kissed me quite insane. one
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oh, to be dead at last and know all the stars forever
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.
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There is a girl.
( There's always a girl. )
And then there is destiny.
( Cruel, wicked thing. )
There is a girl and a boy and they meet. They fall in love when they really shouldn't, when they both know far better. Regardless, the heart has a mind of its own, a dark side that no one's quite prepared to confront, and it falls.
Falls hard enough that it crashes through the centuries, leaving screaming echoes in its wake of a love that became a Greek tragedy all too quickly and blood that runs and the heart in the hands of a scorned woman ( hell hath no fury like a woman scorned ).
( But what about when they're heartbroken? )
Her face and skin and bone will appear, again and again, timeless and a strange constant in the eternal change and shift of the world, chased by the flesh and muscle and blood of the boy she shouldn't have loved.
But this isn't their story.
Instead, this is the story of a girl forced to grow up all too quickly, a baby strapped to her front and gurgling with new life and wonder that would all too quickly be scraped away and leave a certain vicious cynic in its place.
This is a girl whose face is her own, at least for now, with cherry lips and sunlight smiles who falls for a wolf in a boy's skin. Much like their forebears, the originals of this tragic tale, their love is a never-should've-been. Or maybe it could've, if they hadn't lived in such a world.
It ends in tragedy, as all good things do, and leaves its mark in the birth of bloody monsters and night creatures that never should've walked the earth. Fate weeps and destiny laughs, spinning a story, a face that will know nothing but misery and blood.
( We are possessive creatures. We do not like to share. Especially not blood and bone. )
Some day, someone will realise that even back here, when it was all just beginning, the cogs so innocent in their youth, it was still far too late.
—
October comes marching in with a vicious wind and a vicious chill. It seeps into the bones, muscles shifting into icy crystals, but a fire still burns brightly.
It burns in the cry of a newborn girl, pulled from her mother's womb with failing limbs and a wordless cry — demand — to return to the warmth and safety of her first home. The doctors wrap in her blankets, laugh and call her a fighter.
The girl, still screaming, still wailing, still fighting in her rose-pink blankets, is placed in her mother's unsure arms. Even here, wrapped in the comfort of her mother's arms, she screams. Not in fear, but in outrage.
They call her Caroline.
( Poor girl. She never had a chance. )
—
Elena Gilbert knows loss. She knows the sinking feeling in your gut when you look at D on your English paper when you usually get As, the singe of embarrassment on your cheeks when you stumble on a cheerleading move in front of the whole school, the flood of tears that drowns you when your parents' coffins are lowered into the ground.
But she doesn't know loss quite like this. The hole that Greyson and Miranda Gilbert leave seems like an abyss, yawning open wider and wider with each day that comes and goes. It's not just them that Elena seems to have lost; not the smiles and the words and the jokes, but the scent of eggs and bacon on Saturday morning by Greyson, the sight of her mother's boots thrown haphazardly in the hall, their shampoo bottles in the shower.
That's the type of loss Elena is still trying to navigate. What they're all trying to navigate.
Jenna's trying to cope with the fact that she is abruptly an only child burdened with the weight of two grieving teenagers and college work. Elena can see the exhaustion, the unsurety sitting in the crease of her brow.
Jeremy's trying to cope with drugs and addiction. She thinks the burn of it takes his mind off the pain, the high makes him think that everything will be okay. Elena couldn't ever tell him that because she doesn't think it's true.
( How can you be okay when you don't have your parents to welcome you home? To make you dinner and laugh with you and tell you that everything will be okay? )
Elena finds herself pretending. Pretending that she's okay, everything's okay and she gets the sickening sense that if she doesn't, if she falls apart, everything will fall down with her.
Her world has already collapsed once. Elena doesn't think she has the strength to do it all over again.
—
The first time Elena feels hope is when she collides with Stefan Salvatore. Not that she knows his name at the time — merely only a 'hot back' that Bonnie can't take her eyes off — when they clash just outside the men's room, Elena is struck by how divine he is.
Golden hair, golden skin, he's a Greek tragedy carved into flesh, something divine and Orpheus-mottled about him. His full, heavenly lips curve into a polite smile. "Excuse me."
"Y-Yeah. Sorry," Elena replies, stepping to the side to let him pass. A flush mars her pale complexion as she watches him step into the men's room, the door swinging shut behind him, blocking him from Elena's sight, but she already has him burnt into her memory.
For the first time, her heart doesn't flutter in pain.
—
They have history together. Elena can't help how she steals glances at him periodically, amazed by how he shines in the sunlight, a halo weaving between the strands of his bronze hair. She begins to understand Jeremy's reliance on drugs — they must be exquisite if they match up to the simple, divine sight of Stefan Salvatore.
She's a thief, guzzling down the sight of him greedily. So consumed by him that she doesn't even realise Matt's gaze digging into her back.
( She doesn't notice how he's as much of a thief as she is. How Caroline's his downfall, his addiction that he can't seem to stay away from. )
—
She goes to the graveyard after school, her diary digging into her leg with a certain optimism and eagerness that Elena hasn't felt in months. For a while, she was convinced it'd drowned with her parents.
She writes for over ten minutes, scribbling with a ferocity only a lovesick teenage girl can have about Stefan Salvatore; his angel hair and angel smile and angel eyes.
She packs up her diary and leaves.
