"Are you sure about this? I thought the whole point of laying low at your family's boarding house was to avoid being seen by anyone. Now you want to just knock on Grams' door?"
Damon leaned back in his chair. "We're desperate, Bonnie! We have no idea how to do the spell we need, and no access to any witchy cookbooks to look for one. Besides, we know that woman can keep a secret. All we have to do is convince her to trust us."
Bonnie rolled her eyes. "Oh, is that all? What am I supposed to say? 'Hey Grams, it's your granddaughter visiting you from 30 years in the future. Now let me introduce you to Damon, my vampire friend. You don't mind inviting us in, do you?'"
"Well…" Damon started. "You might want to ease into the vampire thing a little slower, but otherwise? Yeah, pretty much."
Still on the fence, Bonnie started to shake her head. "I don't-"
"This is all we've got, Bonnie!" Damon gritted out as he planted a fist onto the table. "What the hell else are we supposed to do? We need help – and we can't trust anyone else! Your Grams is our only shot at talking to someone without disturbing the future. We can't just sit around here doing nothing! Elena needs us!"
"Fine," Bonnie gave in. "But let me talk to her first, okay? Wait until I can convince her that I am who I say I am before trying to get you through the door."
"No problem," Damon said. "I'll wait outside once she lets you in so I can eavesdrop."
Noting Bonnie's glare, Damon shrugged. "Just trying to be honest."
Stalking over to the door, Bonnie grabbed their coats and shoved Damon's in his direction. "Let's just go."
Alaric tensed at the sound of someone climbing the stairs toward the apartment before recognizing the clomp of Elena's boots. He poured her a drink before collapsing back onto the couch.
Elena dropped down next to him and wordlessly toasted her glass in his direction before slamming it back.
"Rough day?" Ric asked her with a raised eyebrow.
"Is there any other kind?" Elena replied before noticing Ric's concerned gaze. Deciding to elaborate, Elena shrugged. "It's just…all I can do is survive. I've got these rituals – classes, running with Tyler, feeding, texting Jeremy, work – I just focus on making it from one part of my day to the next. If I try to think more than one step into the future, it all just…" she paused, "I just can't."
As Ric poured her another drink, she continued, "I know you guys worry about me, but I just don't know what to do about it. I mean, I'm trying to do the best I can. I haven't killed anyone, I haven't flipped my humanity switch…focusing on avoiding those two things is about all I can manage. Okay?"
Deciding to change the subject and cut her a break, Ric asked, "You talked to Stefan lately?"
Elena rolled her eyes. "Has anyone? He's holed up in that place he rented and avoiding all of us. The only thing he's said to me for months is that I need to move on with my life like he's claiming to be doing."
"Yeah, Caroline mentioned earlier that he was dodging her calls." He cleared his throat before continuing, "She also happened to mention that you've been avoiding her too?"
Elena tensed hard enough to shatter the glass she was still holding. She set the pieces down very calmly before turning to meet Ric's eyes. "I just can't stand listening to her, okay? She goes on and on about how we all lost family and how we all need to work together to move on. It's crap! She never liked Damon; she never missed an opportunity to make that crystal clear to me. I won't listen to her try and pretend otherwise now." She got up and began pacing. "Sometimes I seriously think I might go crazy, Ric. Nobody but you – and maybe Stefan – ever understood what kind of person Damon really was. Or could be, at least. Listening to anyone else talk about missing him, even if they mean it, makes me want to kill something. Nobody misses him like I do!"
As her voice got louder, she picked up Ric's empty glass and slammed it against the wall. "No one understands why I can't move on! Why Damon is the one person I can't stand to lose!" She collapsed onto the ground and drove her hands wildly through her hair. "It wasn't supposed to be him, you know? It was never supposed to be him. When I'd imagine the future, I thought about Jeremy, Matt and Bonnie and about how they'd eventually grow old and we'd lose them. Fine, that's how things are supposed to be. I actually thought about how we'd keep track of their families over time and check in on them! God, I wish I'd never thought about any of this. Because the one thing that never changed is that Damon was always there with me. He was supposed to be with me! The decades, the centuries…however long we had, he-" Elena finally broke down, unable to continue.
Easing down next to her on the floor, Ric put his arm around her. "I know," he said quietly, trying to offer her comfort.
"He was always the one," Elena gestured weakly with one hand, "that made me feel like I'd be able to handle being a vampire. How the hell am I supposed to do any of this without him? Why the hell should I even want to?"
"Not to mention losing my best friend," Elena continued to rant. "Bonnie was always there for all of us, willing to do whatever she could to help. We should have done more to leave her out of it! Then she wouldn't have died or been stuck on The Other Side…she'd be here."
