A/N: Thank you so much for your amazing comments! :D

& From this chapter on, the story is going to be much better ^^ because of the wonderful arabian beta-ing the story :) Thank you so much! *hugs*

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

Chapter 4

He should probably tell Stefan that if he could not handle his own blood issues, he should not even entertain the possibility of taking care of a new-born vampire who may or may not have blood issues, but since he was feeling gracious, Damon limited himself to saying that it would be best if Elena could adjust to the new situation in a neutral setting and without people smothering her with irrelevant affections.

"Irrelevant to whom?" Stefan asked levelly.

Damon rolled his eyes. "Irrelevant to the situation, Stefan. If you want to do something useful, have Bonnie start on a daylight ring for Elena."

"Is it Elena's decision to stay away for some time?" Stefan asked in a low voice.

"Of course it isn't. That's why I gagged her, blindfolded her, tied her up, and put her in the trunk." It was clear from the perfect silence on the other side that Stefan did not appreciate the joke, so Damon added. "Everything is OK."

Stefan grimaced humorlessly. "You don't really believe that, do you?"

Damon glanced at Elena's sleeping form snuggled into the car seat. Breathing. Not dead. Next to him.

"I don't believe that, Stefan. I know it. I hope you can work that out with yourself too," he muttered.

"What does that mean?"

"It means that I hope you won't be projecting your bunny-eating guilt-ridden tendencies on other people."

"Ah." Stefan's voice acquired a note of irritation. "So you think it will be better for Elena to feed on human blood. She never wanted to be a vampire, Damon. You know that. Don't you think it would be best to make her experience being a vampire as little as possible?"

Damon snorted dryly. "So you were planning on projecting you on her. Do you even hear what you're saying, Stefan? She's not trying out some costume that she will take off after Halloween. She is going to be a vampire forever. If all you can do is make her feel bad about it-"

"And you will make her feel good about it. Do you think that is what is best for her?"

"How about letting her decide for herself?" Damon said brusquely.

"Yes, you're clearly an expert on letting her make her own choices. Having kidnapped her and all. Where are you going?" he added in a lower, more intense voice.

"Well, if I told you it wouldn't count as kidnapping anymore."

Damon squinted into the darkness in front of him, one hand on the steering wheel, the other holding the phone. He glanced at Elena again. She looked tired but peaceful. Like she would if they were coming back from a summer home in the mountains, several years from now, in a parallel universe that did not exist.

"It's always going to be Stefan."

"Pennsylvania," Damon said tonelessly after a longer moment of silence.

A loud, unpleasant sound pierced the night, accompanied by flashing lights and Damon glanced into the mirror.

"Really?" Hitting the brakes he shrugged, but then smirked to himself.

"What's going on?" Stefan asked.

"Nothing," Damon said, stopping the car. "I'll call you later. Play nicely and don't stay up late."

Stefan looked at the phone and shook his head when Damon abruptly ended the conversation.

"We weren't going that fast," Damon said conversationally, flashing a smile at the police officer who appeared to his left.

But the officer was far from smiling, and simply requested his driver's license and registration instead, giving Elena's sleeping form a wary look.

Then he looked at Damon. Nothing else was needed.

"What's going on here?" Stefan asked, entering the living room, and looked between Tyler, Matt and Caroline.

Caroline practically leaped toward him, looking absolutely petrified. "This is not Tyler," she said under her breath, her lips barely moving.

Stefan's eyebrows knitted in confusion as he shifted his eyes to Tyler who smiled, a very slow, very familiar smile - but not Tyler's smile.

"Well, I'm not exactly enjoying this either," Klaus said in Tyler's voice, glancing into the mirror at what was Tyler's body.

"What did you do to him?" Caroline shouted, tears springing out of her eyes.

Stefan gently caught her arms to keep her from doing something reckless.

"If you don't mind, love, I'll rather come straight to the point. Your ex-beau isn't very high on my list of priorities right now," Klaus said with a sour smile. Caroline clenched her fists, shuddering at the sight of Klaus looking through Tyler's eyes, speaking in Tyler's voice... She bit her lip so hard she could taste blood. "I'm here to tell you that I give you a week to turn Elena back into a human," Klaus said stiffly, his eyes burning into Stefan's.

Matt raised his eyebrows in bafflement. Caroline gave Klaus an incredulous look.

"Oh, I'm afraid you'll rather have to find yourself some other hobby than making hybrids," Stefan said somewhat nonchalantly.

