Fic: And The Abyss Gazed Back (2/2)
Title: And The Abyss Gazed Back (2/2)
Author: Anna (bite_or_avoid)
Fandom: The Vampire Diaries
Characters/Pairings: Damon/Elena
Word Count: 2,491
Rating: R
Spoilers: Everything through 5x13
Author's Notes: I own nothing except my student debt. Thank you to the amazing tempertemper77 for the beta
Summary: Damon doesn't shut off his humanity when you think he does, but the when isn't really the part that matters.
He doesn't shut off his humanity when you think he does.
It's still there when he goes all Night of the Living Dead on Aaron Whitmore. And when he threatens the kid he swore to protect; the kid for whose safety, up until a few short days ago, he would have done almost anything. When he watches Enzo stake Elena, the wood penetrating a little too close for comfort, it takes every ounce of anger and betrayal coursing through his veins to keep from rushing to her side. Protecting her is an instinct now, woven into the very fabric of who he is. His every step further into irredeemable territory is a direct rebellion against that instinct.
It's a relief to turn his back on their comically dismayed faces. As if they weren't both waiting for the moment he would fuck it all up. He means it when he says he has no intention of coming back.
Until karma bites him right in the ass.
He's not really surprised when Stefan and Elena come riding in like the vampire cavalry once they find out about his fun new party trick.
After all, his brother never did learn when to leave well enough alone.
This time it's slightly less annoying than usual, primarily because the whole chewing other vampires' heads off thing is getting pretty inconvenient. Damon's never been the poster boy for self control or anything, but he's pretty sure this Ripper-On-Steroids scenario is a tad much, even for him.
And he has to admit, the whole play is pretty damn effective. Apparently even St. Stefan has a limit to his patience, because he goes right for the 'do what I want or I will turn you into a vampire and have my newly cannibalistic brother eat your face' approach.
Oldest trick in the book.
So, as soon as he gets the antidote he takes Dr. Frankenstein's head and twists it clean off. Just for good measure, you know? It's not like anyone's gonna miss the creeper.
But then she looks at him, this girl he thinks is Elena.
Her features are painted with a kind of disdain that cuts him right to the core. That's when he sees everything clearly for what feels like the first time.
It was easy enough to blame Katherine as she lay dying, (although not definitively enough, as it turned out). To put it all on this frail, fading body that reminded him so much of the mortality he lost.
The mortality he gave her.
She took his innate goodness, his kind human heart, and used it up until there was nothing but an empty husk. He tried to fill it with bitterness, and anger, and an endless litany of ways to screw with his brother's life, but it was never enough to heal that wound, raw and gaping even after a century.
Until a human girl filled him up again, beyond anything he could have imagined. And now she's looking at him as if he's finally done something she can't defend. And, yeah, he probably has. Because, really, when you come down to it, that's just him.
If there's one thing he knows how to do, it's own his shit.
That's the moment he decides. Fuck this. Fuck it all.
He commits the look on her face to memory. (As if he could ever forget.)
If that pesky humanity ever slips through the cracks, all he needs to do is remember this moment. Right here. He put that look there and he owns it. (Even though it's not really her. Katherine always knew how to cut with a glance as assuredly as any dagger.)
There's only so much hurt a man can take.
Whatever broken, mangled excuse for a soul is still in him, he doesn't fucking want it.
He flips the switch.
Damon doesn't shut off his humanity when you think he does, but the when isn't really the part that matters.
***
If he thought (or cared) about it even a little, he could have guessed that they would follow him all over the damn southeast.
Again, with the leaving well enough alone thing. He really tries to impress the concept onto Stefan. With a rebar, amongst other things.
The only part that surprises him in any of this is how crafty Katherine got in her quest for survival. Really, though, that should surprise him least of all.
(He laughs about it. Elena doesn't seem to think it's funny, but she tends to have a stick up her shapely ass about these kinds of things.)
