AN: In which Katherine is...mentioned. Thanks so much for the replies and enjoy chapter three!

Chapter Three - The Ugly Truth

Darkness had a way of making Mystic Falls feel sinister. Everything became magnified. Trees took on a menacing shape, even during the summer when lush green leaves sprouted from skeletal branches that reached for the heavens. Anything could, and often did, hide within those lofty heights. Unseen eyes seemed to peer out from the thick shadows, watching and waiting for the moment to strike. Innocent prey became more pure and vulnerable while evil predators grew stronger and bolder.

For a long time, Damon had considered himself a predator, the top of the food chain. Human beings were little more than amusing playthings. Immortality was his failsafe and as long as he wasn't colossally stupid, he was invincible. The events of recent months had altered that perception considerably. Now, when things went bump in the night he listened.

The sun had just set, and through the tall windows of the Salvatore house, Damon watched the last dying rays of light lose their battle with the dark. Elena wasn't back yet, a fact that bothered Damon for two distinctly different reasons. One, his paranoia about her safety was worse at night and two, when she finally arrived, he no choice but to tell her the truths he'd been hiding.

"Bonnie's in," Jeremy announced to the quiet library as he pressed a button on his cell phone and shoved the device into his back pocket.

"That just leaves Tyler," Alaric leaned against the back of the couch and lifted his booted feet to the coffee table. "Think he'll be up for it?"

"If Caroline asks," Jeremy grinned as Damon rolled his eyes. A twinge of something that might have been pain flared on his left arm where the half-turned werewolf had bitten him. Damon knew it was all in his head, the wound had healed the instant Klaus's blood had hit his veins, but he brushed his hand over his arm anyway and tugged on the pushed up sleeve of his grey t-shirt. Caroline and Tyler's star-crossed species relationship was a recipe for disaster, but considering he and Stefan had been fighting over the same girl for their entire lives with no end in sight- he really had no room to talk.

"I gotta say, Damon," Alaric began, pouring two fingers of whiskey for himself from an antique crystal decanter on a side table. "I'm surprised by this divide and conquer plan of yours. Splitting up is an awfully cautious move. Are you thinking of turning over a new, responsible leaf?"

"Screw caution," Damon scoffed, turning away from the window overlooking the driveway and facing the room. "I'm tired of Klaus pulling the strings like we're a bunch of damn puppets. He wants to play the odds that we'll pick the wrong trail and waste time. Splitting up and following all of them is the best way to beat him at his own game."

"Unless that's his plan and he wants to split us up so we're easier to pick off," Jeremy offered, earning him a withering look from both Alaric and Damon.

Headlights suddenly shined through the windows, illuminating the hundreds of books lining the fall wall. Damon looked back out the window, noted the hulking shadow of a familiar black SUV coming up the driveway, and closed his eyes briefly, feeling equal parts relieved and tense. Caroline had succeeded in keeping Elena safe…and now it was his turn to come clean.

Tires screeched and ground to a halt, loud enough for even Alaric and Jeremy's human ears to detect, as Elena came to an abrupt stop in front of the house. Through the window, Damon watched both the driver and passenger doors fly open, noted Elena as she leapt from the vehicle and stalked up the sidewalk and then Caroline as she closed both doors and blurred to her friend's side. Damon sighed, completely unsurprised when two seconds later the front door flew open and hit the wall with such force it nearly shook the house.

"I'd say Elena knows," Damon shook his head and looked heavenward. "Let the self-righteous judging begin."

Anger came off Elena in waves as she stormed into the library. Ignoring both Alaric and Jeremy, she zeroed in on Damon. With blazing fury she closed the space between them until she was practically standing on his toes. Elena may have had to crane her neck to look Damon in the eye, but she did so, completely unafraid. Poking a finger at his chest, she declared. "You lied to me."

Damon shifted slightly on his feet and crossed his arms. The rest of the room was silent as he appraised her with a cool intensity only he could master. The beauty of every aesthetically perfect line of his face nearly got the best of her, but Elena defiantly lifted her chin.

In response, Damon's walls went up, giving nothing away. Blatantly dismissing the furious brunette in front of him, he raised a brow and addressed the blond vampire standing a few feet away. "Really, Caroline? You couldn't have waited a few more hours?"

"You know I'm a bad liar," Caroline voice was thin and reedy with distress, her shoulders slumped. "I told you that Elena would see right through me."

"You didn't even have to lie, though," A hint of exasperation bled through Damon's tight control. "You just had to keep your mouth shut."

