Need
DG32173

Sarah: this idea has been bugging me off-and-on ever since I watched the episode in Season 1 where the tomb was opened, which was actually about a week or two before I posted my first TVD fanfic. I've finally decided that I should explore this scenario since it's been bugging me for all these years. Starts with Damon.

CREDIT
Credit goes to Natchez for her awesomeness as my beta. Or it will when I can reach her.

DISCLAIMER
I own this story, though I doubt the theme is original. If a concept or scene is inspired by my beta or a reviewer, I will put a credit section like the above to tell you who inspired it in the chapter it appears in. If I own a concept as it is portrayed, then I will claim it before the chapter it appears in. If it appears in the real world, then I think it's obvious I don't own it. Anything else is so widely used on the site I don't know who came up with it first.

ALTERNATE UNIVERSE! PLEASE READ!
As you can tell from the summary, this fanfic is definitely an Alternate Universe. Here's some background info. After Damon and Elena got back from Georgia, Elena ripped into Stefan viciously for his betrayal. Upon finding out all that he knew about her but had refused to tell her, she chewed him up and spit him out for his lies and manipulations. Damon went as her date to the Decade Dance while Stefan was just an unwanted tagalong to help take down her vampire stalker. Elena told the truth to Damon when he asked if he could trust Stefan to help him open the tomb. Together, Elena and Damon got the grimiore without Stefan finding out. Elena talked Grams into helping open the tomb, convincing the old witch even to lift the seal so that Damon wouldn't be trapped. Grams still died from overexerting herself in the spell. Damon, Stefan, and Elena think the seal fell back into place when the door to the tomb slammed shut as soon as they got out. The truth will come out in the story.

WARNINGS
Other than the alternate universe warnings above, rated a big fat M for deliciously mature content. Alternating viewpoints between Damon and Elena. There will be the occasional peak into Stefan's perspective, particularly when Damon is expressing himself in a way Stefan has never seen him do so before.

SUMMARY
"He needs me." Elena's words were so simple. But they didn't even begin to describe the way her gentle hands and loving heart soothed the savage beast within the older Salvatore brother. Yes, he definitely needs her. But first he needs her to pull him out of the pit of despair he fell into upon discovering Katherine was never in the tomb. Damon/Elena

Chapter 1
He Needs Me

I stare into the flames in the large fireplace in the living room of the boarding house. Anguish, grief, and betrayal rage within me, annihilating all other emotions. I briefly contemplate tossing myself into those flames. Surely the pain of burning to ash would be nothing compared to the pain bottled up within me upon discovering I had been played the fool, manipulated like a puppet for nearly a century and a half.

I close my eyes against the flames, knowing I can't kill myself. If it had just been about me, I could do it no problem. But it's not just about me. I have to take into the consideration how much pain my death would cause a certain young human. For all that she wears the same face as the bitch who betrayed me, Elena matters to me. How much, I'm not sure. I never bothered to figure that out because I had put my heart on hold while I chased a dream. But now that dream has turned to smoke and all that's left are the ashes of a love that had burned for more than a century. But I loved a lie. Katherine played me for the fool.

Suddenly, a scent that has soothed me from the first time I smelled it the night her parents died floods my nose. I find myself relaxing slightly, as I always do when she is near. I hear her soft footsteps start toward me only to stop when my brother vamps to block her path.

"What are you doing here, Elena?" he asks.

"He needs me," she says simply, trying to dodge around my brother.

"Elena, he could kill you! You look like her!" he says.

"He would never hurt me, Stefan. He knows I'm not her," she says impatiently. Suddenly, the sound of a body hitting the floor reaches my ears. "Stay out of my way, Stefan," she snaps as she steps over his body. "Damon needs me and I'm going to him, whether you like it or not."

A few seconds later, the cushion dips as she sits next to me. She takes my right hand with her left and laces our fingers together. "I'm here," she says softly.

I open my eyes and turn to stare into warm brown eyes so full of compassion and shared heartache that a dam within me bursts. I latch onto her like the lifeline she is and start crying out all my pain and grief into her shoulder. She wraps her arms around me and begins to rock me the way my mother used to do when I was a small child and grieving from my father's undisguised hatred of me.

