Written 2013 by VeGirl

It was dusk when I stretched my body, which was sore in both a bad and a good way, I took a deep breath and sighed in contentment.

"Hi Sweetie." Damon said. "Are you okay?"

"Oh yeah..." I said with a wicked grin. "Much better now, thank you." I giggled and he rolled over me in our bed.

"You're a bad girl."

"Pitch black!" I chuckled darkly.

"You're my princess of darkness, even if you look like an angel in that blonde hair." His smug face changed to a serious expression again; he slid down beside me and watched every inch of my face, following each line with his finger. "You were gone too long." He complained.

"Yes." I replied seriously. "Klaus said something about... time continuum or flux capacitor or something." I giggled, rolling my eyes; I smiled sweetly up at him again. "It was longer for you... I don't understand how, but time has travelled in different speed and to get back, it had to be on this special night; Laoug-something... I don't remember."

"Elena's a vampire." He interrupted.

"Yeah, I've heard." I said compassionate. "And I visited Alaric's grave."

His face got hard lines which I stroke lightly. "I wish I had been here to help you get through it; this is a little much to handle on your own."

A flash of pain ran through him as he looked troubled at me again. "Are you back to stay now?"

I took a deep breath. "By God I hope so; I can't take these departures anymore."

He exhaled and his face softened. "Me neither." We looked at each other again with all the longing that had filled our essences for too long. I couldn't watch him enough, that gorgeous face had not faded away from my mind, but when I had it right in front of me it was even more splendid. My hands just ached to tangle in his hair as my head rested on his chest and I sniffed his masculine scent, we could have laid there all day.

After some time to catch up, we got downstairs and started to make something to eat; I had my usual bagel and Damon had his liquid diet; not much was changed. He eyed me a bit cautious, though. "Are you really okay with the smell of this?"

I leaned closer and smelled at the red liquid. "It's not really my taste, but if you want it, that's your problem." I even had a cocky attitude about it.

Damon kept eyeing me suspiciously. "And this is Klaus handiwork? What else did he do to you?"

"Hey, cut him some slack, will you. He has actually been such a gentleman it almost creped me out." I said, pretending to shudder. "Really..." I assured when I saw his doubtful look. "How have you been?"

"Shit; what about you?"

"Shit, just like you. I thought I'd never see you again."

"Me neither."

We sat there for a good time after having finished our second breakfast, or if we had been checking the time we had agreed it was dinner. After having picked up something else to wear instead of the ripped clothes, still scattered over the living room, we decided to go for a stroll.

We walked on the path along the lake as the sun set; it was so beautiful that I wanted to cry. I remembered the first time I was here and when I thought about spending my life here. I still wanted that. Before I had time to think it over, a sentence left my mouth. "If you turn me I can't leave." I was determined it worked like that.

His eyes got huge. "Turn you?"

"Yeah you know; blood, snap, blood - vampire."

"You can't mean that!"

"I'm dead serious!"

"But there is some secret Vampire Hunter clan in town." He said appalled. "They would kill you!"

"The five?"

He just stared at me. "What do you know about that?"

"I was with Klaus when he got the sword back from one of the first hunters; me and Anna." I clarified.

"Anna's here too?"

"Yes, we've been together this entire time; Anna, me, Amariya and Klaus, figuring out how to get us back."

"Wait a minute; he got the sword?"

"Yes." I said a little surprised that Damon knew about. "I was blown away that he even got it through customs, but he said he was good at persuade people." I added tart.

"Where is Anna?" Damon said alarmed, totally ignoring my tale about the sword.

"She's with Klaus."

His eyes got huge and I was instantly worried. "We have to get over there, now!" He grabbed my arm and walked briskly back to the house.

"What the matter?"

"Sacrifice..." He hissed and all the hairs on my body were standing.

We were walking quickly up to the house when I remembered the wrecked car. "Oh..." I moaned.

"What?"

I stopped walking. "I crashed your car."

"I know."

"I'm really sorry... But you were on a suicide mission and I had to stop you." I tried to defend.

"Yes, and I'm grateful that you made me see that you were real this time."

"This time?"

"Yes, you've been here a lot, tormenting me... Well, not you personally, but the first times I really thought it was you; I had given up by now..." He had a weak smile on his face. "But you don't have to worry about the car, I took care of it."

"You're a mechanic now?" I teased him when we got through the house, locked up and got out front, where a black Ferrari stood. "What is this?"

"My new car; I took the other one to the repair shop."

"But the radiator was broken, I saw the smoke." I said stern.

