Author's Note: This picks up in 5x18 Resident Evil, when Damon is sitting alone on the porch of the boarding house.

Thanks to my world-class beta, Goldnox, for degenerating into gibberish cursing at this chapter, because that shit was just funny, and for not letting gibberish cursing distract you from perfecting my comma usage, because you're just that good.

Chapter 1: Tinkerbell Laughs

DAMON

Words are unoriginal.

Every one of them has been fondled off a hundred thousand tongues, snuggled up to a whole whorehouse of modifiers and been slapped into line by punctuation of a dozen different stripes. In a language as old and bastardized as English, there's not a virgin syllable left.

And minds are just the sewer where over-used words collect to churn through the same few compulsive patterns, over and over and over again. When you're as old as I am, a truly new thought is so rare that when it comes, your brain stutters to a stop over making the translation.

For me, it is regret.

Six ancient letters whose weight has been enough to bring many men to their knees, including the one who shares my blood and my name.

It's a burden I've never shouldered before, because I'm fucking smarter than that. Guilt will never take you anywhere new.

I always skirted the darker tables where the other old vampires brooded over aged drink and antique theology, debating damnation and punishment, karma and sin and all the different shades of resurrection.

But whether or not I was listening, the universe was speaking.

It started when Maxfield shot me full of the Ripper virus, but even when the words came out of my mouth, I couldn't feel their weight yet.

Karma. Karma is happening to me.

To be honest, I still can't feel it. I can't feel any part of my body: not the thighs that bear my weight as I sit on this brick porch. Not the hands that hold a glass too light with liquor to wash away a single letter of the new word that fills my entire mind. Not the dick that acts like a dead thing until Elena's scent enters a room, or in the dark hours before dawn when I wake from dreams of her with pain pounding through every rock hard, unsatisfied inch of me.

I guess I should be comforted by the fact that unlike my brother's visions, those dreams belong just to me. But they feel stolen because she doesn't want me to touch her like that anymore, and for once it tastes wrong to savor the pleasure of the forbidden.

The life that I sit in today is my punishment for every forbidden thing that I've done.

Not because I wasn't sorry, and not because I didn't feel guilty: I think it's simpler than that.

It is cause and effect and no flimsy emotional reparations will ever hold back the power of that falling gavel. Call it whatever you want: the universe or God or fate or karma or Jiminy fucking Cricket, but for all my scoffing, there's something out there and it ain't Tinkerbell.* It doesn't give a fuck what I believe in, because it is and right now, it is fucking me over for every murder, every cruelty and lie and moment of pain that I've brought into this world.

The Ripper virus and losing Elena were just the beginning: all my brother's sufferings visited on my head so I could feel them for myself. Now I have to know that she's dreaming about him because all those nights she was with him, I wanted her to be dreaming about me.

Sometimes, she even was.

And even though I never placed a single dream of myself into her beautiful head, it turns out that Jesus wasn't blowing smoke. Apparently sins of the mind are as dark as sins of the fist, because sure as shit I'm getting paid back for both. In full.

It will get worse. I know this. And now, too late, I am sorry.

I don't know, or care, if I would have acted differently had I known there would be consequences. I just wish with everything in me that this wasn't happening to me. Or Elena, or Stefan, because they may be dreaming of paradise but by the look in their eyes their current address is located somewhere a fuck of a lot hotter.

Regret.

If I want it, it's there, smirking in the shadows like whatever shit is going to hit my personal fan tomorrow.

But because I've never placed a single ounce of those six letters on my shoulders before, I have no idea how to carry them now that I know I must. I don't know how to endure a punishment that can last forever.

And just like death, it doesn't matter if I know how to bear it because it is already done.

My cock twitches as her tentative footsteps touch the wood of the hallway behind me. I can't stop the painful twist of a smile that crosses my face as I lift my glass in a toast and take a long drink to divinely cruel timing.

Fuck you, Tinkerbell.

Her stride is a little shorter when she's nervous, and so each whisper of her boots brings her closer to me, but a few inches less each time than she would have traveled if she was certain. I forget to breathe, my heartbeat dropping once for every touch of her toe testing the way before her heel settles under her weight. How many too-short steps is she going to take in my direction this time? Will it be close enough that the pull of her feels like it is going to rip my heart clean out of my chest, or far enough away that she fills my eyes and my nose, but nothing else?

With the soft landing of her shoulder against brick, she stops in the doorway instead of taking her place next to me. Playing it safe, but not safe enough. Because for better or worse, that's my girl and that's how she's always been.

I take another drink.

"What are you doing out here?" Elena's voice is the kind of soft that slays my cynicism, not that it really matters because I'm too fucking bone tired to deflect anyway.

"Ah, you know..."