***
The stalking starts to get to him. Not because there's any danger of gross, messy feelings getting evoked. It's because they're cramping his style. By the time Elena catches him outside that club, he's debating a variation of the Fuck Lexi plan from the last time Stefan was dumb enough to try and rehabilitate him.
And then she has to go and know him like she does. She has to see that the redhead just isn't doing it for him. He's not about to tell her that no one does it for him anymore. That ever since that goddamn antidote he can't enjoy feeding on vampires or humans. That he's a broken fucking toy, but he's going to keep right on trying to revel in it because the alternative is too damn depressing.
Instead he tells her to fuck off, basically.
Something bitter twists inside him at the thought, and he tells the flicker of emotion to fuck off, too.
He goes and finds himself a blonde to eat. He's always been an equal opportunity monster.
***
He shouldn't have touched her.
Then again, there's a whole list of things he shouldn't have done, but he doesn't really give a rat's ass about shouldn't, so there's that.
It's arrogance that screws it all up. Which is a nice change from blindly pathetic love, he supposes, but still.
He's secure enough in the new and improved Damon Salvatore that he can do whatever he wants and not suffer the consequences. Cause that's worked out so nicely for him in the past.
Pride goeth before...
Yeah, that.
Hubris was always his least favorite sin for a reason.
His favorite was always a toss-up between lust and wrath, and it's probably a little of both that makes him do it.
Because she's standing there, challenging him like she always has, and even though he doesn't feel anything per se, he wants her on a very primal level. That kind of almost pisses him off a little, because he also wants her to go away. So he does what he wants, takes what he wants. And the kicker is, she lets him. Just accepts what he's dishing out and then hits him right between the eyes with her truth. It's pathetic, really, how far she's willing to go.
How far she's willing to go for him. She's doing this for him.
That's when he finally gets it. He keeps thinking that if he's just cruel enough, that if he does something unforgivable, she'll leave him in peace. But he carries a whole history full of unforgivable deeds, especially where Elena's concerned, and somehow she's still here.
For the rest of the night he keeps reliving her eyes locked on his as she shatters around his fingers and he can't help it, the thought just slips through.
It's a lie, you know. There's no switch you can turn off. Sure, when you're a newbie, but after a couple of hundred years you just have to pretend.
He really shouldn't have touched her.
Of all the mistakes he's made recently, this one is the most costly.
***
Damon doesn't expect that little stunt with Elena to be any kind of deterrent for her, so he's surprised when no one follows him the next morning. But he's definitely not looking for her around every corner as he goes about the day; definitely not waiting for Stefan to sidle up on the barstool next to his and make him simultaneously bored and annoyed. And he's most definitely not worried when nearly sixteen hours have passed and there's still no sign of his unwelcome posse.
Good riddance.
He ends up at their hotel anyway and curses himself for it.
Deep down though, he senses the tether that pulled him here. He knows there's something wrong even before he reaches the open door, or feels the crunch of broken glass beneath his feet. The familiar scent lingers in the air before he ever stands at the edge of a ravaged room and sees Elena's blood.
He can't keep the fear from seeping out around the edges he's drawn himself into, and in that moment, he doesn't care.
***
He follows some otherworldly sense back to that abandoned hospital near Whitmore College.
Actually, he follows the grease stains Stefan's Porsche leaves on the asphalt. He really needs to remind his brother to check the oil plug.
Damon gives himself all kinds of reasons for why he's willingly creeping around the place where he got all jacked up on cannibal juice to begin with. He owes Stefan, no one gets to kill his brother but him, Elena's too good a piece of ass to just let her bleed out, et cetera, et cetera.
Deep down he knows that he's already reverted to where sometimes he does things just because it's Elena.
It's not even shocking how fast he got all the way back here, and that really sucks. Like, he's just doomed to fail at everything when it comes to her, even when he's trying to walk away.
***
There are these lazy little puddles of blood on the ground. Side by side next to their bodies. A matching set, His and Hers.
Whoever the hell drained them did a thorough job of it.
