"Hey it's me, leaving another message about how today was not a good day. Everyone drifted apart. It's like everyone's pretending that they can get through this, alone.
Elena's gone and I thinks she's so scared to accept what happened that she's become a completely different person.
And if you ask me Tyler's just hiding at Whitmore, pretending everything's fine as if he can outrun his werewolf gene or something.
Matt and Jeremy never leave Mystic Falls anymore. There's an invisible wall standing between us and them. And nobody's doing anything about it. Part of me wonders if they hope we never find a way back in.
Then there's me, just sitting in a diner at the border of town, looking for a way to get our home back.
We just lost two of our closest friends, we need each other. We need to be together, Stefan, or pretty soon we're just going to end up pictures in yearbooks in your drawer somewhere.
And that is why I'm not going to stop calling you until you pick up the phone and I hear your voice and you tell met that you are going to help me fix it. Because I'm not going to give up on us."
Caroline ended the voicemail, not sure if she was talking about their whole group of friends or just the two of them. She wished she could just find out where the hell Stefan was, instead of leaving him endless messages.
Elena needed him, because he was the only one as close to Damon as she was. Alaric and Tyler needed him too, after all he was the most experienced supernatural of them all.
And Caroline herself might've even needed him the most. Instead of wishing she'd find him, she just wished he would answer her call for help.
Meanwhile, somewhere no one could find him, Stefan sat on a chair in his new house. He looked at his phone while holding a beer - not the first that night - in his hand. Suddenly, the screen of his phone lighted up and he saw Caroline left a voicemail. He picked up the phone, but instead of listening what Caroline send him, he pressed down on the screen until his phone broke.
Elena had a picture frame in her hands, looking at a photo of her and Damon. Alaric stood in the corner of her dorm room, watching her.
"Do you like being a vampire?", Elena asked him.
"Why don't you get some sleep?", Alaric said to her, not answering her question. "We'll talk about it when that crap's out of your system."
Elena ignored that and went on. "Because of all the funeral's and the start of the year, we never really talked about how you're dealing with all this."
Alaric stayed silent for a short moment.
"With me coming back to life?", he then asked. "Well, moving away from Mystic Falls helped. And since my ex-girlfriend is happily married to a pediatrician up in Alaska, I didn't have any awkward reunions to handle."
"I meant the bloodlust, the heightened emotions and immortality", Elena said quietly.
Alaric came to sit beside her on the bed.
"Honestly, Elena", he said and then looked her in the eyes. "I hate everything about being a vampire."
"Me too", Elena said. "At least I know I did." She looked away, thinking about the old times.
"One day, I discovered the good part." She smiled and looked back at Alaric. "You know, the promise that love could be eternal. And I had that with Damon." She knew the conversation would spiral downwards in less than a second again.
"Which means, for the rest of my life, there will be a hole in my heart where he's supposed to be." Elena couldn't handle it anymore and looked the other way.
Alaric looked down. "Trust me", he said. "It gets easier."
"I know how death works, Ric", Elena replied bitterly. "Trust me, I've done it. A lot."
She turned back to look at Alaric. "There's no such thing as moving on, it's a lie. So if I'm ever going to be able to fall in love again and make eternity bearable, I'm gonna need you to do something."
"What?", Alaric asked cautiously.
"You were created by the original vampire spell, which means you can compel other vampires. And since I can't take away my vampirism, I want you to take away Damon.
I want you to compel me to forget I ever loved him."
Damon flipped over the pancakes, while Bonnie made the coffee. Moments later, Damon gave Bonnie a plate with a pancake with a smiley face made out of blueberries. It had fangs made out of whipped cream. He smiled and sat down on the other side of the table, with his own pancakes.
"You know I hate that, right?", Bonnie asked. "And I do it everyday again anyway", Damon answered happily, while looking down at the newspaper. "Bon appetit."