The Search

(Elena's POV)

It couldn't be real that my brother was missing. It couldn't be real that he made the conscious decision to run and leave without so much as saying goodbye, or even where he was going. The note that he left on the outside of the door, was still clutched tightly in my hand when I felt Damon's hand on my shoulder, silently signaling to me that I had spent enough time in complete shock, and needed to act.

Turning around slowly, I could feel tears burning the corners of my eyes as I looked into the same blue eyes that had brought me so much comfort over the years, and even though it failed to do it this time when my mind was going ninety miles an hour with all the what ifs and whys, I did feel like I wasn't alone in this, as he rubbed my arm gently, letting me know that he was there, that he would help me.

"Jeremy's gone," I said, stating the obvious.

We had had such a great weekend at the lake house, and now that Jeremy had decided to leave and run away, it put a taint on that whole time we spent together. We had both checked in regularly with him, and he said things had been going okay. He wasn't snapping at me anymore, and he seemed to be accepting of the things I had done to make sure he still had a great future ahead of him.

Apparently his brightness was because he had already made the choice to leave. Shaking my head in complete astonishment at the turn of events that had suddenly befallen our lives, I walked further into the open bedroom and started looking for any miniscule signs or clues that would tell me something about his current location.

There was nothing that I could see. No stone had been left unturned. No book or CD had been left out of place. The bedroom held little clues as to where he had resorted to running, but when I looked down at the note that I had crumbled up in my hand, I figured it wouldn't hurt to read it again for the twentieth time that minute.

Smoothing it out with difficult, I inhaled a deep breath as I read through it again, picking apart each and every sentence he had scrawled out to me, and what it could possibly mean. He wasn't incapable of taking care of himself, but with so many bad things out there that he wasn't able to protect himself from, it definitely upped the concern level, and made me feel almost frantic to find and protect him.

"He said that he needed to get away," I said aloud, wracking my brain for what that simple phrase could mean. "He said he needed to leave...but why?"

Not that things had necessarily been easy lately with everything happening with Stefan going missing, and me getting on his nerves because of me "forcing" him to return to school, but I never thought he would do something drastic like running.

"Elena," Damon said, momentarily distracting me from the issue at hand when he forced me to turn around and face him. "We will find him. I promise you."

It was hard not to feel confident when he spoke so assuredly to me. To him, there was no way that he would allow me to feel this kind of pain for too long without doing something to stop it. Even though he and Jeremy butted heads more times than they got along, I knew at the end of the day, he would put aside his own issues to help me solve whatever was happening with him, and this time was no different.

"But where could he be? It's not like he has a set place that he likes to go to!"

"Well, think," Damon said patiently, calmly. "Tell me where he always liked to go to when he was having a problem, or when he needed to get away."

There were a thousand of those places all over Mystic Falls. The old hangout at school where he used to deal drugs after school after our parents died, and then the cemetery where he and Vickie used to gather with her stoner friends.

"The school," I said weakly, listing out all the possible locations for my brother. "The woods near the cemetery."

"Anywhere else?" he asked softly.

I knew that he was trying to induce any amount of calm in me that he could, but it was falling on deaf ears until we actually had a location for him. It was terrifying not knowing where he was when something serious could be happening to him a in world that was full of creatures that could do harm to him.

"Denver where some of our—our friends lived," I said shakily, "he was happy there but that's only because he was compelled to be happy there."

When Damon compelled Jeremy, on my orders, to live out a "normal" life in Denver with some of our family friends, he sent me regular updates on how he was doing, and he seemed happy, something that had been hard to come by in a world that was inhabited with vampires and hybrids.

"Do you think he'd go there to escape his problems here?"

"I don't know—I don't know. Anything is possible, I guess."

"Why don't you call your friends there, and I'll go through the cemetery and school and see if he's crashing there."

"Thank you."

