A/N: Instead of the killing of Conner triggering a dizzying storyline of him haunting Elena and forcing her into suicidal tendencies…I had the thought of something quite different and that's what spawned the driving force of the rest of this fic.
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Sire Bond. It passed through Elena's mind like a dirty word, causing her to cringe.
She had been sitting on the couch with Damon, the fire crackling just beyond his face in a blurry dance. She spoke as the flames licked and popped, intertwining and pulsing, "I wanted to dance with you today."
Her eyes flitted up to meet his and his face immediately grew thoughtful, eyes dropping to her lips and mouth curving into a brief smile.
It was Caroline that sped in front of them first. Her face was flushed and eyes wide as she sputtered up her theory on the sire bond. Stefan kept his eyes on Damon's even as Elena willed him to look at her.
Even after Elena pled and practically screamed that it wasn't true, Damon asked her softly to leave.
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Jeremy was dead. After pain in her chest and blinding tears in her eyes, she pled with the people who loomed over her shaking body. She pled for help.
Damon's fingers brushed gently in her hair and he commanded her, siring her to turn it all off.
Her house burned to the ground.
Xxx
The only time she felt anything anymore was in her dreams. It was always the same dream with different visitors. Jeremy would be back, magically conjured by Bonnie and her never ending supply of miracle spells.
She'd run into his arms, feeling everything again. Feeling safe again.
Upon waking she'd twist the switch even harder. Emotions weren't a magic spell or the answer to life. They weren't needed in this life anymore.
Xxxx
When Elijah appeared in Mystic Falls with his own agenda, she detected the hurt in his eyes at seeing her as an emotionless vampire.
She suspected she'd find an eloquently polite note on her bed later explaining how his heart yearned for her to find her way back to her compassion. His emotions were always better conveyed through pen and paper or behind his earnest dark honey eyes. Being a writer herself at one point in her life, she understood the appeal of a letter rather than a soft confession over a feel-good hug.
He surprised her though and asked her to accompany him and the Salvatores out for a drink. She accepted, understanding to the fullest it was yet another attempt by the older than old men in her life trying to rescue the little girl they'd all grown so fond of.
Elena had gotten ready in Damon's bathroom, not even bothering with the door. She'd need help with her zipper. Damon hadn't even complained when she turned up some music a touch too loud so she wouldn't have to hear his heavy sighs.
She stood with nothing but her panties, bra and bare feet, applying a touch of color to her lips. When she had finished and shook her hair out of the curlers, she walked in time with the music to the edge of his bed.
He was staring up at the ceiling with his hands tucked under his head and ankles crossed.
"Zip me up?" She asked as she had stepped into the dress that had been spread out at the bottom of his bed.
Wordlessly he sat up to reach for her and she obliged, walking to the side of the bed so he could access her back.
"I still can't remember where my shoes ended up…" she murmured.
"Couch cushions," came Stefan's voice from the doorway. He strolled in with her black pumps dangling off his fingers.
Wordlessly she stepped into them after he had placed them at her feet and moved back to lean against the wall with his arms crossed and eyes far away. She didn't bother surveying herself in the mirror once her ensemble was complete. She knew she looked like her, she had done it on purpose.
It wasn't that she was rebelling, she just logically felt like she should portray what they all thought she was now. Stefan had already accused her once of using seduction to manipulate just like her. He was wrong, but she knew how to work like Katherine and if need be she knew she could do it. She had better ways of getting what she wanted and needed though.
She felt more honest which was a trait Katherine lost long ago. Probably as soon as she learned to talk. Words were easier to use than her body to get her way, that was just the way Elena worked. Without emotions filtering and blanketing, the words slid much easier off the tongue.
Elijah had shown up in a luxury SUV. The color as onyx as her dress and interior just as glossy as her legs, Elena breathed in the expensive leather as she settled against it. There was a driver in the front, hands on the wheel and eyes faced forward.
Elijah took a seat next to Elena as the brothers slid in behind them, leather groaning under their weight. Music played softly on the radio, surely more for the driver's sake than the passenger's.
As they crept down the driveway and turned slowly onto the road Elena's ears tuned into the music at a familiar rift.
"Can you please turn the station," Elena called to the driver, her heart starting to pick up its pace.
Elijah said something in a different language to the man at the wheel who nodded politely and pressed a button, switching to something that wasn't Jeremy's favorite band.
She got fidgety as she sank deeper into her seat, wishing her heart wasn't so damned loud. Elijah placed three fingers light as a feather to her knee to still her tapping leg. She glanced up at him but he was looking the other way towards the streaming line of trees that rushed by.
Once she was still and her heart slowed to its' normal slowed vampiric thump, Elijah removed his touch and settled his hand on the seat behind her head.
It wasn't until Wickery Bridge that she let it slip again. She hadn't thought to ask the brothers how to stop the triggers from affecting her emotions yet.
