AN(1): Okay, I can't express how sorry I am. If you want me to, you can PM me to tell me to beg for your forgiveness and I'll gladly oblige, okay? But you gotta know that this is gonna be a hell of a year. My future depends on the grades I get this year, so I'm stressed, blocked and uninspired. So please, be understanding, I would gladly drop high school to write the most awesome fanfictions for you, but unfortunately, I can't.

Here's the chapter, enjoy it, and please, review! :)

Chapter 4: Bleed

We all live,

We all die.

That does not,

Begin to justify you.

Evanescence – Bleed

The sound of a TV downstairs woke me up. It was already nighttime, I could feel it, I felt it was safe to go outside to… what the hell was I supposed to do now?

There were a couple of bags on a bedside table, which weren't there this morning. I stepped closer to them to examine them. There were some clothes inside; they all were mi size, and a note:

It's for you.

D.

Wow! This man wasn't too much talkative, was he?

I looked around me and found out that the bedroom I was in had a bathroom. This morning I didn't take too much time to explore the room, because as the sun came out onto the horizon, tiredness took me over to the point I think I fainted carelessly on the bed. There also was a basic cleaning kit, which I gladly used, having a long shower to wash any blood remains away from my skin. The memory of how that blood had gotten there, made my fangs elongate and my vision turn red because of the thirst, but a growing part of me was sickened by what I had done. I almost killed my aunt! I almost choked my own father! What the hell was wrong with me?

I turned the water down and stepped out of the shower before the pain in my chest took over me completely and lost control.

I looked at myself in the mirror. Tears stained my face and I'll never forget the horror I saw in it. Guilt was eating me alive, the self-loathing was so strong and intense I could barely stand watching my own reflection. In a sudden rage attack, I punched the mirror; shattering it into a thousand of tiny sharp little pieces. I opened my fist to check the damage: my hand was full of little pieces of glass sticking into my muscles, my nerves, my tendons, and even some of my bones. It didn't hurt too much though, and this was actually insignificant compared to the pain I felt when my father stabbed me.

The memory of my father at that moment came to my mind, hurting me in a deeper and more intense way than the actual knife. The cuts on my hand were then nothing for me. The pain I felt within my chest when I realized my own father wanted to kill me was way a hundred times worse than any cut would ever be. Again, tears filled my eyes, but these tears weren't guilt tears, but regret, pain and loss tears. Because I had lost my family. I had lost them all when I decided to go back to the house that used to be my home.

I didn't realize Damon had come to the bedroom until he took my cut hand to examine it. I held back a scream of surprise, because I hadn't heard him coming in. I was so blinded by the pain and the sorrow I hadn't paid attention to what happened around me.

Damon watched my face carefully, lifting my chin to see it, I wasn't crying anymore, but I was breathing sharply and my thoughts were incoherent and confusing, mainly occupied by my family's faces and their voices when they were at the autopsy room. Another wave of sobs took over me.

He tensed up immediately. It seemed he didn't know how to deal with a crying girl; he probably killed them or ripped their throats off to shut them up. I wondered if he was thinking of doing that to me. However, he decided to ignore my tears and focus on matters that were more important:

"Come with me. Let's remove those glasses from your hand so you can heal." His voice, unlikely last night, was kind instead of cold. I have to say I liked the change, to be honest. Damon let me silently through the house to the kitchen. It was richly decorated, but I was too numb to notice it further. Damon pointed a chair for me to sit down and let go of my hand to go and get a first aid kit, he took a couple of bandages and cottons and sat in front of me to begin to remove the little pieces of glass that had sank in my hand.

For a minute or two, we were in a calm silence, only interrupted by the clicking sound of the glasses hitting a bowl nearby that Damon had brought. Damon was the first to talk:

"At the beginning, it's normal that you feel a thousand different emotions within seconds, and every emotion will be more intense than the last one. Everything is heightened, not just your senses; smell, taste, touch, sight; but also all your feelings; pain, joy, sorrow, guilt, lust… Everything is magnified, everything is confusing, every emotion is terribly different, but, at the same time; similar. Everything will lead you to the same thing: thirst. It's like… being on your period, but more intense." He finished winking at me, I guess to make me feel better. And I guess it worked because I smiled briefly and said:

"And here I was thinking that I wouldn't have that problem being dead." He shot me a faint smile and kept on working silently.

Meanwhile, the TV at the other room, the one that woke me up, was still on. At that moment, the news was being broadcasted. One particularly took my attention:

"Elena Gilbert's body's disappearance from the Mystic Falls Hospital's morgue is still keeping the police in a state of anxiety. Sheriff Forbes has talked to this channel and said that it's still being investigated how and when the body could have gone missing." Said Logan Fell's voice.

"There are still no suspects." Said Liz Forbes' voice. "The people responsible of the body's disappearance could be the men found dead at the alley, but no one remembers seeing them here before, so the investigation could still lead us anywhere."

