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𝐈𝐓 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐘𝐄𝐃 𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐄𝐗𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐋𝐘 𝐀𝐒 𝐈𝐓 𝐇𝐀𝐃 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐌.

Colette walked into her childhood home and found both her parents mutilated. She screamed, cried, and cradled her mother to her chest and the paramedics arrived and took them away. She met them at the emergency room where her mother, Stella Copeman, was pronounced dead at twelve-fifteen in the morning. Adam Copeman, hooked up to countless machines and his neck being held together by staples and stitches, was on life support in the ICU for the night.

There had been a moment, just a moment, that he was conscious long enough to recognize Colette as she watched him. The doctors allowed her to hold his hand just for a moment before she was asked to leave. No one was allowed in for more than thirty minutes and she was cutting it when he opened his eyes, just briefly, to meet her gaze. His skin was splotchy and dull, dried blood crusted across his neck and she knew he would not be able to speak.

That didn't stop her from getting into his mind. She didn't know she had that talent, but Damon would tell her later it was a small gift vampires were given to ease sufferers.

Adam was healthy in this small vision, their dream world. He was at the kitchen table and Colette was beside him, both eating from a plate of pancakes.

He took in a deep breath, reaching up to run his fingers over his neck. "I feel...alive here." His eyes settled on her. "Where are we? What are you doing?"

"I'm easing your pain," she whispered, pushing the plate of pancakes towards him and then the container of syrup, the real sugary kind he always loved. "It's hard to explain but, here, we can talk. Just for a little."

"Am I dying?" he whispered, his eyes full of tears as he looked up from the plate. There was something so shockingly young about his features, the fullness of his face and the lack of age in his eyes.

"I hope not." The emotions were stuck in her throat and she felt sick. She didn't know if he would survive but she prayed he would. What would she do without her father now that she's lost her mother?

Orphaned not only by family but of heart.

"Colette, he came in–"

"I know," she breathed, stopping him. "I know who did this and I'm going to stop him."

Adam shuddered, as if relieved. "He wasn't always like this, you know. But...when he got to high school, things changed. You've got to understand that."

She nodded, even though she didn't. She would tear his throat out before she could understand properly. She reached out, taking Adam's hand and in a slow voice, said, "We don't need to talk about him, okay? I'm here to tell you–" She cleared her throat, feeling it grow tight with the coming tears. She shook her head, forcing a watery smile. "I'm here to tell you that I love you, dad. I love you so much and–and I know this is going to be hard and it's going to be painful but–" She covered her mouth with her free hand as Adam grasped her hand tightly, tears slipping down his cheek. She lowered her hand, taking in a deep breath. "I need you to know how much I love you and it's okay to-to let go."

"Colette," he breathed, tilting his head to the side to disagree but even here, they could both tell how much of a toll this was all taking on him.

"Mom will–" She sucked in a deep breath. "She'll be waiting for you. It's okay, I promise–"

He was shaking his head, her handsome, beautiful father was shaking his head. "I can't leave you."

"But you can," she said, licking her dry lips. Even in this perfect world, she still had flaws and pains. "I'll be okay here, I'm stronger now. I'll be strong, I'll be okay."

I'll be strong for you. For mom. You needn't worry any longer.

He nodded but didn't let go of her hand and she let him finish his pancakes before she let go of her hold on his mind. When she left, his heart was still beating and she hoped it would continue to do so. The doctor's reassured her and told her they would call if there were any changes and she was sent home. There was no point in waiting, her father would either wake up within hours or die trying.

Colette knew exactly who had gone into her house and slaughtered her parents. She knew exactly what twisted, fucked up mind had done this and she was going to kill him.

When she got back to her home, thanks to Damon, she found that the latch on the front door hadn't been broken. Someone had gone in easily, either with a key or had just simply opened the door because more likely than not, Stella left it unlocked during the day. It would have been completely unlike her to keep it unlocked once it got dark so someone must've used a key.

