DISCLAIMER: I don't own this show. If I did, I sure the heck wouldn't be waiting THREE months to get back to it (weeps)
A/N: I know. I really know. I swear if you had any idea how ridiculously bad things have been, you might forgive me. They've been bad to the point of just stupid. And I have to say my confidence has been so thrashed by the last month, that if I didn't have all of you, the most amazing, reviewers and readers in the world, I never would have had the guts to return.
If you are happy to see this update and you are one of the lovely people who left a review, pat yourself on the back. It is your kindness that convinced me. No question.
The bad news is, this chapter is NOT Damon/Elena heavy. I'm sorry. Really. There are some things that happen that I can't get around. And I'm really feeling a serious lack of confidence because I can't get quite thrilled with this one – it needs a little more editing, but at this point, I think I'm going to just let it go and get it up. I'm already done with the next chapter (just editing) because I didn't want to post anything until I knew I'd have another one up soon, but I still feel meh about this one.
Last warning. Cliffhanger. Bad one.
And despite ALL of that bad news, if you're really feeling kind and you're still enjoying this, please pop me a little review. It helps so much. Next chapter should be up Monday.
Day Thirty-one – Elena's POV
Clearly I'm dodging your call, but you can leave a message if it makes you feel better.
I close my eyes at the sound of Damon's voicemail. I know this message by heart now. After seven times hearing it today (and countless times hearing it in the past), I could imitate the lilting rise and fall of each of his words.
"It's me," I blurt out after the beep, and then I let the following silence stretch long. As if it's an old answering machine and I'm waiting, hoping to God he'll pick up. Of course, he won't pick up.
I take a breath and go on. "I really think we need to talk, Damon. I know you tried to tell me Stefan was home. And I don't know if you think I'm mad or freaked out, but the truth is…"
Go on, Elena. What exactly is the truth?
The truth is I kissed Damon. And all of the feelings I had, and probably still have, for Stefan didn't stop me. And since there was tongue and moaning involved this time (and nobody was dying) I'm pretty sure it won't be shrugged off as a pity kiss.
Damon's voicemail beeps, jarring me out of my reverie and cutting me off before I can finish. It's probably better that way. What the hell was I going to say that would explain it?
I stuff my phone deep into my purse and glance at the boarding house outside my windshield. The irony of calling Damon from his own driveway isn't lost on me. Damned vampire is getting on my last nerve.
I slip out of the car and into the boarding house, dropping my keys on a table inside. It's freshly wiped and gleaming like everything else in this mausoleum of a house. There are even a couple of vases of fresh flowers.
I scowl at them, imagining Damon here just moments ago, trimming off the dead leaves before diving out the back window when he heard my engine. I'd really like to know how the hell Damon is managing to dodge me and play Martha Stewart at the same time. If Ric is helping him somehow, so help me I will kill them both.
"Alaric? Hello?" I call out.
Nothing. Huh. He's usually on watch around this time. Damon wouldn't have left Stefan alone, would he?
"You fall asleep down there?" I holler.
Banging and a shout filter through the floor from the basement. And then Alaric's voice. Strained. "Stay up there, Elena! Don't come down!"
My heart jumps to my throat. I can't get to the stairs fast enough, flying down them towards the basement where I can hear chains rattle and bars shudder. The cell comes into view and I take a sharp breath, surveying the scene.
Stefan. Stefan, who's been unconscious or slumped in a slurred-speech stupor in the corner, is now a blur of long limbs zipping back and forth at an unbelievable pace inside the cage.
Alaric stands in the cramped space before it, a crossbow at his shoulder and a phone to his ear.
"How fast is fast?" he asks the person on the phone.
Damon. It has to be Damon.
"Break laws if you need to," Ric sighs, and then drops the phone and spares me a fleeting glance. "Get back, Elena. Please."
Stefan stops his manic pacing and for one moment everything is still. I wait, expecting his face to appear behind the bars, his eyes dark and full of pain. My name on his lips like a prayer.
I'm half right.
His face looms closer to the bars, but there is nothing even close to pain in his eyes. If I had to pick a word, I'd go with gleeful. I watch him inhale, long and hard, his fangs glittering and lips and chin red and slick.
Wait a minute – that's blood. And we're not feeding him.
"Elena," Stefan says darkly, and it is his voice but not. His smile, but twisted in a way that sours my stomach.
"I've missed you," he says, tongue sliding between his teeth and eyes flicking to my neck.
I feel sick.
And that's before I see Alaric's hand. A jagged bite tears across his palm and up the flesh between his ring finger and his pinkie, blood still dripping down his arm. And down Stefan's chin.
