It must have been hours before Damon managed to drag himself back over to his bike. He'd settled in a shadowy layby leaning against a broken street lamp and staring unseeingly at the desert stretching out for miles in front of him. Eventually the turmoil in his head calmed enough that he could think straight. Trevor was a king of manipulation; he was the one who got any and all information from you before he shot a bullet through your skull. He knew exactly how to screw with a people – that was all. There was no foundation to his last words, the same words that were etched into Damon's mind. He could here them over and over, taunting him viciously and provoking the storm.

However, the sheer lack of base to Trevor's words didn't calm his churning nerves and bone-deep fear that maybe, just maybe, she wasn't okay. He raced through the moonlit roads that were unnervingly devoid of traffic and thanking his lucky stars that there were no speed cameras on this stretch of highway. Somehow his legs carried him right to Elena's door, across the gravel pathway and through the tidy entrance, the familiar sound of his fist pounding on the door sending a fresh wave of fear crashing over him.

Several long seconds passed with aching slowness, each heartbeat echoing in his ears, as that familiar wooden door remained firmly shut. Another second, another heartbeat and another glance at that door was enough to make him crack. His own voice sounded foreign to him as he called her name as calmly as possible. He leant his forehead against the door, starting backwards suddenly when his substitute wall fell away from him leaving an open doorway and an exquisitely beautiful, living, breathing Elena Gilbert in it's place.

Damon let out a visible sigh of relief, closing his eyes for a moment and brushing her hand with one hand for a fraction of a second, as if he was checking she was really there. "Oh thank god." He muttered under his breath, his eyes frantically scanning over her face.

Elena stared at him confused, gently touching his arm. He shook his head slightly and folded her into his arms. "People keep telling me they are going to come and kill you." He moaned burying his face in her hair.

She cracked a smile and pulled away from him guiltily. "No one would dare hurt me. I have a bodyguard." She said slowly, staring at him intently carefully gauging his reaction.

"Glorified Barbie would be less help than a throw pillow." Damon scoffed disdainfully, leaning against the now closed door and folding his arms.

Elena swallowed roughly and looked at him contritely. "I thought we were going to be done with you being mad at me for today." She complained irritably as she looked backward towards the kitchen. Glancing at Damon carefully she gestured with her head for him to follow her.

"Why would I be mad at you?" he questioned suspiciously through narrowed eyes. "Elena?" He glanced around the messy apartment, a slight movement catching his attention and shattering his relief. "You've got to be kidding me!" He cursed loudly, glaring furiously at Elena. "What happened to Blondie? Do you actually want to die, is that was this is? You actually want to die, right? Otherwise you wouldn't be so utterly reckless with your life! This place is supposed to be safe; it's not some place you bring people like her! This is the one place that not one Vengeful knew existed. The one place, Elena!"

"Is it time for me to go?" Katherine said smirking, her eyes darkening slightly as she stood up and slipped on her shoes. "Always a pleasure, Damon. I'll tell Stefan you said hello."

"You tell him anything – anything – I will kill you." He told her, his voice low and even and dangerous. "If he turns up here, I will kill him. If he so much as calls me. Is that clear? I swear to god Katherine."

Katherine glanced briefly at Elena, some communication flying between them. She shook her head and glared at Katherine. Katherine shrugged. "Stefan thinks I'm with Mason tonight. That's all he needs to know." She nodded fleetingly to both of them and let herself quietly out of the apartment.

Damon turned to Elena furiously. "Don't say a word." He snapped, the fight leaving his body by the second. He sat down resignedly on the sofa holding his chin in his hands and massaging his temple wearily. "Don't." he repeated quietly, the tension in the room evaporating, leaving the empty room cold and still and unwelcoming. It didn't feel like coming home any more.

"Because that'll happen." She said joining him on the sofa, bringing one knee up to her chest and winding her arms loosely around it.

Damon rolled his eyes wildly and looked at her, his eyes glinting in the dim room. "I just wanted to come home tonight and check you were still breathing. I just wanted to come home to you and kick Blondie out and drag you to bed and just have you near while I told you everything that happened tonight. I wanted to tell you how I nearly shot a man right there in the Warehouse just because of who he was. I wanted to tell you how he taunted me, provoked me. He played on my emotions and it worked, I actually let that lowlife get to me. That doesn't happen to me, it just doesn't but he said all the right things. He knew how to make me crack. I was going to tell you how all those things made me shoot him without a second thought. I wanted to tell you how now I feel like a monster, like someone who isn't me and I wanted to tell you all those things and have you look at me the same way you did this morning."

Damon buried his face in his hands and let out a long shuddering breath. He looked up again, fixing his gaze on her. "And then I was going to leave. No, don't argue with me on this one." He looked at her pointedly, a smile playing at the corner of his lips. "I was actually going to get up and walk out of that door." He shook his head disbelievingly. "I actually thought I'd be able to do it."

