Title: The Calm Abyss
Author: Roguie/ Danae Bowen/ SunSpecOps
Fandom: The Vampire Diaries
Characters: Damon/ Elena
Rating: T
Spoilers: Up to and including random speculation for 4x19 - Pictures of You
Summary: Sometimes even the calm of having no emotion becomes an abyss of its own. Tonight they should have danced like no one was watching, only when one has lost everything and walls begin to fall, it isn't always a pleasant journey to the end.
Disclaimer: I do not own the Vampire Diaries, I just like to borrow the characters and mutate their inner voices. What can I say? It's fun. My house is small, my car is useless and my dogs are pains in the arse, but they're all I have.
A/N: First time playing in the Damon/ Elena sandbox, but they're just too juicy to let pass without comment. My muse has basically cracked out on them, so, guaranteed there will be more to come.
~~~E~~~
A part of her recognized the fact that she should be curled up on the floor somewhere dark, screaming in agony for all she'd lost. She knew this wasn't right, this perk, this escape from reality. Her heart should be in tatters, her mind lost in grief, her soul drowned in absolute horror, but it was so easy to forget it all in the calm Damon had gifted upon her.
A tiny, quiet-voiced whimper of her heart startled painfully at the thought of the older Salvatore brother, but was quickly silenced and locked far away. She should care that he sacrificed everything for her, his heart, his life, their love, but she couldn't bring herself to give a single solitary damn. She felt fine. It was Damon that suffered, Damon whose pathetic excuse for a heart struggled to beat in even time as she slipped her tongue past the lips of a very startled boy she'd known her entire life. Mortal life anyway. She danced with them all, fed on the sweetest, and lingered the longest with the younger Salvatore brother, the one whose heart she'd intentionally broken when emotion ruled her every decision.
How she lingered with him, lips brushing across his jaw, fingers dancing across his powerful chest, dead lungs holding a false breath, the beat of two aged hearts filling her senses, one caught in the throws of arousal, one faltering as her every move carved away a new sliver of flesh as sure as diamond cut through glass.
Elena's fingers were a scalpel, cutting past dead flesh into organs that long should have rotted, and though she left not a mark on either man, the consequences were long reaching. One damaged heart slowed to a steady rhythm as emotions were steeled against her and she found her hands empty of the man who'd just occupied them. Instead, she stood alone on the thriving dance floor as one brother walked to the next.
The second damaged heart struggled painfully, its beat heavy and faltered, agony written on its owner's face, an abyss of misery spreading through crystal eyes, misery that evolved into anger, anger that morphed into hot hatred.
The stuttered beat of his broken heart slowly faded, the organ suffering a necessary death, protecting his mind from the pain that came with the realization he'd made her exactly the opposite of what he'd fallen in love with in the first place.
The distance between Elena and her friends grew to an insurmountable difference as they all came to the same conclusion. The doppelganger curse would never change. Elena was gone and in her shell there existed only a paler, weaker copy of whom she'd been born to replace.
If asked, this Elena would never admit it, but in the visible carved out wake of her sudden loneliness, her own heart faltered. Just for a single millisecond, a span of time no human would recognize as having passed, but a beat was missed and in that millisecond she was reminded of the loyalty of her friends who'd lost so very much in the years she'd spent finding herself. She was reminded of the endless depths of adoration that had once filled Damon's gaze upon her, his heartbreaking admission of love for her that she hadn't been free to return, and he hadn't been free to allow her to remember. He'd offered his life in exchange for Jenna's, tried desperately to spare her the pain of loss. She thought of his desperate need to keep her alive because he couldn't bear to draw a single breath in a world she'd abandoned.
She knew with absolute clarity, in that millisecond, that she'd been every single solitary drop of purity that Damon possessed. What Katherine had stripped from his soul, Elena had returned, and now the cycle was repeating.
A whimpering cry of horror begged to fly past her lips, the purity she'd thought she'd lost choking her with her own horrors. Miranda and Grayson. Jenna and Alaric. John and Jeremy.
Grief, loneliness, rage and despair threatened to drown her again, her feet pulling her to Damon before her mind could catch up. She was falling, she was dying, she needed his arms or his stake, and as the pain spread its visceral tendrils around her heart, she realized for that simple, brief moment in time, she didn't care which.
Still, the moment passed as all moments do, and by the time she reached Damon, her fingers gripping his arm, the hatred in his eyes cruelly shifting to unguarded hope, none of it mattered.
"I feel nothing for you, Damon."
She couldn't say where the words came from, how she knew the perfect phrase to slaughter what was left of his hope, of his heart, but they entered the space between them without remorse and the last lingering vestige of connection between them shattered without a sound.
He released an exaggerated sigh, tipping his drink to his lips as he winked in her general direction before turning to scan the crowd, paying particular attention to a small group of pretty girls gathered in a distant corner.
"Well, that's an absolute relief, Gilbert. Saves me spending years wondering when you'd turn back on your little judgy innocent lamb eyes and try to save me from what we so obviously are." At her hesitantly startled expression, his grin grew wider, and a distinctly evil glimmer came to life in his eyes. "Oh, don't give me that look, Elena, not even Katherine could make me believe anything I said surprised her, and you, my dear, are nowhere near as skilled as your other self. So, unless you'd care to join me in the delectable meal that group of very drunk girls are about to offer me, why don't you toddle off? I'm sure you can find some other corner of town where blood needs drinking or necks need snapping, whatever it is you do for fun these days."
He offered her one last wicked wink and grin before lifting his glass towards the group in the corner and began to dance slowly towards them.
"Don't wait up, Kat…" His face alighted with false surprise as he drew a finger to his lips in an exaggerated attempt to stop the rest of the name from slipping past, offering her an absolutely unsheepish grin and a shrug. "My bad, Elena." His laugh was forced as he shook his head and only her vampire hearing was able to pick up his last words. "But if the designer jacket fits…"
She couldn't feel the bite of his remarks, wouldn't feel the guilt, shock or sorrow he once would have caused. She tried not to notice the circle of emptiness that surrounded her as her friends danced and drank the night away, leaving her all but forgotten in a corner. For a brief moment she considered compelling someone into dancing with her before the comparisons Damon would draw between her and Rebekah gave her pause.
She stormed out of the dance, her head held high, no sign on the outside that she wanted nothing more than to scream at the top of her lungs with frustration. This wasn't how anything was supposed to be. She wasn't supposed to be alone.
Breaking away from the group of girls, Damon moved to stand beside his brother and together they watched Elena storm off into the night.
"Huh. You were right. She's more like Katherine than we'd initially thought." Damon cringed quietly. "When she comes back, do a guy a favor and don't tell her I said that. It's kind of like comparing a girl to her mother… it never goes well."
"Are you ready to deal with the consequences of her choices, Damon? She's done things now that she can't take back."
"We'll get through it. I'll… compel Dr. Phil to talk to her if necessary."
"And the consequences of the sire bond?"
Damon forced a blasé tone to his voice, his eyes rolling as if in boredom. "If you love something set it free, if it doesn't come back, blah blah, killing spree, all better. Happy now, brother?"
"Hmm."
They should all be accustomed to the dangerous game they referred to as life, by now. Nothing ever came as a surprise, anymore. They would fight, someone would die, and when the sun came up, Elena would be in a Salvatore bed. It's just the way the story went these days.
Only this time, no one was eager to reach the last page.
~~~Fin~~~