Saved By Grace: Chapter One - Genesis (The Beginning) - (1/7)
She turns seventeen while she's in the hospital. Her parents are dead, and her little brother sleeps on a chair in the corner of her room, tears dried on his cheeks.
Her Aunt Jenna shows up, looking shell-shocked, stunned not to have just lost her sister, but to have inherited two teenagers.
Elena Gilbert closes her eyes and pretends to be asleep even as hot tears slip down her face.
She meets Stefan Salvatore on a Tuesday in September and she thinks his eyes are the prettiest shade of green she's ever seen. He's so nice, but mysterious, walking away from her before she's even finished talking to him.
She falls for him fast, because there's no reason not to. Life is short, things happen, and with no parents, Elena has stopped thinking like a kid. She wants to have fun, but she wants it to be meaningful. With Stefan, things are meaningful. He's intense, and seems older than any of the other seventeen-year-old boys she knows.
When everything starts to unravel-first, he's a vampire, then his brother is a menace to society, then she finds out she looks just like the infamous Katherine-she holds on tighter. Every instinct tells her to let go, but she can't.
There is no reason for this, not until Atlanta. In the space of an unplanned, heartfelt plea for the life of someone she knows has done unforgivable things, she begins to understand something about herself.
Her parents died, but she lived. It had to be for a greater purpose, and every day that passes with the Salvatore brothers in her life seems to prove that.
His fingers brush against her throat as he says, "I didn't compel you in Atlanta because we were having fun...and I wanted it to be real." Elena's fear that he'll decide that right now he doesn't care if it's real or not floods her and she fights against trembling. She feels the clasp drop against the back of her neck as he pulls his hands away. "I'm trusting you," he says, and his voice quivers over that word-as though to even think of trusting someone is the hardest thing in the world for him. His eyes come up to hers. "Don't make me regret it," he finishes.
He turns away from her and picks the Grimoire back up. Elena decides right then that she won't do anything to break that trust, not tonight. It's too precious when there is no confidence, when there is nothing but strife. When a man who loves has nothing to direct that love to, and only hate and anger and wrath to spill upon the world.
Her fear for Stefan is what first forces her into the tomb, but her fear for Damon is what sends her back. She hears his voice echoing from the depths (She's not here!) and Elena can't comprehend it. The terrifying certainty at the end of all this was supposed to be a vampire who looked just like her, and the reality of Damon leaving Mystic Falls forever with her.
She calls out to him, desperate to get them all to safety before time runs out; there's palpable devastation on his face as his eyes find hers in the filtering darkness. It somehow makes the night before when he'd been so angry to find them digging up the Grimoire without him pale in comparison.
All of her broken promises could never compare with the biggest lie of them all.
"I love you, so much," Stefan whispers, and the desperation in his voice scares Elena more than any of the frightening things she's seen since they started dating. He holds her too tightly, his grip on her painful, but she doesn't protest.
She's never seen him this vulnerable, and she's not sure what it means.
She learns a few days later when Damon picks Stefan's limp, vervained body up off the bedroom floor and takes him downstairs to the basement. They sit together on the cold, hard cement for a long time, and Damon doesn't say anything, which is strange. She's never known him not to talk incessantly, especially when it would annoy her.
"Will he be alright?" she finally asks, and her voice is hoarse, tired and unused.
"Yes," Damon says with no hesitation, which is in direct contrast with his words when they first shut Stefan in an hour before. (There's no guarantee this will work.) He's as capable of lying to her face as she's been to him. The difference is that he says it to make her feel better. His eyes shift to hers, and she remembers those moments in his arms earlier, when she had forgotten about Stefan. She's not blind, and she's sure that Damon has gotten through more than a hundred and sixty years on the planet because of his beauty-the wildness in his gaze, the danger in his smile-but somehow until today, she'd never been taken in by it herself.
She'd also seen him care about his brother-panic on his face, and a resolve to fix things. It had started with Stefan getting taken by the Tomb Vampires, but Elena faced it head-on today-Damon loves Stefan more than he hates him. Because she's seen the hate too; one couldn't spend any length of time with the two of them and not see it-not feel it.
