The pub where Elena and Damon ended up was lively and ful of people, but of course Damon made sure they didn't have to wait for a table. He lounged across one side of the booth, looking as arrogant and relaxed as a big gorgeous cat, and listened peaceably as Elena talked. Elena found herself gaily chatting away, fil ing him in on al the minutia of her campus life so far, from finding out that Professor Campbel knew her parents to the personalities of the other students she'd met in her classes.

"The elevator was real y crowded, and slow, and my lab partner's back was against the buttons. Somehow she accidental y pushed the alarm button, and the alarm started going off." Elena took a sip of her soda. "Suddenly, a voice came out of nowhere and asked, 'Do you have an emergency?' And she said, 'No, it was an accident,' and the voice said, 'What? I can't hear you.' It went on like that, back and forth, until she started shouting 'Accident!

Accident!'"

Damon stopped tracing patterns in the condensation on his glass with one finger and glanced up at her through his lashes, his lips twitching into a smile.

"When the doors opened on the ground floor, there were four security men standing there with a medical kit," Elena finished. "We didn't know what to do, so we just walked past them. When we got out of the building, we started to run. It was so embarrassing, but we couldn't stop laughing." Damon let his slight smile expand into a grin - not his usual cool twist of the lips or his brief, bril iant, and enigmatic there-then-gone smile, but an honest-to-God cheek-puffing, eye-squinching grin. "I like you like this," he said suddenly.

"Like what?" Elena asked.

"Relaxed, I suppose. Ever since we met, you've been in the middle of some crisis or another." He raised his hand and brushed a curl away from her face, gently touching her cheek.

Elena was vaguely aware of the waiter standing by the booth, waiting for them to look up, as she answered with just a touch of flirtation, "Oh, and I suppose you had nothing to do with that?"

"I wouldn't say I am the one who's been most to blame, no," Damon said cool y, his grin fading. He looked up, his eyes sharp and knowing. "Hel o, Stefan." Elena froze in surprise. Not the waiter, then. Stefan. One look at him, and she winced, her stomach dropping. His face could have been carved from stone. He was looking at Damon's hand, stil stretched across the table toward Elena.

"Hey," she said tentatively. "How was your study group?" Stefan stared at her. "Elena, I've been looking everywhere for you. Why didn't you answer your phone?" Pul ing out her phone, Elena saw that there were several messages and texts from Stefan. "Oh, no, I'm so sorry," she said. "I didn't hear it ring."

"We were supposed to meet," Stefan said stiffly. "I came to your room and you were just gone. Elena, people have been disappearing al over campus." He had been scared, afraid that something terrible had happened to her. His eyes were stil anxious. She started to reach out to comfort him. The fact that she'd lost the Power she'd had so briefly was hard for Stefan to accept, she knew. He thought her mortality made her fragile, and he was afraid he'd lose her. She should have thought it through, should have left him more of a message than a quick text saying she would return soon.

Before she could touch him, Stefan's gaze turned to Damon. "What's going on?" he asked his brother, his voice ful of frustration. "Is this why you fol owed us to col ege? To zero in on Elena?"

The look of hurt that crossed Damon's face was only a subtle shadow and was gone so quickly that Elena wasn't entirely sure she had actual y seen it. His features settled into an expression of lazy disdain, and Elena tensed. The peace between the brothers was so fragile - she knew that - and yet she had let Damon flirt with her. She'd been so stupid.

"Someone should be keeping her safe, Stefan," Damon drawled. "You're too busy playing human again, aren't you?

Study groups." He lifted an eyebrow scornful y. "I'm surprised you've even noticed that there's something going on around this campus. Would you rather have Elena alone and in danger than have her spending time with me?" Tense lines were forming around Stefan's mouth.

"You're saying you don't have an ulterior motive here?" he asked.

Damon waved a hand disparagingly. "You know what I feel for Elena. Elena knows what I feel for Elena. Even that sports-loving Mutt of yours knows how things are between us. But the problem isn't me, little brother - it's you and your jealousy. Your wanting to be an 'ordinary human'" - Damon made quote marks with his fingers - "and stil carry on with Elena, who is hardly ordinary. You want to have your cake and eat it, too. I haven't done anything wrong. Elena wouldn't have come with me if she didn't want to." Elena winced again. Was this the way it was always going to be? Was any minor misstep on her part going to set Damon and Stefan at each other's throats? "Stefan...

Damon," she implored, but they ignored her.

