"I don't like we've all been born afraid.

Are we gonna make our great escape?

I feel alive, but I feel ashamed . . .

. . . I don't like a story without a real good twist.

You know, there's evil in this world we can't control.

So let the punches roll."

Caroline was now eighteen, at least legally. According to her, she was forever stuck at a filler age, and that was fine. We all agreed to let her mourn her "filler" life, so instead of throwing her a birthday party, we threw her a funeral.

The old Caroline was dead, and the new one was . . . well, she nearly died, too. After making out with Tyler, despite the fact that we all knew he was dangerous while sired to Klaus, she got bitten. Of course Klaus was a solution to the problem, and when Caroline told him that she didn't want to die, he healed her.

Her birthday funeral we planned came far too close to being an actual funeral.

At least today was better, and by better, I really just mean not deadly, for now. We made it through the school day without imminent danger looming at each turn.

Now, it was just sitting in front of me, in the form of four coffins that Stefan had stolen from Klaus.

Stefan had warned Bonnie about bringing anyone else into this, but she knew that he would trust me, at least. Elena had a bad habit of making choices that affected everyone else on her own, and before I did things like that, I usually thought it through.

While stealing from Klaus wasn't a good idea, there was a reason he wanted all of these coffins, and since one was sealed shut, I didn't imagine it had anything to do with his family at all.

Bonnie told me about her dreams of four coffins, sitting in the very spot Stefan had them waiting for Bonnie to arrive. She was very busy at school, however, with recent events causing us all to get behind. For me, getting caught up was easy, but Bonnie was struggling a bit more.

So here I was, keeping guard of the coffins while Stefan talked with someone on the phone—I imagined Damon, since he was still trying to convince Stefan to tell him where he was and tell him what he was up to—and Bonnie made her way over here. There wasn't much I could do to the hybrids, with my lack of practice, but maybe I could use the magic in their blood to slow them down until Stefan could get back to kill them.

Stefan warned me what he would do if I told anyone else where the coffins were, or even what was in them, but I assured him I would keep it to myself. Whoever Stefan was right now, I wasn't going to dare cross him, not when I might end up dead if I did.

That would've been such a stupid way for me to die.

It was the reason I was here to begin with, Stefan's new personality that is. Bonnie didn't trust him, not alone, so even though I wasn't strong with my magic, she brought along her best friend who was a witch as well, the one person who might stand some semblance of a chance against Stefan if he snapped. Since that also means that I can't be compelled no matter what, Stefan agreed that I could come along.

When I got here, he mentioned that it had a lot to do with my sound judgment, my ability to make the best choice in a situation even if it meant someone had to die. Elena would put everyone in danger trying to save one person, but I could see a different solution, one that might end with death.

I wondered if he would feel that way if he knew about that drunken night with Damon. Stefan was very vocal about the fact that Elena and I could both do so much better than either of them, so if he knew about the night I got drunk and lost my virginity to a man I considered to be a brother, would he still believe that I had good sense in me?

Sometimes, I didn't believe that, but it didn't have anything to do with sleeping with Damon. Sure, he slept with tons of people, but that didn't mean I had any reason to regret what I had done. The first time was out of the way, and it just so happened to be with someone who I trusted to be careful with me, someone who did everything in his power to make sure he didn't hurt me.

I later found out that he slept with me, hoping that he could let go of his feelings for Elena and maybe fall in love with me, but it was to no avail. I told him that was probably a good thing; I just didn't see him that way.

My fingers tapped against the screen on my phone as I moved a card across the screen. Something that had become habit, for no real reason other than boredom, was completing all the daily challenges on the Solitaire game on my phone. The dailies were always a single game of each of the five types of Solitaire, of varying degrees of difficulty.

They were never really challenging, even on expert difficulties, but it usually gave me something to do while I sat around, waiting for something to happen.

Today was different. Today, I finished my games and stared at the glossy coffins with nothing more to do.

My eyes moved between the four coffins, and it occurred to me that I didn't actually know what they all looked like. Of course, I had met Elijah when he first came to town looking for Elena, and he liked me enough that he never once told his brother about me. Then there was Rebekah, who Elena very openly hated—I imagine that Rebekah was going to do the same once she finally had the dagger removed from her back—but I had different feelings for her than my sister, and it worked the same for her.

She admitted that she hadn't liked the Petrova doppelgängers of the past, as they always had a way of dividing her brothers, but I was an exception. She said something about my quirks, the things that made me different from the others, only helped her feel differently towards me.

