She didn't say anything to Damon.

There was no sense in telling him that she remembered the entire conversation. No sense in making him feel embarrassed. From what she gathered, he only opened up to her because he assumed she was drunk and would forget it all within the hour. If he learned that she was fully aware of what was said, he might hurt her to silence her.

Instead, she'd simply keep it a secret. Pretend it never happened.

Within the next few days, she got a good rhythm going with schoolwork and her duties as a GSI. Aaron had left Whitmore, and with him her chance of getting all the funding she needed. She would have to work extra hard teaching Wes's classes and keeping up with her own to prove to other potential faculty sponsors that she deserved a cut from their newly increased budget. At least this taught her that she never wanted to be a professor.

She saw Elena, Caroline, and Bonnie on campus often, the three attending school regularly and seemingly pleased with Katherine's departure from the world. The one Maribel hadn't seen was Damon. There was probably no point to him visiting if he'd only ever come by to see Elena.

The one she hadn't expected to hear from was Stefan Salvatore.

"Hi," he said when she answered a call from an unknown number. "It's Stefan, Caroline gave me your number."

"Hello," she replied. "Uh, what for?"

"To ask if you've seen Damon. I know he hangs out around Whitmore a lot."

"I haven't seen him in several days. Why do you ask? Did something happen?"

"Last I heard, he was hanging out with Enzo. I haven't seen him since then."

Maribel lifted her gaze as two figures appeared in front of her. "Don't worry. They're fine."

"But you said you hadn't—?"

"I'll take that," said Damon, grabbing her phone and hanging up. "Enzo, this is Beli. Beli, Enzo."

"Hello, gorgeous," said Enzo, lip twitching into a grin as he acknowledged her.

She smiled slightly. "I would say it's a pleasure but judging by the mischievous looks on your faces, you're here to make me do something."

"I won't make you do anything, love," said Enzo with a wink. "Not unless you want to."

"Stop," said Damon, cringing at the thought of the two starting to flirt with each other. "She's into mysterious immortals."

"Is that so?" said Enzo, wiggling his eyebrows.

Maribel crossed her arms. "What do you want?"

"We need you to find your old boyfriend."

Maribel glared at Damon. "Wes was never my boyfriend, for fuck's sake. Besides, I don't know where he is or how to find him. He knows I went through all his documents to get rid of them, chances are he's in a completely new lab with whatever money he had left over."

Damon hummed. "Okay. Then tell us who else was associated with him."

"I don't know."

"You don't know who else covered up Megan King's death?"

"No, I didn't look into that. And I burned all the files already. You want to kill someone? Go find them yourselves, I'm not going to be an accomplice. I need to get to class."

She shoved her way between them, walking quickly into the nearest building to take a detour to her lecture.

Elena messaged her that afternoon, asking if she was going to be attending that evening's Bitter Ball. Though Maribel said she wasn't going to, the girl invited her to her dorm to help her pick a dress anyway.

"I am not bitter enough for this," said Maribel. "I can, however, affirm that that is a cute dress."

"Thank you," said Elena, twirling around. "It might be fun if you come with us, you know." She seemed desperate for her attendance.

Maribel really wasn't going to be convinced. "I might go to a club instead, if I'm bored enough."

"What about earrings?" asked Elena as Caroline walked in. "Diamond, or dangly?"

Caroline raised a brow. "Since when does Elena Gilbert accessorize?"

"Since she's being conned to go to the Bitter Ball with her best friend Susie Sunshine," replied Elena.

"Ah," said Maribel, "that's why you want me to go so bad. You don't even want to go."

"Look," said Caroline, "you're not fooling anyone, Elena. I know you're faking it."

Elena frowned. "Faking what?"

"Please, it's so obvious! I appreciate it, I do, but you know I'm on edge because of the whole Tyler-Klaus thing, so you are pretending that breaking up with Damon was no big deal."

"What Tyler-Klaus thing?" said Maribel. "Isn't Klaus the bad guy... wait did he and Tyler have a thing?"

"Oh god no," said Caroline, cringing. "I-I slept with Klaus and Tyler found out and he got really mad."

"Were you together when it happened?"

"No."

"Then why is he mad?"

"Klaus... killed his mom."

Maribel immediately mimed a zipping motion over her mouth. "Not my place to make any further comments."

Caroline gratefully turned her attention back to Elena. "Come on, Elena, just admit it."

"How do you always see right through me?" sighed Elena.

"Look, Elena. You don't have to pretend with me. And if you don't want to go tonight, it's all good. I can be a bitter, party-of-one."

