Klaus walked into his mansion to find his sister standing just inside the door with tears in her eyes.
"Why does Kol always have to make everything so much worse?" She asked her brother.
"I think that he was actually trying to help," Klaus told her. "He just didn't choose the best method."
"And now everybody knows just how pathetic I am," Rebekah complained. "I can handle myself. I was doing perfectly fine without Kol and his 'help'."
Although Klaus had seen his sister upset countless times over the centuries that they had been together, he still found that it didn't get any easier to see, even after all of this time. As much as he hated to admit it, even when he was the one that was hurting her, it still was terrible and usually ended up leaving him with a sickening feeling of guilt afterwards... Not that he would ever tell her, or anyone else for that matter, about that.
"I can't do this anymore, Nik," Rebekah told him through sobs. "I can't just sit here and let myself be the joke that lets herself get taken advantage of. I have to leave... At least for now."
Klaus frowned. He didn't like the idea of having his sister going somewhere else without him, but he thought that it probably was the best idea for her right now.
As Rebekah left Mystic Falls, she knew that she needed to let go of all of those memories that she had been holding onto so tightly… Even the one that she had never dared bring up to anyone, not even Stefan since they had been reunited… One that took place during one of their very last nights together.
They had just finished draining a runaway bride together and Rebekah couldn't help herself from trying the veil on and holding the dress up to herself as she looked in the full-length mirror of Stefan's room.
"What would you want a wedding for?" Stefan had asked as he watched her from where he was reclining on the bed. "Isn't marriage a little juvenile when we already know that we're going to be together for an eternity?"
"So you're telling me that you've never even considered the idea?" She questioned.
"You're the only one that I'd ever consider it for," He told her. "Although it would certainly be a small wedding with just us and your brother."
"You forget that we can compel whoever we want to attend," Rebekah responded with a sinister smirk.
"Invite our own all-you-can-eat buffet, I like it," Stefan told her as he grinned back at her before dashing across the room to pull her in for a passionate kiss.
"So you'd really be willing to have a wedding, just for me?" She had asked.
"I'd be willing to do anything, just for you."
Rebekah felt a tear streaming down her cheek as she thought about just how much things had changed since then.
Bonnie knew that Kol had been acting strangely for a while now, but she was still surprised when he stopped in her driveway and made no attempt to try and come inside with her. She reached her hand over to slip it into his, causing him to quickly rip his hand away.
Kol wondered if she was insane as she asked, "Why are you acting so weird? I'm fine, it's just a bruise."
"I could have crushed your hand," He told her, annoyed by the fact that she didn't seem to understand that.
"But you didn't," She pointed out matter-of-factly.
"But I could have," He said emphatically. "And for a second I thought that I had broken your hand."
Bonnie reached across the car to turn his face to look at her before she kissed him gently on the lips. Kol kissed her back, although certainly less enthusiastically than he usually did.
"Come inside with me," She told him. "…Please?"
He reluctantly got out of the car with her.
Once they were inside, Bonnie led him to her bedroom. Kol didn't seem to want to do much of anything though, since he just lay down on her bed and shut his eyes.
Bonnie lay down and cuddled up next to him with her head resting on his chest. He hesitated for a moment before he wrapped an arm loosely around her waist.
The next morning, Bonnie woke up to find the other side of the bed empty and sighed, surprised by how disappointed she was to be waking up alone.
She debated calling Kol, but decided against it. After all, he's the one who had snuck out in the middle of the night… Why should she have to call him then?
The day was barely half over and it seemed to be dragging out to be impossibly long to Kol, who was busying himself with playing video games so that he wouldn't have to think about the fact that his sister hated him and that he had almost broken the girl he cared about's hand the night before.
He quickly became more than a little bored of playing by himself, so when Elijah walked into the room and accused him of moping, Kol quickly convinced him to play.
"I don't understand what I'm supposed to be doing," Elijah commented as Kol started the game.
