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verushka70Part 3 of this unfinished behemoth, endless, hopeless fic. Sigh.
Stefan hesitates in the half-open doorway to Damon's room.
Damon could be back to his usual snarky, cool self. He might rebuff any warmth, comfort, closeness now.
Or he might still be nursing his wounds.
Or angry. Enraged and wanting to lash out.
Or...
Stefan hasn't seen Damon like this since they opened the tomb and Katherine wasn't there. And before that – not in nearly a century. That this very old Damon has come to visit is either a very good or a very, very bad sign.
Stefan peeks carefully into the dark room, vampire eyes seeing clearly through the gloom. Damon is where he left him, in exactly the same position: face down in a pillow, one arm cast across another.
He must sense Stefan because he rolls over on the bed, then, and stares up at his ceiling in the dark.
“She gone?” Damon asks tiredly.
Stefan hesitates. “Yeah,” he finally replies, figuring simple answers are best now. “She wanted to apologize. I told her to wait 'til tomorrow.”
His brother doesn't reply for a very long moment, except to exhale heavily.
“What's her deal, Stef?” Damon finally asks, and his voice is shockingly plaintive and barely audible. He throws an arm over his eyes.
Stefan shrugs. “I'm... not sure.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.” He restrains the urge to apologize to Damon on her behalf. Elena is not under his control. He would never want it that way, and he suspects neither would Damon.
“Your girlfriend is a real piece of work,” Damon says meanly.
“I know. But.” Stefan hesitates before he says what he's thinking. “Well, so are you. So am I.”
There's no answer for a long time. Then, finally, Damon replies.
“Yeah,” he says heavily. “Guess we are. A piece of work.”
He sounds so exhausted and defeated that Stefan doesn't realize he has come into Damon's bedroom until he's standing at the foot of the bed.
“What are we doing, Stefan?” Damon removes his arm from his eyes and stares up at the ceiling. “What the fuck are we doing? What are we thinking?”
Stefan pauses before replying. “Don't worry about that right now.”
“What the fuck does she want from me? From us?”
Stefan's heart warms oddly at 'from us'. He sits cautiously at the foot of the bed. “Honestly, I have no clue. I – didn't see this coming. But I guess it's not entirely unexpected.”
He passes a hand through his hair, guilty, uncertain, concerned. He has not seen his brother like this in – longer than he can really remember.
He wonders if Damon will ask, or just assume.
After a long, not uncomfortable silence, Damon lifts his head. “Still here?” he murmurs.
“Yeah,” Stefan replies quietly, waiting to see which way this will go.
“Stefan,” Damon says more strongly, a cross between an order and a plea.
But still, Stefan would like to hear it. Would like it acknowledged, out loud. They owe that to each other, at least.
There is a long silence from Damon. “Damon?” Stefan finally asks, unsure why the silence.
“I know she's all 'I need to know' and all 'I didn't mean it'...” He trails off.
Stefan hesitates. “I wasn't sure how much you heard,” he says carefully.
“Enough,” comes Damon's bitter reply.
They say nothing for a time. Then,
“Don't go to her. Any other night, but not tonight,” Damon whispers.
Stefan sighs. “I wasn't going to.”
“Really?” Damon asks, sounding so young and surprised and grateful that Stefan only feels worse.
“Really,” he replies with quiet emphasis. “Whatever you need.”
There is almost no hesitation, this time. “My brother,” Damon says simply. More quietly, “You. Stay here tonight.”
Stefan stands and takes off his shirt.
“Not like that,” Damon snaps.
Stefan hesitates then starts to put his shirt back on.
“Stop, Stefan.” Damon doesn't speak for a moment. “Or go ahead. It doesn't matter. It's fine either way.” He shrugs. “Just...”
He gestures to the spot next to him, and Stefan climbs onto the big, comfortable bed. He lays beside Damon. Their wrists brush. Although there is an electricity, he feels confusion and exhaustion, anger and bewilderment coming off his brother in waves.
“It will all be okay,” he says. What else can he say?
Damon barks a morose laugh. “We'll never be okay,” he says, mournful, not humorous.
Stefan feels for his hand and grabs it. “We might.”
“Doubt it.”
They used to play this game, back when they were boys. Back when they were human. Damon the naysayer, Stefan the perpetually hopeful.
“It's possible.” He squeezes Damon's hand.
“Unlikely,” Damon murmurs.
“You never know.”
“Unrealistic.” Damon squeezes his hand back, hard.
“Could still happen,” Stefan whispers.
Damon doesn't say anything for a long time. Stefan sits up on one elbow, and they look at each other in the darkened room. He brushes Damon's hair from his brow, and Damon touches his cheek.
“Maybe,” Damon says hoarsely, trying to muster a smile.
Stefan bends his head slowly, Damon's eyes shining up at him in the dark. He presses his lips to Damon's forehead.
“Nothing to lose trying, then,” he murmurs into Damon's hair.
“Sure. Why not,” Damon sighs, and pulls Stefan down against him.
But it's not like that. He just holds Stefan to him, tucking his face into Stefan's neck. His arms tighten around Stefan. Stefan settles down, half on and half off Damon. He massages the back of Damon's neck while Damon's eyes slowly wet his neck.
--------
The first thing she does when she gets up is grab her phone from the bedside table and text Damon.
I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Damon. Please let me come over. I can explain.
There is no reply. She hopes for his usual near-instant reply, but isn't surprised when she doesn't get it.
Minutes tick by and her stomach clenches, anxious.
She waits fifteen minutes, and then types another message. It's long, wordy. Stupid. She deletes it and types one word only.
Please.
There is no response in ten minutes. She gets up to brush her teeth and begin the day. It's just a way to distract herself so she won't bombard him with messages.
When she's done brushing her teeth and has the water running for a quick shower, she goes back to her phone.
Nothing. No response at all.
She grips the phone, angry at herself, afraid she has pushed Damon farther away rather than getting closer, which was all she really wanted.
She types slowly, carefully. She tells herself this will be the last message. If he doesn't reply to this one, she will stop pestering him and wait to hear from him. It will kill her, but she will. Somehow.
I never meant to hurt you. Never.
She hits 'Send', puts her phone down on her dresser, and walks away.
She stands at the window a good five minutes, letting the water in the shower get good and hot, listening for the tell tale vibration of her phone.
It doesn't come.
Elena sighs deeply. She crosses to the bathroom. The quick shower has now become a long, hot shower where she can cry in peace.
She comes out half an hour later, toweling her hair. There is one message from Damon, and she feels her heart jump and thud anxiously.
I know.
She eagerly texts him back.
Let me come over and explain. Please.
She chews her bottom lip, waiting. The reply is not quick and she wonders if he is thinking carefully about what he types or if he is just unwilling to text her or talk to her.
His next message is blunt but not entirely unkind.
Your need to explain does not mean I am prepared to hear it right now. Sorry. I can't.
And that hurts, but only because he's right and it's true. She does need to explain, wants to purge, explain and excuse her stupidity and her pushing and her realization that she doesn't have a fucking clue about things between he and Stefan, and it threatens the security of what little family she has left.
Should have thought about that before, Elena.
Later, then? She texts him hopefully.
She gets a terse reply a few minutes later.
Maybe. I'll call-text if so. Gotta go.
She's been dismissed.
She kind of deserved it. No, she totally deserved that – and more.
She wants to call Stefan, but assumes he was present for every text message she sent to Damon.
Elena decides to text Stefan instead of humiliating herself by calling to hear what she already knows: Damon won't see her. Somehow it feels better to tell him what all three of them already know, than to have Stefan tell her after she's already heard it from Damon.
Damon won't see me. Will be home doing laundry. Call me when you can.
She grabs her phone, dresses quickly, and heads downstairs.
The house is so empty. The ghosts of everyone she's lost the past two years seem to linger in dusty corners. Mom, Dad, Jenna, Alaric – there is a reason she stays at the boardinghouse more often than not these days, and it isn't just because of Stefan or Damon.
She does all her laundry, even the bed linens. While the washer and dryer run, she cleans out the fridge. Does the dishes. Cleans the counters, stove, kitchen table. She balks at washing Jeremy's clothes, but only because he's a teenage boy and. Just. Ew.
She checks her phone, but there has been no response from Stefan.
Elena goes out onto her porch to sit in the swing and watch the remains of the day go by. It's sunny and clear, blue skies and puffy white clouds. The cheery weather makes her want to destroy everything, because it should be cloudy and gloomy and rainy to match her mood and her life right now.
She doesn't bring her phone so she won't have to listen to how silent it is.
--------
The sun was warm and weakening, she guesses, because she wakes up to Stefan's shadow cast over her.
“Stefan. Hi,” she says hopefully.
“Hi.” He pauses. “Wanna move over so I can join you?”
“Sure,” she says, scrambling from her sprawled position into sitting upright. He sits down beside her.
“You weren't answering your phone,” he says, concerned.
“Yeah, I... I left it in the house when I came out here.”
“Elena... daylight... the porch, where anyone can visit without being invited in...”
“I know, I'm sorry. I just... forgot.” She looks down, guilty at this lapse in common sense, in Vampire 101.
He nods sympathetically.
“I know he doesn't want to see me,” she begins, slipping her hand into Stefan's. “But is he okay?”
