Author's note: So glad Doctor Kaw-Kaw was a hit!

Finally getting around to posting the rest of these chapters here, too! Things are a bit hectic, so please bear with me. I want to thank everyone wholeheartedly for their warm response and lovely messages of support and kindness.

September 2009

For the next two days, Elena couldn't help but wonder about the weird turn of events. Damon certainly wasn't acting like Anna described – in fact, he seemed almost amused by the situation. He definitely didn't behave like he'd lost all memories after his 'tween years. It actually felt like he was playing with her, and riling Anna up in the process.

Every instinct within her was telling her that something wasn't quite right. Damon and Anna almost appeared to have a shared secret, dancing around coded language that felt more like sardonic cracks than genuine concern. She would even say that the connection felt ancient. Maybe Anna knew Damon and Stefan from her previous school? Did they all live in the same city or town?

Her interaction with Stefan just outside the cemetery was beyond weird, too. While she could admit to herself that he was attractive enough, there was a certain intensity with which he studied her that almost seemed invasive – like he found every miniscule fraction of her absolutely fascinating – and longed to put her under a microscope from which she could never hope to escape. An idle part of her wondered if she would have been charmed by it if Anna hadn't been around to pull her out of the worst of her post-accident depression; if she would have clung to the notion – that anyone could have shown that level of interest to her, a girl who fervently believed that she didn't deserve to live – like a lifeline.

Like she would have used that level of attention as validation that perhaps she still had a place on this Earth, after all.

She knew the impact of vulnerability, and though she could soberly admit that the experience left her deeply wounded, she was not quite as raw and bleeding as she had been months ago, when she was just a ghost in corporeal form, wandering through a town that seemed unchanged in the wake of her personal tragedy.

And so, instead, she just found Stefan Salvatore a bit odd and just skirting creepy – but not in any kind of alarming way, and maybe he had stress of his own in his worry about Damon's devastating injury. She meant to question him if there was a relation when she scraped her knee, and he all but ran away, but not before Anna showed up to snark him into submission. At least her question about Stefan being Damon's brother was answered.

She sure seemed to have history with that family – which Elena found absolutely fascinating, and definitely intended to explore.

What's worse was that her journal was missing. She retraced her steps back to the cemetery the day before, but she couldn't find it anywhere, which she was horrified to realize that meant someone must have picked it up.

She only hoped that it was Anna, because if it was Stefan, she'd be absolutely mortified, especially if he happened to read the passages where she fervently wished the man she now realized was his brother would get his memories back. She groaned into the palms of her hands, stifling the sound. Of all the people to have found documented access to her innermost thoughts, it just had to be the guy who was apparently Damon's younger brother and her classmate.

One who hadn't been to school since the two of them ran into each other and he ran off quite oddly after she unveiled her leg injury while inspecting it. Maybe blood made him queasy? She'd have to be more careful with him going forward. He seemed such a delicate sort.

To top it off, it appeared that Caroline's crush on him seemed unrequited, if her constant complaints were to be believed. Nevertheless, she was determined. Maybe Caroline's dogged attempts to ensnare Stefan Salvatore would work out in her favor, Elena thought. By now, the relentless head cheerleader had to have worked out where he lived – which would mean that perhaps Caroline would share the information so that Elena could stop by to perhaps ask him if he had her journal?

Which he hopefully hadn't read, Elena prayed with an inward groan that made up for its silence with sheer emotional intensity.

She groaned again, falling onto her bed in dramatic woe with the realization that the chances of that were slim to none. He was a teenage boy – of course he read her journal.

Maybe relaxing at the Grill really was what she needed – so when Anna suggested a quick game of pool after school, she was entirely too eager to agree.

She'd hardly had a moment to put her backpack down in the seat of the booth the girls regularly claimed as their favorite when her gaze shifted seemingly of its own volition to find Caroline flirting with Damon. Her heart constricted instantly before Elena remembered to admonish herself. Caroline had no idea what she was doing – if Anna were to be believed, and Elena was certainly starting to have her doubts – so feeling jealous wasn't entirely appropriate. Sadly, emotions were willful creatures and paid little heed to silly human notions like matters of propriety.

