I lied. I said I would update quickly. I'm a liar.

But alas, i hope you can find it your hearts to forgive me.

Haven't seen VD in ages so i have no idea where this is on the timeline, so just bear with me until I regain some sort of control over the story.

I actually like this chapter, which is a rarity, so I hope that you guys like it too!

XxMxX

Chapter 4

Damon pushed past the hugging couple irritably, hammering on Elena's front door. Every time that he seemed to get remotely close to her, Stefan would suddenly be on top again and he'd have to walk moodily behind them.

'Jeremy!' He shouted through the letterbox.

The door opened, and Jeremy leant against the frame, looking first at Damon, then at Stefan, then at Elena. 'You're back then,' he said coolly to Stefan. 'I assumed after you turned around at the front door and disappeared that you weren't coming back.'

'Sorry, Jeremy, but we have a pretty big problem.'

'Is she okay?' he nodded at Elena.

'Standing right here, Jer'!'

Damon didn't wait for an invitation, clearly sick of the small talk, and strolled inside, taking care to turn back around and smile at the two of them still outside. 'You might want to invite her in.' If it was one thing that Damon had always liked about himself, it was his talent for inciting an atmosphere like no other.

Jeremy looked at him with ice cold eyes, but Damon could see the fear that had been roused in them.

'I can explain,' Stefan said slowly.

Jeremy ignored him, turning around as Alaric appeared out of the living room. 'Do I hear a commotion?'

'Elena's a vampire,' Damon said quickly, before Stefan could begin to think of anything. 'Just thought I'd drop that bombshell now rather than wait half an hour while Stefan tries to sugar-coat it.'

There was a long pause. 'Have you invited her in?' he asked.

'No,' Jeremy shrugged, 'but I'm sort of guessing that would be the next step.'

'I don't know if there is some sort of strange mental debate going on here, but it's not like I'm going to turn evil and kill you guys, I mean seriously, just invite me in,' there was something about the way that Elena said it that made Damon think for a second; what if she did go evil? He remembered what had happened with Vicki Donovan, and tried to push those kinds of thoughts out of his mind.

'Of course, I – come in,' Jeremy swallowed, standing out of the way as Elena stepped inside. Damon thought he saw her breathe in a little too deeply as she walked past the two humans in the house.

#

'You think you know someone, and then…' Jeremy looked down at his fingers.

'Look, I'm no therapist, so I'm not going to sit here and tell you that everything is going to be alright,' one-on-one conversations like this were not ones that Damon enjoyed finding himself in. 'But Elena hasn't changed. Not inside, I mean. Look at Caroline, she's still the same right? And Bonnie's a witch and you don't look at her any differently. Elena is still Elena.'

'Except now every time she sees me she's going to want to rip my throat out.'

'Where's Jenna?' Damon didn't want to address that particular topic of conversation.

Jeremy shrugged. 'I don't know, she went out with some guy that she met in one of her lectures.'

Confused, Damon raised his eyebrows. 'Aren't she and Alaric…?'

'I don't think that the guy she met is really that kind of thing, I think she genuinely just wanted to talk to him about her dissertation.'

Much as Damon hated to get himself embroiled in pointless human gossip, he wanted to ask more. Realising that this probably wasn't the subject that Jeremy would want to talk about right now, he cleared his throat and stood up. 'I'm gonna go and see how she's doing.'

He took the stairs two at a time, pushing open Elena's bedroom door and finding her sat on her bed, mobile in her hand and looking much better than she had half an hour ago.

She was wearing her own blue tank top with a black skirt and white jacket, and her hair was clean and free from the blood of earlier. Once again he was struck by how completely and utterly she looked like Katherine. In fact, the way that she smiled when she saw him was disconcerting – it could've been a scene from a hundred years ago.

'I can't seem to bring myself to call Bonnie,' she waved her mobile at him, 'one click on speed-dial away but I'm too scared to just press a button. Stefan went outside to call Caroline.'

