[5x03; Original Sin]
It was early in the morning. The crickets still chirped now and then, there were no cars on the highway, the lamp posts still signed on either side of the pavement, and the sun would raise any moment now. His throat burned from thirst and misuse and the man he helped himself to only an hour or so before hadn't helped him combat his bloodlust at all.
Slowly, Stefan kept walking down the middle of Route 29. There was nothing on his mind but blood and he needed it—it needed it so badly. Up ahead, he could see a light, shorter than the ones on the side of the highway, and soon, in the darkness, he saw the outline of a building.
It was a one-story building and plain, with a big sign proclaiming itself as a bar. There were no cars in the parking lot in front, but he could see one in the back. It was probably the bar tender, cleaning up after a long night shift. That meant blood. He needed blood.
His feet sped up, even if his mind told him to stop and run away, to not harm the innocent bartender. The poor person was probably exhausted and ready to get home and go to sleep, and instead, he was coming for them and with his track record, drinking them dry.
He didn't want that. Stefan could control himself.
As soon as he stepped into the bar, the delicious scent of blood overwhelmed him. His control was already slipping; that didn't last very long. He stumbled over to the bar and saw the bartender; she had her back turned to him and was wiping down her workstation.
"Hey, man," she turned and greeted him cautiously. "Last call was four hours ago. If you want some coffee, I could put some on."
In a blur, Stefan was on her, sinking his fangs deep into her neck. The blood that flowed into his mouth and onto his tongue felt like bliss. He took one, two, three pulls of the thick, crimson liquid and pushed her away from him.
"Run!" he urged her. "Run!"
The woman took off running and exited the bar, Stefan following not long after her. The sun had risen while he was inside, and as soon he stepped off the awning-covered porch, his skin started to blister and smoke from its rays.
He dropped to his knees, waiting for death to come for him.
Lucy gasped as whatever dream or vision she was swept up into ended and she came back to herself. She frantically looked around the room and sighed in relief when she realized that no one had entered her apartment while she was so vulnerable.
The vision she had felt so real, so real that she was sure it was real. The bar that Stefan had entered was real, just off of Route 29 just outside of Grove Hill, and this was the real Stefan—not Silas acting as him. She knew it in the way he carried himself, the way that he warned off the bartender, and the way that he let himself burn in the sun in order not to hurt her.
All that she had seen had really happened, probably at the same time as she saw it.
Lucy glanced at her bookshelf, giving it a onceover in order to find the book of Virginia county maps of Alaric's that she had kept. Once she found the book, she went through and found the map of Grove Hill, tearing it out and setting it down where she had been previously doing a location spell on Stefan.
She took Stefan's daylight ring and placed it in the middle of the map. Praying that this spell would actually work, she closed her eyes and began the spell. For two whole minutes, she sat there, images of Grove Hill sifting through her mind. Then, her mind centered on a cabin; when she opened her eyes, Stefan's daylight ring had moved over to a section of woods on the map.
That was where Stefan was located, a cabin in the woods.
She didn't stop to think about how she had suddenly been able to locate Stefan using magic, even though her previous attempts all summer had been unsuccessful. She pocketed Stefan's daylight ring, grabbed her phone and keys, and left her apartment. She was going to find him.
Stefan shifted restlessly on whatever he was laying on. He clenched his eyes shut tightly as he felt beads of sweat dribble down the back of his neck. He also had the distinct feeling that someone was watching him, his fight-or-flight response kicking in.
He opened his eyes and scrambled into a seated position on the cot he was perched on. A woman sat on a stool only a foot away from him; he eyed her warily, his mouth watering from the delicious beat of her heart.
"I don't want to hurt you, so get away from me before I rip your throat out," he warned her.
"Hello to you, too," the woman said flatly as she held out a blood bag. "I brought dinner."
Stefan ripped the bag out of her hand and quickly tore off the cap. He groaned as the blood touched his tongue and swallowed it quickly. The blood hardly quenched his thirst but the need he had to suck it down was tremendous.
"A vampire doppelganger who's burdened by a conscience," the woman commented as he squeezed the blood bag like a juice box, sucking it all down. "Now I've seen everything."
That caught Stefan's attention. He gasped for breath as he finished the bag and brought it away from his mouth. "You saved me from burning to death outside that bar this morning, didn't you?"
"And I pulled you from the quarry before that," the woman added. "That is, I figured out where you were and told the former owner of this cabin to pull your lock box from the water. You thanked him by biting off his head."
He could feel guilty about that later. "How do you know I'm a doppelganger?"
"Because I've seen your face before on someone who wasn't you."
Stefan raised an eyebrow at her, his mind racing. He was Silas' doppelganger, so did that mean she knew Silas? "Who are you?"
She didn't answer his question and instead asked one of her own. "How much do you know about Silas?"
"I know that he's a bloodthirsty immortal who's killed more people than I can count," Stefan answered, his temper flaring at just the mention of Silas' name. "and that was before he stole my identity, locked me up in a safe, and dropped me in the bottom of a quarry."
The woman didn't look sympathetic. "You made it through."
"Barely," he retorted. "I came very close to flipping off my humanity switch, but I didn't because I knew if I ever got out, I wanted to be myself when I killed him."
"Strong words."
"He's a monster," Stefan threw the empty blood bag on the floor and stood. "I'm going after him."
He stopped halfway to the door of the cabin, his eyes landing on the one person he had been aching to see all summer. Lucy was laying, unconscious, on the floor next to the large table near the kitchen. She looked the same, with her hair a little bit shorter and lighter than it had been. His heart raced as he sped over to her, kneeling down to brush some hair out of her face.
"What did you do to her?" he demanded, looking over to the woman.
"She came to get you too early," the woman sighed and stood from her chair, glaring down at Lucy. "so I snapped her neck."
Stefan gritted his teeth together angrily. "I'm taking her and leaving."
"Except you'll burn to death in the sun without your daylight ring," the woman shot back, causing Stefan to slump in realization. "Silas wasn't always a monster. He used to be a simple man in love with a simple girl, his soul mate. She was his one true love," she scoffed and nodded down at Lucy with narrowed eyes. "You know how that goes. They thought their love would last forever."
"How do you know all of this?" Stefan asked begrudgingly.
"Because I was there in his arms."
"You're telling me that you were Silas' one true love?" was this one of the women that Silas gave immortality to?
The woman nodded. "I would have done anything for him."
"So you're immortal," Stefan got to his feet and stood protectively in front of Lucy; the woman shook her head in disagreement. "Okay, then how are you here right now?"
"Love bends the rules of possible," she told him. "Silas and I were the two most powerful members of a gifted people called Travelers," he lifted his chin, recognizing the name; Lucy had told him that she was a Traveler when she was Lucia. "When we were engaged to be married, we decided to reach even further. We wanted to find a way for our love to last forever."
"Yeah, look, I know the story," Stefan said impatiently. "Everything was great for Silas until some witch named Qetsiyah or whatever came by and screwed him over, right?"
"Wrong," the woman said firmly. "You don't know the story. Silas convinced Qetsiyah that he loved her so she would make the immortality spell, but when she found out that he was just using her, she dumped him in a tomb with a cure, hoping he would take it and die because she had created a supernatural limbo to trap his soul."
"Like any other sane, rational, well-adjusted woman would do."
"Which catches us up to today," the woman went on. "Now Silas wants to destroy that supernatural limbo. Once the Other Side is gone, he can take the cure, become mortal, and die, and finally pass on and find peace."
Good riddance. "Look, if you really are Silas' one true love and you're not dead, then why don't you just do us all a favor and run off into the sunset together."
"Silas was my true love. I never said I was his," the woman slowly walked by the fireplace, dragging a hand along the stone, which lit up in blue flame. "I'm Qetsiyah. That sane, rational, well-adjusted woman you seem to know so much about."
Stefan stared at the fire worriedly and took a small step back, careful not to hit Lucy. If this woman was really Qetsiyah, he was so screwed. This was the witch who created immortality and the Other Side—she was more powerful than any other witch he had met in his life, including Bonnie and Lucy.
"Clearly you've heard the man's version of the story," Qetsiyah continued. "the one where I'm a back-stabbing lunatic who ruined everything for Silas. A raging bitch witch whose obsession with vengeance created a whole new dimension of suffering in the afterlife."
