A Thousand Years

Rating: PG-13/T

Genre: Romance/Drama/Angst

Summary: For the love_bingo challenge, prompt "Excitement". After all these years, she was going to see him again.

Author's Note: …Will this pairing EVER stop hurting?

Disclaimer: I don't own The Vampire Diaries. It belongs to L.J. Smith/The CW.

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Nine-hundred years.

Nine-hundred years.

Sage wanted to rip Klaus limb from damn limb, wanted to decorate his living room with his entrails. The entire damn point of Finn turning Sage was so that they could stay together, so that they would never have to be alone. Sage wasn't supposed to lose Finn a hundred years into their immortality and spent the other nine-hundred alone. Klaus had taken him away from her.

Sage had spent so much of that time trying to find a way to find Finn and get him out of that coffin and away from Klaus. She tried to keep track of the hybrid, but found that he had become much better at hiding himself than he had when he was human. He slipped through her fingers plenty of times; other times, Sage found herself closer than she'd originally intended to get and had to get the hell out of Dodge while she still had legs to do it with.

Every time brought a sense of renewed fury, desperation, sadness and frustration. Coming so close to having Finn back only to fail made her kick herself for the hundreds of little things she could have done and didn't do, and for ever letting him out of her sight in the first place. It made her hate Klaus twice as vehemently for being the cruel bastard he'd become, and it made her hate Elijah and Rebekah for abiding by him.

Sage fell into periodic depressions that always came after a long span of forced happiness, a time when she just said 'Fuck it' and couldn't ignore the fact that Finn was gone no matter how hard she tried. These times came with plotting and reminiscing, and usually ended with either another attempt to find Klaus or a major, major bender. She had been in one such depression (leaning towards a bender ending) a month previously in Bombay when she'd received a text from one of the vampires still in the U.S. that she had sired.

Wht was the nm of that vamp u were lookin 4?

Sage absolutely hated chat-speak. Having once been almost completely illiterate, Sage very much appreciated proper grammar and language. But she had texted back nevertheless: Klaus.

Hes in Mystic Falls VA.

Sage had rolled her eyes. I know that.

Theres som others w/ him. There living in a house 2gether.

Sage's eyes had narrowed. Who?

Bunch of guys, 2 girls.

Names, Jim.

He hadn't responded for a while, and eventually Sage assumed that he had forgotten about it. The man was a pot-smoker when he was a human, and she assumed that the healing effect turning had could only go so far. She sank back into the quiet, moody depression and began to count which countries she'd gone on benders in (she was trying to collect them all) when he finally texted back.

U still want thos nms?

Why not?

Klaus, Cole, Rebecca, Fin, Elisha, Ester.

Sage had sat for a long, long time just staring at her phone, fixated on that fourth name. She recognized them all, botched Latin transliteration or not, but the fourth was the only one she honestly gave a damn about.

Fin. Finn.

What had happened? Had he broken out? Had Klaus let him out? If he had, he had let Kol and Rebekah out too, and she had no idea what exactly was going on in that strange, twisted mind of Klaus's, and she wasn't certain she wanted to know. But she didn't really care, either, so long as Finn was out and about.

Sage had set off immediately for Virginia. When she'd gotten there, however, she had found that Finn was nowhere to be found. It took some quiet poking around to figure out that he had in fact been present, been living in the house just like Jim had said, but had left not long before she arrived.

He was here, Sage thought, heart constricting. He was here. Maybe I can track him down. Maybe I can find him. And once again, that feeling that she was so close she could almost feel it was overwhelming.

Then she had gotten involved in Damon's vendetta against the Originals, which had ended up becoming her vendetta against him. Sage wasn't one-hundred percent clear on all the bullshit that had gone down with Klaus and the good people of Mystic Falls, nor did she doubt that Damon's claim was perfectly justified- against Klaus. All she did know was that she wasn't about to put Finn's life at risk just so Damon could have a go at Klaus and probably kill him, taking his siblings down with him.

Following the bridge-incident with Damon, when Rebekah told Sage (with all the usual snobbery and disinterest) that Klaus wanted to speak to her, Sage came very, very close to telling Rebekah to take that bit of information and shove it where the sun probably shined a lot, given that Rebekah was a raging slut. What did she need Klaus for? She could find Finn on her own.

But Sage was curious, and so she went along with it.

"Here's the thing, love-"

"I'm not your love."

"Right." She had always hated that smile, soaked with faux-charm and trickery. "You're Finn's."

"Make your point, Klaus."

"It's already been made, really, by your choice to aid Rebekah rather than Damon. My siblings and I are all connected, and if one of us were to die, the rest will follow almost immediately. Now, though Rebekah tells me you both burned all of the White Oak from the bridge, only an idiot would just sit around and leave the spell in place. If something unfortunate were to befall one of us- something we were unaware could harm us- it would be a shame for all of us to die. I'm no idiot, Sage."

No, he wasn't. Klaus was a lot of things- insane, evil, cruel- but he was not stupid. Sage would even go so far as to call him wickedly clever. "What do you want?"

