Yeah, looking through here, that's a lot of sittin'-and-talkin' scenes. I'll punch the next chapter up with some action. In the meantime, I totally want one of those bumper stickers.
Fanfiction.net link: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6910203/3/
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CHAPTER 3
When Jenna came down the stairs the next morning, Elena was already up. Not only up, Jenna realized; she had made coffee and prepared parfaits of yogurt, granola and fresh fruit, one of which she passed to Jenna along with a cup of coffee. She regarded her niece suspiciously as she slid onto the stool beside her at the breakfast bar. “You’re not going to tell me you’re pregnant, are you?”
“Uh, no. Vampire boyfriend. Not exactly an issue,” Elena said, topping off her own coffee.
Jenna hadn’t really thought about that. “Wow. That’s true. Huh. I can see the bumper stickers now: ‘Practice safe sex: Screw a vampire.’”
“Somehow, I don’t think that’s going to catch on," Elena said, laughing. "Anyway… I thought maybe we could talk.”
“Okay…”
She swirled her spoon through the yogurt, making a trail through the fruit and granola. "I know you were really upset last night."
"Yeah. I was."
"And I realized we haven't really talked about everything from before. It's been so crazy since the ritual and everything..." Elena started segregating strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries into separate camps. Jenna wondered if she planned to eat it, or if she'd only made it to have something to do with her hands. "I hated lying to you," she said finally. "That was the worst part. All the lying."
Jenna took a sip of her coffee. "For something you hated doing, you did it for an awfully long time."
"I know. It wasn't supposed to be like that. At first, when Stefan told me and asked me to keep his secret, I didn't like it, but I didn't think it was going to hurt anyone. He said it was better for people if they didn't know, and I thought he was right. Then something happened, and then something else, and the lies just kept snowballing. Then it just got to the point where it was like, how do you even begin to tell someone all that? Where do you start?"
"After your evil twin made me stab myself might have been a good time," she suggested.
Elena winced. "I know. I just... I guess I thought we could handle it. Could handle Katherine, get things under control..." She raised a bite of the yogurt, then gave up on it, putting the spoon back in the bowl and pushing it away from her. "I'm so sorry, Jenna, and I need you to know that it wasn't because I didn't care about you, or didn't trust you, or didn't think you could handle it."
Jenna got up and grabbed the coffee pot, topping off both of their mugs. "I couldn't really blame you if you did think that. I haven't exactly been a candidate for the World's Greatest Parent."
"Jenna – "
"No, let me finish. There was a time, a very short time ago, when I would have said that I couldn't handle it. Just like I said I couldn't handle losing my mom and dad, or graduating college, let alone going to grad school. Or suddenly finding myself with a niece and a nephew to raise. There are still times I think maybe I can't handle it." She pushed Elena's hair back behind her shoulder. "I've made a lot of mistakes, too. With Jeremy, and with you. I was so worried that you wouldn't see me as 'Cool Aunt Jenna' anymore that I let a lot of things slide that shouldn't have. And I haven't set a very good example."
"For the record, can I just say that we're fine with you being 'Cool Aunt Jenna?'"
"So I can do things like let you go away for the weekend with your boyfriend?" She stopped and shook her head, marveling at her own ineptitude. "Who does that?"
"Cool people?"
"Anyway, the point is, we've both made mistakes. But, we have the opportunity to do things differently from now on. I need to be able to trust you and your brother. And I need for you to be able to trust me. I need to know if there is something going on, even if it's going to freak me out. It probably will freak me out. But I still want you to tell me. Two-way communication from now on, okay?"
"It's a deal."
"Good. Now, in the interest of being a responsible parent, I'll point out that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and you should really eat that."
Elena made a face at her and pulled the bowl back over, sprinkling another spoonful of granola over it. “So, in the interest of that two-way communication, what’s going on with you and Elijah?”
And already that one bites me in the ass. “Uh… well, we… I… this is really good!” she punted, stuffing a big spoonful of yogurt and granola into her mouth.
Elena just gave her a raised eyebrow.
Jenna sighed. “We're enjoying each other's company, and seeing where it goes from there. That's really all there is to tell right now."
"Just be careful, okay? He's..."
"A vampire. Which you should have no problem with, considering you're dating one yourself."
“That’s different. No, it is!” she said, when Jenna gave her the hairy eyeball. “Besides, what I was going to say is, he’s dangerous.”
“I thought that was sort of covered under ‘vampire.’”
“Well, yes, but Elijah is big ‘D’ Dangerous, not little ‘d’ dangerous.”
“He saved your life,” she reminded her.