"Yeah, I know," Ric says, noticing my gaze. "I'm an idiot. Now go upstairs before he manages something worse."
I ignore the demand and inch closer, looking for something to wrap Ric's hand or maybe some vervain to cram down Stefan's throat. Darts! We need one of those darts!
I clear my throat, determined to sound unaffected. "Ric, where's your…"
"You looking for one of these?" Stefan asks, holding up a vervain dart. I have no idea how he got that in the cell, but it's clear he's been hatching this plan for awhile. He tosses the dart away and shakes his head. "I'm afraid I've been up to all sorts of trouble, honey."
Alaric's brow creases miserably and I know without asking he doesn't have more darts. At least not here.
"Have you missed me, Elena?" Stefan asks.
My heart is pounding and my hands are shaking and this isn't how it's supposed to be. He was supposed to wake up and call my name softly, guilt tattooed so plainly on his face that it would soften up the edges of all this hate.
I came here every day ready to be conflicted. Hurt. A thousand things, really. But not once did I think I'd be revolted. Not like this.
Stefan sniffs lightly at the bars and his eyes go even darker. "Oh, you brought me a present, didn't you?"
I don't quite get what he means or why the words set my teeth on edge. He sniffs again, licking his lips. And I still don't understand. Until his eyes flick to my zipper. My pelvis.
My period.
Oh God, I'm on my period and he can—he can—
I think I'm going to be sick and Alaric suddenly gets it, too, because he jabs the crossbow towards the bars and spits out a succession of words I'm sure he's never used in the teacher's lounge.
Stefan just laughs at him, rolling his head around like he's getting ready to box.
"Get the fuck back," Ric snarls again and somehow that one word makes me flinch more than all of Stefan's put together.
Stefan does step back. But I hear him take a breath and plant his feet in a way that I know can't be good.
There is a burst of rushing inside the cell and—WHAM—the frame bends sharply at the latch. Ric and I exchange a horrified glance and then Stefan rams it again. There is a terrible shriek of metal and I see the door shift. Just a little.
Just enough.
"Run!" Alaric says, a breath before the door explodes open.
I see Stefan flying out and Alaric leaping in front of me. He's in the air and thrown against the brick wall before I can even form a scream.
And then Stefan turns for me.
I'm scrambling, adrenaline rushing as I see him reach for me, mouth wide and fangs ready.
My scream is cut off when someone slides in front of me taking the fangs meant for my neck in his own. I feel a hard hand pushing at my belly, propelling me towards the stairs. Damon's hand.
"Would you mind getting your teeth out of my throat?" Damon asks, as if this is all very ordinary.
Stefan hauls back, trying to get around Damon, snapping left and right like a pitbull. Damon only just manages to keep in front of him, his hands raised in a placating fashion.
"Won't work. I've seen this movie, Stefan," he says, shaking his head. "The psychopath never gets the girl."
"I already had the girl!" Stefan growls, the veins in his neck corded in stark relief. My palms are sticky with sweat and I feel waves of nausea at his expression.
Damon scoffs, unfazed. "Well, the psychopath doesn't get her back either, dipshit!"
"She's mine if I want her! Mine to fuck. Mine to drink. Mine to throw away."
"Wrong," Damon says.
He stabs Stefan with something. I can't see what it is, but the cry Stefan lets out comes with a gurgle. I will my feet to run, because I don't want to see this. I want to un-see and un-hear everything that's just happened. But I feel frozen in place. Stuck.
Stefan is still groaning, hunched over and reaching for whatever weapon Damon used, but Damon won't let him at it.
Damon says something then, but I can't make it out. I shake my head, wondering if I've lost my hearing. Or maybe my mind. But then I realize I'm not crazy, and Damon's not speaking in tongues. It's French.
He knows French.
Not the way I know it, little stilting bits picked up in my two required foreign language classes. He knows it like he was born there, the words flowing out so quickly and beautifully that I can only catch a few of them here and there. His mouth was made to form these words, his talented tongue placing just the right emphasis, creating the perfect inflections.
Stefan's human face emerges at something Damon says, something I can't quite catch. Then he shakes it away, bringing his monster back to the surface.
"I'm not here for her, Damon. I don't give a—
Stefan's words cut off in an agonizing scream as Damon twists whatever he's stabbed him with. Otherwise, he acts as if Stefan never said a thing, just continuing on, his voice low and deadly despite the beauty of the language.
"This is who we are!" Stefan screams in response, snapping his teeth for good measure. "This is what I'm meant for."
