Lie Detecting Mood Ring
DG32173

Sarah: here's chapter 2 of Lie Detecting Mood Ring. I'm sorry about how extraordinarily short chapter one was! And I'm also sorry in the long delay in updates! Please forgive me! Anyways, here's chapter 2! I hope you enjoy!

TIMELINE
For those who are wondering, this story takes place in an alternate universe of early season two. Katherine is back. No, Damon did not snap Jeremy's neck because Elena saw just how drunk and depressed he was and only told him that she cares about him, not that it will always be Stefan. And no, there will be no Originals coming into play. Just Katherine.

Chapter 2
My Little Lie Detector

I notice that Damon's Camaro is parked in its usual spot in the boarding house driveway as I park my SUV, which means he's home. Stefan's Porsche is also in its spot, but that doesn't mean anything. He said he had plans this evening. But maybe Damon knows where he is. Or at least when he'll be back. I turn off my SUV and get out. I lock my car before making my way to the boarding house. I let myself in as I've always done. I enter the parlor to see Damon sipping at a glass of bourbon. "Steffie's not here," he tells me with a smirk. "He was already gone by the time I got back from the council meeting this afternoon and didn't leave a note."

My mood ring doesn't heat up so I know Damon's telling the truth. "Any idea when he'll be back?" I ask.

"I just got through saying he didn't leave a note," he says, rolling his eyes. "It's Thursday, so he should be back in a by tomorrow." He raises an eyebrow at me as he takes a sip of his bourbon. "Anything I can help you with?" he asks, a wicked twinkle in his beautiful ice blue eyes.

I purse my lips, thinking over my options. Then I smirk, deciding to test my mood ring's enchantment on Damon. "Sure. Let's play a game," I tell him, taking a seat on the couch opposite him.

"A game?" he asks, raising an eyebrow.

I hold up my right hand to show off the mood ring. "Bonnie enchanted this lovely little mood ring to be a lie detector," I tell him, grinning when he arches his eyebrow in question. "I plan on using it to catch Stefan in his lies. If someone lies to me, the stone will turn bright red and the ring will heat up. The more they lie, the hotter it gets. Bonnie assured me that it will never burn me. Since Stefan's not here, I think you and I can make use of it in a game of twenty questions."

"This could either be really fun or really humiliating," Damon muses, taking another sip of his bourbon while he thinks it over. Then he shrugs. "Sure, let's do this," he tells me. "No questions are off-limits, right?" he asks, arching an eyebrow.

"If we go by that rule, I'm gonna need a drink myself," I tell him, grinning impishly at him.

He smirks and gets up to vamp over to the liquor cart to pour me a glass of bourbon and refill his own glass. He then comes over and hands the newly filled glass to me. I take a sip and smile as the high quality bourbon burns its way down my throat. Damon takes a seat next to me. "Who starts?" he asks, doing the 'eye thing' I secretly love.

"I'll start," I tell him, already having my first question ready. "What made you come to my room the other night completely wasted? I've never seen you that drunk."

He winces. "Katherine came to the boarding house the night before," he says slowly. "She wanted a little roll in the hay with yours truly. I asked her if she ever truly cared about me. She ruined the mood by saying that in all honesty it had always been Stefan. She left after that and I had a drink, which turned into two, then four. I drank for the next twenty-four hours, laying waste to nearly our entire stock of alcohol. When I found that I couldn't get drunk enough to get the betrayal off my mind, I went to see you. Just being around you has always had a calming effect on me. I figured that if anyone would be able to get my mind off what happened, it would be you." He raises his right hand to stroke his index finger down my jaw as I suck in a sharp breath as the mood ring tells me that he's telling the stark honest truth. "I was right," he says softly, pulling his hand away. "Mood ring, please," he says, arching an eyebrow at me while he holds out his hand. I take off the mood ring and hand it over to him. He examines it briefly. "Sterling silver, huh?" he asks. I nod. "That's a pricy metal to go into a mere mood ring."

"My mom gave it to me," I tell him as he slips it on his right pinky finger. "So, ask your question."

He smirks. "The night I came to your room drunk, you told me that you 'care about me'. Just how much do you care?" he asks.

I sigh. "I should have known you'd start off with a question I wouldn't want to answer," I mutter, taking a swallow of my bourbon.

