(AN:For those patiently waiting for other stories I am working on have no fear I will complete them too. Sometimes the plot bunnies are too demanding to ignore. I hope you enjoy this one too. Please review. Its like getting paid in chocolate and I am a chocoholic :) )

"According to the ancient Romans, the Hour of the Wolf means the time between night and dawn, just before the light comes, and people believed it to be the time when demons had a heightened power and vitality, the hour when most people died and most children were born, and when nightmares came to one."

CHAPTER ONE

Elena walked the road near the falls. She'd come here frequently since... well... since. This was where she'd first met Damon. Where she'd stood waiting for her parents to pick her up the night she'd broken up with Matt Donovan. It was a bittersweet feeling coming here. Some days she could almost feel Damon's presence, she could almost smell his cologne. Some days it left her feeling even more empty inside than ever before.

Stefan was drowning in grief as much as she was and it was hard to look at the pain she felt reflected in his eyes. It should bring them closer but it hadn't. Because of their past relationship, even though it was a traveler curse that had brought them together, taking comfort in each other left them feeling guilty. So much time both of them had wasted that could have been spent with Damon instead of fighting against him. She could only imagine that it was more so with Stefan as the curse had destroyed their relationship even as humans because of Katherine.

They still cared about each other. Still looked after each other. But it was hard to look at each other. Recently Elena had begun to sense a chill in his demeanor. The only one that seemed to be able to pull him out of his solitude was Caroline and even she had to struggle to get him to leave the house he'd bought in Delcrest to be near by the two of them as they attended Whitmore.

Alaric tried to help but she wasn't ready to let go was he. It was worse for him than it had been for Damon when Alaric had died. Damon had the hope that Ric was on the other side and still in a sense alive even if that wasn't the right word for it. He also hadn't had the guilt of being the last to make it through from the other side. She had the feeling he tried to help her as much because of that guilt as the fact that he still very much considered himself her guardian.

None of them knew Damon's fate. It was true that no one knew the fate of their loved ones when they died. But most people, even those that didn't believe in a forgiving loving god and a heaven that awaited those who believed, had some sort of home that they went to a good place or even that they simply ceased to exist.

But Elena knew what had been seen on the otherside. That there was a darkness that sucked people away into oblivion. Had he been pulled into oblivion? Had he gone on to find peace? Had he and Bonnie simply been destroyed when the other side crumbled? He'd sacrificed himself for those who had been on the other side. For Stefan... for Ric... for Luke and Enzo. It should counter the horrible things he'd done as a vampire... shouldn't it. He should be at peace. With Bonnie, with Jenna and her parents...well okay maybe not her father. She couldn't see that going well.

Elena stopped abruptly, pulled out of her thoughts abruptly by a pair of pale blue eyes. "Damon?" She asked almost breathlessly. Was she seeing things? It had happened before. More often than she had ever admitted to the others. She'd seen his face in the crowd, thought she'd heard his voice.

No this wasn't Damon. Was it? The young man paused his struggle to put the mountain bike on to the rack on the back of his car. "What? No." He smiled at her, an easy dazzling smile. "You have me confused with someone one else." No. Damon never smiled so easily. Her heart fluttered and sank to the pit of her stomach.

Another doppelganger? Was that possible? Or was this just a man who happened to look like Damon Salvatore. A man who happened to sound just like Damon Salvatore. "I'm Elena." She said stepping closer still. She could hear his heart beat and it dashed any hopes that it could be him. Still he looked so much like him. Was this what Damon had felt the first time he'd seen her? Hope cruelly choked out by the sound of a beating heart.

Right in this very spot.

He wiped his hands on his pants "I'm Jace." He said offering the left one to Elena. "You from the town?" He asked. "Kinda dead in there." He had driven through up to the bike trail. It had looked almost like a ghost town.

"I used to be." She said. "I'm a student at Whitmore College. There was a gas main scare a few months ago. Blew up one of the restaurants. People are just now starting to come back. It'll pick up again." Would Damon have been able to cross over if she hadn't died with him? Had that one extra person crossing over been too much? Was it her fault?

