The Rest Is Still Unwritten

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Summary: Owner of a failing bookshop, Elena stumbles upon a unique set of books, written by an author with a rather dark story of his own. Can she break him out of his permanent writing block and give him a reason to write again? Delena. AU/AH.

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Chapter 20
And The Walls Came Tumbling Down

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Elena didn't remember much about the days after her parents' deaths; mostly because it was a blur, but also because she'd zoned out for a while. Trauma wasn't something she'd been used to at that point, and so it had taken her a while to adjust between one reality and the next, like she'd been playing a video game only for the system to crash when she was halfway through, the graphics distorting before her eyes, all progress lost in the space of a blink of an eye, leaving her with a black screen and a whole mess of anger to work through.

What she did remember though, however, was that it left a mark. Not a visible one, but something that told people without even having to ask that she was going through something heavy, and it would either draw or push people away depending on how close she was with them. It was the distinct mark associated with those who'd suffered with tragedy, a substantial loss, and it might as well have been the red cross painted on the doors of those suffering with the plague, because suddenly people didn't know what to say, how to act, and so they kept their distance. Only those closest were compelled to draw closer, and she was grateful for those people because she wouldn't have survived without them.

Now, in a sea of disaster, Elena could feel that mark returning, branding itself on her forehead like a vulgar tattoo, and she could see the pity, the concern, even the suspicion on some of the crowd's faces. She could almost hear their wordless accusations of her having started the fire herself, presumably for the insurance money.

The money she would get from the store wouldn't get her far. Certainly not to start again, and certainly not enough to go elsewhere. There was no benefit she could reap from this, and those who thought money was even a partial part of the equation here, well they could just shut the hell up. She'd pour every bit of her own money, everything she'd ever saved, into getting the business back up and running if she thought it would make a damn bit of difference.

It wouldn't.

Even if Elena did get the business up and running again, it would be pointless. It would still face financial ruin. There was just no place in this new world for business owners who weren't interested in spreading out, who put customer service above profit, who cared about what they were selling and not just about selling full stop. She had to admit defeat.

After waking up in her own apartment, surrounded by Jenna and Damon and Jeremy and Caroline and Bonnie - hell, even Matt had taken a day off to make sure she was okay - Elena had asked them to leave her alone for a while. When she thought they weren't looking, she'd slipped out, and now she was here, wandering the streets, numb and void.

There was a bitter chill to the air, yet she couldn't feel it, even with her arms exposed to the elements. She kept walking and walking, hoping for some sign to emerge from the air that could tell her where to go next, but her legs took her on, and her mind took her nowhere.

Eventually, she found her way, almost by instinct, to that quiet little spot that overlooked the city. Right now, it played the role of sanctuary as she contemplated what the hell she was going to do next. She knew it was important to have a backup plan but somehow she'd had this naive confidence her business would do well. It had, but somehow in the blueprints for running the damn thing, she'd never included a forethought about what you did if you were subject to an arson attack.

Running her fingers through her hair, Elena was surprised to find herself in an almost blissful state. She had every reason to fall apart, but not just yet. She needed to breathe and this is what she was doing.

"Cool spot," a voice called behind her.

She turned her head, surprised to find herself flinching at the sight of Damon here, of all places.

It was like her sacred spot had been tainted, but maybe that wasn't a bad thing. Just one more part of herself she got to show him.

"It's not mine, technically."

"Can I sit?"

She made a nodding gesture, vaguely expecting him to make a fuss about getting his trousers dirty. Based on the way he dressed, and his manner in general, she'd expected him to be that kind of guy, but to her surprise he came to sit next to her without another word. His warm body was in such a close proximity to hers that she almost leaned into him. Almost. He had a smell to him that she couldn't describe, but which she could've picked out a mile away. She let it distract her for a moment.

