ELENA

I should have known where this conversation was headed when he started talking about his family. Yet I hadn't seen it coming – not this. "It can't be..." I whispered, my voice breaking. "My brother died. His name was Steve. There is a grave with his name at Mystic Falls cemetery. I remember his burial..."

Stefan looked at me with a sad, sympathetic expression. "They buried nothing but an empty coffin. Allegedly, my body was not in a condition to be looked at. Officially, I had died in a gang-related street crime. That's what they always claim if it happens in a city. Animal attack for the more rural areas."

Again, I was unable to say anything. My rational self still clung to its memories – the version of a past that had been solid and valid up to now. The present could change at short notice and turn your world upside down from one minute to the next – I had learned that the hard way. But your past wasn't supposed to do that. I had fought so hard to accept reality back then – and as painful as my past was, it was mine, it had become a part of me. It couldn't have been all wrong.

Yet my gut was telling me that each and every word was true. Stefan was the undead vampire my brother Stevie had become.

"I don't recognize you..." I finally said, searching his face for some kind of familiarity and coming up empty. Why hadn't I been able to tell at first glance?

"Do you even remember what I looked like?" Stefan asked gently. "I don't think you could. You were only seven years old, back then. I was nineteen – a grown-up in your eyes. And you never saw any pictures of me after my death."

That was true. Mom had kept them locked way somewhere. She had always said they were too painful to look at. "She never showed them to me. After they died and I was moved to Pennsylvania, the albums were gone. They must have been lost in packing."

Stefan picked something up from the desk and set it in front of me. The photo albums. All of them. Flipping through the pages with shaking hands, I felt my eyes swell with tears again.

"After Mom's and Dad's death, Elijah took them," Stefan explained with a tone of regret. "He couldn't have sent them to you. It would have made it impossible for me to ever return here."

"Elijah? As in Dr. Daniels? So he was the vampire who changed you?"

"Yes. We wanted everybody to forget what I had looked like, so that I could come back eventually."

"But Jenna should have recognized you... She knew you!"

"Thanks to her living in California, we hadn't met all that often. The last time she had seen me, I had barely been an adolescent. And I don't take after our father, either, so there wasn't much of a family resemblance. Besides, people look different after going through the change."

I looked at the pictures, slowly turning the pages, and wiping the tears before they fell on the treasure in my hands: the memories of a childhood caught on polaroid. My parents smiling at me. Me and Bonnie in the sand box, all messy. And there was Stefan. Yes, if I had been in possession of these pictures, looking through the albums over and over again and branding them into my memory until I knew every detail by heart, there was no doubt that I would have recognized him, even though he had looked different back then. Less perfect, more – human. Only now that I was able to draw a comparison, did I realize how little human was left in him.

"Why did they never tell me about you?"

"They would have, eventually. At the time, you were simply too young. And then they died before they had a chance to tell you. Mom left her diary, though. I'll give it to you. You'll understand if you read it."

"You have my mom's diary?"

"Our mom's diary, Elena," he said gently. There was an aching tightness in my throat and unshed tears veiling my eyes. All of a sudden, I had a brother again. It was still hard to wrap my mind about that.

"You said they always knew and kept contact?" I asked eventually, trying to understand what had truly happened back then. I couldn't even begin to imagine what it must have been like for them: Learning about the death of their beloved son, and then hearing that he had been raised from the dead to live as a vampire... They must have been freaking out completely.

"They took up hiking. It gave them an excellent excuse to leave town and go out into the wilderness – where we could meet and spend a couple of days together without fear of accidentally running into someone who knew me."

"You met them on their last trip..."

"Yes. I saw them last the day before they died. They had their old camera with them, and Mom gave me the film roll that was in it, with all the pictures she had taken recently. She always did that when we met. To make me still feel part of the family, I guess." He pointed to the photograph of me and my parents on the table. "I liked this photo best. It's how I remembered them, and you. I've been carrying it with me for the last five years. It must have been very disturbing for you to find it. I'm sorry for being so careless."

"So their death really was a car accident?"