Damon laughs, and his voice changes as he breaks into English. "Stefan, Stefan. Cruella Deville is more bad ass than you."
Stefan draws back and then he punches Damon, right in the stomach. But it isn't just a punch. I hear something. A soft, fleshy puncture that goes through me like a blade of ice.
No.
No. No. No. No.
Damon stumbles on his feet and I feel my knees giving out.
"How's this for bad ass, Damon?" Stefan asks.
I surge forward, but Alaric holds me back with both arms.
"Please," I say, but I don't really say it. I don't even whisper it because I have no voice. No air at all left in me, it's just my lips mouthing the word. Everything has been sucked into a black hole in the center of my chest, the black hole that would drop me to the floor if Ric wasn't holding me up.
"I can rip your fucking heart out right now," Stefan says.
Damon gives a soft, weak laugh and shakes his head, whispering something else in French. Something just slow enough and basic enough for me to translate.
"Elle est mon coeur."
"She is my heart."
His words are still slamming into me when I see Damon crumple to the floor.
Someone is screaming. It's a horrible keening sound that hurts my ears and my head. And my throat, too, because it's coming from me.
I look up at Stefan's face, finding something akin to horror there. There aren't words for the things I feel, sharp, biting things that surge through me like a burst of adrenaline. I spring towards him, ready to kill, but Ric holds me fast.
"He's alive, Elena. He's alive."
Alive?
I glance at Stefan, whose hands are slicked red like his teeth. But they are empty. I turn to Damon just in time to see his lashes flutter, a groan slipping past his lips.
I choke in one greedy gulp of air and drop to the ground in a heap. Alaric lets me. Crouches behind me with his hands on my shoulders. As if that's going to help.
"Damon." I think it's me saying it, but it's not.
It's Stefan.
He's crying now, tears cutting tracks through his filthy face. He's kneeling by his brother, pulling Damon's head and shoulders off the ground. And now he's the one speaking in French, though not as seamlessly as his brother did. It doesn't matter. I wouldn't need to know the language to understand these are apologies slipping off his lips.
Damon's still barely got his eyes open when Stefan hauls him all the way up, his arm around his waist.
Damon coughs weakly, sagging into his brother's side. "And I'm the psychotic one?
"I'm sorry," Stefan says. "I'll make this right."
"You could start by putting me down. And then a Tic Tac or twenty."
"You belong with me," Stefan says, his grip tightening. "I know that now."
Alaric draws back and I see something sharp in his hand. I leap in front of him, because I don't know who he'll hit, and I don't know if I can lose either of them. Damon shifts, too, instinctively protecting Stefan.
"What are you doing?" Alaric asks, voice cracking.
Damon's eyes are so sad they hurt my soul. "He's my brother, Ric."
Reluctantly, Ric lowers the weapon and Stefan starts for the stairs, dragging Damon along.
He's going to take him. He's going to take him away from me. Stupid things flash through my mind. Not the big moments that changed everything, but the stupid jokes. The rolled eyes and thrown pillows and long looks we've both denied. Every stupid thing feels so damned big, and what does that mean? What am I supposed to do with that if he's not here.
"Stefan, please," I cry, stopping just short of begging.
I wish Stefan had never come home. I wish it hard and long, like Dorothy with her ruby slippers. And I know it's sick and so unbelievably wrong, but I don't care. All I care about now is making him stay. Keeping him here.
"It's alright, Stefan," Damon pleads, but his eyes are on me. Right on me. "This'll all be alright."
He smiles and I feel the protest welling up in me with my tears. I open my mouth, but they are up the stairs and out of the house. Gone before I have the chance to say a thing.
Day Thirty Four – Damon's POV
I smell like Stefan's armpit.
And blood. And take-out Chinese, because apparently, the most powerful vampire in the known universe prefers smelly above-restaurant apartments to five star hotels. Nothing says living large like roaches in your bathroom sink.
"You going to eat that?" Stefan asks, toeing the long-dead drug addict at my feet. She slumped to her death beside the chair I'm sitting on, one arm hidden beneath me where the rats can gnaw in peace. I know they're gnawing because I can hear them.
Oh yeah. The place is chock fucking full of charm.
"I'll pass," I say and then give him a bright smile. "Say, if you're bored, how's about you rub the two brain cells you have left real hard until you remember that you are not the second coming of Hannibal Lecter."
Stefan crosses his arms and looks superior and vaguely amused. The fact that he'd still use this look in full throttle evil-mode is just sad. "You think this isn't me, Damon?"
