I was really in the mood the write some more Vampire Diaries this weekend and this has been in my head since I first watched the third season back in May, so it's been a long time coming x I own nothing - the characters are L.J. Smith's x I based it on Katy Perry's song Thinking of You and have reposted and edited it xx I'm not quite sure where in series 3 this is set, I didn't have a specific episode in mind xx Please read and review to tell me what you think and if I'm a little too comma happy xx

Elena didn't know what she was supposed to do. She'd tried so hard to stop it from coming to this, to stop herself from becoming the next Katherine, that she hadn't seen herself falling until it was too late. Damon had been so good to her with Stefan gone, so supportive, that most of the time she had to force herself to remember what he'd done to her and to the people she cared about.

He'd snapped Jeremy's neck, and by no stretch of the imagination was that acceptable, nor forgivable. He'd turned Matt's sister and in doing that signed her death warrant. He'd killed his own nephew and Coach Tanner and so many other people besides.

But Elena knew almost better than anyone that Damon had changed. His switch was very firmly on, in spite of how he sometimes acted, and he was actually being considerate of other people's feelings and protecting them because he cared about them. He'd killed Rose as a mercy killing and he'd saved Bonnie because she was important to Elena.

He'd changed. Become a better man. And he'd done it for her.

There was something in the older Salvatore's eyes when he looked at her and she melted inside, despite knowing that she shouldn't. He looked at her like she was his entire world, like he couldn't bear to breathe without her and it made her more than a little breathless. There was nothing quite like being needed by a vampire that didn't even need to stop for air.

It made her feel like no one else ever had, not even Stefan.

And with Stefan gone she had less and less reasons to make herself say no. But oddly, Stefan not being here made Damon back off, determined to return his brother back to her, or else help her to move on. He seemed to have given up on the idea of himself and Elena, and for some reason it made her heart drop and the back of her eyes sting and her throat close up until it felt like she was breathing through a pinprick.

Damon had warned her, Stefan might be gone. She'd never realized that losing Stefan would mean losing Damon too.

She supposed that she should've, after all their fates were intertwined, forever destined to fall in love with the same girl and to lose her in the same way, Sometimes Elena wondered if he'd follow her if she left, or if he'd save them all the heartache and let her go. No, she decided. Damon had never been one to give up, and neither did Stefan.

It's how they ended up here in the first place, not that she can regret it.

If she did then she would be regretting the fact that Damon was alive and there's something inside her, even when she wants to hate him for making her feel this way, for making it so that she feels this way about the man who murdered her brother in cold blood, that can't do that.

Since Klaus had first come to town Damon had done everything possible to keep her alive, whether she liked it or not (case in point, forcing his blood on her). And watching everyone else die around her made her wonder if it was worth it.

When she died she didn't even stay dead.

She didn't come back as a vampire either.

Instead she came back to a staked vampire aunt, a distraught little brother, a missing blood addicted vampire boyfriend and his werewolf bitten brother.

Damon had been the only one to help her cope, to keep her sane, when everything was falling apart around her and Jeremy was thinking about slipping back into his drug habits and standing at the foot of the graves of her family was too much for her to bear alone.

He'd stood beside her and held her hand and she didn't think she'd ever held anything tighter.

oOo

Stefan was back, both in presence and mental capacity, this time for good. Klaus was gone, for now, and at the moment Stefan was neither a Ripper nor emotionless, returned to the schoolboy that he'd been impersonating on the day that they'd met, only a little more distant, a little more lost. He had changed, and so had she. She had grown up in the time he had gone, more so than she had before. This was more than losing her parents in an accident and discovering that bunny eating vampires existed.

This was seeing true darkness and dying at its hand. It was watching other people die for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was training against a vampire because if she didn't then she was dead. It was seeing her boyfriend tear into someone's throat and enjoy it.

Only Elena and Stefan were destined, so that's not supposed to matter. Sometimes she wonders if destiny listens to her when she tells it that those kinds of things do matter, but then she wouldn't feel this way about either of them.

Stefan was Stefan again, back with her and Damon, and they'd never felt further apart, despite how hard he was trying to breach the gap that had been built in his absence. She knew that she still loved him.

But every time that he kissed her she closed her eyes, imagining icy blue eyes instead and hating herself for it because she knew she'd become Katherine.

As Katherine had told her, it was okay to love them both.