Because I think you're my real mother probably wasn't the immediate answer Isobel was hoping got, and Elena wasn't in any state to defend herself from being called crazy tonight. Or to explain everything for that matter. Damon wasn't much help deflecting either. For one; he was a little drunk, and two; every time he and Elena seemed to have some time alone—they got interrupted, and that apparently had taken a toll on his patience. He just laid next to Elena with his hands over his face steeping in his own frustration.

"Uhm. . ." Elena was trying to thin of something plausible and clever but all her mind said was: sleep. "I was just curious," was the excuse she decided on going with.

"Right," Isobel was smarter than to believe that. "Try again, honey."

As much as she didn't want to go through this now, there was really no way around it. She'd dug herself into a pretty deep hole.

"Did you have a girl at the Gilbert house, stay with them for a few days and then bailout for good?" Her words drained of all emotions, she wasn't really even looking at Isobel, just blankly staring at the ceiling. This was so not how she pictured this moment.

"I didn't just bail, I----yeah," Isobel admitted, questioning Elena with her eyes.

"I'm Elena Gilbert," she paused, wondering if she should drop the entire bomb right now. There wasn't really any other choice. "I'm your daughter."

Damon shot up straight, staring down at Elena. If this was true—somehow—then he unknowingly almost killed her mother. That's not exactly a major selling point or qualify him for any brownie points. And when did she find out she was adopted? Why hadn't she told him? How?

"Stefan figured it out and told me when you and I got back from Georgia. Jenna just confirmed it," Elena could tell Damon was asking himself all about it in his head. She forgot that she hadn't told him, it wasn't exactly something she bragged about.

Isobel looked like she was going to die, again. The color drained completely from her face and she was as stiff and still as a statue. "I—uh—um—I---have—to—uhm—go," she stumbled through her words then flew out the door.

"Adopted?" Damon questioned.

"I'll tell you all about it when I wake up." She mumbled, rolling over on her side and resting her head on Damon's shoulder. He didn't say anything else, he just pulled her closer into her arms and they both fell asleep.


"Morning," Damon whispered to Elena, kissing the base of her neck as she woke up. It was around noon but he'd been awake for a while, just watching her sleep. Before she changed, he used to occasionally watch her sleep in her room that was around the time he realized she was more than just a puppet or a reincarnation of Katherine to him.

"Mmm, morning," Elena yawned. The light beaming in through the window at the other end of the room was piercing her eyes. She used her hand to shade her eyes a bit, but it wasn't helping much. "Ugh, my head is killing me."

Damon just chuckled to himself and leaned over the side of the bed, opened a little fridge he kept on his floor and took out a little coke bottle filled with blood.

"Here, drink this it'll help I promise," he handed her the bottle.

"What is it?" She asked, taking the bottle a little reluctantly.

"Think of it as. . . .cherry coke."

Elena just shrugged and opened the cop, her throat was burning like someone threw a lit match down her throat. She downed the whole bottle instantly and handed it back to him. It put out the fire a little and dulled her headache to a slightly tolerable rate but she still felt kind of edgy.

"Wait," she said, thinking about what she'd just done. "Who did I just drink?"

"Nobody important," he replied slyly.

"Damon," Elena demanded, giving him that stern look that said she knew he was hiding something.

"Just some random criminal," he shrugged, "I figured your morality complex wouldn't let you eat just anyone."

"You hunted down a criminal for me? That's really sweet in its own weird vampire way," she laughed.

Damon leaned in to kiss her but she stopped him.

"I probably have morning breath," she admitted with a hint of embarrassment.

"Nope, just another perk of the immortal." Without her stopping him this time he leaned in a kissed her softly and quickly.

"Come on," he started getting out of bed, "let's get some coffee to help that headache."


"Vampires, vampire, vampires," Jeremy muttered to himself as he searched through the abundance of folklores and myths on the Internet. Everything said pretty much the same thing: no sunlight, undead, feeds on humans. Everything but the Twilight stuff that was also mixed up in any kind of vampire search he could think of doing. Who knows what was true. Elena, Stefan, Damon, and Anna all came out during the daylight, so that myth had to be false. He'd seen the mind trick at work and the super speed, and the stake thing must be true because Anna was threatening Elena with it last night.

He was so deep in his research that when the doorbell rang he nearly fell out of his chair. Minimizing the windows he had on his screen, he went down stairs to answer the door.

"Hello—Bonnie?" He felt his heart skip a beat when he saw her standing there.

"Is Elena here?" Bonnie looked completely frazzled. Her hair was a mess, she had mascara streaming down her face, her clothes were covered in mud and dirt, she was a complete wreck.

"Are you, uhm," he tried to swallow his fear, "one of them?"

"One of what, Jeremy?" She was irritated with him exactly, but she sounded like she was. What she had to talk to Elena about was very very very time sensitive and she didn't have time for mind games with Jeremy.

