Elijah

Damon faced Elijah and Finn while Caroline turned towards Kol, they literally had each other's backs. Both held white oak stakes at the ready. Damon really didn't want to use his but he would if he had to, if it was the only way to keep Elena safe.

"You know if you needed a lift you could have just flagged us down," Damon teased.

"Sorry was it rude of me? While we're talking about manners I have to admit I was offended you decided to kill my brother and sister, without telling me first anyway," Elijah returned as he advanced on the Salvatore.

"Now we don't want to scare the good citizens of Mystic Falls do we?"

"You would be amazed how many people I can compel if you need to," Elijah answered.

"That's if I leave them living long enough for him to need to," Kol warned.

"Might be better to kill them, I swear they spike the drinking water with vervain these days, you never can be too careful but it's really ruining the whole humble small town American sense of community, I miss the local cuisine," Damon's tone remained light and witty but his body was tense, ready to move. He was outnumbered and he knew that in the time it would take to take down one the other would kill Elena. "Makes me wonder why you'd return?"

"There was the matter of my brother and sister."

"The brother and sister that until now you've been happy enough or us to kill?" Damon countered.

"Klaus yes, but Rebecca, Rebecca was… almost sweet. There was an innocence about her, despite her lesser qualities, I wondered if I'd taken her under my wing instead of my brother, perhaps things would have been different?" It was a rhetorical question, Elijah didn't expect Damon to answer.

"You know how siblings are, so stubborn and strong-minded, always leaving dead bodies all over their bedroom floor for you to clean up after them, tell me about it," Damon smiled slightly at the strange affinity between them. He had never thought of himself as having anything in common with any of the originals until that moment. What had begun as his usual reflexive acerbic wit had somehow come a little to close the truth.

"Well perhaps you have done me a favour," Elijah conceded, "As you know Finn is not particularly sympathetic towards our siblings either, but the matter of the white oak stakes remains, we cannot allow you and your friends to run around with weapons whose singular purpose is our destruction."

"What happened to Mr Vampires-Are-All-Evil-And-We-Should-Die, found a good support group did you? Rediscovered the joy of life?" Damon's gaze darted to Finn, who had until now been silent.

"My immediate plans have changed, it does not mean that my long term goal is any different," Finn replied.

"So you don't mind that he still wants to kill you as long as it isn't right now?" Damon asked Elijah.

"Finn and I have an understanding," Elijah countered.

"I do see what my brother saw in you," Kol leered at Caroline. "Such a shame that I have break his little toy before he ever got to play with it."

"You have got to be kidding me," Caroline replied and in a move that was both reckless, bordering on suicidal she dove at the Kol with the white oak stake, but the older vampire was faster and more powerful and she found herself transported, thrown up against a brick wall in a nearby alleyway between two shops.

"That's better, much more private," Kol smiled. "You think you're better than me because you love humans, but where are your precious humans now? Has even one of them come to your aid? See I don't think they will. I think most of this town knows we exist, senses it, but chooses to ignore it because they are selfish creatures. They exist only to live our little miniscule mundane little lives and serve as food for us, the more powerful species. If you could see that you could do great things, you will be eternally beautiful and powerful, but you never be more than mediocre because your love for them pollutes you. You're nothing more than a dirty human whore," as he spat the last words in her face he shoved his hand down her front, a demeaning bruising groping assault that made Caroline feel no more powerful than an ordinary human, in reminded her of when Damon had used her, back in the beginning, only it was a hundred times worse because she knew what it was to be the hunter and now she was the prey. She wanted to vomit in his face.

Despite her revulsion and her fear and as she fought against him, scratched at him, pushed at him, Kol was able to take the white oak stake out of her hands easily. It was like taking candy from a baby. In that moment Caroline realised something, they had all grown too used the originals, began to underestimate them. Killing Klaus and Rebecca had been a fluke. She remembered Elena describing the time Damon and Stefan had confronted Elijah and he'd thrown them around like ragdolls. That was the real power of the originals. They were stronger and almost impossible to kill.

But they were divided.

Suddenly a second body pushed against her. Kol's body was sandwiched between them as the stake entered his heart and the dying vampire fell against Caroline and then into the alleyway at their feet.

"Elijah?" Caroline asked shocked. "Why?"

"I did want Klaus dead, he was the worst of us, and as the hybrid the most dangerous, but Kol… Kol was even darker still. Kol lived for nothing but the kill, felt no remorse, had no entanglements. Klaus at least had Rebecca, Finn had his vampire lover, Kol cared for no one except himself and as soon as I heard you'd killed Klaus and Rebecca I knew he would come after you, all of you, stop at nothing to get the weapons that could threaten the most precious thing in the world to him – his own life. The only way to end him was to come here with him. Finn agreed."

"Thank you," Caroline panted. When she looked into his ancient eyes she saw the man Elena had described. A man tortured by what he was a part of but still holding on to life, to some principles, despite all the double crosses and deals. Elijah had finally made the hardest choice of all, the choice to betray his own flesh and blood, the only souls that had lived as long as he had, that shared an unimaginable history, for the betterment of mankind, a people he had virtually lost touch with. She could see there was regret on his face, but there was also relief, the relief of knowing that Kol would not hurt any more people and Elijah would no longer feel guilty for standing by while it happened.

The sound of screeching tyres interrupted her before she could say anything more or check to see how Elena and Damon were doing. Stefan and Bonnie leapt from the car, Bonnie already chanting. Caroline could see how it would look to them. Elijah had her cornered. Stefan had a white oak stake in his hands.

"Wait! Stefan no!" Caroline cried out.