Disclaimer: Not mine.

AN: I'm writing this for a few different reasons.

1) Because I hate that Elena wasn't allowed to be angry about how Damon forced her to turn her emotions off and then, with Stefan's help, literally tortured her into turning them back on.

2) Because what Damon did to Caroline in season 1 was rape, and what happened to Sired Elena was borderline too.

3) Because I hate that no one ever talked about it, so I'm choosing to believe that Elena didn't realize the main extent of what had happened to Caroline.

4) Because I always wanted to see how Elena and Rebekah could have gotten to be actual friends because the potential for it was there.

5) Because I'm suddenly in an Elejah mood again and I wanted to deal with some of the mess American Gothic left us with. I do warn you though that though there's going to be Elejah in this fic, most of my plan here is to live vicariously through Elena, Caroline and Rebekah as they all kick the hell out of Damon.

This isn't going to be a long fic, maybe one or two more chapters.

CONTENT WARNINGS: This fic doesn't contain any rape or dub-con in the story itself but the characters think and talk about it having happened in the past, so for those of you for whom that might be a trigger, please be careful and only read if you think it's safe for you to do so.

*o0O0o*
*She's Come Undone and Set Free*
*Chapter 1 - Humanity Doesn't Mean Forgiveness*
*o0O0o*

"Just find that one thing inside of you that makes you strong. It's in there, just latch on to it, channel everything you're feeling into that one emotion. Find the thing inside of you that makes you want to live, Elena," she heard Stefan saying somewhere past the screaming, howling avalanche of her returning humanity. "And then, let it in."

She wanted to rip his throat out.

Instead, she clutched at her own, choking, still trying to swallow back all the horror and grief and - oh god, Jeremy was dead - and guilt at the waitress she had killed, the humans she'd terrorized, Caroline's hurt eyes. She'd tried to kill her, she'd tried to kill Bonnie. She couldn't, couldn't... please...

Damon's hands were around her and-

The gut-clenching feeling of aversion to the memory of Damon's touch when all she'd been capable of had been pleasing him, she felt like she wanted to claw her own skin off. She'd loved him. Hadn't she? Had she even had a choice in that? He'd compelled her to fall in love with his version of love since before she'd first thought she'd met him. So how real were even the feelings that she'd felt before she'd been enslaved by being turned with his blood?

For a moment, before the next emotion overcame it, all Elena could feel was the overpowering urge to throw up Matt's blood.

He was fine, Matt was fine. Nothing else was, but at least Matt wasn't dead too. She could still hear his neck crack under Damon's fingers, the sound of it echoing through her very bones.

He'd made her turn it off. How could he, how could he?

A flash of Katherine's pleased eyes. Katherine torturing her because they'd asked. Jeremy, dead because of her. The Salvatores in her life at all because of her.

The feeling of Elijah's lips on hers, the shock of it to her system, the muted, ugly nothing because he thought she was someone else, because of course there wasn't a single thing that Katherine hadn't left her touch on. His letter burning. Her house, her whole life, Jeremy burning.

The sun, igniting her skin and burning her alive as Damon and Stefan watched, her ring in their hands.

One thing, one thing. Just one thing, so that she could take another breath and not have it scorch her lungs to ash.

It was like trying to build a sandcastle during high tide. She didn't have anything to use that wouldn't wash her away spinning into the next wave of awful flashbacks.

Nothing. Nothing except-

She'd been free. Freed from a conscience she couldn't afford to give up again. Free from the grief she'd never actually wanted to abandon, not until the choice was taken from her. But also free from the two brothers that had been taking choices away from her from the moment they'd come to town.

And she didn't want to give that freedom up. She wouldn't. Not ever again.

She gasped in a deep, cleansing breath free of pain, - just one moment of utter clarity - and moved before either Stefan or Damon expected it. One of them too intent on coaching her through her returning humanity, the other with his arms holding her in place and his head within easy reach, neither of them saw her coming before it was too late and they'd already joined her first boyfriend on the ground with their necks in the same state as his.

Then she staggered in place. Feeling the starvation that had been inflicted on her these past few weeks as the Salvatore brothers tried to get their Elena back.

Her eyes strayed toward Damon again without her consent and she felt a moment of reignited terror at the tug within her, the encroaching pull to not hurt him. She could still feel it. Weaker than she remembered, frayed copper wire instead of hard steel cuffs, but still there. The sire bond wasn't gone. Not entirely.

"No," she choked out and after only a momentary stop to take back her ring, was running toward the one place that might hold the information that could sever that last piece of chain. Because she couldn't live with it in place, she'd rather go back to burning alive.

Once Rebekah returned back home she was met by utter chaos.

