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Entry tags:
open | super super super rusty brief surprise revival...
Quick and painless — that was a lie. There was nothing quick or painless about having your neck broken. Maybe it seemed quick and relatively painless to the inflicter and the observer, but to the one experiencing that 'quick and painless' death, the brief moments that seemed to go on for hours and sharp spikes of pain unlike anything you've ever felt before said otherwise.
It hurt. It hurt a lot, and the darkness that enveloped him while he waited out his return wasn't exactly what you'd call comforting. Unsettling was more like it. There was nothing. Nothing but a dark veil cast over you, like you were underwater and unable to surface.
But eventually that ice cracked and Matt surged past it, taking a great big gulp of air that went rushing into his lungs so powerfully it startled him. He bolted upright, bumping against the cool metal of the railing that gnashed against the line of his spine. Vision still blurry, a rush of sounds assaulted him: birds, footsteps, voices, and the distinct sound of waves slapping against the side of a boat.
He'd only been on a boat once, with Elena's family out at the lake before her parents passed away, but the sound of water rushing against the side of a boat stuck with him as one of the most soothing sounds he's ever heard.
It had him twisting around and grasping the railing to peer down over it, to try and get an idea of where the hell he was. Had Damon gone back on his word and done away with his body? Had Elena? Had their attempt to get her to turn it back on gone awry?
Matt couldn't say. All he knew was that he wasn't where he should be, this wasn't exactly a boat, and there was a strong possibility that the ring hadn't worked like Damon said he would and death was having a good laugh at his expense over daring to trust the word of a Salvatore.
It hurt. It hurt a lot, and the darkness that enveloped him while he waited out his return wasn't exactly what you'd call comforting. Unsettling was more like it. There was nothing. Nothing but a dark veil cast over you, like you were underwater and unable to surface.
But eventually that ice cracked and Matt surged past it, taking a great big gulp of air that went rushing into his lungs so powerfully it startled him. He bolted upright, bumping against the cool metal of the railing that gnashed against the line of his spine. Vision still blurry, a rush of sounds assaulted him: birds, footsteps, voices, and the distinct sound of waves slapping against the side of a boat.
He'd only been on a boat once, with Elena's family out at the lake before her parents passed away, but the sound of water rushing against the side of a boat stuck with him as one of the most soothing sounds he's ever heard.
It had him twisting around and grasping the railing to peer down over it, to try and get an idea of where the hell he was. Had Damon gone back on his word and done away with his body? Had Elena? Had their attempt to get her to turn it back on gone awry?
Matt couldn't say. All he knew was that he wasn't where he should be, this wasn't exactly a boat, and there was a strong possibility that the ring hadn't worked like Damon said he would and death was having a good laugh at his expense over daring to trust the word of a Salvatore.
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He wanted to give Elena that chance to keep living like she had him, wanting to open that door to her future back up for her, regardless of whether or not she wanted him in it. So many things in Elena's life have been out of her control. Too many people have been making decisions for her that she should've been left to make on her own. Maybe he was dipping his toes into those waters by agreeing to let Damon kill him, but he wanted to give her the chance to do something else with her life — to choose for herself where she wanted to go from there.
Being commanded by her sire bond to Damon to turn off her emotions in a time of immeasurable, inconsolable grief when she was at her most vulnerable, her most willing to listen to anything that would make the pain go away didn't count as a choice. Matt refused to believe that shutting off her emotions had been entirely her choice.
Sniffling in a vain attempt to push back the urge to cry in frustration with everything, to let that sadness and anger spill out of the jar he had it so carefully contained within, Matt turns to her. He looks at her, just as she asks, startled by the feel of her heart thumping in her chest. Matt knew that vampires could give the illusion of a pulse and something of a normal body temperature using caffeine and alcohol, but not... Not like this.
She's too warm, and her heart's beating too rapidly with the adrenaline his words have sent coursing through her to be nothing more than a vampire's illusion.
He swallows roughly, starting to take into consideration that maybe — just maybe — this is the real deal.
"Elena?"
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Matt could easily push her away. Despite all of her desperate training, he would still be stronger than this version of her - but she is hoping he won't this time. She is hoping he lets her arms lock around his neck to pull him toward her, where he will feel her heart still pounding furiously against him the closer she brings him. He's wearing a ring and she isn't, because she's never had to, but she would be lying if she said she wasn't scared. She would be lying if she said a part of her wasn't waiting for it to happen, for death to claim her like it was supposed to.
Life is transient until all you're left with is eternity.