I chuckled. Damon looked at me, curious.

"Those men have nothing to do with my 'body's disappearance'." I said drily, pointing the room where the TV sound was coming from.

"Then someone put them there so the police could have something to investigate?" Damon asked. It looked like it was a rather important matter for him, because he seemed very interested.

"No. Well, I mean, yes. I put them there, given that I killed and left them in that alley."

For a moment, Damon looked at me astonished. After that, his expression changed to an amused one.

"Looks like someone had a good feast on her first night as undead."

I was about to reply rudely and sharply to him, when I heard my dad's voice on the TV. In a moment, I was not at the kitchen anymore, but at a living room watching the flat TV screen, which showed my parents, whose appearance was heartbreaking. Dad was wearing a swan collar pullover, I was it was in order to hide the bruises my fingers had left there when I grabbed his neck. My mom looked lost in her thoughts, her eyes empty and void.

"We think that whoever people responsible of our daughter's body's disappearance has to pay for it." My dad was saying. "We do know that this is a human mistake and that's why no compliant will be filed against the Hospital, but we do want our Elena's… body to be found as soon as possible to be able to bury her properly and go on with our lives as normally as possible. We just want to bury our Elena for her to rest in peace."

Why the hell was my dad on TV if he knew that my body hadn't gone missing, and that I wasn't dead?

"Why don't they clarify it? Why don't they say that this is a misunderstanding? Why don't they say that I'm still alive?"

"Because, for them, you are not." Said Damon next to me. I turned around to look at him. "The Gilberts are in the Founders Council and it seems that the Founders Council knows about our existence. They may be protecting you from the Council, or the Council already knows about you and it's going to hunt you down. Anyways, you should get the hell away from here."

"Go away? From Mystic Falls? How could I leave? This is my home."

"Yeah, with these adorable neighbors who want to see you dead, actually dead." He said sarcastically. "Believe me, Elena, when all the ones you knew want to see you dead, you're not home. And now," he said turning the TV off, "let's finish removing that piece of glass from your cheeks, shall we?"

"There isn't a piece of glass on…" I started saying, but stopped when I touched my cheek and found a piece of glass that, when I touched it, dug further within my flesh and cut my finger."

"Excuse me, you said?" He asked teasingly arching an eyebrow.

"Shut up."

We went back to the kitchen and I sat on the chair I was on before, while Damon resumed his task of removing mirror fragments from my body. He was almost done with my hand and the skin there was regenerating and going back to be as flawless as usual. When Damon got a little closer to me to remove the piece of glass from my cheek, I made the most of the fact that he was really close to me to watch him more intently.

The first thing that caught my attention was that pair of blue eyes of his that could take your breath away with a simple glance. They were the shiniest, clearest and most beautiful eyes I'd ever seen. When you looked at them, they absorbed you. I could stare at those eyes eternally and never get tired of them. His hair was black, smooth and straight. It was slightly messed, but not too much. God, I did want to run my hands through that hair to check if it was as soft as it looked like…

"See something you like?" Damon's voice interrupted my school girl thoughts. I smirked at him.

"Very." He smirked back at me. "So, what are we doing today?"

"'We'?" He said arching an eyebrow. I rolled my eyes.

"Seriously, I thought we had passed that last night. I'm not gonna entertain you much if we don't do something together." I added grinning.

He narrowed his eyes, but said nothing about it.

"Okay then. Given that you already had a very good dinner yesterday, you won't need to feed today, so let's go and have some fun." He said winking at me.


"Seriously, Damon, what are we doing here?" I asked glancing at the bar we were in.

In the first place, when we got out of the old Salvatore boarding house, we went to the woods surrounding it. There, Damon showed me how fast and strong vampires can be. He did a couple of showings which I'm pretty sure he really enjoyed to leave me speechless: he suddenly disappeared from my sight and was right behind me, a second after that, he was on a tree branch twice his height, which he easily ripped off, and right after that he was in front of me again, as if none of that had happened.

Once he had showed me the physical qualities of vampires, which I already had figured out from my experience, he told me he'd show me something I would love. That's why, seemingly, we were here, at a crowded Denver college bar.

"Given that today you're surely not feeling too thirsty, let's have some fun with these amusing, drunk college students." He said with a macabre smirk on his lips which worried and excited me at the same time.

"And what's exactly the idea of 'having fun' for a vampire?" I asked in a whisper.

"You see, princess, one of the first things you must learn about your new species is that we're predators, we're at the highest position on any food chain. We enjoy the hunt, the chase, fucking and killing, and not necessarily in that order." I shuddered. "But, since nowadays we can't enjoy a good killing without people realizing within a minute, we have the lightest substitute: 'snatch-eat-erase'."

