A/N: In which Damon does an assessment. This chapter is actually in response to a reviewer, ShyButterflyKiss, who asked for Damon's POV on the situation. Early gift: I'm ahead by two free writes, so expect another one of these things in a few days. Enjoy.

What's The Rule on Mourning?

More traumatic things had happened in his life. War, Katherine, vampirism. So many people had died. He outlived or killed a vast majority of friends, lovers, or acquaintances. Rick wasn't the first friend whose death Damon witnessed, it just felt like it. The sight of Rick lifeless shocked him. He recalled the first bloodied body he had ever seen, out on the battlefield during the Civil War. The listless eyes and the stench and the brown, clotted clothing and the slackjawed agony forever sketched on the man's face followed him back to Mystic Falls. He had seen plenty worst from that point on. He even became the embodiment of a nightmare, but that initial shock, that terror upon witnessing the brutality of mortality and empathy clung to him, ready to be revisited. And then Rick died. And it was that shock a thousand times over because earlier that day Damon had stormed his office and bitched about haggling with teenagers over security while consuming half a bottle of Rick's best malt.

Eight hours later, his only friend was killed by his girlfriend. Intellectually, Damon justified the killing. He saw Rick reach out a bloody hand to Bonnie, knew what had to be done, saw Bonnie hesitate, then the power consumed her and Rick went limp. He knew someone had to die in order for them to live. How many times did he ready the sacrificial altar to save Elena? Too many times, the living part of him said. Too many times, and now you have to reap. And so he did.

He saturated himself in abandon. At first, alcohol. Prodigious amounts of alcohol, then sex got thrown in, and before long, a body count. Elena came after him after four days of gallivanting. He was dancing and feeding and drinking in the middle of a too crowded nightclub in some scene district of D.C. No one would remember anything tomorrow, not even how five people ended the night dead in corners. He turned and there she was, haloed in electric blue. She passed through the crowd like silk through fingers. He watched her coming, watched the colors shifting over her face, and had a moment of providence. Elena reached him, touched him, used him as leverage to pull herself forward, and in so doing fell into his orbit. It was instantaneous. All he had to do was kiss her, sweep her in, press her close, and kiss her. She tasted the blood on his lips. From there, Damon could only classify it as a line from a Queen song: "I'm a rocket ship on my way to Mars, on a collision course."

A week of Elena. Heaven. They forgot, together. They fed, together. They drank and partied and fucked and it was glorious. He had everything he wanted and all it took was Rick dying. And then the following week came and clarity began to assert its dominance. Clarity in the form of Stefan. He tracked them down as a pack of hybrids found them. Damon went sober the moment an guttural scream silenced the surrounding action. Stefan lay on the slick alley cement. The hybrid reared back, ready to deliver the death blow. Elena pounced. She separated his head from his body and tossed it aside like a dirty rag. Elena went to her knees, hands trembling over a still and ashen Stefan. It was all Damon could do not to lose the rest of his shit.

Without so much as a blink, Damon punched the hearts out of the remaining hybrids. He went to his brother, saw the stab wound in his chest, watched the gray withering of his face. A piece of the wood had splintered off. A slow but eventual death. Extraction would have to be finite. His hands shook. Elena looked at him. What do we do, she asked. She kept asking and he kept shaking and Stefan kept dying. A woman stepped out from a side door, looked at the scene, disappeared, and returned with a dark wooden box. She had rings on her fingers and reddish brown hair in silken dreads. She smelled like lavender and patchouli. A witch.

A witch saved his brother without a word. She removed the splinter and gave him some blood from the brachial artery, stopping the cut with a white poultice from her box. She stood up, gazed at Stefan, then Elena, then at him. Did she recognize him? Damon saw Bonnie in her hazel eyes. Stefan sputtered back to life and his attention went to his brother. When he looked up again, the witch was gone.

The aftermath Damon found trivial. He wasn't for tears and declarations and prostrations. Stefan felt betrayed. Who hasn't? Elena was confused. Right. He was impassive to the tension and hurt. Stefan was alive. That was enough. Or he thought it was.

"You've been avoiding me," Elena said. Damon looked up from his glass. He was just about to pour when she sauntered in. The sight of her produced body aches. He set the glass down, forgot about the scotch.

"Not true. I've been underfoot the entire week. You're the one doing the avoiding."

Elena cast her eyes down in a display of flustered embarrassment. She tucked hair behind an ear. Damon counted the seconds before her brown eyes flitted to his face. Ten.

"How do you do it?"

Damon narrowed an eye. "Do what?"

"Forget about the people you've killed? Because I feel sick, like I want to regurgitate all that blood, give it back, make them alive."

Damon sighed. He took the glass in hand again. "First, that would be absolutely disgusting. Second, you can't bring them back. Third, I carry all the guilt so you don't have to. My capacity for death and destruction is virtually limitless."

Elena watched him pour. She waited until he drank it down and poured a second before asking, "So humorous denial and lots of alcohol?"

Damon toasted her. "Yes, exactly. Denial. Like I say you did all that because you were unable to help yourself, being a baby vampire and all that. The sex can be explained away under that heading, just in case that was the next topic of conversation."

"It wasn't, but since you brought it up..." Elena rested a hand on his drinking arm. One touch immobilized him. She took the glass, set it down, and filled the empty space with her hand. Her eyes never left his as she kissed his knuckles.

"I don't want to deny anything. It wasn't because I was out of my mind. I...I wanted to be with you. Because ever since I met you, you've fascinated me. And you excite me. You challenge me. And I need that. I've longed for that. So I won't deny it. I want to face it. With you."

Damon squeezed her hand. Flesh and bone and heat. He kissed her, soft and slow, falling between the folds of her lips and into her silk strands, losing his sense of self, slipping off into Elena-land. He was nearly there too when green eyes and a crooked smile arced across his brain. He drew back as if stung. The air in his lungs grew stale, the elation he felt soured in his mouth. Elena gazed at him with a knowing that made him uneasy.

"What is it?"

Damon stepped away from her. Bonnie loomed in the background. She had always been there, waiting. He had left her waiting.

"I can't do this," Damon said. He looked at Elena. "You know why."

"Bonnie."

They stared at each other. Damon broke the contest. "You're all I've ever wanted."

"I know. But am I still who you want?"

Damon looked up. Elena was gone. Her question rang in his mind. Am I still who you want? He couldn't answer.