A/N: Initially I wasn't going to write a full chapter for this episode, then I changed my mind. So here it is. Thanks as ever to my loyal reviewers and to my new reviewers it's always so nice to hear from people, plus I'm not feeling well today so please, talk to me when you're done! And to those of you who were disappointed that Elena didn't mention naked Damon, I hope this makes it a *little* better. I do not own TVD.

The End Of The Affair

"I'm still alive but I'm barely breathing
I'm falling to pieces
'Cause when a heart breaks no it don't break even"

Ah alcohol, how I love thee. Unknown callers on my phone? Not so much.

"You're interrupting my drink" – "You miss me?" oh god, like a hole in the head. "Katherine. Where are you?" – "Lurking outside your window, pining away" don't let it be true. I glance around the room just to make sure.

"What do you want?" – "I'm homesick. What have I missed?" yeah right, like she's calling me for gossip. "Well Stefan's still Klaus's little prisoner and Elena still thinks she can save him and no one's thought about you since you left" although that's not strictly true, I did think that if I could find her she might know where Stefan is. To be honest, we could really do with a witch around this town. Where the hell is Sabrina anyway?

"And what about you?" what about me? "I'm sure now that you've given up on your brother, you're plotting some sort of way of moving in on his girlfriend" – "I didn't give up on him, I just don't know where he is" but I'd lay good money that she does.

"But you do. Are you trailing them?" -"A hybrid who wants me dead and his sidekick who's off the rails? I couldn't be further away" and that would be true, if the sidekick's name weren't Stefan.

"Which means you know exactly where they are" so spill the beans Kit-Kat, share your secrets.

"All I know is Klaus pitched a fit once his hybrids didn't work and now he's looking for some answers" and I just guarantee you that those answers all lead straight to Elena's front door and I don't like that one little bit.

Where is my brother? Chicago. Fabulous, because I didn't see enough of that place in the 20's, still, road trip with Elena, those always turn out so well.

I decide to start Elena's day off right and wake her up to the glorious sight of, well, me. In her bed. "Rise and shine sleepyhead" she opens her eyes slowly and shrieks when she sees me, oh come on, I'm not that scary. "What are you doing? Get out" oh but it's so comfy in here honey.

"You know you were dreaming about me, explains the drool" she huffs at me and then hits me in the stomach which probably hurt her more than me. "Oh my god. 6am? Seriously? Do you really have nothing better to do at 6am?" – "Fine then, don't come with me to bring Stefan home. See ya" and 3, 2...

"Wait, wait, wait, what? What are you talking about? Where is he?" so predictable. "Windy city" – "He's in Chicago?" ye-ep. "How do you know?" – "Came to me in a dream, I was naked, you would've loved it" I don't know if she dreams about me because I can't enter her dreams anymore and I wouldn't if I could but the fact that she talks in her sleep and my names comes up...sometimes, makes me think that she does.

"Start packing" let's get this show on the road. I pull open her drawer, of course it's her underwear drawer and it's all red and pink lace and black silk and god! this girl is a devil underneath those plain clothes. I pluck a pair of her red lacy panties out "put these in the yes pile" but she just glares at me, grabs them and closes the drawer.

But not before I spot one other thing in there that makes my chest tighten like a 14 year old boy. The rose, she still has the fucking rose I gave her at the Founder's Party when Stefan lost his shit the first time around. She has it, she kept it. In her underwear drawer. Wow.

I give her a smile and leave her to get ready while I try to figure out if that means anything.

We're in the car and she's been fiddling with her necklace for ages now without really talking "it would suck if your last memento of Stefan was that crappy old necklace" it really is ugly. "It's an antique Damon, like you" oh burn.

I brought along some light reading for our trip, and by light, I mean dark. Stefan's journals chronicling his forays in Chicago in the 20's. "Read this, paints a pretty little picture of Stefan's first experience in Chicago" – "It's Stefan's diary I'm not gonna invade his private thoughts" why not? I do it all the time.

More importantly "you need to be prepared for what you're about to see" – "I've seen Stefan in his darkest periods, I can handle it" oh honey, no you have not, you've barely seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Stefan's darkest periods and I sure as hell don't think you can handle it.

I start reading from the book "...I've blacked out days; I wake up in stranger's blood in places that I don't recognise with women I don't remember. Huh! I'm shocked! Stefan's not a virgin" – "Eyes on the road grandma" she says and takes the journal away.

Back in the 20's Stefan was hanging around with some blonde chick for a while, I never did find out who she was. I watched him from the corners and the shadows and he never knew I was there; I got a lot of my information from a witch I knew back then. He probably killed that blonde girl; I didn't stick around long enough to find out.