Emotions did what they wanted when they wanted, and left behavior – which was actually under the control of its humanoid vessel – to clean up the mess.

Elena took a seat at the booth, wondering if she should interrupt them. Caroline probably wouldn't appreciate wasting her flirtatious energy on a man who believed himself to be a 12-year-old boy, thanks to a particularly devastating brain injury resulting in retrograde amnesia, Elena nodded inwardly in an attempt at being sage, though she'd be remiss if she didn't admit she had an ulterior motive – one she wasn't quite willing to explore yet – that hinged on Damon quite suddenly getting better, or at least revealing the source of his romantic speech to her.

And what if she accidentally said something to take advantage? Elena knew Caroline would never forgive herself. Oh no! And what if Damon's mom showed up? From what Anna said, she was exactly the type of woman who would actively try to ruin someone's life just for speaking to her son. With Caroline's Ivy League and Miss Mystic Falls dreams on the line, she knew she had to save her friend from a potential scandal. Anna told her that Damon's mom would twist the situation to make it look like she was deliberately seeking to take advantage of her son's vulnerable state for her own nefarious means.

Gathering her resolve, Elena took a deep breath, pasted a friendly smile on her face, and slowly made her way over to their table.

"—Lockwood mansion," was all Elena heard Damon say to Caroline before he suddenly turned to look at her and shot her a flirtatious smile, much to Caroline's chagrin. "E-le-na," he greeted her with a wry musicality. "Can't seem to stay away, I see."

Elena blushed, feeling a particular flurry within her at the combination of his playfully sultry voice and this curious half-impishness, half-flirtation when his eyes did this enigmatic thing – this 'eye thing' – that left her feeling pleasantly flustered; both anxious and elated; and yet there was almost a curious rightness to it all.

Snapping out of it, she reminded herself – not for the first or fifth or perhaps hundredth time – that Damon was healing from a devastating brain injury and wasn't entirely himself. She shouldn't take his flirtation seriously. "It's great seeing you again, Damon," Elena greeted warmly, though cautiously.

"Always a pleasure, Elena," he replied with a marked wink, reaching for her hand to bestow a gentlemanly kiss, leaving Elena a veritable puddle on the floor of the Grill – a reaction he clearly noticed the last time they interacted, with a smug certainty. "What brings you here?"

"Yes, Elena," Caroline asked haughtily, and with steadily decreasing patience. "Why are you here?" Seriously, what was Elena's deal? Here Caroline was, flirting with the hottest guy this town had ever seen, and Elena just obnoxiously strolls in to ruin her fun? This wasn't like her – but Caroline had to admit that ever since Elena's parents died, she'd become almost a different person – no longer fun, curious, excitable. For those first few months, she was like a shell of a human being, haunting life like a ghost. That's even if she managed to leave her bed at all. She and Bonnie certainly hadn't had any success in luring anything resembling life out of her, but at least it seemed like Anna had some measure of it. This, though, was unusual.

Maybe O-blocking was part of Elena's 'blah' phase, Caroline thought derisively. Wasn't it enough that Matt still followed her around like a lost puppy, and now that new hottie in school seemed fascinated by her? Now Elena needed this ensnare this sizzling blue-eyed trouble incarnate sex-on-legs, too? Wow, that was a lot of adjectives, Caroline thought, troubled. She'd have to work on that before it came time for her SAT prep. It was Ivy or bust.

"Anna and I agreed to meet here for a game of pool – then I heard you guys talking, so I thought I'd come over and say hi," Elena replied with false cheerfulness, feeling a bit guilty for riling Caroline's insecurities, but knowing her friend would thank her once she learned the truth.

