A/N: So, I'm back, and so annoyed after watching 5.17! They did exactly what I hoped they wouldn't. And I just can't let it stand. This will be more than a one-shot, probably just a couple chapters. It depends on how stubborn Elena and Damon insist on being. Obviously, spoilers through 5.17, and then I'm off in my own little world. Thanks for reading. Also, please don't add spoilers in your reviews (but please review!)—I'm still on season 5 for the first time!

Chapter One

It had been almost a week since Elena had seen Damon. Since she'd heard his voice anywhere outside of her dreams or felt the euphoria that even his most casual touch could kindle. It was never really casual with him though, was it? It was as if she'd fallen asleep the night she'd offered to be Damon's friend (and he'd refused), and she just couldn't seem to wake up.

Oblivion and rage were preferable to reliving the constant loop in Damon's head. The one from six days ago of Elena's naïve "offer". The one where he'd shot her down hard and fast. The one where her eyes had filled with tears, and instead of seeing his frustration for what it was—and what it wasn't—she'd walked away. So he'd just kept drinking, and then he'd started smashing things.

Ten days of sleepwalking. She'd spent a few days with Bonnie, but it was awkward with Jer in Bonnie's bedroom very night, despite him supposedly "living" at Tyler's. Then she'd taken the guest room at Caroline's, but Caroline and Liz were trying to smother her into being fine. Plus, Caroline and Stefan were now (the very best of) friends and he was always there, and if she had to endure another second of sad sympathy eyes from that pair she was going to stake someone. Mrs. Carter's Bed & Breakfast it was then. It was amazing how much difference it made having nobody tiptoe around you—having no one care how dark and desperate you felt. It was better. She was not better (maybe worse?) but Gilberts weren't quitters, right? So she just kept getting out of bed in the morning. There was a nagging question in the back of her mind though, constantly wanting an answer (one she didn't want to think about). What did quitting Damon make her, if not a quitter?

There weren't many family heirlooms left after the first 100 years the Salvatore boys were dead. Death (and not!death) had made them both angry. The house, as well as random innocents, bore the brunt of it. The place looked like a museum—mausoleum, sometimes to Damon—but it was mostly just stuff from eBay. By the time the wind was out of Damon's sails of destruction, Stefan had replaced most of it already. They didn't speak about what had happened after that first night, which made Damon insanely angry because if Stefan said the wrong thing he could have justified beating him senseless, for so many reasons. It also made him grateful—because he'd lose his mind if he had to talk about her. Coming out of his bender haze, he was disappointed that it hadn't even been two weeks. And, that Stefan hadn't even been fazed—just kept the liquor and the replacement furniture coming.

It had been a peaceful (and unbearably restless) two weeks at the B & B. She ignored most calls, ate alone, and arrived at social events late enough that her friends were already sloshed, and so didn't notice when left early in order to avoid questions.

Elena tried to write in her diary, but all she could seem to write was the word "broken". It was the only word that fit the utter feeling of bereftness that surrounded her like a cloak. Her bank accounts were flush these days, a side effect of every adult you loved dying—and of compelling the insurance adjuster when you torched your house in a fit of despair—and so she took to house hunting.

She needed a life—one not dependent on the completely undependable Salvatores—and it was time she started looking after herself and her brother. Jeremy was standing his ground, and against her pleading and demanding, was now officially a drop-out. But she wanted them to have some stability. Have a home again. To be a family—and now he was all she had left. If she found a house for them, maybe he would come home.

While looking at houses was keeping her too busy to cry all the time, she certainly wasn't having fun. For whatever reason (was she cursed?) her time was filled with both waking and sleeping dreams. She wondered if it was Marcos' mind games that had given her sub-conscious mind a mind of its own, and as she wandered through another house, or walked along the river, or visited the cemetery, or stopped for gas, she kept having flashes of an impossible (Stefan-less, this time) future. Damon was kissing the back of her neck while she did dishes. He was rocking their sleeping baby in the porch swing. They lay on a blanket in the grass under a massive oak during a summer concert at the park. He stood with her, silent and strong, as she changed out the flowers on her parents' (Jenna's/Ric's/all the rest of the) graves. Everywhere she looked, or walked, or slept, he was there, loving her.

And it didn't surprise her that it felt right, which was surprising in and of itself. And she began to wonder how any other life would—how a life without him—could be enough.

He'd thought he might travel, but he couldn't figure where to go. Because, nowhere else had Elena—which was all he wanted—but here he couldn't have Elena, so what was the point of any of it? The less Damon drank, the more Stefan talked (this was not a good development) and tried to get him to talk.

Stefan even delivered a leather-bound book one afternoon—interrupting a nap with a delicious, but not useful in forgetting the woman of his dreams, dream—and insisted that "journaling" would help get him out of his "funk". Damon Salvatore did not funk. He was not funk-ing. And he was not going to turn himself into a "dear diary" freak like his baby brother. And writing would make it real. And—no.

Then there were the dreams. Within months of being turned, his skills as a dream manipulator (he liked to call it dream-weaving; more seductive, less stalkery) became apparent. His ability was—if he did say so—extraordinary. He'd been in one of Stefan's, and it was all bad CGI and 1940's greenscreen. Damon was a master of control and detail though, and he didn't have a reason to do it nearly often enough. He also had never done it by accident, and he had always been able to tell the difference between a natural dream and one of his creation. Lately though…was he dreaming? Was he weaving a dream unintentionally? He definitely was not fantasizing about Elena—Elena in a life with him that they could—would—never have, on purpose. Self-flagellation was never his thing (that was all Saint Stefan), and while he was using napping—and bourbon—as a lifeline these days, he couldn't shake the feeling that it wasn't his emotional crutches that were causing these day/night dreams. These lapses in judgement/consciousness/control.

He was at war with himself about these dreams, and whether it was important to figure out the how and why of them. On one hand, being with Elena (anywhere other than The Friend Zone, even if it wasn't real) felt like paradise. On the other hand—he always woke up, and it was never enough.