A/N I loved hearing your reactions to Chapter 6 - thanks so much guys - you really made my week. I'm so very happy you liked the 'new development'. Your reviews, thoughts and opinions inspire me and help to improve my writing. Please keep 'em coming if you can! Thanks to morvamp for pre-reading this one for me - go read her stories - she's awesome! Hope you all like Chapter 7. Please click on the review button at the bottom once you've finished reading and let me know what you think. Thank you!
Chapter 7 – Second Guessing
Damon looked down at the sleeping girl beside him. His face was wide open and honest now that no one was watching, and the depth of his love for her played over it like shadows dancing across hot pavement on a bright summer's day. He gently traced the contours of the side of her face with the tips of his fingers. Then he carefully slipped out of bed, pulled on some pajama bottoms, grabbed his phone and quietly left the room.
Before he spent any extended period of time thinking about and/or discussing what had just changed between them, he really needed to speak with Katherine.
After making sure Stefan wasn't wandering about the large house somewhere, he made his way silently down to the empty kitchen to give her a call.
She picked up on the first ring.
"Damon. I've been expecting you. What took you so long?"
"Katherine." Just hearing the intonation of her voice instantly put him on edge and made him grit his teeth. "And why exactly were you expecting my call?"
She ignored him. "I assume Stefan arrived safely. Does he know you're calling me?"
"No," Damon spat out. "Of course not."
"So, get on with it. Tell me what you want." She sounded bored. He could just picture her studying her fingernails disinterestedly as she spoke.
He rolled his eyes. "I want to know why, Katherine. Why did you let him come back here?"
"Trouble in paradise, Damon?"
He sighed deeply. God, he hated talking to her. Nothing was ever easy. He forced himself to rein in his incredible urge to tell her to shove it and end the call.
"I could ask you the same. You got some backwoods witch doctor to save his life. Fine. Great. And then by … what? By mistake he comes back human? And you leave him human? And then you just let him waltz the fuck on back to Mystic Falls and potentially to Elena? Nope. I'm not buying it, Katherine. What's going on? Why didn't you immediately revamp him and the two of you continue on your merry way?"
Katherine didn't say anything for a few moments, which in and of itself was telling.
Finally she huffed out a short sigh of exasperation and spoke quietly. "He wanted to. I let him go home because it was what he wanted. If I'd tried to stop him he would have resented me for it forever."
Damon laughed. "Do you really expect me to believe that you did something selfless for once in your life?"
"Believe what you want, Damon. I'm hanging up now."
He spoke quickly, "Wait, Katherine." Pause. "There might be something you can do for me that would be mutually beneficial to us both right now."
Damon could nearly hear the sly grin that stretched her face at his words. "And there it is. You've got one more minute. I'm listening."
Pellets of rain are driving down in torrents, hard and unrelenting, but she feels neither cold nor wet. The ever-present rumble of thunder forms the soundtrack to her cascading thoughts and emotions.
Elena is rapidly pushing her way through the forest, searching, honing in. She spares a glance down at herself and is unsurprised to find that she is naked – again - much like the last time she had a dream like this. She wonders in passing why the rough and stony forest floor doesn't hurt her bare feet and why the sharp branches slapping against her do not tear into her exposed flesh. Why she feels so nimble and does not slip or trip.
She feels nervous, very nervous, but she has no idea what for. She thinks her heart would be beating a mile a minute, if she were human. What a minute – she is human! Why can't she feel her heart beating?
She shrugs it off; it's not important.
What's important right now is that she find him and find him fast.
It's not just that he's scared … now so much so that 'fucking terrified' might be a better way of describing it. But he's also being very, very foolish. He's taking a huge chance. And he's doing it all for her. And she knows she needs to stop him. Because this might not work. There's no guarantee.
And she can't let him take that kind of a risk for her. She won't.
She begins to run just as fast as her legs can carry her. Which, as it turns out, is incredibly fast. Though the ground below her is rapidly turning into sticky mud, tree trunks and bushes blur past her peripheral vision as she flies along. And "flies" feels like an accurate descriptor – it's hard to believe her feet are even touching the squelching forest floor at all.
