AN: Thanks for all the reviews on the last chapter, they really make my day! QueQuowle, I almost laughed out loud when I read yours, that Damon "did an excellent job of being a shoulder and an ass". I also think it's funny that my hotmail account edits what I guess is considered "offensive words" or something in the reviews when I get the alert e-mails!

Thanks to sunshine2006578, my amazing beta, for all her help with this chapter as well as the rest of the story!

Disclaimer: The characters of The Vampire Diaries are the property of L.J. Smith and the people at The CW. I'm just borrowing.

Chapter five

The weekend passed in a blur of phone calls from the police in New Mexico, updating them on the, naturally, futile search in the mountains around Santa Fe, and the town people coming to the house to pay their respect. You could never keep a secret like this for very long in Mystic Falls.

When Elena opened the door for what felt like the hundredth time late on Saturday afternoon, she found Bonnie on the other side.

"I'm so sorry!" the witch exclaimed, embracing Elena. "My dad just told me what happened, why haven't you called?"

"I'm sorry, I've been wrapped up in everything here," Elena apologized, hugging her friend back.

"How can they just have disappeared like that?" Bonnie questioned, pulling away to give Elena an inquiring look.

Elena glanced over her shoulder, making sure that Jenna wasn't in the hallway. Then she stepped out onto the porch.

"They haven't," she said quietly when she had closed the door behind them. "We think they've left because Anna's going to turn Jeremy. She probably already has by now. But we haven't told Jenna the truth, we don't think she'd handle it very well."

"Oh." Bonnie leaned against the porch railing. "You don't sound too surprised."

"I guess I'm not," Elena admitted, leaning against the wall next to the door. "At least not now, when the initial shock has passed. I had hoped it would be a while before it came to this, but I've been expecting it to happen at some point."

"They have been together for a long time," Bonnie pointed out.

Elena gave her a quizzical look. "You're taking this a lot better than I thought you would," she said after a moment. "I was sure you'd freak out at least a little. I mean, you're not exactly a big fan of the whole vampire thing."

Bonnie shrugged. "I've pretty much been expecting it too," she replied. "And you can't be around Damon and Anna for as long as I have without a big gray area appearing between the black and white of the world. It's been a long time since I was a part of the 'all vampires are bad' camp."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." Bonnie gave Elena a scrutinizing look. "In fact … is there anything that you want to talk to me about?"

Elena realized what she was referring to. "Not right now," she said, and Bonnie nodded.

"OK. But you know that you can talk to me about it, right?"

Elena had actually been worrying about that; she had been afraid that Bonnie would completely freak out if she brought up her thoughts about asking Damon to turn her. She had, in the past two years that they had been together, come to realize that one lifetime with him wouldn't be enough for her; she wanted forever, the real forever, his forever. And she knew that getting that would mean that she'd have to become a vampire too, even if she was still a little afraid of what that might mean and how exactly it would change her. Since thinking too much about it made her feel a little sick to her stomach, she had decided that she was going to put off the actual decision until after graduation, which gave her two and a half more years to get used to the idea. But she already knew that, barring something drastic happening, like them breaking up or something, she was going to go through with it.

It was good to know that, when it came down to it, she would be able to talk to her best friend about the biggest decision of her life. She smiled and reached out to squeeze Bonnie's hand gratefully. "I do now."

As the weekend passed without any news from the Santa Fe police, Elena watched more and more of Jenna's hope slip away. She hated leaving her aunt, but she had class on Monday morning and knew that Jenna wouldn't accept her staying in Mystic Falls if it meant that her education would suffer.

"I have Alaric," her aunt said on Sunday evening when Elena brought up the possibility of her staying a few more days. "And I think I'm going back to work tomorrow, it'll help to keep busy. I won't be able to think too much about it then."

"Probably," Elena agreed, remembering how she had felt after her parents had died and she'd had nothing to do but stare at the walls of her bedroom and write in her journal.

"I was thinking," Jenna started, "maybe we should have some sort of memorial service for Jeremy? I mean, we can't have an actual …" she seemed to be having trouble getting the word out, "… funeral, but I think that people would still like to get a chance to pay their respect, say goodbye." As she spoke, tears rose in her eyes again, and Elena hugged her.

"I think that's a good idea, Aunt Jenna," she said.

"Then I'll set it up," Jenna concluded, pulling back and wiping her eyes. She seemed relieved to have a project, something to do, somewhere to focus her thoughts. "How about next weekend? Or do you think we should wait a little longer? The police could still find something …"

Knowing that she shouldn't encourage Jenna to keep hoping, Elena shook her head. "No, I think next weekend will be good."

