Our Eternity Begins
DG32173

Sarah: I told you guys that there would be more to come after the end of Setting Things Right and The Woman I Love. Here's proof for you. In fact, I started working on this set of stories around the time I was supposed to be working on Chapter 14, what the site calls Chapter 15, of those two stories, the chapter in both stories labeled Miss Mystic Falls. But I'm not posting it until Setting Things Right and The Woman I Love are complete. Hope you enjoy the continuation of that storyline. Picks up just hours after where I intend to leave off in Setting Things Right.

CREDIT
Credit goes once more to my beta crzykittyfangirl for helping me make my stories the best they can be. Thanks so much.

DISCLAIMER
I know I did this a bunch of times last story but I still have to put at least one disclaimer in every story. So here's this disclaimer: I own what I write. I own the eternal mates thing I made up for my TVD fanfics. I own the prophecy that Damon and Elena are going to fulfill. I own the powers I will give them in the beginning of this fanfic. If I own it, I will claim it before the chapter it appears in. If my beta or a reviewer inspires its creation, I will post a credit section like the above giving credit for it. TVD and the cast are own by L.J. Smith. Mystic Falls and the settings are owned by the scriptwriters of the CW. Everything else you recognize is owned by someone else.

WARNINGS
As per usual, this story is rated M for mature content. You will be getting more of my delicious smut you all seem to crave. But there will also be other, darker topics at play within this story as well, hence the drama label as well as romance. A good portion of this story, maybe even the entire story, will deal in Damon and Elena retraining Stefan and his inner vampire so that he's no longer a Ripper. And that will be a long, grisly affair. You have been warned.

SUMMARY
Sequel to Setting Things Right. Elena is now a newborn vampire, having sacrificed her humanity to save Damon on Founder's Day. It is time for Fate's second test of her, it's first test of Damon. It is time to make a choice on what to do about Ripper Stefan and follow through. Damon/Elena

REVIEW REPLIES TO LAST CHAPTERS OF SETTING THINGS RIGHT

Leann Nickerson: so glad you enjoyed Setting Things Right and how it ended. Here's the next story and what happens when Elena wakes up from death.

HoneySexy: Glad you enjoyed it. Here's the first chapter of the next in the series.

Chapter 1
Awakening

Being dead while waiting for my transition into vampirism is boring. Probably the most boring part of the whole process, though my actual death was the most painful. I'm trapped in what seems like an endless and eternal darkness. I know Damon's blood has to heal my body before it wakes me up in transition. After we discovered the scar he left me with was indeed his eternal mates mark, he had explained multiple times the process behind becoming a vampire. The more badly injured a vampire-to-be is in what causes their death, the longer it takes the vampire blood in them to heal their body before waking them up.

Considering how badly injured I was when I jumped between the stake in John's hand and Damon, I know it will be a while before I'm awakened. Finally, finally, I see a soft glow in the distance and start making my ways towards it. As I walk through the darkness, my life plays before me, including the six months of memories I should not have. I don't stop, I don't hesitate. Damon's waiting for me. I saved him. I prevented my ultimate loss from happening again. I know instinctively my nightmare will never bother me again.

Finally, I'm on the other side of the light, which had gone from a soft glow in the far distance to what seems like a heavenly light source. I can hear Damon on the other side, telling me to wake up already. If he hadn't figured out what I'd been hiding from him with my last words, he'll have questions. But he's smart. He'll have figured it out at last; I'm sure of it.

I leap into the light and find myself gasping as I sit up in our bed. There he is, laying next to me, even more beautiful to my new vampire eyes than he was to my human eyes. "Damon," I breathe joyously, still amazed that I had actually saved the love of my existence.

He gives me a scowl and I know that he figured out what I had been hiding the past three months. Even sensing how upset he is by it, I can't keep my sheer unrestrained joy at seeing him next to me, alive, from him. Finally he sighs and gives me a wry smirk, knowing that I have to have my moment to process that I had succeeded in my mission from Fate.

