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frieslxver · 2 months

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Bite to Bruise - 33

This work is mine and I do not give consent for my works to be used, copied, published, or posted without my permission. I am sharing chapters as I work on this story but it is copyrighted material that I plan to rework and publish when completed.

story tags: modern-fantasy mashup, werewolves, witches, monsters, romance, learning to trust, hurt/comfort, blood, violence, explicit sex, explicit language

The earlier parts can be found under the tag or over on patreon. <3

BITE TO BRUISE - CHAPTER 33.

Ever wound his arms around her, gently catching her up when she was in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil.

They hadn’t spoken much since the woods. She had come home with him. They had showered, slept, and woken together. Somewhere in the night, she had let her glamour fall away. Ever said nothing. He was never sure if it was a conscious choice or something she simply forgot to hold up.

She was smaller in this form, his body curling lower to wrap around hers, and his face pressed into the dark of her hair. It felt the same against his face and smelled like magic and deep woods—just like when it was blond.

He could feel the mountain of things she wanted to say but hadn’t quite decided how. He certainly wasn’t going to rush her. Ever would happily wait a lifetime for her to put her words right, so long as he could wait with her.

Her fingers touched his arm, dancing across his skin and dragging the ripples of magic. Ever didn’t think she felt it the way he did. It was her own skin, after all, even if it was stained black by magic from fingertips to knuckles.

“Ever…” the witch started, her voice raw.

He opened his eyes, forehead against the back of her hair, listening to her heart beat and her breath drag deep. She had been so close to crossing that river yesterday—to throwing herself into an unknown that no one had ever returned from. He had meant what he’d said. He would follow her if she went in. He had seen her in those icy waters, like the cold hadn’t touched her. If anyone could survive what was in that forest, it was his witch.

A howl cut through the air outside, making the shadows of his own fenrir roll off his shoulders and snarl.

Invasion.

As if she understood that howl, his witch turned out of his arms and with no effort at all, drew her glamour over herself. She grew a head taller, broader and thicker, brushing past his side on her way to the front of the house.

She stopped by the door, leaning against the wall like she could see through it but didn’t dare to put her face in the window. “They’re here…”

He knew, because his pack knew, gathering and spreading out in the valley around the house, between the road and the woods. “I’ll take care of it,” Ever said, brushing a lock of now blond hair off her shoulder before grabbing the doorknob and letting a gust of winter air into the house.

He stepped outside and closed the door.

The black cars had come up that long road from Blood Country but stopped just in sight, lining the side of the road while one continued on alone.

Ever crossed the porch and stood on the top step, waiting.

Sky walked closer, the shape of a giant fenrir cutting through the thick snow on his way. He stopped, far enough away to make anyone who hadn’t fought a fenrir think they were safely out of distance.

The car pulled right up to the house and stopped, engine idling.

Ever waited. He kept his gaze on the car while other eyes in his pack watched the cars, estimating numbers and silently discussing strategy and odds. Was this the arm Blackwell had brought to start her war and take their land? Could they chase them off?

He felt Sunny slipping through the door between their territories, followed by a handful more into the house.

The door to the backseat opened and Primrose stepped out of the car. The wind pulled at the delicate gold adornments of Primrose’s vest and slacks, tugging the thin material of his dress shirt tight to his skin before whipping it the other way. He flashed Ever a smile like he was expected and lifted a hand, the gesture asking for a moment. He had not dressed for winter but he did not seem to notice the cold either, turning and reaching into the car with that same hand that had asked for patience.

He guided a human out, she wobbled and winced at the daylight. She had an ornate box curled in one arm against her narrow chest and leaned against the side of the car when he closed the door, giving her nowhere to go. It seemed that the car was all that held her up, legs shaking on bare feet in the snow. But she wasn’t shivering. She didn’t appear to be cold either, her cheeks flushed and her breath curling hot off her chapped lips.

The stink of pending death radiated off of her along with that sickly heat.

The packs growled. Ever’s lip curled. Everything inside of him raged to get her away from them—away from their land and their families and their town.

The human spoil did not hear the snarls, her head tipping back to roll her unfocused gaze across the afternoon sky. A thick, bloody tear pearled at the corner of her eye.

Blood sickness. She was a timebomb. The second she died, riding her last breath, the illness would escape into the wind. “What have you done?”

Primrose took a few steps away from her, toward Ever. “Nothing, yet. And nothing you can’t fix with a miracle. I hear you’re a wolf with access to miracles.”

Ever snapped his gaze back to the shade. A jolt shot along his spine, and he recognized it, at first vaguely and then with dawning horror. It was fear. He felt afraid for the first time since he was a kid because this shade had a reckoning on his tongue and was prepared to speak it.

“Do you know why wolves and witches don’t coexist, boy?”

Ever stared back at the other man, wondering if he too could feel the presence of the witch on the other side of the door, just inside his home, listening to every word.

“It wasn’t always the way of things. There was a time, long before your father and his father, when the fae were plentiful. Never enough to be their own kingdom but enough not to be thought extinct by most. They made the mistake of thinking we were their friends. Many of the midnights had witches in their courts, as did the sunrisen. But the witches thought they were our equals. They thought they were exempt from the lines we drew around our bloodlines and our races. They thought they could come and go freely.”

Ever hung on his words, heart pounding, but gaze flicking back to that sickly human against the side of the car. Every rattling breath she dragged could be her last and bring a plague to his land.

“My midnight never kept a witch in her court, but I saw what happened. We all did. Everyone knows how possessive immortals can be. As far as the courts were concerned, those witches belonged to them. But what could they do to keep them when bribery and emotional manipulation finally failed? Witches are dangerous.”

The human whined like she was trying to hum along to something only she heard. It was painful to watch and worse to feel how much he just wanted to shove her back into that car and close the door. “What did they do?” he asked, suspecting.

Primrose rolled a tongue against one fang, as though considering whether or not to share that next secret. “I don’t remember which court started the culling… They moved quickly, before the witches could suspect.”

“They killed all of them?” Ever wasn’t surprised. The shades must have had access to the magical bloodlines at that point, before they were spread out and so watered down that a true witch was beyond rare.

“It’s not a bloodline,” Prim said, watching him with those cunning eyes and either hearing his thoughts or divining them. He had Ever’s full attention. “The bloodlines you know are watered down and still rippling with magic, showing themselves in seers and scryers, crafters of the echo of that great unfathomable power, but no witch is born to the bloodline. The witches that have walked this world have never been the descendants of witches who walked before them. They are eternal in their own right. The midnights had figured it out already, or else they would not have risked the culling.

When a witch dies, their soul settles back into the soil and cultivates a new form. It can take a year or twenty, but eventually they are born again from the mud and roots, returned to the world and to our waiting hands. In the time before, they would be there waiting for one another, to guide them back into life and remind them of who they were and who they are. But the culling was all and when they woke again, it was only we who waited and we who told them who they were.” Prim’s smile twitched, uncontrollably cruel. “We don’t mind lying when it gets us what we want… But it never really made them more loyal to us. Eventually they strayed. Eventually the magic wielders always did as they pleased.” Primrose’s smile tightened, painfully honest in how much he seemed to like that and grieve it for them. “They stopped returning. Almost all of them. They just… never came up from the ground.”

But not Wren. Wren was here now. Wren was hunted by Baron. Why?

“It has been my rare pleasure to match deals in truths. They are the most efficient way to find terms, but not always accessible or suitable to trade. But this…” He grinned, looking around as if to take in the whole valley, the gathering pack, the house behind Ever, and the woods beyond. He nodded. “I think we can find terms, Hayes. I think we can finish this today and be done with one another.”

Ever curled a lip, flash fang. “Is that why you’ve come with an army and a plague?”

Primrose’s gaze snapped back to his, never more snakelike than in that moment. Ever wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if a slender, forked tongue had flicked past the shade’s lips. “Blackwell does not want your land and will not be buying it from you,” he announced. “We come with truths today, boy. All the truth and no time to waste,” he said like it pleased him. “We want your service in bringing something out of the woods and in return for that service, we will leave when it is done and not bother you again.”

Ever frowned. They wanted something in the woods to come out? Why? And what? “There’s nothing but monsters in those trees.”

Primrose shrugged. “Of course, just leaving isn’t payment enough for your help, lord of fur and tooth. We will keep the knowledge of your witch to ourselves,” he said in that deep, smooth voice. Ever felt a fist grip his heart. “We will not tell Baron where to find her, and,” those eyes were on his eyes, boring deep. “We will answer the question no one else can—Why can’t wolves and witches coexist? Why is she a curse to you? Why is Baron hunting her?”

The pause after those words seemed painfully long. The whole valley waited, even those long out of earshot. Primrose waited and Ever could hear Wren’s heart beat faster through the door behind his back. Would she run again? He had seen how terrified she was of Baron, but he knew the answer to those questions would be too much to resist. He wanted to know but she needed to know.

The doorknob turned.

Primrose grinned wider and Ever growled and pushed a step forward just to drive the shade another step back when she opened the door and stepped out onto the porch.

They could take this deal, but he couldn’t trust what they’d get from it or that the leeches would really leave his land and not come back. His gaze flicked out toward the line of cars on the road and the dozens of blood creatures standing outside them, waiting and watching.

His fenrir were just as still in the valley, staring right back. The slightest signal would set them all off and they would melt the snow with violence and bloodshed.

Bellamy stood beside him, the wind pulling at her blond hair and one gloved hand twisting in the pendants and chains she wore. She sneered at Primrose like she wasn’t scared and it was so convincing that Ever could have believed it if he didn’t know her so well.

Ever wasn’t sure if Prim believed her show or not, but he did believe that strange ripple of relief and sadness on the old shade’s face when he beheld her. His smile dimmed to something scant and polite. “Wren, is it?” He tipped his head and rolled a hand at his side in an ancient gesture. “We have never met, fae creature. I apologize for my tactics and for your fate. Even by our ideals, Kish has gone too far with you. It’s a waste. If any other house had claim to you, you’d be prized and pampered.”

Ever ground his teeth but Bellamy spoke. “Pampered until I tried to leave or didn’t do as I was told, right?”

Primrose’s smile grew and he gave a coy shrug. “We are all as we were made to be. The dogs are wild and proud just as the shades are possessive and dramatic.”

“And me?”

