Previously
Katherine was able to break the tomb spell, after killing Elijah, Lucy, and the Martins. She compelled Elena to kiss Damon and stole a kiss with Stefan herself. Damon and Stefan had Alaric move in with them, and Jenna, Jeremy, Elena, Caroline, and Tyler are also staying at the boardinghouse while Katherine, who has invitations to their houses, is on the loose.
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CHAPTER 4 - The Calm Before The Storm
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The next week was uneventful. If Katherine was still around, she kept to herself. With Elijah and the Martins dead, Rose was the only reminder that something was looming on the horizon.
Tyler spent almost as much time roaming the house restlessly as he did staring at the calendar. The full moon was Saturday night. Damon handed over Mason's chains, and Tyler announced that he was going to practice tying himself up in the basement.
"I'll go watch," Caroline stated, following after him. "I mean, help," she amended, stopping for a second before speedily catching up to him.
Bonnie didn't think that was such a bad idea, but she was in the middle of a game of checkers with Jeremy, and something told her he didn't want to be abandoned. Again.
It took Tyler a while to get the chains sorted out.
"If I'm in the form of a wolf…" he couldn't finish the sentence, it was too preposterous.
Caroline sighed, and gave him her best encouraging look. "I know, I know. You still can't believe it. But you have to: you saw your uncle. You know it's true."
Tyler leaned back and stared at the ceiling.
Caroline took his hand. "What were you asking?"
"If I'm in the form of a wolf, I don't see how these chains could hold me. I mean, wolves have smaller legs, and stuff." He held up his own arm, looked at it, and shook his head.
"These chains are special. They're like that kind of knot that only grows tighter if you resist it. In your wolf form, if you try to pull out of the knot, it will clench around you. Your uncle had been using these for a whole year: they work."
He let himself believe her assurances.
"And I'm going to lock the door to the dungeon behind you. You shouldn't be able to break out, even if you do somehow escape from the chains. Then I'll come back the next morning to let you out."
"There seem to be plenty of dungeons around here," he noted, looking around him.
"Damon doesn't want you in the house…"
"Oh. Right." He sighed.
Caroline was silent.
"I don't want to hurt anyone, Caroline."
"I know that, Tyler. I know."
"Mason said that he loses control when he turns. He almost killed you."
"But he didn't," she pointed out. "And when you called out to him, he backed off of Stefan. You got through to him."
Tyler pondered that.
"Maybe you can learn to control yourself." She bit her lip. "Maybe I can help."
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Stefan was going to check on Caroline and Tyler, but he heard something going on outside
They were squaring off in the yard.
Tyler landed on his knees in front of Stefan, his eyes yellow.
"Wait! Wait!" Stefan ran into the center. "What's going on here?"
Caroline jumped to her feet from lying on her back and Stefan leapt protectively in front of her.
Tyler had turned around and was growling, but his aggression was dissipating. His eyes were back to normal.
Caroline laughed. "Stefan, it's OK. We're just sparring."
Tyler scratched the back of his head and chuckled. "I'm a much better match for you when you aren't taking me by surprise," he said to Caroline. "Hitting a girl takes getting used to."
Stefan turned around and faced her. "You're teaching him how to fight us better?" he whispered, clearly angry and slightly incredulous. "Maybe Damon's original inclination was right: you and Tyler should not be friends."
"I don't want to be out of control," Tyler said, obviously picking up on the trend of their conversation even if he couldn't hear it.
Stefan turned 90 degrees. "Then maybe you shouldn't be giving into it."
"Dude, what's the problem? I'm trying to figure how to not hurt anyone. I don't want to be dangerous. I don't want any of this."
"Uh, Tyler, give us a minute," Caroline pleaded. She nodded to him, and the werewolf sighed and went back into the house.
Stefan turned fully back to her.
"I thought you wanted him to kill Klaus," she reminded him.
Stefan crossed his arms. "Well, I figured we'd sort of…I don't know, unleash him. We don't want to teach the only person who could kill us with one bite how to do it better. Showing him our weaknesses."
"I'm learning just as much about him as he's learning about me. You're just as bad as Damon: you don't trust anyone."
