Title: Brown Eyes into Blue
Author: Cora-Louise
Rating: K+
Notes: Does NOT take into the accounts the events of Season 2. Oneshot!
Summary: It would only be a matter of time before he would have to step in again. After all, Elena was his daughter, his little girl.
A/N: This is my first TVD fic. I'm a little obsessed with John and trying to find a motive behind his actions. I would like to think that he is not actually a horrible guy but just does horrible things for the right reasons. Anyway, here is my attempt to understand John Gilbert.
John remembered the day Isobel told him she was pregnant; it was the day before he had to beg her not to have an abortion. He went to Grove Hill every weekend after that, although they both knew it was only to reassure himself that she hadn't lied about her decision to go through with the pregnancy.
He remembered the day he arrived and stopped short, stunned, to see the physical evidence of their relationship in the slightest curve of her belly. With each passing week he watched that curve become more and more prominent until it was a distinct bulge. During the later months of her pregnancy, when Isobel complained about his child destroying her internal organs, he wanted nothing more than to place his hands over the bump and feel the life he had helped create. Isobel snorted at the gesture, calling him overly sentimental and pathetic before refusing him access to her body. He begged, and she laughed at him.
The day Isobel began having contractions John broke nearly every traffic law in Virginia to get her to his brother's medical practice. They had almost been too late.
Grayson never asked the question, but after the baby had been cleaned his elder brother placed the little girl in his arms.
It was at that moment, when tiny brown eyes opened that he realized this perfect creature, his little girl was the most important thing in his entire world. That's why he ignored the tears sliding down his cheeks as he handed her back to Gray, because he remembered Miranda's sobs at being unable to have her own child. He didn't deserve this little girl, but Miranda and Grayson did. It was unspoken among them, the truth about his daughter, their daughter, the child his brother and sister-in-law had named Elena.
He couldn't stand the thought of going over to Grayson's house to visit. The very idea of being able to see Elena, to hold her tiny body in his arms, hurt more than John was willing to admit. The few times he had gathered up the courage to go, and subsequently hold the infant, he couldn't help but feel the intensity of Grayson's gaze as it bore into his back. It would be awhile before he could go back again.
He received pictures and copies of home movies regularly. His heart swelled with pride at each of Elena's new accomplishments. Yet at the same time, it broke every time it was Grayson who was 'dada' and it was into Miranda's outstretched arms that his brown-eyed little girl took her first teeter-tottering steps. Some days, those home movies made him want to die.
When the need to hold his daughter again became unbearable he would put on those tapes and listen to her babbles and 'dada's' over and over again. With his eyes closed, John could almost pretend that she was talking to him.
He watched her grow up from afar. Hiding behind a mask so thick it made him impossible to love. School pageants, dance recitals, cheerleading events, and everything in-between was witnessed on the tapes in the solitary expanse that was his home. His greatest fear was that the truth would come out and she would hate him for it.
When the Sheriff called about the accident, all he could think about was her. The reality of his brother and sister-in-law's deaths didn't hit until he entered her hospital room and confirmed for himself that her heart was still beating and that she was still breathing. That Elena was alive.
She looked so small and fragile in the hospital bed. The bruises from the accident stood out a deep blue-purple against the startlingly paleness of her normally olive skin. John sat in the guest chair, a ridiculously uncomfortably plastic contraption, for the entire night just to assure himself that he wasn't losing his daughter anytime soon.
The day of Grayson and Miranda's funeral, all he wanted to do was pull Elena into his arms and promise that she wasn't alone. He couldn't though. Instead, he watched her grieve alone for the only parents she had ever known. His chest ached at more than just the death of his family but also at the death of the care-free life Elena had been robbed of. Her childhood was supposed to be better than anything he would have been able to offer. It wasn't supposed to turn out the way it did.
When he first heard the Salvatore brothers had returned to Mystic Falls his first instinct was to get his daughter out of there as fast as possible. When he learned she was dating one of them, it was the last straw, he had decided; the brothers had to die. John had to keep his little girl safe, even if it meant breaking her heart. He refused to lose Elena like he lost Isobel.
He'd never been more proud than the day she walked down the steps for the Miss Mystic Falls competition. She took his breath away. Her beauty surpassed anything he could have imagined on the day he first held her and then lost her. Then his world began crumbling around him as she took the arm of Damon Salvatore. John hated Stefan Salvatore, the vampire was everything he was taught to hate, but Damon he loathed more than anyone else on the plant. That demon destroyed Isobel and as he watched the elder Salvatore dance with Elena, John couldn't help the feeling that Damon would one day destroy Elena as well.
John was more than willing to kill the Salvatore brothers on Founder's Day. He was especially gleeful when he injected a syringe full of vervain into Damon's body. The disappointment he felt was nothing in comparison to the shock and heartbreak he felt when Elena confronted him about her paternity.
In the end he walked away from Mystic Falls with stitched fingers and the knowledge that Elena hated him.
John knew he would be back in Mystic Falls though, most likely sooner rather than later. As long as the Salvatore brothers were in town he would keep and eye on Elena and her relationship with the two. It would only be a matter of time before he would have to step in again, and there was no doubt in his mind that he would. After all, Elena was his daughter, his little girl. At the end of the day he was willing to do anything to keep her safe. In the meantime he would watch his videos, with his eyes closed, and listen to his daughter's babbles and remember the bright brown eyes that gazed into his blue ones the day he became a father.
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