"Another, please," Elena mumbled to the bartender, this was her third round of scotch, a drink she had never drank in her life but she figured depressed, lonely business men must drink it for a reason. The room has started to blur and voices had become muffled, just as she'd hoped.

"Are you sure? You don't look like a scotch kind of girl," the concerned bartender replied, raising an eyebrow at the petite brown haired girl slumped over the bar. Elena looked up and smiled sarcastically, "I bet I don't look like the kind of girl to have feelings for her boyfriends brother either, sorry, ex-boyfriend, and lets not even bring up the death toll hanging over my head," she snapped back and snatched the next glass of scotch from his hand. The bartender held his hands up and moved on to another customer in an effort not to agitate Elena more.

Elena stayed like this for a while, replaying her entire life over and over in her mind, picking out where exactly it went wrong. Sometimes she'd wish she never met Stefan that day, and that she was still with Matt, a human, going to high school everyday like a normal person would. Coming home to Jeremy and Jenna, having dinner with her family. All of the little things she missed out on now she was a vampire, and most of the people she cared about were dead. Elena considered flicking the humanity switch several times during this self-pity parade, she couldn't decide whether it would make her feel better or feel worse. The freedom of having no feelings, no emotions, not a care in the world, but it would be a world without love and passion, something she had never gone without before.

The later it got, the more the bar began to fill with people like herself, drowning their sorrows in countless glasses of alcoholic beverage, drinking away their sadness. Elena looked around, looked on as people enjoyed long, pointless and yet thoroughly entertaining conversations with their friends and family, laughing, smiling. She found it extraordinary that none of them knew of the creatures living beside them, that none of them had any idea the amount of horror and violence they had been surrounded with. Elena searched the room for someone she knew, someone to distract her from her own torturous mind until a familiar handsome figure strolled through the doorway. Elena groaned and turned back to her drink.

"Elena," Klaus smirked, "what a pleasant surprise," he lifted her glass and sniffed around the rim, "you never struck me as the type of girl who drinks scotch..."

"Well now you all know," she sighed, "what do you want Klaus?" she asked with a frown on her face, snatching the glass back from his hands and downing the last mouthful. She had to squint her eyes to be able to focus on Klaus' sculpted face, and kept her hands firmly on the bar in an attempt to avoid toppling right off of her stool. Klaus stared at her for a moment, his head cocked to one side as he observed this foreign sight, a very drunk Elena.

"I was looking for Damon and planning on drinking away my anger, but I think you will make do," he smiled mischeviously and dragged Elena over to the dancefloor in a flash, just as Moves Like Jagger began playing through the speakers. "You need to stop being so pathetic Elena, you remind me of my sister. Do you realise that you are a vampire and you are sitting in a bar feeling sorry for yourself?" Klaus gripped Elena's waist to support her legs, but she fought back with her hands pushing him away, scrunching her eyes.

"I don't want to dance Klaus!" she snapped. Klaus locked his arm around her, not allowing her to move an inch.

"Just dance," he began to move to the beat of the song, and Elena groaned in defeat, moving with him. More people had began to join them and spin around them, Elena watched their faces light up with happiness as they danced with their friends, and allowed the alcohol in her veins take her to a happy place and suddenly she lifted her arms up and joined in too. Klaus grinned and danced with her as she lost herself in the music and people around her, she smiled wide and her arms closed around Klaus' neck as he pulled her closer to him. She could barely recognise him, or anyone in fact she had drank so much. She had no control over what she was doing, and Klaus was staring intently at her lips as they moved. "Haven't you heard I'm the biggest slut in town?" Elena exclaimed as she laughed, "I don't care anymore!" Klaus' smooth, icy lips closed over the crook in Elena's neck, and the switch was about to flick, before Klaus was forcefully thrown through the doors of Mystic Grill. Before Elena could fall due to her inability to stand, she was carried at vampire speed outside to join him.

Elena was sat on the cold hard floor, resting against the rough bricks of the Grill, and all she could see was a blurred picture of two beautiful men wrestling before her. Damon's hands locked around Klaus' neck, "give me one good reason why I shouldn't snap your neck right now," he hissed through gritted teeth.