"That's not true, Caroline. I just…" he sighed. "I made an overture of peace to Mason, and he didn't want anything to do with it. And don't forget: he almost killed you."
Caroline smiled. "You were there to save me."
"That's all I'm trying to do right now. Damon killed Mason, but Bonnie and I were part of it. If Tyler ever figures that out…"
"He'll forgive you. He just doesn't want to be alone. Look at what you're doing for him, letting him live here to keep him safe, teaching him about what he is."
Stefan shook his head. It was so much more complicated than just looking out for Tyler's welfare. And if Tyler ever figured out that Damon had stabbed Mason unprovoked, and that they wanted him to kill Klaus….well, he wouldn't just forgive them.
"When he fights the…wolfiness comes out," she continued. "His eyes were golden, did you see? I'm trying to help him come back from it, to learn how to control it." She smiled softly: "Like you helped me."
Stefan smiled back. He spent a moment on the memory, and then turned back to business: "Is it working?"
"I don't know." She crossed her arms, feigning annoyance: "We were just getting started."
"He said he thought you guys were about evenly matched: is that true?"
Caroline's expression grew slightly more serious. She nodded. "I stopped holding back, and he was still able to throw me. I was able to take Mason when I fought him before, but I took him by surprise and fought kinda dirty." Stefan smiled at that. "It must be because I'm such a young vampire. I'm sure you could handle him without a problem. Still, it's something to think about."
"Maybe you shouldn't be doing this. I'll do it."
There was a suggestive glint in Caroline's eye: "No, that's OK. I'll do it." Stefan had seen that look in Caroline's eye before – it usually led to trouble. "Caroline, I'm not sure that hooking up with Tyler is really a good idea right now. You're both extremely volatile emotionally."
She glared. "I know I've had a really bad run of it recently. First you rejected me, about as coldly as someone can without literally insulting their rejecteee to their face. Then I had the pleasure of Damon, who not only fed on me repeatedly while we were in bed together and compelled me to let him, but also treated me like shit, and recently made his second attempt on my life. And then I had Matt, sweet Matt, who finally said he loved me after being hung up on Elena, and whom I had to break up with so that I wouldn't accidentally kill him, and who is now dead anyway. So, yeah, I can see why you would be advising me to get myself to a nunnery, but I'm not giving up yet."
Stefan reached out to comfort her, but she was more angry than sad, so she didn't respond to his touch except to take a calming inhalation. He retracted his arm and changed the subject: "But he could hurt you."
"But he's not going to."
Tyler was watching them through the window. Caroline smiled at him, and gestured him back out.
Stefan ran his tongue along the inside of his cheek, and then reluctantly agreed with a helpless shrug: "OK."
He and Tyler passed each other, and Stefan tried a conciliatory smile. Tyler was stiff at first, but then let it go and nodded back.
"Don't worry about Stefan, he's just being protective," Stefan heard Caroline say to Tyler.
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Matt's funeral was on Tuesday. His body had been found, face down in the creek. Liz had reported the death as a drowning, though she knew it had been a vampire attack. She put Damon on alert, and he pretended to be searching for the vampire, but both he and Stefan assumed that Elijah had been the culprit. Damon knew he would need a scapegoat for the council soon, especially if the body count continued to rise. None of the other dead found in the tomb were from Mystic Falls except for Jonas and Luka Martin, whom everyone assumed were back at their old home, still arranging their move. Stefan smoothed things over in the school office.
Damon kept up a story for the council that the vampire who had killed Matt was likely hiding in the forest. Carol Lockwood, as interim mayor, banned anyone from entering the forest, fronting surveying as the reason. Damon hoped this would keep people out of the forest while Tyler turned, just in case.
Everyone was gearing up for the full moon, and Damon almost wished that Klaus would do something already, because it would be another month before their weapon was viable again, if nothing happened by Saturday.
At the funeral, the Gilberts sat in front with Kelly: Matt's second family. When Caroline and Tyler and Carol sat in the second row, Kelly nodded to them, with a momentary awkward pause at Tyler. The woman's face seemed to say: I deserve this.
