Seattle | June 2020
"Bonnie," Elena squealed into the phone upon seeing her friend's name in the display. "I feel like we haven't talked in forever," she said.
"Same," Bonnie replied. "Are you good? How are things?"
"Hold on," Elena said into the phone and transferred some of her bags to the arm holding the phone so she had one hand free to rummage for her keys. Once she had the apartment door unlocked, she dropped her bags and said, "Okay, I'm back. Sorry about that."
"What was that? You sound winded. Oh my god, I didn't interrupt anything, did I?"
"What?" Elena asked back, confused. Then understanding dawned and she blushed. "No, you're not interrupting anything. Damon's not even home yet."
"How is he? Did he like his birthday surprise?"
Elena laughed. "He did. I swear, sometimes I think he loves this car of his more than me."
A week before his birthday, Elena took Damon to Mystic Falls, letting him believe they were going for a few days to spend time with their friends and family. Instead, they picked up his beloved car and spent the next week driving it across country, stopping at beaches and lakes along the way, in cities Elena wanted to see, restaurants Damon had heard about and wanted to check out, and one memorable night in the middle of nowhere, Montana, where instead of grabbing a room in a motel, they chose to spend the night outside, gazing at the stars. With the top down and windswept and sunburnt they had arrived back in Seattle just the day before.
Elena put Bonnie on speaker and went to unpack the things she'd bought.
"Isn't his Camaro a manual?"
"Yeah," Elena replied, not following.
"Well, I'm sure there's a 'Suck, squeeze, bang, blow' joke in there somewhere," Bonnie replied.
Elena's jaw dropped. "Bonnie Bennett!" She cried outrageously while Bonnie cackled on the other end of the line. It was so nice to hear her laugh again. "God, I miss you," Elena said into the phone.
"I miss you, too."
"Would that be a good time to remind you once again that there's a whole apartment just one flight of stairs below ours that is waiting for new occupants?"
Bonnie sighed. "It's tempting. So very, very tempting."
"But?"
"I just want to spend some more time with mom right now. You understand, right?"
Elena grabbed the phone to make sure her friend heard her crisp and clear, "Of course I understand, Bonnie. That's just me and my selfish self wanting you close by."
"Thank you."
"Speaking of," Elena said, "how are your mom and Enzo getting along?"
"Oof. That's a can of worms I'd rather not open too often."
"She immune to his British charms?"
"It's not his charms that's the problem. She's not too thrilled about the fact that her daughter is in love with a vampire."
"Oh."
"Yeah. I think she's afraid that one day I'll want to change. For him."
Elena bit her lip, not knowing how to ask. "Would you? I mean, are you considering it?"
"No," Bonnie immediately replied. "I know where that puts me and Enzo. I understand the implications and whatnot. But I don't want to be a vampire. Enzo knows that. We talked about it. A lot."
"Well, then I'm sure your mom will eventually come around to it. Give it time. When she sees how happy you are, she'll put aside her concerns."
"I hope so," Bonnie muttered. "She keeps bringing up children. And she doesn't seem to believe me when I tell her that's not an issue. We're not like you and Damon, Elena. You two want children. You want a family. I don't. I never did. The fact that now I can't – at least not with Enzo – won't change my mind."
Elena froze in the middle of her kitchen, thankful that Bonnie couldn't see her over the phone.
For months now, she'd successfully avoided thinking about that particular topic. Had accepted that it was not meant to be. She was fine with it. Everything was fine.
"You okay?" Bonnie's voice rang through the speaker. "You've gone so quiet."
Elena roused herself, shaking her head to dispel the unwelcome thoughts. "Yeah, yeah. I'm okay." I'm okay, Elena thought. I'm okay.
They talked for a few minutes longer before hanging up. Elena stopped in the middle of the empty apartment, looking around, wishing for Damon to come home. The place suddenly seemed so big and empty. Then she filled her lungs with a deep breath and let it out through tremulous lips.
Damon stopped at a confectionery store on his way from the gym. Elena's birthday was coming up in a few days but he wasn't really the flower giving kind of husband and she didn't particularly care for flowers and her real present waited for her just across the Canadian border anyway. Still, he didn't want to show up empty-handed. He hurried a bit because he still needed to pick up his suit from the drycleaners before they had to leave.
He was taking Elena to Vancouver for a long weekend in honor of her birthday. Well, both their birthdays, really – but he'd planned this before he had known of the cross-country road trip. The timing turned out to be perfect. After a week spent mostly in the car, they now had a whole weekend to relax and recharge.
Elena's second year of med school would start shortly and Damon hoped to give her a more relaxed start than last year's.
But when he crossed the threshold, all plans he had made were immediately trashed.