"Yes. A truck driver had gotten into their lane right in the middle of the bridge and their car crashed into the river. I only heard about it a day later through Elijah. I can't tell you how that felt. Losing them completely and forever, losing you..." Stefan's voice broke, too, and I saw tears swell in his eyes. "I was at their burial. I couldn't help it – I just had to go there to say goodbye, if only from a distance. It almost broke my heart to see you cry at their grave. More than anything, I wanted to be there, to comfort you and let you know that you were not alone." His eyes were full of sadness and grief, mirroring my own.

"Then why didn't you? I was fifteen by then. I would have understood!"

"In the middle of puberty, with the loss you had to deal with, your whole life being turned upside-down? No, I couldn't risk it. It didn't seem fair to you, either – you would have lost me again. There was no way I could have been around you without raising suspicion: A nineteen year old who took interest in a girl of barely fifteen... Jenna would have had me arrested. Not even she is as liberal as that." No, probably not. "When I learned that you were moving back to Mystic Falls to go to Greenville College, nothing could have kept me from coming here, too."

"Where have you lived before?"

"It's true what I told you: I've been living with a foster family in Chicago. Vampires who take in the newly-created under-aged, who can't get by all by themselves yet and or who simply need an alibi family. They often have more than one foster child – in my case, there was Alys."

Stefan looked fondly at her, and I couldn't help feeling a pang of jealousy. Not about how much he cared for her – because I did, too. But envy for all those years in which she had known my brother and I hadn't. Yet I was also glad that he had found someone who cared for him as much as Alys obviously did.

"I'm so terribly sorry, Elena," Alys said, "for yet another secret that I couldn't share with you. It made my heart ache to see both of you suffer. And I felt guilty for even calling him my brother in front of you – it felt like stealing. I never wanted to take him from you."

I quickly took Alys's hand and gave it a squeeze. "I know that. And you don't have to feel guilty. You did your best to be a sister to both of us. I just wish Stefan had told me sooner."

So much time had passed, and so many opportunities to tell me. Why hadn't he?

"It's not something you blurt out on a first meeting!" Stefan said in an attempt to defend his decision, although he clearly did feel guilty about it. "You wouldn't have believed it. And then Damon showed up and complicated matters further."

"Damon? What's he got to do with this?"

"Well, he clearly had his eyes on you, and I had a feeling that you returned his attention."

"I didn't!" I immediately said, maybe a little too defensively.

"You doubtlessly would have, if he had gotten serious. As it was, you and I had become friends – and this instant connection between us must have looked like love to Damon. I decided to leave it at that. It wasn't fair on you, I know that now." I blushed, remembering the incident that had made him aware of how mistaken I had been about my feelings. Of course, it all made sense now. My heart had obviously recognized him, even if my mind hadn't.

"I never meant for you to start having doubts about yourself on realizing that what we had wasn't anything passionate. It was very inconsiderate of me – my only excuse being that I hadn't thought that far."

"Well, I guess Damon will be surprised to hear about this, too."

"I'd much prefer it if you didn't tell him."

I looked at him in surprise. "Why?"

"Because Elijah has strongly requested that I not let him know. I have no idea why – but he must have his reasons. He's very distrustful of Damon. It might offer some kind of protection against his advances if Damon thinks we're going steady." There was a certain irony to the statement that he couldn't be aware of. Damon wasn't the main threat to me at the moment, and even if he was, I didn't think having Stefan posing as my boyfriend would discourage him much.

"You believe he'd respect that?"

Stefan frowned. "Did he not? I mean – when you were with him, did he make a pass at you?"

I wasn't even sure if it hadn't been the other way round. Thanks to my getting thoroughly buzzed, I couldn't be sure of that. And Damon was always making lascivious remarks and innuendos, that was just part of his play. "No, he was behaving like the perfect gentleman," I said. And he had, most of the time. "Actually, he saved my life on Friday night."

Stefan and Alys looked at me with alarmed attention. "What do you mean?"

