The Aftermath
by poopaw
(Disclaimer: I do not own TVD.)
At this very moment, probably the one person she hates more than Klaus is Katherine Petrova.
(And that's saying something because she's pretty sure her hate for him reaches the ends of the Earth.)
"Something's wrong," Stefan throws the bomb that pushes everyone to their toes. His arms are crossed and his features are set into hard planes. They are all in the Salvatore house. Bonnie is pacing back and forth by the window, a little too hot-headed to give them any thought.
(Elena had found about her and Jeremy's active sex life and it wasn't a pretty conversation – scandalous sex only brings trouble, if you ask her.)
Damon has the bottle of scotch, as he's always done since he made the greatest mistake of his life.
(And the best mistake Elena's ever been on the receiving end of, she thinks to herself.)
Seeing as she seems to be the only one lucid enough to notice Stefan's grave voice, she speaks first. "What do you mean?"
"Elena's not Elena."
Damon's head snaps up almost immediately. Bonnie stops her pacing long enough to hear Stefan's theory. It's true. Elena's been a little too exuberant, a little too flirty with the Salvatore brothers. Her smile is just a bit too vicious and her hair's bouncier than usual. In other words, she's a little too similar to a certain doppelganger who had fooled them in thinking she had finally died.
And while Stefan continues to explain, she can't help but think how messed up their entire lives are.
If he hadn't figured it out, her best friend might have been gone for God knows how long. It brings a certain chill to her body, knowing that it wasn't really her best friend that's been prancing in and out of their lives for the past seven days. The guilt creeps through her veins like a violent reminder of how awful they all are.
(And also, she can't help but think of how Stefan only needed a week to notice anything off but it took everyone else almost three months – or more, if "Tessa" hadn't gotten him – to notice he was drowning at the bottom of a lake.)
As it turns out, Katherine has taken over Elena's body. And they have no idea where she is. While they do know how to rid Katherine off of Elena's body, there's absolutely no way for them to find out her location.
(Thank God for Matt's little excursion with the doppelganger's devil spawn and her boyfriend, at least they had something to work on with regards to these goddamn travelers.)
The thing is: Bonnie isn't a witch anymore. They had no locator spell. The last time any of them had even seen Elena was two days ago. Katherine could've gotten tired of playing with their lives and decided to fly off to any part of the world by now.
One thing's for sure: she isn't in Mystic Falls.
"If Klaus couldn't find her for five hundred years, then what are our chances?" Jeremy voices out the concern of everybody.
She flinches harder than anyone else because it reminds her too much of stolen touches against tree barks and cold dirt.
When the pressure of looking for Elena becomes too much, she hides away in her bedroom to give herself ten minutes of silence.
No Damon biting everyone's heads off. No Stefan jittery asking everyone if they had any ideas on Elena's whereabouts. No Bonnie looking like everything was her fault for not being a witch.
She takes a deep breath and clears her mind of everything.
(Everything except him because as it turns out, she's still very much troubled by the fact that she had intercourse with Hayley's, her least favorite werewolf, truth-omitting baby daddy.)
One week quickly turns into three weeks in a blink of an eye. She senses that Damon's just about ready to kill the entire population of Mystic Falls. This just further increases everyone's anxiety and stress.
However, the main problem they have right now is that they still have very little knowledge about travelers.
(Other than the fact that they are the most annoying little creatures to ever surface, Caroline decides.)
"I think it's time we call in reinforcements," Damon turns his head to her direction and gives her a look that both infuriates her and makes her pity him. He just wants to find Elena but the method he wants to take is the last thing she wants to consider.
She crosses her arms and declares a very firm no.
"Don't you want to find Elena?" Damon yells accusingly. She sees the veins on his neck. His anger is making its full appearance today. She vaguely remembers flashes of him like this a few years back.
When she was still human – insecure and weak.
Her own anger soon rises because how dare this man think that she doesn't care what happens to her best friend? She's literally died and killed for Elena. "Of course I do!"
"Then why can't you just call –"
She leaves the room before Damon even finishes the sentence.
Stefan quickly catches up with her in the woods. She sits down on a rock and stares up at his warm and worried gaze. He knows something is wrong. But she hasn't told anybody anything that happened in this very same area a week ago, so he doesn't have the slightest idea why she's acting the way she is.