“And I'm glad. It's just... you haven’t seen him do the things I have. He acts like this mild-mannered historian around you. But he can be scary. Really scary."
Jenna paused, spoon halfway to her mouth as a thought struck her. "Elena, you're not scared to have him in the house, are you?"
"No... No, not exactly. I just want you to be careful, okay?"
"Fine. I'll be careful, Mom."
Elena stuck her tongue out at her. Jenna responded in kind, making them both giggle.
"I will even go one better," Jenna told her. "I hereby do solemnly swear that Elijah will not be wandering the hall naked in the middle of the night, eating ice cream."
"Oh, thank you so much for putting that image in my head!"
Jenna waggled her eyebrows and downed her coffee. "I have to jet. I'll see you this afternoon."
Elena hopped off of the stool and hugged her. "We're good?"
Jenna hugged her back. "We're good."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Miss Sommers!”
Jenna stopped when she heard the voice and rolled her eyes before turning around. “Professor Mitchell.”
Hustling a little to catch up with her on her way to the student union, the Professor drew even with her. Jenna started walking again, him falling into step beside her. “I think we got off on the wrong foot yesterday, Miss Sommers. I’d like to offer my apologies. Can you join me for lunch?”
Well, that was unexpected. “Uh…”
“Please. I’d like to help you get that abstract together for the review panel. That is my job, as your advisor, after all.”
Jenna shrugged. “Um, okay. I guess.”
He smiled. “Excellent. How about the café upstairs, here? It will be a little quieter than The Den.”
“Sure.” Jenna followed him up the granite steps on the outside the building, his keycard allowing them access through that door so they could avoid the noontime crunch of people in the building’s grand foyer. She snuck curious glances at him as they worked their way through the lunch line, where she decided to forego the delicious-looking but gravy-laden shepherd’s pie, opting instead for a lunch-with-a-man-I-don’t-know-very-well salad. Their lunches purchased, he led her over to a table next to one of the floor to ceiling windows.
“I was a little hard on you yesterday, Miss Sommers,” he began, once they’d seated themselves.
“First of all, call me Jenna, okay? Every time someone calls me ‘Miss Sommers’ I feel like some spinster librarian with a beehive hairdo and those pointy silver glasses on a chain, wearing a grey hounds-tooth skirt, a cardigan, and those ugly, sensible pumps.”
He grinned and let out a chuckle. “Well, that’s certainly… descriptive.” He wasn’t at all so fierce-looking when he smiled like that. In fact, he wasn’t at all bad-looking, either.
“Fertile imagination,” she admitted.
“Please call me Richard. At least when we’re not in class.”
“All right.”
“Speaking of imagination, you did tickle my curiosity with some of your research on the supernatural.” He took a bite of his club sandwich. “I know I said it didn’t have the makings of a psychology thesis, and I stand by that, but it looked like an interesting collection of anecdotes and mythologies. What drew you to the subject matter?”
Let’s see, my ex-boyfriend’s undead vampire wife showed up on my doorstep; my niece is a curse-breaking doppelganger; the previous doppelganger, who is also a vampire, compelled me to stab myself in the gut with a knife; said niece’s friends are a witch, a vampire, and a werewolf, respectively; and I’m theoretically quasi-dating an Original vampire. “Um, no big thing, I guess, really.”
“Really? That was a pretty extensive collection of research for there to have been ‘no big thing’ spurring it on.”
She chased an errant chick pea around her salad plate, finally cornering it against a broccoli floret and spearing it with her fork. “I don’t know, there’s been this explosion of vampire and werewolf movies, books and television shows over the last decade or two. And the ‘Harry Potter’ phenomenon. Some of those stories deal with supernatural creatures suddenly going public, and how society deals with that. I guess it made me wonder what would happen if that did occur, how would it affect us on some fundamental level.”
“I see.” Richard ate some potato chips, making her jealous. Stupid salad. “One of the stories you managed to collect was a little different than the usual run-of-the-mill stuff. Something about a werewolf curse, and a moonstone. How did that go, again?”
“Uh, that one… let me think…” She was treading on dangerous ground, here. She had never been able to lie convincingly to save her life. She decided to stay as close to the truth as possible, and just act like it was only a story. “If I’m remembering it correctly, that was the one where certain families were cursed to be werewolves, and then there was another curse that limited them to only changing during the full moon.”
“How was it that a moonstone played into it?”
Jenna ate a bite of broccoli. Yuk. “I think the witches who cast the curse used the moonstone to hold the curse together. Probably whoever originated the story liked the symmetry of the moon and the moonstone.”
“Weren’t vampires somehow involved in the whole thing too?”