Damon closed the door behind her once she'd entered the home, the stench of blood more prominent and thick in the air. She hadn't noticed before but the walls and furniture were painted red, like someone had opened a hose or a spray bottle and had attacked the clean leather and the wallpaper.

She stalked into the kitchen, her mind like a big empty room, and she filled up a small bowl with water and grabbed a sponge. It wasn't much but if she made enough trips, the blood on the floor would be gone.

"Colette," whispered Damon as she bent down by the largest pool of blood. Her mother's inchor was the richest in color. "You don't have to do this. I can get someone to come by, clean this all up–"

"No," she murmured, sniffling, "I can do this myself. I–" She shook her head. "I have to do this myself."

No one else was worthy enough to touch her family's blood.

She dipped the small sponge into her water and watched it run through the old thing, soaking it up until it grew fat and soft in her hand. Behind her, Damon sighed softly and muttered, "I'm going to go out and get you something you can clean with, alright? Will you be okay here?" When she didn't respond he said in an even softer voice, "Colette?"

She looked back at him and gave him a small nod to tell him she heard him. He gave her a smile she couldn't discern before slowly leaving. He'd taken Elena home while Colette had been transfixed in the emergency room and she wished the girl had stayed. She was afraid to be alone with her own thoughts and actions.

She'd lost Nik. The idea of him replaced by Klaus Mikaelson, killed, fiend, ruiner. She truly believed he could've been everything to her, as naive as that sounds, and now he was gone and with him, the lasting memory and life of her mother. She knew Klaus had nothing to do with what happened, that a greater force was at play.

Now, Adam was hanging on to life by a thread and Stella was somewhere in the morgue. She had known Colette was a vampire and just how she knew Colette didn't know for sure. Tommy was an acceptable option and she knew it was him, like it all was. There had been another scent in the air and she knew it was her bastard brother and his loathsome girlfriend.

Their scent covered almost everything. Spicy. Wrong. Tart in the back of her throat.

Colette raised the sponge out of the water and squeezed, feeling the liquid run out cold against her hand before she raised it over the puddle of thick blood. It was already congealing and when she began to scrub, it moved in thick, gooey clumps. Underneath, it was still wet, although cold. Colette stared, her mouth watering and she let go of the sponge to hover a finger over the mess. She dipped the pad of her finger against the strange feeling and ran it up and down the floor, catching a good film of blood against her skin.

She knew she shouldn't have let it touch down on her tongue and she knew she shouldn't have sucked it clean but she could hardly help herself. Her eyes throbbed and pulsed and she felt her fangs elongate with a sharp pain of hunger.

What happened next was horrific as she lowered her face down and licked the floor to gather as much of the rich blood on her tongue and down her throat. Her hands moved through it, the thickness coating her flesh and seeped deeper into her pores and clothing.

The smell of it was overwhelming, making her dizzy as she rubbed the bloody palm of her hand down her mouth and chin, licking her lips. There was so much blood here she could scoop it up into her hands and slurp down the strange jell. It was so sweet in her mouth, like a candy so forbidden and angelic that you could not get enough of.

She felt like one of the women in Goblin Market, the fruits so tempestuously delicious that it ate her up inside. She couldn't get enough. She needed more and more and more.

Temptation, take hold of me and never let me go!

Until she realized what exactly she was doing. She barely made it to the sink in the kitchen before throwing up, blood spewing from her lips and across the metal drain and faucet.

God, what was she doing? What was she doing–

Tears rolled down her cheeks before she could stop them, her hands trembling as she looked down at what covered her palms. Her mother's blood.

Stella Copeman's life blood.

It had dripped and pooled out of her and Colette had found it salivating. Choking on a sob, she reached out and turned the water on, scrubbing at the bloody mess in the sink and then what was left across her hands and arms. She even went as far as to wet her hands and run it over her face in a pathetic attempt to cleanse herself of what she'd done.

