I'm autistic, and I've always struggled to start watching new TV shows because the unknown makes me anxious. But TVD hooked me from minute one, and I just wanted to know more. It's become my safe place in a way, and it's easier for me to learn English by writing about them. I'm sure Stefan and Elena will bring me luck. Thanks a lot to those who read and help me by giving advice on how to improve my English :)

Since the beginning of the series, I've had a crush on Stefan, no hiding that. I've always been into the good guys. Paul Wesley is fun and charming, and these days I've been watching him play an angel in Fallen (He's so adorable when he talks to his dog for the first time...). Who knows, maybe some angels could appear in this new world too... hehehe.

Chapter 2: Bright and strange

Elena looked into her own eyes in the bathroom mirror. She had been ready for an hour, and it couldn't be past six yet. Stefan wasn't good at keeping secrets, which comforted her because she didn't have to worry about him lying to her. She could read his gaze like her own diary. But she couldn't help feeling uneasy after he left.

Why couldn't he remember anything they had talked about the day before? Stefan seemed like a different person, constantly looking over his shoulder as if someone might come to stab him. She understood he had reasons to be scared; they were still worried about Klaus coming after them. But there was something more, something he wasn't telling her, and that tormented her.

The doorbell interrupted her thoughts, and she checked her makeup one last time before rushing downstairs. She hoped to find Stefan, consumed by guilt for not being honest with her. Or at least, that's what she hoped to find.

But it wasn't Stefan, nor did he look anything like him. It was Klaus himself standing at the door, arms crossed. Elena was at a loss for words.

"Aren't you going to let me in?" he asked with a sly smile. She tried to close the door, but he stopped her. "Oh, come on, Elena. I'm not here to kill you or anything. I don't care if you're alive or not. I already know that Elijah gave you that potion, and honestly, I couldn't care less."

"What... what are you doing here?" Elena managed to ask.

"I've come to pay my respects for the death of your father. Again," he emphasized, and Elena felt a pang of pain in her chest. That was the expression, yes. "Well, fine," he rolled his eyes and with a single touch, he fully opened the door and entered. "Let's drop the act, shall we? I want to go home soon, and I imagine you have plans for tonight."

"That's none of your business. Why did you come here?" Elena demanded.

"I was looking for your boyfriend. Do you know where I can find him?" Klaus looked inside the house, as if Stefan might be hiding behind a corner. "Lately, he's been quite elusive, especially since I sacrificed his girlfriend in that full moon ritual."

Elena rolled her eyes. "No, I haven't seen him since this morning—unfortunately for me. But even if I did, I wouldn't tell you."

Klaus chuckled. It was a gesture that would have softened him, but not too much. He didn't have many places to look for Stefan, but he had decided to start with the first one that came to mind, and that's why he was there.

"I hope you get along, love" he said, not seeming angry, which made him even more terrifying. When he was calm, he was most unpredictable. "I believe I've shown you that I'm in a truce with you."

"Oh, yes, thank you for not turning my aunt Jenna into a vampire to sacrifice her," she replied sarcastically. "It was very kind of you to change your mind at the last moment."

"Well, if Stefan hadn't brought me a suitable substitute, I wouldn't have been able to do it, would I?" he replied casually.

Elena looked into his eyes for a few seconds but said nothing. Even though her uncle John wasn't someone she held in high regard, he didn't deserve what had happened to him. At first, she wasn't sure if she could forgive him for volunteering to be sacrificed instead of her aunt, but burying him had been punishment enough for his soul. So, although it had only been two days ago, she had genuinely forgiven him and let go of her resentment. Why did everyone around her end up dying, in one way or another?

She was tired of burying people she cared about.

"Man, the guy I was looking for," he said suddenly, and turned around to face the man who had appeared behind him, "we were precisely talking about you."

"I don't have time for this now, Klaus," Stefan excused himself, and walked past him to grab Elena by the wrist, "let's go from here. They are waiting for us."

"But..."

"Now," he interrupted, and had to use his strength to make her move. Klaus stood in front of them again, preventing them from moving forward, "Klaus..." he growled.