“Yeah. The same curse made it so vampires couldn’t walk in the sun.”
“And was there a way to break the curse?”
“Um, yeah, I think so. I can’t remember the details very well,” she fibbed. “What was it that interested you in that particular story?” she asked casually, though his honing in on the Sun-Moon Curse made her suddenly suspicious. Elijah had said to be on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary. A faculty advisor, apologizing for being hard on a student, definitely fit that category.
He shrugged nonchalantly. “As I said, it was a little different than the usual fare. I often find it’s the inconsistencies that can lead to revelation, not the dozens of repetitions.” Jenna glanced at his hands as he took another bite of his sandwich – no ring. It was impossible to tell for sure under the button-up shirt, but Jenna didn’t think he was wearing a necklace either. No lapis lazuli made it highly unlikely he was a vampire. That didn’t mean he hadn’t been compelled by one, though.
“So,” she said, changing the subject, “my thesis.” Jenna rattled off the basic structure of the outline she had worked on until 3:00 a.m. or so, and they spent the rest of the lunch debating what should be included, and in what order. Mitchell was actually helpful, and perfectly charming, with no trace of the previous day’s surliness. She could definitely see why he had the reputation for being moody.
Having filled a page with notes she had jotted down during the conversation, Jenna glanced at her watch and realized she had ten minutes to get to her next class. “Yikes, I need to go.” She stood and held her hand out to him. “Thank you for lunch, and for the work session. It’s been really helpful.”
He stood as well, and shook her hand, holding onto it for perhaps a moment longer than necessary. “My pleasure, Miss – Jenna. Um, say… what are you doing Friday evening?”
“Excuse me?”
He let go of her hand with a little laugh. “The department is holding a meet and greet for its faculty and Ph. D. candidates. It’s an opportunity to meet with members of the panel, get to know the people who will be making the decisions as to who will proceed.”
She blushed. Jeez, Jenna, as if he were really going to ask you out. “Oh, yeah. I remember getting a letter about that.”
“I think you should come. It would be helpful to meet the committee in a less formal setting, before you have to pitch your abstract, when your nerves will be running high.”
“But gee, I’m so poised under fire,” she self-deprecated.
He smiled – and didn’t argue the point. “It’s at 6:00 p.m., over at the Arts Center. Wine, hors d’oeuvres, and pretentiously artsy exhibits will all be provided. Bring a date, if you like.”
“I’ll see if I can make it,” she agreed.
“Then I’ll look forward to it.” He collected his briefcase and, nodding to her, deposited his tray on the return cart and headed out.
Jenna headed toward class, thinking about the mixer. This sort of thing seemed right up Elijah’s alley. She'd call him later to invite him. Maybe he could tell her if there was something off about her professor, or if she was just being paranoid.
And, it wouldn’t suck to finally go out on an actual date with Elijah, either.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As it turned out, Elijah’s car was already there in the driveway when she got home. Judging by the noises coming out of the backyard when she got out of her car, he was giving Jeremy the promised sparring lesson. Rather than go into the house, she walked around to the back and leaned her arms along the top of the fence, watching.
“You’re tall, and you have a long reach,” Elijah was saying, “which can be advantageous when you’re fighting hand to hand, but it can also be used against you, as your center of gravity sits higher and can be more easily thrown off by grasping your limbs. Rather than relying on reach, I want you to try coming around the side and bringing your body in closer, like so.” He showed Jeremy what he was talking about, nodding to her when he saw her standing there.
Jeremy did as Elijah had just instructed him, landing what looked to Jenna like a pretty hard punch to Elijah’s kidney. She winced and decided to go inside after all. Setting her bag on the kitchen counter, she went straight to the coffee maker and started a fresh pot. Elena didn’t appear to be home, yet. She was probably at the hospital, or with Stefan. Or at the hospital with Stefan.
‘The boys’ came in from the yard as the coffee finished brewing. “Done beating on one another for the day?” she asked.
“Yeah. I had to stop before I hurt him too badly,” Jeremy told her, grinning and grabbing a package of cookies out of the cupboard.
“I quake at the thought of a rematch,” Elijah answered drily.
Jenna handed him a cup of coffee as Jeremy thundered up the stairs to his room. “It looked like he was hitting you pretty good out there.”
Elijah shrugged. “He may as well learn to do it properly.”
She leaned up against the counter. “You’re good with him. He seems to look up to you.”
“He’s an adolescent male. He’s going to look up to anyone who actually encourages him to engage in fisticuffs and weapons-play.”
