A.N.: Can I have endgame as Stefan and Rebekah being human and having a family together? I think - I think I like that idea. Also, I think I'm a little bit in love with Tom Holland and George MacKay; I shouldn't have watched How I Live Now on repeat so many times…

I can't believe I haven't noticed the similarities between Ian Somerhalder and Rob Lowe before now…

Also: I CATEGORICALLY reject the finale of The Originals. Just…the whole season. Doe-eyed bratty teen!Hope who got Hayley killed; and the demonization of Elijah, only to have him end his life in a suicide-pact? He never had a life; he never had anything for himself, or anyone. I just - REJECTED. It has been REJECTED.

We'll say no more about it. (Unless you want to vent in great detail, in which case PM me).


Machiavelli's Daughter

04

The Lay of the Land


"Stefan."

"You don't look surprised to see me."

"Your sentence is almost over."

"Yeah. But there's talk of parole."

"I'm sorry to hear that." Stefan sighed, his smile uncertain. They hadn't seen each other in a decade. Giulia wasn't a skinny seventeen-year-old anymore. Stefan was, although he seemed to have bulked up a little bit. Stefan sighed, chuckling under his breath, and shook his head.

"I figured you probably had someone tip you off that we were on our way back to town." He smiled, beautiful in the moonlight. Standing there, Giulia stared; as a teenager, she had never looked at Stefan and thought, He looks young. Because she had been the same age, she hadn't noticed. Now she did. He was stuck inside his seventeen-year-old body. And he was just as handsome as he had been the day he was shot in the back and turned into a vampire. But it was only as a twenty-seven-year-old that Giulia noticed that Stefan did look very young.

"After a fashion," Giulia admitted.

"I, uh, couldn't get into the house."

"No," Giulia said, smiling gently. He wouldn't be able to. Giulia had made sure of it. He had brought the devil home with him. She wasn't giving either of them access to her property, even if it wasn't her home. It was Rose's now, it had been Matt's for a long time.

"Guess I picked the wrong weekend to come home, huh? Don't worry…we've already found somewhere else to stay, I just…thought I'd visit and see Damon," Stefan smiled. Giulia frowned softly.

"Damon left…months after you did," Giulia said. "But you knew that." They hadn't seen each other, but they had spoken, though infrequently. He'd given her lip about burning down Whitmore - it was only the one building.

Stefan frowned, sighing, running a hand through his hair, looking suddenly tired. "I guess I forgot… I kinda expected everything to be the way I left it, you know?"

"Time doesn't just stand still," Giulia said softly, sympathetically. She knew a little of what Stefan had endured over the last decade. Since Klaus had Stefan's compulsion erased in Chicago and raised his sister from the dead, things hadn't been quite as awful for him, when it came to the physical and emotional abuse at Klaus' hands, but it was a lot more confused now that Stefan remembered being the Ripper, and the Ripper's bond with sociopath Klaus, and…and falling in love with Rebekah, whom Giulia had never met but had heard about - at length, and in great detail - from her cousin Kol, and from the charismatic Marcel Gerard.

While Stefan had endured Klaus, time had moved on. The people he had left behind had moved on, including the brother he had left to save.

"Yeah," Stefan sighed, looking exhausted. "I know… Rebekah woke thinking it was 1922 and I didn't even remember her."

"That's harsh."

"That's Klaus. He loves to punish." Giulia shifted uneasily, glancing around.

"I've heard. Is he here?"

"No. I left him near the National Park," Stefan said, sighing. "Up in the mountains. He won't be bothering anyone for a few days." Giulia raised an eyebrow in disbelief.

"You came here alone?"

"No, I, uh…" Stefan cleared his throat softly, approaching them carefully, at a pace that was clearly meant to be nonthreatening. After what he had endured over the last decade, Giulia was sure he had learned a thing or two about animal behaviour. He seemed to be consciously not wanting to provoke a reaction, good or bad. "You, uh…you remember the night I left? You put my old journal from 1922 in my duffel-bag?"

