Chapter Text
Grief is a monster.
Elena Gilbert has lived with the monster of grief tucked under her bed for two hundred, thirty three days. It keens and yelps at her, licks her feet when she gets up in the morning - slow, because ever since the accident and the hospital everything has been slow, like swimming through murky waters. It is always there, for her, in her dreams. The water and the shadowy figure. Waiting for her, the surface dark. And him; ready to pull her under.
Two hundred and thirty three days, Elena has sleep-walked through the act of living. Food appears outside her room. Bonnie still texts, and Elena diligently deletes the unopened messages.
It's not that she hates Bonnie. It's different.
How can she text, when her parent's fingers will never hold hers again?
How can she chat, when her dad's last word were gurgled screams?
Elena Gilbert lives, two hundred and thirty three days, bought and paid for with her parents' lives.
All, because she wanted to go to a party, in the woods.
All, because she needed a lift back home.
All, because of a shadowy figure that appeared out of nowhere, on the bridge, the white bloodless face with the blue piercing eyes glaring at her, in the headlights of the car.
Grief is a monster; but so is blue-eyed man who caused her grief.
And Elena will kill herself a monster.
Elena is stuck inside her head, they say.
She is not stuck. She is sinking, under an ocean of Whys. Of Whos.
Who was the man on the bridge.
Where has she met him before.
Why was he there.
No one believes her. There are no traces of a pedestrian, no proof that it was anything but bad luck and wet asphalt that caused her parents' car to veer off the road and into the reservoir. But Elena knows. Every time she shuts her eyes, she sees his face. The cold bright blue of his eyes.
Staring at her.
"She's young," Elena overhears the therapist say, through the cracked open door. "They overcome so much in that age."
Jenna's crying. She knows the sound; it's the muffled sobs she often hears from her aunt's room, quiet and gentle, so as not to wake her up.
"But she is not doing any better! I am sorry... I just don't know what else to do."
"Give her time. Jenna, she is so young. She has all the time in the world."
Elena knows that the old her would be feeling terrible, guilty at the pain she is causing to the people she loves.
Elena, after the water, after the bridge, feels nothing but hollow rage. They say she has time, but all she feels is the certainty that it is running out.
Time. Time Elena doesn't waste going to school, checking her phone.
Time is what Elena uses to go through her parents' things. Boxes and boxes, hastily thrown together by distant relatives and well-meaning family friends. They packed up everything in those boxes. Dad's practice, his office at the university. Mom's little corner at the Mystic Fall's preservation society building. Their bedroom, to make space for Jenna's things.
Elena goes through everything. Most of their belongings mean little to her. A stethoscope, still in its original package. All the same, they cut her deep, every item her parents once touched another reminder of their loss.
Another reminder of the shadowy figure who took them from her.
She is not quite sure what she is looking for, but once she starts, fragments of clues begin showing themselves to her.
A clipping of a newspaper "Four dead at the Salvatore Boarding House: Suspected animal attack". Date: 8th of November 1971.
A faded photo from her mom's class, only two faces are crossed out.
She searches online, then. So may unexplained deaths, in Mystic Falls. Animal attacks, accidents. Always in clusters. Always two decades apart.
The basement is last.
It's a treasure trove, and Elena forgets to sleep for days, existing on Monster energy drinks and packs of red vines. When Jenna pesters her too much, Elena snaps, and then feels terrible about it.
But she is making so much progress; The Gilbert Journals, penned by her ancestor, Jonathan Gilbert, consume her.
Jonathan Gilbert had seen the ghostly man with the piercing blue eyes. And then the deaths had begun.
His fiance, his father, all of them mauled. Animal attacks, the townspeople had said, but Jonathan knew better. At every horrific scene, Jonathan had seen him; the shadow of a man with piercing blue eyes, mocking eyes, flashing for a moment and then gone.
The town thought him mad.
Jonathan kept hunting for clues, and in the abandoned Salvatore house where tragedy had fallen, a mere decade earlier, he had found them: A portrait of a young man. In the grey daguerreotype, his eyes, were white. Crystal blue. Damon Salvatore.
Elena's blood runs cold.
Something about the name makes the blood in her veins ache, curdle, her tongue freeze in her mouth.
Damon.
She turns the pages like a woman possessed.
Her ancestor had found blood, dried blood, trails of them leading up to the cellar. A boarded up room - less than that. A cell. And in it, buried in a shallow grave, a single box.
