No one says anything during our drive back home. We fill Caroline and Jeremy in while waiting for his burger. He eats it in the car. Damon doesn't look too happy about it, his eyes are glued to the greasy bag and filthy napkins and there are multiple stains on his mind. Possibilities he will have to clean afterwards. Jeremy doesn't seem to notice, and if he does, he just doesn't care.

Caroline had few questions, once none of us had answers to, so she stopped asking them. She's probably trying to come up with answers of her own. Or maybe she's thinking about Tyler or literally anything else. With Caroline, you never know. We could find ourselves in the middle of apocalypse and she would be thinking about what she's going to wear at the post apocalypse party and are any of the stores going to survive so she can go shopping. If you don't know Caroline Forbes, but learn this fact about her, you might think she's shallow, but the truth is, this is what makes her wonderful. The way she slides through life. See, it really doesn't matter if she's thinking about clothes or make up or coffee during the apocalypse, because she's thinking about what comes afterwards. She believes this, whatever is happening at the moment, will end, and make place for better things to come, like parties and shopping and lazy Sundays with cups and cups and cups of coffee. She's an eternal optimist.

I check on Elena few times in the rear view mirror. She's looking through the window, her eyes empty, her look blank. I want to crawl into her mind just to see is she thinking in secret, without letting anyone know. I don't even want to know what she's thinking about, I just want to know if she's present or not.

I wonder where Bonnie is. Is she here, with us? Or is she using some other traveling device to get home? Can she just appear wherever she would like, in matter of seconds? Maybe she's in Hawaii now, sunbathing and drinking cocktails. All she needs to do is blink and she will be back in Mystic Falls. Or maybe she's sitting in Jeremy's lap or the hood of the car, because she's always there with us. For us.

When we get home, the first thing I do is check on Katherine. It's 2 A.M and Matt is sleeping on the couch. Elena wakes him up and tells him he can go home, which he gladly does. I don't think he feels comfortable here, or that he ever will.

Katherine is asleep as well, but I don't wake her up. I tell myself it's because she looks so comfortable, but the truth is, there's nothing to talk about with her. I could tell her what we found out, which isn't much, but other than that, I have nothing to say to her.

I can't give her what she wants, or what she needs, especially if those two are the same thing.

She said she will wait, and if she were still a vampire, then maybe I would let her. I know I have to let Elena go, but that's easier said than done. You don't just wake up one day and stop loving someone, no matter how much they had hurt you. Love usually is pain in the ass anyway, but when someone loves you back, it's worth it. You're in it together. This way, it's just pain on top of a much larger pain. It's not like I'm letting anyone know that I still love her, I'm not acting like I am, nor am I pursuing her, but I can't hide from my own thoughts and feelings. I know what I know and I feel what I feel, and there's no point in denying it.

But, I don't want to be with her, even if she suddenly changed her mind. I don't want her to be mine anymore, because now I know how badly it hurts when she leaves. It's like someone cutting you open and filling your body with water and rocks and every time you move you feel something poking at your insides and you feel like you can't move no more, because if you do, you're going to explode and there will be nothing left of you. The truth is, I'm afraid of having her again.

Maybe, in a century or two, if she comes to me and tells me she wants to give it another shot, I would agree to it. Maybe then, maybe out of love or respect for what we had or sheer curiosity can we make it work for the second time.

The thing is, I don't think she will, not now, not in a year and not in a century from now, so I have to let her go. That doesn't mean I will stop loving her, I don't think that will ever happen. But I have to stop allowing her ripping me open from the inside every time I lay my eyes on her.

I have to learn how to be in the same room with her without the weight of nostalgia pressing at my chest. I have to learn how to stop thinking about kissing her because I don't really want to kiss her for the sake of kissing her, but because I feel like I deserve a proper goodbye. Because I can't remember the last time I kissed her, and I want to remember that because maybe then, the door will fall closed.

You never do know, though, which time will be your last.

So I have to let her go, for my sake.

