(your compassion is a gift. carry it with you always.)

Her name was Elena Gilbert, and she was Nature's payback.

She was tragedy embodied in the form of a bad girl turned good. She was the little orphan of Mystic Falls, the girl whose parents died in that car crash. She was the party girl—the quintessential cheerleader—who spiraled to such a low point that she was constantly being kept alive by those who surrounded her after the death of her family.

Before the accident, she had been fabulous. Ask anybody, and that's what they would call her. Fabulous. She threw parties, she danced, she got drunk, and she had fun. She was the girl who blew off Family Night, and the girl who flirted with random people. She was that girl that everyone loved, because she was lovable, even with her mistakes. Then it all fell apart.

She had been at a party. She got utterly smashed, she fought with her boyfriend, and her parents had to come to pick her up. And before they got there, Elena met a guy.

Oh, he was so much more than any guy. He was darkness personified, and his voice sent shivers down her spine. He radiated charm and lust and passion. In other words, he was exactly what she wanted. He told her everything that she needed to hear. She was dating the All-American boy. She needed more, and he knew that. Somehow or another, he saw into her soul that night, and saw that she wanted passion, adventure, and even a little danger. Damon, the mysterious stranger, recognized that she wanted a love that consumed her. He seemed to get her in a way that no one else had.

Too bad she wouldn't remember that meeting for almost two more years.

That night, right after her meeting with that stranger, Elena's parents picked her up. And on the way home, her dad lost control of the car—they had been yelling at each other because she was stupid enough to go and get drunk, and it was all her fault—and the three Gilberts went off of Wickery Bridge and into the depths below. Elena was awake for most of it. Her mother was unconscious (dead?) when they hit the water. Her father was still awake. But then the water slipped over her, and the air ran out, and she gave up.

The next thing she remembered was waking up in a hospital with her Uncle John staring down at her, and her Aunt Jenna holding a crying Jeremy. That was the day that her nightmare called life began.

It was four months later, and she had to put on the fake grin. She would smile, and it would be believable. And then she met him, and everything changed. His name was Stefan Salvatore, and she met him outside of the men's restroom at school. Romantic it may not have been, but he was hot, and she needed someone to love her, and he wanted to be that guy. He was so kind, so loving, and he fell just as fast for her as she did for him.

Then she met his brother Damon, and she hated him. Damon was an ass in every way, and Elena couldn't stand to look at him. He did horrible things to her best friend Caroline, and he was cruel and sadistic in Elena's eyes. She hated him.

Oh, but the Salvatore brothers were hiding a deep secret, and when Elena found out what Stefan was, she flipped. He hid that he was…that from her. He scared her. But oh, she loved him in spite of it, and she told him how she felt in an act of desperation to keep him with her. They got one lovely night together. It was when Elena spied the tin-type of what could be her identical twin on Stefan's table that she got scared.

Katherine… His (and Damon's, for that matter) ex-girlfriend was Katherine. She lived in 1864 where she met the brothers. All this she had known before. What she didn't know was that they looked exactly alike. It was scary, how identical they were. It made Elena want to go change her face, or her clothes, or her body, or just something that wouldn't make her look exactly like Katherine.

She settled with rushing from the Boarding House in the middle of the night. What she didn't count on was crashing her car and almost being attacked by a mysterious vampire. In her desperate moment, the last person she expected to help her, did.

She woke up the next morning in Damon's precious blue Camaro, halfway to Georgia. She was pissed at Stefan for not telling her about Katherine, and Damon's suggestion of stepping back for five minutes sounded heavenly. She needed to let loose—to become the carefree girl that she was before the accident again. It was time to let off some steam. An added bonus was saving Damon's life from a pissed-off vamp, and she would never let him forget it. She and Damon rolled back into Mystic Falls the next day laughing like old friends. They had bantered over music, and life choices, and whether or not high school was actually a waste of time, and she was more like the old Elena than she had ever been since the accident. Something in Damon brought out that alive side in her, and she truly valued his friendship.

Stefan didn't understand her and Damon's friendship, but he accepted it, and Elena appreciated that. Stefan would always let her make her own decisions. He trusted her not to do anything to stupid, and if she did, she was just a seventeen year old human. He knew much more about things than she did, so of course he knew when she was acting stupid.

Then Stefan went off the rails, and Elena saw another side to the saintly Stefan that she knew and loved. It was a side that she didn't really like. At all. That Stefan scared her. He was not in control. He was… He was a monster, when he was like that.

In hindsight, she should have felt bad about what she did while her boyfriend was out there destroying a girl, but she didn't. Of course, it would have been Stefan, had he been in the proper state of mind. But instead it was Damon standing at the bottom of that staircase, looking up at her. And it was Damon who made her insides flip-flop, because his gaze conveyed things that Elena knew she could not understand yet. She had not seen enough of the world and its tragedies yet to understand what was shown in the piercing eyes of the man with the dark soul, but she knew that it enraptured her during their dance. The simple intimacy of the near touch was the theme of the dance, and intimate it certainly was. But simple? No, that dance was not simple. All that one dance did was complicate things further down the line. Elena did not regret it though. She could never regret a moment like that.

Then Isobel—apparently her parents had forgotten to mention the little fact that she was adopted to her before they died—showed back up in town to raise hell. Her birthmother seemed to enjoy screwing everyone's life up, and Elena hated her for it. The woman was coincidentally the ex-wife of Elena's history teacher, Alaric Saltzman, and she had hunted down Damon, asking him to turn her years ago. Finding out that Alaric was sort-of her stepfather had been a shock, but finding out that the man she had always known as her uncle was now her biological father, was worse. Elena had never had a strong relationship with her Uncle John, and she detested him as her biological father. To Elena, her parents would always be Miranda and Grayson Gilbert. They were the people who raised her, and loved her, and they were her parents. Isobel and John may have created her, but they had had no part in her upbringing. That was what mattered, in the very end.

Everything was falling apart at Elena's feet, and she didn't even know what was cresting on the horizon. Founder's Day—a big event in Mystic Falls—had started off well, and then spiraled down quickly. John set off a device that exposed the vampires of Mystic Falls, and Damon almost died while Elena was getting Stefan away. Then Jeremy's vampire girlfriend Anna did die, and it was like their parents had died all over again. The grief in her little brother's eyes was so prevalent; it killed Elena to even look at him. He was only fifteen. He didn't deserve this pain. Anna was Jeremy's second girlfriend to die on him—Vicki Donovan was the first. All Elena wanted to do was call Damon once more, and have him take away Jeremy's grief for Anna, like he did with Vicki, but that would only make Jeremy hate her. They were just getting back to a normal relationship. They didn't need any hindrances.

