Disclaimer: Only plot and original characters belong to me.

"So this is where you live?" Charlotte asked as she drifted through the wall of Thomas' apartment and he came through the front door. She was shocked. She'd never seen such a tiny dwelling in her whole life.

"I know it's not much, but I've never needed much," Thomas told her as he sat down on the sagging navy blue sofa. "As long as I can say it's mine, that's fine with me."

"Well, I'm sure," Charlotte nodded. She noticed a thin layer of dust on the furniture, but ignored it. "It's very…homey," she said.

"I know, isn't it?" Thomas asked.

Charlotte then noticed an old photograph on the table behind the sofa. It had two people in it. "Who are they?" She asked, gently picking it up. "Are they your ancestors or something?"

"No, they're my parents, or what I thought my parents would be like," Thomas said, even though the photo was dated from the early 1860s. "I know that sounds silly, but that picture really was from when I was a child. I'm a vampire, you know."

"What?" Charlotte asked, her eyes widening. "You couldn't be! You're much too nice to be one of…them."

"I know it's a bit unbelievable and that vampires are thought to be just creatures in stories, but it's true," Thomas told her. "It's what I am. I know it's a bit soon to be blurting something out like this, but I thought that, you know, since you're a ghost and all, it wouldn't bother you. Does it bother you?"

"Oh, no…" Charlotte told him quickly. "Of course not. I mean, you could say that I was very anti-vampire in my life. The town I lived in was under threat from them, and my husband carried a strong belief in them from his childhood in Italy, which made him hate them too, but…since my sons joined their ranks, I've learned to be a bit more tolerant. So I don't hate you for being a vampire. I'm just a little surprised because you don't fit the image of vampires that I've had all my life. You're more like my sons, or my best friend, or my best friend's daughter."

"Am I?" Thomas smiled. "What are they like? Tell me, please."

"Well, Amelia," Charlotte began, "She's the sort of person who, if you just looked at her and took what you saw, she wouldn't seem very likable. She grew up in a family of very wealthy people who taught her to think a lot of herself because of her position in town, plus she wasn't given a lot of love in her life, so giving it to others wasn't something she was good at, especially to her poor daughter." Charlotte sighed. "She put that little girl through so much, but it wasn't entirely her fault. She tried as well as she could, and as long as I was there to help her, things went reasonably well. And then there was whole matter of Andrew."

"And who's he?" Thomas asked. "Her beau?"

Charlotte looked at him in surprise and chuckled a little. "I haven't heard anyone talk like that in a long time, but yes. He was the one she loved because he was one of the few people besides me who took the time to know the real her, under the façade that made her seem so unapproachable. She loved him very deeply and he loved her, but because he was a second son, he wasn't in line to inherit anything particularly spectacular and her parents wanted more for her than that, so they urged her to marry his older brother instead. And those two got along, of course, and Matthew was good to her, but you couldn't say they had the kind of deep and enduring love that she had with his brother."

"How sad," Thomas said and sat down on the sofa. "No wonder she was so unhappy."

"Yes," Charlotte nodded. "Fortunately, her daughter turned out reasonably well in spite of Amelia's troubles. Her name is Selina and she's just…she's a little mischievous, but also very sweet."

"That's not a name you hear every day, is it?" Thomas wanted to know.

"No, it's not," Charlotte agreed. "But it was a subtle way to honor Amelia's family heritage, which was not otherwise mentioned in her house. A very strange thing."

"Well, your friend doesn't seem so bad," Thomas told her. "There were times growing up when I would wish for a family and a home, no matter how strict they were. I just wanted to feel like I belonged."

"And did that happen for you?" Charlotte asked. "Did you get a home?"

"Yeah," Thomas nodded. "I did, but…the couple died when I was fifteen and I've had to make my own way in the world ever since."

"Well, it seems you were successful with that," Charlotte got out. "I mean, you have a home and all that."

"That I do," Thomas nodded. "Although, it's an empty home. Between being a vampire and being able to see spirits, I've shied away from having many friends in my life."

"Well, that's what I'm here for," Charlotte told him. "I'm your friend, Thomas."

Thomas smiled. "You are, aren't you? And thank you for the story about your friends. Now I can think of them and maybe…maybe pretend they're my family. I know that might sound strange, but…"

"It doesn't sound strange at all," Charlotte assured him. "I promise."

"So you're still looking at that letter even though it's been days since we got it," Amelia said, coming down stairs early one morning to see why Andrew wasn't in bed with her.

"Yes, sorry," Andrew replied as she kissed his neck. "I'll come back to bed now."

"Oh, you don't have to," Amelia replied and sat down in the chair next to him. "I didn't come down here to tell you to do anything. I just wanted to make sure you were okay."

"Ah," Andrew nodded and took her in his arms to give her a kiss. "All right." He chuckled a little as he held the letter out to her. "I know this letter can't possibly be from our son Thomas, because he's been dead for years, but is it…is it weird that I'm pretending it is? That I want to forge a connection in some way with the first child I ever fathered to live more than a few days?"

"No," Amelia shook her head. "In fact…" She got up and ran upstairs, then came back with a box of folded paper, some of it more yellowed than other bits. "I used to do the same thing. I knew giving him up was probably the best thing I could have done, and I don't regret it at all, but…I never forgot him, you know? And I imagined what he was doing with himself and I would write letters as if they were from him, telling me what he was up to with his other family and how well they treated him. It just…it helped me cope with the loss."

