Fic: We've Been Living In A City With No Children
Title: We've Been Living In A City With No Children
Fandom: The Vampire Diaries.
Pairing/Characters: Gen. Caroline, Tyler, Matt, Vicki, Elena, Jeremy, Bonnie, Damon, Stefan.
Rating: PG.
Words: 3,650
Summary: No one remains innocent in Mystic Falls for long.
Notes: Written for amoenavi's prompt in The Vampire Diaries Free-For-All Comment Ficathon. The prompt was I wish that we were magic so we wouldn't be so young and tragic.
Caroline looks at herself in the mirror and tries to breathe. You’re here, you made it, you can do this, she repeats over and over in her head, but the butterflies still dance in her stomach (better than that sinking feeling that burned when she heard Elena and Jenna talking, their words reminding her of how her mother isn’t here by her own choice, not understanding Caroline’s love of silly, frivolous things). Caroline pulls her shoulders back and straightens her spine and paints on a smile, practicing for when she’ll have to walk down that stairs and hoping she doesn’t trip over her dress and fall (Matt won’t be waiting for her at the bottom, but that’s okay, it’s not perfect, but she’s learning to live without perfection).
She stands up and tries to stand tall (and she does, taller than most girls sans heels, taller than her dainty, petite friends and she’s tried and tried not to let it bother her, but sometimes it does: she’s still a work-in-progress), lifting her chin and looking proud of what she’s accomplished (because she has accomplished something, even though most look down their nose at it, call it a shallow and air-headed small town beauty pageant), because Caroline knows it’s important, feels confident that she’s doing something her ancestors would be proud of and feeling proud of all the work she‘s done to get here.
Caroline touches her hair gently, careful not to mess up the set to it, tucking stray pieces back into place as she makes the final inventory of her makeup (the look took hours and done by her own steady hand, and she’s happy with the results, grinning at herself in the mirror), then slipping into her shoes without creasing her gown. She glances once more at herself, the completed result and feels a surge of contentedness (this is her princess moment, her mother who taught her to throw a punch at five and took her to the gun range at ten would be heartbroken, but this is all she’s ever wanted: to be the pretty, pretty princess everyone looked up to and admired, the belle of the ball, the one everyone picked).
-----
Caroline looks at herself in the mirror and finds she can’t breathe. You look a mess, Caroline Forbes, an utter disaster, she thinks to herself, to make light of a sight that was choking her silent. She remembers the pain (she’ll never forget it, locked in a cage like a beast, poked and prodded and cut open to see if she bled like everyone else) and she remembers thinking, very far from Miss Mystic, aren’t we, Caroline. She barely remembers that girl anymore, the girl who sat in front of this mirror and applied makeup like a pro instead of pulling wooden bullets and vervain darts from her skin, that girl who was blissfully unaware of the darkness that suffocated her town (the sleepy little town she was so proud to be a member of), the girl who didn’t know what blood tasted like or how it looked on her hands and clothes (that girl would cry over how many designer blouses Caroline has ruined, stained in blood, how everything she owns is steeped in it).
The girl Caroline was is a far away distant memory (a princess in a fairytale that didn’t fit anymore, not when Caroline became the monster and tried to eat her prince), but she misses her, she misses being her, she misses the time when her only worries were the school dance and what she was going to wear and how her mother’s distance killed her each day (better than knowing her mother would rather kill her, better than looking into her mother’s eyes and seeing nothing but hate). She’s not girly little Caroline anymore, but sometimes she wishes she was.
-----
Tyler wakes up in the middle of the night and can’t slow his breathing, or his heart beating rapidly in his chest (like he’d been running and maybe he had, maybe he’d been running in his dreams). He sits up frozen in bed, to terrified to make a move and put his feet on the floor, too much darkness clouding around him and smothering him. Then the light flicks on (shocking the breath out of him) and Grandma stands in doorway.
“What’s wrong, baby? I heard you scream,” she says, moving over to the side of his bed and reaching for him. Her presence settles something in him, melting his frozen limbs and he’s able to move, crawling into her lap and into the comforting circle of her arms. “Was it a nightmare?” She smells equal parts warm and spicy, like a tin of freshly baked cookies and he buries his face in her neck, nodding his head. She rubs smooth circles against his back and he leans further into her, the safest place he knows.
“What happened in your dream, Tyler?” she asks, and he can feel her voice vibrate against his cheek as he curls his fingers in her soft robe.
