A/N: Hi! Can you believe it? I still exist! I checked and I last updated this story over a year ago :( :( :( I am soooooooooooooooooo sorry! I swear, I've been meaning to update sooner. I've actually tried to sit down and write this chapter probably a dozen times. But I just couldn't do it. This chapter was so difficult for me. I didn't know what to do with it. I debated scrapping it altogether but I've hinted at it throughout the whole fic so I didn't want to leave you all hanging. My fault for not properly structuring the story beforehand, I guess.
Anyways, a little while ago I got a wonderful review on one of my other fics from lauura (If you're reading this, you were anonymous so I couldn't thank you, but I was very very touched!) and it gave me the kick in the butt I needed to finally sit down and get this over with. So I actually took a couple of days off work to write and here it is. I hope I'll be able to finish this fic in a somewhat timely manner now. Please keep me in your prayers ;)
For those of you who are still reading this: Thank you! I feel awful for the unacceptably long wait and you have no idea how much I appreciate your support on this crazy ride.
The twenty-first chapter, in which history is revealed
As they were settled in their first class nook, curtains drawn, the rest of the airplane far away, Damon observed Elena from the corner of his eyes – observed her unconsciously furrowed brows, the way her teeth nervously scraped across her lower lip and her worried eyes, as they darted restlessly from one bulbous heap of clouds passing by underneath to the next. Eight long hours of flight lay before them, eight hours in which they would get no news, no instructions, in which her children were kept in limbo, in which nothing could be done to help them – eight hours of fear, of worrying, of agonizing inactivity. He could only imagine what that kind of complete impotence could do to a worrying mother's mind. He needed to distract her, to do something that would – if not take her mind off things – at least help pass the time faster.
"Tell me about Jenna," he demanded.
Elena's head whipped around at the sound of his voice, as if she had forgotten he was there and his request had just startled her into the renewed realization of where she was and why.
"Jenna?" Elena asked, apparently unsure of what to say.
"The woman your daughter was named after," Damon explained. "You mentioned a friend?" He saw recognition flit across Elena's face, as if memories suddenly assaulted her. A sad smile pulled on one corner of her mouth.
"She never got to be a woman," Elena said. "She passed away." Her eyes dropped to the cheap, blue cabin carpeting.
"I'm sorry," Damon returned, his heart sinking. When Elena had mentioned the name during their date on the cliff, it had seemed to fill her with fond memories. He had hoped to evoke these. Now he feared he had only deepened her sadness. To his relief, Elena smiled as she lifted her face to meet his eyes again.
"It's okay," she waved away his worries. "It was a long time ago. She was my best friend during the darkest time of my life. It feels good to think of her. I should think of her more often."
Damon watched Elena take a breath, giving her the time to throw a look out the window, to find the courage she needed to tell her story.
"I never told you about my time in Foster Care, did I?" she asked, keeping her eyes averted.
"No," he confirmed. He remembered her mentioning it, but it hadn't felt like the right moment to dig deeper and she hadn't elaborated of her own volition.
