Atlanta Burns
Chapter 4: Exposed
He couldn't believe quite how fast she had sunk downhill. At first he had fretted ineffectually, but she had told him to calm down because this - just like all stomach bugs - would pass in its own time. Now she had nothing left in her stomach to vomit, she was retching - although the retching in itself was quite violent and left her in pain. It seemed all he could do for her was hold back her hair and stroke her shoulders.
Her being sick made him think of Rose. And thinking of Rose gave him more pain. She had meant something to him; he knew it because he didn't want to examine it. It made him realize that he didn't have anybody now who needed him in that way, for comfort or for strength. The thought made his eyebrows knit together. He ran his hand over Elena's shoulders again, rubbing the back of her neck with his fingers and feeling the silk of her hair. Despite the circumstances, he liked the contact.
She reached out with a splayed hand for toilet roll to wipe her mouth with, but he was closer, so dealt with it for her. Rather than give her the paper, he leaned forward and gently wiped her mouth. She blushed. He balled the paper and chucked it into the toilet bowl.
"I'm sorry." She said for the umpteenth time as he flushed it away. He didn't say anything, what could he say? 'There is no need to be sorry, it's not your fault', because that was pointless. She was going to blame herself for this anyway. He reached for the bottled water on the sink, but it was almost empty.
"I'm going to get you some more water." He said and she nodded, putting her face back over the rim of the toilet bowl as the urge to hurl came over her again. "I won't be long." He added. He was anxious about leaving her alone, which was the feeling that formed the central conundrum of his day.
As he walked to reception, he had time to run their morning over in his head and consider what had led up to this.
He had woken up first and discovered that in the night, Elena had peeled off her pajamas because the room was overly warm. She was lying under the duvet at an odd angle with her foot and calf exposed and one arm flung out towards him. He loved the way the light fell on her. Her foot looked good enough to eat. He tried to resist the urge to touch, but he just couldn't and he settled for placing a tiny kiss in the palm of her hand. She wriggled back under the covers with a gentle sigh and he had fallen back into his own bed feeling bad about the massive hard-on he was harboring. He looked away from her and thought about dead kittens until it went away.
Eventually, when he could, he jumped out of bed, showered and wandered into the bedroom with a towel around his waist. She was awake and putting an adapter onto her phone charger.
"Good morning." He said.
"For you maybe, but Jeremy has woken up with his face twice the size it was yesterday."
He had the good grace to look bad about that.
"So, you spoke to him…"
"Yes, and my advice is you had better not, not for a long while anyway." He nodded. "And by the way, the 'note' you left him to 'explain everything', he told me what it said."
"Ahh."
"'Sorry, dude. Better luck next time' is not an explanation!"
"Understood." He opened Jeremy's rucksack and pulled out the boy's clothes, looking for something he could wear that didn't make him feel ridiculous.
"What's wrong with your own clothes?" She asked, indicating the wheelie bag she had pulled to the hotel the night before.
"Mmm. No clothes in there." He said, rummaging some more, putting aside the hoodies and finding a plain black t-shirt and combats that at least he could live with.
"What is in there then?" She said, suddenly curious. Meanwhile she was reaching out from under the duvet and feeling around for her abandoned pajamas. He tried hard not to think about that, or his previous 'problem' was going to come back - especially now she had found her clothes and was wriggling around energetically under the covers trying to put them on.
"Nothing that should worry you. Come on. Get up. We should have breakfast and get going." He said.
"You're not going to actually wear Jer's underwear are you?" She teased.
"Commando, baby. All the way." She rolled her eyes and got out of bed.
He had been surprised to see Costel, the receptionist from the night before, helping serve breakfast. When the tall man brushed passed their table, he had spoken to him, "You pulling a double shift?" he asked. The young man smiled.
"Oh yes, sir. As I said, we are at capacity, so all of us are working extra hours. I help out until after the breakfast during busy times."
The room did seem to be full of people. Behind them a large group of Germans were talking loudly about the hunt. His German was patchy, but he got the gist that they were excited. He'd tell Elena later that they had said something about picking up a trail.
"Well, gee. That sucks." He replied. Costel smiled.
"Oh not at all, sir. I really don't mind. May I ask, has your waiter taken your order yet?"
"Not yet." Elena said. "What do you recommend to eat after drinking Rakia?" He laughed.
"Headache pills and eggs, ma'am. Lots of eggs!" She smiled and Costel left with her order.
He had realized he didn't want to eat, he might need blood later, but at that point, he'd been fine. She had eaten scrambled eggs on toast just as recommended and between them they had sunk a pot of coffee. They had begun to discuss their plans cautiously, aware that they were in a public space and could be overheard. She had laid out a map of the mountains that she had bought in Belgrade airport.
"See this area, here? This was where the wedding was held. And over here is where those Germans are going to meet this morning for the hunt."
"You speak German?" He said.
"Some. Not much. Jeremy and I had a German Au-Pair when we were little, but I've forgotten most of it." He wondered what else he didn't know about her. He tried not to think too hard about it, because inevitably that game ended up in thinking about what she liked to do in bed. He tried to focus on what she was saying instead. She had a flash drive plugged into her iPad and was sharing the theories that she and Jer had for where the 'wolves' would go next. It was all very techie and impressive, but he couldn't help thinking she should just relax and let him take control of that side of it. After all, to get one step ahead would require thinking like a vampire and no amount of computer wizardry could help her with that.
He pulled out his own 'tech'; the newspaper that had been pushed under their door this morning.
