Hey, everyone. Sorry for the delay on this chapter, I was sidetracked, I forgot to write a scene, and I also wanted to wait for a few more episodes to pass so I could make sure I'm doing everything right. But thanks for sticking with me! Enjoy!

Disclaimer: Chapter 1 please :)

Yellow Ledbetter

Four Months Ago

The wind had stopped blowing, the ground had stopped shaking, and the world seemed to be at complete peace. Damon kept his eyes shut, fearful of where they would open next or if they would even open at all. Part of him expected nothingness and another part, a hopeful part, expected to be back in his bed with Madeline like nothing had ever happened at all.

Sadly, neither one of those things happened. When Damon peered through his closed eyelids, he found that the world was the same as before his eyes shut except without the shaking ground or blinding light. Everything was still and silent, causing Damon to hum under his breath in confusion.

"Huh." He looked around, completely dumbfounded. Bonnie was standing by his side, preforming the exact same inspection, and their eyes met at once while they tried to process what was going on. Quickly, the two realized that their warm hands were still entwined, and they uncomfortably ripped themselves out of the weirdly intimate touch. Damon cleared his throat. "That got awkward fast."

"What happened?" Bonnie asked, looking towards where she last saw her friends standing, watching her as she crumbled with the Other Side. However, they were no longer there. "Where is everybody?"

Damon felt around his chest to make sure he was real and not a ghost-like creature. He'd never been on the Other Side before—let alone crumbled with it. But as he did this, Bonnie walked off in another direction, leaving Damon alone in the cemetery. He threw his hands up in the air seeing her rudeness.

"Where you going? Hey!"

They ended up wandering back into Mystic Falls's town square that was, somehow, desolate. Damon put his thumb in his mouth and poked at his canines that were sharp as they'd always been.

"Well," he began as they walked down the street. "I feel a fang. Well, I'm still a vampire. Either I'm a dead vampire or Mystic Falls is no longer magic-free."

"Look," said Bonnie, pointing in front of them. The pair came to a halt in the middle of the road to see the Mystic Grill still standing with lights inside but no noise or people around or within the facility. However, the isolation of the restaurant was not the weirdest part about it.

Damon's eyebrows knotted. "I definitely blew that up about an hour ago."

"Why don't we see any people?" asked Bonnie. "If we're on the Other Side, we should at least be able to see the living."

"Where the hell are we?" Damon turned in his place, his eyes travelling across the town he called his home. "And I don't mean geographically."

"I have no idea," confessed the witch, just as baffled as he was.

Today

"What time are your classes today?" Matt asked Audrey as she buttoned the top of her jeans, still clad without a shirt. She was in a rush, which made him think that she was somewhat late.

"Oh…about now-ish." The teenager shrugged and bent down, taking hold of her shirt. She slipped it over her head and pulled out her hair, letting it fall down her shoulders in a wave of red. "I really shouldn't have spent the night. I can't do that anymore now that I'm at college."

"You could always drop out. Stay in Mystic Falls," Matt proposed as he sat down on his bed and buttoned up his own shirt. "You're a human, you know."

Audrey peered up at him and smirked. "What, and defer from college for two years like someone we know?"

Matt chuckled. "It's not all that bad, you know? College was never my thing."

"I'm a Forbes." Audrey hastily shoved her boot onto her foot, holding the bedpost as a railing for her to slip it on. Matt watched her curiously as she made her way over to him and sighed. "It's practically in my blood."

"Are you gonna be here later?" he asked, earning Audrey to fall silent. "I was just asking because of…of Jeremy, you know?"

Things were pin-drop silent for a moment before Audrey whispered, "I'm sorry. I don't want to sound like one of those girls, Matt, but…"

"But you're just using me for sex," he finished, a playful smile on his lips. Audrey bit down on her own lip shamefully, but the blonde-haired human just snickered. "Come on, Audrey. I'm not an idiot."

"I just can't get into anything…serious right now." She exhaled heavily. "Not with…with what's going on with Mads and Caroline, and—"

"Stefan?"

The words got caught in the Forbes's throat as if they were too thick to come out. "You…really should never mention that name again."

"Sorry." Matt stood up so that he was taller than her only by a few inches. She looked ashamed, like she was being impolite to him or something. But Matt understood completely—it was just sex. It started two months after Stefan left and it would only be sex until she wanted something more; or, perhaps, she wanted something less. He held up his hands in defense. "But, in all seriousness, I had to ask. Jeremy's been getting suspicious."

Audrey snorted. "Not like he cares about anything other than getting drunk nowadays." She was disappointed in the young Gilbert, just like everyone else. He was taking Bonnie's death the hardest. "But I might be able to stop by for an hour or two. Eight-ish?"

"I'll be here," he promised, giving her a small smile. Audrey nodded at him and, in an attempt to salvage an awkward goodbye, leaned forward and kissed his cheek. Matt didn't object to it at all but rather smiled when she pulled away.

Elena stood beside the bed picking up all of Damon's things that I had laid out for her to help me with. I sat down on the full-size college bed, studying the shimmer of the diamond ring surrounded by an abyss of black satin. Elena spoke to me and, though I comprehended all of it, I didn't feel like I was hearing any of it.

I could picture it as clear as day; the warmth on our skin, the impending doom looming over our heads, and the one spark of light that evolved from it: "Marry me, Madeline. After all this is over, marry me."

"Madeline?" Elena asked softly, and I looked up at her to find my sister staring at the satin box in my hand. I swallowed down the sadness in my throat and tried to pay attention to her. "You know, I don't think staring at that ring for hours is helping your situation."

My situation? What was I, an experiment?

"What would you rather have me do?" I sighed and swung myself off the bed with the box still in my hand. "Have Alaric compel me to take a hammer to it? That should work, right?"

"Hey," Elena said briskly in a condescending voice. "You agreed to this. Don't be angry at me for it, you said you wanted Alaric to compel you to forget loving him."

I paused, my back facing away from Elena as I stopped to think about what she was yelling at me for. She was right, as much as I hated to admit it. This was no joke. I could tell she had felt undermined by the whole deal—after all, she was the one who brought it up in the first place, thinking it would be a quick wake-me-in-the-middle-of-the-night-and-wipe-my-pain thing, but Alaric had decided that he didn't feel comfortable erasing my life with Damon without my permission. Besides, it would take much more than one simple act of compulsion, and we needed the consentient of our friends to keep up the charade.

All in all, it was not going to be easy rewiring every single feeling I'd had since the eleventh grade.

I had agreed, after much thought, to do what Elena thought best. Some could look at it as conformity, and the truth of the matter is that it was quite possible I was conforming to my sister's command. But I saw no other options; I was at a loss for any other way to rid myself of the pain and suffering I kept inside me. It wasn't healthy to stare at an engagement ring for hours on end and feel a severe punching at your chest, in a hole where your heart should be. It wasn't healthy to be taking ancient drugs to see your dead fiancé. I'd gone too far, but it wasn't even the farthest I could go. I knew, deep down, there was a part of me that could go for miles longer.

Elena made it sound like my entire eternity would be drenched in despair. A dark abyss of nothingness. I had to say that—for once—I actually agreed with what she proposed. How long would it be before I switched off my humanity and became as cruel, ruthless, and vile as Stefan, Damon, and Elena when they'd turned off their humanities? How long would it be before I went running back to Luke, begging for more herbs to make me see the hallucination Damon I'd been clutching to all summer? If that were the case, I would keep blacking out and keep hurting more people.

There was nothing left that I could try. If I couldn't bring myself to move on in a healthy way, I had to try it by force. The only way to get him to leave was to make him leave. It seemed like the most logical option—and that was the problem. Elena had been thinking more logically, thinking with integrity and clarity, while I was acting impulsively and emotionally.

If I couldn't even recognize myself anymore—if my sister and I had truly swapped places when it came to intellectual thinking—what was left of me, of my humanity? The answer was nothing. Nothing would be left.

I spun around to face Elena with a tight smile. "I did. I just can't help but make fun of it, you know? It can't be healthy to get a routine memory wipe every year, can it?" I chuckled to myself, finding a spark of light in my dry humor.

Elena, however, found it humorless. "Mads, this isn't a joke; this is serious. You're getting rid of all your love for Damon. All of it. Alaric won't do this if you're not okay with it."

"Elena, I said I wanted this." I walked over to her and looked down at the bed that was cluttered with items that had some tie to Damon. Hesitantly, I set the closed ring box down on the bed and looked at my sister. "I don't want to spend the rest of my life grieving. I won't—I can't do it."

