CHAPTER 67: O COME, ALL YE FAITHFUL

The Mikaelson Mansion

There were times when Natalie actually wondered whether or not Stefan was suffering from paranoia. He knew Elena was sired to Damon, he knew that the search for the cure had gotten so much more important because of this, but he didn't know if Klaus was lying to them or not. Somehow he had gotten the idea that the original hybrid had been lying to them about having found the sword the deciphers the tattoo that Natalie had the unfortunate pleasure of being able to see. So, Stefan had sent the reincarnation because other than a very busy Caroline, she was the only one that might get an answer out of him.

But she was a little confused when he wasn't just standing around and yelling for hybrids to pick up his laundry or whatever evil people usually do. He was painting a huge snowflake. "You're painting a snowflake, you do know that right?"

He hummed in agreement, having seen what he was painting, but he turned around as he was surprised that she found his work that literal. "I prefer to think of it as an expression of postmodernism. It's my donation to the Winter Wonderland charity event."

She was about to let out some witty retort when a hybrid that Natalie easily recognized as Adrian, the one who had told Kimberly to slow down on the Caroline torture, walked through the door, as sired as ever. "You said it was urgent."

"Yes, take this to the Mystic Grill immediately." the hybrid gestured towards his expression of postmodernism that he had just finished right before he came.

"You want me to be a delivery guy?" Adrian frowned, having thought that something urgent would be more... exciting. Natalie however tilted her head with a small grimace in realization as this was the closest thing to picking up laundry his hybrids seemed to be doing today.

"What I want is for you to do whatever I say. Without the attitude," Klaus walked closer to his minion, leaving less space between them than before and sent him a more threatening look. Adrian nodded, knowing that he should always listen to Klaus and walked over and picked up the painting and started leaving the room. But not before the original voiced his deepest and darkest worries. "And be careful with that. It's still wet."

Natalie rolled her eyes as she crossed her arms over her chest and let out a witty remark as she once did on a daily basis. "I don't know if you've heard or not, but there was this guy, his name was Abraham Lincoln, and he happened to have freed the slaves, but you don't know anything about that, do you?"

"What is the point of my hybrids being sired to me if I can't maximize on the benefits of free labour?" he smirked before turning around to met her gaze once again, wondering what she was actually doing there. "What are you doing here?"

"Stefan sent me because he still somehow believes that I can get any answers from you. Basically, as you probably know, Elena's sired to Damon, which makes the cure even more important and blah blah blah. And everyone is working hard while you're here making postmodern snowflakes." she shrugged, allowing him to shake his head in amusement.

"I've delivered," he reminded her, grabbing a cloth so he could wipe the paint off his hands, not being up for walking around with dry paint on his hands all day. "I retrieved the Hunter's sword from Italy which we'll use to decipher the map hidden in the Hunter's mark. You and your friends are the ones who is supposed to deliver the Hunter and his mark."

Natalie walked closer to the hybrid, sighing as he seemed to have forgotten who the hunter actually was. "You see, Jeremy's the hunter and we happen to actually care about him, so before he can go around slaughtering every most likely homicidal, undead person he sees, we have to find a way to keep him from killing people he actually cares about."

The hybrid chuckled at her words, not sympathizing with her and her friends' job with the poor Gilbert boy. "Sounds like quite the chore. Which is why I feel perfectly justified doing a little charity work."

She sent him a slightly irritated look. "So, there's this idea, mostly coming from a paranoid and love sick Stefan, that you haven't actually found the sword and you're just a big fan of giving us false hope before just coming out and saying ha! Fooled you, suckers!"

"Why would I lie to you, Natalia? We're in this together," and with that he walked past her, into another room, and she followed him, of course, being convinced that he wasn't done with the conversation, and she was right as he opened a vault and pulled out a sword, which had to be the sword. "The hilt acts as a cipher which we'll use to decode the marks on Jeremy's tattoo when he's killed enough vampires to complete it."

