title: wear me like a locket around your throat.
pairings: damon salvatore/elena gilbert. implied tyler lockwood/caroline forbes.
rating: t.
disclaimer: i do not own the vampire diaries. i do not own fall out boy.
warnings: spoilers up to latest episodes released. language. (character death.?)
words: 6,797.
prompt: the rise and fall (and rise) of damon and elena's relationship through the eyes of another character. i don't mind who the character is—so long as it isn't bonnie or an oc. written for the 2010 Damon/Elena Secret Santa Exchange at the damon_elena community on LiveJournal.
summary: six days after elijah physically removed katerina petrova's head from her shoulders, they disappear.
author Notes: i like this title—as you can tell, i've been listening to too much old school fall out boy lately—but this could easily also have been titled "my love affair with caroline forbes." xD this prompt? loved it, loved it, loved it. it took me forever to actually decided how i wanted to write it out, so sorry it's so late. i hope this is what you want, whoever you are. (:
The raging fire which urged us on
was scorching us; it would have burned us
had we tried to restrain it.
— Casanova (1725-1798).
when you go, i will forget everything about you.
Six days after Elijah physically removed Katerina Petrova's head from her shoulders, they disappear.
No warnings, no good-byes—just two empty bedrooms in two different houses. The only signs of their departure (other than the lack of clothes in dresser drawers, the pleasant echo of voices in the halls) are an envelope and a crumpled note. The note says "I'm sorry" in hasty, looped handwriting and the envelope holds a fine-chain necklace with a nickel-sized pendant. The note is addressed to Aunt Jenna, with love. The envelope to Stefan and sealed with a tiny lipstick kiss.
i'm such a sucker, and i'm always the last to know.
Caroline cannot bring herself to tell Jenna the truth, or even some semblance of it, for the sake of her safety and for her sanity. She has seen firsthand what knowing can do to a person, knows what it did to her. How does one explain mythological vampires and doppelgangers and centuries old curses?
Not over coffee and muffins.
She sits in the Gilbert kitchen and shares meaningful looks with Jeremy and Alaric, trades cool stares with her once-best friend Bonnie. Jenna's nephew grips her hand tightly as Alaric rubs soothing circles on his girlfriend's back. Caroline says, they've run away before—they'll come back. Just give them time. Elena's a smart girl, and Damon won't put her in danger. Even Alaric agrees with her: Elena is perfectly safe in Damon's quite capable hands. Bonnie knows better than to open her mouth. Things like "maybe it's for the best" and "I'm sure they're happy, whatever they're doing" are not welcome in this kitchen. This is a place of despair, of regret, of mourning.
Jenna cries for the niece-girl who was like a friend, who was once here but is now gone. Jeremy cries for the sister that he knows isn't coming back, because even if she did, she would not be his sister anymore. Caroline cannot cry, but if she could, she would cry for a kindred spirit.
When they leave, Bonnie touches Caroline for the first time in weeks—a punishing twist of fingertips on her forearm, prompting Caroline to spin to face her.
"Why do you guys continue to lie to her?" she snaps, letting go as though burned. "They're not coming back."
"What did you do, Bonnie?"
The witch recoils, feet stumbling back a step. "'Excuse me?"
Dark eyes narrow, her teeth setting—speaking with a grimace. "You know something. What did you do?"
She's young, not weak. Sometimes, Caroline wonders if Bonnie fully comprehends what she is capable of doing, if she understands how easily actions can occur in the minds and hands of young, irrational vampire. And she doesn't mean sleights of hand. The natural tendency toward violence is a knife-edge walked every day. She never better understood Damon's tendency toward aggression and the warped, twisted affection he drowned her in until she placed her teeth against the soft skin of Matthew Donovan's neck, and bit.
She was once a kiddie pool of shallow thoughts and selfish inclinations, but now she is deep, deeper than she ever believed she could be. Her abyss is bottomless.
Caroline is anger and slick emotions, rash violence and deep, blood-red death clad in big doe eyes, bubbly blonde curls and spun sugar skin.
She wonders if Bonnie needs another lesson in just how quickly she can deliver. "What did you do?" she asks again, this time with the threat curling behind every specifically pronounced word, every punctuated click of her heels on the concrete.
"I made Damon another daywalker ring."
There is no sudden realization, or calm understanding. The fact that Bonnie so calmly sentenced her friend to death is sickening. "God, you really are a bitch," snaps Caroline, taking a single forward step.
The woman she knew as Bonnie Bennett scrambled backwards on unsteady legs as the concrete around the young vampire's foot spider-webbed with cracks. "You practically gift-wrapped Elena and then handed her over to Damon."
"You are all so blind." Bonnie's practically running backwards, but possesses the sense to keep her lip from quivering. "Elena was gone a long time before she left. And I didn't hand him anything he didn't already have claim to—I just gave him the means to secure it. You were all just too blind to notice. I told you, I'd protect this town from vampires, even if it means having to give Damon a reason to leave."
"What do you mean?" The blond hesitates, just one second, and it's enough time for the witch to regain a little composure.
Bonnie's all strong lines and slight smirks, and she tilts her head to the side as she asks, "You never noticed, really?"
Caroline's not sure if Bonnie's even asking a question or just repeating it for the sake of feeling superior for a moment. "Well, then again, you never had much going for you in the head-department. Jeremy told me, even if I hadn't noticed it with my own eyes. Damon loved Elena."
"Damon loved women." She's bristling from the insult, blond hair bouncing with the forcefulness of her words. "No surprise there."
"Damon liked sex, and yeah, he liked women, but he loved Elena. Really loved her." In another person, this might sound romantic, thinks Caroline, but watching the effect the words have on the witch's features would make anyone believe Bonnie was talking about a flesh-eating disease rather than the way a man cared for a woman. "And she cared for him too. Why else would she have never let Stefan get rid of him? Never tried to get him out of Mystic Falls, even after all he did? In her own, weird way, Elena loved him too. And for whatever it was worth, Elena made Damon better. There were thousands of little hints that anyone with half a brain could have noticed. It's why Stefan never let Elena out of his sight, after that whole fiasco with Rose. He even kissed her once—granted, he was drunk and out of his mind and then he tried to kill Jeremy. Stefan doesn't even know."
"I'm sure Elena was more focused on the fact that her brother was saved from dying by a magical ring than this supposed kiss."
"Yeah. Sure, Caroline. Believe whatever you want to believe. But Katherine's dead, and Damon's gone—and if you haven't noticed, Stefan's gone too. Mystical Falls can finally go back to being semi-normal." Bonnie's cocky, but it still only takes one more step toward her to send the witch running to her car.
It's enough to satisfy Caroline's still-burning rage, and the confusion suddenly fogging up her mind.