"And I'd give up forever to touch you
Cause I know that you feel me somehow.
You're the closest to heaven that I'll ever be,
And I don't want to go home right now.

And all I can taste is this moment.
And all I can breathe is your life.
And sooner or later it's over.
I just don't wanna miss you tonight.

And I don't want the world to see me
Cause I don't think that they'd understand.
When everything's meant to be broken,
I just want you to know who I am."

Getting away for another selfish retreat, this time a two day retreat, was the best thing I could've done for myself. As far as everyone else, probably not, and the guilt did catch up to me when Kol dropped me back off at home.

When we weren't, you know, being super intimate, Kol was helping me master spells. He was letting me siphon the magic from his blood and store it into the necklace he got me, so there was enough to use when I needed it. He taught me the pain infliction spell, allowing me to practice on him so that I could make sure I had it down. It took me forever to actually make myself do it because I didn't wanna hurt him.

He also taught me to use magic to snap his neck, in case Klaus ever tried to hurt me. There were a few other spells, like the basic fire spell, that we practiced, but he really stressed the two that I could use against Klaus if I needed to, to make sure he didn't hurt me again.

After using the spell to snap his neck twice, we realized I had it down. From there, we were able to just enjoy our time together, without worrying if Klaus was gonna kill me the next day. There was a peace of mind about it all that I hadn't felt in a long time, maybe even ever. For once in my life, I could take care of myself. I didn't need anyone else to protect me, not from Klaus or anyone else. It felt good, so good that I didn't let the guilt get to me too much, even when Damon came over and told me to stop being such an idiot. I just smiled and said, "I can protect myself now, Damon. He showed me how to snap Klaus' neck with magic and inflict pain. Would like me to demonstrate, or will you take my word for it?"

He left it alone, but no one was really happy with my abrupt departure. I got that, but they didn't get my side of it, nor did they really care to get it. Bonnie was the most chill about it, even after she found out that Kol was a vampire. She saw things like I did; if Kol wanted to hurt any of us, he wouldn't have saved Jeremy, and Elena and I would definitely not still be alive.

The best memory that I got to carry with me after those two magical days was after we had gone out for dinner. Everything in me wanted to have sex with Kol, except for the fact that I was so tired. We hadn't gone anywhere super fancy. I actually wore a baggy t-shirt and jeans, which of course he said I pulled off better than anyone in the world, and it was the freest I had ever felt. To not care about how I looked, even standing next to someone who looked damn good effortlessly, was a feeling I didn't imagine anyone else could make me feel.

So I didn't feel so left out without making up my face, he didn't shave his, and he actually got a bit of stubble, which only looked damn good, of course. He made the "just rolled out of bed" look better than anyone else could.

When we got back to his hotel room, we listened to music, and he just kinda held me while I fell asleep in his arms. Before I could drift too far off, the song changed, and Kol asked me to dance with him.

We had never danced before, with all the time we spent laying around listening to music, so I couldn't pass the opportunity up, especially when I realized what the song was. The words were everything I had yet to say to him, the way my heart began to feel in such a short time, in the grand scheme of forever.

The way he held me in his arms felt like more than just a simple sway to the music we were dancing to; it felt like he was trying to tell me something without actually saying the words out-loud.

"You ask me how I feel, and it's really no big deal. You're only everything to me."

For someone who had spent a century in a coffin, he knew how to dance without dancing over the top. It was a gentle sway, with a few spins added in throughout the song. It was beautiful. It was vulnerable, but it just made me more certain that I loved him.

As I laid across my bed, holding tight to the shirt I was currently unpacking from my duffel bag, all I could think about was the moment I stole this shirt, and it was almost like I was back there.

We were packing up my clothes to go, but while I did that, Kol decided to clean up the room a bit. The button-up he had worn to pick me up in was still laying on the floor, in the small walkway between the bed and the wall, and I was standing beside it. Instead of being normal and handing it to him, I decided to put it on.

Of course he noticed it almost immediately. "What are you doing with that?"

