Chapter Text
***
***
Before the crash, when her parents were still alive, they would help her with centering reality. In their presence everything seemed to dull, become manageable. A whisper of wind teasing autumn leaves didn’t carry the lamenting screams of those left behind; a piece of toffee given to her by the elderly neighbor didn’t taste like ash.
Her mother taught her that focusing on one sense; closing her eyes, covering her ears, keeping her mouth tightly closed, could make things easier.
Following the pattern forced the onslaught -of too much, not enough, bright, dark, cold, hot- to fade slowly, until all that remained was the scent of dirt, grass, and rain.
She would then let her mouth open. Taking in a deep gulp, letting the woody aftertaste of tree bark, and flowers settle on her tongue, Elena would find her shoulders starting to relax.
Hands coming away from her ears -bird song, cars honking, dogs barking, Jeremy laughing- reality hits her like a gentle hurricane.
Finally, when the sweeping whispers of creation settle, her eyes open.
***
It wasn’t peaceful, but it was far better than the alternative.
***
When she wakes in the hospital she sees muddy water, and her father’s graying face.
Not a room that smells of disinfectant and pain.
There are swirls behind her eyelids, brown bleeding bronze, while the phantom brush of her mother’s clammy fingers press against her neck. Her skin never bruises, but she can’t breathe, and lost as she is she clings to the familiar pain.
It makes her certain the torture she is living is nothing but a horrible dream, that her parents will grab her heart and tug her out of the suffocating waters crushing down on her chest.
***
Slowly words filter through the fog surrounding her mind.
‘Autopsy… dead… worst case… prepare.’
The voice does not have her mother’s familiar cadence, or her father’s firm certainty. It is apologetic, stretched thin, like a violin piece played with shards of glass.
Elena can feel something piercing her heart, a terrible certainty not letting her sink.
The water holding her is real, forged from the remnants of a dream, that was itself pieced together from a memory.
***
When she blinks the images away -some hours later- she can feel the drying salt of tears on her cheeks.
It itches, but she can’t scratch at the scrapes on her face. Her hands are numb, colored shades of hurt that leave them lax on her lap. She feels like an overly ripe plum, and, taking in the state of her body, she finds the comparison unfortunately accurate.
‘Just a shade shy of perfect.’ It’s a bitter thought, but she does not correct herself.
***
Death has claimed her parents, snatched their souls from the watery grave that broke their mortal forms.
Death has left Elena behind.
***
After, while funeral costs are being juggled, and aunt Jenna tries to figure out how to budget for three, doing the centering exercise makes her throat feel full of water. So, she digs her nails into her palms, focuses on the sting of skin breaking and blood welling, and smiles prettily to appease the vultures circling her fractured family.
It is far from perfect, one day she ends up catatonic in her bedroom.
She’d been in the garden and rain had started to fall, it was nothing but a gentle shower, yet…
Huddled in the corner, hands cradling her head, she shakes. Voices, and emotions, and colors swirl against one another, in and around her.
Continuously circling her brow is a mantra.
Amara, Helen, Tatia, Katerina.
On, and on, and on.
The names do not stop, not when everything else stills, not when she sits down to eat dinner at a table laid for five. They quieten as she lies in bed looking up at the moon, becoming nothing but background humming.
But they do not stop.
***
Damon and Stefan crash into her life -with permanently bloody hands, perfect smiles, savage obsessiveness- and it’s not just her perception of reality that’s swirling now.
The entire town is falling apart at the seams, trust withering as the body count rises with little explanation.
There is something malignant growing in the community, and it all starts when the Salvatore men come back to their childhood home.
There is something deeply off about both men.
Elena can’t fully place it, but her gut tells her to be wary. She heeds its warning, watches them whenever they enter a room, and quickly notes the way they get close to those who inevitably wind up dead.
Swallowing her suspicions, she tries to avoid them. But no matter how hard she tries they inevitably pop back up. It leaves her breathless, and paranoid, and the names chanting in her mind sound desperate as the pair slowly take over her life. Stefan is sat behind her in history, Damon runs into her when she visits her parents graves, at the bonfire both follow her.
On and on they circle. Neither ever get close enough to touch, there is something reverent in their eyes, but this does nothing to ease her fear.
She feels on display, laid bare.
Sleep rarely comes easily, because every time her eyes close the looming presence of another in her room sets her on alert.
When she learns they are vampires Elena is not surprised.
There is nothing human about them past their skin.
***
One day, when she knows both are out of the Boarding House, she sneaks in through the back.
Her curiosity overwhelms her caution as she wanders through the richly decorated halls. History radiates from the dark wall panels, it bleeds from the time worn mantle piece. Scattered through out the building half empty bottles of expensive bourbon line the maple side tables. She is almost tempted to steal one, but shakes her head in an attempt to make the impulse dissipate.
Eventually she heads up the stairs.
She finds Stefan’s room.
