[tvd] big bang fic: Watch You Bleed Me Dry
WATCH YOU BLEED ME DRY
fifty six
A funeral of sorts is organised but most definitely not by him. Figures Alaric or Caroline or someone equally well adjusted and normal had made that winning decision. He wonders how many bottles of scotch he'll need to drain before the whole debacle becomes bearable. Wears his leather jacket, a pair of jeans that sit on just the wrong side of needing a wash, and a scowl that is fast becoming his default setting.
If he bothers with shoes then he doesn't remember which ones.
Elena arrives in a shapeless black dress. She's painted her face with too much smudged eye makeup that is already threading a path to her chin, and a shocking slash of blood-red across her lips. He stares at her for a beat from a point mid-way down the main staircase. Blinks dumbly. Can't quite decipher whether she's in mourning or auditioning for an emo cult.
Her mouth moves but he fails to detect sound. Like they’re both suddenly stuck in some silent movie where everyone cries or bleeds or dies and one option is no better, no worse than the next.
He thinks he’s been here before.
- - -
Her friends filter through the doorway then. Caroline shifts her gaze to meet his, smiles a slow, sad smile that reeks of undeserved pity. The witch doesn’t bother to acknowledge his presense and the familiarity of her non-reaction is lifeline-like.
- - -
“Nice to see you went to so much--”
It’s the aftermath now, and the booze-induced buzz has faded to a high-pitched ringing in his ears. He’s on her before she can finish the sentence. Forearm pressed heavily against her throat.
“Now, now,” she still manages to condescend. “Is that any way to treat the person who swooped in and saved your pathetic excuse for a life?”
She laughs. A melodious tinkle that belies her true intent.
He doesn’t bother to remind her that the last person to have had a go at saving him ended up with a stake between his shoulder-blades. Knows it would be air; wasted.
He moves away instead, lets her drop back to the floor, cat-like in her grace. “What do you want?”
“Such a moving ceremony.”
He snorts. Should have known she’d be there.
Lurking.
But she came to say goodbye to Stefan. Had figured a century and a half of loving him, the idea of him, she’s yet to really figure out which, had earned her that right at least.
He’d have hated the whole thing. Of that she is most definitely sure.
Thinks Damon probably knows it too. In the parts of him that are made up of the parts of his brother that he’s collected along the way. Used as replacements for where his own insides have rusted.
If she thinks, just for a second, that the only good in him is the good he stole from Stefan, then she wouldn’t be the only one.
But they’d both be wrong.
“Goodbye, Katherine.”
Pointed. And she’s almost as sick of this game as he is.
Plays along nonetheless.
“Goodbye, Damon.”
Figures they’ll be playing it for eternity.
sixty
Caroline delivers Elena her completed homework on a Tuesday morning. She knows it’s a Tuesday because the garbage collection wakes her from where she’s fallen asleep in front of the muted television.
Or maybe yesterday was Tuesday.
And today Wednesday.
Or Friday.
Or tomorrow.
And really, what difference does any of it make?
She smiles and nods her head and throws around thank yous and promises that she most definitely means but barely manages to feel. Engages in an enthusiastic conversation about the pros and cons of skinny jeans over boot cut at one point and only just stops herself from putting her fist through the kitchen window.
But then; “Have you talked to him since?”
And the change in conversation is so stunningly abrupt that she wonders if Caroline hasn’t suddenly added mind reader to her list of supernatural capabilities.
“Huh?”
Feigns confusion to buy herself time for breathing.
In and out, out and in.
Or something like that.
“Damon, have you talked to-” Caroline’s voice drops, fades out in the direction of her lowered gaze until she snaps back up to eye contact. “I’m not one hundred percent convinced he’s, you know, stable.”
She whispers the word conspiratorily, like pairing together the concepts of ‘Damon’ and ‘instability’ is something new. Something novel.
“I think he’d listen to you.”
“Why? He’s never listened to me in the past, what makes you think now would be any different?” Collects up the completed homework she didn’t even know had been set and heads for the door without skipping a beat. “We’re going to be late.”
- - -
There’s an empty seat beside her in class. She keeps turning towards it, a reflex motion, expecting to find him sprawled there, staring back at her. Quiz already completed or notes perfectly scribed.
Is always a little surprised when he’s not.
Takes a moment.
Remembers…
sixty five
Damon thinks he’s decided that death, his own, would be too easy now. A reprieve of sorts that he far from deserves.