She does. She should. But then, if she really doesn't understand why I couldn't stay in the house and keep breathing air that might have touched her lips first, it's really just one more indication of why she's back to dreaming about my brother instead of me.

"Looking at the stars. Listening to the universe laughing at me." I tilt my chin back as if I were tracing the points of light that every human civilization has scoured for hints of meaning. All I can see is the blackness of the porch roof, but it doesn't matter because its complete lack of answers is the most honest omen I'm likely to get these days.

"Damon…" She comes closer, like she does every single time I try to use honesty to push her away.

"We were doomed from the beginning." I say it without a trace of self-pity, and the statement owes nothing to my new understanding of the reason for the bullshit that has become my life.

Before doppelgangers and prophecies, even before vampires and sibling rivalries, when it was just me and her and the empty road stretching out to either side of us, she was never the kind of girl who ends up with a guy like me.

She looked at me the same way both times when she first met me. On that dark road and when she took her first tentative step through the front door that right now lies at both our backs. Elena looked up at me and her eyes flared, thick lashes fluttering slightly with a combination of fascination and instinctive wariness. She knew I was the wrong thing, and she wanted me anyway, both times. That's how I know it was the truth, completely separate of everything that's ever happened between her and Stefan.

"We were always going to end up here," I remind her quietly, and instead of answering, she sits down next to me.

She sighs, pursing her lips like she does when she's frustrated with me and she knows that whatever words she chooses, it won't change what I think.

"Damon," she says, and even her first breath is different, like the tension drained out of us as soon as we crossed the barrier of the threshold. She talks to me like she used to: like we're what's real and everything else is bullshit. It feels too true to hurt so fucking much.

"They're just visions. After we find Markos, they'll stop."

She sounds as frustrated as I feel, but how can she suddenly be so certain when her feelings about my brother have been every shade of every fucking thing but certain since she met him?

"And then what?" I turn my head to look at her and I feel much too old to act like a human right now, so I let my muscles slide too smoothly, unnaturally balanced like the vampire I am. It would be easier to pretend our only problem was Stefan. I almost miss those days. "We're friends? Can't wait."

She leans into me and my body takes the weight of her automatically, casually, and it's not until she lifts the glass from my hand that I remember she doesn't touch me this way anymore. I look down, already regretting the way my traitor fingers relinquished the whiskey to her without question.

I exhale, the sound of my breath lost behind her sigh, and I wish I were a little more sane. Because then, I wouldn't be sitting here with a DSM-V** diagnosis of a hard-on from the idea that her soft lips are parting to receive the rim of a cup that I just drank from.

I've moved too many times, packed too many trunks and boxes and saddlebags and rolling suitcases to give a shit about what I put inside of them. It wasn't until the first time Elena wore my clothes that I suddenly, roaringly, felt like they were mine.

And now I'm reduced to getting all caveman possessive over drinkware.

My fingers itch to snatch the highball back from her, but I don't dare because if I accidentally touch her once I won't be able to stop and I swore when I was just a boy that I'd never lay a hand on a woman that she didn't want me to put there.

It was a vow I broke many times, as it turned out, but not in bed. Never in bed.

I tilt my head just enough that I can no longer see her in my peripheral vision, and I wonder the exact moment when she stopped wanting my touch.

It wasn't the first time we broke up, or the second. It might have been when she told me that she couldn't let me drive her back to Whitmore. That might have been the day when the pain of me started to outweigh the pleasure I've always been able to give her.

I hear her voice, but the words don't matter. Soft and beautiful as they are, they're just the whistle of the gavel coming down on me.

"Hey," she says, touching my chin and I am absolutely the universe's bitch because when I hear the tiny catch of hurt in Elena's voice that always means she thinks I'm ignoring her, I murmur an answer before I can stop myself, my eyes lifting automatically to hers.

No part of my body understands that these familiar movements are an outlawed dance performed in a ballroom that's already burned to ashes.

And right now, her body must not remember either because her hand slips easily behind my neck, her fingernails combing through my hair fondly, thoughtlessly, like she does when she's reading beside me at night.

"The universe doesn't control anything," she says, a hint of frustrated sarcasm in her doe eyes that was never there before I teased her sense of humor back out of hiding again after she lost her parents. She tilts her head impatiently. "It's not real," she insists and I have to smile, because she's adorable and ridiculous in her staunch disbelief, just like I must have been.

And because the sweetness of her hand in my hair, the presence of every cell of her dangerous body next to mine, is more proof that the universe is real. And it is a vicious bitch.

Her eyes settle into mine like the click of a latch falling into place and I forget all about regret, and time, and sin because none of that exists between us.

Until I see the infinitesimal flare of her lashes when she remembers that she's not supposed to be doing this, that touching me leads her down paths she's no longer eager to explore.

