Time spent with Damon Salvatore proved to be an excellent distraction from all the worries that had built up over the last several days. In a way she hadn't expected, he grounded her. Coming back down to earth to argue with him pulled her out of her own head and made existing in her new state much easier to stomach.
The next morning, after restful sleep and a few hours spent lazily (and not so lazily) in bed, her thoughts began to drift to Jeremy once more. Where was he? Why hadn't she heard from him? Was he still with Klaus? What did he remember? Would he write, or should she seek him out? Damon must have noticed the change in her demeanor, the crease between her brows, or the far off look in her eyes because he ushered her out of bed with plans for the day. Something about teaching her the best parts of vampirism.
Nothing from the previous day had been forgotten. She could still see the look in the couple's eyes when she closed her own. She could still feel the rush of their blood flowing into her mouth, and a part of her wanted more, while another part mourned that desire. Finding a balance in life now seemed impossible. Keeping her head on straight was hard enough.
She was still getting dressed when Caroline knocked on the door. Pulling on one of Damon's button-up shirts and quickly fastening the buttons together, she pulled open the door with a shy smile.
Before the blonde could speak, Elena stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Caroline. "Oh?" Caroline said in surprise, before she wrapped her arms around Elena, too. "I was just coming to check on you, but it seems like you're doing better."
Elena pulled away. "I'm managing," she said, with a shrug of her shoulders. "I'm sorry—" she started.
Caroline cut her off, shaking her head. "Don't be. Don't worry about it. It took me years to feel like myself again. Not that I'm saying it'll take you years, I just mean—"
Damon appeared behind Elena, one hand on the door. "Really comforting, Caroline," he mocked.
Caroline's eyes shifted between Elena's and Damon's. Finally, she said, "You missed a button," nodding at Elena's messily buttoned-up shirt. But the smile on her face was unmistakable. "Meet me downstairs? I need details." Before Elena could respond, Caroline turned on her heel and disappeared down the hall.
Elena looked over her shoulder at Damon, who lowered his hands to fix the mismatched buttons on her shirt.
Stefan, Marcus, and Caroline stood facing one another, engaged in conversation that abruptly ended the moment Elena descended the stairs with Damon just a few steps behind.
"Don't stop on our account," Damon said, crossing his arms over his chest. "What'd you learn?" he asked Marcus.
Marcus cleared his throat, looked at Elena, and then said, "Unfortunately, not much. We don't really know what Klaus' next move is. It seems like he got what he wanted. True immortality without needing blood to sustain him."
"He's still a threat," Stefan added. "He knows we want him dead for what he's done."
Caroline shifted uncomfortably, almost imperceptibly, but Elena caught it anyway. Was there still love there? For the man who had killed her best friend twice over?
"He wants power," Marcus continued. "Always has. I doubt he's going to stop now that he has it. It's what he does with it that should worry us."
"What about Elijah?" Elena asked. "He wanted to use me to kill Klaus, right?"
"And all vampires with him," Stefan clarified. "Including himself."
Damon looked at Caroline for a moment, then turned to Stefan and Marcus, purposefully keeping her out of his line of sight. "I will kill him."
"How?" Stefan asked.
Damon shrugged. "Well, that's to be figured out."
"You've been following him, Klaus?" Elena asked, looking at Marcus. He nodded. "Have you seen my brother?"
Marcus and Damon exchanged a glance. That damn language they spoke wordlessly. "Tell me," Elena said, grit to her voice, refusing to be left out, especially in conversations that had to do with her family.
"We haven't seen him."
Caroline turned to her, grabbed her hand. "That doesn't mean anything," she said, trying to be reassuring. But Elena wasn't so certain. It'd been over twenty four hours. Shouldn't he have let Jeremy go as soon as the ritual was complete? And if he had let her brother go, where was he?
"Maybe he went home. I could go—" Elena said, but was cut off by Caroline shaking her head.
"I went by last night," she said.
"What about the apartment?" Elena asked, losing hope with every question. Caroline only shook her head again.
