quixotism | [fanfic] [vampire diaries] Nowhere Men

Summary: Elena is dead and the Salvatores are on a roadtrip to nowhere.
-xx-

"No man knows till he experiences it, what it is like to feel his own life-blood drawn away into the woman he loves."
--Bram Stoker’s Dracula

“The possibility of physical and mental collapse is now very real. No sympathy for the Devil, keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride.”
--Raoul Duke in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

--
The world had been fixed. Or so Damon kept telling himself. No more Originals to dog their nightmares, no shadows at their back. There should be a feeling of utter contentment in his bones but as he digs into himself, all he can find is bone-marrow emptiness. He wasn’t fit for dogs. And as Stefan drives down the road that seems to echo with every whirl of the tires, Damon struggles with the world.

Again, he followed the thread. Klaus was dead due to Bonnie’s timely intervention with a spell Luca’s father had left simmering in her head. Of course, this had resulted in her demise (who could understand the nature of spells? Not Damon as he stood there tonelessly as Jeremy cradled her body, lost again and left behind again), but it had won the freedom and horror of all vampires. With no Originals, whatever structure they had was gone and they had retreated into whatever holes they could find. The humans hadn’t won, the werewolves hadn’t won and the vampires most definitely hadn’t won. It was a bizarre status quo that he didn’t care for, but it itched. There should be something meaningful behind it all, something to account for their odd victory. For the Salvatores didn’t side with vamps, wolves or humans. They sided for themselves and that’s what made them so feared and dangerous. Who else would be stupid enough to take their own side?

Damon turned his eyes to his brother. Stefan was completely focused on the road, his green flecked with shadows from overhead trees that bracketed the sides of the road. His grip on the wheel was firm, so firm that Damon briefly entertained the idea of distracting him into a car crash. His lips thinned as he kept staring at Stefan and Stefan hadn’t so much as given him a glance back. Anger? It could have been, but Stefan was always good at hiding. Even as Damon tore it out of him, Stefan simply scooped his insides back in. There! A speck of irritation and anger. Damon greedily took hold of it. He wasn’t picky anymore.

“Damon,” Stefan said. There was no inflection in his face and when Damon tried to stir up his feelings again, they dried like ashes in his mouth. With an irritable jerk of his head, Damon looked out the window, determined to ignore Stefan for the rest of his life.

If only living wasn’t so long.

-xx-

Everything was on time now. Stefan recalled a time when everything was too late, too late, a mantra that seemed to bounce around the walls of his mind. Now, staring at the worn-down clock in a truck stop, he felt that he should be late for something yet again. But nothing came to mind. They had been on the road for two days now and he wasn’t sure how long he could keep driving without an idea in mind. A part of him wanted to turn back, go home to Mystic Falls and have his life fall in line. It was an overwhelming urge, but not so overwhelming as his need not to go back and face the people he had abandoned without word or explanation. He had no answers, no good words to smooth lives over. This time, he was running and he was fine with it.

A second passes by. Stefan steeples his fingers against the table and watches Damon flirt with the waitress. She was clearly enjoying the attention though her eyes kept darting back and forth between them. He could picture her thoughts clearly. ‘Who to pick, the charming older brother or the quiet younger brother?’. It was like a pit opened up in his stomach. Damon’s eyes flickered over him like a roving predator and that smile deepened to teeth. Stefan looked away.

An hour after Stefan had eaten his pancakes (“Such a pansy” “Shut up Damon”), he got up, jingling the keys in his pocket. It was strange, not wanting to leave and being too desperate to leave. The door waved him out while he turned his way to the carpark and caught the well-known drift of a leather jacket. Stefan let out a sigh. Damon had curbed most of his feeding habits since they left, but that could be because Stefan has been extra vigilant in preventing any accidents. He closed his eyes and opened his senses.

the scraping of feet against dirt and flayed grass, breathless titters from a girl’s mouth, something was murmured, something about beauty and a great uniform, tittering again in puffs of loud breathing, the sound of mouthing at the neck, even the smile that comes with it…

Stefan jerked himself back to reality. He considered interrupting Damon and shook himself. He doesn’t believe Damon will kill her and if he did… he’d clean up after him. He wasn’t in the mood to save a waitress today.

