Author's Note: In my head canon, Damon never would have kept the same bedspread and sheets after sleeping with Elena in his bed and then having her call it a "mistake." So despite the fact that the TVD art department didn't change it on the show, I did for this fic.
This chapter is dedicated to Goldnox, for ruining my life. No, not for refusing to send me that "technical diagram" you hilariously tried to draw in Paint (aka fingerpainting for 80s kids on their enormous desktop PC's). Though Mr. Trogdor was crestfallen. But no, for the other crime of unspeakable brilliance and meanness, that I have only forgiven because you proceeded to save my life half an hour after ruining it, in a feat of quantum superpositioning rarely observed in humans.
Chapter 2: Tinkerbell Speaks
ELENA
After I said good night to Stefan, there was only one place I could go. I felt bruised by the day I'd just lived through, by every unbidden thought that had invaded my mind.
I knew the visions were over because I felt it the moment the Travelers' spell broke, the held-breath waiting feeling in my body finally letting me go. But even though they're gone, the house still haunts me. 4620 Walnut Drive felt safe, as much as I hate that I ever saw it. Its bright red pots and pans and cheery little egg timer reminded me of the lake house when I was a child: a place where nothing was ever so wrong that it couldn't be fixed.
I haven't felt truly safe like that since just before Katherine stole my body straight out of Damon's arms.
So I went to our room.
I know it's just his now, know that it was my choice to take my things and leave, but after everything that's happened I deserve to be able to let down my guard for a little while. Just an hour to take off my clothes and wrap myself in the scent and the soothing slide of sheets so expensive I wouldn't even know where to buy them.
Damon shouldn't find me that way. It would be cruel, to both of us, but I tell myself I'll get up and get dressed as soon as I hear him come home. I have to see him, to make sure Markos didn't hurt him. To do what little I can to take away the look that came into his eyes when he realized I was right next to him, but in my mind I was with Stefan, pushing the papers heedlessly off the kitchen counter the same way I spilled the books off a school desk in my fantasies about Damon at the parent teacher conference last week.
The door to our bedroom is closed and I turn the knob and slip inside, letting my eyes fall closed and my shoulders relax as tears threaten behind my lashes.
In my vision when I hugged Stefan, that little velvet box clutched between my fingers and his neck, I was deliriously happy. I had everything I'd ever wanted and there was absolutely nothing standing in my way to keep me from enjoying it. Weirdly, that was the only moment when it started to feel more like a dream than reality, because I've never felt that way in my entire life.
When I was falling in love with Stefan, I felt a little guilty for being happy in a world where my parents were dead. And the happiest I've ever been, the night I finally let myself claim Damon and we were together for the first time…even then the guilt of knowing that Stefan was hurting gnawed at me, even if sometimes I forgot it in the heat of the moment.
But that's life; complicated, painful life, and Stefan was right. We had our time. It was real and it was beautiful and ugly and scary and God we did love each other. So much.
And it was nothing at all like what I feel for his brother.
Sitting next to Damon tonight, my body was more relaxed than it's been in weeks. Even in sleep I toss and turn and my fingers clench tight, punching holes straight through my pillowcases. I don't know how much longer I can keep myself away from him, and every time I see him, it's harder to remember why I should even try.
I made a whole list of resolutions to change myself, neatly numbered in the new journal I bought after I got my body back from Katherine. I dutifully recorded goals for myself with a sublisting of what to do to live up to each one, every single day. I followed it to the letter for four days before I started to slack off, but even for those four days I never felt anything but miserable. I'm no better of a person apart from Damon than I was when I was with him. I don't know if he's had any more luck than I have. There haven't been any bodies, but every time I see him his voice is a little duller, and I miss the spark of the old Damon.
I take a deep breath, because I know at least his scent won't have changed. But no, something isn't right. I open my eyes, frowning. Damon could probably pinpoint the difference without having to resort to his sight, but I haven't been a vampire long enough to categorize scents the way he can.
Fortunately, the switch is easy to spot. The bedspread is glaringly light and so crisp that it must be brand new. I frown, confused, and venture a little closer, eyeing the blotchy polka dots that clash with the sleek swoops of the celtic knotwork on the headboard.
Since when does Damon like polka dots?
A heaviness quavers deep inside my gut and I take one more reluctant step, reaching out to twitch the top of the coverlet back.
White fabric glares out at me, a whole world away from the rich hazelnut cotton sheets and red satin pillowcases that we slept on the last time we were here.
I let the ugly comforter fall back into place, my hand rising shakily to my throat. I can't curl up and hide here, not beneath bedding he must have bought to erase the last trace of me from this room.
I turn toward the window, swallowing hard. I feel like I need to steady myself against something, but there's obviously nothing in this room I'm allowed to touch.
And somehow, I still can't bring myself to leave.
I always come back to this, come back to him, no matter how many ways I try to deny the ties between us.