"It's okay," the blonde said. "We're going to find him."
"As hard as it will be, Elena, I think we're going to have to go back about our lives. Go back to Harmon. Go to class. Pretend nothing has changed," Marcus explained. "If he knows we're tracking him, trying to kill him, we'll never find him."
"Or he'll just kill us all. Eliminate the issue," Stefan said. "Who knows how powerful he is now."
"He has a weakness," Damon said. "We just have to find it." He spoke to everyone but held Elena's glance.
Caroline, still holding Elena's hand, squeezed harder. Maybe this news should have shaken Elena more than it did. But deep down, maybe she'd already known that her death hadn't been the end. It had been wishful thinking to believe that the ritual would end their feud with the immortal, and maybe it had been naive of her to believe he'd return Jeremy so easily. Her hand twitched with a desire to hurt someone, him. But in the same vein, she knew it would only end with a stake through her chest. No. She needed to continue living, even if it killed her.
"We'll keep searching," Stefan said, looking at Elena sympathetically.
Stefan and Marcus left together, working in tandem to get more information regarding Klaus and his whereabouts with a promise to be careful. Damon, Elena, and Caroline gathered their things and awaited a carriage that would take them back to Harmon where they would go on as if nothing had changed, as if Elena's life had not been flipped completely on its head.
"Home, sweet, home," Caroline said with a forced smile on her face as she opened the door to their small shared apartment. It felt foreign. The whole town did. A place where she'd once felt at home now felt completely and utterly odd. Months spent curled up on the couch with a book, hours spent sifting through evidence at the table, and of course, many a moment spent fretting in front of the mirror about her disguise. None of it seemed to matter anymore.
Now all she could think about was how difficult it would be not to feed on her classmates, how stressful it would be to pretend she was still human. An entirely different kind of disguise. One that required mental fortitude she wasn't certain she had.
"Come on, Elena," Caroline said, turning around to grab her roommate's hands. "I need you to at least pretend you're happy to be back. Maybe then it will actually happen."
Damon had departed immediately without word, so Elena was stuck with Caroline's full attention, something she hadn't had in quite some time and felt incredibly overwhelming all of a sudden. Elena forced a smile to her lips and Caroline matched it with a nod. "Better," she said.
"Are you okay?" Elena asked suddenly, overtaken by all of the weary expressions she'd seen cross her friend's face in the past few days. "Everything with Klaus, it can't be easy."
Caroline took a seat on the couch and Elena followed suite. If they disregarded the subject matter, it was just like old times. If 0nly. "It's complicated," Caroline said, letting out an exasperated sigh. "But don't worry about me. I want to know about you."
It seemed neither of the two wanted to answer questions about their mental stability over the past few days. With thoughts so scrambled up inside her mind, working them apart and untangling her emotions took effort, but she had to start somewhere. "I killed someone," she said, looking down at her hands. "Two people. After we talked yesterday. I just ran. And then there was this girl asking me if I was okay, but all I could hear was the blood. I barely felt like myself. Once I started, I couldn't stop."
Caroline folded her hand atop Elena's. "When Klaus turned me, I barely knew what was going on. Just that I was hungry," she said. The word reverberated through Elena's skull, and she knew her friend understood her, knew she'd gone through the same thing. "I can't remember how many people I killed. I was alone for a long time before Damon found me. And Stefan… it was even longer for him. The point is, Elena, we've all struggled. Some of us still. It's not easy. I should have prepared you better. I should have told you more about what it would be like before you made the decision you did." The blonde looked away for only a second before Elena squeezed her hand back.
"Don't blame yourself, please," Elena said. "You did what you could, I mean, Caroline—you saved my life. I'd be dead without you."
"Elena," Caroline said, tilting her head to the side, looking at her friend with such awe. "You saved your own life. I just stabbed myself with a needle."
Elena smiled, and the two sat in silence for a moment, feeling as if a lot had healed between them. Even just discussing those who she'd killed made the new vampire feel better. Though, she would never forget their faces, would never forget the guilt that their deaths caused. But maybe that was for the best, maybe that would prevent her from killing again. And though she knew she would not be a perfect vampire, the least she could do was try.
