A/N: Well, it was inevitable ;) After waiting fruitlessly for the (otherwise brilliant) writers to come up with a good way to reconcile that important moment in Delena history, it was time to push up my sleeves and get creative :)

I don't know about you, but I'm sure I could hear/feel the collective outcry of thousands of enraged Delena fans all over the world when this episode aired. Frustrations were running high and I, too, was flabbergasted, wondering how our favorite heroine could have gotten it so wrong. As a die-hard Damon sympathizer, the ball scene and Elena's belittling comment to Stefan afterwards definitely rubbed me the wrong way, and I felt he deserved a lot more from her than just another annoyingly meek brush-off over the phone. On the show, she tends to get away with so much lately where Damon is concerned that it felt nice to force her character to open up a bit and make her face up to the importance of their friendship - even if she isn't ready yet to examine it further.

So, after long hours of replaying that scene in my head and hacking away at my laptop, I came up with this burning sequel to their confrontation. I wish it could have happened to some degree on the show, but things are bound to heat up soon anyway now that Elena's in transition and waiting for the right time to re-awaken...let's just hope a certain someone will always be around to keep things interesting for her! ;)

I would really LOVE it if you could spare a few seconds to leave me your thoughts after you've read it. What did you think of Episode 3x14? Do you think the show made the right decision in leading the characters down that path?

DISCLAIMER: TVD is the property of L. J. Smith & the show runners at the CW. Luckily, thanks to those amazing individuals, they're ours now too! ;)

PROLOGUE

Damon Salvatore took a swift peek at himself in the hallway mirror, satisfied with the way his naked chest gleamed in the morning sunlight that was filtering in through the eastern windows. As he crossed the threshold into the parlor, he found that it was already flooded with light. He stopped for a moment, closing his eyes briefly to allow himself a moment of rare introspection.

Most of the time he didn't pay much attention to the luxurious sights surrounding him, preferring the more minimalistic style of his own bedroom to the lavish and opulent displays of the grand mansions of the 19th century; this house, which had once been full of memories of the man who had hated him, certainly was no exception. But as he looked about the room, he couldn't help but think back on slightly happier days too. Those moments when he thought that the world was alive with mystery and every day held some secret promise. He remembered that this was also where his mother had rocked him to sleep on her lap or read to him when he couldn't fall back asleep after having nightmares about deep wells and fierce-looking monsters. He thoughts back to when he and Stefan used to play pranks on the servants and afterwards hid behind those same heavy damask curtains that hung in front of the windows opposite him.

He felt himself smile at these recollections against his will, but when his thoughts came to rest too long on the younger Salvatore, his expression changed and his smile flickered and went out. Thinking about what his brother might be up to (or rather who he spent his time with) was never a good idea, and right now he desperately needed to think about anything but Stefan and as the petite brunette that seemed to follow him wherever he went.

He shook his head as if attempting to physically dislodge the unpleasant memories he had stirred up and let his gaze drift further across the room. Even though pretty much everything in his life sucked beyond the telling of it right now, he couldn't help but appreciate the simple taste and beauty of the room in which he stood, which in itself was an enduring testament to his mother's memory. He knew that their father had indulged her wishes and let her have free reign in how she furnished the house, something Damon appreciated to this day. Who knows what a dismal place this would have been without his mother's good taste and careful hand in arranging everything to her liking. While he thought about this, the bright shafts of gold slowly crept up the dark-panelled walls and made the ornately framed paintings glow brightly as if lit from within.

As his eyes traced the soft glow illuminating every piece of antique furniture that had once belonged to his ancestors, he thought about how different his life might have been had his mother been alive long enough to see him grow up. The memory of her gentle arms and tone of voice still haunted him sometimes, but he knew it was no good to dwell on the past. "What's done is done and nothing will bring her back. You'd better get used to that if you want to make it in this world". That was what his father used to say to him whenever he'd found him crying silently in the back garden or in the attic, Stefan being too young to remember much of it or to bear the hatred of their father after he had lost his wife.

