The Monster in Me

1

I Heard Your Heart Beating

"Everything is intensified as a vampire. When we hurt, we really hurt. But when we love…" - Lexi

"I love you." Those were the first words that she heard when she woke from death. Her world was spinning; an upside down and inside out chaotic mess of smells and sounds and sensations that she couldn't explain. But it was the voice at her ear and inside her own head endlessly repeating the words, "I love you", which confused her the most. If only because she always thought that it would be Stefan, but it was Damon's name on the tip of her tongue.

Even as she opened her eyes to see that it was Stefan at her side, loyally perched on the edge of a table like the most sorrowful harbinger of death imaginable, it was somehow Damon that she was really looking at. Elena could feel the warmth of his hands as he palmed the sides of her face. Her heart raced with the intensity of his gaze bearing down on her. He was so sad, so lost; the flames of devotion burning beneath the surface made her heart break as his did. "I just have to say it once," he whispered. "You just need to hear it. I love you, Elena." Where was he?

Stefan helped her to a sitting position and took her into his arms, smoothing her hair away from her face and whispering calming reassurances in the darkness. "I know you didn't want this, but it's going to be okay." What was it that she didn't want? Why was it going to be okay? She remembered… She remembered being with Matt. They were in his truck, driving. They were on their way to Stefan, but why Stefan?

Because it was the end and she needed to say goodbye. Klaus - Klaus was dead and Tyler and all the vampires were going to die. Obviously that hadn't happened. Unless they were dead and she was dead with them. The memory of being trapped in the darkness rushed back to her with the force of the freezing cold water that poured down her throat and thrust upwards into her nostrils.

It burned more than she thought it would – drowning. Her veins were turning to ice, her flesh numb with the cold, but inside she felt like she was on fire. She had watched Stefan drag Matt free from the wreckage while her lungs screamed bloody murder for oxygen. And then it was gone. The pins and stabbing needles were replaced with dull, fuzzy peace as her head stopped swimming quite so much. The darkness had pulled her downwards into accepting arms.

Elena always thought that she would be going somewhere after the end came for her. She had expected her life to flash before her eyes, or to see some bright white light beckoning to her to come home. Instead, she had found a hospital morgue. She had only closed her eyes for a second. Just for a second. How had she gotten there? What was that smell making her stomach grumble? When was the last time that she had eaten? Why did it feel so bright when all the lights were off and the room was clearly dark?

Stefan was still talking to her, holding her close. His scent was comforting in the confusion, but his words weren't making any sense. There were so many thoughts muddling their way around her mind that she couldn't think straight. And there was that smell again. Where was it coming from? What was it that could be so mouthwateringly delicious, so painfully appetizing that she couldn't get her brain past it?

And then there was yelling echoing back to her from somewhere outside, each tone slightly distorted by the reverberation of bouncing off of hard tile walls and being funneled down a hall. "Where is she? Where is she?" the voice demanded. He was so sad and lost again, but even more upset than she could ever remember having heard him before. "You did what?" He was angry then, but why?

She could smell him too. His scent was faint but growing stronger as agitated footsteps thundered across the floor like the march of a thousand bass percussionists. Something metallic clattered from being knocked over or tossed, spun around into a whoop-whooping sound of disturbed airwaves, and then clapped on the floor towards stillness. Was he always that loud?

"God, I wish you didn't have to forget this." The low rumble in his chest vibrated against her ribs as he looked down on her. A pained tear escaped one of his stormy blues to roll over the barrier of thick, dark lashes and stream down a pale cheek. "But you do."

How could anyone look at another person that way without shattering into a million pieces? How could anyone love so recklessly, and burn with such an all-consuming desire without conflagrating themselves and the very ground they walked upon?

She had thought that Damon Salvatore's looks should have the power to kill before, but it was never truer than when he exploded into the room with another clap of roiling thunder as the door cracked against the wall, his foot hovering in the air for a second from kicking the obstruction out of his way. The door crashed into the wall so hard that the force of impact made it bounce back to a close, jamming in the frame where the wood had splintered. A burst of vampire speed carried him to her side long before the second sound wave beat its way down her sensitive ears, or the plaster splatted onto the floor from the irregular semicircle of doorknob damage on the wall.

