A/N: I'm so sorry. Writing is hard sometimes. I love y'all. -E
The worst part of coming back to Mystic Falls wasn't seeing Damon. He wasn't even waiting for me at Elena's house when I came by to get my overnight bag. The worst part wasn't another week of school looming over my head. It wasn't even Elijah's not-as-terrifying-as-Damon's but still erratic driving, though completing the drive in three hours had me questioning if I left my stomach somewhere along the turnpike. No, the worst part of coming back to Mystic Falls was John Gilbert, lurking in the entryway the moment I let myself in Elena's front door.
"Where have you been?" He asked.
"Um." My keys jingled in my now-shaking hand. "I don't live here?"
"Well your car was parked in the driveway all night, so I'm assuming your parents are under the impression that you spent the night here. Were you with Damon?"
Not a moment too soon, Elena interrupted our conversation. "What are you doing here John?" She asked from the top of the steps. "You know Jenna doesn't want you here."
"Well then Jenna shouldn't leave the front door unlocked and the house unattended," John replied. "Were you both at the party that Liz Forbes called me about?"
Elena trod down the stairs, stopping on the landing to cross her arms and stare down at John. "Why would Sheriff Forbes call you about a party?"
"Given that the bartenders have no recollection as to why they felt it was okay to serve alcohol to half of the underage population of Mystic Falls, we suspect it may be a council matter," John said. "Tell me, do you think Jenna would maintain her lax parenting style if she knew who, or what you were really spending your time with?"
"You wouldn't dare," Elena said.
"Wouldn't I? I've been willing to look the other way on her inattentive guardianship, given the circumstances, but you," John turned his attention back to me, "I can't believe Peter and Elise have just been letting you run around town and god knows where else as you please. You would think after losing one child they'd care a little more—"
"That's enough, John." Elena said. "You have no right."
"I have every right to be concerned about my daughters. God knows someone has to be."
"You don't have any daughters." I said.
I opened the front door to leave, and nearly collided with Jenna, who was carrying two iced coffees
"Lucy, hi," She said. "Sorry, I didn't know you were coming over, I would have brought you a coffee."
"Don't worry, I was just leaving." I replied.
"I can see why. Hello, John." The plastic coffee cups bent under her grip. "I already told you, if Elena doesn't want to see you, then I'm not going to force her too, and unless she changes her mind or you get a court order, you are not welcome here."
John ignored Jenna's invitation to leave. "Were you aware that Lucy was pretending to spend the night here while she was really with Damon?"
"I wasn't with Damon," I said, "Not that it's any of your business, but we aren't together anymore."
"Well I hope that means you've come to your senses and found better company."
"I have, actually." I smiled. "I was with Elijah. You've met him, right? Goodbye Jenna, it was nice to see you."
I slowed my walk down the driveway when Elena reopened the door I had just slammed. She ran to catch up with me, and handed me the bag I left at her house last night.
"This is what you came over for, right?" She let out a heavy exhale, then tilted her head to the side. "When did you get that sweater?"
I shrugged.
"I'm sorry," She said, "I didn't know he was here. I would've warned you."
"It's fine."
"No, it's not fine." She shook her head, still struggling to catch her breath. "He's horrible. He's pompous, and cruel, and— and wrong. I can't believe he would even say that."
"He was right about one thing." I leaned against my car. "Maybe you should tell Jenna."
"You're joking."
"Better she finds out from you than from him."
"I wanted to keep her out of this," Elena said.
"She's dating a vampire hunter and one of her best buddies from high school is a werewolf," I said. "She's already a part of it, she just doesn't know it."
"Well what about your parents?" Elena asked.
"What about them?"
"He could tell them, too."
He could. My parents could also slam the door in his face if he ever tried to speak to them. Or they could converse with him out of unfriendly curiosity and find themselves barraged by inconstruable information.
"Maybe if we tell Jenna she'll help us put him down before that thought crosses his mind," I said.
"Lucy." Elena gasped. She managed to hold her wide-eyed and wider-mouthed stare for all of three seconds before her laughter burst through the facade.
"I probably should figure out how to tell them that you're my twin sister before I tell them that you're wanted for a mystical sacrifice." I should figure out how to tell them a lot of things. "At least we've already crossed that bridge with Jenna. Maybe it's time to think about crossing others, before John bulldozes them."
"I'll think about it." Elena finally said. "I'm definitely not telling her before next weekend."
"Next weekend?"
"She said Stefan and I could go up to my family's lake house. She might rethink that if she knew he was a vampire."
"Ooh, a weekend with Stefan."
"It's not like that." Elena rolled her eyes. "I just want to get away from all this craziness for a minute. You can come too, if wherever the hell you went last night wasn't enough of an escape for you."
