Lauren

I stalked the Prison World, lonely and feeling jealous of Vicki and Jeff for adventuring without me. The alternatives to sending them were slim to say the least. If I went I would lose my magic in the vampire's body, and be flooded with instincts and powers I had no experience controlling. As new as Vicki and Jeff were, they had some experience with being vampires, while I might become a Ripper if I was in Rebekah's body. Damon going along with them would also help, if Jeff was right.

I went over notes that Jeff had written out in a vague timeline of the "shows" he had watched. The things he was more sure of had all been mapped out fairly well, with a few holes or mistakes, but the things he hadn't reached yet were far harder to research. Jeff had learned some bits and pieces through reviews and wikis as well as the "jumpchain" document itself.

All of these notes fit on one page.

-Lucien Castle: The Beast. Vampire/Werewolf Original+Hybrid? Probably weaker than a Tribrid.
-Kai: Siphoner, trapped in Gemini Coven Prison reached after the Other Side collapsed. Killed his family, or tried to, in order to lead his coven? Only twins rule the Gemini Coven.
-Siphoner Vampires: Stronger than Tribrids. Can cast spells. Probably explode after a while.
-The Devil: Cade? Psychic? Controls Hell? Inspired stories about the Devil. Gains power from evil (souls).

The name Lucien Castle meant nothing to me, but I agreed with Jeff it sounded incredibly cool and probably evil. Kai sounded like exceptionally bad news, but hardly seemed to rate compared to the others. Siphoner Vampires seemed like the most dangerous known unknowns, but then again anyone called "The Devil" might be worse.

I had gone over these notes before, while Jeff was gone. I had even asked the Travelers about Lucien Castle and Cade, though if they learned anything they had never shared it with me. I was getting stressed and worried without my friends.

I needed a distraction, and I had a gnawing curiosity about something that my current situation brought into focus. Since Lavinia was off working with the remaining Travelers, I was alone with Jonas Martin. Dr. Martin was a hard man, dangerous and powerful. In another world Jonas would be the kind of warlord who founded a petty kingdom that lasted for a few generations. In this world his life was twisted by Esther's stain on the world.

I entered Jonas's room. He looked up. "Hello, Lauren. Do you need something?"

"You have read a lot about witches," I stated and gestured at his collection of grimoires; several hundred of them. "You're a historian. I have some questions on a rare strain of witches. What do you know about Siphoners?"

"I know a little," Jonas said carefully. "Only the Gemini Coven ever produced them as far as I know, until your bloodline mixed with theirs. Even among that coven they are rare. I have studied this some since we met. You have a right to wonder about your heritage, and I believe even pure Siphoners are just as much witches as we are."

"Pure Siphoners," I commented. "So I am impure?"

"Not impure, a hybrid." Jonas clarified. "The Gemini Coven witches are either a Siphoner or a more normal witch. I believe you inherited one coven's magic from one parent and the Gemini Coven's Siphoner power from another."

"My mother's side descended from the Gemini Coven and my father's did not, yes." I considered. "So you think that the bloodlines of my parents gave me two different kinds of powers that happen to be complimentary?"

"It is the most reasonable theory I have. Few covens inbreed, but Siphoners are rare even among the Gemini, so if they are the only carriers of the gene then they may simply never have had someone inherit it while having a strong enough bloodline to also be another kind of witch. Siphoning seems to break down magic into a new form for later use, unlike channeling which requires defined energy sources. It has long been theorized that not all witches channel magic in the same way; bloodline powers and quirks are well known, so it might be that Siphoning is simply a noticeable example of a common event where witches are born with multiple forms of channeling." Jonas paused in his explanation. "It is possible that Nature has worked to balance or separate witch bloodlines, if the more interventionist theories are correct."

"Interventionist?" I asked.

"Some witches believe Nature is a person or deity while others believe it is simply a set of laws and consequences manipulated by witches. The Parliament of Spirits has been taken as evidence for and against both theories, as the Spirits may be responsible for 'divine' actions attributed to nature, but they claim to speak for Nature." Jonas smiled. "Witches have religions just like mortals do."

"Do you have anything else to tell me about the Gemini Siphoners?" I asked.

Jonas picked up a grimoire I had seen before, which had belonged to a Gemini Coven witch. "The Gemini Coven largely accepted their existence until the late 19th century, when a generation produced an unheard of number of Siphoners at the same time during a population boom. Fearing the Siphoners would act together to steal magical power, they began exiling them from the coven. Later they were sent to a prison dimension much like this one after the Siphoners returned to seek vengeance on their former coven. Siphoners had always been met with fear and suspicion, but their willingness to work together terrified their elders into new and extreme actions."

"What do you know of their abilities?" I asked. "Is there anything that I could learn?"