Tyler waits and chews on her bottom lip, tries to remember. “Monster,” he says, “And it was chasing me, I think. I don’t remember. There was a lot of running.”
Grandma begins to run her fingers through his hair, scritch-scratching gently against his scalp and pauses a long time without saying anything. Tyler lifts his head up to look at her and she smiles when he meets her eyes, but there’s a sadness about her face that makes Tyler want to curl back up against her (he remembers this sadness, it comes out around his parents, when she looks at his father, like her heart is broken) and make it go away. “It’s okay,” she finally says, “You shouldn’t be scared.”
“It was a monster, Grandma.”
“Yes, I know,” she says, pushing his hair back and cupping his cheek. “But sometimes monsters aren’t so scary, sometimes monsters are just like us, you just have to look for the man behind the mask.”
-----
Tyler wakes up aching, naked, and alone after the full moon (his limbs feeling stretched and pulled in all directions, his bones still feeling like they’re being set) and he blinks in the early morning light, trying to quell the pounding in his head. He lays for a while on the ground, curling in on himself and tries to remember the night before (little by little, it gets easier to recall what he did as a wolf, but it doesn’t translate well: all he gets are impressions and scents, a jagged mix of colors and images that don’t make sense). He remembers running, the speed of his new limbs pushing him harder and faster against the earth under his paws and it almost felt like flying, and it’s moments like these where it clicks (because he has a vaguely recollects his grandma speaking to him, telling him not to be scared of monsters) and he feels okay.
Then the pain ebbing through him grounds him and he grits his teeth, trying to push himself upwards as he wishes for it to cease (he’s not scared anymore, but he still hates this, more than he can ever remember hating anything in his life, and acceptance won’t do a damn thing to make it better).
-----
The storm keeps Matt awake (rain pounding against the roof and thunder crashing and lightening brightening up his darkened room intermittently), but he doesn’t mind (it’s Friday and school is a long weekend away), he likes listening to the storm and the strange music it makes, counting down the seconds before Vicki creeps through his door. When she does, lightening flashes and fills his room with light, catching her terrified face in a moment as she jumps, dashing across the floor and diving into Matt’s bed. Vicki’s shaking when Matt wraps his arms around her, pulling his blankets up over her shoulders (he comforts her just like when they were little because Vicki was always scared of storms: scared but fascinated).
She looks up over his shoulder and out the window, even as her teeth chatter behind her lips. “You think I’ll ever be brave enough to play out in one, Matty, a monster storm like this?” she asks, he voice small and slight, her eyes never leaving the window.
“Maybe that’s not such a good idea, Vick,” he says, breathing heavily and running his fingers through her hair (he doesn’t know how they got like this, how they grew up backwards and damaged, but Matt doesn’t ever remember a time when he wasn’t taking care of his big sister when it should have been the other way around).
“Maybe,” she says, sighing as she settles down beside him, curling all around him (like she could lose him if she didn’t have a tight enough hold, like that isn’t what he worries about all the time, losing his dizzyingly flighty sister if she’s not tethered to him and grounded), “Or maybe I could dance away from the lightening and it could never touch me, if I was brave enough to try.”
He doesn’t ask her what she took (he stopped asking ages ago, not that he doesn’t care, but the name doesn’t matter, it’s still a drug that’s destroying his sister bit by bit), just whispers soothing, nonsensical things as he strokes over the back of her head as he waits for the storm to pass, glad that she’s not out in it.
-----
Storms remind Matt of Vicki, whenever one crashes down around the house, echoing through its empty rooms (and lightening cuts through his chest, thunder squeezing his heart in its fist). He lies awake and stares up at the ceiling, hating the sound and hates that he’s still waiting, still counting down the seconds (he’s still solid and structurally sound, not built like anyone in his family). But Matt knows he’s alone and Vicki’s not coming.
Because Matt’s all that left and his sister is dead.
-----
Elena watches her dad cook (more than he should, they’ll have enough finger foods to feed an entire army and it’s just them and Uncle John and Aunt Jenna), moving quickly throughout the kitchen with a effortless grace, multitasking like a second nature. “I hope you’re hungry!” he calls out over his shoulder, and Elena grin when Aunt Jenna answers. “Starved! Cafeteria food is the worst. Feed me, Gilbert.”
