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Elena’s seventeenth year is a long series of panic attacks remembered in bits and pieces.
(This week, she writes, I almost died. Virtually all the entries are identical. The threat changes; her tone does not.)
Two weeks after Elena turns eighteen she steals Caroline for three days. They drive to Richmond blasting loud pop, feet on the dash; Elena drives too fast and Caroline says nothing. When they get there, Caroline compels a doctor and Elena gets her tubes tied. It’s an easy procedure, she leaves the clinic six hours later.
She cries the next day. Caroline goes out and comes back satisfied, a spot of blood on her collar, her hands full of grocery bags.
“If you wanted sympathy“ Caroline says, “you would have brought Bonnie.”
The grocery bags are full of liquor and ice cream and Elena drinks vodka until she vomits. Caroline holds back her hair.
Caroline tucks her into bed, hums something low and soft until she falls asleep.
There’s a screwdriver and advil waiting for her when she wakes. Elena downs both, no mind for her kidneys and drags Caroline shopping. They spend too much, drink cocktails over lunch and dinner and go out dancing after. They laugh and spin until they’re sick, and dance with boys they will never see again.
Elena is brutally, terrifyingly, alive. Caroline only hates her for a moment.
Elena spills her blood like so much water. She slits her wrists for advantage, puts a knife in her stomach for a vow, feeds her blood to every vampire that remembers to ask.
Doppelgängers don’t live long enough to have death wishes.
This week, she writes, I almost died.
The problem is Elena has always been too much. Too bright, too determined, too human. She’s lived every day of her life fast and hard, dragging the whole town in her wake. She stayed up later, woke earlier, drank in the sun like it meant something.
Elena has always known she would die young. So she lives too fast, loves too hard, and angles her neck for a bite that’s five hundred years late.
My choice, she says clutching it to her, mine. At least pretend to respect me enough to allow me this.
Elena wears vervain at her neck, and on her wrists, she stirs it into her tea and spices her food with it. Later she does the same with blue rocket.
It has been a very long time since Elena Gilbert felt safe.
Elena wanted children. Wants children with a sort of urgency that terrifies her. But she’ll not curse a child with a dead mother, nor a descendent with her face.
Elena used to want a lot of things. Her hopes are smaller now; safety for the people she loves, normal lives for those who can afford them. She doesn’t think it’s too much to ask.
“For my family.” Elena says to Elijah, because they’re on the same side this week and he asked. “You would do the same.” Certainty carving itself into her bones.
Elena and Elijah have always understood each other.
Matt's truck goes off Wickery bridge and Stefan finally makes the right choice; the one she wants him to make.
She’s breathing water and doesn’t expect to wake up.
Sunlight itches.
She is so very thirsty.
Elena's friends, her family come to make their arguments and she lets them.
When they're done she says, I never wanted to be a vampire.
She says, This is my choice.