STAND BY ME: ACT II

...Previously on the Vampire Diaries

Stefan wondered how it came to this… Which parts of it were fate, which were inevitable and which choices could have been made differently. Stefan also wondered if this was how it was always going to be; himself, his brother and a girl they loved equally, caught into an inescapable triangle of love, hurt and loyalty.

The younger Salvatore braced himself for what was to come. Elena's humanity was who Elena was… Who would she be now that she had lost that? He admired his brother for sacrificing the love he shared with her so that Elena could survive this… But Stefan feared the price they would all pay… Would she be like Katherine? Would they see a side to Elena that they never knew? Ripper? Slut? Insensitive Bitch? Stefan felt weak at the knees just thinking of how bad it could get but hoped against hope that he and his brother could save Elena and fix her.

Elena and Damon got into the Camaro, destination the Boarding House, Stefan in the back seat with his eyes still lost looking as the flames ate up the house behind them.

Damon looked stoically ahead in the same direction that Elena had fixed her uncaring gaze - he would always do what she needed of him – and in that moment Stefan realized the depth of his brother's devotion. Damon always placed Elena's needs first and maybe that is why he would be the one to save her… and the one to keep her... in the end. The knowledge hurt Stefan deep inside, but the love he felt for his brother and Elena was greater and he made a silent pledge to devote his time to helping both of them.

Stefan only hoped that the Elena he had loved, that he loved still, hadn't died in the pyre they just left behind. Maybe she would never be human again now that the cure was forever lost… But Stefan had to hope that she would be Elena again… Losing her forever would be too much…simply too much to bear.

Damon's thoughts echoed his brother's. He had done what he had to in order to save Elena from her own undoing. He had seem vampires succumb like she had, he had seen them reach into their own chest and rip their hearts out in their despair. Damon couldn't let Elena sink that far… even if he had to sacrifice their love for it… And when the time was right he would ask her to turn the switch back on and hopefully…Hopefully, the Elena he loved and that loved him in return would still be there…

Damon held on to that belief and braced himself for what was to come. The girl he loved was a shell of who she was and had lost her moral compass, his baby brother looked just as much on the edge of a break down. Sabrina had lost touch with reality, Caroline was near hysterics, he had no idea what Klaus, Rebecca and Sillas were up to. Come tomorrow everyone would know that Jeremy was dead and he had to erase the phone call from April's memory. For the tenth million time Damon wished Alaric was here to help him stir the Scooby gang into safety… Because truth be told, Damon felt weary and old beyond his years…

Truth be told, it was simply too much even for him…

Elena, Damon and Stefan drove to the boarding house under a pregnant silence. Each of them caught in their own thoughts, worries and predictions of what was to come. All three vampires occupied the same car but they were as disconnected from each other as if they were on separate planets.

Elena looked on into the night, her mind free from the chains of grief, loss and worry that had kept her tortured and bound since her parents had gone off the wicked Wickery Bridge. She felt like it was almost like going back to the self centered teenager she had once been, the wild girl that could match Caroline on her worse days and give her a run for her money. The key difference however, was that this time there were no nagging recriminations in Elena's head, no one to be accountable to, not even herself ; a liberating feeling bloomed in her dead chest.

Had Stefan and Damon been looking Elena's way, they would have seen the mischievous smile coloring her features as she realized all the fun she was about to have. After all, it was like getting a "no judgement" free pass because, let's face it, whatever she did they would all blame it on the switch or the grief or the fangs.

Oh… It was too much of a good opportunity to miss… To let loose, to go wild, to push all boundaries… To be reckless, to be wild, to revel... Beyond the promise of freedom and fun lay the fact that Elena not only couldn't care less, but that she didn't want to care anyway. She could feel the "Elena that was" caged somewhere inside of her. The whinny, grief stricken, heart governed Elena was still there but pushed to a dark corner. She remembered someone, somewhere saying that the switch was a fallacy and she could understand what they meant now. It wasn't a complete switch off. No, you could distance yourself from your feelings, that much was true. You could put them in a box inside a box inside a box and let them rattle in a dark corner of your mind but that was the extent of it. The truth was that you were still aware of them but you could choose not to be a puppet at their hands and in that very fact lay a vampire's freedom.

Elena was more than ready to cut her strings loose… She needed a time out from her own judgmental subconscious, from having an internal battle of which Salvatore to choose, from martyring herself for others, from being fixed by her ex-boyfriend, from being kept at arm's length from Damon for her own good. Fuck being good… Elena wanted. NO, scratch that. Elena needed to embrace the bad and go all the way down the rabbit hole whilst doing it.

Elena bit her smiling lips with glee. She looked at her own dark reflection in the car window pane and smiled more broadly.

"Bring it on" - she told herself- "Bring it on."


AN: Here it is, for better or for worse, here it is. R & R Please. I have the next chapter sketched in my head and am hoping to write and publish it before Thursday if I get good feedback from this new chapter. xoxo