CHAPTER 27: RESIDENT EVIL
The Mystic Grill
Since they hadn't had a conversation in a while, Elena had invited Natalie to lunch at the Grill. They then found out that Caroline was going to meet her mother as well, and so the three girls decided they could all eat together, only for them to find that Sheriff Forbes wasn't there yet when they came.
"Well, I guess my mom's not here yet. I'm gonna get us some coffees," Caroline offered, looking at the two sisters, giving Natalie a look that told her that she needed to talk to her sister. The two had been in a really good place, and after what happened with Katherine they had just fallen away from one another.
"Sure," Natalie replied, sounding strained. She had jumped at the idea of not having lunch alone with her sister because she wasn't sure how they were supposed to talk anymore after the last time she saw her she was Katherine. And Katherine made out with Stefan in front of her in her sisters body.
The two sisters walked together to find a table, and nothing seemed wrong because both of them seemed a bit awkward with one another from a time the two of them happened to end up alone in their dorm room together. Of course, there was something wrong with Elena (what else is new), but it just wasn't easy to see.
"My mom's minutes away," Caroline then walked up to them, struggling to keep the three coffees in her hands steady, so Natalie quickly grabbed hers with a smile. There was one of them who didn't seem very responsive. "Elena? Hello? Elena!"
It looked like something snapped inside the doppelganger's mind and she almost jumped in surprise at how everything seemed so different, only to then start asking questions. "How did I get here? I was just standing at the doorway."
Natalie frowned as she narrowed her eyes at her older twin sister, finding her to seem really weird because she thought it was only natural awkwardness, but that didn't seem too likely. "Uh, you walked."
"Hang on. Did you just have one of those dreams, like, right here?" Caroline asked, catching the look in Elena's eyes that she was one of the only ones to have seen before. Of course, Natalie heard about it but she wasn't really team Stefan/Elena romantic dreams.
She tried to act like it didn't bother her, because she didn't really have a reason to feel bothered anymore. Her and Stefan weren't boyfriend and girlfriend, and that was her choice and she had to live with it. She had to take a deep breath as quietly as she could, then she would force herself to meet Elena's eyes and try to see more than her kissing Stefan in some romantic dream.
Elena didn't seem to notice Natalie's discomfort when it came to the subjects, which was understandable seeing as she was trying to figure out what was going on with herself. "It didn't feel like a dream, okay? It felt like it was real, like I was just there."
"That's weird," the blonde vampire commented, obviously wanting to say more.
The eldest of the three girls was getting annoyed at her inability to just say what she wanted to say what she wanted to without being asked to do it. "Caroline, if you bite your tongue any harder, you'll bleed. Say it."
"It's psych 101. Actually, it's whatever comes before 101. You told Damon that you couldn't see him anymore, and now you're having dreams about Stefan?" Caroline answered to Elena's wishes quickly.
The 19-year-old vampire finally glanced over at her sister, finding her to seem very interested in the look of her coffee as she held it right in front of her face without taking her eyes off it. "It's not just about Stefan, ok? My parents were still alive. It was like a different life."
Then a loud ring interrupted the conversation, and as she put her coffee down to answer her phone Natalie silently thanked whoever it was a thousand times because she did not want to hear what was going on. "Hey, what's up?"
Stefan's voice was easily heard on the other side of the line, which both Caroline and Elena heard with their heightened hearing. "Well, you know how sometimes you feel crazy and you call me and I tell you that you're not crazy?"
"By the way, thank you for always knowing when to lie to me," she smiled sweetly as if he was standing right in front of her. She would bet her life that Caroline was studying Elena's expression at her talking to Stefan to try to detect any jealousy.
She could hear him snort on the other side, finding her response to be beyond amusing. "Well, I need you to tell me that I'm not crazy."
She hummed a bit as if she was trying to figure out a response to that, but in the end she simply shrugged before remembering that he wasn't actually there. "Just because you're a liar doesn't mean I am."
