Chapter 5: Crossing
Damon stepped off the plane after the long, but at least direct transatlantic flight to Budapest. It had to be Hungary they'd start their search for information, he knew some older vampires there who could be willing to share if asked properly. That he had taken Elena with him was natural, it was the only way he felt he could protect her, and the young woman secretly felt the same. She wasn't consciously aware she was doing it, but she was tense and uneasy every time Damon moved out of her sight.
Right now, as she has been for the last days, Elena was looking at him with a concerned expression. She'd packed ten small vials of the concoction Bonnie has given him and threatened him by wanting to make him ingest the contents, asking how he was feeling every ten minutes or so.
"We have to save some for the rest of the journey," Damon insisted. He was going to do everything possible not to have to down the wine tinted liquid. Bonnie had claimed she had changed and made the recipe vampire friendly by swopping the main ingredient from water to blood, thus the colour, Damon however experienced otherwise. He had recovered from the wolf bite, he had been feeling strong, eager, energetic and edgy, at least prior to the witch arriving with his so called medicine. The Salvatore seriously wondered whether the young witch was in on his game and has given him a remedy she knew was going to give him nausea and stomach aches instead of curing it as a punishment. Bonnie! Would be a good joke from the Bennett, he had to admit, but either way, he will have to stay off the brew as much as possible.
Elena bit her lip, not wanting to admit that he was right. They didn't know how long they were on the old continent for just yet, so they had to conserve the supplies. "Just let me know if you need some," she walked hugging him round his waist, giving his stomach a little sympathetic rub as they went.
"Damon Salvatore with his charms," a confident acting woman stood in their way, "how do you make your food serve you with such infatuation without compelling her?"
Elena's eyes quickly focussed on the phenomenon, obviously their contact Damon had intended to see. "How do you know I'm not compelled?" She looked their not so tall, but beautiful interceptor in the eyes. The woman wasn't skinny like those you could cut out of magazine ads, more like the incorporation of an ancient fertility goddess with rounded hips and groovy, bouncy breasts.
"I'm over twentyfive centuries old, dearest," the woman adjusted a pin in her raven black hair. With how much it was up in a bun and rounded in tight circles on her head, Elena wondered how Rapulzellike it could've really been.
"That's not an answer," Elena would not shy away. She'd faced Klaus with dignity as well, but there was something else that unconsciously fuelled her to become defiant. The playful, domineering look the older vampire gave Damon was making Elena jealous.
"I dunno, I dunno, could it be the way you touch him, look at him as if a constant electric current fuelled your gaze, hm? Oh devoted love, true love, so young and pure before you would know it is your own heart alone that'll cause you the agony? Do I recognise that? I've made mistakes once, like everyone."
Elena disentangled herself from her travel companion. It was the second time in less than forty-eight hours an older vampire had pointed out to her she was in love with Damon when she still wasn't willing to admit such a thing to herself up till now and so the allegation was enough to make her back off a little.
"Perchance my spirit summoned thine, oh true love and thou hearest and art here," the woman with the fabulous body continued half mockingly, half jokingly, "summoned with a true love song of the heart,
That would not stop singing everlast,
A burning fire from the lips,
All cries and hopes and dreams
All going to you Damon
So I can have you to look upon!" She stepped close and rose to give him a genuine looking hug that Damon reciprocated, the embrace lasting a bit longer than Elena would've liked.
"You kinda lost your touch, you know that?" Damon held on to the other vampire's hand, squeezing it and caressing it cordially, "what happened to the mirages and dreamlands and lilies?"
"Oh, people don't talk like this anymore, I had to realise," she smiled, "besides, symbols are overrated," the woman replied a little distractedly and Elena had the impression that the ancient one was listening out to so many other things in the background at the same time. She had an air of vastness and intensity, very vampiric in her attention and embracing of every aspect of the moment, not limited to human perception.
"This is Elena Gilbert," Damon seemed to notice the human's presence again, "let me introduce you to..hm, I dunno what name you go by these days, so well, this is Sapho, or the way she was introduced to me in the good old days, Christina Georgina Rossetti."
"Nice to meet you," the other vampire granted a fraction of a second of attention to the young girl, "and its good to see you Damon," she smiled at him again, showing off a line of cute little perfect teeth, seemingly so unvampirelike as it goes.
Elena froze, barely able to keep her composure, "you mean you're Sapho and Christina Rossetti at the same time?" She knew Damon had only had eyes for Katherine though his lifetime, but she wondered whether a famous conquest like the poetess would mean anything more to him than any of the other numerous ladies he had bedded to pass the time and amuse himself.
The attractive vampire shrugged, "that's in the past. I still go by the name Christina though. Christina Sanders." She blew some air out to displace a braid of her very dark hair that slipped down into her face like the twenty year old she looked like would've, "But I did write some poems about your guy here."
"You mean that something about a blue eyed phantom?" Damon laughed.
"Yeah, well, can't remember the words anymore," she laughed with him.
"Don't say that Christina," Damon said softly, "this might the a different world than the one we used to know, but romance isn't dead." He set his bag down so that the verses sounded more poetic as he raised a hand to his chest, "oh why is heaven built so far,
Oh why is earth set so remote?
I cannot reach the nearest star
That hangs afloat.
I would not care to reach the moon,
One round monotonous of change;
Yet even she repeats her tune
Beyond my range.
I never watch the scatter'd fire
Of stars, or sun's far-trailing train,
But all my heart is one desire,
And all in vain:
For I am bound with fleshly bands,
Joy, beauty, lie beyond my scope;
I strain my heart, I stretch my hands,
And catch at hope."
The women watched in awe as he recited. Christina was impressed that he remembered her poems, Elena because she saw yet another part of him she hadn't before, even though she suspected it existed.
"That one wasn't about you," Christina challenged him in the end.
"Its about anyone who was ever hopelessly in love," Damon specified, "and I guess that would cover me," he provided some self insight freely.
"So you know about Klaus," Elena tried to take the conversation into the right direction. She did not like the signs of obvious previous intimacy between those two vampires, or Damon's lack of reluctance to share private information.
"Try not to know about Klaus with an extensive history like mine's," Christina gave.
"I've tried not to know about Klaus with a history like mine's," Elena reciprocated, earning an upshot of a sceptical eyebrow from the older woman that suddenly made her feel very, very young.
"But you are curious, aren't you? You still have your penthouse gallery by the Danube? We could satisfy your curiosity regarding Klaus' interest in Elena for something similar from yourself?" Damon signalled a taxi driver over to help with their luggage and took both women by the arm.
Christina gave him an admonishing look, "you know that's not exactly how it works, Damon," she walked on, her body closely pressed to the other vampire, making Elena really squirmish about how exactly did it go between those two.
Tbc