"Don't even think about it." She warned sternly, pointing an accusing finger at him.

Damon chuckled and gently tugged her towards him, resting his chin on her head as she curled up on his chest. "It doesn't matter; you ruined my whole plan by acting like an idiot. "

She smiled lightly and let her eyes drop closed. "I wasn't being an idiot. I like her."

"I don't." he said grumpily, his eyebrows furrowing together.

"I know." Elena sighed, sitting up and winding one arm around Damon's neck. "What happened tonight?"

"I messed up, 'Len. Real bad. I've never seen Klaus so angry. Not to mention my dad will have my head. Grayson will be a thousand times worse, he was the one who got me and Klaus this deal to start with, my dad wasn't up for it but Grayson was all for it." He leant his head back against the arm rest. "I never even wanted this job."

Elena pressed her ear closer to his chest, hearing the steady thump of his heart under the shin layer of his t-shirt. "You killed someone."

"Yes." He said shortly, tensing slightly.

"Did they need to die?"

Damon closed his eyes and sighed deeply, unwinding her arm from around him and placing his own under his head. "I can't talk about this with you."

Elena scowled into his chest. "Why not?"

"Because part of my job is to go and interrogate Vengeful Souls. Sometimes what I believe should happen isn't what I was told to do. Sometimes they need to die, like tonight and sometimes they don't, it's not my call to decide you dies and who doesn't. I had an order, and I ignored it. Either way, I'm not the good guy. I won't sit and talk to you about every man I've killed."

"You are a good guy."

Damon snorted loudly, laughing in disbelief. "Yes, I'm that misunderstood killer that is secretly a good guy under all my issues. I'm that guy."

Elena rolled her eyes and sat up, glaring at him pointedly. "I don't like the fact that you kill people. It's," she shuddered and looked at him oddly. There wasn't disgust or reproach hidden in her chocolate eyes, but something else he couldn't quite put him finger on, a sort of mild acceptance at whatever came out of his mouth, somehow she'd find a way to deal with it. "You've killed people and you'll kill more in the future if you need to. You would do anything for the people you care about."

"And that makes me a good guy?" he scoffed derisively.

"Who did you kill today?" she pressed calmly, looking straight into his cold eyes.

His face hardened immediately. "He deserved to die." He snapped viciously, looking away from Elena's gaze. He sighed deeply. "This is why I'm bad. God, I shouldn't be with you. I'm glad I killed a man. I've never been glad to be a murderer." He swallowed and looked hesitantly towards her. She didn't flinch. "He nearly killed you." Her eyes widened as she stared at him, her mouth hanging open slightly. "Trevor." He clarified quietly, staring unblinkingly at a patch of wall. "He started the fire."

"Why are you so cut up about this?" she asked hesitantly.

"I killed a man."

"He deserved to die."

"Then he should have been hit by a bus or struck my lightning or something. Anything. A sheer fluke should have taken his life, not me. Never me. I hate this." He cursed, shaking his head back and forth repeatedly. "I don't care that he's dead. I don't care that I killed him! I'm no good for you! How can you stand to be around me? I've killed people, real people with families and people who love them!"

Elena shifted closer to him again, her feet resting under his thigh as she leant her head on top of her folded knees. "People love you too." She murmured softly, leaning her ear on her crossed arms, powering on before he could turn those eyes on her. "They've killed people too. No one wants blood on their hands, no one wants that on their conscience but this is just the life you live. Everyone you care about knows that, they won't think less of you for protecting something you've grown up within. They won't see you differently for killing someone who threatened the people you're loyal too."

He looked at her evenly, turning his body to face her with eyes so sad. "I don't care how they see me. I care how you see me. You didn't grow up with this, you didn't have it slowly hammered into you from the time you could understand what this club did. You haven't grown up knowing that one day you'd be a killer." He trailed off looking distraught. "I only care how you see me. That's all I care about."

She stared at him, her heart beating loudly in her chest. "You shouldn't care so much."

His eyes closed off immediately. "Of course not."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You don't let people care about you, Elena. That's fine. Every time I open up to you and say something that actually lets you know how I feel about you, you bolt. That is also fine. Just don't expect me to sit around and wait for you to be ready to let me care about you."

"I bolt?" she scoffed, glaring at him. "I have never walked out on you. Not once."

"Are we really doing this? You being involved with me adds a huge goddamned bull's eye to your back! If I don't walk, you're a target, if I do walk, you're still a target expect I have no way to protect you!"

"So why do you walk?" she cried exasperatedly, throwing her hands up in the air as she stood up and backed away from the sofa. "No matter where I am I'm in danger! You know that, you just said so! You just make everything a whole lot more complicated because I have to live with the fact that you're now in danger too and I can't even breath without thinking you'll go running!"

"I'm not going to run!"

"You already have! You run like the damn hounds of hell are after you whenever something happens to me!"

