Everything disappears, but only for a second or two.

When I step on the edge of the hole, something sucks me in. I feel like I'm inside of a vacuum, I'm falling and everything is moving so fast, too fast. I try to keep my eyes open, but it's useless, my eyes hurt too much and I have to close them. There's nothing to see, anyway, nothing but a blinding light. Then, I can feel it, the same electricity I felt when I first touched the crack on the fence of a bridge. It attacks my whole body, from head to toe, crawling inside, making my organs inflate. I have a feeling everything inside of me is too big for my body, I feel like I'm going to explode. The pressure becomes too much and it pushes me aside, like it did the last time..

The last time, on the bridge, when Elena and me were touching it. I feel like it was a million years ago.

Pressure takes me flying on the other side, I can feel my body turning as an unpleasant punch lands on my stomach. It feels like the punch made by an invisible fist glued my stomach to my back, like I no longer possess a human form, but now, I'm as flat as a sheet of paper.

I keep falling down, now in the opposite direction than before..

Before. I almost can't even remember it, like it was years ago, not a second ago.

Something sends me crashing down and I hit the ground which doesn't feel like ground at all. It feels soft, like rubber, but my back still hurt, since I fell on them. I felt like my spine is splitting my skin open, ready to escape my body. The pain disappears almost instantly, like I've healed already. I've never healed so fast before, it usually takes some time, a couple of minutes, depending on the size, and the intensity, of the wound.

I can't feel the white light protruding through my closed eyelids, trying to shovel my eyes right out of their sockets, so I conclude it's safe to open them to have a look around. I don't recognize this place.

It's small and big at the same time. I feel like I'm all alone here, but then, I also have a feeling like a lot of things are squeezed in here with me. One moment it's light in here and then, before I get a chance to close my eyes, it turns dark. I can't see anything. I can see everything. There's silence. There's a murmur of voices, all of them talking at once, their voices are overlapping like all of them are saying the same thing at the same time. Just when I think I can't smell anything, my nose is under attack by various scents, ones I enjoy and ones I despise.

My head hurts. Everything is happening too fast, but nothing is happening fast enough.

I feel like my brain is going to explode. It's too big for my head.

I close my eyes and try to turn off all of my other senses, the throbbing I feel inside of my head decreases, even though it's still present.

This place seems to be everything and nothing at the same time. There are too many things to see and feel and hear, but then, for a fragment of a second, there's nothing. Complete loneliness. I wonder how much of it I can handle before I go completely crazy, because I can already feel my mind slipping after a.. minute, year, century? Eternity?

I don't even know for how long I've been here.

I wasn't ready for this. I was ready to die, I thought the world wants me gone.

But I should have known better. I should have known that death sounds too peaceful, too painless, like a gift. Instead, I get to live in the torture that is my life. It never stops. The world doesn't want me gone, it just wants to laugh some more, so it had spit me here. Wherever this is.

I'm too curious. I'm too everything.

I'm also nothing.

I'm jumping from one extreme to another in the matter of.. argh, I can't tell.

I have to think. Harder. Less. Everything is moving too fast, even inside of my head.

I walked into a time hole, but I'm not dead. Or maybe I am, I don't know. Maybe this is hell, maybe this is where you go when you die. Or where people like me go when they die.

I don't think you're supposed to feel like this when you die, though. I don't think you're supposed to feel.. alive. Like you're still here, like you still exist. Like you can touch and love and just be here, or there, or wherever you want.

So maybe I didn't die. I didn't go back in time either. I'm not stuck in a moment.

I'm nowhere.

I start moving with my eyes closed. I feel like I'm walking on a rubber ball which keeps rolling. I walk and walk and walk but there's no other physical presence but me.

This is pointless, everything wants to come in, something is whispering to me to open my eyes, and because I'm so tired, because I have no strength to fight, I do it.

I open my eyes.

I let everything in.

ELENA'S POV

I'm not dead, is the first thing that comes to my mind when I open my eyes again. The sheer fact that I'm able to open my eyes one more time sends a jolt through my body and a smile creeps on my lips.

All of a sudden, I remember it all, things I didn't want to think about when I decided I'm going after Stefan. How surprised, and relieved, I was when I realized Jeremy doesn't want to stop me, just warn me. Tears in Caroline's eyes.