"Well, that's a little hard to do when she's staring at the bloody mess you left in Alaric's apartment," Caroline turned to the social studies teacher. "Seriously, you couldn't have, like, hired a maid?"

"Hey, I'm not even living there," Alaric protested.

"Guys, none of that matters," Elena cried, glaring accusingly around the room at her friends. The game of pass-the-blame only intensified her feelings of betrayal, of being left out of the loop. They might as well have kept her shut up in the Salvatore house with another one of Bonnie's spells. Although her words were meant for all, Elena fixed her gaze on Damon. "The point is that you all kept the truth from me about what really happened to Stefan and I want to know why."

Elena waited for any one of her friends to speak, but it was clear that they had all silently deferred to Damon. The elder Salvatore said nothing, using the lengthy silence and his steady, unblinking stare as he always did – to intimidate and keep her off balance. She'd lost track of the number of times he'd successfully manipulated her this way and she'd be damned if she allowed it to happen tonight.

Eventually, after the standoff had reached uncomfortable heights and without offering one iota of explanation, Damon grabbed his jacket off the back of the couch and addressed the teacher. "Ric, give me your keys."

Alaric frowned, even as he began digging in his pocket. "What the hell for?"

Unperturbed, Damon shrugged on the leather jacket and grabbed Elena roughly by the upper arm. "She wants the truth. Do you want to me break in to your classroom or will you give me your damn keys?"

"There, was that so hard?" Alaric said with a patronizing smile.

Damon rolled his eyes and caught the keys as they arced through the air. "You kids be good and try not to burn the house down."

"What are you doing?" Elena protested in the entryway, finally jerking her arm free from Damon's grasp. In that moment, her confusing feelings toward the vampire took a backseat to a burning desire to punch him in the face. Hard.

Alone now with Elena, Damon uttered an exasperated curse. "You said you wanted the truth, so I'm taking you to the truth."

"Can't you just tell me?" she demanded.

"Can't you just trust me?" Damon shot back. In a move too fast for Elena's eyes to register, he grabbed the back of her neck and gently, but firmly pulled her closer. Automatically, her hands came up to ward him off and ended up trapped against his chest. Their foreheads nearly touching, Damon pitched his voice low, too low for even Caroline's super sensitive ears in the next room. "It's not good, Elena. And I don't think you're ready for them to know."

"I thought everybody already knew but me," Elena challenged, but something in his tone prompted her to speak equally low, a sub-whisper that only a vampire's sensitive ears could hear.

"Not all of it," Damon clarified with the subtlest shake of his head. "There are some things I thought you should hear first."

Damon said nothing more and it took Elena a second to realize he was waiting for her. Standing in the nearly dark entryway, she caught a glimpse of what lay behind his walls. Dread wrapped around and choked her stubborn pride. The vampire was offering her the truth. Not the watered down, safe for Elena version, but the unadulterated, messy, frightening truth.

Her acceptance was a living thing between them. Damon's hand behind her neck loosened, skirting her shoulder as it fell back to his side. Elena swallowed, stepping back and tugging her black leather jacket down around her slender hips. Then she ducked her head and tucked a strand of long dark hair behind her ear. "Okay. Lead the way."


Stefan came to his senses stretched out on a black leather sofa in a dimly lit room. The walls were draped in lush brocades and silk, all the colors vibrant and rich. Candles burned everywhere: in sconces near the arched doorway, dripping from candelabras on antique side tables and from a chandelier in the middle of the low ceiling. The shadows they cast danced and writhed about the room. There were no windows, making it nearly impossible to guess the time of day.

A soft whimper at his side made Stefan glance down to find his arm pinned beneath the delicate form of the brunette beauty he'd…played with the night before. Monica, he remembered. Or was she from two nights ago? Three? Rather than the blood stained clothes he'd been wearing when he left Mystic Falls, he was now clad in black pants, a pristine white shirt open at the collar and a black jacket. With detached curiosity he touched the girl's face, traced the bloodless lips and gaunt, hallowed out cheeks. The girl was nearly dead, drained of the blood that normally pumped through her veins, clinging to life by some quirk of biology. Bruises stood out beneath her closed lids and Stefan wondered dispassionately if they were from fatigue and lack of blood or the games he'd played with her.

The girl didn't look like Elena anymore. The long dark hair was dry and brittle and the once beautiful olive complexion was a sallow imitation of its former self. A memory teased his subconscious for one brief second before flaring to full glory in his mind's eye.

Walls of stone, tallow candles, the sharp scent of magic mixing with desperation and fear. Elena in a black dress, tucked back in the shadows and leaning on the jagged rocks for support. Calling to him. Begging him for help. For pity.

