Sleep did not come easy. In fact, it did not come at all. For the first hour, she tried to fake it. She closed her eyes and hoped that if she laid still enough sleep would eventually wash over her. For the second hour, she tossed and turned, restless in her inability. By hour three, she gave up. Getting out of bed, she wrapped a robe around her nightgown and slipped down the stairs.
In some sense, it was nice to creep down the stairs with her hair messy, cascading down her back in tangles. Her headache came from all she'd learned and not the band of her brother's hat cutting into her skull. It felt like a return to herself, in some ways. In others, she could still feel the pain like a heartbeat, could still see the way Damon and Caroline had looked at her. They'd pitied her, felt bad for keeping the secret, but what else was there for them to do? They couldn't take it back, couldn't rewrite the past. They'd, she'd have to find some way to get past it. To look at her friends and not see that pitied glance.
Stepping into the living room, she loosed a sigh. Gone was the life she'd had only days ago, weeks ago, months ago. That Elena, the one who buttoned her brother's shirts up to the collar, the one who wore a cardigan even in the summertime, the one who pinned her hair up so tight, who was so careful, she was gone. And maybe she hadn't existed in the first place. Caroline knew, Dr. Bartlow knew, Stefan and Damon knew, Marcus knew. What about the twins? Had she truly been a joke for the entire first year they'd known each other? Was that why John had teased her so relentlessly?
She stopped in front of the bar, a long table full of crystal bottles with decorative stoppers, filled with amber and clear liquids. She reached for the one she was most familiar with, a bourbon that Damon liked to dole out on nights when they gathered. Her hand found an empty space just as he cleared his throat.
Elena jumped, turning. Damon sat on the couch, leaned against one of the arms, feet kicked up on the coffee table. He held the bottle by the neck between two fingers, extending it out for her. Grabbing a glass, she joined him on the couch, taking the bottle and pouring herself a, frankly, absurd amount, before handing it back.
Neither of them spoke, but they lifted their glasses to their lips at the same time in place of conversation. And for a while, the silence spoke volumes. Like all good things, it had to be broken.
"Gilbert, listen," Damon started, and unlike earlier in the day, she didn't immediately move away, didn't place her hands over her ears and pretend she couldn't hear him. She just looked away from the glass she'd been staring into and met his eyes. "I never meant to hurt you."
The words took her back. She'd received apologies from Damon Salvatore before, but never with the genuine tone he spoke in now, not with the ache that resonated in his vocal cords.
"I know," she said, looking back at the rim of her glass.
"I thought it would be easier if I didn't know."
"It was. I mean," she paused, eyes finding his again. "I thought it was." She licked her lips, catching both between her teeth for a moment while she thought. "From the start," she said. "You knew?"
He nodded and she looked away again, feeling his eyes on the side of her face.
"And Marcus?"
"Him too."
Another sigh. Her hand came up to rub her forehead. "The twins?"
He let out the driest laugh. "No, the twins don't care about anything except themselves."
"Funny. I would have said the same thing about you last week," she said, taking a long sip of her drink. It burned going down. "Now? I don't know."
"I care about you."
The previous week had been full of doubt, of feelings she wasn't certain were real. It was full of annoyance, of looking at his face and not being sure whether or not she wanted to kiss him or never see him again. But now, she could only look at him. Her breath caught in her throat. Wasn't this what she had convinced herself she wanted? For Damon to see her? Then why now did it feel so wrong, so misplaced? There were too many grudges she couldn't let slip through her fingers, not yet.
"You should have told me," she said. "Everything. About Klaus, and—and you. About Caroline."
He placed his glass down on the coffee table, then reached out tentatively. When she didn't move back, he slid his hand through her hair, his thumb settling on the apple of her cheek.
"I know," he said, moving his thumb in slow circles.
She closed her eyes. His touch lulled her, made everything feel like a distant memory. How could she be mad at him when he touched her like this? When it felt like nothing else mattered in this moment? She wished to fall into him forever, to not have to worry about anything that would happen come morning.
Past the anger, there was something else. A joy, and she couldn't help the words that fell from her lips. "You saw me." When he furrowed his brows she spoke again, "The whole time I was Jeremy, you saw me. You saw Elena and you—you liked her."
"Well, let's not go that far," he said playfully, and a hint of a smile appeared on her lips before she could hide it. "Of course I liked her. All I wanted was to protect her. That's all I ever wanted."
He dropped his hand to her neck, and his thumb brushed against her lower lip so slowly she shivered. She wanted so badly to give into this, whatever it was, to accept the attention he showed her, to let him lean forward another few inches, to kiss him. But she couldn't. There was one thing that nagged at the back of her mind, even as he looked at her with those apologetic eyes.
She didn't rear back, didn't move, but spoke against his thumb as it moved along her lip. "Did you ever…" she couldn't figure out how to say the words without sounding ridiculous. "Detective Matthews called it compulsion. Did you ever do that, to me?"
His hand fell away, and a look of devastation crossed his features like he never thought he'd have to have this conversation.
"Elena," he said.
"Did you?"
"I—" he started, cutting himself off with a hand dragged across his face. "Yes. Twice."
She took her lower lip into her mouth, chewing on it with worry. She could only nod in the face of this new information, and she couldn't stop her voice from breaking when she said, "When?"
"Elena," he said, pressing.
"When?" she said, with more force, more aggression, more anger that built up at the thought of him playing with her mind.
He reached out for his glass, finishing the contents before setting it back down on the table. "The night that you and Caroline went to The Hall."
She sucked in a breath.
"Caroline called me in a panic when she couldn't find you."
"I was in the bathroom, passed out," Elena said, reciting the story that had been fed to her.
"You weren't. You were in a carriage, with my brother."