A little more of the dwindling hope in Jenna's eyes disappeared. "I can't believe he's just gone," she mumbled, biting her lip. "I've never understood those people, parents whose children have gone missing, when they say that they would rather their child was found dead than keep living without knowing what happened to them. I think I do now. Anything would be better than this … this uncertainty. What if the police never find anything? Are we supposed to just move on without ever finding out what happened to him?"

Elena didn't know what to say to that and was saved from saying anything at all by Damon and Alaric coming into the kitchen.

"We should probably get going," Damon said, wrapping an arm around Elena's waist. "It's already past eight, you have class in the morning. And while I'm all for you skipping it, I know you don't want to."

She nodded. "Yeah, you're right."

"Go, sweetie, I'll be OK," Jenna told her, enveloping her niece in another hug. "I'm the one who should be comforting you in the first place, not the other way around. I am supposed to be the parental authority around here. Though it doesn't much feel like that right now."

"How about we comfort each other?" Elena suggested, hugging Jenna tightly before letting her go. "We'll be back on Friday afternoon, OK? Give me a call if you need any help setting things up. Or if you just want to talk, anything."

"OK, sweetie. And I probably will. Maybe you could think about what kind of music Jeremy would like? I never really paid much attention to his taste in music, which I probably should." A guilty expression appeared on Jenna's face.

"Don't worry about that now, Aunt Jenna," Elena tried to tell her. "And I'll think of some songs he would like, OK?"

Jenna nodded, sniffling a little, and then she and Alaric walked them to the door.

"Jenna wants to have a memorial service for Jeremy," Elena told Damon when they had left Mystic Falls behind and were on the highway heading south. "She said that maybe we should wait a while, in case the police find something, but I don't want her to go around hoping more than she already does."

"I figured as much. And that's probably a good idea," he agreed. "I mean, she'll probably always keep hoping he'll come back, on some level, you humans are hardwired to never lose faith." He shook his head, as if the idea was absurd to him. "But the sooner she can stop expecting it, the better. You humans are good at healing, too."

Elena could see the reasoning behind his thinking – despite the incredulous way in which he said 'you humans' – but still hated to be the one to kill another fraction of Jenna's hope. But she told herself that it was for the best.

"I talked to sheriff Forbes earlier," she said. "She told me that the police in Santa Fe will probably send Jeremy's things here later this week, they shouldn't need to keep it around for evidence much longer. Maybe it'll be easier for Jenna to accept it when she sees them."

He looked a little doubtful, but still nodded in agreement. "Maybe."

They drove in silence for a while.

"Where do you think they are?" Elena then asked, quietly. She hadn't been able to stop thinking about it all weekend. Where were they? What were they doing? What were their plans? She knew that Anna could take care of herself, but in her mind Jeremy was still the six-year-old who had refused to let go of her hand on his first day of school, the twelve-year-old who had tried not to show how disappointed he had been when the first girl he ever asked out turned him down, the fifteen-year-old who stubbornly refused to let her comfort him after their parents died. No matter what he became, he would always be her little brother and she would always want to take care of him, look after him. But now she couldn't do that.

"My guess is they've headed north somewhere," Damon replied, pulling her back to the car and the question she had just asked. "Less daylight up there, helps with the whole burning-up-in-the-sun thing. I never actually had to deal with that little problem myself, courtesy of Emily and her nifty little rings, but I bet it takes a while to get used to not being able to go outside when you want to."

"Right," Elena mumbled, seeing why that would be appealing; even if Anna had a ring that protected her from the sun, Jeremy didn't. "Do you think Bonnie could spell a ring like yours?"

Damon frowned. "Maybe. All the details to the spell should be in Emily's grimoire, and I'm pretty sure Sabrina has enough juice to pull it off. Question is if she'd want to. You know she has issues with vampires."

"I don't think she would be as opposed to the idea as you might think," Elena mused out loud, making a mental note to ask Bonnie about making a daylight ring the next time she spoke to her. "I wish I could get a hold of Jeremy, talk to him for just a few minutes." This wasn't the longest she had gone without talking to her brother; her first few months at college had been really hectic, and sometimes it had been two weeks or even longer between their conversations. But this was different; back then, she had always known that he was just a phone call away if and when she did want to talk to him, but now she didn't have that. All she could hope was that, some day, he'd get in touch with her.

"Do you want me to get someone to try to find them?" Damon wondered. "It probably won't be easy, but I have contacts. People … or, well, vampires mostly, who are under the impression that I'm still the big bad." He let out a sigh that could only be described as wistful.

"Missing the good old days?" Elena asked, a little amused.