"I need it. It's cold outside."

He frowned. "That's one of my favorite shirts I've found since the dagger was removed."

"But I need it," I said, and I poked out my bottom lip, an attempt to look more cute and pathetic.

His hands grabbed onto my hips, and in one fluent motion, I was sitting on the dresser, almost eye level with him at this point with saliva pooling up in my mouth. It wasn't raging desire in his eyes turning me on this way, but it was something else—the same thing that had been there the previous two nights.

"You can have whatever you want, love."

Everything I felt any time Kol was around, any time I thought about him, was hard to believe. These feelings were intense. Elena had warned me about getting too attached, as this was Mystic Falls, but it wasn't like I could just stand back up—I had fallen hard and way too fast, but it was real.

That connection, the very feeling that had me pulling the dagger out of his chest . . . that was the connection of a soulmate, that feeling of being complete and whole for the first time in your life.

You never realize how empty you are until you experience being whole, only to be left empty again.

When Kol dropped me off, after getting a call from Rebekah to come home and join the rest of their family, the last thing he said to me was, "I swear to you, Darcy Gilbert. We will find a way."

What way was there? The only time we were able to be together anymore was when we left town, and Klaus would never let me just leave town without following me. The only reason we got away the first time was because he feared the coffin was being opened, which it apparently was.

All I could tell myself was that we would, in fact, find a way.

Kol knew that his siblings had heard him arrive. He knew that they were probably waiting for him to come inside, maybe even eager to find out what he had been up to the month they were all free from the coffins.

He didn't know what they might've told Klaus, who they said let them out, but every part of him hoped that they didn't tell him the truth. Darcy could protect herself now. Kol made sure of that, but Klaus was always a step ahead. There was no way to say for sure if she would actually be able to protect herself. All he could do was hope that their mother put some sort of leash on him, until he could ensure she was safe from his monstrous ways.

How could he do that, though? The idea of turning Darcy with his own blood was far too appealing to him, although he'd give it up in an instant if he had to do so. As long as he got to turn her, that was all that really and truly mattered to him.

In such a short time, he had fallen in love with her in such a profound way, more than he imagined most people could fall in love in that time. They had spent so much time together, though, getting to know one another more thoroughly than people usually did these days.

The two days he spent with her, before Rebekah called and gave him the good and bad news, were by far the most amazing he had ever had, even compared to days he had spent with her. There was so much more than just the sex and the passion. He wondered if there was love in her eyes, too, though he imagined it was probably just the reflection out of his own.

He still couldn't decide if he was happy to be reunited with his family or upset, though hearing that his mother was alive had surprised him in a pleasant way. Still, none of it made tearing himself away from Darcy worth it. Any semblance of family that had once existed was gone, after the many betrayals over the years.

"She wants us to be a family again, Kol. She wants us to be whole."

How often had Kol wished for that very thing, to be a part of his family again? For the longest time, it was what he wanted more than anything, but that was ruined every time a dagger was shoved through his chest, with the help of the siblings around him. Each time, he let himself believe it would be different, only to be daggered again in the end.

This time was different; he wasn't going to be so naive as to believe they could be family again, though there wasn't anything any of them could do to him anymore. Rebekah was the only other one to have a dagger, and he had three of them. She was so angry with Klaus for all that he had done to her, all that he had done to the family, Kol actually believed she wouldn't use it against him.

Would it be his downfall again?

The only thing that got Kol out of his car was the idea of what attempting to be family again would mean. If their mother was really back and really wanting to make her family whole, she had control over Klaus that was unmatched. She must've been what was inside of the coffin, and that was definitely the thing that could bring down Klaus.

It wasn't the way the people in Mystic Falls wanted, but Kol could probably find entertainment in it, especially if it meant they all had to leave Darcy alone.

When Kol stepped through the front doors of the finished mansion that he had only been inside of once, to rescue Darcy from Klaus when he had attempted to drain her dry of blood, he could actually take the time to enjoy the luxury around him. Staying in hotel rooms had its perks, mainly a place he could get away with Darcy, but living in a nice home again was appealing to Kol.

