Timey Wimey - CosmicAdventurer - The Vampire Diaries (TV) [Archive of Our Own] (2024)

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

"People assume that time is a strict progression from cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff."

– The Tenth Doctor, Doctor Who

"Damon Salvatore," a wizened woman projected across the domed atrium of a decidedly decorated building, her very countenance bearing an air of regal gravitas, eyeing the man who crashed her coven's ceremonial proceedings with an air of undisguised superiority. "Your bark hardly carries the same bite, when your teeth are no longer quite so sharp." The threat was implicit, though she refrained from providing a demonstration – a part of her surprisingly wanting to learn more. Behind her, stood several cloaked figures, though they were all silent.

"Yeah, well, what I don't have in fangs, I'll make up for in fighting dirty," the object of her curiosity flippantly replied, producing several vials that he'd stolen from their concealed stores – some whole, while others, broken and drained of their priceless liquids. It must had taken him some time to acquire them – deals made with local witches to be untraceable, giving away any magical artifacts he'd managed to collect over the decades in exchange. This was his gambit, and he only hoped it had a chance at success.

It was his last hope.

"And here I thought humanity would cure you of your mischievous ways."

"If you give me what I want, then these events will be rewritten anyway, and their contents restored."

"What is it that you want, exactly?" She furrowed her eyebrows elegantly, though her calm demeanor suggested that she already had a good idea.

"I want you to send me back."

"Oh? And what makes you think we are capable of such marvels?"

"When that Siren bitch was in my brain," he growled, practically reliving the revolting memories of her tinkering with everything that shaped his identity – of her surgically removing all that made him happy, every trace of his humanity. "I was able to take a peek in hers, as well. I saw your coven and what you could do. You were on her list, too, just so you know."

"And are we to feel grateful that Sybil has been eradicated, and thus we are left untouched by her machinations with Sabine and Cade?" The witch pondered, idly tracing an elegant finger over a silver goblet. Several of her digits peeked out from her ornate bell sleeves, allowing Damon to catch a hint of runes either drawn or tattooed on the spaces above her knuckles.

"You can feel however you want. All I care about is that you send me back."

"We can fulfill your wish, but I will decide when you will appear."

"As long as it's far enough that I can save them, save –"

"Yes, I know who you want to save, Damon Salvatore," she retorted, almost sounding bored. "Stefan and Elena. Your brother, and the love of your life. He is dead and she is still trapped in magical sleep, while you age and wither away in mortal form, unsure if you would ever look upon her again. I know of your dilemma. But remember this: time is a delicate tapestry. You may save them, but lose them both in the process. The future is always in motion – unpredictable. We only get the barest hints from the scrying fires."

"I don't care, as long as they're safe," he stated emphatically, though the notion of losing either indefinitely was enough to break him. Realistically, he knew his own chances of dying while attempting his endeavor were high. If not saving Elena from Kai, then taking Stefan's place in the tunnels.

"Hm," she hummed, as though considering his proposal. "And why should we help you? What would we get in exchange as part of this bargain?"

"What do you want?" he ground out, becoming visibly desperate, something he ached to avoid.

"How far are you willing to go?" she asked with a delicately raised eyebrow.

"…I'll give you anything," he finally managed in quiet not-quite-defeat. "Within reason," he added as a caveat, though it sounded empty even to his own ears.

"Very well," she acquiesced, though Damon had the distinct impression that her decision had been made before he even entered the massive chamber. "All will reveal itself in due time."

"Why does that sound both cryptic and creepy?" Damon intoned wryly, not entirely comfortable with either the wording or the suspiciously serene tone his interlocutor insisted on maintaining throughout their entire exchange. She seemed disturbingly unbothered by it all, which he found a lot more unsettling than even rage, because he failed to get anything resembling a read on her.

"We are all but mirrors of each other, Damon Salvatore, and we see in each other what we want to see - or fear to see."

"Yeah, I'm not a teenage blonde girl in her first whitewashed yoga class. That won't work on me."

"You will accept my deal nevertheless."

"And why is that?"

"Because you are a desperate man. We will come to collect soon enough but worry not – you have my word that what we ask is not too nefarious. We only seek to restore balance."

"Is that an elegant way of telling me you want me to be your killer? Like for Sybil and Cade?"

"No," she sighed mournfully, revealing for the first time the weariness that comes from her extended lifespan. "There has been enough death already. We are Nature's servants – not its destroyers."

"Doesn't this sort of thing go against Nature?"

"Normally, yes – but as I said, the tapestry of time is an elegant and fragile one. You will be asked to correct more than one misdeed – both your own those committed by others." At Damon's evident confusion, she pressed, "as I said, all will be revealed when the time comes."

"Fine," he allowed, visibly deflating. "Just do what you have to do."

Nodding once, the witch took his hand with a surprising gentleness, her eyes widening slightly as she murmured a spell to split his wrist open. "Only a little will suffice. You will find yourself in a familiar place, that will be most optimal for the task and hand."

"What does that mean, exactly?"

"You will see," she smiled serenely, a touch of mischief in her golden eyes. "Before I send you to be one of our Champions, you should know – there will be others. Some, friends; others, adversaries. I am not the only one who wishes to affect these particular points in spacetime."

"What –?"

This was all Damon Salvatore was able to say before he was engulfed by a gleaming light, surrounded almost entirely by incandescent streams ofbeing. He felt at once connected to the very cosmos and yet entirely disconnected from everything – both wholly noteworthy and utterly insignificant in the grand scheme of existence.

For a brief instant, he knew the reason behind his travels and felt utterly at peace. In the following moment, he knew nothing of the sort, as the light dissipated, revealing the cemetery of Mystic Falls.

It took him several whole seconds to collect his bearings. Something about the sensation pulsating through his veins felt achingly familiar – a ravenous, unsatiable hunger.Bloodlust.He was a vampire again.

There was a warm body in his arms. Human, his instincts told him, from the scent of her rich, oxidized blood. His vision cleared, and he almost jumped when he saw a terrified-looking Stefan –alive, and well, and so veryalive– before him, extending what appeared to be a large, leather-bound tome – a grimoire, he realized.

With a sinking feeling, he looked down and saw a familiar mess of brown hair. It was then that he felt the utterrightnessof the body in his arms. He could have sworn he felt her struggle a second ago, only to have her lean into him.

Elena…

Taking in the full view, he realized he had her in a firm hold, with his bleeding wrist pressed into her mouth. Of all possible moments. His eyes widening in horror at what he was doing, he quickly but gently pushed her away, wishing instead that he had been sent to that forest road – a time when he could have saved her family and spared her this debilitating grief, kept the memory of their first meeting intact, in hopes that she bonds with him first instead of immediately thinking him a monster.

And now that sneaky witch brought him to a point when he was in the process of threatening to turn her against her will. Although he always knew it was an empty threat, she certainly didn't.

Numbly, he watched her walk into Stefan's waiting arms, though he could have sworn she was a lot more rigid in his embrace than he remembered. Then again, he hardly paid attention last time as soon as the grimoire was his, well on his way to the unneeded rescue of the most ungrateful bitch of a vampire on the planet.

He took the grimoire firmly in his hands, not yet quite sure what his next step would be, and watched Elena give him a puzzling look, before letting Stefan lead her away from the scene.

Hours later, Damon found himself several bottles deep in bourbon, a rare silver lining that he was able to drink some of his favorites from his secret stash - twice! How did he think this out so poorly? Couldn't he at least rein himself in a little more and negotiate a better placement? He'd already killed Lexi, and threatened Elena. At least he hadn't snapped Jeremy's neck yet, he reasoned, taking another large sip.

Stefan still hated him, but that was to be expected.

And what did that witch mean, anyway, when she said he'd be one of her Champions? What exactly did he get himself into?

His messy reverie was interrupted, however, by the tell-tale vibration of a text message. Checking his phone, he noted the not-yet-added contact of a number that had already been etched in his heart.

Meet me at the Quarry at midnight. We need to talk.

Chapter 2

Chapter Text

One hour to midnight, Damon noted, reasoning that now that he was a vampire again, he could easily finish yet another tumbler and sober up with time to spare. Pressing the glass to his forehead, room temperature cooled by the crisp, Autumn air, he finally allowed the day's tumultuous events to replay in his mind, hoping to suss out some hidden meaning behind the witch's vague warnings.

She mentioned something aboutothers– some helping, some hindering. Helping what, exactly?

He dubiously eyed Emily's grimoire sitting next to him. Perhaps if he gave it to Bon Bon early this time, maybe they could be friends sooner. He'd almost forgotten what it was like to be completely and utterly alone, minus the occasional meaningless one-night stand that left him feeling just as empty in the harsh light of day. So, becoming friendly with Witchy while hoping to earn a measure of Elena's forgiveness and perhaps even love would make his existence here a lot more bearable.

Granted, he did just nearly rip Bonnie's throat out, Damon remembered with an inward groan. And used not-yet-Vampire Barbie as a mobile blood bag. And force-fed Elena his blood.

Would it even be fair to pursue Elena, knowing that he was unlikely to survive for long? He knew the devastation she faced when she mourned him. Would he so selfish as to force her to go through that again? Maybe it would be best if he backed off entirely, and just kept her safe – encouraging her to lead a normal, human life. Maybe marry Doctor Future Humanitarian Award and pop out a couple of kids while singlehandedly curing world hunger and saving the whales and everything else a blithe, compassionate spirit like her could accomplish without the supernatural intervention with which she was saddled.

No, that kind of global overachieving was more Blondie's style, he internally reasoned, replacing 'blithe and compassionate' with 'determined and conquering.' Elena had a considerably more personal approach. She was the kind of person who could find the most miserable, the most downtrodden, and make him feel like the most important person on Earth. She could find a lost soul adrift, bereft of conscience, and still genuinely see enough good in him that he'd move mountains just to meet the faith in her eyes. Could he really subject her to the devastation of such soul-crushing grief – again?

But what if he didn't have to die? What if there was another way?

He needed another drink.

Before he could properly get his bearings, he heard the heavy, wooden door slam into its adjacent wall, signaling the arrival of the Terror of the Forest himself, guaranteed to strike fear into the heart of every cute bunny and squirrel – Steffie.

Damon fought the urge to run up and embrace his verylivingbrother, standing mere feet before him – breathing, whole –alive. And then punch him for the pompous, self-righteous lecture he was undoubtedly about to deliver, if he was reading his forehead wrinkles correctly.

And then hug him again.

Stefan stared at him curiously, seemingly confused by the undisguised affection on his brother's face, before Damon caught himself and carefully returned what he deemed to be sardonic perfection. While he considered seeking some supernatural aid for his endeavor, it absolutely wouldn't be from him. At this point, Stefan would be too quick to think the absolute worst of his brother, not believing for a minute that his goal was only to save him and Elena. If he even believed that he was displaced in time, this version of Stefan was a lot more likely to lock him up to desiccate than provide any kind of valuable assistance.

At least for now, hiding the truth from him was utterly imperative.

"I hope you're happy, Damon," Stefan moped, angrily, seeing Damon's expression return to normal. "Elena's so distraught over what you did that she forced me to leave. I've never seen her like this. She's not herself,at all. If something happens to her while your blood is in her system –"

"Then at least you know you'll see her again," Damon interrupted airily, still not entirely understanding why Stefan would prefer a dead Elena to a vampiric one.

He missed his brother, truly and wholeheartedly, though he had hardly the energy to deal with the confrontation this version of Stefan was clearly craving. Grabbing the grimoire before his little bro got any ideas, Damon made a beeline for the door. "I'm going out," he announced, making a show of shutting it casually behind him, and immediately blurring away from the Boarding House at supernatural speed before his interlocuter got any bright ideas and tried to follow him.

Maybe a drive would be an environment more conducive to pensive brooding – no, strategizing; he didn't brood – while he mentally prepared himself for confrontation number two, due to take place in less than an hour.

Damon arrived at the quarry with 30 minutes to spare in his paranoia that his clandestine night-time interlocutor lost her mind, continuously aghast that she would pick such a deserted place at night, when she knew very well that vampires roamed Mystic Falls. Although, he reasoned, at the time, he was the only known danger, at least until Anna –

Anna!

This was the night the Anna kidnapped Elena and Bonnie to manipulate him and Stefan into helping her open the tomb. Panic seized him, until he saw her unmistakable form approaching, his palpable relief quickly replaced by anger.

"Are you out of your mind?" Damon demanded, quickly closing the distance between them as his voice rose in volume. "Out here all by yourself in the middle of the night? Are you trying to be vampire-bait?"

"I knew you'd come," Elena almost-whispered, too quiet for human ears, but evidently aware that he would hear her. Her face seemed to run the full gamut of emotions. From sharp relief, to what Damon could swear was hazy adoration – she looked so happy to see him, that he could have almost interpreted the tears in her shining midnight eyes to be ones of joy, of affection, as her eyes darted between his and she stifled a sob – but all too quickly, her face contorted in rage.

The force with which Elena slapped Damon could kindly be called a minor tremor on the Richter scale – at least that's what she probably told herself. He was a vampire, so it hardly felt like anything.

"What the hell is wrong with you?"

He allowed her to do it, his face shifting to the side, but only slightly, because her human strength when compared to vampirism was frankly the equivalent of a kitten trying to move a lion.

"Elena, I'm sorry; I – " Damon began, his voice filled with shame. What excuse could he possibly give her?

"Do you haveanyidea what I went through for those months when you were," she swallowed thickly against the tears rapidly forming in her eyes, drowning her voice in emotion, unable to bring herself to say it, "…gone? And now you would willingly subject me to the possibility a life without you? How could you, Damon? And don't even think for one second that I don't think you have some secret plan to sacrifice yourself and save Stefan! What happened to hating martyrs? Well, I won't let you do it!" She pushed him, and then immediately squeezed him in an almost too-tight embrace. He heard her breath tremble against his chest, his jacket clasped tightly in her fists.

His eyes widened in animated – almost cartoonish recognition – that would have looked bizarrely out of place to anyone who'd only seen Damon's carefully-sculpted facial expressions. But it had been five years for him since he had seen her awake, not counting earlier that evening, when he numbly pushed the love of his life into his brother's waiting arms.

"You're …myElena?" A Damon of yesteryear would have probably cringed in embarrassment at the sheer vulnerability breaking his voice, but his current version couldn't be bothered to care. She was here, awake, and she remembered him – and she loved him.

"Always yours, Damon," she pulled back to gently cup his face, smiling against the tears that threatened to fall, while gazing at him with something akin to awe, as though hardly believing that her endeavor worked after so long.

They were drawn together instantly, whether by magic or by love or by desire – or a combination of all three – but all they both suddenly knew was a whirlwind of lips and tongues and hands, and the salty taste of tears that snuck into their ardent embrace for the first kiss they got to share in years. When Elena reluctantly pulled away to catch her breath, Damon drew her impossibly close, almost fearing that she could disappear at any moment.

"Buthow? How are you here?" Damon finally managed, finding his voice akin to volcanic eruption of emotion threatening to overwhelm him, his face buried in her hair. This day had certainly not turned out how he imagined, and its various sharp and unexpected turns left him reeling.

"I followed you," she breathed, pulling away to look at him, to bask in the cerulean fire that were the eyes of which she'd dreamt so often when she was in her magical sleep. "I could tell right away it was you –myDamon – from the way you looked at me earlier tonight," she traced every contour of his face with utter adoration shining in her eyes – a part of her truly believed she would never see him again. "Bonnie found a way to wake me up,on the day you left," she added, with a hint of annoyance, quickly overshadowed by the typhoon of emotion that was actually being in the same physical space again.

"Don't you realize dangerous this is, Elena?" He tried to sound upset, truly, but the joy lighting every facet of his face told an entirely different story.

"It's like I said before," she smiled against the tears continuously falling onto her cheeks, pressing her forehead against his. "I know what I signed up for, Damon – and I'm all in. And this time I won't trust Alaric or anyone else to make sure you're okay. I'm doing it myself."

"You're really here," Damon breathed reverently to her returning nod. "She said there would be others. I just never imagined…"

"That it would be me?" Elena smiled, drawing him closer for another kiss. "Why not?"

"Because I didn't expect this trip to make me so deliriously happy," he replied, pressing adoring kisses to her knuckles. "How did you get her to agree to send you? She didn't strike me as the most charitable witch."

"Ooh, that's anexcellentquestion," she narrowed her eyes, her exasperation from before suddenly returning. "I'mso glad you asked. Bonnie woke me up shortly after your disappearance, only for us to both learn that you had yourself cloaked from being sensed by magic. By the time we managed to track you down, you were already gone, and the most obstinate witch in the history of witches kindly informed me of all the materials you ruined in your display of douchey irreverence to be taken seriously. You know that slug paste you destroyed to make a point? Do you know what slug paste even is? Well, I do. I spent nine months crafting a new batch for every vial you obliterated in your show of little rebellion. Would you like to know how it's made, Damon?"

He winced, sensing he would learn the answer soon, and in considerable detail.

"Do you know what they made me do, Damon?" Elena cried in exasperation, throwing her hands in the air. "I had to spend nine months scouring the globe to replace the contents of the vials you broke. One of them contained slug paste.Slugs, Damon! I had to reach in with my bare hands and squeeze slugs to make a paste out of them. Do you know how many slugs I had to squeeze to fill just one vial?" She grew increasingly animated as her tirade progressed, emoting the actions behind said creation of the paste.

"I—"

"Two hundred! And the entire time, I'm caught between disgust and heartbreak – because what if they're in pain? I mean they have to be, right?"

"Elen –"

"You made me squeeze slugs, Damon! And the butterflies," her face constricted in pathos for the poor creatures she helped obliterate. "I had to find hundreds of butterflies, of varying species, to make butterfly oil. I'm pretty sure some of them were endangered," she pouted, then collected herself after a long sigh. "Just so you know, she would have sent you regardless. My understanding from our not-brief-enough, but very terse, encounters is that they'd been seeking to create a team of 'champions' for a long time now, and you happened to waltz in and give them everything they needed."

"Do you know what for?" Damon wisely changed the subject from butterfly-and slug-murder-cum-ingredient creation.

"No, she was very tight-lipped about it," Elena admitted pensively. "Though I have seen her talk to Bonnie, which I'd been meaning to ask her about, but the witch – Althea – dropped me here before I got the chance."

"And now you're here," he brought her hand to his lips to press a kiss to her palm. "And dating my brother again, in my least favorite bout of déjà vu," he wrinkled his nose in distaste.

"Actually, I broke up with him tonight – shortly after we left. We've been friends for so much longer than we were together that it just felt all sorts of weird. Plus, I knew you were here," she nudged him playfully. "It was almost impossible to get him to leave me alone after that, but I made my escape by going to Bonnie's. I'm just lucky she chose to cancel her date with Ben. It gave me a place to stay for the last few hours."

"Bonnie the lifesaver," he smirked lopsidedly, his mind evidently elsewhere. "He made it sound like it was more of a fight – that you weren't yourself."

"Well, I'm not," she laughed, then studied him. "Hey, don't tell me you're worried. Damon, I'm in love with you – and only you."

"I know," he told her seriously. "It took me a while, to get to this point – I admit. But I'm here. So, what reason did you give Stef for the break-up?"

"I told him it made me uncomfortable that he manipulated me into betraying you tonight and that it was wrong, which it is," she emphasized, leaning her head on his shoulder. "It's something I should have done even then. I love Stefan – truly – he's one of my best friends. But we really brought out the worst in each other when we were together. Kept each other in this perpetual state of grief and mourning, and it often led to you being hurt. I never should have lied to you that night. I'm really sorry about that."

"Hey, it's okay. It was a long time ago," he soothed.

"Technically, it's only been a few hours," she smiled, though it didn't reach her eyes – guilt gnawing at her anew at how much she inadvertently hurt Damon before they officially got together, despite her best efforts to avoid it.

"Well, if you'rereallyconcerned, I know exactly how you can make it up to me," he smirked, raising his eyebrows suggestively.

"Oh no, you don't!" Elena gasped, affronted, though grinning happily at the turn away from morose topics. "You're making it up to me first!Slug paste and butterfly oil, Damon!You can spend the night making it up to me, and we'll see where you are in the morning in terms of forgiveness," she purred, wiggling suggestively in his arms.

"Oh, Elena,Elena," he sang, a decidedly smug expression slithering onto his face. "That didn't take long at all. Still can't keep your paws off me."

"I have to get going," Elena offered reluctantly, biting her lip. "Or Jenna's going to catch me. I'll text you as soon as the coast is clear, and leave my window open for you," she winked, before sauntering off to her car, swinging her hips in a manner she knew from experience drove him wild. Perhaps she wasn't a precision-point caliber seductress like Katherine Pierce, but the college years were educational in many ways for Elena, in and out of the classroom.

It was near two in the morning by the time Elena was finally satisfied that Jeremy and Jenna wouldn't wake, and that the coast was clear enough to text Damon to climb through her window for a night-time tryst, laughing at the Shakespearean absurdity of it all, with significant hope of a happier outcome. She barely set her phone down before he appeared by her window, his presence serving to erase her worried thoughts like magic. She smiled beatifically, greeting him with a lingering kiss as soon as he entered the room.

He pulled away reluctantly, his face awash in consternation. "Elena, you said that nine whole months passed since I disappeared, right?"

"Just about, yeah."

"When did you get here?"

"Right at the moment when Stefan handed you the grimoire," her eyes widened, suddenly catching his train of thought.

“Me, too,” he replied, his expression solemn. “Only I left nine months before, but we appeared at the same exact moment. The witch – Althea? She said there would be others – both friends and adversaries. That means that whoever else came after you –”

“Is already here.”

Chapter 3

Chapter Text

Damon and Elena lay curled into each other on her bed, holding on with a desperate tightness that only two people who nearly lost one another could understand. Elena fought to catch her breath, having only made love to him for the second time as a human. Her mind dizzily recalled the first time in the barn – smiling into his neck at the beautiful memory until the day inevitably turned ugly, ending with Jo's death, the near-annihilation of the Gemini Coven, and her spelled slumber.

"I still can't believe we're here," she whispered, careful not to rouse the other occupants of the house. "After all this time."

"Do you need me to prove it to you again?" Damon pressed a finger under her chin to meet her gaze, grinning suggestively at her with a lift of his eyebrows.

Elena laughed, barely able to hear her voice above the rapid beating of her heart and pushed up to press a kiss to his waiting lips.

"I. Waited. For you. For nine months," she punctuated between hurried kisses.

"And I waited for you forfive years," Damon countered, rolling Elena to show her again precisely how much he missed her, again.

Sometime later, in the whispers of the afterglow, the night stilled between them.

"We could do so many things differently this time," Elena marveled, sighing happily as she laid her head on his shoulder.

"We could leave the tomb sealed," he offered, tracing patterns onto her thigh that was draped across him. "That would take care of that whole mess with the tomb vamps. Katherine will probably stay away, thinking that Operation Fake Death is still in motion, and hopefully Klaus and his creepy family will, too."

"I can't imagine desiccating for all eternity," Elena shivered, frowning.

"Leave it to you to feel sorry for a bunch of murderous psychopaths," he snickered affectionately, pressing a kiss to the crown of her head.

"They weren't all bad," she defended. "Wasn't there one who tried to help Stefan?"

"Harper, yeah. He was pretty decent."

"Couldn't we help him, at least?" Elena squirmed, uncomfortable with the notion of leaving others to perpetual suffering after having been a vampire herself.

"Opening the tomb would invite Katherine, and in turn the Lycos-less Wonder – who, at this point, would be a lot less amenable to listening to reason and would absolutely try to repeat all the greatest hits from the sacrifice ritual," Damon explained pointedly.

"You're right," Elena conceded, though she clearly didn't like it. "There's also Anna – who's probably on the prowl to take me hostage," she explained, in response to which Damon tightened his hold on her protectively. "I'm sure she's going to want to free her mom."

"I won't let her or anyone else hurt you. I promise, Elena," he told her earnestly.

"I know," she smiled, pressing her palm into his cheek affectionately, as she looked up to meet his stunning blue gaze. "But she won't give up – and I can honestly understand her. It must be so awful to know that her mom has been suffering for over a century. I don't think I would have understood her as well if I hadn't been a vampire, myself. If someone I loved was trapped to desiccate, I would move everything to help them escape," she explained, looking at him meaningfully. The subtext danced on her tongue, spinning merrily about, secure in the understanding that it had made itself known without morphing into its more blunt and literal counterpart – instead content to swim in finesse. She would do everything required to save those she loves.

She would take apart the Other Side with her bare hands to save him, just as they both traveled across time to save each other.

Damon smiled, a rare vulnerability coating the fiery blue of his irises and just allowed the moment to settle between them. They were here. They were really doing this. Scheming future witch and coven or not, he would save those he loves.

"We'll have to get rid of her somehow. Maybe leave her to desiccate until the next time the comet passes over Mystic Falls," he continued pragmatically.

"Harsh," Elena balked, raised both eyebrows.

"If not, we invite Isobel and John, who killed her last time," he shook his head, tipping a finger under her chin to meet her eyes, willing her to understand. "Desiccating for a dozen plus decades might be preferable to death – especially if she's reunited with her mother when the time comes. Maybe by then, Katherine and Klaus will have been dealt with. Either way, it won't be your problem anymore."

"What do you mean?" Elena frowned, not entirely pleased with the turn of the conversation. She knew this side of Damon, and it always hurt her to see how quick he was to discount his own importance in her life. She wouldn't let him get away with it – not this time.

"Humans don't exactly have the longest lifespan, Elena," Damon smiled gently at her, though she could see the pain lingering behind it.

"What about you?" she asked pointedly, raising an eyebrow.

"I don't even know if we're going to be able to find the Cure this time, but I know I won't let you die."

"Damon," she sat up immediately, turning to face him. He had to hear her. "If we don't find the Cure, you know that I'm going to turn, right?"

"Elena, it's okay," he soothed, cupping her face softly. "I know how much you want to stay human."

"Not as much as I want to be with you!" Elena shot back, outraged – then stilled when she realized how loud she was.

"You can't turn just for me," Damon insisted, wincing when he recognized the familiar flow of argument from a night that now felt like another lifetime.

"Oh really?" Elena crossed her arms, raising both eyebrows in defiance. "What happened to doing it for us? Isn't that why you took the Cure?"

"It doesn't mean that you owe me anything," he admitted, aware that this was such a fundamental part of Elena's personality – especially given her almost pathological need to excuse Stefan's behavior after he left to decorate the Eastern Seaboard with bodies with Klaus – that he had to make sure.

"I didn'tsaythat I felt like I owed you anything!" Elena hissed, throwing her arms up in frustration. "Damon, I want to be with you," she insisted, grabbing his hands, before a note of insecurity snuck into her voice. "Don't you want to be with me?"

"You know I do – of course I do," he reassured vehemently, squeezing her hands drawing her closer.

"Then what's the problem?"

"I don't want you to regret it," he finally managed after a brief silence, though she had to struggle to hear it with her human ears.

Elena softened, stroking his hair as her eyes caressed the contours of his face. "I won't, Damon. Look, I'll turn – when I'm a few years older. And if we happen to find the Cure, then we can make a decision on whether or not we take it – together. Either way, I love you, and being with you is nonnegotiable for me. It meansmore to me than being human," she insisted – though her voice was a soft whisper, there was a passion in it – a fervent aching – urging him to understand. When he offered her the Cure that Bonnie brought back from the prison world, her first instinct was not to take it, because she refused to live without him. It was only after he insisted that he would be human, too, that she changed her mind. She needed him to know that her feelings on this were still the same. "Okay?"

"Okay," he finally conceded. It was a small word – monosyllabic, conventional, often considered dispassionate. But context can be everything, and in this moment – the breath with which Damon delivered his acceptance of the ardency of her feelings, the passion burning in his cerulean eyes to rival the brightest stars in all the cosmos, the depth of euphoria and love and longing with which his lips infused the kiss that followed – finally gave her hope that he understood how much she loved him, because he had made his feelings clear long ago.

"We'll have to ask someone else to turn me, though – avoid the sire bond," Elena suggested when her human form peskily demanded airflow.

"Yeah, I'm with you there. But who? Blondie would be the obvious choice, but we don't even know if she'll turn this time around."

"Stefan? We'll have to tell him the truth eventually," she shrugged.

"Let's leave that as a last resort. I'm not exactly rushing to have this discussion with him – and in a few years, a lot may change."

"That's fair," she acquiesced. "When do you want to tell him?"

"I don't know, but I don't think we should say anything to him yet. He'll probably think I compelled you and just try to trap me to desiccate again."

"Yeah, probably," she frowned. "We'll figure it out," she reassured, pressing a kiss to his lips. "As long as we're together, I'm not worried. We'll find a way to make this work," she murmured, laying back down on his shoulder, though she failed to hide her slight wince.

"What's wrong?"

"I've just had this headache ever since I got back. It doesn't seem to want to go away."

"Afraid that's my fault. I had a tension headache coming on when I fed you my blood," he said remorsefully, then bit his wrist. "Here, drink. This should make you feel better now."

As she drank, Elena's pupils enlarged immediately, flooded with the desire and potent love infused in Damon's blood – and for the third, and likely not last time that night, they allowed their bodies to express what words already hoped to convey, unaware of the narrowed, supernatural gaze observing through a crack in the blinds.

"I can't believe I have to go to high school again," Elena complained sleepily, annoyed that her supernatural beau appeared fresh as a daisy despite also receiving the minimal sleep offered by their reunion. Sometimes she missed being a vampire. "Did I quit cheerleading yet? Please tell me Tanner's already gone. I can't deal with his douchey interrogation today," she groaned into her pillow in a manner that was only partly intelligible.

"Yeah, he's gone," Damon trailed off, hoping she doesn't ask him why. Apparently, Stefan didn't divulge this particular misdeed. "I think Ric's probably on his vengeance mission now," he offered, then frowned in recollection. "Actually, I think I killed him already," he shrugged in a manner entirely too nonchalant for the subject, when suddenly, his voice reduced to a whisper. "Someone's coming."

Elena opened her eyes to see that Damon was gone, her confusion interrupted by a loud knocking on her door, followed by Jenna's voice.Jenna!

"Elena, Bonnie's here to see you!" Jenna announced, sounding somewhat confused, no doubt by the nature of such an early-morning surprise.

The door suddenly opened and the witch in question hurried inside, hastening to shut it behind her. "Damon, where are you? I know you two weren't discussing pancake recipe," Bonnie snarked, placing emphasis on the singular, and searched the room.

Suddenly a blur whirled in through the window and grabbed Bonnie in a crushing hug. "Bon Bon! You're here,too?"

She hugged him back, laughing, then accepted an equally eager embrace from Elena. "Althea found me about a year after Elena left. Apparently, the two of you will do – or are about to do – or plan to do – something that disturbs a Fixed Point. It's all very confusing, even after she tried explaining it at length. Eventually she gave up and just told me that it's something that has to be experienced," she struggled to explain between squeals of joy shared with Elena, and tight hugs exchanged by the three.

"So, what are you here to do exactly?" Elena inquired, grabbing Bonnie's hands. "Aside from just making everything more fantastic with your presence?"

"I'm not sure. Tell me what your plans were, and we'll try to figure it out."

Damon nodded, looking at Bonnie meaningfully. "We didn't talk about this yet, but we need to –"

"—Save Enzo," Bonnie concluded, to the agreement of both interlocutors. "We'll come back to that later, but it's probably something a bit bigger – on a cosmic scale. What else?"

"We're going to try to save everyone," Elena offered, looking at Damon.

"By keeping the tomb sealed," Damon finished for her.

"Damon convinced me," Elena began, bubbling with excitement. "And it's such a brilliant idea! If we keep the tomb sealed, we can keep Katherine and Klaus away. That'll save Jenna, and John, and Isobel, and Anna – and Bonnie – yourGrams," she softened, squeezing her friend's hand. "Imagine how much easier life is going to be for us if we just leave it closed for a while longer."

Bonnie listened, taking the information in. Leaving the tomb sealed would undoubtedly make massive changes. "Althea said that an action you at this point stillplanto take – but have yet to enact – would lead to the loss of hope, which is pivotal in maintaining a healthy flow of this universe. You're in danger of creating a paradox."

"What does that mean?" Elena asked.

"Wouldn't a paradox suggest the kind of contradiction that leads its own impossibility?" Damon inquired, leading to curiously raised eyebrows from both interlocutors. "It's not like we went back in time to kill our own grandparents before they met our parents."

"I don't know yet," Bonnie admitted, listless. "Except that there's only one plan you have that has the potential for major consequences," she announced with all the peace and plans-shattering piercing gravitas that she could muster. "We have to open the tomb."

Chapter 4

Chapter Text

Bonnie thumbed through Emily's grimoire that Damon retrieved from the trunk of his car in his best imitation of a blur. "There's nothing here that every remotely sounds like what Althea described," Bonnie lamented thoughtfully. "I'm here to help you both, but I don't even know how – or with what."

The three of them had been sitting on Elena's bed and adjusting plans since Bonnie's unexpected but exuberantly welcome arrival.

"So, after making all those plans, we'restillgoing to let the tomb vampires out and repeat the ordeal of our junior year?" Elena asked grimly, plopping her head back onto the pillow.