For blood.

Stefan inhaled sharply. Not Elena. Katherine. Trapped in the enchanted tomb by a witch's curse. The bloodlust roared within him, nearly blinding him with its intensity. He gripped the unconscious, nameless girl's face tight enough to crack the delicate bones of her jaw and searched the slack features for Katherine. He felt like he was waking up from a long sleep, his true purpose finally remembered.

"Ah, I see you're awake. Still enjoying your pet?" Klaus's unmistakably silky voice annoyed Stefan. The Original sauntered through the raised archway, a human girl under each arm. Stefan looked them over in a cursory fashion, vaguely disappointed. They'd do for the night, but neither one would satisfy his craving. Klaus sensed his disappointment. "Patience, Ripper. Too many of your pretty dead girls will spoil our fun."

Stefan scowled as Klaus led the obviously compelled girls to a chaise lounge, also black leather, in the opposite corner of the room. Details came back to him in a rush. They were in Charleston, South Carolina. The plain metal door Klaus had opened to him a few nights ago had led to a club of sorts, a decadent den of the debauched and demented. Scores of the Original's vampire disciples had littered the halls, blissfully unaware of whom and what he truly was. The plush room they now occupied was on an upper floor. A vampire VIP section, as Klaus put it - just one of the many perks to infinite wealth and equally infinite life.

At first Stefan had been awed, swayed as he was by the insatiable lust for blood. So many willing veins just waiting for the gentle – or not so gentle – prick of his fangs. Now a direction, a sense of purpose, was slowly taking hold.

"What's the plan, Klaus?" he demanded, his words thick around his descended fangs. "What's next?"

The Original raised sandy brows toward the black painted ceiling. "My you are an impatient one. This is no weekend holiday, Stefan. We are in this together, for the long haul as they say. Why rush?"

"You know that brush off may have worked a few days ago when I was seeing the moon dance and blood drip from the walls, but the novelty is wearing off," Stefan replied. Swinging his legs to the floor, the brunette rolled off the couch, landing in an unnoticed heap on the carpet. Stefan's focus was returning, ignited by the flash of recognition, of Katherine, in the nearly dead girl's face. This was how it happened, every time. Once the disorienting and overwhelming draw of the human blood settled into something resembling normalcy, the pull to find her set in and he was as helpless to it as the bloodlust.

As if he understood already, Klaus grinned. "So, you're coming into your own. Excellent."

"What are you talking about?"

"I wondered," Klaus began, trailing his fingers over the delicate throat of one of the girls curled up adoringly at his side. "How you could have developed that sterling reputation when you were so…unhinged. I see your focus is returning."

The fingers continued caressing the tantalizing flesh and Stefan's gaze zeroed in, his mouth watering as dual desires threatened his newfound balance. Longingly, he gazed at the brunette on the floor at his feet. "I need to know what you want from me."

"Very well," Klaus intoned. "I have studied your movements ever since the first stories of your Ripper glories found their way to me. Where others of our kind might have been overwhelmed by the sheer…depravity of your exploits, I looked deeper. I came to understand who you sought, probably because I, too, hunted for her."

Stefan's entire being stilled. He thought that knowledge was his alone. The girl on the floor beckoned and he had to touch her. A pang of distress shot through him as he once again saw Katherine in the tomb, emaciated and desperate. A shell of her vibrant self. The whisper of his rapidly receding humanity cried out for Elena, but faded without Stefan exerting more than the slightest effort to silence it.

"My pursuit pales to your single-minded purpose," Klaus continued in the background as Stefan reached out and stroked the living dead girl. "But what I lacked in passion, I made up for in subtlety and organization."

"Your point?" Stefan was on his knees now next to the girl, his voice distant, preoccupied as he was by the memory of the blood surging down his throat after he'd bit into her neck.

"Between the two of us, we shall find her with ease," The Original promised. "Katerina Petrova will be ours."

The words stoked the primal beast just under the surface and it grinned. Stefan's features, however, remained dispassionate. Gently, he plucked the girl from the floor and laid her out on the leather sofa, arranging her hands as a mortician would and reverently smoothing the wrinkles out of her dress. The silk was a deep purple. Monica's had been pink.

Stefan shook the girl's shoulder and after a moment her eyelids fluttered. When they opened, two dark blue orbs stared back at him, not the rich chocolate brown he wanted, gazing at him with something close to adoration. Stefan tilted his head and trailed his knuckles down her pallid cheek.

Then, without a word or flicker of emotion for the girl who wasn't Katherine or Elena, he snapped her neck.