"You know, I figured you weren't going to sit around and sulk like you told everyone you would," Damon said, smiling softly. "You're like me that way. You can't just sit and think. You have to move, get away from it all." He looked away, taking a deep breath before adding, "When Katherine ended it with me, I hopped on a flight to England, of all places, because I wanted to put as many miles between the break up and myself as possible. I liked England because it looked as miserable as I felt. The weather was gloomy, and the people just ignore you there, which was what I needed. I didn't need anyone telling me it would be okay, or that it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, and all that usual crap you get after a break up. I just needed to be alone."

"So why are you here?"

"Because after a while, being alone sucks. You pretend it's what you need, but you don't. Nobody needs that. If you're alone, you sink into a black hole of misery and you lose yourself in it. It forces you to stop everything." Damon sighed. "When you first came along, I was still in that hole, only I was dumb enough to believe that I could live that way forever. I should've known I couldn't." He reached out and held her hand. "You were my wakeup call."

Elena didn't respond.

For a woman who'd once had so much to say, she found she couldn't respond to anything. This feeling of numbness had crept over her again, and she found there was very little motivation to crawl back out of it.

"I don't know what to do," she said, her voice flat, unrecognisable to her own ears.

"Let me help," Damon urged, seizing upon her response as if she'd thrown him a buoy to cling to. "I can call people, get the place up and running again..."

"And then what? My business was failing anyway. Might as well leave it burned."

"Don't you do that. Don't you pull away," Damon warned, anger creeping into his voice. "Your brother told me you have a nasty little habit of doing just that. Your friends, your family... they might be content to let you cope however you can but I say screw that. Let it all out, Elena. You're hurting and the world needs to know you're hurting so let it have it! God knows you've been strong for long enough..."

Elena rose to her feet, and she could physically feel the colour flee her cheeks, but she wasn't going to rise to the bait. She knew what game he was playing and she refused to play it. She'd been walking a fine line admittedly, all these years, but she'd kept herself balanced quite well, despite the majority of people believing the opposite. If she let everything creep up on her and consume her, there would be no coming back.

"I'm not doing this, Damon. Not with you."

She turned and walked away with the intention of going somewhere - anywhere - away from him. He was under her skin, burning like a fever, and she was itching to get him out of her system. Despite how she felt about him - how she was afraid she would eventually feel about him- Elena knew she had to cut him loose. The deeper in she got with him, the harder she would fall later on.

Every good thing in her life eventually left her in some way anyway.

It would break her if Damon left too, particularly since she was beginning to suspect she was falling for him. Hard.

"You just gonna walk away?" Damon shouted after her, starting to move like he was going to chase her. "Without a word? Come on, this isn't the Elena I know..."

She ignored him, moving faster and faster until she broke into a run. She heard him curse behind her but he definitely was running after her.

This was getting dangerous.

How could she ever have believed she could start again? It was too soon to fall, too soon to let herself feel this way about another man again. Everything was going to hell and Damon would not burn with her, she was sure of that. He may not ever write again the way he used to, but Stefan had shown her the writer was still in there, he was just stubborn, and maybe even a little frightened.

You're a hypocrite, her mind accused her. You've lectured Damon about keeping everything and everyone at a distance and you've been doing this for years. Maybe not to the same degree, but you're the same as him and that scares you! He could be The One, and you're running away like a coward because trauma once again has come knocking at your door. Be brave for once and tell someone - ANYONE - how you're feeling because this holding-things-back nonsense will kill you. You don't have to fight this battle on your own.

She shook her head, battling with herself all the way, her legs aching with the sheer energy she was using to push herself away from Damon.

She came to a complete halt when she found herself back in front of Pages to Go, and instantly, she was transported back in time to the moment when she'd been told about her parents' deaths. There was that same moment of horror, grief, overwhelming sadness that flickered on and off like a pulse, never staying too long to take full effect, but present enough that she knew she'd never be the same again.

The crowd had long since cleared, and the firemen had gone off site, off to their next emergency. She'd been questioned by the police and had gone down the tiresome avenue of filing a report, but it all seemed futile in the grand scheme of things. What was lost was lost, and there was no getting it back.