My sister cautiously examined me, but eventually sighed and stood down from her scolding. "All right. I believe you."

"Thank you," I murmured sourly before I shifted my attention from Elena to the box beside the bed, resting in a chair.

Inside the cardboard box, I could see a copy of Gone With the Wind, Damon's ripped shirt from the night Silas put me in a mind-control trance, the dress that Katherine had thought Damon gave me for my birthday but was really a present that he gave me on Elena's not wanting me to feel left out, and a bunch of various other items that had some sentimental value. Lying on the top of all those things, my vervain necklace rested inside, as if haunting me of a human life that was surprisingly long, yet still so very short. I reached inside and grabbed the chain end of the necklace and held it up to the light, watching as it glimmered from the sunlight just as the ring had before.

The necklace was a melancholic item. It represented everything I'd ever been through—right from the start until the very end. It also represented Damon, who'd had the necklace for years before he gave it to me. He always told me he'd won it in a poker game, but I've always suspected that it was a lie. Either it was a necklace from one of his victims or he had bought it on an impulsive, compassionate whim and was too afraid to admit his feelings. Maybe he bought it for Katherine, who knew? All that mattered was that he gave it to me.

"Mads?" I heard Elena whisper. I lowered the necklace and glanced over at my concerned sister, looking almost as if she were in pain.

"I'm fine," I said quietly, setting the necklace down in the box. She studied me while I looked up again and gave her a sad smile. "I'm fine. Completely fine."

So this ingenious plan required the cooperation of everyone I knew who also knew about Damon. This included Alaric, Tyler, Stefan, Matt, Jeremy, Elena, Caroline, Audrey, and any other vampire or human that also knew about my relationship with Damon. Alaric, obviously, was first to agree, so that left the rest of them.

"It's been four months. It's time for her to let go," urged Elena as she spoke to Matt and Jeremy. They'd joined us on the Whitmore campus for this specific reason.

My brother scoffed. "You gonna erase Bonnie from her head, too?"

A peeved Elena took a cautious step forward and cocked her hip. "Missing Bonnie makes her sad, Jer. Missing Damon makes her dangerous."

His gaze drifted to me and his shoulders rose and fell angrily. "Are you just gonna let her make all of your decisions now, Mads?"

"Well, in case you didn't get the memo, Jeremy, I haven't been really making the right ones lately," I snapped, unaware of my brisk tone before the venomous words came out. I could tell Jeremy was shocked at my quickness, but he didn't say anything about it. I sighed, frustrated, and tried to lower my tone. "Look…I'm barely hanging on. I haven't eaten; I haven't slept. I can barely close my eyes without seeing him and I can't function properly anymore. I'm being rash—I'm not being me. I can't stay this way forever."

"Mads," Matt tried, his voice strained with disbelief. "You don't have to do this to yourself. You don't have to do this if you don't want to."

"It doesn't matter if I don't want it," I told him blandly. "I need to do this. Not just because I'm 'dangerous', but for my own sake."

A silence dawned on the four of us for a while, and I could tell Jeremy and Matt were either resenting me or accepting me for what I wanted to do. But at this point, I had made up my mind and there was no changing it. Stefan had moved on and it was time for me to do the same. I didn't want to be a burden to anyone, not even myself.

Elena crossed her arms over her chest and said softly, "Alaric will compel any memories and then forget that she had him do it. I need you to keep the truth from her, too. Tyler and Stefan are on board."

"What about Audrey and Caroline?" asked Matt.

I frowned. "That's an excellent question. But right now, I can't get a hold of either."

"Isn't Audrey in class or something?"

Elena cocked an eyebrow. "Um…no. Audrey doesn't have a class today. Why? Have you talked to her?"

Elena and I studied Matt, but he shook his head immediately upon being asked the question. He shrugged. "No. I just thought…you know, she'd be in class."

Audrey sat across from Alaric with a pissed-off expression on her face and her arms crossed over her chest defensively. Caroline was angry as well, but she voiced her own anger towards the teacher rather than sitting in silence.

"You said that Stefan was looking for a way to bring Bonnie and Damon back," the blonde snarled.

"I thought he was," Alaric reasoned. "I've been feeding him leads for months. He let me believe he was following them."

Audrey straightened in her chair, and Alaric's eyes moved over as he watched the teenager slowly let it sink into her skin.

"I'm sorry; so you're saying that, all this time, I've redirected my anger from Stefan because I thought he was trying to save his brother and, in all reality, he's been…" Audrey's teeth clamped down and she hissed, "…playing house somewhere?"

"Well, I've been a little focused on magic bubble duty!" Caroline snapped, trying to keep her voice quiet in the diner the three of them were sitting in. "And as you can see by the lack of magic in Mystic Falls, it's a spectacular fail of a mission! And now you're telling me that this whole time, no one's been doing anything to help Bonnie and Damon?"

Alaric looked between the two furious Forbes. "I wouldn't exactly say no one."

An hour and a half later, Audrey and Caroline walked in on a turned-on coat check girl and a determined Enzo kissing said coat check employee. Caroline cleared her throat and earned Enzo's attention, causing him to turn around with a smile.

"Well, well, well. Now there's a blast from the past." He looked back at both Forbes with a smirk. "Hello, Red. Hello, gorgeous."

Alaric shut the blinds in his office and turned around at me. I was sitting down on one of the chairs while Elena leaned against Alaric's desk. It seemed that she was just as nervous as I happened to be.

"What are you going to do, again?" Elena asked, kneading her hands together as if she was making a huge mistake. I was seconds away from getting angry with her, not by my own accord, but because of the heightened emotions. My tolerance level was around zero now.

"I raided the psychology department's research library. In a nutshell, we'll be using a combination of hypnotherapy and memory reprocessing techniques." He walked over to me and instantly sensed my tense form. Alaric put a hand on my knee and captured my attention. The first object of compulsion appeared when he said, "The more we talk, the more you'll relax and open your mind to me."

Alaric pulled back, and I felt myself begin to relax. "We're going to be searching through memories that are…deeply embedded, and each significant memory that we hit which is connected to Damon, I will help you modify. And this should eventually lead us to the signature memory which, once erased, will create a positive domino effect through all of your other memories."

I sighed and leaned back in my chair. This seemed so complicated. "Can't we just pull out the Pure Blood book and find a sacrifice ritual that lets me forget? I mean, there's got to be something to make me forget all at once without this much…work."

Alaric laughed softly. "I am supernaturally rewiring your first love, Mads. Three years worth of memories. If it were that easy, I wouldn't be so terrified."

I frowned. "You and me both."

Alaric leaned forward again and started compelling me. "I have some questions. Answer them honestly."

"I'll answer the questions honestly," I agreed.

"Do you have doubts about this?"

"Of course. But this has to be done." I didn't think about the words before they spilled out of my mouth, but I guess I didn't have an option. I quickly realized that being compelled as a vampire was ten times different than being compelled as a human. As a human, you didn't really comprehend what was happening to you. As a vampire, you were very much aware.

"Are you afraid?"

"Petrified."

"Why?"

"Because I don't want to let go of him. Ever. But I have to." I said the words softly, but I didn't take my eyes off of Alaric. He seemed to accept this answer.

"Do you trust me to be…digging around in your mind?"

I nodded and let out a small scoff. "Of course I trust you."

"Okay. Well then…let's…let's get started." He sighed heavily. "Who is Damon Salvatore?"

"He was my fiancé. I loved him more than anything…and then he died." I felt something pain inside of me, but I was forced to ignore it when Alaric moved on.

"And when did you first meet him?"

"I was in high school. I went out for an evening jog and I ran into him. My phone slipped out of my hand and he caught it for me."

"And what was he like?"

"Creepy," I said honestly, my shoulders coming up and down in a shrug. I shook my head. "But…for some reason, I was really nervous. I kept nervously rambling until he told me to relax. It was embarrassing."

"And how did he make you feel?"

"Uncomfortable," I said slowly, trying to come up with the most accurate answer. "But there was something about him that I couldn't shake. The way he moved…the way he looked at me…the way he sounded. He was different, to say the least."

Alaric took in a deep breath before finally speaking, "You had a nice moment with a stranger on your evening jog. But that's all he was—a stranger."

Suddenly, the memory of meeting Damon—of gasping as I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, of his cocky smirk, of his enigmatic one-liner—was blocked, as if a wall had been formed and forts were declared. I nodded in agreement.

"A stranger."

"He saved your phone and you parted ways."

"We never saw each other again."

The night had disappeared and the morning arrived as Damon and Bonnie walked down the suburban, deserted streets of their hometown. Damon had stripped his heavy leather jacket and slung it over his shoulder, having no patience for the heat. Bonnie, as well, had her jacket tied around her waist.

