Disclaimer: The characters used here belong to L.J. Smith. No copyright infringement is intended, no money is being made.
Dreams
by Kadira
In her dreams, everything seems so much easier. Stefan is always with her, her support and her love, just as much as Damon, who no longer kills people, his intense fire now focused entirely on Stefan and Elena. Two brothers, light and dark, each alone a force to reckon with and irresistible together.
In her dreams, Elena doesn't need to hide her attraction to Damon either, because Stefan not only knows and approves, but shares it.
There are no life and death fights anymore, because they just are, one unbreakable unit. They belong together, day and – especially – during the night, when they share the wonders of the world around them, immerse themselves in the closeness between them as well as in the air, the sounds, the sights, all of it so much sharper than what Elena knows.
And then there's the taste of what Stefan has denied himself for so long, but which he now shares happily with them, the only thing that feeds the never-quite stopping hunger for life in them. They hunt it down during the night. No longer animals, but humans, the only thing that not only really sates the hunger, but which also fulfills a much more basic desire within them, which makes them as strong as they possible can be. They don't kill, though, something even Damon agreed to after a time. Reluctantly, but he did - for them.
After the hunt, Elena can feel the presence of the two brothers all around her, even more strongly than during their physical closeness when they conclude their wild hunger for something more in the only way it can be satisfied. Elena arches under the hot lips and hands on her cool body, strokes black hair and a strong chest. She groans as her own desire increases when she watches Stefan and Damon, dark and dangerous, the ultimate predators, finally living out their eternal bond in a way that doesn't mean pain and destruction for both of them, but turning it into a passion unrevealed to anything Elena had ever experienced before.
The dream always stops when teeth scrap against skin, first carefully, then breaking the surface, and the blood they have stolen mixes with their own unique essence until they feel closer than any time before.
When Elena wakes up, she always feels mortified and remorseful, because she knows that this is an impossible dream, that she shouldn't even feel this way, that she has Stefan and that she should be happy to be human. But Elena can't help but think that as much as she loves Stefan, their life is not quite complete yet, that something is missing, like the last piece of a puzzle, somewhere in the middle, which makes it impossible to see the entire picture.
But for Stefan's sake she ignores the burning desire for more, for what is just beyond the boundaries of her reality, merely out of her reach. And as well as for Stefan's sake as for the sake of their relationship, she ignores Damon when he crosses her path on her way to school, when he suddenly appears in front of her, like a ghost.
It has become some kind of ritual between them. Every day anew, barley out of view of the boarding house, so close, yet so far away from Stefan, Damon is there, asking the same question: "Did you have sweet dreams, Elena?" She ignores the words as well as the chills they gives her, swallows the question how Damon could know, if maybe he is even the one sending the dreams to her.
She tells herself that she doesn't do it because she doesn't want to give Damon any satisfaction, doesn't want to let him know that he is indeed getting to her. But mostly she ignores him, because she is afraid. Not of Damon, but of his answer and the possible consequences. If she doesn't know for certain, she doesn't need to fake the justified anger she is expected to feel and to express at his manipulation. And if Damon is doing it but if she pretends that she doesn't know, there is no need for the dreams to stop, because that is something Elena can't bear to even think about.
So she just passes the vampire instead and ignores him and his smirk and the bottomless eyes that seem to scrutinize her, the gaze that lets her feel completely exposed and which makes her stomach flutter.
Her dreams are the only time that Elena can understand Katherine and what she did, no matter how senseless, even childish, her action has been. It is also the only time that Elena envies the long dead girl, because unlike Elena, Katherine saw the complete picture for some time at least and could live Elena's dream, before she lost the one piece and so destroyed everything forever.
When Stefan opens the door and greets Elena with one of his radiant smiles, she chases away thoughts of forever, a dead Katherine and peaceful togetherness – at least until her next dream – and leans forward to kiss Stefan.
-.-.-.-