"The tomb opening on that day is a Fixed Point," Bonnie replied, shaking her head regretfully. "That's all I know. She said that disturbing it would create a world without hope – whatever that means."

"So, leaving it closed would invite despair – on a global, maybe even cosmic, scale," Elena sighed, pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes to stimulate herself awake and her brain into functioning. She needed a cup – or a gallon – of coffee. And a vacation. Away from smug witches named Althea who took delight in speaking in riddles – which may be fun when playing a game but suddenly loses all appeal when the apparent fate of the Universe is at stake.

Coffee. Brain. Awaken. Coffee was magic, Elena groggily decided.

"Apparently," Bonnie nodded, despondent. "But maybe we can find a way to save Grams, at least! I can reach out to Lucy, or some other Bennett witches. Maybe if they share the burden, Grams can survive having to cast that level of magic," she added hopefully.

Both Damon and Elena nodded mutely, neither willing to voice that idea that Sheila's death could be the Fixed Point, as well.

"At least we don't have to lie to Anna – we can help her get her mom back and try to keep her alive," Elena beamed, desperate to find anything resembling a silver lining – though she had to admit that just Bonnie's presence was an amazing surprise enough.

"And we'll be ready when Bon-Bon doesn't deactivate the Gilbert device," Damon added, grateful for the change of subject, before his lips curved into a wry smirk. "Again."

"Hey! It's the easiest way to get them off our backs should they try for a repeat performance," Bonnie defended. "Just make sure to leave the premises before it goes off."

"Yeah, no harassing uncle John this time," Elena teased, drawing herself up to press a soft kiss to his cheek. "Let's just grab everyone and head home –"

"Just in time to the she-devil, herself," Damon grumbled.

"Ugh, Katherine," Elena groaned, dropping her head into her hands in annoyance. "I am not looking forward to seeingheragain. What did she want last time? The moonstone?"

"And to just make us as miserable as possible in the process," Damon rolled his eyes. "And Stefan. I'm pretty sure she made a few plays at him."

"Why don't we just let her have what she wants, then?" Elena shrugged.

"And why would we do that?" Damon looked horrified at the notion of acquiescing to Katherine even by an inch.

"Because Klaus will eventually take it back from her, anyway. At least this way, we'll save ourselves the trouble and focus on defeating him, instead," Elena reasoned.

Damon scoffed, though nodded, begrudgingly admitting there was some sense to it. After everything that happened since Elena's magical sleep, the very notion of working alongside the cunning vampire left him feeling ill.

"It'll unbalance her," Bonnie supported. "She'll expect us to put up a fight, but if we're smart about this, we may even gain her as an ally against Klaus."

"And why would we ever trust that raging sociopath?" Damon argued, horrified. "She had Elena sealed in the boiler room to burn in hellfire."

"We wouldn't!" Bonnie was quick to reassure him. "But it doesn't mean we can't use her. We have the advantage of foresight. Maybe we can beat her at her own game."

"Maybe," Damon conceded for the time being, knowing there was plenty of time to change both of their minds –and aware that while his brain naturally gravitated toward a logical solution regularly, it was often devoid of such benefits where Elena and her safety were concerned. "Look, you two should probably get to school. I need to make a stop at the Boarding House. I don't remember if I started drinking from blood bags yet at this time, so I may need to stock up – and see if Stef can be in the same room as me without trying to stake me – pitifully trying, of course. Getting subpar scores from all the bunny and squirrel judges he's so eager to impress."

"Nope, no school! We're getting Enzo, today," Bonnie jumped up, suddenly excited at the prospect of not only being reunited with her lost love – but also saving him from unspeakable horrors years earlier.

"Sounds great!" Elena beamed, happy to do something useful as a human, and spend some time away from Mystic Falls with its looming tomb vampires, and Stefan mopeyness, and all the problems of yesteryear. "I'll get the—"

"You're not going," Damon interrupted.

"You can't be serious!" Elena argued, aghast.

"I'm perfectly serious. You know how dangerous Wes Maxfield is, and I'm not letting you anywherenearthat place," he explained stubbornly, then amended his statement, upon further reflection, "again." Hoping to appeal to her logic, his voice softened. "Look, Bonnie and I both have supernatural powers, Elena. You'rehuman."

"Would you rather I stay here and get kidnapped by Ben and Anna to be used as leverage?" Elena arched her eyebrow smugly, knowing she likely won.

"She has a point," Bonnie interjected. "I can protect her while we're at school, but there's nothing stopping Anna from grabbing her while I'm not around."

"Fine," Damon ground out. "But you're staying in the car, and you should know how much I hate this."

"Actually," Elena bit her lip shyly, fully aware that Damon would likely explode once he heard her suggestion. "I think I should distract him while –"

"Absolutely not!" Damon interrupted hotly, the anxiety within him steadily building.

"Just hear me out," Elena soothed, placing either hand on his face to trace comforting circles on his cheeks in a way that she knew calmed him. "Not only am I human, but I'm Grayson Gilbert's daughter," she said with an internal wince, still feeling deeply wounded and betrayed that her father could have participated to such cruel atrocities. "I could pretend to be interested in Whitmore's medical program. It wouldn't be suspicious at all."

"Elena, please," Damon beseeched, naked fear coating the blue of his eyes.

"He wouldn't hurt me, Damon," Elena implored, her voice raw with emotion as her dark eyes seemed to pull him into the magic that always seemed to flow between them, of their own volition. "I'm human. I can buy you and Bonnie all the time that you need to get Enzo to safety. Without me, he may capture you both, and hurt you. Please don't put me in a position to lose you again. I couldn't bear it."

Damon only stared back, locked into their shared, deep gaze. A part of him understood the reasoning behind her request, and he couldn't bear to see her in that much pain again – that moment when he had to say goodbye to her from the Other Side had been one of the most agonizing in his life, because it physically hurt him to see her so shattered.

"We could try it," Bonnie softly interrupted their silent exchange. "I learned this spell from some river witches when traveling through the Amazon. I can charm amulets to heat up to send a signal, and place one on each of her arms. If the left one heats up, it means we need more time. If it's the right, we're good to go, and Elena can start getting out of there."

"But what if –" Damon began, still evidently worried.

"And if Elena is in trouble, all she has to do is press into either amulet, and the ones we're wearing will heat up, so we know to come help," Bonnie interrupted soothingly. "We'll make this work, Damon."

"Fine," he sighed. "We'll try it your way – but the second there's even ahintof trouble, Elena, you get out of there. Promise me."

"I promise," Elena whispered in return, having never let her hands fall from stroking his cheeks.

He smiled into Elena's ministrations, placing a soft kiss on her left palm. "How do I let the two of you talk me into these ridiculous plans? I must have the patience of a saint."

"Damon, Patron Saint of Bourbon and Sarcasm," Elena giggled, pressing a quick peck to his lips.

"And having a culinary repertoire ofone," Bonnie teased.

"Yeah, but thatonerecipe is excellent, so vampire blueberry pancakes are in a place of honor next to bourbon and sarcasm," Damon retorted.

"Hey, with that confidence, maybe someday your skills might even double into two recipes!" Bonnie grinned, nearly dancing to the door in her glee at being reunited with Enzo soon. Although heart positively melted at watching the obvious love between her two best friends, it made her acutely aware of her own loneliness and heartache – that much more determined to be reunited with the one who sent everything inside her alight with joy and wonder. "I'm off to work on the amulets. Meet back here at noon?"

"Perfect," Damon replied, gathering an increasingly groggy Elena in his arms, who couldn't quite understand why they were both acting like Damon only knew one recipe, but was too coffee-deprived to question it. "I'm off to get this one caffeinated before she implodes."

Once they arrived at Whitmore University a few hours later, and Damon compelled them all past campus security, Elena swiftly made her way toward Whitmore Hall using the front entrance. Damon and Bonnie, meanwhile, snuck into the basem*nt through a hidden door in the back. They saw that Dr. Wesley Maxfield was due to conclude his weekly office hour in ten minutes, after which there was a few-hours break before he was scheduled to teach his evening Microbiology class.

They reasonably inferred that he spent that interlude between academic responsibilities on less-than-savory pursuits.

And so, Elena was able to catch him in his office right as he was about to leave.

"Doctor Maxfield," she barged in, followed by his helplessly embarrassed student aide that served as his secretary, as he began to gather his belongings. "I was hoping to speak to you for a few minutes about joining Whitmore's excellent medical program.

"I'm sorry, but my office hour has just concluded. Please make an appointment with Trudy, and she will do her best to schedule you in," he brusquely retorted, making his way out of the room.

Elena quickly got in his path, a bright smile frozen on her face. "It'll only take a few minutes. You see, I'm a legacy –"

"I'm really sorry, Miss…?"

"Gilbert," Elena supplied.

"Miss Gilbert. But I really have to –"

"It'll only take a few minutes," she insisted, blocking his path. "It's just," she paused, forcing her voice to become softer, sadder. In reality, she was so wrecked with anxiety that the shaking quality of her speech could easily be attributed to sadness, and she hoped that this is precisely how this foul man would see it. "My father, Doctor Grayson Gilbert, used to talk about his days here all the time when I was a child. He told me that the work he did here was revolutionary – he felt that the research he did here really helped humanity," she insisted, starting to feel sick, though she hoped that the obvious distress in her voice wouldn't be correctly interpreted.

At this, Wes seemed to soften almost, nodding. "Very well. I have some important work to which I must attend, but perhaps I can allow you a few minutes. Let's walk and talk."

The basem*nt was the same dimly lit and creepy hall of nightmares that Damon remembered. Images of five of the worst years of his life came unbidden to his mind as he felt his hands tremble, his breath quicken.

"While your eyes regrow, two-one-oh-five-one, we are going to study the regenerative powers of a vampire's lungs," his tormentor nonchalantly announced as a scalpel was thrust deep into his chest and the sounds of his own screams filled the small space.

"Hey," Bonnie's hushed voice broke through his unwelcome reverie. "Are you okay?"

"Fine," Damon replied, clipped.

"Enzo told me all about what happened here," Bonnie continued softly, unconvinced.

"I don't want to talk about it. Let's just get Enzo and go," Damon pressed forward, doing all he could to push the thoughts away. Every second they spent here was one where the situation could spiral out of control, and none of them could afford to be caught.

He surprised himself with how well he was able to maneuver the place, despite only having been let out of his cell to serve at the whim of a maniac masquerading as a medical benefactor – there was nothing about Doctor Whitmore that any sane person would associate with healing.

Bonnie pressed her talisman, signaling to Elena that they still needed more time. They agreed that it would be pressed every five minutes, until no longer necessary – at which point, the other one would be pressed, to alert her that she was to quickly make her way back to the car.

"As a legacy, your admission to the program would be all but guaranteed, provided that your grade point average an SAT scores are sufficient – though as Grayson's daughter, I have trouble imagining you being anything but brilliant," Wes complimented, evidently charmed by the young woman who bravely sought him to follow in her father's footsteps.

Elena smiled, trying her best to hide her discomfort, as she sensed the warmth of the talisman attached to a bracelet on her left hand. "Thank you, Doctor Maxfield, truly. It means so much coming from such an esteemed mind as yours."

"The pleasure is mine," he smiled, as they neared a staircase. "And I'm afraid that it's here that I must take your leave. I've some important matters to which must –"

"Wait!" Elena desperately called, following him through the door and down the flight of stairs. When he stopped and looked back at her with a decidedly annoyed expression, she knew it was time to take a risk. "I'm afraid I wasn't entirely honest with you, Doctor Maxfield. Although I am very interested in following in my father's footsteps, I'm afraid that I have an ulterior motive."

"Oh? What's that?" Wes inquired with no small amount of suspicion.

"You see," Elena leaned in conspiratorially. "I found this journal my father used to keep where he described some … unorthodox experiments. Something to do with an," she paused, pretending to struggle to remember the name. "An Augustus Society?"

"The AugustineSociety," Wes replied tersely, emphasizing the correction of the name, "is a matter of great secrecy, I'm afraid, and I cannot divulge our knowledge, methods, or other aspects of our research to a complete stranger, even if she happens to be the offspring of one of the most brilliant minds of our time."

"But, you see," Elena pressed, growing desperate. "My father once cured this girl, Megan King – she was diagnosed with a rare heart condition – her prognosis grim. But thanks to this research, she was completely cured and healthy, and is still alive! I want to be able to be a part of that. I want to help people, like my father."

"The work we do here, Miss Gilbert, is not for the faint of heart. Our methods are perhaps … unusual."

"How so?" Elena asked, her body trembling with what she knew was rage and disgust, but she hoped would be mistaken for passion and curiosity.

"I regret that I can tell you no more – at least until you become a student, which I hope you do. I would be honored to take you on as an assistant then, if your interests are still so inclined," he retorted, once again making to leave.

Sensing the talisman on her left hand heating again, Elena internally cursed and ran to cut him off. "You experiment on vampires!" The gloves had come off. She knew this was an enormous risk, but she had to keep him away, and was swiftly running out of options. Short of assaulting him, this was the one course of action that would delay him. She suddenly wished she had brought something she could have used as a weapon to knock him out instead.

"You know," he breathed, his eyes widening. "Were your father's journals that detailed?"

Elena nodded mutely, not trusting herself to speak.

"Perhaps I was mistaken about you, Miss Gilbert, and you have the stomach to do what it takes, after all. I was about to conduct some research now actually. Would you like to accompany me and see for yourself?"

Elena felt bile rise in her throat at his obvious excitement. Swallowing thickly, she forced herself to smile. "I would be delighted," she shakily replied, and followed him through a door to which only he had the key.

"Who needs keys when you have magic?" Bonnie smugly shrugged, making short work of yet another poor excuse for an obstacle on their way to success.

Within minutes, they were at Enzo's cell. He sat silently against a wall, though his eyes were booming with rage, instantly locked with the shame-filled ones of Damon. It occurred to Bonnie very suddenly that he had absolutely no idea who she was, and the very notion of her one true love not being even remotely aware of her existence filled her with agony.

"Enzo," she barely heard Damon whisper, causing his interlocutor to jolt from his position, grabbing the bars in less than a second.

"Well, well, well – looks like the prodigal Judas returns," he sneered, his voice broken, yet nevertheless filled with contempt.

"We don't have time for this," Bonnie finally managed, her voice thick with emotion, as she whispered a spell to open the cell door.

Within moments, Damon blurred in to break Enzo's neck, lifting his prone form over his shoulder. "Let's go," Damon announced flatly, masking any unbidden emotion from his voice.

Bonnie nodded, and pressed the talisman that would heat on Elena's right arm as soon as they left the basem*nt.

Elena and Wes were nearly at Enzo's cell by the time she finally, mercifully, felt the warmth of the talisman on her right arm. Breathing a sigh of relief, she made a big gesture of looking at her phone, gasping in alarm. "Doctor Maxfield! I am so sorry! I hadn't realized what time it was. I'm afraid I'm late for a meeting with a friend on campus, who promised to show me around. I couldn't just leave her," she explained, hoping she sounded sympathetic. "Please say that you'll still be willing to show me your research in the future."

"Of course," he nodded, sounding disappointed. "On your way then, Miss Gilbert."

Elena nodded enthusiastically, and wasted no effort bounding for the door, unaware of what was found as soon as he turned the corner to the now-empty cell.

"You helped them! You were distracting me before!" Wes roared, quickly catching up to Elena and grabbing her arm roughly, dragging her to the cells.

Elena gasped, alarmed by his strength, deducing that he must have been dosing himself with Enzo's blood regularly. "No, you must be mistaken! I would never –"

"I don't care who you are, or who your father was, Miss. Gilbert," he interrupted, seething with betrayal. "If my vampire is not returned to me in forty-eight hours, you'll be taking his place," he declared, before shoving her inside and locking the door. "Forty-eight hours. I have everything I need to turn you, and no one will ever find you again."

Elena sank to the floor, her head falling miserably into her hands. She was a weak human again, reliant on others to save her. Damon will undoubtedly come for her, she realized, only to get himself caught, too. Perhaps Bonnie, as well. This was a nightmare.

And if they did get out, they were only months away from ancient vampires hunting her for her doppelgänger blood, putting everyone in danger yet again.

Her hand hovered over the talisman, but she ultimately decided against pressing it. If Damon and Bonnie rush in to help her, they'll only get caught. Although she knew that they would regardless, perhaps if they waited, Wes would lower his guard.

Maybe the most ethical course of action for her would be to just disappear. It would save Jenna's life, and John's, and keep Jeremy from losing yet another family member. She understood realistically that if Klaus learned about her existence, he would undoubtedly find her, but at least if she's alone, her loved ones would be safe. She would have to sneak away. Damon would be hurt, but at least he would be alive. Last time was too close for comfort, and there's no guarantee that he would survive his encounter with the Original would-be hybrid this time around.

"Where the hell is she?" Damon paced in front of his Camaro, whose trunk now held a recently-freed Augustine vampire, growing increasingly agitated. "Are you sure you pressed it? Press it again. Maybe it's not working –"

"It'sworking," Bonnie stressed, trying to stay visibly calm, though she was admittedly getting nervous, too. "Neither of us felt our talismans heat up, and Elena knows to press hers if she's in trouble."

"Does she!?" Damon agonized, near to ripping his hair out with worry. "Do you even remember what she can be like?"

"Don't do anything rash, Damon," Bonnie stressed, grabbing his arms. "You know how you get when it comes to her. We need to think. We need to plan."

"It's been half an hour, Bon! Do you have any idea what he could be doing to her by now? Screw this, I'm going," he murmured, willing the images from his mind as he raced back into the building to save Elena, praying he was not too late.

Bonnie watched him blur away and took a deep breath. Though she understood his behavior perfectly – having exhibited similar anxiety-fueled carelessness when Enzo was in danger – she knew that one of them had to be rational if they were going to all survive this.

Seething, she felt the magic within her crackle. Wes Maxfield had already taken so much from them – in his sneering, hateful, self-righteous hubris.

But today would be different. Today they would win, because he may think he has the the upper hand, but he had never encountered a Bennett witch.

Wes violently jerked his laptop open, relieved to see that the internet was at least finally working again. Taking measured breaths, he opened his email, in view of the human prisoner behind him. Aside from the usual professional correspondence at the university and several requests for extensions from desperate students, there was a suspicious one from an unknown address.

When he opened it, he found a most peculiar message.

Elena Gilbert will endeavor to distract you today while 21051 and a powerful witch free your vampire prisoner. If you allow them to get away and take her hostage, you can set a trap to capture them all.

Wes sat back and marveled at the curious turn of events. Had be received this email before Elena's visit, he likely would have sent her away immediately, assuming that she had been part of the scheme behind the correspondence, but with its delayed delivery, it seemed he would have no choice but to follow the mysterious sender's advice.

Affording a withering glance to the girl miserably curled up in her cell, he began to look through the basem*nt's architecture for the best place to trap the escaped test subject and the - witch? – that accompanied him. The rational thinker within him wanted to laugh at the existence of magic, though even vampires were once rumored to be mere fantasy.

A witch. Curious. Perhaps the day would see him the winner, after all.

Chapter 5

Chapter Text

Damon sped toward the basem*nt that haunted his memories for decades before he was forced to confront them several years ago – though it did little to lessen their impact. Even when under the murderous haze of compiled trauma when he carved out his tormentor's eyes did he fail to feel reprieve.

Elena had always told him that vengeance was never the key to relief – that the vicious acid of hate damages the vessel far more than its intended target. But how does one let go of five years of that?

And if his five years had haunted him so deeply, how much did Enzo's seventy?

He got near enough where voices would carry before he heard the tell-tale blearing pain of one of Bonnie's aneurysm attacks inside his skull. "What the hell!?" he screamed, grabbing his head.

She panted as she struggled to catch up to him, though this did nothing to lessen her worry-tinged rage. "Sorry," she panted breathlessly, pointing at his head. "I don't get it. You kept your cool when Kai had her in the school from what Alaric told me – long enough to come up with a solid plan –"

"Kai wasn't an Augustine!" Damon hotly interrupted. "You have no idea what they're capable of!"

"Yes, I do, Damon," Bonnie gently persisted, having finally caught her breath. "Enzo told me."

"Hearing about it and experiencing it are two very different things, I assure you – just like I'm certain that he left out the ugliest parts to spare you."

"Maybe," Bonnie reluctantly admitted. "But please, don't run in there in a rage. We have to think of a plan. You know this – and normally you'd be the first person to insist on this."

"I know," Damon deflated. "I was honestly just planning on scouting the area – see where he's keeping her, though I have a suspicion we both already know. He obviously figured out that she was helping us, so he's counting on us saving her."

"Exactly! So, we can't just give him what he wants," finally feeling like she was making some headway.

"But the longer she stays there, the greater the chance that he might hurt her," Damon argued, looking pained. It had been bad enough when they had both been captured during Elena's freshman year at Whitmore, but at least he was there, too – at least there was hope that he could keep her safe by making sure he was the one chosen for experiments until they both escape.

But now she was there alone. Unprotected. He should have never agreed to this. This was all his fault, Damon berated himself.

"Elena's human," Bonnie reasoned, before asking a question to which she was afraid of hearing the answer. "Do you really think he would?"

"I think that their so-called 'mission,' where they torture vampires to save human lives, is just an excuse that they tell themselves. No one inflicts that kind of pain for a noble cause. Whatever their real motivations are, they don't care who gets hurt along the way," Damon spat bitterly. "I'm not saying he'll torture her right away, but he'll have no qualms about hurting or even killing her to get another subject, especially since she clearly knows his secret," he added, trying to hide the obvious fear creeping into his voice.

Bonnie nodded, the horrific implications of Damon's words making sense. "Okay. Then we go in together. I'll cloak us both."

"Deal, as long as you hurry it up."

"We have to go in at normal human speed," Bonnie stressed. "I won't be able to keep it up otherwise."

As they neared the building, Damon's entire body sagged in obvious relief. "She's okay – for now," he explained in answer to Bonnie's curious look, her non-verbal prompting. "I can hear her voice, her breathing. She doesn't sound hurt. Afraid, maybe, but at least she seems to be physically fine – for now."

As they neared their destination, Damon was able to make out some of the conversation between the two. He smiled to himself as he realized that Elena was trying to mask her fear with sarcasm – a trait she shared with him that only became magnified as they spent more time together. He could only imagine how scared she must be, resolved to get her free as quickly as possible.

"We'll get her out, Damon," Bonnie reassured, placing a comforting hand on his arm. "I promise you. He won't have the chance to hurt her."

Anna continued to play and re-play the previous night's events in her mind. So, Elena Gilbert was with Damon Salvatore now? They certainly looked cozy, from what she saw through a crack in Elena's bedroom window's blinds.

When she received a mysterious text message from a private number that told her to observe Elena's room that night for clues on freeing her mother, she expected to see Emily's grimoire or a magical artifact, not her spending the night wrapped in the elder Salvatore's arms.

Why would this even be a clue? So, Damon was so hung up on Katherine, that he was using her human doppelgänger as an obvious replacement? And she'd clearly fallen for it. Maybe he compelled her?

Except she didn't seem to be compelled – and from his dulcet tones, their obviously genuine laughter, his tender touches, he didn't seem to be faking, either. Although she had been too far away to make out their exact words, the general tone spoke volumes about obvious affection.

It didn't make any sense.

Was she playing them both, like Katherine? And if Damon really did fall for Elena, would he even care about opening the tomb anymore?

And now neither of them could be found, along with the Bennett witch that suddenly cancelled her date with Ben the night before, thwarting their plans.

She had to investigate this further. Combined with her mysterious contact, a lot of this was entirely too suspicious to ignore.

It was with this thought in mind that she found herself sitting in an armchair in the Salvatore Boarding House parlor, bourbon in hand, waiting for Stefan to return from school.

Elena forced herself to breathe deeply, rationalizing that despite her fears, Damon and Bonnie would almost certainly come to rescue her. She needed to get a hold of herself to remain even remotely useful. She kicked herself that prior to Damon's temporary death and the outright trauma of her grief, she had been able to hold herself together much better at the thought of him being in danger. Although she had nearly lost him several times prior to that, it had never felt quite as real.

She was never confronted with the actual possibility of spending a life without him.

Then during that awful Summer when she felt that every fiber within her continuously died with her recollection of that night's events – that night that was seared, erased, and re-seared into her memory as the worst of her existence – she felt herself withering away and changing into someone she couldn't recognize. First, she bullied Luke – practically emotionally blackmailing him to give her psychedelic herbs to hallucinate Damon, despite how dangerous they made her – despite them nearly turning her into a killer.

And then, when faced with the very real danger she posed to others, she had Alaric rewire her psyche to hate him. And yet, a small piece always remained – even in the throes of the hypnotic compulsion, the thought of him hurt or in danger sent her into a blind panic.

And now that her memories were back, it had been even worse. Shaking off her vivid recollections of the Summer and the memories and the fear that continued to haunt her, Elena channeled herself of yesteryear – the brave, irreverent, sassy girl who went toe-to-toe with an ancient, vindictive witch while spelled to be trapped in her cabin. If she could face Qetsiyah, then she could certainly stand to ruffle a few of Wes Maxfield's feathers.

"So as far as creepy mad scientists go, I'm guessing you're not very bright, since all your grand plans got thwarted by a teenage girl with a hastily-concocted cover story and access to WiFi," Elena shrugged casually, fighting to keep her tone light and irreverent, though she supposed she was probably in her mid-twenties by now – depending on whether or not she should count her magical coma years as learned experience. No need for him to know about any magical amulets. After her stunning display of vulnerability in her anxiety attack over Damon and Bonnie being in danger just minutes prior, she desperately needed to save face with her eerie captor.

And she honestly could see no better way than by riling him up, at least a little.

"What makes you think that this wasn't part of my plan, Miss Gilbert?" Wes asked, reluctant to let her get under his skin.

"I think you'll want to play it off that way to save your ego, sure, but you definitely looked surprised."

"I think you'll find that I'm very adaptable."

"Somehow I doubt that," Elena laughed. "The tie and matching sweater vest don't exactly scream 'go with the flow,' do they?"

"Your attitude's certainly changed in the last few minutes. A far cry from – what were you – practically hyperventilating in the floor of that cell just now?"

"Maybe I'm the adaptable one," she sassed, raising an eyebrow. "How did you manage to …Hulk out, anyway? You certainly don't look like a guy who spends a lot of time at a gym" she followed up, when she could see that he went back to ignoring her and studying his plans. Perhaps distracting him from analyzing the blueprints of the basem*nt's layout and any potential hidden compartments he may have missed could prevent the ambush her subconscious so obviously feared. "Oh, come on. You're obviously not going to let me go, anyway. I know your dirty little secret."

Wes smirked, not taking his eyes off the monitor. "Clever deduction, Miss Gilbert. Perhaps the proverbial apple didn't fall far from the tree. Too bad you chose to use your clever mind to betray your species."

"At least I'm not betraying the dignity of life," Elena shot back.

"How droll. Your concern for the creatures that consider humanity no better than livestock is truly inspirational," Wes finally turned to look at her, rolling his eyes with disdain.

"They're not all like that, you know," Elena insisted, hopeful that perhaps she could change his mind – or at least distract him. "They have souls, hopes, dreams. A lot of them just want to live normal lives, without hurting anyone."

"What they have is an insatiable appetite for our blood, and a medically useful healing factor – so despite their menacing existence, they can still prove to be useful to humans. Your father understood this."

Elena bit back a comment about her father, her mind unwittingly traveling to a letter scribed by a man who learned love, tolerance, and acceptance a bit too late."Human or vampire, I'll love you just the same."And yet, she found her entire soul to be filled with an all-encompassing warmth when she thought back on the complicated figure that was John Gilbert. But he was alive in this timeline! Perhaps she could reach him this time. Perhaps she could even –-

She shook her head, forcing those thoughts away. She had an entirely different goal that she absolutely had to focus on. "My father's not who I thought he was," she only commented cryptically, resolving not to elaborate. "So, your super-strength?" she prodded again, determinedly changing the subject.

"A new formula I've been perfecting. I've been extracting small pieces of my subject's heart. As you know, a vampire would die if the heart were to be removed – it pumps the blood throughout the body, allowing it to function like a superhuman specimen of humanity. It stands to reason, then, that –"

"These qualities would be concentrated in the heart's tissue," she finished for him morosely, starting to understand the depravity of his plan.

"Yes!" Wes confirmed excitedly. "The challenge, however, was to extract pieces of the tissue without killing my subject," Wes explained, enjoying that he finally had a chance to discuss his breakthrough, even if it was with Grayson Gilbert's traitorous daughter.

"So, you cut out parts of his heart," Elena breathed, horrified.

"The increments were quite tiny, I assure you. I couldn't risk one-two-one-four-four's life. He was entirely too useful," Wes replied matter-of-factly, while Elena's face contorted in disturbance. "I then created a serum that I injected into my own bloodstream."

"You experimented on yourself?" Elena asked, shocked, then forced herself to recover. "Equal opportunity psycho. I suppose the next dose is for me?"

"I would hardly equip you with means to escape, Miss Gilbert. Perhaps you hope me to be naïve since you seemingly tricked me once before, but I assure you that it was a fluke. But yes, this serum is only useful to a human, and I couldn't risk divulging this secret to anyone who would have power against me. Ergo, I used it on myself."

"And of course, now that I'm stuck here, you've no problem with telling me about it," Elena supplied resentfully.

Wes was about to reply when the motion detectors picked up a presence by a backdoor. The cameras showed nothing, though he suspected that Elena Gilbert's supernatural friends were finally on their way to mount their rescue mission.

He typed a code into the security system and waited.

"How are there only two entrances to this Frankenstein Freakshow?" Damon mouthed to Bonnie as they stalked past the doorway, only visible to each other thanks to the cloaking spell.

"How would I know?" she mouthed back, looking exasperated at having to make conversation while maintaining a complex spell. "Maybe you should have taken it up with your former tormentor," she gestured emphatically toward the cells.

"When? During the fire? Excuse me, Doctor Whitmore," he pantomimed. "I was wondering if you could interrupt your roasting marshmallow impression to consider installing additional entrances – for, you know, fire safety. Ooh, oops! I guess it's too late!" he widened his eyes comically, bringing a hand to his mouth in jest.

Bonnie rolled her eyes, fighting a smirk despite only being able to make out half the words, which promptly disappeared. Something felt wrong – very wrong. The air in the room was a lot dryer than before. She closed her eyes, concentrating as she reached out with her magic to try to ascertain the difference – when suddenly, they snapped open as she felt the hum of extra electricity. There were additional devices active in the room that hadn't been operative a mere half hour ago. As she stopped to gather her bearings to maintain the cloaking spell through, she noticed Damon plunging ahead.

She flailed her arms, trying to get Damon's attention, but it was too late. As soon as he stepped over the threshold of the adjoining room, a large steel trapdoor closed behind him, separating him from Bonnie, as therefore forcing him to become visible again.

As Damon rematerialized, he found the waiting form of Wes Maxfield before him, vervain gun in hand. He dodged the pellets easily, weaving around him as he made his way toward the cells to free Elena, when suddenly an inhuman force caught him from behind, and threw him into the adjacent wall.

"What the hell are you?" Damon groaned, before dislodging himself from the hole created by the force of his impact.

"The next step in the evolution of mankind," replied his opponent's snide voice, as he sped in Damon's direction, ready to continue his assault.

Damon sidestepped his punch, rolling behind the fallen table to grab the disc-shaped top to throw it at Wes' head. As the hit landed, Damon took the opportunity to deliver the killing bow, but as he reached his opponent, Wes plunged his arm into Damon's chest, grabbing his heart. Momentarily weakened by the intrusion, Damon didn't notice as Wes' other hand injected him with vervain, promptly knocking him out.

Bonnie cursed on the other side, straining to open the contraption. This was going to take a while

Perhaps for the first time ever, she was grateful for Enzo's weakened state, because he would undoubtedly wake up long before the three of them actually managed to escape the Augustine Society's clutches.

Stefan stopped abruptly in his tracks upon finding Annabelle Zhu seated entirely too comfortably on an armchair in his parlor. He inched toward her slowly, acutely aware of her superior strength, despite her petite appearance.

"Anna."

"Wow, Stefan. I see you're still an ace at spotting the obvious. Must be what draws all those doppelgänger girls in," she quipped, wanting to hurry this along. "Speaking of which, where is your Katherine look-alike?"

"What are you doing here?" he asked warily.

"I'm just hoping you'll be able to help me solve a little mystery. Usually that doesn't involve answering questions with questions."

"I'm not telling you anything about Elena until you tell me what you want with her," Stefan emphasized to Anna's elaborate eye-roll.

"Fine. I guess I'll just have to look for her myself. Say, do you think Damon's seen her?" she asked with an air of exaggerated drama. "Because I haven't seen him either. Funny that," she remarked, before swiftly exiting the grand estate. Perhaps speaking with Stefan wouldn't net any leads, but following him, now that she'd planted the idea in his head, just might.

As Damon felt the first stirrings of consciousness, the world around him began to materialize through the pounding pain of the vervain headache. Groaning, he forced himself into an upright position, as the bright lights of the basem*nt assaulted his eyes.

He was back – back in the hellhole where he spent five of the worst years of his life, accentuated by the "D.S." carved into the wall behind him.

