the low road

[that_treason]

Title: the low road
Author: that_treason

Rating: M overall (T this chapter)
Length: about 6,500 words (this chapter)

Spoilers
Spoilers through the end of 4x18, "American Gothic"
Heavily AU take on the end of 4x17 and all of 4x18

Characters
Damon/Elena, Rebekah, Katherine

Warnings
references to sex while switched off
vampires eat people & vampires kill people

Disclaimers
Everything belongs to the people who own them.
I am just borrowing.

Written For
The Damon/Elena & Damon/Katherine & Ian/Nina Fic-a-Thon
Hosted by badboy_fangirl

Wonderful Prompt from upupa_epops
“Damon/Elena, AU from 4x17. When Elena reaches to steal Katherine's addresses,
Damon impulsively decides to screw the high road and team up with Elena instead.”

Also Available At
Archive of Our Own  | FanFiction.Net



A/N: Written for the fantastic prompt from upupa_epops -- once I read it I could not stop thinking about how it would all work and I had to write this out. The finished product ended up much more spare and spartan than I expected -- and very dialogue-y. But I kinda think I like it this way, rather than more detailed and filled out.  YMMV.

__the_low_road________

“I've never done it on a rooftop before.” Elena looks to the side, all coy, but then she smiles up at him.

Damon’s eyes flare and he leans in without a second thought, before he stops himself, and pulls back. It takes all his concentration to bring his eyes up from her lips so he can talk.

“You're not missing much.”

But Elena just rolls her eyes at him, sees through his transparent deflection. “You don't have to take the high road, Damon.” She pulls on his jacket to bring him closer and now it’s her eyes on his lips. He is made of confusion. Her presence overwhelms him -- the smell of her hair and the tug of her hands on his jacket, hands so close. Restraint has him on fire.

“I'm not sired to you anymore. I want this. You want this,” Elena whispers.

And then he can’t help himself: he’s falling into her. He’s waited so long for everything to be right and real, and now he aches for just the slightest taste, even an echo of what they’d had. His lips find hers, and he’s lost. Her arms go up to wrap around his neck, so she can pull herself up to him and balance their heights. But then one of her hands is running down his side, while the other holds the almost empty bottle and...

Damon’s not so gone he can’t catch her. Not so gone he can’t push her off him and away from the pockets of his jeans. Elena’s face reveals real-enough-seeming shock -- but who can tell anymore?

When she says “What?” at him she’s indignation head-to-toe. He pulls the paper from his pocket and waves it in her face.

“Looking for that? Did you really think that was gonna work, the sex, the temptation, the booze? What, are you kidding me? I invented that trick.” Damon pulls the bottle from her and she stumbles a little, but he stares out over the city and doesn’t even glance her way. Instead he swallows down brown liquor straight from the bottle. It’s cheap and it offends him, but it gets the job done.

“I pulled the exact same shit right here on this roof, with Lexi. I wore her out, kept at her till she fell asleep in my arms. Downright adorable.” He glances at her and takes another swig from the bottle. Elena’s listening intently, but he can’t tell what the look on her face might mean. “Spent the rest of the night reinforcing that door over there -- real quiet like. And when the sun came up and she ran for the door, she was stuck up here with no other exit. Just had to huddle in the doorframe all day waiting for dark.” His eyes go wide when he turns to her and says, “I played her -- and I did it all as payment for those six months of misery that she forced on me.”

He sighs. “She went back to Mystic Falls and Stefan. Told him all about how irredeemable I’d become. Finally left me in peace.”

Elena shrugs her shoulders, but he can hear the irritation in her voice. “So you pretended to have feelings for her just to get her off your back?” she says.

“I was willing to do whatever it took,” he says, eyebrows arching. “Sound familiar?”

Elena’s face is all fake grin and fake sweetness. “Aw. I hurt your feelings. Once upon a time you told me you didn’t have any feelings, remember?”

“Not my feelings,” he says, “I'm looking out for you because one day, you will flip that switch back on, and all the bad stuff that you did is gonna come rushing back, and it is going to suck.”

“So you're saying that you felt bad for Lexi?” Elena’s voice drips sarcasm onto the pavement.