Jonas paged through the book. "Siphoners could drain virtually any known form of magic. Werewolf bites, vampire blood, enchanted objects, sacrificial wards and active vampires are all known victims of Siphoner power. There are several claims that Siphoners are somehow related to demons, but none of the suggested links are particularly sensible and witches have used the term 'demon' extremely carelessly to refer to everything from witches from a nearby coven to vampires and werewolves. It seems that there are limits to how much power that can be safely Siphoned according to Gemini texts, similar to the limits of channeling. It is likely that your body would break down if you tried to channel anything that would be unsafe for a witch to use."

"That is quite informative." I nodded. "Thank you for your time."

"You know that being a Siphoner doesn't mean you aren't a true witch, right?" Jonas asked. "Even if you didn't have your own mystic power, a Siphoner can connect to many of the same forces that a normal witch can channel."

"I've always thought people were just kind of racist against me," I shrugged. "Though I've always thrown off hostile magic far more easily than most people even when my Siphoning is not active. A few people have described me as a 'hole' in the magical world, but even if that's true I don't think it makes me evil."

"Racist?" Jonas raised an eyebrow.

"The whole point of your digging up all these lost grimoires is that you think witches are one family. You don't think we're a different race just because we have a different skin color, do you?" I giggled.

Jonas Martin gave me a rare smile. "That's fair, Sister. Is there anything else?"

"Nothing that I want from you, but I will tell you what I am working on and why I wanted to know more about Siphoning," I explained. "Way back in the past, Qetsiyah trapped Silas in a cave with the Cure for Immortality she whipped up, and expected him to take it. She sealed Silas in with powerful spells to make sure nobody dug him out in the hopes of using him. We don't even know exactly where it is, though I've narrowed it down a bit. I was hoping that whatever she is using to cloak the island might show up when I use tracking spells, and that I might be able to amplify my Siphoning somehow to break through that. It seems that nobody developed any spells using Siphoning directly like that, so I'm probably out of luck."

"Actually..." Jonas flipped through the grimoire. "There's an incantation mentioned to be used alongside Siphoning at times, to make it safer. It was used on a killing field of witches that the Gemini Coven warred against. "Magia tollox de terras. Utera aso utox."

"Ooh." I smiled. "That could help me a lot. I like knowing about my heritage, but I like expanding my powers a lot more."

"I am happy to help. Uncovering Silas, especially destroying him, would make a lot of what I have done worth it. The legend is not widely known, but it is exactly the kind of thing I have researched for years. I thought working with Elijah would be the height of my career, but clearly I was wrong." Jonas smiled again.

"Hm, there's something else." I paused. "Jeff says he got something vague, once. You are a historian of witches. Does the name 'Cade' mean anything to you? Jeff said he inspired stories of the Devil."

Jonas frowned. "Cade. No, I don't know that name. Clearly the Devil has a thousand stories about him, as do various demons of folklore. If there was a real person who inspired stories of demons, he was presumably a witch or something like Silas or a werewolf."

"Jeff said Cade was some kind of psychic who got burned to death. He says he..." I paused. He'd said he read it in the "jumpchain" for The Vampire Diaries. "...it was different from his usual visions," I finished lamely.

"Without more information I can hardly guess what you are talking about. I will keep my eyes out for a reference to this 'Cade' and the Devil, but I doubt I will come across anything." Jonas said. "You never did tell me much about Jeff's visions, beyond that he had little or no control over them."

"They're his, not mine, so I don't know a lot about them." I answered Jonas, being careful. "Before he was trapped here, years before, he saw an arc of the future and a little of the past. He saw a lot about the Mikaelsons and doppelgangers and Mystic Falls, but it was all in patches. The timeline he saw is already derailed, but seeing a timeline gave a lot of information. He also saw a little of New Orleans in general, but most of it was based around the Originals settling there."

"Do you know why he saw what he did?" Jonas asked. "Does he get new visions at a regular pace?"

"He says it was like a story in his head," I answered somewhat truthfully. "He doesn't get more, and he doesn't understand how what he saw connected to what he is living through." I paused and hedged. "He didn't even know that his visions were of real things until shortly before we met."

"If Jeff is a psychic, then is he related to this 'Cade' person? The immortality, the advanced compulsion, the visions; might that be what is going on?" Jonas asked thoughtfully.

"I hadn't considered that," I admitted. From what I had just told Jonas, it would make a lot of sense if Cade had given another psychic a variety of visions of the past and the future. It didn't fit what Jeff had described as well, but we had agreed that explaining the entire backstory of the "jumpchain" would cause a lot more problems than our current version.

[hr][/hr]

Wyld

I woke up in the car and stretched. I'd never been able to sleep this well in a car in my old body, even as an Immortal, but it seemed that Kol was a natural at it. I checked the car's clock.

"Wake up, Vicki," I nudged her in the back seat. She lurched awake and pulled a strand of Rebekah's long hair in front of her eyes.

"Damn," She moaned. "I was hoping being blonde was just a nightmare."

"I gotta say I don't get the big deal. Claire Holt has a damn fine body." I shrugged. "That's not even factoring in Originality."