There was nothing to purify her in these moments. No amount of scrubbing the floor or her skin would clean what had happened here in this home. Her parents suffered tremendously. She could feel the weight of their torment as it clung to every surface, she could see when the beast attacked and his partner stood by and laughed and grinned.

What was the point in family and friends when they were all going to turn on you anyway?

Colette moved back from the sink and felt her heel glide through the thin layer of blood on the ground and she slipped and fell, her elbow colliding with the floor with an angry jolt of pain and numbness. She cradled her arm as she laid there on her side, letting her clothes soak up Adam's blood, feeling the chill of it touch her skin.

Once she'd gotten up, her phone rang inside her pocket and she had to peel it out, the case smeared with old and fresh redness. She knew who it was before she'd even answered and when she did she reached out to clutch at the edge of the counter.

"Ms. Copeman? I'm so sorry but..."

The rest was white noise. She didn't remember saying 'thank you for the call' or even hanging up the phone. There was all this horrible static in her ears and fogging up her eyes and she knew she was doubled over sobbing so loudly it sounded like some poor animal was dying over the hum.

She drummed her fists across the ground from how she sunk to her knees, her head resting against the blood stained floors that would never quite look right after this. Nothing in this home would be the same. It would always smell of death, this cold fragmented feeling of horrible longing.

After a long moment and once the tears had stopped and her face felt swollen and full, the numbness now just a friend, she stood and retreated to the garage. Stella's old car still sat inside, unused for years since Adam had declared he would fix it for her one day before their thirtieth anniversary. It would've been romantic but none of that mattered now.

Nothing would ever be the same.

Colette choked back an ugly little cry as she picked up the old jug of gasoline they kept incase Tommy ran out of gas again like he had back in his junior year. She clutched the red thing close to her side as she retreated back into her home. She couldn't stand to be here knowing what had happened and how her parents had been casualties of a war they didn't know about.

Did they know, though? Adam didn't let on to anything but Stella had known the second Colette brought her wrist to her own mouth. She had a feeling Stella had known about Tommy's secret and the one now festering inside her daughter. She would rather die, horrifically, then be trapped to live forever.

Adam...well, Colette would never know if Adam had felt the same or not. He had taken her word and had allowed fate to work it's timeless magic. She hoped he passed more easily than her mother, with her entrails exposed and her body nearly bloodless.

It seemed the Copeman's died just as violently as they lived, except for one.

Colette would make sure he suffered more than his parents, more than her. He would be the last of the long line of failures and monsters she'll allow herself to come across with.

First, she will burn down his home and drive him out of hiding. Second, she will kill his beloved. And third, she will kill him just as ruthlessly as he killed their parents. It will be terrible and it will be agonizing.

Colette grinned as the tears ran down her face, her emotions on such an exhilarating high, she thought she would pass out but she soon came to realize it was the gasoline. It was the anger inside her keeping her from falling apart like she knew she would later. She moved in a robotic daze as she poured the gasoline over the kitchen floors, the couch in the living room and left a trail leading up the stairs and into her parents bedroom.

She stopped only to pack a small bag. It was no longer her heart and soul leading her but her brain. She collected a few photos of her parents, a blanket from their bed that smelled of them, and even her father's old jacket. She packed both her parents an outfit to be buried in.

She then went into her own room and stuffed her bag full of her own clothes and personal items. She wasn't a fool, she wouldn't burn all of this down without taking what was hers.

She just couldn't stand to be in this home for a second longer. She couldn't bear it, not with the smells all around her masquerading as a happy home when in reality it turned to hell. This was no longer a safe haven. It was a prison.

She placed her bag outside in the grass on her front lawn before going back inside the insidious home. She held the match book in her hand and stood where her mother died, letting her eyes close to take in one last moment. She pictured Stella standing next to her, Adam on her other side. She imagined one last happy family before she grabbed three matches and struck them hard and watched them burn.

Is this what you really want? Is this your cure?

She took a deep breath, feeling the slight warmth corralling into her.