Elena was a wreck. She was cowering on the bare floor at the foot of the stairwell, leaning against the railing. Her hair was a mess and her face blotchy and wet. Her eyes were swollen from the recent crying, and her eyelashes clumped together. Her body heaved with mostly dry sobs and Damon's heart broke as he saw her.
He dropped the box of chocolates next to his gym bag and hurried over to her. Dropping to his knees, he gathered her into his arms. "Baby," he breathed into her hair. He wanted to ask what happened but these weren't the bad news kind of sobs and besides that there were not many things that could bring Elena to her knees like that.
At first she didn't respond, but then she slung her arms around his shoulders and clung to him, grabbing onto his t-shirt with two tightly clenched fists.
Damon pulled away a little and wiped the remaining tears from her face. She just looked at him, eyes empty. The emptiness scared him more than her sadness did. He would have loved to pretend that he didn't know what this was about, but the truth was that this wasn't the first time he'd seen this expression on her face, though it had been a while.
Damon wasn't fooling himself. Just because Elena had become better at pushing certain thoughts out of her head, didn't mean that anything had changed. She had learned to stay busy and over the last half a year or so, the topic of children had come up less and less. Damon wondered what had triggered it today. He had only been gone a couple of hours.
He palmed her face, thumbs softly stroking over her cheekbones. "I'm so sorry," he whispered.
She blinked and finally seemed to focus. "Why are you sorry? It's my fault." Her voice sounded so small, defeated.
"It's nobody's fault, Elena."
"Why don't you hate me? Or at least blame me, even a little. Because I do."
"You're talking crazy and I don't like it. I could never love you any less – kids or no kids."
Elena didn't comment on that and Damon kissed her forehead, lips lingering on her skin. He pulled back a little and waited until her eyes met his. "What if you'd known?" he asked.
"What?"
"What if you'd known, that day, back in December after we came back from Europe. If you'd known that taking the cure wouldn't bring you closer to having a family. That children wouldn't be part of our future. Would you have done something differently? Would you not have taken it?"
Elena's chin trembled and her teeth worried her bottom lip while she considered how to reply. But Damon knew the answer before she did; had known even before he'd asked the question. She answered anyway, "I still would've taken it. But you wouldn't have had to."
Damon shook his head. "I didn't do it just for the promise of kids," he said. "Don't get me wrong – I want them." Desperately, he didn't add. "But not as much as I want you."
He didn't mention that there were other options. They could adopt. They could try a surrogate. But he thought it was not a topic to bring up today of all days. Besides, he was sure Elena was aware of those options as well, being an adopted child herself. If she hadn't brought it up yet, then probably because she didn't want to. Damon had meant what he'd said. He didn't care either way. As long as he had Elena, the rest would always be just window dressing.
"I'm a terrible wife."
"Why? Because you can't get pregnant?"
"No, because with all those theatrics I probably make you think you're not enough. But you are, Damon. Please believe me." She pleaded so insistently, tears were gathering again in her eyes.
"I do believe you. I just wish you'd stop apologizing. You have nothing to be sorry for."
Elena nodded. "I'll try." It was the best she could promise and Damon knew that.
Damon helped her up from the floor and led her over to the couch, sinking down on it with Elena in his lap. "What happened after I left?" he asked.
This morning, Damon had woken Elena up with breakfast in bed. Technically, she was on a short summer break, but most medical students used their time off to start their internships early, before the new semester kicked in. Elena wasn't due to start hers until July, so Damon went all out for her last ten days of freedom. The lavish breakfast had been followed by some truly spectacular sex that left Elena drowsy and happy. Damon had begged off half a day to do an inventory at the bar and then go to the gym before they would jump in the car and drive over to Vancouver. Elena sent him away, saying she was going to take a nap and then go out for some last-minute road trip shopping while he was gone. Everything had seemed so normal when he left. Nothing had even hinted at the drama that unfolded now, a mere few hours later.
"I woke up," Elena explained, "I went to take a shower and I thought how wild to already be done with the first year, you know? It just flew by so quickly."
Damon nodded. The past year had been wild; probably the wildest in his 181 years. He motioned for her to continue.
"Bonnie called and we talked for a while. She mentioned her and Enzo's future plans and I just flashed to two years from now when I'd be done with med school. A proper doctor. And then out of the blue this thought hits me. No matter how successful I become, there would always be this one thing that I fail at."
"Elena—" Damon began, but she talked right over him.
"What if whatever's not working in my body, was defective before?" she asked. "Before I even became a vampire. In my head I had kind of started blaming everything on the supernatural in my life. But what if it has nothing to do with that? What if it's just something natural, something human, that's been inside me all along. It kind of broke me, I guess."
"Why didn't you call me?"
"I wanted to but I felt so—"
"Guilty," Damon finished for her.
Elena nodded.