Stefan squeezes her hand and relief floods her body that she hasn't fucked this up, in addition to fucking it up with Damon.
“He will be, I think,” Stefan says thoughtfully. “No, I mean – he'll be all right. You just have to give him some time.” But he doesn't look at her, avoids her gaze.
“Are you okay?” she asks, peering into his face.
His gaze shifts to hers. “Yeah. Why wouldn't I be?”
“Well, your girlfriend almost just wrecked everything with your only brother, your only family. I would understand if you weren't okay with that.” She looks down, feeling guilty again.
Stefan squeezes her hand once more before putting his arm around her and pulling her close.
“I am concerned about your ...motives. But we don't need to talk about it right now. Actually, I'd like if we could give it a rest.”
She hears the admonishment from within his embrace and she thinks how lucky she is that he is so forgiving. And maybe that's something he developed because he had to, because of Damon.
“Yeah, sure, we can give it a rest,” she agrees quickly, simply glad to have his arm around her, to know that he has not given up on her entirely.
--------
Stefan can't forgive himself for being a Ripper, being only "the bad parts" of being a vampire though Lexi absolved him of that once she got him to laugh again. He can't forgive himself for all the terror he caused, the sharp scent of fear he inhaled right before ripping into someone, can't forgive himself for craving the paradoxically soothing and inciting pleasure of sucking down pint after pint of blood, for needing the blank oblivion and conscience-less calm it delivers, even as he feels the life of the human under his teeth ebb. He can't forgive himself for being incapable of stopping himself.
Damon can't forgive himself for being such a fool, for spending a century and a half waiting to free and awaken a woman who cared so little for him that she couldn't be bothered to let him in on her escape plan. The thought lingers and burns: maybe it wasn't just someone she was running from... maybe she was only trying to escape him.
- - -
Stefan wishes he were dead. He's like a zombie, he thinks; an automaton of blood lust, a brainwashed, enslaved sidekick. Klaus was right to call it "indentured". He wishes he could take off his daylight ring and wait for sunrise but knows Klaus won't allow it. The only reason Stefan doesn't provoke Klaus into killing him, doesn't remove his daylight ring and burn up in the sun, is because he can't do that to Elena.
He can't put her through another death, not when she's suffered too many already, her parents, Jenna, her birth mother Isobel, birth father John...
Stefan keeps trudging emotionlessly through the endless days of blood and death with Klaus because he just can't put Elena through losing him, too, even though she already has (she just doesn't know it yet) -- not when the implicit promise of a vampire boyfriend is a boyfriend who will never die.
--------
You've had the luxury of not lying about your life, up until now,” Damon tells Elena.
--------
Stefan's back is up against the wall, casually leaning on it, hands in his pockets. Damon has one hand up on the wall over Stefan's shoulder. He leans close to Stefan. Too close, too far into Stefan's personal space. They speak quietly, but Elena can't make out what they're saying. Their gazes are locked together.
But then Elena must make some sound, a gasp or twitch. The brothers' gazes break and they are looking at her, Damon half over his shoulder.
"I, uh, the door was open," elena stutters.
Stefan looks serious but impassive. Damon looks bemused. Neither of them move; they seem more to solidify, to go still as statues.
"Humans sneaking into vampire homes. There goes the neighborhood," he snarks as they both look at Elena.
She's not quite stunned but can't find her tongue. She's seen Damon corner people with threats of violence – or with violence, period – but that's not what this is. She's seen him invade Stefan's space, too – brotherly or intimidating, or both. And while that looks a bit like this, this is somehow totally different.
"We were just talking about you," Damon says easily, not moving.
Neither of the brothers move and Stefan's politely concerned but otherwise impassive expression doesn't change, which Elena finds suddenly – irrationally – highly suspicious.
Though nothing particularly weird seems to be happening, Elena is suddenly uneasy.
"You were just talking about me?"
"Yeah, you and your martyr tear," Damon says, narrowing his eyes at her.
"If that's what's on your minds--" she begins.
"Relax. We're figuring out how to work with you rather than against you," Damon interrupts. He glances at Stefan, whose remain on Elena.
Damon shoves away from the wall and saunters over to Elena.
"Really?"
"Hell, no," Damon jokes, now invading Elena's space. "Have we met? I'm never gonna be okay with you sacrificing yourself. Whatcha got there?" He nods at the books in her arms, changing the subject.
"More Gilbert journals. Research on Originals," she replies numbly, still looking at Stefan, who still gazes at her, expression betraying nothing.
"Good. Then you two better get to work," Damon says, shooting a look over his shoulder at Stefan, before he walks away from them.
"Where are you going?" Elena says, glancing at Damon, who looks typically nonchalant.
"To talk to Mystic Falls' most popular sired Klaus bitch," Damon says, walking backward a couple steps to speak with her, before he turns to head out.
Elena looks at Stefan. Silence fills the room after they hear the front door close.
"What was that?" She asks Stefan, and she hates how small and timid her voice sounds.
"Nothing," Stefan says quietly, shrugging, but not moving, still leaned back up against the wall.
Elena says nothing. Whatever it was, she feels it was not nothing. But. Stefan has raging issues with Damon, so that's nothing new.
She goes to him and stands in front of him, looking up into his face. He takes his hands out of his pockets and enfolds her in his arms. She rests against his chest, feeling his loose embrace. He seems far away
though he's right here.
"We need him on our side," he finally sighs.
"I know," she agrees.
It isn't until she starts awake in the middle of the night that she realizes what it most looked like: a come-on. With his head quirked to the side, and so very close to Stefan, it almost looked as if Damon was about to kiss Stefan.
--------
They had a horse named Nelly that father bought. She was half Arabian, fine boned, black with a silver streak down one leg and another on her forelock. The filly was beautiful, frisky and friendly. She loved to romp in the pasture with the calves and field mules. She was also sensitive, easily spooked; she shied away from loud noises, thunder, gun shot. And she was smart: several times she was able to unlatch the paddock and let herself (and the mules, sheep and goats) out.
This should have been a clue to the overseer assigned to break her. But he was an evil stupid man, hired by Giuseppe to keep his own hands and reputation clean. The overseer treated horses the same way he
treated cattle, mules, dogs, and all slaves: like stupid animals, beasts of burden with no soul and no intelligence. His method of breaking a horse involved a lasso, a long whip and a big, thick tree bough, trimmed down. Any resistance was treated with whipping, and if that wasn't enough, by beating until the animal quit resisting.
Stephan could never watch the overseer break the new horses or mules. Damon would watch and seethe.
By the time he had Nelly barely green broke, Mother was dead and in the ground and Nelly was vicious. She was also devious and sneaky, clever and mean. You could throw a rope over her neck but then when you got close, she would bite or kick you. She would hide by the stall doors waiting for the other horses and mules to come in, waiting for the stable hands. She would wait for the stable hands she liked least or really hated, and would try to kick them if they came past. One of them, she broke his leg in two places.
Nelly had a special place in her heart for the overseer himself. She twice kicked him in the head when he wasn't looking because she snuck up on him. She was that devious and that good. Both times he tried to
put her down.
But Damon intervened. He refused to have her put down because, he said – rightfully so – that what had started out as a beautiful, sensitive horse and could've been trained as an excellent riding horse if trained properly, had ended up a vicious, devious, ruined horse by being trained the wrong way. He declared
she would be put down over his dead body.
The overseer did not dare deny the oldest son who would inherit the plantation. Nelly was pastured. No one could ride her.
Damon did his best to gentle her, but he could only get so far. Stefan wondered if she saw in him a kindred spirit. Damon could not saddle and bridle her with full tack. If she accepted the saddle, she
refused to accept the bit, and vice versa. She didn't trust so much leather and tack bending her to the will of unproven, untrustworthy men. She threw anyone who tried to climb on her and kicked and bucked if fully saddled, including Damon.
Eventually Damon gave up riding her any way other than bareback, holding on only by her mane and with his knees. Nelly accepted this and even seemed to like it, but only from Damon. Damon made sure to ride her near the tobacco fields in full view of the overseer who had ruined her.
Stephan often thought that Nelly was a perfect example of how to ruin a horse or a dog. He also thought that she was a perfect example of how to ruin a boy.
After Mother died, it seemed that there was no end to what Father would do to Damon. There was a tobacco blight: Damon got switched. Damon was too gregarious at dinner with guests; he got whipped for it later. Damon was too quiet at dinner while they had guests... and got beaten later. If he was insolent he got whipped. If he was scrupulously polite, Father assumed he was mocking him and whipped him. Damon was whipped for any reason, and for no reason at all.
Eventually Damon started giving Father reasons to whip him. He was found with his hand up the skirt of a founding family's most precious and prized older daughters: la jeune fille à marie. He was forbidden to ever see her again, and then father whipped him. He proceeded to do the same thing with her sister the following month, and was whipped again.
It had reached a point where even some field hands believed Damon was whipped more often and more viciously than they were. He had much sympathy from them. Being slaves, they expected whippings. They did not expect young Master Damon whipped as often and as harshly (or more) as they were, by his own Father.
He returned their feelings of sympathy and was the first to champion their cause to Father and the vicious overseer. That got him beaten publicly in the fields, so the field hands could see it. Far from teaching Damon or the field hands the lesson Father no doubt intended, all that resulted was that Damon was just as (secretly) welcome in the slave quarters as he was in his own home. Probably more.
