Alex's P.O.V

Damon stood in front of our old house and I was standing next to him. Frozen - whether out of fear or shock - was really the only word to describe how I looked. "Wow," I said. "Never thought I would see this place again."

"Why would we want to?" Damon asked.

"Good point," I stated and my brother moved forward to walk in, but I stayed glued in my spot. He turned around to me and raised his eyebrows in question. "Is it reasonable for me to not want to go in there?"

Damon sighed at me and held out his hand. "Dad's dead, Alex. He can't hurt you here," He said.

"Given our luck he could," I muttered. Damon sighed before extending his hand out to me again, and I hesitated before taking it. He led me inside and I felt like a kid again, walking through those front doors. I walked around lightly grazing my hand over some of the furniture. "It feels weird being back here."

"Yeah," Damon whispered.

I spotted a painting that was flipped around on the floor beside the fireplace. Turning it around, I saw it was an oil painting of our family before Mom died. Glancing above the fireplace, where it should have been hanging, I could see where it used to be. It looks like Mom didn't want Father glaring at her. Can't blame her. I walked closer to the mantelpiece and saw our baby pictures sitting there. I grabbed the one of Damon and turned around to him as he lit up a lamp behind us.

"You were so adorable as a baby," I stated with a smirk. Damon looked at me confused before I turned the photo around for him to see. He walked up to me and grabbed another baby photo from the mantle.

"You were too," Damon said and showed me a photo of a four-year-old me sitting on Mom's lap. "Maybe I should take this back with us and send it to Klaus as an earlier wedding gift."

I looked at him shocked, "How'd you know about that?"

"While I might not like your baby daddy a majority of the time, he is a gentleman. He asked me for your hand before he went to the car," Damon explained.

"Well then if you do that, I'll take this back to Elena," I said, then turned and grabbed Stefan's too. "And maybe this for Caroline once you get her emotions back on."

"We're not here to socialize," Damon reminded me, breaking the nice moment we were having. He turned around, pocketing the photo of me, and started snooping through a desk. "We get the Ascendant and find our mother." Damon turned back to me. "You sure you can't stay till after she flips Stefan's switch? I would love some help to figure out what the hell we're going to do with her afterward."

"You do remember that Klaus's evil aunt, may or may not be coming to take my daughter away from me for the rest of time?"

"Ah! Right," Damon grumbled.

"Although, I think you should keep her at arms distance," I suggested. "But we still need to hear her out."

"Hear her out! Then what? Give her another chance to disarray a literal boatload of people?" He asked and I rolled my eyes. "But no. No. I decided to look at this like a son and not a sane person, which led me here. I thought we could help her since Stefan's a fucking Ripper and we never fucking give up on him."

"We both know our brother is only a full-blown Ripper with his humanity off. For all, we know Lily is one with her humanity on. Plus where was she from 1855 to 1903? She was blood-binging through Europe while we carried the loss. Not exactly maternal." I added on to my brother's rant. "How the fuck did we never hear of her before? I mean three thousand people dead in Europe? Stefan only killed a couple hundred and he was famous." Someone - other than the witches - must have heard about her? How did we miss this? Klaus didn't say anything to me and he must have known. I sighed, "We're so stupid. We let the temptation of getting our mother back in our lives blind us and forgot how idiotic this idea was in the first place."

"You did try to stop me," Damon confessed.

"Yet two hours later I called Klaus and asked him if he'd be ok with me going to get her," I replied. "I'm just as guilty as you."

"No," Damon walked up to me. "This only proves to us that our mother died when we buried her empty coffin. What we're doing now is getting a tool to get our Stefan back," Damon explained. "Or at least that's what I'm looking for?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked him, offended.

Damon scoffed, "Like you don't want to ask about your father." I opened my mouth to say something, but before I could someone walked into the room.

"Damon?" I heard a familiar female voice ask behind me. I turned around and stumbled back a bit when she made eye contact with me. "Alexandria?" Mom asked and I was speechless.

"Hello, Mother," Damon responded. She was as shocked as we were and I could tell her words were caught in her throat. Mom looked down at the firewood in her hand, then back at us.

"Um, excuse me while I put this down," She said before walking over to the fireplace.

Mom paused for a moment when she saw the oil painting had been flipped over but moved again to put the firewood down. Damon and I looked at each other as Mom moved to flip the painting over again, before turning back to us. She patted herself down, to look more presentable. The awkward silence was killing the three of us as we stared at each other. Mom then broke our gaze and began to take off her red coat. Once she was done, and the coat rested on her right forearm, she gestured to the couch.

"Please, make yourself at home. I'm going to go get the kettle and make tea for the three of us," She said before walking out of the room.

Damon and I moved to the couch and took off our jackets before sitting down. Mom came back with a kettle full of water and placed it over the fire. I watched her move around the room gracefully as I smiled at the picture before me. She hadn't changed, even if she was a Ripper like Kai had told us. Mom grabbed the tea set from the kitchen and placed it on the coffee table. There were some cookies that Damon and I used to love as children on the tray.

