A/N: This fic is sort of three ideas rolled into one because each separately just wasn't working so I decided to shove them all together. It starts off in 2x06 just after Elena has given Stefan her blood at the well and other than Jenna being stabbed, the fic doesn't follow what happens in the show.

Angst heavy. Blood heavy. Comfort heavy:

It doesn't take very long for her blood to heal him. The scars on his face are fading within minutes and he's soon standing, resting against the granite of the well's base with her hand at his back to steady him.

Elena nods at Bonnie and at Caroline the okay to leave, the former looking as though she was close to passing out. Caroline needs to practically tug at Bonnie's hand but she turns her head over her shoulder and looks back at them until Elena can no longer make out her furrowed expression between the trees.

"Are you okay?"

She wasn't going to pretend that it hadn't scared her. Seeing him like that. It had scared her to death. There was the fear of an external force, that Katherine could hurt him or Mason. The fears of something internal had never really entered her mind. Or really, she didn't have the energy, the emotional capacity to let them.

He nods, staring down into the water, his face grimacing, "I should've known it wasn't going to be so easy, he didn't trust Katherine as much as he didn't trust me and Damon."

She shakes her head a little, fighting the images of his scarred face away from her mind, "We've got the stone now…so dealing with Katherine, it doesn't have to be as big of a problem. We have something against her." She says faintly.

They were still soaking wet but it's not the reason for why her voice was getting breathless, why her hands have begun to shake and why she can't keep her jaw from quivering. He just looks at her for a moment then wordlessly pulls her into his arms.

"I'm sorry you had to see that." He breathes and she shakes her head but grips to him tighter.

"I need to get back to the house. If I can stop Damon…" He doesn't finish but he doesn't really need to and she nods and he keeps one arm around her waist while he moves for the small brown box a little out of reach.

"Come on, let's get you home." He kisses her temple softly and she hates how it takes her almost a minute to be able to move.

Finding the moonstone didn't feel like a win. It felt more like a loss.

She's always hated hospitals. The smell, the noise. The lighting. It was just one tiny room of depression after another and she hated it.

Jeremy's tapping his foot restlessly beside her, slumped over with his head to the floor. She doesn't know whether he's crying or not.

Their home had become yet another police crime scene; blood pooled on the kitchen floor, dripping down the island in the middle. Officers demanding questions, taking the lies on return easily.

She doesn't remember getting good at it. Lying.

There are pins and needles in her feet and she gets up from the chair she's wedged herself into and starts to pace the waiting room, back and forth, hearing her heartbeat roaring in her ear, muttering, 'Please don't take her away, please please please' repetitively under her breath.

She wouldn't be able to handle it; Jeremy would fall apart. She would fall apart. They couldn't survive another death in their family. Death at the hands of a vampire.

Elena shivers, stopping, a little dizzy and she leans against the window that looked out onto the river. Anger rested in her body, sat there simmering. Katherine had done this to her. To them. Katherine was the reason for her life to become what it was. Katherine was…

"Elena?"

His voice doesn't register in her mind until he's standing behind her, his hands extending momentarily from his body, like he's not sure what to do with them. Hug her or wrap them around himself.

"Any news?"

She's good at reading people. What they're hiding, feeling. Excellent in fact but she can't read his and it's so frustrating, the way he hesitates and looks to the floor that she almost yells out the, "Alaric? Any news?"

From the corner of her eye she can just see Jeremy, lifting his head, his face blotchy, covered in tears.

But Alaric is just shaking his head, biting his bottom lip that suddenly can't stop quivering and Elena doesn't almost hear it; his words breaking right out of him.

"She…she didn't make it, Elena. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

She doesn't get out of bed for three days. Stefan doesn't move out of the chair beside it for two but she hasn't spoken a word to anyone and that terrifies him more than the fact that she wasn't eating properly, that she hadn't cried.

He knows grief. How it can hit you unexpectedly, that it sometimes didn't have explanations for the way you cried for days, lied against the floor for a week; the helplessness at not being able to make it stop. But watching it in her. Watching it in someone you loved. That was a little beyond explanations; that type of grief.

"Please." He whispers when he's lying beside her one night, when the house was at it's quietest; it's numbest, "Please say something."

But she continues to stare at him, through him and she has tears in her eyes that don't fall.

He shuts his own eyes and immediately hears it; her soft, low moan. A guttural sound deep from her throat that breaks his heart but when he opens them again, she's turning and facing the other way.

After two days of this, he's so desperate that he asks Damon to try.

He waits outside the door, sitting on the floor and hangs his head between his knees. He's learnt how to block out noises he doesn't want to hear and he's so exhausted, emotionally and mentally…physically that the whole 30 minutes they're in there together, he hears absolutely none of it.

"She's asleep."

Damon comes through the other bathroom door; the one that leads out into the hall and Stefan lifts his head and levels his eyes onto his brother's face, reading it.

"I couldn't." Is all he says and he looks defeated, like he can barely keep his face from falling right apart and Stefan just nods weakly before standing back onto his feet.

"She needs help…Stefan."

His back is to his brother, holding her bedroom door handle and it's because Damon can't see him, that he lets himself, just for a second, fall against that. Tighten his face against the ache in his heart and swallow down the lump in his throat and as he turns back to his brother, his eyes are filled with tears and it's a testament to the situation that Damon makes no response to that.

"I know." Stefan whispers and opens and closes the door, leaving his brother still standing out in the hall.

A/N: Chapter 2 up a little later.