He shrugged. "Nah, not really. I mean, the whole thing with having people afraid of you might be fun – or, OK, a lot of fun – for a while, but, like everything else, it gets old eventually. Besides, I can still talk the talk and at least pretend to walk the walk if I want to, I think I can scare up someone who can find something out."

She nodded thoughtfully and contemplated his question for a moment. "No, you don't have to use your 'contacts'," she finally decided. "I don't want Jeremy to feel like I'm trying to keep tabs on him or something. If he wants to get in touch with me, he will, and if not …" She didn't finish the sentence, not wanting to imagine never speaking to Jeremy again, never seeing him. That would be too much, especially right now after having dealt with Jenna's grief all weekend.

"I'm sure he will, when he's ready," Damon assured her. "The whole sibling thing works two ways, you know. You can never really get rid of them, no matter how hard you try. Take it from someone who knows."

She laughed once, dryly. She was pretty sure that Damon couldn't know for sure that Jeremy would get in touch with her eventually and was just trying to make her feel better, but she still appreciated the effort.

"I'm sure he will."

Elena went back to class on Monday, feeling like life shouldn't move on quite so easily. But that was the way the world worked; it didn't stop spinning even when you thought it should.

When she got home from class on Thursday, she turned her computer on; she had a paper that she needed to finish for her lit class and was already behind because of everything that had happened. When she sat down at the desk, she saw the little icon telling her that she had a new message blinking, and clicked it to open her e-mail.

She frowned when she saw the new message. There was nothing in the subject box and she didn't know anyone called Gil Jerry. But, for some reason she couldn't quite explain to herself, she didn't delete the e-mail, like she normally would with a message like that, but opened it. The first two words almost made her heart stop.

Hey sis!

She had to take a couple of deep breaths before she could keep reading.

Yep, it's me. I know, the name must have thrown you off. Maybe you didn't even open the e-mail, in which case this is completely pointless, but I'm gonna keep going anyway, just in case. If I don't get a response, I'll just keep mail bombing you until you realize that it's not some weirdo trying to convince you that you're the lucky winner of a million dollars and read one of my e-mails.

I'm OK. Just wanted to get that out there right away. You don't have to worry about me. And, yes, I know it's pointless to tell you that. I can practically hear you as I'm writing this, 'Come on, Jere, I'm your sister, I can't not worry about you.' Well, try. Please?

I know that you're probably pissed at me right now, and you have every right to be. It wasn't that I thought you'd try to talk me out of it … OK, so maybe it was, at least a little. I know that you of all people would understand why I wanted to do this, but I thought you might still try to get me to put it off. Am I right? You would have said something along the lines of 'What's a few more years, Jere? You'll have the rest of eternity together, why do you have to rush things?' And maybe a few more years wouldn't make a difference – to you. But your boyfriend isn't going to be fifteen forever, so try to understand, please. I really don't want this to mess up our relationship, it's been really good these last few years. I know, I know, maybe I should have thought about that before I went through with this without talking to you about it first, but I didn't, so this is what we have to deal with. Do you think you'll be able to forgive me for putting you through this, one day? I hope so.

OK, I was saying how it actually wasn't about thinking you'd try to talk me out of going through with it. It was more about not wanting you to worry too much. And yes, I know that that might sound like a paradox, since I'm sure you've been plenty worried these past few days, but I know that if I had told you that I had asked Anna to turn me you would have obsessed about something going wrong and I didn't want that. I chose the lesser of two evils, OK?

It went fine. I'm OK, feeling a little weird still, but I guess that's to be expected. And, don't worry, I didn't kill anyone to complete the change; Anna got blood from a hospital before. And I haven't planned on starting hunting humans, either, if you were worried about that. It's surprisingly easy not to want that, I thought it would be harder, that I'd want it so bad I'd have to work really hard to keep from going after some poor unsuspecting person in the street or stay away from humans altogether for a while. And, yes, the blood does tempt me, but not more than … walking past an ice cream stand in the summer. Yes, bad analogy, I know, but it was the only thing I could think of. It feels good to know that I can control it, I was a little worried about that, to tell you the truth.

I don't know what you think about my choice to keep Jenna from finding out about this, about the entire world of vampires and werewolves and whatever the hell else is out there – hey, wouldn't it be cool if everything we stopped believing in as kids actually exists, like Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny … anyway, getting back on topic. I just feel like Jenna couldn't handle it, and she shouldn't have to. It'll be easier for her to think that I'm missing or dead or something. You can judge me all you want, but unless – until? – you're in the same position yourself, you can't really know what you would do in my place, can you? Anyway, if you've decided to tell her the truth I guess that's your choice. Maybe I would even be glad if you had, if she knew everything and I wouldn't have to hide what I am from her, I don't know … I didn't do it this way because I never want to see her again, I did it because I thought it was best for her. Please try to be there for her and don't let her blame herself in any way, OK? She'll probably feel like she's failed me or something, but try to convince her to not think like that.