“Still…” Elijah had removed his jacket and rolled his sleeves up for the lesson. His shirt had come untucked on one side; she briefly entertained the thought of sliding a hand up underneath it. Clearing her throat, she dug around in her bag until she came up with the crumpled and slightly torn letter regarding the mixer. “So, what’s on your dance card for Friday evening?”
“Well, I had planned on grading papers and bemoaning a certain graduate student’s dedication to preparing her thesis abstract, but I’m open to suggestion.” He looked over her shoulder at the letter, running a finger down her arm as he did so.
Andie’s comment about what vampires could do with their fingers recalled itself to her, unbidden. She shivered a little under the touch. The next two weeks could not possibly go by fast enough. While her brain might have a qualm or two about whether vampire sex constituted necrophilia, her body apparently had no such compunction; if she kept touching him, kept letting him touch her, she was going to spontaneously combust. Oh hell, who was she kidding? He didn’t even have to touch her. He was such a damned dominant presence that she could feel him all the way across the room. She was tempted to think it was part of the whole vampire mystique, but neither of the Salvatores had this effect on her. Just Elijah.
“I thought – ” she had to clear her throat again, twice, as her voice came out all low and husky. “I thought it would be a good idea to go to this,” she said, holding the letter up to him. “Both for the obvious reason, and because I need to know if there is something off about someone.”
“Oh?”
“My adviser, the jerk-off that I was ranting about yesterday? He caught up with me today, apologized, and took me to lunch.”
Elijah smirked that little smirk of his. “The cad!”
“And, asked a lot of questions about the Sun-Moon curse.”
The smirk disappeared with a quickness. “Wait, what?”
“He read through my notes on vampire and werewolf stuff yesterday, and that was the story he chose to fixate on. So I’m wondering – ”
His tone alone was enough to push her back against the counter again. “What in the nine hells was that doing in your psychology notes?!”
“I… I was thinking about changing my thesis to people dealing with, you know, if the supernatural were…” She swallowed, hard. “Did I forget to mention that?”
The look he shot her before whirling away from her had her flinching back from him even further. “Yes, Jenna. I think I would have recalled that,” he said acidly. “What in God’s name were you thinking?”
“Nothing! I mean – ”
“Clearly.”
“Okay, it was stupid! I get it! But it’s not like I put it out there as a true story or anything. It was one of a series of myths and legends that I had jotted down to show him…”
Elijah paced back and forth across the room a few times, visibly wrestling his temper under control. Suddenly, what Elena had said earlier carried a little more weight. Elijah could be scary. Damn scary. She shut up and drank her coffee, hoping that if she kept quiet he would calm down, and she could bring the discussion back on point.
He eventually stopped, let out an explosive sigh, and came back over to the island, picking up his coffee again. “So, you want to know if he was asking merely out of curiosity, or whether he already knows something and is fishing for more specific information.”
Jenna nodded. “He wasn’t wearing a ring and I don’t think he had a necklace. He was out in the sun, so I doubt he’s a vampire, but for all I know he could have been compelled. Would you be able to tell if he has been?”
“Perhaps. Yes, I’ll accompany you to this and scope out the situation.”
The front door opened and closed, and Elena came down the hall into the kitchen. “Oh, hey.”
“Elena. I’m glad you’re home," Elijah greeted her. "I need to speak with you and Jeremy. I have news. Would you go up and get him, please?”
“Um, sure.”
Once Elena headed upstairs, Elijah turned back to her. Jenna sucked in her bottom lip and looked up at him through her lashes, going for cute and contrite. Elijah sighed again and put an arm around her shoulders, pulling her to him. She wrapped her arms around his waist; then, remembering that his shirt was untucked, she slid her hands underneath the fabric to touch his sides – all hard muscle – and his back, rising to her tiptoes to kiss him.
God, she wanted him. Scary or not, he did things to her insides that she didn't even think there were words for. Images danced behind her eyes, of taking his shirt off altogether, of touching all of that muscle, of him picking her up and laying her on the counter and having his way with her right there…
Elijah nudged her away from him just as Jeremy and Elena came around the corner into the kitchen. Embarrassed, she went to refresh her coffee while he gestured them to the family room to sit.
“Is this about Bonnie?” she heard Jeremy ask. “Did you talk to your witch?”
“I did. That’s what I’d like to discuss with both of you.” Elijah lowered himself into the chair. Jenna could have sworn he made a strategic and surreptitious adjustment as he did so, and thought it was perhaps fortunate that his shirt was untucked after all. Maybe she wasn’t the only one going crazy with this unresolved sexual tension. The thought pleased her inordinately.