Stefan stiffened as she slowly walked toward him. "What are you doing here?" he asked. "I thought you were dead and on the Other Side."
"I was for two thousand years," Qetsiyah confirmed. "but I came back for you."
Okay, well, Stefan had no idea what to say in response to that. He really needed to get himself and Lucy out of that cabin before Qetsiyah did something horrible.
"Do you have, uh, a cell phone?" he changed the subject. "I have to make a phone call."
"There's no cell reception out here," Qetsiyah answered swiftly, moving away from him to grab a bowl of herbs that she must have collected before he woke up. "and remember, I made it safe for you here, but I wouldn't go outside if I were you."
Stefan went to reply, his temper flaring, but a quiet gasp behind him cut him off. He swiftly turned around and kneeled down next to Lucy as her eyes fluttered open.
"Stefan?" she breathed, reaching up to cup his cheek.
"It's me," Stefan assured her, kissing her palm. "I missed you so much."
"I missed you," Lucy threw herself into his arms, wrapping her own around his neck. "Oh, my God, are you okay? I love you so much. I've tried finding you all summer, I tried so hard Stefan, but I couldn't find you. I'm so sorry I couldn't find you."
"It's not your fault, Luce," Stefan said truthfully, pressed kisses to her hair, forehead, cheeks, and lips.
"What happened to you?"
"He was thrown into a safe and left in the quarry," Qetsiyah spoke up, making Lucy stiffen in his arms.
Stefan helped her up, swearing that he smelt her blood coming from somewhere, and watched as Lucy's eyes widened almost comically.
"Qetsiyah?"
How did Lucy know the ancient witch?"
"Lucilla," Qetsiyah glared back at her.
"Uh, how do you two know each other?" Stefan pointed between them. Neither of them answered him; Qetsiyah was glaring at Lucy and Lucy was still staring at Qetsiyah in shock. Stefan decided to move on, knowing he'd get an explanation from Lucy later. "No offense, Qetsiyah, but I'm having a bit of a hard time believing what you were saying."
"Qetsiyah," she sighed, her eyes flickering over to him. "Sounds so…ancient time-y, don't you think? How about Tessa? It's a little different but not so different you wouldn't find it on one of those souvenir keychains."
"So, that's why you rejoined the land of the living," Stefan raised his eyebrows. "souvenir keychains?"
"I'm here because Lucilla and the Bennett witch lowered the veil," Tessa told him. "I saw an opportunity and I thought, 'Why not?'. My hunters had failed in their task to kill Silas. I figured it was time to handle things in person."
"Well, two thousand years is a hell of a long time to hold a grudge."
Lucy softly squeezed Stefan's hand, grimacing. "Stefan, don't."
She didn't want him to bring up the situation from two thousand years ago, not because she didn't want to him, but because Qetsiyah was an extremely powerful witch. Not only did she know that she wouldn't beat her, but she also couldn't feel her magic. The symbol carved at the back of her neck wasn't healing—so she was pretty sure Qetsiyah did some magic on it—and she assumed it was an anti-siphoning symbol at that.
Tessa smirked at Stefan. "You have clearly never been left at the altar," she sent another glare to Lucy. "Like a lovesick idiot, I created an entire garden for out wedding, and I made a spell that would keep us alive forever; an immortality spell so we would never have to part. Silas and I were going to drink the immortality elixir as part of our wedding ceremony, but then everything around me started to die; my wedding flower, the garden trellis, our harvest. Then I realized why."
"Silas had already used the immortality spell," she continued. "He was already drinking the elixir somewhere else. He took what he wanted, and then the bastard abandoned me. So, call me a woman scorned or a vindictive bitch or whatever label suits your story, but I thought I was his one true love and he ripped my heart out."
Stefan frowned empathetically. "I'm sorry."
"I deserved a chance to look him in the eye and make him understand how much he hurt me," Tessa's voice started to wobble, but both Lucy and Stefan understood that it was because she was still so angry. "So, I found him in the wilderness with the woman he gave my immortality to. She was one of my handmaidens, Amara."
"Amara drank the elixir?" Lucy didn't know that. Honestly, she assumed that it was her who drank it because Silas had told her that she was his one true love.
"I see that you're confused, Lucilla," Tessa adopted a haughty look on your face. "Why don't you clue Stefan in on why?"
