Wow it's been almost a year since I updated this story. To anyone who's still reading this I'm really sorry! I hope you like this chapter and I'd love to read your thoughts on it :)

The next morning Jenna found Toby sat outside on the porch. It was early and no one else was awake so she'd quietly made her way downstairs to get a couple of blood bags from the basement to satisfy her hunger. On her way up she noticed that the front door was slightly open and had stepped outside to investigate. Upon seeing her friend lost in thought she decided to try and sneak back inside when Toby heard her and turned around.

"Hey." Toby greeted. "Do you want to join me?" She asked, motioning to the space next to her.

"What are you doing out here so early?" Jenna asked.

"I couldn't sleep so I decided to watch the sun rise. It's not like I've been able to see it the past week."

"How does it feel?"

"Bright." Toby laughed and Jenna joined in, happy that amongst all the crazy things happening they could still relax and joke together as friends.

Jenna finished the first of her blood bags and offered the remaining one to Toby who willingly accepted it after being assured that, with all the vampires in the house, there would always be some available for everyone.

"How are you dealing with everything?" Toby asked her once she'd finished drinking.

"I'm not sure. Jeremy's…" She paused as she struggled to say the word 'dead' before settling on another. "Gone and Elena's a vampire. All I can think of right now is how I've let Miranda down. I didn't look after them and now everything's just so messed up."

Jenna didn't realize that she'd started crying again until Toby wrapped her arms around her and pulled her into a hug.

"You can get through this." She assured her friend. "And if this Silas guy does manage to drop the veil you might be able to say goodbye to Jeremy."

"Humans don't go to the Other Side." Jenna pointed out.

"But if that resurrection ring didn't work it must mean that the Hunter abilities make him supernatural."

"How do you already know more about this than me?" Jenna asked, shocked at the amount of information Toby had been able to retain from the events of the night before.

"I have a good memory." She laughed. Jenna wiped her eyes dry and let out a small smile at the idea of being able to see Jeremy again. She wanted to apologise for leaving him and just hoped that she could see him one last time. As much as she knew that it was impossible, if she were to have ay wish right then it would have been to allow Jeremy to come back to life at almost any cost. She owed him that much.

"So what about you?" Jenna asked after a few minutes of silence. "How're you adjusting?"

"I think things will be better now I can act like a normal person again and go out in the day."

Jenna smiled. "That always helps."

"And I definitely don't feel as much of a freak here where almost everyone is a vampire. Wow that still sounds weird to me." She laughed.

"You get used to it." Jenna remarked. Although she rarely spoke about vampire aloud she'd used the word in her head many times since she'd become one and it almost seemed believable at this point.

"How long did it take you to feel like yourself again?" Toby asked.

Jenna pondered this for a minute. "I don't really know." She replied after a while. "It wasn't a sudden change or anything, and I definitely don't feel the same as I did when I was human, but the whole things gets easier and more familiar over time. You know, you'd be better off asking Stefan or Damon. They've been vampires for over a hundred years."

"How is it fair that Stefan looks younger than us?" Toby commented and the pair laughed. Jenna was happy to see a smile returning to her friend's face after the difficult week she'd had adjusting to being a vampire. "Mac and Evan will probably be asleep all day, won't they?" She asked after a while and Jenna nodded in agreement. By the time all was said and done it was almost 7am when they went to sleep. While Jenna, Toby, and the other vampires didn't need as much sleep they knew that anyone human would be feeling the effects of their busy night for the rest of the day.

"Why don't we head inside and see if anyone else is downstairs?" Jenna suggested, hoping that Elena was awake so that they could finally have a chance to talk properly.

Jenna and Toby headed inside and were greeted by Stefan, who looked like he was about to leave.

"Where are you off to?" Jenna asked him.

"Hunting." He replied.

"I thought you were getting better at drinking human blood."

"I am but I don't like getting too carried away. Keeping up the animal diet helps me stay in control because it means I'm never too hungry."

"Why can't you drink human blood?" Toby asked.

Stefan shifted awkwardly, as if he was ashamed of something. "I have a bit of a problem with it. If I drink too much I become a ripper." He admitted.

"A ripper?"

"I can't stop feeding until I rip someone's head off. There are two types of vampires: those who can handle human blood without killing everyone and those who can't. The latter are usually the ones to turn off their humanity."

"I can see why that would be a problem." Toby said lightheartedly, surprised at how she wasn't scared of the man in front of her after what he'd just said. But then, she reasoned, she wasn't a target because she wasn't human.

"It definitely makes things harder." Stefan replied. "You seem to be doing alright though."

"That's only because Jenna's been by my side every time I've fed."

"You don't need me there, Toby. You'll be able to stay in control on your own." Jenna assured her.

"I don't know." Toby said, unsure that her friend's trust hadn't been misplaced.

"Why don't you come hunting with me?" Stefan suggested. "I won't let you get carried away and you can learn to feed without Jenna by your side."

Toby turned to Jenna, silently asking if she thought that it was a good idea. Jenna gave her a nod and a reassuring smile that filled Toby with the confidence she needed to agree to go with Stefan.

Once they had left Jenna found herself alone. She was still the only person awake in the Salvatore boarding house so she decided to have a look around. She'd always been intrigued by the number of books that were kept in the living room. Looking through the titles, she could see that the collection held everything from old town records to the first editions of some of the classic novels she'd grown up reading in class. Picking up a title she recognized, she sat down by the fire and read until she was interrupted by the found of someone coming downstairs. Her keen senses had picked up the noise of them walking long before they were in the living room. Looking up to greet them, she saw her niece staring back at her. A smile appeared on each of their faces as Elena rushed over to hug her aunt.