I take Elena to Stefan's Chicago apartment; the place is a shithole as Elena points out in nicer words. "There used to be an all girls high school around the corner but it shut down for attendance issues. Weird" she thinks I'm joking. But I'm not.

"If you're trying to scare me into giving up and going back it's not gonna work" oh I'm not, it's not like I had to bring her in the first place. I'm just done trying to hide my brother's alter ego from her. I tried that, didn't work out too well.

I break the handle and in we go, "here we are, Stefan's second personality home" – "He obviously hasn't been here" no but he will be, at some point. I open up his secret compartment and indicate for her to come and look.

"Stefan hid his alcohol, what a monster" such bravado, "look harder" – "it's a list of names" and there we have it. Stefan's wall of shame. Stefan's wall of pride. Really depends on which side of him is winning the battle at any given moment. "Mmhm" – "Are these all of his victims?" oh yeah. "Still handling it?"

"What were you doing in the 1920's? Paving the way for women's liberation?" of course, because you show the girl a wall of names of people her boyfriend tore to shreds and somehow it all becomes about me and how much worse I am.

"I was around. Chicago's a big city. Stefan was a cocky ripper douche but I could avoid him and still indulge in a few Daisy Buchanan's of my own" difference being I don't rip people apart.

"Where are you going?" away from you. "His old stomping ground" – "I'm coming with you" – "No. You stay here and whip up an actual plan. I'll come back when I find him" god she's insufferable sometimes. I get that she wants to maintain her perfect illusions of Stefan the saint but I'm fucking sick of being painted the bad brother. We're all monsters here honey, no more, no less.

"Well look what the wind blew in. Last I heard you hated this place" 'hate's' a little...strong. "Gloria" the, witch, I referred to earlier. "Damn if I knew you were gonna age like this I woulda stuck around" – "I always did like you better" yeah well you'd be one of the few honey. It's an elite group; the ones who like me better.

"But I see your brother is still running in the wrong crowd" oh good he has been here then. "You've seen him?" – "With Klaus, bad combo" – "Know where they went?" – "They'll be back here later tonight. They're out uh, running a little errand for me" she slides me a glass of Bourbon and it's been over 80 years and somehow she still remembers my drink.

"Gloria, don't be a tease. What kind of errand?" – "Mm I don't think so. You may be cute but you're still a vampire" yeah, that's causing problems all over the place these days. Not to worry, they're coming back she said, at least we know where we need to be now.

Fuck. Me.

Elena calls me in a panic because Klaus and Stefan turned up at the apartment and she had to hide in the cupboard, because I'm a jerk. What the hell was I thinking leaving her behind? Oh that's right. I wasn't.

"Finally, I called you an hour ago" she says when I get back. I throw her bag at her "make yourself presentable, I know where Stefan's gonna be tonight" – "I told you that I was practically discovered by Klaus and you're worried about what I'm wearing?"

"I had an hour to realise what a bad idea it was to leave you here alone, process it and move on" of course only the first two things I've actually done. What I really want to do is grab her and run the fuck away from this city. Which yeah, truth be told, I do fucking hate. But I can't do that.

"Are you okay?" – "Yeah" – "Okay, good, get dressed. You're all road-trippy and gross" lies. She wouldn't be gross wearing a black bin-liner.

"So you know where he's gonna be?" and we're back to Stefan. Like clockwork this girl. "Yes, with Klaus, so I'll distract Klaus and you deal with Stefan" – "Okay, thank you" – "But you're gonna have about 5 minutes tops before that hybrid-freak rips my heart out so please tell me that you can do this" cause I still don't wanna die.

"I can do this" excellent. Get dressed. Let's go rescue a lost boy. Honestly, brother's like a fucking puppy.

Elena looks gorgeous, of course, hell if it were me she wouldn't even need the vervain dart to bring me home. I'd fucking follow that girl anywhere she wanted me to go.

I drive us to Gloria's and poke my head around to see Stefan and he follows me outside. And slams me into a car. Well that's not a polite way to say hello Stefan.

"What is wrong with you?" – "What is wrong with you?" I ask him, shoving him away from me. "You kill Andie one day, save my life the next. What are you, good? Bad? Pickone" – "Klaus almost saw Elena today you have to get her out of Chicago" yeah fat chance of that happening baby bro, not without you safely stowed away in the trunk of my car.

"She's not going anywhere until she's got you checked into Vampire Rehab and on the mend. Trust me, I've tried" for fucking weeks now. Girl is as stubborn as a damn mule.

"She is the key to everything. Klaus can't know that she's alive" what the hell does that mean? Are we speaking in fucking code now? "She was supposed to die in the Sacrifice and she didn't; now Klaus can't create any new hybrids. His witch is seconds away from figuring that out" oh. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

"Tell Elena to go home and forget about me" hey now, I'm not gonna be the dick that breaks her heart. Although of two things I am quite certain, firstly she heard every word of that, and secondly, he's staying. He's doing this to protect her. Sometimes I fucking love my brother.

