Chapter Fifteen: Break The Ice

Dear Diary,

I've tried for the longest time to make sense of all that has happened to me. Nothing feels right, but somehow I just can't put my finger on it. You know how it feels when you're just waking up from a bad dream, and you're afraid to go back to sleep? That's sort of how I feel. There's a part of me that's been ripped away, and I'm bleeding and suffocating inside of myself. That if I go back to sleep, I'll remember all that I've been blessed enough to forget. That's the thing about nightmares; sometimes we can't remember what they were even about... what was even frightening us. But we know how scared we were, and that's enough. That fear is enough to shake us down and knock us out and hold us there, shivering, without even really knowing why we're even scared at all...

Freeze! FBI! Freeze! You have the right to remain silent, you…"

The door broke off of its hinges then, cracking slightly in the middle before falling to the ground. The dark blue jackets were a giveaway. The yellow block lettering was even clearer. Why do they yell that? she asked herself. Men of all ages, heights, and sizes came barreling through, shouting and ordering one another around and running through all of the doorways around her. She thought she saw two go up the stairs, but she couldn't quite focus clearly.

Guns were drawn all around her, and flashlights were slowly being put back into the belts of some of the men around her as they went around flipping on the lights.

Then a dark-haired, kindred looking woman approached her, stepping out from behind a circle of the armed men standing in front of the ruined door. Elena couldn't help herself.

She started laughing.

Then woman approached her tentatively, concerned and unsurprised by the hysterics she was greeted by. Her hair was pulled back into a short, tight ponytail.

"Elena, you are going to be okay," she said softly.

She was close now; her hands were out in front of her warily, and Elena still kept laughing.

What? Did they expect her to just fly into their arms? Of course; everyone wants to be the hero.

She felt strong arms grasp hers gently, and suddenly she felt like wrenching away. "Elena," she whispered again. "You're safe now. We're here to take you home." Home. Elena met the woman's eyes. They were hard and kind looking- stern and maternal all at once. A no-nonsense type of authority figure who had the side of good ingrained inside of her. Elena liked the look of her; she liked the truth in her eyes. But she didn't like what was happening to her. She didn't like what she'd become.

"Where were you?"

The question had come from Elena, but it didn't feel like she was asking anyone in particular. She was just speaking to the room, speaking to the sky. Asking the universe why horrible cruelty could exist in a world that pretended and tried so hard to be good.

Suddenly the laughter that had been so powerful before began to wane, and the giggling erupted into sobbing. Huge, bitter sobs that shook her entire being, rocking her from her perch on the couch, shaking her from the inside out.

Elena thought she heard the woman consoling her, whispering sweet nothings meant to soothe, and then introducing herself, but she wasn't really listening.

The dark-haired woman pulled a syringe from the hands of a person behind her, and Elena vaguely acknowledged the stretch behind her. A gurney.

"Elena. Shhh, everything is okay now." Her hands were working deftly, clinically, tapping the side of the plastic shot and releasing the air. "We're going to make sure you're healthy and you can see your family. Everything is going to-"

The crying did not abate. When she felt the needle in her arm, she didn't even flinch. Nothing could hurt her now. Why did everything have to always come back to this? Everything always seemed to come back to hospitals and doctors and people who thought they were helping, but really weren't.

Elena could hear, but she couldn't listen. Nothing would be OK. So why did everyone say that in the face of brutal, crushing tragedy?

XXXXXXXXXXX

At first, she'd had a plan. She'd known what she was going to do… what she was going to say… how she'd look, act, behave.

Then something went wrong.

She just couldn't stop shaking. And the doctors had kept her for observation another night.

From some part of her mind, she knew she shouldn't tell them everything. She knew they'd think she was crazy.

But they wouldn't let anyone see her. Only doctors and nurses and sterile-looking people had been around her at first. Then there were the big men in suits who looked nothing like her own security personnel. They followed her to the bathroom and stood outside the door. And the talking was so… controlled. No one wanted to say anything to her, tell her anything that she could use. That would matter. Like where Aunt Jenna was, and if she was coming to see her.

Elena asked if she was in the same hospital as Jeremy or if she wasn't in Virginia at all, but some other big city. The men had just smiled gently at her and stayed silent. Like she couldn't be trusted with the truth in her unstable, emotionally unpredictable state.

