Back on my schedule again and good news! This is the last boring episode that I have forced myself to write and the next few are smooth sailing until we get to Season 3! I'm working my hardest to pre-write them for updates every Wednesday at 5PM. Enjoy the chapter everyone!
Disclaimer: Refer to the first chapter please :)
The Dinner Party
With the dying embers of the fire at Fell's Church, the scourge of the vampires had passed. And though war raged all around us, our town was safe from the demons of the night.
Or so we thought, for the monsters we drove to their fiery deaths had begat new monsters.
Elena was positioned on the couch in the Gilbert lake house reading Jonathan Gilbert's journal intently to pass the time where she was alone, since all three vampires that accompanied her to the lake house were steering clear of her and her apparent martyr self at the moment. She pushed the thought of them out of her mind and read about the encounter Jonathan Gilbert had with a vampire the following nights after the massacre at the church.
I knew I was about to die. You cannot run from a vampire. I saw the vampire who killed me; I recognized him.
It was Stefan Salvatore.
Elena read the words over and over again, trying to comprehend them as she looked out the window looking over the clear water and watched as Stefan paced on the edge of the dock by himself. She tried to rid herself of the shock, but it was nearly impossible. Stefan? Stefan Salvatore?
With confounded eyes and a sped heartbeat, she lowered her head and continued reading.
Stefan watched as the stone he threw at on the lake skipped over and over again, more than it should have if it had been a human's throw. He stood in silence and kept throwing stones so that they skipped nearly halfway over the lake, but just as he threw the second stone in his hand, he heard his phone ringing from his pocket. Solemnly, he reached inside and answered it.
"What's going on?"
"Well, I showered. I shaved. Had breakfast. Very relaxed."
Stefan observed Elena inside of the lake house and mumbled, "That makes one of us."
"I did hear one piece of good news though. Tyler Lockwood ran away from home last night..." Damon told his brother happily. Stefan raised his eyebrows.
"How do you know?"
"Well I heard it from Sheriff Forbes, who heard it from a very distraught Carol Lockwood. Thus, ending our werewolf chapter, bringing us to..."
"Killing Elijah," Stefan finished.
"Exactly."
Despite Damon's good mood reflected in his tone, Stefan was quite the opposite. "Well, it's not going to be easy. He's crafty."
"Well, I've got a crafty little dagger."
"He's an Original," Stefan complained. "We don't know what all that encompasses."
"Oh, trust me, Stefan. I'm gonna dot all my t's. I don't want any surprises."
"Wow," Stefan began, genuinely surprised at his brother's actions, "Damon, tell me you're actually gonna be careful for once?"
He could practically hear the eye roll. "Yes, Stefan, I've become you. How tragic for both of us. Hey, what's the deal with Judy Moody rejecting my phone calls?"
Stefan sighed. "You'll have to ask Claire. I'm sure she has her reasons."
"Well, can you tell her it's extremely annoying? The one time I actually need her around she decided to go on a spa vacation." Stefan scoffed. "All right, brother, got to run. I have a murder to plan. Busy day."
Damon ended the phone call without so much as a warning, but Stefan didn't mind. He slipped his phone back into his pocket and turned to go back up to the cabin, but just as he did, he watched as Claire and Amelia walked down the dock to meet him. He walked forward to meet them halfway, but he could see the reluctance in his own girlfriend's eyes to come and talk to him. He didn't blame her, after what had happened the night before. Claire squinted at Stefan in the morning sun.
"Let me guess. Damon called you?"
"He says you're ignoring his phone calls," Stefan informed her as they came to a stop on the dock. She shrugged.
"I needed a weekend away from him. Sue me."
"He wanted me to tell you that it's hindering his plans." Though Stefan relayed the information, he was very robotic about doing so. "Says the one time he needed you, you decided to go on a spa retreat."
"Asshole," Claire murmured, but sighed. "Whatever. I'll call him later."
"What's he up to?" Amelia asked.
"He's..." Stefan shook his head and thought for a moment before confessing, "...trying to kill Elijah." Both King girls widened their eyes. "Yeah. I know. But it doesn't seem like we have any more options what with...finding out what we did last night."
Amelia shifted uncomfortably, something so slight and insignificant, yet it caused all three to become quiet. Claire noticed Stefan eyeing Amelia carefully, and she realized that she was basically stepping in the middle of things. Deciding to give her sister and her friend some time to talk, she began to retreat from the situation slowly and cautiously.
"You know, I'm gonna go...check on Elena. See if she's feeling up for a little chat about this nonexistent future she plans to have." Claire muttered a nervous laugh. "You two can...um, figure out your issues."
Leaving Amelia and Stefan to their bidding, Claire walked up from the dock back into the warm cabin, where Elena was sitting on the couch with Jonathan Gilbert's journal in her hand. Upon Claire's entrance, Elena looked up awkwardly, and Claire said nothing to her for a few beats. At last, Elena spoke.
"Is Stefan still mad?"