"Sorry to inform, but it appears you've been stood up," Damon replied with a playfully casual shrug and the most insincere attempt at sounding apologetic that Elena had ever heard, then his eyes widened in comic epiphany, as though he just thought of a brilliant idea. "Hey, Caroline and I were just going to take a little stroll over to the Lockwood mansion," Damon said, with a quick glance to his other interlocutor, then turned his smoldering gaze back to Elena with an air of confidence that gave her the distinct impression that he knew exactly what he was doing. "We'd love for you to join us."

"Would we?" Caroline asked, her tone thick with sarcasm.

"Elena seems to think I need adult supervision, lest I get myself into trouble again," Damon retorted, his eyes widening in mock-innocence as his he drew his hand to his heart in a show of what was clearly not sincerity.

"I didn't mean by me," Elena ground out.

"No? But I really want it to be you," he smirked, sending another sexy wink in Elena's direction, suddenly losing any badly feigned attempts at innocence. "You don't want me to get hurt again, do you?" he asked with a pout of his lips and a judgy shake of his head, then recovered with a grin that looked far too smug and in control to verify any of Anna's claims, leading Elena to once again wonder if her best friend was being entirely honest with her. "Unless you're into that," he leaned in, his voice dropping to a whisper, a satisfied gleam in his eye when Elena swallowed thickly, feeling heated pinpricks on her skin that she refused to analyze. Perhaps out of mercy, but more likely outright amusement, Damon pulled back with a laugh. "I don't judge, Elena. Your kinks are your own business and I respect your agency as a woman."

When Elena finally allowed herself to breathe again, each inhale and exhale coming out in ragged bursts, her jaw dropped of its own accord as she struggled to make any sound aside from shocked noises, which only seemed to widen Damon's already noticeably Cheshire cat grin. She noticed the mirth dancing in his eyes with an expression akin to bewilderment and indignation. Was he laughing at her? That jackass.

"Okay, what the hell is going on here?" Caroline demanded, frankly offended at having yet another guy shift the entirety of his attention away from her and onto Elena. Did she suddenly become Helen of Troy? First new-hottie Stefan, now sexiness-personified Damon. What did Elena do? Spray herself with pheromones?

With an impatient roll of his eyes, Damon turned his attention to Caroline. "Elena and I are trying to have a conversation. Why don't you go make yourself useful and grab a few drinks from Hallmark Chic over there," Damon said, gesturing with his head to Matt Donovan, who had recently started a job as a busboy at the Grill.

His gaze intensified as he went on, and Elena noted with some trepidation that his pupils were doing that strange thing again when he looked at Caroline. Elena's heart constricted again, this time with empathy for the poor soul. This was bad. This had to have been a manifestation of his injury again. Before Caroline had a chance to reply and tell Damon exactly what she thought of his suggestion, Elena quickly grabbed her hand and all but forced her out of the booth, dragging her vocally displeased form outside to tell her about Damon's condition before she inadvertently did something to worsen it.

"What is your problem, Elena!?" Caroline yelled once that finally stopped right outside of the Grill, having more than enough of the seasonal drama. Summer was over, school began, and it was time for Elena to at least try to act normal again, thank you very much. "I finally get a chance to score a sexy newcomer, and you have to come along and ruin it!"

"Teenage drama! My favorite attack against my remaining brain cells," Anna quipped, seemingly materializing out of nowhere. "What are we fighting about, ladies?"

"Elena interrupted my date!" Caroline huffed petulantly, looking to Anna for support.

"It was with Damon," Elena winced, looking at Anna meaningfully. "I think we need to tell her."

Anna, who looked to Elena to be a little too overjoyed at the prospect of discussing Damon's condition, started explaining about the accident that allegedly took place in April, rendering all of his memories gone past the age of 12.

"Oh my God!" Caroline gasped in horror. "Poor Damon! We have to help him! He's way too hot to keep thinking he's twelve!"