To take the cake, Elena's vampire ancestor Katherine Pierce—yes, that Katherine—showed up in Mystic Falls, and started creating havoc wherever she walked. Katherine was a bitch, and Elena hated her with every fiber of her being. Not only did they look exactly alike, but Elena hated that she used to be Katherine, in strange way.

She was the queen bee and the petty cheerleader before her parents died. She was a lot like Katherine, and it scared her. Stefan… Well, Stefan loved that Elena was the anti-Katherine. He loved that Elena was totally different from the girl that he loved in 1864. He may have never said it explicitly, but Elena could tell. It often made her wonder that, had Stefan met her before the accident, if he would even have fallen in love with her, Elena, or if would he have fallen for Katherine's Human Copy. He might have just hated her, and never have fallen in love with her at all. She was eternally thankful that she would never have to show that…shallow side of her to her boyfriend. He would never know what she was like before he met her.

To make everything worse, Damon did the Ultimate Unforgivable, and Elena lost her close friend and the person that she really needed right then. She understood later that, in his twisted Damon-y way, he was grieving for Katherine, and he was grieving for himself, and he was grieving for the one hundred and forty-five years he had wasted, but that didn't excuse the fact that he killed her brother. Damon, in a fit of rage, had snapped Jeremy's neck, not knowing that Jeremy had the life-saving Gilbert Ring on. And Elena hated him for it. Elena was a forgiving person. She loved people, and she cared easily. She would let a lot of things slide for those that she cared about. But Jeremy was her brother. He and Jenna were all she had left. It wasn't okay that Damon had killed him, even if it was only temporarily.

She did appreciate his honesty in regards to the situation—he could have easily told her that he had seen the ring, and she would have believed him—but he chose to be clear with her that he didn't know Jeremy was wearing the ring. He knew that he would lose her friendship because of it, but he still told her anyways. And that was something that slightly redeemed him in her eyes. Elena valued when people were straight with her. She didn't enjoy being kept in the dark, and she had to know what was going on, especially when it regarded someone she cared about. And, even with all of his screw-ups, Damon Salvatore was someone she cared deeply for, and he was someone that had always been honest with her. She considered him to be one of her best friends, and Elena would grieve the loss of their friendship, just as she knew he would. But he still did it, and that would take time for her to get over fully.

When they all found out that Caroline—sweet, bubbly, Caroline—had been turned by Katherine as a form of payback, rage was the first thing that coursed through Elena's veins. Caroline had been an innocent in this. She had been purposefully left out of the loop as a form of protection. They didn't want to stifle her, or worry her, or make her over-analyze the whole situation. The secret of vampires was kept from Caroline to keep her safe and unaffected, and then Katherine had to screw it all up. When Elena saw her best friend sobbing over the fact that she had just killed someone, blood smeared across her normally pristine face, her heart broke in two. Caroline was a girl that cared too much. When Elena's parents had died, she had been over at their house almost every day, never without a casserole, or brownies, or muffins, or just something. She was shallow, yes, but she was shallow in her own special-Caroline way. You always knew that beneath her exterior she genuinely cared. And now she had been dragged into something that she never should have known about, simply because Katherine Pierce was the biggest bitch on earth.

At least she was on good terms with Stefan. He was honestly just such a sweet boyfriend, especially in light of everything that was going on. He even took her to ride on the Ferris Wheel at the carnival, just so that he could fulfill her dream of kissing at the top of one. Yet, sitting on top of that ride with Stefan, she couldn't help but feel that everything was going to get more complicated in the days to come. She couldn't have been more correct.

Katherine came after Aunt Jenna next—it seemed everyone close to Elena was dropping like flies. Elena had gotten a phone call from her ancestor, and the next thing she knew, Jenna had stabbed herself with a kitchen knife. By now, Jenna was the only one of Elena's loved ones to be kept out of the vampirism loop. She was the last normal one left. In reaction to this, she ended things with Stefan. It hurt, but Elena had to do it. He was the reason that she was brought into this. If he never entered into her life, she would have been able to live her life out contentedly with Jenna and Jeremy. They would have been safe. Stefan just… Stefan was making her life more complicated than it needed to be, and Elena couldn't deal with it.

After the events of the Masquerade, Katherine was locked away in the tomb under Fell's Church, and everything seemed to be safe. But, in true Mystic Falls fashion, everything went south. Again.

It all started when Elena was kidnapped. Apparently she couldn't get lucky enough to just have Katherine as the worst person after her. No, as a Doppelganger, she was now special, and there were more people that wanted her. What a lovely existence she was doomed to lead. Stefan and Damon were able to safely rescue her from the clutches of Rose, Trevor, and Elijah, but now things were just going to get worse. She had the oldest vampire in the history of vampires after her to break a curse, and apparently she was the key ingredient in said ritual. She had to die because someone else wanted to break a curse, and it wasn't fair. Yet, she would do it just to keep those she loved safe. She couldn't live with herself, knowing that she could have prevented someone else from dying. It would be too much for her heart to bear.

That night, she learned something that changed everything. Damon… He showed up in her room, holding her vervain necklace. To be honest, she had practically forgotten about it during the excitement of the day, but she was glad to have it back nonetheless. Stefan gave that necklace back to her, and it protected her from compulsion. The necklace kept her safe. But Damon had the necklace and he was telling her things about loving her—yes, Damon was in love with her—and that he couldn't be selfish with her. It was so shocking and surprising (but at the same time not at all) that she could do nothing but stand there and listen. This was Damon. Damon, the crazy and impulsive vampire. The man so opposite from Stefan, it was ridiculous. And he was telling her that he loved her. Oh god, was she like Katherine now? Did she do something like Katherine that made him fall in love with her? No, no, she couldn't have. When the words started pouring out of Damon's mouth—words that spoke of love and being selfish—she knew that he wouldn't just leave it with his words. She didn't expect the tears and the compulsion, though.

It was the second time Damon Salvatore compelled Elena Gilbert, and she would not remember the moment until she remembered their first encounter. It would also be the last.

