GONE HEART
By the light of the moon
She woke up with a startle.
The obscurity had been pitch dark, the air so thick it was impossible for it to flow freely in her lungs. The harbinger of some kind of evil draining the life out of her rendered her breaths erratic and hard to take.
.
The more she had tried to see, the more her eyes had been enraptured in a kaleidoscope of only one color: pitch black.
Her head had spun, the ground under her feet had lacked. The oxygen had been heavy, so oppressive to draw her in the deep meanders of the nothingness.
Elena tried to inhale as much fresh air as her body could master, but even while awake there seemed to be left overs of that horrific, nonsense dream.
.
She let her eyes wander around, her ears listen.
The only thing that sounded off was the noise her heartbeat released in her chest.
.
The rest of her bedroom was silent; everything in it was at its place, as it always had been ever since she was a little girl.
Glancing at the window, the girl noticed it was closed.
Sure, the dream had been utterly realistic. And, thinking straight, what wasn't probably helping had been the consumed air and the tremendous amount of coffee ingested over the past week.
.
When she let the cool September breeze blew in the room, Elena felt chills run down her spine, almost like an electric impulse of some kind of supernatural force.
Yet her mind recognized it as her personal relief. It had grown to feel like it lately.
Although it rendered her body as cold as the weather outside.
.
The croak of a crow broke the apparent quiet of the night, drawing her back to Earth. Its huge wings ripped the distant full moon in half and shadowed the room for a split second.
Just like that, Elena knew it was just the beginning.
Again.
/-/-/
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"Morning, Jer" she greeted her brother once down the stairs, the following morning.
The teenage was everything but an early bird kind of person. Elena knew it well.
.
That was why the first thing she did once stepped in the kitchen was turn on the coffee machine.
The kid merely hinted a sign of greeting with his chin, still munching on his usual cereals.
It only had been two weeks after Aunt Jenna's death.
And uncle John's.
.
Ever since then everything had seemed to start over again.
There had been the mourning, the fears, and then a promise of a new beginning.
The latter had seemed the most unrealistic.
.
.
Katherine had been lurking around since the doppelganger curse had served its purpose, and Klaus had run off somewhere to do God knows what. That meant leaving ol' Miss Petrova on vacation right in Mystic Falls.
Damon had disappeared because of the huge weight on his shoulders called "guilt". He had tried to exchange his life in exchange for Jenna's , but the hybrid had refused the offer, choosing rather the most dramatic effect of the.. How had he called it? The "symmetry of three women".
How poetic.
.
Then Elena had blamed Damon for feeding her with vampire blood. She was going to wake as a one of them, hadn't it been for uncle John who had for once had a change of heart and sacrificed himself for her daughter.
Still it didn't change the fact that the control Damon had tried to have over Elena's life was utterly wicked and egoistic.
.
"I will always choose you"
Those words echoed in her mind as a reminder of his absence.
How could he still manage to make her feel like the guilty one even though they were miles apart?
She feared the influence he had started to have over her, when all she had to do to make her life simpler was let go.
But she cared about him. She owed it to him to assure there were no hard feelings for anything that had happened, or she couldn't have been able to deal with it.
Blame it on her righteous self…
.
There had been no trace of Damon Salvatore as far as Elena had been aware of.
No texts, no phone calls, no nothing. It would have made her think he had been ripped to shreds by wolves if it hadn't been for their last conversation (or better yet, argument) before his "departure".
Ever since that night he had made sure the carry-on memory left of their friendship was embellished with resentment, frustration... awfulness.
She still remembered it. How they had left things off..
.
.
"You know he wouldn't want to see you get hurt, why are you doing this?" she had blurted out, almost raging.
Why doubt Stefan's brotherly love for him? Why would he underestimate himself so much to doubt even a family bond so deep? Why leave the only rational proof that was left on this Earth that could actually save him from himself?
Damon was giving her his back, face pointed up in the sky, towards the same clarity of the big, full moon.
The damned reminder of his goodbye.
"Damon, talk to me!" she had tried. Watching him shift uncomfortably with his weight almost gave her hope for some sort of answer.
"Fine!" she uttered. "Keep pushing people away." Elena raised her hands to the sky, pacing back in her bedroom. Tears were beginning to push their way out of her eyes, but she wouldn't let it.
Crying now would have meant weeping for everything happened in the past 24 hours.
She was already a good mess as it was.
.
"You will end up alone. And it will be because of you!" she burst out, frustration finally finding an easy outlet with his doings.
Then he turned, agonizingly slow, surprised by the tenacity in her voice.
She was pure fire.
