[fic] you only know what I want you to
Title: you only know what I want you to
Recipient: pyrrhical
Prompt: Damon/Elena: Elena remembers Damon talking to her before her parents died after she wakes up post-322, as well as his confession, because, you know, that shit wears off when you become a vampire, everybody should have thought of that. Bonus points if those aren't the only things she's been told.
Author: badboy_fangirl
Characters/Pairings: Elena POV; Damon/Elena
Word Count: ~2100
Rating/Warnings: PG-13
Spoilers: Goes AU about halfway through 4x01 "Growing Pains." Contains dialogue lifted from episodes 1x01 "Pilot," 3x19 "Heart of Darkness," and 3x22 "The Departed."
Summary: Elena remembers a few things as she starts transitioning into a vampire.
Author's notes: It's here, finally! Thank you for your infinite patience, pyrrhical. Title lifted from The Civil Wars "Poison & Wine" -- because when in need of inspiration, always, always, always use this song. It's magical. In this story, Elena feels like a sped-up version of the Elena on the show right now, but since this was really supposed to be written without S4 canon, I did the best I could. I hope it works! [Sort of beta'd by the usual suspects, thanks for the help, girls!]
In three dimensional glory, Elena stands in her bedroom and watches herself with Damon. He is gentle and sweet and open and she is shocked and touched and confused, both then and now.
There is pressure in her chest that makes her feel as if she's drowning all over again, but this time it's emotion flooding her ears, nose, and mouth, not water; it's the desire to reach out and grab a hold of this Salvatore, the one standing just a few feet from her, the one touching her other self, kissing her forehead, and clasping an all but meaningless locket around her neck too speedily for her to see it.
The vision vanishes from sight as quickly as it appeared, but the knowledge doesn't vaporize with it.
That night? The one where Damon brought back her necklace, and stood in her room and laid himself bare, and changed the terrifying memory of Jeremy dead on the floor to something strangely sweet? That was the night she fell in love with him.
It would be so much easier if she could feel rage choke her now. If this could be like all the other times Damon had made her want to slap him, if the instinct to be angry with him would just surge through her and she could go find him to pick a fight. Then it would all be over. But she doesn't feel that. And now she remembers, the exact moment. Now, she can't wonder how this happened, how she got here.
Now all she can do is wonder how she'll survive knowing that when she becomes a vampire.
(There is no choice; that's the story of her life.)
At the hospital, she searches for Meredith Fell. She doesn't know what she'll do if she finds her; yelling and screaming that she never wanted to be a vampire seems pretty stupid now, even if that's the noise in her head, along with the buzzing of the fluorescent overhead lights, the heart machines, and the smell of blood, everywhere she turns.
Finally, she ducks into a supply closet, the one where they found Caroline's dead father. She doesn't know what she was thinking, coming back here, coming here at all knowing that the very thing she doesn't want might overpower her.
She should have stayed with Stefan.
(She couldn't stay with Stefan. She can't find Damon. She is such a mess.)
Her stomach jitters and her skin crawls, both in desire for blood and revulsion at the idea. She closes her eyes, pressing the heels of hands tight against them.
"How're you feelin'?" he asked.
She opened her tear-swollen eyes. There was a strange man in her hospital room, and Jenna was nowhere around. She didn't know where her aunt had gone, but she felt very alone.
Hours before she'd been drug from the river bottom, alive. Her parents, too, only they were dead. Feeling cold to the center of her being and numb, she had screamed and cried, but they wouldn't let her go to them. They were dead, and that's all she can feel. Death, inside her, filling her up, like filth.
She didn't know him, the man next to her hospital bed, his blue eyes piercing into hers, but at the same time, she couldn't stop the truth from spilling from her lips. "It's my fault," she whispered. "I killed them." Tears she couldn't stem flowed over her cheeks.
He bent closer to her, his vivid eyes somehow soothing her. "You'll be alright, in time," he said, his voice very soft. "Think of it as an opportunity to...start fresh, be someone new."
Elena's first instinct was to shout at him, to tell him nothing could ever be fresh or new again, not when she killed her parents, but then, he leaned in again. "It's the only way you'll make it through."
More tears came at those words, and she thought he was some kind of dark angel, sent to tell her things that made no sense, except that they did.