He knows, objectively, that you can't kill a vampire this way. It's still unsettling seeing Stefan and Elena like this, depleted and cadaverous.
Damon sighs, bites into each wrist, drips blood into their mouths until they revive enough to latch on. He cradles each head in his lap and closes his eyes, something in his chest loosening a little. There has to be some kind of symbolism in it, he thinks, him in the middle like this.
He believed it would always be Elena wedged between them.
***
"It was the Travelers," Stefan explains, as they ration out the blood bags in his trunk. "They seemed to need us alive last time, but I guess with Wes dead, it doesn't matter anymore."
"He was studying the mystical properties of doppleganger blood for them, I think," Elena offers. The color finally returns to her cheeks as she finishes her O-pos.
Damon scoffs. "Of course he was. Aren't you two sick of all the doppledrama?"
"Do we have a say in the matter?"
"As always, brother, you fail to be even a little useful." He pauses, tries to ignore the ease with which he falls back into this dance. "Any idea where the blood-jackers went on their magical mystery tour?"
"Oh, God." Elena's eyes are wide with alarm. "They said something about needing the Anchor..."
"And the hijinks just keep on comin'."
Stefan is already in motion, focus and determination suffusing his face. "I'll call Caroline. Elena, warn Bonnie, and then you and Damon--"
"She and Damon what? You think just because I saved your squirrel-chasing ass-- you're welcome, I might add-- we're all going to hold hands and sing Kumbaya?"
"Seriously, Damon? Are you really going to keep pretending like none of this matters?"
"That's weird. You're talking to me as if I care."
Stefan's green eyes fix on him, alight with the strangest combination of disappointment and empathy. For a moment, he sees their mother when, in a fit of boyish petulance, he proclaimed hatred of his new baby brother, and he wants desperately to look away.
"You do care. Know how I know that? You're here." He turns to Elena. "See if you can talk some sense into him."
"Don't forget to groom your hero hair before any big showdowns. It looks like shit."
Stefan flips him off as he walks away.
***
Elena watches him carefully.
Given how their last solo encounter turned out, he figures she has every right to be wary.
"Stefan's right, you know."
"If I had a quarter for every time I heard that, I'd have a shitload of quarters."
The corners of her mouth curve up almost of their own volition. "You care. I cut myself before the Travelers overpowered me because I knew you would look for us."
"You--" He doesn't finish the thought, no longer sure how to quell this misplaced faith in him. She senses his hesitation, pounces on it like the predator she is.
"Stefan needs you. I need you. You don't have to disappoint us just to prove that you can."
It's not that I can, he wants to say. It's that I'm going to.
The seeds that first his father and then Katherine sowed, all those years ago, had flowered in the core of him, until the fear became a self-fulfilling truth.
That he would never be enough.
He tried to fight that knowledge, and maybe he shouldn't have.
It's not about being good for her, or for himself, or for anyone. There's no good left anymore.
"Don't try to appeal to the humanity in me, Elena. There is no 'better man', and if you believe different then you're even more delusional than I thought."
A wistful smile ghosts across her lips. "That's the thing, Damon. I know exactly who you are. I've always known. I knew exactly who I was getting involved with. All I ever wanted was for you to love me, to be there for me. If you're so convinced that you didn't live up to someone's expectations, maybe they were your own."
It's a split second in which her words throw him off balance, in which he can't respond, and a split second is all she needs.
She kisses him. All soft lips and painstaking tenderness and a hint of melancholy. She kisses him like it's the first time, or the last time. He isn't sure which. And when she pulls away (too soon. not soon enough), he can't shake the feeling that whatever battle he thought he was fighting, it was lost a long time ago.
Her proximity has invaded every crack and crevice in his already crumbling wall and it doesn't look like she has any intention of stopping the assault.
"Let's go home, Damon."
Her words release the pressure that's been building inside his chest since the moment he touched her. If he's honest, since the moment he realized that she wouldn't let him go.
