AU/AH: 3 years ago Elena Gilbert made the biggest mistake of her life by walking out on her one true love Damon Salvatore. Damon, heartbroken, moves away to a little town (it could be Mystic Falls or whatever you choose) and buries himself in alcohol and work. Now, with the approach of the 4th Christmas since that day, Elena just couldn't stay away any longer and is determined to prove Damon that she never stopped loving him and tells him what really made her leave.

-bonus point if the reason behind her leaving Damon is somehow his father (who sees his son as a disappointment) Giuseppe Salvatore (threat or something else)

-bonus point for insecure Damon

-bonus point for both fluff and angst

Thank you if you take interest! Merry Christmas! :)

Author's note:

First off, I apologize for my delay in having this ready. Time simply escaped me.

Second, I've taken a few liberties with the prompt. I'm hoping the spirit of the story still rings through, but I was having some difficulty making a few aspects of the prompt "play nicely" with each other. Hopefully, this will still meet the spirit of the request.

Third, I don't own TVD, its plots, or its characters. I simply take them out every so often for a bit of fun.

Warnings: mature, angst, language, adult situations, alcohol use, Stefan

Nurse Mariah Torrez waved her freshly-manicured fingers in Elena's direction. She was just coming in for the graveyard shift. If Elena had wrapped up her patient just fifteen minutes faster, she would have escaped this most recent addition to the newly-engaged club.

"It's a beautiful ring." Elena wasn't lying. The solitaire was the perfect blend of large-enough-to-be-noticed with simple-enough-not-to-be-pretentious. A stabbing pain in her stomach made her realize why it seemed a bit too familiar. She'd once tried an almost-exact-copy on for size at Mystic Falls jewelers. Once. Ages ago. If Elena were honest with herself, she had to admit it was basically a lifetime ago.

Another world.

A much-different Elena.

Before her life took a path she'd never anticipated.

Mariah giggled her thanks. "Sergio was supposed to wait until tonight, we had it all planned out, but his grandma was only in town for the weekend. He wanted to do it in front of all the family."

A chorus of oohs and aahs accompanied nods of agreement as Elena felt the distinct need to get as far away from that ring as possible. She remembered a time when she thought they'd had everything planned out too.

Back when she was still part of a couple. Back when things were simple. Back when she still went home for the holidays.

Elena retreated to a quiet section of the workspace, trying to pretend to be caught up in her notes. A pale pink onesie landed on her keyboard. She looked up to see Tracie practically beaming at her.

"I'm going to wrap it for Bryant. He doesn't know it's a girl. Do you think he'll be surprised?" The emergency room's pediatric specialist rested a hand on her belly as she waited for Elena's response.

"You didn't tell him you knew?"

"She didn't cooperate during the first sonogram, but I convinced Kyle to help me take another peek. I've had this planned for ages."

"Bryant's going to love it." Elena fought to summon the appropriate level of excitement, which was harder than it should have been. It seemed like this past year had been filled with every person Elena knew either announcing an engagement or a pregnancy. Some were doing both…at the same time.

Sometimes it was a little more than she could handle, which was why she was happy this was the busiest season for her work.

The emergency room buzzed with activity. As was the apparent holiday tradition, the closer the calendar inched to Christmas Eve, the thicker the crowd in the waiting area. Headaches. Chest pain. Shortness of breath. Complaints serious enough to warrant a trip to the main hospital downtown, regardless of the fact that most ailments were simply a result of too much time spent in the company of family members.

Just as the walk-in patients multiplied in number, the city seemed to sprout extra ambulances during the holidays. As drivers tried to multi-task behind the wheel, they seemed less likely to notice brake lights in front of them on the highway. More than one businessman had a little too much Christmas cheer at the holiday party and took a tumble on the icy steps on the way to his car.

Occasionally, though, a true life-and-death situation gripped the emergency room. Just such an occasion had arrived at Boston's largest hospital over two hours earlier. A family traveling over the bridge on their way to some sort of holiday celebration had been struck by a semi whose driver had nodded off behind the wheel. Their SUV plunged into the freezing water below at exactly the right time. In a twist of fate that only seemed to happen in the season with abundance of eggnog and mistletoe, the city's water rescue team was on its way back from a training run on night rescues. The men and women from the fire department were three cars behind the wreck, and they witnessed the family plunging into the midnight-black depths below.

