AN: Woah, this is my second update this week! Just wanted to give all of you a heads up, in case you have not read the last chapter, to go check out that one first so you don't miss anything!


With her thoughts hazy and vision dangerously blurry, Elena forced herself to open her heavy eyelids. Was she going blind? Feeling her pulse begin to accelerate, she made the decision to rely on her other senses to determine her location. Stricken by fear and suddenly alarmed, she felt around for a long moment, coming to the conclusion that the cold substance against her fingers was concrete. The thing that baffled her, though, was the stickiness, the dry, syrupy stickiness that somewhat reminded her of a melting lolly-pop. She was sure, though, that whatever this cracking substance was, it was nothing sweet. Finally, her vision cleared and she took a glance around. The lighting was dim, but now, the drying, thick stuff on her fingers was more distinguishable. It was dark. And dense. And coming from Stefan.

It was coming from Stefan!

Involuntarily, a loud gasp escaped from Elena's trembling lips. She regretted it immediately, her hand flying up to cover her mouth. It was then that she remembered exactly where they were, under the possession of a cure-crazed vampire, in a dark, windowless, cold room.

Oh god, she tasted his blood on her lips now. Elena swiftly removed her hand from her mouth and placed it against his face. He was so cold. She was going to be sick.

"Stefan," she whispered, kneeling down as low as she possibly could by his limp form. She reached around to find the source of his bleeding and quickly learned that it was coming from his head. Luckily, it seemed to have stopped, but the old wound from his experience in Mystic Falls a few weeks ago was split open once again. He was not moving at all, so still she worried for a second that he was dead. Then, she remembered their link and nearly cried out in relief. He was okay. For now. "Stefan, wake up," she silently pled, terrified by his lack of response. How hard had he hit the sidewalk? "Stefan!" She shook him now, shaking him a bit. Gradually, his eyelids fluttered open and he looked up at her, through her. His expression was glassy, and there was no doubt in her mind that he had a bad concussion. He didn't even bother looking around.

"Hey," she whispered, pulling him against her. His fingers twitched for hers, and immediately, Elena placed her bloody hand in his. He didn't seem to mind all that much. "Do you know what day it is?" She remembered her dad once asking Jeremy these questions after he'd hit his head on their swing set.

Stefan didn't seem to hear her for a long moment before responding, "The day… the day I die?" a dry chuckle escaped his lips, and Elena was quite surprised by this answer. She wasn't sure if it was his dark attempt at humor or if the only thing he could acknowledge at the moment was that they were both in danger. She suspected the latter.

"You're not dying today," she whispered, kissing the top of his head. The taste of his blood somehow seemed less vile now that she knew that he at least had a chance at being okay. "We're going to get out of here. Damon and Katherine will find us." With her every word, his eyes appeared to be getting heavier and heavier. "No! Don't fall asleep on me. Whatever you do, you can't go to sleep. Stefan!" He was out again, and she was terrified that he would not wake up. It was the wildest thing she'd ever experienced, but with every passing moment, Elena was beginning to feel weaker and weaker. Oh, god… Stefan was dying. She could feel it in her veins, and it sent her mind and body reeling.

"Hey!" she screamed at the top of her lungs. "I know you can hear me!" Her throat was dry and sore, but she didn't much care. "He's dying! You're killing him! How are you going to get the cure if he's dead?"

She heard rustling a distance away and could now hear muttering among what seemed to be a group of vampires. She cupped her ear and leaned in, trying to catch their conversation. Elena quickly realized that they were not shy about their plans, their volume increasing every moment as they argued.

"Give him the blood," a woman said, clearly frustrated.

"No, let him suffer. Who cares if he dies?" a man –the man who had captured them, she recognized—replied.

"We do!" another person replied. "If you really want him to suffer, here's what we do: we heal him up and then go for the girl. We use her against him to get information," her voice got softer now, but Elena still could hear, "and once we're done, we kill her."

This girl's idea was rewarded by silence. After a long moment, everyone else seemed to agree.

We kill her.

We heal him and kill her.

If they killed her, they would kill Stefan. Elena's heart dropped. After all of the sacrifices Stefan had made for her without even expecting anything in return…

If either of them deserved to live, it was him. She would not let him go down with her.

Elena, sure, was happy to die along with Stefan. But the idea of Stefan dying along with her never really had hit her until now.

Trying to be as silent as she could, Elena reached into her pocket, praying her phone was still there.

She knew what to do.

"It's your fault!" Damon exploded, his voice louder and harsher than it had ever been. He was pacing back and forth in their tiny room, while Katherine sat on the bed, her head in her hands.

