“and we drown”
Prompt (for
The Vampire Diaries Free-for-all Comment Ficathon #2): Elena/Damon, no more dreaming of the dead as if death itself was undone
A/N: Title is taken from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot. My first TVD fic, egads.
Afterwards, she dreams about him in her bed. She kicks off the covers at night, when they start to feel fever-hot and like they’re going to drown her.
It’s not me it’s you it’s not you it’s me:
I love you:
I:
Too little, too late, that’s what she told him, wasn’t it. She said the words because he wouldn’t.
You sound like Katherine, he said, but the crooked grin never quite reached his eyes.
~~~~~
They meet on a hill, gravestones popping up out of the ground like bizarre flowers. Elena plucks a dead dandelion and watches as the seeds float away.
“It’s not over, you know,” he tells her, but she shakes her head.
“I know,” she says. “That’s the problem.” She turns and walks away, her head ducked, not looking back, but Damon lingers for a while. He and Stefan had been out here before, at their “ancestral” grave- had passed a flask back and forth over it, truthfully. That was a long time ago, though, and Damon’s far beyond jokes of who should’ve stayed dead. Damon scuffs the corner of his headstone with his toe. He’s sure now- it was both of them.
~~~~~
This is:
This is not the:
This is the end:
Damon’s almost convinced himself that it was all the product of the fever, that he’d hallucinated it all, but then she appears in his bed wordlessly.
“Katherine, you bi…”
“I’m not Katherine.” Her feet are cold. “Now, don’t say anything.”
Damon opens his mouth, reconsiders. “I wasn’t planning on it.”
~~~~~
The river’s icy, but Damon has never felt more alive than he has at this moment, beneath the weight of the water and the knowledge that he’s not here alone. Elena unbuttons his shirt and then lets it float away. Neither of them is breathing. When their mouths meet, they share lungs.
His fingers tangle in her hair. There’s no blinking. They drown together, and Damon wakes up.
~~~~~
“I feel dead inside,” Elena tells him. “Maybe you should turn me, so that all of me would match.”
Damon holds her close, feels her tears drip onto his chest.
“Babe,” he says slowly, “I’m proof. You know that doesn’t work.”
It’s the parts:
The parts in the sum of the:
(W)hole:
~~~~~
He takes her back to the cemetery at dawn. He stands back and watches her, twisting his ring. The burn is only in his heart now, but it’s no less painful.
He unscrews the cap of his flask and steps behind where she’s kneeling.
“You’d better do it,” he tells her. “Safer.” He passes over the flask and Elena tips her head back. She grits her teeth at the taste and then pours out the rest over the dead roses.
She holds out her hand for the lighter without looking at him, and when the flames shoot up she doesn’t move back until Damon drags her.
“It should’ve been me.”
“You’ve still got a death wish, huh?” Damon takes her by the shoulder so that she’s facing him.
“Yeah,” she spits. “Don’t you?”
~~~~~
Damon read Hemingway once, but he abandoned the book partway through, having had enough personal experience with civil war to last him several lifetimes.
He fits his chin on top of Elena’s head, hugs her close to him. She stands- mute, passively accepting his embrace.
The sun:
The sun also rises but:
It sets too: