A.N.: Hi guys. A huge thank-you to everyone who has reviewed. Just started watching episode one of season three The Originals. Elijah: Fight Club. My brain has exploded.

Drunken Binges, Funerals & Formals

60

Game On

"Whoa. Cover up, Fabio, we've got a crazy ex on the loose," Damon grimaced, as they sauntered toward the couple sitting on the park-bench.

"A little redundant, isn't it," Giulia frowned at Elena, who was dabbing at Stefan's exposed six-pack with a dishtowel with the kind of expression one would see on the face of a hospitalised amputee's visitors. Elena shot her a confused frown. "Playing nursemaid to a vampire. Why d'you think they only wear dark clothes?"

"Makes us look all villainy," Damon smirked.

"Clearly you've not watched The Bad Seed. Pigtails," Giulia said, giving Damon's standard uniform dark-jeans and black shirt casually unbuttoned a sweeping look.

"I don't think I'd rock that," Damon frowned, running a hand through his inky hair.

"Are you smoking pot?" Elena suddenly asked. Giulia, who indeed had a lit spliff perched delicately between her fingers, hooked her thumb in the pocket of her jacket, feet slightly apart, hips leaning slightly forward, sunglasses already perched on her nose, the tips of her ears starting to sizzle from the unexpected sunshine. The very picture of apathy. Seeing the disapproving look on Elena's face, Giulia inhaled, and let the fragrant smoke out in rings toward her. She smirked when Elena wrinkled her nose, coughing lightly and waving a hand in the air.

"No, that's illegal," Giulia said, passing the joint to Damon, who inhaled and passed it back, giving Elena a lascivious grin. Damon sighed, glancing over the shimmering lake, then smirked tauntingly at Elena.

"Better watch out, looks like Katherine's trying to steal your guy." Elena looked crestfallen; Giulia wondered if Elena would ever have given that an inkling if Damon hadn't brought up the point.

"That's not what's happening," Stefan said quietly, almost under his breath as he tucked his t-shirt down and sighed.

"Isn't it?" Damon asked, his expression almost cruel. "I mean, it's only fair, since I went after your girl." Giulia exhaled a plume of smoke and frowned at Damon.

"You can do better," she said sternly. Given that Caroline was lying in the hospital, and Tyler, the most impatient guy she knew, was suffering through receiving condolences from everyone who pretended they didn't know the Mayor had smacked his kid around, she wasn't in the best frame of mind to be under the influence and anywhere near Elena. She'd espied Bonnie but had been drawn to the buffet and successfully avoided all but Grams – Sheila Bennett had apparently heard all Giulia had said to Bonnie at the hospital. She had sighed that perhaps the best thing to have done would have been to destroy the device, and send the old vampires off to destroy the baby one causing so much pain. But here she was, Elena. The one this was all for. Caroline in the hospital, Tyler's dad dead – all for Elena. And she didn't even realise it. She should have guessed that John Gilbert's true motivation had always been to protect her: she was his daughter. Whether she had been raised by his brother didn't change the fact that he had always been in Elena's life, the outsider, the uncle she didn't like, but he had been there; he had loved her before she was ever born, ensuring she was adopted by a couple he knew would lavish her with love, the kind of life any parent would want for their child.

Well, John had done what he'd set out to do. Giulia hadn't visited him in the hospital; all her time recently had been spent with Caroline, or studying. The vampires were dead; and because of him, Katherine had been able to come in, undetected, stab John Gilbert and masquerade as Elena, wreaking havoc in just one evening. She had come here, to the Lockwood house, Tyler had invited her inside thinking she was Elena. Giulia had glimpsed her from afar, knowing instantly she was not Elena – amazing ankle-booties, a killer jacket and glossy curls to her waist. Elena, with taste. But Giulia hadn't stormed across the crowded room to confront her; and Katherine hadn't sought her out. She'd been too preoccupied with Bonnie, apparently.

And then she had stabbed Stefan with one of the yard lanterns and skipped away. She liked to punctuate her words with stabbings. Giulia couldn't help feeling this was something to do with compensating for impotence – in Katherine's case…powerlessness when it came to her situation. Lash out at those weaker than she was because those stronger than her had manipulated and controlled her for years. Why she was here in Mystic Falls at all. It all came back to the curse.

Of course, they weren't to know that. As far as Giulia was concerned, the best way to protect all involved was by keeping them utterly ignorant – and unlike Elena, when Giulia set her mind to something, she never faltered.

