CENTURIES, stefan salvatore [1]

The Hybrid

CHAPTER 38: THE HYBRID

The Salvatore Boarding House

Natalie didn't tell Elena about Stefan calling her. But she did tell Elena that she thought he wasn't a lost cause, and they needed to convince Damon of that. And that's how they ended up in Damon's own bedroom as he was taking down all the clues he found about Stefan and Klaus.

"Just can't stay away, can you?" Damon smirked, turning around to face the twins.

"You've been dodging my calls." Elena told him, as if he wasn't already aware.

Damon looked at the brunette annoyedly as flashes of Stefan letting Andie fall to her death went through his mind. "Yeah, well, busy dating a dead fake girlfriend and all."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Elena asked the raven-haired vampire confusedly.

"Happy Birthday, Elena. Stefan killed Andie. Cake?" Damon asked sarcastically, ignoring Natalie's presence.

Well, until she spoke up with a surprising revelation. "He called me."

"What?" Damon and Elena asked simultaneously.

"Stefan called me last night." Natalie sighed cautiously, glancing up at a shocked Elena.

"Well, what'd he say?" Damon asked her, pursing his lips, trying to hide is annoyance at what Damon was convinced was a lie.

"He didn't exactly say anything. But I did talk to him and I asked Sheriff Forbes to track down the call's origins. It originated from Tennessee." Natalie gave him a pointed look as he was reminded of all the traces leading to Tennessee.

"Where he's binge drinking on the country folk," Damon agreed sarcastically. "Elena and I went through this, Natalie. Stefan's gone. I don't mean geographically." and with that, he threw all the documents and paper cut-outs into the unlit fireplace.

"If he was gone he wouldn't have called." Natalie told Damon woefully.

Damon's only response was lighting a match and throwing it into the fireplace before walking away, needing to convince himself that Stefan was gone after what he did to Andie because he couldn't handle imagining the guilt his younger brother might be feeling after everything that Klaus might have made him do. So he had to walk away.

And that gave Elena the perfect time to ask Natalie about why her boyfriend called her instead of herself. "Why would he call you?"

"What?" Natalie asked, being a little more interested in how they were going to get him home.

"Why would Stefan call you instead of me? You know, I'm his girlfriend and we love each other, so I find it weird that he would call you instead of me. Do you know why?" Elena asked her sister, crossing her arms over her chest as she finally realized how Stefan might have felt about her and Damon.

Truthfully, Natalie had no idea. She loved him, she knew that. She knew that if their roles were reversed her first choice to call would easily have been Stefan. But she had no idea that he knew that he loved her just as much as she knew she loved him. But neither of them, not even Stefan, knew why he called her instead of Elena. So Natalie just had to guess. "I don't know. I'm his friend, you know. Maybe if he heard your voice he'd feel so desperate to come home, something that wouldn't happen if he called me."

"But being desperate to come home is good thing, right?" Elena frowned.

"Not for Klaus. Which makes it awful for Stefan."

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The Mystic Grill

Whilst Elena was trying to convince Alaric to come with them to Tennessee to find Stefan and come home, Natalie was talking to Tyler, trying to get some kind of guess on where Stefan and Klaus might be.