three human again

✧

MYSTIC FALLS NEVER CHANGED, BUT SOMEHOW IT FELT DIFFERENT NOW TO HER. All her life, Mystic Falls was always the same town going through the same cycle. Nothing new, nothing changed, everything staying the exact same no matter how the tides changed. And in some ways, it still was. The houses were still the same suburban build with front porches and columns, the same people still walked the streets, and the Mystic Grill was still where people gathered.

          But it also felt completely different. The Mystic Grill, which used to be where she felt most comfortable, with the loud atmosphere and bustling behavior made her feel alive. Now, though, it was almost too loud for her sensitive ears. The boisterous mood wasn't inviting anymore, but it felt like a reminder that she – Lux Morgan – was never longer alive.

          Lux was dead, she wasn't alive and thriving, fun and fresh dancing queen, because she was dead and this was who she would be forever. She looked at her friends, who looked the same as her, but knew how different they would be in ten years' time. They were going to grow up, they were going to move forward with their human lives, and Lux wasn't going to be around because she couldn't.

          They were going to change and grow, and one day hopefully they would sit on their front porches and watch the sunset when their hair was grey and face covered in wrinkles, but that wasn't Lux. Lux was a dancing queen forever and ever, doomed to watch them all grow up and envy her friends because they were human – so beautifully human – and she was young forever.

          Until now, she hadn't even realized how much she adored the simple human life. She always wanted something bigger. She wanted a city instead of small Mystic Falls, she wanted a challenging career instead of a low position here helping the town, and she wanted something larger than life. But now, now that the simplicity of a human life was stolen from her, she wanted that.

          She wanted to grow old, she wanted to fall in love and hold their hand forever even when they were old and grey, she wanted to grow up. Lux the human wanted to stay young forever, but Lux the vampire just wanted to grow up. She wanted to age, wanted to get wrinkles, wanted her blonde hair to turn grey. She dreamed of that now, but her dreams were unfulfilled fantasies which could never turn true.

          God, being a vampire sucked. But at least she wasn't alone now with Damon. It just sucked that he had this feud going on with his brother, because Stefan was hot but he was also a dick, which was a huge bummer.

          But whatever, she could live without him. She had Damon, and Damon was being a great and generous guide for her.

          Still, there was only so much that Damon could teach her. He could teach her how to hunt, how to not expose herself, but she was left to her own devices to just be a regular teenage girl again. She was a teenage girl, seventeen and thriving, but she wasn't.

          The same problems she had before, like whether or not she was going to be cheer captain, didn't matter anymore. Her teenage existence had been ripped from her hands, torn away from her because this was going to be her life forever. Those things didn't matter as much anymore, but they still mattered greatly to her friends, so she had to keep pretending to be the same Lux.

          Part of that teenage experience was sitting outside the Mystic Grill with her friends, talking about the upcoming comet because that was apparently super important. Maybe it was for them, because it only came once in a lifetime, but Lux had more than a lifetime to spare. These things just weren't so big to her anymore even though she knew human Lux would be jumping over this.

          "Well, I was talking to Grams, and she said the comet is a sign of impending doom," Bonnie explained, causing Lux to raise an eyebrow, "The last time it passed over Mystic Falls, there was lots of death. So much blood and carnage, it created a bed of paranormal activity."

          "Bonnie Bennett, are you saying that the supernatural exist?" Lux teased, because maybe she got a kick out of asking this when she knew full well that it was and she was their resident vampire friend. She hadn't had so much fun as a vampire until this moment, so let her have it.

          Bonnie's cheeks flushed a bit. "That's not what I'm saying, it's just what Grams believes."

          "But you did say earlier that Grams called you a witch, so I'm pretty sure she's saying the supernatural exist," Lux recalled, a mischievous glint in her eyes.

          "Okay, and then you poured Grams another shot and she told you about aliens," Caroline rolled her eyes, obviously not finding this as amusing as Lux did, with a hint of caution because death and carnage didn't exactly sound great right now. Then, she looked at Elena, "So then what?"

          "So then nothing," Elena shook her head, fighting off giving any details about what happened with her and Stefan.

          Personally, Lux wasn't interested in what happened with Stefan because it was a dick who made Caroline cry and his brother upset, so that didn't sit well with her, but whatever. She would just have to deal with it apparently.

