The light in the hospital was too bright, lancing through Elena's eyelids. A machine beeped, its steady rhythm a quiet comfort in the unfamiliar place. She was floating, floating on a cloud of something cottony and soft, but beneath the shroud was pain. Her body knew it was in agony, even if her mind had been swaddled safely away. Echoing in her ears was a scream that ended in a watery gurgle. She opened her leaden eyes. Jenna sat slumped in a chair at her bedside, head cradled in her hands.
"Aunt Jenna," Elena rasped.
"Oh, honey. You're awake," her aunt said, raising her head and putting on a brave face, but Elena saw the brightness in her eyes, and she knew.
"Mom? Dad?" She knew the answer, but she had to ask, had to know.
"You should wait for the doctor," Jenna said, reaching through the slatted side of the hospital bed to squeeze Elena's hand, fighting her way through tubes and sensors. "You should wait," she repeated.
"Both of them? They're both...?" She couldn't say the word.
Jenna just nodded. "I'm sorry, Elena. I'm so sorry."
Blackness yawned, and Elena let it take her, as it had taken them.
Somehow, Elena ended up back in front of Caroline's house, though she had no memory of the drive. This house had seen too much death, too much despair. Were they all really only eighteen? Two parents between the three of them now. It wasn't fair.
But fairness didn't matter in this world; all that mattered was how you managed with the shitty hand you'd been dealt. Elena forced herself to dry the tears that had appeared on her cheeks like dew and made the long walk up the drive to Caroline's front door. Did they know? What if they didn't know? How was Elena supposed to tell Bonnie that she'd lost another family member because of Damon—because of her?
The front door swung open before she could knock, and one look at Caroline's face told her everything.
"Is she-" Elena started.
"She's with her mom. Abby's in transition," Caroline said.
Elena hadn't been sure, hadn't known what Damon had done. He'd tried to do the right thing, to make sure Bonnie still had a mother, even if she wasn't quite the same, but Elena honestly didn't know if it would have been better if Abby had died outright, died and been buried in the earth. Could Bonnie accept her mother like this?
"Can I see her?" Elena asked.
"She doesn't want to see you right now," Caroline said. "The next few days are going to be tough. I don't...I don't know what Abby will do when she wakes up." Her voice cracked. Bill was barely cold in his grave after rejecting everything Caroline was, and now she had to go through it all over again. Elena didn't think, she just wrapped her arms around her friend.
It wasn't supposed to be like this, not for any of them. Only a year ago, they'd had the world on a string—popularity, friends, loving families, bright futures. Now their worlds were shattered, their families scattered, and their futures uncertain. This wasn't how it was supposed to be.
The girls held each other, showering the other with her tears. Then they pulled apart, Caroline fanning her eyes with her hands. "I have to get back to Bonnie," she said.
"Are you sure I can't see her?" Elena asked again. She didn't know what she'd say to Bonnie, knew there were no words of comfort she could give. But she wanted to try.
Caroline shook her head. "She doesn't blame you, but I think right now, when she looks at you, all she can see is him. Give her time."
"I didn't want for this to happen. I tried—" she shook her head. "It doesn't matter. It's done now. Just...tell her I love her. And that I'm sorry. But mostly that I love her."
"She loves you too, Elena. So much." Caroline smiled through her tears. "So do I. We'll get through this. Somehow. Just let her be with her mom right now."
"Love you," Elena said. The door closed, and all was still. Faintly, within the house, she could hear a keening cry of grief.
He was waiting for her, standing at the window in Elena's bedroom. He didn't react when she entered, didn't move a muscle, just watched the live oak toss in the wind outside.
"Stefan?" she asked.
"Elijah kept his word," Damon said.
"Is he hurt?"
Damon shrugged. "Stefan tried—ah, it doesn't matter. He's fine now. Or he will be. He'll heal. I even left him a couple of squirrels for a snack."
"What does that mean? And why is he eating squirrels?" Elena finally advanced into the room, looking longingly at the bed. She knew if she stopped now, if she lay down, the grief and exhaustion and horror of the night would consume her, and she might never rise again.
"My brother, the boy wonder, tried to do the noble thing. Shocker. When he realized what it would mean if we stopped the ritual, he tried to provoke Rebekah into killing him." Damon still didn't face her, just toyed with his ring, turning it around and around on his finger. "He's a little rough, but he'll live. As for the rodents...You'll have to ask him."
Elena nodded. Some part of her realized something had shifted, something about Stefan had fundamentally changed, but she couldn't take it all in. Not yet. She drifted over to her vanity, staring at the pictures that ringed the mirror. A happy family. All smiles. What had happened to them?
"Say it," Damon commanded.
"What do you want me to say?" Elena asked. She tugged one of the photos free. The four of them at the lake house, just a few weeks before the accident. The first boating weekend of the year, all of them beaming into the camera from the deck of the boat. Even Jeremy had a smile, sullen and grudging as it was.
"You hate me, I was wrong, I should have let Stefan die," Damon spat.
"Maybe you should have," Elena said, fingers brushing across the glossy surface of the photo. "Bonnie's going to kill you, you know."
"I don't give a fuck what Bonnie does. I care what you think," Damon said. He was suddenly behind her, grabbing her arm, forcing her to face him. The picture fluttered out of her hands.
His face was deceptively calm. It was a lie. The tension in his mouth, the loathing in his eyes. "Is it easier for you if I say I hate you? If I yell and scream at you?" she asked. For Damon, hate was easier to accept than pity. He couldn't bear for her to know the truth, that his family was his greatest weakness, that he cared so deeply for them that morality, right and wrong, his very soul became irrelevant in his quest to preserve those he loved. Better for her to scream at him, pound her fists against his chest and tell her she'd never forgive him than for her to look at him with sadness in her eyes, as she did now.
"I did what I had to do, Elena. It was the only choice," he said, almost pleading.
"No. It wasn't," Elena said. "He's lived one hundred and sixty-three years, Damon. That's enough for anyone. He wouldn't have wanted Abby to die. He wouldn't have wanted Klaus to live."
"She's not dead! She'll be up walking around in an hour, the same as always. Better than always! She'll get a hundred and sixty-three years of her own," Damon said. "And what does his age have to do with anything? He's my baby brother, Elena. What if it had been Jeremy?"
"If it had been Jeremy," Elena said quietly, "you know exactly what I would have done."
He flung her arm away, turning back to the window. She watched his reflection in the glass, blurry and indistinct. "Even when I hated him, Stefan was the one constant in my life. He was my fucked up north star," he said. "Bonnie's gonna kill me, you're pissed at me, even if you won't say so. Hell, Stefan hates me." He rubbed his jaw. "But I'd do it again."
"If I could have stopped you, I would have. But I couldn't. It's done," she said. She moved to stand beside him. Blood was smeared on both his wrists, the color of dying roses. "I hurt for Bonnie. She just found her mom again, and now...I don't know what happens now. And Klaus. I don't know what's going to happen to any of us." The tree pawed at the window with skeletal fingers. "But I'm not sorry you did what you did. For your sake, for his, for mine. But we'll pay a price."
"I'll pay it. I'll take whatever comes," Damon said. Something caught his eye, and he knelt, claiming the photo that had dropped from her fingers. He looked at the smiling family in the photo, strangers all.
Elena took the photo, tucking it back into the frame of the mirror. "Leave the dead be," she said.
Their bodies found each other then, kissing and touching with frantic energy, full of passion but devoid of joy. Here in the world of the dead, they had to confirm they still lived. In the ruins of the night, they found each other.