Elena woke with a jolt, her eyes finally focusing after her head stopped spinning. She quickly noticed the surroundings… the city morgue. Had she died? She took a moment to recall her last thoughts. She was in the truck with Matt, headed back to Mystic Falls to say goodbye to her friends, then all of a sudden they had been hurtled off the Wickery Bridge into the freezing depths of the same river she had been saved from before. She remembered Stefan pulling out Matt, then drifting off into the black abyss called death. She really had died. But if she was dead, then how was she awake?

"About time you woke up." She heard a distinctive accented voice say from one of the dark corners in the morgue. She looked around frantically until her vision focused on a silhouette of a tall man in the corner. "Everyone thinks you're dead. I knew better." The man said, stepping closer to her.

"Kol?" She asked hesitantly, still unsure if it was indeed him. He stepped forward once more and her suspicions were confirmed. The curious part was that she didn't feel afraid of him like she knew she should.

She quickly came to the conclusion that she was in transition to becoming a vampire, if she really had died.

"I'm in transition, aren't I?" She asked him and he nodded. Her eyes slowly filled with tears, knowing her days of being a human were over. "How did you know? Why are you here? I thought you were long gone before Esther turned Alar-" She couldn't finish his name, remembering that if she had died then he had too. The questions had poured from her mouth before she could stop them.

"I've been around. I happened to have been in the hospital, looking for a bite yesterday, when I had come upon a certain doppelgänger being rushed in with life-threatening injuries. Being the generous Original I am, I gave you a bit of my blood. No one knew, of course, I do have a reputation to uphold as the 'evil' one. So naturally, when Elijah called saying to run to the ends of the earth, I knew exactly what Bekah was planning. Low and behold, I was right." He said with a smirk on his face.

"Wait- hold on a second- you gave me your blood to heal in the hospital because I was going to die? I thought the doctor only said it was a minor concussion?!" Elena whisper-yelled.

"Use your head, darling. I compelled the good doctor to say that. You actually had pretty bad swelling of your brain, would've killed you in no time at all." He replied with nonchalance.

"Well I would thank you for saving my life, but I still died in the end." Elena said with sarcasm.

"Technically, I saved your life again, otherwise you wouldn't be talking to me right now." He joked. "However, you are still in transition, and if you wish to be able to make the choice yourself, I suggest you come with me, and quickly. Your little boyfriends will be back soon and we all know they would never let you die… again."

Elena's eyes shot open as she looked at the youngest original brother in confusion. Then she thought about what he said. She knew in her mind that neither Damon or Stefan would allow her to make her own choice regarding the transition, but they already thought she was fully dead, right? What if this could be her second chance, to start over fresh, a clean slate?

"If I agree to go with you, then I have some terms." She told him seriously as she threw her legs over the edge of the metal slab.

"Go ahead." He urged her.

"No killing. No compelling me… And you have to make it look like I'm still dead." Elena told him in a serious tone.

"Done." He said, walking over to one of the doors, pulling out a body that looked almost identical to Elena and carried it over to the slab she had been laying on.

"H-how- who is that?" She asked quickly.

"Let's just say that I have witch friends all over the world, darling." He said, winking at her.

Elena shook off the strange feeling and began to try and walk, feeling extremely weak, before she felt a strong hand on her upper arm. He helped her walk a few meters before they heard the sound of a door opening.

"Time to go." He whispered before scooping her up and flashing away at vamp speed. They were out of the hospital and a mile down the road standing next to a black Maserati. Even delirious, she was still impressed by the car.

"This is your car?" She asked as he opened the door and slid her into the seat.

"The most inconspicuous one I own, yes." He answered in a light tone. They began driving and soon the sun was coming up. Elena grabbed her head and yelled when the light hit her.

"Why- does it- hurt- so bad?" she asked through painful tears.

"It's part of the transition, the light will irritate you pretty badly until you are a full vampire, and then you'll need a daylight ring." He told her, pulling off the highway onto a dirt road. They drove for a few minutes on the dirt road before he stopped the car. It was heavily wooded and dark and there was an abandoned cabin.

"Why are we stopping?" Elena asked as she felt the migraine die down a bit from the shade.

