Author's note: Following chapter is not as emotionally up and down as the previous one, but it's still nice... it's a little bit of a filler... but I hope you enjoy anyway...

Elena had finally convinced Damon to sit down, it turned out werewolf bite or not he was still stubborn as hell. He had agreed to go up to his room, but then he'd scoured his drawers without listening to her to rest, finally producing a silver bracelet with Lapis Lazuli pendant on it, he'd had a spell put on it when he'd given her blood and Elena frowned slightly at the memory. The bracelet wasn't new though, it looked like an antique and then she softened.

But it didn't help the fact that she was worried. Elena cringed every time she saw him flinch or close his eyes against the pain and it would only get worse she new that. She was terrified right now, the sight of him made her want to cry only because she wanted him to be here for her, she wanted to spend this forever with him. She loved Damon Salvatore and she didn't know where to go from here. What was she supposed to do now?

And then there was Stefan, she couldn't even grasp what this would do to him, losing his brother and realizing that his girlfriend was in love with him. She couldn't think straight, what she'd done wa so, so, so wrong. But she found herself not caring, there was no guilt and no second thought that if she had been in the same situation she would have done it all over again. It was so precious, so different and intimate in a way that it had never been with Stefan. Damon was part of her, he was one half of her, he was all she thought she would ever need and now she was slowly watching him slip away.

"Caroline and Tyler are about to do the dirty downstairs." Damon finally spoke and pulled Elena to lean into him. She giggled at that, she could hear Caroline and Tyler too now, and what they were doing was definitely considered making out. But the humour that brought her only lasted a few seconds, she realized that Damon was trying to comfort her and everything was all wrong here. He was the one who was dying and she was the one that was heartbroken about it.

"Damon." She breathed and then she felt as if she might cry again, she swallowed back tears at the thought that she might never get to say his name again.

"Elena?" He answered the way he always did, in a slightly mocking tone and Elena did cry then. She sat up and held onto him crying into his neck as she felt his hands wander on her back before they settled on her hips and she leaned back a bit. She couldn't miss this, she couldn't be robbed from this.

"How can you be so calm about all of this?"

"I love you." He said steadily and even smiled at her. The tears stopped and she closed her eyes burying her head into the crook of his neck. Memorizing the way he smelled and the feeling of him so close to her. "I get to love you now Elena. It's worth everything, all the pain, it's all worth it as long as I get to love you right now." That wasn't fair she thought. It was so unfair for so many reasons. He would love her, and Elena knew now that he loved her far beyond anything she'd ever known, his love for her was forever. With Stefan she'd never been sure where it was going but with Damon, it was never-ending. It would be for her too, even if he died. She couldn't see herself ever recovering from loving him. And all of it happened overnight. How could she not have seen him so clearly before. She felt stupid and angry at herself for not knowing before, for denying him something that clearly had belonged to him all along.

"I love you so much it hurts Damon." She looked into his eyes again, they were clearer at the moment, he had moments that were really bad and then other times where he seemed to be almost completely fine. "I just wish we had more time. This is so unfair." Damon smiled and kissed her gently on the top of her head.

"We've got more than enough time, for all the important things we've got time." He leaned over and kissed her more possessively but it was still so much sweeter than Elena had ever imagined from Damon.

When Damon was finally asleep Elena quietly slipped out of the bed and into her clothes. He looked blissful now, but he'd flinched in his sleep already once or twice. He was also way too warm Elena didn't doubt it now that his temperature was at an abnormal high. She wanted to stay with him for as long as she had but she had the feeling that her time would be better spent finding a way to save him. She turned to look at him as he turned around in the bed onto his back and Elena had to leave the room before she cried again. Everything they did together seemed to be their last moments together and it wasn't right. Elena couldn't grasp how severely she was hit by all this. When she came out of the room she headed down the stairs but stopped halfway down and sank onto one of the steps, crying. For the umpteenth time in the last day or so. She'd lost track of time too, and she was tired and hungry. She cried tiredly slumping over the steps when she heard someone else's soft footsteps meet her halfway up the stairs. Caroline sat down next to her and put an arm around Elena, the girls always knew each other better than they knew themselves. Elena leaned into her friend and Caroline quietly waited until the sobs had calmed down.

"You love Damon don't you?" She asked softly and Elena sat up straight and nodded.

"More than I ever thought I could. I love him so much-" Her breath hitched again, that's how much she loved him. She loved him so much that the thought of being without him made breathing impossible. "You love Tyler?" Elena looked up at Caroline and Caroline looked worried. Usually when Caroline cared about someone she was happy-go-lucky, whatever happens, happens kind of person but now she looked sad.