Hesitantly, I started to tell both of them what had happened after I left Stefan on Friday night. As expected, neither of them took it well. "God gracious, Elena! Have you any idea how close a call that was?" Stefan gasped, jumping up all agitated and going through his hair again. "I've never heard of a human whose life could be saved after a vampire injected his venom. I can't believe Damon managed to do that!" His frown deepened. "Maybe he didn't – maybe he just made that up as excuse to feed on you..."

Remembering the look on Damon's face in the car, I knew that this didn't even hold a grain of truth to it. "No, definitely not," I said, wondering why he would even think that. "You haven't seen how shaken he was. Why is everybody always suspecting the worst in him? He isn't all bad, you know. He even tried to convince me to tell you about it, thinking that I would need your protection."

"Maybe he does have a soft spot for you," Alys said pensively. "At least he has neither fed from you nor slept with you yet, and that's normally all Damon ever does with women."

"Yet? It's not gonna happen – none of it! I'm not a human blood bag!"

Stefan smiled weakly. "You're making your point with the wrong vampires. You're safe with me and Alys. And given that Damon saved your life twice, I owe him deeply. But that doesn't mean I trust him."

I kept my silence, fearing that my disapproval would lead to another discussion about Damon that I didn't care to have.

"So – why does he think that this guy, whoever he was, will try to get at you again?" Alys inquired. Since I had no clue, I could only shrug. "I'm not sure. Damon just doesn't believe it was coincidence. The guy had been following me."

"Then we'll have to make sure you're always with me, or Alys, or even Damon in the next couple of weeks," Stefan said resolutely. "Until we find him." As much as I enjoyed being in their company, being under surveillance 24 hours a day didn't sound like fun. "Find him? How do you want to do that?"

"If he sticks around, he's likely to leave a trace," Stefan said rather gloomily. I had a fair idea what he was talking about. "Of dead bodies, you mean..."

"He'll have to feed on something. Provided he doesn't have access to a blood bank – which is a luxury not many vampires enjoy – his feedings won't go completely unnoticed, if you know what to look for." Stefan probably saw the concern in my eyes and put his hands on my shoulders in a comforting gesture. "Don't worry, Elena. Now that I finally have you back, I won't let anything happen to you. We'll catch him."

His voice was calm and firm, intended to be reassuring, and it was. I wondered if it would always have been like that, having an older brother. Maybe not. Given that I had been so much younger than Stefan when he died – I still kept thinking about the end of his human life in these terms – we probably would never have shared this deep understanding. Our lives would barely have touched at all. So maybe there was some good to be found even in disasters. Provided you made it through them.

Overcome with emotion, I pulled him into a hug and Stefan returned my embrace with all his heart. Once again I was blinking back tears, except they were happy tears this time. I felt like being home again.

*'*'*'*'*'*

I spent the next couple of days in bliss, rejoicing in my newfound sibling relationship and spending almost every waking moment with Stefan. There were so many years we had to catch up on, so many long forgotten memories that longed to be unburied and still so much to be found out about each other.

Seeing him as my brother instead of a potential boyfriend had eased out even the last wrinkle in our relationship. There was no need anymore to question myself if this absence of passion was normal, or to pressure myself into feeling something I clearly didn't. Knowing about the things we shared – parents, a happy childhood, the sadness of losing it all and the incredible emptiness it left behind – explained our tendency to delve into rather serious topics of conversation. We were so alike in our thinking that any other relationship would have bordered on incest, anyway. Finally, I was able to embrace the familiarity we had always felt around each other with untainted, heartfelt joy.

My happiness was only marred by a few unpleasant concerns, that I purposely shoved from my mind for the time being: A guilty conscience for neglecting Bonnie and Caroline, the underlying worry about my attacker and the horrible nightmares that tore me out of sleep every night and slowly made me look like a zombie.

I tried to ignore them at first, hoping they would stop once my subconscious deemed the incident sufficiently dealt with. Yet that didn't seem to be happening anytime soon. If anything, they got worse.

Starting to feel desperate, I finally went to have a talk with Damon about it. He was the one primarily responsible for them, anyway, having messed around in my head. He simply had to put it right and fully erase those haunting memories of menacing eyes, sharp teeth that tore through my flesh, and the abundant flow of blood that had me screaming in horror.

