Tying up loose ends and starting on the trip back to Mystic Falls happened faster than Dean had expected. Cas had returned the phoenix to his own time and slumped back into his chair. Exhaustion dented the creases around his eyes. Dean didn't have time to worry about Cas now, so he tabled that concern for later. He loaded everybody up, bit by bit, and as he talked with Bobby and Sam, he noticed Caroline approach Cas herself.
He wished he had the same damn super-hearing as the two of them; he wanted to know what they were saying. Whatever it was, Caroline had her bounce back in her step when they parted. They left a few minutes later. Cas and Caroline folded into the backseat, and Bobby hugged Sam goodbye. Dean had turned to him next.
"You left your cowboy hat in there," Bobby observed, tilting his head back toward the cabin.
"Yeah." Dean rubbed the back of his neck. "Back to reality now. Ridding the world of another unspeakable evil. You know the drill."
Bobby nodded. "I do. You sure you don't need me to come with you?"
Dean considered it. Having Bobby there always made him feel safer, or rather, it had when he was younger. Now too much stood between him and the boy who had believed Bobby Singer and John Winchester knew everything. He shook his head.
"No. We'll call if we need anything."
"Call even if you don't." Bobby hugged him, and Dean leaned into it. Bobby gave his cheek a fatherly pat before sending him away.
After that, they had driven away, and Dean had been surprised at his own happiness. Watching Cas send Elias back to 1861, sealing the phoenix ashes in a jar, driving back to a pair of witches cooking up a plan… it felt like putting W's on the board. Sam felt the same way, too. Dean had only suspected his brother's happiness until he cut on the radio at the Virginia state line. After aggressively vetoing Asia's 'Heat of the Moment,' Sam had started digging through the cassette tapes.
"We've heard all of these a thousand times," Sam grumbled. If there was one thing about Sam that Dean knew, it was that he only grumbled when he was in a good mood. When shit fell apart, Sam was the first one to go Susie Sunshine and take it in stride. When he was in a good mood, he could be Sammy the little brat, five years old again and grumpy over nothing.
"We've got to get some new tunes. I mean, this kid back there doesn't even know what these are," Sam continued, holding up a tape.
"Hey, I do so," Caroline said. "I have a Bangles tape that I love."
"The Bangles do not count." Dean shook his head. In the rearview mirror, he saw her smile.
"They count!" She looked at Sam for confirmation, but he shook his head.
"Nope. No dice." He turned around and handed her back the bin of tapes. "You can pick something from here that you know, though. We'll teach Cas the words."
The corner of Dean's mouth kicked up at the grin he heard in his brother's voice.
Caroline dug through the bin, and Dean watched the road pass by. He could have taken the interstate this time, but old habits die hard. All his years of driving he had been taking other routes, following the curves of the land rather than the roads that sliced right through it. He could go faster on the roads with less cops anyway.
"Put this one in!" Caroline handed them a Journey tape. Dean was tempted to tell her no, that this was some of the weakest music in his collection, but her hopeful face glowed in the rearview mirror.
"Sure thing, vamp." He popped the tape in and cut up the volume. 'Any Way You Want It' started blasting through the speakers. Caroline should have been shy - she was the newcomer out of the four of them - but instead she started belting out the tune with all the enthusiasm of a drunken karaoke singer. She swung her head side to side, waves flying, and threw her arms out dramatically. Her voice cracked a couple times she sang at such volume. The two non-drivers stared at her.
She leaned forward during an instrumental stretch, putting her hands on either side of the head rest and leaning close. "Come on, Dean!"
"Nah. I'm waiting for Cas to jump in."
Cas looked up at the rearview mirror in surprise, meeting Dean's gaze, and opened his mouth to say he didn't know the words. Dean winked at him, and Cas, realizing the joke, nodded. That shy half-smile flipped at the corner of the angel's mouth. Dean expected that to be the end of it.
The chorus started up again, and Caroline opened her mouth and redoubled her singing. Then Castiel, Angel of the Lord, joined in. His voice formed a surprisingly true baritone in spite of its otherworldly gravel, and his quick mind had the words down pat even after only hearing it once before.
Dean ignored the warm happiness that flooded through him at hearing Cas cut loose, but when Sam joined in with an enthusiastic howl, Dean lost control of the warmth. It spread up from his chest and became a grin. Dean hadn't heard Sam let go like that since he had gotten him back, and Dean drummed his fingers on the wheel and just listened.