"Giulia…that's not very nice," Damon said, blinking in mild surprise, though his tone was half mocking, half amused. He cast Elena a sidelong glance, almost wary.

"I'm not in a very nice mood," Giulia said. She drew a circle with her fingertip in mid-air, arching an eyebrow at Stefan who sighed deeply, in her head calling Elena a number of colourful and very foul words at the idea of her getting her claws into Damon, the same way Katherine had, and just like before, it would only lead to more and more pain for Damon. Stefan was a masochist and enjoyed the thrill of being a vampire-martyr. "The scent of the bullshit brewing here is a pungent one."

They didn't seem to know how to respond to that. Elena frowned, handed Stefan the towel, and sighed, "I'm gonna go…check on Jeremy and Jenna… Let me know when you guys are done…"

"Bye!" Giulia sang, waving chirpily, before she collapsed on the bench with a groan, stretching out.

"Giulia… That wasn't called for, what you said to Elena," Stefan said.

"I said nothing to Elena; I simply mentioned to Damon that he can do far better than her," Giulia said fairly, eyeing the illuminated tip of her spliff. "If you want to continue to play the tame version of yourself, the unmanned, defanged one, who am I to stop you doing so with the Katherine lookalike with no bite." She crossed her knees, jiggling her ankle frantically as she watched the water glitter. She glanced at Damon. "But I refuse to let her ensnare you."

"Elena's not Katherine," Stefan said, with sombre certainty.

"Don't underestimate her. Elena knows how to get what she wants, she always has," Giulia said quietly. She had known Elena her entire life; everything Katherine became was latent in Elena now, the potential. The right set of circumstances and the same monster would be born – but Elena had been brought up loved and taught consideration by her parents. She was also in high-school, and the greatest worry she had was – Katherine. She had two big bad vampires protecting her – Katerina had been entirely alone. She had learned how to depend upon herself, and trust no-one not to betray her. She had learned the lesson too harshly, too many times.

"Katherine's defining attribute," Damon said idly, tilting his head thoughtfully. He eyed Stefan. "So, what's it gonna be, huh? Fight to the death?"

Stefan blurted a laugh despite himself.

"Go ahead. Make your threats. Stake your claim!" Damon said, holding his fists up in a mock boxing pose.

"I'm not gonna fight you," Stefan said, his voice measured.

"Why?!" Damon asked indignantly, and Giulia's lips twitched. "I'd fight me."

"Katherine's gonna try and plays us against each other, you do know that, right?" Stefan said, gesturing between himself and Damon.

"Brother, don't you worry. Our bond is unbreakable," Damon said, irony dripping from his voice like molasses, and Giulia smirked, chuckling softly under her breath. But in the corner of her mind, she reflected on what Damon had taunted: When push came to shove, the brothers would die for each other. They may have been fighting like dogs for decades, but nothing had ever been strong enough to get between them when they needed to stand by each other. It hadn't been Katherine that Damon had promised to punish Stefan over, all those years ago; he hadn't promised an eternity of misery because Stefan had been fed Katherine's blood as well.

It was because Stefan had caused Damon to turn at all. Damon's choice had been to fade, to not feed on blood, not to complete the transition; to die. Stefan had forced blood on him. And here they both were.

Giulia hoped sincerely that Elena Gilbert was not enough to get between the two brothers. Their history was too rich, their bond was that strong. And in the end, she was just another girl, a faded copy of the enigmatic character they had both loved when they were young.

She just hoped they both continued to think with their heads – not their hearts, or any other treacherous member of their body.

"We need to stay united against her," Stefan said fiercely, standing up. "So yes, as much as I'd like to kill you, I'm not gonna fight you."

"I kissed Elena," Damon enunciated, frowning bemusedly at Stefan.

"I have mouthwash in my purse." Stefan reached out and swatted Giulia's head. She defended herself, cautious of the piercing still delicate in her cartilage.

"You feel something for Elena," Stefan said, spreading his arms wide. Damon fidgeted where he stood, looking uncomfortable. "Because you actually care. And I'm not gonna let Katherine come in and destroy that part of you that is finally, after all this time, willing to feel something." Definitely uncomfortable; that was Damon. He didn't like being told what to do and even less did he like discussing feelings. He and Giulia were very alike in that regard, Giulia didn't like having to name the gooey yucky tangled mess of stuff that was just a feeling in her stomach sometimes. And she reflected on the fact that it was…it was Elena who had brought out this change in Damon.

