Chapter One

Dear Diary

They say that when you die your life flashes before your eyes.

Floating weightless in murky waters, trapped and drowning in a car beneath Wickery bridge for the second time in my life, I remember thinking about that and not caring a great deal either way.

I suppose it should have occurred to me that even thinking about such a strangely appt but utterly random subject was a little bit off, even for me, but at the time, watching Stefan pull Matt's unconscious body from the cab all I could feel was a kind of fatalistic peace about where this was ending.

Ironically, moments later as I gasped out my last breath memories did come, and I remember thinking Oh, and then I guess I died, because I stopped thinking at all.

I Don't know what happens when most people die but death for me contained no tunnels of light or fluffy white clouds and lost loved ones. I don't remember dreaming at all and to me no time passed between drowning in Matt's truck and waking up in the Mystic fall's Morgue.

Oh and BTW diary how ooky is that?, you'd think that the least they could have done after Meredith Fell informed them of her little attempt at "helping me" would be to allow me to wake up somewhere a little more welcoming than a morgue draw. Anyway I'm just saying... it was a little disturbing.

At least Stefan had the good sense to sit and not say too much when I first came gasping back to life. And let me tell you now, I was really surprised about the back to life thing, for all of about thirty seconds. Weirdly my next thought was that at least no one could blame Damon for this one. And of course, timing being everything it was at that moment Damon came barreling through the doors and It hit me that I was still a little deader than I would have liked.

Of course my meltdown ended up getting put on hold when Damon with his usual impulsive fury punched Stefan in the face hard enough to leave a Stefan sized dent in the door adjacent to mine.

During the following furor, he made it pretty clear that he was less than impressed with his little brothers actions in the waters beneath the bridge.

I have seldom seen Damon so blazingly angry at anyone, he is usually so cold and contemptuous when he's pissed, his emotions carefully controlled to give nothing away before he takes action, but in this instance he wasn't in control at all. And during the whole excruciating confrontation he didn't look at me even once.

When the shouting and punching was finally over and the two brothers stood face to face, I had time to think about how strange it was that I was more upset at the moment about a possible rift between the two of them than the fact that it was my being dead that had caused it. Of course it could of had something to do with the fact that I'd pretty much figured I'd end up either dead or a vampire sooner or later. After all there was only so many times a person could dodge a bullet, and hey, it seemed my dodging days were over. So I just stood there gripping the edge of the table I'd so recently woken up on and watched the two most important men in my life reach an understanding that would change things far more irrevocably than my becoming a vampire ever could.

And through it all Damon still wouldn't look at me.