The rest of the week proceeded without incident. There were no encounters with dangerous original vampires, nor were there any more instances of passionate, half-drunk hallway kisses. Though, there were plenty of longing glances balanced with avoidance. After that night, the pair barely had a moment alone together. Stefan, Caroline, or Marcus always seemed to be right around the corner, so even if a conversation about what had happened did spark, it fizzled before any questions were answered.
Thankfully, Elena was able to return to normal, every day life. After a few days of hiding out at the country house, Caroline and Elena headed back to their small apartment. They had no choice in the matter, Damon, Stefan, and Marcus would be keeping watch outside whenever they were home, and Elena would never be alone again.
But she did get to return to her coursework, which almost made it feel like nothing had ever changed. Aside from the fact that she could still feel the ghost of Damon's lips on hers, and when she closed her eyes, she saw Klaus looking at her with that curled up smile. Sitting in a classroom, however, it was easy to push all of those thoughts far from her subconscious and to only worry about upcoming assignments and projects she'd have to work on while also trying not to die. A simple balancing act, of course. School, apparently, had been too easy, and the powers that be had meant to challenge her with the curse of impending doom and potential death. Just what every girl needed, really.
And maybe it hadn't really sunk in yet, and maybe it wouldn't until she was face to face with Klaus once more. But it was hard to believe that all of the bad things she'd experienced hadn't been some horrid nightmare. That she'd actually been bound to a chair, that Caroline had thrust a stake through that man's chest to save her. It felt oddly other, like someone else entirely had experienced it, and she'd only heard about the events afterward. Maybe it was a trauma response, blocking out those memories so she didn't have to think about them—but it kept her going either way.
As she sat down in Dr. Bartlow's classroom in a disguise that honestly didn't matter very much anymore, she loosed a sigh. The classroom still felt like a second home with its high bookshelves packed tight with course materials and books from places she'd never heard of. Somehow, the place felt wrong now. With everyone in on the secret, aside from the twins, she felt even more as if she didn't belong. Despite Dr. Bartlow's compliments, despite Damon's, she hated the feeling of transparency their knowing afforded. But she settled regardless, pulled out her book, and began to read as she waited for everyone else to arrive.
Damon, she knew, was somewhere roaming the halls. They'd arrived together and he seemed adamant about keeping an eye on her, regardless of how safe she was or was not when the sun was out. There were always loopholes, chances that the big bad Klaus had learned the magic to deflect the sun or sent someone else in his stead. Either way, despite all of that, despite everything that felt wrong or other or overprotective, she was glad to be back in the classroom. At least for a few moments, she could continue pretending that everything was completely and totally fine.
Once everyone had filed in, Elean relaxed, trying to push the tension collecting under her skin as far away as possible. Something about a dramatic change to one's entire life and beliefs, however, made that more difficult than she'd hoped. However, it started to slowly melt away when Dr. Bartlow began speaking.
"Let's cut to the chase, shall we?" he said, with a clap of his hands, turning away from the cluster of students to scrawl on the chalkboard behind him. He wrote, in his messy but familiar handwriting, the word 'translation'. He pointed at the word and then turned back toward the class, scanning every one for a certain understanding. Though it was unclear whether or not he found it. "This is why we're all here, correct?"
Elena nodded, and from the corner of her eye, she could see Marcus doing the same. The twins remained still, and she couldn't see Damon, though she could still feel his eyes on the back of her head. They didn't intimidate anymore but made her shift. Being in his presence after that kiss was something she could hardly stomach. No words had passed between them about the matter, and if she met his eyes, she wasn't certain she could stop herself from jumping him. So, she avoided eye contact.
"Why?" Dr. Bartlow asked. "Why do we care so much about translation?" No one volunteered an answer. His eyes fell on Elena, two raised brows. "Mr. Gilbert."
Her mind was splintered down the middle, segmented, each portion of her existing in entirely different places. One struggling with thoughts of Klaus and her impending doom, the other thinking about how Damon had put his hands on her in the hallway over a week ago. Neither half cared much about what Dr. Bartlow had to say.
"Mr. Gilbert?" he asked again, pressing harder with sharpened words.
