A/N: Thank you so much for all the beautiful reviews! :)

Beta: arabian (aka arabean) – Thank you SO MUCH! :]

Disclaimer: The Vampire Diaries belongs to L.J. Smith & CW.

Chapter 4

Elena's eyes fluttered open just in time to see Damon walk out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his hips. He stopped near the desk and flipped one of the books open, his eyes skimming across one of many paragraphs they had underlined yesterday.

Elena snuggled her cheek deeper into the pillow and watched him in silence, her eyes following drops of water rolling down his skin. She liked those quiet moments. She liked catching those minuscule moments that were no longer in the past, not quite in the present, not yet in the future. The moments before another day would begin, the glimpses of how she imagined the perfect eternity to be like – looking at someone who was making her happy, who was looking at her as if she could do no wrong.

It was only when Damon put the book down and turned around that he noticed her gaze, a smirk flitting across his face.

"Good morning, Elena. See anything you like?"

"Pretty much everything. Except the towel," Elena said with a twinkle in her eyes that made Damon smile even more. Then almost simultaneously their smiles became pensive, silent recollection of yesterday's news concerning Bonnie passing between them. "Why are you up so early?" Elena asked, slipping out of the bed and tiptoeing toward him, his black shirt barely covering her thighs.

Damon sneaked his arm around her. He pressed a kiss to her forehead, the tip of her nose, her lips. "I was thinking I could try being a bigger person and prepare a breakfast for everyone," he said, propping her up onto the desk.

Elena widened her eyes at him. "That's a brilliant idea," she said, locking her arms around his neck.

"Considering our stellar track record in reconciliatory meals... I'm not so sure about that." Damon said, sifting her hair through his fingers. "But I knew you'd like it."

Elena smiled and looked at him, absently catching unruly strands of his wet hair between her thumb and forefinger and twirling it playfully in her hand.

"I'll go take a shower," she said a little breathlessly, suddenly very aware of his hands moving to rest on her hips.

Damon's eyebrows furrowed in thought. "I just realized..." he started seriously. "I don't think I rinsed my hair well enough."

Elena bit her lip and shook her head. "I can tell that you didn't," she said sounding concerned, as if they were truly discussing something worrisome. "There is shampoo all over it."

"It is?" He asked, slowly unbuttoning his shirt that she was wearing.

She nodded matter-of-factly, reaching out and loosening his towel so it fell to the floor.

xxxdelenaxxx

"Romeo and Juliet's not awake yet?"

Jeremy looked over his shoulder at Stefan who walked into the kitchen, a flicker of a sarcastic smile passing across his face.

He made his way over to the fridge and pulled a blood bag out of it. "We listened to that audiobook on our way here. Fun story. Very..." He leaned against the counter and took a sip from the blood bag, "inspiring."

"Are you going to stay here?" Jeremy asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Are you throwing me out of my own house?" Stefan asked, tilting his head to the side.

"I'm not doing anything," Jeremy replied calmly, slightly wrinkling his forehead. "I'm just asking. Really. What's your plan, Stefan?"

Stefan' lips stretched into a brief smile. "I contemplated suicide," he said somewhat wistfully. "But fate and I seem to have a difference of opinion on the subject, so I think I'll focus on the pursuit of happily ever after with my one true love instead," he said giving Jeremy a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "What do you think?"

"The ever after part may be a little difficult if that one true love is Katherine Pierce," Jeremy observed pointedly, holding Stefan's gaze.

Stefan smiled. "Good point," he said, taking another sip of blood. "A very good point indeed."

Jeremy waited for him to say something more but he didn't. "So what's the deal with you and Katherine? I thought you hated her."

"Who says I don't?" Stefan asked with a shrug.

Jeremy knitted his eyebrows in slight confusion. "So you brought her here just to annoy us?"

"Us," Stefan echoed the word, pronouncing it with exaggerated fondness. "How nice. Aren't you a cozy little family? You, Damon and Elena."

"We're doing alright," Jeremy said, suddenly feeling defensive. "It wasn't anyone's intention to make you feel left out," he added after a pause.

Stefan laughed and Jeremy blinked, slightly caught off guard by his reaction and also finding the tone of the laughter rather chilling.

"Someone woke up in a good mood," Damon said, strolling into the kitchen, looking between Jeremy and Stefan.

"Ah. Dear Brutus." Stefan raised the blood bag in a salutatory gesture. "The man who loved Rome more," he took one last swig and threw the drained blood bag into the sink, the remnants of blood splashing messily all over it. "You don't seem to be in a bad mood yourself, if sounds of morning shower sex are any indication," he added on his way out of the kitchen, causing Damon to almost drop the blood bags he had just taken out of the fridge.

His appetite effectively ruined, Jeremy put down his cereal.

Damon looked after Stefan with a grimace on his face. "What is he doing?" He muttered under his breath.

