[ fic ] the blood runs red down the needle and thread ; caroline/damon, the vampire diaries
Written for the prompt "with pretty-eyed boys girls die to trust" by youcallitwinter, happy holidays!
the blood runs red down the needle and thread » the vampire diaries. caroline/damon. pg-13. 1,345 words.
She hates herself for saving his life when it's the last thing he deserves. warnings: references to rape and an abusive relationship. I don't own these characters.
Everything changes in one split moment.
All she knows is that they are going die if she does nothing, and she acts instinctively, throwing everything away and throwing herself down into the cellar - everything blurs, she moves in dizzying sweeps before striking out at the deputy, teeth buried into his neck, blood smearing into her skin.
She lifts her eyes, can only imagine what a monster she looks -
Croaks out “Hi, Mom”, and staggers under the ramifications of what she’s done - her mother will never look at the same, her mother is looking at her like a worst nightmare come to life.
She is vaguely aware of the two boys on the ground; she did this for Stefan, only Stefan. Damon saunters out later, and the thought that she actually saved his life leaves her sick and shaking. It’s not fair. None of this is fair.
Once upon a time, she was happier (sort of). Life was easier (sort of).
She was distinguished from her peers by virtue of being head cheerleader, not a vampire. She wasn’t a murderer. She was just a girl, and she’d thought he was just a boy, and that mistake had nearly cost her life.
When she remembered, there in the hospital, everything slowly filtering back, she’d felt small and terrified, unable to trust even her own memory, unable to believe what it was trying to tell her. How does the human mind go through so much pain and terror, she’d wondered, and manage to block it away? There must have been some part of her screaming underneath her skin, every time she’d been near him.
If there wasn’t before, there is now.
She’s in the basement, going to see her mom, when she hears her voice and stops. She knew - she knew all along that her mother would think like this, would think that she was a monster, no longer her baby daughter, but it still hurts, hot and tight in her throat, and her mouth opens but she doesn’t know what to say or how to breathe-
“You have no idea how wrong you are,” he says, low and serious, and Caroline is still hovering in the hallway, tears forming in her eyes that she thinks should be half-blamed on anger, her mind a swirl of how dare you and you’re not allowed to say things like that after everything you’ve done.
She hasn’t left when he returns upstairs, and she nearly stumbles - shock, fright - when he enters the room suddenly. “Don’t suppose I get a thank you for saving your life?” she finally says, almost choking on the words.
Damon blinks, looks bewildered for a second, and then scornful. He starts to open his mouth, but she doesn’t give him a chance to spout whatever crap is sure to come, and ploughs ahead instead - “You know, since all you’ve ever done is try to kill me.”
His eyes flash, jaw tightening, and it’s just enough to make her afraid and make her hate herself for feeling afraid. He takes a step closer, and she narrows her eyes at his silence, bites out “Whatever” quickly, and darts out of the house, runs as quickly as she can and leaves it all behind her, pretends her blood isn’t pulsing quite so fast and desperate through her.
Pretends she’s not still terrified.
She lies in her bed and can’t sleep. Her head is entirely too full of him, of his words tonight, of the way she saved his life, of how charming she’d once thought he was. Those are the thoughts she tries to bury deepest - not the frightening memories of blood and bites and having her control filtered away from her, but the memories of how infatuated she’d been with the idea of him, dating the hot, older Salvatore, how she’d thought she was on top of the fucking world and she hadn’t had a clue.
Caroline knows she shouldn’t feel embarrassed, but it disgusts her all the same, how she can’t make the two sets of memories fit together, how wrong it all is.
When she does fall asleep, she dreams of teeth plunging through skin and blood spilling out and she can’t tell if she is the one feeding or if someone else is ripping her apart.
In the morning, she goes to the boarding house.
“You’re late, Stefan’s already out bunny-hunting,” Damon tells her when she enters, though he doesn’t even look up, doesn’t notice the way she’s got her arms folded or how she has to swallow before she speaks up.
“Were you going to kill me?”
That gets his attention. His head turns around, and he looks so confused she wants to smack him just for not getting it. “What-”
“I mean,” she interrupts, barely refraining from tapping her foot in staccato on the floor, all wired up and letting the words tumble out of her mouth, trip over each other. “When I turned-I was dangerous, then. So. I get that, but-I mean, before, when I was human, back when you were feeding on me, and-” she can’t even say it, can’t get any of the other words out, has to breathe in quickly.
“Were you really going to kill me or was it all talk?” Damon is, sometimes. All talk. And it shouldn’t make a difference, whatever he says. She won’t hate him any less for what he did to her, but she needs to know.
He gets up from the couch slowly, his expression strangely guarded. For a moment. And then he raises his eyebrows, shrugs his shoulders, and says as casually as he can manage - “The only reason you’re still around, Blondie, is ‘cause your friends dosed you up with vervain.”
And - oh - she’d known, she’d known that it was the truth, but it still twists something inside of her to hear him say it so callously. She narrows her eyes, thinks brave face, Caroline, and spits out “Screw you”, though the words are by far too quiet and empty.
“Hey, you know-“ he starts to say, and she doesn’t want to hear it, doesn’t think he could possibly understand how much she doesn’t want to hear it. She shoves at his chest before he can get another word out, sends him flying backwards into the couch, toppling over it, and blurs forward quickly to bend down and secure her fingers around his throat.
His chest is heaving, and the look he shoots her is dangerous, but surprisingly enough, he doesn’t fight back.
She takes a deep breath. “You’re welcome,” she hisses, “for the one and only time I will ever save your life, Damon Salvatore.”
And then she straightens up, and runs out of the house in a blur, as if she was never there.
That night, it is the same. She can’t close her eyes without summoning his to mind; she can’t do anything but go over her formerly buried memories again and again and again. What scares her more than the fact it all happened is the fact that it all happened and she never knew.
If she’d never been turned, she never would have known, and that scares her the most.
She would choose knowledge over ignorance any day.
But she wonders if she ever would have felt something off, felt the stirrings of the stolen memories underneath her skin, in the veins he fed on - where his blood runs now. She hates that most of all, how permanently he is a part of her.
Caroline closes her eyes, and thinks of a stranger at the grill, dark-haired and blue-eyed and smiling her way. Run away, she would tell herself now. Run away and stay away. But she can’t change her memories, can only live them over and over.
She remembers how he bit into her neck that last time on the Lockwood lawn, hands holding her tight to him.
I would have died, she thinks with a wince against her fear, and then -
I died anyway.