Meredith stuffed her econ notes into her bag as she walked across the quad. For the first time in a while, it felt almost like a normal college campus: groups of students sitting on the grass, couples holding hands and strolling the paths. A jogger brushed by Meredith as he passed, and she stepped aside. With the death of the last of the Vitale vampires, the attacks on campus had pretty much stopped, and the fear that had kept everyone inside was receding. They didn't realize that a much more dire enemy was now lurking in the shadows.
Klaus's army must be hunting, but they were keeping a much lower profile. Which was good, of course, but it meant that Meredith's class, after three cancelled sessions, had started again. And they had a lot of material to make up before midterms.
Meredith would have to find a way to fit in studying, working out, and patrolling, and she was also determined not to miss any time with Alaric while he was at Dalcrest. An irrepressible smile broke out on Meredith's face just at the thought of him: Alaric's freckles, Alaric's sharp mind, Alaric's kisses. She was supposed to be meeting him for dinner in town in just a few minutes, she realized, glancing at her watch.
When she looked up again, she saw Cristian, sitting quietly on a bench a little farther down the path, raising his eyes to meet hers.
Meredith reached inside her bag for the small knife that she carried with her. She couldn't carry her stave to class, and she really hadn't expected trouble in the middle of campus in broad daylight. She could have kicked herself: she'd been an idiot and let her guard down.
Cristian got to his feet and came toward her, hands held up unthreateningly. "Meredith?" he said quietly. "I didn't come here to fight."
Meredith gripped her knife tighter, keeping it concealed inside her bag. There were too many people around for him to attack without endangering innocent bystanders. "It didn't seem that way in the woods," she reminded him. "Don't pretend you're not working for Klaus."
Cristian shrugged. "I fought you," he said, "but I wasn't trying to hurt you." Meredith flashed back to facing off against Cristian in the battle with Klaus's vampires. They'd been so evenly matched that it had been clear they'd trained with the same parents: each blow he'd thrown she'd blocked automatically; each time she'd struck at him, he'd seemed to anticipate it. "Think about it," Cristian said. "Klaus turned me just a couple of weeks ago, but I remember everything from before. We used to spar all the time, but I'm a vampire and a hunter now. I should be much stronger and faster than you. If I'd wanted to kill you, I would have."
It was true. Meredith hesitated, and Cristian moved to the side of the path, sitting down on the bench again. After a moment, Meredith joined him. She didn't let go of the knife, but she couldn't help her curiosity about Cristian - her brother, her twin. He was taller than she was, and broader, but his hair was exactly the same shade of brown. He had her mother's mouth, with a subtle dimple on its left, and his nose was shaped like her father's.
When she met Cristian's eyes at last, his gaze was sad. "You really don't remember me, do you?" he asked.
"No," Meredith said. "What do you remember?" she asked.
In the reality she knew, Klaus had stolen Cristian away when he was a baby, raised him as his own. But in the Guardian-altered world, her twin brother would have grown up with her until he was sent away to boarding school for high school. Most of the supernatural-touched people in this world - Tyler, for instance - had a dual set of memories, two different sequences of events overlaying each other. Now that Klaus had made Cristian a vampire once more, would he remember both childhoods?
But Cristian was shaking his head. "I remember growing up with you, Meredith," he said. "You're my twin. We - " He laughed a sad little disbelieving laugh, just a puff of breath, really, and shook his head. "Remember how Dad made us learn Morse code? Just in case, he said? And we used to tap out messages on the wall between our bedrooms when we were supposed to be sleeping?" He looked at her hopefully, but Meredith shook her head.
"Dad made me learn Morse code," she said, "but I didn't have anyone to tap messages to."
"Klaus told me that in your reality, he took me away from home and made me a vampire when we were really little. But it's still weird for me that you don't remember me at all. We are - we were close," Cristian told her. "We used to, um, go to the beach every summer when I was home from school. Up until last summer, when I enlisted. We used to find little creatures and keep them in the tide pools, like our own tiny aquariums." His gray eyes, rimmed with heavy black lashes, were wide and sad. They were similar to Meredith's own eyes, perhaps a shade lighter, but right now they reminded her more forcibly of her mother's. With a jolt, she realized that the army must have told her parents Cristian was missing by now.
