For Lack of a Better Name

by Dolphingirl32173

Damon decides to use Stefan's call to clean up the mess he had made in turning Vicki Donovan into a vampire as a perfectly valid excuse to kidnap both Elena and Teddy before leaving Mystic Falls fading from the rearview mirror of his Camaro. FULL SUMMARY INSIDE! Damon/Elena

2. Talk About Embarrassing

For Lack of a Better Name
DG32173

Sarah: here's chapter 2. This chapter starts off in Elena's perspective.

CREDIT
I am a firm believer of giving credit where credit is due. If it weren't for the outstanding and witty help of my invaluable beta, this fanfic would still be trapped in my head. As it is, here's a well-earned shout-out to Cameron, aka VDfan2107. You are by far the best beta I have ever had.

REVIEW REPLIES

rcardinals4: I'm so glad you think this story was a great idea and that you love it. I hope you continue to love this story. Here's the next chapter.

JMHUW: Damon's primary reason for placing the compulsions on Jeremy was both to give Elena some peace of mind in concern of her brother so that she can focus on what's happening between them and to make sure that the note he forged in Elena's handwriting was found soon as well as was accepted by her brother at the very least. In regards to your comment about Stefan feeling like an idiot for not realizing what Damon was up to, he will feel that way but there's also the fact that he hadn't stopped to think that Damon just might give up his quest to open the tomb so he could set Katherine free in favor of making Elena his. And Elena's subconscious is indeed thinking hard and long about Stefan's betrayal of her trust while she's knocked out. Hope you continue to enjoy this story. Here's the next chapter.

kfulmer7: I'm a huge fan of Delena road trips, which is why I have quite the tendency to write stories about them. Here's more to the story.

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Chapter 2
Talk About Embarrassing

As the oblivion of the deep sleep I have been in for what I know to be a very long stretch of time finally starts to release me reluctantly back into the waking world, I get the distinct feeling that the peace that oblivion gave me is going to be annihilated upon waking up. So I try to cling desperately to oblivion because my life has become crazy enough that even such a state of total nothingness is more enticing than returning to it. But my body refuses to obey me and continues to rouse into awareness gradually. As I wake up, the final moments before darkness had taken over return to me and if I had been awake enough to have control over my body, I would grind my teeth in fury over the knowledge that although Damon has done plenty of horrible things to make my life downright miserable, he has never flat-out lied to my face. That knowledge is enough to assure me that although the gleam of triumph in his eyes had been so obvious even a child would have seen it, he would not have lied to me about the picture of Katherine he had found on Stefan's desk nor would he have lied about my resemblance to his sire being so remarkable that I could pass for her twin. While I have no idea what he had been hoping to gain by sharing those two details with me, I know that he was completely honest as he spoke the words.

But try as I might, I cannot recall what had happened after he had told me those facts or how I had fallen unconscious to begin with. As I draw closer and closer to full awareness, I find that my body is in enough pain to remind me that Vicki had been deadset on killing me before Stefan had shoved a broken wooden board through her chest. Whatever else had happened while I was unconscious, the injuries she inflicted upon me have not had adequate time to heal enough for the pain to have faded very much.

After the return of the pain from my injuries, I realize that the situation around me is not right. For one thing, I am sitting up and I feel what is obviously the seatbelt of a car holding me upright. I should, by all rights, be lying in my own bed right now. The fact that I'm not only not in a bed of any kind but that I'm in a car that I can now tell is moving extremely fast tells me that whatever had caused me to pass out has put me in a situation that I know instinctively that I do not under any circumstances want to be in. So as desperately as I had been trying to cling to the black comfort of sleep, I now just as desperately start to claw my way to full awareness. But as adamant as my body had been that I wake up, it is now just as adamant that I do so at the pace it chooses.

As my body continues to take its own sweet time rousing to awareness, I am granted too much time to fret over the many possible scenarios I could be in right now. No longer am I able to just worry about what a human kidnapper would want with me, but now I know that humans are actually the least of the dangerous beings walking this planet in human guise. I'd be hyperventilating from my fear if I had the least amount of control over my body right now.

It is only when I am close to full awareness that the rest of my senses, except for sight, come back to me. I use these returned senses to further analyze the situation I am now in. My hearing is too muddled to make out much sound at the moment so I focus on scent. My sense of touch had told me that I am buckled into a car that is moving quite rapidly. Now my sense of smell adds to the knowledge of what's going on around me. The smells that I recognize are of leather, some kind of spice, aftershave, and just a hint of musk. The combination of these scents is too damn familiar for me to pretend that I don't know who had kidnapped me: Damon Salvatore.

