Damon has never felt so small in his entire life.

He remembers being a boy, holding his father's hand as his father shouldered his way through the mob watching a hanging at the gallows. He remembers his father saying "Don't look, Damon, it's not for little eyes," and he remembers trying to look anyway, but being too small, not able to see over the horde of people that his father was breaking through. All Damon could see was dirty breeches and stomping feet, but his father's hand is strong, tugging him along. He'd felt small, then, insignificant, but nothing like this.

Nothing like sitting at Elena's bedside, unable to let go of her hand even as she struggled weakly to sit up, unable to look up at her, hot tears streaming down his face. Everything in him told him to pull it together, to help her, to tell her everything will be okay, but his throat is closed up and he's hitching in sobbing breaths like a child during a tantrum. He can't do anything because for the last horrible six hours, Elena has been dead, and it has been unbearable. The feel of her hand in his, the sound of her breathing, her heart beating sluggishly, makes him feel like there's broken glass in his chest, and he's so tired from his grief that he can't lift his head.

"Damon," Elena is saying, and her voice changing from that lilting, flirty tone to concern makes him suck it up and look at her. He tries to smile, and he knows it must be some horrible ghost of his usual grin based on the furrow in Elena's pretty brow.

"Finally," he says, his voice unsteady but growing stronger, "I thought you would never wake up."

"Damon," Elena says again, and before he knows it she's swinging her legs over the side of the bed. He tries halfheartedly to stop her, but he feels weak as he looks into her face.

"I'm fine, Elena, I just thought-" his voice breaks a bit, and he hates himself for not being strong for her, for not handling this better, but keeps going anyway, because it feels like a betrayal to lie to her now, after all of this. "I thought maybe you wouldn't wake up," he finished, and his voice is hoarse like hers.

Then Elena does something he'd never expected, never even imagined. She climbs into his lap like a child, wrapping her arms around his neck and placing her head in the hollow between his shoulder and cheekbone. "I'm awake now," she says, and sighs against his throat. He can feel her breath there, and it feels like a gift.

Every place that she is touching him seems to be lit on fire, and he can't stop his arms from locking around her. The tears have dried in tracks on his face, and he's sitting there an hour later, Elena still huddled in his arms, when Stefan walks in.

Damon's arms tighten around Elena instinctively, and Stefan's eyes flash once before retaining their cold, calm gaze.

"Is she awake?" He asks, quietly.

Elena didn't stir, and Damon could tell from the slow, steady beat of her heart that she had fallen asleep.

"She was awake, earlier. She's tired," he says, almost defensively. He looks up at his brother with confidence and fierce determination.

"How was she?'"

"She was all right. Better than me." He doesn't drop his gaze from Stefan's face.

Stefan takes a step toward him, and Damon growls low in his throat. Stefan holds his hands out in defense, but Damon can't help the words that snarl out of him.

"If you try to take her from me, I'll kill you."

Stefan smiles, and it was an awful smile, full of rage and loss, and for the first time since Stefan had entered the room, Damon can see that his brother's face looks lined and tired, his eyes wild and bloodshot.

"Is she yours now?" Stefan asks, his voice so quiet and so calm it's an eerie whisper.

Damon can't speak, can't take his eyes from his brother's face, because he's sorry but not sorry, guilty but not guilty. If Elena wakes up now, he thinks, if she wakes up now and chooses Stefan, I'll kill them both, and the thought burns in his brain, because it is both awful and true. He knows the last words that Elena spoke to him before her death were that she was choosing Stefan, but that all seems so long ago now, so long before she woke up alive and Elena, before she crawled into his lap and let him hold her for hours, fell asleep in his arms like a child. Damon thinks she might never be his, no matter how much he wants it, but now he'll never let her go.

"No," he says, finally, "but I'm hers."

Stefan smiles that shadow of a smile again. "So we are here again, brother. A century later, and here we are."

"Here we are," Damon repeated.

"If she contacts me, if she gives me any idea that she's unhappy, I'll come for her."

"You can try," Damon says, and he means it. He'll kill his baby brother for this girl, this waif sleeping in his arms, and he's ashamed, but it's true.

Stefan doesn't try to argue anymore. He doesn't try to touch Elena. He's gone from the room before Damon can blink. Damon drops his eyes to Elena's face, and he hates himself for every thought he has about imprisoning her, keeping her with him always.

When Elena opens her eyes and smiles at him, he's thinking that if he was forced to let her go again he'd take off his ring and watch the sun rise, just the way he'd wanted before his brother had forced him into immortality.