#[ ch: loren bennett. ]

[founderscouncil]

made a new muse. extra extra, read all about her

[founderscouncil]

She flinches slightly at the underlying bitterness in Penelope's voice but she doesn't blame the other witch for it. Loren has been... difficult, and it wasn't fair to Penelope, who's shown genuine interest in wanting to know her. It's always been hard for her to let her guard down with anyone. The antisquad is the exception to the rule and even Loren doesn't understand what makes them different. She sits on the arm of a broken couch a few feet away from Penelope and looks down at the laces of her boots, as though they might give her the words to explain.

"Not that surprising," she says finally, looking up to meet Penelope's eyes. "Can we talk? I... " she exhales slowly and closes her eyes for a brief second. "I think you should understand what you're getting yourself into if you're serious about this." How Loren was a ticking time bomb and she couldn't even explain what happened to the last group of people who loved her because they were all dead and she had no memory of it. Maybe if Penelope understood that, she would run far away. / @ofvalor (continued from xx)

[founderscouncil]

It's 3:30 in the morning when she gets the call and she's glad that she's upgraded from staying in hostels like she used to. It allows her the privacy to pick up the phone with the full force of her sleepy disgruntlement. "Caroline do you know what ti-"

Her best friend's voice interrupts her immediately, which isn't exactly a new thing, but she picks up on the urgency and it forces her back to consciousness a little more. "Wait Care, slow down. What does any of this have to do with me?"

"Bonnie... she's a Bennett."

The trip back stateside passes in a blur and even the normal excitement she feels at Caroline picking her up at the bus station in Whitmore is somewhat subdued. The drive back to Mystic Falls is mostly filled with Caroline's nervous chattering and while that habit may have once annoyed Bonnie when they were teenagers, she finds herself grateful for it now. It feels like a semblance of normalcy while her entire worldview is on unsteady ground.

When they arrive at the gates of the school, Bonnie looks around in mild surprise, impressed with how much has changed in the year and a half since she's been back on the campus but any statements about that die on her lips when she sees the young girl waiting for her in the headmaster's office. It aches how much she reminds Bonnie of a younger version of herself, left alone to fend for herself in a world that was completely unfamiliar. She squeezes Caroline's hand and mouths 'thank you' to her before walking into the office with her head held high.

She breezes past Alaric's awkward introductions and instead sits in the chair next to the girl and she has to stifle a sharp sound when she sees her name written in her file.

Loren.

None of them have any clue about what happened to Loren before the school heard of her, but Bonnie doesn't care. She's been in her position before, left by the people who were supposed to care for her, whether they chose to leave or not, and Bonnie refuses to let history repeat itself. There will be things to discuss and figure out, especially considering just being in Mystic Falls brings fresh grief back into her life, but there's no going back now. They'll figure it out together.

"Hi Loren," she says softly and gives the girl the warmest smile she can manage. "My name is Bonnie Bennett. It's nice to meet you."

[founderscouncil]

what does loren's anger look like? what is it like when she gets upset?

Loren's anger is stony. She's very much someone who shuts down when she's angry, like she's throwing dirt onto a fire to suffocate it. Because even when she's angry, especially when she's angry, she's terrified that her magic will go haywire again and hurt someone. So she smothers everything down and it takes a long while to draw her back out.

It's a problem in the sense that, like anyone else, burying her trauma and emotions is only a stopgap and she needs to find an outlet or what she fears happening will likely come to pass. She has been working on expressing her emotions in a healthy way, through therapy, exercise, mindfulness, etc. but there's a wall still that she needs to work through. Likely, it's tied to learning how exactly her magic malfunctioned the first time because right now, it's the unknown that's the most terrifying.

So circling back to the original question, Loren's anger looks quiet, simmering, almost non-existent if you don't know her well. She will quietly excuse herself from a situation that is making her upset if possible, because if she explodes, she doesn't want to hurt anyone. She has yet to have a large incident while at Salvatore, but there have been the occasional rumblings when her emotions are high. But at the forefront of her mind is always needing to make sure that she doesn't harm anyone else, so she isolates to the best of her ability.

[founderscouncil]

FLORIBETH DALISAY ( @floripire ) said "i'll lie here, right here"

She doesn't reply but the vampire doesn't push either, and true to her word, they just lie on Loren's floor in silence while the witch sorts through her thoughts. Ever since her mom told her that she was coming back to Mystic Falls permanently, there has been a nagging dread in the pit of her stomach.

She knows that Bonnie isn't her biological mother but Loren has no memories of the person that would have been. For over a decade, she convinced herself that was "fine", that she didn't need to know the truth about what happened to her before the age of eight, but the truth is that Loren is scared of what that means. For most of her childhood, Bonnie was in and out of Mystic Falls, never lingering particularly long but also never hesitating to shower Loren in love and gifts and reassurances. And she got to spend all of her breaks from school traveling the world with her adoptive mother and learning new cultures.

Despite a very good childhood, a better one than Loren could have ever wished for, she still worries. How would their relationship change now that her mother actually was just down the hall and she could get a hug instead of just talking through astral projection? The wall that Loren has built around herself, she is quickly realizing, also includes Bonnie and she doesn't know how not to feel guilty about that because it feels like she's criticizing her mom when Loren knows that she was just doing the best she could.

"My mom's coming back to teach," she says finally. "In the fall. Since Dr. Saltzman is gone, Caroline asked her to help keep an eye on things." Loren falls quiet again after that and stares up at the ceiling for a long moment.

"What if she realizes I'm not that strong or powerful or... any of that stuff I'm supposed to be? What if she's not proud of me?"

[founderscouncil]

MIA HIRSCH ( @fellvespers ) said ❛ i wish we had grown up together. ❜

It's a thought that has crossed her mind more than once when Loren thinks about the group of friends that she has managed to surround herself with. What would life have been like if she had Mia, Faith and Flori while they were still kids, before the world sunk its teeth into them? "Me too," she replies finally, looking over at where Mia was sprawled out on her bed. "I never really got the whole friend thing until you all showed up here," she admits freely, nonchalant like it's not the most pathetic sounding thing in the world. "Maybe we'd all be a little less fucked up too."

[founderscouncil]

FLORIBETH DALISAY ( @floripire ) said "c'mon, loren, we'll go take a walk. you can tell me all about spell theories or practical applications or whatever you want to talk about. or we can just walk in silence, if you'd prefer."

Loren's not sure whether Flori is intervening because she caught the look on the witch's face or because the room was just barely beginning to tremble, but she let her friend lead her away from the crowd of wolves that had assembled. The full moon was just around the corner so she knew that they were all on edge, and Loren didn't have any excuse for it other than she happened to be born into an incredibly powerful bloodline without knowing.

When they step outside, she tries to focus on the warm breeze and the sun on her skin. Nature at its simplest always seemed to make more sense to her than people did. "Your boyfriend should keep his pack under better control," she grumbles finally, not actually meaning it. Jed does his best as far as Floribeth insists and she doesn't have it in her to fight about it with her. "At least tone down some of the aggressive dick measuring."