AN- It took me some time to get this done because I wasn't sure of what I was writing. However, I do hope it meets your expectations even though it hasn't quite met mine. There's just one more chapter to go.
"I've had a lot of women do a lot of strange, delicious things when I kiss them but you're the first to have fainted."
And that is all that ever passes between them about that night.
Sometimes she thinks that perhaps she dreamt it all…
So she closes her eyes and wills her to dream about Stefan instead, about her boyfriend who was trapped in a tomb because he had only been trying to help, because God knows what she would have done if it had been Jeremy there instead.
And she tries to remember him…Stefan's hands, Stefan's mouth and Stefan's body. The way he makes love to her, the gentle way he touches her, kisses her and green eyes turn to smoky blue and then it's not him anymore..
The thing is that this time she doesn't think it's him playing with her mind.
This time it's all her…
She wakes up sometime when it's still dark and he tells her through the shadows surrounding the room that she had some kind of viral and her body had not been strong enough to take it.
She nods and dozes off once again; He was here.
Apparently that's all that makes sense to her.
The next time it's voices that wake her, "Don't wet her hair you dimwit, put it on her forehead," Damon orders a very irritated looking Jeremy who's placing cold, damp towels on her head.
Her irresponsible, younger brother who hardly ever made his own cereal was nursing her?
She really must be delirious with the fever.
However, the next time when she feels the dampness on her head again its accompanied with cool, lean fingers she recognizes for some odd, bizarre reason and the protest that she would rather just take a Paracetamol dies in her throat.
It's a strange, disfigured, jumbled up image.
Damon Salvatore looks too comfortable in a position such as this.
"You seem to have a lot of practice with it." She asks quietly, just to feel her voice again.
"It's the fastest way to get the temperature down." He responds without answering her question.
She waits.
"Stefan." He utters without preamble when she just continues to stare, each aware that there was a story here that he didn't want to unravel.
But he does and so it's somewhere in the middle of a tale of scarlet fever of 1855 that she realizes that he did care. Oh! God! He does care.
He had spent an entire winter's night once taking care of a very sick Stefan and she knows with a certainty she has no claim over that he must have prayed, must have been scared, must have gone insane with worry…
"Father was away, mother had died, it's not like I had a choice," he executes with as much bluntness as he can muster.
And she knows that there is so so much more to it.
"How old were you?"
"Fifteen." He says while pulling back and clearing off the bedside and the way he averts her eyes tells her that the topic was now closed.
It must have been some long night
And even though she knows the answer before she has asked the question she is unable to stop herself and halts him on his way out, "You two were close Damon. What changed it?"
He stops at the door way and turns around to look at her slowly, his eyes cold, his expression closed, "So the Lord said to Cain, 'Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen'"
She doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.
Damon Salvatore was quoting the Bible?
There was once a time when she would invite Jeremy over just to keep her company and probably just to irk Damon and now there are times when he comes and goes without her even knowing…
He's there to see Damon and no, it doesn't surprise her anymore. It only just sort of annoys her at times.
"What was that about?" she asks one day when she catches Damon pushing a reluctant Jeremy out of the door.
He turns to look up at her, a small patronizing grin gracing his face, "your brother's spell bound."
Bonnie. She isn't blind you know; as much as both her brother and her best friend have been hiding it from her she can feel the vibes between them from a mile away.
And apparently it's Damon's turn to fetch out relationship advice.
A sudden thought enters her head.
"Does Jer remind you of Stefan?"
He blinks at her, once, like he can't believe she has asked so and then his eyes return back to their usual mirth, "Of course he does" her eyes flick up to him in surprise, "They both are huge pain in the…" he smirks wickedly at her, "you know where."
It's days later that she remembers to ask him about Stefan.
She wants to know what happened to the out of town witches who were supposed to help him get out but she lands up standing at the door of his room and asking absolutely irrelevant questions…
"Would Stefan still have liked me if I hadn't looked like her? You know, would he have bothered to get to know me, save me, if I had looked any different?"
Someday she will make up her mind about whether or not she took the right brother's name.
He's sprawled on his four poster bed, head at the headrest, arms casually crossed at the chest, eyes closed…
She would have thought he was asleep if it hadn't been for the yellowed, moth eaten, hard cover book peeking from under the pillows.
His love for old classics still does not cease to surprise her.
He opens his eyes and quirks up an eyebrow. She can make out the amusement in his eyes even though she hasn't dared cross the threshold of his room…Their relation…Take your pick.
"Insecure much Elena?…Afraid what may happen while baby brother is stuck in a dark, damp tomb with his ex girlfriend who strangely looks exactly like his current girlfriend?"
She shakes her head, because really this has never been her problem, she doesn't know what is though.
"I trust Stefan." She says honestly and his eyes flicker at her for a second before he shrugs, "frankly," he says closing his eyes once again, "I trust him too. Boring isn't he?"
She hasn't gotten the answer she was looking for, but then she hadn't asked the right question.
Weirdly disappointed, she turns to go, her hand on the doorknob when his voice paralyses her to the spot, "Hypothetically speaking," she turns back to look at him as he continues, his eyes still closed, his posture still the very picture of casualness, "If I was Stefan, I wouldn't care that you look anything like Katherine…"
Her heart stops as he opens his eyes and stares right into hers, "I would love you for everything that you are and not for what you look like."
She all but runs down the steps…
Because what his words, his voice do to her…The thoughts it fills her head with when he tells her that he doesn't care that she looks like Katherine only makes her feel more and more like her evil doppelganger in a strange twisted kind of way…
Katherine had never made her choice, she was afraid she would never be able to make hers either.
Irony has never before bitten her so hard…
AN- So? Do review and let me know. The ending of this story however may not be a great one but I will try and make as much consolation as I can for the Delana fans I may land up disappointing.