She blinked, and he was gone.
She blinks, rubbing her eyes with her fists, and cursing Damon like a drunk sailor. How many times had he compelled her? And how had he even known she had been in the hospital? They hadn't known each other then.
"I'm going to kill him," she mutters, bolting from the closet. She passes Meredith as she sprints outside, but she doesn't want to stop now.
She doesn't even know where she's going until the words come back, stronger.
Think of it as an opportunity to...start fresh, be someone new.
It's the only way you'll make it through.
That's what she'd written in her diary, on the first day of her junior year. Those were the words she'd repeated to herself through those months when she thought she'd never feel happy again.
She had met Stefan, and he had made her glad to be alive. But, it was Damon's words that gave her life.
She ends up near Wickery Bridge, and then she's running across it, holding her breath, as if it matters. She dashes through the park gate towards the Falls, and then she's there, on that narrow stretch of trail where she'd been talking to Bonnie on the phone the night her parents died.
And so is Damon. Only, not Damon now. Damon then. And Elena then. A girl whose biggest problem was telling her boyfriend she just didn't see them being together forever.
His voice was soft with wonder when he said the name, "Katherine."
Elena looked up, startled. "Um, no...I'm Elena."
She watches herself, and it all floods back to her. Another compelled memory popping inside her head.
She had met him first. She had seen him on that dark road, and he had been the most beautiful creature she'd ever laid eyes on. Her heart swells as the scene plays out in front of her.
Damon, the same Damon she would meet in just a few months time, the Damon that folded towels with her in the kitchen, the Damon who could look at her and make her feel like he knew her, even though it was impossible.
Only, it wasn't, not at all. He did know her, at least enough to say things to her that always made sense, except that they shouldn't.
"I don't know what I want," her then-self says, and he smirks, an expression so familiar to her now, it's hard to realize she hasn't seen it her entire life.
She finds herself turning away from it, and tears are all over her face, though she hadn't even noticed she was crying. She could watch the rest of it, listen to the things he says, but she already sees it all clearly in her head, she doesn't need to relive it.
She doesn't want to relive it. It changes nothing.
(It changes everything.)
She had come here, because it had been inside her all along.
Why don't you let people see the good in you?
She hates him almost as much as she loves him. Or maybe she loves him almost as much as she hates him, for being everything she shouldn't want, for being everything that she can't explain that she does want.
She does want. She has wanted all along. What she has denied that she wanted all this time.
She runs back across Wickery Bridge, and this time she knows exactly where she's going.
He meets her at the door, but not because he heard her coming. He's got his jacket in one hand and his keys in the other, but it's the anxious expression on his face that lets her know he was going out to look for her.
Then he says, "Where the hell have you been?" and "You need to feed," almost simultaneously, as he tosses his jacket and keys back on the foyer table.
He reaches out and grabs her wrist, yanking her inside the Boarding House, but he doesn't really allow her to speak as he continues with, "Stefan has been looking for you everywhere, but of course he doesn't even tell me you're missing until he's afraid you've just laid down to die somewhere because you won't feed." He pulls her down the hallway. "Or," he says, smirking, "maybe he was worried you were eating one of the outlying neighborhoods." He pauses and turns her to face him directly at the top of the stairs that lead to the basement. "You didn't feed, though, I can tell. You're not looking so hot."
"Thanks, Damon," she mutters, as he tugs her down the steps.
"You want compliments from me now? It's a little late for that."
They stop beside the big fridge that holds the blood bags. Elena knows what's in there, even though because of the preservation the smell isn't as strong. This is what it's come to.
But maybe that's for the best.
Damon hesitates. His fingers fall away from her wrist and he just looks at her face until she meets his gaze. She can see it, in his eyes, a moment where he thinks of giving her the choice. Where maybe, one time, Damon would stand back and not try to control everything, when it would destroy him to give her that, knowing.
It would be the last time.
But Damon would never do that, first time or last, his response is always the same.
He jerks open the fridge and points. "Eat."
"Is Stefan here?" she asks.
"No. He and Caroline are off somewhere looking for you." He nudges his chin in a downward motion. "Pick a type, any type."
"So, we're alone right now?" she asks.
"Elena," he says warningly, and she can see his patience waning.