Stephan knew that making Damon cut his own switch only added to the humiliation. Knew that Father unbuckling and removing his belt prior to whipping Damon with it merely heightened the fear. Knew that the use of a riding whip communicated that Damon was little more than an animal Father owned, controlled, punished, and disciplined.
“Why do you constantly do things that you know will upset Father?” Stefan pleaded. “You know it will only lead to another whipping, Damon.”
“He'll whip me anyway, Stefan,” Damon said sullenly. “I might as well deserve it. I might as well enjoy something worth punishing. It's better than being punished for nothing at all.”
It wasn't that Giuseppe never whipped Stefan at all. He did, only twice, very judiciously: the first time Stefan was caught in a lie, and again when Stefan uncovered and played around one of the old, dry wells which had been covered expressly so that children didn't fall into it.
It was that the countless and frequent whippings inflicted on Damon for comparatively minor infractions, or none at all, appeared so monstrously unjust to everyone except Giuseppe. It appeared so most especially to Damon and Stefan. Had Stefan not silently, secretly sponged Damon's welts with cool water while Damon shuddered and refused to cry – had Stefan not murmured quiet but steadfast disagreements with Giuseppe's disdainful pronouncements about Damon – their brotherhood could easily have splintered under the divisive pressures of Giuseppe's vastly different treatment of them.
As it was, Damon was often openly hurt by Giuseppe's favoritism of Stefan. While younger, he tried mightily to please Giuseppe, to no avail. When he was older and had given up trying to please his father, Damon was visibly resentful.
For his part, Stefan did his best to never take advantage of the already advantageous place he had in Giuseppe's heart. In fact he despised it because it drove his brother away from him through no fault of his own, though he was not defiant or aggressive enough to openly defy Giuseppe the way Damon eventually did.
When he was fifteen, probably intentionally, during a dinner party of father's with founding family members in attendance, Damon was caught in the maids' chambers with the son of another important founding family. They had their pants open. They were fondling each other and kissing.
Stefan had no idea what the punishment was for the other boy. The punishment for Damon was predictable. He was to be whipped.
But this time Father used the long whip usually reserved for slaves, rather than his belt, a switch, or the riding whip.
Stefan wasn't sure what the long whip was supposed to mean. It probably meant that Damon was as seemingly ill-bred as the slaves supposedly were. It probably meant Damon was as much Father's property as the slaves and field hands, and therefore should be as obedient and grateful for his mercy as they were.
It was a strategic mistake. Several brutal lashes of the long thick whip landed on Damon's bare back – some of which snapped around to leave welts on his chest and ribs. But Damon turned just as the next lash was about to land. He grabbed hold of the end of the whip as it landed. Welts rose where it wrapped around his arms, but he held on and hauled Father towards him.
His calm fury shocked Father motionless. Fear dawned in Father's expression. They were quickly face to face. Stefan would never forget the look on Father's face when Damon punched him.
Damon proceeded to beat father severely with his fists. He beat him down to the ground while the tobacco field hands stopped and stood motionless to watch. He screamed incoherently at Father as he beat him. Giuseppe hardly fought back, though from shock or fear, Stefan wasn't sure. Stefan was the one who dragged Damon off Giuseppe, afraid he would kill him.
It was the last whipping Giuseppe ever gave Damon. No matter. Damon was, from then on, deviant and devious, malcontent and often openly malicious. He took on the qualities of a ne'er-do-well libertine at a shockingly young age. He distrusted Father and all men like him, such as the entire Founder's Council, preferring the company of men of ill-repute, denizens of Richmond's brothels and gambling houses.
What sweetness there was left in Damon was accessible only to those who knew how to handle him: certain house slaves and field hands, the cook, Stefan.
Just when Stefan felt that his and Damon's brotherhood was healing after years of unequal treatment, Giuseppe sent him to West Point.
--------
It was so subtle, Elena didn't notice it at first. (There was a lot of other drama going on at the time to distract her, anyway.) But after a while she noticed the pattern.
She could not bring herself to ask him about it. Had he been a normal teenage boyfriend, it would have been difficult and humiliating enough to discuss with him. The fact that he was a vampire made it utterly mortifying. Elena simply couldn't go there.
But she did notice. Certain nights he sent her home with a chaste peck on the cheek – well after they had begun sleeping together. Some nights he kept her at arm's length and then made sure to walk her to her porch, rather than bringing her back to his house and his room. Even when she was feeling amorous, he would gently disengage her limbs and lips from his and find some much less intimate thing for them to do, or some way for them not to be alone together.
She realized, eventually, that he could tell when she was bleeding – or about to begin bleeding. He could even seem to tell when she was about to start, but hadn't yet – or when she already had started, but hadn't found out yet.
Far be it from Elena to ruin the illusion. She never wanted to do anything during her period anyway – ick, gross thought. But she sometimes felt friskier then than at any other time, which seemed an evil trick of nature. And sometimes she wistfully remembered Matt Donovan's much more matter-of-fact “it doesn't bother me if it doesn't bother you” attitude.
She felt terribly guilty when the occasional thought flashed by: you should have enjoyed that when you had it. Now she didn't have and even though she would never have actually acted on it, she missed having the option. Especially since it seemed with every passing year (month), her premenstrual horniness got stronger.
Damon also knew. Elena could tell. It felt like he could see right through her, through her skin and bones and into her body. His bored gaze would cut across the room to her like a laser. His eyes would bore into her belly and then meet hers. He would say nothing. But his nostrils would flare just the tiniest bit and his eyes would narrow just slightly like a cat that has seen exactly what it wants and knows it can't have it.
Elena wondered what Damon did with other human women in his past when it was that time of the month.
Then she gritted her teeth and dismissed the thought.
It lingered though, in the most embarrassing and disturbing way.
--------
One day when Elena stops by looking for Stefan, Damon answers the door in only a bath towel. She rolls her eyes as she passes him, a whiff of his clean scent and soap making just the slightest irritating knot in her stomach.
“Come in, Elena,” he says sarcastically, after she has past him and is standing in the hall. He shuts the door and leans back against it. There is only a hint of his usual smirk on his face. As usual she'd like to smack it off him, but... there's just so much bare Damon skin before her. She's speechless for a moment because she refuses to stutter and she is not flustered, she isn't.
“I take it Stefan's not here.”
“Are you sure you didn't time it just right so you knew I'd be just finishing my bath?”
She huffs. “You wish.”
He smiles. “You have no idea how labor intensive it once was to take a simple bath, do you?”
She is startled, taken aback. This was not the response she expected. “What?”
“You had to draw bucket after bucket from a well, which might or might not be close to your house,” he begins, stepping away from the door and advancing on her. “Of course, we had slaves, back in the day, so they mostly did that. But still, after Stefan ate all the slaves... it was no longer as exhausting but it was just as tedious and almost as time consuming.”
“I'm sorry, what?” Elena asks, confused.
“And then you had to heat it all up, because, let me tell you, Virginia well water in the winter – chilly, to say the least. So you're heating it all up. And then someone has to pour it into your bath, which was usually some oversized wash tub.”
“Oh,” she says, imagining all of the work involved.
“And of course, this is taking place by candlelight,” he adds, “not gaslight and most certainly not electricity. It is this difficult and tedious because there is no running water in anyone's house. There are no toilets, only chamber pots.”
Elena wrinkles her nose as Damon steps up to her. She refuses to take a step back as he gets too close, invades her personal space. H pale, muscular skin
She looks up at him. “So you enjoy the luxury of baths.”
“Are you kidding?” he smiles, and this time it is genuine and not a smirk. He slowly takes a lock of her hair between his thumb and forefinger. “I love it. I love the fixtures, I love that there is running water in the house, I love that it comes out of the tap hot, instead of having to be heated, I love my ginormous bathtub...”
“Okay, I get it: you like your baths,” she replies drily.
“It's not just that I like them. I appreciate them the way a starving man appreciates food.”
“Okay...”
--------
It is months after Jenna died when Jeremy looks at her across the kitchen table and says, “If anyone read about everything we've been through, they wouldn't believe it. It sounds like movie crap. Some unrealistic tragedy.”
She just looks at him. It's true. If Caroline and Bonnie didn't know the truth of it – if she had just moved to town the summer her parents died (and she almost died along with them) – would they have believed her tale of woe?
All Elena knows is that now, when someone has some unbelievably tragic story, she listens without judging and she believes first and doubts later, instead of the other way around. No one would make up this much horrible crap to live through. And if they did, that's just a testament to how profoundly messed up they must be, because she wouldn't wish that even on her worst enemy.
Well. Maybe on Klaus. He does such a good job of manipulating and daggering and boxing up his family, he really doesn't need any help from her.
--------
“I love you, Damon.”
“Stop saying that!”
“Why?”
“Why do you have to say it so often? Trying to convince yourself it's still true after everything I've done?”
“It is true.”
“Stop. Saying. It!”
“Why?!”
“People can say anything, Elena. You can say anything. I can say anything. Doesn't mean you mean it. Words mean nothing. Actions mean everything.”
“I think my actions have shown I love you.”