Dr. Elena Gilbert's blood ran as cold as the icy waters when she heard the call come over the radio at the main desk in the emergency room. She'd been typing the last of the notes on her most recent patient who needed to work on her knife skills before trying to impress her new mother-in-law, and she was thirty minutes from being finished for the night. But the news of the water rescue put any plans she might have for the rest of the night on hold.

When asked how her parents died, she'd always chosen the simplest explanation. Car accident. But a few of her closest friends at the hospital knew the whole story. As Elena placed the tablet on the desktop, she fixed her eyes on the whiteboard as the charge nurse updated the information about the family on its way to them.

Two ambulances. One helicopter. At least one more victim still in the water. Probably a kid…possibly two. Both parents were unconscious, and the toddler they'd rescued wasn't overly clear about how many siblings were still in the water somewhere.

God, Elena hated working on kids. She'd barely survived her rotation in pediatrics. It wasn't that she didn't like kids. She adored her nephew, and she had a photo of her goddaughter as the wallpaper on her phone. She hated seeing kids in pain.

And she hated losing kids even more.

She practically wept with relief when she saw her name next to the mom in the wreck. Adults she could handle, even when the reason they were on their way to her was a little too close to home.

But the deja-vu disappeared as the team transporting the patient crashed through the doors. Any fatigue Elena had been feeling as the result of the far-too-long day disappeared as her adrenaline surged. Far more years had gone by since a wreck like this claimed her mother. Elena wasn't going to let the same thing happen to another family tonight.

And she fought.

And she worked.

And the team gathered around her moved in the smooth symphony of hours spent laboring together through the years.

When the mother was stable enough to me sent on to surgery, Elena had been able to clasp hold of her hand and tell her with total certainty that her husband and all three of her children were going to be fine. They'd see her when the pin in her leg had been placed.

Elena meant every word she'd said. A true Christmas miracle had visited their town tonight. But as the woman was wheeled from her care, the weight of the day hit her doubly hard. One quick glance at the clock told her it was Christmas Eve.

Elena Gilbert hated Christmas Eve.

"Doctor Gilbert." Ugh. Her chief of staff only used the overly-pleasant sing-song voice when he was dispensing unpleasant information.

"Yes, Doctor Travis." Typically they were on a first-name basis. But if Brad was going with using her title, she was probably safer following suit. "Do you need something?"

"Care to explain why you're scheduled to work Christmas Eve and Christmas Day?"

"I traded with Gibson. He's got family coming into town."

"Gibson has family coming out his ears. And they live thirty minutes away. I'm the one who wrote the schedule. I distinctly remember give you the holiday off."

"I didn't want it." Elena wasn't trying to be abrupt. She was simply telling the truth.

Brad pointed in the direction of the employee locker room. This was going to be one of those little chats. He waited until they were safely away from prying ears with the door closed behind him before he continued, "Have you taken a look at yourself lately?"

"This morning, when I was getting ready."

"You like what you see?"

Elena wasn't sure how to answer. She'd lost a few pounds over the last year, but not so much that she considered herself unhealthy. Yes, it took a little more concealer to mask the circles under her eyes, but that was just part of getting older.

"Because I don't." Brad saved her the trouble of asking. "I have to thank you for changing the schedule on me, though. It made me look up your schedule. You haven't taken a vacation day in over two years."

"I haven't needed one."

"Everyone needs one, especially if you work in triage." He gave her a very grandfather-ish expression. "Do you realize your hands are still shaking?"

Elena didn't look down, she just thrust her hands into her pockets. "I'm fine."

"Maybe now." He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the wall. "But you're going to burn out if you keep up this pace. You're one of my best doctors, and I refuse to let that happen. You're off tonight. And you're off tomorrow. In fact, I don't want to see you back until January 2nd."

"But that's…."

"Over a week. I know. Go somewhere. Get out of this town. It'll do you some good."

"It's too late to book a trip."

