Author's Note: Be advised, this chapter contains VERY BRUTAL AND EXPLICIT VIOLENCE. You've been warned. Extra points for anyone who, after finishing the chapter, knows why I chose the name I did for this chapter. These characters are not mine, nor is the universe.

Damon POV

I'm an idiot.

If I wasn't an idiot, I would still be in Elena's arms instead of doing the only thing on earth that can ruin my good mood. As I walk down the stairs, jug of animal blood sloshing in my fist, I think that there might be something that I'm not willing to do for Elena after all.

I lean my forearms against the door and watch Stefan through the barred window for a long time. It's hard to look at him, because I'm seeing double. I'm seeing the little boy who would cry when I would go fishing without him and I'm seeing his senseless, savage eyes staring at her jugular. I'm seeing him save me from that werewolf when he was supposed to hate me. I'm seeing him knock me off of Klaus even though Klaus had taken everything from him. I'm seeing him kissing Elena.

I feel so sick. I should go back upstairs and go to bed. I need to sleep off this feeling, run it off, drink it off. My stomach is churning like I drank rancid milk laced with vervain.

"You here to kill me, brother?" Stefan says without raising his head.

That's my cue to say something sarcastic, but there is nothing funny about how much I love him and how very, very much I want to kill him. If I open this door, how will I keep my hands from tearing him apart? If I open this door, I can burn Klaus like old garbage and Elena will still never be safe.

She's famous for her bad decisions and misplaced faith. Why am I going along with this?

"Do it." Stefan looks up and his face is all challenge. "If you're not man enough, call Klaus."

"And give him back his own personal Dr. Mengele? I think not. Klaus's minion army doesn't need any new talent." **

"Oh, he'll kill me this time. If you're not sure, drop one of the coffins into the ocean and tell him I did it out of spite."

"I'm not in the mood for this martyr shit, Stefan," I snap. "Tell me something interesting for a change. You know I don't give a shit what you do. You can kill, steal, lie, or cheat on your taxes, no skin off my ass and yet you manage to find and push my only button?"

If he was pulling this self-sacrificing act to Elena, I'd say he was doing it to win her over. But doing it to me? The only thing he's hoping to win is his own death, by my hands.

"Your only button? Come on, Damon, you lose your shit two or three times in a good week," Stefan laughs bitterly. "It isn't hard."

"You know what is hard, Stefan? It's hard to look at your face and not rip it into little bloody pieces. It's hard to understand how you can't manage to keep from trying to fucking eat the girl we both love!"

"You could have her, you know." His voice echoes like an empty cell. "Kill me. Tell her Klaus did it. You'll have her all to yourself."

I slam the bolt open and stalk across the room. Stefan's sitting in the chair I installed, broken links of chain all around it from the last time I let him out. Chain that I broke because I didn't have it in me to let him rot in a cell, and I figured the lives of the few dozen lingerie models he'd kill were worth less than one, mostly pain-in-the-ass brother.

I kick the chair over and he hits the stone floor and rolls to his feet, pissed off but not enough to break through his self-flagellating depression.

I've got the girl. I could throw it in his face right now.

It'd be nice if I could say that I don't tell him because I want to keep his hope alive, because I want to give Elena a chance to save him. But I'm not that good.

I want to see his face when I touch her in front of him. When I kiss her. I want to see his face when a girl chooses me instead of him. Because he told her I wasn't good enough for her. Because deep down, he thinks he can leave her, head off on a killing spree for a few months, feed from her against her will, use her dead parents to fuck with her head, then maybe try to rip her throat out and she'll still love him.

Maybe he's right. Maybe if I weren't here, Elena would forgive him and nurture him back to bunny-killing, football-hero health. But there's no way I am going to allow her to waste her life saving him, watching him, worrying about him and never once living for herself.

I'll let him out. I'll give him his chance and I'll let her heal him with that infinite grace that nobody but Elena could ever maintain after all he's put her through. But I won't give her back to him to suffer through the process of Stefan trying to build a life out of his guilt, regret, and that inconvenient little urge to slaughter a cheerleading squad on a bi-weekly basis.

I shove the jug of animal blood against his chest so he has to take it from me or spill it all over himself. "Got it from the butcher. Told him I was making blood sausage." I flare my eyes aggressively. "Still might."

Stefan doesn't answer. He doesn't even look at the blood.

"Drink up, brother. When you're full as a tick on a waterbuffalo binge, you come on out and play."

I turn as if to go, because I want to push him to finish this. I can feel his desperation. Suicide by Damon was his plan for redemption and I knew it when I came down here.

"You know, brother," the careless Ripper voice says from behind me. I brace myself and turn, lifting a mocking eyebrow. This will be his last ditch effort. He better make it good.

"There's only one way to call someone's bluff," he says, feeding my words back to me with that smile that doesn't belong on his face. That smile belongs bathed in blood, and it has been. Many, many times. "And that's to be willing to lose everything if you're wrong."

I actually lose my sight for a second as the adrenaline in my system overloads the blood supply to my optic nerve.

He made it good. He's just playing the best villain again, I remind my lengthening canines. Then, fuck it, I've got him pinned against the wall by his throat, his feet a foot off the ground.

My fist rapes his chest cavity as I cram it all the way up to his heart.

My fangs pulsate with the need for his blood and I hold his heart in my hand, feeling it shudder against my conscienceless palm.

"Hear me now, brother. If you hurt her. If you touch her with one tainted little finger. If you take a single drop of her blood, even if she offers, even if she begs you to, you will be my victim. I will lock you in a room full of pictures of her. I will force-feed you animal blood just often enough to keep you breathing and her eyes will be your hell for every day of forever."

Stefan's face is twisted with pain, his breath coming in little gasping sobs. I squeeze his heart gently.

"The next time you look at her, that's what I want you to see. Her eyes haunting you for your sins. Remember, brother. I will never allow you to make her one of those sins."

I let go of his heart. I hold him up by his neck and haul my arm free of his chest. He falls like a corpse to the floor, huddled next to the jug of animal blood. I leave him there.

I don't close the door to the dungeon behind me.

Author's Note: If anyone is still puzzled about the chapter name, Bonnie gives it away in "Smoke without Mirrors." Some of the subtleties in Damon's motivation will be explained in the next chapter. I really love how this chapter came out. I hope you like it too, even if it isn't sweet Delena.

**Dr. Josef Mengele was the most famous of the Nazi doctors who ran torturously sadistic experiments on human subjects without anesthesia in Auschwitz and other German concentration camps during WWII.