Chapter 4

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Her hands wandered on the keyboards, hesitating on whether to take the bad road, and write those things down.. or to ignore everything, shut the session off and leave that so-tempting room.

She had realized her being alone had begun to drive her completely insane.

What was she doing right now, after all?

Elena was facing the inner struggle of inserting herself into a void with no way out, that could have made her fall deeper and deeper inside the black.

At last, she shook her head and decided she had nothing left to lose.

She had to give it a try.

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So, with that thought in mind, the first words of the mail to be sent to the mysterious, pro-ana girl were typed down.

A simple and plain "Hello" was the only thing she was capable of pouring out.

Her finger trembled in the moment it touched slightly the cold key that made it all be delivered to the font.

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What had Elena taken aback, anyway, was the fact that the girl responded a short while after.

She looked furtively around before opening the reply, and with an accelerating pace of heart the first lines were read.

"Hey. What's your name?"

Elena hesitated.

She wasn't a geek or something, but she knew well enough how news could circulate on the Net. Was it really the case to give away her real name?

Being conscious her fantasy really did lack, the only thing she came out with was "Lena".

The mysterious girl answered once again. "Cute. Mine's Katia. Guess you need an ana buddy?"

That made Elena stumble. Was she really ready to do this? Was she going to become like that, such an expert of the subject and a user of those terms?

But again, what other choices had she left? If maybe.. in just this thing, she'd have succeeded, then she could have known she wasn't a quitter, a loser. A lost cause.

She had always let others overcome her, because they were supernatural. Things had always gone wrong in her life in the past two years. Every time she'd tried, her hopes had been blown down, like a fragile castle of cards.

If only she could get this right… Maybe she could've had the upper hand over something. For once, in her life.

"Sure. How old're you?" she asked, hoping the girl wasn't too young to be thrilled with the disorder.

"?" A grin appeared on Elena's lips. Looking in the reflection of the desktop in front of her, she swiftly brushed it away, doubting her mental sanity.

"18, but I'm pretty new."

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And with that, her whole day was spent chatting. Forgetting about life, forgetting about her problems outside. Forgetting about Damon.

The only thing that she found in that girl, so similar to her, was sympathy . It was somebody who fully understood, because she was into it as much as her in the first place.

And motivation.

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Most of all, motivation.

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Two days later.

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"What does that mean you're going after Stefan?" her raging voice echoed in the silence of the parlor, leaving a dumbstruck Damon cold in his tracks.

But him being the headstrong and impulsive vampire, had him kept quiet just for a short while.

"Exactly what it seems to mean!" he told back, his voice growing irritated.

Couldn't she just let him have his way, for once? Had he really found somebody more stubborn than himself?

Elena paced back and forth in front of the fireplace. "You wanna get yourself killed" she grumbled, shaking her head in unbelief.

"No Elena!" he raised his voice on the edge of hysteria . She was taken aback, letting her jaw drop.

The distance between them was literally nullified the moment he blurred a few inches next to her face.

Too close Elena kept on thinking, by now on panic mode.

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His blue eyes were burning with cold fury and determination, maybe their flames could have burnt more than the fire itself a few feet next to them.

"I'm trying to keep you alive!" he whispered then, in all of his sincerity.

"I.. I don't want one more people gone because of me." She admitted, unable to unlock her gaze.

He stroked her face. In the quickest gesture a vampire could manage the tips of his fingers were stroking her pale cheeks, reaching out for her before coherent words could be made into his head.

She felt guilty.

"It's not your fault. People come and go.." his voice was fully of sympathy. Elena was too young. Too naïve to get the badness and madness of life.

She was too pure for this fucking word, which didn't save anybody from the sufferance.

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She shook her head once again, so slowly and slightly that he doubted she had even done that.

"That's exactly what you're about to do now. " she pleaded. "If you go.." Elena stumbled on her own words, not wanting to let anything away. But it had become too hard to hold everything back.

"I.." she whispered, afraid.

Damon narrowed his brows, preparing for the worst. "What, Elena?"

She bit her lower lip, and joined her hands with his, which were still placed on her flesh.

"Promise me you'll come back."

"I " he promised, and then did the only thing he was allowed to: holding her tightly in his embrace, holding to the moment she would realize the feelings running and exchanging through their veins in that instant.

That was the reason why he'd come back.

Because he loved her.

Dear diary.

I feel alone. Physically alone.

Jeremy's trying to live his life out of the supernatural. And I owe him that. I'm the doppelganger after all, he's just a kid.

Damon left to find Stefan.

And I have nobody here to talk to except Katia.

It's absurd how people living on the opposite side of the Earth can mentally be so linked and united to you.

She's from Italy, can you believe it? That's been my dream country ever since I was 6!

I guess I have it running in my veins. My name's Italian, after all.

But anyway. We've been talking for hours every day, and she's even inviting me over!

I trust her not to be a maniac or anything like that. But since she's got her uncle in a small town on the boundaries of Georgia, and I'm up for a road trip.

We'll meet in three days. Hopefully this is finally going to be a turning point.

With those last lines and hopes for the imminent future, she went to bed.