Elena had known real passion with Stefan. There was no denying that. But he was never as beautifully masochistic as the elder Salvatore brother. Damon made a broken heart look like the envy of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling and any other master work of art that Michelangelo could have ever dreamt of.

His hands danced around in the air for a moment, helpless to figure out what they were supposed to be doing. His bottom lip trembled slightly just as equally frustrated with the lack of words that could accurately describe the feelings boiling within for what had happened. He didn't try to take her from his brother's arms however much every movement he made and every breath he took shrieked aloud that he wished he could. In the end, he simply sat down on the autopsy table beside them and rested a shaking hand on Stefan's shoulder, a withdrawn sigh puffing from between his lips.

Dirt, sweat, blood – his own, hints of Alaric's aftershave, and something inexplicably Damon swirled around in her nose alongside the mud and water on Stefan and hospital antiseptics. His eyes flickered up from his knees to meet hers and it was like his deathbed confession all over again. Those stormy blues were little soldiers, beaten down and broken, but defiantly carrying their splinters of armor to the bitter end. Never willing to claim defeat. "It's going to be okay," he whispered, finding resolve. Because I love you, his eyes said. Elena forced herself to look away, dropping her head down onto Stefan's protective chest. He moved mountains with his silence.

A cell phone chirped in the stillness of mourning. Stefan didn't want to let go of her so Damon reached to answer the call for him. "It's Jeremy," he mumbled, looking at the name that flashed across the ID. "He knows."

Jeremy, she thought with a sudden pang of worry ripping through her gut. She had forgotten all about Jeremy. Where was her brother? Was he alright? What had happened to him? What did he know? The racing thoughts returned, that time focused on her brother. Elena was all that he had left, and he needed her to take care of him. "I need to see him," she croaked. For someone that had just been a drowning victim, she hadn't expected her throat to be so dry.

"Call him back," Stefan muttered in agreement.

"We're going to need him to invite us in," Damon said in a decidedly grim tone. She wondered what he meant by that as they started to move. Both of the brothers practically had the run of her house. They hadn't needed an invitation for ages.

"Elena, I need you to look at me." Stefan took her face gently in his hands, locking their eyes so that he held all of her attention. "We're going to get you home to Jeremy, but I need you to stay focused. Whatever you see or… smell, just keep your eyes on me, alright?" She nodded her agreement and held tight around his neck when he lifted her into his arms. He frowned slightly at exactly how tightly she had gripped him and flexed his shoulders uncomfortably, but didn't say anything to correct her. Stefan had carried her around like a china doll a thousand times and it had never bothered him before so she didn't understand why it had started to then.

Damon gave the morgue door a tug to open it. The space between his eyebrows crinkled as one of them rose slightly in irritation. He pulled harder and the wood cracked some more being freed from the jam only to creak angrily as he jerked the entire door off its hinges. He shrugged at his brother in his very Damon way when Stefan shot him a cross look for being less than inconspicuous. He poked his head out into the hallway, looking down one half of the corridor and then the other before disappearing from view. "Get lost," she heard him tell someone off in the distance; compelling them to leave their station no doubt. And then he reappeared at the open doorway in a blur. "We're clear. Let's get her out of here."

Elena kept her eyes on Stefan as she had promised she would though it was incredibly tempting to disobey. He was mostly focused on where he was going but his dark, brooding eyes glanced down at her regularly to check on her status. Bright lights flashed overhead only to disappear again, thumps and thuds and pits and pats filled the dark night air, and there was the smell again. Scrumptious and alluring in various flavors and textures but without a name. Her eyes strayed from Stefan's. It was an accident she told herself. But where they landed wasn't.

Damon was running beside them as close to her side as he could be without crowding his brother given their circumstances. The breeze ruffled his permanently disheveled hair as his lean body whipped through the night. He was a blur of constant motion at vampire speed, but at the same time she could seem him perfectly. "Maybe if I had met you first," she had told him. But she had met him first. Her own words made no sense to her.

"You want what everybody wants."

"What? A mysterious stranger who has all the answers?"

He had given a stunted little laugh as if he weren't used to people challenging him. "Well, let's just say that I've been around a long time. I've learned a few things."

"So, Damon, tell me. What is it that I want?"

"You want a love that consumes you. You want passion, and adventure, and even a little danger." Even then, she thought, he had been thinking about them together. It was her question though that apparently sealed the deal.

