New Beginnings
DG32173

Sarah: welcome to Chapter 2 of New Beginnings. As I'm inspired, I'm just gonna get to the review replies and the chapter.

REVIEW REPLIES

HoneySexy: glad you enjoyed it. Here's the second chapter.

Leann Nickerson: glad you enjoyed the first chapter so much. What is Stefan thinking? Well, I might just have to write a companion fic like I did with Jeremy to detail his thoughts as now I'm curious, too. Here's the next chapter. Hope you enjoy.

amazing Aisha: so glad you enjoyed the previous stories so much as well as the first chapter of this one. Here's more.

Imarifirst: yeah, I had been hoping my muse would finally allow for Damon and Elena to have some time together without worry about anything. But as this chapter proves, my muse is a stubborn bitch and insists certain things happen as in the show. Thankfully, Caroline is a quick learner in the ways of vampires in the show and will soon be doing her own thing while Damon and Elena do theirs. While I'm not a huge fan of Caroline on her own, I am a fan of pairing her and Klaus together. And hey, imagination is always a good thing. Here's the update.


Chapter 2
What To Do With Caroline

Elena and I rush to the hospital, using our vamp speed since the Camaro is still in The Grill's parking lot. I hold back from my full speed because I know Elena won't be able to keep up with me at full speed, not until she's been a vampire for a few decades. I can sense Elena's worry for her friend and pray to the Fates that we make it in time.

It takes us only a few minutes to get to the hospital, despite it being on the other side of town. I could have arrived in under a minute but Elena can't run that fast yet and I wanted to let her have her first taste of what it's like to be a vampire running at top speed.

We slow down in the parking lot of the hospital after making sure nobody can see us just 'appear' from seemingly thin air. When we reach the ICU, we're both surprised to find that John was there, having had his fingers cut off last night by someone, including the finger that had been wearing his eternity ring. I can tell that Elena doesn't really care that he's in the hospital. She said the other night she intends on hunting both him and Isobel down and making them pay for what they have put her through these past three months as well as the three months she had survived after my death in the first timeline. But right now she's more worried about Caroline.

When we get to Blondie's room, we see Liz letting herself out, tears of worry in her eyes. "Elena, Damon, I'm 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," Elena says softly.

"How is she?" I ask.

"Not good," Liz says, voice full of the pain of a mother fearing the loss of her child. "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."

Elena exchanges a brief look and an even briefer conversation of emotions with me. I nod, giving her my permission to save Caroline the only way we can. "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," I say, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and guiding her down the hall towards the elevators.

Over coffee and a bagel that I force her to get, Liz tells me stories about her daughter's childhood growing up with Elena and Bonnie as best friends, giving me more insight on my girl's past than she had given me herself. Once Liz has had about three cups of coffee, a bagel, and even a little fruit, I realize I can't keep her from her daughter's side for much longer and send Elena an emotional warning that we're coming up. Thankfully, Elena sends me the emotional equivalent of a green light. She's done with what she was doing and is now just spending time with her friend.

I lead Liz back to her daughter's room. Liz sank wearily into the chair Elena vacates for her. Elena places her hand on the older woman's 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," my girl says encouragingly. "She's a fighter. She'll pull through."

Liz examines Caroline. "You're right. She does look a little better," she admits. She clasps Elena's 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 can feel Elena's internal grimace at the thought of seeing John again so very soon but she keeps her expression strictly schooled. "I will," she says.

Since the ICU staff only likes two visitors at a time per patient and Elena and I aren't willing to separate unless we have to so soon after last night, Elena and I bid farewell to Liz and leave the room. Elena sighs and turns deeper into the ICU, towards John's room. "You sure?" I ask softly.

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

I silently follow her down the hall to John's room, not sure what she has planned. I can't let her kill him, not in the hospital with all these humans around. At least, I can't let her kill him any of the ways I've been thinking about it since he had shoved that stake in her gut and caused her death. She may be able to think of a way to succeed in such a crowded setting. I notice her grab a syringe that had just been laid down after being filled with a large dose of a heart medicine and hide it in her pocket. I hide a smirk. Giving heart medicine to someone without heart problems, particularly such a large dose, can cause a potentially lethal heart attack.

Good thinking, Elena. And the best thing is that no one will think to blame John's visitors today, if it's discovered that he died because of a heart medicine he wasn't supposed to be on. As Elena and Jeremy are his only living relatives and both hate him with nearly equal fervor, they won't ask for an autopsy. They'll just be glad he's gone. This means that, unless the hospital forces the issue, the cause of his death won't be discovered.