"No, Stefan, I don't." I say. "You are a self-righteous prick who probably gives last rites to the bunnies you off in the woods. You'd go to confession if you used an expired coupon—
Stefan cuffs me hard in the face, snarling behind his fangs. "You don't get to talk to me like that."
I'd hit him right back if I wasn't hog-tied to this damned chair. But things being as they are, I swallow blood and smirk up at him. "Only your pimp can use dirty talk? Speaking of that, where is Tito? Lining up tricks for your Friday night?"
Stefan's eyes dart around, his face going pale. "You can't say things like that, Damon. You know who he is. What he's capable of."
"I know he bathes in cologne and has absolute shit taste in lodging," I sigh, wrinkling my nose. "Seriously, Stefan, is this the pinnacle of your dastardly plan? You finally give into the Dark Side so you can…what? Be an evil henchman?"
"This isn't about being evil," Stefan says, leaping up with that old familiar fire in his eyes.
My brother, the walking crusade. He needs a damned cause the way most people need air. Too bad this one's on the wrong side of the moral compass.
"This is about being what we are, Damon," he says. "We're not human! We can't live by their standards."
"I'm not saying you should buy a minivan and move to the burbs. But, look around you! This is starting to look like a bad Quentin Tarantino flick."
"I'm a predator. This is what I'm made for. This is what I am," Stefan says, for, oh, maybe the eighteen billionth time since we arrived three days ago.
And I've had it up to here with this bullshit. If I had the use of my hands, I would rip off my ears and eat them to save myself from this vampire altar call.
I interrupt him before he can go on. "This isn't what we're made for. And right now while you keep chanting your little vampire mantra, Elena is—
"Don't you say her name!"
"What, you afraid if I say it too much she'll just poof into the room?" Stefan's eyes are getting buggy. The idea of getting them to pop out is seriously entertaining.
"Elena," I say, smirking. "Elena, Elena, Eh-lay-nah!"
I'm not exactly sure what happens next. Stefan lets out this growl, which is like the starting pistol to the world's most ridiculous temper tantrum. The entire room gets thrown around. Nightstands and dressers and a couple of the dead girl's limbs. It's like Poltergeist meets a Freddy Krueger flick. Blood and destruction and a really bad soundtrack thanks to Stefan's iPod droning on. God knows how he manages to not destroy that.
He's blah-blah-blah'ing on about instinct and the call of blood and some other ridiculous bullshit. When he slams his fist into my chair, I hear something splinter and crack.
It's not much. A jagged tear in the wood that might be enough to get my hands free.
Might, my ass. I've been in here three days too long already. You can't even imagine the kind of things I have seen, heard, and yes, smelled, in the last seventy-two hours. Stefan fucking Elena in my bed while I watched would be easier to endure.
Well, more visually pleasant at any rate.
"I'm going to need a longer leash for you," Klaus says, announcing his arrival. God, he is a shit villain. Always propped up in some doorway, delivering some accented monologue that's about as interesting as a grocery list. Surely he could have picked up a few good one-liners over the past zillion years he's been alive.
This time, though, there is no monologue. He just clucks his tongue like a disappointed pet owner.
Maybe this is why we're in this dive. Klaus doesn't think his new lapdog is fit for the high life before a little more obedience training. I briefly envision Klaus chasing my brother around the room with a rolled up newspaper.
"What seems to be the problem?" he asks Stefan, pushing some glass aside with the toe of an Italian shoe that's probably worth more than this whole building.
"Nothing. Brother stuff," Stefan says with an awkward shrug.
Oh, yeah. Blood is dripping from the ceiling and I'm still trussed up like a chicken, but sure. Klaus will buy that.
"I had a great way of dealing with brother stuff," Klaus says, with a smile that's anything but friendly.
Stefan looks back at me and for the first time since this started, his human face emerges, green eyes flashing an emotion I wasn't sure he was still capable of.
Fear.
My mouth opens, ready to say his name. I only just hold it back in time.
Then the fangs are back and Stefan is fisting a jagged edge of a picture frame. A big wooden one.
"You're right," he growls to Klaus, and then, to me, "This hurts me more than it hurts you, brother."
Then, just as quick as you please, Stefan actually figures out how to be a bad ass. He grabs my neck and rips me off the chair, breaking both of my wrists freeing me from the arms and then he rams that stake straight through my middle.
Before I can process the pain, I process that I am flying. Backwards. Through a window. I see my brother's face just before I fall.
And no, my long existence doesn't flash through my mind.
Just Elena.
Life is a real bitch that way.
-TBC—