"New York."
"What?"
"That's where I was last night," I said. "New York."
Her shock wasn't feigned this time. No, her face was frozen in surprise, only moving in an attempt to find words. "You were in— why did— is that even possible?"
"Is being a thousand years old even possible?" I replied.
"You have so much explaining to do."
"I know, just. . ." I glanced at the still-shut front door. I didn't need vampire hearing to deduce that there was an argument taking place behind it. "Not here. I'll tell you everything tomorrow, okay?"
And I did. Well, almost everything. She didn't need to know that I kissed Elijah, and I definitely wasn't going to share that information while Stefan was listening in as well. Just because Damon couldn't kill Elijah didn't mean he wouldn't try to.
At the end of the week, I wanted to go and tell Jenna everything myself. She never hid the fact that she wasn't the biggest fan of me and Damon, but after hearing that we broke up, she literally jumped at the opportunity to set him up with one of her friends. Maybe she would change her mind about a double date dinner at the Salvatore house if she knew the Salvatores were vampires.
"He's not seriously entertaining the idea," Stefan said, "He just knows he'll need something to do tomorrow night since Mason will still be recovering. Plus he's probably hoping it'll get a rise out of you."
Elena claimed she just wanted to stop by my house to borrow a pair of jeans before leaving town for the weekend, but I knew better. She wanted to make sure I wasn't going to lose it.
Elena shut the trunk of Stefan's car. "Are you sure you don't want to come with us?"
The temptation to fold myself into Stefan's trunk right next to Elena's duffel bag was strong. I couldn't though; they deserved a romantic weekend together.
"I'm sure." I said. "Nobody wants to be a third wheel."
Stefan nudged me. "You're not the third wheel."
"I know." I elbowed Stefan back. "I meant Elena would be third wheeling on our bro weekend if I joined you guys at the lake house."
Elena rolled her eyes. "Well, I love you and call me if you need anything, okay?"
"Elena, I'll be fine. I love you too, now get out of here." My parents hadn't been this dramatic with their own farewell for the weekend. My parents also hadn't dropped the news that Damon was now apparently open to dating again right before leaving town.
It's not that I wanted to spend my weekend doing homework, but when I turned on the TV, I came face to face with Jenna's friend, Andi. I couldn't hate her. If anything I felt bad for her getting dragged into Damon's orbit. As much as I didn't hate her, I didn't want to watch her report the evening news either, so I turned the TV off and started rereading Othello in search of passages to reference in my essay. Then the doorbell rang.
"Elijah," I propped the door open with my foot, "You don't write, you don't call, it's enough to make a girl feel used after whisking her away for a weekend."
"I would hardly call twelve hours a weekend." Elijah smiled. "May I come in?"
I stepped onto the porch, letting the door bounce shut behind me. "What's up?"
"How was your week?" He asked. "Were you able to manage all of your classes?"
"Did you really come by to ask me about school?"
"Are you this hostile towards all of your suitors?"
"You consider yourself my suitor?"
"One of us is going to have to answer a question with an answer at some point."
"I asked you first," I said. "What are you doing here?"
"Damon has invited me to dinner tomorrow evening."
"You're going to the setup dinner?" I replied. The only thing worse than third-wheeling was fifth-wheeling.
"It was Jenna's suggestion. As a member of the historical society, she's been kind enough to show me around Mystic Falls." Elijah explained. "I would like to know if there's any ulterior motive for the event. Is there something I should know?"
"How should I know? Damon's not my problem anymore. You made sure of that."
Elijah's gaze gave no indication that he tasted the bitterness in my words.
"No." I decided. "Not if Jenna's involved. She doesn't know anything about the supernatural. And we'd like to keep it that way for now."
"I have no intention of being anything other than a perfect gentleman; I'm just not certain Damon feels the same." Elijah said.
"He hates you, you know." If this was Damon's attempt at keeping his enemies close, he really chose a poor group of people to involve in the process.
Elijah's eyes narrowed. "Yes I'm well aware that his feelings towards me are less than positive, hence my concern about his intentions."
"I'm just saying." I shrugged. "Especially after last weekend, he really doesn't like you."
"And you?" Elijah asked.
"I'm still figuring you out."
"And here I thought your opinion of me was thawing," He said.
"Ask me again after you get through tomorrow evening without any fights breaking out at the dinner table."
"Was that an invitation to return tomorrow?" Elijah asked.
"A conditional invitation." I smiled. "You'd better go back to wherever it is you call home around here, full moon tonight and all."
"A werewolf bite cannot kill me, you know this."
