Title: Homeward Bound

Rating: K+

Summary: There's this feeling you get once you're home, in your heart and in your mind. Peace, contentment. Excitement to rediscover the place where you became you.

Pairing: Damon/Elena Damon/Bonnie

AN: Just gonna say, Elena(cannon) really needs to fucking clue in that the person you go to whenever life tries to screw you is the person you should always have by your side, the're called "your rock" and they aren't meant to be second choice. Season four I'm watching you! AND Damon and Alarics moment made me cry to not, which made me hate everyone all the more because if they just freaking listened to Damon Ric would still be alive.

Damon hadn't moved in thirty six hours. Not since she left. Not since she'd asked him to choose.

He wanted to stop her, truly. He wanted nothing more than to drag her back and kiss away the pain. To rock their bodies together, hip to hip until the light return to her eyes. But he hadn't. Couldn't? Didn't. Five years. He had let five years walk out the door. Five years of honesty, of trust and genuine love. For what exactly he didn't know. Maybe that was why he couldn't ask her to stay, why he couldn't lie and tell her he'd already made his choice. wHEN he didn't even know what the options were. Enter in his one true love. Good old southern bourbon. Decanter full, glass never empty before a roaring fire. It was so him and yet so foreign. He hadn't had the time to wallow in a drunken stupor. He'd been too busy. with life, his life, their life. The one they had fought for, that their friends had died for. A normal life. Or as normal as a vampire and witch could get. So the first few hours were really spent trying to not do things. Now its a fight to stay in his seat instead of picking her up after class, or making dinner while she studied or watching a movie before bed. Because she drove herself to school yesterday, and since she hadn't come home there to cook for and their, his… the bed was empty.

Thirty seven hours, fourteen minutes and twenty-six seconds since the door had close behind her. A part of her wished she could go back and undo the last day and a half. The other part remembers bitterly why she left in the first place, how she knew he wouldn't stop her. No, he'd let her leave. Just allow her to walk away. She who had loved him with all that was in her capable of love, she who had fought against everyone who cared about her to be with him. She who had never made him second choice but always, solely her only option. That's what she tells Caroline hurts the most, the reason behind her tears. Whether this is it, or not doesn't matter. What matters is that he fought harder, was more dedicated, more in love with someone who had always considered him an afterthought. After five years, that is where she stands.

Elena stands in her family home. She runs her hand though her hair while her eyes take it all in. She sees nothing. The Gilbert House is a void, a time paradox. A place the world had left behind. with its mementos and nostalgic good intentions. Statically indifferent to the last decade when everything she had known to be true became a lie and every lie she told herself proceeded to blow up in her face. She strains to find her brother's scent, struggles to tie herself to this place to anchor herself to someone. Maybe she is meant to be lost; maybe that is her penance for all those wrong choices. Maybe she should have gone to Denver, to Jeremy and make a new life instead of coming back here. But he wasn't in Denver, his presence echoed through this paradoxical place. His scent remaining in the places where dust should have settled, he'd kept this place whole for her. Waiting, knowing she would return.

Is that what he'd done… waited for her? Was that the reason he couldn't bear to let the dirt collect in an abandoned home. Was he waiting for her still? He didn't stop Bonnie because he knew she would come, knew that when she did he wanted nothing in their way. No obstacles between them and happily forever after. It fit, but it didn't make sense. He loves Bonnie, as surely as he have loved, did love? Elena. He's never doubted that, until now.

Caroline didn't doubt that Damon loved Bonnie, but she would admit that she wasn't sure if the same was true of Damon. So blinded and broken from the Petrova years, she wasn't sure he could recognize much less trust his own feelings. But she knew. It's the reason he stopped hunting, the reason he lives in a town he hates, the reason he has Sunday dinner with a childe that would love nothing more than to drive a stake through his heart. Bonnie knows too, it's why she chose to stop aging. Its why she let go of all the prejudice she had towards vampires, its why she finally truly accepted her place in the supernatural world.

She doesn't know where she fits anymore, the world has changed so drastically and her former point of reference was somewhere in Japan banging a look-a-like. It's sad really, and feminists everywhere probably wanted to shake her but she really doesn't know who she is without Stefan. Or rather in relation to Stefan. She fought to be normal for him, to be hope for him, to be the embodiment of all his needs. Until he didn't need her anymore.

He didn't need her anymore. Bonnie had always known she was a place holder, she had. She had always known that her role was to keep him too entertained to walk into the sun. And that one day Elena would come back and be the one who made him truly happy. It still hurt like hell though.

It hurt. So much. Burned him in a way not even the sun was capable of. She was there, in front of him offering up everything he'd ever thought he'd wanted and he's choking on her scent. It's wrong. Too sweet, artificially so. That bottled shit they sell by the gallon. He's assaulted by strawberry and alcohol. Searching for that hint of vanilla and fresh water, as stale as it may be after forty-two hours.

It's not the same. This is not her home, he is not her safe harbor. Okay that's a lie. He is definitely her safe harbor. Every cell in her body is calling him to her, pleading with him to connect their souls. He hears it, she can tell by the way his hands twitches. But it passes, his muscles relaxing just as quickly. Her siren's call is but a whisper. She takes her leave, confused, too young to understand why.

She doesn't know why she's back, only that the decision was taken from her. She knows that after leaving Caroline at the grill her body was being pulled towards him. She tried to go left, her hands steered right. She tried to stay in the car and the door opened itself, forcing her out.

He calls her to him, knowing in his heart that it would work. A vampire's call to their mate. Elena hears it, it's an echo, like the memories in her home. A whisper of her old station, of the position she no longer holds. That's why she cries, how she explains the tears to Caroline. She would always be able to hear that call in the shadow of her mind, but it would be so faint, so distant that it couldn't possibly be for her.

As young as she may be, Bonnie understands what it means to be called home.

FIN