gorysortofstory | OPEN SHIP WITH ME POST

Rebekah ends up leaving Yale. Not because she wants to, mind you, but because she needs to. Niklaus calls her up, panicked in a way he has rarely sounded.

His child is in danger.

Family always comes first. Rebekah leaves a note for Quinn, she leaves. It hurts, because she's pretty sure she loves her friend but sometimes that's what has to happen.

As much as she loves Hope, she misses Quinn. She settles down in a small town, somewhere unassuming. Where nobody might come looking for her. And yet whenever she's out she finds herself searching for the other woman -- afraid she might never see her again.

She wishes she had said something, been braver about how she felt. Now it might be too late.

Today she's out a few cities over to some outlet shops, picking up clothes for both herself and Hope. Once again she finds herself subconsciously looking through the crowds for that one familiar smiling face -- the person she wants to see more than anybody else.

After her mother dies, after Allison gets too close to the edge thanks to her Grandfather's influence, her father gets her out of Beacon Hills. They spend a few months in France and when they come back to the US they end up moving to Los Angeles. Allison wants to stay in Beacon Hills, to right what she's done wrong but her father insists they need a clean start.

A place where they can be normal.

Except nothing is normal in Los Angeles. Allison meets Connor the first time when she's walking home late at night and she gets ambushed by a vampire. Even with a few daggers on her she doesn't stand a chance -- vampires weren't part of the Argent training. He stakes it -- saving her life in the process. She's grateful -- and then spends a while grilling him on what she needs to know in case she ever runs into one again.

They run into one another more often than not, often working together to try to help the people of the city. He seems to need a purpose as much as she does. Something worth fighting for. He seems to ache with loss the way she does. Maybe even worse, as they slowly begin to open up and tell each other more about one another.

Tonight was a particularly bad night. The nest they took on had ambushed them, and if she had been on her own she's not sure she would have made it. After, they make their way back to his place so she can clean up. Her dad will lose it if she goes home like this. But before any of that they end up sitting next to one another on the edge of his bed. His jacket is draped over her shoulders and slowly Allison finds herself reaching for Connor's hand.

She just wants something to hold onto, something to ground her as she tries to still her beating heart. She tries to act brave but honestly?

She had been terrified.

Their parents tell them to run and that's what they do. They run. They leave Mystic Falls and they never turn back. It's hard -- the most difficult thing either one of them have ever done but it's all they can do to stay alive. They miss their mothers. They miss their friends. But they have each other and more often than not, that's enough.

They decide to make a list of all the places they want to see. They start with Mason's house in Florida. They hang by the beach for a while, they learn to surf, and eventually they move on. Caroline insists they go to Disneyworld. It's like a right of passage. Tyler complains but he has fun and honestly? After seeing stuff like Star Tours and Space Mountain he's pretty sold on it.

They've been traveling for months now, and currently they've pulled over to the side of the road. Early today she caught him singing along with some dumb pop song he'd deny later he liked and they ended up singing along together for a while. But right now?

They just need a break. There's no one coming for miles, they're on a deserted dirt road off the beaten track and they get out of the truck, laying out their blankets in the back. Sometimes they don't even bother with hotels, staying like this instead.

"The stars are pretty tonight," He mentions idly as he crawls onto the blankets. Idly he notices what phase the moon is in -- even though he no longer transforms thanks to being a hybrid he doubts he'll ever stop noticing that.

Edited 2014-09-28 08:19 (UTC)

Sometimes her heart aches for home. For the familiar. She misses their friends, she feels like a traitor. But they can't go back. None of them can. Not with all that's happened, all that could happen. They had to run, they had to. Although there were a few nights, when she was so homesick she physically ached, that she made him whisper that to her. We had to run.

Most of the time they have fun, they can forget why they're travelling and just have a good time exploring. She swears they'll go across some ocean soon but right now, while their mothers are alive, she can't stand the idea of going that far. Just in case.

They're on some back road in Georgia (or maybe it's Mississippi, she fell asleep at one point). It's the closest they've been to home in almost a year, she knows that much. As she gazes up at the sky, she thinks the stars look more familiar this close to home. She almost remarks on it before she feels the truck dip, just a little, with his weight as he climbs into the bed of it. She lifts one corner for him so he can climb beneath it. It's getting colder but it's not unbearable. "They really are," she murmurs softly, offering him a smile. "There's so many."

