Disclaimer: If I owned it, Elena would be with the other Salvatore brother. Or I would. So obviously, I don't own it.

Rating: T

Pairing: Delena (post 2x01)

A/N: As you may have noticed, I'm very, very new to Vampire Diaries fanfiction. As a matter of fact, I don't even watch it half as religiously as any of the other shows I watch. And I haven't caught up to the US episodes. But I watched this episode tonight and simply had to write this. It's rather short, only exactly 777 words. Give it a shot and tell me how it went. Please don't flame, if you've got something to criticize, use objective words. Enjoy!

That simple truth

She'd done it. She had pushed him away. And she didn't regret doing it, especially now that he had actually killed her brother just to get back at her, to prove her he wasn't capable of being good. To prove that there was no person left inside the vampire.

Elena knew this was it. This was the moment in which everything had changed. By snapping Jeremy's neck, he had changed it all. Hell, by sitting on her bed looking all defeated and sad and so small, he had changed it all.

Pushing him away had been instinct. She was with Stefan. She loved Stefan. And no matter how important he had become to her, Damon would always be second to his brother.

(Which was part of the whole problem, too.)

Elena really didn't want them to feud again, but it hadn't been her choice. She hadn't made him do anything, least of all kiss her. She had told him in no uncertain words that she wouldn't kiss him back. Which she hadn't.

She really wished he hadn't forced those kisses on her, because this meant whatever friendship had connected them was over now. She'd known before she had pushed him away, that he would do something stupid to make up for it.

To make up for allowing himself to feel.

It hadn't shocked her to hear he'd kissed what he'd assumed to be her. Not one bit. He was, after all, Damon. And she loved him for not doing it sooner. She loved him for taking the time to fall in love with her. To not rush into things to hurt Steffen or to simply get Catherine back anyway he could. She loved him for loving her without malice or agenda.

And now she couldn't do that anymore, because he had hurt her. By kissing her to get over whatever demons (CATHERINE) he was wresting. By doing his best to break her faith in the good within him. By not trying to fix them or apologizing or waiting around or allowing his heart to break without closing it off to the world again.

She had heard him. She had heard him say being a vampire meant not feeling anything. She had heard him lie as he said it and she had heard him wish he could believe it was true.

The undiluted desperation of opening up just to be stepped upon, again. To not matter enough, again. To not be worth it, again.

She really, really wished he hadn't come to her that night.

Because they had been something. Maybe not what he wanted them to be, but they had been something. They had formed a bond, they had grown close, they had opened up to one another.

In some moments, they might even have been more than something. Or could have been more than something if she wasn't so completely in love with Stefan.

They had been something and now they weren't anymore. Now they couldn't be anything but enemies anymore.

He would give in to the darkness again, since being good hadn't caused him anything but pain. He would find ways to break hearts the way his had been broken time and time again. He wouldn't be the sweet boy and the tortured man she had found in him anymore. Damon would do anything to chase them away, lock them away, drown them out, just plain get rid of them.

His oldest mistake. Countering pain with anger.

(Damnit, he had gotten so far…)

And she did hate him. She did hate him now. More than anything, she hated him. More than her father for being not enough. More than Catherine for destroying him. More than herself for crushing him. He was so much worse, because no matter how much she hated him, she couldn't just stop caring about him from one second to the next.

And a very small, tiny little part of her, that nagging, innocent little voice inside her heart, it hadn't wanted Damon to show up in her room, drunk and desperate and so determined to make her admit she wanted him. It had said something that would be hard to ignore, no matter what happened next.

They would torture her, those silly ten words. She wished she'd never thought them. She wished she'd never had to. How much he had destroyed in her with his stupidly rash actions. She would never have allowed her mind to even wander in this direction had he not taken the time to think away. Her choice to think it.

That simple truth.

This wasn't how our first kiss was supposed to happen.