"Stefan, are you sure he's out here?" Elena asks doubtfully, picking her way through the brush and brambles of Old Wood, lifting her feet high like a doe so as not to trip over something. Behind her, Stefan walks quickly, sure-footed, the predator in their equation… Except that his hand is on her back, gently supportive, still nervous over her fainting spell earlier that morning, though she's told him a dozen times that she is fine.
"Yes, Elena, I've told you - he can shield his presence from me, but can you honestly think of anywhere else he'd be?"
"Another girl's bed," Elena mumbles under her breath. Stefan pretends as though he has not heard.
Half an hour later, school is about to start.
"You need to leave," Elena says casually, not looking at the dark-haired beauty beside her. She can feel Stefan's confusion without looking at him, anyway.
"What for?"
"School, silly," she reminds him, though of course he hasn't forgotten. "If the attacks are really starting up again, you have to be very visible." They stop dead, each obeying some physical cue from the other. Elena turns, and Stefan is leaning against the rough bark of an oak tree, leather-sheathed arms folded tight across his chest. He is an ice sculpture, frozen, unmovable.
"I am not going to school."
"Stefan," she murmurs, using that special coercive tone, looking up at him, making her eyes extra-wide and pleading.
He groans, tries to look away - "Elena, please don't" - but she is already advancing on him, her hand coming to a rest on the cool leather of his jacket, directly over his heart. She sees the moment of change in his eyes - sees the slight give, the bend, the break. And he is hers, just like that.
"Alright," he sighs, taking her hand in his, tugging, turning away towards where the trees get lighter - back towards town. Elena resists.
He says nothing, looking back over his shoulder at her. They stand in deadlock for exactly twenty two seconds without breaking the silence.
Finally - "You're not coming with me, are you?" he asks.
Elena shakes her head. "I need to see Damon."
Stefan's eyes squeeze shut, and he pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and pointer fingers. When he finally looks up again, his expression is remote, an unemotional mask that she is not used to. "Why?" he asks tonelessly, green eyes devoid of their usual spark, boring into hers like laser beams, making her squirm under his empty stare.
"I - what do you mean why? Because it's Damon, and I care about him," she says this quietly, her eyes on her gray converse sneakers slipping into the mud. "No matter what he does, no matter what his choice is, Stefan, please, I need to just -"
"Need to do what, Elena?" his voice, still distant, rings in her ears, and for once, she doesn't know what to say, how to fix the emptiness in his eyes. When it comes to Damon, she never knows the what or the why, only that she can't stay away from him. She can't -
"I can't give up on him," she whispers, pulling her jacket tighter around her. "I can't. I thought you, of all people, would understand that."
"I don't," Stefan says, his expression morphing from that unemotional mask into something ugly - bitter and anguished. Elena isn't sure which one she prefers. "Damon is a monster. A killer. And don't think for one minute that he would have any qualms with doing the same to your best friends as he did to those girls last night. He's irredeemable, damned, you can't save him -"
"Then I'll die trying."
Elena holds Stefan with her eyes, watches something in his expression break.
"If you aren't back at the boarding house by nightfall, I will find you," Stefan says briskly. And then he is gone in a whirl of black leather and dark jeans. For a moment, Elena is paralyzed, immobile as a mannequin. She is unable to think, to breathe, to process what just happened.
Me and Stefan just had our first real fight, she thinks as the reality sinks in. Over Damon. God help me.
Her breath catches around the lump that has formed in her throat, and Elena leans against the tree that Stefan so recently vacated, trying to slow her heartbeat, trying to keep the saltwater from spilling over the bottoms of her eyelids. She wraps her arms around herself and slides down to the damp earth, hands locked in front of her knees, eyes squeezed shut.
Stefan, she thinks, I'm sorry. And she is. So sorry - for this, for not letting Damon go though she shouldn't give a damn about him one way or another -
And then she feels it. A sudden wave of power washes through the woods, quieting the birdcalls, stilling the air. Nothing moves. Elena stops breathing. The tiny hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, a natural warning, something that tells her to be afraid, to run -
But Elena isn't going anywhere.
She opens her eyes, tilts her head up.
Damon is directly in front of her. He is at the top of his game today - lounging grace and staggering perfection, perfectly in control of his surroundings, perfectly in control of her. Those black eyes capture her, hold her, examine her as if she is a bottle of perfectly aged wine that he is considering selecting for dinner.
"Damon." His name rushes out of her on a breath.
"Why, hello, Beautiful," he smirks devilishly, handsome features twisting just right - giving him that dangerously beautiful expression that he pulls off so well… "I was wondering how long it would take you to get rid of my brother."
