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He lay in his bed that night, having only talked Elena out of sleeping with him by reminding her that they aren't little kids anymore. She's his sister, and he loves her (even when she pisses him off), but seriously, he's not gonna sleep in the same bed with her just because he died tonight.
That's right, he died. Or even better: he was murdered. The blank space in his memory between when Damon's desperate hands snapped his neck and the moment when he gasped back into his body as it lay in Elena's arms felt like those times he blacked out from too much of whatever he and Vicki used to smoke, drink, or swallow on a regular basis.
He'd only tried to kill himself eighteen hours before that, foolishly thinking the vampire life would be better than regular life. Damon had told him the truth, it sucks either way, Jeremy, yet he'd still gone forward with his stupid plan.
Dying changed everything--not about how sucky his life seemed, but now he can see something that before he'd been blind to. Damon's misery is something larger and more consuming than anything Jeremy had ever felt, even in the face of his parents' death, and the loss of Vicki, and now Anna. Damon's misery is so huge one minute he's practically declaring love to a girl (Jeremy's sister, no less) and a split second later he's killing someone that girl loves. Even though Elena drives him nuts half the time, the one thing Jeremy knows for sure is that his sister loves him. Which makes him a dick for trying to kill himself, but...well. It isn't easy being Elena's younger brother. She acts like the two years between them are lifetimes of space, when really they've pretty much been through all the same things, including dating a vampire. (Well, and he died, which is something Elena had not yet done.)
Jeremy might be an emo jackoff half the time by his own admission, but he sees everything that happens around him. Misery isn't something you can turn off anymore than you can lose the sensation of emptiness. It had to be filled by something else, not just taken away. There's a big difference between those two things, and this sudden realization hits him broadside.
It all coalesces into something that gives him perspective. Damon in his bedroom, apologizing for something like Vicki (an apology he owed her family far more than he did Jeremy) and Damon in Elena's room, begging her to tell the truth. He'd been listening, and had only stepped in when he feared Damon might push it too far, the way Tyler had with Vicki in the woods that time.
In the end, as he lay drifting in the space that wasn't quite sleep and wasn't quite consciousness, he figures out that Damon's fucked up behavior sorta makes him feel better about his own situation. He probably can't tell Elena that, can't explain to her that he sort of understands what's going on there. He remembers following Vicki around, trying to make her tell the truth about what was between them, but she'd only been willing to do it when Tyler had done whatever last asshole-y thing she couldn't explain away.
Uncle John's words echo through his mind as he fades out completely. He needs to figure out what he stands for, and do something to show what that is. He has to stop waiting for shit to happen, for Vicki to come home, for Anna to turn him, for his own misery to get the better of him the way it had Damon.
He needs a plan.
The night he decides to kill Damon (after his run in with the asshole at the school carnival), he's energized by purpose and rhythm. He steals some vervain from Elena's stash, finds a stick in the woods that he (sort of) sharpens into a point (almost cutting his thumb off in the process), and he goes to the Salvatore Boarding House.
He has a plan, and it's good. The front door is unlocked; everything's deathly quiet inside the eerie house. He laces one of the booze bottles with the toxic herb, and then sits down to wait. But the wait ends up being forever, and by the time Damon finally shows up, Jeremy has had three hours to out-think himself.
He tells Damon the truth, and Damon's...kinda cool, eventually. They talk about their fathers, and they joke about how crappy his stake is, and then they just sit there, kinda quiet for a while.
Finally Jeremy says, "She won't hate you forever."
Damon's eyes widen hopefully for a split second before he squints at Jeremy and smirks, "One can only fuck up so many times before one loses their chance at a redo."
"Maybe," Jeremy says, shrugging. "But I know my sister."
"I know her, too," Damon says, pushing himself to his feet. "Did you poison all my alcohol?" he asks, circling the sofa to the table with all the bottles.
"No, just the big one," Jeremy says, pointing.
Damon pours himself a clean drink. "Why won't she hate me forever?" he asks, his eyes on the amber liquid as it splashes into the glass.
"Because she's too good," Jeremy says. It's the truth. Elena really is one of the best people he knows; that's why her lies to him had made him so mad. She doesn't usually do stuff like that. Stefan and Damon coming into her life had changed some things about her.