“I live in the now. The only thing that's real is now.”
“Tomorrow's not real? Yesterday wasn't real?”
“Tomorrow you might be dead, or I might be dead by association. Yesterday's mistakes are carved in stone and can't be undone. The only thing any of us ever really has is now.”
“Fine. I love you now.”
“Don't say it. Show me. Now.”
--------
“He can't help it, you know,” Damon says from the shadows by the cold, gray fireplace.
She edges closer, uncertain what he means.
He looks up at her neutrally from where he lays on the red brocade sofa, glass tumbler on the floor, his hand casually draped over it.
“He can't help what?”
“Turning you away.” Damon lifts one shoulder slightly and lets it drop.
She feels the heat of her blush start on her chest and rise to her throat, her jaw, her cheeks, her forehead. “I don't know what you're talking about.” She musters a huff of indignation.
He gaze sharpens on her, but then his eyes slit and his gaze turns away dismissively like a cat's.
“Sure you don't. Whatever.”
He lazily picks up his drink and takes a sip. He is never a sloppy drunk and tonight is no exception, though she senses he has had quite a lot of bourbon.
She can't help it, though. Damon has the most insight into Stefan of anyone else she knows, though she feels he is not to be trusted most of the time, because of his own hidden agenda. She swallows, feeling her face burn.
“What do you mean, he can't help it,” she asks quietly.
He looks back up at her, his eyes searching her face. His pupils are wide in the half light.
“The blood,” he says simply. “He's always had a hard time controlling the blood lust. If he wasn't on this silly nonfat soy vegan vampire diet, I think he could get a handle on it, but he insists on it. So he never gets any practice. And, once a month, for several days, you smell so...” Damon trails off.
Elena waits. When he says nothing, just looks at her, she prompts him. “So...?”
He shrugs as if it were self-explanatory. “Bloody.”
If it were possible, she thinks she must be purple with embarrassment by now. This is usually only possible in cartoons but she thinks she might be that rare human it could be true for.
Damon sits up to lean closer to her. In a conspiratory whisper, he smiles up at her. “Let me guess... you need it most on the days when he turns you out of his bed, am I right?”
It's not embarrassment anymore, it's just rage. He's been reading her mind or her diary or both. But then Elena fingers the necklace around her neck and realizes she's wearing vervain. So can't have been reading her mind.
And he is, like, 170 years old or something. A long time to spend getting to know women's secrets.
“Some of us aren't that squeamish, you know,” he whispers, just as she is considering (picturing) how Damon might know these things that he knows.
“You're so gross,” she says automatically.
Damon raises his hands in mock defense. “You wouldn't be the first woman to feel that way. You definitely won't be the last.” He shrugs.
She grabs the embroidered pillow that says “If you don't have anything nice to say, sit right here by me” and hits him with it several times. Damon growls in protest after the first few, then stops her with an iron grip on her wrist.
He doesn't grind her wrist bones together or hurt her, he just imprisons her wrist in his grasp.
“If you were mine, I would love – I would worship – everything about you. Not just the nice parts,” Damon murmurs, looking her in the eye. “I would never turn you away. Ever.”
He slides his hand off her wrist slowly. As he does, she has a sudden, hideously erotic vision: Damon's face between her legs, mouth bloody and smiling.
Their eyes lock. She twists her wrist out of his grasp. She wants to flee; she feels the heat in her face. But something makes her respond.
“But I'm not yours, Damon,” she says with finality.
He smiles. “Not yet.”
This time she does flee. The vision of Damon going down on her during her period torments her for weeks afterward.
--------
Damon tells her that the Stefan and Damon of 1864 lost someone they loved very much in the church fire. But Elena knows from the way he says it, that he has lost someone that he deeply cared about.
It isn't until later that she learns that he and Stefan were the Stefan and Damon of 1864, and the woman they loved and lost in the church fire was Katherine. But it doesn't matter. It is the change in his voice, the slightly strangled way it comes out, that gets under her skin. Others – those who haven't been through it themselves – would probably miss it. But Damon is more than acquainted with death and loss.
Later Damon also tells her, in an odd defense of Stefan's secretiveness, that he and Stefan lost their mother when they were young. She understands, then, how she sees lost little boys at both their cores, where others see only what they want to see in Stefan, and what Damon wants them to see.
--------
Over the decades – the century and a half, the almost two centuries – Damon has had ample time to imagine his reunion with Katherine and how they will pick up their lives where they left off in 1864. She dangled such a glittering, decadent future in front of him. He imagined the two of them on a gondola in Venice, drinking of luscious young Italian women. Imagined them walking arm in arm under an umbrella in Paris on the Champs-Elysees in the rain. Fantasized about arriving with her in London after months at sea feeding on the crew of the ship. Dreamed of seeing cities of living antiquities with Katherine on his arm: Florence and Rome, where the marble facades of ancient Roman temples and the Colosseum were torn off to build Renaissance architecture. Dreamed of visiting the gold rush cities of the American West: San Francisco. South Dakota. Alaska.
As the decades wore on, he dreamed of new scenarios. He and Katherine in Berlin in the 1920s would have been even better than Chicago during Prohibition – except for the steep inflation, but no matter. Katherine at a roulette wheel in Havana in the 1950s. A Star Trek, then Star Wars, then He had only his dreams and fantasies to kindle the flame that burned for her inside him while he bided his time. Sometimes the fantasies included Stefan. More often they did not; he wanted Katherine all to himself. He made the best of life around him while he waited for the damned comet to return, although he never permitted his heart to connect deeply with anyone, believing himself spoken for.
Finding that Katherine was never in the tomb was a shocking blow. Anna's statement that Katherine knew where he was all the time and didn't care was crushing. It didn't just cut deeply into all that Damon believed about his love for her and her love for him. It didn't just prove that she was as selfish as he'd suspected even as he couldn't help but yearn for her.
It proved that all his wondrous fantasies and imagined adventures with Katherine were the delusions of a lovesick boy, someone easily seduced and just as easily abandoned by her – as if he meant nothing.
It meant the death of the futures he had mapped out for them while waiting almost a hundred and seventy years to bring her back.
Damon was by no means chaste during the century and a half until he could bring Katherine back. But he never once let another woman into his heart, though several came knocking. Looking back on it, more than a couple of them were probably worthier than Katherine. But he turned them away, discouraged them, said he was spoken for.
All that fidelity for nothing.
These deaths – of the futures he planned for he and Katherine, of his own innocence – were not the kind of deaths he could openly eulogize and bury. Not without basely humiliating himself.
It enraged him because if it didn't, he would have wept endless, bitter tears.
--------
Elena noticed after their parents died that Jeremy was always home from school before she was. He was also almost always on the video gaming system in the living room when she got home. It was kind of annoying, the constant gunfire and explosions coming from the TV in the living room. Jenna, at least in the beginning, until she tied up loose ends in her graduate program, usually wasn't there when they both got home from school.
The few occasions when Jeremy didn't get home before her, Elena realized that she'd love to hear the annoying gunfire and explosions. Without Jenna there, without Jeremy there, Elena opened her front door and walked into her own personal ghost town.
Nothing said “they're gone and they're not coming back” like an utterly empty, silent home.
She didn't have a TV in her bedroom. She'd never been one of those kids who came home and automatically turned the TV on.
She became one.
--------
She realizes that people have suffered in trying to save her and help her. And she's sorry for that, she truly is. But Elena thinks maybe the consequences suffered by people who help her should be their first fucking clue to stop trying.
Really, Elena sometimes fumes to herself, what do Caroline and Bonnie actually have to complain about? True: Bonnie's mother is a vampire now – but she abandoned Bonnie long before she became a vampire. She still walks the earth, she can come back to be Bonnie's mother any time. She will be around for every milestone in Bonnie's life: high school graduation, college graduation, Bonnie's wedding; Bonnie will always be able to call her mother for baby advice.
Elena will get none of that. Her mother will never see her graduate, will never see her marry, will never see her children.
It's not a contest, and Elena would never want to win, but the fact remains: Caroline lost one person, her dad, in the last ten years. In less than three years, Elena has lost her mother, her father, her birth mother Isobel, her biological father John, her aunt Jenna, her uncle-to-be- Alaric, and her brother Jeremy.
If it were a contest (which it isn't and should never be), Elena would win hands down. She has spent more time in the last two years wondering if she were losing her mind from grief and loss, than most people will face in a life time.
If she fell for Damon because he was her rock when Stefan became Klaus' slave, so fucking what? She's entitled, Elena thinks. After all this, after all the unbelievable shit she's been through, she's entitled to something that makes her fucking happy.
She plans to tell Bonnie and Caroline the next time either one of them raises even a hint of objection.
She was supposed to die. At least twice, she should have been among the dead. It didn't turn out that way.
In the not-too-distant past she would have been inclined to regard that as a sign, a miracle of some kind.
Now she knows it's only (a curse) the randomness of the universe, the luck of the draw. There's nothing special about it except she's. Still. Here.
It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything.
(Secretly she knows she hasn't – yet – lost everything. She is afraid to even.
There are still two people whose loss really could drive her over the edge. For fear of making it a self-fulfilling prophecy, she won't even whisper that thought aloud to herself in the bathroom mirror. That would be like asking the universe to shit on her one more time, when it has already shown ample inclination to do so.)