"Well, you have to answer it. And your nifty little ring will tell me if your lying," he says, smirking.

I lick my lips, thinking about how much of the truth to let out without it being too much. "You're my closest friend, Damon," I tell him slowly. "Not even Bonnie or Caroline, my best friends since we were babies, know me half as well as you've known me from the beginning. There are times I want to hate you for the bullshit you pull. But I've never been able to fully commit to it. In the beginning, after I found out about the fact that you and Stefan are vampires, I was initially terrified of Stefan. And there've been times since then that I've been afraid of him. But, for some reason, I could never fully bring myself to be afraid of you. Not even when you did your damnedest to scare me. Something deep inside told me that you would never willingly hurt me. Even when you were at your worst, with your humanity switch flipped off, I could see this glimmer of light in your soul. I did my damnedest to bring the man out of the monster because I just knew you could easily become my friend. I knew you just needed someone to believe in you, to give you a chance. I decided I should be that someone. Your own brother wasn't about to do so."

As I speak, I watch as a myriad of emotions flicker across his face while he stares at the whisky in his glass. When it becomes apparent to him that I'm not going to say anymore, he takes a ragged breath. "That was enlightening," he says once he's collected his wits. He takes the mood ring off and hands it back to me.

I put it on my right ring finger and contemplate my next question. I decide on one that's been bugging me for a while. "When I first came to the boarding house to return Stefan's book, I felt like that wasn't our first meeting," I say, taking a sip of my bourbon. "I felt like I knew you from somewhere, but I couldn't remember where we might have met before. Now that I know what you are and what you can do, I've been meaning to ask this question: was that really our first meeting?"

I take a glance at his face and frown to see that his expression has become guarded. He's silent for so long that I start wondering if he's going to refuse to answer and end our game. But he finally sighs. "No, it wasn't," he says, refusing to meet my gaze. "Our real first meeting took place the evening of May 23rd." I inhale sharply at the significance of that date. "You're parents were coming to pick you up. I happened to be on the road near the party you attended and when you left the party, you pretty much headed in my direction. We met and talked. I compelled you to forget because I didn't want anyone finding out I was in town yet since word would have eventually gotten back to Zach and Stefan."

I bite my lower lip as I realize the significance of his words. I had met Damon first. And all this time he had let me think it had been Stefan who had laid eyes on me first. And he's telling the truth. The mood ring would tell me if he was lying. I take off the ring and pass it to him. He slips it on his right pinky finger and is silent for several long minutes, thinking over his next question while sipping at his bourbon. "Well, I think I'll go easy on this one," he says, giving me a smirk. "What's up with that teddy bear of yours?"

