Author's Note: A round of applause, please, for the tour de force that was episode 4x15 "Stand By Me." I knew I wasn't going to recover from that episode without writing something, and I've been enslaved to this piece for most of the weekend. I've never had to work so hard for something I was so inspired to write, and I hope it was worth it, and that it means something to you. Sincere angst warning, dear readers. It's a dark tunnel, but I promise that for whatever TVD has planned, there is some light at the end of my version.

Disclaimer: Rated M for sexual content and mature themes and language. I do not own the Vampire Diaries, its characters or tragic universe. Spoilers through 4x15 "Stand By Me."

Pain Like a River

My dick feels ragged.

Fuck it, my life feels ragged.

My eyes are wide open, and it hurts like hell, but I'm used to it. The water from my shower stings them, but not enough. I should shed my own tears for him, I know, but the water running down my cheeks isn't my own. If I was the kind of man she needs me to be, it would be. If I were the kind of man she needs me to be, I would have gone down into that fucking well and kept him alive instead of taking five when she needed me the most.

But I didn't and so there is water falling all across the city tonight, a biblical flood for Baby Gilbert. A rain of Matt's tears, Bonnie's hysterical sobs a storm that wails and threatens to turn hurricane. She's going to sell her soul for Jeremy's unless I stop her. Of all the crazy shit in the world. I mean, they dated for what, five minutes? I shake my head. And Caroline's probably running the faucet into yet another mop bucket, trying to clean it all away.

She should know better. This kind of water drowns, it doesn't cleanse.

I know that right now, the gush of the fire hose is soaking the sooty remnants of Elena's childhood home and it makes it impossible not to think about how the glass exploded out of the windows when I burned my own. I did it to hide the ugly aftermath of Stefan's vampire coming out party, but it felt like a Salvatore family funeral pyre. Crowded and hot with pyrolyzing sin.

The fire engines were drawn by teams of horses back then, and they were as slow as a church service on Easter Sunday. My fire burned all the way through to the next morning.

I had plenty of time, but the only thing I saved from our human lives was my dad's shitty clock, and a brother who's equal parts saint and psychopath. She's probably better off with nothing.

I'm so tired I don't even want to think about tomorrow, but I'll need to be up before her to call the homeowner's insurance and compel the fire inspector. I'll have bulldozers there by the afternoon to scrape the ground clean. We'll get a new house built and I'll sell it for her at a profit so she can go anywhere she wants. She'll be free, even though that's the last thing she ever wanted.

Elena wanted what I had wanted, once upon a time. A family.

Instead we got flames to hide the bodies we couldn't face. A choice of unbearable grief or emptiness with a side of homicidal tendencies.

Order's up, fucker. Just try to send it back to the kitchen. I hear the chef's a real bitch.

I shake my head with irritation. My mind is like a photo album that refuses to close tonight, as if burning all Elena's mementos reminded me that I still carry all of mine and the only way to burn them is to throw away my ring.

Her journal was there tonight. I saw it, sodden with lighter fluid, and I didn't reach to save it. It's filled with her dead family, teenage angst over the quarterback and my poufy-haired brother, maybe even a word or two about me. I let her burn it, that epistolary Elena that I never read.

The whole time she was talking, I could see Stefan itching to sneak a keepsake or two into his pockets. He's so fucking stupid. He thinks the past is something you can hold in your hands, something you can pull out on a rainy day, like a family in a box. Just add water.

But the past is all water, memories and lost identities pouring through me tonight like a river that you can never touch the same way twice. Transforming, evolving and shrinking away, slipping through our fingers faster and faster.

He tries to hold on and I never do, but in the end all our hands are empty.

When it was done, I saw him look back at the porch where we picked her up and dropped her off, where we held her and kissed her and stole her from each other. I know he wanted to rescue the porch and the girl who waited on it for him.

She's not supposed to be this way…

Fucking Stefan, always seeing what he wants to see instead of what is.

And what will never be again.

He wants to anchor her with diary pages, re-gifted necklaces and pressed corsages, but he can't because that girl is already gone. I never expected her to stay, but I don't think I was any more ready for this version of her than he was.

