Author's note: Thank you for all the beautiful love, everyone!
I'm really pushing my personal boundaries as a writer with this chapter. I've never written a scary scene before, so I hope it comes through well.
So, with that said, this chapter really earns the warning about violence, so a bit of a TW for graphic violence applies. At least the first section. After that, it's all good.
"I swear, Damon, if you mess with the Miss Mystic Falls pageant and rig some dumb new rule to make me say something embarrassing, I'm putting sawdust in your blood bags. Yeah, Anna told me what it does," Elena threatened after Damon insinuated how much fun it would be to introduce some foul play to a pageant in which she didn't even want to participate, then took a bite out of her apple as she walked to the counter to pour herself a glass of water. There was a strange clicking noise.
"Wow! Did Anna actually tell you what it does?" Damon teased dubiously over the phone.
No, she didn't. She just insinuated that it would be really bad when she threatened to do it herself while they were nursing their frustrations with champagne on the night of the nightmare that was Little Miss Miss Mystic Falls.
"Yes, she did," Elena lied, increasingly distracted by the sound. She went to investigate.
"Uh huh," Damon snarked, not believing her for a second. "Ooh, kinky! Wood hurts vampires, Elena. I didn't know you were into that," he purred. "That's okay. We can play. My safe word is You're a Terrible Liar."
Elena smiled and shook her head into the receiver, rolling her eyes, though her mood immediately shifted when she got to the counter. "That's strange," she said approaching the source of the clicking noise. "The compass is moving," she observed, before narrowing her eyes playfully, fighting the hopeful smile that was intent in subtly creeping up her face. "You're not around, are you?"
There was a brief pause before she heard Damon's response, his cadence almost forcefully casual – except she could almost feel the slightest tremor in it, and her anxiety instantly spiked – as though the fear in him transferred to her. "Elena, was that an apple bite I heard earlier? And you didn't even wash it? Ew, groooss."
"Jenna washed them when she brought them home," Elena replied, confused by the abrupt change of subject.
"You should go wash that apple before you take another bite. I insist," he said very seriously.
"I really think we need to have an intervention about your neat-freak tendencies and boundaries," Elena sassed, then let her lips curve into a smile. "Unless you want to extend your services to my room? After I hide all personal items with compromising info, of course. It might even net you an invite," she teased.
"I can't keep talking to you while imagining all those disgusting little germs crawling all over your mouth, ew. You're like a walking petri dish," Damon said, through what sounded like intense wind in the background. "All I can see is them jumping onto the receiver. What if I have to touch your phone?"
"Oh my God, fine!" Elena replied, rolling her eyes. "Where are you, anyway? It sounds like you're going through a tunnel."
As Elena turned on her sink to wash her apple, she heard a completely toneless Damon on the line, careful not to allow the slightest inflection to enter his voice to make it that much harder for supernatural ears to discern. "Elena, listen to me very carefully. Don't make any sudden movements. You need to get out of the house. Now. Very slowly, casually, walk to the nearest exit – door, window – doesn't matter. If you run and make it obvious, whatever vampire is in your house will immediately realize what you're doing and they're faster than you. I'll be right there to get you, okay?"
Now truly afraid, Elena just nodded numbly and turned off her sink before quickly grabbing the wooden spoon, mindful of what he revealed earlier about the material's danger to vampires. "Okay," she said into the phone, trying to sound nonchalant, though the tremble in her voice was obvious. She began a very slow trek to the front door.
"Finally! So back to what I was telling you before, if you stick some wood into a vampire, you can really hurt them. If you stick it into the heart, you kill them," Damon explained a little too cheerfully. It sounded forced to her. Now she knew why.
Elena opened her mouth to reply, before a hand clamped over it, and another pinned her arms to her sides, causing her to drop her phone and the apple, but she was grateful that she managed to hold tight to the spoon. She struggled against the hold for several seconds, before lodging the long end of the spoon into his side. Initially shocked at her strength at being able to impale him, she chalked it up to 'fight or flight' response and angled to get away. It was enough for him to let her go. She seized the opportunity to make a run for it, knowing all sense of subterfuge had gone out the window just as she hoped she would, but he caught her by the arm before she could so much as move a foot away.