"What are you talking about?" she said as coolly as she possibly could. Damon hated her for not reacting at all. As if his brother's existence meant nothing! "I heard the scream first."

Damon shook his head, blue eyes blazing with an icy fire. " You were distracting me! They could have killed him by now! They could have killed them both! Stefan could be dead as we speak!" He was visibly shaking, actually shaking: his hands, his legs. Katherine had never seen the eldest Salvatore so affected by anything.

She chuckled a bit, ready to make a comment about how he cared more than he let on, but decided against it after catching his deadly glare. Damon didn't need that right now, after all. She'd take pity on him. And as much as she hated to admit it, she was scared out of her wits as well. "There's got to be a way to find them. What about that witch out of town? Elysia?"

He shook his head. "It's a waste of time. By the time she finds something it could be too late. This town is small enough. We'll just have to tear it up, house by house."

"Only one problem: we can't get in without an invitation."

Damon growled, actually growled. If Katherine wasn't so terrified and worried for his well-being, it probably would have turned her on.

Just as any possibility of finding them seemed completely and utterly hopeless, Damon's phone began buzzing. Immediately, he ran to it. "It's from Elena," he said, shocked and afraid to read it.

Break the link, was all that it said.

He furrowed his brows. Then came another message.

Call witch NOW. Stefan will die.

Damon was already dialing Elysia's number. The phone was ringing and he was waiting for her to pick up when one more message popped up on his messages from Elena.

I'm sorry for everything that happened. Sire bond, staying with you. I hurt you. I did love you for a second when he was gone and you were there, but not in the ways that anyone ever should love someone. You don't deserve that. Regardless of what happened, I do love you now, just differently. Thank you for being Stefan's brother again.

Damon gripped the phone tightly. He knew what this was. This was Elena's goodbye. He felt tempted to write something back, even just to ask about the plan to get Stefan out, but before he got the chance, Elysia picked up.

"Damon, what a surprise!" she greeted.

Everything hurt so badly. Stefan felt like his soul was being ripped out of his chest and getting reassembled. Were they going to put that broken, jumbled thing back inside of him?

The pain gradually subsided as he continued to wander through what appeared to be a dimly lit high school hallway. He didn't know where he was going. All he knew was that there was someone he was supposed to meet at the other end, someone he'd been waiting on for a very, very long time.

He walked and walked until he finally saw the silhouette of a man in the distance. He quickened his pace to approach him.

When he saw his face, it was hauntingly familiar but also vastly unrecognizable.

I'm supposed to know you, he thought to himself, but I don't.

"I know," the man said, replying to his thoughts.

"Who are you?" Stefan croaked out, feeling cold and empty and intimidated by this wise young man in front of him.

The man simply smiled, a hauntingly sad smile that made Stefan's insides twist in empathy for whatever he had once experienced. "I'm the part of you that's missing," he said. "I have all of your memories. You want them back?"

He thought he seemed familiar. They had the same face now, he realized. But he was different as well. Two of the same men with different pasts.

"I don't know."

The man –Stefan still refused to call him Stefan yet- chuckled, a cold, tired sound that only vaguely echoed true laughter. He was broken, Stefan could tell. "I'm giving you the choice to remember your life," Young Man said. "You can remember this, continue to live every day haunted by demons and consumed by guilt. But you can remember her, what it felt like to fall in love with her and kiss her for the first time. Or you can create a new life, throw the past away and create a new future. New memories with her. It's your choice."

Stefan, Stefan 2.0 eyed the man across from him warily. "What do you want me to do?"

The man, the man who contained his every lost memory, gave that haunted smile once again and simply extended his hand. "We are more alike than you can see, Stefan," was all that he said.

And then, Stefan nervously extended his hand and placed it in the other Stefan's hand. He watched as the man across from him began to slowly dissipate. As his appearance began to vanish, Stefan could strangely feel a part of his head seem to fill, fill with memories that he could choose to open. And soon, within seconds, he was alone again, feeling no different than earlier.

No, he did feel a bit different. Although he had not yet channeled these memories, an emptiness inside of them seemed to fill.

And so, as he walked back down the hall, Stefan decided that he would let himself remember as soon as he found Elena. He wanted her to be with him as he re-lived his dark past.

He couldn't wait to see the look on her face when she realized her love had fully returned to her.

Elena slowly rocked back and forth, her eyes closed as she experienced the horrible sensation of her body burning from the inside out, Stefan's soul being broken away from hers, she assumed. As soon as it started, she regretted texting Damon demanding the link be broken. She cried to herself throughout this entire ordeal, panicking with whatever would happen after this. A horrible, sadistic part of her sure hoped that he still loved her when he opened his eyes. Whether she was alive or not.

