Work Text:
When everything is life and death
You may feel like there's nothing left
Instead of love and trust and laughter
What you get is happy never after
When she learns about Carol’s death she runs into the woods and screams until her throat can’t take it anymore. She doesn’t call Damon. She doesn’t call Caroline or Bonnie. She doesn’t go to Matt. She most certainly doesn’t call Stefan. She just screams.
And then she learns that Carol wasn’t the only one who has died that night and she breaks.
*
She goes to Carol’s funeral with Damon. She basically blackmails him into coming with her but she just can’t do it alone and none of her friends is really an option now.
Damon doesn’t say anything but she’s grateful for his silent presence. It’s enough, even when he keeps a careful distance between them and refrains from touching her. Not entirely, no, there are those moments when she thinks she’s about to break again but then she feels a delicate touch, his finger is tracing soothing circles on her knuckles and she feels like she can breathe.
For the entire time Damon doesn’t make a sound, doesn’t move until everyone is finished with their speeches. It’s only when Caroline leaves the podium that she feels a light squeeze on her hand and sees him standing up. He goes to the podium and there’s a whisper somewhere to her left but she tunes it out. For a few long seconds Damon stays silent but then he tells them how after her husband’s wake she went into the garden, sat on the ground under a tree and cried for hours. He tells them a story about her last birthday and how she asked him to stay when all the other guests were leaving, how they sat on a terrace’s steps drinking champagne straight from the bottle, just talking. He tells them about Carol they didn’t know and Elena realises that he has just lost a friend and she never thought to ask if he’s okay.
*
„When this is over,” Caroline says one night when they’re sitting on the rooftop of the boarding house drinking tequila and vodka and blood. “When all this is over I’m going to take Tyler and go to Paris. I’m going to be a fashion designer, yes, and everyone is going to fall to their knees before me,” she says and Elena smiles with a kind of smile that doesn’t reach her eyes and drinks another shot of tequila to cover it up. Caroline shifts a little and looks at her then, still smiling, and asks, “And you, Elena? What are you going to do when it’s finally over?”
“I don’t know,” Elena answers passing Caroline the bottle and doesn’t ask what exactly she means by ‘this’.
*
It takes her some time to learn that she can’t run away from this. It’s always with her, this annoying feeling at the back of her mind, constant need to be near him, to make him happy. Sometimes it’s overwhelming and then she can’t think of anything else, has to distract herself with half a million things to do and surround herself with people. It helps, having things to do, having and all those noises outside of this little space in her head that is all Damon-filled. It helps to muffle the need a little, to forget about it for a few more hours.
Often it’s more than she can take and she ends up stealing her own car keys from Matt’s pocket and driving two miles before she’s stopped by Caroline or Bonnie or Matt. But most of the time it’s not like that, it’s nothing like that. Most of the time the need is quiet and subtle, and perhaps it’s what scares her, what makes her avoid him. Correction: it’s what finally convinces her to force herself into avoiding him.
It’s not hard, really, as he’s usually out of town anyway, still helping Jeremy to take a hold on this whole super vampire hunter thing, and well, avoiding her right back. But sometimes Damon and Jeremy get tired of each other and have to take a break. They drive back to Mystic Falls on those days and Jeremy meets her at the Grill because he still doesn’t trust himself to be alone with her. They spend a few hours talking but not really, doing their best to update themselves on the things they already know and pretending they’re not watching Damon saving Alaric’s stool at the bar and ordering two glasses of bourbon.
Elena watches him and thinks he looks like shit, that he’s terribly, terribly sad, that there is no usual ease in his movements, no cockiness in his voice. She watches him and has to fight a sudden (but really, really not) urge to go and hug him, to kiss it all better.
“How is he?” she asks Jeremy instead, not taking her eyes off Damon’s back.
“As he usually is,” Jeremy shrugs after a moment, and adds when she frowns, “Heartbroken.”
*
“Stefan loves you,” Caroline says for a millionth time and for a millionth time Elena answers, “So does Damon.”
They’re laying now, arms under their heads, their eyes skipping over the stars and constellations they can’t name. Empty bottles and blood bags are scattered around them on the rooftop and Elena thinks she would kill for a few warm drops straight from the vain. She closes her eyes and forces herself to think of a frozen lake, which in turn makes her think of the lake house and, inevitably, of Damon.
“But Stefan—,” Caroline continues but this time, this time Elena cuts her off.
“Stefan loves the old Elena, the human Elena, and Stefan wants her back. But guess what, Car? She’s dead, she doesn’t exist anymore and she is not coming back, not ever. And in all this mess that is my life Damon is the only person that noticed and accepted it, accepted the new me.”
“Elena—,” Caroline tries again but Elena just shakes her head and moves to get up.
“Damon is the only one who doesn’t judge me for changing,” she says and kicks one of the bottles so hard it shutters into pieces changing into rain of glass pieces in the middle of the wood.
