State of Grace
He watches her reflection in the window. She's got her temple pressed to the glass and she's drumming her fingers on her knee. Her eyes are wide and unblinking as she stares out into the darkness. He can still make out the tear tracks that weaved their way down her cheeks only a few hours ago.
The house is quiet now, although the sound of her screams still echo in his ears. Stefan's gone to Caroline's after getting a vague and high-pitched call from the blonde. He'd given Damon a very pointed look as he'd walked out the front door. A look that made it very clear it was his responsibility to talk Elena out of her latest suicide mission.
He's about to open his mouth to start when she breaks the silence. "You know one of the few great things about being a vampire is?" she tilts her head slightly to look at him, a sad smile forming on her lips. "You can't sneak up on me anymore," she answers for him.
"We'll have to put that theory to the test some other time," he smirks at her. She doesn't react to the challenge, but goes back to looking out the window. She knows he wants to talk, and she's already decided she's not going to fight with him. She doesn't have the energy or the inclination. They've already said too many things they can't take back.
She speaks to her reflection now, her face blank. She tells him the things that have been bothering her in the hopes that it will distract from the declaration that's been bothering him, "Jer and I used to watch horror movies all the time. My parents couldn't stand them but he and I would spend whole weekends spread out on the couch. And the ones that always scared me the most were the possession stories. When people's bodies would get taken over and they couldn't control themselves anymore." She runs a hand through her hair and fidgets with one of the red streaks, "I have all of her memories Damon. I remember hurting Caroline's mom, trying to kill my best friends. I remember exactly how it felt when I snapped that waitress' neck." She takes a deep breath and runs a hand over her face, "I don't even know her name."
"Elena," he kicks off the far wall he's been leaning against and tries to cross the distance to her, only stopping when she turns on the spot. She drapes her legs over the window seat and fixes him with a dejected stare. There is so much sadness in her now that he can feel it pressing against him even as they stand half a room apart. She has lost so much already, but now they're standing at the precipice of too much to bear and he doesn't know what to say to make it okay.
"Don't try to make me feel better Damon," she commands, and the moonlight frames her on either side, making her look almost ghostly pale, "I can't get them out of my head and that's what I deserve. I deserve to feel bad about the things I've done for the rest of my life."
He shakes his head, "It wasn't you. The person who did those things wasn't you Elena."
"I wanted to be her though," she observes, her voice calm as she assesses her own weakness, "I asked to be her because I was selfish. I didn't want to have to feel like that. I didn't want to be in that house, standing next to his body-"
"It's okay," he replies and she lets out a bitter, bark of a laugh, "It will be Elena, I promise." He wants to believe it's the truth, that there's a way for her to be okay with all that she's done. That he can help her without destroying her like he did that night in her living room. At the time it had seemed like such a good idea, and now its yet another thing tearing her apart from the inside out.
"It shouldn't be," she draws a hand over her face again, and her voice is taking on that nasal quality it gets when she's about to cry. She looks out at him from under her heavy lashes, her voice is still frighteningly calm, "You're not going to talk me out of it. I want her dead Damon and I'm going to make it happen."
"And then what," he asks, his voice raising and his hands flailing, "You think the way you feel is going to disappear once you've killed her?" It's a valid question, but one she doesn't have an answer too. All she knows is that something hard has formed in the pit of her stomach, an anger so urgent it has to find an outlet. Katherine is as perfect a target as she could imagine. There is no one more deserving of her rage.
"Maybe," her voice is soft, so small that he can barely hear it as she explains, "I don't know, but I need something to work toward. I need a distraction for ten seconds so I don't have to think about trying to kill Bonnie and Caroline and the noise that waitress made as she dropped to the floor." She's begun to ramble, her voice high and fast. For a horrible second he thinks she's going to go off the rails again. She must see the change in his expression because she closes her eyes tight and takes a deep breath, letting it out in a sigh. "Please," she whispers.
He crosses the rest of the way towards her, falling onto the couch a few feet away. He wants to reach out, to touch her, but there is even more between them now then there used to be. The things she'd said to him and the things he'd done to her. "We just got you back Elena," and he's upset that it sounds like a plea, that his voice was one word away from cracking.
In a flash she's next to him on the couch. "I'm right here," she points out, but her face is still more empty then anything else. He's about to try another tactic when she looks down at the couch and adds, "I'm sorry Damon."
"You're sorry," he snorts, a genuine smile actually gracing his face for the first time that night.
"The things I said-" she starts, her voice taking on a tone of intense concentration. She's afraid that her soulless persona's lies have just confirmed what he'd feared in his head. She hates that this has allowed even more awkwardness and misgiving to creep between them. She hates that she can't seem to make a single decision without eviscerating one Salvatore or the other.
"Elena," he interrupts, reaching out to grab her hands, "I lit you on fire today. How about we call it even?"
"You were trying to save me," she points out, turning her hands in his grip so she can lace their fingers together, "Thank you by the way."
"For lighting you on fire?" he asks with a kinked eyebrow.
It gets her to smile. "For saving me," she corrects. "It was you too," she adds, and she hopes this clarifies things for him. "I held on to you."
"I came right after hate?" he questions wryly.
She squeezes his hands, "You missed me didn't you?" The question takes him off guard, his entire expression changing. Of course he'd missed her, but that didn't make her any less fucking infuriating.
She leans forward but he pulls back, which is a show of control he'd thought beyond him. "This conversation isn't over," he argues, "Katherine's got a few hundred years on you and we're running out of ways to save your life."
She rolls her eyes, "We'll make a plan." She's finished with this conversation, and is determined to divert his energy into more constructive pursuits.
He laughs again, and tries not to get distracted when she crawls into his lap, "Because our plans always work out so well?"
She reaches up to frame his face with her hands, her face growing serious. "I want to feel better Damon and I can only think of a few things that could help me," she pushes a piece of hair out of his eyes, "Don't you want to help me?" There is sincerity in her voice but also a touch of cunning, and he remembers not so long ago being abandoned on a rooftop while she fled New York City with Rebekah.
"I know what you're doing," he frowns. He doesn't add that it's working. That he's missed the way she's looking at him. That he would have done anything to get her back, even the pieces of her that throw his life into chaos on a daily basis, "I won't lose you again Elena."
"You won't," she promises, and her tone is genuine and full of determination. She stares at him with something soft in her eyes, something that reminds him that the girl he loves has returned, that she is done trying to hurt him for sport. So the next time she dips her head to press her lips to his he doesn't pull away. Instead he lets his hands fall to her waist and she leans into him and it's the kind of perfect that almost makes him forget their argument. The kind of perfect that could actually make him believe their lives will work out for once.