Stefan woke up in the dark, covered in a mist on the ground. His eyes shifted around at his surroundings. A cracked headstone was next to him with a name so caked with dirt and moss that he couldn't read it. There were thin, leafless trees in every direction as he sat up and looked around. Grave markers were everywhere, all in less than ideal conditions and covered in dirt and over growth. Turning his head to look in another direction, he noticed other people sitting around with dreadful looks on their faces. Stefan's features hardened in his confusion and he rose to his feet. Looking around again, he didn't recognize where he was or know how he got there.

He tried to remember the last thing he saw before waking up in the cemetery. It was Henrietta after she'd swung the rifle at him. He'd caught a split second view of her and the gunman falling to the floor as he was thrown from the body. Everything after that was a blank. Stefan wasn't sure if Henrietta had managed to get away that night or not. If she had been caught and burned, or if she'd been able to run out of town to save herself. But thoughts of him being inside the gunman came back to him.

He wasn't sure how he'd done it. All he remembered was feeling powerless to help Henrietta, then all at once he felt an overwhelming flow of emotions rush over him. Anger. He was angry—furious that someone would hunt her down. She'd done nothing wrong. But that was humans, always jumping to conclusions, scared of things they didn't understand and deemed them evil... He was starting to scare himself with that thought, but he could feel his anger start to rise again. Suddenly he thought of Julian ripping out his heart. Stefan didn't kill Maria. Liv and Luke did. He didn't deserve to die for it.

A flash of light suddenly appeared in front of him. Lifting an arm he shielded his eyes until the blinding light faded. He dropped his arm and opened his eyes to find another bright, rippling light directly in front of him. An image came into focus and began to show himself as he was when he was standing with Caroline in the parking lot.

Caroline had wondered what was taking Bonnie so long and Stefan said he would go and find out. That's when Julian came up to them and asked about Maria. Stefan had to tell him that his wife was dead, that the witches killed her. But Julian didn't want to listen to him, he wanted revenge. Stefan was shoved back and he tried to calm Julian down; He didn't want to fight. They would find a way to save everyone even if Mystic Falls was gone. And then Caroline tried to break Julian's neck...

The scene changed, something else happened. Julian suddenly fell to the ground as if hit. Stefan and Caroline had confused looks on their faces as they looked down at Tyler's body, then suddenly his eyes opened. They shifted to Stefan and watched him for a moment before they closed again.

The vision began to fade to black, then refocused on the image of him in the forest after he'd crossed over. As soon as he recognized the scene, his form began to fade away and the vision faded to black once again.

It refocused again. This time it showed Henrietta with her suitcase as she opened the front door of her house. The gunshot boomed. She fell back to the floor as blood began to stain her dress. And Stefan's form faded away again as he had rushed down the stairs to go to her side.

Stefan looked away from the vision as the gunman walked into the house. He heard another shot and knew he hadn't saved her that time.

"You shouldn't mess with the past, Mate," a familiar voice said behind him.

Stefan opened his eyes when heard it. Clenching his jaw, he turned around and looked up to see Kol leaning against a tree with his arms crossed and a grin stretched across his face. "..." Stefan watched him for a moment, unsure if he was really seeing him or not.

Kol's features stiffened as the two of them locked eyes. He pushed himself off the tree and started to walk to him. "Ever since this place has started falling apart, these things have been popping up whenever we think about someone or some place," He told him and looked at the torn space that showed Stefan the images.

Stefan turned to look at the vision again, but this time found it displaying himself about to be killed by Julian again, only now he could see his spirit about to possess him. But he'd faded away just like he had in the forest and with Henrietta.

Stefan's green eyes locked on the scene as he watched Julian rip his heart out.

"Seems to me that if you stop Julian from killing you, then you never come here and aren't able to save your friend. And if you never die, you can't possess the hybrid to save yourself. That's one hell of a paradox, Mate," Kol said and looked back to him with a serious demeanor. "You're stuck here, darling."

Stefan's jawline hardened and he glanced back to Kol. "There's got to be a way to fix this."

"There is," Kol told him and relaxed his arms to his sides. "The witches are saying that you just started it."

Stefan's brows wrinkled in confusion.

Kol nodded towards the image. "That girl you saved. The witches are saying she could save us."

"Henrietta? Why?" Stefan turned to face him now.

"She was supposed to die. You saved her and inadvertently brought her back. This place is falling apart, you should have never been able to go into the past."

"But she wasn't dead when I saved her. How could I have brought her back?"

"Time is messing up here. It used to run along with the living, now no one knows what time it is." He glanced to the window. "And these things are like tears in the walls of time. Whenever we think of a certain time, a wall rips and allows us to pass through. There's no order here anymore, the walls are crumbling."

