Disclaimer: I don't own the Vampire Diaries - however like many a kindred spirit before me, if the Vampire Diaries came to me and offered itself to me - I wouldn't say no.

Timeline: This is what Elena *might* have been thinking that morning/afternoon during 'As I Lay Dying'

A/N: Some people wonder exactly how Elena could have brought herself to forgive Damon (mostly Stelena shippers - but, hey - fair enough). This is my little attempted foray into her mind. This is my very first fanfic Ever (exciting, right?), so I hope it's a worthy one.

Detente

Elena stood alone in her bedroom. It was early and Jeremy was still asleep. She knew that because one: she hadn't heard him move around yet; and two: because she kept checking. She had been up for a few hours already, tired but restless. And she kept peeking into his room to make sure he was still there, still breathing. It was just them now and part of Elena was vaguely terrified that the universe would take him from her as well. She sighed and lay down on her bed, in a heedless sprawl above the comforter. Her eyes remained open and fixed on a single point of chipped paint on the ceiling above her bed. She saw her parents there. She saw Jenna. She might even have glimpsed Uncle John. She stared until the ceiling was no longer an object, but a swirl of white and shadow. She blinked.

This was her fault.

Not Klaus; not the Curse…not even her inherent 'doppelganger-ness'. Those things were not her fault. Those things were ancient and beyond her power and beyond her culpability, and things that should have been beyond her need to comprehend. She had taken on that guilt early on, had tried to turn herself over to Klaus, had tried to spare everyone everything – but, she had not understood real culpability, real guilt…until now.

No. This was her rational brain speaking to her now, not some kind of supernatural survivors' guilt. The way that everything had gone down was her fault. It had happened that way because Elena had made sure that it had.

When Damon had showed up in her home, when he had asked for her forgiveness – she was briefly reminded that he was from another era, one long past, as his demeanor conjured up images of his coming to her with 'hat in hand', gentle and supplicating and with no trace of his usual, more modern affectation; bravado and self-entitlement. She had shut him down. She may be guilty, but he would share her guilt, share her burden. She had still been clinging to her intellectual and very reasonable concepts of 'right' and 'wrong' – and Damon had been wrong. So had she, but Damon, she knew, would share that burden with her – maybe not happily, but resolutely and unwaveringly.

So, she denied him. But there had been no fight left in her – no real emotional or moral conviction behind her principled stance. The truth was that watching Jenna (being horribly and viciously murdered) die before her eyes less than 48 hours ago – a turned Jenna – but, a Jenna that could still walk and talk and breath and feel and experience and love and sacrifice – watching that woman who happened to be a vampire – Elena knew that if she could have saved that woman by having her be a vampire that she would have. She would still be here and that would be enough. And, yeah, maybe she wouldn't have acted as aggressively…as abusively…as Damon had – but Elena was determined and she had recognized the impulse within her. If she knew (knew) in her heart that she was capable of making that selfish choice – then what was left for her? From what 'higher ground' could she, in good conscience, look down at Damon from and with what moral authority? All these thoughts had flittered unbidden through her mind as she caught his eyes watching her the day that had buried both her family and the last of her innocence in unsanctioned and unmarked graves at the Mystic Falls cemetery, and they returned to her as she sent him away, unwilling to forgive, but unable to condemn. Understanding herself had given her a greater insight into Damon – or was that the other way around? Either way, she wasn't sure she liked what she was seeing; didn't know how to reconcile the idea of who she had once thought she was with the truth of what she now knew herself capable of. She couldn't forgive him, because she wasn't sure that she could forgive herself.

But, that wasn't really the half of it – was it? It was her fault that the events that led up to the sacrifice (that she had allowed them to, wanted them to) had devolved into a battle of wills between Damon and herself. She had understood his actions on the night of the decade dance once she had all of the details. She had even felt (more than) a glimmer of respect for the way he had sized up the situation so quickly and dealt with it – just like that, taking in and promptly discarding whatever there might have been of surprise and fear and confusion and got everyone out alive. She had thought at the time that she could have handled the knowledge beforehand, but that was nothing to knowing that his plan had worked. Stefan had taken it harder than she had.

But, that was the night that it started.

He had thrown down the gauntlet that night; beginning... exacerbating the power struggle between them that was to define and determine the shape of things to come. He threw his love for her in her face, threw the worth of her loved ones under the bus with the intensity of that love. They had played these power games before – she should have seen this coming – the time that he 'rescued her' before she could turn herself over to Klaus; the undercurrent of power that rippled through her when she refused to allow him admission to the Boarding House just that morning. She had resented his love, resented his intensity, resented his sick and twisted and wrong mind for assigning greater value to one life over another – (here Elena almost choked on her own bile as she remembered how little she thought of or cared about the vampire and werewolf sacrifices when she didn't know their names were: Jenna, Caroline or Tyler – and how she still could not and would not spare a thought for Jules). She had resented his determination to place her life above all others. All at once the sacrifice became about everyone and something that simmered between the two of them alone. She seized on Bonnie. Bonnie would be her line in the sand.

He had all but challenged her to find another way. Maybe, he hadn't meant to. But, he had.

And she had.

She woke up Elijah and put all her faith in him. Because he wasn't Damon.

And Stefan. That was the night that she had relegated Stefan to the role of guard-dog. A glorified Rottweiler with a Hero Hair-Do (thanks for that, Damon): charged with protecting her liberty if not her life. Let loose to keep Damon away; to keep him in check; to maintain the balance of power in her favor. So intent was she to win this war with Damon. It was almost funny. She had begun as a pawn in the brothers' eternal rivalry – but, now it was Stefan that was the pawn in the merciless war that raged between Elena and Damon.