And Katherine can't wait for me to let her go. She doesn't have time to wait, not anymore. Maybe, if she did have a forever, I would knock on her door few years from now and tell her that we can try to make this happen, just maybe, because the ghost of our former relationship is still haunting me. I do believe I loved her, and I do believe that she loved me, I just don't believe we were right for each other or that we ever will be. There's too much history and some history is not supposed to be put on repeat. Most importantly, she was running for such a long time, from her enemies, from herself. It's time to stop. It's time for her to have a real life. And who knows, maybe in this lifetime, she finds someone she will love so much that nothing will scare her enough to run away from him.

But that person is not me.

Sometimes I wish I could go way back, to 1864, to the boy I was back then. I wish I could ask Katherine not to run. I wish she wasn't a vampire and that she loved me still and that we built a life together. I never used to wish this before, because if it were to happen, I would have never met Elena, and that's simply not a chance I ever wanted to take. Now, I would have no problems with traveling back to the past and leaving everything behind. Having my memory wiped clean.

At the same time I wonder, would I feel the pit in the back of my stomach, indication that something is missing?

I do not know, nor I ever will. But I do know that I have to let both Elena and Katherine go, in different ways and for different reasons.

I'm a mess, a bigger mess than I care to admit to myself and to the people around me, and I don't want to infect others with my mess. I may be drowning in it, but I'll be drowning in it alone.

In a way, I never left that box. Part of me is still in there, under the lake, drowning. I left a piece of me there, and I wonder where did I leave some other pieces I can't even remember were a part of me.

When I come downstairs I catch Caroline slumped on the couch Matt was sleeping on when we came home. I walk over and take a seat next to her and we sit there in silence for quite some time. Silence that fills the room is not uncomfortable at all, it's natural. We're not not talking, we're just whispering and not even the walls can hear us because our words are so light that air can't lift them.

"Some crazy shit, eh?" she says, bumping her knee into mine.

"A bucket full of shit."

"We're so deep in shit, it reaches our necks."

"And there's no shovel to get us out."

We both laugh at the horrific situation we're in, in the situation we were in million of times before and we laugh because the only other choice are tears out of fear this is the time we're not getting out of it so easily. Our laughter becomes hysterical.

I only laugh when I'm with Caroline because she's the only one who can make me laugh from the top of my lungs, until every inch of the skin on my face is so stretched out that it hurts. If you don't feel like this every time you laugh, what's the point in doing it?

We laugh until we end up with open lips but no sound coming out of our throats.

"So," she puts the laughter in a plastic bag and stomps on it. The sound it makes is terrible, it almost makes my ears bleed, "What are we going to do now?"

I try not to look her in the eyes. "I have no idea, but we can't tell him that there's no way for him to find a way to the woman he loves. That's literally the only thing he wants to do."

"We should run."

"Run where?"

She ponders on it for a moment or two, her lips wiggling.

"New York!" she finally exclaims.

"Now York?"

"Sure," she nods enthusiastically, like we're going to pack our bags, sit in a car and drive as soon as she finishes this sentence, "We can star on Broadway. I can sing, you can dance.."

I cock my eyebrow at her questioningly.

"Or awkwardly slump behind me with a handsome brood."

That sounds more like it.

"We don't age, we would be a real attraction."

"Maybe we should join the circus then."

"Or bake cupcakes."

"Cupcakes?" after all this time she can surprise me like no one else.

"Cupcakes make everything better," she sighs. Cupcakes used to make everything better. I have no idea how they taste like, I come from before their time. I have a feeling Caroline is forgetting as well.

"I tell you what," I put my hand on her knee, shaking her lightly, "If we get out of this alive, we're baking cupcakes."

She's serious for a moment, and then a mischievous grin appears on her face. "I'm so getting you an apron."


Caroline falls asleep as soon as I leave the room to check on Katherine again. When I come back downstairs she's sleeping on the couch, her knees pressed into her chest. She looks uncomfortable, so I take her in my arms, and this time she doesn't put a fight like she did the last time, and I take her to one of the guest rooms.

