Okay so… I THINK this update came at least a little bit faster than the last one… not by much though, I'm afraid. I'm really, REALLY sorry for that but… I hardly ever have the time to sit myself down and write. And when I DO have the time, all I want to do is sleep and relax. Well anyway. I managed a new chapter, and I'm actually satisfied with it.
So: A veeeery big thank you goes to AVECIA, my dear beta reader who I KNOW has even less time than I have, and still managed to read over this chapter! And to all you lovely readers and reviewers… I would be soooo screwed without you guys!
Disclaimer: I don't own a thing 'bout TVD, I just mess with them because it would be a shame not to!
Now, on with it!
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
Soon after they had come to terms with the fact that the woman momentarily inhabiting Elena's body was here for the sole reason to kill Klaus – well maybe not the sole reason… there had been some seriously heated gazes wandering from her to Elijah and back… - they went back to the Boarding House.
There was no way that Alyona could pretend to be Elena in front of Jenna, so they had decided that Stefan would have to fake mono – meaning he would need the care of his ever-loving girlfriend. No reason in letting Jenna know just yet that the Stefan/Elena fairytale had come to an end.
That would be an interesting conversation for another day (one on which Damon would not be around for. He wanted to keep on living, thank you very much.). So now he, Stefan, Elijah and Alyona/Elena sat in the living room of the Boarding House; nobody had said even one word in the past ten minutes, and it was starting to border on insane. What the hell where they doing, giving each other the silent treatment? This was certainly not the weirdest thing to ever happen… or well, maybe it was, but still; shouldn't they've gotten used to weird and/or strange by now? Because, even for vampire standards they've led fairly unusual lives. Doppelgangers, First Ones, Werewolves… it all played together to make one screwed up story.
But Damon still had no idea what topic would be safe around here, and as the only human in the room (see? Another weird thing. After 140 odd years of being a vampire, he suddenly was human again) he felt the need to not try and get a rise out of the other occupants of the room.
So in the end he just took one of his better Whisky bottles up to his room, and settled for a nice night of reading. Only minutes after he made himself comfortable though, there was a slight knocking on the door and soon after it opened and revealed Alyona.
"Elijah left and I told Stefan to go put headphones on; I thought it might be better than him complaining about unholy noises again."
Or maybe not Alyona?
"Elena?"
Softly smiling, she shut and locked the door behind her, beginning to shed her clothing on her way to the bed. Interesting. Very interesting.
"Yeah… it seems that it takes up quite a bit of strength for her to stay in my body so she decided to… rest for a while. And I think she was tempted to do things with Elijah that I wouldn't approve of. It's still my body, after all… well, either way; we have the whole night for ourselves. Maybe a little more, maybe less, I don't know exactly… she's going to tell me when she wants back in though, and this time I'll warn you beforehand."
As she stopped talking, she stepped out of her panties, and took the last step that separated her from the edge of his bed.
She stood there as if she wasn't naked – comfortable, relaxed, totally at ease. He loved it, because it meant that she wasn't ashamed of him, herself or what they would be doing.
He had heard what she had said alright… but right now, he felt his blood rushing down south, not leaving enough in his brain to consciously think about her words. And thinking was overrated anyway, so he got rid of his shirt and socks, pulled Elena on top of him, and together they worked on letting the rest of his clothing disappear, too.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
For a minute or two Stefan actually thought about doing what Elena told him to, but then he decided it was healthier for him to just leave the house entirely.
So now he sat in the Grill, tucked away in a dark corner where people won't look too close – just a little precaution. Because otherwise they would see a seventeen year old, with a half-empty bottle of Bourbon (so what if his chosen poison was the same as Damon's? They where brothers, had known each other for over 160 years… it was only natural that they had at least a few things in common!). He hadn't been alone for long though. Barely half an hour after he got comfortable on the old wooden bench, Elijah slid into the chair across from him. He hadn't said one word – just placed his own bottle of hard liquor on the table and proceeded to drink right out of it, not even bothering with a tumbler. It was fairly unusual for the man who seldom acted anything else but refined and proper.
Stefan needn't to ask what was wrong; the man had talked with his dead wife after over two thousand years of missing her. And right now, said wife had disappeared into a dark corner of Elena's mind again, and Elena in turn, had disappeared into Damon's bedroom. And they both weren't blue-eyed enough not to know what was going on in said bedroom right now.