Finally running out of words, Elena just sat with Ric for countless minutes, trying to force her mind back into default survival mode.
Eventually she cleared her throat and looked up. "So, have you dug up anything in your super-secret plan that I'm sick of pretending not to know about to comb through Shane's research?"
"That devious sarcasm right there?" Ric started after he got past his initial shock, "That is Damon's bad influence rearing its ugly head." Snorting, he shook his head. "And no, we haven't found anything yet. But your brother has decided to start helping, and now that you've revealed how bad I suck at being deceitful, you can start pitching in too."
Elena managed a small smile. "Like I'd really go through my days if I thought no one was doing something to try and find them? I'm sick of not being a part of it. I need to find hope from somewhere. Might as well be from the research of Professor Shadypants." She winked as she headed toward her room. "There's a little more Damon-speak for you."
Ric just smiled in return. Looks like letting her get a rant off her chest had helped lighten the load, at least for now.
Stefan winced at the sound of tires crunching gravel as a car approached the driveway of his cabin. He didn't even need to look out the window to know it was Caroline. She was the only one that ever came out here – and she was one person too many.
With a sigh, he shut his laptop and leaned back on the couch and cracked open a new bottle of beer to wait for her.
When she whirled in, he glared at her. "Not even going to knock now?"
Caroline snorted. "What would be the point? You'd just ignore it and I'd have to just come on in anyway."
Stefan shrugged. "Point to you."
"So…" Caroline started as she looked around, noting the empty beer bottles everywhere. "How's the novel coming?"
"It's fine. Why are you here?"
"Straight to the point? Okay," Caroline nodded. "I just wanted to check on you since you never answer your phone-"
"Nu uh, don't start with that," Stefan interjected. "You didn't come all the way out here for an update on how many squirrels I've been eating. What do you really want?"
"Look, it's just that…things aren't so good at home, okay?" Caroline sat down on the opposite side of the couch. "Nothing is going like it's supposed to, and I can't fix it all on my own!"
Stefan shook his head. "Why should you fix it? Why should anyone? People drift apart, it happens. Maybe we should all just let it go."
Caroline jumped to her feet in frustration. "We didn't just drift apart, Stefan! We lost two of our best friends – part of our family! Being in denial doesn't make it go away, it just makes you a coward. I am sick of watching you rot out here when we all need you at home!"
Unperturbed by her outburst, Stefan just shrugged. "No you don't. You, Alaric and Elena have each other – and I couldn't go to Mystic Falls to check on Jeremy even if I wanted to. You're all just holding onto the past instead of moving on with your life."
"No one is moving on, Stefan! Jeremy is holed up in your house alone, Tyler has to spend all his time fighting back his crazy werewolf gene rage…Alaric is basically on 24/7 Elena watch while she totally self-destructs. She won't even talk to me anymore. None of us are okay!"
"So Elena's feeding on people – it happens. We're vampires. She'll get past it eventually."
"She isn't just feeding on people, Stefan! She tracked down Luke and tortured some kind of crazy witchy drug blend that causes hallucinations. She spends hours at the cemetery every week getting high and waiting for Damon to appear. God, it's so messed up! She doesn't even talk to Jeremy regularly anymore. She needs help, Stefan."
Almost speechless, Stefan's shoulders sagged. "What can I do that no one else can? I sure as hell can't bring my brother back."
"Well," Caroline said with a raised eyebrow. "About that…we've been combing through all Shane's old research that Ric inherited with the teaching position looking for anything about realms beyond The Other Side. It's pretty slow going…we could definitely use some help?"
Stefan rubbed the back of his neck. "Not giving up, huh?"
"We can't," Caroline said simply. "Giving up hope means that we can accept the way things are now. And we can't. Not until we actually know what happened to Bonnie and Damon. They would never give up on us."
Stefan grunted. "You never even liked Damon."
"I wish everyone would stop saying that! Elena won't even come anywhere near me because she's convinced that I'm glad he's gone." Caroline shook her head. "Just because I think he's a total ass doesn't mean I don't care about what happens to him. And even with all his many faults, the one thing I know is that family means something to him too – he was always willing to fight for us. You better believe I won't stop fighting for him now. He and Bonnie."
"Look, I can't just drop everything…" Stefan sighed. "Let me think about it, okay?"
"Sure!" Caroline said agreeably. "You have five minutes to think about it before I drag you out of here myself. No more mopey in-denial Stefan laying around out here alone. You're coming with me if I have to hit you with a vervain dart and haul your ass to my car. Got it?"
