*A/N: Hi again. I'm trying to be really good about updating; I just haven't found as much time as I would have liked to write. And I want to apologize beforehand for all the liberties I've taken with history, even though I really am trying to stay true to the timeline.

So a lot of time has passed since we last saw Marielle (and is that even her name anymore? Hmm…). She's forgotten everything that happened that night, but I just wanted to clarify that she also forgot who turned her, when Kol compelled her to "forget all that happened." She basically forgot anything that ever caused her emotional anguish.

And please – please – please read until the end before you think, "What the heck is this?" And then review.

And so, with that…

I give you Chapter V.

And a disclaimer: I don't own TVD.

1913

"A Seurat, you say?" The man's double chin wobbled from excitement.

I nodded, barely suppressing a smile. "You've heard of A Sunday Afternoon."

"Yes, of course. No self-respecting art collector ignores the most famous Seurat in the world."

"Then you probably know that Monsieur Seurat produced many preliminary oil sketches and drawings in the two years he spent painting A Sunday Afternoon."

"So you have a draft." Suddenly the man's countenance grew cold. "I came to purchase a finished Seurat, not a draft."

"It's not a draft," I assured him. "It's a rework of the original; he completed it shortly after he finished A Sunday Afternoon."

If this buyer didn't accept my sale soon, I'd cut my losses and leave. There were plenty of other potential buyers in New York. Jack and I couldn't afford to stay in one city for long, but even he had to make allowances for New York City.

It didn't help that this buyer in particular, while he had plenty of respect for himself, had no respect for me. As ever, I was sorely tempted to tell him I had been well over 900 years when he was born. Unfortunately, this was the case for most male clients – no respect for women, even if the mentioned woman could leave him dead in less than a second.

And it didn't help at all that I looked like I was barely at the age of 20.

The man sneered and wiped a pink handkerchief over his balding head. "I knew what I'd get from meeting with a little girl of a fence – no quality and all talk!"

Inwardly I sighed. Outwardly I rose to my feet. "Good day, Mr. Delaney."

"What? Wait – where are you going?" He scrambled to his feet as I started walking away. "Come back!"

I turned. He stopped short at my cold look. "You've wasted my time, Mr. Delaney. I was willing to do business with you. But I am not willing to suffer your insults. Good day."

And I left him standing agape in the corner of the café.

When I was a safe distance away, I sighed again and rubbed my forehead. I didn't really have a headache – I didn't get headaches – but it seemed like the right thing to do. I had been in the fencing business for so long that it seemed as natural as breathing; Jack had come later. It was just buyers like Mr. Delaney that thoroughly irked us.

The Seurat we had gotten from a thief we'd worked with before. We didn't ask any questions, and he didn't ask for too much money in return. Though neither Jack nor I had ever seen him, we knew well enough that the relationship was the best we could ask for.

I turned the corner and hurried back to our home – Jack's and mine. We had purchased it decades ago, knowing that New York would be enough to keep us busy. The only thing was that we had to be careful about showing our faces, because there was an elderly neighbor or two that remembered us from the last time we had lived here.

Our lives had been like this for so long; the constant moving, the avoidance of places we'd lived before. I missed our home in San Francisco, but I had heard that it was long destroyed in the quake earlier this year.

I unlocked the door and stepped into the foyer. "Jack?"

In an instant, he stood before me, powerful forearms crossed. A swatch of his brown hair had fallen over his forehead. "I missed you."

"Did you?" I smiled cheekily up at him. "I wasn't gone for all that long."

"You were gone when I woke up. So you owe me, love."

I set my purse and umbrella down and started to remove my coat, trying to act as nonchalant as possible. I should've never tried; nonchalant around Jack was near impossible. "Oh? And what could I possibly owe you?"

He fitted his hands around my waist and drew me against him. My heart – my dead heart – skipped a metaphoric beat.

"My good-morning kiss, for one." He smiled down at me. "My good-morning cuddle, for another. And my good-morning romp through the sheets…I'll definitely be wanting that."

I laughed. "Jack!"

"What?" he said innocently, hoisting me up in his arms. I wrapped my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist.

Looking him in his dark brown eyes, I leaned forward and touched my nose to his. "I love you."