A spell goes up so none of them can go back to Mystic Falls (except Matt) and they all scatter. Tyler tries to put his life together. He travels for a while, eventually goes back to school -- though not Whittemore. He tries to move on. He avoids Louisana, New Orleans, all of it. He's not going to chase after Klause anymore. He's not going to let him have that sort of power.

He wonders sometimes if anyone misses him. He and Matt text occasionally, but as the years pass on it becomes less and less. He doesn't really keep in touch with anyone else. He makes friends here and there, has a few flings, but he never truly connects. Maybe it's self preservation.

If you don't let someone close you can't lose them.

It's maybe fifty or so years before he runs into Caroline. He's up in New York for a gallery opening -- a few pieces he did under a pseudonym are being put up and he wants to see them. See how people react to them. What he doesn't expect to see is her.

In all this time Tyler hasn't loved anyone the way he loved Caroline. He's not sure he ever will. Back then, when he left, everything seemed too impossible to put back together. In the end they both chose Klaus -- just in very different ways. Still, it almost knocks the air out of his lungs to see her, and it aches in a way he can't quite describe.

It takes a moment for him to even find his voice.

"Caroline?"

We had to run. Sometimes he has to say it for himself as much for her. But for the most part, they have fun. They make the most of it -- pretend like it's a romantic runaway trip and not something they're doing just to stay alive.

It works, mostly.

He's pretty sure they're in Mississippi by now. Sometimes it's hard to keep track -- and sometimes it's just simply easier not to. But it is the closest they've been to home in a long, long time. He gets under the covers with her, wrapping an arm around her tightly as he does so.

"There are. Kinda makes me wish I had ever bothered learning constellations."

But Tyler was always too busy doing other things as a kid -- learning had never been very high on his list of priorities.

She doesn't move away from him when he wraps his arm around her. In fact, she leans in to press a kiss to his cheek. "Good thing I know most of them." Knowing Caroline, she probably wanted to be an astronaut when she was little.

Some find it a surprise how much Caroline knows, underneath that perky blonde is a real student, even if it's not so much a love of learning as it is a love of being the best. So when he mentions the constellations, she settles against him with a grin, pointing to the left, naming some constellation before moving onto the next, describing it. "Obviously you know Orion's belt. That's the easiest one to know."

Katara wonders sometimes if she'll think about this every time it rains now -- how she looked straight in the eyes of her mother's killer -- that pathetic, weak excuse of a man -- and walked away. Even now she can't say whether that was the right choice. Aang things forgiveness is the higher route -- but she didn't forgive anything.

Some things can't be forgiven.

But some can. If anything good came out of all this -- she's been able to forgive Zuko. It's surprisingly a nice feeling -- to not be suspicious of him all the time, waiting for him to betray them again. Because if he was still waffling, if he was still uncertain he never would have gone through so much effort to prove himself to her, right?

She excuses herself from the group. Her thoughts are elsewhere and right now she just needs a little break from all of them. The rain is pouring harder and harder but she doesn't particularly care. It doesn't bother her -- not really.

She's not entirely sure how long she's there, standing by herself before she hears footsteps approach. She turns and it's Zuko -- she supposes if anyone might of figured out what was preoccupying her mind today it would be him. He had been the one to see all of it.

Even if the parts she's not particularly proud of (like the blood bending).

Without allowing herself much time to think on it she steps closer to him, wrapping her arms tightly around him. Perhaps because he could understand. He had lost his mother too -- though in a different sort of way.

It's been a few years since Cordelia last saw Stefan. He eventually has to go back to Mystic Falls and life goes on. Sometimes not as smoothly as either one of them would hope. (Someday she'll hear about how he ended up in a safe like Angel did -- it's almost funny, almost).

Cordelia comes back from the higher realm possessed, things go from bad to worse, and she ends up in a coma. Eventually she wakes up, she sets Angel on the right track and then she leaves Los Angeles. Because she can't stay there, not after everything that's happened. And she can't just sit and watch while her friends work for Wolfram and Hart.

