There are by far not enough fanfictions about this couple yet. I've only recently caught up on the new season and I am completely enamoured. I've decided to just let my imagination free for this fanfic. I don't know too much about TVD's complications, but I've tried to look as much into it as I could, to get the timelines and backstories to fit with the show.

I hope you enjoy!

September, 1885

Your neck tingles as if a thousand needles are being pricked into your skin. The feeling travels from your chin to the tip of your head. When it crosses the back of your eyes, you blink rapidly, trying to keep your vision for as long as possible before your sight inevitably turns into colorful oil stains. They move before your eyelids until everything finally turns black.

June, 1880

You're part of a famous butcher family. The store they own has been full of people from your town every single day since the day you were born, eighteen years ago. Your parents and brothers are often working in the store, while they make you work in the slaughterhouse and garden along with the other two paid workers. You're close to being called a slave with your chores that could easily be done with magic, had you been able to do so. As a siphoner, you can't.

You were working in the garden by yourself on a hot summer afternoon in June of 1880. The air was still, not a cloud in the sky. You were wiping a droplet of sweat from your forehead when a brown haired girl with messy curls and big eyes ran past you and came to a halt when those eyes met yours. You paused your work as she stared you down, as if she was contemplating something in her head. Instead of feeling uncomfortable, a thrill shot through your body.

Before either of you could speak, a loud shout sounded from not too far away. Your head shot towards it and when you turned your head back to the girl a second later, she was already right in front of you, grasping both of your arms.

"Help cloak me, please!" she said in a harsh whisper.

You wanted to tell her you couldn't. Even though the Gemini coven was known for its cloaking spells, nobody was ever willing to teach you, the siphoner, anything. You had never successfully cloaked anything, let alone a whole person. But when you saw the clarity and life in the girl's eyes, like you had never seen before, you couldn't do anything other than nod.

She wasted no time sliding her hands down your clothed arms and to your muddy hands. She grasped both of them and closed her eyes while breathing in.

It took you a moment to realize she was trying to siphon off of you. Your heart jumped to your throat for two reasons. First, because you realized she's like you, a siphoner. Then, because you heard the shouts coming closer and the girl in front of you was frowning her eyebrows and cocking her head with a confused look.

Before you could think of anything else, you pulled her down to the ground and pushed her fingers into the soil, yours on top of hers. You tried to siphon as much magic from the ground as you could, as you had practiced so many times before while working in this same garden.

You could feel it. You could feel the magic traveling through the mud, as if your hands were two magnets absorbing every little drop of it. You could feel it travel through her fingers and dividing itself into yours. Like magnets and electricity.

You knew she could feel it too when you heard her let out a small breath. You met her eyes and gave her a small smile with a nod, before you simultaneously closed your eyes and started chanting, "Phasmatos radium calaraa."

You repeated the spell over and over while the shouts now sounded only moments away. You could see the brunette in front of you starting to panic when nothing seemed to happen. Her grip on your hands became tighter and her chanting became faster.

"Come back!" You heard a rough voice shouting. The only thing that was between you two and the voice was the perfectly square-shaped hedge. The girl in front of you let out a silent whimper, only for you to be able to hear. When you opened your eyes and saw that her round cheeks were smeared with tears, a protective instinct took over.

You slid your hands from over her hands up to her shoulders, grasping them while breathing in the still afternoon air.

"Phasmatos radium calaraa," you said one last time. This time you felt the spell working and you didn't have to open your eyes to know she was gone.

You didn't have long to breathe out in relief, because moments later the man who was shouting for the girl growled at you.

"Have you seen a girl here?"

You recognized the man immediately. You knew he visited your family's store at least once a week, though you never knew his first name. You knew he had a wife and a son with jet-black hair and a constant scowl on his face. This time you saw something else in the man. You recognized the girl's face in it. The round cheeks, the shape of her eyes and nose. He was her father.

You turned your body and slid your hands through the mud until you found one of her hands and squeezed it, unable for the man to see.

"No, sir," you told him without any doubt in your voice.

