A/N: Okay I am finally settled in my new city in this new country, so hopefully things will start to move quicker. I thank all of you for your lovely reviews, please keep them coming I like to know what you all think and I do take it into consideration. Actually this chapter is an example of that because someone wanted to know why I characterized Becca slightly different than Rebekah (making her more perfectionist) so I gave you a peek at that storyline in this chapter!

"We are dropping you off at your house on the way, Nick," Stefan said as the group got into the car. He ran a hand through his hair while he pulled out his cell phone from his pocket, checking once more to see if his girlfriend had contacted him. There was one thing that about Elena that drove him crazy, and it was her need to martyr herself for the safety of others. He had been alive over a hundred years, lived a lifetime, nearly two. Elena had everything still going for her. And here she was throwing it away for his sake.

Nick shook his head. "I am coming with you," he said firmly.

"No, you're not. You are a young vampire, and this is originals that we are dealing with. Even if they aren't there, the vampires are still much older than the Salvatores, you wouldn't stand a chance," Caroline told him. She was going through her purse trying to find her own phone with the address to where she had met Rose before.

"Are they older than you?" Nick asked, the words of Katherine still burning in his ears. Who was Caroline anyway? Where was she from? How old was she? These were all questions he hadn't bothered to ask.

Caroline shook her head. There were some questions that were better not answered directly, such as her age. "You never ask a lady her age, Niklaus," she said, using his full name.

Baffled and a bit embarrassed Nick tried to recover. "That's not what I meant, I just meant… it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that I am new, I am still a vampire. If Stefan and Damon are going to go and they are not as strong as the opposition, why can't I?"

"Because you aren't in love with her," Caroline whispered to Nick in the backseat. She could see the way that Damon looked after her, how emotional he got whenever the topic was Elena. She was wiser than she looked, but she could also see that Stefan was denying it, pretending that he didn't know his brother's feelings. A different Stefan than the one she had known. The one who would take anything that was his and made sure that everyone knew it.

The car pulled into Nick's driveway where his buick was sitting in the driveway behind his father's truck. A light was on in Rebecca's room and Nick could only cringe when he realized that he missed dinner. Father wouldn't be pleased with him about that. Nick got out of the car and waved goodbye to the group as the SVU pulled out and started towards the highway.

As the car pulled away, Stefan turned to look into the backseat where Caroline was sitting. "Are you older than these two, Rose and Trevor?" he asked seriously.

Caroline nodded. She didn't know the exact lineage of the vampires, but she knew that she had to be older than them. "At least I think so. They were quite young at the time that Katherine was turned to be so easily used by the Originals."

Pulling the map up on her phone she handed it to Damon in the driver's seat. Her past was something that needed to remain a secret, at least for now. "Where did you stay before you came to Mystic Falls?" she asked, trying to get him to speak.

"A place in Minnesota, a college town. Got a degree in English Literature, again," Stefan replied. "And you? What were you doing before you got here?"

Caroline thought over what she should say. Generally she did the same kind of work, or lack thereof in every city she went to. Including Chicago, where she had met Stefan before. "Party Planner in Los Angeles. Nothing really that exciting, but I enjoy it."

"Have you done that before? Been a party planner?"

Caroline bit her lip before answering honestly. "For the last hundred years or so now. I move from city to city and get myself involved in the socialite scene, either as a orphaned socialite or as a planner or club promoter."

Stefan raised an eyebrow. "I generally don't really live in cities, except Chicago. I have gone there a couple times. Have you ever lived there Caroline?"

"Yes, I did once, in the 20's. It was too cold though, I prefer Los Angeles myself." Caroline gave a fake smile, one that she had mastered over the long centuries. The best liars are the ones that tell as much truth as possible, this was something that she had learned. Only if he asked her directly if they knew each other would she lie.

