Title: The Hidden Room
Disclaimer: These characters don't belong to me.
Summary: Damon. Elena. Katherine's machinations.
A/N: This contains spoilers for Season 1. Enjoy and review!
Chapter 1
Being a fatalist, when Damon goes to kiss Elena, he is not filled with love or affection, or even desire. He is, instead, filled with dread. As his lips descend on hers, Damon knows the score and has one thought: Here's to another 150 years of misery.
The kiss is still for a moment and it feels… strange. There is a duplicity there. And, really, why shouldn't there be? Katherine was not completely gone, of course. She couldn't just disappear. But the longing he felt now, it wasn't for her, and despite the fact that he indulges for just a second, when Elena begins to kiss him back, Damon sort of hates her for it. But he can't process that quite yet. To hell with it, he thinks. I give in.
But then the door opens, and he turns away, exposed. There is judgment in Jenna's voice and Elena… she walks away and into the house. The moment is fast and over in an instant. Damon touches his lips.
He starts to walk home and, at first, he is angry with himself, having proven Stefan right. Damon couldn't hold back. He never does. But then his anger turns toward her.
"Why didn't you just punch me?" he says into the night bitterly. "You should have."
Elena had asked him earlier to stop with all of this. To just be her friend. And in that moment, up on that porch, he had every intention of being just that, but in the end he could only be what he was. Impulsive. Destructive. And Elena will not choose him. He knows that. The realization cuts into him. She kissed him and she will not choose him.
Damon's rediscovered feelings are all dark and twisted now. They overtake him. He feels betrayed. Disillusioned. He is disappointed somehow. The Elena of his mind is not the reality. Is it possible to want to kiss someone so bad it hurts, and yet not want the kiss in return? He thinks her a tease and he turns back toward her house to tell her so. Damon is despondent. It's easier to feel anger and despair than to see the signs. And he wants to blow all this—them—to bits.
He runs up the porch, misdirected, on a path of self-sabotage. And is hell-bent too, but then he hears a whimper.
Damon yanks the door open and hears a struggle inside. His speed carries him into the kitchen and the first thing he sees is a pool of blood and John Gilbert facedown on the floor.
"Damon," he hears from the corner of the room.
He turns and his breath catches.