Because it turns out that the opposite of love isn't hate. It's impersonal sex and indiscriminate hunger and a selfishness that makes me understand why he would have run into the fire to rescue a girl who wasn't there.

My bedroom door slams as she pushes me toward the shower, a flat, gnawing kind of hunger in her cold eyes.

My eyes burn and flinch from the assault of the shower, but I won't close them because the water blurs the excruciating clarity of my vision. If I close my eyes, I'll see her new face.

I don't know if it's funny or cruel that my eyes can tell the difference in her, but my heart can't.

Her face now isn't Katherine's, or her own. Features are so much more than bone structure, coloring and complexion. Your emotions animate your face, draw lines in your skin.

When you're a human your emotions are written on your face until they can't be erased. But she was young when she turned and as a vampire, her skin is smooth and unmarked. When the muscles beneath took a new shape, she was gone as if she never existed, the girl we've all chased for so long. I wonder who we'll find, if she'll ever let us catch her.

Her hair in a high ponytail, miles of legs beneath her short cheerleading skirt. She watches my brother play football with the light of curiosity in her troubled brown eyes. When I wave, she doesn't wave back.

I'm not my brother. I don't need her to stand still so I can see her. I always see her, and I always want to.

She's not her doppelganger, and fucking Christ it's a relief to know that no matter what you take away, my dream is still not my nightmare. She doesn't have Katherine's calculating pride, hasn't honed every flawless line of her body until it's too sharp to rest easy in your hands.

She has a predator's confidence, and an animal's casual disregard for the fact that there are things that don't need to be said, but I don't mind because there's no manipulation in her echoing eyes, not even now.

She takes what she wants, she doesn't toy with it.

She took me.

She didn't even wait until we got home, just reached over and squeezed my cock hard through my jeans, with Stefan in the backseat. I took her hand and interlaced her fingers with mine without comment but she pulled it back, giving me a scornful look.

"What? Like he doesn't know we have sex now?" She turned to the backseat. "Stefan, we have sex now."

"Super," I piped up in a cheery voice before he had to answer. "Also, Santa's not real. And the Easter Bunny? Is just a Furry who likes to hang out at the mall. Glad we got that out in the open."

Elena turned up the stereo.

The second time she waited until Stefan got out of the car and then her hand was down my pants and I wanted like fuck to open the door and just run and run and run before I had to look her in the eye.

But I didn't. Because she's my girl and as long as she's with me, she's safe and she can't do anything she'll regret.

I can't let her have anything else to regret.

The water's hot, but I want it to scald. I want this river to speed past tonight, to take me with it. I tell myself I don't want to drown.

There's such an ugly symmetry to this. Katherine's blood took my humanity, just like my blood took Elena's. We both wanted to take it back, when it was done.

Elena went to that island to become mortal again, and instead I turned off the last part of her that was human. She's all vampire now. All speed and instinct and no remorse because Katherine stole her chance at being human.

What is it with me and those two beautiful girls and how we poison each other? Are they my punishment or am I theirs?

It's ironic justice. The blood, but also the sex. I've used so many bodies for sex and I've never felt used myself until tonight.

Her fingernails digging into my ass, jerking me into her as my hips lock and my throat closes. "Is that all you've got, stud?" she sneers.

The memory of her voice kicks me straight in the gut and I grab the rough flagstones that line my shower, rock crumbling under my fingers. I never touch the walls, because they're a bitch to clean and if they get wet, they'll mildew. Only my state-of-the-art ventilation system and the smooth flow of my showerhead keep my beautiful shower clean and dry.

But right now the sour smell of mildew would be a blessing; anything to crowd the death from my nose. It was all over that corpse of a house, all over my clothes because she asked me to carry Jeremy downstairs. And I did it, even though she's a vampire now and strong enough to lift him herself.

Jeremy. That kid was so much heavier than he should have been. It's been less than a month since I promised her I'd keep him alive. That I'd protect him and teach him to fight. Less than a month since he accused me of not caring about him. Since I asked him to kill me so I wouldn't kill him. So that Elena would never be the way she is tonight.