Elena.

Not Giulia. He was opening up; but not, as he had once done, to her. Not for her, either; not because he loved her. Not because he felt guilty for orphaning her. Because of Elena. Because he thought he saw something in her, something he wished he could have seen in Katherine. Gentleness.

"She'll try to break you," Stefan was saying, as Giulia took a pensive draw from the spliff. "She'll try to break us. And how we will respond to that will define us. It's our choice… So, no, I'm not gonna fight you."

Giulia exhaled a plume of smoke, ground the butt of the spliff with the heel of her boot, and stood. "Well, that was anticlimactic."

"Where are you going?" Damon frowned.

"Home. I have to study," Giulia said over her shoulder, striding across the gardens toward the front-gates, avoiding the house crawling with people. Mason Lockwood had been a surprise, more so than Katherine flaunting her shining chestnut curls and superb cream contouring. But she supposed his brother was dead. Given the brother in question, in his shoes Giulia wouldn't have bothered to show up. Pay respects to a man who so rarely respected his own family beyond its legacy? No.

She didn't see Tyler again, and no superb twin of Elena showed herself; if Katherine wasn't going to introduce herself, Giulia wasn't going to seek her out. This was a delicate situation; Giulia was gaining a reputation, apparently, in the supernatural world, and she wondered just what Katherine knew.

Because she would bet anything Katherine had no idea what Giulia knew.

It was always best to be the villain when nobody knew your secrets.

Voldemort and his Horcruxes had taught her that; everyone had a past and their secrets had the power to undo them. Horcruxes, the Ring of Power, moonstones.

Overconfidence.

It was the defining trait of villains everywhere – and Katerina Petrova had it in spades.

Sat in her new study, Giulia worked for hours, getting her reading done – sat braless in a slob tank and cropped, baggy grey sweatpants, makeup scrubbed off and face shining from moisturiser, her hair pulled up into a messy bun stuck through with pens and a highlighter between her teeth as she jigged her foot, trying to temper her energy listening to some of her favourite classical music, she broke the strain of continuously reading and tapping away at her laptop with rapid-fire bursts of arguments and evidence, page after page, tracking her changes, racking up the references in the footnotes as she configured images into the dissertations, by texting – having to double-check messages before she sent them because she was continuing conversations with Caroline, Cara and Elijah simultaneously, and with the latter two it was easy to forget which was which when they started flirting.

She saved drafts of her essays, yawning widely, and propped her glasses on top of her head, rubbing her exhausted eyes. Her phone, the battery in the red from too much texting, buzzed on the desktop she was vainly trying to tidy after five hours of straight studying, surprised the desk, located at an angle near the centre of the room, didn't topple from the six precarious stacks of Post-It filled textbooks, and she exhaled a huge sigh at another missive from Caroline.

Car was driving herself crazy; handing over the reins to someone else wasn't in Miss Mystic Falls' repertoire, and despite being bedridden, the doses of medicine she was receiving weren't enough to blunt her personality: she was frantic about every tiny detail of the celebratory school carnival Giulia had had to take over organising at the last minute. Caroline wasn't likely to be discharged in time to go but that didn't mean she was any less invested in the event being a success. She would take it as a personal failure if the carnival turned out to be anything less than the perfection she had envisioned over six months ago when they had started planning things.

Did you remember to order the extra Team Jacob t-shirts?

You know my personal feelings on that atrocity, Car.

I don't care about your personal opinions; did you get the tees or not?

I ordered them; though DVDs of Nosferatu would've been cheaper. She sighed, dialling Caroline's number from memory, knowing they would only be threatening text limits if they continued, and Caroline answered instantly.

"Nobody cares about creepy black-and-white movies, Giulia," Caroline snipped; she was in a mood, Giulia had been able to tell just by the tone of her texts.

"Obviously, otherwise our culture would be vastly superior," Giulia sniffed. "But I got the t-shirts as asked, three hundred thousand pounds of candy, the books for the book-drive have all been given prices, the video-games for the swap are under lock and key in case of sticky fingers, the caricaturist has their supplies, and the Facebook group has been started, the announcement went around school yesterday that people can post their pictures online and tag them, the five photo-booths have their various decorations put up – I have gold spray-paint all over my calf, by the way, you're welcome – the jazz band is gonna play and I told Shelley if she plays anything depressing, I will shove her saxophone so far up her –"

"Okay, okay, I get it," Caroline sighed. "They're setting up all the equipment, right?"