"I'm sorry," she told him, and she did feel sorry. "I don't remember ever going to the beach as a kid. I think my parents - our parents - lost their taste for family vacations after you were gone."
Cristian sighed and put his head in his hands. "I wish you had gotten a chance to meet me when I was human," he said. "One minute I'm lying in the barracks surrounded by a bunch of other guys, wondering what ever possessed me to enlist right out of high school anyway, and the next this vampire takes me and tells me all this crazy stuff about how I've always been his, how he's putting things right." He gave another sad huff of laughter. "All my training, and the first vampire I meet takes me out immediately. Dad's going to be so mad."
"It's not your fault," Meredith told him, and winced as she realized that, yeah, their dad would be kind of mad. More sad, of course, and sickened, but he would definitely feel that Cristian should have put up a better fight.
Cristian cocked a cynical eyebrow at her and they both laughed. It was weird, Meredith realized: for a moment there, sharing the feeling of exactly what it meant to be 'Nando Sulez's child, she really had felt like Cristian was her brother.
"I wish I had come to meet you when you were still human," she told him. "I just thought there would be more time."
Would she have been a different person if she'd grown up with a brother? she wondered. Klaus's attacks on her family had changed her parents: the ones in this reality, who hadn't lost a child, were less guarded, more open with their affections. If she had grown up with those parents and with Cristian next to her, someone to compete with, someone to help bear the weight of her parents' expectations, someone who knew all the secrets of their family, what would she be like? She'd felt less alone in the brief time she'd known Samantha: another hunter like her, her age. A brother would have changed everything, Meredith thought wistfully.
"I'm not interested in Klaus's endgame," Cristian told her. "I'm a vampire now, and that's tough for me to deal with. It's hard to fight the way I feel when I'm near Klaus. But I'm still your brother. I'm still a Sulez. I don't want to lose that. Maybe we could spend some time together? You could get to know me now." He looked at her sadly.
Meredith swallowed. "Okay," she said, and let her fingers loosen on the hilt of her knife. "Let's try it."
Dear Diary,
I have to prepare. If the Guardians won't change my task, my Powers will be concentrated on finding and destroying Damon, not Klaus. I need to be able to defeat Klaus on my own, by discovering my Power for myself.
For an hour today, Andres and I tried to unlock more of my Power.
It was a complete failure.
Andres had decided that learning to move things with my mind could be useful, so he folded pieces of paper all over James's house and encouraged me to imagine protecting my friends from evil by flinging them around. It was sickening to imagine Stefan or Bonnie or Meredith at Klaus's mercy, and I wanted to save them. I knew that if I could swing a stake at the right time, I might change things in a fight. But I couldn't even stir a page.
I'm going to be as ready as I can be, though. If I can't use my Guardian Powers to defeat Klaus, I'll fight him face-to-face. If I can't be killed by the supernatural, I have a huge advantage. Meredith and Stefan have been teaching me how to fight, how to use weapons.
Klaus is so much worse than Damon could ever be: when I think back, I can remember so many times that Damon saved innocents instead of killing them - Bonnie, the humans of the Dark Dimension, half our high school. Me. I owe him my life. Time after time, even when he's wavered, he's turned away from the easy darkness and come down on the right side, the side that saved the helpless. I know he's strayed again -
Elena paused. She couldn't bear to think of it: Damon killing again. But she took a deep breath and faced the truth.
- but maybe it is our fault, mine and Stefan's, for not showing him we care. It was just that once I got Stefan back, all I could think of was clutching him to me so tight that he'd never slip away again. Damon needs us, though he'll never admit it, but we'll fight through the darkness that shrouds him. We will save him. If I can just remind the Guardians of all Damon's done for us in the past, they'll see that he isn't evil. They can be rational, even if they are cold and distant.
I used to hate the idea of being a Guardian, of becoming less human. But now I know that it's a gift, a sacred trust to protect the world. As a Guardian, I can stop some of the deaths, some of the suffering. Once I fully come into my Power, I can use it to defeat the right target. I can still be the one to kill Klaus.
"I called Alaric and told him I'd meet him in an hour," Meredith said. "I had to talk to you guys first." She stirred a spoonful of sugar into her tea with such careful, precise movements that Elena was sure Meredith was keeping a firm control on herself to avoid slipping into hysteria.
