I apologize for the wait on this chapter, and I know that it is also short. I lost interest for a very long time, but I forced myself to finally sit down and write this. My goal is to finish this story by the beginning of 2016. Here's the outline for the upcoming chapters.

Ch. 34 - Woke Up With a Monster

Ch. 35 - Prayer for the Dying

Ch. 36 - The Day I Tried to Live

Ch. 37 - AU "Come As You Are"

Ch. 38 - AU "Because You Loved Me"

Ch. 39 - AU "I Love You Always Forever"

Ch. 40 - Thank You Note

Disclaimer: Chapter 1 please :)

Christmas Through Your Eyes

"I just figured that we were skipping Christmas this year," Caroline told her mom over the phone she held to her ear. Lowering her voice, she explained, "Considering the part where I die if I cross the border into my hometown."

"What happened to Christmas being your favorite time of the year?"

"Was my favorite time of year," the blonde emphasized bitterly. "When I could actually live in my own home and decorate the town tree and drink hot cocoa with my friends—"

Caroline stopped mid-sentence as she walked into her dorm to find her mother and Audrey standing in the middle of the room, surrounded by Christmas decorations. Caroline's mother smiled triumphantly as Audrey threw up her hands.

"Surprise!" she shouted with a huge grin.

"What are you doing?" Caroline asked, her eyes wide. She turned to her mother. "You're supposed to be at the Mystic Falls tree-decorating ceremony!"

Sheriff Forbes stepped forward and shrugged. "I'm playing hooky this year! Audrey called me a few days ago and I figured...just because you can't come home for the holidays doesn't mean the holidays can't come to you."

Caroline looked back and forth between her mother and her sister before finally laughing and looking down in a box at the end of her bed.

"You even brought our favorite ornaments! Mom..."

"Oh, I always loved that one!" Audrey chimed in, walking over to Caroline's side to look at the ornament of her and her sister when they were younger. Sheriff Forbes laughed seeing her daughters smile so brightly, but before the conversation could continue, there was an interruption from behind the two Forbes sisters.

"Hey! I didn't know which ones to get, so...I got both." Caroline and Audrey turned around to see Stefan standing in the doorway holding up two packs of Christmas lights. Audrey's lips turned down slowly.

"What the...w-why are you here?" she asked, grinding her teeth. Stefan shrugged.

"Your mom needed Christmas lights."

Audrey spun around to her mother. "Mom?"

Sheriff Forbes shrugged nonchalantly. "Well...you have a huge dorm and I...thought we could use an extra set of hands."

Audrey gave her mother a look, and in turn, Liz gave her daughter a scolding expression, causing her to run her tongue along her teeth and, with just a quick glimpse back at Stefan, she said nothing and walked over to a box of holiday supplies. Caroline and her mother shared a small glance, and as the room filled with awkwardness, Caroline turned around and tried to be as cold as she could to her sister's ex-boyfriend.

"The little ones. Obviously."

Should I wake him up? I should probably wake him up. Yeah, waking him up sounds like a good idea. But he looks so...so peaceful. No, I shouldn't wake him up...or—goddamn it, make up your damn mind!

"You're staring," Elena warned, snapping me out of my internal debate. I jumped at the startle, but she just looked up at me over her eyelids as she flipped through one of Alaric's archaic books in her hands. I cleared my throat and shook my head.

"Um, what?"

"She said, 'you're staring'," Damon mumbled from beside me with a stupid smile sliding across his face as me and Elena both turned out heads to realize he wasn't sleeping. Damon's eyes fluttered open for a moment as he questioned in a child-like tone, "Are you watching me sleep?"

"No..." I trailed off as I crossed my legs underneath the table and straightened myself. "Because that would be creepy and weird. Come to think of it, it sounds like something you would do."

Damon chuckled under his breath, but before he could answer, Elena put her head on her hand and leaned on the table before pointing to Damon accusingly. "You know...you're drooling all over Ric's texbooks. And considering you're already on his bad side..."

"I don't drool," the vampire defended himself as he lifted his head from the book, sure enough, to find a small streak of drool from the side of his mouth. He wiped it off and straightened, and I watched discreetly as he stretched and Elena kept looking through her textbook. "Mm...what time is it?"

