A/N: I do not own
The Vampire Diaries or its characters. Thanks to Cassie (barbieklaus on tumblr) for being my beta.
She wakes up, and she's breathing. She's alive again, for the third time. Alive when she shouldn't be.
They expect her to yell, wail, and kick; but she knows better than that.
That night she decides she wouldn't finish the transition.
After it happens, she feels sick to her stomach, and she pretends she can still hear her own heart beating over the echoes of screams she can't recognize. There's blood in her mouth, blood running down her chin, and blood in her hands. She doesn't look at the dead body lying on the dirty floor as she wonders if she's Katherine yet. She decides she doesn't care anymore.
She is not wise, but she remembers her mother's comforting voice telling her as she wiped away her tears: "There's nothing you can do to change the past, honey, but you can always do something to change the future."
So she runs.
She runs away from the quivering street lights of the town that reminds her of everything she doesn't want to be reminded of. She runs from those boys of hers, whose mournful eyes she can't bare to look at anymore. She runs and she wonders about selfishness and selflessness. She runs.
It's harder at first. There are tears on her cheeks as she drains the fifth blood bag she stole from the hospital of the town she happened to be in. And she's alone.
She hasn't killed anyone since her escape, but the sickening feeling in the pit of her stomach won't go away.
Stefan doesn't look for her.
Damon finds her two months later somewhere in the state of New Mexico. She writes down her adoptive mother's first name on the dotted line, she's nineteen if someone asks, and she doesn't believe in vampires.
He stays in a motel fifteen minutes away from her apartment. She sees him out of the corner of her eye, walking across the street, in the rearview mirror of her car. They don't talk; he doesn't ask her to come back, and she pretends he's not there. So he just waits, he's always been good at that.
"Stop it, Damon." She says one day as he walks by her on an empty street. Her voice doesn't tremble because she's Katherine after all.
"Stop what?"
She squints her eyes, and it's sweet seventeen-year-old human Elena all over again. And there's a moment when he doesn't feel miles away from the deadly town they left behind, from the slaps and almost punches, from I hate you and I like you know.
"I can't" he says after a moment, because he's still Damon after all.
Most days it goes like this:
He enters her apartment early in the morning without knocking or invitation. He doesn't need any. He wakes her up as she groans and tells him he's annoying and to go away. He never does.
And because they're both self-destructive, they like to pretend they're normal. Sometimes they stay at home, watching crappy television Elena still likes, and Damon claims to loathe.
Occasionally she would laugh at his jokes, and he would mentally pat himself in the back. He tries not to think about how pathetic he is when it comes to women (when it comes to her).
She doesn't tell him about the silent mornings, afternoons and evening, but mostly nights, she almost wished he, Stefan, someone, would find her and force her to go back home. He knows she doesn't need to.
They never address anything Mystic Falls related, because it's Damon and Elena, and avoiding subjects it's their thing.
Other days he finds his way to her mouth, and buries himself deep into her against the living room wall, the kitchen table, the couch, the wet floor.
It usually starts with a fight over the most ridiculous things. It's always rough and raw at the beginning, gentle in between, heart-crushing at the end, and nothing like Elena imagined it to be in her human days.
Sometimes there's broken furniture. Every time he whispers her name like a prayer.
She's never submissive. She's impatient, and she claws. There are fangs, veiny big brown eyes, and drops of blood. But she's still Elena.
He doesn't say he loves her and she's glad, because it scares her she might say something, like I love you too, It's always going to be you, Please— Damon.
They never talk about it.
He never goes back to the motel.
They're sitting on the couch one morning, Damon lazily changing TV channels after a make out session that led to nothing else because the eggs were burning. They end up watching Animal Planet when Damon tells her a shark joke that wasn't funny enough to make her laugh.
That makes her think about that day, when she was a kid, and her parents took her and Jeremy to the aquarium on summer vacation. There were sand tiger sharks and her four-year-old brother threw a fit because they told him he couldn't have one as a pet. She doesn't remember much about it, only that her father would talk about it every time when their relatives were in town.
She misses Jeremy the most.
After Damon's arrival, he convinced her to call Jeremy; he said it would help her to control the unfamiliar emotions that haunt her since she completed the transition. They talk at least twice a week, and she cries every time after hanging up.
Caroline calls two weeks later, she tells her about how much she misses her and how James Millers and Cassie Young broke up last week in front of the entire school. There are tears and laughter in Caroline's voice, and Elena realizes some things haven't changed at all.
After an hour of gossip, Caroline tells her Bonnie is next to her and wants to say hi. And it's the happiest Elena's been since there are fangs too big for her mouth when she smiles.
She hears Damon talking with Stefan over the phone when he thought she was sleeping.
She's furious as he tells her Stefan's been calling every day just to check up on her. He's hurting as he says something about her being stupid and still in love. They are both defeated as she slaps him across the face.
She locks her bedroom door that night.
The next morning is a mess of tangled limbs, hungry mouths, and husky whispers. (I'm sorry, I promise, I lo— Me too.)
"Take me home" she says against his neck.
So he does.