"You still like these don't you?" Mom asked, and giggled. "It's funny the tiny details you remember."

"Yeah, that's fine," I told her, still in awe that she was right in front of me.

She gave us a shy smile, then went to the next-door room, and came back with a chair. I looked back at the jar of blood and a small dropper next to it. Was this all the blood she had? Mom came back into the room with a chair and placed it on the other side of the coffee table, so she could sit in front of us.

"Mother," I spoke up, my voice higher than normal. I coughed slightly when Damon looked at me confused, and she glanced over her shoulder. Mom was checking on the water in the fireplace.

"Yes, dear?" She asked sweetly.

I looked over at Damon, who was sitting with his forearms resting on his knees, before I continued, "Do you know how long you've been here?"

"There was a time I marked days on a calendar." Mom brought the kettle over to us. "I gave up after a few years...but judging by your," She trailed off, glancing up at us quickly while pouring the hot water into the teacups. "Bizarre attire-"

"You've been here for a hundred and fifty-nine years," I informed her softly and she snapped her head towards me.

"Yeah, we would have come by sooner...but Alex and I thought you were safe and sound in the family crypt," Damon said sarcastically and Mom turned her gaze to him, bewildered by his attitude. "My bad."

"Technically, I did die in 1855, after a nurse in the TB ward fed me vampire blood," Mom explained.

"And you never thought to stop by and clear things up?" Damon asked her, bluntly. Mom looked at us both awkwardly, before turning around and putting the kettle back over the fire. You could have handled that more delicately, brother.

"How did you end up here?" I asked her, suddenly trying to defuse the tension between them. Mom turned around and smiled at me before sitting down in her chair.

"It was October 31st, 1903," Mom began and dipped a tea bag into the cups. "I had just arrived in New York harbor. The night sky was alive with this beautiful shimmering light." Mom looked up at us with a smile. "And, out of nowhere, a coven of witches attacked. When I woke up, they were gone. Everyone was gone." Mom chuckled nervously and placed the teabag down. "That night, the sky danced with colors again, and it's done so every night since." She then handed Damon and me each a cup of tea.

"It's called prison," Damon - again - bluntly put it. "You must have pissed off a lot of people." I shot him a glare, while Mom stared at him with guilt.

"That life seems like forever ago," She said. Damon picked up the dropper next to the jar of blood and examined it.

"You on a diet?" He asked her.

"I depleted every slaughterhouse within walking distance, and every butcher's shop along the hellish trek from New York to Mystic Falls." She picked up the jar of blood and showed it to us. "This is the last of the blood here." So I was right in my observation. "Two drops a week, just to stay awake," Mom explained.

"That sounds miserable," I muttered as I placed my cup on the table.

"I manage," Mom said with a smile. She picked up her glass and looked between us. "I heard you three turned during the war."

"Mm-hm!" Damon hummed as confirmation. I glared at her while a million thoughts ran through my head. You knew and you never came to find us.

"Your father must have been horrified," Mother said and took a sip of her tea.

"He was," I stated. Now it was my turn to be blunt. "And then, Stefan ripped his throat out." Mother laughed, and she accidentally spits out her tea. She then looked at us a little embarrassed. Damon and I smiled at her reaction.

"I apologize. That's cruel to laugh at, but...good for Stefan," Mother said. "I truly hated that man."

"Didn't we all," I replied with a groan while leaning back into the couch. Mother looked at me and noticed my change in demeanor towards her.

"But you must have hated him so much, that you left your kids with him...faked your own death, and went out to join the Ripper coalition," Damon elaborated, wording both of our thoughts out loud. Lily sat up straighter, then gave him a small smile.

"Well, it's nice to see that you two have grown into yourselves," Lily stated. "How's your brother?"

Damon looked over to me and asked, "Do you want to tell her, or shall I?"

I sat up in my seat, before flashing Lily a tight-lipped smile. "Long story short: your youngest son has his humanity off. Which is very bad, so we need you to come back with us to flip his switch on," I said.

"And you believe that I can reconnect Stefan with his humanity?" Lily asked.

"The last memory our brother has of you is a vision of an angel telling him 'Everything is going to be okay," Damon said, and she looked touched by his words. "So, you're gonna be an angel again."

"He doesn't need to know how screwed-up you really are," I stated. Her smile fell as she looked between us, noticing that we were both thinking the same thing.

"Of course I'll help," Lily said with fake joy. "I'd love nothing more than to see him again."

Damon slammed the table, and we both stood up after she agreed to help us. "Pack your bags," Damon ordered.

"Wonderful!" Lily exclaimed and stood up as well. Damon and I went to grab our coats near the door. "I'll alert the others."

My brother and I stopped dead in our tracks and looked at each other before I turned to Lily. "You'll alert who, now?" I asked her. Only more proof we were idiots to come here.

"You knew so much about me...I assumed you'd heard of my traveling companions?" Lily questioned and we looked at her uneasy.

"What traveling companions?" Damon asked.