While Katherine was stuck in the tomb, Elena went back to meet with her doppelganger. Outwardly, she wrote it off to everyone as information gathering. She needed to find out more about Klaus, and Katherine had clearly met him previously; her intel was valuable. Inwardly though, Elena was curious. Katherine was clearly an old vampire, and Elena was her direct blood descendant. Katherine may have been the biggest bitch Elena had ever met, but she was still family, and Elena had to know all about her past and their family. It was dangerous and stupid, but she needed to know where she came from. And by the end of the night, Elena thought that she might have actually seen a bit into the brain of Kateri…Katherine Pierce. She found out that her doppelganger ancestor had had a terrible life—it was worse than Elena's, which said something—and that she was not as horrible as everyone had pitched her to be. There had been genuine emotion on Katherine's face when Elena handed her their family history. She still hated her, but she felt that maybe her ancestor had a heart after all.

It was when John came back in town that Elena had had enough. Elijah was running around, Tyler was a werewolf, Damon just lost Rose (they had turned out to be surprisingly good friends) and compelled himself a new girlfriend, Bonnie and Jeremy had something going on between them, and it was just all too much. So, she grabbed Stefan and a couple of suitcases, and skipped to the Gilbert Family Lake House. It was time that they just have a romantic weekend to themselves. They both needed a break. Of course, they wouldn't exactly get that.

First Tyler and some werewolf friend of his showed up. Stefan managed to kill the other guy, and that problem was temporarily alleviated. But of course Elijah had to appear. It was he who pushed Elena to those drastic measures—he called their truce off, and was the catalyst that pushed her to stab herself. She had to be taken seriously. She was going to fight with all that she had to prevent herself from being sacrificed at the altar of a demon. She was Elena-effing-Gilbert, and she was not going to be left out of the plans to keep her alive, simply because they were plans to keep her alive. She was a Gilbert, and the Gilberts didn't go down without a fight.

It was when she watched Isobel die in front her eyes that Elena started to lose it. Klaus did this to her; he made her kill herself. Isobel may have never been her mother, but she was her mother. And while she hated the woman's guts, she did feel terrible about her dying. Isobel—while a horrible parent and a psychotic vampire—was the only mother she had left. That had meant something. But now Elena's spare mother had died, and there wasn't another one waiting in the wings.

Of course it wasn't enough that Klaus killed Isobel. No, he had to start stalking Elena too. His power was demonstrated to Elena Gilbert, that night in the school. He proved that he could infiltrate a safe event. He took over Alaric's body. Jeremy was in danger because of Klaus. And then, he killed Bonnie. Or at least he thought he killed Bonnie. Elena had been so scared—Bonnie was practically her sister, and the thought of her dead was too much to bear. When she had seen Bonnie's face on the webcam, she was more relieved and happy than she had been in a very long time. But still, Klaus had shown that he was dangerous and very, very, real. And that scared her. That is what drove Elena to do something that could possibly be very stupid. She undaggered Elijah.

She learned more about the Original Family from Elijah than she had ever really wanted to know. It turned out that Elijah and Klaus were brothers, and that they had both had a thing with Katherine way back in 1492. Yeah, both of them. Apparently Katherine Pierce had a penchant for brothers even as a human. Seriously, that girl just got worse and worse the longer Elena knew her. Then she learned that the lovely Sun and Moon curse was a fake. She wasn't going to be sacrificed to break a curse on the werewolf race; she was to be sacrificed because Klaus wanted to be hybrid. Even better.

It was when she got the phone call from Stefan that her heart broke. Klaus had dropped the vampirism bomb—while still in Alaric's form—on Jenna. Jenna had been the last normal one left, the last one untouched, and now she had the burden of knowing about this. As she talked with Jenna about what she had kept from her, Elena realized she had been so wrong to keep it from her aunt. Jenna deserved to know all along. She was her aunt, and she was the only parental figure she and Jeremy had, and Jenna should have been told long ago. It would be Elena's biggest regret with her Aunt Jenna.

Elena Gilbert did not wish to be a vampire. She didn't want it. She wanted to grow old, and have children, and she didn't want it. But Damon Salvatore took the choice away from her. She got why he forced her to drink his blood. He wanted her to stay alive, and she knew that he would always go to great lengths to keep her alive. But she didn't want to be alive like that. She was going to die that night—she was going to give herself up to Klaus, be sacrificed to break his curse, and now she was going to turn because of Damon. And she didn't want that. To escape, Stefan whisked her away on a last day together. As she sat on that mountain top talking with her boyfriend, she found that she was not sure what love actually was. Before she had claimed that it was always going to be Stefan, but faced with her last day alive on earth, she was not sure if he really was "the one". She was only seventeen, what did she know about love? Was she actually going to commit to Stefan for eternity, now that she was faced with it? She wasn't sure. She didn't know if she actually loved him. She thought she had, but now she just didn't know if what she felt was really true love.

When Klaus showed up at Elena's door, she went quietly. There was no point in fighting. She was going to turn when he killed her anyways. Jeremy still had Jenna, and even if she was a vampire, she would still be there, albeit different. Fighting the oldest vampire in existence was only going to make this blasted ritual more painful. Why make it harder on herself? So yes, when Klaus came to take Elena Gilbert to break the curse, she gave herself over easily. There just wasn't any point in caring about it anymore.

Aunt Jenna was dead. Instead of using Caroline and Tyler as the other sacrifices, Klaus used Jenna and a werewolf named Jules. He turned Jenna, and then killed her, right in front of Elena's eyes. Then to make it worse, John died. He gave up his life to keep Elena from turning, as he was able to do as her biological parent. While Elena had never been close to John, he was the last guardian left for she and Jeremy, and the last blood relative they had left on the earth. Unless you count Katherine, that is, and she wasn't exactly going to win any "Relative of the Year" award. But Jenna…her death hit the siblings hard. She was a wonderful person, and now she was gone. The only person that really understood how they felt was Alaric. Oh, Ric. He and Jenna had been in a relationship, and other than she and Jeremy, he was taking it the hardest. It just…it just wasn't fair! Jenna had been one of the sweetest people. She had been an amazing and fun aunt, and she had stepped up to be a fantastic guardian. And now she was dead, most likely because Elena had kept the secret from her for so long. If she had known, she would have been able to prepare, and to arm herself. Jenna would have been alive, had Elena just been more open with her, and it ate away at Elena like a parasite.