“She became a walking, talking reminder of all the awful things I'd done. And I managed to avoid her for decades, and then she just shows up in Mystic Falls to wish my baby bro a happy birthday, and boom -- rush of memories...rush of guilt." Just remembering her now makes his chest ache in uncomfortable ways. Regret is a sensation he tries to avoid at all costs (just too many and too much), but some things even he can’t shut down and ignore.

“So you kill her?”

“Out of sight, out of mind,” he says. “So understand: Every day that you're like this is the day that you might do the one thing that you can't take back.”

“Here's what I don't get.” Her voice is empty when she lays it out for him, and his eyes fall away. He looks out at the city, because he can’t look at her.

“You spent six months trying to get her to fall in love with you just so that you could hurt her. You were spiteful, malicious, borderline evil, and you say that you had your emotions turned off, but those all sound like emotions to me.”

Damon shakes his head, might be in denial, might be to underscore his point -- he’s losing the thread of this conversation and he doesn’t know what he thinks or feels anymore. “Maybe they were. Maybe hatred was the first one I got back,” he says. “All the more reason to Cure you. That way, we get the normal Elena back without aaaall the ugly stages in between.”

“I'm not taking the Cure, Damon,” she says as she steps away from him, across the roof.

He rushes in front of her, bottle dropped and broken behind him, and tries to speak, tries to cut her off, but she doesn’t let him. Elena’s voice overrules him and he gives in.

“This is who I am now.” She hits out at him with the palms of her hands, landing solidly on his jacket. “All this talk about guilt and...and..and memory. Why do you get to decide? Why are my emotions, my guilt, somehow your responsibility?”

Damon freezes. Her words turn over and over in his head. The sounds of the city fade away and all he can hear is his own voice inside his head.

(“My actions, what I do, it's not your fault. I own them. They belong to me. You are not allowed to feel my guilt.”)

“I’ll give you that.” The words come from his mouth slowly -- like everyone of them costs him. “Alright.”

“Alright?” Elena quirks her head, obviously puzzled. “Is this some new plan? Just agree with me till we get the Cure and then snatch it from me?”

“Nope. This one’s real. You...you reminded me of something, something I said to Stefan once. Looong time ago, before I started spending all my time chasing after teenaged girls that didn’t want me.” Damon looks right into her uncaring brown eyes and says, “You’re right, much as it pains me to admit it.” His hands come up to circle her wrists, still locked in place on the front of his jacket. He pulls them down and holds them lightly in between Elena and himself. “My guilt is my guilt, and your guilt is yours. Fair enough.” His voice is soft and barely carries over the breeze.

She squints at him, then turns away, dropping his hands -- obviously thrown off by his change of heart. He can see her deciding something in her head.

“How do I know I can trust you. How do I know you won’t just play along and then shove the Cure down my throat as soon as it’s convenient?”

“You want trust?” He grabs her right hand, flips it over, and slams the folded paper down into it. Elena jumps a little, surprised in spite of herself. “How ‘bout this: that one big clue to finding Katherine? You can have it.” The paper stays behind in her hand, while both of his go to cup her face. He looks her dead in the eyes and she can’t look anywhere else. “But I have one question for you: I don’t want to take the Cure and you don’t want to take the Cure, so why are you still looking for it?”

“Does this mean I don’t get to snap his neck?”

Damon’s boots scrape the concrete of the roof as he spins around to face Rebekah. “Bex. Lovely.” He rolls his eyes with his entire face and turns back to Elena. “Did you two have an actual genuine plan? A plan that involved yet another instance of my neck being snapped, Elena?”

“Could be,” Elena says and shrugs. “You were in the way.”

“Perfect,” he remarks. “That still in the cards at the moment?”

“Not if you’ve really decided to be useful, instead of remaining difficult.” Her voice is ruthless, but her eyes are flat.

“Tch” is all he can say, with a shake of his head.

“You asked what I...what we,” she nods at Rebekah, partner in crime, “want with it. I want the Cure gone and out of my life. Rebekah wants to take it and make a million babies with some perfect man of her dreams. We have a mutually beneficial goal between the two of us. You still interested in helping?”

