ff|tvd: 02 | work in progress
oh don't you see that lonesome dove? sitting on an ivy tree
prompt: during the final battle between silas and bonnie, the magic surges and everyone fighting and tearing each other apart (silas, bonnie, her friends, the original vampires, the werewolves)... vanishes. except elena. she had been dead. dead-dead, sacrificed to trick silas. she wakes up alone - and human.
ship: eventual elena/bonnie/caroline
she's weeping for her own true love
Elena goes to the cemetery every day, waiting. She doesn’t expect a championing symphony, or anything: everyone she loves hanging on each others’ shoulders as they all come home.
But she does keep waiting for a sign. Fuck up Orpheus still staring for the traces of a collective Eurydice.
She writes in her diary sometimes that she hopes they’re all dead. Everything they’ve been through, they deserve that peace. It has to be wonderful; she’s been trying to die for years and keeps being rejected. But if she expects nothing she’ll lose touch with reality completely. The things she did consumed by grief or passion as a vampire already make the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. That girl was a walking horror movie. She needs to believe there’s someone in the next room she can scream for, if only some day.
----
She looks at the Salvatore house. 'Her' house. She remembers, fuzzy and splintered, the way she’d been so possessive over it, like she’d bare her fangs at her best friends like a feral cat if they came too close to it. She purses her lips, regret pulling at her but not a single tear builds up in her eyes.
The good memories, or just the fact it had become a second home, though, are nothing compared to the repulsiveness of violence and things that happened in it for the past two years. Matt once told her that she could let the girl who dated the quarterback and sprung out of bed happily every morning - go. With a pretty flower, he helped her release it.
Elena lights a match.
She lets go of the girl who was so sad and in love and angry and scared. She lets go and with a weight lifting off her shoulders watches the boardinghouse go down in flames.
----
“So, um,” Elena doesn’t have anything to look at. There’s no statue, no commemorative rock, no flowers, no flag from a dollar store.
The earth shares in her passivity. There is no ominous crevice, no distinct lack of wildlife, no certain place where nothing grows. There’s nothing to mark where she last saw everyone.
“I don’t think you’re ever coming back,” the last words, already so terrifying in her head, took months to write, creep out of her mouth and she laughs as her mouth hurts contorting down.
All of you. Any of you.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
And just like that she sees - she doesn’t know who she sees - so clearly, so close she could feel it, hear it, or taste it, sharp
Her knees hit the ground, she clutches her chest, terrified. Her other hand digging in the patch of earth she walks an unkept number of steps to and knows, and, Elena realizes she isn’t breathing. The spell wore off, she’s a vampire. She did something wrong, was supposed to be taking some kind of herb, figure out Bonnie’s grimoire to keep the cure going, keep the sign that something happened here permanent and she messed it up.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
It was all a hallucination, she’s still in Klaus’ collection room with so many antique pieces, screaming for Connor to let her go.
“I didn't want it to be only me. I swear, I...” She keeps choking, she finally exhales but it doesn’t feel alive.
There's no fucking balance of nature to the gaping hole in her chest.
-----
It’s a little surprising Katherine never shows up.
Or maybe it isn’t.
----
It’s easier to miss Bonnie, Caroline, and Jeremy; she can read diary after diary of feelings about them, and the way back to those feelings is gentler.
Ric and Jenna are harder. She needs to hold things that belong to them, but crying feels better somehow. She’d been mourning them human, she feels like she’s picking up where she left off, returning to a note on a piano after pounding up and down the clef. She might even be done with that pain some day.
If she thinks about Stefan and Damon it’s like turning on a tv full volume. She covers her head to block it out as it tears at her eardrums. The passion and violence is a path caked in thick, fresh blood she slips on and breaks bones no longer made of granite. Not the way she’d held them down, the way she’d climaxed: the way she’d hated. When she locks them away, she’s safe in her room.
