At Least Pretend - Delena Oneshot
Title ▬ At Least Pretend
Type ▬ One-shot
Characters/Pairings ▬ Damon/Elena
Summary ▬ After her mother's death, Elena keeps up some of their old traditions. Little does Damon know, one particular tradition is about to ruin his plan. Takes place during 2.08.
Rating ▬ PG
Disclaimer ▬ I do not own The Vampire Diaries.
SPOILERS FOR 2.08
-- -- --
My mother and I had always had a few traditions. We always put the Christmas tree up. Dad and Jeremy were not allowed near it; one year they had tried to put it up while Mom and I were on a shopping trip. The lights had been uneven, the star sat crooked, and the tree was in constant danger of falling over because they’d placed all the ornaments on the very front.
There were other holiday traditions, and there were weekly traditions (like always watching Friends together before it went off the air), and there were daily traditions.
My mom had a cup of hot tea every night before bed for as long as I could remember. When I was eight, I begged her to try some. I hated it. But Mom let me stay up fifteen minutes late as long as I told her about my day, so I did. I told her about how Caroline had been mean to me on the playground but that she was having a sleepover for her birthday and she’d already invited me, so I wasn’t really mad. I told her about how Matt and I had climbed a tree on our way home from school one day and how he called it “Our Tree.” I didn’t drink any of my tea.
As the years went on, I decided I didn’t hate tea. The gossip grew up with me; I was telling Mom about how much of a complete cow Caroline was when she and I stopped talking to each other in seventh grade. My freshman year, I was telling Mom how much I was starting to like Matt, my best friend Matt, and what if he didn’t like me back?
And Mom was always there, listening quietly, adding a few choice words of encouragement or advice or support. We only skipped tea a few times over the years, when I was experiencing bouts of rebellion and stayed out late partying.
Just like the night of the accident.
I kept having tea. Jenna tried to join me once or twice, but I think she realized that it wasn’t a void she could fill. I think she was feeling that way about a lot of things, to be honest. But since Mom was gone, it felt more important than ever to keep up that tradition. I’d spent every night talking to her. Just because she wasn’t sitting right next to me, mulling over her tea, smiling or frowning at all the right times while I talked, didn’t mean she wasn’t still listening. I could imagine her words as I mentally told her about my days.
After I met Stefan, after I began to realize I could be happy again, I had new reasons to talk to Mom. I told her about how Stefan made me feel. How different he was. How sorry I was I’d hurt Matt’s feelings. How being with Stefan was different from being with Matt, and was this what it was like when she’d met Dad?
And after Stefan told me what he was, what his brother was, and about Katherine, the girl who’d broken their hearts, Mom was the one person I could be completely honest with.
And then Stefan told me about vervain, and how I could wear it in jewelry, carry it in my pocket, and add it to food and drink. And how vervain would protect me, allow me to make my own decisions, keep my mind my own. That the necklace he had given me would protect me from being compelled. That necklace was my greatest protection… aside from Stefan himself.
As soon as I got home from being held captive by Rose and Trevor, as soon as Stefan had left and Jeremy and Bonnie had been reassured that I was safe, I needed some semblance of normalcy. I needed to talk to Mom.
I pulled the teapot from its cabinet and filled it almost absentmindedly, my mind still reeling. I could feel the adrenaline from today finally weaving its way out of my system, draining me of energy. It was with a fuzzy mind that I realized my necklace was still in that abandoned house somewhere, and trembling fingers went to my neck to confirm that it was missing, and I suddenly felt vulnerable, unprotected. As if I were missing a limb.
My trembling fingers turned into shaking hands, quivering arms, weak knees as I frantically rooted through cabinets. Jenna kept vervain tea hidden somewhere; it had been a gift from Stefan, among the various necklaces, bracelets, and sachets that I had handed out to every person I cared about.
I found the handmade teabags above the stove and yanked one out of the little box, fingers fumbling over themselves. The bags reminded me of something you would find in one of those bogus herb stores, run by “witches” selling elixirs and potions to ward of stress and envoke love and whatnot.
I had to wait a few more minutes for the water to boil, jumping when the kettle began to scream. The teabag turned the hot water a deep, warm amber color, and it smelled sweet, like roses and oranges. I waited a few minutes for it to brew and then with considerably calmer hands I took my first sip.