He leans in, face in her face, but never touches her. He’s so close he can feel her breath on his skin, the breath she still forgets she doesn’t need, and he can smell the scent of liquor and leather climbing off of both of them. “I’m in this for you. It’s always been you. Vampire, human, whatever -- I want you. So, yeah, I’ll help you get what you want -- and in exchange, you do one simple thing for me.”

“Of course there’s a catch,” Elena says and chuckles. “What do you want, Damon?”

“I want you to turn it back on,” he says, catching her chin with his hand when she tries to turn away. “Maybe not right away. Maybe we party and we feed and we fuck across the whole continent, and you take all the time you need. But you promise me that when it’s all been enough, you’ll turn it back on. For me.”

Elena just narrows her eyes.

###

“How can you seriously still have nothing but a radio in this car. No hookup for my phone, no place for CDs -- you don’t even have a tape player in this thing.” Rebekah is leaning her whole body from the back seat up towards the radio, trying like mad to change the station. Damon smacks her hands away and she retreats to the back, looking wounded.

“This car is classic. Everything in it is perfect. Stop touching things before you break something.”

Elena ignores them both in favor of staring out the window.

They’ve been driving for hours, away from New York, across northern New Jersey and on into Pennsylvania. Everything went from urban to rural quick enough, and the road wound up and down as they entered the mountains. After hours without stopping, Damon pointed the car south and west, and they left the mountains behind.

The ninth time that Rebekah and Damon fight over the radio, Elena finally interrupts them. “It amazes me how in spite of being so ancient, the two of you still spend most of your time acting like six-year-olds.”

That shuts them up for a while. Rebekah crosses her arms in the back of the car. Damon just hums to himself, out of sync with the country song on the radio, and a stupid closed-mouth grin on his face. They pass Harrisburg before anyone speaks again.

“So what’s the plan?” Elena asks. “We have these addresses, some of them in the same general area, but you don’t honestly believe she’s living in one of these towns.”

“Now that would be downright silly of her,” Damon says, glancing away from the road to look at the fragile-seeming girl in his passenger seat. She’s still concentrating on the scenery running past her window.

“And where does that leave us?” Rebekah calls from the back.

“Well,” Damon says in a voice so cheerful it makes Elena sigh, “as Elena so rightly pointed out, it’s unlikely that she’s living in any of the towns on our list. But! If she’s going to be checking these PO boxes in any reasonable way, she’d have to be somewhere within a certain distance of them.”

Elena’s face turns from the window for the first time in hours.

“And if you look,” he scoots down on the seat, so he can reach into his pocket to grab his phone -- which he promptly chucks at her, “you can see that the most recent addresses are all in a vague circle of each other. So, it’s entirely possible that she’s nesting somewhere in the middle there.”

“Still leaves a lot of places to check, “ Rebekah whines.

“But Damon’s right,” Elena says as she examines the map on his phone, “this might narrow things down significantly. It gives us something like an actual chance.” Elena grins at Damon, but it’s fake. Damon smiles wide right back at her, but it’s snark. Rebekah just sighs and sulks and re-crosses her arms.

“You know I kinda like this threesome--”

“...not in a threesome with you, Salvatore...” Rebekah growls under her breath.

“--road trip action we’ve got going on.” He squidges up his lips and bobs his head in time with the radio.

And the miles pass on.

###

It’s early afternoon when they reach the first town in their search area. There’s a brief argument about the best way to really figure out if Katherine’s around, but eventually Elena rubs her temples and cuts off all discussion. They decide to split up, to cover more ground, but they still have no clear method for finding her trail. After two hours with no sign of her, they get back in the car and move on. Rebekah huffs and Damon hums and Elena is silent as the grave.

Four towns later, the sun dips below the horizon and there’s still no sign of her. Rebekah is asleep in the backseat, limbs thrown everywhere and face soft. Elena’s still off in her own thoughts, staring out the window at darkening fields.

Damon glances down at the gas meter.

“We should probably stop somewhere for the night,” he says. “We don’t have enough gas to make it all the way there and this far out in the sticks there won’t be a station open.” He looks over at her, but she doesn’t move an inch.

