divided | ( closed ) and played my mind just like a toy;

After Matt's arm almost snaps in half underneath a car, Elena's not quite sure she has it in her to remain standing. Her feet move on their own accord, side-stepping bodies as they swarm towards the car and the ambulance that's come for Matt. She's looking for a dark mop of hair, hunched shoulders, and an attitude that sets him apart from all the other kids who smoke and internalise every little thing that they're feeling.

Her heart quickens as she can't find him or the straight shoulders and stiff posture of Isobel. Pushing through the crowds, she makes her way to the Grill in hopes of contacting him via his cell phone. It's her fault that Jeremy's hard to reach these days; as she became further and further involved in the Salvatore scandals of centuries past, she's been pushing her friends and family as far as she can away from herself. It's not intentional, but every choice she makes on their behalf pulls her away from their circle of reach. She hates how Jeremy seems to look at her and see a stranger, how there's a glint in Bonnie's eyes that still doesn't forgive her for what happened to Grams.

Call it luck or coincidence, she finds Jeremy in the Grill. She's not sure what he's doing here, but she sure hopes to block his attempts at moving even further away from her. "Jeremy!" she calls out, unnecessary for such an empty space. The energy's based outside, not inside for once, and it's taking her a few moments too long to grasp her sea legs. Making her way towards him, she pleads, almost tripping over her own feet, "Jeremy, please talk to me. Let me explain."

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A.S.A.P. generally means as soon as possible; when Anna opens the text message, she expects to see Jeremy within minutes. When minutes pass into almost teetering on half an hour, she has to wonder whether this is some plot of Damon's (or Elena's) to get her to stay far away from their plans and, ultimately, Jeremy. She begins to grow anxious, debating whether or not she should send him another text, something that would come off as clingy and pushy, but decides against it. Feet bouncing along the ground, she keeps her eyes peeled for any part of him that wanders into the town square. She's already lost so many people over the course of time. Anna isn't a stranger to it, but she's wanting to break the cycle; finding her mother has given her the determination to do so. The fear still gnaws at her, a slip of humanity that she wants to bury deep and forget but won't allow herself to.

The sound of a rolling skateboard has her paying it no mind, but it's when she hears his voice that she turns around, as if surprised, smiling wide at the sight of him. Quietly, as if forgetting his ears don't extend this far, she says, "Jeremy." Standing up, she begins to approach him; a walk to his jog, she keeps her feet moving at a steady pace. It's hard to shake the smile now that he's here.

When she reaches him, her eyes glance towards the items in his hands, but she keeps her own hands in her pockets and her gaze on him; jumping to conclusions is something she doesn't want to do right now. Enjoying the moment, however, is. "Did you happen to get lost?"

Jeremy has the good graces to at least appear sheepish as he smiles down at her. "Hey, yeah, sorry about that. I thought maybe with the weather like it is, it'd be good to have something warm, you know? Apparently I wasn't the only one with that idea. The line at Starbucks was pretty wicked."

He reaches to snake the arm that isn't carrying the carafe around her midsection, drawing her into a sloppy embrace. She's so tiny in comparison to him, but inside that slight frame he knows lurks a strength beyond his wildest imagination. It should scare him, but it doesn't; he trusts her implicitly.

"Sorry," he mumbles again into her hair, enjoying the faint fragrance of shampoo. "I didn't even think or stop to ask if you like coffee, I just kind of really wanted to surprise you..."

In all the years she has been alive, she has never met someone like Jeremy. His heart is on his sleeve and it's so enormous that she's not quite sure what she did to get into his good graces. He's nothing like the man who held the Gilbert name back when she was by her mother's side; the apple fell very far from the tree with Jeremy.

She wonders what his arm is doing when it seems to slither around her waist. Trying to be normal, in any sense of the word, is new for Anna; having been on the path of vengeance for so long, it's hard to sit back and enjoy the life she had missed out on. She leans into his embrace, shifting to the point where her side bumps into him. "I'm surprised," she smiles. Her own arm goes around his waist loosely. "And I like coffee." She's sure she's blushing when she says the cheesiest thing to ever come out of her mouth, "Especially when it's with you. You didn't have to get anything, Jeremy."

Looking up at him, she says, "I figured you just wanted to hang, right?"

His heart warms considerably at her words; they're a better antidote against the cold than any beverage could ever hope to be. "Yeah... I wanted to see you, more than anything else." He worries sometimes, that she still thinks he's hung up on Vicki. And maybe a small part of him always will be, given the traumatic circumstances surrounding her death and everything that followed. But when he wakes up in the morning, it's Anna that he first thinks of. Just as it's Anna that he finds himself daydreaming about in class, or when he's wiping down tables, or especially when he needs someone to turn with all these bottled up emotions like earlier.

She just seems to get him, in a way that nobody else in his life ever has. But more than just what she can do for him, Jeremy thinks often about what he can do for her now, wanting so desperately to be the man his ancestors were not. Prove to her that she has nothing to fear from him, that she can rely on him for anything - including a happy, normal life.

"Your mom's not going to be too pissed that you're out with me?" He suddenly thinks to question, brows furrowing.

Anna's pretty sure she's blushing. Jeremy has the uncanny ability to make her feel like she's merely a girl, susceptible to these feelings rather than being a creature that's able to combat them and use them to her own advantage without a slip of remorse. She likes that he makes her feel human again.

She bites her lip for a moment. Her mother disapproves out of fear of what happened to her and Jonathan Gilbert repeating with her own daughter. She assumes her mother might also dislike her hanging out with Jeremy because she's incapable of gaining closure on her feelings for his ancestor. Hesitating a moment, she knows she might come to regret her words, "What she doesn't know won't hurt her." She shifts slightly on the seat. Realising how that sounds, like he's some dirty secret, she quickly amends, "Not that she doesn't know about you. It's just … I don't like to tell her everything. I like to keep what happens between us ... between us." She feels a little shy at the end. Jeremy Gilbert isn't her dirty little secret that she's ashamed of. He's the person she wants to spend the most time with, and keeping that a secret keeps him out of harm's way.

For all of Pearl's apparent mistrust of him, at least she hasn't yet tried to compel him to stay away from her daughter; Jeremy's no longer sure that if Elena had the same chance, she wouldn't take it with him and Anna. And it's beyond frustrating that she can't--won't--even see the hypocrisy of her own behavior.

"I think my sister knows about us," he admits with a slight frown. "But I'm not one hundred percent sure and I haven't wanted to bring it up yet given... everything. I mean, we had a pretty big fight earlier today and she basically already told me that she doesn't want me caught up in this whole vampire business, that it's too dangerous. As if me not knowing would paint any less of a target on my back at this point."

Anna's not quite sure how to feel about Elena. She understands her need to protect her brother, as she had the exact same feelings towards her mother, but keeping him in the dark, treating him as if he were a child, only puts him in even more danger. Anna knows ignorance kills more than knowledge.

She doesn't want to say Jeremy's already caught up in it all. He has been since the day he was born into Elena Gilbert's family. Those close to the doppelgänger are always in danger. Anna learned that the hard way.

She doesn't respond to that. Instead, her brows furrow together slightly, gnaws on her bottom lip before releasing it to say, "Has she said anything?" What Elena does and does not know, what she thinks she knows, could be dangerous for the both of them. And Anna needs to plan for it.

( closed ) and played my mind just like a toy;

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i am so sorry ;o;