"You gotta keep this coming.
Tell it like you know it, but you don't know nothing.
Your call, we can settle this like gentlemen,
Or meet me out the back to end it all and start again."

Damon's skeptical eyes hadn't moved off of Kol since Kol had gotten back from dumping the body. Kol didn't expect to see him here, but Elena had already told him what happened. She had gone inside and called him while I was outside talking to Kol, so he was here not even five minutes after Kol left, telling me that I was absolutely idiotic.

It wasn't idiocy; it was the beginning of love.

It was crazy to imagine that I was falling in love so quickly, but love was crazy, wasn't it? Nothing about love made any logical sense or reason, but it didn't really have to. The heart was a stubborn thing, wanting things that it sometimes shouldn't, but in the end, it wanted what it wanted, not what logic and reason wanted. Sometimes, those things aligned, but in the case of soulmates, there wasn't a such thing as logic and reason.

Soulmates are the person in your life that make you the best you that you can be, without even trying. They make you unafraid to live your life however you choose, even if it means pissing people off and doing what everyone around you might think stupid or reckless.

This wasn't reckless. Above all else, I truly believed that I could trust Kol. He had no reason to lie to me, about any of it.

"Okay, so, we've got three missing Originals, two of which none of us have ever seen," Damon said, the corners of his eyes tightening further as he continued to stare into Kol, as if he should be intimidated by him or something. "A mysteriously old vampire who knows Klaus better than anyone we've ever met before comes into town, and you expect us to believe that you're not one of them?"

"I don't care what you believe," Kol said. "As long as you believe this: Klaus will not harm any of you."

Damon snorted. "How can you stop him? Only Originals have the strength to stand up to Klaus, and no matter how old you are, you can't match his strength. A single bite from Klaus will kill you."

"Magic is the only thing left in the world that can kill an Original," Kol reminded him. "You have a powerful witch at your disposal, from one of the most powerful lines of witches, and another who has only started to touch base with her abilities."

"What do you know about magic?" Elena asked, but just hearing Kol talk began to ease some of her fear. "I thought witches hated vampires."

Kol shrugged. "We have one thing in common. We all hate Klaus."

"Or so you say."

"Damon, I have no reason to lie to you," he said, showing a great amount of restraint and patience that I wasn't sure he had in him. He had shown more than once that his patience was a very thin line, but right now, he was holding himself together well. "If I wasn't telling you the truth, I could've let Jeremy die, but I didn't. I exposed myself to save him because I don't want to hurt any of you."

"For now," Damon allowed, and he downed the rest of the drink he had made himself prior to Kol getting here. "Say we help you kill Klaus. Then what?"

Kol actually scoffed, his eyebrows raising a bit while his eyes drifted away from Damon, over to find me. "You act as if it's going to be easy."

I rolled my eyes. "Damon, will you just drop it?"

"You may find this hard to believe, Darcy, but I'd like to make sure you don't end up dead, too," he snapped.

"If I were an Original, being in Mystic Falls would be completely idiotic," Kol pointed out.

A rather dark smirk twisted onto Damon's face as those piercing eyes found Kol again, the gleam much darker than the actual blue of his eyes. "If you're not an Original, you'll have no problem meeting Klaus then."

"Actually, I would," Kol disagreed. "Klaus knows me. He knows that I've made it my life's goal to destroy him the same way the he destroyed me."

He was exceptionally good at that, but they had all probably made quite a few enemies over the years, especially if they treated people the way Klaus was treating all of us. Lying had probably been something he had just gotten very skilled at.

Skilled enough that I wouldn't notice . . . .

"What did he do to you?" Alaric asked, speaking up into this conversation for the first time since Kol had actually gotten back. He had voiced his disapproval before he got there, stating that we shouldn't just trust vampires who show up out of nowhere, but once Kol got here, those protests had silenced a bit.

Kol allowed himself to look away from me, over towards Alaric, and he let out a large sigh. "He destroyed my family."