Thus it was that she stuck her head in the sand (right behind the line she had drawn). Never contemplating that "the most powerful vampire in the history of time" might go after her friends while she wasn't looking. Thus it was that she never dreamt that Caroline – turned by Katherine as an offering – could still have her head on the chopping block; never imagined that Tyler might come home to visit his mother in the hospital; never even thought to be afraid for Jenna.

Jenna.

She HAD failed Jenna. She had kept her in the dark for so long. Long before she had died, she had failed her. And her last days had been a spiral of confusion, fear and devastation. She had stood in the way of Alaric telling Jenna the truth and she had sabotaged Jenna's trust in him and every moment with Jenna that Alaric had lost - she had taken from him. And Jenna knew that Elena had failed her. She had died knowing that and she had gone out trying to save Elena.

Jenna was dead, but Caroline and Tyler were alive because he had saved them. Because he had gone rogue after she had so successfully neutralized him. She had won. She had won and her victory had cost her so much.

Now she and Jeremy were here in the town center, laying down a blanket to watch Gone With The Wind, because she wanted a time-out, a three or four hour break from reality – one lesson, she thought, at least, that she could take from Damon now that it was all over. She just wanted a break from the grief and death and loss that clung to the Gilbert siblings like Virginia Creeper Ivy on homes left to rot, blocking out the ability of anything else to grow.

She hadn't realized that she had wanted a break from Stefan too until he showed up and she heard herself speak – a hint of derisiveness on her tongue as she remarked on his inability to pass up an 'epic' love story. She was beyond exhausted and she was much too tired to be 'epic' today. Her mind went back to the day a life-time ago it seemed (could it be that she was as old as Stefan now?), so soon after she had 'met' Stefan for (what she had then believed had been) the first time - when she had referred to their 'Epic' conversation, and she wondered in retrospect what she had even meant.

"Can you take a walk with me?"

"You're breaking the rules you know," she spoke in a measured tone, attempting a kind of lightness and teasing banter, but failing. And if there was a slight tremor of warning in her voice – Stefan chose not to acknowledge it. In fairness, in that moment, Elena wanted nothing to do with either Salvatore brother. "Movie night is supposed to be a distraction," she continued. "Tomorrow, we can return to our regularly scheduled 'drama'." Again, if there was an undercurrent of distaste or misplaced bitterness coloring her speech – Stefan let it go.

"I know. I wish this could wait, but it can't." Elena nodded slightly in a tired acknowledgement of his words, but averted her eyes, unable or unwilling to meet her boyfriend's gaze.

"The other night – when Damon was helping Tyler…something happened…" Elena eyes remained fixed on his tee-shirt and his jacket, uneasy and uninterested, looking up at Stefan's face when she heard Damon's name as she silently waited for him to continue.

"…Tyler was starting to transform, and Damon was bitten."

"What." Her eyes held genuine interest now and fear – as her mind flashed back to the terrible night that Rose had died. "Is it...is it…is he gonna…?" Her tongue tripped over her own numbness and disbelief, as Stefan's eyes searched hers momentarily considering her reaction, before turning away from her briefly and answering the question that she had not quite managed to ask and facing the possible outcome that he did not want to see, "Yeah."

"Oh my god…He came to the house this morning and…and tried to apologize. I practically slammed the door in his face."

"He told me not to tell you, but I figured that if you wanted to talk to him…I wouldn't wait."

Take all the time you need, he had said. Elena tried to wrap her mind around the implications, around his apology, around his silence, around his acceptance, around his death. Nothing of what she contemplated made him 'right' – it didn't even make him 'good' – but, it made him human (in a way that she had not acknowledged since before...he killed Jeremy... the incident) and prone to human (vampire?) frailty. Like her. She saw his one-track mindedness, his determination and his devotion reflected in herself – and in every mistake that she had (willed into happening) made in the days before that day. But this time instead of blame and censure (for both) – there was acceptance, a tired yet desperate desire to move on and forward, and just like that Elena knew that the last shot had been fired in the war...power struggle …WAR …between them. And the ruins of the wall that she had carefully constructed began to fall away; the wall constructed of loathing and resentments that he had fed, that he had helped her build. The wall that had held him firmly at bay on one side, while ensconcing herself and Stefan (her guard dog...boyfriend) safely on the other. Stefan. What must this be doing to Stefan? Elena caught herself amid her reflections and considered Stefan for the first time.

"Stefan, I'm…"

"It's not over. There might be a cure. But, I have to find Klaus to get it."

"No, he's going to kill you." Elena shook her head in anxious disapproval, but said nothing more.

"No. He had a chance to kill me, but he didn't. Whatever Damon's done, whatever's led him here…I'm the one that made him become a vampire in the first place…so, if there's a chance for a cure – I owe it to him to find it."

Elena looked down, sad and thoughtful, and tried to consider Stefan's words. She had heard this story from Damon a long time ago while Stefan was recuperating from a human blood binge in the basement of the Boarding House – She remembered chastising Damon for making Stefan feel guilty. She had taken a side then – back when 'taking sides' mattered. She wasn't entirely sure that Stefan could be the cause of everything that Damon became, but neither could she absolve him. And she wasn't about to argue in favor letting Damon die; it wasn't what she wanted and she didn't have the heart to try to dissuade Stefan - she would not come between Stefan and his brother on this. It was Stefan's decision to make, whether he owed Damon or not.

They embraced as Stefan continued to speak over her shoulder. "Go talk to him. Just tell him that there's still hope."