Damon mutters, "Yeah, too good," and throws back the entire glass of whiskey.
Jeremy's eyes linger on the empty glass as Damon sets it back on the table. "I read her diary; she's not that good."
He meets Damon's surprised gaze with a smirk of his own. Then he stands up to leave. "I'll see you around, Damon."
Damon gave up introspection years ago. All the same, he can't help but notice Jeremy Gilbert following him around like a Labrador puppy, trying to be helpful (and actually accomplishing it), and also managing to outsmart Elena on like every level.
He feels this begrudging respect for the kid, but he does his best to squash it. This is a wise choice because at the first available opportunity, Stefan is reprimanding him for involving Jeremy when he's done all he can to shake the kid off.
(Well, not really. But he wants to know what the Lockwood brat knows about the moonstone, and Jeremy wants to help, and it's not like it's his job to boss Elena's brother around. Come to think of it, Stefan got on his ass for doing that on Founder's Day, so fuck Stefan.)
The problem with Jeremy isn't so much that he's somewhat useful, it's that he reminds Damon of himself. This is the same problem that led him to be in Jeremy's bedroom the night Anna died, and in some ways it's why he snapped Jeremy's neck. Sure, he'd been drunk and pissed at Elena (and yes, Katherine, too), but Jeremy is him in so many ways. Part of him--the part that tried to never think thoughts of this nature--recognizes the irony of killing himself, and then the irony of Jeremy coming to the Boarding House to return the favor, but not being able to do it.
Jeremy had tried to save Mason Lockwood, but that's only because Jeremy doesn't really understand, and he shouldn't. Elena has done so much to protect him, Damon knows he should have done more to keep him innocent of all that went on around him. But when push came to shove, all he could do was scare the kid until he left the scene of the crime. It had been effective, but not what she would have wanted, he's sure.
He has moments when he longs to be that kind of person again, when he wonders if he could ever get back to that place, and if he could, would it make a difference? To Elena, to Stefan, to himself? Would Katherine, as Elena had said tearfully as she stood in the doorway before she walked away, always win? Beat them all, kill anything that is good or right or promising?
See, this is why he never thinks about this shit. What purpose does it serve? Just a pitiful reminder that what's done is done and there is no such thing as fixing anything.
It's Stefan's idea to let Jeremy help with the trapping and what will be the ultimate killing of Katherine. Damon doesn't argue the point, but he lets his eyes linger on his brother's until Stefan nods slightly, as if to say he'll take the responsibility (the blame) if anything happens to Elena's brother.
Damon will do his best to protect the kid, but he can't be everywhere at once, and who knows what could happen in the melée. With Katherine, they could all end up dead before they even saw it coming. Damon knows, that's how it happened to him the first time.
He doesn't want Jeremy dead, though, even though he killed him once. He wants Jeremy to have the life that he deserves. He wants what he sees that Elena wants for her brother, and he knows the deeper the kid gets in with them, the less likely that is to happen.
He wants everything for that boy that he never had for himself, that he never can have because of Katherine, and his choices, and everything. He wants some inexplicable happy ending for someone who deserves it.
(More than anything, he wishes he could go back to the days when he never had thoughts like this.)
After Rose appears in their lives, after Rose dies--Jeremy still comes to the house to hang out or whatever. He always shows up when Elena and Stefan aren't there, and he always stays far longer than Damon wants him too. But he never tells him to leave, and they usually just sit, staring at the fire, talking a little at a time.
"Bonnie's just scared," Damon says, handing Jeremy a beer. (He doesn't give the kid the hard stuff, but a beer once in a while isn't going to kill him.)
Jeremy's pouty and emo today, so even without him saying anything, Damon knows the witch has got his boy all tied up in knots. "Scared of what?" he asks bitterly.
"Everything. Life. Living. She thinks she's gonna go the way of her ancestors. She's thinking of you, really. You've already lost people you love, she's trying to protect you."
Jeremy snorts. "Yeah. Well. I don't want her to protect me. I want..."
"I know," Damon says when he doesn't finish. "So does she. Give her some time. Don't hound her--" When Jeremy's head jerks in Damon's direction, Damon wags a finger at him. "That's your MO, Gilbert. Following people around until they're forced to accept you. Girls aren't into that--it's called stalking. So, just chill. She'll come around."