Lucy pursed her lips together, and turned to Stefan to look him in the eyes. "This is going to sound bad and you're probably going to think horribly of me, but I have to tell you," she inhaled deeply at the serious look on his face. "I lived back then, with Qetsiyah and Silas. I haven't had many memories of my life then, but I betrayed Qetsiyah and had an affair with Silas."
Stefan furrowed his eyebrows and Lucy could see the hurt in his eyes. He had to know that she wasn't in love with Silas, though. The only person she loved, or had loved in this lifetime, was Stefan. It would always be Stefan.
Qetsiyah scoffed. "And you're wasn't the only one," she told Lucy. "Silas and Amara had sleeping together for months before our wedding, even before you two were together. I hadn't known this at the time, but Amara had blackmailed Silas into giving her the immortality elixir."
"Blackmailed him, how?" Stefan cleared his throat, letting go of Lucy's hand. She frowned sadly, cursing Silas, Qetsiyah, and even her previous self for potentially making Stefan doubt her. She wasn't the kind of person like Lucilla was. Even if their personalities were the same, there were still circumstances that manipulated their actions. Two thousand years ago, she was a woman, a servant, and a siphon, which meant that she had virtually no power over herself of her actions. And from what she learned from Silas, it sounded like he manipulated her into loving him, even if he claimed her to be his true love.
"She threatened to kill Lucilla," Tessa said simply. Lucy mentally cursed Amara; she thought that she was her friend back then. "But, Silas had a plan of his own. He used Amara to make sure the immortality elixir worked and then intended to make a cure and shove it down her throat," she laughed once. "I got to her first."
"She was the one whom the Petrova doppelgangers came from," Qetsiyah explained as a side thought. "When Silas and Amara drank the immortality elixir, they violated the natural law that all living things must die. So, nature found a balance by creating mortal shadow selves. Stefan, you Elena, and Katherine were all caused by the ripple effect from Silas and Amara's affair."
Qetsiyah paused in the middle of her story in order to pick up a cast-iron skillet and others supplies. She brought them over to the fireplace and set the skillet on the grate above the fire, before dropping the herbs she had collected and a metal ring into it.
Stefan stared at it suspiciously. "You want to tell me what the hell you've been doing this whole time?"
"Silas stole your daylight ring, you're going to need a new one," Qetsiyah said simply. "When this is ready, I need your help to take down Silas once and for all."
Lucy dug her hand into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out Stefan's daylight ring. "Well, Damon stole this off of Silas and gave it to me, so I guess he does have his daylight ring," she quickly passed the ring to Stefan, who hastily slipped it on. "We're gonna go now. Nice to see you, Qetsiyah."
Stefan took Lucy's hand and together, they rushed toward the door. Unfortunately, when Stefan tried the doorknob, the door wouldn't budge. They both turned to Qetsiyah with accusing eyes.
"You caught me," she said, as if she wasn't bothered by their want to escape. "I can't let you leave. I wasn't kidding when I said I needed your help to take down Silas, Stefan."
"So, what's your plan, then, huh?" Stefan stiffened and took a tiny step in front of Lucy, not letting go of her hand. "Take the cure and shove it down Silas' throat, kill him?"
Lucy went to interject in order to tell him that Katherine had been forcefully given the cure by Elena, but Tessa was too quick.
"You're skipping ahead," she scolded him. "We don't stand a chance against Silas with his mental powers."
"But you took him down before," Lucy reminded her.
"A long time ago," Tessa disputed. "That was before he could compel masses. And two thousand years of consuming dribbles of blood from thousand of people, it's allowed him to hone his skills. It prepared him to escape from the tomb I put him in."
"Is that where Amara is right now, locked away in a tomb?" Stefan raised an eyebrow.
"No, Stefan, Amara is not locked in a tomb," Qetsiyah laughed bitterly. "I created two cures and shoved one of them down her throat. I immediately killed her after. I then offered Silas the other cure to take back what he had done so we could live a long human life together."
"Surprisingly, Silas didn't seem upset about Amara's fate," she pursed her lips and glared over that Lucy. "That was when I found out about Lucilla and I was shocked. She was my servant and my friend. The only point to her I could give was that she did not know anything about the immortality elixir and she was by my side at the wedding ceremony, not knowing about Silas and Amara's sin."