Vicki looked confused, then groaned as she caught the pun. "How on Earth do you know this actress's name?"

"Mostly because it's easy enough to remember that it's probably a pseudonym. Also she was on a mermaid show in Australia before she joined The Vampire Diaries, so Netflix kept me reminded of the name when I watched it."

Vicki put her face into her hands. "Seriously. Watch cooler TV. Please. Mermaids, really?"

"Eh, I'm straight and have bad taste. Why not watch a show about mermaids? They're not as gross as vampires." I paused. "No offense."

"Offense taken," Vicki growled.

"Then I apologize. If it helps, Rebekah is less likely to lay eggs than Emma so vampires have that beat." I smiled.

"Ugh." Vicki sighed.

Damon wrapped on the car window. I opened the door and waved to him.

"Crazy MILF has questions I'm not drunk enough to try and answer. We're swapping cars," Damon informed me.

"God yes!" Vicki shouted. "I need something to eat before he stops seeming gross and starts being quirky."

"Forest is full of critters," I pointed out. Vicki and Damon managed to roll their eyes in sync with each other. "Okay, Damon, make sure she doesn't kill anyone, please?"

"We'll see." Damon smiled.

I got out of the car and moved over to the one Damon and Esther had shared yesterday. "You are aware that I can't drive, right?" I asked her.

"I was not," Esther admitted cautiously. "Neither can I."

"So do I compel someone to drive us, or do you have another plan?" I asked. "I'm pretty sure it's mostly luck that Vicki didn't crash yesterday."

"I had some questions on your compulsion, actually." Esther said.

"Fire away," I nodded.

"You said that you were hoping to put your full psychic might into your host body. Yesterday you demonstrated minor magical powers beyond being psychic. I don't think you actually noticed at the time, but that should have been impossible." Esther looked at me. "Did you find a loophole?"

"Kind of," I answered. "Vampires can cast spells, as the Siphoners demonstrate. What vampires cannot do is channel. Even Travelers channel, they simply can't channel most things. I can't channel anymore, but when I entered this body I believe I carried a 'tank' of magical energy with me. This tank would likely have been tiny for Kol and Rebekah and may normally be exhausted in death or transition, but I didn't die and didn't transition. I believe my work on transferring my full psychic powers helped, but need to study this more."

"Fascinating." Esther nodded. "So with the right spell, any witch could possess the body of a vampire and cast a certain number of spells?"

"Lauren and I are very special witches. We have tremendous reserves of magical energy. Without any channeling any magic I do will be very inefficient. I doubt many witches will gain the benefits I can." I looked at Esther thoughtfully. "Do you have plans?"

"It is another weapon to use against vampires. Lauren learned a great degree of magic from the Travelers, and perhaps you could communicate with her on how to increase your efficiency." Esther answered.

"I still prefer my true body, but I expected to be much more limited in this form. I consider myself very fortunate." I paused and thought. "So about the car..."

[hr][/hr]

A very annoyed Damon drove me deeper into Virginia. After about a minute of talking Damon had declared I was "the worst company in the world" and I had shut up.

"Your future," Damon said suddenly. "I didn't die in it, did I?"

"Not that I recall," I answered. "You came close a couple of times, but didn't, oh wait, actually you did, unambiguously in the..." I caught myself before I said "season finale." "In the last vision I really had, actually. You and Bonnie were dead, about to deal with the Other Side collapsing. I think you somehow got sent to a Prison World next," I stopped myself from saying "season" again. "So that's a thing. You made it at least a few more years."

"A few more years," Damon sighed. "Spend 145 years on a plan, then die a few years later."

"You did pretty good, honestly. Schemed around the Originals, broke Augustine, helped save the magical world. You're not a hero, but you came close a couple times." I told him.

"Why?" Damon asked, sounding annoyed.

"Elena, mostly." I answered. "You fought hard to save Elena when she needed it. That and pretty much just a bunch of things happening around you that you got sucked into. It's hard to live around Originals and doppelgangers without living an 'interesting' life."

"Elena?" Damon sounded unconvinced. "Did I get that bored without Katherine?"

"You didn't know her for very long in this timeline. In the timeline I saw, you knew her very well. Elena has a mystique about her, and she is very good at social combat." I paused, realizing that my terms might not be good for Damon. "I mean, she's clever, and beautiful, and socially skilled on an instinctive level. The learning curve for her lifestyle was steep, and she learned how to survive. You were a big part of that survival."

"You're saying she can play me?" Damon asked.

"Not exactly," I lied. "She can play Elijah, though. Elena and Katherine, if they share anything, it is that they can start from nothing and walk into a situation so they start to control it. That kind of person scares me, but it is also kind of beautiful."

"Scares you?" Damon smiled. "How the hell do they do that?"