I leave the house and sit on the short wall in front of the house, waiting for sunrise.

Sky is black, and when you're not paying attention it turns dark blue. Like someone poured water on it to make the color lighter.

The same water washes away our dreams about running away. We can't run away, we're not allowed to, we're our own prisoners.

The sky becomes purple and it swallows all the stars. I wonder where they go during the day.

I wish running away is possible, from everything. Maybe to some other world, where we're not people we are or the people we pretend to be. Maybe somewhere there are different versions of us who are living much different, better, easier lives.

However those people are, they're not us, because this, all this mess, is what makes us us.

I love this part, when dark sky becomes a masterpiece. There are so many colors on it now, yellow, orange, red, white, lilac. All of them are mashing together into a big, shiny ball which will soon turn out to be the sun.

Door open and close behind my back.

I can feel her. That's the worst part, how she lives inside of me and I can't get her out. Maybe I could try to cut her out, but she's too spread, like a disease. She's a non existent beat of my heart and a tree whose branches are wrapping around my lungs and she's a tiny person trying to rip my skin open from the inside. She's a melody I hear every waking moment.

I think that's the worst part, the fact she never leaves me, even when I try to wash her down with blood and water and poisonous words. She clings onto me and I scream why why why when it was her choice to leave.

They are wrong. Blood is not my weakness.

Elena Gilbert is.

I am addicted to her.

Her skin smells like vanilla and almond and it's the softest thing you will ever feel.

Have you ever been in love?

Her hair smells like strawberry and sometimes it's softer than her skin.

Have you ever fell out of love, but no completely? It's like hanging off a cliff, clinging onto the ground with your toes.

Her kisses taste like happiness and there's love sipping from her fingertips and she's more human that anyone you will ever meet even when she's not human.

I wanted to be great for her, but instead I wasn't enough.

If you were ever in love then you know memories are like oxygen, and you would never give them up. You might talk big, but memories are what keep you alive.

"Hey," she sits on the wall next to me.

Earth opens and swallows me whole. I wish. Nothing is ever that easy in life.

So I choke the word out, "Hey."

This woman used to be the only person I could tell everything that's on my mind to. When did things become so awkward between us? When did we become strangers?

I want to fold myself in the sheets of her life and find all that hiding places on her body where she can carry me like I carry her. Maybe it will be easier if we carry each other.

I wonder does she carry me at all anymore.

"Katherine asleep?"

I look at her. She's staring at the sky. She loves sunrise as well.

She understands sunrise. Not many people do. She knows what it means when the sky swallows the moon and the stars and spits them out on the other side of the world, doing the same with our sun. She understands how things begin and end.

That's why we used to watch the sunrise together, because we both understood it, but never talked about it.

"Yeah," I answer as shortly as possible.

This is the first time she said anything to me since the whole Katherine incident, unless we count that weird time jump we did in our heads. Which I don't. Because it wasn't real. It was our minds playing with us.

"Damon?" I ask out of politeness. I can't believe we're actually talking about it.

She just nods, her look still glued to the upcoming sunrise.

Silence between Elena and me used to be as comfortable as the one between Caroline and me. Now it's just awkward and hard and it weighs more than the whole universe.

"Are you happy?" I ask. I don't remember planning to ask this question, but I do. Words simply slip out of my mouth. Maybe because I'm curious. Maybe because I want her to say yes and no at the same time.

If she's happy without me then maybe I can be happy without her.

It takes her a long time to answer, and when she does, she doesn't even look at me. Or maybe she's looking at me in all the ways I can't see. "Yes," there's a smile on her face. Not a forced one to prove her point, but a genuine, soft smile she paints on her face whenever she feels at ease. "I am happy," her lower lip quivers because the truth scares her, because she's afraid the truth will hurt me even though I'm the one who asked the question. I demand the truth. "But sometimes, I'm completely and utterly unhappy," and now, she locks her look on mine, and I can tell she's telling the truth. She's not crying, her eyes are not even glossy with tears or pain, they're empty of any emotion. "Sometimes I go back to being that girl who lost her parents and had no one to talk to because no one understood. Why do you think that is?"