Yes, she thought. Yes, yes, yes.

Colette let the match drop and her home erupted in flames.

It was the only way to properly wipe out the plague lying within these walls. It was the only way to regain her freedom. One day, maybe she would miss it, this place she grew in but she knew she wouldn't. Not when it was only filled with lies forced upon her and made up memories.

She took a deep breath again, this time pulling in the smoke into her lungs as she left. She coughed and hacked but it felt good to feel almost alive for a second. She collapsed on the grass, facing her home and looked up as the flames caught and consumed every little thing she'd ever known.

She thought, just for a moment, she saw two figures standing in one of the windows upstairs and she felt herself smile as the tears built up in her eyes and emotion swelled in her throat so tight it was hard to breathe. She clutched at her chest and wailed, tears rolling off her nose and jaw as she snotted with this horrible aching pain moving through her.

It was grief.

Grief felt like death. Grief felt like something far worse than anything she had ever felt before.

When she was little, her grandmother died but she was too young to feel the weight of it. She was the only other family member she had, the only true loss close to her besides a beloved pet cat she had in middle school. But this was far worse.

The loss of one parent is one terrible thing but the loss of two? She suddenly felt so sick she thought she would vomit again. She didn't like knowing what Elena felt like but it was impossible to avoid. They were the same and she hated to admit it and she hoped the other girl wouldn't come to her with pity and condolences. It would only drive her farther into this pool of despair and sorrow.

How does one live like this? How does one live while the ones they love are dead?

She clawed at her chest so feverishly, her nails almost pierced through the fabric of her shirt. The fire had taken over the house entirely, the glass in the windows shattering and the walls beginning to fall into one another like a house of cards collapsing. The figures in the window had vanished when the flames grew so hot they looked like strands of sunlight against the stark sky.

The sun was rising behind the burning smoke, like cotton candy in the wind. It was crazy to see how something so beautiful could still occur while something so evil happened all around her.

Colette Copeman cried on her hands and knees until Damon arrived ten minutes later along with the fire department. He took her bag away to hide that she'd known what was going to happen and they blamed it on faulty wiring and Sheriff Forbes agreed.

She was an ally, Colette realized as Damon helped her to his car. If only she could've stopped Tommy before he gutted Stella and Adam.

If only anyone had known and as Colette got inside the car and watched the firemen try to put out the fire that would not be put out until thirty minutes later when there was no coming back from the damage that someone did know this horrible thing was going to happen to her family.

Colette had known the night she'd returned from the mountain with Damon. She had seen the blood in a horrible daydream and thought it was a memory.

It wasn't a memory but a vision of the future, something she had stolen from Naya the night she had died. Naya had been giving her Tommy's blood and her own, she knew that from the way Naya's blood had tasted.

Like something horribly familiar.

Colette had stolen her powers, something impossible for a vampire to do, and was now living with the consequences. At least, that's what she was guessing too. Some of her memories, the most potent confusing ones, were warnings and she would never allow herself to overlook one again.

If she had just taken the time to think about that first vision of her home, she could've saved her parents. If she hadn't gone to Chicago or had fallen for Klaus, they would've lived or she would've been able to prevent it.

It was her fault, all of it.

As Damon drove away, she let herself get one last look of the fire in the side mirror and this time, after all this horror and pain she'd gone through the past day and a half, she felt her heart truly break and she didn't think she would be able to recover from it.

No vampire healing or powers would be able to heal her guilt. Her grief would burn on just like the fire that took her life and the fire that was now taking her home.

Everything started and ended with the flame, it seemed.

AUTHOR'S NOTE━━sooooo colette taking a page right from elena's book by burning her house down LMAO....also sorry to kill stella and adam.....they had to go in order for things to continue the way i want them for colette soon !!!!

what do you think is gonna happen in the next chap??? any guesses???

let me know what you think and as always pls pls pls vote/comment and i'll give you more klaus soon