As his own sense of foreboding began to take hold, his mind suddenly remembered the reason he was here.Elena!Looking around frantically, he saw her curled up into a ball in the cell next to his, her knees hiding her face from view, though his heart ached when he heard her soft whimpers.

"Hey, psycho-Doogie! Did you get your medical degree from YouTube University? In case it escaped your notice, she's human!"

"Miss Gilbert is to remain in my custody until my subject is returned. She has robbed me of a vampire, so unless one-two-one-four-four comes back, she will take his place – so I suggest you cooperate and answer honestly about his whereabouts."

"You have a vampire!" He screamed, pounding on the door so hard that his knuckles bled. "Me! Now let her go!"

"Ah, two-one-oh-five-one. How does it feel to be back home?"

"Screw you," Damon growled, his usual snark quickly replaced by rage as the anxiety threatened to overwhelm him. He was back here – and what was worse, this monster clearly had no qualms about hurting Elena, despite her being human.

At least Bonnie hadn't been caught yet. She was their last hope.

"I see that you bloodsucking monsters are as eloquent as ever."

"Sorry I didn't get to work on my charm and etiquette much last time I was here, what with my tongue and eyes and other organs carved out so often. Let's switch places, and you can show me how it's done."

"You must find yourself very amusing, two-one-oh-five-one. Miss Gilbert did, too. Seems her moxie left her," Wes commented cryptically, before walking out of the room.

Growling, Damon continued punching and kicking against the lock until his knuckles bled. Bonnie couldn't come soon enough, Damon lamented, praying she wasn't caught.

As Elena's breathing became more shallow with anxiety, Damon ceased his barrage against the cell door and dropped to the ground, reaching out to her through the small window.

"Hey, Elena," he soothed. "It'll be okay. Bon-Bon is still out there, and she'll get us out. I won't let him hurt you – I promise," he emphasized, hoping that his words were true.

"Damon?" Elena finally lifted her tear-filled eyes, almost sobbing his name. "What are we doing here?"

"Did he hurt you?" he asked, bile rising in his throat at her visible distress.

"I – I don't know. I just appeared here in this cell. He described what he was going to do to me, to you – to all of us. Do they really experiment on people here? He said he's never had a female test subject before and –"

"What's the last thing you remember, Elena, before you found yourself here?" Damon asked, dreading her reply.

Elena looked at him strangely, her large brown eyes wide with fear and confusion. "We were in the cemetery. You caught Stefan and me betraying you, and you fed me your blood."

For a long moment, Damon wasn't sure that he heard her correctly. He stared at her as he felt the fibers of his heart crushing under the weight of this bombshell. This couldn't be happening. Not after everything they went through.

But the longer he stared at the clear trepidation on Elena's face – her obvious distrust of him as she refused to come nearer, wouldn't reach for his hand, refused to meet his eyes – the more the unavoidable realization struck him in his heart, shattering it entirely.

His Elena was gone – and there was no telling if she would ever be back.

Chapter 6

Chapter Text

Damon's undead heart sped up to the point that he wondered if he'd be having severe heart palpitations had he been mortal. This couldn't be happening. He forced himself to breathe evenly – to slow down – so as to not frighten Elena any further.

"What do you mean, Elena?" he asked quietly, slowly, with forced patience.

"I mean that we were in the cemetery. You threatened to turn me. And then I found myself here," Elena explained in a hushed tone, when her eyes suddenly widened in fear. "Oh my God, did you turn me? Am I a vampire? Is this how I ended up here? He said I was human – for now."

"Nonononono, Elena – I swear to you, I didn't – I would never do anything to you that you don't want," he tried reaching for her again through the small opening between the cells but was dismayed when she backed away from him even further. "I was just trying to scare Stefan."

"How did we end up here?" She looked around frantically, not hearing him.

"Do you remember anything about the last few years?" he asked, desperate for some shred of hope that his Elena was still in there. "About taking the Cure? Or the meteor shower?" When she stared at him blankly, he tried some more unpleasant memories – perhaps those were more visceral and memorable. "Kai? Being under a sleeping spell? Me dying?"

"You died?" Elena asked, alarmed. That finally got her attention. She looked almost pained at the notion, which gave Damon a sliver of hope. Maybe whatever happened was temporary? And her memories could be retrieved?

"I got better," he grinned, affecting an air of carefree roguishness. "Turns out death is too boring, so I decided to crash the life party again."

Damon smiled genuinely for the first time in hours, when he saw that he finally teased a reluctant laugh out of Elena – but that quickly disappeared as Wes strolled back into the room.

"I just spoke to my graduate student, Nathaniel. He'll be in shortly to begin your procedure, Miss Gilbert," Wes delivered in a clipped tone, never taking his eyes from his laptop as he added some notes.

At the blood noticeably leaving Elena's face, combined with her backing away into a corner, Damon turned to Wes with a threatening inquisitiveness. "What procedure?"

"Miss Gilbert's presence here provides me with a unique opportunity in my quest to usher in the next step in mankind's evolution."

"You were never going to let her go, were you?"

"No, she's already seen too much. I can't take the security risk."

"I can compel her to forgeteverything," Damon ground out. "About everything she saw here – about vampires – even about the supernatural, in general. My compulsions stick. Just let her go," he swallowed thickly, forcing the next word from a deep part of his soul that firmly rebelled against it. "Please."

"Sorry, but no," Wes replied, sounding not even remotely apologetic. "One, I have no reason to trust either one of you – you could pretend to compel her, and she could just as easily pretend that it worked. And, more importantly, two, Miss Gilbert's presence here is kismet."

Wes finally turned to face them, studying Elena as though she were a particularly interesting mutation under a microscope.

"Miss Gilbert, huh? What, no number?"

"Not yet,two-one-oh-five-one," Wes replied, emphasizing the number with disdain. "Miss Gilbert here will serve the noble purpose of helping usher in a new, superior breed of humans by acting as my surrogate. My graduate student will implant the fertilized egg into her uterus, and it will receive weekly doses of my solution, extracted from my previous subject's heart."

"And you just happen to have fertilized eggs lying around, waiting for the occasion that a human woman should wander in."

"We offer fertility treatment at Whitmore Medical Center. I simply had my student obtain one set and replace it with placebos," Wes began nonchalantly, when a tall, stern-looking man walked into the room. "Ah, you're here. Wonderful! Nathaniel will administer the egg via in vitro fertilization," Wes announced, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. "I've been looking forward to launching this phase of my experiment for too long. Should this fail, we will plan more properly next time."

"I won't do it!" Elena finally spoke up, forcing herself to stand on shaking limbs. Damon watched with admiration as she approached the bars despite her obvious fear – a show of courage. "I won't be a part of this psychotic plan! I refuse."

"I'm afraid you have no choice, Miss Gilbert. You will become the mitochondrial Eve of the next step of human evolution, and that's all there is to it. Your father would be very proud. Think of this as a way of redeeming yourself after aiding and abetting these monsters," Wes countered through narrowed eyes.

"The only monster here is you!" Elena roared as she railed against the bars, the tears that had gathered in her eyes finally falling.

"If you were never going to let Elena go, what incentive do we have to return Enzo?" Damon inquired, trying desperately and failing to appear unconcerned.

"I can see that despite having no soul, you seem to care for her well-being. So, the incentive is this: she will remain here, but her level of comfort in her captivity is negotiable. Your choice will decide whether she keeps her name or becomes a number, as you so eloquently put it," Wes stepped forward menacingly, looking at Damon for the first time since he re-entered the room. Damon's blood ran cold when he realized that the threat wasn't idle. "Bring Miss Gilbert into the examination room and begin the procedure, Nathaniel," Wes continued, unblinking.

"Wwwwaaait," Elena stuttered, stalling. "Aren't you supposed to stimulate fertility with a shot first? My friend's mom had this done. It's a whole, lengthy procedure –"

"I checked your medical records, Miss Gilbert. According to your primary care physician, your last menstrual cycle was two weeks ago, which puts you in the perfect window of ovulation. Given your age and general physical condition, I think fertility would be a safe assumption. If I am mistaken, I can find other uses for you once I turn you into a vampire," Wes replied matter-of-factly. "Today, Nathaniel," he urged impatiently.

Nathaniel opened the cell, receiving an immediate kick to the groin from Elena that caught him by surprise. As he doubled over, she punched him in the jaw, momentarily startling him as his mouth bled. Seizing the opportunity to escape and call for help, she bolted past them, but was swiftly caught by Wes. "I guess I have to do everything myself," Wes sighed, and dragged a struggling Elena out of the room, to Damon's increasingly loud screams of protest, knuckles bloody from banging against the steel bars of the cell.

“LET HER GO, YOU PSYCHOTIC –!”

Once inside the examination room, he began strapping her to a table when a sudden noise gave him pause. "She doesn't leave this room until the embryo has been implanted. Is that clear?" he instructed Nathaniel.

"Crystal," his graduate student nodded, strapping Elena's other hand in, as Wes left to evaluate the disturbance.

What Wes found when he entered the room was beyond anything he could imagine – never in his wildest dreams could he have imagined the entire room in controlled flames. It was as though they had a mind of their own, carefully avoiding his work, but destroying everything else in sight.

His subject had evidently escaped, given that the cell door was wide open. There was a young woman waiting for him, holding flames in her hands.

"I've been waiting for this for a long time," she uttered in a hushed tone that he found more threatening than the loudest scream. When she finally turned, he saw her eyes glowing. It was a truly terrifying sight.

"And who are you supposed to be?"

"Someone who's going to give you what you deserve. You've done unspeakable damage to two of the people I love most of this world, and you were about to do it to a third. I'm not a vindictive person, but I'm going to enjoy this."

Realizing that this is likely the witch he was warned about, Wes sought to capture her before she could damage his lab further. He barely caught her next words, because after that he only knew indescribably bright light and exultating pain – and after that, he knew no more.

"Phasmatos incendia," Bonnie chanted.

"What the hell is wrong with both of you!?" Elena screamed, kicking at Nathaniel, who began strapping her feet to the examination table. "I didn't consent to any of this!"

"I'm beyond caring what you want. The Doc wants it done? It's getting done," Nathaniel replied tersely, still nursing his shaky tooth and shakier ego from her earlier attack. In his distraction, he failed to notice that the second strap on her leg was loose. When he moved to inject her with the syringe, she kicked it out of his hand, the contents spilling upon impact with the examination room's floor.

"You little bitch! Fine, you want to play it that way? You think you can get away from this by destroying the vials? Guess we'll just have to do it the old-fashioned way," he sneered, grabbing her by the throat and shoving her flat onto the table. Elena only had seconds to ponder the underlying threat in his statement, as her vision darkened around the edges from lack of oxygen, before he was abruptly removed from her. She sat up shakily to find Nathaniel dead at Damon's feet, his neck twisted in an unnatural angle. Damon killed him without even bothering to feed from him. Or maybe he had ingested vervain? Elena a little surprised at the direction of her thoughts, considering her trembling hands, and knees, and very being.

"Elena, are you okay?" Damon asked soothingly as he quickly unstrapped her hands and foot, moving to draw her into an embrace, from which she violently flinched away. She barely caught the wounded look in his eyes before he covered it and took a step back from her.

"I'm fine," she swallowed thickly, wrapping her arms around herself. "Let's just get out of here. Where's Bonnie?"

Damon was about to answer, when the woman in question ran into the examination room. "We have to go. Now!"

"Wait, we have to get his files – figure out what he's done to her memories," Damon urged. "You left them, right?"

"Yeah, grab them and let's go. I can't control the flames for much longer."

The three of them ran out of the basem*nt just as flames began to engulf everything in the basem*nt, taking with them Wes' laptop, files, and a few vials that they were certain weren't dangerous illnesses – in case one of them may contain a lead to Elena's mysterious memory loss.

"Elena, you should really take some of Damon's blood. Those bruises on your neck look really bad," Bonnie advised, wincing, once they were finally by the car. Elena had immediately slid to the backseat.

Bonnie moved to sit in the front, but Damon shook his head, gesturing to Elena. "She needs you more," he mouthed silently, hoping she understood him.

"Why? So that he could forcibly turn me like he threatened?" Elena rasped, annoyed, as soon as Bonnie sat next to her. "What's with you, Bonnie? Since when do you take his side?"

Damon shut his eyes tightly, his knuckles white against the steering wheel as the Camaro finally left Whitmore University's parking lot. He prepared himself for this when he first arrived – knowing that Elena would probably still hate him, still love Stefan – and he calmed himself that it was still worth it, because she'd be safe. He'd even resolved to possibly keep her at a distance, really give her a chance to live a happy, normal life, outside of supernatural interference.

But it hurt so much more now after learning she followed him – after happiness had been so close within reach.

"There's a lot more to this than you know, Elena," Bonnie said softly, taking her friend's hand, and smiling when Elena leaned into her embrace, though a few seconds later, she frowned in consternation. Something felt very odd to her about Elena suddenly – different than before, almost on a magical level.

"Where to?" Damon asked.

"We can't go to my place," Bonnie lamented. "Grams might givemea magical aneurysm if I invite you inside," she smirked, despite the seriousness of the situation.

"The Boarding House is out, too. We can't bring Stef in on this – not yet," Damon replied.

"You killed him," Elena accused, snapping out of her stupor. "You just killed his assistant."

"He tried to hurt you, Elena," Damon responded in a clipped tone. "I have a general rule that if someone hurts you – or even tries – they don't get to live. He's just lucky we were in a hurry, so his death was quick and painless."

"You follow rules?" Elena asked dubiously, a surprising warmth filling her with the familiarity that came from teasing him. "Since when?"

"Even I have to break my rule about breaking rules sometimes, Elena. Can't be too predictable," he grinned, feeling hope flourish in his chest for the first time in hours at the sight of the smile Elena was desperately trying to hide through the rearview mirror.

As they drove into the night, Elena was startled by the thumps coming from the trunk. "What's that?"

"Oh, that's Enzo. I guess he finally woke up," Bonnie sighed, though Elena could hear the trepidation in her voice.

"Who's Enzo?" Elena asked, alarmed. "And why is he in Damon's trunk?"

"He's the vampire we rescued from Doctor Creepy," Damon supplied. "No need to worry. He's so close to desiccation that he won't be able to break out until we let him out."

"That's not why I'm worried, Damon! Why is he in the trunk, and not in here with us?" Elena asked, exasperated.

"He's not exactly mentally stable –" Damon winced.

"Oh, and you are?" Elena interrupted, a smile teasing her lips. "The height of mental balance and measured behavior?"

"I'll have you know, Elena, that brooding and forehead wrinkle cultivation isn't the actual definition of psychological health. You shouldn't listen to my brother so much on that front – or any, really."

They reached a comfortable silence. Banter and teasing were where they met – how they found each other – the secret hideaway and home they created for themselves in the first place. Maybe, with hope, they'd find it again.

"Foreclosure?" Damon asked.

"Isn't Isobe—?" Bonnie began asking.

"Not until we openit," Damon interrupted, looking at Bonnie meaningfully. "It should be fine for now, and we can just pick a different one," he continued, to Bonnie's confirming nod.

As they drove to Mystic Falls, the night was filled with Enzo's annoyed thumping in the trunk, Elena and Bonnie holding each other for shared comfort, and Damon trying to will the shattered pieces of his heart whole again, desperately trying to infuse himself with hope.

Chapter 7

Chapter Text

It had been evening by the time they arrived in Mystic Falls, the autumnal Sun having already set for hours, allowing the increasing crispness in the air to instead pay tribute to the luminous Moon. Elena noted that it was beautiful and full above their heads, shining with an almost dazzling magic.

"I need to go home," Elena urged, when she saw that Damon wasn't driving in the direction of her house. "Jenna's probably worried sick."

"Just call her and tell her you're staying over at my place tonight," Bonnie insisted. "We have a lot to talk about."

"I would, but I left my phone behind," Elena lamented. "I'm pretty sure that Whitmore's resident mad scientist had it taken from me, because it wasn't on me anymore when I – found myself there," she frowned, unable to think of another way to describe the feeling of suddenly finding herself in a dark basem*nt cell, when her previous memory had her placed miles away. Was she losing time? Just how much time passed, anyway?

"Oh, sorry," Damon announced contritely, handing Elena back her phone. "I grabbed our phones along with all this other stuff on the way out, and completely forgot I had it."

Elena snatched it from him with a look of suspicious annoyance out of sheer habit, only to see that her battery must have died sometime during the day. "It's dead."

"It's okay, I'll call her," Bonnie suggested, desperate to alleviate some of the obvious tension between Damon and Elena. It seemed like they were only getting along when teasing each other, but even that gave weight to the exhaustion of the day within the last hour – when Enzo's continuous thumping seemed to have placed Damon in a considerably more morose mood, though she suspected she knew the source and abject guilt behind that anguish. "Hey, Jenna?" she asked when a frantic woman on the other line answered. "No, Elena's here with me. She's fine. She came over to study, but we lost track of time and didn't realize her phone died," she said, sounding apologetic, then hummed a few times in response to Jenna's mumbled tone.

"Let me talk to her," Elena mouthed to Bonnie.

"Yeah, she forgot her charger – oh, she wants to talk to you, hold on," Bonnie said, reluctantly handing the phone over to Elena.

"Hi, Jenna!" Elena chirped with faux enthusiasm, to a dubious look from Damon in the rearview mirror. "No, I'm perfectly fine. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to worry you. I'm going to stay at Bonnie's tonight. We still have lot to go over for the uh – the," she looked around, catching Damon rolling his eyes at her rough attempt at lying, and Bonnie's widened gaze, urging her to continue. "Biology test on Friday! We're studying… the circulatory system?" she finally replied, their recent ordeal inspiring her fib. "I'm sorry, I'm just a little out of it. Brain is all bio-ed out for now. We're going to take a little break, then right back to it. Uh huh. I love you, too, Jenna. Bye!"

"How you ever managed to fool me is honestly beyond my understanding," Damon snarked, pulling onto the street that had the foreclosure that Bonnie found earlier on her phone. "You're a terrible liar."

"One of your assets, I suppose?" Elena asked with a little more bite than strictly necessary – considerably more than at any point earlier in the night when the two almost danced through quips powered by teases and half-hidden smiles – as the guilt of her earlier actions with Stefan gnawed at her. She noticed that the atmosphere seemed to tense about an hour ago with Damon's visibly increasing exhaustion. He seemed quieter, more introspective – sadder.

"One of many," he supplied sarcastically, though his tone lacked the playfulness it normally held with her, as he parked the car and quickly got out. Elena and Bonnie followed him out as he unlocked the trunk, pulling out an emaciated-looking man. Elena stifled a gasp when she noted his protruding collar bones, noting the angry tears forming in Bonnie's eyes.

"Damon. My personal Brutus and Judas in one. I've been wanting to give you something all these years," the man, who Elena realized must be Enzo, rasped as he made a weak lunge toward Damon that he neatly side-stepped.

"Yeah, well, get in line," Damon replied, before turning to address Bonnie. "I'm going for a blood bag," he paused, thinking, "and bourbon run. I have a feeling we're going to need it tonight. You'll be able to handle them?" he asked, gesturing to Elena and Enzo with his head.

Bonnie nodded, a smug smile gracing her lips. "I'm overqualified. Oh, and can you pick me up an acoustic guitar?"

Damon raised both eyebrows. "Bonnie, you remember that this is Mystic Falls, right? You expect me to just stumble onto an all-night Sam Ash?"

"Look, steal it if you want. I don't care what you have to do – just bring me an acoustic guitar," she urged. "Trust me on this. It'll help," she whispered, hoping that Enzo wouldn't hear her in his blood-deprived state.

"Fine," Damon sighed. "But I might be a while." He took the small cooler containing the few blood bags they brought along when they all naively expected to go home for the night out of the car, dropping it at Bonnie's feet, while pointedly avoiding eye contact with both Elena and Enzo. He then got back into the Camaro and drive off into the night without a backward glance.

"Are you two supposed to be dinner?" Enzo grinned threateningly, blood pooling into his eyes as his fangs elongated on instinct, his body singing with the ability to finally feed to his heart's content after years of malnourishment.

"I set Wes Maxfield on fire with my mind," Bonnie replied flippantly as a small fireball gathered in the palm of her hand, watching with satisfaction as Enzo's eyes widened in fear, and his vampiric features retreated.

The three walked inside the expansive house, with Elena lingering back. What a confounding day. A part of her continued to question her sanity for not trying to escape the group and sneak away home – instead, she was willingly entering a foreclosed house to spend the night with a murderous vampire, a victim of experimentation, and one of her best friends in the world. Honestly, if it weren't for Bonnie's obvious trust and dedication to the terrifying twosome, she'd have put up a considerably larger fight.

"Bonnie, what's going on?" Elena asked as she watched the witch in question hand over the contents of the cooler to the vampire, who ripped into them with wild abandon.

"That's what Damon and I are going to try to figure out," Bonnie honestly, though evasively, answered. In the car ride over, Damon made some allusions to her lost time, though the subject hadn't been discussed yet. Elena just noted the wide-eyed and troubled look on Bonnie's face when he announced that Elena didn't remember anything past the cemetery, and the subject was quickly and unceremoniously dropped, while the two seemed to give each other worried, but meaningful looks.

"When did this happen? And how? This … partnership … with Damon," Elena elaborated, at Bonnie's questioning look. "I thought you two hated each other, and now it's like you're –"

"Best friends?" Bonnie asked softly.

"Yeah," Elena replied, matching her tone. "I don't understand. In fact, I don't understandanyof this," she bit her lip, on the verge of tears. "How did we end up in Whitmore Hall's basem*nt? Do people actuallyexperiment on vampires?" she asked, her voice shaky with horror as her vision blurred. "Why did Damon save me after I …?"betrayed him,Elena wanted to say.

Bonnie took her hand gently, looking at her friend with undisguised compassion. "Because he lo –caresabout you very much, Elena," she quickly amended, realizing that Elena might not be ready to hear about the full extent of Damon's feelings for and history with her after the harrowing day they've had. "Maybe you should cut him a little slack. It's a difficult situation, and he's trying his best."

"But he wanted to unleash the vampires on the town," Elena argued. "They would hurt everyone. Stefan said –"

"Do you know what desiccation is?" Bonnie asked, interrupting. In reality, she still held a measure of resentment for Stefan's role in Enzo's death from their original timeline, and though she objectively understood what it meant for a vampire to have his humanity off, the knowledge did little to lessen her utter heartbreak and emotional agony at his actions. When Elena shook her head, Bonnie continued. "It's when a vampire slowly dries out from lack of blood. It's incredibly painful, and it goes on forever unless stopped." In truth, Bonnie found this exchange ironic, since it had been Elena who initially made the case to her that leaving a vampire to eternal desiccation was cruel and inhumane. In those months when the two had gathered Althea's ingredients, Elena presented a defense of Damon wanting to open the tomb that startled and surprised her. Even death would be more merciful than the never-ending torture of blood vessels scraping against each other, unable to die, but in constant pain. What kind of person would Damon have been to have left his sire to suffer in that? It wasn't obsession, Elena argued, but compassion. To find herself on the opposite role of the same argument struck Bonnie as a bit ironic.

Elena gasped, bringing a hand to her mouth to unconsciously stifle it. "That sounds awful!" she cried, horrified, then a look of understanding settled on her face. "He's just trying to save someone he loves."

Bonnie looked at her for a long time before responding. Technically, Elena's wording is correct, even though they're talking about different people – that Katherine was currently the least of his worries and not even remotely the woman who occupied the great bulk of his heart. Finally, she nodded, and decided against elaborating further. "Yes. Yes, he is."

"Okay, ladies, what do we have around here for entertainment?" announced a surprisingly cheerful voice from the doorway, where Enzo stood, looking markedly healthier.

"You're in a better mood," Bonnie smirked at him, appearing entirely unsurprised by his change in behavior.

"What can I say?" he shrugged nonchalantly, wandering inside. "The way to a vampire's heart is through his, uh, fangs?" he tried, and then immediately got distracted by the flatscreen television. "What's this?"

Elena left the room shortly after Bonnie clearly found enormous delight in explaining modern technology to the newly liberated vampire that was their housemate for the time being. Instead, she took to wandering the house, and ruminating on the profound and tumultuous changes to her life in only the last few hours.

She couldn't find a notebook but did locate some odd papers and a pen to help articulate her thoughts, when she heard the front door open and then close. Damon must have been back.

She followed the noise and saw him dropping off another cooler and a few bottles of bourbon on the kitchen floor, as well as a worn acoustic guitar on the table. He wordlessly placed a few food containers on the kitchen table. She thought to approach him, when she saw him take a blood bag and bottle to head to an empty room, carefully avoiding any eye contact with her, before shutting the door. A cursory glance at the containers revealed that one contained - eggplant parmesan? Did he know? No, he couldn't. Could he? And why would he even bother obtaining her favorite veggie dish? Must be a lucky coincidence.

She frowned, noting that his sudden change in mood had not yet abated. If he was determined to avoid her, she would at least apologize to him first – he deserved that much, especially in light of what Bonnie had just revealed.

"Hey," Elena said softly, entering the room in which Damon secluded himself. He appeared to be immersed in the mountains of papers and open folders littering the desk. There were dark circles under his eyes. Is this the first break he'd had in hours? Was he drinking enough blood? Elena stopped herself, baffled at her line of thought. Bonnie's admonition affected her more than she thought – though if she were completely honest with herself, she felt the pang of remorse only seconds after lying to Damon in the first place – she knew it was wrong, that Stefan asked her to step on her principles in a massive way – but she'd allowed herself to be talked into it if it meant keeping the town safe. But maybe Damon wasn't quite the monster he appeared – that Stefan made him out to be. He fought so hard for her in that basem*nt. "I just came to apologize." When he didn't offer any kind of verbal response, she wrung her hands together nervously, urging herself to continue. "I realize that I was being unfair to you. You saved me, and –"

"That was all Bonnie," Damon interrupted her, putting the file in his hands down and getting up to approach her, but not too closely. Elena noticed just how keen he was to keep a distance now.

"No," Elena frowned in consternation. Something about Damon's refusal to acknowledge his own role in her rescue bothered her on a visceral level. "It was you, too. If it weren't for you – if you didn't come when you did, then –" she broke off, shaking her head, and instead deciding on a different avenue. She resolved to bravely take a step closer, nodding to herself as though she finally made a decision. "You and I – we have something – anunderstanding. And I know my betrayal hurt you – different from how it was with you and Stefan. But I'm promising this to you now – I will help you get Katherine back."

Damon barked a laugh, shaking his head – but it was pained, bitter.

"I don't see what's funny," Elena frowned, affronted.

"Oh, trust me. It's very funny – probably not to you or me, but objectively speaking, there's a profoundly painful sense of irony here that I can definitely appreciate," Damon sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. He was so exhausted. Everything hurt, down to his very soul.

"I mean it," she persisted, choosing to disregard his confusing statement and overall behavior. She reached for the clasp of her vervain necklace, determined to show him that she was serious – that he could trust her.

"What are you doing?"

"I know you don't trust me, but please, ask me," she prompted, removing the necklace and placing it on the table next to her. "Ask me if I'm sorry. Ask me how much I regret what I did. Iamsorry, Damon – truly. You didn't deserve that."

"I know you are, and it's okay."

"No, it's not, because I want you to trust me again – and I want you to see that I'm serious. I'll help you get her back, Damon," she urged, growing visibly upset by his reluctance to even look at her. He tried so hard to connect with her in the cells in Whitmore Hall's basem*nt – but now he seemed determined to push her away entirely. She stepped closer, taking a deep breath to quiet her heart and instill some courage within her. "I get it," she soothed, taking measured steps toward him. "You love Katherine —more than anything in the world. It's how I feel about Stefan. I thought about everything you're doing – I put myself in your shoes – and I'd probably do the same thing. I'd move heaven and Earth to rescue him, too. I'm not judging you," she insisted. Of course, she would do everything possible to save those she loves from unending pain, locked away in a dark room, left to perpetually suffer. Anything else would show a staggering lack of empathy. When she analyzed it from that perspective, all of Damon's actions made a lot more sense – though she still vehemently disagreed with his less-than-savory methods.

"Elena, please stop," he breathed, his voice coming out a broken whisper. When she reached to place her hand on his, Elena was dismayed to find him stepping away from her, putting some physical distance between them. His eyes were shut tight, like he was experiencing incredible pain. Elena was utterly flabbergasted. What did she say that was so wrong?

She'd never seen him like this – couldn't have even imagined it hitherto, and yet in this moment, every word she uttered seemed like it pierced his very heart. What happened to the wryly nonchalant Damon Salvatore who swaggered into town, intent on causing his brother an eternity of misery? What happened to the confident vampire who flirted and teased smiles from her in Atlanta and only hours ago? She had anticipated more bluster, as she'd come to expect from him, but not this – not this vulnerability.

Feeling an indescribable urge to comfort him, Elena allowed her body free rein without the requisite analysis with which she was often encumbered and placed her hands on his cheeks, gently urging him to really see her – her sincerity – the fact that, despite her earlier behavior, she really was starting to care for him.

"I'm sorry, Damon," she whispered, and found that she meant it with every fiber of her soul.

"I know you are, Elena," he allowed, repeating his earlier words, but with considerably more naked affection, finally looking at her. She nearly gasped at the gaze that met her own – the stunning vulnerability in his blue eyes, the gentle concern; the deep, penetrating sadness; another lingering but powerful and all-encompassing emotion that she was too afraid to yet name. Not even Stefan had ever looked at her like that – and Damon did so just from a promise to help rescue his beloved. She wondered briefly what it must feel like to be loved like that and was distressed to find herself feeling jealous of this Katherine.

"To answer your question from before, I was able to lie to you because I didn't think I was fully lying," she explained, desperate for him to understand. "I meant it when I said that you could trust Stefan – that he wanted what's best for you. I didn't know how awful desiccation really was."

"I know," he said, closing his eyes and allowing himself a few brief seconds to lean into her touch. "I know you didn't."

"Then tell me what I can do," she urged softly.

He reached for her necklace on the table in response, taking care to secure it around her neck again with a tenderness that was surprising to her. "You really need to give me some time. I'd like to be alone for a while, okay?"

She nodded reluctantly and stepped out of the room, desperately fighting every urge inside her to glance back.

"Hey, Bonnie," Elena announced shyly, entering her best friend's chosen room, marveling at the surreal nature of the day.

"Hey, Elena," Bonnie replied softly, though Elena didn't fail to notice the exhaustion around her eyes.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I will be. It's just been a long day. How are you feeling?"

"I'll be better once I understand what's going on. Bonnie, why can't I leave? I need to call Stefan. He's probably worried about me."

"He'll be fine, Elena. Don't worry. So will Jenna and Jeremy. We just need to figure out what happened to your memories first."

"My memories…?"

"You really don't remember anything after the cemetery?"

"No, I – I tried to apologize to Damon, and I even promised him we'd help him get Katherine back, but I don't think he believed me," Elena confessed. Bonnie's unsure smile twisted into a grimace, which Elena noticed immediately. "You disapprove."

"Yes, but not for the reason you think," Bonnie replied hesitantly.

"Tell me what's going on, Bonnie, please. Why is everyone acting so weird? Why are you walking on eggshells with me? Why does Damon keep looking at me like I stabbed him in the heart? I know what Stefan and I did to him was awful, but there's no way he could be that hurt by my actions – I don't mean nearly important enough to him for that."

"You'd be surprised," Bonnie winced.

Elena frowned in confusion, but continued, "he thinks he's hiding it, but I can see how hurt he is, and it doesn't make any sense."

"Okay, so," Bonnie took a deep breath, drumming on her thighs nervously. "Here goes. Damon and I – and until early this afternoon, you – had our consciousnesses sent back from nine years in the future. Well, nine for Damon. Ten for me. With you, it's a bit questionable, since you spent about five of those years in a magical sleep."

Elena listened wide-eyed, with growing trepidation, as Bonnie gave her the broad strokes of their lives together, though her eyes widened, and heart sped up, and whole soul contorted in a way that she suspected was not entirely unhappy over a very specific new bit of information.

"What!? Damon loves me? That can't be right." Elena denied, panicked.

"It's true," Bonnie urged patiently. "I admit it took me a while to see it, but it's there and it's very real."

"It's because I look like Katherine. It has to be," Elena stuttered, feeling her anxiety rise.

"He's not the one who lied-by-omission about your resemblance to her, Elena," Bonnie countered softly, expecting this kind of reaction.

"Maybe he couldn't rescue her, or she turned him down, so he's just using me to heal his heart. That has to be it," Elena dismissed, unable to believe that any of this could be real. It couldn't, could it? The way he looked at her… the way he fought to save her. No, she was with Stefan. Stefan was the one she loved – he was the one who would never die – would never leave her. Damon was reckless, and attracted danger, and he said he died, and –

"Nope," Bonnie deterred. "He loves you and you love him. You called him your soulmate – the love of your life. You said it was the most real thing you've ever felt in your entire life."

"That can't be true, Bonnie. I love Stefan – it'll always be Stefan!" Elena all but shrieked and ran out, when the sound of glass breaking could be heard from the room Damon sequestered for himself.