"Okay, I'm sorry for doubting you." the reincarnated brunette muttered, even if it was actually Stefan's idea that he may have been lying and she just had to ask.

"Oh, that's quite alright," he smirked, plopping himself on a couch next to the vault, propping his feet on a table he had just put the sword on. "May I ask why you're still Stefan's errand girl after he broke you heart?"

Natalie scoffed at him degrading her to nothing but Stefan's errand girl when he knew that it was much more complicated than that. "No, you may not. I didn't come here so we could gossip and braid each other's hair, Klaus."

He chuckled at the brunette's sarcastic remark. "I was just wondering, seeing as he simply, how do put it, dumped you for your sister after she was ready for their love to be rekindled once again. Doesn't seem quite like you."

She glared at him for having to bring up the sensitive subject, seeing as thinking about Stefan simply dumping her kind of hurt. "Well, people change and people grow. I'm not as petty as I was a year ago, and I'm certainly not the same person. But I'm still not here to braid your hair, we're not going to sit here and bond over our experiences of having the hunter's curse or being in love with people who chose someone else over you!"

She expected an angry reaction to bringing up Caroline and her relationship with Tyler that he seemed to detest oh so much, definitely compared to the thought of the relationship between him and the vampire blonde. "Oh, on the contrary, I think right now I'm the best friend you've got.at It seems like you'd need someone to, how'd you put it, bond over your experiences of having the hunter's curse. I know the memories seem to stick around quite a while, and nobody seems to understand how hard it is? What is haunting you? What did they use against you?"

Natalie looked down for a moment, gnawing on the inside of her lip, not having opened up to anyone about what they actually said, and the only one who might have a small inkling of what it was about was Stefan, who had gotten hints of her insecurities on the subject. "You know... my recent insecurities of somehow being the reason for a lot of the deaths in town."

"Well, that's bullocks. You never really cause problems, it has to be quite annoying to your problematic love interests and family. You've barely killed compared to people such as, your former bed buddy, Kol, your ex-who-knows, the ripper of Monterrey, and as you know, me, the original hybrid."

She looked down for a moment at the mention of Kol, realizing she hadn't seen him after he had told her to get over her selfless act and let him show her some real fun. "Fears and insecurities don't always make sense, Klaus. I've had a whole lot of fears and insecurities during my current lifetime and this one just builds upon the foundations of my fear of abandonment, my fear of not being good enough and now it just seems to add my fear of it being all my fault."

Klaus seemed to find her small rant about her fears almost amusing as it made no sense to him whatsoever. "Well, love, I can promise you that to me, none of those fears make any sense. Who would ever want to abandon you? Unless you can't remember, you do know that my siblings and I spent a millennium having you on our minds."

"Thanks?"

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The Mystic Grill

Something weird happened. It seemed that Caroline Forbes happened to have Natalie and Stefan's numbers close to each other on her phone, either as favorites or they had special contact names that started with the same letter, but somehow Natalie ended up with a text from the blonde.
Stefan, Ty is getting ready to get rid of Klaus
Of course, this sparked some interest in Natalie as she hadn't heard of a plot to get rid of Klaus in a while, and somehow, after that deep conversation they just seemed to have, she knew that he seemed to be the only one who understood the aftermath of the hunter's curse, and the effect it has on you.

So, when she saw Stefan resting against a wall by the Grill, she couldn't help but confront him about whatever was going on. "Hey."

He looked up when he saw her walk towards him and he smiled, pushing himself off the wall to greet her back. "Hey."

"So..." she started trailing off, gnawing on the inside of her lips for a moment as she tried to find a way to formulate a sentence that would get the best answers from the Salvatore vampire, but for the moment she couldn't find any so she went with a Natalie-ish remark. "When were you planning on telling me about the plan to get rid of Klaus?"

