Damon's POV

She was bit. Rose was bit.

I knew I was impossibly angry with Rose for sleeping with me, despite the fact that it was a mutual thing, but I couldn't help but feel like I should be doing everything to help her. It was my fault. Jules 'marked' me. It should have been me.

Abandoning that thought, I grabbed my glass of Bourbon off the side table and started walking slowly around the fancy, old, rather familiar room. So many people had died in this house. I would hate it if one of the few people who'd been friendly to me died as well.

"Oh, no..."

I wasn't even sure if that's what I'd heard. It was a mix of a cry and the whispers of feet on the rugs. I'm pretty sure it was coming from my room. All my nerves tensed in the most instinctual way, my body freezing completely, listening. Before I had actually realized what I was doing, I was at the doorway to my room, alcohol sloshing over the lips of my glass. If I had to describe what I saw, I'd probably use the word... art.

While Rose lay, sleeping through her werewolf-induced sickness, a girl sat in a crumpled heap near her side in a thin, saphire blue dress with her dangerous red hair spilling down, over her shoulders and covering her face. Her pale, ballerina feet were bare and spotted with filth from running towards the house through the mud and night. There was a desperately sad, wracking sob coming from beneath the locks of scarlet hair, and her chest was convulsing with pain. It all looked like a graceful, beautiful oil painting from an overly practiced hand.

My foot shifted positions, unsure of what to do, and the floor groaned. Mentally, I cursed the age of this damn house. Her head shot up and spun around, her hair fanning wildly around her, her cheeks stained with tears. Her eyes were red and puffy. Fury and regret burned in her eyes.

"Annice," I said, my voice barely audible to my own ears, "where have you been? It's been-"

She was gone. My eyelids hadn't even fluttered a bit. It was like she was a memory that was blinking in and out of existence. Was she really that fast? Or had she even been here?

"-days." There was a commotion a couple rooms down and Stefan ran in, looking winded.

"Wait! Was somebody here?" Stefan asked. I bit my lip and shook my head. Rose was still sleeping.

"No." His frown became even more obvious, pulling at the corners of his eyes and creasing around his lips. "Nobody was here."

I think.

Stefan's POV

Something was going on.

I could feel it. Damon had that look of chagrin on his face, mixing with some sort of broken-hearted puppy dog expression that made me want to punch right in the mouth for some reason. He needed to wake up. He was forgetting everything we were working for. We had to save Elena! We had to figure out what Elijah and Klaus were working towards! He was letting himself get too caught up in his own personal problems.

There had been somebody in here. I'd heard it. It was probably Annice. She'd been gone for days now, and everybody was burning to know where she was hiding. What does she have planned? Would she steal Elena again? If she wanted to offer her up to Elijah again, she wouldn't have to search farther than the Gilbert household. Supposedly, he'd been showing up there, helping out Jenna and looking for local information on his 'new book' or something.

I stared at Damon for a while and he stared back. It's like he was daring me to say something, daring me to cross his statement, but in the end, I only sighed and rolled my eyes irritably. Damon set out to make me undead life an eternity of misery, but all he's really done is annoy the hell out of me. And piss me off.

I know. I should be happy. He finally found somebody besides Elena to be *exasperated groan* in love with. But my brother's an asshole. And an idiot. And doesn't always think first. And apparently, too horny to keep himself from banging the new-new girl in town. I know they're friends and all, but did he really have to screw Rose? I think I should break his nose. Just because he gives me a headache.

He is totally the cause of my frown lines.

Annice's POV

It was the first time in days that I'd seen mon ange. Angel, bah! More like enfant du diable. Devil's child. He was never an angel, to hell with his beauteous looks, and he was sure as shit never mine.

But he could wait.

Because Rose was dying.

I was hiding from that fact. Literally. It was dark in Jeremy's closet. It smelled like cologne and signature boyishness. I was crying more often nowadays than I had in my entire existance. I hated this town. I hated these people. All of them were bad, bad, terrible people.

Except Jeremy.

Jeremy was nice.

Jeremy's a friend.