He effectively put a stop to his strange musings when he reached the antique sideboard, which was decked out in its usual array of crystal tumblers and left-over bottles of vintage. Thinking drily of how convenient it was that they didn't employ a cleaning lady who cleared all this stuff away from time to time, he reached for a glass and was just about to pop the cork from the bottle, when his movements were arrested by a single sound coming from somewhere to his left.

Damon froze on the spot, remainig motionless as he probed the air carefully with his senses. This time there was no mistaking either the sound of footfalls nor the scent coming from the other side of the front door. Damn. He had felt her more than he even heard her.

The peaceful serenity of the moment evaporated as a shiver of apprehension spiked through his body. Without turning around, he dropped his hand that had been about to reach for the scotch and let it ball into a fist at his side, his fingernails digging painfully into his palm.

Muttering a soft string of imprecations under his breath, he let his eyes finally swivel towards to the door. Even with the solid wood and the short distance between them, he could feel her heart beating out a strong and steady du-dum du-dum to him as she made her way up the driveway, pulling up short when she reached the front door to reach for the bell pull. The scent of her warm body used to drive him crazy whenever she came near him, but now all he felt was an angry and bitter hole where once had been a seat of pure electricity and fireworks.

He had expected her to come calling soon enough after the uncomfortable truths that had been spoken between them at the ball, but he still had no idea what to say to her, much less what she would expect him to say. The truth was that he had been fooling himself into thinking that Elena actually returned a small measure of the love that he felt for her, a love which had steadily grown in intensity despite her feelings for his brother. Shaking his head at himself, he reflected back over the past few weeks, trying to see what he had missed...

It was mostly little things, like the occasional melancholy mood that would settle over her or the fact that she rarely ever smiled anymore. He had just assumed that that was a given, knowing intimately what it was like to have one's still-beating heart ripped out and crushed into little pieces by the one you loved.

He had had a hard time forgiving his brother for what he'd done to Elena, but more than that he was furious to be stuck in the worst possible situation he had ever been in, with his brother off God knows where. It was frustrating beyond belief to be this close to her and not have her - never touch her, kiss her, or hold her in his arms like he had wanted to do a million times over.

He kept telling himself after a while that she just needed time to get over Stefan, that things would start to get better once she could accept the inevitable truth that he was not coming back. If nothing else, his own dismal experiences in matters of the heart had taught him that one could move on from anything, no matter how devastating and crushing the loss one may suffer. Hell, hadn't he just spent the last 146 years of his life waiting for a woman who could never love him back? As much of a waste as that was, he had eventually gotten over it, so he assumed that Elena would too.

The realization that he had been mistaken again had hit him with the force of a wrecking ball, and it was all he could do to keep from falling apart inside when Elena delivered the final blow last night.

Twice it had happened to him now. Elena didn't love him, just as surely as Katherine had never loved him. She cared about him for sure, but he was beginning to suspect that her feelings were more akin to a sister's affection for her wayward elder brother. That would at least explain why she felt so comfortable spending so much time with him.

Damon's heart gave a painful throb while he worked hard to battle down the sudden rush of despair that was welling up inside him. Closing his eyes, he tried to chase away the mental image of Elena and his brother, willing himself to picture something hopeful instead.

It didn't work.

He sighed. It always had to come down to him, didn't it? No matter how hard he tried, he could never win against Saint Stefan - not with his father or the women in his life.

Stefan, the martyr, who had sacrificed himself to save Damon from certain death not six months ago, had left Mystic Falls for good - that is until he had unexpectedly turned up at the boarding house to take them all on the emotional rollercoaster ride of their lives.

When Elena had received an invitation to the ball the Original family was throwing in their honor, he had no choice but to accompany her, with Stefan agreeing to come too - strictly for safeguarding purposes, as he called it. Safeguarding, my ass, Damon thought derisively. Not too long ago, Stefan had been the one who had cheerfully opted to go on a killing spree up and down the East Coast, leaving him and Elena completely out in the cold to pick up the pieces he had left behind.