“You ok with sleeping in the car? Any motel we run into around here will be crawling,” Damon says, disgust in his voice and on his face.

“It’s fine. Whatever needs to happen is fine.” Elena’s distracted when she talks, definitely doesn’t notice his sigh as he pulls the car off the deserted road and onto the gravel shoulder. The ignition clicks when he turns the key, the emergency break pops, and then the low rumble of the car goes silent. It’s perfectly dark, with only tiny house lights off in the distance. The pair of them don’t move for several minutes. They just sit there and listen to the night sounds and Rebekah’s dreamy muttering from the back. Eventually Damon relaxes in his seat and put his hands behind his head.

“Sweetheart, you’re awful thinky over there. Care to share?”

“I’m thinking about that ‘simple thing’ that you want.”

“Ah.”

He clicks the key back on just enough to power the radio and flips around the dial, finding static and more static, but eventually settles on an old jazzy sounding song. It’s near the end of a horn solo, but pretty quick the horn is joined by piano and strings and a happy woman singing along:

'Twas there that we parted, in yon shady glen
On the steep, steep sides of Ben Lomond
Where in purple hue, the highland hills we view
And the sun coming out in the gloaming.

And then a man’s voice joins in, sharing the chorus with her:

Now you take the high road
And I’ll take the low road
And I’ll be in Scotland afore ya,
For me and my true love may ne’er meet again,

“On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond,” Damon whispers along.

They listen to the song’s big finish and the clapping that’s been left on the track. Damon rolls over on his side and gets as comfortable as he can, pillowing his face with both hands on the back of the seat.

“That was Liltin' Miss Tilton -- Martha Tilton,” he says, when there’s silence from the radio. “Saw her sing this at Carnegie with Benny Goodman’s band in ’38. Perfect voice for the orchestra. She was so good the crowd screamed for an encore and they had to scramble together something because the band had nothing else prepared.”

He gives Elena a toothy grin. “She was tasty too.”

Elena rolls her eyes, but turns over on the seat towards him and pillows her own face in her own hands. Bright horns and clarinet fall from the radio as the next song starts without any introduction.

“Yesterday you were a punk, today you’re all about big band?” she questions him.

“What can I say, I’m a music enthusiast.”

A smile more genuine than he’s seen in day creeps onto her face, and it thrills him. Damon wants to keep her talking, keep her engaged -- and he does for a little while -- but soon enough her voice slows and her eyes flutter closed.

It takes all his control not to touch her sleeping face.

###

The sound of the emergency break popping into place wakes Elena. She can’t remember falling asleep, but here she is, head fallen over to the side and mouth wide open. Her face is confused when she looks over at Damon whirling the keys around a finger in the driver’s seat.

“Why are we stopping?” she asks quietly, turning to look at Rebekah in the back seat.

“Next town on the list,” he drawls. “You looked so peaceful, with the little bit of drool on your cheek, I figured I’d just get us here before waking you up.”

The talking from the front wakes Rebekah with a start. “Nik!” she yells and sits up fast enough to bang her head on the roof. They turn around to look at her while she rubs her head from instinct more than pain. Damon’s eyebrows are shot up into his hairline and Elena’s early morning scowl is deepened.

“Sweet dreams about the incestuous love of your life?” Damon asks before ducking out the driver’s side door to dodge Rebekah’s wild punch. Elena follows him out of the car, but turns back to pop the seat forward so Rebekah can get out. The morning air is cool on her skin, helps to wake her even further -- thoughts drifting immediately to that ever-present need. She wanders a few feet away as Damon and Rebekah finish their first squabble of the day and eventually start to discuss the best places to search.

“You coming?” Damon calls to her.

“I need a minute. I'm hungry.”

“This isn’t a pub crawl, Elena!” Rebekah stomps her foot and her arms go back to crossed. “I want the Cure, Katherine has it. We don't stop until we find her.” Damon idly wonders if she’ll get stuck that way someday, since she spends so much of her time with her arms folded up like that. Elena doesn’t even bother to look at her, just scans the street for a likely target.

“I said, in a minute,” she yells back and walks steadily away from them, towards an auburn-haired girl loading bags into the passenger side of a car. She doesn’t notice Elena creep far up into her personal space. The girl jumps back and clutches at her chest when she turns to see Elena so close.

