AYO! So here is Chap 10!

FOR ANY OF YOU WHO ARE WANTING ELENA TO FIGHT FOR DAMON DONT YOU WORRY! WE ARE GETTIN TO THAT! I have five more chapters to go and hopefully they will cover and wrap up everything I've promised in this fic. So be patient...in the words of Damon, "I'll get you there..." ;)

As always, please please please please review! Gahh. I'm sure a lot of you know how awesome it is to recieve a review and see your story grow in popularity.

Ya'll know how much I love writing for you guys :)

xXx

"Doesn't mean I'm over, cuz you're gone..."

~Stronger, Kelly Clarkson.

xXx

I wasn't expecting him to come for me so soon.

Stefan had gotten home and I'd been waiting up for him in his room. He'd sighed, looking more tired then ever, and said that Klaus had only told him to watch his back. Like the good little girlfriend I was, I nodded thoughtfully, and we both decided it would be best if we set up safety nets. Some sort of system of precaution should Klaus act up. It wasn't until Stefan casually mentioned that Bonnie and Tyler were to be set free by tomorrow and that Rebekah was lurking around the Original's manor when I understood...

Tonight. He was going to take me tonight.

The minute Stefan had fallen asleep I'd raided his bookstand for a stacks of paper and a pencil; and set to writing letters. Two bags of B positive blood later, I'd completed them. A letter to Stefan. A letter to Damon. A letter to Bonnie. A letter to Caroline. A letter to Jeremy. I even included a letter to Matt - to wish him well in his recovery and to state that no matter what, I would never regret my choice to save him first.

It was Damon's letter I had really agonized about. Stefan's had come quickly, flowing, all confessions that I had to say to him were written in that envelope. Damon's was tricky. There was so much to say and to apologize for...how I met him first, how I should have picked him, how I would pick him now...to be honest, chances were, I would have fought for him tooth and nail. But fate has other plans...

All my letters ended with "I love you" but one of them. Damon's.

'If I ever see you again I will tell you what you've been waiting to hear for so long...but not like this, not on paper. It should come straight from my mouth. Just know that my love for you consumes me. And I want it to. I want you and maybe one day...you'll want me back too.'

Maybe it was a longshot, but I figured I'd have an eternity to find my way back to him. Surely Klaus would get bored with me after a decade or two...

"Have all your letters ready, love?" Klaus's voice brushes against my ear and I jerk forward in my chair, my pencil flying out of my hand.

"Klaus," My eyes fly to my hastily packed duffle bag and my heart picks up a sickening 'crunch crunch' sound. For a split second I'm opening my mouth to scream, to wake Damon up from his spot on the couch, to snap Stefan out of his slumber, anything to delay the inevitable.

-But I close my mouth, because everyone has been brave for me, and now it's my turn.

"I found 'Bekah," Klaus shuts the door to the Salvatore study with a quiet 'click' and turns back to me, hands in his pockets, "She's agreed to come along. Won't that be nice?" He cocks his head at me in pure sadistic joy, as if he finds this a giant joke.

I stand up abruptly from my chair and hoist the duffle over my shoulders, "Can we just leave, please?" Surprisingly, my voice doesn't waver. They'll find the letters. They'll read them. All my loose ends will be tied - fingers crossed, anyway.

"You packed, how cute," Klaus obviously wants to drag this out as long as possible, and damn, I think I may let him. My feet don't want to walk myself out of this house. My heart is in the other room with a dark, sleeping boy, and Klaus knows it. He knows this is sweet torture for me.

"Yeah, I packed, and we need to go now." The more we wait the more I'm seriously debating making a run for it.

"Why the hurry? If your lovers wake up they can be dealt with. Or should I just say Damon?" Klaus is in my face in one fluid movement, hands roughly gripping my chin like a child's. He raises it, and I hate myself for letting a few wet tears spill onto my cheeks. Not the best time to look weak, Elena. "I can compel them, you know," he says quietly, eyes searching mine, and if he wasn't such a monster I may just believe he actually cares, "to forget about you. To forget about all of this."

I wrench myself from his grasp and stumble backwards, breathing heavily. He's messing with me. He would never do that. Would he? Would I let him? I shake my head, trying to clear my thoughts, and Klaus's face looks bemused.

"Alright, I take it you want them to pine after you forever, so be it." He shrugs and extends his left hand toward me, "Take my hand, Elena."

Compulsion. I can feel it rattling my bones. My teeth. Compulsion for a vampire is a painful experience - that much I've figured out. The need to take his hand is like no other, stronger then love, stronger then blood. I reach forward feverishly and grip his hand - and find relief.

