A/N: Thursday's episode was so amazing! Here's chap. 3. And thanks for all the wonderful reviews!

Chapter 3: Secrets Better Left Hidden

She was in the most beautiful, ornate house she'd ever seen. It had a classic beauty to it. Outside, she could hear thunder in the distance and the light from the sun was quickly fading. It was obvious at once that she was only a bystander in this dream, instead of an active participant like the last one.

A woman came rushing out into the hall, panicked as she stared out the front windows. The lady was beautiful, and her dark blue, hoop-skirt dress accented her flawless ivory skin and dark hair. She turned around and Elena's breath caught in her throat.

The woman had the most beautiful light blue eyes, just like…

"Mother," a young boy called as he rushed down the stairs. Elena knew him instantly.

"Damon," Elena thought aloud.

"Mother, I've closed all the windows upstairs. The storm is getting – "

"Damon, take your brother and go to the cellar! Now!"

"Why? What's wrong, Mother?"

"Do as I say!"

The young Damon turned and ran for the sitting room, returning with a small toddler in his arms. His mother ran to a door under the stairs and held it open for them.

"Mother, what's wrong," Damon asked.

"Nothing you need to worry about, my son. Just take Stefan downstairs and don't open this door… no matter what you hear. Do you understand?"

Damon looked like he was about to question his mother, but the intensity in her eyes kept his questions at bay and he quickly carried Stefan downstairs as she shut the door behind him.

"They'll be perfectly safe," a voice instructed. Elena and Damon's mother turned at the sound and saw Klaus standing in the hallway.

"They better be. I only promised to do this so you'd leave my family alone."

"I always keep my word. I only need your magic, though… if those boys are half as powerful as you…"

"They don't have any powers."

Klaus stared at her incredulously, eyes flashing momentarily to the door the boys had just exited through.

"What do you mean, Samantha?"

"I took them away. I want Damon and Stefan to have a normal life, and I don't want you taking advantage of them the way you did with me! After tonight, you will let them live their lives in peace!"

Klaus nodded, though he seemed disappointed now. The thunder grew louder and the rain was now beating against the roof. Samantha returned her attention to the front windows, worriedly.

"He's getting closer; I can feel him," she explained.

"Is everything ready?"

"The coffin is in the backyard. I couldn't have the boys finding it. It's already spelled; once I take him down, you know what you have to do."

"I'll take care of it."

Klaus disappeared from view, but Samantha remained fixed on the door, until slowly… it opened.

Elena gasped as the same man from her previous dream came waltzing through the door, black eyes surveying the room before resting on Samantha.

"Rumor has it… you're the witch hiding Niklaus," he spoke. His voice was just as icy as his appearance and Elena felt the blood freeze in her veins. "Show him to me and your family will be spared."

Samantha didn't answer, and simply closed her eyes. Elena was confused until the man began clutching his throat, dropping to his knees from the lack of air. Samantha began chanting and the whole house started to shake, causing the man to scream out in agony. Somehow, through his obvious pain, he managed to stand and advanced on Samantha, muttering foreign words of his own.

This man's magic was clearly the stronger and Samantha seemed to be having trouble continuing her curse under the weight of his magic.

"You stole something from me, Niklaus," the man yelled over the trembling of the house. "Return it, and this woman and her family will be spared."

Samantha screamed out in agony as she pushed on, but Elena could already see trickles of blood pouring from her nose and eyes. But just as she was about to give out, the man let out an agonized scream of his own as a sword pierced his side.

The young Damon stood holding the hilt of the sword with tears of anger streaming down his face.

"Stay away from my mother," he yelled, but the dark man recovered quickly, lifting Damon off the floor with nothing more than his mind and sending him flying across the room. Elena winced when she heard his head connect with the wall as he was rendered unconscious.

A yell of pure fury rang from Samantha and her chanting began again, with more force than before. This time, the man went to the ground, clutching his head, and in seconds, it was over. Elena guessed that someone that powerful probably wasn't dead, but he continued to lay motionless.

Samantha attempted to crawl to her son, but Klaus beat her to him.