“Oh, my god, you startled me,” she says, a smile sneaking onto her face.

“Did I?” Elena says through her own nasty grin.

Even though it’s broad daylight veins creep up Elena’s face to her eyes and her fangs slide down between her teeth. Damon comes running. She grabs the girl with both hands and pulls her close, angling her so her hair falls away from her neck. Before Elena can even break skin, the girl just calmly speaks into Elena’s close-by ear: “Katherine, what are you doing?”

It’s the opposite of anything Elena is expecting and she throws herself back, mouth still wide but teeth all human. It’s instinct at that point to ask the girl “You know me?” -- more out of shock than anything else. Damon and Rebekah arrive by Elena’s side in time for the girl to reply.

“Of course,” the girl says, as if it’s a silly thing to ask. “And I know most people around here prefer you to feed from the neck, but I asked you to drink from my wrist, remember?” She holds out her arm with her shirt pulled back, revealing neat little healing puncture wounds at her wrist.

Rebekah can’t help but say, “I think we just found Katherine.”

Damon snorts and says, “The conniving little bitch compelled the whole town.” He’s visibly impressed.

“What’s my full name?” Elena asks.

“Katherine Pierce. I love the new ‘do, by the way.” The girl is happy to be helpful, seems happy to just be in Elena’s presence.

“How do you know Katherine?” Damon asks.

The girl looks at him, nothing but puzzled. “How do I know who?”

“Me,” Elena says, drawing the girl’s attention away from Damon and back to herself. “How do you know me?”

The girl shrugs and says, “Small town, everybody knows everybody.”

“So everyone here knows Katherine?” Rebekah asks her, leaning into the girl’s face.

Her smile fades and she does her best to bend away without moving her feet. “I’m sorry, I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

Damon slaps Rebekah across the chest with his the back of his hand when he figures it out. She yelps and hits him back, hard enough to knock him down. “She’s compelled them all to forget about her unless she’s talking to them herself,” he says as he picks himself up off the ground. “It’s the perfect hiding spot. No one knows a thing about her, and at the same time she’s got a whole town of happy little snacks.”

“Clever girl,” says Rebekah, who can’t hide the fact that she now she’s impressed too, in spite of herself.

Elena ignores their discussion and presses on questioning the girl, looking for some slip-up in Katherine’s perfect compulsion web.

“How long have we known each other?”

“It’s- been a while. I can’t remember.”

“Where do I live? Where do I work?” Elena’s rapid fire with her questions, barely waiting for the girl to answer.

“I don’t know.” The girl tries to keep up, but the more she has to answer “I don’t know” the more flustered she becomes.

“Who do I spend time with? Do I have any friends?”

“Well--you said we could all be friends with you, as long as we kept your secret.”

Elena jumps on her answer: “What secret?”

“I-I don’t know.” The girl’s biting her lip and tense now, looking at the ground, unhappy with being unable to answer.

“Let me compel her,” Rebekah exclaims. “I’m certain I can get it all out of her faster than this game of twenty questions can.”

“No!” Damon yells, but then brings his voice back down, “We can’t risk that Katherine hasn’t wired them all with some self-destruct command, in case one of them gets caught.”

Rebekah starts to respond, but immediately Damon and her are just talking over each other. It's all: “I know I can do this--” and “--this is our best and only lead, I’m not going to let you fuck it up!” round and around.

Elena thinks intently, looking at the ground while they argue behind her.

“I don’t live with you?” she asks the girl.

“No,” she replies.

“Do I visit you at your house?”

“Well, you haven’t been by in a while, so I was sortof expecting you some time soon.” The girl shifts her head to the side, thinking. “Although not so early in the day as this. I know I already bought cookies and juice for afterwards.”

This is enough to stop Damon and Rebekah dead in their arguing tracks.

“Cookies and juice?” Elena asks.

“Afterwards?” Damon and Rebekah say in unison.

“For after -- after you feed. So I’m not so woozy.”

“Can I go home with you now? I know it’s early, but I feel like spending time with you right now. Would that be ok?”

