Awake- Chapter Nine
**Thank you for the good reviews and encouraging words. I hope you can all get back into the story despite my absence. This perhaps will bring in new fans to the stories. As always, this is my first fan fic so please let me know what you think, I love to hear your comments. As an aside, I was thinking of the song Wide Awake, by Katy Perry, (of which I own no rights) while writing the start of this chapter, is you want to listen to it, go ahead, if not, I think the story stands on his own. **
This morning, the quiet town of Mystic Falls awoke to the a morning like any other but as the rest of the town woke form a restful sleep, four separate scenes, yet so connected, were unfolding. However, for the people involved in those scenes, the night had been anything but restful. Six people, four scenes, and none of them were saying a word. After all that had happened in the previous night may be no word were left to say. After you had witness agony, perhaps all there is left is silence. After you had encountered death, may be all that was left was the feeling of the morning air which hits the dry tears on one's cheeks. Yet these people knew death. It surrounded their everyday life. But last night had been different. Last night they had had lost a part of themselves. Every person who animated these scenes silent scenes had in their way lost something precious, something very important.
In the middle of a waking town walk a boy or lease he was a boy once, now it seemed like so much time had passes since the carefree days of adolescence. No, now Jeremy Gilbert who was silently walking through the streets of Mystic Falls on his way home, was surely no longer a boy. Jeremy was awake and he knew death. He would see it everywhere, hell, he even spoke to the souls who had passed on. He had scene violence. He had felt lost. Yet, the event of last night felt different. He had always known that those vampires were not good news. He gotten used to them, even loved them but he had always been afraid. Vampires had caused Jeremy Gilbert to lose, one by one, the people he loved most. Once his aunt Jenna had died, and all that remained of his naturel family was his sister Elena. That sense of unease which despite his acceptance of certain vampires had always remained with him had accentuated to a sometimes not so well hidden fear that these vampires were going to take the last person he truly cared about. He had this feeling that simply wouldn't go away and last night all his fears came true.
He still didn't know. Elena could be dead. Elena could be alive. But in fact, at this point, these definitions seemed vague and at best completely inadequate. She didn't know if Elena had turned as planned. If she hadn't, she may be gone and that last embraced on the porch could be the last time he help his sister. Even if she had turn, it may still have been the last time he held his sister. He had no idea what would emerge if she had gone through with the transition. Would he find the sister he once knew and promise to keep loving or a monster he could not recognize? Jeremy had just left the hospital where the doctors had informed him that while Matt's recovery was nothing short of a miracle, he would not be up for hours, if not days. Jeremy knew that Matt was driving the car that drove Elena over that damn Wickery Bridge yet he held no blame for Matt. He has only done what he wanted to do, take Elena away from the danger, away from the vampires. No he needed nowhere else to look for blame than the Salvatores. These two men whom he had come to know, like, even consider friends, they kept taking Elena back in. They were the ones who put Elena in danger. Of Klaus and his whole family had their share of the blame, but Stefan drew her in and he and Damon would just pull her in. As Jeremy walk he didn't know where to go. Going on meant finding out or worse walking into a scene which had long inhabited his nightmare, he wasn't sure if he was ready to face any of it. It was morning, he was wide awake and now he had lost something very important, he had lost his sister.
In the living room of the boarding house, two people lay silent, one of them asleep, one of them awake. Deep in the arms of the man who she thought she loved Caroline laid deep asleep. This had been a long night. She first believed she had lost him, the man she loved. She had seen him in pain, once again the one who had to lose someone else, first her life, then her dead, and now the man she loved. But he was back. She didn't know why, she hadn't asked him. The events that transpired that night had made the conversation impossible, if not seeming fruitless. Her man had survived, her friend had survived and yet her sleep remained was not peaceful. The night had reminded her of all she had lost. The town knew, they knew she was a vampire. They knew about Tyler. All the evil that had transpired that night was now over but what about tomorrow. Would they need to compel the entire town? Could she go back to school? Could she see her friends? Caroline was asleep and yet she was wide aware because she had lost something very important, her liberty.
Holding Caroline was a man, a man who was awake, a man who despite all his better instincts loved the woman he had in his arms. Klaus had learned long ago that loving someone was a big mistake, a way to get a stake through your heart, literally and figuratively. She had sneaked up in him. She was a vampire and yet she had this live about her he had long forgotten. She had managed to retain so much of her humanity it was refreshing and he was smitten. But for now he had a plan and he could not get himself distracted. He had to plan it smooth. He needed a way to speak to Bonnie. Only she had been privy to the little switcheroo which had managed to avoid a much more painful outcome then the one that had been planned for him. If Caroline now wanted to share a bed with him, which he was not the intended affect but it was definitely a plus. Now he had to figure out what the best move forward would be. He wasn't sure but for the moment he had to stay strong and keep up the act despite this inconvenience. Klaus was wide awake, then again not really, he had lost something very important, he had lost his body.
At the Gilbert house Damon sat in Elena's bed. He couldn't help but remember every moment he had been in that room with the woman he loved, a woman he had now lost not once but twice in the same evening. Something accrued to him tonight, something which he had never realised before. He had loved Katherine, or at least he thought he had loved Katherine. He would have killed many times to get Katherine back but not before he was face to face with whatever was left of Rick had he realised he may have been willing to kill for Katherine but he was willing to die for Elena. He did not even care she had picked Stefan, well that wasn't true, hearing her say those words he had heard so many times before that is was Stefan, it had always been Stefan hurt more deeply than anything or anytime he had heard those words before. He remembered the promise he had made to Stefan that whoever she picked would stay and the other one would go. Now he was unsure, the plan didn't include a vampire Elena. She had said she wanted him to stay, that she couldn't lose him. He may have made that promise to Stefan, a promise he intended to keep but he made his promise to Elena first.
Yet, he was scared. The Elena he loved, the Elena he knew, she was gone. He didn't not know what he would find once Elena would wake up, but he knew she was strong; he knew she would pull through. What scared him was the feeling in his gut that was consuming him. The incredible guilt which came with the idea that any of his actions had caused the pain he saw on Elena's face tonight. He had lived so long shutting away human emotions. He had told everyone it was like a switch. He could simply turn it off, it was the basic trait of a vampire. She had made it impossible. The passion, the love, the kiss, it was all so vivid in his memory. It was a force that inhabited his entire soul. Damon not only lost, not once, but twice the women he loved tonight, he lost something very important, he lost his vampire ways.
In the upstairs of the boarding house, Stefan watched a silent Elena sleep in his dead. He was wide awake, unable to catch the sleep everyone else seemed to be enjoying. He knew he made the right decision. He could not let himself think any differently. He was different from Damon, he respected Elena's wishes. She wanted him to save Matt and he did. He was so sure he could save both of them. When he finally got her out and realise she wasn't breathing he rushed her to the hospital faster than he had ever moved before. However, he felt guilty, not for saving her in time, he felt guilty about how happy he felt when he learned that she had vampire blood in her system when she died. He knew she didn't want to be a vampire and he wanted to honor her wishes, but he had always hoped that with time she would change her mind. How could be not. He loved her and he didn't want to lose her. He had always thought that may be later she would change her mind and decide to spend eternity with her.
But of course, now he was worried. She said she would make her choice. He knew she loved him but the way she looked into Damon had him worried. It was one thing for her to spend an eternity with her, but to look at her have an eternity with Damon was a thought that he could entertain right now. But he was sure as soon as Elena woke up, they could sort it out. Then they would have an eternity together. Stefan lost something very important; he lost the constraint of time.
Elena well, Elena she lost her life.