Alaric buys him booze and Caroline brings him blood bags that go untouched for longer than they probably should. He drinks just enough to keep his feet underneath him and steady. But not enough that everything comes into sharp clarity. Hides out in the heady haze that exists between waking and desiccation and pretends like he doesn’t, just for a split second, think that every tap at his door, every car tyre rolling over in his drive, belongs to Elena.
It works.
For the most part.
- - -
It’s been four days since he last saw her, back to him and walking away.
- - -
It feels like everyone, everyone left, is watching him, waiting for the moment that he snaps and devours the town in one fell swoop. He doesn't know how to articulate that he's barely got the energy required to get out of bed in the mornings, let alone spend the night terrorising the neighbourhood.
His eyes close around images of his brother’s face. Alternate, strobe-like, between fangs that drip, drip, drip with Elena’s blood and the toothy grin of a wide-eyed toddler.
He wants to hate Klaus. To hunt him down and torture him one hundred ways to Sunday.
But he doesn’t and he can’t.
After all, Klaus only succeeded where Damon himself had tried and failed on numerous occasions.
seventy three
Damon knows that Elena loved Stefan because of who he was. He thinks, he hopes, that she might love him, too.
But if she does, he also knows that it is only inspite of all the myriad ways in which he has let her down.
seventy four
Caroline tells her. In the same way that Caroline tells her everything newsworthy these days.
“He left.”
She blinks dumbly, feels her forehead crease into a frown even as the base drops out of her stomach. Reflexively asks Caroline to repeat herself despite the fact that she’s heard her loud and crystal clear the first time.
Knows exactly the he to whom she is referring.
“Damon, he left. He--”
Her eyes are bright with unshed tears that Elena can’t quite fathom.
“I mean, I tried, Elena, I really tried. For you. For him--” She’s babbling. Elena watches her lips move but doesn’t so much as register a note. “I did everything I could think of to fix him for you.”
- - -
She goes to class and sits in Stefan’s seat, looks over toward her own empty desk instead.
Finds the juxtaposition oddly comforting.
- - -
He’s slumped to seated on her front veranda when she gets home.
Eyes closed. Asleep or dead or dying.
It’s hard to tell the difference these days.
She walks past him without word. Stomps heavily up the stairs and slams the door to shut behind her back.
He’s waiting in her room when she arrives.
Just like she knew he would be.
“Caroline told me you left town.” She’s seething inside. An incongruous mix of fear and fury that she can’t quite bring herself to reconcile.
He shrugs, speaks. Voice rough from lack of use. “I did.”
“And yet, here you are…” She lets the sarcasm roll out and onto the floor between them. An almost tangible entity.
He shrugs again. She wants to scream in his face.
“I got as far as the state line. Sat in the car for three hours before turning around and coming back…” Trails off. She wonders if this is her cue to feel sorry for him. “You know,” brings his eyes up to meet hers, sudden and sure. “There was a time when all I wanted was to get the hell out of this town.”
“Then what’s stopping you?”
She knows the answer. They both do.
“Nothing I guess,” he lies. Bald-faced. Shuffles his feet uncertainly in a way that trips across her misfiring synapses. “Elena?”
But she’s this close… this close.
“What do you want from me?” Screamed.
“I think I want you to hate me.” Measured. Empty. A thousand other things that set her teeth on edge.
“Well, too bad, because I don’t.”
“I know you don’t. You hate yourself.”
“Oh, please.” She laughs and the bitter tang burns on her tongue. “Like you haven’t always had the monopoly on that particular world view.”
She can hear herself speaking words, complete sentences even. But she’s not entirely sure what it is they're talking about now. Guesses an implied change of topic has occurred somewhere along the line and what they're screaming about on the surface no longer correlates with the underlying messages.
“I wish I hadn’t done it.”
She stops still at his words. Feels her blood freeze to glaciers in her veins because; “Well, I wish he hadn’t done it.”
And there it is.
The truth.
- - -
He nods his silent agreement and moves to push past her, out into the hall. She reefs on his arm, spins him back to face her. “I’m sorry…”
He blinks. Matches her sudden tears with his own. Hot and heavy. Understands immediately that she’s not apologising for her thoughts, only for what they would mean.
“Me, too.” They’re on the same page after all.
Always have been.
She brings her fingers up to her face. Speaks into them even as she’s staring directly at him. “Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.”