A spark of recognition hit Stefan, a glimpse into another life. Looking at Caroline's face he saw a speak-easy, and a girl standing in front of a microphone, swaying to the jazz music. The red curtains behind her making the white of her beaded dress even more vibrant. Then it was gone. Shaking his head he looked back at Caroline. "I was there about that time too, but I am sure we never ran in the same circles. I was involved in the bootlegging business back then, far from the high class socialites."

"You'd be surprised about where the socialites were back then," she said with a smile. Caroline turned and looked out the window, trying to avoid the conversation. When she looked at him now, all she saw was the strong man that she once knew, and the life that they had together. Caroline risked everything to be with him, and he remembered nothing. A pang hit her heart as she remembered the way it felt to sway in his arms, drift to the music until the sun came up.

Elena sat in the chair that she was currently handcuffed to, in a dusty old house that was falling apart. It had once been a grand plantation house, but at some point or another it had drifted away. The hard wood floors and the neo-roman columns still stood, along with some of the old furniture. She could hear her captors upstairs, and waited until she heard some footsteps coming towards her. Craning her neck she saw Trevor leave out the front door without a word and Rose come towards her.

"Do I really need to be cuffed? I don't think I'm going anywhere, considering I came willingly," she asked Rose as the vampire sat on the dusty sofa.

"We have to take certain precautions after what happened the last time we had a doppelganger in our possession."

Elena nodded, remembering the tale that Katherine had told her and Nick in the tomb. She was something precious to these people, she meant the end of a curse that trapped them to the night. Maybe her death is a noble one, but Elena was still only a teenager. And she was afraid.

"We have word that our man will be here late this evening, then you will go off with him," Rose informed her. "I can't promise you that they will treat you well, actually probably the opposite. So I am having Trevor get you something to eat, you must be hungry."

Elena nodded, sitting in the room all day and dozing in and out didn't give her much to think about. Other than the fact that she was hungry and wondering if she had made some sort of mistake. She checked for her cellphone multiple times but knew that Rose would have taken it from her. If she wanted to get out of this alive, Stefan and Damon would have to find her on their own.

"Thinking about your knights in shining armor?" Rose asked.

Elena looked up at the woman. She didn't answer but she knew that her face probably gave her away. "Does anyone know that you came to find me?"

"Caroline. Caroline knows."

"Caroline?" Rose's eyebrows raised. "Who's Caroline?"

"A vampire that moved into town recently, she's somehow related to the sheriff," Elena replied.

Rose connected the dots and realized that she and Trevor might be in more trouble than she thought. If Caroline knew that Elena was there, she could get to them before their man arrived. It could mean that they would remain on the run, never able to make amends with Lukas. "Is that what she told you? Do you know how old she is?"

Elena shook her head. "She knew Katherine when Katherine was human, so at least five hundred."

"Oh, Elena, you are in over your head. You have no idea who she is do you? What she's capable of? Caroline is not just a normal vampire. Have you seen how she walks in the sun?"

"So she had a witch make her something, like Stefan's ring. That doesn't mean anything," Elena told her firmly.

Rose shook her head. "You don't know her. She's cruel, one of the worst vampires to associate yourself with. Especially you, being the doppelganger."

"That's not true. She's been nothing but nice and helpful to me. How do you know her anyway? Maybe you have a different Caroline."

"You better hope I do, because the Caroline I am thinking of probably wants you dead."

Elena remembered the things that Katherine had said, about Caroline not being everything that she said she was. Add this to that and Elena had to wonder if maybe they were right, that Caroline was really not a friend but something quite the opposite.

When Nick walked in the door of his house he could hear yelling coming from the basement. His father was demanding a beer and he was just shouting about it up the stairs. Sighing, Nick put his keys down on the table and reached into the fridge, grabbing a beer. He walked down the stairs to see his father reclining in his chair, watching some stupid reality television show.

"Here's your damn beer," Nick said as he slammed the beer down on the coffee table.

Thomas Fell looked up at his son. "What was that you just said? Treat your father with respect boy."