"Taking your frustration out on the bourbon, I see," Bonnie wryly commented upon entering the room containing Damon, as she gestured at the broken tumbler and carpet stain at his feet. He was surrounded by papers from Wes' files, haphazardly thrown about the room, while his hands lay idle on the laptop's keyboard, having evidently just been interrupted for searching the drive.

"I happened to have been holding that in my hand when Elena delivered one of my favorite lines in this or any universe. Couldn't keep all that excitement inside," he snarked.

"At least you shared some with the rug. Not worried about this one's virtue?" Bonnie needled, aware of Damon's ultra-protectiveness of the rugs at the Boarding House.

"Hey, it's not mine," he shrugged. "What do I care if it wants to indulge in the finer things in life and pursue the path of the lush?"

"Speaking of which, I kind of, sort of,mighthave let it slip to Elena during one of our ingredient-gathering sessions that you drank your bottle of nineteen fifty Chateau Cheval Blanc while she was in her magical coma, and she was," she cleared her throat, "irate, to say the least. Granted, telling her this while she was doing gross manual labor to replace ingredients you stole probably wasn't perfect timing."

"Oh, is she upset that I didn't wait for her?" he sassed. "Maybe I won't wait this time, either, if she keeps the Steffie-worship up. I'll drink it right in front of her, too."

"Vindictive," Bonnie deadpanned. "I'm sure that's her chief concern now. And you're sharing that bottle, by the way. I'm mad at you, too."

"You'll have to find it first," he smirked.

Bonnie narrowed her eyes but decided to change the subject for the time being. "Were you able to find anything?" she asked, gesturing to his mountains of research.

"I found a lot. Apparently, the Creepy Professor had plans to open a West Coast department for his psychotic overlord of superhuman beings plan, the formula for his heart serum, some general crazy megalomaniac rambling," he sneered, pushing the papers to the side. "But nothing –nothing– that even hints at Elena's condition," he ground out in frustration.

"And you're sure he did something to her."

"Oh, absolutely."

"Why?"

"You didn't see her, Bonnie," Damon emphasized, emotions, hope bubbling to the surface. "When I was trying to jog her memories, and I told her that I died, she cared – she cared so much. More than that – she looked terrified of the idea."

"So?" Bonnie asked flatly, not understanding the connection.

"If she cared that much, that means it's like the compulsion that Ric put on her – her real feelings are still buried under whatever it was that was done to her."

"Damon," Bonnie sighed. "I don't think that's it. Elena and I had a lot of time to talk over the months that we looked for you. We both did a lot of soul-searching. Without yet another cataclysmic threat over our heads, we had a lot of time to really analyze everything."

"And? What does that have to do with this?"

"She's had a thing for you for a very long time – averylong time," she stressed. "Probably since the moment you met on the forest road. She even went as far as to say that if you didn't compel the memory away, Stefan may have never been in the picture, romantically speaking."

"Good to know," Damon intoned flatly, kicking himself – not for the first time – for ever having compelled that memory away. "Well, she's certainly back to Team Stefan factory settings now, and given howafraidshe is of me thanks to our field trip, that's how she's most likely to stay."

"Afraid of you? I don't think she's afraid –"

"Look, you didn't see her, okay? She was terrified. She wouldn't come near me," he interrupted, frustrated.

"Yeah, she was terrified of thesituation– not of you. She certainly didn't seem scared in the car when she kept snarking at you and obviously trying to get a rise out of you, untilyourmood suddenly soured," Bonnie countered. "And when she went to apologize earlier."

"She felt guilty," Damon dismissed. "I know, thanks to my brother, the lengths she'll go when she feels guilty about something. Look, let's just focus on fixing this – whatever it was that he did to her."

"I don't think it was him," Bonnie pensively retorted. "Her magical signature is different than before," she frowned, then collected herself. "Okay, let's go over this again. Tell me about the spell Althea used to bring you back."

"I told you already," Damon ground out, exasperated. "Probably at least a dozen times." Taking a deep breath in a show of annoyance, he continued monotonously. "I broke into their ceremonial chamber; damaged some of their precious ingredients, so they would take me seriously –"

"Did Elena tell you that they made her replace those? She had to grind slugs with her hands, Damon," Bonnie interrupted, clearly entirely too amused at her friend's ingredient-crafting ordeal.

"Yeah, she told me all about the slug paste – and the butterfly oil – repeatedly," he narrowed his eyes, though his tone had a wistful note to it. He would happily listen to Elena blame him for this all day if it meant he got to back her back.

"Sorry, continue," Bonnie cleared her throat contritely.

"Then she told me that she needed me to be one of her Champions – whatever that means, slit my wrist, engulfed me in a bright light, and –"

"Wait, say that again?" Bonnie's eyes widened in realization.

"Engulfed me in a bright light –"

"No, before that," she pressed impatiently.

"You mean when she collected my blood?" Damon raised both eyebrows in confusion.

"Yeah, you never mentioned that before!"

"Of course, I did!"

"No, you didn't," she insisted irritably, though hope was sparkling in her tone." I would remember that. That's areallyvital part of the spell, and neither Elena nor I had our blood taken."

"I'm pretty sure I told you that she went all Lizzie Borden on my wrist, Bon-Bon," he smirked.

"You definitely didn't," she countered. "Who's the witch here? Blood is an important spell ingredient."

"So, what difference does it make?"

"Damon, think about it," she stressed, seeking patience. "What was the first thing you did when you found yourself back here?"

"I fed Elena my blood," he realized, his eyes widening. "Do you think…?"

"Yes," Bonnie replied, gleeful at having finally solved the puzzle. "Elena's consciousness is tethered to your blood. It has to be! That's why you both appeared when you did, with you feeding her your blood in the cemetery. When your blood left her system, 'future' and 'past' Elena must have split again."

"So, if she drinks my blood again…?" He asked, almost afraid to hope.

"I think the two consciousnesses will re-merge, and our Elena will be back."

Both friends finally sat back with matching grins bubbling in joy, while Damon poured them each a tumbler of bourbon in celebration. For the first time all day, he felt stirrings of hope and happiness in his heart.

Chapter 8

Chapter Text

Elena was struggling to get her bearings after what she had just overheard, when both Damon and Bonnie bounded into the room she was occupying – the library. She had fallen in love with the expansive collection of classics owned by the Salvatores almost immediately but was even more charmed and surprised by some contemporary choices she found squirreled away in decidedly not corresponding corners. Since when didThe Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxybelong in the 'healthy eating' section – and why would two vampires even care about maintaining a vibrant human diet, unless the purpose of storing this literary contraband was precisely to hide it from the other?

She knew from their long talks that Stefan was the historian of the two brothers – always quick to reference famous accounts through which he lived and those that predated him– sometimes in a truly spectacular way in class, guaranteed to shut their bully of a teacher down immediately.

Damon's preferences were a mystery to her, however, but something inside her told her that this particular novel was his, and he took great pains to hide this fact from his brother, which managed to tease a smile onto her lips before she caught herself. She examined the book in her hand. Stefan favored the historical significance of first editions. This was just a book – more favored for its contents than the representation of an old tome – as old as one can be when first produced in the 1970s, anyway. The push for the innovation, the desire the unconventional, the boldly undiscovered – something about that screamed "Damon" to her.

Before she could ruminate properly on the discovery and her even more baffling reaction to it, the two intruders rounded on her excitedly, their eyes wide with conviction and purpose. In Bonnie's hand was a tumbler, evidently containing some kind of co*cktail.

"You have to drink Damon's blood, Elena!" Bonnie all but shouted, taking her hands and shoving the co*cktail into one, which Elena deduced was a mixture containing Damon's blood and probably some fruit-flavored juice or something to that effect to dilute the flavor.

Elena instinctively backed away, alarmed by the passion in her friend's voice and her insistence, refusing to take the offending glass. Yes, Elena knew objectively that eavesdropping was bad, but she also was given to curiosity – perhaps too much. After all, it was her insatiable curiosity that propelled her investigation into Stefan's true nature – maneuvering her way into a police station and sneakily watching compilations of evidence to mentally assemble the conclusion that he was, in fact, a vampire.

Her latest bout of curiosity-based misbehavior led to her discovering a rather unsettling fact – drinking Damon's blood would force her future consciousness to merge with that of her present – and both Bonnie and Damon seemed gleeful at the notion of their version of Elena swiftly returning.

And this made her feel cold, and alone, and unloved. Was Bonnie really so eager to get rid of her? Damon, she could understand – apparently this version of Elena loved him with her whole being. But Bonnie has been her best friend since childhood.

Elena's face dropped at her friend's words immediately, and a part of her that she didn't want to admit was immature and stubborn crossed her arms determinedly, refusing to cooperate. Damon's face was unreadable, Elena noted.

"I deserve to be a part of this body just as much as she does," Elena huffed impatiently, to Bonnie's shocked face, who had clearly not expected this response.

"You would be, Elena. It's amerge. Your future self is not replacing you," Bonnie stressed.

"Why are you so eager to get rid of me?" Elena asked, her eyes narrowing at her friend, then immediately springing to Damon. "You, I get. She loves you apparently," she shot at him, unable to resist adding, "for some reason," even though there was an increasing part of her that could see exactly why, not that she was even remotely prepared to acknowledge it.

She was hurt. There, she admitted it. Why was this future Elena so much better than her? A part of her realized that she was probably being immature, but he was seventeen, and that meant that she sometimes reserved the right to not rise above it all. Heaven knew that with the death of her parents, she had to grow up entirely too quickly – practically becoming Jeremy's guardian, since Jenna, for all her efforts, was only partly successful at the task. It hadn't been fair to Jenna either, Elena reasoned – since her aunt's priorities before becoming their stand-in parent usually revolved around dancing the night away at the next rager, not parent-teacher conferences and breakfast before school.

Considering the massive personality shift required of her, Elena had to admit her aunt pulled quite the self-transformation miracle, placing the well-being of her niece and nephew even above her insatiable hunt for a night of fun. It wasn't everyone that could drink Kelly Donovan under the table and impress her with her wild ways.

"We're not trying to get rid of you, Elena," Damon finally spoke with measured patience after observing the exchange. "We're just –"

"Yes, you are!" Elena shot back.

"Oh, enough of this," announced a bored Enzo who seemed to materialize out of nowhere. "This is becoming tedious," he added with a pronounced roll of his eyes, as he swiftly removed Elena's vervain necklace, ignoring the sting when he touched its center. His eyes connected with hers. "Have a drink, gorgeous." he said, handing her the tumbler.

The compelled Elena took a sip and immediately her eyes became wide and unfocused.

"What the hell, Enzo?" Damon exclaimed. "We would have convinced her."

"No, I'm with him on this," Bonnie defended, extending her palm for a high-five to the confused Enzo, who hadn't seen this gesture previously. Amused, she took his hand and slapped her own with it. "I've lost patience with this endeavor several rounds ago. And you would have, too," she told Damon pointedly, "if it had been literally anyone else."

"Hope is the thing with feathers," Elena finally spoke in a dreamy, almost otherworldly tone, as she looked at Damon, then Bonnie, then Damon again. "It perches in the soul," she breathed slowly approaching Damon.

"Why is she quoting Emily Dickinson at me?" Damon inquired, not sure how to address the oddly behaving body of his maybe-future-girlfriend.

"It sings the song without the words," Elena continued as though he hadn't spoken. "And never stops – at all."

"Are you okay, Elena?" Damon whispered, taking the chance to gently cup her face when she came impossibly close to him.

"Anna… help," she gasped, before squeezing her eyes shut to the alarm of everyone in the room, as the younger Elena's new memories of the last few hours stormed her consciousness. As their panicked voices reverberated through the space, Elena's expressively dark eyes slowly blinked open, finding themselves locked with a pair of eyes so brilliant and blue, she found they placed the summer sky to shame.

"I love you," she smiled at Damon, gently taking his face in her hands. She moved to kiss his cheek, and then his lips, then hovered over his ear to whisper, "It'll always beyou," determined to erase the pain his younger self must have caused him while she was – wherever it was that she was. She frowned, trying to ascertain the unique feeling of having felt everything and nothing all at once – knowing all and then having that knowledge immediately disappear – but then shook it off. There were more pressing matters at hand.

"Is this making you uncomfortable?" Enzo asked Bonnie cheekily, having evidently procured a bag of popcorn from somewhere in the kitchen in the short span of time since he compelled Elena to drink Damon's blood. "It's making meveryuncomfortable."

"Whatisthat?" Bonnie frowned, grabbing the bag from his hands, then contorting her features in disgust when she examined it. "Ew, Enzo! This expired two years ago!"

"Vampire constitution," he grinned. "Built strong," he leered suggestively, though Bonnie was still evidently focused on the aging bag of snacks that she promptly went to dispose of, partly to give her friends some privacy, knowing that Damon was unlikely to allow himself vulnerability in front of an audience, and would sincerely regret his current display.

Finally remembering the others in the room, Damon took Elena's hand, and led her to one of the upstairs bedrooms for some privacy. The Sun that finally rose shone brilliantly through the window, illuminating the shining brown of her locks, her chocolate eyes sparkling with flecks of golden honey – glowing with her love for him. Damon thought she had never looked more resplendent.

"Are you okay?" Damon reiterated his earlier question.

"I am now," she smiled through the emotion building in her voice. "Thank you for saving me earlier – for never doubting me – for everything."

"Hey, you did plenty," Damon praised. "Veryimpressive punch, for someone who'd never been trained. I think you sent some teeth loose."

She grinned roguishly in response, preening under the compliments. "Sadly, looks like no Tooth Fairy donations from the Creepy Senior and Junior."

"Elena?" he breathed, as his vision blurred from a warm liquid gathered in his eyes. "MyElena? I was afraid I'd never see you again."

"Always yours, my Damon," she whispered, her own eyes shining with matching tears, as she pulled him into an ardent kiss, and the suspicious moisture was finally released to mingle on their cheeks.

Stefan seethed as he paced the parlor of the Boarding House only a short while later. Not only was Damon ignoring his calls, but Elena's phone was dead. He tried to calm the rush of anxiety that flooded his very being. Where were they? What if Damon was hurting her?

As though in answer to his query, he heard a thump on the house's front door, which he immediately opened to find an arrow, with a package below it. He looked around, extending his senses to listen for any possible signs of life, but all he felt were the animals of the forest. Whoever left this used the arrow to draw his attention while avoiding getting close to risk being caught.

The took the package inside, horrified to find a collection of photographs, all of Elena and Damon standing by a bedroom window. Some had them gazing into each other's eyes; in others, they were ardently kissing. He narrowed his eyes, rage filling him when he saw a marker circling her clavicle in the photos – one that was distinctly not wearing her vervain necklace.

His hand, trembling with rage, reached into the package to pull out a peculiar set of weapons. One was a stake with a curious logo carved into it – a mysterious symbol with six arms extending outwardly. The other was a bag containing what appeared to be darts with attached capsules of liquid that smelled like vervain.

"Where'd you get that?" Anna's voice asked over his shoulder, almost causing Stefan to jump. He'd been so engrossed at his rage in finding out about his brother's misdeeds that he hadn't heard her sneak in. "Been playing professional peeing tom?" she quipped, picking up the photos, and cycling through them. "Very emotionally evocative work, Stefan. If this whole brooding gig doesn't work out, you've got a future as a photographer."

"I didn't take those," he shot back. "But look," he added, pointing to the circle on each photograph indicating that Elena wasn't wearing her vervain necklace. "He's been compelling her."

"She doesn't look compelled to me," Anna frowned, recalling the text message she received the night before. "Look here," she placed one of the photos in Stefan's hand. "Look at her eyes. They're not dull or spaced with compulsion. She looks very alert. She looks – in love," she softened at the realization, then shook her head. "You can't compel that, and you know it."

"She's clearly crying in this photograph," Stefan pressed, pointedly ignoring Anna's words, while searching for incriminating evidence. There was no way Anna was right, Stefan mentally insisted – absolutely no way. He knew Elena, and how she felt about Damon. But this was low, even for him.

"Is Damon crying, too?" she asked, exploding with laughter. "Oh, this is the best blackmail material. I never thought I'd see the day. I'm keeping this one."

"He's pretending," he stressed through clenched teeth.

"Yeah, I don't think so. He's got no reason to – especially if she's compelled, as you say. So, either John Varvatos announced a swift end to his clothing line forevermore, or your big bro is genuinely overwhelmed by what looks like avery positive emotion. I wonder what happened next," she couldn't resist teasing cheekily, possibly just to watch the vein pop on Stefan's head, then sobered when she looked at the weapons placed on the table. "What are these?"

"They came with the photographs. I think the darts are filled with vervain. Not sure what's supposed to be special about this stake, though," Stefan replied, losing patience with Anna and her nonchalant attitude.

"You're being set up," Anna concluded flatly. "Look, someone sent me a text the night before last to go watch Elena with your brother – clearly trying to get a reaction out of me," she informed, to Stefan's horrified gaze at hearing that they were together then as well. Expecting an interruption, Anna decided to plow ahead before Stefan could ask any of his predictable questions. "Something's up, Stefan. Don't react emotionally to this. Someone is clearly trying to benefit from all of us being at each other's throats," she concluded. Seeing that she was unlikely to make any headway in changing his mind, Anna grabbed the stake with the mysterious symbol before Stefan could use it and blurred out of the house. Something about the window in those photographs looked familiar – and she had a feeling she knew exactly where it was.

Sometime later, the four unusual housemates found themselves paired up in mostly different areas of the house. Damon had yet to have the conversation with Enzo that had been overdue some decades, but he reasoned that the day's tumultuous events bought him a bit of time.

Meanwhile, Bonnie seemed to be taking some pleasure in playing discordant notes on her new-old acoustic guitar in the library, watching with amusem*nt as Enzo flinched with each offending strum, his supernaturally-sensitive musical ears positively rebelling against her self-contained cacophony.

He could have sighed with audible relief when he saw a giggling Elena enter, followed by a beaming Damon, since their arrival might at the very least put an end to the worst concert that refused to end.

At least they seemed to be having fun.

Elena stopped directly in front of him, tilting her head to the side in a decidedly Damon-esque way to study him, the smirk on her lips widening as she caught sight of Bonnie with her guitar. "You get a pass, just this once," Elena said, playfully wagging her finger at Enzo, though there was a certain sternness to her tone. "Don't do it again."

"Or what?" Enzo grinned. "You'll pick up the drums and bass, and start the worst band ever to melt my brain?"

"Maybe!" Elena shot back. "I'll play the triangle. And Damon can borrow my squeaky recorder from elementary school."

"We can be very creative," Damon answered with a growing smirk, suddenly appearing next to Elena, with his arm wrapped around her waist. "Ever have your favorite song ruined by a tone-deaf witch?"

"I heard that!" Bonnie called, to waiting giggles, and Elena ushering Damon out of the room.

"So," she purred when they re-entered the living room. "I hear you've got a bottle of nineteen fifty Chateau Cheval Blanc stashed somewhere. Maybe this time you'll share it," she whispered into this ear, unable to resist an impish smile, "now that I've stopped it with the so-calledSteffie-worship."

"Oh, you heard that?" he grinned, to her impish nod. "And here I thought all the fumes from Steffie's hair products rendered human teenage you allergic to breaking etiquette rules like eavesdropping, and just having fun in general. Otherwise, how else put up with the giant stick up his –"

Elena gasped, interrupting, mock-scandalized. "I'll have you know I was very rebellious!" At Damon's dubious look, she playfully bit his neck. "What can I say? My younger self wasn't always the good girl everyone thought she was –which you already know. And we had plenty of fun in Atlanta, "she pointed out. "Maybe I just needed the right influence."

"I might be persuaded to share," Damon murmured, pulling her close and trailing kisses from her jaw to her neck and finally her collarbone.

"Ugh, gross!" Bonnie announced, entering the room. "We have actual rooms with doors that close, guys. Please. Also, I heard you. You're sharing it with me, too."

"Did someone say nineteen fifty Chateau Cheval Blanc?" Enzo asked with marked interest, seemingly materializing out of nowhere. "You know, Damon, giving me that bottle would go a long way tobeginmaking up –"

"The hell I am! You're lucky if you're getting –" Damon interrupted.

"Oh, you are not getting the whole –" Elena exclaimed.

"Four ways!" Bonnie announced over the steadily building cacophony. "To cement ourfriendship, and partnership," she stressed, glaring at the room's occupants threateningly and daring anyone to contradict a trained Bennet witch, "we are splitting the bottle evenly. Together. Four ways."

"Five," announced Anna, who boldly jumped in through the room's window, and threw the stake onto the table for all to see.

The symbol carved into it elicited visceral reactions from three of the room’s occupants, who recognized it immediately: the Brotherhood of the Five.

Chapter 9

Chapter Text

Everyone was silent, except for the crunching coming from Enzo's general direction, who had apparently now found a bag of Skittles. He seemed entertained by the turn of the night's events – and even more so by the apparent drama surrounding them. Besides, he mentally argued, the more engrossed he became in what appeared to him a nonsensical and hilarious drama, the more distracted he became from the ordeal he faced for the last seventy years of his life, being rescued by the person who betrayed him almost fifty years prior, and this strange new world with all its curious technological advances.

Also, the matter that three of them claimed to be time travelers. Were they actually just crazy? Was he? Was this all just a product of an overactive imagination trying to protect itself from consistent exposure to pain and torture?

At least his imagination managed to conjure up a cute witch. Very cute. Incredibly sexy witch, actually.

Elena's eyes noticeably widened as she took in the meaning behind the symbol on the stake. "Where did you get that?" she finally asked, echoing the thoughts of her two spacetime skirting companions.

"Someone sent it over to the broodier Salvatore, along with some darts holding liquid vervain, and someverycompromising photos of you two," Anna, who had by then begun lounging lazily on one of the armchairs with her leg obnoxiously resting on the table, replied, her index finger pointing to Damon then Elena then back again. "Sans necklace, with attentionobviouslydrawn to Elena's very bare clavicle. He was pissed. I don't think I need to tell you how it looks."

"Who sent it?" Elena asked, alarmed.

"I knew it!" Damon exclaimed, looking a little too smug and victorious, at the same time as Elena spoke. "I knew he'd think I was compelling you – I told you," he added, though both Elena and Bonnie could tell that beneath the bravado he was hurt, as a result of which Elena squeezed his hand in reassurance.

"I have no idea," Anna answered honestly, "and congratulations, Damon, on predicting Stefan's obtuse behavior," she added sardonically, then sobered. "On top of that," she added to the immediate shock of most of the room's occupants, "I got a text the night before to observe Elena's bedroom window. Someone was clearly trying to get a reaction out of me."

"I also found an email on Psycho Ken's hard drive, telling him to expect Elena to distract him while we're saving Enzo, and advising him to lay a trap for all of us," Damon added with some biting contemplation.

"You never mentioned that before!" Bonnie exclaimed; her eyes widened in shock.

"We had more pressing matters," Damon countered, glancing at Elena affectionately, who blushed under his smoldering gaze. "But it raises an interesting question. All three of us knew there might be others. We were told as much, so this probably shouldn't come as a huge shock."

"When I was –whereverI was," Elena responded almost dreamily, not being quite able to identify the exact place – the feeling of peace and knowing and justeverything– that enveloped her while de-merged. As soon as she was thrust back into her human body, that knowledge began to fragment. And once the memories she missed while she was away – wherever she was – came hurdling toward her, it seemed all but gone. Only the feeling remained. "Iknew. I knew with every fiber of my being. But now I can't remember it anymore. Does that make sense?"

"About as much as you immediately spouting Emily Dickinson at me upon returning," Damon offered. "Hope is the thing with feathers," he elaborated to Elena's clearly confused visage, which did nothing to abate her consternation. "What did you know?"

"Everything," Elena replied, her voice soft as a whisper as she swam in the epiphany of it all. "I can't explain it but – it justfeltlike I knew – absolutelyeverything. And it was okay. It was peaceful. Everything was good. I know that sounds crazy, but…" she trailed off, trying to wrap her mind around her own thoughts.

"You also mentioned Anna," Bonnie added, pointing to the vampire who had suddenly become silent.

"Which raises another question," Damon accused, narrowing his intense blue gaze at the newcomer. "A little convenient you come bearing such a provocative gift, paired with an action-prompting cover story."

"What, does paranoia run in your family or something?" Anna defended. "First your brother is a little too keen to get himself ensnared in an obvious set-up –"

"Isn't that actually the opposite of paranoia? Steffie's always been eager to believe the gospel of his own views once he settles into them. Narrow mind that doesn't open itself to the possibilities – probably hair gel fume poisoning," he offered flippantly. "Whatever works for him, I guess," Damon bit out.

"Hey," Elena soothed, cupping his face, prompting his eyes to immediately connect to hers – and, almost involuntarily, the previous cloud of bravado dissipated to display the earnestness of vulnerability. "We'll get him back. We've done it before."

"I've never actually vomited blood before, but today might be the day," Anna deadpanned. "Please keep this up if you want to see the grossest show displayed by a vampire ever."

"You're really giving yourself alotof credit," Damon replied with an eyeroll, and that cloud reformed almost immediately.

"Okay! Enough with the vampire posturing," Bonnie cut in. "Anna, thank you for the information, but Damon's right. You have to see how this might look suspicious to us, so just give us some time. Damon, tact. Please. Enzo, did you seriously findmoreexpired snacks!?"

"Fine!" Anna huffed, though begrudgingly mollified. "I get it. I would probably be suspicious, too. For what it's worth, you actually look sincere to me, so I thought I'd have a better shot trusting you than whoever's obviously trying to set you up."

"And we appreciate that," Elena appealed diplomatically.

"I just – I have to know. Are you going to -?" Anna began nervously.

"Yes," Elena interrupted, placing a comforting hand on Anna's shoulder. "We're opening the tomb. We'll help you get your mom back."

"Why?" Anna narrowed her eyes suspiciously at Elena. "You mean to tell me you're actually okay with him throwing you away for Katherine the second that seal's lifted?"

Before Elena could respond, Damon retorted hotly, "I want nothing to do with Cade's little cuddle-buddy, so you could take your insinuations and stick them up –"

"It wasn't an insinuation," Anna replied, thoroughly confused about who Cade was, and what it had to do with Katherine, though she noted the amusem*nt on Elena and Bonnie's faces.

"We know she isn't in the tomb, Anna," Elena cut in before the two vampires could come to verbal blows again.

"…How?" asked Anna, her eyes widening in surprise. "And – and why? If you know, then why are you opening it? What reason do you have?"

"We," Elena began to reply before realizing the sensitivity of the information, along with the subtle headshakes of her two traveling companions, then bit her lip thoughtfully and settled for a version of the truth, "had some encounters that led to the truth being revealed and we need something from it."

"Fine," Anna sighed. "Keep your secrets. I don't actually care as long as I get my mom back. You know where to find me when you're ready, and you'd better be ready soon," she added with an uncharacteristically threatening tone, before blurring away.

"So, what role does she play in your little melodrama?" Enzo asked as though a spectator watching some wild insanity unfold.

"Annoying interloper," Damon muttered. "I need a drink."

"Also, we should probably order some pizza or something, because everything you brought last night is gone," Bonnie added, smirking at Enzo, who was responsible for ridding them of roughly eighty percent of Damon's impromptu shopping trip with a takeout stop from the night before."

"Thanks for the eggplant parmigiana," Elena supplied with a kiss to Damon's cheek, prompting a smile from him. "Past me was grudgingly impressed by your 'intuition,' though not ready to admit it to herself – myself – something yet," she trailed off, a bit unsure how to verbalize the altogether unusual situation.

"I'll order it to the house next door to avoid suspicion," Damon suggested, taking out his cell phone to place the order. "I'll hear it and intercept them when they come."

"And garlic knots!" exclaimed Enzo.

"Garlic knots for Enzo, pepperoni stromboli for Bon-Bon, and mushroom topping for Elena," he muttered to himself, then grinned. "With extra pickles."

"Don't you dare!" Elena gasped, playfully smacking him. "Keep those rancid abominations away from me, please."

"But you have no problem eating actual fungus," Bonnie intervened, then turned to Enzo, smiling tenderly. "Hey, we'll get you anything you want. Why don't I take you around town later? Let's take advantage of that daylight ring of yours, and I'll show you some of the fun spots," then grinned wickedly. "I'll take my guitar."

Enzo shuddered at the thought of assault on music from the woman who was quickly becoming his favorite witch ever but agreed. "I think I can handle the occasional discordant note if it comes with such gorgeous company," he winked flirtatiously. "But maybe I can help with that."

"I thought you'd never ask," Bonnie purred, then noticed the bewildered stares of Elena and Damon and cleared her throat. "But for now, Elena, tell us more about this place."

"I don't know how to explain where I went," Elena began, her eyes blurring as she tried to recall the distinct feeling evoked by her trip. "Except to say that everything felt really clear and certain."

"No, I know what you mean," Damon concurred. "I had this really strong sense of peace and almost – knowing – right before I merged with my past self, but I can't remember why."

"Same," Bonnie agreed. "Our future bodies are clearly gone, for whatever reason."

"So not like thatBack to the Futurefilm Bonnie showed me on your abnormally flat television set?" Enzo, who was apparently listening, asked.

"You're processing all this suspiciously well," Bonnie remarked, raising a skeptical eyebrow. "What gives?"

Enzo just shrugged in response, not willing to pursue that line of thought yet, and committed to watching the entertainment unfold.

"They're dead," Damon explained to the shock of the occupants of the room, not emotionally ready to face the reality that he needed to talk to Enzo yet. "Our future bodies, I mean, since I'm pretty sure having two versions of us here would create some kind of paradox. I think it's just our universe trying to protect itself."

"Well, we can't destroy the universe, now can we?" Elena teased.

"Why do you make it sound like a challenge? And why am I suddenly tempted?" Damon grinned.

"Okay, no one is destroying the universe. I've been sent here to make sure you two idiots don't mess around with Fixed Points, which I'm now coming to understand refer to Damon's paradoxes, probably."

"Why are theymyparadoxes?" Damon asked, amused.

"So, if leaving the tomb closed creates a paradox, then opening it leads to the creation of something that helps our trip happen in the first place?" Elena asked uncertainly.

"Exactly," Damon confirmed. "Paradoxes are a contradiction. But that's not to say that some don't already exist, but they're probably not true paradoxes; we just don't know how to explain them yet, like the EPR paradox, which states that information cannot travel at a speed that exceeds light, and yet that's exactly what seems to happen with quantum entanglement. Relating to us, though, you have Fermi's paradox, which states that if time travel were real, then we'd see some already from the future; but the easy rebuttal to that is that they could be disguising themselves. But traveling backward in time can can create a lot of problems, so despite them being a potential mathematical solution to general relativity, most physicists agree that closed timelike curves are impossible – or should be."

"Wait, when did you learn all this? And why did this never come up when we were stuck in nineteen ninety-four? I'm pretty sure you could have helped with at least twenty of those crossword puzzles," Bonnie asked with undisguised suspicion and annoyance. She vividly recalled a time when she visited the Boarding House after her return from the prison world and found it smelling delightfully of sautéed tomatoes and basil. If she ever found out that Damon knew a recipe other than pancakes, he'd have to deal with one vindictive Bennett witch. He was the one that was supposedly atoning for murdering all those boarders. Why did she have to be exposed for four months of monotonous breakfasts for his misdeeds?

"Damon got really bored in the sixties and compelled his way into a few of Richard Feynman's Caltech courses," Elena explained with a thick swallow, trying to fight her increasingly obvious physiological response and turning away to hide her dilated pupils. "It came up in freshman year when he helped me study and –"

"Yeah, I remember what most of your 'activities' revolved around in freshman year," Bonnie replied sardonically, rolling her eyes. "I had a very involuntary front-row seat as a ghost when I couldn't whisk away immediately, for some reason," she deadpanned, leading to a deep blush on Elena's cheeks and amusem*nt for Damon.

"This is the weirdest conversation I've ever been privy to, and I spent seventy years listening to the insane ramblings of actual mad scientists," Enzo remarked, arching both of his eyebrows, and becoming increasingly convinced that all of those – absolutelyallof this – was just a product of his imagination.

"Humanity switches have zero impact on curiosity," Damon explained, clearly enjoying Elena's reaction.

Also noting Elena's very obvious reaction and desiring to bring the conversation back to a more useful place that doesn't quickly devolve to Elena and Damon suddenly disappearing behind closed doors, Bonnie took it upon herself to steer the topic back to one the suited her curiosity. "Not that paradoxes and the science behind them aren't fascinating and all, but I'd really like to get back to where Elena was, because this is a shared experience between all three of us."

"I," Elena sighed, trailing off in frustration. "It's so hard to explain. Okay, I guess it's a bit like Plato's Forms –"

"Elena took one philosophy class in her first semester of college, and she won't stop talking about it," Damon stage-whispered to Bonnie, earning a snicker from the witch.

"I also took a psych class, and you'll be hearing plenty about that, as well," Elena mock-threatened with a wag of her finger, then grew serious again. "I don't remember what it felt like while I wasthereso much as the feeling I had right before gaining past-me's memories of the last few hours. It was – a lot. I saw so much, andknewso much, but I couldn't hold on to it. It was almost like it was too much for my human body, and it started to fragment. And once I got all those other memories, it was just … gone. Or receded elsewhere," she trailed off helplessly, before collecting herself, and focusing on something she actually could explain. "Plato talks about the Forms – idealized versions of concepts that we have that can't exist in the physical world – like the perfect circle. We can all imagine a perfect circle, despite never having seen one, right? Even one that's electronic still has pixelated little imperfections."