"You're the king of bad road trip singing. What gives?" Sam asked as the song ended.
"Yes, Dean. What gives?" Cas repeated Sam. "You said you would sing if I did."
Dean had no desire to tell them that the god-awful chorus of their three voices in his Impala was so beautiful he didn't want to miss it. Instead he punched the rewind button, listening to the whiny scratch of the tape backing up, and like a pro, hit play again. The first blast of the song started again. He cut the radio up louder. This time no one sang the first note louder than Dean.
They belted it out together. Caroline played air guitar on her seatbelt strap, Castiel did not move with the music at all until she grabbed his hand and made him dance, and Sam watched the spectacle in the backseat with sideways glances at Dean that clearly said Are you seeing this?!
Dean almost missed the sound of a phone ringing.
Caroline didn't though, and she scooped it up as he cut the music down. He had no idea how he knew the happy moment was over, but he felt the joy leave the car like air hissing out of a balloon. Caroline's face fell, her voice tightened, and she spoke in terse replies to whoever she was talking to.
"We're on our way." She hung up without saying goodbye.
Dean, Sam, and Cas waited for her to turn her attention to them. When she did speak, her voice shook.
"Eve is back in Mystic Falls, and she has Elena."
Dean thought of that dark-eyed teenager whose mouth already had frown lines from years of her heavy load, and he pushed down the accelerator. He didn't even wait to hear the details before saying,
"We'll get her back."
The storm clouds lingering ahead at the horizon took on a new and ominous meaning.
X
Damon paced the floor of the Gilbert house, wearing a grooved path in the wood in front of the fireplace. Feed. Be free. Feast. Enjoy. Be free. Eve's voice purred inside his skull, caressing the edges of his brain and blurring his thoughts. He kept his body in motion because the pumping adrenaline helped him cling to his anger even against the waves of peace promised by The Voice. Stefan had already succumbed to sitting again, head in his hands and back bowed.
Klaus sat at the counter in the Gilbert kitchen with a sheet of paper and a pencil, expanding out a map of the town and its surrounding woods that he had created from memory. If Damon was inclined to be impressed by Originals, he would have been so now.
He had created a reconnaissance hub and had sent his hybrids out in a grid-like formation to search the town. His phone rested on the counter, and every few minutes, it rang. He would listen intently, offer a new instruction, and then jot down the update on the map. In place of his temper and sarcasm, he had taken on cold lethality. Dangerous though it was, Damon trusted him with this.
"I should be out there looking for them." Alaric walked down the stairs, changed from his teaching attire to jeans and boots. "Jeremy and Elena. They're both my responsibility."
"You can't do anything out there that a bunch of nearly invincible hybrids can't do," Damon said. "Except die. Not exactly useful right now."
"I have my ring."
"I don't have time to go traipsing across town to get your corpse, Ric. You're just going to have to save your dead-damsel-in-distress fantasies for a time when I am more able to fulfill them." The snark burned the inside of his mouth, tasting wrong, but he forced one of his sardonic smiles. Alaric walked toward him and shook his head.
"You're not fooling anybody, you know." Ric said it quietly, but it still made Damon's stomach flop unpleasantly. He did not like anyone to see through him. "How is your head?"
Damon knew Alaric was asking him a personal question deliberately, trying to keep him grounded. He appreciated the gesture.
"Loud."
"Sorry." Alaric walked into the kitchen, willing to risk the wrath of Klaus in order to see the map. Damon glanced over at Stefan who was pushing his hands against his temples so hard that the skin was bruising and healing in a continuous ten-minute cycle.
"We're not going to be able to stop Eve. She's too powerful. I'm so…" Stefan looked up, red veins snaking all around his eyes and fangs extended. "Thirsty. She wants us to feed. We cannot beat her. She wants us to feed."
The repetitive refrain joined in rhythm with the voice pounding in Damon's skull. He bit the inside of his cheek, using the pain to hold himself apart from the hypnotic bliss of the words.
"You've got to hold it together, brother," Damon muttered. He moved two steps forward without even realizing it and braced himself against the arm of the couch. If Eve's voice had been a loop before, now it felt like a part of his pulsing heartbeat, a refrain drumming out its tempo inside of every inch of him.
"I'm trying," Stefan murmured.
