Pulse

"I looked everywhere. Yeah, someone definitely took my stuff." Elena sighed dolefully as she fumbled for the keys to her front door. "I've just got to check on Jeremy before I go to the hospital…Can you meet me there?" She nodded as he complied. "Okay. I love you Stefan." His reply - "I love you too" - made her smile like only Stefan could.

As she entered home, she called up to her brother questioningly.

"Jeremy?"

A muffled groan and a clatter startled her, coming from the kitchen. What was Jeremy doing? Elena walked without hurry towards the curious sound. She entered the kitchen to find the fridge open, obscuring her view of the counter next to it, and she pushed it shut –

There was nothing behind it. Her eyebrows furrowed into a quizzical frown, as she tried to trace where the noise had come from. She bent down to pick up a kitchen knife from the floor and immediately recoiled. Blood. But not on the knife – the knife was wet, as if it had been hastily washed clean and thrown on the floor. No, there were spatters of blood near the bottom left door of the fridge. How had that gotten there of all places…and, more importantly, whose blood was it?

Elena then remembered the lack of a response from Jeremy. Her heartbeat quickened and, not pausing to think, she swiftly made her way upstairs. "Jeremy? Jeremy!" she called frantically, taking no number of seconds to contemplate whether barging into her brothers' room without a prior knock – a brother who, when she last checked, seemed to hate her – was a good idea, she rammed his door open. She absorbed the air her lungs had forgotten it so desperately needed in her panicked state. He was sleeping.

Thank God. Seriously, thank you, God. She couldn't imagine the pain and regret she would feel, how broken she would be, if her last conversation with Jeremy had been and gone, without closing the void that had come between them.

An ill-tempered looking Jenna opened her bedroom door.

"Please stop with the shouting."

"I wasn't screeching. Well, I was calling for Jeremy because I was worried, but that doesn't matter now. Why so irritable?"

"You're joking, right?" Jenna raised her eyebrows, ever so judgingly. "Downstairs, before. What was that?" Without pausing to give Elena a chance to reply, Jenna carried on. "Damon may seem like a charmer, he sure looks like one. But I know you and Stefan are stronger than that. At least, that's what I thought. And his brother, of all people, Elena?"

Elena blinked, then smiled as realization dawned. Jenna must have been sleeping, and now she was confusing dream from reality. She smirked to herself and shook her head as Jenna waited for a response that was never going to come, as Elena focused her attention back to her peacefully sleeping brother. Then she froze. Why wasn't his chest rising and falling, or his body experiencing the tell-tale sleeping twitch? Jenna had started talking again, though her voice had more chill than normal. "…and then John made some horrendous noise at whatever you were saying to him but I really couldn't care less."

Elena was at his bedside in an instant. No pulse. "Jeremy….Jeremy, Jeremy! Jeremy…" She shook him hard, whispering his name, and Jenna had rapidly reached her side also, the initial animosity forgotten. Elena couldn't cry. She couldn't speak. These tears would not shed. What is there to say? No words can fix this.

Jenna knelt silently next to Elena, one hand touching her shoulder, the other holding an empty pill bottle of…she read it.

Elena Gilbert.

Take (1) tablet every 4 to 6 hours as relief for pain.

Acetaminophen / Hydrocodone.

"Jenna…no pulse." And it was then, Elena started crying.

Jenna was on her feet in a fluid movement. She positioned her hand on Jeremy's heart for some long seconds, then pressed two fingers to his wrist and gasped.

"There is a pulse! Oh Elena, you scared me so much. But…it's so faint. We need to call 911, now." She said in a thick voice, obviously fighting back tears.

"No! I mean, yes, but first…" Elena didn't know why she said it, but the minute she did, she felt as if it was the right thing to do. She knew, without a trace of a doubt that when she had felt Jeremy, there was no pulse, not the slightest thrumming of blood through his body. She also knew Jeremy's girlfriend was Anna. A vampire.

"I need you to call Stefan."

"Elena." Jenna bristled instantaneously, and her voice regained the unexplained coldness from before. "Just think of Jeremy! Think of someone but yourself. Put your brother on the brink of life before the guilt your feeling in your relationship."

Elena had never seen Jenna this way – when her parents had died, they had leaned on each other, sad enough to cry, and broken enough not to have any tears left. And now, Jenna was insulting her relationship with Stefan with no apparent reason – what had Elena done wrong in Jenna's eyes?

"I need to call him." Elena murmured monosyllabically. "There is nothing we can do for Jeremy. There's nothing a doctor can do for him."

Jenna slowly took a breath in. "Elena. I'm calling an ambulance. I love you, Elena, like a friend and even a daughter, but you need to sort out your priorities, and right now, Jeremy is the most important thing tonight for both of us."

Elena swallowed and then got out her cell from her back pocket.

"Jenna, just please wait a minute. Just one minute is all I'm asking, just trust me."

Stefan picked up as the first ring sounded

"Hello?

"Stefan. I need you, now. I think Jeremy…I think he's gone the same way as Vicki."

"What? Give me a minute, I'll be there. Love you."

And he wasn't wrong. Elena watched the second hand take just over a full turn, before she felt arms enclose her from behind. Stefan was firm, strong, as he held her, and the back of her head rested on his chest.

"Stefan…"

"Let me check on him." Stefan approached Jeremy tentatively, and looked for his ulnar pulse, his carotid pulse and a pulse that even Elena didn't know she had, at the top of Jeremy's foot.

"It's just about the right pace and strength now. It's just a matter of hours before he wakes up, but he'll be starving. And he'll have this thirst for blood that makes it very unsafe for you, Jenna and even John – even though he's got an upper hand, literally. We'll have to take him to the boarding house to recuperate for a while, however long it takes, he's welcome."

He turned around now, and looked at Elena with soul-searching eyes.

"I love you – I love you Stefan. More than you know, more than you can imagine. Thank you so much We should take him there now." She kissed him softly, lips slightly parted, but lasted only for a few sweet seconds, and breather a sigh of relief. Then, abruptly Elena's eyes widened.

"Stefan. Jeremy overdosed. He didn't cut himself or injure himself externally. But downstairs, there's a spatter of blood on the fridge, and there's a kitchen knife on the floor, and I'm probably just being paranoid, but it was wet, like it had been washed hurriedly and just – chucked on the floor." Elena gasped as she realized something else. "And also – also, I just remembered, my bags! The dress, everything that had been stolen is on the table. I can't believe I didn't realize immediately when I saw it but I as so preoccupied that Jeremy might have been killed – which he was, but it was self-inflicted – it just didn't occur to me to wonder how it got there."

Stefan's brow now furrowed, his rugged face creasing in curiosity.

"Let's continue talking about this at the boarding house – who knows, it could have been Jenna that brought it all back. We have only a few hours until Jeremy awakes." He was right. In some hours, Jeremy would be metaphorically and yet so literally 'reborn'.