The cellar was timeless, a little spot in the world where time seemed to stand still. Day and night were combined into one, a simple opening and closing of doors and inconsequential conversations. There were times when someone would come to the cellar, try to pry my humanity from somewhere deep inside of my chest, then leave after their attempt was futile. The floor around my feet was covered in dried blood, stained from the times Damon bled me out so I would starve faster. The chains that held me down to the chair were also red, burning into my skin with the bit of vervain they sprayed on me.

   I swallowed hard as the veins beneath my eyes appeared and my canines extended into fangs. Elena stood a few feet from me, a small shot glass in her hand filled with blood. My face stayed true to my appearance as she walked in, my red eyes focusing on the blood. "Are we going to have a girl talk?" I asked as a sarcastic smile formed around my lips. "Is today about Stefan or Damon?"

   She rolled her eyes. "I have to feed you so you won't desiccate," she said with annoyance. She stepped in front of me and pushed the shot glass to my mouth. 

   When the small drop of blood touched my lips, I quickly grabbed the glass with my teeth and craned my neck back. The blood moved slowly to my mouth, cold, but a sweet taste that I only had once a week. I almost licked the glass clean, but Elena quickly pulled it away. A small chuckle escaped as I licked between my lips, catching whatever blood was left. "You got Caroline's humanity back, why are you all so sure you're going to get mine?"

   "Because you're still Clara Forbes," she said, crossing her arms and shrugging her shoulders. "You wanted to take Aunt Jenna's place when she was going to be sacrificed, you cared about how I felt when I turned, and you were there for me when Damon was in that Prison World." She leaned against the wall and watched me carefully. "Your humanity is part of you, and it makes you Clara. The person standing in front of me is someone strange."

   A breathy laugh escaped my throat as I leaned back in my chair. My hair was matted with dried blood, sticking to the bit of sweat around my face. "It's been at least three months since I turned it off," I said, softly so she would understand,  "three months since I've been in this cell. Every plan that you all have made has failed miserably. By now, you should know that there's nothing that can bring my back my humanity, because there's nothing left for me here." I blew on a stand of hair on my face, then smiled. "How about letting me go? I won't stay in Mystic Falls."

   "Where would you go?" She wasn't curious, but she asked because she wanted to amuse me, to see if there was anything that could help her.

   "New Orleans," I said. "Maybe I'll run into our dear old friend Klaus Mikaelson. He's a hell of a lover."

   Disgust filled her face as she shook her head. "You're disgusting."

   "Klaus was fun," I continued with a smile, "rough, and liked to bite. Ask Caroline, she'll tell you." A small smirk formed around my lips, the blood taking an effect on me. It had been days since I was last given blood, days since I felt something that wasn't Damon cutting into my skin or Stefan getting into my mind. It was the small taste of power, small but strong enough to stop the burning ache from the vervain in the chains that wrapped around me.

   "That's enough," Damon said as he walked in, eyes hard and anger clear in the way he moved. 

   I tilted my head to the side and licked my lips. "I'm just having fun," I teased, "but I could have a lot more fun if you let me go."

   "Not gonna happen," he said as he circled me. 

   "Not even if I say I'll leave Mystic Falls?" I arched a brow and followed him with my eyes. "You let me go and I'll leave, somewhere far away where I won't be a problem to you all."

   He huffed and stopped in front of me, crossing his arms. "Why are you so insistent on leaving?"

   "I know where I'm not wanted, Damon," I smiled, staring into his eyes.

   "What are you talking about?"

   "Wow, do you think I'm stupid?" I laughed. "I'm an imposition here, right in the middle of a love hexagon." I tried to make myself as comfortable as I could on the chair, but it was painful when the burn immediately began when I moved just an inch. "You love Elena, a lot, to the point where you want to take that stupid cure and become a petty, little human. But, you also love me. You can't stop thinking about the past, what could have been if we continued to be together. Then, there's Stefan. Heck of a lover, but too much emotions, don't you think? He loves me, like a lot, but at the same time there's something brewing between him and Caroline."

   "He cares about her," Elena said as she took a stand by Damon. "That's all that's going on between them, Clara."

   I hummed and nodded. "Do you know how Caroline feels? She likes him, a lot, to the point where she would have let go of her moralities if that gave her chance to be with him. I mean, she switched it off but there were still emotions there. She didn't get with him because I was there." I chuckled and shook my head. "Even when she switched it off, she still cared. How the hell did she do that?" I let my eyes wonder up towards Damon, a small smirk spreading around my lips. "Because right now I feel absolutely nothing."

   He leaned down in front of me, hands on his knees. "You're reminding me a lot of a bitch we both hated," he softly said. "I think you remember her: she tortured you, I cheated on you with her, she killed you, and she looks a lot like Elena."