She couldn't lose anyone else, she just couldn't. But of all the people she could not lose, Elena could not bear to lose Damon. Even after his…transgression on Founder's Day, she had managed to forgive him, Jeremy had managed to forgive him, and he was back to being one of her best friends. Underneath his sarcastic and unfeeling exterior, she knew in her heart that Damon cared very deeply for her and Jeremy. He and Ric were even friends. And now Damon was dying from a werewolf bite that he obtained while trying to save her friends. If a cure was not found, Elena did not know what she would do. She couldn't handle Damon's death on top of the deaths of Jenna and John. Damon seemed to get her like no other. He understood her faults and her weaknesses, and accepted them. Caroline and Bonnie would always be her best girlfriends, but somehow, in some way, Damon Salvatore had become Elena Gilbert's best friend. And now he was dying.

He was saying things—things that she was unable to discern if they were from his heart, or a product of the hallucinations that the werewolf venom caused. He wasn't making sense. He said things about her meeting him in 1864; about how she would have liked the human version of him better. Yet, she found herself not wanting to know that Damon. She liked the harder version. She liked the caring and selfless man that had searched tirelessly for a way to release Katherine for 145 years. She liked the man that loved deeply and passionately. She liked the weathered man, because the Damon that had lived through the years was her Damon. The human version of him wouldn't be the same person. In a moment of weakness-a moment in which Stefan was not in her mind, Elena kissed Damon. It wasn't a romantic kiss, persay, but she did it. And she could not find herself regretting it, either.

In the end, it was Stefan who found the cure for Damon. Naturally, it was in the hands of their greatest enemy. Klaus's blood was the agent that would heal the bite of a werewolf, and it was Stefan who gave himself over to Klaus in exchange for enough of his blood to save Damon's life. She didn't know how far over the bridge Stefan had actually gone in order to obtain this until much, much, later.

It had been three months of searching for Stefan, and Elena was determined to save her boyfriend. Sure, they had been through a rocky patch before the sacrifice—she still wasn't totally sure that she truly loved him, after all—but she had to bring him back. He had been taken against his will, and she had to save him. She would scour the internet and newspapers for anything related to animal attacks—Klaus was bound to be on a killing rampage since the curse was broken—and she would bring the articles to Damon and Alaric, and they would see if a pattern was forming, or if there were any clues that would take them back to Stefan and Klaus. All summer long, they told her that there was no hard and fast evidence that suggested it was either being.

But at her 18th birthday party, Elena discovered something that changed everything. There was a map in Damon's closet—the last place she would have ever thought to look, but she was in his room for a breather from the party and the door was open—that seemed to place the majority of those animal attacks that she had thought to be Klaus's handiwork, as Stefan's. She had seen what happened to Stefan when he was on human blood, he had even told her a bit of his past as a Ripper, but she had never thought that he would be capable of this. This was…mass murder, to put it lightly. If this map was true, then Stefan had killed hundreds and hundreds of people since he left Mystic Falls. No, it couldn't be true. It had to be false. Stefan was so kind and sweet… He was not capable of doing something like this. But then Damon showed her the evidence—said that he had actually seen Stefan—and she had to accept that Stefan had gone off the deep end. And now he really needed her to save him. She could help him get better again.

Now that her need to save Stefan was renewed once more, Elena and Damon dogged the footsteps of Klaus and Co. across the country. They found them first in the Smoky Mountains, where they found that Klaus was hunting down the werewolf packs to turn them into vampire/werewolf hybrids. Elena had originally left Damon out of that venture, and had gotten Alaric to go with her instead, but of course he had to spill the beans. Needless to say, Damon wasn't very happy to find out that Elena was trekking through the same mountains as Klaus looking for Stefan, who was with Klaus. Next, Damon and Elena took a roadtrip to Chicago, which had apparently been Stefan's hangout during his last stint as a Ripper. There, Elena really saw how terrible Stefan was.

He had this list of people that he had ruthlessly murdered in a closet. It was terrifying to Elena, to see how many people he had actually killed. But, well, this wasn't her Stefan. Her Stefan would never have done these things. And Elena had to believe that he could be saved. Even when he broke up with her in Chicago—saying that he didn't want to even look at her—Elena still had to believe that it was just him wanting to save her from Klaus. She needed to believe that he still loved her a tiny bit, because if he did, then he could be rescued. And Elena couldn't bear to lose someone else.

Throughout this all, Damon had been her rock. Even if he was the primary catalyst for Stefan leaving, he stood by her with all that he had. She couldn't deny that she was attracted to him—anything with hormones would be attracted to that man—but at the same time, she couldn't deny that she felt something more. That something was forbidden. If she even dared to go down that road, she would be more like Katherine than she dared. That was a line that she could not allow herself to cross, even when she so desperately wanted to. Of course, it had gotten to the point where even Caroline and Ric had noticed the…feelings between the two. It was getting harder and harder to deny, and Elena couldn't help but feel that she was fighting a losing battle. Damon had snuck up on her. They had been friends for so long, and she had seen the sides of him that he dared not reveal to anyone else. He was someone that she could trust implicitly. She knew that he always had her best interests at heart, even if the decisions he made in the process pissed her off.

It was when Stefan and Klaus came back to Mystic Falls, that Elena found a need to train in self-defense. Klaus needed Elena's blood to make more hybrids like himself, and he would stop at nothing to keep her as his little human blood bag. Before Stefan went off the deep end, she had always entrusted her protection to those that surrounded her, and they had done a fairly good job of it. But now Stefan was compelled to follow Klaus's every order, and he had turned his humanity switch off. He was volatile, dangerous, and completely unpredictable. He was not someone to mess with. Because of this, Elena asked Damon and Ric to begin teaching her how to take down vampires. She needed to know what to do in the event that she was faced with someone who could easily overpower her. It turned out to be a much harder job than she had expected. While Elena had always been a slim girl with a runner's build, after she quit the cheerleading team her athleticism slipped, and she found herself in much worse shape than she had believed herself to be. Training began early before school, and was brutal. It tested her mind, body, and will, but still she found the strength to go on. This was how she would stay alive—because she did it, not because she constantly relied upon her friends to keep her alive.