She quickly turned to face him; the shock and terror evident in her gaping dark eyes as she took him in.
"Elena! You're a quick learner. Apple doesn't fall too far from the tree, huh?" Her attacker chuckled, gesturing to the discarded fruit rolling away. He removed the spoon from his torso, and threw it across the room, never taking his eyes off her.
"N-noah!" Elena fearfully stuttered, slowly backing away toward the door. Ever since the day they'd met, he'd given her the creeps. The way he seemed to watch her with fascination – the way he'd say her name, as though he caught her in a lie. "I thought you were on your way to the Pacific Northwest to look for Katherine."
"Oh, I was, I was," he allowed. "But then I realized that I was coming to see her empty-handed! Everyone knows that when requesting an audience with the Queen, you need a worthy tribute – and she'd be very interested in you, Elena." He said her name in that peculiar way again – like he had gleefully just discovered some scheme of falsified identity. It brought revolting shivers up her spine.
"H-how did you get in?"
"Your little brother invited me when I delivered your pizza last night. Tsk tsk," he chided. "He should really be more careful with who he invites into the house, with so many vampires afoot. You did tell him about vampires, didn't you, Elena?" he mocked as Elena presumed that he already knew the answer.
Elena swallowed a lump in her throat as she continued to subtly inch toward the door backwards, desperately hoping he didn't intuit her intentions. Maybe she'd be able to make it – just a little bit more. She was about to reach for the handle, when with dizzying speed, Noah blurred toward her and clamped a hand over her mouth again, dragging her toward the kitchen.
At that same moment, her front door was ripped open, Damon on the other side. To Noah, he looked furious – but Elena could see the worry lining the creases of his eyes.
Damon was petrified.
"Salvatore!" Noah beamed. "What fun seeing you here. Would you like to come in?" he mocked, giddy as Damon crashed against the invisible barrier. "Oh, looks like you haven't been invited. What do you think, Elena? Can Damon come in?"
Elena kicked and struggled against his hold, trying desperately to nod, to invite him – anything – but his hand muffled all her cries. In answer to his own question, it moved her head from side to side, joined by his caustic laughter.
"Oh, look! Guess Elena says you can't. Now why don't you go wander off? Elena and I have some business to attend to, right, sweetheart?" Noah asked, forcing Elena's head to nod.
"Hey, dickhead. How about you let her go so that I don't have to rearrange your vertebrae to look like an avant-garde interpretation of Kat's stone cold heart. Steffie's been telling me to channel my rage into art, and I think I want to take up sculpting," Damon snarked in a manner that would have sounded almost bored to anyone who didn't know him.
Noah guffawed. "Yeah, you're so scary from way out there, Salvatore. Really, you're not needed here. Off you go. Go scamper off. This is about me and Katherine – and my gift for Katherine," he said with a leer at Elena before dragging her back toward the kitchen.
Elene tried gesturing for Damon to come inside with her hands, but was quickly blurred out of his line of sight.
"A vervain necklace? How adorable! You really think that's a barrier?" Noah mocked, ripping it off and throwing it across the room. He dragged Elena along as he grabbed a knife from one of the drawers, and pressed her into a wall with his hand still clamped over her mouth. "Oh well, if you insist on sticking around, Salvatore, you're going to get a show," he said, knowing that Damon would hear him, as he held the knife out to Elena, letting his pupils contract with compulsion. "Take this knife and start slitting your wrist. And no screaming!" he sang.
Elena froze. She knew she had no choice but to play along. It might be her only chance at an escape. She took the knife and pressed it to her wrist, desperately hoping that he'd release her for long enough to invite Damon in.
"Deeper," he urged, his voice practically toneless – the ice in it so potent it sent a veritable chill through her veins.
When she hesitated for a second and released an unconscious whimper, he was quick to note her friendship bracelet, promptly ripping that off, as well. "A bracelet, too? Just how much vervain can one person have? I think you might need to see someone about your paranoia about vampires," he said with an eerie smile. "That person is Katherine," he elaborated with a chuckle at his own joke.