Once that feeling settled in, once it had sunk in like snow on dry ground, it began to gather everything at once, every hurt she'd been holding back, every angry sentiment she'd wanted to scream to the heavens... it all just came crashing in at once.

And then she began to break.

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After staying to help as best she could, Bonnie made her way home - after ramming voicemail after voicemail into Elena's phone - and felt something close to tears prick the corners of her eyes. She physically hurt for her best friend, for the pain she was going to feel at knowing the last part of her parents was gone, but it was more than that.

Sometimes watching someone else's suffering reminded you of your own.

Bonnie knew looking for her mom would've been like looking for a needle in sea of other needles, but she'd been putting off reading that letter because she'd selfishly needed to deny herself what she'd already known: that her mom wasn't coming back, and this letter would probably tell her why. She didn't need her, hadn't needed her for years, but she needed the truth, because Elena was a stark reminder of what holding too much back could do to you.

Elena wouldn't have noticed the little things in her appearance which had changed dramatically after each trauma, but Bonnie had. It started with the little things, like the cut back to her make-up routine, and the result made her look... not plain exactly, but like she was trying to blend in to the background. She'd become visibly thinner, but somehow she'd kept it from being too noticeable, as if she was consciously stopping herself gaining weight, but keeping enough of it on so that she didn't draw attention or worry. Also, Elena had stopped wearing jewellery; Bonnie remembered every piece of jewellery she'd ever owned, and her affinity for jewellery had once earned her the nickname of Magpie in school because she would always steal people's trinkets - only the little things she knew they wouldn't miss - and would give each a fascinating back story. Now, Elena's skin looked bare and pale without at least one piece on. She'd even refused to wear her mother's wedding ring as she'd once did, ditching it only after Elijah had left, and Bonnie had to wonder if it was because it was a haunting reminder of the wedding she never got to have, or if there was something deeper to it.

After finding the letter, Bonnie sat down and looked at the envelope, and it already told her so much about the woman who'd given it to her. The shaky handwriting on the front alone told her this woman hadn't given her up lightly, that it was a decision she'd known instinctively she'd come to regret. If she pressed the envelope to her nose, she could even imagine she'd smelt a faint trace of perfume, although how it was possible for a smell to linger around something that long she had no idea.

No matter how hard the truth was to swallow, Bonnie had to take the chance it would eventually heal. The not knowing was the part that killed you, not the actual finding out. Even if the woman she barely remembered turned out to be a bitch, at least she would know, and she could move on. The deepest wounds could heal the strongest.

After exhaling loudly, Bonnie finally took the courage to open it, and the first thing to slide out was a picture. A picture she'd not seen in a long time but could somehow remember, as if the very image itself had awoken the ghost of the memory. It was a picture of her and her mom, laughing and pointing at something unknown in the distance. She couldn't have been more than four in the picture, her hair scrunched up into dark ringlets, her grin toothy and her eyes sparkling. Her mom had this dark hair that fell past her eyes and to her shoulders, and seemed to hold her quite tightly, as if afraid the wind might blow her out of her hands.

Whatever they'd been laughing at, the joke was now ancient history, forgotten, and the memory only served to hurt rather than to give joy.

The letter was shorter than she'd expected, covering both sides of a single sheet of paper, the writing tiny and precise, and Bonnie felt a twinge of disappointment. If you were going to write a letter to someone you loved, explaining their absence in a way that softened the blow, wouldn't it take every word you ever knew to get that down on paper in a way that made your sorrow crystal clear? Wouldn't it fill a library, all the ways you had to say goodbye? A single piece of paper didn't seem to make the cut unfortunately, but nevertheless, Bonnie was at this point and refused to back down.

She began to read, feeling dread and hope course through her veins with every word she read.

Bonnie,

This is a letter no mother worth her salt should ever write. It's a letter no daughter should ever have to read. I am writing this letter in the hope that one day it'll find your way into your hands, and that you'll be ready to understand why I had to leave.