"Alright, so we won't tell Klaus he's here," Elena spoke up, looking over to Damon now with a rather pointed stare. "Right now, I think it's best if we keep his vampirism to ourselves, from everyone."

My eyes tightened. "Including Stefan."

"I don't think he'll be a problem," Damon protested. "He hates Klaus as much as this guy seems to."

"No, Damon," I said. "I'm serious. We don't know who Stefan is right now. We don't know what he'll do, and if he finds out someone else knows about the coffins, he might kill him."

Damon rolled his eyes. "Fine. We won't tell Stefan either."

"Thank you."

"I'm still not okay with this," he said, taking a deep breath before walking the glass in his hand over to the sink. After setting it in there, he came over and pulled me up out of the chair I was sitting in, only so he could wrap his arms tightly around me. "But you've been brighter these past few weeks. I can't take that away from you."

I wrapped my arms around Damon's muscled torso and smiled, my eyes fluttering shut as I took in the woody smell of his own cologne. "I appreciate it."

"That doesn't mean you're off the hook," he said. Even though I wasn't looking up at his gaze, I knew who he was talking to. "There are three people in this world I will protect above all else, and you happen to be in close contact with one of them. If anything happens to her because of you, you'll have to answer to me. You may be older, but I'll be a lot more pissed off."

"I swear to you, Damon," Kol said, allowing all irritation at the situation and distrust Damon was showing towards him, for what seemed like no reason. "I have absolutely no intentions of hurting Darcy. I meant it every time when I said that's the last thing I want in this world."

"I don't know what all she's told you, but don't go getting any funny ideas about turning her," Damon warned. "It won't be that simple."

Kol took a deep breath. "Yes, Damon, I'm aware that she has an untriggered werewolf curse in her blood, just like I'm aware that she possesses a special type of magic gift. It makes me even more certain that we have to protect her from Klaus, what with him scouring the earth looking for more werewolves to turn into his little slave army. I also happen to know that turning someone who hasn't triggered their werewolf curse is essentially the same as turning a human. Just like they can be compelled—assuming they aren't Darcy and also a witch—they can be made into a vampire."

"How can you know that for sure?" Elena asked. "I don't want Darcy to be a vampire at all, but if Klaus ever finds out she's a werewolf, we may not have another choice if it means making sure she isn't turned into one of his sired goons. Tyler . . . he said that he would rip his heart out if Klaus told him to, and he didn't see anything wrong with that."

"The sire bond is a strange thing," he agreed. "They don't realize how crazy the things they say or do really are. All they can understand is that they have to do it, that if Klaus wants it, there's a reason for it, even if they can't figure out what that reason is."

"You didn't answer her question," Damon reminded him, around the same time I let go of him and sat back down in the chair I had originally been sitting in. "How can you know for sure turning Darcy like any other human will work the same?"

"It's how it worked for Klaus, right?" Kol pointed out. "I'm not entirely certain just yet, and with Klaus effectively killing off most of the werewolf population, it will be a hard theory to test out on anyone except for Darcy."

"Which you're absolutely not doing!" Damon exclaimed.

Kol's eyebrows rose. "What? Why would I do that? You misunderstand me, Damon. Darcy is the only untriggered werewolf that I know, but that doesn't mean I will test it out on her. The only reason I care to know is to make sure she doesn't end up sired to the monster that is Klaus. If she ends up dead, that would be a lot worse."

"Let's just drop the talk of Darcy becoming a vampire," Elena suggested, but it was very clear that she was growing more and more uncomfortable the more this conversation carried on. "I don't even want to consider the possibility."

"It's not really your life to make that decision for," I reminded her.

Her eyebrows furrowed, her chocolate eyes widening. "What? Why would you want that?"

"Just because you don't doesn't mean that no one else does," I said, and I shrugged, as if it wasn't a big deal. To me, it wasn't, but of course it was to her. That was why Damon wouldn't turn me before, the whole werewolf thing aside. "Staying human is your choice. Finding a way to become a vampire is mine."