The picture…
***
[She never remembers how she gets home. Too caught up in a loop of exhaustion, confusion, and anger to pay attention to where she drifts.]
***
Back pressed against the cold wood of her bedroom door, she lets the tears trapped by her eyelashes fall. They cut tracks down her cheeks, running into the corners of her chapped lips.
Eyes closing, she can see nothing but the outline of a girl wreathed in darkness.
In her pocket sits a photograph. Aged, cared for. It is the kind of image a man takes to war as a reminder to the sweetheart waiting for him back home.
The girl -with perfect curls, a secret smile, and dark eyes- looks like her.
It is Elena, but not.
The picture has a impossible date, and a name written in the corner.
Katherine.
Katerina screams under Elena’s skin -loud, incredibly loud, unwilling to go unheard even after her time is done- and it makes her scratch at her arms until scarlet droplets well.
The color is stark as it slowly spreads across her pale skin, running down her fingers until it falls to the floor. The drip, drip, drip, is sickening, and soothing, and there is something in her chest that is cracking.
Something ancient is stirring in a cage in the depth of her being.
Her stomach is churning, she coughs to keep her lunch down.
It comes up anyway.
As she rushes into the bathroom, she glimpses the shadowed forms of four women watching her in the mirror. The vomit crawling up her throat distracts her and she kneels before the toilet, wincing as her knees hit the tile floor hard. The churning hits the back of her teeth, and as she coughs up her breakfast she can taste nothing but ash.
When her stomach is empty, she falls back, leaning against the bath.
She feels hollow, and full, and breaking at the seams. Her body is wrongrightdifferent and she closes her eyes because the light shining down on her is searing.
As she sits there, breath hitching uncomfortably with each inhale, a spark ignites in her lungs. She wants to run. The idea of staying in this place -this sugar coated decaying town, filled with beautifully placed graves dug by death marked hands- makes her flinch.
She wants to live, and staying will lead to tragedy.
The voices in her head agree. They call for her to flee. Never mind that her brother is out with friends, no doubt getting high; or that her aunt is struggling with her there to help.
She has felt unmoored since her parents died, and looking down on her own blood pooling on the floor, she gives in.
***
‘Better you die than I,’ she whispers to herself looking in the mirror after cleaning her arms and dressing the wounds marking her skin. There’s weight to the words that she does not understand, and yet they slip past her lips like they were always meant to be spoken.
***
Rummaging through her closet she finds the bag she needs. It’s an old thing, made of leather with the scent of cigarettes and her father’s cologne imprinted in the stitches. She holds it for several long moments, remembering how he’d bring it on every trip, before throwing it on her bed.
Hurrying -unsure when either Salvatore might decide to ‘check in’- she tosses clothes, and money, and five stakes made of oak into it.
With more care she wraps a aged copy of ‘The Hobbit’ with a shirt and places it within as well. The pages are wrinkled from the many times she’s fallen asleep with it in her hands, and as she tucks it safely in the bag, she can’t help the slight grin that rests on her face as she remembers the note her mother wrote on the first page.
Lastly, she grabs her Gilbert family ring.
Looking around her room, she sighs. It smells of lemon, vanilla, and books. It is home, her safe haven, and she is not coming back. The opportunity is void for as long as the brothers stay, and she knows they will remain; as surely as she knows the voices in her head were once real.
Her brother’s room is a mess as she creeps in, nimbly jumping over the pile of clothes strewn by the door. Shaking her head fondly amused by the chaos, she heads to his desk.
Hidden beneath a large textbook, she finds his sketch book. Flicking it open she smiles.
His work is made up of sweeping lines of smudged charcoal, scratched details drawn with anger, and highlights made with white chalk. It is lonely, and heartfelt, and she wonders for a moment if she will become an entry. Immortalized as art, drawn with material that fractures and spills.
Swallowing, throat dry, she writes him a letter.
It is goodbye, and ‘I’m sorry’, and not enough. But it is all she can give him, and so, when the message is complete, she walks out the door.
***
Driving away, her first stop is a gas station.
The light flickers, it’s that annoyingly stark white blue shade that bleeds the world grey and makes you feel like time has no meaning.
Squinting as she enters, ignoring the cheery bell announcing her presence, she wrinkles her nose as the scent of cheap cleaning liquid makes her eyes water.
The cashier, droopy eyed and hunched over his phone, eyes her bandaged arms knowingly, and watches her every move. It makes her feel stripped bare, and the aftertaste of acid and ash on her tongue deepens.
Head tilted forward, she walks down the aisles. There are beaten up boxes of hair dye, cheap snacks, booze, and books specifically selected to tempt the sleep deprived. As she walks, she runs her fingers along the shelves, wondering what to pick.
What the other girls in her head have not experienced yet?
Eventually she grabs a red box dye, vodka, and chocolate.
***
Racing down the highway, she blasts music on the stereo, and sings along with the windows down.
