They drove in silence after that, each of them watching the lights whip past. In the last month they'd gone through every emotion conceivable, and now they were here; trapped in an endless silence full of undeclared words. In the darkness of the car, Elena was silent, waiting for an explanation; waiting for a reason as to why. Damon kept his mind on the road, one hand draped lightly over the steering wheel as his glacial eyes reflecting the street lamps. He drove quietly, the gentle hum of the engine creating a quiet melody in the silent night. Damon pulled into a side road, handling the old car with the same expertise as his bike. Elena studied him blatantly. The curve of his shoulder in his jacket, the strong line of his jaw with the faint shadow of stubble across it, the sharp profile, and those eyes, blue lighting amongst the storm. He pulled on the gearshift, sending the car to a smooth stop outside a quiet building.

It was appealing; in it's own way, the small building. With its sharp corners and large bay windows on the corners, it gave the street a warm glow from the light inside, dusting the grey concrete a soft yellow. It had a twisting gravel path, edged with plants snaking around the edge of the house, leading into the real Phoenix with it's dusty sand and haunting waving cacti washed in the dull radiance of the moon, making everything magical, mysterious and alluring.

Damon got out of the car, closing the powder blue door with a gentle thud, as if the silence of the night was too smooth for him to shatter. Elena sighed, allowing herself a moment of solitude in the car alone, staring blankly out of the windscreen. Her eyes panned unseeingly over the scene before her, catching on Damon's unblinking gaze as he stood leaning against a wall, watching her with an unfathomable expression. She got out of the car in one swift second, closing the door gently like he had done. She walked up to him, still standing smaller than him, even in her heels. He looked at her sadly; his normal emotive eyes were devoid of the innovative beauty they normally held.

He unlocked the door and opened it for her, holding it ajar as she walked in, staring around the lobby in awe.

"This place is nice." She noted quietly, breaking the silence like glass.

Damon cracked a smile, his blue eyes creeping back to life. He gestured his backwards towards the elevator. He held his hand out to her slightly. "I wanna show you something."

She paused for a moment, her eyes flickering between his outstretched hand and his tempting half-smile. She sighed, linking his fingers through hers reluctantly, letting him tug her backwards into the lift, causing her to stumble slightly, letting her laughter ring out through the small space. Damon looked at her softly, leaning against the mirrored wall of the elevator. As her laughter died on her lips, the tension crept back in, grasping ahold of them.

Thankfully, the elevator arrived at the floor Damon was going to soon, and the enclosed space of a cramped metal box was replaced with the freshness of a corridor with lots of places to run and hide when things started spiraling. Damon was smiling again by the time he reached a dark wood door with gold enamel numbers marking it as Room C18. He fished a key out of his pocket, sliding it into the lock and pushing the door wide open, revealing its secrets to her.

She burst out laughing as she wandered into the wide, empty room. It had dark wood flooring with cream walls, inserted with panels of dark wood and red brick. It was wide, and open, creating an echoing sense of vacancy. She chuckled, whirling around to face Damon. "An empty apartment?" she asked skeptically, leaning against a pillar near the untouched kitchen.

Damon grinned at her, a pale imitation of the one she'd seen earlier. "Catch." He said suddenly, throwing the key in her direction. "Your empty apartment." He told her, gesturing widely into the room. Elena looked around, grinning widely, taking in the large double bed through an archway with sliding doors and the marble kitchen. Damon cleared his throat awkwardly. "It's kind of empty." He shrugged apologetically.

"It's fine." She said simply, brushing away his statement.

A prolonged silence grew between them. It was a long time before she looked up, meeting the blue gaze that had been trained on her the whole time.

"I know you want to say something." Damon told her quietly, settling himself down on the floor. He locked his arms around his legs, with his knees splaying out to rest against his elbows as his head fell back against the wall. "So say it."

"Why?" she asked in a small, steady voice. She focused on him with unforgiving eyes.

"Why what?" he said calmly, his icy stare never leaving her eyes.

"Why are you here? Why did you take me away from the club? Why-?" she began, questions slipping out of her mouth as soon as she let them.

"Because I want to talk to you." Damon answered her simply, cutting her off. "And come on 'Lena," he said, almost playfully as the familiar name rolled off his lips. "You were drinking, and you're supposed to be on pain medication."

