"Are you sure you're okay with this?" Stefan asked, walking over to her. He knew how close she had grown to both Rebekah and Elijah and no matter how she felt about Klaus, he knew it couldn't have been easier for her to kill them.
"Klaus almost killed Jeremy." She answers, looking at him. "He almost died Again. If Ric wasn't there, he could have. I can't lose him, Stefan." She was barely holding on to what was left of her humanity. If something were to happen to him, she wouldn't survive it. "Klaus has to die. It's the only way to keep him safe. It's the only way to keep you safe."
He didn't know it, but she was closer to turning it all off than he thought. He also didn't know he was the one keeping her from going over the edge of the very short cliff she found herself standing on. She watched Alaric cut up the wicker bridge sign into smaller pieces they could use against the originals. "So, however, I may feel, it doesn't matter. It never does."
She walks towards the door. "Let me know when it's done." She says on her way out. "I need some air." She shut the door behind her. She pulls out her cell phone and hovers over Elijah's name before she decides against calling him and pockets her phone. She leaves the building, running into Elena as she comes in.
She doesn't bother saying anything to her and walks away. She could feel herself lose control. There was only one thing she could think of to release the tension building up. Her skin felt like it was crawling.
She headed deep into the woods, stripping out of her clothes. Every bone in her body cracked as she transformed, and instead of fighting it, she embraced it.
The pain she felt overtook any other feelings she felt, and she welcomed it. For the first time in a while, she felt in control.
She loved the freedom she felt of giving in to her animalistic nature. There was something freeing about giving up control and giving in to her urges.
She was outside the town line before she gave in. It was mid-morning by the time she found her way back. She stopped off at the quarry to clean before she redressed and grabbed her phone.
She saw a message left by Stefan to meet him by the church ruins. She headed that way since they were due to meet soon and ended up meeting with him and Damon on the way there.
Stefan was carrying a black duffle bag. Damon brows knitted together upon seeing her, and Stefan looked just as worried.
"What?" She was confused by their looks of concern.
Damon swiped at a spot on his cheek with his thumb, and she did the same to reveal a bit of blood she missed.
"Don't worry, they weren't local."
"Even if they were, I'm sure she wouldn't be stupid enough to leave any traces back to us," Damon said to Stefan.
"I'm not." She affirmed. "And there wasn't much left of them." She started in the direction of the old church.
"What's that even mean?" Damon asked, following her.
Stefan knew the answer to that. "You turned."
"I was feeling antsy. Beginning to lose control, now I'm not." She answered, forging ahead.
"You call murdering a bunch of townies control?" Damon asks.
"If you're worried about the trail leading back here, don't. Klaus taught me how to cover my tracks. It was either them or people we knew. I choose the former."
She stops and turns around to face them, causing them to stop. "Unless you'd rather me drink my way through Mystic Falls. I'm not opposed to it."
They remained silent.
"I thought not."
"This is what your version of control looks like?" Stefan asks.
"Despite all my problems ending with Elena's life, she's still alive. So yeah, Stefan, this is my version of control. Now I have a question: If both of you are here, who's watching Ric?"
"Bonnie's herbs are working. He seems to be his old self." Stefan answered.
"He's so much like his old self he wanted to turn himself into the sheriff," Damon tells her. "Please tell me you could talk him out of it."
"Of course I did." Damon answers. "Ric going to jail because of his crazy alter ego wouldn't change anything."
"And he doesn't deserve it. He wouldn't have done it if it wasn't for that stupid Gilbert ring messing with his mind."
"Yeah, about that. I might have given it back to him."
"What?!"
"He's going vampire hunting. He needed it."
"What he needs is to stay out of it."
"Since you and Elena insist on being involved, so does he. Unless you care to sit this one out."
She turned around and kept on walking as her answer.
"Didn't think so."
Matt, Elena, and Caroline were waiting for them at the old ruins.
Stefan asked, "Where's Bonnie?"
Caroline and Elena turn around.
"I texted her, too." He said.
"Um, Bonnie's mom bailed on her. Again. So, let's leave her out of this one."
Matt asked, "What are we doing here?"
Damon answers. "We found some more white oak. Long story, wait for the movie."
"Hang on. White oak? You have a weapon that can kill Klaus?" Elena asks.
