Dying to Live

Damon stared down at the supposedly dead body of Astra, appearing to be asleep even though her heart was silent in her chest and her skin was cold with death. But she couldn't have been dead; she looked as perfect as she did when she was alive. Aside from the lack of heartbeat and the blood that stained her clothes, she didn't appear any different than she had when she was sitting a couple seats down from him at the dinner table.

Although, she couldn't glare at him while she was asleep as she was.

He reached forward gently, brushing one of the blonde curls of hair from her forehead and staring at her wantonly. He hadn't realized how much he truly missed her until he had seen her again, known that she was still within reach. She wasn't dead as he had assumed; even though he had searched for her when he was freshly turned into a vampire, there was no trace of her left and he knew that she had moved on. He thought she had died a human, married and with children of her own.

Dipping his hand into the front of his dark, button up shirt, he produced the chain that held her ring. He was surprised that Elijah hadn't ripped it off and cast it off somewhere, never to be found again. Perhaps he had simply left it with Damon as a sort of torture, taunting him that he could hold the ring that had once claimed Astra as his fiancé, but he would never have the woman herself back.

"I'm so sorry," he whispered to her still form, caressing his knuckles down her cheek. He truly didn't deserve her, not after what he had done. And it was all for naught, because Katherine only wanted Stefan. Never had she truly wished for Damon, he was simply a way to attack the other woman deeply.

His phone vibrated in his pocket, drawing his attention away from the still woman.

Stefan

"What?" he demanded into the phone, having only just finished speaking with him a couple of minutes before to tell him that Elijah was dead. What now? More trouble in the paradise of the two lovers?

"Damon, the journal says that the dagger has to remain inside the Original in order for them to stay dead," Stefan explained in a rush, not missing a beat. Damon's heart dropped to the floor as understanding dawned on him. He was racing down the stairs and standing in the open door of the cellar before a human would have a chance to blink, staring down at the empty floor.

"Damn it!"

Upstairs, Elijah leaned against the doorway of Damon's room as he looked down at the woman that lay upon Damon's grand bed, looking dishevelled as his hair was messed, suit covered with dirt and blood and a scowl marring his features. The spell had taken hold and it was now up to Astra to decide where she was meant to be. Appearing at her side, he leant forward and pressed a lingering kiss against her forehead.

Perhaps, with the sudden attacks that Elena's friends were issuing on those that worked with him, she was safer standing on the side that opposed him.

Straightening to his full height, he could hear Damon making his way back upstairs and quickly took his own exit, knowing that he needed to get in contact with Jonas to get the address of Elena's cottage. He would admit his heart ached to know that he was leaving Astra behind, with Damon Salvatore of all people, but he could not risk taking her away with him. He was already long gone by the time Stefan and Elena would be notified of his missing body, making his way to Jonas' home.

He didn't care to knock and broke the simple locks on the front door, appearing in the doorway to the study in the apartment, scattered with books and grimoires as the warlock himself looked up from the thick, aged book in his hands. His surprised registered clear on his face, and he knew upon first sight of the older man that something terrible had happened at the dinner party. It was not the blood that stained his suit or the way that he looked so dishevelled, no, it was the murderous gleam in his chocolate eyes.

"What happened?" he dared to ask, turning his full attention to the original as he placed the book down.

"Finish the spell," Elijah ordered, "Astra already agreed, now the time has come. Complete the spell, and tell me where I can find Elena."

Jonas looked torn, but knew that he had no choice. Turning his back to the silently enrage Original, he plucked a book from the far side of the bookshelf and flipped it open to a marked page. Instead of looking for a spell, his eyes fell on a small braid of leather, intertwined with several strands of golden blonde hair. Astra had freely given the strands only hours before, allowing the spell to be performed.

Gently plucking the braid from its hiding place, he put the book back and turned to his desk, where there were several things needed for casting on the wooden surface. Among them, a knife. Elijah watched, frozen, as Jonas lifted the sharpened blade to the leather and hair, glancing over to him one last time, before he sliced it clean in half. Elijah could feel a slackening sensation as the connection that had temporarily killed Astra wore off, leaving a cold feeling inside of him.

"Now," he started, drawing the warlock's eyes back to him. "Where is Elena?"

