Sincerely Yours [Stefan Salvatore]

[60. A New Era]

While Lucy had talked to the owner of the shop, Stefan was on the phone with Joel, who was giving them news about Elena. After his call was done and he and Lucy were left to design Alaric's headstone, he told Lucy what was going on.

Lucy looked at him in shock. "Bonnie's trying to find a way out of this for Elena?"

Stefan nodded. "She and Joel seem to think there might be a way."

"There isn't," she shook her head; Bonnie and Joel were just getting Elena's hopes up for something that was impossible. "Elena has one choice; feed or die."

"I'm inclined to agree with you, Luce, but you know Elena," Stefan sighed as Lucy scrolled through the different fonts they had to choose from. "She told me she didn't want to be a vampire."

"Then she's going to die," Lucy stated matter-of-factly; it shocked Stefan that she seemed so casual about her sister dying. Seeing the look on his face, she quickly clarified, "I don't want her to die, I really don't, but if it's her choice not to feed...I have to accept that."

Stefan nodded; he knew that free will was one of the things that Lucy advocated for the most. She had siphoned Klaus' compulsion from him and accepted that Alaric didn't want to transition for that very reason.

"Well, she has time to decide what to do," he stated.

Lucy pressed her lips together. "Yeah."

After finishing up with the order and paying for it, Lucy and Stefan split up. Stefan was going to bring Elena, Jeremy, and Joel some lunch from the Grill while Lucy was going to pick up Matt from the hospital and tell Caroline about the Tyler and Klaus situation.

Surprisingly, Caroline took the fact that Klaus was riding around in Tyler's body all right. She was worried at first but when Lucy assured her that she and Bonnie would put him into a different hybrid, she felt better about the whole thing.

With Caroline calmed down, it was Matt's turn to be worried about. When his truck went off Wickery Bridge, he had almost drowned. After Joel and Damon got the call from Rebekah, who ran the truck off the bridge in the first place, the two went to rescue Matt and Elena.

Elena's neck snapped on impact, though, so she was dead before the vampires could get to the submerged vehicle. While Damon had pulled Elena from the truck, Joel was tasked with saving Matt.

Matt was understandably upset about the whole thing. He brushed off the comfort Lucy and Caroline tried to give him and had demanded very insistently to his nurse that he be released.

"Elena doesn't want to be a vampire," Matt said to them angrily as he pulled on his plaid shirt.

"She doesn't want to be dead and now she's not," Caroline replied. "This isn't your fault, Matt."

"This is my fault," Matt insisted. "I was driving, I was saved. She's a vampire because of me!"

"Okay, first of all, you were saved because you were still alive, Matt. Elena was already dead," Lucy said firmly, trying to get him to see to reason. "Second of all, you have to keep your voice down, okay? Caroline's a fugitive and who knows what the council will do to me."

Matt calmed down slightly and gave them an apologetic look. "If the council's after you guys, then why are you here?"

"Because Elena has a decision to make and I want to be by her side when she makes it," Lucy told him.

"And we can't leave until Klaus is out of Tyler's body," Caroline added.

"Besides, you're our friend, Matt," Lucy grabbed his hand and squeezed it. "We wanted to see if you were okay."