My skin chills as her hand falls back to her side and she sighs.

And then her eyes go empty and frightened and mine snap protectively to the shadows around us, scanning for whatever enemy I'm about to kill for her. But even before my head finishes turning, I know where the enemy lies.

If I were Stefan, I would keep looking in the bushes, pretending this was something I could fight. Pretending that what was happening to her was something she would want me to fight.

But I'm not my brother, and I've never been a coward. I have only ever been stupidly, doggedly addicted to the ugly truth.

I look at Elena.

I flinch when I see her face. I was braced to see pleasure, a joyful smile or even the heavy-lidded distraction of a more sensual kind of enjoyment. But I'm never ready to see her in pain.

Her face is drawn taut, her whole body rigid as her hands clamp closed on the glass she stole from me. I reach for her, adrenaline surging in an impotent wave through my body that's designed flawlessly to protect with violence, but not from this kind of threat.

My hand snaps to a stop halfway between our bodies as I remember that she's dreaming about my brother. She must be. I don't know what the Travelers are making her think he's doing to her, to give her a reaction like this, but there's no way I'm risking her mind translating my touch into his.

Instead I clench my hands in my lap and then release them, forcing my body to relax so I won't frighten her and then slowly, deliberately, I lean my shoulder against hers, because I have to let her know that I'm here. That she's not alone in whatever they're doing to her.

As soon as I touch her, the glass in her hands shatters and she starts violently, her head whipping around.

"Hey," I say softly, and then my voice falls silent at the sight of her. The guilt in her eyes is all the proof I need that whatever kind of dream she was having? It wasn't a nightmare after all.

"Did I just…" she asks, and I look away but I can fucking hear the flush of embarrassment creeping up her neck.

And Enzo's footsteps coming out the front door.

I can't even scrape up a smile for the perfectly punishing timing of every part of this fucked up night.

"Yup," I say tightly, and don't elaborate because I'm sure the peanut gallery has plenty to report on the topic.

"That good, eh?" Enzo drawls, right on cue, and I wish like hell I could fly into a decent rage but this thing with Elena has been draining the life out of me, day by long fucking day and I can't even muster the energy for violence anymore.

This time, Elena's sigh is tight and unsteady and I know before she slaps her hands down on her thighs that she's furious.

"He's here. I know where Markos is."

My head swivels a little to follow her, my eyes narrowing. What the hell is she so pissed about? She probably just had upwards of fifteen dream orgasms, but it doesn't seem to have to have taken the edge off, because she's as grouchy as she always is when she's not getting laid.

Join the club, princess. But fair warning: the dues are a bitch.

"4620 Walnut Drive," she bites off.

Well, that's specific. What did the Travelers do, write it in glittery body paints across Dream Stefan's bare chest?

Elena's heels punch the floor as she storms past Enzo and even though I'm fed up to the teeth with wondering what she's feeling, my brain hasn't gotten the memo because it's clattering away on the problem without my permission. And so instead of doing something useful, like getting myself a drink or lighting my head on fire in the vampire version of a cosmic punishment fast forward, I sit here with two options laughing harshly in my face.

Option A: That particular special feature on the Gypsy Psychic Network wasn't a sexy little romp. It was something that Elena didn't want to see, something bad enough to scare her and piss her off, bad enough that she felt guilty because she knew it was something that would upset me, too.

Option B: It was a sex dream, a fantasy about my brother so powerful and alluring that it left Elena spitting with frustration at the idea that she threw away her chance at a happy future with him by choosing me, because she knows there's no going back from that.

"Feel like killing anyone?" Enzo asks idly and I shove to my feet.

And even though I know that this next murder will only tip the karmic ledger further out of my favor, and that it won't fix a goddamn thing, I tell him, "Yup."

And I mean it.

*Tinkerbell is a fairy in Peter Pan , and the story has it that the more you believe in her, the more real she becomes. Damon's thought is that God is nothing like Tinkerbell because whether or not you believe in him, his judgment will reach you all the same. I think this is a specific interpretation of the character's beliefs about the divine that is rooted in this particular instant on the show, and not a belief he would hold in general, most of the time.

**The DSM-V is the book that catalogs all psychiatric diagnoses, aka illnesses of the mind.

Author's Note: Stick around, folks, because if you know me at all, you know I can't let a Delena breakup go by without "fixing" it. We've still got two chapters left, so feel free to be enthusiastic with your "Author Follow" buttons, and if you get really excited, there's a favorite button you can take it out on, too.

If you need an exceptionally awesome one shot for 5x19, go revel in the poetically emotional roller coaster of Goldnox's "Lay Me Down," or try out Nightlightbright's "Forever, Finally" because it is sort of sweet and smutty Delena that's good for the kind of grinning that makes your face tired.