Given that I hadn't seen him since our weekend in Fells Church, I felt a trifle nervous when walking up to his door. As clear and pure my relationship with Stefan was, as nebulous and murky was the thing I had with Damon. And after he had saved my life at least twice, I guessed we had a thing – whatever it was. Friendship? It felt like that occasionally, but friendship normally involved a reasonable feeling of comfort, and that was not the word I would have used to describe how I felt in his presence. Besides, what kind of relationship could I have with someone who admittedly saw me as a food source?

Almost regretting to have chosen a time when I knew that Alys was out, I knocked, and mentally prepared myself for dealing with him – another sign that clearly didn't bespeak friendship.

"Elena!" Damon exclaimed on seeing me, putting on his signature smile. "What brings you by? I haven't seen you in a while..." His pretended casualness effectively hid his thoughts and emotions. He looked me over appraisingly, then frowned. "You don't look good. Did Stefan make you lose sleep? Tell him not to be so demanding. You're only human, after all, and those rings under your eyes don't suit you."

I shot him a glowering glance. Okay, so he meant to revert the tone between us to audacious, saucy and flippant – just like it had been before our weekend in Fells Church. I stiffened my shoulders. Fine with me. It was probably better to pretend nothing had happened. Nothing had happened, after all.

Damon beckoned me in with a nod of his head and led me into the living room.

"This memory alteration thing didn't work!" I told him, not feeling the need for polite chit-chat after his preamble. "I'm having nightmares. Though everything remains foggy, I find myself back in the car, unable to move, while he's coming at me... biting me, depleting me of my blood and ripping my throat out. You must take those memories from my mind!"

Again, Damon gave me a scrutinizing glance, his expression unreadable. "I already did," he responded, at least without irony.

"Well, then you'll have to do it again, because it obviously didn't work!"

"Yes, it did," he insisted. "Those are not memories torturing you – it's your imagination. Your subconscious is putting facts and fears together and creates a reality of its own. I'm afraid I can't do anything about that." He offered me a glass of whatever it was that he was drinking, probably bourbon – which I declined.

A hint of despair seeped into my voice. "Maybe you didn't hide them deep enough, or you just didn't erase all the fragments..."

"Elena," he interrupted, looking at me with a sober expression and a hint of regret in his eyes: "I did. Believe me. He never took your blood. And he did not rip your throat out. It never happened like this, so those are not memories. I'm sorry."

"Then maybe you should let me remember what really happened..." I suggested. "You know – so I can deal with it and get over it."

"No-o!" Damon said, pulling the O like a chewing gum. "Trust me – you don't want those memories back."

"But I can't sleep, Damon! Every time I see someone in a hoodie, it makes my heart stop for a second... I was scared to death. I still am, just thinking about it."

Damon's stern gaze emphasized his point: "As you well should be! He meant to kill you, Elena. Fear will help you to keep alive."

"You must be mistaken! Nothing has happened in the last days – there hasn't been a sign of him. It was mere coincidence, and now he's gone."

"Sorry to disagree. It was about you. Or rather about someone he mistook you for..." Damon sighed. "There is something I haven't told you yet..."

Oh no. I had come to dread that line. I looked at him with questioning frown.

"I meant to tell you in Fells Church, but then we went out and you got buzzed and, well, I didn't want to spoil the good time we were having." Damon beckoned me over to his desk, rummaging in the drawers. "There's something I need you to see..." He took out a leather bound book that looked like an old photo album. Seriously? Was I in for another stunning revelation? Like the confession that he was actually my great-grandfather?

Damon turned straight to the last page. Lying unattached between that and the cover, as if it didn't really belong into the album, was an old, sepia colored photograph of a girl. An ominous expression on his face, he silently handed it to me.

I took a look at it and gasped. The girl on the photograph looked – like me.

"A striking resemblance, isn't it?" Damon asked, his voice sounding slightly bitter. "If your hair was a bit lighter and curlier and your eyes a little more olive than chocolate, one could easily mistake you for her. On first seeing you, I did. Maybe your attacker did, too."

