After sitting still for so long, the only thing I can picture is sitting in the giant bathtub of our hotel room. Checking my phone, I see that Helen has sent me multiple pictures of Xavier and some videos, I'd have to remember to enjoy her a little more when we return. I really had no reason to dislike her so much. 

I run a hand through my hair as I blink the sleep from my eyes, entering the airport to hand over our passports and leaning against my husband's burly shoulder. My arm linked in his, the misty haze of the tarmac dampens my hair, but I dare not shield us for fear of exposure so early in the game. 

The cameras click all around, a type of celebrity that I'm not used to, considering I'm often not with him at his appearances. I note that even in the dim lighting, he wears sunglasses to protect his sensitive eyes from the flash.

Tiberius and his band are happy to shield us from the prying eyes of the press, waving and almost seeming to stand taller to block us from the sea of questions and curiosities of foreigners meeting foreigners. Verando drapes his coat over my shoulders to protect me from the rain, and I happily accept the warmth. 

The lines around his eyes make him look older; he's exhausted from seven hours of tightened-down stress flying over a vast ocean. 

While I had managed to capture a few glances, I feared that leaving him for too long might have caused him enough reason to attempt an escape. Pascal slips in front of us, dressed in a suit as security; her slender frame doesn't give much in the form of protection. It could even be considered comical to compare her height to Verando's and consider her a potent force compared to him.

 But the world didn't know him as I did. He was a pampered song artist from London to these people, not a hardened veteran. 

"We're back in France." I muse under my breath. 

Verando allows his shoulders to relax, I press my temple into his bicep, appreciating the smooth texture of his shirt. 

"Last time we were here..." 

I don't know what to compare it to. We were in the middle of a conspiracy, on the run, from the underground society that didn't want this exact thing to become a reality. He had died. We had passed over the very lake, now a massive harbor, and I could feel it in my essence.

 The universe issued a silent warning. 

"Let's not think about it." He responds, his tone low as he keeps his face composed. The open V of the shirt I had created by unbuttoning the buttons revealed hints of the scars along his pectoral muscle. I quickly reach to fasten them, as if that would protect his identity from those who knew us. 

As we enter the building, Tiberius comes to walk beside me. 

"I have a friend who is dying to meet you."

Verando rolls his eyes, tame considering his customary enthusiasm in facial displeasure. "No visitors, Tiberius; I'm quite fatigued."

Tiberius chuckles. "So proper, you sound like.. well... me!" He waves the man off, I was at least looking forward to French. I had devoted so much time to learning it, that it felt a shame for it to go to waste. "This is a good kind of visitor."

Tilting my head into the crowd as the paparazzi begin to thin, I see the massive decorative hat that fanned out to create an abyss of darkness for the paperwhite figure. The long, flowing tangle of black locks rests gently all around the slim face. Red eyes glimmer in the dark, almost considered a deep brown to the untrained eye. 

Verando relaxes, and a small smile ticks at the corner of his mouth. 

"What?" I question him. 

"I'm excited for you." He admits, slipping his arm out of mine and relinquishing me of my protective coat. I grasp for it, and his knowing expression makes me glare. 

"Go have a look then." He suggests. "I have to talk to this reporter with Tiberius." 

Kissing my cheek, he gives me a firm smack on the bottom and sends me towards the figure. The frustration rolls over my mood; I know for sure he wouldn't be speaking to these people if it weren't for this lone figure blocking our path. 

Cautiously, I approach, arms crossed over my chest. The outfit is over the top, stylish, and form-fitting, I realize this person is a man. He nods his head to me, smiling thin lips that look as though they're made of porcelain. 

"It's been way too long, Nikki. Four hundred years looks good on you." My jaw drops. Stefan. 

____

"This is it. Excuse the mess, I don't often have company." It was foolish to think we could sit in a hotel room with such an adamant host at our disposal. Stefan wasn't one for friends, lovers but not quite friends. It would have been incredibly offensive to turn down such a generous offer to use his home as our own until our fate had been decided. 

We enter the humble manor, quite aged, considering the futuristic aspect of the town surrounding us. 

This is not quite how I pictured the future. Dank air has the public crowding into masks once more, though not entirely on the scale of New York, it was utilitarian in a whole different way. There were curfews and allotted time slots when each person could be outside to cut down on the massive pollution. 

The cars cycled in an endless vortex, forbidden from driving on our own, they stopped for only moments on large tube-like tracks to drag us within walking distance of the manor. 

Lumbering, dark buildings disappear into the smog, yet this little slice of paradise remains unscathed with its tiny grassy yard and fascinating arrangement of plants and flowers. The house was quite large, by our standards, but was quickly dwarfed by the supergiants surrounding it.

