Fic - all roads lead me here (Elena, Elena/Damon) pg-13, 1/1
Title: all roads lead me here
Summary It's been years, but some things never change
Rating: pg-13
Author's Notes: 1,022 words. General series spoilers. Sort of veers off into AU after 4x01. Set in the future. Which is my roundabout way of saying I have about 9 episodes of this show sitting on my DVR waiting to be marathoned, but when upupa_epops asks, she receives All mistakes are mine. These characters, however, are not.
For upupa_epops. I have no idea what this is, really. I hope you like it.
Here is all you should know of the past:
In the end, after everything is said and done and all that remains is scorched earth and harsh, gaping battle wounds, Elena does the one thing he’s always wanted of her.
She saves herself.
It takes time - days and weeks and years lost to nights in dark alleys with some stranger’s blood sliding all too easily down her throat, what feels like an eternity spent pushing herself to the edge and further only so she can claw her way back - to realize nothing else matters.
Nothing else could matter.
Elena is a survivor.
She only knows how to endure.
She finds him in a dive bar twenty miles outside of Atlanta, the heat of summer coiling in the air around them. The sweat pools at the base of her spine and she can smell the heady scent of a storm growing on the horizon.
Her hair is shorter, curling a bit at the edges. She carries herself differently now, her spine straighter, her shoulders relaxed without the weight of the world resting upon them.
It’s been years since she’s seen him. Years since she stood beside him in the dead of winter, snow crisp under her feet and too many people’s blood on her hands, as they put his brother, her friends, her family into the cold, cold ground.
(Don’t come looking for me, she had told him when she decided to leave it all behind, suitcase packed and standing upright near her feet.
He took a step back, nodded sharply, and let her go.
When she had enough clarity, enough hindsight, and more than enough physical distance placed between her and her past, she laughed about how he picked the worst goddamn moment to finally, finally get it. To understand that all she ever wanted from him was to respect her enough to let her make her own choices, her own mistakes.
They always had the worst timing.)
The moment she walks in the door, he turns, catching her eye through the sea of people separating them.
Damon’s mouth curls, but he doesn’t smile.
When she slides onto the stool next to him, she hears his sharp inhale; sees the way his mind works into overdrive, figuring it all out. She had an epiphany of sorts, a moment of clarity months before that led her to follow a different path, one that still led in the same direction, towards the same endpoint.
For months, she has been looking for him, tracking his movements with a map she keeps hidden in her duffel bag, pen marks noting his whereabouts, lines connecting the previous location with the next one.
All roads led here, to the place where she first had the guts to think maybe and she breathes something akin to relief when she realizes he still looks the same, still looks at her the same.
The irony is noted.
They might laugh about it later.
(A week after that night in the woods, in a house she couldn’t stand to be alone in anymore, she fucked Damon in the kitchen of what was once her parent’s home, in a house that once held the sound of laughter but now only held silence and wreaked of death. Her body betrayed her intentions, every ounce of rage and grief she felt humming under her skin day in and day out forced upon him with her mouth, with the angry flick of her tongue against his.
He tried to still her, to push her into submission, but gave in too easily in the end. Elena pushed herself up and onto the counter, opened her legs wide for him, ankles crossed behind his back to pull him closer as her mouth whispered obscenities and filth that hid the truths she had always been so very good at burying.
Damon took it, every ounce of it.
Allowed her fingers to draw angry lines down his back, allowed her teeth to sink into his neck, tongue lapping at the blood pooling so willingly into her mouth. He didn’t allow himself to loose control, to take this away from her when she kissed him and he tasted the copper on her bottom lip because it was about her, about what she wanted and what she needed.
Elena came fast and hard, one hand fisted into his hair, and the other curled so tightly around the edge of the countertop that it would have hurt if she were still human, still allowed to feel such things.
She was gone two days later.)
“Of all the gin joints…” he starts, then stops, and she hooks her ankles around the bottom rung of her stool, anchoring herself.
His mouth spreads into a smile that cuts and some things never change.
“Your jokes still aren’t funny,” she murmurs, and he anticipates her moves before she makes them, raises his hand to summon the bartender as he pushes his drink towards her.
Damon’s fingers linger against hers when he presses the glass into her hands, and she thinks maybe, just maybe, he was looking for her too.
“You didn’t call, you didn’t write…” his tone makes light of the sentiment behind the words, and this too hasn’t changed - Elena can read him like an open book, sees the flicker of emotion in his features, knows he will hold her at arms length until he knows exactly what she wants from him.
Nodding, she takes a slow sip of his drink and keeps his gaze. “I had some things to… sort out.”
“How you doing on that end?”
Elena’s mouth turns. “It’s a work in progress.”
Damon smiles like he understands.
She supposes there is a bit of truth in that.
It should surprise her, she thinks, the way he is still acutely aware of her after all this time and distance she placed between them, but she’s not.
Too easily, she remembers - he has always known her. He has always known the most intimate parts of her, the ones she shielded away from the world and only laid bare for him.