The minutes crawled by, and Alaric started making phone calls himself, speaking in hushed tones to the Winchesters. Damon could hear Dean's rough burr through the phone from across the room; they were making progress towards Mystic Falls as quickly as they could, and they had the phoenix ash. In another world, Damon would have stormed out of this house and busted in on Bonnie, demanding she and the old woman cook up their spell instantly. Action would have been his antidote to the deep well of fear in his stomach.
Now he clung to the arm of a couch and tried not to rip Ric's throat out and drink the hot blood.
Someone knocked on the front door, and without waiting for someone closer to do it, Klaus strode to it. He pulled it open.
There was blood. Damon's senses went wild, eclipsing any ability to process what he was seeing. He reacted to the blood before his brain recognized that it was not human, and he felt his fangs extend hungrily. He took a few stumbling steps closer and then steadied himself, gripping the stair railing. Only then could he see what was at the door.
One of Klaus's hybrids stood on the porch, blood splattered on his face, streaked on his arms, and stained on his clothes. His white-blonde hair pressed red to his skull. His whole body trembled.
"Klaus, sir," he said as way of a greeting, looking down at the ground. "Tony is dead."
"Tell me what happened." Klaus stepped aside to allow the hybrid to come into the house, but as he took a step forward, his bloody body stopped as if hit by an invisible wall. Damon let out a small sigh of relief; Elena was still alive, and this hybrid was not invited inside.
Klaus cursed under his breath and stepped out onto the porch instead. Damon watched with surprise as Klaus put a reassuring hand on the hybrid's shoulder. Under his sire's touch, his quivering calmed, and he was able to form words.
"We found her in the Salvatores' woods. She's…" He trailed off because no word seemed able to encompass what he was feeling. Overcome with shaking again, he could not continue until Klaus looked him dead in the eyes.
"I don't want to compel you, James. Tell me what happened."
Damon could not have anticipated the almost-regret in Klaus's tone. Perhaps he needed the familial bond of his hybrids more than he let on in his power-hungry statements. Whatever caused the reluctance, Klaus obviously did not want to compel his hybrid.
James sucked in a few deep breaths, never taking his eyes off of Klaus. "She called us abominations, and she ripped off Tony's head. There was no struggle. Just pulled it clean off. And then she…" He hesitated again. "She ate him."
Damon's stomach flopped in a queasy circle.
"She said to tell you that her children are the only predators, and that yours must become prey."
Klaus did not answer for long seconds, and the lack of conversation made the voice inside Damon's head suddenly reverberate louder.
"Thank you for your report," Klaus said with foreboding calm. "Begin calling your brothers and sisters and tell them to stand down and meet me here. The porch ought to be able to hold almost all of you. Southern architecture and all."
"Okay." James sounded small. Klaus turned and walked back into the house, closing the door behind him. His face twisted into an angry sneer.
"She thinks she can kill my hybrids and take my doppelgänger?" Though he spoke aloud, he spoke to himself. "She thinks she can stop me, and I am about to show her how wrong she is."
He looked up now. "Damon. Call your little witch and tell her that I need her here immediately."
Damon raised his eyebrows. No amount of internal voice or crisis could turn him into someone who took Klaus's orders like that.
"No. If you want to interrupt the person who is trying to figure out how to put an end to all of this, do it yourself."
"Your self-centeredness knows no bounds." To have Klaus sound genuinely disappointed in him surprised him, but he did not have the mental space for self-reflection right now. He was barely holding himself together over the voices in his head, and the small comfort that Elena was alive could not banish all the fear balled up inside of him.
Klaus stalked off to the kitchen, phone in hand, and Damon turned back into the living room. Stefan had not moved from his pained position, but Alaric had moved further away, occupying a space by the window. He looked out into the pouring rain. Damon walked over and joined him.
"So we're trusting Klaus with a plan to save Elena," Alaric observed aloud. Damon noticed his friend's attempt to keep accusation out of his voice.
"He's more powerful than the rest of us." He ordinarily made a point of not explaining himself to anyone, but for Alaric, he tried. "Not to mention him not being able to hear her voice, which I am incredibly jealous about. She's not my favorite song."
"No jokes right now, Damon. Be serious."
"Serious," Damon grimaced. "Alright. I'm terrified that we don't have a better plan than waiting for some hunters to get back with some bird ashes, which we're going to somehow figure out a way to use, but we know Elena's alive if undead things can't get in this house."
"You think Klaus can beat this Mother of All?"