It didn't take long to arrive outside of the cottage that Elena and Stefan had gone to seek refuge in. Stefan's car sat out front and the windows were glowing from the fire and lights that were illuminating the inside of the house. He could hear them inside, whispering in an attempt to prevent him from hearing. He could clearly understand when Stefan warned Elena that he was present, and took that moment to throw the handful of rocks that he had collected at the green front door, blowing the entire thing from the wall.

"Stefan, I'm okay; he can't come in the house."

Elijah smirked at her words, unbelieving that she thought such a thing could stop him. "You know," he began, walking leisurely to the front door, "I may not be able to enter this house, but I am a very patient man. I'll wait you out," he declared, looking for any sign that she was going to show herself. He may say that he is patient, but that was waning very quickly.

Not a moment later, Elena emerged from around the corner and Elijah felt his curiosity peak. The things that she and her band of merry men had done, he couldn't help but to wonder what was in the works in that moment. Would she try and connect with him? Perhaps use his clear feelings for Astra as a shield? Threaten? Persuade? The list of possibilities was tiringly ongoing.

She resembled a timid kitten as she walked toward him, kicking pieces of splintered wood as she approached the doorway. "They shouldn't have done what they did," she finally tried to reason.

"The deal is off," he announced simply, his voice dropping in tone out of his anger and annoyance. This was a delay he had wished not to deal with.

"I'm renegotiating-"

"You have nothing left to negotiate with," he interrupted, stepping up onto the front porch fully, taking up his full height as he towered over the small, shivering woman. He often forgot how tall Astra was compared to women of the modern era; Elena was absolutely tiny compared to Astra, amusing him greatly as he watched her quake.

He would admit that when she pulled the knife from under her arm, he was surprised. Of all the things that he had been expecting her to do, that was not it. Bravo, the human gets a point for actually surprising the Original vampire. However, Elijah was not a fan of surprises, and it had been that way for a very long time.

"I'd like to see you lure Klaus into Mystic Falls after the doppelgänger bleeds to death," Elena threatened, holding the knife tightly in her fist. She was petrified.

"Stefan won't let you die."

"No, he won't," she agreed, but she didn't look as though she had lost the battle. "He'll feed me his blood to heal me and then I'll kill myself and become a vampire, just like Katherine did." The thought of another doppelgänger giving up her human life to become a vampire, just like Katherine did, enraged Elijah even more than he already was. Then again, Elena was not Katherine. She was a completely different woman, black and white, night and day, and Elijah would have to say that he could not see her becoming so desperate. "So unless you want that to happen again, promise me the same as before; promise me that you won't harm anyone that I love. Even if they've harmed you," she quickly added on, knowing that he would say something about Damon's double-cross.

Pursing his lips a moment, Elijah actually thought on considering her threat but instead, denied. "I'm sorry, Elena, I'm going to have to call your bluff."

Taking a deep inhale, the cursed woman looked to him for a moment more before raising the knife and turning it in her hand, changing it from pointing outward to instead aim at her stomach. That move alone brought some doubt to the man, but not enough to act. Not a moment later, however, he was racing for the door as Elena plunged the knife into her stomach, the scent of her blood rushing around him as she howled in agony.

"No!"

Tugging the knife free, Elena let it fall to the floor as Elijah was forced to stop at the doorway, his hands slamming against the wood of the frame. She groaned in clear agony as Elijah sought through his mind to think of any way that he could get to her, but he knew that she would not invite him inside under any circumstances unless it was that he agreed.

"Yes," he growled out, giving in. "Yes, you can have your deal!" She hissed in pain again as her hands covered the bleeding wound, doubled over in agony from stabbing herself. "Let me heal you."

"Give me your word!" she demanded, still fighting until the very end.

"I give you my word," he said immediately.

This was not how things were meant to be; had he known that a new deal would be forced he would not have had Jonas finish the spell or left Astra in Damon's hands. He would not have given her up so easily if he had known that she would still be safe, in a sense, at his side.

Elena finally gave in and stumbled forward, passing through the doorway and collapsing against Elijah. He caught her immediately, intent on healing her, when a blinding pain had him frozen in place. It felt as though ice was coursing through his body, beginning at his heart, as the blade of the dagger pieced it for the second time. Elena kept the dagger in place as the life drained away from him, his last thought on the rousing Astra that was lying on Damon's bed, unknowing to what was going on. He had abandoned her again, once more over the choice of his brother.

And then everything was gone.

