She took a drag from her Malboro Red and closed her eyes, revering in the feel of freshly tumble dried cotton between the tips of her fingers and upon exhale, she was bumped by the washing machine that was a force of momentum itself, flaking tobacco debris all over her recently washed sweater.

"Aw, shit," the oath was muttered absent of finesse as she tossed her smoke into an abandoned bathtub in the corner of the room and peeled the sweater off, tossing it back in the seemingly endless pile of dirty laundry.

"What's going on down there?"

"Nothing Ma, it's fine!" Elena Gilbert snorted and scowled at the now burnt sweater lying in a pool of blue with a few green stains from the grass she had played in as a child, much to her mother's distress. She almost smiled then, almost, because remembering those days made her life now seem heavy, thick, and those feelings could either be accepted or ignored, but Elena found comfort in pretending she was always this person, a blank slate. Never looking at the past made it almost seem like a movie, a recollection of images and senses that didn't belong to her. She preferred to think of the past that way, a movie.

Elena propped a plastic chair against the washing machine as it churned and thumped, it was as if the contents were impossibly eager to escape and drape the room in wet, soggy fabric. On her trek up the stairs, she saw two figures' silhouettes under the door. Trying to get a better look, she tried to scamper up to the door and make as little noise as possible, but failed. The old staircase leading down to the basement was never kind to Elena's endeavors and it make a loud creaking sound, something that might have been alarming if she hadn't heard it a hundred times before.

Creaaakkkkkkkkk!

Isobel Gilbert turned around and expressed her dispassion for eavesdropping by shuffling away into her bedroom, and slamming the door shut.

Elena slowly opened the door to the stairwell and saw her mother's latest boyfriend, Tony, standing in the kitchen looking rather irritated, no doubt because of the exchange between him and her mother only moments ago.

"What the hell are you looking at, kid?" Tony snarled looking an awful lot like something a child might have a nightmare about.

"Nothing, I was just doing some laundry."

"I was just doing some laundry," Tony mimicked in a high-pitched voice that resembled a school girl whose pigtails were being pulled on. "Maybe if you minded your own fucking business people could get more done around here and we wouldn't have to worry about you fucking shit up," he emphasized by taking several long strides towards her and pointing a threatening finger in her direction "Snooping the hell around, sniffing out problems that have nothing to do with your sorry ass."

Before Elena could come back with a snarky retort, he had grabbed his badge and gun off the kitchen counter and stormed out the front door, most likely to the bar or work. You see, our dear friend Tony was not only a senior officer, but he was also the Blue Moon Tavern's favorite day drinker.

Elena rolled her eyes and walked into the kitchen to start the dish washer when she saw an orange envelope that looked like it was torn in half, she picked it up and glanced at the return address; it was from the labor and industries department in down town. Elena Gilbert wasn't stupid; she knew that this check wasn't like the other checks her mother had been getting ever since that dreadful April morning, the 24th to be exact, when she couldn't get out of bed without screaming bloody murder at two in the morning. No, this was different, because there was a bold stamp across the front of it that said 'final disclosure."

"You have got to be fucking kidding me."

Elena Gilbert hated lines; actually, she hated government facilitated lines, perhaps because they were so mandatory you felt not the need to be there, but the nagging necessity, like you had a ball and chain attached to your ankles was enough to aggravate the youngest Gilbert, she disliked being what to do. It was childish, she knew, but she's always had issues with authority figures, even her mother couldn't tell her what to wear before school, she had to choose every article of clothing herself. Recognition of childhood was enough to bring Elena back to the present, where she was very much sandwiched in between Detroit's finest. Her right hand twitched and she felt a strong urge to pull out a smoke, stress did that to her.

The unbearably long line began to inch forward, signifying a passing of time that Elena did not have which only contributed to further aggravation. The whole situation was ridiculous. You see, Elena's mother was a nurse, a state nurse at that, and she was on sick leave for an undetermined amount of time however her social security checks were supposed to be mailed once per month providing them with enough money to keep the roof over their heads with heat on, and maybe even a little food if they could stretch it.

"Next in line," crackled a voice over the intercom.

And that was why she was here, in this dreadfully long line. Because there had been a mix up with the mailing, and they'd gotten it wrong, they'd gotten something wrong.

Elena glanced at her ticket stub that listed her as the 256th person in line, and groaned when she realized they had just called the 56th person. She frowned and looked up, meeting the gaze of a curious stranger. She thought she recognized him at first, but she couldn't quite place his face until he smiled.

Fabulous thought Elena, not only was she stuck standing in this abysmally long line, but one of her high school classmates, Mathew Brown was now a witness to her never ending spiral of humiliation. Her cheeks reddened partly in shame, and partly out of irritation.

Matt had been a football player when she was a freshman and last she'd heard about him was that he had been scouted by several out of state schools for a corner back position, but by the looks of things life hadn't worked out for him as he'd planned, just as it hadn't for her.

Elena grimaced at him and he enthusiastically waved back so vigorously it seemed as if he were trying to chop down a tree with his arm.

"Next in line!"

Elena was going to have a long day.

To Elena Gilbert, life was pretty simple; you have some good things, and you have a few bad, or perhaps more, and those things don't condition each other, nor do they take from each other. But the way we respond to those events are what define us, how we treat each good thing and bad thing, that's who we are regardless of what we feel otherwise. We can lie to ourselves and think that we're good or bad people, but in the end it's how we act or react that defines us and makes us who we are. And we, people, are what effect and change the world; we make it what it is. So you see, it matters not what we feel, but what we do, and that was a code Elena had lived by for years, until her mother got sick.

It was a slow thaw, the little things started to add up and before she knew it, Elena was barely able to pay for the electrical bill and getting a job was out of the question, having never actually complete high school.

So it had begun, it started out as small thefts here and there, the harmless shoplifting that had been more out of necessity than anything, but it still didn't sit well with Elena. After a while she got used to it, it just became an action that she performed while mostly detached, on a good day. But like most things in Elena's life, it went south rather quickly. She was arrested after being caught tucking a bag of sugar under her coat in a mini-mart on the edge of town. Luckily Tony was on shift that night; else she would've been booked all weekend and stuck waiting for a trial while her mother was home and in need of her help. She was so mortified she promised herself and her mother she would never under any circumstances take something that was not rightfully her property again.

But temptation to break that promise was reaching an all-time high no matter how ashamed she was of it. Social security fell through; declining Elena's repeated requests to have her mother reinstated. Elena was running out of options on the income front and she wasn't going to reduce herself to selling what was left of the pride she had on a street corner.

She needed money, they needed money and they couldn't magically grow it, no, she needed to find a source of income before it was too late; if her mother couldn't buy medication, ethical debates with herself usually took the back seat.

The Elena who followed rules and cared about things like homework and morals regarding petty theft was gone, dead. She died when everything went to shit, when her mom became ill, and when she just flat out stopped caring about anything outside of immediate needs like food and water and medicine.

Elena's body jerked as she heard harsh pounding on the front door and sent her cup of coffee flying off the counter onto the filthy linoleum flooring. She knit her eyebrows together wondering who it could be, and then realized that there was absolutely no reason for someone to be knocking on her door at two in the morning.

This couldn't be good thought Elena as she grabbed a knife off the counter in case a dreadful surprise was awaiting her at the front door.

A/N: This is really my first actual attempt at constructing something that was not completely horrendous, so I'm sorry if it is. xD

Music for this chapter: Trentemøller - Moan (ENiGMA Dubz Remix)