"It wasn't a dream?" Elena asked as she and Jenna broke apart from their hug.

"No it wasn't." Jenna clarified; surprised by how young her niece looked despite everything she'd been through. There was an innocence about her that seemed to have only appeared since she'd turned her humanity back on.

"Jenna, I…" Elena hesitated. Jenna looked up to meet her eyes. "I'm sorry that all this happened to you. It was all my fault. I wanted to keep you safe but I let Klaus get to you." She said, fresh tears welling up in her eyes.

"Listen, Elena, none of this is your fault. It's Klaus' fault I'm a vampire and Rebekah's fault that you are. And I promise you we'll get our revenge on them." She said, her protective instincts momentarily taking over any other human emotion that would normally stop her from being so eager to kill.

"We can't kill them." Elena stated.

"Why not?" Jenna asked.

"Because if we do every vampire in their bloodline dies too. Every vampire in this house was turned from Klaus' blood, however remotely, and once he's dead we'd all drop like flies." Elena explained.

Jenna didn't know how to respond to this information. She'd been living in Canada hoping to be invited back by Damon once Klaus was dead yet they all knew that they couldn't kill him. Why hadn't Damon told her any of this?

"I'm going to kill him." Jenna said as she stood up.

Elena tried to interrupt. "I just said…"

"Damon!" She shouted, storming up the stairs to his bedroom. Elena followed behind her in confusion. "DAMON!" She tried again.

Hearing the commotion, both Evan and Mac appeared at the doors to their rooms to see what was going on. Jenna walked straight passed them and into Damon's room without so much as knocking. She was confronted by a very angry looking Damon who had obviously just been in the shower, if his half-naked body and wet hair were any indication.

"What are you yelling about?" He asked, clearly irritated.

"Were you ever going to let me come back to Mystic Falls?"

"What?"

"Don't play dumb." She spat out angrily. "You knew you couldn't kill Klaus yet you still didn't let me so much as visit."

"In all fairness I've had rather a lot going on recently." He replied, his tone almost smug. This made Jenna even more angry and she ran at him with vampire speed, pinning him against the wall.

"You ask Katherine of all people to drop me off in the middle of nowhere in Canada and all but forget about me! You didn't think to tell me when my boyfriend died! When my nephew died!" She shouted.

In a flash, Damon had reversed their roles and was holding Jenna tightly by the neck against the wall on the opposite side of the room.

"I'm over a hundred years older than you. Did you really think you could take me on?" He asked. Without giving her a chance to reply he snapped her neck and her body fell limply on the floor.

Evan ran over to Jenna, screaming at Damon for what he'd done. Mac hung back, noticing how Elena had only flinched at what had happened to her aunt. Sure she looked pissed but she wasn't upset. If she'd loved Jenna enough to turn her emotions on because of her, surely she should have more of a reaction to Damon snapping her neck.

Almost as soon as the thought crossed Mac's mind, Damon spoke again.

"Relax Cross." He smiled. "She'll wake up in an hour or so."

With that he returned to his bathroom to get dressed.

Seeing that Evan was still panicking, Elena made her way over to him. "She'll be fine." She assured him. "It takes a lot more than that to kill a vampire."

"Are you sure?" Evan asked, worried.

Elena nodded her head and offered to carry Jenna to her room. Evan politely declined and scooped her up into his arms herself, carrying her down the hall and placing her gently on the bed. He kissed her forehead and left her in peace, hoping above all else that she would come back to life soon.

He considered this for a moment. She was technically already dead. He still couldn't get his head around the concept that the house he was in was filled with vampires and one of them was his girlfriend. All of these people had died, perhaps multiple times, and they continued about their lives as if it was the norm when to him, a guy who hunted dinosaurs, it was far from it. Evan could appreciate the parallels between his life and the lives of the people living in Mystic Falls but a part of him was still convinced that he would never be able to understand the lives these vampires led like he understood the anomalies. Although he doubted his new friends, if he could call them that, would fare very well against a herd of dinosaurs.

He was pulled out of his train of thought by Toby asking if he'd seen Jenna. She looked slightly disheveled and there was some dried blood near her mouth, making him wonder what she'd been doing and who she'd fed on.

"She's in her bed." Evan told her, hesitant to continue but he did so nonetheless. "Damon snapped her neck but Elena said she'd be ok soon." Not in the mood to answer and of Toby's questions, which he was sure would be better posed to one of the vampires in residence; he proceeded to ask her about her rather suspicious appearance.

"Oh Stefan took me hunting." She replied as if it was completely ordinary. "He wanted to prove to me that I could control myself without Jenna by my side."

Evan was unsure that he wanted to hear all the gory details but he asked her how it went anyway. Toby smiled and told him that it was fine and she hadn't killed any animals while feeding. Although he knew it wasn't healthy for her to resist her new diet, Evan was still slightly pleased to hear that she knew how repulsive what she was doing was. He doubted he'd ever be able to understand the need to drink blood so he was happy that Toby had Jenna and her friends to help her come to terms with that.

The pair headed downstairs to join the rest of the household for breakfast while they waited for Jenna to wake up.