"The most important thing is to keep him calm, Caroline," Anna said sagely. "He was a really big fan of stage magic and hypnotism as a tween, so you might occasionally gaze at you really intensely, trying to make you do something –"

"He did that today!" Caroline exclaimed. "He tried to make me get drinks for him and Elena."

"You mean that strange thing with his pupils is done on purpose?" Elena asked pensively. "I thought it was a symptom of his injury."

Anna shook her head, trying very hard to look sympathetic while fighting with every bit of her strength not to laugh at compulsion being mistaken for brain trauma. "It is! It's something that happens when he concentrates really hard," Anna tutted, barely stifling a snicker. This was just way too good. "If he ever does that again, just go along with it, and walk out of the room. Turn on something that creates white noise – a faucet, blender – anything. Those sounds soothe him," Anna explained. "Then send me a quick text and drop a pin with your location – and I'll come by with his mom to pick him up, okay?"

"His mom?" Caroline asked dubiously.

"She's a bigger Karen than Carol Lockwood, apparently," Elena said sympathetically, wincing at the implications. They'd all been horrified at the downright abysmal way the Mayor's wife treated the household staff – as though they were inhuman and completely immune to verbal abuse. Once, they saw her yelling at a poor, henpecked woman for not greeting her with a smile, completely unsympathetic to her employee's downright terror.

Mrs. Lockwood took 'entitled customer' to scary and unforeseen levels - or, in her case, 'entitled employer.'

"So?" Caroline scoffed, rolling her eyes. "What's she going to do? Complain to my manager? I don't work for her."

"No, but you are trying to get into the Ivies," Anna said sympathetically. "And she'll make it her business to have you kicked off of any committees that you've worked so hard to build. And forget about Miss Mystic Falls. All it's going to take is one word from Mrs. Salvatore that you've been taking advantage of her sweet angel, and your career aspirations are over."

"Mrs. Salvatore? As in Founding Family?" Caroline asked in abject terror. "But – but I'm a Founding Family member, too."

"It doesn't matter," Anna insisted. "She's wrecked lives before in my hometown. She'll do it here, too. I don't want that to happen to you, Care," she said, squeezing the blonde's hand affectionately.

"Okay," Caroline nodded with a sniffle. "Thanks, guys. I'm sorry I snapped at you before, Elena. You were just trying to protect me," she said, giving the two of them a hug.

"Yeah, of course, Care," Elena said, her suspicions rising to near-insurmountable levels throughout the course of Anna's explanation. White noise healing amnesia? She'd taken an interest in medicine back when her father was alive, and he'd never mentioned anything like that. Although Elena wasn't so arrogant as to believe that she knew everything about the field from her slight forays, the combination of the evidence she saw was more than enough to rouse her suspicions.

"So, what did Damon want from you anyway?" Anna asked Caroline.

"He wanted me to take him to the Lockwood Mansion. Why is he so obsessed with that place?" Caroline queried.

"What!?" Anna gasped in alarm, then visibly calmed herself down. "Listen, girls, I need to go speak to Damon for a bit. Make sure that he didn't tire himself out too much, okay?" she asked with audible strain to her voice, pulling back from the embrace. "I'll see you two later."

"Do you think you can come over and tutor me in History tonight, Anna?" Elena asked, unsuccessfully hiding the double entendre in her tone. "I'd love to pick your brain about all your experience with it."

Anna looked at her for a long moment, then finally nodded. "Yeah, I'll be there."

"Anna! I see you've taken to stalking me. Normally I'd prefer someone a bit more mature," he said, pantomiming womanly curves on himself, deliberately to elicit an annoyed eye-roll from Anna, "fewer mommy issues, less inclined to copy my admittedly impeccable quips," Damon sardonically greeted with faux enthusiasm as she took as seat across from him.

"I thought we agreed that we were opening the tomb – and therefore getting the crystal – together," Anna said flatly, really not in the mood for Damon's teasing.

"Look, cards flat on the table? I don't trust you. I've got no reason to trust you, so there's nothing to keep me from believing that you'll double-cross me," Damon revealed, his voice still laced with a wry musicality.

