I brought the basket full of the pieces for the centerpiece onto the porch and sat at the small table in the corner while the three vampires hovered nearby. One name and I was suddenly more than willing to hear them out - much to Elias' irritation - but I refused to do so in their home, our home. I might be willing to create strife over the man I love, but I wouldn't cross the line into allowing creatures that my family feared to enter the sanctity of our home.
"Alright, explain exactly how Kai told you about me," while I waited to hear precisely how Tall Dark and Irritating had managed to see and speak to Kai while I was forced to hear about it second hand.
I worked to process what Damon, since he helpfully offered his name, along with those of his companions - hello Stefan the sad labrador and Alaric the too old for this crap lurker - finally unloaded onto my shoulders.
Kai's prison world was a place where it would be 1994 forever - fitting by Papa Parker's standards of poetic justice - and Damon, through some shit I possibly read about in the local paper back in Virginia, along with a witch named Bonnie Bennett had been sucked into it. With the help of some magical object (way to hide shit where Kai could find, but not use it, father of the year) and, of course, the proper alignment of blah blah blah - here was Damon. Unfortunately for Bonnie, she was still stuck there - along with Kai, the murderous maniac that Damon feared would molest and maim her repeatedly forever in 1994. Awesome.
"And what do you expect me to do about it?" That was the billion dollar question, wasn't it? Here they all stood, watching me with rapt expectation, but I had not a fucking clue what I could do to help their cause - and, if I was being absolutely honest with myself, my own to get Kai close enough to taste.
It was Alaric, not Damon who spoke, and he did it while kneeling beside my chair. "When Damon mentioned your name to Joshua Parker -" I really hoped I didn't actually flinch at the mention of that fucker's name, but since Alaric's hand rose without thinking to offer me comfort, I guess I didn't manage it. His hand dropped before touching me, thankfully, but I saw it. "He said that he looked like he'd heard the end of the world began tomorrow -" What? "I have to think that means more than you think."
"Kai said he killed you," Damon offered, eyes roaming over me again as if to remind me how fictional that idea had been. "He didn't seem as proud of that as when he admitted what he did to his siblings -"
"He didn't." Hello, Captain Elinor Crawford Obvious, welcome to the party. "He didn't know that I survived -"
Explaining to complete strangers what happened over 18 years before wasn't as painful as it should have been. And as I spoke, no one interrupted, no one asked any questions, they just silently listened as I told them everything - including waking up and learning that Kai was gone.
"And it's all because of me -" so hushed I knew that a normal person wouldn't have heard it, but surrounded by those who had amplified senses I knew they heard me. "With a healthy dose of blame to place squarely on Joshua Parker's shoulders." That part came out clear and clipped, thank you very much.
"You survived destroying a shed while you were playing hide Kai's pickle on prom night?" Damon Salvatore - I really hope he didn't aspire to a late in afterlife career in poetry, really.
Standing up, they all took a step back - probably because the porch lights had started to flicker and the chair I wasn't sitting on had made a sound that sounded like the metal was twisting. "Wanna see?" I almost laughed at how they basically all looked amongst themselves to decide if I was terrifying or someone they could manage - while they decided, I picked up the finished centerpiece and went to the front door to offer it to Eve, who I knew was watching every moment on the porch - turning back they nodded, clearly deciding that they'd look at what I wanted to show them and then, maybe away from the prying eyes and ears of my family they could get around to explaining just what the hell they wanted me to do for them.
Standing in the woods, splintered boards and glittering glass scattered around where the shed had once stood, I watched as the three of them looked around at the remains of the first time Kai and I ever -
"Did you do this, or did he do it when he took too much of your power?" Damon scrutinized the scene as if he were a cop and was trying to figure out who to arrest for the crime - too late, Kai already ended up sentenced.
I shrugged, since it didn't matter anymore, not really. "All I know for sure is that I love him," their eyes snapped to me as if I were completely mentally deficient. "And when I finally convinced him that we should let go and go all the way," Damon was staring at me as if he were sure it had to be the other way around - Kai would have wanted to get me at my most vulnerable, that's what he thought and what everyone in the coven had to believe. "He brought me here." Gesturing around us, I took a deep breath and told them how Kai knew about the shed, what its purpose had been. "An abomination," shaking my head, my arms wrapped around me at how horrible it had to be to grow up with no one on your side. "This is where he was sent when Joshua wanted to remind him that he was an abomination. Could you blame him or me for wanting to give him something better than that?"