"'Erase'? What do you mean 'erase'?" I asked confused.

He looked at me, a dangerous glint in his eyes. "That, my dear Elena, is what I'm teaching you tonight." He said, offering me his hand.

I, dying of curiosity, took his hand and let Damon lead me to the bar. There, he ordered two bourbons and turned around to examine the crowd of intoxicated students. Once the waiter had served us our drinks, he grabbed his, downed it and told me:

"When I make you a sign, I want you to follow me to the back of the bar."

"Where are you going?" I asked. I didn't want him to leave me alone.

"To grab a snack."

Without saying anything else, he strode towards a girl who was sitting alone at one of the booths to talk to her. She was blonde, blue eyed, and beautiful. She seemed to be waiting for someone until Damon began chatting with her. I could only see Damon's back and couldn't hear them because of the loud crowd around us, but she looked delighted by whatever Damon was saying to her. It certainly seemed that Damon could be quite a charmer when he wanted to, not just menacing and dangerous.

I stopped with my divagations when the girl stood up and took Damon's hand, who looked at me and made me sign to follow them. I took a deep breath and downed my bourbon glass. The burning feeling that ran through my throat while the alcohol made its way down to my stomach gave me the courage I needed to follow them.

I tracked them in a moment. Damon had the girl trapped against the wall, but she didn't seem to be afraid, she must have been thinking they were going to hook up or something like that. But as I stepped closer to them, I realized that the girl's face showed no emotion, it was void. For a moment, it reminded me of the boy who killed his partner and offered me their blood. 'The guy I killed', said the annoying voice of my conscience. I decided to ignore it and got closer to Damon and the girl.

"Oh, Elena, I see you finally decided to join us." Said Damon cheerfully.

"Why's her face like that?" I whispered.

"Because I've compelled her. That's your lesson today, Elena: compulsion."

"'Compulsion'?"

"Would you mind to stop repeating everything I say? It's annoying. Yes, Elena, compulsion. Our dear friend, Meg… Mag… whatever, is right now under my control. She'll do anything I'll ask her to, no questions. What if I tell her to go in that bar right now and make a striptease? She'll do it. What if I tell her to propose herself to her father? She'll do it. What if I tell her to jump off a bridge? She'll do it! Right, dear?" Damon asked her without even looking at her.

"Yes." She said with a voice as emotionless as her eyes.

"Very well. 'And what has this to do with our «snatch-eat-erase» feeding method?' You'll be wondering. And I'll answer you that it's not just that I can control Mag's body's actions, but also her memories. I can make her remember she has been her whole life in Paris and remember every second of it even if she never set a foot on Europe. I can make her forget all the ones she loves. I can even make forget who she is."

Suddenly, Damon's face changed: his beautiful blue eyes were red now, an intricate pattern of dark veins appearing underneath his eyes, and his fangs had elongated. Now vampire Damon Salvatore was in front of me. The girl, Meg, showed no sign of fear. Her face was still as emotionless as before. Little by little, Damon inched his mouth closer to Meg's neck and bit it. Instantly, the sweet scent of Meg's blood invaded my nostrils. I tried to get closer to her, but Damon prevented me to.

"Ah. Ah. Ah. Careful, Miss Gilbert. Remember: it's 'snatch-eat-erase', not 'snatch-eat-massacre', okay?"

I nodded my head, took a deep breath and inched my lips closer to the bleeding wound that Damon had opened on Meg's neck. As soon as the blood flooded inside my mouth, I moaned. It was delicious. Not as sweet as the first time I tasted blood, but yet, it was exquisite.

Next to me, Damon was trying to move me away from her saying:

"Elena, 'snatch-eat-erase'." His voice was firm but kind. Reluctantly, I got away from Meg. "Good." Damon whispered. "Now it's when the 'erase' part comes up. Look into her eyes and tell her to forget everything that has happened and to leave. Her pupils will dilate and she'll have forgotten everything that has happened."

I looked into Meg's eyes. Her blue eyes were dark, contrary to Damon's, they almost were grey. I focused on what I wanted, and ordered to her very slowly:

"Meg, you forget everything that happened here and go to your place, okay?"

"Okay." She said was her pupils dilated and contracted again. I stepped away from her, and she left.

I turned around to face Damon.

"When a vampire… compels a human, do they always have that… empty face?"

"Yeah." He said. "Why do you ask?"

"Those men… the ones at the alley next to the hospital, the ones I killed. The one who offered me his blood had exactly the same expression on his face as Meg's. And when he cut his wrist for me to drink, he didn't even flinch, he didn't seem to be afraid that I'd killed him. I… I think he was compelled."

Damon's face before that revelation told me those weren't good news.

AN(2): What do you think? Tell me in your review! For spoilers, follow me on Twitter ( Rebeku95) or check sometimes the hashtag #ATILFFic. Love you! xoxo