He may not deserve her, but she is the only home he's ever known.
He nods.
FIN
Author: Anna (bite_or_avoid)
Fandom: The Vampire Diaries
Characters/Pairings: Damon/Elena
Word Count: 2,491
Rating: R
Spoilers: Everything through 5x13
Author's Notes: I own nothing except my student debt. Thank you to the amazing tempertemper77 for the beta
Summary: Damon doesn't shut off his humanity when you think he does, but the when isn't really the part that matters.
He doesn't shut off his humanity when you think he does.
It's still there when he goes all Night of the Living Dead on Aaron Whitmore. And when he threatens the kid he swore to protect; the kid for whose safety, up until a few short days ago, he would have done almost anything. When he watches Enzo stake Elena, the wood penetrating a little too close for comfort, it takes every ounce of anger and betrayal coursing through his veins to keep from rushing to her side. Protecting her is an instinct now, woven into the very fabric of who he is. His every step further into irredeemable territory is a direct rebellion against that instinct.
It's a relief to turn his back on their comically dismayed faces. As if they weren't both waiting for the moment he would fuck it all up. He means it when he says he has no intention of coming back.
Until karma bites him right in the ass.
He's not really surprised when Stefan and Elena come riding in like the vampire cavalry once they find out about his fun new party trick.
After all, his brother never did learn when to leave well enough alone.
This time it's slightly less annoying than usual, primarily because the whole chewing other vampires' heads off thing is getting pretty inconvenient. Damon's never been the poster boy for self control or anything, but he's pretty sure this Ripper-On-Steroids scenario is a tad much, even for him.
And he has to admit, the whole play is pretty damn effective. Apparently even St. Stefan has a limit to his patience, because he goes right for the 'do what I want or I will turn you into a vampire and have my newly cannibalistic brother eat your face' approach.
Oldest trick in the book.
So, as soon as he gets the antidote he takes Dr. Frankenstein's head and twists it clean off. Just for good measure, you know? It's not like anyone's gonna miss the creeper.
But then she looks at him, this girl he thinks is Elena.
Her features are painted with a kind of disdain that cuts him right to the core. That's when he sees everything clearly for what feels like the first time.
It was easy enough to blame Katherine as she lay dying, (although not definitively enough, as it turned out). To put it all on this frail, fading body that reminded him so much of the mortality he lost.
The mortality he gave her.
She took his innate goodness, his kind human heart, and used it up until there was nothing but an empty husk. He tried to fill it with bitterness, and anger, and an endless litany of ways to screw with his brother's life, but it was never enough to heal that wound, raw and gaping even after a century.
Until a human girl filled him up again, beyond anything he could have imagined. And now she's looking at him as if he's finally done something she can't defend. And, yeah, he probably has. Because, really, when you come down to it, that's just him.
If there's one thing he knows how to do, it's own his shit.
That's the moment he decides. Fuck this. Fuck it all.
He commits the look on her face to memory. (As if he could ever forget.)
If that pesky humanity ever slips through the cracks, all he needs to do is remember this moment. Right here. He put that look there and he owns it. (Even though it's not really her. Katherine always knew how to cut with a glance as assuredly as any dagger.)
There's only so much hurt a man can take.
Whatever broken, mangled excuse for a soul is still in him, he doesn't fucking want it.
He flips the switch.
Damon doesn't shut off his humanity when you think he does, but the when isn't really the part that matters.
***
If he thought (or cared) about it even a little, he could have guessed that they would follow him all over the damn southeast.
Again, with the leaving well enough alone thing. He really tries to impress the concept onto Stefan. With a rebar, amongst other things.
The only part that surprises him in any of this is how crafty Katherine got in her quest for survival. Really, though, that should surprise him least of all.
(He laughs about it. Elena doesn't seem to think it's funny, but she tends to have a stick up her shapely ass about these kinds of things.)