She hears their voices before she finds them. Damon's. Her own. Which she instantly realizes has to be Katherine. The deep low rumble of a strange man's voice startles her for a moment.
In what feels like only a split second, she is standing on the edge of a wide clearing beside a churning white-capped river. The water cascading over the falls is roaring, but the volume of the raging storm is nearly drowning it out. This clearing, although different, brings back a sharp reminder of the place where he proposed to her last week. Or was it a few months ago? Time feels so distorted in her mind.
Through the heavy rain, Elena sees Damon on the ground clutching his head within a circle of fire. It's eerily reminiscent of the one she was trapped in so many years ago, as her aunt Jenna was brutally murdered by Klaus right before her eyes.
But Klaus is not here. Klaus is dead, or the next best thing to dead.
Katherine is standing outside the burning circle looking down at Damon. Why is the downpour not extinguishing the flames? A strange, tiny, dark-skinned man is chanting beside her. She steps over the flames to Damon and pushes him onto his back. Reaching inside her jacket, she pulls out what can only be a wooden stake.
Elena's fury at the sight unfolding in front of her violently boils to the surface and she feels something hot and tickly and weird happening to the skin around her eyes. Then her eyes themselves grow hot. Her gums begin to ache and then pinch sharply as she feels her canine teeth extend.
What the hell is going on? She knows she's not a vampire, so why is this happening to her?
Elena rushes down the rocky incline towards them. An incredible desire to tear them away from him overwhelms her. She craves to render flesh, snap bone like twigs - she wants to rip them to pieces. She needs to stop whatever they're doing to Damon before it's too late.
A sudden deafening clap of thunder makes the earth shake below her feet and stops her in her tracks. The brilliant flash of lightning that accompanies it blinds her for a moment. She hears a large tree, or several, crash down nearby.
Then Damon shrieks and her world goes black.
Elena popped her eyes open and without looking immediately reached across the bed for him, but discovered the other side cold and empty. She felt a brief flare of panic, a residual emotion from her dream no doubt, before she realized she could hear the drumming of the shower in the adjacent bathroom. As she focused on Damon's presence she thought just for a second she caught a reflection of her own momentary alarm. It was quickly stifled by worry for her.
The running water clicked off. Thirty seconds later Damon strode into his bedroom wearing nothing but a thick white towel draped low across his hips. A few elusive water droplets sparkled in the sunlight here and there across his tightly toned chest.
She couldn't help it; her breath still caught in her throat at the sight of him like this.
Damon examined her carefully for a moment, then, seeing nothing that seemed distressing, started to move toward his huge wardrobe. He paused and turned back to her again, suddenly comprehending that she was appreciating the view he was providing. His lips curled into a tight smirk as he dropped the towel to the hardwood floor. "Like what you see, Elena?"
She grinned back at him. "You know it."
"I do." He sat down on the bed beside her and held her gaze. Want another go round?
She tilted her head toward him and her face grew puzzled. It was obvious she was focusing.
Finally she sighed. "It's not working anymore. I wonder why?"
Damon frowned. He slid over so that he was right beside her, pressed one hand along the side of her face and looked deeply into her dark eyes. You can't hear me now?
Elena stared back at him with equal intensity. Finally she pulled away from his hand and shook her head. "I'm getting nothing. It's gone." She blew out a quick breath. "Weird."
This wasn't exactly the complete truth. There was something. Maybe she could no longer pick up his exact thoughts, but she could still sense his general mood. At least she thought she could. The trick seemed to be in learning how to differentiate it from her own emotions - identifying which feelings were actually hers and which were his. Right now she was picking up several things, lust obviously being right at the top of the list. And disappointment – probably because he thought their mental connection was now severed. Confusion. Something low and nearly buried that she could barely identify. Was it … a flicker of hope? Last, but not least by a long shot, was worry. Always worry. She carried enough of that herself to have to question whose emotion it was that she was sensing. It didn't take her long to decide it was definitely the co-mingled feelings of both of them. That seemed to be the biggest problem with this "connection". If she wasn't already experiencing the same emotions, she suddenly found herself feeling them when she detected them from Damon. It made everything open and shared. Which may not always be a good thing.
