title: without your love i get nowhere
summary: the feeling of sobbing to damon while she let him go that one fateful night was not all that different than the feeling she got when he sent her away from the lake house. they are ill-fated lovers who refuse to give up.
notes: set after 4x09 because, let's face, we all want answers after our fandom has been reduced to its knees (or me at least). oh, and i'm back – it's been awhile.
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She had accepted Bonnie's offer to stay at her house for a few reasons, namely because her own house reminded her too much of Jeremy and the Salvatore mansion reminded her too much of Damon. On the drive back, the two girls had hardly exchanged words; when they arrived at Bonnie's small home, Elena set up her sheets on the couch and told her friend that she was turning in early.
Now she lay in the shrinking darkness, her senses alert to every sound that ricocheted through the living room. She turned on her side and closed her eyes, sinking into a dreamland that would suck her out of the muddled reality she was trapped in.
"I care about you, Damon, which is why I have to let you go."
She sat up so abruptly that her sheets flitted in the air and landed at her toes; her surroundings rapidly danced into her vision as she touched her face and looked around.
It had been so real, the replaying of her goodbye to Damon that fateful day in Matt's truck. She reached to the table beside the couch to turn on the lamp that sat there, a gesture that called out to her human days (after all, she was very well equip to sit there in the dark). She propped her back again the couch – she couldn't shake that feeling so quickly, the aching in her chest that was a human memory, yet so similar to what she felt now. It was the ache for someone that was not her's and very well might never be.
And she was not blind to recognize why she had said goodbye to Damon that night and planned to finish out the Salvatore story with Stefan. Her life since her parents' death had been about Stefan; her conscience told her to go to Stefan because she owed it to him, because he deserved it, because she could not yet make decisions that reflected what she wanted.
And why had she sobbed when telling this to Damon?
Because, she realized, she was letting him go without ever have gotten the chance to truly love him. And that hurt more than saying goodbye to Stefan because, well, she'd already lived out her epic romance with him. (They were nearing the finish line whether she knew it or not.)
But it was different with Damon. She had not gotten a chance to indulge in her intense caring and love and lust she felt for him. She had not gotten to live the payoff that came from hating him so venomously to watching him change to loving him so passionately.
And that was why it had broken her heart to say goodbye to him that day.
And it was probably why she hurt so much right now, struggling because Damon was just willing to give up on them so easily. What she felt for him now was exactly what she had felt that night – she knew she loved him, had known and did know now. And now she was choosing him, and yet, the timing was still wrong. Stefan was no longer the problem. It was her and her love and the damned sire bond that clung to them like a pesky fog.
Damon had sent her away to fix it. But that wasn't okay. Because they still hadn't gotten their chance; it still wasn't their time.
Elena sat there in the quiet darkness, fighting the urge to curse fate and their cliché ill-fated romance; they were lovers that were not meant to find each other in the stars but had and repeatedly defied the laws to find their way back to each other.