Damon groaned. "How many more streets are we going to wander?"

"How many times are you going to ask me questions I don't have the answers to? Hmm?" asked the annoyed witch. Damon turned around at her and realized, very quickly, that he was stuck in an otherworldly place with one of his least favorite persons. He was sure she felt the same way, which was why they didn't walk side by side but rather one behind the other. This was going to be interesting, he could already tell. Bonnie looked around at the cars on the streets and commented, "There's something weird about these cars."

"Yeah, they're all twenty-years-old or more and yet they look brand new." The witch and the vampire stopped at a white car on the side of the road and surveyed it. Damon's eyes drifted upwards over the hood and, almost immediately, a look of confusion crossed his face. Bonnie realized it, also, when she saw the Gilbert house standing tall. "And that is Madeline's not-so-burnt-to-a-crisp house."

Toys covered the lawn, but a newspaper also sat at the front. Damon bent down and picked up the paper. He takes the rubber band off of the roll and unfolds it to look at the date, searching for how it could be possible that the Gilbert house stood tall. As soon as his eyes rested upon the numbers, he turned around to Bonnie with the paper unfolded and extended to her.

"Hmm?" she asked, confused. Damon pointed to the date.

"Look."

Bonnie craned her neck and read aloud, "'Rare solar eclipse expected to be seen across twelve states'—"

Damon rolled his eyes impatiently. "The date."

She looked back down at the paper and Damon tapped the area he had his finger on. Bonnie said the date cautiously, absolutely dumbfounded. "May 10th, 1994." She looked up at him. "Is that—? Are we—? But that's impossible!"

Suddenly, the sky above them turned to a dark, grey color that was deeply concerning and immediately freaky. The two looked up at the sun to find it covered, caused by this 'rare solar eclipse'.

"I don't think we should be asking where we are," Damon began cryptically. "I think we should be asking when we are."

"Tell me about this moment," Alaric urged as I kept my eyes closed and pictured what he wanted me to. I could see it, right behind my eyes. The memory flashed, giving me the sense of being there when I knew it had been in the past. It was one that I had already relived before.

"What is it, Damon?" I had asked cautiously, but I was very much aware of what was going to come out of his mouth. Afraid, too.

"I just have to say it once. You just need to hear it." Despite what I had wanted, I didn't step back from him when he moved forward. "I know I screwed things up before, I know that. I do it a lot, Madeline, I do. But it doesn't change the way I feel about you, Madeline, I promise." My chest had tightened and I felt like I was drowning. I didn't want to hear it. "I love you, Madeline."

"No. No, Damon. Don't do this. Please don't do this. You didn't tell me just to take it away—"

And after a minute or two of arguing, he finally stepped forward and clasped my necklace around my neck while giving me a kiss on the forehead, something that emotionally wrecked me. Maybe forgetting would've been easier.

But he pulled away, and our eyes met, and I whispered, "Thank you", before he disappeared.

"Elena had been taken that day, so we went to rescue her. Elijah was there and, even though we thought we had killed him at the time, there was still a threat out there. Damon told me that he loved me, and he wanted to compel me to forget it because he thought that he didn't deserve me. But I convinced him to let me keep my memory of it." I paused and ironically chuckled. "Well, would you look at that? If that isn't irony…"

When I trailed off, Alaric watched me with hesitancy. But I looked up at him and nodded once, so he leaned forward and gulped.

"You didn't see Damon that night. He didn't come in your room and he didn't tell you that he loved you. You were exhausted from what happened with Elena and you went straight to sleep."

"I was exhausted so I went to bed immediately," I whispered slowly.

Alaric nodded and then asked me once more, "Who is Damon Salvatore?"

"He was my fiancé. I loved him more than anything and then…he died." I answered the question immediately, driven by the compulsion to do so. I sighed, defeated. This was a complete bust.

Seeing that I had made no progress, Alaric sighed. "Why don't we, uh, why don't we take a little break, okay? To be honest, I could use a drink."

Damon swung himself back and forth on the Gilbert's porch swing while he questioned aloud, "Wonder if there's any booze in this empty retroville."

Bonnie scoffed and looked around the street she had seen her entire life. "It feels so weird to be back here. I practically grew up on this porch."

Damon stopped swinging himself on the swing, deciding that it was not a good time to go down memory lane. "All right. Talk me through it."

"Before the Other Side collapsed, my Grams said that she made a sacrifice so I could find peace."

The vampire frowned. "The part where you actually have a theory."

"Well, this clearly isn't peace, otherwise, I wouldn't be stuck here with you." She smiled bitterly.

"Rude."

"She must've—I don't know—sent me somewhere. And when I held your hand, I took you with me."

Damon leaned forward on his knees. "Well, did she happen to whisper a safe word in her last breaths?" he asked insensitively. "A clue, maybe? Witchy path out of here?"

"No," retorted Bonnie, "but if we got here by magic, magic should be able to get us out."

Damon raised his eyebrows in prompt, but Bonnie avoided his gaze skeptically. He made a face. "And that frown that's not upside down is telling me what?"

Determined to figure out whether she was capable of getting them out, Bonnie turned her head to the side and spotted an unlit candle on the porch. She focused in on it, concentrating, and whispered, "Phesmatos incendia."

The two looked over at the candle in the glass barrier and, seeing no flame lit, they were instantly disappointed.

He grumbled, "Still can't do magic." Damon leaned back on the porch swing, slumped. "Perfect."

"Out of everyone—everyone—you're the one that's objecting to Alaric erasing my love for Damon from my head?" I asked Caroline over the phone after she had expressed her distaste for the current plan. Audrey was also with her, but she had agreed as long as I was sure it was what I wanted.

"We are literally chasing a lead!" exclaimed Caroline, but I knew she was just going to find a dead end. Stefan had been finding dead ends and he gave up, too. There was no point to it anymore. "W…What if we find something out? What if…Damon returns home and everything returns back to normal and then you're just sitting there all confused and…weird?!"

I shrugged. "So Alaric will compel me to remember again. Big deal. All I know right now, Caroline, is that I'm tired of crying. I'm tired of spending every single second of every single day missing him—I am sick of missing him, Caroline! I've never loved someone this much in my life and I'm afraid that if I don't get over it—"

I stopped myself, afraid to continue. I was afraid of the idea of being afraid, and Caroline could see that. I could hear her audible sigh through the phone.

"You're…right, Mads. I…I don't really know what to say."

"She wants you to be happy!" Audrey shouted at the phone, causing me to smile tightly as I listened to the two sisters bicker. "Right, Caroline? Tell her that you want her to be happy. Tell her!"

"Shut up, Audrey, I'm driving." Caroline returned her attention to me. "But yes. I do want you to be happy, Mads."

"Happy is a relative term," I said pessimistically with a long exhale. "Even though I'll be forgetting that I loved Damon, I won't be forgetting about Bonnie. And after everything, I think the term 'happy' won't apply to me for...oh, I'll give it an eternity or so."

"Well, if you're just going to be this cynical about it, why are you even trying to forget your love for Damon?"

But it was not Caroline who spoke, or even the younger Forbes. It was Enzo. He spoke very clearly and very British-ly through the phone, apparently telling me that the Forbes were with Damon's ex-best friend.

I frowned. "Hello to you, too, Enzo."

"Hello to you, Miss Madeline. Tell me, how is life as a vampire?"

"Hell. How's life back in the land of the living?"

"Delightful."

Eventually, I came around to answering his question. "I'm trying to forget him so I don't spend the rest of eternity a broken shell. Without remembering what we had, it'll be easier." I paused. "Or…at least, I hope it will be. Whatever, like I said, it doesn't have to be permanent."

Enzo chuckled. "Haven't you grown bored of having your mind tempered with?"

That was a question that I wasn't in the mood for. "And on that note, I'm finished with this phone call. Caroline, Audrey…thank you guys for being so understanding. Enzo…" I trailed off, trying to find the right way to end the call. Eventually, I sighed. "Bye."

"Bye," I heard from Caroline and Audrey before I heard Enzo's oh-so-charming, "Goodbye, Madeline."

"That's unfortunate," said Enzo unapologetically as the call ended between the Forbes sisters and their friend Madeline. "I didn't know she was taking Damon's death so hard."

"He proposed to her just an hour before he got stuckon the Other Side." Audrey's eyes narrowed, incredulous at Enzo's obliviousness. "Of course she's taking it hard."

"Well, they were fated for each other, so I guess it does make sense." Enzo sighed and shifted in his seat.