It tasted kind of like black licorice, which I hated. But I didn’t want to risk dampening the vervain’s effects by adding any kind of sweetener so I drank it in small amounts, swallowing before the taste could hit my tongue. Already the vervain was clearing some of the fuzziness out of my head, but it didn’t make me any less tired. I decided to finish my tea upstairs and get ready for bed as quickly as possible.
Finally calming down a little, I began to recall what had happened today. I’d been kidnapped; my captors had tried to hand me over to an Original, one of the oldest vampires alive. I’d received a thrilling note from Bonnie-how she’d done it, I wasn’t sure, but I was grateful beyond expression-that promised Stefan and Damon were coming to rescue me and-oh, the look on Damon’s face…
It suddenly hit me, the memory of his expression as I walked down those stairs. Stefan had been there, arms wide, accepting my hug but… Damon, Damon was what I remembered now.
Oh, Damon.
Was this always going to happen? Was I going to keep hurting Damon because I loved Stefan? That wasn’t what I wanted. I didn’t want Damon to hate me, and yet hadn’t I told him I hated him? I didn’t want that.
It was all so much clearer in my head at that moment, the vervain allowing me to see past my judgments to realize that Damon had never meant to hurt me. I didn’t want to hurt him. I wanted….
But even though the vervain helped me sort out exactly what Damon meant to me, it wouldn’t tell me what I wanted. I guess that was the magic of it. Vervain helped organize my head, helped me realize what was already there but that I couldn’t sort through on my own under normal circumstances. But because I honestly didn’t know what I wanted from Damon, there was no magically vervain-produced answer. It didn’t work that way. I had to know somewhere within myself first, even if I was trying to suppress it.
I finished my tea with one last gulp and deposited it on the nightstand; standing up, I noticed my nerves were almost suppressed, as if the vervain was tamping down the jitters. I made a mental note about it in the future, also remembering to ask Stefan if there was anything to make it taste better. I needed to brush my teeth, to get the licorice taste out of my mouth before climbing into bed.
I left the bathroom ten minutes later, mouth refreshed, face washed, pajamas on. I noticed that all of my wounds from the masquerade ball were gone.
My mind was pleasantly clear. I knew I would have no trouble falling asleep, even though I knew I should, I knew I should fret and fluster and worry myself into insomnia. But I knew, thanks to the vervain, that my mind was completely my own, and I could make it do whatever I wanted. And the only thing on my agenda was sleep.
“Cute pj’s.”
I was less shocked than I was annoyed. Damon had to stop letting himself into my bedroom like this, it was getting to be a habit.
“I’m tired, Damon,” I said, my voice heavy with implication. He acknowledged my statement and stood up, taking a few steps towards me. As he drew nearer, his hand came up, a flash of silver caught my eye.
“I brought you this,” he said simply.
My necklace. “I thought that was gone.”
Damon simply raised an eyebrow. Something about his expression told me he hadn’t come simply to drop off my necklace and wish me a good night.
“Thank you,” I said, and reached for the necklace, hoping to put it on and that he would take the hint that I wanted to be alone.
But he pulled his hand away, keeping the necklace out of reach.
Worried, my eyebrows knitted together. “Please give it back,” I said, my voice saturated with foreboding. In my vervain-focused mind, I began to categorically name reasons why he was acting strangely. Had he been to see Katherine, had she told him something about the Originals? Was it something to do with the curse, the doppelganger sacrifice?
Damon’s eyes bored into mine, his lips set in a small frown. He looked sad, sadder than I had ever seen him.
“I just have to say something.”
My eyes flickered to my necklace that he was holding hostage. “Why do you have to say it with my necklace?”
His eyebrows furrowed, his frown deepened. “Because what I’m about to say is… probably, the most selfish thing I’ve ever said in my life.”
A sense of dread crept into my veins. Didn’t he know what he was doing? He was about to say something, do something, that he could never take back.
“Damon, don’t go there,” I said, offering him an escape route and mentally begging him to take it. He took another step closer, bringing him close enough that I could see his chest moving with the unnecessary breaths he was taking. He was scared, scared out of his wits, but sure. Above all else I could tell that he was sure.
Damon. Don’t do this to yourself.
“No, I just need to say it once. You just need to hear it,” he said, his resolve hardening and his eyes locked on mine. I could hear the words before he even said them. “I love you, Elena. And it’s because I love you that …I can’t be selfish with you.”