"He'll live. He might have a headache when he wakes, but nothing serious," Klaus explained, carrying Damon to his mother. As Elena watched Samantha, she was reminded of Bonnie's grandmother the day she'd preformed the tomb spell, and knew that she only had minutes left.

Samantha kissed her son before slumping to the ground beside him, the cries of Stefan in the cellar filling the now quiet house.

As Elena awoke this time, tears were already making tracks down her face, which soon turned to full on sobs. Neither Damon nor Stefan had ever mentioned how their mother had died; she just knew that in all the stories they'd told, she wasn't in them. If this dream was true, did that mean that the man she's been dreaming about is in that coffin?

The memory of his black eyes was still strong in her mind and she knew instantly that she didn't want that coffin opened. But what should she say about the dream? Should she just… ask Damon how his mother died?

Her phone rang on her bedside table and she saw Damon's name pop up on the screen. She stared at the phone until the ringing finally stopped, too scared for him to hear the sadness in her voice.

~TVD~

Damon stared at the phone in his hand; Elena usually answered when he called. He tossed the phone on his bed while pulling a clean shirt from his closet. His plans were to meet up with Mama Witch and Judgy at the lake under Wickery Bridge, but now he was considering stopping by Elena's first. She was still pretty shaky when he'd dropped her off last night.

He'd just finished strapping his boots on when he heard the faint swirl of the air as someone appeared in his room.

"I was wondering when you'd show up."

"So it was you who removed the dagger," Elijah clarified, eyeing Damon speculatively.

"Thought you might want to stretch your legs, get some fresh air."

"Let's just get to it, shall we. What's your master plan this time?"

"Well, someone missed their morning coffee."

"Damon, my brother informed me that you and Stefan have the coffin. I'm here to tell you right now not to open it."

Damon rolled his eyes, suddenly regretting his decision to release the backstabbing original. Why couldn't anyone ever just follow his plan?

"Any why shouldn't I," Damon asked, closing the distance between him and Elijah.

"You have no idea what you're dealing with. Trust me; what's in that coffin needs to stay there."

"Why? Don't tell me you're taking sides with your lying little brother again."

"Damon, I want my family back and you need to be rid of Klaus. I'll help you, but that coffin stays closed."

"And how do we kill Klaus without that coffin?"

Elijah paced the room, clearly deciding how much to divulge with Damon before he finally stopped to stare at a picture of Elena lying on Damon's dresser. He picked it up, running his fingers over her face before turning to meet Damon's curious gaze again.

"There is something that might be the key to killing Klaus, but unfortunately, it was lost back in the 1800s. Around your time I believe."

Elijah paused again, placing the picture back on the dresser and making his way back to Damon.

"What was it?"

"Something powerful... something I need to find. I had thought it was safer for it to be lost; safer because it wasn't in Klaus' hands… but it might be the only thing that can kill him."

"Fine, don't tell me. What's the plan then?"

"I need time to do some digging. In the meantime, Klaus thinks I'm helping him retrieve that coffin from Stefan. I need you to stall him."

"Yeah, the last time I did that for someone, I was skewered with a tiny umbrella."

"Well, you'll just have to be more creative this time."

With a parting grimace, Elijah was gone and Damon stared at his phone, no longer sure of his next move. He was startled when his phone vibrated in his hand, alerting him to a text from Bonnie.

Found the necklace. Working on the spell to open the coffin.

With a long sign, Damon dialed her number and put the phone to his ear.

"Are you coming," an irritated Bonnie asked.

"Not right now. Don't pop the top just yet. I think we should wait until we know more."

~TVD~

Elena sat in her car, staring at the front door of the boarding house. It'd taken one very long shower and three cups of coffee before she'd finally built up the courage to drive over. Now she just hoped that Stefan wasn't home; the last thing she needed was to see the look of betrayal in his eyes when she asked to talk to Damon alone.

She was still staring at the door when there was a loud knock on her driver's side window, causing her to let out a surprised shriek in response.

"Nice to know I still keep you on your toes," Damon smirked, opening the door for her.

Elena stepped out but didn't return with a smile or quip remark like he thought she would. The memory of last night's dream was still fresh on her mind and she knew the conversation they were about to have wasn't going to be an easy one.

"We need to talk," she explained quickly, still refusing to look him in the eye.