Elena's phone started to ring, and she showed them who was calling. "Do you think Stefan would want to come?" She answered, "Hey! I was— heh— just about to call you."

"Hey, listen," said Stefan, "I need to talk to you, but I didn't want to do it over the phone."

"What's wrong?"

"Let's just say it involves Enzo."

Elena looked worried. "Oh. Enzo. Uh... Ok. Then maybe we should meet in person. Actually, Caroline's dragging us to this Whitmore thing for lonely hearts. I think you should come."

"Yeah. No, thanks. I already did the college thing. Twice, actually."

"Please! If it's bad, then I'll owe you a fun time."

Caroline somehow refrained from making a comment until Elena had gone to shower.

"Was that weird to you, or just me?" she whispered to Maribel. "That sounds like flirting with Stefan!"

Maribel shrugged. "I don't know her well enough to really determine that. Damon's way of coping seems to be doing what he likes— ie, murder— and maybe her way of coping is finding someone to fill the gap, or falling back on the last person she felt secure with before Damon. I don't really know much about her and Stefan but it seems they had something special. I just hope she's careful so she doesn't get hurt again. Are they not supposed to be together, or something?"

"I just don't want her messing with his emotions and misleading him."

"So, tell her that. She'll understand. Help her decide if that's what she wants before she pursues it so no one gets hurt. It's not my place to say but from my limited understanding, she's better off without the Salvatores. Does she like girls? I feel like she'd be happy with a girlfriend."

Caroline shrugged. "I haven't asked her about it. I guess I'll talk to her. Sure you don't want to come?"

"Nah, I'm good. Thanks for the invite, though. Is Bonnie going?"

"Yes, with Jeremy, which completely breaks the rules."

Maribel smiled. "They're bitter about the rules. It works out."

Though she wanted to go to a club, she decided to be responsible and go home to get some work done. While steadily consuming a bottle of wine, she worked on some assignments, every now and then checking her phone. Out of nowhere she'd been added to what appeared to be the official group chat for the friend group from Mystic Falls. For some reason, Damon and Enzo were hurting Jeremy to make Bonnie do a Locator Spell on Wes.

She would have made a comment about how bad Damon was at finding people if he was needing to threaten Bonnie for her help. But she knew it would be useless, much like trying to coax Damon into leaving her alone. Besides, by the time she thought of contacting him, it seemed Elena had already had to perform CPR on Jeremy after Enzo wrapped a plastic bag around his head.

"At this rate, those two are never getting back together," she snorted, shutting off her phone.

It seemed her removing herself from the world was a problem. Within an hour, her door was being forced open by Damon and Enzo, both looking as if they'd just killed a group of seminary students (in the sense their expressions were gleeful, and there was some blood on their clothes).

"You will pay me back for that," said Maribel, not getting up from her comfortable spot on her couch and just watching as the broken doorknob rolled around on the floor. "You have no manners whatsoever."

"We found Wes," said Enzo. "Come with us."

"Look, handsome, if you want to fuck me, you can just say so and we'll make arrangements. Barging into my apartment and trying to force me to go with you so I can watch you kill my ex-mentor isn't getting you as close to my bed as you think it is."

Enzo gestured at her, looking at Damon. "She's funny."

"No, she isn't," said Damon. "Come on, Beli."

"Why do you think I'll say yes? The answer is no, I have homework. I need to finish my PhD as soon as I can and you're not helping."

"Suit yourself," said Damon, walking away. Enzo winked, closing the door behind her, though it simply popped open again now that the handle was broken.

"Assholes!" she called after them. "Fucking assholes."

After duct-taping her door shut for the night, she curled up in her bed and tried to go to sleep. At around one in the morning, she received a phone call. Seeing it was from Damon, she chose to ignore it, despite it unceremoniously rousing her. A moment later, a text arrived, which she dared to take a peek at.

'Need your help, gorgeous. It's urgent. -Enzo.'

How he knew how to use a phone was beyond her understanding. 'If you're going to make a habit of booty calling me at this hour, get your own phone.'

'As lovely as that sounds, this is not a booty call. Wes injected Damon with the ripper virus.'

Groaning, she forced herself to sit up. 'Fine. I'll send you an address so you can meet me there.'

She went to her lab first, gathering as much of her equipment as she could carry given her arm strength and the size of her car trunk. Then, she drove to her family's cabin, where she'd asked Enzo and Damon to wait for her.

"Oh, ew," she said when she parked and saw four dead vampire bodies in the trunk of their car. "Get rid of those. And help me carry these machines in."