"Well, one, I can't die so that would be useless, and two, your girl over their is blind drunk and came on to me first," Klaus replied confidently, rage in his eyes and a tension in his voice.

"She is all head over heels lovey dovey kiss kiss with my brother, you really think I believe that crap?" Damon spat back. Klaus gripped Damon's shoulders and threw him off of him.

"Are you sure about that?" Klaus brushed off his jacket, but before Damon could respond he was already gone. Damon looked around in confusion, frowning intensely, until his attention turned to Elena. He rushed to her side as he noticed she was barely conscious, his mind racing at the thought of what Klaus had done to her.

"Elena?" He asked worriedly, until he caught the smell of his favourite drink on her breath. He laughed to himself, restaining every urge in his body not to kiss her and take her pain away for a few minutes. He picked her up once more. Before she could even acknowledge what was happening, she was already in her bed with Damon looking over her. Her eyes involuntary squinted to focus on his glorious face, while she tried to process what had happened over the last hour.

"Damon?" suddenly, her stomach filled with drunk anger and rage, "I don't want you here Damon! You think you can just come and rescue me after your brother has dumped me so you can jump in and be my shoulder to cry on? You aren't fooling anyone!" she began to cry, Damon stood at the foot of her bed, staring in confusion.

"You and Stefan broke up?" he asked, shocked.

"Don't play stupid Damon!" she snapped back, anger taking over her body, knots twisting in her stomach before she realised the real reason for her rage. "I'm done caring, I'm not being responsible for anyone's pain any more." She groaned as her eyes darkened and her fangs took over her mouth. Damon realised what she needed, but before he could help her she had already charged out of her room and back in to the temptation of the outside.

Elena ran, she ran as fast as her vampire ability would let her, to where she knew she could satisfy her rage. All of her cares had vanished, her mind was consumed with the thought of warm, running, pulsating blood passing between her starving lips. The last time she fed on a human, and the only time, she was haunted and tormented by the guilt, what would become of her now? Maybe Katherine was right, maybe she was like her, maybe even worse.

It was cold and quiet, the air tense and eerie while Elena knelt beside a small building in an alleyway as she waited for a human to fall in to her trap. Seconds felt like minutes, but sure enough Elena's nose caught the scent of a young male, around Jeremy's age, walking out of the building laughing whilst struggling to put a pair of wooly gloves on. Her mouth began to salivate, her eyes locked on to the veins in his neck, pumping hot and alive blood around his body. She waited until he turned to walk cluelessly past the entrance to the alleyway, and struck him from behind, latching on to his neck in a nanosecond, sucking the life out of him. Not a single worry crossed her mind in those blissful seconds, and she fully intended to continue until every last drop was gone. She moaned in to his neck, his body going limp.

She could hear his heart beginning to slow, and her humanity prayed for her to find the strength to stop. To let him live, to hold on to what she had left.

Time began to slow down, when a swift arm dragged the unconscious body away from Elena's grasp. At first, Elena's reaction was to fight, she stood suddenly and looked around, ready to fight for what was hers, blood dripping down her face. Her eyes met with Damon's and his faced was filled with sorrow. He blamed himself for what Elena had become, if only he hadn't interfered, maybe none of this would have happened. But he loved her, he loved her.

Elena collapsed to the ground, snapping back to reality. She wiped the blood away from her face and buried herself in her hands, giving in to the underlying tears that had plagued her all day. Damon forced his bloodied wrist to the human's mouth until he was brought back to consciousness and compelled him to forget. The human strolled away, oblivious to the monster that had just attacked him.

Damon sat by Elena's side for a few minutes, making sure not to touch her. Her sobs broke the long silence, after she replayed her violent attack over again in her mind, realising what she had become. "I'm so sorry," Elena manages between sobs, leaning her head down against Damon's shoulder, giving in to her emotions and allowing her to feel what he feels for her constantly. Love and gratitude.

He wrapped his strong arm around her, and held her together while she cried. His mind drifted to his brother, his brother he would sacrifice everything for, his brother he has always been in the shadow of. When would Damon find his happiness? Elena made him lighter, she made him feel good, like he could do good. As far as he was concerned, his happiness was crying in to his chest right in this moment.

"I make that the 487th time I've saved you," he sighed, smiling before lightly kissing the top of her head.