Just a quick one-shot as I haven't had much time to write lately. Hope you like it.
Black Rose
Elena stood with her hands on her hips, staring down at him.
He loved how she looked in those black jersey shorts with the little hole in (that she hoped no-one would notice), and the white Snoopy vest that had been part of a pajama set when she was nine, but could never bring herself to part with. Her hair had been impatiently tied up into a messy top-knot to stay out of her way, and now strands of it escaped and framed her face. She glistened a little, her cheeks flushed from exertion.
He wanted her right now.
"Stefan, you have not moved," she scolded, "and you said you would be up by the time I got back."
Stefan smiled.
"I know what I said."
"And…?"
"And I lied. Sorry about that." He darted out from under the sheet and grabbed her by the waist, sweeping her off her feet and pulling her into bed. She shrieked playfully, slapping away his ticklish hands as best she could, given that she had a water bottle in one of her own.
"I'm all sweaty!" she protested, but her complaints fell on deaf ears, which she already knew by the fact that his playful hands had already become rather more full of intent.
Gently she pushed him away.
"I need a shower, Stefan."
"No you don't," she gave him a look to say 'gross', but he shrugged it off and buried his nose in her hair line, breathing in her scent. "You're so sexy after your run." She tried to get up once more, but he pulled her back down again and straddled her this time so there was no escape.
"Stefan!" she complained again, but less insistently this time as he was nuzzling at her neck, which he knew was her weakness.
She let out an involuntary little sigh and he knew he had her. Making the most of his advantage, he used his lightning speed to slip her out of her top. That was the last time he would use that particular vampire skill this morning…
The water bottle clattered noisily to the floor.
She was in the shower, which was billowing out steam; she liked to run water hotter than anyone else he had ever known.
As she washing her hair, he knew he had time to make the bed, go downstairs and make her French toast with strawberries, brew coffee and read the papers before she would be anywhere near ready to join him.
He closed the bathroom door behind him on a heady cocktail of coconut-fragranced soapy cleanliness, but he couldn't help but think that he liked her own scent best.
He smiled and left her to it.
When Elena stepped out the shower, she saw that he had drawn a heart in the steamed up mirror and put both their initials in it. It was cheesy, but cute. Typical of his old-fashioned ways. She went with it, and impulsively wrote underneath '4 ever'. Then, suddenly embarrassed, rubbed the whole thing out. I mean, what if Damon were to drop by? They would never hear the end of it. (Not that she expected Damon in her bathroom any time soon.)
When she finally went into the kitchen, her breakfast, as always, was laid out in front of her – vapours still rising from the toast.
"I don't deserve you." She said sincerely.
"Probably true." He agreed, "And, I just about tolerate you…" he winked, and stole one of her strawberries as he passed behind her. She swatted at him.
"What? I can't eat my own breakfast now?" he teased.
"Yes, you can. Exactly that; your breakfast!" She gave him one of those smiles that started in her eyes and ended with the revelation of beautiful teeth. He returned the smile, it was impossible not to.
"And what would madam like to do today?" he said. She had a mouth full of his cooking, and took a second to answer.
"Actually, I want to take you somewhere. Somewhere I used to go." She speared a strawberry off his plate. "We'll walk."
She sat between his legs, her arms on his knees, leaning back so her head was on his chest and tucked neatly under his chin. They both had wet feet from dabbling them in the creek, but now they just relaxed in the sunshine watching the summer mayflies buzzing above the water.
"Imagine only living for a single day." He said.
They both went quiet for a moment as they pondered that. The mayflies dipped and soared and paired up in intricate mating patterns, before speeding off.
"Why haven't you brought me here before?" he asked.
"I don't know. I guess I never thought of it." He pulled her in tighter and she snuggled closer. "Jer and I used to come here all the time when we were little." She indicated a bright blue frayed rope flung up into the tree branch above them. "My dad made that swing for us."
He wriggled himself free and jumped up to grab at the rope and catching it, pulled the swing down. 'Swing' was actually too posh a word for something that was essentially a stick pulled through a series of hefty knots. He tested it (being careful not to use all his strength) and saw that it wouldn't give.
"Come on. Get over here." He said.
She saw what he was thinking and bounded over to him.
They spent twenty minutes shrieking; messing about on the rope swing, pushing each other over the creek, spinning it around recklessly and scaring each other with near-misses over the water. Eventually, helpless with laughter, they resumed their place under the canopy of the tree to recover.
"Its lovely here." He said, as they finally grew quiet – but then stiffened slightly, also leaving something unsaid.
She sensed the sudden coolness and spun around to face him. There was tension in his face, so rested her hand on his forearm and asked him what was wrong.
"Nothing." He lied, giving her a brief smile. He didn't fool her for a moment.
"What is it?"