Naturally, Klaus couldn't just come back to Mystic Falls with Stefan, nor could he come quietly. No, he had to roll into town with his blonde and bitchy sister. Rebekah Mikaelson was loud, spoiled, and just a typical mean girl overall. She showed up at Mystic Falls High School demanding a place on the cheerleading team, and thanks to her heightened athleticism by vampirism, she got one. She seemed to think that just because she was an Original, she could get anything she wanted. Needless to say, it really pissed Elena off. But when Elena went digging into the past of the Original Family, and after she got the story from Rebekah herself, she was troubled by the similarities between herself and Rebekah.

They were both young girls who lost their parents too young—Elena's to the crash, Rebekah's due to her mother being killed, and her father deserting them after they were turned. They both loved easily, even when it consumed them. They both wanted a love that consumed them. To feel that all-encompassing, passionate, inspired, love was something that Elena desired in the deepest recesses of her heart, even if she was not ready to totally admit it and she sensed that Rebekah had a need for the same. To be passionately loved was said to be the greatest feeling in the world, and all Elena wanted to do was experience it.

They had had Klaus, and then Stefan screwed it up. Damon had come up with a fantastic plan that covered all of the bases. They counted on Mikael—the father of the Originals—betraying them, Katherine was brought in so Elena was not in danger, and the fact that Klaus would have hybrids to back him up. Anything that could have gone wrong, they were prepared for. The only thing they had not counted on was Stefan messing it all up. Damon had had Klaus, the white oak stake poised over his heart, ready to strike. But then Stefan saved Klaus, and was given back his freedom. It was over. Done. The likelihood of another opportunity like this one to kill Klaus was very, very, slim. And even now that Stefan had his freedom, his humanity switch was still flipped. He wasn't likely to turn that back on anytime soon.

There was only one option left to Damon and Elena; they would have to let Stefan go. He was essentially gone to them now. As Elena stood in the Boarding House, telling Damon that he had to give up on his brother—that they both had to give up on Stefan—she found that this decision was not as hard to make as she had previously believed it would be. Because, as she stood in front of that fireplace, holding the dark-haired Salvatore who had proved time and time again that he would always choose her, the thoughts of Stefan slipped further and further from her mind, and the dreams of a different future replaced them. Yes, Stefan had to be let go, but Elena felt that it would be much easier to release him with Damon by her side.

Once again, Elena found herself in need of Damon's compulsion abilities. The whole supernatural mess going on in Mystic Falls was too much, and she and Ric were sending Jeremy to stay with some close family friends in Denver. It was far enough away that Elena could feel comfortable that her brother's sanity was going to be intact, but it was close enough that Jeremy was still going to be within reach if there was a need for him. It was killing her inside to send him away, but at the same time she knew that she had to. He was sixteen years old, he shouldn't be decapitating hybrids, or needing to use deadly weapons. This really was going to be better for him. She felt horrible about it, but even Damon agreed. They could deal with Jeremy mad at them for sending him away, but he wouldn't be dead. That was what mattered in the end.

Elena Gilbert was in bliss. If this was anything close to heaven, then she would be content to stay here for eternity. She hadn't meant for it to turn out this way—truly she hadn't. But she didn't regret it one bit. She and Damon were talking, about both Stefan and Jeremy, and then he confirmed that the turmoil going on inside her was doing the same in him. She was his brother's girl, after all. Or, at least she thought so. Could she even consider herself Stefan's girlfriend anymore? He left her, and then broke up with her, and now he treated her as an object. A human blood bag, he called her. And, if he was even her boyfriend, did she really want him to be? Oh, but then Damon kissed her, and the thoughts of Stefan fell away, and Elena was enraptured. This was emotion, and feeling, and completely unlike anything that she had ever felt before. This was all-consuming. It was everything, and the world fell away, and the only thing left was the feel of Damon's lips on hers and his hands on her face. It was all she could do to simply place her hands over his—that effort alone was a burden on her overloaded brain. She was feeling alive for the first time in a long time, and it was wonderful. And then, like that, it was over, and it was all Elena could do to not grab Damon and pull him in for a second kiss. But no…she had things to figure out. Yet, while she experienced them, those moments were moments of true bliss.

The day after the kiss was the worst day she had had since Jenna died. Elena, Matt, and Bonnie had just finished having a funeral/party for Caroline's 18th birthday. It had been a bittersweet evening, the happiness of spending time with her oldest friends tinged with the sadness that Caroline would never actually turn 18. It was after the party when everything went wrong.

One moment, Elena was walking around the cemetery with Matt, and the next she's in the car with Stefan, speeding down the road. He was going to turn her into a vampire, simply because he and Klaus had been involved in some macho "'I have the bigger dick!' 'No I do!'" power struggle since Stefan had been given his freedom. Stefan wanted Klaus's hybrids gone, Klaus didn't send them away, and Stefan stole the coffins containing Klaus's family in retaliation. And now Stefan had decided that turning Elena and taking away Klaus's blood source for hybrids was the best move. It was one of those moments in which Elena felt that she might actually hate Stefan. He knew that Wickery Bridge was the bridge that her parents died going off of, and to threaten to drive her off and turn her was one of Elena's worst nightmares. He knew that she didn't want to become a vampire, yet he was in full control of his thoughts, emotions, and actions when he shoved his blood down her throat. But Stefan did it anyways. Then, to make it worse, he tried to justify his actions. As if this could ever be made okay. During those minutes in the car, Elena was in hell. It was a stark contrast from the night before, and made her truly think about whether or not it was actually going to always be Stefan.

Bad things happened when the people of Mystic Falls hosted dances, apparently. The Original family had decided to host a ball in honor of the return of their mother, Esther, and it was not a very fun occasion. Elena had been used by Esther in a ritual to get rid of her children, and Elena could not help but feel slightly guilty. While it would be good to get rid of Klaus and his siblings, Klaus was really the main target. The only problem with Rebekah was that she could be bitchy and finicky. Kol was violent, but he hadn't really done anything that could be considered dangerous. Finn was just…Finn. Elena didn't think that she had actually heard him speak more than a sentence. And Elijah was her sort-of friend. So yes, while all of them needed to die in order to kill Klaus, Elena couldn't help but feel slightly guilty about condemning the Mikaelson siblings to death.

It was after the ball that things got difficult very quickly. Alaric was going crazy because the Gilbert Ring was malfunctioning, and had some sort of evil vamp-killing alter ego that appeared at random points. Yes, it was lovely. To make matters worse, Elena couldn't deny that she felt something for Damon to Stefan. Not only did she have supernatural stepfather drama, but she had boyfriend drama too. At this point, Elena had given up on having a normal life anymore.

