Elena thought, staring at Bonnie. Did she truly want to travel to 1914? She remembered the last time—it was stressful; it was revealing; it brought her to Damon. Of course she wanted to go where Damon was; where she knew he would be. Yet something held her back. Elena should move on, she knew she should. And she would get closer to reaching that goal by not forcing Bonnie to send her through time. What would await her anyway, in 1914 Pittsburgh? Certainly not her Damon; and most likely not the sweet gentleman she had met in 1861. Maybe time travelling wasn't the greatest of choices for Elena and her mending heart. Sighing deeply, she conjured up enough momentum to speak.

"Bonnie," Elena told her friend quietly, "I—I don't want you to send me to 1914." She rubbed her face heavily, blinking. "I don't know what I was expecting. What I was hoping. But you're right; Damon's gone. I should… accept that. There will be other guys, right? Men as kind, as knowledgeable, as funny—as stunning… there has to be." Elena wasn't even necessarily speaking to Bonnie anymore. Her scrambling mind of crazed and hazy emotions was far from healthy. Elena looked to her friend, hoping she would have some sort of practical or concrete words; words that would ease her swirling body.

"Lena, there will be guys like that if you allow there to be. There're seven billion people in this world; you've only touched a small number. I'm not saying that you have to forget Damon, but he's in the past. And that's fine to look back on, but dwelling in it won't help you at all." Bonnie gave a weak smile, reaching out her hand to softly touch Elena's. Bonnie knew her friend's strife. She wished and prayed that she could do something to end and mend it, but there was nothing. All of this was on Elena; she would ultimately make or break herself.

"I just feel like if I move on, head first into the future, I'll forget about Damon entirely; not do his memory justice. I've lost so many people, Bonnie. I just don't know if I can let go of Damon—not yet." Elena shook her head, attempting to keep her cry deep in her throat.

"Don't use your love for Damon as a crutch. That wouldn't be doing him justice. Elena, he'd want you to move on. So would your parents and Stefan. You deserve to be happy." Bonnie supplied her friend with a genuine smile, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. She hated acting like Elena's mother or psychologist, but that's what the young Gilbert needed; whether she wanted it or not.

"Every time I'm finally happy, things and people are taken from me. I'm paranoid. If I stay in the dark though, and in the past, then I'll never get hurt by my future losses. I won't have them."

"I get your logic, but you'll only hurt yourself that way. Don't be the person who thrives in the past. I know it's hard to stay strong after so much has happened, but you need to. If you don't, what will your life be? A vacant mess of memories long gone." Bonnie subtly bit her lip. She knew she was close to crossing a line Elena had firmly placed.

"I know you're right, Bonnie. I won't try and deny that. And I will move on, okay? I promise you. Just—I can't right now." Elena could feel her heart begin to split slightly. Why couldn't Damon just let her be? He left to escape his past… how did he not know that his actions would forever taint hers? How could escape be stronger than love?

"You don't have to promise me," Bonnie lectured softly.

"But I'm going to. I need something solid right now, that won't break. You, and a promise I make to you will fit that. Bonnie, I can't be strong right now. I hate admitting that, but the first step to recovery is admitting, right? Look. No matter how you hated Damon, or how you hate what he's done to me, I still love him. I'll learn to live without him eventually. But for now I need a friend who I can vent to about a boyfriend. Let's be teenagers tonight, okay?" Elena laughed lightly. She needed Bonnie; needed innocence. Why did she have to grow up so fast?

"I like that plan," Bonnie smiled brightly. "We both deserve it." Elena grinned back at her friend, yet the back of her mind was still knocking with the lingering longing for Damon. She could be a teenager. Elena could laugh; could cry; could move on; but that wouldn't change the situation. It wouldn't even reassure her or Damon that everything was okay. Her past was a cruel and serpent-like one. She was just waiting for the day it bit her in the wrist, allowing for its green venomous poison to seep into her bloodstream, turning her clear human veins into a polluted mess of a zombie.


Damon roamed on the vacant road. It was too stereotypical for his liking. Kicking at the dust swirling lowly by his feet, he wanted to disappear. Damon's thoughts were locked, bolted, guarded; even from him. He heard Stefan's voice in his head…

It is a whole new world, he had told Stefan. They had smiled, and life was well. They had been brothers then…

We can explore it together, his baby brother had replied. But now Damon was alone. Forced to discover a world he was beginning to thoroughly tire of.

Grinding his teeth heavily, Damon peered stonily at the road in front of him. He wouldn't cry. He couldn't. Stefan is my past. Stefan is my past. Stefan is my past. He kept reciting the words. He knew they would never be true in his heart, but Damon would at least dupe his mind into thinking that they were. He had to deaden himself; had to not care. Damon had lived without Stefan before, what made this any different?

Everything.

Damon exhaled hotly. He was not bred for this sort of weak sense of sadness and guilt. Damon Salvatore was a vampire; the elite and supernatural human.

