Author's Note: This story was inspired by my wondering about what the experience of the sleep curse would really be like. How would it feel to "wake up" after an unknown interval of time to find your world and the people you loved very much changed? I decided to write from an "ensemble" perspective so that Elena, who's still the center of the story, can show up in the context of everyone else's lives; after all, Bonnie, Damon, Stefan, and Caroline didn't spend the time Elena was gone just sitting on their hands. They and their old and new friends have had experiences that make them see Elena Gilbert differently than she sees herself.

In showing these changes, I wanted to be true to the feel of the Vampire Diaries' universe—to show that epic drama continued to pile up at the same rate that it had when Elena was awake, like a relentless storm with just an occasional eye. Like Elena, I hope, readers will find themselves reeling a bit as they "catch up" with the magnitude of some of the changes in their lives in the first few chapters. (Because of the need to explain what happened "in the meantime" of Elena's time lapse, there's a lot of world-building here in the first four chapters, and then it really gets going.)

Thanks for clicking through this far.

Your vampire-loving friend,

Ollie

…And soon, my friend,
We shall have no time for dances.
We are dying, Egypt, dying
And not expecting pardon;
Hardened in heart anew;
But glad to have sat under
Thunder and rain with you.

-Louis Macneice, from "Sunlight On the Garden"

Prologue. "Not Nearly Long Enough"

Bonnie knew where she was when she blinked, and the forest she'd been standing in became the Salvatore house—and blinked again, and the boarding house became an antebellum ballroom, crowded with hoopskirts. It didn't smell right; it should have smelled of close bodies and stale sweat, the remains of dinner, tobacco and booze wafting a bit too freely. Instead it smelled, only faintly, of mint and magnolia. There were, Bonnie judged swiftly, no slaves, no elderly people, no children. The colors were too hot, too modern, the darts on the walls more Baz Luhrman than Jefferson Davis.

It was not an antebellum ball.

It was a 21st century fantasy of an antebellum ball.

Dear Lord. It was a dream.

"Elena!" The last times Bonnie had been here, in Elena's dreams, she'd been careful, embarrassed to intrude on her friends' privacy. Now, though, there was no time for any of that. "Elena—where are you?"

The crowds hushed and the violinists quit, as Elena ceased imagining their chatter and strumming. And then everyone dissolved between them, and there Elena was, in the purple silk and crinoline she'd worn to Alaric's wedding so long ago. She was flanked on either side by Stefan and Damon. Well. Dream Stefan and Dream Damon. Of course. Oh, Elena.

"…Bonnie?" her friend said faintly, finally.

The room lurched, and the ballroom and the ball gowns and both Salvatores disappeared. And they were all alone in Elena's dream of an empty mansion she had never seen and which had burned down a hundred years before her parents had been born. And Bonnie's heart started to hurt for someone other than herself-to see Elena, her mind stuck in an endless loop of saving Salvatores and of coming to understand them.

"What… how…?" Elena blinked, rapidly. "I'm sorry, Bon. Everything I think about too hard just sort of… dissolves around me." She grabbed her friend's hands. "Don't go."

"I won't. Elena… God. I can't do this again." She heaved a steadying breath, tried to focus on the most important things. "It's time, girl. You have to go back."

Elena's hands, clutching Bonnie's, turned to ice. "No," she whispered.

"Tell them—it's already happened. OK? Now you have to carry it for me."

"I thought you would break the curse." Elena was whispering, but even that was loud in these too-large hallways. Bonnie could feel very fine tremor in Elena's hands. "Well—not you, or we'd both be dead. But that you'd find a way. Deep down. I thought I'd see you again in time for my 21st birthday. Is it… how long has it been?"

Bonnie shook her head. She couldn't break that news, couldn't bear it. "Not nearly long enough." She squeezed Elena's hands, hard. "There's no time here, either. I just want you to know—I love him. So much. That's why I did it. And I thought… this way, we could both have our pieces of eternity." She resisted the part of her that wanted to apologize; damn, but she'd thought she'd had that beat. "When you wake up…" she choked on a lump growing out of control in her throat. "When you wake up—go to the Estate, OK? They're gonna attack it again, but they'll retreat once they know you're there. That rock is no match for this sleep curse."

Elena's eyes were wide, a little frantic. "I don't know what you're talking about, Bonnie. Who's 'they'? What rock? What's the Estate?" Then she shook her head frantically. "No, no. Just tell me that everyone's OK. And tell me that you loved your life, that you were happy, Bonnie, please!"

And then Bonnie felt herself flicker, and knew she was being pulled beyond this plane. Though she knew it was futile, she grabbed harder at Elena's hands even as she dissolved. She was frustrated to hear her own words come out muffled.

"…important…tell Iris…don't touch…"

And then she was swept on to the next place.

It was very dark; there was just one pinpoint of light, almost out of the realm of the visible. And the voices. So many voices, whispering, laughing, screaming, crying, like an auditory museum of intense human feeling.

Bonnie had suffered worse places. Well, at least as bad. So she didn't waste any time starting another search—this time for her ancestors. For the friends she'd lost. She began to call for them every way she knew how.

Though the little light flickered, she didn't think anyone actually heard her.

And damn it. There it was again, bubbling up again. The guilt she thought she'd succeeding in smothering half as many years ago as her best friend had been gone, had started smothering almost from the moment she had sealed Elena's unaging, ever-dreaming form into the Salvatore crypt. Back when they'd all still been children. Albeit children who'd been robbed of innocence again and again.

I'm so sorry, Elena. Because… everything changed in the meantime.