"some mornings I wake up and I find myself trapped under the weight of every bad thing that has ever happened"

Text to; Damon Salvatore                                                                                                                                                     You need to come home. This is not a joke.

Unread

My hands surround linen sheets, I see Elena, she is holding a cup of steaming hot tea and slowly carrying it up the stairs, careful not to spill any.

We enter Damon's bedroom again, "I brought some new-" Rose is gone. The place on the bed is bloody and gross, with bit of her skin sticking to it. But mostly it's empty.

We look at each other and we both know we are in danger. I start to run down the stairs and into the library where Rose was last, before we moved her to Damon's bedroom. Elena follows.

"You should call Damon." She nods and picks up her smartphone, her hand is shaking a little.

I hear the familiar beep of a phone going to voicemail, damn it Damon the one time I need you to actually pick up your phone.

"It's Elena, I'm worried about Rose. I think you should come home." A crack. A sound from another room and there is one thing that Elena and I share, we are too curious for our own good.

"Rose?" I say, careful not too sound threatening, not too loud. Anything not to trigger her.

It's the basement stairs we descend slowly and from the corner of my eye I see Elena picking something up. I look at her and she holds up the emptied blood bag in my direction. We walk on and hear the sound of someone feeding, it's a distinctive sound, always has been.

It's Rose, she is drinking hastily from one of the bags. Around her a circle has been formed, a pattern of empty bags of blood surrounding Rose.

Elena whispers, "oh my god." But forgets that Rose can easily hear her. She turns around, her face is covered in those grey veins, her eyes bloodshot and almost completely red.

"Katerina," she says and Elena lets out a "no." I grab her by the hand and we run, with Rose on our heels. She isn't as fast as she would have been normally, or she would've easily caught us already.

Elena tries to reason with her still, but I don't think it's going to work this time. The bite must have taken over her brain already, eating away at it slowly.

"Rose, stop, stop, it's Elena. I'm not Katherine." She stops for a second.

"You're hallucinating. I'm not Katherine. I'm not Katherine." Rose grabs Elena and pushes her to the floor, she tries to bite her but I pull the heavy curtain away from the large window and scorch her with the light. "Elena, run!" she does but Rose stops her again, holds her by her neck. Elena is smart, she digs her fingers into the wound on Rose's back, she screams out in pain. We run into another room where I lock the door behind me. I hear Elena open the curtain and break a chair, I stand against the door and I pant. Way too much energy has gone into this for the body of an old woman.

I hear her against the door, also slowly breathing, trying to get in.

"Elena? I know that's you and not Katherine."  She coughs and groans uncontrollably, " please, Lola? I need your help."

We haven't heard anything in a while, but we have seen the sky around us grow darker, it must be quite late. "I think she left." I tell Elena from my position on Stefan's bed. Where I know they slept this night, where I know they woke up.

Elena nods, she has been too frightened to talk since we locked ourselves in here and she clutches the stake so tightly that splinters must have invaded her olive skin.

We creep downstairs, not letting our steps trigger the creaks in the old stairway. The lights in the living room are still on and if Elena and I didn't know better you couldn't tell that anything happened here. A creak. We turn around so fast that it probably gave us a whiplash. It's Damon standing in the doorway of the Salvatore house.

"Are you okay? Where's Rose?" she lets the stake fall to the ground and it lands with a loud clank onto the hard wood floors.

"We don't know." I tell him, shaking my head.

He explains to us that Jules, a werewolf friend of Mason's, told him about the dementia but that he didn't know how far it would go, how aggressive she would get.

While talking his phone rings, it's my aunt Liz calling him about a suspicious death, we all look at each other. Rose.

She is standing there so diligently, in her uniform, a gun on her hip. I have been so preoccupied that I didn't even notice that I missed her dearly. Her and Caroline who have been out of my view for a couple of days now, with me not yet having visited school and staying at the Salvatore house. I guess it must be ruining me a little bit, torturing myself by being around these two men who almost love me constantly, dying so slowly. I hadn't even thought of saying goodbye to them, my last family left, I was so preoccupied with the brothers.

"Hey," Damon says to her and I stand behind him like I always do, protected by a broad back.

"Thanks for coming so quickly." It is time to step out of the shadows so I emerge from behind Damon to next to him, my aunt sizes me up, looks so worried.

"Lola, where have you been? And why are you here?" I don't know what to respond, I feel so guilty, like Damon knows I always feel, like Damon uses to his advantage.

"She's been staying with Stefan and I Liz, we have been helping her with the death of her parents, we have experience. And we were in neighborhood, so I got here fast." I nod and embrace my aunt, her firm hand is on my back and gives it a few pats, it feels good to be loved fully.