It didn't help that while picking up Jeremy from Denver, things between her and Damon had gotten a bit…heated. Damon had just snuck up on her—she had never expected to feel like this for him, but she could never regret it. It was outside of the hotel room, wind whipping her hair and stinging her skin, that Elena Gilbert kissed Damon Salvatore. This was so unlike the previous kiss. That one was sweet and tender; a kiss full of love. This was different. This kiss was full of tongue and teeth and fire. This was a kiss that made her scream for air, yet she never wanted to detach herself from Damon. They were glued together, her back pressed against that post, her hands running over his chest under his unbuttoned shirt. This was magical, and passionate, and so grown up. When Damon kissed her on the balcony in Denver, he made her feel like a woman. And then they were interrupted by Jeremy. That wasn't awkward at all.

Alaric was dead, and so, technically, was Elena. Esther—also known as "The Worst Mother Ever"—had turned Alaric into an Original using Elena's blood, and linking their life sources. After a big complicated mess in which Bonnie and Damon made a move to kill Klaus while everyone else back in Mystic Falls was trying to do damage control, Elena had been whisked out of town by Matt and Jeremy. Klaus was dead, and Elena had to make her choice. Did she go and see Damon, who was guarding Klaus's body, or did she go back to Mystic Falls and see Stefan before they died? Which Salvatore would it be? She didn't know. Did she choose Stefan, or Damon?

In the end, Elena's loyalty won out, and she picked up the phone to call Damon. It was breaking her heart, to say the words she did to him. It was killing her inside and she was falling apart. She really, truly, did care for Damon. Before, she had even thought that it might be more than that. But she didn't have time. She had to think about right now, and not about the future. The Salvatore brothers didn't have a future anymore, if they were right about Klaus originating their bloodline. But she had to go back to Stefan. She still loved him (she thought), and even if she really, truly, and wanted to go straight to Damon, it had to be Stefan this time. Elena Gilbert let Damon Salvatore go on a chilly evening, breaking both their hearts in the process as she returned back to his brother. Too bad she would never make it there.

Elena woke up in Mystic Falls General Hospital in transition. The day before, Elena had ended up in the hospital because of a brain hemorrhage caused a combination of too much blood being taken from her by Klaus, magic, and a few other things. To save her life, Doctor Meredith Fell dosed her up with some vampire blood before sending her on her merry way. So, when Rebekah—in a fit of grief and rage due to Klaus's death (he wasn't actually dead, thanks to Bonnie)—stood in front of Matt's truck on Wickery Bridge, causing the truck to go over, Elena died. Or actually, she died after making Stefan (who just so happened to appear on the scene) take Matt and come back for her. Elena Gilbert died in the same place as her parents, her lungs full of water, and vampire blood in her system. She woke up with a Salvatore on either side, Stefan feeling guilty, and Damon just concerned about how she was feeling. For a while, Elena toyed with the idea of not completing the transition and just dying as a human, but in the end she couldn't go yet. She couldn't leave Jeremy without anyone, now that Ric was gone.

In the end, Elena was exactly what she had never wanted to be. She became a vampire. A blood-sucking, terrible, thing. She didn't know how she would handle it. She was afraid that if she drank human blood, she would be like Stefan, but at the same time she knew that if she went on the bunny diet then she would have more of a chance to become a Ripper. She was just scared. The only real surprise that Elena got when she turned was when she found out that Damon compelled her.

They had met first. Damon, her Damon, was that mysterious stranger that she had met when she was sixteen. He was that guy who had seemed to know what she wanted in the recesses of her heart. He was the one who had known that she wanted a love that consumed her, and not just a placid, simple, love. After the second memory, there was no doubt in Elena's mind that Damon truly loved her. He had told her so way back on that night that she was kidnapped by Rose and Trevor, and he had cried. This changed so much for Elena.

Her feelings for Damon had escalated, and now they were so vibrant and alive, she could feel them humming in her veins. At the same time, she felt an even greater draw to Stefan. Yet, it was Damon helping her through this transition. Stefan just wanted to make her like him. He wanted a perfect girlfriend who could control herself on the bunny diet. So, Damon was the one she went to when she couldn't keep any blood down.

When Damon offered for her to drink from him, Elena was a bit unsure. She didn't know what it would feel like, or if it would taste nasty like the animal blood, or nice like the human blood. It was even better. Damon had warned her beforehand that this was a deeply personal act, but she had to know what it was like. Afterwards, Elena would wonder if it was so nice because it was vampire blood, or if because it was Damon. Either way, when she bit into his vein, it was like Damon had exploded inside her mouth. His blood was tinged with his emotions and feelings. It tasted like chocolate and smoke. It was seductive and magical, and inherently Damon. It was the best thing she had tasted, and she wanted to just drink him in.

Of course, getting yelled at by Stefan for it later wasn't all that fun. He made up for it by taking her on a motorcycle ride the next day, though. It made her feel so happy. She was able to do things that were previously impossible, and she had eternity ahead of her. Being a vampire wasn't looking so bad anymore.

At least, that was until Elena killed the vampire hunter Connor, and the hallucinations started. She was going crazy. Connor was appearing at every turn, telling Elena that she was a monster; that she was a killer. She had hallucinations of blood in her her mother appeared, and said that Elena should have died when she went off the bridge, and that she was a disappointment as a vampire. That she was unlovable this way. The worst part was that Elena believed her. It seemed like her mother, after all. She spoke like her mother, and looked like her mother, and walked like her mother. To the confused Elena, it was her mother. So, when the hallucination of her mother told Elena that she should just end it all, Elena tried. She tossed her daylight ring over Wickery Bridge, and waited for sunrise. It was all going to be over. Until Damon showed up.

He saved her. He took her down into the water, fetched her ring, and saved her life. And then, the next morning when Elena woke up, he told her that Stefan had found out about a cure for vampirism from Rebekah. The possibility of being able to be human again was a dream come true. All of her problems would be over. She would be back to normal, and everyone would be okay with her again. She wanted that cure. Of course, she was not happy that Jeremy had to be involved—of course her baby brother was the next Hunter in line to take Connor's place—but since he wanted the cure for her just as badly, she had to be okay with it.

