I had spent months multitasking, trying to find a way to wake up Klaus, Elijah, Kol and Freya with Hayley and Hope, and then at the same time, trying to find Damon and Enzo and whatever or whoever had a hold of them.

  I was completely overwhelmed with trying to save all of them.

Stefan and I met up at the Salvatore Boarding House, our home again, since Matt wasn't exiling vampires from Mystic Falls anymore.

Stefan was surprised to see me. "Kaylin."

"Hello, brother," I told him.

"I didn't know that you were back yet," Stefan told me.

"Well, I have been trying to help Hayley with the Mikaelsons, but you also need my help with finding Damon and Enzo," I told him. "Believe it or not, Stefan, part of Klaus' compulsion when he told me to leave was to be there for my family when they needed me. But I would be here anyway, because we need to find our brother, and my ex-boyfriend, now only friend."

Stefan looked at me in concern, stepping closer. "How are you?"

"Don't give me that look," I told him.

"What look?" Stefan asked. 

"The look that says that you're worried about my mental well being because of the fact that three of the closest guys to me, aside from you, of course, are either sleeping or missing," I answered. "I'm fine, Stefan. What's on deck for today?"

"Well, I'm going back over all the Central State Missing Person Reports for the last four weeks to see if I missed a pattern," Stefan told me.

I nodded. "Great. Yeah, maybe you can follow up with the local affiliates." I pulled out my phone. "Or you can help me check out the body that I found out about before I came in here. All those people that we've been tracking, and now there's a body. That's good, right?"

Stefan finally allowed himself to feel a tiny bit hopeful about this lead. "It's better than yesterday. How do you manage to find more than us, when you're doing a lot more than just tracking Damon and Enzo?"

"Because traveling with Hayley and Hope gives me a little wiggle room to see things that you can't from Mystic Falls," I answered.

Stefan nodded in understanding.

********

Stefan, Bonnie and I were walking through the woods.

I filled her in about the information I had gotten. "Look, I know it's not much, but it's a lead, I mean, all those missing people along the trail we've been following, and this is the first time a body has surfaced."

"Probably because it has nothing to do with what we're looking for," Bonnie told us glumly.

Stefan and I stopped walking, turning to face Bonnie. 

"Yeah, well, we can't let ourselves think like that," Stefan told her. "We have to treat every single clue like it's the one that's gonna lead us to them."

Bonnie sighed, looking at us with an exhausted and pained expression. "Stefan... Kaylin... every time we do this, I let myself hope a little. And when we end up back at zero, my heart crushes in on itself a little bit more. I don't know how much my heart has left, you know?"

"Bonnie, no one--not Caroline, not Elena, no one--knows how to fight longer or harder or better than you," I told her. "If you give up, I won't have anything left to hold on to. Please don't give up."

Bonnie seemed truly touched, softening up to a weak smile. "Of course. But... don't ask me to have hope. Hope hurts, and I don't want to hurt anymore."

Stefan and I nodded in understanding.

********

Stefan, Bonnie and I had just arrived at a crime scene of the murder that I had told them about earlier, finding an investigator, walking toward him, though he was not at all pleased by our intrusion.

"Excuse me," Stefan told him.

The investigator was kneeling in front of the front bumper of the car at the center of the crime scene, groaning in annoyance and frustration, standing. "Oh, come on. It took me four hours to get control of the scene from the local idiots, and now they're letting press past the tape?"

I glared at him impatiently in annoyance, compelling him. "Drop the attitude, because attitude is my trademark. We're not press. We're not anyone, but tell us what you know."

The investigator stopped looking annoyed, doing as he was told, leading us toward the car, where a female victim had been bound to the front of the tire to either side of the hood, and her legs were bent so that her knees were on the ground with her legs tucked under the car and her head lolled lifelessly on her shoulder, while blood covered her neck and chest from where a vampire had fed on her. "Female victim, strangled, then exsanguinated, or maybe vice versa. Now brace yourselves. It ain't pretty. We found blood on the grille, not matching her type. Blood in the road over there, also not her type. Her car is dented, like she hit a deer. Maybe a mountain lion."

