Midnight

And Elena realized that she was turning the inevitable into slow, excruciating torture.

"I’l hold you,"she modified her words for him, "until you want me to let go. All right?"

He nodded. His very voice was breathless with pain. "Could you – could you let me shut my eyes? Just…just for a moment?"

Elena knew, as perhaps this child did not, what would happen if she stopped badgering him and let him sleep. But she couldn’t stand to see him suffering any longer, and nothing was real again, and there was no one else in the world for her, and she didn’t even care if doing it this way meant she would fol ow him into death.

Careful y steadying her voice, she said, "Maybe…we can both shut our eyes. Not for a long time – no! But…just for a moment."

She kept rocking the smal body in her arms. She could Stillfeel a faint pulse of life…not a heartbeat, but Still, a pulsing.

She knew that he hadn’t shut his eyes yet; that he was Stillfighting the torture.

For her. Not for anything else. For her sake only.

Putting her lips close to his ear, she whispered, "Let’s close our eyes together, All right? Let’s close them…at the count of three. Is that All right?"

There was such relief in his voice and such love. "Yes.

Together. I’m ready. You can count now."

"One."Nothing mattered except holding him and keeping herself steady. "Two. And…"

"Elena?"

She was startled. Had the child ever said her name before?

"Yes, sweetheart?"

"Elena…I…love you. Not just because of him. I love you too."

Elena had to hide her face in his hair. "I love you, too, little one. You’ve always known that, haven’t you?"

"Yes – always."

"Yes. You’ve always known that. And now…we’l close our eyes – for a moment. Three. "

She waited until the last faint movement stopped, and his head fel back, and his eyes were shut and the shadow of suffering was gone. He looked, not peaceful, but simply gentle – and kind, and Elena could see in his face what an adult with Damon’s features and that expression would look like.

But now even the smal body was evaporating right out of Elena’s arms. Oh, she was stupid. She’d forgotten to close her eyes with him. She was so dizzy, even though Stefan had stopped the bleeding from her neck. Closing her eyes…

maybe she would look as he had. Elena was so glad that he’d gone gently at the end.

Maybe the darkness would be kind to her, too.

Everything was quiet now. Time to put away her toys and draw the curtains. Time now to get in bed. One last embrace…and now her arms were empty.

Nothing left to do, nothing left to fight. She’d done her best.

And, at least, the child had not been frightened.

Time to turn off the light now. Time to shut her own eyes.

The darkness was very kind to her, and she went into it gently.

Chapter 40

But after an endless time in the soft, kind darkness, something was forcing Elena back up into light. Real light.

Not the terrible green half-light of the Tree. Even through shut eyelids she could see it, feel its heat. A yel ow sun. Where was she? She couldn’t remember.

And she didn’t care. Something was saying inside her that the gentle darkness was better. But then she remembered a name.

Stefan.

Stefan was…?

Stefan was the one who…the one she loved. But he’d never understood that love was not singular. He’d never understood that she could be in love with Damon and that it would never change an atom’s worth of her love for him. Or that his lack of understanding had been so wrenching and painful that she had felt torn into two different people at times.

But now, even before she opened her eyes, she realized that she was drinking. She was drinking the blood of a vampire, and that vampire wasn’t Stefan. There was something unique in this blood. It was deeper and spicier and more heavy, al at once.

She couldn’t help opening her eyes. For some reason she didn’t understand, they flew open and she tried immediately to focus on the scent and feeling and color of whoever was bending over her, holding her.

She couldn’t understand, either, her sense of letdown when she slowly realized that it was Sage leaning over her, holding her gently but securely to his neck, with his bronze chest bare and warm from the sunlight.

But she was lying down flat, on grass, from what her hands could feel…and for some reason her head was cold. Very cold.

Cold and wet.

She stopped drinking and tried to sit up. The light grip became firmer. She heard Sage’s voice say, and felt the rumbling in his chest as he said it, "Ma pauvre petite, you must drink more in a moment or so. And your hair has Stillsome of the ashes in it."

Ashes? Ashes? Didn’t you put ashes on your head for…now what had she been thinking about? It was as if there was a block in her mind, keeping her from getting close to…

something. But she wasn’t going to be told what to do.

Elena sat up.

She was in – yes, she was very sure – the kitsune paradise, and until a moment ago her body had been arched back, so that her hair had been in the clear little stream that she had seen earlier. Stefan and Bonnie had been washing something pitch-black out of her hair. They both were smudged with black as well: Stefan had a big swath across one cheekbone, and Bonnie had faint gray streaks below her eyes.

Crying. Bonnie had been crying. She was Stillcrying, in little sobs that she was trying to suppress. And now that Elena looked harder she could see that Stefan’s eyelids were swol en and that he had been crying too.

Elena’s lips were numb. She fel back onto the grass, looking up at Sage, who was wiping his eyes furtively. Her throat ached, not just inside, where sobbing and gasping might make it hurt, but outside, too. She had a picture of herself slashing at her own neck with a knife.