Damon paused to consider it. "I don't know. All I know is that one way or another, we are getting Elena back. Even if all the rest of us have to burn for it to happen."
The possibility of them dying to rescue Elena had not occurred to him until this moment, but as soon as he said the words, he knew he meant them. Realizing he would sacrifice not only himself but the people around him to save her was an ugly moment. Self-sacrifice was admirable; slaughtering others at the altar was not.
"Elena wouldn't want her friends to die for her," Stefan spoke from the couch now.
"I don't give a damn what Elena wants."
Damon didn't understand why other people seemed to give her wishes such credence. She was a teenage human. If over a hundred years on Earth had taught him anything, it was how quickly someone like that could lose her life, snuffed out before she had a chance to even know what she wanted. The other thing he had learned in over a hundred years was how great it was to live.
He had sailed on yachts with charismatic strangers, had danced the waltz in Milan and bumped and ground to club music in Los Angeles, and watched the sun rise over the Gulf of Mexico. The taste of hundreds of women lingered in his memory; he could lick his lips and imagine their tang still lingered there. In his closet, he had tee shirts from locales all around the country and from every decade hanging beside a Confederate soldier's uniform now worth a lot of money. Only after letting your life get full like that could you realize how much a teenager did not know what she was giving up when she opted to die for someone else.
He wanted Elena to live because he knew how much life was out there.
Klaus walked into the living room. He emanated anger. "Change of plans. My brother is home, and he has the audacity to challenge me."
"It's a trap," Stefan replied. Klaus all but rolled his eyes at him.
"Brilliant insight, Mr. Salvatore. While I appreciate and value your stunning intellect, I am already aware that this a trap. However, we are going to walk into it because Eve has promised to kill my doppelgänger if we do not."
"Okay. Let's go." Stefan stood up. Damon looked at Klaus, and Klaus looked back. His eyes made it clear exactly what needed to be said. Damon took a deep breath.
"I'll be out in a moment," he told Klaus.
"I suppose I'll just go onto the porch and count to twenty very slowly, hoping that the bitch does not get impatient and destroy my only way of making hybrids. I'm sure nothing could be more important than you breaking the news to your brother gently," Klaus said.
He walked out. Alaric followed, a risky move under any circumstances, but there was nothing Damon could do about it right now.
Damon turned to Stefan. "You can't come."
Even as he said the words, guilt filled in his chest, swelling up. His little brother's eyes were haunted. A thousand demons raged inside Stefan right now. Damon knew how hard Stefan had fought just to stand up a second ago, battling Eve's voice, the thrumming bloodlust, and the relentless regret.
"I can help. Damon, I'm going with you if you're going to face Her." Stefan's face set stubbornly, even as his pupils oscillated inside in his irises. Just watching them made Damon dizzy.
Damon remembered when they were younger, and he had gone off to fight for the Confederacy, leaving his brother behind. He remembered when they were this same age, and he had gone off to fight the Nazis, again leaving Stefan behind. He supposed he would have the same expression if he were the one who always got left behind. A soft human place inside of him made him want to tell Stefan some truths: I'm leaving you behind to protect you. I always leave you behind to protect you. If you don't know that I'd risk myself over you every time, you haven't been paying attention for the last one hundred and fifty years.
Instead he shrugged. "You're unpredictable. You can't control yourself even when you're not near her. You're a liability."
Stefan drooped visibly, defeated by one more set of words convincing him he was no hero. "You're right."
They looked at each other for a long moment, and Damon reached out first. He pulled Stefan into an embrace, and in the familiar circled arms, he wondered if he would die today. Facing down the other struggles over the years had not been like this. Eve represented Apocalypse for monsters like themselves, an absolute end to the humanity within their bodies. If they could not defeat her, they might be feeling this way for the last time. He memorized the smell of his brother, the hard curve of his muscle, the tremor across the forearm resting on his back. He memorized it in case this moment was the last of its kind.
"Be safe, brother," Stefan said into Damon's shoulder. Damon closed his eyes and let the words seep into him like a good luck charm.
"I'll bring Elena home."
He did not make the words a promise.
X
Eve dropped her facade after Elena had been with her for several hours. Under the pretty human trappings she wore, she was anything but. Her true being horrified Elena. Eve still had a humanoid shape, but the grey flesh slipped on the bones and muscles, moving loosely and freely when its owner did, and her eyes were hollow dark holes in the flesh. Their quasi-triangular shape added to the unearthliness. Elena could not bear to look at her.