"Nope. We all have a weapon." Stefan throws down a duffel bag with white oak stakes in it.
"Klaus has always been one step ahead of us, but now we have the advantage. We're all armed, and they are all linked, meaning we only need to kill one of them. We must seize the best opportunity, which means we must prepare for every opportunity." Alyssa says, moving behind Elena. "You get to play Klaus."
"Okay."
"Rebekah is our target." Alyssa continues. She had spent a lot of time talking about it, and although she hated the idea, she knew Rebekah would be the easiest Mikealson to contend with. "We distract her and catch her off guard. To do that, we need to keep Klaus separate and occupied."
Damon looks at Caroline. "Caroline."
"Why do I always have to be Klaus's bait?"
Alyssa walks over to her. "Because he's obsessed with you. But for right now, we need you to play Rebekah. We use Matt to distract her. Just keep her talking."
"How?" Matt asked.
"Act interested. She likes you. While you're holding her attention, Damon comes up from behind her." Damon gets behind Caroline, grabs her arms, and puts them behind her back. Grab her arms.
Stefan comes up with the stake in his hand, imitating stabbing Caroline. "Gives me time for one shot."
Damon lets go of Caroline.
"Got it?" Alyssa asks, and Caroline nods. "Good. We all have one stake; we keep it hidden, and we look out for any opportunity we have."
"No last-minute attacks of pity for any of them." Damon looks at Elena.
"Don't worry about me. Not after what happened to Bonnie's mom." She assures him.
Damon turns to Caroline. "Barbie?"
"Oh, I'm ready. Anything that will free Tyler from his sire bond to Klaus." She answered.
Damon checked with Matt. "Busboy?"
"Do I have a choice?"
"Good point."
Stefan looks at the gathered crowd. "We have 12 stakes, 12 shots at killing one Original."
"We can do this," Alyssa assures them. "Let's try another scenario." She hands Elena the crossbow. "Matt, you play Klaus." Elena aims the crossbow at Matt as they play out different scenarios.
"So what, you're suddenly not team Klaus anymore?" Matt asks her as they practice more scenarios in which they are uninvolved.
"I never was." She said, watching Stefan, Elena, and Caroline. "I only did that to protect them. All of this has been about protecting them."
"Suggesting to Klaus he used Tyler to convince Bonnie to help with his hybrid problem was to help him."
"I don't expect you to understand."
He starts to reply, but she turns to face him, and her words make that reply die on his lips.
"Nor do I care if you do."
The look on his face said that he was caught off guard.
"What you or anyone else thinks of me no longer matters. It's about what I can live with. So I will do whatever I want. Kill whoever I want whenever I want. So you can hate me. You can curse the ground I walk on. I'm done caring. And I'm done with this." She walks away from him and picks her steak out of the bag. "Call me when the killing starts."
She left them in the woods and went home, but not before stopping at the liquor store and grabbing as many bottles as possible. She set the steak on the dresser and turned up the CD player in her room, cranking it up. She danced and drank to whatever CD was on her radio as she drank like she used to do with Vicki.
If she closed her eyes hard enough, she could pretend that she was right there dancing along beside her. For three minutes and 45 seconds, life was good again.
Eventually, the music stopped, Vicki faded away, and Jenna appeared. It was right after her parents' funeral. She was still in her black dress. Jenna had come, but she didn't ask her how she was or try to get her to go downstairs with everyone else.
She didn't say anything at all. She just sat and held her. The soft kiss on her head was all it took for the waterworks to turn on. Even then, there were no words. She held on to her as if she'd never let her go. Eventually, she fell asleep, and when she woke up, Vicki was there.
She was there every night for a month. She wouldn't leave her alone to her dark thoughts, and when she'd get into them, she was there pulling her out of it.
Well, she was in the thick of it now. She had experienced a dark spiral enough times to know when one was coming—the last image of her and Damon together in her bed. He tended to her wounds after the night at the dance and when she was vamp-napped. He showed her about Katherine and all the little moments in between.
The final memory was the most powerful and helped put her over the edge, only it wasn't her. It was Elena with Damon—the kiss they shared and him telling her he loved her.