Audrey frowned. "They weren'tfated for each other, it was just a product of Markos's spell that they met. They still loved each other."

"Yeah, yeah, I know." Quickly, Enzo changed the subject, turning his head to Caroline and engaging in small talk. "I, uh, heard you dropped out of school."

"And I heard that you were a lurker who was spying on my life," the vampire shot with a bitter smile. Enzo paid no mind to it. "When do we exit?"

"Soon. Uh, you should reconsider. Looks can…only get a girl so far these days."

Caroline laughed. "Yeah, well, I'm not taking feminist tips from a guy who just used his tongue to get secrets out of a coat check girl."

"Garment attendant," he corrected.

"You just made that up," the blonde vampire accused. She then sighed. "So, did you make up the 'Gemini Coven' lead, too? Because I've never heard of them. Who are they?"

"No idea." He brushed it off. "That's not where we're headed."

"What?" Caroline exclaimed, trying not to panic. But both Forbes looked at each other, even though it was virtually unsafe since Caroline had to turn her head to the backseat to lock eyes with Audrey. "Wait, where are we going?"

"You'll see," said Enzo. But there was no use in turning around—they'd already gone too far to turn back.

Stefan hastily chopped up a variety of vegetables and produce, preparing for the nice dinner he was going to make for his girlfriend, Ivy, since she was in the kind of mood that needed reassurance. The pan sizzled once he scooped all of the ingredients he'd chopped up into a pan and poured wine into it, adding a little extra flavor. Dusting off his hands, Stefan walked to the fridge on the left side of the kitchen island to get his own snack before dinner. In a hidden compartment in the fridge, he pulled out a blood bag and took a long sip, exhaling at the taste of the cold human blood that he sustained himself on. Just as he finished taking his sip, he could hear the front door unlocked and realized quickly that it was Ivy. Before he was to get caught, Stefan threw the blood bag into the fridge just as the door opened.

"Hey," he greeted his girlfriend.

"Hey…" Ivy trailed off. He didn't notice the reserve in her voice, as he was still too panicked from earlier.

"Perfect timing. I was just—"

"I, uh, ran into some of your friends," said Ivy suddenly, causing Stefan to immediately become alarmed. Friends? He didn't have any friends in Savannah.

"What?" he asked, confused. "Where?"

"Here—"

Before Stefan could say anything or object, he watched as Enzo sauntered into the room flamboyantly, throwing his arms up for show. Caroline followed closely behind with her arms crossed over her chest and an angry stomp in her step while Audrey hesitantly walked inside, not too keen on the surprise visit to her ex-boyfriend. He barely even noticed her when she walked in.

"Stefan!" exclaimed Enzo. "You are a hard man to track down. Uh, I wasn't sure if your new…friend would invite us in, but she said that this was your place. Which means…open invitation to all of your mates, right? Got any bourbon?" The sadistic vampire rubbed his hands together while the Salvatore looked at him with distaste.

Enzo walked off to the side, leaving a clear view to Stefan of the red-haired teenager who stood parallel to Stefan. Her arms were crossed and her eyes were clearly full of spite as they stared at each other. A look of guilt swarmed Stefan's face. Caroline eyed Ivy beside her, curious as to who she was and what she was at Stefan's house for. She had a clear image in her mind, but she wasn't all that happy about it. Stefan hurt her sister.

And he knew it, too.

Having no choice, Stefan was forced to let Caroline, Audrey, and Enzo join him and Ivy for dinner, putting a damper on his evening plans. Enzo sat on Stefan's right, staring him down. He fit a strawberry into his mouth and praised, "Good stuff, mate."

But Stefan could see clearly through Enzo's act. In an attempt to make the situation less awkward, Ivy smiled and looked at the two Forbes sisters who sat on her left side.

"So…how do you guys know Stefan?" Ivy smiled.

"He and I went to high school together," Caroline answered, grabbing the white wine in front of her plate. "He actually used to date—"

"One of our friends," Audrey interrupted her sister, who was seconds away from telling Stefan's new girlfriend that she used to date him. "It was a…uh, long time ago, though."

It was uncomfortable for Stefan and Audrey to be sitting at the same table, which everyone could clearly see—everyone except for Ivy, that was. Enzo was looking between his left and his right at the ex-couple that avoided each other's glances at all costs. Caroline realized instantly that her sister neglected to tell Ivy about her and Stefan for a reason. She could also see Stefan's new girlfriend's face fall at the mention of an ex-girlfriend.

"Not that…he's not allowed to date, I just didn't realize that he'd met someone. I mean, like Audrey said, it was a long time ago." Caroline bit down on her lip and, in an attempt to exchange niceties, she said, "So…how did you meet, exactly?"

"Uh, Ivy's car was in the shop where I…work," Stefan responded awkwardly. Audrey's eyes suddenly snapped up to meet Stefan's, the first time that they had made contact since they saw each other.

"Wait a second, you work?" she asked, surprised. Stefan shifted, and Audrey realized her first mistake. Hastily, she added, "A-As a mechanic?"

Stefan nodded. "It's relaxing."

"Why…?" Ivy trailed off, confused as she looked between Audrey and Stefan. Her eyes settled upon her boyfriend. "What did you used to do?"

"Ah, man of all seasons, jack-of-all-trades," responded Enzo in a light tone. His eyes cut towards Ivy and he smiled. "You have a lovely clavicle."

Ivy looked surprised. "Oh! Thank you…I think."

"Forgive me," apologized the vampire, "I always notice a woman's neck—I'm a neck person! So is Stefan; right, Stefan?"

"Not anymore."

"Oh, that's silly! You can't just stop being a neck person!" he exclaimed. An antagonizing look exchanged between Stefan and Enzo while Ivy leaned over to Caroline with concern.

"Is Enzo your boyfriend?"

Caroline almost laughed. "Ugh! Oh, God, no! Would you date that?"

Ivy laughed, but Enzo didn't find it quite as funny. He protested, "Uh, hello. I'm right here! I have super sensitive hearing. Practically supernatural. Do you believe in the supernatural, Ivy?"

"Uh…" the girl trailed off. "Never really thought about it."

Now, Enzo was just taunting her—right in front of Stefan. Four out of five people knew the secret of the supernatural at the table, and for the fun of it, Enzo was itching to make it a full house.

"I, myself, I'm a believer. Had to get a witch to do a locator spell to find my buddy here." An awkward silence loomed over the table as Enzo spoke the truth. But it was hardly a deal breaker—Stefan just laughed, insinuating that it was a dry joke, so Ivy took a social cue and began to laugh along like nothing was wrong.

The music of Salt 'N' Pepa's "Whatta Man" blasted through the stereo in the kitchen as Damon flipped pancakes over the stove in the Salvatore kitchen. He danced to the music and drank his bourbon, finding that there was nothing else to do, alone in a big house with no people to consult with except for Bonnie. However, she had gone out early in the morning to a place unknown, so he had to improvise. Bonnie walked into the Salvatore house as this was happening, and she immediately grew concerned when she heard the '90s music blaring throughout the household.

Damon stopped dancing the moment Bonnie cleared her throat and came into the kitchen, finding that it was awkward for the both of them. He just straightened and flipped his pancakes strategically, blinking his eyes a few times to rid the alcohol that clouded his system.

"I didn't know you cooked."

"I don't. How'd you sleep?" He flipped a pancake. "Me—not good. My 1994 mattress was very lumpy." Damon looked up at her to see the witch with a stuffed animal in one arm and a book in the other. "Whatcha got there?"

Bonnie looked down at the things she'd gotten and gasped. "Oh, Ms. Cuddles! I lost her when I was nine, but I went into my house last night and…there she was! I also found this in my Grams' house." She lifted the book as Damon turned on his heel to change the CD. "Her old Grimoire."

"Yeah, well I found this!" Damon exclaimed, walking over to the stereo. "Drank it last year when Ric died."

After removing the Salt 'N' Pepa CD that he'd had in the stereo, Damon blindly began to pick one off the CD spinning rack. All the while, Bonnie pushed on about her theories.

"So we're in this snapshot of another time or…something. Everything that existed in 1994…still exists."

She approached the vampire carefully and watched as Damon picked the CD and took it out of his cast. He smiled.

"For better or for worse."

He kissed the CD dramatically and put it into the stereo. Damon pressed the button to start the CD and it began to play for all of two seconds before Bonnie, irritated, shut it off and snapped at him.

"Listen, there was a time when I couldn't practice magic. The Grimoire taught me a lot. Maybe…I can reteach myself."

Damon turned the music back on. "If you're still a witch. Which, with our luck and your skill, probably ain't the case."