There is a drawing of it, faded graphite. A perfect cube, intricate drawings on each side, once so detailed but now impossible to make out. Only a list of barely-there words: "Lament = Life?" "Lore?" "Lazarus (inscrutable) = Resurrection"
"I can feel it calling to me," the penmanship of Jonathan Gilbert becomes nigh inscrutable there. "The cube, the puzzle, the relic that whispers promises in the voice of everyone I've lost. It burns ice cold, and when I stare at it too long, it shows me shapes. Wonders. It shows me Laura's face, in betwixt the shadows… I've taken to carrying it with me everywhere. I do not know how it can help, not yet, I do not know how it will bring me back my love, how it will vanquish the villain Salvatore but I do know this: It must be the blessed solution to all my ills. And I can almost feel the solution, it's at the very tips of my fingers…" There are lines she cannot read, scratches almost, and then the letters become blocky, massive. "I shall bring you back, my love. The Lazarus Configuration is the key. Where the horrors begun. I will meet you there, Laura, my -"
That's where the Journals abruptly end, the page half torn and blotches of something brown, like drops of coffee that splashed on the page. Jonathan's obituary comes soon after, in the thick book of the Founding Families history.
That's where Elena finds him. Damon Salvatore. Missing, and then dead. No cause of death given.
And Elena's body shakes, her spirit more alive than it has been in months.
Her ghost has a name. And she has a purpose. And if she gets her hands on that mysterious box, a solution. She will succeed where Jonathan Gilbert failed. Somehow.
The Salvatore Boarding House still stands.
That afternoon, she leaves her house for the first time since the accident. Since the murder of her parents.
There is police tape around the Boarding House. Liz is there in her sheriff's uniform.
"Elena," she says. She looks at her with sad eyes, like everyone since. "I am sorry darling, you can't be here."
Elena doesn't move. Her eyes are trained on the body bag they are now rolling out of the front door.
"Zach," she whispers. She remembers the man, always sitting at the back of the church.
Liz's silence all but confirms it. She needs to get in that house more than ever.
"I am sorry, Elena, please. You have to go. This is an active crime scene. Here," she takes out her phone, "you shouldn't be driving, I'll call your mom-" Liz pauses. "I am so sorry, honey. I meant Jenna."
Something bitter rises to choke her.
"It's ok. I am leaving. I can drive myself home Liz; it wasn't me who drove the car of the bridge, remember?"
She doesn't stay to see the shock or pain in Liz's eyes. Elena was a kind girl, once. Now she just needs for the nightmare to end.
The Lazarus configuration. The Resurrection. So close. She can feel the palms of her hand itch.
Elena drives back to the Salvatore House two days later, when she is sure that the Sheriff won't be there to stop her.
She breaks in through the window.
The living room smells of dust, and something sweet. Metallic.
There's nothing in the bookshelves, but her feet take her to the basement - it is always the basement.
She passes by the cells dug into the walls. One of them is set up like a greenhouse, full of sweet-smelling plants with little lavender flowers. She runs her hand over them, and the smell clings on her. It feels like a friend, and she tucks a flower in her pocket.
Deeper she goes, until she finds the boarded up cell. It is easy enough to kick through the boards, all of them rotten through from the damp.
That room has no light-bulb hanging from the ceiling, and Elena has to turn her phone's screen on to see - ignoring the endless list of missed calls and messages.
There are shapes drawn on the packed dirt that's the floor, shapes that match up to the symbols in the Gilbert Journals.
And in the midst of them, a box. So small, it could fit in her palm.
Elena thinks she can hear it pulse, but it is only her heart. It is real, she wants to scream. She is not crazy, everything Jonathan wrote about is real.
Carefully, she goes to pick it up. It is impossible, but it's like it jumps in her hand, like it wants to be taken by her, so much lighter than she expected. For a moment, she can feel it getting warmer, emitting a flicker of light and then -
She is pushed back, so suddenly, so violently the box flies away from her hand.
"No," Elena screams.
She looks up, into the ice cold eyes of her parents' killer. His smile is the slash of a knife. He has so many teeth.
"I don't think so, darling," Damon, the ghost made flesh says, and Elena runs.
He is faster.
The monster with the pale white flesh and the crazy eyes pushes her against the mouldy wall, pressing one hand against her wind pipe. She doesn't have air to breathe, to scream, and Elena lashes out, all the grief and anger and hatred, all the pain exploding out of her.
She stabs her nails into his face, rakes them down, over and over, wishing to ruin him, to flay him. To hurt him as much as this monster hurt her.
At first, he is smiling, even as streaks of blood run down his face. And then his flesh starts sizzling, and the smile wilts.
"What the hell?" He lets go of her then, hunches over, mewling in pain. His hands scratch at his own face, as if something in her touch was burning him. "Vervain? How the fuck did you know, you bitch!"