"And then you killed me."
Qetsiyah shook her head, a dark look in her eyes. "No, you're going too fast. Silas refused to take the cure, so I created the Other Side as a supernatural barrier between Silas and the peaceful afterlife he craved. Then I dropped him in that tomb with the cure, thinking eventually he would take it and kill himself, just so he could realize that he was caught with me for all eternity."
"What was the point of the Other Side, if I went there anyway?" Lucy asked, just a little confused. "I was supernatural being, too."
"But you wouldn't stay for long," Tessa informed her darkly. "What I did to you was crueler than Amara's fate. I made you into a reincarnation, doomed to come back to life every time one of Silas' and Amara's doppelgangers were born. As the cherry on top, I shifted the universe so that the doppelgangers would always find each other and fall in love, making you watch as the man you loved was with another. It was only after your death in your second life did the Original Witch spell you to be born as the Petrova doppelganger's sister."
"And then you killed her," Stefan finished, clearing his throat.
Qetsiyah shrugged, her glower shifting to a kind look when she turned to Stefan. "I wanted revenge, on both her and Silas."
Stefan narrowed his eyes at her. "How's that working out for you?"
"Well, you two were a surprising anomaly," Tessa admitted. "And Silas has been a little stubborn."
Lucy clenched her jaw, her mind racing. Surprisingly, it wasn't the reason for her reincarnations for her worried thoughts. It was more of the fact that she was the reason that Stefan, Katherine, and Elena were all drawn together because of her. She was supposed to watch Elena and Stefan love each other for their whole lives, they were meant for each other.
Admittedly, she was insecure when it came to Stefan and Elena, though it was no fault of Stefan's. It was her sister that she was paranoid about. It was no secret that Elena still had feelings for Stefan. In fact, the only reason she was probably so in love with Damon at the moment was because Stefan was stuck in Steven's Quarry the whole summer—out of sight, out of mind. And Lucy hated it; she hated that Elena had feelings for her fiancé, she hated that they were in love in the first place, she hated that Elena was leading Damon on, she hated that her first self was such a homewrecker that it led to all of this mess. Most of all, though, she hated that she couldn't bask and relax in her relationship with Stefan, always worried that Elena—or Katherine—would be there to whisk him away from her.
She knew that Stefan wasn't an object and that honestly wasn't what she was trying to compare him to. She just couldn't come to terms for her feelings in any other way. Lucy loved Stefan so much and she knew Stefan loved her just as much and she wanted to protect themselves from any harm, physically and emotionally.
She was brought out of her thoughts when she was forcefully flung the length of the cabin. She fell onto a small cot and was unable to move.
"You won't be able to siphon away the spell, as I'm sure you already know," Qetsiyah told her. When Stefan inched toward her, thinking about ways to stop Qetsiyah's spell on Lucy, she held out her other hand to him. "Don't think about it."
"Listen, we're all on the same side," Stefan lowered his voice in order to negotiate his and Lucy's freedom from the crazy witch. "We want Silas gone as much as you do."
"Have you not been listening to me?" Tessa raised her voice, her eyes wide. "I have trust issues. I'm controlling and paranoid and a little crazy. And that's working out just fine."
It was then that Qetsiyah casted the pain-inflicting spell on Stefan. His eyes rolled back into his head as he gasped lightly, buckling to his knees. With how weak he was from the spell, Qetsiyah was able to get him into a chair and settled him in the middle of the room without him fighting back.
"What are you going to do to him?" Lucy asked Qetsiyah fearfully, her worried eyes boring into Stefan.
"I'm not going to kill him, if that's what you're asking," Qetsiyah walked back over to the table, where the herbs she had previously used sat with other bundles of greenery. "I'm simply going to use him to stop Silas from using his mental powers."
"And it won't hurt Stefan?"
Qetsiyah shrugged and started piling the greenery around Stefan in a large circle. "Not much."
Lucy gritted her teeth and fought against the spell keeping her seated, hissing when it wouldn't budge. "Let him go!"
She had to get Stefan out of there. She couldn't move at all, not even her fingers or her hands, or else she would take the pliers keeping her wound from healing and throw them right into Qetsiyah's eyes.
