New Beginnings
DG32173

Sarah: here's the sequel to The Woman I Love, which, like Our Eternity Begins (sequel to Setting Things Right), was started when I should have been working on Chapter 14, what the site calls Chapter 15, of the previous set, the chapters jointly called Miss Mystic Falls. But I'm not posting this story or Our Eternity Begins until the previous two are completed and the last chapters are posted and have been up for at least a day. Now, enjoy the sequel.

CREDIT
Credit goes to crzykittyfangirl for helping me make my stories the best they can be. Thanks so much.

DISCLAIMER
I own what I write. I own the prophecy that Damon and Elena will take part in during this sister-series. I own the powers that will be granted to them within this book that will last for the rest of eternity. I own the eternal mates bond that I have made up for my stories. If I own it, I will claim it before the chapter it appears in. If my beta or a reviewer inspires its creation, I will give credit to them prior to the chapter it appears in. Anything else is owned by someone else.

WARNINGS
As usual, this is rated M. But there will be much more than my usual smut that will cause the rating of this book. And some of that other stuff is much darker than my usual stuff. After all, we have to retrain Stefan in this book and get rid of his Ripper behavior permanently. That will be a long, grisly affair. You have been warned.

SUMMARY
Sequel to The Woman I Love. Elena has awakened from death as a newborn vampire, having sacrificed her human life to save Damon on Founder's Day. It is time for one more test of Fate, and this time Damon will be included in the test. It is time to make a choice on what to do about Ripper Stefan and follow through. Damon/Elena

REVIEW REPLIES TO LAST CHAPTERS OF THE WOMAN I LOVE

Leann Nickerson: glad you enjoyed The Woman I love and how I ended it. Yeah, Damon is smart enough that he would have had to figure out what Elena was hiding when she spoke her dying words. I just couldn't leave off with him not realizing the truth. Here's the new story.

HoneySexy: agreed. Here's the next in the series. Hope you enjoy it as much as you did the previous.


Chapter 1
She Awakens

During the long hours Elena is in the dead phase of transition, I lay next to her in our bed, holding her. Every so often, I check her stomach to see the progress of the healing that has to take place before she can wake up. Each time I see the wound, my fury is renewed and reinforced, fury towards both that Judgy little witch and Elena's birth parents.

Around midnight, I hear the doorbell ring. I leave it to Stefan to answer it. I recognized the car engine coming up the drive. I'll make the witch come to us so she can see with her own eyes what her judgy little ways have done. I reposition Elena so that she's facing the door, her ripped and bloody shirt on full display, the wound underneath not hidden in the least. It's healed a bit from what it had looked like when she had passed away in my arms, but it's still nasty-looking, showing off her internal injuries just as fully as the external.

I stay behind her on the bed as the witch cautiously makes her way to my room. Stefan had shut my door when he had left the room a few hours ago. There's a very timid knock on my door after the witch stands out there for a minute, gathering her courage to face the pissed off vampire.

"Only come in if you have a ring for Elena," I snarl where she can hear me.

She gulps. "I have a ring, but I can't enchant it until the sun is up," she says.

I contemplate this but decide that will have to do. "Fine. Come in and see what your judgy ways have done," I growl. She gulps again but resolutely opens the door. As soon as the door is wide enough open that she can see Elena fully, she gasps and covers her mouth with both hands, tears in her eyes as her gaze is fixed on the slowly closing hold in my girl's stomach. It's closing at a rate even the witch can see it, but it will still be a while before it heals completely. "Take it in, Judgy. Get a good hard look. This is what happened because of your lie. This is what happened to her because she couldn't stop what she knew would happen if we let you 'disenchant' that device. This is your fault, Judgy. It could have been prevented so very easily if you had just gone through with disenchanting it. She died in my arms because of your prejudices."

"I didn't know," she starts.

"No one did but her," I snarl. I'm exerting my considerable self-control to keep from lunging at her, as my inner vampire demands I do to the one responsible for what happened to my mate. It wouldn't do to kill her before she enchants the ring she has for Elena. "No one knew any of this would happen but her," I continue. "She's known since Georgia, which must have been the reset point of whatever original timeline she lived through before being sent back in time. She showed your grandmother what she knew in a vision when we got back, but that was it."

I turn gentle eyes on my girl. "Now go wait downstairs. I want to be alone with her when she wakes up in transition," I tell the witch coldly, turning my girl's body towards me so that I'm the first thing she sees when she opens her eyes.