          "You and Stefan talked all night?" Caroline asked in a suspicious tone, as if she couldn't believe that this was all that happened, "There was no sloppy first kiss or touchy feely of any kind?"

          "Nope," Elena shook her head, "We didn't go there."

          "Not even a handshake?" she asked in disbelief, "I mean, Elena, we are your friends, okay? You are supposed to share the smut."

          Lux wanted to roll her eyes, because the last thing she wanted to know about was how Stefan was getting it on when he was rude and an asshole, but her friends didn't agree with that.

          Elena just shrugged at that. "We just talked for hours."

          "Okay, what is with the blockage? Just jump his bones already! Okay, it's easy. Boy likes girl, girl likes boy, sex!" Caroline explained, as if that was going to help.

          "Maybe the blockage is that Stefan is an asshole who made you cry, Caroline," Lux cut in, sipping at her Coke and pretending like she didn't say anything serious.

          "Lux!" Caroline hissed at her and she sent her best look of innocence back.

          "Woah, what? Stefan made you cry?" Elena asked, blinking in surprise.

          "It's nothing," Caroline assured her, "Don't listen to Lux, Elena, go get your man."

          "No," Lux adamantly shook her head, "Don't go get your man, because your man's an asshole. You just find someone else, Matt's still willing." Caroline and Bonnie sent her looks and she raised her hands in mock surrender, "I'm just saying..."

          "No," Elena shook her head, standing up, "That's not the Stefan I know. And you know what? Caroline's right. It is easy. I don't need to sit here weighing everything and hearing you tear him down, Lux, because then I'll end up talking myself out of it instead of doing what I started the day saying I was going to do. I'll see you later."

          Elena stormed away and Lux rolled her eyes. "Dramatic much?" she muttered to herself, unable to stop it from slipping, before her eyes turned to the angry Caroline and Bonnie, "What?"

          "Was that really necessary?" Bonnie asked her, "Elena really likes him, Lux."

          "Okay? And I'm just being a good friend and telling her that maybe she shouldn't take everything at face value because he's a dick. He made you cry, Care, and you might be fine forgetting that and pretending it never happened, but I'm not," Lux then huffed, standing up herself, "I'm going home. I'll see you guys later."

          Because honestly, she couldn't stand being around them when they got mad at her sharing her opinion which was based on good word and experience. If they didn't want her to be a good friend and warn Elena, then she would just go home. Not like it mattered to her.

✧

          SHE COULDN'T SAY SHE was exactly surprised when Damon showed up knocking on her window again. It had happened the night before, when he wanted to go out feeding and decided to bring her with him for training purposes, and she was beginning to suspect that this was going to be a common occurrence. Not that she exactly minded, Damon was nice to talk to.

          He understood her in a different way than her friends. He wasn't focused on teenage drama, because he wasn't a teenager anymore, and while Lux delved into it, that drama no longer controlled her life. She was removed from that now, because she wasn't just a teenager anymore; she was a dead one and that meant something. Dying just put things into perspective, like how Johnny cheating on Samantha didn't exactly matter anymore.

          She opened up her window, jumping out of it before closing it because it wasn't like Damon could come in her house. Her Uncle Tim would never allow that, and she wasn't about to let Damon compel him or do it herself. She was still getting the hang of compulsion honestly, it was trickier than she imagined it would watching Damon do it so flawlessly.

          But she was learning, and that was the important part, and one day she would be a pro just like him.

          Unable to help herself, she grinned widely at the sight of him. "Hey, stranger," she greeted him, a little bit of her teasing him because that's what she did with her friends, and Damon was officially her friend now.

          Yeah, they hadn't known each other long, but Damon helped her. He was helping her, and he cared about her. He understood her position better than anyone else, so it created a special place for him and her to be friends quickly even though a few days wasn't enough to constitute a friendship in any other regard for her.

          "Lux," he winked at her, and she knew her cheeks would have gone pink of she was human and that was a possibility. Thankfully, it wasn't, because that would be a bit embarrassing. "Ready for the comet tonight?"

          She shrugged. "Not really," and she took his hand when he offered it, the two racing through the woods, "I know that when I was human I would've been over the moon, but I'm just...not."