A sob unfurls in her throat as she shakes before him in a way she never really has before. Her grief and despair have always been released when no one else is looking, but this is Matt. This is the first boy she ever fell in love with. The boy who held her as both her parents were lowered unto the ground. The boy who loved Jeremy like his own little brother. The boy who's always deserved better than the monster she is and the monsters she has loved.
"I'm so sorry, Matt."
For everything she did to him. For everything anyone else did.
She says I'm sorry except it sounds like I love you and it sounds like Don't hate me and it sounds like Please don't leave me here alone.
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He was used to being the strong one. He's always been the strong one, whether it was because his mother was unable to keep it together long enough to be that pillar of strength her kids needed her to be or because his sister was higher than a kite and lacked the ability to properly comprehend how far gone she was. The last time Matt had broken down like this, it was over Vicki. He'd refused to let Caroline touch him then, but Elena's embrace had been a welcomed one, like she was the only one allowed to see that mask of strength peeled away to reveal the vulnerable layers below.
Sometimes, it made him wonder if he'd ever be capable of getting that close to someone else again. But that wasn't something to be contemplated right now.
"Don't be," he says brokenly into the curtain of her hair, his fingers tangling in it. "Don't you dare be sorry. None of this was your fault."
Elena didn't ask to be a doppelgänger, didn't ask to be drawn to the Salvatores for reasons none of them yet understand. (Though, perhaps it's better if they never do...)
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The moment he accedes is the moment Elena brings him further into her arms, pressing her face to the crook of his neck. The embrace itself is protective in nature because she is protective of him. Tremors ghost across her skin the tighter she holds on to him, and she sounds like misery would feel.
But she doesn't argue. She doesn't say it is her fault, that everything is her fault, even if it has never felt truer than it does now. Matt was her rock in a world that continuously tried to steal the ground from underneath her feet; he has always been everyone's rock, taking care of them at the expense of himself, and Elena refuses to do that to him here. It's as much his grief as it is hers. It is as much his loss as her own. Her family is Matt's family, and they have lost what is left of it. They are orphans clinging to what's left, and that's each other. They can share the burden.
He doesn't have to carry it on his own and neither does she.
Her mind is already racing with possibilities. There has to be a way to get Jeremy back. If not with Bonnie and magic, then with Clark and this stupid ship. But outwardly, she doesn't say anything because that's not what this is about. Her hand cups the back of Matt's head tenderly and she allows herself to feel the agony, willing him to feel his own. "It's okay," is what she whispers thickly instead. It's okay to let it all go, Matt. You've been brave enough.
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Football was the only thing he was really good at, and this life — this mess — made it impossible for him to ever be really good at it. Sure, Rebekah had offered to compel or buy his way into college, but Matt wasn't a disingenuous person like that. He wouldn't have been able to live with himself, knowing that the only reason he was going to a good school was because an Original had a crush on him.
He clings hard to Elena, only allowing himself to draw back when he's got his tears under control. His face is read and feels caked with the emotion that's sticking to his cheeks, but he hasn't felt this unwound in a long, long time. Like piece of wire that's been coiled tight and finally allowed to spring free of its binds.
"I don't get how this works," he says, "but you don't know how glad I am to see you."
The real you, goes unsaid, but he suspects that its implication is heard loud and clear in spite of that.
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"I can explain."
She isn't sure it will make any more sense once she is done explaining it, but she can try. She can tell him about the wormholes in the universe, the timeline discrepancies that are experienced because of this, and the fantastical worlds she has traveled to in the time she has been away. Mystic Falls has never felt farther away from her reach, and at the same time, she's holding it in her hands. Matt has always been home.
"Bonnie, Tyler, and Caroline are here, too. None of us necessarily remember the same things from home. Time works differently while we're here, but it's safe, Matt." As safe as it possibly can be, until they decide to rock the boat.
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Right now, with her hands framing his face and those brown eyes brimming with tears, he didn't care whether or not his death-by-Damon rouse had worked or not. For whatever reason, fate had brought him here and deposited him on this ship in the middle of who-knows-where so that he could be reunited with her. With home. Time itself could break and shatter around them in this moment, and Matt wouldn't care as long as she was still standing here with him.
He learns forward, pressing a chaste, affectionate kiss to her forehead.
"I forgotten what safe feels like, but if you say it's safe, then I trust that it is. As much as it can be for people like us, anyway."
Since when did he, the only human of his group of childhood friends left, become included in that? Long before he slipped on Jeremy's ring, and perhaps even longer before that — before he was aware of any of it, back when he was the innocent bystander who watched someone he didn't know was a vampire swoop in and steal a girl who was too broken up inside to be with him through the haze of her pain.