Her mom starts laying out platters, setting them down on the counter and heaping Dad’s creations onto them in artful poses (Elena remembers when she told her about that time she worked for a catering company, how she never learned to cook a damn thing, but she was now armed with the skills of creating art out of food.). “Elena, honey, could you take this one and put it out on the table and people can start grabbing whatever they want?” her mom asks, and Elena hops off the stool and grabs the platter of mini sandwiches, stacked and arranged like a wedding cake and brings it into the dining room.
She walks past Jeremy and Uncle John sitting on the couch, talking soft and low to each other, but Uncle John looks up (she likes Uncle John, but in the way you have to like family because he sends shivers down her spine and makes her feel uncomfortable when he stares too long at her, like he’s seeing someone else in her) and opens his mouth to speak to her, but stops himself and goes back to telling Jeremy about the family legacy, the only one that will and Jeremy listens attentively like the only one who cares.
Later they all gather in the living room, Elena tucked in between her mother and Aunt Jenna on the couch with Dad, Jeremy, and Uncle John on the other side of the room to form teams of boys verses girls to play a game of Trivial Pursuit (they nixed Pictionary right away when Aunt Jenna pointed out the unfair advantage Dad and Uncle John had with Jeremy on their team and they had too many players for most other board games they had in the game closet). It turns into a battle of the generations and they seem to be evenly matched (when a category goes over Jeremy and Elena’s heads, one of the adults can usually pick it up).
Elena doesn’t think about the party she’s missing or her friends she’s ignoring (Bonnie gets it, but sometimes Caroline looks at her sadly, a hint of envy in her eyes, and Matt can be patient), she just laughs into her mother’s neck and feels Aunt Jenna chuckling beside her when Uncle John messes up on a History category and claims the game is rigged, saying, “Gray, you bought a faulty game, whatever the answer is, it’s wrong,” while her dad just laughs and Jeremy saves them by getting the right answer.
Family Night isn’t a night she wants to miss, even if it makes her possibly the lamest teenager on the planet.
-----
The house is so quiet now. Empty, Elena thinks, devoid of life. She lays back in bed and focuses on breathing, counting upwards to clear her mind (she doesn’t want to think because if she does then she’ll remember and she doesn’t want to remember, just wants to pretend for a little while). Then a crash breaks open the silence, jarring her back to reality. “Damnit!” she hears Jeremy yell, then another loud thump like he might have hit the wall. Elena pushes herself out of bed and wanders down the hall (to check on Jeremy, she’s always checking on Jeremy lately, too silent and too somber and even if she won’t say it out loud, it scares her).
She finds him at the game closet, a pile of them half opened and pieces falling out at his feet. He looks up at her with dead eyes when she approaches, his shoulders slumping and his chin falling. “It’s Family Night,” he says, and Elena nods, kneeling the floor and trying to pick of the pieces scattered across the floor.
They pick out Monopoly to play because it’s long and involved and it can help them forget for a little while. Elena fills a bowl with chips and makes a dip with onion soup mix and sour cream and brings them out to the coffee table where Jeremy’s setting up the board. They play with little words between them (they don’t want to talk about what they’re doing, they don’t want to talk about the people they’re missing) and the silence falls again, oppressive and all consuming.
It feels like a funeral, Elena thinks, when she catches Jeremy blank gaze. A final goodbye to everything we had before.
-----
Bonnie stares at the feather and wills it to move with the power of her mind. Nothing happens (and nothing will, she tells herself, this is ridiculous and a waste of time, you only humor her because Dad is gone on another business trip and Caroline and Elena ditched you), so she tries harder, feeling her brow furrow and a pain in her head growing (and now you’ve given yourself a tension headache, you’re 0 for 2, Bonnie Bennett). “Clear your mind, concentrate,” Grams says, in a dreamy but firm voice, and Bonnie can’t help it, she cracks up and dissolves into giggles.
Grams stares at her until she sobers up and catches her breath. “Sorry, sorry,” Bonnie says, still hiccupping up giggles in between her words. “It’s just that you’re so serious!”
The line of grams’ mouth firms and her neck straightens, her chin tilting so she’s looking down her nose at Bonnie (oh, now you‘ve done it, here comes the lecture). “It is very serious, Bonnie. Magic is a very serious business.”
Bonnie smiles and grabs her grams’ hand (that‘s a girl, Bonnie, ease the tension like you always do, at least you‘re good at something). “I’m sure even floating feathers is serious business when you’ve had too much wine to drink.”
