Chapter Twenty-Six

Elena's head smacked against something so hard that little stars danced in a jig around her eyes. A god-awful noise was blasting loudly all around her and she clapped her hands over her ears. With her eyes shut tight and her ears covered, she tried to focus on breathing.

She didn't think she would ever forget the look on Damon's face when he found out he wasn't going to be able to be with her for one hundred and forty-five years. God, what exactly had Emily meant when she said that memories of her could only exist within her own timeline?

Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. Eventually she was able to get her wracking sobs under control.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Elena recognized that she was back on her living room floor in 2010. She opened her eyes and took in her surroundings. Familiar, yet so foreign somehow. Were the colors always so bright in this room? And what was that horrible noise?

"Never gonna stop me, never gonna stop!

Never gonna stop me, never gonna stop!"

She got up and tried to hurry over to the iHome on the counter where she'd plugged in her iPod, but hoop skirts were not ideal for navigating modern living rooms, and she ended up tripping over the ottoman and tumbling to the floor with a shriek. The clash of drums rang in her ears and she finally managed to reach the iHome. She picked it up and stared at the screen. Rob Zombie? It may have been seven months since she used her iPod, but she was positive she'd never put any heavy metal on it. She jabbed the pause button irritably. She was going to have to have a little conversation with her brother about stealing her iPod and using it because it had more memory than his.

Even with the so-called music off, it was still so loud here. She could hear the cars rushing up and down the streets around the house, liquid sloshing in pipes, the refrigerator and heater humming, and the tinny static sound of all the light fixtures and the electronics in the entertainment center. And then there were the smells. First and foremost was the smell of the Pledge cleaner she'd been using to attack the kitchen and living room before she found the compass, but she could also smell the old pizza Matt and Jeremy had left. And again, the light and the colors inside the house were so bright. Was a quiet, dimly lit, sterile space for her to think too much to ask?

Something silver on the living room floor caught her eye, and she let out a yelp and jumped backward away from it. It was the time-travel compass. Okay, Gilbert, she thought to herself, get a grip. You're home now, and you're safe. There aren't mobs of men outside looking for vampires to burn, and considering the fact that the living room looks exactly like it did when you got pulled back in time, it doesn't seem like your little trip to the past changed anything.

Still, she eyed the compass warily, unsure of what she should do about it but unwilling to simply let it sit there in the open. After a few seconds, an idea struck her, and she awkwardly navigated her way into the kitchen. She found a box of Ziploc bags, but no, that wouldn't do. What if even touching it through plastic would send her careening back into the past? She slammed that drawer shut and kept looking.

That was when she saw the red bowl on the counter. It was full of bananas, oranges, and apples, but it would do perfectly. She grabbed it and dumped it upside-down. Fruit rolled in every direction on top of the island, a few stray apples and oranges even making it far enough to fall over the edge onto the floor, but Elena couldn't be bothered to pick them up just now. She walked back to the living room and covered the compass with the red bowl.

The chances were slim that anyone but her would be tidying up this house anytime soon, but she still didn't want to risk someone picking the bowl up and playing with the compass. Maybe if she left a note on top of it…

"Ha! I love you, Jeremy," she said in delight. For once, her little brother's tendency to leave his stuff all over the place had come in handy. His backpack was sitting at the end of the couch. She opened the zipper and rifled through it until she'd found a pen and a loose sheet of paper. On the paper, she wrote the following:

"Do not touch this bowl. There's a Gilbert device under it. Vampires beware."

It felt very strange to use a ballpoint pen again, but she had to admit that it was handy not to need an inkwell. Satisfied with her note, Elena set it on top of the bowl.

With that taken care of, her immediate desire was to get into her car and drive straight to the lake house to see Damon. She bustled back over to the kitchen table and grabbed her keys, then set off out the front door. She didn't even care if the neighbors saw her slightly tattered Civil War era dress or the fact that her hair was probably sticking up in a million different places. She walked straight to her car and unlocked it.

"ARGH! Are you kidding me?" she cried. If it had been hard to move around her house in this dress, then it was simply impossible to fit into the car. "Where is a plain old horse when you need one?" she demanded angrily as she slammed the car door shut again.

