Work Text:
On bad days, they don't even know who you are: you see the split-second hesitation when they raise their eyes to look at you, asking, Katherine? and when they hug you, still unsure whether you're a monster. You always wonder what's the cinch, what convinces them you are who you are.
(Because, see, some days you're not sure what makes you Elena Gilbert anymore.)
Take a match, light a candle or a house ablaze: they told you it was cleansing, when you don't have bodies, to burn the remains, but what you're left with is as much despair as you had before and a pile of ashes to boot. The reason you don't want to take the cure is because there had to be a way to deal with those things before, before you grew teeth and a set of claws -- right?
You look at Damon and you think that you miss the way he used to be with you, cruel and dismissive but honest, from the sharp smirk to the murderous swagger. You can't trust people who love you.
(The answer is: there was a way to deal with those things before, but everything was different before. Before, Jenna wasn't killed in front of you. Before, there was no switch.)
Coming face to face with Katherine the first time was like meeting who you most want to be and who you most fear becoming at the same time. It was schizophrenic and terrifying, and it was a thrill deep in your blood, the possibilities unspooling at the speed of light: send her to school in your place, live her life, slip into those Manolos and become the unrepentant blood-sucker you've always pretended wasn't lying supine in your ribcage.
She curls her lip at you like you're her child and she's delighted at how you've turned out; or maybe it's something else, that glint, the aftertaste of disdain and the anticipated pleasure she'll take in ruining you. It's funny, you think, a little dazed: she's the reflection you see in the mirror every morning and yet you can't read her at all.
"Elena Gilbert," your name rolls in her mouth, like it belonged to her, all along.
You meet Isobel and she's not your mother. Your mother made you blueberry pancakes on Sunday mornings; your mother hugged you so hard on the first day of school you thought your bones would break; your mother's car veered off the road and killed her, and this isn't your mother.
When she talks to you she's pleading, her hands extended to touch you, but you've gotten good at seeing past goodwill: you see the hint of madness in her eyes, the suicidal desperation that runs in your blood like a disease and that others mistake for strength of character.
"You should forgive her," Bonnie says once, sprawled on your bed, playing boredly with the pages of an old magic book. "You only meet your real mother once."
"Yes," you say, forgetting once more than you're immortal, now. Bonnie isn't, but you don't let yourself think about that either. "I guess you're right."
But you don't forgive her. You hold Bonnie's hand after she dies, pretending not to be empty inside, trying to scrub the image of her walking into the sun off the back of your retinas.
(Well, no seventeen-year-old girl, immortal or not, is an island, and you're pretty sure your friends would die for you. Which wouldn't be such a terrifying thought if the occasion didn't present itself so often these days.
The point being, you have a wardrobe full of armors: boys who love you, girls who love you, knights who would ride through fire for you. Maybe all the Petrova girls inspire such unwavering devotion; if it's just you, you're not sure who they think they're so loyal to.
How ungrateful, then, that you still spend nights staring at the ceiling of Damon's bedroom, wondering if they would notice if Katherine took your place. You think: have I got no shame?)
"What, do her lips taste like cocaine or something?" Caroline wondered once, a long time ago, annoyed with your swarm of prospective lovers.
But you know they don't love you; they love superimposed images, they love girls that life drags through the centuries, girls in shades, Tatia Katerina Elena, a necklace of dark-eyed sacrifices. They love you only better to throw you away. Stefan thinks you've missed the violence with which he used to kiss you, one sharp jab of his teeth in your bottom lip for each of the ways he'd dreamed of killing Katherine after she betrayed him, but you haven't.
Sometimes you wonder: if I die, do I break the line? Am I the last one? You meet Katherine in seedy bars to make life-or-death deals, and all you can think of is leaning in and proposing another kind of deal, one where she takes everything you have and you take her car and her sunglasses and drive into the fucking sunset, make your own happy ending out of European escapades and a habit of roadside snacking.
Other times you remember she pushed a child out of her body, and your head becomes a terrifying place, imagining the roadmap of scars all over that self-healing body, counting the years. The thing is -- the thing is, you hate her, you do, but you have so many questions. How did you survive? Who did you love most? How did you chose? Would you take that cure? How long did you run? Who am I? Who am I?
One day, you will die. You can't imagine living forever; in fact you can't imagine forever at all. It reassures you, thinking that one day this will all be over and you won't have to worry anymore. The only thing you wonder, that makes you pause, is a nagging doubt: what will they write on your tombstone?