"A vampire," he spit out, trying not to think, at all.

"How do you know about that?" Bonnie was pretty certain that Elena had been doing everything she could to keep Jeremy blind to all the crazy vampire junk.

"Well the vampire showdown in my living room last night preeetty much exposed everything." Sarcastic bitterness laced every word he said. "So are you one of them, too?"

"No," Bonnie replied firmly. She was proud of being a witch, and just a witch. The vampire thing still made her skin crawl. "But if I don't get to Elena and tell her what happened soon---we're going to have a serious infestation."

The horror was right on the surface of her eyes, mapped out all over her face.

"She went home with Damon last night," he felt a slight big of guilt now for sending his own sister away.

"Great, thanks," Bonnie gave him a quick smile and then took off down the steps.

Jeremy stood there blankly watching her for a minute until he came back to his senses.

"Wait," he called after her, closing the door behind him as he stepped outside. "I'm coming with you."


"Can I ask you something?" Elena asked sheepishly as she sipped at her coffee. Damon was in the kitchen making himself a cup and she was sitting on the couch in the living room. The light wasn't bugging her eyes as much any more, and thankfully the coffee was warming her up from inside out. But something else was picking at her now.

"You just did," Damon joked, taking a seat right beside her.

"Why me?"

Damon stared at her blankly for a second, not really sure what she was asking. Why'd he change her? It was an accident. Why'd he pick to be with her, maybe?

"Isn't it obvious," he answered, making it more of a statement than a question.

"I mean, for as long as I've known you its always been about Katherine. What changed, or. . . I don't know I'm probably not making sense." She felt like an idiot for even asking, but she regretted not investigating the Katherine issue more when she first found out about it with Stefan.

"You're not Katherine," he simply replied. He knew her question didn't mean was she a poor mans Katherine, it was why her over Katherine. The truth was that he knew why he just didn't think he could vocalize it and do it justice.

"Caroline isn't Katherine, neither is Bonnie or Vikki," Elena pointed out, trying not to turn this into a fight but she just needed to know.

"But none of them are you," he said lovingly. "You're everything Katherine wasn't. See you're making me sound stupidly cheesy, but we've got something real. I didn't realize till I was looking at her again that all we were was compulsion. And that is the end of my sappy romance movie talk."

"I appreciate your step out of character," Elena laughed, she was extremely pleased with everything he said. It made her all the more confident with her choice. "So what's on the agenda for today?" She didn't give him a chance to answer though. As she was talking she was pulling him closer to her until there was no distance between their mouths and he was almost on top of her. She couldn't get enough of kissing him and hoped it would stay that way. There was electricity there when their skin touched and it was addicting.

The bell ringing echoed through the house startled both Elena and Damon.

"Of course," Damon said while getting off of the couch where he didn't want to leave for quiet some time. He made his way over to the door to see exactly who was disturbing them now.

"Damon, we have a situation," the sheriff immediately shot out the moment Damon opened the door. He was taken back at first, it'd been a while since she had come to him for something, but he quickly composed himself probably before she even noticed.

"What happened?" He didn't even have to pull out his fake confused face, although it was pretty impressive.

"May I come in?" She asked mainly in fear of people around hearing what she had to say.

"Oh of course, come on in." He opened the door wide for her, gave a quick look around outside just with his eyes then closed the door. "Can I get you some coffee or water?"

"No thanks I'm---oh hello Elena. I didn't expect to see you here," she gave Elena an unwelcoming leery glance. Elena just smiled weakly and sunk into the couch, she was worried that her, although slight changes, might be noticed.

"Can we speak in private?" The sheriff whispered to Damon, not knowing that Elena could hear her perfectly.

Damon just nodded and ushered her into the kitchen that way Elena could hear everything but the sheriff wouldn't think she could.

"What's this all about?" He asked once they were in the kitchen.

"I'm afraid we're going to need your assistance again. Just last night there were reports of at least 8 different reports of 'animal attacks.'" She knew Damon would understand that she meant they were vampire attacks.

Damon's eyes got wide, there was no way Pearl would have attacked 8 people just last night. She was starved but not that starved, and she wasn't stupid. "I---don't understand. I thought we got rid of them all." Damon was positive he completely whipped the memory of his two attacks last night, Stefan had his own diet, and Elena was in his arms all night.

In the living room Elena heard someone knocking on the door so she stopped listening to Damon and the sheriff and answered the door.

Bonnie and Jeremy stood before her looking more panicked than she'd even seen either of them in her life. They didn't leave her mentally questioning for long though.

"Katherine's not dead, and neither are the other's in the tomb. Well—they were in the tomb," Bonnie said in one breath.


For those of you who watched it last night---that episode made me cry! I'm now more than ever on Damon's side.