"Waiting here for someone.
Only yesterday we were on the run.
You smile back at me, and your face lit up the sun.
Now I'm waiting here for someone.

And oh, love, do you feel this rough?
Why's it only you I'm thinking of?

My shadow's dancing
Without you for the first time.
My heart is hoping
You'll walk right in tonight.
Tell me there are things that you regret,
Cause if I'm being honest I ain't over you yet.
That's all I'm asking.
Is it too much to ask?"

Too Much to Ask: Niall Horan

Darcy,

As I sit here and write this letter, feeling beyond lame since this seems more like something my brother would do instead of myself, I can't help but think about everything that has happened here since you left.

Kol leaned back away from the desk he found himself at, leaving the tenth or eleventh draft he had started for Darcy lying on the table. Of course he knew that some day she would be back, but the lack of knowledge of when was getting to him, more than it should've been.

He had lived for a thousand years, spent countless days with more women than the entire state of Virginia had for a population, he was certain, but something about this one particular woman, about the single month that he had spent in her company, both physically and emotionally, had a hold on him that was unlike anything he had seen, even through his siblings. Elijah and Rebekah had loved over the centuries, and of course Finn had Sage, even to this day, but something about his love for Darcy was different, incomparable in many ways.

I tried to save Elena, my darling. You must know that.

Kol grip on the pen in his hands tightened, so much that physically forcing his hand to write became impossible. The pen began to snap under the pressure, and Kol released it, hoping to spare the fourth pen he had retrieved for the various letters he had tried to write out for her.

Just the thought of what happened, because his sister couldn't let go of her anger, made Kol's blood boil. He knew that he shouldn't expect Rebekah to just drop what had happened to her, and maybe there was a time where he wouldn't have been able to let such horrible things go either. Elena had stabbed her in the back, after all.

She couldn't just spare her for her own brother. Her hatred for Nik and Elena grew too wild, and one night, when Elena came to the Mikaelson place to threaten Kol once again—it had become a regular occurrence after the ball, and it felt like she ripped off pieces of his heart each time—it all came out to boil, in a bloody way.

Kol didn't pay Elena's threats any mind, not once they were in possession of all of the white oak stakes that could be used to kill them. To ensure that their mother couldn't come back again, the same way she had the time before, Klaus had turned Bonnie's mother into a vampire, ensuring that their mother no longer had a mother-daughter Bennett connection on the side of the living to fuel her own life force.

They had destroyed all of the stakes, so only the daggers and ash remained as a way to neutralize them, aside from the power of magic alone. Since only Kol knew where the daggers were, things were safe, for all of them. They didn't have to fear their brother's wrath, more than a few hours of misery inflicted on them from a werewolf bite—he had done that to Rebekah after she tried to kill Elena.

Kol's mind was somewhere else when he had come downstairs that night, though he heard Elena's voice downstairs. His mind was coming up with all sorts of ideas, new ways to find Darcy that they hadn't tried yet. Bonnie eventually agreed to help with a locator spell, after Kol spent days convincing her that he didn't want to hurt Darcy, but it hadn't mattered. Somehow, she had managed to cloak herself to where they couldn't find her with any kind of locator spell that Bonnie knew.

Elena's eyes were like the darkest fires of hell, burning through Kol and reflecting off the shining floors beneath their feet. Kol almost smiled at her, though he had decided long ago that smiling was distasteful. He normally would've smirked and flaunted arrogance, but when it came to Darcy, there was nothing to be arrogant about; he absolutely loved her, and for whatever reason, the angel loved him as well, beyond just who he was and how he looked.

"Elena, haven't you grown tired of cursing my name and empty threats of my death?" he asked instead, his eyes finding her own dark ones to hold her gaze. "I know I'm tired of it all. It isn't getting us anywhere."

In an instant, Rebekah stood behind Elena with one arm twisted behind her back, and her normally bright eyes resembled that of a demon, her smile just as wicked.

"I'm with my brother on this one," she spat in her ear. "I'm sick of your stupid, pointless threats that show nothing but the idiocy you possess! Does your idiotic, self-centered brain really make you believe for one moment that my brother would've bothered with you or your stupid sister—"

"That's enough, Rebekah!" Kol exclaimed, cutting her off before her hatred for Elena could spill over onto the woman he loved very dearly.