Yes. You have lost me forever.
Maybe that's the problem.
I care about you, Damon. Which is why I have to let you go.
It's over. We're…over.
We even agreed this time, that it was best for us to be apart. The only person who seems to think we're good for each other is Stefan, as ironic as that is. And Stefan loves his brother so much that it's not like he's an unbiased audience.
But if it's the right thing to do, why is it that every time I try to push Damon out of my life I end up like a sleepwalker? Lately, I'm forever forgetting what I'm doing and staring blindly out of windows, the confusion so thick that it no longer forms into words but just congeals into the back of my throat until some crisis or another catapults us back together and the only thing I can do is try to cover the guilt of my relief by glaring at him.
I've given in to my feelings for him so many times, but never all the way. Never enough that I could escape that niggling doubt in the choice I'd made.
I hug my arms around myself and take a step closer to the flat black of the glass that stands between me and the forest beyond. But it's so dark that the glass is more like a mirror and the sight of my eyes, wide and troubled, sends something sharp arrowing through my body.
I'm an adult now. No one is responsible for my decisions but me and I need to face the fact that I'm not being honest with myself. I have a long list of excuses to stay away from Damon and every single one of them sounds hollow, frayed around the edges. None of them is the reason I keep coming back.
Or the reason I keep leaving.
I take a deep breath and close my eyes.
It's something about the sex. Not the pleasure that explodes like an atom bomb until I can't remember anything about the world around me. That's just Damon, his insane focus on my every reaction, the way he knows just when to back off and when to push, the way he never relaxes into playfulness until I've had at least my fourth orgasm.
No, it's about the way something blasts open in me every time I touch him: the way the me who is alone with him is richer, more passionate, and completely unafraid. It terrifies me because sex is my permission, but I think if no one else were looking, that girl would be me every moment of the day.
I swallow and pry my eyes open, my skin itchy as I long to flee back to my dorm room, or to burrow under Damon's blankets and pretend that he still wants me there. But I need to be strong, like him. Need to face the violence of what's between us that keeps twisting me to its will until I'm tied up in uncertain, frustrated knots, my feet carrying me away from Damon even as my heart drags me back. My friends keep trying to tell me what the right thing is, but it feels anything but right.
It's so easy for Caroline to condemn him, because she remembers the Damon who murdered our old history teacher, Mr. Tanner, but she wasn't there when the waitress's body hit the floor in the diner, my warning to both Salvatores that I was a monster who couldn't be saved. She remembers the Damon who killed Bonnie's friend Luka to save us from his spells, but she didn't see my face in the moment after I killed Connor, when I felt nothing but satisfaction.
She knows that Damon was the one who said we had to kill Jesse when he attacked. She doesn't bother to mention that it was me who drove the stake home. And Caroline never felt Damon's lips on her forehead, wishing her safe travels anywhere she wanted to go because that's how he loves: without conditions, without restrictions. Without safegards or boundaries or contingency plans.
I bite my lip, forcing myself to follow the thought to its inevitable conclusion, even though my stomach churns.
The truth is that we are more alike than I think anybody sees and the more I'm around him, the more obvious it becomes. But that would mean that the girl I've thought I was my whole life: the honor student, the cheerleader, the girl who curled into her window seat to write about how much she hated to break Matt's heart…none of those were really me.
It would mean that the girl my parents knew wasn't real.
The thought hits me like a hardball in the sternum and I sway a little, my toes curling tightly inside my shoes as I search for balance.
My image blurs in the glass as I blink back tears. I can sense the bed behind me where I've been that other version of myself, the wilder one who loves the scents of sex, who never rushes to shower afterward even though that's what polite people do. The one who likes to taste sweat and blood and leather straight from the skin of a man who would let me claw him all the way to the bone, his only reaction the aroused dilation of his beautiful eyes as he drives so hard into my body that it should scare me.
But it never does.
Is that girl the real me? And if Damon and I are bad together, what about her and Damon?
My mind is so tired that it is fading into a sluggish kind of stillness and I stop breathing, stop shifting my weight, stop doing anything human. I don't know if I can stop running from Damon, still am not entirely sure I should.
What I am certain of is that Damon is still out there somewhere, doing whatever he has to do to protect me. And no matter how dangerous it is, I know he'll be back.
But mostly, I know that there is nowhere else in the world I can stand to be but in our room. I feel it so strongly that it's like I was placed here, and I don't even want to start to fight it. Even if I'm no longer welcome here. Even if it's bad for me. Even, God forgive me, if it's bad for him.
Author's Note: Hello, wonderful readers! Thanks for reading and supporting all this writing I can't seem to stop doing! One more chapter to this fic, my friends, and I think it might have to be that heartbreaking scene in the bedroom in 5x18, so click those Follow buttons if you believe I'll give you a better ending than the TVD writers did!