Then, that morning, she was allowed out of her hospital room- and into an office down the corridor where several police officers were waiting for her. At least, she thought they were police. They were probably federal level detectives, but that hardly mattered. They were plain clothed, for one thing, and for another they were men.

She was SO NOT about to sit and chat with them in a little hospital gown. Oh, no. This wasn't social time, and anyone who thought it was could do something highly inappropriate with that information and their backside.

But she didn't say so. She just asked politely to change, and they let her. Except the clothes the nurse brought her weren't her own, and she began to feel so deflated.

Where was everyone? Where were all the people who were familiar to her? Why was she so alone?

Elena had been speaking with the same man for the past three hours. No one else had been in or out of the room, despite her repeated demands for her lawyer. Missing persons cases aren't treated this way, she thought to herself. Were they?

The man was staring at her intently, too intently for a victim.

Was she a criminal now? Did they think she was guilty of something?

He leaned back in the threadbare green chair. It was one of those big rolling ones with wheels on the bottom. She found it easier to simply fix her eyes on the empty pencil holder and doodled-on stationary on the desk than to meet his eyes.

"Miss. Gilbert-" he started to say, then stopped again.

This had been happening throughout the whole session. It was beginning to bother Elena.

She glanced up at the clock; the small hand wasn't moving.

The other two men had left when she returned with her borrowed green dress. It was two sizes two large for her- and Elena guessed it belonged to the one of the nurses or that they had brought it up from the gift shop downstairs. Either way, it was very soft and comfortable, it came down below her knees, and the neckline was high. That was all that mattered to Elena now: covering up.

She wanted to drown in her own shame, but if she couldn't, the least she could do it hide it away.

"I-" the man stopped again.

This was getting ridiculous. His gaze on her was unwavering yet cautious.

Whatever he had to say, she wished he'd just spit it out already.

But he didn't. They say in silence for another six minutes before he tried to speak again.

Elena thought about asking to speak with the men who had left- maybe they'd be more competent- but she was frankly didn't care enough. There's a point a person reaches were nothing matters anymore. She wasn't about to just go serve herself up on a platter for questioning. She'd rather sit in silence with an incompetent idiot.

"Elena, are you aware of what happened to you?"

His question shocked her into looking up. When she met his eyes, they were uncertain.

He continued. "There is a point where when must ask you to discuss with us what you can."

"You want me to tell you what happened to me." She wasn't asking, she was making a statement.

He nodded, releasing the pen he'd been tapping. It dropped to the desk and stilled.

"We are still looking for your attacker, I can assure you. We just have a lot of questions that need answers."

Elena took a deep breath. "I don't know what you want to hear. I've asked again and again for my lawyer or my family. I'm only seventeen; I can't be questioned without one of them."

Surely she wasn't a suspect in her own disappearance! She hadn't committed any crimes while she'd been kidnapped, for goodness's sake.

Yet the man reclaimed his writing utensil and began tapping his pen on the wooden desk in front of him AGAIN, the dull thuds emanating dully throughout the quiet room.

"This isn't a civil questioning, Miss. Gilbert. This is a criminal investigation at the federal level. There are a lot of odd things going on here. A lot of questions that don't have answers. Things are… off in this investigation. You do understand then, don't you, why we need all that we can possibly be informed with."

Elena nodded absently, a lump rising in her throat.

She tried at first. She tried so hard to get through it, but she couldn't. She couldn't explain without explaining EVERYTHING, at by that point, her credibility began to wane in the eyes of the man in front of her.

He began to nod pityingly, beseechingly. He began to act sympathetically toward her. To see her as the victim that everyone seemed to think she was.

"Elena," he said finally. "I understand that you are a very high-profile young lady."

"Yes," she whispered.

"Then you must realize that the nature of your story isn't a very realistic one."

Her eyes flickered beneath her long lashes. "I understand."

"W-would you stop that?" she asked breathlessly, gesturing toward his pen and raising her other hand to her throbbing temple.

"Of course." The tapping stopped again and Elena took another deep breath.

"I know it doesn't sound truthful. I know what you probably think of me, sitting her, telling you this. You think I'm a lunatic," she said, and she tied the belt around her borrowed dress tighter. The red floral print was so cartoonish- it was so silly looking for such a serious conversation.

"I don't-" he began, but she stopped him.

"Yes. Yes, you do. And it's okay." Elena liked her lips and averted her gaze as tears began to spring up beneath her eyes.