Andrew then held onto her as she sniffled and said, "This is too sad. We need to stop talking about it. Why don't we just make ourselves some tea and then try and get some sleep, all right?"

"Sure," Amelia nodded. "That's probably a good idea. And do you think I should tell Selina about her brother?"

"Yes," Andrew nodded. "I really think you should. Not that she probably hasn't had it figured out for years because that's how she is, but…telling her so that she knows for sure would be nice."

"You wanna get the door?" Selina asked Elijah as he gave her bare breasts one last kiss and rolled next to her on the mattress. "Or I could? It sounds like my mother's come to visit."

"I really think you should do this," Elijah told her. "She's your mother. And she's probably come to talk to you anyway."

Selina sighed. "You have a good point. I'll go, tell her whatever it is that she wants to hear, and then I'll be back in a jiffy. I promise."

"Well, I hope that's true," he told her, a smirk on his lips as he got out of bed and came up behind her as she reached for her bathrobe to cup her bare bottom with both hands, pull her against him, and whisper into her ear. "Cause you know how I don't like to be kept waiting."

The feeling of his lips against her earlobe along with him holding her against his body made her moan. "You know," she said, "I could always tell her to wait. Once she finds out what she interrupted, I'm sure she'll be more than willing to come back later."

"No, you really should go," He said, turning her around and giving her a kiss.

"For heaven's sake, make up your mind!" She told him as she pulled away from him and got her robe tied. "You really are terrible."

"Oh, I know," Elijah grinned wickedly. "Hurry back, darling."

Selina didn't look back over her shoulder cause she knew the wicked grin he was wearing would just make her lose her focus and go running back to him instead of going to answer the very persistent ringing of the doorbell. "I knew it was you," she said when she saw her mother and uncle on the other side of the door.

"Sorry for being so persistent," Andrew apologized before she could even invite them in. "After Amelia rang the doorbell a couple of times, I told her that we should leave and come back later, but she insisted."

"Because what we're about to tell her is too important to wait on," Amelia replied, and then turned to face her daughter. "Although I see that you're wearing a bathrobe, which can only mean one thing, so I'll make it quick: When you were ten and your grandparents died, I decided afterward that I should do whatever I wanted and your uncle and I sort of…began an affair, which led to me getting pregnant. I didn't find out for sure, of course, until after he died, and then I didn't feel I could raise a child alone, so Doctor Stensrund took me to an orphanage in Richmond and I gave the baby up. Long story short, you had a brother for some of your human life. I just didn't feel up to raising him, so he didn't live with us."

Selina was silent for a little bit and then she said, "I knew you were pregnant that whole time! Why didn't you just be honest with me about it?"

"Cause I wasn't sure if I was going to keep the child or not and I didn't want to get your hopes up," Amelia replied. "Are you mad?"

"I suppose not," Selina replied. "You made the choice that was right for you, even though it would have been nice to have a sibling. I suppose Damon and Stefan were close enough, though."

"All right," Amelia said and turned around. "That's all we came to tell you. You can get back to whatever it was that you were doing before we showed up. Goodbye."

"That's how we're ending the conversation?" She heard Andrew ask as he and Amelia walked away. "I think it warrants more discussion than that."

"Why?" Amelia asked. "She obviously is okay with it. Why go on when we don't need to?"

Selina shut the door behind them and went back to Elijah. "Well, that was fun," she said, undoing her bathrobe and climbing back beside him.

"What happened?" Elijah asked. "What did your mother have to say? It was your mother, right?"

"Yeah," Selina nodded. "It was no biggie, though. Mama just told me that she and Uncle Andrew had an affair after my grandparents died, then she got pregnant, and after Uncle Andrew was killed, she gave birth to my half-brother and then gave him to an orphanage. That's all."

"How do you feel about that?" Elijah asked, taking her in his arms.

"Well, what's there to feel?" Selina asked. "I mean, it's not like when Christine and Daddy said they were gonna have Sarah. This brother of mine isn't someone who exists now. He's someone I could have had as a sibling, but didn't. It's exciting and…a little sad."

"But trust me on this, though," Elijah told her. "Little brothers aren't always all they're cracked up to be. Sometimes they're nice, but sometimes they're…evil."

"Yes, I suppose you're right," Selina nodded. "If anyone could help me with the reality of this, you could."

"I mean that's not to say that you shouldn't mourn this lost sibling," Elijah continued. "But it might help with the grief process if you think of them not only as this angel that was lost, but as a person who could have had a tendency to go bad and your mother's giving him up prevented that."

"And in the environment where he would have grown up if Mama had kept him, that would have been a definite possibility," Selina agreed. "In all honesty, even if there is a loss, I think Mama did the right thing. I was strong enough to handle living with the Lockwoods cause I was a girl and not as susceptible to the pressure that came with having a werewolf gene, but a boy in the same position? That might have been more trouble than Mama bargained for, especially when he found out about the werewolf stuff. Cause even though the rule in the family was that none of us was supposed to turn, I know my male cousins at least talked about it behind their parents' backs."

"Exactly," Elijah nodded. "Feel better?"

"Yes," Selina nodded and put her arms around him. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," Elijah replied and nibbled on her ear before putting her back down against the mattress and parting her legs so he could bury himself inside her while his fingers knotted in her hair and his lips crashed against hers which was a blessing because even if it was just for a little while, she forgot everything in her world except him, and that was perfectly fine with her.