Not counting the years she had spent in a magical coma, she had been a human again for almost exactly a year now. And while everything else seemed to have turned back to previously working order, her period still hadn't returned. Something she had considered a nuisance as a teenager, and later as one of the perks of becoming a vampire when she realized she didn't have to go through it every month, had now become something she would have paid money to get back.
In the beginning, whenever Damon noticed Elena being dragged down by the thoughts in her own head, he tried to distract her. But he was absolutely useless in terms of how to help her. And even though it seemed to work in the beginning, no amount of taking her out on dates, organizing weekend trips, or spoiling her with gifts would have made up for the fact that she blamed herself.
It was a conversation that they seemed to be having with recurring frequency. Damon knew what was coming before she even said it.
Elena shook her head, holding back tears. "I hear what you're saying, Damon, I really do. But the fact remains – you wouldn't have become human again if it wasn't for me. All this," she motioned in a sweeping gesture that encompassed their apartment, their lives, and pretty much everything they had built for themselves, "is because I wanted kids. Greedy me. I couldn't be happy with having the love of my life back. No, I wanted it all. This is punishment." She whispered the last sentence, nodding her head.
Damon grabbed her hands in his and squeezed them while shaking her gently. "Stop thinking like that."
"I'm so sorry, Damon. I'm so sorry I pulled you into this. You would still be a vampire and loving every second of it if it wasn't for me and my grand plans for our future."
"I said stop it! I am with you. That's all I ever wanted from the future. And I am loving every second of it." He wiped her tears from her cheeks.
Elena looked at him, searching his eyes. She could only see sincerity in them. Did he really not hold a grudge against her? It was almost unimaginable to her when the sole reason they had given up their eternal lives was so that she could have a family of her own. She knew it was true, despite Damon's assurances to the contrary.
"Give it time," Damon pleaded, not for the first time. "You're still so young."
"I wish I could talk to Jo. Let her give me a checkup. She would have been able to figure out what's wrong with me."
"There's nothing wrong with you," Damon said again.
Normal doctors were no use. Elena had seen several of them already. But she couldn't exactly tell them that the last time she had her period was before she became a vampire. She couldn't ask them if her period not returning had something to do with her living as a vampire for four years. Or spending the next four and a half in a coma. Any and none of those things could be the underlying problem. And oh yeah, by the way, I'm only the second woman in history to ever take the cure and we can't exactly ask Katherine if her period came back after she turned human because she was burned to a crisp when the actual hell collapsed. No, she couldn't exactly discuss it with her gynecologist. All any doctor she saw would ever tell her was that there wasn't anything physically wrong with her. Aside from that, they were at a loss.
"Maybe…" Damon began carefully, "maybe it would help if you talked to someone about it?"
"Like a psychologist?"
"No," Damon replied. "Like… a friend?"
Elena shook her head. "No. I can't."
"Why not?"
"They can't do anything to help me and I just don't want them to know. I don't want their pity."
"They would want to be there for you."
"I can't, Damon. Please. I can't. Bonnie is finally happy, with Enzo being back and everything. And Caroline—"
"Caroline is a mom."
Elena bit her lip and didn't say a word.
"Is that it?" Damon asked. "Are you jealous?"
"No," Elena denied, a little too quickly. "I love the twins and I'm happy they found a new mom in Caroline after the tragedy of losing Jo."
"But it's also unfair?" Damon finished for her. "Of the three of you – Caroline, Bonnie, you – she was the least likely to have children and yet here we are."
"I am happy for Caroline," Elena insisted.
"I know you are, Elena. But it's okay to want what she has. It doesn't make you a terrible person, or a bad friend."
"It's not that."
"Then what is it?"
Elena sighed and tried to explain. "Right now, Caroline sends me pictures of what the girls are up to, funny videos, she talks to me when she has no idea what to do, when she's at her limit, when she just needs to vent. I don't want that to change. I don't want her to treat me differently; don't want her to think she can't come to me with her mom problems. I want to be part of that part of her life. I don't want her to tiptoe around me because she thinks it's hurting me."
"It goes both ways, babe. If she knew what you're dealing with, she'd want to be there for you, too."
"I know. Maybe I will talk to her eventually. But not now. Okay?"
Damon nodded. "It's your decision. Ultimately, it's up to you."
They were quiet for a while before Elena said, "I think I want to switch into pediatrics."
"You're about to start your surgical fellowship next month," Damon reminded her.
"I know. The timing couldn't be worse. But if I talk to my professors and my supervisor, maybe it's not too late to change my mind?"
Damon's arms tightened around her hips where he held her and she added, "It's not because… Okay," she immediately amended, taking a deep breath, "it's not just because I can't have children. I know I always said I wanted to go into a surgical program, but I can't really picture it. But when I think of myself as a pediatrician... It just feels right, you know? What do you think?"