"You can feel pain, can't you?" Of course he could, or he wouldn't have so many concerns over Damon's intentions towards him. He knew that death was not the worst torture one could endure.
He leaned towards me to place a gentle kiss on my cheek. "It was lovely to see you, Lucy."
God. Why couldn't I just be normal? Why couldn't I have feelings for Matt, or James from English class, or hell, even Tyler. At least he was actually a teenager, even if he was a werewolf. But I knew that was never meant to be my fate. The feelings I had towards those I had admired before moving to Mystic Falls never came close to those evoked in me by people who carried the aura of multiple lifetimes, who carried multiple souls wrapped up in one.
That evening, my phone rang just as I was falling asleep. I assumed it was Damon, relishing in Stefan's absence. When it rang a second time, I went to switch it to silent only to see that it was Stefan calling.
"Hello?" I grumbled.
"Did you know?" Stefan asked with a low voice, almost an out of breath growl. Not the voice of someone enjoying a romantic weekend.
"Know what?"
"The sacrifice has to happen for Elijah to kill Klaus. He's going to let Elena die." Stefan's words sent a jolt through my entire body. "Elena agreed to it."
"That can't be true." I whispered, now sitting up in bed. It couldn't be. Elijah promised he could save her. "She knew?"
"That's why I called. I thought if she made a deal with Elijah that maybe you knew about it."
"No, god, what? No. Of course not." I switched on the lamp on my bedside table. "She was just going to let it happen? How could she be okay with this?"
"She thinks she's protecting us."
"Protecting us?" I yelled. "She's the one who needs protection. Where is she? Put her on the phone."
"She's asleep. She wasn't open to discussing this any further."
"That's it." I got out of bed and struggled to put on a sweatshirt while holding my phone. "I'm coming up there. Can you text me the exact address?"
"Lucy, it's the middle of the night. Everyone's safe right now, please stay home," Stefan said. "I was just hoping that there was something else, that Elijah told you something when you were with him last weekend."
"No," I paced alongside my bed. "We can't trust him. Stefan, he's going to be at your house tomorrow. With Ric and Jenna. What if he hurts them?"
"Listen," Stefan sighed. "There might be something we can do. But even if we do manage to subdue him, Klaus could already be on his way here."
"He's not," I said, "Elijah hasn't contacted Klaus, and he's gotten rid of anyone who's tried to." If anything he said to me was true, that is.
"You left that bit out when recapping your weekend with him."
"I just thought. . . god, I'm sorry, Stefan." I stopped walking at the foot of my bed. "He was so nice."
"If I promise you no one else will get hurt will you promise to stay away from my house tomorrow?" Stefan asked.
"Like hell I'd want to be anywhere near that dinner."
"I'm serious." Stefan said. "I know you've gotten . . . close to him lately. I need to know that you're okay with this, that you're not going to do anything to interfere. If he finds out we know, there's nothing stopping him from taking Elena and leaving town."
Don't do anything stupid. That's all he was asking of me, with the request wrapped up in his usual unattainable level of patience. But I had already done plenty of stupid things, already entangled myself with volatile promises and fragile lies, creating a mess that I couldn't even clean up.
"Do what you have to do." I said.
Stefan was worried that I'd do something stupid, that I'd run to confront Elijah and blow the one chance they had at catching him off guard. But no, I couldn't even move. I fell back into bed and stared at the shadow my lamp cast on the ceiling.
Elijah lied to me, and I had let him. As if Elena's complacency wasn't enough, he needed my blind faith too.
Keeping my promise to Stefan was almost easy; Elijah's betrayal had paralyzed me. By the time I made it out of my bedroom the next day, the slightly overcast sunset was casting a weird green close through the windows. The dinner party would be starting soon, if it hadn't already.
Part of me entertained the idea of just eating the cookies my mom baked before leaving for dinner. The other part of me knew I needed the distraction of cooking. It seemed like a good idea until a searing headache hit me just as I was pulling a glass pan out of the cabinets.
"Lucy, are you sure you're okay?" Brandon asked. "We can pull over. Get food somewhere. Mom and dad will understand if we're late."
"I'm fine Brandon," I choked out. "I just want to get home."
God, I needed advil. Or something stronger.
"Are you sure? Because you shouldn't be driving if you're so-"
"I said I'm fine Brandon."
I should apologize. He was just trying to help. But apologizing wouldn't get us out of this stupid town any faster.
Pinching the bridge of my nose didn't help. Closing my eyes couldn't block out the memories. I almost screamed. Did I scream? I heard a scream.
"Lucy, look out!" Brandon yelled.
I snapped out of it. There was something in the road. A deer? I slammed the brakes. The car kept skidding forward. If it was a deer, it was the biggest deer I had ever seen. The headlights illuminated a mass of black hair, the flash of a belt buckle, and luminescent skin. Definitely not a deer.
