Chapter Text
Elena put the last photo she had taken with her happy family in the rucksack and zipped it shut, though the zip didn't close all the way and Jenna's face beamed out from the little gap between the teeth. Her room, tidied compulsively, looked as though she had simply gone to school.
When her sneakers hit the pavement, she realized how scary dark it was. She gave her home a last longing look, considering the letter she had left in the letterbox for Jer. Would it be enough?
It has to be, she thought. Because if I write any more, I’m going to lose my nerve.
As she walked, she thought more about the whole... predicament. Her eyes were hot and she felt like she'd been crying for a year, even though she'd only shed a handful of tears. Her head pounded, which made the thinky part of her situation hard, but she tucked her hands deep into her pockets and let her feet take her on auto-pilot as she marched her way determinedly to the highway.
Her boobs hurt and tramped down on the niggling thought at the back of her mind that made her think she would be safe in her hometown.
The third time she heard a truck approach at her back, her feet were hurting and her body was shivering, and the sun was threatening to out her from the shadows. She turned to face it and pulled off her beanie, determined to catch the ride. It slowed with good time and pulled up with enough space between them that she had to jog out to get to the door.
She pulled it open and got on her tip-toes to see the driver.
He was a chubby old man, ruddy cheeked and peering down at her, both hands on the wheel in his flannel sleeves. He looked like the grubby, grumpy version of Santa Claus.
"You alright, hon?"
"Can I catch a ride?"
"Where you off to?"
"Literally anywhere but here," she said, a touch of urgency in her voice. She decided to tell him, make him understand. "I'm - I'm pregnant."
"Oh," he said, and got out of the truck. For a horrible moment, she thought he was coming around to do something nefarious. She wasn't sure if running would hurt the baby, but she got ready to take off the second this went sour. But grumpy Santa just unfolded a series of steps near her open door, and offered her a hand. "Here y'are, hon. Get on in out the cold, now."
"Thank you." She took his hand and threw the bag in before she semi-awkwardly climbed up into the truck, letting him close the door behind her. It was much warmer, and much higher, than she'd anticipated. She clutched her beanie in both hands and started to pull on the pompom as the man climbed in.
He checked the rear view, then shifted into gear and started driving.
"How far along?"
"Four months."
"Startin' to pop?"
"I started to pop a few weeks ago," she told her beanie.
"You're skinny, s'why." He was quiet for a moment. "You need some food?"
"I'm fine, thank you." She stared out the window. "Where are you going?"
"North Carolina. That okay?"
"That's fine." She nodded. "Thank you for the lift."
"Not a problem," he said, waving off the good deed. "If y' wanted to wait around for a day or so in Carolina, I'm goin' on t' Texas, if that means anythin' to you."
"I might." She wouldn't.
Putting her eggs all in one basket was a mistake she knew not to make. Too many Stephan King novels had put enough wayward on-the-run knowledge into her head for her to think that one kind trucker would be her entire salvation. No. She had someone else for that, but she needed to get away from prying eyes, first.
"The daddy a bad man?" he wondered. At her pause, he continued: "You don't have to tell me, hon, but you should know I ain't gonna cross paths with anyone you know. Pass the time, or such, while you're here."
"Therapy on wheels," she joked, earned a scoff from him.
"I'm old 'nuff 'n' ugly 'nuff to know a couple things 'bout the world, maybe," he said with a shrug. "I know talkin' helps. Doesn't get caught up in your head."
She considered.
"You're the first person I've told I'm pregnant," she said softly.
He glanced over at her, his wiry brows lifting in surprise.
"Y' didn't tell y' momma?"
"No momma." She nodded. "No father. My aunt – my guardian - was murdered. The man who was looking after us - me and my brother - he left."
"Oh, shit," he muttered.
"Yeah." She stared at her beanie again. It was an old one, and the stitching was starting to stretch in the seam.
"No friends?"
"Can't be trusted. Not with this." She shut her eyes. "It's... complicated."
"We got time." He checked the GPS mounted on the windscreen. "We got hours."
She took a minute of those offered hours to think. How could she explain? It wasn't easy, not even to her.
"I..." she opened her eyes.” There were these brothers."
"Ooch, never good to get in the way o' family."
"No kidding." She smiled, though it wasn't entirely happy. "I fell in love with the youngest. He fell in love with me. But so did his older brother."
The driver seemed to gather something.
"He didn't..." he glanced at her belly. ”He didn't - hurt you?"
"No, no, he didn't," she reassured him, and saw his hands loosen on the wheel. She wondered why he'd been so worried. She realized in his situation, she would've been equally as worried. "They-... They were a lot. There is just so much history there. It wasn't with either of them - I was trying to help someone. I was working with a friend-"
"He the father?"
"She's a girl, so I hope not."
That, at least, got a snort out of him.
"Was it a one-night-stand?" he wanted to know. "No judgment."
She considered it.
"That is… also complicated. It was and it wasn’t," she said quietly. "To help my friend I had to go away. Far, far away to – find, something, for her. And there was this guy there, who was patient and kind, who just wanted to talk to me. He was just -... so loving, and gentle." She put a hand on her stomach, felt the warmth in her palm echo in her stomach. The baby hadn't moved, yet, but she kind of hoped it would.