There will never be any explanation good enough as to why I walked away. My marriage to your father wasn't perfect, but it wasn't that. It wasn't even the fact I only had Miranda Gilbert as a friend, because I only ever needed one to feel like I belonged.

I walked away because I needed to. I wasn't happy, and I couldn't work out why that was. I used to cry myself to sleep some nights because I had everything a woman could wan and it was still not good enough, and then I started wondering if this life was really what I wanted at all. A woman assumes she wants marriage, kids, the whole white picket fence type of life because sometimes that's what she's raised to want, although frankly your grandmother was about as unconventional a woman as you can get.

I didn't know what I wanted, so I tried to ignore that feeling, pretend it was just a phase. But the more you push unwanted feelings away, the more they resurface. In the end, I was suffering to the point where I didn't know whether I wanted to scream or just stay silent and hope I disappeared.

Baby, please don't think this is your fault. I loved you the moment you were born, and I have loved you every day afterwards, but leaving is something I knew I had to do. Walking away is never easy in the best of circumstances, but in this case the decision to do it has meant I've had to go through a lot of pain as I've made my plans to leave, and the worst moment of every point is picturing your heartbroken face as you ask for mommy. This is undoubtedly the most selfish thing I have done, or will ever do, and all I can say is sorry, even though I know it won't ever be good enough.

Wherever you end up in life, I hope you're happy. If you're not and you're reading this wishing there was something you could change, change it. If you break a few hearts on the way, so be it. Sometimes your own happiness has to come first, no matter what the cost. I know I made the biggest mistake walking out the way I did. As your grandmother used to tell me, you can always tell the mistakes from the bad choices by how wrong it feels the moment you commit to it. A mistake will feel wrong the moment you make it, whereas a bad choice might not become apparent it's one until it's too late to undo it, and even then some good may still come from having made it.

This will be a mistake and a bad choice rolled into one, and I know that, but I've got to search for the good it will bring me in the end. I have no doubts you'll ultimately be better off without a woman who was never fully committed to the life she lead before anyway, and I know it sounds like I'm excusing my actions but it's how I feel.

I know you probably want there to be some secret, special reason as to why I walked away, but the truth is never as glamorous as you want it to be, and I wish I had a better explanation other than just I was unhappy, but I don't. Every person has their breaking point and I reached mine.

Don't let me be yours.

You are so much stronger, and wiser, than I ever was, and I have every faith you're going to be a hell of a woman when you're older, and it won't be thanks to me I know. I love you, Bonnie, and I am so sorry I couldn't be the mom you wanted. I just never wanted that life, and I don't know if I ever will.

I love you all the same.

Abby

Bonnie's eyes swam with tears.

It wasn't an explanation, not really, but to have read the letter gave her an innate sense of closure because she'd put it off for so long.

How was "I walked away because I needed to" an explanation? It just didn't make sense. If Abby had thrown words like "depression" or mentioned a trauma that had forced her to walk away for her own mental health, that would've given her a pass even though it would've still hurt that she had chosen to leave without a word. The letter instead made it sound like she'd found out motherhood wasn't for her years too late to do anything about, and so she'd decided walking away was her best option.

With a hefty sigh, Bonnie lay back on her couch and let tears roll down her cheeks.

Closure was something she'd wanted for a long time, and yet sometimes getting it, even if you only had it in writing, could be more of a burden than you could realise, because it meant you were letting go of something you'd held on to for a long time. For years, Bonnie had held on to a secret hope that her mother had been taken away from her for a special reason; she'd kind of secretly envisioned her mother as someone who had been working undercover and had to go away into hiding to protect her family. A ridiculous lie was sometimes easier to believe than a cold, bare truth.

Now the truth was out there, and she could let it go if she wanted to.

The thing was, she didn't want to.