"I think you'll be amazing no matter what profession you choose." After a slight hesitation, Damon asked, "Won't it be a constant reminder of—" He trailed off there and let Elena finish the sentence for herself.
"You could be right," Elena admitted. "Or it could be helpful. We won't know until I try."
"Then I say go for it."
Elena smiled and kissed him, lips lingering softly against Damon's. "I love you so much," she breathed against his mouth.
"I know. I love you too."
After thoroughly stealing his breath, she said, "I know you have the entire weekend planned out. But do you mind if we stay home and spend it in bed instead?"
"Depends," Damon replied. "Are we naked in this scenario?"
"I was thinking some lingerie, but naked works for me as well," Elena whispered seductively.
"I like your way of thinking," Damon said. Jumping up from the couch, he carried Elena into the bedroom bridal style.
"Was that a box of chocolates I saw earlier?" Elena asked a long while later as they were lazing about in bed.
"Yep," Damon replied with his eyes closed. "I got you your favorites."
"The salted caramel ones?"
"Yep."
"Mmmmh."
Damon cracked one eye open and in a resigned voice said, "You want me to go get them, don't you?"
Elena sent a huge smile in his direction. "Would you?"
Damon groaned but got out of bed. "Don't get dressed while I'm gone."
"I know you can't talk to Jo," Damon said when he returned. "But there is someone you can talk to."
"Who?"
"Meredith Fell. She's a doctor and she knows about the supernatural. You can explain your unique situation to her." Damon didn't know if it was the right thing to do. Maybe it would help her to finally talk to someone that she could be honest with or maybe it would give Elena false hope. It could backfire completely and leave her even more depressed than before if it turned out that Meredith couldn't help her either. But Damon hoped that at the very least Elena would stop feeling helpless.
"Hasn't she moved to Alaska or something?" Elena asked.
"Anchorage, yes. I can get the address if you want."
"Yes, please?" Elena asked and Damon saw the hope in her eyes. He sighed on the inside, praying to all the deities that he hadn't just made a huge mistake.
Because Elena started her fellowship in the pediatric ward of the teaching hospital only a week and a half after that initial discussion, there was no time left to go and see Meredith in person. She and Elena ended up discussing the issue over phone and facetime. Elena sent over all of her medical files going back to when she was still a child, as well as her swab results and blood samples. She used the medical equipment available to medical students to perform ultrasounds and an x-ray, under pretense of needing to gain more experience handling them.
"I'm sorry, Elena," Meredith told her one late Friday evening. "There's nothing medically wrong with you. But I'm guessing you knew that already."
Elena nodded, even though Meredith couldn't see her over the phone. "So, it must be supernatural then, right? A result from me taking the cure?"
"Your guess is as good as mine. Your blood composition is different now than it was before you were a vampire. But there is no way to tell if that's an influencing factor."
Elena closed her eyes and listened to Meredith gamely trying to walk the fine line between being reassuring and not planting false hope. They talked for a long time, exchanging theories they had no way of proving or testing. It all boiled down to lack of data. When it came to the cure, Elena was pretty much patient zero right now.
Elena listened carefully and thanked Meredith for her time and her candor before finally ending the call. Sliding from the edge of the bed to the floor, Elena leaned her back against it and took a deep, shuddering breath.
"I can make stuffed eggplant – it's your favorite," Damon suggested from the doorway, leaning against the doorpost. "Or we can go out. Wherever you want. Your choice."
Elena huffed out a breath that might have been a laugh. She ran both hands through her hair and let her head fall between her raised knees. She didn't cry, but the air of misery weighed heavy in the room. Damon watched her quietly. Eventually, she lifted her head and looked at him. "My dad used to do that, you know? Whenever Mom had a bad day or just needed a pick me up, he'd make her favorite dish." She smiled faintly at him.
Damon came into the room and kneeled down next to her. "Yeah?" he prompted.
Elena nodded, smiling again, a little more pronounced now. "Yeah," she said. "Except, he'd always ruin it somehow – burn it, drop it, whatever. So they always wound up having to go out for dinner and that would make Mom forget all about her problems. It wasn't until I was a teenager that I realized Dad was doing it on purpose."
Damon returned her quiet smile and reached out a hand, thumb slowly stroking Elena's face. She cupped his hand and turned her face into his palm, kissing the center. "Can you make me forget, too?" Elena asked in a small voice. "At least for a little while?"
Damon hesitated for the briefest of moments. Then his hands grabbed her under her arms and lifted her onto the bed. He pushed on her shoulder until she fell back, and pushed himself on top of her. Elena's hand went to his hair and slipped to the back of his neck. She applied slight pressure and Damon obeyed willingly, nodding in answer to her question and capturing her lips in a storm.