"You know that was mostly school admin in charge of that," Giulia said. The PTA and school boosters had done a tonne to raise funds and all of that, but seeing Giulia, the Student Council Treasurer, had gone out to tender with several different companies to see which quoted the cheapest on the carnival equipment – with the best insurance and liabilities, and background-checked employees, of course. "But they set up all the big stuff today during school hours, and they're going to be testing it all out tonight and tomorrow. The food vendors will start setting up at noon. Candy-apples galore. Oh, and design-your-own hotdogs."

"That was such a good idea," Caroline admitted on a grudging sigh. It had been Giulia's idea; there was nothing like hotdogs at the fair, even more so when they got to choose all the toppings, with fresh, handmade fries too. "So, like, everything's okay?"

"We've been doing all the legwork for months," Giulia assured her gently; with Caroline, it was never wise to suggest she wasn't needed. Giulia wished Caroline could be there, not to be in charge and boss everyone around, but to just be there, to enjoy it, to live in the moment and appreciate just how amazing she was for pulling it all together. Giulia had done her part, she had helped curb Caroline's enthusiasm and Blair Waldorf-esque expectations, grounding her back to reality, but she had also instigated the clothing-drive, the book-collection, the DVD and video-game drive: they had set up second-hand stalls in the large gymnasium with a bake-sale, all organised and overseen by Giulia, along with the catering; she had also organised the Auction of Promises – parents and families were more than welcome, hell, expected to show up, so she had encouraged people all over town to commit to a promise of something – from a dozen jars of homemade spiced peaches, to a spa weekend, to a fishing lesson, a cooking lesson, babysitting hours, a week at a family's ski chalet in Whistler, or a flying lesson, tickets to a touring-car race-day at the best track in Virginia, Tar Heels tickets (Giulia didn't know whether they were baseball or football, and didn't particularly care), a manicure or a case of wine from Napa, a car-wash every month for a year, dinner at one of the best restaurants in Richmond.

The proceeds from the carnival were going to be split between the school and the local children's hospice – Giulia had also managed to finagle a promise from the Founding Families to match whatever they raised and give it to the hospice, where she had spent her summer giving music-lessons and reading to the younger children.

"I'm just so mad I'm not there," Caroline sighed. "Thank God you're my deputy – the others do just not know the meaning of the word 'fabulous'."

"I know," Giulia groaned, scrubbing a hand over her eyes. "It'll be great, everything has been taken care of to the finest details – oh, we got the pancake guy, by the way, he's setting up next to the kettle-corn vendor. And we had a few last minute additions to the Auction of Promises after all those letters I wrote to people, and blitzing Facebook. Oh, and the ASPCA are bringing a load of animals that need rehoming, so I put the puppies near the candy-bar and the face-painting, so that should be mutually-beneficial for all involved."

"Except the parents, I'm guessing," Caroline said drily, and Giulia grunted softly, not feeling the least bit guilty.

"Hey, and guess what?"

"What?" Caroline asked; she still sounded moody.

"Buzz called me and asked if I had the time to commit to helping him coach Little League this spring," Giulia said, smiling with pride. Buzz had been their fifth-grade teacher, and amazing; being strict, they had known where they stood with him, he had all these amazing isms and he had always been jovial, encouraging, creative; he had made their stomachs hurt with laughing. He had gone to school with Giulia's dad, and had been Giulia's coach three seasons when she had played the non-differentiating Little League – boys and girls played in the same soccer league in Mystic Falls.

"What? No way," Caroline sounded a little happier.

"Yep," Giulia smiled, her lips popping on the 'p'. She had to say she was happy at the prospect of doing something outdoorsy, after having spent a lot of the winter cooped up.

"It won't screw with cheerleading, will it? I mean, you're already doing so much," Caroline said, sounding troubled. "You're still…on the squad, right?"

"I'll be at the Classic," Giulia promised unenthusiastically. She had slowly and surely been divesting herself of the kinds of things she only had ever done for the sake of other people – Caroline was different, though, and what was important to her was still important to Giulia. She would be at the cheerleading Classic in Richmond, potentially at the one in D.C. if they made it through the competition, and she had proved herself more than capable of carrying not only her own workload but Caroline's as well when their leader had landed in a hospital-bed and a big event needed organising. "I went through the League schedule and mine before I even thought about committing to anything. But he's coaching the Lupins this year. D'you remember that?"