"What I have accomplished I have accomplished through advantages. You could say I am privileged. In a way, every vampire or witch is privileged, even werewolves if you accept the curse. Now, if you define things like that, everyone is privileged in some way. You're a man with a daylight ring, white, educated, and so you can do things that Bonnie could not. Bonnie has witchcraft you don't, and she is a beautiful girl with a loving family like you never had, and so things you would struggle with are easy for her. Elena gives the impression of being able to win despite expectations, though I think part of her power is controlling those expectations and stories. I am scared of her because if she beats me I won't have seen it coming. If Klaus beats me, it is because he's simply got better powers than I do."

"Does it get better, with her?" Damon asked. "Do I just stare at her and mope forever?"

"I've seen you get with her, honestly." I paused. "But no; loving Elena is never easy. Even if Stefan was dead she would never be easy to love. For you, love is always going to be a thunderstorm, never a clear summer's day."

"That's enough," Damon answered, but he sounded less annoyed now.

[hr][/hr]
"Okay," Damon pulled into a bar parking lot. "We're getting you fed before we go into town."

"You mean people blood?" I asked. I felt mixed on that.

"Duh. That cow blood Esther woke us up in could last, but you're still sick from that."

"Sick?" I asked. "Doesn't it just like, not run you at 100% if you're on rabbit blood?"

"Try running an engine on cheap fuel, or running a marathon on cheeseburgers. You will feel the difference right away." Damon answered.

"You can stop me from killing, right?" I asked.

"I couldn't stop Vicki," Damon answered. I stared.

"What?" They hadn't told me.

"I tried to pull her off and she snapped the guy's neck. We're vampires, and these bodies are the same age. I can't stop you if you can't help me. Vicki didn't help me. Can you do better?"

[hr][/hr]

"So you're a psychic?" The girl asked me. I listened to Damon's thoughts on how to cut her off from her friends and she seemed impressed with Kol's body if nothing else.

"Think of a number," I answered.

The girl closed her eyes. "Seven," She said. She opened her eyes and I looked at her. "Oh!" She closed them.

I reached out. "Eight," I answered and her eyes flew open.

"No fair. Let's do it again." She closed her eyes again.

"Six," I said with a somewhat defeated sigh. "Come on, give me a challenge."

"Okay, my birthday?" She asked.

"February 19th, 1991," I answered. "Not what's on that fake driver's license, though." I paused. Barely eighteen, but did it matter? Maybe it would help me pull away.

"Cool!" She clapped her hands.

"Name is Stacie, currently with an eye-ee, but you had one 'eye' last year. Two cats, no dogs, no siblings." I continued.

"Wow. This is getting creepy." Stacie answered.

"Favorite book is Twilight, but that's the first guess of any cold reader. Grandparents, Nathaniel and Elizabeth on one side, Simon and you forget on the other." I grinned.

Stacie's jaw dropped. "That's so freakin' cool!"

"Not even my best trick," I answered. I looked around. "Got a quarter?"

"Um, here's a dime." Stacie handed it to me. "Going to pull it out of my ear?"

"Nope." I sat the coin on its edge and put my hands around it. Then I raised my hands, and the dime rose with them so only she could see it.

"Alright, I give up. How are you really doing this?" Stacie smiled.

"Weird thing bit me and I woke up in a TV show," I answered.

"Huh?" She asked.

"Hot vampire drama on TV. Seriously. Weird ass random encounter, thing ripped into my throat, and when I came to I was regenerating in the woods." I pulled the dime with fierce strength over the palm of my hand, showing a gash that disappeared.

"What the hell was in my drink?" Stacie asked. Damon was shaking his head.

"Nothing," I answered, putting a bit of compulsion into it. "You want to know more."

"I want to know more." Stacie smiled.

"I've got another trick. You want to go behind the bar and see it," I added compulsion to the idea.

"What's the trick?" She asked.

"You ever seen Buffy?" I asked as we got up. "Kind of like their vampire game faces, but way lamer and a lot more sexy."

[hr][/hr]
I gasped, ripping myself from the girl and biting into the cement corner of the bar. Cement did not taste any better to a vampire than it did to a human, and I was tasting some of my own blood along with the girl's.

"Damn you're messy," Damon commented. "Here Stacie, have some nice vampire blood and heal up nice and strong. You've got a big day tomorrow." I heard Damon bite into his wrist and heaved against the cement again to stop myself from attacking him or the girl.

"Man, he is messy." I heard Vicki's voice. "Was I this bad?"

"He didn't snap the neck rather than stop eating, Vick." Damon sounded tired.

"I told you we should've put in the vamp blood first!" Vicki sounded very annoyed. "He could have lived!"

"Great, and we'd be stuck with a brand new baby vamp to take care of on this mission. Great plan." Damon answered. "Forget about this and go home." Damon compelled Stacie and she walked away.

"I'm sorry." I looked up at Vicki.

"It was quick," She answered softly.

"You're a vampire. You'll get over it," Damon told us.