"It's a person!" Brandon yelled.
It was. There was a person in the road, and my car was about to hit them. I couldn't hit them. Hitting the railing would be better. I steered to the left. The railing wasn't strong enough.
This felt like dying, only more painful. It wasn't the fade that washed over my mind when Stefan drained the life from me. No, this was sharp, searing, forcing me to pay attention to the worst depths of my memory.
I woke up coughing. Sputtering, really. It was cold. So cold. I was shaking harder than I ever had in my life. There was a man crouched over me. He cupped a hand around the back of my neck, lifting me up.
"Look at me," He said.
I did. His dark eyes were framed by pieces of his hair that were plastered to his face with water. His features were strict, almost stone like, and yet he was touching me so gently.
"Do you remember your name?" He asked.
"Lucy. Lucy Adams." I replied.
"Your birthday?"
"June 22, 1992," I blinked slowly.
"Focus on me," He instructed. "Does anything hurt?"
"Everywhere. My head. I think I hit it." I rested my hand on my forehead and squinted at the man. "Why are you wearing that?"
"Wearing what?"
"A suit. Paramedics don't wear suits." I felt my eyes drooping, and my vision went out of focus for a moment. His suit was so soaked with water that it was glistening.
"There you are." Another dark haired man ran out of the trees lining the river. "I thought you were staying in the shadows."
"I was," The man in the suit replied, "Until it became apparent that she might die if not for my intervention."
"You." I said to the second man. My voice sounded so different, like it was twenty feet below me. Or I was twenty feet above it. "You were in the road."
"Yes, he was," Suit-man glared at the second man, "Though I have yet to ascertain why, as that was not part of his duty for the evening."
"You just said I needed to find her and talk to her. You didn't specify how," The second man replied. "I thought she would stop."
"You're very brave, Damon, coming to find me after nearly causing her death."
Damon took a few more steps towards us. "I take it she's human, since you're so concerned about her dying."
"How well observed." The man's arm, still touching my neck, began to tremble. Or was that me? Were we both shaking? "Did it not once cross your mind that had drawing attention not been a concern, I simply would have spoken to her myself?"
"Well maybe next time you should specify subtlety when forcing others to do your dirty work."
Suit man growled and let go of me. And then he was nose to nose with Damon. "You're lucky you may be of some use to me yet, otherwise your heart would already be floating in the river. As it is, you've done enough for the evening." He grabbed Damon by the neck. "Leave here. Forget you ever met me, forget everything I asked of you. When the time comes, I will find you again."
I blinked, and Damon was gone. The man in the suit knelt beside me again. He ran his fingers over my face, and I winced when he touched my forehead.
"I thought I'd never see this face again," The man murmured. There were sirens in the distance, echoing louder as they got closer. "You're going to be okay, Lucy. When the police question you, you will tell them exactly what happened. You saw an animal in the road, you swerved, and you went off the bridge. You don't remember anything else. Do you understand?"
I nodded. "Where's my-"
"Good," He said. "You're going to close your eyes now. Everything will be okay."
It was so easy to do as he said. I was already struggling to keep my eyes open. Struggling to even stay sitting up. I just wanted to lie back onto the ground. That would feel better. So I did. I felt the man press his lips to my forehead before whispering a goodbye into my ear.
"No wait!" My voice cracked. I tried to sit up. I wasn't sitting at all, I was encircled by broken glass in my kitchen.
It wasn't a coincidence or an accident. It was Elijah. Damon had been looking for me because Elijah had been looking for me. Screw my promise to Stefan. I needed to see him.
"Damon, I need to talk to you!" I blurted out the moment he opened the door. And then my arms were around his neck. I hadn't planned on hugging him. I hadn't planned much at all on the drive over. "I just remembered something. Elijah, he—"
"I know." Damon gripped my elbows to pull me back. To look me in the eye. "I remember everything, too."
"But how?" I asked. "How do we both remember?"
"Because he's dead, Lucy."
"What? No, he's not dead." Stefan said subdue, not kill. I never even considered that he meant kill, because. . . because. . . "He can't be killed."
"We found a way," He said.
I shook my head. "I don't believe you."
Damon sighed and nodded over his shoulder. "Come on."
Shoving my hands in my sweatshirt pocket did little to stop their shaking as I followed Damon down the basement steps.
"He's in here." Damon unlatched one of the cell doors and swung it open. "Oh. Oh no."
"Damon," I said, "Tell me you're kidding. Please tell me that this is another one of your horrible ideas of a joke, and that you didn't try, and fail, to kill Elijah."