"I remember," Giulia said softly. How could she forget - that was the night she learned her mother hadn't died in childbirth, but from complications of an aggressive cancer that had only been delayed long enough, by Damon's vampire-blood, so that Giulia could be born. That night Damon lay dying, the night Stefan had made a deal with the devil, Giulia had learned she had gestated with vampire-blood in her system; she had been born with the latent potential to become a supernatural being.

"There was a witch in Chicago…I kind of - annoyed her - back in the Twenties, when I was the Ripper of Monterrey… Back when he still could, Klaus had compelled me to forget him, to forget Rebekah, just like you'd guessed. Gloria scrubbed the compulsion from my mind… I can remember everything."

"I imagine that violation has you pretty unsettled."

"Unsettled is a, uh, a good word for it," Stefan chuckled humourlessly. "It's hard to reconcile that I once thought Klaus was an entertaining friend, a replacement for Damon…" He shook his head, as if he couldn't believe how wrong he had been.

"And Rebekah?"

"She's…complicated," Stefan said, with a grin that was at once bashful and smug.

"But you're figuring out how to make her tick," she guessed, and Stefan had the grace to blush. He flicked a glance at Enzo, waiting patiently with sleeping Zita in his arms.

"You, uh, you must be Giulia's husband." Giulia bit her lip around a smirk, amusement bubbling up in spite of the situation. Her husband? She stifled a grin. "I'm Stefan, her…cousin."

"Lorenzo," Enzo said with enthusiasm, shit-eating grin in place. He was enjoying the hell out of himself. "I've heard a lot about you, Stefan." Just not from Giulia. Decades ago, trapped in a cell, starved, experimented upon, talking about Stefan had helped Damon pass the time. Enzo, his eyes twinkling in the starlight, turned to Giulia. "I'll go and get Zita settled. Stay and chat with your cousin." He gave her a lecherous grin as he leaned in to give her a lingering kiss, making her shiver. She wasn't going to hear the end of Stefan mistaking him for her husband for a long time. And Enzo knew he wasn't going to get away with kissing her as if he was.

Her husband was a touchy subject. She allowed Caroline to talk about Fabian because not letting Caroline talk about something as huge as Giulia's disintegrating marriage was just recipe for a verbal explosion of nuclear proportions - and she was already anticipating one about her dirty Originals secret. But being kissed by Enzo just highlighted how long it had been since she had been kissed, since she had been caressed, since she had made love. She hadn't seen Fabian in person in just shy of four years; Zita came into their lives, and they'd made a decision. Her marriage had been in limbo ever since. She was still married; she didn't date.

But Enzo's kiss had reminded her just how lonely she was. She didn't need anyone; but she wanted… She wanted Fabian; or some sort of resolution to her marriage. She was nothing if not loyal, and that was a painful, lonely place to be sometimes. She just wasn't wired to be unfaithful.

Enzo wandered off, chuckling under his breath, tickled by Stefan's mistake in his identity, and Tisiphone licked her feet and Zeus huffed as he sat down on the grass. Gallant scented the air in Stefan's direction and sneezed. Giulia watched Enzo walking off in the moonlight with Zita in his arms, reassured that there were few places in the world safer for her daughter to be than in Enzo's grasp.

"Your daughter looks just like you," Stefan said quietly, also watching after Enzo. "You had the same curls at her age." Giulia smiled softly, fiddling with her rings. To anyone who knew her tells, they might wonder what she thought about when she fiddled with them; but if anyone brought up how much Zita looked like her, she touched them out of reflex. Next to her mother's pearl solitaire ring, she wore a dazzling vintage daisy cluster diamond engagement-ring and a simple gold wedding-band. Fabian had matched her rings to her mother's, which she rarely took off. On her other hand, she usually alternated the jewels Damon had given her for each PhD and her completed Architecture degree, or the stunning platinum Art Deco-inspired aquamarine Enzo had given her when Zita was born.

