Matt set two mugs on the table, but Elena couldn't even sit down, let alone find any shallow creature comfort in the tea. She'd been naïve and stupid. Damon had been right all along. They'd been stupid, fooling themselves if they thought they could overcome the chasm between humanity and vampirism. Stupid.
That woman was dead and Elena had done nothing to save her. Stefan was even worse than before, suspended between two worlds, torn by his own dual nature, and all because of Damon. Everything was wrong, and even Matt was staring at her like she'd defected, like she was one of them. "Just say it," she said, pacing through the kitchen, arms wrapped tightly around herself.
"I don't get it. Your thing with them," Matt said, sinking into a chair. Just for a moment, Elena wished she really could have loved Matt. It would have been so easy being with him. The quarterback and the cheerleader, the high school sweethearts who went off to college together. Matt would find a good job selling insurance; Elena would work as a kindergarten teacher until they had children of their own, beautiful babies with her dark hair and his blue eyes. That was what she'd dreamed when she'd been sixteen. The road was so clear. Even now, looking at him, he was an island of normalcy in a swirling sea of insanity. Even now, she wished she could love him. But he deserved better than her, better than this town, better than this nightmare. She didn't deserve anyone as good as Matt Donovan.
"I never loved them because they were vampires. It all kinda happened in spite of that," Elena said. But something about that wasn't quite true. "Maybe at first, after my parents died, there was something about being with Stefan that...felt safe."
Matt's eyes widened in indignation, and Elena saw the hurt there. She hadn't let him keep her safe after her parents died. No, she'd pushed him further and further away until they stood in different worlds, unable to reach back for the other. "Safe ? Elena, he's a vampire."
"I know. There's nothing safe about them. I know that now. But then...it seemed like he would never stop loving me. Like he would never..." Never what? What had it been that Stefan had been able to give her that Matt never had?
"What?" Matt asked.
"Never die." Logically, Elena should have run screaming when Tiki's grandad had told her about seeing Stefan in the '50s, when Stefan first showed her fangs. But being a vampire meant that he wouldn't—couldn't-leave her. Not like everyone else had, one by one. Of course, being drawn into that world that Stefan opened to her meant that she only lost more and more of the people she loved, became more and more dependent on these creatures who couldn't perish. But it was more than that.
Matt laughed softly. Finally he saw. Of course he couldn't compete with an endless, immortal love. "And Damon?"
Elena flung herself into the chair opposite Matt, finally letting her hands wrap around the warm mug. It helped, a little. How could she explain Damon? How could she explain that what she felt for him was irrational and terrifying but the truest thing she'd ever known? How could she explain how she could love him even after all this? Even after tonight? "Damon just sort of snuck up on me," she said. "He got under my skin, and no matter what I do, I can't shake him."
"Once you fall in love with someone, I don't know that you can ever shake them. But would you want to?" Matt asked. "Shake him, I mean. I thought you two were really serious."
Elena looked at her friend with new eyes. When had Matt gotten so perceptive? Had he always been able to see things so clearly, the eternal outsider? "Loving Damon was never a choice," Elena said. "Maybe it's because I'm the doppelganger; maybe it's in my blood to love him. I don't know. But I know that if I could have chosen differently...I would have." Who would ever choose something like this? Who would choose a love that demanded everything of her and gave so much pain in return for only stolen moments of happiness? Who would choose a love that hurt everyone around her, that hurt her very soul? Elena suspected that if she asked Damon, he'd answer the same. Why would he choose his brother's girl, the woman with Katherine's face? No sane person would do that. The sane person would choose someone good, someone kind, someone human. Someone like Matt. But Elena was pretty sure sanity didn't have anything to do with her life anymore. "I'm sorry. This is weird, talking about them with you."
But Matt just smiled and shook his head. "No. It's not. But I got you something." Elena fervently hoped it was not another vial of blood, and sure enough, it was much more mundane. A book. "It's your ancestor's journal. You should have it," he said.
Elena took the battered volume. "How did you manage to get this?" She flipped through the pages, but they seemed all wrong, the words written and overwritten in thick, black strokes, the words arranged in nonsensical patterns. Great. Another crazy Gilbert.
"Sometimes, it pays to be the only normal one in a town of vampires," he said with a self-deprecating smile. "I'm practically invisible."
"You're not invisible, Matt. I-" Whatever words she would've used to comfort him were broken off as the front door creaked open, and Alaric returned home.
They welcomed Ric. Even in the few hours he'd been gone, Elena had missed him, his calm presence and his wry smiles and his gentle, good-natured wisdom. He was her family, part of a small, broken circle, and she was glad to have him back. Matt went home, and eventually Elena went to her room, intending to spend some quality time with Samantha Gilbert before before trying to snatch a few hours of sleep. What she was not going to do was call Damon and tell him that it was okay he'd killed that woman. That was what was not going to happen.