"I entered the system when I was eleven. My parents had died in a car accident when I was eight years old and after that I lived with my uncle John. He treated me like I was his own daughter. But he was suddenly hit with a severe case of cancer. Of the pancreas. He passed away shortly after. When I reached my first foster home – the Youngs – I was shocked by how disinterested they were. I was used to being in a loving home and here, suddenly, home only meant a place to sleep and food on the table. I had to fend for myself, raise myself, and get myself through school. I was hit with a lot of responsibility all of a sudden and I felt very alone. There were five foster children in the same family but we lead very separate lives. I suddenly felt like an outcast and I didn't know how to deal with it, so I started to rebel. I didn't think it could get any worse so I tried everything I could to get out of that place. And finally I did. I was moved to a different family. Liv and Luke Parker. That's where I met Jenna. She was already living with them. She was a little older than me and the two of us shared a room. She was the first person since my uncle passed away, who showed any interest in me and the first person who resembled a friend or family for me. We became close friends and for a while things seemed okay. Our foster parents didn't have a lot of time for us, but we had each other, and that was enough. Then my foster father got a job on an oil rig and he was gone for months on end. His brother Kai came over and moved into the basement to look after Liv and us. He was a nice guy. Where Luke had mostly been disinterested, Kai was attentive. He asked us how school went. He came to chat with us when we were sunbathing in the backyard, bringing us lemonade. He sometimes took us out for ice cream. He was younger than Luke and worked in construction so he was muscly and tan. I think we both had a little bit of a crush on him. The first time my foster mother left us alone with him was just before my fourteenth birthday. She had a sick aunt and had to go help her out so she asked Kai to stay with us. We were actually excited. Kai was the kind of adult who winks at you behind your mother's back when she tells you you can't go to a concert, who makes you feel like you both know that your parents are idiots for treating you like a child, who makes you feel like an adult yourself, mature for your age, unfairly locked in a child's life. That night he gave me my first can of beer. Jenna had gone to bed and we were sitting in lawn chairs in the back yard commiserating over the cards life had dealt us. 'It's unfair, Elena,' he said. 'You should be a model, you should travel the world with your fancy friends, instead you sit here with an old chump like me. You're so pretty and so sweet. Why don't you have a boyfriend? You must fend men off with a stick.' It was so cliché. Textbook."
Elena stared at the back of the seat in front of her, her lips pressed together in anger at herself. Then she let out a breath and seemed to release the fury with the air. The irritated frown was replaced by a softer look of resignation, her lids heavy and tired, her shoulders slightly slumped.
"But I ate it all up. I was so desperate to be liked, I guess. I was so stupid. I should have laughed it off and gone to bed. But I felt so seen. I thought to myself: yes, I must really be beautiful, Kai is a real man and he finds me beautiful, so it must be true. I didn't think that he was flattering me. I thought that everyone else was blind and he was the only one who saw how special I was."
Damon's heart constricted in his chest. He felt pain for the young girl who had been taken advantage of, but also for the woman sitting in front of him now, who couldn't believe how special and beautiful she was because her confidence and integrity had been taken away from her long ago. He understood now, why she had trouble trusting his compliments and his love, why she hadn't objected to the way her husband had treated her. She had believed that that was what she deserved. He prayed that he would be allowed to prove to her how wrong she was, that she would let him give her all the love that she had missed her whole life.
"I let him kiss me. And I was so excited." Sadness crept into her voice. "It was my first real kiss. And from such a man, too. I was sure my life was about to change. As he kissed me there, in our backyard, I saw us strolling along the beach, his arm around my shoulder, whispering into my ear that he loved me. I pictured him picking me up from school, how jealous all the girls would be, then driving to the movie theater or the ice cream place. I didn't picture sex. I knew what it was in theory, and Jenna and I were talking about it constantly. But it was nothing I could actually picture myself doing. Or wanting. When he touched me, I was surprised at first. I wasn't sure if I liked it or not. But he was persistent and I assumed I should like it, so I let him. The first time I tried to stop him was when he pulled on my shirt. I laughed. I said something like 'Not here, people can see,' or something like that. As if that was the reason. 'Don't worry. It's dark,' he said. 'Relax.' I did try to relax. And I tried to like it. But the excitement didn't last very long and I started to get uncomfortable. When he opened my jeans, I tried to get up and leave. But he was very strong. He held me back and pushed me down onto the grass. It suddenly hit me, how little I could do, how vulnerable I was. He wasn't even trying very hard and I could barely move. I started to panic. I tried to push him away but he held me faster. He tried to reason with me first. 