"Stefan?! There you are! I found a nightclub serving all our old favourites, and the most divine jazz band," a chirpy voice declared, and Giulia watched as a blonde beauty approached, having trouble in her heels on the grass. "Apparently there'll be a Charleston competition for charity tomorrow - we should enter! I'm feeling philanthropic. What do you think? I've still got all my frocks. How long do you think you can last after a few De La Louisianes? Who's this?"

"Giulia…I'd like for you to meet Rebakah," Stefan said, and he had been brought up in a time where etiquette meant he knew he was showing Giulia deference by introducing Rebekah to her, rather than the other way around. "Rebekah, this is my great-great-great…great-niece, Giulia Salvatore."

"Pleasure," Rebekah said, with a tight smile and an assessing sweep of pretty blue eyes. "Are we dancing tonight? I wish you'd told me there was dancing, these are not the appropriate heels for the Charleston, by any stretch of the imagination."

"Louboutins. They're pretty, though," Giulia said, glancing down at Rebekah's shoes, the trademark red soles. She knew she had been dismissed by Rebekah, taking a book for its cover worth.

"Stefan took me to New York," Rebekah dimpled, beaming fondly at Stefan. "He's so sweet to me." Stefan just shrugged slightly.

"I guess we'll be dancing," Stefan said softly, glancing at Giulia. "I'll let you go, tuck your daughter in. But maybe tomorrow…we can catch up?"

"Oh, count on it," Giulia promised him. Something had made Rebekah freeze as she glanced between the two of them.

"You have a daughter?" she asked quietly. Her accent was clipped, almost English but with a faint hint of French and a drawl on some words that was distinctly American.

"I do," Giulia nodded.

"How old is she?" Rebekah asked, her entire face illuminating. She truly was beautiful, with high cheekbones, a sweet little nose and plump, pouting lips. Someone had taught her how to apply her makeup as it was worn nowadays, Giulia could tell even in the moonlight.

"Zita is four," Giulia said, and Rebekah's pretty face morphed into a smile that was at once wistful and tragic. Stefan watched her carefully, and took her hand.

"We should let you go. Apparently I've got some drinks to catch up on." Giulia wondered if Kol had ducked out of Rebekah's sight…if Victoire had ducked out of sight, too. They had known each other in New Orleans.

"I had only the two cocktails!" Rebekah protested, but she let Stefan lead her away.

"Goodnight, Giulia."

"One thing before you go, Stefan," Giulia said, and Stefan glanced over his shoulder. "No tucking into the locals. You'll regret it if you do."

Rebekah froze, and turned, with almost animalistic, predatory grace. "Who are you, to give us veiled threats about doing exactly as we please in this armpit of a village? How do you imagine you will stop us?"

"I won't need to try," Giulia said coolly, frowning gently, tilting her head to one side as she observed Rebekah. Most importantly, she didn't cower under the look Rebekah was giving her, one she imagined got Rebekah exactly as she wanted. They would feed; and they would learn. For all intents and purposes, Mystic Falls was a Prohibition-zone to vampires. Like Lily Potter, Giulia had afforded the people of Mystic Falls her protection in her death that night at the quarry. Neither vampire nor werewolf could inflict harm on the human locals, without being punished for it, even the witches were limited as to what they could do, and Sheila was happy about that; it meant fewer people could strong-arm them into unwilling compliance. "Goodnight, Stefan," Giulia said, with a dismissive bite, and when the two were gone, she reached up and pinched between her eyes, suddenly tired.

She checked her watch. So his arrival hadn't ruined her day. It was two a.m. and she could happily compartmentalise the wonderful night she had been enjoying, and Stefan's arrival with Rebekah, as two separate events.

She followed the scent of rich, dark, bitter, chocolatey coffee to Enzo, who was brewing espresso and had lit one of the lamps on the table in the awning and was smoking a cigar with Ric while Jenna and Sheila chatted quietly in the lamplight, wrapped in light blankets because there was definitely a damp chill to the air even in June. She checked in on Zita, who was snoring softly in the teardrop in her night-dress, starfished across the bed. Giulia smoothed a hand over her curls, sighing, and went to sit in Enzo's lap, the only available seat. She sipped her coffee, and smiled when Enzo brought out the bottle of Barolo Chinato, and the tin of lovingly handmade baci di dama Enzo was famous for; he always gifted digestivi and handmade Italian cookies on special occasions, and Jenna especially adored them. She was a big fan of the new traditions Enzo had brought to their lives through his friendship with Giulia, and however he had come into their lives, Jenna wasn't sorry Enzo was her friend.