Stefan hesitates in the half-open doorway to Damon's room.
Damon could be back to his usual snarky, cool self. He might rebuff any warmth, comfort, closeness now.
Or he might still be nursing his wounds.
Or angry. Enraged and wanting to lash out.
Or...
Stefan hasn't seen Damon like this since they opened the tomb and Katherine wasn't there. And before that – not in nearly a century. That this very old Damon has come to visit is either a very good or a very, very bad sign.
Stefan peeks carefully into the dark room, vampire eyes seeing clearly through the gloom. Damon is where he left him, in exactly the same position: face down in a pillow, one arm cast across another.
He must sense Stefan because he rolls over on the bed, then, and stares up at his ceiling in the dark.
“She gone?” Damon asks tiredly.
Stefan hesitates. “Yeah,” he finally replies, figuring simple answers are best now. “She wanted to apologize. I told her to wait 'til tomorrow.”
His brother doesn't reply for a very long moment, except to exhale heavily.
“What's her deal, Stef?” Damon finally asks, and his voice is shockingly plaintive and barely audible. He throws an arm over his eyes.
Stefan shrugs. “I'm... not sure.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.” He restrains the urge to apologize to Damon on her behalf. Elena is not under his control. He would never want it that way, and he suspects neither would Damon.
“Your girlfriend is a real piece of work,” Damon says meanly.
“I know. But.” Stefan hesitates before he says what he's thinking. “Well, so are you. So am I.”
There's no answer for a long time. Then, finally, Damon replies.
“Yeah,” he says heavily. “Guess we are. A piece of work.”
He sounds so exhausted and defeated that Stefan doesn't realize he has come into Damon's bedroom until he's standing at the foot of the bed.
“What are we doing, Stefan?” Damon removes his arm from his eyes and stares up at the ceiling. “What the fuck are we doing? What are we thinking?”
Stefan pauses before replying. “Don't worry about that right now.”
“What the fuck does she want from me? From us?”
Stefan's heart warms oddly at 'from us'. He sits cautiously at the foot of the bed. “Honestly, I have no clue. I – didn't see this coming. But I guess it's not entirely unexpected.”
He passes a hand through his hair, guilty, uncertain, concerned. He has not seen his brother like this in – longer than he can really remember.
He wonders if Damon will ask, or just assume.
After a long, not uncomfortable silence, Damon lifts his head. “Still here?” he murmurs.
“Yeah,” Stefan replies quietly, waiting to see which way this will go.
“Stefan,” Damon says more strongly, a cross between an order and a plea.
But still, Stefan would like to hear it. Would like it acknowledged, out loud. They owe that to each other, at least.
There is a long silence from Damon. “Damon?” Stefan finally asks, unsure why the silence.
“I know she's all 'I need to know' and all 'I didn't mean it'...” He trails off.
Stefan hesitates. “I wasn't sure how much you heard,” he says carefully.
“Enough,” comes Damon's bitter reply.
They say nothing for a time. Then,
“Don't go to her. Any other night, but not tonight,” Damon whispers.
Stefan sighs. “I wasn't going to.”
“Really?” Damon asks, sounding so young and surprised and grateful that Stefan only feels worse.
“Really,” he replies with quiet emphasis. “Whatever you need.”
There is almost no hesitation, this time. “My brother,” Damon says simply. More quietly, “You. Stay here tonight.”
Stefan stands and takes off his shirt.
“Not like that,” Damon snaps.
Stefan hesitates then starts to put his shirt back on.
“Stop, Stefan.” Damon doesn't speak for a moment. “Or go ahead. It doesn't matter. It's fine either way.” He shrugs. “Just...”
He gestures to the spot next to him, and Stefan climbs onto the big, comfortable bed. He lays beside Damon. Their wrists brush. Although there is an electricity, he feels confusion and exhaustion, anger and bewilderment coming off his brother in waves.
“It will all be okay,” he says. What else can he say?
Damon barks a morose laugh. “We'll never be okay,” he says, mournful, not humorous.
Stefan feels for his hand and grabs it. “We might.”
“Doubt it.”
They used to play this game, back when they were boys. Back when they were human. Damon the naysayer, Stefan the perpetually hopeful.
“It's possible.” He squeezes Damon's hand.
“Unlikely,” Damon murmurs.
“You never know.”
“Unrealistic.” Damon squeezes his hand back, hard.
“Could still happen,” Stefan whispers.
Damon doesn't say anything for a long time. Stefan sits up on one elbow, and they look at each other in the darkened room. He brushes Damon's hair from his brow, and Damon touches his cheek.
“Maybe,” Damon says hoarsely, trying to muster a smile.
Stefan bends his head slowly, Damon's eyes shining up at him in the dark. He presses his lips to Damon's forehead.
“Nothing to lose trying, then,” he murmurs into Damon's hair.
“Sure. Why not,” Damon sighs, and pulls Stefan down against him.
But it's not like that. He just holds Stefan to him, tucking his face into Stefan's neck. His arms tighten around Stefan. Stefan settles down, half on and half off Damon. He massages the back of Damon's neck while Damon's eyes slowly wet his neck.
--------
The first thing she does when she gets up is grab her phone from the bedside table and text Damon.
I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Damon. Please let me come over. I can explain.
There is no reply. She hopes for his usual near-instant reply, but isn't surprised when she doesn't get it.
Minutes tick by and her stomach clenches, anxious.
She waits fifteen minutes, and then types another message. It's long, wordy. Stupid. She deletes it and types one word only.
Please.
There is no response in ten minutes. She gets up to brush her teeth and begin the day. It's just a way to distract herself so she won't bombard him with messages.
When she's done brushing her teeth and has the water running for a quick shower, she goes back to her phone.
Nothing. No response at all.
She grips the phone, angry at herself, afraid she has pushed Damon farther away rather than getting closer, which was all she really wanted.
She types slowly, carefully. She tells herself this will be the last message. If he doesn't reply to this one, she will stop pestering him and wait to hear from him. It will kill her, but she will. Somehow.
I never meant to hurt you. Never.
She hits 'Send', puts her phone down on her dresser, and walks away.
She stands at the window a good five minutes, letting the water in the shower get good and hot, listening for the tell tale vibration of her phone.
It doesn't come.
Elena sighs deeply. She crosses to the bathroom. The quick shower has now become a long, hot shower where she can cry in peace.
She comes out half an hour later, toweling her hair. There is one message from Damon, and she feels her heart jump and thud anxiously.
I know.
She eagerly texts him back.
Let me come over and explain. Please.
She chews her bottom lip, waiting. The reply is not quick and she wonders if he is thinking carefully about what he types or if he is just unwilling to text her or talk to her.
His next message is blunt but not entirely unkind.
Your need to explain does not mean I am prepared to hear it right now. Sorry. I can't.
And that hurts, but only because he's right and it's true. She does need to explain, wants to purge, explain and excuse her stupidity and her pushing and her realization that she doesn't have a fucking clue about things between he and Stefan, and it threatens the security of what little family she has left.
Should have thought about that before, Elena.
Later, then? She texts him hopefully.
She gets a terse reply a few minutes later.
Maybe. I'll call-text if so. Gotta go.
She's been dismissed.
She kind of deserved it. No, she totally deserved that – and more.
She wants to call Stefan, but assumes he was present for every text message she sent to Damon.
Elena decides to text Stefan instead of humiliating herself by calling to hear what she already knows: Damon won't see her. Somehow it feels better to tell him what all three of them already know, than to have Stefan tell her after she's already heard it from Damon.
Damon won't see me. Will be home doing laundry. Call me when you can.
She grabs her phone, dresses quickly, and heads downstairs.
The house is so empty. The ghosts of everyone she's lost the past two years seem to linger in dusty corners. Mom, Dad, Jenna, Alaric – there is a reason she stays at the boardinghouse more often than not these days, and it isn't just because of Stefan or Damon.
She does all her laundry, even the bed linens. While the washer and dryer run, she cleans out the fridge. Does the dishes. Cleans the counters, stove, kitchen table. She balks at washing Jeremy's clothes, but only because he's a teenage boy and. Just. Ew.
She checks her phone, but there has been no response from Stefan.
Elena goes out onto her porch to sit in the swing and watch the remains of the day go by. It's sunny and clear, blue skies and puffy white clouds. The cheery weather makes her want to destroy everything, because it should be cloudy and gloomy and rainy to match her mood and her life right now.
She doesn't bring her phone so she won't have to listen to how silent it is.
--------
The sun was warm and weakening, she guesses, because she wakes up to Stefan's shadow cast over her.
“Stefan. Hi,” she says hopefully.
“Hi.” He pauses. “Wanna move over so I can join you?”
“Sure,” she says, scrambling from her sprawled position into sitting upright. He sits down beside her.
“You weren't answering your phone,” he says, concerned.
“Yeah, I... I left it in the house when I came out here.”
“Elena... daylight... the porch, where anyone can visit without being invited in...”
“I know, I'm sorry. I just... forgot.” She looks down, guilty at this lapse in common sense, in Vampire 101.
He nods sympathetically.
“I know he doesn't want to see me,” she begins, slipping her hand into Stefan's. “But is he okay?”
