A/N: The following 2 chapters are kind of angsty and sad. Sorry they're necessary.

*Flashback*

"Let me see him." I barely communicated as I shoved through the crowds of people that stood looking mournfully towards me, as if they pitied me.

"Elena-"Jenna called after me, but someone, I think Damon stopped her. He was smart enough to know that this wasn't the time to discuss anything with me.

I rushed into the room that was directly past the small kitchen and walked into my brother's room only to halt and find the scariest sight of my entire life.

On the bed, on top of the over-worn auburn covers that my mother had bought him when he was only five years old, sat my beloved brother. Pale. Blue-lips.

My eyes widened. I was horrified. The bubbly, often sarcastic, and wonderful boy that once inhabited this room was most definitively gone. It was hard to believe this body ever had life at all.

I walked at a deadly slow pace, with tears filled in my eyes, until I reached my brother who laid on the left hand side of the bed. I fell onto my knees on the side of the bed, goose bumps spread through my body and my hands shook. It took every force of my being to lift my hand, my hands in tremors, to touch his soft and innocent face. When my hand finally reached his delicate and frighteningly cold skin, I blew out a breath of air and my head collapsed on my forearms.

He's really dead, I thought as I gasped for air through my sobs.

"Elena," I couldn't hear the voice over my wailing. "It's going to be alright," Damon said as he put his arms around me.

"Everything's gonna be alri-" I almost laughed as I looked at the blurry figure in front of me. I saw strands of hair stuck around the rims of my eyes and I wiped my nose quickly as I looked at Damon. "My brother's just died!" I screamed, but didn't pull away from his embrace as I didn't find the strength to resist him. "How can anything possibly alright?" I shut my eyes closed tightly as I felt a severe pain in my heart, as if someone had just plunged a knife straight through the middle of my heart and to prolong the pain had begun twisting and turning it.

"Sh," I heard Damon whimper as he gave me a tight hug and put he put his head on top of mine and cuddled me into his neck. "I-I don't know." I heard his voice tremble as I sobbed profusely. "But it will be, okay? I-I promise." Damon cooed.

You can't promise me that. I thought, but didn't say because I didn't have the energy to argue.

"We'll survive this, okay?" I heard Damon cry as he patted my back. "We always survive."

I can't live like this anymore. I decided as he continued to whisper lies in my ear.

"How did he die?" I asked as tears started falling down at a slower rate.

"I don't know, Elena. Jenna still hasn't-"

"We don't know, Elena." Jenna interrupted. The pain in her face mirrored my own. "The doctor came by just before you got here and couldn't diagnose him. He-he said," she stuttered, as tears started to slip down her cheeks. "He said he'd never learned about this sort of death before."

"So, we don't even know what he died of?" I yelled, outraged that we were so poor that even our doctors were too ignorant to discuss the cause of my poor brother's death.

"Elena, calm down." Damon breathed.

"Calm down?" I cried as I stood up and moved my hands to my hair and began pulling at it just to be able to control something. "Calm down!" I yelled as I paced the small amount of room between the bed and the wall. "My brother's just died out of nowhere, for apparently no reason, and you want me to calm-" I breathed a deep breath, and suddenly I fell down to the floor, my legs giving out.

"Oh, Elena." Jenna ran over to me and held me in her arms as I leaned onto the bed and cried my eyes out, gasping with breaths I didn't know I had left in me.

"This is all because we don't have enough money." I growled furiously into my brother's covers.

"You can't think like that." I heard Damon say as he grabbed on strongly to my voice.

"It's true," I moaned as I looked up in front of me to see my dead brother – yesterday he had told me it was my turn to take out the trash, and I yelled at him for not taking it out himself. Today, I would've given all of the possessions I had in the world – which granted weren't much – just to be able to have been able to tell him I loved him and goodbye. "If we-we, ha-ha-had money," A startling breath made me pause "we would've k-known he was sick."

I'll never let this happen to me again. I swore at that moment in silence. I'll never let money be the reason I lose someone I love again.

I dragged my feet slowly as I walked over to my room from my brothers'. I could hardly see the floor beneath my feet as I slid over to my room next door. I guess you couldn't qualify the floods of tears in my eyes as crying, seeing as how they stopped falling, but they remained on the cusp of my eye lids. Just waiting for me to blink so they could fall.

He's gone. I thought as I looked in the direction of my small and humble bed, looking into space absently.

I heard the door close behind me, without my doing so, and finally I blinked.

I heard soft, quiet footsteps behind me and I closed my eyes and sighed.

"Don't Damon-"

He's gonna hate me, I uncomfortably reminded myself as I sat in the car with Dean Crystal and his friend, whose name was apparently John Fell.

"Are you alright?" Dean Crystal asked with a smile that seemed as if he were recuperating from a laugh – I had been so distracted I didn't realize someone had told a joke.

"Oh, I'm fine. I just have a small headache, but it's going away now." I quickly smiled shrugging away the thought.

"Are you sure?" Dean Crystal's friend looked at me with a small smile, as if he were really concerned with my well-being, although I knew his real concern with my health was for alterior reasons as he spoke to my breasts rather than my face.

"Yes, perfectly fine." I shrugged it off. "So tell me Sergeant Major, was it?" I giggled, pretending the ranking was too difficult for my silly little head to even pronounce.

"It was, but please call me Maxwell."

"Maxwell then, how does one achieve all of those decorations?" I grinned as I pet all the decorations on his shoulder and ridiculously flirted with the Mayor of the city.

I felt a little uncomfortable flirting with this older gentleman, because in my heart I felt like I was betraying Damon.

But in all honesty, there was nothing I could do. I had to get out of my small and dirt poor town. I didn't care if I had to flirt, sleep with, or kill someone – but I would overcome poverty one way or the other.

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