Archive of Our Own

Teeth. Sinking into a neck, through skin and gristle. She didn’t realize how much was hard in a neck, how much you had to bite down and bite through. That soft, supple skin that instinct screamed to protect masked all manner of biological machinery, tubes and bone and thin cartilage wire. And after that? Blood. It gushed. She didn’t know that either. It was a hot, sticky wave and you didn’t even have to suck. It all but poured into her mouth, forced itself down her throat. And she drank deep and she could feel his heartbeat in the rhythmic swell of the blood, thump, thump, thump, until it slowed and eventually stopped.

And he was dead. Just a handful of days into her new immortal life and Elena Gilbert was a murderer.

Everyone knew it was going to happen. It was the secret behind every whispered word between Caroline and Stefan, every silent argument between the Salvatore brothers. Every vampire in the history of forever killed, especially one as imperiled as she was. How long could the bloodlust be controlled, when it was her friends’ lives on the line, her brother’s life? And no matter Stefan’s fear and Damon’s quiet acceptance of the inevitable, she had really believed she would be different. She couldn’t kill. She wouldn’t kill. Until that man pointed a gun at Jeremy’s face and Damon’s words rang in her ears: fucking kill him.

And then she ripped out his fucking throat.

The aftermath had been slow, awareness slipping into her like his blood stained her clothes. Little things stuck in her mind, traps of viscera. She remembered how the blood had been all over her face, how it had smeared when she tried to wipe it away and bits had clung to her sweater in long, sticky strings. She remembered looking at his body, the unnatural way it slumped in death, and thinking about how she’d have to carry it to bury him. She remembered looking up and seeing Stefan staring at her, mute and horrified. There was a part of her convinced that she saw disgust in his eyes.

That had started the spiral that spun right out of control. She had tried to bury his body with her bare hands, digging in the woods, until Stefan and Damon found her. They had taken her back to her house and, by some miracle, she had managed to fall asleep. Until the visions started. Connor standing over her in bed, waiting behind Jeremy, staring at her with blank accusatory eyes. You killed me.

As things always went in her life, it had morphed after that. Klaus had kidnapped her, to protect her from herself, he claimed. To protect her from something he called The Hunter’s Curse. That the man she killed would haunt her and torment her until she killed herself too. Her friends had panicked, had scrambled to free her. While, all the while, she sat and wondered why the hunters thought they needed some curse to torment her in the first place.

Not that it didn’t work.

It had started with Connor, but once Klaus had her imprisoned, isolation had turned it more insidious. Faces flickered in the corner of her visions, familiar voices lingered in the silence of the room. It was Caroline coming up beside her, ‘You weren’t meant for this life.’ It was Bonnie watching her from across the room, ‘I don’t even know who you are anymore.’ It was Katherine looking back at her out of the mirror, ‘the girl you were, the girl everyone loved, is gone now. You’re going to be just like me.’

When Stefan arrived to save her, she couldn’t believe it was really him. And even if it was, she didn’t know what would be worse. If he was a vision there to tell her more horrible things...or if he was actually there and she was going to see that flash of disgust in his eyes again, when he saw her huddled in corner. Both were unbearable to consider. So she did the only thing she could think to do.

She ran. Where to was a blur. It was all voices and visions, like a swirl in her mind. It didn’t help that everything still felt wrong after her transition. The wind in the trees was too loud, the air was too cold, the smell of the water and the road was too strong. The whole world was so alive and it was like it screamed at her, to remind her that she wasn’t. That she’d never be again.

It wasn’t the only thing that was screaming at her. Connor returned first. His voice was all taunting like a knife against her skull, like fingers digging underneath her skin. He spoke truths she didn’t want to hear. That she had liked it, killing. That she had liked the taste of his blood. That she could still taste it, somewhere in the back of her throat and her mind. It was drowning her.

Maybe that was why she’d fled to the bridge.

She hadn’t meant to go there, but it was where she ended up. It was still, where it crossed over the quiet river. There was still a hole in the guardrail, where she and Matt had crashed through it. If she closed her eyes, she was convinced she could hear the squeal of tires, a singular scream, the flood of the water as it filled the car, pinned upside down in the river below.

And Connor’s voice went quiet when she reached the bridge. But the replacement was far worse. Worse than her friends. Worse than Stefan. Her mother. Her actual mother, not the woman who’d abandoned her, who’d burned to death in front of her, but the woman who’d raised her. She was just standing next to her, feet above where she’d drowned on that terrible night. Had anything been ok since that night?

No. Elena could’ve answered that question herself, but she didn’t need to. Her mother’s voice did it for hear, spoke truths she had always knows, had always believed, and had just been too scared to say.

“This is where your life should have ended. Not once, but twice.”

She wanted to cling to her mother, to beg forgiveness that she didn’t deserve, to ask what was next then, now that she’d lingered on. Her mother offered the next step unbidden.