Stefan and I exchanged a knowing look, realizing the similarities between this case and our brother's preferred way of finding victims to feed on.

"Or a person," Stefan told us.

"Teeth marks above the collarbone, ligatures on her neck from the wire," the investigator told us.

Bonnie took a closer look at the neck of the victim, looking shocked when she saw how thin the ligature marks were. "That's not wire. It's guitar string."

********

Stefan called Caroline, who was looking up information on the case at her job, apparently having just pulled up a map of the area and was reporting the details about what she had found to Stefan.

"It's just a lot of empty land. Farms."

"The gas odometer only had three miles on it. That's strange. Maybe that means something?"

"There was a news story about this area a couple months ago. Some locals cried miracle when a nearby creek ran red with blood. Turns out there's a slaughterhouse with a drainage issue nearby. They closed it down."

"How far from the crime scene?"

"Exactly three miles."

"We'll go check it out. I'll call you back."

  ********  

Stefan and I walked into the abandoned slaughterhouse that Caroline had directed us to, on the phone with Bonnie, who stayed behind at the crime scene in case they learned any new details.

"We just walked in," I told her.

"They're still processing the scene. It shouldn't be much longer. What is that?"

We heard the investigator. "Looks like candle wax."

"Everything okay?" Stefan asked.

"I'm on my way," Bonnie told us.

We hung up. 

Stefan and I walked through strips of plastic sheeting hanging from a doorway, stunned by the sight of the remains of the victims that Damon and Enzo had killed, alarmed and uneasy, slowly walking further into the slaughterhouse.

"Damon?" Stefan called hesitantly.

Stefan and I continued to slowly walk along, eventually stepping onto the grate over a tank full of bloody water.

Damon walked closer. "Stefan." He smirked, though the smile didn't reach his eyes. "Kaylin."

I took a deep breath. "Hello, brother."

******** 

Damon turned away from us, walking toward a mop and a bucket full of soapy water, beginning to use to mop up the floor.

Stefan and I walked off of the grate platform toward him, confused and incredibly concerned about his disappearance and current behavior.

"What is all this?" Stefan asked. "What are you doing?"

Damon continued to mop up the floor without looking at us. "Daily chores."

"What was in that vault, Damon?" I asked. "What has a hold of you?"

Damon sighed. "Eh, it doesn't matter what has me. Only that I've been had. You should be proud of me. Killing bad people."

"Where's Enzo?" I asked.

Damon started to become impatient and frustrated with our insistence, turning to face us. "Go home, Kaylin. We're all good here, Stefan."

"In a slaughterhouse?" Stefan asked skeptically.

"Surrounded by death," Damon told us. "It's who we are. It's who we've been for 160-some years. Stefan, I know you think it's still worth the fight to live the illusion of your heroic life, but I'm officially done."

"You flipped your switch, didn't you?" Stefan asked.

Damon rolled his eyes, continuing to mop. "Always the quick one."

"We can help you get your humanity back," I told him.

"I know you can, and I don't want it," Damon told us. "I've seen how this ends, and believe me, humanity can't save me from it."

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

"I'm talking about hell, Kaylin," Damon answered. "Not the kind of hell that traps you in a stone. Fire-and-brimstone hell. I've seen it. I met it up close. Tasted it, touched it. It's beyond its reputation."

We were now more worried than ever, walking closer.

"You're not making any sense," I told him.

Damon sighed, both out of exhaustion and frustration. "Okay." He paused as if someone was talking to him. "You need to go. It doesn't want you yet. Walk out of here with your hero hair intact, and never come back."

I gave Damon a stubborn look, shaking my head. "Not without you."

******** 

Stefan and I were still talking to Damon, to reason with him, to no success. 

"Don't do anything you might regret," Stefan told him. "Think about Elena."

"I'm trying to explain to you, Stefan, Elena doesn't matter to me anymore," Damon told him.

