This story was completely outlined before the last two episodes of season six aired, but it is canon with everything except how the season ended. This story will explore an alternate ending where Elena was merely seriously injured by Kai in the finale and Damon chose to compel away her memories of the supernatural.

**POSTING UPDATE 7/11/15: For those of you that have already reviewed, favorited, and followed I have decided to change the format for how I post. Instead of long ginormous chapters I'm going to be updating by the scene. So the first original chapter will be divided into six chapters. If you're a returning reader look for chapter 7 as the newest update. If you're a new reader, just ignore this and read on!

Chapter One: The Other

One foot in front of the other,

Keep breathing just like they taught you

Elena

It's been a long day.

It's all I can do to put one foot in front of the other, and yet I do manage to make it up the stairs, twist the key in the lock of my door, and shoulder into my tiny loft apartment. The raucous din of the Thursday night bar crowd wafts up from below only muted slightly by the floor between us, but I don't mind. I've grown accustom to the melodious laughter of strangers, the muffled conversations of inebriated relaxation.

I don't think Charlie, the laid back, henley-wearing bar owner with dark tousled hair and crooked smile, ever expected for me to stay as long as I have in this affordable but never quiet little bachelor pad. He even tried to warn me away as he was handing me the keys, but I've grown to love it here. One wouldn't think that such an environment would be suitable to a studious med student, but I do most of my studying nomadic-like in little coffee shops, diners, or my favorite restaurant in Little Italy all the while nursing bottomless mugs of hot caffeinated beverages. The only times I'm ever home, I'm cracking open a cold one on the couch in a t-shirt and panties enjoying the noises from below as if I were apart of it all, or I'm so tired my shoes barely make it off my feet before my head hits the pillow.

I'm not sure which of those categories this night belongs to, but it's becoming apart of a third category I don't readily wish to acknowledge. My bag and keys hit the table by the door. I flick on the light to the kitchenette portion of my living room/kitchen/bedroom room before peeling off my soiled scrubs and letting them remain somewhere between my ugly orthopedic shoes and the foot of my bed. I briefly miss the maroon of my uniform from Whitmore Medical as I note the various unidentifiable stains that mar the light blue fabric, but as my skin hits the comforter of my bed a different kind of nostalgia sets in.

Not bothering to pull back the covers or to dress in anything besides my mismatched bra and panties, I throw my arm out and grab my tablet from the bedside table replacing it with a phone full of voicemails and unanswered text messages. I've long since grown out of the cute little matching sets of pajamas I used to wear in high school—the too short plaid shorts and coordinating lacy camisoles. Now if it's anything at all, it's whatever I was wearing under my scrubs that day or if I've managed to make it to the shower that night, it's the softest black t-shirt I own and a pair of cotton panties. Cotton boy shorts have replaced most of the red lacy things that used to fill my underwear drawer, and the black t-shirt seems like the most luxurious article of clothing I own, though I have no recollection of where I got it. It came with me in the move from Whitmore. I think it must have belonged to an ex-boyfriend, but it's not something I could picture Matt or even Stefan ever wearing.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I swing my feet back over the edge of the bed to my dresser and grab the wad of soft, comforting material from the arm of my reading chair where I last discarded it. I pull it over my head, before jumping back into bed and relighting the screen of my shameless Facebook stalking.

Caroline's timeline is full of wedding details and thinly veiled statuses about unavailable bridesmaids that remind me guiltily of the three unanswered voicemails waiting for me on my phone. I've put in my request at the clinic and with my internship at the ER for two weeks in June, a whole week more than I know she expects me to, so I want to wait until I have the energy enough to enjoy her squeals of excitement. I know I haven't been there for her like she would be for me.

Bonnie is worse than me. Last I heard from her, she was in Massachusetts with her cousin, Lucy, but since she finished her Masters in comparative folklore, she's taken to traveling. She checks in occasionally with Caroline, and the last time I saw her was at the fitting for our bridesmaid dresses. Caroline thinks she has a mysterious boyfriend that she's run off with, so she keeps nagging her about seating arrangements, hinting that if she doesn't RSVP for a date that he won't have a seat at their table. I know better. Bonnie has the same look in her eyes I see reflected in the mirror. If there's a man in her life, it's not an emotionally available one.

I check my email and there's a short line from Jeremy confirming the tickets he's set aside for me for his Senior exhibition in the fall and letting me know he'll give them to me when he sees me at Caroline and Stefan's wedding. The second ticket like the plus one on Caroline's invitation is a courtesy that both of them know I wont take advantage of. I don't press Jeremy about the lost two years that he said he was in art school and wasn't, and he doesn't ask me about my love life—or lack thereof. I'm just happy to see him enjoying himself and succeeding in life. I know our parents' death has stayed with him in a way that I can't hold onto it. We look out for one another, and the holidays we spend together reaffirm for me that my brother will be okay. I can only hope he thinks the same of me.

Ric is somewhere without internet or cell reception again, though I halfheartedly look for an email anyway. I miss him. When all of us are together it feels like I belong to a family again even if it is a dysfunctional one—my brother who's really my cousin, my biological mother's widow, and me. We're all bonded by death, the crumbling remnants of families riddled with holes, smashed together into a mold made for happier times.

I know I won't see him at the wedding. It brings back too many memories for him of the aisle Jo never made it down. Watching my pseudo-father figure's pregnant fiancée be rushed to the hospital after fainting and hitting her head in front of me and then never seeing her again was the straw on a very laden back. It's what gave me the courage to finally pack up and leave Whitmore and Mystic Falls behind.

I briefly wonder if Matt will be at the wedding, too. He's the only one of us that stayed in Mystic Falls for very much longer after I left. I haven't seen him since the last time I was there which has been years. If it weren't for Caroline I wouldn't even be contemplating a return.

I drift off after that thinking it is one of those nights from the third category, and that category is loneliness.

Thanks for reading! Drop me a review and let me know what you think.