"Tell her yourself" I know now that this plan won't work. Stefan won't let it, but they deserve a few minutes alone so I go inside and play my part at distracting Klaus.

"You don't give up do you?" never. "Give me my brother back you'll never have to see me again" he babbles on about me wanting to die and I really just have to hope he cares about my brother enough to not kill me.

He's got a tiny umbrella from his girly drink and he's jabbing it into my chest and even though it's tiny it still fucking hurts because, well, it's wood.

"You want a partner in crime? Forget Stefan, I'm so much more fun" especially when you're not squeezing the heck out of my neck. He sends me crashing into a table full of glasses and grabs a stake and I think I might have over-estimated his affections for my brother. Thankfully not Gloria's affections for me though as she stops him.

"You don't have to negotiate your brother's freedom. When I'm done with him he won't wanna go back" yeah, that's kinda what I'm afraid of.

As I suspected we are going home sans-Stefan so all in all this road trip has pretty much been an abysmal failure. Elena is waiting for me in the car and I'm not even sure I want to hear the details of how Stefan broke her heart but I ask anyway.

"You okay?" – "Just drive" well okay then, works for me.

We drive in silence for a long time and I pretend I don't notice the tears streaming down her face in silent rivers but eventually it becomes too much so I comfort her in the only way I can. I reach out my hand for her and she takes it and we drive like that for a while until she finally calms down enough to tell me in vague details what happened.

There's nothing I can really say to make it better so I just keep holding her hand the whole way home and hope its good enough.

Dear Diary,
I woke up with a Damon in my bed this morning! He told me that he knew where Stefan was, said it came to him in a dream, that he was naked and I would've loved it and god – I do dream about him, especially now, after the birthday from hell.

That morning, when I got to the house Damon walked through, totally naked, all covered in bubbles and...glorious. I'm not going to lie in my diary; there are really no other words for it. Damon is glorious. Sinfully delicious.

And completely off-limits. Of course I covered my eyes and told him off, but I saw, I saw everything. And now I'm dreaming about it. I just really hope I didn't say anything embarrassing in my sleep. And then, of course, he had to go playing around in my underwear drawer, which just made me think more dangerous thoughts and I made him leave because we were supposed to be going to rescue Stefan and I couldn't keep getting distracted with Damon.

We took a road-trip to Chicago to track him down. It turns out that Katherine actually called Damon and told him that's where Stefan was.

Damon took me to Stefan's apartment and he has...a wall. A wall full of names, the names of all of his victims, all the people he's killed. It made things very, very real.

Damon left to see if he could track down Stefan and I was in the apartment on my own when Klaus and Stefan showed up, I hid in the cupboard and I was so terrified, then Stefan came into the cupboard and god, for just a second, I actually thought he was going to tell Klaus that I was there. I can't believe I thought that, of course Stefan would never do anything to hurt me! But I did think it, just for a second.

I have no idea how Klaus didn't notice that I was there, I'm sure my heart was beating like a jackhammer because I was so terrified and I called Damon to let him know and he didn't come back for an hour! But when he got back, I could tell that he was upset, I think he was angry at himself for leaving me there alone, and then he told me that he knew where Stefan was going to be so I got dressed and Damon drove us to Gloria's. She's a witch that they both knew in the 20's.

I had planned to inject Stefan with vervain but when I tried he grabbed my wrist and he got really angry with me. His eyes turned dark and he looked...dangerous. He said that he doesn't want to come home and that things would never be the same if he did.

He said that he'd killed innocent people, left bodies scattered from Florida to Tennessee and I know this, but I told him that he could still come home, I reminded him about Lexi finding him like that, saving him and I told him that I couldn't give up on him.

And he said that I can. He said it's done, that part of his life is done and he doesn't want to see me and he doesn't want to be with me, he just wanted me to go. And I spent the whole summer, looking for him, searching for him, worrying about him, breaking down over him and all this time...he just, I don't even know. It feels like he doesn't care, that he would rather just be with Klaus. And I've tried, so hard, and Damon has tried, so hard to bring him home, but I guess...we can't keep chasing him if he really doesn't want to be chased.

Damon drove us home, and the whole way he just held my hand and he didn't pressure me to talk, he just kept holding my hand, kept holding me together, rubbing little circles into my thumb and making me feel safe. I told him a little about what happened with Stefan, and I know he's worried about me. But I am going to be fine. I refuse to let this break me. Even if my heart does feel like it's been crushed into tiny little pieces.
Elena