Author's note: Hi again, everyone! Sorry for the delay with this chapter. I made a promise to myself that I'd finish Midsummer by the end of the summer (although it's not done yet, I'm determined to get everything with it completed by the autumnal equinox), and since the last chapter ended in a relatively peaceful place, I thought it would okay to divert my attention for a little while.
I spent some lovely time at the beach, which always makes me feel super-inspired!
After the initial bout of questions and their impromptu pizza party celebrating what Anna deemed their 'Yay We're Alive' status, Damon, Elena, and Bonnie snuck away into the library to discuss the turn of events and compare notes, as the only three temporally displaced persons in the household. Although they were aware that the vampiric element would almost certainly be able to overhear them, at least being in a separate room physically should enable them to have a much-needed discussion without constant interruptions.
Perhaps it was time to bring others in on their secret, anyway, and this current group at least seemed determined to help.
"What do you think your mention of 'whistle' was about?" Elena asked, happy that someone else was getting mysterious messages from that strange, disembodied plane.
"I'm not sure," Bonnie said, frowning. "But Grams told me about some divining aids I could use to try to suss it out."
"Do you think they'd work for me, too?" Elena asked hopefully.
"I don't know, miss Water Witch," Bonnie smirked teasingly. "I guess we'll have to try and find out. Grams also said that divination and clairsentience were part of the water spectrum, so as limited as your access is to that now, I'm sure it'll be better than nothing."
"Always, always, always left out of witchy-woo club," Damon said with the most dramatic of all sighs. "Maybe I'll be like Stef, and just rearrange my hair whenever I have to deal with the disappointment."
"I don't think the ozone layer could handle both Salvatore brothers exhausting that level of hair product," Elena smirked. "Really, you're saving the planet by resisting."
"You see? I provide brilliant, free entertainment, and I'm an actual, planet-saving superhero," Damon announced in mock-exasperation. "None of you appreciate me enough."
Elena allowed her hand to slowly slither the expanse of Damon's chest all the way to cup his face, leaning in to whisper sultrily into his ear, "I know one way to show my appreciation…," prompting his pupils to immediately dilate with desire as he pulled her flush against him.
"Please, stop," Bonnie deadpanned, looking horrified. "I'm still here, and there's been enough potential for trauma for one day." She narrowed her eyes with suspicion as they both separated with a laugh, trying to play it off as a prank, but she knew better. "Maybe next time, you'll listen to me and keep a steady supply of your blood in Elena, instead of waiting to play Human and Vampire," she sassed at Damon.
"You told her?" Damon asked Elena, eyes widening in betrayal.
"No, you just did," Bonnie smirked, then grew immediately stern. "Seriously, though. We can't have any more teenage mishaps, so keep it in your pants, please."
"I don't think it was a total loss," Elena winced. "We found out that my first trip predicted Anna's participation – and her trustworthiness. I said the exact words I'd end up repeating at her doorstep later – 'Anna help' – and now with this strange poem… We'll have to try to analyze it later."
"And my mysterious 'whistle' reference," Bonnie frowned. "I guess we should be grateful that my 'trip' only lasted for a few minutes. Grams said I almost set Stefan on fire."
"And considering that his hair's consists almost entirely of aerosol, he would have gone up in flames immediately," Damon quipped smugly. We should all be grateful that I can't de-merge, too. Sexy as this body is, it's still a killing machine, especially back then," he nodded lightly, though both Elena and Bonnie could hear an undercurrent of self-admonishment in his tone.
"What makes you think you can't?" Bonnie asked through narrowed eyes, skepticism evident on her voice. "We just haven't triggered it."
"Then you should really get on finding out what it is, so we don't, or the body count in Mystic Falls might start growing like Stef's carbon footprint," he winced.
"I don't use that much hairspray!" Stefan growled from the parlor, though only Damon heard him, prompting a snicker.