“Sure Katherine,” the girl says, full of enthusiasm, “I love it when you visit. I’d love to have you over now.”

“Hey, what do I call you?” Elena asks. “What’s your name?”

“My full name is Sophia Neres, but you usually just call me Soph.”

Rebekah snickers. “She even has pet names picked out for them. Lovely. I wonder where she keeps the treats.”

###

After stashing Damon’s car in an out-of-the-way alley, they all pile into Sophia’s tiny car for the ten minute ride to her house. Elena has to sit in the front seat to constantly remind Sophia what they’re doing. There’s a point where they almost end up on a highway headed the wrong way out of town -- which leaves everyone in the car screaming. Damon sprawls across the back, legs spread wide and right arm along the back seat, obviously infuriating Rebekah. She slams his head into the window twice before they arrive at Sophia’s house. Doesn’t stop him from calling her names.

Sophia parks in front and gets out, heading right for the door, keys in hand. Elena scrambles to follow, struggling with the unnecessary seat belt she fastened like clockwork at the beginning of the drive. “Soph! Wait up,” she calls and zips up to meet her on the porch. Sophia’s already got the door unlocked and pushed open.

“Is it alright if I come inside, Soph?” Elena asks, trying to be as mild as she can. Damon and Rebekah catch up to them with a minimum of fuss.

“Of course,” Sophia says, puzzled all over again. She goes to enter the house, but Elena grabs her arm to stop her.

“Can my friends come inside?” Elena asks, gesturing to Damon and Rebekah.

“I’m not s-supposed to...” she’s having trouble talking, the words are getting stuck in her mouth. “...not supposed to have...people over...except for you, Kath...”

“She seems to have her locked up pretty tight,” Damon says. “Has to be a good reason for it. Otherwise this is some pretty insane snack machine security Katherine’s enforcing.”

“Look,” Rebekah says, “we need to get into this house and this girl’s invitation is standing in the way. Perhaps she’s outlived her usefulness.”

“Mmm...I remind you again: she’s our only lead. Probably not the best idea to lose her permanently just yet,” Damon replies, and then nods his head at Elena. “So, Katherine, what do you think?”

Elena turns to Sophia, who’s waiting patiently half-in and half-out of her own house and says, “You have a secret that you keep here for me, right?”

Sophia nods, but says nothing else.

“What did I tell you to do if anyone comes her looking for it? You’re not supposed to let anyone else in, but what if someone stops by and asks you about it?”

“I’m supposed to wait till they go away and then call you, tell you what happened.”

“Well, there’s our in,” Elena says simply. “Damon, would you care to do the honors?”

“Wait, what ‘in’?” Rebekah pleads. “What are we going to do?”

###

“You sure you’re clear on your part of the plan, Bex?” Damon whispers from their hiding spot on the side of the house.

“Katherine shows up to check on the girl, I snap Katherine’s neck, we take the Cure.”

Damon is a ball of exasperation, but he manages to keep his voice down. “Katherine shows up, gets the Cure from the girl, then you snap her neck, and we take the Cure.”

“Right, right. And we’ll know that she’s gotten it because Elena will signal us--”

“--from inside the house, yes. Perfect. Try to keep track in that blond head of yours, ok? Has to be pretty close to go time.”

He can tell she wants to hit him, but she’s prizing caution over revenge for the time being. Instead they crouch in the bushes and wait. At least half a dozen cars go by over as time goes on. One or two of them slow down near the house, but otherwise none of them are even slightly suspicious.

After an hour of waiting, Damon is antsy and raw. Doesn’t want to be outside waiting for Katherine to show. Doesn’t want Elena waiting inside where he can’t reach her. Certainly doesn’t want to be hanging around Blondie Bex the whole while. Impatience is just about crushing him when Katherine runs up to the front door out of nowhere at regular old human speed.

At first he doesn’t think it’s her, because this is a Katherine he’s never seen before. Her curls are up in a high ponytail, pulled entirely away from her face. Where usually there should be 6-inch stiletto heels there are running shoes. Running shoes.

Damon bites his lip bloody to control his shock.