"Why can't you let people care about you?" he said loudly, standing up too and clasping his hands behind his head.

"Because everyone I care about is dead or dancing along the line like this whole situation is okay! They are in danger because of me! All because I was born! My mom left my dad because of me! Grayson sent the one woman he's ever loved out of state because of me and then she died because of me! You think people just get over that? They don't! He can barely look at me because I look like her! My own father can't bear to set eyes on me because my existence in the reason his wife is dead. Everybody around me is hurt because I'm around, the people I care about never live to one hundred and ten. And the worst part? They are going to hurt you because of me and you're so intent on keeping me safe you won't be able to see it!"

Damon took a deep breath. "I'm not fighting with you. All we do is fight. I won't fight with you." He paused for a moment, gathering his thoughts together. Damon moved closer to her and reluctantly wound her arms around her and let her head fall between his shoulder blades. "It'll be okay." He told her, rubbing small circles over the small of her back and pulling away.

"Yeah, once we're all dead and there's no one left to fight back." She said darkly as she stormed over to her closet and pulled her shorts and shirt off, replacing them with a loose t-shirt that fell to the middle of her thighs.

Damon scowled at her witheringly. "Once Mason Lockwood is dead and the Vengefuls fall apart."

"There's always going to be someone ready to replace him. Michael could. There's always going to be a war in Phoenix." She flopped onto the bad and threw one of the pillows over her face with a weary sigh.

"Mason controls the Vengeful Souls with threats and bribes." Damon explained as he lay down next to her, snatching the pillow from her face and placing it under his head. Elena frowned at him and propped herself up on one elbow. "He feeds off their terror, their fear – he uses it against them. The Vengefuls have no loyalty. They have no sense of family. When Mason falls, Michael will try to step up but he has secrets that half of that club has unearthed. He commands no respect, the second he isn't under Mason's protection he'll be dead within a week. The Vengefuls will crumble. It's a war that we'll win. We've done it before."

Elena made a questioning noise and rolled over so she was lying on her stomach. "Phoenix is Vagrant territory, it always has been. This is where we started. This is where we were born. It happened before, back in the eighties. It was another club, another war, but it was the Vagrants and a club called the Malicious."

"Charming." Elena said with a small smile.

Damon nudged her playfully. "The Malicious were the original Vengefuls, the start of this war. Another Lockwood, I don't remember which, decided that Phoenix needed taking and they moved in and it was one of the bloodiest club wars in our history…in any history. There was conflict everywhere, inside the Vagrants and out."

"And you won?"

"Obviously." Damon said dryly. "We've done it before, we can do it again. We're still standing, even after all these years. My dad and Grayson were part of that war they know how to fight for what they built."

"Why do you fight so hard?"

"It's where we started. It's home. It's always been our home." Damon said simply, his eyes closed with one hand clasped under his head again.

In the soft light underneath the new moon and the inky night, Damon finally rolled over and kissed her neck softly, trailing his lips across her jaw as his hands snaked to her waist and pulled her tight against him. "Are we done fighting?" he murmured enticingly against her skin, pausing in his movements.

"We'll be done fighting when you stop trying to protect me."

He glowered at her. "This argument is circular."

Elena looked at him softly, pushing him gently to the bed and straddling his hips as she captured his lips stubbornly. "Stop. Complaining." She ordered in between kisses, smiling against his lips.

Damon sat up smirking, his eyes glinting roguishly as he pressed her body tightly against his as he kissed her feverishly, his hands knotting in her long hair as her nails teased the skin at the base of his neck. She kissed him back, succumbing to his skilled lips and electrifying touch and letting him press her firmly against the mattress as his lips trailed a hot path across her skin. He set her on fire, burning furiously under his practiced touch. And how she burned, hot and slow as he set her alight in the captivating stillness of the darkened room.

Klaus stormed furiously into the clubhouse with his brother on his tail. It was dark, the moon offering little light to the darkened halls of this place. He stalked the halls, checking Giuseppe's first and finding it empty before grabbing a sleepy guard by the shirt and pulling his furiously towards him. He glared at the man's now awake brown eyes that were wracked with a new fear.

"Where is Giuseppe?" he asked slowly and distinctly, his eyes glinting furiously.

"Grayson's wing. In the office last I heard." The man forced out, his hands shaking violently as he pointing vaguely down the hall.

Elijah punched his brother's arm. "Let's go." He urged. "I don't have much time. Nick, now."

Klaus dropped his hand and backed away from the guard, jogging steadily towards the wing the club deemed Grayson's. He burst into the office, cursing as he found it empty and growing more and more agitated as he stubbornly checked the connecting rooms.

"Giuseppe." He said loudly when he finally found them in a warm, smoky room with a low-burning fire, his voice angry and cold and utterly unlike himself. He glared between the two men; sitting opposite each other in deep-set leather armchairs with crystal glasses in their hands and laughter still dying on their faces. "We need to talk about Damon."