~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*v*(E)*v*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She sucked in a ragged breath.

Cold. It was so cold, and her head- oh how it ached! Her skin felt like it had been abraded with sandpaper and the stench of lake water was strong. Sterile walls, metal slabs. She'd seen enough cop dramas to know she was in a morgue, not in a hospital bed.

Eyes of green bled concern and remorse. Familiar eyes, safe. Stefan. Much as they comforted, she fought against her momentary confusion. They were not the eyes she had expected to see. "Elena!" Stefan breathed. "You're… it's… I'm so sorry, but Dr. Fell explained that your injuries when Jeremy brought you in earlier were much worse than she let on at the time. She gave you blood. When you went over the bridge, it was still in your system. You're in transition."

She remembered. The truck, Matt, Rebeckah, the bridge, the water. She'd found it fitting, at the end, that she'd die at the bottom of the lake under Wickery Bridge after all, only about a year too late to go with her parents.

Matt hadn't deserved any of the supernatural sideshow that her life had become. He wasn't the reason the Originals came to town, or even that the Salvatores had decided to come back to stay, so when Stefan appeared outside the window, she had insisted that Matt be the one who was saved. She'd had her second chance, and had made such a misery for everyone else with it. They'd all lost so much… so many because she hadn't died in that car with her parents. Vickie, Logan Fell, Bonnie's Grams, Lexie, Caroline, Anna, Mayor Lockwood, Mason Lockwood, Sarah, Tyler, Aimee, Trevor, Rose, Luka, Jonas, Isobel, Andi, Jules, Jenna, John, Mr. Forbes, Abby Bennet, Rick, and many others who she never knew about, never learned their names. So many deaths all because Stefan had saved her from her parents' fate. Her last emotions were of guilt and finally, peace. No one would ever have to die to save her life again. Her long fight with death was over, and death had come to claim her at last. There was no need for fear, for sorrow, for pain. The last air left her lungs and she breathed in searing agony, but then, darkness. Rest.

Only to open her eyes once more in shock, confusion, with a hunger unlike any she'd ever felt. Her throat was rubbed raw with lake water and something more. Each breath brought the scent of bleach, burning in her nostrils, with the faint, faraway smell of something delicious, something necessary. Instinct clamored in the back of her mind with the sure knowledge that she would need to feed on blood if she wanted to survive beyond the day. Stefan (or was it Damon?) had been right: a lot of it was pure instinct. She supposed she was lucky that she was better prepared for all of it, that it wouldn't come as such a shock when she woke to life again. To be perfectly honest with herself, she knew it was bound to happen sooner or later. From the moment she'd taken Stefan by the hand and led him up the stairs toward his bedroom, she knew deep down that it would always come to this. To think otherwise was simply a delusion.

"Elena?" Stefan's voice pled with her to speak, to acknowledge her existence.

"Stefan," she replied, her voice a weak rasp in her parched throat. She squeaked out a tortured groan and began to rise. He helped her sit up with gentle solicitous patience. She swung her legs over the side of the cold, steel slab they'd laid her out on. It was dark where they were, but there was enough artificial light filtering in through the windows set into the top of the wall at ground level to see by. "Matt?" she rasped out, not trusting her voice any farther.

"He's fine. He's in the recovery ward upstairs. They got to him in time."

"Jer?"

"I've called him. He's on his way."

"Da-?"

At that moment, the revolving doors of the morgue flew open with a bang, a preternatural wind blew through the cold, clinical space and crystal blue eyes hovered right before her, pale hands holding her face as if to reassure himself that she was real. "Elena!" Damon gasped, her name leaving his lips like a prayer.

She didn't know exactly why, but some tight place in her chest loosened with his arrival. Where before, Stefan's presence made her feel safe and loved, like she'd felt when her parents were still alive, but upon waking, she'd felt a distinctive lack-as if she were disconnected from reality. Damon brought that sense of being alive, protected, and loved back.

Having assured himself that she was as alive as she was ever going to be again, Damon released his clasp on her jaw and took a step backward out of respect for his brother's feelings. If he and Elena had been alone together for their reunion, it would have been a different story. He didn't know when his feelings for his little brother had begun to change from vehement hatred to brotherly love. All he knew was that he didn't want to cause his brother any more pain.

Elena took a moment to really look at the two men who had come to mean so much to her. Stefan and Damon stood equidistant from her and each other. Stefan wore his heart on his sleeve, heavy with guilt and remorse. His eyes glistened with moisture and his mouth hung open slightly with his grief. He seemed to have the weight of the world on his shoulders as he held back the sobs within. Damon, on the other hand, was merely wary. He wore his poker face, keeping his emotions bottled up and away from scrutiny, but she could tell he was waiting for her to say or do something that would cause him no end of suffering. Where Stefan had already given up on her, now that she wouldn't have the human life she'd clung so desperately to, Damon still held onto the hope that this wouldn't be the end. She could well understand Stefan's feelings on the matter: he always respected her decisions and if she decided she wasn't going to complete the transition, he would mourn for her, but ultimately let her do what she thought she needed to. He took the choice from Damon once, and the hatred that had engendered in his brother had lasted more than a century. He would not make that mistake again, not with her. He could not bear the thought that she would hate him for taking her choice away. He would rather lose her forever to death than to lose her heart. That she wouldn't make the transition was a foregone conclusion to him. He hated being a vampire-a slave to the monster inside-and could not fathom how she would ever feel any differently. To him, that life was fraught with misery, and it was only by trying his hardest to be human, to be normal, that he ever found any sort of happiness.

She wondered idly if he could ever truly love her as a vampire, now that she could no longer serve as a tie to a normal, human life. Instantly, she felt guilty for even entertaining such a notion and the guilt that welled up was black and drowning as lake water. The force of her emotions swamped her, and she felt more miserable than she had ever felt in her life, even right after her parents had died. It hurt to look at him so much, she instantly switched her gaze to Damon to take her mind away from the source of that pain.

Damon's look of hope still managed to win through his blank facade. It didn't matter, in that moment, that she had made her choice before she'd died, that she'd chosen Stefan. He could survive without her by his side just so long as he knew she existed somewhere in the world. He valued her life more than he valued his own, or anyone else's for that matter. Countless times, he had made that perfectly clear though words and actions both. He would always do everything and anything to save her, even if that meant enduring her hatred of him for the rest of eternity. If she decided not to transition, she could count on him to try to change her mind through pleading, cajoling, insults, downright threats, and every weapon in his considerable arsenal until he'd worn her down or changed her mind. Since she could be incredibly stubborn about these things, if he failed to persuade her, he'd try to make her. He'd pull something out of Stefan's playbook and tempt her with a bleeding human, or more likely, force bottled blood down her throat.

Still, in that moment, even though she knew he would never let her get away with deciding to die, she felt none of her usual resentment toward his inability to let her make her own choices. Stefan seemed for all the world like her dying was a forgone conclusion, that the decision had already been made, while in truth, she hadn't thought about it long enough to make up her own mind. Damon seemed as if he was waiting for her to decide. Then, if she decided differently than he wanted, he'd try to change her mind. Still, he was holding on to hope that he wouldn't have to, that she'd choose what he wanted. Stefan's method was ineffectual. It was a kind of inaction, a passivity, born from the idea that he knew exactly what she'd do, when she didn't even know it herself. Damon was willing to let her come up with her own decision, and then fight her on it if need be. Damon would always fight. Stefan would always concede.

That was the fundamental difference in their relationships with her. Damon would always challenge her, Stefan would always support her.

Her eyes kept darting between the two of them as her mind whirled and whirled. It became increasingly harder to think as the blood lust warred with her senses and her body began making its sharp decline back toward death. Soon, she would be nothing but a ball of need and predatory instinct. She would lose herself to the need to feed on blood. It might take decades before she resurfaced again from the monster she might become if she ever let it go that far.

She realized she wanted-needed-more time to figure things out without the weight of the transition turning her thoughts to mulch. As seconds ticked by, she held onto her sanity, forcing her brain to grind away at the problem: the knowledge that if she died, she'd be leaving Jeremy without a single family member alive, leaving him only with ghosts. She could not do that to Jeremy.