Vampire or human, thinking about them had never led anywhere. Maybe that was the point her brain was trying to tell her.
prompt: during the final battle between silas and bonnie, the magic surges and everyone fighting and tearing each other apart (silas, bonnie, her friends, the original vampires, the werewolves)... vanishes. except elena. she had been dead. dead-dead, sacrificed to trick silas. she wakes up alone - and human.
ship: eventual elena/bonnie/caroline
she's weeping for her own true love
Elena goes to the cemetery every day, waiting. She doesn’t expect a championing symphony, or anything: everyone she loves hanging on each others’ shoulders as they all come home.
But she does keep waiting for a sign. Fuck up Orpheus still staring for the traces of a collective Eurydice.
She writes in her diary sometimes that she hopes they’re all dead. Everything they’ve been through, they deserve that peace. It has to be wonderful; she’s been trying to die for years and keeps being rejected. But if she expects nothing she’ll lose touch with reality completely. The things she did consumed by grief or passion as a vampire already make the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. That girl was a walking horror movie. She needs to believe there’s someone in the next room she can scream for, if only some day.
----
She looks at the Salvatore house. 'Her' house. She remembers, fuzzy and splintered, the way she’d been so possessive over it, like she’d bare her fangs at her best friends like a feral cat if they came too close to it. She purses her lips, regret pulling at her but not a single tear builds up in her eyes.
The good memories, or just the fact it had become a second home, though, are nothing compared to the repulsiveness of violence and things that happened in it for the past two years. Matt once told her that she could let the girl who dated the quarterback and sprung out of bed happily every morning - go. With a pretty flower, he helped her release it.
Elena lights a match.
She lets go of the girl who was so sad and in love and angry and scared. She lets go and with a weight lifting off her shoulders watches the boardinghouse go down in flames.
----
“So, um,” Elena doesn’t have anything to look at. There’s no statue, no commemorative rock, no flowers, no flag from a dollar store.
The earth shares in her passivity. There is no ominous crevice, no distinct lack of wildlife, no certain place where nothing grows. There’s nothing to mark where she last saw everyone.
“I don’t think you’re ever coming back,” the last words, already so terrifying in her head, took months to write, creep out of her mouth and she laughs as her mouth hurts contorting down.
All of you. Any of you.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
And just like that she sees - she doesn’t know who she sees - so clearly, so close she could feel it, hear it, or taste it, sharp
Her knees hit the ground, she clutches her chest, terrified. Her other hand digging in the patch of earth she walks an unkept number of steps to and knows, and, Elena realizes she isn’t breathing. The spell wore off, she’s a vampire. She did something wrong, was supposed to be taking some kind of herb, figure out Bonnie’s grimoire to keep the cure going, keep the sign that something happened here permanent and she messed it up.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
It was all a hallucination, she’s still in Klaus’ collection room with so many antique pieces, screaming for Connor to let her go.
“I didn't want it to be only me. I swear, I...” She keeps choking, she finally exhales but it doesn’t feel alive.
There's no fucking balance of nature to the gaping hole in her chest.
-----
It’s a little surprising Katherine never shows up.
Or maybe it isn’t.
----
It’s easier to miss Bonnie, Caroline, and Jeremy; she can read diary after diary of feelings about them, and the way back to those feelings is gentler.
Ric and Jenna are harder. She needs to hold things that belong to them, but crying feels better somehow. She’d been mourning them human, she feels like she’s picking up where she left off, returning to a note on a piano after pounding up and down the clef. She might even be done with that pain some day.
If she thinks about Stefan and Damon it’s like turning on a tv full volume. She covers her head to block it out as it tears at her eardrums. The passion and violence is a path caked in thick, fresh blood she slips on and breaks bones no longer made of granite. Not the way she’d held them down, the way she’d climaxed: the way she’d hated. When she locks them away, she’s safe in her room.
Vampire or human, thinking about them had never led anywhere. Maybe that was the point her brain was trying to tell her.