   "If only I hated Katherine as much as Elena does," I said, keeping the smile on my lips. "Too bad I'm not Elena, Damon, maybe then I would have forgiven you for all the shit that you have pulled throughout your lifetime."

   He pressed his lips together and clenched his jaw, anger swimming at his features. His hands opened and closed into fists at his knees. And his blue eyes continued to stare into mine, frozen in place with both anger and hurt. There were wrinkles in the corners of his mouth, probably from fatigue. I had heard him toss and turn through the night, sometimes pacing back and forth in the kitchen. There was an obvious tiredness on him. It was a face that made me feel triumphant, amused.

   In return, I smiled and wiggled my brows once. "Oops!" I sarcastically breathed. "Did I strike a nerve?"

   He pressed his index finger and thumb close together. "I'm this close to breaking your neck, Clara," he said. "This close to leaving you here for another three months."

   "You wouldn't," I stated, "because you can't stand seeing me like this. It pains you to see me so careless, so emotionally unattached that I can't help you with your problems." I paused for a moment, then smiled as I recalled a conversation I had overheard. "How's your dear mother, by the way? I heard that she didn't love you, but that doesn't surprise me. No one can really love you, Damon, because you're not worth it."

   "Damon!" Elena grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back. When he was close to the door, she laid her hands on his cheeks and made him look down at her. "Hey, this is not Clara talking. She's not herself; she'll say anything to rile you up."

   "It's working!" I sang.

   Damon turned glared at me. "I'm going to wring your neck, Clara."

   "Please be rough," I teased, licking my top lip slowly. "We all know how you like to choke a bit." I glanced over at Elena, seeing her wide and confused stare. "Oh, you didn't know? Damon likes to be rough in bed, all that biting and grabbing."

   "Okay!" she breathed, shaking her head in disappointing and looking back at the other angry vampire in the room. "How can it be so hard to bring her humanity back?"

   "Because Clara doesn't want to feel anything," Damon said, his eyes moving towards me. "She's a mess with humanity and even worse without it."

   Stefan appeared besides him, those pretty green eyes glued on me as if I would strike at any moment. "Nothing?"

   "Does it look like something happened?" Damon sarcastically asked, pointing at me with his hand. "Still the same bitchy Clara we all hate."

   "Katherine's a no," Elena said as she laid her hands on her waist. "Nothing happened when we mentioned her."

   Stefan shook his head. "I told you that she's not the trigger," he said. "I know Clara, and her humanity has to be something important to her. Caroline's not picking up her phone, so we can't ask her for help."

   "Her memories!" Elena quickly said, turning to the brothers with a smile.

   "Already tried that," Damon said as he crossed his arms. "I got in her mind and gave her quite a few terrible memories, but none of those worked."

   "Did you try her mother?" Stefan asked. "Her brothers, Charlotte?"

   Damon shook his head. "Nothing worked."

   Stefan's eyes slowly landed on me again. "She really doesn't want to come back."

   "Wow!" I breathed with fake admiration. "It took you three that long to figure that out?"

   I knew that I didn't want my humanity to return because of the many pesky feelings that would immediately absorb into every cell of my body. The emotions would overwhelm me to the point where I wouldn't be able to breathe, to move, to comprehend that it was my body shaking instead of the room. Every little thing I had done and said would come crawling back, and I would apologise furiously for saying them, and then I would lock myself in my room for killing all those people. I would hate myself more than I did before.

   I didn't want my humanity back. I would push back at any attempt that struck a chord of emotions, drown them with my silenced demons.

   Damon hurried towards me and grabbed my face with his hand, making me look up at him. "You're going to be such a mess when you turn it on," he softly said, taunting me. "So why not save yourself some trouble and just turn it on now, because I won't be backing down, Clara."

   "Is this where you say that you never loved me?" I taunted, leaning my head closer to him. My mouth fell open a bit, but there was a smile there, teasing and enjoying the pain I was causing everyone in the room. "Or is this where you give me a rundown of what you and Katherine did while you thought I was rotting six feet under?"

   "Damon," Stefan called, laying a hand on his brother's shoulder, "you're her humanity trigger."

   The eldest brother looked down at him with a confused expression. "What?"

   "You're her trigger!" Elena repeated, taking a stand to his other side. "Think about it, Damon: why didn't Clara come back to the house during all the days she was out there? Stefan did, but she didn't. And she keeps mentioning the past, especially things that include you. You are her humanity trigger."

   Damon took one step back, leaning on a leg as he kept his eyes on me. The wheels in his head were turning, thoughts running past. "Okay," he said, nodding. "Fine. Elena, go to her room. Bedside table. You'll find a lovely black box in there, bring it to me. Stefan, go to my room. You know the trunk that's in the corner of the room? Open it, bring me the bundle of letters."

