A/N: I'm finally making some decent progress with season 5 of TVD. Finally about to wrap up when I've had Rise III already started LOL

Tbh this season just kills me inside -shrug-

Thank you all though to everyone who enjoys what I've been writing about it and stuck around to keep reading! You're all awesome!

xoxo
Kuraki-chan

21: You Can't Change Your Fate.

Damon had been inexplicably glad to walk into Nova's house and hear the sound of the grand piano echoing throughout again. He approached quietly as to just watch her for a little bit. Her face and body were calm and serene while her fingers tapped away on the keys. Her hair was slowly starting to grow its way down her shoulder blades which allowed the natural waves to begin to form. It had felt like so long since Damon saw her at any kind of such peace. As soon as he stepped into the room she stopped playing and gave a small smile to him.

"You don't know how nice it is to see you playing again," he told her before joining her on the piano bench.

"I know that my humanity isn't intact anymore, but I'm learning to work with what I've got I guess." She shrugged. "Some sort of normalcy keeps me stable."

"Oh, good. Then you might be more inclined to do something for me."

One of Nova's brows rose curiously and skeptically as she looked to him. "I suppose it depends on what that is."

"Well…" He drawled with a playful grin. "I was thinking about May."

"What about May…?"

"For our wedding of course."

She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. "This again?"

"Absolutely 'this again'! I could have lost you the other night, Nov. We've spent over a century and a half just trying to be and remain together. Don't you think we deserve something good for ourselves?"

She rolled her eyes and kept looking everywhere in the room but him, but she honestly couldn't say he was wrong. "Why May?" She finally asked softly.

He smiled and took her hand. "Because that's when I met the most beautiful girl from Romania. Also we missed Valentine's Day so we couldn't be cliche like that."

That actually got her to laugh a little. A sweet sound that always brought joy to Damon's ears. "Okay, then what makes you think we can pull together a wedding amongst all the bullshit we're dealing with in, what? Like two months?"

"I'm sorry, have you met Caroline Forbes? She could help pull together our wedding if we wanted it tomorrow evening."

"Fine, I'll start mulling over ideas if it'll get you off my back."

"Oh, good!" Came the excited cheer of Zina suddenly. "I've got plenty already. There's this site called Pinterest that's just filled with ideas."

Nova sweatdropped. "I've got to get new locks and start using them."

While Nova and Zina sorted out wedding ideas (mildly begrudgingly on Nova's part as she was forced to stare at a laptop her sister had acquired), Damon, Stefan, Caroline, and Enzo approached Sloan and the Travelers. Elena was doing her best to sort out her life again at Whitmore with Bonnie, Liv, and Luke. "We know you want the doppelgangers," Damon started. "We want something too."

Sloan raised a brow curiously. "And what would that be? Also, why would I care enough to give it to you?"

"We need Nova's humanity back. The archangel Remiel damaged it. Can you fix it?"

Her eyes kept flicking to the other three vampires, Stefan especially. "I probably could. But something of that caliber will require a substantial payment. There's still one more doppelganger out there; I need to find him, and kill him."

"And how exactly is that to be accomplished?" questioned Caroline.

Sloan smirked as she looked to Stefan. "By creating a link through Stefan's mind."

Damon looked to his brother. There was hesitation in his olive eyes, but then he flashed back to Nova tumbling down the stairs in 1860. He wanted nothing more than to laugh and say 'hell no', but guilt began to creep in. He glanced to Sloan, then back to Damon and saw Nova drowning in the river again with Damon rushing to save her. He even recalled how Nova swapped herself in in place of himself to Klaus. His rocky relationship with Nova from day one was what got her into this mess. Finally, he sighed. "I'll do it."

"I'm not wearing white," Nova told her twin for what had to be the hundredth time.

"Well I hate to break it to you, sister, but that's kind of all you get when you search 'wedding dresses'." Zina quipped back.

The elder sister rolled her eyes and snatched the laptop. Her lengthy nails clicked away on each key, emerald eyes scanning the screen with a quick pace. She made some faces at some things she found until one caught her eye. "That's why you don't look up basic ass wedding dresses, prost (dumbass)."

When Nova handed the laptop back, Zina's brows raised. "Okay, fine. So what about your maid of honor and bridesmaids?"

"Lethia is my maid of honor, obviously. And I want the dresses based around a dark or emerald green."

"Alright, so who are you having for your bridesmaids?" Nova's expression deadpanned and looked out the window rather than at the laptop or her sister. Zina sweatdropped. "You haven't thought about bridesmaids."

"How am I supposed to? I don't have female friends. I never have. It's always just been me, Lethia, and Damon."

