damon salvatore (diabolical) wrote in salemscenes, @ 2016-03-26 22:16:00 |
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Entry tags: | damon salvatore (diabolical), elena gilbert (vampirebait) |
Who: Damon & Elena
What: Reunion
When: Backdated to Damon's arrival
Where: Elena's apartment
Warnings: SIGH
Damon didn’t know what he was going to say to her. He had so much. He didn’t know what was more important, what could wait and what couldn’t. Damon’s heart was racing - it had been since he saw Elena on the network. She’s back. She’s here. The words filled his mind as he realized it. Damon knew that Elena being awake meant that Bonnie was surely dead. He was torn between feeling happiness and distress. The love of his life was here but his best friend was gone. Damon was never going to see Bonnie again and he hated it, hated their last exchange of words before he dessicated himself besides Elena’s coffin.
To do what he had done? Leaving his friends and his brother? Damon wondered if Elena would have wanted it. He knew, deep down, that it was selfish but he had decided it based on the fact that he couldn’t live without her. He couldn’t be kind or forgiving. He couldn’t be any of those things without her.
He pushed it all down for the moment. Damon knew he would break eventually but right now he needed Elena. He needed to see her because he was afraid that the longer he took the chances of her vanishing would build. Would she disappear? Damon didn’t know. He didn’t know anything about Salem or why they were suddenly there. Damon didn’t want to take the risk so he was racing, using his vampiric speed, counting doors until he finally found the one that Elena messaged him about. He didn’t bother knocking - why would he? Damon didn’t know if he could walk in without being invited in but he decided to throw logic out the window.
He walked in.
Blue eyes looked for her and Damon was out of breath, something he knew was just his human side making up for the anxiety and nerves that were tormenting his body. Damon had never felt this...impatient before. He wanted to see Elena so badly that he wondered if he would ever survive again if something else happened to her. He couldn’t lose her again - not to some spell or anything. Damon needed for Elena to be real.
Damon needed Elena. Period.
When the door opened, Elena moved at lightening speed. It seemed to be the only way she knew how to move anymore. She knew that she could be impulsive when her heart was broken but she wasn’t mature enough as a vampire yet to be able to completely control it. She thought maybe one day she could but even the older vampires, especially the older vampires were even worse at it. In fact, the only vampire that Elena had ever known to be extremely good at control was Caroline.
She rushed into Damon’s arms just as quickly and powerfully but he was one of the older vampires and she didn’t bowl him over. Instead he was there, solid as ever, to catch her before she fell. Her tears were a rushed release and they stained the collar of Damon’s shirt as she held onto him like he was her only lifeboat and the Titanic was sinking. People went on, the world went on, but Elena could see the trouble ahead. It felt like a dream at first, she had to just hold onto him for a few minutes before her body, spirit and mind all caught up to the fact that Damon was alive and he was here. Just like he promised.
When she pulled away from him finally, her makeup was smeared and her hair was wild but she was unmistakably Elena. Her eyes were wet but there was no longer a flood of tears rushing down her face. She wanted to smile but still too uncertain in the moment, it looked more like a grimace.
Elena’s roommate was nice but Elena was glad she was out for the moment so that she could have this moment alone with Damon. Maybe in time she and Costia would be good friends but Elena couldn’t really be a friend to anyone until she got her shit together and the one person who always managed to help her keep it together had finally been returned to her.
She kissed him, just as impulsive but with tenderness instead of rushed sentiment. Her hand crept up the back of his neck, fingernails gently digging into his hairline before she pulled away again. He was here. He was alive. She could finally breathe.
“I thought I lost you forever,” she said.
And forever was a long time for a vampire.
Damon thought that he had forgotten the way that their bodies fitted together, the shape of Elena’s frame against his, something that he had always been amazed at and thought that he had taken it for granted. Damon eyes closed as he took it all in, embracing Elena with a tightness that reflected his mindset and how desperately he didn’t want to let her go. Not again. Never. Damon felt like he had failed to protect Elena against Kai - against his own mother who had been the one to suggest the linking spell. Damon felt that his arms could be a protective barrier against all living threats so he hugged her against his body - he would be the barrier against all things. Damon wasn’t going to let anything happen to her ever again.