Later on, Stefan came over and they talked. Her feelings for Damon had grown so strong; she could not deny them any longer. She was way past just caring for him now, and she knew that it was wrong to resume anything with Stefan. Thankfully, he felt the same way, and they had a nice, mutual, breakup. No fuss, no tears, and Elena was free to act upon her feelings for Damon as she so wished.

It was a flashback from the previous year. It was the Miss Mystic Falls pageant once again, and, again, it was Damon waiting at the bottom of that staircase for Elena, looking up with his deep gaze. It was Damon that seemed to be thinking of the same thing as her when they watched the contestants dance that dance. And it was Damon that stayed with Elena at the Boarding House when she couldn't live at her house anymore. Jeremy's instincts were on "Kill Vampire" mode, and it didn't matter that she was his sister. Matt stepped in as Jeremy's new roommate, and Elena moved in to the Boarding House. In hindsight, Stefan probably shouldn't have told her to just pick a room before he left her there. She did pick the one that she wanted, it just wasn't the one he had expected.

Damon was so comforting. He listened to her as she ranted on about how her life was all messed up—Jeremy couldn't live with her, Stefan wanted to fix her, and Caroline flat out admitted that she didn't like her this way—and he took her mind off of it. In a really...dynamic way. Elena had been right earlier, Damon had been thinking about their dance at the previous Miss Mystic pageant. Honestly, if Elena had to pinpoint a moment in which she really started feeling for Damon that would be the day. So, when he stood up and held out his hand for her to dance with him, she wasn't all that surprised. What did surprise Elena was what she felt.

Dancing with Damon was like dancing with fire. She could feel the passion coursing through their bodies, and the tension was so palpable, it was almost corporeal. He was like ice and rage and the heat of the storm in the heart of the sun. He burned through the centuries and somehow, in some way, ended up dancing with her, a baby vampire that had had too many people die on her. He was wonderful. He made her feel alive in ways that she had never felt before, and all it did was make her feelings for him grow even more. Then they were kissing, and while she had kissed Damon before, this was unlike the others. This was pure, unadulterated, lust. This was the pent-up feelings of the past year coursing through their veins and lighting them up. Love in its most primeval form came to a head that evening in Damon's bedroom, and from that moment on, everything changed.

She and Damon really couldn't catch a break. First it was Elena denying her feelings, then she turned and felt loyal to Stefan, and now everyone was claiming that she was freaking sired to Damon. They were making her out to be crazy and that Damon was some sort of twisted monster because poor, innocent, Elena was now sired to him! So what if she wanted to make Damon happy? She was falling in love with him, of course his happiness was on her mind. But no, Caroline and Stefan had gotten everybody on the "Elena's Under Damon's Mind Control" train, and she couldn't take it. Honestly. She tried to explain that she didn't sleep with Damon because of the sire bond; she slept with him because she was in love with him, but it was just written off as another one of her "deluded" moments. As if Damon even knew that she was sired to him then. And now they were both miserable, because he wanted her to be with him without any doubt that she truly loved him, and not just because of some freaky bond thing. She couldn't even come to the Lake House and help him train Jeremy to fight vampires. Stupid sire bond.

Jeremy killed Kol, and with him, all of the vampires that were a part of Kol's bloodline. That certainly sped up the process for finding this cure. If they found it, then any vampire who wanted to become a human again could! It would be so much better for everybody. Things could be so different for all of them. Professor Shane—the one who seemed to have all the answers about this cure—took them all on a trip to Nova Scotia, where he seemed to think the thing was located. Everything was going to be better when they found the cure. However, Shane did not know one crucial piece of information. There was only one dose. Silas—the immortal witch-thing that the cure was originally made for—only needed one dose to make him human, ergo one cure. One person could get it. That was all. Talk about a hard decision. When Katherine Pierce, masquerading as Elena of course, snatched the cure from right under their noses, the fight was on.

Jeremy was dead. Like, dead dead. Katherine had killed him to get the cure, and he was dead. Her last living family member was dead. She didn't have any step-siblings or aunts and uncles or cousins to fill that void in her heart that was reserved for Jeremy. Her family was dead. She was the last Gilbert left. There was no one else. The pain, the grief, it was all too much. It was breaking her apart inside. Elena was falling to pieces, tattered and broken from the tragedy of her baby brother dead. She wasn't going to survive this. She knew it in her heart. She couldn't handle the emotional load of being the last Gilbert alive. She just couldn't do it. So, she turned it off.

Being emotionless was fun. Elena found that she could do anything she wished, fight anyone she wanted to, and throw parties without feeling anything. She was…apathetic to it all. She also found that she was more like the person she was before the accident than she had ever been before. Of course, that little girl was still ruled by her emotions, and this one wasn't. It was easy to be this way, and it was a lot of damn fun. Sure, people still pissed her off. But now she could just fight back without feeling bad about who they were, or who their family might be. It was a lot better this way.

When Damon took her to New York, Elena was elated. She saw right through his little cure-hunt scheme of course, but she had fun. New York had great shopping, and she loved her new hairdo. Even if she despised Katherine, the bitch did have a fantastic fashion sense, and waves worked so much better than that bland straight hairdo she was working before. Honestly, she used to be the most boring person ever. Like seriously. She hadn't thrown a party in forever before she flipped the switch. She felt so much better this way. Everything was way more fun. Rebekah even ended up being fun. She was a surprisingly interesting friend, now that Elena didn't care about everything she had done. Yes, life was better without emotions. Stealing Damon's precious Camaro was especially fun.

Katherine had the cure, and Rebekah wanted the infernal thing. She had some fanciful idea of wanting to become human, and Elena couldn't understand it. Why give up your life, when you had eternity ahead of you? Rebekah was just being stupid and foolish. She was led around by her heartstrings, much like Elena had been. Well, not anymore. She and Rebekah managed to track Katherine, who was located in a teeny-tiny town in the middle of Nowhere Land, Pennsylvania. And she had actually compelled herself a town full of friends! Talk about pathetic. Of course, finding that Katherine and Elijah were an item was more than nauseating. But clearly Elijah's good taste in suits did not expand to his taste in women. He was yet another pathetic fool led around by his heartstrings. It was so easy to turn him against Katherine. All Elena had to do was drop a few words about his girlfriend playing a part in Jeremy's death, and he was a goner. She wondered how Katherine would feel when she found that her latest boy toy had his doubts. Poor little Kitty Kat.