Jeremy folds his arms over his chest and tucks his beer under his chin, huffing out his agitation. "How do you know?"
Damon hesitates, just a moment. He doesn't want to give the guy false hope, but he's seen the way Bonnie looks at Jeremy. She's in just as deep as the kid is. "Just trust me," he says. He reaches over and puts his hand on Jer's shoulder. "Okay?"
Jeremy nods, his eyes shifting sideways. He smiles at Damon. "Thanks."
Damon gets up and fixes himself another drink, a strange contentment in his chest. He knows just how fucked he is when making Jeremy happy makes him happy. He's saddled himself with the well-being and longevity of two Gilberts, neither of which has anything to do with himself. Oh, how times have changed since he's been back in Mystic Falls.
"Remember how I told you I read Elena's diary, because I wanted to find out what her secret was?" Jeremy asks, startling Damon out of his happy lamentation.
"Yeah. So?"
"Well, I sorta still do it sometimes."
Damon widens his eyes in mock horror. "You bad, bad boy," he chides, laughing a little as he takes a swallow of whiskey.
"I know, I'm a dick. But..."
"But, what?"
"I just think you should know that Elena knows."
"Elena knows what?"
"That you love her."
Damon scoffs. "Yeah, well, everyone seems to have that misconception even though I have a girlfriend."
"No, Damon, she knows. Like, you know, knows. When she lost her necklace, she immediately started drinking vervain tea. So, she knows. She remembers you coming over that night."
Damon's glad he's standing next to the table that holds all his booze, because he has to set his drink down and put his hands flat on the smooth mahogany surface to keep himself upright. Sudden nausea wells up in his stomach. He didn't even know he could feel so sick without ingesting any vervain.
Jeremy swivels around on the couch to see Damon better. "She's...confused by how it made her feel. And she's been throwing herself into how she feels about Stefan so she doesn't have to think about how she feels about you."
Damon shakes his head, hoping Jeremy will shut the hell up, but the kid just keeps on going. "I think she's afraid, just like you said about Bonnie. But she definitely--"
"Stop," Damon croaks out, finally getting some impetus back. "I don't want to know, I can't know, Jer. She's my brother's girlfriend, and I. Can't. Know."
Frustration crosses Jeremy's face. "How can you not? I get it, that Stefan's your family and all, but this is--this is love, Damon. It's the most important thing in the whole world, isn't it?"
It's funny how a 16 year old kid can know everything, and absolutely nothing, all at the same time.
Elena finds him sitting at his desk in his bedroom, the place he seems to spend most of his time anymore, if he's not somewhere with Damon. Always on his computer, doing research for school or, you know, their lives.
For a lot of teenage boys that would mean the door being not just closed, but locked. With Jer...well, he pretty much doesn't do anything "normal" anymore. Ever since the Salvatores had come into their lives, neither of them could talk about normal activities.
Elena can't remember the last time she did anything that was relatively normal, either. Between watching her brother die right in front of her to being kidnapped by 500 year old vampires, she's hard pressed to recall when life was simple. When there wasn't age-old paradoxes waiting for her wherever she turns.
She's glad at least that Jer knows the truth so she can talk to him about it. As much as she'd like to protect him from all the bad in the world, there's a lot of comfort in knowing he understands most of what's going on around them. Especially now that, together with Alaric, they're protecting Jenna from all kinds of evil.
She just has one issue that she has to bring up to him, right now.
"Jer, how can you be so buddy-buddy with Damon?"
He looks up at her with a serious expression, not even surprised that she's there, or perhaps that this is a question she's posing. The thoughtful contemplation he shows more often than not comes over his face yet again. "Because I get it," he says, not even hesitating. "I understand him."
"He killed you," she reminds him. She, too, once thought she understood Damon, but that had all shattered the night she held her brother in her arms, hoping he would wake up. And then again, when he came to her room and laid bare everything he felt, only to make her "forget" it. It's quite possible that what she understands about him now frightens her more than anything else ever has. And Jeremy tapping into that in anyway also terrifies her.
