Chapter Four

Elena woke up still cradled in Damon's arms. Turning on her side, she wrapped her arm around his back. He stirred at her movement.

"Good morning, sunshine," Damon yawned.

Elena laughed. "We were only out for a couple hours."

"Hey, I'm still half asleep. Cut me a break."

"I know," she rolled out of bed. "I'm gonna go downstairs and get something to drink. Do you want anything?"

"Are you sure you don't want me to go with you?"

"Damon, it's not like I'm going mountain climbing. I'm making a trip to the kitchen. If anything happens, I'll call for you."

"Okay… Just grab me a blood bag from the fridge."

"Lucky," Elena sneered.

"Sorry I wasn't born a doppelganger," Damon said. "Besides, you already had a snack this morning."

"Not funny."

"You're right; you're right…"

As Elena made her way to the kitchen, she kept her eyes open for any signs of the curse coming back. She knew the hallucinations could start at any moment, but she refused to let them shake her any more than they already had.

She opened the refrigerator and grabbed a bag of blood and a pop. Elena eyed the red liquid enviously, wishing she could tear into the bag and suck it dry.

"Looks delicious, doesn't it?"

Elena gasped. "Aunt Jenna?"

"In the flesh," Jenna casually took a seat at the table. "Well, actually, not so much the flesh, thanks to you."

"No," Elena turned away. "You're not here. You're not real."

"Are you sure?"

Elena tried to walk away, but Jenna blocked her path.

"I was like you once, Elena. Even if I was the shortest-lived vampire ever," said Jenna. "Actually, now that I think about it… if it weren't for you, I'd probably still be alive. Don't you find it funny how death follows you everywhere?"

Pushing Jenna out of the way, Elena tried to run to the staircase. Jeremy darted out in front of her.

"Jer? No…"

"What's wrong, Elena?" he asked, raising a stake over his head. "Afraid I'm going to kill you before you get the chance to kill me?"

"I'd never do that! I killed Connor for you!"

Jeremy ignored her. "A few months ago we were two regular kids in a seriously screwed up situation. But we've both changed. One of us for the better. One of us for the worse."

"Jeremy, please," Elena begged. "You're the only family I've got left. We have to stick together on this."

"But you're not my family!" Jeremy yelled. "You're not my sister anymore. You're just like the rest of them. You'll rip people apart like Stefan. You'll lose control and kill people on a whim, just like Damon. You don't even care anymore. Remember when he snapped my neck without even thinking? Oh, wait. I guess you can relate now."

"I did that to save you," she backed up.

"Come on. Connor wouldn't have killed me, and you know it," Jeremy fiddled with the stake. "He protected humans. He just wanted to get at you and the rest of the freaks."

He rushed Elena. She ducked down, covering her head with her arms. When she opened her eyes, Jeremy was gone. Breathing a sigh of relief, Elena steadied herself against the wall.

Bonnie appeared before her, hands on her hips. "Why do I even bother helping you anymore? I should've known that spell would never work. You're too far gone."

"What? That doesn't even-"

"The only reason I got involved in this vampire business was to protect the people I love. My grams taught me that it was a witch's job to protect family and friends first and foremost. But Grams wasn't stupid like me. She recognized that witches and vampires could never really be friends. You're disgusting."

"No. No, you'd never-"

"Elena!" Damon darted down the stairs and grabbed her by the shoulders. "They're not real. There's nobody there. It's okay."

Alaric stood at her side. "I always taught you to be cautious around vampires. I taught you to defend yourself so you wouldn't turn into Isobel."

"I'm nothing like her!"

"Elena! Just focus on me, not them," Damon begged.

She pulled away from Damon, only to be confronted by Caroline.

"Don't you have any self-control?" she asked. "After all Stefan's done for you, you still want his brother. Do you have any idea how selfish that is? Or do you just not care anymore?"

"Stop saying you weren't yourself, Elena!" Bonnie said coldly. "From the moment I saw you at that party, I knew you were gone for good. All that time I spent trying to save you was for nothing. I would've never bothered if I knew this was what you would become."

"No, no, no!" Elena screamed. Rage overtook her judgment. She wanted to drain them. Stab them. Snap their necks. Anything to make it stop. Elena didn't care that they were her friends and family. In that moment, her anger and hatred trumped their worth. She ripped a leg from the closest chair, ready to stab the next person who interrogated her.

Elena spun around and swung. Damon sped out in front of her, grabbing her arm and holding it steady.

"Let go of me!" she growled. "I know I'm a freak! I'm a terrible person! I shouldn't exist! Go ahead and tell me! Everybody else is!"

"Elena, no," Damon said calmly as he ripped the stake from her hand and threw it on the ground. He held her wrists tight and stared into her eyes. "I'm not gonna do that. Just calm down, okay? I'll help you through this. I'm here. This is real. Remember what I told you?"

Her arms shook violently. "I…"

Damon placed her clenched fist over his heart. "You know I'm real. I'd never leave you alone with this curse."

He wasn't insulting her or calling her a killer. He didn't bring up the countless times she rejected him in favor of Stefan. He just stood there and held her. Elena sunk into his embrace, and Damon wrapped his arms around her.

She opened her eyes and peered over Damon's shoulder.

Stefan shook his head. "I was kidding myself if I thought it'd actually work between us. Look at you. You're so fickle."

"I warned you about Damon," said Jenna. "But a vampire wants what a vampire wants. They only care about pleasing themselves."

Connor stood next to her, his shirt drenched in blood. "I hope it was worth it, freak."

