A/N: Final chapter of this series for you lovely people. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did writing it:

"Stefan Salvatore?"

From where he's been sitting and half trying but mostly failing to sleep for the past 4 hours, Stefan lifts his head. He rises off the chair immediately when he notices the Doctor standing just shy behind the nurse.

"What is it?" Stefan asks quickly, trying to gauge the expression on their faces, knowing how this worked. Their job was to poker play it; give absolutely nothing away that couldn't be said through words. Faces weren't dangerous though, words were.

"We've managed to get her into a stable condition but she's lost a lot of blood, she's going to need transfusions now I've…"

"I can give her blood, I'm a match."

Both the nurse and Doctor chance to catch one another's eye before staring back at Stefan.

"Right now, let's do it now." Stefan says, stepping forward. The nurse holds up one hand though, now smiling.

"It's okay Mr Salvatore, we'll arrange everything. You just need to wait here."

She turns quickly and leaves, leaving the Doctor still standing there, watching him,

"Mr Salvatore you'll have to understand the implications that have happened here, giving her the transfusions doesn't guarantee that'll her condition will be consistent from here on out, you'll need to prepare yourself."

Stefan lets out a scoff and crosses his arms over his chest, looking down to the floor. He was struggling between trying hard not to fall right over; or to punch the guy in the face.

"Dr Watson have you ever been in love?" He asks, looking back up.

Dr Watson, taken aback, stutters, usually so precise with his wording.

"I will never be prepared for losing her, neither will her brother or her friends. We're both fighting this, her and me, together, we're prepared for that and that alone." Stefan turns away and sinks back down into the chair, letting his head fall into his hands. It's quiet for a moment but he hears the footsteps, moving to turn out of the room, stop suddenly.

"I wasn't prepared for losing my wife to cancer, Mr Salvatore and I wasn't prepared for the days afterwards, listening to her speak on our answering machine just to hear her voice. I'm not telling you to give up, I'm asking you to be ready for when it's not longer your choice to do so."

He walks out of the room, shutting the door and Stefan slips down off the chair and lies against the ground, wondering how impossible it was that the earth wasn't splitting.

Nobody can find Damon when they eventually roll her out of ICU and back down into her room. But Stefan takes it upon himself to search, he always knew where to look anyway and it gave Jeremy time alone to be with Elena.

It's impossible to pin point his voice out of the hundreds in the hospital so he starts by floor. He almost skips the maternity ward completely but stops, catching the black jacket out of the corner of his eye as he rushed out of the elevator.

He's hunched over, sitting in one chair amongst a sea of them in the visitor's area. It's empty, all but the two of them and the receptionist at the very end, tucked behind a boxed desk.

"What are you doing here, Damon?"

He can hear, like his brother can, the sound of babies crying out into the air for the first time, of fathers and mothers overcome with joy. It's both horrifying and beautiful at the same time.

"What if she dies?" Damon asks quietly.

Stefan slowly walks past the line of chairs, walking through them to sit down just behind his brother so they weren't facing one another. Though he wishes that they were for this, it's easier that they're not.

"Why are you asking me this, Damon?" He asks and watches as Damon shakes his head a little.

"I know you, I know you don't think that I do, Stefan but I do. Better than anyone, almost. You're my brother and you love her, you love her more than you ever loved Katherine, more than you ever loved me-"

"Different," Stefan cuts in quickly, lifting his head higher, "It's a different love."

"Regardless." Damon shrugs.

Stefan thinks for a moment about what to say, about the words he needs to use in order to relieve his brother, in order to somehow make him see even though Stefan couldn't really see himself.

It's the truth though, what comes most quickly to mind. To tell his brother the truth.

"I won't leave you."

Damon lifts his head, barely turning it back, "But you'll want too, just to not feel her absence anymore, to not have to keep waking up everyday without her, to not have to live."

Stefan rises from his chair, no longer managing the sounds that were blaring in his ear. He had to get back to Elena but he stops just as he's reached the end of the row, turning his head back to see that Damon was already looking at him, "Yes I'll want too, of course I'll want too but I won't. You're here, Damon, you're my brother and you're here."

He leaves, feeling the tears down his brother's cheeks like they were falling on his.

She loses consciousness when he's walking back to the room and they're paddling her; with all three of them, Jeremy, Bonnie and Caroline, in tears standing just outside the door just as he's coming around the corner.

"What happened?" He asks, pushing past them to get through but a Nurse reaches over to grab him just as an orderly yells out, "Start it up again!."

"Please Mr Salvatore, you'll have to wait outside."

Stefan pushes against her, frantically trying to find Elena's face amongst a sea of white and blue uniforms, "I'm not leaving her."

Whether she knows it's not an equal fight or because she has more important things to attend to, she drops her arms and lets him by.

They shock her again but the monitor continues to flat line and Stefan finally catches her face, pale against the pillow and no longer feels his hear beating, his hands connected to his body or his feet on the floor.

"We're not getting any response, Dr, try another round?"

Stefan doesn't take his eyes off Elena and he hears, only distantly the order of another round to be administrated. He thinks, as they charge the paddles up, of what he had told Damon only seconds ago; what he had promised.