Bonnie made a face at him as he walked back over to his pancakes. She put a hand on her hip and judged, "Would a little support kill you?"

"You know, I am acutely aware that we are in some otherworldly time dimension. However, do you ever think, for one second, that maybe it's you being negative reacting to my natural self negatively?"

Bonnie frowned. "You're ridiculous."

"Nope. I'm consistent. Eat your pancakes." He flipped two pancakes onto a plate and, though they were burnt, he shoved them in front of Bonnie so she could eat them and stop complaining. He turned around and grabbed the newspaper by the window. "Oh, and—" He slammed it in front of the witch with a sour smile, "You can do a crossword puzzle."

"Oh, gee! Thanks!" she thanked him facetiously. "Breakfast with my least favorite person and a crossword puzzle…from 1994."

Damon just drank his bourbon, hoping to ignore her, and Bonnie turned around on her stool to start the crossword puzzle. The two were on edge with each other, but they both knew that they were stuck, whether they liked it or not. The witch began to focus.

"All right, what's a seven letter word for—" Bonnie was cut off mid-sentence when the windows that gave them light started to suddenly darken just like the day before. The two looked up, surprised, and they observed the sky window over the kitchen. A solar eclipse was clear in the sky, making it the second solar eclipse in a row.

"You've got to be kidding me," Damon muttered. "Bonnie, look at the date on that paper."

Hastily, Bonnie turned to the page with the date. She read: "It says May 10th, 1994. It's the same day as yesterday. We're living the same day all over again."

The two exchanged a frustrated, worried look, and the vampire behind the stove just sighed heavily as he realized what came about from their unfortunate situation. He expected it, however.

"Well, that proves it." He looked up at the sky again. "We're in hell. My own, personal, custom-built hell. And you're in it with me." He rose his bourbon bottle. "Bottoms up."

"It was the Miss Mystic Falls pageant," I told Alaric as I leaned against the wall of the window and observed the specks of college students floating around campus at the evening hour. I shook my head. "I hated those things. They were pretentious and useless. Being a beauty queen wouldn't make me half the person that I wanted to be, but I still went. Matt and I were together so…naturally, he was my escort. But with what was going on with Stefan, Damon decided to pull a fast one on me. He compelled Matt to preoccupy his time and he made himself my escort. I wanted to be angry, but…but that was the first time I'd ever felt something like that before."

"Felt what?" asked Alaric. My head turned, and I watched him and Elena look at me with persisting eyes. I straightened.

"Lust," I said quickly without knowing it was the word to come out of my mouth. I sighed to myself—this was not a conversation I wanted to have with my father-like figure and my sister. I shook my head, but I was forced to explain. "I've never…been attracted to anyone like that before. Ever. It was confusing and foreign, but because of the way he made me feel, I wanted to do it all over again. A hundred times over."

Alaric stepped forward. "You went down the stairs and Matt was the one who was waiting for you."

The memories surrounding my eyes changed. "Matt and I danced. We had a good time, but overall, I knew it was something I wouldn't want to do again."

"Who is Damon Salvatore?"

"He was my fiancé. I loved him more than anything…then he died." I sighed, as did Elena and Alaric realizing that we hadn't hit that one memory that was going to end this all.

"Ric, how much longer will this take?" Elena pushed, standing up from her new position on the single couch I'd been sitting on before. He turned back at her.

"Until we find that signature moment." He looked back at me. "The moment you knew you loved him."

"Oh!" I scoffed, crossing my arms. "Well, I know. It was when he was dying of a werewolf bite. I knew he was going to die, so I kissed him and I told him I loved him."

"Okay." Alaric crossed his own arms. "When he was dying of his werewolf bite, you didn't kiss him and you didn't tell him you loved him. Who is Damon Salvatore?"

"He was my fiancé—"

"That's not it," Alaric interrupted me, causing frustration to rise. Elena, mostly, was the one who was losing her patience over at the couch. I, however, was just…stumped. I had no idea what he wanted me to say. "You've gotta dig deeper; earlier."

"Well, I don't…" I sighed, giving up. I racked my mind for anything that could be useful, and eventually, I scrambled at a good memory that lasted only for a short while. "Fine. What about our first kiss? The night of the Founder's Day parade, after I'd begged Bonnie to help Stefan save his brother. He was already at the house…we started talking and…and then I asked him to kiss me."

"No one kissed anyone." Alaric compelled me. The memories were like plastic bags in the wind—just gone. "Who is Damon Salvatore?"

"He was my fiancé—"

"That's not it, next."

I shook my head, but I wasn't getting angry. I was getting sadder, if that was even possible. My voice fell quiet as I paced. "I don't…I don't know."

"Well, think about it, Mads!" Alaric shouted at me, urging me to do my part. I could see Elena stand up with a hurt expression. "Think about that moment where you knew this person was somebody you had feelings for. That you loved. That you could see those feelings going on forever. Trust me, you never forget."

I groaned and rubbed my eyes. "How about—"

"Stop!" Alaric and I turned around to find Elena shaking her head back and forth, refusing to continue any longer. She held up a hand. "Stop…stop it. I can't handle seeing this anymore." She looked at me with soft eyes. "This was a stupid idea. I'm sorry."

Without any warning, Elena turned on her heel and angrily stormed out back towards the dorms. Alaric and I watched her as she left, but it was more than confusing. I was more than willing to push through this, to finish what I had woken up telling myself I was going to do.

What changed Elena's mind?

"Go," said Alaric softly, shaking his head. "Talk to her. I'll…figure something out."

I wanted to argue, but I knew he was right. First of all, we were getting nowhere with our therapy at the moment, and secondly, I had to tend to urgent family matters. With a hesitant sigh, I took off after Elena.

Two Months Ago

Damon stood in the kitchen, humming to himself while he flipped more pancakes over the stove at an expert level. At the table, Bonnie sat down by herself twirling a pencil in her hand in thought.

"What's a seven letter word for kill me now?"

"That joke got old six weeks ago."

"And so did this crossword puzzle," she added. Damon artistically picked up the whipped cream and sprayed some on Bonnie's pancakes in a circular motion while she complained, "Every day for two months I've done this stupid thing and I still can't figure out twenty-seven across! 'Old tongue twister Eddie turned Top 40'?"

Damon walked around the center island and brought Bonnie her pancakes with a Damon-like smug smile. She looked down at the pancakes with distaste.

"And I hate pancakes!" She dug her pencil through them, refusing to have any more of the fattening substance.

"Whoa. Don't take it out on the pancakes. Those pancakes, like myself, are waiting for you to be witchy and get us the hell out of here," he chastised.

She stood up and yelled angrily, "You know I've been trying!"

"And failing," the vampire pointed out at her, his voice the same volume.

"Further evidence we're in hell. Not only am I stuck with you, I'm stuck with the useless version of you."

An appalled Bonnie opened her mouth to retort to the smug vampire, but instead, she stopped cold when she heard a sound that was not made by either her or Damon. She froze and looked around cautiously, waiting for whoever or whatever made the sound to show himself, herself, or itself.

"Did you hear that?" asked Bonnie quietly.

"What would I have heard, Bonnie?" Damon propositioned her, tired of the witch and her theories. Frustrated, he continued, "We're the only two people here! We were the only two people here two months ago and the only two people here now!"

"Well, I swear I heard something!" she shouted.

"Maybe it's the sound of existential despair. I hear that's what hell sounds like."

"You know what?" started the witch. "You think we're trapped in your hell? I have to spend everyday on repeat with the person I like least on this earth! Maybe we're trapped in mine!"

Without anything else, Bonnie grabbed the teddy bear on the table in the kitchen and stormed out.

"So, Stefan," taunted Enzo from the table as Stefan opened another bottle of wine at the kitchen island. "Tell us; this house is very charming. When'd you get it?"

Stefan poured the wine into his cup and replied, "About a month or so ago."

"No, more than that, remember?" Ivy corrected him, holding up a piece of her dinner on a fork as she watched Stefan in the kitchen. "We met two months ago and you already had it."

Audrey's jaw practically dropped to the floor in disgust and anger. "You've had this house for over two months?"

Caught in his lie, Stefan just scoffed dismissively. "Yeah, I guess I…have." He sat back down at the table and watched as his ex-girlfriend pursed her lips.

"That's…that's really, um, intriguing because…well, everyone thought that you were doing important…investigative research." Audrey gave him a pointed glance. "Some of us thought that it was best to leave you alone because you were doing this important investigative research."

"Right, well, I've moved on from that job," Stefan snapped.