Damon's eyes remained wide, glued to the center of the cell, glued to nothing but the empty dirt floor.
"You didn't. Please tell me you didn't." I said. "Because if you did, he's going to be mad. Really, really mad."
"Hey." Damon snapped out of his trance and put his hand on my shoulder. "Breathe. It's okay, we'll find him."
God damnit Damon. God damnit Stefan. I thought they had found a way to incapacitate Elijah, constrain him, hell, even a way to wipe his memory. But killing him? They had to know that would be unforgivable if it failed.
"Elena." I tugged at the strings on my hoodie."We have to get to Elena. He's going to go after her."
"We just found out he was using me to track you down and you're worried about Elena?"
"He needs her for the sacrifice and he knows we're not on his side anymore!"
"I was never on his side."
"Please, Damon." With both hands, I clutched at his free hand. "He's going to go after her. I know it."
Damon nodded. "You can call her from the road. Let's go."
Stefan answered Elena's phone and assured me that he would keep her inside the house until we figured out what Elijah was going to do. I couldn't stop bouncing my leg up and down and watched the storm clouds that threatened to race us along the state route to the lake.
"Can't you drive any faster?" I asked.
"There really is a first time for everything." Damon's head drifted to give me a lopsided smile. "Relax. Even if you're right, there's no way he even knows exactly where Elena is. He's probably begging his witchy minions to do a locator spell as we speak."
"Not helping."
His hand hovered over my fidgeting leg before clenching into a fist and returning to his lap. "What do you want me to do?"
"I don't know." I wished I was wearing something other than just my timberwolves sweatshirt, something warmer. Something that I hadn't been wearing the first time I kissed Damon.
"Did it hurt?" I asked. "When you remembered? I thought I was having an aneurysm at first."
"Yeah." Damon nodded. "Yeah, it did not feel good."
"Why? I mean, when you compelled me I don't think it hurt to remember." Physically, at least.
"I don't know." Damon replied. "Bigger memory? Stronger vampire? It's not an exact science."
If only it was. "Why did he want you to find me?"
"Lucy, I don't think now's the time."
"Okay, fine. How did you kill him?" I asked. "Or try to, anyways."
Damon grimaced.
"You've been begging to talk to me for weeks." I folded my arms over my chest. "So talk."
Damon shook his right arm until a dagger slid out of the sleeve of his leather jacket. He handed it to me. The blade was simple, narrower than even most of my kitchen knives, but the handle was intricate, with carved vines twisting all around the hilt.
"You stabbed him with this?" A dull coating of ash obscured the shine of the blade, but any trace of Elijah's blood had been wiped away.
"Alaric did. According to John Gilbert senior, if a vampire uses this, they die too. I'm guessing I shouldn't have pulled it out." He held his hand out. "Now give it back."
"Why?" I asked. "Not like you can use it."
"What, are you telling me you're going to take him down?"
"Do we have another option?" I countered.
"I'd take my chances that Jonathan Gilbert's journal entries were just the ramblings of a crazy man before I'd let you go up against Elijah." Damon said. "You can't trust him."
"I know." I pressed my index finger against the point of the dagger, then rubbed away the ash that transferred to my skin. "But he trusts me."
"He was hunting you."
The first raindrop of the storm landed right on the center of my reflection in the side mirror. I slid the dagger up my sleeve.
"How could you?" I asked Elena the moment I walked in the front door. "How could you agree to this?"
She crossed her arms. She wouldn't step closer to me than she already was, standing with the great wall of Stefan between us. "It was the best option."
"Best option for who?"
"The best option for all of you!" Elena said.
"How can you say that?" I asked. "How could you even think for one second that any of us would be fine without you?"
"Hate to break up this sibling bonding moment," Damon said from the doorway, "But I kind of need to be invited in. Preferably before Elijah gets here."
"Yes, Damon, you can come in." Elena regarded Damon as if he were his regular inconvenient self, as if this was any other evening where we were stuck bantering out our differences. Stefan didn't regard any of us. "You guys shouldn't have tried to kill him," She said.
"Well then you shouldn't have tried to kill yourself." Damon slammed the door shut.
"I can fix this," She said. "He needs me. Just let me talk to him."
Like hell.
"Because it worked out so well the last time you tried to strike a deal with him. No, I'll talk to him," I said. "And I'll make sure he stays dead this time."
"What?" Stefan's head snapped up. "Are you crazy? You can't face him."
"That's what I said." Damon hissed.
"He won't hurt me." I looked over my shoulder to meet Damon's staggering eyes. "I can't say the same for you."
"Elijah's probably furious right now," Stefan said. "There's no way of knowing what he'll do."