-xx-

Damon dreams.

What he dreams doesn’t matter anymore. He knows that Stefan comes into his dreams, scattering them like mist into the dawn. There is no nightmares, but no good dreams either, just hazy thoughts that burst when he wakes up in a start. Now, it was Stefan by the bedside, Stefan who looks like he’s gotten the perfect amount of sleep, Stefan with a book in his hand and an incalculable look in his eye. It nettled Damon that their roles have been so perfectly reversed. If anything, he should be the one holding it together, perfect and righteous. He should be the one gloating over Stefan’s actions, saying the told-you-so’s and tugging Stefan to their next glorious destination.

But here Stefan was, his broad shoulders steady, a pinprick of light on his tattoo, making the lines sharp and stark. Stefan, the boy who never stopped crying when his mother died, who crept into corners to hide from monsters, Stefan, who held Elena’s limp body in his arms, his fingers in her hair, shaking, trembling, weeping Stefan…

He abruptly turned his head away.

Stefan set up down on the desk and languidly walks over to the bed. Damon bites his lip furiously, his back fraught with tension. Stefan sits on the bed, letting it creak before he reaches out with his hand and rests it on Damon’s neck, a curve of a caress.

“It’s okay,” Stefan said softly, “We’ll get better. We always do.”

And Damon wanted to rail at him, dig his nails against his skin, tear out his throat and crow over the carcass. Instead, he lets Stefan do whatever it is he wants to do.

-xx-

In all honesty, they should have known. A human and a vampire? It never works. They had all the stories and bad romance stories to learn that truth. Still, knowledge made no difference in the end. The whisperings of Klaus had been ignored. Even now, with all the facts and scribbles shifting through his head like a steady shuffle, Stefan struggles. He struggles with himself, he struggles with Damon, he struggles with pretending to breathe and he struggles with the pretense.

He sees it clearly in Damon’s eyes. The need to die, to wilt away, to render themselves obsolete… he sees them clearly as if they were his own. And they could be. It was hard to tell each other apart these days. There was no Stefan Salvatore or Damon Salvatore, just two people hoarding a pain that they refuse to talk about.

It wasn’t like him, he thought to himself as he watched Damon sleep. It was like Damon to be bitter and angry, to rage against the world silently as he plotted himself to death. It was like Damon to tempt a pretty waitress, to forget himself in a bite to the neck. But Stefan can’t be Damon anymore, can’t be bitter, can’t draw strength from his sadness. He lives from moment to moment because that is the only thing he seems capable of doing.

He was so entrenched in his wool-gathering that he did not see Damon get up.

“Stefan.”

He blinked and looked up at Damon, “What is it?”

Damon paused, his face fearless and frightening in its intensity. For a minute, Stefan wasn’t sure if Damon was going to kill him. Still, he didn’t move.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you… do we keep … doing this?” Damon spat out, like it was a mark of shame, “What is wrong with us?”

“Besides everything?” Stefan replied dryly only to have Damon shoot him a poisonous glare, “What do you want me to say?”

“I want to know why we keep living,” Damon’s eyes are burning now, combustible that he was; the brightest dying firecracker in the night, “She’s gone. There’s nothing for us here.”

And Damon was right. Elena was dead while they remained alive, soaked in her blood and tears. Stefan felt like he swallowed a handful of ash and for the first time since they packed up and left, swearing never to set foot in Mystic Falls, his cold tears pricked his eyes.

“Because…,” And Stefan faltered, because the wish of death was strong in him, “Because you’re still alive, Damon. And I can’t give that up.”

Damon crumbled. He took Stefan’s face in his hands and he buried himself there. Stefan steeples his fingers in Damon’s arms and does the same.

Who needed graves when they had each other?