“You know what you have to do.”

Connor again. He had already tried to have her do it other ways. Had haunted her with Stefan and Katherine in turn, to get her to stake herself or poison herself or any other manner of painful end. The revulsion that she felt at her own reluctance to do it was the only thing that helped her balk. But now? Here? Where she was so close to where her life had ended twice, in its own way? She went for her daylight ring and spun it on her finger. Connor and her mother and Stefan, they all nodded encouragement.

“It’ll be quick,” Connor said it almost kindly, “And then it’ll be over.”

Still, the coward in her resisted.

“What about Jeremy?” She couldn’t leave him behind. She couldn’t leave him alone. Could she?

“You’re a monster. He’s better off without you.”

Was that true? Maybe it was. After all, in everything that had happened to them over the past few months, every horrible twist of fate, hadn’t she always been the one responsible? Never mind that so long as she was around, they’d cling to each other, like she was a suitable guardian. Like she could raise a child when she hadn’t gotten to finish being raised herself.

“He’s better off without you.”

“What about my friends?”

Caroline, Bonnie, Matt, Tyler. Time and time again, they had shown up for her, no matter the danger. They had all just survived a night that should have killed them all, a night she had caused.

“Let them go. Set them free.”

Free from her? Yes, maybe that would be for the best. Maybe that would make everything better. If, after all they’d suffered, they could finally live a life on their own terms, instead of one dictated by the destinies she inspired. Set them free. That just left...

She winced at the selfishness of the thought. What about Stefan and Damon? They wanted nothing except her happiness, right? They’d sworn it time and time again and proved it too. Stefan had stood by her even as she raged against his secrets, all on her behalf, all for her. And Damon had stayed, even after she had told him it was Stefan, that it would always be Stefan. He had stayed to help her with the transition, had risked his and his brother’s life against the hunter. They both had. If she was gone, it would destroy them.

“What an ugly love.” She winced as Connor’s voice became Katherine’s, “If you let it linger, it will only fester.”

Maybe so? Maybe it had never brought any of them good. The three of them tangled together, dragging each other down. What do they say about trying to save a drowning person?

She would drown them too. And she’d drowned enough people in her lifetime.

“You don’t want to hurt anyone else, do you?” For a moment, she thought it was still Katherine’s voice. But the surety that came with it, came from within, “I don’t want to hurt anyone else.”

It wasn’t Katherine’s voice. It was hers.

She slipped her ring off before she knew she had made her decision. She was always bad at making decisions. But this wasn’t one she could push back and forth in her mind. It burned her on contact and all she knew was that, really, she’d decided a long time ago how she felt about this.

She held her ring out, over the railing of the bridge and over the water. It felt like when she was seven and had just started jumping off the big kid diving board over the deep end at the community pool. Her dad used to tell her not to hesitate.      

“Just jump and realize you’re already falling.”

She closed her eyes and let the ring fall, so small she didn’t even hear it hit the water.   And it was done. Now, all she had to do was wait. The air was cold. It was dark still, the night stretching out across the river and the bridge and the town. She’d have some time before the end. But she knew it was coming.

For a long, blessed moment, it was silent. She wondered if the voices were gone. If her acceptance had quieted them, their mission complete. A part of her wished they would keep talking to her. If she listened to them, couldn’t her mother stay with her? Or Stefan? Even a vision would be better than taking this final step alone.

Footsteps. She could hear them coming from away off, like she could hear everything now. She knew who it would be before she heard his voice, but that didn’t make it any easier.

“Elena?”

Without thinking, she recoiled, suddenly afraid. She didn’t turn to look at him, didn’t know if she was strong enough to look at him. For all that she wanted someone beside her in this moment...she couldn’t hear him say horrible things to her too.

“I decided,” she said, almost pleading, “I’m...I’m going to do it.” You don’t need to convince me anymore.

There was a quiet moment again. And then, Damon cleared his throat.

“Yeah?” he sounded forcibly cheery, like how he did when he was afraid, “What did you decide exactly?”

It was too much to hope, but suddenly she couldn’t stop herself. She turned to look at him and there he was. He looked slightly disheveled, like he’d had the evening that they’d just survived. His dark, curly hair was windswept and frizzy, as if he’d run here. Because maybe, just maybe, he had? It was too good to be true, but the question came before she could stop it.

“Is...is it really you?”

His face was soft, almost too soft, and it should have made it suspicious. But there was that fear still in his eyes, even as he smiled his sloppy half-grin. Fear and concern. None of the visions had looked at her like that.

“Last time I checked,” he plucked at his own shirt, “I’m still me.” He held out his arms, but Elena didn’t approach.

“How did you find me?” she heard the relief in her own voice, but she couldn’t feel it through the numbness that had settled around her.