Caroline couldn't hold the tears or the sobs back. Tyler kept his arm around her the whole time, and he could see from his mother's expression that for once she approved of his girl.
Caroline leaned over and whispered into Tyler's ear: "Matt was too good for all of us. He was too good to be my boyfriend. He was too good to be your friend. He was too good to be Vicki Donovan's brother. He was too good to be Kelly Donovan's son. Elena was probably the only one who deserved him; but then it was her who brought this on, not that it's her fault. Poor Matt." She buried her face in his shoulder. "Why is everything so fucked up?"
Tyler pulled her closer, but he couldn't answer: grief pounded in his ears. Matt had been his only real friend, and Tyler had never deserved him, had never treated him like a friend deserved to be treated. When he remembered what he had done to Vicki, he felt sick. He knew he wasn't that guy anymore, but he would never get a chance to apologize to Vicki or to Matt
Funerals weren't really Damon's thing, but he attended out of respect for Elena. He and Stefan sat in the back. They could hear each and every whisper. Stefan found it hard to listen to so many grieve for the universally-loved Matt.
"Well, there goes our only other competition for Elena," Damon said, trying to lighten the mood.
Stefan ignored him.
Bonnie scanned the front of the sanctuary, and then, realizing there was not enough room for her, reluctantly sat down next to Stefan. She leaned over and whispered to the brothers: "If you ever have to kill someone, let it be Kelly Donovan: I can't stand to see someone in that much pain." The poor woman had lost both of her children, and blamed herself for both of their deaths. She was completely alone.
"I'll keep that in mind," Damon said. But if he remembered correctly, Kelly had more to offer than just her blood.
After the funeral, no one had anything to say. The mute bunch headed back to the boardinghouse for an evening of silence.
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Caroline noticed Elena looking less than pleased at breakfast. She stuffed large chunks of muffin into her mouth and headed over there. "What's wrong?"
Elena poorly hid her disapproval. "You and Tyler?"
Caroline rolled her eyes. "You too?"
"What do you mean 'me too'?"
"Well, Stefan can't seem to hide his objection. Why is everyone so down on us?"
"Well, Caroline, it might have something to do with the fact that we just buried Matt yesterday."
Elena in sarcastic mode reminded Caroline of Katherine and it made her shudder. She leaned over and sniffed her friend.
Elena withdrew and gawked. "What…are you doing?"
"Just making sure that you are you. I see that you are. Well, I smell that you are. And you - being you - might not understand this wonderful thing called 'comfort sex'. It's a delightful act of forgetting and physical pleasure. Why do you think Damon and Rose have been at it like bunnies?"
Elena's eyes grew wide. "Damon and Rose?"
"Uh, duh!" But then Caroline remembered that not everyone had super vampire hearing like she did. "Did you know that she even has her accent when she moans?"
Elena's face contorted with disgust. "They're sleeping together. I get it."
"Not a lot of sleeping from what I can tell," Caroline replied.
Elena crossed her arms, held them lightly to her chest, and glared.
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It was Friday, and things continued to be at a standstill.
And then there was a knock at the door of the boardinghouse.
Everyone who was staying there was present, and everyone else the least bit involved was otherwise occupied, so the tension immediately became nearly unbearable, and everyone froze.
Damon held up a hand, as if to calm them all down, and he headed over to the door.
He opened it to see a woman around 28 years old. She had the sort of wild red hair that could only be tamed for short periods of time. Her white ruffled blouse and tight jeans said very little about her. Her mouth was confident, but there was something nervous behind her eyes.
"Damon Salvatore?" she asked. He placed her accent as French, though perhaps not de l'hexagon.
He kept the door only partly ajar, leaning on its edge and the doorframe. "Who's asking?" he responded flirtatiously.
She smiled. "My name is Charlotte. I'm here to help you."
He raised his eyebrows. "Is that right? And what makes you think that you can help us, Charlotte?"
"Because I can do things that you can't do," she stated simply, but not without an egotistical smirk.
"Why don't we talk out here on the porch," Damon suggested, moving forward.
She slid in between him and the door and entered the foyer. "I'm not a vampire," she said.