I wish he would have listened to me. Fucking rebellious teenagers. They never listen, and look where it gets them.

One last nap on the couch by the fire. I wonder if Ric watched him burn.

All our clothes smelled like the grave tonight when she ripped them off of us and backed me into the shower. I wondered if that's why she was in such a hurry, but then I felt her slick and demanding against my fingers and I thought maybe death had nothing to do with it.

Elena covering her eyes with a gasp, embarrassed to see me wearing nothing but bubbles and a knowing smirk. Happy Birthday to you…

As soon as the fabric was gone, her teeth were in me and I didn't fight her even when my fangs slammed down in automatic response. We've bitten each other so many times, blood and sweat mixing in our mouths, her taste like an approving moan deep inside me.

There's nothing I crave more than her bite, and if my blood would soothe her, I'd give her all of it. I'd bleed it into the dirt of a magic well; serve it to her in a crystal goblet. She knows it, too. Fuck, half of Mystic Falls knows it. It's probably written on a plaque somewhere in this overactive historical society of a town.

Elena's eyes, dilated with arousal and dazed with confusion because I decided to purchase my guilt with a kiss on the porch of the Gilbert house. Her lips as soft as the ceiling of heaven, trembling in the aftermath.

This time she didn't take my blood, didn't take the merest taste of me. She just bit, wrapping her bare legs around me in a clear demand. The fact that she didn't drink hurt more than the careless, vicious slice of her teeth.

Her tongue against my palm, her trembling body cradled against my chest in the bathroom of the Grill. She's starving. I'll never let her starve.

I knew she'd want this, and I knew I'd give it to her. I could have sex in my sleep I've done it so many times. Somna-copulation. No big deal. I'm gonna be last in line to go crying to my therapist because my girlfriend wants to get some.

We don't finish our dance in front of the fire. Instead, the lamp shatters as she pushes it carelessly aside, pressing me into the wall. I liked that lamp, but right now I don't give a fuck about anything but the fact that I'm finally allowed to touch her.

She ripped my clothes off that night, too. That time she wanted me. This time she wanted something else entirely.

I fucked my way through half a continent when I stopped feeling anything other than the predator's holy trinity of sex and blood and power, and I'll be two centuries dead before I'll let Elena ruin herself like that: strangers' hands marking her body when she's too numb to know what it will do to her. Besides, all she wants is to feel good and no one knows how to do that for her better than I do.

Her body arching under my lips, her nails raking my scalp as she urges me closer. Her lips part on a moan that turns into a giggle as I growl playfully against her belly.

Tonight, she didn't bother to talk and I didn't bother to answer. She ripped our clothes off and I washed the smell of sorrow from her hair before I lifted her onto the bathroom counter.

I buried myself before I even walked through my bedroom door tonight, because I knew what she wanted from me, and I thought I could do that for her.

But the girl who tore my pants off and took hold of me with hands that still smelled of lighter fluid didn't peek up at me through her eyelashes to see if I liked it. And that, of all the stupid shit in the world, nearly broke me.

I dropped to my knees so she couldn't reach me while I took care of her.

But even while my tongue and fingers were expertly playing all her favorite tunes, I couldn't get the rest of me on board. Damon Salvatore, who had never faltered since that first failed time 156 years ago in the slaves' quarters, was utterly flaccid.

I felt like I was cheating on Elena, and after her, every other woman leaves me cold.

Her eyes are addicted to mine and one word falls from her lips to explain why she broke my brother's heart. "You."

I'm ashamed but more than that, I knew damn good and well that if I couldn't be what she needed tonight, she'd find it somewhere else. Anywhere else, because her empty eyes don't care what body they fall upon. The closest man is just downstairs and I'll be damned if I'll allow her to do this to my little brother.

He'd let her, too. I know how much he misses her touch because right now, I miss it too.

If I were the man she needed me to be, the tears threatening to escape my tightly closed eyes would have been for her brother, and not for her. Not for me.

Elena, laying four red roses on the ground for her family. It wasn't her first funeral, or her last.

I'd buy that girl every flower in the world. But I'll never give her a red rose, and neither will anyone else, for as long as I live.

