It felt immensely good to sit in class with her peers after the fear of Mr. Lithander outing her faded into the background, became only a memory. Because for a mere moment, it had been possible that Elena Gilbert would never see the inside of a classroom at Harmon College ever again. And while the problem had been promptly dealt with, left behind was the faint echo of a possibility unfulfilled. What could have been if she hadn't had friends such as Caroline? And that made getting to stay feel all the more special.
As Dr. Bartlow strolled into the classroom, forever exactly on time, dropping his messenger bag onto his desk and pulling out a stack of folders, he started speaking, diving headfirst into the lecture. "And how did we all enjoy Medea over the Winter break?"
No questions about relaxation, about vacations, or personal matters of any kind. It seemed he was straight to business on this first meeting back, and Elena was all too happy to engage, leaving thoughts of her own strange break in the dust behind her.
"Feeling shy this afternoon, are we?" Dr. Bartlow asked when no one volunteered any information regarding the story. "Very well then. Let's start with you, Mr. Gilbert. How did you find Euripides?"
Elena cleared her throat, sitting up straighter. "Enjoyed it, sir. Found Medea to be a most interesting character."
"And Mr. Salvatore? Your thoughts?" Dr. Bartlow took off his jacket, slinging it over the back of his chair and rubbing his hands together as he moved toward the center of the chalkboard, standing in front of the nearly-closed circle of chairs and couches.
"Hell hath no fury," Salvatore said as he followed their teacher across the room with his eyes. Elena looked at him as he spoke, irritated as per usual at his fine outfit and dashing appearance. It would be so much easier to hate him if he looked as poor as she found his personality.
Bartlow only nodded. " Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned. The Mourning Bride, William Congreve. Very good. Medea in this case both rage and fury. But we return to this topic of love, yes? Love and its consequences."
The brunette must have made some sort of face, brows furrowed together in disgust. For Dr. Bartlow caught it and raised his own brow in exchange. "Do you see an issue with that statement, Mr. Gilbert?" he asked.
Caught off guard, Elena straightened again, though it was likely impossible to be seated even more forward, to be paying even more attention. "I just find it hard to believe that we can call what Jason and Medea had love. I mean, certainly, Medea loved Jason, we can see that from how eager she is for revenge, how torn his betrayal makes her. But did Jason ever truly love Medea?" she asked, turning the thoughts over in her head as the words left her lips, trying to find the meaning in all of it. "Because of Hera and Eros' conspiring, I think perhaps that love could never be true. At least not from Jason."
"And you're saying because it was orchestrated from the start, that it was doomed to fail?"
"I suppose. Can love built on a lie ever truly be love?" Elena asked.
"But Medea loved Jason, did she not?" Dr. Bartlow returned with another question, back and forth. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Salvatore leaning in as if the conversation engaged him. John and James barely paid them any mind, and Marcus only looked moderately interested, though that was just his normal resting face.
"I think she must have, to experience the rage she did. To be that woman scorned. She thought what she felt was matched, and when Jason chose to marry Glauce, she was broken. Thus scorned, and with that rage, she plotted revenge. But she still kept him alive."
"Why do you think that is?"
"I think Euripides means for us to think it's because she wants him to suffer like she suffered. If she didn't love him, she wouldn't have cared to make him suffer so. She could have just killed him outright instead, but she wanted him to feel that pain, wanted him to live with no children, no crown, and no legacy. But I think there's still some love left for him. She can't kill him because her love is true, and that's worse. Because the greatest revenge lay in leaving him with nothing, in ruining all of his prospects, in ruining his life as he ruined hers."
"She killed their children, did she not love them?"
"I don't believe you can love someone and kill them." In truth, she related to the children of Medea and Jason. To be used as only a tool by one's parents. Because that's all they were to Medea, a tool to increase Jason's suffering. And Elena, she'd only ever been a tool to her father. A showcase of his greatest achievements. Not love, never love.
"Perhaps you have never been in love," Dr. Bartlow offered. And though he was right, she still could not see love driving her to commit such a crime, could not see herself becoming the woman scorned.
"Mr. Wicklaw," Dr. Bartlow said, his attention moving off Elena. "Why do you believe that Medea chose to kill her children, too? Though they were only innocent bystanders to Jason's betrayal?"