*
She caves after nearly a month and she’s awfully proud of herself.
It’s the middle of the night, she wakes up from a nightmare in which she saw him die for her. For a moment she thinks she can feel her heart pounding in her chest before she remembers her heart doesn’t beat anymore. She lies in his bed and thinks she’s tired of people dying for her. She tries to count them on her fingers but then it’s too much and she literally jumps out of bed and runs to her room. She gets dressed in haste and is almost out of the door when she hears Stefan asking, “Where are you going, Elena?”
She considers telling him that it’s none of his business but she remembers the last time she said that and Damon’s favourite coffee table flying out of the window. She turns around to face him. He’s in his red pyjama bottoms and a worn out Twilight t-shirt she bought him for laughs. He looks concerned and heartbroken and like he misses someone with his entire being, and is far too much than she can handle now.
“To the lake house,” she says, turning away, and she runs.
She has a very good idea who he misses so much it hurts.
*
She gets to the lake house in time for sunrise and she doesn’t go inside. She sits on the porch and waits for the sun, listening to birds’ quarrel, watching them chase each other from one tree to another. She closes her eyes when she hears the door open and takes in his scent; he smells his usual mix of coffee and cinnamon, soap with a slight touch of oranges, and something new, something she never smelled on him before and it takes her a moment to recognise but when she does, she smiles. He smells of pine-trees and rain.
He doesn’t ask what happened, doesn’t tell her she should not be here. He sits down next to her and hands her a red mug she decorated for her mother so long ago, in times she barely remembers. It’s filled with coffee but she can smell a taint of blood underneath, and she smiles.
*
“It’s not love,” Caroline whispers that night when they’re get drunk off their asses on tequila and blood. It’s a weird night, full of words, full of stars and bottle’s glass falling over the woods. They’re lying on the rooftop now, Caroline is getting sleepy and Elena is slowly cooling off.
“It’s not love,” Caroline whispers into the wind, her eyes falling close as she says so. “It’s not,” she repeats stubbornly and Elena isn’t sure who she’s trying to convince.
She sighs and says nothing. Suddenly she feels very tired, like she has just run marathon kind of tired, and for a moment she wonders how it would feel to let go. She doesn’t really want to, it’s just a fleeing thought because she’s so tired of fighting, of people judging her constantly, of people trying to fix her. She’s tired of her friends demonising Damon. Sure, she knows he has done some pretty horrible things, she has judged and hated him for some of them herself, but so much has changed since then. Damon is no saint but nor are they, they all did some bad things, some of them killed people. They lost a right to judge him.
She stays silent, though. She doesn’t want launch herself into another discussion, and besides they’re both too drunk for this now, they’re probably not going to remember this anyway.
“Go to sleep, Car,” she says instead and laces their fingers together.
They sleep on the roof that night and wake up before noon only because they missed school and Bonnie got worried. She groans into her phone and asks if Bonnie has some kind of magical way to cure a vampire from a hangover of a century. Bonnie laughs, hanging up. The sun is way too bright and the world is too loud. Caroline smiles.
*
They sit on the porch for a while, watching the sunrise, drinking their vampire coffee and not talking. It’s enough, she thinks, just being here with him, making sure he’s alive. She doesn’t need to touch him or kiss him or something, she thinks.
And it is, it really is enough for about half an hour, but then she runs out of coffee, the sun is already up and there is nothing to watch, so she turns to him and blinks. He’s barefoot, still in his red pyjama bottoms and a black t-shirt she gave him for his last birthday. The image of Stefan flashes in her mind and she can’t help herself, she has to touch him, has to make sure it really is him, Damon, her Damon. She touches his jaw lightly and turns his face toward hers. He avoids her eyes for a few seconds before he finally meets them, and she knows she has made a mistake.
They don’t go to the house, no. They run into the woods, laughing like teenagers on high and make love between the trees. It’s nothing new, not for them, but it feels like something important, like there is something different this time. She sits on top of him, tracing figures and letters on his chest and leaving delicate kisses along his jawline, neck and collarbones. He lets her take a lead, lets her take what she needs, gives her the world and then some. She thinks they will travel to the moon next time.
They stay like this for a long time, lying on the ground, their clothes scattered around, some hanging from tree branches. It’s close to ten when Damon texts Jeremy he will be back for their noon hand combat lessons and that he’ll bring Elena, and she’ll hang out with them for a while. They don’t specify what ‘a while’ means exactly; maybe they don’t know it themselves. She texts Caroline that she’s safe and will be back soon. She texts Stefan to tell him she’s sorry.
They go back a few hours later and Damon cooks them lasagna for dinner. Jeremy makes her another coffee and asks, casually, how she wants her blood: hot or cold, and what type she likes best. She laughs and thinks that maybe she won’t get her happily ever after but for the first time in days she feels like they just may be alright.