Damon shrugged.

“It wasn’t very hard,” he turned to look out off the bridge at the river rushing below, “Third time’s a charm?”

She closed her eyes against the quiet understanding in his sing-song tone, against the ease with which he said what she had never been able to voice. She took a step back involuntarily and Damon froze, like he was trying not to startle a frightened rabbit.

“I...” she found suddenly she couldn’t put any of this into words, so she just nodded.

“Listen,” to his credit, he didn’t move closer to her this time, but kept his eyes locked on hers, “Stef told me they’ve dealt with the curse. It’s over,” he tried to smile, “So, let’s go home, huh?”

For a long moment, Elena stood there, looking from him and back to the river. Shaking her head felt like letting her ring slip off her hand and into the water. This was it. There was no going back.

“I’m...I’m not going home.”  

“No?” Damon looked nonplussed and she would’ve believed if she didn’t see him worrying away at his own ring, the nervous tic that was a dead giveaway, “Well, I don’t mind if you crash at our place again. You’re much better company than Stefan anyway—”     

“I’m not going anywhere,” she was surprised at the firmness she was able to muster and clearly he was too, because she got him to stand still with that one. It didn’t matter that the ghosts were gone. Her own voice in her mind spoke their words.

“I don’t want to hurt anyone else.”

“You should go, Damon,” and she put an edge in it that she didn’t know she could muster, “I don’t want to talk to anyone.”

Damon looked unfazed by this.

“Yeah,” he sighed, “See, I told Stefan he should come and talk to you, but he thought I’d have better luck,” he shook his head, in disbelief, “Stupid, right? You should come back to the house with me and tell him what an idiot he is.”

Now he took a step forward and she responded in kind.

“I said no.”

“Why?” there was the barest sliver of panic now, underneath the same pleading insistence, “The curse is broken, Elena. The hunter can’t speak to you anymore,” he tried to hold up his hands, placating, “It’s over.”

Elena closed her eyes. It was so much to say. Maybe too much to say. This was easier to imagine going through with when she didn’t have to justify it to another person. Now, confronted with this moment when it was so clear that the only way out would mean going through Damon, she didn’t know what to say. Instinctually, her hand went to her bare ring finger and Damon’s eyes followed.

“Where’s your daylight ring?” he sounded calm again, but it was still too much. She shook her head, “Where’s your ring, Elena?”

“I...” she winced away from it internally and he took advantage of her closed eyes to come closer to her in an instant, one hand outstretched, “I...I didn’t need the curse to know what I have to do,” when she looked at him again, there were tears in her eyes, “I can’t do this, Damon.”

She saw Damon’s eyes widen ever so slightly. Selfishly, she hoped it would be too much for him, that maybe realizing she was a lost cause would make him spiral. At the very least, that would get him out of the way long enough to do what had to be done. But the resolve never left his face.

“That bad, huh?”

There was a strange comfort in his words, in the ease with which he looked at her and knew. There was no horrified denial, no look of pity or shame. He accepted her where she was. Which was terrible news for her.

“I killed someone,” it made her gut lurch to say it out loud and the words tasted like blood, “I can’t...I can’t...”

“Live with it?” Damon filled in the blank with a shrug of his shoulders, “Well, you’re a vampire. You don’t have to.”

If he’d expected any sort of levity, he would be sorely mistaken. She recoiled unconsciously. It was too much to hope that she could be rescued now. It was not what she could accept.

“Listen,” Damon glanced out across the river, at the horizon, still sheltered in the dark of night, “We don’t have to go anywhere yet, if you don’t want to. Can we just talk?”

Somewhere, in the swirl that was her newly heightened vampiric emotions, she craved the promise that she would not have to face this alone. In her mind, the voice that had belonged to the vision whispered that she needed to pull away, to deny this outstretched hand. But then again, if she knew how she felt, if she knew what she was going to do, there wasn’t much Damon could do to stop her.

He walked over to the railing, seemingly undeterred by her silence, and swung his leg over the side to straddle it. When she still didn’t move, he continued.

“I know what you’re going through,” she couldn’t help but to scoff, which only seemed to embolden him, “You don’t think I understand?”

Elena opened her mouth, but anything she tried to conjure up seemed insufficient. She settled for a weak, “It’s...easy for you.”

“Is it?” Damon leaned back, crossing his arms behind his head, “That’s news to me.”

“I didn’t mean...” she didn’t know what she meant, but Damon just laughed.

“No, I get it. I’ve certainly been doing it a long time. Lot longer than you,” he scooted back a little on the railing and looked at her hopefully, “But I still know what you’re going through.”

She shifted on her feet, reluctant to sit. Sitting imparted some sense of permanence, of sway. If she started to waver, she was sure she’d hear the voice again. But she couldn’t stop herself from answering.

“I...I really thought I’d never do it.”

