You guyyyys. You're the best. Thank you so much for all the wonderful, kind, grin-inducing reviews. They genuinely make my day, so thank you. As it so often does though, special thanks go out to WildYennifer whose smart conversation and excellent music recommendations help me focus my thoughts, and whose betaing keeps me on track. Дякую, darlin'.
Now that we've dispensed with that, how about we continue our little tale?
I lob the plastic bag into Stefan's suitcase. A fluffy tail flops out. "I brought breakfast," I announce.
Stefan picks up the bag with his thumb and forefinger and sets it on his bed. He crams another shirt into the suitcase. It's a wadded mess and I want to refold it, but I restrain myself. "You know, I have a whole new appreciation for this diet of yours. Rocky there was a bitch to catch." Seriously, who knew raccoons bite?
Elena clip-clopped her way out of the loft an hour ago. It took me a few minutes to recover from the dual shock of seeing her ass in that teeny, tiny pair of panties and her revelation that she'd told Stefan. Once my brain was fully functioning again, I slowed down long enough to catch Stefan's meal before I beat feet over here. I know I shouldn't enable Stefan in his perverse quest to eat his way through Noah's Ark when he should be looking higher up the evolutionary ladder, but he could probably use some comfort food right about now.
He looks better than I thought he would, though. I assumed I'd find him an inconsolable blob in the corner, but he's not. I mean, he's all furrow-y and has his lower lip pushed out petulantly, but that's just kinda what his face looks like. His eyes are a little red and there's a half-empty bottle of whiskey on the nightstand, but he's functioning. I probably should be relieved I don't have to break him out of a blubbery funk, but I'm not. I'm actually kinda worried about how okay he seems. Am I going to find a basket of heads in the basement? I make a mental note to check before I leave.
"Did you come here to gloat?" he asks. Yeah, that's what I came here for. To gloat because I'm just so thrilled that instead of being the only miserable one, we can all wallow in unending Sturm und Drang together. Watch me struggle to contain my joy.
"Nothing to gloat about, Stef. Well, besides that I'm the smarter, better looking, and better endowed brother, but that's nothing new," I tease. "But I assume you're talking about Elena. Look-"
He cuts me off by huffing a massive sigh like he usually does whenever I open my mouth. It didn't use to be this way. As a tot, Stefan worshiped me. No, seriously. Followed me everywhere, wanted to do everything I did, whether that was riding a wild new stallion, reading dangerous books like Uncle Tom's Cabin in secret, or dancing scandalously with the prettiest girl at a party. Wherever I went, there he was, watching. When I signed up for the Army of Northern Virginia when he was just fourteen, too young to enlist, he cried and sulked for days until I promised to bring him a Yankee scalp. Where did we go wrong, Stefan and I?
Oh. Women. Right.
"Don't play dumb. Elena left me for you and now you want to rub my nose in it. Go ahead," he says dourly.
"I told you, there's nothing to gloat about. We aren't together," I say with studied casualness. "But out of morbid curiosity, what did she say?" I know I shouldn't make my brother relive his dumping, but I have to know. Just add it to the long, long list of things I'll make up to him one of these days, along with the forgotten Blue Coat scalp.
Stefan turns away and walks to his chifforobe, pretends to be engrossed in his never-ending supply of hoodies and earth tones. "She said that she knew she should stay with me, that her head knew I was the right choice. But her heart wanted you, and she couldn't ignore it anymore. Said she loved me enough to let me go."
"So she's recycling break-up lines now. Resourceful," I say, but it's half-hearted at best. What does that mean? Why can't that girl ever just give a clear answer- "I want to be with Stefan because he makes me feel like a pretty pretty princess and never questions my decisions," or "I want to be with Damon because..." I can't even finish the sentence in my own mind, can't fill in the blank. I also can't argue with her; logic and reason both dictate that Stefan's the right choice. And yet...
"Do you want to punch me? You felt better the last time you punched me," I offer. He hits like a girl anyway. Or so I pretend as I brace myself for the blow.
He looks tempted for a moment, raises his right hand in a clenched fist. Then he drops it with another melancholy sigh. He turns to the chifforobe and pulls out a pair of Chinos. "I saw it coming. I'd be more upset if it had been a surprise." He folds the pants sloppily and tosses them into the bag. "She tried to love me like she used to. I think she wanted it to be like the old days. But it was never the same."
"Oh, cheer the hell up. Just wait an hour and she'll change her mind again." I shrug and upend his suitcase on the bed, scattering clothes and books.
"Dammit, Damon." He mopes his way over to the bed, starts to refill the bag. "We had a deal. I'm just trying to keep my word."
"Why? I didn't keep mine," I remind him cheerfully.