Prim sighed, a twinge of that sadness returning and Ever couldn’t fight the terrible feeling that this man was looking at her like the last of her kind. “You are free, despite all the imaginings and efforts of others, because the world is as you make it and your kind have never been able to see themselves broken. Baron has tried many times, yes, but never for long, and never truly succeeded. He can take your tongue before it curses him and your eyes before they spite him. He can take your hands to stop the weaving of your magic and trap you in that skin for a time, but he has never been able to break you.”

A growl rippled through the wolves in the valley as the words struck, not as a nasty threat or idea, but as a truth of something that had happened and would happen again.

“It is madness to hold a grudge for so long against someone who doesn’t even remember the crime,” Primrose continued, conceding as though they were on the same side.

Ever tasted blood on his teeth and realized it was his own, jaw clenched too tightly.

He shivered at the feeling of a conversation without words taking place along that psychic thread that bound his pack. No one outside of fenrir ever really understood how their packs worked. They saw one voice and one lead with their mortal eyes and tasted the word alpha, turning it over and over in their fantasies. But that figure was chosen. Ever was in charge because his pack put him there and together they had a thousand debates and arguments spoken and felt across that connective spirit.

There was no debate this time.

There was no disagreement.

He shivered and the pack as a whole relaxed. They were of one mind now and that mind said to make the deal, give Blackwell what she wants. Let her come in close, let her look at the woods. That mind said to tell Baron where to find the witch too because that mind, his pack, his heart, said they were going to kill every damn shade until the whole of Blood Country understood—the witch was going nowhere. The fenrir would give up nothing.

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frieslxver · 6 months

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Kill {elena/stefan/katherine fic pt. 6}

The gif limit is so irritating LOL. Hope you enjoy it.

Link to part 1: https://zalrb.tumblr.com/post/707929608286240768/toxic-elenastefankatherine-fic

Link to part 2: https://zalrb.tumblr.com/post/709460774203064320/valentines-day-elenastefankatherine-fic-pt-2

Link to part 3: https://zalrb.tumblr.com/post/709838031967879168/choices-elenastefankatherine-fic-pt-3

Link to part 4: https://zalrb.tumblr.com/post/710274615200628736/blood-elenastefankatherine-fic-pt-4

Link to part 5: https://zalrb.tumblr.com/post/710584105290579968/boundaries-elenastefankatherine-fic-pt-5

Katherine was cackling. “Damon, did I ever tell you, you’re my hero?”

“Shut up,” he snapped.

“No, I mean it. You tried to kill me to get your girlfriend back and ended up shooting your girlfriend instead? You’re phenomenal.”

“Shut up!” This time it was Stefan who spoke but he hadn’t turned away from Elena.

He held her gaze and Elena found herself sinking into him as he drew into her, everything else, everything around them irrelevant or nonexistent. Like always. She barely felt it when he took the arrow out of her leg.

“Are you in pain?” he asked gently.

She shook her head.

“Oh give it a rest, she’s a fucking vampire,” snapped Katherine.

Stefan didn’t bother responding. He touched the side of Elena’s face. A natural response when he wanted to comfort her. She held onto his wrist.

Damon watched the two of them, unsure of what hurt more, the fact that they never stopped sharing this kind of intimacy or the fact that they couldn’t help but display it whenever they were around each other. That that had always been the fact of them. He was glad that the two bottles of whisky he drank had somewhat numbed him.

Katherine watched Damon’s observation and pushed further.

“Of course, even if you had managed to kill me,” she said. “It wouldn’t change that the love of your life is in love with the love of mine.”

“SHUT UP!”

All three of them shouted. And still, Katherine observed, Elena and Stefan hadn’t looked away from each other. She felt something in her rise.

“But, Damon, you can be honest with me,” she said, walking closer to him.

“Get closer at your own risk,” he said.

“Elena isn’t the only reason you came here tonight, is she?” she said, ignoring his warning. “Part of you can’t stand it. Me and Stefan together.”

Damon made a noise of disgust. “Don’t make me sick.”

Katherine smiled and started tracing her finger across his chest. He slapped her hand away.

“Have you ever thought about why you’re so angry with me? Why you try so hard to kill me?”

“Because the world would be a better place with one less evil slut in it?”

“Witty,” she said.

“Just telling it like it is.”

“Humour as a defense mechanism gets a little old, Damon. Food for thought,” she said, already getting bored of the subject of her seduction. But he wasn’t the target.

“But you won’t let yourself think about it, won’t you?” She started brushing his hair. He clenched his jaw but didn’t move. “Why do you kill people, Damon? Lexi. Zach. Reminders of your humanity? There’s a part of you deep down that still wants me. That will always want me. And it kills you that Stefan gets to have me.”

With each word she spoke, Katherine could see something in Damon unravel. She glanced over to see if Stefan had looked away from Elena, to see if saw her and Damon together. He hadn’t turned away from her.

Stefan parted his lips to ask Elena another question and then suddenly ---

Searing pain. He cried out and then looked down to the source of his pain. The arrow was now speared through his leg.

“Now you can both have matching injuries,” said Katherine as she dug the arrow into Stefan’s flesh so that he grunted in pain. “Wouldn’t that be cute?”

“STOP.” Elena got up to charge at her but Damon blocked her. She pounded against him and he held her, carrying her over to the side.

“DAMON, LET ME GO.”

“She’ll tear you apart.”

Katherine bent down to whisper in Stefan’s ear. “Remember what I said about being ignored?”

He glared at her. She withdrew the arrow from his leg and tossed it to the side. Katherine sauntered down the hall but Stefan, furious, called out after her.

“KATHERINE.”

She stopped.

“I don’t know what mood you’re in,” he said. “I don’t know what point you’re going to go out and make but leave Matt out of it.”

Katherine smirked at the gravity of his tone. “Matt,” she said. “Now, there’s an idea.”

And then she sped off.

Damon was brushing Elena’s hair to the side and trying to see if she was OK.

“I’m fine, really,” she said patiently.

“Well I’m not,” said Stefan, getting up and pushing Damon against a wall. “What the hell were you thinking?” He shook him slightly. “You could’ve killed her!”

“I didn’t know she was going to be here!” He glared at Elena. “I didn’t know that a day after we broke up, she would go and stalk my brother at his fuck buddy’s apartment.”

“You could’ve had it worse,” said Stefan harshly. “Speaking from experience.”

Elena looked at him. “Stefan…”

He shook his head. “I should make sure Matt’s OK.”

Damon scoffed. “She’s not going to Matt Donovan. He’s… Matt Donovan. She made her point with him, she’s not --- no way.”

Stefan looked at him wearily. “Damon, don’t try to kill Matt just because he’s the latest pawn in whatever sick game Katherine’s playing.”

“I’m telling you, she’s moved on.”

“Right.”

Elena was running her hand through her hair. “Stefan, I want to continue our conversation.”

“Your conversation?” Damon asked her incredulously. “What about our conversation?”

“I can’t talk to you when you’re like this, Damon,” said Elena. “Like, how much did you drink?”

“I am perfectly capable of having a conversation about---”

“About what? The conversation where we broke up and you almost break Matt’s wrist? The conversation where I saw ‘we need to break up’ and you don’t say anything, you just leave, and I have to warn everyone I’ve ever known to watch out for you because I don’t know what kind of rampage you’re going to go on?”

“But I didn’t go on a rampage!” said Damon “I came here! I came here to end all of your problems.”

“And you got so drunk to do it that you shot me!”

“I thought you said you forgave me for that!”

Elena closed her eyes. “My point is, this is not the right time for us to talk!”

Damon laughed harshly. “But it’s the right time for you and Stefan?”

“No,” said Stefan. “I have to make sure Katherine doesn’t ---”

Elena put her hand on either side of Stefan’s face and brought his gaze to hers. “Follow her. Or come with me,” she said.

Damon watched them and snorted. “You can’t even fucking help it, can you?”

They turned to look at him and Damon shook his head. “It’s always the fucking same.”

They decided to speak outside. When they made it out of the building, Stefan stopped walking. Elena continued for a few steps then realizing he wasn’t keeping pace, she turned around and saw him looking at her, pissed off and distressed.

“You said you didn’t know why you came here, you were just here, but what am I supposed to do with that, Elena? What are you doing?”

She continued toward him. “Fighting for you.”

Stefan closed his eyes. “Well, don’t.” It’s only getting you hurt. I can’t stand it.

She shook her head. “Old habits, I guess.”

Stefan scoffed. “Yeah,” he said in disbelief. Elena glared at him.

“Don’t rewrite history just because it makes you feel better.”

He looked at her then. “I have nothing to feel guilty about.”

It was true, he didn’t. And yet that was all he felt now. All he felt whenever he saw Elena after he saw Katherine.

Elena was inches from him now. “But you’re not happy with her.”

“Maybe that’s not what I’m looking for right now.”

Elena cocked her head, bewildered. “I can’t even fathom that.”

“I never remember asking you to try,” said Stefan calmly.

“You know this is bad for you,” she said.

“Elena, I’m not looking for your approval.”

She wasn’t listening. She pointed toward the apartment building. “You know she is bad for you.”

Of course he knew that. “Can’t you just stop?”

“No,” she said.

It was Stefan’s turn to be surprised, his expression a mixture of exasperation and desperation. “This has nothing to do with you.”

“I don’t care.”

Stefan looked at her sharply and felt a pang, an ache, at seeing the sincerity in Elena’s eyes.

“Giving up is not what we do, Stefan. We don’t stop,” said Elena, holding his gaze so he could understand how serious she was. “I didn’t stop when you went off the deep end with Klaus. You didn’t stop when Jeremy died.”

“I haven’t lost my humanity.”

Elena snorted. “No, just your mind.”

“Sleeping with Katherine doesn’t constitute an emergency.”

“Doesn’t it? After all the shit she’s pulled over the years---”

“She did what she had---”

“Don’t defend her!”

“Why shouldn’t I?” he yelled back, words rushing out before he could stop himself. “After all the energy we spend defending Damon, holding up the lie that being with you has reigned him in, the fantasy we’ve constructed for ourselves just so we could all feel better about your choice?

“Wow,” she said, her eyes getting teary. “How long have you been holding that one in?”

Stefan closed his eyes and sighed. “I just want to know when you decided you were the only one who got to have a pass on who you sleep with.”

Elena shook her head. She wasn’t going to let him rationalize. “You know why I couldn’t stop at the time.”

“Yeah, because you didn’t want to,” he said harshly.