Of course, Stefan and Damon couldn't drop the cure topic. They didn't seem to get that she didn't want the damn thing, Stefan especially. He was throwing her pathetic loyalty to him when he was going all Psycho Ripper on the East Coast back in her face. As if she wanted to be reminded of that phase in her life. She was foolish then. She was grasping onto the straws of the boy that she thought loved, even when he treated like scum on the bottom of his shoe. He had told her multiple times that he never wanted to see her again, and she still wanted to be with him then. Idiot. Of course, she wouldn't make that mistake again. The Salvatore brothers wanted her back to her emotional self. That wouldn't be happening anytime soon, and they had to see the consequences that would occur if they continued on the "Cure Elena" train. She made her point very clear.

Unfortunately they got back on the "Cure Elena" train after Prom, when Elena attacked Bonnie, Bonnie did her witchy-juju thing, and had actually inspired a spark of fear in Elena. Yeah…that thing hurt, and Bonnie was pissed off enough to hurt her. Anyone in their right mind would be scared. Then, because Damon was oh-so-fortunate to have seen that tiny bit of fear, she got locked up in the Salvatore Dungeon for "Torture Time with Stefan and Damon". Yay. They weren't going to win, though. As much as they made her life hell, it would be nothing compared to the pain that she had felt before she switched it off. Nothing was that terrible. Nothing could be. They would have to move hell and earth to get her to cut her emotions back on. And they did.

After she flipped the switch back on, Elena knew it was a brilliant plan. If there was anyone as significant to her as Jeremy, it would be Matt. When Damon snapped his neck, she hadn't seen the Gilbert Ring. She had thought that Matt was dead. And for a split second, she didn't care. But that little tiny moment of not caring was what triggered the rush of emotions. The thought that she wouldn't care that Matt was dead was horrific to her, and it made all the grief and hurt come back. And then Damon pointed out the Gilbert Ring, and joy and relief came flooding back into her heart. Matt wasn't dead. She still had him. Now she had to kill Katherine for what she did to Jeremy.

One of the things that came back with Elena's emotions was love. Specifically, her love for Damon. Whether or not the sire bond was real—everything that she felt when she was sired still felt real, even if it wasn't—she knew now that she was in love with Damon. Truly and utterly in love. The bond was broken when she flipped the switch, and stayed broken when she flipped it back on. But it was not yet time to act upon her emotions. Bonnie had dropped the veil to The Other Side, and a band of hunters were in down seeking the cure. Katherine was also hanging around since Elijah had dumped her sorry ass for his psychopathic brother—"Always and Forever" apparently did not include Katherine Pierce—and Jeremy and Alaric were back as ghosts. She wanted to spend as much time with those two as possible, but Kol was seeking revenge for her and Jeremy's part in his death, and it was her graduation day, and Damon had gotten shot with a werewolf venom-laced bullet. Nothing was going right. But then, that evening, the time was right.

The first thing Elena did was try and get rid of the cure. Damon had wanted her to take it, she refused and gave it to Stefan instead. Honestly, he sucked at being a vampire. He was a Ripper, for goodness sake. But the real reason Elena tried to give it to him wasn't just because she wanted to get rid of it. Giving away the cure was more than that. It was her choosing vampirism—and Damon, if he still wanted to be with her—for eternity. It was the final step in accepting who she was now, and choosing to be happy about it. It was about choosing the rest of eternity, and letting her life as a human go. It was the last step in growing up. Of course, Stefan just gave it back to her, but Elena knew she would not take it. But she had something else to do, something more important than dealing with cure. She had to find Damon.

He really thought he was wrong for her. He genuinely, absolutely, believed that he was not good enough for her, and that Stefan, or just someone other than him was. What an idiot. Fine. Well, she wasn't sorry either. She wasn't sorry that she met him. The day that she met him—that very first day, when he seemed to know exactly what she wanted was one of the most special moments in her life, and she was forever changed by his words. She wasn't sorry that knowing him had made her question everything. He had turned her view on life upside down and back around. He had shown her that the world could be fun again. In death, and in life, he had been the one who had made her feel most alive. He had a way of making her inexplicably happy and frustrated, all at one time. He had been a terrible person when she met him. He had been obsessed with Katherine, and he had been cruel, and sadistic, and horrible. But slowly she had seen that better side of him, and she fell in love with Damon as a whole, not just the better parts of him. It had always been said that Stefan was the best choice for her. Yet, Damon was not Stefan. He was opposite from Stefan in every way. Damon was dangerous, dark, and seductive. He was highly protective, passionate, and caring. They were so similar, in many ways. They clashed more often than not. But she fell in love with him all the same, even if he was technically the worst choice for her. It would never be soft with Damon. But she wasn't sorry for it. She wasn't sorry for being in love with him. She didn't regret any of it.

When he kissed her, cutting off her third "I love you", it was the best kiss they had had thus far. Their first kiss was a goodbye. He was dying, and she was simply trying to help him. Their second kiss was tender. It was a kiss full of things yet to come, and things that could not be. Their third kiss was gritty. It was a kiss of passion and broken promises. It was a kiss of fire, and fire burned. Their fourth kiss was all lust. It was a kiss that said "Our time is now". It was a short-lived kiss. But this kiss…this kiss was never-ending. This kiss consumed her with love. It made her feel alive and so happy. This was kiss that went on for eternity. It screamed unending love. It shouted that time was theirs to spend. This was more than just a kiss. It was a promise.

The last thing to do on the best day of her life was to say goodbye to Jeremy. But instead, Elena found Katherine, and the time for revenge was nigh. The fight was dirty. It hurt. She got stabbed in the jugular with a broom handle, and that really hurt. Like, really hurt. It was when Katherine was moving to rip out her heart that Elena remembered the vial in her jacket pocket. The cure—the blasted thing that everyone had been fighting over—got shoved in the mouth of the evilest bitch in existence. Katherine Pierce was now human. But Elena had bigger and better things to think about than Katherine. She had Damon waiting for her back at the Boarding House, and after way too much heartache, they had finally sorted themselves out.

Let the eternity ahead of her begin.

AN: And so, I present the final installment of this lovely piece. I truly hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I have writing it. This was my labor of love to the TVD show, as well as to those of you whom I have made friends with in the fandom. As for my other stories, Letting The Light Shine Through should have an update within the next couple of weeks, and I've got ideas for The Strange Ones. Again, thank you for reading!

Hugs and Kisses,

Inky