As the conversation continued on in the background, Elena found herself stuck on the subject of love. The power of it, and what it could do to those around oneself. Never having experienced love like the Ancient Greeks spoke of, perhaps she was incapable of understanding the topic fully. Perhaps she did not understand the feeling that came with losing one's greatest love, with being furious and full of rage after a betrayal that cut so deep. However, she knew that her love for her brother ran deep. And much like many a hero in Greek literature, there was nothing she wouldn't do to protect him. And no matter what love she fell into in the future, it would never come at his expense. That had to mean something. At least, it meant that she was unlike her father, unlike Medea, in that sense.
Love, for Elena Gilbert, seemed an unobtainable phenomenon. Men, from her experience, didn't want an intellectual woman. They wanted a trophy, just as her father had. They wanted something to display on a shelf, someone who could cook and clean and take care of the house. They were, for the most part, seemingly uninterested in someone who could translate Ancient Greek and Latin, could recite passages from the great tragedies with little error, who could perform Shakespeare, and drink a bottle of wine without getting sick. All things she believed to be incredibly impressive. Unfortunately, men her age tended not to agree. And now, as she masqueraded as Jeremy Gilbert, it was impossible, except apparently in the rare circumstances of Winter Break, for her to engage with men of her own age in a romantic matter.
All that to say she felt unqualified to discuss the level of love that characters like Medea felt, because she had never felt a love like that, one so all-consuming, so big that it made you feel rage to lose it. But was it truly that good in the first place, if losing it was possible all along? Wouldn't a secure love, one that stands by your side despite it all, be the better of the two? Maybe, eventually, she'd be able to figure that out for herself. For now, however, she'd have to absorb all the information about love she could from ancient stories and continue to daydream.
"Love isn't the only thing at play here, however," Dr. Bartlow said, snapping Elena out of her own loveless haze. "We have exile and its efficacy, we have guilt. We must ask ourselves, how did Medea feel after committing her crime of passion? Was she satisfied, or did she feel a shred of regret for killing her children?"
"To kill without guilt would be apathetic, and we know that Medea is capable of feeling. This was not a crime devoid of such," James said, finally chiming into the conversation.
Dr. Bartlow nodded, pacing back and forth in front of the chalkboard before grabbing a piece and drawing a circle of three arrows. Next to each arrow, he wrote a word. Love. Anger. Guilt. "A vicious cycle, is it not?" he asked, looking at each student for a moment before placing the piece of chalk back down. "Keep these thoughts in mind when working on your translations. The words you select should be imbued with this sense of struggle, the decision to hurt something you love, the guilt you feel after the act, and the love that drives it all."
By the end of class, they'd all spent a good twenty minutes or so scribbling on paper, working with the pages of Medea in order to find the right translations from English to Ancient Greek. Just before the bell rang, Dr. Bartlow stood up from his desk and clapped his hands together once to get their attention.
"That was a good warm-up exercise, I'm sure," he started. "But for this semester's project, I'd like to see you work in teams. You'll work together to fully translate a book of your choosing from Virgil, of which you will present to the class at the end of this semester. Mr. Wicklaw, you'll be working with the Mercury twins. Mr. Gilbert, you and Mr. Salvatore will settle your differences over this, as well."
The glare Damon gave Dr. Bartlow didn't seem to phase him at all. He only offered a small shrug and a smile. But with the kindness Salvatore had shown her over Winter break, perhaps collaborating would be a breeze.
Unfortunately, Elena Gilbert was dead wrong. Going on hour two, seated in the Harmon college cafeteria, the pair continued to bicker back and forth about word choice, verb tenses, pronouns, and any other aspect of the ancient language they could find to disagree on. Which, apparently, was just about anything, including which table in the cafeteria had the best lighting, and which dish was best served on Tuesdays.
"And I'm saying, you're wrong," Damon said, scratching out the words she'd just meticulously written moments before.
She pressed her writing utensil down onto the table, nearly making indents in her own hand from how hard she'd gripped it. "And I'm saying you're not listening to me."
"I'm listening, your translations are just incorrect."
She scoffed, standing up from her place at the table and collecting her books in a dramatic fashion, letting them thunk together as she stacked them before sliding them into her bag and slinging it over her shoulder.
"Oh come on, Gilbert. Where are you going?" he asked, not bothering to stand up, as he clearly had no intention of actually stopping her from walking out. She was convinced this was his plan the entire time. Annoy her enough and she'd do the project all by herself, right? Save him the trouble. She was the one in the lead, after all, and with the shared grade on the project, she might as well do all the work.