"Let's just be sure to stake Klaus. If you feel guilty, channel it into the mission. I've seen Klaus kill hundreds of innocent people in the course of doing his business." I suggested.

Damon stared at me. "Hundreds? I thought he was in control?"

"He was," I explained, darkly. "His biggest mess was probably when he wanted a vampire hunter to kill enough vampires to finish a ritual to track down the cure for immortality. He started grabbing batches of tourists, turning them, and compelling them to attack Jeremy so he'd have to kill them and continue with the ritual. There's also the time he jumped the gun and killed dozens of werewolves trying to make them into Hybrids. There's probably more, but those are the biggest I can remember."

Vicki shook her head. "Point taken. Klaus needs to die."

"Not like there's any chance a psychic bloodsucking witch will start racking up a body count after all." Damon rapped his knuckles along my back.

[hr][/hr]

Lauren

"Ole Heldhat Eina Odvozniti." I chanted the Traveler incantation as I channeled the burning Donovan house. I felt I had a right to be petty with Vicki off on an adventure, and it's not like the house would stay burned. I saw the howling ocean crashing on the shore, but nothing was more clear. "Où tu fuis, A pouvoir la trouver. Yonn souri nan zeb." I tried a spell of Esther's to even less luck.

I pulled out my e-grimoire and started looking over cloaking and anti-cloaking spells. I had to assume Qetsiyah's cloaking spell would be stronger than any counter-spell I could produce, given how long it had lasted. Siphoning a spell I couldn't touch seemed impossible, and if I could touch the cloaking spell I wouldn't need to break through the cloak, I'd already be there.

I thought over the problem. It was possible to create a representation of a spell to manipulate it, though it was usually done as a form of magical training on spells designed for the purpose. I brought up a scan of Esther's notes on the "sanguinum knot" that she had trained with. I teased out the core elements of this. Without something of the island or Qetsiyah's I could not see how to create the representation. Then again, there was something connected to something on the island that was within much easier reach.

Stefan Salvatore was the doppelganger of Silas if Jeff was to be believed. A mystical representation of an immortal. If the cloaking spell was protecting Silas, I could interact with it through Stefan.

I walked to the Salvatore boarding house and went to Stefan's room. Hundreds of journals and diaries from Stefan's long life were here. I picked one up and considered it. The link was very tenuous. Diary to Stefan to Silas to cloaking spell.

It took me two days to crack the problem. Stefan's diary, wrapped in a pair of Elena's underwear to exploit his connection with her, to represent Stefan. I drew a line of salt from Stefan's representation to an emptied blood pack from Jeff's refilling cooler, and inside the pack I put in a splinter of White Oak from the sign "Welcome to Mystic Falls." A symbol of immortality surrounded by blood made for an Immortal; echoing Elena's call to Stefan in blood's call to Silas.

Finally I drew a line of chalk from Silas's representation to a photograph of Bonnie, wrapped in her grandmother's sock. A spell of Qetsiyah's was represented by an image of Qetsiyah's descendant, calling to a beloved family member.

The spell was delicate magic. Channeling most things wouldn't have helped, as I needed to call on a very faint connection, not overwhelm it with more power. I needed to provide an active push to make the connection, however. I looked up ideas of Earth magic, and placed magnets on each representation to symbolize the pull of magic into these representations.

I had Jonas look over my notes and magic.

"Fascinating," He said after he finished looking over the ritual. "I admit this is far too improvisational for me to give a confident answer on whether or not it will work, but each step of theory is sound. I don't even think it is dark magic, and as such the risks are relatively small."

"Define 'relatively' for me, please?" I asked.

"It's an entirely new spell. You could draw the attention of malicious powers. I believe that there are malicious powers that magic can stumble across beyond the ideas of breaking a natural balance or contacting evil ghosts, but witches have failed to create a taxonomy of such forces. As this is a new spell I cannot rule out the idea that this stumbles across something dangerous, but I don't see any reason why it would. It could also alert Qetsiyah if she's still on the Other Side and draw her ire, but I doubt she truly exists these days. Though I would have never guessed Esther was still around, so it might be a larger risk than I assumed." Jonas shrugged.

"Jeff thinks she's alive. Well, dead, but an active spirit on the Other Side who might come back. He told me he saw her do it and even knows what she looks like." I answered.

"Do you think he's right?" Jonas asked.

"Yes," I answered. "He's made a few mistakes, but his visions are just too accurate to ignore them. He saw a timeline where Qetsiyah was walking around alive, even if it wasn't our timeline."

"He is an odd man to put faith into, even if I agree," Jonas answered. "He is clearly hiding something."

"Oh," I had discussed this with Jeff in a dream vision. "It's more a matter of the dreams being surrounded on all sides by craziness."

"Huh?" Jonas looked at me curiously.

