Fic - Navigating Old Secrets (Jenna Sommers) pg, 1/1
Title: Navigating Old Secrets
Summary: Jenna is just waiting until the earth feels solid under her feet again. We all have skeletons in our closets. Some are just easier to navigate than others. Set immediately post 2x19.
Rating: pg
Author's Notes: 2,214 words. Spoilers for everything up to 2x19. For empressearwig (naturally) who asked for these two during a comment-fic-kiss meme forever ago. Also, title credit goes to summerstorm who used it as a prompt for Jenna fic ages ago. I have been obsessed with it ever since. All mistakes are mine. These characters, however, are not.
The boarding house is too large and quiet at night. Jenna continuously finds herself jumping at every sound and every creak of the floorboards under her feet. Eventually she decides she may never be entirely comfortable with the knowledge that Elena's boyfriend is a vampire and there are some truths to those stories Miranda always used to tell her when she was a little girl and so ridiculously naive, so she retreats to a spare bedroom in the corner of the house. Tries so very hard to remember that this is Stefan - Elena's trustworthy, noble boyfriend, and while Damon has been on her shit list for longer than she can count on her fingers and toes, they all agree on one, solitary thing: they need to do whatever they can to keep Elena both safe and alive.
She swears she hears a scream and a crash echo down the hallway, even peaks her head out to look, but sees nothing. She thinks she sees a flash of Andie's blonde hair running out, but Jenna is too far away and too tired to know for sure, so she chooses to ignore it. Retreats back inside and closes the door softly behind her. Out of instinct and habit she moves to twist the lock to the left, but figures if vampires were real, and really were out to get her and her family, a lock isn't going to do anything towards stopping them.
After a while Jenna showers because that is when she does when she's stressed out past the point of no return. In college she found that long showers soothed her, calmed her nerves, so she turns the water up until it nearly scolds her skin, spends too much time trying to wash away the lies and the memories. Thinks about Ric and how for months the guy she thought she loved and the kids she loved as though they were her own had done nothing but lie to her over and over. She cries a little. Washes her hair twice because she's too involved with her thoughts and the anger boiling under her skin that she forgets she's already done it once. By the time she's finished the tips of her fingers are wrinkled and pruny, and she rubs the pads of her thumb and forefinger together, cringing at the foreign feel of her skin. In the mirror her cheeks look hollow and the curve of her jaw too prominent, her eyes red from all the crying. She's been staying at her friend Sara's for days; working on her thesis around the clock, trying not to think about everything that's gone so horribly awry with her life. Trying to forget the fact that this time within a year ago she was carefree and happy and that life was, for the most part, beautifully simplistic.
It's then, as she stares at herself in the mirror and tries not to focus of the differences of then and now, that she realizes she doesn't actually have any clean clothes to change into. She exits the bathroom in a huff, angry all over again at this reality she fears she will never be able to wrap her head around.
"I forgot you always did have an affinity for marathon showers," somebody says out of nowhere as soon as she steps foot into the bedroom and she nearly jumps out of her skin, both her stomach and heart lodging themselves in her throat. She recognizes the voice, looks over to see John sitting smugly on the edge of the bed, but she still grabs her chest in reflex, hand over her rapidly beating heart and glares something fierce in his direction. She's too exhausted to feel self-conscious and takes a step further into the room.
"You really think now is the time to scare the shit out of me? Really, John?" Her heart rate slows as she calms herself, but her head starts to pound something horrible against her skull. It's probably from the crying and constant over-analyzing, but she still blames it entirely on him.
John sobers, lips pressing into a thin line. He motions to the bag next to him. "I brought you some clothes."
They look at each other for a moment and Jenna remembers why she hates him, but feels the anger lessen its hold on her just slightly and for only a short moment. He was always good at that, always knew just the right moment to do or say something nice to make her forget why she was angry with him. It only works for a short span of time, her anger lessening and returning in full force spontaneously before turning into something she assumes is resignation. Her thanks is mumbled and quiet as she reaches for the bag next to him on the bed and John merely nods in response.