They were glaring at each other. Stefan stepped closer, flexing his fists, and Damon clenched his jaw, silently daring Stefan to make a move. For the first time, Elena saw a resemblance between them.

"I can't do this," she said. Her voice sounded smal and soft to her own ears, but both Salvatore brothers heard her and whipped their heads toward her with inhuman speed.

"I can't do this," she said again, louder and more firmly this time. "I can't be Katherine."

Damon scowled. "Katherine? Believe me, darling, nobody here wants you to be Katherine." Stefan, his face softening, said, "Elena, sweetheart - " Elena interrupted him. "Listen to me." She wiped her eyes. "I've been walking on eggshel s, trying to keep this -

this thing between the three of us from tearing us apart. If anything good has come out of al the stuff that's happened, it's that you found each other, you started being brothers again. I can't - " She took a deep breath and tried to find a sensible matter-of-fact voice somewhere inside herself.

"I think we should take a break," she said flatly. "Stefan, I love you so much. You're my soul mate, you're it for me.

You know that." She looked up at him pleadingly, silently begging him to understand.

Then her eyes moved past him to Damon, who was staring at her with a furrowed brow. "And Damon, you're part of me now. I ... feel for you." She looked back and forth between them, her hands clutching each other. "I can't lose either of you. But I need to figure out who I am now, after everything that's happened, and I need to do it without worrying about destroying the relationship between you.

And you need to figure out how you can be friends with each other, even if I'm in both of your lives." Damon let out a skeptical noise, but Elena kept talking.

"I'l understand" - she gulped - "if you can't wait for me. But I wil always, always love you. Both of you. In different ways.

But for now, I just can't be with you. Either of you." She was tearing up again, and her hands shook as she wiped her eyes.

Damon leaned across the table, a smal twisted smile hovering on his lips. "Elena, did you just break up with both of us?"

The tears dried up instantly. "Damon, I never dated you," she said angrily.

"I know," he replied, and shrugged. "But I've definitely just been dumped." He glanced at Stefan, then quickly away, his expression closed off.

Stefan looked devastated. For a moment, his face was so bleak that it wasn't hard to believe he was more than five hundred years old. "Whatever you want, Elena," he said. He started to reach for her, then pul ed his own hand back to his side. "No matter what, I wil always love you. My feelings aren't going to change. Take whatever time you need."

"Okay," Elena said. She stood up shakily. She felt like she was going to be sick. Half of her wanted to pul Stefan to her, kiss him until that broken expression on his face went away. But Damon was watching her, his own face inscrutable, and touching either of them felt ... wrong. "I need to be by myself for a while," she told them.

At any other time, she knew, both of them would have objected to the idea of her walking the campus alone. They would have argued, fol owed her if she wouldn't walk with them - anything to keep her safely under their protection.

Now, though, Stefan moved aside to let her out of the booth, his head bowed. Damon sat very stil and watched her go, his eyes hooded.

Elena didn't look back at them as she crossed to the door of the pub. Her hands were shaking, and her eyes were brimming with tears once more. But she also felt as if she'd carried something very heavy for a while and had final y been able to put it down.

This might be the best choice I've made in a long, long time, she thought.

Dear Diary,

Every time I remember the look on Stefan's face when I told him I needed space, my chest aches. It's like I can't breathe.

I never wanted to hurt Stefan. Never. How could I? We're so close, so wrapped up in each other that he's like a piece of my soul - without him, I'm not complete.

But...

I love Damon, too. He's my friend - my dark mirror image - the clever, plotting one who will do whatever it takes to get what he wants, but who has a kindness deep inside him that not everybody sees. I can't imagine living without Damon, either.

Stefan wants to hold on to me so tightly. He cares for his brother - he does - and Damon cares for him, too, and having me between them is messing that up.

All three of us have been held so closely together by the crises we've had to deal with recently - my death and rebirth, Klaus's attack, Damon's return from the edge of death, the phantom's attack - that every move we've made, every thought we've had, has been wrapped up with the other two. We can't go on like this.

I know I've done the right thing. Without me between them, they can become brothers again.

And then I can sort out the tangled threads of my relationships with both of them without having to worry that any move I make will snap the tenuous bond between us.

It's the right decision. But still, I feel like I'm dying a slow death. How can I live for even a little while without Stefan?

All I can do is try to be strong. If I just keep going, I'll get through this time. And in the end, everything will be wonderful. It has to be.