Be warned; I am a total and complete fanfiction noob. I've written a few oneshots here and there, but I rarely publish anything. This is mainly just what I see as the character's different takes on them and Damon and Elena's always changing and redefining relationship. Also, I have a lot of feelings about Jeremy, so make due with that what you will? (Sorry, I know it leaves the fic totally imbalanced D:)

Just me trying to figure out this whole writing ordeal and seeing if I'm any good at it. Feedback would be fabulous!

~Sandy

Everyone with eyes seemed to be able to see that there is always been this...something between the martyring warrior princess and the psychopathic vampire with no redeeming qualities. The gazes that linger a few seconds too long. The brief nods and looks of understanding that they cannot even attempt to comprehend. It's subtle, in the beginning, despite Damon's cruel intentions and Elena's dedication. But a blink later it's so prominent they can't discern why they didn't see it before.

Jeremy is the first to notice, he thinks. His older sister is a little lighter (and maybe a little more sarcastic) when he is around. He likes Damon, at first. He seemed to exhibit every typical cool-older-guy stereotype in every way from girl advice to kicking his ass at video games. He likes Stefan, sure, but the other Salvatore had a tendency to treat him like a child. Jeremy reasons, by now, he's seen enough to know better than the average 16 year old.

This preference is short lived, however, when he sees Elena's tears and Damon's glassy eyes when he's perched in the doorway with his new ring glinting. The last thing he witnesses before darkness is Damon's hands grasped around his neck and Elena's horror struck expression. Later that night, when Jeremy wakes up, he determines he hates Damon. For what he did to him and for the tears streaming down Elena's face.

But it's the next day (with a ring shaped welt on his forehead and a poorly crafted stake digging into his palm) that Jeremy gets it. Sort of, at least. Damon mutters something about cookies and milk, 19th century prejudices, and daddy issues parallel to his that Jeremy finally sees. Maybe it was growing up with Elena that factored in his empathy, but he sees Damon as what he could have been. Destructed by vampirism and utter loneliness for a century and a half. Suddenly the younger Gilbert is very glad for the fact he didn't take enough pills to grow fangs.

But it's when the sacrifice goes down that the realization truly, fully, solidifies. The murderous psychopath who killed him would do anything to protect his only remaining relative (Jenna is gone and he never lets it sink in.) and he wonders why no one else sees how Elena seems to gravitate towards Damon. Damon, of course, has always, always been tracing his sister's footsteps, and Jeremy feels like hitting himself for not seeing it sooner.

Damon's dying and out of his freaking mind but still the only thing he mutters to Jeremy is focused around his sister. So when he's shuddering in his last gasps in the floor of the grill, he doesn't regret the decision of trying to get him to safety. For Elena.

The summer that follows is easily one of the most confounding and lost times of his life. Ghosts are plaguing his mind, Stefan is gone, and Elena worries and frets over Jeremy more so than usual (when did that become possible?) but Damon is always there. When he gets back from work every day, the sheriff keeps on bringing the bad news and Elena looks as if she is going to collapse. But then Damon is always there, and Jeremy wonders how he's able to achieve more with a look than Jeremy has been with his reassuring words and awkward three-way-conversations among himself, Alaric, and Elena over the bags under her eyes and the constant searching for Stefan.

Hell, the only time Jeremy sees her laugh anymore, it's usually because of Damon.

Stefan and Klaus return to wreck their havoc on the town (and his sister) and a particular leather jacket is always draped somewhere when he gets home from work everyday. Anna is here and gone and what he had with Bonnie is over soon after. But somehow, it's his sister, his history-teacher-slash-virtual-uncle, and oddly enough, the memory of all the times Damon has saved them that gives him the strength to bring the meat cleaver down to save his family.

His family has only had the one constant member, and that would be his older sister. Alaric had wormed his way in there like he wormed his way to the couch, so that was kind of a given. But the strangest member is the darker Salvatore brother (which is an irrelevant title now) but he was there just as Elena was. Drinking, teasing, and an asshole 90 percent of the time, but it's the ten percent when he's steadying Elena, critiquing Alaric, and subtlely eyeing the sketches Jeremy leaves out that matters.