"It's OK that no one around her will believe me and that I didn't get a lawyer, and it's okay that I'm not even wearing my own damn underwear and that I've been herded like a sheep all my life. You know what, though? It's NOT okay what happened to me, and it's NOT okay that you aren't doing anything about it.'"

She thought she saw the man blushing a little, but she couldn't be sure. The redness was gone before she could know whether it had even been there at all.

Elena kept going, heedless of his attempts to calm her and interrupt her furious monologue.

"I'm not going to be passive and just let these things happen to me. I know who I am. I know what I've done, where I've been, what's happened to me. But YOU haven't said one word about what you know, about where YOU'VE been, about why no one rescued me sooner. YOU have that to answer to and-"

"Enough," he said.

But it wasn't enough. Not for Elena. Not for anyone who'd been abused and beaten and used like she had. It was never enough. It was NEVER OKAY.

"NO." She stood up defiantly, gritting her teeth and shaking a finger in front of his face warningly. "No, I'm not done. I want to know why I'm being treated like a chemical outbreak victim. Why I'm being sectioned off and ignored and overlooked. Don't you know who I am? I'm ELENA freaking GILBERT. I want to know what everyone around here is keeping from me."

The man had stopped staring at her with such intensity. He'd stopped looking at her sympathetically. Now he just looked nervous.

"Well, I suppose it would be best to wait until you're feeling a little calmer…"

"CALMER?" Elena knew her voice was getting progressively louder. She didn't care if the men standing outside the door came and took her out. She didn't care at all. She wanted it, even. She wanted to smack someone silly. If not this man, then one of them would do.

She began to laugh lowly. It was a mean laugh, filled to the brim with malice.

"I get it. You want me to tell you every last horrifying and traumatic thing I've been through- draw you a pretty picture of every torturous, hideous act and event and experience I've been through- and you want to tell me NOTHING."

He swallowed visibly, glancing at the door to his left as though it would protect him.

She advanced on him, leaning over the desk and snatching the pen he'd picked back up right out of his hands. She threw it across the room violently and it smacked loudly against the glass of office room.

He kicked back against the desk, the wheels spinning, and hurried from his chair before Elena could grip his shirt in her hands and pull him toward her.

"I'll have Janice Rogers come in to speak with you," he blurted out before squeezing through the door and hastily escaping.

Elena panted as the energy coursed through her. She couldn't handle this back and forth, up and down sort of headache. She needed something to get away from it all.

Twenty minutes later, the woman who'd come and put her to sleep her at... well, it was the dark-haired woman, anyway, and she came in, closing the door behind her gently.

"Are you going to tell me the truth?" Elena wanted to know this. She needed to know this.

The woman just sat down in the vacant green chair and nodded.

"You know something? I've never wanted something more in my life."

There was a moment of quiet as this sank in around the room. It was Detective Rogers who broke it first, calmly responding to the left-field comment.

"To put this behind you?" she asked.

Elena shook her head. "No. To be insane. To pretend that nothing that happened was real- even though I know that everything was." She paused to think, going over her thoughts before saying them. "I don't want to be normal. It would make this a lot easier."

Detective Rogers reached across and put her hand on Elena's over the table. She let her, and they stayed that way for a long time. The woman's hand was small and dry and slightly sweaty, but Elena didn't move away. She needed reassurance and she didn't care where it came from.

"Elena, you've been through a horrendous ordeal; it's only natural for you to feel this way. There are some wonderful counselors your handlers have lined up for you, if you're ready to see them."

"No," she said again.

Janice Rogers cocked her head.

"No. I just want to go home. Now."

XXXXXXXXXXX

I can't watch the news. I'd see my own face. Hear my own voice. See my own story.

They said it was erotomania.

That he was just fixated on a celebrity. That he was wild and insane and delirious. That he'd been planning on holding me for ransom because he didn't actually even know what he wanted.

They told me that he was delusional. They explained everything they could about what it means to be an insomniac, which I guess is what I am now, 'cus I can't sleep at night when I close my eyes tight and try to drift away. I hear a voice in my head, whispering to me. Telling me to do things that I would never want to do, telling me about things I would never want to hear. . . my hands are shaking as write this. Some of my tea just split on my comforter. I'm back home now; it's been an eternity since I've bundled up beneath my own blankets.