There had been that moment, there in her history classroom, when he clued her in. Not just about how he feels about his brother, but that he also understands what she feels-how helping Stefan isn't just something she does, but is something she needs to do. She doesn't know why she has to be reminded of Damon's good points-although his constant flaunting of his many flaws probably has something to do with it-but in case she ever forgets, all she really needs to do is remember him that night in the cemetery.
Alone, bereft, without.
She doesn't know why, but the one thing she knows without a doubt is that Damon gets her motivation. He gets the driving force that love is.
In a moment of self-realization, she understands that a comparison of her short, little life should be insignificant to him: instead he lets her know that he doesn't think it's any less for her just because she's so much younger-or just because she's only known Stefan for a few months.
He sees them as equals. Not in their ability to save Stefan, obviously, but in the role they both have to play. He had denied her permission to help once they got there, but he'd let her drive his car after they convinced Alaric to go with them. It had been a little thing, but she knows it was his way of letting her have something.
He wrapped his hand around her wrist, pressing his fingers to her pulse, looking directly into her eyes and promising without words to bring his brother back.
The funny part was she believed him.
It confuses her, but it also eases her conscience. Damon had been worth saving, because without his help, Stefan would be dead.
She can't lose Stefan, so that means she can't lose Damon either.
(That's why he sits with her in the basement. He can't lose Stefan either.)
"We kissed, Elena," he hisses at her as they stand in the hallway of the hospital.
She has no idea what he's talking about and even less patience to try to solve the riddle that is Damon Salvatore. Her uncle (father) almost bled to death in front of her, and while she's not John's biggest fan right now, he's still her family. And now Caroline might die? She can't handle any of this.
Tomb vampires on the loose, Damon saying crazy things like he can't forget it even if she can? What the hell? She's pretty sure she doesn't want to know what he's talking about, but she learns soon enough anyway.
Later, she plays mediator between the brothers, standing in her dining room, watching their eyes sparking, feeling the tension that's always there flare even higher. Katherine has shown herself, and now the monster is real. All the things she's heard and all the things she's concluded on her own without Stefan's input or Damon's expressions of desolation to influence her-okay, fine both of those things are what influenced her opinion the most-but now, she's going to find out, first hand, just what Katherine can do.
Trying to kill John was the first thing, but she doubts very much it's the last.
Hours later, when she finds Damon on the end of her bed, sad, drunk, and incomprehensible, it all begins to unravel. Again.
(Katherine's wake of destruction can't be quantified to only what she does.)
His hands grab at her face, his lips mash over hers, and she tries to reason with him. But deep inside her, she knows she can't speak calmly about something that may not be true and expect Damon to react well to it. It's like it all happens in slow motion, and she should have the right words to prevent it-somehow, someway, but instead she screams "NO!" when he snaps Jeremy's neck.
She runs to her brother's side and feels a rage course through her body that she's never known before.
"I hate him, Stefan," she sobs into Jeremy's hair thirty minutes later when he still hasn't woken up. She doesn't know what the turn-around time is on a magic ring that keeps people from dying permanently, but this has been the longest half hour of her life.
She never thought she could hate anyone, but the feeling fills up every crevice in her body until she's animated with it.
(It's possible that hate is more powerful than love.)
She holds on to that anger, through every charming remark, through every smirk, through every attempt he makes to cajole her out of it. She is immovable, and Damon Salvatore has no tricks that can change her mind.
She tells herself she goes to offer her blood to Stefan because it's the logical, sensible thing to do when you're in love with a vampire. It's not because Damon stood flatfooted and calmly reasoned with her.
She doesn't do anything because of Damon.
When she breaks up with Stefan a week later-because of Katherine-she's sure she'll get out of the house before she breaks down sobbing, but Damon heads her off at the door, yet again.
He's sorry. It's not the first time he's said it to her, and meant it; but it's the first time he's ever apologized to her for something that can't possibly be his fault.
She drives home from the Boarding House wondering how that expression on his face is almost as painful for her to see as it was on Stefan's.
At the foot of the stairs, in Stefan's warm embrace, she sees it again, and it chokes her. The emotion steals her breath; the fact that Damon, who would never admit to feeling anything at all, is only inches from her plainly showing how relieved he is that she's alright and how much he wants her in his arms, rather than his brother's, makes Elena close her eyes so she doesn't have to deal with it.