And in the next moment, he's got his arm wrapped around my waist as he shoves me into a dark car. Somebody (Rebekah?) presses hard on the gas pedal and I watch, dazed, as trees fly by me, and the Salvatore Boarding house fades from view.

My hands are pressed against the window and tears are falling more freely then ever down my cheeks - but I turn and face him. Klaus. The man who took everything from me. He took everything from me...

"You didn't win," I say quietly, "Because Bonnie and Tyler are safe now." I jerk my chin up and give him the mental middle finger - because in the end, he didn't. He hasn't won. Bonnie weakened him in some way as payback for being forced to cast the spell on my blood and therefore, he didn't leave without a scratch for his battles. Tyler has been returned to Caroline and maybe, just maybe, Damon can find solace in that fact. Highly unlikely, but I dream.

Klaus only shakes his head, "Oh, but Elena, I did. Your friends may be safe now, but it seems as if two rather...desperate," he says the word like he taste it, like it's the most delicious thing to utter, "vampires will kill themselves over loosing you. Your merry little band will fall to pieces and that is where I win, Elena."

I don't say anything. I just go back to staring out the window. My emotions and feelings are too mangled and tragic for me to touch, so I let them fester underneath the surface. The worst part of being immortal? it really is a never ending nightmare.

xXx

Klaus shoves me into the hotel room and I sniff irritably. It's dusty and dank and there's a weird, foreign smell clinging to the carpets. Rebekah trails in behind, looking bored for the most part, but the way she warily eyes Klaus tells me that she's been beaten into submission like the rest of us.

I should be mad at Rebekah, she started this mess upon a mess, but I'm not. I just feel...sorry for her.

"We're catching a plane tomorrow morning to Brazil," Klaus throws a travel brochure my way and I stare down at it numbly. Happy tan bikini models frolic on a white-sand beach. A cute family walks along the shoreline. Happy pictures, happy descriptions. And yet I feel like I'm being sentenced to hell.

"Oh really Nik?" Rebekah rolls her eyes, "Brazil?"

"Shut up, Rebekah," Klaus snaps at her and she takes a step back, clearly not anticipating the sudden outburst, "We'll have a thousand lifetimes over to go wherever you want to go. You too, sweetheart." Klaus nods in my direction and I feel sick. Dead inside. They say when you make a heroic sacrifice for the betterment of a whole you feel fulfilled and right in your choices - but this feels wrong, so wrong.

"I'd like to go home." I say quietly, and the brochure is trembling in my hands.

"You can, dear, in about one hundred years your lovely boys will be gone." Klaus's fingers are on my cheek and I slap them off viciously. Every word he says stings with the reminder that I gave up. And sweet surrender should be nothing like this.

Rebekah unzips one of the many duffles and to my horror produces an empty blood bag and a siphon-like tube. "Let's get to it, shall we, Nik?" She eyes me like a bug she wants to squash, voice cold like her eyes.

With a cry of protest Rebekah's got my arms held down on the chair in a vice grip, viciously plunging the tube into my arm. I twist and arch and writhe in feeble attempt to get the hell away from her, but she only watches with pleasure as the tube fills up with red and drips into the bag.

Klaus suddenly swats her away, relieving the pressure and looking down at me worriedly, "Now, now, what would Caroline and the boys say to me if I were to hurt you?" His voice is whisper soft as his hands run over my sore wrists. I'm too weak to resist his comforting efforts.

I close my hands and let the blood drain out of me.

I almost allow myself to hope I die in the process.

xXx

I haven't read my envelope. God fucking hell she left us all little note cards. The first thing I did when I saw the lovely white envelope with my name written in Elena's pansy cursive was to shove it deep into my jacket pocket and pretend it wasn't there. Stefan, of course, ripped his open - and ha, payback's a bitch, because he didn't like what he read. He won't tell me what the fuck she wrote but I guess it can't be too good. He's all but thrown himself in a sack cloth and ran around without his daylight ring on.

We aren't dealing too well at all. I've thrown a couple of Ric's precious things around in his - now deemed my - apartment. I don't have diddly dick on which direction Elena went. Everyone is begging me to open up the envelope because 'maybe she put the location in there!' but please, don't get me started on why Elena wouldn't let me of all people know where she's going.

She's smart enough to know I would haul her ass right back from wherever the one-woman Martyr Brigade went, probably with a tourist hat and some souvenir key chains while I'm at it.

The first day after her appearance is a whirlwind of hell. We all group into my apartment -except for Katherine, whose still in the dungeon thinking on why she should never side with the enemy - and sit there like gutted fish. I guess we just want to be close to eachother for 'support' or shit. I sure as hell want them all out. Excuse me, I wish to grieve alone, maybe break a few more mementos, down a couple more drinks.

