everyonelives | hey it's good to be back home again

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hey it's good to be back home again

[It's been a while since Stefan has been back in Mystic Falls, but he wasn't going to miss the twins graduation. He knew that coming home was going to be complicated. He was bringing his girlfriend to meet people. He was bracing himself for Damon's judgement about him dating a vampire slayer the entire ride from the airport.

What he hadn't expected, was getting ambushed at a gas station while filling up his car by a hunter.

According to Damon, there haven't been hunters in Mystic Falls in years. They knew that the school would be a beacon, but they also took precautions for that to protect the kids. Most hunters understood that they were trying to reduce deaths, rather than concentrate them. This isn't to say that Mystic Falls is perfect, but they're doing better than they used to.

Stefan doesn't kill him. He's caught off guard enough that he doesn't immediately go for the kill, and Buffy catches the hunter off guard enough that the guy decides to retreat and regroup rather than push his luck against a slayer and a vampire. This isn't, unfortunately, before he manages to plug Stefan with a few wooden bullets. And those hurt like a mother.]

Gotta love coming home.

[He groans as he sinks back against the car, trying to keep an eye on their surroundings, before glancing down at the bleeding holes in his shirt.]

I liked this shirt.

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Go easy on the brakes. And watch for bike messengers.

( But, Sam gets his hot little hands on the keys to Baby. He gets a very, very stern warning look before Dean heads around to the other side and gets into Elena's car. )

[Sam pulls off one way and Dean and Elena go the other, pulling back onto the highway and heading towards the diner that she had passed a few minutes earlier.

She swallows, her fingers gripping the wheel and does her best to keep her eyes on the road.]

So. What'd you want to catch up on?

Our twenty year gap. The Ripper of Monterey. Katherine Pierce.

( Take your pick. )

I am sorry about your parents. I heard what happened.

[Getting an apology about her parents twenty years after the fact is disorienting, to say the least, but she swallows and nods, taking it a lot better than she used to.]

Thank you.

[But that's the easiest part to talk about.]

It's hard to really know where to start.

( It's never not disorienting for Dean, talking about his dad or mom. Or, any loss. Losing Jack the first time. Everything that happened after. He and Sam have lost a lot. They've lost each other. He'll always take the time to first apologize for that. )

Start with your dad. He worked hard to keep you out of this life. As far as we knew, the last vampire that set foot in Mystic Falls did so back in 1994. And the only Salvatore in town was Zack Salvatore. Not a vamp.

Well, then he died.

[She tries not to sound glib about it, but it's true. And honestly, even if he lived, no matter how hard Grayson tried, vampires were always going to be part of her life. It was her role as a doppelganger.]

And when the car went off the bridge, Stefan Salvatore saved my life.

After ripping his way through 1920's Chicago.

( Talk about a gap in time and behavior. Dean knows there are all kinds. Vampires. Werewolves. Djinn. Some are people, too. Most are threats. Dean met one vampire he likes. But, that vampire took himself back to Purgatory. )

[Yeah, well. There is that.]

Stefan's not that person anymore. I know that's not going to be easy for you to believe, but he's come a long way from the person he was then. He's even spending most of his time with a gaggle of vampire slayers, if that counts for anything.

( Resting a hand on her dashboard, he follows her story. That connects what he's doing here with a slayer. The slayer. )

No offense to Stefan, but I've heard that line before. ( Elena doesn't seem to be kidding herself, nor is she the type to. He remembers her when she was younger. More carefree. Less stress lines. But, life changed. Life always changes. ) So. Stefan Salvatore saved your life. Which meant a vampire was back in Mystic Falls. The council couldn't have liked that.

No, they didn't. Especially because his brother, Damon Salvatore came with him.

[So, for everyone counting at home, that's now two vampires.]

This also happens to bring us around to Katherine Pierce, because she is the one who turned them.

You're her doppelganger.

( The vampire who, somehow, five hundred years later, turned human again. )

Stefan and Damon, they're sired by Katherine - who looks like you. And Stefan goes and saves you from drowning. ( Her, and not her parents. ) What happened after that? Was Katherine with them?

No. Katherine had faked her death in 1864. There was this whole thing with a church and a tomb that she wasn't actually in and twenty-six starved vampires who almost tried to murder the town over it.

[Her life is an endless run of horrors, which is why it was hard to tell where to start.]

Anyway, technically we're both doppelgangers of a woman named Amara who had an immortality spell cast on her two thousand years ago. Nature abhors a vacuum. If you try to make yourself not die, then it will want to create something that does. Katherine was the most recent one before me, but the doppelganger before her was used to create vampires in the first place, as well as bind some other curses, so we were hunted by the people who wanted to undo them. They needed our blood to do it.

[And for some other things.]

Our being you, Katherine. The one before her.

( Dean's good at following ghost stories and monster movies. ) After they died and the Salvatore's -- they must've involved you, then. Must've thought something was up since you looked like the vampire that turned them originally. Or, did they come back to Mystic Falls to find Katherine. No bad blood there, you calling Stefan your friend.

Yeah, they did. And I really don't want to rehash all of this, but I trust them, Dean. And it's trust that's been well earned. Which is less than I can say for you, who I haven't seen in twenty years.

[She's just going to be plain about it. It's nothing against him, but him trying to make it seem like Stefan and Damon can't be trusted when they've been here and he hasn't is not going to happen.

She pulls into a parking spot at the diner and shuts off the car.]

Coffee?

And pie.

( He's going to go back to Sam about trusting these Salvatore's. It's still not a full story, and he and Sam are both going to delve when they're done with this part, when Elena is back in Mystic Falls with the vampires and the other students.

For now, he'll play nice and not ruffle her feathers.

