Holy super long chapter, you guys! Well, long for this story, anyway. I didn't sit down intending to write this monster, but Damon got chatty, so, um, bonus? Anyway, this will catch us up through 1912, so we can all get ready to have our faces rocked off by 3x17. Enjoy, and I'll see you on the other side.

Elena climbed the stairs to her room, already plotting what she'd say to Damon when she opened the door and found him standing by the window. Surely he'd be there like always, surely he'd take her in his arms and look at her with eyes that were blue, not scarlet, and tell her it had all been a lie, explain what had really happened and tell her that she made him want to be a better man. Surely that was what would happen.

Her window was closed. The room was empty.

Fine. If he wanted to play the vampire, let him. She'd play the human. She ripped the vial of his inhuman blood from her neck and dropped it into the trash can. If that was what Damon thought their future was going to look like, tag-teaming drunks in back alleyways and eating soccer moms, he had another thing coming.

It didn't have to be that way...did it? Stefan had managed just fine for decades without a single drop of human blood. Sure, he couldn't do some of the more complicated vampire tricks, like compulsion, but why would anyone want that power, anyway? That kind of power was seductive, and Elena was afraid that if she had it, she'd use it. Like Damon did.

But even if she did decide to drink human blood, she didn't have to hurt people. That girl—Karen, he'd said—she didn't deserve that. She didn't deserve to be attacked and bled and have her mind wiped clean.

Elena thought she'd been ready to turn. She thought that with Damon's help, they'd be able to get through anything. Together. But what if Damon became her worst enemy when she turned, the nagging devil on her shoulder urging her to bite a little harder, drink a little more deeply, hunt a little more viciously? What would become of her then?

Scar or no, Elena was afraid she and Katherine would become indistinguishable.

A scalding hot shower didn't scour the doubt from her mind, but it did erase the lingering scent of blood from her skin. Elena curled up in bed with Samantha's journal, certain sleep would never find her, but after trying to decipher a few pages of the lunatic ramblings, her eyelids drooped.

She awoke when the dagger plunged into the mattress, inches from her face, the bed bucking wildly with the force of the blow. Elena operated on pure instinct, her months of training kicking in as she rolled off the bed to crouch on the floor. She sought desperately for a weapon, any weapon, and came up with her bedside lamp, clutching the slender neck in both hands like a baseball bat. She whirled to face her attacker and froze.

It was Ric but it wasn't. There was a horrible, aching emptiness in his eyes, a sort of slack blankness that she'd never seen before. This wasn't him, this wasn't him slashing out with that brutal, familiar knife, leaving her to leap backward, but there was nowhere else to go except against the wall. And she was trapped. "Stop! Alaric, wake up!" she cried.

But he didn't. He just turned those dead eyes on her and started to ram the knife home. But Elena was faster. The lamp shattered against his skull, the base exploding into a thousand shards, and Ric slumped to the floor.

The world stopped. Nothing moved, nothing breathed. Then she heard a sound and realized it was her own scream and then Damon was there and how could he be there? How did he know and why did he come, after everything she'd said, after she'd called him a monster? She didn't know, but he was there and he was pulling her away from Ric, saying something about the ring and Samantha Gilbert but she couldn't hear the words and all she knew was that Ric had tried to kill her but she'd beaten him to it.

The scent of blood bloomed, sharp and real. It brought her back to herself as Damon forced his wrist to Ric's mouth, and the man choked and sputtered his way back to consciousness. He wasn't dead. She hadn't killed him. Again. That was something. Cold comfort, but it was something.

"Damon? The fuck?" Ric managed. He tried to sit up, but fell back, wincing. Elena saw his eyes, and that emptiness was gone, replaced with pain and confusion. It was Ric again. "Oh, man. What am I doing in Elena's room? How much did I drink?"

Damon rose from his crouch, offering a hand to his friend. "I don't know how much you've had, but I have a feeling you're going to need another. We have to talk."

"You don't have to do this," Elena said, plumping the pillows on the makeshift bed they'd made up on the floor of the Salvatore dungeon. The air mattress and blankets didn't make up for the fact that this was still a jail cell, the last resort for those who couldn't be trusted with those they loved. Elena had the absurd desire to go find a vase of flowers to put down here, just to cheer up the unrelenting gloom.

Ric had scarcely spoken since they'd realized the truth about the murders, the truth about the ring. But there was no sense in denying what they knew had to be true. Damon's memories and findings spurred a closer examination of Samantha Gilbert's journal. When all that evidence was combined with Ric's own actions, there couldn't be any doubt. Ric had asked to come to the dank cell, had put the cold, heavy ring into her hand and asked Damon to make sure he couldn't hurt anyone else.