"My brother-" Klaus had paused, biting his lip in what Sage pinned as irritation. "-Damon was not lying to you, Sage. Finn does in fact have a death wish." Sage didn't react, had forced herself not to fully process the words so that Klaus couldn't read her. "Now, I have a strong suspicion that finding out that you are alive and well might give him a change of heart."
"You want me to convince him to not try to die."

"If anyone can, it's you."

There was never any question about what she would do. As badly as Sage would have loved to see crows picking away at Klaus's rotting carcass, she cared infinitely more about Finn. Whatever plan Esther was trying to pull would have to be done without him, because Sage was not going to lose him again.

"What do you want me to do?"

"Just wait."

And now Sage was doing just that: Waiting in the mansion that Klaus had made his own in Mystic Falls. He and Rebekah had a lead on where Finn was, and had gone off to retrieve him. Sage offered to go, but Klaus saw through the suggestion in a second. "No thank you, Sage, I'd much prefer to not get screwed out of my goals this early in the game." He was probably concerned that Sage might just get Finn and run- which, honestly, was something Sage had been seriously considering.

Finn was coming back. Finn was coming back. If Klaus and Rebekah could catch him- and they probably would, as much as it bothered her- they were going to bring Finn back. She was going to see Finn again, after nine-hundred excruciatingly long years apart. You know it's real when the pain of the loss never quite lessens over a time-span like that. Maybe a little unhealthy as well.

Fuck it. Sage never once claimed to be mentally stable, and Finn had never had a problem with it.

She paced the halls of the upper floor nervously, excitedly, waiting to hear the front door open and- hopefully- three pairs of footsteps walking in. Sage resisted the urge to claw at the walls or throw vases around, because she was determined not to take out her fury on Klaus's material possessions until she was certain she and Finn could make it at least a few miles away before he found out.

A few hours passed. Klaus and Rebekah had left around seven that morning and said they were going to Petersburg, which was maybe three hours away. With Klaus and Rebekah's combined impatience and general lack of regard for the rights of others, they'd probably break the speed limits and be there in two. It was now almost one o' clock, and Sage had yet to hear anything from them. Not so much as a phone call to coerce Finn with her voice, which Klaus said they might do if they couldn't physically drag Finn along.

I want to see him. I want to see him so badly.

Had he changed? Finn had been in a coffin for nine-hundred years, she had no idea what could happen to a person's head in situations like that. Maybe he was a little crazier now- and given that he was pretty much the textbook definition of sanity before, that might not be such a bad thing. Maybe he was cold now, or bitter. Maybe he had changed completely and didn't want her anymore.

Sage swallowed and had to stop for a moment.

She hadn't been obsessed with Finn, not like Rebekah made it out to be. They had been very much mutually in love, and had been just as happy with one another right before he had disappeared as they had been when they were human teenagers sneaking kisses in the forest. If he had been asleep all of this time, it was far more likely that he still loved her, but maybe assumed that she had moved on from him.

Never. If Finn had been truly dead, Sage probably would have found a way to come to terms with it (In the form of throwing Klaus to an angry pack of werewolves) and found a way to move on. But why did she need to move on when Finn was still alive and being held captive? When there was still a hope she could get him back? Sage had had her fun with other men, but never truly loved any of them. At heart, she stayed faithful to the man she had loved the most.

Sage found herself pulling at her hair and forced her hands down by her sides.

Where the hell are they?

It was almost two before the sound of the SUV pulling into the driveway. Then there was one door opening, then another. They both shut. Then a third opened, and it sounded like maybe they were struggling with something.

Sage's heart began to pound, and she could have screamed with anticipation, with the knowledge that any minute now she might (would) be seeing Finn again. Would he recognize her immediately, or would he need a minute? What would she say? What did you say when it had been so long…?

She sucked in a deep breath and ended up choking when she heard the front door slam open, followed by the sound of something (someone) hitting the floor hard and then sliding across it.

That's him. That's-

"Gather your witch. Let's get his blood and get on with it." Sage heard Rebekah grouse.

"You can't force me to help you."

Sage started to walk out onto the staircase balcony and looked down. Was she really seeing Finn on the floor below? She had to be, even though his hair was shorter and he was clean-shaven (that was going to take some getting-used-to), and that was most definitely his voice. Sage almost felt a little dizzy because the moment was here, he was really back-

"Oh, I most likely could." Klaus said, almost bored. "But why force when I can persuade?" He looked up at Sage and raised a hand towards her in indication, and she took that as her cue to make herself known. Sage started down the staircase slowly, eyes on Finn.

Please be happy to see me. Please.

Finn turned and saw her, and as she had wondered, it seemed to take him a moment to realize who he was looking at. She smiled tentatively. "Hello, Finn."

His eyes widened. "…Sage." Sage grinned. Finn didn't return it at first, but he did scramble to his feet and walk over to the stairs, and the smile slowly grew until he met her at the bottom and threw his arms around her.

It was everything she'd dreamed it would be.

-End