She travels on her own for a while, helping people where she can. Eventually, she ends up in Portland for a while. One night she's drinking alone in this dank little bar and she's almost stunned when a familiar face sits next to her, ordering a bourbon.

"I didn't expect to actually see anyone I know here."

Caroline eventually has to go back to Mystic Falls and Isaac goes back to his life, more or less. He ends up falling for Allison, they have something going on -- and then she dies, and on her dying breath is how much she loves Scott.

He'd be lying if he said it didn't sting.

Chris takes him in, takes him to France to try to move on with life. Ends up leaving him there with other Argents. Living with hunters is weird, weird as shit and it makes him uneasy but he tries to cope.

Isaac's whole life is kind of one long coping mechanism.

But then in Paris, he runs into Caroline again and somehow everything falls into place. It's like no time has passed at all. And he finds himself increasingly glad she's a vampire --

Her chances of dying on him are slimmer than most people's.

Maybe it won't last any longer than it did the first time, he's pretty sure it won't. She still has a life to go back to. But for now he's trying to enjoy whatever stolen happiness they can find together as he leans in to press a soft kiss against her bare shoulder. His grip around her waist tightens a little, as if he's afraid she might disappear on him or something.

"Good thing," He says in complete agreement. It doesn't surprise Tyler -- she's always been an overachiever really. It's one of the many, many things he loves about her.

He's more than content listening to them and when she points out Orion's belt he nods a little.

"Yeah, I know like that and the two Dippers. That's about it."

Quinn's furious when Rebekah leaves. It's easier for the ex-Cheerio to be angry with someone than to admit she's hurt, and she paints every memory she has of the vampire with a layer of negativity, trying so hard to make herself despise the girl for daring to abandon her. Perhaps someone without Quinn's issues would've been more understanding, but Quinn's been jerked around one too many times by the people she dares to let in to feel even remotely okay with what Rebekah's done.

Even if she did so for noble, vague reasons — reasons, that had Rebekah been able to detail, Quinn would've understood completely. After all, Quinn was a mother who, even though she wasn't the one raising her daughter, knew what it was like to do what you had to do for the sake of a child's life. That's why she gave Beth up, after all.

Two years later, Quinn's graduated from Yale with honors with a BA in Musical Theater. Instead of hitting the stage right out of college (or before, as was the case with Rachel Berry), Quinn ends up working for a film production company as a vocal coach on a movie based on a Broadway movie. She's been working with some of the biggest names in the biz, Hollywood actors who haven't necessarily sang before, doing her best to get them ready to sing in the studio without the need to digitally alter their voices. That happened far too much in today's industry as it is.

It's pure coincidence that Shelby happens to be in the same town to attend a conference, even more so that she brought Beth with her. Her little girl's in the 1st Grade, is the spitting image of her and Puck, and is excited to spend the day with 'Mommy Quinn' while Shelby's seeing to some business she needs to take care of.

So, when Rebekah's eyes go scanning through the clouds, her gaze should eventually land on Quinn Fabray, hand-in-hand with a flaxen-haired five-year-old who is pointing excitedly at a toy display in one of the windows.

Sokka makes some comment about how waterbenders love when water's falling freely from the sky when Katara excuses herself, and even Aang doesn't seem to notice the solomn look that graced her face before she disappeared into the rain. Only Toph seems to notice when Zuko himself rises from his spot by the campfire and slinks off after her, turning her unseeing gaze towards the firebender, then shrugging and going back to playing with the hunk of meteor that Sokka had given her before Zuko joined their group. Toph knows (knows what, Zuko can't help but wonder), but she's going to keep it to herself.

Thank the sages. For whatever reason — perhaps those reasons that Toph's aware and he yet isn't — he's thankful that Sokka nor Aang chose to follow in pursuit of him or Katara. They're too busy being wrapped up in their own trials and tribulations to notice that Katara's still hurting. Finding her mother's killer didn't absolve her of all that pain. If anything, it brought right back to the surface.

Zuko doesn't know if helping her track down the former leader of the Southern Raiders ultimately did her any good, regardless of the fact that she'd spared the man in the end, but at least — selfishly — she doesn't seem to hate him anymore. Her continuing to hold his betrayal in those caves beneath Ba Sing Se over his head had bothered him more than he cared to admit. At some point, making it up to her started to worm its way past getting Aang to stop slouching while firebending on his priority list.

