THE NEXT MORNING, Ylva woke up face-first on the ground, with nearly ten plastic flasks of her personal blood-infused vodka strewn around her general area, and a royally awful headache. "Bloody hell," the blonde original groaned, her accent seeping through her impaired (or, as much as a thousand-year-old vampire could relate to the word) mind. She was usually able to mask it quite well, but the pounding in her skull made her perfectly indifferent for the moment. 

Ylva peeled herself up off the floor and was immediately greeted with her reflection in the full-body mirror in front of her. It wasn't a pleasant sight. "Oh my god . . ."

With an indisputable groan, the girl slinked over to her closet and threw on a pair of black jeans and whatever top she could find. After washing her face at least three times to scrub off the extra blood cocktail that didn't make it into her mouth, Ylva decided that today she would take a stroll around town and hopefully get acquainted with some more of the locals. 

That thought alone sent a shiver up her spine (she can only handle so much verbal interaction, after all), but her mind traveled back to Klaus and his various demands all pertaining to breaking the 'Sun and Moon curse,' as her brothers so cleverly named it five hundred years ago.

Rolling her dauntless blue eyes, Ylva sped out of her apartment and only stopped when she reached the one landmark that she recognized with ease: the Mystic Grill. Despite how much she wanted to stroll inside and empty their collection of Spirytus, the blonde knew she had to start mingling before people started to get suspicious of the doe-eyed, family-less new girl. 

Suddenly it seemed as if her prayers were answered, as the dark-haired witch-girl from last night turned the corner and began walking down the same street, looking rather flustered as her thumbs appeared to be running a race on her cellphone. 

Well that certainly doesn't seem like a good sign.

"Hey! Bonnie - was it?" Ylva greeted, her voice as light and airy as a cloud. It was nauseating, but unfortunately necessary. 

The girl quickly averted her eyes up from her phone and turned to Ylva's direction, letting a small half-smile appear on her features. "Hey, uh, yeah. Ylva?"

"You're good with names. Most people can't remember it to save their lives," the blonde chuckled. "Oh, how's your friend doing after last night? Those were some pretty nasty cuts. I was worried she might need stitches, but she must be fine by now, right?"

That seemed to pull Bonnie back into the real world, as she drew her lip between her teeth, as if trying to restrain herself from saying something. Ylva's eyebrows furrowed in confusion . . . and slight alarm.

"Is she? Okay, that is?"

The witch took a stiff breath, eyes glazing over with apprehension; and Ylva could give a probable guess of what was running through her mind at that very second. 

Should I really be spilling my guts to this almost total stranger? What if she can't be trusted? What if she can? Who even is she? Why does she care so much? Why is she staring at me so intensely?

That was just Ylva's general guess, of course. 

"Can I trust you?" Bonnie spoke up again, eyes searching Ylva's for any reason to walk away and pretend like they had never spoken. But she couldn't find one. Ylva's eyes were completely clear as the sun settled on them, leaving a sea of steel blue in their wake. 

An almost subconscious slow nod gently tousled her blonde hair, and her voice was unnaturally soft. "Of course."

Ylva liked to think that is was true - that people could trust her discretion on all matters she was involved in. She didn't have much else to be proud of in her thousand years of life. She could be impolite, headstrong, possessed manners that would have sent her early 1800's English mistress to the grave; but the one thing Ylva did have left was her honor. 

Perhaps she had spent too much time with Elijah during her early childhood years. 

A muffled sigh escaped Bonnie's lips as her eyes squeezed shut for a moment, before fluttering open again. "Elena's missing," her deflated - yet determined - voice spoke up. "I'm on my way to meet up with a few of my friends who are good at dealing with things like this. Ylva, trust me when I say we cannot involve the police. That would only make it worse. You're new here, so I don't expect you to understand, but you need to trust me, okay?"

Ylva's teeth gritted with anger, forcing herself not to speed off and rip out the heart of whoever dared to lay a hand on the doppelgänger. She really did not want to be on the other side of Klaus' dramatics for another five hundred years until another one popped up. 

"I'm coming with you."

"Ylva -"

"Bonnie. I'm trusting you - which I really don't do too often - so you have to trust me here. If your family came from a line of herbalists, mine came from a line of gym junkies . . . we're used to close quarter combat. I can help you and your friends bring Elena back safely; and, assuming none of you are even close to having an idea of who has her, I would say that's your best bet right now," the blonde replied, swiftly and without hesitation as the words tumbled off of her tongue with ease. 

The witch seemed conflicted as she stared at Ylva, arms crossed over her chest and one leg jutted out. "Okay," she finally conceded, not once breaking eye contact with the girl in front of her. "Okay, I trust you. Come with me."