Grams’ eyes grow large and owlish for a moment, and Bonnie thinks she’s going to splutter offenses at her (and maybe you deserve it, you lack respect for your elders), but Grams just sighs and deflates, looking warm and inviting all of a sudden, like a grandmother should (but then she wouldn’t be your grams) and smiles. “Well, maybe I had one glass,” she says, curling her fingers through Bonnie’s. “Maybe that’s enough lessons for the night, how about a movie?”
Bonnie picks Practical Magic off the DVD shelf, grinning to herself at her own joke (movie night with grams should be at least be amusing) and settles on the couch beside Grams, who wraps a thin arm around her shoulders and pulls Bonnie to her side, kissing the top of her head. “I’m glad you came over, baby,” she whispers. “I hate the idea of you alone in that big, empty house.”
Bonnie doesn’t says anything back, just curls into Grams more and watching the movie play across the TV screen. Grams mutters about the inaccuracies throughout and Bonnie can never really lose herself in the story, but it’s nice and it feels like a comfortable sweater in the dead of winter (admit it, Bonnie, you’re glad you came over, too).
-----
Floating feathers is easy now (everything feels easy now with this much power flowing through you, you know that, don’t let it go to your head, don’t get cocky), Bonnie does it over and over again, trying to remember when it was hard, maybe trying to make it hard again. She feels like she jumped over an entire section of her development, just leaped and bounded over it like it didn’t matter and she almost feels like it doesn’t (it matters, Bonnie Bennett, wasn’t that what Grams was trying to teach you, what she was trying to instill in you before it was too late?). Grams is gone and Lucy ran away, and Jonas burned up in a fire of his own making and Bonnie has ghosts of dead witches whispering in her ear, expecting her to know things she should know by now (and you would have, if you paid attention, if you had listened when you had a chance).
She feels lost (you don’t like admitting that, even to yourself) and alone (only witch in a room full of vampires, waiting to bleed you dry), and she doesn’t know which steps to take, which path to follow (you needed to learn the basics before you went for the big stuff) and everything she does, it takes her further away from where she wants to be. The feather keeps floating higher and higher and it takes her forward, when all she wants to go is back (not even you can’t rewrite history).
-----
Stefan sneaks down the hall (tip-toeing quietly and speedily as a mouse), clutching the book to his chest. He hears Damon’s coughs before he sees him (wheezy and violent, they pang in Stefan’s chest and frighten him, but he tightens his face so it doesn’t show) and he’s bowed over in his bed when Stefan pushes the door back, clutching at the collar of his dressing gown. His eyes land on Stefan when he looks up.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” Damon says on a breath, pausing to cough. “Father can’t afford to lose two sons in such an undignified way.”
“Father won’t lose either of us,” Stefan says, lifting his chin and setting his shoulders back, trying to look older than his twelve years. “You’ll get better, I’m sure of it.”
Damon’s gaze softens and Stefan sees the mask slip to reveal his older brother. “I don’t want this illness to befall you as well, little brother.”
“That won’t happen either.“ Stefan snorts and feels his mouth form into a pout, despite his every intention of putting on a brave face. “Please, Damon?”
Damon stares at him for a long moment (drawn-out in the way that feels like forever), then rolls over onto his side, breathing heavy from the exertion of that small of a movement, and slides backwards, patting the empty space beside him. “If you’re so willing to risk it, come now, show me what you’ve brought me.”
Stefan bounds towards him, crawling up the bed with him and sliding under Damon’s covers, reaching over him to turn up the gas lamp at his bedside, then opens the book in his hands and lays flat in his lap, beginning to read (just the way Damon used to read to him whenever he fell ill).
-----
Stefan stands stock-still in the middle of their library (you can’t avoid it, no matter how much you want to, you must cross it no matter which way you plan to leave), staring at the books tucked away neatly on the shelves and for the first time, he doesn’t want to go (he has to, there’s no other way, Damon needs a cure). He wants to stay and pick out a book, then climb the stairs and read outside Damon’s cell until he quiets, until he feels better (there’s magic in words) because that’s how it was when they were kids, nothing would get them better faster than a story. For a moment, he closes his eyes and wishes for simpler times, for a night when Damon was bedridden with a chest cold and that was the scariest thing in Stefan’s world.
Then he breathes out and turns on his heel, opening his eyes when he can’t see the shelves anymore, and sets out to save his brother in the only way he knows how.