'It's just for fun,' and 'you'll like it'. But when I didn't calm down he suddenly changed. He held a hand over my mouth and hissed that I better shut up. After all, I had been the one to kiss him and come on to him. I couldn't just back down now. Then he started to threaten me. He would tell everyone in school what a slut I was. He would hurt me. He would make sure I was taken away and placed in a home. I didn't know what to do so I let him. It was the worst moment of my life. The next day he did it again. I thought when Liv came back that it would stop but it didn't. He found ways to be alone with me. Jenna noticed right away that something was wrong and kept asking me, but I didn't want to tell her what it was. She found out because she woke up one night and I wasn't in my bed and when she came looking for me she found us in the basement. I remember how mortified I was, lying there, naked, crying, with Kai on top of me. But then, suddenly, I was relieved. I thought: somebody knows now, he can't keep doing it, it's not a secret anymore. Jenna threw a fit. She screamed and woke the whole house up. I was afraid but at the same time I had never felt more thankful. I was sure it would stop now. He sprang up and got dressed while yelling at her to shut up. I was too dazed to do anything. I was sitting there, clutching my night shirt to my chest. That was all. When our foster parents came into the basement, they were livid. They looked at me like I was possessed. Liv didn't say anything, just stared at me. Luke was the one who asked what the hell was going on. 'He's raping her,' Jenna yelled, pointing at Kai. Kai took a step towards her, I swear he wanted to murder her. He looked so angry. But suddenly his face changed. 'What?' he said and it almost sounded like he was laughing. 'That's ridiculous!' Liv and Luke didn't know where to look. I was sitting there, naked, but Kai said nothing happened. He pointed at me and said: 'That little slut came down here, got naked and tried to crawl into my bed. I was sleeping.' I couldn't believe what he was saying, but I was too shell-shocked to say anything back. He said he was trying to explain to me that nothing was going to happen. Then he pointed at Jenna and said: 'And then that psycho marched in here and started screaming.' Jenna looked just as shocked as I was. She told them that she had seen him rape me. But I could see the doubt in my foster parents' eyes. And then Luke said: 'My brother would never do that.' Just like that. 'But I saw it,' Jenna shouted. 'I saw it!' I still remember how outraged she looked. 'Maybe you just thought you saw something,' Liv tried to calm her down. But Jenna was so sure. I loved her for how hard she defended me. She screamed: 'No, he's lying!' And Kai screamed back: 'Shut up! That little bitch came on to me and you know it!' I was so stunned, I didn't know what to do. I wasn't sure. I had kissed him, weeks before, in the backyard. Maybe I had come on to him. Luke looked at me with a grave expression. 'I'm so disappointed in you, Elena,' he said. 'We took you into our home. We fed you. And this is how you repay us?' I think that's when I started to cry. I tried to explain to them, that I didn't do what he had accused me of, but I could tell that that wasn't what they wanted to hear. They couldn't get me out of the house fast enough. They called child services and had Jenna and me taken away that night. I tried to apologize to Jenna. She said it wasn't my fault but I just felt so guilty. After that we were placed in separate homes. Jenna lived with a nice but overwhelmed lady, who was also housing three younger children and mostly left Jenna to her own devices. I was seen as a troublemaker, after having been kicked out of two homes and was placed with a strict older couple. They saw it as their duty to discipline me. I actually believe that they didn't know what else to do with an unruly child and that this was their way of turning me into a functioning adult. They beat me a lot to make me comply. In those days, Jenna would come and pick me up because she already had her driver's license. We would climb to the roof of her house and look up at the stars. We would tell each other what our lives would be like once we'd be old enough to leave. I'd tell her that she would grow up to be a famous photographer and get married to a French soccer player and that they would move to Monaco and drink tea with fancy Europeans. And she would tell me that I would become a movie star and move to LA. Then one night she didn't come to pick me up. After a couple of days I got worried. My foster parents didn't want to take me to her house so I snuck out one day and hitchhiked there. The woman she was staying with couldn't tell me much, just that she had been in an accident and was in the hospital. When I got there, a policeman was guarding her door. At first he didn't want to tell me what had happened but then I guess he took pity on me. Apparently Jenna had been in a car accident and hadn't woken up since. Because I wasn't family, they didn't let me in to see her. She died later that night while I was sitting in the waiting room. Then the hospital called child services and I was taken home. My foster parents grounded me for having disappeared. They didn't let me go to Jenna's funeral. It wasn't until later, that I gathered all the different bits and pieces of information from what people told me and what I could find in the news and learned that Jenna had run into Kai that day. He had spotted her from across the street and when she had jumped into her car and tried to drive off, he had followed her. She must have been scared and lost control of her car when rounding a corner. I don't know. She crashed into a tree. Kai must have tried to get away. A shop manager who heard the crash came running outside and saw Kai's car drive off. He wrote down the license plate, that's how they found him. He was actually charged that time: with failure to render assistance. I still can't believe Jenna had to die because of a mistake I made."