I simultaneously relax and tense, however impossible that might have seemed before. If Damon had sinister plans for me, he would have enacted them while I was trapped in oblivious unconsciousness. The fact that I am waking up in a slightly lesser degree of pain than I had been in when I fell unconscious tells me that whatever his motives are for kidnapping me, they do not involve going so far as to inflict further damage on my body than Vicki had already done. That is just enough to reassure me that he wants me alive and relatively in one piece for those plans. But what causes me to tense at the same time is that Damon is both highly intelligent and extremely crafty. There could be any number of reasons that he wants me to stay alive and in decent shape for the moment. But as I am nowhere near as diabolical as he is, I'm not even going to begin trying to figure out what he's up to.

As I draw even closer to full awareness, I'm startled to realize that Damon had been so thoughtful as to bandage my injuries. But considering the car that we're in has to be his beloved Camaro, I find I'm not all that surprised. He would never permit anything to cause any kind of damage to the car. And bloodstains on the upholstery are indeed damage to the car in his opinion. Even as I understand the primary reason why he would have tended my injuries, I can also tell that he had taken his time and applied the first aid properly. The bandages are neither so tight that they cause greater pain than the injuries they conceal nor are they so loose as to simply stop the blood from flowing onto the Camaro's upholstery without having much effect on the actual injuries. Even though I should be furious that Damon had to have undressed me so he could tend to all my wounds, the unexpected thoughtfulness of taking the time to do so correctly completely negates that fury and in its place I feel touched at the unexpected kindness from the badass vampire. Maybe my instincts were right after all in that he is still redeemable from the sins he has committed in his vampire life.

So now that I know he had not only bandaged my injuries but had taken the time to do it right, at least I can rest easy that whatever his reasons for kidnapping me are, he's not going to turn around and kill me later. After all, if Damon wanted me dead for whatever reason, he would not have wasted time not only bandaging the injuries that bled but also wrapping bandages around my chest to keep my cracked ribs in one place.

But just as I start giving him the benefit of the doubt, I finally reach full awareness and open my eyes. Damon had situated me in the front passenger seat of the Camaro in such a way that the very first thing I would see when I open my eyes would be him in the driver's seat. And the sight turns all the thoughts about him not being such a bad guy after all to ash.

Not only is he driving more than 100 miles an hour but his eyes are focused on the book he is holding in one hand while the other is on the wheel. And he is reading that book aloud. It takes me a minute to cool my panic enough to remind myself that as a vampire, Damon can most likely do any number of tasks while driving at such extreme speeds and still be just as in control of the car as if his attention was fixed entirely on the road ahead of him and he was going at the legal speed limit.

Then the words he's reading make me realize precisely what book he is reading.

"-and I have to admit, Diary, that today's decision to go to the boarding house without calling to make sure Stefan was there just might have been a smart move after all. I mean, it was quite apparent when Stefan finally turned up that he would have done his damnedest to keep me from ever meeting his charming, devastatingly sexy older brother," Damon reads, using the vampire's ability at perfect vocal control to mimic my voice exactly.

Dear God, what did I do to deserve the utter embarrassment of having Damon reading my journal and finding out every last thing I have ever written down about him? I'm too caught up in humiliation and shock to snatch my journal out of his hand. And meanwhile, Damon keeps reading as if he hadn't noticed that I had woken up, which I know damn well he had to have known the instant I started returning to the waking world. He is a vampire after all. He has all these super senses and vampire powers at his disposal.

"Anyways, I guess I should go into a bit more detail about Damon than what I had mentioned above. After all, I don't ever want to forget that I had met someone that unbelievably hot," Damon continues to read in perfect mimicry of my voice. "So, Damon is a few inches taller than me. He has hair as dark as a raven's wing and I had to fight this intense urge to run my fingers through it, just to check and see if it was as soft as it looked. He has mesmerizing ice blue eyes that I wanted so desperately to fall into and never leave." Damon's voice turns a touch smug at the next lines. "And to think that just the other day I had been thinking there couldn't possibly be anyone on this planet who was hotter than Stefan. I was completely mistaken. Damon is way hotter not to mention he was quite the gentleman about the fact that I had just barged into his house without an invitation. But I'm curious about what Damon meant about Stefan's last girlfriend leaving him a complete mess. Not that I'm actually Stefan's girlfriend or anything. And I don't know why this is so, but I know I wouldn't have been denying it if Damon had been the one who had met me first and showed all the signs of wanting to hook up with me."

