And now...there were no guards or kitsune around to spy on them. There was nothing to keep them from each other. They had been playful in the shower, splashing each other, Elena always making sure to keep her feet on the no-slip guard and ready to try to support Stefan's lanky weight. But they could not be playful now.
The shower's spray had been very helpful, too - at concealing the teardrops that kept flowing down Elena's cheeks. She could - oh, dear heaven - count and feel each one of his ribs. He was just bones and skin, her beautiful Stefan, but his green eyes were alive, sparkling and dancing in his pale face.
After they were dressed in nightclothes they simply sat on the bed for a little while. Sitting together, both breathing - Stefan had got into the habit from being around humans so much and, recently, from trying to eke out the small amount of nutrition he received - in synchronicity, and both feeling the other's warm body beside them...it was almost too much. Then, almost tentatively, Stefan groped for Elena's hand, and catching it, held it in both of his, turning it over wonderingly.
Elena was swallowing and swallowing, trying to make a start in a conversation, felt herself practically radiating bliss. Oh, I never want anything more, she thought, although she knew that soon enough she would want to talk, and to hold, and to kiss, and to feed Stefan. But if someone had asked her if she would have accepted just this, sitting together, communicating by touch and love alone, she would have accepted it.
Before she knew it, she was talking, words that came like bubbles out of molasses, only these were bubbles from her soul. "I thought that somehow I might lose this time. That I'd won so many times, and that this time something would teach me a lesson and you...wouldn't make it."
Stefan was still wondering over her hand, bending industriously to kiss each separate finger. "You call 'winning' dying in pain and sunlight to save my worthless life - and my even more worthless brother's?"
"I call this a better kind of winning," Elena admitted. "Any time we get to be together is winning. Any moment - even in that dungeon..."
Stefan winced, but Elena had to finish her thought. "Even there, to look in your eyes, to touch your hand, to know that you were looking at me and touching me - and that you were happy - well, that's winning, in my book."
Stefan lifted his eyes to hers. In the dim light, the green looked suddenly dark and mysterious. "And one more thing," he whispered. "Because I am what I am...and because your crowning glory isn't that glorious golden cloud of hair, but an aura that is...ineffable. Indescribable. Beyond any words..."
Elena had thought they would sit and simply gaze at each other, drowning in each other's eyes, but that wasn't happening. Stefan's expression had slipped and Elena realized how close to bloodlust - and to death - he still really was.
Hurriedly, Elena pulled her damp hair to one side of her neck, and then she leaned back, knowing Stefan would catch her.
He did this, but although Elena tilted her chin back, he tilted it down in his two hands to look at her.
"Do you know how much I love you?" he asked.
His entire face was masked now, enigmatic and strangely thrilling. "I don't think you do," he whispered. "I've watched and watched how you were willing to do anything, anything to save me...but I don't think you know how much that love has been building up, Elena...."
Delicious shivers were going down Elena's spine.
"Then you'd better show me," she whispered. "Or I might not believe that you mean it - "
"I'll show you what I mean," Stefan whispered back. But when he bent down it was to kiss her softly. The feelings inside Elena - that this starving creature wanted to kiss her instead of going at once for her throat, reached a peak that she could not explain in thoughts or words, but only by drawing Stefan's head so that his mouth rested on her neck.
"Please," she said. "Oh, Stefan, please."
Then she felt the quick sacrificial pains, and then Stefan was drinking her blood, and her mind, which had been fluttering around like a bird in a lighted room, now saw its nest and its mate and swooped up and up and up to at last reach unity with its best-beloved.
After that there was no need for clumsy things like words. They communicated in thoughts as pure and clear as shimmering gems, and Elena rejoiced because all of Stefan's mind was open to her, and none of it was walled off or dark and there were no boulders of secrets or chained and weeping children...
What! she heard Stefan exclaim voicelessly. A child in chains? A mountain-sized boulder? Who could have that in their mind - ?
Stefan broke off, knowing the answer, even before Elena's lightning-swift thought could tell him. Elena felt the clear green wave of his pity, spiced by the natural anger of a young man who has gone through the depths of hell, but untainted by the terrible black poison of hatred of brother for brother.
When Elena had finished explaining all she knew about Damon's mental processes, she said, And I don't know what to do! I've done everything I could, Stefan, I've - I've even loved him. I gave him everything that wasn't yours alone. But I don't know if it's made even the slightest difference.
He called Matt "Matt" instead of Mutt, Stefan interrupted.
Yes. I...noticed that. I'd kept asking him to, but it never seemed to matter.
It mattered this way: you managed to change him. Not many people can.
Elena wrapped him in a tight embrace, stopped, worried that it was too tight, and glanced at him. He smiled and shook his head. He was already looking like a person rather than a death camp survivor.
You should keep using it, Stefan said voicelessly. Your influence over him is strongest.