"We'd get you back," Elena said softly, taking his hand. "You never would have hurt me, even then. I know that now," she breathed, meeting his suddenly vulnerable gaze, that felt so seen and understood and overwhelmed that it had to look away. She placed both hands on his cheeks, prompting him to look at her again, to feel the truth of the words in her eyes. "I just wish I knew it then, too."
"As long as you know it now," he whispered, taking one of her hands, and placing a kiss on her palm.
"Can we please focus?" Bonnie asked, trying to sound stern, though she was secretly touched by her friends' emotional display – relieved that all her friends were safe and sound and so very alive.
"I'll take daily doses of Damon's blood," Elena cleared her throat, flustered and a little embarrassed.
"It can still be during Human and Vampire," Damon leered, not embarrassed in the least.
"Well, we all know what the obvious permanent solution to this is, right?" Bonnie suggested logically, crossing her arms over her chest, hoping to please, for the love of all that is sanity-saving, lead the topic of conversation away from her friends playing Human and Vampire, before the mental image is horribly embedded in her brain forever.
"Me turning Elena, because then my blood would become an everlasting part of her," Damon replied impatiently, as though she was missing something patently obvious. "But that's going to just invite the sire bond again. This is why we wanted someone else to do it, if it came to that."
"Actually, I may have an idea on how to break the sire –" Bonnie dropped her voice, leaning in conspiratorially to speak in a voice barely rising above a whisper, only to be interrupted by an alarmed Elena.
"No! Nonono, don't say out it out loud!" Elena all but screamed adamantly, placing a hand over each of her interlocutors' mouths, only partly aware of how insane her behavior must have looked, but entirely not caring.
"What? Why not?" Damon asked in amusement after removing Elena's hand, to press a kiss into the pulse point of her palm, profound confusion written all over his features otherwise.
"Think about it," Elena replied despite the shiver coursing through her as she took her hands back, forcing her tone to stay calm and measured through even breaths. "We planned to keep the tomb shut –"
"What!?" Anna interrupted hotly, blurring into the room; a feeling of deep betrayal written on her face.
"Relax, we're opening it," Damon calmed her with a roll of his eyes.
"Because we have to – because it's apparently a Fixed Point," Elena continued trying to stress her point. "Not opening it would create a paradox, as we've so annoyingly learned, and keep learning," she muttered.
"This is the weirdest conversation I've ever been privy to, and I spent seventy years listening to the insane ramblings of actual mad scientists," Enzo remarked with trace amusement, having finally raided a pantry filled with non-expired snacks for the first time in this millennium, and popping another pretzel in his mouth. Bonnie secretly sighed in relief that she wouldn't have to take this bag away, at least.
"Then we decide that someone other than Damon turns me, to avoid triggering the sire bond" Elena continued, her arms held dramatically wide in demonstration to really emphasize the importance of her point. Why was no one seeing this very obvious pattern? "And what happens? Boom. Damon has to turn me. No more plans. Just do it," Elena stated emphatically. "But don't talk about it first. Just," she sighed, sounding almost defeated. "Keep it to yourself."
"Well, obviously we weren't going to tell you, anyway, or it wouldn't work," Bonnie chided, smiling at Elena sympathetically.
"Just don't tell anyone. Don't say it out loud," Elena followed up quickly, her voice a hushed whisper. She appeared very distraught by this. Damon and Bonnie looked at her sympathetically, both wondering if her eccentric behavior was perhaps the result of prolonged exposure to the so-called 'Forms.'
"That's not how reality works, Elena," Damon smirked, though it didn't hold any malice. Instead, he pulled her onto his lap to stop her frantic pacing and pressed a soft kiss into her temple.
"Just humor me," she breathed into his neck, allowing herself to be held and comforted, running a hand through his raven locks to comfort him in return, though he didn't seem to need it nearly as much at the moment. "Please?"
"Fine," Bonnie agreed, with an affectionate roll of her eyes. Let it never be said that her friends weren't strange. It's not like she needed their cooperation for what she had planned, anyway.
That night, everyone elected to stay over at the Boarding House – there was certainly enough room. After their brush with near-death and devastation, they wanted to cling to each other and some normalcy – a feeling of safety – even of most weren't quite ready to admit that this was the case yet.
Elena stayed in Damon's room, though they both remembered it as 'theirs' from their life together in future years. They lay cuddled in each other's arms, scarcely having let go of each other for more than a few minutes after the ordeal in the Lockwood tunnels.
Their lead was gone into the identity of the mysterious traveler who followed them was gone.
But they were all alive.
Bonnie's magic had receded to near-beginner levels, with a sliver of hope in the silver lining that she got to keep all the vast knowledge she obtained over the years.
But they were all alive.
It was early still, but they retired hours ago just to be together – to celebrate each other's survival – to bask in the happiness of having this chance, when a series of crashes were heard down in the parlor.
"If Saint Stefan spilled anything from my stash on any of my rugs again, I'll make those forehead wrinkles permanent," Damon growled.
"How are you going to do that?" Elena yawned, feeling sated from her favorite cardiovascular workout ever.
"I'm going to found Counsel for Critters – legal representation for all the cute little animals of Mystic Falls. I'll just manipulate one of the pageant contestants to make protecting them her pet cause– and since Steffie has all this anxiety about breaking laws, he'll be caught in a perpetual loop of indecision," he said smugly. "You hear that, Stef? Stay away from my stash!"
"Let him be," she stretched lazily, gracelessly plopping on top of him to wrap her arms around his neck and press a kiss to his lips. "His whole world changed today."
"Yeah," he said sympathetically. "He lost you."
"But he got his brother back," she softened, now considerably more alert. "And we both know that matters to him a lot more."
No longer concerned with the fatalities of the Boarding House's antiquities, Damon and Elena resumed their earlier activity for several more rounds, until sleep beckoned them both.
Elena was back on the Astral Plane with the mysterious girl – except – no, this was a memory. Now that she was safely back in her body, lying cocooned in her beloved's arms, her subconscious felt secure to explore – to find the missing links of her strange journey.
The girl looked at her with astounding bravery, though the sadness in her clear, blue eyes was penetrating. It was so unfair that someone as young as she had to face those difficulties. Everything about her countenance sought to protect herself – even the way she wrapped her flame wings about her small frame. Such beautiful wings, with such exquisite, fiery-feathers.
Hope is the thing with feathers…
Hope is the thing with feathers…
HOPE is the thing with feathers…
Elena shot out of bed, breathing heavily, her mind absolutely reeling. The cocktail of emotions she felt were peculiar – she felt at once elated to have solved at least part of the mystery, yet anguished at what it most likely entailed.
"What is it?" Damon asked, alarmed, awakened by her panicked state. "Are you okay?" he breathed, wrapping her in his arms.
"I know why we have to open the tomb," she said with a slight tremble to her suddenly alert voice, a choked laugh sneaking through her defenses. "And you're not going to like it."
Yep, a few of you guessed it already – our mystery girl from the Astral Plane is none other than Hope Mikaelson! :D More on that in the next chapter.
Next chapter, we'll check in with everyone else, too! :D
Elena's insistence on the plan not being said out loud as just a fourth wall-breaking "show, don't tell" joke. :D But really, that pattern happens a lot in storytelling.
This is kind of a quieter chapter, where everyone kind of deals with the aftermath of a big event, but you need those, too. It will continue in the next chapter or two as this arc properly closes and then next one is set up.
I miss this story a lot, so I thought I'd come back and write the chapter that wraps up this arc, before the next one inevitably begins! I want to finish Midsummer first, and then I'll likely split my attention between Timey Wimey and With Great Power equally, with a new story potentially on the horizon, too, because I clearly have no self-control about starting new WIPs. :D
I just wanted to leave all you beautiful souls with a little affirmation. You're lovely, and delightful, just as you are – but since we're all in a constant state of flux, you frequently have the power to decide how you want to change – and one of the best ways to do that is by prioritizing good mental health through self-care, since once that deteriorates, it's very difficult to restore. So, make time for fun, set good boundaries, and love yourself with just as much zest as you love others. :D
Much love, all! :D
