a/n: new idea that keeps playing on my mind. Delena. M rated. Once again II live in NZ and I'm bad with American geography etc.

ElenaPOV

I was sliding up and down the stripper pole, doing what I've done for the last four years. Well, four years part time during the weekends, but full-time now that I couldn't be bothered finding a job.

I'd left Mystic Falls after High School. Honestly I don't remember much of it. I woke up in hospital after graduation night, apparently I'd been in a car crash – another one. I'd lost a lot of important memories, but people had filled them in. My parents passed away, Matt and I broke up and I stayed single throughout the rest of high school. I don't remember any parties or any weekends or fun activities my friends and I did. Almost as if someone had taken all the good times away. Caroline and Bonnie tell me I was fun though, I'd also somehow become friends with Tyler Lockwood? What was that about?

Anyway, my grades were so good I got accepted into Harvard, apparently. I somehow managed to get A+ in all my classes and graduated with high class honours.

I became a recluse in college. I just felt like something was missing. I really missed whatever that something was. All I have left from those years is a necklace that Jeremy and Caroline had told me to never take off, as it was "really important" for me to keep on my body at all times. Thanks for explaining that one, guys.

Because Jenna had died in some weird accident that no one could really explain to me, and my parents money for college wasn't enough to cover Harvard fee's, I had to start paying for myself, which is why I turned to stripping, even though I had a scholarship, it only covered half my fee's.

I only intended to it for one night, covering for my roommate who I'd become really close friends with – Sophia. She promised it was great money, boy she wasn't lying. I made almost $2000 in the first night. That was more than enough for the months' rent and food, another couple of nights and I could pay off my fees for the year.

I got dragged down though. I never filled that empty gap that seemed to be missing in my heart. Had I had a child and lost it somewhere along the way? The hole that was missing from my heart was huge.

When I graduated college, instead of finding a job I bought the club. Yep, I had made so much money I managed to pay my fee's, my debt I'd accumulated, and managed to outright buy the club, which had apartments above it that I collected rent on.

However, I took my job a step further after I graduated. Sick of the hole I had in my heart. Sick of being lonely at night.

My parents would be rolling in their graves in they found out. I hadn't even told Sophia, my best friend. No one knew what I got up when I took clients upstairs for private shows. I discovered one night that it filled the void I'd been missing. Only temporarily – until the next night – but for those couple of minutes or hours (depending how much the men or woman were willing to pay) I felt wanted, and I felt like I was making them feel wanted.

I was good at that. Lying. Lying to customers about who I was. Lying to Caroline, Bonnie and Jeremy that I was fine and just too busy to call them. Lying to myself that I was OK.

Because I wasn't OK. The void, no matter how hard I tried to fill it, night after night, somehow kept growing bigger. I started to feel guilty for whoever it was that I was somehow missing. Was I in a relationship before the second crash I was in, and somehow I had forgotten about it? Perhaps my body was now subconsciously telling me that I had a boyfriend somewhere, and I shouldn't be letting these men and woman see me naked, let alone be fucking them? Even though the pleasure they gave me put me on cloud nine for all of an hour afterwards. That's right, not only did my customers have to pay me, but that had to get me off, otherwise I tripled my price. I was worth at least my own temporary happiness, I thought.

I'd gone from the cheerful happy cheerleader I remember being in high school, to a rather skinny and sickly looking empty shell of a woman I was now. An honours degree under my non-existent belt. The only courses I was actually using to my profit where the three business management papers I had taken. The papers I took out of interest because honestly, my teaching degree was boring and I was kind of hoping the business papers would be interesting.

Whatever. I was racking in the cash now. Writing it off as profits from the bar and from stripping alone. I had quite a lot saved up. I'd already bought an entire master suite in an apartment block on the better side of town, and I drove the most bitchn' car I could find. A 1968 V8 baby blue Camaro. I had no idea why I loved that car. I had never in my life taken an interest in cars – let alone classic cars, until I woke up from the second car crash.

The car itself was in some old guy's back yard, rusting away. I had to have it. I took some night courses at the local tech school and graduated as an apprentice mechanic.

Yeah, I had insomnia. In four years I managed to get an honours degree in secondary teaching and become an apprentice mechanic. Not that I ever finished the apprenticeship. Honour school got a bit tough to juggle with stripping and a full time apprenticeship.

Anyway, I built all that I had time for, all that I could achieve on my own, then just wrote cheque after cheque to get a classic car garage to finish the rest. It was my graduation gift to myself. Why baby blue? I had no idea. I wanted it to be a darker blue. I had these eyes in my mind – yes, eyes from a human body type of eyes – the most beautiful blue they were. But I could not for the life of me find the exact colour to match them, so the second best? Baby Blue.

The car was a head turner, to say the least. Loud and grunty, yet so smooth to drive – well, a bit heavy because the engine weighed so god damn much, but still. It was my baby, even though I had no idea why I had formed this attachment to it.

So here I was. Elena Gilbert. A stick thin woman, clad in nothing but a g-string, grinding up and down a pole, shaking my booty for tips. Trying to find a culprit to take upstairs tonight as I twisted and turned on the pole.

And then I saw it. I had to blink and shake my head, but those eyes. In the corner of my bar, those damn eyes I'd been dreaming about ever since I woke up after graduation, they were here. In my bar. I had to meet him.