So the question was – did she tell him they were still linked? Or did she wait to see if it lasted first? Maybe in a couple of hours that would be gone as well. She really needed to find out what was going on and if the mutual blood-sharing had actually been the catalyst for this new development, as she suspected it was.
Damon was still concentrating on her face as all these thoughts danced around in her mind. He angled his head to one side and a perplexed expression crossed his features.
"It's not, though," he said, voice tinged with wonder.
"Not what? Weird?" Elena flashed him a smile. "You're kidding, right?"
"Not gone. Not totally, anyway."
Elena's breath caught in her throat. "What do you mean?" She wanted to see how he would reply, to know if he was experiencing the same thing as she was.
He frowned and flopped his head down hard onto one fluffy white pillow, staring up at the empty ceiling as if it might hold all the answers. "I can still sense you in my mind, just not your actual thoughts any more. More like your … emotions, I guess. I'm not a hundred per cent sure what I'm sensing, to be honest. Maybe it's just my own feelings. Maybe it's just wishful thinking."
Elena regarded him silently for a long minute.
"It's not wishful thinking, Damon. You're right – and I can feel it, too," she whispered.
She settled down beside him on the pillow and turned to rest one palm against his firm chest. "So what does all this mean? Why could we read each other's minds this morning … after …" Elena trailed off, not sure how best to complete that sentence.
"After?" Damon laughed and rolled onto his side so that he could look her in the eyes. "After you bit me? I'd love to know what possessed you at that moment. You shocked the hell outta me." He reached over and tucked an escaped lock of chestnut hair behind her right ear.
"I don't know. I just … something came over me. And I just went with it," she stammered, blushing. Unconsciously her fingertips traced patterns along the bare skin of his lower back.
Damon smirked at her. "You should let yourself go more often then. It was amazing." He paused for a moment and his voice got softer. "But I know what you mean. Something came over me, too. I'm really sorry, Elena. I shouldn't haven bitten you without asking. Especially on the neck."
Reaching over, he lightly grazed his fingers over the spot where his teeth had punctured her skin. "At least you having my blood healed it right up," he mused softly, almost to himself, as he gazed at her neck.
"It's okay. I knew you were about to do it and I would have protested if I didn't want you to." She grasped his hand and threaded her fingers through his.
His eyes glanced back up to meet hers. "Really?" He could feel the strength of her love in that moment and it gave him even more determination to find a solution to all of their issues. Especially the unspoken issues.
"Really."
He leaned in to press his lips against her immediately receptive ones.
Elena pushed an escaped strand of sweaty hair behind her ear with a large sigh.
She'd been sitting on the floor at the end of her bed, painstakingly sorting through boxes for hours now. Her head was beginning to pound from trying to decipher all the squiggly and sometimes faded handwriting in the old journals, letters and copious notes. She was grimy, overheated, nearing exhaustion and pretty much ready to give up for the day. It was almost suppertime but her bed was calling out to her far louder than her stomach was.
She knew that she should just give in and ask for help with her research. But … it was such a personal thing that had happened between she and Damon that morning and she wasn't really ready to share it with anyone else just yet. Her highest priority right now was to find out what was going on - if there was any precedent for the bond they'd somehow opened.
So she'd come straight back home after lunch to dig out Alaric's old boxes of her birth-mother Isobel's extensive vampire and supernatural research. About five years ago Ric had brought it all back to the Gilbert house from where it had been sitting in storage at Duke University. It hadn't taken Elena very long to locate all the dusty and cobweb-covered boxes stacked in one darkened corner of her basement. She'd slowly hauled every last dingy carton up the two flights of stairs to her bedroom, carefully piling each against one wall, and began the arduous process of investigating them.
She wasn't even a third of the way through the contents of the boxes yet. Isobel's notes were thorough and the plethora of information Elena found was fascinating. Four hours had flown by like four minutes. The buzzing of her cell phone startled her out of her concentration and when she glanced at the alarm clock on her night-table she was surprised to note that it was now past 6:00 in the evening.