Not a tree, not a single bird, though the sun shimmered beyond the haze of cloud cover, the colors lacked the familiar bleaching of outdoor life. Hesitating on the porch, I cast a lasting look outwards to see the billow of smoke from the exhaust of a nearby factory. 

Stefan quickly closes the door behind me. 

"Not quite how you remember it, I imagine." He muses.

 His marble skin looks freshly polished as if he had stepped off a sculptor pedestal, only his body lacked life. Stefan appeared thin and worn down. He dare not take off his coat though as he removed his hat, I could see his hair had dulled some with age. Once more, he hugs me, so tightly yet not firmly enough. "I've missed you so much, Nikki. Disappearing from the planet is not how I imagined you'd die, but I'm glad to see you've made it back at last."

What had felt like moments to me was lifetimes to this gentle strigoi. His chilly hands touch my face his eyes spark for a moment, and concern crosses his gaze. I flick my eyes towards Verando, and he composes his face, stopping the mothering in its tracks. 

"So I heard you're getting married? Was I going to be invited?" 

I shrug innocently, "Technically, I am married." I show him my ring excitedly, and he appropriately oo's and ah's. 

It tickles me right to my toes, and I can't help but grin ridiculously.

 "But that was the plan- hey! If you knew I was alive, where the hell were you?" I demand. "You must watch the news! You knew Red was hunting me!"

Stefan gestures with a casual flip of his hand towards my lycan, my husband, my defender. "You don't need me to protect you, my dearest one. Besides, France is a touch more accepting than the States. One step through their scanners, and I would be done for. There is a strict no vampire policy almost worldwide." His eyes casually skirt over Keeta. "Thanks to... savages."

Keeta bares her teeth with a low hiss. "Speak for yourself. You're hardly even a vampire."

He chuckles, adjusting a long strand of hair. "I'm not a vampire. I'm a Strigoi. We are magical more than we are bloodthirsty miscreants. Your kind has nearly wiped mine out and created the need for slayers."

Slayers were nothing new; we had them in our time as well. I capture his hands in mine, squeezing them firmly. "Stefan, we must catch up. There's so much to tell you, so much for you to tell me." He doesn't match my excitement; his expression softens, and he places a slender hand on mine. 

"How are Tonic and Reidy? Sweet Helen, mousey little thing, has she faired well? Imagine my surprise, seeing her twice in a lifetime and knowing exactly what she must face going back to our time."

Verando stiffens at the questions and pinches his nose's bridge, "Darling, I'm going to turn in. Enjoy your friend; thank you for the hospitality, Stefan." 

The strigoi bows his head lightly, winking and twiddling his fingers. I kiss the exhausted male on the cheek, letting his fingers slip through mine as he departs. Our Siren friends follow suit, and Pascal is practically dozing off on the couch, completely at home. 

The young fire mage and Sulema converse gently, sitting in front of the low rolling fire in the main room. Stefan gestures for me to come to the kitchen, and I happily follow. "Tonic and Reidy are dead, Stef," I tell him, refusing to allow it to ruin my good mood. He hesitates momentarily before handing me the bottle of wine and two glasses. 

"You know what your man needs? A good meal." In other words, it hurts too much to keep talking about it. 

He throws a lude apron at me, black and form-fitting with white lace trim. I roll my eyes, and he smiles in return. 

"This is nothing like I imagined when I agreed to come to the future," I tell him, searching his refrigerator and finding a steak; I figure that is the best option for Verando to eat something in a strange place. 

Stefan considers this, working on slicing vegetables for me. When I was younger, he loved to cook for me, considering that he couldn't eat it. 

"Well. Wars don't end just because their flame dies out. Wars end because people want it to be so, and the persecution of magical users has only gotten worse. There was a great cleansing not long ago, where humans all agreed that we would be considered illegal in hopes of defending themselves. I don't blame them. We were running wild, but, still."

 He slips the blade through the fresh vegetables. 

"You were the only one who seemed to care enough and were powerful enough to stop this. I hate that we couldn't get it done for you."

This is news to me. "You tried?" I ask curiously. He nods. 

"We tried valiantly. We hardly got the empire stopped, and with France's help, we could tie things up alright. You had no heir, Nikki. Romania fell into a dictatorship; the world fell into chaos. War after war, humans fight each other just as much as they fight us. Our members disbanded; we were hunted, killed in the streets, and deemed mythical. For a while, the government helped, but-" Stefan rubs his fingers together. "It's a lot of money to support so many."

While I pity his plight, knowing there were numbers gave me hope. "What happened to Filippa?"

