Whew. Seems like most of you don't hate me for last chapter. I'm relieved-it was tough to write (as was this one), but it just seemed like the right time. I don't want to go all after school special on you, but I do feel the need to remind everyone that suicide isn't glamorous or beautiful, and if you ever feel the need to cut or otherwise harm yourself, you should talk to a trusted friend or a suicide prevention hotline. We're all good on that, right? Right. Let's get back to it, shall we?
The sun was warm. Deep green water cradled her like silk, the gentle current tugging at her hair. Elena wanted to stay here forever, thoughtless and weightless.
A small wave washed over her body and she lifted her head, searching for its source. A boat floated by, unhurried. A handsome, tanned man sat behind the wheel, guiding the vessel with deft movements. A woman sat on the back of the boat, her legs dabbling in the water as they drifted. Her hair was a dark banner on the breeze as she looked over her shoulder at the man and laughed.
"Mom? Dad?" Elena said.
The pair seemed to notice her for the first time. Neither spoke, but their faces split into radiant smiles. Elena began to swim to the boat with strong, sure strokes. But no matter how fast she swam, the boat moved farther and farther away.
"Wait! Wait for me," she begged.
Her father just smiled, that slow, shy smile so like Jeremy's, and shook his head. Her mother blew her a kiss.
Elena strained after them with all her might, but no matter how fast she swam, the boat moved toward the horizon. Exhausted limbs could swim no more, and she sank beneath the tiny, crested waves. As the water swallowed her, she heard her parents' voices raised in gentle, sweet laughter.
Limbs thrashed. Lungs burned for air. She had to make it out of these blue-green depths, had to make it to the surface, but something was holding her, stopping her from swimming, from reaching the air and the sun and-
"Calm down, Elena. I've got you," Damon said, every word replete with relief. He was holding her, confining her, stilling her frantic flailing. He sat propped against the headboard of his massive bed and she was curled in his lap, his arms wrapped tightly around her.
Everything was all right. He was here. She was safe. There was no lake, no consuming waters. Her parents were gone, on the other side of some uncrossable divide. Maybe forever. Something within her ached, but then she remembered. They'd smiled. They'd laughed. Maybe it had just been a dream while she'd hung suspended between life and death, but she didn't think so. They'd see her, seen her choice, and given their blessing. She hoped. She prayed.
Elena squinted against the light. The darkness outside the window told her it was still night, yet even the light cast by the bedside lamp was too bright, too crisp. Everything was too.
Damon brushed the damp hair from her face. "Welcome back. You fucking idiot," he said affectionately.
"I'm not an idiot. It worked, didn't it?" Her tongue was clumsy. It felt thick, striking her mouth in the wrong places. "Didn't it?" she asked, suddenly uncertain. Had the blood he'd given her that morning after Ric's attack been enough? Or had it been too much, when combined with his frantic last efforts? Had it simply healed her and spit her out the other side unchanged and human? Elena turned her arms over, staring at her wrists. They were seamless and perfect, the same familiar roadway of veins still visible beneath the thin skin.
"You tell me." Damon reached for a glass on the nightstand. Even before it entered her view, the smell struck her. That smell was everything; that smell was life itself. There was an undercurrent of metal, but thousands of contradictory top notes exploded in her nose, in her mouth, nearly overwhelming in their diversity and complexity. It smelled of milk and honey and wine and rot and flowers and meat and stars and sex and death; it smelled of every good thing she'd ever known. Every cell of her body ached for what was in that glass. She burned for it, a throbbing need that started in her watering mouth and fell downward to her grasping hands. It further descended to her stomach, hollow with hunger, before finally plunging to a pulsing heat between her thighs. Without a shadow of a doubt, Elena knew she would dissolve into nothingness without that precious substance.
In Damon's hand was a glass of glittering, garnet blood.
"It worked," she breathed, reaching greedily for the glass. Dimly, she was aware that she should be horrified. This was the blood of another thinking, functioning human being, a person who'd thought they were donating to save lives, not to fuel an undead thing. An undead thing like her. But that part of her was subsumed by the greater portion of her who wanted to gulp the blood down in great swallows, bathe in the stuff, let it sink into her veins and make her live again. "Give it to me."
But Damon pulled it away, ignoring her protests. "Focus, Elena. There will be time for that, but you need to focus." He took her face in his hands. Only the familiarity of the gesture and the tenderness in his eyes could distract from her need.
"Focused," she promised, covering his hand with one of her own.
"Liar," he smiled. The smile drifted away. "Why did you do it? How could you? Now, of all times."
She blinked at him. "Didn't you see my note? I left it on the-"
"Yeah, I got it. 'You jump, I jump.' But I didn't jump. No one was jumping, and then you went and belly flopped off a cliff," he said, fingers digging into her cheeks.
Truly, Elena tried to focus on Damon. This was serious. She knew all the things she should say, about how she loved him and wanted to be with him forever and always, but she couldn't think of anything besides the precious glass so near at hand. If she could just lean a little farther, she could almost reach it...
She wrenched herself back to the moment. "I love you. I did it because I love you. I want to be with you—really with you, as your equal—until the end. Whenever that is. I hope it's not soon; I hope it's not tomorrow. But if it is, it'll be okay. Because we'll go down together, and find each other again on the other side."
Elena could see the mesh of tiny capillaries in the whites of his wide eyes, the delicate veins that carried stolen nourishment. "That," he said slowly, "is the single dumbest thing I've ever heard."