"Whitmore... that's why you look familiar." He said with a grin. The one that so rarely crossed Damon's face. The one that always melted her utterly when it did.

"You're a student at Whitmore?" She asked. How had she not seen him before? Or was that why she'd seen Damon and heard his voice. It had actually been Jace.

"Not really. I'm checking out their genealogy department. Its supposed to have one of the most comprehensive collections in the south."

"Personal research or historical?" Elena asked.

"Both actually." He said leaning against his car. "You want to go get a cup of coffee?" he said nodding down the road toward Mystic Falls.

"I would love to but I am actually running late." She could never cross the boundary lines of Mystic Falls again. Not unless she felt like a particularly painful suicide. " I can give you my number and maybe you can call me next time you're at Whitmore." There was that grin again. She wanted to pull him into her arms and hold him tight. He wasn't Damon. Still, she could pretend a little. Just a little. It was just coffee right?

He took out his cell phone and handed it to her. "I can do that."

Elena handed her phone to him in exchange and they entered their numbers, and handed them back. "So I'll talk to you soon then." She said, smiling, and for the first time in months it reached her eyes.

"I'm looking forward to it." Jace said.

Elena hurried back to the university and arranged for a coffee date after all, with Alaric. He'd gotten a teaching position at the college which was more suited to him than the high school had been. She thought he seemed more content with his job there than he had maybe that was because he wasn't a human trying to fight the darkness alone any longer.

She waved him over as he walked into the coffee shop. She pulled up a photo she'd taken earlier that day with her phone and pushed it over to him as he took his seat.

"I didn't think Damon was into cycling." Ric said looking at the picture a little sadly.

"I took that picture this morning." Elena told him, taking a sip of her coffee.

"Elena," He said gently. "this isn't Damon. I know it looks like him. But Damon is gone."

"He looks like Damon, sounds like Damon, smiles like Damon. Ringing any bells?"

Alaric frowned. "Another Doppelganger? That makes no sense." He said. "You and Stefan came about because of the immortality spell. There wasn't a third party involved then. Well, not a male third party anyway. If there had been I'm pretty sure he'd have been part of the traveler's spells."

"I don't know." Elena said. "It doesn't make sense to me either, but the fact is that there is a man that is Damon's double. And around here doubles are neck deep in danger whether they know it or not."

"okay." He said "But I don't know that you need to be the one to look into this."

"Who do you suggest? Stefan? He's more fragile than I am." Because he'd lost Lexi too. Because he blamed himself for coming through before Damon did. So many things resting heavily on Stefan's shoulders.

"There are more people than you and Stefan." Alaric said with a faint smile as their coffee was delivered.

"Jeremy is staying in Mystic Falls with Matt and Tyler, and I doubt they'd handle it subtly, Caroline has her hands full with Stefan and her class load, You are teaching full time now and Enzo would just turn him and make him into some clone of what he wanted Damon to be. That leaves me. Besides I'm the one he's asked out to coffee."

Ric sighed heavily. "When?"

"Next time he's at Whitmore he's going to call me."

He frowned. "What's this guy doing here?"

"He says he's checking out the genealogy library." She shrugged.

Another sigh. "Well, one thing we agree on is not involving Stefan in this." Alaric said, wishing his coffee was made of sterner stuff.

Stefan poured another glass of bourbon and sank into his least hated chair to drink it. New chairs, new town, new home... brand new shiny empty place inside where his brother had been. He had hated all of it, but it was only temporary. At least that's what he'd told himself and Caroline had been more than happy to enable that delusion. Now he was numb...

His brother was dead. Actually truly dead. Not watching from the other side, not waiting for a Hail Mary pass to save him. Damon was Dead and he wasn't coming back. He'd known that their plan was too crazy to go off without a hitch. He'd expected someone not to make it. He'd been hoping for Enzo to be honest, he'd been willing for it to be himself, but he'd never once thought it could be Damon. So here he sat in an uncomfortable chair drinking enough bourbon to make up for Damon not being there to do it himself.