"Why?" I asked in annoyance. "Because you flipped your switch?"

"I ripped the switch off the wall," Damon told me. "There is no switch, Kaylin, because there is no hope. Every drop of blood I ever spilled, every body I've ever drained, every bad decision I've ever made sealed my fate. My path and Elena's path, they're not the same. Her great beyond is a decidedly happier one than mine. Now for the last time, go."

"We said no," I told him, rushing over to the mop, breaking the wood over my knee, stabbing Damon in the back with it, making him fall to the floor.

Bonnie walked toward us in concern. "Get him in the car while I find Enzo."

"We have to leave," Stefan told us. "It's not safe."

"We're not leaving without Enzo," Bonnie told us.

Stefan and I heard Damon gasp in pain, looking toward where he had been on the floor, but he was gone, turning back around to find that Damon was holding Bonnie in a headlock.

Enzo rushed closer, punching Stefan in the face, looking between me and Stefan. "You need to leave now, before Damon is forced to do something no one is going to like."

Bonnie struggled against Damon's grip. "Let me go, Damon!"

Enzo looked at Bonnie with a blank expression, but his eyes indicated that there was still a shred of humanity hanging on. "Go."

"Fine," Stefan told them. "Let her go, and we'll be on our way."

Damon hesitated, letting go of Bonnie. "Till we meet again."

Bonnie turned to Enzo pleadingly. "Enzo."

"Don't you three get it?" Damon asked. "You think you can win against this thing? You can't. My life is over. My life has been over for a century and a half, Stefan. Since you took it from me."

Stefan was hurting from that comment.

I didn't want to go, but knew that we didn't have a choice at the moment, looking at Stefan and Bonnie, hurting to leave them behind. "Let's get out of here."

Stefan, Bonnie and I didn't want to leave, but we reluctantly did so.

******** 

Stefan, Bonnie and I were sitting in Stefan's car outside of Bonnie and Enzo's safe house, absolutely devastated by what had just happened, remaining silent for a long moment.

"You haven't said a word," Bonnie told us. "I know that was hard. But that wasn't Enzo. That wasn't Damon. They're not in control. But all those clues... The guitar string and the odometer... Enzo left them for me, I know it. He wanted us to find them. Next time, we'll get them back from whatever it is that has a hold of them. Not twelve hours ago, you were telling me, have hope. You were right."

"He said it was my fault," Stefan told us glumly. "He's said it before, so I don't know why it hurt so much. This time, it feels like... He may never forgive me. Maybe you were right this morning..."

I shook my head. "No. No, you were right. You told us there was hope. Now, just take a minute, pull yourself together, and go find yours. Stefan, I can't do anything... save anyone... if I don't have hope, and I might need your help to keep mine."

Stefan looked at me, nodding.

********

Bonnie and I were taking inside the safe house.

"He left me all these clues pointing to an old story about the Sirens," Bonnie told me. "You've lived a lot longer than I have. What do you know about them?"

I shrugged. "My mom used to tell me about them when I was growing up. There are different origin stories. Uh, Greek pagan mythologies. I mean, all the legends are based in the same idea. Sirens use mind control to lure their victims to their death. Some say they're messengers of the devil."

"Something has control over them," Bonnie told me. "Do you think Sirens could be real?"

I shrugged, sighing. "To be honest, Bonnie, I... I don't know what to think anymore. I suppose every story has to start somewhere."

Bonnie looked picked up 'The Odyssey', reading a passage that described the Sirens. "'They bewitch everybody who approaches them. There is no homecoming for the man who draws near them unawares. With their high clear song, the Sirens bewitch him as they sit there in a meadow piled high with the moldering skeletons of men whose withered skin still hangs upon their bones.'"

"How very poetic," I told her sarcastically. I thought back to the bodies in the slaughterhouse, thinking. "But not just poetic. It's real. The bodies I saw., the clues Enzo left. He wants us to know who the enemy is. He wants us to help them fight it."

Bonnie and I looked at each other, stunned by the entire situation.