"Sorry, yes," Elena said, and she swore she could hear Damon snicker from behind her. She had to restrain herself from twisting around to glare at him. "Translation is an act of preservation. Without it, we would lose important stories. We'd lose history. For the same reason we study the ancient languages, right? To keep them alive? We translate these languages for the same reason," she said, feeling confident in her answer.
After all, it was truly what she believed. Her passion lay in stories. Although her father had wanted her to learn ancient Greek and Latin, she'd always been content to have her nose in an English book. But now that she'd aged, she understood the draw of translation. The desire to puzzle together the best way to preserve a story in another language. It felt like a different kind of magic. And while her interest in such had been sidelined as she focused on the secret society, on cracking their code—one of a different sort—her main love still lay intertwined with the magic of storytelling and her ability to preserve things that otherwise may have been lost to time. Didn't that go hand in hand with Harmon's Great Minds? With Arthur's initial search for immortality? Because in translation, in preservation, things could become just that, immortal.
While she hoped never to bear the weight of an immortal life, she did hope to establish herself as a professional in the translation industry. She hoped to work on translations of her own one day, taking in ancient texts and finding meaning within them. If only she lived long enough to see those dreams through.
Lost in thoughts, she'd completely missed the conversation Dr. Bartlow had continued to have in her metaphorical absence. As she checked back in, he said, "We are historians in our own right. What are stories if not history, if not a showcase of what the world used to be like in any given period? Without these stories of the past, without revisiting our ancestors' mistakes, we are doomed to repeat them. We are doomed to be the next Orpheus and Eurydice, the next tragic love story, the next man with want only for power, the next Icarus."
Everyone held Dr. Bartlow in rapt attention. He always managed to capture them with his dramatic lectures such as these. He continued. "This week, I ask something different of you."
An obvious eye roll from John, to which Dr. Bartlow only responded with one of his own. "I know, how very unfair of your dear teacher to ask you to engage in exciting course work. You know, my dear boy, I do often question what you're even doing here," he said, glaring at John in the softest way possible.
"Well, sir," John said, clearing his throat and sitting up a bit straighter. "Ladies love a historian."
This time, it was Elena who rolled her eyes. She just barely kept herself from laughing at the words. Though, it was true, in her case at least. A historian would be quite attractive, but definitely not one of John's talents. No, the only one that she held any interest in was tapping his foot softly behind her. And even then, he always found a way to be both interesting and unbearable.
"Anyway," Dr. Bartlow moved on, likely rethinking his decision to allow the twins into his close-knit classroom. "I'd like you all to pick your favorite short story—if you don't have one, there are many collections on the back wall—and translate it into Ancient Greek. Not only the language but for the people of that time. Tell a story of our present, just like their stories tell us about the past."
Elena hadn't read many short stories, but there was a collection of Edgar Allen Poe stories that lay tucked away in her trunk, a loan from her brother that she'd never returned. His favorite growing up had been The Tell-Tale Heart. She had fond memories of him reading it to her while she lay in bed with the covers pulled all the way up to her chin. It wasn't scary in the same way anymore. When she was younger, it felt as if the heart would beat through the floorboards like the body would raise and attack in her sleep, but now, in a world where the dead truly did walk, she had other, more important things to worry about. Now, she related more to the narrator with his worry, his ability to sense the heartbeat beneath the floorboards no matter what, no matter how much time passed, no matter the knowledge he held.
But what hid under her floorboards? What haunted her every waking thought? The fear of Klaus coming for her, or the way Damon looked at her? Did either of those truly drive her to the same insanity? It was hard to say. With her ear pressed to the door, she could only hear the soft beat of all the things she wished to forget, instead.
She did a slow lap around the room, eyes flicking around the shelves, searching for the story she wished to find. While most of the shelves held texts from across the globe, there were a few at the very back of the classroom written in English, including many works translated already. She hadn't noticed Damon at first, but he flipped through a book only a few feet away. Had she moved in such a trance, or had he moved quickly enough that she hadn't noticed? Had anyone else?
"You spiraling, Gilbert?" Damon asked, not looking up from the book in his hands. She could hear the smirk in his tone.
"Me? Never," she responded, voice low. She knew no matter how quiet she spoke, Damon would still hear her.
He chuckled, his back still to her, the picture of two scholars perusing the class library. Heaven forbid the rest of the class knew they engaged in kind conversation. What would the twins think next? That they liked each other?