Thankfully, she doesn't argue, leaving and closing the door quietly behind her. My guess is she is too greatly disturbed by Elena's damaged and dead body to even want to stay in here.

It's an hour before dawn when Elena's body is finally fully healed. I know it's now only a matter of time before she wakes up. I start talking to her softly, hoping my voice will encourage her to wake up sooner rather than later.

Right as dawn's first light starts shining through my window, Elena snaps into a sitting position with a gasp. "Damon," she breathes with a gasp, overwhelming joy radiating so intensely through her that I wouldn't even need our jewelry or the mating bond to sense it.

I scowl at her, letting her know in no uncertain terms that I had figured out her big secret she's been keeping the past three months and I'm not happy with her. Even sensing my displeasure with her, she can't bottle up her feelings of joy of seeing me before her, alive. Finally I sigh and give her a wry smirk, understanding that after all the turmoil she had been going through for however long she had been going through it, she needs time to process and accept that she had succeeded in her mission to save me last night.

It takes several minutes before both her heart and her head can accept that she had succeeded. Her success had come at a price, as Gemma's message had said it would. But we're both still alive, in a sense. Neither of us met our final death last night.

That's when I speak. "You, young lady, are in trouble," I tell her.

"I couldn't let you die," she retorts. "At least I was able to come back. You wouldn't have."

I sigh and let her have that one because it's true. I wouldn't have come back from a stake to the heart. I pull her into my arms. I had been waiting for the right time to say three oh-so-important words to her. But I realized as she was dying in my arms that there is no 'right time'. Every day is a precious gift and should be treated as such. "I love you," I whisper in her hair, knowing her new vampire senses will let her hear me.

I feel her joy at finally hearing those words from me and wonder what kind of fool I was to deny her such a simple thing that brings her so much joy. She wraps her arms around me in return. "I love you, too," she breathes into my chest.

We hold each other, luxuriating in simply being able to wrap our arms around each other after such a horrific day. Finally, though, I sigh and pull away. It's with great reluctance that I speak. "Judgy's downstairs," I say. "She has a ring she's willing to enchant for you." Elena looks at me for a long, silent moment, letting me feel just how angry she is with the witch and her reluctance to go near her right now, her fear of killing the witch in a fit of pique. And I realize that even after all the witch's actions had put her through, Elena still cares about her as a friend. And I realize I can't have the revenge I had so desperately wanted when I realized what the traitorous witch had done. I sigh through grit teeth. "I won't let you kill her," I tell her.

Elena relaxes, knowing I would never willingly break a vow I make to her, or anyone for that matter. As much as I feel the witch should pay for her betrayal of Elena, I won't let my girl act on her anger towards the witch nor will I go for revenge myself, as it would hurt Elena. And I would never hurt Elena. I can't, not without hurting myself in the process. "Then let's go," she says, pulling out of my embrace.

"I want that ring enchanted and on your finger before you finish the transition into vampirism," I tell my girl as we climb off the bed.

Elena looks down contemplatively at her bloody and torn shirt and I let her feel my curiosity at the internal debate I sense waging war within her. "I'm debating whether I should keep the reminder that I'm now technically dead because of her or change clothes before heading downstairs," she says in reply.

I smirk. "Keep it on," I encourage. "If that's all the revenge your pesky sentimentalities will let us get, then the least you can do is shove it in her face that you're now a vampire because she wasn't a good friend to you."

Elena nods her agreement. "Alright," she says, heading for our door.

I follow behind her as she heads downstairs. I see the witch cringe as she sees the ruined clothes my girl is still wearing and struggle to hold in my urge to further rub her nose in it. I had my go at it earlier. It's Elena's turn and I won't intrude on my girl's show.

Elena waits a moment, letting the witch squirm beneath her predatory gaze, further enforcing the fact that she's no longer human. "As you can see, I'm now back from the dead, Bonnie," she tells the witch finally. The witch opens her mouth to say something but Elena cuts her off. "I warned you the other night when you faked de-spelling the device that if anything happened to Damon or Stefan, I would never forgive you. You better be damned grateful I managed to get between the stake in John's hand and Damon at the last second or I'd have killed myself with Damon's blood in my system immediately after Damon's death. Then I would have completed the transition just so I could enact my revenge on you, John, and Isobel. After I had killed all three of you for taking my mate from me, I would have found a nice sunny place and allowed myself to burn to death so I could be reunited with him in true death. That Damon survived is the only reason I'm not trying to kill you right now. As it is, it will be a very long time before you earn my good graces back. You've betrayed me in the past in many different ways. Each time, you had to re-earn my friendship. And you know as well as I do that combining all those times of betrayal would still have nothing on this act of betrayal. I died, Bonnie. I died because you couldn't accept that Grams knew she would die if she went through with the spell to lift the seal on the tomb.

