Hey guys, so I hope you're all enjoying this fic so far. This is the final chapter of the main "Triangle" so to speak. I'm thinking of also doing a Bonnie, Alaric and Jeremy POV but it may be a few days before I start adding those chapters....next Thursday-ish or so. So I really hope you'll keep reading my stuff until then, I hope you like this chapter, it's a little, longer since it's the last one for a little while. Also, if you're in the mood for another vampire diaries fic by me, feel free to check out my story "don't tear me down" if you haven't already :)

....just a little disclaimer since i seem to have been forgetting them lately: I don't own The Vampire Diaries, TV or Book rights....but boy oh boy do I wish I owned Ian Somerhalder.....*drooooll* lol

xoxox

Becca

She loves Stefan, she does. He's sweet and caring and he kisses her like she's the most precious thing in his world. He makes her feel warm and content inside when he holds her and she knows he'll never fail to try and protect her.

But something is missing: that deeper connection her parents always talked about, that felling of being complete just by looking at your partner. When she thinks of their relationship with Stefan, it isn't with giddy smiles and memories of sweet dates like she thought it would be in the beginning. What she thinks instead is 'vampires'. It's the one defining word in their relationship, before happiness or fun or even love. Vampires. And with that one little word come the memories: worry for her family, fear for her friends, the initial belief that she was going crazy the first time she saw Stefan's eyes turn red with bloody lust; terror in her own home as vampires invade it. There are good memories too she thinks, they're just harder to find, and somehow they're still linked to vampires; either because they happened after they had just beaten one (she has to see so much death nowadays) or because they get ruined by the arrival of a new one.

Sometimes she wonders if they actually have anything in common at all, anything substantial tying them together apart from their shared knowledge of vampires. In the dead hours of the night when she is alone with only her darker thoughts, she sometimes thinks that if you took the vampire aspect out of their relationship there would be nothing left; nothing to keep them from drifting apart out of sheer boredom and lack of shared interests. She hates thinking such thoughts; they feel like betrayal to her mind...yet she finds she can't help it.

Before anything else, she likes to know the truth, she hates being lied to and it is the only thing she and Stefan truly disagree on: he thinks it's acceptable in order to protect her, she would rather he just trusted her enough to make her own choices with the knowledge. She lives by the truth, she has to nowadays to stay sane. With so many lies in her life she finds she almost needs to tell and be told it constantly wherever she possibly can. Maybe that's why she can't deny that the words her subconscious whispers to her sound scarily like the truth to her.

When she thinks of Stefan it makes her smile briefly as she thinks of butterfly kisses and sweet words, but she doesn't think passion and despite his best efforts to always protect her, she doesn't think safety. She loves Stefan, she's sure of it. She just isn't sure is she's in love with him anymore. That spark seems to have disappeared somewhere between empty tombs and road trips to Georgia and dances at a ceremony she didn't get the point of until he took her hand and showed her the meaning of them.

Damon. He's evil. Supposedly. Stefan seems to think so anyway. And at first, when she got over her initial impression of him as a gorgeous mystery enough to see the monster beneath, so did she. So much so that she couldn't see past the blood coating his lips and the steely coldness of his ice-blue eyes. Over time she convinced herself to hate him; fuelled on by Stefan's stories and her own nightmares until all she could see when she looked at Damon was death and hate and an obsessive love for destruction.

She saw the way he looked at her, even from the very first day; lust and want and nostalgia for someone she knew nothing of but already resented with a vengeance. She was determined not to let him destroy her too in his quest for the ultimate desecration of his brother's life.

But then something changed between them. Cliché, she knows, but it did and the vulnerability she saw on his face as he lovingly replaced her necklace- keeping her safe, even from him- and told her he trusted her- lump in his throat and fear in his beautiful eyes- was enough to make her hate him that little bit less...and love him that instinctive bit more.

She tried to deny it, especially when she realised she was the exact image of Katherine, but she couldn't stop herself falling no matter how hard she tried. At night she forced herself to write calmly in her journal about the day just gone as she settled down to sleep- refusing to let even the thought of his name enter her head. She wasn't quite so successful in her dreams. There he plagued her mind with images of his cobalt eyes- shining in the darkness; full of vulnerability and hope and love. She would wake to the ghostly feeling of his breath on her shoulder-just as it had been when he stood head hung low and broken at the realisation of Katherine's betrayal- only to find herself disappointed when he wasn't actually there.

By the time Georgia happens, she thinks she almost trusts him; he's saved her too many times now not to. So she asks, and although he doesn't give a real answer, she's too tired and sore and hurt by Stefan's lies to stop herself from just letting go and living as though Damon was the only one in her life. Just for the night. By the time morning comes they're not enemies anymore, she wouldn't call them friends just yet, but she knows she can no longer pretend to hate him. It was easy enough to talk herself into thinking she did the first time, but even then he still found a way to manipulate her emotions in his favour. She refuses to even try this time, it would be pointless anyway. She's finally found a few redeemable qualities in her psychopathic vampire; she doesn't want to pretend they don't exist.

