Chapter 27

Damon walked into the boarding house, the easy smile that had been impossible to shake all day, still firmly on his lips.

He smelled it first. Blood, lots and lots of blood, Elena's blood. He could tell her blood from anyone else's in the world.

Then the smile finally fell from his face to be replaced by dread and fear. It was just as well he didn't need to breathe, because his throat seemed to have closed in on itself. He fought the rising panic that was taking him over and ran towards the source of the smell. His feet had turned to lead and he almost stumbled as he made his way to the kitchen. There was a moment when it crossed his mind how un-vampiric he was being; the scent of a young woman's blood was filling his every sense and yet his eyes remained blue, the idea of feeding the furthest from his mind.

"Elena!" His voice was several octaves higher than normal and laced with an emotion so raw that it was hard to fathom.

After what seemed like an eternity, but was really only a couple of seconds, he reached her. She was lying on the floor in a puddle of her own blood, her wrists slashed and hanging limply at her sides. Her face was deathly pale and her eyes were closed. She was wearing his shirt, her small frame swamped by the material.

Damon fell to his knees beside her. Her blood staining his jeans.

"No, no, no, no Elena." Tears began fall from his eyes and his chest was making some sort of heaving sound he had never heard before. Everything seemed far away, like he was watching the scene play out before his eyes but he wasn't actually there.

He grabbed her wrists and pressed his hands over the gashes, trying to stop the seemingly never ending flow of blood. He didn't understand how everything had gone from being so perfect to so horrible. He couldn't wrap his mind around what his eyes were seeing.

He sat there, her wrists held tightly in his fists, almost in a trance, unable to understand what was happening for long enough to do something useful. He vaguely realized he should be giving her blood, and fumbled with his foggy brain until his thoughts began to make more sense. He grabbed her and pulled her onto his lap, biting into his wrist, a little deeper than necessary and shoving it into her mouth. He forced her unresponsive lips open and let his blood flow down her throat.

Silently pleading with her to hold on, to be ok. Not able to consider the other option. She couldn't not be ok. He wouldn't survive that, the thought was so unbearable that he had to push it out of his mind.

His panic finally began to subside as he heard her heartbeat strengthen. The skin on her wrists began to knit itself back together and the flow her life force finally stopped.

"Thank god. Thank god, thank god." He whispered in a desperate mantra.

He cradled her body in his arms, feeling a horrible sense of déjà vu. This time though, alongside the gut wrenching pain, there was the numb ache of betrayal. Why would she do this? Why, after what they'd shared, would she throw it all away? Did it mean that little to her? Did his love mean that little to her?

Just over an hour ago he had pressed his lips to hers and reveled in her breathtaking smile. What changed? Why, within that hour did his whole life, everything he had ever wanted and knew he could never have, get pulled away from him yet again.

He found himself cursing aloud. He knew it had been a bad idea, this is why he had been keeping their relationship from going to the next level. He knew something like this would happen. But he had let himself hope, despite the knowledge that it was too good to be true, he had given in and let himself enjoy her. Let himself love her, let himself believe that maybe for once the girl would choose him and they'd get their happy ending, riding off into the sunset with silly grins on their faces.

Tears slipped hotly down his cheeks.

The worst part was, it was his fault. He shouldn't have left her alone, he shouldn't have slept with her, he shouldn't have believedher. He should have carried doing the right thing. He shouldn't have been so selfish.

But she had been so convincing, promising him that she was better, that she loved him…

He almost hated her as much as he adored her in that moment.

She stirred and her eyes flickered open, looking up at him blearily. He met her gaze, half of him feeling such an intense relief at seeing her beautiful doe eyes staring back at him, and half of him simply feeling betrayed.

Elena had never seen him look more heartbroken. He looked at her with nothing but pain and anger. His voice cracked when he spoke.

"How could you?"

"No Damon..."

"Were you just waiting for me to leave?" His face was twisted into an furious, pain filled grimace, he pushed her almost roughly off his lap and stood up, pacing around the room.

He looked so conflicted that she started to cry, hot, unstoppable tears streaming down her face.

"So you could…kill yourself while I was out and…"

"No." She sobbed.

He knew he was being cruel, but he was angry, he was angry at her for making him feel this way, angry at her for hurting him, angry at her for being the only thing in his life that mattered.

"Was that your plan? For me to come home and find your dead body in my kitchen?"

He broke off and choked on a sob.

"Damon please listen to me I…"

"Don't you understand what will happen to me if you die?" He shouted.

"Please stop!" She begged, her chest heaving.

He crouched back down next to her and grabbed her face in his hands, his thumbs pressing into her cheekbones almost painfully.

"How can you be so callous with your life? How can you, when it means everything to me."

His face crumpled and his eyes burned.

"You told me you were happy, you let me believe that everything was perfect…"

She tried to reach for him, but he pulled away from her and began pacing again.

"I love you Damon." She cried. "I love you more than…"

"STOP." His yell shocked her and she found herself automatically cringing away from him. "Just stop it."

He flopped down on the floor opposite her and put his head in his hands. He looked so broken, so tired, that she began to cry harder, desperately wanting to stop him from hurting.

"We'll go back to how it was before. I'll keep helping you get better…"

She suddenly found it hard to breathe. What if he pulled away from her completely and never let her back in, what if everything they had fought so hard to find was lost forever.

She crawled towards him, her knees dragging through the pools of blood on the floor.

"I love you Damon. I would never want to hurt you." She whispered, begging him with her eyes to listen.

She cupped his face with her hands, forcing him to meet her gaze.

"When you were gone I had nothing to live for. I just wanted the pain to go away. But now I have…I have you. And I love you. And you love me, I believe in that. It's something to live for, to fight for. I would never leave you Damon, I would never do that to you."

He wanted so badly to believe her.

"Then why…" He whispered, reaching out to take her hands in his, tracing his thumbs across the scars on her wrists. "Why?"

She pulled herself even closer to him, needing to feel the security of his touch, needing to assure herself that he was still there, that he wasn't going anywhere. That he wasn't going to leave her.

"I didn't do this." She said quietly.

He frowned.

"What?"

"I didn't try to commit suicide Damon, it was the man who…"

And then she was in his lap, his strong arms circling her protectively, holding her impossibly close. His touch made it all better, the possessive way in which he was embracing her made her feel safe. Her tears finally stopped falling.

All the anger seemed to have intensified in his eyes, but now she could tell it was no longer directed towards her.

"Start at the beginning. Tell me exactly what happened." He said firmly, his voice low and dark.

She gulped and nodded.

"I came downstairs to get something to eat. I heard somebody behind me and there was this man…vampire, standing there. I asked him what he wanted, and he said… retribution."

Damon's jaw was clenched and his arms were holding her so tight she was having trouble breathing.

"I tried to keep him talking, and he said that you…killed his me. Those were his words."

She looked at Damon's face but he avoided her eyes. She couldn't get a read on him.

"Damon, he was the one that took you away. He realized that he didn't stand a chance against you so… He figured that killing me would hurt you just as bad."

She swallowed thickly.

"I told him that you would kill him if he hurt me, and he said that he knew that. He wanted you to think that I'd done it to myself..." She choked on a sob and tried to compose herself, wrapping her arms around his neck and burying her face in his shoulder, before whispering;

"He wanted you to believe that I didn't love you."

I'm not sure if I'm happy with how this chapter turned out, it feels slightly off :(

I know y'all thought that it would be Caroline who saved her... But I wanted this moment to be between Damon and Elena, so we could see how far they've come since the first time he found her like that. Caroline will come in soon, with quite a bang I might add!

Don't forget to review!