I roll my eyes. Even though I have a lot of teddy bears, we both know he doesn't have to specify which teddy bear. There's only one that he could be referring to: Teddy, the teddy bear that that he loves holding whenever he's in my room. "Teddy's special," I say softly, closing my eyes and remembering the day I got him. "He was my first teddy bear. Mom took me to get him at the Build-A-Bear Workshop in Richmond as my fifth birthday present from her. "When we first entered the store and I saw all the over-the-top teddy bears being put together for the other kids, I'll admit that I was more than a little intimidated. I was actually rather timid when I was little. But Mom saw my nerves and knew immediately what was scaring me. She knew that I was scared of the overly-elaborate teddy bears. She knelt down so that she was on eye level with me and told me that my teddy bear could be a very simple bear. 'A really fluffy, really soft teddy bear with a bow around his neck would be just fine,' she said. She helped me pick out the softest stuffing, the fluffiest fur, the gentlest eyes, the cutest nose, just the right shade of brown yarn for his mouth, and the perfect ribbon to be formed into his bow. While the sales assistant was putting Teddy together, Mom told me the story about the very first teddy bear. She told me that the very first teddy bear had been formed the guardian angel of a little girl whose parents had died. The guardian angel couldn't go to the little girl to comfort her himself, so he made a stuffed bear he could inhabit that would keep the little girl company as she faced the world without her parents' guidance. It was the little girl who had come up with the name teddy bear, because that was the name she called her stuffed bear. The little girl somehow knew that her guardian angel inhabited Teddy Bear and had made him just for her. She thanked him for the teddy bear. She did her best to be worthy of such a special gift. She would play with Teddy Bear as a child. As she faced hard times, she would hug Teddy Bear tightly and cry into his fur. When she felt alone, she would just pick up Teddy Bear and remember that her guardian angel would always be there with her and had loved her so much that he had created Teddy Bear as a physical form for himself. As the girl grew up, her guardian angel watched with pride as she stayed good and was as honest as she could be. So, when the time was right, her guardian angel sent a message to the girl, who was by then a young woman, that he would leave her with Teddy Bear because he was going to search for something to reward her for the good life she had led. The guardian angel searched and searched. Just when he was afraid that he would fail in this mission he had given himself, he came across a young man whose soul would compliment the young woman's perfectly. The guardian angel could not interfere directly with the living world, but he knew that this soulmate was the perfect reward for the young woman. The only problem was that the young man was on the other side of the world from the young woman. So the guardian angel used the angelic powers he possessed to guide the young man to the young woman. There were times of hardship for the young man and at times the young man just felt like turning back or even giving up on ever finding something good. The young man was by no means perfect. He had done many things in his life that could have condemned him in many eyes. He had even condemned himself against deserving good fortune. But the guardian angel knew there was good in him still, and that he deserved the goodness in the young woman. The guardian angel knew that once the young man and young woman were united, the young woman would do whatever it took to redeem the young man of his past life and show him that he is worthy of good things happening to him. So the guardian angel got permission from God to be a touch deceptive in regards to the young man. It was for a good cause, after all. Well, God had been watching everything, of course, and allowed that touch of deception. So the guardian angel did what he had to do to get the young man into the young woman's hometown. He made them cross paths just once, because he knew that their hearts would guide them to each other again after that first meeting. After that, the guardian angel needed to rest. So he returned to Teddy Bear and took up residence inside of him to watch as the young woman and young man fell in love. It's no surprise that after spending so much time in the presence of the young woman's guardian angel, the young man was at ease with Teddy Bear. After all, the guardian angel that had brought him to the young woman and now resided within Teddy Bear. The young man had no qualms about holding Teddy Bear whenever he got the chance and, in fact, did so as much as possible. But much to the guardian angel's surprise, the young woman had very little to do with the young man's redemption. He wanted to make himself worthy of such a good soul and so he redeemed himself." I smile, keeping my eyes closed. "Time passed and they had children. The guardian angel had made Teddy Bear when the young woman had just been five years old. When the young woman's daughter turned five, she wanted to pass along the gift of a teddy bear. So she set her daughter down and got out Teddy Bear. She told her daughter all about Teddy Bear and the guardian angel that still resided in him. She told her daughter what that guardian angel had done as a reward for her own good life. The daughter said she wanted a teddy bear, too. So the young woman and her daughter set to work on making the daughter her own special teddy bear to house her guardian angel. As the generations passed, some women kept the tradition of passing along The Story of Teddy Bear to their daughters when they turned five. Others subconsciously wanted that physical embodiment of the guardian angel much sooner, and sometimes even made or picked out a teddy bear while still pregnant. Some have even forgotten about The Story of Teddy Bear but still pass along that first teddy bear to their daughters. Overtime, sometimes even the sons had been privileged with a teddy bear, though many of them grow to think it's embarrassing." I sigh and open my eyes. "That's the story Mom told me while Teddy was being put together. I believe in the idea of a guardian angel residing in a girl's first teddy and, if the girl has been really good, going on search for the girl's soulmate to bring him to her," I tell Damon with a warm smile.

He's quiet for quite a while after that, examining the mood ring. "I want to make sure this thing works for people other than little miss witch," he says, his blue eyes twinkling.

I sigh. "Damon, after the incident with the grimiore, I promised myself I would never lie to you again," I tell him seriously.

"Oh, I'm not talking about you lying," he says with a smirk, sliding the ring off and passing it to me. "Steffie's home."

I feel my eyes widen with surprise and quickly slip the mood ring onto my right ring finger. I turn towards the front door just as Stefan opens it and walks in. "Elena, what are you doing here?" he asks with a frown, coming into the foyer quickly.

"I was waiting for you," I reply. "Damon and I were passing the time with a game of Twenty Questions." I glance at Damon. "It's my turn," I remind him.

