"Welcome to the Denver Blood Center! Are you here to make a donation?" the smiling grandmother behind the counter asked.
"Why, yes. Yes we are. But not blood." Damon reached into his breast pocket and produced his checkbook. "Because of my...condition, I've benefited from the blood bank for years. Thought it was about time to start giving back." In his old-fashioned copperplate handwriting, Damon wrote an amount with several zeroes. The woman's eyes widened. Damon started to slide the check across the counter, but stopped abruptly, giving the woman a disarming smile. "Do you think we could see the back? It'd just mean so much to me."
Elena felt the force of his compulsion, sensed the gentle, focused push of suggestion. The woman's gaze turned vague, but snapped back to reality. She smiled. "Oh, I think we can arrange that. Follow me. Your friend, too." Fascinating. As they walked into the secure area of the blood bank, she spared a fleeting thought for Brandon, wondered if he'd become any less pathetic after her first fumbling attempt at compulsion. Probably not.
It had been Damon's idea to come to the blood bank before they picked up Jeremy. They were down to their last few bags of blood, and since they needed to make a quick exit from Denver and burn rubber back to Mystic Falls, a quick pit stop now would save time later. They both would have been happy to get blood directly from the source, but even once Jeremy knew the truth, he probably wouldn't be ready to see his sister snacking on a gas station attendant.
Ever since Damon had rebuffed her advances the night before, the pair had been all business. They spoke of plans, they spoke of strategies and tactics. They spoke of how to handle Kol ("No vampire stuff—we don't want him blabbing to Klaus," Damon had reminded her), how they'd handle Jeremy ("Don't get into a pissing match with Kol over him. We can't kill Kol, so don't try. This is about getting Jeremy and getting gone," Elena warned). They'd spoken not a word about themselves or where this mess left them. If there even was a "them" now.
He treated her as if she had died. It wasn't her fault he couldn't accept that this aspect of her was just as real as the soft, weeping Elena Gilbert. Everything she was now had always been within her, just hidden under layers of weakness. Even if she came back from this, turned it back on and returned to the tears and the pain (and the laughter and the love), this was still a part of her he had to accept. By choosing him, she'd chosen to embrace the darkest parts of her. If they were ever going to return to being a "them" again, he'd have to accept those shadowy places. But that was his problem. For now, she was concerned about securing their blood supply, securing Jeremy, and getting back to Mystic Falls before someone found the stake and they all wound up dead.
It was early, and the storage area was nearly empty. The woman was babbling about plasma this, hemoglobin that, but Damon sent her away with another nudge of compulsion. Elena held her massive purse open while Damon loaded it with armfuls of blood.
"After you die, your body stops producing new blood. By feeding, you're replenishing the blood in your veins. Otherwise, you run dry. Desiccation. You've seen that—not pretty." Damon ducked into the freezer to grab some O-negative from the back. "Little thing like you, you probably have about eight and a half, nine pints of blood. To stay at full strength, you need to drink four or five pints a day. You can get away with less, but there are consequences."
Elena considered. From a human perspective, it was a lot of blood; Elena vaguely remembered from an old episode of CSI that humans died after losing just forty percent of their blood. But for a vampire, it seemed like such a small indulgence, so few moments of pleasure and completeness. Why stop when it felt so good? "Does it hurt if you drink more? It's not like vampires get fat or anything."
Damon tucked a few extra bags into his jacket pockets and closed the freezer. "There's no physical drawback, no. But it's a pain in the ass. You either have to find and compel multiple people, which can take a lot of time, or hide bodies and keep on the move. Or you can knock off blood banks, but you can only do that so often."
The grandmother behind the counter waved cheerfully as they stepped into the chill Colorado morning. "So you've decided it's time to give me Vampire 101? Will there be a test later?" Elena asked.
"Maybe if I'd covered more of the basics, you wouldn't have wound up with chunks of Bonnie caught between your teeth," Damon said. "And maybe you wouldn't have blown through fifteen blood bags in a day."
