A/N: I only own a toaster oven and some decrepit plants (no green-thumb here).
SPOILERS: This is my feeble drabble on Elena Gilbert's thoughts after her daylight ring melts as result of Kai turning her blood to acid. Just a heads up:
I imagined that after Damon pulled the stake out of her, he left her in the corridor so that he could get the unconscious Kai. So Elena is just sitting in the hallway really absorbed in her ring-less finger.
Set in S06E11: Woke Up With a Monster
It Meant Something
Her gaze shifted from the doorway that Damon had just disappeared through and rested on her hand. Elena Gilbert had been strung up in these same hallways earlier, with her blood bubbling and curdling as Kai took another stab at turning it to acid.
In the process he liquefied her daylight ring. It simply melted away – no amount of protest stopped the silver from dripping over her hand and onto the floor. Watching the silver of the ring waste away had her distraught, upset and genuinely pissed-off. Emotions she vowed not examine too deeply.
'I take it that that ring meant something to you.'
Even though Elena knew that things had changed too much, she could still admit, even if just to herself, that the ring had meant something. And it wasn't just silly sentimental attachment.
Her fingers still covered in her own blood looked foreign and naked without the lapis lazuli gemstone. Until now her finger had not been without it since the morning Stefan had slipped the blue gem onto her finger. 'I'll get to be with you forever,' she had said. And she had meant it.
Truth of the matter was that Elena Gilbert and Stefan Salvatore's love had never been the result of some spell, prophecy or sire bond. Looking at her naked finger she knew that it had been truly real.