"It doesn't make any sense. But he- we-" Caroline shook her head. "He knows me." She finally said in a way that Elena understood. It was hard to explain how it felt. "He knows me like no one else ever has. He understands-" She broke off again and shook her head.

"You fit together." Elena finished for her, she understood. Damon fit for her. It was perfectly right and she didn't know what she'd been thinking all this time with Stefan. She cared about Stefan, but Damon. She was his, they belonged together. There was no other way for her to explain it.

"What are we going to do now?" Caroline said, leaning her head against Elena's the two girls sat like that, the way they had when they were little and they were sad about something. Like when Caroline's cat had died, but this was in no way comparable to that, and Bonnie's presence was missing.

"I don't know, we're pretty pathetic aren't we?" Elena actually managed to laugh a little. All she knew was that they had to do something. She couldn't just watch Damon die. Not now that she finally felt like she'd found him, discovered what it meant to be with him. She couldn't let go of that. She refused to do it.

Elena was hungry she realized but then Caroline produced, it seemed out of nowhere, a bag of blood and handed it to Elena who drank it faster than she thought. She'd forgotten how mind-reeling good it tasted. It sent her head flying and her whole body felt like it was humming by the time she was done. It was almost better than sex, almost.

Once she felt well-fed she had intended to get up and go do something useful, but Caroline and Elena both heard the front door to the boarding house open and the two of them rushed to find out who was coming in, it's not like Elena could stop them anyway, she was no longer human and the house was in her name, which meant that the boarding house now belonged to a vampire and anyone could come in. Stefan appeared with Katherine and Elijah at his sides, the odd company took Elena by surprise for a second but then Elena thought maybe Elijah would know a way to help Damon. He had to do something, he owed her didn't he? He was now the most powerful vampire, ever, and she had helped him get that way. He looked her over curiously and Elena thought maybe he knew already what she was thinking, it was hard to tell the extent of Elijah's powers. Stefan broke from his strange company and moved towards Elena, she was surprised that he just hugged her and gave her a kiss on the cheek, she thought it would have been strange but instead it felt like the same old gestures from him. She wondered if it had always been this superficial, slightly fake. She couldn't always have felt like this around Stefan could she? She did feel guilty though, right now Stefan thought absolutely nothing was wrong, and it was most definitely the wrong time to tell him that she'd slept with his brother. That she loved his brother.

"What's wrong? You've been crying." It figured Stefan could tell.

"Damon- he's-" Elena saw Stefan blanch, she'd never noticed before how subtly his facial expressions could change, she'd been too human but now she saw it, the sudden flash of worry, and love for his brother. "He's been bitten Stefan." Elena didn't have to hide her worry for Damon, Stefan knew that Elena had seen what it was like to die from a Werewolf bite, she'd been upset when it was Rose, of course she would be upset when it was Damon. Stefan just didn't know the extent of her distress for Damon. Katherine looked remarkably level considering the information that Elena was sharing with them and Klaus looked disinterested. Though his eyes were fixed on Elena. He knew, she thought. There was no other way to explain the look that was boring a hole through her skull.

"Where is he?"

"He's asleep upstairs." Stefan disappeared for a second and she turned to Elijah. "Is there something you can do? Please Elijah, I know Damon isn't your most favourite vampire, but please, if there is something you can-"

"I can't Elena. I don't know anything that would save him." Elena took a deep breath then, feeling desperate, she couldn't lose Damon, not Damon. Caroline appeared at her side and held onto her hand.

"Are you sure?" She asked Elijah and he turned to Elena, tilting her chin up to look at him.

"Elena, if I could I would have done it. If only for your sake. But there is nothing I can do. I suggest you spend time with him while you still have it. The only thing you can do is make him comfortable." Elena knew that was a lie, there was no comfort in this. She'd seen Rose die, she'd seen what it had done to Damon and now she would be forced to watch him die. She shook her head and sank to the floor, Caroline was at her side in under a second, stroking her back and she suddenly heard Tyler's voice too. Soothing her, her old friends were here but nothing could comfort her at the thought of Damon being lost to her.

Caroline watched Tyler pick Elena up off the floor and she felt a surge of relief at him being here. Elena hadn't been like this since her parents had died, and Caroline hadn't been very good at this back then either. Bonnie had been the one to run damage control, Caroline was merely there for comic relief. Caroline was the one who knew how to get everyone to laugh or cheer up even in situations like this, but she couldn't think of anything that would comfort Elena. She knew that Elena was beyond heartbroken. She remembered how it had been before, how Elena had been in bed for weeks, broken and in pain, both physically and emotionally. Bonnie and Caroline thought she would never recover from it, but she had. This time though, Caroline couldn't see how it could be fixed.