Rebekah scoffed. "I'm sorry, Kol, but I have a hard time understanding how this could be anything more than fun and games for the doppelgänger I actually liked for once. Where is she? Why did she just disappear? Why didn't she tell anyone the truth?"

"I don't know, but she wouldn't lie to me!"

Elena's eyebrows furrowed. "She didn't . . . she didn't lie to you, Kol. She lied to all of us."

"She didn't want to," he assured her, and his anger faded, just a bit, as he looked to the twin sister of the woman he loved, the spitting image of every other doppelgänger Kol knew. "She hated it, but she was scared."

"She . . . told me in her note."

"She told you?" Rebekah asked. "Then why have you been over here bothering us every day since she left? You're dumber than I thought, Elena, and frankly, I'm sick of your existence here on this earth."

Kol didn't get a chance to react before he heard the sound of tearing flesh, as if a blade had cut through both fabric, flesh, and muscles alike. He didn't see a knife, but Rebeakh did have her arm twisted behind Elena's back. He had been so distracted with the painful thoughts of Darcy, with defending her honor, that he forgot to see what it was Rebekah was doing.

Elena fell to the ground, her eyes wide, and she had one hand behind her back, an attempt to hold onto the wound it seemed. Kol noticed the place on her lower back where Rebekah had stabbed her, but Rebekah didn't stick around to be yelled at by Kol. She disappeared, leaving Elena to bleed out on the floor.

Kol rushed across the room and bit down onto his wrist, not giving himself a single moment to hesitate. This was Elena, the most important person in Darcy's life, and if he let her die while Darcy was away, he couldn't imagine how she might react. Forget that she would probably hate him; she would be utterly devastated, might even go so far as to blame herself in some sort of twisted way.

Elena, despite the pain in her back from the knife that Rebekah had shoved through her, just stayed where she was on the ground and stared up at Kol, doing all that she could to hide her pain. They both just stood there, uncomfortably staring at one another, until the wound on Kol's wrist healed back up.

"Damn it, Elena, Darcy will be back eventually, and I don't want her to come back and find you dead!"

He bit down on his wrist again, but something about what he said snapped Elena out of her angry haze. She took his wrist much quicker this time, getting just enough of his blood into her system to heal the wound on her back and make her good as new.

I had no idea what was going to happen to her on the way home, or I would've escorted her home safely myself. I'm so sorry, love. Maybe I should've been more careful, but I suppose I can't blame myself for everything, can I?

It had been a horrible day the following day, when Kol was physically ripped from his mostly sleepless night of bittersweet dreams by Klaus, who threw his brother's sleeping body into the floor to rip him from sleep the fastest way possible.

"Where is she?!"

Kol struggled to even function on the amount of sleep he had been getting lately, and he had no idea what time it was. Without Darcy around, he had stopped going to school, so he usually slept until he decided to stop trying to get more sleep.

Whatever Klaus was pissed about made this morning different, and Kol was just as pissed, or at least he thoughts so.

"I swear to God, Nik, if you're asking me where Darcy is, I will find a way to kill you myself."

Kol heard a growl building in his brother's chest. "How can you not know?! How does someone just disappear like that? She can't hide from us! We're Original vampires! We've been around for a thousand years, and some doppelgänger wench who hasn't been around more than eighteen manages to outsmart all of us?!"

Kol found the strength to stand up, and he grabbed his brother by the shoulders, slamming him into the wall beside him to glare right into his eyes, to demand his attention in a way that even Klaus had no choice but to submit to.

"Watch your tongue! You may not see much of her, but I do! I don't know where Darcy is, but she's smarter than you will ever understand! Do you even understand all the things she's kept from you? She's not just some eighteen year old girl; she was meant to survive and last an eternity, and damn it, Nik, I will find her!"

"You can't turn her," he growled. "I need blood for my hybrids."

Kol snorted. "Isn't that what Elena's for to you?"

"Elena died last night—with your blood in her system."