"Now I stand before you, in transition to becoming a vampire because of you. I would have rather waited another four or five years, waited until I looked less like Katherine, before reaching this point. Now, because of you, I will have all of her enemies after me for the rest of eternity. Because of some information Damon and I have been given, I know Damon and I will be able to defend me from them. But we will still have to fight them off for however long it takes other vampires to start recognizing the differences between Katherine and I. The only reason I'm even willing to talk to you right now is because Damon said you have a ring you're willing to enchant for me to protect me from the sun. Otherwise, I'd be avoiding you like the plague. And if you think a simple apology would even start to soothe my ire, know this: I lived the past three months twice. And after the events of Founder's Day in the first timeline, I had continued to live, if that's what it could be called, for three more months. Three months where I wanted to die more than anything in the world. Three months without my other half. Three damn months of existing as half a soul! Because, Bonnie, when Damon died in the other timeline, half my soul died, too! I couldn't bear to live. But I also couldn't bear to die because I didn't know if I'd go to where he was in death. And you want to know the biggest irony of this whole damned thing?" she asks rhetorically. Before anyone gets even a chance to even think about replying, Elena answers her own question. "The biggest irony, Bonnie, is that in the other timeline, you were the one to send me back to right the wrong you had committed and yet you nearly committed it again!"

I'm beyond surprised that it's both because of the witch and thanks to the witch that last night had happened the way it did. I can see that however hard a pill that is for me to swallow, it's even harder for the witch to come to terms with how royally she had fucked up Elena's life in the original timeline and had nearly succeeded in doing so again.

I decide that even if Elena's not finished venting her frustration, Stefan, the witch, and I need to come to terms with what Elena has revealed so far before she reveals anything else. I place a hand on her shoulder. "Elena," I say too softly for the witch to hear, a warning in my voice. I don't need to voice the warning because she understands me so well I can use tone or even just emotion to communicate with her and she understand what I leave unsaid.

"Fine," she mutters at a volume only a vampire would hear. She refocuses on the witch. "Damon won't let me continue further right now," she tells her. "So what do I need to do so that you can enchant the ring you brought for me?"

Judgy takes a shaky breath before going to stand on one side of an open window that is letting the early morning light in. "Stand across from me," she tells my girl. Elena obeys. The witch pulls a beautiful silver ring with a pale blue lapis lazuli setting from her pocket and places it on the ground in the sunlight between them. I decide that while the witch is casting her spell, I'll get Elena a blood bag so she can complete the transition once the ring is enchanted.

I return with the blood bag even before the witch finishes her spell. I can sense the last of the spell being placed on the ring and know the witch isn't tricking us this time. Once the spell is complete, Judgy picks up the ring and hands it to Elena. "There, it's enchanted to protect you from the sun," she says.

Elena puts the ring on her finger. Before Elena can think of a way to kick the witch out, I decide to do it for her. "Alright, Judgy," I say coolly. "You've enchanted the ring; you've seen that she's okay. Now get out before I give into my desire to do to you what you caused to happen to her. And I won't be giving you blood beforehand, either."

Elena and I can both see the fear in the witch's eyes before she beats a hasty retreat. But she pauses at the front door. "Caroline's in the hospital," she says to Elena. "She, Tyler, and Matt were in a crash last night, and she was seriously injured." With that, she leaves.

Elena freezes so completely even her breathing stops, not that she needs to breath anymore. I sense her worry for the blonde and place a hand on her shoulder. "After you finish the transition, we'll go see her," I tell her, handing her a blood bag.

Elena does as she's seen me do when I didn't want to feed from her and rips the valve off before sticking the tube in her mouth to drain the blood bag dry. I can tell she's too caught up in her worry to tell that I had gotten her type O positive blood. After I dispose of her blood bag, we head to the hospital to see what we can do for Blondie.


Sarah: and that's it for Chapter 1. I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as they seemed to enjoy The Woman I Love. Please review and let me know what you think.