She turned away from the bed and grabbed a hold of the steak in her hands. The pain was becoming too much. She thought, indeed, if it could kill an original, it could kill her.
She picked it up, pointing the end of it at her heart. She pushed it in just a little before her phone went off in her pocket, and she put it down, picking up the phone.
"Yeah."
Stefan tells her about what he found when he came home. Alaric was on the ground, and Rebekah took Damon.
"I'm on my way." She took her steak with her when she left.
Stefan was standing on the porch with Elena when she walked up.
"How is he?" She asked Stefan, not even acknowledging Elena.
"He's just banged up. Caroline's going to stay with him and make sure Alaric stays Alaric."
"Matt texted me." She had gotten a text from him on the way over. "He said Finn is still at the Grill with Sage. We need to plan our next move."
"Wait, wait, Rebekah has Damon," Elena said as if they didn't already know. "Our next move should be finding him.
"No, we need to stay on point. See an Original, kill an Original. That's the plan." Alyssa said.
"Yeah, that was the plan before Damon's life was in the balance."
"Look, Elena, I understand that you're concerned about Damon's life, but if he even knew, for one second, that we were talking about missing a chance to kill these people, he would lose his mind."
"Yeah, and if the roles were reversed, he would stop everything to save you."
"Not if it meant saving you." He proved that to her before she didn't need to learn it again. "And need I remind you it was your idea to follow Esther's plan."
"I know, but it's Damon."
"Oh, so now that it's Damon, you suddenly care about someone other than yourself. Where was that same caring attitude when I asked you not to do this because of Rebekah and Elijah? Two people you knew I grew to care about, but you didn't care. It bothers me that you don't care. And you know what now, neither do I."
She left the Salvatore house and went to the Mikealson Mansion to see Klaus after making a quick pit stop. When she walks in, Rebekah's in the lobby with Damon, who's chained and bleeding. Rebekah stabs Damon in the stomach, and he screams.
Rebekah turns around when she hears the door closed and stops. "Oh look, your vampire rescue party has arrived. Come to save him, have you?"
She looks over at Damon, who looks like he's just been put through hell. She then looks over at Rebekah. "The complete opposite. Where's Klaus?"
"In the library. But he's in the middle of something, so I'm afraid he doesn't have time to chat."
"He'll want to hear what I have to say." She walks in and sees him with Bonnie. She's looking over what appears to be a grimoire. She wasn't surprised. She figured Klaus had something to do with her not answering anyone's text all day, even if her mom did bail on her again.
Klaus smiles when he comes to see her. "Ah, I've been wondering when you would darken my doorstep. Come to save your beloved."
"Eventually, but I don't want to ruin Beck's fun. I heard what he did, and he deserves it. Although what I'm about to tell you will save him and my brother's life."
She spent enough time around Klaus to know how he operates by now.
She looks around. "Kol has been noticeably absent. And with you and your family still linked, I thought he'd be more concerned. But when Elena told me no one had heard from Bonnie all day and Finn was back in town, I started putting two and two together. So I made a quick stop." She left to return with Abby, who had a severe werewolf bite.
"Mom!"
"I figured she might be more persuasive than my brother." She looks at Bonnie. "What do you think, Bon Bon? Am I right, or am I right?"
Klaus turns back. "About the spell. Now, I know it's in the grimoire, and I know it requires the blood of my siblings, so here we are."
Klaus grabs a case and opens it. There are four bottles of blood within it. Klaus points to them.
"Elijah. Rebekah. Kol. Finn."
Klaus bites his hand hol, ds his bloody hand clenched in a fist, and looks at Bonnie. Blood drips from his fist.
"Where do you want this?"
Bonnie looks away and grabs a glass, holding it under Klaus's hand so his blood can drip into it.
The blood disperses into five different circles as Bonnie continues the spell.
Klaus looks at her. Later, Rebekah comes out of the room, wiping blood off her hands. Klaus is escorting Bonnie and Abby, who he's healed.
She looks at Klaus.
"Aw, leaving so soon?"
"Sister. Be nice."
"Thank you, Bonnie. See you in physics class." Rebekah smiles and walks away, revealing Damon in the snares in the room Rebekah just walked out of.
Bonnie exclaims, "Oh my God."
