A/N: Thank you so much for all the amazing reviews! :)

& I just wanted to give you a heads up that the final updates might be a bit slower. I'll be going on vacation soon and while I'm taking my computer with me, I'm not sure if I'll have as much time for writing as I have now (because having fun is obviously a more time-consuming activity than school and work haha ;)

Beta: arabian - Thank you sooo much! :]

Disclaimer: TVD belongs to L.J. Smith & CW.

Chapter 18

"I'll get it!" Jeremy called, heading out of the kitchen, a bowl of cereal in his hand.

"Tell him it's preposterous, coming two hours earlier than planned," Elena said with mock-haughtiness, leaning over the banister in her bathrobe and then scurrying back to her room.

Jeremy snorted, pulling the door open and narrowing his eyes at the sight of flowers. For a moment the bouquet blocked the view of the face, but when it was slightly moved to the side it revealed the visitor.

Jeremy raised his eyebrows, but didn't say anything and just let Stefan walk inside. "Elena!" he called, closing the door.

"Tell him I'm indecent!" Elena shouted back from upstairs.

A small frown passed over Stefan's face and he turned his gaze to the floor for a second before regaining his composure. "I'll wait in the living room, if you don't mind."

"Sure," Jeremy said noncommittally, turning his attention back to his breakfast.

Prompted by Jeremy's worrisome account that they decided to keep secret from Elena for the time being, Caroline walked around Matt's house, calling his name but to no avail. All the doors and windows were closed and he didn't seem to be home. It couldn't be good, especially that the last thing they knew was that he had gone to see Bonnie who unhelpfully continued ignoring their calls.

"Looking for someone?"

Caught off guard, Caroline whirled around. Klaus was leaning against the car, arms crossed over his chest. He tilted his head to the side, watching her with a smile on his face.

"What did you do to him?" Caroline asked in the most threatening tone she could muster, half-hoping her suspicions were wrong, but to her distress Klaus only confirmed them.

"I just gave him a head start, so to speak," he said with a speculative look that quickly turned into a smirk. "But don't worry," he added with a hint of mock-reassurance in his voice. "No limbs missing, as of yet. And actually, I have very nice things planned for him. I'm like his personal fairy godmother, really," he said after a moment of consideration with a thoughtful expression that was soon replaced by a grin.

"Psychopath," Caroline muttered, glaring daggers at him as she marched passed him, got into her car, shot her phone a frustrated look and drove off.

"I'm sorry for coming so early and unannounced," Stefan started when Elena took the flowers from him. She held the bouquet in such a way as if it was a grenade about to go off and he also didn't fail to notice a change in her expression. He thought that, paradoxically, it wouldn't have been so bad had she just stopped smiling. But she hadn't stopped smiling. Instead, her smile had changed. It had become less bright and more self-conscious, as if she had hidden a part of her at the sight of him and it sent cold shivers down his spine. "But I thought the chances of you speaking to me would be greater that way," he said softly with a brief smile.

Elena grimaced. "Don't be absurd," she said with the faintest hints of impatience and embarrassment in her voice. "Why wouldn't I speak to you?"

"It's more than that, actually," Stefan continued, taking in her appearance, the sunny yellow dress he'd never seen, her hair tied up with a ribbon that seemed better fitted for a costume party than a casual morning. A casual date, he reminded himself, clenching his teeth. "I wanted to ask you… I know it's a very selfish request considering that you've just come home and that on Sunday-"

"And on Saturday I'm taking Elena away from here for one day," Jeremy cut in the conversation, grabbing his backpack from the couch and also relieving Elena from the burden of holding the flowers.

She gave him a small smile and he smiled back, exiting the room. "Jeremy's got something planned for Saturday," she said, looking back at Stefan, clearly glad she was able to focus on a more placid subject matter. "I don't know what it is and where we're going," she said, trying to sound lighthearted and conversational, "but apparently it's going to be great."

Stefan smiled. "That sounds like a good idea."

"It does."

They looked at each other in silence.

"What happened to us, Elena?" Stefan asked wistfully after a pause, his voice low.