The teacher looked at her, but didn't bother to respond to her platitude. Of course he should be locked up. They both knew it. But he didn't deserve this.

"You're a good man," Elena insisted. "You're my family, Ric. We're going to get through this. I'll give—we'll get the ring to Bonnie. She'll know what to do." Maybe. If she'd even help them anymore. But surely for Ric...she didn't know. They'd figure something out, find another witch if they had to. They weren't letting him go.

"You need to leave," Ric said, sinking onto the mattress and turning his back on her. "It's not safe for you here."

Elena felt the ring in her pocket. This had been supposed to keep him safe. "I'm not going anywhere," Elena said firmly.

"I'll stay with him," Stefan said from behind her. She turned. No blood on his face, the hunger extinguished from his eyes, leaving a much more familiar emotion to fill the void. Pain.

Ric was caught in his own private world of misery; he didn't even raise his eyes when Elena left the tiny, claustrophobic cell. Or when the door clanged shut. Or when Stefan drove the bolt home. "You're going to be okay, Ric. We're going to fix this."

It was only then that Ric raised his head. "You can't fix this. They're dead. Two people are dead. Because of me."

"It wasn't your-" Elena started, but Stefan rested a hand on her shoulder. She pulled away. All she could see was the blood dripping from his lips, feeble attempts to wipe the gore away.

"I'll keep watch over him. I need the distraction," Stefan said.

Elena didn't want to go. She wanted to stay here, just to be with Ric, as he'd been there for her after Bonnie had disowned her, after Jenna had been torn from them. But once again, she was powerless. Once again, she was a problem. Tears welled in her eyes, but she forced them away with a hard scrub of her hand. No. She wouldn't fall apart. Not in front of these broken men. But she'd go, if that's what they needed, if they needed to be alone with their grief. "I'll just be upstairs. If either of you need anything."

Neither man responded. Elena climbed the stairs.

Damon was standing in front of his bottles and decanters, staring hard at the array. He didn't look at her when she walked in. It was just as well. "You okay?" he asked.

"No. You?"

"No." Damon walked away from the bar. No drink. Elena took his place in front of the golden, glowing bottles and poured herself a stiff glass of bourbon (or was it scotch? Whiskey? She couldn't tell the difference; it all tasted nasty) and drank deeply. It didn't help.

Damon sank into a chair. Elena chose the couch. "You still pissed?" he asked.

"Yes," she said simply. Maybe she shouldn't be. After all, he'd still saved her. But even a brush with death couldn't erase the cruel words from her ears, couldn't take away the image of him sliding from her bed and stalking into the night.

"Good. I'm still pissed, too." Damon leaned forward, swiping the glass from her hand. Elena was too busy sputtering to notice.

"You're pissed? At me? You were the one who-"

"Who said anything about being pissed at you?" Damon said, mercifully cutting off her enraged mumblings. Elena blinked in bewilderment. It was too late and this had been too long a day for this cryptic bullshit. "I'm pissed at my brother for refusing to face the reality that he's a fucking vampire, and that we have to deal with it now, when everything's falling down around our ears. I'm pissed at your lousy timing, because we were finally making progress until you showed up." He tossed the rest of the drink down and stared at the empty glass. He sighed. "Mostly though, I'm pissed at myself."

There was considerably less yelling than Elena had anticipated. That was good, she supposed, but this situation was still baffling. "I need you to explain what happened. Without getting all vampire-y, just tell me what you were doing with Stefan and with that—with Karen." She would give the woman her name. She deserved a name.

Damon set the glass on the table. Ran his hands through his hair. "I was helping him. I know it didn't look that way, but Stefan's problem is that he never learned how to just deal with the shit that comes with being a vampire. He was always either living this weird, creepy aesthetic lifestyle with squirrels and things, or he was completely off the deep end and tearing people to pieces. And part of that's my fault." He dropped his eyes, staring down at the floor. "A lot of that's my fault, actually."

Some deep, protective anger stirred within Elena. "Stefan told me something you said to him once. 'You are not allowed to feel my guilt.' Stefan has made his own choices. He's your brother—it's your job to love him, it's not your job to take responsibility for his actions."

Damon's gaze rose to meet hers, lips parted in surprise. "Christ Almighty, Elena, I love you. But I don't want to talk about Stefan. Not right now. I want to talk about the other thing I'm pissed off about. And that's taking out all my guilt and fear and all those other squishy things I'm not supposed to feel on you."

