Shatter by LindaMarie 01/22/06: R Elena is happy to be home. She's glad she went with Damon--glad to escape the new silent tension inside the house (Stefan's eyes always on her from a distance, searching and maybe even accusing, yet warm and hungry up close) and glad to have shared this with him. A thousand years ago, in another life. "Come with me, and I'll show you some real hunting." Stefan wouldn't go, wouldn't look at her when she asked Damon anyway. He is afraid of tainting her, somehow, she thinks. He thinks he knows better than she does, what she needs. He has been different for days, and neither she nor Damon knows why. She dreamt last night that she saw him from afar, at the edge of some dark precipice. "I'm going for a walk," he told them, as they got ready to leave. "Don't worry if I'm not here when you get back." He's taken to going off on his own, from time to time. But never when he's upset, as he clearly was when they parted. Damon led her through the still-busy night streets, both of them hardly talking, his arm on her waist directing her where to go. When she asked about Stefan for the third time, he'd silenced her sharply. "Leave it. He'll make his own choices, the same as you. You've done what you can; he'll have to sort the rest out for himself." What about you? Have you done all you can? Elena directed the thought squarely at him, but if Damon heard it he gave no indication. The hunt hadn't taken long: less than an hour in a dimly-lit club, Elena clinging to the shadows, watching Damon thread through the dance floor crowd, strobe lights picking out hidden colors in his hair. She could have joined him out there, if she wanted, but she wasn't ready. She's still not sure how much she wants to pretend to be something she's not. Still not sure what she's become. People noticed Elena, despite her attempt at invisibility. Damon came back twice to fend off unwanted attention; the second time, he took it upon himself. He pulled the skinny auburn-haired boy onto the floor, murmuring into his ear. Elena watched them, shortly thereafter, Damon pressing the boy down on his back on the steps of the emergency exit stairs. She stood on the top landing, looking down over them; the boy no longer saw her at all. Damon's mind surrounded her like a blanket, a veil. His mouth on the other's mouth, raw physical hunger roiling in his gut, flickering electrically down his limbs and burning in his mouth. His pleasure at tasting, touching warm human skin, feeling life humming beneath. It was nothing like she remembered, with Matt. This was a meal, and nothing more, but infinitely satisfying in its own way. Elena is still a little shaky, as they walk up the steps to the front door, her nerves tingling from things that never actually happened to her. There is no one else inside the building--she can tell before they're even through the door. "He'll be home soon," Damon tells her, his voice husky and surprisingly close to her ear. She turns around and in one motion he closes the door and picks her up as if she were a child. His mouth is on her mouth as they ascend the stairs. They undress, into bed in a matter of moments, and the lovemaking is somehow both urgent and unhurried. He takes her slowly, crouched over her. She is on her back, her palms pressed flat against the wall behind her head. Afterward, she sleeps, the sound of Damon's heart in her ear, knowing she will wake when Stefan comes through the door. ********* "No. No. He wouldn't. He can't." Elena wakes up to being unceremoniously dumped off Damon's chest, having the covers yanked off the bed in Damon's sudden effort to rise. "Wh-what, Damon? What's going on?" "There's no time. I'll be too late as it is. Damn him for getting just strong enough to shield me--" Damon is tearing open the blackout curtains and tugging open the window. "Take the car. Bring two sets of clothes. Get to the water--Baker Beach. There's maps in my office. Park as close as you can. I can afford fines." And he's gone in a flurry of feathers. ********* Elena breathes slowly through her nose as she drives. She must be calm. Must be. The Bay. The beach closest to the Bridge. The well. I've--been better. The texture of long-wet flesh. White as cleaned fish. The car. The bridge. Water swelling and churning from the rains. They call it Drowning Creek for a reason. The surface so far away. You must be calm. You cannot pass out. They need you. ********* Stefan looks down at the water, so far away, yet intimate, like a memory of home. A half-remembered line of poetry filters through his head: The face of the water asked me for a kiss. He doesn't know why he's here. He doesn't think he can die. Maybe he will find brief oblivion, or maybe it will just...clear his head. He aches for gravity to claim him. How its pressure weighs him down. The passing cars don't see him. He makes