She had to get out of this dress. She headed back inside and hurried up to her room. Her cell phone was lying on her bed, and it occurred to her for the first time that she could call people here. She seized it and poked the screen awake. It looked like she had a few missed calls from Bonnie and Caroline, but no new texts. She couldn't remember exactly what time it had been when she found the compass, but according to her phone, it was still mid-afternoon. So she hadn't been gone long enough to make anyone worry.

"Oh, Emily, I love you," she said to her empty room as she quickly looked for Bonnie's number.

"Hey, I can't get to the phone right now. I'm in class or I'm with my besties. Go ahead and leave a message, and I'll call you back!"

Okay. No Bonnie. That was okay. She tried Caroline next.

"Why the hell are you calling me? Unless you're my mom or this is a super big emergency, send a text!"

Elena didn't want to send anyone a freaking text message. Okay, Jeremy now.

"Hello?"
"Jeremy!" said Elena. "I need to—"

"What's up?"

"Um, well—"

"Gotcha! Go ahead and leave a message."

"UGH."

She tried Matt and Tyler too, but neither one of them answered. Damon had already proven that he wasn't taking her calls right now, so she tried Stefan. When she heard he sixth voicemail in as many minutes, she yelled in frustration and hurled her phone against the wall. "God, what's the use of a phone and modern technology when no one answers their phones!"


The first one hit him like a freight train.

Katherine was standing in the woods behind the mansion, leaning against the tree. She hadn't spotted him, and he was excited for the chance to surprise her. He'd been on his way back to where the rest of the army was camped out when he'd decided he'd had enough of this war and turned back. He spun Katherine around and kissed her, but within seconds she was shoving him away and telling him angrily that she wasn't Katherine.

Utterly confused, Damon dropped a piece of the pizza Matt and Jeremy ordered back into the box as he tried to make sense of what he'd just seen. He didn't get the chance to analyze the first, however, when another one started up.

He was at the first Founder's Ball, dancing the near touch waltz with Elena. Stefan was dancing with Katherine several couples away, yet somehow, he couldn't find it in him to care that much as he looked into Elena's smiling face.

Little pieces started filling in the gaps, like Katherine introducing Elena to him as her twin sister, Elena coming to find him where he was skipping rocks out over the quarry, and almost kissing her outside her bedroom door when he brought her home from the ball. She'd even spent the night with him in his room after she found him so upset at Stefan's declaration of love to Katherine, and her shy but pleased reception of it.

Where the hell was this coming from all of a sudden? Was he remembering a dream? But no, it didn't feel like a dream, it felt…real. It felt like memories. But that was impossible.

He didn't have time to reflect more on the jumble of images (which were still pouring in), because at that precise moment, he felt a sharp blow to the backs of his legs, which immediately buckled, sending him crashing onto his back. His head thunked hard against the wood floor of the living room, and the next second, Jeremy was there, holding a breadstick over his heart like a stake.

"Still think I'm not ready to hunt vampires?"

"Get off me, asshole," Damon growled, shoving Jeremy away from him. Holy hell, it was a good thing that hadn't been a real stake. Voices and images continued to bombard him to the point that he wanted to lie down and try to figure out what the hell was going on, but he couldn't let that happen when Slayer boy was all intent on attacking him with bread items.

"What's your deal?" Jeremy asked angrily. Little Gilbert nearly lost his footing as Damon darted to the other side of the living room.

"It's…nothing," Damon said. "Good one. You're getting better at sneaking up on me, but let's avoid breaking the house." He turned around, digging into his jeans for his phone.

"What's going on, man?" said Matt, returning from the bathroom and grabbing another slice of pizza.

Damon couldn't be bothered with answering Matt's question. He was done babysitting the teenage humans for now. He took his phone outside and pressed the speed dial button for Elena's number. He waited anxiously, but it just went straight to voice mail. "Really?" he muttered. "Ten missed calls and eight texts from you, and now you're not going to answer your phone?"

He stalked back into the house just long enough to grab his keys off the counter.

"Dude, I didn't hurt you that bad, did I?" said Jeremy.

"Nah," said Damon. "Points for catching me off-guard, though. I need to make a run somewhere, how about you two X-box brains go run around the lake a few rounds?"

Matt groaned. "Seriously? You're going off God knows where, and you expect me to run too? I'm not even the Hunt—"

"Just do it, Donovan." Damon left without waiting for a response.