She wanted more than just a half assed explanation in a letter. She wanted to spill her heart to a woman who'd broken it. Letters were all very well and good, but you couldn't scream your heartache to a piece of paper, particularly if you had nowhere to send it. If she'd learned anything from Elena, it was that bottling things up only caused you to suffer more in the long term of things. Reading another person's explanation as to why certain things had come to be could only help you understand their logic, not necessarily their truth.

Bonnie would have to seek out her mother herself, and she was determined that come hell or high water, she would get a better answer. Not necessarily a less painful answer, but something more substantial all the same. Nobody reached their breaking point without a trigger, and maybe to get the whole picture she needed to find out what that trigger was, even if the answer wasn't pleasant.

After all, she owed it to herself to find out the truth.

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When a person breaks, it is akin to seeing a tree being felled in a forest. You watch as each axe, each hard knock of life, cuts a chunk away, never quite reaching deep enough to really make an impact, until finally there's that one motion, that one deep cut, that just uses the right amount of force to knock it down completely. The fall that follows isn't a quick, safe drop to the ground; it is a slow, lingering fall that can crush anybody who happens to be in its path, and then the crash itself is an almighty one that sends tremors running through to the ground, not enough to unsettle the earth but just enough to let the world know a calamity has happened.

When Damon found Elena, she was on her knees in her shop, her hands across her face, great gasping sobs bursting out of her, as if she'd been possessed and was only now getting to taste reality. He could only watch as she imploded, gripped with a kind of simultaneous terror and relief that she was now, finally, getting to release her emotions. He'd not known her long enough to realise the extent of what she was holding back, but he was seeing the visual proof of it right in front of him.

He was by her side as quickly as he could, but when he tried to hold her, to let her know he was there, she pushed him away.

"No! You should leave," she yelled.

"Elena, you're clearly not in the right place to be alone..."

"This is none of your business!"

"The hell it isn't! You are my business now, whether you like it or not," he snapped.

Maybe he was too harsh, but she needed to hear the truth now more than ever. People who went through emotional hell never needed to be mollycoddled, this he'd learned from his own brother. They needed to punch their way through the pain - not literally of course - and then rebuild themselves. People who endured traumas, break ups, emotional damage of any kind, were not victims - they were survivors, and Elena needed reminding of that as sure as he did.

Elena tried to walk away but he'd grabbed her hands. Furious, she started lashing out, hitting his chest, sobbing words he could barely make out, but if she was going to be his literal punching bag, she could garble any damn language she liked at him.

"This is not your mess, this is mine! This is my fault!" she raged. "I don't want you here, Damon. You've no right to try and tell me things will be okay! They won't!"

"No, probably not," he agreed, and his reaction momentarily caught her off guard. "They won't be okay for a long time, Elena, and you know that. But all this - this bullshit wall you put around you - it's stopping you from facing your trauma head on. So tell me what you're REALLY feeling."

"Why? Because you're Mr Emotional?" Elena sneered, fisting her hair and pacing around, clearly agitated and only one step short of falling into an abyss she wouldn't be able to easily crawl out of. "Don't you dare criticise me for putting a wall up. You're the king of keeping your true feelings locked away."

"That's very true, but the worst I went through was a break up, and enduring a father who couldn't stand the sight of me. The standard back story of a bad boy, or so Hollywood has lead me to believe. You've been through hell, Elena, and it's okay to admit you're not okay. Nobody is going to judge you for admitting that."

Elena ceased fighting, and pushed him away in such a manner that he let her go. She was pale, her face was streaked with tears, and her hair was a mess. She was the epitome of a beautiful disaster, and he found the more rage she unleashed on him, the more he wanted to know her. She was feisty, fiery, brilliant and beautiful, and he was falling head over heels for her, much as he'd resisted. But simultaneously, she was a walking disaster. She breathed tragedy like it was in her DNA, but despite all that she remained a compassionate, caring, loving human being, and he was humbled by that.

Humbled, and a little unnerved, because he was still a fragment of the man he once was and yet she'd broken through to him in ways he could never have foreseen.