"Please," his voice croaks out.
She soon relents because she can't say no to true love.
If her call doesn't connect, then they're screwed.
"Absolutely beautiful."
It was an unconscious proclamation because when she looked up to his eyes curiously, he looked somewhat embarrassed to have been caught.
Fortunately for him, his hand on her hip quickly distracted her from asking any questions.
She's doing this for true love. Stefan is the good guy. He's the boy every girl wants their best friend to end up with. Elena needs Stefan. He's good for her. He has never given up on her. He's always fought for her. He's always sided with her.
Elena and Stefan are perfect together.
(She doesn't acknowledge the little part in her that is yelling out that she's also doing this for Damon. So that he'll stop hurting himself and brooding over the loss of Elena. He doesn't deserve Elena, she tries to convince herself.)
The phone rings.
And rings.
And rings.
Then, nothing.
He is evil and there is no excusing all of the things he's done, she thinks. She should have never gotten involved with him.
(She's still talking about Damon and Elena, right?)
Elena's been missing for more than a month now and everyone is on edge.
Damon, Stefan, and Bonnie are all circled around a map – all of them deciding where Elena's possible locations could be. She could hear Matt's grunts from outside as he distracts Jeremy with a little sparring.
She notes the dark circles under Damon's eyes. His hair is in disarray. The glass of scotch beside him refilled every thirty minutes. He looks like a beautiful disaster.
She sighs and moves upstairs to try again.
"Please answer," she whispers to herself. She hates this. She hates him. "Please."
Her call gets blocked after the fifth ring.
It's two months in Elena's disappearance when Damon sits down on the curb next to her. It's the first time he corners her on his own. His eyes are sharp and dangerous. She can feel the frustration rolling off him. She knows whatever he has to say will hurt.
"I guess you weren't all that special to him, huh?"
She expected that but it doesn't make the blow feel any less painful.
It takes Stefan nine weeks before he finally cracks. He takes her arm and pulls her to a location far enough to make sure that none of their companions will hear. She sees his eyes flashing darkly, the strain of the whole situation apparent in his posture. He looked so rigid, so very unlike Stefan.
But she guesses that's what it is like to not know where your loved one is or if she's even alive.
"You either explain to me why Klaus won't answer any of our calls or I swear to God –"
He stops and for a moment, she is afraid Stefan would actually turn his emotions off. So in an attempt to placate him, she finally tells him what happened. She tells him their promise. She tells him the truth.
(That she didn't expect him to follow his word, didn't actually believe that she'd be ignored.)
Stefan looks at her strangely for a minute and then, he presses a kiss on the side of her head.
"Oh, oh, oh, oh!"
Centuries on this Earth truly taught him a thing or two about the human body, she thinks.
"Why don't we have anything on these goddamn travelers?"
The Salvatore coffee table flies through the window and onto the front porch. She knows that Damon is about two minutes away from turning everything off. It's been too long since they've heard from Elena/Katherine. There's no telling if she's even alive. And even if nobody has voiced it out yet, they are all very close to thinking that this is a pointless mission.
It seems that the only information the world has on these travelers are from the Originals' experience. And it's not like they can just show up to New Orleans because according to Tyler, going there would be like signing your death certificate. There is war is ongoing there and for the first time in a long time, they weren't involved in it. It would be stupid to run right into that.
(And it's not like they can just contact and ask them because, well, obviously.)
Suddenly, a large crash from the front door takes up all of their attention. Stefan zooms inside with a struggling Katherine and the corresponding devil spawn in his arms. She isn't all that surprised when she sees Nadia's heart fly across the room almost instantly, courtesy of one Damon Salvatore.
Love is beautiful but revenge is much more entertaining.
An hour later, she gets to hug her best friend back. Everyone is happy, as they should be. And she's happy too. It's just –
She can't help but think that this is the first problem he hasn't solved for her.
It bothers her more than it should.
Author's Note: Length of each chapter will vary. Sometimes it'll be a drabble. Sometimes it'll be a novel. Tell me what you think of this chapter by submitting a review or messaging me!