"Yeah, you'll have to excuse the mess," Klaus said. "Damon hurt her feelings."
Bonnie looks like she's considering helping him.
Alyssa steps in her way. "Think about your mom, Bonnie." She tells her in a friendly tone, but it's meant as a warning.
Bonnie helps her mom out of the house without assisting Damon.
She turns to Klaus. "Now, on to negotiations."
"Ah yes, you're here to save Damon once again."
"And I just so happen to have the perfect bargaining tool." She pulls out the white oak stake. "A steak fashioned out of white oak. And there's ten more where these came from, and they're all yours. All you have to do is let Damon go."
"The only weapon you have is to kill an original, and you would hand it over to save Damon," Rebekah asks.
She looks at Damon. "I can't explain it either. I guess I love him more than I hate Klaus." She turns to Rebekah. "But helping Klaus isn't for him. I'm sure Klaus has made a lot of enemies over the centuries, and I wouldn't want anything to happen to you. I couldn't bear to lose another friend."
Rebekah gave her a soft smile, and she turned to Klaus. "So I will get you the rest of those steaks as long as Damon stays alive and my brother stays safe."
Klaus stepped out of the way, and she left. She texts Stefan on the way to gather all the remaining steaks except for one and meet her at Klaus's. She didn't explain why he trusted her.
She stopped by the house and got some vervain before meeting Stefan at Klaus's.
The traps still string up Damon. Stefan enters the room with a duffel bag. Alyssa with him.
"There are eleven weapons, as promised."
"Ten." Stefan corrected. "We had to use one on Finn. He's dead."
She looks at Stefan, surprised.
"You killed my brother?" Rebekah asked.
"Damon in exchange for the weapons." Stefan reintegrated.
"And how do I know there aren't any more left?"
"Because there aren't."
"Let's be certain, shall we?"
Klaus walks over to Damon. "Leave."
"No."
"Go on. Leave."
"Nik, he's my plaything, not yours." Rebekah wines.
Klaus grabs Damon by the throat and compels him." I said, go home."
Damon starts to pull a wrist out from the snares, peeling the flesh off of it in the process. He screams in pain.
Alyssa walks over to them, pushing Klaus away. She grabs Damon's hand, keeping him from pulling at the chains, slipping the vervain into his hands.
"You see that he can be compelled."
"Alright, stop, stop, stop, before you hurt yourself.' Now." Klaus grabs Damon by the throat and compels him again. "Minus the stake in my brother, how many more stakes are out there that can kill me?"
"Ten."
"Happy now." She asks Klaus, ignoring how the vermin burned her skin, and he nods, permitting her to free him; once she does, they're out of the house.
Alyssa stood in the Salvatore conservatory, staring at the fireplace flames. She'd been like that since they brought Damon home. Elena had been waiting for them. Stefan and Elena had taken Damon upstairs.
"You scared me today," Elena says, coming into the room while Stefan stays upstairs and tends to his brothers. "You wouldn't have survived if you went up against one of them on your own, you know that, right?"
"Yeah. But you don't have to worry about that anymore. I'm done. It's over. All this time and energy I wasted hating him was for nothing. I'm right back where I started."
"Yeah, Klaus dragged you through hell, but you came out the other side."
"Yeah." She turned to face her and shrugged. "What did I lose in the process? Hating Klaus was easy. It allowed me to ignore everything that was happening around me. Everything I let slip away. Now I have to deal with that."
She approached her carefully. "We're all still here."
"That's not what I'm talking about." She knew Elena wouldn't like what she was about to say.
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about the fact that while I know you love Stefan, you're also in love with Damon." She would never admit it. She even started denying it, and she silenced her.
"It's okay that you are. If anyone can understand why, it's me, right? I've hated you for it, but it's my fault because I knew."
He never hid it; she just chose to ignore it. She decided to believe that if he got to know her, he would see that she suited him. How naive she was.
"I knew how he felt about you and still allowed myself to care. I still allowed myself to fall for him. Then, I compelled his feelings for me away because it was best for him. It's the same reason I pushed Matt away and sent Jeremy to the other side of the country."
She wanted them safe and away from Klaus until she found a way to kill him, and now it looked like that wasn't going to happen. Even with the one weapon left, they wouldn't be able to kill Klaus since his vampire line would die with him.