"Whatever we have, it needs to stop," Elena said, and he was almost frightened by the lack of emotion in her voice.

"I'm sorry?"

"This. Us. It needs to end," she repeated, a sliver of determination lining her voice.

"No, not happening. What else you got?"

"I'm serious, Damon! I'm not doing this anymore. We barely know each other, so it shouldn't be that hard walking away from each other."

"Goddamn it, Elena! Why are you being this way?"

"BECAUSE EVERYONE LEAVES ME!" Elena bellowed, her eyes overflowing at this point.

And the elephant in the room lets out a mighty roar, Damon thought.

"EVERYONE LEAVES ME, AND I CAN'T STOP THEM!" Elena bawled. "I TRY, BUT THEY ALWAYS FIND A WAY." She fell to her knees, hugging her entire body, weeping but somehow still clinging to whatever emotional podium she was trying to balance on. "My parents died, my fiancé walked out on me... and now my business is gone." She hiccupped loudly before adding, "And someone tried to take a pot shot at me as well, so someone up there," she pointed fiercely, "clearly wants me to suffer."

Damon went over to her to hold her, touch her in some way, but she shuffled away.

"Don't. Just - don't." She peered up at him through haunted eyes. "I've been broken a long time. Even before Elijah left. I tried to move the hell on, but when your parents die, it's something you never get over. Particularly if you were supposed to die in their place."

Damon's eyes widened. "What do you mean?"

"It was an accident. I was at a party, my parents were back home for the weekend taking well earned time off from working so hard. My dad was a doctor, but he used to help in the store from time to time, but it was my mother's pride and joy. They both worked crazy hours working in the city, as you can imagine, and never really got time to see each other, so when my aunt Jenna suggested they book some time off and come back home , well they jumped at the chance. Then their stupid little girl had to bail on family night because her boyfriend at the time was celebrating his birthday. She had to go and get herself drunk." More tears burst from her eyes, making Damon wonder how much she'd really had time to properly grieve such a tragedy. "They came out to get me, pretended they weren't annoyed that they'd had to come out to pick me up, and then the car went over Wickery Bridge. Some issue with the road being slippery, or whatever. I was in the back seat, and I should not have survived, but my dad - well, he spent the last seconds of his life making sure I got out." She looked physically ill at the memory, as if being saved was the worst punishment imaginable. "By this point, someone had noticed we were in trouble and someone had dived in to save us, and my dad... well, he made sure they got me out. By the time, they got back to saving my parents, they were..."

Elena dissolved into more tears, burying her face into her hands, her shoulders shaking with the weight of the emotion she was currently unleashing.

"I should be dead, not them," she sobbed. "And the events of the last few weeks should prove that! It's the universe trying to correct its mistake by letting me live..."

Damon slowly approached her, also sinking to his knees, not caring that ashes would stain his expensive trousers, or that the room still had this suffocating aroma to it that almost made him heave.

"Don't say that," he said lowly. "Don't you dare say that, Elena."

She glared at him through tear-filled eyes.

"Why the hell not? It's true."

