A/N: Here's the next chapter! I'm sorry for the ridiculous wait! As always, please please please review and follow/favorite! Every single favorite/follow/review makes me so happy!

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Chicago, 1922

"I'm not going to sit here and be insulted by you." I told Stefan, who just shrugged and walked away, but not before he bent down and picked up Rebekah's necklace. I quickly walked to the back alley and saw Katherine standing there. She looked me up and down, and she seemed to approve of what she saw.

"Immortality still suits you, Grace." She said with an approving nod.

"Piss off, Katherine." I spat through my teeth.

"You're still mad at me for turning you and your brothers into vampires?" Katherine said innocently.

"No. I'm pissed at you for stringing both of my brother's along and making them miserable." I yelled at her. There was a time when we were friends. When she was the best friend I ever had. She taught me so many things. How to be confident in myself. How to be strong. But, after everything she did to my brother's, I was not about to forgive and forget.

"They certainly weren't miserable when I was in their beds." She said smugly.

I make a gagging noise. "Gross, Kat." I honestly almost hurled. "They are my brothers. I do not want to have those mental images in my head."

She just laughed a short, breezy, arrogant laugh. "What are you doing with Klaus?" She asked seriously after she finished laughing.

"My affairs are none of your concern." I said simply, almost daring her to continue the subject.

"Yes, they are. Despite everything, we were, are, friends. I will look out for you because I do care for you and your brothers." Katherine said.

"I don't believe that for a second." With Katherine, everything is a manipulation. But, the memories of our friendship still swirl around my mind from time to time and I know I will never forget them. However, that does not mean that I can ever trust her again.

"Well, you should. I'm only looking out for you, Grace." She does her best to look sincere, but I could see right through it. "Stay away from Niklaus Mikaelson."

I rolled my eyes and said, "Or what?"

"Or he'll kill you. He killed my entire family and he won't hesitate to do the same to you." With that, she signals a passing taxi and closes the door before I can say another word.

Could Katherine actually have a point about Nik? I started walking home to the apartment I was staying in, thinking over the events of the night. Eventually, I decide to go on with my life as if none of this had ever happened. What are the chances I'll ever even see him again, anyway? I thought as I made my decision.

"Tell me about yourself, Elena." I said to make conversation while we wait for Elijah. "I figure I should get to know you if both of my brother's are in love with you."

She opens her mouth to deny it, but it's so obvious that Damon is in love with her she doesn't go through with the protest. "I'm 17. I grew up in Mystic Falls. I have a younger brother, Jeremy. My parents died a year ago in a car accident."

"I'm so sorry." I say quietly. "That's awful."

"Thanks." She says mechanically. It sounds as if she been saying the exact same thing over and over again. And I knew from my own experience with bereavement that she had. "How do you know him?" She says and inclines her head towards Elijah.

I had been dreading that question. It was a gateway question that would lead to more that I wasn't sure how I would answer, or even if I should answer them. "I met him in the 80's. We quickly became friends, and have been close ever since." I give her the simplified version.

"Just friends?" She asks with a raised eyebrow. It was not the first time I had gotten this question. Whenever Elijah came to visit me wherever I happened to be living at the time, I would always get that question from the friends I'd made at the particular place. Apparently, men and women could never be just friends. But, Elijah and I were just friends. It had never even occurred to either of us to be anything else. It would be like kissing Damon or Stefan.

"Yes. Just friends." I answer. "We get that a lot, though."

"Where's the dagger?" She suddenly asks, looking around for it.

"I have it, don't worry." I explain and she relaxes a little, but not fully. "He'll wake up soon. I took it out about an hour ago. It takes a while to work."

"You've done this before?" She looks at me with disbelief and fear.

"Elena, you can trust me. I'm on your side." Saying that, I got a little pit in my stomach. That wasn't entirely true. Their plan was to kill Klaus, and there was no way in hell I was going to let that happen. But, I was also not going to let Nik kill Elena. I had no idea what side that put me on, but I would do my best to help my brothers, just like I told them I would. But not at the expense of Nik's life.

"I know. It's just... I don't know much about you." She says in a whisper.

