Stefan looked at the charred mess that was the living room and tried his best to ignore the smell. The living room was damaged, but still there. He couldn't say the same for Jeremy's body. Now he and Caroline just needed to figure out what to do with it.

Caroline came around the corner holding a trash can. "I double checked the house and nothing else seems to be damaged or on fire. I think it's safe to say that we got it all." She glanced down at Jeremy's body and sighed. She looked like she was fighting to stand up, though she never cried. "Oh Jeremy." Then she turned to Stefan "What are we going to do with his body?"

Stefan looked up from the black carpet. "I was going to ask you the same thing. I wish Elena was here."

The house was barely being held together. The fireplace was gone and the wall had been almost completely burned down. Now, a giant hole showed the side yard. The floors were torched, as was all the furniture in the kitchen and living and dining rooms. Elena's journals and Jeremy's sketches were just ashes. The ceiling wasn't falling in, but all of the dry wall would need to be replaced and the entire second floor smelled like smoke. He didn't know where to begin when it came to fixing the place.

Stefan's thoughts drifted toward Elena. The sound of her gasping, desperate sobs was going to fuel his nightmares for months. In all his time in this world, he had never heard anything like that. He didn't know a person could break like that. Through it all, he couldn't help thinking it should be him with Elena, helping her through her grief, not Damon. But in her moment of need, the sire bond forced her to turn to his brother, not him.

Curses he wouldn't let out rattled in his brain. All of this was because of that damn sire bond. Elena left him. The house was burned. Even Jeremy's death, all of it could be traced back to it. Stefan wanted his Elena back. The one who fell in love with him so easily. The one who loved him so deeply that even knowing his darkest secrets hadn't scared her away.

He needed to find the cure. But first, he needed a backup plan in case he couldn't find it. Or in case he didn't get to it first. And right now, the best plan B was getting Elena to turn her humanity back on. Stefan looked once again at Jeremy's body and knew what to do.

"He should be buried with his family. Elena, whenever she comes back, she'll want to be able to visit his grave. He belongs with them."

Caroline seemed spurred into actions at his words, unwilling to sit around and wait. "Okay, you're right. Absolutely. We'll…we'll bury Jeremy with his family, and then we'll fix the house up to look good as new. I've practically lived in this house since I was five. I can make it perfect." Caroline began cleaning and moving things around, happy to have a purpose. "After that, we just need to get Elena and Damon to come back to Mystic Fall's and when she sees the house BAM! humanity switch back on."

It was the best plan they had. Stefan just hoped it would work.


Once Elena was a few blocks away from Damon, she began to look for other things to occupy her time. She figured that Damon wasn't one for exploration, especially since he had been to the city before. He probably wouldn't want to waste time showing her anything either. But the more time she spent in the city, the more she just didn't care anymore for exploring. What was the point? Going to all of those touristy locations would be crowded and there was no way she would be able to eat anyone.

New York was already starting to bore her when she stopped in front of a salon. Maybe New York was boring because she hadn't yet let go of everyone in her new life. Darling Elena still hadn't fully accepted this new life and all of its possibilities. What she needed was change. A physical one to separate New Elena from Old Elena.

"Good morning! What time is your appointment?" The brunette behind the desk was surprisingly perky. Weren't New Yorkers supposed to be rude?

Elena leaned close, trying to look at the schedule book, but the woman covered it up. Okay, have it your way. Elena focused her energy on compelling the woman and felt her pupils constrict, then dilate. "Answer me: Who has the next appointment?"

The woman glanced down at her book and said in her same chipper voice. "Theresa Sagely."

"And what is she having done?"

"A blow-out and color."

Color, huh? Elena thought that sounded like the perfect change to usher in this new era of Elena-ness. "Go tell the stylist that Theresa is here." Man, she could really get used to this compulsion thing.

A few minutes later, Elena was sitting in the stylist's chair debating what she wanted to have done. Should she chop it all off and dye is purple? I wonder if people still get perms. But that would be too close to Katherine. Black would be too much, and she was very attached to the warm brown color.

Suddenly, her thoughts went to Damon in the ally and the girl between them as her blood flowed freely. She remembered the fire.

"Make it red."


A couple of hours later Damon finally spotted Elena in the crowd, making her way to him. The first thing he noticed was the red in her hair. The second thing was the red on her lips. And last, but absolutely not least, was the clothes. The woman was wearing all black with the perfect pair of skin-tight, leather—leggings?—whatever those thin, not-pants were that everyone was wearing these days.

Damon pulled his bottom lip between his teeth as he thought about how slowly those would peel off her thighs, exposing her soft skin. Focus, you moron. He needed to stop thinking about her body, and start thinking about how he was going to keep her out of trouble. He wanted her to enjoy herself, sure, but he also didn't want to listen to a lecture from Stefan when they got home about tight leashes and how he should have gone with her instead of Damon.