“I thought she had to be out of the hospital first,” Elena said, tucking her legs up under her on the opposite end of the sofa from Jeremy. Jenna stayed leaning in the archway, cradling her mug between both hands.
“Maya felt confident that she could perform an evaluation of Bonnie’s condition at the hospital without undue risk. She visited her today.”
“So is it good news or bad news? Can she do anything?” Jeremy looked ready to come out of his skin.
Elijah looked him into silence. Man. How does he do that? “It’s both. Yes and no, good and bad. The way Maya explained it to me, there are two components to a witch’s essence: that which is merely human and physical; and that which is metaphysical. Obviously, the two intersect in various ways, but they’re by and large two different things.”
“The doctors said that Bonnie seems fine physically, so it was the metaphysical part that was damaged?” Elena asked.
Elijah nodded. “Her brain – the physical organ itself – is whole and is functioning, which is why all of the autonomic systems, such as respiration, are working, and why brain scans show activity. She’s in a coma, not brain-dead.
“The metaphysical part, though… to put it simply, it’s burned out. There’s nothing there anymore. Bonnie wasn’t able to contain the amount of power she channeled without it destroying the vessel.”
“I don’t understand why that’s keeping her from waking up, though,” Jeremy said. “If her brain is okay… I mean, people who aren’t witches don’t even have that other part, right? So shouldn’t she be able to wake up even if the witch part doesn’t work?”
Jenna went over and put a hand on Jeremy’s shoulder, squeezing gently, and silently willed Elijah to get to the point before he flew apart. The poor kid had lost two girlfriends already. Surely fate wouldn’t be that cruel…
Elijah seemed to consider for a moment. “Think of it like this: a person who is born blind uses his other senses to navigate through the world. It’s normal to him, it’s all he’s ever known, so that’s how he operates. Then take someone who is suddenly struck blind: he can still hear, he can still feel things with his body, but he doesn’t relate to the world through those senses because he’s never had to, he’s always been able to see. Once he can’t, he doesn’t know how to navigate. He’s lost.
“Though witches don't show outward signs of magical ability when they're small children, usually not until after they reach puberty, that other part is always there, and their experience of the world is always filtered through that. Take it away, and it’s just like being blinded, but it’s their mind that’s blinded.”
Elena picked up one of the throw pillows and hugged it to her stomach. “So what you’re saying is, Bonnie’s mind is just sitting there, afraid to move, because it can’t make sense of the world around it anymore.”
Elijah nodded. “That's an apt way to put it, yes.”
“So what can we do about it?” Jenna asked, before Jeremy could. She kept her hands on his shoulders for support.
“Maya believes that if they can… ‘wall off’ the metaphysical part, then Bonnie’s mind will stop reaching for what isn’t there anymore and start figuring out how to work without it. The question, or the danger, I suppose, in doing so is how she’ll be able to adapt to her new circumstances, mentally and emotionally. Which is why I wanted to talk to the two of you.
“There are some people, a few, who when faced with something like the amputation of a limb, or the loss of one of their senses, would choose not to go on. They can’t face not being whole. Maya tells me that, for a witch, the loss of that part of herself is devastating, far worse than losing a physical part of the body. The two of you know Bonnie the best out of everyone. I need to know what you think she would want.”
Unable to be still any longer, Jeremy fairly exploded up off of the couch and stalked to the window, looking out. Elena wiped tears off of her cheeks and went to him. “Jer?”
“We have to try. She’d be alive, Elena! That’s what’s important, right? She’d be alive.”
“I know.” Elena swallowed a sob. “But what if she can’t take it? What if they do this and it’s s-so awful and she can’t t-t-take it?”
Jeremy gripped her shoulders. “This is Bonnie. She’s tough, Elena. She’s so tough.” Elena nodded, sniffling. “You should have seen her, working out spells, totally ready to kick Klaus’s ass… she was fierce. And she did it. She took him down. She’s gonna do this too. We’re gonna help her, and she’s gonna do this too. Okay?”
Elena nodded again and hugged Jeremy, who sniffled a couple of times himself. Jenna couldn’t stand it anymore. She retreated to the kitchen, ostensibly for a box of tissues, and shed a few tears of her own. She ached down to her soul for them; just kids, asked time and again to make life and death decisions that no adult should have to make. It wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t right, and there wasn’t a goddamn thing she could do about it. And standing here in the kitchen wasn’t doing a damn thing for anyone either. So she wiped her eyes and blew her nose, and took the tissues into the family room.
Elena accepted the box gladly. Jeremy gave a couple of manly sniffs and passed. Jenna perched on the arm of Elijah’s chair. “So what happens now?”
"Now we get Bonnie out of the hospital."
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