No Remedy for Memory
Rating: PG-13/T
Genre: Romance/Drama
Summary: Fill for lynzie914's prompt on the TVD comment fic meme, "Sage/Finn - loving you forever, can't be wrong." An elaboration on the first two scenes we see of Finn and Sage in 3.18.
Author's Note: I HAD TO DO IT. I just recently discovered this song, and I LOVE it. I often associate certain songs with certain pairings, and THIS ONE- This one just SCREAMED "Finn/Sage".
Disclaimer: I don't own The Vampire Diaries. It belongs to L.J. Smith/The CW. The title comes from Lana Del Rey's song "Dark Paradise".
()()
Finn was not having the best of days.
He had hoped that by stonewalling Klaus that his little brother would just leave him be. He had hoped that his mother, in all of her cleverness, would have by now found a way to work around the fact that most of her power was gone and finally succeed in killing him and his siblings. Because really, what else did he have to look forward to in his miserable existence now?
"Oh yeah, that's right, you've got a death-wish." Klaus had rolled his eyes. "Fine. Pathetic, but fine. The thing is, I'm not going to let you take the rest of us down with you." Finn had forgotten just how strong Klaus was right up until he'd been slammed into a wall and thrown to the ground, and then- literally- dragged back to Mystic Falls.
Upon being thrown into the parlor of the mansion, Finn was starting to get the idea that this wasn't going to be easy to get out of. Klaus was strong enough on his own as a hybrid, and he had Rebekah backing him up. Hell, he had all of their siblings backing him up. They didn't want to die.
"You can't force me to help you." Finn said, because he would try to resist at the very least.
Klaus's mocking smirk said that he would be more than willing to prove him wrong. "Oh, I most likely could," He said, "But why force when I can persuade?" He motioned towards the staircase behind them with his hand, the same side their mother had stood on the night of the ball when she'd given the toast.
If the question had been posed to him before, Finn would have been highly skeptical towards the idea that Klaus could "persuade" him to do anything. He would have been hard pressed to imagine Klaus possessing anything that Finn would want.
Then Sage came down the steps.
At first, Finn didn't recognize her. Her hair was a tint or two darker, quite a bit shorter as well. When she moved, he saw a glint of something beneath her hair- earrings. And she was wearing pants and a shirt and jacket and boots, all black. He wasn't certain he'd ever seen her in all black before (when they were last together, it was a color restricted to mourning).
Her smile was spreading but tentative, like after all the years she thought maybe he might have forgotten about her.
"Hello, Finn."
Her appearance was so unexpected that Finn's mind took a few seconds to catch up with what his senses were telling him. When he was certain that, no, his eyes were not fooling him, yes, it was her standing on the steps, he felt winded.
"…Sage."
Her smile brightened instantly. Sage quickened her pace down the steps as Finn stood up and walked over, stumbling a bit initially from the rough treatment his brother and sister had given him, and when she reached the bottom she threw her arms around his shoulders.
It was a mix of old and new, familiar and unfamiliar, because while she smelled different he could still detect a bit of it that was just the same as it had been all those centuries ago. And when he wrapped his arms around her waist, all of her curves felt exactly the same, though the material covering them was noticeably different, and she was just as warm and inviting.
When they pulled back a bit, Sage was smiling radiantly, her hands sliding from his shoulders to his neck to his chest. For the first time in all of the time that he'd known her, she looked speechless.
"I've never seen you without words before, Sage." He said, and he realized that he was grinning. He hadn't smiled like this in… So long. Too long.
Sage shook her head. "I… Don't know what to say." She paused. "No, I do- I missed you." Her voice cracked a bit. "I missed you so much." Finn leaned forward and kissed her briefly, chastely.
"I missed you too." And then, much like her, he didn't know what else to say. He picked up one hand from her waist and curled it into her hair. It was straighter now, too. "Your hair is different." Sage laughed, and oh, he'd missed that laugh. He hadn't even realized how much until now.
"My hair's different? Have you looked in a mirror lately?"