At that moment, she let out this breathy little moan. I looked up to see her biting her lip in that cute way she has and I remembered. It might be shallow, it might be raw instinct and hormones, but I can make her feel better. I made her pain stop and now I can give her pleasure to take its place. And neither will last; nothing does. But it's still real.

The sound in my ears, the first time she screamed my name when she came. It was the first time I've really loved the name my father gave me.

I didn't whisper to her the way I wanted to, reassurance and comfort and all the love that she hasn't lost. She's felt enough, heard enough today and she'll reject anything else.

Instead, I let my lips speak to her skin. Maybe tonight, she didn't remember the difference between love and fucking, but her body did, because it leaped to my every touch the way it always, always has. When her breath caught and she strained to get closer, her face started to look like her own again and God, I wanted her.

I can hear her right now, her breathing steady and slow in my bed, habit ruling her body because even in sleep, there's still that shred of her that remembers what it is to be human. It's a lie.

My fingers tighten on the wall of the shower as I remember what we did. Stones creak and give way before me, the masonry jagged and ruined now. I can't manage to care that I've broken one more thing tonight.

My first thrust rocked her head back on her neck and when her eyes opened, they were hot and excited and strange. I didn't realize how much love was in her eyes when she looked at me until I made it go away.

I always knew that's how it would go. That one day, I'd do something to erase that light out of her eyes. I've been waiting for it this entire time, because I know I'm never going to be enough for her.

I sure as fuck wasn't tonight. She went to her knees in front of me and her sobs were pulling my guts out my ears and I knew that she had to feel it, that this was a pain that would be in her life forever and I couldn't erase it. But I wasn't strong enough to let her hurt.

She is frustrated and un-fucking-believably beautiful as she glares up at me. "Well, maybe that's the problem."

She was right. And now I get what everybody thought I always wanted: Elena, conscience free, nothing but fun and sex and violence.

Fun times. I'd laugh if I didn't feel so fucking sick. I'm still watching us, my memory replaying over and over like a tic.

I folded her knees into her chest and pounded into her while I watched her stranger's face. Elena flushes during sex: shy, but fascinated by her obvious power over me. The excitement paints her cheeks the most beautiful pink, and I fight to keep my eyes open even in the midst of orgasm because I love to watch her like that. But tonight her face was pale.

"More," she hissed at me, and I bent my knees and thrust obediently, exactly at the angle she likes best. Her eyelids drooped as she gasped in response and I splayed my hand on her back, supporting her against the all-out assault she was begging me for.

I watched my expert fingers pinching her nipple until she shivered, the sharp pleasure knifing all the way through her as she clenched around my cock. I stroked her open until my pelvic bone was pressing her clit with every rough advance of my hips. She hissed and I let her have it hard and fast, as merciless as this endless fucking day.

Her arms tightened around me and it almost felt like she was holding me, like she wanted me close and not just my dick. I remember wondering if I could use the sire bond to give her back her feelings for me. If I could let her love me without hurting for everyone she'd lost. But I know damn well if I let anything through, the dam would break and her sobs would shatter me.

So instead I clutched her to me and I pretended that it was just to tilt her hips so she could take me deeper.

When her lips touched my neck, I braced for the assault of her teeth but instead she nuzzled my earlobe aside and kissed the spot right behind my ear that only she's ever found, the one that makes me shiver like a fucking schoolgirl.

"Elena?" I whispered, stuttering to a halt.

"Don't stop," she ordered, but then she kissed me again, her lips soft and hidden behind my ear. I picked her up off the counter and wrapped her in my arms and drove up into her with a helpless cry.

I didn't stop when she came the first time, or the second. Instead, I pressed her against the doorframe and buried my face in her neck so I couldn't see if her face had changed again and I gave her what she needed. I wanted her to be so drunk on sex, she wouldn't remember her own name, much less the flames of this accursed day.

But I could read the difference in her hips as she strained toward her climax instead of toward me. In an instant, I was back on the foyer table with a girl that I'd missed so long that I'd somehow forgotten she only touched me to put me where she wanted me.

