Midnight

Susurre reeled back. For the ruler of such a harsh and unyielding realm, she seemed almost too gentle – but not too soft to shear off my Wings, Elena thought, wriggling her shoulders to ease them. Maybe she didn’t know how much it would hurt, another part of her mind offered vaguely.

Then al her mind came together in an emergency meeting.

Something warm and cooling was sliding down the back of her neck, in tiny droplets. Not blood. No, this was infinitely more precious than what the Guardians had taken away.

Stefan’s tears.

She rocked hard, trying to take her own weight on her feet.

Somehow, shakily, she managed it. She only realized just how shaky she was when she tried to lift a hand and wipe the tears off Stefan’s cheeks with her thumb. Her whole hand wobbled as if she were making a childish joke. Her thumb struck his cheek with enough force to make anyone else wince. She looked at him with dumb apology, too shocked to try to speak.

Stefan was speaking. Over and over. "It doesn’t matter,"he was saying. "It’s All right, love. Oh, lovely love, it wil be All right."He wiped her eyes with a hand that was rock steady, and al the time he was looking only at her, and – she knew –

thinking only of her.

She knew that because she also knew the moment when it changed.

Red hair was in her line of sight, blurred through new tears.

Red hair and narrow green eyes, too close to her. That was when Elena felt Stefan remember that there was anything other than Elena in the world.

His face changed. He didn’t snarl or stick out his chin. The change was an entire alteration, but it centered around his eyes, which became deadly hard while everything else became sharp and fierce.

"If you touch her again, you vicious bitch, I wil rip out your throat,"Stefan said, and each word was like a chip of ice-cold iron dropped onto the floor.

Elena’s tears stopped with the shock of it. Stefan didn’t talk that way to women. Even Damon didn’t – hadn’t. But the words were Stillechoing in the sudden silence of the cathedral-like room. People were backing away.

Idola was backing away too, but her lip was curled. "Do you think that because we are Guardians that we cannot harm you – ?"she was beginning, when Stefan’s voice cut through hers cleanly.

"I think that because you are ‘Guardians’you can kil sanctimoniously and get away with it,"Stefan said, and his lip made a far more compel ing – and frightening – line of scorn than Idola’s had. "You would have kil ed Elena if Sage hadn’t stopped you. Damn you,"he added softly, but with such utter conviction that Idola took another step backward. "Yes, you’d better ral y al your little friends around,"he added. "I might just decide to kil you anyway. I kil ed my own brother, as I’m sure you realize."

"But surely – that was only after taking a mortal blow yourself."Susurre was between the two of them, trying to intercede.

Stefan shrugged. He looked at her with the same contempt as he had the other ruler. "I Stillhad the use of my arm,"he said deliberately. "I could have decided to drop my sword, or to merely wound him. Instead I chose to put a blade straight through his heart."He showed his teeth in a distinctly unfriendly smile. "And now I don’t even need a weapon."

"Stefan,"Elena managed at last to whisper.

"I know. She’s weaker than I am and you don’t want to see me kil her. That’s why she’s Stillalive, love. It’s the only reason."As Elena lifted half-frightened eyes to him, Stefan added in a voice only she could hear, Of course, there are some things about me you don’t know, Elena. Things I’d hoped you’d never have to see. Knowing you – loving you – made me almost forget about them.

Stefan’s voice in her head woke something inside Elena.

She lifted her head and looked at the blurry mass of Guardians around them. She saw strawberry-blond curls suspended in midair. Bonnie. Bonnie fighting. Doing it weakly, but only because a pair of the fair Guardians and another pair of dark ones were holding her in the air, one to each limb. As Elena stared at her she seemed to regain energy and fought harder. And Elena could hear…

something. It was faint and far away, but it almost sounded like…her name. Like her name spoken by whispering branches or the whirring of passing bicycle wheels. lay…nah…eee…lay…

Elena reached inwardly for the sound. She tried desperately to grasp whatever came after, but nothing happened. She tried a trick she would have found easy yesterday –

channeling Power to the center of her telepathy. It didn’t work. She tried her telepathy.

Bonnie! Can you hear me?

There wasn’t even the slightest change in the smal er girl’s expression.

Elena had lost her link to Bonnie.

She watched as Bonnie realized the same thing, watched the fight go out of the smal body. Bonnie’s face, upturned in blank despair, was indescribably sad, and somehow indescribably pure and beautiful, al at once.

That will never happen to us, Stefan’s voice in her mind told her fiercely. Never! I give you my –

No! Elena thought back, superstitiously terrified of a jinx. If Stefan swore, something might happen – she might have to become a vampire or a spirit – to ensure that he didn’t break his word.

He stopped, and Elena knew that he had heard her. And somehow this knowledge, that Stefan had heard a single word from her, Stilled her. She knew he wasn’t spying. He’d heard because she’d sent the thought to him. She wasn’t alone. She might be ordinary again; they might have taken her wings and most of the Power of her blood, but she wasn’t alone. She leaned toward him, her forehead against Stefan’s chin.

"No one is alone." She’d told Damon that. Damon Salvatore, a being who no longer existed. But who Stillcal ed forth from her one more word, one final cry. His name.