"Ouch." The barb bounced off her armor, meaningless. They climbed into the car. "Bonnie's death wasn't a result of anything you did or didn't do. I killed her." All the vampire lessons in the world couldn't have tamped down that feral fury, that rage and protectiveness that had overwhelmed her. It had been an unstoppable force that knew no reason or logic. Oh, perhaps she could have knocked Bonnie out, held her down, incapacitated her in some way. There were other options, but a showdown with Bonnie would have been inevitable. Bonnie's abrupt death had likely saved both sides the casualties of a protracted war.
Elena idly wondered what she would have done that night had she still been human. Would she have gone so far to protect him even then? It was so hard to remember what being human had felt like, though it had been only a handful of days since her transformation. To be so weak and base and temporal was like a dream; this was the reality and always would be. It was pointless speculation, and she brushed the thoughts aside.
Damon hesitated for an instant before responding. "I leave the blame and guilt to you and Stefan," Damon said lightly. Elena didn't believe him. He felt it every bit as much as they did (as she had), but rather than turning his guilt into a gnawing cancer like Stefan did, Damon instead lashed out, painted his pain on the world in blood red letters. Even the night before, hadn't he taken out his pain out on her by pushing her away rather than taking some cold comfort in her body? Not that she cared, save for the dull ache it had left between her legs and the gnawing emptiness. But Damon's coping mechanisms were beside the point-he had no reason to feel guilt for this. Killing Bonnie had been exactly what she wanted to do at that moment. "I'm more results-oriented—just trying to make sure it doesn't happen again."
"It'll happen again," Elena said as she began to transfer the blood from her purse to the cooler. "You can't protect me from everything. Even if I don't try to, chances are good I'll slip up during feeding. Or kill someone intentionally. Even Matt has blood on his hands now. None of us are going to get out of this clean."
"That ship sailed a long time ago," Damon agreed. "We're all going to get good and dirty before it's finished. But there's no need to add another weight to your load because of sloppiness or carelessness."
But right now, there was no weight. There was no load. It was only if she gave in and unleashed all those emotions again that the burden of her conscience mattered in the least. Could she bear the load? Elena didn't have an answer, but she didn't need one yet. There was still so much that needed to be done yet, and emotions would only be a liability.
Elena was surprised when the Johnsons told her Jeremy would be at the batting cage this morning. While Jeremy had played Little League, he'd always been the kid in the outfield more interested in picking dandelions than catching pop flies. Damon denied that the compulsion had anything to do with his sudden affinity for sports.
For once, things went according to plan. Kol had been there with Jeremy when they arrived, offering advice on Jeremy's stance (apparently he needed to choke up more on the bat). Once he caught sight of Damon and Elena, however, Kol had immediately revealed his true colors. Jeremy's look of hurt when Kol declared they weren't "buds" was unmistakable. Elena had grabbed Jeremy and hung back from the fight, ready to spring to action if things looked dire, but otherwise content to let Damon take the lead, to mask her true nature from Kol. There was no need for her intervention. Oh, sure, Kol shattered a few of Damon's ribs, but that was entirely within the bounds of acceptable damage. And Damon got his revenge in short order, staking the Original with a shattered Louisville Slugger. Leaving the bloody temporary corpse behind, they whisked Jeremy to the car. Fast. Easy. Elena had barely opened her mouth during the whole exchange, which was for the best.
"What are you guys doing here? And where are we going?" Jeremy asked. "I mean, I'm glad to see you and all, but I promised the Johnsons I'd mow the lawn this afternoon. I gotta get back."
Elena turned from the front seat to examine the boy. They'd been feeding him well—Jeremy had filled out and bulked up, strong and healthy. And there were even the faint beginnings of a tan, something she hadn't seen on him since long summers at the lake so many years ago, before he'd retreated to his room and his music and his pot. There was a pang of something brief and painful as she looked at him, so like his old self, so like a normal teenage boy. Elena immediately moved to suppress the aching, pathetic love and sorrow, but the stab of weakness would not go quietly. It wasn't time for this. Not yet. She ruthlessly forced the escaped feeling down. There. Better.
"We're going back to Mystic Falls, Jer. Don't you miss home?" Elena asked.