When she looked up from her lap and noticed where they were, she immediately reacted and snapped her seatbelt into place, moving closer to Elijah and away from the glass. It was a stupid mistake, a knee jerk human reaction that must have still been imbedded inside of her. She didn't need protection from the bridge anymore. She was already dead.
Elijah's hand twitched a little, she felt it against her hair, as if his own knee jerk reaction was to comfort her, but instead he called again to the driver in that language that rolled so beautifully off of his tongue. It must have translated to 'drive faster' because the driver sped over the bridge.
Normally this would have been a good thing, made sense; drive faster, get over it faster. But instead it just brought her right back to when Stefan had ripped his way down the bridge, steel toed boot grinding down on the accelerator the louder her pleas had become.
Her words tumbled out of her mouth because it was what she wanted to say at that moment as they slowed at the end of the bridge. She unsnapped her seatbelt and turned slowly to face Stefan whose jaw was so clenched that a vein was pulsing in his temple.
"I never got to tell you how much I hated you for that night. How close I was to giving up on you. How much I threw up all over my bedroom floor because my legs wouldn't stop shaking even hours later, the toilet was just too far. I wanted you to know how much it hurt but I didn't want to hurt you. I didn't want to lose you. As I watched my little brother clean up my vomit I held onto the thought that if I hated you as much as I hated Damon in that moment that he snapped Jeremy's neck…I could love you again too," Elena went on, ignoring that a tear trickled down his cheek.
Now that the words were flowing and the switch was so tightened up that tears and pleading eyes and Elijah's fingers trying to calm her through little circles against her bare shoulder didn't soften them, she turned completely around in her seat. She propped up on her knees and rested her chin on the seat to turn her eyes to the elder brother who met her gaze coolly.
She recognized the look though it didn't reach her heart. He was asking her to stop in that expression that would look vacant to anyone who didn't know him, his lips still and body tense.
"Emotions allowed me to forgive you for killing my brother. Pity for your broken heart drove me to try to mend it back together again. And the woman that broke it to begin with ends up finishing the job. If I were the monster either of you were without your emotions, I'd rip your little brother's heart out and shove it down your throat," Elena explained, narrowing her eyes that were painted just like Katherine's.
Damon leaned forward then, face inches from hers so that all she could see was the icy blue of his eyes trained on hers. He spoke in an even tone so there would be no confusing his seriousness for nonchalance when he replied, "Sweetheart, make no mistake. Where we rip out hearts and break necks, your words are your most monstrous asset. Now. Turn. Around."
The switch loosened, his harshness triggering something deep in the pit of her stomach. Maybe it was the monster that lived in them all but in her rebuttal she turned to face Elijah who's eyes still looked so calculating.
"You see how they to fix me?" Elena asked him softly, leaning towards him, "they can't stand my honesty because I have no use for softer words or white lies to blanket what's going on around me anymore."
"I see a child who never grew into her emotions in the first place. You must be very confused right now, but no mind. You'll fix yourself Miss Gilbert," he opted for politeness and honesty in his tone.
"Quite the opposite. I've never felt surer of every thought," Elena admitted.
"Someone, quite some time ago, said to me once that if we cease to believe in love, why would we want to live. Do you find truth in this?"
She tilted her head a little, examining his eyes and then trailed her gaze down the bridge of his nose to the curve of his lips. Finally in a voice barely above a whisper she replied, "I used to, more than anything in the world, believe in those words."
"And now?" he prodded just as softly.
"It's hard for you to look at me isn't it? It's hard for them too. I look like her and now I'm too honest…which roughly translates into too monstrous apparently," her eyes flicked towards Damon.
"You are the third person to walk with this face on this Earth and I find it harder each time," Elijah admitted, bringing her attention back to him.
"I hope you take comfort in knowing I'll be the last," Elena blinked slowly, eyebrows raising.
"Careful, your humanity is bleeding though," Elijah murmured.
Elena leaned forward then and pressed her lips to his. His mouth parted in surprise, causing her lips to mold gently between the swell of his lips. Her tongue moved to hook under his top lip and it trailed very slowly beneath it as he pulled away almost sluggishly.
Their lips separated with the moist crinkle of saliva and the softest sigh of her breath against his face.
"That was very unkind Elena," Elijah admonished.
"It wasn't meant to be," she countered, touching her lips with her fingers.
Xxxx
It was Elijah who turned Elena's emotions back on. It was pertinent that she was able to fulfill her part in his plan.
He took her by surprise after she excused herself to the restroom of the club. He slid into her unlocked stall just as she was hiking her skirt up around her hips.
Her mouth formed an 'O' of surprise as he pressed her against the stall wall and cupped her chin.
"Elena. Forgive me but I require your assistance. You will forget this ever happened-but now…I need you to turn on your humanity. Turn it on."
