Not Like We'd Planned It

[deeperwonderment]

Title: Not Like We'd Planned It
Author: not_from_stars
Fandom: The Vampire Diaries TV!Verse
Pairing/Characters: Damon/Elena, Stefan, Caroline, Jeremy
Rating/Category: PG-13/Gen
Summary: "Stefan, this is really not the time for you to get all jealous."
Words: 2,581
Notes: This was written for robs55 at vd_exchange





This was not how things were supposed to go.

That was the main phrase that was going through Damon's mind when he and Stefan finally found Elena. She was laying crumpled in some leaves and Damon felt his heart squeeze at how broken and fragile she looked.

"I'm going to kill her," he fumed as he dropped to his knees and then reached to gently turn Elena over so they could see what injuries she had.

"We don't know that it was Katherine who did this, Damon," Stefan said in a low voice. "It could have been anyone."

The look Damon gave him said how clearly he didn't believe that.

"Go get Bonnie. She might know something to help."

"And what are you going to be doing?"

Damon sighed, rolling his eyes. "She can't be moved because we don't know how badly things may be damaged on the inside. So, while you go get the witch, I'll stay here to make sure no one comes back to do anything worse to her."

"Maybe I should stay."

"Stefan, this is really not the time for you to get all jealous. Elena is possibly dying and Bonnie likes you more than she likes me. If you tell her that Elena is in trouble, she'll believe you and she'll come help." Damon turned back to Elena. "Tell her to hurry. I can't tell..."

I can't tell how much longer she has.

Stefan hesitated only a moment before he turned and was off to find Bonnie and get her back here.

Damon waited until he was gone before he gently pulled Elena up into his arms. He knew that she was almost dead and that Bonnie wouldn't get here quickly enough. He could hear everything shutting down and her heart was stuttering. He knew that sound and more importantly, he knew what it meant.

"No," he whispered, glad that no one else was around to hear him right now. "No, Elena. You can't die. You can't leave us like this. You can't leave your family." His voice dropped. "You can't leave me like this."

Damon was a realist. He had always known that unless Elena asked him or Stefan to turn her, she would die. However, he always has assumed that she would die at a much older age than eighteen because he and Stefan would always be around to make sure of it.

This.

This was not right and this was not how is was supposed to happen. She wasn't supposed to be dying in his arms while he waited for help that would never come in time.

"I'm sorry, Elena," he whispered into her ear as he used his nail to cut a deep gash across the veins in his wrist. "I'm sorry that there's no choice in this. But I can't let you die like this. It was never supposed to happen this way."

He moved his now freely bleeding wrist to her mouth and as her head lay against his chest, he used his other hand to gently massage her throat. She was running out of time and he needed to make sure that he got enough of his blood in her so that they wouldn't lose her completely. She needed enough of his blood to make the transition after her body died.

"Come on, Elena, please, just a little more." He could hear her heart starting to slow even more and he was trying not to worry that he wouldn't get enough of his blood in her in time. A few seconds more and he heard her heart stop all together. One last breath came from her lungs and that was all.

He healed his wrist and just held onto her with his face buried in her hair. He hoped he had gotten enough blood into her in time.



After Damon tucked Elena into his bed, he came out into the hall and shut the door behind him. He didn't want to deal with the five people waiting downstairs for him, but there was no avoiding it. He muttered something under his breath and started down the stairs.

He was halfway down when Jeremy started yelling at him.

"What in the hell did you do to my sister?!"

"I kept you from losing your sister completely, now get out of my face."

He pushed past Jeremy and went into the library so he could get something from the bar.

"Damon," Alaric asked calmly. "What were you thinking?"

Damon clenched his fists on the top of the bar for a moment. He shook his head and sighed. After he poured a drink, and he could control the shaking of his hands, he turned around to face them.

"I was thinking that she was dying in my arms and not even Stefan carrying Bonnie to us would get her help in time. I was thinking that she was dying and that I couldn't let that happen because it would hurt too many people." And it would destroy me. He leaned against the bar. "I was thinking that there was no way that it was right for her to die like that -- and if I turned her, not only would she not die, she would be able to tell us who tried to kill her."