Setting down the knife, he ties his hair back with an elastic band. His face looks sullen, sunken as if he'd worn this expression for a long time. "Sent back to her father. She was never coronated, and Romania wouldn't accept her as queen. He killed her on arrival for her failures." I inhale sharply, our love might not have been real but I felt deeply for her. She was so full of life. 

"I assumed. Tonic didn't-" Stefan inhales sharply and tosses the vegetables into the pan. I set the steak on to cook and hug him tightly once more. "Tonic was sick," I whisper.

Stefan nods against my neck. "I know." He murmurs back. "That sweet, sweet boy. This life was not right for him." He sniffles, wiping angrily at his eyes and stepping back to compose himself. "Damn it, if he didn't take a piece of me with him when he went. They all did...." He takes my hand once more; we seem to feel the same. 

Two pieces of history, we couldn't separate from each other in fear the other might float away and vanish once more. "Damn it." He says once more with a strangled smile. "If only he hadn't... if he had just left Anuetta alone."

I blink, surprised. "Randy? Stef, Randy was set up. This was Red's plan, and Tonic was in on it. Red was never supposed to be in our timeline; she was sent back to retrieve me and helped to coordinate Verando's murder-" I stop, the pain on his face to real. He didn't want to believe that Tonic wanted me over him. It was easier this way. "I would give anything to redo that day and find a way to stay behind; maybe things would be quite different."

Stefan frowns. "I've lived that day twice, my dearest. You died of a heart attack. Either someone poisoned you, or the stress got the best of you. My guess would be the poison. You've cheated the reaper, my friend. It's best just to be grateful you're alive at all. We should stop bitching like old women, crooning about the past. I must say, I never pictured you as one to play with Sirens?"

"They're helping us," I tell him, happy for the topic change as I flip the steak. I know better than to prepare it any other way than rare. Silence falls between us, and his prying eyes bear into my soul.

"How long have you been chilled?"

I sigh. "Since I blew up a building."

This seems to impress him. "You're getting stronger. How often do you use?" 

I cringe, averting my eyes back to the sauteing vegetables. 

"Nicolas. You are a Solomonari. You are not meant to lay dormant." He touches my face with the back of his hand. "How are you even still alive? You've dropped two degrees just standing here."

Shrugging, I poke the contents of the pan with a wooden spoon. "Verando warms me back up. When I'm close to him, I become warm again." 

Stefan taps his chin lightly with a long, ghostly finger. 

"How's the relationship with the celestial being? With Alpha?" 

Shaking my head, I toss the spoon down and cross my arms. "Whitewind is an ass. Alpha is my best friend; that's never been better."

"Have you formed mental bonds with the wolf? Such that we do with the dragons?" I raise an eyebrow, and he rolls his eyes. "Well, that explains that. His wolf is reading you, pulling off magic by staying in constant connection. Dragons siphon magic, I would not be surprised if the wolf is doing the same." 

The disapproving look makes me self-conscious, and I take the steak off the stove to put it on a plate. "So, you're saying Alpha can read my mind?"

Stefan nodded, reaching up to carefully run his fingers over the ends of my hair; I could feel that he was contemplating giving me a haircut. Snagging one of the green pepper slices, I nibble on it gratefully. Vegetables were a commodity in this time.

His concern over me seemed paramount, but he also knew me well enough to know I wasn't one to take too much stock in my well-being. He would be better off addressing this with my husband, who would force me into some treatment plan. "Tomorrow, we should have a briefing on what I know and what you know. We can share stories. In exchange, I only ask that you get that lovely husband of yours to sing me a song or two."

The innocence is lost on me. I know how many songs the man could tolerate; two would not be sufficient. But, for his hospitality, I couldn't complain about the terms. I wasn't foolish enough to believe this wasn't a ploy to pick Verando's brain on my health, but perhaps the two could worry themselves into the conclusion that I was fine, if not odd.

 "Deal." I pack the food onto a tray, and as I gather it up and sip on my glass of wine, I feel the overwhelming urge to know flood over me. "Stef?"

He tilts his head, downing the rest of his wine. "Yes?"

"Is there any of our home left?"

He considers this, tracing his thumb over the rim of the glass. "Cluj Napoca remains. Transylvania. The rest is... very different. Your castle might be there, but it's worn, not as you remember. The earth tends to take back what it offers, baby. I'd say most of what you remember is gone." 

As much as I didn't want to accept it, at least now I knew. I kiss his cheek and hug him one last time. "Thank you, Stefan. For everything."

Laughing lightly, he hands me my tray. "Anytime. I'll see you in the morning. Sleep in; it might be the last time you get to for quite some time, and I have no interest in waking up early for such talk."