He allowed himself a smile as Caroline entered the house. "Hey." he said quietly. "How's your mother doing?"

"She's okay. " Caroline said as she came to sit on the low slung table in front of her friend. "She's worried about you and Elena."

"I'm alright. Its nothing time won't take care of on its own." He'd grieved before. He'd grieve again. It was just going to take time. Another pointless mantra. "Elena has Alaric looking out for her. I'm more worried about Jeremy."

"Yeah well she's not taking Alaric with her when she goes walking by the falls every day." Caroline said. "She's looking for Damon but she won't admit it. She figures if he finds a way back he'll go where they first met."

Stefan sighed. "She'll pull it together. She's strong. Stronger than we give her credit for."

"I hope so." Caroline said. She sank into the one comfortable chair in the room. "Jeremy is doing alright. Matt and Tyler are keeping an eye on him. They say he can't find anyone on the other side. Its completely gone."

He nodded. "I think we'd have had more visits from an irate Damon if it were still there."

"He'd never blame you for living. He sacrificed himself so that you could live." Caroling told him emphatically. "He loved you. He wanted you to get through back to our side. "

"He had planned on coming back too." Stefan pointed out. "I was supposed to wait for him."

"And he was late because he and Ric were saving my mom. Should we blame her too?" Caroline said folding her arms across her chest. They'd had this argument so often that it was almost like a script now.

"Of course no one should blame your mom. Without her we'd have never gotten anyone back." Stefan said in near monotone. He was tired of the debate as well. "look, I am allowed to grieve. That's all this is. Me grieving. I'm not going to walk into the sunrise and take off my daylight ring. Its just going to take time. That's all."

"Fine. If that's all it is, then you can leave this house and come with me to the coffee house tonight." It wasn't him taking off his daylight ring that she worried about.

"I'm not sure the grieving process includes coffee dates." He said with a faint smile. A forced smile.

"Not specifically. But it doesn't say you can't go for killer coffee and escape your house and all the boxes of things from the boarding house that you have not dealt with yet." she said. "If you don't come to coffee with me I am going to start unpacking tonight. I'll start at that box right there and I won't stop until everything is sorted, cleaned and put away. Worse I'll call other people over to help."

"You win." He put his hands up in defeat. " Coffee it is. Although if you make that threat too often I'll take you up on it." He said teasing a little.

Caroline got up, took the bourbon glass from his hand and set it on the table before taking his hand to pull him up out of his chair. "I hate that chair." She said pulling him toward the door before he could change his mind.

"So do I." He said opening the front door for her.

"Then why do you keep it?"

He shrugged."It came with the house."

Alaric left the coffee shop and hit the freeway. It had taken him several months to locate the woman. She'd once been a regular visitor to his home. The home he'd shared with Isobel in North Carolina. At the time he'd thought that his wife was gullible and that the woman was delusional. He hoped now that he was wrong and that she was as capable as his wife had believed. He'd been relieved to find that the witch had relocated to Virginia.

He parked in front of the bar an hour later. It was more upscale than he frequented these days, nestled in ivy covered brown stones converted into antique stores, coffee shops and goth culture pretending to be esoterica. Or was it the other way around? The bar was down a flight of stairs into the basement level of just such a shop.

Claire was on the small stage, seated on a bar stool in front of a mic singing an old Harry Chapin love song about a schizophrenic man and the woman who loved him anyway. She'd been beautiful before he supposed but he had never really paid attention. Until Jenna he'd only ever had eyes for his wife. Now that he looked at her he could appreciate the delicate lines of her face, almost elfin, with dark eyes that rivaled Elena's in their depth.

Her hair had been dark, almost black when he'd first met her. Now it was a paler shade of brown, hanging around her shoulders instead of short cut and spiked. But it was definitely her, older, more subdued, but he was certain now that she was exactly the person he was looking for.