She sighed and stood up, taking a moment for a languid stretch before locating her phone on her dresser.
It was a text from Damon. Can I come over?
Elena smiled to herself. At this point she really could use all the help she could get. To be honest, though, she could also really use a nap. And a shower. She quickly texted him back an affirmative reply and made her way to the bathroom to get cleaned up, at least temporarily.
When she stepped back into her room again, the first place her eyes fell was on her fluffy floral-patterned pillow. She couldn't stifle the yawn that escaped her lips at the sight of it.
Quickly moving the dusty old books and stacks of notes off the end of her bed to the floor, she slipped with relief in between her soft cotton sheets. I'll just close my eyes for a few minutes. Just until Damon gets here. Then we'll start searching again. Together.
She mentally reached out for him, just to see if she could find him at this distance. What she discovered was definitely not merely a reflection of her own feelings. She sensed annoyance and frustration, but below that a fierce determination and an intense love for her. A small grin graced her lips and as she drifted off to sleep she held tightly onto the enveloping sense of his unwavering love.
Damon found his brother in the library, quietly reading, or perhaps just pretending to read for his benefit. He headed straight for the drink cart in the corner and poured them each a fifth of bourbon. Handing the crystal tumbler to Stefan, he sat down on the edge of an overstuffed reading chair.
Stefan glanced up, held his gaze and waited.
Damon flashed his brother a small smirk. "So … what's it feel like?"
Stefan's brows shot up in surprise. That was definitely not what he'd been expecting Damon to ask. The look of confusion on his face was enough to give the older Salvatore a little chuckle.
Stefan briefly flashed a tight grin back at his big brother. "Honestly? It's taking some getting used to. I feel … a bit devolved, to tell you the truth. Slower. Weaker. Harder of hearing. I get tired way easier, my muscles ache, any injuries are slow to heal and my tolerance for alcohol is way down. I keep having to remind myself how vulnerable I am now. It's not as great as you probably remember it to be." He paused and thought for a moment. Then he smiled. "But I suspect I'll find some benefits to be had with it. If not, I can always re-vamp … if I don't die first."
Damon just stared at him. "So you hate it? Figures," he muttered, shaking his head a bit. The irony couldn't get any more blatant if it had walked up to him and smacked him upside the head. He decided to change the subject. This one was just pissing him off.
"Moving on. So tell me, dear brother, what have you been up to the past few years?"
Stefan was taken aback slightly by the sudden shift in conversation, but he knew this would probably be a less contentious topic to navigate.
Pausing to give his reply some thought, Stefan eventually began to tell his brother about his travels with Katherine. He recalled hanging out in a smoky, dimly lit pub sharing pints and conversation with a famous musician in Glasgow, exploring narrow stone alleyways of shops in London, strolling among oblivious tourists along the famous pier in Brighton. He described watching at a distance the painters perched along the Seine in Paris, who could, with a few strokes of their brushes across a blank canvas, create beauty that came alive before his eyes. He tried to explain the awestruck feeling that overwhelmed him when they first arrived in Florence and roamed the ancient city in the nighttime shadows, coming across stunning architecture and otherworldly beautiful edifices lit up around nearly every corner. He described Geneva and Vienna and Marbella and Morocco and Alexandria. The live music they had watched, the castles and museums, mausoleums and tombs they had explored, the beaches and parties and festivals they had enjoyed. He declined to mention the quiet moments – all the times when it was just he and Katherine sitting somewhere deserted, maybe silently examining the stars and holding hands and knowing they had forever to be together. The times when he felt like they were nearly, but not quite, a real normal human couple.
Damon took all of this in without comment, listening to his brother's tales of adventure. He couldn't help but envision what it would be like to experience all those things with Elena by his side.
After Stefan finished describing the absurdity of his futile tries – yes, plural – to learn to surf in eastern Australia, Damon finally chose to speak up again.
"Why, then, Stef? Why come back here?" He held his brother's gaze with intensity. "Why leave Katherine behind?"
All the amusement at the recalled memories fell from Stefan's face. Now Damon was finally asking the questions he'd been originally anticipating. He sighed and tried to formulate an acceptable reply.
