Damon dies. Damon dies and she is told that there is no way of him coming back. She spends three days alone, crying in her dorm room before hopping in her car and going on a cross-country roadtrip; knocking on every witches door looking for just a tiny bit of hope.
She finds that there is none and comes back to Whittemore addicted to some witchy drug cocktail that allowed her to hallucinate him. It's an awful sensation actually. He tells her to move on and she cries; but she can't stop doing it. If she stops, then his face will fade from her memory. If she stops, then he's truly dead. She won't be able to survive if she stops. She needs to see his face.
Stefan said the same as Damon, that she needed to let go, and move forward. She doesn't understand how he could be so callous when it was his brother that died too. Caroline doesn't tell her to move on, she just steals her witches brew. When Caroline stages the intervention, she can see that nobody cares except for her. Caroline is the one front and center begging Elena to stop. She just sees disappointment in the boy's eyes.
"Please don't leave me too" Caroline takes Elena's hand and tries to make her see the light. "I miss Bonnie, so much. But we can't go through life like this, Elena"
She shakes her head, her hair is ratty, her eyes are red, her clothes are a mess, and her voice is a tad too hysterical when she speaks; "No, no, Caroline, you don't understand. If I can see him he's not dead. And this" Elena shakes the bag of herbs, "This makes me see him! So I need it Care," The rest of her words slur together and become a mush of nonsense and tears.
Stefan slams his fists down on the table, "Elena, Damon is dead. Your drug problem isn't going to bring him back and it is not helping anyone."
"It's helping me," She says between hiccups. Stefan rolls his eyes and they don't give her the bag of herbs back.
So she keys Stefan's car and goes on another roadtrip. This time she doesn't come back.
It takes them fifteen years, but they find her. On a crisp winter day, she opens her apartment door and finds Stefan, Caroline, and Jeremy standing there. "How is looking for me for fifteen years any less desperate than I taking this to see Damon?" Elena spits at them when they start to go on their spiel.
"One, I'm your brother and your family," Jeremy says heatedly, "Two, I have not let it consume my entire person."
"Matt became a police officer and he looked for you in his spare time." Caroline says. Her voice is soft like she is talking to an animal that was going to spook. The comparison might be accurate, but Elena hates it.
"Great, so you got a police officer to stalk me!" Elena says without losing any of her previous passion.
"I didn't think we would need to. Vampires with this problem tend to get infamous and die. So I guess I should congratulate you on managing to stay alive." Stefan said as he flicked a speck of dust off his coat.
She looks up at him in surprise, her attention captured. She had never seen him so careless to her well-being before. Especially when it was something serious. In fact, she never heard him sound so careless when regarding anything this serious. It was like it was a new Stefan. It confused her.
"What happened to you?"
"Well, it turns out; life without the Petrovas is pretty sweet. It makes you care a little less about the littler people in life too." So now she was a little person in his life, go figure.
"I'm sorry. We haven't gotten Stefan to completely let go of his ripper attitude yet."
"You like me better like this." Stefan shots back. Caroline elbows him and they start to squabble.
"They're children," Jeremy says to her. Elena starts to nod, "But you're a drug addict so I suppose that they're better off than you." Elena's mouth dropped open. "Oh, don't look so shocked. It's only the truth. And to be honest, I have a lot of truth bombs that I want to drop on you. Especially since you decided to chase a ghost and leave your underage brother guardian-less fifteen years ago."
Elena blinks and tries to come up with a comeback. She can't so instead she opens the door and kicks them out.
"Maybe that wasn't the best opener, Jer," she hears Caroline through the door.
"Care, she needs to hear the plain truth." She can almost see Caroline reluctantly agreeing as their footsteps fade.
"Surprise," Jeremy says, the next morning and pushes past her into the apartment. "I hate you. But I want my sister back." He starts to open various drawers.
"What are you doing!"
Jeremy gave her a questioning look, "Search for breakfast, sis."
She edged closer to the kitchen and watched as he messed everything up. "Ah, here it is. Just as ugly as I remember it." Jeremy turned to Elena with a fake smile on his face. "Here's my contribution to you getting better, 'Lena" Jeremy plans to light the herbs on fire. But his neck is snapped before he can touch them.
Her first reaction is to check the bag and see if the herbs were still safe. Once she confirmed they are, she breathes a sigh of relief. But then her eye caught sight of the brown mop of hair on the floor. She pukes. "Oh my god," she whispers and lifts Jeremy's hands, her face crumbling when she does not find a Gilbert ring. "NO!" she screams out, and a softer string of "no, no, no, please, no" follow it. Somehow through her haze, she manages to find Jeremy's phone and plug in several combinations, trying to find the right passcode. Her birthday. The sobs come out more fiercely.
"Jer?" Caroline's sleepy morning voice comes through the speakers and is met with hysterical sobs.
"I screwed up. I screwed up bad Caroline, help me."
"Calm down, can you tell me what's wrong?"
"His neck! His neck isn't right. It's, it's twisted wrong. And there's no Gilbert ring. Why is there no Gilbert ring? Care, he has to come back."
Caroline was there within five minutes, and found Elena frantically trying to bend Jeremy's neck back to the correct positioning. "This is right, Care. This is how it's supposed to look. So he isn't dead right? I mean if he's neck's right, then everything's right, right?" She twists his brother's neck around, trying to get it to a natural angle.
"Elena," Caroline tries to put her hand on her shoulder to comfort her but it is brushed off, so she knelt down to Elena's level, "you have to stop before,"
Whatever she was saying came too late, and Jeremy's head popped off into Elena's lap. She stands up and bites her lip, moving backwards from the body, "No, no, no, no. That's not supposed to happen. His neck is supposed to be at the right angle, so when he comes back, it won't hurt him. It's gonna hurt if he has to grow a new head. I have super-glue, maybe if we use that then he won't have to." Elena crumbled into herself, "He and Damon are both here and they're both going to come back. Don't cry, Care. It will be all good." Her voice cracks and moves into something hopeful.
"You take care of the body," she hears Caroline whisper to Stefan once he arrives.
"It's not a body!" Elena screeches. But she has eyes, and she knows it is. But it isn't, her mind tells her. Elena can't look, so instead she closes her eyes and places them on her knees. "It's not a body," she mumbles a final time. She feels protective arms surround her, she moves to hide her head in Caroline's shoulder and ignores any sounds that contradict her belief.
"Damon Salvatore is not Elena Gilbert. I am not dependent on him." She parrots back to Caroline the first two years.
"Damon Salvatore and Bonnie Bennett died. But I will not let it define my person." She says for the next three.
"Jeremy Gilbert died and it's the drugs fault not mine." She says for another year, but the words taste sour in her mouth.
"Drugs are not the solution and I will not use them to grieve again." She repeats for the whole ten years it takes her to get back to a neutral state.
"I love you, and I promise I won't disappear this time." Caroline and Elena hug and Stefan loads the final bags into their cars.
"Good, I want my best friend for forever- literally!"
"I pinky-swear" Caroline laughs and hugs her instead.
"Well, here's to moving forward!" Stefan pronounces.
"I don't think I can drive away from you!" Caroline says through teary eyes looking at Elena. Elena gives her a sad smile and a final hug before hopping in her car and telling her GPS to take her to the nearest airport. She's done with this whole country.
"I'm not gonna be one of those pathetic girls whose world stops just because of some guy," she said as she stuffed cereal in her mouth twenty-seven years ago. Maybe next time it will finally be true.