sure of it. The railings' protective barriers are damp and want to freeze to his hands, but he ignores them. Walking forward is like stepping off the edge of the world. ********* Damon's been calling to him, the whole flight. Wait, brother, wait for me. And no answer, no getting through. Stefan's shields are blastproof walls. Stefan. Stefan. How did it come to this? How could he have been so blind? Damon's wanted for centuries to see him break, but not like this, no, no. He blinded me. No, that's not right. Damon has blinded himself with his own desire, seeing its reflection and looking no further. He'd thought their affection, his, Elena's, could hold Stefan long enough to tear down his walls. Instead it allowed those walls to collapse in on themselves, unnoticed. Damon knew he would do something, but he'd never imagined it would be something as completely insane and pointless as this. As pointedly designed for suffering. The selfishness of this act, as of all Stefan's many failures. But Elena will say, He was not selfish on his own. She will say, You should have seen. I asked you to watch, as I could not. She will sob over her love, and say to his prodigal brother, I should have known better than to trust you. And she will be right. ********* Elena finds a place for the car and runs to the water with the small bag of clothes in her hand. There is nothing but dark water and fog. She hugs herself against the wind, and thinks of Penelope, at the water's edge, not knowing who or what will be returned to her. ********* Damon spends precious minutes circling over the tossing waves before he homes in on Stefan, far below the surface. He shapeshifts not far above the water, splashing in, snarling at the cold which even he can feel. He dives. Stefan is unconscious, beyond mental controls, his pulse as slow as those of their kind can be. His mouth is open; doubtless his lungs are filled, his body feeding solely on the oxygen of stolen blood. He sinks slowly, unaware of his own fall. How apt. Damon wraps his arms around his brother's chest, from the back. Even with his strength, it is a struggle to rise to open air. When he gets there, he backhands Stefan in the face, screams wordlessly when there is no response, and does it again. Stefan opens his eyes, tries to inhale, and promptly vomits seawater back into its source. Damon hits him squarely in the back, hastening the process and helping to dim his sudden rage. When Stefan is finished, he looks over his shoulder at Damon, panting, soaked. His shields are down but Damon is too disgusted to pry. "Take off your clothes. You'll swim faster without them." Stefan looks down at his own body, where Damon still holds him, waiting unconsciously for him to take on his own weight. "Don't let go of me. I think my legs are broken." Damon sighs. "Very well. Any other damage?" "A few ribs. There's something wrong with my spine, but I can't say what." "If I break it, then you'll be more than able to say." Stefan looks away, and goes silent. Damon treads water for both of them, long moments before: "I'm going to turn you. Climb on my back and hang on. If you let go, I'll knot your arms together and keep you there that way." And so it is. Damon swims for shore. They do not touch each other's minds, and say nothing. ********* Elena sees them from a distance, through filtered moonlight, and at first glance she does not see them as men. They are a great fish tossed up from the depths, a creature who has never seen light, nor warmth. A cold timeless monster from another age. She is frozen on the grey shore, fascinated and repulsed and stricken. And then the mist clears, and she recognizes what is hers. She stumbles forward, anticipatory and afraid, watching as Damon inelegantly tears the sodden garments from Stefan's body, then passing along her bundle, helping Damon with his buttons but afraid to touch Stefan, who makes no move to dress. "Stefan...are you all right?" She says it softly but she knows he'll hear her over the ocean sounds. He doesn't answer. "His legs are broken," Damon says, "Among other things. I think we'll have to forgo the clothes; I'll carry him." "But if he...if he fed..." Elena cannot let herself think beyond having him whole again. Her mind tells her it should be simple, that healing his body will heal him, but she knows better. "I could..." "You blood's useless to help him heal, Elena." "But yours..." "He doesn't deserve my blood. Or yours, for that matter." He stares Stefan in the face as he begins to lift him. Stefan screams when he hefts him over his shoulder. "Let's get him to the car." "We're going home now, Stefan," she whispers, walking behind Damon, looking into Stefan's closed face. "It's my home, Elena. Not his." Elena joins them in silence for the rest of the journey. Damon shifts to bird-form after Stefan's tucked in the passenger