His eyes widened for a moment, not knowing how she would have gotten the information about Tyler and his pack's plan to get rid of who they saw as the greatest enemy of all. "How'd you find out about that?"

"I have my sources," she tried to answer cryptically, but then he raised an eyebrow at her and she sighed in defeat, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear. "Caroline accidentally texted me, okay?"

"She told you?" a familiar voice asked from the end of the stairs, and the currently semi-arguing pair turned around to face the young hybrid, who seemed pissed off at his blonde girlfriend, even if she wasn't there. "I've had twelve hybrids sworn to secrecy for a month. I have Hayley and a witch risking their lives and she's blabbing my plan to you?"

Stefan closed his eyes for a moment in annoyance as it felt like Tyler simply had to interrupt the moment they were having and he was trying to get to inform Natalie of the situation, but he had to get the things he needed done to get done as well. "Look, all I'm asking you for is a little bit of time, okay?"

Tyler scrunched his eyebrows up angrily at the vampire who was the sole reason that everything that had happened to him and this town actually happened, just by him returning to live in Mystic Falls, bringing Damon with him. "How long? An hour? A day? Because every minute that goes by that we don't do this, they're at risk. You and Klaus already served one of them up for Jeremy to kill. I don't owe you anything. I'm taking him out."

Tyler was about to leave them, but then Stefan used his supernatural superspeed and sped in front of the hybrid, making him jump in surprise. "I'm sorry, but I can't let you do that."

He could hear Natalie calling out his name, but he didn't know why, he turned to look at her and had the idea that she was protecting Tyler, but she wasn't. "I'm sorry but I can't."

But she called out his name again, and this time it was more persistent as he turned to look over his shoulder and finding a dozen hybrid behind his back, all seemingly on Tyler's side and they blocked any means of escape. Tyler looked at the two, who he thought had been working together. "Sorry man, but you don't have a choice."

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The Old Lockwood Cellar

Tyler and his hybrids had forced them down into his old family werewolf turning cellar where he had kept the one hybrid that Natalie did not want to see on watch for them. Kimberly. She was sending Natalie dirty looks as Tyler was glaring at Stefan.

"Keep them down here until we're ready to bring Klaus in," he dropped some chains in front of the female hybrid, and Natalie gazed at them in disgust, knowing that Tyler had spent several hours in them with his bones breaking and fur appearing. "Use these if you have to."

Stefan glanced at the brunette who just seemed annoyed at them being there, but she really wanted them to stop trying to get rid of Klaus. It was getting pretty old. "Come on, Tyler, this is bigger than you. It's about more than revenge for us."

"I know what it's about for you, Stefan. It's about the cure. You know what happens to a hybrid when he's cured of being a vampire? We go back to being werewolves; turning on every full moon. We could give a rat's ass about the cure." the hybrid spat in response, then leaving the others behind, the hybrids and all.

Natalie was already getting enough of that stupid idea of keeping them there and groaned as she rested her head against the hard wall of the cellar. "Ugh, this is ridiculous. We are not hostages!"

"Sure you are, sweetie." Kimberly responded in a condecending tone of voice that made Natalie send her a mocking grimace and a glare. She really hated her, and the fact that she attempted to kill her didn't help at all.

But then Stefan's phone rang and every single one of the hybrid turned to him as if they were ready to attack the phone or something. "Relax, it's my brother," he informed them and answered the call. "What's up? ...You're kidding," and with that he hung up the phone and turned to a curious Natalie. "We don't need the sword."

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The Salvatore Boarding House

Of course, the plan seemed to be going strong, as much as Natalie hated it. She wanted Klaus to not be gone at the moment, as he seemed to actually understand her struggles with her former difficulty with the hunter's curse. Stefan seemed like he wasn't very happy about it either, having previously talked to Klaus about loneliness, keeping memorabilia from their victims.

He sighed from his spot next to Natalie in front of the fireplace, the two sitting on the couch. "You know I thought I'd be happier watching Klaus get led away to his slaughter, but for some reason I can't help but feel kind of guilty."