I close my eyes and feel my cheeks heat up so much I know they're crimson with embarrassment. Then I hear the rustling of pages before Damon starts reading another entry. And as if it's not bad enough that he now knows I had been smitten with him when I first met him, he starts reading the entry about the night of the football game where I had slapped him outside the stadium for trying to steal a kiss and my immediate reaction afterwards.

"Okay, diary, I am now in a mess of mixed feelings. Let me explain the situation that led to this," Damon reads in my voice. "Tonight when I arrived at the football game, Damon was waiting for me out front of the stadium. I was flustered that he had chosen to wait for me. I mean, he's this hot, twenty-something guy who could probably have any girl in the world, and he chose to wait outside a high school football stadium for me. So yeah, the nerves kicked up. Then he pointed out that my attempts to hide my attraction to him had failed miserably. Then he pointed out that at that moment, I wanted to kiss him. Admittedly, the thought had been in the back of my mind ever since I first laid eyes on him. So I have no idea why I slapped him when he tried to steal a kiss. I immediately regretted it and did my best to cover that up by pointing out that I'm not Katherine, the girl the brothers had fought over in the past. But that did nothing to ease the regret of missing out on a chance to feel his lips against mine."

I groan as he flips through several more pages in search of the next entry he wants to read. As soon as he starts reading the entry he had chosen, I get the strong desire to unbuckle my seatbelt and fling myself out of the car with strong hopes that doing so would snap my neck and kill me. But given my luck, such a stunt would not only not kill me, but I'd probably walk away from it with no more injuries than the ones I have right now.

"Okay, this is ridiculous. I have just barely begun to accept the fact that the Salvatore brothers are in fact immortal vampires and that the gentleman act Damon's been pulling off for me is just that, an act to hide how black his heart really is, if he even has one to begin with," Damon reads, his grin one of triumph. "And now, ever since I found out what the brothers are and that Damon's behind the 'animal attacks' that have been cropping up around town in recent months, my damn subconscious has finally decided to betray me by dreaming about him. And the dreams are by no means the nightmares they should be. No, they are the kind that make me flush crimson with embarrassment over the in-depth detail my subconscious brought to such raunchy dreams. Yes, diary, I said raunchy. That's because they are. For God's sake, I'm with Stefan, the good brother! And all my sleeping mind wants to think about is just how wild a lover Damon could be. I mean, Bonnie and I didn't decide to call that look of extreme pleasure Caroline wore every time he dropped her off for school the Just-Had-Mind-Boggling-Sex-With-Damon-Salvatore look for nothing. For all that Caroline is one of my best friends, even I have to admit that she's been a slut since two summers ago. Anyways, maybe if I write down what this latest dream was about, I might be able to rid my mind of these pesky dreams. I will not allow even my own subconscious to cheat on Stefan any longer, particularly not with his evil older brother. God, I hope writing this down will make my subconscious shut up about the subject. So, at the beginning of the dream, Damon and I are dressed in formal attire and are dancing in this grand ballroom."

I finally manage to shake free of the paralysis my shame had cast over my body and snatch my journal from his hand. He lets me take it with a smug grin. "Go ahead and keep it," he says with a cheeky grin and a wink, using his own voice now. "It's all in here anyways," he continues, pointing at his head.

I groan. I need to get away from him. "Let me out," I demand.

"You sure about that? Take a look out the window and tell me if you're really sure you want to get out of my car," he says cheekily.

I glance out just long enough to note that we are in the middle of a desert with no sign of civilization other than the road we're on anywhere around. "Let me out of the car, Damon," I hiss through my teeth in spite the fact that I know damn well that I probably wouldn't be able to make it to the nearest town on my own.

"Fine," he says with a shrug, slowing down and pulling over to the side of the road. As soon as his car pulls to a stop, I immediately launch myself out of it and slam the passenger door shut. I hear the window roll down behind me. "One hundred miles down the road in the direction we were going is Austin, Texas. Eighty miles in the opposite direction is a town even smaller than Mystic Falls. The most exciting thing about the tiny town is that it has a single gas station with two pumps and a working payphone that's so old that a five minute call is only a quarter. It's up to you which way you want to walk."