"That are invisible to the human eye, so close enough," Damon countered.

"Fine, I'll give you that. But it's the idea of us having this knowledge a priori – before birth. For him, the five virtues – justice, piety, temperance, wisdom, and courage – only really exist in their idealized state as Forms– wherever it is that the soul is before its thrust into the body, and since that process is so traumatic, the soul forgets. So, we're born with all the knowledge in the universe, but then because we have to live with the pain of the physical world, we forget. At least that's Platonic theory. I'm not saying that it fits one hundred percent, but it's the closest equivalent I can think of to explain … this," she gestured wildly with her hands in her frustration with being able to articulate the everything-nothing-expanse of what she saw and felt and experienced.

"This is pretty wild," Enzo commented, having picked up some modern slang from a television show he just watched, with no small amount of amusem*nt. "But after hearing how much you like mushrooms, are you sure you didn't just eat some …magic… ones?" he grinned wickedly, having some very fond experiences of draining "experimenting" youths.

Elena frowned. "Did I? Maybe Wes really did slip me something," she mumbled, suddenly doubting herself, since a psychedelic trip sounded a lot more reasonable than what she proposed. And yet it felt so real.

"Hey," Damon took her hand. "I believe you. I thought we got past you doubting yourself," he whispered in Elena's ear, referring to her tumultuous emotional state when she was human – when survivor's guilt seemed to motivate her every action.

"No, we felt that, too," Bonnie reassured. "And your magical signature was different, so you definitely went somewhere."

The foursome dropped the topic for the time being when their food arrived, prompting the rest of the Saturday afternoon to be spent on pizza, drinks, and shared laughter, before Bonnie slyly whisked Enzo away with a wink for a quick serenade at the quarry, leaving Damon and Elena alone to continue some activities suddenly inspired by paradoxes and time travel and all that goodness, having both realized a while ago that moments of happiness must be seized and appreciated between bouts of tumult and upheaval.

"So, tell me more about these 'closed timelike curves,' Damon," Elena whispered sultrily into Damon's ear while pressing him into the living room's wall seconds after their housemates left, in response to which he chuckled under his breath and gathered her into a searing kiss, like they had all the time in the world, both hoping to stretch the moment into infinity.

Chapter 10

Chapter Text

By 2009, the fad for unusual ice-cream combination flavors made it even as far as Mystic Falls, so after taking a stroll around town, Bonnie picked up two cones of lavender ice-cream for herself and Enzo as they made their way over to the Quarry.

Although Bonnie had mostly held it together for the last few days, she had to admit that this entire exercise had been brutal – and difficult. Sure, Damon thought he had it hard when the Elena of their time briefly disappeared, but at least her past version knew him.

At least he never had to see her heart ripped out right in front of him.

This version of Enzo never met her, and there was still clearly something the matter with him. The rational part of Bonnie understood that he was probably in the throes of post-traumatic stress disorder, and his reaction was probably stellar considering what he went through. He almost seemed to betoowell-adjusted to the information.

"How are you feeling Enzo?" she chanced to ask, as the two of them settled onto the sunniest spot on the grass, licking their respective cones of ice-cream.

"This is a really unusual flavor," Enzo frowned, then brightened. "I like it!"

"Yeah, those have kind of become all the rage in recent years, finally making their way down here, too. I'm not sure where it all began, honestly, but I like trying new things."

"You're a witch who likes a bit of adventure?" he asked with a grin.

"You could say that," she replied, with a matching one of her own. "I've been to a few choice places, some even that few others have ever seen," she mysteriously added, thinking of her brief forays into the 1994 prison world and the Other Side.

On the one hand, Bonnie was relieved with how easily they fell into their pattern – their chemistry – from before. They'd met under considerably better circ*mstances – with her being one of his rescuers, who annihilated the man that tormented him for decades – instead of being bitter adversaries before they inevitably fell into the deepest and most beautiful love that she had ever known.

"Oh yeah? Like where?" he asked, pretending to examine his cone while really sneaking a peek to admire the beautiful woman who seemed to have designated herself his guide through the modern world that he'd missed.

"Paris, Rome, all over South America…" she trailed off, a wistful look in her eye. They had such high hopes when traveling the world, until they came back to Mystic Falls, until –

"Wow! Sounds like you've done quite a bit of travel. Who's the lucky bloke?"

"How do you know there was one?" Bonnie asked with consternation, unnerved by his insight.

"You have this look on your face of a woman in love," he explained, then caught himself. "Oh, apologies, gorgeous. Lucky lady?"

Bonnie laughed, seeing that he came to the wrong conclusion at the look on her face. "It's a …bloke," she tried the word out on her tongue, sampling its distinctly foreign flavor. Although she found Enzo's British-isms utterly charming, she hasn't quite adopted any herself. Who knows what would happen with time?

"What happened to him, luv?" Enzo asked frowning.

"What makes you think that something happened to him?"

"You had this faraway look to you – sad, almost heartbroken. Like you lost something that made up half your heart," he explained softly.

Bonnie swallowed thickly, desperate to change the subject – it was too soon. There was no way she could let him know about his role in her life – not yet. Pasting a smile on her face, she grabbed a guitar and struck a few distinctly discordant notes, watching in amusem*nt as Enzo visibly winced. "Enough about maudlin matters. Weren't you going to help me learn how to play?"

Elena squeezed into Damon's side, trying to catch her breath both from their latest bout of sexy cardiovascular activity and from all the cascading events that seemed to just not stop ever since they made their return. Had it really only been two days?

A part of her was jealous that Bonnie and Enzo were out exploring, and they had to be cooped up, but it appeared that someone was watching her and Damon, specifically, so she reasoned that it was best that they stay put until they at least thought of some kind of plan – or at least an explanation for these strange events.

Althea's warning had come to pass. They had at least one adversary who seemed to be aware of their every action, and at least had some working knowledge of the nuances of Damon and Stefan's tenuous relationship.

They also clearly knew about Brotherhood of the Five iconography. Was it a Hunter in their midst? Or just someone who was aware of them?

Were there even any Hunters left by the time the three of them made their trip back? What if this person traveled earlier? She knew that both Connor and Galen were dead, so that's two of the five. There was no way Jeremy would return to this point in time just to hurt them, Elena adamantly insisted, so that left two unknown persons.

Or perhaps this person had just made an alliance of a Hunter of this time, like it appeared they might with Anna?

Or maybe they just knew the symbolism. This was all so much. The clouded reverie of her thoughts was quickly interrupted by a familiar jingling sound that she had first associated with who she – for admittedly a short time – thought was her epic love, and then instead it came to symbolize her bond with his brother, who she realized all too reluctantly was her soulmate. She laughed at her younger self's denial of this frequently.

The knowledge was like a tidal wave breaking against denial made of driftwood – torrential, powerful – it consumed her.

"Got something for you," Damon teased, producing Elena's vervain necklace seemingly from out of nowhere, though it was actually just a drawer in the nightstand, with a little vampire superspeed-aided sleight of hand. It dangled on its chain like a pendulum, and she thought back to the veritable tumult of the last few days with its storm of dichotomies. Yes, no. The serenity of finding each other again, versus the harrowing anguish of their brief capture. The deep love shared, versus the vile hatred spewed in the depths of Whitmore Hall's basem*nt. The certainty of their plans versus the chaos of the unknown and all its many rising elements.

She immediately erupted in laughter. "My necklace! How many times has it been now?"

"I don't know," Damon replied flippantly, "At least three, not counting the time I stole one from Flannel Hellscape Groundhog Day."

She scrutinized him with a teasing smile for a few long moments, before sitting up bringing her hands to her hips. "Well, do you have tortured truth to tell me, or do I have to feign being tired first?"

Damon stifled a grin, but just barely, while placing the necklace around her neck. He carefully schooled his voice to sound very sad and earnest before speaking. "I love you, Elena. And it's because I love you that I won'tconstantlyremind you how much you suck at pool. Only occasionally," he smirked roguishly.

She laughed and playfully swatted him as he secured the clasp around her neck, though she sensed by his stilled movements that his demeanor changed. "What's wrong?" she asked, concerned.

"Why didn't you press your talisman to call for help?" he asked quietly. "I know you were stillyoubecause I heard you sass to Franken-Creepy when Bon-Bon and I were stealthing our sneak-attack. Your past self had some bluster, sure, but the need to make your adversaries feel like a joke didn't come until later."

"I wonder whose influence that was," she teased with an adoring impishness, while being utterly hopeful that it was enough to distract him.

"Only magnifying what was already there," he confessed, though his tone still held that measure of smugness in it, before he sobered. "I'm serious, Elena."

She just stared at him, not entirely sure how to respond. He must have deciphered something from her expression, because he laid flat on his back, staring away, straight ahead, his eyes distant, thoughtful. She was instantly taken back to a night in Denver, though it was almost as if their roles were reversed – now he was searching for information, while she fought to distract and deflect.

"What are you planning to do?" Damon asked without taking his eyes off the ceiling, his voice hollow. "I've seen this behavior in you – right before you tricked Rose into giving you up."

"I—" she began, then faltered. What could she say? That the thought of anything happening to him made anything alive inside her freeze and corrode and scatter into a million pieces drawn together only by agony.

"No, not this time. Promise me. Elena,please," he finally turned to look at her, and it was as though his whole heart was in his eyes. Elena shut hers tightly.

"Damon, I…" she started again, but drifted into silence.

"Just talk to me," he whispered, brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear while she fought to keep the tears that threatened to overwhelm her at bay. "Tell me what's going on – what you were thinking. Did you honestly believe that we'd just leave you there?"

Her eyes were downcast, still unable to look at him, until he gently cupped her cheek, finally prompting her to look into his eyes. She was taken aback by the openness in them, though she shouldn't have been. Although he'd looked at her like that for years – especially when they were alone – it sent veritable shivers down her spine every time. "Elena…"

"I couldn't bear the thought of anything happening to you," she finally spoke, though her voice was becoming increasingly broken with each word. "We got so lucky last time – even though we didn't realize it. Tyler bit you, so Klaus couldn't use you in the ritual, but what if this time he does? Or what if you get bitten again, but we can't get Klaus' blood in time to cure you? Anything could happen! It's a miracle any of us made it through that and –" she broke off, convulsing into sobs.

"Hey, hey," he soothed, taking her in his arms. "I'm not going to die, Elena," Damon added, stroking her back comfortingly to calm her. "I promise you."

"You made that promise before," she cried accusingly, squeezing him almost impossibly hard for her human form, as she pressed her face into his increasingly wet shoulder. "And then –"

"And I kept it!" he interrupted passionately. "It might have been delayed, but I made it back to you. I crossed time and space for you, and I'd do it again, okay? Hey, come on. What happened to all that annoying optimism? Where did it go?" he pulled back to look into her shining eyes.

"I can't lose you," she whispered ardently, shaking her head.

"You won't," he whispered back, and they both had a ghost of a smile on their faces at the irony of the words and their apparent role reversal.

"I'm the human doppelgänger again, Damon," Elena insisted. "I'm a danger magnet. Everyone in my life gets pulled into that orbit. Look at how many people died because of me. Jenna, and John, and –"

"That wasn't because of you!" Damon interrupted hotly. "It was because of Klaus – and we don't even know if we'll encounter him this time, or even in the same way."

"If I – if I just," she bit her lip, knowing he wouldn't like what she had to say. "If I'm nothere, then Klaus can't associate any of you with me, and –"

"And what? He just kills you?" he demanded, anger rising in his tone. "And what about what your death would do tome?" They both stayed quiet for a few long moments when Damon spoke again. "I don't know if anyone told you – I wasn't exactly forthcoming with the information at the time, but while you were off in Neverland, Stef and I got caught in something called the Phoenix Stone."

"What's that?" Elena asked, at once frightened at what she imagined must have been an ordeal for him and relieved that the spotlight had been taken off her transgression.

"It's a hell dimension, I guess. It's hard to explain. This vampire hunter, Rayna, used to mark vampires with it, and anyone sucked into it was forced to relive some of their worst memories."

Her eyes widened in horror mixed with empathy. "Damon," she breathed. "Do you want to talk about it?" she asked, taking his face in her hands.

"Maybe later," he said, closing his eyes and leaning into her touch, then opened then and physically distanced himself again when he remembered what he had to tell her. His mind reeled at that whole awful year as he braced himself.

He should have told her this a long time ago – right from the start – as soon as he learned that she was here. Instead, he was just buying time – delaying the inevitable.

"When we were released from it, we were both all kinds of messed up. Hallucinations, delusions, uncontrollable emotions – you name it. I actually thought I was part of another loop at first and that none of it was real, so I killed everyone," he revealed distantly to Elena's increasingly widening eyes. "They got better," he explained with a smirk that didn't reach his eyes. "The hallucinations were getting worse and worse, and then I insisted on seeing you, I…" he trailed off, glancing away from her. She squeezed his hand reassuringly, urging him to continue. He finally looked at her. "I had to see you," he breathed. "You were the one light in all that darkness." His expression turned grim, then. "And then that light combusted into a giant inferno." When Elena furrowed her brows in consternation, he continued. "I kept seeing my old platoon-mate, Henry – he's one of the tomb vamps, actually. Henry kept insisting that I'm a monster – that was kind of the entire point of my hell loop –"

"What!?" Elena asked, aghast. "You can't possibly believe that, Damon!Please, tell me you don't."

He smiled thinly, wondering if this enthusiasm on his behalf will remain once she leans what he did, or if she'll rightfully want nothing more to do with him. Perhaps it was only a matter of time until everything crashed and all these handful of hours in the last few days were just a swan-song before he's left to his comeuppance. "When I opened the coffin, I saw Henry inside, urging me to let the monster out," he revealed in soft, slow, measured tones, so that there was no misunderstanding. He wanted her to feel every ounce of the weight of his crime. "I set it on fire. In the next instant, I saw you inside, burning, with Henry yelling in my ear and telling me you were all that kept me from becoming the monster I was always meant to be. I thought I killed you."

Elena gasped, both hands at her mouth in horror, as tears formed in her eyes of their own volition. "Oh, Damon…" she whispered, reaching for his hand, but he moved his away.

"I thought you were dead – that I killed you – and all I wanted was to die. I kept looking for any reason – any excuse. My mother's boyfriend, Julien – real king douche, and I mean Douchasaurus Rex – just her type." At Elena's look of confusion, he elaborated. "He's a lot like my father, only British, and if he attended," he pretended to flippantly search for a word, though he had the perfect one in mind from all the time he spent scrutinizing Julien and making barbs in his head when he couldn't see him in person, "finishing school, or whatever it is they did in England back then. He had this sort of vampire fight club ring going, so I joined. I kept fighting, going up against bigger guys, hoping someone would kill me. Then I almost got my wish when this really huge beast of a vamp almost ripped my head off," Damon revealed casually, to a terrified gasp from Elena. "But then someone threw me a stake – illegal move apparently – so I killed him. Maybe next time, I thought."

Elena's drew her eyebrows together in concern and confusion, uncertain why he thought she would judge him so harshly, for clearly not killing her, since she's alive. And even then, it sounds like he didn't intend to, and he was horrified by it. Her vision blurred with hot tears over his ordeal, the agony he must have felt. "What happened then, Damon?"

He barked a bitter laugh. Here it comes, he thought. "I started drinking in the Lockwood mansion – anything to numb myself from the pain. Then the woman who threw me the stake came in," he began, no longer able to look her in the eye. "She started –"

"You slept together," Elena interrupted with a hurt whisper, connecting the pieces of his body language – lack of eye contact – with the trajectory of the story.

He only nodded, and slipped farther away, hanging his head in shame. "Look, I get it. I should have told you sooner. You don't have to say anything – I know." He moved to get up, but she grabbed his hand with speed that surprised them both.

"What do you know?" she was terrified to ask.

"That we're over," he answered as it were the most obvious thing in the world, while his own heart shattered in the confines of his chest. He was surprised his voice still worked, that his undead heart still beat, that breath still permeated his lungs while everything inside him broke, piece by piece.

"Why would we be over?" Elena asked with a trembling voice, taking his other hand in hers as well, as tears rapidly filled her expressive dark eyes. "Damon, you thought I was dead! Do you really think that I of all people would judge you for the way you grieved? Me? After what I did?" She instantly thought back to that summer, that awful summer when she was so caught in the throes of her grief that she became addicted to psychedelic magical herbs, if only to hallucinate him for a few minutes a day, to see him, to touch him, to feel his presence deep in her heart.

But there was a caveat.

It ignited her bloodlust like never before and turned her into a monster. Faced with the prospect of starting a killing spree after nearly draining several bodies dry, her one choice left was to forget, to give him up, rather than spread untold pain and become the cause of the agonizing grief she felt in untold numbers of others. She became a danger to the humans around her, and so the only option left was to erase her heart.

And then he unexpectedly came back, and though those very humans for whom she sacrificed the memories of her heart were now safe, it was all then unleashed on him in the form of her nonchalance and coldness and aloofless, while a tiny part of her would whisper that she actually loved him.

And then the tiny little spark grew into a roaring fire, a torrential ocean, and she was consumed with love for him yet again, seemingly in no time at all.

Damon tried to wipe the utter shock off his face, but allowed her to pull him into an embrace, if only to conceal the tears shining in his eyes. "You can't mean to tell me you're okay with what I did, Elena."

"If hurts, obviously, thinking of you with someone else. But you would never do that if you knew I was alive, Damon – I know you. You're the most loyal person I've ever met, at least to me. I'm just more horrified by what you had to go through while I was asleep," she murmured into him, squeezing him tighter.

"I've done so many terrible things in all those years," he breathed, his voice almost broken with emotion.

"And I forgive you all of them," she soothed, now the one to trace comforting patterns along his back.

"You don't even know what they are," he argued.

"I don't need to, because I know you," she pulled back to look at him – to take him in – to let him see the love shining in her eyes. "If you want to tell me, I'll listen, but know that I'll still love you all the same."

He looked at her – really looked at her – tracing the contours of the face he loved the most with his eyes as his heart caught up with the meaning behind her words. Did she really love him? Absolve him? After those years? After his temporary insanity from the Phoenix Stone? Krystal?

Cade? All those awful things he did for Sybil and Cade, when he was desperate to hide the memory of Elena deep in his subconscious to keep her safe from their clutches.

He allowed himself to breathe deeply, fully, letting some of the weight that had gathered over the years - that he had forgotten was even there – fall off his shoulders, allowing himself to be seen, felt, loved. It was a rare feeling, but he only recalled ever having felt it with her. His arms tightened around her of their own volition.

"You have no idea what losing you would do to me," he finally spoke in hushed tones, pressing his forehead to hers, closing his eyes to savor the sensation. "What it did when I thought you were gone."

"I have some idea," she replied, matching the intimacy of his tone.

"Then can we agree? Neither of us does this anymore, okay? We both try to live – fully, sincerely – for each other."

"You've got a deal," she smiled, perhaps for the first time since this conversation began.

"Come on," he pulled away, some energy and vibrancy returning to his tone. Elena could practically see his being flood with happiness that had been held at bay throughout most of their conversation. "We've been cooped up long enough. You need some sunshine and I need a change of scenery."

"But what about our mysterious stalker?" she queried.

"Let's get out of town for the afternoon," he suggested with a beaming smile. "Have a bit of fun."

"Five-minute time-out?" Elena grinned, suddenly in much better spirits.

"Exactly. These problems will still be here when we return."

Chapter 11

Chapter Text

Enzo winced, winced, and winced again as Bonnie earnestly tried to play – but instead utterly butchered –Stairway to Heaven.

"Are you sure the song is supposed to sound like that? Is this what music sounds like now?" he asked, bewildered. Surely, even his imagination couldn't have come up with this cacophonous monstrosity. Maybe this is a new brand of torture designed by Wes – have an absolutely delightful creature be the originator of some of the worst combinations of sounds known to man – just to send his mind into two different directions.

Bonnie huffed in reply. "Look, I'll get it," she sighed impatiently. "But if you're really curious," she paused, taking out her iPod. She quickly scrolled through her music selection to find the song that she poorly failed to imitate and set it to play. "This is what it sounds like."

Enzo's eyes immediately widened at the soothing melody – the soulful vocals, the poignant lyrics. Perhaps this wasn't Wes' doing, after all. Wow, Enzo thought. His imagination must be sick indeed to come up with all those discordant notes.

What was he trying to punish himself so hard for, anyway?

"Do you like it?" Bonnie asked nervously.

Enzo nodded, having not listened to music – just listened to music, without the distraction of anything else, like the modern movies Bonnie showed him – in decades. "Why did you choose this song?"

"Honestly?" Bonnie laughed, feeling a little ridiculous. "It's a popular choice for beginners in guitar schools. Its basic tune is relatively easy to play, but it's also really pretty and melodic. I know this is the simplified version, and that it can get very difficult – but it's certainly better than learningTwinkle, Twinkle, Little Star."

"Now,that, I actually remember!" grinned Enzo.

Damon and Elena were on their way to Richmond, having figured that whoever was stalking them was likely based in Mystic Falls, and they would notice if a car were following them. They needed a break, honestly. Sometimes, the very best way to approach a problem and find its solution was to distance oneself from it completely.

To avoid being predictable, they decided to forgo their usual haunts when visiting the city and instead try something completely new.

Karaoke!

Okay, so maybe karaoke wasn't all that new, Elena reasoned, but it was for the two of them, since Damon usually scoffed at the musically disinclined trying to awkwardly gyrate onstage while butchering overplayed and altogether conventional melodies. And as for Elena – well, she was one of those musically disinclined who mercilessly destroyed timeless favorites with all the subtlety of a very tipsy sledgehammer.

But at least she could dance! What she lacked hopelessly in being able to carry a tune, she'd made up in stage presence – if only the bar's patrons could effectively shut off the auditory component of their senses.

Grudgingly, she had to admit, that Caroline was the vocalist of their girl trio, for sure – though she sometimes suspected that quiet and introverted Bonnie had some hidden talents in that area, as well. She knew for a fact that her not-quite-adept guitar playing was at least partially emphasized for effect.

When they finally entered the bar that Yelp claimed had excellent fruity co*cktails but a really subpar whiskey collection – which Elena argued would normally be reason enough for Damon to stay away – and thus, the perfect place for their little clandestine excursion, they found that instead of the usual fare, it was open mic night.

On this November Saturday,The Crooning Canaryof Richmond apparently invited musicians to come entertain the locals with impromptu live music. An electric guitar, bass, and drum set were already on the stage, waiting to be used – though some musicians came with their own instruments, or opted for an acoustic set instead.

"We should invite Bonnie and Enzo," Elena prompted, after taking a sip of her Aperol Spritz that Damon had compelled the bartender into serving her – having long decided that sparkling-based co*cktails are her absolute favorites of all mixed drinks.

Damon grimaced both at the suggestion – since he'd been pointedly avoiding adding even more drama to their lives by having it out with Enzo – and at his drink. The only bourbon they carried was Wild Turkey. What kind of bar was this? "They're on a date. Bon-Bon's showing him all around Mystic Falls and trying to stir up some old feelings by playing on his aversion to bad music."

"Exactly!" Elena beamed. "And what better place do to that than here? You've got what I'm assuming is going to be some truly, epically terrible music, excellent drinks –"

"Horrible drinks. The worst," Damon disagreed vehemently, looking like he was seconds from detaching himself from the contents of his stomach. Maybe he could make a quick vampy run to a local liquor store and buy something … tolerable. Keep it in a flask and sneak it in. Yeah, that was probably the only viable solution to save his poor taste buds – enhanced by vampirism and subjected to this vomit-in-a-bottle. "Hold that thought," he whispered, pressing a soft and lingering kiss to her lips, then disappeared just as she was about to deepen it, only to reappear less than a minute later, with a suspiciously smug smirk on his handsome face.

"Where did you go?" Elena asked, narrowing her eyes.

"Self-care is important, Elena," he mock-admonished, wagging his finger at her, while subtly pouring the contents of a flask into his now mysteriously empty glass. "My body is my temple, and all that New Age-y nonsense."

"Yeah, I'm sure they weredefinitelyreferring to bourbon quality, and not a healthy lifestyle at all," Elena raised a skeptical eyebrow with a cross of her arms but let the smile that fought its way to her face through, nevertheless.

Damon just shrugged. "Mental health is health, too, E-le-na," he sang. "And sometimes mental health is just not subjecting yourself to bottled gasoline. Drinking Big Bird's bodily fluids is not my idea of self-care."

"And a big part of self-care is maintaining healthy relationships with the people in your life," Elena grinned, taking the opportunity to push her agenda, mentally patting herself on the back.

"I think they're plenty healthy. Don't you?" he all but purred, standing in front of Elena in such a way that she was covered by his back to the bar patrons behind him. He pressed her against the crowded bar's wall, taking her lips in a searing kiss as his hand found the small expanse of skin between her sweater and jeans, rising upward. To prove a point, of course, he mentally argued, with a growing smirk.

Elena laughed into the kiss, regretfully pushing him away after giving in for a few long seconds, while she fought against her escalating heart rate. "You're insatiable," she breathed. "But I actually meant with Enzo."

Damon's eyebrows ostentatiously rose as high as they could go, as he sardonically misinterpreted her point. "Elena, Enzo's a really attractive guy and all, but you should know that I don'teverintend to share – we didn't have pre-k when I was a kid, so I never really learned that lesson," he murmured, pressing a string of kisses into her neck, hoping to distract her.

"You know exactly what I meant, Damon," Elena gasped, making absolutely no move to dislodge him, and instead gripping Damon's jacket to pull him closer. "Stop trying to distract me."

"I don't think 'trying' is the term used for successful endeavors, Elena," he couldn't resist grinning into her neck. "Maybe you really should re-do high school, after all."

Affronted, she pushed him away finally, wagging her index finger to emphasize her point, though her face wore a grudging smile, nonetheless. "First of all, fail on the distracting, so not successful at all – many thanks to your ego and premature bragging. Secondly, text them. We need to have this out. The longer it goes on, the more it'll fester – and if that happens it could turn into an actual problem – and we really don't need any more of those."

Groaning, he took out his phone. He hated it when she was right and he had to concede that her logic was sound – and at that moment he also kind of resented that logic worked on him. Shooting a quick text to Bonnie with the bar's name and address, as well as information about open mic night, knowing that she wouldn't be able to resist pushing Enzo onto the stage, he put his phone away and decided instead to focus on his charming companion.

"Enzo, how are you doing with all this?" Bonnie asked hesitantly, reveling in the feeling of his arms around her as he settled her hands in their correct positions – ones she already knew from their previous lessons in what now felt like another life, but he certainly didn't need to know that.

"You mean being rescued by the most charming and beautiful witch in existence, who not only set my tormentor on fire with her mind, but also shows a marked interest in my favorite hobby in the whole world?" he winked in response.

"What, flirting?" Bonnie asked cheekily.

"Okay, second favorite," he amended, enjoying the serenity of her company – the way she had this unique ability to quiet his heart and mind. Was this also a part of her magic? Or was this something more? "I meant music."

"You don't seem to be questioning any of this," she pressed. "And this is definitely some … unusual… information."

"You mean about you lot being displaced in time?"

"Well, yeah."

"Mum's always said I have a vivid imagination," he shrugged, finding irony in the fact that it's entirely possible that she only said thisinhis imagination, given that his parents sold him to a workhouse so young in life. He liked to believe that at least she fought against it – that at least someone loved him, before he had the good fortune to run into Lily and her gang of witch-pires.

Bonnie's eyes widened instinctively, and suddenly everything clicked into place. Of course.Of course, he would think that all this is just a product of his PTSD-addled brain. She gingerly turned to face him, not entirely sure how to pursue, but chose to plunge ahead regardless. Placing a hand on his, she furrowed her brow. "Enzo, this is real."

"That's exactly what a gorgeous figment of my imagination would say!" he brightly exclaimed, grinning irreverently at her.

"No, Enzo," she shook her head, wondering how to form the words. "I know –I knowthis is a lot to take in. But we're really here. We came back to save a few people, including you. I know about your history with Damon," she treaded gently, "and I know you feel – justifiably – betrayed, but it was really important to all three of us that we saved you, the second we knew you were still alive. You don't really know us yet, but we know you – and you mean so much, to all of us," she emphasized, choosing to leave out the exact nature of their relationship so far.

She wanted this again – craved it – needed it. But it had to be real, and for that to happen, he had to fall in love again organically, not be pressured by the ghost of Enzo of yesteryear.

He began vehemently shaking his head, unable to accept the magnitude of her words, when Bonnie heard a chime, and took her phone out to read Damon's text message.

"I have an idea!" she grinned from ear to ear, positively beaming with the opportunity. This was perfect. "Damon just texted me about open mic night at a bar in Richmond." At his confused look, she elaborated, "it's when musicians can get on stage and just do an impromptu performance to wow the audience. We should go – let you get a chance to really dazzle everyone with your musical prowess. I know – firsthand – just how great you are with the guitar."

"I don't know," he retracted, suddenly shy to allow her inner performer out after hiding him for so long.

"Come on! I know how much you need this. Let's just take this as an opportunity to unwind, and take it from there, okay? Please?"

Not at all knowing why this witch had so much power over him, Enzo found himself reluctantly agreeing, even if it was going to put him in the same room as … him – a confrontation about which he wasn't feeling too optimistic. The rage and betrayal he felt at Damon threatened to overwhelm him, and he doubted he'd be able to keep it all inside around a bar full of humans, now that the walls of delusion were crumbling and he began to consider the idea that this was, indeed, real.

A little over an hour, two Aperol Spritzes and three quarters of Damon's bourbon flask later, Damon was spinning Elena to the sounds of the jazzy band that took the stage at the bar, laughing at his very tipsy girlfriend's beaming face. While normally much more graceful, anything sparkling had the distinct tendency to not only affect Elena's physical equilibrium, but also send her into the dizziest bouts of happiness.

When the music came to a natural halt, she panted her way over to their table, followed by a gloating Damon. "What, tired already?"

"I don't have supernatural stamina anymore, Damon, and you know it!" she wheezed, struggling to catch her breath while giggling with undisguised joy.

He took a seat next to her and pulled her close to press a slow kiss into her temple. "I know, I know. So much more work for me, then," he suggested, with a suggestive move of his eyebrows, earning a laugh, followed by a delayed blush from her.

"Should we talk about the Hunter symbolism on that stake?" she piped, trying to change the subject.

"Not tonight," he shook his head. "Tonight's about fun and distraction. We both need it. I think a night of keeping this light and fun will probably put our heads in the game to solve this puzzle better."

But light and fun were unlikely to be the only items on the menu for the night, as the bar's door opened to welcome Bonnie and Enzo, the latter of whom immediately noted the laughing couple sitting at a table in the dimly lit corner of the room, his eyes zeroing in on the subject of his ire for the last twenty years.

The night was about to take on a much more serious flavor, indeed – one of overdue conversations, confrontations, and long coming honesty.

Chapter 12

Chapter Text

And here they were, Damon thought sourly. This night had been going impeccably well, minus the crushing headaches he got from some of the so-called vocalists on the stage tonight. Thank God for vamp healing.

He felt Elena grip his hand in reassurance when he noticed Bonnie looking about the space nervously – the anxiety was visible on her face to anyone who really knew her – and it was potent.

Next to her, was Enzo, who appeared strangely calm. There was a quiet fury in his dark eyes that seemed to override any nervousness he likely would have felt in a room full of humans – densely packed and clearly intoxicated – so soon after his release back into the world. He held a well-used acoustic guitar in his hand like it belonged there – like it was less an accessory or instrument – but more an extension of himself.

Damon knew he had to talk to him, but what would he say? Hi, sorry I left you to die in a fire, but I turned off my humanity to deal with it?

He scoffed at his own hesitance to confront him. This wasn't like him at all. Damon Salvatore didn't hide from the truth – he didn't spend all day shaping his hair, surrounding himself with so much product that he might as well be hiding his head like an ostrich in the sand.

And yet. The last time had gone so poorly. It took Enzo actual years to properly integrate into their group and develop some semblance of emotional stability. The same could probably be said about him, though, Damon thought with a shrug, taking another sip from his tumbler full of contraband.

"Hi guys!" Bonnie beamed with faux enthusiasm as she approached her friends, with the all-too-wide and not-at-all convincing smile on her face perfectly matching her tone. "I'm so glad to see you both on what is definitely going to be a verypeacefulandmatureandnot testosterone-drivenafternoon," she added through clenched teeth, never once letting her plastered smile fade, a subtle hint of threat in her voice. Having been on the receiving end of her magic, Damon knew all too well not to take those threats lightly.

"Yes!" Elena reacted, when noting Bonnie looking at her meaningfully. "Why don't we arrange a time slot for a performance? And I think they're planning live band karaoke after the open mic sessions end," she added, with forced cheer to rival Bonnie. "Enzo, you play, right?" she asked, addressing the musical vampire, desperate to ease some of the rapidly building tension.

