All right--I know it's been a while since I updated. I'm in the smack-dab middle of finals week right now, so I apologize for the delay but can't promise that it won't happen again. I'll try to do better, though. Cross my heart. ;)
Anyway, this chapter is set after the tomb has been opened and Damon has discovered that his lady love left him for greener pastures quite a long while ago. (As you will quite easily see in the chapter itself.) I truly love the scene in the actual series in which Elena hugs him and tells him she's sorry. But I wanted to re-imagine it on my own terms and add a little dash of intimacy that's missing when Stefan's looking on at her sympathetic hug. So...voilá!
And, as always...I hope you read, review, and find something to enjoy.
He cannot find the will to burn tonight.
Normally he's fueled on power, riding on its bright-flaring high, feeding off its energy as it feeds off his. Normally he's willing to make a ceaseless bargain with the devil inside himself, trading the waning vestiges of his humanity for the unbelievable rush of freedom, wild and hot and dangerous as the razor-sharp edge of a polished blade. But tonight he has no energy left, no rush, no fuel, no high. The flame is guttering, and all he has left are the broken edges of what used to be a man, shattered and stained beyond all repair.
She left him. It's all he can think, over and over again as he stares into the dancing flames. All these years he thought it was his fault, that if he'd been a little more careful and a little less trusting she wouldn't have been trapped in that dank tomb for a century and a half. He'd waited for her, longed for her, missed her in every bone and tendon throughout the endless years. Sometimes, late at night when an anonymous body slept beside him and the moonlight poured in cold and crystal through the windows, he'd thought of her and ached with the memory of what they'd been. He'd never met another woman like her...beautiful and treacherous, self-centered through and through, a skilled manipulator who could do anything, beguile anyone, just with the simple magic of a tilt of the head and a smile. Unlike Stefan, he'd loved her because of, not despite, her faults. And he would have sooner taken his own life than watch her be carried away, leather bridle an obscene framework around her lovely face, body limp and weak from vervain, arms falling loose and languid at her sides. Helpless.
He'd protected her as best he could. He'd trusted his brother to not betray his secret, to lie for the woman they both loved. He'd had no way of knowing that Stefan's stupidity had recklessly exposed them all. And then when the world came crashing down around him, when he lost father and home and lover all in one blood-soaked night, he had nowhere left to turn but the thrill of the hunt and the rush of the kill. It's all he's had since. He thought that tonight the long wait would be over and he'd be whole again, his other twisted half fit to the mold she'd made. But he should have realized that she could not be anything other than what she was. And the Katherine Pierce he'd known and loved one hundred and forty-five years ago would never have waited for any man, no matter how deeply he cared for her. She was always on the lookout for the next opportunity, the next encounter, the next victim...and love never entered into any portion of her beautifully calculating mind.
And now he's sitting in an deserted forest, gaze flicking over the rubble of an empty tomb, wondering why the resurrection he'd thought would bring his Easter had dissolved into the darkness without a trace. She wasn't there. She'd never been there. She'd left him over a century ago and never looked back. She was in Chicago, he thinks miserably, hopelessness a hard lump in the back of his throat. Chicago. She could have so easily come back, so easily found him. But she hadn't, and she never would, and somehow or other he was going to have to find a way to live with that.
He sighs and hooks an arm around one knee, drawing it up to his chest, hunched over like a child trying to curl up under the blankets and forget the world outside. He's never weak; he can't afford to be. Everyone else depends on him to be strong, even when he's not. Of course they expect him to be a bastard. He's cultivated the image too carefully for it to not be effective. What everyone fails to realize is that beneath that devil-may-care facade is a steadiness that can handle whatever the world throws at him. But tonight--tonight that strength has crumbled, disintegrated under his feet, and as he lowers his forehead to the top of his knee, his sigh is a requiem for broken dreams.
He's lost so deep in the pain that he barely hears the sound of footsteps crunching over sticks and fallen leaves. He doesn't even look up until he hears her sit down, feels her warmth next to him. She doesn't touch him, not now, and he's grateful that she seems to know instinctively that he can't bear the sensation of a human hand just yet. There's too much of that fragile humanity too close to the surface in him now; he's raw, open, nerves exposed to the cool fall air and the roaming breeze. Oddly enough, she's shielding him from the worst of the grief, cushioning his senses until he can almost bear to draw in the next breath, and then the next. He's vaguely tempted to take her hand, hold onto her like a trapeze artist clutching the wooden bar that lets him fly weightless through the air. But he can't bring himself to make the first move, display the cracked edges of his existence to her...give her the knowledge of the trust she has already earned.
