"We need to do this, okay. Breathe, eat, sleep, wake up, and then do it all over again… until one day it's just not as hard anymore."
The shock rushing through Damon's body destroyed his concentration, yanking him out of Elena's mind. Sitting there in the yard of Elena's old house, he could visualize the exact moment he'd driven up that night as if he were experiencing it again. Damon remembered pulling up to the curb, confusion marring his features as he found Elena kneeling in the middle of the yard. As soon as he had seen her face, however, that confusion grew extensively into concern and outright fear. In the two years that he'd known her, Damon had never seen that much torment burning in her eyes, and he'd had no clue why she was in such pain.
Damon remembered looking away from Elena to see the front door flung open, and he'd immediately stood up to investigate—finding his worst nightmare inside the door. He could smell blood and a hint of gas as he walked closer, and the pool of it was the first thing to come into his line of sight. Then, he saw the heart laying near the blood, and finally the body strapped to the column in the living room he'd begun to see as his second home. At first, all he saw was a body. But then, he registered the face of the dead boy—a boy that he had grown to love over the years, and a boy that explained Elena's comatose state in the front yard.
Before he could truly feel the pain of losing Jeremy, his body had been flung across the yard by an explosion, slamming him into the Camaro at full speed. Damon remembered regaining consciousness a few moments later after his head hit the car's metal frame, only to find Elena gone and her house up in flames.
Rewatching this moment through Elena had been nearly as painful as it had been that night, but Damon knew that his emotions were morphed by Elena's agony—after all, the pain had led her to turn off her emotions for over a decade. But Damon also couldn't say that Jeremy's death and Elena's subsequent disappearance hadn't destroyed him for months after the incident. He'd be lying if he didn't admit that he'd gone through his and the grille's entire liquor supply ten times over in that first year, and he'd also be lying if he said he hadn't forced Bonnie to search for Elena everyday for months and years.
But sitting here in this same fated place he'd held her years before, he knew that it had all been worth it—all of the searching and alcohol had led to this moment that Elena finally returned to him. Damon wasn't sure Elena would agree in her current state, but he didn't regret anything he'd had to do to get her back. He did, however, regret never getting this damn house bulldozed to the ground—it created too many painful memories for the entire group to still be standing in all its torched glory.
Damon had no clue how long he sat there, Elena wrapped in his arms as he stroked her hair, hoping that it was lending her some comfort in her dreams. At some point, Damon realized that he needed to get her home before she woke up, but also realized his predicament—the Camaro was still miles away at the grille after he'd chased Elena through the woods, and he couldn't carry her that far before she awoke. Pulling his phone out, he called Stefan and told him where they were, emphasizing the urgency in his voice.
Headlights rounded the corner of the street five minutes later, and Stefan pulled up to the curb quickly. Pulling Elena's body into his arms gently, he walked to the car as Stefan held the door open for him. Damon could see the questions zooming through his head before Stefan even voiced them, so he quickly put his fear to rest.
"She's alive, brother," Damon assured, the solemn tone in his voice making Stefan think otherwise. Stefan pulled away from the curb and began to drive to the boarding house, shooting his brother a concerned look that demanded answers. Damon looked out the window, watching as the charred ruins of Elena's house grew smaller and smaller, taking a deep breath before he explained what happened—leaving out the morbid details of the flashback he'd experienced with Elena through her memory.
"She turned her emotions back on?" Stefan exclaimed quietly, trying not to wake her from the back seat as he turned down the driveway towards the house. "How'd she handle it?"
"Well, seeing as though she's passed out in the back seat, how do you think she handled it?" Damon griped, the stress of the night beginning to weigh down on him. Who would have known that Damon would find Elena, babysit her, and watch her fall apart in three days after searching for 10 years to find her? Once they walked into the house, he laid her on the couch in the living room and took a seat on the ottoman next to her. Stefan sat down in a chair across the room, watching Damon quietly and waiting for him to speak. "She can't handle this, Stefan, and I don't know how to convince her that she can."
"She always gets through these things, Damon. She'll do it again—it just takes time."
Looking down at the floor, Damon shook his head slowly. "Not this time. You didn't see what happened—what she had to go through, it was…it was too much. Even for her; especially for her," Damon whispered that last phrase, questioning his plan to bring her back yet again. Was it worth bringing her back so that the grief could eat her alive?