Claire scoffed. "Of course he's still mad. We're all mad, Elena."
"We have a difference of opinion," Elena shot rationally. "Everyone's not going to always agree with me on everything."
"Elena," the vampire began icily, "you've agreed to sacrifice yourself to an Original vampire to break some centuries-old curse based on the words of my vampire bitch sire who scared you into thinking that everyone you love is going to die." Elena lowered her eyes as Claire crossed her arms and scoffed again. "To say that we all have a difference of opinion with you is the understatement of the century."
"You would know."
"Yes, I would. Because, unlike you, I have lived more than 17 years of my life." Bitterly, Claire moved herself over to the couch and propped her feet up on the table, staring at Elena lying down with a blanket over her legs. She shot her a sour smile and looked at the journal in Elena's hands. "Good reading?"
Elena frowned. "More or less. He has a lot to say. It's insane...the things he wrote in his journal that he kept from the Founding Families. Stuff that nobody knows. Stuff that...that Stefan's never told me."
As Elena said her dark thought, she let Claire take the journal for herself and read the bookmarked page as she lowered her feet from the table. Claire's eyes skimmed the words and she saw the description of what Stefan had vaguely recounted to her the night that it happened, and an immediate look of recognition came over her face. Claire looked up at Elena, her blue eyes swarmed with guilt.
"We were...all angry at the Founding Families," Claire whispered quietly as she watched the young teenager shield her eyes. "Stefan and Damon were angry because of Katherine and I was angry...I was angry because I knew that the only reason Christopher died was because of that massacre. We wanted revenge. Stefan told me about what he did to Jonathan Gilbert...neither one of us knew about his ring yet, that he would come back."
"He described Stefan as a monster." Her voice shook.
Claire nodded slowly. "That's because Stefan...Stefan was a monster, Elena." The doppelgänger's expression shifted immediately to shock, and Claire set the journal down on the coffee table. "But this...this is only one side, Elena. I can tell you ours."
Elena watched as Claire leaned back in the chair and began.
"When you first become a vampire, there are two paths you can take. You can either relish in it or be content while you're forced to live with it. Damon...Damon didn't really choose a path in the weeks after he'd turned. It had been put off due to his misery over Katherine. I decided to live with it. Stefan, though...Stefan decided to relish."
Mystic Falls, 1865
"If you're so unhappy here, Damon, then get out!" Clarissa yelled at him as she walked around the Salvatore house that they had taken residence in since Giuseppe's death. She moved around the upstairs, cleaning the messes that Stefan had left behind. Honestly, she didn't mind the messes Stefan made; it was Damon's presence that irked her.
"What do you mean 'get out'? This is my house!" he bellowed. She huffed. "Besides, who would call me unhappy?"
"I would!" She spun around at him sharply. "All you do is sit around and sulk. You're absolutely miserable and I'm tired of seeing it everywhere I turn! It's pitiful. Especially since I know who it is you're brooding about."
Damon grimaced as she continued down the stairs. "This isn't about the fact that I'm pitifully sulking, it's the fact that I'm pitifully sulking about my beloved Katherine."
"Your beloved Katherine." Clarissa scoffed the words. "Your beloved and deceased Katherine, if I have it correct. And before you say anything, I reserve the right to hate her, which you can do nothing about."
Damon watched as she turned around at him as they reached the end of the staircase and her eyes were full of fiery hatred and irritation. Just as he was about to respond to her, they heard the soft piano that was playing from the parlor turn upbeat in an instant, and the next thing they heard was the sound of fangs piercing skin. Clarissa and Damon both rounded the corner and peered into the parlor, where they witnessed Stefan surrounded by the presence of multiple dark-haired women, all with bite marks in their necks. His shirt was stained with blood, as was his mouth and neck, as he fed off of one of his whores in the parlor. Damon sauntered forward as Clarissa stood, mortified, at the damage around her.
"Company, brother?" Damon questioned.
Stefan turned back with a snarl. "I brought enough to share."
He tossed one of the girls to Damon and the girl landed in his arms, but Damon was less concerned with her and more concerned with the sanity of his brother. "Are you mad bringing them here when the entire town is hunting us?"
Stefan walked forward with a groan. "Damon, if you're worried about the Founding Families, please don't be. They're all dead...or about to be."
Damon looked around with widened eyes as Clarissa stepped into the room. "Stefan! This is absolutely unacceptable! For once, your brother is right and..." She peered at the couch beside her and observed the blood stains from the dead girl lying upright. Clarissa sighed heavily. "And I'm never going to be able to get the blood stains out of that sofa!"
"Calm yourself, Clarissa," Stefan told her softly as he turned to her, the body of the girl he was about to feed on between both him and his friend. "Have a drink. Indulge me for a while, this would be so much fun if you joined."
Clarissa ignored him and Damon took the girl in his arms and gripped her face with his hands softly, compelling her hurriedly, "Leave this place. Never think of it again."
