Elena personally oversaw the death of the women they had brought back, soothing them into complacency before Jeremy stabbed them in the back. She hoped that they hadn't been afraid or felt pain.

Bonnie, upon losing both of her magic mentors, was pretty glum. She sounded pretty bummed as she suggested that they try to break into Professor Shane's office and apartment, looking for more information on how to open the tomb. Elena took one last look at Damon as the others gathered together, formulating last minute details on the plan. She wished she could kiss him goodbye.

While they drove, she remembered how cute Bonnie and Jeremy were as a couple. He made her laugh, and she looked at him with such heartwarming sweetness that it made Elena incredibly jealous that they could be together so openly and unabashedly.

"You two are so cute. I'm glad you patched things up." Elena smiled.

"Elena, stop." Jeremy frowned, but he seemed pleased.

"I'm trying to compliment you."

"Oh no, did I sign up to deal with sibling bickering?" Bonnie grinned. "It means a lot that you're ok with us, Elena." Bonnie said, exchanging a look with Jeremy.

Elena kicked up the speed a little bit, wanting more than ever to be human again so she could finally convince that stubborn man that she was truly his.

"This is where you come in." Bonnie nodded at the locked door of Shane's office. Elena easily twisted it until the lock broke. Jeremy looked impressed at his sister's strength, and only a little murderous. Bonnie grabbed his hand, taking notice, and the glint in his eyes faded.

They wandered into the dark classroom. Bonnie seemed to know exactly where to go. She started searching through one of the many bookshelves. Jeremy joined in hesitantly. Elena was overwhelmed taking in the number of books on his many bookshelves. Then something occurred to her.

"He's been trying to reunite himself with his other half for over a thousand years now. I doubt he kept that information on it with all his other books. It would have to be somewhere special."

Bonnie and Jeremy slowed their frantic upturning of books and looked at her, realizing she was right.

"Where do you think it is?"

"I don't know, but we should try to think outside of the box. I bet it's in a secret room or something, like my parents had up in the cabin."

None of them had any idea how to look for a secret room. Jeremy suggested tapping on walls and floors.

"There's nothing here. Every inch of this place is solid." Bonnie looked deflated.

"Lets try his apartment. If I was going to keep a dark secret, I would hide it in my house so I could get to it whenever I needed and make sure it was secure." Elena said, thinking of her diary. She was trying not to get discouraged.

"I've only been there once. I hope I can remember how to get there."

Elena was turning out to be quite the forceful locksmith. She easily cracked the professor's apartment door as well.

The apartment was pretty normal, for belonging to an exiled thousand-year-old witch. The occasional weird Occult memorabilia decorated the walls and shelves.

It was actually not long before they discovered the clichéd moving desk ornament that opened a secret door behind his home desk.

Of course it was spelled.

But Bonnie had learned a few things from dear Professor Shane, and soon they were walking around a very creepy, tiny room. A rock on a pedestal was spotlighted in the middle of it.

Elena's phone went off, startling her.

"Hey. How goes the search for the key to your humanity?"

"Damon! Thank god. Did you guys get Professor Shane out?"

"Yup. Klaus, trusting comrade that he is, forgot to tell us that he retrieved the daggers he used on those two and had them stashed in his back pocket the whole time. Just love working with the guy."

"What, so they're out of the picture again?"

"For now. No more Originals mucking up our schemes, except for the most meddlesome of them all. Stefan and Klaus are, well, questioning him right now. Right now we're trying not to let him know that we know who he is. Might give us the upper hand in all this."

"They can't kill him. We might need him to unearth the cure."

"I don't think killing him is the plan, but I'll let them know. You never really know with Klaus."

Elena was staring at the dramatically lit rock while Bonnie examined it. She had seen it before, when he showed it to her at the lake house. She probably should have questioned why he was hauling around a rock with him.

"The other rock is still on exhibit, I saw it the other night. He must have stolen this one and replaced it with a fake."

"What does it do?"