   I tilted my head to the side as they left the room, leaving only Damon and I. "Do you really think you're my trigger?"

   "It's worth the try," he said as he crossed his arms.

   "Didn't you try that three months ago?" I arched my brows in the air. "I'm still chained to this chair, bled out daily, vervain burning my skin as we speak—I don't think it'll work. I think you're trying to find anything possible to try and get me to turn it on. Here's the thing, Damon: you won't be able to turn it on."

   "Why's that?"

   "Because you're nothing to me," I softly and slowly said.

   Elena and Stefan appeared at that moment, the pair holding what Damon had requested. He grabbed the letters from Stefan and held it in front of me, the scent of dust immediately hitting my nostrils. The letters were old and the writing in front smudged, crumbled at the edges from too much opening and closing.

   "You know what these are, don't you?" Damon asked, shaking them only a bit.

   "No," I responded with a shrug of my shoulders.

   "You should," he said, grabbing a trash bin from outside the cellar, "because you wrote all of these letters, Clara." He pulled the piece of twine that held them together. "You wrote each and every one of them while I was in the army: what you did in the day, the new dress you bought, how much you missed me." He stared at the letters for a long while, a frown decorating his face. "I used to read them every night while I was away, a small comfort in the camp. But, the Clara in these letters is completely gone, so what's the point in keeping them?" 

   The letters slid from his hold and fell in the bin under him. He pulled something from his back and flicked it, a flame lighting his hard features. His stared into my eyes as he dropped the lighter in the bin, the letters igniting. The scent of burning paper wafted through the room, memories leaving with the smoke.

   I clenched my jaw as a memory passed through my head, the one where I sat on my desk and wrote letter after letter. They were written in the night, a small candle illuminating the jar of black ink and the dip pen that laid so golden besides it, the papers stacked in front of me, envelopes sitting in the corner, the small stack of books my mother was so keen that a lady should know about. It was pure memories, making me let out a small his and glare at the blue-eyed man standing in front of me.

   "You begged me to write those letters," I reminded him, staring down at the burning papers. "Told me to write back right away as there were few pleasures greater than receiving mail from home." I slowly looked up at him, letting my eyes stare right back into his. "Didn't you write in stationary taken from Union prisoners?" A small smirk formed around my lips. "My Dearest, Clara, I am still in the land of the living and hope you forgive me for everything I have done in this godforsaken war."

    Damon's jaw clenched and his shoulders stiffened. He grabbed the box Elena was holding and opened it, revealing a golden band. The band was decorated with alternating rows of ravishing diamonds and blue sapphires, the scroll work and pierced detailing along the sides that complimented the gemstones perfectly. I stared at it, something in my chest aching a bit.

   "The ring..." I uttered, surprise clear in my voice.

   He nodded and plucked the ring from the box, holding it between his fingers. "I picked this ring from the jewellery I had stolen from my mother's box days after she was sent away, kept it hidden in a small box under a broken floorboard in my room. A few weeks after our relationship fell in the public eye, I proposed." He stared at the ring as he gently moved it, as if he were trying to see every little thing. "It was during one of our many outings to the woods during the nights, where we'd spent countless hours and imagine the future."

   "Who would have thought our future would have ended here?" I gripped the arm of the chair tightly, pushing back the emotions that tried to push their way from deep inside of me. It was a war in my chest, heart beating wildly and tears threatening to fall.

   He straightened his posture and began to pace back and forth, still admiring the ring. "We were talking about the future, about what would happen, and then I pulled this ring from my pocket and asked you if you saw a future with me." He stopped and let the ring fall to the floor, the sound of metal hitting cement combining with the sound of letters burning. "You said it was all you could see." His foot stomped on top of the ring, hard. 

   Something in my chest broke, causing me to let out a breath and then groan. I pushed it back and dug my nails into the arm of the chair, glaring at him. "You think that's working, Damon?"

   "You're fighting back," he softly said. "Just let it come through, Clara."

   "And then what?" I looked at him, at Elena, then at Stefan. "I'll feel guilty for killing all those people and I'll continue to hate myself, just like I always did. That's not fun."

   Stefan closed the distance and laid a hand on my cheek, rubbing his thumb gently up and down. "You're worried about feeling guilty, I get it, but I promised you that I would help you get through it."

   "Like you kept so many promises," I huffed. 

   Instead of appearing hurt, he only nodded. "That's it," he said. "You're feeling something."

   "I'm feeling nothing," I tried to muse, shaking my head. Instead, that small ache in my chest continued, making me grip the arms of the chair tighter. My breathing deepened, my vision became a bit blurry, and my heartbeat erratic.

