Devil's Angel ° {K.M}[Rewriting]

{005}

Under Control
"When will my reflection show who I am inside."

Her hands rubbed tiredly at her red eyes as a yawn escaped her lips. America slowly descended the stairs, sighing softly as she would honestly rather crawl back into bed than face another day but a familiar face at the bottom of the steps had her stopping short. "Uncle John?" Blearily, she smiled as she closed the distance between them. He hugged her back and America exhaled heavily as she resisted the urge to just sink into his embrace. "Hey, kid," he maneuvered so he was able to get a glimpse of her face and frowned, "America, you look horrible."

A begrudging smile tugged at her lips. She'd heard nicer variations or hints at it over the last few days and had hated every word of it. Hearing it as it was from John was a welcome change. "Yeah, it's been a rough week." A gross understatement, really, when considering her frequent and potent nightmares, the healed wounds that still ached and the visions. And that was just what involved her alone. It didn't include her neglect of her and Tyler's relationship, Stefan's newly-developed alcoholism to stave off the blood cravings or that Damon and Elena now knew about her visions.

The latter had been the worse of it, oddly enough, but the most easily resolved. America had been cooking with her sister, Damon on the phone with her while she supervised the brunette's chopping and the pot of water boiling had mirrored a basket in her mind's eye. The young woman hadn't a clue until Elena's scream pierced through the veil of her vision and the excruciating pain of the second nearing third-degree burn had registered. And what had made it worse—aside from having to tell Damon she had the memories of his deceased wife—was that she had healed without vampire blood.

Elena, in a panic, had wrapped and dressed the wound before Damon arrived, neither sister considering vampire blood but when they'd undone the bandages for the man to assess the damage. . . there was none. So, now, with the suspicion that she wasn't human—and instead, god knows what—and mentally unstable, nearly everyone who knew one or the other, if not both, had taken to treating her with kid's gloves. "Kid, when was the last time you got any sleep?" America blinked, retreating from the confines of her mind and refocusing on John. 

She didn't bother beating around the bush. "Four days ago." One day before she had been kidnapped and two days before the visions started changing. Stefan and Damon were still in some but in others. . . she was certain the girl she knew as Katerina was Katherine, and it was in Bulgaria a few centuries before the Salvatores. The transition was seamless in the way that America barely batted an eye at the sheer insanity of it, unable to conjure enough care that the change in visions was just another silent confirmation of her lack of humanity.

And it was some of the only confirmation she got and that which made the most sense because going to Sheila Bennett had yielded nothing she didn't already know or suspect, the witch cryptic and vague. The only new piece of information was that there was a man fated to cross her path and help her—tell her whatever truths—but Sheila's implications had been clear that the connection was presumably romantic. Given how spectacularly her relationship with Tyler was going, America didn't entertain the witch and left shortly after that. 

The only thing looking up in the past week was Stefan's affinity to have alcohol somewhere on his person and she took advantage of it on the harder days.

-

There was another party in the Founders' Hall for one thing or another and America was all but forced to attend rather than staying home and curling up beneath her covers as she would've preferred. She avoided who she could until Damon found her at the bar with a virgin drink and a contemplative look while people-watching. "You look delicious." A startled smile tugged at her lips at the oddity of the compliment, and as she turned to face him, she huffed fondly upon realizing it was his intention.