"I do," Enzo replied easily, momentarily releasing the glare he was sending Damon to answer Elena's question, gazing at her charmingly – he was still a gentleman. "I've been a musician for most of my human life, and an all-too-brief part of my vampire one," his eyes shot back to Damon coldly. "Damon can tell you," he smirked menacingly, lacing his words with double entendre. "Music is a skill that requires dedication, some degree of loyalty to your craft. Not everyone is capable of it –"

"Who wants shots?" Bonnie interrupted, getting an enthusiastic nod from Elena.

"Shots," Enzo laughed. "Damon was shot. Weren't you Damon?" he asked, approaching the other vampire threateningly, his vampiric veins starting to materialize.

"I can't believeI'msaying this, but you need to calm down. We're in a bar, surrounded by humans," Damon hissed, approaching him in an equally threatening manner.

But Enzo was beyond this. He wasn't listening anymore. "I'd been shot before – it's nothing compared to having your organs sliced out, being dissected. But you would know all about that, wouldn't you? It's what you left me to after I helped save you and you just walked away," he growled, his fangs now fully elongated, eyes flooding with crimson blood.

The bar was suddenly filled with silence as its patrons gasped at the sheer aggression coming forth from the man whose face looked decidedly otherworldly – inhuman. With a growl, Enzo launched himself at Damon, who blurred out of the way. Elena and Bonnie looked at each other frantically, taking note of the spectacle their display was becoming.

"Hello, everyone! We're the … uh, Mystic Players! And this is a surprise performance engineered by the lovely manager of this bar, uh…" Elena, announced, desperately glancing at Damon, then at Bonnie, then at Damon again. "In fact! It'ssucha surprise, that we thought you'd never expect it to start during this, um, … memorable … rendition of 'Poker Face,' which was definitely different than the last three, for sure."

"What is the meaning of this?" a furious man existed an office in the back, practically red-faced with the flush increasingly rushing to his head.

Damon began approaching the manager in the fastest human-looking speed he could manage to compel him into compliance, when Enzo reached out to follow him, prompting Bonnie to wrap her arms around him tightly, much to his shock and alarm. "Oh, Odie! Please don't fight that vile man!" she exclaimed dramatically for all the bar to hear. "Just because he's rude and thinks making quips is an acceptable form of communication, because he thinks he's so funny –"

"First of all, I'mhilarious, and you know it," Damon interrupted, mid-compulsion, before turning back to the no-longer-irate manager.

"And he engages in cruel and unusual punishment, by forcing those who he deems 'friends' to eat pancakes every day for four months," Bonnie continued dramatically, pointedly ignoring Damon's interruption.

"You made her eat pancakes every day for four months, Damon!? Why would you do that?" Elena exclaimed, horrified. "Why didn't you just make her some –"

Damon could have sighed in audible relief when the manager took that moment to interrupt Elena's potentially incriminating revelation. The last thing he needed tonight was another witchy aneurysm.

"I said, what is the meaning of this? We're blessed to be in the fine company of the acclaimed Mystic Players! All musicians stop! Everyone put away your phones – this is a no-film performance," the manager instructed, to several disappointed sounds from the bar's patrons. "Now, on with the show!" He then practically ran over to several people surreptitiously trying to record what they believed to be an impromptu performance, snatching the devices from their hands.

"You were the most important person in my life, Damon!" Enzo roared, the darkened veins prominent on his face. "And you ruined me!"

"You want me to apologize?" Damon spat the word like it left a ridiculous taste in his mouth. "I won't. I had to turn it off – leave my humanity behind. It was the only way for me to survive."

"Did you see that guy's face?" A member of a group next to Elena whispered among themselves, which gave her an idea.

"That's nothing! Look at that speed. It looked like he teleported. How did he do that?" replied his interlocutor.

"Their make-up and special effects team is amazing!" gushed the third.

Seeing that the two were about to come to blows and noting that Bonnie's distraction seemed to work at least temporarily – Enzo issucha performer – Elena suddenly got in the middle of the two rampaging supernatural beings, extending her arm in a dramatic gesture beckoning him to stop. "No, halt, brave Odie! This man speaks truth! You've both been led astray – led to seek grievance with one another at the behest of a foul schemer set to annihilate you both through cunning machinations!" she exclaimed, using their current predicament as inspiration.

Enzo raised an eyebrow, temporarily taken out of his rage by the utter ridiculousness of this moment in time. This inner thespian lived for it, though. Oh, how he missed the stage. And where did the guitar go? He had to be careful not to damage it while pounding Damon's face in.

Damon looked at Elena dubiously, suddenly questioning all of his life choices. These were his friends? He used to be so cool. Oh well. At least no one was insisting that he wear a silly nobleman's frock, equipped with ugly tights.

Enzo was caught between enacting his revenge and getting into the impromptu, so-called "performance." It was a really tough call. He opted for the best of both worlds.

He woulddramaticallybeat the snot out of Damon. If they wanted a show, they'd get a show, all right.

Suddenly leaping over Elena, with a completely unnecessary flip in the air, incitingoohsandaahsfrom the crowd, much to his delight, he landed in front of his opponent, fist landing squarely in his face, just like Enzo hoped. Really hamming it up, he addressed the room. "This cur, this knave – this vile betrayer! What punishment suits him best, I ask you fine and noble folk?"

Damon recovered quickly, slightly hindered by the energy required to produce the most dramatic eyeroll of all time at Enzo's antics, and swept his opponent's leg, causing him to trip. The vampire then suddenly dropped, to pin his arm behind his back, hoping to stop this "show" before it got out of hand. "Okay, Errol Flynn," Damon sassed, figuring that his choice of actor would at least be familiar to his surprisingly dramatic opponent. "You can get your drama kicks the same way everyone else does – by convincing Blondie – you haven't met her – that she has a giant pimple on decade dance night." Being back in 2009 meant pre-vamp-massive-glow-up Caroline, so while he dreaded the return of all those memories where he used her as his personal spy-slash-Capri Sun, the considerably less shallow version of her might actually become helpful -- especially if the Lying, Mama-Killing, Dagger-Happy Original ever came into the picture.

Enzo was displeased with this development and showed it by roughly shoving Damon off. In his bombastic and over-the-top display for the increasingly impressed audience, he accidentally shoved Elena, throwing her into one of the tables, where she hit the back of her head on impact, spilling the glasses of water on herself.

"Elena!" Damon blurred toward her in a wild panic, followed by his worried companions, whose flair for the dramatic and ire had been momentarily forgotten. She lay in a heap on the floor among some broken glass, a thick trail of blood running down her arm. Damon rushed to cradle her head to see if she was all right, but she sat up, quite alert, of her own accord. "Are you okay?" he breathed.

"I'm fine," she assured, looking profoundly confused. She lifted her bloody arm, surprised to find that she didn't have a scratch. "When did your blood become so potent?" Touching her forehead, she felt the telltale stickiness of blood, but there was no wound.

Damon breathed a palpable sigh of relief, holding her close, while sneaking a glare at Enzo. "You'd better be more careful," he growled, feeling an odd mix of anger at his carelessness and guilt over his own actions toward the vampire.

Bonnie studied the turn of events quizzically, looking to confirm a suspicion she had since she noticed the wildly different magical signature between her friend and the Elena of yesteryear. "I don't think it's the blood," she murmured to herself, then turned to the rest of the bar, projecting her voice. "And scene! That's our show, everyone!"

The quartet was met with resounding applause and whistles, which quickly dissipated once the patrons rediscovered the purpose of the establishment – drinking and singing. The karaoke sets resumed.

"I'm sorry," Enzo said contritely to the human who was really only trying to enhance his performance. There were worse things in this world, he knew.

"It's fine," Elena assured. "I'm fine," she repeated, more to herself than those around her. The situation was so confounding.

Deciding to put the matter behind him for now – now that the performer's bug had returned, Enzo compelled himself an early slot for the open mic section for the day, since there were only three slots left before live karaoke was set to take over. So what if he took someone else's spot? They got an amazing performance! Ungrateful sods.

He thought he would be nervous. Honestly, he did, but after that fight earlier, he just feltalive. Enzo was back! Before he had been kidnapped by the Augustine Society, he had been commissioned to take part in USO tours, having been spotted for his considerable musical talent and performance energy when entertaining his fellow troops one evening. He was set to leave on tour after that one final battle – and then everything changed.

Maybe this was his opportunity to get those dreams back.

He sat on stage, cradling the guitar lovingly in his lap. Playing music – in all his life – was perhaps the happiest he'd ever been, though he certainly suspected that this belief would soon be challenged by the charming acquaintance of a certain witch.

"Hello, everyone! My name is Enzo. I hope you enjoyed our surprise scene tonight –"

He was interrupted by loud cheers from the bar, soothing his admittedly somewhat vain performer's spirit. Yes, the ego liked this kind of stroking.

"Tonight, I'm going to take you back to a classic time," he began, suddenly acutely aware that he had absolutely no understanding of modern music. "This isThe Way You Look Tonight." Perfect. Enzo could already see the way the bar's patrons were undressing him with his eyes. Now him sensually crooning to Fred Astaire's classic would seal the deal, and he'd be the sexiest person this bar had ever seen – although, truth be told, the only eyes hereallywanted on him were Bonnie's.

When the song came to an end, the audience was practically mesmerized with Enzo's talent and performance energy – the vampire clearly placing all his emotion into the song. He walked offstage positivelyrevived.What a rush!

A few sudden fans approached him immediately afterward, offering to buy him a drink, and asking where they could see his show – and if he has an album. Bonnie came over to give him a tight hug and kiss on the cheek, causing him to blush as much as a vampire conceivably could.

Damon was displeased. No, this wouldn't do – at all. This was beyond unacceptable. He quickly left to compel himself as the starting singer for live band karaoke. Enzo was not about to steal his thunder.

Hewas the eternal stud – him, Damon – and that was that.

"Enzo, that was amazing!" Damon heard Bonnie gush upon his return, watching his witchy best friend practically melt over the preening vampire. And now Elena was getting in on the praise, too? Fine. That abhorrent gasoline that had the audacity to call itself bourbon, Wild Turkey, was stirring in the pit of his stomach. He was two seconds away from unleashing the contents of his stomach if this kept up. Only two acts left, thank God, and then he would rock everyone's world. That would show them.

"Feeling better?" Damon asked tightly, approaching Enzo.

"Fine, but you have to sing something truly embarrassing to redeem yourself," Enzo asserted, then corrected himself, "to start redeeming yourself. It's a long list."

"Yes!" Elena nodded enthusiastically, a wicked grin growing and growing on her face matching the one on Bonnie's. "It's the only way."

Damon narrowed his eyes at his traitorous girlfriend and best friend, so keen and eager to watch him make a fool of himself. Fine, two could play that game. "Sure."

He continued sipping his smuggled bourbon until his name was called at the start of the karaoke section of the evening. AC/DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long." This place was about to explode with pheromones, Damon decided co*ckily.

He sauntered onstage, in that practiced way of his – knowing from experience precisely what it did to anyone watching. Damon loved to dance, and while he didn't dedicate hours to the craft of music that Enzo did – only dabbling on the piano on the occasion that it suited his fancy – he knew he sounded good.

Eternal Stud Mode: Activated.

As he gyrated to the beat, oozing sex and charisma, he sent a wink to his three companions. That'll show them.

"Did he just take his shirt off?" Bonnie asked, raising an eyebrow. "Have you ever seen him do something like this? I thought he hated karaoke," she shook her head, then raised her voice to yell at the singing vampire. "This isn't a strip club!" In response, she noticed the glares in her direction from most of the female populace of the establishment, and some of the male.

"Nope, he does," Elena responded, after she finished laughing at the glares the bar's patrons were sending Bonnie for her attempts to de-scandalize their peep show. "I think he's jealous of the attention Enzo got, so he's trying to one-up him," Elena explained, grinning in amusem*nt, and something else that Bonnie really didn't want to analyze. Shaking her head, she turned to her friend. "Why are men such babies?" she asked wryly.

Bonnie laughed at the truth reflected in the vampires' competing behavior but took this as an opportunity to address what she felt was a very big problem. "Speaking of babies, you may want to re-up on Damon's blood, ASAP, before you regress to your teenage state again and make me feel like I need to change a diaper."

"I wasn'tthatbad!" Elena laughed, scandalized.

Bonnie shot her a look that suggested the exact opposite was true. "When was the last time you were around a teenager for an extended period of time? Go give Care a call, ask her to talk about boys, and see how you feel." Elena's widening eyes and slightly sickened expression told her all she needed to know. When they were teenagers, Elena and Bonnie decided that they were incredibly mature, and adult, and just years wiser than the rest of their classmates. Caroline seemed to embrace being a teenager almost wholeheartedly, while the two of them imagined themselves to be the height of depth and sophistication. They were so naive.

"But we were both so mature for our age, right?"

"Not nearly as mature as we thought. Trust me."

"Fine," Elena conceded, electing to bring this up later, instead. Tonight was about fun. She studied Damon's performance, which was becoming raunchier by the second, with a raised eyebrow. "I think he's trying to make eye contact with as many people as possible just to out-do Enzo in the fan department," then brightened. "Which means more free drinks for us!"

Bonnie scoffed, rolling her eyes, as the trio was approached with another round of shots from one of Enzo's new fans.

The song concluded, leaving Damon feeling unabashedly smug, as his vampiric senses picked up in the increased arousal in the room. Good. Now that's how it should be. He sauntered offstage, the height of co*ckiness, taking a few seconds to sensually thank everyone who stopped him to give him a compliment on the way.

Oozing with conceit, he grinned in a manner that positively showed it. "Sorry, I really tried to be embarrassing," sounding not apologetic at all, "but I guess it's only embarrassing for you, and your sad little performance."

Elena made a show of looking like she was pulled into Damon. "Oh no! Your ego has its own gravitational field now. I can't escape!" she cried with an impish grin. "We should call Jupiter for help. Might be the only planet in our whole Solar System to put up a worthy battle," she teased, squeezing him around his middle, and angling her face for an awaiting kiss.

The rest of the night was spent on shots, which the two non-vampires knew they would probably regret in the morning, until the last number was called, during which they decided to sing Queen'sWe Are the Championsin a boldly ironic revelation of their identities to anyone who may be hunting them.

That's what a night of shots promises to deliver.

Only a few bars into the song, Enzo looked at Elena in abject horror. This was … quite possibly … the worst sound that he had ever heard in his long life – far exceeding any tortures even dreamed up by Wes Maxfield – even those by Doctor Whitmore. How did such a skinny little thing produce a wail that horrifying? Was she a banshee? A siren? Wait, no, they sounded good.

His ears hurt. His brain hurt. His very soul hurt.

Someone had to make her stop. How did she manage to hit almosteverynote incorrectly? He looked at Bonnie, who didn't appear to be phased in the slightest. Maybe her witchy powers cushioned her precious psyche from this auditory monstrosity. Damon was prone to the occasional wince, but his frozen smile held strong, so clearly, he seemed intent on keeping this dark secret from her. She couldn't know she sounded this awful, could she? No one could be that cruel, to willingly release this wretched unmelodiousness onto the world.

He apologized to her? Really?

The song couldn't end soon enough. Finally, it was over. He practically ran from the stage, grabbing his tumbler whatever it was he was drinking at this point in the night – he didn't care.

"Elena, I want to try something," Bonnie bit her lip. "Give me your necklace."

"Sure," Elena responded, confused, though, complied with Bonnie's request.

"Do you trust me?" Bonnie asked.

"Of course," Elena nodded.

"Good. Okay, I need one of you to compel Elena to do something – anything," Bonnie said, addressing the two vampires.

Before Damon could reply, Enzo blurred forward. "Gladly." He looked Elena straight in the eyes. "Never sing in front of me again. Ever.Ever."

Elena glared at him, tilting her head to the side. What an ass. She pursed her lips, then smirked, and hit him with the only lines of the song that he performed earlier,The Way You Look Tonight, that she had memorized.

Enzo reeled back as if shocked, clearly pained. "You evil, evil woman," he practically sobbed, stalking away.

Damon and Bonnie looked at her curiously. "Are you on vervain?" Damon asked.

"Not that I'm aware of," Elena replied, her eyebrows knitted in confusion.

"I'd question Enzo's compulsion abilities, but he clearly did it before – and on you," he continued, puzzled. "Bon? Your hypothesis?"

"I'm … not sure enough to say yet," Bonnie responded distractedly. "I have a few ideas, but not solid enough to say yet," she whispered, though one of those ideas dominated above all others – and if it turned out to be true, she would need her Grams' help sooner rather than later.

They finished their drinks and left shortly after that. The night had been a surprising success, with even the initial bout of chaos having spectacularly fun results. Damon pulled up by Elena's house, after she informed him that perhaps her poor phone finally needed some charging after days with a dead battery, and it would probably ease Jenna's spirit somewhat to actually see her niece in person after she all but disappeared.

It was just as well. He needed to talk to Stefan, anyway, especially if someone was plotting to his him in their machinations.

Noticing that no one was around, Damon got out of the car and blurred over to Elena's side, opening the door. Sometimes he liked to show a classical touch. She smiled as he helped her out, then grinned into the searing kiss that met her as soon as she was fully outside.

"Come in through my bedroom window tonight?" she asked, breathless, leaning against him.

"Just as long as I don't have to channel prepubescent chic and make comparisons to you and the Sun. I've had enough Elizabethan drama for one night," he grinned, rolling his eyes, unwilling to admit that a part of him actually loved it.

"I see you as more of a Mercutio, anyway –" she offered, biting her lip wryly.

"You'd better. Much wittier. The only remotely tolerable person in that whole play," he concurred, then leaned in for a conspiratorial stage whisper. "Steffie's that extra that bites his thumb in the beginning." He leaned against the car, pulling her against him by her waist.

Elena laughed, wrapping her arms around his neck. "A Mercutio who stays alive through the end – and then decides he's kind of had enough of all that silly nonsense," she fantasized. "And leaves Verona – meets this really smart, funny, beautiful girl who just enchants him in every way possible..." she purred, pressing kisses along his jaw.

"Uh huh, he fakes his death. Doesn't want to deal with all their juvenile drama," Damon grinned in amusem*nt, urging her to continue. "And then what happens to Mercutio?"

"And then he and this incredibly charming girl go off on adventures."

"And what do they do on these adventures?" he asked sultrily.

"Why don't I just show you tonight?" she purred, and then her eyes widened. "This reminds me, I think I might need another dose, so teenage me doesn't unexpectedly come out to play," she said, gesturing meaningfully to his wrist with her eyes. "On second thought," she stopped him hand before it reached his fangs, smiling wickedly. "Maybe we'll save it for tonight, instead. We can playVampire and Humanagain," she winked. "This time, I'll be the vampire."

He pulled her flush against him, smirking when he heard the gasp she couldn't stifle, her shallow breathing, quickened heart-rate. "Mercutio escaped from Verona," he whispered, his lips just barely brushing the shell of her ear," looking for a new start, but instead he meets a temptress. What ever will he do?"

Elena barely detangled herself, knowing that if she didn't, they'd almost certainly be caught in a compromising position by Jenna, and she really needed to start limiting the amount of people that were in on their secret. "Hurry back, Mercutio," she swallowed thickly, very hard to look like she was in control of the situation. "And stay away from Tybalt! I'll be waiting for you in my lair," she added, finally feeling her breathing restore to normal. With that, she sauntered into her house, looking back once to send him a flirtatious wink.

A very frustrated Damon got out of his Camaro in front of the Boarding House. He needed this to go quickly.Vampire and Humanwas one of his favorite sexy role-playing games, and he was already getting way too excited.

Steffie might have to just wait. In a choice of counting forehead wrinkles for interpretation or seeing Elena sprawled out in sexy, red lingerie, the latter always won. It had been a while since she was the vampire, too, since she usually played the human – and her interpretation of an ancient vampire seductress was inadvertently hilarious in how ridiculous it was, so there was that, too.

She started hissing once. It made no sense, at all, especially considering that she'd met actual ancient vampires.. As clever and sometimes brilliant as Elena sometimes was, she could be such an adorkable idiot sometimes -- but she was his idiot.

His senses picked up suddenly, a whoosh in the air, headed right toward him. He blurred away, just barely missed by a vervain dart.

"Steffie, this is not the welcome home present I imagined," he chided dramatically into the air, knowing his brother could probably hear him. "Etiquette dictates that youaskbefore injecting someone with drugs, otherwise, you come across as creepy, and get banned from bars," he continued obnoxiously. "Just ask Donovan. That's probably his future," he smirked to himself.

Suddenly, he felt another dart come his way and blurred out of the way, yet again – except it followed him, along with several more. "What the hell?" he breathed. "What is this?" he outran the darts that seemed to be following him as if he was their spelled target, until a new one came out of nowhere, and hit in square in his chest, distracted him long enough to be hit by the remaining six.

In the next instant, Damon was unconscious on the Boarding House grounds.

Chapter 13

Chapter Text

It had been such a long time since Elena played the role of the vampire inVampire and Humanthat she found herself getting decidedly excited. After their impromptu performance atThe Crooning Canaryin Richmond earlier that day, she really wanted to go all out. This was going to be more than just a sexy role-playing session – this was going to be art!

She found her sultriest red lipstick, donned her sexiest lingerie, fixed her hair and makeup, and set about creating a character.

Was she going to lure men into her lair via her hypnotic voice like a Siren? No, Bonnie told her that Damon was brainwashed and tormented by a Siren while she was in her magical coma, so he definitely wouldn't like that. She also needed to stay away from anything that even hinted at Katherine Pierce.

Damon had it so much easier this time – Mercutio was already an established character – and a well-fleshed out one at that.

Hmm. What kind of ancient vampire temptress would she be?

Stefan had to talk to Elena – he absolutely had to. He had to make sure that she was okay, and that his brother hadn't compelled her to do anything terrible.

He knew Damon had committed some foul acts in his life, but this was depraved, even for him. He never would have imagined it if he hadn't seen the photographic evidence with his own eyes.

He found her window open, thank God.

There she was, he breathed a sigh of relief. He widened the opening of the window gingerly, so as not to spook her. She must be under so much stress. Was she wearing red lingerie? He didn't even know she owned that. He jumped into the room, landing softly on the floor.

Without turning, Elena began speaking in a pronounced tone that honestly really exaggerated the sultriness, if one had to be honest. "Hello, my sweet, innocent, human Mercutio. I see you've found your way into my lair," she cackled. "Don't bother trying to leave. I've ensnared you." And then she finally turned around, her eyes widening, followed by a horrified scream, her arm darting to the side to throw the first object it found at the intruder – in this case, a stuffed puppy, though she wished she found something heavier – and grabbed a robe to wrap around herself. She wasn't entirely sure of the order, but all those were achieved. "What the hell, Stefan? Learn to knock!" she shouted, tightening the belt on the robe around herself, distinctly annoyed.

Stefan's eyes widened, too, completely unprepared for this reaction. At first, when she started speaking so strangely, he thought maybe her mind had been utterly decimated my compulsion. Poor girl. He'd never actually seen it happen, but he heard stories – or at least some wild rumors. She seemed to be fine now, though. So maybe it came and went?

"Elena, you haven't been answering your phone, and I've been worried," he swallowed thickly. "You haven't been returning my calls, and I thought –"

She sighed, feeling a bit guilty, but the last few days had been tumultuous to say the least. She also had to get rid of him, to avoid what could possibly be one of the most awkward evenings in the history if awkward evenings, especially if Damon was really on his role-playing game, and came in in character, too. "Look, Stefan, I'm sorry. It's been a really busy few days. Why don't we talk about this later? I need to get to bed –"

"You didn't seem like you were going to bed. And who's Mercutio?" he asked suspiciously, again wondering what had been done to make her behave so strangely.

"Romeo's best friend, the prince's cousin, thorn in Tybalt's side," she deadpanned. "I'm sure we'll cover it later this year in lit."

"What's going on with you, Elena? You've been behaving really strangely –"

She was getting annoyed. "You know what's strange, Stefan? Coming in through a girl's bedroom window at night, uninvited, and then giving her the third degree about her so-called behavioral changes," she shot back.

"A girl's window? Elena! You're my girlfriend –"

"Ex-girlfriend," she corrected. "I broke up with you, remember?"

"But ... but why?" he asked, agonized, desperate to understand the sudden change.

He looked so earnest that Elena almost felt sorry for him. How could she tell him that they'd been friends for far longer than in their childish, teenage attempt at a relationship at this point? She took his hands in hers gingerly, hoping she would be able to convince him. "Stefan, you mean so much to me, but we don't bring out the best in each other – at least romantically. I know we were always meant to be friends, and I know we'll excel at it. This was just a phase for both of us, and it had to end – and now it did. Okay?"

He looked devastated, then zeroed in on her clavicle, looking positively enraged. "Elena, where's your necklace?"

She looked confused for a second, grasping at the spot where it usually hung, until she smiled with realization. "Ooh! Bonnie must still have it."

"Why would Bonnie have your vervain necklace?" Stefan narrowed his eyes in confusion.

"She needed it, for a spell," she thought quickly. The actual explanation was considerably stranger.

"Why did you think I was this Mercutio?" Stefan persisted, trying to see if he could trip her up to reveal the compulsion.

Elena's eyes widened. She definitely couldn't tell him the truth. Perhaps a version of the truth? Yes, that would do, she patted herself on the back mentally. She'd become a much better liar as a result of her time being a member of the supernatural. "I wasn't talking to you! I'm rehearsing for a performance."

"Oh really?" he asked dubiously. "Where?"

She gasped, pretending to be affronted. "Just today, Stefan, my troupe and I performed our act atThe Crooning Canaryin Richmond. We're called The Mystic Players. Go ask them! They'll tell you."

"Since when are you into theatre?"

Since when, indeed? Elena knew that she couldn't exactly tell him that this was very special theatre, but he'd get even more suspicious, at least at this point. She really needed to sell this if it was going to work. "Since I'm a seventeen-year-old girl, Stefan, and at a time in my life when I should be trying new things and expanding my horizons," she spat, growing annoyed with the interrogation. Were things that different when she was in her late teens and did ex-boyfriends always presume they'd be privy to all kinds of private information?

Stefan sighed, unwilling to play this game any longer. "Tell me the truth, Elena. Has Damon been compelling you? I've seen the pictures."

Her eyes widened. Oh, that's right. He did have photographs. "No, he hasn't, Stefan," she told him gently. "I'm sorry – but I promise there's a very good explanation. Now's just not the time to discuss it, so you need to get going, okay?"

"It's okay, Elena," he soothed, taking her in his arms. "You're safe. He can't hurt you anymore."

Elena's mind sorted through possible ways to get rid of him quickly, until she finally registered what he said. She rounded on him, grabbing and pressing him against the wall, like she was the predator of the two, having seemingly forgotten that she was no longer a member of the undead in her rage. "What the hell did you do?"

"Are you going to be okay here for a little bit, Enzo? I need to go speak to my Grams, and there's absolutely no way she'll allow a vampire inside. I'll try to be back as soon as I can," Bonnie soothed.

"Yeah, I'll be fine," he reassured with a smile. This would give him plenty of opportunities to examine the contents of this mobile flat television set with a keyboard attachment that allowed him to … surf the internet? What peculiar wording. He liked it! Although he was a bit puzzled – if this was a foreclosed home, why did all the utilities work?

"Great!" Bonnie beamed, leaning in shyly to press a kiss on his cheek, and then scurried out of the house before he had a chance to reciprocate in any way.

She arrived at home within minutes, grateful that the foreclosed house was so close to her own. Her Grams was waiting by the door, scrutinizing her.

The truth is that Bonnie had suspected that her Grams knew more than she let on since the day she returned. It was the way she looked at the young witch, studying her, that almost made her feel uncomfortable. And now, she seemed positive that Bonnie would arrive at this exact moment. Not angry, not disappointed – just aware.

Bonnie had no idea how to feel about this.

"Hi, Grams," she attempted weakly.

"Hello, dear. Did you have a nice trip?" her Grams asked casually, though it was clear to Bonnie that her words held considerably greater meaning.

Bonnie nodded, unsure how to respond, as she stepped into the house. What was she supposed to do? How would she tell her Grams her tale, without looking positively insane?

"You can stop fretting, child," her grandmother soothed, taking her hands in her own. "I know exactly who you are, and where you've come from. I may even be able to offer some insight on why you're here."

"How?" Bonnie all but squeaked.

"Come along, Bonnie," she gestured into the living room. "We're going to project onto the Astral Plane," she explained, gathering some candles. "Now, I know you've never done this, so it might be a bit disorienting at first, but you'll get the hang of it."

"I didn't do anything!" Stefan shot back. "What's wrong with you? Since when are you so concerned about him?"

"You said 'he can't hurt you anymore.' What the hell does that mean?" Elena persisted, refusing to be deterred.

This was bad. This ran deep. He didn't like what he had to do, but maybe it was the only way to override what was clearly happening to her, to keep her safe. Stefan took her shoulders in his hands, gazing deep into her eyes, allowing his pupils to shift with mental suggestion. "Damon is dangerous, Elena, and you need to stay away from him."

"Oh my God, did you just try to compel me?" she gasped, enraged, then grabbed the bridge of her nose, feeling an impending headache come on. "Look, Stefan, this isn't like you. We don't have time for this, and no matter how many Little Orphan Bambis you create!"

"Now you even sound like him! Did he tell you to say that?"

Elena groaned internally, knowing that if she explained that this was a natural byproduct of spending a lot of time with someone, it would just to confirm his wild theory. "Focus, Stefan. What did you do? Don't make me ask Bonnie to give you an aneurysm, because she will."

"I told you," he sighed. "I didn't do anything. I received some vervain darts, and some photos," he added bitterly, giving her a subtly sad glare. "I didn't mean to use them. I was just sitting outside, looking at them, trying to figure out the strange symbols on them. But then Damon came home, and they just flew out of my hands!" he explained, to Elena's visibly growing horror. "I tried to hold on to one, but then I couldn't maintain my hold, and it hit him in the chest, followed by the others."

"So, you camehere, instead of guarding him, and making sure he's okay?" she asked, her growing anxiety threatening to overwhelm her.

"I had to make sure you're okay!"

"So, where is he now?" she breathed, filling with dread.

"I locked him in the cell in the basem*nt until I could figure out what to do with him," Stefan explained.

She was instantly seized by a panic. This was a targeted attack, and he was alone – unconscious. "We're going there. Now!" she commanded, though her voice was a trembling whisper. She ran to grab a tee shirt, converse, and jeans, practically flying out of her house. She should have taken the blood. She had no idea how much time she had left, before reverting into her teenage form again, forgetting everything.

Forgetting that Damon was in trouble.

They drove in silence, Elena running into the basem*nt as soon as the car stopped.

Her stomach dropped. This couldn't be happening again. Not again. Not again.

The cell was empty. He was gone.

Damon awoke to find himself suspended in a darkened room; his hands locked in manacles held by thick chains. Well, this was certainly familiar. At least they weren't bear traps this time, he reasoned.

His head was pounding. He must have been injected with the motherlode of vervain.

Damon looked around. There looked to be a woman studying him, wearing similar runes on her fingers that he'd seen on Althea. Another witch. Perfect. She kept looking behind her at two mysterious figures. Then he looked down at himself, noticing his shirt was open.

"Look, this is all obviously very kinky, and I can't say I blame you – I mean, look at me – but we should probably start with my safe word," he sassed.

The witch paid him no mind and continued chanting.

"I got it!" he announced excitedly. "How about 'End of Days Rambling Subway Hag'? he asked in mock seriousness. "No? Okay, maybe you'll like this better –"

Before he continued, she removed what looked like a paintbrush from a drawer, and began to draw the very same runes that she had on her hands on Damon's chest, despite never having used any paint. They appeared by magic, and they somehow felt both hot and cool and altogether alive.

"Hey! Hands off the merchandise," he barked hoarsely, a sardonic smirk lining his features. "I don't give it away for free."

One of the figures stepped into the light, looking and sounding appealing like the kind of déjà vu that was forgotten, and spent entirely too long at the back of the 'fridge, and maybe even grew some of its own lifeforms. "Do your friends in Mystic Falls think you're funny, Damon?"

Chapter 14

Chapter Text

Elena was on the verge of getting a full-blown panic attack. Calming her trembling fingers to send Bonnie yet another text message before she de-merged. This couldn't be happening. Damon couldn't die. Not again.

She remembered the darkness – the despair – the desperation to get him back that led to her near killing-spree.

What she had to give up to avoid becoming a monster.

Breathe.

He's just missing. It doesn't mean he's dead. Where is Bonnie? Anna! Maybe Anna has some information they could use.

The sensible part of her understood that she was just having a trauma response. She had these a lot when she first entered automobiles after the accident with her parents.

Breathe.

Forcing herself to breathe evenly, she lowered herself into one of the parlor armchairs. She focused on her surroundings, trying to ground herself. She focused on the roaring fire, the water in her glass on the table, the feeling of the material she squeezed in her hands.

She saw Stefan frantically saying something to her, but she couldn't make out his words. It was so loud – the beating of her heart.

She tried calling Bonnie again for the thirtieth time and got her voicemail. Where was she?

Bonnie was instantly awed by her surroundings. So, this was the Astral Plane! She had always dreamt of visiting but had never quite gotten the chance. It required candles made out of rare materials that were hard to find – for some peculiar reason, their stores had all but vanished worldwide when they awakened Silas, and she never made the connection, though now she had to wonder.

