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Disclaimer: TVD belongs to L.J. Smith & CW.

Chapter 3

The road was dark, eerily quiet, and despite wearing Damon's jacket Elena could still feel the cold wind on her face. She thought that it was a reminder that there was always going to be a part of her that would not be able to hide from the algid reality of it all.

Standing in front of a motionless stranger, she was shaking from dismay and disgust. If he would not have been compelled to stay still and silent she was certain he would have had been shaking in dismay and disgust at the sight of her.

The man was standing next to his car, staring at her but not appearing to see her. There was already a cut on his throat. She could see a thin stream of blood startlingly red against his skin that looked devastatingly pale in the faint moonlight. She did not even need to bite him. Just drink. Drink his blood. Drink human blood and complete her transition to become a vampire.

Panic circulated in her veins like scalding sand. She gritted her teeth, trying not to faint. She could not even tell if the pain was physical or just in her head. Every time she imagined herself leaning down toward the stranger's neck a surge of hideousness would immobilize her and bring fresh, hot tears to her eyes. She felt very cold and feverish at the same time.

"I can't do this, Damon," she repeated, bringing her hands to her face and moaning under her breath when her fingertips brushed against the veins that had appeared under her eyes. Or at least she thought they appeared there. She did not know if they were meant to appear just now. And she did not want to know. She did not want to know anything about that.

She swirled around, hiding her face in her hands and stifling a sob.

"Elena."

Damon's hands landed heavily on her shoulders, but he did not try to make her turn around. She waited for him to speak again. His voice made her feel... less dead.

"You must be Elena."

His voice reminded her of the past. But her name sounded foreign to her.

"He's compelled," Damon whispered into her ear. "He won't feel any pain, and he won't remember that it happened. Elena." His tone was softer now, and she could feel his lips almost touching her cheek. "You have to... you just have to-"

"I know," she cut him off, taking her hands away from her face, and slightly turning her head. "But I can't. I don't know if I can... if I can stand... if I can stand the taste..." she stammered at last, not recognizing her own voice, not understanding the words she was saying.

Was it really her, was it really Elena Gilbert standing now in the middle of an empty road on the outskirts of Mystic Falls where nothing bad ever happened, about to drink human blood to complete the transition and become a vampire? She could not repeat the words in her head enough times for them to actually start making sense to her. She could not think that it was really happening. She could not allow herself to think that it was really happening. It could not be real. If only she could wake up and start all over again!... But it would not do, it would not do. She had no idea where she would have to start. When everything had gone wrong? If it was all her fault, she would have arrived at this road, on this night no matter how far back in time she would have gone.

Fault... fault... The word sounded false. She struggled to find a better word.

"Imagine it's the blood of someone you know."

She heard Damon say the words but for a moment she was not able to grasp their meaning. "What?" she asked mechanically, shivering when a gust of wind passed across her face.

"Why not?"

Very abruptly she turned around to escape the memory brought by the wind.

"Elena."

Choice, not fault, she thought absently.

"Imagine it's the blood of someone you like. It shouldn't seem that disgusting to you then." Damon was trying to speak in the most reasonable manner but she was hardly listening to him at all.

It was when he rephrased the same advice for the third time that she finally nodded, and clenching her fists, carefully turned around toward the stranger.

Each step felt like a thousand miles to her. Each step was heavier than the previous one. When she stopped right in front of the compelled victim she was choking on her tears again.

Damon appeared near her and she glanced at him before shifting her eyes to the blood. She drew a deep breath, and for the first time allowed the sight, the scent of it slowly wash over her and cloud her mind in what felt like a sickening mixture of abhorrence and exhilaration.

With a stifled cry caused by the frightening, repulsive, tingling sensation in her mouth that caught her off guard, she awkwardly, unnecessarily sank her teeth into the stranger's throat.

The time stopped.

In her ears, she could hear her heart beating louder and louder, the sound replacing the ticking of the clock in her head.

Time was gone.

She was still where she was.

She did not know how much time had passed before she felt Damon pulling her away. She did not resist at all, and in the back of her mind blinked a thought that it was a good sign, that maybe she could control herself. But the thought was too abstract to contemplate. It required for her to actually know what was happening and she did not know anything right now.

It felt like being underwater and drowning.

"I didn't need to bite him," she muttered in a hollow voice. This time, she could have just drunk, there was no reason to bite. It was another thought she could not afford to have. Not now. Not yet.

She felt like she was drowning all the while when Damon carried her to the car, ushered her inside and vanished for a mere second or two before returning to her.

When he came back, she was standing next to the car, having gotten out of it in the meantime, shaking and crying and rubbing her mouth with the back of her hand with forlorn determination.

"Elena."

Damon tried to get hold of her but she kept wiggling herself out of his embrace, muttering something over and over again.

He hoped she was just blaming him for making her do this, but when he finally discerned the words she was repeating they made his heart clench.

She had never thought that of anyone. Not of Damon, not of Stefan or Caroline. Not of Isobel. But when she was thinking about herself now, only such words seemed appropriate. She was a monster.

"You're not a monster, Elena." Damon tugged her toward him, his hands closing around her forearms, making it impossible for her to move. "You are still yourself. You don't have to be anyone else. It doesn't have to be that way. You can still be you. It's your choice and you are strong enough to remain yourself."