"It's a spell, the spell that Qetsiyah used to seal Silas away. It's pretty complicated. I'll have to take it back and examine it. If I can figure out how they sealed him in, maybe I can reverse it. I just keep wishing, you know, that I could ask Shane about it. But now that he's evil…"

"Well he doesn't know that we're onto him. So I don't think we can take this rock without alerting him to our plans to thwart his plan."

"So let's act like we live in the digital age and take a picture." Jeremy rolled his eyes at their slow thinking.

"The markings are so faint though…." Bonnie squinted at the rock. Jeremy left the small room and came back with a pencil and some paper.

"Lets take an imprint too. You just rub the pencil over the paper on the rock."

"My artist, so smart." Bonnie smiled. Jeremy grinned, bashful.

"Um, there's a file with all of this stuff that looks important right here. Let's get to photocopying." Elena was busy rifling through the few paperwork, old books, and darker black-magic like objects. Mummy fingers. Gross.

Elena returned home that night. She had school in the morning and Bonnie had missed enough school, so she was going back home too. She dropped her off and returned with Jeremy to her house. Stefan and Damon were there to pick him up and drive him back to the lake house for the night. Elena relaxed tension she hadn't realized she was keeping in her at the sight of them. Jeremy waved to them then jogged inside to pack some new clothes and such for the week.

"Hey, what are both of you doing here?"

"Well, even with Rebekah and Kol daggered in a box, I thought you might want two bodyguards watching Jeremy if he was sleeping away from you." Stefan answered.

Elena looked between the two of them. Stefan was standing a good distance from Damon, arms crossed. Damon had his hands in his pockets, trying to look relaxed, but she could tell better.

"Both of you… are you going to be able to get along together up there?"

"Well, Matt volunteered to stay at night to try to keep an eye on Jeremy. He's been driving back for work and school and such. Hopefully his presence will be enought to keep him from staking us in our sleep. He's probably not as effective as Bonnie, but hopefully we'll all still be alive tomorrow." Damon joked. "Maybe he'll keep Stefan from staking me in my sleep too." He muttered under his breath.

"Don't count on it." Stefan growled. Elena's eyes widened until she realized he was half kidding. Half kidding was not good enough.

"Stefan. Don't." She warned, narrowing her eyes at him. He met hers in a challenge. She wasn't going to let him win, though, and soon enough she saw the pain leak out under the anger and he let his eyes drop to the ground.

"I'm going back to the boardinghouse to get a few things. I'll just meet you up there, Damon." Stefan, voluntarily leaving them together? Elena looked at Damon, but he seemed almost as surprised as her.

"Um, ok." Damon gaped as Stefan vamped off.

They were suddenly very along together. Elena walked up to him to hug him but then she realized she couldn't touch him so she ended up just standing there a bit awkwardly.

"And how was your day?" Damon had seen her awkward movements and sympathy sparked in his face at the realization of what she was trying to do again.

"Probably better than yours. No fights, we just broke into places. Bonnie's looking over that old rock that he showed us up in the lake house."

"Yeah, the fight lasted about two minutes. Klaus disappeared the moment we got there, so we went in to face off without him. They had barely started to fight us when Klaus magically reappeared and daggered them both in the back. He used us as a distraction. I've got to say, for two Original vampires, they didn't make for a very impressive fighting duo. They were kicking our asses for those two minutes, but neither one of them stopped to think, 'hmm, where could Klaus be?'"

"You guys went to fight them without Klaus?" Elena stared at him, horrified. Her hands balled into fists again as she thought about hugging him in relief that he was still alive. "I thought I told you not to be reckless." She whispered faintly. She willed her body to relax, but it took her a moment.

Elena was about to yell at him, but she couldn't muster the steam. She was suddenly incredibly, incredibly tired. Tired of fighting him, tired of fighting her own body. She slumped against the side of the car, putting one hand to her head.

"Hey, don't do that. Cheer up. Everyone's fine. Happy ending." Damon took a step closer to her, concerned.

"What's wrong?"

