The Return: Shadow Souls

allowed herself to be soothed by simple familiar odors, by the feeling of her cheek against his shoulder and the wonder of the two of them breathing together in synchronicity.

When she tried to put a name to this miracle, it was at the front of her mind.

Stefan…

Elena didn’t even need to look up at his face to know that Stefan’s leaf-green eyes would be dancing like the waters of a small pond ruffled by wind and sparkling with a thousand different points of light. She buried her head in his neck, afraid somehow to let go of him, although she couldn’t remember why.

I don’t know how I got here, she told him nonverbally. In fact, she didn’t remember anything before this, before awakening to his call, only jumbled images.

It doesn’t matter. I’m with you.

Fear seized her. This isn’t…just a dream, is it?

No dream is just a dream. And I’m with you always.

But how did we get here?

Shhh. You’re tired. I’ll hold you up. On my life, I swear it. Just rest. Let me hold you just once.

Just once? But…

But now Elena felt worried and dazed, and she had to let her head fall backward, had to see Stefan’s face.

She tilted her chin back and found herself meeting laughing eyes of an infinite darkness in a chiseled, pale, and proudly handsome face.

She almost cried out in horror.

Hush. Hush, angel.

Damon!

The dark eyes that met hers were full of love and joy. Who else?

How dare you — how did you get here? Elena was more and more confused.

I don’t belong anywhere, Damon pointed out, suddenly sounding sad. You know I’ll always be with you.

I do not; I do not— give Stefan back to me!

But it was too late. Elena was aware of the sound of water trickling and of tepid liquid sloshing around her. She woke up just in time to keep her head from going underwater in the bathtub.

A dream…

She felt much more flexible and easy in her body, but she couldn’t help feeling saddened by the dream. It hadn’t been an out of body experience, either — it had been a simple, crazy, mixed-up, dream of her own.

I don’t belong anywhere. I’ll always be with you.

Now what was gibberish like that supposed to mean?

But something inside Elena trembled, even as she remembered it.

She hastily changed — not into a Valenciennes lace nightgown, but into a gray and black sweat suit. When she emerged, she was feeling overtired and prickly and ready to start a fight if Damon gave any sign of having picked up on her sleeping thoughts.

But Damon didn’t. Elena saw a bed, managed to focus on it, stumbled toward it and collapsed, flopping down on pillows that sank unsatisfactorily beneath her head. Elena liked her pillows firm.

For a few moments she lay, savoring her after-bath sensations, as her skin gradually cooled — and her head cooled as well. As far as she could tell, Damon was standing in exactly the same position as he had taken up when they’d entered the room.

And he was still as silent as he had been since the morning.

Finally, to get it over with, she spoke to him. And being Elena, she went straight to the heart of the problem.

“What’s wrong, Damon?”

“Nothing.” Damon stared out the window, pretending to be engrossed in something beyond the glass.

“What nothing?”

Damon shook his head. But somehow, his turned back eloquently conveyed his opinion of this motel room.

Elena examined the room with the too-bright vision of someone who has forced their body beyond its limits. She contemplated beige walls, beige carpet, a beige armchair, a beige desk, and of course, a beige bedspread. Even Damon couldn’t reject a room on the grounds that it doesn’t match his basic black, she thought, and then: oh, I’m tired. And bewildered. And scared.

And…incredibly stupid. There’s only one bed in here. I’m lying on it.

“Damon…” With an effort, she sat up. “What do you want? There’s a chair. I can sleep on the chair.”

He half turned, and she saw in the movement that he wasn’t annoyed or playing games. He was furious. It was all there in the faster-than-the-human-eye-could-follow assassin’s spin and the complete muscular control that stilled it almost before it had begun.

Damon with his sudden movements and his frightening stillness. He was looking out the window again, body poised as always for…something. Right now it looked poised to jump through glass to get outside.

“Vampires don’t need sleep,” he said in a voice icier and more controlled than she’d heard since Matt had left them.

That gave her the energy to get off the bed. “You know I know that’s a lie.”

“Take the bed, Elena. Go to sleep.” But his voice was the same. She would have expected a flat, weary command. Damon sounded more tense, more controlled than ever.

More shaken than ever.

Her eyelids sank. “Is this about Matt?”

“No.”

“Is it about Shinichi?”

“No!”

Aha.

“It is, isn’t it? You’re afraid that Shinichi will get past all your defenses and possess you again. Aren’t you?”

“Go to bed, Elena,” Damon said tonelessly.

He was still shutting her out as completely as if she weren’t there. Elena got mad.

“What does it take to show you that I trust you? I’m traveling all alone with you, without any idea where we’re really going. I’m trusting you with Stefan’s life.” Elena was behind Damon now, on the beige carpet which smelled like…nothing, like boiled water. Not even like dust.

Her words were the dust. There was something about them that sounded hollow, wrong. They were the truth — but they weren’t getting through to Damon….

Elena sighed. Touching Damon unexpectedly was always a tricky business, with all the risks of setting off murderous instinct by accident, even when he wasn’t possessed. She reached out, now, very carefully, to put her fingertips on the elbow of his leather jacket. She spoke as precisely and unemotionally as she could.

“You also know that I have other senses now than the usual five. How many times do I have to say it, Damon? I know it wasn’t you torturing me and Matt last week.” Despite herself, Elena heard a certain pleading in her own voice. “I know that you’ve protected me on this trip when I was in danger, even killing for me. That means — a lot to me. You may say you don’t believe in the human sentiment of forgiveness, but I don’t think you’ve forgotten it. And when you know that there is nothing to forgive in the first place—”

“This has absolutely nothing to do with last week!”

The change in his voice — the force in it — hit Elena like a whiplash. It hurt…and it frightened her. Damon was serious. He was also under some dreadful strain, not completely unlike that of fighting off Shinichi’s possession, but different.

“Damon…”

“Leave me alone!”

Now, where have I heard something like that before? Befuddled, her heart pounding, Elena groped through