Through A Glass, Darkly
PG-13. 07/22/2002.

Damon used to be the peeping tom of the group, but now Elena peers through windows and keyholes in the dead of night, looking for a glimpse of life, of love.

Stefan's ashes scattered to the four winds before he could even know she wasn't really dead, Damon bitter and vengeful and she was just one single girl. How would she stand a chance if he didn't take her in, if he went after her with teeth and nails and maybe a stake to boot?

So she just stayed quiet and hoped he'd never find out about her. The night is cool, and fresh, and new every time she wakes up, and the moon and stars call to her like the parents she'd lost what seemed like a lifetime ago.

The deer are plentiful for Elena's new, fierce hunger, and the old barn behind the boarding house offers welcoming, blanketing shelter.

If Mrs. Flowers knows she's there, she'll never tell.

Elena attempts to remember exactly what's so important about what she left behind. She recalls her family, friends. Elena knows, vaguely, what it's like to feel loved. The pieces just don't fit any more, that's all.

She runs wild in the wood in a shredded, icy gown, hair tangled with brambles, mind jumbled with riddles. "What happens to the girl who has everything when there's nothing to have?" "How many times do you have to die in order to live?" "If a heart breaks and there's no one there to break it, does it hurt?" "If the dead aren't quick, does that give time an excuse to move slowly?" "Does the soul have a shelf life?" "If the world ended while you were sleeping, would you notice when you woke up?"

The questions come and come, with no one to answer them, no one to even ask them to.

Elena yearns in the dark and the cold and wet--yearns for something unreachable, unknowable, forgotten. She remembers Matt's butterfly kisses in the hot summer sun, Stefan's searching hands in his barren room, Damon and his burning black eyes. It makes her hurt, makes her rage, and she tears throats too hard, wasting blood.

She hates them for what she doesn't have. She hates, and wants them all at once, and when the feeling gets too fierce she goes out in the night, a white spot in the dark, and bends her head to crimson dark, drowning abandoned need in the new.

FIN.

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