"There had to have been another way, Damon," Bonnie argued. "You could have given her just enough blood to heal --"

"She was past the point of healing, Bonnie," Damon growled. "There was nothing else that could have been done in the condition she was in. Ask Saint Stefan. Her heart was already stopping and her lungs weren't exactly functioning. Even he knew that no one would be able to get to her in time!"

"There had to have been another answer --"

"Shut up, Bonnie." Everyone turned in surprise to see Caroline glaring at them all as she came to stand next to Damon. "No matter how much of an ass Damon can be, he never would have done this without asking Elena if there was anything else that could be done. I know how it felt to be dying and know that there was nothing I could do and that there were things I could never say. Even when I was losing consciousness, I was still aware that I was dying. I would never have wanted Elena to go through that. If he says there was no other way to save her, there wasn't."

"Thank you, Vampire Barbie," Damon said with about half of his usual snark. He still got a smack from her over the name.

"He wouldn't have risked turning her if there had been any other choice," Stefan said from where he was leaning against the wall. "There are a lot of things that he would do, but he wouldn't hurt Elena by making her into one of us without her permission if there was anything else that could have been done to save her."

"You call what he did saving her?" Bonnie demanded. "He turned her into a monster. He turned her into Katherine."

"Hey! Still in the room here," Caroline said angrily. "Is that what you think of me Bonnie? That I'm a monster?"

"Caroline I didn't mean you --"

"If you think he made Elena a monster, then you must mean I'm a monster, too, since it was his blood that kept me from being completely dead when Katherine killed me." Caroline's eyes had darkened. "And who was it that insisted he give me his blood to heal me while I was in the coma? Oh wait, that was you."

"Caroline --"

"Go to hell, Bonnie." There was hurt underlying the anger in her voice as she headed to the stairs. "I'm going to go sit with Elena. We monsters should stick together after all."

After he heard the door to his bedroom shut quietly, Damon turned to Bonnie. "Anyone else you want to eviscerate before thinking? Get it out of your system now, Bonnie. I won't be held responsible for my actions if you hurt Elena like you just hurt Caroline."

"Are you trying to threaten me?"

"No. I'm just telling you that if you cause anything to hurt Elena, I will not be responsible for what happens."

Bonnie glared at him for several moments before she turned and stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind her. When the echo of the door faded, Damon looked at Jeremy.

"She's my sister," Jeremy said firmly. "Human or vampire, Elena will never be a monster. If you say there was no other way to save her, I believe you."

Damon suddenly felt very tired and he sighed, shaking his head. None of this was like he had ever imagined. He had wanted Elena to come to him and tell him that she wanted him. He wanted her to tell him that she wanted to be with him for the rest of time. It was supposed to have been a good thing, a freely made choice. But someone had to go and screw it up by killing her and now he didn't know if he was still going to lose her after all of this.

"You need to feed, Damon," Stefan said quietly, watching his brother.

Damon shook his head. "I'm not leaving. I promised her that I'd be there when she woke up. I'm not breaking that promise." Not when he had already failed in his promise to protect her.

"You gave her a lot of your blood, Damon," Stefan pushed. "You need to -- Jeremy no!"

Stefan's yell and the sudden scent of fresh blood in the air caused Damon to jerk his head up. What he saw made his eyes widen in surprise.

Jeremy was standing at the end of the bar, holding his bleeding wrist over a glass. Alaric was standing next to him.

"What are you doing?" Stefan demanded.

"You said it yourself. Damon needs blood after what he did for Elena and he won't leave her to go hunt because he promised he'd be here." Jeremy pulled his wrist back and Alaric wrapped it before he repeated what Jeremy had done. While his wrist was over the glass, Jeremy shrugged. "So, Alaric and I are taking care of that for him."

Alaric finished and wrapped up his own wrist before bringing the glass to Damon. "This will help. I know that Elena will need blood when she wakes up, so I'll make a run to the usual place."