The girl immediately began to walk out and Damon continued to his brother, where he pushed Stefan off the girl he was feeding on and compelled once more, "Same for you. Leave this place, never think of it again."
"Damon, don't be like this!" Stefan exclaimed as the girl walked out. "I'm just having some fun!"
"Death will not be fun!" Clarissa defended Damon as Stefan looked back at her and watched her step forward with a cautious look in her eye. "I beg you, Stefan. Stop this. We have to be more careful."
"More clever," Damon corrected her. "Like Katherine was."
Stefan scoffed. "Look where that got her."
"The next person to talk about Katherine Pierce dies!" Clarissa snapped behind them. Stefan and Damon both looked at her as she clenched her fist hard and stared at them with an ice-covered gaze. "Do you understand me?"
Stefan and Damon were both surprised at her coldness but receptive to it as well. They were silent until Damon growled, "I'm done here." His gaze shifted to Stefan. "With you. I'm leaving town."
"It must be a blessing," Clarissa murmured under her breath as Damon started to walk out of the parlor, only to be stopped by a panicked Stefan. He rushed in front of his brother and gripped him hard by the shoulders.
"You hate me! I know. I know. An eternity of misery and on and on, I know. But you don't have to leave town, Damon, I'll do better. I promise!"
"No." Damon's voice was cold and stern. "You will get us killed. I'd rather leave you to do that to yourself." The dark-haired Salvatore looked over his shoulder at the beautiful blonde behind him. "And she can suffer your demise with you."
"He wasn't himself back then," Claire defended Stefan to Elena, who listened intently. "He was full of guilt for what he did to Giuseppe. I thought that was all, but upon finding out that Stefan was the one who made Damon transition, I suspect that he was full of guilt for that, too. The only one he hadn't hurt was me, but...but I didn't make things easier on him." She swallowed thickly. "He turned it off so he wouldn't have to feel the pain."
"It sounds like he was Damon," Elena whispered, as if it were a shameful thought. Claire shook her head distractedly.
"No, he wasn't." She pursed her lips. "He was...much worse."
"I know that what happened last night must've..." Stefan trailed off as he and Amelia walked down to the edge of the dock. Amelia didn't look over at him, though he tried to look at her regardless of the discomfort he felt. "...been a little confusing."
Amelia scoffed. "Why on Earth would it be confusing, Stefan? I'm terrible at gathering context clues." It was a bitter joke, but an indirect nonetheless. He sighed.
"I didn't mean that I would die for Elena, I just meant—"
"That's exactly what you meant, Stefan!" She stopped cold on the deck and Stefan circled her so that they were face-to-face. Her voice was softer the second time. "That's exactly what you meant. Now look, I get it, okay? I've had some pretty epic loves in my fair share of time. But to tell her that you would become a martyr yourself so that she could live when you're not even dating her anymore?"
"I don't know what you want me to say," Stefan admitted quietly. "Elena will always be a part of my life."
"But you're a part of mine," she countered softly. Stefan noticed the wounded look in her eyes, and he couldn't help but feel completely guilty. He watched her swallow cautiously. "Stefan...I've loved you for as long as I can remember. I loved you when I was...five, for Christ's sake. Maybe it wasn't the type of love that made me want to throw myself all over you, but I loved you. I truly did. I loved you even after I ran away from home."
"Amelia..."
"And what's strange about all of it is that I used to have this fantasy in my mind..." Amelia touched her forehead and smiled as if she were remembering it just then. Stefan watched her carefully. "I used to have this beautiful fantasy; a thirteen-year-old girl imagined that Stefan Salvatore, her Knight in Shining Armor would come and sweep her off her feet like in the stories her sister would read to her at bedtime. That they would fall in love, get married, have children together..." Amelia opened her eyes, the color pouring into Stefan's sadly. "And that is who you are, Stefan. You are the Knight and Shining Armor. Truly. And though it didn't happen as fast as I wanted it to, it did happen. You don't know how many times I wanted to reveal myself to you over the years, but Katherine knew how much I loved you, and since Christopher was locked away in the tomb, she was obsessed with you...and only you. She kept me as far away from you as humanly possible. Until we got to Mystic Falls, where I saw you and I couldn't stop myself because, Stefan, I love you. I still love you. But you don't owe me your love because of what we felt when we were younger. If you love Elena, you should be with Elena—"
"Amelia, stop." He shook his head, and Amelia looked up at him and silenced herself. Stefan moved forward and grabbed both of her hands passionately. "I love you. I've always loved you. But I love Elena, too, and I just can't help that. If it were you who had to be sacrificed for this ritual, I would never let you die. Just like I'm not going to let her die."
"Elena has people who love her enough to make sure that doesn't happen," Amelia told him assuringly. "Damon...Claire...Caroline...Bonnie...hell, even me. We would never let anything happen to her." She squeezed his hands. "But we do it because we care about her because we're her friends. And it's okay to love her, Stefan. It's okay to feel something for her after what you'd been through, but if you're protecting her because you love her more than the way a friend would, it's not okay. Not if you want to move on. Not if you want to move on with me," she added.
