entrancelogs | + Your imagination can't hurt you! +

Elena mashes down the urge to reach for him again.

Damon isn't making sense to her, if her bewildered expression is anything to go by, and she must choose between worry and confusion. Silence follows Damon's outburst, and all she can hear is the crackling of the fire. His breathing.

The things she would be saying, if she knew how.

It's not his anger that stills her. It's his fear.

A whisper. "What are you talking about?"

The worst five years of his life are torn open again as if he never escaped them (he never did. can he? if he saw an Augustine here today, he'd still kill them. Doesn't matter.

Doesn't).

"Oh, just a society of people who decided capturing, experimenting, and torturing vampires was a good cause to dedicate their lives to."

It sounds wrong leaving him in that way. His shoulders slump. He slides down the wall until he hits the floor.

"No one knew before today." He growls even though he is on the floor as if the growl locks him into what he's more comfortable being especially when talking about this. "It's not an excuse."

Edited 2016-11-17 20:43 (UTC)

Her gaze follows his descent.

If she'd been still before, she turns to marble now, and just as cold.

"You were — " Experimented on and tortured? For being a vampire?

The blistering realization shoves every other question from her mind. She doesn't ask how on earth Stefan didn't know. She doesn't ask who found out, and someone must've: the mazes thought in pairs.

"How long?"

Nausea crawls up his throat.

Shoulders tense. Limbs feel like rocks, weighted, wrong.

"Five years."

He stares at the broken glass. Her shock fills the room. He doesn't know what Elena feels. He doesn't know what he wants her to feel. It never would have come out right, would it? People ask him about the fifties, and he shrugs and makes a light comment as if the 50s didn't feel like a hundred or so years crammed into five, as if those five years didn't change the rest.

Edited 2016-11-17 20:48 (UTC)

An ache sticks in her throat.

Elena strains under the weight of his refusal. She lowers herself down to her knees, limbs overwhelmed and the rest of her just as affected. The thought of him caged like an animal makes her sick.

She looks sick. "Damon ..."

What can she say? What could possibly encompass how horrified she feels right now? Nothing he has ever done would make her believe he deserved this. "It's not an excuse to acknowledge you were tortured for five years."

Damon's jaw locks hard, hands clenching as his gaze darts back to her. He does not deserve her compassion, either. Her worry. She aches on his behalf. He reads it written in her expression, and she should be free from him.

"It's an excuse if people use it to explain your behavior. It's an excuse if people start to see more when they have every goddamn right to their hate. Who do you think re-lived it with me?"

One of the last people who ever should have.

One of his victims because he is not only a victim who was tortured. He became the monster.

Have you forgotten the things that he's done to us? To me?

The truth is cruel: Elena failed to remember. It sits in the far back of her mind, and only Caroline's hurt yanked it all back to the surface. She's held Caroline's scared, shaking body, all because Damon decided to use her as his own personal juice box in his war against Stefan. Damon's made terrible choices, and he didn't care who he destroyed in the process. She'd hated him for it.

A flinch grasps hold of her blanched face.

"Caroline."

She should flinch, shouldn't she? She shouldn't forget. His heart breaks at the sight regardless.

Every word leaves him in a burst of self-loathing.

"I was tortured. So what? I made an escape plan with a fellow tortured, trapped friend. I turned off my emotions so I could leave that friend behind, and I left them off and have destroyed everything and everyone in my path since!"

He shoves his fists into the floor.

"I am not good for anyone."

Elena inhales sharply, holding the ache of that breath in.

Is it terrible that she can't, won't, let him go despite knowing what she knows? Is it terrible that she doesn't care what he had to do to survive within those walls, because failing to do so means he would not be here? His friend is a nameless face that can't reach her.

Caroline is not. And still.

Still.

She can sense where this is going, the sharpness of that breath reaching her eyes with a sting.

"Don't do this."

"I have to." The first words are harsh as the rest and then his head drops down low. They come out strangled from his mouth. "I have to do right by you."

The lesson shoves itself into him over and over again. He has to learn.

He has to learn before he drags her down into the fire, too. If he closes his eyes, he still feels the fire tearing away his skin bit by bit by bit. Hears the echoes of his own screams mingling with all the screams of everyone he's ever killed.