"When you start acting like a father, maybe I'll consider it," Nick said as he turned around and headed towards the stairs.

"First your sister, now this. I should throw your ass out for speaking to me like that," Thomas muttered as Nick made his way up the stairs.

Nick walked up to his sister's room and knocked on the door softly. "Can I come in? Dad said something about fighting with you today, is that true?" Nick pushed the door open slowly and saw his sister sitting on the floor in front of the mirror.

Her right eye was black and blue, and there were hand marks on her upper arms from where he had grabbed her but that's all Nick could see from the tank and shorts that she was wearing. "Generally he's smart enough not to hit my face, I don't know how I am going to cover this up for school tomorrow…" she said as she applied foundation to her face.

"What happened? What set him off?"

Sighing she turned around and faced her brother. Nick sat down on her bed as she started to recount the evening. "After cheer practice I came home and made dinner, and over dinner Dad asked about Chemistry class. I couldn't lie well enough and he found out about the C I got last week on my lab report. He went off about college and how I was worthless…" Rebecca started to tear up, but sniffed and made sure no tears fell. "After dinner I came up here to do homework and he did this."

"I could kill him, I really could. Beck, you are anything but worthless, really. You are my sister and I would do anything to protect you," Nick said, clenching his fists. Now that he was a vampire he felt anger in a way that he hadn't before. Whereas before he would have never wanted to take his father on, now he had the courage, knowing that he could overpower the man.

"What the hell has gotten into you lately? It's okay really, nothing to get yourself in trouble over. You're eighteen soon, just be glad that you get a chance to get out of this fucking house," Rebecca said as she turned to face the mirror again.

Nick sat there just a moment watching his sister as she found a way to make her bruise disappear. Rebecca didn't really have friends, she found other girls to just be rivals more than anything else. She didn't let other people close to her, her walls were up so high to hide her secrets. Watching her as she fixed her hair and her face, plastering on her fake smile he saw one of the strongest girls that he had ever met. If only she let others know who she was. Nick would never grow older, there would come a day that he will have to leave her, leave her to face their father. That was the problem of never growing older, the people around him would. Rebecca will notice in a couple years that he doesn't look a day over seventeen, and one day she will grow up and get married and have a family, and Nick won't see that. So he would have to prepare her the best way he can, create a future for her when he can't have his own. He would have to do something about their father, some way to insure that Rebecca will be safe after he is gone.

Half way through the journey Bonnie texted Damon with a more exact address of where Elena would be. The witch had tracked Elena using some of her hair and it brought the boys and Caroline to an abandoned house just across the border. As they pulled up, Caroline could see that lights were on inside, and there was a car parked out front.

Damon turned off the ignition and got out of the car, Stefan and Caroline following close behind. "Can you hear how many people are there?" Stefan asked his brother.

"Three. Two vampires and Elena from the sound of it," he said as he walked towards the door. He grabbed the handle and pulled the door off its hinge, throwing it to the yard.

Rose gasped and ran to the door, Trevor close behind. Trevor quickly stepped in front of Rose and looked over the three vampires. "What are you doing here?" he asked.

"We came to rescue Elena, again." Damon said with a sigh.

Trevor shook his head. "You are not taking her anywhere. She came with us willingly."

Caroline walked into the other room where Elena was strapped to the chair. "So willingly means you had to chain her to the chair? That's doesn't look willing to me."

"Caroline," Elena said, looking at the blonde with desperate eyes. She didn't want to die, but she didn't want everyone else to suffer either. "I did go and find them, but they are going to be passing me off to someone else."

"Who? Who are you taking her to?" Caroline asked.

"I don't know, he didn't tell us his name. But he is going to bring her to Lukas, tell him what we did."

"You are handing off the doppelganger to a random stranger on the hopes that he will tell Lukas what you did? You must be stupid."

Stefan shook his head, worried about Elena. "We will be taking her now."