"Okay… should I be worried."

Elena didn't answer, but her silence was all the explanation he needed.

"We can talk inside. Stefan's with Bonnie."

She nodded and let him guide her into the house, still replaying what she planned to say to him. This would probably be one of the toughest conversations they'd ever had and she wasn't completely sure how it would go. What if he didn't open up to her? What if there was no truth to the dream and she just needed to have her head scanned? She was sure to be going a little crazy from all this supernatural crap.

He sat down on the couch and pulled her down beside him, bringing her chin up so he could look into her eyes, which were on the verge of tears.

"What happened?"

"I had another dream… but this one was different than before…" She trailed off, uncertain how she should begin. Damon could never be considered fragile, but she was about to bring up the death of his mother.

"That bad? Elena, I can take them away." As he stared into her troubled eyes, his had taken on a slightly frantic look.

"Damon… how did your mom die?"

"What?"

Damon was completely taken off guard by this line of questioning. How did they go from her crazy dreams to his mom?

"Uh… she died from an illness when I was six. What does that have to do with anything?"

"Are you sure that's what happened?"

"That's what I was told. I don't really remember. Elena, what's going on?"

"The dream I had last night… your mother was in it… and so were you. Damon, she was a witch."

He didn't respond in any way, didn't even move, and at first, Elena feared he'd gone into shock. But then, he ran his hands through his hair and sought his much loved alcohol at the table behind the couch. It wasn't until his third drink that he finally spoke.

"You had a dream that my mother was witch? How do you know it was her?"

"You were in it too as a boy. And Klaus was there and so was the man from my other dream, the man with the black eyes. She did a spell to take him down and… and then she… died."

Elena nearly choked on the last word and she watched his face, waiting for his response. Damon stared into his empty tumbler, as if the remaining drops of scotch would hold the key that would make sense of all this.

"You're wrong. My mother died of an illness when I was six. It was sudden, and she was just dead. She was not a witch!"

"Damon, I know this is hard, but you have to believe me. She entombed that man in the coffin, the one Bonnie is trying to open."

"I think I would remember my mom fighting someone like…"

Something hit him, something that had eluded him yesterday when he'd gone into that dream. The man with the black eyes; it wasn't the first time he'd seen him. The memory of that man standing in the hallway of his father's house with the walls shaking around him was suddenly clear in his mind. Why was he just now remembering this?

"I need to see that dream," Damon ordered.

"Damon…"

Elena stood, coming up beside him to cup his face in her hands, forcing him to look at her.

"You don't have to do that," she urged.

"I have a right to know how my mother died!" His eyes were fierce, but the longer her warm hands massaged his cheeks, the softer they became until a vulnerability shown through that Elena had never seen before.

"Okay," she nodded, taking his hand and leading him upstairs to his bedroom.

~TVD~

"What are you doing," Stefan asked as he watched Bonnie and Abby gather their grimoires from the cave floor.

"Damon wants to wait to open the coffin," Bonnie explained.

"What? No, I'm not waiting just because Damon has cold feet."

"He just wants to wait until we know more. We were going to go back through the other grimoires to see if we could find anything."

"Elijah must have got to him," Stefan mumbled, turning to punch the cave wall with his fist, sending shards of rock falling to the ground around him.

"Elijah?"

"Damon removed his dagger before Klaus came for the coffins. Apparently, he's Damon's new best friend."

Bonnie massaged her temples, trying to decide who she should trust now.

"Bonnie," Abby spoke up. "I don't think we should stop. The witch spirits wanted you to open this for a reason. We shouldn't give up."

"But what if Damon's right? What if this is a bad idea?"

"I trust our ancestors a lot more than some vampire."

After a moment of consideration, Bonnie nodded and placed the grimoires back on the ground to pick up where she'd left off. Something deep in Stefan's mind was troubling him. Weren't these the same witch spirits that had tried to kill Elena, and almost roasted him in the process? But this was about destroying Klaus; that was all that mattered now.

He pushed the thought from his head along with the unresolved passion for Elena and sat back to watch the witches at work.

A/N: Oh, Stefan; haven't you learned to trust your brother yet? Let me know what you think!