"What's wrong is you don't listen to me. Ever. Here I am, forced to listen to your every word, and you're free to ignore me and charge off into situations that could get you killed." Elena was exhausted mentally, physically, and emotionally. She felt truly dead. She needed something stable, something to ground her in the middle of all of this turmoil. She needed him, her closest friend and supporter, and he had bound her physically and wouldn't listen to a word that came out of her mouth.

Damon stood there awkwardly, trying to figure out her erratic behavior. Elena needed to get away from him and his 'safe distances' just then.

"You can wait for Jeremy inside. I'm going to go to bed." Elena started walking towards the house.

"Elena!" Damon raised his voice, but she kept walking. He didn't follow her. She shrugged off her coat inside and stumbled up the stairs to her bedroom.

"Goodnight, Jer. Damon is downstairs when you're ready." She mumbled as she passed him.

"'Night Elena."

Damon stood there, watching Elena's slumped and retreating back, trying to decipher what had just happened. He had never seen her so depressed, too depressed to even yell at him. All the energy had just seeped out of her right before his eyes.

Vampire emotions were really not sitting well with her. Damon turned to leave, thinking that the safest course of action. He shouldn't do it. He really shouldn't try to comfort her, not when she was in her bedroom. That was very dangerous territory for them. Her empty eyes haunted him, though.

She's bound by the sire bond, she can't do anything. Don't be a dick just because you're afraid to lose control.

He vamped up to her room, avoiding the younger Gilbert's suspicions. She was rifling through a drawer looking for pajamas. She didn't even look up when he stopped by her.

"What?" She asked, quiet. Her movements were so heavy, so lifeless. He recognized that deep hopelessness. He had felt it on more than one occasion. In the beginning he used to slow down to an almost catatonic state, unable to feed or move for days as he thought about the loneliness of an eternity without Katherine. But time had turned him bitter and he learned to channel it into the hunt, the kill. He hadn't had anyone to save him from it, but he was here now and he wouldn't let Elena be buried in it. The loneliness had made a monster out of him. Until her.

"What can I do?" He asked, gentle.

She slowly shut the door and started to undress. This time there was nothing sexual about it. She just didn't care anymore.

"Just leave, Damon. You've made it clear that there's nothing more you're willing to do for me right now." She turned away from him and unbuckled her bra, slipping her tanktop on over her head. Damon felt helpless.

"If there's anything I can do to make you happy, I'll do it."

"No you won't." Elena pulled her shorts on, flipped the light switch, and climbed slowly into bed. "Just go."

"Try me."

Elena rolled onto her side, facing away from him. She was very still. It became clear that she was going to ignore him until he left, but there was no way he could leave her in this state.

He walked to her bed and sat down on the bed sheets, rubbing her knee through the comforter. She didn't look at him.

"Elena. Talk to me."

She closed her eyes and lay very still, not saying a word.

"Anything you ask me to do, I promise to do."

"You break your promises." She mumbled despondently.

"Not tonight. Not when you're like this." He squeezed her knee. She turned to face him, her eyes bitter, challenging.

"Then make love to me."

Damon froze. He should have known.

"That's what I want." She rolled back on her side and closed her eyes, dismissing him.

"Ok." The words slipped past his lips, a whisper in the dark.

Elena's eyes opened and she turned to face him. She was searching his face, looking for a hint of duplicity. She must not have found it because she sat up, her apathetic expression changing into something that might appear on a living woman. She didn't say anything, she just looked at him with intensity, waiting for him to take it back.

He swallowed.

"Look, I have to drive Jeremy back. But later tonight, I'll come back to see you."

"Really?" She whispered, hope evident in her voice. Her eyes had light in them again.

"Really."

I'm caving again. I warned you that I'm weak willed with my schedule. Um, not even going to attempt to date the next update. Check back in a couple of hours, lol. This story is like crack to update. Oh, and I agree, Stefan is totally a black zebra and an Uh Oh oreo (though I kind of wish Damon could be the Uh Oh oreo, because that sounds adorable). Thanks for playing my reviewing game XD!