A/N: Hiii, I'm sorry about the shortness of this chappie - I know I suck - but I'll try to make it up to you :D

I hope you like it and please review!

xoxo Ascha

Chapter 12:

Mystic Falls, Virginia 2011

A week passed by before Damon returned to Elizabeth with blood. She was starting to feel weak after being constantly injected with vervain and cut all over her body. She was also starving, but she remembered one of Elijah's techniques and just tried shutting out all the pain in her body.

She hadn't said a word to Damon ever since he captured her, because why should she help him when he clearly wasn't the man she fell in love with anymore? He had changed. No, he had become just like Katherine, who apparently was staying in the boarding house without knowing that her sister was down in the basement.

"Here," Damon said, letting her have some blood. Elizabeth drank every bit up of it, until he suddenly moved the bottle away from her and flashed one of those smug smirks of his. "I'm fairly impressed by your endurance, but can't please just tell me what's going on. I really don't want to hurt you again."

Elizabeth still didn't say anything, but just closed her eyes for a moment and then let her tears out. She couldn't hold them back anymore and wished sincerely that he would just kill her already, so she didn't have to suffer that much.

"Kill me, Damon…" she said hoarsely. "Please."

Damon sighed heavily, but he shook his head and removed the chains instead. Elizabeth was too weak to move, so she just sat there and cried.

"Elizabeth, I'm not going to kill you. Why would I kill you when I…" Damon stopped himself, because he had no idea that he still had those feelings for her. "I still love you, okay?"

Elizabeth finally looked up and met his eyes with hers. She tried raising her hands to touch him, but they felt like they had gone numb.

"If you really love me, then you wouldn't do this to me," she said. "You wouldn't ask me to explain why I went to Elijah for protection."

Damon looked at her for a moment, but he knew that she was right. He nodded and took her up into her arms, then carried her upstairs to his bedroom where he gently placed her on his bed. Luckily, Katherine was busy somewhere else, so they had the entire boarding house for themselves. Well… sort of. Elijah was still lying dead in the other cellar.

"Does she know I'm here?" Elizabeth asked weakly as Damon helped her get her clothing off so she could take a warm bath in his standalone bathtub.

"No, I didn't want her to have the pleasure of seeing you like this after what you told me," Damon said, helping her into the tub. Elizabeth took a deep breath and exhaled, trying to relax after being locked up in a basement for a whole week. "I'm sorry I harmed you. I just… I was so angry with you after you suddenly left the way you did. I returned from the war earlier than I should have, because I was thinking about… asking you of something very important."

Elizabeth quickly looked up at Damon, trying to figure out if he was being serious. Had he really been that much in love with her? Was he really going to ask that question?

"It's okay, Damon. I got what I deserved…" she said and smiled weakly. "You really want to know why I'm so scared of Klaus?"

Damon nodded and sat down next to the tub. He wanted to know what she had done to him since she was so much more frightened of him than Katherine seemed to be.

"I know that Katherine fled from him a long time ago and that he killed her-no your family, but other than that I don't know so much about what really happened." Damon said.

Elizabeth sighed and leaned back in the bathtub, thinking back to the very beginning – to the day where her life changed. She still remembered that day as if it happened only yesterday. She even remembered her first taste of Klaus's blood and how everything suddenly went blank. And then there was of course that day when she killed the young servant and slaughtered all the other servants.

"I met Klaus at a ball in 1491… Katherine was supposed to go too, but she got ill after eating some poisonous berries. Again," she said, making Damon smile a bit. "He was so charming, so… mysterious, and… he saved me from a vampire, who tried killing me. I saw what he really was and ran away to the woods where he finally caught up with me. And before I knew it, I could hear screams coming from the party and the mansion was on fire. Werewolves had come to town because of Klaus. He asked me if I wanted to become like him. I said yes and left my home behind. I left Katerina behind…"

Damon raised an eyebrow. "And that's why she's pissed at you?"

Elizabeth shook her head hesitantly. "Only partly though. After a year of killing hundreds of innocent humans with Klaus and becoming a monster like him, we finally returned to Bulgaria and I was forced to choose between Katerina and my freedom. I chose Katerina and helped her flee. But because I did that Katerina became a vampire, Klaus became pissed, and our parents were brutally killed."

"Oh…" Damon sighed again and looked deep into her eyes. He could see the pain in her eyes, the utter fear of being found by Klaus, and the guilt she felt. "Elizabeth, I promise you I won't let Klaus get to you. What you did for Katherine… You were just trying to help her and you shouldn't feel guilty of wanting to help your own sister. I would probably have done the same thing for Stefan. Hell, I did help Stefan once…"

Elizabeth rested her arms on the edge of the bathtub, sitting so close to Damon that their lips were only inches from touching again. She gently stroked his cheek and leaned in to kiss him, missing the touch of his lips. She knew that it was wrong of her to do this, but Elijah was dead and gone. She didn't have anyone left but him to cling on and needed his protection.

"Oh, look at that! Dear Elizabeth has finally returned!" they heard a voice say behind them.

Damon turned around, scowling at Katherine who stood in the doorway with a smirk on her lips. But Elizabeth wasn't scared of seeing her sister again. She was more… relieved, because maybe she was able to get through to her this time.

"Katerina," Elizabeth said in fluent Bulgarian, then continued saying in their language. "You came here to hurt me too or to finally kill me? Go ahead, I don't care anymore."

Katherine snorted and walked up to her sister, saying in Bulgarian. "So you will be spared from being tortured of Klaus when he finds us? No, thank you. If I have to suffer then you have to too. After all… you're the reason why we're both in this mess in the first place."

Elizabeth glared venomously at Katherine for a couple of minutes, until Katherine finally left again and let her alone with Damon.

"Not kind words, I take?" Damon guessed.

Elizabeth shook her head. "I don't blame her though. It is my fault that we're in this mess and I'm going to get us out of it one way or the other…" she said.

"Not alone, are you," Damon quickly said firmly. "We're going to help you and you're going to let us help you. There is no way that I'm going to let that freak put his hands on you."

Elizabeth giggled softly and slipped her arms around him, pressing her lips against his again passionately. They stayed at the bathtub for a couple of minutes and just kissed, but then Damon got the "great" idea of joining her in the bathtub and quickly stripped down. Elizabeth moved a little away so he could be there too and leaned over to kiss her again.

"You have defiantly changed quite a lot since we last met!" she said, giggling again.

Damon chuckled and kissed her deeper, wilder, and more passionately this time. Elizabeth was reminded of all those times she and Klaus got so passionate we each other, but this passion was something else. It was like a mixture of Klaus and Elijah – the perfect compromise.

But there was still a part of her that longed to be free and that wished more than ever to see Klaus again and live the life she lived with him. The life where she didn't have to worry about a thing and could kill hundreds of innocent people without feeling the slightest remorse. And that scared her.

"Why does this bathtub smell of Andie?" Elizabeth asked a tad irritated.

Damon shrugged, blushing a bit. But Elizabeth pushed him down and got up on top of him, baring her fangs at him as she continued. "You better break up with that chick, because I don't like to share."

"Oh, is that so?" Damon said teasingly. "I guess that means I can't have a threesome with the famous Petrova sisters then…"