"Time for Ric to get a new reference library," Elena muttered. I rolled my eyes.

"Oh, ha-ha, Elena. So funny."

"At least I pretend to laugh at your jokes, Mads." She frowned and then turned back to Damon. "We've been looking through these things all night and I swear...I haven't found anything that even remotely resembles...an Ascendant."

"Well, we haven't looked hard enough," Damon shot Elena a small smile and started to turn the pages of his book. "Let's get to it."

Elena and Damon immediately looked down and started to look through the books, but I'd been in and out of mine for the past few hours, re-reading over every page five hundred times because I couldn't concentrate...which was strange. But regardless, it didn't stop my brain from shutting down every time I saw any body part of the vampire sitting beside me move. I tried to focus on the book on the table, but instead, my eyes kept drifting up and looking at him. Damn him, I thought. Why does he have to be so attractive?

"Madeline..." he cooed without looking up at me. "Have you found anything yet?"

"Um...no."

I tried to make myself focus again, this time succeeding for a full two seconds before my eyes did what my brain didn't want it to. Still without lifting his head, Damon's mouth turned up into a huge smile.

"Still staring."

Frustrated, I rose from my chair and huffed, "I'm getting a fucking coffee."

"Good idea. Maybe that'll curve your appetite," he muttered. Hearing his statement before I walked away, I managed to hit him on the back of the head like a bad puppy dog. I could hear Damon merely laugh as I walked away and went to the bar in the contemporary study hall/bar we hung out at so often within Whitmore College. While waiting for my coffee, I could feel my phone vibrate in my pocket. It was an incoming call from Ric.

"Hey, Ric."

"Have you seen Jo?" he hurried out. I raised my eyebrows.

"No...I haven't worked a shift at the hospital since yesterday." Alaric sighed, and this immediately worried me. The barista behind the bar placed my coffee in front of me and I left it there for a moment as I stepped off to the side and crossed my arms, waiting for the bad situation to arise. "Why?"

A while later, as Elena, Damon, and I were all congregated into Alaric's living room, I watched as Elena paced back and forth with her arms crossed over her chest.

"So...I asked around the hospital. No one's seen Jo since last night at the ER. A bunch of stab victims came in and one of them's missing as well."

"It was Kai," Alaric agreed. "Jo knew he'd come after her, and he did."

Damon, who was sitting down on the couch with his feet up on the coffee table, abruptly commented, "Not to give you boyfriend lessons or anything, but...if you knew Jo's wack-job brother was on the loose and after her, don't you think keeping an eye on her would've been a smart move?"

Alaric turned at him sourly. "And what would you have had me do, Damon? Ask you to compel Jo to stay put?"

Damon nodded in agreement, clearly entertaining the idea for the sake of his pride, but I just sighed and interrupted them before it could get out of hand. "Hey, how about we stop throwing darts at each other and start coming up with a plan to get Jo back, huh?"

"Plan's easy. Find Kai," Damon made a cutting motion with his hand and smiled, "kill Kai."

I frowned. "That's not much of a plan. But yeah, we need to find him first. Where do you think he would go?"

Damon took a moment, but eventually, he pursed his lips and his eyes turned to look up at everyone else. "Where would a psychopath go to hide from vampires?"

He lifted himself from the couch and whipped out his phone, and I shook my head with a roll of my eyes.

"I literally just asked that," I mumbled, taking Damon's seat on the couch as Elena, Alaric, and I waited for him to get off the phone. It only took him a moment, and when he finally turned around, we all stayed silent for him to fill us in.

"Well, Beavis and Butt-Head are on the lookout," Damon told us. Matt and Jeremy...of course. "Anyone else brimming with confidence?"

"I mean, this just doesn't make sense," Alaric blurted out.

Damon's eyes widened in feigned shock. "What could possibly not make sense about magical twins absorbing into one another?"

"Listen, Jo needs her magic for the merge to work, okay? And she got rid of that back in 1994! If the only way to restore Jo's magic is to reunite her with that knife, Kai's gonna come for it."

"Ric's right." Elena nodded and turned to Damon. "Even if Kai can't do the locator spell, he's gonna make it his mission to find it."

"Kai finds it." Damon shrugged. "Great. Love it."

"Why aren't you more concerned?"