"Okay, so you know how he sometimes starts rambling about random bullshit? It is because his visions are like that. If he has a vision about Rebekah, he doesn't just see Rebekah, he sees a girl who looks like her but is a mermaid and a champion swimmer and then he sees her as a detective. We think he sees their dreams just as much as their waking lives. It means he's always having to watch himself for what is actually a part of the world he sees and what is just something that someone dreamed about or felt was true. If he didn't censor himself and he described everything he knows and how he saw it, then he would make everything a lot less clear."

Jonas smiled. "That's an excellent lie. Keep using that."

After Jonas left I went over everything again one more time. Finally, I decided to add a candle; fire signified purity, and I would need to only gather the pure energies of the cloaking spell instead of drawing random power from the Earth.

My work complete I did the spell and felt the magical ties form. I placed my hand above Bonnie's photograph and Sheila's sock and began to slowly, delicately siphon. As the representation emptied, a bit more magic was summoned into it, and I had a bit more magic to siphon. Over the course of several hours I weakened the spell enough that I could overwhelm it with a locator spell and find the exact spot the island had to be on a map.

Once I was done I pulled Emily's talisman and projected to the Other Side. I watched my friends in Mystic Falls. Jeff looked comfortable in Kol's body. Vicki looked a bit out of sorts, always playing with her hair and trying to avoid being seen.

[hr][/hr]

Wyld

Mystic Falls was just as chaotic as I had expected. Among other things, Katherine and Lexi were working together with Bonnie and Elijah on the plan to kill Klaus. A large pack of werewolves were running after the moonstone and trying to break the Curse of the Sun and the Moon. For some reason Elena and Jeremy's aunt had become a vampire shortly before I entered the town. The town history teacher and vampire hunter, Alaric, had vanished instead of joining the adventuring party. I picked all of that up just from reading minds in the school cafeteria.

"Elijah took down the sign made of White Oak," Vicki reported, entering the school janitor closet I'd made temporary home base.

"As expected, but still annoying," I answered. "If he thinks all the Originals he likes are buried at sea then he might be weaponizing it instead of burning it, though."

"Think he's noticed people in the bodies of his brothers and sister?" Vicki asked.

"He's not on the lookout for that. Klaus probably is wondering what happened to them, but he'll probably blame Mikael."

"Their dad would really kidnap them in a plan to kill Klaus?" Vicki asked, sounding a bit weirded out.

"Absolutely," I answered. "If he could kill Klaus without harming any of his other children he probably would, but I have no doubt that Mikael would harm the rest of them to get at Klaus."

"You act like you feel sorry for Klaus half the time, and the rest you act like he's the worst piece of shit ever. What gives?" Vicki asked.

I considered the answer. "He's dealt with absolute shit, but he's worse than he has to be. Klaus is cruel, paranoid and selfish, but he also knows enough about people that he's usually right about them. Growing up, both his parents abused him and neither one respected him, and then they turned him into a vampire and cut off his metaphorical balls when he found out what he was missing all his life. He took that abuse and played it out in the cruelest ways imaginable on anyone who came under his power. If you want a metaphor, Klaus is a rabid dog who needs to be put down, but he's still a dog, and it's always a tragedy when a dog goes rabid. "

"Dogs," Vicki said thoughtfully. She picked up a nearby mop and twirled it experimentally. "Sometimes I think you and Lauren look at me like a dog who might bite."

"I've had nasty pets. When I was a toddler my family took in an adorable stray kitten. When I ran, he would jump on me, claws out. My parents declawed him, and he stopped hurting me," I answered.

"What happened to the cat?" Vicki asked.

"Huckle lived for years, most of my childhood, and died outside. He was a good cat overall," I answered. Then I paused. "I was a bad child, sometimes. I got mad at Huckle for hurting me, and so I hurt him when he couldn't fight back. I stopped, of course, but I didn't stop as soon as I knew better."

"Jesus." Vicki winced. "Remind me never to get you a cat."

"We made peace long before he died. I do well with cats now. But it might be an argument against declawing in the metaphorical as well as literal department," I admitted.

"Being a vampire is shitty," Vicki answered. "Before I was a vampire Damon could do anything to me he wanted. After I was a vampire Stefan felt he had to kill me."

"Overall I think being a vampire is less safe than being a human. But vampires aren't really important. Vampires are just detritus of Esther's Originals. I think for all the flaws of Esther's spell, it helped her children more than it hurt them. Kol and Rebekah want to be witches, but I don't think any of them but Finn would rather be dead than be monsters."

"Did you just offer to make me an Original?" Vicki asked.

"I implied it," I admitted. "I am unsure to what extent it's even possible to transform a ghost into an Original Vampire or something like it. Then, even if I have a spell, look at the side effects Esther's version had. Without some time to test it I have no idea how it might go wrong. And then there's the issue that you killed someone by accident; without more control I'd be accepting a giant pile of corpses building up over time."

"It'll all be fine though," Vicki said darkly. "We just kill Klaus and we're a net gain no matter what shit we do, right?" She was clearly not taking my earlier statement well now that she'd had time to process it.