It looked like Elena had been thrashing the library, there were more books thrown abandoned on the floor than there were those still left on the shelves. And Elena Gilbert sitting in the middle of the room, flipping through pages of text like her life depended on it.

"Have you lost your mind?" she felt her temper fraying at the edges and the only reason Elena wasn't already getting slammed against the nearest wall was that Rebekah just couldn't quite comprehend the sight.

"I need to find something to break it."

"Break what?"

"The sire bond, I can still... I can still feel it, it's still there. It's weaker, but it's still-" and then Elena sobbed and turned her eyes to Rebekah and she couldn't fight the feeling of reluctant sympathy that it brought. Because she'd started to almost like Elena, the one without humanity anyway, and this was clearly no longer that same Elena but she couldn't quite remove the memory of her trying to help Rebekah get the cure.

Still undecided, Rebekah opted to get more information "So where are your two shadows?"

"If they haven't healed yet then still on the side of the road near the Salvatore Estate," Elena said, her hands visibly clenching and eyes flashing with rage and something that might be fear and might be guilt. It was hard to tell because she was still clearly volatile, mercurial. With her humanity so freshly returned her every emotion was painted across her face but it was also slipping from one into another faster than Rebekah could read them. "Rebekah, please."

Rebekah let out a frustrated breath and squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn't believe the Dopplebitch was actually managing to make her consider helping her with this.

But she wanted to be better. Matt seemed to believe she was capable of being better and for once she wanted to prove to herself that she could be.

"Fine, fine, just- how weak exactly are we talking about?"

"I don't know. I wasn't able to want it gone before. But I don't know how long that will last once I stop feeling like-"

"Like you want to rip your own heart out to punish yourself for all you've done."

Elena shuddered and then nodded. "But Tyler broke his bond to Klaus, so it can be done I just need to find something strong enough to cut that last piece out. Some kind of magic, or spell, or artifact, or- "

Something strong enough. Great.

It wouldn't have worked with a fully functional sire bond. But if the bond was as weak right now as Elena was making it out to be, there was a good chance that Rebekah actually did know of a way to free her.

She just hated the very idea. Ugh.

"Or blood," Rebekah found herself finishing for Elena with great, great reluctance.

"What?"

"Come on!" She swung around toward the library door and snapped over her shoulder for Elena to follow. "If I'm doing this, you're helping me pack."

"What do you mean?" She heard Elena getting up on her feet and starting to trail after her.

"You need the only thing stronger than the blood from your sire."

"Blood from an Original vampire," Elena answered with clear comprehension and halted in place, Rebekah turned back around to face her. "You want me to drink from-"

And there Elena's face turned strangely stony. "Can't I just- you're an Original."

"No," Rebekah scoffed because if there was one thing she wouldn't do it was that, "I might have lost most of my common sense but I'm not letting you bite me, I don't want to know you that well, and I sure as hell don't want you to know me that well either."

"Then which of your-"

"Spare me." Rebekah rolled her eyes.

"I don't want to see Elijah." And here Elena's face flashed with the sort of anger that made Rebekah blink because there was something very personal about it.

Rebekah couldn't help being curious. "What exactly happened between you and my brother the last time you saw him?"

"Nothing."

"Uhuh. Then I guess I have no way to help you. Because Klaus certainly isn't going to do it. And I don't know if you remember but you kind of murdered my other two brothers," she said, not without a good amount of viciousness.

"He kissed Katherine," Elena ground out between visibly clenched teeth and looked over Rebekah's shoulder. She heard her heart skipping a beat.

Lie.

The realization struck Rebekah and she felt her jaw drop. "You mean he kissed you."

"Not as far as he was concerned, he didn't."

And that- there was no way that was true. She knew her brother, she'd seen how utterly focused on Elena her eldest living brother was any time he and the newest Doppelgänger were in the same space. It had been driving Rebekah utterly furious for months, since the first time he'd saved the still human Elena from her. There was absolutely no way Elijah had looked at Elena and hadn't recognized her as herself.

Which meant he'd- he was right, she had no smart brothers.

"You're still both pathetic."

"Why do you keep saying that?"

"I'm sure you'll figure it out eventually." She wasn't touching that one with a hundred-foot pole, Elijah could clean up his own mess.

The car ride toward New Orleans was uncomfortably silent and Elena couldn't stop her mind from running from one worry to the next.

What if Damon followed her?

She knew that was an illogical fear, there was no way that the first place Stefan and Damon would look for her was at Rebekah's. They'd try Caroline or Bonnie first. Then the burned wreckage of her old house, probably.

And once they actually reached the conclusion that she was no longer in Mystic Falls they wouldn't be able to guess her destination. Not unless they knew where Elijah and Klaus were and found it odd that Rebekah had vanished too. But that should still give her at least a two-day head start, and all Elena really needed was enough time to finish breaking the sire bond.