Fandom: The Vampire Diaries.
Pairing/Characters: Gen. Caroline, Tyler, Matt, Vicki, Elena, Jeremy, Bonnie, Damon, Stefan.
Rating: PG.
Words: 3,650
Summary: No one remains innocent in Mystic Falls for long.
Notes: Written for amoenavi's prompt in The Vampire Diaries Free-For-All Comment Ficathon. The prompt was I wish that we were magic so we wouldn't be so young and tragic.
Caroline looks at herself in the mirror and tries to breathe. You’re here, you made it, you can do this, she repeats over and over in her head, but the butterflies still dance in her stomach (better than that sinking feeling that burned when she heard Elena and Jenna talking, their words reminding her of how her mother isn’t here by her own choice, not understanding Caroline’s love of silly, frivolous things). Caroline pulls her shoulders back and straightens her spine and paints on a smile, practicing for when she’ll have to walk down that stairs and hoping she doesn’t trip over her dress and fall (Matt won’t be waiting for her at the bottom, but that’s okay, it’s not perfect, but she’s learning to live without perfection).
She stands up and tries to stand tall (and she does, taller than most girls sans heels, taller than her dainty, petite friends and she’s tried and tried not to let it bother her, but sometimes it does: she’s still a work-in-progress), lifting her chin and looking proud of what she’s accomplished (because she has accomplished something, even though most look down their nose at it, call it a shallow and air-headed small town beauty pageant), because Caroline knows it’s important, feels confident that she’s doing something her ancestors would be proud of and feeling proud of all the work she‘s done to get here.
Caroline touches her hair gently, careful not to mess up the set to it, tucking stray pieces back into place as she makes the final inventory of her makeup (the look took hours and done by her own steady hand, and she’s happy with the results, grinning at herself in the mirror), then slipping into her shoes without creasing her gown. She glances once more at herself, the completed result and feels a surge of contentedness (this is her princess moment, her mother who taught her to throw a punch at five and took her to the gun range at ten would be heartbroken, but this is all she’s ever wanted: to be the pretty, pretty princess everyone looked up to and admired, the belle of the ball, the one everyone picked).
-----
Caroline looks at herself in the mirror and finds she can’t breathe. You look a mess, Caroline Forbes, an utter disaster, she thinks to herself, to make light of a sight that was choking her silent. She remembers the pain (she’ll never forget it, locked in a cage like a beast, poked and prodded and cut open to see if she bled like everyone else) and she remembers thinking, very far from Miss Mystic, aren’t we, Caroline. She barely remembers that girl anymore, the girl who sat in front of this mirror and applied makeup like a pro instead of pulling wooden bullets and vervain darts from her skin, that girl who was blissfully unaware of the darkness that suffocated her town (the sleepy little town she was so proud to be a member of), the girl who didn’t know what blood tasted like or how it looked on her hands and clothes (that girl would cry over how many designer blouses Caroline has ruined, stained in blood, how everything she owns is steeped in it).
The girl Caroline was is a far away distant memory (a princess in a fairytale that didn’t fit anymore, not when Caroline became the monster and tried to eat her prince), but she misses her, she misses being her, she misses the time when her only worries were the school dance and what she was going to wear and how her mother’s distance killed her each day (better than knowing her mother would rather kill her, better than looking into her mother’s eyes and seeing nothing but hate). She’s not girly little Caroline anymore, but sometimes she wishes she was.
-----
Tyler wakes up in the middle of the night and can’t slow his breathing, or his heart beating rapidly in his chest (like he’d been running and maybe he had, maybe he’d been running in his dreams). He sits up frozen in bed, to terrified to make a move and put his feet on the floor, too much darkness clouding around him and smothering him. Then the light flicks on (shocking the breath out of him) and Grandma stands in doorway.
“What’s wrong, baby? I heard you scream,” she says, moving over to the side of his bed and reaching for him. Her presence settles something in him, melting his frozen limbs and he’s able to move, crawling into her lap and into the comforting circle of her arms. “Was it a nightmare?” She smells equal parts warm and spicy, like a tin of freshly baked cookies and he buries his face in her neck, nodding his head. She rubs smooth circles against his back and he leans further into her, the safest place he knows.
“What happened in your dream, Tyler?” she asks, and he can feel her voice vibrate against his cheek as he curls his fingers in her soft robe.