Vervain. The little lavender flower in her pocket.
Breathlessly, she clenches the flower in her fist. She stumbles over something - the box! She picks it up, and then, using all her remaining courage to approach the monster that's still howling, she presses the flower against the tatters of his face.
The screech is so loud her ears ring.
Elena runs, and doesn't stop, until she is in her car.
"Come on," she pleads, as the first turn of the keys does nothing. "Come on!"
In her rear view mirror, she catches a glimpse of a figure stumbling out of the front door she left open behind her.
"Come one," she screams, and then the engine roars to life, and Elena speeds, breathlessly, all the way back home.
She doesn't dare leave her bed the next day.
Somehow, it feels like the last safe place in the whole wide world.
Hidden under her blanket, the strange box. She spends all day staring at it. Running her fingers over it.
"Please," she says. "You have to work."
Nothing happens.
A week passes, with little progress. The box remains silent, cold. Elena manages to eat.
"Elena," Jenna's voice comes. "Hey sweety, you have a visitor!"
Elena doesn't take visitors. Jenna should know that.
The knocking won't relent, and so she hides the box under a pillow and drags herself out of her bed.
Jenna's newly lined face is full of something like concern.
"I am so sorry," she whispers. "She really wouldn't take no for an answer. And maybe it would be good to just say hi to her?"
Elena wants them all to leave her alone.
She walks downstairs. The image she catches in the mirror is something strange; lanky, oily hair. Too large eyes on a drawn face.
It doesn't matter. Lazarus. Resurrection. Soon, as soon as she can figure all those symbols out.
Caroline's bright smile is waiting for her. Weirdly, she's waiting at the doorstep.
"Elena!" Caroline's voice is so chipper, like a slap of sunshine.
"Hi."
"I can't believe you haven't been returning any of my messages!" Caroline performs an exaggerated frown, and Elena feels like something like hatred, a toxic sludge of rage poison her dry mouth.
"I just need some time," she drags the words out through clenched teeth.
"I knowwww," Caroline says, bites her lips. She keeps playing with a perfectly curled strand of blond hair, next to her silk scarf. "But I need you to come out with me! I got a new boyfriend and you have to meet him oh my gosh Elena he is so dreamy, and we can all go get milkshakes together!"
"Sorry," Elena says. There's buzzing in her ears, blotches in her vision. The outside is so bright, and she hasn't eaten today, and she feels like she will throw up. "I really can't."
"But Elena -"
"I said no!"
She doesn't know when she's slammed the door in her once friend's face, only Jenna is at her side, and she is kneeling at the floor and then she is on the sofa, a cup of ice chips on her hands.
"It is ok," Jenna is stroking her hair. "I am so sorry for pushing you, oh honey, it is ok, just take all the time you need, ok?"
Elena, some small forgotten fragment of who she was, swells with something like love.
Her phone keeps buzzing that night. She is trying to look up the symbols on Jenna's laptop while everyone else is asleep, and the progress is so painfully slow. Every time the phone buzzes her mind slips, forgetting the words she had just been reading.
It is weird, because she thought all her friends had stopped trying so hard.
Finally, she can't take it anymore.
"Who is it?" Elena snaps.
"It's Liz." A pause. "Is Caroline there?"
"No," Elena says, "why would she be here?"
Another pause.
And then a too-familiar sound; a sob.
"I'm so sorry Elena, it's just, she has been acting so weird lately but with everything that's been happening I…" a sob, "she told me she would be going out with you and her new boyfriend and I didn't even think - and now, she hasn't been back all night and she won't pick up her phone, and of course she isn't with you. How could I have been so stupid?"
"She was here this morning," Elena says, her mind numb. "She came over and said something about a boyfriend … and then… she left."
"Ok. Thank you, I will just - go looking." A pause. "It's probably nothing, I am sorry for calling at… oh my god, it's gone 4 in the morning."
Liz hangs up.
Elena feels a familiar dread wrap its slimy hands around her heart.
She goes through her phone.
So many messages from Caroline. Since a week ago.
Since the day after she came face to face with Damon.
She clicks through them. She can almost hear Caroline's cheery tone.
"Hey girl! I met someone awesome! Can't wait for you to meet xx"
"Hey 'Lena! We are at the Grill tonight. Please Come! xx"
"He is waiting! xx"
"Come on Elena! xx"
"Come on you bitch!"
"Your friend will die"
"stop playin so hard to get"
"tik tok girlie pop x"
Elena's hand goes numb.
The phone falls from her hand.
She screams, and then everything goes black.