Stefan ran his hand over his face, not believing everything that was happening right now. Elena died and was now going to be like him. Bonnie had called Caroline and Elena monsters. Now, Jeremy and Alaric were slitting their own wrists to feed Damon. The world had flipped upside down.

Damon didn't look at him as he finished the glass and headed to the stairs. In fact, he didn't say anything to anyone.

The other three watched him go and then Alaric sighed. "Is he going to be all right?"

"I don't know," Stefan admitted. "When we found her... he didn't look like himself. When I got back there with Bonnie, he was just holding on to Elena and he didn't speak at first." He shrugged. "You guys got here shortly after we did, so you know as much as I do."



Upstairs, Damon found Caroline sitting by the window watching Elena worriedly. Damon reclined on the bed next to Elena, looking her over worriedly. He sighed and leaned back against the pillows.

"This is going to change things," Caroline suddenly said.

Damon gave her a confused look. "How so?"

"You have to help me kill that bitch." She paused. "Katherine, not Bonnie."

Damon's lips twitched slightly at the fact that Caroline thought she had to specify which bitch she wanted dead. "I thought that's who you meant because I think Elena would be really pissed off if we killed Bonnie just for making us miserable."

"She's supposed to be our friend, but she thinks we're monsters."

Damon wisely decided that this would not be the ideal time to point out to Caroline that vampires were technically monsters. "Bonnie's stupid and she can't see anything beyond the fact that she thinks all of the shit that's happened is my fault."

"It's not," Caroline said. "I mean, yeah, you did some really horrible things, but what happened to me or to Elena wasn't your fault. Where would the two of us be if you hadn't been here? Very dead." She looked at Damon. "I'm kind of attached to not being dead and buried. Elena is like that, too. All you have to do is look at everything she's gone through. She survived the wreck that killed her parents and made herself continue to live. Jeremy turned to drugs to deal with it, but Elena didn't. She tried to help him and protect him and no matter how shitty he treated her, she still tried. When all of this other stuff happened, she still didn't run away from it. She's a survivor." She sighed. "I used to be jealous of her."

Damon couldn't believe that they were having a heart to heart conversation. Any other time it would have made him laugh, but the last thing he felt like doing was laughing right now. "Why?" Oh, he'd known a long time ago that Caroline was jealous of Elena, but he was curious as to why.

"For a long time, I thought that everything was so easy for her."

Damon frowned at her, showing a little bit of fangs. "That is a stupid thing to think."

"I said I thought it, Damon. Now I know she was just much better about hiding how hard things are for her sometimes. She wants to take care of everyone she cares about and she rarely takes care of herself." She tugged at her hair. "When Stefan came along, I thought that she was going to have it even easier, but I was wrong. He treats her like she's fragile and that he needs to always be the one taking care of her. That's not Elena. That's not what she wants. Stefan... I don't think he would have been able to do what you did."

"Meaning what?"

"I don't think he would have been strong enough to face Elena's emotions if he turned her without asking her. I think he would have been too scared and that fear would have cost her her life."

Damon eyed her. "Do you think she's going to hate me for this, Caroline?"

"No." Her answer was immediate. "Elena would want to live and even this is a kind of living. She would not have wanted to die the way you were describing. You saved her, Damon."

I hope you're right and she does feel that way, Damon thought to himself. Because he wasn't about to admit that he was afraid that Elena would hate him for what he had done. He started to say something to her, but that was when he felt movement next to him. He turned his head as Elena opened her eyes. There was confusion in their depths and then they cleared when she saw him looking down at her.

"Damon," she breathed.

He allowed himself to smile as he looked down at her. "Hello, beautiful."

"I knew you'd save me."

Comments

[wiccabuffy.livejournal.com]

I really like this! It's D/E/, but believable. I also like including almost every character on the show realistically, and I heart on your Caroline. A lot. :)

[robs55.livejournal.com]

I love it! It's believable, and I love the way you've written Damon. And Caroline! Thank you!