Rose was a friend. There was no way she couldn't die. She was bitten. I don't care why the wolf was after Damon. I don't care why she felt bothered to jump in front of Damon. And I don't care how far she runs. I will catch that bitch Jules if I had to forget everything. Nobody else would die.

So run, little wolf, run and hide.

Because I will find you. I will kill you.

Run.

Jeremy's POV

When I got home, there was a familiar sound coming from my bedroom closet. Do vampire's get periods? Because she was an emotional wreck. It was definately her sobbing in there.

Fearing her reaction (I was just hoping she wouldn't flip and rip my throat out), I tore the door open and stepped back, but Annice hardly moved. She was just sitting there on the floor, among a scattered pile of clothes and old, tattered books, with her head in her hands and a beautiful, mud-stained blue dress I'd never seen crumpling around her crossed legs. Her hair was a mess, like she hadn't brushed it in weeks. Slowly, she raised her head and looked at me, her eyes glowing with an unfathomable expression and her face splotched with red.

"You were right, Jer-Bear," she mumbled in a brokenhearted voice. "Rose is dying."

Oh, I shouldn't have told her that. Her feet and dress must be so muddy from running through the rain to see if the news was true. Had the Salvatore's seen her? Would they trace her here and realize that I not only had information of where she might be, but was harboring her like a fugitive myself? Oh, crap.

She leaped into my arms, knocking me backwards until I found a foothold somewhere in the carpet. I caught us just before we would've tipped onto the floor. The sound that was tearing from her throat, a horrible mix of a wracking sob and a sad excuse for an attempt at speaking, made my insides twist in pity and regret.

"You and her are my last friends. And she's gonna be g-gone soon." I hugged her back fiercly and rubbed a little circle in that spot between her shoulder blades. I could feel her tears seeping through my v-neck.

I whispered, "Then you'll have to settle for just me. It's going to be alright, Annice, it'll all be alright."

But you knew that whenever somebody said that, they meant everything was falling apart. Nothing was going to be alright. Elena had death waiting around every corner. Oppurtunities for me and my humanity to go down in flames were lining up. The Salvatores were nothing to what we were up against. And Annice will eventually be left completely alone. I'd put together from the second meanings of Damon's stories (which there always were) that something bad was going to happen when she killed her family.

What was going to happen to her?

Damon's POV

Stefan's wrong. Plain and simple. I don't- don't love Briana!

Not Briana, she'd said, It's Annice.

Annice is missing. Gone. Escaped. Abra cadabra, disappeared.

She must hate me. But, no, she loves me. She said so. Would she still, though, after everything I've done to her? She knows I love Elena. But I don't think it's a question of whether I love her or Elena anymore. I think it's a question of whether I love Elena with all my heart, or my heart is split in two.

I'm feeling more like Jeremy everyday.

Jeremy's POV

Days had passed. Annice relayed more information to me every day, like how she used to stalk her family, debating how she was to go about killing her siblings. She just couldn't gather the courage. And then, when something caught her attention elsewhere, she entrusted a certain person to watch for her. She was discovered sometime after and killed without a thought.

She said the girl's name was Jane Leroy.

I don't know why that was so important. It's just, she had a real name. A life (albeit she was technically dead). And because of vampires, she was a cold, inhuman superbeing who was killed because she felt a certain loyalty to other's like. Hell, she was murdered by other's like her. Sort of like her. I knew it wasn't Annice's fault. But, overall, I was just bitter about the whole story. By the tone of her voice, she was too.

There were more, granted, but a lot were of her human childhood and her travels with the Vikings. And, wow, did that sound stupid. Travels with the Vikings. But I've gotten used to the unusual by now. My adopted sister's boyfriend was a vampire with a similarly undead brother who just loved to seduce and mind-control people (particularly women). Also, she was being chased down by the mega-vamps, the Originals, to be used in a sacrafice that could break the curse of the Sun and the Moon.

A curse which Annice tends to clam up around whenever it enters the conversation. It doesn't make sense. Supposedly, they'd seen Elijah walk around in the sunlight, and we're not sure if he had a daylight ring. So, he didn't need to break the curse, but yet he was straining to? She was leaving key parts of the story out. She said she was linked to her siblings and they were linked to a burnt down White Oak tree. But what did that mean? Linked?