"What I know is that Elijah was so fixated on me that he took away Damon's free will and my brother just to try and find me. And I don't know why, or what he's capable of, but I know that he wants me alive. So yes, it has to be me." I glared at Elena. "It's the best option."
The rain echoed through the vast entryway. Somewhere out there in the universe there was a version of myself that agreed to a peaceful trip with my sister and best friend. That version of myself was probably curled up on the sofa in front of the fireplace, maybe reading a book or maybe just staring through the full-length windows at the moody lake, appreciating that I was engulfed by warm wood.
But I wasn't that version of myself, and that wasn't my life. Instead I was here, in the timeline where only death and dishonesty engulfed me, and the wood walls simply hovered around me, buzzing with the reckoning of the evening.
"Lucy, you don't have to do this," Stefan said. "Just say the word and we'll go out there."
"No, you can't." I replied. "If you use the dagger on Elijah you could die. That's not a chance I'm willing to take." I turned around to face Damon. "On either of you."
Damon's brows convened. "I hate this," He said.
"I know," I replied. "Please, just let me do this. Promise me you'll stay in the house." I grabbed his hand for the first time in almost a month. "Please."
"Are you sure you can do this?" He asked.
Elijah's deceit was too great for me to even focus on one transgression. Instead, each moment of dishonesty simmered down into cool rage. I nodded. "Positive."
"Listen to me." Damon pulled my hand against his chest. "You can't stab him here. You won't be able to get through the bone. Here." He guided my hand down. "Aim here, angle up, and you'll be able to reach his heart."
A dagger in the heart for a knife in the back. At least I could find poetry in Elijah's dishonor.
Damon dropped my hand and looked at the door. "He's coming. I can hear his car."
Stefan still stood between me and Elena, probably to keep her from running out of the house to meet Elijah herself. "Be careful," He said.
I stormed out of the house to meet Elijah at the end of the driveway. The moment he exited his car the rain began to turn his otherwise pristine suit blacker than the night itself, but that was all that marred him. There was no blood, no tear in the fabric, not even a single button appeared to be undone. But while the rest of him maintained his usual well composed demeanor, I didn't miss the blazing rage emitting from deep underneath his stare.
"Lucy, sweetheart." His saccharine voice chilled me more than the wind whipping through the trees. "You shouldn't be here."
"You can drop the act," I replied. "I remember everything now."
It was like I had personally extinguished the fire in his eyes. A harsh strike of lightning froze time as shock froze his face. And then the fire was back, burning away any intimation that Elijah was not perfectly in control of the situation.
"Of course you do," He said, "Your friends tried to kill me. A plan which I hope you knew nothing about, seeing as you told me as much."
"Does my dishonesty bother you?" I circled around Elijah until his back was turned towards the cabin. "I wonder how that feels."
"I understand you must be upset with me. You must—"
"You don't have a damn clue how I feel!" My voice broke. The first crack in the glass facade of my fortitude. "Why? Why were you sending Damon after me? What could you possibly need from me that you couldn't just ask for?"
"I didn't know you were you. I thought . . . I thought . . ." Even his shout could not overpower the thunder that threatened to carry his words away. He took a step towards me, and I took a step back. "From the moment I first saw your face, I was certain my brother was involved, that he was controlling you."
"Why would Klaus want to control me if it's Elena that he's after?"
"Not you," He said. "No, Klaus is unaware of your existence. I would take a thousand daggers to my heart to keep it that way." He shook his head. "No matter how cruel killing my sweet love was, it would have been far more cruel to force her to eternally walk the earth and never remember my name."
He was no longer looking at me, but through me, beyond me. Beyond any realm of time I would ever exist in.
"You thought I was her?" I asked.
"He couldn't know. I couldn't give him the satisfaction of knowing another one of his manipulations prevailed," Elijah said. "But I was wrong." He brought his hand to my face. "I never meant to hurt you."
"How can you even say that to me?" I took another step away from him, and found my back against a tree. "I thought I could trust you, I thought I was safe with you, that Elena was safe with you. And this whole time you were planning to let her die. You may as well be on Klaus's side."
"I would never." With his hair coated by rain, he almost looked exactly as he did in my now-recovered memory. "He took everything from me, the love of my life, my family."
"And now you're doing the same to me?" I replied. "As if killing my brother wasn't enough, you were going to let Elena die too?"
"I did not kill your brother." The unspoken apology in his eyes carried as little meaning as the rest of his lies.
"He was in the car with me," I said. "He died because of you."