"We've got a pulse, we've got a pulse, it's faint but it's there."

Stefan's eyes roll to the back of his head and he lets air rush back into his lungs, suddenly feeling faint as the room starts becoming a little emptier; the crash cart being wheeled out.

"Mr Salvatore?"

Dr Watson is staring at him with eyes that are filled with something Stefan only reads as remorse. He doesn't think he'll able to bear it, hearing what he knows he's about to be told.

"Let me be with her without the constraints of knowing it might be the last time…okay? Just…let me be with here." Stefan whispers, tearing his eyes away from her to his. Dr Watson looks at him for a moment but nods gently and gestures to the nurses to leave.

The door shuts, leaving the room eerily quiet and it takes him a full minute to move from where he's standing, tucked away in the corner.

He pulls a chair over to the bed and takes her arm, weaving his fingers through hers, kissing the bend of her elbow as he rests his head there.

"Why…why are you crying?" A voice mumbles and he jolts his head up, reaching over to clutch her face.

"Hey, hey baby, try not to speak too much, okay." He whispers gently, fumbling over a smile and his tears.

She groans but manages to nudge her nose into his palm, "My…head…hurts."

Stefan brushes hair away from her face, rubbing his thumbs slowly over her temples, "You went into cardiac arrest and they had to operate again, they needed to give you blood because of how much you had lost."

She flicks her eyes around the room, suddenly looking nervous but settles them back on him, "Your blood?" She asks quietly.

He smiles and kisses her forehead again, "My blood." He sinks back down into the chair, reaching for her hand again. She doesn't say anything but moves her fingers over his palm.

"It's not going to work." She suddenly says.

It's like she's just screamed at him, the air practically being knocked right out of his chest as he sits up further in his chair.

"What do you mean, you're stable, it's going to be okay, you're going to be okay, Elena." He quickly says, panic flooding him.

But she closes her eyes and turns her head against the pillow, letting her fingers slide through his and presses out the gaps between their hands.

"Don't do this to me, okay? You are not going to give up on me."

Elena opens her eyes, a tear slipping down her cheek and into the blankets.

"You need to let me go, Stefan." She whispers and he glares and drops her hand, standing from the chair he kicks away from the bed. She couldn't be doing this to him, she couldn't.

"Stefan…" She tries quietly

His breathing was coming out in rough clumps and he turns back around, stopping mid-pace to look at her desperately, "How could you do this to me?"

She shakes her head and opens her mouth to say something but hesitates before closing it, it was getting harder and harder to move her arms, her toes and more than anything else, the feeling was calming and not terrifying.

"What am I supposed to do now?" He asks and looks away out the window, tears run down his cheeks and he wipes them away with the back of his hand.

"What am I…what am I supposed to do now?" He breaks out through his tears, turning around and staring at her.

"Stefan, come here."

Without resignation or thought he carries himself back over to the bed and lays his head down against the mattress as she put her hand against his neck, hushing him softly through his sobs.

"I love you, I do, I love you so much and you will live, you will live because that is what you are supposed to do. For me if not for anything else." She whispers against his hair, closing her eyes again, her hand dropping back to the bed.

He crawls into that bed and holds her, not hearing the way she suddenly stopped breathing, how the heartbeat monitor flat lined again; the noise ringing around the room. Nobody comes in and nobody bothers them as she dies and he lies there, minutes later, gripping to her body, weeping into her hair in the quiet darkness.

But Jeremy walks in and Stefan, somehow, manages to stand, every single last inch of him, piece, numb. Numb to Jeremy's sobbing, numb to everything but the need to get as far away as he could, to keep moving for as long as he could.

"Stefan, Stefan…Stefan come back!"

He's against the wall, pressing his face against it and unable to walk any further when Jeremy's voice along with a much softer hum that Stefan doesn't recognize, comes into range.

"You have to come back, you have to come back." Jeremy repeats as Stefan begins to step slowly back down the hall. He doesn't know if he can see it again, her body, he really doesn't but he's walking through the doorway and coming into the room because that sound, that noise that was merged in with Jeremy's, suddenly becomes clear. Blindingly clear.

Elena was gasping violently, her back arching on the bed and Stefan rushes over, throwing out his arms to hold her down. He's crying and laughing and he doesn't honestly know how he's heart's still beating after the plethora of emotions he's just experienced in the past 10 minutes.

"What's happening? Should I get a Doctor?" Jeremy splutters, standing at the end of the bed.

Stefan moves his arms away from her body and instead clutches for her face, her body settling. Her eyes fly open and Stefan's elbows almost give way, "Elena," He gasps as she spun her eyes reflectively all over the room.

"Stefan, what is going on?" Jeremy asks loudly, "What happened to her?"

And Stefan rests his forehead to hers, his heartbeat flying, as she focused her eyes on his face.

"I died." She whispers with a small smile, "That's what happened to me."

A/N: …yeah, rather abrupt ending but she's turned! And just a minor side note, Stefan gave her his blood for the transfusions with no underlining intentions of doing it to turn her, it was a surprise for them both.