And Giulia needed his friendship in that moment, with Stefan's appearance and Rebekah's dismissive attitude. Enzo had cuddled Zita in the diner; now he cuddled Giulia in the lamplight. Even after Ric and Jenna had stumbled off to bed, hand-in-hand, and Sheila had gently held Giulia's face in her hands, kissing her before heading off to the RV, to Bonnie and Penelope and the Unborn, Giulia stayed in Enzo's lap, letting him cuddle her.

She had never known how much she wanted a bond like she had with Enzo in her life until times like this, when he just let her sit in his lap and cuddled her, and didn't ask her about the million thoughts racing through her mind, just protected her from the worst of them by keeping her grounded and in the moment, enjoying their closeness.

They drank an extra finger of the fortified wine, nibbling the sweet-looking little cookies, literally translated as Lady's kisses, and turned the lamp low, watching the stars, listening to the night-insects and the strains of music carrying on the breeze, biting their lips around smiles as Caroline and Jesse's tent shivered without a breeze.

They waved and smiled when Ashlyn and Jeremy staggered back to their tent, the beam of their flashlight darting about as Ashlyn stifled giggles and Jeremy laughed, and paused for a breathless kiss; and Giulia sat and fiddled with her rings, and fought the influence of a few cocktails and a long day and a constant reminder of the ache in her chest and her loneliness…

Enzo took her hand, gently, and gave her a wistful smile. He stoppered the wine-bottle, and gave her wrist a delicate, chaste kiss. "It'll all be alright," he told her quietly, and when the tent next-door collapsed, with Jesse and Caroline trapped inside, locked tight in each other's embrace, they choked on laughter, but dutifully snapped the rods back into place and tightened the guy-ropes as Jesse's rich laugh echoed and Caroline's muffled squeals of mortification carried on the air.

"Stefan thought we're married." She smiled to herself, curled up in the teardrop with Zita on one side and Enzo on the other, the little dogs at the foot of the bed and Zeus guarding the awning.

"I take it as a compliment," Enzo murmured against her neck, and Giulia smiled.

"I might, too, if it was the truth."

"It's nice to know you wouldn't be ashamed to marry me. Personally I can understand Stefan's mistake; you are such an incorrigible flirt whenever I'm around."

"Me?" She smiled, wriggling onto her back, and glanced over at Enzo.

"Yes, you." He smiled lazily back at her.

"It would be so easy, wouldn't it?"

"What would?"

"You and me, a life together, with Zita." It sounded wonderful. But they had reached this point in their relationship because they weren't romantically involved. They were family; that was a stronger, abiding, deeper kind of love.

"I don't think true love is supposed to be easy," Enzo said thoughtfully.

"No," Giulia sighed, gazing up at the low ceiling. "It certainly is not that." She continued to stare, until Enzo asked her what was keeping her up.

"Just…time passing…people being left behind," she said softly. She glanced at Enzo. "Tomorrow I'm going to have to tell Stefan exactly what it means that we've all moved on without him."

"And with everything else you've got going on… You just don't know how to make life easier for yourself, is the problem," Enzo sighed, gathering her up in his arms.

"True," Giulia agreed, humming softly.

He sighed, leaning in to press a tender kiss to her cheek. "Get some sleep, Giulia."

"Can't make me," she sighed, cuddling up close, relaxing, and fell into a deep sleep.


Stefan caught up with her early the next morning; she had left Enzo preparing the campidanese sauce for their lunch while she walked the dogs, her boots on and a light jacket covering her pyjamas as she and Zita wandered along the hedgerows and the treeline into the woods. She wanted to know everything about Zita learning Shirley Temple's 'Codfish Ball' dance, and smiled to herself, wondering how her tiny girl had kept the secret for so long. She'd had no idea.