And it's his family that meets him in his room later that night. The realization of what is about to happen (again) kicks in too late and Alaric's furrowed face, Elena's tears, and Damon's calming words are the last thing he remembers before the decision to leave his home indefinitely appears.

Alaric notices this change too, earlier or later than Jeremy he isn't sure of. But he does see the change in someone he's now able to call his best friend. Whenever his sort-of-roommate/history student/niece-of-his-dead-girlfriend is mentioned, the look in Damon's eyes has a tendency to change. Sometimes he's a little softer when she's brought into play, other times he's bitter and condescending over the fact he'll never get the girl. Which is why he can't let someone like him to be with someone like Elena.

Damon isn't the only one who's changing. It's after a conversation he's sure he missed between them that she decided on the whole, as named by Damon, "Warrior Princess Ordeal." Elena is stronger now, and Alaric tries not to linger on the fact that Damon definitely had something to do with it. So when she almost kicks him in the jaw the morning after Damon compels Jeremy, he decides not to question it.

Bonnie, despite all her deep rooted, pure, hatred of Damon, now sort of respects him. I mean, anyone who would do anything to save her best friend couldn't be 100 percent unconcentrated evil. And after all, Elena's laughter is heard a little more, her best friend's eyes light up more often, and Damon is a little less murderous when they're in each other's orbit.

Instead of freaking out when she hears they kissed, she's surprised to find that she's completely unsurprised. She knew Elena long enough to know when her best friend is feeling something this deep-rooted, and while she wishes that it could just be anyone but Damon she understands why it can't be anyone but him when Damon frantically calls her later because Klaus will kill everyone she loves if he doesn't get those coffins. Bonnie finds that somehow, the fact that Damon loves Elena (she's not blind) has opened him up to care about the people she loves, too.

Caroline's detestment of Damon is far from unfounded. He used her, compelled her, and downright abused her. But once the fact that Elena is totally head over heels for the wrong-freaking-Salvatore-brother, she is going to be damned if Elena doesn't come to terms with it too. She likes Stefan, adores him actually, but she understands that her best friend's needs need to be put first.

Caroline doesn't tell Elena that she needs Damon, though. She's just anxiously awaiting for her to figure it out herself. That way, she is still completely entitled to say "I-told-you-so." while letting Elena figure it out for herself. After all, it's the build up between the asshole who abused-her-but-turns-to-mush whenever-somebody-is-mentioned and her best friend since Elementary school that really has her curious.

In the end, however, Stefan is the least unsurprised. And that's why it hurts so much when Elena tells him she kissed his older brother. Elena was the center of his universe for so long that it was off-putting when she was out of it. But he knew he lost her. He's always known since the love of his life invaded his house a year ago and his older brother accompanied her in the foyer.

He gradually sees his monstrous, villainous sibling turn into what he's been trying to help Damon become for over a century. Redeemable, able to see his humanity, able to love. And it's all because of the wrong person. Why should the love of his life redeem his older brother? Guide him to his humanity? Get him to love her? It just didn't make any sense. He didn't deserve her.

They're like magnets whenever they're in the same room, and something in Stefan's brain suddenly clicks into place one day. Elena needs Damon and Damon needs Elena. He's only a detail, a plot point in the grand scheme of their evolution. But he loves his brother more than anything in the world, after all these years. And he loves Elena, though not like he used to. He's horrible and destructive, and now he understands what Damon experienced a year ago.

But then Stefan blinked. Now Damon and Elena seemed to be in their rightful places, and when Elena tells him what happened with Damon the second time (but now it's that she loves him, though he's sure there might have been a kiss involved in there too.) he gives a brief nod. He tells her how he's sorry for all the things he's put them both through, and annuls the previous comment uttered months ago with another.

"You both deserve each other. Thank you. For everything."

Oddly enough, it's not laced with a bitter edge or sarcasm. He means it. They both saved him, and fought for him when everyone else gave up. Damon and Elena were just incapable of being defined, but Stefan hopes he summed it up correctly. Elena and Stefan were immediate, as easy and quick as breathing. But Stefan is different now, and even if he wasn't, Damon and Elena's were the fight, the slow burn. And Stefan knows how much they both need to keep fighting. How everyone needed to keep fighting in this war.

Damon and Elena don't only get each other to keep surviving, but the people they love most.

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