A/N: Happy Australia Day, everybody (well, technically it's past midnight here, but whatever)! Hope you all made it through the 100th episode unscathed. I love Katherine, so my feelings on the matter are mixed, but how great was it to see Alaric and Jenna and Elijah and even Vicki and John again?! I was in tears, honest tears (actually, I'm writing this author's note in advance, so the episode just aired, and I'm still not over it). I'm uploading this from my phone while away on holiday, so I hope it works okay.

Now, onto the matter at hand. Thank you so much for all your reviews and favourites and alerts in the past week. Congratulations to Jessjunky and Scarlett2112 for being the first to pick up on the chapter titles; I was wondering how long it would take for somebody to catch on! So, yes, the chapters are structured and titled deliberately after the five stages of grief in the Kübler-Ross model. It was the idea I built the story around, after I made the decision to turn it into fanfiction. I hope you enjoy stage three: Bargaining.

I just wanted to clarify one thing, and it's my fault that this wasn't more explicitly stated: Katherine did not commit suicide on May 13th, the same night she was caught cheating. There was a period of a few weeks between the breakup and her death; the timeline picked up with the funeral in mid-June. I'm sorry for any confusion, and I'll try to clear up the issue when I have time to revise the earlier chapters.

Disclaimer: I don't own TVD or its characters or the song Dust to Dust by The Civil Wars; all rights to their respective owners.


BARGAINING

You've held your head up
You've fought the fight
You bear the scars
You've done your time
Listen to me
You've been lonely, too long

ELENA

After hours of pointless staring at the blank page of my notebook, I huff in annoyance and look desperately around my room for some inspiration. I've always loved writing, but for the past few weeks, I've been unable to craft a single sentence. Instead, my mind keeps wandering to Damon, and subsequently, Katherine, and I'm too lost in my memories of the one real conversation I had with her to concentrate any longer.

Exasperated, I slam my book closed and switch on my ceiling fan to get some air circulating in here. The heat has been unforgiving for the past few days, rarely dropping below ninety degrees until late at night, with the humidity making leaving the house almost intolerable. It's the fourth of July, but I don't feel much like partying, even though the rest of Mystic Falls is braving the mid-afternoon sun for the national holiday.

Today only serves to remind me of what I've lost, and I'm not too keen on celebrating that.

When I was younger, my family used to spend the week of July fourth at our lake house. Jeremy and I would go fishing and boating on the lake with Dad, and at night we'd climb up on the roof with Mom and she'd point out all the constellations and tell us stories about them until we fell asleep.

After they died, Jenna offered to take us to the lake house, but we all agreed it didn't feel right. Instead, we'd spend a few hours at the annual town fair and then retreat to our home, watch the fireworks together, maybe reminisce about how our lives used to be before death tore them apart.

Poor Damon, I sigh to myself. I've had years to grieve the deaths of my parents and the pain still burns as fresh as if it were yesterday. Damon's had a matter of weeks, and he's still alone in the labyrinth, trying to find his way out.

His solitude may be partially of his own design, perhaps, but I've still been in Stefan's ear, trying to convince him to push until Damon lets somebody in. Stefan, however, seems set on the fact that I'm the only person with a chance of breaking down his emotional barricade, despite Damon wanting absolutely nothing to do with me anymore for reasons I don't understand. I just wish he had somebody who could talk to him, actually make him listen, but if he won't have me and his own father and brother turn their backs on him, who else is left?

"Elena?" Jenna taps lightly at the door before she sticks her head in, a concerned expression on her face. "What's wrong?"

I hadn't even realized I'd been crying. Hurriedly, I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand and force a smile. "Oh, nothing. I'm just being silly."

Jenna softly closes the door behind her, despite nobody else being in the house, and crawls onto my bed to sit beside me. "Elena, if there is one thing I know about you, it's that you are far from silly." She pulls my head into her lap and starts stroking my hair, a gesture that reminds me so painfully of my mother that I feel the tears building up again.

"It's just everything, you know? Today, especially with Jeremy not being here… and all this stuff these past few weeks with Katherine has reminded me of what it felt like when Mom and Dad died. It's just been a bit overwhelming."

We sit in silence for a while, listening to the whirring of the ceiling fan and the distant music of the annual Independence Parade.

"So it has nothing to do with Damon, then?" Jenna questions shrewdly, her eyes on the single word I'd apparently managed to write in my notebook during my daydreaming. I swallow the lump in my throat that appears at the mention of his name and hastily scribble a line through it.

"I don't know; maybe, I guess. He won't talk to me anymore. He won't talk to anybody, but I know he needs help to get through this. I'm really worried about him."