He approached the stage as she set the guitar aside. "Its been a long time." He said looking up at her.

"I was sorry to hear about Isobel." She said letting him help her down from the stage. "Was she the one that turned you?" She whispered as he set her on the floor.

"No." Ric said, surprised that she could tell so easily. "Long story."

"And I'm betting not the one that you're here to tell me."

"That obvious an I?" He asked.

"Vampires only come looking for Witches when they want something. Given what's been going on over in your neck of the woods, I figure you must want something pretty big."

"Guilty as charged. But right now I'd just like to pick your brain." Ric told her. Elena had put some very disturbing questions in his head that he didn't know how to find the answers to.

Claire nodded. "okay. Lets head up to my place where we don't have to worry about other peoples ears. Or the act that's following me." She rolled her eyes and led the way to the back of the building where they took the service elevator to the top floor.

She stepped through into her home and looked at the vampire. "You may come in. But if you ever walk into my home without my permission I will turn your brain into Swiss cheese and serve it at my next dinner party. You hear me?"

Ric smiled. "I hear you." He said and followed her into to a large loft. Her home took up the expanse of the brown stone. It was a completely open floor plan. The only doors in the place he assumed were for closets and the bathroom.

She shed her 4 inch heels and tossed them into a corner. She made her way around the place in stocking feet. He thought she looked even more elfin, standing no more than 5' tall. "So what's your poison these days?"

"Bourbon." He said as he followed, feeling awkward and somewhat hulking compared to her diminutive form.

"Gone native have you." She said laughing a little.

"Something like that." He said.

"Take a load off." She indicated the sofa positioned to catch both the view from the floor to ceiling windows and the fireplace. She grabbed the bottle from behind the bar and two glasses. Claire sat down and put them on the table, letting Ric do the pouring. "So what is it you want to know?" She asked, and curled up comfortably in the corner of the sofa.

"What can you tell me about Doppelgangers. Not the Petrova set or Silas, but anything independent of that. "

"What? You don't have enough of them on your hands?" She asked.

"Okay, how is it you know whats going on in my life?" He asked, brow furrowed and a frown beginning to form.

"Which question do you want answered first?"

"The second one. You're giving me the creeps."

Claire laughed. "Isobel came to see me a few years ago. It wasn't the best of meetings. She wanted my help and seemed to forget that not all witches are going to jump up and down for the opportunity to serve a vampire completely." She shrugged. "Anyway she told me about her daughter and that she was a Petrova. Where there are Petrova's there is always the other one eventually."

"And she mentioned that I was teaching in Mystic Falls." He said.

"Correct. She wanted my help in dealing with her maker to keep him out of her hair. I refused."

"I'm just as glad you did. Her maker, Damon Salvatore, ended up being my best friend. Talk about backwards right?" He said sadly.

"So was he the one that turned you?"

Alaric chuckled. "I wasn't so much turned as made." He admitted.

She raised an eyebrow. "That takes a powerful witch."

"Yes it did. She wanted an original to wipe out the originals she made the first time around."

"Since there are still vampires in the world I can only assume that you did not succeed."

"Long story but no. I didn't succeed." He handed her one of the glasses of bourbon.

"Good thing. I have friends in the fanged crowd." she said, and took a sip.

"Serve many of their brains at dinner parties?" He asked with a grin.

"One or two."

"It worries me that I believe you." he said with a nervous laugh.

"It should." She told him "Okay... Doppelgangers. The kind you've been dealing with are rare. Mother nature rarely decides to make duplicates of people that break her rules."

"That much is reassuring." He said. "I always found that idea kinda stupid to be have an abomination... lets make more of them." He rolled his eyes.

"There are those that are more fae than anything else. A literal translation of the German word. A double Walker. Usually that kind are just a harbinger of doom for the person they look like. A less noisy banshee."

"If that's what this guy is he's a little too late."

