I'm back! This is really short, but I just had to cut it right where I did, and that's the reason this note is at the beginning and not the end. Enjoy. ;)
"Elena." Damon murmured softly. "Jake just called you, we need to go back."
She groaned and buried her face in a soft pillow. "No." she protested adamantly.
Damon shook his head and flicked her ear gently. "Get the hell up!" he ordered, tugging on a soft grey jumper she hadn't noticed he had before and his jacket. "Now!" He yanked the duvet off of her.
"Damon!" she roared, sitting bolt upright.
Damon didn't think he'd ever seen someone look so good. He chucked her jeans, jumper and jacket at her. It had never been so painful to give a girl clothes to wear, he'd much prefer her without them. "Clothes. Then we're leaving."
Elena dragged her jeans up her legs and scrambled out of bed, throwing her other clothes over her arm and slipping on her shoes.
"Nice shirt." He commented ruefully. She was deliberately torturing him, he decided.
"I think I'll keep it." She pointed out, heading for the door. "I like it."
Damon opened the door, motioning for her to walk out. "Whatever makes you happy, 'Lena." He said dryly.
The second Elena rang Jake's doorbell, the door was thrown open and she was being squeezed to death by her lifelong friend. Damon edged around them gingerly. Elena noticed he was throwing some pretty smug looks and Jake.
"I told you so." Damon said smugly, sitting himself down at the kitchen table.
Jake glared at him, not saying a word.
"Smug bastard." She muttered under her breath, prodding Damon in the arm.
He grinned at her and clasped his hands behind his head and lolling backwards.
"You know, I really need to call Grayson." He said resignedly staring at his phone as it buzzed in his palm.
"So call the guy." Jake spat out vehemently, shooting daggers at Damon. She'd have to get the story out of one of them later. Her bets were on Damon, it seemed he was smug about something and Jake wasn't the kind to flaunt his losses.
Elena chuckled and grabbed Damon's phone out his hand. "Behave. I'll do it."
She disappeared out of the room, leaving one loose cannon and some pretty explosive fuel in the same room.
She sat down heavily on the soft sofa and called her father's number.
"Damon, we got new-" Grayson started breathlessly.
"New what?" she asked, despite herself.
"Elena!" Her dad cried awkwardly. He coughed, trying to cover his mishap. "Just new bikes, baby."
She rolled her eyes and resisted the urge to flip off her dad through the phone. The one thing that connected her and her dad was their love of the road and motorbikes – new bikes were one of the things they shared over the years. She would not be out of the loop on new bikes. Her dad was making one poor-ass excuse to cover something up.
"Sure Dad." She said skeptically.
"Are you okay, Lay?" he asked softly, successfully changing the subject. "Damon couldn't find you, then some other guy had no idea where you went and that was last night..."
Elena sighed. "I'm fine, Dad. Honest." She lied.
"That mean you gonna get your ass back home?" Grayson asked semi-playfully just as Damon walked into the room, unnoticed by the brunette on the phone.
She chuckled humorlessly. "So you can tell Damon something new on who's trying to kill me?" she accused flatly.
Damon grabbed the phone out of Elena's grasp. "Hey Gray, what's up?"
"Hey!" Elena hissed, making a move to snatch the phone back. "Damon!"
"What? Sorry, your daughter's attacking me." Damon said flatly, a small smirk playing around the edges of his lips. Damon pulled the phone away from his ear and pressed it to his chest. "You act like I'm not gonna tell you what he says!" he hissed.
Elena stopped grabbing for the phone and stared at him strangely. Her mouth was making an 'Oh' shape and she looked as if someone had just told her Santa wasn't real.
Damon rolled his eyes at her and placed the phone back against his ear, relaxing back into the sofa. "It's fine. I killed her." He said flatly.
Elena could hear Grayson's unamused voice even without loudspeaker.
"Relax Gray, I didn't kill her. I mean she's annoying and all, but I'm learning to deal-" Suddenly, Damon furrowed his brows and ran his hands agitatedly through his hair. "Where are you even getting the information Gray? Stuff like that doesn't just get leaked to people like us."
Damon frowned and rubbed his face tiredly with his hand. "If you want to keep people safe, keeping them in the dark isn't the way to do that." He snapped viciously.
"Don't you dare finish that sentence," He threatened. "I'll tell her what is necessary, but don't ask me to keep her in the dark. Bye Gray."
He threw down the phone violently and messed up his hair restlessly.
Elena stared at him, inexplicably frustrated at only hearing half the conversation.
"Damon." She said quietly.
He sighed and met her eyes. "It's not even a big deal. It's been confirmed that the biker who set fire to your house is a new patch member of the Vengefuls, his bike's not in our older record. He's fresh meat willing to put his butt on the line to impress."