"Finish up with your boyfriend and I'll be happy to continue playing," he replies with a wicked grin as he sips at his bourbon.

I turn to Stefan. "Where'd you go?" I ask curiously.

"I told you, I had plans," he says, trying to evade the question.

"I'm your girlfriend," I point out, keeping my right hand behind me so that Damon can see it but Stefan can't. "I should at least be allowed to know what those plans were."

"I went hunting," he replies quickly. The ring heats up. A lie.

"Oh?" I ask. "What did you hunt?"

"Elena, you don't like talking about when I hunt," he points out.

"Well, maybe I'm filled with curiosity tonight," I retort. "What did you hunt?"

"I caught a rabbit and a couple of squirrels," he replies. The ring gets hotter.

I purse my lips. "Were you 'hunting' near the boarding house?"

"Yes," he says. The ring gets even hotter.

I sigh. "Stefan, you can stop lying any time now," I tell him.

"I'm not lying!" he protests. The ring gets even hotter.

I pull my hand from behind my back and show it to him. "See the red stone on this ring?" I ask.

"What about it?" he asks.

"I've been getting tired of turning around constantly to find out that I've believed some lie," I tell him. "So this ring and I made a visit to Bonnie this afternoon before coming here." The fear is all over his face. "This is actually a mood ring, Stefan. I asked Bonnie to enchant this ring so that there will be two ways of knowing if I'm being lied to. She said the best she could do is make the stone turn red and the ring heat up when someone is lying to the person wearing it. As you can see, it's turned very red. You lied to me four times just now. It's pretty damn hot because of that. Bonnie assured me the ring won't burn the wearer. Damon and I were using it as a way to make sure we were telling the truth during the game of Twenty Questions. Apparently, he and I are pretty damn honest with each other, so we were wondering if Bonnie had goofed on the spell. Now I know she hadn't." I turn and slide the ring off my finger and pass it to Damon. He raises an eyebrow in question. "Put it on and call out when I'm lying, please," I tell him.

He smirks and slides it on his right pinky finger. "I can't wait to see this," he chuckles.

I turn to Stefan. "Stefan, I love you," I tell him.

"Lie," Damon says.

I smirk. "Stefan, I can't stand looking at your face right this second."

"Truth," Damon speaks up. Stefan pales.

"Stefan, I will be able to forgive you for anything."

"Lie."

"Stefan, the moment I made the decision to find something Bonnie could enchant into a lie detector, I completely gave up on ever being able to trust you."

"Truth." Stefan's eyes widen.

"Stefan, what we had was real."

Damon bursts out laughing. "Well, damn!" he crows. "I may yet find myself a spot in Heaven! That was a damn lie!"

Stefan gasps.

I let my lips turn into a cruel smile. "Stefan, what we had was over-extended infatuation on my part that was mistaken for love."

"Truth," Damon says around his giggles.

"Stefan, what we had might have lasted if you had been honest with me."

"Lie!"

"Stefan, what we had was doomed to end before you even approached me." Damon's quiet for so long that I turn to look at him. He's staring at me with his jaw dropped. If this was a cartoon, his jaw would be on the couch. Thankfully, this isn't a cartoon. I smirk at him. "Verdict, Damon," I remind him. "Was I lying or telling the truth? By the way, shut your mouth before you swallow a fly."

Damon snaps his mouth shut and shakes his head in wonder. "Well, even I'm shocked by that verdict of the mood ring: you were telling the damn truth," he says after he gathers his wits.

I turn around to face Stefan. His face is a mask of shock and pain. "Stefan, our relationship was doomed before it started because you don't know how to trust anyone," I tell him.

"Mood ring says she honestly believes that's the truth," Damon says, his voice full of awe.

"I know how to trust!" Stefan snaps.

Damon sighs. "According to the ring, not even you believe that," he says.

I take a deep breath. "Stefan," I start, meeting his eyes. "I feel like I don't even know who you are. You are not the person you tricked me into thinking you were."

"She's speaking honestly," Damon says.