He sighed and met her eyes. He knew that look. She wouldn't let it drop until she found out the truth. He sighed again.
"Its just, I was thinking – it's a wonderful place to bring children. You should be bringing your children here." He said, glancing at her for her response.
She nodded slowly and thoughtfully. So that was it. She guessed it was time to have this conversation, both of them had shied away from it many times before, afraid of arguments and recriminations. But here, in the place where she felt most connected to her kin, she felt able to broach the subject. She tackled it head on, as she did with everything.
"I think about it Stefan, I won't lie. I know what I am giving up to be with you. And if I'm honest, yes its true, a life without children is not what I would have asked for." At this he turned his head away, he nodded, as if happy to admit he was the cause of some deep-routed pain.
She put out her hand and turned his face back towards her.
"But I face something worse than not having children," she smiled a bitter-sweet smile, "I face a life without you. So those are my choices. That's the hand I've been dealt."
He searched her eyes and found sadness there, but strength too.
"Stefan, a life without you, isn't a life. So don't you feel any guilt about what I am missing out on, because there is no alternative. I choose you, every time."
He considered her face for a long while in silence. She leant forwards and kissed him. He was satisfied, for now, but she knew it was only part of the conversation and that he would raise it again, sometime soon. She had to change the subject.
"So, I brought you here to my place, and now it's your turn to share!"
"What do you want to know?" he asked.
She slid her hand up his arm and under his t-shirt sleeve, revealing the tattoo that abided there.
"I want to know about this." She traced the intricate black ink-work with her fingers, it was a rose depicted in a traditional style. "When did you get it?"
He raised his eyebrows.
"Well, I was in this bar…" he began "and this really hot woman said to me that if I got this, she would so make it worth my while…" she punched him on the arm.
"Ow! What? You asked!" he said. She gave him a withering look. He smiled. "Ok, the truth it is… do I really have to share this?" he wined.
"Well now you do!" She said, folding her arms, utterly intrigued.
He sighed and leaned back against the tree trunk. She always wanted the hard stories.
"It was Damon. Damon did it."
She didn't expect that. She raised her eyebrows.
"Go on…" she said.
"It was 1975 and I was living somewhere just outside Connecticut. One day I woke up, and I realized that Damon and I hadn't spoken for five years. I don't know why, but it just filled me with sadness and I just suddenly knew I had to find him. I had to see him again, even if we fought.
"I contacted some of the people I knew he had previously hung out with, but I was getting a lot of dead ends - Damon's not exactly one to stay in touch. It was becoming almost impossible to track him down. It took me six months before an old drinking friend of his, said he had heard that Damon had gone to Europe. He couldn't remember where, but thought it was probably France, Spain or Germany.
"Eventually I got desperate and began to call up newspapers in Paris, Berlin, Frankfurt and Madrid, trying to find out if any of them had covered reported animal attacks. They must have thought I was crazy, and a lot slammed the phone down on me, but finally I got lucky and a local Berlin paper put me on to a journalist who had been tracing some such attacks. We chatted, and he told me that animal attacks had been reported outside the city. I knew it was a vampire, but not necessarily Damon. But something made me need to check it out. I got on a plane and flew to Germany. I slept in the days and checked the bars at night. I searched every bar on the West side of the wall in Berlin. The American hang outs, the British pubs, the French cafes. I couldn't find a trace of him."
"You were on the wrong side." Elena interjected. He smiled; she was always one step ahead. It's why he loved her.
"Of course I was, and I felt stupid for not thinking it before. Damon didn't want to live anywhere easy, he was torturing himself. Suffering. Back in those days, the East side of the wall was, well, pretty bleak. People had it bad."
He paused, and shifted his weight. He looked once more to the river, birds were singing, the sunlight glinted off the water. It was a million miles away from concrete blocks and gun turrets and a never-ending sense of oppression.
"It wasn't easy to get across, even with my skills. Only days before two students had been killed trying to go the other way. So I was quick, and I was careful. Chose my moment. But as soon as I was across, I knew I was right. The East faced hardship, but it bread a healthy underground resistance movement too. And rebellion always attracted my brother. I began to find traces of it, but it wasn't easy. Alcohol in particular was hard to get hold of, so I stuck with the trail of suppliers and black-marketers because I knew that those were the people who carried information. Eventually I began to hear about an American living there, but I couldn't find him. One night, exhausted and broke from a hundred bribes I had given to get to this point, I found myself drinking my last dollars away in something that could be barely called a bar. I had nowhere to sleep that night and was exhausted from trying to make myself understood in a language I didn't speak. I had drunk the best part of a bottle of the cheapest Russian vodka there was, and was asleep on the bar.