She welcomes the consistency.
Summary It's been years, but some things never change
Rating: pg-13
Author's Notes: 1,022 words. General series spoilers. Sort of veers off into AU after 4x01. Set in the future. Which is my roundabout way of saying I have about 9 episodes of this show sitting on my DVR waiting to be marathoned, but when upupa_epops asks, she receives All mistakes are mine. These characters, however, are not.
For upupa_epops. I have no idea what this is, really. I hope you like it.
Here is all you should know of the past:
In the end, after everything is said and done and all that remains is scorched earth and harsh, gaping battle wounds, Elena does the one thing he’s always wanted of her.
She saves herself.
It takes time - days and weeks and years lost to nights in dark alleys with some stranger’s blood sliding all too easily down her throat, what feels like an eternity spent pushing herself to the edge and further only so she can claw her way back - to realize nothing else matters.
Nothing else could matter.
Elena is a survivor.
She only knows how to endure.
She finds him in a dive bar twenty miles outside of Atlanta, the heat of summer coiling in the air around them. The sweat pools at the base of her spine and she can smell the heady scent of a storm growing on the horizon.
Her hair is shorter, curling a bit at the edges. She carries herself differently now, her spine straighter, her shoulders relaxed without the weight of the world resting upon them.
It’s been years since she’s seen him. Years since she stood beside him in the dead of winter, snow crisp under her feet and too many people’s blood on her hands, as they put his brother, her friends, her family into the cold, cold ground.
(Don’t come looking for me, she had told him when she decided to leave it all behind, suitcase packed and standing upright near her feet.
He took a step back, nodded sharply, and let her go.
When she had enough clarity, enough hindsight, and more than enough physical distance placed between her and her past, she laughed about how he picked the worst goddamn moment to finally, finally get it. To understand that all she ever wanted from him was to respect her enough to let her make her own choices, her own mistakes.
They always had the worst timing.)
The moment she walks in the door, he turns, catching her eye through the sea of people separating them.
Damon’s mouth curls, but he doesn’t smile.
When she slides onto the stool next to him, she hears his sharp inhale; sees the way his mind works into overdrive, figuring it all out. She had an epiphany of sorts, a moment of clarity months before that led her to follow a different path, one that still led in the same direction, towards the same endpoint.
For months, she has been looking for him, tracking his movements with a map she keeps hidden in her duffel bag, pen marks noting his whereabouts, lines connecting the previous location with the next one.
All roads led here, to the place where she first had the guts to think maybe and she breathes something akin to relief when she realizes he still looks the same, still looks at her the same.
The irony is noted.
They might laugh about it later.
(A week after that night in the woods, in a house she couldn’t stand to be alone in anymore, she fucked Damon in the kitchen of what was once her parent’s home, in a house that once held the sound of laughter but now only held silence and wreaked of death. Her body betrayed her intentions, every ounce of rage and grief she felt humming under her skin day in and day out forced upon him with her mouth, with the angry flick of her tongue against his.
He tried to still her, to push her into submission, but gave in too easily in the end. Elena pushed herself up and onto the counter, opened her legs wide for him, ankles crossed behind his back to pull him closer as her mouth whispered obscenities and filth that hid the truths she had always been so very good at burying.
Damon took it, every ounce of it.
Allowed her fingers to draw angry lines down his back, allowed her teeth to sink into his neck, tongue lapping at the blood pooling so willingly into her mouth. He didn’t allow himself to loose control, to take this away from her when she kissed him and he tasted the copper on her bottom lip because it was about her, about what she wanted and what she needed.
Elena came fast and hard, one hand fisted into his hair, and the other curled so tightly around the edge of the countertop that it would have hurt if she were still human, still allowed to feel such things.
She was gone two days later.)
“Of all the gin joints…” he starts, then stops, and she hooks her ankles around the bottom rung of her stool, anchoring herself.
His mouth spreads into a smile that cuts and some things never change.
“Your jokes still aren’t funny,” she murmurs, and he anticipates her moves before she makes them, raises his hand to summon the bartender as he pushes his drink towards her.
Damon’s fingers linger against hers when he presses the glass into her hands, and she thinks maybe, just maybe, he was looking for her too.
“You didn’t call, you didn’t write…” his tone makes light of the sentiment behind the words, and this too hasn’t changed - Elena can read him like an open book, sees the flicker of emotion in his features, knows he will hold her at arms length until he knows exactly what she wants from him.
Nodding, she takes a slow sip of his drink and keeps his gaze. “I had some things to… sort out.”
“How you doing on that end?”
Elena’s mouth turns. “It’s a work in progress.”
Damon smiles like he understands.
She supposes there is a bit of truth in that.
It should surprise her, she thinks, the way he is still acutely aware of her after all this time and distance she placed between them, but she’s not.
Too easily, she remembers - he has always known her. He has always known the most intimate parts of her, the ones she shielded away from the world and only laid bare for him.
She welcomes the consistency.