Her brother looks at her for a long moment before he offers, "Dude's broken, Elena. I mean, have you ever really looked at him? Looked into his eyes? There's, like, this abyss there. He's wrecked. I don't know, I just kind of get him. I know you're mad at him about what happened--but me and him, we're square. Now, we're, I don't know. Sorta friends."
"Well, I don't understand how you can be friends with someone who tried to kill you--who did kill you." She wants to stomp her foot in frustration, but she doesn't.
Jeremy just shrugs, his eyes returning to his computer screen. "He killed Ric, and they're friends."
Elena can feel her face grow hot as her irritation rises. She bites her lip and wonders just what lecture she should unleash on her baby brother when he looks back at her and says, "I don't get why you're so mad at him for something he did to me."
"What?" Elena exclaims. "What?" she cries again, marching forward to slug Jeremy in the arm. "You're my brother. Our parents are dead! If you were dead, I would--"
"But, I'm not dead," he says, enunciating each word clearly. "So get over it."
Elena's vision blurs a little as she looks down into his face, and the words he's just said so flippantly--that remind her so much of Damon that Jeremy might as well have been doing an impersonation of him--reverberate inside her head. There's no controlling her temper now, and she all but shrieks, "I can't get over it! He might have killed you, but he did it to me. He did it to hurt me, to wound me the way I had wounded him. But it was way worse than what I did, and I can never totally forgive him for that!"
Jeremy smirks at her, and she barely restrains herself from smacking his face. "You can't totally forgive him? But you can forgive him a little?" He chuckles and pushes himself back from his desk so he can fold his arms over his chest. "What are you holding on to that for? So you don't have to admit to yourself that you care about him? That he matters to you? That, yeah, he hurt you in the worst way he possibly could, but only because you'd done the same thing to him? There's nothing worse than loving someone who doesn't love you back, 'Lena. You don't know, because you've always gotten whoever you wanted. But, trust me, it sucks, big time."
She opens her mouth with a rebuttal, but Jeremy puts a hand up, as though anticipating her response. "I'm not saying it's okay for him to kill people because he doesn't get to be with you, or whatever it is exactly that he wants. I'm just saying, I know how he feels."
They stare at each other, and the tightness in Elena's chest swells to a painful level. She has grown tired of everyone telling her that Damon loves her. Not because she doesn't know it's true, but because it's agonizing to hear.
It's agonizing to know.
So many times since that night--the night he brought her the necklace back--she's wished that Damon had been able to compel her. If she could not know, she wouldn't be so messed up right now, she's sure of it.
"Hate him all you want," Jeremy says. "But it doesn't change anything. I'm still here. And he's still there. And you...well, you know what you are."
Elena bites her tongue not ask what that means. She's afraid she knows all too well.
It's not like she just wakes up one day and realizes she's in love with Damon Salvatore.
When she looks back over the span of time that she's known him, and when she re-reads certain journal entries, she can see it all there. It's not like when he accused her of lying about it that she thought he was necessarily wrong, though at the time it had seemed more important to make him understand that no matter what she felt for him, she had chosen--and would always choose--Stefan.
The first time Elena experienced that weightless flip in her stomach because of Damon--if she's completely honest--was when they were in Atlanta. It had been so strange, sitting next to him in Bree's Bar, talking like they were old friends, joking and exchanging information. Then he'd leaned towards her, did that eye-thing he always did, and smiled. The sensation in her stomach had taken her by surprise, one because it was Damon, and two because since she'd met Stefan, she'd literally had eyes for no other guy around her.
The really disconcerting part had come later, though, when she pled for Damon's life. She'd told herself it was for Lexi's boyfriend, or even for Stefan, who despite everything loved his brother, but in the end, she knew she'd done it for Damon. She'd had a glimpse that day of someone worth saving, and she couldn't let that go, just in case deep down inside, Damon was redeemable.
(Okay, she'd done it for herself.)
So she wakes up the morning after her big fight with Jeremy, and she just can't not face the truth any longer.
She's in love with Damon, despite everything. It comes down to two nights--here in her own bedroom. Two moments in time that run the gamut from the farthest dark place to the closest light place. If she pushes away the hurt and anger about Jeremy, and if she thinks about how he looked that night, confessing all the things he didn't want her to remember--it seems inevitable.