"You'll figure it out eventually," Kol responded, too lazy to actually explain to his brother. Besides, if he didn't explain then it just gave him even more of an advantage against his brother.
A few minutes passed by before Elijah said, "I don't think that I was supposed to do that."
"…You just won," Kol responded, trying to keep himself from getting angered as he muttered, "…Beginner's luck…"
During the next game, Elijah was just about to win again when Kol stood up and yanked the cord from the wall before storming out of the room, leaving Elijah more than a little confused.
On Monday at school, Stefan was disappointed, but not overly surprised when Rebekah's seat remained empty during first class.
When lunch came around, Stefan and Bonnie both seemed to be in bad moods... Stefan because of the fact that Rebekah wasn't in the lunchroom either, and Bonnie because Kol had been ignoring her since he had snuck out at some point on Friday night.
Kol had been sitting at home moping for the course of the entire weekend because he knew that he couldn't be with Bonnie without inevitably ending up hurting her. He hadn't even been able to look at her without feeling guilty after what he had done to her.
She didn't understand that though… She seemed to think that everything was perfectly fine, but it wasn't. He had wanted to hurt her for a long time before that, he had even fantasized about it, but now that it had actually happened, all that he felt was an overwhelming amount of guilt, self-disgust, and a large heap of self-loathing.
Still, she at least deserved some sort of explanation, didn't she? As much as Kol really didn't want to go explain himself to her, he forced himself to go head to the school, since it was just the end of the school-day and she deserved to at least have him officially end things instead of just ignoring her in the hopes that she would get the point.
Of course, Kol didn't manage to get more than about three steps into the parking lot before Jeremy Gilbert seemed to appear out of nowhere to harass him.
"I saw what you did to her hand," He said accusingly. "You must really not care about her at all, or else you would stay away from her."
Kol opened his mouth to say that he was staying away from her, but was surprised when instead he defended himself with, "Do you know what your problem is, Jeremy? You're so sure that Bonnie needs you or someone else to look out for her and keep her from getting hurt. You look at her like some little girl, but she's not. She's strong and she doesn't need anyone looking out for her. She could easily kick my ass if she wanted to."
He hadn't even realized this himself until the words had come spewing out, but now he was sure that what he had said was the truth.
"You don't even like her!" Jeremy accused. "You said yourself that you can't even stand to be around her. This is all just part of one of your stupid games."
"She's annoying, and stubborn, and gorgeous, and feisty, and strong, and she knows exactly how to get on my nerves. She drives me completely insane, and maybe that's not always in a good way, but I wouldn't want it any other way," Kol responded angrily. "Maybe we aren't perfect, but there is no perfect. And even if there is, perfect's overrated and short-lived before it's just turns into boring and flawed. She's the closest thing that I've found to perfect in all my life and I'm not going to give that up just because you don't approve."
With that Kol turned and walked away, completely done with that conversation.
What he didn't see was Jeremy cracking a slight smile after he left… Maybe Kol wasn't completely terrible.
"So are you here looking for Caroline, or are you done completely ignoring me?" Bonnie questioned as she crossed her arms over her chest defensively.
"I'm an ass," Kol told her in response. "I was trying to stay away from you so that I wouldn't hurt you again, but I was entirely ignoring the fact that you can look out for yourself."
"Yeah, I can," She agreed.
"Forgive me?" He asked as he brought a hand up to the side of her face.
She pretended to consider it for a few seconds until he brought his lips down to meet hers. She quickly kissed him back, tangling a hand in his hair as she pulled him even closer.
"I guess so," Bonnie whispered with a teasing smirk.
By the time that Rebekah returned back at school the next week, Stefan had grown to expect her to not be there.
She sat down in her regular seat in front of his and acted as if there was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. As he watched, he thought that she had somehow come back looking even better and a lot happier.