Tyler waits and chews on her bottom lip, tries to remember. “Monster,” he says, “And it was chasing me, I think. I don’t remember. There was a lot of running.”
Grandma begins to run her fingers through his hair, scritch-scratching gently against his scalp and pauses a long time without saying anything. Tyler lifts his head up to look at her and she smiles when he meets her eyes, but there’s a sadness about her face that makes Tyler want to curl back up against her (he remembers this sadness, it comes out around his parents, when she looks at his father, like her heart is broken) and make it go away. “It’s okay,” she finally says, “You shouldn’t be scared.”
“It was a monster, Grandma.”
“Yes, I know,” she says, pushing his hair back and cupping his cheek. “But sometimes monsters aren’t so scary, sometimes monsters are just like us, you just have to look for the man behind the mask.”
-----
Tyler wakes up aching, naked, and alone after the full moon (his limbs feeling stretched and pulled in all directions, his bones still feeling like they’re being set) and he blinks in the early morning light, trying to quell the pounding in his head. He lays for a while on the ground, curling in on himself and tries to remember the night before (little by little, it gets easier to recall what he did as a wolf, but it doesn’t translate well: all he gets are impressions and scents, a jagged mix of colors and images that don’t make sense). He remembers running, the speed of his new limbs pushing him harder and faster against the earth under his paws and it almost felt like flying, and it’s moments like these where it clicks (because he has a vaguely recollects his grandma speaking to him, telling him not to be scared of monsters) and he feels okay.
Then the pain ebbing through him grounds him and he grits his teeth, trying to push himself upwards as he wishes for it to cease (he’s not scared anymore, but he still hates this, more than he can ever remember hating anything in his life, and acceptance won’t do a damn thing to make it better).
-----
The storm keeps Matt awake (rain pounding against the roof and thunder crashing and lightening brightening up his darkened room intermittently), but he doesn’t mind (it’s Friday and school is a long weekend away), he likes listening to the storm and the strange music it makes, counting down the seconds before Vicki creeps through his door. When she does, lightening flashes and fills his room with light, catching her terrified face in a moment as she jumps, dashing across the floor and diving into Matt’s bed. Vicki’s shaking when Matt wraps his arms around her, pulling his blankets up over her shoulders (he comforts her just like when they were little because Vicki was always scared of storms: scared but fascinated).
She looks up over his shoulder and out the window, even as her teeth chatter behind her lips. “You think I’ll ever be brave enough to play out in one, Matty, a monster storm like this?” she asks, he voice small and slight, her eyes never leaving the window.
“Maybe that’s not such a good idea, Vick,” he says, breathing heavily and running his fingers through her hair (he doesn’t know how they got like this, how they grew up backwards and damaged, but Matt doesn’t ever remember a time when he wasn’t taking care of his big sister when it should have been the other way around).
“Maybe,” she says, sighing as she settles down beside him, curling all around him (like she could lose him if she didn’t have a tight enough hold, like that isn’t what he worries about all the time, losing his dizzyingly flighty sister if she’s not tethered to him and grounded), “Or maybe I could dance away from the lightening and it could never touch me, if I was brave enough to try.”
He doesn’t ask her what she took (he stopped asking ages ago, not that he doesn’t care, but the name doesn’t matter, it’s still a drug that’s destroying his sister bit by bit), just whispers soothing, nonsensical things as he strokes over the back of her head as he waits for the storm to pass, glad that she’s not out in it.
-----
Storms remind Matt of Vicki, whenever one crashes down around the house, echoing through its empty rooms (and lightening cuts through his chest, thunder squeezing his heart in its fist). He lies awake and stares up at the ceiling, hating the sound and hates that he’s still waiting, still counting down the seconds (he’s still solid and structurally sound, not built like anyone in his family). But Matt knows he’s alone and Vicki’s not coming.
Because Matt’s all that left and his sister is dead.
-----
Elena watches her dad cook (more than he should, they’ll have enough finger foods to feed an entire army and it’s just them and Uncle John and Aunt Jenna), moving quickly throughout the kitchen with a effortless grace, multitasking like a second nature. “I hope you’re hungry!” he calls out over his shoulder, and Elena grin when Aunt Jenna answers. “Starved! Cafeteria food is the worst. Feed me, Gilbert.”
