All I Need (Vampire Diaries/Captain America Fanfic)

36. She's My Best Friend

"Cursed?" I asked. "What?"

"I didn't believe it at first either," he said. "But things started to add up."

I stood up, a small smile on my face. "Look, if you've made up some joke legend to cheer me up, I really appreciate it but-"

"Fine, don't believe me," he said.

"Why would I believe you?" I asked. "It's clearly a joke."

"I'm trying to help you Serena," Klaus said stonily.

I felt like everything was piling on top of me. First Katherine, then Steve, and now this.

"I've been fine for well over a century. If I'm cursed... why am I still here?"

"Don't you think it's weird that everyone we've come into contact with; Elijah, Marcel, the witches, think that you should be dead?" he asked.

I wanted to dismiss his claims, but he wasn't wrong. Even Anna and Harper had thought that I'd be dead by now, that I'd have stayed human.

"Tell me what you know," I said. I didn't for a second believe that I was cursed, but he was right. Something didn't add up.

"I've heard this legend for years, but I never even thought about it being real," he said. "Rumor has it, all Bennett witches have a demon, of sorts. A being that watches over them from the Other Side with no way of being able to get through to this side while their witch is alive."

"What, so, when Bennett witches die, demons come out and take their place?" I asked. "If that's true, why aren't there millions of 'Bennett demons' running around and causing chaos?"

"When they gain access to this world," Klaus continued. "Their memories are wiped and they begin again, as humans. Babies. They have no knowledge of anything that happened before, and they're given parents with no connection to the supernatural world, so that they can start again fresh."

"That sounds great," I said. "What's the problem?"

"Serena," Klaus said slowly, as if he were talking to a small child who had barely grasped the concept of the English language. "Your demon was waiting for you to die. They would have taken your place in the world."

"But I didn't die," I said. "So what, they're... still waiting?"

"That's what I would have thought," Klaus said. "But... you did die."

"No I..." I trailed off. Did he mean when Damon turned me? "Yeah, I did. But I was dead for a couple of hours at most. It doesn't count."

"According to my research," he said, gesturing to the piece of paper that was still in my hand. "It was enough for your demon to start to make its way into the world."

I looked down at the words on the page.

"I don't understand," I said. "You said that the demons get re-born as babies. This article says that..."

"When you came back to life, the life of your demon changed. The witches had no time to find a human baby for it to live as, so it stayed an adult, with all its memories intact."

"And I just... never heard anything about it?"

Klaus took a deep breath. "When a demon gets stuck, they carry a hatred for their witch, that only grows with time. By turning into a vampire, you went against the witches. Giving your demon permission to haunt you for as long as you live."

This was too much to take in.

"How-How do you even know this anyway?" I asked. "For all I know, this is just a... story. I haven't been haunted."