I stuck to my guns. "Kill Klaus, we wipe out most of the vampiric race. Almost all of it if we get Kol and Finn staked as well. I don't think Elijah or Rebekah sired many vampires, but it'd be good hygiene to kill them anyway. That just leaves Mikael, who we should destroy on general principles anyway and probably doesn't have any living vampires descended from him. There's maybe what, a thousand vampires in the world? I'd guess they kill quite a few people a year."

"So all the poor people who didn't have a choice, like me, get killed to save a bunch of other innocent people?" Vicki asked.

"Trolley problem. Shove a fat man in front of a trolley to stop it from hitting five people, did you do the right thing even though it looks like a murder?" I shrugged. "Philosophers have been arguing over this for centuries. On the ground, people tend to be utilitarian when they can consider each individual case on an emotional level, but when you zoom out and look at numbers you tend to follow whichever story seems more visceral. Adding up five stories of medical miracles doesn't quite register to us against a doctor slicing up a stranger to give his organs to five patients. I'm willing to bite the bullet and bomb a a metaphorical camp with 500 refugees and 500 serial killers, but if you're not willing to do that then it's not a sign you're a bad person."

"You're such a comforting friend," Vicki glared at me.

"I try to be honest. I think about depressing shit a lot and being morbid runs in my family." I answered.

"Your real family, the one in the land of Nina Dobrev you hail from, not the witch body's, right?" Vicki asked.

I smiled. "Yes. In the land of Nina Dobrev, my father loves horror and my mother loves thrillers. When the TV is on my mom's cop shows will have victims screaming in pain and my dad's horror and fantasy will have the sounds of people dying to monsters. Both of them think the other one's tastes are creepy. When I visited my grandmother she had bought someone's stuffed dead cat at a yard sale and kept it around in the living room because she thought it looked cool."

"You're making me miss Matt," Vicki smiled back at me. "I want to tell him about everything when it's all over. But I don't know where to begin right now. 'Hey, I became a vampire, and I died, and this is a friendly nerd from another dimension who doesn't think his girlfriend would mind if he gives me extra superpowers.' Now I know you want to say it just like that when you meet him, but please don't." Vicki sounded mildly worried.

"It's likely," I admitted. "I have to say I never liked your brother much on the show, but he never did much wrong besides being a bit of a dick to Caroline when she was in deep freakout modes he didn't understand when she became a vampire. Okay, and sometimes just being a dick to the human Caroline, but she could be a bit much."

"Well, he doesn't have my tits," Vicki answered.

"That's probably a factor. Prettier people just feel worth more, and I'm saying that as someone who never felt pretty. It's not a good way to go through life but it's sensible when watching TV." I answered.

"Oh yeah, you were really fat." Vicki laughed.

"It just didn't feel like it mattered what I did to my body, I guess. I was a guy and I'd never feel that hot. I never liked sports, always seemed a bit sick, needed glasses and had strange nosebleeds. I always felt a bit wrong before I met Lauren. Maybe it was the Immortal healing that cleaned up acne and scars, but I think I wouldn't have needed that just as long as I knew I had her at my back." I reminisced for a minute.

"I get it," Vicki said quietly. "She just trusts people, even the worst people."

"Nicely put." I tipped an imaginary hat to Vicki.

"You know I feel we should be doing something," Vicki said after we'd been quiet for a minute. "We were stuck in your Prison World for so long after all. Shouldn't we be hunting down Klaus or making dangerous deals by now?"

"We're keeping guard on Elena," I answered. "If Klaus makes his move, it has to be toward her, and if we just kidnapped her we'd start a mess I'm not sure we could clean up. But if you're worried, one of us should go and make contact after school." I considered for a moment. "If you don't mind, it should probably be me. Your coming back from the dead in the body of an Original raises a lot of questions and I can read their minds to make contact easier."

"No complaints from me." Vicki answered. "If you want to deal with Elena and the guy who killed me, be my guest."

[hr][/hr]

In the end I decided the best course of action was just to walk up to the Salvatore Boarding House and knock on the front door. Stefan opened the door; Lexi had to be letting him out of the basement if I hadn't arrived in the middle of a daring escape.

"Stefan Salvatore?" I 'asked' the vampire.

That's me. Are you looking for someone?" Stefan asked, clearly a bit preoccupied.

"Okay, remember the weird shit involving Emily? I'm the psychic she was talking to and I'm possessing a vampire. We need to talk. Can I come inside?" Beating around the bush would do me no favors with any of the doppelgangers.

"You're Lauren, then." Stefan said. "The one Emily is afraid of."

"Jeff, actually." I shrugged. "I guess you lost something in communication. Lauren's stuck in there with me, but I'm the one who knows the future."

"I'd invite you to come in, but I actually can't do that anymore," Stefan explained.