"Because it is time for you to decide. You don't have too much longer, so if you decide to become a vampire, it's out of the sunlight for now, and if you decide to die, then it's a convenient burial site." He said impassively.

Elena thought about it for a second, but she knew she had already made up her mind. Then a question struck her as she looked around.

"What if I decide to go through with the transition? There aren't any humans or blood for miles?" Elena asked quickly.

"It's a bit different if an original is your sire, darling." Kol told her as he rolled up his shirtsleeve. Elena suddenly felt a sharp pain in her mouth as her other teeth moved aside to accommodate her new fangs as they slid out. She put her hands to her mouth. "Now what have you chosen?"

She felt as if his blood was singing to her, that she needed it, wanted it, and craved it. She started walking to him, feeling the dark veins appearing under her eyes. He extended his arm to her and she looked up at him, silently asking herself if this was the right decision. Upon hearing her conscious answer 'yes', she bit into Kol's wrist, letting the blood spill down her throat. It was the best feeling in the world. His blood tasted like how the gods described ambrosia. It was heavenly.

"That's enough, darling." Kol told her as he pulled his arm away, handing Elena a handkerchief for the blood running down her chin. "How do you feel?"

"I feel… amazing!" She said as she started laughing, but quickly found that she couldn't stop. She looked up at Kol, pleading.

"Don't worry, your emotions are extremely heightened right now. It will take a few days for them to settle down, but they will still be more than you felt as a human." Kol explained.

"Everything looks different, feels different. I never knew there were this many colors in the world, and we are in a dark cabin. How is this not making my brain hurt?" She asked, twirling around, looking at everything in amazement.

"Just wait until you go outside, darling. We'll have to wait until night for you to be able to go outside though. That will be our first stop, to procure a daylight ring for you. Fortunately, I know a great many witches all around the world, so it shouldn't be a problem." He told her, making her look at him curiously.

"I guess I have a lot to learn about you," Elena said as she stared at him intently. "Considering I really don't know anything about you. The one thing I have heard were the stories—"

"Of when I left trails of bodies… yes, yes. Somehow it always ends up being the worst part of yourself that lives on through stories. I had a few bad decades… but what vampire hasn't? I mean, look at both of your previous boyfriends. The Ripper who now feeds on bunnies and well, the older Salvatore doesn't need a special name to label his bad deeds." He said, then noting that Elena became a bit scared of herself. "Don't worry, darling, I won't let that happen to you."

"Why did you offer to save me, to take me away?" She asked, needing to know the answer.

"I've recently attempted a new direction in life-which I'm still getting accustomed to-considering it's been a thousand years since I've felt anything, but alas the switch has been flipped and if there is one thing that I've learned in the millennia that I've been alive, it's that I don't want to spend the rest of what I have alone." He said honestly, which surprised Elena.

"So your humanity was off for a thousand years?" She asked, watching as he looked out the window.

"Since the very day that I became a vampire." He responded, turning to sit down in the chair next to him.

"What made you turn it back on after so long?" She questioned, hoping she wasn't pushing him too far.

"I felt the pull of a sire. I knew the moment that you died. Somehow, in that moment, I managed to turn it back on without even knowing I did. Of course, it takes time to come back piece-by-piece. The first thing I felt was the overwhelming need to find you and make sure those imbeciles didn't force you to transition. The person my brother said was the embodiment of compassion, if they would have forced the transition on you against your will, that would have been lost. As your sire, it is my responsibility to teach you, and it wouldn't hurt to gain a friend." He responded mindfully.

"How did you know I died? I've never heard of that before." Elena asked, curious to this newfound development.

"None of your friends have been sired directly by an Original, darling. The line gets a bit weaker each time, gets more and more diluted, if you will. Your case, however, is kin to drinking directly from the source; yes, pun intended."Kol explained as she listened intently.

"Is it like this with all of the vampires you've sired?" She asked Kol seriously, awaiting his response.

"It was, but that was a thousand years ago. I've only actually sired three myself. I had my first sire do the 'dirty work' of siring the others so that I was not directly connected. My second sire was created when my first was killed by my brother because we had left quite a large mess in Transylvania. He was killed about 500 years ago. And you, darling, are my third creation. That being said, my line has thousands upon thousands of vampires if you break it down, but you are the only one directly connected to me at this point."