I find myself here a lot lately. Just bundled, never asleep. Aunt Jenna comes up sometimes to talk to me, but every time she starts to say something, her voice catches and then she stops and closes the door and walks back downstairs.

It feels so strange. Everything seems so real and unreal at once.

I guess I'm delusional, too. They said they found strange and unprecedented traces of opiates in my blood. They must've tested it while I was unconscious because I never even saw them draw it. But they had a bunch of little vials with red and yellow tops and lots of doctors came in to talk to Aunt Jenna about the results of the lab tests. He'd been drugging me is what they said. That everything I'd witnessed is unreliable and that my time is unaccounted for and nothing I really say is credible to their investigation. 'Cus that's what it is... a criminal investigation. I was completely alone in that room they found me in. There was no evidence that anyone else had even been there. Everything I told them about later . . . everything I tried to describe, didn't add up with what the police had found there. I accidentally saw the newspaper Jenna was reading one day because I walked downstairs to refill my mug and she'd left it there on the table. Nothing makes sense. Nothing is right.

There's something wrong. It's so wrong I can feel the unfairness of it all pounding through my veins. I can heard it in my bones and smell it in my heart. I know that doesn't make any sense at all... but what does? Aunt Jenna told me she'd been worried sick about me all this time, hoping against all hope that I'd be returned to her safe and sound. Then, it appeared a random bystander heard my voice from the room... the room I suppose I was rescued from... and called the police and my missing persons phone line to report it. Except, I don't remember some things. What I told the police about… what my life was like when it was actually normal.

Normal. There's a funny word. Is there anything in the world that's normal?

Photographers are lined up around the block; reporters are camped out on my front porch. I can hear them screaming and chanting and talking to me no matter what I do. Jenna said that there was security down there to keep them back for the most part or I'm sure they'd try to climb in through the windows.

They're that wild for a story.

Well, they'll get one soon enough, I suppose. Once the label figures out what I'm planning to do they'll stop paying for my security forever. John and Alaric will be furious, naturally. I've already lost my cell phone, though. They've tried coming to the house, but so far I am safe from any company at all. Jenna said I didn't have to talk to anyone for weeks if I didn't want to. I told her I didn't want to talk to anyone ever again.

The thing is, I'm not going to go back to music. Not ever. Everyone keeps telling me that I'm OK now, that everything will be OK. But it wont. Nothing will ever be OK again, and I'm sick of people telling me that it will. Once my contract is up, I'm not going to set foot in a recording studio or a dance room or a vocal coach's office or ANYTHING. I'm no longer for sale. My self worth is more important to me than a dollar sign, and I know my parents would have wanted me to know that.

All that has to happen now is for my lawyer to confirm I'm off the hook, and I no longer have any further sales or promotional obligations to anyone. I'm going to lay here in bed and think about everything that has gone wrong and how bad it sucks. I'm going to dig a hole and lie in it for as long as I so please, because I'm so tired of being hauled around and treated like a toy for everyone else's benefit but my own.

Most of all, I'm glad. I'm glad that I've finally been given an opportunity to escape the confines of my life. And I'm even more hopeful that this newfound realization will enable me to find closure in what is to unfold. I'm Elena Gilbert. I'm a star. But sometimes I think I would be better off without any of this… without living at all. Now that there is no one relying on me for their paycheck or pressuring me for their validation or using me for what I can do or give to them, I've realized how devoid and empty my life really is.

Nothing matters. Nothing. And nothing will ever be OK again. So right now, I'm going to pull the covers over my head and just think. Just lie here, knowing I won't sleep. Because when I pull the covers back again, and I eventually have to, everything is going to be just as it was when I first covered up.

That's what life is. Existing and wondering if maybe things would be different if we all weren't so obsessed with finding ways to distract ourselves from . . .

I guess, from us.

A/N: Thank you to everyone who has read, reviewed, favorited, and followed both this story and me as an author on this site from day one. It's been almost three years now since I started Obsessions & The Dangers of Fame and I am so glad to have been on this wacko mental ride, and to say that I have finally written the epilogue to finish this insanity of a plot. I don't actually write for TVD that much anymore, so I'm not sure what will happen with that in the future, but I'm sincerely thankful to be able to give this story the closure and finality that it deserves. If any of you are still reading this story, please leave a review to tell me what you think!

~KaterinaPetrova