Elena's eyes were wandering around before settling on his face.

She looked more miserable than he had ever seen her. He tried to convince himself that he was just trying to get his meaning across, make her feel better, that it was not selfish or pathetic. Or maybe it was, but he did not care either way, he could not care anymore because now it was not merely right now that was at stake, but an eternity, and he could not spend eternity away from her.

It was the first kiss that did not catch her off guard or happened in a frenzy or a fever. The night was silent and they were dead, but his lips against hers felt more real than ever.

She kissed him back, unhurriedly but without hesitation, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, and he subconsciously marveled at that.

Gently, he broke the kiss and cupped her face in his hands. She looked so exhausted, so fragile, so sad. "Elena." I love you. I love you. I love you.

She looked up at him with tears in her eyes. He brushed the tears off her face with his thumbs and embraced her. To his amazement, she fell into the hug immediately, clinging to him and burying her face into his chest.

She burst out crying but he could not help feeling overwhelmed by relief. She had made it through. She would not die. She would not die. She would never die.

Drawing back and propping her chin with his hand he said seriously. "I give you thirty seconds to cry, and then we get the hell out of here."

She tried to smile at that, but the tears kept streaming down her face and she shook her head with a grimace. He pulled her into his arms again, leaned his cheek against the top of her head, and closed his eyes.

"Forty five," he muttered into her hair.

She hastily drew back and looked at him like he had always wanted her to look at him, breathless from determination to utter the words.

Only the words she said were not exactly the words he had always imagined her to say when she would have looked at him the way she was looking at him now:

"Let's get the hell out of here already."

But they were good enough.

For now.

Matt wanted to follow Jeremy, but Caroline insisted they should give him some time. Time to grieve, or to hope, or whatever he felt he needed to do.

She then sat down, looking dejected.

Stefan had gone up to his room a while ago, and Matt rather thought they should go home, but Caroline seemed intent on staying. She looked dejected but not despondent. He knew that look. She was a general, the boarding house became her accidental headquarters, and she would not go anywhere until she worked out a plan.

Caroline's phone rang, and she grabbed the phone from the couch, almost automatically going to accept the call.

But when her eyes noticed the caller's name she froze. Matt gave her a questioning look.

Very slowly, she looked up at him and whispered: "It's Tyler."

It seemed to Elena that the car was not moving, and that it was the dark trees that kept running to her right and to her left – away from her.

She felt drowsy and she knew that soon she would fall asleep. And when she would wake up…

She tried to convince herself that she was not a vampire yet. That even though she completed the transition she still had time. That she still had an hour or two. A minute. Half a second. She was not a vampire yet. She needed to fall asleep, and wake up, and only then... For some reason it calmed her down, ridiculously pushing away the thought for as long as it was possible. Even if it was not possible.

Because that was just something too unimaginable to accept that easily. Elena Gilbert. A vampire. She was not quite sure why it seemed so impossible, so odd to her. What made her being a vampire more bizarre than Caroline being a vampire? Or Bonnie being a witch? It made no sense – or at least she felt that there was something wrong with her thinking that.

"When I'll start remembering what I was compelled to forget?" she asked to get away from her thoughts, hoping that speaking out loud could be a useful distraction - even if speaking made her remember the kiss that still lingered on her lips.

Damon glanced at her, his brows furrowed. She was looking out of her window, her head pressed into the headrest, eyes following the monotonous landscape obscured by the night.

"Any time now," he replied in a low voice that sounded amazingly clear to her. For a moment she could not remember her own question. The more she concentrated on his voice the clearer it sounded. She closed her eyes and imagined drowning in it. "But it will most likely come to you in a dream when you fall asleep now."

With a visible effort, Elena slightly raised and turned her head. Pressing the other side of it against the headrest, she made her eyes focus on Damon's face. "Why did you choose to become a vampire?"

He looked at her and his heart clenched at the sight of her eyes glowing with tears, with exhaustion, with hopeless wish to remain open because closing them meant crossing the ultimate border, letting go of the past, plummeting into the unknown.

"You know that story, Elena," he said evasively.

"I know you did it for Katherine. But why?"

He neither liked nor understood the question. "What do you mean why?"

"I mean why."

He gave her a sidelong glance. "Because... I wanted to be with her forever," he admitted at last in a self-mocking tone, avoiding the expression that was off limits now in all the contexts except for one.

Elena's gaze drifted past his face and into the night. "It never occurred to me to become a vampire before," she said barely above a whisper with a hint of wonder and guilt in her voice.

At first he did not know what she meant at all... but then it dawned on him.

"How could it never occur to me," Elena whispered rhythmically in a detached voice, as if she was recalling some abstract song lyrics.

"Yet you eventually chose to become one," Damon said with empty lightheartedness, valorously trying to imply the opposite of what she- of what he wanted to infer.

She closed her eyes for a second but then opened them, fighting the drowsiness that was falling over her like blankets upon blankets of snow. "You know that story, Damon."

He double-checked the faint smile that flickered across her face.

Before he had a chance to answer, she was asleep.

His phone began to ring.

Shaking off the stardust of the moment, Damon produced the phone out of his pocket to check the caller's name.

Of course.