(As if he ever had any patience.)
She doesn't want this; she never wanted this. But this is what she has. And suddenly Damon being the only one there is perfect. Someday she'll kick his ass for compelling her to forget all those things that changed her life, but for now, she'll give him one thing.
She reaches in and grabs a bag. He helps her twist open the tube at the top and when she takes a drink, he murmurs, "Easy, easy," even though she's barely begun.
The feeling hits her just as suddenly, the desire for more, the way it seems to flood her body, head to toe tingling extremities and warmth, and life.
Life in a different way.
She finishes it very quickly, but Damon closes the lid when her eyes fall back to the other bags of blood. He takes the empty bag from her and tosses it into a garbage can she never noticed before, sitting in the corner.
"How're you feelin'?" he asks, and it reverberates in her mind. Everything is an echo with Damon now. They've been here before. They'll be here again.
They'll always be here, like this, together.
"I remember," she says.
"I know," he replies.
"You can never make me forget again."
His lips lift in an-almost smirk, but his eyes are far too serious to let it fully form. "No, I'll never be able to make you forget again. That's why you'll need whiskey."
She examines his face, lifts her hand to touch his cheek. "Maybe I never wanted to forget, you ever think of that?" His eyes widen ever-so-slightly, and then he blinks in confusion. "Of course, you didn't," she says, answering her own question. "You're kind of an idiot, Damon."
He frowns and his hand covers hers, dragging it away from his face. "Maybe, but you're alive, at least in some form, so I'm not as big an idiot as my brother."
She can feel the tension in him, the way he wants to turn from her, not face it head on; it's nice to be on this side of it for once. "You have to let me choose, you know."
He drops her hand and backs up a few steps. "You already chose, remember?"
"You have to let me choose, based on all the information."
"Elena..."
She closes the distance between them, not even meaning to move as quickly as she does. She slams into his chest, and he grunts as the air whooshes out of his lungs. "Sorry," she mutters. His eyes search her face, and his vulnerability gives her courage she's never had before. "I'm sorry," she says. It could be for a million things that she can't explain right this moment.
He shakes his head uncertainly. But she kisses him anyway.
That's when he chooses, too.
Recipient: pyrrhical
Prompt: Damon/Elena: Elena remembers Damon talking to her before her parents died after she wakes up post-322, as well as his confession, because, you know, that shit wears off when you become a vampire, everybody should have thought of that. Bonus points if those aren't the only things she's been told.
Author: badboy_fangirl
Characters/Pairings: Elena POV; Damon/Elena
Word Count: ~2100
Rating/Warnings: PG-13
Spoilers: Goes AU about halfway through 4x01 "Growing Pains." Contains dialogue lifted from episodes 1x01 "Pilot," 3x19 "Heart of Darkness," and 3x22 "The Departed."
Summary: Elena remembers a few things as she starts transitioning into a vampire.
Author's notes: It's here, finally! Thank you for your infinite patience, pyrrhical. Title lifted from The Civil Wars "Poison & Wine" -- because when in need of inspiration, always, always, always use this song. It's magical. In this story, Elena feels like a sped-up version of the Elena on the show right now, but since this was really supposed to be written without S4 canon, I did the best I could. I hope it works! [Sort of beta'd by the usual suspects, thanks for the help, girls!]
In three dimensional glory, Elena stands in her bedroom and watches herself with Damon. He is gentle and sweet and open and she is shocked and touched and confused, both then and now.
There is pressure in her chest that makes her feel as if she's drowning all over again, but this time it's emotion flooding her ears, nose, and mouth, not water; it's the desire to reach out and grab a hold of this Salvatore, the one standing just a few feet from her, the one touching her other self, kissing her forehead, and clasping an all but meaningless locket around her neck too speedily for her to see it.
The vision vanishes from sight as quickly as it appeared, but the knowledge doesn't vaporize with it.
That night? The one where Damon brought back her necklace, and stood in her room and laid himself bare, and changed the terrifying memory of Jeremy dead on the floor to something strangely sweet? That was the night she fell in love with him.
It would be so much easier if she could feel rage choke her now. If this could be like all the other times Damon had made her want to slap him, if the instinct to be angry with him would just surge through her and she could go find him to pick a fight. Then it would all be over. But she doesn't feel that. And now she remembers, the exact moment. Now, she can't wonder how this happened, how she got here.