But then, her father had had no idea about a good deal of the stuff Giulia had gotten up to when she was a kid.

They walked, hand-in-hand, watching the dogs snuffle and explore, chatting about dancing and Shirley Temple and Enzo and Caroline working together to teach Zita the dance she loved. Zita, who always loved a dawdle whenever they walked the dogs, was for once not distracted by every patch of wildflowers or the twitching of the underbrush as a bird dug for worms; she was engrossed in her conversation with Giulia about dancing, and music. She told Giulia which of the bands she had liked watching the most yesterday, and the colours she could see when she listened to others. Giulia smiled, thinking of Kandinsky, and how passionate Zita was about music. Ever since she was a newborn she had stilled to listen, entranced; Giulia had spent hours on the piano, or the violin. Her tiny old gunmetal iPod Nano was the source of classical and jazz and big band and punk and classic rock and it was the Holy Grail to Zita, who had learned through playing with Ruth's Kindle Fire when the Saltzmans babysat to find music on YouTube.

A four-year-old shouldn't love Saint-Saëns' Cello Concerto in A Minor Op. 33 and Mendelssohn's Hebrides and Stravinsky's Capriccio for Piano & Orchestra and the soundtrack to Wonder Woman and The Hunger Games quadrilogymore than, say, 'Let it Go', as Ruth had, or The Greatest Showman, which had been on repeat at Caroline's place for months - admittedly in Giulia's car, too; Zita had fallen in love with the musical. But classical music, and movie scores fascinated her.

Zita woke every morning for music. The first thing she did when she clambered downstairs for breakfast was to climb onto the piano stool while Giulia prepared their oatmeal; if it was too early for her to be allowed to come downstairs, she had a small stereo in her bedroom that Giulia let her listen to, quietly, or she picked up her guitar and started plucking the strings, or her flute. She was meticulous with her musical instruments; and because Giulia wanted to encourage but not smother her talent, she was slowly introducing more instruments for Zita to explore, and Zita did explore. She sat and played and taught herself just by listening, finding out what sounded beautiful.

Zita danced with Giulia because she had learned from watching her mother that it was fun, and dancing made Giulia happy. But she engaged with the music more than Giulia had ever seen anyone truly listen to it, as if focusing every fibre of her being to absorb it into her soul. She understood it, as a language few others knew how to decipher. Like her mother and codes. Giulia had been around the same age when her father realised that Giulia's mind was extraordinary.

And Giulia was slowly starting to experience the mingled wonder and dread her father had felt when he realised that his child was extraordinarily gifted. Because hers was, too. And like her father, she was a single-parent to a truly gifted child. The difference was, she also had Caroline, and Enzo, and Liz, and the Saltzmans, and Mason, and Sheila, and Carol Lockwood, and Matt, and Rose, and Kol, and Cara. Her father had cloistered himself in the Boarding House with his strange, bright daughter, a sorrowful introvert broken by the loss of his wife and the unresolved disappearance of his brother; Giulia had returned to Mystic Falls to allow herself and her newborn daughter to be embraced into a sprawling family, a support network to buoy her when times were hard and share in every wonder.

She had returned to Mystic Falls because she needed somewhere sleepy and welcoming to raise her daughter.

For the first time in her life, she hadn't wanted to do it alone.

She'd needed help. Giulia had come home.

Stefan's reappearance represented the fragility of that illusion of safety she had returned to, more ever than waking the Originals yet had.

Giulia glanced down at Zita as a slim dark figure approached, hands in his pockets. If she had had second-thoughts about waking the Originals, she knew she didn't regret taking the dagger out of Finn's chest. He doted on Zita; if nothing else, she thought he might protect her should she and Enzo fail to do so. Enzo was charming and irreverent but she knew what he was capable of when they were threatened. But she didn't want him to put himself in harm's way because of something she had done. She had freed him; she had not freed him to use him.