She doesn't say a word, simply rocking me in silence as I cry. I haven't cried like this, like my whole world was shattering, since I lost my mother just minutes after she gave birth to Stefan. All that hurt and grief that has stockpiled for just over 162 years has finally decided to be released with this ultimate betrayal. The tears quickly turn into gut-wrenching, body-shuddering sobs of grief. And still Elena holds me, rocks me, comforting me the only way she knows how. As my body heaves and shudders with my grief, I can feel her tears, tears of empathy and compassion, soaking into my shirt. Knowing she understands, knowing she knows how it feels to be so badly betrayed by one you love, I give myself over to my grief, clinging to her as she clings to me.

Stefan

I stare in shock and horror as my brother, the man who has never shed so much as a single tear in my presence, is reduced to deep, soul-shattering sobs of heartache before my eyes. I can see tears streaming down Elena's cheeks as she holds him, rocking him as if he were only a child. And I can see clearly that neither of them even remembers that I'm bearing witness to what is so obviously a private moment of grief and pain.

I quietly make my way up to my room and close my door as quietly as I can, shaken down to the depths of my soul with what is still going on down there in the living room. Even all the way up here in my room, so very far from where they are, I can sense my brother's overwhelming grief and pain.

With a shaky breath I get out my latest journal and a pen before seating myself at my desk. It takes a while to recover enough from my shock and horror that my hand isn't trembling too badly to write. Finally, I put the date on a new page and begin.

I can't believe how wrong I was about Damon. I had thought that every last vestige of humanity had been wiped from his soul. But what I bore witness to tonight proved that I was completely and utterly wrong.

Damon and Elena had gone behind my back and gotten the grimiore. They had somehow convinced Sheila and Bonnie to open the tomb and lift the seal. And what we discovered when the tomb was opened tonight completely shattered my brother. Katherine was never in the tomb. She had been walking around freely all these decades. She had to have known what Damon had committed his vampire life to. She had to have known that he was determined to 'free' her from the tomb. She could so easily have let him know she wasn't down there. I doubt letting him know she didn't care about him at some point in the past 145 years would have hurt him nearly as badly as opening the tomb and discovering she cared so little about him that she didn't think the effort of letting him know she was safe was worth it.

When I got him back to the boarding house, he became numb and lifeless, staring vacantly into the flames in the living room hearth. At least, he was like that until Elena came. She somehow knew he needed her. As soon as she sat beside him and let him know she was here for him, Damon broke down into gut-wrenching, soul-shattering, body-shuddering sobs while clinging to Elena like she was his last lifeline. She held him, rocking him like he was just a small child, tears of empathy streaming down her cheeks.

They completely forgot I was still in the room. Damon has never shed even a single tear in my presence. Tonight he broke down completely. And it was completely horrifying to realize that my brother can care about someone so much that they can reduce him to such a broken man. Katherine never deserved that kind of love and devotion. Since Elena was able to get him to grieve, I'm praying she'll be able to put his heart and soul back together. The thought of Elena and Damon getting together makes me feel like ramming a stake through my heart. But even that pain is nothing to how terrible it was to see my brother so devastated.

I find myself at a loss on how to help my brother. For all that lies between us, I felt my hatred of him completely vanish when that first terrible sob tore itself out of him. I know that even if I live until the end of time, the sight and sound of my brother sobbing his heart out will be embedded firmly in my mind. I hope Elena can help him. I sure as hell can't.

Sarah: this scene just would not leave me alone. As I said at the beginning of the chapter, it has been bugging me off and on for years. So, yeah, gotta get it out of my head. Originally, I hadn't planned on having Stefan stick around when Elena sat next to Damon. But then I realized this was the perfect way to wake Stefan up to just how deeply emotional Damon is in spite of his tendency to hide behind sarcasm and wit. As it is, Stefan's going to be at war with himself between wanting to push them together and wanting to keep them apart. His head knows Damon needs Elena far more than he ever will but his heart wants her back.