It is Jenna's broken face that tells her everything she needs to know when she wakes up, tucked up in the sofa.
"No," Elena says.
"I am so so sorry Elena," Jenna starts, but Elena is already crawling away from Jenna's soft touch, "it was an accident, there was -"
"Stop talking!"
Jenna flinches.
"It is my fault!"
"No, Elena -"
"I told you! It was Damon Salvatore, he killed my parents, and Zach, and now - Ca - "
Elena can't make the word come out of her lips, she is babbling and crying and shaking and Jenna forces her into her arms, even as Elena tries to push her away.
Elena can't sleep.
She doesn't think she can ever sleep again. He is behind her eyelids.
She learns every single notch of the box by feel. She runs her fingers over it, over and over and over and over again.
Something clicks.
Elena, eyes aching from the endless hours fighting the clutches of sleep, startles.
She runs her fingers over the sharp edge once more.
It clicks.
"So close," Caroline's cheery voice giggles in her ears.
She runs her finger over the edge again and again and again.
"Come on, girlie pop," Caroline's voice speaks the words of her killer.
Elena presses her finger against the edge so hard she feels the flesh split.
Too slow, she retracts her hand.
A drop splashes on the weathered wood.
Snaps, one after another, like the pops of a spine realigning.
Curiously, as if observing herself from far above, Elena lets more drops land on top of the box.
Drip, drip, drip.
The box moves by itself now. It dances on her lap, and then it hovers mid air and Elena reaches out to touch it, it is pulsing glorious light -
"Please," she begs, "please bring them back to me!"
Light brilliant light pours out of the box as it cracks open.
Light, and a cool, heavenly breeze and her heart ascends, it swells with hope and joy Elena hasn't allowed herself to feel in months.
A bright white figure emerges from the light, and Elena yearns to scream her dad's name, because it must be him, finally, she did something right, she solved the puzzle and now they are all coming back to her!
She can tell them how sorry she is, how much she loves them -
The light recedes, but in its stead the cool breeze picks up.
It is misty now, and burns at the back of her throat with every breath.
"Dad?" Elena whispers, blinking so that her eyes can adjust to the milky white light.
A sound rings.
It is a croaking, guttural sound, and it takes her a terrible moment to realize it is coming from the figure.
The figure is unnaturally white, with a bulbous, hairless head, wearing dark glasses and a black suit.
It is not - it cannot be her father. As it moves, leisurely, to stand in front of her door, Elena can see the suit is leather, and it ends in an apron like skirt. The top half is held by so many straps - no, it is - the leather straps are threaded into its skin, sharp edges protruding from its chest.
And the head - these are not glasses. They are black shards of glass, embedded where its eyes should have been.
Elena takes in a breath to scream, only the breeze becomes a gust of wind that turns her scream into a coughing fit.
Another surge of light and electricity blinds her. When it fades, another figure has appeared. This one is stark white and clad in leather like the first, but it is hunched over as if it is in agony, bony - and as it turns to her, Elena does scream.
It has no eyes, only skin.
And the mouth… there is no mouth, only a flayed open wound revealing the muscles underneath and so many teeth.
As if it senses her eyes, it twitches.
The teeth chatter.
Elena's frozen body finally, finally moves.
She scrambles to get out of her bed, her nightgown catches under her feet only - before she can untangle herself sharp claws are pulling her out the bedsheets, so strong they lift her in the air.
There is cackling, so loud it drowns out her screams.
The eyeless creature is now grabbing her face with hands so cold they burn marks into her skin. Elena struggles, more awake, more desperate than she's felt since the lake.
Another surge of light, and a woman-shaped creature appears in the hellscape that was once her bedroom.
That creature must have been beautiful, once; only now, she is bloodless, white, like the belly of a fish. Her skin, so much of it exposed in her tight leather corset, is smooth and hairless all over. Every inch of it, flawless, but her neck. The flesh there is missing, torn open, a clean cut bisecting her neck and all the insides of her throat are visible, down to her spine.
(Jeremy and Jenna, there is but a thin wall separating what's left of her family and the horrors in her room. She has to get the creature to leave, she has to somehow escape the creature holding her hostage, she has to warn them.)
"You are not them," Elena says, and the creatures erupt in terrible laughter. "Who are you?!" she says, "what have you done to them? What do you want from me?!"
The air sparks once more and this time the light burns for so much longer, until Elena's eyes tear up and she has to blink the tears away.