The look on Damon's face. Like I'm choosing Stefan over him, once again.

I'm not.

I'm choosing myself.

The moment I decided to follow him, I chose myself.

Because this is my mess as well. Mess I never wanted to create, but did anyway. Allowing Stefan to deal with it, to pay for the sins of our love by himself, would be purely selfish. Cowardly.

So I chose to be selfless. I chose to be brave. I chose to do the right thing not because it's expected of me, not because I have to do it, because, in fact, it is the right thing to do. Every choice defines us, who we are, who we will become. Every choice changes us, and it changes our life, irreversibly. So I chose myself, and it was a selfishly selfless choice, but I made it, no matter what it may bring.

I shake my head, making those thoughts go away. I can't deal with them right now. I don't have time to deal with questions and decisions and answers which will be required from me if I ever go back home.

I try to concentrate. I'm not dead, in fact, I feel very much alive. I feel like I'm standing in the middle of where everything is happening. Where things get born, and where they die. I can feel it going through me, like some sort of an energy, like I'm a portal.

It doesn't feel unpleasant, it feels magnificent, to feel everything. To feel thoughts and lives and creativity and things getting built. Even feeling bad things like death and tears and unhappiness seems kind of wonderfully overwhelming.

I know better than to think I'll get to enjoy this feeling for too long. After some time, feeling everything will start driving me crazy. Beautiful things tend to do that to people.

I look around myself. I'm standing in a room with bright, white tiles, a room that reminds me of a panic room. Across it, there are strings.

Thin, glistering, silver cords, stretching across the room, vertically, horizontally, diagonally. Some are so close that it seems that they're touching and some are so far, like for them, it's forbidden to touch. Out of some, smaller cords are coming out, like small branches coming out of the main tree branch. Some are stretching from a wall to wall, and some are lingering in the air, like someone had cut them off in the middle.

The sight in front of me seems so familiar, but not like I've seen it before, more like I've imagined it. Like I've seen it inside of my head.

I start walking towards the cords, hoping seeing them from a closer distance will trigger my memory. The closer I come, the better I can see what's inside of them. Even though they're incredibly thin, inside of them there's some kind of a fluid, and in that fluid small particles are traveling through the cord. They seem like moving pictures, but they're so small that I can see what's inside of them. They're moving too fast and the only thing I can see are flashes of figures.

The room is huge, I can't see the end of it, and something is telling me that I shouldn't be touching the cords. They seem so fragile, but so incredibly important.

So I turn around and start walking in the opposite direction, one I came from. Stefan is clearly not here, and I have to find him. I refuse to believe he's anywhere else, he has to be here, in the same place I am.

I walk for what I have a feeling are hours, but when I look back the cords are so close behind me, like I didn't move at all. I don't stop, though, because there's nothing else to do. At one point I touch the walls where there are no cords coming out of them, but nothing happens. They're as soft as pillows, but other than that, there's nothing out of ordinary. After some time the room starts shrinking, like the walls are coming in on me.

But they're not, the room is getting more and more narrow as I walk, until I find myself in a narrow corridor. My surroundings start getting darker, I get an unpleasant feeling in my stomach, like my insides are turning upside down, which is when I feel it. The same energy I've felt while touching the cracks, the more I walk, the more it's cutting through me. I swallow.

There's a strong wind, but I can't feel it on my body, just inside of my ears. The pressure reappears.

I make a step forward and I have a feeling it took my hours to just make that one small step. I step into the void, and everything is moving so fast in there, even though the only thing in it is me.

There's nothing else to move, but I can feel it, everywhere around me. It's confusing, it's too much, it's driving me crazy.

How I can feel and see and hear everything and nothing at the same time. It's unnatural to feel something so contradictory.

I look around myself, which is when I spot him. Stefan.

He's crouching there, in the blackness of things, in the big, black hole both of us are standing in. His head is in between his knees and he has his arms wrapped around himself. He looks like a ball, but I would recognize him anywhere.

"Stefan!" I yell loudly, from the top of my lungs, because one moment the silence is startling until the only startling thing is how much noise there actually is.

But he doesn't react. He doesn't even flinch.

I start walking towards him, fighting my way through everything and nothing, literally, towards him. When I come closer I say his name one more time, but no reaction this time either.