Right now, making sure she was alright surpassed dragging Aang out into the rain to teach him how to bend in conditions that could put his flames out. He really should've seized the opportunity to do so before the comet, but Aang was significantly less important than Katara right now.

He doesn't say anything when he finds her, remaining silent and unmoving in the rain. It soaks his robes and hair, making the raven locks appear longer as they cling to his face and neck. He lifts an arm to push them out of his face, and is half-convinced that she's going to grab hold of the water around them and whip him into the nearest bolder for following her when she finally does turn around.

But she doesn't. Instead, she does the exact opposite, and Zuko can't help but hold his arms open to her, instinctively, as she launches herself at him.

They've hugged once before, but that was a hug of forgiveness and gratitude. This is one of comfort and support, something he senses Katara's been lacking from their group since she often plays that part for the rest of them. She's the mother figure, the unwavering one who isn't supposed to want to do things like kill a man for killing her mother. But she's only human, and even the strongest of people succumb to grief and outrage; Agni knows he has.

Zuko's arms tighten around her, his unmarred cheek resting against the wet mat of her hair. "They don't understand." Perhaps they never would, but he does.

"I know. I don't expect them to."

In some ways she's glad they don't -- though she can't understand at times how Sokka doesn't. That he didn't want revenge the way she did -- it was his mother too. Why didn't it burn him up inside the way it did her? It didn't make sense to her. (She remembers hissing those words at him, about how he didn't love her enough -- she's not sure that's true but in the moment she had meant it).

Of course, Sokka also wasn't the reason she died. Their mother died protecting her. The last waterbender of the Southern Water Tribe. She died to save her. That sort of thing -- it stays with you. Katara couldn't kill the man who did it but she couldn't forgive him either. She tries to be the bigger person so much of the time, the one who holds everyone together -- but even she has her weaknesses.

She's glad it's Zuko who came to find her. If it were Aang he'd probably start lecturing her on what the monks taught him about forgiveness again. Sokka would try to cheer her up, but Zuko just let's her be, which is surprisingly nice.

It's not that Katara minds being the mother of the group -- she loves her friends dearly and steps into the role willingly -- but sometimes it's nice not to half to be. So when his arms wrap around her in response her own grip tightens just a little.

Rebekah wishes she had been able to tell Quinn -- but to inform Quinn would of been to endanger her. If anyone figures out Hope is alive and she's with Rebekah -- they'll come after anyone else connected to her. And Rebekah cares about Quinn far too much to put her in danger. Rebekah's lost too many people in her long life -- she doesn't want to lose Quinn too.

Even if that means staying away from her.

She keeps track of her career though, her heart swelling with pride when she hears how successful she's become. She deserves it. Deserves that and a lot more.

Despite often looking for Quinn she's surprised when she finds her. It only takes a moment to connect who the little girl is -- Beth. She's seen pictures of her before, but has never met her in person. Hope is two now -- toddlers are far more work than the Original expected but she manages, somehow. The little girl looks more like Hayley than Klaus with dark hair and bright eyes.

It's probably not smart and yet she finds herself calling out before she can stop herself.

"Quinn!"

The 20s was not the first time Rebekah met Tamsin. The first time was somewhere in the 15th century -- in England. Katerina has escaped a vampire -- Elijah has left to chase after and she is left alone with Niklaus, for better or for worse.

Often for worse.

The new estate is beautiful, but lonely. Rebekah walks through the woods with a heavy heart. Nik shuts her out more and more as his anger festers and she is left to her own devices. It doesn't make for happy times. There is a weariness in her bones. It is in this state that she first meets Tamsin, for better or for worse.

OPEN SHIP WITH ME POST

Allison >.>

do i even need to say it?

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i'm giving you two options: one happyish

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idek what this is

tell me if this doesn't work!!

AU end of season 3

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/aus so he's still a hybrid

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cordelia }

isaac? }

rebekah }

surprise me }

/wings it

Re: isaac? }

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idk what this reply is, either

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we can not know together

Re: rebekah }