Caroline hissed, "Well, you can't move on from investigative search until you've solved the investigation, Stefan."

"How about we just drop it?" He looked between the Forbes sisters. "I'm happy doing what I'm doing now and that's all that should really matter, right?"

Caroline leaned forward to push further, but Enzo held up a hand to stop her. "There, darling. No need to make a scene. Really, it's all probably just some big…misunderstanding. Perhaps this will clear it all up."

Abruptly, Enzo grabbed his fork and stabbed Stefan right in the middle of his hand, pinning it down onto the table. Ivy gasped—or screamed—while Audrey jumped from the quickness of the movement and Caroline shouted, "Enzo!"

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Stefan growled through his teeth. His hand was dripping blood from the four holes on the back of his hand.

"So many secrets. What are you running from, Stefan?" he snarled as he pulled back the fork in Stefan's hand. After a moment of silence, Ivy watched as the wound began to heal miraculously on her boyfriend's hand.

"Um…I…I don't—" Caroline got out of her chair and forced Ivy to look at her.

"Calm down. Come with me. Let's go upstairs," she compelled the human. She grabbed Ivy's arm and the two of them got out of their chairs to go elsewhere. Caroline turned back at Enzo with widened eyes. "No need to make a scene?"

"Enzo," Audrey hissed at him once Caroline left the room. "What is wrong with you? Stop this."

"What kind of coward gives up on his own brother?" the dark-haired vampire scolded, throwing his hands up. Audrey leaned back in her chair and sighed heavily, almost panicked.

"You don't know what you're talking about," the Salvatore retorted.

There were no more words, just blurs. The human was left to watch as Stefan and Enzo began to brawl in the middle of the kitchen on high-speed. Audrey jumped up out of her chair and made sure to stand back, but she wasn't in favor of the fight. She didn't have enough time to protest as Enzo stabbed another fork into Stefan's neck and snarled something to him. In a matter of seconds, the fight had escalated to the point where the table had fallen to pieces and Enzo's neck was snapped, rendering him unconscious on the kitchen floor.

Things had fallen drop-dead silent after the fight, leaving Stefan and Audrey alone in the middle of a trashed kitchen with no words. All of a sudden, Audrey's phone rang, and she answered it without glancing at the Caller ID.

She swallowed. "Hello?"

"Audrey?" Matt said from the other side of the line. Audrey watched as Stefan's face slightly altered hearing Matt's voice on her cell phone. She turned herself and sighed.

"Matt—"

"No, just listen. It'll only take a second. Jeremy's at my house with that girl Sarah so I was thinking maybe we could skip tonight. Or if you're back at the dorm I could make a trip—"

"Matt!" Audrey cut him off, stopping him just as she realized that everything he'd said had been heard by the vampire behind her. She rubbed her head. "I…I need to go. I'll…talk to you later."

Immediately, she ended the call and dreaded the moment when she turned around. Sure enough, Stefan was standing over Enzo's temporarily dead body, standing tense. She slipped her phone into her pocket.

"I've just…been spending a lot of time in Mystic Falls lately," Audrey lied, not really knowing why she did it in the first place. It's not like she owed Stefan anything. "It's…better there, with no magic."

Stefan cleared his throat and tensed just a bit more. "I'm sure."

Before either of them could continue, Caroline's voice rang out behind a wall as she approached the room.

"Look, Madeline's problem is that she doesn't know when she fell in love with him because she didn't know what love felt like for a really long time. You just have to get her to understand what it felt like and then she'll remember the first time she felt it. Problem solved." The blonde vampire stopped cold when she saw the kitchen wrecked and Enzo's dead body on the floor. Her mouth fell open, and she said to Alaric, "I've…got to go."

Caroline dragged Enzo's body outside with a look of disdain towards Stefan, who she was far from pleased with. She told Audrey to wait inside the house while she made sure Ivy was properly compelled and she started the car, but it was more uncomfortable for Audrey inside Stefan's house than anywhere else. Instead of helping Stefan with the cleanup in his home, she just watched him as the wonder was eating her up inside. She looked at the vampire and no longer saw the man that she fell in love with under the most complicated of circumstances, but she saw someone different. A stranger.

"I'm sleeping with Matt," she blurted out without thinking, but it was something that she needed to get off her chest. She didn't want to tell him to make him jealous or something, but rather because she felt guilty for it. Perhaps she didn't know the full story.

Stefan looked up at her, unshaken. "I figured." He stood up. "I don't blame you."

The human scoffed. "What, so a new house, a new girlfriend, and a new wrench just completely erased you? Made you stop caring? You left us, Stefan—you left Madeline, who has basically been the equivalent of a broken toyever since Damon's death; you left Caroline, who is going insane over this 'No Vampires Allowed' rule in Mystic Falls…you gave up. Out of everyone in the whole world…how could you give up?"

She wasn't doing it to be cruel, but she wanted an answer. She was uneasy when she called him Stefan—he wasn't Stefan.

"Because I had to," the vampire said shortly. "I had to move on. You know, the months before I moved here, I was following every lead that Alaric sent my way? I spoke to every witch, every shaman, every psychic in twenty countries around the globe—"

"That's what you were supposed to do," Audrey told him firmly, her eyes staring at him with incredulity. "That's why you left. You were determined to find a way to bring Damon back—"

"—and every lead was a dead end," Stefan finished, spelling it out clearly for her. The two stared for a while before Audrey shook her head.

"Just because things get hard doesn't mean you have to give up. There's another lead. A coven in Oregon—"

"The Gemini Coven?" Stefan finished for her, causing Audrey to fall silent. "Yeah, I looked into them too, Audrey. There was nothing there. Because there's nothing we can do. Damon and Bonnie are dead. I had to come to terms with that. And once I did, I couldn't just live my life with my old friends. I couldn't just go near Mystic Falls or Mads or Caroline or—"

"Me?" the teenager finished, composing herself. "You couldn't go near me. You couldn't face me. Because you gave up on me, because you gave up on us, Stefan!" she shouted, her eyes blazing with sadness and anger. Stefan stopped, and a wave of guilt crashed on his features. "I fought for you. I stood over your dead body and I thought I would die if I had to live without you for the rest of my life—do you know how that feels at all? To see the one person you love unconditionally lying in your arms, dead?"

As she said the words, Stefan remembered exactly what she was talking about—he remembered waking up next to his own dead body, watching as she cried and held him and cried some more. Caroline walked into the house, ready to announce their departure, when she saw that her sister and her friend were in the midst of a fight. Luckily, neither one of them noticed her.

"The night Damon died, you said that you loved me and that was all you thought of while you were on the Other Side," Audrey whispered, studying Stefan's eyes as they dropped and moved around the room. She stepped forward. "Why would you do this? Why would you start a new life with someone else if you really, truly, love me?"

A cold silence ensued, but eventually, Stefan had no choice but to answer, "Because I had to move and I didn't have a choice. I had to erase everything." He paused. "Especially you."

Audrey stared at him, finding that—no, she did not know the man before her at all. What she was standing with someone who was in Stefan's body, but not with the Stefan she loved. He'd changed, far too much. And if he wanted a fresh start so badly, he could have it.

"Well, Enzo's right about one thing," the teenager hissed, staring at Stefan with cold eyes. "You are a coward, Stefan. I…I hate you."

Stefan wanted to say something, but he didn't know what to say, and he didn't have the chance. She bumped his shoulder and ran out of the house, not minding her sister at the threshold.

"Audrey…" Caroline trailed off, but Audrey just slipped past Caroline and ran out into the dark. The elder sister sighed heavily, feeling sorry for Audrey. When the teenager was gone, Stefan turned around and looked at Caroline at the door. The blonde vampire shook her head at him. "You're a dick."

I found Elena sitting on the window seat in our dorm room, staring out at the night sky as if she was contemplating some big question. She had her knees to her chest, almost curled up into a ball. I sighed and walked inside the dorm room, but she didn't turn her attention to me. I let her speak first.

"All I wanted was for you to get better," Elena whispered, staring at the stars. "I didn't want you to be in pain anymore. I don't want that for you."

I came over and leaned against the wall that was carved for the window seat. "I know, Elena."

"What we've been doing today…it's only making things worse." Finally, she turned her head to look at me. "I can see it, Mads. Every time he…makes you remember something or takes a memory away, it's only making things worse."

"I don't know about making things…worse, Elena," I tried, frowning. "I mean…it's difficult for me to have to remember him. It was difficult for us in general. But I've had to do it before when my memory was wiped. You don't need to worry about me."

My sister hesitated for a moment before shrugging. "I can't help it. With everything that happened…I have to worry about you."

