"Don't feel like dancing?"

The cooler air nipped at my skin, but I welcomed it over the stifling heat indoors.

"Don't really know how."

Tyler sat next to me on the stone bench. "We both know that's a lie."

"I wasn't, back then. I really didn't know how to dance the way more modern teenagers do. I was taught how to ballroom dance before I could read." If not for father's own image, it was so I could be married off more easily when I first bled. "Then again when I was adopted. I remember standing on Elijah's shoes so I'd learn more complicated steps."

Tyler's hand crept to mine on the bench. "I grew up with these kinds of parties, dressed in some stiff suit."

I hummed, looking back out in the quiet darkness. "I needed a break."

"Me too."

"Your mom still treating you like you're fragile?" He hadn't talked much about his mom, even less about his dad, beyond that he was a dick.

"Yes." He shook his head. "Like I'll disappear at any second."

"After the first time I got kidnapped, I'd wake to Elijah having snuck in to watch over me while I slept. Often, he'd have fallen asleep himself in that uncomfortable bedside chair. Yet night after night... he was always there."

"And now?"

"Elijah trusts you with me." A feat no one outside the family, bar Enzo, has ever done. Even though they wanted me to leave him, he would've never been allowed out on this balcony if Elijah didn't somewhat trust him. "You should take pride in that."

I moved over, resting my head on his shoulder. Tyler's hand clasped mine in my lap.

He hummed. "Surprising, considering the glares sent my way when you're not looking."

Now that made me laugh. "They're trying to intimidate you."

"Mission accomplished!"

I had to do this. It was either Stefan and Damon die or I break up with Tyler.

The smile melted from my face.

At least he'd still be alive.

He immediately picked up on it. "What? Are you cold?" Tyler took off his suit jacket and laid it across my shoulders. "Better?"

"Perfect." I settled back in my spot against him. He laced our fingers together once again. I wished I could keep this moment forever.

Why would Nik be so cruel as to ask me to abandon someone who made me genuinely happy?

God, I felt the tears coming back.

Tyler or my brothers?

What kind of choice was that?

I'd finally found Stefan and Damon. They were alive and breathing, and now that the dust had kind of settled... I don't know, I had hoped that we could actually reconnect as siblings.

And Tyler?

He made me feel safe in a way that I'd never felt before.

"They're going to kill them." I whispered.

"If there was anything I could do, I'd do it in a heartbeat." He kissed the top of my head, giving my hand a reassuring squeeze.

"I don't know what else that could be done. Releasing them would only make it into a hunt." I didn't believe for a second that Stefan and Damon even had a chance. "I've tried everything I could possibly think of. It all rests on Elijah's decision and he wants nothing more than to see them dead."

"He doesn't care how it'll affect you?"

"He knows exactly how it'll affect me. I already thought them dead once. I think he thinks that's the key to getting everything back to the way it was a century ago."

I hope they heard every word of it too.

"But you're not the same. No one is."

"Elijah is. Nik is. Same old same old." Neither had changed much in the time I'd known them. "That's what they aren't getting. They want me to go back to being the little girl I was, and they think that taking away my brothers will do that for them."

"That's..."

"Horrible? Yeah I know. Unfortunately for the rest of us, Mikaelsons always get what they want." Do it, you coward. "Which is why we need to break up."

There. I said it.

"What? Why?" He stood.

"It's the only way they won't kill Stefan and Damon." He began moving in the direction of the door and I quickly sped into his path. "What are you doing?"

"I'm going to go fix this."

"You can't do anything I haven't already tried. It's over Tyler. They won." Like always. I laid a hand on his chest. "Don't make this any harder than it is. I can't-" Fuck. "You'll be happier without me."

Tears welled in his eyes and I fucking hated that I was the one to hurt him. 

"Let me fight for us." He begged softly, his fingers curling around mine. "Please Morgan. I love you."

"You'd die."

"You are all I want, all I'll ever want."

"One day, you'll look back on us, and see that you were better off without me in your life." It'd be torture, being unable to even speak to him. No doubt I'd be watched the remainder of the time we stayed in Mystic Falls. "It's the only way to keep everyone I love alive."

Tyler kissed me then, slow and soft. He pulled me flush to him, warm against the nip in the air.

God, I wished I didn't have to do this.

It was like the whole world fell away, the way he had me in his hold.