It takes a moment for me to realize what he is saying. In that moment, he's rolled the window back up and started pulling away. I whirl around and gape as he pulls back onto the road and starts driving away. Sure, he's now travelling at a snail's pace compared to what he had been travelling at, but he surely doesn't intend to leave me here in the middle of nowhere with the nearest bit of civilization eighty miles away! But as I stare after him, he not only doesn't stop again, he starts picking up speed. I let out the nastiest blue streak I have ever laid voice to and take off after him as fast as my legs can carry me.

"Dammit, Damon! You can't just leave me here in the middle of nowhere!" I shout after him. He keeps the speed his car is moving at the same speed I am running so that while he doesn't leave me behind, he also doesn't let me catch up. He keeps this going for a good mile before finally stopping. I was just starting to fall behind and when I realize he had stopped, I dredge up even more stamina from somewhere. I know damn well he's now toying with me because if he really was going to leave me in the middle of nowhere, he wouldn't have matched my speed and kept the distance I was from the Camaro the same for a full mile. He would have just taken off and left me choking on his dust. I stagger the last few steps to the passenger door. But when I try to open it, I find that he had had the nerve to lock me out. I glare at him through the window and glare even more fiercely when I see that he's twisted in his seat to watch me with a grin of amusement.

"Dammit, Damon! Let me in!" I shout at him.

"But you were so insistent that you wanted out," he points out, his voice muffled slightly by the glass. "I did tell you to look out the window so you would see that we happen to be in the middle of a desert but you still wanted out."

"Fine, I'll admit it, I was an idiot. Now will you please let me back in?" I snap.

He considers my words briefly and realizes that is the best he's going to get out of me. He unlocks the doors. I immediately swing mine open and climb back into my seat. I wince in pain as my injuries tell me in no uncertain terms that they do not like the treatment I had put them through. By the way Damon's nostrils flare as soon as I get in; it is safe to say that several of the surface injuries had reopened because of my exertions. Damon makes a face and looks to the side as he thinks over something. Finally, he sighs, brings his right wrist to his face, morphs his face to that of the vampire just long enough to use his fangs to open a vein in his wrist, and then holds that wrist to me.

"Drink," he orders shortly.

"Damon," I start to voice my protests over being given vampire blood because I know enough by now to know that if I happen to die with his blood in my system, I will become a vampire myself.

"Elena, vampire blood can heal all kinds of injuries on a human. I happen to still be quite hungry from my three-day stint locked up in one of the vampire holding cells in the boarding house basement during which frame of time my darling brother withheld blood from me in an effort to desiccate me. The scent of your blood is driving my inner vampire crazy. If you don't want to feel my fangs sinking into your own flesh, then you will drink my blood so that your injuries heal," he says through his teeth. I can tell he's trying to breathe as little as possible and still be able to speak.

'Well, when you put it like that,' I think and reluctantly latch my mouth over the wound on his wrist. At the first taste of Damon's blood, I find myself suddenly desperate to keep that sweet, rich, smooth taste flowing down my throat. When Damon goes to pull his wrist away when my injuries have healed, I grab his hand with my right one and his forearm with my left and struggle to keep my mouth latched over the wound on his wrist.

"Well, what do you know?" he murmurs thoughtfully, as if he's gotten his hands on some information that can be damn useful at a later point in time. After a moment, he reaches his other hand forward and pries me away from his arm. I moan in disappointment. "Elena, we are still in the middle of a desert in Texas. Now is not the time to let things head the way they would have headed had I let you keep drinking my blood," he tells me forcefully.

That's when I finally come down off the high that the taste of his blood had given to me. "What just happened?" I demand. "I only meant to drink enough to take care of my injuries but then I couldn't stop!"

Damon rolls his eyes, straightens up in his seat, and pulls the Camaro back onto the road. "You, kitten, just so happen to be one of the rare humans who become addicted to vampire blood at first taste," he replies.

"Are you saying I'm some sort of blood addict?" I demand.

He shrugs. "Well, the fact that you wouldn't let me take my arm back without having to pry you off of me says quite plainly that you couldn't get enough of my blood," he replies.

I cross my arms over my chest. Then I remember what city Damon said is ahead of us. "Damon, are we really in the state of Texas?" I demand.

"Yep," he replies, popping the 'p'. "As I said, ahead of us is Austin."

"How long was I out?" I exclaim in shock.

"As of the moment you started waking up, it had been nearly thirty-six hours since you last had your eyes open. I was beginning to worry that I had accidentally put you in a coma," he says.