"Who is she?" I asked, flabbergasted. It was weird, having my own face look at me from a photograph that must have been taken at least a hundred years ago.

"Her name was Katherine, Katherine Pierce. She was the vampire who turned me." Damon's voice was oddly toneless, not giving anything away. It made me instantly suspicious. "Was?"

"She vanished in 1864 – at least out of my life. I never heard from her again."

"But she's still alive?"

He shrugged all too casually. "Most likely so. Katherine always knew how to watch out for herself."

Okay, I could sense an issue here. An iceberg submerged might not look like much, judging from what can be seen, but it gives a hint at what lies beneath. And I had the feeling that there were a lot of turbulent emotions hidden beneath Damon's seemingly calm aloofness.

"Am I related to her?" I asked the most innocuous of all the significant questions that came to my mind.

"Now that's an interesting thought. The thing is: Vampires can't conceive. If you are a descendant of hers, Katherine must have had a child before she was turned herself – before I even got to know her. She certainly never mentioned it, and she sure wasn't the motherly type."

"You were in love with her," I stated, not even questioning it. He had a heart, after all. Probably a broken one. "What happened?"

A careless shrug was meant to tell me that it didn't matter, a disdainful twitch of his mouth told me it did. "What always happens: People fall in love and, rather unpleasantly, fall out of it again. I wasn't the only one she left – there was a very disappointed husband, too, and a few lovers and admirers she had wrapped around her fingers."

His tone didn't fool me. Clearly, there was way more to his relationship with that woman. And it was equally clear that he didn't want to talk about it. "A vampire husband?"

"No – he was human. She was married to Benjamin Lockwood."

"Tyler's ancestors? Had she already been changed when she married him?" Damon gave an affirmative nod, and I questioned further: "Do you think the Lockwoods know about vampires?"

"I bet Tyler doesn't have a clue. From what I heard and saw, he's an idiot. But I strongly suspect that his father had a fair idea. He was the chairman of this ominous Founders' Council after all."

"It's not ominous," I objected. "My father was a member, and so was my grandfather. It's a kind of tradition – families who have been residents of Mystic Falls for more than two generations can join in. Which is about half of the inhabitants."

"Well, it wasn't a tradition when it was first established," he pointed out with slicing logic. "At the time, you qualified for membership if you were in on the secret. That must have been about half of the inhabitants back then, too."

"You mean it started out as something a secret society of those who knew about vampires?"

"Yes. There was a time when this town was very much aware of them. Katherine was the one who made sure of that. Not only had she turned me, but also her brother Frederic and her best friend Pearl, who in turn changed her own daughter and one of her slaves. Frederic changed his girlfriend Bethanne. I lost track of the ones after that. Once started, it was like an infection – people who got vamped wanted to make sure that their loved ones would remain part of their eternal life."

"Who did you change?"

Damon turned his back to me and put the albums back to the shelves. "Alys," he said curtly. "She didn't thank me for it, though."

"Did you thank Katherine?"

He narrowed his eyes when looking back at me. "I wanted this, Elena," he said with a no-nonsense voice. "Don't mistake me for an accidental victim. It was my decision. So yes, I was grateful to her for giving me eternal life. But I had not foreseen the consequences of her meddling. Things in Mystic Falls started to get – out of hand."

"What happened?"

"Too many vampires in one spot drew attention to themselves, competing for the same food source. There were a couple of ugly deaths, given that most of the newly created vampires were still inexperienced and lacked finesse. It's difficult to feed without killing if you don't have the practice yet. The townsfolk were in uproar. That's when they created the council – a last line of defense against the vampires – to take back control over the town."

"It doesn't sound like they stood a chance against a horde of vampires. What could they possibly do?"

"They invited vampire hunters to Mystic Falls. Hunters have means to track vampires and render them defenseless. They are experts at killing them, too."

I remembered what Damon had told us about the vampires that had been burned in that chapel. So that was probably what Bonnie's grams had meant when she said the comet had brought evil to Mystic Falls. Except it hadn't been the comet. It had been Katherine.

"The burning of the Pierce's property – and the chapel... it was the hunters' doing?"

