“Tears”

A Teaser for Vampire Diaries: Shadow Souls

Elena and Damon reached the motel room just after midnight.

“What's wrong?" Elena sat on the bed, swinging up her legs to support her head on a pillow
which sank beneath her unsatisfactorily. She liked her pillows firm.

"Nothing." Damon was at the window, pretending to be engrossed in something beyond the
shrubbery outside.

"What nothing?"

Damon shook his head.

Elena examined the room with the too-bright vision of the seriously sleep-impaired. She must
not have really slept at all last night on her out of body adventure to see Stefan, she
thought. She contemplated beige walls, beige carpet, a beige armchair, a beige desk, and of
course, a beige bedspread. Even Damon couldn’t reject a room on the grounds that it doesn't
match his basic black, she thought, and then: oh, I'm tired. And frightened. And irritable.

And stupid. There's only one bed.

"Damon . . . " With an effort, she rolled over and sat up. "What do you want?” she
said. “There's a chair. I can sleep on the chair."

He half turned, and Elena saw in that movement the extent of his anger. The faster-than-the-
human-eye-could-follow assassin's spin and the complete muscular control that stilled it
almost before it had started. Damon with his sudden movements and his frightening
stillness. He was looking out the window again, body poised as always for . . .
something. Right now it looked poised to jump.

"Vampires don't need sleep," Damon said in a voice icier and more controlled than she'd
heard in a while.

That gave Elena her first clue and the energy to get off the bed. "You know I know that's a
lie."

"Take the bed, Elena." But his voice was the same. She would have expected flat, weary
command. Damon sounded more tense, more shakily-controlled than ever.

More shaken than ever.

Elena’s eyelids sank. "Is this about what happened with the tumbleweeds attacked us and we
had to strip to get the malach off?"

"No."

“Is it about what happened when you were possessed back in Fell’s Church and made to hurt
me?”

“No!”

Aha.

"It is, then. You're afraid, aren't you? You're afraid that Shinichi will get past all your
defenses and possess you again. Why? Have you sensed him or heard from him?"

"Go to sleep."

"What does it take to show you that I trust you? We were just practically naked together
getting those malach off, and I didn’t mind." She was behind him now, on the beige carpet
which smelled like...dust.

Her words were the dust. There was something about them that sounded hollow, wrong. But
they were true. They had been practically naked together, desperately pulling the jelly like
malach off each other, and it hadn’t once occurred to her. . .

Oh. Oh.

But she’d been so busy worrying about herself, she’d never thought about how it must be
affecting him. Especially being so close—and so upset—her aura must have been
everywhere. And what could Damon have done about it? Nothing except try not to look at
her, try to block her out. . . Try to be a gentleman . . .

Not exactly his forte.

Elena sighed. She was going to have to get Damon to talk about it . . . somehow. Get him to
deal with it.

Get yourself to deal with it, a voice inside her whispered.

Touching Damon was always a tricky business, with all the risks of setting off murderous
instinct by accident, even when he wasn't possessed. She reached out, very carefully, to put
her fingertips on the elbow of his leather jacket. She spoke as precisely and unemotionally as
she could.

"You also know I have other senses now than the usual five. How many times do I have to
say it, Damon? I know it wasn't you torturing me and Matt last week." Despite herself, Elena
heard a certain pleading in her own voice. "I know that you’ve protected me on this trip when
I was in danger. That means—a lot to me. You may say you don't believe in the human
'sentiment' of forgiveness, but I don't think you've forgotten it. And when you know that there
is nothing to forgive in the first place—"

"This has nothing to do with that!"

The change in his voice—the force in it—hit her like a whiplash. It hurt . . . and
bewildered. He was serious. He was also under some dreadful strain, not completely unlike
that of fighting the possessor, but different.

"Damon . . . "

"Leave me alone!"

Now, where have I heard that before? Befuddled, her heart pounding, Elena groped through
memories.

Oh, yes. Stefan. Stefan when they first met, when he was afraid to love her. When he was
sure he would damn her if he showed he was in love with her.

Could Damon be that much like the brother he always mocked?

"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.

“A little. Yes.”

Eye contact. All right. Elena recognized a weapon, groping for a chair and finding the bed
unexpectedly close behind her. She didn't have many weapons right now; and she needed all
of them. She gave in to the weakness in her legs, but she kept her eyes on Damon's
face. His mouth was swollen. And that was . . . unfair. Damon's pout was a part of his most
basic artillery. He had always had the most beautiful mouth she'd ever seen on anyone, man
or woman. The mouth, the hair, the half-drooping lids, the heavy lashes, the delicacy of
jawline . . . unfair, even to someone like Elena who'd long ago gotten past interest in a person
because of some accident of beauty.

But she'd never seen that mouth swollen, the perfect hair disordered, the eyelashes trembling
because he was looking everywhere except at her and trying not to show it.

"Was that . . . what you've been thinking about while you've been refusing to talk to me?" she
asked, and her voice was almost steady.

Damon's sudden stillness was perfection like all his other perfections. He stared at a spot in
the beige carpet that by rights ought to have broken into flames.

