CHAPTER 03 - Rippers United!

I was still in one piece living at the Mikaelson place, but I was in a bad way. Caroline had warned me this would happen the second I had warm and fresh human blood, that because while I was a human I was susceptible to the temptation and addiction of drugs that as she told me Stefan had called her in her first days of being a vampire, basically she was an insecure, neurotic, control-freak on crack, and with a few tweaks, I would be that way too. Promising!

Anyways, I had gone off my vampire rails, I had become a 'mini-Stefan the Ripper don't wannabe', which amused Klaus a bit, but then Caroline heard him chuckling at 'the poetry of the whole thing' and she didn't sleep with him for two days, which as I understand it, is undying hell for Klaus.

Stefan had also been coming over a lot, taking me out bunny hunting, trying to wean me off the fresh and human stuff. It was definitely not working though. Every moment of every second of every day my gums ached for the feel of that warm, red liquid to soothe the burn that coursed through my body violently. No foul-tasting animal's blood could quench my thirst and need for human blood.

Caroline and Klaus did not have time to babysit me 24/7, making sure I was not giving into temptation, but they said that since they were housing the blood addict, Stefan could play the part of saviour – rather ironic when you think of his name – and spend time with me and tell me stories of his ripper days attempting to shock and scare me out of my unhealthy blood habit, nothing that Aunt Jenna hadn't tried to do the first time, I was remind of her saying something to do with her own weight and tacos...

Elena had called a couple of times trying to find out how I was and why I was avoiding her, as she was too consumed in her own troubles and insurmountable woes to work it out for herself. I didn't want to talk to her before all this drama, now I wanted to talk to her even less. She just refused to understand me, like always, which began with her getting her vampire stooges to compel my memories away and has now ended with her still safe and me a bloody vampire!

The end of my grave thoughts and the natural end of Stefan's latest ripper story coincided, so I decided to level with the guy. He looked at me knowing that I had no clue what he'd just been talking about, but I returned his look with another that said I was sorry.

My eyes immediately turned from brown to black without cause and Stefan looked at me gravely. "We really need to get you sorted...this is becoming a very real and dangerous problem,"

I began gasping and my fangs presented themselves ready for the feed and ultimately...the kill. Stefan grasped me by the forearms and held them tightly – if I was still human, he'd have broken them.

"Come on, Jeremy, just work through it, feel the need for blood but turn it into something else...think about," he hesitated for a second thinking about what my outlet should be, and then he looked at me with pointed, yet understanding eyes and almost shouted, "Think about Elena. I know how you hate her; how you think she's the one who's done all this to you and that she's selfish. Jeremy, you're absolutely right. Hold on to that and use that rage, that frustration, that ferocity to get through the blood lust. I'm with you and I know Elena has really made everything into a disaster zone, I'm on your side,"

Listening to his words, even in a state of total animal instinct when nothing seemed as important as taking a mouthful of blood, I felt that Stefan was right. I let out a wall shattering roar, releasing all of my need for blood and all of my hatred of Elena into the universe, no longer only mine. As the rage and hunger left me, so did the darkness of my eyes and my fangs retracted.

Stefan smiled and gave me a chummy slap on the cheek, "Well done, Jer, I'm proud of you. That must have been hard..."

I just smiled at Stefan, "What you said about Elena, did you mean that? That you blame her as well?"

Stefan looked at the floor, "You know what, Jer, yeah, I do blame her. I blame her for starting things out with me, then falling in love with Damon, then not being able to make the choice and making us dance through hoops for her and then she chose the wrong person after all that. Damon's the better for it, though; he's never had such humanity since we transitioned. But I cannot forgive her for doing exactly what Katherine did all that time ago."

I watched him intently as he poured his soul out to me, declaring all the feelings that he clearly never showed to his brother or Elena, always trying to do what was best for others. That was Stefan for you. I suddenly felt sympathetic to the youngest Salvatore brother, who I had just realised was in the same boat as myself – treated scandalously by Elena.

"I'm sorry,"

He looked up, "What?"

"I didn't realise, all that time I spent sitting around rooms watching you and Damon struggle over Elena, feeling sorry for myself and there you were, pretending to be candid and doing all you could knowing that at the end of it all you wouldn't be getting the girl. I wish I could have been that way."

"No, Jer, you were right to have acted the way that you did. We couldn't even look beyond our own desire to protect Elena to see what we were doing to you by muscling in and making decisions for you and on behalf of her. I realise that now, though I know it's too late in the coming, but I apologise for my part in it. Together, Damon, Elena and I managed to destroy your family and what was most important to you. Ric was right when he installed himself on the Council saying that someone needed to just be human and on the side of the people of the town, so I'm sorry this has happened to you, Jeremy,"

I nodded, as no words could express how liberating it felt just for someone to finally say they were sorry for what they had done and to realise that the path to protecting Elena came with a lot of avenues which led to the pain and suffering, and most often death of people who mattered as much, if not more, than Elena.

"You know what sucks?"

He smiled at my casually put question, "What?"

"Bonnie's not here. She would have made everything all right and boy, would she have railed at you and Damon for how the last plan turned out."

Stefan recalled the feisty side of the witch and nodded, "And we would have deserved every word. I miss her too – we should have noticed how distant she became and what it meant a lot quicker...just another person who got let down in this whole mess." The grief that he bore permeated his voice like water in sand, weighing it down.

I remembered Stefan on that day, returning to Mystic Falls after going to see Bonnie who was staying in a small cottage which she had been renting out for a couple of days. The last conversation I had with her was strange, but I didn't think about it until after I knew she was gone. She seemed different and almost spaced. She said she would be staying out of town for a while because she needed to get some distance between her and everything that was going on. I never imagined that not even two hours drive would be far enough, that only death was far enough for her.

Stefan went to get her to come back after no one had heard from her in over a week, but she never returned to Mystic Falls. He found her hanging from her ceiling, limp and cold as ice, having been dead for almost the whole week. She left a note, which I was allowed to have, saying it was all too much and that she wanted to leave on her own terms rather than a vampire's, which is how she said she would have eventually died, just like her Grams. In what seemed, at the time, to be a severe case of ill humour, she said she would say hi to everyone who was already dead – my parents, Elena's parents, Aunt Jenna, Ric, Caroline's dad, Vicki, Anna, Tyler's dad – but when the initial, terrible grief had passed, I realised just how Bonnie that was, that even in her final thoughts, she thought about others. We didn't bury her, she said she didn't want to be the plaything of archaeologists in years to come who would search for vampires and dig up Mystic Falls Cemetery, so we laid her out in the house where she had died and filled every room with wild flowers, so she'd be surrounded by nature and set the place on fire. I hoped that, just like the site of the mass execution of the witches was a witch's power hotspot, the cottage by the lake would be Bonnie's eternal place of power.

Stefan's phone began to ring and after seeing the caller ID, he said he had to go check on something. I glanced up at him, well aware that it was my sister demanding the attention of the man she should have chosen, whose care and devotion she now did not merit.

"Thanks for the help, Stefan,"

He smiled at me fondly, "My pleasure,"