"It's not always your responsibility to fix everybody's problems, Elena. It's a beautiful, selfless trait that you have, but sometimes you put too much stress on yourself to help others and forget to look out for yourself."

"But he is my responsibility. He has nobody else that cares enough to look out for him."

"He has a family-"

"A skeleton of one. His mother's not in the picture, his father is detached at best, and his brother is sick of bearing the blows when Damon lashes out. It's only me, and Damon refuses to let me in." I succumb to a fresh wave of sobs and Jenna hugs me tightly, whispering nonsense words in my ear as I try to control my breathing.

"What happened between you two? From the handful of times I've seen you two together, you've seemed like good friends?"

I laugh slightly. "'Friends' is a bit of a stretch. We weren't close; we didn't have heart-to-hearts or anything like that. I was just… there, the night he found out about Katherine's infidelity, the night she died, her funeral. We talked a little. I just wanted to help him through it, you know? But it backfired and now he hates me and I don't even know what I did."

"He doesn't hate you."

"He does! You should have seen the way he looked at me, Jenna; if looks could kill…" I force myself to sit up, wringing my hands together. "He said I was always interfering, that I shouldn't bother calling him. I don't know what to do; he needs help but he won't let me give it to him."

Jenna looks pensive for a moment. "Maybe there's another way."

"What do you mean?"

"I can ask Ric if he'll have a word to Damon…" she trails off, lost in thought. Alaric is my aunt's sort-of boyfriend and the head of the history department at the high school. I've never had him as a teacher, but Damon was in his class last year.

"You think he would?"

"Yeah. Ric told me once that Damon reminded him a lot of himself. Maybe he can get him to open up a little."

"Thank you," I say gratefully, giving her a sideways bear hug, and she laughs.

"Don't thank me yet! And Elena?" Her tone softens, taking on a serious note. "He doesn't hate you, okay? I promise. He lost somebody he loved. He's just looking for somewhere to place the blame."

I nod shakily. "I know. But blaming me isn't going to bring her back."


DAMON

The awful heat wave we had for the first week of July has finally broken, and the miserable gray skies and intermittent rain outside are a perfect representation of my current mood. I'm seated in my favorite spot at a bar on the edge of town, where I'm less likely to run into somebody who knows my ID is faker than Rebekah Mikaelson's hair extensions.

Scratch that. My old history teacher just wandered in.

As much as I try to duck my head and hide my face behind my whiskey, he spots me and slips easily onto the barstool beside me, ordering 'the usual'.

"Breathe, Salvatore. I'm not going to call the cops. You've earned a drink or two."

I'm not about to tell him that I'm on my third for the day, so I just watch him, fascinated, as he tips his glass towards me before downing half of it in one go.

Seeing a teacher outside of school is as weird as seeing a polar bear in a desert.

Mr. Saltzman throws back his head and laughs uproariously, and I realize too late that I voiced my thought aloud. I shrug apologetically. "Sorry, but it's true."

"Don't I know it, kid." We sit in comfortable silence for a moment, before he turns and fixes me with a hawk-sharp glare. "So, how are you doing?"

I roll my eyes. "I knew that was coming. You're not my teacher anymore, Mr. Saltzman; you don't have any obligation to look after me."

"You're right on both counts. Firstly, you don't have to call me 'Mr. Saltzman'. Just 'Ric' is fine. And secondly, I don't have an obligation to you, but I do have an obligation to my girlfriend, and I happen to know that her niece has been moping around the house lately. Care to shed any light on the situation?"

I shrug, opting to finish my drink instead, and tapping twice on the bar to order my next.

"She's worried about you."

"Tell her to stop sticking her nose in where it isn't wanted," I sneer.

"Maybe she has reason to be concerned. I mean, you're eighteen years old, alone in a dive of a bar, on your," his eyes flick down as the bartender sets my glass in front of me, "fourth drink, and it's barely three in the afternoon." Shit, nothing gets past this guy.

This time, I didn't say it aloud, but he seems to know what I'm thinking anyway. "How did I know that? I've been there, Damon. I've been you. My wife died of cancer a few years back. I spent three months almost catatonic, and another three having violent, angry outbursts at people for no apparent reason. I pushed away everybody that cared about me, and it took almost losing my license to teach, my whole chance at a future before I built up the courage to move on with my life. I could have done it so much faster if I had someone willing to help me through it. You're lucky to have Elena. She's not going to give up on you, and that's the kind of person you want in your corner right now."

I don't say anything, because I know he's right.