"And why did you knock me out and kidnap me in the first place?" I demand. "Do you not realize that after what Jeremy witnessed …"

"Actually, I took care of your brother. He now believes that Vicki had sent him a text saying she had to leave Mystic Falls if she was ever to get her life in order and that he would never hear from her again. He will miss her but believes that the text was right in that if she had stayed in Mystic Falls, she would most likely have died of a drug overdose and that maybe roaming about the big wide world will help her overcome her past. As for what Jeremy and Jenna think about your disappearance, I forged a note from you saying that you needed to get away from how your life has gone straight downhill since the events of this past May. So, in that letter, 'you' said you were going to go on a road trip and that you would keep in as much contact as you were able to through calls and texts. I made sure to mention that you would have inevitably allowed yourself to be talked out of doing what you thought was necessary to finally allow you to move on with your life. Thus, the abrupt disappearance with just a note to explain what was going through 'your' head."

I groan and slump down in my seat. "And where are you taking me?" I ask, knowing that demanding he turn around and take me home would be pointless since he's driving. Not to mention his car is a stick-shift and I never learned how to drive one.

"The first real stop on the road trip will be Vegas. Even Teddy agrees that's a good idea," he says. He glances in the rearview. "Don't you, Teddy?" he asks.

With a feeling of dread, I sit up and turn around to check out the backseat. Sure enough, buckled up in the middle of the backseat, Teddy is staring at me as if he is perfectly in his right to be there. I groan, cover my eyes with my hand and turn back to the front. Of course Damon would know that if I really had left of my own free will for a road trip, I would have inevitably brought Teddy along. How he has managed to learn so much about me when we don't even get along is a complete mystery to me.

And since Damon had gone so far as to grab Teddy and leave a forged note explaining my disappearance, I now know that whatever he is planning has nothing to do with killing me off at all. But whatever's going through his twisted mind is still a mystery to me. I don't have enough clues to even try to piece together his motivations behind this. "What are you planning?" I ask wearily.

He chuckles darkly. "For now, all you need to know is that we are going to be gone from Mystic Falls a good, long time. And I intend on making damn sure that you begin enjoying this road trip," he replies.

"That's unlikely," I mutter.

Damon suddenly rises up so he can dig something out of the back pocket of his jeans. He tosses it to me and I fumble with it for a moment before realizing it's my phone. I give him a sharp look. "You better call your family to check in as 'you' promised you would," he tells me. "Just don't go trying to mention that I'm with you and I won't have to cut your call short. I'm going to make my brother sweat for a good long while as he tries to figure out what happened to you and what evil plot I'm undoubtedly working on. I can't wait to find out how long it takes for him to finally realize that your disappearance from town coincided with the last time he had laid eyes on yours truly and puts two-and-two together."

As soon as he mentions his brother, rage flares up within me over his duplicity in regards to Katherine. He had led me to believe that there is nothing about me that reminds him of his ex. And now that Damon had made it perfectly clear that not only was that a lie but that I look so much like the vampiress that I could very easily pass for her twin. I grind my teeth as I do my damnedest to calm down. Unfortunately, practically as soon as I turn my phone on, Stefan calls and I become enraged again.

I signal to Damon to keep quiet and he nods. I then hit talk and put my phone to my ear. "Hello?" I answer, as if I don't know who's on the other end.

"Elena? Where are you? Why haven't you been returning my calls?" he asks, sounding extremely worried.

"What does Katherine look like, Stefan?" I ask sharply.

"What does she have to do with anything? No one's heard from you in more than a day and a half. Do you realize how worried I was? And why didn't you tell me you needed to get away from town? I would have gone with you."

"Stefan, answer my question," I growl. "What does Katherine look like?"

"Elena, I told you," he says, and I can finally detect the desperation to avoid the topic.

"Stefan, I'm a fallible human. You can't expect me to remember every single thing in my life. So, remind me, what does Katherine look like?" I repeat my question with growing impatience.

"Elena, what does Katherine's appearance have to do with anything?" he asks.

"You tell me what she looks like and I'll tell you why it matters to me," I tell him. "Let's start with her eyes. What color were they?"

"Blue," Stefan says hastily.

"What about her hair? What color was it? How long was it?" I demand.

"She had short blonde hair," he replies with the same haste that he had used before.

"Are you sure? Because I keep picturing her with long brown hair and brown eyes," I say idly, as if I couldn't care less.

"What are you getting at, Elena? What's going on?" he asks.

I sigh. "You know, I thought you loved and respected me," I tell him.

"I do," he assures me.

"Then why lie to me about what Katherine looks like?" I ask softly. Complete silence answers me, telling me that he's shocked. "Did you honestly think that I wouldn't find out that not only do I look so much like your ex that I could be mistaken for her twin but that you also keep a picture of her lying on your desk where anyone who walked into your room could find it?"