I flinched and my rhythm faltered, but then her hand clenched on the back of my neck and I could feel the delicate band of the ring I had designed just for her. Katherine has so much daylight jewelry that I don't recognize any of the individual pieces because she changes them so often. But even though Elena's fingers grip me differently tonight, I can still feel that ring, beautiful and understated and constant.

I see her. Even with my eyes closed, I can see my girl.

I never meant to let myself finish. My soul's not so black that I could get off on what I was to her at that moment. But she wouldn't let me hold back, has never let me keep any part of myself from her, even when she had no right to demand it. Her little hands were gripping my biceps, and her skin was stroking mine and when her tongue touched my earlobe I lost control, yelling in shameful pleasure and a hope that disappeared as soon as I saw her smug, sated eyes. They weren't hers.

And God forgive me or not, it was still better than her tears.

Elena, knee-deep in her first grave, her face contorted with grief. "You told me to kill him, so I did."

I took her to bed and fucked her to sleep, and this time when she came, I didn't. After she was asleep, I cleaned her up with a warm, wet towel. I tucked her into my softest sheets and put an extra blanket on the bed and I turned the shower on full-blast, just for myself this time.

I feel like something that needs to be burned.

I wish I'd have told Elena before I erased her that I was proud. Proud that she told April Young the truth and that she spread lighter fluid over her brother's body rather than slaughter innocents to raise the dead. Even though it would have been far from the first time.

We're vampires, after all. We feed from whoever and whatever we can to stay a little bit alive. It's all we do, it's all we are. But it's not all she is, and even when the parts of her I love best are buried so deep they're all but invisible, I know she's the best of us.

"Unless you're willing to bring back every supernatural creature on the other side to get him back. Would you, Damon? Because I know you want your drinking buddy back. Would you? Because I wouldn't."

I wouldn't. But I fucking want to, and she knows it.

It must be a night for the nastiest kind of firsts, because the shower runs cold on my back for the only time in memory. I have a hotel-sized water heater for this bathroom, and I don't know how long I've been in here, but my legs ache from standing.

I turn off the water.

I don't remember to reach for a towel until I'm almost dry.

I pull on jeans and tell myself not to check on her, to get the fuck out of here and drink myself into the kind of stupor where I won't care that she doesn't live behind her own eyes anymore.

That there are two sets of brown eyes tonight that are empty, and they're both my fault.

"Trust me. I will keep him safe."

Somehow I'm beside the bed, watching her long eyelashes lying gently against her cheeks. I'm never going to get to watch her sleep in her cute, cherry-print sheets again, never going to sneak through her window just so I can hear her heart flutter when she sees me.

I should at least be glad that fucking awful horse picture is gone, but I can't even manage that much. I loved her bedroom, loved how girly and personal it was. Every time she found me there and let me stay I felt like I'd won every prize ever invented and the only one that mattered, all at once.

She shifts in her sleep and the sheet falls away from the graceful curve of her shoulder. The switch won't keep the dreams at bay. Her subconscious will batter her with memories, trying to remind her of who she is, the way things are supposed to be. It's like watching movies with no sound, just images with no meaning. I know. I remember.

Her face is relaxed now, though. She hasn't started to dream yet. Maybe tonight she'll get off easy. Giraffes dancing to the Nutcracker. Ric teaching about the Civil War while wearing a Catholic schoolgirl's uniform, his hairy legs dead-ending into a pair of oversized Mary Jane's.

I smooth the sheets back over her and she huffs out a little breath, relaxing into the mattress. I stroke her hair away from her face so it won't tickle her nose, remembering the first time I ever snuck into her room. I meant to kill her, to remind Stefan that he wasn't allowed love.

My switch was off then too, and all I saw when I looked at her was another pretty girl. Until I realized I was still just looking, content to listen to her breathe.

And that's all I've been listening for ever since.

My feet are silent when I leave the room and pad downstairs. My brother isn't breathing, so I can't hear him. He's been a vampire so long that he sometimes forgets, when he's alone. But I know where he is.

My legs are tired as I descend the stairs. I didn't bother to feed after Vaughn's half-assed torture attempt. He could stand to take some notes from Original Barbie: Mistress of Pain.