"You mind stepping outside so I can change?"
"Why?" His grin widens across his mouth. "It's nothing I haven't seen before."
"You better think twice about pulling that smarmy bastard act right about now," Jenna flicks the wrist that isn't busy holding up her towel towards the cross-bow-stake thingy that Stefan taught her how to use earlier. "It's pretty dark in here. I could mistake you for a vampire and shoot you without thinking twice. I doubt anyone would miss you."
"You forget that I know you're a terrible shot."
"Not when it counts."
John laughs and she rolls her eyes in response, grabs the bag because this is going nowhere fast and John is about as stubborn as she is and she is way too tired for these petty little games tonight. She thinks she’s earned the right to slam the door behind her so she does. In the bathroom she throws on sweatpants and a ratty sweatshirt that belonged to Miranda once upon a time, and busies herself with brushing her teeth and her hair, operating under the falsely guided notion that eventually he'll get up and leave rather than wait for her to come out.
It doesn't work, of course. He knocks on the door while she snoops around in the medicine cabinet, re-arranging the prescriptions and belongings that must have belonged to their uncle - or not uncle as the case may be. Jenna still doesn't really understand how this lineage thing works. Doesn’t really understand how any of this works. She is quite sure she never really wants to understand. If she's being honest with herself, then she will freely admit that she is still hoping she'll wake up tomorrow and this will all have been a very bad dream.
That tiny, rational part of her understands the odd of that happening are damn near impossible. Still, Jenna holds onto the miniscule possibility as if it was her lifeline, until the tips of her fingers are pearl white and numb.
"You still alive?"
She sits on the edge of the tub, mumbles her childish and ungrateful unfortunately to nobody in particular. John must take that as his cue to enter because he does, pushing the door open cautiously, eying her in that way he always used to - with gentle features and kind eyes. She thinks it’s probably a very bad sign that he's being nice to her and not trying to bait her into some pointless argument. Jenna wishes he would. Wants to scream at him and fight with him until she's blue in the face, until she starts to feel like the earth is solid beneath her feet again.
"You want to talk about it?" he asks, crossing his arms over his chest and he looks serious and uncomfortable at the same time, but he's here and she knows that means something - even if she's not quite sure what that is. Jenna laughs anyway. The sound is not at all kind.
"About what?” she asks somewhat hysterically. “How my boyfriend is being possessed by a vampire? Or that my niece has been dating a vampire for months? Or how about the fact that vampires exist at all?" She shakes her head and runs her hands through her hair. "How is talking about it going to change any of it, John?"
All he can do is shrug and she's not even surprised. "It might make you feel better at least."
She laughs again, loud and manic and something wells in her chest that she can't quite control. "Since when are you in the business of making me feel better?"
"Jenna -" he starts, but she shakes her head in an effort to cut him off.
"I think about all that time we spent together. I think about that time I spent trying to love you, trying to be honest with you, and you've been lying to me since day one."
"I didn't lie to you -"
"No, you just think it was pertinent for me to know that you were Elena's father. Or that her mother is really Ric's dead wife, or not-dead as the case may be. Or that she was a vampire. Or that vampires even existed for that matter," she laughs and shakes her head at the same time, rests her elbows on her knees and buries her head in her hands.
He comes to sit next to her after a moment and she's surprised that for the first time in years his presence isn't entirely unwelcome. It's almost comforting and manages to calm her in a subtle type of way - reminiscent of how she used to feel with him when they were two very different people all those years ago.
"Isobel is actually very dead now, just so you know," he says and she lifts her head from her hands and just stares at him for a moment. He's smiling, of course, in that insufferable way of his, and Jenna just wants to smack it right off his face.
"That's what you're choosing to focus on right now?"
He doesn't falter, and is still smirking as he says, "It's all in the little things, you know."
This, too, he used to do - make her laugh when she needed it the most. It didn't take much - Jenna was always pretty easy to please, but he always knew just when she needed him the most. Always there, it seemed, to save her at the very last minute.
