title: Clarity
summary: They were both broken in the wake of her torture, and they were both scared the other had finally given up.
notes: Written after 4x20 with spoilers from the promo of 4x21. Just trying to have my Damon/Elena fix before all goes to hell in the finale. Enjoy!
.
.
.
The wake of her torture left a hollowed-out eeriness about the boarding house. In a way, everyone had lost a small piece of their humanity in the acts that had played out.
In the end, it was Matt that saved her. Matt at Damon's hands, the pain he was feeling diluted with his red eyes and unforgiving fangs, the human slumped unconscious in his grasp and slowly bleeding out. It was probably a combination of what had occurred in the hours before the groups' last desperate attempt at awakening some feeling in Elena – a mixture of tiredness and trivial insults and time-consuming straight torture of more people than those of whom actually were tortured – that finally broke her.
Her humanity did not return with a bang; merely, she whimpered once and dipped her head to her knees of which were scrunched to her chest and took agonizingly sob-constricted breaths. But she didn't cry. It was shock, mostly, and she would cry later. All she could manage was to whisper, "Not him. Not again."
And at that string of broken words, Damon dropped the blonde, leaving Caroline to catch him and slash her wrist and feed him her blood, and disappeared.
She was not the only one who had been broken that night.
The recovery was agonizing for everyone. And in a way, Elena did her recovery right this time. She sunk into the hands of her best friend instead of a boy, sleeping in Caroline's bed and talking when she wanted and smiling very rarely. But as much as it hurt, she did not consider slipping back into the emotionless world that had destroyed another piece of her.
Stefan had almost broken; he had been so close, but maybe because he hadn't been the one causing Elena the pain that brought back her humanity, he didn't shatter. He kept away, though, in reason. He nodded at her tentatively when Caroline brought her over the first time – nearly a week after the revival – and he hadn't been able to do much else. She talked a little, reminding him of a stronger form of whom he found after her parents' death. He took back that comparison when she left because she smiled and meant it, saying she was glad to see him. She didn't ask for Damon, and at first he didn't understand why.
Caroline had been the strongest of them all, and the most reluctant to participate in the torture. In fact, she didn't participate as much as merely try to talk with Elena which in the end had probably helped wear her down mentally. But Caroline had stood strong, a ghost of someone by her side that made her steel her spine and make her hands into fists when Elena screamed and cried. (The boys were too agonized to smell Klaus' scent on her when she appeared after their breaks between the torture of her best friend.) And when Elena did break, she selflessly forgot all Elena had done to her in the past few weeks, and swept her off to her house.
Damon had broken. And maybe that shouldn't have been a surprise to everyone there. Because when Damon loved, he put everything he had into it. He was the bad guy like always, the one with the impulsive, last-resort plan as he dragged Matt onto the cold floor and bled him out slowly, so that she could watch him die in agony. And he didn't compel the pain and begging from Matt's voice as he warned Damon he was losing too much blood. And he didn't stop when the blonde faded out of consciousness, and Stefan and Caroline began to panic. He waited and began to shake because nothing was going to bring back the girl he loved until – she came back. And she came back to him as the first one she saw bleeding the life out of the one person she had given everything to save just a little while ago. And that had done it.
Because he had worked so goddamn hard to regain her trust after every bad thing he had done, so hard to prove how much he loved her, and life was so cruel that it would be him to bring her back in the way she hated most. And his irrationality didn't let it run through him mind that maybe, maybe she would understand. He was just done in every sense of the word – done seeing the girl he love writher in pain he felt too, done being the bad guy, not good enough, the sire. It was a sum total of everything that sent him over the edge.
And he didn't leave. He didn't have that energy or willpower. He left for a day after she regained her humanity and then returned to his room, showered, and crawled into his bed. And then he went about life as if nothing was wrong.
And that was so uncommon, so not-Damon that it was scary. Stefan would pat him on the back, and Damon would merely shrug away from it. He would make little jokes here and there. And though the fire had left his eyes, he was still acting like Damon. But he avoided her like the plague. He left or shut himself in his room when she came over, Caroline biting her lip and watching Elena.
But Elena didn't make a move to see him first. And Caroline knew why. Because Elena was scared, scared that this was finally the breaking point in Damon Salvatore's eternal, unconditional love for her. And Elena was scared at what she had said and done and the pain she had caused, and she was afraid to see him for just about every reason he was scared to see her. And that wasn't even putting the sire bond into question.
And so she danced around the topic, visiting Stefan now and again with Caroline until finally she didn't need the blonde, and she came over more often but with less to say until finally she started coming to the door and then turning around before she even went in.
One night, she slipped into the house a bit past midnight. She knew both of the brothers would hear her, but she was feeling a bravery she wasn't sure she'd still have in the morning light. The darkness made her less fearful and more determined as she crept upstairs, unnecessarily holding her breath as she waited outside of his door.
She pushed it open with an intake of air, holding still as her eyes swept over the familiar features of his room. The smell of him overwhelmed her, and her heart ached against her chest in longing and fear. She willed herself to creep closer, doubt in her mind. How could he not still love her? How could he still love her?
The edge of his bed was at her side in a few steps, and when he rolled over, her eyes widened as his gaze met hers.
He smiled, a half-smile, a bit nervous and broken, but it had traces of his usually cocky laziness.
She was shaking as she climbed into his bed, tucking herself into him, her head dipping into the crook of his shoulder and her arms wrapped around him. He pressed a chaste kiss to the crown of her hair, and she found she wasn't the only one trembling in that moment.
There would be time for apologies all morning and into the next day, and there would be time to talk and time to lament and time to laugh and time to cry.
"I've been waiting for you," he breathed.
No matter what happened, she realized then, he always would be.