"Not if you're going home. Why don't you go pay a visit to that little girl on your phone?"

"I…" She wanted to argue. She wanted to fight. But sometimes, she knew the battle was already over.

Brad was already looking at his phone, in the middle of solving the next crisis at the hospital. "Have a good holiday. Go home. See your family."

Elena wasn't sure about many things, but she was certain that going home didn't mix with having a good holiday. That wasn't exactly something she could explain to her supervisor.

Christmas Eve

2004

Elena practically jumped through the window of the plane. How long did it really take for six rows of passengers in front of her to shuffle out of the crowded corridor? Since everyone seemed to have a hat, at least one carry-on, and an armful of packages, the typical time to deplane seemed to have doubled.

Or maybe that was just because Elena was so excited.

As soon as she stepped into baggage claim, she'd see him. It didn't matter that they'd talked every night along with their Facetimed breakfast conversations. She hadn't seen Damon face-to-face since Thanksgiving when they'd made a trip into town to visit the same jeweler who'd made her mother's engagement ring and her grandmother's ring before that.

Tonight, Damon would slide a ring onto her finger encircled by their family and friends and carry on a much-treasured family tradition.

She'd hardly been able to concentrate on the last of her finals. If she didn't make it into medical school because she'd been distracted, she'd never forgive him. Then she thought of his crooked smile, and the way he arched an eyebrow in her direction while she practically read his mind, and remembered the way his hands slid over her skin while making everything else in the world disappear….and she guessed she'd survive not making into her preferred medical school.

But now she was here. Home. Well, almost home. Twenty minutes in the car, and she'd be back on Main Street – complete with a Christmas tree and too much fake snow on the windows of the Mystic Grill.

The elderly couple in front of her finally cleared out of her way, and she sprinted through the tiny airport in the direction of baggage claim. The crowd practically buzzed with electricity from the coming holiday. She scurried through the revolving door, expecting his arms to instantly wrap around her just like they always had each time she returned home. The last time she came to visit, they'd succeeded in making two teenagers blush while watching them kiss.

And that was before Damon drove her to her house.

Elena anxiously scanned the crowd, surprised that Damon wasn't right there to greet her. She looked all around the room in search of the familiar dark, messy hair.

And she found Caroline.

Funny. Who would Caroline be waiting for at the airport? It wasn't too big, and Elena's flight was one of only three to arrive in the past hour. Elena hadn't been in a tiny plane, but she knew no one else from Mystic Falls had been on her flight from South Carolina.

And then Caroline noticed her. And then she flinched. That was Elena's first clue that something was wrong. The pained expression on Caroline's face was the second.

Instantly a flood of worst-case-scenarios filled Elena's mind. She pushed past a cluster of nuns and jumped over a pile of carry-on luggage. "What's wrong? Where's Damon?"

Caroline gave the faintest shake of her head. "Not here."

"Oh God! What happened? Was he in a wreck?" Elena hadn't been able to reach Damon this morning, and that had been out of character for him. But then she got stuck in traffic getting to the airport, and flight changed gates three times. She hadn't had a chance to try to call him. And he hadn't been answering his texts. "Something's wrong isn't it? Something happened."

The whole world spun on its side as one scenario followed by an even worse scenario dominoed through her head. If Caroline hadn't realized that Elena had suddenly stopped functioning, Elena likely would have simply left without her luggage.

"Caroline, talk to me."

"Wait until we're outside." Caroline picked up Elena's navy polka-dotted suitcase with one hand and clutched hold of Elena's arm with the other.

Allowing her best friend to steer her out of the busy area, Elena's imagination freely cartwheeled out of control. She held it together, mostly, until they got to Caroline's car. By then, her hands were trembling so badly that she couldn't even open the car door. Caroline tossed a bag in the trunk, opened the door for Elena, and slid behind the wheel.

That's when Caroline's face changed from pale to several-shades-lighter-than-milk. She swallowed. She swallowed again. She reluctantly opened the console and drew out an envelope with Elena's name written on it.

In Damon's handwriting.

"Damon asked me to give you this." Caroline tossed it into Elena's lap as if it were on fire.