"It was the only year I ever played soccer," Caroline said softly. The number of grazed shins, the grass-stains on her clothes, the sweat, had put Caroline off for the rest of her life, but that season she had played soccer with Giulia hadn't even been about the sport – Mr Forbes had been so thrilled girly little Caroline had wanted to join Little League that it had never occurred to either of her parents that Caroline was…trying to keep her dad around, to prove she could do manly things like he preferred to do, that she understood more of what she heard than they evidently had ever thought, that when she heard her parents arguing – Liz crying – about how her dad liked men, Caroline had thought she should be more boyish and do boy things like play rough soccer with the boys. That was the year Caroline's dad had left; he had moved in with Stephen, and yet he had never missed a game. Caroline hadn't played an organised-sport since (Giulia discounting cheerleading on principle) and yet one of Giulia's favourite photographs of the two of them was wearing their powder-blue jerseys, grinning from ear-to-ear, Car in her neat braid, Giulia in two sloppy buns, her knee bloody, Car hugging the life out of her, one so bright and sunny, eyes closed and beaming, the other dark-haired, intense and proudly boasting that bloody knee. She'd collided with a boy on the Devils team – he'd had to have an adult incisor reconstructed by the dentist after losing it in Giulia's knee, but she'd scored the game-winning goal and helped haul Tyler off the field to his frantic mother, nauseated at the sight of all that blood pouring from Tyler's gum.

It seemed like a very long time ago. She wondered if she'd packed her old jerseys into a box that she'd brought here, and made a note to check later.

"Yeah. I was wondering if you were going to sign up to work at the snack-shacks at the sports park this year," Giulia said. "They're looking for people, otherwise I'll ask Jeremy."

"Yeah, no, I can't do it," Caroline sighed. "I'm starting that SAT prep course in a couple weeks, and my schedule at the soup-kitchen and the children's library – which you signed me up for, BTW, is really hectic with cheerleading and the Student Council. Not to mention, we're still in the middle of planning junior-prom."

"Caroline, it's junior-prom; it's not supposed to be spectacular," Giulia yawned.

"Yeah, but, seeing as you're probably going to say 'to hell with it' and graduate this year, this might be your last amazing dance," Caroline said, almost frantic. "It has to be perfect."

"And if it is? What happens next year? How do you outdo yourself?" Giulia asked, smiling.

"We always do, truthfully I'm not that worried," Caroline sniffed. "But is it sad I'm wishing we could skip through the next few months and be seniors already? We'll be eighteen and fabulous, there'll be amazing parties, the guys will be cuter, we'll be going off to college. The world will be our oyster!"

"I don't think we should be wishing our time away," Giulia mused. "Especially since the carnival we're hosting tomorrow is donating money to the children's hospice." She grimaced sadly. She had become emotionally invested in several children at the hospice – and yet never let it show; tiny coffins were the worst thing in the entire world, and after going to see Tyler, she wondered why she would ever want to go to another funeral again.

"True," Caroline sighed. "And considering I'm in the hospital right now. Hey, how was Tyler?"

"He was hiding," Giulia admitted, pulling her legs up to sit cross-legged on her new desk-chair. "We were sat in the study –"

"Ugh, on the stainy sofa?" Caroline snickered.

"I didn't tell you about that so you'd crinkle that delicate little beauty-queen nose," Giulia said, "I told you because it was fucking hot!"

"Hey, don't cuss!" Caroline protested, and Giulia rolled her eyes. Beauty queen indeed. "So he was pretty bad?"

"Actually, he wasn't in bad shape," Giulia said thoughtfully. She licked her lips, frowning into the middle-distance, ruminating on what she had seen. Tyler had been quieter than normal, hiding from excess attention; he had been tippling from her hip-flask, blasé about his father being dead, but she knew him. If she was Vesuvius, a dormant volcano that erupted without warning after the fuse had burned long and low, Tyler was the hot-spring you always knew was coming, you just had to time it. He was impatient, incapable of walking away from a fight, belligerent and cocky. A dick. But underneath it all, the façade he put in place to stop people from seeing, Giulia knew him too well: the father who smacked and humiliated, belittled and bullied him, was dead. So suddenly, he was left disoriented, like waking from a short but deep sleep, frantic and bewildered. And what he'd hoped a thousand times had happened; and what he felt – relief, anger – were starting to creep in through the shock.