When she had arrived at the old Lockwood estate, she had found Jeremy crudely trussed to a tree. A wound on his neck still ran bloody, and Elijah had wiped the corner of his own mouth upon seeing her. In that moment, she realized she was being taken prisoner by something that no longer had access to humanity.
Now she was sitting on a familiar couch, looking around at the Mikaelson living room. Nothing held her here except the horror of what she had seen when they had moved through the woods at the edge of town. When Eve had eaten the hybrid… Elena swallowed hard to force rising vomit back down her throat. It would be the most grotesque thing she ever saw even if she lived a hundred years.
Elijah stood in the doorway of his own space, looking nothing like himself. The red veins framed his eyes still, and he looked longingly at Jeremy, whose unconscious body lay slumped in the corner of the room. Earlier, she had tried to go to him, but Elijah had stopped her. She was not allowed to leave this couch. Clenching her trembling hands together, she tried to breathe in and out slowly. She needed to find her voice and try to reach out to Elijah. He had once been the most understanding member of his family.
"Elijah?" Embarrassed by her own fear, she dug her nails into her skin, trying to distract herself enough to be understood.
He turned to look at her. "Yes?"
"Please let me go to Jeremy. He's hurt."
"He is of no importance." Though Elijah did not finish with the words "to Mother," they floated in the air unsaid.
"Not to you. But he's my brother, Elijah. My brother. Please. I won't try to escape. I promise. Just let me sit with him."
Elijah's face flickered as she spoke of her brother. She watched him lift upright, shoulders softening for a moment. He took a few steps toward her, and she saw him in his body again. She could not have put words to what she was seeing, but she could see that he had control of himself for a moment. His unclouded eyes closed.
"I cannot promise not to hurt him. Mother has graciously taken away my thirst for your blood, but I am so very hungry." He had genuine regret in his voice. He looked back over at Jeremy again, and a hiss escaped him as his fangs extended and his eyes reddened. She had never seen Elijah lose control like that until today.
"Please. Even if you're going to feed, I'd rather be with him than not," she pleaded. They stared at one another, and he nodded slowly.
"I will try not to kill your brother, Elena."
What about yours? She wanted to ask, but she dared not. Pushing her legs to work, she hurried over to Jeremy and knelt down beside him. Blood streaked his ripped football jersey, and his chest rose and fell with shallow breaths. She touched his face first, feeling the roughness of cheeks in need of a shave, and then checked down his body for broken bones. He hissed without waking when she ran her hands along his sides. Perhaps he had broken ribs.
"I'm here, Jer," she told him tearily as she checked his legs for injury. "I'm so sorry. I never meant for anything like this to happen to you. I just wanted to keep you safe."
Hearing her own voice soothed her in the quiet terror of the room, so she kept talking, murmuring little nothings as she held his hand.
"You were so happy in Denver. You'd call and tell me about your new friends, that girl you were dating. I got to worry about normal things for you. Like if she was nice or a slut," Elena giggled but her eyes filled with tears, blurring her vision entirely. "I only ever wanted to worry about normal things for you."
The weeping crept up on her so gently that she was crying on Jeremy's chest before she realized she had stopped talking. She cried for her hopeless inability to save anyone she loved from this monster. She cried for her hopeless inability to ever save anyone she loved.
"You should know that Mother wants to make the world better," Elijah spoke suddenly, quiet but firm. "Humankind has had a long dawn with creatures like us in the shadows, living as lurkers in our own world. She wants to see us have our turn in the spotlight. She is not evil."
Elena heard the terrible slurp of Eve consuming the hybrid bubble up from her memory.
"She wants what all Mothers want for their children. Happiness."
Elena sat up and shook her head. "You're human in all the ways that count. You don't want to see everything humans represent destroyed."
"Humans have wars on their hands, the hunger pains of hundreds of poor children, the extinction of many innocent species. You've borne killers who rape children and dismember their corpses. You climb into steel contraptions and run over pedestrians. What have monsters ever done that is as monstrous as what humans do every day?
Elena closed her eyes against the picture of humanity he painted. She thought of the TV commercials she had watched all her life of starving children in Africa, looking up with wide, hungry eyes, and how her father had quickly changed channels, not wanting to feel guilty during dinner. She changed the channels too. Elijah was not as wrong as she wanted him to be, and yet she knew he did not really feel this way. She knew that someone besides her would be able to articulate why humanity deserved to live in spite of its flaws, but she struggled for words.
