Episode Report Card Cindy McLennan: A- | 91 USERS: C+ YOU GRADE IT 50 Shades Of FanFic
By Cindy McLennan | Season 5 | Episode 10 | Aired on 12.12.2013
Mossy Manse. Damon watches Elena, who is reading by the fire. His face fills with regret. When he brings her a cup of tea, she tells him about her father's journal. She figures Megan is the little girl her dad once told her about. When Megan was seven, a congenital heart defect left her with a life expectancy of a couple of months. One injection of vampire blood saved her life. Damon says, "A hundred pages of horrific torture and you find the one happy passage." Elena says her dad used his research to save people. Damon: "Yeah, and dissected vampires, along the way. News flash, Elena: You are a vampire. Do you honestly think he would sit here and see you as anything more?" Elena doesn't know, but she can't not defend her own dad. Damon says he knows that, since she does it for him all the time. Mostly, she just ignores your shit, Damon, but point taken.
Elena isn't trying to defend his vengeance quest against Aaron's whole family. When she makes a little dig about continuing it, after they got together, Damon asks why she's there. "I'm bad, Elena. I am bad for you, so why wouldn't you have run away from me as far as humanly possible?" Elena says, "Because I love you, Damon. Because I chose you. And because I stand by my choice."
Damon says now he's choosing. "I'm choosing to let you go." Elena rejects that. Damon says he's choosing to relieve her of having to defend him regarding every awful thing he ever did. Elena tells him to stop acting like he's perfect and reminds him that she too has done horrible things. She says she isn't going to judge him after learning he was tortured for five years. Damon yells, "Stop defending me!" His voice softens. "I won't change who I am. I can't. But I refuse to change you." He walks away, leaving Elena looking like a lost little girl. She tries to compose herself, but breaks down.
Upstairs, Katherine examines herself for signs of aging. Stefan arrives at the door and asks if he can come in or if she's going to freak again. She tells him she's getting wrinkles. Stefan laughs. "Katherine Pierce's chickens come home to roost in the form of wrinkles. It's kind of brilliant." Katherine is not amused. She's in his room because she wants to talk about last night. When Stefan agrees, she orders him to talk. Stefan says, "Well, it was a long day. We had a moment and we got swept up in it." Katherine asks if he memorized that from a book. Stefan asks if she expects him to forget everything she's put him through for nearly a century and a half.