I chuckled softly and sat down on the empty part of the window seat. Oh, my poor sister. Cursed with the compassionate heart of Gandhi. She would never let a problem walk away from her. "Elena, you don't have to fix everything, you know. I can take care of myself."

"On a regular basis, sure." She scoffed, then shook her head. "But losing Damon destroyed you. And…I don't blame you because he was everything to you. He meant a lot to me, too."

"Losing Damon was…a lot, yeah." I shrugged. "I mean, I never expected him to get stuck on the Other Side. Or…I did, but he wouldn't listen to me. And you're right, I guess it did destroy me. But that's the whole reason why I'm doing this. I'm trying to adapt."

Elena tightened her hold on her knees. "I should've never suggested it in the first place." Her eyes watered. "I only want you to be happy."

I gulped and gave my sister a slight smile. "I want that too, Elena. Trust me. But if I don't do this, I don't think I ever will be again." Before Elena could answer me, I saw Ric at the threshold. The both of us turned our heads, and I stood up. "Hey. Sorry, we're just…finishing up here and then we can try again—"

"It wasn't working because you're not getting it, Mads," he said suddenly, stepping forward. I looked at him with confusion.

"Not getting it?" I repeated in a demanding tone. "What am I not getting? I've done everything you've asked!"

"Sit." He gestured to the bed, and with a frown, I complied with him. Elena straightened on the window seat, swinging her legs off so she could watch as Alaric came over to sit beside me. I turned myself so we faced each other, and his eyes captured mine. "Tell me what love is."

"An intense feeling of deep affection," I responded immediately. Alaric shook his head.

"No. No, tell me what you feel when you think of love. Not what the definition is."

"I…" I trailed off, trying to come up with the words. They escaped me, but somehow, my mind began to generate the sentence for me using the leg of compulsion. "When you're in love, you should feel like you've changed somehow—for the better, that is. You should feel confident and understood. You should feel like you're the only two people who matter. But love should also frighten you because the thought of losing someone you love should…rip you apart."

For a moment, Alaric stopped the compulsion on me as I thought about what I'd said. The feelings that it had brought about were about to make me fall, even though I was sitting on a bed. Beside me, Elena shook her head.

"I can't…I can't stay for this." With a hand wiping her tears away, she left the room and I stared after her. God, was I really that bad? Did I really succeed in making my own sister cry? I looked up at Alaric.

"What was the point in that?" I whispered, my throat dry. He looked at me with hurt filling his eyes.

"I think you fell in love with Damon long before you ever truly knew that it was love," explained Alaric, moving his head from side to side in a small shake. "And it's not entirely your fault, but…Mads…it's okay to love sometimes, even if it's done quickly."

I swallowed down hard, trying to collect myself. "My mom…my mom always used to tell me that. That it was all right to care, to love someone. Even if it happens too fast. I just had to know when it was right." I looked up at Alaric. "I think I know when I fell in love with him."

Alaric nodded. "Tell me."

Today

Damon sat in the hallway of the boarding house, bouncing a ball back and forth between him and the next wall. He was stuck, living the same day over and over again with someone who didn't like him at all and was stuck with him, as well. He didn't want to be stuck in 1994, he wanted to be back home. Planning his wedding or…or not, it didn't matter to him. He was homesick, completely trapped in a black hole that he could not escape.

He needed a little taste of what it would be like to return home. He needed some…familiarity.

So Damon went up to his room and walked over to the bed, which was still as uncomfortable as it was when he'd first slept in it. But he didn't walk all the way upstairs for his bed, he walked upstairs for something else. He reached inside of his dresser and pulled out a chain that lead to reveal the necklace that he had given to Madeline on their way back home from Georgia. He'd planned to give it to her, anyway, knowing that he couldn't trust himself if she was without protection.

Damon studied it, and while it gave him a little bit of hope, it also crushed his heart. Four months had gone by and they were still stuck in 1994. Four months had gone by and he had no idea what was happening back in his time, with Madeline being a vampire and grieving with his death.

If she was taking it half as hard as he was, he knew it couldn't be good. And that only made him want to get home even more.

I took in a deep breath. "It was the trip we took to Georgia. He'd brought Elena home, injured from a car crash, and then dared me to take a risk with him. I wanted to prove that I could be…fun, so I decided to go with him. Of course, I'd had second thoughts but…" I trailed off and shook my head. "In the end, I wanted to be there. But it was after the trip when I…I knew."

"Someone's got to protect you from me," Damon taunted as he swung the necklace in front of my face. I stood with my back against his car, trapping me on one side, and his body creating a barrier on the other. However, I didn't mind it. His smile stretched from ear to ear. "I won it in a poker game. Monte Carlo, 1925."

I stared at the necklace, in all its simplicity. It was somewhat like Elena's, but not exactly. This one didn't have an intricate design on the front of the locket that was noticeable, but rather, this one was modest. Etchings sculpted the silver on the front and backings of the locket and it was a small thing, but it was no doubt powerful. It was an antique, too—that much was obvious.

I scoffed. "What'd you do, compel all the other players to play dreadfully?"

He rolled his eyes. "No. I won it fair and square."

This time, I pursed my lips and stared into his eyes. A smile overcame my face. "I don't believe you."

For a moment, I could see him look impressed, almost as if he would've never guessed that he was lying. Then, his face changed and he held up his hands defensively. "Fine. Believe what you want to believe. But if you think I'm lying, then I'll just put this—"

"No!" I stopped him, grabbing his hand as he started to put the necklace back into his pocket. He looked over at our hands that were now clasped together. I was uncomfortable, but nevertheless, spoke, "Don't take it back. Someone has to protect you from me, remember? I'm going to go insane if you keep compelling me to think that you kissed me time and time again."

Damon chuckled wholeheartedly as I removed my hand from his and relaxed. "Don't pretend like you didn't enjoy it, Madeline."

"Oh, I don't have to pretend." He smirked at me and I was lost, just for a moment or two. Eventually, I sighed. "Is it already full of vervain?"

"All ready to go."

"Well…thanks, Damon." I reached out for the necklace, but instead, he jerked it back and smiled. I frowned, unimpressed. "Should've known this would come with a price."

"Hey, hey, hey." He tsked at me. "I'm giving you the necklace, I should at least be the one to put it on."

I cocked an eyebrow, wondering if he was actually being serious. But he unclasped the chain and held it open, waiting for me to get the hint. With a sigh, I lifted up my hair and turned around in the constricted space I was in. Damon put the necklace on me carefully and slowly, almost as if savoring the time. I was starting to feel uncomfortable, my neck exposed and what not, but once I had the necklace on, my hair was down, and I turned around, I felt oddly…safe. I even felt safe when I didn't have the necklace on, I was just worried that he would act impulsively.

"Looks good," Damon whispered and looked up at me with a faltering, almost caring smile.

"I was blocking myself from admitting that I was in love, but…I think I was," I told Alaric slowly, swallowing down the tears. "He had given me the best day of my life. In one day, he changed things for me—he changed me. And, from that day forward, I knew that I couldn't stand the thought of losing him."

By now, there was no point in holding back the tears. They'd split involuntarily, practically drenching my cheeks. I could feel my heart just explode from all the hurt, all the pain. I was drowning in my own sea of affection—who would've thought? Alaric stared at me and shook his head.

"You don't have to do this." He leaned over and grabbed my hand. "You can put that engagement ring on and you can find another way to cope. You can try to find a solution."

"And what good will that do me?" I asked, sniffling. I silenced my tears for a moment so that I could talk to him without sounding foreign. "I've already lived through doomsday, Ric—I've already lost him. I won't allow myself to spend the rest of my eternity chasing down someone who's gone. I can't waste my life like that; it's not fair to me, to Damon, to Jeremy, to Elena…or even fair to you." I bit down on my lip and felt a tear roll. "I have to let go. Please. Do it."

And, even though I know it killed Alaric, he leaned forward and looked into my eyes with intent.

"Damon brought Elena home the night of her car crash, but did not invite you on a trip to Georgia. He left shortly after telling you what happened and then you called Stefan and took care of her. He never gave you the necklace. You found that necklace in a drawer and Stefan gave you the vervain to put inside. You protected yourself from Damon."

And then, instantaneously, it was all gone.

I pulled away from Alaric, ripping my hands out of his while I thought to myself. I blinked a few times, but I was unaware of why I was crying. Confused, I wiped my tears off of my face and Alaric caught my eyes again.

"Who is Damon Salvatore, Madeline?"

