With no expression at all, he said, "Is it over?"
"Over?" Elena wasn't really this dense, but she figured it was important that Damon be clear in his own mind as to what he was asking.
"Is he - dead?" Damon said wearily, pinching the bridge of his nose with his fingers.
Elena allowed the silence to go on for a few beats longer. Damon must know Stefan was not likely to actually die in the next half hour. Now that he wasn't getting instant confirmation of this his head snapped up.
"Elena, tell me! What happened?" he demanded, urgency in his voice. "Is my brother dead?"
"No," Elena said quietly. "But he's likely to die in a few days. He was coherent this time, Damon. Why didn't you speak to him?"
There was an almost palpable drawing-in on Damon's part. "What do I have to say to him that matters?" he asked harshly. "'Oh, I'm sorry I almost killed you'? 'Oh, I hope you make it another few days'?"
"Things like that, maybe, if you lose the sarcasm."
"When I die," Damon said cuttingly, "I'm going to be standing on my own two feet and fighting."
Elena slapped him across the mouth. There wasn't room to get much leverage here, but she put as much Power behind the motion as she dared without risking breaking the carriage.
Afterward, there was a long silence. Damon was touching his bleeding lip, accelerating the healing, swallowing his own blood.
Finally he said, "It never even occurred to you that you are my slave, did it? That I'm your master?"
"If you're going to retreat into fantasy, that's your affair," Elena said. "Myself, I have to deal with the real world. And, by the way, soon after you ran away, Stefan was not only standing but laughing."
"Elena" - on a quick rising note. "You found a way to give him blood?" He grasped her arm so hard it hurt.
"Not blood. A little Black Magic. With two of us there, it would have gone twice as fast."
"There were three of you there."
"Sage and Dr. Meggar had to distract the guards."
Damon took his hand away. "I see," he said, expressionlessly. "So I failed him yet again."
Elena looked at him with sympathy. "You're completely inside the stone ball now, aren't you?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"The stone ball you stick anything that might hurt you inside. You even draw yourself inside it, although it must be very cramped in there. Katherine must be in there, I suppose, walled off in her own little chamber." She remembered the night at the hotel. "And your mother, of course. I should say, Stefan's mother. She was the mother you knew."
"Don't...my mother..." Damon couldn't even form a coherent sentence.
Elena knew what he wanted. He wanted to be held and soothed and told it was all right - just the two of them, under her cloak with her warm arms holding him. But he wasn't going to get it. This time she was saying no.
She had promised Stefan that this was for him, alone. And, she thought, she would keep to the spirit of that promise, if she hadn't kept to the letter, forever.
As the week progressed, Elena was able to recover from the pain of seeing Stefan. Although none of them could speak about it except in choked, brief exclamations, they listened when Elena said that there was still a job to be done, and that if they managed to complete it well they would be able to go home soon - while if they did not complete it, Elena didn't care whether she went home or stayed here in the Dark Dimension.
Home! It had the sound of a haven, even though Bonnie and Meredith knew firsthand what kind of hell was lurking in Fell's Church for them. But somehow anything would be preferable to this land of bloody light.
With hope kindling interest in their surroundings, they were once again able to feel pleasure at the dresses Lady Ulma was having made for them. Designing was the one pursuit that the lady could still enjoy during her official bed rest, and Lady Ulma had been hard at work with her sketchbook. Since Bloddeuwedd's party would be an indoor/outdoor affair, all three dresses had to be carefully designed to be attractive both under candlelight and under the giant red sun's crimson rays.
Meredith's gown was deep metallic blue, violet in the sunlight, and it showed an entirely different side of the girl from the siren in the skin-tight mermaid dress who had attended Fazina's gala. It reminded Elena somehow of something an Egyptian princess would wear. Once again, it left Meredith's arms and shoulders bare, but the modest narrow skirt that fell in straight lines to her sandals, and the delicacy of the sapphire beads that adorned the shoulder straps served to give Meredith an unassuming look. That look was emphasized by Meredith's hair, which Lady Ulma dictated be worn down, and her face, which was bare of makeup except kohl around the eyes. At her throat, a necklace made of the very largest oval-cut sapphires formed an elaborate collar. She also had matching blue gems on her wrists and slender fingers.
Bonnie's dress was a little clever invention: it was made of a silvery material which took on a pastel tinge of the color of the ambient lighting. Moonlight-colored indoors, it shone a soft shimmering pink, almost exactly the color of Bonnie's strawberry hair, when she was outside. It sported a belt, necklace, bracelets, earrings, and rings all of matching cabochon-cut white opals. Bonnie's curls were to be carefully pinned up and away from her face, in a daringly mussed-up mass, leaving her translucent skin to shine softly rose in the sunlight, and ethereally pale inside.
Once again, Elena's dress was the simplest and the most striking. Her gown was scarlet, the same color under blood-red sun or indoor gas lamp. It was rather low cut, giving her creamy skin a chance to shine golden in the sunlight. Clinging close to her figure, it was slashed up one side to give her room to walk or dance. On the afternoon of the party Lady Ulma had Elena's hair carefully brushed into a tangled cloud that shimmered Titian outdoors, golden indoors. Her jewelry ranged from an inset of diamonds at the bottom of the neckline, to diamonds on her fingers, wrists and one upper arm, plus a diamond choker that fit over Stefan's necklace. All these would blaze as red as rubies in the sunlight, but would occasionally glint another startling color, like a burst of mini-fireworks. Onlookers, Lady Ulma promised, would be dazzled.