Damon shakes as he stands, shakes as he walks by her. Again.

The cocktail has returned in its full force, ringing around in his head.

Elena bites the inside of her cheek in frustration, hard enough to draw blood.

This isn't what he's supposed to learn.

Plenty of people have told her that Damon is bad for her, that choosing to be with him is dangerous. She's felt her fair share of guilt and shame for it in the past. But she didn't expect Damon to join the crowd. Not after everything they've been through in Wonderland. Not after she stood her ground with Stefan and Caroline. Not when only she can make that choice. She feels irrationally betrayed by him, even with the understanding that she can't fix this by hugging it away or asking him to feel his pain. Everything she has given has been given freely.

He's never had to earn it.

She wants to fight him. She wants to press until he caves, so he doesn't have to carry this alone. He's too raw to listen. It's funny in all the ways that it isn't: he's also the second Salvatore, within the week, to make it clear she is to be nowhere around him.

She needs to check on Caroline. To be the friend her loved ones deserve, instead of continuously falling short.

"This isn't right for either of us."

The door shuts behind her.

Caroline is pretty easy to find.

She never wants anyone to see her dealing, and so after parting with Damon, she goes back to her room to be alone. While she's emotionally exhausted, her mind won't let her sleep, so that option is out, so she does what every well adjusted vampire would do in this situation.

The blonde is sitting on her perfectly made bed, knees pull up and hugged against her chest as she stares at the far wall when she hears a knock at the door.

She can guess who it probably is.

"I'm fine."

The words sound somewhat hollow as they escape her, as if her thoughts are somewhere else, and she knows if she's right about who's here, that's not about to be enough of a deterrent.

Nothing ever deters the relentlessly stubborn Elena Gilbert.

At least, not as a general rule. Doors have been closing in her face left and right lately, though. There isn't a single person from home that she hasn't angered or driven away, and the harder she tries to sink her claws in, refusing to let go, the worse it gets.

"Caroline ..."

Her voice trails off, sad and tired but earnest. "I don't want you to be alone."

There's a heavy silence for a long moment, some bitter words involving the idea that Elena should be comforting Damon instead of her sticking to her throat, but she pushes it back before sighing.

"It's unlocked."

Upon opening the door and coming inside, Elena would find a partially empty bottle of whiskey and a glass on the nightstand next to her bed. (With her vampiric tolerance, it's just enough to dull her thoughts without totally falling over the sobriety edge.) There's also a drained blood bag on the same table, which she probably should have thrown away but didn't bother.

Elena's steps are soundless.

Closing the the door behind her with a quiet click, she appraises the room before her gaze can land on Caroline properly. Elena is clutching a pillow to her chest with one arm, her free hand holding a short-necked bottle of liquor. She thought about bringing other things that could distract her friend, but the closets can easily supply whatever they might need. "I see you started without me."

She loosens her grip on her knees, letting them stretch out a bit on the bed before looking over at her friend as she walks further into the room. A laugh escapes her mouth, but it's quiet and bitter and lacks any trace of actual humor.

"I didn't know I was supposed to wait for anyone."

She wasn't exactly going to go asking for a shoulder to cry on, and Damon had been the one to tell her to keep her mouth shut. Granted, he only said Stefan, but she and Elena hadn't actually been on the best terms lately.

"What did he tell you?"

Finding a spot at the foot of Caroline's bed, Elena's feeble attempt at a smile falters.

"Not everything, I'm guessing."

Damon doesn't trust easily, if at all. It's easier to push people away and lash out. Elena is arguably the person he is closest to, and there's a lot he doesn't share with her. "He mentioned a society that experiments on vampires. A society that captured him for five years." She still can't imagine it, and Damon never offered details. "I know you were there with him now. Nobody hurt you, did they?"

She nods her head a bit.

"There was a dungeon. Vervain on the bars. He said they kept the vampires weak, did experiments, paraded them around at parties. There was an exam room and a scalpel and..."

Her voice shakes a little as she trails off, but she finally shakes her head.

"No, not really. Nothing that I couldn't heal in a couple seconds, other than the vervain burns. But Damon..."