They listen to her knock on the door and ask to come inside. There’s no concern in her voice, just a polite chit-chatty tone, like she’s in the neighborhood popping by to visit friends in the middle of a run. The door closes behind her and it’s silent on the street.

Minutes tick by.

Damon holds his phone in a death grip, waiting for it to buzz with the signal from Elena, but then a huge vase comes crashing through the window behind him, spraying water everywhere and he drops his phone to the ground. The few drops of liquid that splatter his skin burn.

“Son of a--” he growls, “Go, go!”

Rebekah takes off past him, shooting straight for the door. She’s inside in a second without bouncing off. Damon’s right behind her into the living room of the house, no invitation needed, just enter at will.

The room is a floor-to-ceiling wreck, all the tidiness he’d glimpsed through the door earlier thrown into disarray. Hurricane Katherine is in the middle of it all fighting Hurricane Elena, raining down destruction and mayhem in their collective wake.

He steps over Sophia’s body without pause and into the fray, helping Rebekah to haul Katherine off of Elena.

Elena’s struggling like mad to grab hold of one of Katherine’s flailing arms. Rebekah doesn’t notice -- she’s just trying to contain as many of the flying limbs as possible without special attention to any one -- but Damon does and fast as lightning he’s got Katherine’s arm in a vise grip and Elena’s prying open her fingers one by one. Damon squeezes and Rebekah pulls and Katherine’s hand flies open, and the little brown thing she was holding so tightly rockets across the room.

Then it’s all mad scramble at vampire speed, until ultimately Damon’s got his hands on it: a weird little brown glass vial, filled with liquid and sealed with wax. Right there in his palm. The Cure.

Rebekah’s finally got Katherine pinned down, arms wrenched behind her back and shoulders looking dislocated. There’s a sickening crunch and Katherine falls limp to the floor, head lolling uselessly on her neck. The Original sister plays at wiping her hands off and looks at him expectantly. “Well? Give it here.”

Damon looks at the vial and looks at Elena, who shifts herself into readiness and quirks an eyebrow at him. This is where it all ends, he thinks as he throws the vial.

Rebekah catches it with one-handed ease and stops to examine her prize, holding it up to the light. Elena lets out an audible breath. It has the sound of something she’s been holding in for days.

###

“What did it taste like?” Damon asks.

Rebekah thinks for a minute and then says, “Sortof like licorice.”

Damon makes a face and says, “Ugh, better you than me.”

“How do we test it?” Elena says through a sigh. As usual, she has no time for the weird bickering relationship that Damon and Rebekah have built up over the course of the trip. She just wants this finished.

“I guess we try and kill her--” Damon starts with a grin, but Rebekah cuts him off.

“The sun. It’s still up, for now. I’m going to walk out there without my daylight ring. Should tell us quick enough.”

Elena nods and motions with her eyes. “Good. Go.”

Rebekah slides the ring off her finger and drops it to the ground, doesn’t even watch to see which way it rolls. She is perfectly certain of the change to her nature. Damon opens the door for her with a little chivalrous bow and the dying light pours in as she steps out into the world. Her skin glows golden; eyes closed and face tilted to the sky, she revels in the late spring warmth.

“How do you feel?” asks Elena from the doorway. She’s leaning close to Damon, but watching Rebekah.

“Well, she’s not on fire, which is a good first sign.” Damon mutters.

“I’m actually really tired,” says Rebekah. “And...um...hungry...I think.”

“Need a ride back to Mystic Falls?” Damon asks.

“No. I...I want to make my own way,” Rebekah says. “At least try to get a head start on my brothers finding me, so they can kill me or re-vamp me or yell at me. I want to get started on my own family, as far away from that terrible town as possible.”

“Probably for the best,” Elena says.

###

“I didn’t kill her.”

“Hmm?” Damon mumbles at her.

“Sophia. The girl. I didn’t kill her. If you were interested.”

“Vaguely,” he says. It’s the first time she’s spoken since they got back on the road, and he wants to keep her talking, keep her interested, now that the quest for the Cure is done and Rebekah’s long gone. Stopped for gas in the middle of nowhere seems as good a place as any to get started. “Tell me about it.”