Then, finally, he lifted those huge dark eyes to hers. It was so hard to tell anything about
Damon's eyes because the iris was almost the same color as the pupil, but Elena had a feeling
that they were dilated now so far as to be almost all pupil. How could eyes that dark trap and
hold light? She seemed to see in them a universe of stars.

A universe of possibilities.

Damon said, softly, "Run."

Elena felt her legs tense. "The possessor?"

"No,” Damon said flatly “You should run now."

Elena felt her thigh muscles relax slightly and was grateful not to have to try to prove that she
could run—or even crawl—at this exact instant. But her fist clenched.

"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.

"Damon, the window—this late, this far away from the main hotel—well I doubt that
anybody will come to help me." Elena's body was catching up with the adrenaline-spurt that
had allowed her to fight her way out of Damon's grip.

But that iron grip had broken, hadn’t it, when Elena had deliberately started to hurt
herself on it?

And now it seemed they were back to square one, with Damon staring into the night
and her staring at his back. Or, at least, that was where Damon wanted them to be. But she
could

see

that

his

shoulders

shaking.

"You could have just asked for a kiss," Elena whispered. She didn't know if this was
possible for a vampire to understand. She still hadn't taught Stefan. Stefan went without
because he didn’t understand about asking. In all innocence and good intentions, Stefan left
things until she was forced to ask him.

Damon was laughing silently, which meant that he was truly stricken. He put his
hands to his face.

"I'll take that as an apology," Elena said softly.

Now Damon was laughing out loud, and Elena felt a chill. Here she was, trying to help
him, and—-

"Do you think," he broke into her thoughts, "that that was all I wanted?"

Elena felt herself freeze as she thought this over. Damon could easily have taken her
blood while he held her immobile. But—of course—that wasn’t all he wanted from her. Her
aura . . . she knew what it did to vampires. Damon had been protecting her all along from

other vampires who might see it—and who would want her as they hadn’t wanted a girl since
they’d become creatures of darkness.

The difference, Elena’s native honesty told her, was that she didn’t give a damn about
any of the others. But Damon was different. When he kissed her she could feel the difference
inside her. Something she had never felt before . . . except with Stefan.

And Stefan—was this really her, Elena, betraying him by not running away from this
situation? Damon was being a better person than she was. He was telling her to take the
temptation of her aura away from him.

So that she could start the torture anew tomorrow.

Somehow that thought, of Damon living in this terrible agony every day that she was
beside him, was unbearable.

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.”

Even now, when her hands were shaking, something rose up in Elena to challenge
him. “You say it’s not the possessor. I believe you. But is all this because of what Caroline
said?” She could hear the sudden hardness in her own voice.

“Caroline?” Damon blinked as if thrown off his stride.

“Is it because you think I’m . . . easy?”

Again the utter bewilderment in Damon’s eyes. “Easy?”

Elena muttered hastily, “Never mind.”

“How can I not mind when something was said that hurt you? At least tell me what it
was,” Damon said.

Elena heaved a great sigh. She might as well clear the subject up. “Caroline said that
before I met Stefan I was just—” Elena had trouble getting the last words out, but she
managed. “Just a slut. An—-anybody’s slut.”

There was a pause and then Damon’s fist flashed out again, this time to the beige
plaster of the wall. It knocked a hole right through to the outside, this being an outside
unit. The hole was much bigger than Damon’s fist.

Elena felt herself floating with shock. But somewhere, deep inside her, there was birdsong.

Damon’s lips were tight and a muscle in his jaw twitched. “That meddling girl,” he
said in a voice that was half a snarl. “Caroline. She’s already fixed her destiny. If it were
anyone else I might be inclined to have some pity for her. But she goes . . . beyond . . . she’s
gone beyond . . . any hope of saving . . .her. . . .” As he spoke his words slowed, and a look of
bewilderment clouded his face. He was gazing at Elena in surprise.

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.

And then—something changed. Suddenly, Damon stopped dead, frozen in mid-
motion, looking at the tears on his fingers. Suddenly he looked bemused and he brought one
of his hands up to his lips, tasting her tears.

Whatever they tasted like to him, he didn’t seem to believe it. He brought the other
hand up to his lips as well. Elena was openly staring at him now; he should have been
embarrassed—but he wasn’t. Instead a cavalcade of expressions passed over his face, too
quickly for her human eyes to catch them all. But she did see astonishment, disbelief,
bewilderment, more astonishment, and then finally a kind of joyful shock and a look almost as
if he couldn’t believe his own senses.

And then Damon laughed. It was a quick, light laugh, almost as if he was laughing at
himself, but it was genuine, euphoric, even.

Elena stared. Once again she could have sworn that there were tears in those black
eyes. They caught the light and shone from the pupils. Elena was still as deeply under their
spell as ever.

“Damon,” Elena whispered, still trying to choke back her own tears—it had all
happened that fast—“what is it? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, everything’s right,” he said, laughing aloud, while shaking his head
in wonder at her. “You should never try to fool a vampire, Elena. Vampires have many
senses humans don’t—and some we don’t even know we have until we need them. 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.

But if he knew, she thought dizzily, and he knew she knew he knew, then why . . .?

Sometimes, Damon’s telepathic voice came to her, a kiss is just a kiss . . .