She pulled her feet up, putting her arms around her knees she pressed her back into the leather-clad seat of Rebekah's car. She was shaking again, the three bags of blood Rebekah had thrown at her before they'd left had helped but she still felt the effects of her recent starvation.

And more than that she felt herself getting dragged back to those weeks where she'd been sired to Damon, to the kisses that now made her stomach turn, to the night she'd slept with him because he had wanted her and saying no hadn't even been possible. She wished it could feel better to know that Damon hadn't actually known about the sire bond until after but it didn't, she still felt violated. And he did know that he'd compelled her the first night he'd seen her.

She had never enjoyed seeing anyone in pain, but right then she wanted to force gallons of vervain down his throat so that maybe he'd actually feel a fraction of what she was feeling now.

"Rebekah?"

"Yeah?"

"What will happen when I- if Elijah actually agrees to give me his blood, I don't want to replace one sire bond with another," and she didn't want to be tied to Elijah anymore than she wanted to keep her bond to Damon. She didn't want to be tied to anyone's will but her own. She never wanted to lose her humanity again, but the taste of freedom that had gone with it was like fresh air she hadn't had for what felt like an eternity and she was not giving it up.

"That's not how sharing blood between vampires is like," Rebekah said after a moment.

"But it's supposed to be... intimate, and you don't want to do it so why-"

"It is. And I don't. But it's nothing like a sire bond. You'll probably feel what Elijah feels," she said and then muttered something to herself so quietly that the only word Elena caught was 'you' before finishing her explanation with a louder - "but only during that moment and even then it won't subjugate your will like you're afraid of. You might get a little bit of a high after, but even that part should last only a few hours."

She could probably deal with that. Still, she felt heat creeping up her chest and landing on her cheeks at the thought of how she was talking about biting and drinking from Elijah.

Not that she hadn't thought about it. Those fantasies had tended to include less blood than Rebekah was talking about but by the uncomfortable look she could see through the side-view mirror on the thousand-year-old girl's face, Elena could rather guess why she didn't want Elena to bite her.

She shook her head, forcing stupid fancies back in their place by reminding herself that this was going to be just another deal she'd strike with him. And if he agreed it would be a favor to a- to a friend. Were they still friends? Or did she ruin that too while lacking the compassion he valued in her so highly?

"But how is it supposed to help with the bond?"

"If the bond you have tying you to Damon Salvatore is weak, - and going by the way you actually want it gone, I agree that it's holding on by a thread, - then you just need a few seconds where you literally can't think about Damon."

"Okay," Elena said and tried to convince herself that it would be.

Rebekah turned on the car's radio and by a mutually silent decision, they went back to ignoring each other.

It was about an hour after that, that their quiet drive which was only accompanied by the smooth sounds of old jazz, was interrupted again. This time by the sound of Rebekah's cellphone ringing.

Elena exchanged a look with Rebekah through the driving mirror before Rebekah declined the call and Elena sighed in relief.

Said relief was short-lived however, a moment later the cell rang again. And then again. Making the anxiety Elena was feeling rise with each subsequent second. She was just about ready to do something monumentally dumb, like throw Rebekah's cellphone out of the window of the moving car when the ringing was interrupted by the sound of an incoming message.

Once she had looked at the screen Rebekah exhaled in what sounded like exaggerated exasperation "It's your blonde friend, she's demanding I pick up."

Elena bit her lip but then nodded, Caroline would not give up. "Just don't tell her I'm here, please, or where we're going."

"You know doing favors for you is starting to give me a headache," Rebekah said in answer and once the phone started ringing again, answered. "What?"

"How is she?" Caroline's voice was full of worry and Elena swallowed, mind full of every cruel thing she'd said during her stint as no-humanity-Elena.

"How is who?"

"Don't play dumb, Rebekah. I know you have Elena with you. She's not in town, you're not in town, and I went to your house, it looks like someone packed in a lot of hurry." Here Caroline's voice turned snappy and Elena could practically feel the no-nonsense glare that would have gone along with the voice if she was in the car with them. Elena felt her lips twitch into the first smile she'd worn since the return of her emotions. It was strangely good to be faced with Caroline being un-apologetically Caroline, especially while she felt like she did right then.

"Breaking and entering? What will my brother say?" Rebekah snarked back.

"I'm sure he'll deal."

"Still don't know what you're trying to imply here, I don't have the faintest-"

"It's okay, Rebekah," Elena found herself interrupting on a sudden whim and reached over the back of Rebekah's driving seat toward her cell. Rebekah passed it over without further comment but probably with another roll of her eyes. She was starting to get to know Rebekah well enough to know that Elena could make her roll her eyes on a frighteningly common basis.

