Title:

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"Look, I know you think you took it away, but it's still there. Even if I can't remember why."
- Jeremy

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She’s standing at the door, hating him for not looking up because he knows she’s there and he’s pretending she’s not and it’s so, so—

“Is there a point or purpose to this, or should I start with the twenty questions?”

She looks at him not looking at her, “Damon.”

“Elena.” He finally looks up, flashing her a half-smirk, like it’s a thing with them, this ridiculous only-saying-names thing. It’s not though, they don’t have a thing, they never have. Not stupid road trips or fighting on her porch or all those things they do way too often like they’re supposed to mean something.

She can still go back downstairs, because honestly, she doesn’t need to know. It doesn’t change anything. Not the fact that Klaus is probably going to kill everyone she loves. Not the fact that she’ll probably be left standing there, watching it.

But she’ll still ask, because really, she’s an idiot.

“How did I get this back.” It’s not a question, not really.

He looks at the necklace hanging in her hand for a long beat, his eyes flashing to hers in half-recognition, or maybe she thinks it, she doesn’t know. “I see Stefan’s overcharging his white knight card as usual. Ah, brother.”

She hesitates for a second, maybe it was Stefan, it’s not like she’s asked him and he does these things for her. It’s why she loves him. And she doesn’t think about how much Damon does these things for her too because really, that’s the yellow brick road to madness.

“Don’t lie to me, Damon.” She wants to bite it out, cut, hurt, but she’s too tired now. Because all she has left are words which don’t mean enough and that look in his eyes which says way too much.

“O-okay,” he says slowly, and he’s doing a good impression of pretending that he doesn’t know, but the thing with his pretences is, he’s not so good at them when it comes to her. Maybe because he wasn’t good at them with Katherine. Or maybe because there’s a point somewhere when he got tired of it too. And she’s terrified of that, terrified that someday that look in his eyes is going to translate into words and this will change. And she doesn’t even know what this is. “I see the teen angst is amped to radioactive levels. The whole ‘Big Bad Vampire Wants To Kill Me Because I’m The Doppelganger Of A Crazy Bitch’ thing getting to you, Elena? Want me to kiss it and make it better?”

She stares at his suggestively raised eyebrow because— really? He can find it in himself to be so goddamned annoying at this moment when she’s dropped her heart across the middle of the room. Which is so ridiculous that she’s going to pretend she didn’t just think that.

 “Okay, Damon,” she says, and mostly she’s wishing she was drunk, because later, when she’s going to be making up excuses in her head, justifying, it’s going to be so much easier if she’s drunk. But she’s not, so there’s that, “kiss it and make it better.” Because it's weird but he always makes her feel like that- young and restless. Reckless. Like the moments in which they're together don't really exist so she can do whatever the hell she wants, however the hell she wants it, no consequences, no strings.

He doesn’t react and she thinks she might want to hit him. Hard.

“That,” he says, flipping through whatever the hell book he’s pretending he’s reading, “might work on some poor, drunk frat boy, but a hundred and fifty years of dating cougars with teenage daughter— not to mention the teenage daughters themselves— means that I have a pretty good handle on when the idea of ‘kissing’ is just a badly used metaphor for a whining and clinging session. You hate yourself, you want to hate yourself more, so ‘hey let’s kiss the boyfriend’s older, hotter, evil brother and convince myself I’m really not worth it’, I get that. I’m just not going to donate to your pity party; the idea of altruism is so last season.”

And then suddenly she’s angry. Angry because he can do that. Angry because he can sit there, in her room, on her bed and act like he belongs and look at her like that and do these things for her and not be the person she needs him to be to hate him; the cold, vicious vampire who thinks he has the right to kill because he’s at the top of the food chain. The guy who’ll take advantage of her in the skip of a heartbeat because it’s natural for him. Angry because in this whole mess he’s the one trying to make it easier for her and how dare he? Angry because all she can do about it is be angry, otherwise this’ll be something else and she needs it to not be something else. God, please let it not be something else.

“I’m glad you’re enjoying lying about doing nothing while your brother is locked up in a tomb with the woman who could kill him in ten different ways before breakfast.”

“But she won’t do that,” he casually flips another page, “she’s in loooove with him, remember? She came back for him. The only thing in any real danger is his chastity and a tarnishing of that halo he so spectacularly bears the weight of.”

“I wish you were down there instead, at least you’d have enjoyed it.”

He stills and she thinks she’ll kneel down because it hurts so much right now. And she doesn’t even know why.

“With your droning and hysterics and suicide missions, I’m beginning to wish I was down there instead too. At least I’d be getting something out of it, mostly—”

“Well you’re getting something out of being here as well. Rose, remember? She’s a good substitute for Katherine I’m guessing, the fancy hair, the British accent.” She bites her tongue because there’s a two second gap between her mind and her mouth and she thinks her sanity might have fallen through the crack.

His mouth curves up slightly, and she can tell he’s amused, “jealous much?”

“Jealous that I have to hear you and Rose going at it like the world’s going to end tomorrow while Stefan’s stuck with an ex-girlfriend who’s carried a torch for him for over a century and a half— yes, very much.” She thinks she’s getting good at this. Deflection. But then again she learnt from the master himself. Because all she has left is that aching loneliness whenever he looks at her and she can’t remember why, but it still hurts.

He laughs outright and for a moment, the knot in her chest uncoils a little and she thinks Georgia and kitchens and car-rides and a whole lot of other things she won’t admit to thinking because she’s not going to be that girl again.

“At least you don’t have ultrasonic hearing.”  She pretends she doesn’t hear, like she hasn’t wondered, lying awake in Stefan’s room, whether he can hear every whispered moan, every silenced cry, wondered whether it’s like a hammering at the back of his eyes, this auditory knowledge of her rejection. Because she really hasn’t. Wondered, that is.

“Are you in love with her?” And she hates herself. Hates how it sounds, like she thinks he owes her something. The jealousy and emptiness and need just clinging to her like second skin.

“Would it matter?” he says flippantly, and she wishes she knew why the weight of his non-question flows though her bloodstream like lead, like he’s actually saying that it doesn’t matter. Like he’s finally given up. Given up on her. On them. On the possibility of them. And she wants to cry. She won’t think it out, not right now, not in this moment, but she wants to cry. Maybe it’s because Stefan’s still inside and she’s out here safe, or maybe not, she doesn’t know. Doesn’t want to know.

She doesn’t even realize he’s moved at all, till he’s standing much too close, invading her space like it belongs to him. Like he always does. God, don’t let that change.

“I’ll get him out,” his words ghost across her nerves and set them alight, “I promise that, Elena.” She thinks she wants to kiss him- she hates him sometimes, and she almost loves him sometimes and she thinks she wants to kiss him. And she thinks she’s sick, which she probably is. And she thinks she won’t be able to sleep tonight, which she probably won’t.

And later, when he’s still lying on her bed, making tally marks against the number of times his name comes up in her diary as opposed to Stefan’s, and she’s laughing, trying to snatch it away from him, her necklace lying forgotten on her dresser, her question unanswered; she thinks she knows.

She can’t remember, but she thinks she knows.