Once she'd set up on the kitchen counter to the best of her abilities, she had Enzo tie Damon down to a chair using every rope at their disposal. Unfortunately, there were no chains available.

"This should keep you weak," she said to Damon, finishing the insertion of an IV catheter that would keep him pumped steadily with vervain. "I'm going to draw blood on the other side. Wes used my research. I should be able to reverse this, I just need time."

"How much time?" demanded Damon, yelping when she used a bottle of liquid vervain to drench the ropes. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"We can't risk you breaking out to attack us!" she snapped. "You asked for my help, which means you're my patient, I'm your doctor, and you listen to me and keep your mouth shut if all that'll roll out of it is complaint after complaint! You don't know how to fix yourself, so stop being stubborn and just let me do what I need to do!"

"I didn't want your help!" said Damon sourly. "Enzo took it upon himself to do that."

"Good thing he did, 'cause otherwise, I don't know what you'd do! You wanted me to go with you when you were gonna hurt Wes, so thankfully that gave him an idea—"

"I didn't want you to come, that was all Enzo."

"You two idiots share one brain cell, don't you?" she muttered. "And right now, Enzo has it. It was smart of him to tell me, considering this is exactly what I'm studying. Wes has proved my theories by injecting you. Now that I know it to be true, I can undo it. I don't know how long it'll take, considering undoing it is a lot harder than doing it in the first place. I can first attempt an injection to turn 'off' the gene he modified, but that doesn't solve the problem, I need to find a way to efficiently cut the gene out. Putting it in isn't a problem, from my understanding, because your healing will not be opposed to something being added in, but it might resist me trying to splice it out. I just don't know, I've never studied vampires the way he has. Just let me do my work. Enzo, keep him entertained."

"Woah!" said Damon when he saw her pulling out her phone. "What are you doing?"

"Texting Stefan to see if he can bring some more materials from my lab— there was only so much I could carry."

"Do not tell any of them that you're here! I don't want anyone knowing, especially not Stefan or Elena."

Maribel huffed and set her phone aside. "Fine. Then in that case, if I run out of anything, Enzo can snap your neck, we'll pile furniture onto you, and then he can bring my stuff."

"Or," said Enzo, raising an eyebrow, "I stay here to restrain him while you go."

"No, because if I run out of anything, that means I'll have solutions that need to be monitored. I can't leave you here to monitor them."

"You have no faith in me, gorgeous."

"Why would I have any faith in you? Right now, my apartment is duct-taped as best as possible from the inside and I have to hope none of my stuff gets stolen while I'm here because you two geniuses broke my doorknob for no reason!"

"Stop talking!" said Damon loudly. "Get to work, Beli."

Before she could, there was the sound of footsteps outside, and echoing voices.

"What is that?" asked Enzo.

Damon growled. "It's the obnoxious theme song of the Travelers."

The door opened on its own, revealing a group of what appeared to be witches, judging by how their arms were extended while they chanted. Nearest the door was Wes.

Enzo tried to rush toward him, but collided with an invisible force in the doorway, rendering him unable to leave the house. "As a man of science," said Wes, "I always considered magic a cheat. Turns out, I cheat. How's the appetite?"

"Funny you should ask," sneered Damon. "I was craving a blond."

Wes smiled wryly. "You're my patient zero, Damon. I couldn't let you ride off into the sunset without running a few tests."

Enzo frowned. "A few tests...?"

"Well, one test." He stared at Maribel, then at Damon. "Now that you're trapped with only one real source of food, how long can you go before you feed on your best friend?" Just like that, he and the Travelers left.

"Okay, quick," said Maribel to Enzo, "break the legs off of every chair to have stakes to use." She went to the kitchen, gathering all the knives she could find, and every wooden spoon they had. "In the event Damon starts to attack, we can use these to take him down."

"You better work fast, Baby Fell," muttered Damon as they laid their weapons on the living room table.

"There's only so much I'll be able to do with limited equipment. I'll start working but I really think we're going to need Stefan to bring us stuff now that we're stuck in here."

She got to analyzing Damon's blood and locating where Wes had inserted the gene. She started the process of tagging it so she could shut it 'off.' With any luck, that would turn off the 'Ripper' aspect.

"We'll give it a try after it has its hour of reflux," she said following thirty minutes of her mixing solutions. "What are Travelers, anyway? Why not just call them witches?"

"They're not witches," said Damon. "They're a different faction that like to possess people 'cause they don't have access to Traditional Magic. They're always on the move, they hate immortality, and witches hate them. Oh, and they speak Czech for no reason." He groaned and leaned his head back. "This spell can't last forever."