She slipped her hands out of his grasp and turned to walk away. He watched as she left him on the deck and walked up, wanting to take a walk to clear her head while she left Stefan alone to think about what she meant.
Claire walked over to Elena with two cups of tea in her hands to entertain them while she continued the story.
"For weeks, Stefan spiraled." She let Elena take her cup. "Blood, blood, blood; it was all he cared about. The hunt. No one taught him better...I didn't know how to teach him any better, so it was all he knew."
"How come no one caught on to what you were doing?" Elena inquired. Claire shrugged.
"The Civil War was still raging." Elena looked confused, and Claire dropped her voice to a teasing whisper. "Wars mean blood. Lots of it with no one to question the deaths of whoever was injured." The brunette nodded in understanding, and Claire continued her story at a normal tone. "So, as I gathered from what Stefan told me, one day he went out to feed on the injured and ended up attacking a vampire in the woods."
"Who was the vampire?"
"Alexia Branson." Claire gave Elena a sad smile. "She always hated her full name."
"Lexi?" Elena asked, surprised. "Your friend Lexi?
"The one that Damon killed?" Claire moved over to the couch and sat down again, this time with her feet up for good. "Yep."
"That's how Stefan met her?"
"Yep."
"What was she even doing in Mystic Falls?"
Claire sipped her tea and shrugged. "She'd heard through the grapevine that it was a good place for vampires to settle. Of course, the irony in that statement was that it was exactly the opposite. Lexi had no idea that they'd all been massacred weeks before. But she needed a place to stay, so Stefan brought her home and introduced me."
Stefan opened the door for Alexia as she began, "I'd say it isn't necessary for you to take me in, but you did try to eat me and well, with dawn coming, beggars can't be choosers." She peered at the mess in the parlor and mumbled, "Or should they be?"
"Stefan Salvatore!" Clarissa called as she angrily dropped the wheelbarrow full of bodies that Stefan had left all over the parlor for her to clean up. Her eyes settled upon Alexia. "It's bad enough you've left me to dispose of your godforsaken mess and now you've brought home another?! You're absolutely relentless!"
"Clarissa, Alexia is not human. She is a vampire, like the two of us," Stefan told her softly. Clarissa relaxed as Stefan introduced them. "Alexia, this is my friend, Clarissa King. Clarissa, this is Alexia Branson. I offered her a place to stay."
"That's...oddly kind of you," Clarissa noted as Alexia walked into the parlor and observed the mess she was trying to dispose of. Clarissa's eyes wondered on Alexia as she turned around at Stefan with wide eyes.
"My God, you're a ripper."
"A what?" Stefan inquired.
"There are good parts of being a vampire and there are bad parts. You're the bad parts." She paused as Stefan and Claire looked around the room, confused to what she was saying. "Well...we're going to have to change that."
Elena watched as Claire's face dropped thinking about Lexi, and concerned, she asked quietly, "Hey...are you okay?"
"I'm fine." Claire looked up at her quickly, but it was hardly the truth. She lowered her legs from the coffee table, shifted in the chair, and let out a deep sigh. "Just...thinking about Lexi makes me remember things I'd rather forget at the moment."
"Like...Damon killing her?" Elena offered. Claire scowled.
"Primarily," she agreed and irritatedly tossed her hair over her shoulder. "I forgot how much easier it was to be in different time zones than that man. My life would be so much simpler."
"No," Elena countered, earning a dismayed look from her friend. Regardless, Elena didn't back down. "What? It wouldn't be and you know it. We're not going to sit here and go through this again. I know you love Damon, it's too obvious!"
Claire stared at Elena blankly for a moment, but Elena could see the twitch in Claire's lips and suddenly, Claire broke out into hysterical laughter. Elena watched as Claire buried her head in her hand and laughed for a while, a long while, and at last came up for air while flipping her hair out of her eyes and checking the bottom of her lids for hysterical tears from her laughing fit. She laughed a few more times before stabilizing.
"I'm sorry, that was just...that was just too funny." Claire leaned back in her chair with her hands feeling the side of the armchair for the smoothness as she smiled thinking about Elena's comment. "Elena, 'love' is a word that I don't use with people. Ever; period. Especially not with Damon."
"Why?" Elena asked.
"Because," Claire sighed heavily, "being in love is something that I have never experienced; nor will I ever experience in my entire immortal life. Love doesn't exist for me." She took a longing sip of her tea and looked out through the window. "It never has, and it never will."
Right as she finished the sentence, there was the sound of the door closing behind her. Claire and Elena both turned back to see Amelia entering the house and shredding her jacket, looking not frustrated or sad but more melancholic than anything. Without moving, Claire spoke to her sister.
"Hey," she said over her shoulder, catching her sister's attention. "Are you okay?"
"Fine." Amelia walked over to Claire and Elena. "What's going on in here?"