" My parents raised Jer and I to believe that any positive relationship is only that way by trust being given and received by both parties," I tell Stefan. "Even you know you don't know how to trust anyone. Because of that, any relationship with you is bound to end up a negative one. Damon has never flat-out lied to my face. He only misled me by omitting details, but he never lied to me. My trust in him was first placed there tentatively. He's omitted crucial details from what he tells me, he's inadvertently hurt me by not listening to me when I'm trying to share things with him. But I can forgive that. What I can't forgive is someone looking me in the eye and telling me something they know damn well isn't true in the least. Even the night I read your names on the town charter, he didn't lie to me. Who you two were as humans must have been very different from who you are now. Time changes people. You two have had a hundred-and-forty-five years to change your personalities time and again. I'm the kind of person who looks out for the little guys. Damon looks at the overall picture and does what has to be done to make everything work out all right in the end, even if it is something cruel or dangerous. Sometimes what needs to be done to make the bigger picture work out all right hurts the little guys. That makes me upset. But once he's sat me down and explained it all to me, I can see where he's coming from and why it has to be done. Sure, I usually feel like there could have been other ways it could have been handled, but sometimes the expedient way is actually the best way." I look down at my hands in my lap. "Stefan, you only look out for yourself. But you don't like that about yourself so you pretend it's Damon who's doing that. You need to face facts, Stefan. Whatever happened the night you two were killed by your own father, you, Damon, Katherine, and Giuseppe are equally to blame in my opinion. From what I understand, Damon trusted you when you said you wouldn't say a word to your father about anything related to vampires. That was his mistake: trusting you to keep your mouth shut. You, you viewed the world through rose-colored glasses. You thought that if you could just reason with your father, he would come to see things your way. You had put your trust in your father when Damon had put his trust in you. That was your mistake: you broke your promise to Damon that you would keep your mouth shut. Giuseppe had let fear of the unknown turn into blind hatred and the need to abolish that which he didn't understand. He didn't think that you two might have truly had your hearts stolen by her rather than just being compelled to be with her. That was his mistake: his inability to just accept what he didn't understand. And Katherine? She's made more mistakes in her long life than I care to think about." I look first into Damon's eyes then turn to look into Stefan's eyes. "But I can't hold it against her because then I wouldn't have met either of you. Stefan, your father broke your trust by spiking your drink with vervaine and broke it again in shooting you through the heart. But that should not make you feel like you can't trust anyone but yourself.

"I've had my faith in the world broken more times than I want to think about. I broke my promise to my family to be there on Game Night on the night of May 23rd of this year. That ended up with my parents drowning. I allowed myself to wallow in guilt, grief, and self-hatred for so many months and was lost so deeply in those negative emotions that I literally cannot remember anything that happened this summer. I remember every second of the crash. I remember waking up in the hospital and finding out my parents had not made it. Then it's just a blur of grief, guilt, and self-loathing up until the first day of school. There are snippets and glimpses here and there, but that's it. What you two have seen in me since school started is me slowly working my way out of those negative emotions. It's hard, it's uncomfortable, and at times all I want to do is sink right back into them and let the world go by without me. There are even times I wish I was a vampire for the simple ability to lock away every emotion because it would be so much easier to just not feel. But I know that I would never be able to keep the switch flipped permanently. Something would flip it right back on and then I'd be heaped with even more negative emotions over what I did when I had locked them away. I'm just seventeen. You two are both over a hundred-and-sixty. But if there's something I've learned that you two seem to still be struggling with, it's that whatever happened even two seconds ago can't be changed. You can only look at it as a lesson and either learn from it or face repeating that same event at some point in the future." I sigh. "I'm quite certain that the very first word that went through both your heads when you saw me was 'Katherine'. And it was at that split-second that the 'Battle for the Girl' started all over again. Only there's one problem. In the first round of that Battle, 'the Girl' was a vampiress and you two were human. In this round, 'the Girl' is a human and you two are vampires. In case you don't understand the problem, I'll spell it out for you. There are actually several small problems that sum up to the big one.. The first small problem I see is that Katherine and I might as well be twins for all that she's more than five hundred years older than me. My resemblance to your sire sparked up all the emotions both of you have been suppressing since the day she was 'taken' from you. And I do mean all of them. The bad as well as the good. The good news is that you both eventually realized that I'm not her. The bad news is that neither of you actually cared once you realized that the other would want me just as much. The battle for my heart was already in motion. And I hadn't even been asked my opinion. This battle to be the 'better brother' dates all the way back to the split-second Katherine decided she just had to have you both. You are both trying to one-up each other all the damn time. Stefan, you think lying to me 'protects' me because then I won't be worrying when in actuality I need to worry about some things. I'm mature enough to know what I should and should not worry about, so I'm begging you to start giving me the damned truth from here on. Damon, you've always been completely honest with me. I appreciate that, I really do. But you sometimes go too far, like when you're tattling on your brother's actions. The heads up at Miss Mystics Falls was a good thing, but that other stuff? That's just tattling. Some things I need to find out for myself. That way, he only has himself to blame and he can't get bitchy at you for telling me. Stefan, you need to stop spouting of the line of 'did Damon put you up to this?' When you do that, it makes me realize you don't really consider that I have my own free will. Damon, you look at the big picture, yes. But usually the big picture you look at is only the big picture of the moment. You need to start adding long-range consequences into the calculation. Killing Lexi got the town council off yours and Stefan's backs. But it nearly got you turned into a vampire barbecue at a later point. Don't even try to start asking 'how were you supposed to know' because I'll answer that now: Lexi was much older than you and Stefan. Stefan could not have been her only friend in all that time. She seemed extremely friendly and she was actually a pretty good person, as I was just starting to find out when you killed her. Instead of killing her for whatever reason you gave yourself, you could have asked her for a little help finding a suitable vampire to stake. Or you could have compelled your way into the jail in the next town, found someone who actually did do something pretty despicable, turned them, temporarily released them on the town, and then stage your show of staking a vampire to get everyone off your back.