He sighed as if he was preparing to say what he was saying. He had a mental argument with himself for maybe five minutes on whether or not to call her, just because she was her and he knew that her with him wasn't all too platonic. "I was walking to my car, and I nearly got plowed over in the middle of the street because I was having some vision of Elena."
Natalie met Elena's eyes, which widened as she heard what he said. "Congratulations, Stefan. I'm not even lying to you when I say you're not crazy. But something really weird is going on and I don't like it."
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While Caroline had gone to talk to a newly arrived Matt about her mother's whereabouts, Natalie and Elena decided that it might have been time to get in touch with Damon. The only problem was that he was refusing to answer their calls. It was a stupid idea to let Elena call first because when Natalie called him shortly afterwards he thought Elena had gotten to her phone or something.
"I hate myself," Natalie muttered in disgust as Damon declined Elena's call for what seemed like the fortieth time. She found the number she was about to call and grimaced as she pressed it, and it didn't take long for the other person to answer.
"Hello, gorgeous," the familiar accented voice answered, and she could feel his smirk through the phone and she kind of wanted to find him just so she could slap it off.
"First of all, wipe that ridiculous smirk I know you have on your face off," she instructed and she could hear him chuckle at her words. "Second of all, please tell Damon that something really weird is happening between Stefan and Elena."
As she heard Damon speak, she could only guess that she was put on speaker. "What?"
"Well, remember how it used to be so funny to think about how the universe was drawing Stefan and Elena together?" Natalie asked, getting a hum in agreement on the other side. "It's not funny anymore."
"What are you talking about?" he asked, still seeming confused, which didn't surprise her because she hadn't really gone that far into the depth of it all.
"Well, you know how the last Stefan-ganger, Tom, died a while ago? Yeah, hi, Enzo, I remember that. Go to hell," she sent a message over to the guy who killed him. "But, when he died, it rendered Stefan and Elena to the mystical last doppelgangers on earth. And now they're going around and having weird visions about each other."
"Wait. What kind of visions?" Damon asked, definitely not sounding happy about it.
"You know what she's not telling you. Somebody's having sex dreams." Natalie glared at the table at Enzo's words, finding him to be a complete menace in her life. Especially because she did not want to believe that Elena was having sex dreams about Stefan.
"They're not sex dreams," Elena stressed, probably mostly because Damon was standing with Enzo, and she did not want him to think she was having fantasies about Stefan anymore.
Caroline had obviously heard what they had talked about as she walked up to them, finding it in her to defend Elena and Stefan's weird dream-vision thingies. "Yeah. They're more like romance dreams."
"I don't need to know that," Damon commented grumpily.
Natalie rolled her eyes at his attitude. "You think I do?"
At the reminder of Natalie not enjoying it either, he came to think about the reasons she wasn't. Well, there was the fact that Elena was her sister and the thought of her sister in bed with someone was gross, but it was most likely the fact that Stefan was her ex-boyfriend. "Where's Stefan?"
"He's on his way to the Grill to pick me up. We're going to the old traveler camp we were at, and then we'll try and hope to see anyone or anything that can help us get a clue about what's going on," she bit her lip as she knew it was a terrible idea. "I know it's a stupid idea which probably won't lead anywhere. But it's our only lead."
Damon sighed, and seemed like he just wanted to find the answer to, because even if he didn't have a chance with Elena anymore, like Natalie did with Stefan, the last persons he wanted her with was his brother. "Find a witch, get her over here. Let's figure out what the hell's going on."
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Mystic Falls Junkyard
It had only taken a silent twenty minute car ride to get to the junkyard. Luckily, it wasn't uncomfortable because there was music blaring through the speakers of the radio, and so they didn't have to talk. Natalie was really happy they didn't have to talk. So was he because the last thing he wanted to talk about with her now, face to face, was Elena.
The two had gotten to start searching through the massive junkyard, which would most likely take some time, but Natalie had already gotten impatient. "You find anything? Anyone?"
"Not yet," he responded easily from a few meters away as he searched the junkyard from the top of a small pile of trash with his eyes. It wasn't the most efficent way to search for anyone, but it was simple enough.
