Though the truth may vary,
This ship will carry our bodies safe to shore.
- "Little Talks" by Of Monsters and Men
Damon Salvatore is always fighting himself.
There is a perpetual internal struggle, occurring within every inch of himself, rampaging just under the skin, between his lips, at his fingertips, behind his ribs. It is a hurricane in a bottle, crashing and smashing unto itself at its very center.
It is why he acts impulsively. When he makes rash decisions, it is just because his inner storm is finding a way to lash out, to destroy something else for a change. Because the terribly frustrating thing about it is that you can only fight yourself for so long, until all of your parts are remnants of themselves. At the very least, he comforts himself with knowing he always has this strength in him to keep fighting. Because long after the other battles are over and done, he will still be there, tearing himself out from within. He will always be fighting.
And he chooses that life. There is always a choice, as he recently was reminded. He could put it all behind him and still the warring waters, but that would mean accepting who he is. And, despite what he says or does or pretends to be, he will never be able to do that. He will always be stuck with himself, stuck with his decisions (I don't even believe in half the things I do anymore, but you can't stop a boulder when it's on its way down a mountain and you can't stop a chain of choices from defining a person), stuck with his war that only he can control.
In his mind, he is the villain, the victim, the devil, the savior, the good guy, the lost cause. And these identities will forever drift around his conscious, taunting him, never settling, always floating just out of his reach. The worst part about salvation is knowing it's there, but it will never be offered to you. Worse still, you will never accept it.
Elena tries to give him salvation sometimes, but he has yet to deserve it. Stefan tried to force it upon him for so long, but sometimes you can't accept it because of the person offering. They do not deserve to save you; not yet. And Damon does not know how timing fits into all of this, but he just knows that the time is not right now. Nothing is in its right place, and he is not done fighting yet.
Bonnie holds something for him. He doesn't know what, and he doubts it's salvation, but he knows something is there because she keeps orbiting around him, too. Something is there, and he knows Bonnie sure as hell isn't going to offer him anything. But he cannot stop wondering what it is, what he could possibly have if he just stopped fighting for one second and deserved it.
He wonders if she can hear the guns blazing and swords clashing and waters eroding away at him when he talks to her. He wonders if she hears beyond the war and listens to what he really means.
When he gave his seemingly half-hearted apology for Abby's turning, there was whole-hearted intent behind it.
"You're still mad at me for what happened to Abby. Let me apologize: I'm sorry Elijah forced us to turn your mother into a vampire to save Elena's life. Didn't exactly have a choice."
I wonder if you know that, all things aside, Abby never deserved a daughter like you. She left you, and sometimes people leave because they know they ddin't earn a second chance. You know that. That doesn't make what I did right, I know that. I know I'm wrong, all the time. And for the most part, I don't mind. But I always notice when my decisions affect you, and I always care. I don't know why. I always have to comment on it and try to twist some form of understanding from you, because I want it. I want whatever you have to offer me, but I don't know how to reach it. I'm afraid that once I do know how, I won't be able to do it. I'll be a disappointment to myself, again, but also to you. And, for some reason, that's unacceptable.
I wonder if you know not to listen to anything I say, but to hear what I mean.
I want to justify myself to you. I care about what you think. Always, and I don't know why.
He wonders if Bonnie knows that people are like keys. They fit into each other in such intensely specific ways, they unlock things that would have never been awoken otherwise. He wonders if she knows that he wants them to fit together, badly, if for no other reason than to see what would be unlocked.
Bonnie Bennett is at constant war with everyone.
It is all in her environment, in her opponents, in those who doubt her. She knows who she is, what she represents, and she knows where her strengths lie. She is stability, the one cemented rock in a sea of raging tides. If she was ever uprooted, they would all be washed away.
There are those who try. Enemies, friends, family. Everyone yanks and pulls at her, trying to drag her with them, trying to persuade her that no, she is wrong, she has to leave her spot. She can never give in to them. She can never let go of what is holding her together. And so she is constantly fighting, constantly pushing and wrenching herself back from all the influences around her. There is never a moment where does not feel someone is trying to use her, hurt her, contest her, tug her in a certain direction. There is never a moment when she can settle and distill her adrenaline. Life for Bonnie Bennett is a never-ending battle against the world, and she can never, ever doubt that she had to eventually win. Doubt was slick and could make her slip. Doubt was an agent of destruction.
Being the one melded in solidity allowed her to sense when the ground was shaky under another's feet. She sensed it in all of them, all the time. She would try to share her ground, share her strength, but there is only so much you can stretch yourself until you start to rip at the seams. And since that could never be an option for her, she had to continuously pull herself back together, reserve her strength for those that will need it. Whether or not this was healthy for her was not allowed to creep into even one crevice of her mind, because that is doubt. And doubt will send everything spiraling downward and it would all be for nothing.