For Elijah, it had to feel as if his wife was cheating on him. Or at least close to it. Also, he already knew that he couldn't keep her, that she would go on to wherever one went after their final death. Right now he could see the millennia spent alone reflecting in the man's eyes; could see the weariness of a world devoid of anything even remotely worth living for. The Old One they had feared for quite some time was tired, and not just in a sense of 'I need a good night's sleep'.
Stefan had the feeling that, after all of this was finally, finally over… that Elijah would find a way to follow Alyona to where she'll go… or at least find a way to permanently end his unlife.
"You are looking at me as though I could answer you the great questions of humankind. Just say what you want, boy."
Stefan rolled his eyes at the condescending way the man was talking to him. There was no use in trying to win his respect. To that day, he still had no idea how Damon managed to get it – but he obviously did, because even though a blind man could've seen that they disliked each other, Elijah barely ever spoke down to his brother.
"I just wondered… you cannot be killed. The dagger with the ashes of this tree might turn you into a corpse, but it doesn't really kill you; for good. You pull it out, and you're as good as new again. So… how does it feel, the time in which you are not able to move or do…well, anything?"
Elijah lifted one eyebrow at the question, and right there Stefan had answered his first – unspoken – question. Damon hadn't earned Elijah's respect; he probably just reminded the man of himself. Because right now it was painfully obvious that they were more than a little bit alike. Both sarcastic to a fault, irritatingly sure of themselves…
"However do you manage to think of such things? I do believe that you spend way too much time inside your own head. You think too much." Elijah washed his words down with a healthy swallow of his drink.
Yeah, definitely an older version of Damon Salvatore. Creepy.
"But either way, it's… a little bit like the state between asleep and awake. You are not really aware of the time that goes by, but neither are you 'dead to the world' as some might say. A little less than awake; a little more than dreaming. That is the best way I know how to describe it."
Stefan was slightly surprised that he got an answer at all… but he wasn't about to question his luck, so he rolled the words around in his head, trying to imagine how it might feel, but came to no satisfying result. He had guessed it might be a little bit like the state the tomb vampires had been in. Reduced to a dried-out shell, not able to move, but still feeling and hearing everything going on around them. But even if that were the case… he never had starved to a point so severe. Ever. And after what Elijah had said it wasn't the case anyway.
He just nodded to the other vampire, taking a swallow of the amber liquid in his glass, returning back to his thoughts, and leaving Elijah to his own.
It wasn't as if he had terribly much to do at the moment. Alyona had yet to tell them how she would manage to kill Klaus; his little side project as a matchmaker had been successful already, and he couldn't go back to his house right now because he had succeeded.
Maybe Elijah (and his brother too… damn) had been right. He really was spending too much time in his own head.
Sighing he looked at his bottle… still nearly half full. Shrugging, he abandoned his glass and mimicked his silent companion – drinking right out of the bottle.
It was way after midnight, and still there was light on in Bonnie's room. She was sitting on the floor, surrounded by dozens of old tomes; her hair was up in a messy bun, she wore the oldest sweatpants she could find that still fit her, and one of her dad's old College shirts.
As soon as the vampires (and Damon) had disappeared, she made a mad-dash for her attic. She had felt the honest intent of the woman-that-was-not-Elena, but still there was something she hadn't told them; she had no idea how she knew, she just did. So now she reread everything she had found out about the doppelganger already, and tried to find new things with the information she had gotten from Alyona. At the same time, she went over everything about Helen of Troy in her old history books and on the internet to see what they had to say about her.
When this was over… when Klaus was dead, Elena was just Elena again (not the host for an ancient Queen or a vampire) and everything was as close to normal again as it could get… well, she would lock away the Grimoir and all things about magic, and would pretend to be a normal teenager again. At least for a while; she just needed a damn holiday from all this supernatural stuff.
Really… when she thought about how fast her life had turned from normal and mediocre to… supernatural, magical and crazy, her head spun so fast that she nearly had to throw up; she had always hated the rollercoaster, and now her life had turned into one. She had always been the one waiting outside with all of their purses while Elena and Caroline rode the stupid things, her face turning slightly green just watching.
Slowly she got to her feet and walked the five steps to her bed, and then flopped down again. She was so, so tired that it wasn't even close to funny anymore.