She was hit by a drunk driver, in the middle of everything supernatural. The human scum of the world was what took her out this time, or just some idiot who didn't think about the consequences of their actions. In most situations, you would've lost your twin sister, the only blood relative you had left, but this is the supernatural world, so she died with my blood in her system.

At least your friends are done trying to kill me now; oh that's right. You weren't here when Bonnie discovered the secret my mother had tried to keep hidden, in her plans to kill us all. When an Original vampire dies, everyone who was turned from their blood dies with them, and everyone turned from that vampire's blood dies, so on and on.

She's adjusting well, for what it's worth. Before sitting down to write this letter, I tried to go see her, but the Salvatores wouldn't let me through the door.

I should probably tell you about what I did to Damon, but I suppose that would be better to talk about when you're back, in person. I've tried to apologize, but I don't think he actually believes it—could be because I don't fully believe it myself.

There was a knock on Kol's door suddenly, ripping him away from the letter he was writing. Finn had left town with Sage not long after Kol killed their mother, and Klaus had made it a point to walk into Kol's room without knocking, as he didn't trust Kol right now. With Kol taking away his power over his siblings, Kol's "betrayal" of falling in love with the last living doppelgänger, Klaus didn't allow him the privilege of privacy.

Kol opened his door to reveal Elijah, with his hair freshly cut and parted to the side, his dark eyes wide with fear and concern. His jaw was set, his brows furrowed, and Kol knew in an instant that something was going wrong.

"There's someone downstairs I believe you need to speak with."

Kol didn't say anything, only followed behind Elijah, and the two descended the spiral staircase, into the grand entrance room downstairs. Kol hadn't been paying much attention, as his thoughts were clouded with fear of the unknown ahead of him. Something told him that Darcy wasn't dead, that the locator spells weren't working for some unknown reason, but for Elijah to be afraid . . . what was he about to find out?

The blonde woman standing just inside the doorway next to Klaus, who looked just as furious as he had since the day they learned Elena had become a vampire, had a rounded face with eyes set on her goal, unwavering and almost dark. That didn't ease Kol's fears in the slightest; he didn't recognize her at all, and she seemed less than friendly.

"Tell my idiot little brother what you told the rest of us," Klaus spoke up, when an awkward silence fell upon the rest of the room. Rebekah stood silently in the doorway, her eyes drifting down to the floor beneath them, so her expression was lost to Kol, at least for the moment.

"Something is happening," she said, with a flatness to her voice that struck a chord inside of Kol. Most times, he might've been afraid, but even if this woman wasn't a witch, he wasn't afraid of her. "Something you will all want to protect because it could be your salvation or your downfall."

"I'm not really in the mood for riddles," Kol said, his eyebrows rising as he looked right into the empty eyes of this woman. "Can you just get to the point please?"

"You need to find the doppelgänger," she said, and everything inside of Kol set off in a very familiar way. It was almost daily that someone mentioned finding Darcy, as if Kol hadn't been spending almost every waking moment trying to do that very thing, and he was absolutely sick of it. "If you don't, your mother will find another way to come back and kill her."

"Is she really that hellbent on tormenting us all?" Klaus snorted. "I know she views my hybrids as abominations—"

"Would you stop making it all about you?" Rebekah cut him off, before Kol got the chance to do so. "If she's going after Darcy, that's obviously a personal hit to Kol."

Kol shook his head, his eyebrows furrowing. "I thought that for a long time, but it isn't about any of us. Before I killed our mother again, she said that we had to find Darcy, that something was a threat to our family and the world with Darcy somehow tied to all of it."

"You can go now," Klaus said to the witch, who Kol had honestly forgotten was even still there. "We appreciate the warning, and we'll make sure to find her. Trust me; we want her alive more than anyone."

The woman, who was surely a witch with all that she knew, looked between the four siblings in the room, her blank expression unwavering, and gave each of them a courteous nod before turning and heading out of the house, closing the door behind her and disappearing from sight, back out of their lives.

Everyone paused their conversation until the distinct sound of a car engine sounded, long enough for the car to be out of the driveway, and then, it was as if there had been no pause at all.

