The Last Weapon

10: Masquerade! Burning Glances, Turning Heads...

Briana's POV

Days had gone by. Failed attempts during the setup for the masquerade had shown Tyler had already given the moonstone to Mason, something I hadn't known but had acted like I had. Damon, although he had enjoyed our clubbing, was still refraining from talking to me as often as possible, even though he was the villain in our little war. I tried to forget casually walking into the house to find Mason slumped over in a chair with singed holes in his shirt and a bloody, gory cavity in his chest, his heart in Damon's hand. They were going to extreme lengths to get information. Elena and Stefan were fake fighting and avoided me whenever possible, not that I had bothered to be around them much in the first place. And tonight? Tonight was the ball itself, and everyone was planning on killing Katherine. Not my ideal Cinderella fantasy, the one I'd been having up until Damon walked in and said, "We're murdering Katherine tonight. I can trust you won't go blabbing to your little buddy about this?"

"Absolutely not," I said. "Katherine may have been my best friend but the act we put up now is only pretense. Kat has several faults and more enemies, both of which I am and have been included in." I sobered, finally remembering why I had left. Damon read my mind.

"She hurt you, didn't she?" I opened my mouth and closed it again.

"Yes," I snapped bitterly, "People I get close to tend to do that." I wouldn't meet his eyes, show him how crushed and angry I actually was for his cunning tricks. I became even more pissed off when he opened his mouth again.

"Well, at least you've admitted you were in some way close to me. Trust me, it doesn't do you well going on pretending it doesn't still hurt." He grabbed the crystal bottle of Bourbon of my stack of romance novels and took a sip, an acidic look on his face.

"Oh, yeah," I joked with a voice like vinegar, "it's not like you've been doing that for, say, a century now." I jerked the bottle out of his hands and took a swig, scowling. He heaved a large sigh and reclined on the bed next to me, looking devastated and incessantly raging in one plain expression.

"Yeah, I know. And look where that's gotten me." We continued to pass the drink back and forth, the taste delightfully scalding in our throats. I laughed without mirth.

"Alone, hated and left behind by anyone you got to trust you at some point?" We smiled wryly at each other.

"All the older vamps said it would be better this way. No one to use against you, no one to have to leave behind. If you care about a human, you don't want to damn them and make them a vampire, take their humanity away from them, but you don't-"

"Want to live without them?" He looked down at me with the weight of the world on his gaze, more sadness then I thought possible. "I've been in love several times, Angel, and none of them ended well." I took a steadying breath and stared longingly at something past the walls and wooden chest, to something all vampires craved with every fiber of their being: love. "I've never known someone- undead, werewolf, witch or human- that didn't love someone, something. Even now, the vampire hunters John and Alaric love Elena and Jenna, whether they say it or not. Bonnie loves Elena and her Grams, even if she's dead. Mason loved Katherine, Katherine loved Stefan, and Stefan loves Elena and so on and so forth." Damon winced and his lip curled.

"Is this supposed to be helping, because-"

"You may love Elena but, even if she didn't love your brother, she wouldn't fall for you like you would want her to. You hide everything behind a switch you never turned on. You notice how, in everyone's little love octagon, it's not only one person loving the other? Someone is always loved by someone else?" He nodded reluctantly, unsure. "You don't have anyone loving you because the only person you loved you made all the wrong impressions on. You love Elena. No one loves you. You're like the point on a completely different plane then their octagon."