"So what do you want?" That wasn't supposed to be a stumper, but he still fumbled because no one had ever asked him what it was that he wanted before, or at least none had genuinely cared about his answer.

"I want you to get everything you're looking for." Because I love you, his eyes told her again as they ran. For the second time since waking, Elena had to forcefully will her gaze away from him and she buried her face into Stefan's chest until she heard the familiar hollow thudding of their steps on her porch. Relief flooded through her at the thought of being home.

Damon's knuckles wrapped on the hardwood door insistently and Stefan let her slide free from his hold but kept a careful hand locked on hers. Why was he knocking? It was her house. All she wanted was to be inside where it was safe, to make sure that her brother was alright, and to crash face first into her comfy bed after one of the longest days that she could ever remember. He had to know that her head was already pounding; did he keep making that awful knocking racket just to annoy her? What was taking so long?

She picked up on a subtle thump-thumping sound moving around inside the house in time with urgent long strides. Jeremy answered the door with wide eyes, unshed tears lining the brims and threatening to spill over. "Elena, thank God!" he rejoiced, almost lunging forward to hug her. "I thought – I saw Ric, and –" He couldn't get all of his words across either.

The thump-thumping grew louder in her ears until it reached an intolerable level. Whoosh-whoosh, thump-thump-whoosh. Jeremy shouldn't have been allowed to smell so good to her. It was a little perverse really, how much she was enjoying being so close to him. His scent was different from Stefan's and Damon's, more concentrated somehow, sharper, poignant. Whoosh-whoosh, thump-whoosh-thump. Her nose was right on his neck because he was so much taller and it was like having a cheeseburger tease her. The biggest, juiciest, most succulent all-beef patty, double bacon cheeseburger that had ever been crafted by man, flavored with unique herbs and spices. God she was ravenous! The pit of her stomach growled and clenched, starving. When was the last time she had anything to eat? Taking a tiny nibble was oh, so tempting. Just a little bite wouldn't hurt.

Both Stefan and Damon reached out to steal her away from Jeremy with lightning speed as her lips spread and the tip of a fang skimmed over the top of an easily flowing artery in her brother's neck. He was angry with them at first, not understanding why they had jerked his sister away so roughly, but after a few blinks and a squint into the darkness, awful awareness dawned on him. She looked like Elena, spoke like her, moved like her, but her face had changed into something more terrifying. Red and purplish veins squirmed about the hollows of her eyes like they had taken on a life of their own, and her flushed lips were parted just enough to expose the points of two unnaturally elongated canines. She was leaning forward while in the grasp of the Salvatore brothers, towards him, taking in deep inhalations and seemingly ignorant of what she was doing.

"Katherine?" he asked with a glimmer of dark hope which was dashed when Damon hesitated and Stefan's frown fell even farther. Stefan quietly shook his head no.

Elena watched the first tear spill to the porch in slow motion. Jeremy's face scrunched up painfully, his lips drawing tight over his teeth in a fearsome expression of anguish. She wanted to reach out to comfort him and tell him that everything was going to be alright. She had survived. They had all made it out of the fight alive and they were going to carve out new lives for themselves, carrying on in the face of tragedy as they always did. She wanted to wrap him up in her arms and say that he didn't have to be so sad. But the grip that the brothers held on her arms stuck tight. She wasn't going anywhere without them.

"She didn't want this!" Jeremy screamed into the darkness. "She never wanted to be a vampire! What did you do to her? Why?"

"Maybe this was a bad idea," Stefan spoke morosely.

"You think?" Damon snapped back at him.

Vampire? Elena traced the tip of her tongue over the front row of her teeth. Sure enough, a needlelike pinprick jabbed her tongue from the end of a tooth that felt sharpened to a razor's point. The bitter, irony tang of blood tainted her mouth, tasting so much sweeter than it had a right to. Almost sugar syrupy, she thought when she caught herself sucking on the wound to get more of the taste before it closed. The depths of her stomach clenched again. She was so hungry, so, so, hungry. Why couldn't they understand that?

The smell understood. It called to her like the siren's song; wafting in the air to mix with all the other scents, so close but so far away.

"We didn't want this either." Stefan implored her brother to understand without releasing his hold on her arm.