"And why would I do that?"

"I don't know. Why would you go to high school again? You and baby bro both seem to have a hard-on for mind-numbing, indoctrinating institutions. Or do you just miss eighteen sixty-four so much that you needed to find the only History teacher in all of Virginia openly presenting the Confederate flag on his desk without also donning a Klan hood? Maybe your willing choice of company just fills me with bad memories, and I need to find my safe space away from you and your History-revision teacher" he shrugged with a smirk that didn't make him look traumatized in the slightest, and Anna just narrowed her eyes at his obvious attempt to get a rise out of her, refusing the take the bait. "Oh hey! The Lockwood mansion seems pretty safe. Something tells me that the Mayor wouldn't willingly associate with a guy who – no scratch that – actually probably does have a Klan hood stashed somewhere. Bad PR and all that."

"Yes, Tanner is a racist and a douche. Wow, your powers of observation really impress, Damon," Anna deadpanned.

"You're clearly working an angle," he explained, "which is smart, given the way the bigots in this town think," he indulged, raising his hands in a mockery of surrender. "Which means that you're clever enough to try to fool me, too."

"Damon, did anyone ever tell you that paranoia is a symptom of an unhealthy psyche?" Anna leaned in with a smirk of her own. "But then again, so is waiting to rescue a backstabbing sociopath for nearly a century and a half, so your behavior definitely tracks."

"I don't trust you, Anna," Damon said seriously, all jocularity gone. "You've given me no reason to. Amusing as it was, your first move was to tell your Katherine look-alike bestie that I have amnesia? Does she even know what you are? How do you think she'll react to the news?" he asked, a subtle threat of exposure in the air.

"You know very well why I can't tell her," Anna ground out, refusing to acknowledge his insinuation.

"Are you even friends then?" Damon asked with a shrug that seemed a little too practiced to be completely casual. "What do you think will happen when she finds out? Unless you plan to skip out of town the second Mommy Dearest is free from her subterranean confinement?"

Anna took a deep breath to calm herself, Damon's words piercing considerably more insecurity than she was ready to admit. "We're getting the crystal together," she said, and walked out of the establishment without another word, her very soul vibrating with anxiety. This situation was unraveling a little too quickly for her liking.

Elena spent the better half of the last hour researching retrograde amnesia, so fully immersed in her endeavor that she hadn't heard Anna come in, and only acknowledged her presence once the girl not-so-subtly pushed a plate of Eggplant Rollatini onto her lap in what was clearly a bribe.

Despite every intention of interrogating her secretive friend, Elena couldn't resist the mouth-watering allure of the divinely smelling dish, doing all she could to appear stern for all of two seconds before haphazardly diving in. "Want some?" she offered, only after she realized she'd inhaled half of the plate's contents.

Anna shook her head, stifling a snicker.

"Where'd you get this? Oh my God," Elena queried with a stifled moan as she watched the melted cheese stretch with an expression akin to sweet surrender.

"I made it," Anna replied smugly, though there was a subtle air of trepidation in her voice.

Elena's eyes widened to hitherto unforeseen proportions as her mind suddenly explored all the possibilities. "Why didn't you tell me you could cook?"

"I can do a lot of things. I've been around for a while, Elena," Anna said mysteriously, though the playfulness in her voice was gone.

Elena felt a touch of déjà vu at her words, suddenly recalling a very similar claim from Damon on the night they met. Her heart sped up in anticipation, as her subconscious whispered that this may be the day she may finally get some answers. "Damon said something similar," she breathed, studying Anna for any change in micro-expression – or anything, really. Not quite knowing what she was looking for, Elena narrowed her eyes, determined to catch Anna in her lie. "How did you say Damon got his amnesia again?"

Anna took a deep breath, steadying herself. Inside, she was a trembling mess. This was it. This was the moment she could lose the one solid friendship she'd made in centuries – perhaps her whole life. But Damon was right. If it was built on this lie, did she even have a friend? And he all but threatened to expose her, anyway, so this was her opportunity to gain control of the narrative.