Damon’s jaw tensed, but when he spoke again, his voice was still light, like it always was no matter what he was talking about. Somehow, though, that made it easier to listen to him and she willed herself to listen.

“I remember the first person I killed,” he started, “I think I was 19, but everything gets so blurry back then.”

“19?” she couldn’t stop the question, caught on it, “But...but you didn’t change until you were in your 20s.”

Damon’s smirk never reached his eyes.

“And before I changed, if you remember, I fought in a war. Pretty famous one,” he raised an eyebrow, “maybe you’ve heard of it?”

How often had she seen him kill? She didn’t know why she balked, but she did.

“I just never realized you did it when you were...”

“Alive? Yeah, well...I did.”

His gaze drifted away from her out across the river. She met it out there, swaying with the tops of the red maple trees in the wind, the horizon betraying no hint of the sunrise. Elena savored the silence and the breeze and ignored the part of herself that hoped Damon would continue. As if he could read that part of her, he did.

“I didn’t think I could do it at first either, you know. I was fresh out of this fucking place and a goddamn idealistic idiot back then,” he said it with that bite he typically reserved for fighting with Stefan, “I didn’t know how to picture it, so I imagined nonsense instead. Shooting bullets across an empty field or doing it to protect someone else. I didn’t know what it would actually feel like. And they barely trained us. I was just cannon fodder, after all. Not worth it. I got a rifle and a kick in the ass as a send-off. ‘Go shoot somebody, buckero.’ First time I’d aimed it, I was shooting flour sack targets, and a few days later, it was some idiot on the other side.”

His hands worried away as he spoke, fiddling with his ring or bits of his shirt. It was one of the things she’d come to notice about him, one of many distinctions between him and Stefan. Damon could never sit still.

“It was a skirmish out in farmville. Early in the war. The sky got so dark with smoke from artillery, it was night in the middle of the day. And there I was, scared out of my fucking mind,” he laughed. She could see it in her mind’s eye or her fledgling vampire telepathy had slipped through his defenses. She saw flashes of fire and felt the ground quake.

“What happened?” she said it mostly to try and bring herself out of the trance, the figment memories. Her mouth tasted like blood again.

Damon looked away from the horizon and back at her. He gave a small shrug.

“Honestly? Fuck all. I was in a ditch when it happened. A few boys from the other side came scrambling in. Thought they’d play at being heroes and flank us. Or they were just dumb and got lost trying to get back to their own side’s ditch. I’d been telling myself one thing the whole battle. Gotta pull the trigger. Don’t think, just do. So I saw ‘em and I did.”

Fucking kill him. Now, she was back in the store room under The Grill, caught between that split second when she went to strike. The moment when it still would’ve been possible to make the other choice, before she tore into Connor’s throat. It was as quick a moment as pulling a trigger.

She wondered if Damon could see her drifting off, because his voice grew oddly soft.

“The boy I shot was probably my age. I gut shot him and it was like his stomach popped, and he went down right on top of me. I still remember, later, when I was washing myself off in the river, I had his blood in my hair.”

She tried not to think about how saliva pooled in her mouth at the description, her tongue toying away with the gaps in between her teeth. What if there were bits of him still there? To stop the sudden swell of nausea at the thought, she asked the question she most wanted an answer to.

“How did you...get over it?”

Damon leaned back on the railing and, instead of the horizon, this time he chose to gaze up at the stars. What few there were with all the light pollution sparkled down at them and all she could think was that this was the last time she’d see stars.

“You’re a better person than me, Elena. You think I had a tortured moral breakdown? Me?” any joke he tried to put in his tone was farce, “I was numb as cold feet back then. If I tortured myself, wondering about that boy or who might’ve loved him, who missed him, I don’t remember it. I remember I was a better shot by my next engagement. I remember thinking how I might die gut shot in a ditch too,” he held out his hands, sighing, “Course, I wasn’t that lucky, so I get to be here with you.”

She shook her head at that.

“I don’t believe you,” she said and he raised an eyebrow, urging her on, “There’s no way you felt nothing.”

Damon fixed her with his gaze, suddenly sharp.

“I’d have half a mind to say I don’t believe you, actually. You mean to tell me you’re gonna end it all, because you killed some asshole after he pointed a gun in your little brother’s face?”

Elena recoiled slightly, half expecting the voices to return. But it was only her own whispering at her. She tried to recoil from that too.

“It’s...it’s not about that,” she said before she’d really consider, “It’s about...how I feel about me. I’m not...I’m can’t be...”

“A murderer?”

The word was sharp. And she knew he knew that as soon as he’d said it, curling his fingers into a fist at his side, like he could draw them back. For some reason, his regret hurt worse than the word itself.