He could feel the wetness of Elena’s tears and Damon felt a sense of sadness as he heard her, her sobs of pain and relief, her feelings something that he carried within himself. When Damon pulled back he smiled, his own eyes glossy and filled, tears that he didn’t think he had any right to spill given how horribly he had been during the time Elena was inside of her coffin. He had been a horrible brother - a terrible friend. Damon didn’t think that he even deserved this moment or even to feel what Elena was feeling. It took everything to hold it all in. He couldn’t cry in front of her.
A thumb brushed a darkened tear drop that curved over Elena’s cheek, mascara ruined and smudged but to Damon she was beautiful. Elena was always beautiful in his eyes and ruined makeup and messy hair didn’t bother him. It didn’t even seem to be something he noticed as he pulled her up, arms circling and hands gripping as he kissed her back with a renewed sense of need. God, he needed this. He needed to feel her again because everything in his life had gone to Hell - literally.
“No, you didn’t lose me,” Damon said, pulling away and breathing hard, trying his best to regain control of his body and his heartbeat, everything inside of him twisted and hurting. “You never were. I waited...it felt like so long but I tried to wait. I just couldn’t.” Damon felt like he was going to ramble on but he shut himself up, swallowing and shaking his head, deciding to keep quiet as his eyes finally blinked to allow some tears to be shed.
He didn’t cry. He hardly ever did. Damon didn’t give choked sobs but the tears that fell gave it all away. Damon tried to catch them, to wipe them away before Elena could see them but he wasn’t fast enough - how ironic, considering.
Now it was Elena’s turn to wipe Damon’s tears. She was so used to comforting him now, it was second nature. Elena was a comforting presence to begin with and along with her compassion and deep emotional nature, it was amplified when she had drowned that night and turned into a vampire. With her shirt pulled up over her hands, she used the material to dry Damon’s tears before she stood up on her toes and kissed under his eye gently. The rushed nature of their reunion had passed and now things had slowed down to a sweeter pace.
She had no idea that she was from a different timeline than him, than her friends. It was her own fault for keeping herself secluded from everyone. She wasn’t even sure if Caroline and Stefan knew that she was there. Elena hadn’t bothered them because she knew she was a wreck and they had both already put up with their fair share when Elena had briefly gone off the rails and turned off her humanity. She didn’t think she was in a place where she would flip that switch but like most vampires, she was impulsive and when she was suffering, she could definitely make other people suffer along with her.
With her hands on the sides of his face, she kissed him again. She didn’t want to let him go, though she inevitably would to reunite with Bonnie. They weren’t as likely to make out during their reunion but there would probably still be plenty of crying. Elena couldn’t seem to stop herself from leaking even if she wasn’t actively sobbing anymore.
“I can’t handle this without you,” she said to him, her dark eyes searching his. “Don’t leave me like that ever again.” She hated to admit that she was incomplete without him but it was true. Love it or hate it, Elena and Damon needed one another just to maintain.
She pulled him down on the sofa with her, their limbs tangled together because she literally refused to let him go. She wasn’t sure she ever would again, just in case. She never knew how much she loved Damon until she lost him.
“And not to relive old fights, but can we just say screw the I make my own choices thing and make our choices together from now on?” Elena asked. She knew she had started that fight but that had been a million years ago and before she had fallen in love with Damon or maybe just before she realized that she had.
For a moment there was confusion in Damon’s eyes as he tried to correlate Elena’s words with what he was feeling. Damon hadn’t been the one to leave her. Did Elena feel that way? That her time sleeping was time spent that she blamed Damon for? No. That didn’t sound right. Damon decided he would ask later, after their emotions weren’t so high and off track. The things that Damon did manage to gather and understand was that he also couldn’t do this without Elena. The attempt was made and for six months Damon had made so many mistakes and every single one had Elena as his reason.