Damon loves her, and she knows it, but as Stefan's arms surround her, anchoring her back into the world she thought she might lose forever, she can't know it. She doesn't want to know it.
(So when he comes to her house that night she doesn't remember it, and it's a small mercy.)
When she sees him at Slater's apartment, the betrayal that she feels is sharp and sudden, and then it fades. Rose doesn't really owe her anything. She'd been remarkably easy to manipulate for someone who claims to be over five hundred years old.
He's angry, but so is she, so Elena doesn't hold back. She tells him just how it is, and he tries to scare her into agreement. She doesn't know why she tries to hit him-it's pointless, even if she could actually make contact. It's not like she can hurt him. She doesn't want to hurt him, anyway, she's trying to save him, and Stefan, and her family, and Bonnie, and everyone. Why doesn't he get that? Why is okay for him to save her, but not the other way around?
He stops trying to coerce her and instead focuses on berating Rose loudly and vehemently for several minutes before dragging a very willing Alice into the bedroom. At first Elena thinks he'll kill the girl, but he comes out moments later having only compelled her, and wanting to leave.
She doesn't doubt it; he's most likely going to throw her over his shoulder and drag her out. She knows he'll do whatever he thinks he has to. But then, suddenly, there they are, Klaus's minions, whomever it is that she can give herself to, to end this once and for all.
And there's nothing Damon can do to stop it. He threatens her again (I will break your arm.) as his fingers wrap around her wrist, grinding the bones together in a preview action. But he draws up short, letting her go when they both see Elijah. (You were dead. I killed you.)
And inexplicably, she lives another day, and Damon doesn't have to haul her out like a sack of potatoes.
In the stairwell, he looms close beside her as though something will reach out of the shadows and snatch her away. She's still angry, and so is he, but when his arm surrounds her shoulders and guides her towards his car, she lets their bodies brush together. There's comfort there in the light touch.
Not an apology, but something better. Something she won't identify, but finds herself basking in anyway.
Damon carries Rose's body out to the car, and Elena follows him to help open the trunk lid. He keeps telling her to go home, to leave him alone, but she can't stop trying. Stefan's nowhere to be found, and though Damon would never say he needs or wants his brother, she knows he needs something. He needs someone, and she's the only person there.
She's sort of always the only person there. She's the only one who even seems to care about Damon, because Stefan just shuts that part of himself off most of the time. It's easier for him, she understands, but she can't, as much as she's tried. All that anger she channeled into her feelings for him dissipated at some point, and she's not really sure how or why. All she knows now is that she wants to take him in her arms, and that desire is so strong, that even as he climbs into the car and drives away, tossing one more, "Go home!" behind him as he leaves, she can't.
She won't. So she goes back inside and waits for him.
He's quietly furious when he arrives at the cabin. If they weren't sure of Elijah's imminent arrival, Elena might spend more time trying to convince him not to kill John when all this is over, but she sort of doesn't care. When it comes down to it, of the two of them, she picks Damon. John's prejudices don't have anything to do with Damon as a person, it's just about what he is, what he represents, and Elena is not okay with that mentality at all.
(And besides, it's Damon. He's her friend. He's here now, with a plan, and they're going to take care of Elijah, once and for all. She knows it was foolish to think she could strike a deal with the Original and hope everyone would be okay with the outcome.)
"It's not easy to inflict pain upon yourself," Damon says now, looking at her seriously.
"I can do it," she says.
Stefan's fingers wrap around hers, giving her silent encouragement. "I'll stand just inside the door, so I'll be right there to give you my blood. You'll begin healing instantly."
She nods in agreement. "I know," she says.
"And you will kill Elijah," Damon says, handing her the dagger. He sets the bottle of ash on the coffee table at their knees, his fingers strumming along the neck of it. "Right in the heart," he directs as her hand brushes his to grasp the weapon.
"He's here," Stefan says, and Elena's eyes meet Damon's as he pauses to listen to whatever his brother has picked up on. Of course, she can't hear anything odd herself.
"I'll do it," she says, trying to reassure him. "I promise."
