AN: This is the sequel to Transition, so you might want to read that first. Although this story will feature a close friendship between Elena and Damon, the romantic pairings are firmly Stefan/Elena and Damon/Katherine. Other pairings will include Tyler/Caroline, Bonnie/Jeremy, possible Matt/Rebekah and one-sided (or is it?) Klaus/Caroline.
Elena Gilbert had not been expecting to become a vampire. It had crossed her mind, of course – any time she thought about being with Stefan for a long time, she knew that one day turning would be an option she'd have to consider – but it had been a decision she didn't think she needed to make for a long time.
Then a blow to the head and a car accident had taken that decision away from her, and she was left drowning in a sea of blood, desperately trying to keep her head above the surface.
But ever since the supernatural entered her life, Elena had never been alone, and it wasn't any different now.
Damon and Katherine had helped her tread water and taught her to swim, and now Stefan was there, helping them pull her back to shore.
Right now, they were driving back to Mystic Falls, Damon and Katherine in the Camaro, Stefan and Elena in the Porsche, and Elena was watching the scenery fly by, her foot tapping against the car floor.
Stefan's hand on her knee caught her attention, and she glanced across at him, a smile spreading across her face. She placed her hand over his, lacing their fingers together.
"What are you thinking?" Stefan asked, one eye on the road.
"Nothing much." Elena admitted. "I'm just … worried, I guess. The only time I was around people this week was when they were teaching me to hunt … What if I hurt someone?"
"Sweetie, if you can be around blood without reacting, you can be around people." Stefan assured her. "You'll be more aware of their humanity, yes, but it shouldn't be a problem. And we won't let it be a problem." He lifted her hand to his lips, kissing it softly.
"What about you?" Elena asked. "Something tells me Katherine's going to be sticking around for a while. Will you be okay with that?"
Stefan grimaced. "Honestly, I don't know how I feel about it. I don't trust her, Elena – I know you do …"
"It's not that simple." Elena said softly. "It's not a case of trusting Katherine – I just have a gut feeling that she can be trusted in this case. Maybe it's the doppelganger thing, I don't know."
"I don't think you've ever fully explained 'the doppelganger thing'." Stefan remarked.
"That's because I never wanted to freak you out." Elena responded. "We have a … connection, I suppose you could say. I can usually tell when she's lying, but it's not a certainty, more of a gut feeling. A very vague gut feeling," she added, "before you ask why I didn't use it earlier."
"I wasn't going to ask that." Stefan said.
"You were thinking it though." Elena said, smiling slightly. "Sounds to me like you do know how you feel about it."
"No, I got off-topic." Stefan said, releasing her hand to run his through his hair in frustration. "I don't know, Elena. On the one hand, I don't entirely trust her – although I do trust you, so I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt – but I don't feel comfortable around her. I know I had 145 years to get over it so to speak, but I probably feel about as comfortable as Caroline used to around Damon." He paused. "Although what Katherine did to me was nowhere near as bad."
"It was." Elena insisted. "Maybe she was a little gentler about it, maybe she didn't intend to hurt you, but she treated you terribly, Stefan, and it's okay not to feel comfortable around her."
"But Caroline …" Stefan began.
"Caroline had to see Damon immediately after she remembered." Elena continued, accurately guessing his new protest. "She had to see him and interact with him, and, God, I was a terrible friend, wasn't I?"
"I think we both were." Stefan said soothingly, taking her hand again. "Neither of us thought about how difficult it must have been for Caroline, being around Damon all the time. When did she … Has she forgiven him?"
"I think so." Elena said slowly. "I doubt she'll ever forgive what he did, but I think she's forgiven him. When he was … dying," she hesitated, the word sticking in her throat, "even after Katherine brought the cure, it took a week before he was himself again. The hallucinations stopped, but he was a little more … forthcoming, I suppose you could say, than he would normally be. He admitted to Caroline that he let her get the upper hand when she attacked him after she first turned, because he regretted how he treated her but was too proud to apologise."
"Damon said that?" Stefan asked, surprised.