"That's enough about Elena, though. I want to know how you are feeling."

I sigh heavily. "I keep thinking about what I'd change if I had the chance."

"And what's that?"

"I'd pay more attention; I'd push her to tell me what was going on in her life that made her so unhappy. I should have known, Ric. I was the only person close enough to her to be able to see it, but I keep going back through everything in my mind and wondering where the signs were, because I can't see a fucking thing."

"Katherine had been hiding her pain for a very long time, Damon. She was an expert. If she didn't want you to see, you wouldn't."

"I'd try to be enough for her," I admit quietly. "If she'd loved me more, if I'd given her more attention, she wouldn't have cheated, and we'd never have fallen apart the way we did."

"Damon, you can't blame yourself. Katherine's emotions were damaged long before you dated her. None of this was your fault."

"Sometimes I wake up, and I've forgotten. I feel so much lighter, and happier, and I can breathe again. Then it all comes flooding back: the fight, the call from her father, the funeral, and the pain of it all is worse than ever."

"Have you thought about seeing a grief counselor?"

I scowl. "I'm not seeing a shrink."

"There's nothing wrong with it. It doesn't mean that there's something wrong with you, either. They're there to help you accept the loss of somebody you cared about, and move past it."

"I don't need a shrink." I speak more firmly this time.

"Okay, okay."

I stare hollowly down at my drink again.

"There is nothing you can do to bring her back, Damon," Ric says softly. "It's time you stopped living in the past and beating yourself up about the should have's and could have's and what if's."

He claps me on the back as he stands, emptying his glass and setting it down on the counter with a fifty, presumably to cover both of our bills. "Talk to Elena." He nods to a group of people at the pool table as he leaves.

"Thanks, Ric," I murmur, long after the door swings closed behind him.


I sit in our regular booth at the Coffee Corner, nervously chewing on my lip as I wait for Elena. I simply sent her a text asking to meet here at six so we could talk, and I didn't get a reply, so I'm not even sure she'll show up. Maybe it's too late, and Ric was wrong, and she did give up on me.

Just as this thought crosses my mind, the bell over the door tinkles and I look up to see Elena walk in. She doesn't look any different, I think to myself. Perhaps the circles under her eyes are a little more pronounced than they were the last time I saw her, and there's a glint of anxiety in her gaze too.

"I wasn't sure if I should come," she admits softly, looking shyly at her feet.

"I'm sorry I said those things to you. Let's just say, I've had some sense talked into me since then."

She half-smiles and takes a seat opposite me, looking a little more relaxed, and I breathe out slowly.

"How are you?" I ask lamely, unable to think of any other small talk to ease the awkwardness.

"I'm okay," she replies, after a brief pause. "You?"

"Getting there." This time, the smile she gives me is bright, electric, like I've just made her fucking week by admitting I'm trying to get better.

And just like that, the tension is broken.

We start to chat, like we used to before everything went to shit. She tells me about this new book series she's found; I tell her about the spectacular sight of Carol Lockwood, Mason's mother and wife of the mayor, falling face-first into Sheila Bennett's apple and rhubarb pie at the Fourth of July festival. I'm so caught up in our laughter that I don't even notice Mason enter the café and walk up to our table, as if mentioning his surname summoned him, until he clears his throat, loudly.

"What's new, Salvatore? So, this is your rebound… Got a thing for brunettes?" His harsh and unpleasant laughter sends chills through my body, but I force myself to ignore him and remain calm.

"I didn't think weak little Elena Gilbert had it in her to seduce a guy whose last girlfriend offed herself just a month ago. Color me impressed."

Elena's face turns scarlet and I clench my fists, knowing that if he doesn't stop I'm going to lose it, especially with the amount of alcohol I still have in my system.

"Leave, Mason," I hiss, through clenched teeth.

"Be careful of him, Elena. Wouldn't want you to end up the same way Katherine did!" He crows victoriously, but it's cut short as my first punch hits him straight in the jaw, followed by one to his stomach. It takes him a second to get his bearings, but with a vicious snarl, he strikes back at me, and my alcohol-inhibited reflexes fail to properly block the move.

All I see is blind rage. I'm vaguely aware of Elena screaming at me in the background, but my focus is on the sick bastard in front of me, as if landing enough punches will somehow get justice for Katherine, get revenge for his screwing with my relationship which eventually led to her suicide.

There, I've found it: someone to blame.

Mason kicks hard out at me and it lands straight in my chest, sending me flying backwards. I'm winded, and as I'm incapacitated, he lands a hard punch to my face. I'm spitting out blood as I sit up and lunge for his throat, pinning him down and pressing my thumbs into his windpipe.

