Elena trailed out of her freshman English section near the end of the crowd, still stuffing her notebook into her bag. Zipping it closed, she looked up to see Andres waiting patiently in the hall directly outside her classroom.
"Hey," she said. "What's going on?"
"Stefan and I think it's not a great idea for you to be on your own right now," he said, falling into step beside her. "He and Meredith both have class, so I'll walk you wherever you're going."
"I have Powers of my own, you know," Elena said, a little haughtily. "Even if they're not really fighting ones yet, I'm not a damsel in distress."
Andres nodded, a slow, solemn dip of his head. "Forgive me," he said formally. "I don't think any of us should be alone now. James's death proves that."
"I'm sorry," Elena said. "I know it's been hard for you, especially since you were living at James's house."
Andres nodded. "It has," he said, and then made a visible effort to be more cheerful, throwing back his shoulders and pasting on a smile. "But I must take advantage of the chance that allows me more time with my charming and beautiful friend."
"Oh, in that case," Elena said, following his lead, and took Andres's proffered arm. As they moved down the hall, she examined him carefully out of the corner of her eye. Despite his courtliness, Andres looked haggard and worn, the lines at the corners of his eyes more pronounced. He looked older than twenty now.
James's death had hit them all hard. It felt more real, somehow, than Chad's death. It had happened in James's house, not on a battlefield, and so proved that death could come for them anywhere. When Elena had looked in the mirror the last few mornings, the face gazing back at her was grimmer, her eyes rimmed with gray circles.
Still, they had to keep going, for one another. Whistling in the dark, people called it, when you kept your own spirits up by finding any happiness you could.
Squeezing Andres's arm affectionately, Elena asked, "How are you settling into Matt's room?" The police had sealed James's house, so Matt had offered up his own empty room to their visitor. Matt himself was back to camping out in the half-burned boathouse with Chloe.
"Ah," Andres said, his face relaxing into a smile as they stepped onto the elevator and pushed the button for the ground floor. "The dormitory life is very strange to me. There is always something happening."
Elena was laughing at Andres's tale of a drunken freshman wandering into his room at three in the morning, and Andres's own polite and befuddled attempts to steer the intruder back to his own dormitory, when the elevator jerked violently to a stop.
"What's happening?" Elena said warily.
"Maybe it's an electrical problem," Andres said, but his voice was doubtful.
Elena pushed the button for the ground floor again, and the elevator gave a deep groan and then began to shake. They both gasped and steadied themselves, hands against the walls.
"I'll try the emergency button," Elena said. She pushed it, but nothing happened.
"Weird," she said, and flinched at the uncertain note in her own voice. "It seems disconnected, too." She hesitated. "Do you have a weapon?" she asked. Andres shook his head, his face pale.
The elevator rattled again, and then the lights went out, leaving them in the dark. Elena found Andres's warm hand and clutched it.
"Is this . . . do you think this could just be a coincidence?" she whispered. Andres squeezed her hand reassuringly.
"I don't know," he said, his voice troubled. "Can you see anything?"
Of course not, Elena was about to say. The elevator was pitch-black. She couldn't even see Andres despite the fact that he was holding her protectively close to him. Then she realized what he meant, and closed her eyes for a moment to reach deep inside herself, calling on her Power.
When she opened her eyes again, she could see the warm, living green of Andres's aura, lighting up the darkness. But at the edges of her consciousness was something else.
There was an even thicker blackness moving closer. It hurt to look at it as it seemed to breathe through the cracks in the elevator doors, as amorphous as fog. Elena instinctively shut her eyes and turned her head away, burying it in Andres's shoulder.
"Elena!" he said, alarmed. "What is it?"
For a long time nothing happened. There was a moment when she relaxed despite herself - nothing's here, she thought, caught in a wave of relief, nothing's here.
"It's okay," she said, with half an embarrassed laugh behind her words. "I just - "
Then a tile from the elevator roof was kicked in, and the blackness was all around her. Flinching, Elena looked up, straining to see something.
"Hello, my pretty one." Klaus's voice came from above. "You've been waiting for me, haven't you?" His voice was as casual as if he'd just come by to chat.
"Hello, Klaus," Elena said, trying to keep her voice steady. She pressed herself against Andres. She felt like she was falling.
"I know what you are," Klaus said smugly, his voice a singsong. A loud bang came against the side of the elevator, and Elena and Andres both jumped, sucking in their breath. "I know what your secret is." Bang. "I can't kill you with anything magic." Bang. "And I can't kill you with my vampires." Bang. He was banging his big black boots against the side of the elevator, Elena realized. He must be sitting on the edge of the service access hatch in the roof, his legs dangling down. His boots banged once more and then Klaus said gaily, "But you know what? If I cut the cable here at the top of the elevator, you won't survive."
Elena cringed. She rode in elevators every day and it had never before occurred to her how vulnerable they were. Her English class was on the ninth floor. They were dangling above a long, long drop, and the cables were the only thing keeping them from falling straight through to the basement.
Andres sucked in a quiet breath next to her, and Elena saw the life-green aura around him begin to grow. He was trying to form a protective shield to shelter them with, she realized, as he had done in the battle against Klaus and his vampires.