"That was different. She needed you."
"And she's gonna need you again when she realizes her head's gonna win the fight."
"She doesn't want me. If she doesn't want me, there's no reason for me to stay." He reaches for his diary, but I'm faster. I snatch it from his hand.
"Please—you've got so much to stay for." He jumps for the diary, but I hold it out of his reach. "There's your school career to think of. And...um, Caroline likes you, so that's something, I guess?"
"Give it back, Damon. Just let me walk away. Let me give the two of you a chance," he says. I squint at him. He's all hero hair and earnest eyes. I think he actually means what he's saying. Typical dumbass Stefan.
"There's zero chance because we aren't together," I say. "And besides, bros before hos. She's just a girl." But she's a pretty special girl. I swat the echo away. Girls come and girls go, but blood is blood. And if, in the impossibly remote chance that Elena doesn't change her mind and something potentially possibly maybe happens between us? If she can't deal with Stefan being around, then she's not the girl I thought I loved anyway.
He stops lunging for the diary and looks at me, really looks at me, for the first time since I walked into the room. Takes a step toward me. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you want me to stay."
I scoff, put on my best smirk. "Of course not. I'm just saying you've dealt with a year and a half of high school; it seems a waste to throw away your shot at getting into a good college now." I hold the diary out to him.
He takes it and quirks a crooked smile. "You too, brother," he says. "You too."
I nod and look away. Too mushy. Better wrap this up. "Now, you eat a nutritious breakfast and skedaddle on to school. Study hard for those SATs." I stroll to the door, hands shoved in my jacket pockets. I hear plastic rustle behind me and smile.
"Hey, Damon?" I turn. He's peering into the bag at the dead raccoon. "She means it. Don't be an idiot." He finally looks up, and he's that fourteen-year-old boy with hopeful eyes. Maybe now they're dimmed a bit by the passage of years, but he's still that watchful, sensitive child. "If it can't be me, I want it to be you. If I'm not what she wants, I want her to have you."
I turn on my heel and leave.
Biggest discovery of the afternoon: Witches have shitty handwriting. I've been sitting in the Richard Lockwood Memorial Founding Documents Room at the Mystic Falls Library for hours, delicately paging through crumbling books with white-gloved hands. I think my eyeballs are about to fall out from deciphering the crabbed, faded handwriting on these seventeenth century papers.
Whining aside, it's worth it. These are the very first records we have of Mystic Falls (well, except for those cave drawings, but I'm kind of sick of Originals right now), back when the first coven of witches relocated here from Salem in 1692. While I'm not fluent in witch, I'm pretty sure they chose the site because the falls, the caves, the hills, and the oak forests created some kind of mystical convergence point (hence the hokey name of our beloved town). Something about all the elements being in balance made a place that was perfect for a bunch of witches on the lam.
I tug my right glove off with my teeth and pick up a pen. Taking care to make my penmanship better than the witches', I jot notes on a legal pad. Did the convergence draw Esther and Ayanna to MF like it did the Salem coven? Does it draw vampires? Does it keep us here? Witches + Doppelganger = Vampire. How are we connected? I underline the last sentence with thick black strokes. There's something here, some idea I can't tease out. There's a connection between this place and us, a reason so many vampires are drawn here and get caught like mosquitoes in amber. But right now I've got more questions than answers. That seems to be a recurring theme in my life right now, but I don't want to think about that. Don't want to think about my brother's self-sacrificing words (the overly-dramatic martyr) or Elena's fierce promise. I just want to think about dead sorceresses, local landmarks, and old blood. Is that so much to ask?
I turn back to the grimoire I'm trudging through when I hear the door hiss open. I expect it to be the librarian kicking me out for the day, but when I look up, it's Elena.
Thank God, she's abandoned the sex pot thing for her usual jeans and sneakers, topped with a shirt the color of bruised plums and a black leather jacket. She's carrying a bulging backpack as big as she is like it's full of feathers. I'm still getting used to her like this, remembering how strong she is. I always knew she was pure steel on the inside, but it's hard to remind myself that she's made of sterner stuff on the outside, too.
"Hey," she says.
"Stole my line," I say lamely. What do I say now? I don't know what to do; I've been trying not to think about her and me (us?) all afternoon, to lose myself in these extinct worlds. And I never thought she'd find me here—who would expect me to be at the library? I'm flatfooted and I don't like it.
"Oh, sorry," she says, tucking a long hank of hair behind her ear. She swings that overstuffed backpack up, nearly brings it down on top of a letter from Constance Bennett to her sister back in Salem. I rescue it right before the bag comes crashing down on top of the brittle parchment.
"Kids today," I say as I smooth the letter. "No appreciation for history."
