“Still, there was no point in hurting Damon. She loved Damon, too. “I’ll try,” she promised.“We’ll take you home,” he said.“But not yet,” she told him gently. “Let’s wait just a little while.”Something happened in the fathomless black eyes, and the burning spark went out. Then she saw that Damon knew, too.“I’m not afraid,” she said. “Well—only a little.”

“Something was shining on Damon's face. She reached toward it, touched it, and lifted her fingers away in wonder."Don't be sad," she told him, feeling the cool wetness on her fingertips. But a pang of worry disturbed her. Who was there to understand Damon now? Who would be there to push him, to try to see what was really inside him? "You have to take care of each other," she said, realizing it. A little strength came back to her, like a candle flaring in the wind. "Stefan, will you promise? Promise to take care of each other?”

“Katherine," he said. He was still smiling."Yes." She leaned closer."Katherine...""Yes, Damon?""Go to hell.”

“But then she remembered something else, just a flash: looking up at Damon’s face in the woods and feeling such—such excitement, such affinity with him. As if he understood the flame that burned inside her as nobody else ever could. As if together they could do anything they liked, conquer the world or destroy it; as if they were better than anyone else who had ever lived.I was out of my mind, irrational, she told herself, but that little flash of memory wouldn’t go away.And then she remembered something else: how Damon had acted later that night, how he’d kept her safe, even been gentle with her.Stefan was looking at her, and his expression had changed from belligerence to bitter anger and fear. Part of her wanted to reassure him completely, to throw her arms around him and tell him that she was his and always would be and that nothing else mattered. Not the town, not Damon, not anything.But she wasn’t doing it.”

“You didn’t feed from her,” he said, and this was not a question.“Swill poison? Not my kind of fun, little brother.”One corner of Stefan’s mouth quirked up. He made no response to this, but simply looked at Damon with eyes that were... knowing. Damon bridled.“I told the truth!”“Going to take it up as a hobby?”

“She was still looking down and she saw tears spill from her eyes and fall toward Damon’s outstretched arms. Elena didn’t know why she was crying, but part of it was sorrow for her ever having doubted him.Because Damon wasn’t just on her side. Unless she was wrong, he was willing to die for her - was courting death for her.”