I try to smile kindly. "Well, what do you want to know?" Elena doesn't get the chance to answer because at that moment, Elijah starts to wake up. It happens so suddenly we both jump a little. I know in an instant something is wrong. Elijah is struggling for breath and his body is convulsing in unnatural ways. Elena makes a move to go to him, but I pull her back. "Something's wrong."

"What?" Elena moves behind me while I go to Elijah.

"Something's wrong." I repeat. I rack my brain trying to think of an explanation but I come up empty.

Elijah stands up and says in a rough voice. "I can't breath." He runs at full vampire speed into the cellar wall. I run to grab him and right him. "I can't be in this house."

"You're not invited in." I say after it finally clicks. Elijah runs out of my arms and up the stairs. I chase after him at vampire speed, and Elena follows at a human run behind me. Elijah makes it out of the house, and I see him standing on the porch. "'Lijah, are you okay?"

"I'm fine, Grace." He sounds aggravated. "I figured you would be the one to undagger me. Where are those pesky brothers of yours? I am going to rip their hearts out."

"First things first." I step out into the sunny porch and hand him the rest of my blood bag, which he drinks greedily. I see the color come back to his features as he drinks, and the horror I had felt seeing him lying dead in the cellar subsides now that I see he is safe. He angrily throws the now empty blood bag on the ground and turns to look at me for the first time. Elena has come upstairs and she is now standing inside the house, looking like a deer caught in headlights.

"Thank you for the blood." He says, ever the gentlemen, and eyes me to see my reaction to his little proclamation that he was going to rip out my brothers' hearts.

"Anytime." I whisper and point upstairs to show that Damon and Stefan are able to hear us. I take out the dagger and show Elijah I have it. "Promise not to hurt my brothers."

"They killed me, Grace!" He whisper-shouts.

"Yeah, well we established long ago that we both had idiotic siblings." I respond. Elijah cracks a smile and I can see he won't kill my brothers. For the moment, at least. I have no qualms as I hand him back the dagger. Once the dagger is in Elijah's hands, I thump him on the back of the head. "That is for not telling me you were in Mystic Falls of all places! With my brothers and a doppelganger!"

He rubs the back of his head, which I might have hit a bit harder than originally intended. "Alright, I'll give you that I deserved that one."

"What is going on?" Elena finally speaks up.

"I think it's time we tell them everything." I say to Elijah. He nods his agreement. "Elena, if you invite Elijah in, we'll both tell you everything we know."

Elena considers this for a moment. "You can come in." She says in a normal voice, breaking the whispers of the rest of the conversation.

"Thank you, Elena." Elijah says and we walk into the house.

"Damon! Stefan! You might want to get down here!" I shout loud enough to make sure to wake them up.

After a minute, I hear Stefan making his way downstairs, and Damon calls back, "I'm asleep! What the hell do you want, Grace?!"

"You might want to be more polite when we have company, big brother!" I shout back, and that gets his attention. He comes down the stairs at the same time as Stefan. They are both in their pajamas with serious cases of bedhead.

They both look terrified when they see Elijah. Their eyes widen almost comically and they are at the bottom of the stairs in less than half a second. "He won't hurt you." I tell them, but they do not relax one bit. Damon runs to Elena, grabs her, and runs her a safe distance away from Elijah. I roll my eyes.

"What is going on, Grace? You promised you wouldn't remove the dagger from him." Damon says, anger coloring his tone.

"I fixed your mistake." I say. "Now, there are some things I need to tell you."

"What do you mean?" Stefan looks on edge.

I take a deep breath. "I know more about Klaus than I originally led you to believe."

Damon, Elena, and Stefan share an apprehensive look. They have no idea what to make of me, standing next to Elijah, telling them I lied. I eye Elijah and we start walking to the living room, hoping they'll follow our lead. Elijah and I stand in front of the couch and I signal for them to sit. "I'm sorry, but I have to ask you something before we get into this." I turn to Elijah. "What the hell was your endgame here, 'Lijah? We both know you were never going to kill Nik."

"Nik?" Damon, Stefan, and Elena say at the same time, in a way that would be almost comical if the situation wasn't so tense.

"We'll get to that in a minute." I hold up a finger to shush them without turning away from Elijah.