"Why are you being so nice to me?" she asks after a long moment. She's too tired to fight, but these days that's what her body has grown accustomed to preparing for when he's present and the absence of the bickering is making her feel as if she's on uneven ground.
John sighs, the sound heavy and weighted and he shifts in his position next to her on the edge of the tub. "Believe it or not, Jenna, I was just trying to protect you."
A part of her can understand that, she thinks, but it still makes her angry because she doesn't understand how she's supposed to do her job, how she is supposed to care for Elena and Jeremy if she doesn't know the whole truth. She doesn't know how she's supposed to survive in this scenario if she's living in ignorance.
"I think I'd be a hell of a lot safer if people would stop trying to protect me and start telling me the truth."
John’s face is somber, tone so soft she has to strain to hear him when he replies, “there is a whole world of truths that I know and you don't."
"Yeah," she laughs softly and without mirth. The pounding in her head is coming and going in waves and there's a sudden surge of something both familiar and foreign inside her chest. She feels like crying again as thinks of Elena and Jeremy and all they've probably endured without her. As she thinks of Ric and how he very might well be dead. "That's what I'm worried about."
In a movement that goes against everything he is now, John leans in softly and brushes his lips to her forehead. For the first time in years, Jenna doesn’t flinch at his touch. For the first time in years, she allows her eyes to fall closed and her body to lean into him. The moment is soft and fleeting, over before it really starts and for a moment, for the smallest span of time, she rests her side against his and sighs something soft and so utterly exhausted as she allows him to carry some of her weight.
There is a part of her that still hates him, that needs to hate him, but there is a larger part of her that realizes they can only fight a war on so many fronts before they end up failing miserably.
So instead of pushing him away, instead of falling back into familiar patterns, she just sits there with her head on his shoulder and her heart in her throat as she tries to make sense of the mess going on around her.
"This isn't going to end well, is it?" Jenna asks after a while, voice thin.
"Probably not," he replies quietly and it's probably the most honest thing he's ever said to her.
Jenna stares at her hands for a long time.
Summary: Jenna is just waiting until the earth feels solid under her feet again. We all have skeletons in our closets. Some are just easier to navigate than others. Set immediately post 2x19.
Rating: pg
Author's Notes: 2,214 words. Spoilers for everything up to 2x19. For empressearwig (naturally) who asked for these two during a comment-fic-kiss meme forever ago. Also, title credit goes to summerstorm who used it as a prompt for Jenna fic ages ago. I have been obsessed with it ever since. All mistakes are mine. These characters, however, are not.
The boarding house is too large and quiet at night. Jenna continuously finds herself jumping at every sound and every creak of the floorboards under her feet. Eventually she decides she may never be entirely comfortable with the knowledge that Elena's boyfriend is a vampire and there are some truths to those stories Miranda always used to tell her when she was a little girl and so ridiculously naive, so she retreats to a spare bedroom in the corner of the house. Tries so very hard to remember that this is Stefan - Elena's trustworthy, noble boyfriend, and while Damon has been on her shit list for longer than she can count on her fingers and toes, they all agree on one, solitary thing: they need to do whatever they can to keep Elena both safe and alive.
She swears she hears a scream and a crash echo down the hallway, even peaks her head out to look, but sees nothing. She thinks she sees a flash of Andie's blonde hair running out, but Jenna is too far away and too tired to know for sure, so she chooses to ignore it. Retreats back inside and closes the door softly behind her. Out of instinct and habit she moves to twist the lock to the left, but figures if vampires were real, and really were out to get her and her family, a lock isn't going to do anything towards stopping them.