"I've been trying to come up with some sort of explanation to that," Elijah agreed. "I've failed. What could Darcy possibly be doing that would threaten not only us but the world? If she's nothing else, she's kind hearted. She wouldn't want to hurt anyone."

"She goes out of her way to not kill anyone, including vampires," Rebekah agreed. "What could be going on that could be our downfall or salvation? This is making less sense."

Klaus' eyebrows rose. "I think it's time we joined our brother in his search for the woman he loves. We need to bring her back and get answers from her ourselves."

Kol, as he was the one standing with his face turned towards the door, was the first to notice the figure standing in the doorway now. Elena hadn't showed up at the Mikaelson place since the night she had died, but she was here now, with fear twisting her usually impassive expression—at least any time she looked at one of the Mikaelsons.

Kol rushed over to open the door, his eyebrows knit together. "I tried to stop by, see how you were doing."

"I heard." She folded her arms over her chest. "I need to talk to you—alone."

"You're delusional if you think for one second that we're going to trust the woman who has been spewing death threat after death threat out towards our brother," Rebekah snapped.

Elena glared back at her, the corners of her eyes tightening. "Thanks to you, I'm a vampire who came from his bloodline. Killing him would kill me, and I'd rather not die until I'm sure that my sister is home safe."

"If this is about Darcy, we're all in on finding her," Elijah spoke up, in an attempt to ease the tension between the two females in the room.

Elena shook her head. "This is . . . personal. It is about Darcy, and maybe, if Kol wants to, he can tell you himself, but I'm talking to Kol, or I'm walking away."

Kol didn't even hesitate to step outside, into the bright afternoon, and take off down the stairs, as fast as he could without disappearing from sight. He wanted to run vamp speed away, but he also wanted to stay close enough to Elena for her to tell him where to go.

"My house?" she suggested.

It hadn't been more than three hours since Kol attempted to get inside of the Gilbert home, and actually getting himself inside would've been far too easy. He didn't want to force anything, however. Darcy invited him in, but she wasn't around. His welcome didn't linger without her.

They made it to the Gilbert house in less than five minutes, but it wasn't as empty as Kol had hoped. Bonnie, Jeremy, and Damon all stood just inside the doorway, giving him different variations of glares throughout their expressions. Bonnie's was the softest, as she had seen more attempts to find Darcy than any of them even knew. Kol showed up almost daily at one point, to pointless try and do a locator spell again. He found all sorts of grimoires and gave them to Bonnie, any that had any kind of locator spell within them.

None of them had worked, but Bonnie saw that he did, at least, want her found and safe, just like the rest of them.

Elena wasted no time, however. She didn't even let Kol appreciate the fact that he could still get inside of the Gilbert home, meaning Darcy was still alive. Elena had been the one to invite him inside initially, but Darcy, being her usual adorable self one night, had sweetly purred for him to come in, to see what surprise she had for him upstairs.

Kol remembered that day fondly, the surprise being bourbon and a new piece of lingerie she had bought just for him, but Elena's insistence to get right to the point didn't allow him time to linger on the thought—he was admittedly okay with that, as it might lead him to Darcy faster, to the chance to make even more memories with her.

"What was my sister to you?" Elena asked. "Some fun you could have until Klaus found you?"

"No," Kol said, but he was tired of trying to defend his love for Darcy. He tried not to be angry about the fact that she hadn't told them since he missed her so damn much, but it would've made his life so much easier if she had, with both her family and his.

Her expression didn't change from the flat indifference she was trying to portray, and she kept her chin raised. "Then what?"

"This may be hard for you to understand, Elena, but everything that happened with Darcy was real," he said, using all the patience he had gathered within himself to try and speak calmly with her. "I love her."

"You honestly expect us to believe that?" Damon demanded.

"Give me a reason I have to lie to you!" he exclaimed. "You can't kill me; Elena is from my bloodline. You're not keeping me hidden from Nik; he knows I'm here at this moment, and he's known I'm fucking in love with her! She knew who I was from the beginning! She pulled the bloody dagger out of my chest herself! I don't know why she didn't tell you the truth, but I'm telling you the truth now. Everything I experienced with Darcy was the most real thing I've ever felt in my entire existence on this earth, and I can't even begin to explain this to any of you right now. I've been alive a thousand years, and within a month, I've fallen in love, which I've never done, to be clear. I've given myself the most vulnerable weakness there is, so please, Damon, tell me that I'm wrong. Tell me that I don't love her, and give me a reason I have to lie to you anymore."