"Damon found me like that. He sat down beside me and woke me up. 'Way to make yourself inconspicuous, brother.' He said. But I was just so pleased to find him, and I guess a little drunk, that I put my arms around him. He didn't know what to make of that. He picked me up off the stool and took me to a room beneath the bar. It was filled with people, all of them drinking, smoking, planning – they looked on at me with suspicion and voices were raised. He conversed with them in a combination of languages that sounded like German with some words of Russian, and quickly lead me through that room, into another.
"This is when I first saw Karina. She was fast asleep on a cot. She was very thin with fine porcelain features and cropped blond hair. She was quite fragile and beautiful. But I'd be lying if I didn't say that the first thing I noticed was that she was fully naked. Her body was covered from head to foot in black-ink tattoos. Damon didn't try to cover her; he went over and found a bottle of whisky from under the cot, pulled it out and offered me some.
"We didn't speak much that night. I remember passing out not long after and when I woke up he was gone. Karina was still asleep, and it was impossible not to be drawn in to look at her body, no matter how hard I tried not to. The tattoos were odd, all different styles, some good, some quite basic. They depicted all kinds of things, but it was only when I spotted in the centre of her back a church on fire, that I knew what they were. I looked for other clues, and sure there they were, oblique references in ancient languages and imagery to blood, Katherine, our church, the civil war, our father, our house - me. It was Damon's life on her body.
"I was reeling. Could he really have done this? Damon came back in the room bearing bread. 'Its harder and harder to get this these days.' I appreciated it and we sat and shared some. 'Admiring my handiwork were you?' he nodded towards Karina. She was stirring now and pulling a sheet over herself. I asked him when he had learnt to do it; I always knew he was artistic, but he hid this from most. He shrugged, 'She taught me.' He said. I couldn't know if he had compelled her into allowing him to use her body as his canvas, or whether she loved him: with Damon the lines were always blurred. So I simply asked him why. 'She said that tattoos should come from the heart.' He looked at her and shrugged. He nodded his chin to the adjoining room where the people had been last night. 'They don't like it of course, they say she is conspicuous. They want her gone.' I asked him if he had any on his body. He shook his head. 'She tried it once, but the ink just pushed itself out of my skin. It healed itself too quickly.' He suddenly looked at the sleeping body on the bed, and his eyes darkened. 'I'll have to kill her soon.' I was taken aback; I didn't know what to say.
"Why?" Elena was shocked.
"He wouldn't say, but I think that she was in trouble. Those were dark times and there was lots of suspicion. Agents, double agents. It was messy." He leant forwards and gave her a peck on the cheek, as if remembering how precious she was to him.
"Do you think he loved her, Stefan?" she asked. He shook his head.
"Who knows? I don't think so, but Damon holds his cards close to his chest. She definitely meant something to him – must have done. He had expressed his pain all over her body."
"Did he do it? Did he… kill her?" She asked. Stefan looked deep into her eyes and she had the answer she knew she would get. She looked away, tears rushing to her eyes.
"I stayed for a while afterwards, but I had no money and already we were quarrelling. He was secretive and argumentative. The people I had seen that first night were always in his face, especially after Karina disappeared. It sent a chill wind through them, as if they were next. It wasn't unusual for people to disappear then." He shivered at the memory and Elena reached out and stroked his leg, comforting him.
"I remember we had fought, I can't even remember what it was about, but I do remember that he had me by the throat up against the wall of his room. I remember looking into his eyes and thinking he was lost. Just lost and broken. For whatever reason he felt he had to kill her, he was trying to block it out. Through broken breaths I said 'Tattoo me.' He wasn't expecting that and he loosened his grip, puzzled. 'I told you, it doesn't work.' He said, dropping me completely. 'It will if you can get the skin not to heal long enough to take the ink.' I replied."
"Vervain!" Elena cried out. He nodded.
"He mixed some with the ink. The poison kept the skin open long enough so the ink had time to take. I never asked him why he chose the rose and he never told me. It was the single most excruciating pain I have ever felt, but it was his pain too. But as soon as he was done he marched out of the building and threw the tattoo machine as far as he could into the wasteland. He pulled the collar up on his coat and walked away from me, that basement and those people. I didn't see him again for many years after that."
Once again, she traced her finger over the design, but this time looking at it more closely as if she could see Damon himself in its intricacies. It was beautiful and she wondered what it meant. Was it for Stefan, Karina, or Damon himself? She found herself welling with tears as if she could feel both the brother's pain. It was a symbol of so much between them.
Stefan caught her hand and squeezed it with his own.
"I love you Elena." He said simply, and she smiled at him, her eyes brimmed over. He brushed the tears from her cheek. "And when you need to walk away from away from me, don't you ever look back."
She threw herself into her arms then. She knew it now, even if he didn't want to hear it; she would always be his.
Like the black rose on his arm, there was some pain she would bear forever.