I would find out. No matter what.

I was sick of being the little kid. The one everybody looked down on and thought of as nothing but a liability. Bonnie was finished with Luka. In fact, she was planning to capture him and steal some info straight out of his mind. But there was always that cautious look in her eyes, like she was tempted to look at me the way I want her to, but just didn't want to risk it.

Wasn't I worth the risk?

I've got to get over this. I'm not a kid. I wasn't much younger than Elena. I'd show them. All of them. I'm going to do something great.

Hold me to it.

Which brought me to now. Where Rose was dying and Annice was sobbing and my problems were a meaningless memory.

Annice's POV

Every day, I'd divulged a little more. But Jeremy was catching on. He saw the holes in my story.

Linked? What do you mean they were linked?

I said I'd tell him tomorrow. It's been several tomorrows.

On a much more normal note, I was sleeping on his dome chair. You know, the one that looked like a shallow cereal bowl with the pillows and junk? Yeah, that was my bed. According to Jer-Bear (that was his official nickname, eep!), I was still considered missing, and under extreme pressure, I'd compelled him to not be able to tell the gang until they knew it themselves. I don't think he minded. I hope so.

It was slightly awkward, for him, because he'd always have to go in the bathroom to get dressed. I honestly thought it was funny. I once told him to just strip right there in the middle of the room. When he refused, I pressed him onto the bed and pulled up his shirt, and then poked his abs.

"Not bad!" I praised, observing the way his muscles coiled and tensed as he moved.

"Ah, dude," he laughed. "Get off me! Stop poking my stomach!"

That was a normal conversation.

It sounded like the Pillsbury Doughboy telling some kid to back off.

Hmm.

* * * * *

It had been about an hour since I'd stopped crying. I would take care of Rose and Jules later, but for now, I couldn't go out. It was daylight. It wasn't safe.

"I'm hungry," I groaned. My voice was still a little crackly. Jeremy looked at me stiffly, clicked his tongue, and went back to his drawings. "And bored." Nothing. "And also being ignored."

Oh, that gets an eye roll out of him. He opens his mouth, shuts it, and then opens it again. Pursing my lips, I pick up a spare pencil off the carpet and toss it at his brown-haired skull.

"Ow!" he exclaimed, and I praised the fact that I could raise my voice above a whisper while Elena was over doing Satin's deed with Stefan. I giggled and averted my gaze, searching his room for the millionth time. Writing desk, bed, television, book shelf...

"What's bothering you?" I asked. His shoulders hunched a bit so his face was hidden under the shadow cast from his desk lamp.

"Well..." I crossed my arms.

"Spit it out." I was never really a gentle person.

He blurted, "Do you ever regret it?"

I froze.

"What?" I said innocently, but then again, these Mystic Falls people had a habit of breaking through innocence.

"Everything!" he continued vaguely. "Bloodsucking, immortality, never just- just getting it over with? Do you ever regret living this long?"

I accidentally swallowed the gum I was chewing in anxiety. Nervously, I sipped at the water on the night stand and stood up, beginning my daily, frustrated pace around the room. All the while, Jeremy just stared at me with a defeated and rather pitiful look on his face. He looked desperate.

"I, um... there's really no- no way to get around it, I know, but... but..." I stuttered and stumbled my way around a meaningless sentence that could never express what I really meant to say. I took a deep breath and stopped midstride, pivoting, and faced him directly. "I regret things, sure. But I never regretted living this long. If anything, I- I miss things from my past. And by my past, of course, I mean," I stared right at his darkly colored eyes, "my humanity. I miss being human."

His eyebrows pulled.

Mine raised, expecting a response.

"What?" I threw my hands up in frustration. Stupid kid! But then again, how can you really understand the depression of a one thousand year old undead encyclopedia as a sixteen year old human?

He went on, "You- an inhumanly strong, smart, powerful, beautiful 'anti-vampire'-" I think he was having trouble with that term, "miss shitty humanity, when you could have the world at your disposal? You could have anything you want!"

