Damon finds a motel.
He's immortal, but that just means he's not a heap of splintered bones in a parking lot. He's still tired, alright? Pretty damn exhausted, though when Elena asks, he just says he needs beauty sleep.
She agrees. He watches her fingers curl towards her phone, but then she seems to change her mind. Most everyone in Mystic Falls thinks she's missing, anyway.
When he was eleven, he got lost in the woods. Spent a night there, shaking with cold and fear. No cellphones, then, in 1850 or whatever it was.
Sometimes he forgets his own age.
The motel is nondescript, paint peeling from too may South Carolina summers. He forks over fifty bucks to the clerk, because compelling people feels shittier than usual tonight.
"Thanks for paying," Elena murmurs, following him down the hall. He doesn't say anything in reply, just digs his knuckles into his spine to pop a wayward vertebra back into place.
The room smells like cigarettes. Two beds. Not that he's sleeping, but he didn't want to freak her out.
"Normally," he says, "I'd be a gentleman and offer you the shower first. But—gasoline. Grime." Bree's blood, still sticky in the creases of his palm.
"Of course." Elena nods. She sits on the edge of one of the beds and he can hear her heartbeat, pattering too fast.
"Hey," he says, flicking a sandpaper towel over his shoulder. "Are you gonna be OK out here?"
"Yeah." She hasn't unwrapped her arms from around herself since Atlanta. She does that a lot, has many little tics for when she's nervous or pissed or scared. It's just one more thing that sets her worlds apart from Katherine.
Katherine. It's all for Katherine, it's always been for Katherine, and it's only in this past year that he's come close again to regretting, to feeling like there's something…ugly in all the things he does to get information.
Was Lexie worth it?
He doesn't have such qualms about Bree, but that doesn't mean he plans on telling Elena. And ah, that's what gets him. Guilt and secrets. He thought he was so practiced at splitting them up.
The water isn't hot enough, but he can't bring himself to care. It's not about comfort, even though he was pretty damn comfortable three hours ago, side-by-side with Elena's laughter. It's the first time he's seen her look so free, and it lit up the whole bar. Probably all of Georgia.
This is a girl who has lost a lot for the life she's lived. He gets that. If she lived forever, she'd lose so much more—but it must hit hard, at seventeen.
Seventeen. God, he and Stefan should just leave her the hell alone. He pauses, switching the water off. When did it become him as well as Stefan? When did he start caring?
When he comes out, she's in bed, with her jeans folded neatly on the nightstand. Damon throws the towel on the chair that his jacket isn't draped over, out of sheer habit. Water and leather and all that. As if the damn thing isn't already drenched in gasoline.
Elena's hair is fanned out around her face. Her eyes are shut and he can just look at her when she's like this, here in this moment, like she isn't human and holy and everything but his.
She's Stefan's girl, and as for Damon, well, he nearly just got torched. Justifiably. All day, those realities—those facts of life and not-life that led them here—haven't felt like they mattered.
Elena opens her eyes. They matter again.
He's just an ancient, brooding psychopath, most likely guilty of kidnapping in the majority of states.
"Hey," she says. "Can I ask you something?"
He sits down on the other bed, runs a hand through his damp hair. "Shoot."
The way she tucks her elbows against her chest, props one hand horizontally against her cheek—it's cute. Cute in the way of things that aren't meant to survive.
Except that Elena is. Elena, he realizes, may be mortal—but she's also forever.
Shit.
"Are you sorry?"
Sorry? There's a part he keeps locked away that knows if he started apologizing he'd never stop. He's not about to open that lockbox, just because a few beers and a near-death experience and a dark-eyed girl have made him maudlin. "For what?"
"Lexie." The corners of her mouth turn down. She's deadly serious. "Are you sorry for what you did to Lexie?"
If it were Stefan—Stefan, who lost one of the only friends he had—
Well, he'd probably say, "I enjoyed it," because what is there about going rib-deep with a stake that's not to enjoy?
(He'd enjoyed it tonight with Bree, how her slippery, throbbing heart flexed between his fingers. How her eyes looked almost the same dead as alive, though not quite.)
(He'd enjoyed it.)
(He had to.)
"Fall," he answers at last. But it's not a complete sentence. "Someone had to take the fall."
"I don't want your bullshit reasons," Elena says. There's a tone he recognizes: judgy, pissed. He wants her heartache. Or maybe he wants her to be happy, arms in the air, laugh ringing out—
But there's no way he can give her that.
"Elena," he says. "If I started apologizing, I'd never stop."
She doesn't blink for what feels like an impossibly long moment. She could kill him, with that look. Only, he's already dead.
"OK," Elena whispers. Then she rolls over, back to him, hair soft and sleek across the pillow.
Holy and human. He stretches out gingerly on top of the covers. Humanity is back on, then. That's the only explanation for this internal turmoil. He'd meant to keep it off until he got Katherine back. Then he'd turn on all that love for her and she would mock him and grind him into the dirt and kiss him and he would drink it up. Damon wants Katherine the way he's supposed to want blood.
Finally, he can't take it anymore. "Do you hate me?"
When she doesn't answer, it hits him hard. Then he sees—
She's asleep.
Little, soft breaths. Heart-rate down to normal. His dumbass question hangs in the air unanswered.
He turns out the light, and is grateful.