"I spent a good portion of my life believing my mom's death was my fault, and my father spent a hell of a good time blaming me for it too." Damon wiped a hand across his face, and that motion almost seemed to age him, as there suddenly became a heavier note to his voice, and the lines under and around his eyes seemed to dramatically become enhanced, as if they'd evolved into wrinkles in the space of a microsecond. "She died when I was about sixteen. I was being a pain in the ass, hanging out with the wrong crowd... generally being selfish." He gave a sad smile. "Typical Damon behaviour. Anyway, my mom she drove all the way out to fetch me because she knew where I would be hanging out - which, at the time, was a bad neighbourhood. My friend, Enzo, had an older brother who was showing us a gun he'd got, and it was about the coolest thing I'd ever seen... until, idiotically, he handed it to his kid brother to look at and the damn thing went off... right at the moment my mom got out of the car ready to tear me a new one for being a dick." He averted his eyes as he added, "She died in hospital a few hours later. My dad and I never got along before she died anyway, but after that... the man just didn't want anything to do with me. Kicked me out when I turned 18 and I went to live with my uncle Zach for a while." He locked eyes with her once again. "When I met Katherine, I was happy for the first time in a long time, but I depended on her for that happiness instead of finding it in other people, in other things, so that when she left, I was right back in that miserable pit of despair and self-loathing I had been in before I'd met her, the one I'd built for myself right after my mother died, the one you're holed up in right now. So when I stopped writing, it was because she made me start. I'd been doing it for years in dribs and drabs as Stefan will tell you, but Katherine was my inspiration. Choosing to stop what I love was never about her - not really anyway. When she left, I was reminded of everything else I'd blamed myself for, and that just sucked the desire to write right out of me. What you're going through right now, it's what I went through exactly the day she left."

"It's not the same, Damon..."

"No, it's not. Two people's grief and misery will never be equal. But you're not going to feel any better wallowing in this sadness and misery than you did whilst keeping it all at bay. As my mother would've said, it's all about moderation. Some days you'll feel it all. Some days you'll feel none of it. The point is, the pain is there, and you have to find a way to deal with it."

Elena was still crying, but her sobs had subsided. She raised a shaking hand to wipe away her tears, but Damon had beaten her to it.

"I'm sick of pretending I'm okay," she whispered.

"Then don't," he replied. "If you've taught me anything it's that locking yourself away only delays the inevitable." He leaned forward to kiss the top of her head. "You've needed to do this for a long time... Accepting your demons doesn't mean you embrace them; it only means you know you need to fight them."

"When did you get so smart?"

"Right around the time I met you." His trademark smirk reappeared for the briefest of moments before it faded. "I'm sorry to hear about your parents."

"I'm sorry to hear about your mom," Elena responded, gripping his hand tightly.

"Some wounds are too deep to bury, Elena." His voice was restrained, as if he was holding back a tidal wave of emotion. "So we need to endure them as best we can." He gripped her hand back. "I'll carry yours, if you carry mine."

With a last sob, Elena nodded fervently, and kissed him, still shaking, still torn apart by the events of the last few weeks.

He held her just as tightly as she held on to him.

He wasn't a praying man, and he wasn't a man who believed in half the crap he'd once written about, but he did believe in starting over, and he believed wholeheartedly in believing that another person could be your salvation. The trick was getting that balance right, between letting your grievances overrule you, and ignoring them completely.

Well, both Elena and himself could definitely say they'd never achieved that balance. They were all or nothing kind of people; they could love and hate deeply in one breath, and then in another feel absolutely nothing.

It was what drew them together.

And, he secretly feared, what might tear them apart.

A/n: Whew! Big chapter. It turned out a little different than I originally planned but hopefully you guys still enjoyed it. Major angst is something I really write well in my opinion, and I enjoy writing it more than fluff. This won't be the end of the angst, but the next few chapters will be more smooth sailing as the plot goes on. Don't worry - the M-rating on this fic is not for nothing. Smut will be in the horizon but I warn you I don't write smut like some other fanfic authors do because I'm not really comfortable getting too graphic, but it will be smutty enough that you'll be satisfied Next chapter will see more Bonnie/Jeremy action, a little more insight into Elijah & Elena's past, & finally some Steroline action, although I pre-warn you that I intend Forwood to be endgame just purely because I don't see hardly any Delena fics where they are either a central pairing, or where they end up together. Forwood are my biggest OTP on the show next to Delena, so you can imagine how disappointed I was when they ended. I don't mind Steroline - I actually do find them adorable - but I prefer Forwood. Just my opinion ;) Thank you all for reviewing my fic and if you do have any issues reviewing, as some people have mentioned that they have had trouble with doing so, feel free to drop me a PM with your comments/questions/issues, and I will always get back to you