“No, you should say it,” she twisted her hands in the fabric of her shirt and was seized with the desire to twist them in her flesh instead, like if she could get it all out, she could get the feelings out with it, “It’s...what I am now. I’m...” dead. It was the unspoken word that had haunted her steps since she’d woken up when she should’ve been sitting at the bottom of this river, her lungs filled with water, pressed upon inside and out. She wasn’t supposed to be here anymore. But this strange new body, pulsing with another person’s blood, lingered on.

Damon’s eyes softened, which was a danger all its own, unfamiliar and impossible to predict. He seemed to hesitate on the verge of continuing, which was also disturbing. Damon was rarely at a loss for words.

Without meaning to, Elena found herself sitting down next to him, on the barrier that had failed to stop two cars from going over the side. She had no reason to think it would save her now. But the person who sat next to her...

She swung her legs out over the river and the sound of it gurgling quietly over stones seemed too gentle.

“You want to know why I was numb to it?” Damon looked at her and the sudden honesty there was frightening, “I’d never expected any more of myself. My whole life...all I ever did was screw up. Falling into step as a soldier, shooting a scared kid because I was a scared kid too. It didn’t prompt any identity crisis in me. It was just me, making more bad than good, like I’d always done,” he paused again, but pushed himself on more rigorously than he had before, “That’s where it’s different for us. You have a dissonance I never did. That’s a fucked-up burden to have to carry into this kind of life.”

“I don’t think I’m better than you,” she said it before she thought it, but it felt suddenly important that he understand this.

“No,” Damon smiled again and the familiarity of it relaxed something in her, “You just are. Sucks to be you.”

“I’m not...” perfect? Even that felt charged with ego, an ego she didn’t feel. She was so much less than herself now. She was almost nothing, “What happened to: I know what you’re going through?”

“I do,” he said, shrugging, “I just know where our perspectives diverge. At least when it comes to killing. As for that other thing you’re struggling with, I understand that too. I remember the first time I wanted to die.”

Now Elena could balk and she did so, her eyes widening despite herself. In a flustered flurry, she nearly stood up again, her panic souring in her throat.

“I don’t want to die!” she said it like she was affronted and maybe she was? Was it offensive to her, his certainty? He blinked at her in surprise and gestured with one hand towards the road.

“Awesome. We can take off then? Get you inside before the whole fireworks bullshit you’ve got planned?”

Elena pulled her knees up to her chest. It would have been precarious, had her new alien body not been able to keep her perfectly balanced in her sleep. With her legs up, she could dig her fingers into her jeans and hold on there, pointedly not looking at him.

“You...know what I mean.”

“Do I?”

She pressed her forehead into her knees, groaning.

“It’s like...I don’t want to die. I just...”

“Feel like you should?”

Her head shot up to look at him and she couldn’t help the surprise in her eyes. It hurt to hear the words out loud. And it seemed like he could tell, because his face softened again and he kept talking, filling the silence for her, a temporary wall between her and her thoughts.

“There were a lot of times I wanted to die, for as long as I can remember. Course, plenty of those nights during the war. They condition you for it. But you know me, I like to come prepared,” and he winked at her. Briefly, the spell of understanding was broken and Elena felt an overwhelming urge to hit him. Somehow, that helped even more.

“So when did it start?” she asked, because he’d somehow made it ok to ask something like that. He shrugged, so at ease.

“I think I was maybe 12?”

“Jesus, Damon...” it felt like the wrong thing to say, but she also couldn’t think of anything else. He was still managing to smile at her.

“It wasn’t that dire. Just...moments. You’re telling me you’ve never had those moments? Besides right now, of course.”

She knew she had, but...she’d never really thought about them like that before. Realized what they were and named them. There were none quite so young. Really none until the accident. And then...

“This is where your life should have ended.”

And she remembered waking up in the hospital, Jeremy asleep in a chair next to her bed, and she was so relieved to be alive. Until the relief turned to guilt on contact and guilt mixed with grief. And then she was at the funeral, sitting in the front row, listening to person after person giving speeches about her mom and dad. How wonderful they had been. Such amazing, loving parents. Everything is past tense. She remembered walking up to their open coffins at the wake and thinking how it looked like her mom should just be able to open her eyes. And that she never would again. And it was as if the entire world had ended. Except her. Everything was gone.

And she wanted to be wherever it was, no matter where that might have been. She’d never had a plan. She’d never been close to doing what she was doing now. But she had laid awake in her bed, alone, staring at the ceiling, thinking about the empty room down the hall, and thought, ‘if I didn’t wake up...that wouldn’t be so bad.’

Damon was watching her with sad eyes when she came back to herself. Slowly, he reached a hand out to rest it on her knee. She hesitated. She should pull away. Anything less was a crack in the wall of her resolve.

But she didn’t want to be alone in her bedroom anymore.

