You're cold. That's the first thing you notice.

Suddenly you open you eyes and gasp for breath, but no matter how hard your lungs and diaphragm work, you simply can't breathe.

So, you stop trying. Wait to see if your vision will become spotted as you slowly lose consciousness. Surely something's broken in you, which is why you can't breathe. Maybe a punctured lung? But there's no pain in your chest, like something stabbed between your ribs and pierced the delicate, fleshy organs so vital to life.

You're not breathing.

But you're not dying, either.

You've been staring aimlessly at the ceiling until you dare to glance around. Immediately your eyes latch onto Stefan's before quickly moving on to take in his damp hair and wet clothes.

That's when you remember.

And wish you didn't.

The phone calls. Rebekah. Matt swerving. The impact as the truck crashed into the water. The flashback from the last time this happened.

Most people never get to experience the sensation of being trapped underwater in a car, tugging at stuck seatbelts and pounding on windows that won't shatter. But you—you got to do it twice.

You shook Matt. He didn't respond. You saw Stefan rip the driver's door off of the truck; surprised to notice your split-second jealousy over how easily that was accomplished while you couldn't even disengage your seatbelt. You remember your first vampire love reaching over your first human love to get to you. But you shake your head, shake your finger like you would scold a puppy, and made Stefan save Matt. And he respected your (dying) wish, let you make your own decision—as always.

But as soon as they disappear, the fear hits, and you can't decide if you wish Damon was the one to dive into the water after the submerged vehicle this time because you knew, with every fiber of your being, that your second vampire love would have ignored your underwater demands and gotten you out of the truck first, Matt's life be damned. Because to Damon, your safety trumps everything, including other people's lives and feelings. Especially your own feelings toward him.

He would've saved you, and if Matt died, Damon would've let you hate him and blame him. Because at least you'd be alive to despise him, and that's all that mattered to him.

"Elena."

You look back at Stefan but can't quite catch all of the emotions swirling in his eyes. Relief? Guilt? Trepidation?

That's when you realize where you are.

You're cold because you're lying on a slab of metal in the basement of the hospital. The morgue. You recognize it because this is where you identified your parents' bodies. And the only reason you'd be here was if you were dead. Which apparently you were supposed to be.

But you're not.

Which can only mean one thing.

You were dead, but died with vampire blood (Meredith and her "cheating," you suspect) in your system. Ergo, you're in transition to become a vampire.

Now you understand Stefan's reaction.

Relief that you're not dead-dead.

Guilt because if he had saved you instead of Matt, you wouldn't be in this position.

Trepidation over how you'll react. After all, the only two real goals anyone has had since the Salvatore's came to town have been 1) you not dying and 2) you not becoming a vampire.

One or the other was bound to happen eventually. Honestly, you're more surprised that one hasn't happened sooner.

"Elena…how—" The boy (because no matter how many decades he lives, he'll always be just a boy) with the green eyes stumbles over his words, clearly not knowing what to say to you. You know he wants to ask how you are, but the only thing both of you know for certain at this moment is that you are most definitely not okay.

He looks miserable, not knowing what to say to you.

"How's Matt?" you ask, more to divert the awkwardness than because you want to alleviate Stefan's discomfort.

"Good. He survived after some CPR and is resting," Stefan answers earnestly, clearly glad to be able to say something coherent.

A weak smile flits across your face and you nod, but don't say anything in return. The anxiousness returns in Stefan's face and he opens his mouth, clearly having decided on something to say when the door is flung open with the force of an F-5 tornado. Instinctually you look over and latch onto blue eyes that are boring into yours with the intensity of a blind man seeing the sun rise for the first time in his life.

"Elena."

His one word mirrors the emotions you saw in Stefan's eyes, but Damon adds one more—sadness. He knew you didn't want this, and despite his relief at you being "alive," he's sad that the only reason you are is because the last thing you ever wanted to happen, happened.

Behind him you hear other voices—Meredith, Jeremy…

Silently you sit up and hop off the table. Your legs are unsteady and instantly each Salvatore is holding an arm, helping you regain your balance.

"Whoa, maybe you should take it easy right now," Stefan says softly, as if he's trying not to startle a wild animal. Is that how he talks to the bunnies before sinking his fangs into their throats?

Damon doesn't say a word, just continues drinking in the sight of not-dead-you.

You shrug off their grips and head for the door. Surprisingly, no one tries to stop you.

At least until you actually reach the door.

Faster than you can blink, Damon's body is blocking the doorway—the only exit to this silent, creepy, sterile room.

"And just where do you think you're going?" he demands with less force than usual, obviously still unsure about whether he should be wearing kid gloves around you or not.

"Out of here. Do you really want to have this conversation here, of all places? I may have recently been a corpse, but that doesn't mean I want to hang around with a bunch of them."

To someone who doesn't know him as well as you do, his flinch is almost imperceptible.

Almost.

You know your words are equivalent to squeezing lemon juice in everyone's eyes after stabbing a needle through their pupils, but you don't care. Right now you can't really feel anything, so everyone else needs to do some extra feeling for you.

As always, Damon recovers quickly. "The lady has a point. Shall we adjourn this meeting to casa de Salvatore? Or would you prefer casa de Gilbert?"