Elena cried so hard she fell asleep in Caroline's lap, and when Caroline was positive that her friend was in a deep sleep she slipped away with Tyler outside. They needed to be somewhere where no one could hear. She pulled Tyler through the French doors and blinked at the sunlight. It was unnaturally bright, too warm and sunny for all this darkness to be surrounding them. This was all so wrong. Caroline frowned at the heat and walked a few feet away from the windows just in case. Tyler followed her silently and then turned to be in front of her.

"Are you alright?" He asked again and Caroline shook her head, but then he already knew that. He moved closer and took her up in his arms and Caroline felt herself relax into his warmth as she rested her head against his chest, he kissed the top of her head. And she thought hard on what she was supposed to do.

"Elena is so heartbroken that she can't function and Bonnie's- I don't even know how Bonnie's doing." She shrugged and shook her head some more. She felt steady as long as Tyler was here, as if he passed some of his strength to her, and she never felt more grateful. She looked up at him, into his dark eyes and hoped for an answer from him but he just looked back at her with those damn puppy eyes. Her friends were falling apart and that had never happened at the same time, it was always either Bonnie or Elena who had kept the three of them strong, and kept them all from immediate danger. But now they were both incapacitated and Caroline had never been so worried. "I have to do something Tyler. There has to be a way to reverse it." She moved away from him now, feeling as if it was finally her turn to take care of her friends and she couldn't let them down, but first things first. Damon's condition was pressing on her first. "How much longer does Damon have?"

"It's already been a day and a half, it depends from person to person, but probably not more than a day. Maybe two if he hangs on past the dementia." Caroline ignored the fact that Damon was going to get much, much worse before he would finally die. As much crap as he gave her, they had sort of become friends and she didn't want him to die. More than anything she wanted to spare Elena the heartbreak of losing Damon or watching him fall apart.

She looked at Tyler carefully who moved closer again and glanced past her to the house before he spoke in an undertone. "Look, we should go back to my house and go through my ancestor's journals. There's a bunch of stuff in there about the werewolf bites and stuff that I only glanced over, but if there's any chance of saving Damon we'll find it there."

"Tyler-" He held up a hand and looked at her seriously.

"I don't want you to get your hopes up okay? Jules said that there was nothing to cure it, and I believed her, don't get Elena's hopes up either, because if this doesn't pan out then she'll just hurt worse." Caroline nodded and frowned at that, but she was determined to find a way. There had to be something, if not to save Damon there had to at least be something to lessen the pain. Make it easier. Caroline swallowed hard at that, she didn't want to put Elena through losing him at all, the sound of her sobbing like that gripped Caroline so severely, the three girls had always been like sisters, they knew each other better than they knew themselves, and so Caroline knew that Elena wouldn't recover from this.

Elena didn't care who was in the room, Damon was reeling, he wasn't himself or it didn't seem so. He'd been drinking a lot of blood and it wasn't helping and right now he wasn't thinking straight. It had been hours and she didn't know where Caroline and Tyler had gone, though she didn't really care anymore. Damon was encroaching on Stefan, following him through the room, screaming about how it was all Stefan's fault and Stefan looked thoroughly hurt by all of this. Elena figured it had something to do with the fact that Damon actually talked differently, the way he phrased himself, the inflections of his voice made him sound like he was from a different time. When he finally grabbed hold of Stefan Elena intervened as quickly as she could she moved to stand right next to Damon and placed her hand gently on his arm. He turned to look at her and the veins around his eyes disappeared and his eyes became blue again. She smiled at the coolness of his eyes and moved her hand from his arm to his cheek.

"Katherine? You're alive?" The mention of Katherine's name stung a bit, but Elena forced herself to remember that this Damon hadn't met Elena yet.

"No Damon, it's Elena."

"Elena?" He repeated and she saw something flip inside him, like something came crumbling down around him as he turned to her and she put her other hand against his chest. He closed his eyes and leaned his head into her hand. "Elena." He said more sure of himself before he opened his eyes. Elena smiled back up at him and waited, his eyes were brighter again, she wondered how long this would last. It hurt to see him like this. She wondered how bad the hallucinations would get too, Rose had been pretty bad but she couldn't imagine Damon chasing her through the house. "What just happened?" he looked at her questioningly and Elena knew that he couldn't remember and that scared him more than anything. She'd never seen Damon scared and it made her worry but instead of telling him what had happened she just smiled and said it didn't matter before she guided him back to the bed where he laid down heavily and rested his head in her lap. She would stay here forever if she could, she ran her fingers gently through is hair and watched him close his eyes and try to sleep. Something plagued him clearly though since he twitched and shifted in his sleep way too much for it to be restful.

When he was finally perfectly still Elena got up from the bed and left the room, but she broke down right outside the door, she wasn't sure how long she could put up with this. She'd lost people before, but this was different. Damon was literally slipping through her fingers and there was absolutely nothing she could do but stay with him. It would be unfair to him to stay away for her own sake. Damon needed her now more than ever and she needed to be with him, even if it would haunt her for the rest of her life, she had to be with him. Stefan came out of the room too eventually and he placed his arms around her, Elena leaned into him despite the fact that it wasn't him she wanted. She loved Stefan too, but she knew now that it would never be the same way she loved Damon. It would never be as intense and sincere as it was with Damon, she didn't sob anymore. Her crying had turned into silent tears as she would shake with her grief but she wouldn't let Damon hear her sobbing.

"You don't have to stay Elena. This isn't easy."

"No I want to-" She took a breath for a moment before she looked up at him. She couldn't tell him now, she might never tell him, maybe she would just disappear and never tell Stefan why she couldn't love him the same way she had. But she didn't think he needed to know right now that she loved Damon. "He needs both of us." Was all she said instead and watched him nod seriously in agreement. She moved away then, braving herself to go back into that room.

"Seriously Jeremy if you put one more helping on my plate I swear I'm going to-"

"What Bonnie?" He ignored her as he put a third helping of Mac n' Cheese on her plate. Bonnie figured it was the only thing apart from eggs that Jeremy knew how to cook. And although she'd never been the type to worry too much about her figure this was starting to get ridiculous.

"You're being ridiculous Jeremy, I'm fine."

"You just slept for thirty-six hours straight, you're not fine." He said determinedly moving around the table and coming to sit next to her. "I'm your boyfriend and I'm allowed to stuff you with junk-food if I want to."

"Oh yeah where is that written?"

"The bible." He snickered when Bonnie rolled her eyes. She wasn't going to argue with him when he was bound and determined to tease her. She would walk right into something that he would find endlessly funny and then wouldn't ever let her live it down. She leaned back though, truly feeling stuffed, there was no way she'd be able to finish that plate, Jeremy moved his arm around her and she found herself instinctively leaning into him. Resting her head on his shoulder, she couldn't deny that she still felt tired, she had used up way too much of herself in order to kill Klaus, and in the end she hadn't even been able to do it herself. She'd weakened him just enough so that Jeremy could get close enough. She hadn't expected him to show up with the knife, he shouldn't have been there at all, but leave it to Jeremy to do what he was told not to.

"You tired?" He asked her and she was about to respond to that, feeling as though it was ridiculous for her to still be tired but she was actually exhausted when there was a loud banging on Jeremy's door.

"It's Caroline." Bonnie said just as Jeremy was getting up from his seat to open the door.

"How do you do that?" He asked jokingly, but the truth was Bonnie wasn't sure how she did that, she always knew when it was Elena or Caroline. She just got this warm fuzzy feeling as if she was six again and she knew that it was her friends. As expected Caroline came bursting through the door and smiled only briefly at Bonnie.

"What happened?" Bonnie asked immediately knowing that something was wrong. "Is Elena okay?" She stood up and felt as if she had the flu, she felt as if everything sort of ached.

"Damon got bitten. It's really bad."

"Wait what?" Jeremy looked stunned, Bonnie though had never been really attached to Damon but she could tell that something was really wrong here. Caroline looked exceptionally distressed and she would only be that way if she cared about Damon or if Elena cared that much. And clearly she did. There were so many things that these three friends knew about each other without ever uttering a word. If it hadn't been for their obviously different appearances the three of them could have been triplets, they had been inseparable for almost as long as they'd lived.

"Tyler's at his place, he's looking through his family's journals hoping to find something but it doesn't look good." Caroline added finally and Bonnie frowned. If Tyler was in on trying to help Damon out it meant that something was definitely going on here.

"I'll go help him out, and I'll call Ric too." Jeremy got up and grabbed his jacket, Bonnie watched him go out into the sunlight and wondered how a day that had started out so bright and lazily could have turned into full-on vampire crises in less than a few hours. Story of her life, she thought as she forced Caroline to sit down and tell her exactly what had happened, and how much she'd missed.

Author's note: :) so... yeah, the idea to put Bonnie in here as well came about half way through the last part with Caroline, I figured that since I was on about the fact that the three girls were bff's ;) it would be good to put Bonnie's pov in there as well. Also I decided that using Bonnie was a good way to explain what I imagine went on with the whole breaking of the curse and Klaus and everything. Whether or not I'm going to kill Damon, well I'm not going to tell you what I've decided... yes I'm a cruel cruel bitch like that... haha... you'll all live...

The situation with Stefan is complicated I have to work that one out still... and then there's Matt that we have to deal with.

I hope you enjoyed this chapter...

Please Review... :)