The rounded grand entrance room, decorated with elaborately designed tiles and large pillars that stretched up to the second floor along the edge of the room, had an elegance that was fitting of Klaus. He had always been more into the finer things life had to offer, and at one point, Kol actually cared about those things as well.

Everything he had once lived for, everything he had once believed, didn't matter, not anymore, and that both thrilled and terrified him. The idea that someone could mean so much to him was something he had always wanted but never dared to think about, but it was horrifying to realize there was something he cared about more than himself that was so weak and vulnerable.

They were at an impasse, it seemed; love was both strength and weakness, and Kol struggled to wrap his mind around that.

There was arguing further back into the house, ripping Kol away from his surroundings. It sounded as if it was coming from the very room that Kol had rescued Darcy from a few days prior, so that was the direction Kol headed, as quickly as he could get there.

Only Finn noticed as he stepped in the doorway, his eyes moving away from Elijah to glance up at the youngest Mikaelson brother. "Kol is the only one of you lot who ever even bothered to remove the dagger from my chest!"

"For whatever reason I'm defending this lot, it wasn't exactly easy to do," Kol spoke up, though the very defense made him roll his eyes. "Nik was always around with another dagger to shove into the poor unsuspecting sibling who dared defy him. We don't have to worry about that anymore, though."

Kol allowed himself to look away from Finn and over towards his brother, the one he had last seen as he snapped his neck to break out the woman he loved. Klaus still had no idea Kol had been the one to break his neck, and Kol wanted to keep it that way for now, even if Klaus no longer had the power of the daggers over him.

Still, at the sight of his youngest brother, Klaus' nostrils flared, his eyes darkening even more than they already were. The bickering Kol had heard was probably everyone yelling different things at their brother who more than deserved it, even if he didn't believe that he did. He thought himself superior to them all, just because he was a hybrid.

Klaus' anger only made Kol smirk, though it was a much more twisted version of the smirk that he liked to give Darcy, to make her heart race inside of her chest. "Hello, Nik. Did you miss me? I assume not, since I was in a box for over a century."

"At least it was just one," Finn scoffed.

"Who let you three out?" Klaus demanded, and his eyes tightened a bit more. "They won't tell me, so I'll ask you one time."

"What are you going to do, Nik? Dagger me? I'd like to see you try." Kol walked over to the fire place, which was conveniently set up with all the essentials a fireplace needed. The Original hybrid didn't need the fireplace to keep warm, but Klaus had always enjoyed the aesthetics of it all.

Kol reached down and picked up the fire iron, and the possibilities were endless. A part of him wanted to throw it at Klaus, though he imagined his brother would catch it before it could actually do any damage.

"I would put that down if I were you," Klaus warned, when he noticed Kol looking at the iron intently.

Instead, Kol stuck it into the fire. "You may as well prepare yourself. You deserve this and so much more."

There was a bit of rustling on the other side of the room, and Kol only glanced over to see what the commotion was. Finn had grabbed onto Klaus' arms and held him back, awaiting the very iron that Kol was heating up.

Rebekah walked over in front of their brother, while Kol continued burning the iron, and patted his cheek. "This will only hurt a lot, but I can promise you it won't begin to compare to the pain you've inflicted on all of us over the centuries."

Kol was, in an instant, in front of his brother, shoving the red hot fire iron through his stomach before Klaus could even flinch. Kol liked to think that he wasn't enjoying this kind of violence as much as he used to, but that would've been a lie. Maybe it had something to do with who he was harming like this, but he wasn't so sure.

"That is for all the time I lost because of you."

Kol ripped the fire iron back out of his brother and threw it across the room, back where it had once been neatly placed. He didn't care that it lay scattered on the floor; all he cared about was distracting his siblings from what he had said.

They might've misunderstood, and that was what Kol hoped for. He didn't want any of them to know right now, though Rebekah did know he fancied Darcy. She didn't know the true extent of it, and he had kept it that way on purpose.

