Love Sucks ~ The Vampire Diaries [1]

1x15 - A Few Good Men

Picture of Jeremy Renner as Jensen Sommers

Gilbert Residence

Eliot is sitting on the porch swing, his journal laid out on his lap and his phone up to his ear as he leaves Benny a voicemail. "Hey, Benny, it's me just checking in, seeing how you're doing. We miss you here. Don't let your aunt drive you crazy" Jensen walks up onto the porch and stops to look at Eliot while sipping his coffee. "Come home soon. Love you" He then hangs up.

"What are you doing out here? It's cold" Jensen asks.

"Thinking, writing. The, uh, funeral for Benny's grandma, it brought back a lot about mom and dad. I was wondering... you said that you would do some digging about them, the adoption"

"Right"

"So did you? Dig?"

"Come on inside" Jensen and Eliot walk inside. Jensen pulls out his laptop and sits down at the dining table and Eliot stands next to him, removing his jacket. "Your dad kept everything from his medical practice – records, logs, old appointment books" He pulls out a journal and opens it, showing a page to Eliot. "I found an entry from the night you were born. Patient and a birth date. Isaac Peterson"

"Do you think that's his real name?"

"Pregnant teenage runaway? Probably not. First name, maybe. But where'd he get Peterson? Classmate? Best friend? So I binged it" He pulls up the internet and types in a name in the search engine "I searched for all the Petersons in this area born the same year as Isaac, found 3-2 men and a woman, Trudie, who lived in Grove Hill, Virginia"

"That's not far from here" Eliot notes.

"Well, watch this" Jensen types something else into the search engine and pulls up an image of Isaac from high school.

"Isaac." Eliot looks at the picture with a smile "He was a football player."

"Trudie still lives there" Jensen hands Eliot a post-it note "This is her address"

"What about Isaac?"

"I couldn't find anything about him" Eliot looks disheartened as he sits down at the table. Jensen briefly pauses before divulging new information. "Listen. There's something else. Ms. Saltzman, Thea, her husband was from around here, and his name was also Isaac"

"Wait. Was, as in..."

"He died"

**********

Later, Eliot is putting away clothes in his drawer. Stella stands behind him as they discuss this new turn of events. "Althea's husband might have been your father?"

"It can't be true, right? I mean, the coincidence alone is just crazy" Eliot sighs as he turns around to look at Stella and holds up the post-it note "I have the address for his friend Trudie"

"You wanna talk to her"

"I don't know. I...I – I don't know. If it's true and they are the same person, that means that my birth father is dead, and I don't know if I could handle that"

"Eliot, did Jensen tell you anything about Althea's husband? How he died?" Stella asks.

"Just that he was killed and the case was never solved" Stella nods at this prior knowledge. Eliot looks at her, surprised "You knew that already?"

"The night at the school when she attacked me, she told me some things about his death"

"Well—"