Her mom starts laying out platters, setting them down on the counter and heaping Dad’s creations onto them in artful poses (Elena remembers when she told her about that time she worked for a catering company, how she never learned to cook a damn thing, but she was now armed with the skills of creating art out of food.). “Elena, honey, could you take this one and put it out on the table and people can start grabbing whatever they want?” her mom asks, and Elena hops off the stool and grabs the platter of mini sandwiches, stacked and arranged like a wedding cake and brings it into the dining room.
She walks past Jeremy and Uncle John sitting on the couch, talking soft and low to each other, but Uncle John looks up (she likes Uncle John, but in the way you have to like family because he sends shivers down her spine and makes her feel uncomfortable when he stares too long at her, like he’s seeing someone else in her) and opens his mouth to speak to her, but stops himself and goes back to telling Jeremy about the family legacy, the only one that will and Jeremy listens attentively like the only one who cares.
Later they all gather in the living room, Elena tucked in between her mother and Aunt Jenna on the couch with Dad, Jeremy, and Uncle John on the other side of the room to form teams of boys verses girls to play a game of Trivial Pursuit (they nixed Pictionary right away when Aunt Jenna pointed out the unfair advantage Dad and Uncle John had with Jeremy on their team and they had too many players for most other board games they had in the game closet). It turns into a battle of the generations and they seem to be evenly matched (when a category goes over Jeremy and Elena’s heads, one of the adults can usually pick it up).
Elena doesn’t think about the party she’s missing or her friends she’s ignoring (Bonnie gets it, but sometimes Caroline looks at her sadly, a hint of envy in her eyes, and Matt can be patient), she just laughs into her mother’s neck and feels Aunt Jenna chuckling beside her when Uncle John messes up on a History category and claims the game is rigged, saying, “Gray, you bought a faulty game, whatever the answer is, it’s wrong,” while her dad just laughs and Jeremy saves them by getting the right answer.
Family Night isn’t a night she wants to miss, even if it makes her possibly the lamest teenager on the planet.
-----
The house is so quiet now. Empty, Elena thinks, devoid of life. She lays back in bed and focuses on breathing, counting upwards to clear her mind (she doesn’t want to think because if she does then she’ll remember and she doesn’t want to remember, just wants to pretend for a little while). Then a crash breaks open the silence, jarring her back to reality. “Damnit!” she hears Jeremy yell, then another loud thump like he might have hit the wall. Elena pushes herself out of bed and wanders down the hall (to check on Jeremy, she’s always checking on Jeremy lately, too silent and too somber and even if she won’t say it out loud, it scares her).
She finds him at the game closet, a pile of them half opened and pieces falling out at his feet. He looks up at her with dead eyes when she approaches, his shoulders slumping and his chin falling. “It’s Family Night,” he says, and Elena nods, kneeling the floor and trying to pick of the pieces scattered across the floor.
They pick out Monopoly to play because it’s long and involved and it can help them forget for a little while. Elena fills a bowl with chips and makes a dip with onion soup mix and sour cream and brings them out to the coffee table where Jeremy’s setting up the board. They play with little words between them (they don’t want to talk about what they’re doing, they don’t want to talk about the people they’re missing) and the silence falls again, oppressive and all consuming.
It feels like a funeral, Elena thinks, when she catches Jeremy blank gaze. A final goodbye to everything we had before.
-----
Bonnie stares at the feather and wills it to move with the power of her mind. Nothing happens (and nothing will, she tells herself, this is ridiculous and a waste of time, you only humor her because Dad is gone on another business trip and Caroline and Elena ditched you), so she tries harder, feeling her brow furrow and a pain in her head growing (and now you’ve given yourself a tension headache, you’re 0 for 2, Bonnie Bennett). “Clear your mind, concentrate,” Grams says, in a dreamy but firm voice, and Bonnie can’t help it, she cracks up and dissolves into giggles.
Grams stares at her until she sobers up and catches her breath. “Sorry, sorry,” Bonnie says, still hiccupping up giggles in between her words. “It’s just that you’re so serious!”
The line of grams’ mouth firms and her neck straightens, her chin tilting so she’s looking down her nose at Bonnie (oh, now you‘ve done it, here comes the lecture). “It is very serious, Bonnie. Magic is a very serious business.”
Bonnie smiles and grabs her grams’ hand (that‘s a girl, Bonnie, ease the tension like you always do, at least you‘re good at something). “I’m sure even floating feathers is serious business when you’ve had too much wine to drink.”