"You do have friends though, Nova. After everything that's happened since you returned to this psychotic town you actually managed to gain people who give a damn about you. People who just try to help you do and be better; be happy. Do you need me to actually list them off for you?" She started ticking off the names on her fingers: "There's Zarya who's bent over backwards for this shitty family, Elena, Caroline, Sofia, Daciana, Nessa, Katia, even me. And that's just women."

Nova's eyes turned towards her sister who was looking to her with a sweet smile that reminded Nova of their mother a bit. No, she realized. That's Katia's smile… Katia got her mother's smile… A small ache clutched her heart at the thought of the dhampir.

"We can deal with the bridesmaids later," she finally spoke in a quiet voice.

Zina decided not to press any further. She could see that, even with her damaged humanity, Nova didn't feel worthy of anyone's friendship. Not unless it was Damon and Lethia who had seen her at her worst plenty of times. She nodded and moved onto more trivial things like accessories and the cake.

Miles away, Sloan was essentially frying Stefan's head to find the other doppelganger. When she did, Caroline and Enzo were sent to kill him. Caroline was less than thrilled, but it kept Stefan's brain from being totally fried again. She didn't trust that Sloan could or even would restore Nova's humanity, but it was worth a shot. If they were going to stand up against the Travelers and archangels then they needed Nova Vasile in top shape.

It took a few hours, but finally Zina left Nova alone in her home. For a little while she continued to scroll the 'pinterest' that Zina had showed her. When she found herself growing bored and uncaring, she took Damon's black box out from beneath her bed. One by one she read more of the letters again. She read about the escaped tomb vampires, John Gilbert and Elena's actual birth parents, and Mason Lockwood. Damon frequently boasted about how she would have seen it all coming from a mile away which made her smile. She couldn't really deny it though; she remembered each and every one of those vampires locked in the tomb. She would have known their plan to attack on Founder's Day.

"I should have come back sooner," she muttered before returning to the laptop.

Damon approached Sloan once it was confirmed that Tom Avery was dead. Most of the Travelers had already packed up and begun 'traveling' yet again. "I can't help you," she told him uncaringly. "Even if I could have fixed Nova's humanity, I wouldn't because she is a Vasile. And the Vasiles have done nothing but damn us for centuries."

Anger burned in Damon's chest. "That was Saskia!" he argued. "And it was only because Remiel manipulated her! The rest of the Vasiles are trying to fight back against those two lunatics but we can't do that without Nova!"

She opened her mouth to speak but no sound came out. Instead, her eyes widened in horror just before blood poured from her mouth. She started to choke, then blood spouted from her nose, ears, and eyes. Damon took a step back as Sloan fell face first into the dirt. Someone stood behind her a few feet wearing a dark cloak with the hood up. Their hand was outstretched, implying that they had done magic to kill Sloan. Damon prepared himself to have to either take off quickly or kill the stranger even quicker. Finally, the person's hands grasped the edges of the hood and tugged it down.

Brown hair fell down in light waves as Auriel smiled up at the vampire. "Never trust Travelers," she told him calmly. "It's a miracle they didn't fry your brother's brain. They do, however, have his and Elena's blood for their next phase. I had a feeling I would be just a pinch late today."

"Riel?" Damon questioned with disbelief. "What the fuck is going on? The last time we saw you-"

"Oh, don't worry about that." She stepped over Sloan's body carelessly as if it were just a speed bump or tree root. "Do you want your beloved's humanity repaired or not?"

"I can't trust you."

"Well, you couldn't trust Sloan either." She smiled darkly before giving a tap with her foot to Sloan's body. "The difference is that I can actually do it. It'll just take some time."

"We don't exactly have a whole lot of time."

"I am well aware. But you have more time than you think. Right now, Runa's body is wearing too badly for Remiel to continue to use. And with the deaths of the clan dhampirs, Remiel must search elsewhere for a vessel."

"So we have until she gets a brand new suit. Lovely. What about Saskia?"

"Unlike her mother, Saskia is wearing thin but has no desire to take another body or extend her life further."

"Then what the hell is Saskia trying to do?"

"That's not quite any of your business," she smiled up at him.

They're working together, he realized. They're trying to make sure Remiel goes down, but why…? What does Saskia get out of it? What the hell does Saskia want, especially with Riel on her side?

"What Remiel did to Nova," Auriel's voice broke him from his thoughts, "was some pretty extensive damage. It will take a great power to fix it."

"And you can do it…?"

"I can do many things, Damon. You've barely touched upon the story just yet."

"What are you reading?"