          Damon nodded understandingly, like he had been in the same position as her. "It's a once in a lifetime opportunity to see it," he told her.

          "But we have more than one lifetime," she reminded him, "I don't know how long I'm gonna live, but I know I'll be around to see the comet next time it comes, so why does it even matter? I just...don't get it anymore. I feel like I've lost a part of myself."

          "Well, you died, and so did those human wishes and excitements," Damon told her, "But now you're a vampire and your eyes are widened to the horizon beyond simple human wishes. It's alright that you're different."

          "But I hate it," she complained, "I feel like I can't even relate to my friends anymore because they're talking about boys and the future, and it's so high school and that's me – I'm in high school – but I feel like I'm above that now. I'm disconnected from them."

          Damon's eyes trained upon her as she ranted not only to him but the trees of the forest. "Is that such a bad thing?"

          Lux took a step back, frowning to him. "What?"

          "Is it such a bad thing that you're disconnected from them?" he clarified himself, "You said that you feel like you're above that, because you are. You aren't human, you aren't bound by human actions anymore, so of course you feel disconnected. Your eyes have been open to another possibility of living, and now those little things don't matter anymore, do they?"

          She shook her head, and it felt so nice for someone to understand her. "Yeah," she agreed with him, a bit of an echo, "They don't, but that doesn't mean I don't want them to. I don't want to be disconnected from my friends, I want to be on the same level as them, and it sucks that I'm not. Sometimes I just want to be human again."

          Now, wasn't that a thought. She closed her eyes, because while Damon may have embraced his everlasting existence as a vampire, Lux had not. She clung onto her human self, because that's all she knew, and she wanted it back. She didn't want to feel disconnected from them, she wanted to feel intertwined again. She wanted those childhood wishes of going to Whitmore College with them even though she preferred somewhere further away, she wanted to be excited about the comet, and she wanted to be excited that Elena was going after Stefan but she's not.

          She has none of those things anymore, because she died. She's undead, and when Ben snapped her neck, he killed those human wishes and replaced them with a feeling of emptiness. Now, she was just a carcass of the human Lux Morgan, pretending to still be her, when there was nothing there.

          Damon's footsteps caused the leaves and twigs to snap under him as he got closer to her. "I used to feel that to," he admitted, in a low voice, like he was ashamed of it, "And just like you, I didn't have a choice in my transition, but we can't change the past. We have to embrace what we are, because it may not seem like it, but you've been given a gift."

          "How is it a gift when it's tearing me away from my friends?" she asked in haughtily, "Feels more like a curse to me."

          "Lux, sweetheart, I know. It's because you're young and surrounded by your human life, but if you separate yourself from your old human life, then you would see what I know," he promised her, but she didn't believe him. She couldn't.

          She didn't know if he was suggesting that she run away and start a completely new life, but she couldn't do that. She couldn't just leave her only family, Timothy who always loved her and raised her even though he was young and could've just let her be put into the foster system. She couldn't leave her friends either even if she didn't feel connected to them again, because they were still her friends at the end of the day. She needed them. She needed her human life, she needed to finish this chapter of her life even if Ben closed it for her at the beginning of the summer.

          She needed this, so she couldn't let go.

          So, she didn't.

✧

          WHEN LUX SHOWED UP at the Candle Lighting Ceremony, the town square was already packed with people. For a second, the people and the smell make her waver, but she closed her eyes and focused on the music instead of their beating hearts, and she felt calm again. She had this, she was learning control, and thanks to Damon she was getting better.

          She walked through the square until she saw Caroline, and immediately started her trek to the girl. "Hey," she smiled when she reached the blonde girl.

          "Hi," Caroline said, and Lux could tell by the tone of her voice that she was still upset by what had happened earlier.

          Unable to help herself, she frowned even though she knew that Caroline had good reason to still feel this way. She had brought up something Caroline clearly wanted to forget, and that was a shitty friend move, but Lux was only trying to help Elena...at the expense of Caroline, which was still shitty all things considered.

          "Look, I'm sorry for earlier. I shouldn't have told Elena about what happened at the falls, it was shitty of me," she apologized, because she knew she fucked up and she didn't want this to go unresolved between her and Caroline.

          The blonde girl looked at her, eyes meeting for a second before Caroline glanced away. "I would've gotten over it. You didn't need to tell her."