Instead, he steps out of the car, spots the Impala down the way and holds the door open for Elena. Stepping inside, he searches for Sam and his laptop. )

[Sam is perched in a back booth with his laptop out and his earbuds in, clearly in full research mode. Elena will leave it up to Dean whether they're sitting with him or continuing to have their conversation elsewhere.]

Where are you thinking?

( Before he can answer, the hostess asks for 'how many' and, well. He looks to Elena. And back at her. )

Two? I'm thinking two.

( And she seats them at a table in Sam's eye-line but a few tables away. He can locate the car and do whatever research is needed/whatever research he wants.

The hostess moves two stand up menus onto their table and leaves them to peruse. Dean just continues where they left off. )

Trust doesn't come easy, probably to either one of us. I know you were dragged into something, that, twenty years later you're still a part of. Me, too. Difference is I can count on one hand the number of vampires I'd trust with my life. I know there's a school and they're your friends and I trust you trust them.

Yeah, well ... same here.

[It's not as though she's blindly trusting every vampire she comes across. Her count is a grand total of 3 - Stefan, Damon and Caroline. Tyler would be in there if he were still a vampire, but he's not.]

Also those at the school are kids, who didn't exactly ask to become this. We're teaching them to be better and learn how to not hurt people. Is that a bad thing?

It's not a sure thing. Vampires, werewolves, shapeshifters. They're all natural predators. It just takes one, Elena. ( He holds up one pointer finger, bringing it down.

Taking the menu, he scans it, turning around to the back. To desserts. ) I believe in it, I do. I got a - I have a kid there. But, if you don't think we keep a close eye.

You say that, like people don't make mistakes. Like they don't find themselves in impossible situations, or that they can't atone for those mistakes and be better.

[Elena will never not believe that there's room for people to change. It's so at the core of who she is, she's never going to give that up.]

I'm not saying that there aren't terrible ones out there. I've been at the mercy of some of them, I know how horrible they can be. But there are terrible humans too who have also hurt me just as much. It goes both ways, and I'm not going to turn my back on them for something they didn't choose.

I'm not telling you to. I have seen firsthand what terrible humans can do.

( She's not alone in that. )

But, these impossible situations, usually they're situations of their own making. You and I, we're not going to agree on this. What my brother and me do, we save people from the monsters. ( There it is. ) We're hunters, Elena. That's our family business.

And I'm not going to call someone a monster just because they're not human.

[But that's neither here nor there. And then, because she's a little peeved that they started out playing the "Katherine or Elena" game, she leans back as she continues to scan her menu.]

And I'm not going to have that dictated to me by someone who's currently calling Katherine Pierce an ally.

[Okay, maybe "ally" is too strong a word. But she certainly got the impression of "friendly," and she's feeling a little petty and judged.]

I said our paths crossed. She's a hunter, too. And believe me, if our paths would've crossed when she was Katherine Pierce, the vampire, things would've probably ended differently. ( Considering the stories. ) I'm not dictating to you what a monster is. The monsters we hunt are monsters. Vampires that use a human lure, werewolves that prefer to eat human hearts over cow, vengeful spirits who are dead long enough they get insane and violent. The hunters we've been hunting. I know it's not all black and white, Elena.

[She purses her lips as she keeps her eyes on the menu.]

So it's me you don't trust. You think I'm too naive to make that assessment for myself?

[She's just trying to figure out where they stand. She wants to believe that he and Sam may be an ally, but she won't run too fast into it and put her family at risk.]

I didn't say that, either.

( The hostess comes back - at this inopportune and tense moment. She, great at reading a room, lets them know they can take a little more time. But, then asks who wants coffee.

That she can take care of. Dean holds a hand up. Waits to see if Elena does, too.

He's wishing that Sam was at the table, able to undercut or redirect. There are things Dean doesn't falter on. And big things happening. )

Do I trust you? I thought I knew you. But you were sixteen and your parents died and I was nineteen. You're right about us not knowing each other and not knowing what we've been through. You need me to, I'll give you the gory details. When I say something like, "It ends bloody," it doesn't means I don't trust your judgment, it means everything I have been through, everything me and Sam have been through, it ends bloody. With vampires on our side. With demons. Witches. You name it, it ends bloody.

Do you need me to say it? Witches. Werewolves. Vampires. They are people, too, Elena. Another ex-hunter we know shacked up and became a werewolf, he has little werewolf children. They're good people. Sam and I are not the authority on good or bad wolves. Or, monsters, or people.

We've just been doing this all our lives. Fifteen years straight of doing it together. You were raised in the dark, you got to have your childhood. I got to learn how to shoot a gun when I was 4. I spent most of our childhood in motel rooms.

My best friend's an honest to God, angel. And the three of us raise the same son, a Nephilim named Jack. He's half-angel. What we've seen. What we've been through. It's not about trusting you.

I can only imagine what you've been through. I wouldn't dream of judging that. Your friend's a vampire who's paling around with a vampire slayer. That's them. That's not me. Trust doesn't just happen with me, Elena. I trust you. I trust Sam. Cas. Jack. And there some days, I don't. But, that's me.

( That's all him.

The hostess returns, turning their two coffee cups over and pouring them each the coffee. She keeps a professional smile on her face as she moves the coffee fixings organizer to the middle of the table for however they want their coffee. Sugar, Cream. Etc. )

This? This isn't personal. It's dangerous. These hunters, they're more dangerous than some of the more sadistic monsters I've ever taken down. Because, they believe they have nothing to lose. They believe that every day a vampire does get to go to school, that they're in danger.

( That's not him. )

Things get dangerous around us and they stay dangerous. People you care about go to that school, someone we care about does, too. We're on the same side.

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