He feels sick. Like he might actually be sick. Because he’s there too. All the way to the very bottom of despair. And for the first time in a long time he knows that he’s not there alone. And there’s a flare of agony in his chest that is so desperately familiar but so achingly different all at once.
“Elena.” Urgent. Desperate for her to understand.
“What did we do? Oh, God. Damon, what did we do? What did we do? What did we do. What did we do.” Until the words are no longer a question she’s seeking the answer to.
- - -
They’re slumped to seated against the frame of her bedroom door. She can’t remember how it was they got to there, nor calculate how much time has elapsed.
Damon has her enveloped against his chest. And it should be suffocating but it’s not. It’s not even close.
She can’t begin to imagine how she’ll conjure the strength required to let him go again. To stand up. To breathe.
Doesn’t want to even as she knows that she must. Recognises her own shattered angles as they grate against the jagged cavities created by his.
Can’t help but wonder how many of them she is directly responsible for.
seventy seven
They cross the road headed in opposite directions, and the ridiculous metaphor is so blinding she almost laughs out loud.
An itching kind of hysteria that it seems she’s well versed in these days.
Rehearses what she’ll say to him when she finally gathers together the courage required to stop walking past.
Hello… I’m sorry... I miss you...
And;
Isn’t it hilarious how we managed to completely destroy the one thing that had been keeping us together?
- - -
The air is cool and her breath billows as she exhales. A white cloud that he thinks he could drown in if given the chance.
He lets her walk past. Offers up a grin and a nod and prays they both look something like genuine might. Waits until she’s out of his peripheral vision before turning.
Tries, fails to hide his shock when he finds her stopped and staring back at him. Fingers fisted into the scarf twisted at her throat. He knows he should keep walking even as his feet inch him closer to her. Off the side-walk and back into the street.
She grins. Slow and wide, and he shrugs in return. Feels lighter in that moment than he thinks he has in decades. Stays standing with his feet in the gutter so they’re eye to unblinking eye. Tracks the movement of her hand as it drops to her side before bringing his gaze back up to meet hers.
Is watching her every twitch and tremble as he feels her fingers fist into his. Tighter than he thinks she should be capable of.
But then again, she always has been stronger than he gives her credit for.
THE END
fifty six
A funeral of sorts is organised but most definitely not by him. Figures Alaric or Caroline or someone equally well adjusted and normal had made that winning decision. He wonders how many bottles of scotch he'll need to drain before the whole debacle becomes bearable. Wears his leather jacket, a pair of jeans that sit on just the wrong side of needing a wash, and a scowl that is fast becoming his default setting.
If he bothers with shoes then he doesn't remember which ones.
Elena arrives in a shapeless black dress. She's painted her face with too much smudged eye makeup that is already threading a path to her chin, and a shocking slash of blood-red across her lips. He stares at her for a beat from a point mid-way down the main staircase. Blinks dumbly. Can't quite decipher whether she's in mourning or auditioning for an emo cult.
Her mouth moves but he fails to detect sound. Like they’re both suddenly stuck in some silent movie where everyone cries or bleeds or dies and one option is no better, no worse than the next.
He thinks he’s been here before.
- - -
Her friends filter through the doorway then. Caroline shifts her gaze to meet his, smiles a slow, sad smile that reeks of undeserved pity. The witch doesn’t bother to acknowledge his presense and the familiarity of her non-reaction is lifeline-like.
- - -
“Nice to see you went to so much--”
It’s the aftermath now, and the booze-induced buzz has faded to a high-pitched ringing in his ears. He’s on her before she can finish the sentence. Forearm pressed heavily against her throat.
“Now, now,” she still manages to condescend. “Is that any way to treat the person who swooped in and saved your pathetic excuse for a life?”
She laughs. A melodious tinkle that belies her true intent.
He doesn’t bother to remind her that the last person to have had a go at saving him ended up with a stake between his shoulder-blades. Knows it would be air; wasted.
He moves away instead, lets her drop back to the floor, cat-like in her grace. “What do you want?”
“Such a moving ceremony.”
He snorts. Should have known she’d be there.
Lurking.
But she came to say goodbye to Stefan. Had figured a century and a half of loving him, the idea of him, she’s yet to really figure out which, had earned her that right at least.
He’d have hated the whole thing. Of that she is most definitely sure.