"Because if Kai goes for the knife, I will kill him. Because the knife is right here where I hid it." Damon turned around and grabbed a picture frame from the wall, where he opened a secret compartment in the back to show it to me, Alaric, and Elena. "Ta-da!"

But instead, all we saw was a hollow hiding space, which meant exactly what we all feared.

Audrey stood by the fireplace in the dorm and attempted to make her sister pleased by how she strung the lights. The truth of the matter was, Caroline would just redo them anyways, but it never hurt to try. She moved to reach up and hang the second part of the strand, but before she could, she felt someone come up beside her and grab the lights.

"Here, I got it." Audrey looked beside her to see Stefan easily reach up and pin the strand up on the wall without saying a word. She stared at him for a while, but eventually, she couldn't help herself.

"What are you doing here?"

Stefan turned to her, confused. "Your mom...asked for my help—"

"You know what I mean, Stefan," the redhead snapped unintentionally, but then she softened her voice and sighed. "You can't possibly think that hanging a few strands of Christmas lights can make up for everything you did to me, can you? Because if you do think that...well, you have another thing coming."

She walked around and moved to continue with the strand, but as she did, Stefan rotated his body and said, exhausted, "Audrey, I'm really trying here—"

"I'm sorry, did you just say that you're trying?" she protested, cutting him off mid-sentence with a small laugh. "Hanging Christmas lights for my Mom and my sister? That's not trying! In fact, there is no more 'trying', Stefan! I meant what I said."

"But Audrey..."

"I don't want to hear it anymore." She refocused her attention on the lights and grumbled, "I'm done, Stefan. I'm done."

He took a moment to really process the words, but decided that it wasn't worth it. Him being there only agitated her more, and if she deserved anything, it was a nice Christmas holiday with Caroline and Liz. So, for the sake of whatever he could one day salvage, Stefan turned and walked for the door just as Sheriff Forbes and Caroline walked in.

"Who wants hot chocolate?!" Sheriff Forbes shouted enthusiastically, but was only greeted by Stefan's somber face as he announced his departure and walked out the door. Caroline gasped and looked at the lights above the fireplace.

"No, no! No, those go there, Audrey. Not there." Of course, Caroline walked over and took the strand of lights out of Audrey's hands and started to redo them on her own. Audrey stepped aside and looked at her mother, who was looking at her with something that was a combination between disappointment and anger. Audrey was about to open her mouth and speak when suddenly, Sheriff Forbes dropped the hot chocolate tray in her hand, spilling hot cocoa everywhere on the hardwood floor. Both daughters immediately straightened with eyes widened.

"Mom?" Caroline asked, concern lacing her voice. Sheriff Forbes held onto the bed in the corner and took in a deep breath.

"Wow...I just got really..."

"Mom!" Caroline and Audrey shouted as they watched her knees buckle, but before she could hit the ground, Stefan was behind the Sheriff and caught her fall. Caroline, on her knees, looked into her mom's eyes. "Are you okay?"

Sheriff Forbes shook her head.

Elena and I rushed up to Caroline, who was pacing back and forth in front of the window of the patient room her mother was in.

"Hey!" Elena shouted as we approached her. "What happened?"

"I don't know," Caroline trailed off. "She just...collapsed. One second we were decorating and then the next, she's just...on the ground." She turned to us and fidgeted with her necklace as she rambled. "Maybe she forgot to eat, you know...sometimes she just...skips breakfast."

"Did you also skip breakfast this morning?" I asked, eyeing her fidgeting hand carefully. Caroline sighed.

"Stefan's going to get something for me. Relax."

"Where's Audrey?" Elena inquired, looking around to see if the redhead was anywhere to be found. Caroline pointed behind Elena to a hallway leading to the cafeteria.

"I think she's at a vending machine or something. She was starving, too."

"Okay, well I'm gonna go talk to her."

Caroline and I both nodded and watched as Elena walked away to go find Audrey, and after she did, Caroline and I stood together looking into the exam room in awkward silence. Then, Caroline paced again, clearly a sign of the edge from her starvation, and she laughed quietly before sitting down on the bench a few feet away from the window.

"They have her sedated," she informed me. "She's gonna be asleep for a while. Can you just come and...distract me?"