Damon had considered it a personal injustice to be left out of the game, an offense which still smarted and rankled inside of him. At the time he didn't mind the morality of Stefan's actions so much as his conscious decision to leave town with Klaus instead of with him. And on top of that, he had been stuck in Mystic Falls looking after a human who could never love him back since she was, and would forever be, hung up on his baby brother. As much as he loved Elena, he could not overlook the fact that his brother had royally screwed him over.

Damon knew that Stefan always had a certain flair for melodrama, but his latest martyr tear really pushed the definition of insufferable. He knew that if Stefan had only been able to learn how to handle his blood lust, there would have been no need for things to spin so stupidly out of control. Only last year, he had told Elena that there was no telling what his brother might do for human blood. Since then, things had definitely taken a turn for the worse, with Stefan struggling so obsessively to keep his vampiric instincts in check and fighting so hard against what the monster inside of him demanded, that he didn't stand a chance when it finally won out.

After he left, Damon had felt so angry at him that he hadn't been able to think straight at times. Only long nights of drinking, coupled with intermittent days of Elena-protecting, had been able to lessen the rage and bitter betrayal he felt towards his brother.

But there were definitely times –when he was very drunk and pissed off at the whole world for leaving him stuck in this mess - when he toyed with the idea of just getting the hell out of Mystic Falls and never coming back. He pictured going somewhere where he could live like before, without the burden of a conscience and pesky emotions weighing him down. Let Elena and her merry band of friends deal with all the crazy that befell them on a regular basis, his brother and all the Originals be damned.

But then he remembered the promise he'd made her the night he had almost lost her to Klaus, and he knew he would never be able to leave her again, with or without promise.

And it was a good thing he did. With Stefan having gone off the rails and giving up his humanity, abandoning not only him and the girl he professed to love more than anything in the world, there was no one besides him to watch out for her any more.

Although he'd had many reasons to be mad at his brother, Damon had lived up to his promise as best he could, switching into the role of the" white knight" easily enough now that Stefan had been no longer around to do it himself. Truth was that part of him had always been so used to protecting Elena from the beginning that it felt natural to do it on his own - most importantly, he felt better now that he had a purpose again, something that had been missing from his life for a long time.

In hindsight, he cursed himself for being stupid enough to underestimate Elena's continuing devotion to his brother, when it should have been obvious that she was not the type to switch from one guy to the other. Still, with Stefan gone he couldn't overlook the fact that something had shifted between them and that she had come to depend on him more with each day that his brother was missing in action. Surely, even she couldn't deny the slowly growing intimacy of their friendship even if it inititally sprang from her shock of losing Stefan?

As for himself, Damon loved every moment that he spent with her. He had been so used to keeping his guard up in the past - snubbing anyone who ventured to get closer to him, - that he had forgotten how nice it felt just to be with a woman and enjoy her company. He knew he had kept people at bay all his life, and he was sick of it. When he had met Elena, he'd hoped that that part of his life could finally be over.

Obviously, believing that had been his first big mistake.

The second came late last night when he wound up as collateral damage in one of Stefan and Elena's plans to get him off their back. Although he had only been briefly incapacitated by their attack – both he and Stefan wore magical eternity rings which granted them immortality and enabled them to walk in the sun without bursting into flames,- he didn't appreciate being lied to and having his neck broken by people he trusted most all in the same night.

Inwardly he knew that he was the last person to complain about the abuse he took at his brother's hands, having done the same thing to others dozens of times, but the under-handedness of their collusion still stung. Damon couldn't believe the aggressiveness with which Elena had followed through on her plan, how far she had actually been willing to go to get what she wanted. It had reminded him disturbingly of Katherine's manipulations.

When he had confronted Elena about it afterwards, she didn't seem particularly abashed or remorseful at all. It had been eerie, looking at her in her stunning dress and coiffed hair - which made her look so much like Katherine - that he had felt an uneasy jolt in his stomach. Her eyes, which generally showed so much compassion and understanding, had held none of their usual warmth, and he had a hard time believing that this was actually the same woman who had pushed herself into his heart not so long ago and convinced him to be a better man.