"But you're something…" Damon surmised, closing the door behind him and following her into the center of the room.
"I'm a loup-garou."
Jeremy perked up, recognizing the word from his research. "You're a werewolf too," he said, staring.
Tyler looked at her more closely.
Charlotte nodded to Jeremy. "John sent me to protect you. And your sister."
Elena stepped forward. "John Gilbert?"
Charlotte swirled around to face her. "Yes. We're…friends."
"He sent you?"
"We met a few years ago. He followed the rumors, and found out they were true."
"How did you trigger the curse?" Tyler asked.
Charlotte sniffed the air. "You must be Tyler Lockwood."
He crossed his arms defensively. "Yes."
She smiled warmly, but it rang false. It was overshadowed by sadness. "I've never met another one of us. Not one that wasn't in my family, anyway."
"How did it happen?"
Charlotte sighed. "It was a car accident. I was so tired; it was late at night. I hit a woman on a bicycle. At first it seemed like she might pull through, but she died in the hospital a day later. That was a year ago."
Damon had to wonder about the timing; he knew from his interrogation of Mason that the other werewolf had turned about a year ago as well. "And this was where?"
"Quebec."
"Are there others in your family?" Tyler asked, eager to learn as much as he could as quickly as he good. He glanced briefly at Caroline, who smiled, ecstatic for him.
Charlotte pursed her lips in pain. "My father. He's been dead for some time."
Tyler swallowed, trying not to hide his increasing discouragement.
Alaric, trying to turn the mood around, walked over to Charlotte and introduced himself, shaking her hand.
Jenna noticed Charlotte examining Alaric's hand, searching for a wedding ring. She did not find that acceptable.
"You and John, huh," Jenna said, stepping forward. "But he's such an ass."
Charlotte laughed. "Il est un homme difficile. John is a complicated man."
"Why didn't he come with you?" Jeremy asked.
Charlotte shifted two accusing eyes to Stefan: "He was under the impression that he wasn't welcome here."
Stefan looked away guiltily.
Charlotte turned to Elena: "He only wants what's best for you. He's not very good at…talking about things. I know that he thought he was having a real heart-to-heart with you before Katherine stabbed him."
"Do you know Katherine?" Damon asked. He picked up on something in her tone.
"She has been my friend more often than my enemy – John's stabbing aside – but I understand that's not true for you folks."
Damon laughed. "Katherine doesn't have any friends. She lies, she fucks, and she manipulates – usually all three at the same time."
"I have no loyalty to Katherine."
Damon was not inclined to believe her, but there was a hint of truth to her statement, some reservation that kept her statement from being entirely false. "But you are loyal to someone, aren't you?" He stepped closer to her, diving seductively into her personal space, and turning on his twinkle-eyes.
"If you want more of John's sloppy seconds, you'll have better luck with Jenna," Charlotte responded defensively.
Elena furrowed her brow: "Sloppy seconds? What does she mean, Damon?"
"Well, that's when you sleep with someone that someone else has already-"
"I'm familiar with the expression. Who is she talking about?"
Charlotte chewed on her lip uncomfortably. "I thought it was common knowledge that Isobel, like other members of her family past and present, was not immune to Damon Salvatore's charms. But I am."
Elena's jaw dropped in an almost comical fashion. She narrowed her eyes at Damon.
He shrugged with a nonchalant laugh. "Relax: this wasn't a couple of weeks ago, it was a couple of years ago. When I turned her. Not that I should be reminding you of that." He gestured for Charlotte to sit down, and she accepted. He moved in and leaned over her. "Who are you trying to protect?"
Charlotte looked around the room, and then decided that sharing her secret might gain their sympathy and their confidence. But she knew it meant that she could no longer maintain her façade. She sighed, blinked forcefully, and let a frightened vulnerability show. "I have a son, Henri. He's 7 years old." A tear squeezed out of her left eye and rolled down her cheek. "He triggered the curse."
Everyone gasped.
"But how?" Tyler demanded.
Charlotte was crying freely now, and she shook her head as it to deflect from the importance of that part of her story. "It was an accident. A gun." She swallowed back a sob. "But that's not the problem. He's been kidnapped. By Klaus! Klaus is going to use him to break the curse." She forced her lips together tightly and shook her head several times rapidly. "The ritual can't happen. Klaus will kill him. So, you see, I have every reason to help you."