I hesitated, wanting to see more of the exam in Liz's room, but I obliged my friend and turned around to sit with her on the bench.

"Okay...um..."

"How's the search for the new Ascendant thingy?" she started. I shook my head.

"We haven't made much progress. Elena, Damon, and I spent all night looking for something in Alaric's textbooks, but there was nothing that'll help us figure out a way to get back to 1994."

Caroline sighed, defeated. "God, poor Bonnie. Wait...do you think she knows it's Christmas? You know she never liked being away from us at Christmas."

I dropped my eyes. "It'd be easier if she didn't know."

"Yeah..." the blonde trailed off for a moment but, determined not to waste a second in silence for fear of her sanity, she brought up something else. "So are you and Damon—"

"No." I shot a look back at her, causing Caroline to laugh.

"Someone got defensive! You didn't even know what I was going to ask!"

"I could see where it was going. And the answer is still no."

"For the record, I told you not to do it," she pointed out with a small shrug. "I knew it was a bad idea from the start. Erasing him, I mean. Elena had good intentions when she suggested it, but I would've thought you'd see how stupid it was."

"Well, I don't think it was 'stupid'at the time," I countered. Caroline rolled her eyes. "I mean, it seems completely logical that—"

"Ugh. See, I liked you a lot more when you remembered Damon."

"I never forgot him, Caroline."

"Well, you forgot all the parts of him that made you...you." Her nose turned up in disdain. "Now you're all boring and logical again."

"I don't understand what it is about him that made me different. Everyone keeps saying how different I am without him but I just feel like...like me." I laughed. "Is that such a bad thing?"

"It's annoying," she admitted. I rolled my eyes playfully and listened as she continued, "Well, actually, I was going to say that I think it's great...how he's always been there for you when it mattered. You know, through thick and thin, and good times and bad times. There's been a shortage of that lately. Maybe I haven't given him enough credit."

I stared at her blankly for a moment before finally coming up with, "Where is Caroline and what have you done to her?"

She nudged me in the elbow. "Seriously! I mean it. After seeing what Stefan and Audrey went through, I'm glad that there's at least someone in the world who will never give up on the person he loves."

I shrugged. "I woudn't go that far."

Caroline smiled. "Not yet."

Glioblastoma.

Glioblastomas are brain tumors that arise from astrocytes. These tumors are usually highly malignant because the cells reproduce quickly and they are supported by a large network of blood vessels. Glioblastoma can be difficult to treat because the tumors contain so many different types of cells. Some cells may respond well to certain therapies, while others may not be affected at all.

The definition repeated in my mind over and over again, but it wouldn't process. Caroline and Audrey were waiting outside their mother's room for Liz to wake up, but Elena, Stefan, and I thought it best to give them some time alone. Audrey and Caroline didn't know about their mother's condition—no, Stefan had overheard one of the nurses say it, Elena compelled one of the doctors, and I managed to snag a copy of the scans and determine it for myself. The tumor had grown so much and had gone undetected, and therefore it was beyond the point of repair. Sheriff Forbes had an inoperable tumor living inside of her like a ticking bomb.

I found Stefan sitting in the corner of the waiting room, just staring out into space. Elena was with me, and she saw Stefan too, but I told her to go along so I could talk to him. I walked down the dark hallway and sat next to my friend, who just sighed upon my presence and said nothing.

"Are you okay?" I asked him quietly. Stefan scoffed.

"There's a 22-year-old sociopathic witch running around in Mystic Falls right now. That, we have a plan for. We've dealt with...every kind of evil there is...and we always have a plan. But this...? If they lose their mom, it'll destroy them."

I clenched my fist hard. "I...I know. I know. And I've looked over the scans millions of times—"

"They don't deserve this, Mads." Stefan looked up at me abruptly, catching me off guard. I stared at him and watched as he shook his head slowly and said, "Caroline and Audrey are good people. They may not be related, but they're cut from the same cloth. Happy...kind..."

"I know. I know that people are supposed to die. That's what life is, but...but this is just so unfair." Suddenly, without realizing it, I felt a tear slip down my face. It was strange, but it happened, and therefore, I went with it, pausing only briefly to be shocked by the small salted drop strolling down my cheek before I wiped it away and shook my head at Stefan. "I need to tell Audrey. Elena said that she's going to tell Caroline...because, you know, it's only a matter of time until Caroline compels the doctor..."