She closed her eyes. "What are they keeping me in the dark about?"
He buried his face in his hands. "I don't know. I have no idea, if he tells me, I either have to lie to you, or I lie to them. "
She wanted to think he was lying. She wanted any excuse to find a reason to put a barrier between herself and the only person who she had really begun to open up to in her life. Elena nodded and stood up. "I get it." She told him softly.
"I don't lie Elena. Be whatever you want to be and I'll treat you the same, just don't lie to me." He told her, a faint note of desperation in his voice.
"I won't." she promised, so quietly he very nearly didn't hear her.
"I don't understand where they're getting this information!" he moaned tapping his fingers against the arm of he sofa.
"Someone on the inside." She told him, unable to resist a slightly patronizing tone.
He flicked her shoulder gently. "I know, but I'm starting to think it's not just some corrupt cop."
Elena nodded, fiddling with the ends of her hair. "Well they will tell you." She said bitterly.
"Hey." He said gently, touching her chin for a moment to bring her gaze back to his. "They haven't told me."
"But they will." She pointed out stubbornly. "What is Giuseppe going to keep from you? Nothing. What is Grayson going to keep from me? Besides from my whole background, my relationship with my Dad, and having a chance to grow up in the same way he and Miranda did, nah, not much at all." She spat out sarcastically.
"'Lena!" he exclaimed exasperatedly. "He's protecting you!"
"I may be Grayson's daughter, and I may ride bikes and be part of the Vagrants, but I don't know anything. It's a whole foreign world to me back home!"
He looked at her, and with one long look, he conveyed every emotions a smile could hold into a glimpse. He was one of those people whose smiles were few and far. The smirked, they laughed, and they gave small, shadowed glimpses but their true heart-melting, face-splitting smiles were reserved for those who deserved to see it.
"I want to go home." She confessed to him honestly.
He smiled at her softly, making her stare awkwardly at his expression. He couldn't come out and tell her why her words made him so happy.
She wanted to go home. Her home was Phoenix, and maybe he was reading too much into it, but unless he was very much mistaken, her home was in the place she had spent every moment with him in. In the place she called home, every moment had been spent with him.
And that thought, for unexplainable reasons, made him smile
Elena stared out at the evening sky. Saying goodbye to Jake had been difficult, and being unable to contact Sam, leaving again was harder than last time.
Damon sat next to her in the can, keeping his distance as usual. Maybe he knew her in that aspect, or maybe he just knew himself. Somethings are best pondered alone, in silence, in the quiet company of one person who will leave you be.
The time flew by and merged together to a dull grey colour. There were no outstanding emotions, no fear of the sky, and no sadness at leaving. She was leaving and she was going home.
"You." Grayson hissed at Damon as he wandered into the clubhouse slightly behind Elena.
"Hey Gray." He said absently, clapping Giuseppe on the shoulder as he watched on amused.
Grayson spluttered speechless for a moment, before he glared at Elena, pointing accusingly at her. "You're in trouble, kid."
Elena smiled innocently and sat down on the soft sofa in Giuseppe's office. "Hi, Daddy."
"I like you, kid. You're just like Grayson without all that parental crap." Giuseppe grinned, sitting next to Elena.
"What am I? A next door neighbor?" Damon said grinning, sitting between Elena and his Dad.
Giuseppe shrugged. "I was thinking more of a family pet."
Elena giggled at Damon's indignant and butted her shoulder into him. Her laughter died on her lips as she noticed her Dad's face.
"I'm sorry, Dad." She muttered to him. "But I'm not a little kid. I managed twenty-two years already without you there constantly, a couple days alone won't make a difference." She shut her mouth quickly, her heart hurting as she watched the only parent she had left walk out the room.
She buried her face in her hands. "I cannot believe I just said that." She grumbled to no one in particular. She felt warm hands on her back pushing her upright and towards the door.
Damon smirked at her and winked. Elena's heart immediately lifted slightly, and as she walked out the door, heading towards her father to mend her hurtful words she walked with a light heart, which was more than she could have said a week ago.
"Hey kid." Grayson said sadly, rummaging through the mini-bar in his office to grab a beer, as Elena walked into the room.
"You know I didn't mean what I said." She said quietly, reluctantly meeting his eyes.
"It's true though." Grayson sat down heavily behind his desk and rubbed his temples wearily.
"I just-" Elena trailed off at the end, not sure how to talk to this man. The 'Dad' she had known growing up, with the distinct smell of leather and oil and the crinkled eyes and laughing smiles, was gone, and had been replaced with a shadow of the father she knew. The leather and oil was the smell of home, bringing a new wave of pain every time it hit her. His eyes were crinkled with worry and the laughing smile was long gone, replaced with dull, aching sadness that could only be from losing Miranda. "I don't know you. I don't know this you."
