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CHAPTER TWO

A/N:Thank you all so much for the kind reviews! I'm so excited to bring you another chapter, though I'm feeling kinda blah on this one. The next will be a little more lively, I assure you.

The words didn't spring from her lips in the five minutes after she entered the boardinghouse, frozen on her tongue for the better part of ten as the two of them stood, locked in a battle of fraying nerves. His unreadable eyes ripped into her, even clouded with the vague haze that the liquor he was sipping left behind. Whatever it was he saw within her, however, he obviously didn't find it very interesting, flatness overtaking his orbs after just a split moment of intrigue. She looked away underneath that pressure.

"I need to ask you something," she finally spoke, willing her eyes to meet his, to appear strong and self confident in the face of the situation. It was the only way to win with Damon, and she knew it. Despite the courage those six words had taken, he didn't dignify her hesitant start with much of a response.

"By all means," he implored, making a gesture with his hand as he took a long drink from his glass.

"What you said the other night, about me. About Katherine," she clarified, wringing her hands slightly. She could scarcely remember the last time she was so nervous, a light tremble in her hands that matched the telltale signs of her dry throat as she attempted to speak. "It hurt."

That was the best she could do presently, unable to even meet his eyes, once more.

"And you've come here looking for what, exactly?" he asked, eyes wide with disbelief that she should even possess the audacity to talk to him about hurt. "For me to tell you it isn't true? Isn't Stefan enough of an ego stroker for you, anymore?"

She winced; it had been idiotic to think that Damon of all people would overlook the insecurity she was exposing. It didn't matter how many times Stefan told her or how many times she told herself that she was not and would never be Katherine, because she needed to hear it from the person who had vocalized the fear she'd been bearing in mind, all along. He'd opened the box, and now, she needed him to shut it.

"You didn't mean what you said," she stated, only to second guess that certainty. "Did you?"

"Did you mean to behave like Katherine?" he challenged, though his voice was free of inflection. "Selfishly, manipulatively, just after what you wanted, consequences be damned?"

She had intended to, and they both knew it. Perhaps she had not set out with Katherine as the blueprint for her actions, but she had known what she was doing before it was done, and the end result was something like the unflattering adjectives Damon was hurling her way. It had felt right at the time, giving him a taste of his own medicine, but karma was effectively the biggest bitch Elena's conscience knew.

"That isn't how it happened. We're not friends, and we weren't then," she countered, diving desperately for the loophole she believed herself to have found.

"Of course not. Because it's not as though you let on that I'd be digging myself out of that hole if I helped you," he sarcastically agreed, bitterness rising in his voice as he continued. "And the arrow to the back thing? I suppose that doesn't really merit a friendship, either."

And then there was that — the arrow to the back. The arrow he'd taken without a second thought in efforts to protect her, an act which now weighed heavy on her shoulders. It had been too late by that point to drop the charade and tell him flat out that there was no hope of salvaging whatever they'd had, before he killed her brother. If anything, the arrow had only given her more reason to press on with the ruse, lest she risk Damon withdrawing his help and his protection.

"That doesn't make me like her," she defended herself, weakly.

"Had it been the first time you proved yourself quite the master manipulator, no," he pointed out, his words immediately calling to mind another instance of betrayal. The grimoire incident. She remembered his face painted with shock and grief as he lamented having trusted her, just before he promised to turn her, should Stefan stand in the way of him rousing the tomb vampires. She'd nearly forgotten the look on his face when she'd let him down, her promise to him afterwards, and even the faith she'd had in him which was unshakable enough that she'd offered him her vervain necklace for a moment in time.

"That isn't fair. That was a long time ago, Damon. And a completely different situation."

"Maybe I was wrong," he finally sacrificed after a long moment of silence between them, allowing her to breathe a little easier before her chest tightened with his next words. "At least Katherine has the balls to own what she is, instead of making these pathetic excuses."

Rage boiled inside Elena, tainted with the fear and sadness she'd been cycling through.

"You're in no position to judge anyone, and you know it! You killed my brother, if I remember correctly," she shouted, unable to keep her temper completely in check at the moment. In a flash, she was blinking wearily at an image of Damon, his movement too close and fast for her eyes to focus.

"And I've been atoning for it, every moment since. But I still know what you are, what you're capable of, when you want to be," he said, a note of hurt evident in his voice as he spoke, face inches from hers. There was nowhere else to focus her gaze that on the pools of liquid blue that stared back at her, an intensity in his eyes that, though it burned her, kept her locked in place. They stood that way, frozen with a hyper awareness and anticipation, for a total of sixty-three heartbeats — Elena counted — though it felt like much longer. As suddenly as he'd approached, however, she became aware that Damon was now speaking from across the room.

"But what does it even matter to you what I think?" he asked, clearly working his way underneath her skin, again. "I'm nothing to you, not even worth hating, anymore. Who gives a damn what I think?"

"I'm not like her, and you know that. I know you do," Elena ignored his question, finally growing tired of holding in the emotional outburst she'd been teetering on the edge of for days. She could feel the tears stinging hot in her eyes, surfacing for reasons she couldn't quite explain. She ignored them as well, pressing on with what needed to be said. "I would never hurt you just for fun. I would never trick you the way she did. I make mistakes, sure, but you can't look at me and tell me you hate me the way you hate her."

"And if I did?" he theorized, face showing the concentration he placed over her words.

If he were to look at her and tell her he wanted her dead the way he wanted Katherine dead, or the he hated her with even nearly the same intensity, she didn't know what her reaction would be. Part of her felt as though her heart would shatter into a million pieces, but this was the part of her that was decidedly going unaddressed. The rest of her, iced over by the hatred she had tried to adopt towards him, had no answer for him.

"You'd be a liar." Her voice was small, but she was sure the sincerity in her statement came across.

"At least that would make two of us," he shot back, not bothering to deny her accusation. It left an unpleasant taste in his mouth, knowing that lying would be useless, at that point. Her keen eye was somehow trained to detect the slightest notes of dishonesty in him, his pattern a telltale sign she recognized, on spot. Rather than risk more conversation in that same vein, he effectively ended it.

"But five minutes was up some time ago, and Bambi won't keep Stefan busy, forever," he pointed out.

"You never answered my question," she protested, urgently.

"Tomorrow, you'll have your answer."