Cage on the Ground

[FuriePhoenix]

Piper Farron stepped outside the hospital doors. The one place she has lived for the last year and a half, it felt good to feel the day air hit her face and blow her hair in the wind. She was free, and she was considered stable and healthy mentally. She never thought she would hear those words escape her therapists and doctors mouths, but she did last night and this morning she was out. Her one duffel bag with her belongings inside, and the clothes on her back.

The hospital lent her the money to get the bus back to her home which was Mystic Falls. She wanted to see her friends even though none of them visited her in hospital. Her parents made sure none of them did, but she didn't know that was the reason. She just figured they didn't want to see her as they wouldn't know how to respond to her. She was put in hospital after her brother died, she took it badly and wasn't the same person she was before his death. She was extremely close to her brother- like Elena Gilbert is to her brother Jeremy. She still didn't hear if the authorities found out what killed her brother, but she wanted to find out for herself once she was back in her hometown, as well as seeing her friends. She was desperate to see Tyler Lockwood, Matt Donovan and Bonnie Bennett, she was so close to them until she spiralled into a depression over her brother.

Taking a deep breath, she headed away from the hospital and to the bus stand to get the bus heading to Mystic Falls, it took a few minutes of waiting until the bus came and when it did, she jumped on it and headed back.... to her old life. She had no idea how people would react to her reappearance, she didn't even know if anyone recognise her. It's only been a year and a half and yet her style changed and her hair seemed oddly darker blonde than it ever did before. Her appearance was ragged as she wore a knitted cardigan that was oversized on her. Her mother knitted it for her so she was at least warm in the hospital. She hated it at first, but she had learned to love it and was always seen wearing it. Her bland fitted jeans coated her legs perfectly, but still looked out of place at the same time. She had a pair of DMs on, that she only laced half way up, so the tongues flopped down and forward. Yet a year and a half ago she wouldn't have been caught dead in this sort of outfit.

Around fifteen minutes later, she was back in Mystic Falls. Stepping off the bus she looked on at the town and the people mingling around in the centre grass area between the little independent shops and the mystic grill. "Well... it's now or never Piper.." She muttered to herself, trying to give herself the courage to see everyone again. This was beginning to feel like the scariest thing she's ever done- even scarier than going into hospital at her folks' demand. She looked around and saw Tyler and Matt chatting at a table outside the Mystic Grill, Matt was wearing a Grill staff shirt, and it made her realise how much she had missed out on. She walked down the street and over to them.

"H..hey...." She said, wondering why she was being so shaking in her voice. "Um...we're talking here?" Tyler replied not twigging who she was, wondering why this new age hippie looking chick was talking to them. "Sorry Ty...." She apologised, making him take a second look at her. "Piper!?" Matt was the first to respond, looking down at her properly, and she swept a stray hair behind her hair before smiling shyly. "Hey Matt.. Long time no see huh?" She replied back.

"Oh my god Piper! What.. how are you back!?" Tyler suddenly said, getting up and with Matt, hugged her instantly. The feeling of guilt over sweeping Tyler for being so rude initially. "I got let out this morning...they consider me fit for being out in the real world I guess," She told them.

[BeautifullyxMad]

1863...

The day had been warm, a very nice day for June. June 19th to be exact, and it was a wonderful day for Vivian Ridgeford-Clarke. It was her 23rd birthday and she was getting to spend it with her son and husband, it was all she ever needed in the world was her family. Her sister would have been there, but she had unavoidable things come up, and after their parents had passed, all she had left was her sister, her husband, and her son. It was no secret that her son was her world. Daniel had been their only successful child birth since she had been married to Charles Clarke.

"Momma, do you like your gift?" the bright eyed boy asked, his unkempt brunette hair blowing wildly in the wind.

"Of course I do, Daniel. I love the flowers you have given me, I plan to plant their seeds in the garden." she smiled to him before she took his hand and they headed inside. The night was coming up on them rather quickly, and Daniel needed to be put to bed before he headed off with his father on his morning trip into the main town of Mystic Falls, Virginia. However, Vivian never expected the events of the night to occur the way they did after she had put Daniel to bed, and she herself climbed under the sheets of the bed she shared with her husband.

She awoke to a shooting pain in her chest, and she quickly threw the covers off of her, barely registering that Charles wasn't in bed and ran to check on Daniel. And there he was, a blood mess with a knife drove through his heart, and Charles standing over him, blood on his hands. "What did you do?!" she demanded, tears running steadily down her face, but before an answer came her own magic took over and began suffocating the man as she approached her son, desperately shaking him in an attempt to wake him up, but she knew he was gone, and she could hear her husband gasping for air behind her. She ignored it though, and she picked up her son's bloody body and walked outside. Her eyes darkened as the fire set the house ablaze. She would bury her son. She would remember him, always.

And to this day she did, Vivian Ridgeford remembered her son and the day she lost everything. Her heart had crumbled under the pressure of it all, and she knew that she had changed because of it, but that was why she was in the loft. The loft of Alaric Saltzman, for a warlock named Maddox had found her and said that another entity could use her. The darkness emitted from her, it had since before she had been trapped inside a coffin, preserved so the darkness could be purged of her. Instead it made it deeper and darker, and Vivian loved it.

"When will he be here?" she inquired, her voice monotonous. "I have to get to work soon."