Over 900 reviews. I don't even have words for what each and every one of them mean to me. Thank you. When I beat myself up over a chapter that didn't come out quite right, when I don't want to write at all, when I'm just having a bad day, they mean the world to me. To everyone who's ever taken a moment to drop a review, thank you, from the bottom of my heart. On a less sappy note, hiatus! Ends! Tomorrow! 'bout time, huh? How about a little celebratory road trip?
Two miles down, sixteen hundred to go.
The top on the Camaro was down, the wind raking their hair with cold claws. Music blared, something with squealing guitars, so loud it thrummed in Elena's chest and made her ears ache. A cooler stuffed full of blood sat in the backseat next to Damon's leather overnight bag, loaded with his black t-shirts and whatever clothing Elena had managed to scrounge from the boarding house. She couldn't go home, after all; there was no one to invite her in.
"Sorry Jer, things have been crazy. Tell me about your new friend." Elena looked at the text, finger hovering over the "send" key. Not quite right. "And I want a picture of the puppy, lol." There. Better. Send. She probably should have called him, but it was too risky. He knew her better than anyone; he'd hear the false notes in her laughter, the hollowness in her words. Elena didn't mind telling Jeremy—telling him the truth—but it had to be at the right time. He might do something rash if he found out now, might run or resist their efforts to extricate him from Kol. Worse yet, he might tell Kol his sister was coming, and that wouldn't do at all.
Damon's eyes were fixed on the endless ribbon of highway, one hand resting on the wheel, the other dangling over the car door. "Why are we doing this, Elena?" he asked, the quiet words almost lost in the wind and the music.
"We went over this," Elena said, brow furrowing with puzzlement. She spoke slowly, enunciating each word, just in case Damon hadn't understood the first time. "We're saving Jeremy. If Kol's there, he's in danger," Elena said.
"That's not what I meant." Damon punched the radio off. Elena missed the steady throb of the bass. "You could be halfway to Tijuana right now, leaving all this Klaus bullshit behind. But instead we're driving halfway across the country to save Jeremy from his own characteristically idiotic choice in friends. Why?"
Elena shrugged. "Why did you save Stefan from the tomb vampires? You were switched off then."
"I was only sort of switched off," Damon said, still staring straight ahead. "After we opened the tomb, it started coming back. Didn't happen all at once. I guess I realized I had to have something to live for besides her, and you and Stefan just...snuck in, despite my best efforts." The engine roared as he sank the pedal to the floor, whizzing past some kid on a crotch rocket.
So that was when it had happened. Elena had always wondered the exact moment he'd come back, when he'd turned it back on and turned into the man she'd loved. But if feeling had crept back in that long ago, that meant... "So when you killed my brother, when you fed me blood—you had emotions when all of that happened," Elena asked with clinical interest.
"Emotions on or off, I'm still a dick," Damon pointed out. True. "And I never would have done those things if I'd been switched off—hell, they were the only reason I did them. I was furious at Katherine so I hurt Jeremy, and I was terrified to lose you so I fed you my blood. But we're not talking about me right now."
It made sense. Damon's love had always caused far more damage than his dispassion ever could. For her, it was a simpler story. "I'm keeping my options open." That startled him enough for him to tear his eyes off the road, to finally look at her, eyebrows raised. "If I turn my back on the people I loved, I can't ever come back. The idea of turning it back on is already...distasteful. If I knew I would have to deal not only with the guilt, but also the loss of all my friends and family? It would be impossible to come back." She watched the trees flicker past outside the window. "I haven't decided what I'm doing yet. But I'm not ready to close the door. And if I do turn it back on, I know I'll need Jer in my life. Just like I'll need you." His face softened. "Tijuana will still be there if I decide the other way."
Damon turned back to the road. Elena turned the music back on and let the drums pound against her.