"I'm not on pain meds." She told him bluntly, the throbbing in her chest creeping back into the forefront of her mind. "I forgot them at the hospital, ergo, the next most effective pain medication."

Damon sighed and reached into his pocket, pulling out a little box of pills. "I know." He chucked them at her gently, a sad look in his eyes. "They called me to pick them up."

Elena sighed, setting the pills down on the empty kitchen counter. "So why did you make me leave?"

"Because I want to talk to you." He said shortly, lending no further explanation. Elena groaned and hoisted herself up onto the counter, hissing as pain sliced through her. Damon was up and beside her quicker than she would have thought. "You okay?" he asked softly, his hand resting ever so gently against her arm. Elena drew back, surprised by his concern.

She nodded slowly, absent-mindedly massaging her shoulder. While her wounds were only flesh wounds as she'd gathered from her doctors, and her stay in hospital extremely short, the pain of the bullets still hurt her, sending agony coursing through her veins in the worst cases, and a slight throbbing at best. "You care now?" she asked cuttingly.

Damon sighed and leant over the counter, pressing his hands into his face. "Of course I care, I never said I didn't."

"No, but you left." She said reasonably. "Which was a crappy thing to do, Damon."

"I get that okay?" he said tiredly. "I just fucking left you there, and that was a shit thing to do, but I swear to god, if you start on me too I won't be able to take it."

"I think I can start on you if I want." She muttered bitterly. "I'm the only one who should be starting on you."

Damon scoffed, a noise so full of contempt and bitterness she almost didn't recognize him. "You're the only one who actually matters 'Lena." He said softly, looking into her eyes.

Elena looked away, gazing out the large bay windows onto the desert. The light of the moon seemed to wash everything, from the rocks to the dunes to his striking eyes, in a mystical glow, making the world seem more beautiful. "Why did you leave?" she asked, finally looking at him again. "You said you'd explain."

Damon groaned, rubbing his face anxiously. "I can't explain it." He said slowly, looking away from her. "You're just always there, and you're always hurt, and it's always my fault. I just wanted to stop it."

Elena tentatively reached out with one finger, placing it on his chin and drawing his face around to look at her. "I'm not always hurt." She told him, unsure of anything else to say.

Damon pulled away from her grip and looking at his hands as he straightened up and ran his fingers restlessly through his hair. "You've been here a month, Lay, how many times have you been hurt?"

Elena scowled at him. "Considering the amount of people who want me dead, I think it's a relatively low number." She said weakly, looking at him sadly.

"Do you know how many Vengefuls there are based officially in Phoenix?" he asked emptily, refusing to meet her eyes. She shook her head once, dreading the answer. "None." He told her bitterly. "The Vengefuls don't have a chapter here anymore. They moved to Vegas, L.A, San Francisco."

"I know." Elena said, closing her eyes for a moment. "They were always in L.A."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

Elena shrugged, staring at a blank patch of cream wall illuminated by the moonlight. "They weren't after me."

"So why did you avoid them?" Damon probed gently. This time he reached out and cupped her cheek, forcing him to look at him.

"Because I knew who they were." She whispered, her eyes telling a different story than what they had before. "All they had to do was hear my name and I knew it'd be over."

"You were scared." He stated, drawing back in surprise. Elena was one of the strongest people he'd even encountered. She took the bull by the horns and took whatever life threw at her. She always had lightness in her eyes and a ring of genuineness in her laugh, that when he was with her, he couldn't help but smile too. Elena looked down at her lap. He tilted her chin again, meeting her warm, chocolate eyes and seeing beneath the strength that lay there, to the fear that rested behind it. "It's good to be scared." He told her sincerely. "Only fools have no fear."

Elena cocked her head to the side. "Are you scared?" she asked, her question so simple; yet one thousand different people could interpret it one thousand different ways.

He looked up ay her, raw honesty in his eyes and he answered her question in the simplest way he could. "Petrified." He admitted, running his hands through the ends of her hair. One by one, the walls that had sprung up between them were being broken down.

Elena looked at him, those brown eyes holding all the answers to questions he only had to ask. She didn't ask him what he was scared off, and he didn't elaborate. "I don't blame you." She told him after a long silence.