Kol liked to think that he hated his brother for all the years of daggering him and abusing the power that he had over all of them, but right now, the only thing he could find himself mad about was that he had hurt Darcy, that he was threatening her very existence. He was angry because he couldn't just turn her with Klaus' blood and the blood of Elena simply because they couldn't trust her to be sired to Klaus. There was no way to know what he might have Darcy do.

All Kol wanted to do was continue exploring the idea of forever with her, and this whole "being a family" thing was getting in the way. He didn't care much for that idea anymore; it had been lost over the centuries of betrayal.

Kol took another good look around the room, finding each eye on him, and while he might've smirked and made some joke about how handsome he was in any other situation, he was too pissed off to be arrogant.

"Okay, where is our mother?"

"She has decided to throw a ball this weekend," Elijah said. "To celebrate this momentous occasion. This is the first time since she turned us that we have been together again as a family, and I, for one, would like to celebrate the idea of it."

"Yes, but where is she right now?" Kol asked.

"There were a few guests she wanted to invite personally," Elijah said, but the irritation in his brother's eyes was confusing to him, to everyone who noticed. "She mentioned some of our favorite locals specifically. What's wrong, Kol?"

Darcy was the only person in the world who had made Kol feel as if he didn't know how to breathe, but hearing that his mother wanted to invite her to the ball personally didn't settle well with Kol. For that moment, he didn't know how to breathe.

Some of the locals . . . such as the doppelgänger twins?

"I have to go." Kol took a step back away from his family, his eyebrows furrowing while his mind began trying to piece together what his mother might want to invite Elena and Darcy for specifically.

Rebekah scoffed. "Kol, you can't just leave. Mother will be back soon."

"No, Rebekah, I have to go," Kol said again, and he looked into her eyes, hoping by some chance she understood what he was trying to say. If he had to say it out-loud, there was a violent road ahead, probably lots of yelling and threats.

Right now, he just had to know that Darcy was safe.

Rebekah shook her head. "It will be fine. Just wait for Mother."

He knew there was no sense in arguing with Rebekah. She would never think poorly of their mother, but Kol wasn't stupid. He had been betrayed by family far too much to trust any of them, even their mother.

What had she seen while on the Other Side? Everything they had done? There was no way she was able to watch all of that and just be perfectly okay with it all when she came back suddenly.

Was she hunting down Darcy? What did she need from the woman he loved?

It wasn't like me to sulk, and the aftermath was a big reason why I almost didn't go with Kol the past couple days. Looking at it now, I would've regretted not going more than I hated dealing with the pain of being away from him again for an unknown amount of time, but that didn't mean I was gonna sulk about it any less.

It had been magical, in a way that I didn't get to experience. I finally did, and the idea of becoming a vampire, living out my eternity with Kol, was euphoric. It was extremely unlikely as well, as we hadn't known each other long enough to possibly know if we could last an eternity, but it was a nice thought anyways.

Elena refused to think of the rest of her life with Stefan, as she knew it didn't have a happy ending—how could it if she had no plans to be a vampire?—but it was different for me. I did want to become a vampire.

This kind of sulking that I was doing was different; it left a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach that I couldn't shake, no matter how hard I tried. Still, I tried to pretend that it wasn't there as I made my way downstairs, with the intentions of grabbing a drink.

The sound of the doorbell ringing changed that, however, and if I didn't know that the Originals were all at Klaus' place working on their fucked up family dynamic with their newly risen mother, I probably would've tried to pretend that I wasn't there. Kol had told me where he was going, though, so I wasn't so afraid.

The woman standing on my front porch was completely unfamiliar, with shoulder length blonde curls that seemed to have aged with time, almost an ashy blonde that wasn't a common color these days. She was dressed extremely well, in a dress that was both elegant and casual, with an almost pleasant smile on her face.

Something about it was off, though, enough that I was a bit leery as I just stared, without uttering a single word.

"May I come in?" she asked, her thick accent sounding as if she was from a different time.