Elena smiled slightly. "He said a lot of things he would never normally have said. He confessed his undying love for me at least five times."
Stefan frowned slightly, out of confusion more than anything else. "I don't understand how that's changed. How did he go from being in love with you to … not, so quickly?"
"He was never in love with me." Elena said. "He just thought he was."
"So how did he change his mind?" Stefan asked. "Or don't you know?"
Elena sighed. She had never told Stefan about the two kisses she and Damon had shared that night, and she knew she had to. "Pull over. We're not having this conversation while you're driving."
As they pulled over to the side of the road, the Camaro slowed down beside them. Elena waved for them to carry on, which they did, overtaking the Porsche and disappearing round the bend.
Sighing heavily, Elena twisted in her seat to face Stefan, guilt filling her eyes and lining her face. "The night Damon compelled Jeremy to leave town, the night Damon told me why you saved Klaus … he kissed me."
"He kissed you." Stefan repeated.
"I never mentioned it because …" Elena let out a sigh. "Well, it didn't mean anything. All it did was confirm that I didn't have those sorts of feelings for him and let him know that he wasn't in love with me. I told him to come inside so we could talk, and I told him that I loved him, just not romantically, and that I didn't want to be Katherine …"
Stefan cupped her face, his eyes shining with love. "You could never be Katherine, sweetheart. Not to me."
"Or Damon." Elena added, smiling slightly. "He said that something about the kiss was bothering him, and would it be alright if he kissed me again. I …" She hesitated for another second, before blurting out. "I agreed. I just knew why it was bothering him; I knew he wasn't in love with me, and I needed him to realise that. I'm so sor …"
"Elena." Stefan interrupted. "It's okay. We weren't together, sweetheart; you don't need to apologise."
Elena dropped her gaze. "I feel like I should though."
Gently, Stefan tapped her chin to encourage her to meet his eyes again. "Was it a kiss like this?" He asked, pressing his lips to hers chastely for a few seconds.
"Yes." Elena whispered. "Except yours makes me feel something."
Stefan's lips quirked into a smirk, giving her a split-second of warning as to his intention. "So it was nothing like this then?" He kissed her again, but there was nothing chaste about this one.
It was both a fight for dominance and an intricately choreographed dance, soothing Elena and riling her up at the same time, and she moaned his name into his mouth, moaning again – in disappointment this time – when he pulled away.
"Nothing like that?" He asked.
"Nothing like that." Elena agreed breathlessly.
"See?" Stefan asked. "You have nothing to be sorry about, Elena, although I know how bad your guilt-trips can be sometimes."
Elena raised an eyebrow. "My guilt-trips?"
"I didn't say mine weren't just as bad." Stefan said, unabashed. "It's just that at the moment, we're talking about yours. I'm not mad at you, Elena; you did nothing wrong. But I forgive you."
Elena closed her eyes, letting out the breath she hadn't known she was holding. Deep down, she knew that Stefan was right – she had nothing to feel guilty about – but she had just needed to hear him say the words.
"Thank you."
"What do you reckon all that was about?" Katherine asked, glancing in the rear-view mirror.
Damon shrugged unconcernedly. "God knows. They haven't had much time together recently, I'm surprised they even got out of bed this morning."
Katherine scrunched up her nose. "There's an image I didn't want."
Damon gave her a look that could only be described as affectionate. "You're cute when you do that?"
"Did you really just use the word 'cute' to describe me, of all people?" Katherine asked, disbelieving. "Actually, scratch that – did you just use the word 'cute'?"
"What would you rather me use?" Damon asked. "Hot? Sexy? Drop-dead gorgeous?"
"Careful, Damon, you'll make me blush." Katherine said, almost demurely, but with a wicked glint in her eye.
Damon snorted. "Not sure that's possible, babe." He pulled up outside the boarding house, and leaned across, kissing her retort away. "C'mon." Snagging the bags from the backseat, he got out of the car, and she followed a second later.
"You know, I can carry my own bag." She said.