Elena blinked and looked at him with a sullen expression on her face. "Stefan-"

"What I meant to ask…" Despite his calm demeanor Stefan interrupted her in an almost desperate manner and she fell silent, letting him speak, "is whether you'd let me spend some time with you… today." Elena seemed taken aback and a little confused. "We didn't really have a chance to talk," Stefan said, taking a step toward her, his eyes boring into hers with the intensity of all the memories he believed must still mean something to her. "Everything happened so fast. So much happened. Don't you think we need to talk about that, about us? I'm sorry about the pain I've caused you," he continued quickly just in case she would try to interrupt him. "All those months you spent looking for me, trying to help me. Even if it seemed to you like it didn't matter, because of how I continued to act for longer than it was perhaps necessary, it did. It did matter, Elena. It pulled me through. You pulled me through."

"Stefan-"

There was sadness, but also a hint of warning in her voice that sounded alien to him which made it easy to ignore it, so he continued.

"Give us a day, Elena. We may be able to fix it yet. Or at the very least," he added seeing no change in her expression, "I want to be sure that you know what you're doing."

"I am sure," she said quietly with certainty that pierced his heart like a needle, but he tugged it out.

"I know you think that. I'm not trying to say that you aren't. I just… need to understand what happened." If compassion was the only available restarting point, he would start at compassion. He felt like he was climbing up an iceberg, sliding down inch by inch unable to hold on to anything, but it was surely only an impression. If unearthing his darkest memories hadn't made her stop loving him how anything else could have?

She seemed conflicted and he felt like he was taking advantage of her now certainly amplified disinclination to hurt anyone. But if there was even a slightest chance for them, he was going to find it and fight for it. "Elena?"

With a sigh, Jeremy opened the door and one look at his face was enough for Damon's expression to change.

"What's happened?" he asked, eyebrows furrowing in alarm.

"Nothing," Jeremy said, shaking his head. "It's just that… Elena's not home."

Damon rolled his eyes. "Where is she?" He almost groaned. "She didn't go to see Bonnie, did she?" He asked with a frown. He knew that too much free time in the morning would only result in Elena coming with a plan on her own, a plan that would obligatorily include putting herself in harm's way.

"No, no, she didn't," Jeremy grimaced. "Stefan came in the morning and-"

Damon cast his eyes to the sky. "Of course," he snorted mirthlessly. Making use of eavesdropping. He probably should've seen that coming.

"It's not like that," Jeremy protested, feeling that the comment was somehow directed against Elena. "She didn't even want to go, but he insisted they should talk. He thinks she doesn't know what she's doing."

"I know," Damon said, his eyes narrowing in a brief smile. "That's what everyone thinks." He looked away, feeling dispirited that the day wouldn't go as planned. It surprised him a little. That he didn't feel angry or jealous or upset. But there was that strange feeling surrounding his heart like a warm blanket that made him feel like she was with him. Like her thoughts, her heart was with him. And he didn't feel threatened by her absence, by her spending time with Stefan. He just felt sad, so sad it hurt, that it would be another few hours before he would see her.

"Does it matter?" Jeremy's voice broke into his reverie. "What anyone thinks?"

Damon shifted his eyes to him. "What do you think?"

Jeremy sighed, raising his eyebrows. "I'm still processing," he said after a moment of consideration.

Damon's mouth twitched into a smile. "I'll come back later," he said, making to leave.

"Wait," Jeremy stopped him. "What are we going to do about Klaus?" He asked and then squinted, slightly irritated by the look on Damon's face. "I'm not going to sit here and do nothing. So I can either help or do something on my own," Jeremy said in a determined voice.

"Is that a threat?" Damon asked, amused.

"I'm just saying that I'm going to come up with a plan on my own," Jeremy said levelly, his expression utterly serious.

"Yup. Definitely a threat," Damon said decidedly, squinting into the distance. Then he shifted his eyes back to Jeremy and looked him up and down. "Come on," he said after a moment of consideration. Then he turned around and walked to his car. "But no grumbling and no questioning anything I say or do unless you want to hitchhike your way back home."

Jeremy blinked and then quickly grabbed a few things, locked the door and headed for the car parked on the curb of the street. "What's happened to your old car?" He asked, jumping into the passenger seat.

"Klaus happened," Damon said, starting the engine.

"Where are we going?"

"To Berryville."

"Battle Town," Jeremy said more to himself than out loud, wondering if now every historical detail would always make him think of Alaric – and of the fact that he was dead. But since most things tended to bring back painful memories, why history should be any different? "Why? What's there?"