Was this their mother?

"I don't know," I said, and my eyebrows furrowed. "Can you get in without me inviting you in?"

Her smile widened a bit, and she stuck a single hand through the threshold, offering it towards me to shake while also answering my question—one of them anyways.

When I took her hand, I got all the confirmation I needed. There was so much magic in just a simple touch, resting just beneath her palm and extending out throughout all of her body. It was almost as if it was begging to be stolen from her, but I couldn't steal her magic; this was Kol's mom.

Suddenly, remembering who she was—not just the witch who created vampires, but the mother of my first real boyfriend—a lump began forming in my throat, making it hard to swallow.

"You can come on in," I finally said, letting go of her hand so I could turn and head back inside. It was hard to focus my thoughts, but right now, I decided it would be best to focus on the most important thing right now: their mother was here, and I didn't imagine she left their little family pow-wow just to see me. "Would you like me to make you some tea?"

"Thank you, but no," she declined, and she cleared her throat. "I won't be here long. My children are all waiting for me to get back home, but I knew this had to be done before Kol made his way back home."

My eyebrows furrowed. "Knew what had to be done? I, uh, sorry to be rude, but why are you here?"

She pressed her lips together, her thin eyebrows rising as she held her hand out towards me, which contained a small off-white envelope, with my name written across the front in beautiful calligraphy.

"I wanted to personally invite you to the ball I am having this weekend," she said, and her smile grew warm now, which only made my heart thump inside my chest. "It will be in celebration of my family being reunited after so many years."

"Thank you." I took the invitation from her hands, though my eyebrows never unwove. It was hard to believe what she was saying; she came all this way to personally hand me an invitation to her ball? Why wouldn't Kol let her do that? Surely he'd want me to come, right?

The smile fell from her face, so I imagined she noticed my hesitation. "Your magic is not of nature."

"I know it's not common," I said, and I did my best to clear my throat. "But it's of nature, even if it's not normally how nature does things."

"Regardless, it has put you in a dangerous position that leaves me no other choice," she said.

"What do you mean?" I asked, but it was suddenly hard to breathe. It wasn't like she was using a spell to take my breath away. Her words did that well enough. "Are you here to kill me?"

"You are going to die," she said, which I admittedly didn't expect to hear, "but if I kill you now, my son will kill me before I have a chance to make my family whole."

"I thought you were the thing that could kill Klaus."

"I spent a thousand years on the Other Side, hating my son for what he had done, watching as my children destroyed the world because of what I had done," she said. "I learned to love them, however, and learned to forgive. All I want now is for my family to be whole, which will mean that Niklaus will leave you and your friends alone."

"Oh." Something about that didn't settle well with me, but it was probably the nausea I was already feeling mixed with the fear of what she had so bluntly said. She wasn't the first person to tell me that she was going to kill me, but she was the first that I was genuinely afraid of. "Well, I guess that's all that matters."

"I need you to go to the ball and break up with my son."

Apparently being on the Other Side for all of these years didn't teach her how to approach conversations properly, as she was great at getting right to the punch line, no matter how unsettling and abruptly she had to get there.

"What?"

She sighed. "I've watched Kol terrorize the world. I've watched him murder thousands for nothing more than entertainment, and I've seen what the absence of his family can do to him. Right now, all he needs is his family."

"He hasn't killed anyone since I took the dagger out," I disagreed.

Her eyebrows furrowed. "Is that what you think?"

The thought hadn't actually occurred to me, but I had assumed that he hadn't. I never asked, but he always talked about how he didn't have the urge to kill like he used to, about how he didn't think about blood almost constantly anymore. It was just logical to assume that no one had died after he had been brought back.

"He . . . has he?" I whispered.

"My son is not who you think he is," she said, and my stomach dropped all the way to my toes. "This is all a game to him, unfortunately. He isn't capable of true feelings, not right now. Maybe in a century or so . . . but you'll be long gone by then."