“I explained what was happening with me. I explained why I felt like I had to continue. I explained myself, Stefan. I explained why I couldn’t stop. Why can’t you? Do you love her?”

Stefan threw his head back in anguished frustration. “Stop asking me that, you know it isn’t that.”

“And you know what it is,” she said, her voice getting louder. “So tell me!”

“What do you want to hear, Elena?” He was shouting. “You want to hear that it makes me sick? Well it does! But the rush I get? I can’t ---” He took a deep breath. “I can’t stop! Is this what you mean? This is what you want to hear?”

His words shattered her but Elena wouldn’t back down. “It’s only fair isn’t it? You had to hear what I felt about Damon even though it was against my will. It’s your turn.”

He shook his head. “I’m not doing tit for tat.”

“It’s only fair.”

“I’m not hurting you because you hurt me.”

“I am demanding that we talk about it!”

“Fine!” He roared.

“Fine, let’s talk about it! Let’s talk about how good the sex is, that I’ve had her every which way for hours on end and it’s still, somehow, not enough! Let’s talk about how it feels like I’m addicted to her, like I’m hooked on the high I get when I’m around her! Let’s talk about how right now, I can’t see an end in sight! You really want to talk about that? You really want to hear that? Really? Do you want me to go on?”

Stefan burrowed his face in his hands, unable to bear the expression on her face.

“It’s toxic,” she said finally. “She’s toxic.”

“I know,” he said, looking up at her. He shrugged dejectedly. “I don’t seem to care.”

Elena couldn’t hide the tears brimming her eyes and Stefan shook his head. “I can’t -- I’m done. I’m done talking.”

Elena nodded. “Fine, Stefan,” she said. “Whatever.”

She walked away and Stefan took a shaky breath.

Elena was halfway to her dorm before she turned around and headed back to Katherine’s building. She didn’t know what she expected to find when she broke into her apartment. Katherine? Katherine and Stefan together? But it was empty. She looked around the living room, unsure of what she was searching for, what evidence she wanted to torture herself with, until she found it. The mirror Stefan broke hours before, when she heard him groan and sigh because of another woman. She put a hand to her stomach like she was going to be physically ill.

“You know you’ve broken his heart a thousand times, I guess he gets to do it to you just once.”

Elena turned to see Katherine standing by the window, watching her inspect the apartment.

“I came back looking for you,” said Elena. “But you weren’t here. Where were you? With Matt?”

Katherine shrugged. “Maybe I was with Stefan.”

Elena narrowed her eyes.

“I could give you the tour,” Katherine continued. “There isn’t an inch of this place where I haven’t taken him.”

Elena felt herself teetering on some kind of emotional edge.

“I could even show you the balcony door he smashed just to get to me.” Katherine’s tone was light, as if she were making casual conversation. “I wonder if you’ve ever seen him that wild with arousal, that … determined.”

Elena knew what his determination felt like and remembered, with painful clarity, the weekend she and Stefan had gone to her parents’ cabin. The night the wolves had attacked, and the fight they’d gotten into after.

“A hundred and sixty-two years I have lived, and you've barely begun, and now you want to let yourself get killed? That's not heroic. It's tragic.”

He’d walked away from her, angry and anguished, but he hadn’t left the cabin. He wasn’t going far, not after the attack. He’d stayed around, making sure they were safe inside, making sure she felt OK, making her tea, getting her blankets, but he was quiet and contemplative, silently agonizing over their conversation, a desperation, a wordless indignation at what she’d revealed to him about her deal with Elijah. And when they’d gotten into bed, Stefan lying on his side, facing away from her, Elena staring up at the ceiling, she lay next to him for exactly five minutes before shaking her head and sighing.

“I can’t go to sleep like this,” she said. “With you angry at me. I--” She turned so she could face him, though all she saw was his back. “Stefan, please try to under---”

He’d rolled over and kissed her with an earnestness that moved her to immediately put her arms around his neck.

His hand slid up her back and he pressed her forward, closing the small gap between them, pulling her into him, bringing her firmly against his body so that her leg curled around his hip. He was taking great care with his strength -- she could feel his urge to tighten his hold and crush her to him, to make absolutely sure there was no space between their bodies, and him having to restrain his needs ignited her. She massaged his tongue with hers and his hand went from her back to her face, taking a hold of her chin and guiding her mouth to his for a deepened kiss that was both desperate and possessive and that made Elena shiver and crave more.

He tugged her bottom lip with his teeth. She wrapped her leg around him tighter and when she felt his ever-moving, ever-present hold beneath her, pressing her into him so she could feel his hardness, she moaned in his mouth and turned so that he was on his back and she was on top.

She kissed him again, her hips moving so that she rubbed against him, eliciting strangled sounds from him and she moved to his neck, gently biting, feeling his lips on her shoulder, his hands gripping her tank top, threatening to rip it apart. She skated her lips along his face, placing gentle kisses on his forehead. He sucked and kissed her throat, making her sigh and smile and sway with more vigor.

It killed her to pull away but she did it to see his face, drink in his expression, and as she did, Stefan took her hand and slipped it under his shirt. She lightly grazed her fingernails along his stomach, luxuriating in the tautness of his torso, living for the way her touch made his skin jump and turned his breathing shallow. Staring up at her, he guided her hand upward to his chest, and kept it there, kept his hand atop hers. She felt his heart racing beneath her palm, and her lips parted. His eyes, serious and wild, peered into hers, and she knew they were continuing their conversation, he was making his case, making her feel his plea.

It was excruciatingly intimate, the boldness of his vulnerability and Elena was so overcome with emotion, she started to tremble. But she didn’t look away from him, didn’t move her hand because she wanted him to know her choice wasn’t despite him, wasn’t excluding him, it was because of him, because of this. How could she feel this, how could he make her feel this, and expect her not to do everything in her power to keep him safe? How could he ask her to do that? She swallowed hard, opening and closing her mouth a few times before speaking.

“Stefan---”

He raised his head and kissed her again, groaning as he claimed her mouth, and turned so that she found herself lying on the mattress beneath him.

He was quick, sliding off her tank top and kissing his way downward to her waistband slipping off her shorts. He was between her thighs, his tongue making her bow off the bed, her face pushed into a pillow that she bit and whimpered into. She raised his head and moved forward, sitting up to help him take off his shirt, to kiss his stomach, to run her tongue along his skin, to make him pant and sigh.

He kissed her again, burrowing back into the bed, gripping and massaging the contours of her body, nibbling and clutching so that she was gasping and shaking and lightheaded and feeling, just feeling how her body responded to him, the claim he had over her. They were entwined yet not joined and him against but not inside her maddened her. She could feel the intensity of his arousal, and whether to give him some relief or to torture him as much as he was torturing her, she reached down and felt him. He made a noise somewhere between a moan and a sob, like this would be the last time they would ever be together like this.

His voice was strangled, his words incoherent. “Please…I have to … I have to…”

Elena was gasping. “If you don’t I’ll kill you.”

The way he moved, as if he were physically trying to make them one, made her warble and cry out.

His determination to make her feel him, feel what it was to be alive, had her grabbing at him, pulling at the sheets, whimpering and begging, answering his pleas with pleas of her own. He’d awakened every atom in her body to him, and feeling his heart beat wildly against her chest had in turn made her wild and overwhelmed --- a mess of sensations. She was overcome with the singular feeling that she could never, ever give this up, she never wanted to live without this. He rocked into her deeper and deeper as if to say, So then stay with me, stay with me, stay with me …

“It must kill you to want him back and know he wants nothing to do with you,” said Katherine now.

Elena walked over to Katherine’s bar and poured herself a drink. That memory was a shard in her chest and she had to take the edge off. “Yeah.” She took a sip. “Do you want to know what makes it worse?”

Katherine raised her eyebrows. “Elena Gilbert tells all.”

“He loved me. He loved me so much.” Elena did her best to keep her tone steady. “That kind of love, it…changed everything for me. It saved my life.”

Katherine felt slightly nauseous, her words echoed what Stefan had told her once, back when he thought she was Elena: “When we were together, every atom in my body told me that we were the right fit, it was the perfect match, and that kind of love, it can change your whole life.”

“And now he’s gone,” said Elena simply. “I didn’t think about that, not really, because I’ve never thought of him being gone, never thought about how much that would …” She took another sip so the vodka would burn away the anguish she felt. She paused, as if she were trying to gather her words. “I think the only thing that would be worse is being with him and never being loved by him.” She looked at Katherine, her eyes hardened. A harshness twisted her face.

“So you should tell me, how does that feel? Do you think it’s worse?”

Katherine’s eyes flashed. She hadn’t anticipated such precise cruelty. Rather than acting on her impulse to slam Elena’s head in the wall, she tried to play it off with a scoff. “How predictably boring that you think everything is as black and white as love. What we have transcends."

Elena laughed. Cackled. With a hint of craze. Whatever edge there’d been, she’d teetered off it. Katherine furrowed her eyebrows in partial annoyance and confusion.

“You sound like a donkey,” she said. “Are you having an aneurysm?”

“Sorry, it’s just, it’s just,” Elena continued to laugh.

“You think that you and him actually have something. You think it’s, oh my God,” she put her drink back down, walked across the room and reached out to touch Katherine’s shoulder, “you think it’s special.”

Katherine removed Elena’s hand from her shoulder and clenched her wrist, her fingers grinding into her bones. “I think I reach a part of him, a base, animalistic part of him--” Elena was determined not to wince at the words “-- you’ve never, could never touch.”

“Right,” said Elena, nodding frantically, ignoring the pain both physical and emotional. “Even if that was true, you wouldn’t be the only one. You wouldn’t even be the first.”

Katherine flung Elena’s hand away. “Oh please.”

“You stalked him for years, Katherine, he told me what you said to him the night of the masquerade ball. You’re telling me you don’t remember Chicago? You don’t remember Rebekah?”

Katherine’s eyes narrowed and Elena felt a terrible glee.

“I had him before Rebekah,” said Katherine. “I had him before anyone.”

“I don’t know where you’ve been --- oh that’s right, hell --- but you’re wrong. Valerie did.”

An anger started to simmer within Katherine, Elena could see it. She relished it. She was past jealousy, past heartbreak, and had plummeted to a venomous, exhilarating spite that pushed her to spew words she knew would cut, would wound.

“But you don’t care about that,” said Elena. “You care about the part of him only you can reach but I’ve read his journals.”

