Alright, so here is the first fruit of my NaNoWriMo labors. I did not get all 50,000 words written this November, but I did get about halfway, so I have a fair amount of updates written ahead now. This is a short one, but it puts an end to Elena's very long day so I felt it best to end it after this scene. Plus—DE. So, enjoy. :)
Those who are dead are not dead
They're just living in my head
And since I fell for that spell
I am living there as well
—Coldplay
Despite Damon's rather aggravating expectation of tears, I've managed to hold onto dry eyes and an even expression since leaving the Salvatore boarding house. But even as I mount the climb to my bed, my fingers tremble as they slide up the hand rail.
I'm exhausted.
In my unfortunate case, I'm pretty sure peace is not what waits for me at the top of these stairs. A strange new concoction brews from the terror and anger in my gut when I focus too long on how I've spent the evening—provoking a vampire who may or may not have attacked one of my best friends and abducted my brother's almost girlfriend. All the while, the ghost of another vampire only I can see encouraged me to walk into and steal from said danger, for what I'm pretty sure amounts to his own amusement.
I swallow and distract myself with worrying about Jenna. Her disheveled hair and wide-eyed expression as Jeremy pushed past her in silence when she opened the door tonight reminded me of how young and sudden she became responsible for the two of us.
I hugged her with my quivering embrace, watching over her shoulder as Jeremy disappeared up to his room. I passed into the house to the kitchen where I poured a glass of water while she stepped back out onto the porch to talk with the Sheriff. After a couple of moments extended by their quiet stillness, I heard the front door close and the deadbolt engage.
"Elena?" Jenna called in a small voice.
"In here," I offered with equal reservation. She padded into the kitchen with bare feet and secured her robe by pulling it and her arms tighter around herself. She glanced at the display on the stove.
It was 1:49 a.m.—probably passed two by now.
She put her hand on the kitchen island counter and took deep breath.
"Elena, are you okay? Am I—I'm messing everything up." Her eyebrows were pressing into the middle of her forehead. She looked lost.
"I'm okay, Jenna," I lied with as much sincerity as I could muster, because I really wanted it to be the truth for her. "Jeremy will be okay, too. He's worried about Sarah," and I worried about how bad it would wreck him if they didn't find Sarah alive. A brief expression of hesitant hope crossed Jenna's defeated expression.
"He really likes her, doesn't he? The Salvatore girl?" I nodded in response but my affirmation only dashed her hope into dread as she realized the fate of the girl that pulled my brother out of his grief might plunge him back into unreachable despair. She put her forehead in her hands and shook it as her eyes glassed over with wet panic. "This is all my fault. I am screwing it up. I never should have let you go to that party. I mean, I know what goes on at those parties, but I thought—I don't know what I was thinking—"
I made a quick act of setting my glass of water down and grabbed Jenna's forearms to pull her hands away from her distraught face so I could hug her. After giving her a reassuring squeeze, I pulled back, sliding my hands back up her arms to grip hers and catch her eye.
"It's not your fault," I insisted. "We weren't drinking. You do so well with us, Aunt Jenna. None of this was your fault."
If the blame laid with anyone, it laid with me. I trusted someone who was little more than a stranger to protect me and the people I cared about because of a choice he made when I was a girl not to drain me dry of all my blood.
I steel my tired expression with anger, discarding the terror, as I open the door to my bedroom. I press the door closed behind me with a soft touch and look up, this time without jumping out of my skin, at the figure perched on the edge of my bed. His expression is hard to read, in most part because it doesn't look like he's smiling around a canary. There's a distance in his eyes until they meet mine and fill with a panicked surprise that I'm still looking at him instead of through him. Then, it's gone.
He opens his mouth, but it hangs there silent as I ignore him to step into my bathroom. The light is still on, but the door to my brother's room is closed. I flip the switch and pull my own door shut, twisting the lock.
My rage builds underneath the deep breath I take before turning back around to face him.
"What the hell was that that?" I growl in my loudest whisper. One of his eyebrows jumps in amused confusion. The corner of his mouth curls and erases any of the stoic vulnerability I witnessed from before.
He shrugs.
My teeth clench and my hands curl into fists that press painful half moons from my fingernails into the soft flesh of my palms.
"You knew what he was the whole time. You knew how dangerous he was and you let me—" He stops me with the mocking raise of both his hands open in the air.
"I'm not exactly in a position to stop you from doing anything, Elena." He reins in his infuriating smile.
