It's four AM and I started writing this at 2:30 AM and it's probably terrible. The lack of any inconclusiveness to whether this is Stelena or Delena might have to do with it being in a non-AU Elena POV (really not my thing). Whatever.

Disclaimer: I don't own The Vampire Diaries. But it would be awesome if I did. Lyrics in the title and chapter name come from Corey Crowder's The World Awaits.

If this is what death is, Elena thinks, it isn't so bad. It feels like nothing, like she has just been asleep. Not at the end. At the end she remembers, the end, the part before she wakes up, feels like a dream (just like if she were asleep). But it's a long dream, a dream about her life. She dreams about Damon (but that never happened) her parents dying and Stefan saving her and vampires and her whole perfect life unraveling, starting with one car crash on Wickery Bridge.

She dreams about Bonnie being a witch and Alaric and vampire-hunters, her parents, Katherine, Caroline becoming a vampire (is this how she felt, too?) werewolves and the Originals and dying (she's died before, she realizes, but when she woke up that time her memories weren't like they were now, and she didn't dream). She dreams of confusion and arguments and wishing and hoping, her best friends suddenly becoming different from how she's always known them, her little brother suddenly grown up, ghosts and Stefan killing and killing and killing. She dreams of deals made and broken and trust gained and lost and kisses, breathless and wanting (wrong and right). She dreams of all the wrong people dying. And then she dreams of her unraveled life unraveling some more with another car veering off the same bridge (the past is doomed to repeat itself, she thinks).

But this time Stefan didn't save her.

The last thing in her dream is the water filling her lungs, making it so hard to breathe and see and move, so hard to tell Stefan that Matt is more important (innocent, sweet, good Matt who is the only human left). When she wakes up, what frightens her is that she doesn't feel herself breathing. This must mean she is dead, she thinks, before she realizes that she isn't underwater anymore. Her lungs are empty, but she doesn't feel the need to breathe.

So she does. She opens her eyes and she breathes in, but it doesn't seem right. The world is clearer, the details of a hospital room are sharper than they should be, and she is still not quite breathing. She is thirsty, her mouth feels so dry (but it's not just that being underwater has dried her out).

If this is what being a vampire is, Elena thinks, then she hates it. And it hasn't even started.

Damon is the one who seems to have been upset more because of what happened, Elena notices. She wonders why. Stefan seems to be handling things well, but Stefan is the one everyone looks at reproachfully and wonders; why Matt? (She wonders, too, why they do that. Matt would not have woken up.) Matt is the one everyone looks at and feels bad for but seems to be annoyed by, too. Suddenly he's the only human and he's the most vulnerable, and he's the reason for it. Two others come to the hospital; the only Original she trusted and the one Matt looks at with loathing. She remembers Rebekah standing in front of the car before it went down the bridge and wonders if there was any way Rebekah knew. Damon threatens her, taking her immediately by the neck (she doesn't even retaliate).

Elena wonders what she would do if Jeremy died (oh, Jeremy, he's already lost all of his family and now he's lost her).

Bonnie is here, Jeremy is here, Stefan is here, Matt is here, Damon is here, Elijah and Rebekah are here. She wonders what Klaus would have to say about this (his bloodbag's gone now) but of course, his dying is also a reason for this, isn't it? She has never seen the Originals as a true family (except perhaps she has when Elijah betrayed them a summer ago, when he didn't kill Klaus as he turned into a hybrid), because how could they be a real family when they've spent almost as much time in coffins as they have in the world? But they are a family, she realizes, and one of them is dead (two, can't forget Finn) and still Elijah is in the hospital for the girl who is responsible (or Elena sees it that way).

Once the threats die down, Damon has turned back to her. Stefan has just switched fingers (for an hour now since she woke he has held his head in his hands, fingers intertwined, first left hand above then right hand, switching at fifteen minute intervals). Bonnie has just stopped crying. Jeremy seems to be focusing on her and staying away from Bonnie at the same time. Matt continues to look lost. She wonders if this is what it was like for Caroline, waking up in a hospital (un-)dead. She wonders how much the thought of her being a vampire would annoy Katherine.

"Bonnie will make you a ring as soon as possible," he's saying. "Stefan," followed by a dirty look towards the mentioned, "will be staying away from you. I'll be helping you out with your diet, even though Elijah has kindly offered to help." She almost smiles. He will always be the same, she thinks, Damon. He will always be over-protective and a little bit controlling and very sarcastic. Bonnie is nodding about the ring part and Stefan seems to agree with having no hand in forming her diet.

Somehow, they've none of them considered what she's about to say next: "I'm not doing it."

The chorus of "What"s (one sounding mildly surprised, two truly shocked, and one sounding like he was considering if dying had affected her brain) make her wonder if they even know her.

It's Jeremy who finally convinces Elena that she has to transition. This is the time that Tyler arrives and seems (but only for a second) unnaturally angry at her being a vampire. This is when Elena wonders how he is alive if Klaus is dead, how any of them are alive. This is when Bonnie squirms and glares daggers at him. It's as she's finally agreeing that she sees a bit of a strange smirk on Tyler's face, strange looks aimed towards Rebekah and Elijah before they leave the hospital. She doesn't mention it.

It's Matt who helps Jeremy, and Elena feels bad (it's like he holds himself responsible when it was completely her choice). Bonnie says she's lost her mother to vampires, she can't lose Elena. Stefan doesn't try to convince her to make the transition but she can see it fighting with guilt in his eyes. She knows it reminds him of when he killed his father, then brought a girl to Damon so he would transition too. She wonders if this is why he won't force her, because he took the choice away from his brother and won't take it away from her (this is the way he loves). Damon is telling Stefan that this is why he shouldn't do stupid things like making sure the world had one more jock and telling her that she had to play martyr and that if she doesn't transition he will forcefully pour blood down her throat (but this is the way he loves). She doesn't mention what she has remembered, what she was compelled to forget. She wonders if Damon watched her the way Stefan had.

It's when Caroline gets to her place, having been far, far away from town when she got Bonnie's text and doesn't quite believe it that Elena would choose not to transition (her father, and now Elena?) that she can't help but give in. Elena's resigned agreement to transitioning takes a pause, though, when Caroline asks how on earth Tyler is alive (he tells her he didn't die, only changed into a werewolf and back. Then he refuses to kiss her, saying something about the moment being wrong).

And then she is heard and everyone smiles and announces victory.

They promise to give her a night before she has to drink blood and complete the transition. It gives her time, she figures, time to think before everything changes more than it already has.

She thinks of Jenna. She wonders if maybe being told would have made things different. If Jenna had known, known from the very beginning, she would have known what to do. The night haunts her and she wonders if, as a vampire who had no knowledge of vampires how she had felt when she woke up dead. She wonders if, if Jenna had seen death by a vampire she would have gone for snapping the witch's neck, not draining her of blood. If things would have gone differently. And then she wonders if she really wants that; Jenna was innocent. Jenna hadn't needed to know. And seeing death is horrible (Elena still remembers it, seeing her first death. How one second Vicki Donovan had been attacking her and the next Stefan had killed her. Attacking her or not, Vicki had been someone she'd known. Always. As an extension of Matt and later Jeremy, but Vicki was someone she'd seen grow up alongside her, and then Vicki was dead. She hates remembering it.)

She thinks of Alaric and wonders how he felt when he decided not to transition. Resigned but determined? Vampires seem to have been the cause of all his problems just as they have been for hers (but she doesn't know if she'd give them up for a normal life, not really). He didn't want to become one, become the creature he'd detested and have to stay that way as long as Elena was alive (or had Alaric even known that?) He was dead now, though. Truly dead. One more person for Jeremy, for Elena to lose. And they'd lost him twice. She wonders what it was like for Damon, to see his best friend dying. He hadn't forced him to transition, though. Damon had known how much Alaric would hate it.

She wonders why it's different when it comes to her (why everything's different when it comes to her). She was supposed to grow up and fall in love and live and marry and have children and take it all one step at a time. She's a vampire. Sure, she'll live, but marriage seems impossbile and kids are impossible.

She thinks of Bonnie and Caroline and how much everything's affected them, too. It's her fault, Elena knows. Katherine killed Caroline to toy with the Salvatores, but Elena had made Damon give her some of his blood. And they wouldn't have been in town if not for her. Bonnie's mother became a vampire for Elena. Jenna died because of her. Rick died because of her. She wonders if it would have been easier if Isobel had never had a daughter. But no, she thinks, the doppelganger would have been born somewhere else.

Maybe she isn't entirely to blame.

It's delicious, heaven flowing down her throat. It's bliss and she wants it. It's intoxicating red wine. It's power in her hands, complete control. It's a drug.

It disgusts her (how much she loves it).

She can't blame Stefan for being addicted to this.

The memory of it doesn't leave her mind, a wrist at her mouth, life in her hands, the blood dribbling down her jaw and onto her clothes. The veins enlarge on her face towards her eyes, and they redden completely. She is the face of what terrified her. She is a monster.

Elena Gilbert is a monster.

The end was shit and I will probably hate it tomorrow. But whatever. Review!