"Stefan?" Her eyes narrowed, trying to remember details that were absent. "I remember meeting him, but—"
"My brother struggles with…" he said, and Elena had absolutely no idea where the sentence could have gone. "Bloodlust. He doesn't," Damon looked away. "Hunt, like the rest of us."
"What happened in the carriage, Damon?" she asked, but she had a feeling she already knew.
Damon looked deeply uncomfortable. "He fed on you. Real messy work, got you good."
Her lips parted, mouth agape. This entire time, had her dreams been showing her the truth of that night? Had they been showing her the memories that Damon had taken away?
"I found you," he continued. "Gave you some blood, got you back to the house."
"You could have killed him," Elena said, remembering the words she'd heard Caroline's voice the next morning, the words that had haunted her for weeks, had made her concerned and confused.
"What?" Damon said, glancing over at her.
She met his eyes again. "The next morning. I overheard the three of you talking. That's what Caroline said. You could have killed him. I never knew what it meant."
"Ah," Damon said, and she couldn't help but notice the tiny smirk that appeared on his lips, the smallest quirk of one of the corners. Pride? "I may have gotten a few good hits in. He deserved it."
The unspoken words hung between them. For hurting you.
"And you compelled me," she said it like a statement.
"Yes. We got you home, you… you weren't in a good place. You hadn't started doing any of this research, I mean, you had no idea what was going on."
It was odd to hear about something she could not remember. It didn't feel like it had been her at all. But it was too much to linger on now. "And the second time?"
He looked genuinely uncomfortable at this question, like he didn't want to speak about it, didn't want to think about it. "It's in the past, we don't have—"
"Please."
The word cracked him. "I didn't want you to look at me the way you were looking at me."
"How was I looking at you?" she asked, words tentative.
"Like I was a monster."
Silence pressed in all around them. Everything unspoken. He was a monster. Elena knew as much. Perhaps even Damon knew the same about himself. They were all monsters, wasn't that the issue? Wasn't that what Klaus so badly wanted to fix?
Damon's fist clenched at his side. "He was threatening you. I had to do something about it."
It took her a long moment to understand what he'd said. "Threatening me?" There had only ever been two men to threaten her, Klaus and, "Gregory Lithander." She stood up abruptly, a hand over her mouth, turning away from him. All she could see was a neck twisted, covered in blood. The image that had refused to leave her head, the image that sat in a case file in her bedroom downtown.
"No," she said, shaking her head vehemently even though she did not look at him. "No, he died in an animal attack. It was an animal attack." She'd seen those words so many times before, but this time she believed them as the truth.
He shook his head, although she did not see it. "He didn't."
"Detective Matthews," she said, turning back to look at him with red-rimmed eyes. "Did you kill him, too?" The words were more vicious than she meant, or maybe exactly so.
Damon blinked. "Who?"
"The—the detective, on Lithander's case. He came to see me, asked me questions. Made me drink vervain, told me about his insane vampire hunt. I didn't believe him then, but oh God. You killed him, too. Didn't you?" Her hands were in her hair now, and just like everything had felt in the past twelve hours, more chunks of her life were falling down around her like a storm had hit the boarding house and those old stones couldn't hold.
Damon was in front of her in a second, grabbing her forearms and pulling them away from her hair, pulling him close to her. She couldn't think, couldn't breathe. But she tried to pull away. He held her steady, looking down into her eyes as he spoke with firm, honest words. "I didn't kill the detective. Only Lithander. Only to protect you."
"He didn't deserve to die," she said, and she really believed it too. Just because he'd threatened to take away everything she'd ever wanted, didn't mean he deserved to have his throat torn out. "Besides we… we had it handled. Caroline had it handled."
He eased up his grip on her arms and she lowered them to her sides. The space between them, however, did not change. "She didn't. He only wanted more and more. It was never going to be enough. He would have held this over you for as long as possible, for as much money as possible."
"But," Elena said, but there were no more words to speak. She only let her eyes fall on his, but she couldn't bear to look at them for long.
The moment she glanced away, Damon curled a finger under her chin and lifted it, meeting her gaze again. "I shouldn't have done it," he said. "I could have compelled him to leave it be. I should have. But he just, he pissed me off. Okay, Gilbert?"
"You just kill everyone who pisses you off?" she asked, and for some reason, the anger she felt started to fade. It shouldn't have, but it did.
He smiled that same obnoxious smile she'd hated since the first day they'd met. "You're still alive, aren't you?"
"No thanks to you," she fired back, missing their banter, their conversational sparring. It was moments like these that she felt the most comfortable with him, that she felt the most like herself again. If they could just keep those moments going, keep challenging each other metaphorically, maybe everything would be okay. But still, she saw that twisted neck, always a flicker away in the back of her mind. How could she forgive a man for murder? Was it even possible? And could she forgive him for toying with her mind, for stepping in and stealing memories, for twisting her beliefs?
He placed a hand over his heart like he'd been struck. "That hurts."
She didn't smile. Her lips pressed into a line, one corner tilting downward. It didn't feel the same. This bickering was only meant to break the silence, to take light away from the tense moment—it wasn't real. And maybe nothing between them ever had been. She stepped away from him, putting more distance between herself and the man she didn't understand.
"Good night, Salvatore," she said solemnly as she walked backward toward the stairs, still looking at him with a curiosity, a desire to piece him together.
"Night, Gilbert," he said.
A sad smile crossed her lips before she turned around, walking up the stairs and down the long, dark corridor back to the guest room. When she lay down again, sleep came easily and without fight.
A/N: Hope you're all having a great week so far! Thanks again for reading and for all of your kind comments and reviews. I hope you enjoyed this chapter and I can't wait to keep sharing the rest of this act. It's a juicy one.