"And it was all for nothing."
"It's not... I'm not…"
"In love with Damon? Look me in the eye and tell me that you don't feel something for him." She was hoping that she could. That she would. Cause if she did love him, then whatever she could have with Damon would be over.
Elena hesitates. "I- I don't know what I feel."
She wipes her eyes from tears and stops the rest from falling. "That's what I thought."
She left the conservatory in a hurry, almost running into Stefan and Damon on her way out. She could tell by the look on both their faces that they heard everything, but she didn't stop long enough to ask Stefan how he felt about what he heard, nor did she see Damon's reaction to her feelings or compelling his feelings away.
She needed to get home before the dam that she had spent months building up between the anger she constantly felt and the pain she tried to suppress broke before she could rebuild like she did several times over the last few months.
She paced the floor of her room, sipping the bottle she had taken from downstairs on the way up. She closed her eyes and willed the pain to go back in. She pleaded for the wall to go back up, but it was too late.
The chip had turned to a crack earlier with the memories of Vicki and Jenna she had been keeping away, and with Elena's confession, water started to leak. She was becoming undone like Stefan had warned her so many times she would if she didn't stop running and deal with her feelings.
She couldn't, and now everything she tried to run away from with protecting her family and hating Klaus was starting to surface. She tried one last time to shut the pain away.
It wasn't so easy putting it back into its bottle once it had erupted like champagne out of an uncorked bottle. The pain of Jenna's and Vicki's death sent her to her knees as a loud, painful son broke through so loud that she screamed.
It threatened to send her to a fetal position. Instead, she sat on the floor with her back to the window ledge and let out everything she had been holding in the last few months.
It wasn't just Jenna and Vicki's death. It was hers and John's and all the people that she had killed to protect the people she cared about. Mostly, she cried for herself. The person she was that she would never be again. The future she'd never get to have.
It was somewhere around, and then she felt arms around her. She didn't question it or hesitate to reach for the lifeline given to her. She just held on to it, keeping it as the anchor she desperately needed and only letting go when she felt she was safely grounded.
By then, they had moved from the floor to her bed. She had let him go feeling a lot better than she had before he got there. His shirt was soaked from her tears, and she apologized as she stared at the huge wet spot on his shirt.
He gave her a reassuring smile as they now lay face to face. "Feel better?"
She turned so that she was on her back, looking at the ceiling. "I'm feeling a lot of things right now, embarrassed," she hadn't meant for anyone to see her like that, "sad," she missed Jenna and Vicki. Jeremy.
"Mostly, I feel alone. It's not new. I always have, but Vicki and Jenna always reminded me I wasn't."
She looked back at him. "But they're gone now," she felt a tear slide down her cheek, "and no one cares about me like they did. The way you and Damon care for Elena. The way Caroline and Bonnie do."
Bonnie was prepared to die for her. Damon would kill anyone who dared to think of hurting her, and Stefan's whole reason for being there was her.
More tears fell, but she didn't try to stop them this time.
"I've killed and tortured people without a second thought or regret to protect you with no question or hesitation in the choices that I've made. But at the end of the day, if the roles were reversed, if there were a choice between me and Elena, no one would choose me."
If they were to, it was just because it's what Elena wanted and had nothing to do with how they felt about her.
"So you can tell me I'm not alone and need hope. Elena can say that you're all still here, but the truth is Elena's life and her happiness has and will always come first."
She realized that when they got together and decided that all the originals needed to die despite the relationships she had begun to foster.
"While I'll be the monster that everyone fears and no one trusts, I'll still sacrifice everything to keep you safe, knowing that none of you would do the same for me."
When he couldn't refute one of her claims, Stefan saw that the vulnerability she had just been displaying got pushed behind the wall she had built between herself and her emotions as she slipped the uncaring mask back on. She turned back to the ceiling.
"You should go."
He didn't want to leave her alone, especially after what she had confessed to feeling, but he knew better than to push, so he got up and left.
She exhaled after he was gone, letting the tears she was holding fall as she turned on her side, pulling her legs up to her stomach. The untreated cracks began to leak, and she cried once again, feeling herself fall into the darkness, but she knew this time there wouldn't be anyone to catch her.