Oh, god. Damon, please. I don’t want to hurt you. I can’t hurt you anymore. I won’t let myself. My mind was screaming at me to stop him, to save him from whatever misery would come from this. But I couldn’t. God help me, no matter what I knew I should have done, something within me wouldn’t let me act, wouldn’t let me move. As if I needed, in my very bones, to hear his words.
“And why you can’t know this? I don’t deserve you.” It was like watching his heart break in my hands. I wanted to cry, I wanted to yell at him to stop, but I was frozen, transfixed. He said something about Stefan deserving me, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it was true. If Damon was here, if Damon was confessing his love and willing to admit that he wasn’t good enough for me, that he would step aside and let the better man win, didn’t that prove that Damon was good? That he and his brother weren’t good and bad, but just different sides of good?
And then I realized why Damon was telling me this, why he’d come here willing to lay his heart on the line. Because he had an escape. He had one built right into his handy dandy little vampire powers, and he fully intended to use it. Why he refused to give me my necklace, why he looked so sad, it all came together in a final crash of understanding, and some part of my heart broke as he laid a sweet kiss on my forehead. My eyes closed as I swam in this revelation, his lips warming my skin, lingering there…
I had ruined it, all of it. And I had no way to fix it. Oh, Damon…
“God, I wish you didn’t have to forget this…But you do,” he said, his hand caressing my cheek. His pupils contracted and expanded, and I felt the compulsion rolling off him in waves and hitting the roadblock that was the vervain in my blood system. It was such a tangible feeling that I wanted to break things, wanted to cry, wanted to rip the vervain out of my bloodstream and let the compulsion in. A tear rolled down Damon’s cheek and I fought the urge to wipe it away, and in that moment I swore to myself to pretend that the compulsion had worked the way he’d meant it to, pretend I’d never heard his words.
I blinked and when I opened my eyes, he was gone; there was a weight around my neck that felt familiar and I realized he had place the necklace there and left so fast I hadn’t felt or heard him. He was pretending he was never here. Pretending that this had never happened. Now it was my turn.
I could at least pretend. Couldn’t I?
Type ▬ One-shot
Characters/Pairings ▬ Damon/Elena
Summary ▬ After her mother's death, Elena keeps up some of their old traditions. Little does Damon know, one particular tradition is about to ruin his plan. Takes place during 2.08.
Rating ▬ PG
Disclaimer ▬ I do not own The Vampire Diaries.
SPOILERS FOR 2.08
-- -- --
My mother and I had always had a few traditions. We always put the Christmas tree up. Dad and Jeremy were not allowed near it; one year they had tried to put it up while Mom and I were on a shopping trip. The lights had been uneven, the star sat crooked, and the tree was in constant danger of falling over because they’d placed all the ornaments on the very front.
There were other holiday traditions, and there were weekly traditions (like always watching Friends together before it went off the air), and there were daily traditions.
My mom had a cup of hot tea every night before bed for as long as I could remember. When I was eight, I begged her to try some. I hated it. But Mom let me stay up fifteen minutes late as long as I told her about my day, so I did. I told her about how Caroline had been mean to me on the playground but that she was having a sleepover for her birthday and she’d already invited me, so I wasn’t really mad. I told her about how Matt and I had climbed a tree on our way home from school one day and how he called it “Our Tree.” I didn’t drink any of my tea.
As the years went on, I decided I didn’t hate tea. The gossip grew up with me; I was telling Mom about how much of a complete cow Caroline was when she and I stopped talking to each other in seventh grade. My freshman year, I was telling Mom how much I was starting to like Matt, my best friend Matt, and what if he didn’t like me back?
And Mom was always there, listening quietly, adding a few choice words of encouragement or advice or support. We only skipped tea a few times over the years, when I was experiencing bouts of rebellion and stayed out late partying.
Just like the night of the accident.
I kept having tea. Jenna tried to join me once or twice, but I think she realized that it wasn’t a void she could fill. I think she was feeling that way about a lot of things, to be honest. But since Mom was gone, it felt more important than ever to keep up that tradition. I’d spent every night talking to her. Just because she wasn’t sitting right next to me, mulling over her tea, smiling or frowning at all the right times while I talked, didn’t mean she wasn’t still listening. I could imagine her words as I mentally told her about my days.