Elijah is staring me down when I turn back to him. "How do you know I would not have killed Niklaus? After everything he's done to me!"

"Ok, what has he done to you that's so horrible that you are going to kill your own brother!" I say loudly.

"BROTHER!?" The peanut gallery echoes. They are ignored.

"He killed our siblings! I will never have a family again because of him!" Elijah shouts.

"What are you talking about? They're just daggered! And you cannot tell me that even you would undagger Finn." I retort.

"Well, I will never know, will I?" Elijah looks heartbroken. He had been skirting around this topic with me for years. Always changing the subject whenever it came up. The floodgates are finally opened and I can see exactly how much this has been hurting Elijah. "Niklaus had them buried at sea so no one will ever find their bodies!"

I had not been expecting that. I suddenly feel a weight lift off my chest. The anger from the argument goes away. "Nik did not bury his family at sea. Do you really think him so cruel that he would do that to Rebekah or Kol? To be completely fair, he would do that to Finn, but still..."

"Do you really think so highly of my brother? You need to stop thinking the best of him just because you..."

I quickly cut him off before he can finish that statement. "You don't think I know exactly who is he! All of the things that he's done? I know he is a terrible person. But, I choose to not just see the bad in him. There is good and bad and everyone and to write someone off as just being bad is foolish. Nik did not bury your family at sea." I walk up to him and show him I am not backing down on this one. He starts to see the sincerity in my words, and he lets the truth in.

I see the weight lifted from Elijah. And I know what is going through his mind. Rebekah. He thought he would never see her again, and now he will and I can almost see the relief coming off him. "What was your plan, Grace? Why are you here? You were really going to kill Niklaus?"

"No. I am here to help my brothers out of a bad situation. But, I didn't realize they were so foolish as to try and kill Nik. It caught me off guard. Nik being here caught me off guard." I admit.

"My brother is here?" Elijah says and I nod. At this point, Damon stands up and harshly grabs my arm. I grab it, twist it until he shouts in pain, and sit him back on the couch. He looks like a petulant child who was just put into a time-out.

"Alright, the peanut gallery is getting restless. We should fill them in. What do they know?" I ask Elijah.

He lets out a chuckle. "Not much. And less than they think they do."

"What does that mean?" Damon asks defensively.

"They think Niklaus is trying to break the Curse of the Sun and the Moon." Elijah says with a mischievous glint in his eyes. At that, I have to let out a laugh.

"They do not! Oh, that is rich." I say through my chuckles. "That is precious."

"Alright what is going on!?" Damon finally snaps.

"Why would an Original vampire who can't be hurt by the sun want to break a curse that doesn't affect him? The Curse of the Sun and the Moon is fake. Doesn't exist." I say to shut him up. It works as a dumbfounded expression comes onto his face, as well as Elena's and Stefan's.

"So there's no curse." Elena speaks up and hope is clear in her voice.

"No. There's a curse, it's just not that one." Elijah fills in. "It's a curse placed solely on Niklaus. It keeps his werewolf side from manifesting."

"Werewolf side?" Stefan says. All three of the people on the couch have matching expressions of pure confusion.

"The Originals are a family. Their mother, the Original witch, turned them to protect them against the local werewolves a thousand years ago." I say, then stop and gesture for Elijah to continue. It is his story.

"After we were made immortal, my family discovered the truth that many years earlier my mother had been unfaithful. Niklaus' father was actually one of the local werewolves. My father and my mother had a curse placed on him to prevent my brother from accessing his werewolf side. Niklaus has spent a thousand years trying to find the doppelganger and moonstone in order to break it." Elijah explains.

I interrupt him before he can go any further. "Before we really get into all of this, I just want to say that I love both of you so much."

"That's not a promising start, Grace." Damon says, looking at me with suspicion.

"Well, I'm not going to say I'm sorry for anything I did, because I'm not. So, just know that everything I'm doing now is because you're my brothers and I love you."