Stefan squeezes her hand and relief floods her body that she hasn't fucked this up, in addition to fucking it up with Damon.
“He will be, I think,” Stefan says thoughtfully. “No, I mean – he'll be all right. You just have to give him some time.” But he doesn't look at her, avoids her gaze.
“Are you okay?” she asks, peering into his face.
His gaze shifts to hers. “Yeah. Why wouldn't I be?”
“Well, your girlfriend almost just wrecked everything with your only brother, your only family. I would understand if you weren't okay with that.” She looks down, feeling guilty again.
Stefan squeezes her hand once more before putting his arm around her and pulling her close.
“I am concerned about your ...motives. But we don't need to talk about it right now. Actually, I'd like if we could give it a rest.”
She hears the admonishment from within his embrace and she thinks how lucky she is that he is so forgiving. And maybe that's something he developed because he had to, because of Damon.
“Yeah, sure, we can give it a rest,” she agrees quickly, simply glad to have his arm around her, to know that he has not given up on her entirely.
--------
Stefan can't forgive himself for being a Ripper, being only "the bad parts" of being a vampire though Lexi absolved him of that once she got him to laugh again. He can't forgive himself for all the terror he caused, the sharp scent of fear he inhaled right before ripping into someone, can't forgive himself for craving the paradoxically soothing and inciting pleasure of sucking down pint after pint of blood, for needing the blank oblivion and conscience-less calm it delivers, even as he feels the life of the human under his teeth ebb. He can't forgive himself for being incapable of stopping himself.
Damon can't forgive himself for being such a fool, for spending a century and a half waiting to free and awaken a woman who cared so little for him that she couldn't be bothered to let him in on her escape plan. The thought lingers and burns: maybe it wasn't just someone she was running from... maybe she was only trying to escape him.
- - -
Stefan wishes he were dead. He's like a zombie, he thinks; an automaton of blood lust, a brainwashed, enslaved sidekick. Klaus was right to call it "indentured". He wishes he could take off his daylight ring and wait for sunrise but knows Klaus won't allow it. The only reason Stefan doesn't provoke Klaus into killing him, doesn't remove his daylight ring and burn up in the sun, is because he can't do that to Elena.
He can't put her through another death, not when she's suffered too many already, her parents, Jenna, her birth mother Isobel, birth father John...
Stefan keeps trudging emotionlessly through the endless days of blood and death with Klaus because he just can't put Elena through losing him, too, even though she already has (she just doesn't know it yet) -- not when the implicit promise of a vampire boyfriend is a boyfriend who will never die.
--------
You've had the luxury of not lying about your life, up until now,” Damon tells Elena.
--------
Stefan's back is up against the wall, casually leaning on it, hands in his pockets. Damon has one hand up on the wall over Stefan's shoulder. He leans close to Stefan. Too close, too far into Stefan's personal space. They speak quietly, but Elena can't make out what they're saying. Their gazes are locked together.
But then Elena must make some sound, a gasp or twitch. The brothers' gazes break and they are looking at her, Damon half over his shoulder.
"I, uh, the door was open," elena stutters.
Stefan looks serious but impassive. Damon looks bemused. Neither of them move; they seem more to solidify, to go still as statues.
"Humans sneaking into vampire homes. There goes the neighborhood," he snarks as they both look at Elena.
She's not quite stunned but can't find her tongue. She's seen Damon corner people with threats of violence – or with violence, period – but that's not what this is. She's seen him invade Stefan's space, too – brotherly or intimidating, or both. And while that looks a bit like this, this is somehow totally different.
"We were just talking about you," Damon says easily, not moving.
Neither of the brothers move and Stefan's politely concerned but otherwise impassive expression doesn't change, which Elena finds suddenly – irrationally – highly suspicious.
Though nothing particularly weird seems to be happening, Elena is suddenly uneasy.
"You were just talking about me?"
"Yeah, you and your martyr tear," Damon says, narrowing his eyes at her.
"If that's what's on your minds--" she begins.
"Relax. We're figuring out how to work with you rather than against you," Damon interrupts. He glances at Stefan, whose remain on Elena.
Damon shoves away from the wall and saunters over to Elena.
"Really?"
"Hell, no," Damon jokes, now invading Elena's space. "Have we met? I'm never gonna be okay with you sacrificing yourself. Whatcha got there?" He nods at the books in her arms, changing the subject.
"More Gilbert journals. Research on Originals," she replies numbly, still looking at Stefan, who still gazes at her, expression betraying nothing.
"Good. Then you two better get to work," Damon says, shooting a look over his shoulder at Stefan, before he walks away from them.
"Where are you going?" Elena says, glancing at Damon, who looks typically nonchalant.
"To talk to Mystic Falls' most popular sired Klaus bitch," Damon says, walking backward a couple steps to speak with her, before he turns to head out.
Elena looks at Stefan. Silence fills the room after they hear the front door close.
"What was that?" She asks Stefan, and she hates how small and timid her voice sounds.
"Nothing," Stefan says quietly, shrugging, but not moving, still leaned back up against the wall.
Elena says nothing. Whatever it was, she feels it was not nothing. But. Stefan has raging issues with Damon, so that's nothing new.
She goes to him and stands in front of him, looking up into his face. He takes his hands out of his pockets and enfolds her in his arms. She rests against his chest, feeling his loose embrace. He seems far away
though he's right here.
"We need him on our side," he finally sighs.
"I know," she agrees.
It isn't until she starts awake in the middle of the night that she realizes what it most looked like: a come-on. With his head quirked to the side, and so very close to Stefan, it almost looked as if Damon was about to kiss Stefan.
--------
They had a horse named Nelly that father bought. She was half Arabian, fine boned, black with a silver streak down one leg and another on her forelock. The filly was beautiful, frisky and friendly. She loved to romp in the pasture with the calves and field mules. She was also sensitive, easily spooked; she shied away from loud noises, thunder, gun shot. And she was smart: several times she was able to unlatch the paddock and let herself (and the mules, sheep and goats) out.
This should have been a clue to the overseer assigned to break her. But he was an evil stupid man, hired by Giuseppe to keep his own hands and reputation clean. The overseer treated horses the same way he
treated cattle, mules, dogs, and all slaves: like stupid animals, beasts of burden with no soul and no intelligence. His method of breaking a horse involved a lasso, a long whip and a big, thick tree bough, trimmed down. Any resistance was treated with whipping, and if that wasn't enough, by beating until the animal quit resisting.
Stephan could never watch the overseer break the new horses or mules. Damon would watch and seethe.
By the time he had Nelly barely green broke, Mother was dead and in the ground and Nelly was vicious. She was also devious and sneaky, clever and mean. You could throw a rope over her neck but then when you got close, she would bite or kick you. She would hide by the stall doors waiting for the other horses and mules to come in, waiting for the stable hands. She would wait for the stable hands she liked least or really hated, and would try to kick them if they came past. One of them, she broke his leg in two places.
Nelly had a special place in her heart for the overseer himself. She twice kicked him in the head when he wasn't looking because she snuck up on him. She was that devious and that good. Both times he tried to
put her down.
But Damon intervened. He refused to have her put down because, he said – rightfully so – that what had started out as a beautiful, sensitive horse and could've been trained as an excellent riding horse if trained properly, had ended up a vicious, devious, ruined horse by being trained the wrong way. He declared
she would be put down over his dead body.
The overseer did not dare deny the oldest son who would inherit the plantation. Nelly was pastured. No one could ride her.
Damon did his best to gentle her, but he could only get so far. Stefan wondered if she saw in him a kindred spirit. Damon could not saddle and bridle her with full tack. If she accepted the saddle, she
refused to accept the bit, and vice versa. She didn't trust so much leather and tack bending her to the will of unproven, untrustworthy men. She threw anyone who tried to climb on her and kicked and bucked if fully saddled, including Damon.
Eventually Damon gave up riding her any way other than bareback, holding on only by her mane and with his knees. Nelly accepted this and even seemed to like it, but only from Damon. Damon made sure to ride her near the tobacco fields in full view of the overseer who had ruined her.
Stephan often thought that Nelly was a perfect example of how to ruin a horse or a dog. He also thought that she was a perfect example of how to ruin a boy.
After Mother died, it seemed that there was no end to what Father would do to Damon. There was a tobacco blight: Damon got switched. Damon was too gregarious at dinner with guests; he got whipped for it later. Damon was too quiet at dinner while they had guests... and got beaten later. If he was insolent he got whipped. If he was scrupulously polite, Father assumed he was mocking him and whipped him. Damon was whipped for any reason, and for no reason at all.
Eventually Damon started giving Father reasons to whip him. He was found with his hand up the skirt of a founding family's most precious and prized older daughters: la jeune fille à marie. He was forbidden to ever see her again, and then father whipped him. He proceeded to do the same thing with her sister the following month, and was whipped again.
It had reached a point where even some field hands believed Damon was whipped more often and more viciously than they were. He had much sympathy from them. Being slaves, they expected whippings. They did not expect young Master Damon whipped as often and as harshly (or more) as they were, by his own Father.
He returned their feelings of sympathy and was the first to champion their cause to Father and the vicious overseer. That got him beaten publicly in the fields, so the field hands could see it. Far from teaching Damon or the field hands the lesson Father no doubt intended, all that resulted was that Damon was just as (secretly) welcome in the slave quarters as he was in his own home. Probably more.