Now all she can do is wonder how she'll survive knowing that when she becomes a vampire.
(There is no choice; that's the story of her life.)
At the hospital, she searches for Meredith Fell. She doesn't know what she'll do if she finds her; yelling and screaming that she never wanted to be a vampire seems pretty stupid now, even if that's the noise in her head, along with the buzzing of the fluorescent overhead lights, the heart machines, and the smell of blood, everywhere she turns.
Finally, she ducks into a supply closet, the one where they found Caroline's dead father. She doesn't know what she was thinking, coming back here, coming here at all knowing that the very thing she doesn't want might overpower her.
She should have stayed with Stefan.
(She couldn't stay with Stefan. She can't find Damon. She is such a mess.)
Her stomach jitters and her skin crawls, both in desire for blood and revulsion at the idea. She closes her eyes, pressing the heels of hands tight against them.
"How're you feelin'?" he asked.
She opened her tear-swollen eyes. There was a strange man in her hospital room, and Jenna was nowhere around. She didn't know where her aunt had gone, but she felt very alone.
Hours before she'd been drug from the river bottom, alive. Her parents, too, only they were dead. Feeling cold to the center of her being and numb, she had screamed and cried, but they wouldn't let her go to them. They were dead, and that's all she can feel. Death, inside her, filling her up, like filth.
She didn't know him, the man next to her hospital bed, his blue eyes piercing into hers, but at the same time, she couldn't stop the truth from spilling from her lips. "It's my fault," she whispered. "I killed them." Tears she couldn't stem flowed over her cheeks.
He bent closer to her, his vivid eyes somehow soothing her. "You'll be alright, in time," he said, his voice very soft. "Think of it as an opportunity to...start fresh, be someone new."
Elena's first instinct was to shout at him, to tell him nothing could ever be fresh or new again, not when she killed her parents, but then, he leaned in again. "It's the only way you'll make it through."
More tears came at those words, and she thought he was some kind of dark angel, sent to tell her things that made no sense, except that they did.
She blinked, and he was gone.
She blinks, rubbing her eyes with her fists, and cursing Damon like a drunk sailor. How many times had he compelled her? And how had he even known she had been in the hospital? They hadn't known each other then.
"I'm going to kill him," she mutters, bolting from the closet. She passes Meredith as she sprints outside, but she doesn't want to stop now.
She doesn't even know where she's going until the words come back, stronger.
Think of it as an opportunity to...start fresh, be someone new.
It's the only way you'll make it through.
That's what she'd written in her diary, on the first day of her junior year. Those were the words she'd repeated to herself through those months when she thought she'd never feel happy again.
She had met Stefan, and he had made her glad to be alive. But, it was Damon's words that gave her life.
She ends up near Wickery Bridge, and then she's running across it, holding her breath, as if it matters. She dashes through the park gate towards the Falls, and then she's there, on that narrow stretch of trail where she'd been talking to Bonnie on the phone the night her parents died.
And so is Damon. Only, not Damon now. Damon then. And Elena then. A girl whose biggest problem was telling her boyfriend she just didn't see them being together forever.
His voice was soft with wonder when he said the name, "Katherine."
Elena looked up, startled. "Um, no...I'm Elena."
She watches herself, and it all floods back to her. Another compelled memory popping inside her head.
She had met him first. She had seen him on that dark road, and he had been the most beautiful creature she'd ever laid eyes on. Her heart swells as the scene plays out in front of her.
Damon, the same Damon she would meet in just a few months time, the Damon that folded towels with her in the kitchen, the Damon who could look at her and make her feel like he knew her, even though it was impossible.
Only, it wasn't, not at all. He did know her, at least enough to say things to her that always made sense, except that they shouldn't.
"I don't know what I want," her then-self says, and he smirks, an expression so familiar to her now, it's hard to realize she hasn't seen it her entire life.
She finds herself turning away from it, and tears are all over her face, though she hadn't even noticed she was crying. She could watch the rest of it, listen to the things he says, but she already sees it all clearly in her head, she doesn't need to relive it.
She doesn't want to relive it. It changes nothing.
(It changes everything.)