Elena didn't give Damon the chance to answer, as she seemed entirely convinced. "Okay, then listen carefully to what I'm about to tell you. Darcy left town for a reason."

"I assumed as much, but why?" Kol asked, his anger dissipating into fear, which was much worse to Kol. "Was it because of me?"

"No—well, yes, and no," Elena sighed. "She left because she was pregnant, and before you get any ideas, it was as real for her as it was you, Kol. The baby isn't anyone else's."

Darcy had made Kol feel breathless on more than one occasion, and this feeling he suddenly felt, with what Elena was saying . . . he tried to make sense of it, but a thousand years of life and experience told him that it wasn't real. Vampires had never, to any point, been able to have children, and it didn't suddenly change because he loved Darcy so much.

Yet their mother said that . . . she was bringing something into the world that was going to destroy it.

"It's not . . . it's not possible," Kol tried to say, but everything going on was fighting the experience of a thousand years. It made sense, fit in so many ways that he struggled to deny the accuracy of it.

"Maybe it is," Bonnie disagreed. "You know her magic is different."

Kol nodded, his eyebrows furrowed. "Yes."

"We think that the kind of magic she uses may have somehow made you able to have kids, like maybe she siphoned just enough out of you that you were, for a time, mortal," Bonnie attempted to explain, though she seemed to struggle with the idea herself.

Kol shook his head. "That's impossible."

"Explain her pregnancy then, without saying she slept with someone else, because I know that she didn't," Elena insisted.

"I-I-I can't."

"Exactly." Elena took a deep breath and began rubbing her hand over her forehead, to attempt to calm herself down. "We've never seen this kind of magic before, Kol. We have no idea what it is or how it works, but I think she's pregnant with your kid."

Suddenly, the room seemed much smaller, the oxygen in the air becoming something worthless to him, something he couldn't breathe. "Where is she? We must find her."

"That's the problem," Jeremy said, and he took a deep breath as well. "We don't know. You and Bonnie have been doing locator spells, but she wasn't hiding anything from you. It really isn't working."

Kol's eyebrows furrowed, and his anger was coming back. "You don't know?!"

"We don't know," Elena agreed. "She left me a note explaining that she was pregnant, and she was scared of Klaus finding out. She mentioned something about your mom as well. She didn't tell me where she was going, only said that she was going to protect her baby."

Kol took a few large breaths to attempt to calm himself down, though they didn't help as much as he had hoped. "Do you need our help to find her?"

Elena nodded. "As quickly as we can because I don't think we're the only ones who know this child is yours."

"What makes you think that?" Kol asked, saying each word carefully, as if one wrong word might set off the room.

Bonnie sighed. "I've been having these reoccurring dreams, dreams about someone chasing Darcy, chanting, 'Death to the Mikaelsons.'"

"That . . . no," Kol said, and he shook his head. "Just before Elena got to our home, a woman was there and told us to find your sister, claiming that we needed to find the last living doppelgänger because she was in possession of something that could be our salvation or our downfall, and she mentioned that our mother was going to come back to kill her."

"We have to find her!" Jeremy exclaimed. "She's strong, but she can't fight against an army of witches who want to kill her!"

"Don't underestimate her, kid," Damon disagreed. "She's an anomaly to nature in her own right."

"That doesn't mean she can take them all on!" Elena exclaimed. "She could kill someone while fighting for her life! She can't become a werewolf while she's pregnant! It could kill the baby!"

Kol shook his head. "Werewolves don't turn under the full moon while pregnant. It's nature's way of assuring that the curse lives on."

"Oh." She rubbed her hands over her face. "We're trying to ensure she doesn't end up sired to Klaus. If she triggers her curse, there's no other way."

"Elena, I know you don't like me, but please believe me. I will do whatever I must to find your sister."

A/N: Here it is!

Read, review, and enjoy!