Damon Salvatore

Damon leaned back in his chair at the Grill, twirling his bourbon glass. Behind the bar, neon lights flickered as usual, jazz classics played, and even the perpetual tension of the last few months began to seem like mere background noise.

Until the door opened.

He felt it before he saw it. Not a vampire's warmth—something different, strangely familiar and alien at the same time. And then she entered: slender, with eyes that had seen too much for her age. Sixteen or seventeen, no more. And somewhere over her shoulder, like a shadow, loomed a silhouette that Damon recognized instantly.

Klaus Mikaelson—hybrid, maniac-aesthete, thousand-year-old nightmare—gently held the door for her.

"Damon," Klaus's voice sounded almost friendly, making me want to check if the bartender had been replaced. "Meet my sister. She lives with me now."

Damon slowly put down his glass.

"Your... what?" He turned his gaze to the girl. She lifted her chin defiantly—just as Damon himself had once done in his father's presence. "And who are her parents?"

"There wasn't," Klaus gently placed his hand on his sister's shoulder, and something almost human suddenly appeared in the gesture. "Now it will be me. Don't you dare approach her, let alone touch her, Salvatore. She's staying."

The girl looked at Damon with the cold curiosity of a predator who doesn't yet know his own powers, and the bar light above their heads flickered.