He nodded. "According to witnesses, the captured vampires – rendered defenseless with a special drug that temporarily immobilized their bodies – were locked inside before it was set on fire. I was lucky. I was far away when it happened, somewhere in battle. Nobody knew that Katherine had vamped me, too. When I came back to Mystic Falls, they were all gone. The Pierce's home – that of Katherine's parents – was burned to ashes. Allegedly, the confederate army had believed them to be union sympathizers."

I shuddered at the thought of helpless, but alive bodies in the middle of a man-made inferno. What a terrible way to die. "How did Katherine survive?"

"She had loyal and powerful help." He hesitated, as if not sure how much to reveal. "A servant of hers was actually a witch and sworn to protect her: Emily Bennett."

"Bonnie's ancestor?" Again, he gave an affirmative nod. It was curt, though, and I noticed that his jaws clenched. "I bet her granny knows all about it. Seems like everyone was keeping a diary, those days."

I furrowed my brows, trying to make sense of the story. "I don't understand. Why would Emily help save Katherine when she brought so much devastation to the town? Bonnie said witches are sworn to protect the balance of nature."

"Because of a plea... and a pledge."

"Made by whom?"

He sighed. "By me. Call it a premonition. Or maybe it was just having learned from experience. Katherine was over-confident, and getting careless. I didn't know about the hunters at the time, but it was clear that sooner or later, her actions would be putting her in danger. I made Emily swear to protect her – and in turn made her a promise, too: To always protect her and her descendants, if need be even from Katherine."

Wow. Damon had made a pledge to always protect Bonnie... and she didn't have a clue. "How did she manage to save her?"

"I never found out. Emily wouldn't say. But everybody I asked confirmed that she had not been among those burned in the fire, and I must have asked and compelled everybody in town. They still didn't know that it was she who had started all of this. Rumor had it that Lockwood had thrown her out of his house for being unfaithful to him."

"And you never heard from Katherine again?"

"I told you – love is a very fleeting thing."

"Why have you never tried to find her?"

"I did, in the beginning. But it soon became clear that she didn't want to be found. That's when I left Mystic Falls, banishing her from my memories. Until I met you."

I frowned. "Is that why you came back? To find out if you could somehow find Katherine through me?"

"I was intrigued. You and Bonnie suddenly appearing at my doorstep was a hell of a blast from the past."

Yes, I could imagine... Damon sneaking into my hotel room in order to feed on me – and looking at his lost lover's face after 150 years. I wondered what he had said or done that moment – and if he would tell me if I asked him. But I didn't. "And you think my resemblance to Katherine has something to do with what's happening now?" I asked instead.

"I told you: I don't believe in coincidences. Do you realize that all of this happened exactly 150 years ago – just when this comet was last seen? Witches believe cosmic events to be more than signs. They are some sort of celestial power interfering with our lives. Something is building up, Elena. I can feel it."

I tried to shake off my own feeling of gloom, which had only been amplified by his words. "So you think this guy who attacked me – he mistook me for Katherine? It doesn't make sense – you can't kill a vampire with vampire venom, can you?"

"No. When he caught your scent he must have realized you were human, he probably couldn't resist. He simply would have killed you by taking your blood. Only that he was interrupted. So he used his venom to make sure you wouldn't live to talk about it."

"Provided he really mistook me for Katherine – who would hate her enough that they would try to kill her on sight?"

"Believe me, there are plenty of people who would probably like to see her dead. Katherine wasn't exactly well-loved for her kindness."

Yet he had loved her. "There must have been something in her that you wanted to protect..."

"Oh, there was plenty," Damon said with a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "She was witty and charming, very self-assured and strong-willed, which was uncommon in women of those days. And of course, she was the most beautiful girl I had ever put my eyes on. Very much like you in that department. Being with her was like playing with fire – hot, intense, exciting – but she could be sweet and enchanting, too, if she chose to be."

Funny. It sounded very much like I would describe Damon. No wonder he had fallen for her – being a mere human, it wasn't easy to resist those vampire charms. But what did it get him in the end? Nothing but bitterness and disillusionment. I could do without that.