"It doesn't need to," said Enzo. "Wes only needs it to last eight hours."

"Why eight hours?" asked Maribel.

"Before calling you, we did a test run. The longest he could resist the urge was eight hours. After that, Wes and the Travelers can come back inside and autopsy my mangled corpse."

"That's not going to happen," said Maribel firmly.

Enzo managed a small smile. "Assuming you can fix this, gorgeous."

Damon acknowledged him. "You're pretty zen about all this."

The man snorted. "Did you forget everything I taught you in that cell? Calmer heads will always prevail."

He huffed. "Always the soldier."

"Maribe is right. We have people we can call, like your brother or your ex. Not only to get us the materials she needs to fix you, but they can find Wes and threaten him, or maim him. Anything that doesn't involve your fangs on my neck."

Damon sneered, "My brother told me to leave and not come back. I'm not calling him."

"So my life is not worth your pride?"

"They won't come."

Enzo seemed to realize what he was actually afraid of. "Or... they will and you might hurt them. You don't want to risk them, do you? Me, on the other hand..."

"I'm not going to feed on you," said Damon. "I'll find another way."

"Maybe we can still sate the urge," said Maribel. "We can feed you drops of Enzo's blood so you're not starved."

"No," said Damon sharply. "Then I'll just go rabid with hunger."

"We'll try it after my injection is ready, okay? If it works— which I think it will— then it'll turn the gene 'off,' so while you'll still need to feed on vampires until I edit it out, you won't be a Ripper."

"Hang on," said Enzo, raising an eyebrow. "If you can do that to Damon, wouldn't it be possible with other Ripper vampires such as Stefan? Could you essentially cure him of being a Ripper?"

"I could, theoretically. Thing is, Damon's genes are already altered so it's easier for me to make further alterations. Stefan's haven't been. But if he wanted to, one day, I could try it."

"If you had the ability to cure vampires of being Rippers, many would come flocking to you for help."

"How can you even be sure being a Ripper is a genetic thing, though?" asked Damon, not about to become hopeful that the thing Stefan hated most about himself could potentially be fixed after so many years. "I don't have it."

"No, but addiction in general has been shown to have genetic links. He may have just inherited it and you didn't. A Ripper is a blood addict, to my understanding. I don't think it's a magical side effect, otherwise all vampires or just more of the population would have that. Vampirism magnifies traits you have, so if Stefan already had that addictive gene, it just magnified that and made him unable to control his blood intake."

Damon didn't seem to want to believe it. "There's no cure for this. There's no point."

"There is a cure, and I'm working on it," said Maribel tightly. "You're already losing hope. You have to believe you can go back to normal, Damon, otherwise my work is for nothing. You do have magic flowing through you and if you don't think it'll work, then I fear it could hinder my progress even if the cure works."

"That's what he does," mused Enzo. "There's a problem, he runs. He did it to me, he did it to his girl..."

"Because when I stay, I destroy things," said Damon, more sadly than angrily.

"We're not all as fragile as you think we are," said Enzo. "We're not leaving you." He brought out his phone, and clicked a button, holding it to his ear.

"What the hell are you doing?" asked Damon.

"Calling for backup."

"I thought I told you not to call them!"

"And I told you your pride isn't worth either of our lives. You may not want to feed on Maribel, but you will if she tries to stop you from hurting me. And then we'll have no one to make the cure for you or for other vampires who want to be free."

It seemed whoever he was calling wasn't going to answer. But, at last, Elena's voice came through, "Oh my god, Damon?" she cried.

"Hello, 'Stefan,'" said Enzo, who had apparently been calling the other Salvatore. "How wonderful to hear your beautiful, feminine voice."

"Enzo," said Elena more coldly. "What the hell do you want?"

"I'm in a spot of trouble, actually."

"Where's Damon?"

"Oh, he's here, salivating, about to chomp into my neck and feed until my head pops off in a grotesque but slightly comical fashion."

"Wes infected him?!"

Enzo hummed. "You know about the virus. Good. We could use a hand. Wes enlisted some of those singing witches and trapped us in the house."

Damon tried to speak over Enzo, "Do. Not. Come. Here."

"He doesn't want to risk feeding on you," explained Enzo. "That's sweet really, but you'll be fine. Besides, if he does feed on you, I have orders to kill him."

"Okay. Um, text me the address to my phone, and we'll be there as soon as we can."

"Fine. And, uh, tick-tock. I managed to restrain him, and Maribel is working on a cure, but you know how persistent Damon can be when he wants something."

"We'll be there soon," promised Elena.