#anyway hi tumblr i’m alive happy new year hope you’re all doing well <333

[firelxdykatara]

This is dedicated to @itspileofgoodthings - it’s an expansion on an idea I had that I wrote a bit of immediately after the season 6 finale, and while I lost the original post completely in the nuke (thanks tumblr) this has been kicking around my head recently, largely thanks to all Maria’s awesome meta. Also consider this an internet hug cause I know you’ve been having a rough time of it lately. <333

Anyway, this is basically how I envisioned Elena waking up from the coma, all those years ago when I was still angry and raw over tvd’s treatment of my girl but just wanted her to be happy in any way I could manage it.

This isn’t edited or anything so just. Bear that in mind. It’s four am so the quality probably suffered greatly as a result. >.> Anyway, enjoy.

---

It could have been minutes, or years—time had very little meaning, in this place. She supposed, on some level—and when she could suppose things at all—it made sense. A magical coma didn’t have a whole lot of precedent to follow, but when one was cursed to sleep for what could easily be decades, the ability to mark the passage of time was kind of immaterial.

Actually, it would probably have served as an even more brutal form of torture. Elena wondered why Kai hadn’t thought of that.

Then again, she’d never really had a whole lot of experience with the business end of magic. That had always been Bonnie’s department, and now, thanks to Kai, she would never be able to see her best friend alive again. The moments of clarity were thrown into sharper relief against the backdrop of the formless cloud of an existence she drifted through, her body and mind perfectly preserved by the curse—kept in a limbo of semi-reality. Perhaps that was the point, if anything Kai did ever really had one. (He was a psychopath with no real plan except power and how to gain more of it. It wasn’t all that surprising, in hindsight.)

Those moments when things did solidify, Elena never could quite tell what caused them. Sometimes, she almost thought she could hear Damon’s voice, whispering her name—a prayer, almost, or an oath. A promise. There was a giggle she thought could be Caroline, or her brother’s crooked smile, flashing like lightning across her mind’s eye.

Sometimes she saw Aunt Jenna, and her parents.

“It’s not time yet, sweetheart,” Miranda Gilbert said once, smiling sadly from the other end of Wickery Bridge, the petals of calla lilies cascading around her like rain.

Elena wanted to protest. To run across the bridge and hug her mother—but she stood rooted to the spot, and the scene shifted and vanished, and she was alone again.

When the loneliness became too much, the realization that she was completely alone in this place that tasted bitter on her tongue and cut like a knife, sometimes a memory would surface. Her first date with Matt, long before her parents died and Elena began her journey that started with the gloomy graveyard girl and ended in a coffin for who knew how long—and, really, how was that for irony?—or the first night she stayed up with Damon, curled up together and just… talking until the sun came up and Elena had the first real taste of forever.

A stray thought might make her wonder if she was reliving firsts because she was worried about all the lasts she was missing. But she tried not to think about that, and it was easy—thoughts ran like water, and slipped through her fingers just as quickly.

So, she had no idea how much time had passed, when something happened that hadn’t since right after she’d gone to sleep.

Someone else was here with her.

Her surroundings took form—familiar, achingly beautiful in its simplicity, and far more real than anything her own mind had been able to conjure up. And when she saw her visitor, she knew just what it meant.

“Oh, Bonnie. No.”

Tears welled up, part sadness, part sharp relief at suddenly being, part agony over that relief—because it could only mean one thing.

Bonnie Bennet looked as if she hadn’t aged a day, but when she was spoke it was with the voice of age and wisdom. “Elena.” It almost sounded as if she could hardly believe it, herself. “I’ve missed you.”

The tears fell as Elena ran forward, enveloping her friend in a hug. “Please tell me this isn’t happening,” she whispered, her voice thick as she pushed it out past the lump in her throat. “You found some other way. Right?”

Bonnie pulled back, saying nothing, but tracing Elena’s face with her eyes. She reached out with one hand, brushing the tears from her friend’s cheeks, shaking her head slowly. “It’s my time, Elena. It was going to happen some day—you know that. I just wanted to see you one last time before I died.”

“But you’re not… I mean, you’re still so-”

“Young?” Bonnie interrupted with a laugh. “This is a dream, Elena. I can look however I want.” Slowly, though, her appearance changed—wrinkles appeared, laugh lines and crow’s feet and hair shot through with grey and white. “Though I do look damn good for a hundred and twenty,” she added, and the look on her face was so unmistakably Bonnie that Elena couldn’t help but laugh out loud.

“You’re ok with this?” Elena asked, her eyes earnestly searching Bonnie’s face. “Was your life everything you wanted?”