"You're right about all of those things, but we're also the ones who make art and music and work to try to understand why every atom is a part of the universe and have family…" She lit up, knowing that topic was her best shot. "Family, like your brothers and Rebekah and Klaus. There won't be any families if Eve destroys the world the way we know it."
While she spoke, he listened intently until she said the word "destroys." His face hardened, and he retreated again, away from himself and back into the creature Eve had wearing his skin.
"Mother would never destroy the world. She's here to save us. Klaus need only stand down, and he will be allowed to live with us in Paradise," he said coldly, standing up and walking away. He exited the room without glancing back. Her window to reach him had snapped shut so quickly that she had barely pulled her fingers out before they got crushed.
Elena tried to think of her options for escape, but the situation was futile. She could not move Jeremy, and she would not leave him. She sagged on the floor to wait.
She had been waiting to be rescued for several hours when she heard Klaus's voice from somewhere in the house.
Unashamed, she began to cry again: this time, with relief.
X
Her voice roared in Damon's head, drowning out all other thought and pushing so hard from the inside so hard that it blurred his eyes. As he listened to Klaus and Elijah speak, he could barely make out their words. Eat. Feed. Be happy. Feast. Indulge. He gripped the bottom railing of the staircase to steady himself against the onslaught.
"Conspiring against me is very bad form, Elijah. You were daggered in a box for centuries, and I must say, you were better company then than you have been since the creature took you over."
How Klaus managed to sound so flippant in the face of danger and overwhelming likelihood of death… Damon doubled over as the voice began to pierce, a needle penetrating his brain.
He saw the headlights glow through the window and the rain behind him as it pulled into the driveway. From the shape, he recognized Dean Winchester's Impala and felt a shameful flood of relief. The phoenix ash was here. He had no idea what they could do with it, how it could save Elena, how he was even going to be able to take another step forward when his head was throbbing this way… But it felt like something in the middle of the nothing they mostly had.
"Mother wants peace, and you will not let her have it, Niklaus." Elijah sounded clipped as always. Damon forced his blurry gaze up to see Sam and Dean walking into the foyer through the open front door.
"Where's Caroline?" Klaus asked as he looked them over once.
"She's got a bit of a headache. We left her with a friend," Dean said tersely. Damon felt another renting scream-like pulse of Feast in his head and knew exactly why Caroline had not been willing to come into this house. He was no use to anyone here. His hand slipped off the rail, and he nearly fell over.
He felt the footsteps of his Mother inside of him, thrumming with his heartbeat, even though he could not hear them over her voice. Raising his watery eyes, he saw her descending the staircase. Her human form was blonde, beautiful, and the glow of her eyes was almost purple. She touched his head as she reached him, running a hand over his hair as softly as silk. When she touched him, he no longer heard her voice in his head. Sudden blissful clarity struck in its place. It felt like a lifetime since he had heard silence.
"My child, you fight so hard against me." Her voice was silk and honey. He melted under the touch.
"You must be Eve," Sam Winchester spoke first.
Eve smiled benevolently. "Yes, Sam. You may call me Eve since I am not your mother. I'm pleased to have you all here. We need to talk. All of us."
She lifted her hand from Damon's head, and sadness engulfed him. He missed her touch.
"You know us?" Sam said.
"You're the Winchesters, stoppers of the Apocalypse, defiers of God," she said it without reverence. She turned her gaze to each person in the room. "You are, of course, Niklaus Mikaelson. A human name in spite of your desire to be something great. An abomination and bastardization of my creation."
Damon felt his head nodding along with her words. Klaus was awful, a hybrid species that should not exist. She was right.
"Well you're not wrong," Dean muttered. "Why do you want to talk to us? If you know anything about us, you know we want to kill you."
Damon did not remember how he could have wanted to kill Mother. She was an absolute good. She sensed his thought and smiled over at him, smoothing a place on his shoulder where his shirt had a wrinkle. He smiled back.
She ignored Dean's statement and continued on her own trajectory instead. "I want you here so that I can ask you to stand down. I want nothing for my children that God did not have for his first. You were supposed to perish in fiery Apocalypse, and then my children were to inherit the Earth. It is our turn."
Sam Winchester looked stricken; the gears in his head seemed to be spinning. The other Winchester snorted.