"Want some more blood, Elena?" asked Matt.

"You can have some of mine," April moved her hair out of the way to expose her neck. "I'm so proud. I came really close to becoming your first victim."

"Damon, they won't go away…" Elena whispered.

"Shh…" he rubbed her back. "Don't look at them. Don't listen to them. Just focus on me."

She buried her face in his shoulder.

"Tune them out," Damon said. "Listen to me. You're not Stefan. You're not me. You're definitely not Katherine. You're your own person. And even if you're still figuring out who that is, that's okay. It took me hundreds of years to adjust. There's no hurry. I'll be here for as long as it takes. We have all the time in the world."

Her hallucinations persisted, but she tuned them out. Elena focused her energy on Damon's touch. On the thoughts that circled her mind.

"I'm not the same person anymore," she said.

"No, you're not," Damon stroked her hair. "But that's okay. You need to accept it if you wanna get through this."

Elena thought back to the moment Connor tried to stake her. The rage she felt. The intense pleasure of snapping his neck. It was wrong, and she knew it. At the same time, the havoc Connor had caused was inexcusable. He had tried to kill nearly all of her friends - even the human ones. Being a vampire hunter was one thing, but his tactics were reserved for the true scum of the earth. In truth, Connor was more like Klaus than Jeremy. And he was human.

She opened her eyes and nudged Damon out of the way. Connor appeared in front of her, smiling smugly. Grabbing the stake from the floor, Elena inched toward her victim.

"So what? I killed you," Elena said, her voice drenched in hate. "Maybe I'll kill more people. I don't know. But you wanna know what I do know?"

"What's that?"

"I might be a murderer," she rammed the stake through Connor's ribs. "But you're no better than me."

As she pulled the stake from his chest, Connor crumpled to the floor and groaned in pain. He disappeared as suddenly has he had come.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Elena let the weapon clunk to the floor.

"Okay, so I'm a little confused," said Damon. Did you just stab the air, or…"

"It was Connor," she explained. "It's finally over."

"Thanks for walking me home," Elena said as they stepped onto her porch.

"Well, we had to make sure it was gone for good."

"Seems like it is."

"So what Bonnie did actually worked," Damon shook his head. "I never would've guessed."

"I think acceptance was the key to the spell. And everything you said… it helped me accept the person I've become," she admitted. "You know… In the end, the curse actually helped me. I'm not human. I feel different. And I want different things."

"What do you mean?"

"Well… Klaus was totally right about the hallucinations. Sure, most of the time they brought out my greatest fears. But there was the desire side of it, too."

Damon smiled wryly. "Your dream."

Elena hesitated. Despite her problems, the dream was still fresh in her mind. Because of it, she felt closer to Damon than ever before. Still, it was a memory only she held. That night, their first time together... it had never really happened. She couldn't hold back her thoughts any longer.

"We haven't really talked about what's been going on between us," she said. "With the curse and everything."

Damon moved toward her. "You know how I feel, Elena. I don't care if you're human. I don't care if you're a vampire. You mean the same to me as you did back then."

"And if being a vampire starts to consume me," she reached for his hand. "You'll be there to pull me back?"

"You pulled me back from a very dangerous ledge," he said. "When I think about who I was even a year ago… I mean, sure, I knew how to have fun, but if you got on my bad side…"

She rubbed Damon's palm with her thumb. "Sometimes I forget about that. It seems like such a long time ago."

"Like a lifetime ago. And I know a thing or two about lifetimes."

Elena cleared her throat. "Look. I, um… This stuff's always been kind of hard for me to say. Especially to you. For so long I told myself that this wasn't what I wanted. Even after I turned. But the truth is… when I became a vampire, I wanted this more than anything. I wanted you."

Damon smiled softly. Cupping his hand under her chin, he drew her in close.

"It's just so hard for me to say exactly what I mean," she whispered.

He kissed her gently. "You don't need to say anything."

Author's Note: Four down, one to go! What could possibly happen in the next chapter? Hmm… Probably not all that hard to guess. ;)

In the rest of the note, I'm going to talk about some spoilery topics, so I'm warning you now. If you haven't seen the preview for the next episode, you might not want to read this stuff.

I decided to use Jeremy as a hallucination because today I realized how damn ironic Elena and Damon's "neck snapping incidents" were. Hear me out if you're interested my quasi-literary analysis.

Damon snapped Jeremy's neck because he was fed up with the fact that Elena said she would always choose Stefan over him. In a wonderfully beautiful parallel, Elena snaps Connor's neck (in a very Damon-like style) to SAVE Jeremy. The fact that she's more like Damon gives her the strength to save her brother, even though Damon's impulsive demeanor is what caused Jeremy's death in the first place. However, it was Elena's humanity that brought out the good in him, despite the fact that he kept making mistakes. Lo and behold, he's turned into one of the more moral characters on this show (I say "more moral" because, come on, almost everybody's a dark shade of gray on TVD.) That's what makes him perfect for Elena. That's why, now, she's choosing Damon. As she encounters problems with her own humanity, Damon's humanity will be there to pull her back. THAT is how you do situational irony. It's one of many, many examples of what makes this show so good, and I really applaud the writers and producers for bringing it such depth.

Okay, sorry. I majored in English. Sometimes I need to be a lit nerd and express these things. Anyway, how 'bout last week's episode? Amazing, IMO. And the preview for the episode the week after Thanksgiving? I geeked out. If you live under a rock and haven't seen it, you seriously need to head over to YouTube.

I hope you liked this chapter! I'll be updating soon.