"Lucy stop," Stefan sounded exhausted. "Don't hurt yourself."
"I would listen to your fiancée," Qetsiyah warned her as she finished up the circle of greenery. "I'm very tempted to just end the spell and kill you. It's not anything you wouldn't deserve."
"Lucy…"
Lucy glanced over at her fiancée at his low pleading voice. "All right, I'll stop. Just…be careful. He's innocent in all of this."
"I'll try my best," Tessa spoke sarcastically before heading out of the cabin in order to grab the final touch to the spell.
Within seconds of her leaving, the door opened once again. However, it wasn't Tessa, it was Damon. His eyes darted around the room, pausing only to take in Lucy and Stefan.
"Stefan," he whispered as he crept into the room. "You couldn't call a brother?"
Stefan huffed out a weak laugh. "Nice to see you, too, Damon."
Damon eyed Lucy. "Twitch, you were supposed to find him, not get kidnapped," he scolded her; Lucy rolled her eyes in response. "Why aren't you moving? What the fuck is going on here?"
"Well, Silas' ex-girlfriend decided to come back from the Other Side," Stefan explained as Damon kneeled in front of him and started to try to pry off the thorn-y vines keeping Stefan's arms to the chair. "Lucy can't move because she put a spell on her and can't siphon it off."
"Silas' ex-girlfriend?" Damon raised his eyebrows in surprise. "Qetsi-whatever?"
"It's Qetsiyah," Tessa had entered the cabin again, a flower in her hands as she glared at Damon. "Do you see why I want to change it?" she asked Stefan and she walked further into the living space and told Damon, "You won't be able to break those vines. The spell won't release him until I get what I want."
She crossed the room to the fireplace and threw the flower into the skillet. She waited only seconds before grabbing a bowl and pouring the contents of the skillet into it.
"Well, I guess the rumors are true. You are a ray of sunshine," Damon stood to his full height. "Question—why is my brother wearing your compost pile?"
"I'm going to link Stefan to Silas," Tessa explained, turning away from the fireplace while still holding onto the bowl. "Casting a spell on his doppelganger will neutralize Silas' mental powers. Once he's weakened, I will force him to take the cure."
"That's a great idea; force the cure down his throat," Damon mumbled sarcastically. "Not! The cure's gone, done, it's ingested."
"Katherine, you mean," Tessa stated knowingly. "I'm aware of your condition. She was supposed to be with you."
Stefan lifted his head weakly, his eyebrows furrowed. "Wait, Katherine took the cure?"
"We all have a lot to catch up on, Stefan," Damon told him before addressing Tessa again. "Wait a minute. What do you mean Katherine was supposed to be with me? Did you plant those dreams?"
"What dream?" Lucy spoke up, puzzled. "I had a dream of Stefan this morning and then I was able to find his location. Did Katherine have one too?"
"And Elena," Damon confirmed for her, his eyes still on Tessa. "What is it, some kind of, like witch-y party trick?"
Qetsiyah gave him a flat look. "So, where is she?"
Damon paused awkwardly. "We…ran into a little snag."
Qetsiyah huffed in annoyance. She set the bowl down on the table and waved her hand over the contents. "Then I'll get started without her."
Qetsiyah started chanting; Lucy and Stefan immediately looked at Damon to get them out of there.
Damon got the hint. "Okay, well, thanks for the hospitality, but we should really get going if we want to beat traffic."
"Yep, yep," Stefan agreed hastily. "he's right."
Tessa's eyes flew open to glare at Damon and Stefan. "You probably don't want to get on my bad side."
Damon's face hardened and he took slow, deliberate steps toward her. "You realize you're not the only one with a bad side, right?"
Tessa gave him an appraising look. "Aren't you brave?" she commented dryly. "Without Silas' mental powers, he is an immortal nobody. We can defeat him. Isn't that what you want?"
"Just do it, all right?" Stefan rasped, all eyes darting to him. "Just get it over with."
Tessa dipped her hands into the elixir she had made for the spell and stepped into the circle in order to make contact with Stefan. Lucy watched worriedly—with Damon hovering by her side—as she put her index and middle fingers on both hands against his temples. The elixir sizzled against his skin.