"I'm recounting the stories of Stefan's Dark Days." Claire pulled her lips to the mug in her hand. "Which is odd because I'm not Stefan. Huh. I think I might know him better than I know myself. Where is the old bastard, anyways?"
"'Old bastard'?" Stefan quoted as he slid open the back door and shred his own jacket. He and Amelia exchanged glances, but didn't speak. The younger Salvatore spotted Claire's smile. "You're older than I am."
"Yeah, but I'm prettier." She smirked at him and looked over at Elena, who was engrossed in Jonathan Gilbert's journal. Thinking it was time to tell Stefan what they'd been up to, she glanced up at him. "I was telling Elena about what happened after we turned in 1865. Hope you don't mind."
"About...?" Stefan trailed off, confused.
"About Lexi."
"Oh."
Claire nodded and looked up at Amelia, who was standing over her armchair. "Do you need a 'previously on' or do you already know what I'm talking about?"
"I know," Amelia said softly. "Stefan...mentioned it once." She looked up and caught Stefan's gaze, but within seconds, she ripped her eyes away from his and focused on Elena at the couch and watched as the brunette knotted her eyebrows. "Something interesting, Elena?"
Elena looked up at her distractedly, but shook her head. "Jonathan Gilbert just got crazier and crazier...I guess that's what happens when you spend your life obsessed with vampires."
She set one journal down on the table in front of her and pulled out another. The minute she looked at the first page, her face turned from confused to immediately curious. Everyone noticed the shift.
"What is it?" Claire asked, leaning forward.
"He researched the Originals," she announced.
"You're kidding," Stefan muttered as he came behind her at the couch. She looked up at him and nodded.
"Later in life. Look." She flipped through the book. "Pages and pages of questions and scribbles!" Suddenly, Elena came to a stop when she saw a drawing of what looked like a dagger. "What's that?"
"What?" Claire asked, getting up from her seat and sitting next to Elena with the journal in her hand. Amelia snuck around the armchair and grabbed the tea that Claire had put down and snatched it up while stealing Claire's original spot. They were too engrossed in the book to care. The blonde knotted her eyebrows at the journal. "Is that...is that a dagger?"
"'The wood from one tree and one tree alone, an ancient white oak, would bring death to an Original vampire. When the tree burned, all hope was thought lost'." Elena scoffed. "He was trying to figure out how to kill an Original."
Stefan turned his head and Claire looked up at him, both of them knowing what Elena didn't know. Though Stefan had more information than Claire did, they both knew what Damon was attempting to do.
Elena continued reading aloud, "'But the ash from the tree was saved and witches forged a dagger in which the ash could be bonded. This alchemic bond provides the necessary poison'..."
"Elena..." Stefan tried to stop her, but Elena barreled on quickly.
"I wonder if this is true! I mean, do you think this...dagger actually exists?"
"I know it does," he interrupted. Elena looked up at him, confused. "Because John gave it to Damon."
Upon hearing the news, Claire held up her palms and her face immediately turned down as she overpowered Stefan's voice. "Hold on! You mean to tell me that John Gilbert, Elena's biological father who hates vampires and tried to get me and Damon killed, gave his nemesis, otherwise known as your brother, the weapon that's supposed to kill Elijah?"
Stefan sighed. "Yeah."
"Why?!" Claire stood up immediately, confused out of her mind. But before Stefan could answer, Elena spoke from her place on the couch.
"Wait, so he gave Damon this dagger? This exact one?" She pointed at the page over and over.
"Yes," Stefan said, feeling as if he had been saying it ten thousand times over. Elena looked down and began to read again, this time panicked.
"'It must be brandished by humans alone, for it will bring death to all demons who wield it'!" she exclaimed, looking up at Stefan with alarmed eyes. Stefan reached over quickly and read the passage, whereupon he came to the same conclusion.
"John's trying to get Damon killed!" He moved over to the side and immediately pulled out his phone to call his brother. Claire slapped her hands to her sides.
"I could've told you that!"
Though they unfortunately couldn't get in touch with Damon, they were luckily able to get Alaric to answer his phone and managed to tell him. Once all they could do was wait for Alaric to put a stop to Damon's plan, Stefan stepped out onto the terrace, where Elena was standing outside wrapped in a blanket to think about the fact that all the vampires in her family's house had been lying to her about what was going on back in Mystic Falls. Though it probably wasn't a good idea, Stefan went outside, anyways.
"Elena, we need to talk about this," he tried.
She spun around angrily and complained, "What good is talking if the four of you are just gonna lie to me?" Stefan hung his head. "If you don't like my decisions, that's fine; there's nothing I can do about that. But if you ever go behind my back again, I'll—"
"You're gonna what? Hmm?" Stefan snapped at her. "What are you gonna do, Elena?
"It's my life!"
