Our Eternity Begins
DG32173

Sarah: welcome to Chapter 2 of Our Eternity Begins. I'm inspired so no more talking from me. Here are the review replies and the chapter.

REVIEW REPLIES

HoneySexy: yeah, Elena had to stand up for herself with Bonnie. She's royally pissed at her. As for your question about Caroline, that will be answered this chapter. Enjoy.

Leann Nickerson: questions about Caroline will be answered this chapter. I hope you like it. Glad you enjoyed the first chapter so much.

amazing Aisha: yes, indeed. Elena's letting her inner fire burn hot and fierce. Here's the update.

shnicky87: you'll see the answers to your questions as the story plays out. Your question about Caroline will be answered this chapter. Hope you enjoy the chapter.


Chapter 2
Caroline

Damon and I rush to the hospital, taking our feet since the Camaro is still parked at The Grill where Damon had left it last night before the parade. I can finally see what it's like to run at vamp speed, no longer having to close my eyes as the world moves swiftly by. My human eyes would never have made out any details at the speeds we're traveling, but my new vampire eyes see every dust mote we pass with perfect clarity.

But I have no chance to simply enjoy the experience of finally know what it's like to be a vampire. Caroline's in trouble and I'm too caught up in my worry for her to enjoy such simple pleasures. We make it to the hospital within minutes of leaving the boarding house, though it's on the other side of town. I have a feeling that Damon could have arrived even faster, being an older vampire, but he was letting me have my first vamp run.

We slow down in the parking lot, making sure no one is around to see us suddenly 'appearing' out of seemingly thin air. When we get to ICU, we learn that John, surprisingly, is here as well, having had his fingers cut off last night in our kitchen, including the finger that held his eternity ring. I neither know nor care how that happened. I will deal with both him and Isobel at a later point for what they put me through. But right now I'm focused on Caroline.

When we get to her room, we find Sheriff Forbes coming out, tears of worry in her eyes. "Elena, Damon, I'm so glad you're here," she says, falling into our arms.

"I'm so sorry we couldn't arrive any sooner. We had only just found out this morning," I say softly.

"How is she?" Damon asks.

"Not good," Sheriff Forbes says, her voice filled with pain. "She's got massive internal damage. Right now she's in a drug-induced coma but the doctors don't know if she's ever going to wake up, or even make it through another night."

I exchange a brief look and an even briefer emotional conversation with Damon. He nods, giving me permission to do what I feel needs to be done. "C'mon, Liz, let's let Elena have some time with her best friend. You need a break. I'll buy you a cup of coffee in the cafeteria," he says, wrapping an arm around Sheriff Forbes' shoulder and guiding her down the hall.

I slip into Caroline's room and wince at the sight of my battered best friend. I vamp to the bed and bring my wrist to my mouth, breaking open a vein before pressing the wound to Caroline's mouth. I stroke her throat gently to encourage her to swallow the blood. I only let her have a couple of swallows before pulling away. I quickly clean the blood from her lips and then sit in the chair Sheriff Forbes' had recently vacated, holding her hand between both my own.

Within a few minutes, Damon sends me an emotional warning that he and Sheriff Forbes are on their way back. I send him the emotional equivalent of a green light, letting him know I've already completed my task.

Within minutes, they're back. I vacate my chair for Caroline's mother. She sinks into it wearily. I place a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry, Sheriff Forbes. I think Caroline will be okay. She's even looking better now than she did when I first came in the room," I tell her encouragingly. "She's a fighter. She'll pull through."

She examines Caroline for a moment. "You're right. She does look a little better," she admits. She clasps my hand briefly. "Thanks for giving me a break, Elena. You're a good girl." She pauses a moment. "If you haven't already, you should go see your uncle."

I keep my grimace at her words strictly internal. I can't let Sheriff Forbes know how much I despise John. "I will," I say.

Since the ICU staff have rules about only two people being with any one patient at any given time and Damon and I don't want to be separated for very long after the events of last night, we bid farewell to Sheriff Forbes and leave the room. Making my decision to deal with John now rather than later when he's better able to defend himself, I sigh and turn to head deeper into the ICU, towards John's room. "You sure?" Damon asks softly, not yet realizing I've made my decision, only knowing that I'm going to 'visit' my uncle.

I nod. "I told Sheriff Forbes I would," I say just as softly. "I just didn't say what I would do to him next time I saw him."

Damon follows me down silently down the hall, not sure yet what I have planned. As I walk, I keep an eye out for anything that would help me with my purpose. Thankfully, a few doors down from John's room, I spot a nurse filling a syringe with a large dose of a heart medicine. My plan falls into place when the nurse is called away and leaves the syringe behind.

Healthy hearts like John's can't handle having heart medicine given to them, particularly not such a large dose. Sure, the medical staff of the ICU may be able to revive him, but having a heart attack will leave him incredibly weakened for the rest of his life. And I may just luck out and be able to successfully kill him. I grab the syringe as we pass it, tucking it into my pocket. I sense Damon's immense approval of my plan and know he will support me in this.