She let it stay and realized she hadn’t actually answered his question. But clearly, in silence, she had given him her answer. Desperate for something to distract from the sheen of tears she realized were in her eyes, she managed to choke out, “Why’d it start for you?”

“My mother died,” he said, plainly, “Left Stef and I alone with our father. He didn’t particularly like me. And she didn’t either, really, but she was still something of a buffer, and once she was gone...it got bad,” he shifted a little closer to her, put a little weight on the hand on her knee. The pressure was grounding, “I...something’s wrong with me. Always has been. I think that was the first time I thought taking myself out of the equation might make things better.”

Elena found herself stuck on the words, drawn a little bit out of her own head. Stefan spoke so rarely of his childhood, of any time where he’d been human, in fact. It made her want to work backwards, puzzling together these two men, who’d become so suddenly crucial to her, and who they were and why that was. Puzzling kept her from dwelling on his last words and how deeply they resonated.

“I never tried to go anywhere with those thoughts. Never did anything. But I thought about it. And you think about it long enough...” he let out a low, soft sigh, “Then I went to war when I was 19 and they told me I should want to die, actually,” his voice snapped back to forced cheery, as he adopted an old-timey accent, “There’s no greater glory, they said. ‘No more surefire way to make yourself a hero.’ And it’s like I told you, I was a dumbass back then and I wanted nothing more than to be that hero. Just once,” he looked at her, one eyebrow raised in mock disbelief, like it was a punchline. Can you believe this shit? But she did.  And for some reason, it made her put her hand on top of his, fingers perpendicular to his own, overlaid.

He quirked his mouth into a sarcastic little smirk.

“Course, then you die. And shit gets a lot more complicated.”

This was the only part of the story she’d heard. The part where he wanted to go and Stefan couldn’t let him. The unspoken thing that was at the center of every moment they’d share, for the rest of forever.

“Do you still think about it?” she asked it to have something to say. She knew he did, “It just...seems like you’re used to this life now.”

“Immortality is weird,” Damon said, “I think something changes when dying stops being inevitable and would always have to be a choice,” he seemed to hesitate, rolling his next words around like he fiddled with the ring on his fingers, “Do I think about it? Of course I do. Except for lately,” he smiled a little, “Lately, I haven’t as much.”

Unconsciously, she traced the spot on her finger where her own ring should be. She’d only worn it a few days. She imagined what it would feel like to wear it for decades, to never take it off. To never choose to.

“I don’t feel immortal,” she said, like she was putting the pieces together when the puzzle was already finished, “I just feel like I’m already gone.”

And she closed her eyes at the sudden rush of it all, at the realization of why she could sit here and wait for the sun to finish the job. Of why no part of her could fight the curse. Why she’d barely even needed it to get to this point to begin with.

It was over. It had been over the moment Matt had driven off the bridge, and even if she’d chosen him over her, even if she’d completed the transition, none of it felt like choice. It had just happened and now it was done. There was no way back. And it felt like the world broke underneath her and she fell. Tears that had been threatening since this conversation had started suddenly spilled free, streaming down her cheeks and she choked.

“I didn’t want to die!”

With horrible sort of weakness, she just wilted, collapsing forward. She didn’t notice him move, only that he was there, one arm stopping her from falling. She clung to it like a lifeline as she broke, burying her face in his shoulder. With a gentleness she hadn’t ever expected, he wrapped his arms around her and she held on, her entire body wracked with sobs.

“I know,” his voice was a hoarse whisper, all raw, all honest, “I know. I’m so sorry.”

It felt like waves inside her, roiling, pulling her under, and any attempt to surface just seemed to drag her further down. She was drowning in blood, drowning in the river, drowning in the realization that she was already dead. In her mind’s eye, the world fractured and memories flitted by like leaves. Sleepovers with Bonnie and Caroline, the three of them sprawled on the floor of her bedroom, dreaming ridiculous fantasies masquerading as futures. Cheering at Jeremy’s elementary school graduation with her mom and her dad and thinking about how simple and easy life can be and how much she has to look forward to. Meeting Stefan, even after everything had happened, and feeling like she had someone again. Someone who could walk into the future with her, even if they had to fight for it, and he was ready to fight for it. There was something good still coming. There was hope.

And now, it was gone. It slipped through her fingers and it was never coming back, like her parents, like everyone else she’d lost. Her life was over. And all she could do was mourn before the dawn, face pressed into Damon’s shirt, soaked through with her tears.

She came back to herself slowly, to his arms still around her, tighter, like an emphasis.

“Let me take you home,” he was whispering, over and over again, a desperate wish, “Let me take you home now. It won’t be ok. But I’ll be there. And Stef. We’ll get through this.”

“Why?” it came out a broken, hopeless sound, “What’s there to get through to?”

She felt his hand find her shoulder and squeeze, just as she heard him let out his own, broken sigh. For a moment, neither of them spoke. They just sat there, rocking slightly back and forth, in motion with the gurgle of the river below.

