Kismet | Damon Salvatore

Chapter 19

Maribel couldn't stop crying.

She hadn't seen her sister in many months, even prior to her death. Visiting Alaska was near-impossible with her PhD program, and Meredith hadn't been able to get days off of work in awhile.

She never realized how good it felt to hug her sister. How much she'd missed the smell of Meredith's perfume, which she always teased her for because it came in a red bottle, and Meredith didn't like the color red.

Over Meredith's shoulder, she could see Damon and Stefan in an equally tight embrace. Bonnie wiggled her way out of her hold, mostly because Meredith was unintentionally suffocating her.

"I need to go find everyone," said Bonnie, excusing herself. "Take your time, I'll let the others know everything."

"Thank you, Bonnie," said Maribel. "But you shouldn't go alone, Kai could–"

"I'll be fine. You and Damon need to see your siblings. And I need to go find mine. Elena and Caroline can't be far."

Meredith cupped Maribel's face once Bonnie had left, leaving her no room to protest. "You're here," she said, as if to confirm her sister's presence. "You're back..."

"I'm back," confirmed Maribel. "And you're... in Mystic Falls?"

"Visiting Mom," said Meredith. "Come on. We have to go see her, right now."

Maribel found it odd that Meredith would be visiting her at such a random time. At this point, her 'death' had happened several months ago. Surely Meredith hadn't been able to get that much time off of work. No, she'd said visiting which surely implied that she'd gone back to Alaska, presumably after her 'funeral' and 'burial' and was returning now, for a reason.

"I don't want this to sound rude, I just want to understand why you're here at this time," said Maribel slowly as they walked into Mystic Falls. "Is something wrong, Mer? Something with Danny? Are you pregnant and announcing it to Mom?"

Meredith half-smiled. "Things are fine with Danny, and no, I'm not pregnant yet. I... well, I've told Mom everything by now. She knows what transpired, Elena and Caroline helped to explain it. She wasn't happy about any of it, especially not finding out that you and I were using science to be involved in all this. But she understands. That's what's important. And, when you died, Alaric came to the funeral. We held it outside of Mystic Falls so your friends could attend. He told me how strange it was that you'd been on the Other Side. That you couldn't have possibly been there unless you were some sort of supernatural.

"So, with Mom's help, I looked through Dad's things. And we found out Honoria Fell was a witch. These past months, I've been doing everything to find out if I am a witch, too. I thought maybe, just maybe, I'd have magic and I could bring you, Damon, and Bonnie back to life. But it simply isn't so. I'm not a witch. Liv felt guilty after she was unable to continue the spell and it led to you guys getting stuck where you were. So she let me study her. Believe me, it has not been easy... I may have gone through Medical School but I can't begin to understand genes the way you do. Still, I managed to confirm I don't have any witch gene at all. So, we were at a loss.

"Stefan and Alaric followed leads for two months straight. They talked to every witch they could find. A month ago, Stefan gave up. He tried to start fresh, because it was taking a toll on him to search and search and end up no closer to bringing you guys back. I came back because I was hoping to counsel him through it all, to get him to help me so I could try and use your research to make myself a witch. I hoped Mom could help with some of the research. Together, we might have been able to figure out how to do it. And, on top of that, I wanted to see if our cousins would submit to genetic testing. If any of them turned out to be a witch, we could have them help us. Blair, Tina, Valerie, Violet... one of them is bound to have the gene.