"You feelin' okay?" he said gruffly. "Mornin' sick?"
"It's mostly passed, now," she agreed. "It was bad. I couldn't smell anything without sticking my head in a bowl."
"So was my wife's." He tapped a photo hanging from the rear view, swinging after his touch. There was a woman with a big smile, big belly, and red hair. The man, a little younger than his current self, was clean shaven and standing behind three kids. "For the first one, we had to put our dogs out for five months. But as she went on with my sons she didn't mind so much. She barely even noticed little Alice until I said somethin' to her 'bout her waist!"
Elena laughed.
"I bet she didn't like that."
"Oh no, she did not." He was smiling behind his beard, because his jolly cheeks filled up around his eyes and made them shiny. "I was in the doghouse for at least a week. Best time of my life - I had another baby on the way, and that woman snores like the devil. Win-win."
She laughed. It was good just to talk babies and not think babies. She didn't know what she was supposed to do with her hands, but linking them on her stomach felt good. She wasn't sure if a baby could get cold in there, so she pressed the beanie flat between her hands and held it that way, just in case.
"So this guy, the father," he went on. "He knows what’s goin’ on?"
"No." She swallowed. "I'm not sure I want him to know."
"Why?"
"Because his family is... complicated."
"I thought you said he was kind?"
"He is. Was." She looked at him with a sad smile. "It's complicated."
"I hope y' don't think that after the baby's born it gets any less complicated," he warned cheerfully. "Babies complicate a mess o' things outta the simplest of lives. How you gon' pay for everything a baby needs? How you gon' get it to school? How you gon' work and then spend time with the little one to even teach talkin' or walkin', or when they start to learn how to grab things? Holy God in heaven, that's the time when it gets real wild. They git in everything. You gotta get those uh, I can't 'member what they called, but they're these ties to keep your doors shut, 'cuz babies, once they start movin', they on the move, all the time, and they'll put everything in their mouthes, includin' the dog if it's too stupid to t’ git out the way."
See, that was the part she hadn't thought of. The after, part. She had planned to be on the run for the rest of her pregnancy, and then have the baby. She and a baby would be less likely to be found by certain Salvatore brothers who were solely looking for her.
"If I reach out to him," she said quietly. "There's a chance I lose the baby."
He blinked, his joyful baby ramble coming to a halt.
"Will he wanna abort?" He blinked. "He can't do that to you, hon, only you can do that."
"He might want full custody," she corrected. Her hands tightened a little on her belly. She willed it to move, give her a sign that she was doing the right thing. "His family might... raise it, wrong. Raise it to be like them."
"Are the rest not kind like your fella?"
"They're..." She searched for words. Found only one. "Damaged."
"You're worried it's gon' get raised wrong like you won't be there," he chided. "It's the twenty-first century, nothin' will happen t' you t' make you go away, and you're a sweet enough girl that you'll show that baby the right way of things."
“My sweetness might not be a match for the rest of their habits,” she informed him, somewhat under her breath. “I get a little bit bitter when they’re around.”
“What was that?”
“Nothing.”
She’d been terrified of Klaus long before she even had a face to put to the name – and she was scared of him still, thirsting after her doppelgänger blood - if he decided on a whim to reignite his whole hunt for the perfect hybrid army, thing, she’d be first on his long list of things to do. But beyond Klaus, how many times had Rebekah threatened her life? She'd helped Jeremy kill Kol, been instrumental in killing Finn.
Uncles, said Damon's nasty, biting voice in her head. You killed your baby's uncles.
Complicated.
"Mind," he went on, playfully. "Runnin' away from your problems in a trucker's cabin and havin' unsafe sex on y' holidays ain't exactly lessons I would pass on, myself."
Elena laughed, because it was true. Her parents had barely given her the sex talk before they'd died. She was firmly of the opinion that not only would her child be raised to be safe at all times, she or he would be raised in a good, loving home.
Klaus was incapable of love.
Or had he done everything he had done because he'd loved his family so much…?
He'd never switched off his emotions. So did that make him justified? Or did it make him certifiably insane?
"I don't know what I'll do," she said softly. "But I can't go back home."
"Y'said you have a brother?"
"Younger. He's still in school."
"Doesn't mean he can't help out. What about the brothers, ain't you in love with one of them?"
She thinned her lips.
"If they found out I was pregnant, they could guess who the father is," she explained carefully. "There's bad blood there. And they would make my life, or the baby's life, impossible. They're already strangling me. I won't let them strangle my baby."
He flinched at the words, the image, it conjured, but that was how Elena had been feeling for weeks upon weeks. Stefan would've been a fantastic father, but she wasn't going to risk Uncle Damon being an ever present dark stain on what should've been a bright white light. And Damon? He had love in him, too. He had a deep, terrifying love, and her baby would never be safer than with him.
Only, maybe, if they thought the father was an Original. Then that baby would become a weapon; a bargaining tool. And she couldn’t do that, now, could she?
"Complicated," he agreed, staring out the window.
She nodded, leaned her head back into the rest.
"If you wanna sleep," he said mildly. "We got the better part of three hours to get to where we're gettin'. S'early for a young mama bear to be up and runnin'."
"I might," she said, and before she knew it, was dead to the world.