"If we weren't going to let God's plan destroy the world, why would we let you? Get real, bitch."
Elijah and Damon hissed in unison. How dare he use language like that to address Mother.
"And you." She again ignored Dean and turned to Klaus. "You must understand that you are outside of the natural order. I have been a part of this creation since its beginning. I belong here. What your hundreds of years compared to my thousands? Put away your hubris, and accept my superiority. You can live amongst my children in peace."
"Superiority." Klaus actually smiled. "And you dare to accuse me of hubris."
"I do not want to kill you. That would be giving you credence as an enemy. You're not really my enemy. You're a wayward son in need of guidance. Elijah, tell your brother how much I want to help him."
Elijah stepped forward. "Mother only wants what is best for all of us."
"Damon?" She asked another child to speak for her.
"We have been wrong," Damon said. Mother looked so lovely, and her voice sounded so nice.
"Well, that's some Stepford wives shit we're not buying, but you can work that out amongst yourselves. We're here for Elena. She has no part in all of this. She's just a human," Dean said.
"Not quite," Mother motioned to Elijah, and he exited the room. "She is more than just the honey that brought all the little flies here. She's also the doppelgänger whose blood possesses the magic to create the abominations."
"Hybrids." Klaus's vocal chords vibrated harshly on the words.
"Yes, hybrids. She's more than just a human, and she must die."
Dean and Sam both lurched forward suddenly, knives in their hands, and Damon recognized black and red powder on the blades. Without thought, he lunged toward them, but Mother just laughed and waved her hand in the air. The knives flew upwards and lodged themselves in the ceiling overhead.
"Silly boys."
The Winchesters stood side by side, frozen by their sudden impotence, and Elijah walked in with Elena in tow. Damon looked at her and felt his insides rattle. Mother's perfection suddenly scraped against the sandpapery edges of something else.
"Damon," Elena breathed out his name, and the roughness pressed harder against his insides. Mother was perfect. He loved Elena. The two ideas rubbed together.
He saw the relief on her face as she looked at him.
"I knew you'd come for me," she said, and all the innocence and trust in those dark eyes undid him. He loved her, and every other feeling inside of him slipped and melted away. If he had possessed the power to make his feet move, he would have stepped to her, no matter what Mother said.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sam Winchester lunge forward with another knife in hand and plunge it into Mother's shoulder. She turned her body towards him, face unflinching, and then her features shifted. She shrank slightly shorter, rounded out a bit, and her face aged and changed. The brunette hair transformed into auburn, and when she spoke, she had a twangy gravel of whiskey and cigarettes in her tone.
Sam stumbled backwards. Damon saw Dean's face harden. They both stiffened then, frozen, and Damon realized she had finally used whatever primal magic she controlled to cut off their movement. They had never served as a threat to her; she had been toying with them, a cat with a mouse tucked under her food dish for later.
He loved Elena. Mother was wrong.
"You bitch." Dean spat out the words.
Eve laughed. "I considered Mary Winchester as a skin, but Sam here might not have recognized her. He didn't get much of a mother's love until Ellen came along. Do you miss her, Sam? I know she died horribly so that you might live."
Damon did not know who Ellen was, but if anyone had ever loved her, she had probably not carried such malice behind her face. He clung to the thought that he loved Elena, had to protect Elena, even as the waves of loyalty to Mother crashed against his insides.
Klaus moved in suddenly. Damon had nearly forgotten the Original's presence until he saw him lunge forward, a blur moving in towards Elena. Damon had no time to react, but Elijah countered. He put his hands on his brother's shoulders. They strained against one another. Released, Elena ran to Damon. He pulled her against his chest and felt the rapid fluttery beat of her heart.
He loved Elena. Mother was evil.
He reiterated reality in his head, clinging to clarity.
"Elijah, do not let him interfere with our plans," Mother said. The pair of Original brothers hissed, turning from the gentlemanly personas they projected to the savage beings they began as. Klaus wrenched his brother sideways, sending him careening into a column. The wood cracked down the middle. Elijah sprang back at him, fangs extended. The two brothers became a blurred mass of teeth, sinewy muscle, and blood. Damon could not tell whose blood emerged from the blurred fight that careened through the window and onto the porch.
The spray of glass and blood littered the floor.
"Now..." Mother turned away from the fight on the porch and scanned her gaze over Dean, Sam, Elena and Damon. "To take care of his doppelganger."