She had come here, because it had been inside her all along.
Why don't you let people see the good in you?
She hates him almost as much as she loves him. Or maybe she loves him almost as much as she hates him, for being everything she shouldn't want, for being everything that she can't explain that she does want.
She does want. She has wanted all along. What she has denied that she wanted all this time.
She runs back across Wickery Bridge, and this time she knows exactly where she's going.
He meets her at the door, but not because he heard her coming. He's got his jacket in one hand and his keys in the other, but it's the anxious expression on his face that lets her know he was going out to look for her.
Then he says, "Where the hell have you been?" and "You need to feed," almost simultaneously, as he tosses his jacket and keys back on the foyer table.
He reaches out and grabs her wrist, yanking her inside the Boarding House, but he doesn't really allow her to speak as he continues with, "Stefan has been looking for you everywhere, but of course he doesn't even tell me you're missing until he's afraid you've just laid down to die somewhere because you won't feed." He pulls her down the hallway. "Or," he says, smirking, "maybe he was worried you were eating one of the outlying neighborhoods." He pauses and turns her to face him directly at the top of the stairs that lead to the basement. "You didn't feed, though, I can tell. You're not looking so hot."
"Thanks, Damon," she mutters, as he tugs her down the steps.
"You want compliments from me now? It's a little late for that."
They stop beside the big fridge that holds the blood bags. Elena knows what's in there, even though because of the preservation the smell isn't as strong. This is what it's come to.
But maybe that's for the best.
Damon hesitates. His fingers fall away from her wrist and he just looks at her face until she meets his gaze. She can see it, in his eyes, a moment where he thinks of giving her the choice. Where maybe, one time, Damon would stand back and not try to control everything, when it would destroy him to give her that, knowing.
It would be the last time.
But Damon would never do that, first time or last, his response is always the same.
He jerks open the fridge and points. "Eat."
"Is Stefan here?" she asks.
"No. He and Caroline are off somewhere looking for you." He nudges his chin in a downward motion. "Pick a type, any type."
"So, we're alone right now?" she asks.
"Elena," he says warningly, and she can see his patience waning.
(As if he ever had any patience.)
She doesn't want this; she never wanted this. But this is what she has. And suddenly Damon being the only one there is perfect. Someday she'll kick his ass for compelling her to forget all those things that changed her life, but for now, she'll give him one thing.
She reaches in and grabs a bag. He helps her twist open the tube at the top and when she takes a drink, he murmurs, "Easy, easy," even though she's barely begun.
The feeling hits her just as suddenly, the desire for more, the way it seems to flood her body, head to toe tingling extremities and warmth, and life.
Life in a different way.
She finishes it very quickly, but Damon closes the lid when her eyes fall back to the other bags of blood. He takes the empty bag from her and tosses it into a garbage can she never noticed before, sitting in the corner.
"How're you feelin'?" he asks, and it reverberates in her mind. Everything is an echo with Damon now. They've been here before. They'll be here again.
They'll always be here, like this, together.
"I remember," she says.
"I know," he replies.
"You can never make me forget again."
His lips lift in an-almost smirk, but his eyes are far too serious to let it fully form. "No, I'll never be able to make you forget again. That's why you'll need whiskey."
She examines his face, lifts her hand to touch his cheek. "Maybe I never wanted to forget, you ever think of that?" His eyes widen ever-so-slightly, and then he blinks in confusion. "Of course, you didn't," she says, answering her own question. "You're kind of an idiot, Damon."
He frowns and his hand covers hers, dragging it away from his face. "Maybe, but you're alive, at least in some form, so I'm not as big an idiot as my brother."
She can feel the tension in him, the way he wants to turn from her, not face it head on; it's nice to be on this side of it for once. "You have to let me choose, you know."
He drops her hand and backs up a few steps. "You already chose, remember?"
"You have to let me choose, based on all the information."
"Elena..."
She closes the distance between them, not even meaning to move as quickly as she does. She slams into his chest, and he grunts as the air whooshes out of his lungs. "Sorry," she mutters. His eyes search her face, and his vulnerability gives her courage she's never had before. "I'm sorry," she says. It could be for a million things that she can't explain right this moment.
He shakes his head uncertainly. But she kisses him anyway.
That's when he chooses, too.