"He's been reading lots of Shakespeare, that's for sure," Jeremy said, giving up on his breakfast and putting the bowl into the dishwasher.

A doorbell caused Jeremy's mood to deteriorate even more.

"If that's Bonnie's parents-" he started, but Damon silenced him with a wave of his hand and went to open the door.

xxxdelenaxxx

Centuries of practice made it possible for Katherine to retain a steady heartbeat at all times, but once she was alone in the bathroom she allowed herself to draw sharp intakes of breath, the running water muffling her stifled groans as she was scouring her body with soap and hot water.

Had she been a vampire he would've been in shreds by now and she would've been far away from here. It was difficult to resign from the revenge part, but she could at least make the other part work. After all, she was a master of escape plans and being human, while making everything harder, didn't make anything impossible. She had a chance to escape unscathed yet and she would be damned if after five hundred years of experience in running she would let herself be caught and play a pawn in someone else's game.

Lost in thought, she didn't hear the door open nor was she paying attention to the noises she was unconsciously making, because the sudden sight of Elena made her jump and hit the glass wall behind her.

"What the hell are you doing?" Katherine asked in a hoarse voice, glaring at Elena.

"I'm sorry," Elena glanced around uncertainly, feeling completely ridiculous for checking up on someone who had quite recently and quite literally tried to rip her heart out of her chest with her bare hands, but somehow she couldn't help herself. "I just... I heard someone- I heard you- I heard crying..." She shifted her eyes back to Katherine who stared back at her in anger. "Are you OK?"

Katherine blinked. "What?"

"Are you OK?" Elena repeated tentatively, her eyes flickering away from Katherine's face for a second before returning to look at her with such a sincerely concerned expression on her face that Katherine felt like smashing the shower head right into it.

"What-" Katherine started again, fully intending to at least shove Elena out of the bathroom, but then she noticed what Elena had been looking at a moment ago and her mouth twitched.

The water and the blood were swirling into the drain and when Katherine quickly looked herself over she noticed the self-inflicted bloody marks that must have been caused by the brush with which she had been washing her body in thoughtless abandon. She dropped the brush.

"Maybe-"

"Leave me alone!" Katherine cried out, picking up the brush and throwing it at Elena who gave her an exasperated look.

"Listen," Elena said, straightening up in determination, trying to remain as calm as possible and speaking in a controlled, low voice. "I know that after being on the run and on your own for five hundred years it must be hard to find it in yourself to... connect with people and learn how to trust anyone... again. I get it. But-"

"You get it?" Katherine interrupted her, stepping out of the shower, hastily grabbing a towel and wrapping it around herself. "You get what?" She whispered with menacing irony, taking a step after a step toward Elena. "You have no idea what I went through. You don't know anything. Everything you think you know is just words, with imagined meaning. I don't have to imagine anything. I've been to every hell you could think of." She stopped in front of Elena, glaring at her.

But Elena's gaze didn't mirror her anger. "I know," she said quietly and Katherine flinched. "I'm not saying that I know how you feel or what you feel. I'm just saying that whatever you feel, it doesn't need to stay that way. Everyone deserves a second chance. Sometimes even a... tenth chance. So if you need... help or if you need to talk-" Elena trailed off interrupted by Katherine's sneer.

"You know what I think?" Katherine said, tilting her head to the side. "I think it may really work between you and Damon." Elena wrinkled her forehead, not sure where that was going, but before she had the time to start hoping it was going anywhere nice, Katherine grabbed her blouse and shoved her out of the bathroom. "Because you're just as stupid and irritating as he was in 1864," she added, slamming the door shut.

Elena sighed and squinted at the door in exasperation before heading out of Stefan's room – only to run into him in the hallway.

"Hey."

Elena gave him a brief smile. "I was just..." She pointed behind her but then shook her head with a small sigh. "I don't even know what I was doing," she said more to herself than to him. "Never mind. How are you?" She asked in the most casual voice she could muster.

"I should probably apologize," Stefan said, knitting his eyebrows, his tone oddly reminding Elena of the times when Stefan was joking rather than apologizing, but then he looked at her as if he really meant what he was saying, so the association seemed unjustified.

Elena shrugged a little. "For what?"

"The mess... downstairs?" Stefan replied, and Elena looked away with a weak smile. "And," he continued when she shifted her eyes back to him, "for bringing Katherine here. I just... I was... upset and angry and... I just thought it'd be easier, but I can't seem to be able to get over what happened between us. I think we should talk about it."

Elena's mouth twitched and a concerned expression was replaced by a look of slightly uncomfortable distress. "I think we've exhausted the subject," she said tentatively. "I don't think talking about it... again is going to help. Will you be coming downstairs for breakfast?" She asked, cutting off his attempt at replying to her previous statement.

A glint of dark sarcasm flashed in his eyes. "You eat breakfast?"