***
The stalking starts to get to him. Not because there's any danger of gross, messy feelings getting evoked. It's because they're cramping his style. By the time Elena catches him outside that club, he's debating a variation of the Fuck Lexi plan from the last time Stefan was dumb enough to try and rehabilitate him.
And then she has to go and know him like she does. She has to see that the redhead just isn't doing it for him. He's not about to tell her that no one does it for him anymore. That ever since that goddamn antidote he can't enjoy feeding on vampires or humans. That he's a broken fucking toy, but he's going to keep right on trying to revel in it because the alternative is too damn depressing.
Instead he tells her to fuck off, basically.
Something bitter twists inside him at the thought, and he tells the flicker of emotion to fuck off, too.
He goes and finds himself a blonde to eat. He's always been an equal opportunity monster.
***
He shouldn't have touched her.
Then again, there's a whole list of things he shouldn't have done, but he doesn't really give a rat's ass about shouldn't, so there's that.
It's arrogance that screws it all up. Which is a nice change from blindly pathetic love, he supposes, but still.
He's secure enough in the new and improved Damon Salvatore that he can do whatever he wants and not suffer the consequences. Cause that's worked out so nicely for him in the past.
Pride goeth before...
Yeah, that.
Hubris was always his least favorite sin for a reason.
His favorite was always a toss-up between lust and wrath, and it's probably a little of both that makes him do it.
Because she's standing there, challenging him like she always has, and even though he doesn't feel anything per se, he wants her on a very primal level. That kind of almost pisses him off a little, because he also wants her to go away. So he does what he wants, takes what he wants. And the kicker is, she lets him. Just accepts what he's dishing out and then hits him right between the eyes with her truth. It's pathetic, really, how far she's willing to go.
How far she's willing to go for him. She's doing this for him.
That's when he finally gets it. He keeps thinking that if he's just cruel enough, that if he does something unforgivable, she'll leave him in peace. But he carries a whole history full of unforgivable deeds, especially where Elena's concerned, and somehow she's still here.
For the rest of the night he keeps reliving her eyes locked on his as she shatters around his fingers and he can't help it, the thought just slips through.
It's a lie, you know. There's no switch you can turn off. Sure, when you're a newbie, but after a couple of hundred years you just have to pretend.
He really shouldn't have touched her.
Of all the mistakes he's made recently, this one is the most costly.
***
Damon doesn't expect that little stunt with Elena to be any kind of deterrent for her, so he's surprised when no one follows him the next morning. But he's definitely not looking for her around every corner as he goes about the day; definitely not waiting for Stefan to sidle up on the barstool next to his and make him simultaneously bored and annoyed. And he's most definitely not worried when nearly sixteen hours have passed and there's still no sign of his unwelcome posse.
Good riddance.
He ends up at their hotel anyway and curses himself for it.
Deep down though, he senses the tether that pulled him here. He knows there's something wrong even before he reaches the open door, or feels the crunch of broken glass beneath his feet. The familiar scent lingers in the air before he ever stands at the edge of a ravaged room and sees Elena's blood.
He can't keep the fear from seeping out around the edges he's drawn himself into, and in that moment, he doesn't care.
***
He follows some otherworldly sense back to that abandoned hospital near Whitmore College.
Actually, he follows the grease stains Stefan's Porsche leaves on the asphalt. He really needs to remind his brother to check the oil plug.
Damon gives himself all kinds of reasons for why he's willingly creeping around the place where he got all jacked up on cannibal juice to begin with. He owes Stefan, no one gets to kill his brother but him, Elena's too good a piece of ass to just let her bleed out, et cetera, et cetera.
Deep down he knows that he's already reverted to where sometimes he does things just because it's Elena.
It's not even shocking how fast he got all the way back here, and that really sucks. Like, he's just doomed to fail at everything when it comes to her, even when he's trying to walk away.
***
There are these lazy little puddles of blood on the ground. Side by side next to their bodies. A matching set, His and Hers.
Whoever the hell drained them did a thorough job of it.