Stephan knew that making Damon cut his own switch only added to the humiliation. Knew that Father unbuckling and removing his belt prior to whipping Damon with it merely heightened the fear. Knew that the use of a riding whip communicated that Damon was little more than an animal Father owned, controlled, punished, and disciplined.
“Why do you constantly do things that you know will upset Father?” Stefan pleaded. “You know it will only lead to another whipping, Damon.”
“He'll whip me anyway, Stefan,” Damon said sullenly. “I might as well deserve it. I might as well enjoy something worth punishing. It's better than being punished for nothing at all.”
It wasn't that Giuseppe never whipped Stefan at all. He did, only twice, very judiciously: the first time Stefan was caught in a lie, and again when Stefan uncovered and played around one of the old, dry wells which had been covered expressly so that children didn't fall into it.
It was that the countless and frequent whippings inflicted on Damon for comparatively minor infractions, or none at all, appeared so monstrously unjust to everyone except Giuseppe. It appeared so most especially to Damon and Stefan. Had Stefan not silently, secretly sponged Damon's welts with cool water while Damon shuddered and refused to cry – had Stefan not murmured quiet but steadfast disagreements with Giuseppe's disdainful pronouncements about Damon – their brotherhood could easily have splintered under the divisive pressures of Giuseppe's vastly different treatment of them.
As it was, Damon was often openly hurt by Giuseppe's favoritism of Stefan. While younger, he tried mightily to please Giuseppe, to no avail. When he was older and had given up trying to please his father, Damon was visibly resentful.
For his part, Stefan did his best to never take advantage of the already advantageous place he had in Giuseppe's heart. In fact he despised it because it drove his brother away from him through no fault of his own, though he was not defiant or aggressive enough to openly defy Giuseppe the way Damon eventually did.
When he was fifteen, probably intentionally, during a dinner party of father's with founding family members in attendance, Damon was caught in the maids' chambers with the son of another important founding family. They had their pants open. They were fondling each other and kissing.
Stefan had no idea what the punishment was for the other boy. The punishment for Damon was predictable. He was to be whipped.
But this time Father used the long whip usually reserved for slaves, rather than his belt, a switch, or the riding whip.
Stefan wasn't sure what the long whip was supposed to mean. It probably meant that Damon was as seemingly ill-bred as the slaves supposedly were. It probably meant Damon was as much Father's property as the slaves and field hands, and therefore should be as obedient and grateful for his mercy as they were.
It was a strategic mistake. Several brutal lashes of the long thick whip landed on Damon's bare back – some of which snapped around to leave welts on his chest and ribs. But Damon turned just as the next lash was about to land. He grabbed hold of the end of the whip as it landed. Welts rose where it wrapped around his arms, but he held on and hauled Father towards him.
His calm fury shocked Father motionless. Fear dawned in Father's expression. They were quickly face to face. Stefan would never forget the look on Father's face when Damon punched him.
Damon proceeded to beat father severely with his fists. He beat him down to the ground while the tobacco field hands stopped and stood motionless to watch. He screamed incoherently at Father as he beat him. Giuseppe hardly fought back, though from shock or fear, Stefan wasn't sure. Stefan was the one who dragged Damon off Giuseppe, afraid he would kill him.
It was the last whipping Giuseppe ever gave Damon. No matter. Damon was, from then on, deviant and devious, malcontent and often openly malicious. He took on the qualities of a ne'er-do-well libertine at a shockingly young age. He distrusted Father and all men like him, such as the entire Founder's Council, preferring the company of men of ill-repute, denizens of Richmond's brothels and gambling houses.
What sweetness there was left in Damon was accessible only to those who knew how to handle him: certain house slaves and field hands, the cook, Stefan.
Just when Stefan felt that his and Damon's brotherhood was healing after years of unequal treatment, Giuseppe sent him to West Point.
--------
It was so subtle, Elena didn't notice it at first. (There was a lot of other drama going on at the time to distract her, anyway.) But after a while she noticed the pattern.
She could not bring herself to ask him about it. Had he been a normal teenage boyfriend, it would have been difficult and humiliating enough to discuss with him. The fact that he was a vampire made it utterly mortifying. Elena simply couldn't go there.
But she did notice. Certain nights he sent her home with a chaste peck on the cheek – well after they had begun sleeping together. Some nights he kept her at arm's length and then made sure to walk her to her porch, rather than bringing her back to his house and his room. Even when she was feeling amorous, he would gently disengage her limbs and lips from his and find some much less intimate thing for them to do, or some way for them not to be alone together.
She realized, eventually, that he could tell when she was bleeding – or about to begin bleeding. He could even seem to tell when she was about to start, but hadn't yet – or when she already had started, but hadn't found out yet.
Far be it from Elena to ruin the illusion. She never wanted to do anything during her period anyway – ick, gross thought. But she sometimes felt friskier then than at any other time, which seemed an evil trick of nature. And sometimes she wistfully remembered Matt Donovan's much more matter-of-fact “it doesn't bother me if it doesn't bother you” attitude.
She felt terribly guilty when the occasional thought flashed by: you should have enjoyed that when you had it. Now she didn't have and even though she would never have actually acted on it, she missed having the option. Especially since it seemed with every passing year (month), her premenstrual horniness got stronger.
Damon also knew. Elena could tell. It felt like he could see right through her, through her skin and bones and into her body. His bored gaze would cut across the room to her like a laser. His eyes would bore into her belly and then meet hers. He would say nothing. But his nostrils would flare just the tiniest bit and his eyes would narrow just slightly like a cat that has seen exactly what it wants and knows it can't have it.
Elena wondered what Damon did with other human women in his past when it was that time of the month.
Then she gritted her teeth and dismissed the thought.
It lingered though, in the most embarrassing and disturbing way.
--------
One day when Elena stops by looking for Stefan, Damon answers the door in only a bath towel. She rolls her eyes as she passes him, a whiff of his clean scent and soap making just the slightest irritating knot in her stomach.
“Come in, Elena,” he says sarcastically, after she has past him and is standing in the hall. He shuts the door and leans back against it. There is only a hint of his usual smirk on his face. As usual she'd like to smack it off him, but... there's just so much bare Damon skin before her. She's speechless for a moment because she refuses to stutter and she is not flustered, she isn't.
“I take it Stefan's not here.”
“Are you sure you didn't time it just right so you knew I'd be just finishing my bath?”
She huffs. “You wish.”
He smiles. “You have no idea how labor intensive it once was to take a simple bath, do you?”
She is startled, taken aback. This was not the response she expected. “What?”
“You had to draw bucket after bucket from a well, which might or might not be close to your house,” he begins, stepping away from the door and advancing on her. “Of course, we had slaves, back in the day, so they mostly did that. But still, after Stefan ate all the slaves... it was no longer as exhausting but it was just as tedious and almost as time consuming.”
“I'm sorry, what?” Elena asks, confused.
“And then you had to heat it all up, because, let me tell you, Virginia well water in the winter – chilly, to say the least. So you're heating it all up. And then someone has to pour it into your bath, which was usually some oversized wash tub.”
“Oh,” she says, imagining all of the work involved.
“And of course, this is taking place by candlelight,” he adds, “not gaslight and most certainly not electricity. It is this difficult and tedious because there is no running water in anyone's house. There are no toilets, only chamber pots.”
Elena wrinkles her nose as Damon steps up to her. She refuses to take a step back as he gets too close, invades her personal space. H pale, muscular skin
She looks up at him. “So you enjoy the luxury of baths.”
“Are you kidding?” he smiles, and this time it is genuine and not a smirk. He slowly takes a lock of her hair between his thumb and forefinger. “I love it. I love the fixtures, I love that there is running water in the house, I love that it comes out of the tap hot, instead of having to be heated, I love my ginormous bathtub...”
“Okay, I get it: you like your baths,” she replies drily.
“It's not just that I like them. I appreciate them the way a starving man appreciates food.”
“Okay...”
--------
It is months after Jenna died when Jeremy looks at her across the kitchen table and says, “If anyone read about everything we've been through, they wouldn't believe it. It sounds like movie crap. Some unrealistic tragedy.”
She just looks at him. It's true. If Caroline and Bonnie didn't know the truth of it – if she had just moved to town the summer her parents died (and she almost died along with them) – would they have believed her tale of woe?
All Elena knows is that now, when someone has some unbelievably tragic story, she listens without judging and she believes first and doubts later, instead of the other way around. No one would make up this much horrible crap to live through. And if they did, that's just a testament to how profoundly messed up they must be, because she wouldn't wish that even on her worst enemy.
Well. Maybe on Klaus. He does such a good job of manipulating and daggering and boxing up his family, he really doesn't need any help from her.
--------
“I love you, Damon.”
“Stop saying that!”
“Why?”
“Why do you have to say it so often? Trying to convince yourself it's still true after everything I've done?”
“It is true.”
“Stop. Saying. It!”
“Why?!”
“People can say anything, Elena. You can say anything. I can say anything. Doesn't mean you mean it. Words mean nothing. Actions mean everything.”
“I think my actions have shown I love you.”
“I live in the now. The only thing that's real is now.”