Damon looked right and left before turning into the main road. "And you have the limit of ten questions per hour."

Jeremy gave him a mildly exasperated look before searching the pockets for his phone that had started buzzing.

"Hey, Elena," Jeremy said, glancing at Damon who kept his eyes fixed on the road, but his expression clearly indicated that he was listening. "Yes. Yes, yes, I did," Jeremy said, stifling a smile. "I'm in the car." He sighed. "No. Actually… he's here, so…" He rolled his eyes, extending his hand with the phone to Damon who looked at it, but then shifted his eyes back to the road, squinting into the distance.

Jeremy waited a few seconds longer, perplexed, but at last he reluctantly drew back his hand. "Elena…"

"He doesn't want to speak to me," Elena said on the other side in a voice that sounded bitter and annoyed although he could hear more sadness and hurt than annoyance in it.

Jeremy glanced at Damon again, but he stubbornly pretended to ignore the entire situation, appearing very much engrossed in reading the road signs instead. Only his eyes were giving him away and Jeremy wondered if he could strain his hearing well-enough to hear what Elena was saying. "Elena-"

"It's OK, Jeremy. I'll call you later. Bye."

Jeremy didn't even manage to reply, because Elena finished the call so abruptly. He looked at the phone in his hand with a small sigh and then put it away. "That wasn't fair to her," he said, shooting Damon a glare.

"Ah, ah, ah." Damon shook his head without turning it to look at him. "Refer back to the 'no questioning anything I do or say' rule."

"She felt bad about going, so instead of making her feel even worse you should rather-"

"Are you really going to lecture me?" Damon interrupted him in a gruff voice.

Jeremy regarded him carefully for a few seconds before replying. "You're as upset as her about not taking that call, so what did you do it for anyway?"

Damon's mouth twitched. "A+ from psychoanalysis. Now quit the investigation," he said, shooting Jeremy a grim look.

Jeremy threw his head against the headrest in exasperation. His phone buzzed again and he pulled it out of his pocket with a huff, wrinkling his forehead on Caroline's name that appeared on the screen.

Stefan watched Elena draw a hasty breath after she had finished her phone call.

They had gone to a café, because he was certain she hadn't been to such a place since the transition, or even longer than that, and he wanted her to feel normal again, at least for a few moments.

He had gone to place the order and somehow wasn't really surprised she had taken the opportunity to make a call, only that it apparently caused her mood to deteriorate instead of improving it.

Stefan was standing near the counter, waiting for the coffees to be prepared, feeling sadly disconcerted by the sight of Elena impatiently drop her phone back into her purse and scan the surroundings with unseeing eyes. She bit her lip to stop it from quivering.

"Damon's not happy about our meeting," Stefan said, placing the coffee in front of Elena. She straightened up, startled a little.

"I was talking to Jeremy," she answered somewhat sternly, without looking at him.

Stefan sat down across from her and looked at her for a moment before speaking. "You're angry with me for taking you out."

Elena shifted her eyes to him. "No," she said with a humorless, exasperated smile. "I'm just… I'm not sure what you expect me to say," she added after a pause, her voice gentle, but her eyes dim with seriousness.

"I don't expect you to say anything, Elena." Stefan said with a small frown. "I don't expect anything. I just want to understand. Because I want you to be happy."

"I don't know why everyone thinks they need to understand what I am doing," Elena blurted out with a mirthless smile. "Or why I am happy." She looked up at Stefan who averted his eyes for a second before shifting his gaze back to her.

"Because everyone's worried about you. Because everything seems to have changed overnight," Stefan continued in a low, calm voice.

Elena listened to him, suddenly realizing that she was listening to him with inexplicable rigidness. She tried to take apart the feeling, tried to find its source. It surely wasn't his intention to make her feel guilty, so why she was setting guilt as the default emotion for their conversation? Maybe she was reading too much into everything. His voice was soft and calm, but that's because it was how he usually spoke. It didn't necessarily mean he was grieving, and even if there was sadness in his voice, it wasn't her fault – or at least there was nothing she could do about that. He had a right to be sad. She couldn't expect him not to be sad just because it'd make being happy easier for her.

"It didn't change overnight," Elena observed cautiously.

"I know," Stefan replied with the faintest hint of irony in his voice.