After I met Stefan, after I began to realize I could be happy again, I had new reasons to talk to Mom. I told her about how Stefan made me feel. How different he was. How sorry I was I’d hurt Matt’s feelings. How being with Stefan was different from being with Matt, and was this what it was like when she’d met Dad?
And after Stefan told me what he was, what his brother was, and about Katherine, the girl who’d broken their hearts, Mom was the one person I could be completely honest with.
And then Stefan told me about vervain, and how I could wear it in jewelry, carry it in my pocket, and add it to food and drink. And how vervain would protect me, allow me to make my own decisions, keep my mind my own. That the necklace he had given me would protect me from being compelled. That necklace was my greatest protection… aside from Stefan himself.
As soon as I got home from being held captive by Rose and Trevor, as soon as Stefan had left and Jeremy and Bonnie had been reassured that I was safe, I needed some semblance of normalcy. I needed to talk to Mom.
I pulled the teapot from its cabinet and filled it almost absentmindedly, my mind still reeling. I could feel the adrenaline from today finally weaving its way out of my system, draining me of energy. It was with a fuzzy mind that I realized my necklace was still in that abandoned house somewhere, and trembling fingers went to my neck to confirm that it was missing, and I suddenly felt vulnerable, unprotected. As if I were missing a limb.
My trembling fingers turned into shaking hands, quivering arms, weak knees as I frantically rooted through cabinets. Jenna kept vervain tea hidden somewhere; it had been a gift from Stefan, among the various necklaces, bracelets, and sachets that I had handed out to every person I cared about.
I found the handmade teabags above the stove and yanked one out of the little box, fingers fumbling over themselves. The bags reminded me of something you would find in one of those bogus herb stores, run by “witches” selling elixirs and potions to ward of stress and envoke love and whatnot.
I had to wait a few more minutes for the water to boil, jumping when the kettle began to scream. The teabag turned the hot water a deep, warm amber color, and it smelled sweet, like roses and oranges. I waited a few minutes for it to brew and then with considerably calmer hands I took my first sip.
It tasted kind of like black licorice, which I hated. But I didn’t want to risk dampening the vervain’s effects by adding any kind of sweetener so I drank it in small amounts, swallowing before the taste could hit my tongue. Already the vervain was clearing some of the fuzziness out of my head, but it didn’t make me any less tired. I decided to finish my tea upstairs and get ready for bed as quickly as possible.
Finally calming down a little, I began to recall what had happened today. I’d been kidnapped; my captors had tried to hand me over to an Original, one of the oldest vampires alive. I’d received a thrilling note from Bonnie-how she’d done it, I wasn’t sure, but I was grateful beyond expression-that promised Stefan and Damon were coming to rescue me and-oh, the look on Damon’s face…
It suddenly hit me, the memory of his expression as I walked down those stairs. Stefan had been there, arms wide, accepting my hug but… Damon, Damon was what I remembered now.
Oh, Damon.
Was this always going to happen? Was I going to keep hurting Damon because I loved Stefan? That wasn’t what I wanted. I didn’t want Damon to hate me, and yet hadn’t I told him I hated him? I didn’t want that.
It was all so much clearer in my head at that moment, the vervain allowing me to see past my judgments to realize that Damon had never meant to hurt me. I didn’t want to hurt him. I wanted….
But even though the vervain helped me sort out exactly what Damon meant to me, it wouldn’t tell me what I wanted. I guess that was the magic of it. Vervain helped organize my head, helped me realize what was already there but that I couldn’t sort through on my own under normal circumstances. But because I honestly didn’t know what I wanted from Damon, there was no magically vervain-produced answer. It didn’t work that way. I had to know somewhere within myself first, even if I was trying to suppress it.
I finished my tea with one last gulp and deposited it on the nightstand; standing up, I noticed my nerves were almost suppressed, as if the vervain was tamping down the jitters. I made a mental note about it in the future, also remembering to ask Stefan if there was anything to make it taste better. I needed to brush my teeth, to get the licorice taste out of my mouth before climbing into bed.
I left the bathroom ten minutes later, mouth refreshed, face washed, pajamas on. I noticed that all of my wounds from the masquerade ball were gone.