Thinks Damon probably knows it too. In the parts of him that are made up of the parts of his brother that he’s collected along the way. Used as replacements for where his own insides have rusted.
If she thinks, just for a second, that the only good in him is the good he stole from Stefan, then she wouldn’t be the only one.
But they’d both be wrong.
“Goodbye, Katherine.”
Pointed. And she’s almost as sick of this game as he is.
Plays along nonetheless.
“Goodbye, Damon.”
Figures they’ll be playing it for eternity.
sixty
Caroline delivers Elena her completed homework on a Tuesday morning. She knows it’s a Tuesday because the garbage collection wakes her from where she’s fallen asleep in front of the muted television.
Or maybe yesterday was Tuesday.
And today Wednesday.
Or Friday.
Or tomorrow.
And really, what difference does any of it make?
She smiles and nods her head and throws around thank yous and promises that she most definitely means but barely manages to feel. Engages in an enthusiastic conversation about the pros and cons of skinny jeans over boot cut at one point and only just stops herself from putting her fist through the kitchen window.
But then; “Have you talked to him since?”
And the change in conversation is so stunningly abrupt that she wonders if Caroline hasn’t suddenly added mind reader to her list of supernatural capabilities.
“Huh?”
Feigns confusion to buy herself time for breathing.
In and out, out and in.
Or something like that.
“Damon, have you talked to-” Caroline’s voice drops, fades out in the direction of her lowered gaze until she snaps back up to eye contact. “I’m not one hundred percent convinced he’s, you know, stable.”
She whispers the word conspiratorily, like pairing together the concepts of ‘Damon’ and ‘instability’ is something new. Something novel.
“I think he’d listen to you.”
“Why? He’s never listened to me in the past, what makes you think now would be any different?” Collects up the completed homework she didn’t even know had been set and heads for the door without skipping a beat. “We’re going to be late.”
- - -
There’s an empty seat beside her in class. She keeps turning towards it, a reflex motion, expecting to find him sprawled there, staring back at her. Quiz already completed or notes perfectly scribed.
Is always a little surprised when he’s not.
Takes a moment.
Remembers…
sixty five
Damon thinks he’s decided that death, his own, would be too easy now. A reprieve of sorts that he far from deserves.
Alaric buys him booze and Caroline brings him blood bags that go untouched for longer than they probably should. He drinks just enough to keep his feet underneath him and steady. But not enough that everything comes into sharp clarity. Hides out in the heady haze that exists between waking and desiccation and pretends like he doesn’t, just for a split second, think that every tap at his door, every car tyre rolling over in his drive, belongs to Elena.
It works.
For the most part.
- - -
It’s been four days since he last saw her, back to him and walking away.
- - -
It feels like everyone, everyone left, is watching him, waiting for the moment that he snaps and devours the town in one fell swoop. He doesn't know how to articulate that he's barely got the energy required to get out of bed in the mornings, let alone spend the night terrorising the neighbourhood.
His eyes close around images of his brother’s face. Alternate, strobe-like, between fangs that drip, drip, drip with Elena’s blood and the toothy grin of a wide-eyed toddler.
He wants to hate Klaus. To hunt him down and torture him one hundred ways to Sunday.
But he doesn’t and he can’t.
After all, Klaus only succeeded where Damon himself had tried and failed on numerous occasions.
seventy three
Damon knows that Elena loved Stefan because of who he was. He thinks, he hopes, that she might love him, too.
But if she does, he also knows that it is only inspite of all the myriad ways in which he has let her down.
seventy four
Caroline tells her. In the same way that Caroline tells her everything newsworthy these days.
“He left.”
She blinks dumbly, feels her forehead crease into a frown even as the base drops out of her stomach. Reflexively asks Caroline to repeat herself despite the fact that she’s heard her loud and crystal clear the first time.
Knows exactly the he to whom she is referring.
“Damon, he left. He--”
Her eyes are bright with unshed tears that Elena can’t quite fathom.
“I mean, I tried, Elena, I really tried. For you. For him--” She’s babbling. Elena watches her lips move but doesn’t so much as register a note. “I did everything I could think of to fix him for you.”
- - -
She goes to class and sits in Stefan’s seat, looks over toward her own empty desk instead.
Finds the juxtaposition oddly comforting.
- - -
He’s slumped to seated on her front veranda when she gets home.
Eyes closed. Asleep or dead or dying.
It’s hard to tell the difference these days.