Elena did her best to ignore that the imagery she was conjuring, that the thought of Stefan with Rebekah, with anyone else, the thought of him giving another woman even a sliver of what he’d given her at the cabin, hurt her just as much.

“He’s a descriptive writer. Especially about the, um -- how did he describe it? -- oh yeah, ‘crazy sex’ they’d have, the limits she would push him to, but you, you probably saw it.”

She wanted to inflict damage. Katherine had pushed her to this. Katherine and Stefan together had pushed her to this.

“Did you see when Rebekah jerked him off at a full booth in Gloria’s? Or after, when he bent her over the hood of his car?” This was the last thing she wanted to think about and yet she couldn’t stop. “Or were you there for the knife play?“ It occurred to her that she could maybe understand some of Stefan’s sentiment. She could barely recognize herself in this moment and picturing the things she was speaking of made her want to break something, but seeing Katherine struggle to keep her face impassive was an addictive exercise. She could see how she could become an addiction.

“He did none of that with you,” she said finally. “If you are special to him, Katherine, it’s for all the wrong reasons. You’re the bitch who ruined his life.”

“No,” said Katherine, inching closer to Elena, staring her dead in the eye. “I’m the only one he’s sleeping with right now. I’m that bitch.” Katherine didn’t know if it was rage or heartbreak that flickered in Elena’s eyes but it was enough to satisfy her. “You can let yourself out,” she said as she slipped out of the living room.

Elena overturned the coffee table and smashed a lamp.

Katherine had taken a few steps into Stefan’s room when she was suddenly pushed to the floor and a glowering Stefan was hovering over her, pinning her down by her wrists.

“You touch her again, I’ll put you in the ground.”

“And I thought you would’ve cooled off by now. It’s been a day.”

“Do you understand?”

“This is nothing you haven’t said before,” said Katherine casually.

Stefan lowered his head so she couldn’t escape his gaze even if she wanted to. His face was etched with a protective rage that she’d only ever seen when it came to Elena. “I will kill you. I am not joking.”

He wasn’t. Katherine could tell. He wasn’t threatening her, he was explaining the realities of the situation. When he felt like they understood each other, he released her. Katherine stood up and started straightening out her clothes. Stefan walked to the other side of the room and started to pace. Interesting, she thought. He would kill her for Elena but he wasn’t kicking her out of his room now. Katherine regarded him and contemplated the conundrum of a situation they were in.

She could have anyone. She’d had. It was a particular gift of hers --- getting men to die for her, to kill for her, to worship her, revere her, to do anything and everything for her, and dozens of them had over the years just for the promise of being with her.

And none of it mattered.

All she’d wanted, all she’d ever wanted, was Stefan. He had her completely. He always had. She had no pride when it came to him, to her desire for him, the fact that she was still here after that threat was proof of this, but she had to pretend that she had pride now. It was a game. To make him blink. Make him flinch. To get him to worship her, get him to need her. To get him on his knees before her, to make him hers, even for a moment, even for a second, to obliterate the unrelenting, nagging tie to that bland, self-righteous, lesser version of herself. She had to make him scared of losing the feeling he got when he was with her, the pleasure, the power. She had to make him scared of losing her.

“So then maybe we shouldn’t do this anymore,” said Katherine, examining her nails.

Stefan looked at her from across the room and then laughed.

Katherine quirked her eyebrow. “I don’t believe I said anything funny.”

“On the contrary, I find false threats quite amusing.”

“We all have our limits, Stefan.”

“Not you. Not with me.”

His dark tone aroused her but instead of letting him see that, she narrowed her eyes. “You really think that I can’t cut myself off from you? I have other avenues for fun, for pleasure.”

Stefan paused briefly before speaking. “That where you’ve been?”

Katherine tried not to grin but Stefan’s not-so-hidden jealousy energized her in a way that nothing else did.

“Are you asking if I fucked Matt?”

His face was impassive. “Did you?”

Katherine giggled. “As you’ve made so painfully clear to me, you and I are not together. So I don’t think what I do on my own time is any of your business.”

“Mm,” said Stefan, scratching his chin. “Well, he’s too good for you and he knows better.”

Katherine smiled. “So do you, remember?”

Stefan glared at her.

“Me, on the other hand, I think I’m finally smartening up.”

“Meaning you’re ending this.”

Katherine shrugged. “Why not?”

Stefan sped over to her, a breath of a gap between them.

“Katherine,” his voice was low, soft. It made her quiver. “You and I both know that if I told you to get on your knees right now you’d do it.”

She would. God, she would. “Rules have changed.”

He pressed his lips against her ear. “I thought there were no rules.” He nipped the bottom of her earlobe.

Katherine’s breath hitched and without thinking, she grasped the back of his head. She felt him grin against her. She wouldn’t stop him from kissing her, nuzzling her neck. She couldn’t. But she could stop herself. From going further. Unless ---

“I want the part of you she never got.”

He stopped. “I gave her everything,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Stefan---”

He looked at her now. “I. Gave her. Everything.” His eyes were blazing. Her suggestion angered him. Katherine was beyond irritated. It was one thing to keep protecting her but even now, even after everything, he was still protective of his bond with her. She wanted to stab him again, rip him to shreds, tear him apart for being so predictably foolish. It was also what made her want him more.

She closed her eyes in an effort to tamper her jealousy, her anger, her incredulity. She had to remind herself that she’d expected this. In fact, she’d counted on it. She’d needed it for what she was going to propose next. She couldn’t get swept up in the immediacy of her indignation.

“Fine,” she said, opening her eyes to look at him. “So then fight for me. Keep me from walking out that door. Make me stay here.”

Katherine’s eyes glinted with a primal kind of malice.

This was the part of him, the piece of him neither Elena nor Rebekah got. Because they’d never been in a position like this, a position where Stefan had to admit to wanting something he would do anything not to want. Elena may have gotten his love and Rebekah may have gotten his chaos, but he would give her his defeat and begrudgingly, he would delight in it. Relish in it. And only she would feel that in his body, in his movements, in how he decided to take her.

“Tell me that you want this,” she continued. “Tell me you’ll go crazy without it.” She traced his lips with her finger. “Tell me you crave me.” She held his gaze, her eyes turning steely with a dark desire as she gritted her teeth. “Beg me.”

He glared at her. He hated this game. He loved this game.

“Beg me and I’m yours.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Who told you that I wanted you to be mine?”

She touched him through his jeans and he couldn’t help it. He closed his eyes. She grinned.

“You did,” she said, rubbing him. “Your body can’t lie.”

He sighed.

She moved her hand in earnest. “If you could have me in a cage, you would.”

He made a soft, desperate sound.

Faster still. Katherine raised her eyebrows. “Liking that imagery?”

“I fucking hate you,” he whispered.

“But you love fucking me.”

His jaw clenched.

“Say it.”

He stayed tight-lipped. His defiance was as hot as it was frustrating.

Katherine shrugged. “Fine.”

She walked out of his room but then found herself backing into it again. Stefan had intercepted her in the hallway, blocking her path, and started walking, guiding her back to where they were a moment ago. His expression was dangerous. Katherine’s skin tingled. He was doing what she told him to. Keeping her from leaving. But she needed the words. She needed his surrender.

“You want me to stay here,” she said. “Say it.”

He took a hold of her, his grasp tight enough to break the bones of a human, and kissed her violently, bruising her lips, thrusting his tongue in her mouth, making her knees buckle and head swim.

There was no affection, just an angry passion. She pulled her mouth away and slapped him hard across the face, splitting his lip, her fingernails clawing his skin with one sharp rake that left scratches on his cheek. His eyes reddened and veins darkened his face, his upper lip curled as fangs descended. Katherine grabbed him by the back of his head and forced him to her, kissing him again, pushing him to a wall. She bit his tongue, making him wrench away. Reacting instinctively, he grasped her throat and lowered her to her knees. She looked up at him with excitement, her eyes daring him.

He blinked rapidly and his irises were back to their normal green, the veins disappeared from his face, his fangs were gone. Now that his senses had returned, he let go of Katherine but his hand, trembling, still hovered around her neck, as if itching to continue. This, Katherine thought triumphantly, he’d never do, never have to do, never feel with his precious Elena. Or that wench Rebekah. This battle within himself, that belonged to her.

Katherine started unbuckling his belt, undoing his fly, but then stopped and looked up at him. “If I refused you right now, it would kill you,” she said. “Say it.”

He glowered down at her, breathing heavily.

“Say it, Stefan.”

He gritted his teeth.

“Say it.”

She kissed just below his navel, teasing to go lower. He furrowed his eyebrows and threw his head back. Katherine felt the tension in his body, felt his legs straining with anticipation. But he remained silent.

Fine again. She stood up and pushed him away, making him stagger backwards from the force of her strength. She started toward the door again. He grabbed her by the wrist and whirled her back to him, sinking his teeth into her neck. Her body jerked with pleasure. He grunted. His hands explored her body, gripping and grabbing, holding her to him in a way that made it feel like he wanted to break her to possess her. He hated her. He wanted her. He’d have her then. He’d have her and nothing else until he succumbed.

Katherine pushed him onto the bed and climbed atop him, her knees rested on the mattress on either side of his face. She held onto the headboard as he gripped her thighs and pleased her so that she clenched and trembled and panted, grinding against the movement of his tongue. Everything in her heated with a carnal delight that had her murmuring and begging and racing to the climax, and it wasn’t until she half out of her mind and until sweat misted her skin, until she was gripping his hair, pushing his face deeper into her, until she couldn’t take it anymore, until her body was wound so tight and was begging for the kind of release only he could ever give her in all of the centuries she’d been alive that she realized that Stefan was punishing her.

Because he knew. He knew that more than wanting him to please her, she wanted to hear her name on his lips, hear the noises she could elicit from him. She wanted his body at her mercy, wanted him concentrating on no one, nothing else but her, she wanted him in her web and he was testing to see who could outlast who.

It was too late for her to turn back now, she couldn’t bring herself to stop, to make him stop, they had to keep going, the pleasure was too agonizingly exquisite, too powerful for her not to feel it in its full force. If she didn’t get the release, she would die. She was sure of it.

When she finally came apart above him, Stefan unseated her so that she collapsed onto the bed, spent and aroused and irritated. He got up and started to leave the room. She scrambled off the bed too.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”

In a second, he was in front of her. He held her by the chin, forcing her head up so she could look her directly in the eye.

“You have to decide, Katherine, what’s more important, having your pride or having me.”

