After her realization of the night, the one that hit her like a train, maybe the disease was a consequence of attempting the forbidden, Elena got good and properly loaded. Just completely and absolutely drunk.

Drinking with Caroline, proved once again, to be a danger that she could hardly tolerate. But this time, it was Damon too, always milling about the room filling up cups with whiskey or wine, cutting the conversation of immortality short. And while her mind lingered on the topic for a good amount of time, after a few glasses of red, her only thoughts regarded how good she felt, how much she wanted to dance, and how much she wanted to lie down.

Eventually, when the drinkers started dropping into their beds like flies or falling asleep on the couch, or watching with raised brows and a sloppy smile from the kitchen while stirring a strange paste in a pot, dinner that had never been eaten, Caroline pulled Elena out of the apartment with their hands intertwined.

Caroline spun in circles in the street with arms outstretched, looking into the night sky with a glimmer in her eye that Elena didn't often get to see.

She was going on about romance and how none of the men she'd met had ever compared to the one man she'd truly loved, who had truly loved her. Elena's own mind had turned into a thick soup, not unlike James' strange dinner, and so she didn't press or ask any questions, just let Caroline blather away into the darkness as they ever so slowly made their way back home.

"He was perfect Elena," she said, stopping mid-twirl to capture her best friend's hands. "At least, until he wasn't. And Marcus never liked him. Damon either," she said all of this with a forlorn voice like she was reminiscing on a time distant past. "But he loved me and treated me like a queen. Isn't that all a girl can ask for?" She'd detached from Elena at this point, posing her question at the night, the houses that lined the street with lights turned off.

She didn't go back to twirling and her arms hung heavily at her sides.

"Have you ever been in love?" Caroline asked suddenly, turning big eyes on Elena, waiting to hear a story of romance.

Unfortunately, Elena didn't have one to give, so she only shook her head.

"What about Damon?" she asked, again catching Elena off balance.

Her brown eyes went wide in disbelief at the very question. "What about Damon?"

"The way you look at him, the way the two of your argue. It's very old married couple," Caroline said with a slight slur to her words and a wide smile on her lips, enjoying the game of teasing her friend with words she knew got right under her skin.

"Please," Elena said, crossing her arms over her chest. "I don't love Damon. I hardly even like him."

"You don't have to like someone to love them."

Elena shook her head at this, fundamentally believing otherwise. If she was ever in love, she hoped it would be with someone who loved her unconditionally, who liked her more than anything else.

She didn't wait for Elena's response, only continued. "You do find him quite handsome, though. Don't you?"

The brunette groaned. She wished she could easily answer the question, respond with a quick and firm no, but she'd spent too much time agonizing over his features, too much time looking at his blue eyes and thinking about what it would feel like to put her hands on his arms, his chest. And oh god, she was so drunk. These were not thoughts she'd have sober, not thoughts she wanted to indulge in at all. But her drunken brain had already started whirring and she was picturing what his lips might feel like, imagining him pushing her up against a bookcase and kissing her senseless. She hadn't realized she'd stopped walking until Caroline looked at her with a small, knowing smile.

"Oh," she said, tapping Elena on the shoulder. "You do like him. I think you like him so much it drives you crazy." She threw her arms out again, but this time in exasperation, not to spin around like a child unburdened. "That's love, Elena!"

"I don't love him," she said again, vehemently. "I don't even know him."

"But if you did?"

"I don't."

"But if you did?" Caroline pressed further.

Elena stomped her foot. "I don't know, Caroline. Maybe. Maybe if everything was different. If I was just a girl. If I didn't have to pretend to be my brother just to get an education. If he wasn't getting in my way every step of the way. If we weren't both keeping secrets from one another. If the world was not the world, and I was just Elena. Then, maybe, Caroline."

Somehow, for some reason, and unfortunately at no surprise to Elena, a bright smile broke out across Caroline's face as she said in a sing-songy manner, "You love him."

"Be quiet, I do not."

"But you could."

"I could not. I will not."

Caroline was quiet for the rest of the walk home, yes, but she didn't stop glancing at Elena with eyes like she knew some deep, dark secret, with a smile that said I know you. Elena only pressed her lips tight together, her mind still wandering to the scene she'd conjured in the library, to Damon with hands on her skin until they finally got home and she was able to curl up in bed and shut her eyes tight enough to push away the thoughts that plagued her.

Wheels hit cobblestone, jostling her around in the carriage. But muscular arms held her tight in place. Her neck was craned back, eyes glued to the cloth ceiling. Out of her own body, she could hear herself humming with delight as the man who held her in place kissed along the column of her neck.

Then, she felt a pang of sharp pain as teeth pierced her throat, and she prepared for the world to go dark around her—but it didn't. She squirmed under his grasp, and his hands wrapped tight around her upper arms, pinning her to the back of the seat. He was not neat with his movements, his fangs—because they were fangs—ripped at her flesh and she could hear herself screaming, blood-curdling, pain shooting through her body, ending in her fingertips and bouncing back. This was how she was going to die. Right there, in that carriage, before she got to read every book in the world before she got to do anything with her life worth being proud of.

And nothing she did seemed to get the man to move. No matter how much she squirmed, he only applied more force, only continued to drink from her until she began to feel lightheaded, until the world started to melt around her, falling away slowly, in chunks. One blink and she could no longer see the carriage around them, another blink and he was gone too. But the pain remained.

"Please," she whimpered, with last breaths, with all of the strength that didn't threaten to disappear like the scenery had.