"Haven't I lost enough?" Jeremy's voice took on an eerily calm chill as he gave both brothers death glares. "Now you have to take my sister away from me too?"

"Hey," Damon barked in defense of his brother when Stefan's chin fell guiltily. "It's not like we planned this. Fell gave her some of my blood when she was at the hospital, and then…" He didn't shamefully look away like Stefan did when Elena turned her shocked eyes on him for the truth. "We didn't know." He wasn't talking to Jeremy anymore. "I'm sorry." Because I love you.

No, she shook her head in denial. It couldn't be true. She wasn't a vampire. There was no blood at hospital. It wasn't Damon. She couldn't be a dead… monster. The word came out of nowhere to brand her with its harshness. She didn't want to be a monster. Was that how she really thought of them? Since meeting the Salvatores she had encountered more than anyone's fair share of evil vampires, her own ancestors Katherine and Isobel being among them, but Stefan and Damon were different weren't they?

Even they killed though. The innocent and guilty alike without mercy; sweet, peace-loving Stefan being several times more brutal than devious Damon whom often enjoyed playing with his food. So was she afraid of becoming an evil monster like the women that had gone before her? Or of becoming the kind of beast that could lurk in the woods around Mystic Falls overlooked because of a few good intentions?

Her fangs slowly retracted back behind her gum line and the swollen veins beneath her eyes faded away as the monster within receded. It itched a little. But neither that nor the hunger twisting around inside of her mattered when Jeremy stepped back into the house past the threshold of supernatural protection.

He lingered there with his hand on the door, wanting to block out all of his problems for the night, but not yet willing to shut out his sister. "I'm sorry, Elena," he spoke without really addressing her or looking directly back at her. "I just… I just can't deal with this right now. I think I need some time."

Stefan nodded congenially, understanding the boy's plight even while the fingers of the hand he held tightened their already crushing grasp. Damon too, slipped a comforting hand into her free one when he felt her flinch at the inadvertently cruel rejection. Their fingers intertwined and locked together as easily as if they had always been that way.

"We'll take her to our place tonight." Jeremy hesitated again, the door bouncing slightly against his side where he held it for support, not knowing what to say and feeling badly for it. "We'll take care of her," he solemnly promised. Stefan always knew just what to say somehow.

Her brother gave him a nod of thanks before giving her a grief-stricken look of apology. "Goodnight Elena." The door swung to a close in all of their faces, the latch gently clicking into place once shut. Before she consciously registered what she had done, Elena had ripped her hand free from Stefan's and rushed to the door. The sensation of smacking into the invisible boundary line that barred her entry into her own home without an invitation was stunning. She almost felt like she had been physically slapped with a concrete wall and her hand helplessly pawed at it for everything that was familiar. The sound of locks being turned on the other side was insult to injury.

None of them openly acknowledged that she had kept Damon's hand in her own after letting go of Stefan's. It was something that she had done without thinking and shouldn't have mattered. But it did. The tension in Stefan's shoulders grew that much more, and the scathing words that Damon normally would have said to gloat died on his lips – because it meant something to him.

The brothers shared a look of silent debate for a moment, speaking to one another without a word about who would take her as their charge for the last leg of the journey home. Stefan glanced away from her to the street as a means of giving his consent. After all, he was all about letting Elena make her own choices as of late, and he wasn't going to deny her what she had really chosen when she needed it most. Damon scooped her up into his arms without a word, and Elena didn't protest. She was already too numb to put up a fight for her dignity; so instead she did as she had done with Stefan and let her head fall to his chest, blocking her view of the world. She didn't want to think about the temptations out there after what she had nearly done to her own brother. She couldn't be trusted.

The world went by in a blur and didn't stop until the group paused within the familiar halls of the Salvatore house, midway between the brothers' rooms. Again, Damon and Stefan paused to take stock of one another's position on the subject of where Elena would be going. They wordlessly agreed that that was a choice which could wait until later when she was able to decide for herself where she really wanted to be, and they chose to deposit her in the first guest room placed between them.

Stefan opened the door, flicked on a lamp that sat on the nightstand beside the bed, and pulled the covers down so that Damon could lay her down on the pillow-like feather mattress. In itself the bed was wonderfully fluffy and extraordinarily comfortable, but it smelled slightly musty from disuse, not like either of the brothers. It wasn't home.