It wasn’t fair. He knew that he couldn’t live a one track life but there was no helping it. Damon told Stefan that he peaked - he couldn’t be happy or himself without Elena by his side. It didn’t seem correct in the eyes of others. They didn’t understand how he could be so selfish when other people needed him. They tried and Damon couldn’t give them an answer because to him it was something they should have known. Damon Salvatore wasn’t a good person. He couldn’t be kind or compassionate. He couldn’t be any of those things when his girlfriend was mocking sleeping beauty.
They hated him - Bonnie and Stefan. Damon knew they were angry with him and would continue to be. Of course he couldn’t blame them. Damon didn’t have the right to. It was his decision in the end to make and they didn’t respect it. How could they when Damon abandoned them?
Damon was quiet for a long time, his head resting on the armrest of Elena’s couch as he held her, trying to remember all of the good times that he had while the bad memories trickled in. “I’ve made some bad choices, Elena,” Damon said, knowing that at some point he was going to have to tell her - explain everything. “When you went away...I didn’t handle it as well as I thought I could and for that I’m apologizing. A lot of things happened. Too much to tell you in one sitting and you deserve to know everything. You deserve to know that I haven’t been the man that you wanted me to be.”
Elena sat up slightly and looked at Damon when he began his confession. She frowned. She already knew that he had made some bad choices. Who among them hadn’t? Caroline aside, they had all gone off the humanity rails at least once. Elena had made some terrible choices, like falling in love with two brothers, as if that had been a choice. Damon was impulsive and that lead to bad choices sometimes but Elena loved him for who he was, faults and all.
“What are you talking about? You mean when I went away to college?” Elena asked. Because she really was clueless as to what he was referencing. When she left for school, she had left him in charge of Jeremy which was the most amount of responsibility she could ever entrust with him. Yes, he had killed Jeremy once during a tantrum but Elena believed that he had changed and she trusted Damon to look after her little brother. What could he possibly be talking about?
“Damon.” She started, her dark eyes knotted in confusion as she sat up a little bit more and reached out for him. He looked genuinely distraught which was unsurprising given the emotional reunion they just had but she knew there was something she was missing, some important part of the puzzle that wasn’t immediately apparent to Elena.
“Whatever it is, you can tell me.” She took one of his hands in hers and pressed it tightly to let him know that whatever it was, they would get through it together. Elena did judge Damon sometimes but as more time passed between them, the love and understanding between them also grew. Damon was the lazy predator that perfectly matched Elena’s dark side even if they seemed to lighten one another. Whatever it was, she would surely understand it.
There was something missing between them but Damon couldn’t quite put his finger on it. When Damon looked at Elena he saw Elena but she seemed...off. Damon felt that there was a disconnect but it didn’t seem to be her fault that she wasn’t on the same page. The mention of college was a little confusing because Damon remembered that happening ages ago. What did that have to do with anything?
“Don’t tell me...” Damon frowned, feeling his insides twist as he sat up a bit, trying to see if he could figure this out all on his own. “Elena, what’s the last thing you remember?” Damon asked, curious, wanting to know what Elena actually recalled from their home because it didn’t seem as if she had been stuck in a magical coma. This wasn’t the reaction that Damon expected and there was no mention of Bonnie. Damon knew that Elena - his Elena - would have been heartbroken at the idea of her best friend dead now that she was awake.
“Because we’re missing something or at least I am,” Damon said, his brow knotted in the way that it did when he was trying to figure out one of life’s grand mysteries. “You were in a coma - Kai linked you and Bonnie with a spell and the only way to break it is for Bonnie to die - as long as Bonnie lived you slept. Don’t you remember that?”
Elena frowned. She had sensed the disconnect too but not as fully as she did now. Earlier, she had the luxury of being completely distracted by her raging whirlwind of emotions. Now that she had calmed down a little bit, she could look at things a bit more rationally.
“Who’s Kai?” Her brows furrowed together as she studied Damon’s face. “Coma?”
