Disclaimer: The characters aren't mine, nor am I profiting from this.
Notes: Title from Macbeth.
There's water everywhere, and it's swallowing her whole. Beneath the river's surface, time and light both slow down. Mom is twisting and struggling against the strangling seatbelt, reaching for her. Dad is fighting to open a door against the pressure, or at least break a window. Elena is frozen while her life dissolves around her.
The car is completely submerged. There's no air left. Jagged, primal terror rips through the bright haze of adrenaline and alcohol. The last thing she can remember thinking is Oh God, I'm going to die.
When she wakes up in the hospital the next morning, Elena wishes she'd been right.
/
When Elena was little, Jenna used to take her on history walks around Mystic Falls. Jenna would've been about Elena's age at the time, and she never really knew what to do with kids, but she tried so hard. She taught Elena all of the town's secrets that her mom and the Council had forgotten: the shallow cave behind the falls that was too small for grown-ups, the best climbing trees, the clearings with the most fireflies. Jenna always ended her tours in the town cemetery, at the Gilbert plot. "It's important to know your history, Elena," she'd say.
Elena is too old for fireflies now, but she still visits the cemetery. There's a lot of new history there—five graves' worth, to be exact. She leaves a red rose on each one, a livid drop of blood on the bare earth. When it rains, she can taste the familiar copper tang on the back of her tongue. She pulls her hood up and is surprised to find that her hands aren't dripping scarlet.
Maybe it's true that she's no Katherine, but they both know how to leave a trail of dead behind them.
/
Stefan is a stranger. He's a burnt-out cinder of his former self, and whatever love he had for her has been sublimated into rage against Klaus. She's just a weapon in his war now. The thought twists her gut, makes her feel sick. She still dreams about him, the old Stefan: dreams of light susurrating on water and I love you, Elena and his face in the dark. When she wakes, her hand goes to her throat, searching for the necklace he gave her, but it's not there anymore. Neither is he. Everything she touches disappears.
Stefan is a river, and she lets him bear her out to sea.
/
Jeremy's gone now. She and Alaric still share the house, carrying on with their private griefs and trying desperately to avoid any more. Together they orbit a sun that's no longer there.
She likes to imagine him in Denver, going to a school within view of the mountains, getting A's and accolades and dates with girls who are pretty and kind and have never seen a vampire. She imagines him happy, because she has to.
Sometimes when the afternoon light hits the porch just right, she can still see the faint russet stains.
/
She hates bridges.
They drive west across a bridge over the Mississippi River, in a Camaro the bled-out blue color of the sea in winter, and she tries not to think about how it would feel to have the water rise up and close over them without even a scar.
Her hands clench at her sides, and she tries to concentrate on the music playing on the stereo. She can feel Damon shift his attention from the road and onto her. His hand hovers over the stick shift before his fingertips land tentatively on her knuckles, drift down to the tendons that are standing out like ridges on a seashell. "Are you—" he starts, and she edges away from his touch, rearranges herself into a semblance of control.
"I'm fine," she parries. He pulls back his hand and grips the steering wheel so tightly she can hear the worn leather creak. She watches his hands until the car is back on solid ground. She has to clamp down on the sudden urge to touch him, to reach down inside him and click all the broken pieces into place like an armature. She tucks her transgressive hands under her thighs and looks the other way.
When she touches him, she can hear the water rushing in her ears.
/
Alaric is a casualty of war, and the last parent she had left. He fell in the best Southern tradition: in the service of a lost cause. After his funeral, she finds Jeremy going through Alaric's weapons stash, shoulders impossibly broad and hunched against the weight of burdens he never should have had to bear. His eyes are dry, and empty in a way that is worse than weeping, but they start to fill when he looks at her. "I swear I'll take care of you," he chokes, and her own throat closes up so quickly that she has to fight to swallow. She holds onto him and tells him how sorry she is for everything, and soon she's not sure who's really supporting whom anymore.
/
There's water everywhere, and it's swallowing her whole. She lets it.
The second time she drowns, she does it right. This time, the driver will live. This time, no one will die in her place. Stefan pulls Matt out of the truck at her insistence, a fallen angel ascending into the light, and Elena lets the currents buoy her up like Ophelia. The last thing she can remember thinking, with her final release of held breath, is I'm really going to die this time.
When she wakes up in the morgue, Damon's blood curling ink-black through her veins, Elena wishes she'd been right.