How can she not love him? It's like being drawn into something completely overwhelming and overpowering. Almost as if she had no choice, except that she did. She had many choices, opportunities to cut Damon out of her life, moments to walk away, things she could have done that didn't draw him somehow closer, but every time, she'd done exactly that. She'd let the bond between them grow, nurtured it even until it had become unwieldy in her hands.
She's not taking responsibility for Damon killing her brother, but she can see it now--how it happened, why it happened.
And she also sees that she forgave him anyway, even though no excuse could ever be enough.
But then she thinks about how she is with Damon, how she's felt when she's just let herself be and how Damon and danger and freedom all get mixed up in her head. She sees his face, and the honest confession that if Jeremy hadn't been wearing his ring that night he didn't know what he would have done.
She doesn't either. She can barely comprehend any of it. But she knows that the idea of never knowing is what has gnawed quietly away at all the walls she's put up to keep distance between them. He hasn't even been there, hassling her in person, yet the agitation of all of it has choked away her resistance, has taken the truth out of her relationship with Stefan and made it into a parody of what it once was.
Damon's done nothing but be Damon, and that has somehow been enough.
She walks into the great room at the Boarding House and he's sitting on the sofa, reading a book and drinking--blood. A fire crackles in the hearth but the room is still drafty, like always.
"Hello, Elena," he says, not looking up at her. "Stefan's not here."
"I know," she says, wringing her hands together. "I'm here to see you."
Only his eyes move upward, his neck stays bent over the book. His eyebrows go up questioningly. "Me?" he asks, his voice incredulous in that always-mocking way of his. "Whatever would you want with me?"
"Good question," Elena mutters, and that causes him to grin, and her stomach does that flippy thing and she knows she should have broken up with Stefan first, but here she is.
The book snaps shut in his hand and he sets it aside. "Call of the Wild," he says, gesturing with his head. She watches his body tense, but he never moves from the sofa, and she can't help but think he's just been waiting for this moment.
Except that he can't possibly, because he doesn't know that she knows.
"How can I help you?" he says just before he swallows what's left of the blood in his glass.
"I want to do an experiment," she says, which is the truth.
She's seventeen. She's watched romantic comedies her whole life, and until her parents died, had not really known a day of hardship. Everything that has happened to her since the moment she met Stefan Salvatore should have taught her that there were other ways of accomplishing her goals, but the tried-and-true movie method was just to kiss the guy. If she could kiss Damon, she would know what to do next.
He pats the cushion next to him and murmurs, "Do tell?"
Elena shakes her head. "No, I need you to come here." She points jerkily to the floor in front of her and before she can bat an eyelash, he's standing before her. He grins again when she gasps in surprise.
"He's fast, I'll give him that," he quips. Eye-thing. Grins wider. Studies her face. Gets serious. "What is it?" he asks, and his voice is suddenly softer.
She doesn't answer. Instead she just reaches up, wraps her hand around the back of his neck and brings her lips to his. Now he gasps, and his hands are on her hips, clenching slightly, and she thinks maybe he's going to push her away.
So she bites his bottom lip, and sucks it gently before she slides her arms around his shoulders and presses her body full-length to his. She can taste blood on his tongue as hers flicks over the tip of it, and he gasps again, but then he kisses her--like kisses her, and Elena realizes she's not in a movie.
But it's still a movie kiss, the kind that makes her chest tighten and her thighs burn, and it's Damon in a way that's unfamiliar, and yet so delicious. She has the fleeting thought: why didn't I do this sooner.
He pulls away, and his hands surround her face. She wants to shout and laugh and start a chorus of Hallelujah maybe, because for the first time in months, she feels like something right just clicked into place.
Damon's voice is soft and choked when it utters, "What the hell?" but she just kisses him again, and he kisses her back, his hands tangling in the hair hanging down her back.
She has no idea what to do; she has no plan beyond kissing him until her lips are numb, but it suddenly occurs to her that that's the whole point. If any of it had been easy, she would never have known how much she wanted it.
When they break apart for air, she whisper-gasps, "I love you," and he responds with a breathless, "This is an experiment?"
Elena tugs his mouth back to hers and thinks yes.