As if on cue, the brothers heard a quiet whimper echo through the room. Both of their eyes snapped to the poor girl in front of them, watching as her face twisted in pain. Damon immediately got onto his knees, bringing himself to Elena's eye level as she slowly forced her eyelids open, her breathing picking up speed and tears shining in her eyes. Languidly, her mind tried to make sense of the scene in front of her, when she was hit with a wave of fear and grief as she met the brothers' knowing gazes.
Damon reached out to hold her, but she reared her body back in pain as the emotions she hadn't felt in years pummeled their way into her mind. Before he could say anything, she was off the couch and speeding towards the front door, trying to escape the searing pain pushing its way through her psyche. Just as she flung the door open, it was slammed shut in her face and her wrist was pulled into an iron grip.
Both brothers had leaped into action as soon as she ran, Damon heading to shut the door as Stefan attempted to grab the panicked girl. Elena couldn't register either of the people around her, but she knew she had to get away from here. She had to get somewhere that she could think clearly so that she could turn the pain off again. Wrenching her hand away from her assailant and slamming her fist into the person who had shut the door, she spun around and headed for the back exit of the house, hoping she could outrun the brothers.
When she finally reached the exit, she opened the door again and began to run outside only to run into the brick wall of Damon's chest. His arms snaked around her, holding her in a solid vice that she couldn't hope to get out of. Just as she had the day Stefan had gotten trapped in the tomb, Elena began to pound against his chest, begging for him to let her go—pleading for the pain to stop. Neither knew how long they stood there until Elena's strength began to fade, giving way to the pure, unadulterated agony and grief he'd seen earlier.
Damon offered her no words, knowing that they wouldn't help her now. So he took her fists and her punches, knowing that it was the only way she could get her grief out at the moment. Eventually, her physical beating stopped, giving way to body-shaking sobs that ripped through her body as years of pent-up emotion pounded into her skull. Gathering her into his arms, they returned to the couch. Stefan had grabbed a glass of what he assumed was alcohol, and turned away from the fire to watch the couple walk into the room.
The room was silent except for Elena's sobs and the flickering of the flame in the fireplace, as the brothers sat in the silence of their thoughts. Elena's vice-like grip on Damon's shirt held him to her even tighter than he'd already been holding her, her tears soaking his shirt thoroughly as if he'd walked into a monsoon.
They sat like that for hours, holding each other as Elena's pain rang through the house. Stefan left the room after a while, unable to witness Elena experiencing the same pain he'd felt when he finally turned his emotions back on for the first time after turning. It brought back too many painful memories, and Damon couldn't blame him. Damon had never experienced this pain, having slowly gained back his emotions after flipping the switch instead of them all crashing down at once, but the misery on Elena's face told him that he should be thankful for that. He'd lied to Elena earlier when he said he'd never turned off his emotions—hoping that she'd explain what she felt to make it easier for him to force her emotions back on, but it made no difference since she'd managed feel again on her own.
Damon had no clue how long it took, but Elena's sobs eventually died down to whimpers, and then to quiet breaths as she fell asleep. The extreme emotions had exhausted her so much that they pulled her into a deep slumber, and Damon soon found that the weight of the day pulled him under with her in the sweet dream-world where they could pretend that everything was okay.
Damon's arms were empty when he woke up. Jerking himself into an upright position and shaking off the sleepiness, his panic began to set in. Fear ran through his head as he imagined all the things Elena's grief could have caused her to do—walk into the sun without a ring, step into the fireplace neither brother had remembered to extinguish the night before, decapitate herself by jumping off a cliff into a floor of jagged rocks—striking panic into his heart.
"Elena?" he yelled through the house, speeding upstairs in hope of finding her in his room. Nope. He then found himself at the front door, looking out and praying that he wouldn't find a giant scorch mark in the lawn where Elena had ended the pain. He never should have fallen asleep—and Damon was regretting it very much at this moment. Panic was racing through his veins as she tore through the house, looking in all of her favorite haunts: the basement, Damon's room, even Stefan's room. Desperation was rushing through him as he hoped that she was still breathing somewhere, even if she'd left and flipped the switch again, because she'd still be alive.