“I know it sucks right now,” he started then, his voice quiet, scratchy, “I know it does. And the truth is? It’s only going to get worse. Just like loss. It takes you awhile to see how big the hole is once you’re in it. But you’re still here, Elena. You’re not the same. You never will be and I’m so sorry that you never will be. But you’re still here. And that’s what matters right now,” he pulled back slowly, his hands still on her shoulders. She kept her fingers twisted in the fabric of his shirt, because was sure if she let go, she’d just fall away. Part of her wanted to hide her face when he looked at her. She couldn’t imagine the mess she’d look, red-rimmed eyes and tears and snot. But then she met his eyes and saw the red there too.

“You’re here,” he continued and his voice wasn’t broken anymore, it was clear and firm and desperate, “And so are the rest of us. Stef, and Caroline. Your brother. Bonnie and Matt and all your friends, we’re here. You might be gone from yourself. But you aren’t gone to them.”

“But maybe I should be,” the words came out quiet, muted, and she winced at them, almost like they’d come from outside her, “I’m not who I was. What if I’m not good for anyone anymore?”

She felt his fingers tighten on her shoulders and he looked almost afraid.

“One, that’s not true,” he shook his head slow, gaze never leaving hers, “And two? Even if it was, it wouldn’t fucking matter,” his eyes sparked with the words, wide and terrified, in a way he was clearly trying to hide, “You don’t have to be good to be here, Elena. You don’t have to matter or make things better. Stop trying to break even with some cosmic debt you think you owe the universe for still being alive!”

That stuck. Somewhere inside her, she felt it lodge between her and the memory of voices and for the first time, her eyes flicked to the horizon and she didn’t want to see the sun cresting there. There was a slight deep indigo blue behind the tips of the trees, a prelude to dawn. She wondered if Damon had seen it too and that’s why he was suddenly scared.

“I just...I don’t know...I can’t...” it all fell apart before she could say it and she looked at him helplessly.

“You don’t have to,” he leaned closer and she knew he meant every word, “You don’t have to know anything yet. It just takes one day. One day where you get something you couldn’t have had, if you were gone,” shakily, he tried to smile, to pull some semblance of his jokey, teasing grin back together, “You can never tell him this. But Stef’s given me a lot of those days. And when I’m spiraling all the way down, I think...why give up if I might get one more moment with my little brother? And sometimes its decades between ‘em and sometimes I was so alone, I thought I’d never have another one. But I did. I’ve lived a long, stupid fucking life and I’ve wasted most of it, but now, out of the blue, I got to be here. With him, with you, with all of it,” his voice broke a little again and she saw him fight to pull it all back together, “This immortal life is new to you. So how’s about you give it a fucking shot at least, alright? Give it a fucking go. And if you really hate it...you can always burn tomorrow.”

Her breath caught in her throat. Inside, she felt herself stumble. Her resolve shook. And she thought about being in her own bed again, lying there, surrounded by empty rooms.

But they weren’t all empty. Not yet.

Damon watched her face with everything he had. There were tears in his eyes, but they didn’t fall. She could feel his hands shaking where they still gripped her shoulders. Just barely, she heard him whisper, “Please.”

Across the river, behind the trees, a single bit of sunlight started to peak through the sky, a hint of pink and a whisper of dawn. She felt the skin on her hand start to itch and then to sizzle.

“Damon?” and the sudden fear in her voice was enough of an answer, but she still had to hear herself say it, “I want to go home.”

He grabbed her and he ran.

The race home was a blur. She knew she started to burn at some point, remembered flashes of Damon trying to cover her with his jacket, darting from shadow to shadow. The pain and the night and the whirlwind of it all was enough that, all at once, her mind went blank.

When she came to, she was in her bed, in her room, at home. But she wasn’t alone.

“Elena, oh my god!”

She hadn’t started pushing herself up before Caroline all but tackled her back down, arms thrown around her neck.

“How’re you feeling? Are you ok? That was so fucking scary, El. What the fuck?”

“Caroline, she can’t answer if you’re on top of her.”

Through a curtain of blonde hair, Elena saw Bonnie sitting at the edge of her bed. Her smile was sad, but she reached up and took Elena’s hand, as Caroline pushed herself off.

“Sorry,” she sat next to Elena instead, as Elena pushed herself up to sit against the pile of pillows behind her. Extra blankets had been added to her bed and there was a glass of...well, of what they’d probably been giving her to help her recover. All of it screamed Caroline in a full mother hen mode, “We were just worried.”

“We were really worried,” Bonnie agreed, giving Elena’s hand a gentle squeeze, “How’re you feeling?”

“Um...” the night came back to her in bits and pieces. Some of them burned on contact. She closed her eyes, overwhelmed and ashamed at the thought of trying to say any of it, “I’m...ok, I guess. Now that the curse is broken.”