Klaus smiled, entirely not amused. "In case I didn't make myself clear." He took a few steps toward Stefan without breaking the eye-contact with him. "As a vampire, she's of no use to me," he said, stopping right in front Stefan. "So if you won't find a spell that turns her back into someone whose blood is useful to me..." he trailed off and then added in a low, dark voice, "I will stake her myself."

Despite the darkness of the night, a small, white cottage seemed to glimmer in the moonlight.

"Thank you, Mrs. Flowers" Damon said to the elderly lady who handed him the key, while glancing over her shoulder at the bushes of red roses surrounding low steps leading to the door, as if making sure they looked presentable.

"I thought you'd never take me up on my offer," Mrs. Flowers said with a chuckle.

Damon smiled, not correcting, for now, the lady's assumption that he and the sleeping vampire girl were going to live here happily ever after for the rest of eternity.

"I request that you visit me in a few days or weeks. Whatever suits you." Mrs. Flowers opened the door of her small, green car and turned to Damon. "I want to meet your Elena when she'll be able to meet me," she smiled.

"Of course. I'm sorry once again for waking you at such an ungodly hour and thank you for inviting us in."

"Nonsense!" Mrs. Flowers laughed, patting Damon on the shoulder and getting into her car. "Good night!" Mrs. Flowers exclaimed. "I mean good morning. It's 5am!" The elderly lady laughed, and having shut her car door, started the engine and drove off.

Damon followed her with his eyes until the car disappeared on the small road between the trees. Then the expression on his face fell slightly as he slowly made his way back into the house. "Your Elena."

He locked the front door and back door, and walked around the house making sure that all the curtains were drawn and that all interiors were dark. He turned on several lamps in the house. After that, he went to the room where Elena has been sleeping.

Soundlessly, he approached the bed and carefully sat down on the edge of it. He reached out, brushed her hair off her face, and stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingers.

When she shifted in her sleep, he drew back his hand and just looked at her. For a moment she was perfectly still again but then, all of a sudden, her breath seemed to catch in her throat and tears escaped from under her closed eyelids. With a strangled sigh she sat up and opened her eyes.

Damon straightened up, but did not move from the bed. He quietly called her name and she looked at him, wide-eyed.

"Damon," Elena breathed in genuine dismay.

Hearing his name from her lips made the amount of dismay in his mind decrease significantly, even if the tone of her voice was not exactly reassuring.

"It was you." Elena took her head in her hands and stared at the bed cover with unseeing eyes. "You."

"Elena?"

"You." She looked up at him. "It was you." There was a hint of something strange in her voice, something akin to anguish but not quite. "I met you before the accident," she said more to herself than to him. "I met you-" The sudden accusation was so searing in her voice that he did not know what to make of it. "Why did you make me forget that?"

"I didn't want anyone to know that I was in town at that time," Damon answered with a frown, rather giving up on the idea that she would not make a big deal of being compelled those mere two times.

She seemed outraged by the simplicity of his explanation. "You could have made me remember that later! At some point," she looked around the room, blinking and breathing unevenly.

"I guess it just didn't cross my mind that you might be willing to die just to gain the invaluable insight provided by these memories," Damon said wryly.

Elena's eyes darted to him. "You know what I mean. You could have told me."

"Yeah." Damon regarded her carefully. "Maybe." He did not expect her to be happy about him compelling her, but there was something off about her reaction, and he wondered if it was only because of the transition. "I didn't think it was all that important."

"I want you to get everything you're looking for."

"You didn't think it was important?" Elena's eyes were wide, her voice strained with disbelief. She snorted bitterly, her forehead wrinkling as if she was going to burst into tears, but she did not, and just kept shaking her head instead. "You didn't think it was important that you... that you actually compelled me-" She stopped abruptly in mid-sentence and just stared at him. "You asked me-" she continued after a pause, rushing to follow another train of thought. "When I told you that maybe if we've had met first," she gave him an incredulous frown, "you didn't even mention it then. You just let me get away with that ridiculous answer," she said not knowing if she was more angry with herself or with him.

He tilted his head to the side, searching for the right words. "What I was supposed to say, Elena? It didn't seem important during a "deathphone" conversation," he said without thinking and then, noticing a look on her face quickly added. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-"

"No, you're right," she said, biting her lip with a humorless grimace. "I didn't mean to talk about that on the phone then either, but... there was just no time-"

"Elena," he said intensely, and she shifted her eyes to him. "I know," he said with a small smile, holding her gaze. "We don't have to talk about that."

"And that other time, it also wasn't important?" Elena asked in a low voice, her eyes fixed on him.