"You aren't taking the girl anywhere, not now," a voice said from behind them. On the front porch was a man in a tailored suit. He looked to be about thirty, clean shaven with piercing eyes. "She's coming with me."

Caroline ripped the manacles off of Elena, and started to look over her, making sure that she wasn't harmed. They could no longer hear what was going on in the hall, only that there were many people talking. "Are you hurt?"

Elena shook her head. "How did you find me?"

"Bonnie traced you with a spell, brought us straight here. Are you sure you're okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine, let's just get out of here."

In the hall Trevor walked up to the man in the suit. "I had no idea it would be you that would come to pick up the girl, Elijah," he said with a small bow. "I hope you can see this as an end to our quarrel, and we can move past what happened so long ago."

"It is nearly paid off, but don't think that we will ever forget what you had done," Elijah moved like a bolt and sunk his hand into Trevor's chest, pulling the heart out of the body. "Give me the girl," he said holding the heart in his hand.

Rose screamed and ran over to the fallen Trevor. Damon and Stefan launched their attack, running at Elijah and starting to fight him. Caroline could hear what was going on, but she didn't hear the name of the man that came to get Elena. "We need to stay here, then when it's clear in the hall I will get you to the car."

The fighting continued, the men moving like flashes of light in the main hall, up and down the stairs. Stefan was thrown from the top story as Damon tackled Elijah to the ground, grabbing a stair railing to use as a stake.

Caroline could tell things weren't going well so she commanded Elena to stay where she was and walked out of the hall. She felt her fangs drop as she prepared for the fight against this mystery man. When she opened the doors she couldn't see a thing, the men were moving so quickly. Finally she saw her opening and rammed the man against the door. Holding him by his neck she lifted him off the ground to take a good look at him.

Her eyes went wide and her mouth dropped. He was the first to speak. "Caroline? My dear…" it was that moment that Damon rammed a stake through her brother's heart. It was Caroline's turn to scream, but she also knew that this wasn't the time. Elijah wasn't dead after all, but they would only have moments before he healed enough to get away.

"Let's get her out of here," she said, pretending that she hadn't noticed anything unusual.

"Who is he? This Elijah?" Damon asked as Stefan carried Elena to the car.

"Somebody I used to know, and an original." Caroline answered with the truth. The man that she knew ran away from her, away from the family that he was so committed to be loyal. The Elijah she knew was dead, whoever this was, he was a stranger.

"What does he want?"

"Nothing good, I'm sure."

The car pulled away from the plantation house, and Caroline watched from the passenger side window as it became smaller and smaller. Her brother was alive, she had assumed, like Katerina that he was dead, but there he was. Part of her was relieved, but the other part needed to know what he wanted with Elena. What was his part in trying to kill the doppelganger, what did he have to gain… And where was Lukas?

As they drove towards Mystic Falls, mostly in silence Caroline stared out the window, trying to remember the last time she had seen her brother. After the revolution Lukas, Kol and herself had fled to Austria, where the empire was on the rise. After that she didn't see him again, not until they came to America in the nineteenth century. It was in Brooklyn, near a slum when she saw a business man that looked like him. She had only gotten a glance at him then, but he nodded to her, recognizing her before she hurried off. It had been nearly two hundred years, and yet she remembered his face as though it was engraved in her mind. She never expected that he would be alive, not after she learned that Lukas had staked their other brothers and especially after he came for her in the 1920's.

Although she would never admit it, Elijah was always her favorite brother. And she had always thought that the feeling was mutual, but if it was why hadn't he contacted her? Why hadn't he made any effort to find her or talk to her in so long? Maybe she mattered less to him than she thought… As the highway rolled her to her new home in Mystic Falls, Caroline wondered if family wasn't something that lasted forever. Maybe it was only supposed to last one lifetime, and hers was long over.

Thanks for reading, send a review my way!

Up Next: Nick tries to deal with his heightened emotions, Elijah contacts his sister, and Bonnie discovers the truth about Caroline.