Elena grunted in frustration. Where the hell was a handmaid when she needed one? She had managed to get the overdress off with no problem, but it was damn near impossible to undo the knots on the corset herself. She probably shouldn't have broken her phone; nobody knew she'd just spent seven months in the past, so nobody was going to come and check on her unless she could actually get in touch with them. She was desperate to find Damon, but until she could get out of this dress and into something more car-friendly, that wasn't going to happen. There was also the tempting prospect of a twenty-ten style shower. She was dirty from all that running about in the woods, her hair was a complete mess, and her face was covered in dusty tear tracks.

But none of her plans for showering and driving off to find Damon were going to work out if she couldn't even get the damn corset off. "Argh! You've got to be kidding me! Did Emily use a stupid spell to trap me into this freakin' thing?"

"Elena…?"

Elena stopped tugging at the corset strings at once and spun around to face her bedroom door. "Damon!" It was strange after months of waistcoats and neckties to see him in his usual black shirt/leather jacket combo, but she didn't care. He was here.

He was staring at her with an expression that could only be described as awe. A split second later, he'd sped forward and had her pinned against her dresser, his hands cupping her face and his forehead touching hers.

"It was all real, then," he said. "I came to ask you about the crazy flashbacks I've been having, but I guess I don't need to now." He looked into her eyes. "It was you," he said, smoothing some of her wild hair back from her face. "Not Katherine. All this time, I was in love with you."

Elena nodded, tears falling thick and fast, and threw her arms around him. Neither of them cared that she was probably ruining his shirt; Damon was sobbing too. "It was," she hiccupped a few seconds later. "It was me." She pulled back, wanting to look into his eyes for this, "and I'm so sorry you had to wait so lo—"

She never finished the sentence; Damon's lips crashed against hers in a desperate, passionate kiss. Elena heard a few things from the top of her dresser clatter to the ground and break, but she didn't care as she moved her lips against his and his fingers deftly undid the corset strings she'd struggled against so fruitlessly.


"They're looking for a vampire cure," said Hayley.

Katherine frowned at this revelation. "A vampire cure? What the hell do they want a vampire cure for?"

"I dunno, I guess it's so they can give it to that Elena girl?" said Hayley indifferently.

Katherine rolled her eyes. "Of course Damon and Stefan want to cure their precious Elena."

"You should be paying me for this, Katherine. This town is stupid with teen drama, and it's giving me migraines. Besides, I really don't want anything to do with all this vampire business. I'm only sticking around for Tyler. If I hear any other information—"

Hayley's voice faded in the background of Katherine's mind as she was struck with an image of herself elbow-deep in a mixing bowl, staring across the kitchen of the Salvatore mansion at a dumbstruck Damon.

Katherine shrieked and adjusted the steering wheel; she'd been halfway into the next lane. As quickly as she could, she pulled off to the side of the road. She'd been heading north to Cincinnati on I-75.

"Katherine? Katherine, are you all right?" She quickly fished her phone back off the floor of her car and held it to her ear again.

"Sorry, Hayley, it was nothing. I'll call you back." She hung up before Hayley could respond, then sat back in her seat, breathing it possible for a five-hundred-year-old vampire to have a heart attack? It certainly felt like it. Cars whizzed past her as she sat in a dead stop. That could have ended so much worse for her poor Mercedes.

More images quickly followed the first. Drinking bourbon and vervain in the Salvatores' attic with Elena, helping Emily get herself and Elena ready for the day every morning, freeing Stefan from compulsion and then her joy when he'd come back to her all on his own.

One image that stood out in particular was of the day Damon and Elena announced their engagement. Tears stung Katherine's eyes as she remembered pulling Elena into a hug and teasing Damon while Giuseppe laughed and Stefan smiled at her. She knew it was a memory. It had to be. She could not have imagined up that wonderful, warm feeling of being part of a family again, surrounded by happiness and love. Elena had truly felt like she was her sister, and despite her initial selfish plans, she'd come to wish Elena and Damon well with all her heart.

After letting it all wash over her, Katherine was stunned to remember that mere moments ago, she'd been disgusted at the thought of the Salvatores fawning over Elena and wanting to turn her human. She fought to regain her composure. "Damn you, Emily," she whispered as she wiped her eyes. "Why did you have to do that to us?"