"I had to," he whispered, shrugging. "I had to see you. I had to see her." He tore his eyes from Damon's penetrating stare.
"I don't know why. It was just something I knew I needed to do." At the moment this was all he could offer.
"Bullshit," Damon spat. "I know you, Stefan - probably better than anyone. I know exactly why you came back."
"Really? Do tell, brother." Stefan looked at his older sibling skeptically.
"You wanted to see if there was any chance now to live out the rest of your mortal life with Elena." Damon was blunt.
Stefan's face reddened. He fixated on an antique cuckoo clock on the mantel and said nothing for a long minute. Finally he spoke quietly, "I wanted to see if she was still human." Softer yet, "And if you two were still together."
"Of course you did," Damon sighed.
"I'm sorry. But I had to know. You would have done the same in my place. You know you would. It's Elena." Stefan still wouldn't look at his brother.
Damon scoffed, "Not if I was already with the woman I loved, I wouldn't. If I was in your place, and Katherine was the love of my life, I would have immediately asked her to re-vamp me. But you didn't. And instead of just calling me, you left her behind to come check up on us in person. That speaks volumes, brother. Volumes."
He paused for a moment and snorted a quick puff of air out of his nose. Running one hand over his eyes, he said, "You wanna know the most fucked up part of it? Your timing could not have been more perfect."
Stefan finally turned to face him with a perplexed expression. "Why?"
Not bothering to reply, Damon just got up and left the room.
Stefan stared blankly at the empty doorway from which Damon had vanished. He had known his return would be difficult for his brother once he learned about his re-found mortality. He had long suspected that deep down Damon actually hated being a vampire and missed his own humanity. To now see his baby brother once again with something that he desired, while he was yet again denied, must sting like a bitch.
It wasn't that he was actively hoping that Damon and Elena would no longer be together. He certainly didn't wish that kind of pain on his brother. It was more that he just had to come see them both in person. To see for himself the state of how things really were back home these days. He hadn't been lying before when he'd told Damon he'd been curious to see if Elena was still human. She'd told him years ago that she didn't want to become a vampire, but he had always speculated in the back of his head that she might change her mind one day. He'd wondered if she would grow to love his brother enough to want to be with him for an eternity.
Stefan wanted Damon to be happy – he really did – but if after five years Elena was still in the same position on that subject as she'd been when he was dating her when she was seventeen, then he seriously doubted she was ever going to change her mind.
Which brought his thoughts back to himself again. He hadn't asked for his mortality back. To be completely honest, he hadn't been missing it any more, at least not for the four years that he'd spent with Katherine. She was a vampire; he was a vampire and everything was copasetic. And he did love her – whether he liked it or not he had loved her for over 150 years - that wasn't about to change any time soon. But now the two of them were no longer even the same species. He really didn't want to be a fragile teenage human with Katherine. She loved him, but she would hate that. She might not admit it at first, but he knew her well enough to know she would. She'd want to turn him again. He was amazed that she hadn't already tried to convince him to do it before he left.
But Stefan didn't want to be stuck in the body of a seventeen-year-old boy forever. He had done that long enough, thank you very much. Even though this change wasn't something he had sought out, he was quite pleased about the potential benefits of it.
When he'd told Katherine he was coming home, he'd expected more of a reaction from her. Lots of questions. Suspicion. Possibly jealousy. Insistence that she accompany him. But, surprisingly, he got none of those things. She accepted it calmly, almost expectantly. It was very out of character for her to be so relaxed about his leaving, especially now that he was alive again.
To be honest, he was slightly disappointed in her lack of reaction to his leaving. A part of him had hoped she'd tried to convince him to stay or demand that she come along. But she'd just wished him luck and let him go. She'd smiled at him as he'd walked out the door, but he'd noted that her smile hadn't reached her eyes.
Right now Stefan found himself thinking on what Damon had said about his leaving Katherine behind if he really loved her. He felt bad about it. He missed her. But he definitely wasn't ready to go back.
He was pretty sure he wanted to spend some time in Mystic Falls again.
