#grayson gilbert

TVDU Siblings 𖤓 Grayson and John Gilbert

Okay. So the thing is: Grayson didn’t expect to survive. He didn’t. And he certainly didn’t expect to suddenly be… unmoored, unmarried—widowed. But his daughter is alive, and he gets to be there for Jeremy now, and he isn’t stupid. He knows the only reason he survived is because of Stefan Salvatore.

He also knows that Stefan Salvatore is the original Stefan Salvatore—the one who showed up at the hospital demanding that he deliver Gail’s baby.

All this to say: Stefan doesn’t get an invitation into the Gilbert house, and Damon is in a lot of danger from Grayson in those early episodes. And I don’t even know if Damon survives. I’m leaning toward no. Caroline is Grayson’s niece in all but blood, and if there is a single person in that town who would recognize what he’s doing and kill Damon for it, it’s Grayson. Maybe Stefan can trade a favor out of him, but it would burn up most of his goodwill. And honestly, Damon would probably do something else worthy of dying in Grayson’s eyes soon after anyway.

So maybe Damon still dies, and then Elijah stumbles into a completely different Mystic Falls gang: Zach is still alive, Richard is alive, Logan Fell is still around with most of Season One's causalities, the tomb vampires are still trapped (now that’s a Chekhov's gun if I ever saw one) because Grayson whipped the council into shape, and Stefan—well. Stefan is kept around because he’s trustworthy enough, and Grayson doesn’t actually know his full history, and Grayson does owe him one, and Elena still found out about vampires and fell in love with him, and because a vampire who only drinks animal blood? That’s a novelty worth keeping.

But look: you can bend a lot of your moral standards to keep your daughter alive. And when those moral standards are wearing the faces of children you all but helped raise—well, it’s even easier.

Yes, Caroline’s a vampire now… but can you kill her? Tyler’s a werewolf now… can you hurt him? Bonnie’s a witch like her mother—and her mother made you swear on your life you’d protect her. (The answer is no—well, at least for now. Katherine is the enemy for Grayson, but the only supernatural beings that will ever truly be safe from Grayson are his family and the Bennetts.)

And Grayson isn’t—well, he isn’t fond of vampires. Obviously. But he isn’t stupid. And he’s… grateful. If only because it means he gets a few more months with his children.

(And that part is true: Klaus is coming, and he’ll tear through Elena’s friends and family. And passing your narrative end date doesn’t mean you get to survive—sometimes it just means you die a different way.)

Which is to say: if I were to write this, Grayson shows up with Stefan—freshly (and willingly) turned—and asks Klaus to let Jenna go and take him instead. (Jenna moved closer when Miranda died and then moved in after Grayson got turbo-stabbed by Katherine BTW.) And Klaus has this thing about fathers loving their children enough to die for them (probably on account of his own father—Mikael, who was his father in all the ways that matter—not loving him)

Grayson’s already said his goodbyes to John, and he knows he could be the one to survive this… or he could die in John’s place instead. But that’s Miranda’s baby sister, and Miranda would never forgive him if he let her die. So he writes his own letter and leaves the journals for Jenna.

And again: Klaus has this thing about sacrifice, about proof that other people actually do love each other. But Grayson has something no one else does.

He knows where Mikael's body is.

(Later Stefan comes back afterward to recover Grayson’s body. They bury him beside John and Miranda. Jenna is alive in this one. So is Zach and Logan and Richard and Vicki, and a few others—at least for a time. In some ways it’s a better story.