As Damon ran in search of Elena in the house, he suddenly heard someone whisper his name—the quiet urgency breaking through his panic-induced haze.
"Damon, she's in here," he heard from a voice he realized was Stefan's. Following the comment, he found himself standing next to Stefan in the doorway to the huge, virtually unused kitchen the boarding house flaunted. What he saw before him shocked him even more than finding Elena broken last night had. The kitchen was filled with the aroma of freshly baked cookies, but the chefs were what truly shocked him.
Elena and Caroline walked around the spacious room, grabbing ingredients and silently mixing them together, creating delicious delicacies Damon imagined belonged in a world-class bakery. Pachelbel's Canon in D was playing quietly through the speakers in the corner, and the curtains over the window were drawn to let rays of sun shine into the room and illuminate the girls—hiding the sorrow ruminating in the room. It was as if last night hadn't even happened, and the two were just getting ready for the next founder's day party.
"What the hell is going on?" Damon whispered, leaning towards Stefan to get a better view of the two bakers running around the kitchen. Neither Elena nor Caroline seemed to notice the brothers, but Damon knew that they'd heard him running around the kitchen—choosing to ignore him instead of calm his panic. From where Damon was standing, he could see Elena as she glanced at him from her place at the sink. The pain was written all over her face, and Damon could see that no amount of cookies would pull her out of the sea of agony she was in.
Stefan shook his head, "I have no clue. I woke up thirty minutes ago, and they'd already baked enough to feed a small African village."
"But why is Caroline here? She hasn't even left her house in days," Damon stated, the confusion evident in both brothers.
At the sound of her name, Caroline spun on her heels to meet the boys' eyes. The pain of her mother's death wasn't as evident on her face as it had been, but she was clearly still struggling as she fell out of the rhythm of baking, walking over to the brothers. She signaled for them to follow her into the hallway so that Elena couldn't hear over the mixer.
Stefan spoke first, voicing the question on both he and Damon's minds. "What's happening?"
Caroline smiled, traces of real happiness showing on her face, "We're healing. I don't know how, but I woke up at some ungodly hour this morning and knew that Elena needed help. So I came over."
"…and decided to open a bakery?" Damon joked, his eyebrow raised in confusion.
"Well you two idiots were asleep, and I found her crying out on the front porch so we came inside. Cookies sounded good, so I suggested we make some, and somehow it turned into all of this," Caroline explained, a look of sorrow streaking across her features, "You two never could have known, but when Elena gets this upset, she bakes. Not well, granted, but she tries. And sometimes it helps."
The brothers looked at the blonde in confusion again. "That's crazy," Damon huffed out, not understanding the reasoning.
"No, it's not. I swear I gained 20 pounds in the course of a week after Elena's parents died from all of the treats she baked. She's done it since she got an easy-bake oven—she gets upset, so she bakes. It's a good thing I can't gain weight anymore, because I have a feeling we're all going to be eating a lot of cookies over the next few days," Caroline stated, "It doesn't make sense, but it soothes her—and it's kind of helping me, too."
Damon and Stefan continued to stare at her, slowly realizing that there was no reasoning to the baking—even if it made no sense it helped and that was all that really mattered. "Look, I know you guys don't get it, but just… just let us be. She needs this, and she needs some girl time. I called Bonnie, but she didn't pick up, so you guys are just going to have to deal with me being here the next few days."
"Okay," Damon agreed, deciding that Caroline probably knew how to handle this Elena more than he or Stefan—Caroline had seen Elena after her parents died, so she had the experience to comfort her. "You're right. Do whatever she needs. I'll call Bonnie again, and try to get her over here."
Stefan spoke up next, this time focusing on Caroline. "It's not just Elena, though, is it? You need this too, don't you?"
Caroline's eyes glistened and she nodded her head slowly. "Yeah. Yeah I do. I'm hoping that helping her get better will help me, too," she replied. Elena called for Caroline in the kitchen, making the blonde spin back into action. "I've got to go. It's going to be a rough day, so we're gonna need all the comfort food we can get."
They watched as Caroline rounded the corner again, disappearing into the kitchen again as the clanging of cookie pans and metal bowls echoed through the hallway. Damon turned, shaking his head as he headed towards the bar in the parlor. He poured them each a glass of bourbon, and the brothers sat down in front of the dying embers they'd forgotten to put out the night before.