—
Bonnie invites her down to the Grill for the night and Elena knows her well enough to know that this is an attempt to return to the people they'd been before the accident, before Wickery Bridge. She takes it, snatches it right up with a viciousness that she didn't possess this morning.
She knows what changed.
Stefan Salvatore.
( "He brought me back to life." )
Her diary safely ensconced in her room, Elena steps out into the chilly night and walks to the Grill, buzzing with light and life that for once doesn't irritate her. Instead, it rejuvenates her as she steps into the warmth and alcohol-laced atmosphere, eyes searching for Bonnie amidst the sea of high schoolers.
Elena winces as she notices Matt sitting at the table, his face etched with heartsickness that runs deep, a certain anger and outrage that makes itself known in the clench of his fist.
Elena remembers how she loved Matt. It was simple and sweet, but it had an awful aftertaste in her mouth. They were good for one another, but it wasn't something that would've lasted. Even now, her feelings for Matt have put themselves to rest.
She'd always care for him, adore him, but she could never love him like she used to. Maybe if that night had never happened, maybe they could've toughed it out a couple more months, maybe even years, but who Elena Gilbert is now is not someone that could love Matt Donovan without wreaking more pain on his golden heart.
Bonnie's eyes snap to Elena and she smiles something bright, waving her over eagerly. Elena approaches, however hesitantly and as she steps up the table, Matt jumps sharply out of his seat. Emotions flutter sharply and swiftly over his face and Elena's own heart aches at how he is no longer an easy book for her to read.
"Hi, Elena," Matt says after a moment, pausing like he has more to say, a whole confession prepared to be laid at her feet before he walks off. Elena watches him go, throat tight before Bonnie grasps her attention once more.
"C'mon, Elena, sit down!" Bonnie says and Elena obeys and they lean over their drinks as they smile and giggle and laugh. Elena's confession rests on the tip of her tongue, prepared to leap out and settle in the air — Stefan Salvatore, what have you done to me? — but Bonnie intercedes, something mischievous glittering in her dark, soulful eyes. "Have you seen Caroline? Seems like she's already sunk her claws in the new boy."
Elena's eyes follow Bonnie's finger and her heart sinks in her chest at the sight before her. Sitting in a booth on the other side of the Grill, curled up into one another like they fit together. Caroline's smiling and Elena can see the flush on her cheeks as she sips at her drink, blonde curls bouncing with Caroline's unadulterated joy.
Stefan himself is freer than Elena's ever known in the short space of time she's known of his existence. The smile that stretches across his face is both breathtaking and heart wrenching.
Look at me, look at me, look at me, Elena's heart screams, Smile at me, smile at me, smile at me.
But he doesn't, eyes rooted on Caroline and her sunlight-starlight air and grace. Elena finds herself hard pressed on why he wouldn't like Caroline. Caroline with her bright smiles that warm you from the inside out, the random little gifts she leaves in your locker when she finds something she thinks you might like, the gentle honesty in her gaze that lets you know that you really shouldn't wear that top with those jeans and that she means it when she says she loves you.
But Elena wants that to be her.
All within the span of twelve hours, Elena has fallen in love and gotten her heart broken.
( Oh, the agony of the young heart. It still has so much to learn. )
—
There's a party out in the woods, and Elena — still knee-deep in her heartbreak — is half-convinced to say no. She's already had to suffer through Caroline and Stefan stealing glances at one another all day, as well as Caroline's squealing during lunch. Elena cares for Caroline far too much to make a move on Stefan and tries to comfort her tired heart with the fact that Stefan won't be her last. If only it was in the mood to listen.
Both Bonnie and Caroline practically drag Elena to the party, the chill of the wind a little gentler than last night, the bonfire flaming in the middle of the clearing providing sufficient warmth. As quickly as possible, Elena ducks away, scooping up a beer and settling down on one of the logs near the bonfire.
She tells herself she shouldn't stare, but she can't seem to keep her eyes away from the sight of Caroline and Stefan, their smiles wide and similarly loving and giddy and the jealousy that chews away at Elena's gut is acidic and bitter.
She can take this as a win, in a strange way. Stefan Salvatore is making her feel things she thought she'd never get back, but this is also a loss. She wasn't meant to get her heart broken so soon after it drowned itself in Wickery Pond.
The bonfire passes slowly, agonisingly, the flickering flames stealing Elena's attention away from Stefan and Caroline, her eyes tracking the vicious edges and for a brief, dark moment, she wonders what would happen if she reached out and touched it.
( When she was a baby, Elena was known for her pyromaniac ways. Candles were banned from the house until Elena was four. )
A scream rents the air and the strange peace that had settled on Elena's shoulders is ripped away.
"Somebody help!" The cry is ragged and sore, jagged with the grief and desperation twined grotesquely together. But that isn't what makes Elena's heart plunge into her stomach.
Elena would know that voice anywhere.
She leaps to her feet, her beer splashing on the ground as she bolts to Jeremy's side, where he clutches to a bleeding Vicki in his arms, his face pale and twisted in sorrow and a kind of fear that aggravates Elena's big sister senses.
She doesn't notice how Stefan has disappeared.
But she does notice the sense that something has changed. That this is just the beginning of something awful, that will leave deeper scars than becoming an orphan ever will.
( Destiny dances. Fate mourns. )