I finally reach him and drop on my knees in front of him. It's like he can't even see me or hear me or feel me. I wrap my fingers around his wrists and he whimpers. Has he been doing that for the whole time?

It sounds so shattering, cutting right through me, cutting through the emptiness around me, cutting through everything that surrounds us in this void.

"Stefan," I say his name again, this time more gently.

"Go away," he whimpers as I try to move his wrists away, nudging him to unwrap himself from his arms to look at me, "You're not real."

I furrow my brows before looking at him sympathetically. This place, it has a maddening effect on me and I've been here.. I can't tell for how long. I shake that thought off to focus on Stefan. God knows for how long he's been here.

He must have gone crazy.

"Of course I'm real," I'm trying to stay sane, I'm trying to keep everything away. We have to get out of here. I shake him lightly. "Look at me," I half plead, half command.

Surprisingly enough, he obliges. He moves his arms, my fingers still wrapped around his wrists, and looks at me. Those big, green orbs are glistening with tears.

His voice sounds so desperate, so lost, when he says my name. "Elena?"

You can walk across the world. You can jump from a planet to planet. You can get lost in the universe, you can cross realms. Hell, you can even get stuck in time and his face would still be the most hauntingly beautiful thing you have ever seen. The beauty, it's perplexing in its intensity.

I move my hands from his wrists and cup his face with my palms. His skin feels so smooth, silky from the trail of tears. I rub the tips of my thumbs over his cheeks.

"It's me, it's me," I say soothingly.

He shakes his head slightly like he can't allow himself to believe it's true, that I'm standing here, right in front of him. "It's been so long," he squeezes his eyes and I narrow mine, confused by what he's trying to say, "I've been here for years," he starts rambling like a crazy person, "Hundred years, million years, alone, all alone," I can feel him shaking.

The time in here, it's moving so fast, too fast.

"Stefan, it's only been minutes since we have seen each other," I try to reassure him.

"No!" he snaps, "I've been here.." he starts shaking his head confused, "I've been here for an eternity," he finally squeezes out through his teeth.

That's how it must have felt like for him, like we abandoned him all over again. He thinks he's been here for years, centuries, rather than minutes. It can't be longer than twenty minutes, I'm sure of it, I stepped in the hole not long after him.

I look at him sympathetically, but he averts his gaze.

It drove him insane, all those years alone, even if they were just inside of his head.

I have to get us out of here.

"We have to go," I nudge him, trying to pull him up with me as I get to my feet.

"Go?" he looks at me, his eyes showing nothing but a complete and utter surprise, "Go where? There's nowhere else to go!"

I don't have enough time to explain it to him. As I think this, I realize how ironic it sounds. There's plenty of time in here, too much of it, actually.

Instead, I say, "Trust me," because he always does. Maybe that's why I've taken him from granted so many times, because I always think I'll be able to count on him if things go the wrong way. The more I ponder over my choices, my decisions, my actions and words, the more I realize how selfish I've been, especially in these little things. Things people don't usually hold against you, but then those little things pile up..

He decides to trust me, though, and I manage to pull him to his feet. He wobbles a little, and I can feel how weak he is.

As we move towards the hallway I came out of, I wonder is it possible that he's hungry. I know I've been here only few minutes, but time took a different stroll on him, and if he thinks he's been here for years, is it possible that he also thinks he's starving, like he actually hasn't eaten in that much time. He looks the same as he did the last time I've seen him, no signs of blood deprivation, but he's awfully weak. I can feel it as we walk, like this is his first time using his legs, ever. Maybe that's due to the psychical exhaustion. Offering him my blood is always an option, and it would satisfy his hunger, if there's any to begin with. But what would be a meal for him, would be something close to a sexual experience to me. I don't know how I feel about offering my blood to him, and I don't know how he would react to my preposition.

I pull him into the hallway and push away thoughts about stopping. I know he's exhausted, he's barely keeping up with me, but I have to take us far away from that place. I can't risk him getting sucked in it again, it already did enough damage to him.

So we walk until we reach the cords, where he collapses and falls asleep.

He doesn't sleep for very long, few hours maximum, and in the meantime I study the cords.

When he wakes up, he seems disoriented, so I run over to him.

"Stefan?" I say his name gently, stopping only few steps away from him.