His expression softened and he brushed his lips across mine. "I love you too." Then he playfully nipped at my ear. "So now that I got my kiss, let's skip the cuddle and get straight to the sheets."

"Jack!" But we both laughed like teenagers as he carried me off to our bedroom.

I awoke later to the feel of Jack stroking my hair. "Mmm."

His hand stilled. "You want me to stop?"

"No, it feels good."

He pressed a kiss against my neck and resumed stroking. "We need to hunt later."

"I know."

I remembered the moment I had met him. My Jack. It was an ordinary day, 1811 in Baltimore, Maryland, before the War of 1812, and I had just purchased a new hat. He was standing in the shade, leaning against the wall of a barbershop, just looking at the people that walked by. His face showed no emotion; at best, a flicker of interest or disdain.

But what caught my attention was that he was like me. He was a vampire. I had no way of knowing how old he was, but at least he was old enough that he could control himself. And I had realized that he was outside during the day.

That's when I noticed his ring.

It was exactly like mine.

I don't remember how I got mine, but I know I was in Florence at the time. The memories always bothered me, because it seems like there's a gap. But since I can't remember, there's no use dwelling on it.

Anyways, my ring – it has a simple gold band with a jewel set in the middle. It protects me from the sun; I wear it on my left ring finger. I always thought I was the only vampire to have a ring like that, but when I saw that Jack had it, I was deathly curious.

When our eyes met, I had the strangest feeling, like I had seen him before but I knew I hadn't. I definitely would've remembered if I had; I don't think anyone could easily forget a face like his.

I had stood rooted at the spot as he slowly sauntered forward. Though I couldn't understand why, I saw mostly shock in his eyes: shock and a sliver of fear.

He had taken my hand and brought it to his lips. "Jack McCann, at your service." He had a lilting British accent.

What happened next is something Jack likes to tease me about: I stammered. I was an 800-year-old vampire, and I stammered. "Z-Zoé Fortescue." It was the surname I'd been going with for nearly a decade.

"You're like me, Ms. Fortescue." He looked closely at me. "Aren't you?"

"I would say so."

A slight smirk had crossed his face. "You don't sound very certain."

"Mr. McCann." I remembered trying to sound stern.

"Begging your pardon, Ms. Fortescue, but we're not human. The decorum and fancy talking? I don't like it."

I had laughed and admitted, "I don't either."

Over the years, I had met a handful of vampires, some of which I liked and most of which I didn't. But Jack – Jack was different. Something in me had seen a kindred spirit in him. Within a year we were inseparable. Within two, he asked him to marry me. For someone who usually turned up his nose at human customs, he sure did try.

"What're you remembering, Mrs. McCann?" he murmured in my ear, drawing me back to the present. He had wrapped his arms around me from behind.

"Our wedding."

He chuckled. "Which one?"

"Our first one. The one in the vineyard."

"I remember that one. The wedding with all the bugs crawling all over…"

I dug my elbow into his ribs as he chortled some more. "That's my favorite wedding. Don't spoil it for me."

"Yes, ma'am."

We lay in comfortable silence for a while longer. Days like this were perfect. Sometimes Jack and I would be too busy meeting with buyers or just plain busy to spend time together. It sounded odd, I know, but it was true. Every now and then we'd take a day – or a couple of days, even – to just be.

"How was the meeting for the Seurat?" he eventually asked.

I groaned. "Terrible."

"Why? What happened?" He propped up his upper body on his elbow and looked down at me. I, in turn, looked up.

"Delaney barely even let me make my case. This Seurat is closest he will ever get to A Sunday Afternoon, and he didn't even let me get two words in."

"Daft man."

"None of them take me seriously. Sometimes I think it's a curse that I'm trapped in this body forever."

"You don't hear me complaining." He used a finger to trace my jawline. "I happen to think you're perfect. Not a single flaw to you."

I felt tears in my eyes. "You're so good to me."

"That's probably because I love you."

"Probably?" I repeated, raising an eyebrow.

He rolled so that he was on top of me, holding his weight up with his elbows. Then he kissed me to the very depths of my soul, driving me crazy in that way that only he could. His kiss was hungry, fierce even – and all Jack.