"You're not the only one. We talked today and it almost seemed to slip my mind that he has done so many horrible things." she agreed, resting her chin in her hand, not even glancing at her conversational partner, she flashed back to him basically stalking all of them, killing Jenna, killing Elena (although she was resurrected quickly after), his love of daggering his siblings, and, last but not least, him killing her.

"See that's the thing, we've all done horrible things. And I'm sitting here, trying to figure out what makes us any better than him. And I think it's just that, we have family we can trust." he told her, getting up from his spot on the couch as he ran his hand through his hair.

"Yeah, yeah. Trust is... everything," Natalie shrugged, thinking about Damon and Elena and them having slept together and Stefan having no knowledge of the fact. She couldn't straight out tell him, because Elena would kill her and without actually saying the words, maybe it wouldn't hurt him as much. "Have you heard from Damon?"

"Yeah, he's still with Jeremy at the lake house." Stefan answered, not really sounding like he cared. Like, what kind of bad things could happen at the lake house, he knew that Damon would be able to handle himself, he always did.

"And did he say anything about Elena and where she is?" she asked, swallowing for a moment as she kept having to suppress the urge of stopping herself from hurting him as she knew that he deserved to know of his brother and his ex-girlfriend's intimacy.

He looked at her with a frown, not having thought about Natalie going to ask him about Elena, seeing as she was Natalie and the relations between the three of them weren't always too happy. "Wait, why are you – why are you asking me this?"

She looked down for a moment wetting her lips as she pulled her hair out of her face. She then looked up at him, giving him an apologetic look that made him realize that there was only one answer to that question, and he didn't like it at all. "They're together, aren't they?"

He sat back down on the couch, staring into space as he seemed so upset and he had every right to be. Natalie glanced at him and had to keep herself from grabbing his hand in comfort as she knew with their history it might not be appropriate. "How together are they? Natalie, tell me. How together are they?"

She glanced at him with a very apologetic and guilty look as she was starting to regret being the one who told him, she should have waited until Elena was ready, she felt like a complete backstabbing idiot and now she had most likely ruined the thought of a relationship between the two even more than before. "I'm sorry."

He let out a sad noise as he realized that it happened, Damon and Elena had been intimate in a way that he never even wanted to imagine. He stood up abruptly and Natalie's gaze followed his figure in confusion, wondering what he was about to do.

It started out pretty simple with Stefan simply knocking over a chess piece on the chess table, but that just worsened his anger as he suddenly grabbed the whole table and in a fit of rage threw it halfway across the room channeling his sadness and rage just so he could throw it as he glared.

Natalie jumped up from her seat, and walked over to him quietly, not wanting to set him off. She gently grabbed his arm, making him turn to look at her sharply, and she could see the angry glare on his face, but she knew it wasn't directed at her. "Hey, calm down. It's okay, just calm down."

He was about to turn his face away from her, so she couldn't give him that meaningful look she did before, but she knew that now she had no choice but to be inappropriate, considering their history. She lifter her hands to be wrapped around the back of his neck, her thumbs touching his cheeks as she turned his head back. "I know you're angry, and you have a right to be. But calm down, don't do anything you regret just because you're hurting."

His anger finally seemed to dial down and become sadness as he looked into her eyes once more and rested his forehead against hers as he took a deep breath. She wrapped her arms around his neck to comfort him and he wrapped his arms around her waist, moving his head to rest on her shoulder, burying his face in the crook of her neck as she rubbed his back in comfort.

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A/N: confession: I have already written the last chapter without even writing all the chapters leading up to it. I cry.

So, as you can see, most people wanted Natalie to stay in Mystic Falls with Klaus, Stefan, Caroline and Tyler+co. We may not have seen Caroline though but... eh.

P.S: a familiar face is returning next chapter....
#katalie

Votes and comments are greatly appreciated.