-•-•-

Mystic Falls High was overwhelmingly dull, and the mere thought of ever attending it was enough to cause nightmares. The halls were eerily bleak, with grey lockers lining the plain, white walls that were occasionally littered with fliers, or posters demanding participation in various school activities that all traced back to school spirit. 

Ylva readily followed Bonnie as she lead the way to wherever they were headed, the footsteps from her wedges echoing throughout the empty halls as her hips swayed, delicately. 

The pair approached the door to a classroom, but just as Ylva was about to walk in, Bonnie stopped her. A look of confusion made its way onto the blonde's face, as she thought they had just settled the fact that they needed to trust each other in order for any of this to work - but Bonnie held up a pleading finger that Ylva couldn't help but nod to. 

"One minute, I swear. I just need to, um, settle some things with my friends beforehand, okay?"

And with that, the door was closed. 

Ylva inwardly groaned, running her hand through her hair with frustration. The whole 'innocent human' act was pretty fucking inconvenient, in her humble opinion, as she could hear Bonnie and two other male voices working on some variation of a tracking spell - most likely a Bennet interpretation of it. Ylva had to hand it to the girl; it was no easy task.

Obviously the two other voices knew about magic . . . but did they know about vampires? How far into the supernatural world had they been exposed? God, Klaus had better be grateful for this much grunt work on his baby sister's part. 

She wondered if Rebekah, or even Kol or Elijah, would have capped out by now, and the thought brought a smile to Ylva's face. Testing their patience had always been amusing. 

As her idle mind continued to stir, the door to the classroom opened and out came the three people. Upon seeing the third, she had to stifle a laugh at the beautiful irony that life loved to throw at her; and she truly could not determine whether this was a good thing or an absolutely awful thing. Knowing her luck, however, it was probably the latter. 

Afterall, she hadn't seen Stefan Salvatore since his glorious ripper days in the 1920s. 

"There. She's there," came Bonnie's exhausted voice as she pointed to a spot on a charred map, her attention divided between all three people.

"How did you find her?" Ylva replied, though she didn't quite know why she asked it. She wasn't interested whatsoever in the how, as much as the where, when and why.

"We, uh, tracked her phone," the unnamed boy said, looking slightly cautious of Ylva's presence. "It's three hundred miles away."

"Bonnie, we need a more exact location than that," Stefan said, his voice evidently distressed. He must have a thing for doppelgängers - Tatia's bloodline tended to have that effect on people. 

"That's as close as I can get."

"We can map it, aerial view will show us what's around there, help us narrow down the area," the boy spoke up again, and the answer seemed to please everyone and lessen the urgency of their tones. 

"Perfect. Call me with whatever you find," Stefan stated, offering the kid a firm nod of approval, though the latter instantly narrowed his eyes in disbelief. 

"No! No, I'm coming with you." 

Ylva quirked an eyebrow; she really wasn't in the mood for babysitting. It was bad enough that she had no choice but to be surrounded by a gaggle of over-confident teenagers that believed themselves invincible, along with an ex-ripper vampire who had apparently gone half vegan. "Uh . . ."

"No, Jeremy, you're not," Stefan insisted, and Ylva was glad that the animal blood hadn't impaired his judgement yet. "Listen, you and Bonnie can go back to your house just in case. I'll call you the minute I find her."

Ylva took a step forward, arms crossed over her chest. "I hope your car has a working radio, buddy, because I think you forgot a 'we' in that sentence."

Stefan's brows tugged together as he searched the blonde's face. "Who are you?"

"Does it really matter what my name is? I just want to help you find your friend. Are you really that adverse to my help when you've only just met me?" she teased, tilting her chin up a tad. Oh, if only he knew . . .

"Stefan, you can't do this alone," Jeremy protested once again - though, as soon as Ylva was about to heartily agree with that statement, a figure with jet-black hair and raging blue eyes appeared out of nowhere. 

'Oh, for fucks sake,' Ylva groaned to herself. 'As if this couldn't get any worse.'

"He's not. Let's go, Stefan," the voice of the insolent Damon Salvatore, said. 

At that, Ylva was utterly and completely done with these outrageously idiotic, imprudent half-wits and their unfoundedly self-assured demands. Cocking an eyebrow, Ylva turned her head toward the man and looked him dead in the eyes as her voice spoke up. "Oh, really? Because, to me, you seem like the kind of person who would be up for a road trip rescue mission with one more person tagging along."

Letting her pupils return to their normal size, Ylva grinned in relief as the man shrugged in compliance. "Come on, blondies, we don't have all day." 

-•-•-

i wrote this all in one day let's gOO. also, i'm digging the bonnie & ylva vibes hehe