          "I know that now, I just thought that I should in the moment...but I was wrong," Lux admitted to her, feeling shameful now because she didn't know how badly Caroline didn't want anyone to know – not even one of their best friends, "Light my candle for me?"

          She held out the candle she had been given when she stepped onto the square, a pleading look in her eyes, and Caroline's lips twitched upward before she did so. "There," Caroline said, "And thank you, for apologizing. I know you don't like to do that."

          Lux shrugged, because it wasn't as hard as it used to be. Human Lux never liked to admit that she was wrong, because it made her feel better, but vampire Lux didn't see why she would want to grow this divide between her and her friends. She needed them, like humans needed air to breathe, and if it meant apologizing for his shitty behavior then done. She would do it in a heartbeat – well, a metaphorical one now since she didn't have one anymore.

          She looked around as Bonnie came up to them, and Caroline was quick to jump onto her instead of lingering in their conversation. She didn't take any offence to it because she didn't exactly want to linger onto it either since it made her feel bad.

          When Elena arrived, Lux didn't have the chance to apologize and explain herself before she was whisked away by the appearance of Stefan Salvatore. She still felt some anger boil in her when she saw him and then saw how happy Elena was to have him there, because she knew more than them and she knew not to trust him. Damon said that Stefan had hurt him, and Lux always protected her friends.

          And as the night continued, she still couldn't find Elena and apologize, she eventually she gave up and just hung out with Bonnie and Caroline, reveling in every moment because maybe if she did, she'd feel human again, even if it was just for a moment.

          But the night continued and the candles dwindled done, and eventually she found herself sitting at a booth with her two friends, and she still felt that little disconnection with them, especially when Caroline started talking about druggies. She just couldn't relate herself anymore, because she wasn't attached anymore.

          "Ugh, it's just so much drama," Caroline complained, "Ever notice how the druggies are the biggest attention whores?"

          She eyed Vicki Donavan, who had just been mauled by a creature in the woods a day or so prior. By the patch on her need, Lux guessed it was more of the vampire variety kind of creature rather than a wolf, but she didn't say that.

          "Yeah," Bonnie echoed, but Lux wasn't sure if she actually agreed with Caroline.

          She watched as Stefan approached them, and immediately she tensed. "Excuse me. Hi," he said awkwardly, "Um, have you guys seen Elena?"

          "None of your business," Lux snapped at him instantly, her immediate reaction now. Caroline and Bonnie both sent her looks and even Stefan furrowed his eyebrows.

          "Lux, shut up," Bonnie told her before turning back to Stefan, "I think she went home. I'm gonna give you Elena's cell number and her email. She is big on texting, and you can tell her...I said so."

          "Or," Lux opened her mouth again, "We could not do that because giving people another person's cell number is a bad habit and could lead to some very bad things, like what if you give it to a murderer and then Elena gets killed?" she asked before slitting her eyes at Stefan, "If Elena went home without telling you, there's a reason, so respect it and give her space."

          Bonnie rolled her eyes. "Don't listen to her. Here," she handed him a slip of paper with Elena's cell phone number on it and Lux scoffed.

          "Thank you," he said and as their hands touched, Bonnie let out a gasp. "You okay?"

          "What happened to you?" Bonnie asked him, though it was cruel but soft and curious before she blinked, as if suddenly aware of her surroundings again, "That's so rude. I'm sorry. Excuse me."

          Bonnie walked away quickly and Stefan's eyebrows furrowed again so he turned back to them for an explanation. "Yeah, she kinda wigs out. It's like her thing," Caroline shrugged.

          "And you say that I'm rude," Lux rolled her eyes before she looked back up at Stefan, "You got what you wanted, so go already."

          "I'm sorry, have I done something to you?" Stefan asked her, curious as to why she was so cold to him.

          "Yes, in fact, you have," Lux told him, not shying away now, "You've hurt my friend and I'm not okay with that even if they want to forget about it. Well, I won't, and I'm telling right now that if you ever hurt Elena I will be the one who deals with you. And I have no mercy for those who hurt my friends. Now, toodaloo."

          She waved him off, not caring that Caroline was giving her a look. She just wanted him gone, and when he was, she felt calm again.