It's funny, because, in all this, she knows Damon's secret.
He plants his feet firmly on the earth and wears that smirk and holds himself with a confidence, so you would never suspect that the ground beneath him is quicksand. He is slowly sinking into something, and he is allowing it to happen, every bit of it. She sees it, and every day she sees him digging himself a little deeper. Sometimes she wonders why he does that to himself, but then she laughs in her head and she knows that everyone inflicts everything upon themselves.
She chose this. There is always a choice, and she will always be the one to remember that. She volunteered for this position, and she will continue to fill this role until she is no longer needed. But she will always be needed, and she knows that. Honestly, she is content with her decision. She would rather be nowhere else but with her friends, and she would rather be doing nothing else but helping them. She just wishes that, just for a second, she could stop fighting. She could let her guard down, relax the ever-taut muscles that strain under her skin. But she wonders if, given the chance, would she really stop?
Even when she was kissing Jamie, she was still fighting. She was wrestling with the demons that lurked all around them, she was keeping all of those fearful and worrying thoughts at bay in order to just have one human sensation (just one, that's all I want, I always have to be this superhero but they're not allowed to feel anything at all and it gets tiring, so tiring), and even when she was fighting her hardest to keep her mind on his lips and not on the ever-present threat hanging over their heads, he walked in and interrupted.
It was like Damon was there to remind her that she- both them- will always be fighting, always at odds with something, be it either themselves or everything else.
She wonders if he is aware of how hard she tries to reach him. Because she never yells at him, and she desperately wants to sometimes. But yelling smothers a message instead of spreading it coherently. She knows this. Instead, she levels her gaze at him, trying to drill her words into him because, for some reason, he listens to her. Really listens. She can see her words hit his eyes with their impact, because while a message reaches the ears first, it travels through straight to the eyes, where they reflect right back. Bonnie saw her words reflected back to her all the time with Damon, and she could not say the same for everyone else.
So when she met his stare, she connected to that part of him that listens.
"There's always a choice. Whenever you make one, other people suffer."
Take this in, Damon. I know you're listening. Take this in and let it resound within you, because maybe then maybe the quicksand underneath you will solidify, just a bit. You need to know that I am not fighting all of this for nothing. I am fighting because I chose to, as do you. I wouldn't try to talk to you like this if I thought you weren't listening, if I thought you couldn't, one day, account yourself for your actions. If you were a lost cause, I would have let you be lost. I have no time to go chasing after lost boys who refuse to look for the way home. You're looking, I can tell, because you're listening. I can try to point the way, but only you can realize that you're the only one who knows the way. Use my words as signs, directing you on the right track to that realization.
I hate it, but a part of me holds this hope for you, Damon. I'll never let you know, but there it is all the same, festering in the pit of my being like a disease just waiting to spread. I'm holding it back because hope, just like doubt, can be slick. I cannot slip. Not now. Not ever.
She wonders if he is able to hear her over the chaos that has invaded every part of their lives, every cell of their bodies. She wonders if he listens to not just her words, but how she says them. It is all in the expression, all in the furrow of her brow and the forceful light behind her eyes, trying to act as beacon to his self-imposed darkness.
The war wages on.
And the two dutiful soldiers meet each other on the battlefield, not knowing if they will ever be able to leave it. Every word exchanged, every action performed is important and could be the last. They know this. Yet they chose to spend the time trying to reach each other amidst the turmoil.
If only they could stop fighting.
end.
Author's Note: Here I am, getting too metaphorical and symbolic again. I can't help it, I see all the poetry in these two, it drives me crazy. This is an interpretation of the dialogue exchanged between Damon and Bonnie in the episode "Do Not Go Gentle." There is just so much that goes unsaid in this show, in both a good and bad way. This fic was meant to highlight the good. The thing that really inspired this fanfic was the song that I credited at the beginning. Listened to that and Florence + the Machine all throughout this. In any case, I hope you all liked this! I also want to mention that I'm going to continue my "Neglected Space" fanfic; I've just been waiting for all of the Abby stuff to pan out, because I don't want to write about Bonnie's mother and then have to take it back because we discovered something new about her character. Sorry it's been taking me so long! I promise, it will be continued and it will be awesome. Hope you all had a great week, and if any of you had to deal with finals this week, I'm glad you're still chugging along. The only reason I survived is because I promised myself I'd write some good Bamon fic, heh.