I clapped my hands together and sang, "Did you just call me inhumanly beautiful?" He moaned and slammed his head against the desk he was sat at. He didn't move after that.

"Is that really all you got from what I just said?" he complained, his voice muffled from being spoke into the hardwood surface of a writing desk. I softened, plopping down on his bed and sighing.

"No." I extracted every detail and pieced together every shred of information I could from the walls of his room, looking for the answer that I could give him and not regret doing so. Regret. "But you're right. I could compell my way to the top. I could be an A-list movie star or an award-winning author, go on a lengthy vacation to Paris and not pay a cent. I could do anything, but..." He turned to me, a curious look on his face. Quite odd, really.

"You could do anything," he whispered, "be anything and have anything you want. But you just want to be human."

I laughed a watery laugh, my voice wavering under a precise thickness in my throat. I hated this feeling, and it seemed to be popping up more and more frequently nowadays. Sadness. Grief.

Once, in a book, I'd read about love. It was a dark book, and a sad book, with sequels I hadn't gotten around to finishing. Dozens of decades into the future, love is considered a disease. They even have certain symptoms and phases to show if you've been infected by the deliria. In phase one, a few symptoms are: fits of dizziness or disorientation, reduced mental awareness, racing thoughts, impared reasoning skills...

Something was wrong. I couldn't do this to Jeremy. I was like the girl in a bad breakup and he was a shoulder to cry on. And I'd had plenty of sob stories to use on him. But Jeremy was a friend! He'd said it himself. I can't endanger this.

You can't do anything wrong. Make a wrong move, stare at the opposite sex for too long, comfort you're child when they fall, and you could be out of your job because people were afraid that you're infected. The things was, I don't think love was the disease. It was fear. Phase two: periods of euphoria, periods of despair, fixations, loss of other interests, compromised reasoning skills, distortion of reality, obsessive thoughts and actions, insecurity...

I couldn't see straight. This wasn't supposed to happen. I came here with a purpose. I came here with knowledge. Knowledge that overall, over death and plague and war, one certain thing had the power to destroy you. Love. What was I doing here? I had no romantic interests in Jeremy Gilbert. I didn't. This isn't denial. This is fact. So what was I doing? It started with Aaron. It continued with Andrew. It spoiled with Damon.

So who will it end with?

Phase three is considered critical. Painful. At eighteen, you have a surgury that removes the more sympathetic emotions from your mind. If you're infected before that, you get the surgury early. After that, you have it again, are imprisoned, or are killed. It was the law. I've noticed that people like to break the law. Phase three: difficulty breathing, pain in the chest, throat or stomach, complete breakdown of rational faculties, erratic behavior, violent delusions or actions, hallucinations or delusions...

I was losing it. Going crazy. This was just a sixteen or seventeen year old child. I'd gone to school more times than his drugee friends have had to repeat grades. I'd lived longer than he could wish to half. I was sure I was hyperventilating, but Jeremy was still staring at me with that intese, creepy style, and I was reassured briefly that nothing was going wrong. Briefly. Every decision was right and wrong and wise and unadvised. For a moment, I felt completely lovely and bubbly, and the next, like i was folding in on myself with grief. Like I was tumbling into a pit so deep that no one walking around in the light of day that I could no longer see would be able to reach me.

Suddenly, I grabbed his hand and held it close to me, a smile flickering on my face like a bad light bulb.

"I don't regret all this time, because if I want to find what I'm looking for, I won't be searching for any amount of human time." He gave me a look like What are you searching for? "I'm looking for that one special something. Someone. I want that one last thing that will remind me of what it's like to be..." He finished it.

"Human." I giggled a little, then went silent for a second before continuing.

"I'm going to help you Jeremy, help you and your sister. You want to know why?" He smiled, leaning in closer like it was a dirty secret. We had no reason to be hissing and murmuring, but we were. This was for our ears, and nobody else's. "Because I never want you to want something that Damon and Stefan and, sort of, me have. I don't want you to be frozen. Because you make me feel human. Hold me to it."

And then I kissed him.