"No, Elena," Damon interrupted. "This was not your fault. You can't feel guilty over crimes some asshole committed against you and your friend."
Elena sighed lightly. "I know. Theoretically I know that. But it's difficult to feel it, you know."
Damon wished there was something he could do, some way for him to erase Elena's horrible past. But he knew that she had to overcome this herself. All he could do was to be there for her, while she did that.
"Is that when you met Mason?" Damon asked.
"No. That was later. I still had a little over a year before I turned eighteen and could leave the system. But after the incident my foster parents got even stricter. I got a job as a waitress just so I could stay away from home. Some nights I would let someone take me home with them, because I didn't think I could sleep in my own bed. On my eighteenth birthday I moved out of the house. I had met a guy – Logan – who had told me I could come live with him whenever I wanted to. When I actually did show up, he looked like a mongrel had washed up on his doorstep, but he let me in and he let me live with him. After a couple of months he told me I would have to chip in for rent. I told him I would take more shifts at the diner but he said it wouldn't be enough. He said he had a friend and if I went out with him and 'behaved well', he would give me two hundred dollars. I was sitting in the cab that night and I was shaking. I couldn't believe that this was where I had ended up. I felt like I was going to throw up. I was so scared. I didn't have any money on me and nowhere to go but I just knew I couldn't do it. It was a place I would never be able to come back from. So I told the cab-driver to take me to the bus terminal instead and I got on the first bus that could take me away from there for twenty dollars. I didn't get very far but no one cared enough about me to come looking for me so it was a fresh start. The first few nights I stayed in a homeless shelter but I got lucky and got a job in a bar. It was run by a woman named Bree. She was a little rough around the edges but she was the one who gave me my own life back. She gave me work and then helped me find an apartment. It was in that bar that I met Mason."
Suddenly Elena's head whipped to the side and she gasped.
"Look, Damon," she exclaimed almost reverently, staring out of the window. "Paris."
There it was, stretched out beneath them, the silvery band of the Seine snaking through the metropolis and the Eiffel Tower rising like a beacon over the city's rooftops.
Elena gazed wistfully upon the crawling mass beneath her. She had always wanted to come here – the most romantic city on earth – and now she had never felt more desperate to leave a place in her life.
As they got off the plane and headed towards baggage claim, Damon suddenly grabbed Elena's arm to hold her back.
"Elena, I think you should leave the airport and check into the hotel by yourself. Who knows if someone's watching. I don't want them to see me."
Elena felt her lungs constrict. She had been so relieved when Damon had appeared on the plane. The idea of going through all of this by herself had terrified her and seeing Damon had given her confidence. She knew he would take care of everything. Leaving his side now felt even more daunting than it had when she initially left.
"I will come to the hotel in a little while, as soon as I'm sure no one's seen me. We'll meet there. Don't worry."
Elena nodded resignedly.
"Here," Damon added, producing a little box from his jacket-pocket. "Wear this." He opened the box and pulled a thin silvery necklace out of the velvet bedding. A pendant with a red gem was dangling from the chain.
Elena eyed the gift with confusion in her eyes. "Damon, it's beautiful, but…"
"It has a GPS tracking chip inside that will help us find you if I can't get to you before you get your next instructions," Damon explained.
Elena nodded, letting Damon fasten the band around her neck.
"Thank you," she said. "For everything." She leaned up and placed a quick kiss on his lips. She wanted to linger, wanted to throw her arms around him and never let him go, but she had to leave. Every minute counted now.
Elena rushed into the hotel lobby and plunked her fake passport onto the reception desk.
"Checking in," she said quickly, wanting to hurry the process along.