"How do you know about that?" he asks raggedly.

I scowl. "I wasn't completely sure until just now," I reply tersely. "I didn't bother to look for evidence on my own. I had to get away because you not only lied to me about looking nothing like your ex, you not only keep a picture of her within easy reach, but you also betrayed my faith that you were the good brother, that you would never do anything to hurt me. And looking me in the eye and lying to my face hurts me, Stefan. I'm not going to tell you where I am or where I'm going. And even if I knew when I will come back to Mystic Falls, which I don't, I wouldn't tell you that either. I want you gone from Mystic Falls by the time I get back. I was right about one thing when it comes to you. You're not as bad as Damon. Unfortunately, I hadn't realized that you are worse than him. At least he has never lied to me about the things that really matter. You're no Prince Charming, Stefan. You're no White Knight. You just put on a damn good show of being one. And I hate myself for buying it hook, line, and sinker. From this moment on, you had better stay the hell out of my life and get as far from my family and friends as this world allows. And if you go so far as to try to track me down, I will drive the nearest pointy wooden thing through your heart. Good riddance."

I take the phone from my ear and hang up on his attempts to explain himself. I then put his number on the list of numbers my phone automatically blocks. I get the intense urge to roll down the window and throw my phone out it. But I know that I still need to contact Jeremy and Jenna and let them know I'm okay as well as let Bonnie know how badly Stefan had betrayed me.

The Halloween dance had been Friday evening. Damon told me I had been out of it for thirty-six hours by the time I started waking up. Which means I slept all through Saturday and it's now Sunday. I glance at the clock on the dashboard of the Camaro. It's now going on eleven in the morning. I decide that it should be safe to call Bonnie first and let her know what I had discovered about Stefan. First, though, I delete Stefan from my list of contacts. Then I scroll up to Bonnie's name and hit send. It takes four rings for her to pick up, not that I expected any less. My best friend prefers sleeping until at least noon when she can get by with it. And that's at the very earliest. She prefers waking up around one in the afternoon or maybe even two.

"'Ello?" Bonnie's sleep-filled voice grouses.

"Knock the sleep out of your eyes, Bonnie, because you are going to need to be wide awake for this," I tell her.

"Elena?" Bonnie asks, sounding much more awake. "Where've you been? And why didn't you tell me you were going on a road trip!"

"Bonnie, you better stay in your bed or you're going to fall on the floor with what I'm about to tell you," I say when I hear her bed creaking.

"Elena, why do you sound like you're ready to kill someone? Did Damon do something?" she asks.

"Damon's not behind my fury this time. Stefan is," I reply tersely.

She gasps. "What did he do to upset you so much?" she asks finally.

"First, you should know, what he did to infuriate me has made me break up with him permanently and I want him long gone from town by the time I get back," I tell her.

"What did he do?"

I grit my teeth and feel tears flooding my eyes. I take a deep breath and shove them back. "I told you about his ex, right? The vampiress who sired him?" I ask.

"You told me her name was Katherine. What does this have to do with her?"

"Well, he lied to me when he said that there is nothing about me that reminds him of her. I have discovered that not only do I look so much like her that I could pass for her twin but he also keeps a picture of her lying on his desk for anyone who enters his room to find. It's even labeled 'Katherine, 1864' so that no one can mistake it as a picture of me. I just got off the phone with Stefan right before I called you and he confirmed that I do look like I could be Katherine's twin and that he does have a picture of her in his room that is easily reachable. But first I made him tell me what Katherine looks like. I asked about her eyes, he said blue. I asked about her hair, he said short and blonde. And I had to demand that he answer my questions before I would allow any other topic enter the conversation. Not only did he lie to me about my resemblance to her, not only did he lie to me about the details of her looks, but he also tried to change the topic many times before I could flush the false details out of him. So you can clearly understand why I broke up with him and want him out of my life."

"What do you want me to do about him? You name it, I'll do it," Bonnie says fiercely.

"Keep him away from my family and see if you can get your Grams to help you un-invite him from my house. I'd love to add run him out of town in such a way that he will never try to stick his nose into my life again, but I'm not going to ask you to try to pull off such a big miracle," I tell her. "Accomplishing the first two will be miraculous enough."

"I'll get with Grams and see what we can come up with to accomplish your requests," she promises. "I take it you're not going to tell me where you are or where you're headed?"