She'd heard so much of the famed Astral Plane, lamenting that she never got to visit. It looked different to everyone who came across its magical existence – designed to make the visitor comfortable, and at peace.

To her, it was a blooming meadow.

"Why are we here, Grams?" Bonnie chanced to ask.

"Patience," her grandmother smiled mysteriously, waiting for a third figure to appear – a decidedly elegant witch, whose golden eyes twinkled with wisdom and just the barest hint of mischief.

"Althea!" Bonnie beamed. "How is this possible? Why did you need me to come here? Did you ask Grams to bring me here? Why did you ask me to go back? What is a Fixed Point? Why do we have to open the tomb?" she asked, with increasing urgency with each word.

"One question at a time, Bonnie Bennett. Temporal communication is nothing new," Althea replied dreamily. "Your ancestors have used to scrying fires for centuries. Personally, I favor the Astral Plane, though I must warn you: there are certain rules preventing me from communicating anything that could impede the flow of time."

"I've known about your journey before you even came here," Sheila explained. "I had a dream a few nights ago, beckoning me to visit, and met Althea, who told me quite the story," she raised her eyebrow at Bonnie. "I was kind of hoping to hear the truth from you, though," she chided gently.

Bonnie remembered how intuitive her grandmother was, even long before she spoke of being a witch. Sometimes she would just … know… things, and it would be unclear how or why. She wondered if her Grams visited the Astral Plane even then to search out answers to her most ardent inquiries – examine clandestine mysteries of the esoteric arts.

It was peculiar to Bonnie, how quickly her Grams seemed to accept this strange sequence of events.

Then again, her grandmother had been a witch for far longer than she, and who only knows what wonders she'd been privy to in her vast lifetime?

"I'm sorry, Grams," Bonnie deflated. "I should have known you'd understand, but what happened with the three of us is just so unusual, and otherworldly and –"

"You thought I would judge you?" Sheila asked, gently taking her granddaughter's hand, to which Bonnie only nodded sadly.

"Honey, you weren't sent back using Expression or any other kind of forbidden magic," Sheila soothed, urging her granddaughter to look at her with a soft hand below her chin. "The Magic – Nature – allowed it to happen. If that weren't the case, you'd have already seen the consequences, believe me."

"What kinds of consequences?" Bonnie asked, alarmed.

Althea watched the scene unfold before her curiously. "Witches are protectors of Nature, Bonnie Bennett, and so we uphold its will. Nature allowed me to send your souls back to this time, and so you are all three healed – whole. But the same cannot be said for your adversary. He was sent back using Expression, from what I was able to gather, and the effects on all his life are already being felt."

"I don't understand," Bonnie whispered. "Why is Nature okay with us being here, and not him? Who sent him? Why is he here?"

"To survive the merging of a past soul with a present, one must be in possession of a particular kind of magic – temporal magic," Althea explained, choosing to disregard all but one of Bonnie's questions. "It's what keeps its vessel healthy and vibrant when forced to undergo such a tumultuous event."

"But Damon and Elena –" Bonnie began, confused.

"Both have Traveler ancestry, whose purpose was quite different before the curse to which Qetsiyah subjected an entire witch line for the abhorrent actions of her former lover," Althea interrupted, explaining. "Although their magic is now either nonexistent or corrupt, their name once referred to Travels through time. The only lines capable of producing temporal magic are Bennett witches – and the Traveler line, but only before the curse was placed andaftertheir curse was broken," Althea explained to an increasingly bewildered Bonnie.

"But I've never seen either of them exhibit any sort of," Bonnie muttered to herself, then her eyes widened. "Elena can't be compelled," she breathed with sudden realization.

"Only the version of her from my time. The past version – the doppelganger – blocks the flow of magic from being released, just like the vampirism does in your friend – the one without any respect for rare potions ingredients," Althea added in annoyance, still evidently unhappy about Damon destroying her wares. "Don't be fooled, however, it's still there – keeping them safe from the ravages of temporal displacement."

"Is that why she didn't have any cuts on her skin when she was injured?" Bonnie asked, growing increasingly curious.

Althea nodded. "Traveler magic is elemental. Your friend is an untrained Water Witch – a Water Healer, specifically. Your rambunctious vampiric companion breathes in the world of Fire, fittingly, not that it matters while he's in his current form. This magic within them cannot blossom and grow, because the pool from which they draw has not flowed in millennia, in this time. It cannot grow stronger until the curse is broken again, but it is sufficient to protect them."

Bonnie swallowed thickly, mulling over this strange turn of events. "You mentioned someone being sent back via Expression."

Althea nodded sagely. "I'm not free to reveal his identity, I'm afraid, but the temporal displacement is wreaking havoc on his mortal form. The divination pools have told me that he has the aid of an Expression-practicing witch to cast a glamor to hide this, but you will certainly notice a severe difference in his magical signature. I must warn you, however, at this moment, the same witch is trying to drain your friend, Damon's, temporal magic. I should not have to tell what will happen to him, if she is successful. His status as a member of the undead would not be sufficient to protect him. Vampirism heals human ailments – not magical ones."

Bonnie's heart seized in panic, her bright eyes suddenly flooding with tears. "What? Right now?"

"Thank you for this meeting, Sheila," Althea smiled warmly at Bonnie's grandmother, before turning to the younger witch with greater urgency. "Go now, Bonnie Bennett. We will meet again."

With that, the meadow around Bonnie dematerialized, and she was back in her living room, alarm written all over her face. Her trembling hand grabbed hold of her phone – thirty-three missed calls from Elena.

Text messages about Damon's disappearance.

Elena didn't take the blood.

"Grams," Bonnie pleaded, suddenly feeling like a little girl again in the presence of her beloved guardian.

"Let's go, dear. I'm coming with you," Sheila assured.

Damon's eyebrows shot to his head when he saw Galen Vaughn, the Hunter whom he had left to die on that island off the coast in Nova Scotia, alive and breathing before him. Was he also displaced in time, or was he stupid enough to involve himself with this obviously sketchy group?

Last time he'd worked with Katherine, so probably the latter.

"We're not discussing their sometimes-questionable taste in comedy right now, Galen," Damon sassed with annoying calmness. "We're discussing my safe word. How about," he pretended to think, furrowing his brow in deep concentration – the kind that would make his brother feel both proud and threatened, all at once. "Creepy Island Carcass Buffet?" No reaction. Probably not the Vaughn he'd met previously then. "Okay, okay, fine. I got it. Qetsiyah's Vertically Challenged Minion?" Damon asked with eyes widened in mock-innocence, to Galen's obvious annoyance. At least that finally had a reaction.

"Will someone please shut him up?" commanded a booming voice, obviously distorted by the metal mask work on its vessel's face, whose body approached Damon with increasing agitation.

Damon could barely stifle a laugh. Sometimes his life was ridiculous. "Wow! Somehow Even Less Sexy Eustache Dauger?" Damon tried, to a silent audience – and to his own annoyance. He expected at least some kind of reaction. "The Man in the Iron Mask? Dumas? Based on a real, historical figure? My talent is wasted on all of you," he pouted. "I really think you should read more," chided, wagging a finger of a hand trapped in a manacle.

"I actually can't" supplied the witch, pointedly ignoring Damon's attempts to rile them, now tracing the runes on his chest with what looked like a wooden wand. "The exchange of temporal magic cannot be achieved through coercion. The subject must be comfortable."

"Comfortable!?" Damon balked, then sighed with dramatic sadness. "I think I may have given you the wrong idea before, and now I need my emotional security bourbon. It's not here. So, if you don't mind –"

"Let me make myself very clear," the man with the voice distorted by his mask boomed. "You will get that magic, even if you have to carve it out of him. If I'm going down, I'm taking you with me."

"It has to be given freely," the witch stressed through clenched teeth, growing increasingly annoyed with the man commanding them all.

Bonnie all but ran into the Boarding House, followed by her grandmother, walking at a much more leisurely pace. She found Elena in tears, having what could plainly be seen as a full-blown panic attack. She wrapped her arms around her trembling friend immediately, tracing soothing patterns along her back.

In the time since she began calling Bonnie, Elena ripped through the Boarding House to gather any items of Damon's that could be used for a locator spell, as well as any stakes or other weaponry that could be used in case there needed to be a fight, desperately trying to hold herself together.

"I'm here," Bonnie whispered. "We'll find him. Don't worry."

"I tried calling Jeremy to get Anna's address," Elena cried, trying to control her breathing. "Stefan says she took one of the photos. The vervain darts are gone; the photos are gone. There's nothing we can use to track them if they put a block on him. Please tell me you still have the stake," Elena implored.

"I have it, but we'll try one on him first" Bonnie reassured, reaching to take it out of her bag. She and Sheila quickly removed the candles they brought along, gathered ingredients for a location spell.

Both of which promptly failed. The block on him had been expected, given the apparently magical nature of the vervain darts that followed their target.

"It's the stake," Sheila explained. "There's a block on it. I've seen this symbol before. It's –"

"The Brotherhood of the Five," Bonnie interrupted impatiently. "We know."

"As I was saying," Sheila sassed, impatient with her granddaughter's impudence, causing Bonnie to blush. "The Brotherhood of the Five was created by a powerful, ancient witch named," she shot her granddaughter a look when she appeared as though she was about to interrupt her again, forcing Bonnie to look contrite. "Qetsiyah – an ancestor of the Bennett line. Anything bearing this mark has her protection. We'll have to use something else."

"Anna took one of the photos!" Elena exclaimed. "Jeremy's not picking up, so I can't get her address, but maybe we can figure out a way to track her?"

"We needn't bother," Sheila huffed. "I make sure to keep track of all new vampiric activity in this town. I know where she is."

As soon as the quartet arrived at Anna's house, that Elena bounded for the front door, knocking frantically, followed by Bonnie.

"Anna! Help!" Elena screamed, when it appeared her knocks were being ignored. No sooner had she said those words that she and Bonnie looked at each other with eyes wide in recognition.

Aside from her curious decision to quote the poetry of Emily Dickinson, Elena's first words upon returning from … that world … were 'Anna… help.'

Neither girl had time to analyze the situation, because Anna chose that precise moment to finally come to the door.

"Well, look who's come crawling back?" She sassed. "Are you ready to work together to open the tomb yet?"

"Anna," Elena exclaimed frantically. "Damon's missing. We need that photo!"

"Get your own blackmail material, Gilbert," Anna countered. "Why should I help you exactly? You haven't exactly been hospitable with me."

"Because you know we won't help you get your mom back if you don't cooperate with us," Bonnie threatened.

"You actually expect me to believe that Sheila Bennett of all people is going to help open a tomb full of desiccated vampires?" Anna raised a dubious eyebrow.

"Maybe I will, and maybe I won't," Sheila replied. "But there's only one way to find out."

Anna nodded, gesturing for the four to come inside. Stefan trailed after the group, positively confounded. Did he fall into some kind of nightmare where the Bennett witches, of all people, were desperate to save his brother? What was going on?

And then it finally reached him. Damon was in trouble. Real trouble. And he invertedly helped his kidnappers.

Anna blurred away, returning with the photograph only seconds later, unwilling to let these interlopers see her beloved secret hiding spot.

Bonnie and Sheila went about setting up the ingredients for the spell, while Elena went outside to get some air to calm herself. They would find him, she reassured herself – alive, safe.

All would be well.

"I'm worried, Grams," Bonnie confessed, visibly relieved to finally be able to discuss this complex matter with a knowledgable witch. "Opening the tomb. I'm guessing you already know what happened last time," she chanced, to a knowing nod from Sheila. "I can't lose you again," she choked.

"Oh, my darling," Sheila soothed, gently cupping her granddaughter's face. "You have no idea how proud I am of the woman you've become - exceeding my greatest dreams and wildest expectations. You've become so wise and powerful - you could probably open that tomb up all by yourself, dear."

Urging her granddaughter to follow her friend, to make sure she's okay, Sheila gestured outside, assuring Bonnie that she'd be able to finish setting up within a few minutes. Bonnie nodded, eager for the few-minutes break to clear her own head.

Her best friend was missing and in mortal danger. She couldn't bring herself to tell Elena just how much yet – not with her already mentally reliving that summer.

What she found outside surprised her, however. Expecting to find a distraught woman, worried about her boyfriend, the Elena that she saw looked back at Bonnie brattily, in a way that only a teen could. Oh no.

"That's right, Bonnie," Elena huffed petulantly, somehow looking both hurt and utterly confused, crossing her arms over her chest with a marked teenage pout. "It's me again."

Bonnie needed a drink. Or ten.

Chapter 15

Chapter Text

"Hi again, Elena," Bonnie tried to smile, but had a feeling that her grimace was a little too revealing. There's a reason she preferred to work behind the scenes, though she had a feeling that – given what she was just shocked and amused to learn about him – Enzo would be a pro at this.

"Try not to look so happy," Elena sassed, trying to look and sound defiant, though the slight catch in her tone gave her away. She was obviously hurt, and Bonnie felt a little guilty – but there were more pressing matters at hand than teenage Elena's feelings.

"Look," Bonnie started, not entirely sure what to say. "We're in a bit of a crisis right now. I didn't want to tell your older version, because she was already two seconds away from a panic attack – which, understandable, given what she went through," Bonnie winced, "but I suppose I can tell you. It's Damon, he –"

"What is it?" Elena asked, her eyes growing wide with fright. Did he hurt someone? No – that's not it, probably. Bonnie looked worried, not betrayed – and the two of them seemed to be very close friends. Maybe they found Katherine this time, and he ran off with her? That hurt more than she would have guessed. Oh no! What if Katherine hurt him?

"He's missing," Bonnie supplied, studying her with a creased brow. "We know who took him – and," she hesitated, suddenly a lot less sure of her friend's younger self's reaction, "and if we don't find him soon, he's going to die."

Elena gasped in horror, covering her open mouth with her hands, one on top of the other.

"You… care a lot more than I thought you would," Bonnie queried.

"He's your friend, Bonnie," Elena said kindly, taking the girl's hands in her own. "I know how much he means to you. I don't want you to lose him. I hope we find him soon," she assured, almost successfully convincing herself that her reaction was entirely for Bonnie.

Bonnie was grateful that despite the fact that the girl in front of her was clearly a teenager – and often elected to act like one – she still oozed with compassion, which might make this whole situation a lot more tolerable. Compassion and what she was fairly certain with denial. Perhaps at any other time, she would have taken a minute to analyze the situation, if only for her own amusem*nt, but their current predicament was urgent, and with any hope, they'd get Damon back safe and sound soon, and never have to deal with teenage Elena again. Bonnie nodded, about to reply, when Anna stuck her head out the door. "We're ready for you!"

As Bonnie sat down in the salt circle with her grandmother, Stefan reached out to Elena, gingerly taking her hand. "Are you okay?" he whispered.

"Stefan!" Elena smiled in surprise, inching closer to him. "What are you doing here?"

He narrowed his eyes, his suspicious confirmed. Now this was his Elena. Whoever that was – that brainwashed imposter – must have been a victim of Damon's compulsion. "I knew it!" he growled. "What did he do to you, Elena?" he asked, furrowing his brow as he was wont to do – most of the time – and leaning in to study her eyes.

"What do you mean?" Elena asked, clearly confused.

"What was the last thing you remember? Did he give you any commands?" Stefan urged.

Bonnie sighed, quite audibly. She didn't need this kind of distraction while doing what might be a very difficult locator spell against the work of someone who may be an experienced witch. She dug into her jacket's pocket and pulled out Elena's vervain necklace. "Here," she reached her hand over to Elena. "You might want this back."

"Why do you have it?" Elena asked curiously, taking the necklace, and allowing Stefan to clasp it around the back of her neck, already feeling safer with it.

"I needed it for an experiment," Bonnie replied evasively, though it looked like Elena wasn't about to accept this as an explanation. She was starting to get a tension headache. Maybe it was all those shots they had only hours ago? It feels like it's been days. "For your … other self," Bonnie explained.

"What did the experiment show?" Elena pressed.

"That when you're – together," she stressed, "you can't be compelled."

"You mean she can't be compelled," Elena pouted, still unnerved that she was being replaced by what was apparently a future version of her – one whom everyone else seemed to prefer. It all made Elena feel so alone. Who else preferred this cool, older Elena? Did she do lots of traveling? All over the world? Did she live in cool places? Did she have a fascinating career? Was she suave and sophisticated? Was she clever and witty? One thing she wasn't was a sad, boring teenager, who still sometimes couldn't through the night without nightmares of cars in the river, filled with people she loves, she thought glumly.

"You're the same person," Bonnie corrected gently, but with some force behind her words. "Just a few years apart."

"Just do the locator spell," Elena sniffed, turning to Stefan to mouth that they'd talk about this later, as he and Anna began to wear increasingly incredulous looks. "We need to find your friend and save him."

Bonnie bit back any retort at her description of Damon and focused on their task.

"Somnum nunc," Bonnie heard her grandmother whisper under her breath, and the room's non-Bennett occupants fell into a deep slumber. At her questioning look, her grandmother simply shrugged and said, "you know very well that they wouldn't let us focus. We'd get maybe five minutes of peace and quiet before the next round of questions would begin, and this is time-sensitive."

The spell went surprisingly smoothly – and unsurprisingly, Bonnie's Grams predicted that the photograph would enable them to track… someone. Thank heavens for Anna's slightly more mischievous tendencies! It did take nearly the whole night, however, to disable the blocking spell cast on it. Happily, it appeared that the block on Damon carried a similar signature, so perhaps this would provide a clue to disable that one, as well.

"Whoever it is," Sheila announced, "they're on the move," she frowned studying the map.

"Looks like they're headed toward the Grill," Bonnie guessed, watching as the three sleeping occupants began to stir, assuming that her grandmother finally lifted the spell.

"What happened?" asked a surprisingly groggy Anna.

"All right, this is what we're going to do," Sheila said, taking charge. "Bonnie, you take Elena, and go to the Mystic Grill. With any luck, you'll be able to sense something off someone's magical signature. If it's our errant time traveler, we can get two birds with one stone – learn the identity of your adversary, and save your vampire friend. I'll stay here in the meantime, trying to break the block on him so we could do a proper locator spell."

"But Grams –" Bonnie began, worried for her safety.

"Stefan and Anna will protect me if I need to go into a trance, won't you?" Sheila asked sharply. "After all, if something happens to me, the tomb stays closed," she said pointedly to Anna, then turned to Stefan, "and you won't get your brother back – when you know very well it's your fault that he was taken in the first place."

"Why don't I stay here and try to crack the spell?" Bonnie asked, irrationally afraid to leave her alone with Stefan after what he did to Enzo. Logically, she knew that she was being silly – not only was her grandmother powerful enough to take them both down, but that Stefan had his humanity off, and this one wore every sign of contrition for his misdeed only hours ago.

Not that it stopped him from immediately suspecting Damon of foul play the second Elena reverted, Bonnie thought bitterly.

"It has to be you, dear," Sheila softened. "You're not from this time, so your magical signature will be able to more easily find one that's similar – and Elena's temporal magic was active only minutes ago, so there may be traces of it left – hopefully enough to be of some help. Now go. Shoo, dear," she playfully swatted her hand, eager to get the two girls away.

As soon as the girls left, Stefan turned a dubious eye to Sheila. "Temporal magic? What are you talking about? Will someone please tell me what's going on?"

Sheila looked at him impatiently, then deciding that she was more than a match for the two vampires in the room with her, and could therefore take them out should they react in a way she deemed unacceptable, acquiesced with a sigh. Knowing just how fantastical the story sounded, she surmised she might at least get some mild amusem*nt from their shocked reactions. "About ten years from now, you're dead, and Elena's under a sleeping spell. Your brother, who at that point had taken the Cure for vampirism and become human, made a deal with a powerful witch and her coven to be sent back in time to save you both. What he didn't know is that my granddaughter woke her up only hours after he left, so Elena followed him here. And then after the witch gave her a few warnings about maintaining the integrity of the timeline, Bonnie followed, as well. It turns out that someone else came along, too – someone who is working against them, though I'm not sure how yet, but what I am sure about is that it's the person who sent you those photographs and vervain darts," Sheila finished explaining to two similarly shocked faces.

"Did you put me to sleep?" Elena asked as soon as they sat in the car.

"Yes," Bonnie replied tersely. "We needed to focus, and it didn't look like anyone was willing to do us that courtesy.

"I would have," Elena replied softly, trying to mask the hurt that she felt – this version of Bonnie seemed determined to treat her like a child.

"Perhaps," Bonnie agreed, though somewhat dubiously. "But I doubt Stefan or Anna would have," she reasoned, trying to cheer the girl up. Elena could be so sensitive, though she supposed she couldn't blame her. If the roles were reversed, she supposed she would be feeling much the same way. "We need to make a quick pit-stop to pick up some extra help," Bonnie said distractedly as she broke the speed limit, along with several laws, to race toward the foreclosed house.

"Aren't you afraid we're going to lose the trail? What if he moves? How will we find Damon then?" Elena asked, clearly more worried than she ever wanted to be about someone she claimed to dislike. Still disliked. Very much. Except …

"Grams will follow his location on the map we used for the spell," Bonnie replied, pulling up into the house's driveway, and running inside.

"Bonnie!" Enzo beamed as he greeted her at the door, his vampiric senses hearing her coming. "I've been surfing the … inteweb?" he guessed, unable to remember the exact term. "On your flat-screened gadget with the adjoining keyboard," he explained, "and it looks like I need to find an agent!" he concluded excitedly.

Bonnie looked at him adoringly for a few seconds, then snapped out of it. "Do you remember that glass containing Damon's blood that we fed Elena?" she asked to Enzo's receiving nod. "We don't still have that by any chance, do we?"

"I'm afraid not," Enzo shook his head. "Damon emptied that almost immediately."

Bonnie silently cursed – it was a long shot, anyway – then schooled her features into a friendlier expression. "So, it looks like your favorite frenemy has been kidnapped. Fancy a little rescue operation? Might help you get even more of a leg-up on him," she winked.

"Frenemy? A compound word of friend and enemy? Sounds about right," he admitted, impressed. "I'm in."

With that, the trio found themselves entering the Mystic Grill, here minutes later, sometimes quite thankful that Mystic Falls' small size enabled such quick transportation.

They entered and found a booth immediately, grateful that Sunday mornings at the local bar had yet to catch the brunch craze and were thus relatively empty.

Elena grabbed her head in obvious discomfort, the throbbing she felt upon waking intensifying. If she didn't know better, she could have sworn this was –

"Here," Bonnie said, digging out a vial from her purse. It was one of two she prepared before their night out, just in case. "Magical hangover cure," she felt the need to explain to alleviate Elena's puzzled expression.

Elena eyed the bottle dubiously, but nevertheless took it, swallowing its contents in a single gulp, desperate as she was to rid herself of the headache and nausea. "Are we," she lowered her voice to lean over to Bonnie and whisper, with a deep and alarmed frown, "do we have a drinking dependency?" she asked frightfully. She remembered vividly how Kelly Donovan used to brag about "closing down bars" in Richmond with her aunt Jenna, whose party girl reputation followed her all throughout undergrad and into the early days of graduate school. Thankfully, either the rigorous workload, or her newfound responsibilities, seemed to calm her down some.

Bonnie almost laughed out loud. That was one place she hadn't expected her mind to go. Must be a pretty bad hangover if she took it so willingly after pouting at her all morning. "No, we actually don't do this all that much. Last night was just," she glanced at Enzo, sharing a secret smile, "special."

Elena could have sung with sweet relief the second her symptoms – quite magically – abated, though her trepidation certainly hadn't. "Are you sure?" she asked worriedly. "Maybe it's something that runs on my mom's side. Jenna –"

"You don't have to worry about that," Bonnie interrupted her, not willing to explain that not only was Jenna just a lapsed party girl – hardly a representative of real addiction – but that she wasn't even her biological aunt. That one, she wasn't touching. Someone else would need to handle the whole adoption issue.

Elena looked like she was about to press, when a peppy, vivacious blonde quickly made their way over to their table, practically knocking it over in her enthusiasm to greet the booth's occupants. Taking a seat next to Elena, she studied Bonnie sitting next to a mysterious and attractive stranger.

"So," Caroline chirped, evidently annoyed with her two friends. "Where have you two been?"

It was at that moment that Bonnie's eyes widened – her magical core roaring to life with dire warning.

He was here.

"Knife-happy bondage incel," Damon obnoxiously tried in Galen's direction, evidently still not have grown tired of his 'guess my safe word' game, clearly eager to amuse himself – and apparently no one else in the room.

"Can I stake him yet?" Galen asked irately, desperately trying to keep his last two functional nerves from enacting their suicide pact and jumping into the abyss after this delightful disaster of an evening.

"That would defeat the purpose, wouldn't it?" asked the witch haughtily. "We need his temporal magic, not his death."

In the hours that Damon had been trapped in what he surmised was some kind of kitschy, creepy, not-very-inventive lair, the witch tried desiccating him with a heart-stopping spell to remove the magic, then started it again when failed; siphoning his vampirism using Expression; bleeding, and hypnosis, and absolutely nothing worked.

It had to be given willingly, as she asserted earlier.

Wordlessly, she cast a sleeping spell on the Hunter, knowing that to have any degree of success, she needed to speak to the vampire alone – which they were, since their mask-clad commander left for undisclosed business hours ago.

Damon raised an eyebrow at Galen's sleeping form. "Look, you seem really determined and all, but I'm really not that interested –"

"Don't flatter yourself, bloodsucker," the witch sneered. "Do you know why you're here?"

"You apparently want something from me willingly, but waking up in all the kinky chains and toys make me think you don't really understand how consent works," he sassed.

"You're aware that Silas is your ancestor, right?" she asked, ignoring his attempts to annoy her, as before.

"What does Steffie's husk of creepy doppel-desiccation have to do with any of this?"

"Silas as a practitioner of Traveler magic," she explained calmly. "The entire line was cursed because of his actions – not only friends, family – those close to him. But all practitioners of this magic – all over the world, for generations. As a result, the magic became corrupted, and no one knew its true form, until the curse was broken, in the time from which you hail."

"Right … and what do a bunch of body-jumpers have to do with me?"

"They weren't always body-jumpers, Damon. Travelers once reigned over the magic of time, and thus, they all have within their core something called temporal magic. When displaced in time, they don't suffer from its ravages."

"I don't know what to tell you, lady. I'm not a witch, clearly. I don't know if anyone ever told you, but vampires can't be witches, and I'm obviously," he trailed off to allow his fangs to elongate threateningly, his eyes flooded with crimson."

The witch wasn't phased in the slightest, much to Damon's chagrin.

"But you were – weren't you?" she asked. "You took the Cure for vampirism, and suddenly, everything felt – different, didn't it?"

"Obviously! Because I was human for the first time in over a century," Damon scoffed. "How do you know all this, anyway?"

"You felt some very familiar … sensations. Traveler witches are all elemental. Some favor Earth, some Air, some Water – and then she looked at him, pointedly, assessing his gaze. "Some Fire. And you have quite the experience with Fire, don't you, Damon?"

It was something he never told anyone. Stefan suspected, he guessed. When he reached his late teens, he'd been almost too prone to accidentally starting fires – to practically burning his father's precious artifacts. Back then, he suspected that it had been a subconscious desire to get even with him for the cigar burns he viciously left on his skin.

His father had of course been quick to label him 'demon-spawn,' which only served to increase his hatred of his eldest even more.

And then, with vampirism, it all stopped. And Damon had not thought about it since – not until this day.

"You're lying," he condescendingly accused. "And desperate. We had a few dry seasons, and so the fields were just a lot more flammable than usual –"

"Mostly around you, it would seem," she shot back, amused. "But we're getting off-topic. I want the temporal magic that runs through your core. Give it up, and we can make this all go away."

"Just like that?" Damon asked dubiously.

"Just like that," she shrugged.

"So what's the catch?"

"You'll die. Much like our masked friend over there, without the magic to protect you from the ravages of displacement, your core will deteriorate, and you'll wither away," she supplied nonchalantly.

Damon barked a laugh, incredulous. "So why the hell would I ever give it up?"

She narrowed her eyes, smirking with what she was positive was an assured victory. "Because they don't know the whole truth, Damon Salvatore. You're not the only one in this time with Traveler magic coursing through their veins. Katherine Pierce's grandfather had it, and so do most of his descendants – one in particular that seems especially close to you. Now, I didn't tell them this, because I wanted to ensure that you were our target – one less vampire," she explained to his narrowed eyes, that barely hid his now-present panic. "But it seems if I'm not successful, my life will be in utmost jeopardy. Your 'Eustache Dauger,' as you call him, isn't the real danger – but the one behind him – the one who sent him here. Now her, you should fear. Any sane person would."

"So, you're saying that unless I give up the only thing that's keeping me alive, out of time, you'll somehow get Elena to give up hers? Your logic leaves a lot to be desired. No wonder that New Orleans witch was so against Expression. Apparently, it fries brain cells, too."

"You don't believe me?" she seemed amused.

"You're bluffing. About everything. Go find another 'temporally magical' vampire. I hear there's one on Sesame Street that can count numbers and tell time," he responded defiantly, though inside, he was reeling. Elena's cut seemingly healed itself.

She couldn't be compelled.

Everything was adding up a little too well, and it threatened to turn his stomach inside out.

"You don't think that after we tell her that it's either you or her, she would do anything to save your life? Even take your place? After what happened last time?" the witch asked with a skeptical tone.

"Your plan has a slight wrinkle in it," he assured with a calm confidence that he didn't feel. "By now, she's definitely been replaced by her me-hating teenage self. I'd be surprised if she didn't hand you the stake herself."

She only laughed, clearly having seen enough through any divinatory aids or otherwise to catch his falsehood. ''And you're so sure?"

"Hello again," greeted an achingly familiar-looking girl with bright blue eyes and a warm, enthusiastic smile – though there was a deep, penetrating sadness hidden behind her vibrant visage. "I didn't think you'd be back here so soon."

Having felt the height of serenity only a mere instant ago, Elena was surprised to find herself floating at – the base of a waterfall? It had to be the most beautiful one she'd ever seen. The sky was clear, blue – blue like –

And now it was dark, great meteors shooting across its vast expanse. What was this place?

"You're on the Astral Plane, Elena" explained a young woman with a beautiful, kind face – and a clear, pleasant voice. She looked young – in her late teens, perhaps – but there was something so achingly sad about her that seemed to leave a hole down to her very soul. "It looks different to everyone who visits it. This must be what you associate with Peace – with Serenity."

She looked entirely too young to feel such sadness. Elena's heart reached out for her immediately.

In spite of that, however, she wore a smile – plucky and determined – unwilling to submit to the rigors that tried to drown her.

"How do you know my name?"

"I know more about you than you know about me," she replied mysteriously, but without malice. "This place has rules that we have to abide by. I'm afraid I can't always give you a straight answer," she supplied sadly.

"Who are you?"

The girl opened her mouth to speak, but then her eyes seemingly widened in fright, and she shook it off, instead opting for another route. "Hope is the thing with feathers. It perches in the soul. It sings the song without the words – and never stops – at all."

Elena looked around at the telltale waterfalls of the Astral Plane – she and her interlocutor were sitting in the water, at the base, though she often wondered what this mysterious witch saw – what place of peace and comfort and happiness she imagined.

Given the wings of fire that seemed to emanate from her back, she sincerely doubted that it was the same as hers. She studied them briefly, marveling at their form. It was as though every feather was its own individual flame.

"No, neither did I," Elena confessed, with a shrug and a lackadaisical smile. "I'm sure my friends will find a way to bring me back soon. I'm honestly not sure why I'm not back already," she grinned. "I must be giving them a hard time. I was really stubborn as a teenager!' she laughed.

"I'm sure you'll get your answer when you return to the," the girl frowned, "whatever that place is. We never learned about it in school, though I'm sure it will one day be added to the curriculum."

"Sounds like quite the school," Elena smirked.

"You have no idea – not yet, anyway," the girl smiled mysteriously, but returned to the topic at hand. "I'd have to check some divination aids, but I can't do that from here. All I can do is communicate – with you," she added cheerfully.

"Have we ever met before?" Elena decided to try a different avenue to poke for information.

"We met – through friends," the girl supplied.

"Why don't I remember you?" Elena asked, her brows knitted in confusion.

"Because this is our first meeting," the girl replied confidently, as though it made all the sense in all the cosmos.

"So, are you finally going to tell me who you are? Or are you just going to recite more poetry?" Elena asked, with a wink.

The girl sighed, then looked at her apologetically. "I can't give you anything more than hints."

"Does it have anything to do with our mysterious paradoxes and Fixed Points?"

"Something like that," the girl mumbled.

"Maybe you can take a chance?" Elena tried, poking at her playfully. "It's not like I'll even remember most of it by the time I'm back in my body," she sighed. The rules of psyche-displacement were incredibly strange.

The girl shook her head – though there was some sympathy in her demeanor, she was nevertheless firm. "I can't give you more than hints. She monitors this place. Otherwise, she'll make it so we can't meet, and then I wouldn't be able to help you at all."

"She?" Elena asked, confused. "Althea?" she changed. The girl only vehemently shook her head, clearly desperate for a change of subject. "You look so familiar," Elena whispered. "I know you're from several decades in the future," she chewed her lip, thinking. "Do I know your parents?"