Jeremy looked stricken, the last traces of happiness fleeing. "No, I don't. I came here and I've never looked back. I don't want to go home, Elena, I can't go home." His breath came in rasping pants, his eyes wide. "I can't look back, I can't go back to Mystic Falls. Turn the car around. We have to go back."
"What's wrong with him?" Elena asked Damon, frowning back at her brother. "It's okay, Jer. We won't let anything happen to you in Mystic Falls." A lie. No one was safe from Mystic Falls, but Jeremy belonged to that place as much as she did. He was a Gilbert, and his place was in the darkness.
"I can't go back there. I won't go back there. Let me out, let me go," Jeremy pleaded, scrabbling at the sides of the car, as if looking for a door handle.
"Fuck," Damon said. The tires screeched as he pulled the car onto the shoulder. "Ruptured spleens always make me stupid. It's the goddamn compulsion."
"Oh, that's all? I can do it," Elena said, too softly for Jeremy to hear. Jeremy was making a low noise, a keening deep in his throat. Another pang shot through Elena. Another suppression.
"The hell you can. There's an art to this, Elena, you don't just go stirring shit around in his brain and hope for the best. And he's been compelled so many times it's like a house of cards in there—one wrong move and it all comes tumbling down." He craned around until he was facing Jeremy.
"Hey. Jer. Over here, Jeremy." He whistled softly and Jeremy made the mistake of looking at him. "Much better. It's okay for you to go back. You had a good time in Denver, but it's time to go back to Mystic Falls. You know your sister and I are trying to help you, and you're going to trust us a little bit here. Okay?"
Elena watched Jeremy, watched the blind panic fade to terrible blankness as he parroted Damon's words back to him before the light dawned in his eyes again. "Maybe it is time to go back. I really liked Denver, but...I've really missed everyone. Tell me, how's Bonnie doing? Is she...is she seeing anyone new?" There was such hope in his eyes. Such lingering puppy love for the girl he'd grown up with, the witch he'd fought beside, the woman he loved.
Damon and Elena exchanged a look. It was time. She'd have to find a way to make him understand. Elena unbuckled her seat belt and climbed into the backseat beside Jeremy. Damon turned back onto the highway. "A lot's happened since you left," she said softly. "Let me start at the beginning. It all started the night before you left..."
It should have been an easy story to tell. It was all just images flickering against the wall, meaningless and distant. But it wasn't so simple. Jeremy didn't hear the full story, but as she outlined their love, the truth of the bloodline, her choices and Bonnie's death, every moment of the past weeks replayed in her mind and in her heart with startling clarity. Lips meeting with electrifying intensity on the porch, a declaration of fear and a leap of faith in the firelight, the instant she'd realized this was love, the night she'd given herself to him body and soul. The choice to became what she most feared and hated—an insensate, brutish creature-out of love for him. It was her story—their story—and she couldn't pretend that this story had no meaning for her. It did.
Every word was harder to speak than the last as confusion, horror, betrayal, and loss played across Jeremy's face, each in turn. He didn't rage, he didn't yell, which was almost worse. She hid nothing from him, confessed that it had been she who murdered Bonnie. Damon didn't try to intervene, didn't try to save her this time. She told him about the switch, told him about the ring, why they'd come and their hopes he could help contact Rose and find a way to save them all. They'd just crossed the Kansas state line when she finished the long, twisted tale by explaining who Kol was and what he'd been doing in Denver. Jeremy said nothing. The silence endured.
"Jer?" Elena asked. She didn't know why, but she reached for him. It seemed right to hold him, to comfort him—wasn't that what she was supposed to do? He was her brother, the boy who had lost nearly everyone he'd ever loved. Except her. She had to convince him that he hadn't lost her—not forever, not for good. She was still his sister, and she would still protect him and care for him, in her own way, for as long as he lived. But he shied away from her touch, wouldn't let her near.
"I was so happy here, Elena. I was so happy." Jeremy shook his head and watched as the mountains behind them retreated into blue smudges in the distance.
There was a tickle on her cheek. Elena raised her hand to brush the annoyance away, but stared at her fingers in disbelief.
Tears. Her fingers were wet with tears.