TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY. I have been so busy with college. Anyways here is another chapter of 'The Ugly Truth'. And this is a very important announcement wherein I pledge to weekly update this particular story. Thanks for all the love you guys have spared for this Elejah fic. This wouldn't have been possible without you. Thanks for reading, reviewing, liking, following this story. It is very sad that I don't own Vampire Diaries. CW won't even gift it to me on my birthday.

Chapter Eight

On the first page of our story
The future seemed so bright
Then this thing turned out so evil
I don't know why I'm still surprised
Even angels have their wicked schemes
And you take that to new extremes
But you'll always be my hero
Even though you've lost your mind

Just gonna stand there and watch me burn
But that's all right because I like the way it hurts
Just gonna stand there and hear me cry
But that's all right because I love the way you lie
I love the way you lie
Oh, I love the way you lie

-Love the way you lie (part II) by Rihanna

The glaring rays of sun woke him up from his deep slumber.

For a moment he wondered where he was, but then her smell assailed his senses and the memories drifted to him like gentle breeze. The night he had spent with her was the best night of his life, and he didn't say that only in the context of sex. He had never slept this soundly in his life.

He reached out for her, his eyes still closed against the reality but all he could find were cold sheets.

And that woke him up properly.

There was no sound of running water, no tap of a coffee cup being deposited on table, there was no humming; there was just silence. Elijah Mikaelson wondered where she was. Had she gone to her own room? Was she embarrassed, now that she remembered how bold she had been after the alcohol had loosened her inhibitions?

He rose up from his bed and headed towards the bathroom. He would go, and knock on her door after he had a shower. He had found his center of stability and he was damned if he was going to lose it. He would persuade her into being his mistress.

The little boy on her right was adorable. People generally didn't want to fly economy but she loved it. It gave her a chance to thrive on people and their personalities without the fear of forming attachments or being found out for the imposter she was.

Elena Gilbert was a coward.

It wasn't a fact she herself denied. In fact she was her best critic.

She had done something she had known she would regret in the morning, but then those few stolen hours with Elijah Mikaelson had made her forget Damon Salvatore, it had made her forget herself.

She smiled as the boy next to her chatted 100 miles an hour about batman.

She didn't know why she had invited Prince Mikaelson to fuck her or maybe she did. Maybe she was a masochist. Maybe she enjoyed ripping herself over and over again. If it wasn't so, then why had she followed on to the invitation he had issued almost seven years ago?

She still remembered him. In fact she remembered him far more clearly than any of those wolves who had wanted a piece of her when Damon had humiliated her, and had cast her out of his life with no inconvenience. She still remembered the cruel twist of his lips when he had seen her.

Elijah Mikaelson. The man who had kicked her when she had been down once. The man who had twisted the knife Damon had left in her a bit more.

She still remembered how it had felt when she had walked out of Damon's party, well orgy. She could never forget how Damon Salvatore had broken her heart.

Elena was sure Amara had just wanted to make her feel insecure; her twin had a habit of doing that. Otherwise there was no way what she was saying could be true.

Damon loved her; he had said so before he had made love to her. Before he had claimed her innocence. She wasn't sorry for waiting all those years when Amara had kept dangling her conquests before her. She was happy she had waited. Nothing could equate to what Damon had made her feel. Now she understood, why it was called making love.

She smiled and shook her head when the hostess offered her coffee. She was in a flight bound for Luxembourg city.

She was going to meet Damon; she was going to surprise him. She didn't believe in her twin's vicious lies, she just wanted to see Damon. It had been three months since she had seen him and it had been two weeks since they had talked. She knew he was ruler of Luxembourg and time really wasn't something he had in overabundance or even in abundance but she really missed him.

She had taken a taxi and when it had deposited her in front of the daunting gates of the Luxembourg palace, she had felt a tendril of fear creep in her heart. It looked like Damon was having a party. Each battlement and arch was festooned with light. She could see people getting out of their expensive cars in equally expensive dresses, laden with what looked like gazillions of diamonds. The guards at the gate had given her a curious glance.

'When did you go out Miss Amara?' that statement alone should have raised her hackles. She should have returned from there only. She should have forgotten about Damon Salvatore. For once, she should have believed in her twin's lie for it had been truth.

Now sometimes when she thought about all the ifs, buts and coulds, she wished for once she had listened to Amara. She wished she had never seen what she had seen that day. The day when her love had been murdered and her innocence sullied. The day she had lost everything including her self respect.

This party wasn't like the ones mum and dad hosted. In fact, this was no party at all. Wherever her eyes landed all she could see were bodies in varying states of undress. It had shocked her still inexperienced twenty year self. But all this was nothing compared to what she had seen when she had opened the door of a room on the first floor.

It had been her Damon, the man who had proclaimed to love her, the man who was fucking someone who was definitely not her.

She should have run away then but maybe she really was masochist.

A broken word had slipped past her lips and he had just turned to see who had interrupted him. There had been no guilt on his face when he had seen her, no pain. He hadn't even paused. The man who had been her first love.

She had seen the face of the woman beneath him. And her face had stared back at her, the eyes had held no compassion just glee and viciousness.

It was at that moment when she had run. Watching Amara beneath Damn had ripped the rose colored lenses on her eyes. Watching Amara relish in her broken heart had been something of a wakeup call.

She had been running when she had collided with him. Prince Elijah Mikaelson. She had turned her head in apology and shame because her eyes were full of tears, tears for her dead love.

He had taken her arm and asked about her well being. But maybe then he had seen her face and he had known who she was.

Some people claimed they knew who Elijah Mikaelson was. They didn't. She knew who he was. Someone who loved inflicting pain and misery on people who were far away from his depraved state.

He had taken her upstairs again. For a moment she had thought he was going to demand justification from Damon but then she had heard his mocking voice and she had known that real princes were different from those who existed in fairytales. Real princes only knew how to hurt. They didn't know what love was.

Elijah Mikaelson had stood on sidelines, watching as Damon had stripped every piece of her dignity before the people who had assembled for a night of debauchery in his halls. Elijah Mikaelson had stood on sidelines when they had leered at her, the men who claimed superiority on the account of the blue blood that ran in their veins. He had smiled at the sight of her wet eyes when he had taken her hand to guide her out. She had thought he was going to do a kind deed but then he had pulled her closer, bruised her lips in a single touch of his lips. His eyes had hardened when he had left her to stumble.

'Find me when you learn those tricks that Damon mentioned darling. Right now you taste too much of naivety, far too much of it for my tastes.' And he had turned and ascended the steps from where he had dragged her down in guise of help.

So she had found him, after seven years she had found him and had delivered on that promise. It didn't matter that he didn't remember a girl of twenty he had destroyed. There were few people left who remembered what Elena Gilbert looked like. There were very few people who even remembered that Elena Gilbert was alive.

Choices, they defined the pathways of your life. They defined who you were. Her one choice had made her an orphan despite the undeniable fact that her parents were alive. Amara was the only daughter for them now, Elena had died for them. Elena, who had made a mockery out of the Gilbert name in the lofty circles of European aristocracy, Elena who had been a fool to give her heart to a man who played with hearts on regular basis? Amara was the one they cherished, Amara who had upheld the dignity and gravity of Gilbert name on her back in Damon Salvatore's bed.

It was all the matter of choices.

She turned and smiled at the boy who was trying to gain her roaming attention.

Her life had meaning. She was living. She was doing something she enjoyed. It was okay if she had no one. It was okay if she turned to talk to someone and found only silence for company.

It was okay. She was okay.

Kol Mikaelson paused before the door of his bedchamber with roses in his hands. He couldn't imagine that he was going to be a father.

When he opened the door, the sight meeting his eyes wasn't the one he had ever anticipated.

Bonnie lay on their bed, her wrists slashed as blood gushed out, leaching her life in front of his eyes. The roses fell down, those blush pink ones that Bonnie loved to have, on the ground as he ran towards his wife.

Her eyes were glassy, her voice choppy.

Why had she done this? Why?

Later if someone ever asked him how he had saved his wife, he won't know what to say. He wouldn't remember how he had torn the sheets and wrapped them around her wrists to slow the bleeding. He won't remember her weak voice as she had muttered, 'letter' and tried to point at the piece of paper on her bedside table.

He won't remember picking up that letter with his bloody hands and shoving it in his pocket. He won't remember his frantic run with Bonnie in his arms as death sniffed at the edges of her life.

But he would always remember reading her letter. He would always remember what it said. He would always remember that there was no agony greater than love…

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So, stay tuned for the next chapter of 'The Ugly Truth.'

-Eos