Katherine glared, yet her skin, her blood, her body was still humming from the climax he’d just given her. It was odd feeling completely satisfied and entirely annoyed at the same time. This wasn’t how the game was supposed to go. He looked down at her smugly. She’d been playing him. But he’d been playing her.

It was Stefan’s turn to shrug. “OK.”

He left. He almost made it to the stairs and then was slammed down onto his back, a vice grip on his throat, a finger in his mouth that he instinctively started to suck. Katherine had a chip on her shoulder now and ravished him accordingly. At least, at the very least, she would make him call out for her like she was some kind of higher power. Fuck him for ruining her game, fuck him for thinking he won. She would make him submit, she would enslave him with pleasure. She took him and he bucked and writhed and swore, squirming from the feel of her mouth on him, he was thrusting his hips and begging her not to stop and cursing her name, frantic and wild and helpless because he couldn’t lie, couldn’t pretend that she didn’t do this to him.

His voice came out in clipped hisses.“God, I hate you… I … Katherine …”

An anguished intake of breath. A realization. “Am I hearing what I think I am?”

Damon stood in the foyer of the Salvatore Mansion, his phone out, on speaker, Elena on the other end.

“No mistaking that, babe.”

Damon hadn’t wanted Katherine to be right. He’d convinced himself since meeting Elena that she was nothing to him, a lapse in judgment, a terrible mistake. But when he came home to hear her with Stefan, he felt a misery settle in on him that he was all too familiar with, that he’d spent over a century living with, that had altered and deepened and intensified in more contemporary times when he’d hear the laughing and moaning and poorly made attempts at quiet pleasure in this house, with his most current ex girlfriend. Hearing Katherine and Stefan together had triggered in him a tumultuous urge to source out his pain, raze everything around him and who better to start with than the other woman who could trigger this feeling, who had triggered this feeling before, who had broken up with him because of his brother who was too busy making these sounds that were causing him misery to want anything to do with her. The irony of that was too sweet to keep to himself.

“From the sounds of it, they’re in the hallway.”

The line remained silent. All that could be heard were the moans and the grunts and the cries of pleasure from the two vampires entwined upstairs.

Damon continued. “Like they know other people live here but they just don’t give a shit. At least you two kept it to the bedroom. I guess I could forgive them, I’ve been shacking up with you the last few days, maybe they didn’t think I’d be home.”

Still silent.

“I wonder how often they do this.”

Silent.

“I’m pretty sure he’s bending her over the banister right now.”

“Bye, Damon.”

Elena hung up the phone. For a second, she thought that being at The Grill would be enough incentive to calm her nerves, keep her from reacting strongly, but then Stefan’s voice hungry with need came back to her, the way he said ‘Katherine’ ringing through her head, the way she heard his moans when she’d showed up to the apartment, and she threw her phone against the wall, then the glass she was sipping from, watching it break into pieces. A few patrons looked nervously at her.

“Whoa, what did I miss?” said Caroline, sitting next to her.

“Just Katherine and Stefan fucking each other senseless.”

Suddenly, there was a crash and Elena and Caroline turned to see that Matt had dropped a few bottles. His face was contorted with pain. Elena shook her head, contrite.

“Oh, Matt, I’m sorry--”

He didn’t say anything and just walked through the swinging doors to the kitchen. Elena threw up her hands.

“Is that really the effect that she has? What does she have, a magical vagina? Matt swears nothing happened between them and she still has him so twisted up, what is the deal?”

“Mm. Some could say the same about you,” Caroline muttered.

Elena turned to her. “What?”

“Nothing,” said Caroline. “It was a joke. Sort of.”

Elena was too miserable to continue. “Where’s Bonnie? I thought she was the one who wanted to meet.”

“Yeah, I think she found something in her Grams’ books that she wants to share.”

“The timing couldn’t be better because with Stefan…”

Caroline looked at her, vaguely sympathetic. “You two are in a weird place, huh?”

“I keep fighting with him,” she said. “I’ve never fought with him this much. She’s ruining everything.”

Caroline looked at her tentatively. “Then maybe you should give him space until we figure out how to get rid of her.”

“I know I should,” said Elena. “I just can’t.”

“He probably gets that,” said Caroline.

“I don’t know. The things he said about her, about them… He knows she has her claws in him and he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care anymore.”

“It’s a phase.”

Elena snorted and took another sip of her drink. “Some phase.”

“Elena, he loved you …” Caroline paused as if she were remembering “so completely and you left him for his brother. And not just any brother. Damon.”

“Are you trying to make me feel like shit?”

“I’m just saying that’s going to have some kind of effect. Maybe he’s lost right now.”

“And Katherine’s the answer?”

“He’ll figure out the answer,” said Caroline. “On his own. At least for now.” Caroline looked at Elena to see if she would show some sign of understanding. “I’m going to check on Matt.”

Elena nodded in acknowledgement as Caroline headed into the kitchen. She mulled over her words and decided they were irrelevant.

She was going to pull Stefan back. Even if it killed her.

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frieslxver · 6 months

Text

The First Meetings {SE Fic}

This was fun, though I'm mad I couldn't use all the gifs I wanted.

Elena stood on Wickery Bridge and peered down to the river below. As she examined the water, she saw it all: her parents’ car skidding off the road, plummeting into the depths. The water filling the car. Her father pounding the window. Her mother unconscious. The panic. The fear. The acceptance. The darkness. And then she woke up in the hospital. Her parents were recovering in different rooms on the same floor. It’d been a close call. Too close.

She didn’t tell anyone about it, not her parents or her brother, not her aunt Jenna, not Caroline, not even Bonnie, but every day since that night, she’d come to the bridge. She’d spent a lot of summer mornings just standing here, sometimes sitting against the railing, writing in her diary, before meeting up with whoever or doing whatever. Like a ritual. She couldn’t really articulate why she did it. She couldn’t really articulate how she felt since that night either. Everyone expected that she was fine because she was fine, her parents were fine, everything was fine.

Maybe a week, a month of being jittery -- that was to be anticipated -- but now, it was time to go back to the way things were, the way she was. The only difference she’d really seen with her parents was that her dad had started spending more time with Jeremy, as if trying to make up for the possibility of lost time. But she and her mom were back to their routine. So she was back to hers.

Suddenly -- a caw. The noise disrupted her thoughts. A crow flew by and perched beside her. Elena startled. A crow on the bridge where she nearly died, how fitting. It didn’t leave. It hopped closer to her.

“Go away.”

It started to flap around her. What was its problem? “Shoo!” Stubborn damn bird. She turned to bat it away only to find the crow gone and a dark-haired man standing behind her. Her hand flew to her chest.

“Oops,” he said, his blue eyes glinting. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

Elena didn’t answer right away. “I just didn’t know anyone else was here.”

He was grinning at her. Elena didn’t know how she felt about it. It was playful but there was something else there to it, something that made her a bit uneasy, like she should be ready to run at a moment’s notice. She blinked at him. Wait a minute…

“I know you,” she said, taking in the leather jacket, the blue eyes, the smile that in a second could turn to a leer.

They’d met months before. Four months before to be exact. On the night of the crash. Before everything changed. He’d come out of nowhere, just like he did now, and he thought she was someone else, someone called … what was that name, it’d been a ‘k’ name or a ‘c’ name…

“I do have a pretty unforgettable face,” he said now.

Elena nodded. “D..Da…Damien, right?”

He paused, something sharp and painful flitted over his face and then it was gone. “Damon,” he corrected.

Right. That was right.

“You should be careful out here, all alone.” He gestured around the empty bridge.

Not to be rude or anything, Damon, but it’s kind of creepy that you’re out here in the middle of nowhere.

You’re one to talk.

Pieces of the conversation they’d had in May were coming back to her as he said, “Been catching up on the local news.”

Elena swallowed hard. “Yeah, it’s weird, you know, because all my life, there’s never been a single animal attack and now suddenly it’s like bears and wolves and coyotes.”

“Oh my!”

Elena stared at him.

“Wizard of Oz.”

“Funny,” she said.

Why did she feel so tense? Why did it feel like he’d cornered her somehow?

When she’d met him that night, she’d felt … well, it’d been weird, but it’d been somewhat intriguing. He’d been somewhat intriguing. You want what everybody wants…

“Animal control’s been out so it’ll all die down soon,” she said.

“Unless it isn’t animals.”

Elena narrowed her eyes, trying to sus him out. “Why? You know something everyone else doesn’t?”

“Oh, I know a lot more than ‘something’.”

She shivered. It didn’t feel … her heart rate was steadily picking up. Why was something so simple so nerve-wracking? So stressful? She should walk away but she didn’t feel released from the conversation. He seemed to sense her trepidation because he took a step back and loosened his demeanour, like he was trying to appear non-threatening. He’d done that the last time they’d met too.

“So what are you doing here? Isn’t school starting?”

Elena bit the inside of her lip. “It’s a bit of a long story.”

“I ain’t getting any younger.”

Elena paused. She didn’t know if she wanted to tell him or not, but she somehow felt like she had to.

“A few months ago, the night I saw you actually, my parents’ car skidded off this bridge. We almost died, it’s a miracle we didn’t.”

“You come back to the spot where you almost died?” He raised his eyebrows. “Seems a little morbid.”

Elena pressed her lips together. “Yeah, I can see how it seems that way.”

“What does the boyfriend think about this? You know, the one you got into a fight with?”

Good memory.

“Matt?” Elena thought about him showing up to the hospital, taking her hand in his. Then showing up to her house, anxious to make sure she was doing OK. Then his back as he left when she told him… “We broke up.”

“Figures,” said Damon with a shrug. “Seems too much like a country bumpkin for a gal like you.”

Something in Elena switched and her tone grew firm. “I was in a weird headspace when I talked to you that night but I would never talk down about Matt. OK? You don’t know him so you shouldn’t either.”

He shrugged. “I just call ‘em like I see ‘em.”

“But you haven’t seen anything.”

He squinted his eyes at her and Elena didn’t really know what that meant. She couldn’t be sure that he wouldn’t hurt her but she couldn’t be sure that he would.

“You’re right, you know, I should get to school. Don’t want to be late my first day.”

“Want a lift? I got a sick ride.”

“Thanks,” said Elena slowly, picking up her school bag. “But I’m kind of taking a break from cars…”

“Suit yourself.”

His eyes twinkled and Elena smiled somewhat awkwardly before taking off down the bridge, and when she was sure she had enough distance between them, she slowed down and exhaled, before picking up speed again at hearing another caw.