And then the final creature appears, standing by her most beloved window nook. It is... horror made flesh. Thick stitches, pitch black stitches, run down the middle of him, down to his bare chest. Two halves, two bodies stitched together. Each side of his face looks different, both undoubtedly masculine. The left side is square jawed, thin lipped, one eye dark. The left side is softer. It doesn't have the same square jaw, the bulging muscles; its lips are thicker, his brow-bone heavy. And his eye? Blue.
Both eyes, black and blue, are trained on her. Unblinking.
"I am..." the creature begins, and then another male voice joins the first one. Only both voices come from within the same creature. "We are Chimera, The Hell Priest, the Lord of all Cenobites." The second voice fades, leaving behind a single, menacing one. It is mocking, british, grating against her ears. "And sweetheart, we are here for you, since you are the one who opened the box."
"No, no that's wrong, it's - it's resurrection! The Lazarus configuration! It's supposed to bring my family back!"
"I don't think so love," the blue eye narrows with twisted smile, "it is a means to summon us."
Elena struggled to stay standing, the wind and noxious mist hurting her eyes, the inside of her nose. Every breath hurts.
"What are you?"
"Explorers, from the deepest parts of the universe, demons to some," the left side of the face says, and then the right slice of the mouth smirks and carries on, "angels to others."
The creature holding her is hurting her, its fingers digging into her scalp, keeping her head facing forwards - even if she wanted to, Elena could not look away from the stitched-together monstrosity.
"It was a mistake! I - didn't mean to!"
"You opened the box, did you not?" The dark eye looked sad. "You must come with us; these are the rules," and then the creature's voice switches again to that mocking British tone Elena is starting to despise more than the ice-cold, bony fingers pulling at her hair. "You must taste our pleasures now, sweetheart. Join us...."
"Go to hell!" Her heart is breaking, the mist, the choke-hold makes it impossible to breathe. Her voice sounds strangled, pathetic. "Please, leave, let me go, Jenna - they... Please…"
(Is this what happened to Jonathan Gilbert? This is supposed to be her solution, her salvation! How - how can fate be so fucking cruel?)
The voice switches again. It sounds solemn, but no less monstrous.
"It's too late, I am afraid. It's time for you to joins us."
The pressure of the creature's hands against her skull turns into a pounding headache.
Why is no one coming? Could Jenna not hear the ruckus? A bleak thought crosses her mind. Perhaps... Perhaps this is for the best. And then the memory, the silhouette of a man in the dark road, the ghost that haunts her, the killer in her story. She has to stop him, somehow.
"You've done this before," Elena gasps.
"Many, many times," the creature answers with both his voices.
"Then - he…" It clicks. The unnatural white of Damon's face. His monstrous eyes. Similar to them, but not quite. "Has anyone ever escaped you?"
This time it is the woman with the torn out throat that answers.
"Once."
"Never!" The british voice screams. "No one would ever dare -"
"Once, a long long time ago," the woman with the torn throat continues, with bored disinterest. "A man escaped my brothers' claws."
"Damon Salvatore!" Elena shouts with what's left of her voice. "I know him, I've seen him!"
Chimera sneers with both sides of his, of their face, and the noxious wind gets stronger, burning against Elena's skin.
"What does this have to do with you, girl?" His double voice echoes in her room. "Your fate has already been decided."
"I can take you to him," Elena says with a desperate certainty she doesn't quite feel.
"Perhaps we prefer you, love -" one side of the face begins, but the left hand suddenly rises. It stills all sound, the wind. Even the clacking of the Cenobites' jaws that's holding her stops. "No. I want to hear what she has to say."
"I know him. He killed my parents, my best friend… He has been trying to get to me for months, please, that's why I opened the damned box!"
"A trade," the black eye narrows; he seems curious. Elena can work with curious. "A deal, if you please. You are offering us a deal, his soul instead of yours?"
The bored looking monster woman is now smiling. As if she knows something Elena does not.
"Yes! Please, just don't hurt my family, you can use me to find him, I will do anything…"
"You wish for revenge." The british voice is back. Chimera moves, as if he is floating through air. "Sweet little girl, wishing to taste the pleasure of revenge…"
The unblinking two-colored eyes are so close she can see her reflection in them.
"I will do anything to destroy him," she repeats through chattering teeth.
"You will do anything, to get your pleasure? But you must understand one thing," his voice becomes louder and louder, turning into a deafening roar, that echoes relentlessly inside her skull. "Pleasure is pain."
She can feel a tear rolling down her cheek.
"No, this won't do," Chimera runs his hand down the side of her face, gathering her tear and it is all Elena can do not to scream at the ice cold burn. "Don't cry, sweetheart. It's such a waste of good suffering."
Both sides of the mouth smile, and then everything is burning cold.