Stefan approached, as carefully as he had last night - more so, because his eyes rested on Zita with her beautiful curls and yellow gumboots, leaning over to vigorously scratch Gallant as he wriggled and writhed on his back, snorting.

"Where'd you come from?" Giulia asked quietly, glancing around, readjusting her sunglasses. It was six a.m. and there was no such thing as a lie-in with three dogs and a four-year-old little girl; the birds had been singing since five and Giulia had woken with Zita's foot digging into her neck and the dogs were insistent about going out for their morning walk. Giulia never liked walking the dogs in the heat of the day; it was first thing in the morning before breakfast or late in the evening, decompressing from a long day.

"Oh, I didn't go home last night," Stefan said, shrugging slightly, his smile hesitant but his eyes sparkling. He was obviously in high spirits, despite everything. Giulia wondered what that meant.

"Did you have a De La Louisiane?"

"Those were always Rebekah's tipple," Stefan smiled lazily.

"Where's she this morning?"

"Back at the house, going through her trousseau," Stefan chuckled at the outdated term for Rebekah's wardrobe. "She wants to come back tonight and dance - for a donation, of course. I know this is a ticketed event."

"And yet, here you are," Giulia said, glancing at him over the top of her sunglasses. "Where are you set up, anyway?"

"There's a, uh, ultra-modern place out toward Mystic Gardens," Stefan sighed. He didn't do contemporary.

"Oh, with the view of the woods," she said grimly, nodding. She knew which house he meant; there were only so many modern mansions in Mystic Falls. "A contemporary eyesore."

"You know it?" He sounded like he agreed with Giulia's opinion of the place. It was an ultra-chic, ultra-impractical place of squashy off-white carpets, sharp white furniture, frosted glass, shining chrome fixtures, ambiguous off-white art, marble busts and no personality whatsoever.

"Rather big for three people."

"Klaus likes to make a statement." Giulia made a thoughtful noise. She was a fully-qualified Architect; she focused on sustainability, green buildings, recycling, and rejuvenation. Truthfully, she thought the white mansion overlooking the woods was a gaudy monstrosity; whoever had commissioned it twenty years ago had obviously had more money than taste. Stefan shrugged offhandedly. "The colours changing should look pretty come fall."

Giulia didn't say anything about the implication; that Klaus would still be here in the autumn. Zeus stalked closer to them, sniffed at Stefan, sneezed, and came to wind himself around Giulia's legs, as if he sensed the threat and simultaneously wanted to protect and seek Giulia's protection.

"I thought you were a cat person," he said quietly, eyeing Zeus the Weimeraner and Giulia's two little Dachshunds, who had more attitude packed into their tiny little bodies than in Zeus' left ear.

"I inherited Zeus," Giulia shrugged, and the glorious silver-blue dog glanced up at her with vivid blue eyes, ears twitching. "When his dads broke up, they couldn't decide who deserved to keep him. We fell in love, so I took him in." Kind of like Enzo. Stefan smiled at her, eyeing the dogs warily, his eyes resting briefly on Zita, her curls shining chestnut and copper and molasses and gold in the early sunlight.

"Caroline's daddies couldn't look after Zeus anymore," Zita said, plucking her thumb out of her mouth to speak to Stefan, her voice sad, as she reached out to lovingly stroke Zeus's velvety ears. Zeus nuzzled her neck and licked her ear.

"Zita…this is Stefan, my cousin," Giulia said, touching her daughter's curls gently. Dark eyes flitted up to Stefan's face. "Stefan, this is my daughter, Zita."

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Zita," Stefan said, to his great-great-several-times-removed-great-niece. He smiled, as if it was a genuine pleasure; he had been raised with manners, after all.

"Hello," Zita said softly, glancing uncertainly from Giulia to Stefan, frowning gently as she looked to Giulia to gauge how she should react to this newcomer. Though very young, Zita was observant; already, she was showing signs that she was a gentle, confident child with a kind nature and a stunning aptitude for music. Perhaps she heard the underlying tension in their voices, in what was not being said.