"Let's just do our parts separately. Meet up in a month and try to fit them together as best we can," she said, exasperated by his tendencies and the way he'd scratched out so many over her poetic translations in favor of technical correctness.
It was his turn to scoff. "Bartlow will know, he's got an eye for it. He wants this translation to be a combination of our styles. Your metaphors and my skill."
"Skill?" her eyes could have jumped out of their sockets they were open so wide. "My metaphor and your skill?"
"That's what I said."
She took her book bag off her shoulder and slammed it down on the table, sitting back down if only to look him in the eye. "Your translations are messy, and while they get the point across, they lose all the feeling."
"I'm certain there's a happy middle ground somewhere between us, Gilbert."
"Perhaps if you weren't so stubborn, we'd be able to find it."
He began collecting his things, and she almost stopped him, certain she'd pushed his buttons too far this time, and she'd actually have to end up doing all the work herself, which was definitely not what she wanted. Of course, she knew for a fact that her work would be flawless and that she would continue to best Salvatore in the competition. But the other part of her didn't want to give him the satisfaction of winning, of getting away with not having to put in the hard work that she did.
But instead, as he slung his bag over his shoulder, he said, "Come on, Gilbert. Let's go for a walk."
For a moment, she just sat there and stared at him, her big brown eyes wide, questioning, and confused. "Why?" she finally asked.
"Do you have to question me every time I'm nice to you?"
"Yes. It's strange."
"Just come on, would you?" he asked, but she didn't miss the slight roll of his eyes like he was just as exasperated with her as she was with him.
The pair walked out of the cafeteria and into the cool Winter evening. It hadn't snowed in a few days, so patches of green were visible along the cobblestone trail that connected each and every building. Elena noticed the intricate detail of each stone as she stared at her feet. She was in a hurry to get back to The Mac if only to get away from whatever loud silence had started between them. But Damon had a different idea, apparently, as he meandered at a slow pace.
"You know," he started, looking over at her. Her eyes flicked upward, catching on his for only a second before she looked away again. "Contrary to what you may believe, I don't hate you, Gilbert."
She stuffed her hands into her pockets. "Right. There's a lot I don't understand." Those words had settled under her skin, making a permanent home there. It was impossible not to think about what he'd meant by them. It'd kept her up the night before, wondering. What couldn't he tell her? What couldn't he explain? Was this simply another dig at her intelligence? Or could he truly not tell her something? And if so, what could that possibly be? She had her own secrets, of course, but hers felt much less cryptic in comparison.
"Right," he said, not making her feel any less aggravated.
Elena Gilbert was sick of knowledge being held just out of her grasp, sick of having to stand on her toes to reach it, sick of having to break rules just to get in the club. But she would keep doing it, keep reaching, keep fighting, even with people like Salvatore. Even if it drove her insane.
"You know," she started, crossing her arms over her chest and stopping in the middle of the path. "Contrary to what you may believe, I don't like you, Salvatore," she snapped. He was getting under her skin. All the confusing signs, the moments of kindness followed by threats behind her back. She not only couldn't deal with it, but didn't want to. She'd come to Harmon to learn, and focusing on her studies was the only important thing. Getting caught up in complicated friend groups had never been the plan. So maybe it was time to go back to square one, to isolate herself. At least then she wouldn't have to deal with whatever Damon Salvatore's issue with her was. A truly peaceful existence, perhaps?
"Understood," he said with a curt nod, opening his mouth to say something else likely nonsensical and confusing when a blood-curdling scream pierced the air from a distance. A flock of students fled toward the scream on their left, and Damon looked at her pointedly, almost like a warning. But she ignored his glance and followed the other students, running in the direction of the small but forming crowd.
Elena could barely see what was going on, bodies crammed together, everyone trying to get a peak at something. She muscled her way through a few students, slipping through the cracks. A hand came to her lips as she stood amongst other agape students, all looking at the same view. A body, twisted and mangled, blood-covered and unmistakably dead. Before she realized it, she was backing up, taking steps through the crowd, her breathing fast, heart thumping so fast it felt like it could escape entirely, until she walked backward into a wall. His hand wrapped around her upper arm in an instant, cool blue eyes finding hers as he twisted her to face him. "Are you okay?" he asked. She barely caught the words as everything around her went black.
A/N: Thanks so much for reading! We're really nearing the end of act one here, so I hope you continue to enjoy. I do apologize for the long update breaks, but I promise no matter how long it is between updates, this story will be finished! Happy Friday!