The pain didn't stop when the man pulled away to look at her, everything snapping back into view. His face was a blur, green eyes ringed with deep veins, mouth coated in blood, dripping from the fangs that protruded from his gums. He was a monster, and she scrambled to get away from him as fast as she could. The carriage was moving, but she threw the door open anyways and jumped.

Uncertain whether or not he followed, she took off into the woods. She didn't recognize the scenery, and everything had an unrealistic haze to it, a heavy fog that disoriented her.

From a distance, she could still hear her own screams, and when she pressed a hand to her neck, it came away dark red with blood. The spot where she'd been bitten ached and the dress she'd borrowed from Caroline was beyond ruined.

But she kept running. It was the only thing that her mind would allow her to do. The shoes weren't easy to maneuver in, and her dress ripped against jagged branches, but she kept going. Running and running until she crashed, full force into a body she recognized.

Seeing him here, however, only made her take steps back, away. This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening. Blue eyes found hers and there was something there, sympathy? Then those same eyes found the blood, and he cocked his head back and to the side, trying to resist the draw of the scent.

Even in the dark, in the unreal glow of the woods, she could see the lines grow around his eyes, the veins spreading outward dark and vicious. But they faded as he seemed to get his composure, and he approached her—frozen, backed up against a tree, staring at him.

He placed a hand on each of her upper arms, much like the vampire in the carriage had done to keep her from going anywhere. But this touch was much softer and unexpected.

"Elena," he said, and she didn't stop to think about how he'd known her name. She only looked at him with big doe eyes, fear holding her by the neck, grasping her wind pipe. She could barely breathe, let alone speak. Words had made themselves an enemy and even though she reached, they wouldn't come.

"It's fine. Everything's going to be okay," Damon said, his voice still soft and genuine and caring. Not the same voice that spent ages arguing with her over verb tenses, over semantics, and who was smarter than who, truly? This was a different Damon Salvatore altogether, one that looked at her like she was everything in the world.

But then his fangs elongated and she was thrashing again against his grip. But he didn't move to strike her. Instead, he lifted one hand and sunk his teeth into his own wrist. "Trust me," he said, moving his wrist to her lips. And without thinking, she did. She lowered her mouth and drank from him. The blood was cold and metallic and altogether disgusting, but she drank and drank until he pulled his wrist away.

Then, he lifted her chin with two fingers, brushed the blood from her lips with his thumb, and looked into her eyes. She could get lost in those blue eyes, and she did. She felt herself leaning toward him like she wanted nothing more than for his lips to graze hers. Just before the connection, in the moment where they looked at each other, eyes flicking between each other's lips, silence heavy, surrounding them like a blanket, her skin hot and free from pain—she woke up.

Elena shot up from her pillow coated in a thick layer of sweat, reaching for her neck, then her lips, placing her palms against her cheeks and letting a long, slow deep breath out of her nose and mouth. It took more than a few moments to realize that it had just been a nightmare. But she couldn't get the look on Damon's face out of her mind, the way he'd looked at her so kindly, the way the veins looked around his eyes, the way the fangs looked coated in his own blood. She shivered, going from very hot to very cold, wrapping herself up in a blanket and then pressing her palms firmly against her cheeks once more. What was that? Was all she could think, why had she dreamed of him? Him saving her, nonetheless?

When she finally pulled herself out of bed, she'd convinced herself that this was all Caroline's fault. Well, Caroline and all the liquor and red wine she'd consumed the night before. Before that ridiculous conversation about love, she'd never once dreamed of Damon Salvatore, and she definitely had never dreamed about vampires. Perhaps she was spending too much of her time on this investigation of immortality. Perhaps she was spending too much time thinking about her hatred—yes, hatred—of the Salvatore. Or perhaps, her brain was connecting dots she hadn't quite thought of yet.

But that would be completely insane, wouldn't it? For Damon Salvatore to be a vampire? No. It couldn't possibly be true. Caroline would have told her, wouldn't she? And Elena, ever the intelligent woman and adept investigator, would have found out, would have known.

Still, she paced back and forth in her bedroom, trying to sort the thoughts out in her head, drawing down her journal from the top shelf of her closet, scribbling out all she knew, all she'd learned. And she still couldn't make herself believe it, couldn't even think for a second that these fairytale creatures might be real. There had to be some other way, some aspect of the hunt that she hadn't looked at, hadn't figured out.

Regardless, she wrote down, in big bold letters neatly carved into the page: Damon Salvatore, vampire? And then, not wanting to look at those words anymore, the notes she'd taken, she closed the book angrily and shoved it under her mattress. It didn't help. The nightmare only played over and over again in her head. The man in the carriage and his hungry gaze, Damon and his empathetic one. All the blood, the dress. Caroline's dress. At least that, she knew, was in one piece safe in Caroline's closet. That shred of evidence left her taking a deep breath. Caroline's dress never ripped. This was not a memory. It was simply her overactive imagination. Vampires were not real, and Damon Salvatore was not some empathetic savior, some knight in shining armor.

Besides, even if vampires were real, Elena Gilbert did not need a knight to come and rescue her. She was more than capable of keeping her neck free from injury. And she definitely did not need Damon to come around looking at her like that. No, it was for the best that this had all been just a nightmare. An amalgamation of all the things she'd spent her recent time thinking about mixed with a bottle of wine and the prodding of one drunken Caroline Wicklaw. The world was still the world, and everything would be fine.