She’d made it to school quicker than she thought she would. People were still outside, finishing homework or gossiping or playing hacky sack like they were in some weird retro movie. Elena stopped walking, taking a moment to properly breathe and unclench from her talk with Damien or Damon or whatever on the bridge, and glanced around for Bonnie or Caroline.

“Look out!”

Everyone looked around, and then up. By the time Elena followed suit, it was too late. A football. Spiraling in the sky. It was soaring toward her and in a second it was going to connect. With her face. Elena already knew it was going to be bloody. Bloody and embarrassing and painful.

Someone was calling her name. “Elena!” Maybe Matt? “Elena, watch---”

Out of nowhere, someone came in front of her, catching the football before it could hit her.

He wasn’t even looking at it. His head was turned toward her, his eyes peering into hers for any hint of impact or injury. She could get lost in those eyes -- that brilliant green. She was lost. Elena’s lips parted.

“You saved me,” she said, with a gasp of disbelief.

“You all right?” The boy’s tone was soft but his expression was focused, intent on her, and almost smouldering with concern. She could do nothing but blink. It took her a moment to realize that she was actually holding her breath again. It took her another to realize that it wasn’t because she’d almost been pummeled by a football.

“Sorry! Yes! Yeah, yeah, I’m --- thank you.”

His gaze lingered for a second before he turned around and threw the ball back. It whipped through the air at a speed Elena didn’t think she’d seen before. She chuckled. She couldn’t be sure if it was because of the adrenaline or because she was impressed.

“That was incredible. How did you throw it like that? How did you catch it like that?”

He shook his head. “I saw that it was coming toward you, and I just reacted, I guess.”

Elena felt suddenly and unexpectedly embarrassed, as if that had been the most intimate thing she’d ever heard. She was vaguely aware that they had an audience but she saw no one else, just blurs and shapes, this boy’s chiseled face the only thing she could see clearly.

“So, does my hero have a name?” She hoped he could sense the playful irony in her tone and her eyes widened slightly at the possibility that he couldn’t. She spoke quickly to fill in the silence. “Mine’s, um, I’m Elena.”

He smiled at her, his eyes glinting with … what was that? Amusement? Charm? Was he charmed? Did she charm him? Why was her heart beating so fast?

“Stefan.”

She nodded and bit her lip nervously. “I’ve never seen you around before. I would’ve remembered.”

That last part was unnecessary. Oh God.

“Uh,” he grinned, like he didn’t know what to do with the compliment. “I’m sort of new here. My family has roots in Mystic Falls, I was born here but I moved away a while ago. I just came back.”

“Just in time,” she said.

He looked at her curiously. “For?”

Me. Wait, what?

“Uh, well, our football team is in desperate need of saving. And with reflexes like yours, we might actually have a shot at not being a complete joke this year. Tryouts should be this week.”

Stefan made a face, like he wasn’t certain.

“You should do it for your moral fibre,” she continued.

He laughed at that.

“No, seriously, wasn’t it, uh, Camus!” Elena said his name like she was answering a question on a game show. “Wasn’t it him who said everything he learned about morality and obligation he learned from football?”

Stefan licked his lips and Elena did her best to keep her gaze eye-level.

He smiled. “He wasn’t talking about American football.”

“There’s non-American football?”

“Soccer.”

Elena cringed. “Oh. Right. I knew that.”

He shrugged it off. “Common mistake.”

He was kind. Elena brushed her hair from her face. The bell rang and everyone started moving toward the building.

Stefan gestured in front of him. “Shall we?”

Elena couldn’t help but smile but tried to control how widely. “We shall.”

They started toward one of the school’s entrances and even walking side by side, he kept his attention on her.

“So, you read Camus?”

“Yes. No. Well, I’m trying.” Elena couldn’t understand why she was rambling. Maybe she’d stop if he’d stop looking at her.

“I had something sort of happen to me a few months ago and it - uh - it - it changed things for me, not everything, a lot of things. Well, maybe not a lot of things, but some things…” Why couldn’t she just shut up? “So I’m trying to do … things.” Elena, she admonished herself, stop saying ‘things’. “Kind of like a New Year’s resolution just not on New Year’s…” She pressed her lips together and closed her eyes, shaking her head slightly. If the universe had any decency, it would open up a hole in the ground that would swallow her up.

“That didn’t make any sense did it?”

Stefan grinned. “I get it. You have a new perspective now and because of that, you’re trying to do things you wouldn’t have before.”

That was exactly right. “Wow, you make talking look so easy.”

“Years of practice.”

She laughed at that. She didn’t remember a time laughing this much, this genuinely in such a short period of time.

They were in the hallway now and Stefan had stopped walking. Elena had the horrible feeling that he was going to head in the opposite direction of her and that it was time for them to go their separate ways.

“Thanks again,” she said.

“Any time.”

She moved to continue the way they’d been walking the same time he moved to walk down the opposite way.

They did that a few times before he stood to the side and let Elena pass.

“Thanks,” she said, hunching her shoulders, embarrassed.

She should keep walking. It would be smoother that way. Cool. Indifferent. Unaffected. It’d be what Caroline would tell her to do. She was almost around the corner. No, she couldn’t help it. She felt drawn back. A pull. She had to see him one last time. She turned her head and felt a jolt when she saw that he’d been watching her the entire time.

The rest of the morning went by in a bit of a haze. Truthfully, like most of her days since the accident. And then everything suddenly brightened to a sharp clarity just before lunch. History class. Her eyes went right to him when she walked into the room and she felt locked in even though Stefan didn’t seem to notice her. Before he could catch her staring, before Matt -- who she’d realized a second too late was also in this class -- could feel any worse, she sat down.

Mr. Tanner had been droning on for fifteen minutes but Elena wasn’t paying attention. She couldn’t even if she wanted to --- her thoughts wouldn’t let her neither would her body. Everything in her seemed to respond to Stefan’s mere presence being in the same vicinity. As if she were being called to. Which was crazy, she thought, because she didn’t even know him.

Casually. Very casually. She turned her head to glance at Stefan. A second later, his gaze met hers and embarrassed excitement bloomed in her chest, making her turn away immediately, a smile lingering on her face.

“Am I boring you, Miss Gilbert?”

Mr. Tanner saying her name made her flinch.

She wasn’t expecting it and so answered without thinking. “Kind of.” She was snapped back into reality when she heard the rest of the class titter with excitement. “Sorry, no, I didn’t mean---”

“No, no, you spoke your mind, don’t be a coward, own it. Let’s do something to correct your disinterest in my class.”

“Mr. Tanner, really…”

“Pop quiz,” he said, leaning against his desk. “The Battle of Willow Creek took place right at the end of the war in our very own Mystic Falls. How many casualties resulted in this battle?”

Elena had no idea. It had to be a lot, right? It was a battle. “A couple hundred at least.”

“Are you guessing?”

“Well, I’m trying,” she said helplessly.

The class laughed.

“It would impress me more if you just owned up to not knowing.”

“OK then, I don’t know.”

Mr. Tanner sighed. “I was willing to be lenient last year for obvious reasons, Elena. But the personal excuses ended with summer break.”

“There were three hundred and forty-six casualties,” said a deceptively light voice. “Unless you're counting local civilians.”

Elena looked behind her. Stefan was looking at Mr. Tanner with a pleasant expression on his face.

“Thank you, Miss Gilbert.”

Stefan smiled. Entirely un-intimidated.

“Your name?”

“Stefan. Stefan Salvatore.”

“Salvatore. One of the Founding Families.”

“Distant relative.”

Elena saw Matt mutter beneath his breath. It looked like it could’ve been ‘of course.’

Mr. Tanner nodded, as if deciding on how he would play the rest of the scenario. “In any case, you’re correct. Except, of course, there were no civilian casualties in this battle.”

“Actually, there were twenty-seven, sir.”

Mr. Tanner raised his eyebrows. “Twenty-seven?”

“Confederate soldiers, they fired on the church, believing it to be housing weapons. They were wrong. It was a night of great loss.”

Elena felt suddenly moved by that. Something in Stefan’s tone, in his expression told her that he was no stranger to loss. It was almost like he could feel the pain of that day as if he'd lived it.

“The founder's archives are, uh, stored in civil hall if you'd like to brush up on your facts, Mr. Tanner.”

Elena’s mouth fell open in gleeful shock and admiration.

Mr. Tanner’s eyes flashed. “Cute,” he said. “You know I let it slide before when you swooped in to save Elena, no doubt to impress her, even though I didn’t call on you to speak but I won’t tolerate rudeness. Pack up, go to the office.”

“Well, don’t get upset at him because he knows more about your subject than you,” said Elena.

The class tittered again and Stefan shot Elena an amused expression. She pressed her lips together to keep from smiling.

Mr. Tanner let out a nasty laugh. “Well, isn’t this sweet, the lovebirds defending each other. You can join him in the office, Elena. Come on, let’s go.”

Outside in the hall, Stefan was already walking in the direction of the office and Elena reacted.

“Hey,” she called out.

He turned around. She didn’t really have a plan. She just didn’t want to go to the office and she didn’t want him to go either. She wanted time. She realized right then and there, she would probably always want more time with him.

Elena walked over to a door and pushed it open. She tilted her head -- you coming? He grinned.

They decided to walk around the track, spending a few moments just ambling next to each other as the sun beamed down.

It was weirdly comfortable. Elena didn’t feel the need to talk to fill the silence. It was also strange how calm she felt. Earlier, being around him made her nervous, light-headed, and now she just felt ... anchored.

She’d never experienced that before.

“Bit bold of you, you know,” she said finally. “New school, new - well - old town, but first day and you’re already making trouble?”

“Well, I live on the edge.”

Elena giggled. “I can see that.”

“What about you? Mouthing off to a teacher on the first day? Very edgy,” he said, deadpanned.

She snorted. “Well, I nearly died. What’s your excuse?”

He turned to her then and Elena mentally kicked herself.

“That the thing that got you on your not New Year’s resolution?” he asked. “What Tanner was talking about?”

Elena brushed it off. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s…”

She glanced sideways at him to see if he would just change the conversation to something else he wanted to talk about but his expression was interested. Open.

“My parents and I got into a crash last May. Over on Wickery Bridge.” She shrugged. “That’s it, that’s the story.”

“Mm,” he said. “Maybe that’s what happened but it’s not the story.”