"I didn't drive it!" He said, opened the door and motioned with his neck for me to get into the slick sports car. He closed the door when I was about to object, if he didn't drive it, how the hell did he move it.

"You did what; carry it?" I said in a patronizing tone when he sat next to me.

"So, I'm strong!" He shrugged, and he had a defensive tone in his voice; it was basically the same I would use to say something like 'It wasn't me!'

I just laughed. "Vampires..." I mumbled.

He started the car and it purred like a cat, which was appropriate, because his face had a Cheshire cat grin when he pressed the pedal and accelerated along the winding road. "I didn't carry the car to the repair shop." He admitted with a grin. "But your expression was funny."

"Are you sassing me?"

He just gave me a glib smile and what could I do but laugh. He drove us straight to Klaus mansion, took my hand and walked right up to the door. At first I thought he would barge straight through it, but he pounded on the door and waited until some girl came and opened the door.

"Klaus!" Damon yelled angrily when we were invited in. He still had my hand in his and I felt dragged after him. "Anna!"

When we got into the main area of the house we saw Anna and Klaus sitting there, calmly talking and having a drink together. "Hey, you found him!" Anna said in her perky voice and I noticed Klaus watching my scratched face suspiciously. Damon stopped and just looked at them, since Anna didn't look like she was in any immediate danger.

"Damon!" Klaus said in his usual welcoming, or annoyed way, it was hard to say. "How nice that Emma found you."

"Yes..." Once again he was startled by Klaus actions. "Emma told me that you helped them get back here."

"Please sit down." Klaus offered, gesturing to the couch opposite theirs.

There was something going on in the way they acted toward one another and finally I couldn't help but interfere. "Why don't you two just stop beating around the bush?" They looked surprised at me. "Don't try to give me that innocent crap." I said and Anna hissed my name. "We need to know what's been going on."

Klaus and Damon watched each other as to decide how much we needed to know.

"Why don't we start with our disappearance?" I suggested. "Your brother Kol kept calling her Annora." I nodded towards my friend. "By now we know that you all knew each other; your families moved to America together, right?"

Klaus watched me intently, as if to once again evaluate the need to know business; how much did we really need to know? "Yes, we got here together, arrived to a minor settling up north; it was cold and had pretty much the same conditions we came from."

It was really interesting to hear him tell the story, without any need to hide or keeping secrets. "But then we heard of a much warmer place; a place where people were able to live a much longer and healthy life and our family had lost so much."

"And that area is around here?"

"Yes." He took a deep breath and we waited restless for the rest of the story. "Well you pretty much know the rest." He shrugged. "Michael killed us, turning us to what mother referes to as abominations."

Anna sat next to Klaus, totally absorbed in the story. "What happened to Annora?" She asked quietly.

Klaus turned to look at her with a distant smile. "The time after our turning is actually the interesting part." He said and kept his attention on her, as if he told her the story.

"One night we were out hunting nearby and we found this rocky area; it was as if it called us closer, humming and buzzing." Anna watched him with widening eyes and I could feel how my attention was suddenly totally focused on him.

"It was Rebekkah, Elijah, Tatia, me and Annora who had sneaked out." He said with a smile to Anna. "When those big boulders started to humming and buzz we just had to see what it was and we woke up in a cave."

"You did the same travel we did?" I just breathed.

Klaus just turned and watched me for a while before he answered. "Yes."

"That was why you knew about this?" Anna asked.

"About what?" Damon watched the three of us suspiciously and I felt annoyed that he interrupted the story, I wanted to know more.

Klaus turned his attention to Damon and me and let his eyes wander over my scratched face. "Is that your doing, by the way? What did you do to her; drag her though a forest?" He asked Damon.

"No!" I objected. "I crashed his car..."

"Well that explains it then, luv." He had a wicked grin.

"He didn't..." I started irritated, but then I took a deep calming breath. "Would you please continue the story?"

He looked doubtful at me, and then he took a deep breath. "Well, when we found our way up, the town was gone."

"You made the travel?" Anna asked.

He sighed. "Yes, there the five of us were without a clue of what had happened." He took a sip of the bourbon in front of him and with only a gesture asking if Damon wanted one. A girl emerged at once, giving him a glass and then she disappeared again. "So we stayed in that cave, trying to find our way back and one night the buzzing was back, and the next morning so was the village."

His light tone of voice hung in the air for quite some time, while none of us knew what to say.

"Annora and Tatia's families of course thought we had killed them and our families were never close after that incident. My family went through some rough times and when Mother died, Rebekkah, Elijah and I fled."