"You knew he was a vampire," I whisper the last word even softer which only invites the return of his grin. "You should have said something sooner. You should've—" I'm stopped by a memory and my eyes widen. "That day in the cemetery when I was bleeding—there was someone else there. You warned me; you told me to run. Was that him, too? Was that Stefan?" His eyes narrow in a way that makes me almost sure of the answer.
He stands and closes some of the distance between us. I take a reflexive half-step back.
"I didn't put you in any danger you weren't already willing to risk to get your answers." The calm in his voice is insufferable.
"Answers you already had. And you knew the house; you knew where Stefan's room was. You knew him before, didn't you? Who is he to you?" Fighting the urge to shout is increasing in difficulty with every question I know he's withheld the answer to.
"You and I both know Stefan's undead status wasn't the only thing you were looking for tonight, Elena," he says without addressing any of my questions. I shake with frustration. "Besides, I saved your ass," he adds with complete conviction.
"You sav—" bursts indignant and too loud out of me before I grit my teeth together again and lower my voice. "You egged me on." I pull the heavy pendant from the pocket of my jean skirt and let it hang between us from the chain. "Is encouraging me to steal from a monster who probably wants to kill me your idea of saving me?" He looks away from me, narrowing his eyes in a harsh glare at the weight of the swinging pendulum hanging from my hand.
When his eyes meet mine again, they reflect my own fury back at me.
"Actually—" his voice is low and menacing. "You might want to take a closer look at that." I furrow my brow in confusion. Damon nods his head at the necklace, to suggest that I do so now instead of wasting time with interrogation.
I focus my vision on the pendant instead of his blue eyes as I lift my left hand to let it drop into my palm and the chain fall over the side. The oval shaped mass of what looks like antique silver is rounded on one side with a unique filigree and a small red stone set into it. The opposite side is flat so that it can lie against the wearer's chest. I roll the pendant over in my palm and pick it up again with the fingers of my right hand. There's a gap that runs around it parallel to the flat back. Damon's right; there is something. It's almost like—
I wedge both my thumbnails in the gap and pull. The back and the rounded front of the pendant pop apart and open up like a book, held together by a hidden hinge. Opening the discreet locket does not reveal a picture or even a lock of hair, but releases a pungent concentration of the floral smell I recognize so well from my dreams and memories. Tucked into the concave space of the charm, is a small cushion. I hold it up to my nose to confirm that is the source of the memorable smell.
I gag on the burnt taste my mind triggers by association and snap it closed. My face wrinkles with disgust and confusion as I look up at Damon.
"What is it?" I ask. The sound of Damon's sizzling skin in my dreams reddens my cheeks with guilt and embarrassment.
"Vervain." He says it with a finality that suggests I'm supposed to understand what he means, then sighs when I respond with a prolonged blank stare. "It's an herb," he adds. "It has supernatural properties, most notably being toxic to vampires. It also protects humans with it on or in their person from our best mind tricks." He wriggles his eyebrows at me.
"Mind tricks? You mean the demon's thrall stuff my ancestor was always writing about? The hypnotism. I thought he was exaggerating—I mean I'm sure vampires are pretty persuasive all on their own without—" I trail off at another realization I wasn't prepared for.
"—Screwing with your head?" Damon fills in for me. "Now where would be the fun in that?" There's a longing in his voice that's unsettling. He catches my expression and rolls his eyes before continuing in a more serious tone. "That little trinket saved you from it tonight." He nods at my clutched fist. "That wasn't just a passively aggressive threat Stefan left you with. He meant to literally erase everything you knew about him, and it inadvertently would have erased me as well. Because of my advice, he thinks it worked."
My intense exhaustion washes over me all at once. I sway where I stand and drag my left hand over my face. I cross past Damon while he watches me with interest and lean my palms onto my bed to kick my sneakers off. I turn and sink onto the edge of the bed and observe the vervain necklace again.
"That's what happened to my brother, isn't it? Why he doesn't remember what happened to Sarah?" My voice is small and tired now. A silent gesture from him confirms what I already know. The anger from before has drained. I have to admit that Damon did play a large role in saving my butt, even if it was from a danger he should've warned me about in the first place.
Damon sits next to me on the bed, but the mattress doesn't sink under his weight like it does mine. I watch the necklace twist back and forth as it dangles from my forefinger while I lean over my knees and prop up my head with elbow and hand. I sit up and unclasp the chain of the necklace, pull it up to my neck, and clasp it again underneath my hair. Damon's brow jumps up at this.