She started chanting and immediately, Stefan started grunting in pain. The more she chanted, the more pain Stefan was receiving. Tears started brewing in Lucy's eyes as he tried to fight off the spell, his instincts for protecting himself overcoming his earlier agreement or sitting for the spell. Lucy's tears fell down her cheeks as he started screaming.
The greenery around Tessa and Stefan came alive with fire as Tessa's chanting got louder and louder, and Stefan's screams with it.
"What are you doing to him?" Lucy shouted over them.
"Frying Silas' brain," Tessa answered just as loud. "No one said it would be pretty."
When blood started pouring down from Stefan's eyes, Tessa let go of him. The circle of fire died down, Stefan fell unconscious, and Lucy felt the spell holding her down disappear. She didn't waste time to get to Stefan, using her vampire speed to kneel down in front of him.
"All right, we're done here," she heard Damon say from behind her.
"You're right," Qetsiyah smirked at him. "We're done, it worked."
Lucy shook her head at the ancient witch and grabbed Stefan's face, wiping the blood away. She hesitantly shook him, trying to get him to wake up. "Stefan? Come on, Stefan, wake up."
Damon walked up next to her, rousing his shoulder. When Stefan still wouldn't wake up, he angrily turned to Tessa. "Whatever you did to him, undo it."
"Relax, both of you," Tessa crossed her arms over her chest. "I just burned through his conscious mind. He'll wake up eventually."
"Wow, that's so relieving to hear," Lucy commented sarcastically, sending Qetsiyah a hard look. She reached for the vines wrapped around Stefan's wrists and started to undo him.
"Are you sure you want to take him home?" Qetsiyah asked Damon. "You and Elena were doing so well without her feelings for Stefan getting in the way."
Damon whipped around to face her, sending her daggers with his eyes. "Spying on us from the Other Side?"
"Don't flatter yourself. It was like watching a soap opera except boring and with no volume control," Tessa scoffed. "You know, there was only one thing that made waiting for Silas to take the cure bearable."
"Oh yeah? What was that?"
"Century after century, I watched versions of Stefan and Elena find each other like magnets," Tessa smirked at Damon and Lucy, who had started to untie the vines around Stefan's ankles. "I made it that way so Lucilla would suffer. They'd fall in love, live happily ever after…" at the surprised look on Damon's face, she added, "You didn't think your brother was Silas' first shadow?"
Damon narrowed his eyes and looked back at Stefan and Lucy. Lucy gave him an apologetic look, knowing that he was probably feeling the same way as she was feeling about the doppelganger destiny that Qetsiyah had created.
"I changed destiny in order to get the doppelgangers together forever," Tessa rubbed in their faces.
Damon saw Lucy's look, his heart sinking. He turned to Tessa. "Look here, Miss Crazy, why don't we just dial down the destiny talk a notch, okay?"
"You don't want to hear it, but the universe is working against you and Lucilla," she scoffed knowingly.
"If you're trying to downplay your reputation as being a psychopath, you might not want to say you're the spokesperson for the universe."
Tessa smiled flatly. "You and I are the same, Damon. We're the obstacles standing between two fates. Silas had his true love, and it's because of Lucilla's sin two thousand years ago that Stefan and Elena will have true love with each other. You and I are merely the conflict that makes it interesting."
Lucy pressed her lips together angrily and kept her mouth shut as she finished with untying Stefan. While Tessa and Damon were distracted with each other, she reached around her neck and tried to keep her expression neutral as she took out the pliers that was keeping her from healing. Once they were gone, the anti-siphon symbol that Qetsiyah carved into her skin had healed and her magic rushed through her body once again.
"So what are you suggesting?" Damon sneered at Qetsiyah. "Stefan and Lucy leave the country while Elena and I live happily ever after?"
"Or I could keep him safe," Qetsiyah suggested, sending a haughty look over to Lucy, who glared back at her. "I want to keep him safe. Now that he's linked to Silas, Silas can't mess with our heads, and as long as Stefan's in the way, you will never be with Elena."
"Enough, Qetsiyah," Lucy sighed, tired of listening to the crazy witch's voice. "Stefan's not staying with you and he and Elena are not getting back together."
She was confident in Stefan's love for her—Elena, not so much.
"Exactly," Damon nodded, agreeing with her. "Oh, and you can just go back to Hell."
He went to make a move against her, but Qetsiyah was ready. She held up both her hands, each of them toward Lucy and Damon. A large burst of energy left her palms, knocking them across the cabin.
She left while they were discombobulated. While Lucy was trying to blink away the blurriness in her eyes, Elena rushed into the cabin.
"Stefan!" she called, coming to a stop in front of him. She got down onto her knees and took Stefan's face in her hands while Lucy watched incredulously. "Stefan, hey. Stefan, can you hear me? Stefan, wake up!"
Lucy looked over at Damon, only to see that he was already looking at her, silently asking if she saw the display Elena was putting on. They both had grim expressions on their faces.
Maybe Qetsiyah wasn't wrong about him and Elena. And that meant trouble for Stefan and Lucy.
Stefan was still unconscious hours later. Lucy didn't leave his side the whole time, sitting by stomach on the couch where he rested. Elena and Damon were somewhere, fighting about their relationship—and for some reason, they were yelling out declarations of their love of one another in angry voices—but Lucy couldn't focus on them.
She focused on Stefan. She studied his face, now clean from his blood, over and over. The sharp slope of his nose which led to its tiny tip, the way his long eyelashes rested at the top of his cheeks, the way his mouth made a slight bow-shape, the areas where his dimples would appear when he smiled happily.
She loved him so much.
But how was she supposed to tell him about her life as Lucilla and her affair with Silas? He was already upset with her about it, that much she knew. She didn't blame him whatsoever. Silas had trapped him in a safe and pushed him of into the quarry, where he must have starved and drowned over and over again. She couldn't imagine going through that and making it out alive—Stefan had very much earned the right to hate Silas with every part of his being. The fact that Silas and Lucy had an affair and she was his true love two thousand years ago probably didn't make things better.
All Lucy knew was that she couldn't let anyone destroy her relationship with Stefan. Those slight feelings she felt with Silas were the remnants of Lucilla within her. But Lucilla wasn't Lucy; Lucy didn't want to be Lucilla. And usually it wouldn't matter because ultimately, she was Lucilla and she would normally retain her feelings for the people she had in her first life, just like it happened with her Original siblings and Katherine. Something was different about her and Silas, though. She wasn't experiencing romantic feelings for Silas like she obviously had back then; in fact, all she was feeling toward him was a little bit of lust—but, come on, he had the exact same face and voice of Stefan, which confused her badly—and a small bit of fondness that felt more like the friendly feelings she felt for Matt or Tyler. That was it.
But that was enough to make Stefan hate her. Well, not hate her, but he was more than likely going to be angry and her and the circumstances. Lucy could take it, though. If that was the price she had to pay for her actions as Lucilla, she'd take it. As long as she didn't lose Stefan.
The fluttering of Stefan's eyelashes caught her attention.
"Stefan?" she whispered as he opened his eyes. "Are you all right, babe?"
Stefan grunted softly as he shifted, confused. "Who are you? Where am I?"
Lucy's heart sunk; it looked like Qetsiyah's spell had side effects. "You're safe," she pulled herself together in order to make him comfortable, smiling at him gently. "I'm Lucy."
"Lucy?"
"Mmhm," her stomach flipped nauseously. "Hold on one second, okay. Damon?"
Stefan continued to stare at her while she raised her voice only a little to call out some random guy's name. The girl who called herself Lucy was beautiful and she was kind to him, too. As he heard two sets of light footsteps coming toward them, he smiled slightly. There was a nice, comforting vibe coming from her that made his heartbeat pick up.
A man and woman walked into what seemed to be the living room of wherever he was. They were unrecognizable to them, just like the Lucy girl was.
"Welcome back, brother," the man smiled at him.
"Stefan," the girl grinned at him as she spoke breathlessly; she was attractive, too. Something about her pulled him in just like it did with Lucy. "we missed you."
They were both looking at him expectantly but he didn't know what to say. "Uh, I'm sorry," he apologized. "I have no idea who you people are."
The man and woman's faces fell but he remained relaxed as Lucy put a comfortingly hand over his. "It's okay, Stefan," she assured him before looking back at the other two. "We have a problem."