Elena tightened her grip on Damon's arm. He felt her fingers pulling at his arm hair, creating a sensation of almost pain. He had seen her in terrible situations before, and yet the palpable fear in the air now topped it all. She must have seen the creature underneath the human veneer Mother wore, and that creature must be horrible.
"Damon," Eve's voice was sugar, sweet and addictive. "My boy, you've got to kill her."
"No!" One of the Winchesters let out a strained cry, but Damon did not look at them. He felt Elena's touch on his arm, and he felt Mother's voice stroking him, urging him. Mother spoke to him from the inside out; he felt what she wanted from him before she said it.
He loved Elena. Mother wanted to hurt her.
"Elena, get away from me." Could that be his own voice, so stripped of sarcasm and devilment, so ragged and frightened?
Mother wanted him to listen to her. She wanted him to hurt Elena.
Elena scrambled a few steps back but kept herself close, looking right at him. In those eyes sat a wellspring of concern and trust. She worried for him even as he suddenly became all too aware of the tantalizing scent of her blood.
He loved Elena. He loved Mother.
"You're fighting me. You're standing in the way of your own happiness. I can bring you peace if you'll let go. Without the doppelganger, Klaus will be no threat to us," Mother crooned. Her voice was room temperature bourbon on a cold day, an angelic lullaby on a frightful night. He looked over at her, and her beauty made his insides soften.
He loved Mother. He had to do whatever she wanted of him.
"Damon, no, listen to me," Elena spoke now, five-feet-six-inches of human staring down impending supernatural doom. "You've got to fight her. You can't let her control you. I know you. I know you'd never hurt me. Remember when you were dying?"
"Yes."
He remembered the excruciating pain of the werewolf bite eating him up. The pure poison pumping through his veins had weakened him to a sub-human state. In the hallucinations and agony, he remembered Elena sitting by his side. She had held his hand and kissed his lips and made the prospect of death a thousand times more painful as she reminded him of what he would leave behind.
He loved Mother. He loved Elena.
"You told me you loved me, remember? You told me you wouldn't change anything in all your years because it might risk us not meeting." She closed the steps between them, putting her hands on his chest. He wondered how he could have ever thought she and Katherine Pierce looked alike; Elena's beauty glowed with goodness as she faced him down.
He loved Elena.
"You have to be strong enough to do this." Mother's voice purred, but it held an edge now, a razor-sharp bite to her words.
He loved Mother.
"I didn't tell you then. I didn't understand it, didn't want to understand it," Elena tripped over her words, looking him in the eyes. "But Damon, I love you too. I try not to. I try so damn hard not to want you. You're stubborn and selfish and short-sighted, but you're so much better than you see, than you let anyone see. Except me. I'm the only one who gets to see the real you. I know you won't hurt me. You'd never hurt me. I trust you."
Damon had imagined Elena telling him that she loved him in a hundred different ways. Embarrassing dreams of domestic felicity had crept up on him at night, leaving him with broken images of whispered affirmations, road trips, and soft kisses. They had kissed before; he had memorized the taste of her hot mouth and the feel of her body pressed against his. But he had always known that love - acknowledged and affectionate and pure - could never belong to him. He slid his hands up to cradle her face, memorizing this moment.
He loved Elena. The textured edges of the realities battling inside of him rubbed against one another again.
Elena leaned up into him, and his heart surged at the sweetness of a kiss he did not have to work for, a kiss freely offered. Her lips brushed against his.
"That was a very endearing show of human power. Misters Winchester, I am sure you are feeling in awe of the power of love," Mother no longer sounded like silk but like twin pieces of styrofoam being pressed together. "But that is enough."
Mother's voice changed completely now, becoming as big and expansive as thunder: "Damon Salvatore, kill the doppelganger."
Her voice filled him up, pressed against his skin from within. The three words "kill the doppelganger" swelled inside of him. They crawled along his nerves and burrowed into the nooks and crannies of his psyche, finding his love for Elena and blotting over it with their dark command.
Mother says to kill the doppelganger. He loved Mother.
Damon tightened his hands around Elena's fragile throat and twisted. The snap nearly severed head from body.
He let the corpse hit the floor before turning his gaze to his wonderful benefactor.
"I've killed the doppelganger, Mother."
"Good boy." She smiled, and Damon warmed under her gaze.
He loved Mother.