"Yeah, exactly!" he exclaimed. "It's your life, and the four of us are going to make sure you live it. I am going to make sure you live it because...because you're my friend, Elena, and I care about you." Stefan had rushed out the words so fast that he was forced to swallow the aftermath in the back of his throat. He could see Elena's confused face, but the two of them were silent for a few beats before she continued.
"So this...this...this trip through the past Claire has been telling me about, was there any truth to that or was she just meant to distract me?" Elena asked softly.
"She was telling you about a time where I thought that everything was lost," Stefan said, pinching the bridge of his nose to collect his thoughts for a moment. "When I had given up, because that's exactly what you're doing right now.
"That is not what I'm—"
"Yes, it is!" Stefan shouted at her. "Even if you don't want to admit it. You are giving up! And Lexi...Claire? They wouldn't let me give up! No one here is gonna let you."
Elena stared at him, pondering his heavy words for as long as she needed to as Stefan remembered what it felt like to want so terribly to give up on himself.
"All of these men are dead or dying," Alexia informed Clarissa and Stefan as they walked through the infirmary camps set up on the outskirts of the war. Clarissa looked around, her hunger threatening to burst as she tried to keep it under control.
"I'm well aware of that, Alexia, but it was nice to be informed," she mumbled.
Alexia smiled at her, but looked over at Stefan. "What does that make you feel?"
"Nothing. I feel nothing!" Stefan snapped. She sighed.
"That's because you shut out the part of you that was human. The part that lets you feel."
He scoffed. "Is that not the point?"
"Well, there is a better way. You simply have to want it."
"Is it better?"
"Not at first. You can't choose what you feel. You have to let it all back in. The pain, the look in your eyes when you took their life, the cries of their loved ones..."
Stefan stopped them in the midst of the field and snapped at her again, "Why would I want to do that?"
"Because once you can hurt, you can love," Alexia replied. "Love, Stefan...that's the point. Everything is intensified when you're a vampire. When we hurt, we really hurt. But when we love..."
She smiled at him sweetly, letting him finish the point for himself. Clarissa stood behind Alexia, thinking over Alexia's words but not believing them for a second. She turned her head from the other blonde and mumbled, "Love isn't real."
Confused, Alexia turned around. "But it is, Clarissa. Love is more than real. Love is everything."
"I don't get it." Clarissa held her shoulders tense and looked around, hungry but refusing to give into the thirst. She looked at Alexia furiously. "I'm not the one that needs to be fixed. I can feel. I know that these people are dying. I've rarely taken human life since transitioning."
"Clarissa, you have done an excellent job at burying the monster inside of you." Alexia put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "But without the proper taming, someday that beast may arise. And you had intensified emotions even before you were turned. As a vampire, that is only worse. One day your temper may not want to be subdued. It's up to you to avoid that day."
Clarissa was reluctant, but at last, she sighed. "All right."
"Lexi showed us there was a better way." Stefan and Elena turned to see Claire leaning up against the back door of the lake house, observing Stefan as he told the final story she was coming up to. Claire watched as Stefan gave her a sad smile and she walked out to the terrace, facing Elena. "She taught Stefan how to receive his emotions. She taught me how to tame them. But what she taught us both was how to fight to live another day without being empty."
"That's all we want, Elena." Another King appeared as Amelia stepped out onto the terrace and nodded at her. "We just want you to fight for it."
With that said, all three vampires walked away, starting with Stefan and ending with Claire so that Elena could have time to think about what they were telling her to do.
A while later, Claire sat on the couch flipping through the Gilbert journal filled with research on the Originals while Elena was still outside on the terrace thinking to herself. Amelia and Stefan came down the stairs together, and without looking up, she said to them, "Did you two finally make up?"
"Not that it's any of your business, sis, but yes. We did." Amelia looked at Stefan, who gave her a soft smile.
"Good." Claire nodded while pursing her lips and reading Jonathan Gilbert's crazy words. Stefan put his phone down on the table.
"Elijah's dead." Claire looked up, awaiting the verdict. "Alaric did it."
Claire let out a breath of relief. "Also good. Strangely so. But I've always said, if Damon died, I'd be the one to kill him. Not...himself." She looked up in curiosity at her statement, but shrugged it off by looking down at the journal again. Stefan and Amelia came to either side of the arm chair she was sitting on. She sighed. "These classy Originals believed in two things: truth and honor. Vampire vs. Vampire was taboo, so the dagger would take both lives instead of just the one. But as long as the dagger stays in place, the Original—Elijah, in our case—will stay 'dead'." Claire paused. "Not really dead, but more of a frozen state. It's weird. They can come back, but—"
Before she was able to finish her sentence, Stefan rushed to the phone to call Damon back, and both Claire and Amelia watched him with concern as he relayed the information from Claire's mouth to Damon's ears.
They were too late. Since Alaric had taken the dagger out of Elijah's back, Elijah was up and running, headed right to the Gilbert lake house to retrieve Elena, their deal having been broken by the treason against him. Claire and Elena stood at the door right as Elijah used a few stones in his hands to blow it open, startling them both. Elena turned to Claire.