"Maybe she went with Klaus." Jeremy suggests, and we all look at eachother with wide-eyes, because no shit Sherlock, of course she did. Klaus is gone - so is Elena. It's not hard to put the pieces together.

"The question is where?" Bonnie sits next to Jeremy. She arrived with Tyler on our door front in the early morning hours. Best part? There was like a metaphorical bow wrapped around each of them. A little gift from Klaus. Bonnie is drained of her powers and she can't remember a-fucking-thing except that Klaus is weakened in some way. And Tyler? Oh god. Don't get me started. Tyler and Caroline are all but dry humping eachother every chance they get. Besides, the mutt can't remember anything either.

"Maybe if you had held onto your sanity during your stay at A La Casa DeKlaus we would know that, witchy." I snark at her from my perch on Ric's counter tops. God help me, I'm going to murder them all. The world could use a little less stupidity.

"Damon," Stefan warns in a low tone. Ooh. He means business. I smile at him in a particularly nasty way and turn my attention elsewhere. Like, the window. Like, I wanna jump out of this room. Like, right now.

"Okay," Caroline holds her hands up in front of her head and shakes her hair, "We need a witch with power to cast a locator spell."

"Can't," Bonnie shrugs, "We'd need personal items of both Klaus and Elena, plus anyone else who left with them. Since we don't know of anything Klaus left behind that he owns, and Rebekah may very well be with him..." Bonnie trails off and shakes her head sadly. Oh, poor little teenage witch, so lost and alone without her magic.

"Uh," Caroline chews on her nail, "We could do it the old-fashioned way. Ya know, drop by, ask Elijah where he may be..." She's pacing the room now, twirling her hands like she's stuck in cheerleading mode, Tyler nodding approvingly in the background.

"Like Elijah is going to tell us." I mutter darkly.

"He would!" Jeremy stands up, all passionate teenage angst, "That's my sister. We have to do something!"

"We're working on it!" Stefan growls.

"Anybody knows Klaus's license plate number?" Tyler jerks his head in my direction and crosses his arms like that's supposed to intimidate me, "How 'bout you, bitch? Did you memorize it while you over there banging his sister?"

It takes all I have not to fly across this damn room and end that boy. Sadly, should his compulsion wear off, he may be useful. "She was over at my place." I shrug my shoulders, "And no, Klaus is smarter then that. He doesn't own a car. He just car-hops." I do little bunny motions with my hands to illustrate to Tyler in case he's too dim to comprehend my lingo, "Maybe you can sniff him out before I neuter you?"

Tyler opens his mouth to retort but Caroline throws up her hands in warning, "Tyler!" she snaps, and he grumbles something before falling back into his corner of the room. Wow, he really is Caroline's bitch. "I don't think that's a bad idea, Damon," she goes on primly, "If Tyler can catch Klaus's scent whose to say it won't start us off somewhere?"

"So what?" I throw my hands up exasperated, "You wanna fetch Tyler a pair of Klaus's tidy whiteys and have him sniff down a highway until a car hits him and ... he doesn't die?"

Personally if Tyler wasn't immortal I'd be all for sending him down that road with his nose in the asphalt. Might be fun to watch.

"Okay," Stefan gets up and stalks to the middle of the room, "I got it."

"What?" We all ask him collectively. I swear I can see a detective hat on top of my baby bro's head, he's in a zone right now, a I've-got-to-find-Elena-before-Damon zone.

"Klaus carries cargo with him - coffins, to be exact. Esther's coffin. We need a locator spell for Esther. Would that work, Bonnie?" He turns to Bonnie, who nods slowly, looking hopeful. Alright, so I was wrong, the witch is a wealth of Witchy 101 and not entirely useless without her powers.

"Yeah, it would."

Damn. Stef is smart today. He must have really rubbed his two brain cells together hard for that.

And good. We have a plan. Everybody starts talking at once, setting the plan into motion, planning various things out, working out ways to find Esther's DNA and Elijah and Kol's name repeatedly popping up. By the end of the night, we have something set in motion. We're all damn exhausted though, so we agree to regroup after two or three hours of shuteye. Except for Jeremy. Poor guy needs about nine or ten to function. Being human and all.

After everybody leaves there's a heavy feeling in my chest. Why would Elena leave with the Original Jackass? Not tell anyone? Hell, I'd write a book on things I'd tell people before I'd got stolen away. Most of the things would consist of 'you suck' and 'I hate you' but, I digress. I sit there broodily in a way that would have made Edward Cullen proud - and then reach for the letter nestled in my pocket.

Okay Salvatore, you can do this, you can read this. Don't be such a sorry son of a bitch.

I unfold the envelope and scan the first line.

Damon...

xXx

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