Stefan mentioned that the coffin at the head of the three that were lying flat on the ground, while the one at the head was raised up on some stands, wouldn't open, and that was why he had Bonnie coming out here—that, and he needed her to figure out a way to hide them. He asked me if I knew anything that could be done, and I reminded him that I wasn't allowed to practice magic.

That didn't mean I didn't study it, and yes, there were cloaking spells that could be done, but they wouldn't work the way he needed them to work. Bonnie might not even be able to put a spell on all of them, and even if she could, there was no way to know she would be strong enough to put one that would hold, even if she did come from a powerful witch bloodline.

The one that couldn't be opened wasn't the one that had my attention, not now anyways. When I first got here, before Stefan disappeared, he had me try and pull the magic away, but for whatever reason, the magic that I could usually feel flowing smoothly into my veins felt like trying to get liquid from a rock. There wasn't actually a way for me to open it, not by simply taking the spell off.

The coffins on the ground, one with Elijah and the other two with people I had never seen before, were where my eyes stopped, and they stayed there while the thoughts inside my head swirled.

Every time I took a deep breath, I was reminded that this room was in the middle of an old abandoned house, where hundreds of witches were burned centuries ago. As if the eerie feeling of the lingering spirits of a hundred dead witches wasn't reminder enough, the dust in the air that got me choked up if I inhaled too much didn't let me forget for even a second, with the sunlight through the windows acting as the only light source.

That was the smell that lingered, dust and old wood. Everything smelled empty.

It wasn't empty, though. There were four coffins, three of which had the daggered bodies of three Original vampires.

Elena always told me that my curiosity would be the death of me one day, but I couldn't help it. It would probably always get the better of me, and this was no exception.

What did those other two look like?

I stood up from my place on the dusty ground and went for the one on the far left, wasting no time at all. It was only a matter of time before Stefan showed back up, and if he found me looking inside, there was no telling what he'd do.

The man I found lying inside the single coffin I opened was dead, or at least that was how he looked. His skin was almost a silver-grey, with each and every vein, but even dead, this man was quite handsome. His hair was the same rich brown as Elijah's, though it wasn't long and in his face like Elijah's always had been.

How long had this one been daggered? His clothes were from a different time, though not so different that he seemed from centuries ago.

Why was it fair that Klaus have this power over his siblings without them having the power to do the same to him?

The first time I held one of the daggers, the weight of them surprised me. The spiral metal that wrapped around the handle seemed like it would make the long, silver dagger unbalanced, but it didn't.

The metal of the handle was cold to the touch, cold enough that my hand flinched back for just a moment. It wasn't long enough that I stopped to think about what I was doing, only let myself prepare to feel the cold touch again.

Whenever the daggers were inserted into an Original or pulled back out, there was a sickly sound that went along with it, the sound of tearing flesh. For vampires, their bodies had probably healed around the dagger, so it had to be ripped back out for them to completely heal and bring them back to life.

How often did Klaus do this to them?

With the dagger in my hand, I moved over to the next coffin. The man inside was far more surprising, as his attire definitely resembled a man from centuries ago, more than just one. His brown hair, the same color as Elijah and the other brother, was long and fell in waves, while his face was a more square shape.

There was a sound behind me, and my heart almost stopped in my chest. My body seemed to work on instinct, pulling magic away from my blood in order to incapacitate whoever might be behind me.

Two whiskey brown eyes, tightened at the corners, looked back at me by the time I turned around, set on a face that was tilted ever so slightly to the side.

The man standing there, no longer dead, made even my protective instincts forget that I didn't know him at all. Seeing him up and standing, the soft angled jawline centered with an almost button nose. There was just the slightest dimple in his chin, which rested just underneath a pair of soft pink lips.

The pale hunter green button up he wore, topped with a dark vest, only accented his thin but muscled shoulders, clinging to the more obvious muscles that rippled up his arms. His shoulders were pulled back, giving off an air of dignity that was a distinguishing feature of the Original family. After all that they had lived through and seen, they were probably considered nobility at some point in history. They had even proven that they had written parts of history, leaving behind "Aztec drawings" that ensured Klaus got everything he needed to break the curse his mother had put on him centuries ago.

He stood tall, quite a bit taller than me. With the brown wedge boots I was wearing, my eyes were level with his chin.

After a few moments of tense eye contact, the corners of his eyes softened, as did the muscles in his shoulders. It was as if he just flipped a switch, and everything in his body just relaxed.

"Who are you?"

