She stepped into the dimness before her.
Chapter 5
Elena got into the backseat of the Jaguar and put on a plush aquamarine T-shirt and jeans underneath her nightgown, just in case a police officer - or even someone trying to help the owners of a car apparently stalled by a deserted highway - stopped by. And then she lay down in the Jag's backseat.
But although she was now warm and comfortable, sleep wouldn't come.
What do I want? Really want right now? she asked herself. And the answer came to her immediately.
I want to see Stefan. I want to feel his arms around me. I want to just look at his face - at his green eyes with that special look that he only ever shows to me. I want him to forgive me and tell me that he knows I'll always love him.
And I want...Elena felt herself flush as a warmth went through her body, I want Stefan to kiss me. I want Stefan's kisses...warm and sweet and comforting....
Elena was thinking this as for the second or third time she shut her eyes and shifted position, tears once again welling up. If only she could cry, really cry, for Stefan. But something stopped her. She found it hard to squeeze out a tear.
God, she was exhausted....
Elena tried. She kept her eyes shut and turned back and forth, trying not to think about Stefan for just a few minutes. She had to sleep. Desperate, she gave a mighty heave to try to find a better position - when everything suddenly changed.
Elena was comfortable. Too comfortable. She couldn't feel the seat at all. She bolted upright and froze, sitting on air. She was almost hitting her head against the Jag's top.
I've lost gravity again! she thought, horrified. But, no - this was different than what had happened when she had first returned from the afterlife, and had floated around like a balloon. She couldn't explain why, but she was sure.
She was afraid to move in any direction. She wasn't sure of the cause of her distress - but she didn't dare move.
And then she saw it.
She saw herself, with her head back and her eyes closed in the backseat of the car. She could make out every tiny detail, from the wrinkles in her plush aquamarine shirt to the braid she'd made from her pale golden hair, which, for the lack of a hair tie, was coming unbraided already. She looked as if she were serenely sleeping.
So this was how it all ended. This is what they'll say, that Elena Gilbert, one summer day, died peacefully in her sleep. No cause of death was ever found....
Because they could never see heartbreak as a cause of death, Elena thought, and in a gesture even more melodramatic than her usual melodramatic gestures, she tried to fling herself down on her own body with one arm covering her face.
It didn't work. As soon as she reached out to begin to fling herself, she found herself outside the Jaguar.
She'd gone right through the ceiling without feeling anything. I suppose that's what happens when you're a ghost, she thought. But this is nothing like the last time. Then I saw the tunnel, I went into the Light.
Maybe I'm not a ghost.
Suddenly Elena felt a rush of exhilaration. I know what this is, she thought triumphantly. This is an out of body experience!
She looked down at her sleeping self again, searching carefully. Yes! Yes! There was a cord attaching her sleeping body - her real body - to her spiritual self. She was tethered! Wherever she went, she could find her way home.
There were only two possible destinations. One was back to Fell's Church. She knew the general direction from the sun, and she was sure that someone having an O.O.B. (as Bonnie, who had once gone through a spiritualist fad and had read lots of books about the subject, familiarly called them) would be able to recognize the crossing of all those ley lines.
The other destination, of course, was to Stefan.
Damon might think she didn't know where to go, and it was true that she could only vaguely sense from the rising sun that Stefan was in the other direction - to the west of her. But she'd always heard that the souls of true lovers were connected somehow...by a silver string from heart to heart or a red cord from pinky to pinky.
To her delight, she found it almost immediately.
A thin cord the color of moonlight, that seemed to be stretched taut between the sleeping Elena's heart, and...yes. When she touched the cord, it resonated so clearly to her of Stefan that she knew it would take her to him.
There was never a doubt in her mind as to which direction she would take. She'd been in Fell's Church. Bonnie was a psychic of some impressive powers, and so was Stefan's old landlady, Mrs. Theophilia Flowers. They were there, along with Meredith and her brilliant intellect, to protect the town.
And they would all understand, she told herself somewhat desperately. She might not ever have this chance again.
Without another moment's hesitation, Elena turned toward Stefan and let herself go.
Immediately she found herself rushing through the air, far too quickly to take note of her surroundings. Everything she passed was a blur, differing only in color and texture as Elena realized with a catch in her throat that she was going through objects.
And so, in just a few instants, she found herself looking at a heart-wrenching scene: Stefan on a worn and broken pallet, looking gray-faced and thin. Stefan in a hideous, rush-strewn, lice-infested cell with its damned bars of iron from which no vampire could escape.
Elena turned away for a moment so that when she woke him he wouldn't see her anguish and her tears. She was just composing herself, when Stefan's voice jolted through her. He was awake already.
"You try and try, don't you?" he said, his voice heavy with sarcasm. "I guess you should get points for that. But you always get something wrong. Last time it was the little pointed ears. This time it's the clothes. Elena wouldn't wear a wrinkled shirt like that and have dirty, bare feet if her life depended on it. Go away." Shrugging his shoulders under the threadbare blanket, he turned from her.