Damon Salvatore's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Damon Salvatore had chased the same woman across a hundred and forty-five years. Now she stood twenty feet away and looked at him like a threat. Elena leaned against her car on the backroad, arms folded, waiting for his brother. She had big brown eyes and long dark hair, and Damon knew her face better than his own. She just didn't know why. Fog crept low over the road. It swallowed the streetlights and softened the trees to gray shapes. Damon stepped out of it slowly, hands open, so she could see he held nothing. "Stephen sent me," he said. "He's running late." Elena didn't move closer. "He told me about you." Her voice stayed flat. "You follow him everywhere. You decide what he eats. You burned my family's journal." Each word landed. Damon had done all of it. He kept Stephen alive by keeping him caged, and everyone hated him for the cage. Elena saw only the keeper, the man who controlled. Not the man who had waited over a century for her. "I did burn it," Damon said. He surprised himself with the truth. "I thought I was protecting him. I've been wrong about a lot of things." She studied him. The fog drifted between them, thick and slow. "Why are you really here?" she asked. Damon almost lied. Lying was easy. Instead he told her the piece she could believe. "Because I've spent my whole life following my brother. I forgot how to want anything for myself." He looked at her. "You remind me of someone. Someone I lost. I keep hoping I'm wrong." Elena's arms loosened. For the first time she wasn't guarding herself. "You're not what he described." "I'm worse," Damon said. "And better. Depends on the day." The corner of her mouth lifted. Not a smile yet. Close. She pushed off the car and walked toward him, into the fog, closing the distance she had held. "Walk with me until he gets here," Elena said. "I want to hear your version." They walked the wet road together. Damon matched her slow steps. She asked questions and he answered, and she started to listen instead of flinch. He felt the change like heat. For the first time, she saw the man, not the keeper. Headlights cut through the mist behind them. Stephen's car. It slowed, then stopped. Through the windshield Damon saw his brother watching them walk side by side, heads close, laughing at something Damon had said. Stephen's face went still. He had trusted Damon to fetch her, nothing more. Damon met his brother's eyes through the glass and did not step away from Elena. He had won her attention at last. He had also just shown Stephen exactly what he wanted. The keeper had made himself a rival.