The key word was human.

As powerful, strong, or stony as he could be, Damon was still human. In body, and in heart. Why did that have to be true? Could he not just transform into a bat and leave all memories of humanity and history? Apparently Bram Stoker had been mistaken. Damon continued walking blindly, yet his destination was clear: his mother's grave. She had loved him; had cared. Why now, was he damned to being left in the cold?

Elena.

Elena had loved him. After his bolting, Damon was sure she hated him; she had every right. Love, desire, need, and compulsion were all melded into one in his mind. Elena was the victim of all of those feelings. He loved her. Desired her. Needed her. But he was also compulsive with her; including in his rashness to leave because of the stains she bore of Katherine and dear Stefan.

I love you. He prayed she knew that. But he hadn't made contact with god in such a long while, Damon was not even sure the lord could hear his prayer. Would it not be delivered then? He figured so. He didn't even believe there was a god; there couldn't be, with all the evil in his life.

Lifting his weighty cobalt eyes, he saw the hotel in front of him. Rickety, wooden, old. And still in the realm of Mystic Falls. It was not the hotel's location or the hotel itself; but rather what lied behind the hotel:

The graveyard.

The patch of land that held his mother's disintegrated yet holy body. Damon Salvatore hadn't visited that in over two decades—he owed it to his mother and his own sanity to pay his respects.

Walking into the rundown hotel, he walked to the lone desk in the lobby. An old man stood behind the counter. Damon could hear the blood pumping tiredly and thickly in the man's veins, but he resisted what he would have later called 'a mercy kill'.

"Checking in?" The old man's raspy and gravelly voice asked numbly.

"Yeah," Damon replied distantly. Slapping a hundred dollar bill on the table, he tapped the rotting counter. He was too numb to compel the man to let him lodge for free; he was too cautious to use a credit card. Elena might be looking for him; or so he hoped.

"On-one night?" The man stuttered, staring at the bill in awe. Slowly reaching out for the sacred hundred, he lifted his eyes to see Damon nod. "Room 39," he said, giving Damon the key. The vampire took hold of the key ring, leaving the old man to have his love affair with the money. Twirling the key absentmindedly around his right pointer finger, he made his way slowly to his room. Damon still couldn't sleep at night; his night terrors plagued him torturously.

Unlocking the ancient door, he closed it behind him. Damon was so vacant; he could not even call upon his scapegoat anger.


Katherine Pierce wrung her hands together, feeling her long black nails scrape against her cold palms. A horrid fire burned inside of her; Stefan was gone. Klaus was gone. The only man left now, was Damon.

Tasty, tasty Damon. Katherine smirked at the thought of her dark Damon. Licking her lips, she knew he would be her next destination. Pretty, pretty, Damon.

Sweet satisfactory desire accumulated in her cells, and Mystic Falls was finding itself to be a very seductive location. Katherine's heart faltered momentarily when she remembered:

She couldn't freely go into Mystic Falls. And she certainly couldn't go and sweep Damon off of his feet; damn Elena. Always in the way, pestering her way to holy glory. Katherine needed someone on her side to ease the path to Mystic Falls for her.

Mind whirling, and desperation rising, Katherine finally turned to her past for answers. When Klaus had been hunting her down, there had been someone linked to him. Someone he would steal off into the night to see—it certainly was not a love; that was her department. It was not a sibling; Klaus had abandoned them long ago. Had it been a child perhaps? His child? He or she would want to avenge their father's death, right? Of course.

Closing her eyes tightly, Katherine tried to visualize Klaus' secret 'friend'. Katherine had met one girl, whom mildly resembled Klaus: Aefre. Opening her eyes, Katherine smirked. That had to be her. Aefre would help Katherine…. she hoped.


Damon looked out of his window, staring longingly at the moonlit graveyard. A part of him wanted to be buried those six feet under. There, the pain would be gone. Damon would be free from all the obligations of his trying world. He'd see his brother again; tell Stefan he loved him, and that he was proud. Damon could hold his mother again; hear her calming lullabies and soft words. Oh, how Damon wanted death. But he still had to live—for Elena. If only in spirit and memory. But he had to live on, to see out Elena's fate. He owed that to her, to be her dark and silent guardian; one day, she'd understand.

Suddenly, a figure glided through the graveyard. Her pink and gold and glittering body danced delicately. A small smirk grew on Damon's face. Not out of sexual satisfaction, but rather he felt like a boy again, with a motherly figure to guide his weary mind. Leaning his head on the window, his keen eyes caught the grave she was headed to:

His mother's.


Chapter three is all over the place; I'm sorry about that. And I promise future chapters will be longer… I feel bad with these constant short chapters. This chapter took hours to write, but it'll only take you a few seconds to review, so please do so. It's very difficult to write when I don't know what my readers think.

Be good and review!