Matt reached into his locker and pulled out his car keys. This had been close to a day from hell. Not one. Not two. But three hit and runs just in the last two hours of his shift. All three victims described basically the same car, and that ticked him off even more. Thankfully, no one was too badly injured – more of a nuisance than anything else.

Still, he'd really wanted to catch the guy.

One of the wrecks was just a block from his house. Jenni could have been in one of the cars the guy hit. If his fiancée had been hurt….well, it was just good that Matt hadn't been the one to arrest him.

Of course, no one had that honor yet.

"You going to be at the ball game tomorrow?" His former partner, Trent, wrapped his fingers around the top of Matt's locker before he had a chance to close the door.

Matt shook his head. "We're having lunch at Jenni's folks."

Trent's lips turned up at the corners as he tried not to laugh. "That girl's got you wrapped around her finger."

"Maybe I just like her family. Her dad's grilling steaks." Matt pried Trent's fingers from the top of his locker and carefully shut the door. "Dude can cook."

"But you're missing the game. Might be the last one of the season."

"There's always next year." Matt turned to walk out of the locker room. "See you Monday."

"If you change your mind, we'll have a seat for you."

"I won't." Matt waved over his shoulder already halfway to his car. He was ready to go home. He should go home. He should go straight home and slide into his loveseat and wait for Jenni to get home from her shift at the hospital. She'd probably want to talk about napkins for the wedding or something, but he didn't mind. For the first time in his life, he was on the cusp of having a real family.

And that's where he got stuck.

His future with Jenni was as bright as Elena's future with Jaime was bleak. It was twenty minutes out of his way, but he couldn't help it. Not after what he'd seen the last time he drove past. He knew Bonnie told him that she'd take care of it, but maybe it was the cop in him that kept him from being able to walk away.

Well, that and the fact that a long time ago, he'd imagined his happily ever after involved a girl named Elena Gilbert. The drive from the station to Elena's house had become so familiar that his car could almost drive itself there.

It only took four songs on the radio tonight before he was turning into the gated subdivision, thankful that the gates hadn't closed yet for the night. He'd had to flash his badge to the guard once, but he didn't want to make a habit of it. No need for people to start asking questions about why he kept driving out.

Two rights and a left, and he found himself in the all-too-familiar cul-de-sac. Kids played soccer at the end of the street. A group of teenagers were engrossed in a pickup basketball game. Typical night out here.

Except for Elena's house.

It was completely pitch-black. Not a single light appeared to be lit inside the house. If it weren't for the tiny light glowing from the doorbell, he'd have assumed they'd lost power.

The first niggling hint that something might be wrong flitted around his head like some kind of invisible gnat. Elena never left the house totally dark. Ever. It was a habit she started in childhood, and it carried over to her new life here.

But then he had to admit to himself that this wasn't the first time today he thought something was wrong. All day he'd been fighting the urge to drive past the house to check on her. Now he just hoped he wasn't too late.

A tapping at his car window almost sent him through the roof. He'd be screwed if this had been a real stake-out. Maybe that's why he was still on patrol.

He rolled the window down, surprised to see a gray-haired woman glaring down at him. "Do you need something?"

"What are you always doing here?" Her face was contorted in an expression that reminded him of his elementary school librarian when she was annoyed.

"Excuse me, ma'am?"

"Don't you fake that confused expression. You were here just a few days ago. And last night. And three times earlier this month." She pulled out a notepad from her pocket and thrust it in the car. She'd recorded his license plate number, where he'd parked, and the times he'd driven by. Hell, she probably once was a librarian. "I'm the president of the neighborhood safety patrol. You're not sneaking by me." She tore the notebook out of his grip. "So what is it? Do you have a thing for Ellie?"

"What?" He sputtered his reply. "No. No. I just have a friend who's worried about her. Look," he slowly reached into his back pocket, "I'm a cop. My friend isn't sure if Jaime's a good guy. He asked me to just keep an eye on her."

For a minute, the woman didn't look convinced, but she gave a quick nod. "Your friend's not wrong. I've called the police on him half a dozen times. He always talks his way out of it." She clucked her tongue. "She never lets them press charges." Her fingers drummed the roof of his car. "You should have been here earlier."

"What do you mean?"

"It was the worst I'd ever heard. She was screaming so loud, I could hear her over the television." The woman rolled her eyes. "By the time the police got there, they were both gone, though."

"Gone?"

"Gone." She nodded. "He's going to have fun when he gets back home. He hit two cars on the way out."

"Was she with him?" Matt's blood pressure surged with the thought that Elena might be at Jaime's mercy.

"No. She left on her own about ten minutes later."

Ten minutes? What the hell was the response time out here? He pulled himself out of his thoughts. "Thank you. I'll tell my friend." He rolled the window up, leaving the woman still standing in the middle of the street.

Time froze as blue eyes locked with brown.

Damon wasn't even sure if anyone in the room was still breathing. For one of the first times in his life, he was completely speechless. Less than five minutes ago, Bonnie had presented him with the one thing he never thought he'd see again…and now the one person he never thought he'd see again was standing right in front of him.

Damn, this had been quite a night.

"What did you just say?" Jo was the first one to regain the ability to speak.

"I…I…" Whatever Elena had just said was going to have to wait a few minutes. Right now, her eyes began to blink slower and more slower, and her pupils started to dilate.

And then she dropped.

Fast.

Hard.

If Damon hadn't been a vampire, she would have landed flat on her back on the brick stoop. But he was a vampire. And he'd never let Elena fall. "Elena?" He looked up, ready to call for Jo, but she was already moving his direction.

"Probably just the shock. It's not every day that you find out that nothing about your life is real." Jo pointed to the couch, the expression on her face giving him a lecture far more dangerous than words. "Put her in there."

"It might not just be the shock." Bonnie had reclaimed the ability to speak just as Damon lowered Elena to the couch cushions. She flinched as if she was readying herself for a fight. "Matt said her fiancé hit her."

Jo narrowed her eyes, pressing two fingers to Elena's neck. A look Damon couldn't quite read came over her face. "At the bus accident, she was favoring one side." She reached for the hem of Elena's blouse and the color leaked from her face.

"Crap." Jo muttered a string of words that would get him banned from visits with the twins for a month. Her fingers probed Elena's side. "Definite cracked rib. Thready pulse." Her eyes darted to Bonnie. "Call 911."

Elena's side and her stomach was a mottled mixture of black and purple. But that wasn't the worst thing. Now that Damon was focused on her stomach, he noticed something other than the bruising. "She's pregnant."

"No." Jo paused her quick exam.

But the sound was unmistakable. One slow. One fast. Both were struggling. "I can hear the heartbeat."

Seldom in his 160-odd years had Damon truly lost track of time. He'd been less aware of it, yes. The passage of time occasionally faded into the back of his consciousness. Really losing track, though? That simply didn't happen.

At least not until now.

Now Damon's entire focus was on the tandem heartbeats and the fact he was hyper-aware of every sound in the distance as his ears sought the single one he most needed. He fought back a bitter laugh.

A vampire.

A former witch.

And a witch.

Three supernaturals stood watch over one who was all too human, and none of them could really do anything to help other than simply wait.

Matt almost made it home before his phone started buzzing in the seat next to him. He'd put a call in to his precinct as well as the neighboring ones to warn them that a dangerous driver was at large – cautioning them that he suspected he might have identified their hit and run culprit.

He'd driven the streets surrounding the community to no avail.

As much as he hated to admit it, he wasn't going to find Jaime tonight. That was probably just as well. Given what he'd just learned from Elena's neighbor, he wasn't certain he actually trusted himself to be the one to arrest Jaime.

Now his phone was ringing. That was always a bad sign. Jenni hadn't gotten fully used to being the almost-wife of a cop, and whenever he was late, she seemed to picture being met at the door by his captain delivering bad news. Matt slowed his car and began to pull off the winding road to answer. This wasn't a road that was safe for any type of distraction, one wrong twist of the wheel, and a driver would careen down the side of the not-quite-cliff.

"Hey. I'm almost home." The words had just slipped out of his lips when he focused on the rubber skid marks on the street in front of him. And then he noticed the broken bits of brush at the side of the road. He'd lost track of whatever Jenni was telling him. "Um. I take that back. I might be a while. I think there's a wreck here."

He flicked off his phone and tossed it into the seat next to him. As he stepped out of his car, his ears were already searching for the telltale hum of a car's engine. It didn't take too long to identify it. An engine rumbled where there should have been silence or simply the chatter of frogs and crickets in the night. He carefully stepped to the edge of the road, not surprised to see a faint glow of headlights below.

"If you pace much more, you're going to wear a path in the floor." Ric cautioned Damon with mock-impatience. Damon wasn't sure when Jo managed to get a message to Ric, and Damon didn't have a clue who was watching the twins on such short notice, but Ric was in the hospital waiting room by the time Damon and Bonnie stepped through the doorway.

Damon thought he'd completed his last night waiting in here years ago.

Now on the same night Elena walked into his life, he stepped back into the room where it all started. The first domino in his decision to take her decision away from her. At the time, everyone was telling him he had to do it. Everyone said Elena needed this. She needed her humanity. She needed the chance to live.

Each thought…each feeling…each what-you-should-do had been another domino in the precarious train. And his last decision, the one he chose not to involve her in, had been the one that made the whole set collapse.

He saw that now.

"You thought you were doing the right thing." Ric spoke with more confidence than Damon felt. How many times had they had variations of this same conversation since Damon had made that last decision on Elena's behalf?

Ric never told him what he would have done in the same situation. But looking into the eyes of the man who was almost Elena's father told him the answer. Ric wouldn't have done it. He wouldn't have done it then. And now looking where his actions had put Elena, he definitely wouldn't have done it now.

Damon really needed to throw something.

Or eat someone.

Or simply go back to the operating room and force his blood to work.

But he couldn't do any of them now. Now he simply had to sit and wait and know that he'd let Stefan's advice play on his weakness once again. Maybe if Stefan hadn't been so sure…maybe if Elena hadn't been so happy with the twins…maybe if he'd actually stopped and asked if she wanted to take it.

So many maybes.

Tired footsteps echoed in the hallway. Jo walked through the doorway still wearing blood-spattered scrubs. Damon didn't want to focus on whose blood it was. He'd recognize it in a heartbeat.

Heartbeat.

"How is she?" Damon had to ask because Jo was stalling. He'd never seen her quite so tired, not even when both Nina and Noah were both teething at the same time. She'd gone without sleep for a week before they asked Damon for help. And she looked positively rested back then compared to this moment.

Jo ran her fingers through her hair, her cheeks drawing up in what could possibly be considered the most forced smile that Damon had ever seen. "She's going to be okay." She nodded to Ric like she was trying to will her statement into being the truth. "Yeah. It was touch and go for a little while. That cracked rib had punctured a lung. If we'd waited five more minutes…" Her voice drifted off as she let Damon and Ric fill in the blanks.

A heaviness descended on the air in the room. An unspoken question practically shouted into the silence. Damon's throat tightened as if he'd swallowed straight vervain. "And the baby?"

Ric's eyes widened to silver dollars. That was when Damon realized no one had filled Ric in on that little detail.

Jo's face said it all. Instead of voicing an answer, she just shook her head.

"When can I see her?"

"They're moving her into her room in an hour or so. If she's stable, you can go up then."

If she's stable.

Damon didn't care if she was stable or not. He had to see her. He had to beg forgiveness for something he did that was unforgivable. He had to look into those eyes one last time before she told him to get out of her life forever.

Minutes ticked past.

Ric shot him more than one glance that hinted he might have vervain in his pocket and he wasn't afraid to use it.

Finally, Jo's phone buzzed. "She's in 412." Jo slid the phone in her pocket, shaking her head. "And she's asking for you."

That was all Damon needed to know. He flew up the stairs and was standing outside the door of her room before an elevator would have even had a chance to register he wanted to go up.

He stood in the hallway for a moment, just taking the time to appreciate that she was here. He was actually looking at her again.

She was too thin.

She was too pale. Her cheeks had little distinction from the hospital-white pillow beneath her head.

The corners of her eyes tightened as if she were in pain.

Before he decided if he was really ready to go in the room without Jo or Ric to soften the blow, she turned toward the doorway and saw him. Her fingers beckoned an invitation.

For the first time that he could remember, and awkward silence hung between them. There were so many things he wanted to say…needed to say…but none of them mattered. None of them made a difference. None of them could bring back the last five years.

"I know why you did it, Damon." Elena's voice was surprisingly strong for someone who'd just had major surgery. Of course, she'd always been stronger than he'd expected her to be. "And I almost understand."

"Almost." Damon repeated. He wanted her to scream and rage and be angry. That was what he deserved. And yet, here she was, saying she almost understood. She was truly back to her old self….forgiving him when he definitely didn't deserve it.

"But why didn't you ask me what I wanted?"

"Would you have done it? Would you have taken the cure?"

Elena took a long breath, closing her eyes, and he almost thought she'd fallen back asleep. "You know I wouldn't have."

"That's why I had to make the choice. Because I knew you wouldn't leave…even if it was to go have the life you always wanted."

Elena shook her head slowly, her dark hair rippling on the pillowcase like melted chocolate. "That's where you're wrong. And that's why the compulsion didn't work."

"My compulsion always works."

"Not this time. Because this time you were wrong. You thought I wanted to live some kind of human fantasy life." She cringed at the word fantasy. "But it was never the life I dreamed of having. Damon, that's what you said when you compelled me. You wanted me to have the life I'd always dreamed about. And I did. I dreamed about you, Damon. About our life…here in Mystic Falls. The dreams never stopped. I always knew something was wrong. The life I was living…wasn't the life I was supposed to have."

Damon was stunned into speechlessness.

"I think that's why I remembered. It was your compulsion that brought me back. I finally remembered the life I'd always dreamed about. And it was the life I had with you."

This was going far better than Damon had imagined, and that very fact made him nervous. "Aren't you angry?"

"Of course I am." Elena flinched. "But right now, angry is too much work. I know you, though. I wanted to make sure you weren't going to go do something dumb like take off your daylight ring in some kind of penance. You need to still be here when I'm feeling like being angry at you."

Damon wanted to smile, but he couldn't. This was also the Elena he remembered – the one who saved her anger for just the right time. Was it a bad thing that he was kind of happy to be able to have her yell at him again? Especially since he deserved it so badly. "I'll plan on being appropriately yelled at soon."

Something was still bothering him.

Something she needed to know.

"Elena." His voice caught in his throat. "It's about the baby."

The corners of her lips pulled taught. She already guessed what he was about to say.

"Jo said they did everything they could."

Elena's lip shook and tears slid from the corners of her eyes. "I thought. When he hit me. I knew. It's what he wanted. It's what he was trying to do."

The bedside monitor's beeping sped, and a nurse rounded the corner into Elena's room at a jog. She took one look at Elena's vitals and pointed at the door. "I think it's time for you to leave."

Damon slowly made his way down the hallway, his mind a mixture of conflicting emotions. He punched the elevator button without much of a thought, and he road down, ready to meet with Ric and Jo. But when the doors opened, he walked into chaos.

Two women were screaming, barely being restrained by nurses. They were fighting to get back into the staff-only corridors. Ric stood just behind him with Matt at his side. As Damon stepped into the waiting area, Ric motioned for Damon to follow him outside. Matt tagged along without being invited.

"What's going on?" Damon was still trying to process his conversation with Elena. He didn't need to know what was giving Ric his unusually-grim expression. "And what are you doing here?"

"I'm the one who found him." Matt spoke as if Damon was supposed to know what he was talking about.

"Him?"

"Jaime." Ric supplied the answer. "Apparently after beating the crap out of Elena, he went on a joyride."

"Hit at least four cars before driving his sports car off a cliff." Matt's cheeks flushed red with anger. "He's in bad shape."

"They called Jo in to help." Ric locked eyes with Damon. "Right now he's still alive. But she said he's not going to make it. Not without help."

Damon knew what Ric was implying. One drop of blood could keep Jaime alive. One drop of blood would give him a miracle recovery. Without another word to either Matt or Ric, Damon turned and walked to the parking lot. He had something he needed to do, but it wasn't something he could do at the hospital.

Damon stood in his foyer, staring down at the tiny box that had almost been forgotten in the confusion of the night. He'd thought he knew the life Elena wanted.

And he'd been so wrong.

Without giving it another thought, he cracked the lid to the box and took hold of the tiny glass flask.

He made it back to the hospital before Elena likely had a chance to realize he'd been gone. When he walked through the waiting room, calm had once again descended. Matt and Ric still sat side-by-side. The look in both their eyes told them everything he needed to know about Jaime's fate.

The dude's own temper saved Damon the trouble of killing him himself.

Bonnie was coming into the room from the direction of the elevators. "He's the only one she wants." Bonnie inclined her head in Damon's direction. Maybe Elena realized he was gone after all. "Where'd you go anyway?"

"I had something I had to do." He answered simply. Bonnie looked at him with suspicion. Everyone else might have forgotten about her delivery earlier in the night, but she hadn't. Without any extra explanation, he walked to the bank of elevators and waited.

He was all too aware of everything around him.

Footsteps on the tile.

Ticking of hidden clocks.

The murmur of conversation from his friends in the waiting room.

Finally, he heard the ding that signaled the elevator's arrival. He stepped through the doorway and took a long breath as the doors closed. His pocket felt too heavy for such a tiny bottle. Maybe it was all in his imagination.

When he walked back into Elena's room, he held up a finger to let her know it was his turn to talk. "Just…hear me out." He pulled a chair from across the room and dragged it to her bedside. He reached through the side-rails to take hold of her hand. "I know what I did was wrong. And I know that you're still scheduled to be angry with me later. But I need you to tell me one thing. Truly. Honestly. Do you regret being human again?" Elena's eyelids were heavy as she blinked, but her eyes were focused enough for Damon to know she was weighing the words to her answer. "Just the human part. Not everything else." He was quick to clarify.

"No. I loved being human. But Damon..." Her fingers squeezed his hand as if she were trying to apologize.

"Then that's all I needed to know. Because right now, I still have forever in front of me." He reached into his pocket and pulled out the little vial. Elena's face shifted from pained to stunned to shock and finally disbelief. Without giving her a chance to say a word, he broke the seal and held the glass to his lips. "But I don't want forever if I can't have it with you."