"Could one of you please bring me a blood bag?" she managed to force out through her ragged throat. Drier than the Sahara, it made every word a chore. She couldn't tell if it was because of the thirst or because she'd inhaled so much water before she died.

Stefan startled at the question. His crossed arms unfolded as unshed tears glistened in his eyes. "I, uh, are you sure, Elena?" His depression began to visibly lift as the hope he hadn't allowed himself to entertain broke like dawn over his tortured expression.

"Yes," she said simply, and Damon was gone with a cold wind. He returned in an instant with a bag of O-positive clutched gently in his hand. Elena reached for it without making the conscious decision to, her muscles acting faster than her brain could process the command. Stefan's eyes veined out as Damon unclipped the plastic stopper on the IV tube and the scent of blood hit the air. Elena's did the same a moment later.

"Go find your own dinner," Damon chided his brother, "this one's for Elena." He held the blood bag out for her to take, straw first, and she snatched it away thoughtlessly to cradle it to her chest. Damon merely smiled knowingly, and rolled his eyes. "Newborns. No manners." He seemed to be enjoying himself a little too much, though he'd yet to drop his guard completely. Elena couldn't tell if he was wearing his mask of humor and sarcasm to preserve his pride until the other shoe dropped or if it was a symptom of having a potentially volatile baby vamp around, but she was too damn hungry to spend much brainpower analyzing it. She stared at the straw like tube for a few brief, tension-filed moments as it registered fully that if she did this thing, nothing would ever be the same. Still, nothing would ever be the same anyway. She spared a thought to John Gilbert's needless sacrifice. He had died to keep her human. In the end, all for nothing. She'd ended up a vampire anyway.

Stefan growled a little under his breath in self-disgust and promptly left the room at vampire speed as she latched her lips around the tube, sucking in the first sip with a gasp and a moan. Damon placed a comforting hand on the small of her back as she got lost in drinking and led her back to the mortuary table to sit and finish her meal.

Before she knew it, the bag crinkled, completely empty but for a few lingering drops caught in the folds. Mournfully, she sucked and nothing came out. Huffing in frustration, she blew the bag back up with a breath of air she didn't need, and resumed trying to drain the rest. Damon tutted half-heartedly as he took the empty thing from her. She whimpered at the loss, still ravenous.

"Easy, now," he soothed, stroking her hair back with a tender touch. "Take it nice and slow. We'll get you more, don't worry. I know it's hard. The hunger never really goes away. It's worse when you're new."

Stefan chose that moment to return, having regained some of his composure. He spared a glare for his brother at how close he was sitting to Elena, but kept his territorial comments to himself. "We'll need to get you out of here before sunrise," he cautioned, taking up the empty spot on the table on Elena's other side. "You should come with us to the boarding house. I sent Jeremy home and let him know that you'd completed the transition. You won't be able to go back home until you can handle yourself around him. I' told him not to invite you inside the house until Damon or I are with you."

Elena bristled at that. "I can't believe you think I would hurt my own brother." Her emotions were still rocky, still swinging from one extreme to the next, but her throat felt better and her head clearer.

"It's an easy mistake to make," Stefan sighed. "Trust me on that. I know from experience how hard it can be. Do you really want to take that chance?"

Elena sighed, defeated. "No. How do you plan to explain my disappearance? I take it the paramedics brought me here?"

"Dr Fell said she'd take care of it. They haven't revoked her medical license yet and she told the paramedics she'd continue trying to start your heart. I compelled the medical staff who helped work on you, and the nurse who wheeled you in here. No one knows what happened to you but Jeremy, Meredith, Damon, and myself. Matt's still unconscious, and the fewer people who know right now, the better."

"Thanks, Stefan. I don't know what I'd do without you." She looked back and forth between the two brothers meaningfully, seeing them with new eyes. She filed her observations away for later inspection, trying to tackle the problem of how she was going to get to a safe place before she could fully explore her new senses. "Both of you. So how are we getting me out of here without trying to eat the rest of the hospital?"

"Simple," Damon said, and snapped her neck