"He didn't," Anna said tonelessly, fighting to keep her voice even. "He –"

"I knew it!" Elena jumped up excitedly, now carried by a fierce current of momentum. "And what's going on with his pupils? I thought it was brain trauma, but I looked – and there's no known brain trauma that manifests this way," she continued, now pacing her room, growing increasingly excited. The truth is that this was the most alive she'd seen Elena since before the accident in May, and she would have been grateful for it if not for the potentially heartrending consequences if this conversation went poorly. "What's with you two? Where are you really from?" Elena asked, though she appeared to be speaking to herself, the pace of her words gradually increasing as her enthusiasm built, feeling herself on the verge of solving a great mystery – an epiphany. "Your ability to pick up cheers is borderline superhuman. Your hearing is just – wow! I get that impressing Caroline with gossip whispered from across the cafeteria is fun, but that's not human that's –" Elena's eyes widened as Anna braced herself. "You're superheroes!"

Anna choked a laugh at this unexpected direction. "What?"

"Don't lie to me, Anna!" Elena said excitedly, suddenly taking a seat on the bed next to her, sitting on one knee. "The crystal is something you need to save the world, right?"

"You've seen way too many movies," Anna laughed – genuinely uproarious, feeling all tension resolve.

"How did you develop your powers? Were you born with them? Did they mutate?" she asked in quick succession, then her eyes widened in horror, only to close in empathy. "Experiments?"

"No, I was never experimented on," Anna replied in amusement, needing to put Elena out of her misery, before her empathy-driven brain imagines all sorts of horrible scenarios. Inwardly, she thought it best not to tell her about the rumors she heard about a certain secret society that experimented on vampires in the 1950s.

Feeling the tension leave her body in relief, Elena jumped up again as the flood of excitement returned. "Is Anna Zhu your real name? Do you have a secret identity?"

Anna watched Elena work herself into a frenzy, suddenly feeling a little more optimistic. How far removed was 'vampire' from 'superhero,' anyway? Plenty, she reasoned internally, since vampires took lives rather than saved them – but Anna was always a deft hand at putting an appetizing spin on a matter.

"One thing I don't understand is why did you lie to me about Damon?" Elena asked.

"Because he's dangerous, E," Anna groaned.

"What? Is he your arch-nemesis?" Elena mocked, affecting jazz hands for extra emphasis.

"Hey!" Anna scoffed. "I'm serious. And I lied because Damon really is dangerous, Elena," she explained in a tone that practically bordered on pleading. Noah had already made several allusions to Katherine being fascinated by Elena's existence, and in the moments when he seemingly forgot his fear of Anna made some rather disturbing comments about potentially bringing her friend to the backstabbing bitch on a silver latter to play with. Damon was in love with Katherine, too, wasn't it? What was to stop him from attempting the same? "What do you think would work on you better? Telling you that a guy you're attracted to is dangerous, or telling you that he thinks he's twelve and has a Karen mom?"

"So, that speech he gave me – it came from him?" Elena asked, her heart fluttering as she affected a dreamy expression.

"You're missing the point!" Anna growled.

"Am I? Because from where I'm standing all you've done is lie to me, Anna," Elena replied, crossing her arms over her chest in defiance, then softened, approaching her friend again to grasp her hands comfortingly. "You can trust me, okay?"

"I'm not a superhero, Elena," Anna said with a defeated sigh. "I'm a vampire."

The air hung heavy, fraught with tension with several long moments as Elena's expression subtly shifted to annoyance, and Anna found a pillow hitting her square in the face, followed by a giggle. "Right, and I'm a fairy."

Anna raised an eyebrow at the action, returning the offending projectile into Elena's face. "You believe 'superhero,' but not 'vampire'? Seriously?"

"Vampires don't exist, Anna," Elena retorted with an ostentatious roll of her eyes. "Everyone knows that."