Therein lay the difference between Giulia's father's death and Tyler's – those closest to him had never wished Zach Salvatore would just disappear off the face of the planet. But Tyler, and even Carol, had thought things would be different, all the hateful things would stop, their lives would be so much better, if Richard Lockwood just didn't come home one day. Giulia knew they'd thought it; Tyler had told her himself so many times, and Tyler had snuck her into his room so many times undetected she'd heard the Lockwoods' screaming arguments, a drunk Carol screaming and crying over her arrogant-brute husband's smacking around of Tyler and his infidelity.

"Maybe it hasn't really sunk in yet," Caroline sighed. "I'm still trying to reconcile that the Mayor's dead... Do you know, he was just really this jerk to Tyler that night… We were at the Grill, he comes in all…well, Mayor-esque, and he grabs Tyler telling him off for something, and then…he just kind of…he seemed almost scared, y'know? He told Tyler to take me and Matt home with him." Giulia hadn't known that – she and Tyler hadn't really discussed the ins and outs of his dad's death, just the fact that Tyler had been a dick to her, and that didn't stop her from being there for him now.

"Well, the Mayor wasn't the only one who collapsed at the fair," Giulia said softly. Half the town had seen the deputies injecting people on the ground with something. Jeremy had…saved Giulia – as she'd gripped her head in pain, he'd dragged her into an alley – propping her against the wall, he'd pretended they were making out when a deputy had shone his flashlight into the alley. Blood had seeped from Giulia's ears, and she'd run to Dr Gilbert's old building, where Damon had been heading to confront John… The vampires in town had been burned to crisps as the interior of that old building collapsed, leaving a deceptive shell. A frantic Elena had been trying to prise Bonnie's vice-like grip from her arm as Bonnie, trance-like, had controlled the flames long enough for Stefan to retrieve a weak Damon from the basement. His bloodshot eyes, shining from a sooty face, had honed in on the blood trickling from Giulia's ears as they all – she, Stefan, Damon – hugged fiercely, jittery and relieved, surprise and concern flickering across his features as he touched a fingertip to her jaw, finding the blood wet and still warm on her skin. Not what either of them had been expecting.

He'd told them all about the Mayor.

Another intrigue. What was the Mayor? Why had the device spelled to drop vampires affected Tyler?

Giulia preferred not to ask herself why it had affected her. Sometimes it was more horrific and heart-breaking to know the answers to some life-altering questions. Giulia was working through her father, her new reality, but to consider why a device made to affect supernatural creatures had affected her was too much.

"Maybe it was some really hideous food-poisoning," Caroline mused.

"Emphasis on 'poison'," Giulia said drily, thinking of the vervain the deputies had taken from her stock to poison the vampires.

She wondered if any of the Sheriff's deputies would face disciplinary action for what they had done – they had in essence murdered the Mayor, after all.

"D'you think he's gonna be okay?" Caroline asked quietly.

"Tyler?"

"Yeah. You don't think he'll go out-of-control, you know…like you did?" Caroline asked, and Giulia blinked. Out of control?

"You think I was out of control?" she asked quietly.

"Well, not, like, totally. Only if you didn't think anybody was watching," Caroline said fairly. "Like, my mom would never've realised you were driving around town at three a.m. smoking pot, or climbing in Cade's window for a booty-call, or partying as hard as you did. You kept it all to yourself, but I know how hard you've had it recently. I just think you've been a little lost for a while…but you seem better."

Giulia didn't say anything for a long time, and Caroline didn't push her. Maybe she was tired, maybe it was her cycle, maybe it was the fairness in Caroline's voice, Giulia had rarely dwelled on how other people might have viewed her…her handling her father's death. Out of control. If she really thought about what she'd been up to the last few months – for starters, destroying half the nest of vampires torturing Stefan, running away to New York on a whim, lashing out at Bonnie and Elena, drinking so much, partying in Richmond with the new UV crowd, and the business with Isobel… Maybe she was. In fairness, who was left to tell her that? To be concerned she was barely able to stand she was so hung-over, who worried when she didn't come home, asked if she'd done her homework, who that boy was, where she had been for a fortnight, did she think it appropriate she made eyes at a man so much older than her?

"Why did you never tell your mom about all the stuff you knew I was getting up to?" she asked curiously, when she cleared her throat, picking at the ties of her sweatpants.

