“At least turn around and talk with me face to face,” Elena said.

“Elena.”  It was a whisper, but it sounded as if Damon couldn’t summon up his usual silky menace.  “Go to bed.  Go to hell.  Go anywhere, but stay away from me.”

“You’re so good at that, aren’t you?”  Her own voice was cold, now.  Recklessly, angrily, she moved in even closer.  “At pushing people away.  But I know that you’ve fed this morning.  There’s nothing you want from me, and you can’t do the starving-martyr bit half as well as Stefan—”

She had spoken the words guaranteed to incite a response of some kind, but Damon’s usual response to this sort of thing was to lounge against something and pretend to be completely indifferent or mockingly seductive.

What happened instead was completely outside her range of her experience.

Damon whirled, caught her precisely, held her locked in an unbreakable grip.  Then, with a swoop of his head like a falcon on a mouse, he kissed her.

The kiss was hard and long and when he released her, Elena could taste salt.  Tears were flowing freely down her cheeks.

t didn’t seem to make any difference to her attacker who seemed at the mercy of raw desperation.  He was shaking like a little boy the first time he kissed his first love. That’s what’s driving the control away, Elena thought fuzzily.

Her knees were going to give. . . .

Elena pushed and twisted, hurting herself deliberately against the apparently unbreakable grip that held her.

It broke immediately.

The possessor?  Shinichi again, sneaking into Damon’s mind and making him do things—?

But somehow Elena knew this wasn’t the case.  No.  Instead she thought . . .

. . . she thought she had just met the real Damon, the one who lived behind the shell of indifference.

And she was trembling so hard she wasn’t sure she could stand up.

She and Damon were left staring at each other, both breathing hard.  Damon’s sleek hair was mussed, making him look rakish as a buccaneer.  His face, always so pale and self-composed, was flushed with blood.  His eyes dropped to watch Elena automatically massaging her wrists.  She could feel pins and needles now: she was getting back some circulation.  Once he’d looked away, he couldn’t seem to look her in the eye again.

“I hurt you . . . again,”  Damon said.

“You mean this is just you being a jerk?” she said.  “Have you decided to hate me again?  Did you enjoy—?”

Damon whirled again, stillness into motion faster than her eyes could track it.  He hit the frame of the window, once, pulling the punch almost completely at the last instant.  The shatterproof glass showered like diamonds against the darkness outside.

”That might . . . bring some people to help you.”  He was breathing hard now, and Elena saw to her astonishment something she had never expected to see again.

            Tears in Damon’s eyes.

            She’d thought that only under the influence of her Powers to strip away the stony shell around Damon’s heart could make him cry.  But those were real teardrops trembling on Damon’s eyelashes, and he didn’t even move when one trickled down the side of his face. 

            “Damon,” she said, reaching out to him, but he just shook his head.

            Now that he had done all he could do to try to protect her, he didn’t seem to care about keeping up appearances.  Fine tremors ran through his body.  Another tear ran down his cheek.

She hadn’t spoken for a long time now.  She looked up to find that Damon was watching her once again with those great lost-child eyes.

            “You’re not going to leave, are you?” he whispered.

            “No.”

            “You’re really not afraid of me?”

            “Oh, I’m afraid, all right.”  Again Elena felt that inward shiver.  But she was flying somewhere now, she had set the course, and there was no way that she could stop.  Especially not when he looked at her like that.  It reminded her of the fierce joy, the exultant pride he’d shown when she’d fought the foxes with him.

            “I can’t become your Princess of Darkness,” she told him.  “And you know that I could never give up Stefan.”

            A ghost of his old mocking smile touched his lips.  “There’s plenty of time to convince you to my way of thinking on those matters.”

New tears—somehow released when the plaster in the wall had given way to the force of Damon’s self-expression—were running freely down her cheeks.  She let them; it soothed a sore place in her heart.  If Stefan had been here, he would already have been holding her, brushing her tears away with his fingers.

            Very slowly, very gently, Damon reached up to brush her tears away with his fingers.  First one side then the other.

            Still, Elena sat entranced, mesmerized by the darkness of his eyes and the windows of light it seemed to hold.

            And then, just as slowly, just as carefully as if he were putting some precious but fragile vase on its proper pedestal, Damon reached out and gently drew Elena into his arms.

            Elena felt one moment of anguish, of wrenching indecision.  Then she buried her face in his shoulder briefly, and came up with her head resting on Damon’s shoulder.

            Just sitting.  Just feeling him beside her.  And still crying, tears which he continued to brush away with fingers that touched her like butterfly wings.

            They said nothing at all.  Anything they said would be . . . too little, and not enough.

[..]It’s taken me long enough to realize what I know about you.  Because, of course, everyone was telling me one thing, and my own mind was telling me something else.  But I figured it out, at last.  I know what you really are, Elena.”

            Suddenly he was bending over her, making her lean backwards, too.  Those black eyes filled the universe; they became her universe.

            She could feel the surrender from the deepest part of her soul.

            Except . . .

            “I know your secret,” Damon whispered.  “Shall I tell it to you?  Or should I just do this?”

            And once again he kissed her, a gentle caressing of her lips with his.