Elena knew that she and her friends basically lived in a supernatural soap opera but a coma seemed a little too much, even for them. She had no idea what Damon was talking about but it sounded cruel. A mystical coma that linked her and Bonnie together so they couldn’t live at the same time? Her heart twisted into confused knots as she contemplated the idea of never being able to see Bonnie again. Which, she understood that to some degree was already happening. She hadn’t really processed Bonnie’s death as much because she could still see Bonnie, could still talk to her. And as long as she could still do that, she felt like Bonnie was still there with her. The feeling was entirely selfish but it was the only way she could keep Bonnie and so she chose to be selfish.
“The last thing I remember was The Other Side collapsing. I didn’t want to leave without you but Bonnie made me. And Tyler came through and Stefan and even Ric but you…. You never did. Bonnie said you were there with me but I couldn’t see you, you were just gone.”
Simply thinking about that night made Elena’s eyes well up with tears again. It was hard to picture a time when she might have been grateful to be rid of Damon. That time felt so long ago even if it was only a couple of years. Now she didn’t know how to be without him, how to live, how to breathe. Damon was the thing that connected her to solid ground and he always had. It just took her awhile to realize it.
Damon looked stunned - he was...really stunned. He didn’t think that there could be such a gap in their memories. It was a huge one. There were things that Elena didn’t know and Damon didn’t even know where to start. There was just too much. Way too much to just use words. Damon knew that he could spend so many hours just talking, explaining everything that happened. Damon knew there was an easier way but he didn’t want to push it. He didn’t know if it was better or worse that Elena didn’t know about the things that happened. So, it was words for the time being. Damon figured he could at least push as much as he could together to keep things from getting too confusing.
“There is a lot that went down,” Damon began, swallowing, not sure if he should start with the obvious, “Didn’t die, for one,” Damon said, smiling, although it wasn’t really something that could take away from the pain that Elena felt, thinking that he was dead when the Other Side collapsed. “I was trapped in a prison world of 1994 with Bon Bon. We both survived and we both escaped eventually. Kai was also trapped there. He’s a siphoner - some poor excuse of a witch that can only suck the magic out of other witches to use magic. He escaped - he did the whole bad guy routine - it was all a big mess.”
Damon explained some parts of the Gemini coven and how Kai was a part of it and also told Elena about some other things that went on. There were a few key things that Damon left out - Elena asking Alaric to erase her feelings one of them. Damon didn’t want to walk down memory lane when it came to that. It was painful - and he didn’t think it would make much of a difference given that Elena hadn’t done it, or at least this version of herself didn’t.
Fingers gently traced the skin of Elena’s cheek, a thumb brushing right under her eye, Damon’s arm wrapping around Elena’s waist, holding her a bit tighter. “Look, it doesn’t matter that you don’t remember. The thing that I care about - the only thing I care about - is that you’re here and I’m here. We’re together.”
It was difficult for Elena to wrap her mind around everything but she was quiet as Damon explained. She couldn’t believe she had missed out on so much of her friends’ lives. More than that, she couldn’t believe that they had allowed someone to link her and Bonnie together that way and it had gone on for years. Maybe because she had such a tenuous relationship with death herself, it wasn’t so tangible until she was directly confronted with it. Like when Damon died, but he hadn’t really died, proving her point.
It hurt her to the point where her heart felt heavy again, the idea that she and Bonnie couldn’t exist at the same time. Bonnie wouldn’t live forever like Caroline and Stefan and Damon would. When she woke up in sixty years after Bonnie passed, her friends would be waiting for her but Bonnie, her best friend, was someone she had to say goodbye to forever? Sometimes she forgot that they weren’t infallible. It was that kind of reckless thinking that lead to decisions that were less than sane. Like how she had jumped in that car with Damon. At the time, it had been easy to think that they were ride or die until one of them actually died.
“Everyone is here. Everyone is okay. That’s all that matters to me.” It wasn’t a completely true statement but it felt completely true to Elena when she said it. Damon was right. As long as they could stay together, their problems would seem small. The trick was staying together and keeping everyone alive and out of harm’s way. Elena didn’t know what would happen next but she did know that they were all stronger together than they were when they were apart.