Stefan stared at him for a moment. If he shouldn't have been able to go back in time and save Henrietta, then she had most likely been there on the Other Side. But that meant when he saved her she was ripped out and left to continue living.

"So, how does she help?" he asked.

"I don't know," Kol admitted softly. "But she can see you. You have to tell her what's going on." His eyes began to well up with tears. "The witches are saying she can fix this. She has to... Or else we're all done for."

Stefan looked back at the hole in time. It showed nothing but black as he stared at it. "Can you find me if you find anything out?" he asked.

"If I hear the witches say anything that would help her know how to save us, I'll find a way to tell you."

He nodded as a wind began to pick up and thought of Henrietta again, wondering where she was if she had survived that night in eighteen sixty-four. And just as Kol had explained before, the vision changed to feature a content Henrietta surrounded by shelves of books.

The original vampire turned his head to look towards the direction of the wind. "You have to go now!" he shouted and looked back to him. The wind grew more violent and began to toss their hair fiercely and beat at their backs. When someone began screaming, Stefan and Kol looked off to see a woman clinging to a tree as her body was being pulled and lifted by an unseen force. Stefan felt a hand on his shoulder and turned his head in time to see Kol as he pushed him into the portal and rushed off in a blur.

Stefan was thrown and fell through several bookshelves before he came to an abrupt stop on the hard wood floor. Henrietta jumped as she saw a sudden blur fly past her but regained herself just as quick so she wouldn't attract attention to herself. A man had looked up to her when he heard her startle and watched her curiously before Henrietta noticed him and gave him a small smile. "A frightening book..." she breathed. She pretended the book had scared her and placed it back into its place on a shelf.

The man grinned and looked back to business without a word.

Henrietta's head turned and she looked up and down the isle of books to make sure no one was paying her attention. Quickly, she stepped out of the isle and in the direction that the blur flew off in. She found where Stefan was laying on the floor and made her way over to him in a brisk.

"Stefan?" She whispered in shock. "What happened?"

He looked up to her with wide eyes. His eyes traced her form from her hair bunched up in the back, to her lavender dress, right down to the intricate embroidering on the skirt's hem. Stefan began to recognize the dress from his past and moved to get to his feet, but he couldn't remember when he'd seen her dress before. On habit he reached out to a shelf to pull himself up, and to his surprise his hand hadn't gone through and he had actually used the shelf to help lift himself. But as soon as he remembered that that shouldn't have happened, his hand passed through. Confused, Stefan pulled his hand away and stared at it for a second before looking back to Henrietta.

She had her own muddled expression on her face; She'd saw him just shift a book slightly when he pulled himself up. Looking back up to him, they shared the same surprised look.

"Did I just...?" Stefan trailed off, whispering just in case he could be heard too.

She nodded.

Then it occurred to Stefan that Enzo had been able to affect the physical world because the Other Side was breaking down. Looking back to the book shelf, Stefan reached out to touch an old, thick, leather bound. His finger tips grazed through the spine of the book and he pulled his hand back. A determined look crossed his face and he stepped up to it, locking his eyes on the book.

Henrietta looked around to see if anyone was watching. But when she heard a dragging sound, she turned back around in time to see the book in Stefan's hand as he held it. Henrietta's eyes grew wide as she looked up to him, his own surprise on his face.

"Are you alright, Miss?"

Henrietta shot her arm out when she heard the strange voice approaching and grabbed the book from Stefan. She turned around when the sound of the floor boards creaking under the stranger's weight were right behind her.

"Miss?" The man asked, a look of concern on his face.

"Oh! Yes. I'm fine, sir." She smiled to him.

"Do you have an escort?"

"..." Henrietta fell silent for a second as she looked at him. He obviously couldn't see Stefan behind her, and she obviously couldn't tell this man that the spirit of her friend was with her. I'd be committed for saying such a thing, she thought then shook her head slowly.

He nodded to her, that concerned look still on his face. "Are you sure you're well? I spotted you rushing over here just a moment ago."

"Yes. I'm quite fine. I just needed some air," she told him politely as she noticed the open window only a few feet away.

He nodded again, then smiled to her and took his leave quietly.

When he was out of sight and ear shot, she sighed in relief and turned back around to face Stefan, only to see him now leaned against the bookshelf with his arms crossed and a grin stretched across his face.

"I didn't know you could act," he said.

A rose hue painted her cheeks and she gave him a disapproving look. "Well, I can't very well tell him I'm talking to a ghost, Stefan," she whispered in grievance. She then looked down to the book in her hand and noticed a strange aura coming from it. Her brows knitted and she began to undo the buckle that held it closed.