The rolling hills of Virginia rose into the older, wilder crags of West Virginia before smoothing into the gentle green swells of Kentucky. Elena's phone buzzed steadily with texts from Jeremy. The dog was suitably floppy eared and adorable, and Kol was apparently an exchange student from England Jeremy had met at an art class. Right.
"Apparently Jeremy missed the day we talked about stranger danger in school," Elena said. "But he's okay."
"He can always cut Kol's head off if he gets into trouble; it worked last time. Always wondered what happens if you do it to an Original, though," Damon said thoughtfully.
Elena leaned into the backseat to grab a pouch of B-negative. "Want one?"
"Going through those a little fast, aren't you?" Damon asked, glancing at the crumpled pile of empty bags at her feet.
She shrugged. How was she supposed to know what normal was for a vampire? She was hungry, so she drank. When the warmth fled and the hunger returned, she did it again. She'd even managed to figure out how to draw the little tube from the stopper without spattering herself with blood—progress. So what if the cold began to steal back into her bones a bit more quickly after every bag, if the rush of pleasure and the blissful blankness was just a bit less? There was always more. "You might be right. Maybe we should save our supply. Seen any hitchhikers?"
Damon held his hand out. "Give me one. And tell me you packed some bourbon."
Night fell. They stopped for gas just after crossing the river into Indiana. The inky skies began to spit rain and Damon closed the roof of the convertible. When they returned to the road, the car felt too close, too confining. Elena rolled the window down, letting her fingers dabble in the damp night air. Even with the constant squawk of the music, it was still too quiet.
The miles blurred together. Signs whipped past: "Welcome to Illinois, the Land of Lincoln!" "Now entering the 'Show-Me State.'" "Welcome to Kansas." Damon responded if she spoke to him, but mostly kept to himself, his fingers tapping staccato rhythms on the wheel, gaze fixed on the taillights ahead of him.
Elena had been puzzling over his behavior. Since she'd hidden her emotions away, he'd seemed loath to even look at her; he certainly hadn't touched her, not even an accidental brush of hands. Yet he'd lied for her, protected her from the reactions of her friends. Why? She'd been prepared to take it on—there was no reason not to own her actions. Besides, the truth would come out sooner or later. If Stefan didn't spill the beans, Elena knew she'd go blubbering to Caroline the moment her switch was back on, begging for forgiveness. He'd only bought her a temporary reprieve, and when she needed it the least.
"Why did you tell them you killed Bonnie?" Elena asked. "You didn't have to do that."
He fiddled with the windshield wipers, searched the dial for another radio station. Elena waited. There was no rush; Denver was still seven hundred miles away.
"They'd never look at you the same way if they knew. They might forgive you—Ric and Caroline, at least; dunno about the boy scout. But every time they looked at you, they'd see her blood on your hands, on your face, imagining what it looked like when she died." The windshield wipers whispered. A car honked in the distance. "Like you said, you'll need them when you come back. It's just easier this way. For everyone."
"Easier for you, too?" Elena asked.
He smiled thinly. "Just playing to form, Elena. Just being who they expect me to be—and letting you be who they expect you to be."
They expected her to be kind and forgiving and self-sacrificing; they expected him to be cruel and cold and self-preserving. Turns out they didn't know either of them very well at all.
Damon squinted into the darkness, and Elena followed his gaze. In the distance, there was a sea of red taillights. Traffic was stopped. Elena turned the radio dial until she found a traffic report. A five-car pileup had traffic backed up for miles. "I'll find a detour," Elena said, reaching for her cell phone to amend their route.
Damon rubbed his eyes. "Elena, it's already after midnight. We're three hours out of Denver—if we show up at this hour of the night, we'll just freak everybody out. And I'm fucking tired. Let's just get a motel, wait for this bullshit traffic to clear itself up, and get to Jeremy in the morning."
Well, Elena had ferreted out that Kol hadn't been invited in; Jeremy didn't like having guests to the Johnson's home, apparently. And he'd texted her goodnight hours ago, so he was safe in his bed for now. "Fine. We shouldn't face Kol when we're at less than full strength, anyway," she reasoned.