“Good,” Caroline hugged her again, briefer, but tighter. Elena felt tears burn in the back of her throat and had to swallow it, “Stefan and I gave Klaus shit for taking you, just so you know. As much shit as we can give him, that is.”

“Stefan?” she looked around and there he was, watching her from the doorway. His eyes were soft.

“Hey,” he took a step closer and she reached out her other hand for his, all other things forgotten, for a moment, “You’re ok.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement. One she thought, maybe, she could almost believe.

“Jeremy, is he...”

“Alright. He’s asleep. It was...a long night.”

You could say that again.

“And where’s...” her question died before she could finish it, suddenly embarrassed.

“Damon’s trying to find your ring,” Stefan answered, squeezing her hand a little, his voice still gentle.

At the memory of what she’d done with it, Elena turned to Bonnie, burning with shame.

“I’m so sorry I did that. I know they’re so hard to spell—”

“It’s fine, Elena,” Bonnie reassured, “You were cursed.”

“Literally,” Caroline added, “Like if anybody’s gonna get a pass for something, that’s it. Evil vampire hunter curse is a good excuse.”

Elena felt herself laugh like it was happening outside of her body. But it was good. It felt good. She couldn’t believe it, but she was here with them and they had all been so worried and now they could just laugh.

“We’re betting on whether or not he can find it,” Caroline continued. Stefan snorted.

“No way. We can’t hold our breath longer than a normal human and it’s dark down there.”

“If he sorta knows where to look,” Bonnie argued.

 “You just want him to find it so you don’t have to make another one,” Caroline said and Bonnie rolled her eyes.

“That’s not true,” but under her breath, Elena heard her say, “He better fucking find it though.”

“Are people doubting me up there?” Elena heard the door open downstairs and then there was a rush and Damon was in the doorway. And absolutely soaking wet, “Fucking non-believers.”

“Dude, did you swim in your clothes?” Stefan jumped as Damon clapped him on the back with a dripping hand. He grinned as he held up his other, her ring between his fingers.

“Would you’ve preferred I swim in nothing?” he smirked, dark hair plastered to his face, beads of water running down it, “I had to act quick, alright? Before witchy over here blew a gasket at the thought of doing the ritual again.”

Bonnie crossed her arms over her chest, lips pursed.

“You’re getting water all over her rug, asshole,” but Damon ignored her and leaned in near Elena, conspiratorially.

“I heard her say she was gonna make the next one a ring pop.”

“I did not say that.”

“And a watermelon one too. Can you imagine?”

Bonnie picked up one of Elena’s pillows and tried to throw it at him, but he dodged it with ease and smirked, offering Elena her ring. She took it with fingers that were suddenly shaking. She met Damon’s eyes then and they flashed with something. Sadness, guilt? It was hard to say. But she took her ring back and he took her hand briefly, closing her fingers around it.

“Try not to lose that one, ok?” he said, a little too softly, “Unless, you know, you want the ring pop.”

Caroline had moved back at that point, brushing water off her hair.

“Ok, this is ridiculous. I’m getting you a towel.”

Damon straightened up, rolling his shoulders.

“I prefer to shake it off. Like a dog.”

“Do not!” Bonnie’s cry was punctuated by her grabbing another one of Elena’s pillows, this one held up like a shield. Elena was laughing again, but she waved her hand at him.

“You’re getting river water on my bed.”

“Excuse you, I have river water coming out my ears. I was down there for three hours. I drowned twice,” he turned to Caroline as he went to leave, “If your mom got a call about a body under the bridge, tell her false alarm. Just me.”

“There is literally a puddle under you.”

“Alright, sheesh! I’m going,” he clapped his brother on the shoulder as he went, “Any word re: Klaus?”

Stefan sighed. They truly never got a break.

“Nothing yet.”

“Good. I’ll go sit on the porch then. Be ready in case somebody needs to dance with him.”

“Can we not fight Klaus every day?” Bonnie called after him as he started down the stairs. He responded over his shoulder.

“That, my dear, is up to Klaus.”

Caroline still went to grab a towel, trying her best to mop up what had started soaking into the rug. Stefan offered Elena one last smile, somewhere between pity and consolation. But there was light in it too, just a little bit. And then he retreated, likely to join his brother on guard duty.

Bonnie stayed with her, as Elena finally opened her hand, looking at her ring. Damon had obviously cleaned it off. It looked the same as when she’d dropped it.

Bonnie put a hand on her shoulder, pulling Elena’s gaze up from the ring.

“You ok?” she repeated, quieter, just for them. Elena looked back to the ring. Wordlessly, she slipped it onto one finger.

“No,” she said, softly, still afraid of the truth, but now, at least, able to say it, “But I think I will be.”