Grayson met her eyes regretfully. "And I'm glad for that. You had your Mom, and your childhood was untainted by this life Elena. I was just that man who turned up once in a blue moon, seeing you grow up."
"But I still don't know you." She whispered into the tense air.
"I know, but I'm not the man with the family, kiddo. I'm the ruthless one. The one who takes risks because there is no one they can use to hurt me."
"They could use me." She mumbled without fully realizing it.
Grayson stepped forward and grasped her shoulders tightly. "They will not touch you."
Elena nodded. Her Dad wasn't the rose-tinted man she'd known as a child, and the more she grew the more she understood. Her Dad was a Vagrant, one of the most hated Vagrants at that, and he couldn't have a family when he got the chance, so he gave up his family, to keep her safe.
There was a knock on the door, startling both of them out of their quiet thoughts.
"Gray," Giuseppe said firmly. "We need to talk. Now."
Elena didn't wait to be asked to leave. She walked out of the room, leaving her father to talk about her mother's killers and the people who were after her, and she knew that she would never be told about it.
"Hey." Damon whispered, his eyes glinting mischievously. "Follow me."
She raised her eyebrows at him, waiting for an explanation. When none arrived, she simply stayed silent, and followed Damon as he led her through a maze of corridors and into a small lounge. He tugged on her sleeve lightly, and pulled her over to the door on the other side of the room that was very slightly ajar.
"-John said it was someone you pissed off Gray. He knows about you, and your past, and out off all the people you've pissed off, who have you pissed off more than Slater?"
"That was twenty-odd years ago!" Grayson insisted. "Slater was killed six years ago."
"Elena was born twenty-odd years ago, Gray." Giuseppe added softly.
"Twenty-three years this October." Grayson muttered absent-mindedly.
"Who's to say he wasn't tracking Miranda to get his revenge? You killed Rose, Gray! An eye for an eye!"
Elena's mouth dropped open. She knew vaguely about her father's bloody past. The whole reason that he couldn't have a family was because too many people wanted him dead. It was too dangerous. But hearing the words, so cold and flat, from the mouth of her father's best friend made the murder on her Dad's hands so much colder. Damon squeezed her arm softly.
"I never killed Rose, Gus! Don't you dare put that on me! Don't put the death of an innocent girl on me!" Grayson roared. "I would never murder a women, let alone a pregnant one. That accident haunts me Gus and you know it does! And with only half of that damn story, how can you even say that!"
Giuseppe fell silent. "However it happened, Rose died and so did Slater's kid. Why is it so unbelievable that he tracked Miranda down?"
"Because she lived for nearly twenty four years after that! Why didn't he kill her the second he found her if that's the case?"
"She was pregnant! Then she had a baby, then a toddler and then a child to look after! Slater was no saint, but losing Rose would never drive him to murdering a child in cold blood." Giuseppe argued reasonably.
"It makes no sense, Gus." Grayson said frustrated. "Slater died six years before the fire. We can't go through every Vengeful that wants me dead."
"Trevor's alive." Giuseppe pointed out. "No one loved Rose more than he did."
"Trevor." Grayson cursed violently.
Elena turned to Damon, her eyes wide with shock. 'Who's Trevor?" she mouthed silently.
Damon shrugged, looking equally shocked. "A Vengeful?" he mouthed back.
Elena sighed and moved away from the door. Their father's had moved back to somebody called John and previous information they already knew and with only half the information, neither Damon nor Elena could make sense of the conversation.
Elena leant against the far wall out of earshot of Grayson and stared at he ceiling. "My head's spinning." She admitted.
"Tell me about it." Damon laughed gently, coming to stand in front of her. "We still know basically nothing and it doesn't seem like they know much more."
"It's just a bunch of names now." Elena said with distaste.
Damon nodded, mentally running through the list of names in his head.
"Rose, Trevor, Slater." He started off with the most recent additions.
"Some guy called John." Elena added quietly.
"Then Michael. That whole family are trouble, but Michael's a right bastard." He said through gritted teeth.
Elena giggled half-heartedly.
"Then, slap bang in the middle, there's you." He pointed out sadly. "Along with Gray."
He watched Elena run her fingers through her hair. With each day he kept picking up little motions. The way she tapping her fingers irregularly on surfaces under awkward situations. The way she ran her fingers through her hair when she was stressed or thinking. The way she bit her lip and looked at him with those big brown eyes… he hadn't placed why she did that yet.
"I can't even begin to wrap my head around-" Elena was cut off suddenly by footsteps and moving chairs coming from next door.
Elena looked like a deer caught in headlights. Her wide, brown eyes were filled with shock and Damon, being impulsive and having no ability to process thoughts, hovered over her, caging her tightly against the rough wall and did the only thing he could think of to make them seem less guilty.
He kissed her.