In that moment, Elena knew pain as she'd never known it before. It tore through her, a million times worse than any blade. He hated her, he didn't want to spend forever with her, he wished she'd stayed a disposable human—but he spoke again. "It's also the most amazing thing I've ever heard. I can't believe you would do that. For me," he said wonderingly.
The broken places inside her mended at once. "Of course I would. I love you."
"I love you." He kissed her, slow and lingering. When he pulled away, his face was somber. His eyes lingered on her lips, slowly raising to meet her eyes. "It's not too late to turn back. You can still...you can still go, Elena. I wouldn't blame you. I wouldn't." His voice broke, a wordless little grunt that coming from anyone else would have been called a sob.
Elena didn't understand. What was he talking about? Of course it was too late. You can still go. Oh, hell no. After all this, she wasn't going anywhere. "Who are you and what have you done with Damon Salvatore?"
"Be serious, Elena."
"Now I know you're not Damon Salvatore. Since when are you ever serious? And since when would you ever let me die?" she asked. Honestly. Of all the times to turn serious—or to grow a conscience—Damon had to choose this one?
"I'd follow you. Once this was over, once I knew Stefan was safe...well, we could find each other that way, too." He swallowed hard, eyes searching hers desperately. "It would be better than watching you tear yourself apart over being a vampire, if this isn't what you want. I thought I could stand you hating me, so long as you were alive. But I can't. I can't have you hating me. Or yourself. I'll still always choose you, it's just...different now. Different choices."
Elena couldn't help but smile. It was her turn to stroke his cheek. "You don't think I thought this through before I climbed into the bathtub with the razor? I'm ready. I'm scared half to death—the other half of me is starving—but I'm ready. I want this. For you. For me. For us."
He struggled for words and came up empty. He kissed her, as he'd kissed her that night on the porch a lifetime ago, as if she were made of glass. "For old time's sake," he murmured. Then he pressed the glass into her waiting hands.
The light glinted through the viscous blood and turned it to rubies. Elena stared into the depths, as if she would see the future there. But the sluggish liquid didn't show her who she'd become once she drank, didn't give any hint of whether she would still be herself. There were no answers there, and the smell kept rolling off the blood in waves and her stomach cramped in hunger. She drank.
Elena nearly spat it out. The cold, thick stuff coated her mouth unpleasantly and tasted...well, it tasted like blood. Her stomach roiled, her mostly-human body trying to reject the foreign invader. She coughed, some of the blood splattering her lips and chin. Damon, obviously prepared for every contingency, snagged a white silk handkerchief from the nightstand, delicately dabbing at the red speckles.
"Just choke it down this once, and it'll all change. It'll never be like this again. It'll be...God, I can't even describe it. You'll see. Your body's confused, it doesn't know what it needs. Hold your nose and get it down." His eyes lit up. "Or I could bring you someone-"
Elena slammed the rest of the blood back. It was easier this time, tastes differentiating themselves from the cloying metallic tang. It tasted of green growing things; it tasted of sunshine. It tasted of life. Elena fell forward, her forehead resting on Damon's shoulder. He took the empty tumbler from her, enveloping her in his embrace.
"It's over, right? It's done? I'm a..." No. She had to say the word. This was what she was now. She refused to wind up a broken thing like Stefan, refused to despise what she was. She'd chosen this, chosen the bloodline, chosen the immortality, chosen Damon. She had to accept everything that came with it. "I'm a vampire?" she asked in a small voice.
Damon slid an arm under her knees and rose, holding her effortlessly in his arms. He took a few steps. "See for yourself," he said.
But Elena didn't want to see. It was one thing to do what needed to be done to survive, it was another to see those vampiric features overtake her own, change her. She didn't feel any different. Maybe a little tired, a little weak, a little overwhelmed by the light and the sound of their clothes rustling and the breeze outside and the fire crackling below, but she was still herself. How could everything change when she felt so ordinary?
The floor was cold under her feet as Damon stood her upright. He stood between her and the mirror, and she stared fixedly at his chest. She wasn't ready. "I just...I just need a minute. Just give me a-" she broke off in a squeak as Damon buried his face against her hair. He inhaled deeply, savoring her strange new scent.
When he pulled away, his face had changed. Elena stared up at him. For once, she wasn't trying to see past the blood to the man beneath. No, she saw the blood and the veins and saw only a predator. And that feral, beautiful face called to something inside her like a wolf's cry. Their lips collided fiercely, and as her tongue flicked against his fangs, she felt the change as her own predator came to join its mate.
It started with a pressure that built behind her eyes, then crawled down her cheeks. The skin of her face tingled and twitched madly, like the aftershocks of an orgasm. And there was an instant of pain, a tiny rush of blood, and an instant of relief as fangs—her fangs—tore free.
Damon's fingers traced her cheekbones, trailed along her lips. "Beautiful," he said simply.
He stepped aside, and Elena caught sight of the two of them in the mirror. She gasped. They were beautiful, her body naked and pale against his stark black clothes, both their faces covered in masks of lacy veins, eyes beating red with the blood that sustained them. And when she smiled, her fangs caught the light. She'd once thought him a dark god, a creature spun of fury and vengeance. Now she was every bit the shadowy goddess he deserved.
They groped for each other, but froze before they could reach their destination. There was a sharp rapping on the door. "Everything okay?" Stefan asked. "I just woke up, and I smell blood."