The drive to the high school passed by silently, although the tension coming off of Elena spoke volumes. Damon spent the time monitoring the steady thrum of her heartbeat, noting the way it increased as they stepped out of the Camaro into the cool night air and made their way to the front entrance of the high school. The interior hallways were dark, but still he navigated them with ease. Away from the others and at the mercy of her inferior eyesight, Elena didn't fight the guiding hand at her elbow. The difference wasn't lost on Damon and he silently struggled with his crumbling resolve to be only what she needed, nothing more. It will always be Stefan. The mantra cut him, threatened to tear him apart, but he forced it through his brain over and over in time with his heavy footsteps.

Damon tried to keep the memory at arm's length, but what had happened in his bedroom the night Tyler Lockwood's bite had nearly killed him was always on his mind. Since Stefan had disappeared, Damon hadn't had much time for idle speculation, but whenever he slowed down long enough, errant thoughts of that night dominated his consciousness. Elena's arms around him, her soothing, tearful voice as he'd tried to say goodbye…her scent. The sensation of her lips against his and the way she tasted.

Shit.

They reached the classroom and Damon had to try two keys before finding the one that released the lock. Enough moonlight streamed through the open windows that Elena could see without any extra help. Physical distance did little to ease the ache in Damon's silent chest, but he deliberately dropped her arm and crossed to the opposite side of the room. Every little bit helped.

Emboldened now that she didn't need Damon to guide her, Elena went straight to the point. "Okay, so we're here. Now, why didn't you tell me that Stefan was drinking human blood again?"

"Because I saw what it did to you the last time he fell off the wagon. I needed to be sure," Damon replied, overly casual as he crossed his arms and leaned against a low bookshelf that ran the length of the windows. The wood was scarred and pitted with age, but sturdy. "Now I am."

Elena swallowed, her gaze drifting past his shoulder and out the window. The constant throbbing of her pulse doubled, although her face revealed nothing and Damon sensed she was fighting panic as she remembered the horrific consequences of Stefan's bloody rampage. "H-how do you know?"

The question held shades of disbelief and denial. Not an outright challenge to Damon's theory, but something that mirrored the vain hope he'd deluded himself with after finding the mess at Alaric's apartment. It wasn't that Damon had particularly cared who his brother killed. Hell, if the lightweight could somehow acclimate himself to human blood they'd all be better off, but he'd known what it would do to Elena and hurting her needlessly was simply unforgivable. Damon accepted that she relied on Stefan's unnatural moral standard to justify loving a vampire, even if he liked to keep that painful truth deeply buried.

Damon considered her for a moment, knowing he couldn't put it off any longer. The time had come to let Elena in on all his brother's quirks, no matter how messy or painful. Pushing off the bookshelf, Damon went to the whiteboard and grabbed a marker. He turned it over and over between his hands. He wasn't ready for this. He needed a drink.

"Jeremy's idea was a good one," Damon began and gestured to the map full of colored symbols. In the semi-darkness the red looked like flecks of blood long since dried. "He and Ric mapped this out. All the missing and dead in the area since Klaus and Stefan skipped town."

"There're so many," Elena shook her head, her eyes wide as she stepped around Alaric's desk and studied the board. She grasped at straws. "These can't all be Stefan and Klaus, though. Three different trails? They haven't had enough time."

"Unless Klaus is trying to buy time. I think he's got his little minions going off in different directions laying breadcrumbs for us to follow while he and Stefan get farther away."

For a long time, Elena stared at the map, each X and question mark hitting her with the full force of its meaning. Whatever she'd been preparing herself for, this wasn't it and when she spoke, the defiance and disbelief in her tone made it clear she wouldn't accept it. "No. No, this can't…I can't…There's just…too many. What-what are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to fight this? Klaus is ten steps ahead of us and if Stefan is drinking human blood again he won't even try to escape. How are we supposed to get Stefan back when doesn't want to be rescued, Damon? You remember what he was like last time and now…now he's got a crazy vampire-werewolf hybrid egging him on."

"Elena, relax. And you wonder why I didn't want you to know," Damon snapped, stopping her flood of words. He wasn't annoyed with her. Far from it, in fact. Ignoring what he felt for her and keeping her at arm's length was so much harder when she was emotional and he had to fight the instinct to hold her and soothe away what hurt.

Damon's harsh reply got the reaction he wanted. Elena sucked in a breath and glared at him sharply. He relaxed, at ease with her scathing gaze. This game was so much easier when she was mad at him. Crossing her arms, she squared her shoulders and tipped her chin toward the board. "What's the plan, then?"

