Prologue

The night he took her away from Mystic Falls was the deepest regret of his life. He remembered her face, those tears on her pale cheeks and most of all her remembered that look in her eyes. The image was etched into his mind, but he never managed to find the one word to describe it, he could only define aspects of it: Defeat, loss, disappointment, anger, desperation and mostly dullness. Like someone had blown out the only candle in the dark.

To this day he is not sure what he regrets more: Killing Tyler Lockwood or not revealing his action before agreeing to her deal. He never was such which action had broken her more.

They were still alive, all of them. The Doppelganger, the Salvatores, the human, the witch. But all of them were weakened, bruised and he was about to kill them. As he was about to reach for Matt Donovan, to mercifully break his neck, she was suddenly there, right in front of him. Pleading, begging, negotiating.

"You don´t need to kill us."

"I won´t kill all of you. Just everyone but you, love." he said, smirkingly, trying to push her out of his way.

"No."

"They tried to kill me first, they put me in a coffin."

"Yeah, and you ruined our lives first, you killed people we care about, threatened us, corrupted us, sorry, but you started this war."

Suddenly his hand was clasped tightly around her throat. "Are you saying I deserved having my heart stopped, sweetheart?" His voice was evil and sad, all at once.

"I am saying this won´t make you happy either."

"Why do you think I am planning on sparing you, love?"

For a long time, she only looked at him. It was quite a few breaths before she spoke again. "Take my life in exchange for theirs." It came out as quickly as she could manage. She was scared. Genuinely afraid for plenty of lives.

He remembered considering her proposal. Not his answer, he had been ready to bark his agreement the minute she had finished speaking. But he had considered telling her about Tyler. Before she promised her eternity to him. Only, he had been afraid she might change her mind.

He released her from his hold, while closing any distance left between them. "Okay." That was all he said. In a flash she was with Matt, feeding him her blood, before helping Elena up. The Doppelganger tried to protest. "Caroline, no, you can´t."

He remembered Caroline´s voice, as soft as an angel: "Ssh... Elena, it will be fine."

When everybody was ready to leave, she hugged them all, even Damon Salvatore, smiling like it was a sunny day and they were leaving a nice picnic. Smiling to sooth them all.

Matt had told her to come back to them. Bonnie had promised to look for a way for her out of this deal. Stefan had asked her to stay in touch somehow. Elena cried. Damon had uttered a humble Thank you.

"I need to explain this to my mom and to Tyler." He recalled that at the mentioning of the mutt´s name, his heart had sank. But he had no words to tell her. She took out her phone, calling him, and looked up confusedly at her friends, which were about to leave. She heard Tyler´s phone ring.

Her eye´s shot up to him in comprehension and in horror. He thought about stopping her, but instead only sighed. He could hear her run, after the noise. Her friends on her tail. She found the body two rooms away. He decided to go after her, the second he heard her open the door to that room. When he had flashed himself to the threshold, she was standing there, facing him with her back, looking down at the corpse. He could tell from her gradual change in composure that the realization was sinking in painfully slowly. Finally, she fell onto her knees next to Tyler´s lifeless body, looking at the gaping hole in chest, staring at the heart that lay next to him. And then she cried.

He remembered her cradling the body in her arms, kissing the boy´s cold lips, telling him that she loved him. Apologizing to him. A voice inside his head had some snarky comment on how he had brought it all onto himself, but he knew it would be a lie. The boy had done nothing wrong that all of his friends hadn´t done as well, only he had had her love.

He noticed that her friends, at least the witch and the Doppelganger, were trying to approach her, to sooth her. It was then, that he found his voice again. "Out, or the deal is off."

They all looked at him in disgust and confusion. Finally they left, the girls less willingly than the boys. Finally it was only him, her and the body. For a while, he let her cry.

However, eventually he got up. As he stood behind her, she hissed at him. "Go away." Instead he gently placed a hand onto her neck.

"You get 10 seconds to tell him goodbye." And she did. And each syllable dedicated to the dead boy stung him to the heart.

When she finally said "I´ll miss you." she caressed Tyler´s cheek once more, then she looked up at him. And he saw her fading light. Before he snapped her neck.

That was twenty years ago, she had kept her promise, she had never left. She never smiled or spoke either.