My mind was pleasantly clear. I knew I would have no trouble falling asleep, even though I knew I should, I knew I should fret and fluster and worry myself into insomnia. But I knew, thanks to the vervain, that my mind was completely my own, and I could make it do whatever I wanted. And the only thing on my agenda was sleep.
“Cute pj’s.”
I was less shocked than I was annoyed. Damon had to stop letting himself into my bedroom like this, it was getting to be a habit.
“I’m tired, Damon,” I said, my voice heavy with implication. He acknowledged my statement and stood up, taking a few steps towards me. As he drew nearer, his hand came up, a flash of silver caught my eye.
“I brought you this,” he said simply.
My necklace. “I thought that was gone.”
Damon simply raised an eyebrow. Something about his expression told me he hadn’t come simply to drop off my necklace and wish me a good night.
“Thank you,” I said, and reached for the necklace, hoping to put it on and that he would take the hint that I wanted to be alone.
But he pulled his hand away, keeping the necklace out of reach.
Worried, my eyebrows knitted together. “Please give it back,” I said, my voice saturated with foreboding. In my vervain-focused mind, I began to categorically name reasons why he was acting strangely. Had he been to see Katherine, had she told him something about the Originals? Was it something to do with the curse, the doppelganger sacrifice?
Damon’s eyes bored into mine, his lips set in a small frown. He looked sad, sadder than I had ever seen him.
“I just have to say something.”
My eyes flickered to my necklace that he was holding hostage. “Why do you have to say it with my necklace?”
His eyebrows furrowed, his frown deepened. “Because what I’m about to say is… probably, the most selfish thing I’ve ever said in my life.”
A sense of dread crept into my veins. Didn’t he know what he was doing? He was about to say something, do something, that he could never take back.
“Damon, don’t go there,” I said, offering him an escape route and mentally begging him to take it. He took another step closer, bringing him close enough that I could see his chest moving with the unnecessary breaths he was taking. He was scared, scared out of his wits, but sure. Above all else I could tell that he was sure.
Damon. Don’t do this to yourself.
“No, I just need to say it once. You just need to hear it,” he said, his resolve hardening and his eyes locked on mine. I could hear the words before he even said them. “I love you, Elena. And it’s because I love you that …I can’t be selfish with you.”
Oh, god. Damon, please. I don’t want to hurt you. I can’t hurt you anymore. I won’t let myself. My mind was screaming at me to stop him, to save him from whatever misery would come from this. But I couldn’t. God help me, no matter what I knew I should have done, something within me wouldn’t let me act, wouldn’t let me move. As if I needed, in my very bones, to hear his words.
“And why you can’t know this? I don’t deserve you.” It was like watching his heart break in my hands. I wanted to cry, I wanted to yell at him to stop, but I was frozen, transfixed. He said something about Stefan deserving me, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it was true. If Damon was here, if Damon was confessing his love and willing to admit that he wasn’t good enough for me, that he would step aside and let the better man win, didn’t that prove that Damon was good? That he and his brother weren’t good and bad, but just different sides of good?
And then I realized why Damon was telling me this, why he’d come here willing to lay his heart on the line. Because he had an escape. He had one built right into his handy dandy little vampire powers, and he fully intended to use it. Why he refused to give me my necklace, why he looked so sad, it all came together in a final crash of understanding, and some part of my heart broke as he laid a sweet kiss on my forehead. My eyes closed as I swam in this revelation, his lips warming my skin, lingering there…
I had ruined it, all of it. And I had no way to fix it. Oh, Damon…
“God, I wish you didn’t have to forget this…But you do,” he said, his hand caressing my cheek. His pupils contracted and expanded, and I felt the compulsion rolling off him in waves and hitting the roadblock that was the vervain in my blood system. It was such a tangible feeling that I wanted to break things, wanted to cry, wanted to rip the vervain out of my bloodstream and let the compulsion in. A tear rolled down Damon’s cheek and I fought the urge to wipe it away, and in that moment I swore to myself to pretend that the compulsion had worked the way he’d meant it to, pretend I’d never heard his words.
I blinked and when I opened my eyes, he was gone; there was a weight around my neck that felt familiar and I realized he had place the necklace there and left so fast I hadn’t felt or heard him. He was pretending he was never here. Pretending that this had never happened. Now it was my turn.
I could at least pretend. Couldn’t I?