He nodded and grumbled something to himself. When he turned to leave, you felt relief flooding your body. You knew the girl felt it too, because it was then that you felt her breathe out the long breath she had been holding. You felt the air hit your face first, before it slid through your hair, making stray locks move despite the stillness of the wind.

You froze and saw the man freeze too, looking at you intensely. Oh no. Did he see?

"Phasmatos oculacs," he chanted once, answering your fears.

Before you knew it, everything was chaos. First, green and fearful eyes appeared in front of you again. Second, the man was in your garden, walking towards the two of you with a fast pace. Third, you hear screams. Fourth, you grasped the girls arms as she got pulled up by her father. Finally, the chanting in Latin and the blackness that soon followed.

You didn't even know eachother's names back then, but that was the beginning of a strong and special friendship.

September, 1885

It feels only seconds later when cold hands softly stroke your cheeks, waking you up. You wrinkle your nose as something wet tickles across its bridge. You quickly blink your eyes open.

Nora's face appears in front of you, and for a moment you think you're still hanging upside down, until you realize she's hovering above you, your head in her lap.

You groan and she smiles at you. You feel as though you've been in this same situation endless times before and it has almost turned into some sort of routine. You do something to piss your family off, you get hung upside down in the slaughterhouse, you get left for dead meat, you wake up with Nora hovering above you.

It has gone on for years. In the past, Nora would have looked at you with worried eyes while you tried to hide the shame of being such an abomination to your family. Over the years, you've learned more and more about each other and situations like this have almost become normal.

She daps at the bridge of your nose with a cloth and slides it up to your hairline before bringing it back to your nose. You catch a glimpse of the cloth that now has a deep red streak on it.

"Don't worry, I've already healed it," she says as she taps the soil under you, indication she has siphoned magic from the ground again.

You slowly sit up, bringing your hand to your forehead with a groan when the dizziness quickly hits you again.

"Careful." Nora slides one arm up your back and holds your arm with the other, steadying you.

You groan again, out of annoyance this time and stand up on your feet. Nora follows suit and dusts off her dress with her hands.

"Let's go before anyone sees you," you say, looking back at the door that leads to your family's house.

In all these years, nobody except Nora's father has ever seen the two of you together. When the Gemini coven discovered that Nora was a siphoner, she was soon cast away by the coven, seeing no use in her, unlike you, who seemed to be used as the town's scapegoat. You suppose you were lucky to be born in the butcher's family. At least you didn't have the same fate as Nora, who was cast away and locked up never to be seen by any of the town members again.

Over the years, they have both learned the time window they have to meet up together. Times when Nora can leave the house unseen and you can be missed from work. For example, when you're left to hang upside down in the slaughterhouse alongside the dead cows.

You lean against a wall of your house. The area is shielded by trees and hedges and you know nobody can see you from here. You cross your arms and scowl, twisting one strand of red streaked blonde hair around your finger.

"Mary Lou..." Nora starts, but you're not interested in hearing what she has to say right now.

"Those filthy tarnations," you spit. "We need to think of a new plan to escape this place."

"Mar," Nora tries again. "We're in a town full of gemini witches. We have mastered every possible cloaking spell written in the books available to us. We've tried-"

"We've tried endless times, I know," you cut her off. "But what if this time, instead of siphoning magic from the ground, we siphon it off of a witch?"

"It's not as if we haven't tried that before either. People aren't stupid here. They know not to come close to us siphoners." She leans her hands against the wall on both sides of your waist, not touching you.

"We have only tried it separately, to avoid being seen together."

"And we have never gotten as far as a touch."

"But if we try it together, it might work." You finally push yourself off the wall, grabbing Nora's wrists from beside your waist.

"But what if someone sees us?" Nora looks genuinely surprised by your suggestion. "You are the one who always says that we can never be seen together."

"And that is why we only have one chance at this, my love." You clutch her hands in yours. One chance to escape. One chance to leave this town together for good, never to return again. One chance to finally bring Nora to safety.