"Elena, are you okay? Stefan said you're you again but that you attacked them? What happened? Is everything okay? Do you need help? I'm sorry I left you there, you just made me so mad but I shouldn't have let it get to me." It looked like she really had worried Caroline, the knowledge sent yet another pang of guilt through Elena's chest.

"It's okay, Caroline. I'm sorry about what I said to you, it wasn't fair." She'd gone for what she'd known would hurt Caroline the most.

"It was a little bit fair," Caroline said with a fragile kind of air.

"No, no it wasn't," Elena argued, "and I never should have said it."

"But what happened, why did you leave?"

"I need to do something," Elena said very carefully trying to decide even as she was speaking on how much she actually wanted Caroline to know.

"But you're not going to tell me what, are you?" There was just a little bit of hurt in Caroline's voice, as if she thought that it was because Elena didn't trust her. She did trust her, she just didn't want to risk Stefan or Damon somehow digging it out of her. She knew how persistent the Salvatores were about keeping Elena safe, or their version of it anyway.

She didn't think she'd ever feel safe with them again.

By correctly guessing that Elena was with Rebekah, Caroline already knew more than she wanted her to, but if she knew that Elena was still fighting the sire bond? That it hadn't been broken as they'd thought it might have been when Damon ordered her to flip her switch? Her best friend was smart enough to make a good guess as to why Elena had left town. And there was very little chance that Klaus hadn't told Caroline where he had moved to.

For a minute or two she just clutched the phone to her ear and listened to Caroline breathing. It was almost normal, bringing back the familiar comfort of something they'd done so often before their lives had gotten bombarded by the introduction of the supernatural. When they were just kids chatting with each other and with Bonnie before sleep.

It brought her mind back to how it all started going wrong. The crash that took her parents, the appearance of the mysterious Stefan Salvatore, the deaths that had followed, Caroline's suddenly anemic-looking face, and the bite marks hiding beneath silk scarves.

Her mind came to a screeching halt upon that last image, something that before her sire bond had never even occurred to her hit Elena square in the chest.

"Caroline?" she said, feeling cold to her bones and already numb. She shouldn't ask, not now, not with Rebekah within hearing range, a part of Elena knew she should wait until she was back but she could already feel the shock seeping into her veins and the question was out there before she could stop it. "When Damon first showed up in town, when you were dating him? He just compelled you to feed on you, right?"

The silence on the other side of the line broke Elena's heart into a thousand little pieces she wasn't sure she would ever be able to mend again. In desperation, she sought out Rebekah's eyes in the reflection above her and saw the same understanding bloom there too.

"Caroline? What else did Damon do?" she whispered. Oh, god. Had she actually developed feelings for someone who had hurt her best friend the way she was starting to suspect Damon had hurt Caroline? Why hadn't she ever said anything? Elena would never have given Damon a chance if she'd known. She would never have let it become impossible for Caroline to stay away from him if she'd known.

Caroline's breathing on the other side of the line had turned hitched and uneven.

"Stop the car," Elena gasped out and as soon as Rebekah hit the brakes, - before the car had come anywhere close to a full stop, - Elena flashed out of her seat, leaving the car and Rebekah behind her, the cellphone still pressed against her ear.

"Caroline?"

"I don't- I don't want to talk about this." There was a faraway quality to Caroline's voice now, it scraped against Elena's heart like ground glass. "I'm glad you're okay, and that you're you again, emotionless Elena kinda sucked you know?"

Before Elena could find any other words - as if there could ever be any words that would do here - Caroline closed the call from her end.

Elena felt veins expanding in ugly dark lines under her eyes as Rebekah's phone crumbled to pieces in her clenched hand. And then she screamed, rage like she hadn't felt before escaping her throat and echoing around the forest surrounding her like thunder.

She grabbed the tree in front of her by its trunk and squeezed until it cracked under her fingertips as easily as the cellphone had just seconds ago.

"You know we don't have to go to New Orleans, we can just turn back and rip his spine out of his body and take his heart along for the ride on the way out. That would work too," came Rebekah's voice from behind her, but despite the colorful choice of words, for the first time, her tone didn't have a hint of mockery.

"No," Elena said, voice sharp as the daggers she had driven through the chests of more than one Mikaelson, sharp enough it would cut the eldest Salvatore in half. "I'm not letting him get away with it that easy, he's going to live, because I'm going to make him regret the day he decided to touch either one of us."

She turned around and locked eyes with Rebekah to make one final point, "So we will go to New Orleans, I will break my sire bond to Damon, but you will tell Elijah nothing about this, you will tell Klaus nothing about this. He's ours."

*o0O0o*

AN2: This fic is turning out a lot heavier than I planned for it to be so I absolutely understand if it's not everyone's cup of tea. But if you did enjoy it please let me know what you thought.