She had been intent on getting far, far away from Virginia. She had lingered around Mystic Falls for a while, since Klaus seemed too preoccupied to actively search for her, but when things started to heat up with the Hunters, she'd started using Hayley to do her spying for her. But now, it looked like she had no other choice but to go back home.


Damon couldn't stop kissing and touching Elena, even after they made love twice— once against her dresser and then in the bed. Elena didn't mind in the slightest. She knew that, for him, it was the first time he really had her back in nearly one-hundred and forty five years, even though it had only been a week or so in chronological 2010 time since they'd been together. He'd let her up long enough to take a shower—for which he had joined her, but now they were back in her bed.

"I love you," he said, kissing her and pulling her close. "I—the fact that it was you who I was waiting for…"

"I tried to stay away from you at first, you know?" said Elena. "I was so afraid of changing the past. Emily warned me, because what if I got home and something happened, like if you'd never become a vampire? I just…I love you so much, it was too hard to resist."

She stared into his blue eyes, and ran her fingers through his hair. It felt too short. For the past seven months, she had been with Damon as a human. He smelled different now. More leather and bourbon. "Mmm, you should let your hair grow out."

Damon gave her a real, genuine smile and rolled his eyes. "No way," he said. "I haven't let it grow curly in over half a century."

"Then I'll just have to persuade you," Elena giggled.

The mirth faded from Damon's face. He caught her left hand and traced his thumb over her ring. "For the longest time, I thought I'd lost this."

"We have a lot of stuff we should probably talk about," Elena sighed.

"Later," said Damon. "Right now I just want to keep you in this bed until neither of us can move."

"I don't know if the bed will last as long as we will," said Elena, grinning.

Damon smirked. "True. We weren't exactly gentle with your furniture." The bed was already kind of…wobbly, and two of the dresser drawers no longer fit properly.

Elena reached up and kissed him. "Then I guess it's a good thing I'm going to move in with you."

"You are?" said Damon.

"I am your fiancée," Elena said, wiggling the sapphire ring at him. Her grin faltered. "If you still want me to be," she qualified. Why did she feel so shy all of a sudden? She'd been engaged to him since Christmas in 1864, and this was far from the first—or even the twentieth—time they'd made love.

"That's right," said Damon softly. "You are." Elena smiled, relieved, and kissed him again. "I'm never going to forgive Emily for taking my memories from me," he said between kisses. "In fact, I'm tempted to—"

"Damon," said Elena sternly, "be honest with me. What would you have done had she let you remember who I was? If I hadn't been more careful about my identity?"

Damon sighed. "We might not be here right now. Something would've changed."

"Exactly," said Elena. "Emily did what she had to so the timeline wouldn't change, and I'm so…I'm just relieved that everything's fine. Well, except it'll probably take me a while to get used to not wearing corsets now."

Damon wiggled his eyebrows at her. "I'm sure I could still find you a corsetiere."

Elena laughed at him. "Maybe…"

Damon's arms tightened around her and buried his head into her neck, breathing deeply. "You know, I think we hold the record for world's longest engagement."

"A hundred and forty-six years this week," said Elena. "I wish I could've shared more than four months of it with you."

"I'm never letting you go again," Damon said, pulling back and looking her in the eyes. "We should just elope. Right now. I want you to be my wife."

Happy tears sprang to Elena's eyes. "Okay," she said. "Let's get married. Everyone else will freak when they find out, but we can deal with them later."

Damon sat up suddenly and raked his hands through his too-short hair. Elena immediately missed the feeling of him pressed against her. "What's wrong?" she asked.

"You probably just agreed to be with me because of the sire bond."

"No!" said Elena, sitting up and turning his face to look at her. "Damon, there is no sire bond anymore."

"How could you possibly agree to marry me so fast if that's not what it is?"

"It's not so fast. I've been with you for seven months, and I've been in love with you longer than that. Plus, I just came from a time when it's not weird at all for girls to get married at eighteen, so I really don't care what everyone else at school will think about it. I don't want to wait any longer and it would just be cruel if you had to wait more."

"But that could still be the sire bond!" he insisted, sounding frustrated and even a little vulnerable.