He looks up at me, tiredness overflowing his eyes. He rubs them with the tips of his thumbs. "Where are we?" he asks while trying to get to his feet.

I stay where I am, unsure of what to do. "You don't remember?" I ask, praying that's not the case because explaining it to him would be so complicated.

His hands drop from his eyes, which are wide now, wider than I've ever seen them. "What are you doing here? How did you get here?" he asks, his voice full of panic.

I pull my lips into a thin line. "I followed you."

The next time he speaks, the tone of his voice is intense and loud and full of shock. "You did what?"

I know better than to get offended by it because, let's face it, I haven't actually been a model citizen this past year, so I ask curiously, "Is that so hard to believe?"

He has no time for my pondering, or to tell me I'm not as bad of a person as I think I am. "No, I'm just wondering what could possibly make you do a stupid thing like that," I've never seen Stefan so angry, especially not with something I did. He has a lot of understanding for people, me being on the top of the list, but now, his face is red.

"Well," I cross my arms over my chest, narrowing my eyes at his heaving figure, "If I didn't do that stupid thing, you would still be in there, going through hell."

"Maybe I was there for a reason!" he shouts, "Maybe that's what I deserve!"

I don't know why I'm so surprised by hearing him say that. All he ever did was look down on himself. And I let him. I let him because I didn't want him to get a feeling I'm trying to change him. I wanted to show him that I love all of him, even the bad parts. "Is that why you jumped in?" now it's my time to raise my voice, "To punish yourself?"

He doesn't have an answer for me. Or he does, he just doesn't want to say it out loud. So he keeps staring at me.

"Do you think this is your fault?" I ask.

He answer doesn't surprise me, but the question following it does. "I think this is our fault," he corrects me, "Don't you?"

I wasted a lot of time on this question. Do I think this is our fault, or my fault? The truth is, it isn't anyone's fault. Sometimes, things just happen. I know that's the worst answer I could ever offer, but that's just how things are. Sometimes they happen for no reason, or because they pile on top of other things and everything just breaks. We never meant for it to happen. We never asked for it to happen. Somehow, we caused it, without meaning to. I mean, when a bomb explodes, who do you blame it on? Do you blame the bomb because it exploded, or do you blame the person who detonated it?

In our case, there is no right or wrong answer. It's just a clash of opinions, but if Stefan's opinion is hurting him and driving him to this, he has to change it.

"Isn't that why you jumped in here as well?" he asks another question when I stay silent for too long.

"No!" I finally say, "I didn't do it because I wanted to punish myself. I'm not blaming myself, or you, for what happened. And neither should you. I came here because of you, and I came here because of myself."

"Yourself?" he seems surprised.

"Because it was a right thing to do."

We stare at each other in silence for few moments until I finally say, "I know you don't want to die, Stefan. If you did, you would have killed yourself a long time ago. When things like this happen, you see them as an opportunity to cause yourself pain because you think that's the only thing you can offer to people. What about all the good things?" I'm not even sure why we're having this conversation right now, but I also feel like it's long overdue.

He looks appalled by my question. "I killed people!" he flinches as he says that.

"So have I! So have everyone we know! What about all the people you saved?" I contradict him.

A painful chuckle escapes him. "What, that makes it okay? A life for a life?" he looks at me like he can't believe what I'm saying.

"No. Things we did, we are responsible for them, and we will carry those things with us for the rest of our lives. And maybe this is us, paying for those things, and maybe the price will be much, much worse. People hurt people, in different ways and by different intensity, simply by not being careful with the words they choose to say or steps they choose to make. But that doesn't mean the good things don't count. I'm not saying they can erase bad ones.. but bad things can't erase good ones either."

He stares at me intently, then his look softens. "How can you still believe that, after everything?"

I sigh. "I have to. Because I want to live." I make few steps towards him, "And you?" I close the distance between us, "Do you want to live?"

I feel like some invisible force is pulling our bodies together, as if we're supposed to melt into one person. Maybe if we did, maybe if we squished our hearts together, we would manage to get it to beat, like a real, live, healthy heart.

I see something flash inside of his eyes before he answers, "I want to live."

AN: I'm sorry you had to wait so long for an update, but I hope you also liked this chapter, so maybe that can make up for the wait :)