Stefan noticed her confusion. "What is it?" he asked and stepped over to her to look at the book.

"Something feels wrong..." She told him and pulled the buckle, releasing the lock and opening the cover. Hand written words covered the first page with little drawings of various pentagrams. Henrietta gasped as her eyes scanned the page.

"Is that a grimoire?" Stefan asked in shock.

She nodded as she flipped through a few pages, but a look of disgust washed over her features.

He noticed. "What?"

"These are very dark spells... Possession, curses, summoning death..." She closed the book quickly and shut her eyes as she tried to rid the evil ideas from her mind.

"What's it doing here?"

She shook her head. "I haven't an idea... But it should be destroyed." She looked back to him, her expression grown hard. "It certainly should not be here..." She told him and looked around. "Is anyone looking?"

Stefan cocked a brow and turned his head to look, he even glanced around for security cameras, but remembered they didn't exist in the eighteen hundreds. "No, why?" He turned his head back towards her and froze as he saw her rolling up the skirt of her dress. She took the inner-most layer and rolled the book in it, tying it so the grimoire sat in a makeshift hammock. She quickly pulled the other layers of her dress down over it and smoothed the skirt, hiding any visible sign that she was carrying anything. Stefan looked back up to her with raised brows.

She'd blushed again as she looked to him, realizing he'd seen her inexpressibles. Henrietta didn't say anything to him and turned back around towards the bookshelf. Looking over the various titles, she stretched to reach a copy of The Scarlet Letter on the top shelf. As soon as she had pulled it down, she turned and walked off towards the store's clerk.

~ღ~

"Are we in New York?" Stefan asked as he walked with Henrietta down the side walk. Passersby were walking around her but unknowingly walking right through Stefan. Even though he couldn't be seen, he still walked on her right, between her and the road.

"Mhm..." She didn't move her lips, least she'd be seen talking to herself in the crowded streets.

"How long has it been since you ran from Mystic Falls?" He was glancing around at the bustle of the city and watched as horse drawn carriages carried people up and down the cobblestone roads. But he'd noticed a tapping sound and Henrietta's hand moving out of the corner of his eye. He focused back on her. She was tapping four fingers against the back of the grimoire as she carried it in her hands now and held it close to her. His brows rose in slight shock. "Four years?!" he exclaimed.

Her fingers stopped abruptly. They started tapping again in a seemingly sporadic pattern. It took Stefan a minute, but he soon realized she was tapping in Morse code.

"Months?..." He asked. Stefan hadn't used Morse code for over a hundred years, he wasn't sure he'd translated it right.

"Mhm."

"Eighteen sixty-five?"

"Mhm."

"How long have you been here?"

She began tapping three fingers on the book.

Stefan watched her fingers for a moment, then looked away and back to the city. "I need to tell you something, but we should find someplace private. Do you live around here?"

"Mhm..." Her response trailed for second, then she turned down narrow passage way between two buildings and quickly made her way to a door. She opened it and stepped inside. The door had closed heavily behind her and Stefan passed through it to follow her up a few flights of narrow stairs until she came to another door. Henrietta reached a hand down her dress and fished for something. But after a few seconds of not finding it, she pulled her hand out and turned her head towards Stefan. She then glanced up and down the barren hall before holding the grimoire out to him silently.

He looked at it, then he also looked around to make sure no one was coming. Turning back to the book, he reached out cautiously and tried to grip it, but his hand went through it. A frown appeared on his face and he tried again, this time mentally telling the book to stay in his hand. He gripped it successfully and Henrietta slowly let go of it, ready to catch it in case Stefan lost his hold.

After a second of watching to make sure, she looked back up and down the hall and slipped her hand back into her dress. She felt around for something for a second. "Oh, for Christ's sake!" She hissed in a hush as she bent forward a bit and reached a little deeper into her corset. Finally she'd pulled out a key and huffed as she unlocked her door. Looking back to take the grimoire from Stefan, she realized what had just come out of her mouth and blushed again. "My apologies," she mouthed and slowly took the book from him as shame spread across her face.

"Don't worry about it, in the future that's not nearly as offensive as it is now." Stefan grinned and fallowed her into the apartment.

As soon as the door closed she spoke softly, "The future sounds horribly barbaric..."

He chuckled and looked around at the small, two room apartment. He wasn't surprised when he noticed books beginning to clutter in the corners. "Well it sounds cute coming from you," he teased and looked back to her as she stepped over to her table and set the grimoire down carefully.

"Oh, don't you sweet talk me, Stefan Salvatore," she said, flustered, and turned her head to look at him. "What do you need to tell me?"