Hiya!
Sooooooo I wasn't done with this chapter either and that's why it took me so long post it. . I'm really sorry, I honestly hadn't intended for it to need more primping, but you guys inspire me with your comments and I've got to write. :) I want to make it as good as I possibly can while still getting it all out on time. Wish me luck!
Disclaimer: Everytime I have to write I don't own them, I remember they aren't real and I think that's more depressing than not possessing them.
Happy (hopefully) reading!
Rose needed blood, Elena knows, so it logically follows that if she finds blood, she'll find Rose. The stupidity in seeking said dying vampire who's now possibly on a blood binge is tremendous, but Elena's done tremendously stupid things before.
She puts the mug on the dresser by the door and heads to Stefan's blood stash in the basement, hoping that Rose will have had her fill by the time she gets there (knowing that vampires are never truly full).
When she rounds the corner, "Rose?" and "Oh my god" slipping in a frightened hurry between her lips, Rose is sitting, bent at the waist, using her knees to keep the hands that are pushing blood down her throat steady. For the first time, Elena sees the extent of the damage on Rose's back, watches a piece of skin peel off and fall into a puddle of blood on the floor, where it sticks. She thinks she's going to be sick.
The vampire turns to her, shamed by her inability to control the craving, tracing Elena's veins with traitorous eyes. Blood slides down her neck.
Elena is panting, backing up instinctively, more afraid of this vampire's bloodstained, still-human face than she's ever been of Stefan in bloodlust. "You should go," Rose tells her, and she sounds so much like Damon, that Elena does as told, turning on the heel of her converse. At the start of Rose's sudden screams, she dashes for the phone she ought to start carrying in her pocket.
The stairs trip her and she's thinking Damon, Stefan, Damon, Stefan, Damon, Stefan!, wondering how damn long it can take to get her feet back under her body. She pauses, halting to stop scrambling uselessly, and in the silence of her stillness and the absence of Rose's screams, she hears footsteps.
For reasons she doesn't wait to understand, she keeps moving. She sprints through the hallway, desperation—she has to call Damon, Rose is the closest thing he has to happiness—propelling her. She's almost to the living room, when suddenly Rose is in front of her, advancing, stalking, hungry.
"Rose, it's me: Elena." The words are meaningless.
She spins and runs again, praying that Rose will want to play cat and mouse, because that's the only chance she has.
~V~
Damon knocks three times in quick succession on the teacher's front door, fidgeting impatiently. Maybe the witch can be talked into locating a cure, or he can pull a Mason with Jules. She comes equipped with a truck and everything.
There are entirely too many problems for him to deal with at once, he thinks. At least Elena's off the suicide tear, or he'd be totally screwed. (Hell. Is anyway.)
Ric finally opens the door and Damon smiles brightly at him.
"How do you know where I live?" Ric demands.
"That's a mystery," Damon mocks him. Alaric sighs and, realizing the inevitable, mutters, "Come in." Damon strides past him hurriedly.
"Have you found anything?" he inquires without greeting.
Stefan lifts his head from the papers beneath his hands. "Nothing yet." He stands straight and crosses his arms, sighing wearily. "How'd your meeting with Jules go?"
"Splendidly," Damon answers sarcastically, lifting his shoulders. "Wolf's a bitch," he mumbles. "I am gonna kill her. Her pack, too."
Stefan sighs again, knowing that this pack will be trouble added to trouble already multiplied, and Alaric settles back against the wall to watch the brothers go. He finds he's largely unneeded in their presence, until a weaponry tutorial is necessary. "Focus, Damon," Stefan entreats him.
Damon shakes off his irritation and begins to pace, but he stops in a moment to speak. "She gave me a list of symptoms—not fun—and told me to stake her."
Alaric shoves himself off the wall to join the intimate cocoon the brothers always create around themselves. "What are the symptoms?" he asks.
Damon pushes off the balls of his feet to round on him for dramatic effect. "Chills, pain, dementia," he ticks off, misplaced anger now directed at the teacher.