How did he know that?

“You don’t like talking about it.” The way he said it, Elena knew he wouldn’t press the subject if she didn’t feel like continuing.

“I just don’t really feel like I can say anything about it,” she found herself saying. “I lived, you know, I survived. My parents survived. I shouldn’t…”

“Have feelings about it?”

Elena had never really thought of it like that before. “Everyone’s just so ready for it to be in the past, you know?”

“A car crash isn’t a little thing. Nearly dying is the most transformative thing you can experience. It’s OK if you’re not OK about it right now. There’s a lot to process.”

“You know, I go to the bridge everyday? The spot we skidded off and into the river. Morbid, right?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Seems like you’re trying to keep a promise to yourself. Going to the bridge helps remind you of that.”

“Yeah.” The word barely came out as a whisper.

How did he know that? Know her? Elena felt … recognized. And bare. Yet … safe. This. Was. Crazy.

“A promise…” She repeated. “And that’s the other thing too, it’s like it’s made me restless. Like, I got a second chance, a miracle, who gets that in their lifetime, you know? And I don’t want to waste it. But everything seems dumb and superficial now. I just want to live, you know, live with … with, uh--”

“Passion?”

She nodded. “Right.”

“In my experience, it’s the dumb stuff, the small stuff, that’s what makes up living. By all means, if you want to climb Everest, climb Everest, you know, but going to a concert or a pickup game or …

“Family night,” said Elena.

“Who says you can’t do those things passionately?”

Elena didn’t remember when they stopped walking but they were standing now

and the feeling … that feeling … of being recognized had deepened into something more acute, more intense and she felt the urge, the need to be that person, that space for him. Right then and there, she wanted to pour into him, and wanted him to ---

A crow cawed.

Breaking the reverie.

Elena turned sharply toward it. She couldn’t be sure but it seemed like the same one from the bridge. As soon as the thought entered her mind, Damon’s face flashed before her eyes, and she took a deep breath in. Stefan touched her arm. She wanted him to keep her hand there forever.

“You OK? Where’d you go?”

“Nowhere,” she said. “I’m here. I…” She took another breath and looked around for the crow. It was gone. “The crow … it reminds me of someone. Someone I saw earlier, before school.”

“Someone you know?”

“No. Not exactly. I’d met him once before.” She closed her eyes, searching for the words to describe what was happening to her. “I don’t know, since then there’s just been this feeling in the pit of my stomach. It went away for a bit, when…” When she was talking to him. When she was relaxed. “But it just came back. It’s like something I can’t seem to shake.”

“Sounds like he made an impression.”

She looked at him. “There are better impressions, believe me.”

Stefan’s eyes searched hers and it happened again. Immediately. He was drawing her into him and she was falling and falling...

“Hey, your face. Is there something---”

�� “Sorry.” Stefan shielded his eyes from her. “Sorry, I … sorry, I’ve gotta go.”

“Uh…”

Elena watched Stefan walk away, his stride swift, and felt a sharp stab of disappointment that they were no longer talking, no longer in the same place together,

A few seconds later, the bell signalling lunch rang.

The moment Elena opened her locker, it was slammed shut and her best friend, Bonnie Bennett, was standing beside her. Elena let out a sigh of relief. “Bonnie! Why did you--?”

“You and the new hottie. The whole school’s talking. Dish.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” said Elena casually. Too casually.

Bonnie looked at her. “That always means there’s something to tell. And I can tell because---”

“Because you’re a psychic now?”

“Because I was sitting by the window in calc. and I saw the two of you walking around the track. And you two were vibing. Don’t deny it.”

“Oh, please.”

“Aimee Bradley said that he defended your honour in Mr. Tanner’s class. She said he cussed Tanner out and stormed out of class..”

Elena made a noise of disbelief. “Since when did you listen to Aimee Bradley?”

Bonnie shrugged. “She’s not the only one saying it.”

“That literally did not happen! He just---”

Elena was interrupted.

“Well, your nose doesn’t look broken,” she said, nudging her way between Elena and Bonnie.

“Hi, Caroline.”

Elena exchanged a quick look with Bonnie who tried to stifle a laugh.

“And what do you mean my nose doesn’t look broken?”

“Oh, everyone’s talking about how Matt threw a football at your face to get back at you for dumping him and the new guy beat the shit out of him on the green.”

“What!” Elena looked at Caroline incredulously. “Oh my God, guys! Nothing you’re saying happened! Someone --- not Matt, he tried to warn me -- threw a football, it almost hit me and---”

“And the new guy saved you from massive embarrassment on the first day?” said Caroline. “It’s just so typical. There is a finite amount of hot guys at this school and when we finally get new blood, you get there first. You’ve already dated the captain of the football team, you had this encounter with some mystery man---”

Elena unconsciously tensed at the memory and Bonnie looked at Caroline pointedly, who closed her eyes.

“Sorry, I’m a bitch,” she said. “I shouldn’t have brought up that night.”

Elena sighed, half-exasperated but already on her way to forgetting the insensitivity. “I never said that guy was hot by the way.”

“Oh, please, mystery men are always hot. It’s like a rule,” said Caroline, apparently over her brief bout of contrition.

Elena addressed Bonnie. “You know I actually saw him again today before coming to school?”

Bonnie shook her head. “Really?”

“Yeah, the vibes were … weird.”

Bonnie squinted. “Weird, like, dangerous, weird?”

Elena opened her mouth but didn’t say anything . “It was definitely intense. But not like…” Not like what she’d felt when she spoke to Stefan. “I don’t know, it kind of made me queasy?”

“Butterflies,” said Caroline, throwing up her hands. “So, the sexy, dangerous mystery man gives you butterflies--”

“I never said--”

“And now you’ve got the other mystery guy who actually goes here saving you on the green like some freaking knight?”

Elena rolled her eyes. “Don’t be so dramatic. He caught a football.”

But even when she tried to minimize what had happened verbally, physically she felt her heart thud and a jittery, giddy flutter in her stomach that made her want to laugh to get the feeling out.

“And stood up to Tanner on your behalf,” said Bonnie.

Caroline shook her head like she was severely disappointed in Elena. “You’re being so greedy.”

Bonnie snorted and rested her head on Caroline’s shoulder.

Elena opened her locker again. “Look, I’m not even thinking about Stefan.”

“So the new guy’s name is Stefan.”

“I could be talking about the mystery man on the bridge.”

“You’re not, I can tell by that big, dumb smile you’re trying to hide,” said Bonnie.

Elena popped her head out from behind her locker door and gave Bonnie a playful grimace.

“Anyway. I’m actually thinking about Jeremy. I haven’t seen him anywhere. Have you two?”

Caroline rooted around in her bag for some lip gloss. “Elena, if I ever start caring about the comings-and-goings of sophomores, shoot me.”

“That’s Caroline-speak for ‘no’,” said Bonnie. “And I haven’t either.”

“I’m kind of worried. He never skips school.” Elena pulled a contemplative face. “Bonnie, do you mind if we, like, quickly go over to my house to see if he’s there? I’m sure there’s something in the fridge we can eat so we won’t miss lunch.”

Caroline made an expression as if Elena had said the dumbest thing she ever heard. “In all of the times we’ve skipped school, when have we ever stayed home? He’s probably at the stoner’ pit or something.”

Bonnie snorted. “Yeah, Jeremy, a burnout. Please.”

“No, he could be at home. I don’t know, all summer he’s either been on his Xbox or pining after Vicki Donovan. Maybe he’s pretending to be sick and he’s still in his room.”

“If he’s been pining after Vicki Donovan then he’s definitely at the stoner pit probably trying to impress her..”

“Caroline!” Bonnie gave her an admonishing hit on the arm.

“What! You know I’m not wrong.”

“Don’t be mean just because you’ve had a thing for Tyler since fifth grade.”

“Shut up.”

Bonnie laughed. “Elena, I’ll give you a lift.”

“Since when was your family pack rats?” said Bonnie.

They’d made it to Elena’s house and walked into the foyer. The closet beneath the stairs was open and there were a bunch of boxes around the door, crammed with what looked to be junk. Papers. Dusty journals.

“I don’t know, this wasn’t here when I left this morning,” said Elena.

“You think Jeremy took it out?”

“Yeah, but why?”

Bonnie shrugged.

“Jeremy?” Elena called.

When there was no answer, she walked into the living room and didn’t see him there or in the kitchen.

“Some leftover spaghetti in the fridge,” said Elena to Bonnie. “I’m just going to check upstairs and then I’ll be right down.”

Bonnie nodded. “OK cool. I love pasta night at your house.”

“It’s the oregano,” said Elena, grinning.

She headed up the stairs. She could definitely here talking. Low talking. But it wasn’t coming from Jeremy’s room. She turned around. It was coming from her parents’. It was the middle of the day. Neither one of them should be home. Elena felt like suddenly she shouldn’t be up there. Something was wrong or secret or … She walked slowly down the hall toward the room. The door was nearly closed, but not quite. She peaked through the crack. Jeremy on a chair. So, he did stay home. And then … Dad. He let him stay home? And then … was that … was he holding … a stake?

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frieslxver · 8 months

Text

Guilt {SE Fic Pt. 1}

There will be another part. Hopefully this part is super messy but the second part will be the mess we’ve talked about in the asks/responses but you know, they need to actually make the tape first.

*Note* I have incorporated some of a one shot into this fic to give more context to the relationships so it starts off with the beginning of the “Change” one shot but I am expanding it or taking it in another direction with this fic.

Continuar lendo

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frieslxver · 8 months

Text

Speak!

Link to part 1: http://zalrb.tumblr.com/post/164720175550/trust-jonsa-one-shot Link to part 2: http://zalrb.tumblr.com/post/181817838525/an-entirely-different-way-pt-2

Link to part 3: http://zalrb.tumblr.com/post/182562584780/passion

Link to part 4:https://zalrb.tumblr.com/post/184333793460/survival

Link to part 5: https://zalrb.tumblr.com/post/184637430325/the-happening

Link to part 6: https://zalrb.tumblr.com/post/627229549053214720/nothing-has-changed-everything-has-changed

Link to part 7: https://zalrb.tumblr.com/post/695978201342672896/agony

Jon Snow was dead. With each step he took toward the altar, he’d buried another piece of himself until he stood, waiting, for his bride as not much more than a hollow husk. Truthfully, he’d already been dead for a while. Since his conversation with Arya.