"My mother raised a gentleman." Damon responded loftily.
"Did she now?" Katherine asked. "You'll have to introduce us."
Both bags fell to the floor, and she laughed as he grabbed her waist, pushing her up against the door.
It swung open behind her, and she was forced to take a few hasty steps backwards to keep her balance.
The levity disappeared almost instantly, and they left the bags on the floor in favour of entering the house, knowing that Stefan would never have just left the door open.
They blurred through the ground floor, only to come to a halt in the living room to find Caroline in one of the armchairs, sleeping fitfully.
Katherine reached out to wake her, but Damon caught her arm, observing the sleeping blonde with uncharacteristic concern.
It was more than likely that Caroline had come to the boarding house seeking Stefan for whatever reason, but there were very few reasons that would make her stay and fall asleep if she couldn't find him. If she was going to do that, she would have left a note and taken possession of the spare room that had somehow been allocated to her over the last six months or so.
But it seemed, to Damon at least, that Caroline had not intended to fall asleep. She was curled up almost in a foetal position, her posture relaxed but in a way that suggested that she had been clinging to herself for comfort when she finally gave in to exhaustion.
Her running shoes were kicked haphazardly to one side, her face was unnaturally pale, her make-up streaked down her cheeks like a painting left out in the rain, and even asleep she was shaking.
"Caroline." Damon called firmly. "Time to wake up now."
Caroline awoke with a gasp, springing out of the chair with no sign of exhaustion. Damon couldn't help the slight twinge of pride when she settled automatically into a fighter's stance, relaxing only when she realised who was standing in front of her. "Thank God." She took a few steps towards Katherine, before stopping. "You're not Elena."
"Nope." Katherine agreed lazily. "I'm not."
"She's with Stefan." Damon added, drawing Caroline's attention away from Katherine.
"And where's Stefan?" Caroline asked.
"On his way." Damon answered. "They stopped for a chat. Or sex, one of the two."
Caroline seemed to contemplate this for a few seconds. "I'll have to improvise then." The wobble in her voice alerted Damon a split-second before she attached herself to him in a blonde blur, burying her face in his jacket.
Damon's hands grasped her shoulders to automatically remove her, but the trembling seemed to have increased, and he realised that she was crying, great, heaving sobs that shook her entire body. He glanced over at Katherine, who seemed torn between confusion at Caroline's actions and amusement at Damon's plight.
He wanted to make some comment about being better off without Lockwood (the guy was a loose cannon – Damon still wasn't convinced he'd actually broken the sire bond), but something about Caroline's tears suggested that Tyler Lockwood had little to do with her hysterics.
She seemed … scared.
So he resorted to his tried-and-tested strategy for dealing with Elena when she cried, developed over that long summer before they finally tracked down Stefan.
She still cried afterwards, but they were different tears, more exhaustion than heartbreak, because no matter how much Elena was hurting, she never lost hope.
One hand left her shoulder to stroke her back while the other brushed her hair from her face. Rather wisely, he said nothing, and Katherine followed his lead, wondering down to the basement to get a couple of blood bags.
In the meantime, Damon stayed where he was, feeling increasingly uncomfortable, and it was with no shortage of relief that he heard Stefan's car pull up outside five minutes later. He gave the two a few minutes, before speaking quietly. "In your own time, lovebirds. We seem to have a situation."
Instantly, the front door open and closed, and Stefan and Elena had appeared beside him, holding the two bags Damon had abandoned outside, which were cast aside again when they took in the scene. Damon gratefully turned Caroline into Stefan's arms, and accepted the other mug of blood from Katherine.
Stefan and Elena guided Caroline to sit down, talking to her softly until her tears subsided and the shaking stopped. When Caroline had finally calmed down, she pulled out of Stefan's hold in favour of embracing Elena.
"Does Jeremy know you're back?" She asked.
"Not yet." Elena answered. "Just got here – but that's hardly the point, Caroline."
"No, it isn't." Stefan agreed. "What happened?"
"It's Klaus." Caroline whispered. "He's not dead."