After a while Jenna showers because that is when she does when she's stressed out past the point of no return. In college she found that long showers soothed her, calmed her nerves, so she turns the water up until it nearly scolds her skin, spends too much time trying to wash away the lies and the memories. Thinks about Ric and how for months the guy she thought she loved and the kids she loved as though they were her own had done nothing but lie to her over and over. She cries a little. Washes her hair twice because she's too involved with her thoughts and the anger boiling under her skin that she forgets she's already done it once. By the time she's finished the tips of her fingers are wrinkled and pruny, and she rubs the pads of her thumb and forefinger together, cringing at the foreign feel of her skin. In the mirror her cheeks look hollow and the curve of her jaw too prominent, her eyes red from all the crying. She's been staying at her friend Sara's for days; working on her thesis around the clock, trying not to think about everything that's gone so horribly awry with her life. Trying to forget the fact that this time within a year ago she was carefree and happy and that life was, for the most part, beautifully simplistic.
It's then, as she stares at herself in the mirror and tries not to focus of the differences of then and now, that she realizes she doesn't actually have any clean clothes to change into. She exits the bathroom in a huff, angry all over again at this reality she fears she will never be able to wrap her head around.
"I forgot you always did have an affinity for marathon showers," somebody says out of nowhere as soon as she steps foot into the bedroom and she nearly jumps out of her skin, both her stomach and heart lodging themselves in her throat. She recognizes the voice, looks over to see John sitting smugly on the edge of the bed, but she still grabs her chest in reflex, hand over her rapidly beating heart and glares something fierce in his direction. She's too exhausted to feel self-conscious and takes a step further into the room.
"You really think now is the time to scare the shit out of me? Really, John?" Her heart rate slows as she calms herself, but her head starts to pound something horrible against her skull. It's probably from the crying and constant over-analyzing, but she still blames it entirely on him.
John sobers, lips pressing into a thin line. He motions to the bag next to him. "I brought you some clothes."
They look at each other for a moment and Jenna remembers why she hates him, but feels the anger lessen its hold on her just slightly and for only a short moment. He was always good at that, always knew just the right moment to do or say something nice to make her forget why she was angry with him. It only works for a short span of time, her anger lessening and returning in full force spontaneously before turning into something she assumes is resignation. Her thanks is mumbled and quiet as she reaches for the bag next to him on the bed and John merely nods in response.
"You mind stepping outside so I can change?"
"Why?" His grin widens across his mouth. "It's nothing I haven't seen before."
"You better think twice about pulling that smarmy bastard act right about now," Jenna flicks the wrist that isn't busy holding up her towel towards the cross-bow-stake thingy that Stefan taught her how to use earlier. "It's pretty dark in here. I could mistake you for a vampire and shoot you without thinking twice. I doubt anyone would miss you."
"You forget that I know you're a terrible shot."
"Not when it counts."
John laughs and she rolls her eyes in response, grabs the bag because this is going nowhere fast and John is about as stubborn as she is and she is way too tired for these petty little games tonight. She thinks she’s earned the right to slam the door behind her so she does. In the bathroom she throws on sweatpants and a ratty sweatshirt that belonged to Miranda once upon a time, and busies herself with brushing her teeth and her hair, operating under the falsely guided notion that eventually he'll get up and leave rather than wait for her to come out.
It doesn't work, of course. He knocks on the door while she snoops around in the medicine cabinet, re-arranging the prescriptions and belongings that must have belonged to their uncle - or not uncle as the case may be. Jenna still doesn't really understand how this lineage thing works. Doesn’t really understand how any of this works. She is quite sure she never really wants to understand. If she's being honest with herself, then she will freely admit that she is still hoping she'll wake up tomorrow and this will all have been a very bad dream.
That tiny, rational part of her understands the odd of that happening are damn near impossible. Still, Jenna holds onto the miniscule possibility as if it was her lifeline, until the tips of her fingers are pearl white and numb.
"You still alive?"
She sits on the edge of the tub, mumbles her childish and ungrateful unfortunately to nobody in particular. John must take that as his cue to enter because he does, pushing the door open cautiously, eying her in that way he always used to - with gentle features and kind eyes. She thinks it’s probably a very bad sign that he's being nice to her and not trying to bait her into some pointless argument. Jenna wishes he would. Wants to scream at him and fight with him until she's blue in the face, until she starts to feel like the earth is solid beneath her feet again.
