[rp][w/ Elena] finding out about Josef

[mordere]

Damon is with Elena. They're in a lounge in the Tower, and he has likely only come over to troll her like he do while she is busy with getting ready for college. He is leaning back in the chair by the fireplace, drinking something alcoholic and searching through the journal for anything important.

Damon has gone back a few entries, weeks, years, as far back as the journal can go, but there doesn't seem to be any indication of anything that he would actually want or need to know. It doesn't stop him from sarcastically reading some of them out loud which likely leads Elena to throwing things at him.

He does not expect to see a journal entry locked to him from a girl that he doesn't know when he flips back to the front page and freezes. His entire body posture changes from relaxed to tense, and he sits forward, staring. Damon reads it, takes it in once... and then twice and then one more time.

It can't be- It is not- Damon gets to his feet, throwing the journal down on the coffee table before he starts toward the door. Yeah, he is about to leave without saying something, because he knows. He knows she'll know and she'll make him stop and feel, and he doesn't want it.

Comments

[descendent.livejournal.com]

It's supposed to hurt.

As horrible and painful as it is, when someone you care about has been lost to you, it's supposed to hurt. It's a part of them that needs to remain if they're supposed to be human at all. He once said to her I don't get hurt and whether he likes it or not, Elena knows him so much better than that.

She can tell how much he is hurting now, and is also aware of just how unhealthy his coping mechanisms are.

How dangerous they can be.

Elena presses her lips together, lifting her face to meet his gaze despite the sound of his voice, despite the lack of space between them. She doesn't know what the journal entry said. He's leaving his journal in the Tower as it is, but she thought it would be better to ask him--precisely because trust isn't something anyone magically hands over. They've had a talk about it before. More than once.

"It's not safe for you either, Damon. You're going to go get yourself killed and I am not staying here while you--"

Do whatever it is that he plans on doing. Elena has experienced firsthand what Damon is capable of when he's hurt. She has been told enough about these people to know what they do, know what they are--they are as strong and fast as vampires. There are werewolves, and there's no telling if a werewolf bite from this world can kill him the way it could back home.

There are so many angles he isn't thinking of that she needs to think of in his stead. She jerks in an attempt to break free from the hold he has of her arm.

This is Elena Gilbert, Damon. She doesn't really do what people tell her to.

[idontgethurt.livejournal.com]

It's supposed to hurt, and it does.

It hurts more than he can put to words, more than he ever would put to words, Rift change be fucking damned. It hurts, and it sucks, and Damon wants to drown it out until it stops. The best way that he knows to do that is to give into what the vampire wants, to strike out at others, to break necks or to do things that require the opposite of caring, the opposite of being human.

If he is hurting, his response is to make someone else hurt. It's almost like an impulse. He does it without thought, which does not excuse the many, many things that he has done while he was hurt, out of hurt, but it his reaction and she knows him well. She has been on the other side of what he does when he is hurt. Elena has seen the results, held the results in her hands when he was hurt and broke her brother's neck in front of her.

It's no wonder at all that she worries about what he will do. It's no wonder-- except it ALWAYS is that she worries about him. It always takes him by surprise when he hears it, tilting his head to that side in that momentary confusion that wipes away from his expression before it ever has a chance to register.

"Don't be stupid. I am not wanted by the Society as something to be destroyed. What would you do if you came with? Other than die, other than put yourself at risk to die," he says, and he is already dead, and he just had one friend die. He is not going to let her be anywhere that is dangerous, he is not going to let these people take the only other person that he completely trusts.

The only, only person that he loves.

He is not going to lose her too, not tonight, and the chances of losing her if she goes with him are too high to allow.

This is something that he has only done to her one other time. No, because that time, he used it to erase her memories and this time it is different. It is different, because he's taking her choice away. He tried to do it to her before he knew her, but Stefan gave her a necklace filled with vervain which stopped it.

Elena lost that necklace when the Tower 'appeared' to collapse, and Damon has found it, but he hasn't had the opportunity to give it back to her yet. He pulls her in by the arm again, grabbing her by the shoulder so he can look into her eyes.

And he has plenty of inkling of how angry she'll be with him for this, but nothing has and nothing ever will keep him from protecting her at any, any cost.

"You are not going to leave this Tower," Damon says firmly, he compels her, and she has to obey. With that, he pulls back from her, jaw locked as he looks away, turns, and leaves. He's out of the Tower before she can react, relying on that vampire speed to make up for the time that he has lost to get him to the apartment.

To get him there in time to trail the killers so they can get what's coming to them for daring to touch someone Damon actually gave a damn about.