"The funeral's this afternoon," Stefan said plainly, not knowing what else to say after witnessing the heartbroken girls cooking in the kitchen, baking their tears and denial into the sweet treats.
Damon shook his head, also thinking about the situation they now found themselves in. Elena was destroyed after last night—he'd seen it in her face the second she'd turned to face him in the kitchen—and now had to deal with the pain of Liz's funeral, since he knew that she would never miss it now that she could feel for Caroline again. And Caroline had fallen back into her old ways, comforting Elena and knowing exactly what to do to help—something that neither brother could claim, as much as they wanted to.
After a while of thinking solemnly and listening to the girls cooking, Caroline came out and informed the boys that she would be getting ready for the funeral upstairs. Stefan decided to do the same, knowing that he would have to get there early with Caroline to take care of some last minute preparations, leaving Damon alone in the parlor.
He stood up, walking back into the kitchen and finding Elena still focused intently on the tenth batch of cookies they'd prepared that morning. She was mixing the ingredients to start another batch, apparently, and stirring vigorously as if the wooden spoon in her hands was the source of all of her problems. Damon walked over to her, realizing as he got closer that tears were silently streaming down her face and that she was struggling to catch her breath because her chest was constricted in pain.
"Elena," Damon whispered, trying to take the spoon out of her hand before she broke it and hurt herself. Instead of allowing him to grab the instrument, she wrenched it out of his grasp and began to grind the ingredients even more strongly, shaking her head quickly as she evaded his hands. "Elena, please, let me—" Damon pleaded, being cut off by the forceful, yet broken, sound of her voice.
"No, Damon!" she yelled, her sorrow echoing through the room, "Just… just don't, okay? Don't try to make this okay because it's not. It'll never be okay. I will never be okay."
Despite her struggles, Damon pulled her towards his chest, allowing her to weep into his chest. He reached his hand up to cup her head into the crook of his neck, stroking her hair softly as she cried. Moments later, he pulled her head away so that she could see him. He held her face in his hands, gazing deep into her eyes as he spoke slowly to her. "I know it hurts, Elena. And I know it feels like it'll never get better. But it will—you just have to fight through the pain. And I'll be there to help you every step of the way, okay?"
Elena looked at him accusingly, but finally nodded her head as she mumbled a quiet "okay". Damon smiled sadly as he drew her into a hug. "Good," He muttered into her hair, "Now let's forget about these cookies and go get ready, okay?"
"But they'll burn! And the extra dough will go bad," Elena retorted, unreasonable panic marking her features. Damon let out a small chuckle before responding.
"Elena, you already have enough cookies to feed an army. If you lose a few, it won't be the end of the world," Damon joked, "And as much as I don't think you should go to this funeral, I know you wouldn't skip it for the world if it meant your best friend had to go through it alone. Am I right?"
"I'd never leave Caroline alone in this," Elena responded, resolved to face the pain she'd surely feel today at seeing Caroline's mother in a coffin. He knew that she was completely broken inside, but the fact that she would still be there for her friends even when she wanted to crawl into a hole and die was amazing. It made him proud to know her—and it assured him that the real Elena was back, and Katherine 2.0 was gone for good.
"Okay, then let's go get ready. I'm not about to let you have your public debut to Mystic Falls's finest without looking smoking hot."
Damon joked as he wrapped his arm around Elena and lead them towards his room, assuming that Elena would write off his joke. He might have imagined it, but he could have sworn he heard the most beautiful sound he'd ever heard—Elena laughing quietly.
Maybe this wouldn't be so hard after all.
A/N: I hope you all enjoyed this chapter! Hopefully you got some of Damon's perspective this chapter, and that you're excited about Caroline being back! She's going to start taking a larger role in the story because I love Caroline and think she adds a lot to the story-and she's the perfect person to help Elena right now. Elena's going to be adjusting to being back, but consider this the beginning of the end because a lot of crap is going to start in the next few chapters and pull us all the way to the end of the story! Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this chapter and I'd love to hear what you thought about it! Remember, feedback is love, people, so read and review!
-Kiki :)
Quote: Elena Gilbert, Season 2 Episode 22, "As I Lay Dying"