She walks past him without word. Stomps heavily up the stairs and slams the door to shut behind her back.
He’s waiting in her room when she arrives.
Just like she knew he would be.
“Caroline told me you left town.” She’s seething inside. An incongruous mix of fear and fury that she can’t quite bring herself to reconcile.
He shrugs, speaks. Voice rough from lack of use. “I did.”
“And yet, here you are…” She lets the sarcasm roll out and onto the floor between them. An almost tangible entity.
He shrugs again. She wants to scream in his face.
“I got as far as the state line. Sat in the car for three hours before turning around and coming back…” Trails off. She wonders if this is her cue to feel sorry for him. “You know,” brings his eyes up to meet hers, sudden and sure. “There was a time when all I wanted was to get the hell out of this town.”
“Then what’s stopping you?”
She knows the answer. They both do.
“Nothing I guess,” he lies. Bald-faced. Shuffles his feet uncertainly in a way that trips across her misfiring synapses. “Elena?”
But she’s this close… this close.
“What do you want from me?” Screamed.
“I think I want you to hate me.” Measured. Empty. A thousand other things that set her teeth on edge.
“Well, too bad, because I don’t.”
“I know you don’t. You hate yourself.”
“Oh, please.” She laughs and the bitter tang burns on her tongue. “Like you haven’t always had the monopoly on that particular world view.”
She can hear herself speaking words, complete sentences even. But she’s not entirely sure what it is they're talking about now. Guesses an implied change of topic has occurred somewhere along the line and what they're screaming about on the surface no longer correlates with the underlying messages.
“I wish I hadn’t done it.”
She stops still at his words. Feels her blood freeze to glaciers in her veins because; “Well, I wish he hadn’t done it.”
And there it is.
The truth.
- - -
He nods his silent agreement and moves to push past her, out into the hall. She reefs on his arm, spins him back to face her. “I’m sorry…”
He blinks. Matches her sudden tears with his own. Hot and heavy. Understands immediately that she’s not apologising for her thoughts, only for what they would mean.
“Me, too.” They’re on the same page after all.
Always have been.
She brings her fingers up to her face. Speaks into them even as she’s staring directly at him. “Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.”
He feels sick. Like he might actually be sick. Because he’s there too. All the way to the very bottom of despair. And for the first time in a long time he knows that he’s not there alone. And there’s a flare of agony in his chest that is so desperately familiar but so achingly different all at once.
“Elena.” Urgent. Desperate for her to understand.
“What did we do? Oh, God. Damon, what did we do? What did we do? What did we do. What did we do.” Until the words are no longer a question she’s seeking the answer to.
- - -
They’re slumped to seated against the frame of her bedroom door. She can’t remember how it was they got to there, nor calculate how much time has elapsed.
Damon has her enveloped against his chest. And it should be suffocating but it’s not. It’s not even close.
She can’t begin to imagine how she’ll conjure the strength required to let him go again. To stand up. To breathe.
Doesn’t want to even as she knows that she must. Recognises her own shattered angles as they grate against the jagged cavities created by his.
Can’t help but wonder how many of them she is directly responsible for.
seventy seven
They cross the road headed in opposite directions, and the ridiculous metaphor is so blinding she almost laughs out loud.
An itching kind of hysteria that it seems she’s well versed in these days.
Rehearses what she’ll say to him when she finally gathers together the courage required to stop walking past.
Hello… I’m sorry... I miss you...
And;
Isn’t it hilarious how we managed to completely destroy the one thing that had been keeping us together?
- - -
The air is cool and her breath billows as she exhales. A white cloud that he thinks he could drown in if given the chance.
He lets her walk past. Offers up a grin and a nod and prays they both look something like genuine might. Waits until she’s out of his peripheral vision before turning.
Tries, fails to hide his shock when he finds her stopped and staring back at him. Fingers fisted into the scarf twisted at her throat. He knows he should keep walking even as his feet inch him closer to her. Off the side-walk and back into the street.
She grins. Slow and wide, and he shrugs in return. Feels lighter in that moment than he thinks he has in decades. Stays standing with his feet in the gutter so they’re eye to unblinking eye. Tracks the movement of her hand as it drops to her side before bringing his gaze back up to meet hers.
Is watching her every twitch and tremble as he feels her fingers fist into his. Tighter than he thinks she should be capable of.
But then again, she always has been stronger than he gives her credit for.
THE END