"It's not, Damon, I swear. Emily told me it broke because I drank your blood when you were human." He still didn't look like he was buying it, and Elena's heart ached. It was like he couldn't believe that something this good could happen to him. "Damon, please," she said, "if you don't believe me, then test it. Order me to do something."

"Okay," he said. "Elena, it would make me very happy if you would go snap Bonnie's neck as payback for what great-great-great-great-granny Bennett did."

Elena gasped indignantly and smacked him on the arm. "Damon! Seriously? You couldn't have just tried asking me to hop on one foot while saying the ABCs backward? I can't believe you would try to make me do that!"

But Damon was beaming from ear to ear, and she'd barely finished chastising him when he pulled her onto his lap and wrapped his arms tightly around her. "So it's really broken."

"Yes, Damon. It's broken, and I still love you. I loved you before I was a vampire, I was just too scared to admit it."

Damon rubbed his hands up and down her back as he quietly held her to him. He couldn't seem to stop holding her, and Elena didn't mind one bit. She snuggled her head into the crook of his neck.

"Marry me?" he said quietly after a few moments. He took her left hand in both of his and kissed the back of it. "Please? This is confusing as hell, and there's more I'm going to need you to explain, but I want you to be my wife before anything else happens in this madhouse town. I'll take you to New York. I've got a buddy up there with connections…. I just—"

Elena giggled and sat up straighter. She threw one of her legs around him so that she was straddling him. "I'm kind of foggy on what was going on here before I got tossed back in time, but I don't want to wait either. When I wake up tomorrow morning, I want to wake up as Mrs. Damon Salvatore."

Damon grinned and flipped them around so that she was on her back beneath him, then started peppering kisses all over her face and neck. Elena ran her hands over his shoulders and back. One more time before they hit the road wouldn't hurt.


"It feels so good to be in jeans again," Elena sighed happily, smoothing imaginary wrinkles from her long-sleeved shirt.

"It'd feel better to be out of jeans again," said Damon slyly as he pulled his t-shirt over his head.

Elena grinned and smacked him on the arm. "Don't tempt me. If we don't get out of here soon, we'll have to wait until tomorrow to find someone to marry us."

"Can't have that," he said. He allowed himself a moment to get a proper look at her while she headed over to her broken dresser and started applying make-up. He hadn't really taken the time for that before. Now that he did, he noticed that her hair was a little longer than the last time he'd seen her in 2010, and her waist was definitely smaller after all those months of corsets. He had almost forgotten how tight women had to wear them. Her dress and hoop skirt lay in a heap in the middle of the room next to the dresser where he'd helped her remove them.

"Oh!" said Elena. "You know, I actually should make a phone call before we go."

"Don't take too long," said Damon. For some reason, Elena was blushing. Strange, considering that he hadn't made the sort of comment that would cause that.

"Um, well, funny story," she said. "I might need to borrow your phone because mine is kind of shattered all over my window seat." He looked and saw that there were indeed pieces of phone all over that side of the room. He snickered. "What?" she said defensively. "You see how patient you are after getting six different voice messages in a row."

"You still didn't have to go all she-Hulk on it."

"One—I think you've been hanging out with Jeremy too much—two, could I please just borrow your phone?"

"As long as you promise to give it back in one piece," he said.

Elena pursed her lips and held out her hand. "I promise."

He handed it over. "Who are you going to call?"

Elena shifted her weight from one foot to the other but didn't answer. That was intriguing.

"It's a funny coincidence that you would call me right now, Damon," came Katherine's voice five seconds later. "Because I've just been reminiscing of the time you walked in on me when I was halfway through baking Stefan's birthday cake—"

"Katherine, it's me," said Elena.

"Why are you calling the she-devil?" said Damon contemptuously.

Elena frowned at him.

"Oh, right, you two are kinda tight now. Weird."

"Elena?" said Katherine. To Damon's surprise, her voice actually sounded a little choked. "I guess you were serious when you said you would give me a call."

"Of course I was," said Elena. "But, well, it's not just to catch up. I kinda need a favor."

"Anything," said Katherine at once.

Will wonders never cease? Damon thought.

"So, Damon and I are heading off to New York to get married, but we aren't taking the time to let everyone else know, and…I need you to cover for me in Mystic Falls until we get back. They won't wonder why Damon isn't here, because he's supposed to be training Jeremy at the lake house. And you don't have to worry about Klaus; he isn't in town right now."

"Okay," said Katherine. "I just have one question first."

"What?" said Elena.

"Do you still flat-iron your hair to death?"

Elena laughed. She'd just let her hair air-dry from her shower, so it was in its naturally wavy/semi-curly state. "I probably won't anymore, but no one in 2010 knows that yet."

"Good girl," said Katherine. "Well, go get married, kids. I'll keep everyone entertained at home while you're gone."


It wasn't long before Katherine was regretting jumping into Elena's life again. She normally would've taken the time to gather all the details she needed, but she felt awful for all the crap she'd put Elena through in the last year, and she'd felt a burning need to make up for it. Elena might remember their seven months as sisters more recently, but even though those were new memories for Katherine, it was much fresher on her mind that she was the reason Elena's aunt was dead.

Still, here she was walking into the high school library with a stiff neck because Klaus's stupid sister had recently snapped it. The dark-haired girl she'd been talking to before everything went black was standing in front of her, looking irritable.

"The Assembly is over," she said.

"What the hell is going on?" said Katherine as she got to her feet. She was going to break Rebekah's nails and dunk her head into a vat full of vervain. Or, better yet, she would call Lucy Bennett and get her to desiccate her and then throw her into an ocean. Screw the consequences if Klaus found out. She was sure Lucy would be agreeable, despite their falling out. Enemy of my enemy, and all that.

She brushed her hair out of her face. God, she hated straight hair. She hoped little sister had meant it about not planning to straighten hers anymore. It looked so much better when she left it curly.

"How many times did you compel me?" the girl asked. Katherine looked at her, utterly apathetic about all of this. "Don't—just don't lie. Rebekah says you lie."

Katherine suppressed urge to roll her eyes. Instead of getting to actually go to Elena's wedding, she was stuck here fielding all the teenage vampire drama. And Hayley had been right; there was a lot of that in this town. Even Rebekah, who was over a millennium old, had really never matured past the level of a teenager.

"Rebekah is a liar," said Katherine, trying to affect the level of concern Elena would've had when talking to this girl, but it was hard to fake when she was being so irritating.

"What? So she's not a thousand year old vampire?"

Katherine actually did roll her eyes this time, then reached for her phone. There was a text from Damon already. She opened it and read it. "My southern belle is afraid of cars now, and you and I are never letting her live it down."

"Are you seriously texting someone right now?" the girl asked a little shrilly.

"Sorry," said Katherine insincerely, "Feel free to resume the angst once I get a response to this."

"I'll get you two a horse for your wedding present. Quick question, though: are Klaus and Rebekah still on speaking terms?" she typed in, then hit "send."

Seconds later, her phone buzzed. "Rebekah? I thought Stefan and Klaus had her daggered in a coffin!"

Well, that answered that question.

"Okay, sweetie," said Katherine, pocketing her phone again and grabbing April's wrist. "We are getting out of here before anything else goes wrong. We can hash out our issues over tea and biscuits somewhere else."

"Where the hell do you think you're going?" said Rebekah's voice.

Katherine turned around slowly. She hadn't seen Rebekah since she was human. She was just as much of a brat now as she had been then. It was a struggle not to reach out and pay her back for snapping her neck.

Rebekah stepped forward and stared at Katherine's eyes. Oh fun, Original compulsion. And she was going to have to play along, because Rebekah clearly didn't expect Elena to have had recent access to vervain. "Why don't you take a seat while we wait for the rest of the class to get here," she said.


Stefan was quickly tiring of Rebekah's games. At least they were done with her mortifying versions of 20 Questions and Truth or Dare now. No, now they were doing the much more fun part where they ran for their lives from wolf Tyler.

Barely ten seconds after he'd shut the library doors behind himself, Elena, and Caroline, they heard the crash of the wolf bursting through them with such violence that they were ripped clean off the frame and smashed into the lockers across the hall.

It seemed the wolf had decided to follow him and Elena, rather than Caroline. They ran as fast as they could under Rebekah's "no vamp-running in the halls" rule, making it through another doorway just in time to slam it on the wolf's snarling muzzle. It took both him and Elena using every ounce of strength to keep the doors shut under the beast's assault. Stefan grabbed the fire axe off the wall to his right and shoved it through the door handles to brace them, but that only bought them a couple more seconds.

