Anemone by LindaMarie Elena wakes nestled between the bodies of her beloved blood-brothers, tied in place, tied to them, by lengths of white ribbon. She does not know where she is, or what has come to pass. She is not held by these thin silk bonds, but something even more insubstantial, incorruptible. Her skin is icy where it touches her lovers' still flesh; she shivers, trying to suppress panic. Push down anger, grief...hunger. Her veins burn in counterpoint to the chill, further nagging, frustrated, when she extends her Powers to their limits, and learns nothing for the effort. Her memories ebb in and out, intense, faint. She remembers Drowning Creek, what she has become. She remembers the crypt, and the tiger. Damon, and Stefan, in pain--but alive. She remembers unconsciousness that pulled her into its black undertow. Such dreams I've had... ********* A vision of herself she did not know, slitted sleepless eyes like those of watersnakes. Her hair like Rapunzel, a ladder to climb to some unknown paradise. Or prison. Elena sees this vision, this girl-thing, in a gown like a bride's: pristine, white as the anemone flower, soft as virgin skin. She has an urge to pet her, like a snow-kitten, stroke her white-golden hair. Elena turns away, in this dream-land, and must doubt which is the reflection and which the phantom. Before her is another girl, vision-girl, her painted eyes nestled like jewels on black velvet. Her hair is a braided snake-rope of pale gold, trailing the gold-braid hem of her lapis gown. Elena wants to kiss her scarlet lips, feel the lush swollen heat of her beneath her hands. She turns again. She is pinned to a black marble floor in a room where the stars look down from unfathomable distances, passive, judgmental. She will never be worthy, in their eyes. Pinned by hands with painted girl-nails, snow-white, blood-red, she is cut down: she is wearing the same clothes she wore the first day she met Stefan, but they are slit with sharp fingers as precisely and cleanly as with knives. She is cut down. Two pairs of hands break through the small band between her cleavage, the thin strips of cotton at her hips; her undergarments are cast aside and she is left bare, covered in gooseflesh, nipples puckered, hair raised, struck still with lust and cold in the wake of her uncasement. She is a bride stripped bare by bachelors with smooth-soft hands and downy arms and oceans of flowing gold. She is wed to herself, to herselves she never knew were born. ********* But Elena is no longer dreaming. The memory makes her shiver and sigh, a quick pulse of pure want mingling with need. She remembers Katherine, and a mirror-hand rising to caress her own fair cheek. She remembers long months in bonds, in darkness, in preparation. She remembers everything. Something moves in the dark place where she lies, here, flanked by the corpses of barren love. Katherine appears like an angel in the dark, angel of mercy, blood still damp on her chin. "My pretty rose tree," she coos, kneeling before Elena, who strains at almost-seen bonds. Such hunger. "Won't you show me your thorns?" Theirs is a bloody kiss, Katherine taking great handfuls of Elena's endless tangled hair as Elena sucks at her lips, tongue, licks her face clean and white. Elena finds her limbs can move, within the ribbon-trap, and Katherine begins carefully to unwind her. "I think our boys make poor guard-dogs, dear Elena," Katherine says, rolling one of them indelicately out of the way of her roaming hands. "It's about time we found a new home. Would you like to see the light again, darling?" Elena only knows she is naked when the fabric of Katherine's shift brushes over her thighs. "The whole wide world is waiting for us, together." Elena's hands find Katherine's breasts in the dark, small and firm and heated in her palms. Kissing Katherine is like kissing herself in a dream, in a future time. "I'm hungry," Elena says, "Take me to it."