Damon nodded softly, not even returning my thanks because I knew that he was more than welcome to do it. I knew that, to make me feel better, he would search the ends of the earth until he found something solid about my brother to go on.

The silence that hung around the house after Damon left, was palpable. To escape it, I went downstairs into the living room where he kept his bourbon decanters. Usually, the bourbon was too strong for my liking, but to escape the stress that I could feel circulating in my heart, I poured myself some anyway.

Looking down at my phone, I dialed the number that was saved on my contacts list, and called our friends. To my disappointment, they had not seen or heard from him in several weeks, and had not seen him around the Denver area.

Sinking down onto the couch, I shook my head in disbelief at what was happening as I tried to reign in my emotions the best I could. It was nearly impossible, though, and that was why when Damon walked through the door, I almost pounced on him out of the sheer fact that I needed to know where my missing brother was.

"Well?" I demanded, not taking the time for 'hellos' or 'welcome backs.'

"His stuff was in the cemetery," Damon said, holding up Jeremy's bag of things. "He can't be too far from here."

"Thank you so much," I said, nearly buckling under the relief that I felt. Even though we still didn't know where he was, at least he was somewhere in the general region of this town.

"I'm going to go check the Grille right now."

"I'm coming."

"Okay."

Walking through the crowded restaurant, yielded little results. Neither Matt or Jeremy was on duty that day, but that didn't mean that he wasn't somewhere hanging out with his buddies, or wallowing in whatever was on his mind, alone.

Deciding to take a chance and walk through to the kitchen that was off limits to customers, I was struck by the fact that he was there. Jeremy, my little brother who had decided to run away and had obviously chickened out, was standing in the kitchen conversing with some young waitress.

It was clear from the way that he hung his head that he was feeling badly about what he had done when he saw me, but that was nothing compared to the anger that I felt at having worried endlessly about him until I had been assured of his location and safety.

"Come on," I said, marching over to him and towing him away from his friend. "We're leaving."

"Get off me!" He protested, obviously embarrassed that his big sister was physically escorting him out of the building, but that was nothing compared to what I had been through in worrying about him for hours. "I was going to come back!"

"Yeah? Well, you could have fooled me," I said through gritted teeth. "I found a note on your door, we found your things in the cemetery. What the hell were you thinking?"

"I wasn't, alright?"

"That much is clear."

Gradually loosening my grip on him, we walked out to the main part of the Grille where Damon was still waiting. Locking eyes with us, he gave me a nod before turning to Jeremy, who I knew would have to face some of his wrath before being let off the hook.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Damon demanded, as we walked out of the restaurant together.

"I didn't want to be controlled anymore. I didn't want people who weren't even my parents telling me what to do," he fumed.

"Wow," I said, shaking my head. "That's a low blow."

"I wasn't thinking right. I packed my stuff and left, but halfway through, I changed my mind and went to work to see if I could take up an extra shift. That girl that you dragged me away from, Elena? That was my boss."

"I don't care who it was," I said, as we got in our places in the car. "You scared me to death, Jeremy. I thought something might have happened to you, and that I would never see you again."

"I was fine," he said, rolling his eyes as though I was being ridiculous in reacting the way I was.

"But your sister didn't know that," Damon said. "You need to apologize to her right now, and actually mean it."

I automatically tensed when Damon made the request known to Jeremy that he needed to show remorse for what he had done. I agreed, he needed to be made aware of the gravity of his actions and how dangerous it was in the world we lived in, but I could only imagine how he would take that coming from Damon.

"It's between her and me," Jeremy said quietly, not putting up as much of an attitude as I thought he would. Maybe he was beginning to feel some of what I had gone through, and maybe he felt badly about it.

"Technically yes," Damon conceded, "but when you put her through something like that, and I see her fall apart at the seams, that then makes it my business as well."

Jeremy was silent as we continued to drive through the town back to the boarding house. "I'm sorry," he finally said.

"It's okay," I said. "But you're grounded."

"No questions," Damon added.

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