Alaric seemed just as confused as Elena. "You would lose everything that makes you who you are."

I shook my head. "No I won't. I'll still be Darcy, but Darcy on crack."

"You put that so eloquently."

I smirked over at Kol, loving the way his irritation had completely dissolved away to make room for the happiness that had spread across it like a sunrise breaking through the night sky at the crack of dawn. That first ray of light broke through, only to be followed by so many more that it seemed instant. "You got a better way to describe it?"

"Not particularly," he agreed. "Elena is right, however. Until we can know for certain what is going to happen when we turn you, without Klaus' blood, we can't really consider it an option."

"Fine." I folded my arms over my chest, placing them up on the table to give myself a bit of a prop as I looked to each person. Though Damon had known this was what I wanted, his expression mirrored doubt, maybe because of this new situation entirely. Alaric seemed uneasy, whereas Elena just looked upset. There wasn't any way to change her opinion on the matter, however, so I didn't bother trying.

She'd probably confront me about it later, in a more private setting, but that was fine. It was my life to make my own choices, as it was hers to make her own, but unlike her, I didn't want to grow old and have kids. The idea of staying young forever, of getting to explore eternity to the fullest, was too beautiful to pass up.

To be able to protect myself for a change . . . but I didn't want to kill anyone in the process. Even if it meant being the first vampire in the history of vampires to never kill someone, I wanted to try to be that vampire.

Considering the company I was choosing to surround myself with, that was probably going to be a challenge. Killing someone was inevitable, but maybe if I changed it to only killing someone threatening me, only killing someone in defense of myself or my family.

The conversation was continuing to die away, as the mention of me becoming a vampire had made those who didn't already know that it was what I wanted uneasy. Eventually, Damon found something to have to do and disappeared, giving one final warning to Kol on his way out.

"I should probably go, too." Kol stood from the table, reaching a hand out towards me, and I took it without hesitation. "I'll find those grimoires I was telling you about and see if any of them have what you're looking for in them."

"Thank you." I used his hand to pull myself up from the table, despite the people watching me. I didn't imagine that the conversation had made them any more eager about the idea of me getting close with a vampire who showed up in town out of nowhere, determined to kill Klaus, but I didn't really care. I knew the truth, even if they didn't want to believe it.

When he reached the door, I placed a soft kiss against his lips. Since there were people watching, I didn't draw it out as much as I might've if we were alone, but it was enough that my heart was beating wildly against my ribcage, threatening to fall out and into his hands.

His thumb brushed against my cheekbone as a wide smile twisted onto his lips. "I'll see you tomorrow, darling. We can start practicing tomorrow if you'd like."

"Sounds good."

The door opened, letting in a gush of near-winter air as he slipped back out of it, just barely moving at a human speed to do so. He wasn't necessarily eager to get away from me, but he knew I wasn't a fan of the cold. It was better than the sweltering hot, but that didn't mean I liked being cold.

If there was a way to be perfectly content, temperature wise, I was definitely going to take it.

"We have to do something about Jeremy."

The statement came out of nowhere, and it was definitely not the first thing I expected Elena to say after the vampire company left.

Jeremy hadn't come down out of his room since Kol had compelled him to go and put his ring back on, but it had been a busy day. He was either resting after nearly being run over with a car, or he was talking to Bonnie, doing homework—normal teenage boy stuff.

My eyebrows furrowed. "What do you mean?"

"We need to give Rebekah over to Klaus, in exchange for Jeremy's life."

A/N: The lyrics are from the song Better Off This Way by A Day to Remember.

I'm almost completely finished writing this story! I'll get the outline for the sequel written up and decide if I'm going to make a third installment or end it on the second part, which will be called You and Me. Both titles come from song titles from Niall Horan's new solo album, which is actually called Flicker.

Anyways, I'll post another chapter later today! Hope you guys are enjoying this story! Let me know what you think. :)