He knows, objectively, that you can't kill a vampire this way. It's still unsettling seeing Stefan and Elena like this, depleted and cadaverous.
Damon sighs, bites into each wrist, drips blood into their mouths until they revive enough to latch on. He cradles each head in his lap and closes his eyes, something in his chest loosening a little. There has to be some kind of symbolism in it, he thinks, him in the middle like this.
He believed it would always be Elena wedged between them.
***
"It was the Travelers," Stefan explains, as they ration out the blood bags in his trunk. "They seemed to need us alive last time, but I guess with Wes dead, it doesn't matter anymore."
"He was studying the mystical properties of doppleganger blood for them, I think," Elena offers. The color finally returns to her cheeks as she finishes her O-pos.
Damon scoffs. "Of course he was. Aren't you two sick of all the doppledrama?"
"Do we have a say in the matter?"
"As always, brother, you fail to be even a little useful." He pauses, tries to ignore the ease with which he falls back into this dance. "Any idea where the blood-jackers went on their magical mystery tour?"
"Oh, God." Elena's eyes are wide with alarm. "They said something about needing the Anchor..."
"And the hijinks just keep on comin'."
Stefan is already in motion, focus and determination suffusing his face. "I'll call Caroline. Elena, warn Bonnie, and then you and Damon--"
"She and Damon what? You think just because I saved your squirrel-chasing ass-- you're welcome, I might add-- we're all going to hold hands and sing Kumbaya?"
"Seriously, Damon? Are you really going to keep pretending like none of this matters?"
"That's weird. You're talking to me as if I care."
Stefan's green eyes fix on him, alight with the strangest combination of disappointment and empathy. For a moment, he sees their mother when, in a fit of boyish petulance, he proclaimed hatred of his new baby brother, and he wants desperately to look away.
"You do care. Know how I know that? You're here." He turns to Elena. "See if you can talk some sense into him."
"Don't forget to groom your hero hair before any big showdowns. It looks like shit."
Stefan flips him off as he walks away.
***
Elena watches him carefully.
Given how their last solo encounter turned out, he figures she has every right to be wary.
"Stefan's right, you know."
"If I had a quarter for every time I heard that, I'd have a shitload of quarters."
The corners of her mouth curve up almost of their own volition. "You care. I cut myself before the Travelers overpowered me because I knew you would look for us."
"You--" He doesn't finish the thought, no longer sure how to quell this misplaced faith in him. She senses his hesitation, pounces on it like the predator she is.
"Stefan needs you. I need you. You don't have to disappoint us just to prove that you can."
It's not that I can, he wants to say. It's that I'm going to.
The seeds that first his father and then Katherine sowed, all those years ago, had flowered in the core of him, until the fear became a self-fulfilling truth.
That he would never be enough.
He tried to fight that knowledge, and maybe he shouldn't have.
It's not about being good for her, or for himself, or for anyone. There's no good left anymore.
"Don't try to appeal to the humanity in me, Elena. There is no 'better man', and if you believe different then you're even more delusional than I thought."
A wistful smile ghosts across her lips. "That's the thing, Damon. I know exactly who you are. I've always known. I knew exactly who I was getting involved with. All I ever wanted was for you to love me, to be there for me. If you're so convinced that you didn't live up to someone's expectations, maybe they were your own."
It's a split second in which her words throw him off balance, in which he can't respond, and a split second is all she needs.
She kisses him. All soft lips and painstaking tenderness and a hint of melancholy. She kisses him like it's the first time, or the last time. He isn't sure which. And when she pulls away (too soon. not soon enough), he can't shake the feeling that whatever battle he thought he was fighting, it was lost a long time ago.
Her proximity has invaded every crack and crevice in his already crumbling wall and it doesn't look like she has any intention of stopping the assault.
"Let's go home, Damon."
Her words release the pressure that's been building inside his chest since the moment he touched her. If he's honest, since the moment he realized that she wouldn't let him go.
He may not deserve her, but she is the only home he's ever known.
He nods.
FIN