Her throat is hoarse, sore from the strain of being sick, but she does not stop. The music helps her drown out the rushing thoughts streaming through her mind, and the cold wind nips her skin soothingly.
It’s all loud, and sharp, and she finally feels like she isn’t being watched.
It’s freeing, and for the first time since she stopped seeing her father, and water, and blood, she relaxes.
No one else is on the road, and she is running on nothing but fumes. She doesn’t stop.
She isn’t far enough away to rest, so she pops chocolate in her mouth -ignores how the taste is bitter, and the texture feels like dirt- and keeps driving.
***
When more than a day has passed, she drifts into the parking area of a motel.
The sign is faded, with rust slowly overtaking the lettering, and there is mud caked on the main door. It looks like it has failed health inspections since the seventies, and probably houses several broken bodies.
She enters because the girls who came before did worse to survive.
The room she gets is… old. The bed is lumpy and smells of sweat, while red carpet covers the floor stained brown by what can only be blood.
Sighing, she ignores the sound of screaming voices from the neighboring room and heads to the bathroom.
***
Over an hour later, she looks in the mirror and blinks in surprise.
There are stains on her neck, and the color isn’t perfect, but is different. New. In this moment she does not feel like a poor copy stretched over brittle bone. Purple bleeds under her eyes, and everything she takes in has a hazy outline -reality refusing to become focused- but as the vodka she drinks warms her from the inside, she does not regret running.
She can breath without waiting for someone to watch her.
It is wonderful.
Popping the last of her chocolate into her mouth, she giggles.
“Not so refined now boys,” she mutters.
The horror that would stand stark on Stefan’s face if he could see her makes something bitter crawl through her veins, and she does not realize she is crying until she tastes salt. Collapsing onto the bed, she hums a half forgotten lullaby to herself, eyes closing as she says goodbye to the future she once saw so easily as hers.
Something is buzzing under her skin, a slow static building, and she sinks into the feeling. Lets it take over her senses, as she teeters on the edge of unconsciousness.
The voices in her head are calm.
She slips off the edge.
***
A ribbon of blood and destiny is tugging on her mind, beckoning for her to leave the country.
She ignores it, refuses to slow down, and instead drives along the long forgotten roads scarring North America’s surface. Travel makes the longing curled like a snake around her neck feel lighter, and as she takes in everything she encounters with wide eyes, Elena does not fight the smile that spreads across her face.
It’s electrical light bleeding into the sky hiding the stars that remain unchanged, and the broken sound of a unsung story spinning through empty space.
It’s beautiful, in a strange, sad, way.
Drifting from town to town, shitty motel to shitty motel, she spends many nights drawing waxing crescents on her palms with her nails.
Yet, even on the worst nights -when pain feels like pleasure, and blood is paint, and she can’t tell the difference between life and death- she never tries breathing like her mother taught.
Her father’s face still lingers in her memory, dormant when she surrounds herself with music and alcohol. It’s when she’s buzzing pleasantly, mind vague and foggy, that she lets silence settle. There are always dark corners in the peace, but she lets the current take her, and the good overwhelms the bad.
***
[The first time she wanders down a empty street and finds nothing but echoes of Katerina in the cracked sidewalk, she laughs until she is breathless.
“We are one of a kind you and I.”
Deliberately keeping her gaze down, she sighs knowingly when the hurried pattering of heeled steps races away from her.]
***
She never buys a phone.
Her old one -the last gift either of her parents gave her- she left on her night stand.
‘Too easy to track’ she had told herself. The words had felt like a lie even in the quiet of her own room, and they never end up easing the sadness in her heart when she remembers the pride on her mother’s face when she’d given her a box tied closed with a purple bow.
The Polaroid she buys in New York helps distract her. It’s fiddly, and the pictures are never perfect, but Elena loves them all the more for it.
She found it in a little second hand store that smelled of dust and candle wax, hidden beneath a forgotten sweater.
Two days she spends walking through the bookshelves, picking out worn novels and pretty trinkets. The first picture she takes -and then hands to the owner of the store- is of a stack of Jane Austen books. Broken sunlight streams in through the tinted window, caressing the gold lettering that sits faded on the bent spines of the books gently. Shadows play with light in the photo, and holding it in hand she feels accomplished.
When she leaves New York, ready to head onward, the smile does not leave her face for a full week.
***
Adding photos to her scrap book becomes a relaxing part of her routine.
Most are candid shots, taken when light, person, and time align and simplistic magic takes place in front of her.
It’s fun, walking down the street looking for moments to immortalize.
When she gets to Chicago she captures a tornado swirling out on the lake. Looking down at the image several days later, she runs her hand down the page.
She can almost feel the nip of stormy wind against her fingertips.
***
Walking the streets of different cities is odd. They are all so alike, and yet not.
It reminds her starkly of the voices in her head, of the women who looked like her and died hundreds of years in the past.
Alike, not identical.
***
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