"Fine – fine, I didn't want it to come to this, but…" she trailed off, practically feeling her heart shatter at the notion of this display going badly, as she allowed her features to morph into their vampiric form. Great, dark veins suddenly appeared on her face as her sclera were flooded with crimson. She opened her mouth to visibly allow her fangs to elongate, waiting for a scream that never came. Instead, she only heard a gasp, finally chancing to look at Elena. She expected terror, disgust, rejection. Instead, she found wonder, curiosity. "Why aren't you afraid?" she asked, allowing her features to return to normal.

"I kind of already guessed that you were more than human, remember?" Elena laughed nervously. "You wanted me to guess, didn't you?" she asked quietly. "That's why you showed off so much."

"Some would say I like the attention," Anna replied flippantly, hoping to settle the profound tension from the spiking adrenaline in her heart. "My mom certainly would," she said wistfully.

Elena bit her lip, sitting back down next to Anna to gather her in a comforting embrace. "I guess we're both orphans now, but at least we have each other," she said, leaning her head on Anna's shoulder. "We may not have parents, but we gained a sister. Your secret's safe with me, Anna."

Anna's entire form trembled as she felt the weight of the tension leave her – her greatest secret, accepted. Her arms wrapped themselves around Elena in turn as she allowed herself to cry in front of another person for the first time in decades, feeling seen, accepted, loved. She took a shaky breath, allowing it to leave her with just as much roughness. "About that …I came back to town – Damon and I both came back to town – to open a tomb. There was a witch –"

"Witches exist, too?" Elena interrupted excitedly.

"Elena, focus," Anna laughed, the quickly receding tension heightening the lilt in her tone. "There was a witch who saved the vampires rounded up to be burned in an old church, leaving them sealed in a tomb instead – one that can only be opened when the comet that was used to cast the original spell returns. Damon's here to save his lover –"

"Katherine," Elena interrupted morosely.

"Yeah," Anna said uncomfortably, choosing not to reveal the truth of Katherine's location, lest it get back to Damon before the tomb is actually open. "And I came to save…" she trailed off, taking a deep breath to steady herself, about to reveal another truth. "My mother."

Elena suddenly stiffened pulling back to look gaze at Anna with absolute shock.

"I know I lied about –" Anna began apologetically.

"Your mother's alive," Elena breathed in wonder, finally getting a hold of her emotions.

"Wow, you're really channeling Care tonight with all the interruptions," Anna teased, hoping to lighten the mood, asses just how betrayed Elena felt, but her expression only became more emotive, a growing smile replacing the astonishment.

"Your mother is alive! Anna!" Elena exclaimed, grasping Anna's arms to shake her into understanding, utterly overjoyed. "She's alive!"

"You're not upset that I lied about this?" Anna asked dubiously, since Elena was clearly displeased by every other lie she told that night.

"Of course I'm upset with you for lying," Elena supplied with a growing smile that absolutely belied her words. "But it doesn't mean that I'm not even more happy! At least one of us is getting her mom back, Anna. Tell me what to do – how I can help," Elena insisted with a resolved shake of her head, and the girls both felt their vision blur with familiar moisture and the night that began with tension resolved to laughter and sisterly love.

Well, there you have it! Anna came clean and now Elena knows about vampires, yay! This also means that I can actually start writing real Delena banter because now Elena will finally stop feeling like she has to walk on eggshells with him, and the sparring can begin. :D

Tanner had a little Confederate flag on his desk that you can see in S1. I'm just going to head canon that as being part of the reason Damon killed him (but mostly to mess with Stefan), because S7 made it very clear what he thought of the Confederacy with Oscar's "hated everything your side believed in" revelation about Damon (from 7X3). Given the way Stefan schooled Tanner (in one of the few scenes where I absolutely adored Steffie) in History, it's pretty fair game to assume that he's a revisionist, because he clearly doesn't know his own subject very well.

Thank you all for being super-delightful! :D