I keep looking at her, and I see it too. That girl I met a couple of years back. "Because that girl is a part of you."

With time, you scatter yourself in places you go through and in people you know. People who die and people who never will. You leave a part of yourself with them, because as time goes, it becomes hard to carry so many things all by yourself, so you give them to other people, because that's who you are at the moment, and because that's who they love. And when you meet them again in a couple of years, and you are a completely different person, but they will still see you the same as you were back then, because that part of you lives in them. You planted it there, it was just a small seed, but they watered it with tears and memories and sadness and you grew into a tree with wide branches and bright leaves. Maybe I will always see Elena as the girl she was when I met her, even though she's someone else now. She gave that girl to me, she gave me the stories and tears and everything she felt at the moment.

I guess that's how you stay alive, growing in other people.

But you see, you can give yourself to someone else, but a part of who you were will always stay with you. You give someone a candy, but the wrapper stays with you, rustling in the wind.

"Once upon a time you were that girl. You still are that girl, you just left all the sadness and emptiness behind. You're a shell, and now you're filled with new things, like happiness and nostalgia," I take a deep breath, I pretend that air is my friend and not a cautious person who walks on the other side of the street when they see me walking down the road, "Whenever I look at you, I see that girl. I see all the sadness you carried in you, and all the stories you never told to anyone but me. And then I blink and that sadness disappears because that's how I see you as well, because that's who you are. I see you smiling. We change Elena, everyday, but we never lose ourselves, because people in our lives never forget who we were, so we don't either. You will never see me as a human boy, playing catch with Damon, but Katherine will because that's the person she met. And I won't ever see you as a small girl riding her bike down the street, like Caroline does, because I never met that girl."

She stays silent. We're looking at each other.

Sometimes you love people, but you still let them go, because you've been tied together for such a long time and both of you are dying to fly separately, or with someone else.

I will never stop loving Elena Gilbert, because she left that girl who loved me in me. And maybe, by some chance, she won't ever stop loving me because I left that boy in her. And maybe she already stopped loving me because I never left that boy, I still am him.

However it is, she had let me go, and the reason to why she did so really doesn't matter anymore because what's done is done.

It's time for me to do the same.

"We fight a lot, Damon and me," she tells me, "We rarely see an eye to eye when it comes to most things. He keeps things from me and I keep things from him. Our relationship, it's not something I ever thought I will find myself in."

I don't know why she's telling me this but a masochistic part of me is glad that she is. Ask for more, ask for more, that part is saying.

Their relationship is a polar opposite of what we had, and I wonder does she like it more, because it's full of these things that present a challenge. Our challenges were so hard and exhausting, these are every day ones, and I don't know if that makes a relationship harder or easier.

"Do you ever regret it?" Stupid, stupid, stupid.

She looks at me with surprise, but then her look softens, as if she can see why would I ask such a question. "No," she exhales loudly, "It was my choice. It still is my choice. Despite everything, I love him," she tries to take those words back in, I can see panic in her eyes. "I'm sorry, it's unfair from me to be telling you this.."

"No," I shake my head, "I'm the one who asked." I'm the one who wanted to know.

I know she loves him, hearing her say it doesn't change anything. I've heard her say it before, and that's when it became real. She can say it million times more and it won't change anything, because I can hear it, it's a hum in my mind, since the first time I've heard it.

She can keep saying it, she doesn't have to say it ever again, it hurts all the same.

"Our relationship was so hard. We had life threatening problems on top of normal problems which every relationship brings, but neither of us complained, because it was worth it. And then," she shrugs, like there's no better explanation, and I know there isn't but it all sounds so simple when it shouldn't, "Life happened. We went through something difficult, and we never got time to adjust to it. New things came when we were at our weakest and they knocked us down. We fell apart. We always did, but somehow, we fell closer to each other. This time.." her voice is hoarse and hard, and for the first time I realize this isn't easy for her either.

