Okay, I know that this chapter doesn't have much Delena in it. It's really more about Damon and Stefan and all the mess that's between them at this point. But it's also an important buildup to the next few chapters, and a good look inside Damon's head as far as his brother's concerned. Their relationship, and their shared feelings for Elena, are such an integral part of the show that I couldn't resist the chance to play with them a little bit. (And the background will be useful later on, I think.)

So...read, drop me a line in the review box, and enjoy the angsty and impossibly cute Salvatore brothers. :) Okay?

He'd never cared much for fairy-tale endings.

When he'd been a child, his mother had read to him from a heavy book crammed with the Grimm Brothers and Charles Perrault and Hans Christian Andersen. He'd loved sitting there curled up in her lap, surrounded by the faint scents of roses and spice and clean starched linen...warm and slightly sleepy, lulled by the low murmur of her voice and the squeak of the wooden rocking chair. But somehow the stories themselves had always disappointed him. He wasn't sure if it was because he felt a stirring of sympathy for the villains or simply found the heroes incredibly boring. Either way, something about the perfect world that storybooks seemed to create rang false for him, and he'd never been able to figure out exactly why.

One of the stories he'd always hated most was Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. He had nothing against houses full of pint-sized men with absolutely no ability to cook, clean, or do their own laundry. He thought Snow White was merely annoying in the goody-two-shoes way of most storybook heroines. But the evil queen and her obsession with her magical reflection hit too close to home for his liking. Everyone was a mirror; he'd learned that early on in life. And while the reflections might not be obvious or even apparent to the naked eye, on closer inspection everyone manifested a little bit of someone else.

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He'd always enjoyed observing himself reflected in the shiny perfection of the glass. He was a handsome bastard, and he damn well knew it. (So did a significant number of the female population, but that was hardly relevant at present time.) And so he was busily adjusting the collar of his sharply tailored black shirt and admiring his carefully tousled hair when Stefan walked in, looking as miserably depressed as usual. Damon thought about reminding his dear brother of the old Ella Wheeler Wilcox chestnut "Smile and the world smiles with you," but forbore. There really wasn't much of a point when you were talking to someone who'd been on a one hundred and forty-five year old fast.

"Going out tonight?" Stefan asked moodily, and Damon couldn't help the cocky little smirk that rose to one corner of his mouth. God, he loved the fact that he was sexy and immortal and unattached...well, sometimes. And tonight was most definitely one of those times.

"Yep," he said coolly, and gave his tie a last twist before turning away from the mirror. "How do I look, Mom?"

Stefan glared.

"Why should I care?"

"Because we happen to have the same last name, and therefore I am a reflection on the family. Besides, the world can only handle one moping, unattractive Salvatore brother at a time."

His brother rolled his eyes and picked up Damon's discarded glass of Scotch, sniffing carefully at the contents before setting it back down with an audible click.

"You're hitting the hard stuff pretty early in the evening, aren't you?" he asked, a faint censorious note in his voice.

"I'm over twenty-one," Damon shot back, running a casual hand through his hair as he reached for his leather jacket. "And since when have you cared about what I drink?"

Stefan gave him an incredulous look.

"Maybe since you came back to the town where I live and started picking off the townspeople," he said bitterly. "It makes it a little difficult to be accepted in the community when your brother is running around snacking on your neighbors."

Damon snorted and smoothed down the jacket's collar, reaching for the keys he always kept in the right-hand pocket.

"Please, Stefan, I stopped making Happy Meals out of the locals over a month ago," he pointed out caustically. "I have a vested interest in keeping a low profile too. Besides, I'm friends with the Founders' Council now, remember? I'm on the inside. Which means..." he turned back to his brother and met his eyes straight-on "...don't piss me off."

And with one last glance in the mirror he was out the door and heading for his car, expensive shoes scuffing on the gravel drive. He was behind the wheel and out on the highway in record time, and the steady beat of the radio kept him from hearing again in his head the similarities in their voices, seeing his expression reflected on his brother's face. It wasn't until he was pulling in at The Grill and checking his rearview mirror for traffic that the memories hit him like a sucker punch in the gut.

He and Stefan playing ball in the garden, blond and black hair shining in the soft Virginia sunlight. Fishing in the river that wound through the fragrant woods behind their house, sitting stiff and uncomfortable during the antebellum formalities of dinner, making his brother laugh as he deftly imitated his father's outdated mannerisms behind his back. A little older, voices cracking and feet too big, fighting the innate shyness of all teenage boys just beginning to notice that girls are actually pretty. The fights, the arguments, the silent for-granted forgiveness that was as much a part of their lives as breathing in and out. And then the whirlwind descent into the fires of Hell, falling in love with her, feeling the pull of heartbreak as for the first time he and Stefan shared something that was never really theirs to hold. The fury, the betrayal, the hatred as he looked in the mirror of his brother's face, saw Katherine's destiny in his eyes. The flare of hope as they pulled her out of the back of that barred cart, the welcome sense that they were brothers once again, doing everything together just as they always had. And then the split second of pain, the unbelievable awakening, the agony as he realized she was gone. The emptiness, the cold sickness in the pit of his stomach, Stefan standing before him with madness in his smile and warm blood dripping from his lips. One hundred and forty-five years of anguish and revenge, and he still could not let go.

He couldn't do it. Despite all the years of fury and cold hate, he couldn't even imagine it. How could you destroy your other side, the part of you that never had a chance to surface, the hope that someday you could be something else, someone else? How could you let go of the one person who remembered everything you'd been, everything you'd tried to be, the only one who knew what it was to love the impossible and lose it in a fire beyond belief? How could you lose the only person left on the face of the planet who shared your blood, your memories, your fears? There was no way out of it. There never would be. He and Stefan were trapped in the mirror, caught in the cycle of death and loyalty and twisted love, always doomed to be the fairest of them all. And though Katherine had left their lives over a century ago, the pattern would continue. Against his will, Elena's face floated into his mind, eyes warm and smiling, full mouth promising the impossible, the tilt of her chin buying affection that she never meant to repay. She wasn't Katherine; that much he knew. But she was quickly becoming their girl, the center point of that triangle with Damon at one corner and Stefan at the other. They were mirror images, and she had no alternative but to choose one chimera over another.

But seven years is a long time to wait out the curse of fortune...and the mirror would remain unbroken tonight.