It was clear Stefan was unused to proximity with children: the last one he had been around…was Giulia. And she now had the memories Damon had compelled her to forget as a child, of being attacked by Stefan, when he had snacked on her pet rabbits Rumball and Daffodil; she had been five at the time. Vampires and babies didn't mix. But Stefan made an effort. "Did you name Zeus?"

Zita started to reply, but had her thumb in her mouth; Giulia reached down and gently tugged her hand away. Zita glanced up at her, squinted in the sunshine, latched on to the hem of Giulia's jacket, but glanced up and met Stefan's eye when she said, "No, he's my older-brother. Do you have any pets?"

"I don't," Stefan admitted, with a smile. "I did used to have a pet pig, though."

"A pig?!" Zita gurgled a laugh, glancing up at Giulia to smile.

"Uh-huh."

"What was her name?"

"Her name was Martha." Zita giggled softly. "You think that's a funny name for a pig?"

"I - I like it," Zita said softly, glancing coyly at Stefan.

"So what are these two called?" he asked, indicating the Dachshunds.

"That's Gallant. And this is Tisiphone." Her lisp caught on her S's and Giulia's lips twitched.

"Gallant and Tisiphone and Zeus?" Stefan shot Giulia a look, no doubt remembering Daffodil and Rumball just as she had. So she gave her pets odd names!

"Simba had to stay at home. He's a house-lion."

"You have a lion?"

"No, he's a kitty! But he thinks he's a lion, he likes watching The Lion King but I - I don't like…" Zita trailed off, looking crestfallen.

"The wildebeest stampede," Giulia murmured, patting Zita's curls tenderly, and Stefan's lips twitched.

"Your mom never liked that bit when she was as little as you, either." All the more poignant now because Mufasa had been betrayed and died trying to protect his child.

"Come on, we should get this small stampede moving," Giulia said, nudging Zeus onward with her knee, gently, and the other two dogs scrabbled and gambolled around. Zita skipped ahead, pausing for wildflowers, and to scratch a wiggling Tisiphone. Zeus kept pace with her, her constant guardian.

Keeping an eye on her dogs and her daughter, Giulia fell into step beside Stefan, who still had his hands in his pockets and was squinting in the sunlight. There was a touch of damp in the air, freshness, the early-morning dew that would soon be chased off by June sunshine in Virginia. "How's your diet?"

Stefan glanced at her.

"I guess I don't need to tell you that I've been drinking human blood," Stefan said. He was always more charismatic when he was on the hard stuff; he was so broody when he went vampire-vegan. "But I've kind of had to learn to manage it. One of us at least had to be mindful…at least, one of us had to tidy up the mess we left behind."

"So you've been skating the razor's edge," Giulia said.

"All those years, Damon tried to tell me to just embrace what I am and learn to pull myself back from the edge…to choose to feed and leave a human dazed but alive," Stefan sighed, shaking his head. He glanced at Giulia, holding her gaze. "Would've been easier on everyone if I'd just listened…instead of judging Damon for his lifestyle… I guess I've learned how to flirt with the edge rather than flinging myself headfirst… Everyone thinks the Ripper of Monterrey is a vampire legend...the Ripper has nothing on Klaus now."

"I've heard some things," Giulia admitted quietly. Katherine was not her only source.

"He's wanted me to be as careful as possible to cover his tracks," Stefan frowned softly, but he sighed, shaking his head. "I'm not gonna ask where you get your information from."

"Just be grateful I don't disseminate it."

"What've you heard?" Stefan asked uneasily, glancing at her. In the early-morning sunlight, he looked like a normal seventeen-year-old, though a very handsome one. He had an edgier, more mature Zac Efron vibe to him, with his perfect light-brunette hair and pretty eyes, the Salvatore bone-structure and edgy, subtly moneyed sense of style.

"I've heard that the werewolf aspect of his nature isn't bound to the moon's cycle, because he's also a vampire…but because he's also a vampire, he can never turn fully into a wolf like a true werewolf can… He can't keep blood down, and his bite isn't toxic to vampires… I know that because you're still here, even after what happened along the Appalachian Trail all those years back… I've heard he makes the Ripper of Monterrey look like a shy kindergartner when he's on a terror, but he's mostly mindless; when the bloodlust hits, he's driven by warring instincts. I've heard watching his transformations is truly…harrowing."

