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OO3. SEASON 4, EPISODE 20
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THE SIXTEEN HOURS IT TAKES to drive to New Orleans is an experience that has deja vu skittering over Elena's skin as the car rumbles over the road and the night gives way to the day once again.
The pair stop every few hours to pull over to rest stops to allow Hayley a couple minutes to stretch and take care of other human activities Elena doesn't have to worry about anymore. Has forgotten about them, in truth. She was confused when Hayley first mentioned pulling over to the next rest stop, until the werewolf bluntly confessed that she needed to pee.
( Her switch is on, but she still feels her humanity slipping through her fingers. )
Regardless, it's a difference that Elena clings on to desperately, grounds herself with. She fears that if she doesn't, she'll sink into the memory of her and Rebekah driving through the country, never stopping, never speaking yet somehow sharing that innate understanding.
( That they are both so similar that they want to tear each other apart for it. )
( They have never been good at staring at their own reflections. )
At their second rest stop, and hopefully their last, Elena summons up the last shred of courage she thinks she has and opens up her bag, withdrawing her phone that contains a pound of worried, frantic messages and stones of regret, sorrow and grief.
With trembling hands, she turns her phone back on, and it vibrates like an earthquake in her palm as it's flooded with an influx of missed calls and texts and it takes everything she still has left in her broken, bloody body to not turn it right back off again.
She checks the calls first. Sees over a hundred from Damon, bordering on two hundred, right at the top. Of course. He can't stand to be anything but first on her list.
( Doesn't realise he is slowly slipping right off it. )
Caroline comes second: a hundred and sixty-seven missed calls. At least another hundred have voicemails. Elena shifts her eyes down the roster, refusing to think about hearing her best friend's voice again.
Refuses to allow Mystic Falls to drag her back.
Bonnie's name is slotted right under Caroline's, only behind by one single call. She leaves more voicemails than Caroline.
Stefan is last. He leaves exactly eighty missed calls, and each and every one has a voicemail attached.
They are the only names.
They are the only ones still alive.
Elena swallows, clicks out of the app and shoves her phone back in her bag. Hayley walks out of the gas station and Elena thinks to herself that she'll look at the texts later. When she's a little bit braver, a little less raw and broken.