“Tomorrow's not real? Yesterday wasn't real?”
“Tomorrow you might be dead, or I might be dead by association. Yesterday's mistakes are carved in stone and can't be undone. The only thing any of us ever really has is now.”
“Fine. I love you now.”
“Don't say it. Show me. Now.”
--------
“He can't help it, you know,” Damon says from the shadows by the cold, gray fireplace.
She edges closer, uncertain what he means.
He looks up at her neutrally from where he lays on the red brocade sofa, glass tumbler on the floor, his hand casually draped over it.
“He can't help what?”
“Turning you away.” Damon lifts one shoulder slightly and lets it drop.
She feels the heat of her blush start on her chest and rise to her throat, her jaw, her cheeks, her forehead. “I don't know what you're talking about.” She musters a huff of indignation.
He gaze sharpens on her, but then his eyes slit and his gaze turns away dismissively like a cat's.
“Sure you don't. Whatever.”
He lazily picks up his drink and takes a sip. He is never a sloppy drunk and tonight is no exception, though she senses he has had quite a lot of bourbon.
She can't help it, though. Damon has the most insight into Stefan of anyone else she knows, though she feels he is not to be trusted most of the time, because of his own hidden agenda. She swallows, feeling her face burn.
“What do you mean, he can't help it,” she asks quietly.
He looks back up at her, his eyes searching her face. His pupils are wide in the half light.
“The blood,” he says simply. “He's always had a hard time controlling the blood lust. If he wasn't on this silly nonfat soy vegan vampire diet, I think he could get a handle on it, but he insists on it. So he never gets any practice. And, once a month, for several days, you smell so...” Damon trails off.
Elena waits. When he says nothing, just looks at her, she prompts him. “So...?”
He shrugs as if it were self-explanatory. “Bloody.”
If it were possible, she thinks she must be purple with embarrassment by now. This is usually only possible in cartoons but she thinks she might be that rare human it could be true for.
Damon sits up to lean closer to her. In a conspiratory whisper, he smiles up at her. “Let me guess... you need it most on the days when he turns you out of his bed, am I right?”
It's not embarrassment anymore, it's just rage. He's been reading her mind or her diary or both. But then Elena fingers the necklace around her neck and realizes she's wearing vervain. So can't have been reading her mind.
And he is, like, 170 years old or something. A long time to spend getting to know women's secrets.
“Some of us aren't that squeamish, you know,” he whispers, just as she is considering (picturing) how Damon might know these things that he knows.
“You're so gross,” she says automatically.
Damon raises his hands in mock defense. “You wouldn't be the first woman to feel that way. You definitely won't be the last.” He shrugs.
She grabs the embroidered pillow that says “If you don't have anything nice to say, sit right here by me” and hits him with it several times. Damon growls in protest after the first few, then stops her with an iron grip on her wrist.
He doesn't grind her wrist bones together or hurt her, he just imprisons her wrist in his grasp.
“If you were mine, I would love – I would worship – everything about you. Not just the nice parts,” Damon murmurs, looking her in the eye. “I would never turn you away. Ever.”
He slides his hand off her wrist slowly. As he does, she has a sudden, hideously erotic vision: Damon's face between her legs, mouth bloody and smiling.
Their eyes lock. She twists her wrist out of his grasp. She wants to flee; she feels the heat in her face. But something makes her respond.
“But I'm not yours, Damon,” she says with finality.
He smiles. “Not yet.”
This time she does flee. The vision of Damon going down on her during her period torments her for weeks afterward.
--------
Damon tells her that the Stefan and Damon of 1864 lost someone they loved very much in the church fire. But Elena knows from the way he says it, that he has lost someone that he deeply cared about.
It isn't until later that she learns that he and Stefan were the Stefan and Damon of 1864, and the woman they loved and lost in the church fire was Katherine. But it doesn't matter. It is the change in his voice, the slightly strangled way it comes out, that gets under her skin. Others – those who haven't been through it themselves – would probably miss it. But Damon is more than acquainted with death and loss.
Later Damon also tells her, in an odd defense of Stefan's secretiveness, that he and Stefan lost their mother when they were young. She understands, then, how she sees lost little boys at both their cores, where others see only what they want to see in Stefan, and what Damon wants them to see.
--------
Over the decades – the century and a half, the almost two centuries – Damon has had ample time to imagine his reunion with Katherine and how they will pick up their lives where they left off in 1864. She dangled such a glittering, decadent future in front of him. He imagined the two of them on a gondola in Venice, drinking of luscious young Italian women. Imagined them walking arm in arm under an umbrella in Paris on the Champs-Elysees in the rain. Fantasized about arriving with her in London after months at sea feeding on the crew of the ship. Dreamed of seeing cities of living antiquities with Katherine on his arm: Florence and Rome, where the marble facades of ancient Roman temples and the Colosseum were torn off to build Renaissance architecture. Dreamed of visiting the gold rush cities of the American West: San Francisco. South Dakota. Alaska.
As the decades wore on, he dreamed of new scenarios. He and Katherine in Berlin in the 1920s would have been even better than Chicago during Prohibition – except for the steep inflation, but no matter. Katherine at a roulette wheel in Havana in the 1950s. A Star Trek, then Star Wars, then He had only his dreams and fantasies to kindle the flame that burned for her inside him while he bided his time. Sometimes the fantasies included Stefan. More often they did not; he wanted Katherine all to himself. He made the best of life around him while he waited for the damned comet to return, although he never permitted his heart to connect deeply with anyone, believing himself spoken for.
Finding that Katherine was never in the tomb was a shocking blow. Anna's statement that Katherine knew where he was all the time and didn't care was crushing. It didn't just cut deeply into all that Damon believed about his love for her and her love for him. It didn't just prove that she was as selfish as he'd suspected even as he couldn't help but yearn for her.
It proved that all his wondrous fantasies and imagined adventures with Katherine were the delusions of a lovesick boy, someone easily seduced and just as easily abandoned by her – as if he meant nothing.
It meant the death of the futures he had mapped out for them while waiting almost a hundred and seventy years to bring her back.
Damon was by no means chaste during the century and a half until he could bring Katherine back. But he never once let another woman into his heart, though several came knocking. Looking back on it, more than a couple of them were probably worthier than Katherine. But he turned them away, discouraged them, said he was spoken for.
All that fidelity for nothing.
These deaths – of the futures he planned for he and Katherine, of his own innocence – were not the kind of deaths he could openly eulogize and bury. Not without basely humiliating himself.
It enraged him because if it didn't, he would have wept endless, bitter tears.
--------
Elena noticed after their parents died that Jeremy was always home from school before she was. He was also almost always on the video gaming system in the living room when she got home. It was kind of annoying, the constant gunfire and explosions coming from the TV in the living room. Jenna, at least in the beginning, until she tied up loose ends in her graduate program, usually wasn't there when they both got home from school.
The few occasions when Jeremy didn't get home before her, Elena realized that she'd love to hear the annoying gunfire and explosions. Without Jenna there, without Jeremy there, Elena opened her front door and walked into her own personal ghost town.
Nothing said “they're gone and they're not coming back” like an utterly empty, silent home.
She didn't have a TV in her bedroom. She'd never been one of those kids who came home and automatically turned the TV on.
She became one.
--------
She realizes that people have suffered in trying to save her and help her. And she's sorry for that, she truly is. But Elena thinks maybe the consequences suffered by people who help her should be their first fucking clue to stop trying.
Really, Elena sometimes fumes to herself, what do Caroline and Bonnie actually have to complain about? True: Bonnie's mother is a vampire now – but she abandoned Bonnie long before she became a vampire. She still walks the earth, she can come back to be Bonnie's mother any time. She will be around for every milestone in Bonnie's life: high school graduation, college graduation, Bonnie's wedding; Bonnie will always be able to call her mother for baby advice.
Elena will get none of that. Her mother will never see her graduate, will never see her marry, will never see her children.
It's not a contest, and Elena would never want to win, but the fact remains: Caroline lost one person, her dad, in the last ten years. In less than three years, Elena has lost her mother, her father, her birth mother Isobel, her biological father John, her aunt Jenna, her uncle-to-be- Alaric, and her brother Jeremy.
If it were a contest (which it isn't and should never be), Elena would win hands down. She has spent more time in the last two years wondering if she were losing her mind from grief and loss, than most people will face in a life time.
If she fell for Damon because he was her rock when Stefan became Klaus' slave, so fucking what? She's entitled, Elena thinks. After all this, after all the unbelievable shit she's been through, she's entitled to something that makes her fucking happy.
She plans to tell Bonnie and Caroline the next time either one of them raises even a hint of objection.
She was supposed to die. At least twice, she should have been among the dead. It didn't turn out that way.
In the not-too-distant past she would have been inclined to regard that as a sign, a miracle of some kind.
Now she knows it's only (a curse) the randomness of the universe, the luck of the draw. There's nothing special about it except she's. Still. Here.
It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything.
(Secretly she knows she hasn't – yet – lost everything. She is afraid to even.
There are still two people whose loss really could drive her over the edge. For fear of making it a self-fulfilling prophecy, she won't even whisper that thought aloud to herself in the bathroom mirror. That would be like asking the universe to shit on her one more time, when it has already shown ample inclination to do so.)