"Ah, did you get around to giving Elena your house so strange vampires couldn't walk in?" I asked.

",,,yes," Stefan frowned. "You say you see the future. What do you mean by that?"

"I'll make a long story short; I saw a detailed but incomplete account of a future timeline that diverged roughly when Lauren and I became trapped in a kind of prison dimension. My efforts to escape led to my contacting Emily Bennett, and that has been the center of the considerable divergences from the timeline I saw. I do not know how things will go, but I still have a great deal of information on the secrets, motivations and capabilities of the major players in the coming events."

"So you know about the sacrifice," Stefan nodded.

"I know more about the Hybrid Curse than Klaus does. I also know exactly how to stop him from killing Elena, if he can be convinced I am being sincere. Hypothetically I know how to kill Klaus as well, though that is unlikely to be easy and runs into problems with Elijah." I explained.

"Are you working with Elijah?" Stefan asked.

"Not yet. I expect he will regret not making a deal with me sooner, as I am currently possessing the body of his younger brother." I smiled at Stefan, who stepped back into the house.

"Does that make you an Original?" Stefan asked cautiously.

"For most intents and purposes. Where do you want to meet up, if your house is off limits?"

"I don't know. Somewhere private. If Elijah or Klaus overhear us..." Stefan winced.

"If it helps, your brother's possessing the body of Elijah's older brother. Call that a gesture of good faith, though I didn't do it to win your favor. He was off to see Sheila Bennett last time I spoke with him." I leaned against the wall.

"You want something in return," Stefan guessed.

"Of course. I am currently trapped in an alternate dimension. I would very much like to not be trapped in an alternate dimension. Everyone who is willing to work on that in this dimension is a significant help to that. If I do enough favors for people and dangle enough rewards in front of them I am hoping that people will have no choice but to drag me out." I answered Stefan a bit lazily, feeling rather relaxed.

"What exactly do you want from me?" Stefan asked.

I paused, thinking about how much to say. "Mostly, blood. Elena's doppelganger blood has very useful properties. I have a set of particularly nasty witches I need to defeat in order to ensure I get into your dimension, and doppelganger blood is a massive advantage in witch fights. You are also personally competent, dangerous and resourceful, but those qualities are replaceable and hence I am far more willing to be negotiated out of asking for your service in exchange for defeating Klaus and saving Elena."

"What is your plan to save Elena?" Stefan asked directly.

"Ideally, kill Klaus. I have a few options for how to do that, but none of them are certain. If that proves impossible, I will save Elena by doing my best to convince Klaus that he needs the blood of a living doppelganger. Has Elijah told you the real curse yet?" I asked. Stefan nodded. "Okay. So Klaus isn't the only Hybrid who needs doppelganger blood to transition. If he doesn't feed that to werewolves he's turning into Hybrids, they die quickly and in agony. About 75% of why Klaus even wants to break this curse is to make more Hybrids like himself."

"He doesn't know that?" Stefan frowned.

"His mother went to great lengths to stop Klaus from making his idealized master race. Honestly, the Hybrid plan is the part of Klaus's goals I find least objectionable. Being a werewolf sucks, and being a Hybrid is better than being a vampire or a werewolf. All things being equal I'd like that option to be on the table, but it's not all equal as Klaus is going to kill quite a few people in order to break the curse, celebrate breaking the curse, and in the course of his life as an Original Hybrid." I paused for a moment, weighing the idea of Hybrids. "If Elijah has been weaponizing White Oak he's unlikely to tell it to you or Katherine. That mostly leaves either the use of magic to subdue him. I assume either Bonnie or Luka is being tied to the massacre site to use dead witch power to kill Klaus?"

"You know, you really should be more careful about what you say in public," I heard a voice behind me. It was about time.

"Hello, Elijah," I said without looking back. "Please don't kill Stefan? His brother would be angry if you did."

"You have gotten far since we last spoke," Elijah said, softly. "It seems that finding my family's bodies was easier than expected."

"Honestly, Klaus didn't hide them as well as he said he did. It would have taken quite a while to search the world's oceans, but I found them all together." I turned around. "Hopefully this doesn't make you chicken out on wanting Klaus dead."

"He worked to destroy our family. Your coming along to reunite us hardly mitigates that," Elijah answered. I noticed he didn't actually answer my question.

"So do you want my help?" I asked.

"What exactly are you offering?" Elijah asked.

"That's a good question. I have various ideas, even in this body. If I had some blood from various vampire sire lines and the doppelgangers I think I could manage something to let you kill Klaus before the Sacrifice so long as we can drive White Oak through his heart. Otherwise, you simply have the help of three extra Originals in this fight." I smiled.

"Oh?" Elijah looked amused. "That is incorrect. Finn has already disappeared. As for whoever you have put into Rebekah, there is another complication."

"What do you mean by complication?" I asked.

"Ah. To put it simply, she is dealing with my father," Elijah answered.

"Oh." I answered. "Fuck."