"You want to talk about it?" he asks, crossing his arms over his chest and he looks serious and uncomfortable at the same time, but he's here and she knows that means something - even if she's not quite sure what that is. Jenna laughs anyway. The sound is not at all kind.
"About what?” she asks somewhat hysterically. “How my boyfriend is being possessed by a vampire? Or that my niece has been dating a vampire for months? Or how about the fact that vampires exist at all?" She shakes her head and runs her hands through her hair. "How is talking about it going to change any of it, John?"
All he can do is shrug and she's not even surprised. "It might make you feel better at least."
She laughs again, loud and manic and something wells in her chest that she can't quite control. "Since when are you in the business of making me feel better?"
"Jenna -" he starts, but she shakes her head in an effort to cut him off.
"I think about all that time we spent together. I think about that time I spent trying to love you, trying to be honest with you, and you've been lying to me since day one."
"I didn't lie to you -"
"No, you just think it was pertinent for me to know that you were Elena's father. Or that her mother is really Ric's dead wife, or not-dead as the case may be. Or that she was a vampire. Or that vampires even existed for that matter," she laughs and shakes her head at the same time, rests her elbows on her knees and buries her head in her hands.
He comes to sit next to her after a moment and she's surprised that for the first time in years his presence isn't entirely unwelcome. It's almost comforting and manages to calm her in a subtle type of way - reminiscent of how she used to feel with him when they were two very different people all those years ago.
"Isobel is actually very dead now, just so you know," he says and she lifts her head from her hands and just stares at him for a moment. He's smiling, of course, in that insufferable way of his, and Jenna just wants to smack it right off his face.
"That's what you're choosing to focus on right now?"
He doesn't falter, and is still smirking as he says, "It's all in the little things, you know."
This, too, he used to do - make her laugh when she needed it the most. It didn't take much - Jenna was always pretty easy to please, but he always knew just when she needed him the most. Always there, it seemed, to save her at the very last minute.
"Why are you being so nice to me?" she asks after a long moment. She's too tired to fight, but these days that's what her body has grown accustomed to preparing for when he's present and the absence of the bickering is making her feel as if she's on uneven ground.
John sighs, the sound heavy and weighted and he shifts in his position next to her on the edge of the tub. "Believe it or not, Jenna, I was just trying to protect you."
A part of her can understand that, she thinks, but it still makes her angry because she doesn't understand how she's supposed to do her job, how she is supposed to care for Elena and Jeremy if she doesn't know the whole truth. She doesn't know how she's supposed to survive in this scenario if she's living in ignorance.
"I think I'd be a hell of a lot safer if people would stop trying to protect me and start telling me the truth."
John’s face is somber, tone so soft she has to strain to hear him when he replies, “there is a whole world of truths that I know and you don't."
"Yeah," she laughs softly and without mirth. The pounding in her head is coming and going in waves and there's a sudden surge of something both familiar and foreign inside her chest. She feels like crying again as thinks of Elena and Jeremy and all they've probably endured without her. As she thinks of Ric and how he very might well be dead. "That's what I'm worried about."
In a movement that goes against everything he is now, John leans in softly and brushes his lips to her forehead. For the first time in years, Jenna doesn’t flinch at his touch. For the first time in years, she allows her eyes to fall closed and her body to lean into him. The moment is soft and fleeting, over before it really starts and for a moment, for the smallest span of time, she rests her side against his and sighs something soft and so utterly exhausted as she allows him to carry some of her weight.
There is a part of her that still hates him, that needs to hate him, but there is a larger part of her that realizes they can only fight a war on so many fronts before they end up failing miserably.
So instead of pushing him away, instead of falling back into familiar patterns, she just sits there with her head on his shoulder and her heart in her throat as she tries to make sense of the mess going on around her.
"This isn't going to end well, is it?" Jenna asks after a while, voice thin.
"Probably not," he replies quietly and it's probably the most honest thing he's ever said to her.
Jenna stares at her hands for a long time.