"Your power," Damon offered, thinking that of course, having none that's what Kai would want most.
"A happier memory than the ones he had of it," Stefan watched me as if he were waiting for tree limbs to start breaking, but that wouldn't happen, not here. "What precisely do you want from me?"
Dinner was a quiet affair, which I completely understood. We'd been visited by three vampires (which if it had been Christmas I would have been able to lighten the mood and compared them to the three ghosts from "A Christmas Carol" - fucking vamps ruining everything) who wanted to talk about Kai. Could there be a bigger drain on the good vibes.
The tension was thicker than the bread, and almost too difficult to cut. But I love Elias and Eve, and I would not spend a holiday with them that ended like this - I couldn't.
"I think we need to stop tap dancing around the huge Kai-shaped issue and let it out -" if I'd dumped my entire wineglass over the turkey and sat back ever so proud of myself, I doubt I'd have been given the looks I was getting after that proclamation.
Elias took a deep breath and I thought, ut oh. "There isn't a 'Kai-shaped issue', Eli. Not anymore." The look in his eyes daring me to correct him. And sadly I took that bait like I was the hungriest fucking trout in the lake.
Snorting, and sending a silent thought of gratitude that I hadn't been taking a drink or worse a bite of food when he answered, I shook my head. "Well if that isn't the biggest crock of shit I've ever heard -" Eve didn't flinch, she'd grown used to my flagrant use of adult language over the past 18 years. "There's been a Kai-shaped issue from the moment I crossed that threshold." Pointing toward the front door, I had to take my own deep soothing breath, if only to save the lightbulbs and glassware surrounding us. "From the first time you warned me about him, he's been an issue, Elias." And he had been, because while I'd known the stories about siphoners, I'd never seen one - or so I'd thought at the time, but that wasn't something I planned on sharing with the people who helped raise me. "And I get it, I do, but the thing you seemed incapable of understanding is that he isn't that person or thing to me."
"Because you -" and he had to stop and close his eyes for a beat. "You loved him, Eli, and I didn't understand why, but I understand that you felt that -"
"Love," correcting him seemed to be fast becoming a new Thanksgiving tradition, but he kept getting shit wrong. "I LOVE him, Elias. Just like you love Eve." And that sparked a way to make him see - really see - precisely how I felt about Kai. "Let me ask you something -" He nodded, eyes wary, "if Eve did something that no one else could see being less than terrible," his mouth opened, but I held up a hand and stopped him. "As completely ridiculous as the idea could be to fathom, hypothetically speaking, if Eve had too much wine for dinner and realized that she needed to rush out for something while you were in your workshop and she lost control of the car and hit a car full of kids and their mom wiping everyone out but her, would you still love her?"
"It's not the same -" he was pleading with me to see how what Kai had done was different, that my scenario with Eve was still an accident, but I didn't have to give more evidence -
"It is," Eve had been watching us like a spectator at a tennis match, but clearly she's had enough. "It's the same because Eli's scenario is based around what would have been my decision to drink and drive. It's different because Kai's reality happened because of how he was treated and then lied to about Eli's condition after -" she blinked and looked down at her plate to gather her thoughts. "We made peace, Elias, we found one another after you blamed me for letting it happen -" shit, I'd almost forgotten about that angst. "But the truth is that you saw that as unforgivable, especially while she was in the hospital and we didn't know if she'd ever wake up again."
"Eve," Elias looked like he'd really like to stab something with the carving knife and I was hoping the target wasn't me, but the truth was I knew he'd never - "What Kai did after -"
"Was directly related to what happened before," I couldn't let them argue this between themselves again. "Blame me for a while, Elias, blame the fact that Kai had tried his damndest to keep me away -" I could swear I could hear him saying "Nor" like a whisper in my ear. "I pushed and pushed to get him to open up, then I pushed and pushed for more until -" Until that night that ruined every damn thing because I hadn't taken three minutes to think about who Kai reminded me of - of why I had been so drawn to him in the first place. "This is my fault, and when I get back to Virginia, I plan on making it right."