"I just don't want to be afraid anymore," Elena said in a soft but resolute voice. "Ever since my parents died," she whispered, losing her breath for a second, her gaze drifting away into the distance. "I was afraid that I wouldn't make it through, that my life was over, that nothing good would ever happen to me. That I would lose someone again," she paused, her eyes focusing on Stefan, and she seemed to hesitate before continuing. "I was terrified when you told me that you were a vampire. But I was also… glad," she smiled weakly. "I was relieved because it meant I wouldn't lose you. Because you'd never die."

Stefan listened to her in utter concentration although from the expression on his face she could tell he was also reading between the lines – and didn't like what he was reading there. "Then with Katherine and Klaus and everything else… I was afraid again. I was afraid for Jeremy, Bonnie, Caroline. You," she glanced at him, and then laced her fingers around her coffee cup. "Damon," she whispered. "And I don't want to be afraid of losing any of you. I want Klaus to be gone, so I won't have to be afraid of that anymore. But I also don't want to be afraid of what I feel." She drew a breath. "When I turned, somehow everything I felt broke through this dam of fear and that's what made all the difference. I didn't start feeling differently. I just… stopped being afraid. Of myself."

"Sometimes it's better to be a little afraid," Stefan pointed out in a hollow voice, regarding her with thoughtful eyes.

Elena shook her head. "No, it's not better. But yes, it's probably safer… and easier… and… Only that's not what I want," she said with a small grimace.

Stefan smiled sourly, looking away. "I wanted to talk about us and it seems we're talking about Damon instead. He ensnared you," Stefan said gloomily, but not angrily, unconsciously prompting Elena to say something that hit him like a gust of arctic air.

"He stole me," Elena said without thinking with all the genuine innocence of someone in love. "Piece by piece. I don't even know when it happened," she added with a tiny smile that lit up her eyes.

For a split second, when Stefan concentrated on the words only and not on the fact that it was Elena who was saying them, he felt sincerely glad to hear such warmth, such ardent emotion in someone's voice in regard to his brother. But the moment broke like a bulb and it was dark again.

Elena's smile vanished and she blinked in embarrassment as if she suddenly remembered with whom she was talking.

"Is it this moment when people agree to become friends?" Stefan said tonelessly, attempting to smile but the muscles in his face barely twitched.

"I'd like that," Elena whispered earnestly, her eyes glimmering with tears.

"I'm not sure I can do that," Stefan said after a pause, holding her gaze.

She grimaced and nodded. "I understand."

"I love you," he said, sneering bitterly at himself for looking at her expectantly as if telling her what she already knew could change anything. "I'll always love you." He wondered if she really blinked so slowly, if she really tucked a strand of hair behind her ear so slowly. Or was it only his eyes, his mind processing everything in slow-motion.

"We want to get married."

Not only was it dark; it was also cold; and the silence lasted for a long, long time. "Why are you telling me this?" Stefan asked barely above a whisper, looking at her as if she was sitting on the other side of a glass wall.

Elena thrust up her chin a little. "You said you wanted to know if I was sure what I was doing," she said quietly, gently but her voice couldn't be further from faltering. "That's the best proof of certainty I can think of," she added under her breath.

There was an old church in Berryville and that was where they first stopped. Under a ruined stone wall there was an opening, covered by grass, with steps leading underground into a long, murky tunnel.

"You were going to take Elena here?" Jeremy asked incredulously, following the faint ray of light emitted by the flashlight. "It's a rather spooky date idea."

"She's a vampire. That's spooky," Damon replied, shifting the light left to right, scanning the walls with his eyes narrowed.

They found a glass door that led to a room Jeremy had expected to be the size of a cell, but instead it turned out to be a cave as vast as a house. The gust of wind that rushed out of the room nearly knocked Jeremy to the ground before he stepped inside. When he entered the room after Damon, his eyes widened at the sight of a lake in the middle of it.

"It's not the Fountain of Youth, is it?" Jeremy asked jokingly, looking around.

"Do I look like I need one?" Damon asked, taking the first of several empty vials from Jeremy who had started taking them out of his backpack.

"What is it?"

Damon bent down, submerging the vial into the water and waiting for it to fill up. "That's the eleventh question this hour."

Jeremy rolled his eyes.