"God, I wish you wouldn't have to forget this. But you do."

"It wouldn't have changed anything," Damon said with a small shrug, averting his eyes from her.

"If it wouldn't have changed anything why did you make me forget it?"

He looked back at her, a smile flickering across his face. "I just had to say it. I didn't want to bother you with it."

"Why do you keep sabotaging yourself, Damon?" His mouth twitched at her question, but he did not say anything. She leaned toward him. "And you're lying anyway," she said with deliberate sternness. "I 'needed to hear it' too. You wanted me to know it without me realizing that I knew it. How fair is that?"

"Really, Elena? Is that really your main concern at the moment? Me stating the obvious half a year ago?"

She opened her mouth to retort, because he was purposefully avoiding giving her an answer, but then the realization dawned on her. He was right.

Everything came back to her at once, and she suddenly felt surrounded by shadows. Her main concern should be the fact that she was a vampire – she was a vampire!... She needed to drink blood, she needed a daylight ring to be able to walk around in the sun, she would have to be invited in to her own home, and all her personality traits and emotions were going to be augmented-

She froze, giving Damon another dismayed look. Then she threw herself against the headboard in an abrupt attempt to put some distance between them. There was electricity in the air that made it hard for her to breathe, to sit calmly, and pretend that she did not feel his voice ghost across her skin, that the color of his eyes did not seem more intense, that when she looked at him he did not seem to be so close to her that it would be enough to reach out to draw the outline of his lips with her fingertips-

"Where are we?" she asked, glancing right and left, trying to calm her breathing.

"A friend's house," Damon replied, studying her face with concern. She seemed very much disturbed by something. "I thought we could stay here for a couple of days before-"

"Are we here alone?" Her eyes shifted back to him, and there was a hint of panic in her voice.

Damon cautiously confirmed that indeed they were here alone. "But we may compel a dozen of neighbors and throw a party if you want," he added with a lop-sided smile that she did not return, so his expression became more serious again. "Would you rather go home?"

Elena sighed. She would not. But she should. She was not ready to go back and face everyone, but staying here was a very bad idea. Perhaps dealing with everyone would be much easier anyway. Easier than dealing with Damon... or herself... or both of them... here... alone...

"Oh God," Elena whispered, pushing the bed cover off her, and trying to get out of the bed.

"What's wrong?" Damon asked, and without thinking twice about it he grasped her hand to keep her attention. "Elena!"

She yelped and he let go off her, raising his hands in an apologetic gesture.

She frantically scrambled to her feet, and for a moment just stood motionlessly next to the bed gaping at him with a half-accusing, half-indescribable look in her eyes.

Damon slowly rose to his feet. "Elena," he started cautiously, his voice laced with concern. "I know you must be feeling strange right now, but it is important for you to tell me what seems wrong to you exactly. You need to start controlling what you're feeling. All your emotions will be heightened now, so-"

"Oh, you don't need to tell me that!" Elena cut in sarcastically, leaping to pace around the room.

Without a warning, Damon appeared in front of her and grabbed her hands to keep her still and calm her down. She tried to snatch her hands free, and he allowed her to do so, but then cupped her face in his hands instead.

This had a strange effect on her: she stopped writhing, but her eyes became very dark and frightened.

"You need to tell me what you want, what you need, Elena. You need to name it," Damon spoke to her in what he hoped was a steady, matter-of-fact voice. She was most likely hungry, but she needed to accept that first. She was still struggling with the idea itself, and because of that the blood was controlling her instead of her controlling-

All his very responsible vampire tutoring was cut short when she crashed her lips against his and started kissing him so ravenously that for a moment he not only doubted if it was really her, but also that it was him whom she was kissing.

It did not cross his mind not to kiss her back, but he did make an effort to break the kiss and try to find a rational explanation for what was happening.

"Elena," he whispered against her lips when they were both fighting for breath. "Elena-"

Clearly she did not want to talk about it, because she continued kissing him. Pushing his shirt off his shoulders, she dragged her mouth along his neck before she began trailing open-mouthed kisses on his chest.

He felt as if someone suddenly unplugged his common sense. He could not resort to one coherent thought, only subconsciously realizing that his hands were under her shirt and he was pressing kisses to whatever inch of her skin his mouth could reach.

Somewhere in the back of his mind an alarm set itself off and was ringing – dully but persistently, but he was trying to ignore the sound.