He’d been dressing when she’d entered his rooms, fastening his vest with leaden, sombre hands and when she’d walked through the doorway, he’d turned to grin at her somewhat morosely.

"Let me guess,” he said. “You're here to tell me what a fool I am for agreeing to this wedding. It's a little late. I’ve already asked Tormund to say the first words."

Arya shook her head. "I'm not here to tell you anything." She’d smiled, her eyes softening a bit. "No one can tell you anything, Jon."

"I don't know about that,” he said. “Sounds more like Sansa."

Jon briefly closed his eyes -- how quickly his thoughts turned to her, how eagerly his tongue spoke her name. It was a problem he needed rectified and an instinct he never wanted quelled and a threat he relished to a peace he longed for. It was a multitude of conflicting emotions. It was Sansa.

"That's why I'm here."

Jon turned around to face her completely, raising his eyebrows.

Arya paused. "She'll never forgive you for this, you know."

Oh, did he. "So, you came as her ambassador."

"I came for you, to see if you're prepared for that loss."

He wasn’t. He couldn’t think of anything worse except for what would happen to his home, his countrymen if he went back on his word. And the fact that Sansa refused to see that, that she would severance herself from him, leave him, made him angry.

"Sansa thinks she knows better than everybody else,” he said gruffly. “But I am doing this because--"

"Jon, your Queen?” Arya walked up to him, her tone getting firmer.

“Our Queen, Arya.”

“I know a killer when I see one. And if somewhere she knows about..." She looked at him pointedly and his lips parted. She knew. He knew she knew. But she wouldn’t say it out loud.

"Then Sansa is a threat to her in more ways than one and that's something I will have to deal with."

"Don't speak so dangerously," said Jon.

"I’ve never been afraid of danger.” She kept her gaze steady. "Sansa will never abandon you but tonight you will lose her, do you think you can survive that? Do you think we can survive that?"

He rubbed his eyes. Why was everyone being impossible? "I have to choose what's best for everyone, regardless of how I feel or what I want. We don’t have the luxury of following our … we have a duty … we … I gave my word before I even knew that I’d---”

Jon couldn’t even finish the sentence. It physically pained him

Arya continued to look at him. "I know you think you've made your choice. But don't be surprised if there comes a time where you might have to choose again."

Sansa couldn’t recall the last time a wedding had been a joyous occasion. Tyrion had been kind in their marriage but she hadn’t known what to expect beforehand and the trepidation and unease of that ignorance had made her nervous and fearful the entire ceremony. The night she’d married Ramsay, she’d thought she was going to be sick, walking through the godswood she’d walked through many times as a young girl but with Bolton banners everywhere and toward a family who had slaughtered hers. Upon seeing Ramsay’s face her own became a mask of impassivity while rage and disgust and fear roiled within her. Before either wedding, her mother and brother had been slaughtered at one, ripping out a large piece of her that she would never, even if she’d attempted to, get back. The only glimmer of joy had been when Joffrey, her tormentor, had died an agonizing death at his wedding but that demise had not been the liberation she’d prayed for.

And now, this wedding, between this man and that woman. This wedding that’d had the entire castle in a frenzy of preparation for days. This wedding was plaguing her with a keen, aching sorrow that made it impossible to speak, near-impossible to breathe. In the midst of dressing for the occasion, she would sometimes stare at her own hands, wondering who they belonged to So much had been taken from her over the years, but this loss was something she couldn’t have imagined because she couldn’t have imagined Jon in the first place, of what the two of them together awakened in her. She couldn’t imagine passion. She couldn’t imagine…

Sansa closed her eyes. Stop it. Stop.

It was done. They were done. Before they even started. She had to let it go. There was no other way. Her heart had been broken a thousand times before this, and loving Jon Snow would be yet something else she’d survive. She knew how to endure, she knew how to rebuild, she ---

Suddenly, she heard a creak and felt something inside of her ignite. That spark, it was only triggered by one person’s presence. She turned toward the door, looking at it with such concentration as if that was all it took for her tear-brimmed eyes to see through to the other side, to see through to who she knew, in her gut, was standing in the corridor. She willed him to come in, to knock, to whisper her name, to yell in anger, to do anything to let her know he was there, he was hers.

Jon stood outside Sansa’s door, poised to walk in. He wanted to hold her and yell at her all at once and his hand trembled with the urge to push open this barrier between them and take her in his arms. Soon, his entire body thrummed with the desire to see her, to go to her. His mouth moved wordlessly, and he furrowed his brow, conflicted. It felt physically impossible to stay on this side of the door, everything in him strained to see her, yearned to touch her. The desire was overpowering, transforming into an uncontainable force that made him agitated, made his breathing ragged, he was going to come undone --

And then it was gone. He’d buried it all at once, removing himself from how he felt, shrouding himself in a numbness so complete, it was as if he belonged to himself. He was gone.

He murmured, “Goodbye” and we walked down the corridor, making his way out to the godswood.

Sansa sank onto a chair, her hand suddenly splayed on her chest as the spark died as quickly as it had flared within her and something in her body shifted. Something that told her, it was all over.

The knock was unexpected. It wasn’t Jon. Sansa already knew that. But it surprised her when she opened the door to find Daenerys in full wedding dress.

Sansa blinked. “Your Grace. I… I was making my way to your rooms---”

“That’s alright,” said Daenerys. “I move at my own pace.”

“Evidently.”

Daenerys walked into the room and glanced around. “I wanted to give this to you before the ceremony.”

She handed Sansa a scroll that she unfurled and began reading.

“It will say that as my prince consort, Jon will have another title as King in the North, which is what Tyrion had explained when discussing the political aspects of this union.”

Sansa remained looking at the piece of paper, sensing Daenerys was waiting for some sort of expression of gratitude but she did not give one.

Daenerys prompted her. “It is exactly what we discussed.”

“Well, what you and Jon discussed,” said Sansa, putting the paper on her desk.

Daenerys’ face became steadily less congenial. “I have compromised a lot, Sansa. I even conceded to the Northern customs for this wedding.”

“Which was smart as you’re in the North and want to the favour of our people,” said Sansa simply with a shrug. Every move Daenerys did was calculated and she was rather bored with the assumption that she didn’t know when her strategies were simply common sense. “A Northern wedding and a title with no power.”

Daenerys scoffed. “It holds considerable power.”

“Just not sovereignty,” said Sansa. “He bends the knee to you, we bend the knee to him, nothing changes. He’s just the Warden of North except he’s not in the North and has a fancier title and you’re counting on our loyalty to Jon to quell any idea of a rebellion as he would be by your side.”

Whatever congeniality Daenerys was putting on had now evaporated. “The Seven Kingdoms are my birthright, the North is my birthright and I love this land like---”

Sansa clasped her hands together. “What is it that you love about the North in the short time you’ve been here?”

Daenerys blinked, taken aback by the question. She tried to recover. “I discover something new about this place everyday. Each discovery more beautiful than the last.”

“Mm.” Sansa nodded. “But do you love the conviction we have in our beliefs? Do you understand our beliefs? Our wilfulness and loyalty. The passion with which we uphold our ideals, which may be very different from your own? Our might, our---”

As Sansa continued to speak with more and more feeling, Daenerys got the distinct impression that she was not only describing her country and countrymen. And when she finished, she took a deep, shuddering breath as if her own words moved her to breathlessness.

Daenerys cleared her throat and patted down her dress. “I am marrying him when I am in no need of a husband,” he said. “That is proof enough,” she said, opening the door. “It’s time.”

“Your Grace,” said Sansa.

“How do I look?”

Sansa gave her a once over. “It’s a dress fit for a Queen.”

Jon couldn’t feel the chill on his bare face, he couldn’t feel himself within his body, couldn’t even feel worn or tired, or detached, he felt … gone. Tormund, who stood next to him, was more nervous than he was. He could see Arya looking at him curiously but couldn’t even bring himself to pretend. He just … was. He’d snuffed it out -- the spark that had enlivened him since the Red Woman brought him back and now he was nothing more than an animated corpse and that was all he would be. That was the choice, the sacrifice he’d made.

He saw them approach but his vision was unfocused, saving him from seeing her, from noticing her, keeping his heart dead.

Sansa, once again, found herself in the godswood. Her feet, once again, propelling her toward her heartbreak. They passed by soldiers, passed by faces she knew until they stopped in front of Jon and she felt as though she’d shatter on the spot.

Tormund glanced awkwardly at Jon who gave an encouraging nod and then he spoke, his voice raspy. “Who comes before the gods?”

Sansa didn’t answer right away. She couldn’t. If she did, her voice would break and betray the depth of her pain and she’d already bled in front of Jon enough for a lifetime. She willed herself to swallow her sadness and relax her throat and once she did, she answered.

“Daenerys of the House Targaryen.” Sansa paused before saying the words that had shackled her to a man she’d despised. “A woman trueborn and noble. She comes to beg the blessings of the gods. Who … who comes to claim her?”

Jon hesitated and then stepped forward. Even in such a state, he was drawn to her. His eyes shifted to Sansa’s and when, after a few seconds, they locked, the furious pain that made hers shine with unshed tears lanced through his chest and catapulted him into an internal free fall. He didn’t feel rooted to the ground he was standing on. Nothing about the wood seemed real or possible, it wasn’t possible that he was where was, watching himself stare at the woman, at the two women in front of him. This body wasn’t his, this life wasn’t his. He was aware everyone was waiting for him to recite the expected answer.

He opened his mouth. He paused for a second, an eternity and then ---

Commotion in the near distance. Clanging. Shouting. Everyone turned to look toward the distraction. Voices could be heard.

“Assassin! Assassin!”

Everyone started moving. Jon and Brienne rushed toward Sansa, Brienne standing in front of her, Jon crushing her to him, cloaking her. Greyworm rushed to protect Daenerys, joining her with Missandei. Arya, readied, had her blade drawn, covering Bran. A few soldiers ran toward the commotion. Everything was happening so fast.

In a manner of seconds, men entered the clearing with the severed heads of the apparent would-be assassins.

“What has happened?”

“They opposed the union.”

Daenerys’ head snapped toward Sansa and then her eyes widened near-imperceptibly at seeing the way Jon held onto her.

His stomach plummeted. “No,” he whispered. “Daenerys---”

She addressed Sansa. “Did you know about this?”

Sansa remained silent, her eyes narrowed in fury.

“Speak,” said Daenerys. “Speak!”

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