His eyes announced something that was soon meant to be mirrored in her deep gaze.
Loss.
.
"I already have".
And with that, he was gone.
.
.
.
"..or not?" Jeremy studied her for what seemed a good bunch of seconds.
"What? Sorry, I spaced" was her reluctant reply.
Her brother tried to shrug it off and to act cool about it.
In the past two weeks, sometimes –most of the times- it was as if her sister was living on another planet.
.
It was as though he was seeing the ghost of her.
.
Absent, easily distracted, utterly neutral about anything that was said to her.
" I asked if you wanted a ride to school" he pretended not to show interest in her answer, playing
with some left overs in his bowl.
He added more milk, to then gently offer "Can I pour you some?"
.
"No" was her simple reply.
He stared, puzzled. "What no?"
"Uh" she got near the counter, pouring herself the usual cup of coffee. "No to both. I can drive, got my own car."
"They're gonna arrest you for drug addictions."
"What?" Elena stared puzzled at her brother. What was he implying?
"Well, don't you know that coffee is actually considered like a drug if exceeded with the suggested amounts?" He smiled. "'Lena, you really should have something to eat."
If only had he known...
.
The girl adverted her brother's concern.
"You're right Jer." She got near him to pat his shoulder with affection. He didn't deserve any more problems. "I promise I will cook us dinner tonight."
.
And with that promise, she headed to the Boarding House.
/-/-/
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Elena parked her car right in front the main porch at the mansion.
While she approached the door she realized how quiet it all seemed, like as to accentuate some coolness before the storm.
.
She tried to brush off her brain whatever bad influence the past night's experience had given her, trying to convince herself it was only some kind of twisted way her body was reacting to so many nearly death adventures that had been piling up lately.
Well, at least her doppelganger resume was going to be full.
.
.
.
"Stefan?" she called out once stepped in the house.
The freezing splashes of water hit his face hard enough to be perceived as slaps.
The whole night, he had been sleepless.
Something was off and Stefan knew it. He could sense it, feel it.
Katherine had stuck around, being overly bearable, considering her standards.
And if he knew the manipulative woman well enough, it couldn't just be her way of trying to enjoy her (momentary) freedom from Klaus.
.
She so reminded him of the Katherine he once knew.
It appeared too fiction-like to be true, now didn't it?
Maybe this was it, and he was being his usual paranoid self.
Perhaps it wasn't the older Petrova he was worried about.
.
It was Elena.
She had been spiraling ever since Jenna's death. And John's.
It had only been a couple weeks and Damon being gone didn't help the twelve steps to "walking on sunshine" goal.
She was only seventeen and yet she had had to face the death of almost her entire family in the last year span.
Sooner or later her traumatized unconscious would have had to catch up with her.
.
This led again to the thought of his former lover.
Stefan knew about Katherine's past and the curse that had been probably placed to torment the doppelgangers' chances to lead a happy and fulfilling existence
As much as he hated to admit it, Damon played a big part in Elena's life.
And again, he reconsidered.
.
Maybe it was also his brother he was being concerned about.
Taking a deep breath, he stepped out of the shower ready to face a new day.
.
He was going to find his brother, kick his ass for bailing on him and try to make things right for once.
The eldest Salvatore could put off his world trip to later.
There were more important matters to handle now.
.
Hearing the two identical voices from downstairs had Stefan rush to the lower story.
"Come on. We both know he ran off because of you. He can't be that much of a masochist, now, can he?"
Katherine's mischievous voice echoed in the parlor, and Stefan stopped in his tracks by the stairs.
.
The silence was so loud anyone could have recognized his own heartbeat.
.
"You made him this way. You manipulated him, you used him to your own sick needs." Elena accused. "So if you want to blame someone, it's on you."
"Oh my. Someone is on self description mode here."
The lack of answers had Stefan set his foot in the room before anyone could get hurt.
And by anyone he meant the human seventeen year old with the Buffy urges, as Damon liked to describe her.
.
"Good morning Elena" he greeted her, not sure to mentally label her as his "girlfriend".
After what happened with her family, the two had grown apart, some kind of thick wall had been raised and Stefan could see her get further and further from her usual self.
He tried to focus.
.
The two girls turned, two reactions differently earned.
Katherine quickly ignored the exchange, heading to the bar table to get something strong to prepare herself for some fluffy vision.
.
"Have you called Alaric?" Elena asked, while the brunette from the other side of the room froze dead in her tracks.
"Yes." The history teacher walked in dramatically, no better timing needed, to then reply. "let's get this search party started."
The three exchanged one look of concern.
.
Elena inhaled, then nodded.
"Let's find Damon."