Elena's heart thundered in her chest. She only had one layer of protection left – a few leaves she pressed into the pocket of her jeans. She had to sell this. If he trusted her enough to remove his hand from her mouth, she could invite Damon inside, and he'd save her. She took a steadying breath and forced her trembling hand to calm. He continued staring at her – the sudden rage in his gaze flooding her veins with ice anew. "Continue, Elena," he said calmly.
She suppressed a whimper and pressed the knife deeper, fighting every urge to scream at the excruciating pain, the nauseating sight of the skin from her wrist to nearly her elbow bisecting.
Outside, Damon was wracked with hopelessness. He told her – he told her multiple times – to keep more vervain on her and to start fucking drinking it. She drank it, right? She had to have. He had no line of sight from the door or any of the windows to throw something at Noah to incapacitate him – and even if he did, what if he compelled Elena to stay first? He had to act quickly.
The blood gushed from her arm and onto the floor below them. Noah smiled. "Good girl," he said, finally removing his hand to give another command. He took a step back to study her, meeting her gaze with an eager smile. "Now, Elena, I want you to –"
"Damon, co –" Elena yelled, seizing the opportunity, only for Noah to blur across the room to grab a towel and gag her with it, using another to quickly bind her hands behind her back, preventing her from making any gestures that would count as an invitation for the vampire at the house's threshold.
"Uh, uh, uh," he tutted in annoyance, pulling her back flush against his chest. "No cheating! That was a smart move – I'll give you that. But I was told you were a good girl! Don't you know that bad girls deserve to be punished, Elena?" he growled. "Taught a little discipline?"
Hoping to taunt Damon, he dragged Elena to the front door by her hair, standing mere feet away from him. He pressed her against his chest again, using one hand to hold her in place while the other hand, still clutching her hair, pulled her head to the side to expose her slender neck. With an agonizingly long sniff, he brutally bit in.
The pain was excruciating. Tears rapidly flooded her eyes as she felt her lifeforce slowly drain away. She saw Damon at the threshold – she'd never be able to tell him how she felt. She loved him, she finally admitted to herself with an agonizing pang. What perfect timing, she thought sourly. Come in - please, come in. He'd have to watch her die. She'd never see Anna again, or Jeremy, or Jenna, or Bonnie, or Caroline. Her family would have to mourn another body. Is this where she was meant to end up all along? She just hoped that Damon wouldn't think this was his fault - she'd known that feeling entirely too well, and wouldn't wish it on anyone, especially him.
Noah dragged his fangs down her neck, tearing more of her skin. She screamed into her gag.
Beyond the terror in Damon's eyes, she saw a fierce determination. There was something in his hands.
Elena felt herself growing weaker. Weaker. Suddenly, Noah let go, screaming in pain as a wooden projectile hit him in the eye.
Using the opportunity to escape, Elena made a dive for Damon's outstretched arms, letting him catch her a fraction of a second before Noah's hands reached for her, just barely missing her ankles as Damon sped them away. Once they were clear of the threshold Damon finally took in the sight of her, careful to remove her binds and gag, stroking her hair comfortingly.
"Come in, Damon. Come in, come in," Elena kept saying in a desperate, hysterical mantra as she sobbed in Damon's arms.
"Shh, I have you. You're safe now, Elena," Damon soothed, stroking her hair, her arms, her back. "You're safe," he repeated, seemingly in a cycle of his own.
"Come in, Damon. Come in, come in, come in," she repeated as she felt every wall of defense against him – against her acceptance of her own feelings for him – crumble, fully letting him into her home and into her heart.
In the numb, reality-bending minutes after Damon finally convinced her to drink some of his blood so that she wouldn't bleed out – though she strongly suspected that he would have found a way to make her drink to keep her from dying regardless – he took her hand and walked her back into her room.