We sat there in silence again, doing our best to process the information and all feelings it woke in us.

"So the garden stairs at the Lockwood estate is from that cave?" I asked.

"The cave with the scribbling is under the Lockwood estate, that's why I couldn't get in there." Damon revealed.

"And we could get through this pass way because we were there at the right time and due to the fact that Anna is the doppelganger?" I concluded. "But Anna wasn't there!"

"No, but you wished she was there, right? And you had been together by a rock like this one in Sweden, when that one started to sparkle and hum?" Klaus asked.

We nodded slowly, leaning back in our seats. "Wow, that's how we ended up in Mystic Falls?" Anna breathed, stunned.

"But what about the laps in time, it's autumn now." I puckered my forehead.

"Yeah, we were in that cave a couple of weeks, but when we got back it had only been a day or so." Klaus said puzzled. "I don't have any answers."

I just figured something out. "When we visited that school Anna it was spring, right? Could it be spring ecuin... What did you call it?" I looked at Klaus' amused face.

"Equinox, luv!"

I gave him an annoyed grimace. "Well I know  it's called vårdagjämning in Swedish!" I snapped and was just about to slam some comment if he knew that, when I remembered his linguistic knowledge from the trip, so I let that one drop.

We took our time to process the magic Klaus spoke of, and the same magic Anna and I had experienced.

Damon's phone snapped us out of it by signaling; he looked at the display and sighed. "What life crisis is it this time Stef?" He said and listened intense. I watched as he furrowed his eyebrows. "You must be kidding! Of course it has to be a Gilbert!" Stefan replied something that sounded like lecturing. "Yeah, yeah." Damon said and hung up the phone.

Klaus looked expectantly at him and he sighed. "So I gather that the new hunter has been detected?"

"One of the five?" I asked curious and had to explain to Anna who by some unknown reason had missed that conversation.

"What are you saying; when one of the five dies, another one is born?"

"No, not born; another one get marked and inherit their place." Klaus explained.

"So they never stop?" I asked both amazed and appalled at the same time.

"But you were able to get the key?" Damon interrupted by asking Klaus. "A sword was it?"

Klaus turned to me with a threatening glare. "So you couldn't keep quiet, luv?"

I didn't know I was supposed to stay quiet about it. "Stop being so secretive all the time then!" I snarled. We glared at each other for a while.

"So what does the sword do... besides the obvious." I added tart, thinking of how many people were slaughtered with that piece of metal over the years.

Klaus took a calming breath. "It's apparently a key to decipher a secret tattoo that appears on the hunter from the minute he is chosen, which is the mark." He let that info marinate for a while. "The tattoo gets bigger and more intricate, the more vampires the hunter kills."

"And that tattoo holds the secret how a vampire can get human again?" I concluded. "Like a riddle?"

"From what we have heard; yes." Klaus said.

* * * * *

Damon and I went back to his secret paradise without meeting either Stefan or Elena. "I can't believe how much has been going on while I was away." I sighed.

"Yes, it has been some crazy months."

Finally I had to ask what had puzzled me. "Damon; who turned Elena?"

He looked at me with a troubled face. "Alaric's hot doctor-lady blood-jacked me and used it to heal her patients; Elena, among others. Ergo, I'm responsible."

"But you couldn't help it."

"No, and when Matt and Elena were forced off the road by Rebekah, the self-centered bitch..."

"Hey, Rebekah is my friend!"

He gave me a stern look. "Then you know that she is a self-centered bitch." I knew that she was self-centered even when I got to know her in Oxford, but it was quite recently I had got to see the length which she would go to get her will through.

"Anyway, she was the one that almost killed both Matt and Elena. Stefan the idiot saved Matt first just because Elena said so; hence the fact that Elena now is a vampire."

"But why would she do that?"

He sighed. "Alaric's life was linked to Elena's, and to kill Alaric they had to kill her."

I pondered about that for a while. "Who turned him from being your friend to what sounds like a raging hunter lunatic?"

Damon sighed and glared into darkness. "Ester; Klaus' mother..."

I took a deep breath. "Of course; the original mother..." I rolled my eyes. "It seems she is close by when bad stuff happens to this town."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So, all of you who hasn't understod how on earth Emma and Anna could pop in and out of this magical place where Damon and the other hunks exist, has now been given a possible explanation. As usual I think it is interesting to hear your opinion, so I hope you write a few lines and I really hope you like it.

XX // VeGirl

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