"I think Klaus is playing the odds that we'll pick one trail and follow it together," Damon explained, once again on solid footing. "There's a good chance we'll pick wrong and he and Stefan have more time to…do whatever it is they're doing. So, we split up. You, Caroline and Tyler take the northern route. Alaric, Jeremy and Bonnie will go west and I'll go south. Whoever finds them first wins the shiny prize."

Elena had a better idea. "No way. I'm going with you."

Damon raised a brow and scoffed. "Like hell you are."

"Yes. I am," Elena vowed and grabbed the marker from his hands. Slapping it against the board like a pointer, she traced the southern trail. "You can play all you want like Klaus has you fooled, but I know you, Damon. If you're taking this trail, then I am taking it too."

"No, you're not," Damon slowly and deliberately advanced on her, while internally he kicked himself for not preparing for her incredibly predictable suicidal response.

"What do the circles mean?"

Damon gripped the marker ledge beneath the board, his hands on either side of Elena's hips. The trap was meant to intimidate, but fighting, challenging him at every move was within her comfort zone, too and she didn't flinch. Despite his earlier promise, he really didn't want to tell her this part, about how bad it really was. Elena waited.

"When Stefan falls off the wagon he's a completely different person."

"I know, Damon," she snapped. "I was there the last time it happened, remember?"

"No, you were there when Stefan slipped," Damon returned with equal venom. "What you saw was just the beginning. A sixteen-year-old drunk on his first taste of top shelf. Once his system gets used to it, he's a true predator. He enjoys the darkest aspects of vampirism without regret. He's focused and determined. Nothing gets in the way of what he wants."

"He's like Klaus," Elena whispered.

"Oh, he's worse," Damon argued, backing away from Elena and giving her the harsh, unvarnished truth. "Compared to Stefan, Klaus has…restraint."

Elena stared at him silently and Damon let every word sink in to their full effect. Her skin had paled considerably and beneath her jacket and t-shirt her chest rose and fell with shallow breaths. The moon had climbed higher, its light shifting and cloaking Elena in shadow. The symbols on the whiteboard were barely discernible, but she turned to them, her hair a dark curtain blocking her from his view. Eventually, she cleared her throat and spoke.

"The circles?"

An almost imperceptible quaver in her voice alerted Damon that she was close to the breaking point. Not that he could blame her. Even before he and Stefan had entered her life Elena had been through more than any seventeen year old should. The fact that she hadn't gone insane was either a testament to her strength or a sign that she was already crazy.

"I picked that route because Stefan has a type. He's as helpless to it as the bloodlust," he replied softly. No power in this world or the next could move him to be cruel now. "Petite, brunette, beautiful."

"What are you saying?" Elena looked at him sharply, denial etched into every line of her face. Damon had a violent desire to kill his brother as Elena's denial gave way to overwhelmed tears. "That all these girls…that they all…look like…"

Elena brought a trembling hand to her mouth to stifle a cry. With her other hand she gripped the eraser ledge. Her body started to shake with the silent sobs she'd been holding back for days. Just before she collapsed to the ground, Damon caught her by the waist and pulled her close, supporting her slight weight with ease. Without hesitation she curled her fingers into the open flaps of his jacket and clung to him, needing him in a way he'd longed for and now hated. Elena's pain was his pain; doubled because he knew of nothing to soften the blow.

Damon leaned against the whiteboard, not caring if he ruined the damnable trails of red, and closed his eyes. Elena in tears had been his worst case scenario when he had imagined coming clean, but now he wondered if the breakdown had been inevitable. Resilient as Elena was, too much had happened too fast. Damon wrapped his arm tighter around her waist, pulling her body completely flush to his, and cursed Stefan's weakness for human blood and the stupid, undeserved loyalty to his brother that led him into making deals with a devil like Klaus. Elena's hair was like silk beneath his fingers as he trailed his hand through it over and over. Meaningless words of comfort came to mind, but he couldn't bring himself to utter them. Instead he pressed his lips to her crown and silently reaffirmed his vow to get Stefan back – no matter what the cost.

For a long time Elena did nothing but sob as he held her, but eventually Damon caught words that turned into phrases of recrimination.

"All my fault," Her voice was still muffled by tears and his jacket. "He's looking for me and now they're dead."

Damon frowned and grabbed Elena's upper arms, forcing her to her feet. Cradling her tear-stained face in his hands, his thumbs automatically brushed away the faint tracks. "No, Elena, you don't understand. Listen to me. It's not you."

Elena frowned, confusion momentarily overcoming hysteria. "Then…who?"

"Katherine," Damon grimaced. "Stefan's looking for Katherine."