"I can waken things inside you that have been sleeping all your life."

There were words and deeds stretching back over centuries, languishing between them, and three little ones that could heal them all, but Damon had never been one for words when actions would do, and he thought Stefan should understand everything he wasn't saying by interpreting everything he was doing instead.

1. How he can subsist on animal blood.
2. Why he loathes what we are.
3. Why he won't accept himself and me.
4. His need to brood. I'd say he read Wuthering Heights too many times, but he was doing it for centuries before.
5. Why he refuses to have any fun.
6. His moral center. That's got nothing to do with the vampirism, by the way. I didn't understand his pining for sainthood when we were human, either.
7. Why he persists in the notion that I need saving from myself. I'm perfectly happy as I am, thank you.
8. That he really believes it's still about Katherine.
9. Why he doesn't want Elena to be like us. What's noble and romantic about watching her die and losing her, again? My way--everyone wins.
10. Why he can't see Katherine had the right idea...she was just the wrong girl.

A far more conventional action would have been to slide his lips down the other side of her throat and make his own mark there, but Damon's tongue teased over the twin puncture marks already marring Elena's throat and reopened the wounds his brother had made the night before, ignoring the flash of heat that seared through him when he tasted Stefan's blood mingled with hers.

1. I was born in Florence, Italy a very long time ago.
2. I never much cared for my father. The feeling was mutual.
3. I don't believe in brooding.
4. I like who I am.
5. I have a younger brother who's been nothing but a pain in my ass for centuries.
6. Despite rumors you may have heard to the contrary, I don't seduce or feed on children.
7. I don't appreciate attempts to "save" me--I'm just fine, thanks.
8. I'm not sure I've ever actually been in love. Obsessed, yes. Love--I don't know.
9. He may be a pain in my ass, but no one gets to kill my brother but me. Someday. When he finally annoys me enough.
10. I don't sparkle.

This chaos, this calamity, this garden once was perfect
Give your immortality to me; I'll set you up against the stars

Who shot that arrow in your throat?
Who missed the crimson apple?
And there is discord in the garden tonight

The sea is wine red
This is the death of beauty
The doves have died
The lovers have lied

There should be blood, he thinks, spilling itself across the snow, under the stretch of trees sillhouetted against the sky. Black and white and a glistening red to break up the pristine beauty of the crystalline stretch. Glancing down he sees there are drops in the dawn's light, glinting red as the sunrise hits them, but no widening stretch indicating the draining feeling of life ekeing out of him without an ability to staunch it.

He sways slightly, and the arm around him tightens, holding him up. It's trembling, not really any stronger than he, but perhaps more determined to hold on. Funny, really, considering just moments--was it moments--before he'd been ready to throw it all away, to literally walk unprotected into the light. But Stefan always took his responsibilities so very seriously, and apparently for the moment that means him. Damon feels the laugh bubble up inside of him at the thought, tasting the copper of his own blood on his lips at the sardonic sound. Green eyes flash to him, furious and wounded that he could laugh at a time like this, then softening as he stares into his brother's black eyes and for the first time in five hundred years seem to find a mirror.

There's an irony there, Damon thinks, that is too painful to rest his mind upon for long. Death and love and love and death, separating and destroying and binding and healing and two girls with hair like sunshine and eyes like the sky in their darkened world who could not have been more different...He swallows as he holds Stefan's eyes for a moment, trying to search the cast of his thoughts but finding too much pain there to carry along with his own. Tearing his gaze away, he squints at the damnable sun, and tightens his arm around Stefan's waist.

We're neither of us strong enough to bring the clouds, and they'll be waiting...and it's damnably cold out here. Shall we go?

Eager to be on your way? Stefan's voice is bitter in his mind.

Damon shrugs, eyes brushing over the pure white snow again, and feels the cold seeping under his skin that even the feel of his brother's arm around him cannot drive away. There's nothing left for me here.