"Today, I'm in a good mood. I'll overlook this slight and let you go," Klaus said, looking curiously at Elena, who hid herself in Stefan's shoulder to avoid his terrifying and cold gaze. "But we have a pending conversation."

And with a military salute, he vanished. Stefan took a few seconds to react, but finally approached Elena to embrace her.

"It's becoming clearer to me that living a normal life is impossible," he said.

"We have to try, at least," she sighed against his shirt. "Is the surprise party you've been hiding ready?"

He smiled, and she raised her eyebrows, pretending not to know what he was talking about. She pushed him a little, urging him to stop pretending. He was terrible at it, and Caroline had already let something slip about period costumes they had to pick up. To avoid disappointing them, she was ready to pretend to be surprised when the time came.

She didn't need to say anything until they were halfway home in Stefan's sports car. He seemed tense, and she knew it wasn't just because of the encounter with Klaus.

"Do you think Klaus was lying, and he really wants me dead again?" she asked.

Stefan said nothing, just shrugged and tightened his grip on the steering wheel. He focused on the road to help him think, but with Elena by his side, it wasn't easy. He had more and more questions in his mind, and no answer felt entirely convincing.

Had they gone back in time? It felt like a different world, where Jenna hadn't died because John sacrificed himself, but Klaus was still turned into a hybrid. However, everything else seemed to be in place. It was curious that only one specific event had been altered. And, above all, they had awakened just before everything went awry for them. Was someone giving them another chance? Because he was determined to make the most of it.

He looked in the rearview mirror for a moment.

"I know Klaus well enough not to underestimate him," he finally said when the conversation seemed to have ended. Elena, who had been looking at the road, turned her head to rest against the back of the seat, admiring him better. "But don't worry, Elena. I won't let this dream end too."

Elena smiled, touched. Had her nightmare left him disoriented to the point that he still felt it wasn't real?

"This isn't a dream, Stefan, I've... Watch out, there's something there!"

The next thing she heard was Stefan trying to brake, and they ended up on the side of the road. She was in complete shock, despite Stefan's attempts to bring her back to reality. Suddenly, she felt his hands all over her, anxious.

"Are you okay? Are you hurt?" he caressed her face gently, but all she could do was look into his eyes. "I'll go see what that was, okay? Stay here."

Elena nodded, lifeless in her eyes, and let him go. She had caught a glimpse of a large black lump on the road in broad daylight, and memories hit her before she could resist. Her parents' car veering off the road, water starting to surround them. She gasped, trying to get more air into her lungs than it could hold, and began coughing.

"It's a girl!" he called from afar. The closed windows made the sound carry farther than it actually was. The noise entered their car again when he opened the door. "There's a girl and a guy, they seem to be injured... Are you okay?"

"I-I think so, it was just a scare," she lied, although not entirely; it had been a terrifying scare. She put her hand on her chest, trying to stretch her shirt to let more air into her lungs. "We have to call an... ambulance for them."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, they need medical help, I..."

"That's not what I meant," he bit his lip, getting on his knees in the car. Now he could hold her face and make her look into his eyes. "We're okay, all right? Everything is going to be fine."

"Everything's... going to be fine..."

"That's right, let's breathe together," he closed his eyes, trying to keep the calm he didn't really have. It was also hard for him to fill his lungs with air, but someone had to be the reasonable one there. She followed his lead, trembling. "There you go..."

Two thick tears ran down her cheeks as the panic attack started to leave her body. It had been too close. If Stefan had braked just a second later...

However, those tears didn't go far, because he kept holding her face. He kissed her forehead carefully, as slow as he could. Gradually, color returned to her cheeks.

"Thank you, Stefan," she murmured, stroking his hands on her face. "It was just... a bad memory, more than the scare."

"I know, but it's just that, a bad memory," he kissed her forehead again, this time more briefly. "I'll call emergency, okay?"

His girl nodded, unable to say much more, but that was enough to make him feel a little better and decide to get out of the car. A few meters away, a girl lay on the road with a guy of her age on her back, also unconscious. This time, Stefan dared to kneel down in front of them to take a better look. They were dressed very differently from what he expected from the twenty-first century.