"Hate to break up the love-fest," Klaus interrupted, and when Finn turned around he saw that his younger brother was eyeing them dryly, looking close to rolling his eyes. Rebekah, it seemed, had disappeared without them noticing. "But you-" He pointed to Sage, "-have an hour. I suggest you make it count." He gave a little wave and strolled to the door, stepping outside and leaving them alone.
Finn looked after him, and then slowly turned back to Sage. "What did he mean by that?" He inquired darkly, knowing that no alliance struck with Klaus could be a good one. Sage wasn't smiling anymore, lips settled into a firm line. It softened when she looked back to him.
"Come take a walk with me."
()()
For a moment, he could almost pretend like nothing had changed.
They'd taken many walks like this in the forest when they were human. As it was, they'd chosen the forest so as to not be scrutinized by the rest of the village, in particular Finn's family; but now no one knew them, and no one cared. They could walk down the street, past dozens of people who they both knew did not and would not honestly give a damn who they were and what they had.
It was for that reason that Finn had reached out and entwined his arm with Sage's, the way they had when they'd returned to the old world and no one knew that they weren't married, and therefore could not react with the appropriate amount of scandalized offense.
Everything seemed brighter. The haze of depression and resignation that Finn had lived under since getting out of his coffin had evaporated. Sage was one of those people that, as your friend, could brighten your day just with her presence (and as your enemy, she could easily make your life a living hell). She was and always had been an amazing woman, and he had never understood why his siblings had been so opposed to her.
"Things have certainly changed, haven't they?" He didn't know if she'd been back to Mystic Falls between now and their initial departure a thousand years prior. Sage grinned.
"Oh, you have no idea. Wait until I tell you what the eighties were like, and then you'll- You meant here." Finn chuckled.
"Yes, here. Our home."
Sage was quiet for a moment. "I've had a lot of homes over the last thousand years." Finn became somber again.
He had not wanted to turn Sage. When his mother was dead, his father appeared guilty, his siblings disappeared, half the village slaughtered, the other half fleeing back to the old world and a remaining spattering of werewolves still lurking about, Finn had been most concerned with getting Sage to leave with the remaining half of the village. He wanted her to go to the old world, to live and never look back. He had wanted her to be as happy as she could- even if that meant she had to be away from him.
But Sage wouldn't have it. "I'm not going anywhere without you." She'd said, and she'd set her jaw in that way that clearly stated 'I will not be moved'. She'd bluntly told him that if he tried to shake her, she would track him down every single time. "I'll not be abandoned just because you seem think you're some kind of dangerous monster." She'd said.
"I am a monster." Finn had replied.
"You are Finn." Sage had insisted. "You just happen to burn in the sun and require the blood of others to survive." The woman could justify anything if she was determined enough. "I want to stay with you. As long as I can."
And even after he'd turned her, what should have been a millennium together ended up being only a single century. Maybe a little more than that.
The difficult, looming question was this: What exactly did they have left? Finn had been unconscious for the last nine-hundred years, and so while everything was more than a bit different, he barely felt like any time had passed at all. But what about Sage? She had had all of those centuries to grieve his absence and move on. Of course she must have missed him, hence the warm welcome he'd received at the manor, but did she really still love him? Or was this simply her trying to let him down gently, out of respect for what they'd once had?
Sage led him to the park in the center of town before delicately untwining her arm from his and turning to face him, walking backwards a bit. "So can you guess why I dragged you out here?"
Finn surveyed the area carefully and tried to impose twenty-seven years of humanity over it. Their village hadn't been even a quarter of the overall size of the modern Mystic Falls, and when he'd initially tried to figure out where everything was, he'd been at a loss for much of it. But there was something about this particular spot- maybe the position of the sun, or the clouds, or the sound of the birds- something sparked his memory sufficiently enough.
"If memory serves me…" He started slowly, "This is where the natives used to make sacrifices to their gods." They encircled the statue in the middle of the square, and Finn took a moment to meditate on how fond modern humans were of statues. Maybe it was just him- After all, he and Sage had never made a habit of frequenting cities in their time together, and villages and towns didn't have a lot of statues back then.
