A/N: A bit late, but I would like to wish you all a Very Happy New Year! :):):) May 2015 be a thoroughly beautiful year for you! :):):)
& Just like that, there are only seven days left until TVD returns! YAY. I was actually going to write a post-6x10 fic, but then I realized that I didn't really feel like dealing with Kai right now... or too much plot for that matter lol So here is just a little DE-only story to celebrate the fact that TVD has been renewed for S7! ;)
Summary: Post-6x07. You can forget your past... but not your future. One-Shot. Damon/Elena
Disclaimer: The Vampire Diaries belongs to L.J. Smith & CW.
Chance of Rain
It's 3 am and she can't sleep. Tossing and turning doesn't help, lying still is impossible.
"I'd rather spend every moment in agony than erase the memory of you."
She blames the rain.
Staring at the dark window of her dorm room, Elena tucks a pillow under her cheek. She watches raindrops collide noisily with the glass, blurring the view outside, making the moon look like a frozen in time falling star.
She just wants to know what happened that night. She just wants to know the ending to that... rain story. It's just her curiosity getting the best of her. What else could it be?
Slowly, she turns her head to look at the box in the corner, because as frightening as the box is, it seems to know all the answers.
Pushing the duvet off her, Elena tiptoes barefooted to the box and looks into it. How strange, she thinks drawing a shaky breath, to hide the truth in a box and yet make the whole world nothing more than a hiding place.
The room is dark and the moonlight too faint, but she has everything that the box contains memorized. She doesn't need any light to see the photographs, his eyes, her smile, the black shirt... his? hers? Her own letter to herself. Learned by heart. Terrifying.
A lightning strikes in the distance and Elena shudders, her fingernails digging into the cover of her one page long diary.
She walks up to the window and in the lights of the tempest brightening her window for a split second she can see her tears on the other side of the glass, each tear a tiny mirror to every raindrop outside.
When the next lightning crosses the sky she turns around and dashes out of the room, across the hallway, outside. Half-way through the parking lot she realizes she doesn't need a car.
She swallows raindrops every time she tries to breathe while blurring across the distance, roads and trees flickering on her left, on her right, like snapshots.
It feels like drowning and yet not quite.
She stops a few times to look up.
It's like a giant photo booth, all that.
xxxdelenaxxx
Damon's so stunned he doesn't know what to say long before Elena says, still trying to catch her breath.
"I want to know how the story ends."
He just continues staring at her.
"It started to rain... and then?"
She's barefooted, hardly dressed, her rain-drenched hair is clinging to her cheeks. He should drag her in, tuck her in blankets by the fireplace and kiss her hands until they were warm again, but somehow he steps through the door instead. Slowly, he walks up to her, straight into the rain, his eyes never leaving her face.
"I already told you," he says quietly, just to make the conversation last, because he's only dreaming it all up on another sleepless night after coming back to life only to discover that he died.
Elena shakes her head. "You didn't tell me the real ending. I want to know what really happened. It started to rain, you took my hand... and then what?"
She sounds so impatient, looks so irrationally upset and he starts thinking that maybe this is not a dream, after all.
He tries to blink the rain out of his eyes, but it keeps pouring down in torrents obscuring his vision, obscuring everything around them and yet this is the most transparent of nights and he can see her face as clearly as he did in the fog that night when they met, underwater that morning when they jumped off the Wickery Bridge.
All of a sudden Elena grabs his hands and stubbornly repeats the question, her voice trembling, half-pleading, half-angry.
"It started to rain and then what, Damon? I need to know how it ends!"
Damon squeezes her hands in his. "It doesn't," he breathes out... because it's true; pulls her into his arms... because if it's not a dream this moment may disperse and he's not going to let her disperse with it.
"What do you mean?" She looks sincerely perplexed and he smiles through the rain, because she may not know or remember why, but she's standing with him in the rain right now and her lips are inches away from his and this story that she wants to hear? There is no end to it.
He places his hands on either side of Elena's face, his eyes boring into hers with intensity that in the last couple of days she's found everything from annoying to frightening, but somehow now it ignites fire and tranquility and she isn't quite sure anymore if she could even breathe without it.
I's almost like a magical trick. The more she's looking into his eyes the clearer everything becomes and it feels like the rain's tearing down layers of shadows that's been surrounding her for as long as she doesn't remember.
"I love you, Elena."
The words drift to her from everywhere. They are beautiful. They are terrifying. They are safe. They smile at her.
But this part she knows. That's not what she's asking and so it doesn't make a lot of sense that he's saying the words like he's giving her some kind of an ultimate answer. She just wants him to tell her how that memory ends. They drove to the middle of nowhere. To look at the stars. It started to rain. He took her hands in his. And then...
Very slowly, Elena wrinkles her forehead, her eyes searching his. It must just be her too vivid imagination painting silver and blue photographs in her head.
It started to rain-
That's all she knows. She's just creating images to go along with his words, but then he kisses her and for a few moments she doesn't know if it's the past or the present or both or more. All she knows is that he's kissing her and it's a new story, it's an ancient story and he's a stranger and she's known him forever.
It is raining and it's never going to stop.
The thunderstorm is roaring above them, dealing out lightnings, but she can't see anything, can't hear anything. She's thrown into the stars, the sky's burning with words and images and feelings that are starting to show like it's a neverending dawn.
She was doing it before all wrong.
It wasn't memories that could bring back love.
It was love.
"Elena?" Damon's reaching out for her in dismay, catching her before she collapses to the ground overtaken by tears that are rushing down her face faster than the rain.
Wincing and shaking her head she screams and he's holding her, so worried, trying to understand what's happening, but when her eyes meet his, the world stills, because it's not sadness or despair or fear in her eyes that he sees – it's grief, the memory of which surges through her for the last time before she parts with it.
"She loved you... too much." Damon looks at her and feels like only now he understands.
Elena's hands fly to his face, so gentle, so rough at the same time. Because he's coming back, right now.
She's grinning through her tears, pressing feverish, erratic kisses all over his face. And when he gathers her back into his arms, her arms lock around him so hard that he smiles into her hair more than he had on that first eternal rainy night.
"I love you, Damon."
She whispers the words against his lips and they kiss endlessly and smile and it's May 11th, at last.