"I don't know, I guess I knew you'd get through it on your own," Caroline said thoughtfully. "I mean, who wants that kind of a hangover all the time?" Giulia scoffed lightly, shaking her head. Caroline made a noise of annoyance, "Ugh, Nurse Hitler's coming with that beady-eyed look again. I guess I gotta go."

"Yep. Go. Heal," Giulia said, smiling. "I love you."

"I love you too," Caroline cooed, and hung up. Giulia yawned widely, set her phone down, and eyed her laptop screen critically. The red tracked-changes glared at her, the number of footnotes made her eyes blurry without her glasses, and she hit CTRL-S before standing, her joints aching from her early-morning workout, and stretched, meandering into the kitchen where Firenze was mewling for his dinner. She bent to scratch him behind the ears, smiling contentedly that she had at least one friend here who wasn't hospitalised, and purred fiercely with utter adoration when she picked him up.

"What're we gonna do tonight, little boy?" she asked, bending her head to kiss his, forking his food into his little dish and setting it down on the floor. Taking a break from her work, Giulia sat laughing to herself for over an hour, playing with Firenze and a flashlight, teaching him how to pounce, her favourite Rolling Stones record playing. "Too bad you can't play Scrabble," she muttered, her phone buzzing with another nudge from Cara inviting her to play 'dirty' Scrabble. She rubbed Firenze's stomach as he purred and wiggled. Bundling him into her arms like a baby, she carried her swiftly-growing kitten into the study, where she revived her laptop, changed the record on her glorious Garrard '401' turntable, and got stuck in for another marathon blitz of dissertation-writing.

She woke with a start, the sudden and disturbing sensation of being watched making her skin crawl in the most unpleasant way. Head pounding from being jerked from a deep sleep, she wriggled under the scratchy sheets and grabbed at the TV remote, clicking off the glaring blue screen. The dark figure standing over her made her heart jump into her mouth, and Caroline stifled a gasp as the familiar features registered in her drug-saturated, sleep-fuzzy mind.

"Elena?" she frowned. It was so late, all the lights had been turned down, only the one at the nurse's station illuminated the annoying Nurse Hitler going through charts. For a second, she wondered when Elena had decided to start curling her hair – did she even know what product was? – and where she got such a cool jacket. The blue pendant around her neck was new, she never took off that clunky old antique one Stefan had given her – it was ugly, to Caroline's mind, but hey, if your boyfriend gave you jewellery, you wore it no matter how ugly. And then tossed it into the quarry when you broke up so he couldn't pawn it for cash.

"Hi Caroline," Elena said gently, a small smile playing on her lips.

"Ugh, what're you doing here?" Caroline grumbled, tired, confused and stressed out – that stupid carnival, it had to be tomorrow and she was still stuck inside this gross hospital-room with the Führer who hated Giulia abusing the visitors' hours because her family had built the hospital, and she was stressed that the carnival would be a bust because Giulia was doing her college work and…well, she was leaving Caroline behind so why would she put all her effort into something so trivial and high-school? She reminded herself Giulia had only run in the Miss Mystic Falls pageant to please Caroline, she'd been so excited for it. Giulia did so much because she knew Caroline was excited for it. Going to college in Richmond was something Giulia was doing for no-one but herself, a first. But that didn't mean Caroline wasn't a little anxious Giulia was having so much fun with those new older people she was meeting at UV that she'd forget about Caroline. Girly, safe Caroline who always hesitated, anxious of making a fool of herself – the antithesis of Giulia's intense, wild charm and intelligence. She rubbed her temples, her head pounding, stressed and anxious and a little depressed, and most of all bored out of her mind stuck in this room, despite the treats Giulia had gifted her.

"My name is Katherine," Elena said softly, leaning over Caroline. Those dark curls Caroline was so unused to seeing on Elena glistened in the lamplight. She noticed Elena was wearing makeup – like actual makeup, eyeliner and lashings of mascara, her contouring was phenomenal. She frowned up at Elena, who was saying her name was Katherine. "I was hoping you could give the Salvatore brothers a message for me."

"What're you talking about?" Caroline grumbled, half-asleep and confused and getting very annoyed. What was Elena doing here? Couldn't she just text her boyfriends herself? She pushed herself up in the bed, backed against her mound of pillows, and frowned inquisitively up at Elena/Katherine. "What message?"

Katherine smiled sweetly. "Game on."

To be Continued…

The glorious misadventures of Giulia Salvatore will continue in 'Dangerous Beauty', available now…