"I have a funny feeling that at one point, you and Lexi had been friends as well. Whatever dispute you had with her could not have been as much of one as you have with Stefan. You haven't killed your brother. You shouldn't have killed Lexi. Speaking of killing each other, I am certain that you have both gotten pretty close to doing just that many times over the years. There has to have been moments for both of you where one of you could have easily staked the other and have been rid of the eternal nuisance he represents. Something stopped you both time and again from being rid of the annoying pest that keeps coming back into your life no matter what you do to shake him." I stand up. "Figure out what that something is. Use it as a foundation to start building a bond of brotherhood on. I'm leaving now and I'm going to leave my little lie detector with you two. Use it to talk out your problems with each other. Or not. But just talk to each other. Take turns and vent all that frustration that's built up over the decades. I don't want to see either of you again until you've started solving all those problems you have with each other. And Stefan," I add, turning to him. "You and I are not an item anymore. Whatever it was we were doing was a joke. Until the two of you can figure out if it's me you're in love with or just in love with the prospect of finally 'getting the girl and beating your brother', neither of you are welcome in my house. I'm going to stop by Bonnie's again and see if maybe on of her grimiores has a spell she can cast to revoke all vampire invites into my house. Once you both can prove to me that you are both over this whole feud you two have with each other, neither of you are coming in my house."

With that, I leave two very stunned vampires staring after me as I make my way out of the boarding house. As soon as I climb in my SUV, though, I groan. "I did what you asked," I tell my unwelcome visitor. "You said you wanted me to end the feud you started nearly a century and a half ago. I just gave them both a piece of my mind, as I'm quite sure you've heard. What are you doing in my car?" I ask, glaring into my review mirror at the woman whose face I was born with.

"I know the spell your witch will need to do to get your wish of revoking all vampire invites," Katherine Pierce says softly. "But I will be expecting to be re-invited. I'm by no means done with my final descendant, Elena Gilbert. Even if you do get those two to stop acting like bratty children, I still have many things left to take care of where you're concerned. Now, get driving. We don't have long before sunset and that's the only time the spell can be cast successfully. Of course, if we miss our mark, we could always do it tomorrow or the day after. So long as it's sunset when the spell is cast, it will succeed. Otherwise it will be just pointless fireworks."

I sigh but start the car, turning it in the direction of Bonnie's house. My friend will not be happy to see who I'm working for now. Not that I'm at all happy having to work for her. But her human blood runs in my veins, however faintly. She and I are family. Isobel and I are the only family Katherine has left. And we are both stuck working for her because her blood runs in our veins.

Sarah: dun, dun, dun. Big plot twist. Hope you enjoyed. Reviews will be much appreciated!