The Second Life Of Stella Salvatore

Life is an Adventure

Elena's POV:

Damon and Gabriel were still fighting. Still going at it. They were growling and throwing punches and practically destroying the house. It was like two male panthers, each trying to establish their dominance. It was getting hard to tell which Salvatore twin was which. One of them growled again and threw a vase from a side table at the other. The one it was thrown at ducked and let it whizz over his head and shatter into the wall.

I was crying both because of the fight and because I knew it didn't matter anymore if I killed Stella's boyfriend. I was as good as dead anyway. And my baby. My baby... Brayden wouldn't even get to be born. Unless he came early as a premie. But I was only six months pregnant. Would he be big enough to survive? If I did have him now he would have to be in an incubator for I don't know how long.

There was another growl from one of the twins before I turned and saw Gabriel snapping a table leg off for a makeshift stake. Oh god. He was going to kill Damon. Damon noticed the stake immediately and went into defensive mode. Gabriel spun the stake in his hand as he stared his brother down. "My girlfriend broke up with me. Sam left me because I supposedly tore my family apart. It's your fault she left me! If you weren't my brother, then the Travelers wouldn't have taken Sam to get me to bring them Elena!"

"What are you talking about? Who are the Travelers? What do they want with Elena?" Damon bombarded him with questions I knew Gabriel wasn't going to answer.

Gabriel just laughed. "Why don't you ask her? I mean the Travelers are the ones who brought her back to life. They control everything. They control your pretty little wife's fate."

Damon looked over at me and for the first time in a long time I saw genuine fear in his bright crystal blue eyes. But it was gone as soon as it came. He turned his attention back to his brother then gave a growl and started to charge him. I gave a cry of surprise, fearing the worst, but another voice sounded above mine. "STOP!!" I looked up through my tears and saw that neither brother ever got to each other. That was because the third brother was standing between them blocking their way. It was Stefan who had yelled and it was Stefan standing between them and glaring at both of them. "What is wrong with you two?! This is a house. Damon, your children are upstairs listening to you and Gabriel fighting. Ivy's scared to death. Look at Elena. She's scared too. Fighting is not the answer."

Gabriel started laughing again while Stefan remained dead serious. "About time we finally meet, Baby Brother. Tell me. How's life been with Mom and Dad? I wouldn't know because they threw me away like last night's garbage."

"We both know that's not true," Damon spoke steadily. "What Mom and Dad did was save both of our lives by giving one of us away. When they gave you away they were giving you the chance to live. Think about it. If Mom and Dad didn't do what they did then you never would have met your girlfriend. Sam was it?"

Gabriel looked stunned into silence, but I knew he was steadily simmering in anger. Or maybe hurt. His face lost some of its hostility as he looked down at the ground. Then for the first time since meeting him, he bore a teensy piece of the humanity within him. "She's not my girlfriend. Not anymore. You don't understand. None of you do. When I first met Samantha, she was eight. I rescued her from a burning building where her kidnapper had trapped her. I compelled her to forget me but I still stuck around and looked after her as she grew up. One day she turned into a beautiful young woman and I just couldn't stay away from her anymore. She feels that I'm familiar to her but she still doesn't know what happened. And now she never will because I lost her."

Whether it was the hormones or my actual humanity coming through, I didn't know, but I stepped forward toward him. Damon made a move to stop me, as did Stefan, but they both realized that Gabriel wasn't a threat anymore. I carefully wrapped my arms around him just as I had wrapped my arms around Damon the night he found that Katherine was never in that wretched tomb under the church. "I'm sorry," I whispered. I felt his muscles tense up underneath my touch.