seat, leaving Elena to drive back, listening to nothing but Stefan's labored breath. She tries to hide the thought that keeps surfacing, lest Damon hear: If he turns him out, where does that leave me? And us? ********* Damon carries Stefan into the house, depositing his wet body on the couch. Elena goes upstairs for towels, and comes back down, handing two to Damon and beginning to dry Stefan's hair with one of the others. She knows he's conscious but his eyes are shut, his body limp. "We've got to find him blood. Look at him." "Maybe we should just leave him," Damon says, "Leave him until he begs for it." Elena stands from where she's knelt at Stefan's side. "You don't mean that." "I'm fairly certain I do. Either that, or force him. Break him. Which extreme would you prefer?" Stefan is clearly awake, clearly listening, but he simply shivers and turns his head. As if he would prefer his life in their hands over his own. "There must be some other way," she says, weakly, not looking Damon in the eye. "There was. We already tried it. This is the result." Damon eyes his brother with distaste. "He doesn't want seduction. He wants to be his namesake, or a god of ancient times: dismembered, and reborn." ********* Stefan looks far too young, draped on the couch clothed in nothing but his pain, so before she follows Damon upstairs, she covers him in a soft blanket. She does not touch him, and he gives no acknowledgment of her efforts. Only as she starts to ascend the stairs does she realize that they never even turned on the lights, that she's been nagivating the house by instinct all this time. What if I can't stay? The minute she steps through the bedroom doorway, Damon is there, pulling her to him then pressing her back so that the door clicks shut behind her. He kisses her fiercely, his hand already on her stomach inside her shirt. She gasps, surprised by his urgency, surprised again when he pulls open the garment, popping buttons all down the front. It's happening too fast; she can't think. Elena instinctively tips her head back, perhaps in submission, perhaps in unrecognized need, and Damon leans in to nip her Adam's apple. No. It dawns, or rather, flashes on her, what is happening, and it has to stop because she can't. "No, Damon, stop," she pants, the hands that were gripping his shoulders adjusting their hold, so that he backs away. Damon's teeth are long and white. "What?" "I can't do this. Not with him downstairs like that." "Whyever not? He needs to know what he's missing." "Oh, no, Damon," she says, crossing to the other side of the room and turning on the bathroom light. "I'm not going to be your leverage, or bait, or however you're thinking of it. That's only going to make everything worse." She grabs a hairbrush from the counter and pulls it through her long hair, using the ritual of it to keep her head clear. She does not look in the mirror. "You said we should leave him for now, and I did. But not because I wanted to give him another reason to think we don't want him." Damon doesn't answer. She turns and looks him squarely in the eye. "You told him you wanted to share things with him. I'm not a thing. But the both of you once asked me to make a choice, and I've made it. I don't know what's going on in your head, but let me spell this out for you: it's both of you, or neither." He still doesn't respond, just stares, and she turns back to her task. After a few minutes she feels the brush taken from her hand, feels it begin to carefully sift and smooth her hair. "I know," Damon whispers. "Then...what are you doing, Damon? The two of you?" He sets down the brush, and then he is leaning gently into her, nuzzling the nape of her neck in the way that reminds her of a small animal, a cub. "I don't know. I don't know why he isn't here with us, now." The room seems strange, even, with just the two of them in it, too empty and silent. Damon finishes removing her clothes, without a word, and pulls out two sets of pajamas from the dresser. He turns away as he pulls them on. Elena puts on the bottoms, then thinks for a moment, and puts the top back in the drawer. She reaches into another and takes out one of Stefan's tees. She pulls it over her head, and climbs under the sheets. Damon shuts off the light and joins her. The bed is too big; she crosses miles of empty space to meet his side. She puts her arm over his chest and closes her eyes. "I hardly know what to do with you," he says, "now that I have you to myself." "Don't do anything. Just rest--let me rest. And show him. Show him what it's like without him." He doesn't answer, but then, he doesn't need to. She huddles closer and tries to ignore how exposed she feels, with no one on her other side, no one else's hands on her. Things will seem easier when she wakes--if she can get herself to sleep. Outside the window, it begins to rain. End.