She loved me. It hits me, it hits me for the first time. She loved me and she lost me and just because she found someone else doesn't mean I don't still live inside of her, not as someone who loved her, but as someone who she loved.

"You rolled away from me," I finish her sentence for her. Someone helped her get up on her feet while I was still lying on the ground and we just broke apart.

"I made a choice I believed is right, I still do, because I'm happy. And maybe one day I won't be this happy, but I won't ever regret it, because I won't have to ask myself what if. What if I never tried, what if I never allowed myself to go for it."

In a way, I understand that. Doesn't mean I'm happy or okay with it, but I respect her decision and her choice and I respect her.

Because she's right, as simple as it sounds. Life happens. Wind started blowing too hard when both of us were asleep and it blew her away from me. It blew her away to someone else and I really can't blame her for it. I can't blame her for falling in love with someone else because these things are out of our control.

And if I really want to move on, I have to accept this.

I have to stop being angry at her for leaving, and I have to stop blaming her for hurting me, because on a subconscious level, I always knew she has feelings for him. I just chose to ignore it, or to believe her when she promised me always.

"We really do need to figure out all of this crazy shit that's been happening lately," I say because there's nothing else to talk about.

She laughs because she understands. "Yeah, we do."

Silence overpowers us once again, but this time it's not awkward, even though it's still not pleasant either, but I don't have any more questions to ask and she doesn't have any more answers to the questions she knows I want to ask.

"Friends?" she asks.

I shift my attention from the sunrise to her, and smile. "Friends."

If I'm going to try to convince myself I'm over her, then at least I could do is start acting like it.

She's gone. The wind blew her away in places I can't reach.

So when the wind stops blowing, I know I can't go and search for her, even though I would turn upside down every corner of this planet looking for her.

So I just lay on my back, and rest.

And I let her go.


ELENA'S POV

I am selfish.

I am selfish because I love Damon and I love Stefan for all the different reasons. I'm selfish because I'm with Damon, but I miss how things used to be when I was with Stefan. I miss all the things Damon can't make me feel but Stefan could, and if I were with Stefan I would miss all the things Damon was able to provide me with, that simply weren't in Stefan's nature.

Stefan made me feel safe, he made me feel like I'm at home no matter where we were. But it was never in his nature to just grab me and kiss me like Damon does. He was always so gentle.

Sometimes I miss that gentleness. I miss being asked for license to penetrate my heart.

I am selfish because I don't want Stefan to let me go, and I can't cling on to him like I used to.

I'm not sure when things changed. I'm not even sure they did change. Maybe everyone have to go through this. Through this carefree period of their life. When I was with Stefan I couldn't stop thinking about the future, I couldn't stop worrying about the future and how to make him a part of my life even when I grow old and find a job and want to start a family. I wanted him to be a part of my future so badly that I kept rushing into it, towards the things that are yet to come, just to prove to myself that this will work. That one day he won't be a vampire, but a boy I fell in love with, and that together we will make a choice on how to spend the rest of our lives. Then I became a vampire and things seemed so easy. We can be together forever now.

When did I decide that I don't want a forever with him? I don't remember making this decision. I don't remember throwing our future away.

I just know that one moment I loved him and then the other I stopped. Damon replaced him in my heart so quickly, it seemed like a second.

I still wonder, if it never were for the sire bond, would Stefan and me still be together? Standing side by side, stronger than ever? Or would things still play out like this? Would I be with Damon, breaking Stefan's heart each day a little bit more?

I just know that one day it was like I suddenly woke up and I remembered to love Stefan again, but I just couldn't un-love Damon. So I continued loving both, feeling guilty for wanting to be with one more than the other.

But it's different with Damon. With him, I don't think about the future, because right now, future doesn't exist. It's infinite, it's an unknown term.

