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Chapter 3
…the pain she feels hits hard. This time, Stefan is not being compelled by Klaus to drink from her – he is doing it on his own. It is in this moment that Elena realizes he has fully rounded the corner and given in to his dark side. She can feel the life being pulled out of her, through that point in her neck, where he sucks so harshly, fiercely, with wild abandon. She does her best to fight him off, still fully aware that she is no match for him. She feels herself weaken, slumping against the wall, body pliable in Stefan's hands.
Just as her eyes begin to drift closed, she sees a blur of black and feels her body slide down the wall to the floor, as Stefan is pulled from her.
-hours later –
She wakes up to a pounding in her head. She suddenly remembers what happened and sits bolt upright in the large bed she is in. Looking frantically around her, she realizes she doesn't recognize the room, the bed, anything. Her mind flies to the worst-case scenario – Stefan has taken her somewhere, where no one will find her.
She looks around the room cautiously before gingerly stepping out of bed. Tiptoe-ing across the wooden floor, Elena sees herself in a mirror on the wall, noticing for the first time what she is wearing – a black t-shirt that is way too big for her, obviously belonging to a man. "Stefan," she gasps aloud. Realizing that she may only have moments before her captor re-enters the room to look for her, she pries open the door as quietly as possible.
Elena is startled to feel her feet come into quick contact with something hard on the floor, below eye-level, which explains how she didn't see it at first. She gasps and looks down, noticing what she has kicked – a body. A large body, with black hair, and…no shirt? Even turned away from her, she knows that this is not her nightmare - this is exactly who she needs right now. She'd know that muscled back, those sculpted shoulders, anywhere. "He's sleeping outside the door?" she wonders.
"Damon?" she asks quietly, as she crouches down next to him.
The sound of her gentle, timid voice is enough to wake him from even the deepest sleep. He is on his feet immediately, gently but firmly pushing her back into the room she has just exited. She notices his expression – all at once worried, angry, tired.
"Damon, where am I? What happened? Stefan, he...", she starts, before he puts a finger over her mouth, silencing her. He gestures toward the bed, but his usual charm and eyebrow twitch when in the vicinity of such a temptation are missing. Elena notices just how tired, how awful, she feels, right then. She looks at Damon for some sort of comfort, but his back is turned and he is walking back toward the door through which they have just come.
"Please, please don't leave me!", she pleads, beginning to cry at the thought of being left alone in this strange room.
He doesn't answer, merely locking the door and turning back to her, flashing the comforting smile she has grown so fond of, the one he reserves for use with just her. But when he flashes behind her, placing his hand on her lower back to guide her back to the bed, she shudders at the contact. The reaction is involuntary, but he notices it, backing away infinitesimally and swiftly.
She climbs back into the bed and sighs.
"I'm sorry, Damon", she says. He gives her a look that says she has nothing to be sorry about, and watches her closely as he sits on the opposite end of the bed – giving her the space she seems to need.
It is only then that Elena notices that along with changing her clothes, someone has bandaged the wound on her neck, which is still throbbing. She knows it must have been Damon who saved her, and she wonders how she ever questioned the goodness in the man sitting before her, looking into the distance of the dark room. He promised that no one would hurt her again, and he had upheld that promise –saving her from the demon that Stefan has become.
He is sitting close enough on the bed that she can reach out and touch his arm, which she does now, tentatively. He turns, lightning fast, to her, looking straight at her for the first time. It is still dark outside and the lights are not on – still night, she thinks. He moves slightly closer to her on the bed, holding her hand in his, never taking his eyes from hers.
"Elena, I want you to understand what happened. Stefan attacked you. I wasn't able to get there quickly enough. I should have never left you alone. I am so sorry. I have let you down so many times…", he says quietly.
She looks up at Damon, who is again, looking anywhere but at her.
"You're at the Boarding House. You've never been in this wing of the house, because we don't usually use these rooms. Bonnie has been here to check on you, but it…didn't look good for a while. We were afraid that my blood wouldn't be enough to heal you. I thought I was going to lose you. You've been here in this room for days. The possibility of you dying with my blood in your system, when I know that is not what you want…I couldn't take that choice away from you. Not again."
Elena's eyes started to water at this – he really had changed. Everything she had been feeling before Stefan's attack came slamming through her mind like a freight train. This man, this one, next to her, is the man she loves. How could she not have seen it before? Or rather, how had she been able to hide it?
Is she physically hurt? Yes, of course. But her heart has never felt fuller. She tries to slide closer to Damon on the bed, thinking that being near him now is all she needs. He senses her movement, and puts out his hand to stop her. Her brows furrow.
"I promise, he won't come anywhere near you. I've been able to keep him away from you. But he's here. Or at least he was." At this, he withdraws his hand, again avoiding her searching eyes, thinking how he has let her down.
She wonders why he is recoiling from her so much, and begins to feel embarrassed. He is protecting her, staying here with her out of pity. Elena immediately rethinks telling him what she feels for him – the depths of her emotions for this centuries-old vampire whom she has grown to love. She turns from him in the bed and crawls back under the covers, noting again how sore her whole body is.
For what seems like forever, she pretends to sleep. All the while thinking about the problems at hand: Stefan is possibly downstairs, hungry for her blood, ready to attack. He has proven that he is past the point of no return, and she shudders at the thought. The man she once would have done anything to protect, to be with, is now the person she fears the most.
She hears his words echo in her head, "I own you…who's around to stop me, after all?" and shivers at the memory, as a tear slips down her cheek. Before long, she is crying quietly, pulling herself into a ball under the thin sheet to comfort herself. The man she once loved, and the man she does love, are bloodthirsty, and repulsed by her, respectively. She is being pitied – no more, no less.
She closes her eyes and for the first time in her life, actually wishes that she could disappear. Damon watches the petite girl for whom his heart swells, and feels the remorse he has been wrestling for days. Watching her slip into unconsciousness that night in her room was almost enough to break his undead heart. He had never before been so worried in his existence.
He can't lose her. He can't stand to see her hurt – physically, or otherwise. This is what he's thinking as he escapes his silent reverie and notices the emotional breakdown wracking her small frame in the bed beside him. No more words tonight, he thinks, as he slowly slides closer to her in the bed. He feels her muscles tighten beneath the sheets, suspecting that her reaction to anyone's proximity will be heightened for a while, and understanding why that is the case.
Once he senses that her heartbeat has relaxed, he smoothly wraps an arm around her waist, resting it gently, and hoping she will not shy from his touch. Quite the opposite, Elena laces her fingers through Damon's, snuggles her body closer to his strong frame, and falls into a deep sleep.
Damon spends that night the same as so many nights before – simply listening to the calm of her breaths, while still straining to hear any approaching danger to the woman he loves. The woman who, he has come to realize, even just today, in these brief moments spent together since she came-to, just might love him back.
At that thought, Damon kisses her shoulder, closes his eyes and smiles.