"Sorry, Bonnie, I can't risk word of my whereabouts getting back to Stefan. I know you'd do your damnedest to keep your mouth shut. But if my family or especially Caroline were to find out where I am, word will spread and Stefan will likely get it in his head to come talk some 'sense' into me in person. And I will go through with the threat I gave him about plunging the nearest wooden pointy thing into his heart. And that will make me a murderer, no matter that he's a vampire that deserves it." I glance at the clock on the dashboard. "Well, I still gotta call Jenna and Jeremy and apologize for leaving the way I did. I just hope I can come up with a good enough excuse to explain why Jenna shouldn't call in the feds to track me down and bring me home."

"Tell her that Stefan had led you to believe that you had nothing in common with his ex but then you came across a picture of her that not only was lying on his desk for anyone to find but also that revealed that you and she share a remarkable resemblance. She'll concede that no betrayal she's ever suffered could ever come close to being as bad as that. And she would understand that not only would you feel so ashamed for not realizing that you were being used as a replacement for the one he really loved but also that that very shame and sense of betrayal would drive you to get as far from him as you could," she says, her voice taking on a distinctly odd tone. So odd, in fact, that Damon and I exchange a look and he mouths 'vision' at me. I nod, having to agree that Bonnie must be having a vision while she speaks. After a moment, Bonnie's back on the line and I'm relieved that her voice is back to normal. "Well, I get the distinct feeling that I just said something that will help you out but I can't remember what," she admits. "Whatever it was, I hope it helps."

"It was a big help, Bonnie," I assure her. "Now, I need to make that call to Jenna before she does give in to her worry and calls the feds."

"You be sure to keep in contact," she orders.

"I will, but you be sure to take care of my family while I'm gone," I tell her.

"I'll do my damnedest and I'll bring Grams in on the effort as well," she vows.

We hang up after that. "Now for the call I've been dreading," I mutter, looking up Jenna's name. Damon doesn't comment, not that I had expected him to. He doesn't have a shred of humanity in him. But there is the fact that rather than sinking his fangs into me when my reopened wounds started driving his inner vampire crazy, he instead fed me his blood to heal all my injuries so that I would stop being such a big temptation. So while he doesn't have a shred of humanity in him, he does care about what happens to me to some extent, as his words the other night had indicated. And with that ability to care about what happens to me comes the tiny chance of rebuilding his humanity with that as the foundation.

But I shake myself free of those thoughts for the moment as I find Jenna's name. I sigh in resignation. 'Best to get it over with,' I tell myself. At least Bonnie had given me the reason I need to convince her to let me continue travelling. I hit send and put my phone to my ear.

It's barely halfway through the first ring before Jenna picks up. "Elena! Where the hell are you? Why did you leave like that? And why on earth haven't you contacted me before this?" Jenna's voice comes on, thick with worry.

"I'm sorry, Jenna, but I couldn't risk having you and Jeremy talk me out of this. All I'm going to say is that I'm on the road. I can't tell you where I am or where I'm going. I don't want word getting back to Stefan because he could very well use that information to try to track me down. And if I lay eyes on him any time soon, I'm going to end up killing him," I say, allowing the tears that keep wanting to fill my eyes get their release through my voice.

"What on earth did he do that has you so upset, Elena?" Jenna asks, her tone softening.

I take a shaky breath, trying to keep my composure together. "I found a picture of his ex-girlfriend on his desk," I admit. She gasps in horror and outrage. "And that's not even the worst part. He told me that there is nothing about me to remind him of her. That picture proved him to be a liar. She and I share an uncanny resemblance, Jenna. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to get away from town, away from him. I never thought I'd ever know precisely what you went through when you fled Mystic Falls because of ScumFell, but now I do. I … I can't face him, Jenna. Not right now. Like you said, the chicken option of running seemed the safer route at the time. And I know that if he manages to track me down, he'll put on some wholesome show he's probably working on right now to sweet talk me back into his arms. And if I encountered him right now, I'd kill him for his charades. So, please, don't try to ask me where I am, where I've been, where I'm going, or anything else along those lines."

"Just … just tell me that you're going to be okay," Jenna begs.

"It'll take time, which is why I chose to go on a road trip of indeterminate length," I reply, looking out at the desert scenery passing us by.

"You'll keep in touch, though, right?"

"As much as possible," I promise. "How's Jeremy?"