"You've been staring at the same row of books for nearly ten minutes," Damon commented, and Elena had to stop herself from turning to look at him with a scowl. Kiss or not, he still managed to get under her skin.
She crossed her arms over her chest. "Perhaps I'm just trying to select the best one." Stealing a glance in his direction at just the right time to see him shaking his head.
"My mistake. I just assumed for the English to Greek translation assignment that you'd want something in English," he said, and Elena looked at the text on the spines of the books before her. "Those are all in Russian."
Wordlessly, she stopped over to the shelf he stood before, keeping her eyes forward. He lowered his voice even further. "Are you sure you're okay?"
Handling herself well despite the mountain of new knowledge that had been dropped on top of her was a point of pride, and she was determined not to crumble under the weight of all that stress. She'd had a fraction of a breakdown and that was enough. From now on, it was only forward with her head held high. Scanning the bookshelf, she quickly found a spine marked in delicate script with the last name Poe. "I'm sure," she said, grabbing the book.
Damon turned slightly to look at her, and their eyes met for only a second before Elena looked away. If she looked for too long, she might have actually started to feel that crushing weight just in his measured glance. Instead, she cleared her throat and stepped away, taking the book back to the couch.
For the next half an hour or so, Elena sat hunched over that little book, reading the story she'd enjoyed through half closed lids as a child, thinking about which words she could choose to translate the work without losing the feelings it evoked. A knock at the classroom door shook her out of the focused haze.
Dr. Bartlow, a confused expression across his features, opened the door. A man, half obscured, said a few words that she didn't catch. She glanced back at Damon, who'd moved much closer to the front of the classroom. She tried not to let his interest in the situation shake her, tried to remember that everything was to be questioned, that anything could be a trap. Dr. Bartlow stepped away from the man, who disappeared back down the hallway.
"Mr. Gilbert. A word?" he said and motioned for Elena to come forward. She did so. He leaned in to whisper to her. "There's a phone call downstairs, regarding your brother."
The cool facade she'd had dropped away in that moment and was entirely and immediately replaced with panic. Her brother had never called the school before. They'd only communicated through letters, and even those had been sparse. She hadn't had the time to visit him like they'd wanted, but what could he possibly need to call the school for? Something must have been wrong, something had to be wrong. When she didn't move, Dr. Bartlow said, "With haste, Mr. Gilbert," and she departed the room immediately. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Damon step forward with a similarly panicked expression clear in his eyes, but she didn't have enough time to analyze it.
At the front desk downstairs, half out of breath from running down the multiple flights of stairs, she put her palms flat on the desk. "There was a phone call," she said. "For Mr. Gilbert."
The man, presumably the same one who had delivered the information, handed her the phone. He didn't step away to give her any privacy, only returned to his work.
As soon as the speaker was up to her ear, she rattled off her worries, not even thinking about names or identities. All concern and caution were immediately tossed to the wayside in fear. "Jeremy, are you okay? What happened?"
A smooth and calculated voice of one Klaus Mikaelson greeted her. "Ah, Mr. Gilbert. I do not mean to alarm you."
She held the phone closer to her ear, turning to search the room. Stefan should have been there somewhere, keeping watch. The lobby only held a few students studying in corners, but no watchful vampires. Klaus continued speaking. "I have your brother here. Let me tell you, he is not the best company. I would much prefer yours. What do you say about a little trade?"
"What did you do to Stefan?" she asked, then quickly. "Don't hurt him."
"Please, Mr. Gilbert. I do advise that you think through your next actions thoroughly. Stefan is fine. Your brother, however, may not be." A long pause in which Elena Gilbert thought through everything she'd ever done wrong. He took this silence as a confirmation of her cooperation. "You can save your brother, you just have to do exactly what I say. Do you understand?" When she didn't immediately respond he said. "A simple yes or no will do."
She looked around once more for any sign of Stefan, for Caroline. Maybe if she waited long enough Damon would follow her down to see what took so long. "Time is of the essence, Mr. Gilbert. Yes or no."
She ground her teeth, clenched her jaw tight, then released. "Yes."
A/N: Thanks for reading! Hoping to get an update for At Dawn up soon, but I'm in the middle of a move, so it may be closer to January before Ch. 4 comes out. Thanks for your patience!