"I never asked Damon to run your car off the road, but if you would ju—"
"Damon wouldn't have done a damn thing if it wasn't for you!" I resisted the urge to push him away from me. Resisted the urge to start a fight I wasn't yet ready to finish. "I don't care what instructions of yours he did or didn't follow, because he wouldn't have done any of it if you weren't using him as— as what, as a shield? Someone to hide behind so your brother wouldn't know what you were doing? Well guess what? He wasn't watching, because I am not her. You killed my brother for nothing, and I am not going to let yours kill Elena."
"I did not kill your brother," He repeated. "Because your brother is not dead."
That was it, that was the worst thing he ever said to me. It wasn't when he swore to protect Elena knowing he was going to let her die, or when he turned me against Damon for something Damon would have never done without his compulsion. It was now, when every lie he ever told me had come to the surface, and still he tried to hide under one more, one even crueller than all the other lies combined.
"How dare you?" I whispered.
"I swear to you, I would not have left without knowing you were both okay. He made it out on his own, though he was bleeding horrendously. Even as I healed him, all he was worried about was you."
"Why would you say that to me?" I almost choked on my own scream. "Haven't you done enough? If he's alive then where is he? Huh? Exactly. He's not anywhere, because he's dead. He's dead because of you and your need to win a battle with your brother that didn't even exist."
He shook his head. "I wouldn't let a human die for something as callous as my own love."
"No. You're lying." I clutched at the blade of the dagger, careful not to let it pierce my palm.
"Lucy, I wouldn't lie to you."
"Oh, Elijah." With my other hand, I caressed his jaw. That was all it took for him to surrender, for him to close his eyes and sink into my touch. "I wish I could believe that." I slid the dagger up my sleeve until I could grasp the hilt. "But you already did."
I waited for him to open his eyes again to force the ancient blade into his chest, into the spot right under his ribs that Damon told me to aim for. Then his skin turned grey, and Stefan and Damon rushed out of the house to catch his body before it fell on me. He was dead, and with him, so were the answers to the hundreds of questions I had left.
Stefan stumbled under Elijah's weight when Damon let go of his body so he could hold my shoulders, hold me steady. I didn't need him to hold me steady. I was frozen.
"Hey, hey." Damon shook me. I looked at him. "It's okay, it's over. We know not to take the dagger out. It's all okay."
I blinked, and blinked again, but my vision remained blurry. Maybe it was the rain, maybe it was my own tears flooding my eyes. It didn't matter. Damon slid his hands from my shoulders to clutch at my neck and back.
"It's okay." He repeated.
I barely moved as I cried. Elijah didn't move at all. But with each sob, the muscles in my body unclenched a little bit more until I was fully leaning on Damon.
"Where's Elena?" I asked.
"She's in the house." Stefan wasn't holding Elijah's body anymore. "She's safe."
Damon snorted. "She'd better be. This was all for her."
"Damon." Stefan's jaw twitched.
"I'm just saying, guy was alive for a thousand years, all it took was one murder-suicide mission and—"
"Damon." Stefan cut him off. It didn't matter. Damon's voice barely registered as anything more than an echoing cadence in my left ear. All I could focus on was Elijah's body, sitting against a tree as gnarled as the veins covering his skin.
"She's in shock, Damon."
Shock. That didn't sound right. Shock is electric, it's sharp, jarring. Nothing around me was sharp. Even the rain drops hitting Damon's jacket were muffled. I blinked.
"Hey, Luc." Damon tapped the back of my neck. "It's okay," He said. "He's not dead dead."
"Not helping," Stefan said.
"All we'd have to do is take the dagger out and he'd be up and running and ready for revenge in no time. Nothing to beat yourself up over." Damon spoke as if this was an honest accident and not a deliberate retaliation. He had every right in the world to take this opportunity to focus on my malice, and yet he was unbothered, using his touch to comfort me as he had so many times in the past.
"It was him or Elena," Stefan said. "You did what you had to do."
"Come on," Damon shifted to block my view of what I'd done. "Let's go inside, get you out of the rain."
I shook my head. "I want to be alone."
"Okay." Damon nodded, adopting a placating tone. "Okay, I'll drive you home. Stefan can you uh. . ." He jerked his head towards Elijah's body.
"Yeah." Stefan patted my shoulder. "Yeah, I can take care of things here."
Damon didn't let go of me until he had deposited me into the passenger seat of his car.
"What's Stefan going to do with the body?" I asked. Even my voice was waterlogged, twisted from the cold.
"You don't need to worry about that," Damon said softly.
"Yes, I do."
"I don't know." He sighed. "I'm not sure how it works with Originals. Burn it, if we can. If we can't, put him somewhere safe where no one can take the dagger out."
"The cellar." I said, and he nodded. "Didn't Elijah have witches he was working with? What happens when they come looking for him?"