Damon turned sharply for the exit. "Goodland, Kansas," the sign read.
The motel was one of the anonymous, boxy chains that served the boxy, anonymous people traveling on I-70. The room was filled with the usual dusty bedspreads and inoffensive floral artwork. Elena was instantly bored, wishing they'd found another way to keep going tonight. Anything had to be better than sitting in this tiny, beige room.
Damon approached one of the beds, seizing the corner of the comforter between his thumb and forefinger and ripping it off in a single motion. "Disgusting. They hardly ever wash these things," he muttered, mostly to himself.
Elena pulled the heavy drapes back from the window. People wandered to and from their cars, unloading luggage, unfolding maps. It wouldn't be hard to steal just one away from the crowd, pull him into the darkness. She looked over her shoulder at Damon. "Hungry?" she asked.
"No, and you can't possibly be either. You're going to explode if you keep up that pace. Just lay down and go to sleep," Damon said as he collapsed onto one of the two queen beds.
He was right; she wasn't hungry. But that emptiness which had once been so welcome had begun to chafe, begun to feel as if she were suffocating in her own skin. The hunt, the flash of fangs, the instant of penetration, the rush of blood...it would be something. And she needed something to fill the hollow places inside her.
Elena crossed the room to him. "Okay. If you don't want to hunt, we could find another way to keep ourselves busy." She climbed onto the bed, one knee on either side of his body. Grazing her nails across his chest, she lowered herself to kiss him. He turned his face away.
"I'm tired," he said. His voice was soft, but his tone brooked no argument.
"Oh really?" Elena moved her hand lower. "You don't seem tired-" he seized her hand, forcing it away from him. She blinked down at him, uncomprehending. "What are you doing?"
"I said go to sleep, Elena," he gritted. "We aren't doing this."
Damon had never refused her sex. Ever. On the contrary, she'd sometimes had to push him off after extended lovemaking sessions left her exhausted and sore. Now when she was his equal, when she could match him passion for passion and needed his body so desperately, he would turn her away? "You don't want me?" she asked. "I thought you loved me."
"Don't manipulate me." He sat up abruptly and she tumbled to the side, sprawling on the bed beside him.
"I just need something to help me sleep, Damon. God, I didn't know that was a crime," she said as she climbed to her feet, hands clenching into fists. How fucking dare he act so high and mighty? As if he hadn't tried to get into her pants a hundred times just so he could feel something, even if it was just pure animal lust?
"Sleeping with you like this would be like fucking a stranger. You look like Elena, you sound like her, and sometimes if I close my eyes, I can pretend it's still you. But everything that made Elena who she truly is, everything I loved? That's gone. Until it's back, you'll have to find another goddamn way to sleep." His voice shook, bright blue eyes blazing with loss and longing and for an instant, Elena felt something within her respond in kind, a tender urge to pull him to her breast and stroke his hair and tell them it was still her, that she still loved him and everything would be all right-
Elena shoved the fleeting thoughts away, forcing the traitorous feelings back into the well deep inside her. When love came back, so would loss. So would sorrow and grief and self-loathing and every other thing she couldn't feel, never wanted to feel again. It wasn't worth it.
"You begged me to do this. This was what you wanted," she hissed. He had to be punished, had to pay for bringing those fucking feelings up from the deep. "I am what you made me."
He stood before her in a flash, and the way those eyes burned, the way he stared at her, she was certain he was going to strike her, and madly, she wanted him to, wanted the impact and the sting and the tang of her own blood. But he didn't. He raised his hand, fingers brushing her cheek in that achingly familiar gesture. "You're going to be so sorry for those words when you come back to me, Elena." His lips pressed against her forehead. "Goodnight."
The light flicked off and Damon crawled under the sheets. Elena lay in the other bed and stared at the ceiling until dawn.