"So," Caroline said, her smile turning more joyful as she wiggled her brows. "You and Damon? That finally happened?"
Could vampires still blush? She certainly felt as if a bright red heat spread across her cheeks. "Yes. I mean, I think so."
"You think so?"
"It definitely happened. I just don't know if it meant anything."
Caroline groaned. "You are such an idiot. He has been in love with you since the moment you met. And you've been drooling over him for months."
"In love with me?" Elena asked, raising a brow. "He's not in love with me—did he say he was in love with me?" They argued constantly, he always tried to tell her what to do, and he always seemed to be annoyed with her decision making ability. How did any of that translate to love? Without waiting for Caroline to answer, she shook her head. "No, if anything, we just finally got out our frustration with one another."
"I thought you were supposed to be smart."
"I am smart!" Elena said, defensively.
Before Caroline could launch into her counter-argument, someone knocked on the door. They exchanged a worried glance. They'd never had guests before, certainly not the kind that would knock politely on the door. Damon would have walked right in without even asking for permission first, as he'd always done
After a tense moment of silence in the aftermath of the knock, Elena stood and walked across the room. There was no window on the door to look out of, so she could only take a blind leap of faith.
Standing on the front porch of their small, Harmon apartment was one Jeremy Gilbert. Elena didn't give him the chance to speak, only stepped forward and threw her arms around him. His arms snaked around her waist, hugging her tight.
"Damn, I've missed you too, sis," Jeremy said, slowly detaching himself from her grasp.
Elena left her hands atop his shoulders as she scanned him for injury. He looked totally and completely fine. He wore a brown leather jacket, a pair of pressed slacks, and a nice button-up shirt. His hair was styled neatly, and a smile lit up his face.
"Where have you been?" Elena asked, concern seeping into every word.
Her brother's face scrunched. "What do you mean, where have I been? I've been writing. Been out seeing the world. I know we didn't get to meet up like we wanted to over the summer, so I figured I'm come out here and surprise you."
All of the joy was sucked out of the air, and Elena was too stunned to speak. She blinked away the shock, attempting to pretend that everything was as it should have been. "Right," she said cautiously.
"Well, can I come in? Get a tour?" Jeremy asked, just as Caroline appeared behind Elena in the door frame.
"Elena?" Caroline asked hesitantly, as Elena said, "Yeah, of course. Come in." She took a step back, holding the door open as he walked through it, setting his bag down in the entryway.
He walked through the entry and into the living room, and the girls followed.
"You sure everything's okay, Jer?" Elena asked, reaching out to grab his forearm. When he turned to look at her, something in his eyes shifted, pupils dilating slowly.
"I have a message from Klaus," he said, his voice sounding odd, unlike himself. All tone had been whipped away, and he only recited lines he'd been fed. Elena looked at Caroline as a chill crept up her spine. Caroline's gnawed on her bottom lip as Jeremy took a step closer to Elena.
"He wanted you to know that he's not pleased with the trick you pulled and that your actions have consequences," Jeremy said.
Elena held onto every world, looking into his eyes. She could feel Caroline's gaze on her, too. Both of them waiting for her brother to snap out of it, to return to his normal self. Instead, he withdrew a blade from his sleeve.
"Watch out," Caroline said, stepping in front of Elena. But they'd misread the situation, misunderstood what Jeremy aimed to do, and by the time they realized, it was too late. He hadn't pointed the dagger at Elena, had never meant to harm her. No. He'd taken that blade out of his jacket sleeve and plunged it into his own chest without a second thought. The compulsion broke and he grunted, hands grasping for the weapon, slick with blood, as he staggered backward.
A/N: Sorry for the delay on the upload! I'm just getting settled after a cross-country move. I should have the last chapter of A Bistro in Burlington up before Christmas, maybe tomorrow night? Hope you enjoyed this chapter! Only 6 more to go!