He wore the same shirt Stefan might have worn when he was still human, with one strap outside his arm and the other about to pop. She, however, looked more humble. If he had seen her at the time, he wouldn't have mistaken her for anything other than a maid. Her fingers trailed over the asphalt subtly. She was conscious, at least.

"Don't worry, I'll call an ambulance right away. You have to try not to move too much" he tried to reassure her, but that only made her wake up abruptly "We won't move from here until they come" he pointed to his car, parked behind him, just a few meters away "Do you remember what happened to you?"

The girl blinked rapidly, pondering her next move, but her companion made things easier for her by rolling onto his back and falling like dead weight onto the white stripes of the road shoulder. He groaned in pain from the impact, but after that, he didn't make any more noise. He had a hole in the upper part of his abdomen, yet hardly a drop of blood was coming out of his body. She, on the other hand, had no scratches whatsoever. He would even swear that as time passed, she looked better.

He extended his hand to help her up, but she didn't take it. She held onto her skirt so as not to step on it when she got up and cracked her back to relieve tension. She wore a corset from a time he didn't remember. And her shoes were nothing more than a piece of skin tied around her foot.

He was going to tell her that she didn't have to be afraid of him, but their eyes met, and he felt like he was struck by lightning, and then put back together. He brought his hands to his chest, afraid his heart had stopped beating. But, in fact, it was beating faster than it should.

"How much pain," she murmured, unable to take her eyes off him. He tried to take a step back, but his feet wouldn't respond, "how much pain is in your soul? Who has hurt you so much?"

Stefan began gasping like a fish out of water. The girl was getting closer and closer, and he couldn't move a muscle. He felt the warmth of one of her hands on his chest, and his heart rate slowed down. The eyes that had appeared brown until then turned bright, warm, lighter. That girl wasn't human. And apparently, neither was her companion.

"What... what are you?" he managed to ask.

The girl smiled at him. Her hair seemed to come alive, rising from her shoulders and fluttering around her like snakes trying to escape Medusa's head. It should have scared him, and yet all he felt was... peace. The kind of peace that only Elena had been able to give him in the most genuine and human way possible, the one he had spent years looking for until she appeared. He couldn't even blink.

"What's that red thing over there?" she looked at it for a second before returning to her eyes, and Stefan felt like they let him go just to catch him again before falling—again—under her spell. "It doesn't look like anything I've seen before..."

"That's my... my car. We were coming back home," she nodded with curiosity. "We can... we can take you if you need."

He was surprised by his own words, as if they hadn't come out of his mouth on their own volition.

"You're a good man; I didn't need to touch you to know that," she smiled. "I just need help with my brother; I can't carry him alone. Would you move him a few meters off the road for me?"

He turned to look at the boy lying on the road, and his eyes lost their power over him. There he was, with his arms open. His breathing was rapid yet weak, as if he didn't have much time left. If he had called an ambulance, they definitely wouldn't have arrived on time.

Moved by compassion, he picked him up in his arms and threw him at the feet of the first tree he found. He sat there with his head resting on his chest until his sister knelt in front of him and patted his face. He was already on his way back to the car when he felt a light turn on behind him, trying to catch up with him. However, his reaction was not to turn around and look but to keep walking. Elena was still waiting for him in the car, her mouth open from all she had just witnessed, and his desire to protect her was greater than to help that guy. He abruptly fell into his seat and closed the door silently. The girl placed her hand on his knee.

"Are they all right?" she asked, the only thing she said, and something stirred inside him. She was always worried about others, no matter how well she knew them. "Was the guy..."

"I don't know, probably," he blindly searched for the keys still inside the car and started the engine after a while. He couldn't stop looking at the road. "That girl forced me to move him away from the road. But the strange thing is... it didn't feel like an obligation, you know? I felt like I had decided that myself. At least until I stopped looking into her eyes."

"Maybe you're just too good not to leave him there," she suggested.

Perhaps that was it. Perhaps he just wanted... to do something good for someone.

"Maybe that's it, yes," he muttered, stepping on the gas.

Unaware that they had come to stay.