Grams’ eyes grow large and owlish for a moment, and Bonnie thinks she’s going to splutter offenses at her (and maybe you deserve it, you lack respect for your elders), but Grams just sighs and deflates, looking warm and inviting all of a sudden, like a grandmother should (but then she wouldn’t be your grams) and smiles. “Well, maybe I had one glass,” she says, curling her fingers through Bonnie’s. “Maybe that’s enough lessons for the night, how about a movie?”
Bonnie picks Practical Magic off the DVD shelf, grinning to herself at her own joke (movie night with grams should be at least be amusing) and settles on the couch beside Grams, who wraps a thin arm around her shoulders and pulls Bonnie to her side, kissing the top of her head. “I’m glad you came over, baby,” she whispers. “I hate the idea of you alone in that big, empty house.”
Bonnie doesn’t says anything back, just curls into Grams more and watching the movie play across the TV screen. Grams mutters about the inaccuracies throughout and Bonnie can never really lose herself in the story, but it’s nice and it feels like a comfortable sweater in the dead of winter (admit it, Bonnie, you’re glad you came over, too).
-----
Floating feathers is easy now (everything feels easy now with this much power flowing through you, you know that, don’t let it go to your head, don’t get cocky), Bonnie does it over and over again, trying to remember when it was hard, maybe trying to make it hard again. She feels like she jumped over an entire section of her development, just leaped and bounded over it like it didn’t matter and she almost feels like it doesn’t (it matters, Bonnie Bennett, wasn’t that what Grams was trying to teach you, what she was trying to instill in you before it was too late?). Grams is gone and Lucy ran away, and Jonas burned up in a fire of his own making and Bonnie has ghosts of dead witches whispering in her ear, expecting her to know things she should know by now (and you would have, if you paid attention, if you had listened when you had a chance).
She feels lost (you don’t like admitting that, even to yourself) and alone (only witch in a room full of vampires, waiting to bleed you dry), and she doesn’t know which steps to take, which path to follow (you needed to learn the basics before you went for the big stuff) and everything she does, it takes her further away from where she wants to be. The feather keeps floating higher and higher and it takes her forward, when all she wants to go is back (not even you can’t rewrite history).
-----
Stefan sneaks down the hall (tip-toeing quietly and speedily as a mouse), clutching the book to his chest. He hears Damon’s coughs before he sees him (wheezy and violent, they pang in Stefan’s chest and frighten him, but he tightens his face so it doesn’t show) and he’s bowed over in his bed when Stefan pushes the door back, clutching at the collar of his dressing gown. His eyes land on Stefan when he looks up.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” Damon says on a breath, pausing to cough. “Father can’t afford to lose two sons in such an undignified way.”
“Father won’t lose either of us,” Stefan says, lifting his chin and setting his shoulders back, trying to look older than his twelve years. “You’ll get better, I’m sure of it.”
Damon’s gaze softens and Stefan sees the mask slip to reveal his older brother. “I don’t want this illness to befall you as well, little brother.”
“That won’t happen either.“ Stefan snorts and feels his mouth form into a pout, despite his every intention of putting on a brave face. “Please, Damon?”
Damon stares at him for a long moment (drawn-out in the way that feels like forever), then rolls over onto his side, breathing heavy from the exertion of that small of a movement, and slides backwards, patting the empty space beside him. “If you’re so willing to risk it, come now, show me what you’ve brought me.”
Stefan bounds towards him, crawling up the bed with him and sliding under Damon’s covers, reaching over him to turn up the gas lamp at his bedside, then opens the book in his hands and lays flat in his lap, beginning to read (just the way Damon used to read to him whenever he fell ill).
-----
Stefan stands stock-still in the middle of their library (you can’t avoid it, no matter how much you want to, you must cross it no matter which way you plan to leave), staring at the books tucked away neatly on the shelves and for the first time, he doesn’t want to go (he has to, there’s no other way, Damon needs a cure). He wants to stay and pick out a book, then climb the stairs and read outside Damon’s cell until he quiets, until he feels better (there’s magic in words) because that’s how it was when they were kids, nothing would get them better faster than a story. For a moment, he closes his eyes and wishes for simpler times, for a night when Damon was bedridden with a chest cold and that was the scariest thing in Stefan’s world.
Then he breathes out and turns on his heel, opening his eyes when he can’t see the shelves anymore, and sets out to save his brother in the only way he knows how.