A smile spread across Bonnie’s wizened face, and the years melted away again. “You look out for my grandkids, and they can tell you all about my life.”

“Grandkids?!”

Bonnie’s eyes sparkled when she laughed. “I fell in love. I lived my life, and raised a family, and got to see the world. I was happy. I promise,” she added, pulling Elena back into a hug.

It felt more like a goodbye.

“Now it’s your turn, Elena Gilbert,” she whispered, and then everything went dark.

  For the first time in a century, Elena’s eyes opened.

She gasped at the sudden onslaught of sensation—there was sunlight streaming between the blinds, and everything felt fresh.

There had been a certain stale stillness to everything in the dream world after a while, but this, she knew with sudden and painful clarity, was real.

And the pain was because she hadn’t moved in a hundred years.

It felt as if a million hot little knives were poking at her feet and her hands and sending fire through her veins as every major muscle group screamed in protest. One hand was gripped in Bonnie’s—it was then Elena noticed her friend’s body, the aged version she’d seen briefly in her dream, lying next to her on the bed. She could so easily have been sleeping, and tears stung at the corners of Elena’s eyes. She pressed a gentle kiss to her friend’s cooling cheek, and swung her legs over the side of the bed.

She only stumbled a step, a pained whimper escaping from her throat, before the door to the room burst open and in a rush of displaced air, he was at her side, catching her before she fell.

Damon. Damon Salvatore. And the sun seemed that much brighter.

“Damon?” she whispered, voice rough with disuse, as she looked up into his eyes—those startlingly green eyes that made her toes curl.

“You’re awake,” was all he said, sounding for all the world like a drowning man who’d finally remembered how to breathe.

Or, perhaps, remembered why he wanted to.

It all fell into place, after that. Stefan and Caroline were in the living room waiting, and one of Bonnie’s granddaughters, all of whom filled her in on the passage of time, everything that had happened while she was asleep.

The first thing she did was visit the family plot. “I’m sorry, Jer,” she whispered, kneeling in the grass in front of his tombstone. “I missed everything, didn’t I? My niece’s grandson is older than me!” She laughed, while tears rolled down her cheeks. “But you missed some things too.” She brushed the tears from her face. “Damon’s human, now. He took the cure from me after I woke up. I guess he spent the past century making sure the whole world thought the cure was destroyed—last thing we need are vampires coming around when we can’t defend ourselves, right? And Bonnie’s gone, but I hope you guys have plenty of company on the other side, now. Or whatever it is that happens after we die. It’s kind of nice not to know, actually. Feels weird, not having some immortal out for my blood anymore, knock on wood. But I wish I could’ve gotten to see you grow up. Better be saving a spot at the table for me, you hear?” She shook her head, running her fingers across the etchings in the stone that marked her brother’s name. “Wish you were still here, Jer. But I’ll be ok. I promise.”

  Later, Caroline was only too happy to help Elena settle into a new identity and get her back into medical school. This time, she managed to actually attend most of her classes. Damon had that bar he’d gotten for himself while still a vampire, and, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think Damon is actually happy as a human,” Caroline said, months later.

Elena gasped in mock outrage, and her friend raised her hands placatingly. “I’m not saying it’s a surprise he’s happy with you—just, I always thought he’d feel some… regret, for giving it all up.”

“Damon’s forever was always Elena,” Stefan spoke up as he entered the kitchen.

“You know, it’s super not fair that you both still have superhuman eaves-dropping skills,” Elena remarked, then laughed, throwing a few more things into the chilli. “But… you’re not wrong. I was surprised, too. But I’m glad he is. I never wanted him to have to sit by and watch me wither away.”

“Now you can wither together,” Stefan quipped. Elena threw a celery stalk at him.

It was… perfect. An almost idyllic life. Of course, there were issues. There always would be—that was life, and perfect as it may have seemed, it was still real. But Elena and Damon had always been that. Real. Messy and imperfect, and they had their arguments, but somehow, a normal human life was so much more survivable without immortals trying to kill them.

Really, it wasn’t the end of their story—just the beginning. The beginning of another story, too, as Elena discovered not long after.

“What is it, baby?” Damon asked, in that way of his, the slight hitch in his voice when he thought Elena was in trouble or hurt and needed to be able to fix it. The way his eyes focused on hers, as compelling as ever, even human as he was. “What’s wrong?”

Nothing. Oh, god, for once, nothing at all, she wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come. Tears were filling her eyes, but they weren’t from sadness, nor anger. And, finally, she found her voice.

“I’m pregnant.” And the only word for the light in her eyes was joy.