"Let me do it." Stefan lifted himself from his chair and grabbed his jacket, but I looked up at him.

"No, Stefan, it's okay. I can handle it. You don't have to."

"Let Damon know," he told me with a small nod. "I should tel Audrey. I haven't...been there for her. She...she needed me, she loved me...and I just ran away. So, yeah. I have to do it."

I wanted to say something, maybe to tell him that he wasn't wrong for leaving Audrey, but I couldn't. Words failed me and I was just left to watch as Stefan continued down the hall to break the news to our friend, whose mother was inevitably going to die.

"Hey," Stefan greeted Audrey as the young redhead tapped her foot on the ground impatiently while she waited outside her mother's exam room. Elena had taken Caroline somewhere else, he assumed, to break her the news as well.

"Hi," Audrey greeted him quietly. He walked forward and, as he sat down, she cleared her throat and told him, "There's still no news. The doctor said they're still, um, running tests, I think? Where's Madeline? I'm sure she can figure out what's wrong with her before any of these quacks can."

The human gave a soft laugh towards the end, but Stefan was just a blank expression. She looked at him and realized quickly that there was something wrong.

"What is it?" she whispered. Stefan swallowed thickly. "Stefan...please. Just tell me. Get it over with."

"Your mom..." He took a deep breath as he tried to force it out of his throat. "Audrey, your mom has something called a glioblastoma. It's...uh, cancer. A brain tumor, to be exact."

"What?" the redhead asked, shaking her head. "That...that can't be true. If it were true, she would've told us. She would've told me and Caroline before this all happened."

"Elena and I got worried, so she compelled one of the doctors for information. Madeline found the CT scans of the tumor."

Audrey hesitated, listening to the words out of Stefan's mouth, and then she finally shrugged. "But we can fix this, right? Vampire blood can heal, so we can just give her some blood and the tumor will go away, right?"

"Audrey, don't you think that...if vampire blood cured cancer, we would've heard about that by now?"

"I don't know, Stefan! You want me to start going through books and find some research on it then?"

"That's not what I'm saying—"

"Then what are you saying?" she prompted him with a cocked eyebrow. "Are you saying they're going to operate? When?"

Stefan looked down at the floor. "That's the problem. They can't."

"So it's not only a brain tumor, it's an inoperable brain tumor." Audrey laughed sharply and nodded. "O-Okay then. Let's see, what else is there? Chemo? How about chemo? Or is there something prohibiting her from getting that too?"

Stefan hung his head. "The tumor is growing so fast, the doctors don't think that'll work."

"So you're saying that there's nothing we can do?" she nearly shouted, and Stefan watched her as she studied him for any kind of signs that this wasn't real. Eventually, she realized that exactly what she said was the exact truth. Her eyes swelled up with tears. "Oh...oh my God. There's nothing we can do. There's nothing we can..."

Her voice quality disintegrated over her words as, pretty soon, all she happened to be was a sobbing mess. Stefan, seeing her pain, fought back the tears in his eyes and he just reached beside him, pulling Audrey into his arms, trying to comfort her as she wept into his shoulder.

"That's funny," I said slowly as I repeated Damon's words in my mind. I laughed. "I thought you just said that you were home. I wouldn't really call Alaric's apartment 'home'."

"I am home. And no, I'm not in Alaric's apartment, Madeline. I'm home. Home, home."

I blinked. "H-How is that possible?"

"He took all the magic from the Traveler spell." He shrugged. "I just walked through the front door. Which I should start locking now that Kai's supercharged and on the prowl."

I sighed. "Well, at least there's one part of my day that wasn't completely terrible and sad."

"I'm listening..."

"Look, Damon, I don't," I hesitated, trying to come up with the word, "know what this is yet. I don't really know what I'm supposed to expect or what you're supposed to expect or...what we should expect. Bottom line is, today was...different. With everything that happened with Sheriff Forbes, I...feel things that I don't think I'm supposed to be feeling. Or, at least, I don't know what they mean. But I do know that I...would like to see you."

I could hear Damon's small smile on the other end of the line. "Well, come over. We can talk about our crappy days."

I smiled quietly. "I'll see you later."