"Sometimes they're demonic in nature, but usually only the double of the very good.. hell's attempt to discredit those who could in theory become saints." She said and watched a sad little amused smile cross Alaric's face. "Sometimes though, most often, especially if dealing with vampires or witches that age really well... its a descendant. People pass on their dna and occasionally the genes just land right to produce someone that looks enough like an ancestor to be their doppelganger, but they really aren't."

"And the likelihood of a doppelganger of the magical variety being born into a family with another doppelganger with different … reasons to exist..."

"Is about as likely as winning the powerball every week for the rest of your life." Claire said. "So now that you have picked my brain, why don't you tell me what is going on and why you really looked me up. You could have found all of this out for yourself. You're a history teacher. You know how to do research."

"Damon died. He didn't make it back through before the other side imploded. We don't know where he ended up ultimately. But his girlfriend spotted someone that looks just like him, sounds just like him this morning. I was hoping that it wasn't another doppelganger situation."

"it probably isn't." She said firmly. "You don't have anything to worry about in that regard. Sure lightning can strike the same place twice. But this kind of lightning … no."

Ric nodded. "So... " He took a deep breath, and downed the rest of his drink. "What do you know about the resurrection of the dead?"

"Since the other side is closed for business... nothing that I'd be willing to do." She said "It's messy, it's black magic and it requires a life for a life."

"What if someone was willing to give up their life for his?"

"Its still black magic, Ric. That sort of crap taints your soul forever. It wouldn't just taint the people casting the spell, it would taint the soul it brings back as well. You would get Damon back, but he wouldn't be the man you remembered."

"But that means its possible. That there could be a non black magic way out there to do it." He said. "I've got all the time in the world to find it. Its not like he's going anywhere either."

"You care about him a great deal." She said.

"He's my best friend."

"Find a new one. Don't take this the wrong way but you can't spend your life focused on bringing back the dead."

"I'm a vampire. We tend to obsess."

She laughed a little. "Find a new focus. Heal. Let him go and hopefully be at peace."

Ric sighed. "It's what I keep telling Elena. I've never been good at taking my own advice. " His life had been a mess since Isobel had disappeared. He'd freely admitted that.

"You're not. You're taking my advice. I've always liked you Alaric. Don't screw that up by becoming an out of control grieving vampire. Or worse an emotionless one."

"I won't do that." He assured her. "I have people I'm responsible for. People that depend on me. Besides, if I let Elena down Damon would come back on his own and figure out how to kill me himself." he grinned a little.

They talked. They talked about Isobel, being a vampire, being on the other side, being a witch in the 21st century. They avoided talking about Damon. It was good not to talk about him. He felt a little guilty about that. Claire didn't.

She poured more bourbon and kept the conversation on the living. She kept it focused on Alaric and his adjustment to being back in the land of the living luring him into conversations about hopes and dreams and disappointments.

He left in the early hours of the morning feeling lighter, in spite of the guilt. He promised to come back, and she promised not to turn his brain into Swiss cheese on a whim. He thought it had gone well. After the initial disappointment of having not found a way to save his friend after all.

He groaned as he reached his car. "I'm not giving you a ride back to Whitmore." He told Enzo, with a scowl. Something about this guy set his teeth on edge. "I'd think you'd want to be as far from that place as possible all things considered."

"What? Not looking for a new drinking buddy? Or maybe you've found one in the pretty little witch upstairs."

Alaric moved the other vampire aside and unlocked his car. "What do you want, Enzo. I'm not in the mood for games tonight. I have a lecture to give in the morning."

Enzo moved around to the passengers side. "Good that means you'll skip giving me one tonight. You may as well unlock it." He said gripping the door handle. "If you don't I'll just break the window and get in anyway. "

"You do know I can kill you, right?" He said but went ahead and unlocked the door.

"Vampire hunter turned vampire." Enzo said. "That has to suck."

"Puns are the weakest form of humor." He said as he started the car. "Especially that one."

"I thought it was sarcasm." Enzo said.