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She doesn't say anything at first, for fear her voice would rupture if she tried. Her eyes close as his lips press to her forehead instead, leaning into it. Elena has always been a tactile person, and she craves affection like a starving man would water. She swallows past that traitorous lump, telling herself she'll talk to Caroline once she settles Matt in.
She'll talk to Caroline and Caroline will tell her everything that happened next. Caroline will tell her there was a way, because there always is. They just needed to find it. For now, Matt's here. He's here, held between her arms, and she doesn't want to waste a moment of it.
"It's safe," she confirms again, almost like she thinks if she says it enough, it'll feel more true. "... Which doesn't mean that it isn't sometimes weird. There's a room with endless supplies of ice cream."
This is not a drill, Matt. This is not a drill.
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So it's only natural that the guy has hang ups, but this is Elena. The girl he's loved longer than he thought it was possible to love anything. Even when he was mad at her and couldn't stand the fact that she knew things about vampires, about how his sister really died, that she had neglected to share with him, he'd loved her. She was his constant, and having her back as she ought to be felt like the world had finally stopped shaking beneath his feat.
He didn't want to leave. Selfishly, he decided, right then and there, that he didn't want to leave this ship. There was nothing for him in Mystic Falls; no future, no scholarship that could've been his before the broken arm — just a dead end job cleaning tables at a small town grill. Here, there was at least something worth living for. Maybe Bonnie and Caroline were right. The Elena back in his time or however the hell that worked was a lost cause.
This one wasn't.
"Well," he says with that quirky, goofy smile of his. "What are you waiting for?"
Ice cream is a necessity, Elena. Don't pull his leg.
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It's taken some time to admit it to herself. The guilt wouldn't let her in the past. Elena felt too much of a responsibility to accept being away from Mystic Falls. Being the doppelgänger came with its own set of consequences, with its own set of reasons, and she couldn't just evade them. Except that's exactly what happened. Before she could become the lamb to the slaughter, before Klaus could get his hands on her, Elena was swept into a rift and never saw home again.
She tried hard to get back at first; she did. Even if there had been a small part of her that had thought everyone would be better off if she wasn't there. Bad things happened whenever she was. Then Jeremy fell through the rift, too. He was followed closely by Damon. Caroline, Bonnie, Tyler. Even Matt, for while. All those pieces of home she'd carried with her were soon returned, and she never looked back. She grew up. She got to have one lifetime of choices independent of the face she bears and the blood coursing through her veins. She's lived, in a way she never would've otherwise.
Something similar is happening on this boat. Elena, Bonnie, and Caroline showed up first, but Tyler and Matt and the others have joined them. She wants to figure this boat out, but she also doesn't want to leave it. Not when misery waits at the other end for those she loves most.
Elena links their arms together, dragging Matt off to the ice cream room with a sly smile. (If anyone deserves all the ice cream in the world, it's Matt Donovan.)
She wasn't kidding, for the record. It looks like a retro ice cream parlor, and once you step inside, it's somehow bigger than what it seemed from the outside. On the other side of the counter, there's endless rows upon rows of different ice cream flavors and essential toppings, ripe for the picking. "What's your poison?" she asks him with a small nudge.
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Maybe doppelgängers were just unlucky, maybe that was part of their curse. Regardless, it wasn't anything to hold against her and nothing Matt ever would.
He follows her into the ice cream parlor, breathing out an amazed, "Whoa," when they step inside. It has everything. Literally everything. Matt's never seen so much ice cream and toppings in his life. Marble Slab just got put to shame.
"You expect me to choose? Is 'everything' a valid answer to that?"
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It's likely not the first time they've shared a sundae, and Elena is going to make sure that it isn't their last. She grins over at Matt when he asks his question. "It is, actually," she says to him thoughtfully, tapping a spoon to her chin. "Our challenge can be trying to see how big we can make our sundae."
She lifts up a can of whipped cream enticingly. She may or may not be tempted to dab some on his nose.
"Interested?"
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Matt launches back, bumping into the counter. "Don't you even."
He means the whipped cream. As for the sundae...
"You're on."
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For all intents and purposes, it looks as though Elena doesn't. She innocently meanders over to him with the bowl in one hand and the whipped cream in the other. When he is least expecting it - this is Matt, however, no one knows Elena Gilbert like Matt Donovan does - she will attempt to dab a dime-sized portion of whipped cream right onto his nose.
Whoops. :)
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"You're a sneak, Elena Gilbert. A cheat and a sneak."
He grabs a handful of sprinkles and holds it threateningly over her head.
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She shrieks and steps back to avoid the sprinkles - but not before dabbing some caramel onto his nose.
"You say that like you've ever minded before!"
Better act fast, Matt. Elena's darting off on a run with a batch of whipped cream in hand.