This is the night
That either makes me or fordoes me quite.
Othello ACT V Scene 1
They had spent as much time protecting Elena as they had saving each other. It was no wonder they became so dependent on each other. It had been a welcome surprise that they made such a good team.
One Stefan had no plans on giving up. His brother would be the one to help Stefan feed without losing everything. Stefan would be the one to help Damon release his demons that kept him from feeling any peace. Their growing reliance on each other was addictive. Maybe they needed each other too much to become anything other than inevitable.
A tear fell down Elena's cheek. "He doesn't deserve how much faith you have in him."
"I don't think I deserve how much faith you have in me." He leaned in, brushing his lips against her temple.
She curled against him, resting her head on his shoulder. "I can't talk about this anymore. You can be a good person. Maybe he could be, but then he wouldn't be doing this to you."
Stefan wasn't a good person. He was a vampire who wanted to tear things apart most of the time, and was willing to settle for drinking them to dust for the rest. His penchant of starving himself to nothing for the sake of being human, of belonging to a group of people he would always remain an outsider to, was a tumultuous facade. No, good people weren't in love with their big brothers. Not the way Stefan was desperately in love with Damon.
Elena scooted closer, wrapping her arms around his waist. "Can we go lay down in your bed. Please, can you just hold me?"
Stefan stood up, taking her hand in his. He knew Damon would be home soon enough, but the devastating look on her face broke his heart. "Okay. For a little while."
Katherine's head swiveled back towards Damon. "Stefan was so much easier to read. The way his heart beat faster when he saw you or how his eyes would follow you across the room. He didn't want anything as much as he wanted you but he didn't know how to ask. Such a shame. Well, for me." She winked at him and he glared. "When he turned, he should have found me immediately. Instead he went to you to join him."
"He thought you were dead. We both did. He needed me." Damon lost himself in that memory, a different dead girl between them. The first disgusting swallow of blood, and the way it sang through his body on the second.
"No," she laughed, "That sweet boy needed someone who actually knew how to guide him through this life. But his want burned too brightly for anyone to compete with you." She rolled her eyes at him. "Neither of you would have gone too far without each other. I planned on being with you both so we could work up to the three of us. Together forever, no rules, remember?" A coy smile flashed and disappeared in an instant. "But you would never let me call him in once we got started. I thought it was because you loved me too much, or because you knew he didn't. You were protective, even then. But not remotely innocent."
Damon swallowed the rest of his drink. It didn't go down easily.
"He would have gone on happy sharing me as long as it was with you. But you were much more devious." She took the empty glass out of his hand. "You know, I thought it was perverse talk so you could get it up the first time you wanted me to describe how he behaved in bed. I figured you out when you asked me what he felt like inside me."
"I don't remember any of that." An invisible vice squeezed from inside, locking the air in his lungs. He remembered watching helplessly as his little brother started looking less like a boy and more like a man. He remembered how Stefan's cheek rubbing against his chest when they slept made him feel important. He remembered the way Katherine's teeth glinting in the moonlight made him feel dangerous. But he didn't know what it meant back then. He realized now why breaking a few rules had been so enticing. "Why did I not figure all this out sooner?"
Katherine had that smug expression back and Damon looked away. "You turn off and ignore the things you don't understand. Drink it down, kill it. You've never worked through an emotion in your entire undead life. People feel things for a reason, Damon." She put one finger on his chin to tip his scowling face back towards hers. "You got rid of Lexi, and Zach, and anyone else who saw what you didn't. Ric knows, but you kept him because he let you keep lying to yourself. And whatever other reasons you needed." She smiled something vicious, pretending she was clever. "The worst of it is you don't even have Stefan now. You threw him away the second you let him convince you to turn. So you both suffered alone, and he had to find someone else because before Elena you never gave him the option."
Damon jerked his head away. She leaned forward, threatening him with that wicked smile that made the balls of mere mortals crawl inside their bodies and hide. Once upon a time, Damon was one of those men. Now that alarm felt more like a tired old joke. He stood up quickly, done with all her fucking talking. He scraped together whatever answers he was ever going to get from her.
"You don't like that either, do you?" She stood up behind him and he hated the arrogance in her voice. The fucking life he wasted chasing her. Thinking about her made him sick sometimes. "Maybe you do just want to fuck him over instead of letting him be happy." Her hand tightened over his shoulder, and his whole body froze under her grip. "You're a selfish, greedy little boy who never wants to share his favorite toy. But your toy has a mind of his own. And he loves her now."
He turned around, shaking off her hand fast enough to step away. Katherine and her fucking insights. Damon wanted to slam her against the wall; even as he briefly worried he dreamed their conversation. He'd heard her whisper that phrase in his ear so many nights. It had never sounded so sad in his sleep. For a split second Damon thought she felt bad for him. But she was examining her fingernails to avoid his eyes and he realized she only pitied herself.
So her feelings for his brother still lingered as well. She wouldn't be able to endure seeing them if Stefan chose Damon in the end. Maybe the real reason she didn't push them together the first time she came back was because she knew there would be no room for her between them. He still wanted to kill her.
"You're done, aren't you?"
She looked up at him mind still far away. "With what?"
Torturing him, betraying him, leading him on, pursuing his brother when Stefan didn't belong to her, the list was endless. "All of it."
It hadn't really been a question. Her chapter in his life felt finished.
With a bored eye roll, she shrugged. "I've been looking for a new place." She looked around her living room. "Fur coats and vodka are calling my name." She smiled ruefully. "Don't say goodbye just yet, Damon."
Death wasn't the worse fate for her. Katherine reminded Damon of what it had been like to be lonely. That he wasn't anymore. Maybe their paths would cross again, but her games didn't seem enticing anymore. The sudden gratitude he felt hit him in a burst. "No, not goodbye." He grabbed her jaw and kissed her cheek. "Thank you."
He was walking out the door a second later.