He looked up at her in surprise. "I know you don't," he said tiredly.

"Damon." She said exasperated, grabbing his face with both hand to force him to look at her, and really look at her. "You think you're only putting me in danger?" she asked rhetorically, holding his cheeks between her palms. "You're the only one keeping me together."

Damon placed his hands on the counter, tensing and looking down at the marble patterns. "Don't say that." He whispered. "I'm not good for you."

"Then be my friend, Damon." She said steadily. "I never asked you for anything more and you ran screaming the second you couldn't handle this." She snapped, a hard edge to her voice as she motioned between their two bodies.

"I told you," he said, turning his head and looking at her again. "I'm scared, Elena. I'm fucking petrified." He said, running his hands through his hair and pushing off the counter; stalking across the apartment in hectic circles. "I don't want those expectations put on me. I don't want people to come to me when you get hurt and ask me why I let that happen."

Elena pushed off the counter, trying to ignore the pain as it wracked her body. She walked over to him, turning his face around to meet hers and dropping her hands to her side. "It's not your job to keep me safe." She whispered. "I don't need you to protect me."

"God Elena." He said, rolling his eyes exasperated. "People expect me to keep you safe. I'm supposed to keep you safe."

"You're not supposed to do anything!" she said loudly, walking away from him throwing her hands into the air in exasperation. "I'm not some pathetic little girl who can't look after herself! I don't need you to spend your days acting like my bodyguard!"

"Did it ever," Damon started to say in a low voice, turning around to look at her. "Occur to you that I want to keep you safe– out of free choice on my part? That I don't like you seeing you on the verge of death because of something I could have stopped? That if anything happens to you while you're with me, I don't want to deal with the guilt?"

"You don't have to do anything! You're not some glorified protector of a someone who can't look after herself!" she yelled, anger boiling through her veins. "I got hurt and you couldn't stop it! Deal with it!"

"I could have stopped it Elena!" he shouted back.

"How?" she snorted sarcastically, folding her hands over her chest. "By jumping in front of those bullets? No, Damon, because then you would be hurt, and that would be my fault."

"How come you could blame yourself, but I can't blame me?"

"Because someone shot me." She said simply. "And yeah, it sucked, but I'm alive. So who cares if you couldn't stop it?"

"I care, Elena!" he said, moving towards her with wide eyes. Gesturing to himself he exploded, "I care, okay? I care that I couldn't stop my brother shooting you."

Elena stopped dead in her tracks, staring at Damon in shock. "Stefan shot me? I didn't know that."

"No one knows that." He told her curtly. "He was aiming for me and at the last second decided to change targets and fire a bullet into you."

"Nice." She muttered bitterly, trying to ignore the fact that the nice guy who had made her toast had shot her. Whoever that nice guy had been, he certainly didn't exist anymore. She leant her back against the counter, looking at him with a strange expression on her face.

"He shot you instead of me." Damon said in a quiet voice. "I should have told you to run."

Elena looked up at him quickly. "I did run." She told him carefully. "But then I heard a gun."

Damon's eyes locked on to hers and he walked over to her, standing directly in front of her. Elena found herself transfixed on the azure orbs before her eyes.

"You came back?" he echoed, fixing his unblinking gaze on her. He ran his hands through his hair and looked away from her. "Why did you come back?"

"I thought someone shot you." She told him, her voice as strong and steady as it always was.

"Well they didn't," he snapped regretfully. "They shot you."

Elena sighed and looked away, training her vision on the starless sky. "Do you think I don't know that?" she asked incredulously. "Do you think-?" She broke off abruptly shaking her head in disbelief. She turned on him, her eyes tired and worn and beaten. "Why are you here, Damon?" she said, her voice wearing thin.

Damon looked at her, hesitantly reaching out to touch her cheek to stroke a strand of hair away from her face. "I shouldn't have left."

A/N: Updates will be getting shorter from now on, and probably more frequent. It's a hell of a lot easier writing a chapter maybe 2,000 words or so rather that trying to link together 4/5,000 words in a way that flows. So with shorter chapters, don't think I'm losing interest. I love this story too much to let it go.