He barely tips his chin down in acknowledgment, but his eyes blaze with something that makes her tremble. Then he says, "You're not going to die."
It's simple, it's straightforward, and Elena is forced to accept that fighting the Salvatore brothers for her right to die will be the biggest battle she ever faces.
She stands with Stefan at the top of a hill, looking out over a beautiful valley. The setting sun kisses the treetops and warms her face, and she breaks down crying because she doesn't want to be a vampire.
She doesn't want to die, but she doesn't want to be a vampire, either; and though she's angry with Damon for what he's done, it's Stefan's gentle reminder (he did it because he loves you) that makes her madder. Love should never be a justification for bad behavior (desperation) and it's so easy to pronounce that Damon doesn't even know what love is.
But as they make their way down the mountain, back to Stefan's car, she remembers things. Small things about Damon that she has gathered and tucked away into her heart, things that no one can really understand about him that were most definitely loving gestures. Compelling Jeremy after Vicki died; getting Ric to help them rescue Stefan; coming to tell her Stefan was drinking human blood; taking Caroline's mom back to the Boarding House to wait for the vervain to leave her system; coming to get Elena in Richmond. What Damon lacks in tenderness, he makes up for in thoroughness.
(If it comes down to you and the witch again, I will gladly let Bonnie die. I will always choose you.) Sometimes he's tender in the harshest ways.
She sees him standing in the morning sun, defiantly spitting, "Go ahead, wish me an eternity of misery. Believe me, you'll get over it."
Maybe she will, because one way or another, she's made up her mind. If she wakes up in transition, she'll complete. Because there are some things about life you don't get to choose, and that's the one lesson she's had over and over. Maybe it's time she finally learns it, once and for all.
She doesn't lose her human life-just Jenna, and John, and any sense of the phrase that was worth it.
Her eyes meet Damon's across the graveyard, and she sees some sort of grim appeasement in the small smile he gives her. It's not until the next day when Stefan confides in her about the wolf bite that she understands that expression fully.
She hears the echo in her heart. (Take all the time you need.) Like it wasn't important enough for him to tell her himself, like he hadn't come to her house that morning begging for something she really already feels, but can't explain sufficiently.
And now she has to face it.
Everything it means, if Damon's not in her life.
Even as he's biting her, she's not scared-not in the sense that she should be anyway. She's beyond terrified, terrified that he'll die, that somehow she won't get him home to a safe place, that Sheriff Forbes will come out of nowhere and stake him.
All Elena knows is she can't let that happen. She has to do something, so when she tells him that he's hurting her and he pulls away, she can't stop herself from reaching out to him as he falls at her feet. Comforting the offender, that's what this has come to; except that as she wraps her arm around him and puts her hand against the wound in her neck, she knows she doesn't see him that way, not anymore.
There have been many times that she understood just what a lost soul Damon is, but it's this moment, right now, when that truth resonates more strongly than all those other times combined.
Because now, it's truer than it's ever been. He's going to die, and he's never really lived.
Lying beside him on his bed is unnaturally easy to do. She shouldn't fit against him so well, so simply, as if she's done this many times. She shouldn't hear him sigh out that he loves her on a shaky, poignant breath, and it shouldn't break her heart into a million little pieces.
She already knew it, she did. But now she has to know it and not have him around, not have his antagonistic remarks to gauge her mood by, not wonder where he is in the house, listening to her and Stefan's conversations, not have him speed through a room and take her dish away before she's even set it down on the table.
Now she has to live without Damon, and though it's been hard to live with him many times, it's the sudden emptiness that looms before her that frightens her so much.
She presses her lips to his because she can't fathom it-a world without his eyes, without his smirk, without his shadow over every single thing she does. She kisses him once for all the kisses she ever could have given him but denied them both.
She's startled from his side by another voice. She rolls off the bed as though she's been caught doing something very bad, and though in her heart she knows it was all kindness and generosity, she also knows it was more than that. Apparently, so does Katherine.
Her vampire doppelganger looks at her without judgment; she's not accusing, just assuming in her statement that it's okay to love them both.
Then she whisks from the room leaving a wake of destructive information behind her.
So Elena does the only thing she can; she focuses on the thing right in front of her.
Chapter Two...Book of Damon