~~~Survive For Me~~~

The Latin words rolled off her tongue like raindrops. She raised her arms, feeling the power course through her body like electricity. It felt so real. So much like before.

She kept her eyes tightly closed, unable to look at four of her children that were gathered around the circle. Especially Elijah. The moment she opened her eyes, she could imagine the hurt and the betrayal in his face. Out of all of her children, he was always the one that was the most noble, the most gentle. He never took human life if he could help it.

Her arms were shaking heavily, unable to hold on anymore. "Sisters! Please!" she cried up to the heavens.

"Damon! Damon, no!"

Damon ignored Bonnie as he forced his cut wrist to Abby's mouth. He felt her lips take in the sticky fluid and then with one quick and painless action, he snapped her neck.

"NO!"

The power surged through her body, aching her bones. It felt so real and so right to her. Everything about it was so…

But then it was all gone.

Cries rang through the air and she could hear bodies dropping to the ground. She forced her eyes open in time to see Elijah staring at her in shock before he fell down into a heap on the crunchy grass.

Her eyes surveyed the damage.

Klaus was laying spread-eagled on his back, his eyes open and unseeing, finally dead to the world.

Kol lay about twenty feet away on his side. His arm was tucked underneath his head, as if he was sleeping. But she knew he wasn't.

Elijah was on his front, his face turned out to the side. His eyes were half closed and she could see a strip of white underneath his lids. His arms were pressed into the ground underneath him like he was trying to push himself back up.

In front of her, Finn was on his back, the stake sticking out of his chest. His arms were pushed into the ground, his fingers still gripping the grass as he had when he was in pain after the staking.

She could feel it, all of her children were gone. She knew Rebekah had fallen nearby as well but couldn't bring herself to go and look.

But then the pain hit her own heart. She clutched at her chest, feeling the breath being ripped from her body.

"No!" she forced out, her eyes up to the heavens. "Please, no!"

Then she fell, never to move again.

"What happened? Damon, let go of me!"

Elena thrashed against Damon's grip, her eyes still focused on the top of the hill where she had seen the last of the lights go out. Damon still held onto her, his hands too tight and almost painful on her wrists.

"I swear to god, Damon, you are going to let go of me right now!"

Then he released her.

Elena stared at him, surprised. But then she saw the reason why. Stefan had flown out of nowhere and pulled Damon away from her and was holding him back.

"Thank you, Stefan," she whispered before shooting up the hill with such speed that she didn't know she had.

Once she got up there, she found a sight in front of her that almost made her sick. After seeing Rebekah drop dead in front of her, she didn't want to believe that it was true.

Truth was, she didn't give a flying fig about Esther, Kol, Klaus, or Finn. But there was one man that she did care about and was sorry to see him gone.

Her knees gave out from underneath her as she approached Elijah's body. She crawled over and placed her hand on his eyelids, hoping to bring that vacant stare to an end because she knew it was going to haunt her for the rest of her life.

But then she noticed something that made her heart skip a beat.

The other vampires that were laying dead around her all had that familiar ashen look to their faces. She had seen so many dead vampires that she knew better than to be fooled. They were all dead.

All but one.

"Oh, my God. He's alive… He's alive!"

Damon and Stefan were beside her in a second, both of them kneeling beside Elijah's body. Stefan gently felt for a pulse and could feel it beating away. It was weak, but it was there. He leaned close and sniffed his neck.

"What are you doing?" asked Elena, her nose wrinkled up.

"Human…"

"What?"

"He's human. His heart's beating, his pulse is working. He's human, you two," said Stefan.

Investigating for himself, Damon did the same thing that Stefan did. He rocked back on his heels and nodded. "Yep, human."

"How is that possible?"

"I think what happened is that when Damon turned Abby and broke the link, Esther's ritual had already gone through her other children and hadn't hit Elijah yet. As the power left Esther after killing the others, it in turn went into Elijah and turned him human again," Stefan explained.

Both Damon and Elena stared at him. "How the hell could you possibly know that?" Damon barked.

"Been around witches too long," said Stefan nonchalantly.

At that moment, a low painful groan came from the now-human Elijah. Stefan sighed and stood up. "Get him to the hospital. I'll clean up this mess."

Damon stood too, shaking his head. "Nah, Stef. You and Elena get pretty boy Original to the hospital and I'll clean this up. I'm better at it than you are," he said.

Elena rolled her eyes. "Both of you are idiots."