There was also a horrible chance that he, too, would die if he did not get blood in time. What if she was left alone in a world without him? What if she stopped loving him?

Her body was wracking with violent sobs when one of the vampires approached her, heels clicking against the concrete.

"Please," Elena said brokenly, "fix him. Please, just let him go. I'll do whatever you want."

The vampire girl eyed her with a peculiar look. Her hair was a dyed shade of red with blue at the tips, a permanent smirk on her lips. "Why would we let him go?" she questioned, crouching down, grabbing Elena's chin roughly and forcing her to look up at her. "He holds the key to the cure."

"No, he doesn't," Elena desperately tried. "I'm the one who was cured. I was a vampire one minute, and the next I wasn't. Yes, it happened to Stefan, too, but he had to die for two months. Do you want to die and suffer or get the cure the way that I did?"

The vampire was silent. In fact, the whole house was silent; all the other vampires had gone for the moment.

Elena swallowed. "We don't exactly understand how it happened," she lied, "but I'll help you look. I'll tell you what I know. I'll get you one step closer. I know the basics of how the cure works. I'll do whatever you want me to, just please do not hurt him!" Tears were streaming down Elena's cheeks now. "He doesn't know anything, I swear. He lost every memory he had when he died. I didn't lose anything. It's me you want."

The vampire laughed, a malicious, feral sound that sent chills down Elena's spine. "Is this the truth?" Elena nodded. "If you're lying to me, I swear, I'll find him and tear his head right off of his body."

Elena shuddered. "It's the truth. Please just save him."

The red haired vampire girl eyed Elena curiously and bit into her wrist, pressing it against Stefan's lips. Elena sighed out in relief. "I'm letting him go for one reason and one reason only," she began, her voice dripping with danger, "You are going to come with us and get us closer to this cure. I'll lie and say that you both got away, and I'll give you three days to say your goodbyes before you come back." Elena hung her head, her tears hitting the floor, but she nodded. The vampire continued, "I'm only helping you for one reason: when all is said and done and we are faced with the cure, I am the first one to get it. Clear?"

"Clear," Elena sobbed.

"If you don't come back, his heart will be out of his chest before you can even blink. Two days. That's all you get."

Elena merely nodded, and the next thing she knew, she was alone with Stefan.

Crying and a complete mess, Elena rushed to his side, pulling him back into her lap. He was groaning and slowly coming to, and the second he opened his eyes, she pressed her lips against his desperately. Stefan dazedly kissed back before pulling away. "Elena," he finally said excitedly, his tired face lighting up upon seeing her own. "Elena, I can remember everything."

Her heart dropped. "What?"

"Everything. If I want to, I can remember everything! The past, us. I know how to do it. I wanted to wait for you to remember everything."

Elena smiled at how thoughtful he was. All the while her tears were still falling down her cheeks. "That's great," she said sadly, wrapping her arms around him. "But not right now. Let's do it somewhere more meaningful," she lied. She didn't know if she ever wanted him to remember, now that she would be leaving him. He didn't have to know that right now though. That news could wait a few hours.

As she hugged him, Stefan buried his face in the crook of her neck. "Are you alright?" he asked, holding her against him tightly. His heart was pounding, as was hers.

"Not really," she said honestly, pulling back and placing a long, much needed kiss against his lips. "You?"

"Not really," he repeated, brushing her bloody hair away from her face. He was a little better now, in her company. She could tell by the look in his eyes, the look she would have to take away in two days. "My body feels like it's burning from the inside out. I can't explain it."

Hers did too. It was the link breaking. But she didn't have the nerve to tell him that. Not right now. "I'm sure it'll go away soon," she promised, holding his face between her hands.

I'm sorry, she thought over and over again. I'm so sorry.


AN: Ah, so much happened! Stefan now can remember everything if he wants to, but Elena has to leave him in two days! What will happen? Will he choose to remember? Will they find a way out of this situation? And what will happen once the link is officially broken? Will they still love each other? Will Stefan still love Elena? Will Elena still love Stefan? Maybe it would make things much easier if they did stop loving each other...

Please leave a review letting me know what you think! Lately after my hiatus, I've noticed that I lost a large amount of readers. I'm not sure if it's because I left for a while or not. Nevertheless, I'd really like to make this story as great as it can possibly be for all of my wonderful readers here :) So please let me know and give me feedback letting me know what would make this story super enjoyable for you, and I will take everything into consideration! Every single review never fails to make my day. Let me know what you loved, hated, or want to see!

Thank you so much for reading! I love you all!

Xoxo