"Stop that," Klaus snapped from above them, and a bolt of blackness flew from him and hit Andres's growing shield of green, which snapped and deflated like a popped balloon. Andres cried out in pain.
Elena wrapped her arms around Andres protectively, but she could feel him tensing to try again. His breath sounded rough and panicky. "My power comes from the earth, Elena," he whispered. "Dangling so far above it, I'm not sure if I can help. But I will try."
Above them in the darkness, Klaus laughed jeeringly. "Might be too late there, boy," he said, and a strange scraping noise came once and then again, a screech of metal on metal.
"He's cutting through the cable," Andres breathed in her ear. There was a faint green light around him again as he tried to expand his aura, but it wasn't going to grow fast enough to protect them, Elena knew.
This is it, Elena thought, and took Andres's hand. She had never been afraid of falling before, but now she was terrified.
Then a thud came from above, and another, and a series of shuffling, thumping noises, and suddenly a body plummeted past them and landed heavily on the floor. Two bodies, Elena realized, thrashing and growling at their feet. She tried to concentrate, breathing hard, and after a moment, saw Klaus's aura again, darker than dark, and clashing with it, bloodred and sulky gray and flaring blue all tangled together.
"Damon," she whispered.
Shadowed, the barely-visible Damon managed to push off Klaus and scramble to his feet. "Elena," he gasped, and then a surge of Power from Klaus slammed him against the wall. He let out a pained grunt. Elena reached forward and tried to pull him toward her, but he was crushed tightly, his body jammed against the wall. Klaus chuckled darkly.
There was a flash of green.
Suddenly, all at once, Damon came loose. He fell back from the wall into Elena, and she staggered, holding him up in the second it took for him to regain his balance.
"Get her out of here!" Andres shouted. "I can't hold it!"
Klaus, face twisted with rage, was trapped by the glowing green barrier of Andres's protective aura, the eerie green lighting his face. As Elena stared openmouthed, Klaus forced a hand through the green. Damon grabbed her in his arms and leaped straight up into the elevator shaft.
Elena barely had time to take a breath before Damon was kicking his way through a door at the top of the shaft, and she found herself slumped on the tiles outside the elevator door on the top floor of the building. There were no classrooms here, just offices, and the hall was quiet.
Damon lay beside her, still clutching her, and panting harshly. Blood was trickling from his nose and he unwrapped one of his arms from around her to wipe at it with his sleeve.
"We have to go back," she told him, as soon as she could speak.
Damon stared at her. "Are you kidding me?" he gasped. "We barely got away as it is."
Elena shook her head stubbornly. "We can't abandon Andres," she said.
Damon's stare sharpened to a glare. "Your friend from the elevator made his choice," he said coldly. "He wanted me to save you. Do you think he'll thank me if I drop right back down there instead of getting you out of here?"
A crash came from inside the elevator shaft, rattling the building. Elena pulled herself to her feet, steadying herself against the walls. She felt fragile, but determined, as if she was made of glass and steel.
"We're both going back," she said. "I don't care what Andres would choose. I'm not leaving here without him. Take me down."
Damon clenched his jaw and glared harder. Elena simply stood and waited, immovable.
Finally, Damon swore to himself and climbed to his feet. "Let the record show," he said, grabbing her by the arms again and pulling her close to him, "that I tried to save you, and that you are the most infuriatingly stubborn person I've ever known."
"I missed you, too, Damon," Elena said, closing her eyes and pressing her face against his chest.
On the way up the shaft, Elena realized, Damon must have wrapped her in some stray edge of his Power, because the trip had been smooth and almost momentary. On the way down, apparently he wasn't bothering to protect her. Her hair flew upward and the skin on her face stung with the passing wind. He's got me, she told herself, but her body screamed that she was plummeting.
They landed on the top of the elevator amid a plume of dust, and Elena choked and coughed for several minutes, wiping at the tears on her face.
"We have to get in there," she said frantically, feeling around in the dark, as soon as she could speak again. The elevator must have collapsed when it hit the bottom of the shaft. Instead of a neat box of metal, she could feel the sharp edges and long, broken pieces of shattered beams and the remains of walls. "Andres could still be alive," she told Damon. She knelt and began to feel along what had been the elevator's top. The space Klaus and Damon had come through must still be here somewhere.
Damon grabbed her hands. "No," he said. "You say you can see auras now? Use your Power. There's no one in there."
He was right. As soon as Elena really looked, she could see that there was no trace of Andres's green or that terrible chilling blackness that Klaus carried with him.
"Do you think they're dead?" she whispered.
Damon let out a short, bitter laugh. "Hardly," he said. "It would take more than a fall down an elevator shaft to kill Klaus. And if your human pal with the shield was dead in there, I'd be able to smell his blood." He shook his head. "No, Klaus escaped again. And he took your Andres with him."
"We have to save him," Elena said, and, when Damon didn't reply immediately, she yanked on his leather jacket, pulling him closer so she could stare demandingly into his unfathomable black eyes. Damon was going to help her whether he wanted to or not. She wasn't letting him get away again. "We have to save Andres."