You shrug. "Technically they're both casa de Gilbert. Let's go to the boardinghouse—more room and better booze."

"Can't fault that logic," Damon replies with a smirk that lacks his usual arrogance.

As you talk with Damon, you can practically hear Stefan raise his eyebrows behind you. You can't blame him—frankly, you have no idea what's happening, either. It feels like someone else is speaking the words that are coming out of your mouth.

After a moment Damon steps backward into the hallway and you follow to find a surprisingly placid Jeremy and Meredith. Without a word you step towards your brother and feel yourself engulfed in his warm, familiar embrace. No words are needed. Belatedly you realize neither you nor Jeremy considered the fact that you're in transition and could've easily gone for his throat, his blood.

You break apart after a moment to find Damon and Stefan standing next to one another, each watching you with an inscrutable expression on his face.

You don't know what else to do besides walk down the hall toward the exit.

Damon stands by the bar with a tumbler of bourbon in his hand.

Stefan is next to the cold fireplace, arms crossed.

Jeremy is next to you on the couch.

Alaric is dead. Bonnie is MIA. Matt is still at the hospital, recovering. Tyler is dead and Caroline is understandably MIA.

So. It's down to your own brother and the two brothers whom you're in love with.

It's insane but suddenly you imagine the four of you laying side by side in a bed, singing that ridiculous childhood song, with a few alterations…

There were four in the bed, and Elena said: roll over, roll over.
So they all rolled over and one fell out—which one?

There were three in the bed, and Elena said: roll over, roll over.
So they all rolled over and one fell out—which one?

There were two in the bed, and Elena said: roll over, roll over.
So they both rolled over and one fell out—which one?

There was one in the bed, and….

And then what? What do you say?

I'm lonely because everyone died trying to save me?

But what's the point of living if you're alone?

You wonder what the point of these past months was, all these months during which everyone sacrificed everything they had to save you. So few of your friends and family are left. Would it have been better if you had just died earlier on? Yes, they would have mourned you, but they also would have moved on. Hopefully without all the supernatural craziness that is ensured with each breath you take (took?). Why should your life be worth the lives of so many others? Whether they died for you or indirectly because of your existence as the doppelganger, whether you loved them or not—

Jenna, Alaric, John, Rose, Isobel…you don't even want to keep counting.

What makes you worth it?

Something snaps inside of you. Except maybe snap isn't the right word. More like an anvil drops down your esophagus to your stomach, crushing the glass jar that holds every feeling, thought, and memory that you purposely locked away because if you didn't, you would've dissolved a long time ago, like sugar in hot water, never to become solid again.

You start laughing hysterically. Of course, your laughter quickly turns to tears and then you're crying hysterically. The males in the room look at each, clearly at a loss. Give them a psychopathic hybrid original vampire determined to drain every last drop of blood from your body, and they spring into action.

Seemingly random tears from you?

Giraffes in ice skates.

After a moment Damon sets his glass down, and it's only as you glance up that you see his calm façade disappear to reveal a face wrought with worry and searching eyes, as if he expects to see a visible crack on your body somewhere that would explain this sudden leak of emotion.

He can look all he wants, but the carnage is all on the inside: organs shredded to fleshy strips, veins sliced up like cucumbers, bones embedded with shards of glass.

"Elena?" Stefan's voice is stricken. "What can I do?"

You shake your head. Because there's nothing he can do. Except maybe create a time machine. Maybe if you lived in Eureka instead of Mystic Falls…

Jeremy puts an arm around your shoulders and tugs you closer, but you only start crying harder as you curl into his side. You can just imagine the panicked look on his face; he's seen you cry too many times to count, and comforted you countless times as well, but for once he's out of his depth and doesn't know what to do you. Your heart hasn't been broken by a boy. Another friend or family member didn't die.

You died. How do you comfort someone after they've died?

Ironically, after how many times Jeremy's been killed, you think he'd know exactly what to do for you. Except every time he died, he didn't wake up as an almost-vampire. He just got a bitch of a headache and, as they clearly found out with Alaric, became more susceptible to going on a crazy anti-vampire rage, complete with memory loss.

You feel strong arms slip under your knees and behind your back. Your face is tucked into a solid, familiar chest that smells like copper—you can feel the roughness of dried blood in his shirt against your cheek. But underneath that, you can still smell Damon. Your eyes are closed but you recognize the softness of his bed as he carefully sets you down. There's something to be said for 2000 thread count sheets.

He doesn't leave but crawls in next to you and pulls you closer until your face is against his shoulder. As you inhale, you ignore the scent of salt—definitely from sweat, maybe tears, too?—and blood that tells you of his rough night and focus instead on the underlying scent of Damon.

Your sobs finally slow enough for you to realize that he's been stroking your hair and whispering the same soft words over and over again.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

When you're down to sniffles and the occasional hiccup, you open your eyes to find blue ones looking right back at you. He strokes your cheek with a sad smile before his pupils dilate and his irises shrink as he says, "Sleep, Elena."

And right before you drift off, something clicks in your memory, falls into place, like the very last piece of a 1000-piece puzzle.

You've seen his eyes do that twice before.

But now you also remember what happened beforehand.