"Why would they kidnap your son?" Damon asked. "I'm sure Klaus and the Originals already know about Tyler."
Charlotte shrugged. "I suppose they thought a little boy would be easier to handle. He's not as strong."
Elena sat down next to her and took her hand comfortingly. "We'd be glad of your help. And we'll do what we can for you."
Stefan and Damon exchanged a look. They knew it wouldn't be that easy.
Rose gestured Damon over to her. He waited for what she had to say.
"We can't trust her," Rose claimed, whispering in his ear. "She's a werewolf. There's a reason why we wiped them all out."
"She doesn't want Klaus to get Elena. That's all that matters."
Rose, not for the first time, felt a jealous churn in her stomach. Elena wasn't all that mattered to her. "Just keep an eye on her."
The group broke up, and Tyler took the opportunity to get Charlotte to himself. They sat down on the couch and spoke at length.
Damon, Rose and Stefan took Elena aside and had her call John. He confirmed that he had sent Charlotte to them. She had a text from him that she had missed, notifying them that Charlotte would be coming.
"He could have been compelled to say that," Rose pointed out.
"Uncle John, compelled?" Elena asked doubtfully. "I'm pretty sure he had a stalk of vervain surgically implanted in his arm, or something fanatical like that." Elena was considering a similar operation, given her recent brush with compulsion. Of course, worse things could have happened. Now without her necklace, she was on a daily diet of vervain, as were all of the non-vampire inhabitants of the boardinghouse and their friends and family. Instead of caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee every morning, there was vervainated and non-vervainated.
She and Damon had not discussed their kiss. She had expected him to hound her relentlessly about it, but he treated her no differently. In fact, he was distant, more distant than he had been the whole time that she had known him. How could he no be thinking about it when she was thinking about it so much? She was alarmed: was it because he was afraid, or because he was focused? Was it because of Rose? Ever since Caroline's revelation, Elena found it impossible not to observe the couple. Damon treated Rose with a respect that Elena wasn't used to seeing. In fact, she thought herself to be its only recipient.
The close quarters had ramped up Elena's sensitivity, and she now felt that she could hardly turn a corner without seeing the two of them together. Damon neither hid their relationship, nor exploited it in Elena's presence, which Elena found curiously infuriating. Why wasn't he trying to make her jealous? Why wasn't he being Damon?
Damon noticed her glaring at him, and followed up on it: "What is it, Elena? Is this about your mother? It's not like I knew she was your mother. In fact, I didn't even know you then."
Elena found the topic distasteful, she frowned and swallowed. "It doesn't bother me. That woman isn't my mother. I don't even look like her; I'm a doppelganger. She's descended from me, not the other way around."
"I guess you could look at it that way. Well, if it means anything, I would take it back now if I could."
It did mean something to her, though she tried not to let him see that.
Caroline walked over to them, and saved Elena from further deception.
"There's something off about her," Caroline commented, being sure to draw Stefan's attention to her comment so that he would be included in the discussion.
"What do you mean?" Elena asked.
"Tyler has so much to learn from her, but she doesn't seem to want to talk to him. She has already taken a phone call, retrieved her jacket from her car, and gotten into a long discussion with Jenna about Coke Meshers, whatever those are, like anyone cares."
"Croque-Messieurs," Stefan corrected. "They're French pastries with cheese and ham. Quite delicious. Quebec-"
"Don't worry, he's in the 12-step program for know-it-alls," Damon said to Caroline, putting his arm around his brother and patting him affectionately on the shoulder.
Stefan faked a grin through his teeth.
"Well, did you hear what I said? She's, like, avoiding him."
"I'm sure she's just worried about her son," Elena assured. "Plus they'll have a lot more to talk about on Sunday, once Tyler has, you know, been through 'it'."
Caroline nodded and reluctantly dropped the subject.
They all knew that "it" was coming the next day.
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Chapter 5
Katherine and Alexandra return with a vengeance and no one is safe.