I am selfish because I'm not ready to let Stefan go.


CAROLINE'S POV

I overhear Stefan and Elena's conversation. I woke up in a strange bed. Stefan probably took me to one of the guest rooms. The urge for a cup of coffee is too big. I attack the Salvatore kitchen, but no luck. Apparently no one in this house has appreciation for little brown magic beans.

It's not like I was eavesdropping. It's impossible to control this heightened vampire hearing and Caroline natural curiosity.

Stefan's love for Elena is not even in question here. Does he think I can't notice what he's trying to do? How hard he's trying to forget her? He's a freaking mess, deep down. He's still in that box in the bottom of a lake, trying to keep himself from dying. He's just ignoring that by burying all these feelings deep down inside of himself, as if he pushes them in his heels, they won't exist anymore.

Tick-tock goes the clock. Or an Stefan emotional fused bomb.

And when he explodes it will be nothing like when you hit a pinata. No candies or rainbows. There will be blood and pieces of glass cutting through our skin.

But that's not the point, at least not right now, at least not in this situation or in the words that leave both of their mouths. Elena's love for Stefan is what's in question here.

When I say Damon and Elena aren't going to work out, it's not because I think Damon is a vermin who feeds on other peoples misery, but because those two are simply too different to work out. People say opposites attract, and that may be, but Damon and Elena are basically a different species of people. And when they leave the honeymoon phase of their relationship and enter the real world, face problems Stefan and Elena had to face, they will see for themselves how nonfunctional they actually are. You can love someone all you want, for whatever unknown reasons, but sometimes two people just don't have that something to make it work.

Elena can't let Stefan go. And not because she's a selfish, sex hungry piranha who wants to take two rides at the same time. At this moment, Elena is a middle aged man who gets a shiny, new BMW. You know how guys with middle age crisis love those shiny things, right? They're badass and they make them feel young. And let me tell you something, those men really do love those cars, they love everything about them, even their faults.

But one day, doesn't matter after how much time, they see how unfit that car is for them. They see they're not 20 year old anymore, trying to impress ladies. They see the cars faults as they are - as faults. They see how much gas it spends and how his whole family's luggage can't fit in the trunk when they go on a vacation.

Stefan grew into Elena's skin. He's a blood cell in her veins, circling through her body. He's her home even when they're miles away from each other. He loves her in such a gracious way.

And these weird ass voodoo dreams she's been having of him drowning, their inexplicable time leaps just prove that there's something bigger connecting them. The universe wants them together, it's screaming at them to love each other until the world falls apart, but right now both of them are too distracted to hear it.

Damon had to crawl his way into Elena's heart. Somehow, he did it. It's an inexplicable phenomenon.

But Stefan, he was always there. He started growing in her heart from the moment she took her first breath. And she's holding onto him. She's still holding onto him.

And Damon's either too stupid or too blind to notice it, if not both. Or maybe he just doesn't want to notice it, or maybe he's ignoring it. But if I can notice it, he must be able to notice it as well.

Because Damon is holding onto Elena as well. He has his fingers gripped around her so tightly, out of fear that she will fly away. And Elena is holding onto Stefan, maybe even unconsciously.

She's staring at his name in her phone, thinking about calling him, wanting to call him, fearing of calling him. She looks at the picture of two of them, one she kept because she had no heart to delete like the rest of them, and she looks at it a moment too longer than she's supposed to. She looks at him like that in person as well, when she thinks no one can notice. He does the same.

There's an invisible cord between them, tying them together, and whenever one goes too far away from another, the cord starts pulling at the others heart, where the knot is. It's painful. It's shattering their whole being. It screams for them to come back.

You could break every bone in Elena's body. You could melt her skin. You could shatter her with a hammer. She would glue her bones back together and she would knit her skin back into place and she would pick up the shattered pieces of her body and she would drag herself over to Stefan.

And she would hold onto him with the little strength she has, broken and destroyed, she would hold onto him.