Vervain rope and an arrow in the throat is the kindergarten of systematic suffering. Rebekah took high honors with her master's thesis on the subject, after I fucked her and fucked her over, all in one busy night. But the Ph.D. specialist on the topic is currently asleep in my bed. It takes a certain kind of innocent brilliance to leave your victims begging for more, and Elena has it in spades.

The stairs in front of my eyes have stopped moving, and I remember to start walking again.

We were all orbiting her today, willing to do anything if she'd just tell us what would help. I have to hand it to Bonnie, mass human sacrifice was an option with a certain creative flair, and it was exactly what Elena needed to snap her back to reality.

The problem, of course, is that reality sucks.

I wag a two-finger wave over my shoulder at my brother as I pass on my way to the wet bar, not looking because he knows where I've been and what I've been doing and I don't care to see the judgment in his eyes.

He won't understand; he'll think I shouldn't have touched her when she's like this. He'd never believe his dear little Elena would go out and grab the first hard cock she could get her hands on. I know he's pissed at me for making her flip the switch. I'm sure he thought I had another solution.

I'm the big brother. He wants me to be the one who always knows what needs to be done. When he called me to come home, he was calling me for himself, not for her.

I came for both of them, scared shitless at first because I didn't have the answer, and later because Bonnie did and I couldn't swallow that particular little blue pill.

He begged me to help her, and this, this, was all I could do.

My brother gently takes the decanter from my motionless hands and makes me a drink.

I blink and look away, embarrassed. No fucking idea how long I've been mid-pour. I probably shouldn't have an audience for my narcoleptic attention span.

He nudges the drink toward me, and I wrap my numb fingers around the glass, probably gripping too tightly because I can't quite remember how to hold it. I turn to take a seat but the couch is too far.

"I'm training you to be a vampire hunter, not a Ninja fucking Turtle," I snap.

Jeremy laughs. "What, you volunteering to cook, Splinter? Cause if not, it's Pepperoni or Supreme, Dude."

I smack him in the back of the head.

"Hey, what was that for?" he protests.

"When you can stop me from doing that, you can call me dude."

I promised her I'd keep her brother safe. And even if I failed in that, and even if I have no fucking clue what to do now, I will get her through this. Me and Stefan and the beauty queen with the clipboard are going to keep Elena's body count low and I will figure out a plan so that when I wake her back up again, it will be to a life she can bear.

But only Christ fucking knows how because it took me 168 years to find a life I wanted, and it had chocolate brown eyes that are blind to me now.

I don't know how to be what she needs me to be. Fuck, I don't even know what that is. But I can't give up. Not now. Not when it's Elena.

I slump down by the fireplace. It feels as if my bones have forgotten their shape and it's a relief not to hold them up anymore. I'm so fucking tired.

I can feel the cold stone of my fireplace digging into my scalp, the chill of the room wrapping around me as if it's mirroring my thoughts. Stefan didn't start a fire, and I don't blame him. We've burned enough for one day.

I wish I could have saved her bear before she dropped that final match. But I know that even if I would have blurred up the stairs and out her window one last time, it wouldn't have been enough. I couldn't give it back to her, because all its comfort is gone.

The girl who loved that bear is gone.

My muscles jerk taut as something touches my hand and my eyes snap open, reddening automatically before I register the smell of plastic and iron from the blood bag my brother is pressing into my free hand.

"Drink. You probably haven't had a chance to eat for days."

My tongue tastes like ashes and loneliness, like it did when it was in Katherine's mouth. I pop open the blood bag and drink, but when I lower it I make the mistake of meeting my brother's eyes.

They're sad, but without a hint of his usual denial. Little Steffie might be growing up. Too bad I'm too exhausted to dredge up some fatherly pride. Too bad that means his eyes are full of all the pain she can't feel and the knowledge of all my sins. He knows what I've been doing.

"I'm sorry," he tells me, and I'm so fucking glad I didn't cop out, didn't push her away when I touched her hollow body and felt my skin crawl. Because then I'd be apologizing to him and I'd rather cut my own balls off than know he had to go through what I just did.