"I don't speak a word of Cyrillic, but I don't think we need to to understand what this is." He had said, thrusting his finger onto the page he had already opened and pushing it to her side of the table. The central picture was of a large funeral, with hundreds of mourners. Underneath that, was a picture of a young couple on their wedding day and beside that, a shot of an area of woodland which had been cordoned off and was crawling with emergency services. She winced, but forced herself to examine it.
"I don't want to believe he could do this." She whispered painfully. "But I can't lie to myself." She flicked her brown eyes up to him, making him wonder what his brother would have said to her at this point in time if the situation had been reversed. It was clear that she somehow felt partly responsible for each death. Would Stefan have told her it was all going to be all right? No. Not he wouldn't do that. He was not that man. He merely returned her look. She picked up her pen and circled everything in the article that looked like a place name and began crosschecking them against her map.
"Give me the pen, I'll do that." He said. "You eat your breakfast."
Now, as he walked to reception to buy bottled water he felt kind of bad about having said that, because he suspected the eggs had been the cause of the sudden food poisoning. After all, it was the only thing of any real substance she had eaten in over 24-hours.
When he got to the reception desk, he was met by a pretty Serbian girl, with short dark hair and sparkling green eyes. He immediately thought about doing all kinds of bad things to her. Oh God, he really, really wanted to have sex. It had been over a month of all this Elena agony without Andie as his pressure valve and he was fit to go off. He asked the girl behind the desk for four bottles of water and she sold them to him with a broad smile. As she handed over his change, he spotted an engagement ring. He wondered where the bad Serbian girls were, the ones who could be persuaded to sit on his face. In broken English, the girl wished him a nice day. He tried very, very hard not to use his baby blues on her and marched down the corridor, feeling pissed off about everything in this situation, but most of all, that he was sharing a room with the source of his tension…
After breakfast, they had returned to their room in order to collect up what they needed for the day. Elena had been bustling about, then she had sat down suddenly.
"What is it?" He had asked her.
"I don't know. I just needed to sit down for a moment." She had said. "It's fine. I felt a bit dizzy, but it's already passed."
He had turned his back on her in order to fill a small backpack that he had found in Jeremy's bag (he really had been organized), and when he turned back around he found she had his holdall open. Her face was pale as she held aloft one of the blood bags it contained.
"Why didn't you tell me it was blood?" She asked. He shrugged. She looked inside the holdall. "There's so much of it. I don't understand, we don't intend to be here that long. Why did you bring so much?" She looked at him with a curious expression. When he didn't say anything, her expression began to change. "It's not for you is it?" She said, as the truth dawned on her. "Oh God." She looked away, tears sprung to her eyes.
Stefan had a problem – a serious one. They could wean him off when they got him back to the US, but until then, he would need a lot of blood, or he could lose control and become dangerous. Getting that amount of blood together was what had taken him the two days before they had left to organize. It had been just enough time to arrange the medical paperwork to get the blood through the airports without a hitch. He looked at Elena as she worked it out. She bit her bottom lip, zipped up the bag and got up. He was about to speak, when suddenly she dashed for the bathroom and vomited violently. He frowned. He hadn't expected her to take it so badly.
"Elena," he had walked over to the bathroom and knocked on the door, "are you okay? Let me in." There had been a pause and then she vomited again. He tried the door and found it was locked. "Elena, open the door."
She had eventually let him in and he was surprised at how bad she looked.
And now, here he was, stroking her neck and worrying about what to do. She had said to him three times to go ahead without her, not to lose time, to focus on the important thing which was finding Stefan and getting him the hell out of the there – but he felt rooted to the spot. He'd never seen her like this. Her vulnerability brought out something in him, something he didn't expect. He felt immensely protective of her. The worry went much deeper than the actual level of concern the situation probably demanded. His whole body prickled with it.
She was dressed in a zipped sweatshirt over a t-shirt and she stood on shaking legs and tried to take it off. She struggled with the zip. He put his hands on hers and undid it for her. He began pushing the sweatshirt off her shoulders and realized how close he was to her. Suddenly he caught a scent that threaded itself under the lingering smell of vomit. It was something bitter. He felt for it, sought it out and tried to separate it from her usual scent and the sickness. There was something, he was sure of it. He leaned closer, so that his lips were almost at her cheek. What with that and the fact that he still had hold of her sweatshirt, she mistook his intention entirely. She took a half step back. "Damon!" She admonished, "What are you doing?"
"Keep still. Let me smell you."
"What? No!" She shrugged his hands off and took her sweatshirt off herself, turning away from him so she could place it over the bathtub. He reached out and gripped her arms firmly, pinning them against her body.
"Let me smell you." He insisted. She wriggled, but had no strength to push him off. He leaned in close to her neck from behind and breathed in deeply. There! Yes he was right, there was definitely something - something that the acrid smell of the vomit had almost masked. This sickness was not food poisoning. He was certain of it. He dropped his hands and she turned to face him with an angry look.
"You've been poisoned." He said to her. Her expression changed immediately.
"What?"
"You've been poisoned. I can smell it inside of you."
"Jesus…" She sat down on the edge of the bath. He squatted down to her level and placed his hands on her knees.
"I need to get you help." She thought about it and shook her head in the negative. He looked at her and pushed strands of her hair behind her ear. He left his hand on her face and stroked her cheek with his thumb.
"I should never have let you come here." He said almost to himself.
"Klaus expected us."
"It looks that way."
She looked down at him and he met her gaze.
"Fuck that bastard. I don't care what happens to me. All I know is that we don't leave this place until we get Stefan back. Okay?" She reached for his hands and gripped them in her own. She was making a pact with him. He slowly nodded his agreement.
Suddenly he understood the truth as clear as day. It wasn't her fragility that made him want to be with her. It was her strength.