"Damon Salvatore?" I repeated slowly, and then knotted my eyebrows. "He was Stefan's brother. He was a homicidal vampire who never saw the error of his ways. He died four months ago."

"Audrey!" Caroline shouted as she followed after her sister, looking all around to see where the red-haired girl was. She looked left, right, and towards the wooded area beyond Stefan's home, but she couldn't find her sister. Eventually, it was when she took a moment to listen when she found sniffling coming from beside the car on the darker side. Following her pursuit, the vampire walked over to the car, where Enzo was still inside, temporarily dead. Sure enough, Audrey was wiping away a tear or two in the dark, leaning against the car. "Audrey…"

"It's…stupid, really," Audrey turned to her sister and wiped away the tears that kept coming. "I mean…what did I expect from him? What did I want from him?"

"Don't blame yourself," Caroline scolded her, shaking her head. "He did this to you. He's the one who deserves to cry." She stepped forward and wiped her sister's tears, refusing to see her this way over Stefan, who'd just gone so far off. "You're better than him."

"Well, well." Enzo sighed as he stepped out of the car to greet the two Forbes girls. "That was a bit of a bust, wasn't—?" He stopped cold the second he saw Audrey shield away from him, but he'd seen her face. She was crying. Enzo looked at Caroline. "What happened?"

She sighed. "Don't…worry about it, Enzo, it's just—"

But Enzo didn't listen to her. He just turned back to look at the home and growled the owner's name, "Stefan." He turned to Audrey and Caroline. "I'll be right back."

"Enzo!" Caroline tried, but the vampire was already gone and in the house before she could stop him.

"Tyler texted me," Elena said as she came out of the bathroom with a new dress on. I sat on the bed, tapping my pencil against my mouth as I read out of one of the textbooks. I was still in my regular clothes, even after my discussion with Alaric about Bonnie. I was exhausted, but this homework needed to get done. I would have to change later. "He wanted to know if we could go out. You know, have some fun?"

I scoffed. "Fun is the leading cause of teen deaths, Elena." I looked up at her to find her frowning. "Now that wasn't a specific statistic, but I imagine it could hold."

"Well, I'm going out." She grabbed her phone from the nightstand and knotted her eyebrows at the text messages. "Audrey asked if it was okay for Caroline to spend the night here with us."

I shrugged. "It's fine. We have four beds. There's enough room."

"Okay." Elena quickly typed a response and slipped her phone into her purse. I could tell she was staring at me even though I was writing the answer to a question down in my notebook. "Hey…Mads? Are you okay?"

I looked up at her with a bewildered expression. "Of course. I'm fine, Elena. Have fun."

She was hesitant, but I could tell there was something that wasn't keeping her from leaving. She smiled at me. "All right. I'll see you later."

"Bye." In a few seconds, she was gone, leaving me to my peace. I didn't move, however, but rather kept filling in answers to the questions that I was supposed to answer for class. But about halfway through question number 17, I started to feel that pressure on my eyes again, showcasing the red. However, this was different. It started to spin out of control, pushing, pulling, and virtually twisting until, finally, the world suddenly fell dark.

While Damon sat at the kitchen dining table, Bonnie stood over the cooking pot in silence. The two had spent so much time together that they had nothing to do but to fight, but Bonnie realized quickly how much Damon had broken down in the past few months. She saw the look on his face when he'd come down from escaping to his room for a while, and she knew that deep down, he really thought that he was in hell. That he had lost hope. Despite the smug smile on Damon's face, Bonnie could tell that deep inside, he was hurting.

And they were all each other had.

Damon unfolded his napkin and put it on his lap, and Bonnie received a curt, thankful nod from him as she passed him a spoon. They ate in silence, the glowing embers of the fire in the kitchen their only sound.

"I miss them, too, you know," Bonnie whispered, taking Damon by surprise. He looked up at her and, after a moment, nodded in agreement. There was nothing else to be said. While Damon resumed eating and Bonnie started, he eyed the newspaper in front of them that Bonnie had been slaving over for the past four months.

He knotted his eyebrows and praised, "Look who got twenty-seven across."

Bonnie scoffed, recognizing that Damon was teasing her. "I wish. Twenty-seven across is a rock I am pushing up an endless mountain."

"'An old tongue twister Eddie turned Top 40.' Eddie Vedder, Pearl Jam." He put the newspaper down. "'Yellow Ledbetter'. Good work."

Shocked, Bonnie reached over and grabbed the newspaper, wanting to see it for herself. She knew for a fact that she hadn't solved 27-across, but there it was on the newspaper. Yellow Ledbetter.

She looked up at Damon skeptically. "Are you messing with me?"

He scoffed. "No. Are you messing with me?"

"I didn't finish this," Bonnie promised, a serious look in her eyes. Damon could see the sincerity, and his mind began to turn.

"Well, neither did I."

Bonnie tensed up. "There's someone else here."

Madeline's eyes fluttered closed and open, transitioning into the state of solid, blood red eyes that eclipsed her shade of brown. Ignoring the paperwork on her lap, she shoved the notebook to the side, threw the pencil down, and slipped out of her bed.

Somehow, someway, she found herself walking down a long, windy, deserted road. It was dark outside—pitch-black. No one could see her, but no one was around to see her. She walked the center of the road line, never minding the cars that could possibly go by. There was something in her stance, something in the way she looked, that indicated she was not fully present.

She came to a dead stop in the middle of the road when there was a pair of headlights that sped towards her. Remaining stationary, she watched as the car came to a complete stop just inches from her. With her heightened senses, she knew that the person inside the car was panicking.

A woman climbed out of the car, frantic. "Oh, my God! I didn't hit you, did I? I didn't see you at all." The woman paused. "Wait a second...Madeline? Madeline Gilbert? It's me, Mrs. Harrington, your old English teacher. What are you doing out so late at—"

Mrs. Harrington stopped dead short when she saw Madeline's red eyes point towards her. The woman cowered, shaking. She wanted to think this was some sick joke, but she knew that this would be trouble. Before she could turn to run away, however, Madeline blurred in front of her, blocking her exit. The woman screamed.

"Gilbert?" Madeline repeated slowly, shaking her head. "My name isn't Madeline Gilbert, it's Madeline Reichs."

"B-But Madeline, your eyes..." Madeline stepped forward, and Mrs. Harrington hesitantly took a half-step back in fear. "And you're Elena's sister—of course your name is Gilbert—"

"She and I are not the same." The vampire launched forward and gripped Mrs. Harrington's shoulders tightly, causing the woman to scream and turn her head with tears in the corners of her eyes. "I embrace what we are. I don't suppress my urges."

"Madeline...please," Mrs. Harrington begged. Madeline's grip tightened.

"She needs to understand. She's every bit a monster that I am. A murderer. A killer." Her teeth clenched. "She just won't embrace it. Just won't own up to it. If I were in charge, I'd do everything differently. I'd turn it all off."

Mrs. Harrington pleaded again, but it went unnoticed by Madeline Reichs. She narrowed her eyes into something like slits as she plotted away, the wheels in her head turning violently. How could she take control? How could she make Madeline pay for keeping her locked away in the deepest part of her mind, ignoring her?

This was how. The woman's screams and please became irrelevant. It was too late.

Her fangs barred, her lips split, and she dug into the woman's neck, ridding her life in seconds. The woman dropped to the road, as if the injury to the head on the concrete could kill her. Madeline licked her lips, the taste of human blood complimenting the color of her incriminating crimson eyes.

The return of Madeline Reichs! Sorry about the whole "forgetting Damon" thing that happened in this chapter, but it was actually pretty necessary. Plus, I don't want to change too much that'll come back to bite me in the ass later. I tried to take as much creative license as I could in this episode, but hopefully things will start to get more interesting, if it's not already interesting enough, I guess. Anyways, thanks for reading! Review, please!

BadassPurpleNinja: Haha and the pancakes :) I love the fact that Damon has been spending 4 months making pancakes. Thanks for reviewing!

SomebodyWhoCares: Thanks for reviewing!

grapejuice101: Thanks! Here's the update!

ariabella V: Aw thanks! No need to wait no longer, it's here!

Guest: Sorry that it's not creative per your standards, but I do try to change things around. What you have to understand is that I'm very limited going off the episodes as the season airs. Plus, it was the first episode and I thought I did a good job at changing what I could. Sorry for your experience, I guess.

Dotty92: Thanks!

Elijah Love: Here's your next chapter! Sorry it took so long. Thanks for reviewing!

Smilingbringsjoy: Well here's more! Thanks for reviewing!

Rebel royal: Sorry! I know it took me a while for this chapter to get out, but here's the update! Thanks for reviewing!