Elena's eyebrows knitted a little. "Yes, we do," she said slowly with a hint of restrained annoyance at his tone, but then something occurred to her and her expression changed into a slightly suspicious and a very concerned one. "What have you been doing all summer, Stefan? Tell me you didn't ruin what you'd managed to-"

"No, I didn't go back to being a ripper just because you started sleeping with my brother, if that's what you're asking," Stefan said, a brief grimace of relief that passed through Elena's face quickly turning into a hurt frown at his choice of words.

She thrust up her chin. "Well, I'm glad that it's not the fact that I'min love with Damon that's responsible for you acting like a jerk," she enunciated in a low, intense tone. Her day was clearly and steadily getting worse.

She turned on her heels and went down the stairs where she was immediately greeted by an unexpected guest.

"Elena!" Caroline exclaimed as soon as she saw her and threw herself into Elena's arms in a blur. "I missed you so much!"

Elena hugged her back. "I missed you too," she mumbled as loudly as it was possible while not being able to breathe.

"How have you been?" Caroline asked with a grin, abruptly drawing back and keeping Elena in a firm grasp at arm's length.

"She's been great," Damon replied with a smile.

"I didn't come to talk to you," Caroline said, giving Damon a habitual glare over her shoulder.

"I hope not," Damon said, glancing at Elena. "I happen to have a very jealous wife," he added, walking out of the room.

Caroline wrinkled her nose in confusion. "What?"

"Nothing," Elena said, suppressing a smile and squeezing her eyes shut for a second. "Caroline, sit down. I need to... tell you something."

Caroline slumped down onto a couch. "Good news or bad news?" She asked, squinting. "Because I have my own bad news to share," she added with a sigh, her beaming expression turning grim.

"What happened?" Elena asked, both impatient to tell Caroline about Bonnie and abstractly grateful for the postponement.

"Tyler broke up with me," Caroline said with resignation rather than regret, her eyes dimmed with sadness.

"I'm sorry," Elena said with a small grimace. "What happened?" She reached out for Caroline's hand and squeezed it. "It didn't have anything to do with those e-mails, did it?" She asked tentatively.

Caroline's head shot up. "What e-mails?"

Elena drew a breath. "Jeremy said... that you are... pen pals with Klaus now?" She asked cautiously, trying to make it sound as light and humorous as possible. "Exchanging e-mails with him?" She added seeing a befuddled expression on Caroline's face.

"What?" Caroline repeated, springing to her feet. "I'm not exchanging anything with him! He keeps sending me messages but I never write back!"

"OK, Caroline, I'm sorry," Elena grabbed her hands and made her sit down again. "I must have... misunderstood something," she said, already inwardly rehearsing the most authoritative way of saying 'you're grounded' to her brother. Unless she had really misunderstood him. Which she had no doubt she hadn't. "Forget about it. Tell me what happened with Tyler."

"I really would rather not talk about it right now," Caroline said reluctantly. "I just spent a week thinking only about that and I need a break." Elena gave her a small, reassuring smile and nodded. "Besides," Caroline continued, determined to resume a lighter tone. "It's better to wait until Bonnie comes back, because I really don't want to repeat the same story twice," she said with a weak chuckle.

Elena's face became at least one shade paler and she glanced at Damon who had just come back into the room. He sat on the arm of the couch beside her.

Caroline's eyes shifted between them. "I'm really not enjoying the looks on your faces right now," she said with a hint of anxiety in her voice.

"Do you want to hear the bad part or the not so good part first?" Damon asked, squinting.

"Well, while the absence of the good part is not lost on me I think I'll go with the not so good part first," Caroline said with a sour half-smile.

"Caroline-" Elena started but trailed off at the sudden sound of voices and a door being noisily slammed shut upstairs.

"Who else is here?" Caroline asked, looking toward the stairs.

"That would be... Stefan and Katherine," Elena said with a sigh.

"Stefan and who?" Caroline echoed in an outraged voice, the friend emergency alert rapidly changing her mood. She rose to her feet. "I need to talk to him."

"Caroline, wait. That's not-"

Katherine's laughter echoed in the house and Caroline huffed in disbelieving annoyance. "I will be back," she said and with that headed up the stairs.

xxxdelenaxxx

"Do you know where they found him?" Meredith questioned again, slowly putting the pieces together in her head. She couldn't recall all the details but she vaguely remembered hearing the name and not in the most mind-soothing context.

"They didn't find him. He came here all by himself," the doctor said with a shrug. "All bloody and in tattered clothes, but after the examination it turned out he didn't have any serious injuries except for a twisted ankle. He said that all he remembers is that he left his office at the university late one night. He doesn't remember if he had an accident or whether someone attacked him."

They stopped next to one of the rooms and Meredith looked through the glass window at the newly admitted dark-haired patient.

"I have a surgery coming up," the doctor said, glancing at his watch. "I'll see you later." He gave Meredith a smile and walked away.

When Meredith shifted her attention back to the hospital room's window, her eyes directly met Professor Atticus Shane's intent gaze.