She needed to sleep; but every time she did so, she had nightmares, got visited by Emily or had strange visions she couldn't quite make a sense of.
So now, she was afraid of even closing her eyes for two minutes. She had no idea how long she would be able to live like this; not long though, that much was sure. She constantly had to fear for the lives of her best friends or her own. She felt responsible for the safety of this town – she was the last Bennett witch living here, after all… the list went on and on, driving her to near madness, sometimes.
Without even realizing it, she had found her way under her covers, her head comfortably resting on the soft pillow. Ever so slowly her eyes drifted shut, and soon her breath had evened out.
Xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
It was close to sunrise; the world outside was quiet – it was the time where nearly everyone was asleep. Owls and other night-hunters (be it animal, human or neither) had already found their sleeping place for the nearly-there day, and the things that wandered under the sun had not yet risen.
Damon's room was dark, but they grey-ish color that was typical for this time of the night lent it enough room for even human eyes to see – if not much else – contours.
The large window was open, the curtain billowing inside from a slight, refreshing breeze; if she listened closely enough, Elena could hear the humming sound of insects flying around, or the rustle of the wind in the nearby forest.
It was so peaceful, that she was afraid to move even an inch; it might destroy the mood and let reality back in. If she could, she would freeze this moment in time, bottle it up, and come back every time her life threatened to get too confusing again. It was… perfect.
There she lay, fully satisfied after a night full of decadent love-making, in the arms of the man she loved more than anything. She blinked then; could it be? And really, as she thought about the moments in between coming to him after her trip into the past, until now… she never once told him.
She said she wanted him, needed him… told him to forget and just be; she even broke up with Stefan and all but made it clear that she wouldn't run back to him, that she would stand by him, Damon.
But she never once actually said the words.
"What's wrong? You look like you just realized that Santa isn't real."
Normally she would have turned to him, eyes all big and her lips drawn into a pout, saying 'he isn't?', but right now she felt there was no time to loose on unimportant banter.
She still did turn around to face him, but instead of putting a fake pout onto her face, she lifted one hand to his cheek, gently caressing the side of his face.
"Okay, now you're just scaring me. Honestly, what's up?"
She smiled, soft and tender to reassure him.
"Nothing's wrong I just… I realized that over all that's happened these past few days… I forgot something important."
She could see that he was trying to think of something that might be important enough to her that she would think so hard over it in the middle of the night; but it was plain as day that he couldn't find anything.
"Right so… you had the big break-up talk with Stefan, we can't do a thing about the vampire/human mix up we've got going on – we have to wait for a specific moon phase for that, or something. Jeremy and Jenna are alright and at home, Elijah is probably off pouting because he didn't get the chance of a quickie with his wife. Bonnie was perfectly fine as we last saw her, and the Teacher probably fell asleep over paper grading; again. Vampire Barbie can take care of herself, as can her pet-wolf. So… I'm pretty sure everything is taken care of right now."
She thought it said quite a bit about him and how little he thought of himself, considering that never once in this monologue did he mention himself. It just made her feelings for him even stronger; made her want to tell him even more.
"Not everything. I forgot to tell you something."
She could see that he fought to keep eye contact with her, and knew that he waited to be let down again.
"I love you."
Just like that. No talking around the topic or making a big thing out of it. Just the three little words; and boy, was it worth it.
His eyes changed from surprised to unbelieving to… pure and unadulterated joy. It was like he was a child, and Christmas, his Birthday and all the other holidays had been thrown together into a single, big event. He laid one of his hands over hers that still covered his face and leaned into her palm. His eyes were closed now, but the expression on his face alone told her that she had done the right thing. He seemed as if tons of ballast had been lifted off of his shoulders… and just because she told him that she loved him.
As he opened his mouth to return her words – she knew it was for that – she leaned forward and pressed a quick kiss to his lips to shut him up. There was no need for him to tell her right now; he had been showing her all along, and right now, it was his moment to feel loved and cherished.
And so she rolled him onto his back, straddling his hips and began the age-old dance anew; whispering 'I love you' and 'You're the only one I want' again and again; burning the words into his heart and mind, so he'd never forget or doubt them, ever.
Xoxoxoxoxoxoxo
All done! Well, for this chapter at least. Not with the story as a whole, of course. Now it's your turn – please let me know what you think of this chapter (did I good with the sappy "I love you" scene?). Reviews are love, people!
So long,
Zora