"What happened?" Damon asks and Liz looks at me, she doesn't know I know of vampires, she doesn't even remember that Damon and her daughter are ones. So I comply, I leave her alone and go on a search for Elena who I find so reminiscently standing in front of a car on her phone.

"Hey Stefan, it's me. I don't know where you are but please call me. It's important." I put a hand on hers and scare her accidentally. "It's just me, don't worry." She nods and swallows.

"Is he okay?" she asks me and I don't know which Salvatore brother she is talking about but I have the same answer for both of them, always have.

"He will be." She smiles a doubtful smile and looks back at her phone, hoping for something from Stefan. Damon seems to joins us out of nowhere.

"Hey have you heard from Stefan? Do you know what he's up to?" in my head I can almost pretend that I ask this for Elena, but we all know I am asking for myself.

"My baby brother is not exactly my priority right now. Take this." He shoves a stake into my hands with too much force and almost pushes me back, he is more gentle with Elena.

"Come on, let's go."

We hear a scream from somewhere, Elena and I try to follow Damon but he is already gone.

"I think it's this way!" I follow her and I don't know why, if Damon can stop her we most certainly can't, I guess it's just a way to not feel so terribly helpless.

We hear it from the distance, "Rose, stop!" and when we arrive we see Rose rush toward Damon, he pins her to the ground just in time and keeps her still.

Damon says something to her that we can't hear but when we get closer to her and she looks at us her face has returned to normal.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." I want to comfort her but I don't even know where to start so I keep my mouth shut, so does Elena.

"Come on, let's get you home." He puts his arms underneath her to carry her tired and weak body.

She cries-"No, I don't have a home, I haven't had a home in so long." He lifts her from the ground and hold her tightly to his chest.

"O make it stop, please make it stop! I hate it, make it stop." He starts to walk away,  not run with her in her arms. And I know that he will make it stop.

It's when we get to the house that I understand what making it stop means. What it will entail for Damon, what it means for us all. A mercy kill.

When I'm standing in the doorway Elena puts an arm under Rose's neck, she coughs loudly. They talk but I can hardly hear them, only a slight mumble and a croaking voice. I focus on Damon's face instead, on the pain I know he is. Elena gets up from the bed and starts to back off, it tells me that it's my time to say goodbye.

I walk towards her and I wipe some of the sweat off her forehead with the bottom of my sleeve.

"My sweet Lilyana," she smiles at me kindly, her teeth are beautifully white and straight I notice.

"Even through your sister's betrayal we were so very fond of you." I see her remembering.

"I hardly remember my sister Rose-Marie, I couldn't tell you anything about her." She looks so pleased with herself like this, just smiling lightly and pleasantly.

"She was only your sister once, but once a Petrova, always a Petrova." My head turns so briskly that I can hear it crack and I stare into Damon's equally large eyes. Rose starts to cough and screams.

"What do we do?" Elena asks, unsure of how to proceed, but I already know the answer.

I softly caress Rose's hand, "Goodbye Rose-Marie, you have been good to me.'

"Go," Damon says to no one in particular and I listen to him without any of my usual sarcasm, because what he has to do will hurt him to no end.

"Damon.." Elena knows it too, what this will do to him. But she hasn't yet learned that Damon needs to do this by himself. All alone in this big bad world.

"Just go, I got this." He looks at me and with his head gestures to Elena who is still standing in the door opening. I walk out a grab her hand, I carry her through the halls and downstairs. In the distance we still hear her screams.

Elena has gone home, but I can't. And I don't say that because I want people to feel sorry for me, I say that because it is the truth. I hear his thundering footsteps come down the stairs, they are heavier than normal, he must be carrying her body. He silently walks through the front door and I hear the trunk of his car open and slam closed.

He comes back in, "Damon," I say delicately. I don't want to hurt him, or trigger this episode of his any further than it already is.

"Just don't Lola." Dismissive. He has changed from when he was still a human, but he always was dismissive. "I only want to help Damon-" he rushes into my space, stands threateningly right in front of me, my nose could almost touch his.

"I don't need your help Lola, I need you to get out of my way." He doesn't mean it, he can't mean it, it must be the pain messing with him. I stand up straighter.

"Well I'm not going anywhere." He grins at my response.

"You were always this annoying weren't you, following me around because no one else could stand you? Except for Stefan of course. What a pity that he has moved on too, isn't it." It is an evil smirk on his face, of wanting to hurt me whatever it takes. It works.

"You're a dick, you know that?" he steps back and grabs his leather jacket from the coat rack.

"I know, and a merciless killer. So if I were you little Lola, I would keep my distance." He runs out of the door and I let myself fall onto the uncomfortable couch I have called my home for the past week.

It might be time to find myself a new one of those.