After a few minutes, I finally calm down, finally accepting that it's real. It's not a dream. Damon lived through Founder's Day thanks to my efforts. Sure, I had to pay an equivalent price, as Gemma had said I would in her message to us in Emily's Grimoire. But we're both still alive, in a sense. Neither of us had died a final death last night.

That's when Damon speaks. "You, young lady, are in trouble," he says.

"I couldn't let you die," I retort. "At least I was able to come back. You wouldn't have."

Damon sighs and lets me have that win because we both know it's true. He wouldn't have come back from a stake to the heart. Then he surprises me by pulling me into his arms and whispering those three precious little words that I had been waiting to hear for two and a half months into my hair: "I love you."

Joy almost on par with what I had felt upon waking up from death and seeing him alive radiates through me and through our empathy link. I was beginning to think he would never say those words to me, no matter how much I knew they were true. I wrap my arms around him in return. "I love you, too," I breathe into his shirt.

We hold each other for a while, basking in the joy of being able to hold each other. Finally, he pulls away with a sigh. I can sense his reluctance to even speak whatever is on his mind but he has never let that stop him before. "Judgy's downstairs," he says. "She has a ring she's willing to enchant for you." I look at Damon for a long, silent moment, struggling within myself. I know Damon feels how angry I am with Bonnie and how reluctant I am of going near her right now for fear of killing her in a fit of rage. Despite everything she did, everything that could have been avoided if she had been a better friend, I still value my lifelong friendship with her. This is the biggest betrayal she's ever enacted towards me, but by no means the first. I feel his shock and a brief moment of regret before he hisses between grit teeth, having come to a decision. "I won't let you kill her," he tells me, and I can tell he's making it a vow.

I relax, knowing he would never willingly break a vow he's made, no matter who it's to. He'd be even less willing to break a vow to me. So I know he'll keep me from going after Bonnie in my anger. "Then let's go," I say, pulling out of his arms.

"I want that ring enchanted and on your finger before you finish the transition into vampirism," he tells me as we climb off the bed.

I look down contemplatively at my clothes, noticing I'm still wearing the torn and bloody shirt and blood-soaked jeans I was wearing when I died. I debate whether I should go downstairs like this, rub Bonnie's nose in the fact that I'm now technically dead because of her, or if I should change. Damon senses my debate and lets me feel his curiosity as to the subject of it. "I'm debating whether I should keep the reminder that I'm now technically dead because of her or change clothes before heading downstairs," I reply to his curiosity.

I look up in time to see the wicked smirk spread across his lips. "Keep it on," he encourages. "If that's all the revenge your pesky sentimentalities will let us have, the least you could do is shove it in her face that you're now a vampire because she wasn't a good friend to you."

I decide that's fair. I nod my agreement. "Alright," I say, heading for the door to our room.

Damon follows behind me as I head downstairs. Thanks to my newly enhanced senses, I can see Bonnie's cringe from the foot of the stairs when she sees the ruined outfit I'm still wearing. She knows me well enough to know that this is the first of many times I'm going to rub her nose in the fact that I'm now a vampire because she refused to accept my relationship with Damon. I will one day forgive her, as I have many times in the past, but first, as with all the previous times she had betrayed me, I will make damn sure that she'll never forget what she put me through with this betrayal. And this is the worst of any of the many betrayals she's committed against me during our seventeen years as friends. This betrayal has eternal consequences.

I sense Damon's amusement and know he saw Bonnie's cringe as well and also sense his struggle to keep from further rubbing Bonnie's nose in what her actions did. He's going to let me have my show. I'm guessing he had his turn while I was still in the dead phase of transition.

I wait a moment, letting Bonnie squirm beneath my predatory gaze. "As you can see, I'm now back from the dead, Bonnie," I tell her finally. She opens her mouth to say something but I cut her off. "I warned you the other night when you faked de-spelling the device that if anything happened to Damon or Stefan, I would never forgive you. You better be damned grateful I managed to get between the stake in John's hand and Damon at the last second or I'd have killed myself with Damon's blood in my system immediately after Damon's death. Then I would have completed the transition just so I could enact my revenge on you, John, and Isobel. After I had killed all three of you for taking my mate from me, I would have found a nice sunny place and allowed myself to burn to death so I could be reunited with him in true death. That Damon survived is the only reason I'm not trying to kill you right now. As it is, it will be a very long time before you earn my good graces back. You've betrayed me in the past in many different ways. Each time, you had to re-earn my friendship. And you know as well as I do that combining all those times of betrayal would still have nothing on this act of betrayal. I died, Bonnie. I died because you couldn't accept that Grams knew she would die if she went through with the spell to lift the seal on the tomb.

"Now I stand before you, in transition to becoming a vampire because of you. I would have rather waited another four or five years, waited until I looked less like Katherine, before reaching this point. Now, because of you, I will have all of her enemies after me for the rest of eternity. Because of some information Damon and I have been given, I know Damon and I will be able to defend me from them. But we will still have to fight them off for however long it takes other vampires to start recognizing the differences between Katherine and I. The only reason I'm even willing to talk to you right now is because Damon said you have a ring you're willing to enchant for me to protect me from the sun. Otherwise, I'd be avoiding you like the plague. And if you think a simple apology would even start to soothe my ire, know this: I lived the past three months twice. And after the events of Founder's Day in the first timeline, I had continued to live, if that's what it could be called, for three more months. Three months where I wanted to die more than anything in the world. Three months without my other half. Three damn months of existing as half a soul! Because, Bonnie, you see when Damon died in the other timeline, half my soul died, too! I couldn't bear to live. But I also couldn't bear to die because I didn't know if I'd go to where he was in death. And you want to know the biggest irony of this whole damned thing?" I ask rhetorically. I don't let anyone have a chance to answer that. "The biggest irony, Bonnie, is that in the other timeline, you were the one to send me back to right the wrong you had committed and yet you nearly committed it again!"

I feel Damon's surprise at that and I can see from Bonnie's expression that my words are a hard pill to swallow. Before I can continue, however, Damon rests a hand on my shoulder. "Elena," he says too softly for Bonnie to hear, a clear warning in his voice. I know him so well that I know what his warning is: 'Don't continue right now, Elena. You just dropped a big enough bombshell that everyone needs time to absorb it before you go dropping more.'

"Fine," I mutter at a volume only he and Stefan can hear. I refocus on Bonnie. "Damon won't let me continue further right now," I tell her. I can see the relief in her eyes. "So what do I need to do so that you can enchant the ring you brought for me?"

Bonnie takes a shaky breath before going to stand on one side of a window. "Stand across from me," she says. I obey. Bonnie pulls the ring I gave Grams one week after I first found out about vampires out of her pocket and places it in the patch of sunlight between us. She stares at it silently for a moment and I can feel her power going into the ring. Then she picks it up and hands it to me. "There, it's enchanted to protect you from the sun."

I put it on my finger. Having sensed Bonnie actually using her power and that power going into the ring, I know she doesn't want anything else to happen to me. "Alright, Judgy," Damon says coolly before I can think of a way to kick her out. "You've enchanted the ring; you've seen she's okay. Now get out before I give into my desire to do to you what you caused to happen to her. And I won't be giving you blood beforehand, either."

I see the fear in Bonnie's eyes before she beats a hasty retreat. She pauses at the door. "Caroline's in the hospital," she says to me. "She, Tyler, and Matt were in a crash last night, and she was seriously injured." With that, she leaves.

I freeze. Caroline was injured? I try to recall what had happened to her after Founder's Day in the other timeline but find that I can't remember. I had been too caught up in my own heartbreak to notice anything. Damon senses my worry for Caroline and places a hand on my shoulder. "After you finish the transition, we'll go see her," he says, handing me a blood bag he must have fetched while Bonnie was casting her spell on my ring.

I do as I've seen Damon do when he didn't want to feed from me and tear the valve off before sticking the tube in my mouth to drain the blood bag dry. After Damon disposes of my blood bag, we head to the hospital to see if there's anything we can do for Caroline.

Sarah: and that's it for Chapter 1 of this book. I hope you enjoyed it as much as everyone seemed to enjoy Setting Things Right. Please review and tell me what you think.