Coma.

He was in a coma.

Elena stared at his still body, his chest rising and falling with every shaky breath. Tears pricked her eyes and she shamefully pushed them away.

The heart monitor beeped slowly, showing every struggling beat of his heart, making her own heart ache with sadness and pain for her friend.

Her friend.

Wow.

She had never really thought about it before, but Elijah really was her friend.

And she was his.

She hated herself for caring about him. As she knew Caroline hated herself for caring about Klaus. But maybe, now that he was human again, he could live a life that she knew he deserved.

"How is he?"

Caroline's gentle voice made her come out of her thoughts. She sighed and rubbed her hands up and down her arms, trying to hold herself together.

"Sleeping."

"Stefan told me that he's in a coma," whispered Caroline.

"No, he's just sleeping," said Elena more forcefully. "That's what I chose to believe."

Caroline's eyes found her friend's and she gave her a sad smile. "I know you care about him."

"More than I want to," said Elena, pushing more tears out of her eyes. "I don't know how I'm going to tell him that his whole family is dead."

"You don't have to, you know."

"It should come from me."

"I think the more pressing thing on his mind is going to be that he's human again," said Caroline.

Elena let out another sigh before running her hands over her face in an attempt to pull herself together again. "I'm sorry about Klaus."

Caroline's eyes widened. "Why would I care about Klaus? I'm glad he's dead."

"Caroline, please."

"No, Elena. That filth caused so much havoc in this town. It's about time he's gone. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that Elijah survived. But the rest of them-"

But she couldn't do it anymore and tears sprang to her eyes.

"It's okay to be a little sad, Care," whispered Elena. "He cared about you."

"It's like-, god I don't want to feel this way about someone like him. He was just a horrible individual and—damn it!" Caroline pushed the tears away but couldn't take it anymore, letting a small sob fall through her lips. "I don't want to feel this way. I hate feeling this way."

Elena slowly slipped her arms around her friend, allowing her head to fall on her shoulder. She could feel her tears soaking her shirt but didn't care. All she wanted was for that peace to come back even though she didn't think it ever would.

After kicking Stefan and Damon out for the final time, Elena found herself alone with Elijah. Caroline had stuck around for a while and finally got the strength to go home and left with the parting message of "be careful" to her friend. Elena waved it away and sank back into the chair, feeling relieved when the door closed behind Caroline, leaving her alone.

The nurses had flitted in out of the room over the course of the night, checking Elijah's vitals. They had pronounced him stable hours ago. He just needed to wake up.

The only way that they were allowing her to stay in the room was that she had lied. She had told the nurses that she was Elijah's fiancée. It felt weird lying about something like that. It also felt extremely weird caring so much about a vampire like him.

A former vampire.

Love was just dumb in the world that she lived in. She had been in love with Matt for most of her life, like she had been promised to him from the moment she was born. And those fifteen years were really good. Much better than she had ever given them credit for.

But then her parents died and it was all over in a flash. She lashed out at everything and dumped Matt and tore away from all of the normalcy that was still there.

Then Stefan Salvatore walked into her life.

On again, off again, round and round like a merry-go-round they went. She had admitted to herself that it would never work out. He was a vampire, she was human. And all she ever wanted was to live a normal human life, live through the pain and the heartache, live through all of it.

Damon Salvatore tried time and time again to prove to her that he was the one for her, but he wasn't. They both knew it deep down. She knew that neither brother was the right one for her, and it broke her heart to come to that realization because of how much she cared. All she wanted for them was the best.

She just hoped that they could find it someday with women that could spend eternity with them.

It was like living in heaven sometimes, surrounded by people who were in love with her. But that only lasted a little while and she wished with everything she had that it could go back to the way it was before. She missed being just the ordinary Elena Gilbert. But a certain person made her feel like that again.

All he needed to do was wake up.

She had so many senses about people, that being the gift she was blessed with. She had wondered what kind of senses would be elevated if she had become a vampire after the sacrifice and soon figured out that it would have been that.

And her sense about Elijah was that he had been hurt when he was human. There was so much that she wanted to know about him, but knew she never could get close.

Maybe she could now.

A/N: So this fic originally belonged to abbyli, but she handed the story over to me after she ran out of inspiration. The first eight chapters are hers, with minor revisions/changes from yours truly. Please check out abbyli, because her writing is superb! She is currently writing a new Elejah fic that's extremely brilliant!

Thanks for reading and reviewing! :)