After a moment she shifts, stretching out her legs and rubbing her arms a little to ward off the chill. Normally he'd shrug out of his jacket and toss it to her, masking the innate gentility of the action with casual words and an easy smile. Tonight he merely turns his head until his cheek rests against his knee and looks at her guardedly through the haze of his lashes, eyes blue-green and blank in the glow of the firelight.
"What're you doing here?" he asks emotionlessly, voice dropping into the silence like liquid ice poured over the rocks. She raises an eyebrow and laces her fingers together in her lap, staring down at short fingernails with chipping pink polish.
"I saw the light on the road and pulled in," she says slowly, voice calm but eyes wary. She's not sure what he's going to do next, he realizes, and she's braced for rage or heartache or some strange combination of the two. He wishes he could find the words to tell her that he doesn't have the energy for either reaction, that he's empty through and through, battened down and hunkered over, left grim and waiting to look for the eye of the storm.
She tilts her head a little and peers at him carefully, brown eyes searching and warmer as she takes in the weariness in his face.
"You need to rest, Damon," she tells him softly, her lips pursed as she takes in the dark shadows under his eyes and the sharply carved lines around his mouth. "You look..."
He tries to slice her open with a look, and fails miserably. She huffs out a reluctant little breath of laughter.
"...tired. You look tired. When was the last time you got any sleep?" she asks, with that little furrow forming between her brows that always inspires in him the absurd desire to lean over and kiss the worry away. She looks at him, more questions in her eyes, and he shrugs lightly.
"Don't know. It doesn't really matter, you know. Vampire, remember? I can run on no sleep for a lot longer than...well, you, for instance."
He can tell she's resisting the urge to roll her eyes, and despite himself he can feel a faint smirk curving the corners of his mouth.
"Don't worry about me, Elena," he orders her, with much less force in the command than usual. She shoots him one of those "Seriously?" looks of hers and starts fiddling absentmindedly with the chain of her locket. The silence stretches out between them, taut as a tightrope-walker's line, and he can feel himself suspended in that limbo between grief and exhaustion, trapped in the in-between. Something of that drained-ness must show somewhere, because she looks over at him again and her face twists a little in an answering pain. Gently, she lays one hand on the sleeve of his jacket and simply holds him there, anchoring him to the ground, and he fights the sudden overwhelming need to crumple into a shapeless ball and let the fire consume him utterly until nothing but ash remains. She feels him shudder, one hard racking tremor that goes through his whole body, and then he leans back against the tree and sighs as the worst of it lets go.
"Shh," she whispers tenderly, and her hand slips from his sleeve to the side of his face, her thumb stroking slowly along the cheekbone. "It's going to be okay, Damon. I promise. It's going to be okay."
She doesn't know what she's saying, and he knows that she's riding on instinct right now, not thought. So he lets her try to comfort him and instead hugs his emptiness to him like a lover, drinking it in and refusing to let her pass through his guard. After a moment she lifts her hand from his cheek and looks at him, eyes boring into his until he turns his face away and looks into the flames with feigned indifference. She knows what he's doing--she can see through every move, every subtle lie. But she's not going to push the issue, not tonight, and so she settles back down against the tree and tilts her head back, eyes slipping shut as her own tiredness takes over. They sit there in silence, the broken pieces and the glue that seeks to mend the cracks, and somewhere in that vast expanse of wordlessness he finds a tiny sliver of peace.
It's in the low 30s tonight, and he knows she must be getting cold. But when he looks over to ask her how she's doing, he realizes she's fast asleep, still leaning back against the rough bark of their shared tree. He wants to pull her into him with one arm, curl his body around hers and keep her warm, his cheek pressed to her hair and her head lying heavy on his chest. But tonight he can't let himself use her, pretend she's Katherine and that his lover has returned to him as he's dreamed for countless years. He owes her more than that, if for no other reason than that she came to find him in the middle of a forest in the dead of night. And so he pulls off his jacket and drapes it over her shoulders, brushes back the long silky hair from her forehead and traces his thumb over the contour of her lips, his face set and unreadable in the guttering light. He'll stay with her, here in the darkness and the cold as despair washes over him and he waits impatiently for the dawn. And when the sun rises, it will touch the frigid ashes of the fire, the quiet rise and fall of her chest as she sleeps beside him, the glint of his ring as in unconsciouness his fingers finally take and hold her hand. And when they wake, her face will be the first thing he registers in the low-glinting rays of morning light.
But here under cover of darkness, he doesn't want to acknowledge that he's in need of her tonight.
(A/N: Yes, I stole the chapter title from Lady's Antebellum's hit "Need You Now." It's not mine. Don't sue.)