chapter seven,

Marian said into her phone, walking to the Mystic Grill. He'd been missing for almost a week and she was worried that something terrible had happened to him. He would never leave her unless he had something serious to tend to, but something about him not contacting her at all left an unsettling feeling at the bottom of her stomach.

Besides, the moon would be full in four days' time; there's no way he would leave so close to it. She feared, of course, that her uncle had gotten to him; that Niklaus had daggered Elijah and left him at the bottom of the ocean with his siblings.

Her eyes flickered upwards as Jeremy slid into the booth opposite her, a smile on his face. Her fingers fiddled with the thin green bangle that sat around her wrist; the one that her father had given her five hundred years ago. Elijah had kept it for her. "Hey," he said. "You're early."

"Hey."

She could hardly find it in herself to make small talk with him, not after seeing him with Bonnie. She was hurt, betrayed—how could her two best friends get together behind her back? And Bonnie—God, Bonnie— she knew how much Marian liked Jeremy.

The boy frowned at his friend; she seemed more distant than usual. "You okay?" he asked. She nodded hesitantly.

"Yeah, I'm just tired," she lied.

"Okay," he drawled. "I just wanted to see how you were doing. You looked ... sad all week."

"I'm fine," Marian told him. He raised an eyebrow at her, not believing her. "I just ..." she sighed. She couldn't find it in herself to bring up what she'd seen the other night. "Elijah's missing," she confessed.

"So?" Jeremy asked.

She shrugged. "He was really good at helping me with my homework."

He scoffed. "You know he's trying to sacrifice Elena right? And threatened to hurt you if we jeopardised it."

Marian frowned. "What?"

"And you let Penny and Hannah meet him," he interrupted. "How could you do that?" She looked down at her hands, taking the bangle off her wrist and playing with it.

A figure slid onto the seat next to her.

"Well, well. If it isn't my favourite duo," Damon mused. He looked from Jeremy to Marian. "What'd I miss?"

Jeremy scooted to the edge of his seat. "Nothing," he said frustratedly. "I was just leaving."

Damon put his hands up. "Well, don't leave on my account." Jeremy ignored him, walking off. "What's up with him?" He jutted his thumb towards the boy.

"Nothing," Marian said.

"You okay? You look like you're on the verge of tears."

"Go away, Damon. I'm not in the mood to talk," she grumbled as Stefan slid into the seat opposite them. "What do you want?"

"Klaus," said Stefan. A shiver ran down Marian's spine. Damon narrowed his eyes at her. "He's trying to break the Sun and Moon Curse."

"Why are you so scared of him?" Damon asked.

"I have my reasons," she said.

"Like?"

"He's a dangerous man with an agenda, Damon. I don't want to get in the way," she said.

"Your heart beats oddly fast whenever we talk about him," Damon said. "Maybe you've met him in one of your many lives you've seemed to live?"

Stefan leant forward as he ignored his brother, lowering his voice. "Do you know anything that can help us? Weaknesses? Appearance?"

"Crazy ex-girlfriend who wants to get revenge?" Damon added. The girl scoffed, remembering the daughter of Count de Martel who had been infatuated with Niklaus when they'd met a thousand years ago. Oh how she'd love to see him dead now.

Marian thought of several things that would weaken her uncle: the wood of the white oak tree that burned down a thousand years ago, the dagger her father had worked on before he'd been daggered himself, the wicked man who had dedicated his life to hunting each of the original vampires ...

"Look, Elena contacted him weeks ago. He's already on his way if he's not already here."

"Yeah, and how do we stop him?" Damon urged.

"Elijah's our only hope, but he's disappeared, and I'll bet Klaus has done something to him—"

"Klaus didn't take Elijah," said Stefan looking up at his brother. "We killed him. He's at the Boarding House." Marian froze.

"You ... what?"

"He was interfering with our plans so we put this dagger in his heart," Damon said with a shrug.

She huffed with annoyance. "Look, if you want to stop Klaus, you're going to need him."

"And why do you think that?" Damon pushed.

"You were right, okay? I've met Klaus, and I don't really feel like being on his bad side at the moment," she confessed.

"How?" asked Damon. She sighed. This is what they'd been trying to figure out since they'd seen her standing there—alive—after she'd died in 1864 alongside Emily Bennett.

"I knew him when he was still human—Elijah too," she said, looking at Damon. "For some reason," she didn't dare mention which, "I live, I die, and then I'm reborn. It's a cycle I've been living for a thousand years," she explained.

Damon shook his head in disbelief. "You only thought to tell us this now? How do we know you're not part of his evil scheme?" he asked sceptically.

She looked down. "He killed my dad."

It wasn't a lie; not to her. Her uncle had daggered Kol in front of her, and it had sent him to a liminal space between life and death. She'd watched as Elijah restrained her father, Niklaus holding a dagger and piercing his heart with it as Kol cried out. She'd sobbed loudly as Marcellus held onto her, her hands clawing at his arms as he kept her in place until she fell limp. Dead.

"So you knew Elijah, too?" asked Stefan. Marian nodded.

"Yeah, we've crossed paths a bit." She took a sip of her milkshake.

"How much is 'a bit'?" Damon asked. "Did you almost marry him, too?" Marian almost gagged at the thought.

"You know what?" she said. "If you're going to be a dick about this whole thing, you can leave. Klaus is no joke, okay? Elijah has his own reasons for wanting Klaus dead, and whatever they are, they're justified. Surely that is enough to understand that if he can't be your ally, he's at least the enemy of your enemy."

They sat in silence for a moment, Marian looking down at the table as the two brothers faced each other. She could hear them muttering, Damon more furiously than Stefan.

"We just want to know how to get rid of him," the younger brother said carefully.

Marian raised her eyebrows. "You want to kill him?"

"If that's what it takes to keep Elena safe," he answered.

She shook her head, biting into a chip. "You're a fool, Stefan Salvatore," she told him. "That girl is going to be the death of you."

He smiled. "You know, it's funny," he said, pointing a finger from Marian to Damon. "I said the same thing to my brother just before he proposed to you."

She leant forward. "And you were wrong, because it wasn't me who got him killed, but the doppelgänger who looks exactly like your new girlfriend, and you've rendered your best chance at stopping said girlfriend from being sacrificed useless."

"And you're sure there's no other way to kill him?" Damon asked. "Because I feel like you're hiding something."

"Sure there are," she said. "But time is working against you and you won't get them before he arrives. And mark my words," she said slowly. "As soon as I catch word of him being in Mystic Falls, I'm taking my Mom and I'm leaving. I refuse to be caught in the crossfire of another doppelgänger sacrifice."

"You can't just leave," said Damon. "What about us? We're your friends."

"I'd rather lost my friends than my life. I've died too many times because of him. I'm not going to let him take me this time."

...

Marian looked up as someone poked her shoulder. "You okay, Annie?" She looked up to see Matt smiling at her, setting a strawberry milkshake and a small basket of fries on the table in front of her.

"I didn't order this," she said.

"You helped me with Caroline, so I'm helping you with Jeremy," he said. "It's on the house."

She smiled. "You didn't have to."

"I couldn't leave a pretty girl like you looking all sad." He cringed, causing Marian to laugh. "So take this, and let me know if you need anything else.

"Thanks Matt." She slowly reached for a chip, pulling one to her mouth. "Hey," she called just before he left. "I'm glad you're in a better position with Caroline," she told him. He smiled, nodding at her before walking to another table. "At least someone's happy in this crappy world."

part i:

tvd s2, e11, ""

wc: