Author's note: Angst level set to high.

Mature – Stefan, Caroline, alcohol use, adult content, sensitive situations, nod to Nina

Jo pushed the door to the laundry room shut with her heel, balancing a basket overflowing with sheets, towels, and other assorted items that came along with having one-month-old twins. Elena looked up from where she balanced Noah on her knees. They'd been debating whether his curled lips were a smile directed at his godmother or gas before they'd been interrupted by the buzz from the dryer. Jo rolled her eyes. "He hates it when I bounce him like that."

Elena leaned down, fake-whispering in the infant's ear. "Your momma just doesn't know how to bounce right, does she?" He was definitely the harder of the pair of twins to placate. It had only taken five minutes with rocking Nina earlier in the evening before she had dropped off to sleep. Now the nursery was filled with the sound of soft breathing which explained why Elena sat in the middle of the living room floor with Noah. The little guy was a little too good at waking his sister up. He wrapped his hands around her index fingers and gave what sounded really close to a giggle. Elena winced, tilting her head up to look at Jo. "He's just not tired. How long did he nap?"

"Not nearly long enough." Jo sighed, settling on the floor. "Even Dr. Wilson said he'd never seen a baby as awake as he is." She shook her head. "Shouldn't he sleep more than six hours at night? He barely even naps."

"I guess he's just energetic." Elena shifted, moving to put him in his bouncy seat. "Let me fold the laundry for you. I'm faster."

"No." Jo shook her head. "You've already done the wash. And the dishes. And gave both the babies their baths." She studied Elena with a hint of concern in her eyes. "You've even slept here half the nights since they came home. It's time for me to figure out how to do this on my own."

"You shouldn't be alone, at least not when it's two against one. Where's Ric?"

"He had a conference at school. And then I think he was meeting Damon for drinks."

Elena raised an eyebrow. "Shouldn't he be here?"

"I think he needed a night off."

"All the more reason for me to stay."

"Elena, I'm fine. If Ric's shirts are wrinkled, it'll just teach him a lesson for not doing the laundry last night like he said he was going to. But now you should go. When was the last time you ate dinner with Damon?"

"That's kind of hard if he's hanging out at the bar with Ric. It looks weird for me to be drinking with one of my professors."

"Does it look any weirder than being his babies' godmother?"

Elena screwed up her lips, her eyes rolling toward the ceiling. "Not sure if that's exactly common knowledge."

"That's probably for the best." Jo had an expression on her face that hinted that she wasn't going to be easily dissuaded from her earlier topic of conversation. "If you don't want go meet Damon, why don't you see if Caroline is doing anything tonight. You're young. Carefree. Go do young, carefree things while you still can."

Silence almost overwhelmed the room.

"I'll always be young, Jo. I literally have all the time in the world to go hang out. But I won't always have…" Elena's voice trailed off on a somber note. Whether from lack of sleep or the amount of time she'd been spending with Elena or the fact that she was married to a vampire who was now human, it wasn't the first time in recent days that Elena's vampire-status seemed to have slipped Jo's mind.

Jo flinched at the reminder, she seemed to be searching for some type of comment to cover her mistake, but it was too late. The light mood was broken. Noah fidgeted and started gnawing at his fist.

"I can't help you there, buddy." Elena stroked her thumb over his fist. "I can do a lot of things, but…not that one. Never that one." She wasn't the only one who noticed that Noah took his every-three-hour feeding schedule seriously. Jo was already on her feet, moving toward the glider while reaching for the top button of her blouse. "Here you go." She handed Noah to his mother. "Maybe you're right. I probably should leave."

"No. Really." Jo paused. "I said the wrong thing. Sometimes it's hard to remember…what you are. I'm sorry. You can stay."

"I'll see you tomorrow." Elena had already knelt down to pick up her bag off the floor. "If you need any help before Ric gets home, just text me."

"Elena..." Jo fought for the words for an apology, but she didn't know what to say. She simply watched as Elena closed the door behind her.

Ric walked into the Skull Bar and had no trouble finding Damon. His friend had a perimeter of three empty seats all the way around him. That wasn't exactly a promising sign. For a minute, he questioned whether or not drinking with someone with his mood set to terrible was the way he wanted to spend his first free evening in a month, but just as he was going to turn to leave, he had second thoughts.

Damon hadn't been in a mood like this for a while.

At least not since he'd gotten over the fact that Ric had compelled Elena's memories away. Those troubled waters had taken a few discussions with Stefan, Caroline, and Sheriff Forbes to navigate. Finally, it was Elena herself who broke through Damon's impenetrably ticked-off shell. She handed him her journal, and he read in her own words about how out of control she was that she was frightening herself and how lost she was without Damon as her anchor.

So what was bothering him tonight?

Alaric took a breath and decided to man up. He moved through the crowded bar and took a seat to the left of his best friend. "What's up?"

Damon grunted some kind of reply through a drink of the whisky in his hand. Judging by the way the bartender was studying him, it wasn't his first drink of the night, and based on the waves of hostility rolling off him, it wasn't going to be his last.

"Seriously, what's wrong?" Ric wasn't going to leave Damon alone this easily. His friend called him earlier in the day, saying he needed to talk. Just because he'd arrived late after getting stuck talking with his grad student and Damon had moved into kind-of-drunk territory wasn't an excuse to leave, even if he wanted nothing more than to go home. "Look. You called me, remember?"

Damon turned to almost face him. He guzzled the last of his drink and motioned to the bartender to give him another round.

"Damon?"

Damon shook his head. When he spoke, his words were surprisingly clear. "I'm in love with Elena."

Ric blinked in shock. He knew Damon was crazy about her. He knew that his friend had literally crossed the boundaries of time and space to be reunited with her. He knew Damon was beyond angry when he got back to the here and now only to discover Elena only remembered memories that he'd made the mistake of altering. But he'd never heard Damon say it so plainly.

His friend loved Elena.

God, the guy sounded like a love-sick teenager. Ric could deal with teenagers. He'd spent the last few years teaching them…or trying to teach them. He put his imaginary teacher hat on and settled into his seat at the bar. This might be a very long conversation. "And that's a problem?"

"Yep." Damon chugged at his drink. Right now, he seemed incapable of talking without it.

"Can I have a few hints or am I going to have to play Twenty Questions?"

"Do you know how often I've seen her lately?"

Ric squirmed in his chair. "I thought you were okay with her coming over to help." If Damon wanted Elena to spend more time at the boardinghouse, Ric wasn't sure if he and Jo were going to survive.

"I am. I am." Damon nodded, a pensive expression on his face. His eyes weren't looking anywhere specifically…just not at Ric. "That's not the problem."

"Do you want to tell me what the problem is?"

"Elena wants a baby."

Ric choked on his mouthful of beer. "That's not exactly a possibility."

Damon shook his head slowly as he tapped the rim of his drink with his index finger. "The problem is….it is a possibility."

Ric placed his beer on the bar-top with a little more of a thud than he'd intended. He waved the bartender down and handed him a wad of cash. He glanced at his drunk-vampire-friend. This wasn't a conversation to be had while surrounded by all-too-human college students. "Let's go for a walk."

Damon didn't argue. The bartender didn't either. As far as he was concerned, Ric was doing him a favor by cutting Damon off. The pair made their way through the crowded bar, and it felt like all the other patrons gave a sigh of relief. Damon really had been radiating a mixture of frustration, conflict, and more than a hint of a threat.

Ric recognized this version of his friend, although he hadn't seen it in a very long time. He was one wrong word away from someone getting their neck broken or drained or heart-snatched. This Damon teetered on the edge of being dangerous.

As they walked in silence, Damon seemed to come to his senses, and Ric began to worry less and less about being Damon's next victim. Even with a version of the Gilbert-ring back on his finger courtesy of Bonnie, it was times like these when Alaric regretted his ties to the supernatural world.

"So, you want to explain that last comment? What do you mean, Elena can have a baby? We're not talking about some weird vampire-has-a-baby thing are we? Because that's kind of Twilight."

"No. Nothing like that." Damon shoved his hands in his pockets and stared up at the full moon overhead. Ric couldn't tell if his friend was stalling or if he was just having difficulty framing the words. "When Bonnie came back last year, she brought something with her."

Something in the tone of Damon's voice made goosebumps rise along Ric's skin. A thought came to mind that filled him with an equal measure of hope and fear. Screw it, this was Damon he was talking to, he was far more filled with fear. "Don't tell me…"

"Yep." Damon turned to him, his answer laced with a bitterness Ric didn't expect. "Bonnie brought me the cure. For Elena."

"Does Elena know?"

"Nope."

Ric sighed, a weight pressing down on his shoulders. "Then don't you think this is a conversation you should be having with her?"

A flicker of an emotion crossed Damon's eyes. Sadness? Relief? Maybe a hint of regret? Without explaining more, Damon clapped his arm on Ric's shoulder, his head bobbing slowly in agreement. "Yeah. I should talk to her."

Before Ric could talk with him more, his friend blended in with the darkness of the night.

The dorm-room door creaked open, startling Caroline. She jumped to her feet, concealing a blood bag behind her back. Her eyes widened and then contracted when she saw who'd walked into the room. "God, Elena, way to scare someone to death."

Elena allowed the door to close slowly behind her. She gave a dry laugh. "Technically you're already dead."

"Figure of speech." Caroline exhaled, and Elena could hear her pulse beginning to slow. "What are you doing here tonight?"

"This is my room too, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but you've been staying with Ric and Jo. If you haven't been with them, I figured you'd take a night to spend with Damon."

"Damon's out drinking with Ric. Boys' night out." Elena stared at her bed, surprised that she couldn't remember the last time she'd slept in it. Probably a good thing since it appeared that Caroline had begun to use it for some type of storage. She couldn't even see the bedspread beneath the papers, pamphlets, and envelopes.

Caroline scurried to pick everything up, but she dropped one brochure, and it drifted to the floor at Elena's feet.

Elena bent down and retrieved it off the hardwood floor. "Mt. Ranier, Washington?" Her eyes narrowed as she studied more of the pages in Caroline's hands. "Lincoln, Nebraska? Tampa, Florida? Austin, Texas? Are you planning a trip?"

Caroline's face fell, and she bit her lower lip. "Not exactly." She tossed the collection onto her bed, speeding to Elena's side. "We were going to tell you. I promise."

"What's going on?"

"People are starting to notice."

"Notice what?"

A tear glistened in the corner of Elena's eyes. "I've been a vampire longer than you have, Elena. Since I was seventeen. I'm almost twenty-one now. I've had a few too many 'You haven't changed at all' comments."

"So you're leaving?"

"Stefan thinks we need to. The meter reader even said something to Damon last week." She hissed and covered her mouth with an expression that said she'd said too much.

"The meter reader said something to Damon?" Elena's ears rang. She couldn't believe she was hearing this.

"But you should be fine. You look different than when you turned. You've changed your hair. The way you carry yourself…it screams older. And you have almost two years on me."

"Damon doesn't."

"No." Caroline swallowed thickly. "Damon doesn't. At least Stefan doesn't think so."

Elena backed toward the door.

"Where are you going?" A wary expression filled Caroline's eyes.

"You're right. I need to be with Damon tonight."

Damon had only been back at the boardinghouse for five minutes before he heard the front door crack open. That meant it wasn't Stefan. Unless he was bringing guests to the house, he always came in through the kitchen. He hadn't expected Elena to come tonight. Since the twins arrived, she'd become a permanent occupant of the Saltzman couch.

But it was Elena.

He'd know her footsteps on the stairs anywhere.

Something was wrong tonight, though. While her pace seemed normal, her footfalls seemed a little too heavy. It was as if she was trying to delay climbing to the second floor.

Once she finished climbing, she hesitated again, this time standing just outside his door. After what felt like an eternity, she tapped it open. He glanced up at her, but had to look away from the pain in her eyes.

"I didn't know you were coming to spend the night."

"Jo told me to go home."

"Pretty sure she meant your dorm room, but I'm not complaining." He scooted to one side of the bed, waiting for her to come and join him. But she didn't. She stayed fixed in the doorway like she'd been glued there.

"When were you going to tell me?"

"I'm going to need more of a hint than that."

"Caroline said the meter reader noticed you're not aging."

"Morris?" He waved his hand dismissing the thought. "He's also convinced that he saw aliens land in the woods last week. No one will believe him."

"But it's getting close, isn't it? Caroline and Stefan are planning where they're going. When do we need to leave?"

"No. It's fine. Don't worry about it." Damon shook his head, getting to his feet. "No one's going to notice you're not aging, not now."

"Maybe not me. What about you?" Her forehead wrinkled while she counted. "You've been here five years now."

"I can push it. I think I'll be fine a few more." He stood in front of her now, letting his index finger trail down her cheek, pushing a few errant strands of hair that had slipped out from her ponytail behind her ear. "Maybe I'll compel someone to put some gray streaks in my hair."

"Don't try to joke. I'm serious. How many years? Three? Four?"

"It depends." Damon tried to answer honestly. "I'm at Whitmore a lot now. That might buy me some time."

"Maybe five years. Five years, right? I remember what Stefan told me. Never stay anywhere longer than ten years."

Damon hesitated. His eyes said that he didn't want to have this conversation right now.

"Tell me." A spark of fire lit in Elena's eyes.

"Five more years. No more than that." He'd never been able to lie to her.

Elena struggled to breathe. A list of firsts she'd never see flashed in front of her. No first day of school. No missing first tooth. No stories of the twins' first crushes. "Well, then, what are we waiting for?" She sniffed, wiping her cheek with the back of her hand.

Damon's voice signaled that he recognized this Elena. It was the Elena who'd burned down her house. "Shh…we don't need to talk about that. Not right now."

"Why not? What will we do? Just disappear?" Her words were stumbling over each other. "I won't do that to them. I'm not just going to leave."

"Elena." His eyes showed that he didn't know what else to say, though. Everything she said was absolutely correct. He couldn't argue.

"I can't do that. I can't let them think I'll just leave them. What kind of godparents would that make us?" Elena pushed away from him, ran to the closet, and tugged down a suitcase from overhead. "Why delay the inevitable? Why not just leave now?"

Damon stood back in silence, watching as she threw an assortment of shirts and pants and jackets on the floor.

"It'll be easier this way, right? Easier if they don't remember either of us. Sure, Ric and Jo will be mad, but it's better in the long run. Maybe there's still a Gemini witch who could be godmother. Did anyone ever find Liv anyway?" She collapsed to her knees on the floor of the closet, dropping a handful of clothes on her lap. "Everyone has left me. Don't lie right now. I'm not that dumb. I know Jeremy's not at art school. He just left, and he didn't want me to worry. Everyone leaves. I don't want them to go through life like that. Thinking everyone who loves them is just going to leave them."

"And they won't." Damon bent down and scooped Elena up off the floor, after all the fight was gone out of her. "I promise." He placed her on the bed. For a moment Elena thought he was going to try his preferred method of distracting her, but he didn't. Instead, the look in his eyes simply echoed the same sadness that she felt. "It's been a long few weeks. You're tired. Just relax here for a minute. I'll go get you a drink."

Elena settled back on the pillow and tried to make her heart stop racing. She hadn't had a panic attack for years, but she felt the signals one was about to start. Her heard churned in her chest. A faint ringing filled her ears. Ever since Jo's comment earlier in the evening, everything felt more than just a little off.

She was training to be a doctor to fight against old age, sickness, and death…and those were the very things she'd never have to face.

The sound bottle opening filtered up from downstairs. He was going for the hard stuff. She must be worse off than she thought. No matter how hard she tried to fight it, she couldn't pull herself back from this precipice where she'd been so surprised to find herself tonight. Not just tonight, though. If she were being honest with herself, she knew she'd been building to this moment since she found out Jo was pregnant.

The reality of the life she'd never have was staring her in the face.

Footsteps on the stairs. Damon walked into the room with a fake-smile etched on his face. "Here you go. I know it's not your favorite, but just try to drink it. Then everything'll be okay."

Elena took the glass, surprised to see his hands shaking. He nodded encouragement to her, and she drank.

The ringing in her ears stopped. No, it was just muffled. The sound was still there, just not as pronounced.

She couldn't hear the sound of Damon's heart beating.

All around her, the world seemed to blur.

"What's wrong with me, Damon. What?" The glass tumbled out of her hand, the remainder of the drink pouring across the floor. "What's happening?"

Damon took hold of her hand, helping her to her feet. "Everything's going to be okay. You're going to be fine." He shook his head from side to side as he caressed her cheek with the palm of his hand. "You're going to be better than fine. Ellie Martin, you're going to leave this place and forget everything about your life here. Tonight, you're going to drive to Madison University. The address is already entered in your phone. Everything you need is already set up. Your apartment. Your bank account. Your textbooks are on your kitchen table. The school's expecting you on Monday."

"Damon, what? I don't understand. Who did you call me?" Elena's speech was muddled and confused.

"Ellie, you're going to meet a guy. You'll fall in love. The two of you will have a perfect family. You're going to be happy." Damon bent down, placing a chaste kiss on her forehead. "You'll have the life you've always dreamed of. But now it's time to say goodbye. I love you Elena."