"Sorry. Again. I've been saying that a lot lately." She seems to notice the piles of mouldering old books and scraps of paper for the first time. "What is all this?"
"Just stuff. Just old stuff." I feel weirdly awkward at her finding me like this. I don't know why, but it makes me feel...naked? And not in the fun way.
I pull my right glove back on and start packing the items back into their storage box. Not gonna get any work done with her here, and she might accidentally wipe out a hundred years of history with a sneeze.
"What are you doing here anyway?" I ask, wanting to shift the attention away from me. The last thing I want is to talk about me. "Thought they only let researchers back here."
"My mom was good friends with Mrs. King," she says. The librarian. Figures. Small towns are incestuous. "I was on my way to the loft, but I saw your car. It's kinda hard to miss. So I stopped in and Mrs. King let me sneak back."
"Oh." She was on her way to the loft. Again. How long are we going to play this game? How many times do I have to hurt her, humiliate her, push her away before she gets the fucking message? We can't be together. We only fit together in fevered dreams and dying wishes, not in the real world. We can't keep doing this.
I put the lid on top of the box and strip off my gloves. "So. What do you want?"
This slow grin unravels across her face. I can't remember the last time I saw her look so genuinely happy, and I find myself smiling back before I can stop myself. Not a smirk, not a sneer or a leer, but an honest-to-God smile. There may be dimples involved; I can't say for sure. The instant I realize what's happening, I wipe that shit-eating expression off my face. I don't want to lead her on, even if that mischievous smile of hers makes every muscle in my body clench and relax at the same time.
Nothing has changed, Salvatore. So she broke up with Stefan. Big fucking deal. How many times have they broken up now? I give it a week, two tops. She always thinks she can live without him, but she never can pull it off. She needs him.
"I've been doing some research of my own," she says, unperturbed by my suddenly stony face. "And I made you something."
My curiosity is piqued despite my best efforts. I can't remember the last time someone gave me something. No, wait. Last Christmas, when Ric gave me a surprisingly decent bottle of Glenfiddich but I hadn't gotten him anything so we shared it (and a couple of other bottles) and woke up on the lawn that gray Christmas morning. I never did find my pants. I almost smile again at the memory, but I can't manage to smile about Ric yet.
I snap back to the present and Elena's rummaging around in that gigantic bag of hers, pulling out Tupperware containers and Thermoses and plastic cutlery. I quirk a brow. "What exactly have you been researching?"
"I was looking in some of Stef—in some old stuff at the boarding house," she says. Almost fumbled the ball, but nice recovery. "I found your letters," she says.
He kept them? I never even knew if he got them. Well, obviously he got the letters I sent during the War, back when we wrote each other nearly every day. But after our falling out, every now and then through the decades I'd feel nostalgic and drop a note in the post to him. Half of them were taunts and recriminations (eternity of misery, remember?), but the other half was stuff only he'd understand, stuff only another Salvatore would get. I reminisced about the old days, about long-gone places and long-dead people, about how it was when life was simple and sweet. I know, I know. Pretty sentimental and stupid of me. But no matter how much I hated him, he was still my brother. There were still things about me only he understood, things I needed to try to say to him, even if I never really said them right. He never wrote back, but I didn't expect him to.
"First, way to be a snoop, Elena." I reach for a Tupperware. "And second, what do those old letters have to do with-" I crack open the container and freeze. Inside is a biscuit, perfectly golden brown on top. It's split in half, revealing flaky layers and a thick, luscious ooze of apple butter, redolent with cinnamon and clove. "How did you—I haven't-" I've been reduced to incoherency by a baked good.
"Like your nurse used to make for you. What was her name?" Elena asks innocently, but she already knows.
"Hattie. Her name was Hattie." I haven't thought about her in years. I never heard what happened to her after the War; probably fled north like most of the other slaves. I dip my finger into the sticky jam and put it to my tongue. It tastes like fall, like golden afternoons and warm, soft embraces. "You made this?" For me?
"That, no. After my first baking experiment, I left it to the professionals. Caroline makes a mean biscuit," she says almost apologetically. "She helped a lot; she likes projects. But I did what I could."
I'm half-glad she didn't make it because I've had her cooking, but then she's opening other containers and there's no time for cynicism because every damn Tupperware catapults me back in time. There's thick pappardelle tossed with olive oil and a flurry of black pepper and I'm slammed back to the summer kitchen with Stefan and Mother. Whenever Father was away, we'd chase the slaves from the kitchen and she'd take over. Stefan could barely see over the counter as she rolled the sheets of dough, flour hanging in the air like snow. There's a pitcher of sweet tea spiked with clumps of mint leaves and I'm back on the verandah on a sticky summer night, drinking glasses of the stuff beaded with condensation and trying to sneak my hand up Penelope Davis' petticoat. There's even a little jar of pickles and I can almost smell cheap beer and Georgia peaches.