They worked in perfect tandem with one another; a rhythm that could only be achieved after a century-and-a-half of experience, zipping back and forth to settle her in for the night. There was a framed picture of her and Jeremy that must have come from Stefan's room placed on the nightstand as well as a glass of water. An extra blanket to help with the chills of transition was brought to the foot of her bed, and Damon came sauntering back with one of his personally favorite books from his own collection. She could smell him in the weathered, crinkled pages. He had read it so many times.

Once the brothers were satisfied that they had made the room to be somewhat homey for her, they each took an end of the bed to sit down on; the ancient frame creaking a touch under their weight. "It's only for a few nights," Stefan promised her. "Jeremy, he just needs a little time. He'll get used to the idea, and then you'll be able to go back home. Everything can go back to normal."

"Or whatever impending doom serves as normal around here," Damon snarked back, doing his "eye thing" that he knew bugged her so much and flashing a broody smile that didn't touch his eyes at all.

"Right now you should try to get some sleep. It's important that you try to keep as normal of a cycle as possible. Active by day, sleeping at night." Stefan tugged the blankets up to her chin and she got the feeling that they were tucking her in as parents would a child. Maybe she was sort of like their child in a way. A baby vampire that they both felt responsibility for; sired by Damon's blood without his knowledge, and allowed to die by Stefan's hand even though she had demanded he save Matt in her place. Neither was to blame for what had happened, but they still felt the guilt for it because they knew how she really felt about what she had never wanted. And now they were more determined than ever to be her keepers.

She wasn't sure that she would ever be able to sleep again. She had drank three Red Bull energy drinks in one day during school finals once and not even that much caffeine had been able to make her feel as wired as she was in that moment. Her every compulsion was to be up and about, and outside. The cool night air begged her to join it, to heed the call of the wild and roam the Virginian woods unhindered, seeking, hunting, preying.

Perhaps that was why Stefan took the first watch. They didn't want her sneaking about in the darkness without supervision. They wouldn't let her repeat Caroline's mistakes, or get trapped outside under the rising sun. Damon paused in the doorway to glance back and make sure that she would be alright with the arrangement. Elena rolled over with her pillow in answer, waiting for the click of the door when he left. The last thing that she saw before she closed her eyes was Stefan hunched over on the window seat, bathed in pale moonlight like a fallen angel gazing at the stars beyond which weighed so heavily on his shoulders.

"I know I don't deserve your forgiveness. But I need it." Because I love you. Damon haunted her dreams, snaring behind her fluttering eyelids and swimming through her veins like a pestilence that wouldn't end. "I promise I will never leave you again." Because I love you. "This is the way to a vampire's heart," he had whispered in her ear with his body so seductively close to hers. Because I love you.

Elena could recall each and every second with him with an inhuman clarity that drove her heart into a frenzy, every encounter, every conversation, every tortured touch, every rescue, every hopeful gaze, every comforting or protective shielding of his arms, every press of their lips. Every inch of her was saturated with Damon to the most remote corners of her mind's darkened recesses. He was a self-righteous pain in the ass and her hero in the same right, and he had dug himself so far under her skin that she would never really be able to get rid of him. And she knew that he would never leave her. Not really. Not even when she wanted him to. No matter how many times she pushed him away and screamed that it would always be Stefan. No matter how many times she broke his heart and made him wish that he could run away to hide and lick his wounds. Damon would always be the shadow in her step, the wind at her back that stubbornly challenged her to keep fighting, the watcher that kept a weather eye out for the enemies at her flanks, the keeper of her secrets, and the safety net that would catch her when she fell, brushed the dirt off and shoved her back to her feet again. Because he loved her.

Damon was better for what he had of her as well, regardless of how loudly he stomped his feet in a temper tantrum and protested that it wasn't so. Only for her, he lowered his infuriating walls and shed his armor to expose how much he really cared when his words said otherwise. In return, he changed her too. He always pushed her to be better, faster, and stronger. He challenged her to find her true self in ways that Stefan never could. He never let her take the easy road or give up when life got hard. Damon had the power to drive her completely insane just by entering a room, but he could also make her laugh when it all felt hopeless, and bring her back down to the earth again. He just… consumed her; all of her, burning like a wildfire until there was nothing left in his wake. Because he loved her.

To be continued…