"Be careful," he advises. "If he sees you wearing that, Stefan will recognize it. He's been hauling that thing around with him since the twenties." I turn towards him and one of those questions I've tacked onto the mental list but hasn't seemed important enough to ask swims up to the surface.
"How old are you?" I ask, ignoring all my manners and another admission that he knows Stefan.
He half smirks and answers simply, "I'm dead."
"You know what I meant," I huff, frustrated. I suppose I could have asked with more tact. I pout in silence for a moment before my eyelids begin to droop. Both my hands are propping my head up now. My eyes jerk open at the sound of Damon's voice.
"Look, Elena. He may not always have the best grasp of self-control, but my brother wasn't going to eat you with the Sheriff downstairs. He's not stupid." I stare agape at him while he continues. "You were in more danger in the cemetery with an open wound and no witnesses. Stefan has a self-righteous stick up his butt when it comes to killing humans, but he slips. It's hard to convince yourself to stop when there's no consequences if you don't." He says it all as if it were passing conversation, but he purses his lips in anticipation of my reaction. My face is frozen in what probably looks like a frown.
"Brother?" I breathe. "You're a Salvatore. The eldest Salvatore boy who deserted the confederate army in 1863. You knew Jonathan Gilbert. He wrote about you—both of you." I start spouting everything I know as I realize it, because I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. I catch a flash of resentment across Damon's features. My own petulant wound flares up in my chest again and licks my pride with its flames. "Why didn't you say anything?" I demand.
Damon steps away from the bed with unnatural speed, and I pull back from the menace in his eyes when he looks at me.
"Why? So you could sharpen your pitchfork, take up daddy's torch, and tear apart the monster to find out what makes him tick?" He throws my careless word back at me laced with vitriol. "I don't owe you my trust, Elena. Just because you bat your big doe eyes doesn't mean you can't turn out as monstrous as the rest of us. Why would I subject my brother to that?" He finishes confident in his indignation—a confidence that begins to waver the longer I stare back in response.
I pull my hair back from my face, breathe out and fall backwards onto the bed with my arms laid out spread-eagle and my legs still hanging over the edge. I stare up at the ceiling and try not to think about how much I miss my dad. No matter how many of his sins I acknowledge, I can't stop wishing he were still here.
"You did," I whisper to Damon.
Is he still there?
"I did what?" His defensive voice dispels that worry without much delay. I pull my legs up onto the mattress and roll on my side, curling a pillow up against my chest.
"The vervain in the shower weakened you, but my blood would have given you the strength to escape, right?" I don't wait for a reply. "You convinced yourself not to hurt me even though it meant sacrificing your freedom." My eyes close, heavy with the weight of the day. I trust this time that he hasn't left.
I don't think he can.
"A fact I'm reminded of every single day of my continued non-existence," he finally whispers with resignation and not regret in his voice.
"Why are you whispering," I whisper back with a flimsy smile.
"Go to sleep, Elena," he continues to whisper. My body screams in agreement, but it's hard to let go of control after everything that's happened today. I clutch the necklace against my chest and trace the raised embellishments with my thumb.
"Where do you go, Damon—When you're not here with me?"
"Sleep." A command for me, not an answer.
"Do you think Stefan is the one who took Sarah? Do you think he killed her?"
"No. I don't."
"But you're not sure?"
"No. I'm not."
I disrupt my even breaths with a deep extended one and exhale as I crack my eyes open. Damon's upright silhouette on the bed beside me blocks the light from my bedside lamp. It's the last thing I see before giving in and closing my eyes again.
"Stay," I breathe with the rest of my energy.
He chuckles.
"If you dream about me, I won't have a choice."
So the plan now that I have some written ahead is to maintain a regular update schedule and to finish this story before the last episode of the show airs in March. Right now I plan on alternating every week between writing new stuff and editing what I've written to post it, so expect a new update biweekly.
For heads up on updates and other tidbits you can follow me on twitter McSamLou. The full link is in my author profile.
Your guys' feedback has been so awesome. Feel free to keep it coming. I reference them frequently when I need encouragement to keep writing.
One of my goals now that NaNo is over is to be a better reader and to leave more reviews for other authors, so I invite you guys if you have a story you would really like some feedback on let me know at the end of your review. I may not read all of it, but I'll give the first chapter a go and let you know what I think when I'm done. I'm open to other fandoms too, I just may not be familiar with yours, and if not I apologize.
That's all the catching up on my agenda. Look back in two weeks for another update!