I don't know what to say. I don't know what to do. All I can do is breathe in these memories.
"You don't like it," Elena says uncertainly. "It's just, in all those letters, you kept talking about food and how it reminded you of when things were simpler. I just thought—I thought it might make you happy."
I should push her away again; I should hurl the containers to the ground and tell her how stupid it is to bring food to a vampire, snarl at her like some low-rent Bela Lugosi that I want blood. That's what I need to do, send her scurrying away again, convince her that this is the kind of gesture Stefan would appreciate, not me. That's exactly what I should do.
"You shouldn't have done this. But since you did, pass me the sweet tea." I can go back to being a dick after dessert.
We eat and we talk, ignoring every rule of library decorum. We don't mention that nebulous us thing, don't talk about romance or brothers or bloodlines or anything of importance. Between bites, I tell her about what life was like before the War, about the dances and the dresses (I leave out all the parts about the slavery and oppression); she tells me about how she almost failed Home Ec when she mixed up baking soda and baking powder in her snickerdoodles.
She brought a Thermos of AB-negative. It's rare and hard to find at the blood banks. It's also my favorite— smooth and mellow like a good Cabernet. I pour some into the little cup and offer her a swig without thinking. I swear to God I wasn't trying to be a jerk; I was trying to be nice. I forgot she was on the Stefan Salvatore Diet.
She wants it. Her veins cry out for it, faint shadows whispering under her skin. My own fangs threaten to break free at that predatory, gorgeous, hot sight. Goddammit, why won't she let go? I want her to give in and see what she was made to be. It'd be easy to convince her. She's craving it, dying for it like vampires always are. But she shakes her head and begins to tear a biscuit into tiny pieces. "I'm good. Thanks, but I'm good."
I nod and let it go with only a twinge of regret. Hey, it's just more proof she's Stefan's girl, since they share the same eating disorder and all. But I don't want to think about him right now. I want to see that smile again. "So, did I tell you that I caught a raccoon this morning? I think the little fucker was rabid." I launch into a long and exaggerated tale and gulp the blood down and put the Thermos away. She throws her head back and laughs and laughs at my valiant struggle against the dastardly beast.
But once I've finished, her expression turns serious. "Why were you hunting animals? That's not really your thing," she says.
"Needed a new hat," I say. "Coon skin caps are all the rage in Paris." We're so not having this conversation.
"Uh huh. It had nothing to do with you trying to be nice to your brother, who just so happens to like raccoon blood?"
I don't say anything for a long time. I finish my paper cup of tea, study the melting ice cubes with interest. "Call it a peace offering," I say quietly.
I steal a glance at her from the corner of my eye. She wants to pry, wants me to admit that I did it because I have mushy, squishy feelings for Stefan and we share a brotherly bond and I should let people expect good from me and blah blah whatever. But she doesn't. Opens her mouth once, then closes it. Kind of nods at me, and then dives into a story about Caroline mistakenly hunting a bobcat and I'm laughing and she's laughing and whatever just passed between us has evaporated into the air.
I know this can't last. I know this laughter and fun isn't us, that the screaming and the tears and "maybe that's the problem!" and "I'm not Stefan!" are what's real between us. But for an hour, I let myself pretend this could be us.
We laugh a lot. We eat a lot. All too soon it's over and I'm wiping up crumbs and she's packing the Tupperware away. She reaches into the bag, digs around at the bottom and pulls out one last container. "I made this one all by myself," she says. "Save it for later." She holds it out to me. I close my hand around it, but she doesn't let go. "Have I convinced you? At least a little?"
As far as Elena Gilbert plans go, this one didn't suck. But Stefan's out there, waiting for her to snap out of it and realize that no matter what her heart wants (and her logic is basically shit—hearts can't want things; they're just muscles), he's the one for her. He'll make her happy in ways I never could. I was weak to accept what she offered me today. But I did, and now I have to deal with it.
I smile with my mouth but not with my eyes. "Thanks, Elena," I say.
She releases the Tupperware, that happy glow fading just a bit. She leaves with a tight-lipped smile and a muttered goodbye. I wait until I hear her drive away before gathering my notes and my doggie bag and making my way to the loft.
I sit at Ric's tiny table and open the container. It's a slice of the ugliest apple pie I've ever seen. The crust is raw in places and scorched in others; the apples are a gummy mess. I think that's cheddar cheese melted on the top, and what the fuck kind of communist puts cheddar cheese on apple pie?
I eat every bite.