"Well, Friday seemed to be the night for skipping town," Jenna replies sardonically. "Vicki Donovan got it in her head to take off and find some place else to try to start fresh. She sent Jeremy a text saying that she had split town and wasn't coming back. She also mentioned that he'll never hear from her again. Someone found the crushed up remains of a phone that Jeremy and Matt agree is the same model as hers on the road to Wickery Bridge. It looks like she sent the text then tossed her phone out the window of a car so that no one can contact her. With both you and Vicki skipping town on the same night, I'm finding Jeremy's reaction to be nothing short of miraculous. Not only did he say that Vicki's chances of living long enough to even graduate high school looked pretty bleak if she were to stay here, but he also mentioned that he's decided to use her attempt to find a better life for herself as an example to get his own act together. And while I was freaking out over the fact that you only left a note before skipping town yourself, he was telling me that you must have had a damn good reason for doing so or you wouldn't have done it. There's talk all over town about the fact that two of the towns notable daughters had hit the road on the same night can't be a coincidence."

"Well, I can assure you, wherever Vicki is, she's not with me," I say, flicking my eyes towards Damon. "If I had known Vicki would get it into her head to split town that night, I probably would have found some other way to deal with what I found out about Stefan." We pass a sign saying that we'll reach the city limits of Austin, Texas, in thirty miles. "Listen, Jenna, I have to go. I wasn't really thinking when I fled town or I would have packed some clothes. I'm almost to a big town where I can do a little shopping for some road trip necessities and hopefully find some place to eat and maybe even a motel so I can get cleaned up. I hope my bank account can handle this or I just might be walking back to Mystic Falls." Those last two sentences are said with a stern look at Damon telling him that those things had better happen or I'm not going to make this road trip the least bit pleasant until they do. He rolls his eyes but nods that he'll open his wallet and pay for my needs. I narrow my eyes in a warning that he better or else. "Anyways, give Jeremy a hug for me and tell him I'm sorry to have bailed on him the same night his girlfriend did. Love ya, Jenna."

"I'll do that. Love ya, too, kid," she says.

We hang up and I make myself as comfortable as I can. Unfortunately, that mile-long run Damon put me through was not enough to work out all the kinks left by spending thirty-six straight hours asleep in an upright position. "I didn't drag you on this road trip just to make you suffer by not making sure your needs are met," Damon says.

"Please, do tell, why did you drag me along when you decided to skip town?" I invite sarcastically.

He chuckles. "When the time is right, I'll reveal my hand," he says, smirking.

"Well, why did you have to drag Teddy along?" I demand, wrinkling my nose at him.

Damon shrugs. "I happen to like him," he replies.

"You, Damon Salvatore, evil incarnate, like a teenaged girl's teddy bear?" I demand, choking back a laugh.

"Only because he's your favorite teddy bear," he replies, winking at me.

I frown. "How did you know he's my favorite?" I ask.

"Of all the stuffed animals in your room, Teddy is the only one who is granted a place on your bed. You even sleep with him," he replies.

"How do you know I … you watch me sleep?" I demand shrilly.

"Ow!" he says, wincing away from me. "Keep your voice down, woman! I'm a vampire. My hearing happens to be superior to yours!"

"How could … how dare … ugh!" I complain, completely ignoring his demands for me to keep it down.

Before I can go any further, though, I feel a chill run down my spine as Damon's right hand lands on the back of my neck. "Elena, lower your voice or I'm going to knock you back out," he says tersely. "I might even go so far as to snap your neck. I'm sure you know what will happen to you if I did that, what with the fact that you have my blood in your system right now." I stiffen and snap my mouth shut. "Remember, I'm not like my pansy brother. I happen to think you'd make an excellent vampire. Unlike him, I have sired many vampires since I completed transition. Vicki was a mistake made out of boredom. You won't be. Not to mention the fact that now I know you are addicted to my blood, all I have to do is open one of my veins and your mouth would be latched to it because you won't be able to stop yourself. Because of this, I can keep my blood in your system indefinitely if I so wanted to and you would be helpless to stop me from doing so. You better keep that in mind. So don't push me, Elena. Now, keep your mouth shut until we get to a motel room or you won't like the consequences."

I give the barest of nods to show my agreement. I sigh in relief as his hand leaves my neck. The rest of the drive into Austin is made in tense silence. This has to be the most humiliating day of my life, I'm sure of it. And, unfortunately, I have a feeling that Damon's going to use my newfound addiction to his blood to take things between us to a whole new level, one I would never allow them to reach if I were in control of myself. I sigh and stare out my window forlornly. I wish I could be sure that some good would come of this, but I know better than to set my hopes on such a miracle.