Elena leans against the car next to him, looking out at the empty field across the road from the station. “Katherine showed up. Drank from So-- the girl...a lot actually, almost too much. She was all wobbly and pale before Katherine let go. I was worried that she’d just drain her and be done with it, that there wasn’t any secret in the house.”

“But obviously that didn’t happen...”

“Obviously, no,” Elena says. “Katherine stopped at the last minute and told the girl some weird phrase; it was something like, ‘Now we must honor the guardian of heaven.’ It was all very Da Vinci Code.”

“Sounds like part of Caedmon’s Hymn. Katherine was always a sucker for the classics. A bit strange that she went with the modern English translation, rather than the Old English, but...”

“Ok, but what was the point, modern or old or whatever?”

He sticks his lip out and shrugs his shoulders. “Dunno exactly. Probably some sort of code phrase. Maybe a release mechanism on the compulsion hiding the Cure. That way no one -- not you or even Katherine under duress -- could get the hiding place out of poor, dead Sophia.”

“Huh, never thought of using compulsion that way. I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Great, picking up more tricks from Katherine -- just what you need,” he says as he crosses his arms.  But then he thinks of Rebekah and immediately uncrosses them and brings one up to tap on the roof of his car instead. Elena pretends not to notice his little dance.

“Setting that aside for the moment, what happened next? How did the girl die?” he asks.

“Katherine gave her the code or whatever. The girl went over to this huge vase--”

“--think I’m familiar with it--”

“--and pulled this giant flower arrangement out of it. When she cut the band off the stems, there was the Cure vial hidden in the middle.”

“Bet the water in the vase was full of vervain too,” Damon says idly.

“Once Katherine had it in her hand, she drained the girl dry. That’s when I threw the vase out the window and went for Katherine.”

“Interesting change of plan,” he says nodding to himself, but then his eyebrows furrow as he thinks it through. “Glad it worked.”

Elena shrugs. “I had to improvise, Katherine would have heard me using my phone. Stupid plan to begin with,” she mumbles to herself, before returning to her normal volume. “The girl was already dead by the time I got to Katherine. Pretty quick she had me on the ground -- she was just too strong, there was nothing I could do but keep her angry and focused on me, so she didn’t try to run. And then Rebekah broke down the door and it was all over.”

“So, in the end,” he says, looking down at her, “she compelled the whole damn town -- and was paranoid as fuck about it too -- and we still won this round. I feel like celebrating.”

“She’s going to be murderously pissed when she wakes up and digs herself out of the hole we put her in,” Elena reminds him.

“Yeah, well, murderous Katherine is nothing we haven’t dealt with before. She got what she deserved for once.” He tries to think of something else to say, to keep the conversation going, but Elena does it for him.

“I’m surprised you didn’t ask me about what happened -- to the girl, I mean. You’ve been so bent out of shape about my regrets, I figured it’d be all bad cop again as soon as we were alone in the car.”

“Nope,” Damon says. “I’m done with all that -- no more restraint, no more regret, and no more fucking high road.  Just like you asked.”

He slings his arm from the roof of the car down to pull her close and smoothes her hair back behind her ear with the other, before running his thumb along her chin. “I’m done with appeasing, cajoling, and being the better man.Time to go back to being a ‘self-serving psychopath with no redeeming qualities’...at least for a little while.”

“I don’t know how long it’ll take--”

“--and I don’t really care, it’s fine,” he says firmly. “Take the time that you need.”

He lifts her chin with his hand so she looks up at him, and then his lips meet hers. There’s no hurry in the kiss -- it’s soft and subtle and slow. Chaste even, in comparison to where they’ve been before, but full of promise. They break from each other at the same time and he pulls back just enough to better see her eyes.

“Just come back to me when you’re ready. Until then...we’ll have a little fun.”

Elena is perfectly still -- could be carved out of stone -- while she thinks over his words. Then her eyes go dark and she flashes her teeth, a predator for all time.

“I’m hungry."

###

A/N: This started life as a oneshot -- the story was supposed to end right there. A lot of people asked me about continuing it, which got me to thinking about how I'd go about it, which led to me falling down a rabbithole of a story while neglecting the other pieces I already had in progress.

I still like it very much as a oneshot, but I like what comes after too.