It was only eleven o'clock when Elena got back home and she wasn't surprised no one was there. Caroline called and she agreed to meet her in the park. But when they met, Elena quickly picked up on all of her questions concerning Bonnie or Matt being dodged and it only made her more anxious, although she hoped that if something was really wrong Caroline wouldn't have the nerve to keep it secret from her.

"You're not cheerful," Caroline stated accusingly when they went out of the Grill after lunch.

"I'm not cheerful," Elena agreed in a cranky voice, crossing her arms over her chest and looking at her shoes as she walked next to Caroline, thinking back to her meeting with Stefan.

"Could I ask you one more question, Elena? What would you do if the situation was reversed? What if it was me and... Lexi in that car? Would you get her out first if I asked you to?"

She repeated how glad she was that he had gotten Matt first, but Stefan insisted on her answering the question. She tried to argue that there was no sense in discussing it any further, that she'd never, not even for a second, felt anything but gratitude that he had listened to her and saved Matt, but she didn't manage to convince Stefan to let her get away without answering the question.

"I know that, Elena. I know you meant it with all your heart. But I also think that somewhere deep, deep inside you felt disappointed."

"No, that's not true."

"So tell me what you would do? Would you save Lexi first? Or would you save me?"

She kept shaking her head, the more determined not to answer the more he pressed to hear her answer. But at last she gave up and with tears rolling down her cheeks she admitted that she wouldn't have listened to him, that she would have saved him first.

"That's what I thought," Stefan said as if he had just found the last missing puzzle piece and the picture he was trying to put together was finally complete. "That's what I should've realized a long time ago."

"You could at least try to look cheerful," Caroline said with a sigh, shaking Elena out of her reverie.

Elena shot her a sidelong look. "Caroline, what's wrong?"

Somehow ceasing to think about the conversation with Stefan didn't make Elena feel any better. On the contrary, it left her free to concentrate on nothing else but that overwhelming, uncomfortable, harrowing sense of yearning. Clandestinely she slid her hand into her purse to check if she hadn't missed any calls.

Caroline stopped in her tracks, throwing her arms in the air and letting them fall to her sides while she tried to put her thoughts into words. "He didn't call. Not even once. And he doesn't answer his phone."

Elena looked startled then clueless for a second but after a moment she understood that Caroline was talking about Tyler.

"He's staying away to protect you," Elena said reassuringly.

Caroline tilted her head to the side, giving her an exasperated look. "You don't actually think that."

"I do think that," Elena said defensively, perplexed.

"But you don't think it's how it should be, do you?" Caroline demanded.

Elena sighed. "I'm sure he does what he thinks is best."

Caroline groaned. "Seriously, Elena. You should run for office. That would allow you to make most of your diplomatic speaking patterns." She walked to stand in front of Elena and looked her straight in the eye. "We've been best friends since the first grade. You owe me an honest answer. Do you think Tyler should be here right now with all of us or not?"

They visited a few more places and people in Berryville and although with only ten questions per hour at his disposal Jeremy couldn't make the most of his analytical skills and wasn't sure what was going to come out of the entire trip, he found himself thinking that it was the first time in a long time when while riding in a car he felt like he was on a trip and not on his way to or from a funeral.

It was at five o'clock that Elena began to worry. Jeremy had sent her a text message an hour earlier saying that everything was fine, but she would rather see for herself. She also couldn't get rid of that nagging feeling of missing something... missing someone. It manifested itself in the strangest way: every breath she took made her feel like she was pulling on an invisible thread that was tied to her heart. Every intake of breath hurt.

When the clock struck seven Elena was sitting in the kitchen, sipping on a blood bag and beginning to feel annoyed. She had done two loads of laundry, dragged a vacuum cleaner upstairs all the way from the basement, rearranged the plates in the cupboard (and accidentally breaking one or two in the process). Still, none of these activities made the time run any faster. Not to mention that she felt ridiculous doing laundry two days before all of them could potentially die.

Finally around nine she heard the car engine stop near the house, headlights lighting up the windows from outside before fading into the dusk. Elena jumped to her feet.

Jeremy opened the door with his key and walked inside, giving her a smile as if everything was in perfect order. She narrowed her eyes at him, preparing to glare with utmost-

Jeremy shut the door, looking at the bewildered expression on Elena's face questioningly.