She's silent for a moment, reaching over to the nightstand for the still open bottle, taking a long sip out of it.

"...there was a fire and I was trapped. He was going on and on about not leaving me like some other person. Whatever he did, it got me out of there, but I don't know if he burned up or not. It took him longer to get out of there and the fire was everywhere."

Her heart climbs up to her throat.

Damon burned.

Don't ask how she knows with such certainty, but she does. Their entire conversation makes more sense now; the way he kept looking at the fireplace, like he wanted to jump out of his own skin. Elena doesn't confirm or deny. Caroline doesn't need more to worry about, and Damon is a sensitive topic as it is. (The thought of both of them there still makes her feel sick.)

"He made a friend there. His cellmate, I think. Their plan was to escape together, but Damon had to leave him behind and ..."

It's the first time he ever turned his humanity off. Elena didn't know that. She's only starting to realize how much she doesn't know. Shaking her head, she blinks through warm tears. Settles her hand on top of Caroline's. "I'm just glad you're okay."

"Well, he didn't leave me behind, and I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel about that."

At first, she's tempted to tell Elena to just leave her alone. That she doesn't deserve her comfort for the things she's said, that she still doesn't want her to be with someone as destructive as Damon, and that it doesn't just have to do with her.

But it's not up to her, and he did save her. Even if it was for selfish reasons, it wasn't for him.

Her hand turns over so that her fingers can interlock with her friend's.

"I'm not." That much is clear by the confusion and unsettled emotions in her brain. She might be okay physically, but that was...a lot to take in at once. "But I will be."

Elena is smart enough to not tell Caroline how she should feel about it. Only Caroline can define that for herself. And she'd known Caroline had been lying when she said she was fine; Elena is the queen of saying it regardless of whether it's true or it isn't.

"I know."

Caroline is stronger than she realizes.

"And I know I'm ... probably the last person you want to see right now, but I had to check in on you. I haven't been there for you." It doesn't matter Caroline was angry at her. Wonderland is new for her, and Elena is aware of just how hard the adjustment can be. Elena yearns to make it right, for Caroline and for everybody, but it's not that simple. "I don't want it to be like this. I don't want this to be us, you know?"

Edited 2016-11-18 21:26 (UTC)

Caroline is a much worse liar than Elena. Some might think that's a good thing, but sometimes she isn't so sure. It would be nice to fool people once in awhile.

"No, it's not that."

Elena has been there for her. She was the first one to notice something was wrong back when things first started going crazy. She saved her even after she killed someone. She never really looked at her like anything other than the person she still was, even after she'd changed, not once.

"Yeah, I know. I just look at him and I get so mad it makes me crazy. I don't want him to hurt you too."

And he already has. Maybe not in the same ways, but Caroline just doesn't trust him not to flip out and do something terrible the moment things aren't going his way.

Elena could never turn her back on Caroline, human or vampire. They've known each other from the sandbox, and that will always mean something incredibly important to her. She would intercept a stake for Caroline again in a heartbeat. And Wonderland — they've never faced anything like Wonderland before. If they're going to survive it, they need to stick together.

"... Well, you won't have to worry about that anymore."

Elena presses her lips into a thin line. "Because he agrees with you, so we're done."

Before it even began. How awkward.

Once Caroline is feeling better, she can gloat and say I told you so as many times as she wants.

...It looks like her worries about Elena getting hurt were completely legitimate since he already did it, apparently.

She rolls her eyes and groans audibly.

"Of course he does. It figures that the one time he agrees with me it has the side effect of doing the one thing I didn't want him to do."

Conflicted emotions roll through her and she sighs, shaking her head.

"Sorry, that wasn't very sympathetic, was it? How did everything turn into such a hot mess so fast?"

... No, it wasn't very sympathetic, but it was so very Caroline that Elena can't help but laugh, however feeble.

She squeezes Caroline's hand again.

"Tell you what. I'm done talking about Damon."

And she is extra done with people telling her what is good slash best for her. Maybe he is right and they wouldn't work. She can't be with someone who will cut her out or lash out whenever something goes wrong. No matter what she feels. "So why don't we focus on distracting you for the rest of the night. I'll... even watch the Notebook?" Elena asks, trying not to cringe outwardly.

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