"If they come looking for him," Damon said, "I'm sure Bonnie will be willing to continue her role as witchy liaison. But you don't need to—" He stopped himself, but I could hear the words all the same. "I'm more worried about you right now. How are you feeling?"
"I don't know." I curled against the door. "Like I shouldn't have done it so soon. Now there are some things I'll never know."
"You know he was lying to you, right?" Damon asked. "He would have said anything in that moment if he thought it would make you forgive him."
"You were listening?" Damon nodded. By now, I should be used to the scope of his senses. "I don't get any of it." I said. "He compelled you to forget. I was there, I saw it, but you— you remembered the accident. You remembered me."
"Elijah chose his words carefully." Damon replied. "He wanted me to forget him, but he wanted me to live with what I had done."
"I'm sorry, Damon."
"Lucy, look at me." He tore his eyes away from the empty road, a habit I had long since realized would cause me no harm. "This, none of this, is your fault. I know I haven't exactly been the most trustworthy person as of late, but if you're going to believe anything I say, believe that."
"We can't ever take that dagger out," I said.
"Trust me, that's not on my to-do list."
"I mean it." I twisted against my seatbelt until my back was completely against the door. "He'd come for Elena, and then he'd come for you."
And there it was again. First it was begging Damon to stay in the house, and now it was accepting that I had to leave the dagger in Elijah forever, that I had to remain a killer forever, just to keep Elijah from raining fury upon Damon for the role he played in his death. There was the part of me that couldn't bear the idea of Damon getting hurt.
"He's not going to come after anyone anymore, thanks to you," Damon said.
"Yeah," My voice faded, "Thanks to me."
"No, no, none of that," Damon replied. "No feeling guilty. That's not what I meant."
"I'm not you, Damon. I can't just hurt someone and get over it." I deflated the moment the words left my mouth. "I'm sorry— I didn't mean that I—"
"Don't be," He said, "I deserve that. I deserve a lot of what's happened. But you? You don't deserve any of this."
"How can you say that?" I asked. "How can you always see the best in me when I haven't been on your side for weeks?"
"Because I know you," He replied. "Lucy, you insisted on facing Elijah just because there was a chance my brother and I would get hurt if we took him down. I can't imagine trusting anyone's intentions more than I trust yours."
"That makes one of us."
"You know, when I first remembered everything, all I wanted to do was call you," He said.
I almost smiled. "Yeah?"
"Yeah." He nodded. "But Elijah was in the dining room and I needed to move him before Andi or Jenna saw him, especially Jenna." He let his hand drop from the steering wheel to the center console. "And then everyone was gone, and you were ringing my doorbell, and when I saw you standing there I thought for just one second that everything was going to be okay."
For the third time this evening, I considered taking his hand in mine. But this time I didn't. It was foolish, the thought of some abstract okayness occurring in our lives.
"I know I still lied to you, and this doesn't change anything," He said, "But . . ."
"It changes everything. I just—" My hands twisted together in my lap. "I'm nowhere near ready to think about us right now. Maybe some other night when I'm not sitting in your car soaking wet with blood on my hands when I should have been asleep three hours ago, but tonight, I mean it, I really do just need to be alone."
"Okay." He placed his hands over both of mine. "Okay."
Before I went into my house, Damon slipped off my necklace and compelled me not to have any nightmares. He could have easily compelled me to forget the events of the evening, or to let some of my guilt fade away as I slept, but he didn't. For that, I almost changed my mind and invited him in for what was left of the evening. He knew I needed to feel this, that I deserved to feel this.
I just hugged him one more time. If it was for him or for me, I didn't know. I whispered another apology that only he would be able to hear, and for a moment I thought he wasn't going to let me go. For a moment I didn't want him to. But he did.
Elena didn't bother asking if I made it home okay. Maybe Damon told her and Stefan. She didn't bother calling in the morning either, or even in the early afternoon. Instead she just showed up at my house while I was picking pieces of pyrex off of the kitchen floor.
"Can I come in?" She asked. "Or do you not want to see me?"
I sighed. "You can come in." I stepped out of the doorway to let her follow me into the house. "So what, you spent the last twenty-four hours repenting to Stefan and now I'm the second stop on your apology tour?"
"What exactly am I apologizing for?"
"I don't know Elena." I kicked the dustpan full of glass out of my path. "Maybe the fact that you promised me you wouldn't give up but then I literally had to kill someone to keep you from sacrificing yourself."
"Oh, so I have you to thank," She said.
"What do you mean?" I glared at her. "You were there, you knew I was the one wh—" I froze. The shine in her eyes had passed as the glaze of remorseful tears until now, when the corner of her mouth twitched upwards and emphasized that there weren't tears in her eyes at all, only a devilish glint. "Katherine."