"Definitely," he growled.

When we first met, Jack refused to drink animal blood and I refused to kill people. It was a delicate topic to breach. He kept on insisting that animal blood wasn't enough to sustain him or me and I kept on insisting that killing humans was evil. Jack was the one who came up with a solution; it wasn't a very good one, but it was acceptable.

We only ever went after strong, healthy men that could stand losing a pint or two of blood. We'd drink some, Jack would compel him to forget, and we'd move on to another healthy male until we had our fill. I never liked attacking humans, but my level of control was great enough that I never killed.

"Had enough?"

I slipped my hand into his as we made our way home through the streets of New York. "Yes."

"Good." He paused, inhaled as if he was about to speak, and then stopped. The process repeated for a little while before I took pity on him.

"Whatever you want to say, just say it." I squeezed his hand.

"Okay." He shook his head, as if to clear it. "Someone contacted me about the Seurat."

"What?"

"Earlier, when you weren't home. We got a letter from a courier."

It wasn't all that strange. Most of our clients were thieves that couldn't risk showing their faces in New York, so almost all communication was through messengers. We had a telephone, but rarely used it.

"That's not so strange," I said.

"No, except this courier was compelled."

Now that was strange.

"How did you know?"

"I asked him who sent him," Jack replied simply. "He said he couldn't tell me. Then he looked confused and said he couldn't remember and he didn't know, even when I tried to bribe him. He just said that he was told to deliver the message."

Now I was supremely curious. "What was the message?"

Jack reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a neat square of paper. "Interested in the Seurat," he read. "Meet at 4:00 tomorrow for tea at your house. No questions asked."

"I think it's sort of suspicious."

"Me too," he agreed. "But it looks like we don't have a say in the matter."

I took the card out of his hand. "It's a nice card, though. The message is printed on nice paper – definitely not cheap. Probably just a rich old gentleman vampire used to having his way."

"That likes art," Jack added.

"And tea. Maybe he's British," I said contemptuously, poking fun at Jack's accent.

"Or French," he poked back. "I absolutely – cannot – stand French people."

"Well, that's rather unfortunate for you, as you're married to one."

Jack heaved a sigh. "I know. Whatever did I do to deserve a fate such as this?"

I laughed and burrowed closer into his side.

Jack and I were ready for our guest by 3:55. All of our refreshments were laid out on our finest china in the drawing room; the Seurat was neatly tucked away behind a dresser.

We had spent all morning in the kitchen, preparing the meal together, chatting about everything and nothing. After a century, being together was as easy as breathing; it felt natural. Of course we didn't always get along; if we did, it'd be boring.

For some reason, I was thinking about this as I looked critically over the table, at every little morsel of food and every bit of decoration. Jack came up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist, drawing me against him.

"It's perfect, Zoé," he murmured against my neck. "Why do you worry?"

I sighed. "I don't know. I'm just feeling…anxious. Like something's going to go wrong." I turned to look up at him. "It's not something I can easily put into words, Jack."

Smiling slightly, he kissed my forehead. "If something does go wrong," he promised, "I will protect you." He tilted my chin up to look at him. "I will always be there to protect you."

I covered his hand with mine. Times like this made me realize all over again how lucky I was to have found Jack, my constant. For centuries, the search for a constant had been my own; that is, until I found him. If ever I lost him…

No. I refused to think about it.

The doorbell jolted us into action. Jack grabbed my hand and squeezed. "Here's to getting rid of the Seurat," he said, grinning like a little boy.

I let him go ahead to open the door, choosing to stay behind and check the food one more time. Everything was in order. Then why was I so worried?

In the background, I heard Jack open the door. "Good afternoon! Welcome to our…" His voice trailed away. "Klaus?"

This didn't bode well at all. I sped to the doorway in time to see a polished-looking man step inside, seemingly amused by Jack's shocked expression. He looked dreadfully familiar, much as Jack had seemed to me, except in a dark, sinister way. Without a doubt I knew that this man – this vampire – should not be in my house. And I knew I should not be anywhere near him.

The man spotted me, and a menacing smile appeared on his lips. He cocked his head and turned to Jack.

"I see you've been busy…brother."

*A/N: Review if you want to see more!