I dig up a smirk for him. "Oh, woe is me. Horny vamp girlfriends are the worst."

He hesitates, and then sits in front of the fireplace with me, getting traces of old ash on his jeans. He's cross-legged like a kid, his shoulders curled forward under the shearling jacket he didn't take off when we got home. Maybe he's cold, too.

He's probably wishing he could warm up with a dive into that freezer of blood downstairs. I shoot him a weary, sideways look.

"Not thinking about playing some Twister, are you?"

"I wouldn't do that," he says sharply. "Not now."

I resist the urge to point out that he normally doesn't pencil his killing sprees into his planner.

Elena's cheeks, wet with tears. "He's coming back, right Damon?"

I stare at the plastic bag in my hand and bloodlust is a suddenly foreign concept. I don't know if I want to feel better. Right now my body feels as grey and achy as my mind and it's almost a comfort.

I close my eyes. He's sitting so close that I can feel the faint heat of him. He never sits next to me. He usually has his chair and I stand, so I'm free to move.

He's my only living family. My brother. Elena had hers for sixteen years and I've had mine for ten times that but I guess you're never ready to watch them burn; no matter how long you have to prepare, or how many times you've watched them die.

Stefan is breathing again. I wonder if he's making the effort for me, or just because it hurts to be still. My mind drifts on the sound for a moment and I forget. I want to forget.

"You don't have to go back up there, you know," he offers quietly. "We'll hear her if she moves."

I drag my eyes open and scrub my hand wearily over my face. "She shouldn't have to be alone. Not tonight."

"What about you?"

I raise my eyebrows, surprised that he said that out loud. It's strange, looking him in the eye when he knows about me and Elena. When he knows I'm going to go upstairs and slide in naked next to her and she's probably going to wake me up for round two sometime before dawn.

The funny thing is, with everything that's happened, it doesn't even feel like jealousy anymore.

It doesn't matter that she's in my bed because we gave this whole fucking house to her months ago. All of it for her, just to keep her safe. To keep her happy and warm. And we're still trying, the both of us, to give her what she needs. To be who she needs us to be.

It makes me sick that I'm going to have to look her in the eye someday soon and tell her that I want her to hurt. Tell her that I want her to feel everything she can't handle, every overwhelming bit of suffering. I'm going to have to tell her it will make me happy for her to feel like that, and I'm going to have to mean it or the sire bond won't work, and she's never going to want to flip her switch on her own.

I don't know if I can do that.

I want to ask Stefan how we'll know when the time is right, but he needs me to know. So I don't ask.

Instead, I drink the fucking blood and I shoot the bourbon and when the bottom of the cup hits the wood of the old floorboards I think of all the hundreds of thousands of times I've heard that sound.

This house is older than me, and without the fires I keep burning on both floors it's a drafty old bitch. I wonder if Elena's restless in her sleep, if she's shrugged off the blankets again since I've been gone.

I get up and take my empty cup and blood bag into the kitchen. When I come back, Stefan's still sitting hunched in the mouth of the empty fireplace, his green eyes on the floor.

I kick his foot to get his attention. "Come on, Cinderella. Let's get some fucking sleep now that we're off the Island of Dr. Moreau."

He huffs out a breath in an exasperated chuckle that's half-fond, half-irritated. It's practically his nickname for me.

A grin splits his face as my little brother looks from me to the old slingshot I just handed him. "I don't need it anymore," I tell him off-handedly. "I was just gonna throw it away anyway."

I push the memory aside, because it's been a long time since I could make everything better between the two of us with a simple gift.

I hold out a hand to my brother and when he takes it, I haul him to his feet.

His eyes catch on the stairs, the lines of strain around his eyebrows deepening. He doesn't let go of my hand, as if he can keep me from going back to her.

"She's not gone, you know," I tell him, keeping my voice low even though I know I'd hear her if she'd woken up.

"She's not herself," he says, his brow a topographical map of disapproving concern. "You shouldn't let-," he stops, his jaw flexing.