The accent wasn't all that surprising; Klaus and Rebekah both shared an accent, from somewhere in the European region, but this brother had a distinctively different one, almost as if he had just stepped out of Sydney, not a coffin.

"Darcy," I managed to slip through trembling lips.

He tore his gaze from me to look around the room, and his jawline began to lock. "Where am I?"

"Mystic Falls—long story about the exact location," I said. He hadn't torn into my throat yet, and something about that relaxed me, enough that I was able to talk to him now and stop trembling. "One of my friends stole your brother's coffins to get revenge on him. I was curious, decided you probably didn't deserve to be daggered, and here you are."

The lids of his eyes opened further for a brief moment, his stare finding me again in that same moment. "I'm . . . terribly sorry, but I need blood."

"Right." Sanity didn't exist in this room, not for this brief moment while I interacted with this Original vampire who I didn't even know by name. There was a dagger in my hand, with a point at the end just barely sharp enough to pierce my skin. It had worn down after being shoved into the bodies of all the Originals for centuries, so significant pressure had to be applied to draw any blood at all. Once it started, it pooled in the palm of my hand, coming out as if I had just struck oil. I began to extend my hand out towards him, but seeing the veins around his eyes darken as the whites of his eyes grew red and two fangs began extending themselves out—this was the vampire face I had learned well over the past year—slapped at least some piece of sanity inside. "Wait. You're not the one I've heard stories about being a homicidal maniac, are you?"

The veins around his eyes lightened, though hints of darkness still remained as the fangs began to slide back behind his lips, which were set into a ghost of a smile. "Yes."

"Oh." The cool air around me burned my eyes as they widened, my vision blurring as they watered on instinct. "Well, shit."

"I promise I'll be careful."

Every logical piece of me knew that trusting him was stupid, reckless, but I did. While his eyes continued to graze across my body, taking in more about my appearance than even I could probably see, I allowed my hand to reach back out, pulling the vampire back out onto his face.

His lips were as soft as they looked as they pressed against the skin of my palm, his tongue running just underneath the open wound so he could suck in every drop he could get without sinking his teeth into my skin. I appreciated that, as bite marks would've been hard to explain.

The way he held my hand, the way he had his lips pressed against it, it was as if he was kissing my hand. The social tradition that even he must've known was to kiss the back of someone's hand, but that wasn't what he was doing, just what it felt like.

My hand was ripped away from his lips faster than I prepared for, his eyes returning back to their normal state. Not a hint of the monster lingered, even as the blood continued to come out and into my palm.

"Thank you for taking the dagger out of me," he whispered.

He was the homicidal maniac, the one I had heard stories from Rebekah about. She mentioned that he loved to kill, for nothing more than entertainment, and there was usually a trail of bodies that followed him. According to Rebekah, she didn't believe there was anything human left in him.

Yet here he stood, looking at me as if I was royalty and he was a mere peasant. The smile was still almost coming out, but his eyes were completely locked on me.

It felt like we stood here forever, staring at one another and taking in each and every detail that we could. He had a lot more to see, with the vampire eyes of his, but I had a lot more worth looking at.

"May I have that dagger?"

I held it out towards him without blinking, without thinking twice about keeping it for myself. The daggers had been used against the Originals we could use it against more than once, and I never liked doing it. It felt like we were betraying them, after they had kept us alive just because they could.

It felt especially wrong when Elena daggered Elijah. He was keeping my existence a secret from his brother, gave me his word that Klaus wouldn't hear about me because of him, yet she daggered him anyways.

I didn't want anyone else to be wrongly daggered, and that could only happen if the people who the daggers could be used against had them.

He took the dagger from my hand and actually allowed his smile to come out now, though nothing more than the corners of his lips turning up, almost arrogantly. "Thank you."

I stood still while he went to the two remaining coffins beside me and removed the daggers from the other unknown sibling and Elijah. Even as I heard him struggle to open the final coffin, I didn't turn, only whispered, "It's sealed. We don't know what's in there, only that Klaus wants it."

The man didn't say anything, but the hairs on the back of my neck suddenly stood tall, a shiver running down the length of my spine. It didn't feel cold, or anything that resembled fear. The aftershock of the rush felt good, in a way that I couldn't explain.

Was he looking at me? Was my body trying to be afraid?

I had so many questions that there wasn't enough time to answer, so instead, I walked over to the open coffin that was now empty and closed it back, letting my gaze find the attractive Original with the three daggers.

