She's my calling.

Unlike Stefan, Damon realizes in the first fifty seconds he meets Elena that she isn't Katherine.

She isn't Katherine at all, he knows that.

She isn't like her- she doesn't look like her- even if Stefan was stupid enough to assume that in the first fifty seconds he held Elena, Damon wasn't.

It wasn't perplexity he felt the first time he'd met, really met Elena- he wasn't besotted, he'd just been charmed.

And amused. An attractive, athletic looking girl with bright red sneakers and stick straight hair that looked they'd been ironed painstakingly and a clingy leather jacket to mimic his. Large, scared sort of eyes that stared at him in astonishment as he tilted his head thoughtfully and looked at her.

I get lost in the beauty of everything I see….

She stumbled so close to him their chests almost touched and stuttered and spilled charmingly like overflowing golden wine over crystal, she collected her bearings and took him in.

The world ain't half as bad as they paint it to be.

He kissed her hand very softly but didn't feel the same way like he felt when he kissed Katherine. He didn't feel hopelessly lost and bewilderingly taken for all of eternity like he had the first time Katherine Peirce had touched him- it wasn't such a devastatingly overwhelming feeling. Elena's hand was simply warm. She just felt safe.

An innocent human. Not knowing who he was, what he was, why he was. He was the knowledgeable one, the powerful one here. He was a vampire and she was only a seventeen year old girl who looked too good in a tiny leather jacket and slightly faded jeans.

This he could handle. This wasn't dangerous.

She wasn't even as pretty as Katherine. Something in her eyes was disarticulating, wrong somehow. Too soft, too brown reminding him of swirling hot chocolate rather than rich whisky.

She didn't laugh the same. She wasn't as carefree.

Those eyes were too sad like she had grown up too fast, too soon, seen the world in half a day's time.

He made her laugh and he liked seeing the sadness melt away, chocolate dancing.

Elena wasn't the one he loved.

He wasn't quite so superficial unlike his stupid little brother to believe that.

But he liked her.

Safe.

She slapped him so hard he's sure he feels a molar shift. He, the vampire. He's not sure, after she storms off, whether to smile or yell at something.

It might start now.

She falls asleep with her diary loose and open across her heart, the pages wet with tears she never sheds in public eye. He traced a cheekbone gently with the back of a forefinger, just barely touching her. She awoke, her eyes blinking sleepily.

Or maybe I'm just dreaming out loud.

Elena pushes him hard after Caroline slips and it's hard enough a push for him to courteously jerk back. He stares at her with polite surprise but also increasing silent fury at her as she reveals the error of his latest victim. He remembers that first time Katherine killed the man in the carriage and he remembers kissing blood off her face for some reason as Elena yells at him for hurting her friend.

But until then-

She begs him to leave the sealing tomb and he looks at her, really looks at her and sees the girl he had been waiting for his entire life and the girl that was calling him back to life.

The girl that faced him with tears in her eyes. Damon, please.

When she hugs him, he feels something inside in crack.

Come home.

And she pressed into him so tight, she laid her small face such a definite, delicate burden against his shoulder- shoulders that could no longer carry the load they'd insisted on carrying for so long- he watched in frozen shock as her thin arms- the ones he hadn't expected- expected all of tonight- came around him comfortingly and they're heartbeats met and she was soft and alive, so warm against him.

Safe.

"I'm sorry," she said shaking her head almost angrily as though at the injustice he had suffered.

Come home.

She isn't Katherine. She's too beautiful, her eyes are too different. Too young, too innocently trusting, too wisely understanding. She's Elena and no one since his mother has held him like- like-

Damon stop it!

I'm sorry.

She's not here- she's not here-

What?

SHE'S NOT HERE!

Like he was someone who needed to be held.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Stefan start, move his hands as though restraining the impulse to restrain and slowly plunge his hands into deep pockets. Stefan just watches and Elena doesn't stop hugging him until he feels his breathing start to ease, until he feels the cold air become warmer, until he feels the tears spill from his eyes.

Cuz I've been waiting for you for so long, so long.

He bounces back somehow, not because he ever could have given up on the love he had spent his entire life pinning after but because he knew now she was waiting for him to bounce back.

Elena breaks his heart slightly when she cries.

Bangs into him and looks up with diamonds sparkling in her eyes.

He laughs lightly. He looks confused. He curses.

"Go ahead. Reminiscence about how you killed her,"

Such fury and spirit and love in someone so young.

And right now there's a war between the vanities

Elena is so forgiving. Surely she'd forgive this.

He's looking at her as though about to spit poison.

"You surprised I thought you'd kiss me back?"

But all I see is you and me.

She looks at him as though she wishes she had the right answers for him.

"You can't imagine that I'd believe that you'd want to?"

She starts to take a step back, shake her head.

The fight for you is all I've ever known

"Like what we've been doing here means something?"

He gets up and now she's bracing herself for the war.

So come home.

Most of all you're lying to yourself. I can prove it.

N-

Lie about this.

When his hands come around her face he remembers how Katherine used to smirk triumphantly but all Elena does is look at him with those humongous brown eyes, all Elena does is look scared.

And when he reaches to kiss her his eyes soften and his whole sharp features tender and his eyes slip close and when he touches her lips he knows they taste different- this is different.

I've been waiting for you

She's sunshine. Elena is silver sunshine in darkness. Elena tastes like salvation.

For so long, so long.

Safe.

Everything I can't be is everything you should be and that's why I need you here.

"No- no- Damon-"

So stern, so warningly she scolds him as he reaches to kiss her again.

"Listen! I care about you. I do! But-"

He does pause then because she isn't Katherine he knows, he knows she isn't- she would never hurt him the way-

Everything I can't be is everything you should be and that's why I need you here.

"I love Stefan," she tells him with utmost earnestness, her eyes huge orbs of compassion. "It's always gonna be Stefan."

So hear this now-

He makes the ugliest face as she squeezes her fingers, wrenches her hands away.

Come home

Come home

Cuz I've been waiting for you for so long, so long.

When he hears Jeremy's okay the next day Damon says a prayer of thank you.

He goes to meet her, terrified to his very non existent soul but an inch of him- a minute piece of him believes foolishly- ridiculously he knows- that one day she'll forgive him.

"I like this. You walking on eggshells around me because you think I'm gonna explode. It`s very suspensible. Is Elena worried too? I bet I`m your every conversation."

"Everything that happened is his fault, Elena."

"This isn`t us. This can`t be us."

"What make you think that has any power over me? Cause I took an arrow in the back for you? You are severely overestimating yourself."

"What you did for Caroline's Mom. That was the Damon who was my friend."

"You are not capable of hating me forever."

"You have every right to hate me, I understand. You hated me before we became friends. It would suck if that was gone forever. So is it? Have I lost you forever?"

"And the answer for your question about our friendship is Yes. You have lost me forever."

"Is that before or after that he kills everyone that I care about, including the two of you."

"You're in the list of people Elena loves."

"Be the better man Damon."

He kissed her forehead trapping that one real instant when she knew he loved her and she knew he knew he wasn't worth her and she let him kiss her and she didn't say a word and he looked back at those large orbs staring at him again.

Her face was expressionless but he thought he detected a piece of broken sadness in glass glittering eyes.

A piece of regret. Just this piece of pained regret.

Years later he told her that he only reason he thought he loved Katherine was because he had always meant to love her.

She asked him, slightly aggravated, how am I different from Katherine?

He just looked at her and said, "You're Elena."

To her, that might not mean much.

But to him, it was home.