Elena braced it further by tearing a door off a nearby locker and sliding it through the handles too. The metal of the doors continued to bend and buckle, and at one point, the wolf pushed them inward almost a foot, so that they could see the snapping jaws. In a burst of strength that surprised him, Elena slammed the doors shut again with such force that they nearly caught the wolf's snout between them. They heard it give a surprised yelp and then the clack of retreating claws as it ran back down the hall.

"Come on," she said. "We shouldn't stay here. He might come back."

They ran to the biology lab a little ways down the hall and closed the door behind them. Stefan turned to face her with narrowed eyes, to which she replied with an expression that was entirely too innocent for someone who shouldn't have anything to hide. On one hand, he was glad; everything "Elena" had said in response to Rebekah's questions was now not necessarily true. On the other, he wanted to know what she was doing here, because her presence never boded well.

"I think this is a record, Katherine," he said. "You've never managed to keep up the ruse that long with me before."

"I've had a few chances to brush up on my impersonation skills," said Katherine.

"Where's Elena?" said Stefan through gritted teeth.

"Easy there," said Katherine, holding up her hands. "I didn't do anything, she just asked me to cover for her."

"Why would she do that?" he said.

"Because she wanted to buy as much time as she could while she and Damon run off to New York to get married."

"What?!" said Stefan loudly.

"How else can I phrase it?" said Katherine. "They're getting hitched, they're tying the knot—in this specific case, I think 'eloping' is a good word. Need any others?"

"I'm going to kill him," Stefan growled.

"Why?" said Katherine. "You were happy for them in 1864."

He stared at her blankly. "What are you talking about?"

"Oh, come on, Stefan," she said, moving closer to him. "The memory spell wore off for me and Damon hours ago. Surely you remember too by now."

"I don't—" he began, but he fell silent as the nagging feeling he'd been ignoring at the back of his mind all afternoon finally broke through to the surface. He remembered Katherine telling him he was free of her compulsion while Damon and Elena watched anxiously. He'd fled the room in fear after that, and Damon had chased him and made him swear he wouldn't tell their father what Katherine and Elena were. He remembered cheering for Damon to kiss Elena on Christmas Day when they announced their engagement, and how he had caught Katherine under the mistletoe afterward. It had been the best Christmas of his life.

When he became aware of his surroundings again, Katherine was right in front of him, watching him with what could only be described as longing. He staggered back, his mind still reeling. "why the hell do I remember Elena being in 1864?" he said.

"Because she was," said Katherine. "It was another Gilbert device that did it. She just got back to twenty-ten this afternoon, and she and Damon are on their way to put an end to their century-and-a-half-long engagement."

"But the sire bond—"

"Is broken. Her feelings for him are real. She loves him as much as he loves her. As much as I still love you, Stefan. And I know you loved me back, and it was real, and it was so good." She was actually starting to tear up.

"If it was real, then why did you let me think you were dead all those years?" he demanded. He felt angry and disoriented. Part of him was heartbroken and betrayed to hear that Elena was off marrying Damon somewhere—that either of them would do that when they knew how much it would hurt him, but another part of him just wanted to be happy for his big brother, something he hadn't felt since 1865.

"I would have come back for you," said Katherine. "That was my plan, but then Emily did her spell and I forgot. Elena changed me. You changed me. But I forgot, and I just went on living the same way I had been ever since I turned." She looked so anguished, and quite a large part of him wanted to rush forward and pull her into his arms and comfort her. Instead, he took another step backward.

"I can't do this right now, Katherine," he said. "It's too much. I don't know what to think or feel. I don't even know what's reality right now."

She opened her mouth to respond, but at that moment, the door to the lab opened and Rebekah walked inside. She shot each of them a withering look. "Why are my least favorite people always the most durable?" she wondered coldly.

Stefan shot Katherine a meaningful look, hoping she would understand that he needed her to be "Elena" again. She gave the smallest nod, and he turned to face Rebekah. "Leave her out of this. This is between me and you."