Noah was gone. But he could come back and at any time – could –
She felt her heartbeat accelerating due to building anxiety; her breaths, shallow. Suddenly, she felt warm hands on her cheeks, interrupting her internal spiral. She glanced up. Damon's eyes – reassuring, protective, something else that she desperately hoped she wasn't misreading. "It's okay, Elena. He's gone. You're safe." She leaned into his touch, desperate for the comfort that it brought. They stayed in that position for several moments, both still reeling from the unexpected turn of the day's events – how close they came to losing each other.
Elena looked down, noting that she was completely covered in blood. Noah's attack on her neck was messy and brutal.
It was surreal. When she touched her neck, she fully expected the gaping wounds to still be there, but she was completely healed. She looked at her wrist - still covered in blood, but the flesh was whole. There was absolutely no indication that there was ever a laceration. The image of the knife against her wrist flashed before her, the blood gushing out, the flesh separated. She shut her eyes tightly to will it away.
And yet, she could still almost feel the pain, the terror, the helplessness. She shivered. Damon looked up at her in concern.
"You okay?" he asked.
"I need to take a shower," she whispered, her voice still coming out in broken wisps from her shock.
"I'll be here," he was quick to reassure, and Elena felt immediate relief, feeling immeasurably safer knowing that he'd still be in her room when she came back out.
As she washed the blood away, however – and there was so much blood – doubts started to creep in. Did he even want to be there? Was he only sticking around because he felt obligated? She slowly dressed in the first pair of pajamas she grabbed on her way in, her mind a whirl at the night's events.
"Cute PJs," Damon smiled from his perch on her windowsill as he saw her re-enter her room, hoping to tease her into some normalcy.
"Damon, listen – you don't have to stay. I understand if –" she began awkwardly.
"Elena, there's nowhere else I'd rather be right now. Nowhere in the world," he interrupted emphatically, coming closer to take her in his arms, comfort her again. "Okay?"
"Okay," she smiled, breathing a sigh of relief. She leaned into his chest, breathing him in – letting the warmth and comfort of his presence lull her to safety for the first time since he saved her. He saved her. Maybe – maybe he felt the same way? Her arms encircled him like a vice, and then she suddenly pulled away. Should she take a chance? Her gaze flickered to his lips again. She survived a vampire attack today. She was brave. She was strong. She could do this. She closed her eyes, anticipating the feeling of his soft lips on hers.
Damon's heartbeat accelerated when he realized that Elena was about to kiss him. Hope, unbidden, flooded his chest. He couldn't stifle the gasp of shock and joy at this finally happening. Normally, he would have made the first move ages ago, but given Elena's persistent belief that he still had feelings for Katherine - and her startling resemblance to his sire - he didn't want her to think that he was using her as any kind of substitute, so he waited. Still had feelings? He analyzed himself for a brief instant, he was stunned to realize that they were gone, so quickly. He licked his lips unconsciously as Elena's drew closer, elation flooding his very soul. But then he remembered – the conversation he had with Elena when she told him how she felt she owed Stefan for saving her life. Like he saved her today. He had to make sure.
"You don't owe me anything, Elena," Damon said emphatically, as he cupped her cheeks, gazing deeply into the expressive, dark eyes that suddenly sprang open. He wanted so badly for this to be real – not some misplaced sense of obligation, to which she was clearly prone.
Elena reeled back instantly, flinching at the sting of rejection. She nodded, blinking the tears out of her eyes. She knew she was pushing it today. He just got his heart broken, he saved her life, he insisted on staying to protect her. And how does she repay him? By taking advantage of him. She was a terrible friend. "I – I know. I'm sorry," she said, turning away, unable to face him. "I just got caught up in the moment," she lied. "Just forget it happened."
If she had kept her gaze on him, Elena would have seen the abject heartbreak in Damon's eyes that he couldn't immediately hide – the raw pain of how he imagined sawdust in his heart to feel. Of course, she didn't want him anymore. He's a vampire – and after what she experienced today, she'd never feel comfortable with him enough again. Now she knew how dangerous they all were. Now she truly did see him as a monster. It was only a matter of time, anyway. At least he didn't let her kiss him out of some ridiculous sense of gratitude – like she owed him something for saving her life.
He pulled away, and so did she, both wracked with an entirely different kind of despair from before. Perhaps if their emotions weren't in such heightened disarray from the night's earlier trauma, they wouldn't have jumped to their respective conclusions.