   Damon stood besides his brother. "Just let it in, Clara."

   "Let what in?" I huffed, glaring at him. "I hate myself, Damon, to the point where I have thought of driving a stake right through my own chest. Is that what you want me to let in, the little voice in my head that hisses that I'm worthless?" The ache in my chest worsened, causing me to swallow hard and look away from them, letting my eyes fall on the wall. "Do you want to know what it's like to know that the universe conspires against you so that you will never know an ounce of happiness? Just think back to me with my humanity."

   "This isn't you," Stefan softly said, his hand landing on top of mine. His fingers were cold, slowly warming. "Clara, let that pain come back, and I promise you that I will help you go through it. Just, come back to me, okay?"

   I shook my head, tears falling down my cheeks. "I don't want to feel, Stefan." My voice broke, the words becoming emotions. I tried to push back the emotions that pushed their way up my throat, but it was futile. They pushed through the barrier and overwhelmed me, causing me to let out a cry of pain. The overwhelming amount of things that caught up to me made me feel, and I hated every moment of it.

   Stefan broke the chains and immediately pulled me to him, wrapping an arm around my waist and the other on the back of my head. He ushered soft words in my ear, his hand moving up and down on my back. Everything I had done, everything I had tried to push away, rushed back. It was like fast forwarding a movie, the images flashing quickly and giving you only a quick glimpse of a scene.

   Throughout my crying and the rush of emotions, I somehow ended up in my bedroom. I laid on the bed, the soft duvet wrapped up to my shoulders and my eyes glued on the wooden wall. For moments, I expected the blood of those I had killed to ooze from them, as if I were in some horror film. When the blood didn't come, a shaky breath would leave my chest and I would hold the blanket tighter, enclosing the warmth.

   Someone sighed as they walked into the room, soft footsteps as they moved to the bed and took a seat. "How are you doing?" Damon's voice rang around the silent room, softly, as if he were being careful with the volume of his tone. 

   I sat up and sighed, shrugging my shoulders. "I'm fine," I said, avoiding looking at him.

   "Clara," he sighed, shaking his head. "After that confession down there, we all know that's not true."

   "It's what you want to hear."

   "No, what I want to hear is how you're really feeling."

   I looked up at him and swallowed. "I'm miserable," I honestly said, "and I still hate myself, so I guess nothing really changed in those three months."

   The small smile faded from his lips. "You're going to get through this," he said, reaching over and laying a hand on top of mine, "because you're Clara Forbes, and you've been through a lot and you're still here." He stood, his hands slapping against his knees as he did so. "And, you have all of us to help you, so that should be a bonus."

   "Thanks," I softly said, a small and genuine smile appearing on my lips. 

   He nodded and began to leave, but stopped at the door and turned back. "I'm sorry for destroying the letters and the ring," he said. "It was the only way to get you back, Clara."

   "I understand," I nodded. "It's... It's fine."

   A tight-lipped smile appeared on his lips as he nodded. He tapped on the doorway twice and then left. I laid down on the bed and let out a sigh, feeling fatigued all over again. I kept quiet about the things I had said to him, because there was still a part of me that thought that I shouldn't apologise about them. It was the me without humanity, the small part left that was trying to pull me back.

   A few minutes later, Stefan appeared with a steaming cup of tea. He laid it on the bedside table and took a seat on the bed, in front of me. "I made you some tea," he said as he pointed to it with his eyes. "It has three teaspoons of honey, like you always request."

   "Thanks."

   "I'm sorry," he suddenly said. "Clara, I'm so sorry. I should have been there for you more, but I was so caught up with myself that I didn't realise how terrible you felt." He let out a scoff and ran a hand through his hair with frustration. "I'm a terrible person and boyfriend."

   I shook my head and grabbed his hand. "Can we not talk about that right now?" I pulled his arm gently, making him look down at me. "I don't want to talk about this now. Leave that conversation for another day, please."

   "Okay," he nodded. "Okay." He stood. "I'm going to..."

   "Stay," I quickly interrupted, keeping a tight hold on his hand. "Please."

   Stefan stared down at me for a moment, but then nodded. He circled the bed and laid down behind me, an arm wrapping around my waist and his hand grabbing mine. I intertwined our fingers, feeling the simple warmth of his chest pressed against my back. It was comforting, but at the same time it haunted me. I recalled the moments he left, the moments he chose Elena over me—the universe conspiring against me. I pushed those thoughts back and pushed myself closer to him, letting the comfort take place of that feeling of dread. 

    I wanted to think about nothing, not about my feelings or the things I had done. The only thing I wanted to do was to succumb into that feeling of comfort, no matter how small and how breakable it was.