Just as I found words to say, the other two Originals that lay in coffins began to stir. The one with the long hair was the first to sit up, and his eyes were wide and dark, like that of a man with a vengeance. As he began to understand his surroundings, the anger faded away just a bit, and those dark eyes found me.

Elijah sat up out of his coffin before the man could find a question to ask, and there was a darkness in his brown eyes that I had seen a few times. Though in the end, Elijah hadn't helped us kill Klaus, the things his brother did had pissed him off on more than one occasion.

The last time I saw him was the moment he ran away with his brother instead of killing him, like he was supposed to do.

The anger in his eyes softened when he saw me standing there, and a soft breath passed through his partially parted lips. "Darcy, it is lovely to see you again. I do not know how you have come across our coffins, but I thank you for doing the right thing."

"You guys have to get out of town," I said. "And you have to hurry. Stefan stole these coffins from Klaus, after Klaus ruined his life, and if he finds out that I let you guys out, he'll probably kill me. He could be back any moment now."

Elijah's eyebrows wove together, but he nodded. "Of course. We will leave town until the time is right for us all to come back and get our revenge on our brother."

"Time is right?" the man with the long hair asked. "The time is right now!"

"Finn, let's not be stupid." The only Original who remained that I didn't have a name for had his eyes still locked on me, sending a touch of warmth across my cheeks as my heart fluttered in my chest. Why was his gaze so mesmerizing? I had met attractive men in my life, and he was probably one of the most attractive, even if he did have a baby face. Something about his baby face was charming, made it easy to forget that he was over a thousand years old. "We have no idea what's going on in the world right now, in this town. For now, let's go and get an understanding of the world around us, and when we do, we will think of a plan to get our revenge."

"Since when are you the voice of reason?" Finn snapped back at him.

Elijah shook his head. "Brothers, now is not the time. Darcy has done us all a great kindness, so the least we can do is get away from here, as she has asked us to do."

In a single instant, they were all gone, as if it had all been my imagination playing tricks on me.

The only sign I had that it had been real was the two coffins that remained open, which I shuffled over to close as quickly and quietly as I could. Stefan could be anywhere, and if he saw even the blurs disappearing, there was no telling what he might think.

The sound of footsteps clunking down the stairs, not the steps a vampire would take unless deliberately trying to let me know he was coming, got me scurrying back to where I had been sitting in the floor, once each coffin was closed the way they had been the last time anyone else was in the room.

While Bonnie made her way into the room, her raven black curls falling perfectly on her slim shoulders as her eyes searched the room for someone—finding only me—I sent a text to Stefan, to let him know she was here.

"Did I miss anything?"

Her question was meant casually, not really meant to cause any kind of alarm, but what I had done caught up to me, the moment Bonnie's question left her mouth.

Holy shit, what did I just do?

A/N: I like to put lyrics at the beginning of each chapter, sometimes just a quote I read somewhere, but I usually put lyrics to songs that I feel describe the mood or content of the chapter. Sometimes, it's the song I listen to on repeat while writing a chapter. The lyrics at the beginning of this one are from the song Punches by Bryce Fox. If you've never listened to him, I definitely recommend his stuff. He doesn't have a lot of songs, as he's a new artist as far as I know, but what he does have is quality stuff, in my opinion.

So it's been a while since I posted anything, but before I start posting a bunch of stuff, I want to make sure people want to read and are interested in what I have to offer. If no one's reading, I don't see much point in wasting my time posting. My little sister likes it, so I'll just write it and keep sending it to her if no one wants to read it.

And I know that in the real Vampire Diaries world, a werewolf-siphoner-doppelganger tribrid would probably never exist, but that's the beauty of fanfiction. You can make whatever you want out of the story and characters you're given. I'm gonna try to stick to the actual canon lore, but there will be a few things that might not be 100% the same. For example, things aren't as rushed day-by-day as they are in Season 3. This story picks up right after Homecoming, the mid-season finale I do believe.

I've done a lot of research on siphoners and things of that nature, and I've watched a lot of scenes involving Kai. I know a bit of the story later on might not be completely accurate to the way siphoning actually works, but for the most part, I'm trying to stick to it.

I'm gonna post a few more chapters before I ask for any kind of review. I don't ask for a lot, just one review. If one person wants me to post it, that's enough for me. :) Like I said, though, I'm gonna post up to chapter three before I hold off and wait for any reviews, as I'd like you to get a good sense of what you're reading before I insist on reviews.

Of course, if you would like to review now, that's totally fine with me. :) I hope you guys enjoy!