But Meredith came and pounded on the door and yelled and yelled. Ric refused to let her in, and eventually she went away and all was quiet. Then the Gilbert journal turned out to be nonsense, words overwritten and crabbed and insane and none of it made sense. Elena flung the journal down with a scowl and climbed out of bed. She was going to see him. She wasn't going to apologize—she was going to give him a piece of her mind. "I'm not a person."As if that was an excuse for anything.
The roads were empty, and the night was dark, but Elena could see the flickering of the fireplace through the windows of the boarding house. She stomped out of the car, storming her way towards the door, but Damon was there, blocking her path. She yelped, nearly plowing into him, but he steadied her. "You're late," he said. "I've been expecting you for hours."
"Oh, you've been here for hours? You can hide bodies so quickly now it doesn't even cut into your evening?" she snitted. "So where'd you hide her? The ravine, where you dumped Vicki? Or the quarry?"
"You mean the quarry where I hid your brother's kill?" Damon sneered. "Don't you want to talk about who that hybrid was, a schmuck who had the lousy luck to get sire bonded to Klaus? Don't you want to talk about his hopes and dreams and his poor mommy who misses him very much?"
"That was different and you know it." No. Damon wasn't going to throw this back on her. He was the one who was in the wrong here. "Don't drag Jeremy into this. That hybrid was trying to kill us-"
"She's not dead," Damon said flatly. "Is that what you wanted to hear? Karen—that's her name, lovely girl- is fine. Sent her home with a bellyful of vampire blood and memories of having a little too much to drink. Happy now?"
That was better. A little better. But not much. "What the hell were you doing there in the first place? You know Stefan's not stable, and there you were having a brotherly snack on some innocent woman. How could you do that to your brother?"
"How could I-" Damon spun on his heel away from her, stalking a few steps before turning toward her again. "You don't know what you're talking about, Elena. Just have no fucking clue."
"Then explain it to me, Damon. Tell me that I didn't see what I saw. Make it make sense. I want to believe you." Elena desperately wanted there to be an acceptable explanation.
"How about this for an explanation: I'm a vampire. So's Stefan. What did you think I was? I was hungry so I took what I needed. It's a skill my sainted brother never mastered, so I was trying to help him," Damon said.
"Yeah, because Stefan cared enough to try not to hurt people. What, you couldn't just drink a blood bag? You had to go accost some woman in a dark alleyway? That's not-" Elena bit off the words. It wasn't human.
Damon laughed. The sound made her blood run cold. "Is that how you think being a vampire works, Elena? That you can get everything you need from a bag? Or you think Stefan's got it all figured out, with his furry smorgasbord? If Stefan's so fucking well adjusted, tell me why he tears people apart. Tell me why he can't control himself." He grasped her arms, giving her a little shake. "Do you think that's what you'll do when you turn? That you'll be like him? Because you can't be, Elena. I wouldn't let you. That isn't living. That's denying what it really means to be a vampire, to be alive."
Of course Elena thought that would be the path she walked. Of course Elena thought she'd live an existence without hurting people. And of course she thought that her love could change Damon, could make him see that he could live that way, too. "If not like Stefan, then like Caroline-"
"Caroline. Oh, Caroline. She tried the Bambi diet, tried the bag thing. But you know where her taste really runs? Soccer moms. Don't know what it is about them, but you should see her go. She's a force of nature. I love to hunt with her. Every night, when I slip out of bed, warm from your arms and into the darkness...God, it's beautiful. Come with us," he said with a feral smile, all fangs, veins swimming below his eyes. Elena wrenched herself out of his grasp.
"You didn't—you couldn't—That's a lie." Caroline, sweet Caroline, she would never...she wasn't like them. And to imagine that he'd left her, creapt from their bed and out to hunt like some beast, and then she'd kissed him, stolen blood still cooling on his lips. It was too much, it was too much to take.
"Is it? Or are you the one lying to yourself? We aren't like you. And Stefan's magical eating plan? Has nearly destroyed him. I was trying to save him tonight, teach him some moderation. Because you know what happens when you deny who you are? You wind up like Stefan, who would've killed that woman tonight; ripped her head off and danced in her blood. Is that what you want for him? For yourself?"
There was blood in his eyes; there was blood on his breath. "You're a monster," she said.
He spread his arms wide, his face utterly transfigured with the blood. "This is who I am. This is what you want to be. Take a good, long look. If you thought the reality was different, then you're a fool."
Damon was right. So was Matt. And Bill Forbes. She'd been lying to herself all along. They were monsters with human faces, parasites that lived on misery and death. Elena stumbled to her car, and Damon didn't move to follow. He simply watched with scarlet eyes as her car screeched into the night.