"Then those things weren't true, right? Those things you said—about you and Caroline, that was just you being mad?" Elena asked hopefully. But she knew the answer before Damon even said the words.

"They weren't...untrue," he allowed. "There were some exaggerations. Like sneaking out of bed to go prowling? That was just me being a dick. But I do hunt, and I do feed on people. But I don't kill them. Not anymore."

"So you just jump them in dark alleyways, chomp on their necks and then erase their memories? How is that okay, Damon? In what universe is that okay?" Elena asked, frustrated. So he wasn't killing people. Big fucking whoop. You couldn't just go around biting people just because-

Damon was seated beside her on the couch, nearly on top of her. She swallowed a yelp of surprise. He surveyed her with sober eyes and took her hand in his. He raised her hand until her fingers pressed against the pulse in her throat. Elena could feel her heart dancing beneath the thin layer of flesh.

"Do you feel that?" Damon asked quietly. She nodded. "Imagine that's all you can hear, Elena. Imagine that sound is roaring in your ears like the ocean. Not just the beat of your heart, but the sound of the blood pounding in your veins. I can tell that your blood pressure is high from anxiety, can hear the sheer weight of red blood cells crushing against the inside of your arteries. I can hear the fear in every breath you take, Elena, and that kills me." His fingers trailed against her neck, and she froze, like a mouse trembling before a hawk. "But part of it makes me so fucking hard it's all I can do not to hold you down and take you in every sense of the word. You sound and smell and feel and taste like food and sex and life and death. And so does every other person on this planet, Elena. Every minute of every day."

Then Damon released her hand and she could breathe again, she could think again now that the predator had let her escape. But her heart still hammered in her ears. "But you can control yourself. You don't have to give in, you don't have to be that way."

He shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe you're right. Or maybe it would tear me to pieces to deny what I am. Or maybe I just don't want to stop. But you have to know, Elena. I don't want you to realize one day that you can't love a monster." He smiled softly, but the words struck her like a slap in the face. "And even more importantly, I don't want you to hate what you become. Forever's a long time to despise yourself. Believe me, I've tried it." He held his hand out to her, a silent question.

There was no pulse in the hand he offered to her. No life. Damon was as dead as her parents, in a way. And she'd accepted that she'd become like him, begged him for it with tears in her eyes. Becoming a vampire meant safety and it meant eternity. But it also meant becoming a tick, a creature that could only survive if others suffered. And if Damon was to be believed, it also meant becoming an animal, always starving, always hunting, always teetering just on the brink of humanity. Was that worth forever? Even forever with the man she loved?

His flesh was cold as she placed her hand into his. "I'm going to ask you to promise me three things, okay? But only promise me if you really intend to do it, Damon. Don't lie—don't exaggerate on this, okay?" She mustered a smile, and Damon nodded warily. "First, promise me you won't kill the people you feed on."

"Done," Damon said without hesitation.

"Second, promise me you'll do everything you can to not hurt or scare the people you feed on. Even that you'll be nice to them," Elena said.

He scrunched his face in distaste. "'Nice' might be pushing it, but no unnecessary roughness. You've got it."

Those were the easy questions. Those were the things she knew he'd promise her. But the only question that really mattered was the last. "Third, promise me that if—when-I turn, you'll let me find my own path." He started to protest, started to trample all over her words, but she carried on in a calm, low voice, and he fell quiet. "I can't be like you. I hear everything you've said, but I can't be like that, anymore than I can be like Stefan. I have to be myself, Damon. And I need you to help me remember who that is, not try to force me in your footsteps." Her grip on his hand tightened. "Can you promise me that?"

He wanted to argue with her. That was obvious. He wanted to tell her that she was crazy and denying what she would be and blah blah blah vampires. But he swallowed hard. "I won't let you fall, Elena. I won't let you become like him." He nodded towards the dungeon, where Stefan surely heard their every word. "I can't go through that again. But as much as I can, I'll help you be who you want to be. Is that good enough?"

Neither one of them were very good at keeping promises. They'd both broken vow after vow they'd made to each other. But they both kept trying. One day, they'd make it. She kissed him. "Yeah. It's enough."

Damon wrapped an arm around her. "So we're good?"

Elena rested her head against his shoulder. "Yeah. We're good. I love you even when you're an asshole."

He leaned his head against hers. "I love you even when you're self-righteous."

"Glad we've got that out of the way," she said. "Now how are we going to save Ric?"