ELEANOR WAS PRETTY SURE THE WORLD WAS ENDING. Elena and Stefan had broken up, and she had no clue what happened. Honestly, she didn't really care that much, but she was interested enough to stand with Elena and Caroline in hopes of finding out. The three of them were painting a veranda for some picnic, or something, while Care complained about her mother.

"So suddenly, she's in the running for Mother of the Year just when I'm trying to avoid her the most," she groaned before stopping and shaking her head. "I'm babbling, you don't want to hear all this."

Elena seemed to snap out of the trance that she was in. Eleanor followed her gaze and saw that she had been staring at Stefan. "Oh, no, sorry. Then what happened?"

"Well, I was a bitch which is par for the course with us," Caroline exhaled before changing the topic. "So, how are things with you and Stefan? Anything?"

"No, not since the fight. He's been pushing me away because he thinks that Katherine might get jealous enough to hurt me. I just don't know how to change his mind," the Gilbert girl responded, and Eleanor frowned because something about her sadness seemed so fake.

The Chetwood girl pointed out, "Katherine's dangerous. Maybe he's got a point." Honestly, with the way that Elena was acting, she was starting to wonder if she was Katherine, and she had the real Elena locked away somewhere. And that's why they broke up, to drive a wedge between Stefan and Elena.

"Yeah, I know that she's dangerous and I know that he's just trying to protect me but it feels like giving up and I just..." she trailed off, and Eleanor knew that she was about to say something really cheesy.

Caroline asked, "Just what?"

"I just thought that we were stronger than that," she finished, and Eleanor frowned because that was kind of sad, now that she thought about it.

Elena went off somewhere after another fight with Stefan, and Caroline ran off to comfort her. Meanwhile, Eleanor went to go get some lemonade. That was until she saw both of the Salvatores take a sip and choke on it. She furrowed her eyebrows. Someone had vervained it.

"I'm gonna kill him," Damon said all of a sudden, and that piqued her interest. She leaned against one of the poles and listened in. "I'm not listening anymore of your 'give peace a chance' crap. He's dead!"

"Okay. I don't like it. He's making threats. He could expose us. We need to put him down," Stefan agreed. Who the hell were they talking about? Someone most likely to put vervain in the lemonade would be a councilmember, but it would probably be Sheriff Forbes or Carol Lockwood, who were both women.

"Alright. Let's do it. Woods. Trash duty. Come on," Damon ordered, and the Chetwood girl looked over to the woods to see Mason Lockwood, Tyler's uncle, walking into them. Crap. She had recently been informed that he was a werewolf, and the Salvatores should honestly know better than to piss off one of those.

She let the brothers go ahead but followed about thirty seconds after them. She found them by Damon's voice, and she stepped out into a clearing to see Damon shoving Mason against a tree. "Don't look so surprised. You knew this was inevitable. Go ahead, run. I'll give you a head start."

"Leave him the hell alone," Eleanor told him, revealing herself. All of the men looked over at her in slight surprise, but Damon just kept his usual smirk.

"Really?" Mason scoffed, shaking his head in disappointment. "This is my savior?"

The Chetwood girl's eyes widened, and she turned to him with her eyebrows raised. Misogynistic asshole. "Never mind. Let me kill him. I'll make it painful."

"Nora, come to join?" Damon questioned, although from her first statement, he should have been able to infer that she was in fact there to stop them.

She shook her head. As much as she hated this guy now, she had come to be quite close friends with Tyler Lockwood. At least, she was closer with him than most people in the town other than Caroline. "No, come to remind you that this is someone's family, and you can't just kill him."

"We need to do this, Eleanor. He could expose us," Stefan insisted, but she wasn't totally convinced. There were plenty of ways they could stop him. She had seen Damon drive a lot of people out of town.

"So, threaten him, beat him up, kidnap him, whatever the hell you want, but you can't just go around killing people," she told them. The more dead bodies there were, the more hellbent the council would be on finding them. "You keep this up, and they'll figure us out anyway."

"She's right. You vampires think you're all high and mighty, but the people here aren't idiots," Mason agreed, and it made her want to change her decision. She didn't like being on the same side as him.

The man crouched down all of a sudden, and Eleanor barely had a chance to wonder what the hell he was doing before the sound of a gunshot rang out through the forest. Then, everything went black.

《❂》

ELEANOR STIRRED QUITELY, UNSURE OF WHERE SHE WAS. She looked around, and it appeared that she was in some kind of cellar. There were three officers there — the Sheriff and two deputies. Stefan was unconscious beside her, but Damon was awake. She jumped slightly when the Sheriff shot him in the leg. "This is how it's gonna work. Answer me and you don't get shot, understand? How many of you are there?"

"Liz, please," he begged, but she shot him again. His scream rang out, and as much as Eleanor wished that he had been tortured, it was painful to watch.

"How did you fool us? How do you walk in the sun?" she turned and shot Stefan, who didn't react because he was unconscious. Eleanor winced as she pointed the gun at her, and a pain shot through her shoulder. She shrieked as Liz turned back to Damon. "I will drag this out painfully. Answer me and I'll kill you fast." When the Salvatore man just stayed silent on the ground, she scoffed, "He's not gonna tell us anything. Kill them all."

Eleanor got prepared to fight for her life because she finally had something to live for when she heard Elena's voice aboveground. "We have to stop her!"

"No, I can't. Elena, she's gonna find out about me," Caroline responded, and Eleanor's eyes widened. She could not come down there. But then, one of the deputies crouched down in front of the Chetwood girl with a wooden stake in his hand. He lifted it above his head and slammed it into her thigh.

She screamed loudly, and the man smirked at her pain. Above the cellar, the Forbes girl's eyes widened when she heard the scream, knowing immediately who it was. She breathed out, "Eleanor." And then, she flew down the stairs.

"Let's do this. Each with a stake in the heart, then burn them," Liz ordered, and the deputies nodded, preparing for the kills. There was a creaking sound, and one of the deputies went to go investigate it. Eleanor was shocked when there was a clanging, and the man tumbled down the stairs. Liz whipped around to see Elean standing there with a pan in her hand. "Elena! What are you doing?"

"You can't kill them. I'm not gonna let you," she insisted, stepping over the deputy and further into the cellar. From behind her, the deputy stood up and quickly pushed her forward, readying his gun. Eleanor reached for her with the strength she had left and pulled her toward her, covering her. There was no way she was letting freaking Elena Gilbert sacrifice herself for Damon, of all people.

All of a sudden, there was a familiar whooshing sound, and the door of the cellar closed by itself. The deputy in front of Eleanor whipped around. "What was that?"

"Who else is with you?" Liz asked Elena, and Eleanor grinned when Caroline circled around the room at vamp speed. She suddenly stopped, grabbing one of the deputies and biting his neck. Her face was concealed by the shadows, and the other man tried to shoot her, only shooting his partner.

When he realized and stopped shooting, she rushed behind him and knocked him to the ground. Caroline then stepped out of the shadows, fangs out and blood all over her face. "Hi, mom."

After threatening Damon into not killing Liz and just keeping her in the cellar at the Salvatore house until the vervain was out of her system, Eleanor returned to her apartment. Caroline had helped her get all of the wood out of her body, and she was ready to shower her blood off and get some sleep.

However, life seemed to have other plans for her, because outside her door, someone was already waiting for her. Hearing her approach, Tyler turned to her with a panicked and sweaty face. "Eleanor, I'm scared."