Disclaimer: I do not own anything from The Vampire Diaries.

It was pretty inconvenient to be perfectly honest. One minute I'm taking the subway home from school in good ol' NYC, and the next I'm packing my things to move to some remote town in Virginia that I've never heard of in my life. But, I guess that's just my brother for you, spontaneous.

Alistair was nineteen when our parents died, and according to my second eldest brother Sean, he didn't really take it that well. When I asked my brothers what happened to them they told me they died from some sort of animal attack, and immediately after, Alistair took my three other brothers and me and left without looking back. I was only four at the time, and I'm really not even really sure where we lived. Sometimes I get fleeting images, like watching parades on my father's shoulders or playing with my brothers in our backyard near the woods. I tried asking them what "home" was like but never really got a straight answer from them; it was a pretty touchy subject. Even my brother Sawyer whom I never thought had a serious bone in his body would put on his best stern face when approached about the subject, and say something like, "Mom and Dad loved you Norah-May". Yeah thanks, that really cleared things up.

We never stayed anywhere for long. In fact at four years, New York had been the longest and I really thought that maybe it had been for good. Not long after we arrived in Manhattan, Alistair met his wife, Amy, and since then they had two daughters, which I had to admit was nice after having grown up with four older brothers. But, as it turns out I was unsurprisingly wrong. So now here I am, thirteen years after my parents' deaths, driving down to Mystic Falls, Virginia in a minivan packed to the brim with various household items, as well as my two little nieces, Ashley and Sarah who are 3 years and 18 months old respectively in bumper to bumper traffic.

"Aunt Norahhh", Ashley wined loudly, which was doing nothing to help my rapidly growing head ache from the exhaust fumes outside. I took a deep breath before I answered.

"What is it sweetie", I asked in the nicest tone I could. "I gotta go potty reallllly bad!" Of course she did, was there ever a time that she didn't? Not that I usually minded, because for some reason I was always the one watching Ashley and Sarah and taking them wherever they needed to go so I was used to her extremely small, possibly tilted bladder. Sometimes I felt like their mother, considering their actual parents were constantly coming and going. I think they worked for some computer company, but I'm not entirely sure.

"I'm sorry Ash, but there is nowhere I can really take you right now." You never realise how hard it is to explain something to a three year-old until you actually have to do so on a daily basis. They think you could move the world with your big toe or something and you just choose not to because you want to be mean.

"No, I gotta go now! I'm gonna pee my pants!" That certainly got my attention. If she went, I would have to spend the next three hours in a car that smelt like urine. That just wasn't going to happen. I waited until there was a little bit of room to squeeze through in the lane next to me, and like a mad woman, I forced my way across, receiving many angry honks and vulgar gestures in the process. I successfully got off the road, and pulled into a nearby rest stop, and I'm almost positive that you have never seen someone run that fast into a building while holding a small child. Lucky for me there was a small unisex bathroom right in front of the building, where I was able to deposit Ashley quickly before she peed on my arms.

While I was waiting I figured it was probably a smart idea to get Sarah out of the car with her being one and a half and all. Thank God she couldn't talk yet, because if Alistair got word of this, I think he would decapitate me, if not something more gruesome for leaving his baby girl in the car by herself. I expected to find her crying from all of the commotion, but what I did not expect to find however, was a strange leather-clad man looking around my car.

"Hey! What are you doing", I yelled. He looked up surprised, and held my gaze for a short while. His strikingly blue eyes seemed to be studying me, like I was some alien creature that he's never seen before. The longer we stood there, the more I knew something wasn't right. My heart was beating twice as fast as normal, and the muscles in my legs seemed to have formed the slightest twitch. Every fibre of my body was telling me to run, that there was danger, but for some reason I just couldn't bring myself to grab the girls and leave. I broke his gaze in an attempt to clear my thoughts, and quickly realised that he still didn't answer my question.

"I asked you a question", I said forcefully. That seemed to bring him from his observations, and his quantitative look was replaced with an arrogant smirk. "A mini-van, really?" That was his answer! After all of that, he makes fun of my car? "Whew, call the press; we have a real Einstein over here!" Unfortunately, my response did nothing to dampen his spirits but it did warrant some stares from a couple of passers-by, mostly women, which only seemed to encourage his ego. Who did this guy think he was, Ben Barnes? Before he could open his mouth to respond, our conversation was suddenly interrupted by a small blonde child running up to us. "Oh shit", I mumbled under my breath. I forgot Ashley in the bathroom; I was really on a role today.

"You left me in the potty!" If it was any time but now, I would have thought that her exasperated expression was the cutest thing, but right now I really did not have the patience. "I'm sorry honey, why don't you get in the car and we'll hit the road again, okay?" Sensing my bad mood like little kids do, she obediently climbed into the car, leaving me to deal with our mysterious stranger.

"Quite the attentive mother we are, huh", he said, his words dripping with sarcasm. "She's not my daughter", I snapped back a little too harshly. He wasn't the first one to make this mistake, but it always bothered me when people jumped to that conclusion. I mean, come on, couldn't they just be like "How nice of you to watch your little sisters!", or something equally sappy? Then I could say something like," Oh why thank-you ma'am, but these are my nieces." Do they have to just assume that at seventeen years old I'm already a mother of two?

"Ooh touchy", the man replied still holding that ungodly smirk in place. I needed to get out of there before the urge to slap that smile off of his face got any stronger, because I'm pretty sure he could snap me in half with his pinky finger if he really wanted to. Without another word I started walking around to the driver's seat of the van. However, this still didn't deter him. "Where are you headed to?" he asked before I closed the door. Doesn't this guy take a hint? Following my instincts, I decided against telling him the truth, so I said the first thing that popped into my head, "Kansas". Not even waiting for him to answer, I locked the car and sped out of the parking lot.