This was too much thrown on me at once, and I absolutely couldn't handle or process any of it. Kol had killed people? He had been playing with me the entire time? How could I believe that in the face of everything that had happened? Someone capable of doing all the incredible things he had done for me, all the things we had done together, there was no way it was just a game to him.

I shook my head. "N-No. I don't believe you."

"Believe me or not, I've been watching him closely," she said, and the tears began falling before I even realized they existed inside of my eyes. "This isn't love. Kol wouldn't know the first thing about it."

I had to swallow, hard, to even get where I could attempt to get words out, but my gaze set in hers, holding it as sternly as I could possibly manage. "Please leave."

Her expression lost all pleasantness that had remained, even if I hadn't believed any of it, but she didn't bother putting up the façade now. Darkness covered her expression in an all too familiar way.

"You can either break up with my son, and your death will not destroy him when it comes for you, or you can keep him selfishly, for as long as you live, and when you die—and you will die—you will destroy everything he could be."

I was able to get a grip on myself after hearing that, despite how horrible the words were. "How can I do that if this isn't love?"

She ignored me completely as she pressed her lips together. "It's your choice. Set him free or destroy him."

Though I stood my ground, everything inside of me that had been whole and beyond happy just five minutes ago was crumbling, the invitation still in my hand as she turned and headed for the door. She didn't say anything more, didn't even look back. She just left with the thought that I held power to destroy him or set him free.

The moment she stepped out of the door and it closed back behind her, I lost the ability to stand on my own. My hands pressed against the cold wood beneath me, and I began heaving, as if I was trying to vomit with nothing inside of me. Those were the sobs attempting to force their way out of me, with the tears following almost as violently.

It didn't actually help the nauseous feeling I already had inside me, and I knew it was only a matter of moments before everything inside of me came erupting out of me.

The kitchen was the closest to me, so despite the tears streaming down my face, despite every piece of me crumbling away, I did a painful and quick crawl into the kitchen. The wood beneath my hands stung as I pounded against it, both my knees and my palms, but a little pain was better than attempting to clean up vomit later.

The trashcan was within reach just in time. The muscles of my stomach began contracting with a force of someone going into labor, or at least that was how it felt at the time. I actually had no idea how horrendous labor might actually feel, but this felt worse than even my worst cramps. It felt as if my stomach was trying to purge itself of the lunch Kol and I had gotten before he dropped me off just a couple hours ago, if that.

There was my lunch, not even remotely digested at the bottom of the trashcan.

Amidst my violet vomiting, I didn't hear the front door open. All I heard was Elena calling out my name, her sneakered footsteps running towards me as quickly as she could get to me.

"Darcy?" she repeated, and she knelt down on the floor beside me, tucking all of my hair behind my back in an attempt to help—nothing could help right now, though. "Are you okay?"

"N-No." I hadn't thought much about what I might say after that, but there was no way to lie and say that I was fine, not right now. My stomach hurt. My throat burned, and my heart felt like it was being used in a game of tug-of-war between two vampires. It was being ripped in two, and there was nothing that I could do to stop it.

Had any of it been real? I wanted to believe that it had; everything Esther said proved that it had, but the insecurities in me were stronger than I liked to think. It had all seemed too good to be true, so believing that it was too good to be true was simple, easier than believing it had all been real.

Say it was real: what was I gonna do now? If Esther wanted me dead, I was gonna die. I didn't really see a way around that, but how could I take Kol down with me? How could I break up with him, though, and destroy him in a way he might not come back from?

There was no easy solution.

"What's going on?" Elena asked, and her arms wrapped around my torso, pulling me upwards to get me back on my feet.

My legs were weak, and the crawl across the room had done a number on my knees, but I was at least able to stand up. "I-I think I'm coming down with something."

I wasn't one to play hooky, but if there was any time to do it, this was definitely it.

What was I gonna do? What was I gonna let myself believe?

A/N: There's another chapter about as long as this one coming up in a few chapters. Things are escalating. :)

The lyrics are from the song Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls.

Read, review, and enjoy! :)