He numbly walked to the windowsill, taking a seat as he saw her stumble onto her bed. "Goodnight, Elena."
A few hours later, a petrified Elena bolted upright. "No, no! Come in – come in!" she gasped into the night, still in the throes of her nightmare. She hardly had time to recognize the change of scenery – now safely in her bed rather than at the mercy of Noah – when she found herself enveloped into a comforting embrace. Damon. She felt and breathed in Damon.
Instantly, she felt her respiration normalize, her heartbeat slow down.
"You're safe," he whispered in her ear, tracing patterns along her back, stroking her hair. "I'm here. I won't let him hurt you anymore."
She nodded into his shoulder, willing her trembling form to be soothed by his ministrations. "I – I can't believe I almost died today."
"But you didn't," Damon replied, wisely refraining from telling her that Noah probably wouldn't have killed her – but instead would have taken her to Katherine to be her toy, as he kept suggesting, which was arguably worse. He came so close to losing her today. Damon couldn't remember the last time he felt so terrified, pulling her closer to reassure himself that she was really here, in his arms, and not halfway across the country, the entertainment of two vampires who clearly liked playing with their food a little too much.
He would have never stopped looking for her.
"Thanks to you," she smiled, looking up at him. "You saved me," she breathed, searching his eyes as her own adjusted to the dark upon awakening. She could almost trick herself into believing she saw love there. The notion gripped her heart with ardent hope.
Damon frowned, again remembering how quickly she pulled away from him when reminded that she didn't owe him anything for the gesture. He began moving away, but she held him close.
"Please..." she whispered, before she could stop herself, the sentence trailing off. Her hand refused to let go of his, her earlier compunctions forgotten in the intensity of the moment. She desperately needed to feel him beside her, to feel safe.
"You want me to stay?" he asked, intuiting her intention. She nodded shyly. "Okay," he whispered back, lying down next to her. "I can take the nightmares away," he offered.
"How?" she asked in wonder.
"Vampires can get inside a person's head. I could influence your dreams. You'd just have to take off –" he began, stunned when she took off her necklace and bracelet before he could even finish the sentence, looking up at him with perfect trust.
He couldn't help the genuine smile that arose. Perhaps not all hope was lost. Taking her hand, he let his thumb caress the expanse of hers. "What do you want to dream about?"
She was quiet for a few long moments. "Show me the fun side of vampirism," she said pensively. "After the accident in May, I became more afraid of getting a car as time went on, and I had to force myself to. I don't want that to happen here."
"You got it, Elena," he replied in a whispered breath, and squeezed her hand, allowing his mind to guide hers.
As Elena fell asleep, she found herself in a moonlit forest, the velvet sky sprinkled with brilliant stars along the expanding Milky Way. She was elated to find that she was still holding Damon's hand. The world around them stretched into a vast horizon. As they sprinted together, they watched the trees go by at dizzying speed, running wild and free, filling the air around them with sounds of laughter.
Aaah, okay okay. Immediately sorry for that almost-kiss. But I had that one planned for a while. :D It's a slow burn, right? Also, I think if the scene wasn't so emotionally charged, they perhaps wouldn't immediately jump to those conclusions, but it was an eventful evening, to be sure.
This chapter has been in the works for a very, very long time. I think I've had parts of it written since September? I needed Anna out of the way for Noah to finally make his move; hence, Aurelia was brought in (and it solved the problem of the tomb vamps nicely - AND it opened the door for some future shenanigans with Katherine a la Serendipity). (Oodles of thanks to Pixi and Oiselet for helping brainstorm.) Elena needed to have her vampirism paradigm shift, so this was another purpose for the chapter. Also, this is a slow burn, so we needed a little temporary obstacle for our main pair, and this provides great context for a little misunderstanding, despite the fact that they're clearly already in love, though neither is willing to admit it. But now they've made some headway to at least admitting it to themselves. Whether or not Noah will be back in a major capacity? Hard to say at this point, because I'm not sure, but I wanted to leave that door open.
Much love, all! :D