It was the same reason, Elena knew, that Meredith had called just the three of them to meet her at the coffeehouse: Elena, Bonnie, and Matt, Meredith's oldest friends, the tight group that had withstood so much together. Meredith loved Alaric and trusted him with all her heart, just as Elena did Stefan, but sometimes you wanted your best friends with you.
"Cristian says he wants to be my family," Meredith said. "He isn't interested in fighting on Klaus's side. But how can I believe him? I asked Zander what he could sense about Cristian, but he wasn't sure. He says that sometimes, if the person has a lot going on emotionally, his Power doesn't work on them." She glanced at Bonnie sympathetically. "Zander misses you," she said, and Bonnie stared down at her lap.
"I know," she said softly. "But I can't be the person he needs." Elena squeezed her hand beneath the table.
Matt rubbed the back of his neck. "Maybe Cristian is telling the truth," he offered. "Chloe left Ethan and stopped drinking blood. There are good vampires - we know that. Look at Stefan."
"Where is Chloe, anyway?" Bonnie asked. "You've been spending all your time with her."
"Stefan took her hunting in the woods," Matt told her. "She's afraid to go by herself since Klaus attacked her, but Stefan says if she's going to survive, she can't hide forever. And I have a game later, so Stefan can keep her company, help her stave off the blood lust."
"At least it sounds like Cristian wants to try," Elena told Meredith. "I'm scared I've lost Damon. He was so violent. It was like he wanted me to give up on him." She hadn't told Meredith and the others that Damon had confessed so casually to killing someone, but she'd told them about the brutal, frightening scene at the billiards hall.
Meredith stared down at the surface of her tea for a moment, then raised her eyes to meet Elena's. "Maybe you should," she said quietly.
Elena shook her head in immediate denial, but Meredith pushed on. "You know what he's capable of, Elena," she said. "If he really wants to be bad again, he's strong enough and clever enough to be really bad. The Guardians might be right. Maybe he's even a bigger threat than Klaus."
Elena clenched her fists. "I can't, Meredith," she said, her voice cracking. "I can't. And I can't let anyone else, either. It's Damon." Her eyes met Meredith's. "Cristian's your family - that's why you can't kill him without giving him a chance. Well, Damon's become my family, too."
Bonnie looked back and forth between them, wide-eyed. "What can we do?" she asked.
"Listen," Matt said suddenly. "Meredith was a hunter when she met Stefan and Damon, even though the rest of us didn't know it. She hated vampires, right?" They all nodded. "So" - he turned to Meredith - "how did you get past it?"
Meredith blinked. "Well," she said slowly, "I knew Stefan wasn't a killer. He loved Elena so much, and he tried to protect people. Damon . . ." She hesitated. "For a long time, I thought I probably would have to kill Damon. It was my duty. But he changed. He fought on the right side."
She looked back down at the table, her face grim. "Duty is important, Elena," she said. "A hunter or a Guardian, we are the ones responsible for saving innocent people from evil. You can't ignore that." Elena's eyes filled with tears.
"Exactly," Matt said. "So, what if Damon changes again? If we could get him to act differently - well, if you guys could, anyway; he won't ever listen to me - then we could show the Guardians he's not a threat."
"There's a reason the Guardians aren't worried about Stefan," Bonnie added.
"Maybe," Elena said. She felt her shoulders drooping and automatically stiffened her spine. She wasn't going to give up, no matter how hopeless the idea of getting Damon to change his behavior seemed. "Maybe I can get him back on track. It didn't work the first time, but that doesn't mean I can't try another approach," she said, willing a little more positivity into her voice. She would just have to keep going, think of a way to get Damon on the side of good again.
"Or we could try locking him up until he changes," Matt suggested half jokingly. "Maybe Bonnie and Alaric can come up with some kind of calming spell. We'll figure something out."
"That's the ticket," Meredith said. Elena looked up at her and Meredith gave her a small, rueful smile. "Maybe Damon will change in time to save himself," Meredith said. "And maybe Cristian is telling the truth. If we're lucky enough, neither of them will have to die." She reached across the table and squeezed Elena's hand. "We'll try," she said, and Elena nodded, squeezing back.
"At least we have each other," Elena said, looking around to meet Bonnie's and Matt's sympathetic gazes. "No matter what happens, it'll never be the worst thing, not as long as you guys are by my side."