He knew he could handle her blood issues, even extremely severe ones – if it turned out that she had them. He was prepared for that. He was prepared for her to lash out, be unable to control her thirst for blood, pick up fights, attack people, demonstrate homicidal tendencies, do everything he could imagine that a new vampire might do, but this, this he could not handle.

He knew something was wrong, something was off… something beside her shirt and his shirt and her jeans and-

Like a secret password the phrase sprung to his mind, and he could not ignore the obvious answer to his question about what was going on. With the burning remnants of self-control he tried to draw back and talk to her but she was determined to ignore his every attempt at putting any distance between them.

It was becoming increasingly harder to remember why they should stop. With his hand tangled in her hair he dragged his mouth along her collarbones before bringing it back to her lips, kissing her feverishly.

They had kissed before. He was trying to convince himself that he was not crossing any forbidden borders. Another kiss would not change anything. And another one. And one more.

Stealing another thorough kiss from her, he swept her into his arms and carried her to the bathroom.

He was not very familiar with the house, and it was not easy to navigate his way around while holding her and kissing her, but somehow he managed to kick the shower door open and gently put her down while suddenly breaking the kiss and turning on water.

She screamed, so loudly that the entire house seemed to shudder. Losing her footing on the slippery floor she almost fell down but he caught her.

"What are you doing?" she gasped through her teeth, trying to catch her breath, and staring at him in bewilderment.

He slumped to the floor with her, staying out of the shower stall but leaning toward her and getting soaked himself in the process.

Cupping her face in his hands he looked straight into her astonished eyes. "Your emotions are heightened, Elena. You know that, right?" She still looked baffled but he could see a glimmer of understanding in her eyes. "You need to calmdown," he said gently, water falling over their heads, almost drowning the sound of his voice that was becoming quieter. "Everything you felt as a human is now stronger. You just need to get a hang of how to control what you're feeling." He hoped to sound encouraging but from the expression on her face he could tell he was not successful.

Elena stared at him, slowly translating to herself what he was saying. It was Denver all over, only it was thrice as overwhelming. From now on she would have to deal with the triple Denver effect on a daily basis. For the rest of her life. Forever.

Damon gave her a faint smile interpreting her lack of response as understanding of the situation. He brushed some wet strands of her hair off her face and withdrew from the shower cabin, leaning his head against one of its walls and closing his eyes. Only then did he feel like he was beginning to breathe again.

Elena was sitting motionlessly inside the shower, and if someone asked her if the water that was falling over her was hot or cold she would not be able to tell.

"I can't do that." Her blank voice sounded above the humming of the water. "I can't control it."

She could not wrap her mind around her thoughts and feelings. She was sitting in a shower, wearing only her underwear, making the most ridiculous statements. It all felt like a disjointed part of a picture she could not see. She drew a sharp breath remembering what she had been doing mere moments ago. She did not feel embarrassed. He never made her feel embarrassed. But she felt guilty and angry with herself. To make the matters worse, the more angry with herself she felt, the more she wanted to resume what they had been doing. The vicious circle of it all was making her dizzy.

Damon snorted. "Well, you have to, Elena, because it's the last time I'm giving you a chance to reconsider." He sounded breathless and she covered her ears to stop hearing his voice. If she would continued listening to his voice, she did not trust herself not to jump out of the cabin and beg him-

With a groan, she pulled the stall door close and started to cry, hot tears running down her face along with cold water.

Caroline was so shaken by Klaus' visit that she didn't even feel like demanding that many answers from Bonnie when she finally showed up. She merely listened to Bonnie explain what had happened, Stefan's unenthusiastic responses, and Matt, who was the first to bring up Klaus' request, pointing out that Klaus was being strangely presumptuous about it.

At this point Bonnie thrust up her chin, looked at Matt, and said: "I've already found that spell."

The words torn Caroline out of her reverie immediately. Matt's eyes widened almost to the point of no return.

"Does Klaus know you found it?" Stefan asked, struck by the thought.

Bonnie shrugged. "How could he know?" she asked, looking at Stefan who did not seem convinced by the impossibility of Klaus knowing about it.

"You know how to turn us back into humans?" Caroline cut in as soon as Bonnie's words finally registered in her mind. "Were you waiting for some special occasion to tell us? Like... after we graduate?"

Bonnie narrowed her eyes at Caroline. "Of course not. And I said I found it. Not that I know how to do it. Or whether I want to do it."

"Why?" Stefan asked, wrinkling his forehead.

"It's a geminate spell," Bonnie replied unsmilingly.

"What does that mean?" Caroline asked impatiently.

Bonnie sighed. "It means that to turn one vampire into a human… another human has to die."