"He's here," Claire grumbled.
"You have to go. I need to talk to him alone," Elena pleaded.
"The hell you will, Elena—"
"Claire, it's okay! He can't come in the house," she reasoned.
"You know," Elijah said from outside, "I might not be able to enter this house...but I'm a very patient man. I'll wait you out."
Elena turned to the door, and walking forward, she stepped into sight and came right up to the threshold. Elijah noticed her immediately, but he didn't say anything. He waited for Elena to speak, and when she did, it was half-apologetic. "They shouldn't have done what they did."
"The deal is off."
"I'm renegotiating!" Elena urged.
"You have nothing left to negotiate with," Elijah countered her, stepping closer to the threshold to meet her gaze. Elena swallowed and looked at him with intent in her eyes, but at last, she produced a blade tucked into her arm and showed the shining silver weapon to Elijah. He eyed it curiously, but again, said nothing.
"I'd like to see you lure Klaus into Mystic Falls after the doppelgänger bleeds to death."
Elijah frowned. "Claire won't let you."
"No, she won't," Elena agreed. "She'll just feed me her blood to heal me, and then I'll kill myself and become a vampire, just like Katherine did." Elijah cocked his head at her. "Unless you want that to happen again, promise me the same as before—promise me you won't harm anyone I love...even if they've harmed you!"
Elijah pursed his lips in thought, but at last, he said quietly, "I'm sorry, Elena. I'm gonna have to call your bluff."
The brunette took out a shaking breath as she realized what he was asking her to prove. She was hesitant, but she turned the blade around to her stomach and took a sharp inhale. She knew Claire wouldn't let her die. No one inside the lake house would let her die.
So without further delay, she stabbed herself right in the abdomen with the sharp blade, causing her to let out a cry in pain. Elijah flashed up to the threshold, alarmed, but she was inside of the house and he was unable to come inside. Elena groaned in agony, but she waited for him to agree.
"Yes!" he barked out. "Yes! You can have your deal! Let me heal you!'
"Give me your word!" Elena shouted to him. Elijah let out a long breath, but he agreed.
"I give you my word."
She fell into his arms, weak as can be, but right as she reached the comfort of his embrace, she stabbed him right in the middle of the chest. Elijah dropped to the ground, rendered dead with the dagger in the midst of his chest, and Claire flashed out from the house and pulled Elena upright, seeing as Elena had also collapsed to the floor from the pain in her stomach. Claire bit into her wrist and healed Elena quickly while Stefan, Amelia, and Damon emerged from inside of the house slowly.
"Little tip." Damon looked at his brother and his brother's girlfriend disappointedly. "Don't pull the dagger out."
Damon, Claire, and Stefan all stood in the Salvatore cellar where they'd dragged Elijah's body after returning from the lake house. Amelia had gone to drop Elena home, doing her part in the Elena watch. Damon bent down and searched Elijah's pockets, eventually coming to find the forgotten moonstone that was now in their possession.
"What do we have here?" He examined the stone. "Our little moonstone bar of soap. I'll hold onto this."
"Then that's that." Claire looked down at Elijah's body with her arms crossed over her chest as she leaned against the threshold of the cell. "As long as we keep the dagger in, Elijah stays dead, and that's one problem solved."
"Pretty much," Damon agreed.
Claire sighed and straightened. "You could've died today, Damon."
"I'm well aware of that, but thanks for the reminder." He mumbled the words to her, and she frowned at him.
"I'm serious! You two are absolutely astounding!" She looked between both Stefan and Damon. "I mean, did anyone even think to get my opinion on this little plan? First of all, John fucking Gilbert gave you that stupid dagger. Second of all...John fucking Gilbert gave you that dagger! The man can't be trusted!"
"Damon thought—" Stefan began, attempting to defend Damon, but Claire groaned at him.
"'Damon thought', 'Damon thought', 'Damon thought'," she said to them bitterly. Her eyes landed on Damon. "This wouldn't have been a problem if you'd have shared the information with me to begin with! Or at least waited until I came back to go around killing all-mighty Original vampires!"
"Maybe you shouldn't have gone on your completely untimely 'Girls' Weekend' with Elena," Damon countered to her, stepping forward. She clenched her fists at him.
"I wouldn't have to if you weren't stealing my scarves to play dress-up with your human blood bag!"
"Okay! Okay!" Stefan jumped in between the middle of them as he saw that Damon was about to respond viciously to her comment. He looked between them. "Enough, guys. It's been a long enough day without this. Quit it."
Things settled down with Stefan's mediation, and at last, Claire crossed her arms and cleared her throat. "Well, thanks to the trip down memory lane today, Elena decided that she actually wants to fight to live, so though she's a little pissed that we didn't tell her about killing Elijah, she'll get over it." Claire let her eyes drift between the Salvatore brothers. "As for me, you both know how much I hate being cut out of the plan. Whether it be because I was unreachable or you just didn't want to tell me because for some reason it made sense in your minds, I don't appreciate it. From now on, we're gonna do everything together. All of us. Got it?"
