Isobel once told her that so long as she had a Salvatore on each arm, she was doomed.

It took her another year to really understand what that meant.

Klaus, losing Stefan, seeing what a monster he’d become in the process—it was enough for her to see that vampires in her life were only going to lead to more heartache and pain. She should have walked away from it all, long ago, and if she didn’t love him, she would have, but in the end, she learned that love was never going to be enough.

She loved Stefan. She would always love Stefan. But she needed to live, and she couldn’t do that clinging to someone who was already dead. She needed to stop fighting for Stefan and start fighting for herself.

It was a late night around Christmas when she made the decision. She had done all the obligatory applying to the schools that everyone expected her to apply to—ivy league schools where she would have her future ahead of her and no reason to look back. She was sitting in the kitchen in the middle of the night, and the realization hits her like a smack in the face. The only way she was going to get what she wanted was to get away. The postcard for Lancer was sitting on the kitchen counter. She took a risk and she ran with it.

( *** )