We slip silently into John's room to discover that he's asleep. Elena uses her new skills as a vampire to silently slip closer, close enough to touch John's shoulder. He jerks awake. He stares at her in terror and starts to panic. But she's standing between him and the call button. "Look what you did to me," she snarls, 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." She pulls out the syringe. "This is the price you will both pay: death."

He tries to grab the syringe but is too slow to keep her from plunging it into his IV and draining the entire syringe into the liquid flowing into his veins. At Elena's cue, I change places with her, making sure that John won't be able to call for help before it's too late. Elena drops the syringe in the container for disposing of used sharps.

He manages to get two words out before his heart gives out because of the medicine. Two words that make it clear to Elena and I that things just won't settle down for us anytime soon: "Katherine's back."

As he has his heart attack, Elena goes to the door to the hall and pretends to be worried about him, using her real worry about Katherine's plans as a subterfuge. "Help! My uncle's having a heart attack!" she calls out as the alarms within John's heart monitor start going off.

Nurses and doctors rush in to save him, shoving us into the hall. But Elena had made sure to wait until it was too late to save him. The doctors and nurses then try to resuscitate John but perhaps it's the knowledge that it was his birth daughter that had been behind this murder attempt this time that prevents his spirit from coming back from wherever it had gone.

John Gilbert is pronounced dead at 10:38am the day after Founder's Day, leaving behind only a seventeen-year-old 'niece' and a fifteen-year-old nephew. As for Elena's and my way of thinking, that's one down, one to go.

That evening, while Elena and I are lazing about in bed, Elena under the pretense that she's 'grieving' her uncle's death and not up for the party that will finish off Founder's Month, Elena gets a call from the witch.

"What do you want, Bonnie? I thought I made it clear that I'm still pissed at you," Elena snaps when she answers the phone.

"Where are you?" the witch asks.

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

But even I can hear the worry in the witch's voice as she says goodbye. "What do you suppose that was about?" I ask my girl as she burrows closer to me.

"Who cares?" Elena asks 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 smirk. "Works for me," I say.

The next evening

True to Elena's wish, we stayed together in bed for the past twenty-four hours, only stopping when one of us needed a blood bag. We mutually agreed to wait a few days before going through the rituals Gemma left us to give Elena time to adjust to being a newborn without whatever crazy powers those rituals will give us.

We're now at the school festival and Elena's enduring everyone's sympathies for the loss of her 'uncle', not one of them realizing she is the reason he died. Suddenly, Elena and I spot Caroline going into the school building. We exchange worried glances. She wasn't to be released until tomorrow. What's she doing here tonight?

We follow her, intending on cornering her to find out how she snuck out of the hospital. That's when we get a very nasty surprise. Blondie has now become Vampire Barbie because Katherine wanted to send a message to Elena and I: "Game on."

As we're overcoming this news, she vamps away. I want to stake the newborn Vampire Barbie because I don't think I can handle training two newborns at the same time. But I can sense that Elena won't stand for it. Vampire Barbie is still her best friend, the only one she's on speaking terms with right now.

Elena had chosen to give her blood to Caroline, giving Katherine the opportunity to turn her without using her own blood. And thanks to the empathy link between Elena and I thanks to our jewelry, as well as my mark on her, I can sense the sire connection she feels towards Caroline, the same sire connection I share with her.

That's a bond Elena refuses to have cut short. So I reluctantly back off from my plan to stake Caroline, though this complicates things greatly. Does Katherine know Elena's a vampire? Or is she playing this game because she thinks Elena is still human?

We manage to track down Vampire Barbie again, but only after she's already accidentally drained the life from an injured carnival worker. That's when the witch finds us. When she sees the blood covering Caroline and realizes what had happened, she turns her fury on me, mistakenly thinking it's somehow my fault that this has happened to Caroline.

Elena manages to save me yet again, making it perfectly clear to the witch in no uncertain terms that it was her blood that turned Caroline after Katherine killed her. She also tells the witch in no uncertain terms that if she goes after me just one more time with intent for death, Elena will take her out herself.

Elena and I get Caroline back to the boarding house. The barrier that had fallen in place when Elena had moved in as a human had vanished as soon as Elena died as a human in my arms two nights ago.


Sarah: and there's Chapter 2 of New Beginnings. How did everyone like it? As you can see, there will be some following of Season 2's storyline at the beginning of this fanfic, but I assure you it won't be for long. Review and let me know what you think.