Inside the boarding house, Astra's heart kicked into movement inside her chest as her lungs expanded with a deep breath. Her body remained still, aside from the steady rise and fall of her chest. No longer sleeping in Damon's bed, she was covered by a duvet in one of the guest rooms, her blouse removed and leaving her in the stained material of her white undershirt. The boarding house was silent around her, not a single movement or noise joining in on the rhythmic beat of Astra's heart.

That was, until, the front door opened and the once incarcerated vampire doppelgänger stepped over the threshold. She smirked to herself as she looked around the empty home, no trace of the brothers present. Her first stop was down to the basement, where she knew that was a supply of blood bags in the large refrigerator.

Had she known that the woman that was seeking to kill her was unconscious on the top floor, she would have been heading in a very different direction.

However, she did not know of Astra's slumbering form, nor was Astra aware in any way of where she was or who was nearby. She had done as Elijah told her and stayed away from Katherine, even as tempted as she was to kill the woman while she was stuck inside the tomb—or at the very least torture her a bit for what she had done. Her penance had never been received all those years back, and she was itching to tear the younger vampire apart.

Instead of concerning herself with anything else, Katherine waltzed around the Salvatore home, claiming several bags of blood as her own before moving on to look at what else had been happening. It didn't take long to locate the bloody chair that Elijah had been stabbed through, or the mess of rags that were thrown away, stained with red liquid. Katherine wrinkled her nose at the stale smell and moved on, running her fingers along the back of the couch in the sitting room.

The disgusting feeling of dirt clinging to her skin finally became too irritating and she made her way up the stairs, sauntering and flaunting to an invisible audience. It was so wonderful to be free again.

Sneering, she headed straight for Damon's room.

Only a couple of doors down the hall, Astra's jaw twitched and her eyes began to move beneath the closed lids of tanned skin. Fisting her hands in the sheets that surrounded her, she was ignorant to Katherine's presence, but her mind was quickly returning to her. Voices and faces danced through her unconsciousness, some familiar and others strange to her. The fabric gave way within her fingers; the threads tearing apart as her grip became deadly, cutting her nails into her palms.

Muscles jumped and tensed beneath her taut skin, a whirlwind of miniscule movements, before everything went still again as Astra relaxed into complete unconsciousness once more.

When Damon stepped into his bedroom, the first thing that he noticed was that his shower was running. The second thing that he noticed was that Astra was very much not lying in his bed. He could feel his body grow cold as he found it suddenly hard to move. She was awake? She was still here? He had expected her to run the moment she woke up, trying to get back to those warlocks or probably come for Elijah. Why would she stay behind?

Taking cautious steps into the room, he closed the thick door behind him and moved hesitantly toward the bathroom. He had never been so worried about doing something in a long time; even when he had made the decision to kill Lexi so that he and Stefan could remain inside the town hadn't taken near as much mental motivation as it did to see who was in his shower.

Maybe it wasn't Astra. Maybe she had left.

"Andy?" he called out, but there was no reply. "Ast-"

Stepping around the corner, steam clouded the washroom but he knew as soon as the person in his shower came into view that it was not his ex-fiancé. Astra's blonde hair would not appear so dark, even if it was wet. The light, almost white blonde curls would still remain a golden colour when wet, he just knew it. On top of that, Andy's hair wasn't that dark, either.

And before his eyes, he watched as none other than Katherine Pierce turned around to face him, looking through the glass walls of his shower as she shifted her hair about on her shoulders, heavy and wet. A smirk came to her lips as she looked at him, completely unabashed by her nudity as she began pushing the hair from her face. "Hey, Damon," she greeted casually. "Do you have a robe?"

Perhaps Katherine says that she won't run as Damon stands before her, when she believes Elijah is dead, Klaus isn't in Mystic falls and she is safe, but she doesn't even realize the danger she is in as Astra shifts in her sleep just down the hall, the voice that haunted her reaching her senses and stirring her from a deep slumber. Turning her head to the side, the light caught the silver chain that lay on her chest, the weight of the silver ring dragging the thin chain down.

I hate starting new jobs…I hate school. Why did I choose to continue after highschool? I'm mad, completely mad!

Anyway, I hope everyone liked this one, please send me your reviews! They would be so very much appreciated and needed. I need some good feedback right now, my brain is so weighed down some nice words would do wonders!