At this, Damon and Stefan sit down and shut up, finally ready to listen to the full story. "I met Niklaus Mikaelson in Chicago in Gloria's Bar in 1922. You two don't know this, but ever since we became vampires, I've been checking up on both of you to make sure you were okay. I went to one brother every five years, but I moved checking on Stefan up a few years when I heard Stefan was the Ripper of Monteray." I turned to Stefan. "I tracked you to Gloria's, and I went in after you and sat down at the bar, and then Nik came up to me and bought me a drink and asked me to dance. I didn't know who he was at the time. After a dance, I saw you and decided to break my rule of never letting you see me, and intervene. I would have tied you up and gotten Lexi to get you back to your normal self. But, when I found you, you were drinking some dancer's blood with Rebekah, Nik and Elijah's sister. You were dating."

"I knew another Original?" Stefan struggles to remember what I'm describing. "I don't remember that at all."

"I know." I say softly. "Nik compelled you to forget. It was too dangerous for you to remember."

"Why would it be dangerous?" Stefan asks.

"That I cannot answer." I don't look at Elijah. I know how he is looking at me, and he would have shut me up if I had said anything about Mikael. Not that I would say anything even if Elijah wasn't there. I didn't need them getting any bright ideas about tracking him down. "I can tell you that you and Nik were very close. You called each other 'brother.'"

Stefan is searching his memory, trying to find some long lost memory to validate what I am saying. But, he finds none. "Finish your story." Damon says from beside him.

December 14th 1999

I woke up feeling somehow off balance. Before I opened my eyes, I noticed that my feet were slightly elevated and I looked down to see why. My feet were on a pillow at the head of the bed, while my head was at the bottom of the bed, where my feet were supposed to be. The previous night came back to me all at once. I remembered the feeling of Nik against me, and how it had just felt so right. I felt so at peace just sitting in that bed in his apartment, like the rest of the world didn't exist. It was difficult to describe, but I wanted to see him again, so I got out of the bed and looked around for clothes. I saw the shirt Nik was wearing the night before picked it up so I put my arms through the sleeves and quickly buttoned it.

I heard the shower going, so I started to explore the apartment. It was amazing. Not overly big, but it felt so light and airy. There were large windows and plenty of natural light flowed in. Once in the kitchen, I opened the fridge to look for something to eat. I saw a few blood bags, which I found a bit odd. Nik did not strike me as the blood bag type. He was most definitely the kind of vampire who liked his blood fresh. I shrug it off and grabbed the bag on top and start drinking.

With the blood bag in hand, I walked around the rest of Nik's apartment. I came to a large bookshelf with a mix of old and new books. I studied the titles for a few minutes before coming onto one that looked like it was older than me. A lot older than me. Like one touch and it would disintegrate into dust. I carefully pick it up and open it to the first page. After lazily flipping through a few pages, I realizes that it was a grimoire. Before I have the chance to really explore what kind of spells are in the book, the shower shut off and Nik came out with only a towel wrapped around his waist. That was enough to fully distract me from his book collection. He catches me staring and smirks. "Snooping around my flat, are we?"

I chuckled nervously and replaced the book. "Sorry. I didn't mean to go through your stuff."

"It's fine. I don't keep the truly scary stuff here, anyway." There was a little humor in his voice, but I knew that it was not because the statement was not true. Still in his towel, he went to the kitchen and poured himself a coffee, then he poured me one and handed it to me. "Here you go, love."

"Thanks." I said and took the mug from his hand.

He looked me up and down, eyes finally settling on my legs, making me blush. "I must say, you look much better in that shirt than I ever did."

A nervous giggle escaped my lips. "Thanks." I looked away to hide my blush. "I have to say that I like this look on you."

"Really?" He said seductively and walks towards me. His lips captured mine for a brief moment, over far too soon for my taste.

"Oh, yeah. You should walk around in just a towel all the time." I said and took a sip of the coffee. It was a great cup of coffee, with milk and a little sugar, just the way I liked it. "How'd you know?"

After taking a sip of his own coffee, he asked, "Know what?"

"The coffee. It's perfect." I took another long sip of it. An expression crosses his face that can only be described as sheepish.

"I think we've had enough meals together for me to remember how you take your coffee." He explains. He remembered such an insignificant little detail about me. It was sweet. I hadn't know 'sweet' was in Nik's vocabulary, let alone something he could be. Thinking back, I remembered that he took his coffee black. I guessed I learned more about Niklaus Mikaelson than I'd realized.