Zina jumped a little at the sudden sound of Jeremy's voice. She had been alone in the boarding house; how didn't she hear him come in or approach her? Her dark eyes looked up from the large, old book in her lap to the young hunter. "A very old grimoire in case of emergency."

He sat beside her on the couch and looked over her shoulder at the pages. His face scrunched up. "In what language? That's nothing I've ever seen before."

She snickered and rolled her eyes. "I sincerely doubt you speak over thirty languages anyways. This is actually a very dead language. One that makes angels and demons shiver when they hear it. It technically has no name, but I guess some have taken to calling it the 'Verbis Diablo' thanks to this show Penny Dreadful."

"Why is it so scary to angels and demons?"

"Why are you taking such an interest?"

He chuckled a little and rubbed the back of his head. "Well… everyone else is gone. And after the spell you did to bring Nova here from Whitmore… I guess I'm pretty interested in the things you know."

She looked back down at the book so her hair fell enough to hide the light pinkness coming to her pale cheeks. "It was a language that only Lucifer and Remiel knew in Heaven," she explained. "Angels speak Enochian which meant that their conversations were not private. So they came up with their own language."

"What made it so awful then?"

"Remiel, of course. She imbued it with the darkness that burned inside of her and it became a cursed tongue."

"So is that one of her books?"

"It's actually one of Lucifer's. I'm hoping to find something that might be able to fix Nova's humanity."

Jeremy made her jump again when he put his hand on top of hers. Her head jerked up to look at him. "I don't think he would have known anything about a vampire's humanity, Zina. Hasn't he been locked away for a good few millennia?"

Sorrow flashed in her dark eyes as she looked away. "I know that… I was hoping that just maybe, if it wasn't directly related, that I could find something to help her…"

"I never would have thought I'd see the day where you would be so determined to help your sister." Jeremy smiled at her. He still hadn't taken his hand back either.

"Never thought I'd see the day where I was alive again…" She muttered.

Jeremy chuckled. "Yeah, that happens a lot around here. For what it's worth, I'm glad you're alive and changed for the better with it."

A warmth began to grow where her heart should have been. She gave his hand that still held hers a little squeeze. "I couldn't waste this life continuing to be angry and bitter. It's not why I was brought back."

"So you do know why you were brought back?"

"Not really, no. All I know is that Lucifer had the mojo and did it because… because Siya Vasile asked him to."

"Siya?" His brows raised. "Isn't that Zarya's mom?" She nodded. "Why would she ask that? And why would Lucifer just do it?"

Zina shrugged. "I haven't been able to come up with a solid theory myself. When Zarya's family was about to die going over the bridge, Siya made a plea to Lucifer that he would spare Zarya's life and he did. He continues to to this very day. I don't understand why I was significant enough for her to ask that I be revived, why he went through with it, or why the repercussions were worth it."

"Do you think that maybe Siya needed Katia on the Other Side? And the other dhampirs? She was a hunter when she was alive, so she's got to have a plan of her own, right?"

Bonnie saw them both through the front window. She could only see the backs of them, but it still showed how closely Zina and Jeremy sat together. She turned hastily and walked back the way she had come without ever being noticed.

"I couldn't even begin to fathom what Siya Vasile could possibly be plotting from the Other Side," said Zina.

"Well, being over there who knows what she's seen? We need to focus about right here on our own plane right now though. I was hoping you might want to help with something."

"Why families get kicks out of imprisoning their relatives in boxes astounds me."

Lucifer looked to the white haired woman standing outside of the Cage with a raised brow. "To what do I owe the pleasure, Vespera?"

She chuckled lightly as she circled around the old, iron Cage. "Of course you would be the one to remember my name I abandoned eons ago. The time is nearly upon us, my dear nephew."

"Rya is nowhere near ready or able to kill Remiel. What are you even doing here? Won't Remiel find out?"

"Of course not. When Remiel went dark, my power that was used to create her went dark and therefore detached itself from me. That is why she struggles so deeply. She has nothing to root herself to. And Zarya will be ready in due time."

"So why are you here, Vespera? And quite frankly how?"

She smirked. "I have an anchor, now. Thank you for that, by the way."

"Who the hell-" Then it struck him. "Zina?"

She nodded. "She's a very capable woman. And having an anchor allows me more access. Something your Father didn't quite count on."

"Fine. Then for the third time: what the hell are you doing here?"

"I thought you might want some insight to what the future brings since it's so terribly boring and dreadful down here."

"Don't you mean what the future could bring? I thought the future was ever changing."

"Oh, it is, but there are a few fixed points that will happen no matter what the course is."

"Like what?"

"Like the daughter you and Zarya will create that will hold the full power of the clan."