He would never know how she'd done it, but he found himself changing in more ways than he had cared to and which weren't under his control. He just remembered feeling a sense admiration and respect for who she was very early on in their relationship, and from then it kind of grew on its own. She had stood by him when no one else would have given him a second chance. Her loyalty and steadfastness mirrored his own in many ways, and he couldn't help but feel a sense of connection to her because of that… it was something that they alone shared between them and could not be tainted by the image of Katherine.

It was only when he had met Elena and become a part of her life that he realized what a fool he'd been; Katherine appeared to be no more than a pale ghost when compared to Elena's genuine radiance. Even though she may have expressed a certain affection for Stefan, it was clear from her habit of manipulating every poor soul around her that she wasn't capable of love. Despite being the spitting image of Elena, Damon was constantly reminded of how different the two women were from each other: Whereas Elena's nature was warm and genuine, Katherine's was shallow and self-centered.

But he wasn't stupid. He knew that Elena followed her own agendas if she was convinced it was the right thing to do. But never in his wildest dreams would he have believed Elena capable of the kind of ruthlessness that Katherine had perfected to an art form centuries ago.

When he couldn't hold his anger in any longer at the ball and accidentally let slip that he was mad at her because he loved her, he could have well and truly ripped his tongue out.

That was obviously not the moment to declare himself, not when she was still looking at him with those disturbingly empty eyes that did not seem to belong to her at all.

Apparently Elena had thought so too, because it wasn't even three seconds (time didn't really register with him), before he heard her utter, "Maybe that's the problem."

It must have taken him about five confused seconds to make sense of her words before his brain started working again, and he ground out his next words.

"No I got it, Elena. I care too much. I'm a liability... How ironic is that?"

There was nothing more to say. The bomb had been dropped and there was nothing she could do to take it back again. He just wished he hadn't been so stupid as to debase himself for a love that would never be reciprocated.

After that, the evening had more or less gone by in a blur. He remembered seeking out that brat Kol and launching him straight off the balcony for a little dramatic showdown-y fun. Elena and Stefan suddenly were there too, but he no longer cared. After all, they were the ones who didn't shut up about his emotions becoming a liability, so if caring was the reason he got his heart trampled on over and over again, then what was the point of giving a crap anymore? Especially if it caused him more heartbreak than any man could reasonably handle during his many lifetimes.

After pulling his little stunt, which he thought was still pretty basic by his standards – and let's face it, that punk had it coming - he had left them gaping at his back as he headed straight for the Grill with a defiant swagger in his step. He had intended to have a drink or two and maybe find a nice little coed to wash down the sour taste of the evening with... It was there that he'd found Rebekah, and, man, was he glad to have run into her…She was pretty, even by vampire standards, and a welcome distraction from all the shit he didn't have the energy or motivation to deal with any more. So he had given himself over with a reckless abandon that reminded him of the old days when he had first come to Mystic Falls, although noticing with a small pang of annoyance that it didn't quite bring him the same satisfaction as before.

Damon could perfectly picture Elena's gorgeous and annoyingly self-righteous face from last night and was glad that his little romp with Rebekah seemed to have temporarily taken the edge off the pain he had felt yesterday. If he was honest with himself, then sleeping with her actually turned out to be the only sane thing he had ever done next to making a fool of himself in front of Elena. And after everything that had happened last night he desperately needed another distraction. He needed to step off this whipping carousel of pain that had made every single moment of his life a living hell.

He just wished he'd taken Rebekah up on her offer to drive up to Maryland and spend the night at some first-class hotel, instead of running the risk of bumping into Elena. What was she even doing here so early?

After a second's hesitation he decided he didn't care. All he knew was that he didn't want to act like a coward and start avoiding her so that she could find even more reasons to pity him. It was impossible anyway, seeing as how she and his brother were newly glued to the hip these days, and he knew that wherever Stefan went, Elena was usually bound to follow...

Honestly, the sooner he got it over with, the better.

Heaving a deep, melodramatic sigh, Damon made his way over to the door and wrenched it open before he could change his mind about it.

A pair of anxious brown eyes immediately swung up to meet his in a mixture of surprise and relief.

"What do you want, Elena?"