Sage looked amused, and he sensed that he'd gotten it wrong. "This statue was built where we used to rendezvous." Yes, he had been off a bit. They would definitely have steered clear of any of the native dwellings. The hostilities had died down after the truce, but that didn't mean that they were nonexistent. "Back when you used to have to sneak away from your siblings to see your… Tawdry lady-friend."
Sage had, to the best of Finn's knowledge, never truly been insulted by his siblings' disapproval. If anything, it had entertained her; and made her twice as determined to be with him. In particular she'd taken great pleasure in irritating Rebekah with her presence, and Finn had always assumed that that was some kind of girlhood aggression, the likes of which he would never (and did not care to) try to understand.
Still, he recalled fondly their meetings here. Some were more innocent, with flirting and brief kisses, and others… Were not. They had been fortunate enough that neither of their fathers had ever discovered what went on during some of those more scandalous meetings, else Sage would have been locked in her home for the rest of her life and Finn probably would have been beaten within an inch of his life.
Those times had been some of the best in his life. And not for the first time, Finn meditated sadly on how happy things might have been if his parents had just let nature take its course. He and Sage could have been married, had children and grandchildren and been dead by now. Maybe that would have been better.
"I assumed that after nine-hundred years you'd moved on." He said, eyes locking on Sage's and watching for any hints as to what might be going on in her head.
"I took care of myself." He took that to mean that there had been others, and Finn tried not to be disappointed at that. After all, what could he have expected? It was nine-hundred years. Could he have been chaste all that time, if their roles had been reversed? He wanted to say yes, but how could he be certain? Besides, Sage had never been one to wallow in her sorrow.
Sage's expression melted into something nostalgic, almost sad. "But I never stopped loving you, Finn. And I don't want you to die."
Finn stared at her for a moment, and then smiled. "Nine hundred years, and you still…?" He wasn't certain how to finish that. Fidelity had never been an issue when they'd been together, but really, after nine hundred years of being trapped in a coffin and no particular date on when he'd be released (if ever) and Sage hadn't found someone else?
"You're surprised?" Sage cocked an eyebrow and feigned insult.
"I would have hoped that you could have found someone else to make you happy." While Finn didn't exactly jump at the idea of picturing Sage in love with another, the idea that she'd spent these last nine centuries unable to love anyone else pained him. "Someone that could have made you forget about your moronic lover who let his little brother stab him and trap him in a box for almost a thousand years."
Sage stepped forward into that personal space that lovers occupy and slid her arms around his waist. He mimicked her and pulled her close. "It wouldn't really have been fair to them," She said with a sigh. "When all I could do was picture myself with you every time."
Finn's heart soared. He never dreamed that things could work out so well. "So you still want me?"
Sage snorted. "No, I just dragged you out here to dump you on your ass and go off and have a bunch of wild orgies- Yes, I still want you."
Finn pulled her in for a nice, deep kiss, not caring that they were surrounded by humans, or that he was giving Klaus exactly what he wanted and that Esther would not be happy with this particular turn of events. Once more, he was falling back into that familiar, wonderful old mind-frame of 'All that matters is Sage'. It was his happiest place.
Sage pulled back a bit, lips still pressed against his. "Please don't throw yourself off a cliff, or stab yourself, or throw yourself in front of a car or whatever the hell it was you were planning on doing to kill yourself." She mumbled.
Finn could tell that the words were meant to be a bit humorous, but her tone was too serious to be taken lightly. Sage had never been one to sulk or become overly serious when upset (anger had always been her default), but clearly she could find no other way to express her discontent with the idea of Finn's death.
He curled his arms tightly around her. "I have no intention of doing so." And then he kissed her again.
Sage smiled as though the subject had never come up.
"Well! Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's go get drunk." She winked at Finn, grabbed his hand and started tugging him along.
Nine-hundred years, and nothing had changed.
-End
…I thought about working the Grill scene in here too, but why make myself more depressed than I already am? *sob*