"You didn't have dinner without me did you?" Elena looked confused so Damon reached out to slide his thumb along her bottom lip to clean up the blood. It was a gesture that was meant to be sexy, but subtle. Elena clearly didn't think so. When Damon tried to pull his hand back to wipe off the blood, she grabbed his hand. Just like earlier in the alley, her eyes never left his as her lips wrapped around his thumb to suck it clean.

Damon stood transfixed. Elena was going to kill him; he was sure of it. New York would be his death.

Satisfied that his thumb was adequately cleaned, and his other parts were adequately throbbing, she answered. "It wasn't dinner."

Desperate to bring the conversation to any other topic, Damon said, "Well, somebody got a hot new haircut."

Elena smiled and twirled her hair. "It was time for a change."

"So, there are a couple of places that I wanted to show you before we go to dinner. And there are a couple of ground rules we need to go over."

Elena rolled her eyes. She knew what this was, but she still found it annoying. It was only a matter of time before Damon tried to invoke the sire bond to keep her in check. He and Stefan must still believe that the sire bond was tied to Damon's blood instead of her feelings before the change. Now that those feelings were gone, no more sire bond. But she wasn't ready for him to know that yet. She decided to play along.

"Ground rules? Boring." Elena pouted for extra effect.

Damon rested his hands on her shoulders and looked her in the eye. "While we're here, you can't kill anybody. You can play snatch, eat, erase on whoever you want, but you can't kill anybody. If you kill anybody, we can't stay here and that would make me really unhappy." He paused, trying to gauge her reflection to see if it was working, but he honestly couldn't tell. He didn't exactly know how a sire bond worked.

Elena sighed, obviously disappointed, but she seemed otherwise fine. "Okay. You're right, and I don't want to leave either. What did you want to show me?"

Damon took Elena on a small tour of a couple of blocks that surrounded the hotel where they would be staying. The hotel was all that compulsion could offer. The master suite rivaled any bathroom Elena had come across, and she couldn't wait to try it out later. Damon also made sure to point out any nooks and crannies where Elena could easily take someone to feed without being spotted. Elena also made a note of available shopping.

The entire time Damon tried to keep his distance from her. While he knew he wouldn't exactly be taking advantage of Elena, he couldn't help but thinking about how things were left before she turned off her humanity switch. He felt like he was betraying Old Elena somehow. He needed to be the sane, rational, non-impulsive brother right now and that was hard enough when Elena wasn't trying to suck out his soul through his thumb. Though, that didn't stop him from checking out her ass every chance he got.

When they got to Billy's bar, Damon figured now was as good a chance as any to set her free and test out that sire bond. He needed some privacy anyway in order to go through all of Will's files to find Katherine.

"Okay, look, I want to pop in and say hello to my good old friend Will, and you need to go get ready for dinner. So why don't we go our separate ways and meet up with each other at the hotel in a couple hours?"

Elena made sure to keep her face blank, but something was off. She wondered why he was suddenly itching to get away from her. "And what should I plan to wear for dinner?"

Damon's smirk made promises she hoped he would keep. "Think Murder House."


Elena waited a couple of blocks away while she listening to Damon rummaging around in some boxes. What was he doing in there? She wanted to know whatever it was that Damon was doing, but she was worried that because of his age he would hear her coming. Whatever, it was a risk she needed to take. The worst that would happen would be he would lie to her, but she was sure the information wasn't necessary to her plan.

When she got to the foot of the stairs leading to the part where Will lived, she heard Damon answer his phone. Good, she thought, maybe he would be distracted enough that he wouldn't know she was listening.

She heard Damon's voice first. "So Silas is appearing as Professor Shane? Wouldn't be my first choice." Always the vain one.

"Well, it would be if you needed to brainwash Bonnie into committing a massacre." Stefan said.

Damon paused what he was doing. "You need me to come home?" It would be awful timing. And he knew that Elena wouldn't exactly be jumping at the chance to return to Mystic Fall's, but maybe he was wrong to take her away from her friends.

Stefan sighed. He wanted to say yes, but with everything going on, he couldn't handle Elena too. Besides, the house wasn't ready yet. "No, we got it. How's the cure search going?"

Elena suddenly stood up from the banister she was leaning on. She felt something stir inside her, but couldn't identify what it was. Instead she pushed it away and focused her hearing even more. The cure. Damon was here searching for the cure. That's why he brought her here. That's why he was going down memory lane. She didn't think he was lying about wanting to show her a good time, but in true Damon fashion he decided to omit the important parts.

Whatever was said next Elena didn't hear it. Instead she was focusing on her timeline. She had wanted to break Damon slowly. Wear away at his carefully constructed walls until she barely had to ask him to turn off his humanity switch.

But now she didn't have time. Elena was going to get Damon to turn off his humanity. Tonight.


A/N: Thank you all so much for reading! Please share and review if you like it. I promise, the next chapter will live up to the story's rating.