"Where's Damon?" she asked, perplexed, her eyes darting to the windows where she noticed the headlights flash once again.

Forgetting about the necessity to appear indignant, she rushed outside, where the relief that swept over her upon the realization that Damon hadn't driven off yet was quickly replaced by irritation when she saw him leaning against the car, apparently waiting for her to dash out of the house like that.

She stopped abruptly in her tracks and then swirled around to head back home.

When she was on the porch he appeared in front of her and she looked up at him with a frown.

"How was your day, Elena?" Damon asked in a low voice, a crooked smile flickering across his face, even though his eyes were boring into her with so much intensity and seriousness that it made her breath catch in her throat.

"You didn't want to speak to me on the phone, you didn't talk to me all day and now you just wanted to drive off without a word," Elena said through her teeth. "Is that some kind of punishment?" she asked with an irritated grimace.

"Which part, you mean?" Damon asked with fake cluelessness. "And punishment for what?"

Elena crossed her arms over her chest, glaring at him. She tried to retain the glare even when he pulled her toward him, but when his lips began hovering inches away from hers she forgot how to glare.

"How was your day, Elena?" he repeated in that alluringly urgent voice that demanded an answer and she found herself leaning into him, her lips missing his only because he slightly tilted his head to the side.

"It was awful," she whispered, her eyes fluttering shut when his hand skimmed across her cheek and into her hair.

His breath ghosted across her neck. "Why?"

"Because," she slid her fingers into his hair, pressing on the back of his head, causing his lips to touch her skin. Still, he didn't kiss her. "I didn't see you, I didn't even hear from you all day." She didn't think she could sound any more helpless if she tried.

Her hands flew to his shoulders when he lifted his head and crashed his lips against hers, kissing her feverishly. She subconsciously realized they were clinging to each other, not just holding each other. They were slaloming between bonfires with fistfuls of matches. The abstract image came to her and it just felt fitting, it seemed to reflect the way in which he was reading her with his hands, as if she was porcelain-fragile, but at the same time like she wouldn't break no matter how roughly he was pressing her toward him, how her hair tangled in between his fingers, how his lips imprinted hot kisses all over her face.

"Where have you been?" Elena asked, finding it suddenly completely thrilling to ask mundane questions with her hand under his shirt, his lips wandering lazily across her cheek. It was alluring, the haziness of borders, the lack of need for catalysts and intermezzos. No regrets or apologies. No explanations. A smile for a glare. A kiss for an argument. It was a neverending circle and the order didn't matter, because each was done in love.

"In a church," Damon replied, smirking at the skeptical look on her face. "I have a witness. Ask him."

Elena smiled but then her expression faltered a little. "I promised Jeremy… He's got something planned for tomorrow. A short trip somewhere. A surprise trip. I don't know where."

Damon ran the backs of his fingers over her cheek. "And now you're waiting for me to throw a tantrum."

"No," Elena smiled. "I'm just sad that we lost an entire day today and tomorrow… and then it's that Sunday already," she sighed, glancing away. She looked back at him when he cupped her face in his hands.

"Don't think about that now, Elena. Go and have fun." He kissed her.

"Are you going to at least pick up when I call tomorrow?" She asked, resting her forehead against his.

Damon smirked. "Unless I'll be occupied otherwise."

Elena narrowed her eyes at him and then smiled against his lips when he kissed her again.

Ripping a piece of paper from a note on the refrigerator and grabbing a pen from his backpack, Jeremy quickly wrote down a few words and looked at them with a sigh.

His eyes darted to the front door when he heard Elena walk inside with a dejected look on her face. Jeremy smiled to himself and waited for Elena to walk upstairs before he ran outside through the kitchen door.

Damon was already getting into his car when he heard Jeremy call his name. He turned around and waited for him to catch up.

For a moment Jeremy seemed to search for the right words. "Elena and I are going to Sandbridge tomorrow," he said at last in a casual tone. "I thought she might like a day by the sea, away from Mystic Falls."

Damon opened his mouth to reply, but then froze at the sudden realization that he was just told the exact destination of what was supposed to be a surprise trip.

Jeremy nodded and for a moment seemed to ponder something again. Then he just wordlessly handed a piece of paper to Damon. "That's where we'll be staying."

Damon looked at the address and then at Jeremy who smiled briefly before turning around and heading back to the house.