His eyes are soft when he tells her he "wanted it to be real" and she refuses to acknowledge the emotions she sees in them- screaming at her to accept him. Even then, the image haunts her every time she sees him after that and she finds she just can't act like she doesn't at least like him anymore. She's not ready to admit yet that there may be something more to it than that.

Everything happens so fast after that and her emotions are taken for such an exhausting ride she can barely hold onto her sanity- let alone all the barriers she has carefully set in place to guard her heart from people like him. She finds out Damon killed her mother and she can barely see through the tears of betrayal and hurt that cover her eyes and she thinks she's never hated him more than in that moment: Her heart aching with sadness and disappointment and her mind whispering that she's more upset about Damon than she is about her birth mother being dead. She tries to force the thoughts away and she's just about convinced her emotions that she hates him again, but then Stefan gets captured and his hands are cupping her face and he's so sincere she can't help but wish he was like this constantly. Then Stefan is falling off the proverbial wagon and Damon is the one who holds her while she cries out her guilt and her confusion at everything and somewhere along the way she realises she's done what she swore she could never do. She's fallen for both brothers. She's more like Katherine than she thought. And that terrifies her.

But Damon is there, through it all; her yelling and her slapping, her tears and her laughter, danger and fun. And he's not killing anymore. He's drinking bagged blood and even though she can see the hunger in his eyes as he watches girls parade around town in miniskirts and tiny tops, he restrains himself. She's not stupid enough to think he isn't still biting them, but the killing has stopped. Mostly. And that she can live with. At least he's trying now. For her, she thinks.

The thing about Damon is she's always herself around him. No matter what she's feeling towards him, she lets it out. She doesn't put on the mask she does around everyone else, doesn't feel the need to hide behind false smiles and reassuring words. With Damon she is completely open. It's not like that with others and she can't quite figure out why. But it's refreshing, and she can't help but look forward to seeing him now, she likes his overly obvious innuendos and his charmingly insane chatter. She likes trading joking insults, both pretending to be scathed while their eyes lock together laughingly and smiles slip past their scandalised facades.

She knows Stefan doesn't like it, but she feels like she can talk to Damon, like no matter what she tells him he'll understand and be okay with. Maybe it's because everything he's done is a hundred times worse than anything she could ever think, but still, it isn't like that with Stefan. She feels uncomfortable trying to talk to him about the same things she makes a joke of with Damon. His serious, condemning attitude unnerves her and she finds herself going to Damon more and more; returning his insinuating smirks without thought, talking into the dead of night in her room, craving the support of his arms when it all becomes too much to handle...craving the feel of his mouth on hers when their arguments get heated and her back is pressed against a wall- his face looming above her, his mouth perfectly within reach...

She's started comparing them subconsciously. She doesn't even realise she's doing it until it's too late and her decision has already been made.

Stefan is loving and kind and serious and she knows he wants to do everything he can to make her happy. But it's Damon, dark, irredeemable- irresistible- Damon who is always there for her, who saves her and keeps her safe and trusts her enough to let her charge into situations far too dangerous for her own good. Because he trusts himself enough to know he'll always be there to save her. He doesn't wrap her up like a doll, he listens to her and understands her and she finds she can't be anything but her true self around him. He laughs with her and commiserates with her and makes her laugh even more than he makes her want to scream. And she knows they're not perfect, never will be, but at the end of the day, they have something. Something she can't quite define, but that feels terrifyingly like that deeper connection she's been searching for; that thing that doesn't have a name but bonds them together tighter and better than vampires have ever bound her and Stefan.

She finds herself smiling around him, laughing along at his ridiculously juvenile humour and getting just a little too drunk with him in questionable looking bars- dancing like the teenager she is and that he (almost) resembles until well into the night. She finds herself snuggled into his side on the sofa when they fall asleep together after talking about nothing for hours on end. And eventually, she realises she's built herself a life with him as a major part of it- vampires and witches and ex girlfriends just a pesky little side note to something so much bigger and better and greater than all of it combined. And in the end, that's all she's been looking for all along; someone to laugh with and love and stumble their way past anything life throws at them- confidant in themselves and each other, confidant in them enough to know for certain that they can deal with anything together.

In the end, it's not a hard decision, not even a decision at all really as she slips her way into Damon's arms and presses their lips together chastely, shyly- questioningly, acceptingly. Her laughter rings out around the old house seconds later as he sweeps her into his arms and devours her mouth with his; nothing chaste and shy this time, nothing hidden between them at all...

...Well, except maybe the occasional body in the basement...