The two brothers were quiet, but at last, Stefan nodded. "Okay, fine."
She waited for Damon to answer, and finally, he produced a shrug. "Seems fair."
"Good." Claire heard something from the ground level, and she sighed. "I guess Amelia's home from dropping Elena off. I'm going up."
She left Stefan and Damon to themselves, and once Claire was gone, Damon cocked an eyebrow at Stefan.
"Was it just me or did she seem extremely jealous about Andie?"
Stefan scowled. "Don't drag me into the middle of this...whatever it is. But I highly doubt it."
Damon shrugged. "I think it was jealousy."
His brother pinched the bridge of his nose with a sigh. "Or, she could be having an extremely tough week dealing with the fact that she's had to make sure Elena doesn't off herself before we can even get a chance to figure out what's going on." Stefan crossed his arms. "Luckily for us, Claire finally got through to her."
"Yeah, what was that about? She finally talked some sense into Elena?"
Stefan paused. "She...told her a little story about when I was making the wrong decisions and somebody showed me there was a better way."
For a moment, Damon was confused, but finally, he scowled. "Lexi?"
"Yeah..." Stefan smiled bitterly. "You remember her?"
Saying nothing more, Stefan left the cellar as well to go upstairs and join Claire and Amelia, but Damon stayed down in the cellar for a few moments longer, taking a beat to think to himself about his own time with Lexi when she was helping Stefan.
Damon snuck down the stairs late at night as he attempted to flee the Salvatore house without alarming his brother or his former friend. As he walked towards the door, however, there seemed to be someone almost waiting for him to leave.
"Going somewhere?"
Damon stopped and peered into the parlor, where another blonde vampire other than Clarissa stood in by the candlelight. He paused and surveyed her.
"You must be the vampire I hear my brother complaining about," Damon said bluntly. She curtseyed.
"That would be me." Alexia walked forward. "And you must be the brother who hates him. And the man that Clarissa can't seem to stand."
Damon set down his suitcase to talk with Alexia. "We are all at irreparable odds."
Alexia studied him, but at last, she decided to blurt out, "You know the hate you're feeling towards Stefan? The love you're feeling towards Claire—"
"I don't feel love towards her. If anything, it's hatred," Damon snapped. Alexia stared at him with a soft smile.
"The love you're feeling towards Claire," she repeated gently. He turned his cheek away from her. "You think you have it under control, but you don't. Just like she doesn't. It will get the best of you."
Without replying to her ridiculous prediction, Damon bent down and grabbed the suitcase on the floor. "Help him. He needs it."
Alexia stared for a moment, but all she did was nod. "I'll help him."
"And her?"
"And her."
With that said, Damon turned on his heel and walked out of the door of his home, where Alexia, nor anyone else, tried to stop him.
When Damon entered his bedroom after returning from downstairs in the cellar, he realized that his shower was running. Confused, Damon called out, "Andie? I thought you left."
He turned into the room and walked towards the bathroom, where he observed a very naked girl in his shower. But she didn't have the curves of Andie, she had the curves of someone much more familiar to him. Damon's smile dropped as he watched Katherine Pierce round the shower, dripping wet and clad for him to see without a single care.
"Hello, Damon," she greeted him. His eyes widened as she combed her hair with her fingers, not bothering to cover any part of herself. "Hey, do you have a robe?"
His head tilted, and though he was distracted by the desirous sight in front of him, he ended up finally asking, "How'd you get out?"
Katherine smiled slyly. "I knew that if I begged you not to kill Elijah, that's exactly what you'd do. Little known fact—Originals can compel vampires, but as soon as they die, the compulsion wears off..."
"And you knew?" Damon muttered.
"And I'm still here," she promised, alluding to their earlier conversation in the tomb where she had told him that she wouldn't leave Mystic Falls and would help them fight Klaus. "I didn't run. I meant what I said, Damon. I'm going to help you. So...how about that robe?"
All he could do was stare.
Thanks for reading! Please review!
NicoleR85: Thanks! Here it is! Andie and Claire won't be having interactions until 2x19 when that whole thing with Elijah and Elena happens because Claire's gonna be with Damon in that chapter but if she does end up acting all high and mighty, trust me, Claire will definitely put her in her place. I never liked Andie either. Thanks for reviewing!
RHatch89: Thank you!
Tvd2014: Next chapter, I promise! And they can only improve from there :) At least for this season anyway. No problem! Thanks for reviewing!
grapejuice101: It had been a really long time only because that episode made me dread writing it soooo much but whatever I got over it and managed to use some of that productiveness towards this chapter too. Claire and Elena's friendship is definitely growing stronger and will only grow stronger from here through the rest of the series. Since Elena doesn't have Stefan anymore, she needs another in to the inner circle, which is Claire. Thanks for the review!
SomebodyWhoCares: Same.