entrancelogs | [closed] if you must die, sweetheart,

Damon sits up too though it's less abruptly than she does.

He sits up on the bed, and he winces at her reaction though he can't blame her, can he? She was killed by a mirror. He is not her Damon. He is hollowed out pieces of what is left of him after a siren gets a hold of him. It didn't stop his need to come over.

It doesn't stop his wince as she tries to get away from him, as far away from him as she can.

He swallows thickly.

"I don't want to hurt you."

It's said quickly.

"I just needed-"

To see her. This doesn't happen often. They're not just allowed to come over, and- he needed to feel those sparks, those little streaks of light in person.

The urge to back further away is strong, but something much stronger has taken hold of her. It keeps her in place, the sound of his voice a rope that moors her as she threatens to drift away. Her eyes fill and her throat tightens, and she finds that she can't answer him.

Not at first.

Not right away.

When she does find her voice, she only has one question. It's nothing she would've asked before today, but now she must know.

"Did you know?"

Did he know what Freya's mirror planned to do?

She doesn't have to back further away. Damon stands up, pulls back like- like something's struck him deep within past all the- past all of it.

"What?"

She is right to ask it, is't she? After everything that has happened with the mirrors, after everything said about mirrors, after all of the terrible things she has gone through because of them, and he still can't stop it. He would have come over when his real was taken out of the equation. He would have come over and had his neck snapped again if he wasn't already down for the count. It doesn't matter his emotions are off. He's torn up from the inside out by a siren.

He would have.

"No. No. Elena, no. I would never-"

He steps back. Searches for something that never comes.

"I would have told you. I would have been here." If he knew, if he only knew.

Her jaw trembles, but Elena forces herself to not look away. Like she'll be able to tell if he's lying if she just looks hard enough, searches thoroughly enough. She wants to be able to study him with only her mind at the forefront. It would give her a logical conclusion, not an emotional one. Just because he feels like Damon doesn't mean that he is. Does it?

She's taken it for truth that the Queen creates the mirrors, but how could she create something this real?

"Why?"

It's a simple question that carries such heavy context. Why would he have come? Why would she believe him? Why does he care if he can't?

"You've turned it all off." Can Mirrors do that? Elena's shoulders tense, even as his vehemency reaches her. She can be so weak; she hates that sometimes. "You don't remember. So why?"

Damon shakes his head as he watches her, and there's an apology in his own gaze deep down, deep down where there's some part of him still capable of- still capable of something that the siren tried to tear out of him. He hates seeing her so afraid, and he cannot blame her for it regardless. Logic, logic says she should be afraid of him, and isn't he capable of terrible things?

Doesn't he know they're there without limits? Except there were.

There were limits.

"I had no control. My memories were carved out. The meaning behind them was severed from me. I was not allowed to understand."

All of it.

His head is a mess. She doesn't have to know the reasons why to understand. He does not want her to have to carry it on top of what has already happened this week. Carry knowing what occurs after Damon steps through the armory. He's the proof of it. He's the evidence of the question his real has been asking.

"When I held on to this, I felt these flickers of warmth and light. I could- I could fight. I don't go anywhere without it." He keeps it on him still like it will save him from the Queen's influence as well. "When I look through the mirror, when I talk to you, I feel it too. This- this is stronger than the Queen. It's stronger than Wonderland and Mirrors. It's stronger than anything, Elena. I would sooner die than hurt you."

And he knows Hell waits for him if he does.

His memories were carved out.

That's what he says.

Elena mistakenly believes he means Wonderland took them. Isn't that what this place is all about: stealing memories, feeding on them? If theories are true and the Queen creates her mirrors, why wouldn't she take away the pieces that would make them willful and disobedient? Why wouldn't she take away someone Damon loves and direct that loyalty inward on the Mirrorside?

It's too quiet for too long. She doesn't count the minutes. She doesn't know how many of them pass. When she speaks again, it's still a bit dully, but less reluctant to engage. He is reaching out to her, and this is Elena slowly beginning to reach back. If she can, she will.

Every single time.

"Held on to what?" she finally asks. Finally willing to try and understand. To believe him, because something in her heart tells her to. She of all people knows what it's like to give someone like Damon the benefit of the doubt. So, what does he mean by 'this'?

Damon is not going to correct her about where the memory loss comes from. He did not want to tell her the story. She has been through enough without learning about the siren, without learning about the future she has not yet lived. Hopefully, she won't have to. He hates to think of her lost in the sleeping coma so deeply, never to see her- never to see her brother or best friend again.

It sticks inside the edges of his head horribly.

He breathes in at the question and then pulls the necklace out of his pocket, holding it out to her, to answer her question in ways better than words could.

It's the same necklace he gave to her a very long time ago (what feels like a very long time ago).

It's the same necklace he held on to in a prison world far from her.

It's the necklace that saved him, that helped him pull the heart right out of the siren herself.

"My necklace," she breathes out, eyes growing soft and round.

Elena hasn't seen that necklace in a long time. She stopped wearing it once Stefan fed on her and she believed him to be lost to her, to them. She saw the light go out in his eyes. She saw the bloodthirsty ripper. And then it turned out that the necklace had belonged to Rebekah all along.

But it does feel a little bit like hers, in spite of it all.

It's a throwback if there ever was one. The day Stefan gave it to her. The day she recklessly took it off so that Damon could see that she wasn't lying. The night of her eighteenth birthday when he gave it back to her, after she thought she'd never find it again.

She finally takes a step forward, albeit hesitant.

Damon nods and then finds himself releasing a shaky breath of relief as she takes the step forward. He lifts the necklace out to her though his grip on it still remains tight like he's afraid it'll fall from his fingers and crash on to the floor, break in two (and along with it the remains of his sanity).

"I don't know what I'd have been without it."

Not this, not pieces, not the remains of himself. A smile pulls across his face (tired and pained and real).

"She underestimated us."

Elena will think he's referring to the Queen, and he's not. He's talking about the siren who thought carving into his head and scraping her out would guarantee total loyalty, total servitude to her. And it didn't.

Elena doesn't reach out to take it, not when it seems to be a lifeline for him. She'd want him to have it, if it's helping in even the smallest of ways. And the more he speaks, the more she realizes those ways aren't small at all. Her fingers merely brush against the surface of the locket. Vervain had once been put inside of it ... to protect her from Damon.

It's so strange how some things work out.

Her gaze shifts into a sadder, softer, thing. Instead of letting her hand fall back to her side, she cups his cheek instead. The thumb lightly strokes close to his jaw as she takes in this tired, older version of Damon. She's aware of the risk he took in coming here.

She's aware of the why.

"They don't know what we have." How could they? They aren't privy to the most intimate, powerful moments Damon and Elena have shared, for it can only be shared by two people. They aren't aware of who the two of them become when they are together, and how much worse it can be when they're apart. It's not about right or wrong. It's about need. "You know you can't stay here," she whispers. "Don't you?"

Damon breathes in slow, sudden, abrupt as her hand frames his face, and he leans into her touch like a man starved, like a man thirsting. His throat locks up as his hand slips up over the side of her own hand, and he breathes her in.

He breathes in this moment. Some part of him feels real, and he can't remember the last time that was true.

He does not dare move an inch as if it might ruin it.

Emotion lodges in his throat as he releases the breath trapped in the cage of his chest, opening his eyes again to meet her own. His voice is an ache.

"I know."

[closed] if you must die, sweetheart,

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