She nodded carefully as she bit her lower lip. She tried to keep herself from glancing at him with a questioning gaze, but she had questions she wanted him to answer and finally she couldn't hold her tongue anymore. "What's going on?"
He frowned as he jumped off the pile of trash he was standing on. He couldn't help but curse her a bit for deciding to bring it up, because he was so sure he was going to talk about him and Elena. "What do you mean?"
"What's actually going on here? With us?" she asked, fiddling with the hem of her white blouse to keep herself from meeting his gaze. She was terrified of seeing his reaction, because neither of them knew what was truly happening.
"I don't know," he answered honestly, only to follow up with a question of his own that he wanted to know the answer to. "Are we friends?"
She shrugged. She would believe him if he said that they were just friends (well, probably not), and she would definitely believe him if he said they were so much more than a friendship. They had never been only a friendship before. "I don't know."
Stefan was expecting her to ask a question herself, because it seemed like it was her turn from the way the conversation had gone up until then. But when he saw her take a deep breath, he decided to ask it himself. "Are we doomed?"
"No," she answered without hesitation. She couldn't imagine the likes of Stefan and Natalie being doomed forever. "That I do know. We are far from doomed. I know I seem like a huge bitch for stringing you along like this but I promise that it won't be long and I will come back to you. I just need to balance myself with it."
She shoved a stray hair behind her ear as she tried to convince herself not to say those three big little words, but she didn't listen to herself. "I love you, Stefan. But we just didn't really seem like us, more like we were trying to be who we wanted us to be together."
He seemed unaffected by her confession of love, because they both knew they loved each other. There was no denying that. "I know, I had held onto the fantasy of us two together for so long. I didn't want it to be any different, or worse, I guess."
She smiled as she realized he understood exactly what she was saying. "I think you and Elena now know that clinging onto a fantasy doesn't do any good. I don't know how we are supposed to be while we're in a real, romantic relationship. Do you?"
"Honestly, I don't. I want to know," he shrugged, but his mind couldn't help but drift back to the reason they broke up in the first place. "So, it's not about Katherine kissing me anymore?"
"It hasn't been about that for a while," she confessed sheepishly. "It just gave me the excuse to start thinking about us. And after we broke up, you know the last time we were here, it seemed so much more real. Like us, because we weren't forcing each other to be something we aren't."
He smiled sweetly at her and bumped their shoulders. "You should have told me that, I want to be able to do some thinking too. We only really knew what were like when we were trying to be friends while completely in love with each other. We've known that we love each other for two years now."
"I guess we're just not used to being able to show that love." She found herself being a little proud of herself for figuring it out. They knew how to be in love with each other, they had a ton of practice. But when it came to being able to show it, not having to suppress it, it felt weird like they didn't know what to do.
Stefan nodded, stuffing his hands in his pockets, trying not to smile at what seemed like a promise of them in the future. "So, when we know, both of us... then we'll be back and we'll actually have figured out the balancing of us. Of Stefan and Natalie."
Natalie nodded, smiling a bit. "I like the sound of that."
He took a quick scan of the area as he scolded himself for forgetting about the reason they were actually there, and it wasn't to talk about their feelings. "Well, it doesn't look like they're here anymore. Maybe we should just go back home."
Natalie agreed wholeheartedly. "Yeah, and do some thinking. And a lot of it too."
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A/N: So, I think you guys know the real issue with them now. If you reread the chapters they are in a relationship and remember how they used to be, it just seems so different, like they changed. And this just made sense and so this happened. But, no, Statalie is far from over.
And how is there only four more chapters left of season five after this one? Time sure flies, right? I won't tell you how much time there is left for the book, but I will reveal that there won't be another one after "Monster", but I'm not telling you how long it will be, though. It could end in the season five finale, the 14th episode of season 6, episode 19 of season 7, or the season 8 premiere. Who knows? Other than me and two select people. (You know who you are, love you).
Votes and comments are greatly appreciated.