Stefan sighed, gazing off into the distance, at Zita, skipping alongside Zeus, with the tiny dogs pelting after them trying to keep up on their short little legs, tails wagging energetically. For a little while, he didn't speak. He didn't deny any of it; that was damning in itself. After a little while, he sighed heavily.

"Let's talk about something else. Something happier," he said, looking almost anguished for half a second. She couldn't imagine the toll the last decade had taken on him. "You have a daughter."

Giulia smiled softly. "I have a daughter."

"Of all the things I might've expected to find when I got back home, that wasn't one of them," Stefan said thoughtfully, and Giulia glanced at him, knowing sort of what he meant. It wasn't that Giulia hadn't been maternal as a child or teenager. She had loved children. She'd just never had a mother; she had dreaded pregnancy, the repercussions of having grown up believing she had killed her mother in childbirth.

"How so?"

"I - I don't know, I guess I never really imagined you'd have kids," Stefan said quietly. "Kind of like your dad, surprising everyone when he came home from Italy with your mother… I guess the last time we saw each other, you were…I don't know…intensely academic." Meaning, she hadn't gone around telling everyone how much she wanted a family of her own; she might've told them the title of the essay she was researching, or the obscure Renaissance manuscript she was reading. "I don't know, maybe I imagined you on Wall Street. Kind of like Harvey Specter with breasts."

"You've been watching a lot of television."

"Thank God for Netflix… So what do I need to catch up on?"

Giulia glanced at Stefan, and saw the hesitant, sombre expression on his face, wistful and almost reluctant. The friends and loved ones he had left behind a decade ago had moved on without him; and they had grown up. Only Caroline remained as young and beautiful as she had been at seventeen; the rest of them were aging. Even Giulia. It wasn't noticeable until she looked at photos of herself with Caroline, or standing here, now, beside Stefan, and realising how young he still looked.

She had forgotten he was handsome; she hadn't realised he did look young.

She hadn't forgotten how much Stefan and Elena had been in love; she hadn't forgotten her part in putting an end to Elena endangering herself in her efforts to find a way to get Stefan back.

Giulia knew when Stefan asked what he needed to catch up on…he was really asking about her - Elena. Once upon a time Giulia would've been hurt by that: She was stood here in front of him but he only cared about Elena. It didn't bother her any more.

She sighed, glancing at Zita.

"I know we told you about Damon having to compel Elena to let you go…" Stefan nodded. She had become so hell-bent on freeing Stefan from his deal with Klaus that she had scared people: Elena had refused to accept that Stefan had left, and that she had to move on without him. She had to deal with the loss of John, her birth-father, and of Stefan, the love of her life.

Damon had finally compelled Elena to let Stefan go; but not to stop loving him. Giulia often wondered whether that was their error. She didn't think Damon could ever have erased his little brother from the mind and the heart of the girl who truly loved him.

They had gifted her with acceptance. Everything else, she had to work on. Getting Elena to the point where she had been coaxed into a relationship with Matt, where she had moved in with him, married him, had been excited to carry their child and give birth to him… Elena might not have made it through her senior-year of high-school if not for Caroline's tenacity; Giulia had been in New York at school, leaving Elena the sole focus of all Caroline's considerable energy. Had it not been for Caroline's stubbornness and friendship, Giulia didn't think any of them would still have a relationship with Elena; she had guided Elena through her grief.

Giulia looked at Stefan and realised they were in a similar boat: they had both left the ones they loved, their relationships in intolerable limbo. She thought of Fabian, her stomach going cold, and swallowed.

If it were her in Stefan's shoes, Giulia would want to know how the ground lay, without embellishment. There was no way to sugar-coat it, so she didn't: "Elena and Matt are married; their son Grayson is a couple months old."

If Stefan's heart had shattered into a million pieces, his smile didn't show it.


A.N.: Another chapter for you lot!