"Bienvenue à Paris," the receptionist said with a helpful smile before grabbing the document and tapping away at his keyboard.
Elena tapped her nails against the glass table top impatiently. She could feel her heart racing in her chest.
"Welcom, Miss Sommers," the receptionist finally said, a thick French accent lining his words. "Here is your keycard. You will be in room 134, it is on…"
"Are there any messages for me?" Elena interrupted, wanting to get the newest instructions as quickly as possible.
The receptionist smiled surly, not enjoying being interrupted, and bent down to a little box holding pink note cards. After flipping through them, he looked up and replied with an only ostensibly apologetic shrug: "I am afraid not."
"Are you sure?" Elena questioned, feeling her heart drop out. There had to be something. What was she supposed to do next?
The receptionist gave her a forced smile and flipped through the box again. "Yes," he confirmed. "I am very sorry. But I will call your room as soon as a message arrived. Here is your keycard," he reasserted, pushing the plastic card a little further towards her on the glass surface. "You will be in room 134, it is on the second floor."
"Thank you," Elena replied feeling defeated. She took the card, shuffled towards the elevator and pressed the button for the second floor.
Once inside her room, she let herself drop onto the bed. What was she supposed to do now, she wondered. She had expected there to be a new message with further instructions. Almost an entire day had passed since she had gotten the phone call from Vicky. Her foot twitched with nerves. Maybe something had happened, she thought. Maybe Damon had been spotted after all. She felt her hands get clammy. She quickly pulled her phone from her pocket to check if maybe they had called again, but the screen was blank. Elena anxiously got up again and skimmed the room. There were a few papers strew across the little desk on the far wall. Maybe a note had been placed for her there. Elena rushed towards it and picked up the assortment of cards and pamphlets. A menu for room service, a list of the TV channels, a small slip of paper with the hotel wifi-password on it, a card for a local taxi-service, but no note. Elena's heart sank. She looked around to see if there was another place where a note could be waiting for her, when a sudden knock on the door startled her. Damon – the thought rushed at her and brought with it an instant relief. He would know what to do! Elena hurried towards the door and pulled it open.
"That was fast," she exclaimed, a thankful smile on her face. The smile dropped instantly.
"Hello, sister," Vicky greeted her, wearing short shorts and a flimsy shirt, a Birkin bag dangling in her elbow. "Expecting someone else?" she asked while lifting her sunglasses up, a bemused smile on her face.
"Room service," Elena squeezed out, completely blindsided. "I was parched."
"Too bad. That'll have to wait. Come with me."
Elena grabbed her purse and wanted to follow her sister in law out the door.
"Ts ts ts," Vicky interrupted her movement. "Let's leave our cell phone here, shall we?" With that she seized Elena's purse and flung it haphazardly back into the room. Then she pulled the door shut behind them and put on another bright smile. "Let's go pick us up some money."
A/N: Okay, so this will sound ridiculous, seeing as I am barely able to update this story in one lifetime, but I was toying with the idea of turning it into an e-book. Before you put me into the looney-bin, hear me out! Up to this chapter, I've actually enjoyed this story very much and I loved watching these characters develop. I would like to see what I can do when I don't have TVD in the back of my head and when I actually sit down to structure this properly. There are a lot of things I wish I'd done differently in the beginning that are now biting me in the ass and I'd like the chance to do it properly. So my appeal to you is: Please write me the most honest review you can! Especially if you think this story has horrible weaknesses or if there is a character or plot-point you think should have been different. Or just tell me if you think that's a somewhat good idea even, or if this story looses all its appeal once I remove the TVD-element from it. The more honest you are, the better are my chances of actually pulling off my plan of turning this into a somewhat plausible and fun read! Everyone who writes me a helpful review and then drops me a DM with their e-mail address will get a copy of the e-book (If I ever finish it. I understand if your confidence in me isn't all that high ;)) as well as my eternal gratitude!
But obviously I'm just happy about everyone who takes the time to read this drivel after all this time ;) Thanks, you guys! Your are the bestest! :*