"It's your fault she's dead!" I shout in his face, spit flying, my eyes stinging, and I see the fear in his gaze as he starts to scrabble helplessly at my hands. "She was fragile and you took advantage of her! You destroyed her!"

"Damon!" I can feel Elena's hands on my arms, and I reluctantly let go of Mason as the sound of approaching sirens becomes clearer. Wordlessly, I turn to her, and she wraps her arms around me, tightly. "Killing him won't bring her back," she whispers in my ear, over and over.

At some point, I realize the burning feeling in my eyes was tears, and I'm sobbing into her shoulder, and I can tell from her shaky and irregular breaths that she's crying too. The sheriff arrives, takes one look at the situation, and sends Mason to the hospital. She tries briefly to convince me to go, too, but I refuse outright and she concedes, going to talk to the stunned-looking café owner instead.

When I start to calm down, I start to realize how much pain I'm in. Elena's leaning her head against my shoulder and holding onto my forearm like I'll go after Mason to finish him off if she lets go. I look down at her and I'm shocked to see her covered in blood, for a moment thinking she was hurt in the fray. She notices me staring and is quick to reassure me.

"Not mine," she breathes, and I sigh with relief. "Yours."

I must look like shit.

After the onlookers who've stuck around convince her that Mason goaded me into fighting him, Sheriff Forbes lets me go with a stern warning.

"This is strike two, Damon. Don't let there be a third."

With Elena's help, I manage to limp outside and she helps me into her car.

"I should really take you to the hospital," she says worriedly. "You could have a concussion and you look like you might need stitches."

"I'll be fine," I tell her tersely.

By unspoken agreement, we drive back to her house. Her aunt stares at us open-mouthed as we walk through the door, but Elena gives her a don't ask look and Jenna wisely backs out of the kitchen and heads upstairs.

I lean against the counter as Elena gets a first aid kit, some cold water and towels, reminded of the last time she helped bandage my wounds in this room. She's clearly on the same wavelength as she glances up at me with a small smile and asks, "Why am I always cleaning you up?"

She starts with my face, wiping off some of the excess blood before attending to the cuts as gently as she can. The antiseptic she uses stings like all hell, but I'm determined not to react. After cleaning my hands and giving me some ice for the rest of my bruises, she straightens up, satisfied, and playfully waves her finger at me in reprimand.

"There'd better not be a next time, Mr. Salvatore!"

I laugh and grab one of the clean towels without thinking, reaching for her face to clean my blood off. Her smile drops, her eyes wide and staring into mine intently.

"Sorry," I mumble, thinking my sudden movement must have spooked her.

Painfully slowly, I wipe away the last traces of blood from her face and neck, unable to break eye contact with her. I toss the toweling aside and lean in, my hand coming up to caress her face. Her eyelashes flutter closed, and I lean closer, entranced, feeling her shallow breaths on my lips.

Just as I shut my eyes and close the distance between us, I hear the clattering of footsteps coming into the kitchen.

"Did you guys need- whoa!"

Elena and I spring apart, breathing hard, and her aunt stares at us, her mouth hanging open.

"I- uh, I'm… sorry? I'm just going… back upstairs. Yep." Jenna retreats at a speed that would be comical were it not for the circumstances.

I press my eyes tightly closed, trying to silence every thought and emotion currently clamoring for attention in my mind. Elena starts cleaning up, stuffing the dirty toweling in the trash and re-packing the first aid kit.

"Elena," I begin, the word cracking in my throat.

"Damon, I'm so sorry…"

"It was an accident," I blurt. "A mistake. We're both upset. It's been a stressful day."

For a fraction of a second, she looks hurt, but I blink and it's gone. I must have imagined it.

"Yes," she says shortly.

"I should- uh… I should go."

"Yes."

I grab my wallet and keys from the counter. "Thanks."

"You're welcome."

I'm out of the door in a flash, taking deep breaths to ease the sickening guilt swelling up in my stomach. Katherine.

My traitorous memory is dragging up every moment Katherine and I spent together, every kiss, every touch, and replaying it in my mind. I drop to my knees as soon as I'm out of sight of Elena's house, dry heaving into the bushes, bile burning at the back of my throat, my bruised stomach and ribs aching with every convulsion.

But part of me, part of me is wondering what it would have been like to kiss Elena, what it would have been like if I hadn't hesitated, what it would have been like if we hadn't been interrupted.

Should have.

Could have.

What if?


A/N: Three chapters down, two to go! Have a great week. ~ Kim