'Well you don't have to call Bonnie right now – just call her when you feel like you're ready.'

'She's gonna be angry enough as it is – I don't want her to be the last person in Mystic Falls to find out!'

'Elena, you need to stop being so scared that everyone is going to be angry with you!' Damon rolled his eyes. 'If they're going to be angry with anyone then it should be me, I mean I'm the one who changed you.'

'You're the one who saved my life,' she smiled at him.

'Anyone else would've done the same in the situation. It was an easy choice.'

'You know what the scary thing is? I don't think that Stefan would've changed me. I think he would've let me die.'

'That's ridiculous, Elena,' much as it pained Damon to say it, he knew he couldn't let her go on thinking that Stefan was the bad guy, 'he would change you if it was a choice between that and death. I know him well enough to know that.'

'Then why hasn't he changed me all this time that Klaus has been after me? I could've died any of these past few weeks. At least you considered it.'

'What I did to you was unforgiveable,' despite himself, he raised a hand and ran his fingers through her hair. 'And yet you still forgave me.'

'I don't think I can stay angry with you for that long,' she bit her lip. 'You know, you said to me once… or maybe it was Stefan… that once you become a vampire, everything is heightened. Not just your senses, but your emotions too. I'm realising things about how I feel that I never even noticed when I was a human.'

'And what sort of things would those be?'

She drew away from him, 'just stuff. I never knew that losing my parents could hurt this much, I didn't realise that it could get any worse.'

Well that hadn't been what Damon had been expecting. He glanced up and saw that Stefan was standing in the doorway. How long had he been watching them? And at one point had Elena realised he was there, making her break off the moment with Damon?

'Caroline wasn't answering her phone,' he said coldly. 'We should probably pack you a bag to take back to the house.'

'Whoa, I can't stay here?'

'Yeah, Stefan, surely it would be best if she could stay with her family.'

'Until she gets hungry at one in the morning and decides to kill one of them.'

'Excuse me?' she gaped at him. 'I might be a vampire, but I'm not a freaking idiot! I'm not going to kill Jeremy, or Jenna or Alaric! I can't believe you even consider that!'

'Fine, you know what, make the decision with Damon, since you two seem to have gotten so close over the last few hours!'

And then he vanished.

'Stefan!' she shouted after him.

'Let him go,' Damon caught her arm before she could move, 'I know my brother, he'll run out of steam in a couple of hours.'

'God, I've been a vampire for all of two hours and I'm already ruining everything!'

'You aren't ruining anything!'

'I'm pushing Stefan away, and I don't want to, I love him! And I saw the look on Jeremy's face when he saw me – I'm not his sister anymore, I'm just another vampire.'

'Don't talk like that!' Damon found himself almost shouting. 'You haven't done anything wrong, and you're the exact same Elena that you were before. So maybe people are going to look at you a bit differently, but not Caroline and Bonnie, and definitely not me!'

'Stefan does,' there were tears in her eyes. 'He never wanted me to be like this – this is like his worst nightmare! He pretended everything was alright back at the boarding house, but it took five minutes for the cracks to start to show.'

'Well then screw Stefan,' how much Damon had always wanted to say those words to her. 'If he isn't going to accept you for who you are now, then you sure as hell don't need to take crap from him.'

Elena wiped her eyes angrily. 'You really think he'll come around?'

'I know he will,' Damon sighed, 'my brother's lost too much to throw away the best thing that's ever happened to him.'

It was a fact that he knew he had to accept. Even now that everything had changed, he still had absolutely no chance of Elena ever loving him. Just like Katherine had never loved him like she loved Stefan – he was starting to grow used to the pattern.

As usual, previews of the next chapter will be sent to all reviewers who want them, and yes, there is lots of lovely Delena coming :P

PLEASE review, the more I get, the more I am reminded I do at some point have to update. Reviews make me stupidly happy, they are like cotton candy.