I pull my hand away from his but I still have to clear my throat before I answer. "I flipped her switch, I didn't give her a fucking lobotomy. She's not up there with a curling iron, if that's what you're thinking."

Stefan shrugs, but he steps back, his eyes on me as if he wants to hear me say it again, to promise him that it's true. I don't repeat myself. If he can't see her on his own, I don't have any fairy dust to sprinkle in his unworthy eyes.

I saunter toward the stairs, sharpening my ears so I'll have warning if she's awake. Part of me wants to stay and have one more drink with my brother, because I still can. But I resist the urge. I don't need Aunt Stefanie to keep fussing over me, and I don't want Elena to get cold.

"Goodnight, brother," he offers quietly.

"Goodnight, Moon," I croon sarcastically, and then I choke on my tongue as I nearly make a joke about tucking him in with his teddy bear. I look back before I can stop myself, but he must have given up on brooding tonight because he's already turning toward his side of the house. *

Good. He's earned his rest.

My well-oiled hinges don't make a sound as I open the heavy door to my room. I wonder if she'd choose to sleep here if I didn't screw her into unconsciousness first. She doesn't have a room anymore and with no emotion involved, there's no reason to think she'd want to be close to me.

But she's still here.

I drop my pants by the bed and climb in next to her. She's sprawled on her belly, her face buried in my favorite pillow.

I don't want to wake her, but I can't stop myself from touching her. My hand settles soft as a breath into the curve at the small of her back, letting her warmth seep into my skin.

She still smells like Elena, now that I've washed away the smoke and death. Vanilla sugar and fresh peaches, like my own personal fucking Yankee Candle. I draw in the deepest breath I can hold.

She shifts with a sigh, curling closer into my side. Her fingers twitch and settle on my stomach, covering the tiny scar next to my right hipbone as if she's hiding it from view. I freeze, and then slowly relax. It's the way she always sleeps, every night since the second Miss Mystic Falls pageant.

Her hand over my scar, her head tucked securely into my shoulder.

It's more than a face that defines a person. More than a beating heart, more than a conscience.

Ric died and went insane and transitioned and finally crumbled away into a husk of a body and he's still here, just behind that veil that only Silas and slaughter can drop.

And Elena's here too, wrapped up safe and warm inside her mind where I hid her away until I can find a way to help her carry her burden.

I cuddle her body close to mine and she settles into me with a little yawn and a grouchy mutter of protest. Asleep, she doesn't feel so different to me.

I wonder if Stefan's asleep or if he's writing in his journal. The house feels very small tonight.

I remember waking up next to him in that shack, my shirt crusted with blood from my father's musket ball. It flew true because the barrel was clean. I would know; he always made me clean the guns when we came back from hunting. You can't trust slaves with weapons, he told me. I wonder who cleaned it after he shot me. I hope he did it himself, watching rag after rag come out black and ruined.

That morning, I didn't care that my brother was next to me. I never wanted to see another sunrise.

There have been a lot of mornings like that. There have been a lot of mornings period.

And then there was one when a girl jumped and skidded across my sheets with a grin, wearing my button-less shirt and smelling like ripe peaches and languid sex.

There's always one more morning worth waking up for. And I'm going to be there to make sure Elena keeps waking up until she sees it.

Always.

Author's Note: Huge thanks to Goldnox, who earned her angel wings today by bending the time space continuum to beta this for me when she had zero minutes to spare for it. And for delivering brilliant writing advice while making me laugh like a duck with a megaphone. Thanks to PeeNiss0314 for The List ;) and thanks to arabean for the lovely icon for my story cover shot.

For the most compelling (and compellingly steamy) Delena you will ever read, check out Goldnox's story "Mirrors and Broken Things," based on the lovely 4x02 "Memorial" episode.

And if the real version of Season 4 is too sad for you, I'm in the midst of writing a wholly different version of Season IV called "Desperate Love," in which there is no sire bond and no dead Jeremy. If you're interested in the stories behind the grandfather clock Damon saved from his family's estate and the story he referenced in the slave's quarters 156 years ago, those are both in Desperate Love.

* Goodnight, Moon is a reference to the title line in a classic children's book.