We slip silently into John's room to discover he's asleep. He always was a late riser. I use my new vampire abilities to stealthily move closer to his bed, close enough to lay my hand on his shoulder. He jerks awake. Upon seeing me, he stares in terror and starts to panic. But I'm standing between him and the call button. "Look what you did to me," I snarl, vamping out. "You did this. You, Isobel, and Bonnie. None of you could let me be happy with the one who made me happiest. And because of you three, I'm now immortalized as a vampire who looks nearly identical to Katherine. All her enemies will now come after me. I warned you and Isobel that you would both pay a price if you went through with using the device. I'm sure you think the price was 'losing' me to becoming a vampire. That's where you're wrong." I pull out the syringe and I see renewed terror flood his gaze. "This is the price you will both pay: death."

John tries to grab the syringe but his measly human body is too slow to keep up with even a newborn like me. He's too slow to prevent me from plunging the syringe into the IV and draining the entire syringe into the tube that will carry it into his bloodstream. At my cue, Damon switches places with me to make sure John can't press the call button for help. I drop the syringe in the container for disposing of used sharps.

John manages to get two words out before his heart gives out. Two words that make Damon and I realize that we still won't be getting a respite from craziness: "Katherine's back."

As he has his heart attack, I go to the door leading into the hall, using my worry about Katherine and her games as a way to fake worry for John. "Help! My uncle's having a heart attack!" I call into the hall as the alarms within his heart monitor start shrieking.

Nurses and doctors rush in to save him, shoving me and Damon into the hall. But I had made sure to wait until it was too late to save him before calling for help. The doctors and nurses then try to resuscitate John but that fails, too, for whatever reason. I'm glad. Saves me from having to track him down later to kill him for the hell he has put me through.

John Gilbert is pronounced dead at 10:38am the day after Founder's Day, leaving behind just me and Jer. He hadn't even had time to change his will after my transition into a vampire. As for the way Damon and I think of it, one down, one to go.

That evening, while Damon and I are lazing about in bed, totally getting our money's worth of supposedly 'grieving' the death of my 'uncle' to skip the last party of Founder's Month, I get a call from Bonnie.

"What do you want, Bonnie? I thought I made it clear to you I'm still pissed at you," I snap when I answer the phone.

"Where are you?" she asks, ignoring my words and my tone.

"I'm at home with Damon. Nobody expects me to be at the party, not after my 'uncle's' sudden heart attack just today," I reply shortly. "Not that it's any of your business."

Something about the worry in her voice as she says goodbye concerns me but I push it aside. "What do you suppose that was about?" Damon asks me as I burrow closer to him.

"Who cares?" I ask rhetorically. "I just want to spend the next twenty-four hours with you, pretending to grieve while really celebrating. Then we can go to the school festival tomorrow evening."

I can hear the smirk in his voice when he says, "Works for me."

The next evening

Answering my wish, Damon and I had spent the past twenty-four hours in bed together, only leaving when one of us needed to feed. We had reached an agreement to wait a few days before casting the spells Gemma had left us, give me time to adjust to being a newborn vampire without all the crazy superpowers those spells will give us.

We're now at the school festival and I'm enduring everyone's sympathies for the death of my 'uncle', none of them having the slightest clue I was the reason he died. Suddenly, Damon and I spot Caroline making her way into the school building. We exchange worried glances. Sheriff Forbes said she'd be released tomorrow. What's she doing here tonight?

We follow her, intent on cornering her to find out how she snuck out of the hospital. That's when we get a very nasty surprise. Caroline reveals in no uncertain terms that she is now a vampire, made one by Katherine just to give a message to us: "Game on."

As we're overcoming this news, Caroline vamps away. I can sense Damon wants to kill her because he doesn't want to train two newborns at the same time. But he can sense that I won't stand for it. Caroline is still my best friend. I chose to give her my blood, creating the opening for Katherine needed to turn her. As I can sense the sire connection he and I share, giving him limited control over me while he trains me, I can also sense the sire connection I share with Caroline.

That's a bond I won't cut short. Oh, but this greatly complicates things. We can't put off using those spells for much longer, not if Katherine is going to try to play her games with us. Does Katherine know I'm now a vampire? Or is she playing these games because she thinks I'm still human?

We manage to track down Caroline again, but only after she's made her first kill by mistake, draining the life from an injured carnival worker. That's when Bonnie finds us. She stares at the blood smeared around Caroline's mouth and down her shirt and gets angry. She tries to take her anger out on Damon, mistakenly assuming it's Damon's fault Caroline's like this.

I manage to stop her, telling her in no uncertain terms that it was my blood that turned Caroline, not Damon's, and that it was Katherine who killed her. I also warn Bonnie against ever going after Damon again, because she's down to her last chance. If she tries to kill Damon a third time, I will take her out myself.

Damon and I manage to get Caroline to agree to come to the boarding house with us for a few days for training. The barrier that had fallen in place when I had moved in as a human had disappeared the second my heart stopped beating when I died on Founder's Day.


Sarah: as you can see, this story is gonna follow the beginning of Season 2 a little bit. Not for long, mind you, but there will be some spoilers for Season 2. So, how did everyone like it? Review and let me know what you think.