Stefan is suddenly concerned (uh-oh, frown lines). "How soon do those symptoms start after a bite?"
Exasperated and rolling his eyes, Damon spins to reply, wishing briefly for a drink, "She was too busy threatening me to mention."
"Damon," Stefan emphasizes, trying to communicate what he doesn't want to say, "Elena."
Realization dawns on the elder brother. "In a house with a deranged, dying vampire who has no idea who she is," he finishes for Stefan.
Alaric stares at his now-empty home after the brothers vanish, then goes and pours himself a drink.
~V~
Damon beats Stefan and blurs to Elena's heartbeat, finding it in Stefan's room. The feisty little thing is standing in front of the large window Stefan likes to brood at with Jeremy's whittled stake in her hands. He cocks an eyebrow at her briefly, before turning around to face the threat.
Rose is huddled in the shadows, trapped by sunlight but snarling. Damon moves closer, careful to stay in the ray of light on the floor. He kneels in front of her. "Ew, grisly," he says when he gets a look at her face.
"I found her in the basement," Elena offers, a bit more secure in her safety with Damon present, but still clutching the stake.
"You got into Stefan's leftovers, huh?" Damon murmurs, gazing intently at Rose. The other vampire whimpers and growls.
Elena continues, her steadiness a little less steady than usual, "She was like this," she gestures to indicate Rose's bloody state, "but as…fine as could be expected. I went to get my phone" to call you she doesn't say because she really needs Damon to focus right now and has no inclination to explain to him why she was going to call him and not Stefan especially when he won't listen anyway, "but she cut me off. And then," she pauses, wanting to emphasize this, "Damon, she didn't know who I was."
Stefan appears beside his girlfriend and takes her into his arms as she drops the stake, twisting to position himself between her and Rose. "Apparently, those symptoms start fast," Damon clues him in. He's still looking at Rose when he asks, "Where're we gonna put her?"
"Elena, why don't you go downstairs?" Stefan suggests. Understanding his intent, Elena nods and steps out of his arms. Stefan creeps to Damon's side once she's out the door.
"Damon, maybe we should put her down. She's—"
"No," Damon growls. "We have a friendship. And we" he points between himself and Stefan, "have a vested interest. If we find a cure that works on her, we are free of the werewolf threat."
Stefan knows that discovering a cure is not worth the risk, but the something he sees in his brother's eyes is. "All right." He pauses. "So what do we do with her?" In the shadows, Rose begins clawing at her back. Her frantic fingernails are tearing at the loose skin, peeling it down the length of her back. Without thinking, Damon speeds to her and grabs her hands. "Uh, uh, uh," he singsongs. "Hands off the damage." Rose bares her teeth at him and he bares his right back. Her eyes widen, lucidity returning momentarily, "Damon?"
"She is in there!" he announces. He keeps his grip on her hands. She sags into him. "Back to bed for you," he says. She's already unconscious.
"You can't just put her back in your bed, Damon."
"Sure I can, Stefan. Watch, I'll show you."
"She's dangerous, Damon."
"Hardly," Damon argues. "She's weak as a kitten." He picks her up gently, bridal style.
Stefan decides to pick his battles. "I'm taking Elena home," he tells the other man.
"Good plan, brother," Damon responds. "I got this."
~V~
Two hours past his phone call to Stefan to suggest talking to Katherine about a wolf bite cure (it's almost a surety the bitch has one), a plan to which Stefan agrees and one that, predictably, fails, and three hours into the most boring stint of guard duty he has ever undertaken, Damon desperately needs a drink. And a snack. He purses his lips at Rose feverish and asleep on his bed, then leaves his bedroom to jog down the stairs.
He's sipping on a blood bag—uncouth but economic—and pouring a bourbon when he hears the rustle of sheets hitting the floor. He has time to spin around and see her pause just before she bounds out the door with speed greater than his.
"Shit."