I'm guessing you've found out that Anna and I dropped out of UCLA. If not, maybe I shouldn't have worried about you freaking out about this; it's been two weeks since I talked to you or Jenna, one of you should have at least tried to call me by now. We bought a car before we left LA and abandoned it at a truck stop just outside Santa Fe. The guy in the gas station should have called the police the day after we were there, and I suppose they contacted Jenna. We left all our stuff in the car, including IDs, so they would know who to notify. I thought it might give Jenna some closure, be easier than if I had just completely disappeared into thin air. Maybe the police will think we got lost in the mountains there or something like that. They'll probably look for us for a while and then let the case go cold. People disappear in the mountains all the time, right?

I've thought long and hard about whether or not I was going to tell you where we are, and I've finally decided that I will: a town called Barrow in northern Alaska. Anna did a lot of research before all of this, and right now we have about three hours of daylight here and apparently there is no sun at all between the middle of November and the end of January, which is a good thing since I don't have one of those rings that protect from the sunlight. This way, I won't have to stay inside all day, and we have some time to try to get a ring or something for me too. Anna has some contacts and is trying to find a witch who knows how to do these kinds of spells and, hopefully, by the time the sun rises above the horizon again here, I'll be able to enjoy it. Or at least endure it, Anna says that it's not very pleasant to be out in the sun, at least not at first.

That's really all I was planning on saying. I'm sorry again for keeping you out of the loop like this, but I think – hope – you understand. I don't want to lose you, and I hope we can still see each other. But I understand if you need some time to get used to this. Take all the time you need. I have the rest of forever, after all!

You can reach me on this e-mail address when you're ready to talk. I'll wait a week, then I'll assume that you deleted this e-mail without opening it and send you another one.

Love you, sis,

Jeremy

Elena stared at the screen for a long time after having finished reading the e-mail. She felt so relieved that Jeremy wasn't trying to completely shut her out, and that he was OK, that she felt like a huge weight had been lifted off her shoulders.

She snapped out of the daze only when there was a knock on the door and she opened it with a big smile on her face.

"Aren't you chipper today," Damon noted. "Good day in school? Or are you just happy to see me? And please say yes to the last one, I have a very fragile ego."

"I got an e-mail from Jeremy," she told him, unable to hold it in. "He's fine and he and Anna are up in Alaska somewhere, where there's no sun for months in the winter."

"Ah, I was right."

"Yeah, you were." She nodded vigorously. "I'm so relieved, I feel like I could sing."

"Please don't!" he immediately exclaimed, and she slapped him playfully on the arm. "Ow!"

"You can't ruin my moment," she said. "It's impossible."

"Wasn't trying to." He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her close. "I'm going to enjoy seeing a smile on your face, because I haven't in almost a week."

"You do that, come tomorrow afternoon I'll have to act like the grieving sister again." She frowned at that idea, not sure she would be able to keep up appearances. But that would have to be a problem for tomorrow.

"Did he say anything about why they decided to do it this way?" Damon wondered.

"He said that he didn't think Jenna was ready to find out the truth, and that he didn't want me to worry about the actual transformation before it was over," she replied. "But he also said that if I decided to tell Jenna what was really going on, it was up to me. But … I think he's right. She couldn't handle this, not right now at least."

"So we don't tell her," he concluded.

"No, we don't tell her," she agreed. "Not right now."

"But maybe someday?"

She smiled. "Yeah, maybe someday."

AN: I hope nobody (especially Merlin!) is too disappointed that Jeremy and Anna hadn't been kidnapped by Katherine or something. I'm just not really that into the whole supernatural stuff in my stories, I focus more on the relationship aspect of the Vampire Diaries universe. Which is, of course, why I chose not to have Katherine return when she did on the show in the first place. And Merlin, to answer your question about the length of this story: like I said in the AN on the first chapter, I think, this story started out as a one-shot, which then turned into a really long one-shot and then was divided into chapters. At that point, this was the last chapter: everything's pretty much been resolved, Elena knows where Jeremy is and that he's OK and all that, and Jenna's not going to find out the truth right now. But then – as happens a lot when I'm writing, for some inexplicable reason – I got an idea. So there is going to be one more chapter (at the time of writing, mind you, I can still change my mind!) to wrap everything up in a – in my mind at least – more satisfying way. Then I have an idea for a second sequel that would take place around Elena's graduation from college – and you should all realize what that means after this chapter! OK, that's it for now. As always, please let me know what you thought!