"Bye."

And as I hung up the phone, I turned the corner to find Audrey and Stefan in a somber embrace, Stefan comforting Audrey as she cried into his chest. I tried not to cry again, but it was too much. The entire day had just been too much.

Later, as promised, after dropping Elena, Caroline, and Audrey safely back at the Whitmore dorms so the sisters could catch at least a few hours of shut-eye after all the crying after the horrible news they'd endured, I was at the Salvatore boarding house to meet Damon. As I knocked on the door, I noticed the mistletoe hanging above the doorway and shook my head. Classic Damon.

He answered the door promptly, as if he were waiting for me, which I had no doubt he was. I crossed my arms over my chest and smiled.

"Do you actually think mistletoe will work?" I challenged, but though he looked at me, I felt like he was looking right through me.

"Hello?" he asked aloud, a confused look on his face. "Anybody there?"

I frowned. "It's not funny. It's freezing outside, can I come in?"

But instead, he just made a confused face and shut the door, where I blinked a few times in disbelief. Rude, I thought to myself, but I knew there was something wrong. He wouldn't have shut the door in my face, it was Damon. I mean, unless him trying to make me remember all the amazing relationship time we had was just some sick joke—

"I may have put a cloaking spell on us." I jumped and turned around to face some guy standing behind me with a wide grin on his lips. "How genius is that?"

I opened my mouth to scream or say something, but instead, nothing came out, and I was on the floor, the world around me turning black.

Thanks for reading! Please review! Three more episodes until the final chapters!

LovelyFandomLover: Well thank you for understanding. Yeah, it really was disappointing and I'll admit, Season 7 is a lot better, but I just don't think that it's a good idea for me to continue this story into Season 7 for the integrity of the plot. Yeah, it will definitely be worth reading and we're almost getting to it. Oh my Gosh this was such a long time ago...Deception was actually one of my favorite stories and honestly I'm so sad that I deleted it. I think I deleted it because someone said that my characters were OOC and I hate when that happens so I just went ahead and got rid of it because I sort of understood where they were coming from. Thanks!

thisdarkpassenger: Thank you!

LMarie99: Elena's always too narcissitic. Thank you!

vampangel25: Yeah, I've thought about doing that, but it would just ruin the whole last few episodes of the show and honestly I do not want to have to deal with the whole Emotionless Caroline crap that happens towards the middle episodes so I'm just cutting it off early. Anyways, thanks for the review!

SomebodyWhoCares: :P

Adela: Thank you!

Shadow97: Thank you! Yes, there will be a few chapters at the end of the story and...I mean, it won't necessarily be an 'epilogue' but it'll be close. I mean, it won't be anything into the future just because I always find that stuff annoying to write and annoying to read but the way it'll end will be very satisfying, I promise. I won't leave anyone hanging. Thank you!

Guest: She'll get her memories back before the story has ended, that's all I'll say about it. But no, she won't get pregnant. But maybe there are wedding bells in the future I don't know we'll have to see...thanks for the review!

DreamonAlina: Yeah I mean, I just don't want to have to deal with this for another season, it's already taken me enough effort to put into this chapter and it was only 5000 words. Six chapters now, yes. Thanks for your review!

SnarkyPenname: Here it is!

Smilingbringsjoy: Here it is!

Guest: Well I lost motivation in this story and I had a lot going on. I apologize for the delay but here's the chapter.

Guest: No one is dying in the season finale because I'm not writing the season finale. But yeah, I hate Elena too and I'm glad she's dead right now.

annabeth: I'm sorry but the decision has been made. Thank you for reviewing!

ariabellavega: I know I disappeared for a while but yes, I will be continuing this story and it will eventually come to an end. My goal is to get it done by the New Year.

ariabellavega: Thank you!

kimchi759: Thank you for all your reviews and all the constructive criticism. Like I said in my PM, this story has been around for a long time and I'm not too proud of some of the writing and plot that's on it either.

cory: I'm sorry but the decision has been made. There will be no end of Season 6 and no Season 7. But I appreciate the effort! Thank you for reviewing!

river: I lost interest in the story and I had a lot of stuff to do so I couldn't update as often. Madeline won't be interacting with Lily or the heretics so that stuff can't really happen. Anyways, thanks for reviewing!