A few minutes passed by before he whispered, at a volume that he was sure her vampire hearing would pick up, "When Klaus said that you were gone, I didn't think that you were going to come back."
Rebekah heard him, but made no effort to show it as she continued to face the front of the room.
"I missed you," He continued to whisper as he smiled a little to himself. "And you were right. That night did mean something. And I have been clinging to the idea of Elena for too long because I couldn't stand the fact that she had chosen Damon instead. But there was one thing that you were wrong about, I don't just want you because I think I can't have you."
She continued to act as though she hadn't heard a word that he had said and when the bell rang, she quickly walked out of the door ahead of him in order to dodge him.
When lunch came around and she came and sat down next to him and across from Matt, Stefan turned to look at Rebekah in surprise.
"What?" She asked him innocently.
"Nothing," He responded. "I'm just a little surprised that you're sitting there after you've been avoiding me for a week and completely ignored me this morning."
"I wasn't ignoring you, I just had nothing to say in return," Rebekah told him with an innocent shrug. "And I wasn't just avoiding you, I was avoiding everything. I went shopping in New York for a week."
"I'm confused," Stefan stated. "You had nothing to say to everything that I told you this morning, but now you're just chatting with me like nothing happened? So then what exactly does that make us?"
"Not knowing is a real bitch, isn't it?" She asked him with a grand smirk. "And you're going to learn just how irritating mixed signals can be."
Before he had the chance to ask what she meant by that, Rebekah had turned and brought her lips against his to pull him into a passionate kiss. A very long minute and a half of her reminding him of exactly what he'd been missing passed by before she finally pulled away from him.
"See you later, Stefan," She told him before she got up from the table and walked away to go join Katherine.
Stefan watched her walk away in a stunned silence as a tilted smirk formed on his lips. This was the Rebekah that he had fallen for in the first place.
"It looks like all that time she's been spending with Katherine has been rubbing off on her," Elena commented condescendingly.
"No, it hasn't." Stefan responded maybe a little too sternly, earning him a few looks of surprise. "Sorry... It's just that they're two completely different people."
He knew both of them much better than Elena did and it bothered him that she could even think that they were the same… That was like saying that Elena and Katherine were the same person.
When Rebekah sat down at her second table of the lunch-hour, Katherine commented, "Nice shoes."
"Thanks, they're new," The other girl responded with a grin as she looked down at them.
A few days later, Klaus and Rebekah walked into the Mystic Grill to find Caroline and Stefan were already there.
Stefan and Caroline were just about to start a game of pool when Klaus walked over to Caroline and wrapped his arms around her waist. She turned and grinned at him before pulling him in for a kiss. She noticed that Stefan seemed pretty happy talking to Rebekah by himself, so she let Klaus drag her away to a separate table.
"Looks like it's just us then," Stefan commented. "Want to play?"
"Sure, I like a good game," Rebekah responded with a teasing smile.
As she took a shot, he remained behind her, admiring the view.
"Be a little more obvious with your staring, why don't you?" She asked him with a smirk.
"As soon as you're a little less obvious with your attempts at getting me to stare," Stefan responded.
"Why would I do that?" She questioned in an amused tone as she took a step even closer to him.
He brought his lips down in an attempt to kiss her, only to have her turn away at the very last second.
"I don't think so," Rebekah told him with a smirk. "…I see why you enjoyed playing your games with me so much. And it's my game now, which means my rules."
Stefan couldn't help but smile because, as much as he knew that he shouldn't, he knew that he was going to enjoy the game.
A/N: Please read and review! This may be a surprise to many of you, but this is actually the last chapter other than an epilogue. So I hope that you guys enjoyed the story and thanks for reading!
Another extra special big thanks goes out to all of the incredible reviewers of the last chapter: Damon Salvatore is awesome, ferrylis, Hazel21, redbudrose, MyloveforKlaroline, boomkarakaraka05, BlueJean452, FallenWitchAngel, brynn brigham, and Rasha007