Katherine paced back and forth in the parlor of the boarding house. Elena had used Damon's phone to let her listen to their entire wedding in New York, and now she'd just sent a picture of the two of them. It must have been taken by whomever they'd wrangled to be the witness in the ceremony. Elena was laughing while Damon kissed her on the cheek, and they were both holding up their left hands. Elena's wedding ring was the sapphire engagement ring that had belonged to Damon and Stefan's mother, but now there was also a thin silver band next to it on her finger, and Damon's was just a simple broad silver band.

Katherine smiled. It was a strange feeling to her, being happy just because someone she cared about was. She hadn't felt that way in a hundred and forty-five years.

The front door opened, and Stefan walked inside. She stood up quickly to greet him, and he froze at the sight of her. "Katherine, I already told you I'm not doing this now." He sounded weary. She couldn't blame him.

"I don't suppose you want to see the wedding pictures," she said, waving her phone.

"No," he said. "Not really."

"They didn't do this to hurt you, you know," she said.

Stefan's only reply was to look sullen.

"After as long as Damon's been waiting to get the girl he fell in love with in eighteen sixty-four back, you can't blame them for not wanting to waste any more time."

"They could've at least told me first."

"Why, to give you a chance to be a massive downer about it? This isn't about you, Stefan, it's about them."

"They told you," he pointed out.

"Elena told me, because she knew I'm probably the only person on the planet who'd actually be happy for her, and because she needed my help."

"See, I don't get that," said Stefan. "You, helping people. It's not very in character."

"I'm not the same girl who came to this town earlier this year and wreaked havoc in all of your lives," said Katherine.

"Why would you be?" he said. "You already got what you wanted for doing that. It's only natural you'd have a different strategy now."

"Stefan, please," she said. "I don't have any strategies or ulterior motives. You remember what it was like when we were together now. We both do. We can have that back."

"You say you're not the same girl who did all those awful things?" he said. "Well, I'm not the same either. The boy who loved you in 1865 is gone for good."

"I don't believe that," said Katherine. She started walking forward. "I don't think you believe it either. And I can prove it." Before he could move a muscle or say another word, she grabbed him and kissed him hard on the mouth. He struggled and tried to push her away at first, but she persisted, and after a few seconds, he let out a moan and pulled her tighter against him instead. It quickly grew passionate, but when she reached for the buttons on his shirt, he pulled back.

"I can't promise you anything, Katherine," he said.

"I know," she said breathlessly. "And you can take all the time in the world to figure things out, but—"

"That timer doesn't have to start until tomorrow," he said.

She smiled brilliantly at him and eagerly resumed the kiss. His hands slid from her back down to the tops of her thighs, and she took the hint, jumping up and wrapping her legs around his waist. She'd waited so long for this. It was hard to believe it was really happening. The next thing she knew, he was rushing them up to his room without loosening his grip on her or breaking off the kiss.


Taaroko: As I write this AN, I am listening to "Back in Time", the song playing on Marty's radio alarm when he wakes up the morning after his time traveling adventure in 1955 in Back to the Future. Anyway, particularly in that last scene, it really struck me how much Stefan/Katherine mirrors Damon/Elena, especially in this fic. Damon waited for Elena, Katherine waited for Stefan, and nobody knew the whole story. When they finally learned it, it changed everything.

AnglcDmn1986: I've been waiting months to write the scene where Jeremy gets one over on Damon. I couldn't wait to post the chapter on Monday, I had to post it now because I already had mostly finished till I decided to share it with Taaroko XD.

Okay, so I have some news, and you guys may or may not be happy with me for it.

I am going to write the sequel to ATT by myself for this year's 2013 National Novel Writing Month. Taaroko is busy with graduate student stuff. This means I can't write a stitch of it until November, but it also means that we are probably going to have a LOT of chapters planned out (I'm still including her in the outlining process). I need a break from coming up with completely original ideas, though. The good news is that once it's finished, updates might start coming fast, and it'll give me time to finish Cheap Guitars (posted a new chapter today, please go give it a read!) and Head Over Hoof (an Au/Ah DE that I haven't posted yet).

All right. I hope you guys loved this. I laughed so hard when Taaroko added the "southern belle" bit in the texting. XD I'm not sure how many chapters are left in this, but there's at least one—Taaroko is pulling for a couple more.

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