It was so… mundane when it happened. Nothing special or supernatural. Instead it was the sort of thing that would be featured in a blurb on the third page of the local newspaper, only to be forgotten a week or two later.

Suzanne was glad that she barely remembered it – only the last few seconds or so. It was horrifying enough to wake up on the side of the road in a shallow ditch, her dogs beside her while her own injuries were gone. Stupidly, it took her a few moments to realize what had happened.

The sun was setting, and Suzanne scrambled backwards away from the street when the bodies of her dogs – oh god, they were bodies – made her feel a pang of thirst. Letting out a strangled shriek, Suzanne shakily tried to stand.

She had been hit by a car while walking Louie and Killer, and the person had kept driving. Suzanne hadn't – she hadn't even been close to the road, and it was a Tuesday afternoon. Were they drunk? Were they texting? There were tire marks shredding the grass five feet off of the road, so clearly they'd swerved and had sped away.

Suzanne wrapped her arms around herself, hunching in on herself and trying to steady her hyperventilating so she wouldn't become light-headed or pass out. Could she still have panic attacks after dyi –

Suzanne was dead.

She'd died and come back from death only because this morning she'd sipped from the cup of Damon's blood that he'd left with her a week ago after she'd scraped both of her knees pretty badly.

This wasn't supposed to happen. This wasn't fair, it wasn't fair, it wasn't –

Suzanne didn't know how to feel when the car came around the curve of the road, immediately pulling over. What was she supposed to say? What kind of excuse could she give them to make them go away and leave her alone until she could call Damon, having decided a moment ago that it was the logical thing to do?

The woman driving seemed to throw herself out of the SUV while a teenage girl remained in the passenger side, wide-eyed as she took in Suzanne, whose clothes were still covered in her own blood. The woman who had pulled over looked incredibly concerned and approached slowly, speaking in a calm and soothing voice.

"Are you okay? Can I call for help?"

Suzanne didn't feel in control of her body as her thoughts became muffled.

When she came back to her senses, the first thing she noticed was that somehow the passenger door of the car had been ripped off. Two bodies were in pieces at her feet. A second later, her vervain tattoo started to viciously burn her back, and Suzanne screamed.

Damon stared down at his phone, annoyed that Suze was calling him for the third time in a row. He was trying to get drunk and find someone to feed on. She had been a little bit careful around him ever since the reveal a week ago that Katherine had never been in the tomb. It had been welcome the first day or so, but now it felt stifling.

Deciding that he might as well talk to her instead of putting it off, Damon let out an annoyed sigh and picked up the call before flatly saying, "What?"

The first few seconds of silence on the other end of the line irritated him further and he nearly hung up before Suze spoke.

"I need you to pick me up on the bend of the road on Laurent Drive."

Damon felt confused, unsure why she'd be demanding that he haul ass to Springfield instead of calling a tow truck or something, but he figured maybe she didn't want to spend the money on the service. Before he could ask and clarify, she said in a blank voice, "Bring a shovel."

The dial tone snapped Damon out of the spiral his thoughts had taken and he threw himself out of the stool, despite knowing that he shouldn't be moving so fast in front of humans. He didn't bother getting the shovel she asked for, instead he drove 30 miles per hour over the speed limit to meet her where she'd said. The only thought that could come to him was that Louie had died and needed to be buried. The dog was too heavy for Suze to carry anywhere far, and nothing else made sense.

But fifteen minutes later when he screeched to the side of the road where Suze was sitting on the edge of the pavement next to an unfamiliar car he realized something much, much worse had taken place.

Suze stood slowly, revealing clothing that was covered with blood. Speeding over to her, he immediately gripped her shoulders and forced her to look at him. When her eyes met his she seemed entirely unfocused, as if unable to recognize him.

"Are you hurt? Suze? Suze, answer me."

She then seemed to realize for the first time that he was speaking to her. When she answered, her voice was even but distant.

"The alcohol thing, you know? No impulse control, basically an addict. I moved them already to make it easier." Her eyes shifted, staring over his shoulder towards the edge of the woods. With a pit of dread growing in his stomach, he slowly turned around to see what she was looking at.

The bodies of her dogs were laid beside the pieces of two human corpses.

For a second, it didn't make sense, and Damon wondered why Suze hadn't been attacked by the same thing that had killed these people. But when he turned back towards her, she had an out of place expression on her face, like a mixture of pity and sadness.

When she whispered out her next words, time stopped.

"I died."

Suzanne wondered how long it would take a vampire to starve to death. The tomb vampires had still been alive after a century and a half. So a few hundred years, maybe. If she didn't move would it be faster?

Damon had been able to force feed her a half a bag of blood in the last week, but she hadn't had anything else. She didn't want anything else.

It was strange, how different the world felt now, how foreign her own body was to her. Suzanne had used the bathroom a few minutes after Damon had carefully carried her into the boarding house. But then Suzanne had stripped down to her underwear and bra and wiped off what blood she could with a damp towel in silence. She'd closed the drapes, curled up in Damon's bed, and hadn't left.

Suzanne had been prepared for Damon's anger. It was expected. It didn't make it hurt any less when he said she was a coward or pathetic when she wouldn't drink any blood. But she just couldn't. Everything felt heavy and blurry – most of her days were spent in a near-sleeping state. Whenever she focused her thoughts she could only focus on the expression of the teenage girl when she'd seen Suzanne rip her mother's head off. She hadn't killed them. She'd mauled them. Slaughtered them. Mutilated them.

What Suzanne hadn't prepared for was Damon's sadness and desperation. When he'd pleaded with her to drink in a hoarse voice she'd tried so hard to make herself get up, to feel something other than self-disgust.

It startled her when Damon opened the door slowly. Suzanne made herself turn over to meet his eyes. He looked miserable. She expected him to start speaking but instead he walked around the bed to the side her back was facing. Wordlessly, she heard him kick off his shoes before the duvet was shifted. A moment later Damon was curled around her, his chest pressed to her back. He shifted them around, reaching an arm underneath the pillow while the other curled over her. Suzanne barely kept herself from flinching when he laced their fingers together and gently squeezed her hand.

Neither of them spoke, and the two laid there in silence, their breathing eventually syncing up. Damon finally broke her out of her haze when he buried his face into her neck. As he started whispering to Suzanne she felt a pang of shock when his voice wavered.

"You can't do this to yourself. I know you didn't want this, and I know it's my fault. If you want to leave and never see me again, that's okay."

Suzanne felt a tear fall onto her skin, but Damon's voice grew stronger and his arms tightened around her when he continued, "But I need you to be okay. You have to be okay, you deserve it. We can help you, I swear."

At that, everything that had been crushing her, pressing in on her chest and filling her head shattered.

Suzanne's fingers tightened around his and before she was overcome with sobs she choked out, "I'm so hungry, Damon."

Suzanne broke, and Damon held her together as best he could.