The girl looked momentarily struck – heartbroken – then turned away to hide her obvious pain, before she collected herself with what she hoped was a convincing smile. "Yes," she whispered, her voice trembling.

Elena squeezed her hands into fists trying to calm her own nerves. It seems that every question was making this poor girl uneasy. "I love your wings," she swooned, glancing over the appendages made of orange flame. "They're beautiful."

"Thank you," the girl nodded, though even this seemed to fill her with sadness.

"I'm sorry," Elena expressed sympathetically. "It seems I can't stop gravitating toward painful topics for you."

"It's not your fault," the girl was quick to reassure. "The wings are – special," she concluded, after thinking for a few moments. "But the came at great personal cost."

"You lost someone?" Elena asked, her expressive dark eyes filling with empathy.

The girl nodded, her own blue eyes steadily filling with tears. "I did. And in trying to save him, I created a Fixed Point, so, you see…" she trailed off.

"I'm so sorry," Elena urged, and gathered her in for a hug, stroking her back soothingly. "Do you want to talk about what happened?"

"The powers that came with these wings made it possible for me to create the magical artifact – through a long and convoluted series of events – made it possible to send you back. So, you see, if it weren't for his death, I wouldn't have been able to make the very artifact that I need to save him," the girl brokenly explained.

"A paradox," Elena breathed, and the girl only nodded.

Chapter 16

Chapter Text

"Who's this handsome stranger?" Caroline asked, eyeing Enzo with an almost lascivious gaze, much to Bonnie's obvious annoyance. She'd almost forgotten how boy-crazy the seventeen-year-old version of her powerhouse boss-lady friend was.

Bonnie narrowed her eyes, taking Enzo's hand possessively, much to his amusem*nt.

"Bonnie Bennett, you closet rebel!" Caroline cheered with obvious shock. "Is this your new boyfriend? An older guy? I didn't see it coming."

Desperately wanting to change the topic, since she and Enzo had yet to have this conversation, Bonnie decided to shift attention away from her sort-of-would-be-non-relationship with her favorite vampire, and back to Caroline's favorite topic: herself. Though she loved her friend dearly, she had to admit that Care was at least slightly histrionic – and perhaps the most extroverted person she'd ever met. "So, how's Matt?" she asked with false sweetness, all the while allowing the magic inside her to extend forth to search for any temporal anomalies.

Caroline blushed under her scrutiny, since the relationship – if it could even be called that – was still so new. She desperately wanted to get Matt to like her as much as she liked him, but every cell inside her body was worried that he still wasn't over Elena. And wasn't she with Stefan now, anyway? She studied the brunette, who looked unusually nervous. What was going on? Caroline hated being out of the loop – she needed to be on top of all gossip and all comings and goings of her friends – and Mystic Falls, in general, if she could help it – at all times, so all this obvious secrecy to which she wasn't entirely privy was making her decidedly uncomfortable.

Caroline prided herself on being able to sense shifts in the collective mood, and she would get to the bottom of this. But first, she needed to answer Bonnie's obvious attempt at deflection. "He's supposed to be around," she announced with a sigh. "Tyler's dad invited the entire football team out for burgers to celebrate last week's victory, but it looks like everyone's scattered. He wasjusthere," she huffed petulantly, especially since she spent over an hour making sure her hair looked flawlessly effortless – perfecting the bedhead look that just screamed 'I woke up like this because I'm naturally fabulous.'

Bonnie looked around in alarm. How did the space empty out in the last few minutes? Her attempts to follow the trail of the temporal anomaly were interrupted by a ding signifying that Caroline received a text.

"Oh," Caroline pouted. "There was some kind of emergency meeting where Tyler's dad was called, so the team just grabbed their burgers and went – wherever it is that immature delinquent boys go." Then she visibly brightened. "Oh! Looks like they took the party to the Lockwood property, and we're invited. Are you ladies up for a little day drinking and a lot of day flirting?" Caroline asked, smiling fervently.

Bonnie's eyes widened. The anomaly did seem to extend in the direction of the Lockwood estate, so their temporal trespasser would either have to be at what she assumed was a council meeting, or at the teenage party. Normally, she would be quick to assume that the former is their best bet, if she and Elena were not in their teenage bodies, themselves.

Shooting Elena a meaningful look, Bonnie forced a smile. "We'd love to!"

"Great!" Caroline chirped, just happy to be with her friends again – and hopeful that she would discover the reason behind this very obvious and very sudden shift in overall mood.

Not entirely privy to Caroline's musings, mostly because she was so concerned with her own, Bonnie allowed herself to feel a measure of victory.

They were so close.

They were going to find the time-traveler that hunted them, and with him, hopefully Damon.

Finally. Her very bones – the magic in the deepest fibers of her being – sang with impending victory.

"So, let me get this straight," Stefan deadpanned. "Elena and Bonnie,andmy brother, are all from about decade into the future. Damon and Elena werehuman, but he came back to save bothmeand her – me, the brother he promised an eternity of misery – and then Elena followed him, and then Bonnie?"

"Yes," Sheila responded curtly, not at all amused by his obvious skepticism.

"So why do they look exactly the same?" he challenged. "If all three of them were human, then surely they should have aged?"

"Only their consciousnesses came back and merged with those in this time. Elena's is tethered to something that has to be replenished periodically, so her future consciousness de-merged, and she's currently her seventeen-year-old self again," Sheila explained nonchalantly, anticipating more disbelief and not in any mood to entertain it.

"My mom read something about temporal magic once," Anna whispered with an ashen look on her face. "She said that there were theories that it was once abundant – elemental temporal magic – but It's since all but disappeared. No one knows why."

This actually got Sheila's attention. While vampires certainly had the habit of meddling in witch business for their own gain, they usually didn't cross into the realm of learning about their intricate histories. "She did?"

"Yes," Anna preened with pride. Pearl Zhu had always been known as an intellectual in every community they'd joined – helping them thrive through the excellent tool of knowledge. It was only thanks to Katherine Pierce and her inherent selfishness that she'd been unfairly locked away to desiccate in a dark tomb – tormented for centuries – starving and alone. Perhaps she and the other vampires had each other at first, but after a while, any communication had surely become an impossibility, and they were each left only to the wiles of their ongoing pain and the crevices of their own minds. Anna shivered at what her mother must be experiencing and resolved evermore to save her. Perhaps showing this witch that her mother was not what she believed most vampires to be would be a good start. "Mama always said that knowledge is power, and she resolved to know as much as possible. I can only imagine how much she'd love the world today – with limitless information at her fingertips," she added a little dreamily, filled with the kind of poignant ache that only stirs the soul of a child missing its parent. In that moment, despite her age, she felt like a little girl who just wanted to be held – who missed her mother.

Sheila studied her cautiously, curiously, though before she could reply, Stefan chose to make himself known again.

"This is…" he attempted, then gave up, evidently at a loss for words, all semblance of articulate speech quickly scurrying away from his confounded brain. He sighed, annoyed with his own inarticulate expression. "Why didn't anyone tell me before now?"

Sheila raised a dubious eyebrow, pointedly addressing him. "Are you honestly telling me that if you hadn't found out in a very similar situation, with me telling you – rather than your brother or Elena – that you would have believed a word of it?"

Stefan stayed silent, because he knew her implications to be true, though his face still wore a scowl, because he didn't particularly like it.

In a decidedly surprising turn of events, Damon found his manacles suddenly unlocked, his hands free. Cautiously, he schooled his facial expression to be nonchalant-bordering-on-amusem*nt, but inside he was ready to do battle if necessary. "Well, this is an interesting turn of events. I'm glad to know that my scolding about consent was effective," he quipped, wagging a finger at her in mock-importance, his eyes widening in an exaggerated display of innocent earnestness. "And remember, if you participate in urban clean-up, and you, too, can become a Planet Hero."

The witch rolled her eyes, not entirely sure why he found himself so amusing. "I'm letting you go."

"Why?" he asked with poorly masked suspicion, his eyes immediately narrowing.

"You'll see," she smiled mysteriously, though he was hardly reassured by the calculating expression on her face. "If I don't get that temporal magic from you, I'm dead either way. Letting you go presents my best chance to live."

"I feel like we're getting really close to a Bond Villain Revelation speech, but we never quite got there, so what's standing on our way? Talk to me, Witchy. Do you have a name?" Damon asked in a tone that outwardly suggested playfulness but was steeped in alarm to anyone who knew him well.

"You'll learn my name if it benefits me, vampire," she snapped, evidently a proud member of the 'witch versus vampire' rivalry.

"You thought you said I had temporal magic?" Damon teased. "Doesn't that mean that I'm one of you? Maybe we can all eat magic mushrooms and braid each other's hair." Normally, he would have been thrilled to just kill her and get out of there, but instinct told him that any information he could get from her was enormously valuable. She threatened Elena, and she knew about her very mysterious new abilities? If they could even be called that.

"Not anymore," she barked a laugh. "Or not yet, depending on your perspective. Your kind of magic is still cursed on this time – inaccessible. Instead of temporal displacement, it's become perverted and corrupted, jumping not through time and space, but into other people's bodies."

"Yeah, I really don't need a refresher on Markos' Vagabond Gang, thanks," Damon retorted, rolling his eyes. "Or their creepy obsession with doppelgängers. I am curious about your plan, though. Come on!" he mockingly cajoled. "Don't you want to dazzle me with your brilliant scheme?"

She smirked indulgently. "If I don't get him some temporal magic, I'm dead. If he gets his temporal magic, I live. If, by some miracle, you actually manage to defeat …her… I guess I also live. So, you can trust that I'm looking out for my best interests – a notion with which I'm sure you'reveryfamiliar, Damon Salvatore," she explained with a trace of amusem*nt. "You, on the other hand, are going to have to make a choice – and soon."

"Who's this 'her'?" Damon asked, finally feeing like they're getting somewhere.

"You'll see," she allowed, with a trace of mystique. "One more thing – revelio," she whispered, and Damon saw one of the runes painted on his chest disappear.

As Bonnie, Enzo, and Elena reached the Lockwood Mansion, Bonnie could feel the temporal disturbance careening throughout the atmosphere. He was here, somewhere in these grounds.

"So, this is the guy who took those photos of her and …." Elena trained off, still trying to wrap her conscious mind around a notion that was a little too scarily accepted by her subconscious.

"Yes,youand Damon," Bonnie snapped, then immediately regretted her harsh tone. She knew she was being unfair – Bonnie was an empathetic person – she could realistically place herself in Elena's shoes and comprehend just how disorienting it would be to lose time, and to find out that not only did her life turn out to be completely different than what she imagined, but that a future version of her was parading on her body – even though they were the same person, give or take a decade. Even as a witch, who felt the living fibers of magic in her very soul, she was utterly confused by this confounding notion.

Confused, and somewhat alarmed. If Elena's future consciousness could be untethered, what about her? What about Damon? Seventeen-year-old Elena was just a human, and ultimately harmless. She, on the other hand, was a fledgling witch, eager to prove herself, and not entirely known for her cool temper. And Damon – Damon in this period was still strutting through town with his humanity on a dimmer switch, desperate to save Katherine from the tomb, regardless of who he got hurt or of which secret affections for her doppelgänger his subconscious whispered.

If either she or Damon became untethered, the situation would be considerably more disastrous.

Enzo stayed quiet throughout this exchange, still trying to wrap his mind around this peculiar situation. He was familiar with magic and witches, of course - having procured a daylight ring courtesy of some very boisterous witch-pires with who he'd made acquaintance through a dashing lady who saved him from consumption. But this seemed to be of a different realm entirely.

"It's funny," Elena said, drawing her eyebrows together in consternation. "Even though she's gone – Ifeelsomething … different… here. Something feels, I don't know, off? Almost unhealthy," she tried to explain, then laughed at herself, feeling ridiculous. The witch version of her was gone. This was probably just a magical version of the placebo effect. "Forget it. It's probably just my imagination.

Bonnie's eyes widened in surprise. "No, that's – that's actually how it feels to be, except it's almost overwhelming. I feel myself almost getting sick, too." Maybe it doesn't disappear all at once. I guess Grams was right – there must be small traces of it left on you.

Elena allowed a smile to grace her features for the first time in what felt like hours, feeling almost validated. Maybe she could live up to that future version of her, after all.

It was at that moment that Bonnie received a call, anything even remotely easygoing in her expression immediately fading to be replaced by alarm. "Okay, thanks, Grams," she said into her phone, then hung up to the telltale ding of a text message. She opened it to find a map.

"Where are we going?" Elena breathed, studying the map Bonnie showed the other occupants of the vehicle.

"Grams found Damon, so we have to make a choice. We pursue this or –" Bonnie began.

"Let's go save him," Elena resolutely interrupted. It wasn't even a choice. It was the most obvious answer that came to her mind as naturally as she drew breath. The alternative – allowing him to die – left her with the most poignant, painful dread she could imagine. She didn't allow herself to dwell on her feelings – to fully analyze why it was so important to her that they rescue someone she had actively disliked not too long ago.

But did she really? Did she ever? No, she was not going to follow those questions to their conclusion. She didn't know what to think or make of her behavior.

All Elena knew was that she had to find a way to save him.

Chapter 17

Chapter Text

They turned away from the Lockwood mansion almost immediately, instead heading toward its surrounding woods. Bonnie only made a show asking Elena her opinion, but the truth was, she would have saved her friend over learning the identity of their adversary any day.

And perhaps there was a way to do both.

Regardless, the information was in place, and the map seemed to point them to the tunnels that could only be entered through the Lockwood estate. Recalling her conversations with Althea during the year where the witch tried to convince her to follow her friends, the tunnels were the birthplace of vampirism and the Original family. It was here that the witch, Esther, cast the spell that would be both the curse and salvation of her children.

It was here that the Originals were born, along with every vampire that roamed the Earth.

It was here that a special magic permeated every molecule and seeped through every pore – the very essence of this place coated with the otherworldly.

"Do you think we'll pass the party?" Elena wondered aloud, feeling slightly uncomfortable, and honestly hoping that they wouldn't run into any mutual friends. Bonnie already informed her that the rest – her Grams, Stefan, and Anna – were on their way, in case assistance was needed. Explaining all this to anyone might prove to be too confusing and volatile, since she barely understood any of it herself.

"I hope not," Bonnie murmured, mostly to herself. Unusually quiet, Enzo took her hand to offer his support, to her receiving smile.

"If you need me to distract or entertain any of these so-called 'friends,' I'd be glad to lend my services," he offered, a charming grin firmly in place, confident in his abilities, now that he'd reintroduced both the world and himself to his talent as an entertainer.

The girls both smiled, though for entirely different reasons, and Bonnie's was considerably brighter. At least her love life seemed to be on an upward trajectory – finally. Although this Enzo had never met her previously – being of this time – they seemed to hit it off almost immediately, likely owing to the unusual nature of their meeting in this timeline – the dashing rescue; the romantic and altogether wild and whimsical tale of their traveling through spacetime; the sheer adventure that their lives had so quickly become.

Bonnie noted that Elena looked nervous and took her hand in her free one. "We'll find him. Don't worry," she reassured, correctly guessing the source of her friend's trepidation.

"I know, I …." Elena trailed off, looking far more worried than was making her comfortable. "I don't want anyone else to die."

"No one will, Elena," Bonnie said confidently, feeling the truth of it with every fiber of her soul – in the very magic within her, "not today. I won't let them."

Elena nodded resolutely, and the three entered the tunnels. They hit a barrier – it would appear Enzo lacked an invitation to go further. "I think this is as far as I go," Enzo lamented.

Bonnie nodded. "Okay," she whispered determinedly. "We'll have to make do. Wait for us here. We're getting out of here – all of us."

"No need," replied the haughty voice of a woman none of the three had met before. She was decidedly elegant, with a tight updo, taking a moment to study the trio before making her measured approach. "This is as far as you need to go. You're deep enough to the tunnels that the ancestral magic can do its work. Combined with my use of Expression, we'll have all we need."

"And you are?" Enzo asked dubiously, having spent enough time with dodgy characters in his life to smell a trap.

She smiled serenely then, though the emotion she evoked in her three interlocutors was quite the opposite. "I'm the one you've been searching for – the one you've been tracking. I'm the one who has your vampire."

"Let him go!" Elena announced, feeling at once angry and embarrassed by her childish outburst. Why would she – this obviously powerful witch – let him go just because she demanded it?

"Oh, I already have," the witch replied smoothly, the picture of innocence. "You'll see him soon enough."

"Great!" Bonnie sassed. "Then we'll just take our friend and be on our way, then. See you never!"

"Of course," the witch agreed magnanimously. "Take him. I just need something from Elena in return."

"How do you know who I am – who we are?" Elena asked dubiously, anxiety rising in her tone.

"I have my ways," the witch smiled secretly. "To which you are unlikely to be privy. But that hardly matters now. But there's something I need before I can let you go – your temporal magic."

"She's not doing that," Bonnie announced flatly, yet firmly.

"I'm afraid the plan is already in place. All the attendees of that sad little teenage party on the Lockwood grounds are dead once I give the word, unless you give up your temporal magic, Elena," the witch revealed.

Not knowing whether or not the witch was bluffing, Elena turned to Bonnie to seek counsel. Her witchy friend's ever-widening eyes in apparent alarm did little to soothe the anxiety fluttering within her.

"It's true," Bonnie whispered growing incandescent with rage. "I can feel the stranglehold of Expression all throughout the property."

"That far away?" Elena asked, somehow managing to still be impressed despite the dire situation. Just how powerful did her friend become over the years?

Bonnie nodded grimly, her eyes narrowing at their magical adversary. "You think you can manipulate us? I can take down ten of you, easily," she growled. "Phasmatos inc –"

"Uh-uh-uh," the witch cautioned with a shake of her head, interrupting Bonnie. "I wouldn't do that if I were you. I've placed a time-release wood-attraction spell on your vampire friend, and only I know how to deactivate it. If you kill me, you'll never save him. How long do you think it'll take for wood of just the right shape to pierce him in his heart?"

"Once you die, the spell deactivates automatically," Bonnie shot back, knowing that this wasn't always her case, but she hoped to call her bluff.

"Because that's exactly what happened to your friend's magical coma after that heretic was killed?" the witch prodded knowingly. "You can take the risk that I'm lying, of course, but we both know that you won't."

"Why are you doing this?" Elena asked, her worry driving her to near-tears.

"Because I'm trying to stay alive here," the witch answered flatly. "And wouldn't you know it? You're the only one who can save them all, Elena," she offered, her lips curving into a mockery of a smile.

"How?" Elena asked, trembling.

"Don't listen to her!" Bonnie commanded, sensing a trap. She immediately moved to grab the witch's head in her hands, searching the magic within her body to try to remove the spell. Seething, Bonnie echoed internally that this bitch had no idea who she was dealing with – she'd decimate her for trying to hurt her friends. Closing her eyes, she searched her mind – finding the Astral Plane, a familiar presence, though corrupted – the masked one – and one further, elusive, yet one so – almost close, and yet not. Though tempted to discover their identities, she instead focused on the task at hand. She had to stop the spell. If she did, she could prevent Elena from acting on this foolishness. She knew one thing with perfect clarity then.

Bonnie had to save her friends, and so would move spacetime itself to make this happen – let alone sift through the mind and magic of one vile Expression witch.

"All you have to do," she explained patiently, with a touch of smugness to her tone, pointedly ignoring Bonnie and what she knew was going to eventually going to be a successful attempt to diffuse her spell, so she had to hurry and manipulate the teenager, "is give up your temporal magic."

"But … I don't have any," Elena argued with confusion. "That'sher," she emphasized, referring to her future self. "I'm just a human," she added glumly.

"Perhaps," the witch agreed with a careless shrug, "but I can still feel traces of it on you. And once I inject you with the vampire's blood, your psyches will re-merge, and the temporal magic will flood into you once again."

"Elena, no!" Bonnie cried with alarm. "Don't do this – you'll die. The temporal magic is all that's keeping you from deteriorating. Time senses the anomaly and the ravages of temporal displacement are no joke. Trust me," she pleaded with friend. "There's a reason she wants this so badly," Bonnie growled at the witch.

Elena shook her head, coming to a conclusion. "I have to Bonnie," she said calmly. If she was the only one who could save them, then she must. She should have been dead months ago, anyway. Maybe this was just life playing catch-up. What right did she deserve to live, when it was her fault that her parents died? That Jeremy was an orphan? The Jenna had to uproot her entire life to become a guardian to teenagers?

"Wise choice," the witch prompted.

"Elena, no, stop!" Bonnie begged, with rising panic, suddenly hit full in the face with the raging death-wish her friend had as a teenager, which manifested in all sorts of ways, until it was finally granted in the depths of the river under Wickery Bridge. "Please."

"How do I do this?" Elena asked, ignoring her friend's frantic pleas.

"Close your eyes," the witch instructed sternly. "Feel the pull of whatever little residual magic is left in your system. There isn't much in you, but magic is everywhere, and the influence of what your future self left behind lingers still, despite not being the kind that's readily available. Magic recognizes magic," she continued explaining, her voice almost affecting a dreamy tone.

Elena closed her eyes, allowing her feelings to extend deep within and all around her. She felt – aconnection– like never before, except… Water. It was a connection she frequently felt when visiting the falls, and when sneaking a swim in its base, when – she felt so very connected to all around her that it was almost … magic.

Magic.

"What do I do?" Elena breathed.

"Agree to give it away," the witch replied severely. "Do it internally, with all your heart. Do it, and those at the Lockwood estate will be safe, once the transfer is complete."

Elena looked hesitant, suddenly enamored with this world open before her. "And doing this will keep everyone safe?"

The witch felt Bonnie nearing the loophole that would destroy her spell on Damon, thus rendering this entire exercise futile, so she knew she had to up the ante, and used the knowledge that the woman she feared most threw at her disposal. A part of her knew this was wrong, but her very survival was at stake. "Don't you think you owe it to them, Elena, to actually save some lives? After taking two such important ones just in May? Maybe even more, if you think about all the lives your father could have saved as the town's physician." she asked, twisting the knife. The rolling guilt came off Elena in waves, the genuine, stalwart belief that she was responsible for their deaths – only confirmed on the Astral Plane by another witch in preparation for this task, should emotional blackmail become an inevitability. "They died because of you, and yet you survived. How is any of that fair? Shouldn't it be time to even the scales?"

Elena reeled back as if struck, her eyes instantly filling with tears. Yes, she was a monster – she was the one who called them – who killed them.

"You bitch!" Bonnie roared, doubling her efforts to sift through the woman's brain, as the effort rendered them both inert, screaming in pain – the witch through Bonnie's less-than-gentle exploration and something else – a kind of built-in spell cast on the witch designed to protect the knowledge that she wielded from any over-curious parties. "Don't do this Elena, please! Please!" Bonnie begged, though a part of her knew it was futile.

And though at that moment Bonnie successfully disabled the spell cast on Damon, it was too late, because the words of the witch affected Elena too deeply in her core – in a profound center that felt them to be entirely too true – and she consented to give her temporal magic away, with all her heart, ready to face death.

As soon as the pact was made, the witch was seemingly whisked away from the scene, and in her place appeared a circle of stones, infused with magic.

Damon blurred through the tunnels, desperate to find his way out and warn Elena and Bonnie of the looming dangers, but they proved to be a veritable maze – a magic one, he realized. The was no way out, unless the spell was removed. He'd heard of a similar spell being a beloved trick of the New Orleans witches, famously cast on the Mikaelson family and Hayley to prevent them reaching then-infant Hope in time to save her.

The only way to break it was with a counter-spell. It appeared that the feat became unnecessary when the witch who'd held him prisoner previously suddenly appeared before him.

"I'm not trying to send you mixed signals or anything," Damon offered, widening his eyes in an exaggerated show of innocence. "I just honestly couldn't be less interested. I only like witches who can keep their promises – at least ones about letting me go, so let's get to it."

"I can send you away, but I don't think you'll want to leave anymore." she smirked. "Elena has consented to give up her temporal magic. She made the vow. The exchange is imminent."

"You're lying!" he growled. "She doesn't even have any – not now." The thought that all her temporal magic would come rushing back the secondhisElena returned hit him with the all the subtlety of a freight train.

She was gone.

"Perhaps not at the moment, but you seem to forget that I'd bled you, and taken your blood. The magic will ebb away slowly the second anyone injects her with even a drop of it, vampire – or sneaks it into her drink – or finds any conceivable way to get it inside her. You and I both know you can't protect her from that forever," she enlightened slyly, then narrowed her eyes, sizing him up, knowing with near certainty that she'd won. "But you can volunteer to take her place."

If she ever came back, she would die. Which was the better fate? To die in her corporeal form and spend the rest of existence on the Other Side or to stay in the mysterious realm that was the source of all knowledge?

Given the solitary nature of the Other Side that they were all horrified to discover, perhaps she would be better off where she was - swimming in what she called "the Forms." Either way, he was unlikely to ever see her again, and the idea pierced him more than the sharpest stake – shattering him entirely. He had no idea how to de-merge his consciousness to follow her, if he even could. So, what awaited him was either eternal loneliness on the Other Side, or Cade's hellscape, once that was destroyed – if they even manage to do so in this timeline. Maybe Bon-Bon might take care of Cade eventually, with Stef's help, and then he'd eventually find Peace. Would his Elena's soul ever make it there, as well? Or was she stuck floating through the limitless expanse of cosmic knowledge forever?

And he never even got to say goodbye, so confident that he'd see again her mere hours after a conversation with his brother. So foolish.

"You scheming bitch," he ground out, suddenly feeling defeated. Without a second thought, he made a lunge for her neck – maybe if he killed her, the exchange wouldn't have to take place.

The witch responded with a brain aneurysm attack, sending Damon to his knees in agony. "The exchange will take place regardless of whether I'm alive or dead – she made the vow. And if you kill me, you'll never remove the wood-attraction spell I cast – due to begin the second you leave this lair," she revealed with marked pride in her abilities.

"Maybe I just want the pleasure of ripping your throat out," he growled. "If one of us has to die, why shouldn't you?"

"I'm just trying to stay alive here, Damon. Surely you can understand that," she retorted airily, and in the next moment, they were in the same space as Elena, Bonnie, and Enzo.

"What makes you thinkI'll let you live?" Bonnie roared in her direction, her irises disappearing in the white of her sclera as the power and the rage overtook her, and she levitated above the ground.

"Because if you kill me, then I won't tell you how to save her," the witch spoke fast, halting them in their tracks, though it was clear from the dubious expressions on their faces that they weren't entirely trusting of her forthcoming words, especially given her less than trustworthy behavior.

"So, talk," Bonnie coolly commanded, lowering herself to the ground again, her irises and pupils once again forming in her eyes as she allowed her power to recede visibly.

"I want assurances," the witch thrust her chin up defiantly. "I want to know that you won't kill me as soon as I tell you how."

"The hell we won't!" Damon announced. "You as good as killed one of us, and you can be damn sure that we'll return the favor," he sneered, suddenly softening when his eyes fell on Elena's sullen form. She looked so small, yet so resolved. How could she agree to this? He had a very strong feeling that the witch managed to exploit the biggest weakness she had as a teenager – Elena had always been entirely too easily manipulated through guilt and shame, but this was especially true when she was seventeen, freshly reeling from that car accident that changed everything. "Bon, check if she's telling the truth about this vow – and if she is," he swallowed thickly, his voice breaking, "I'm taking her place."

Elena looked up sharply. This was not what she wanted – not what she intended. Her goal – her purpose – was to pay penance for her crimes, not kill yet another person. Her eyes widened in horror, and she shook her head. "No, no! It's mine. I chose this."

"Hey," Damon said softly. Taking a chance, feeling like this was quite possibly the last time he'd ever see her – so he had to make it count – he gently placed his palms on her cheeks. It was a gesture he'd done thousands of times for her; and she for him – it was their secret, physical language when the need to create and draw comfort went beyond words. But for her, it was the first time – from someone he knew she didn't trust – and he only hoped that she would accept the affection as it was meant to. To his surprise and relief, she almost seemed to lean into the touch, perhaps without even realizing – a subconscious need for the security that it offered. "There's something I need to tell you, while there's still time – something you really need to hear." At this moment, it was as though no one else was in the room. He had to tell her. She needed to hear this. It was that important.

Elena's eyes widened in alarm. Why did this all sound so final? It was supposed to be her sacrifice, not his. She wouldn't let him. She'd find a way – she had to.

"It's something we talked about lot – or will talk about – or I guess we won't anymore," he smiled sadly, though it didn't reach his eyes. "So, this might be my only opportunity to tell you," he explained, then looked at her with marked intensity, hoping it would catapult her to really listen. "It wasn't your fault."

"What wasn't?" Elena asked with barely a whisper, not at all expecting the conversation to go in this direction.

"What happened with your parents that night," he offered. When she was about to protest, he continued, "I know you blame yourself. I know all your arguments – that you weren't even supposed to be out that night, that you were grounded, that you chose a party over family night, that you called them – your entire litany of so-called sins and misdeeds."

"You don't know anything about it!" she cried petulantly, though her ire was more aimed at herself, resolved to never forgive herself. She was selfish and she took lives. She deserved this.

"Don't I?" he smiled, though now it appeared more genuine, holding sincere affection and a trace of humor. "You and your friends decided to take it upon yourselves, eschewing the strict traditions of Mystic Falls, and let your inner rebels out with a Beltane celebration – one that that took place about three weeks too late, because the weather had to be perfect," he grinned with clear fondness at their teenage audacity, taking every few seconds to wipe a stray tear from her cheek with a thumb. "And then you had a fight with the Quarterback because he wanted a future with you that you didn't – and," he left himself trail off, half-considering returning the memory of their first meeting. She would get it upon his death, anyway. Maybe giving it to her now, while she still had the chance to confront him about it and get some closure would be kinder. "It wasn't your fault, Elena."

"But it was! If I didn't? –" she sobbed, surprised to find his arms wrapped tightly around her, and surprising herself when she snuggled into his embrace, seeking comfort. It felt so unusual, yet so right. This wasn't fair. She couldn't let him die for her. So this was him? The one with whom her future self fell so deeply in love? And now she'd never know? The very notion crushed everything inside her until she felt she was made of disintegrating particles of imaginary substance – of nothing.

"No, you didn't. You didn't kill them," he urged, knowing what was on her mind from the conversations he had with the version she may one day become, stroking her hair in a way he knew soothed her. "You know who you acted like?" When she opened her mouth to say what he knew would be a self-recriminating insult, he continued. "A teenager. A regular, rebellious teenager. What happened was an accident. It doesn't have to be anyone's fault. Sometimes these things just happen."

"But –"

"It wasn't your fault, Elena. You need to forgive yourself. You need to let this go, and live your life." He pulled away then, placing his hands around her cheeks again, and looked deeply into her eyes with more affection than she had ever seen wrapped in one gaze. "You need to find a way to be happy, and I know you can be. I've seen it. You are the best person I know –"

"That isn't me," she interrupted. "Not yet."

"You will be," he reassured. "You're strong, and filled with love, and you make everyone around you better – and you spread joy, and you will learn to do that again someday. I know you will."

"This isn't fair," she murmured. "I won't even have the chance to get to know you."

"Then you won't know what you'd have lost," he replied wistfully. "You'll be okay, Elena."

"But why?" she sobbed into his chest. "Why would you do this?"

"It has to be me. I'm the only one who can. No one else currently has temporal magic," he replied. Technically, he knew what he said to be true – but only technically. Elena's temporal magic wouldn't be back until she re-merged with her future self.

Elena looked at Damon, and decided to take a gamble that her future self wasn't that different from her and would do anything to save him. Schooling anything that could have been a scheming look off her face, she distanced to look at him, knowing it might be the very last time, and for reasons that she wouldn't want to admit to herself, her heart shattered into millions of tiny fractals. Hoping it would work, she decided to make him an offer she very much doubted he'd be able to refuse. "Do you want to say goodbye – to her?" she whispered meaningfully.

"Yes," he breathed. "But I can't. The second she comes back, then spell starts, and you die."

"Wouldn't she just blink out of existence, anyway? Or get stuck wherever she is now, forever?" Elena argued, hoping her plan works. "Doesn't she deserve the right to say goodbye?"

"For the last time," Bonnie growled, mentally wrestling with the witch to see if she can disable the spell. "You're thesameperson!" All this melodrama was ridiculous, she internally asserted.

She would save them all. She had to. Bonnie Bennett was absolutely not letting anyone die today, and she was not about to lose any more friends – not to this Expression bitch, not to Cade, not to humanity-free Stefan, not to anyone.

Bonnie was determined to bring everyone she loves home. Alive and well.

She could see Damon's resolve crumbling, understanding that he's likely trying to scheme a way to die before Elena could, but unable to bring himself to prevent her from saying goodbye – from them both from seeing each other one last time, as though they didn't realize she'd save them.

She had to.

It was at that moment that she saw her Grams, Stefan, and Anna walk into the tunnels. The stage was set.

Showtime.

Chapter 18

Chapter Text

The Astral Plane returned to daylight around Elena, switching every few minutes between incandescent sunlight and the glorious, meteor-filled night sky. The waterfalls around her continued to roar soothingly while she floated in the base of the river, speaking with the mysterious girl who had become so adept at pulling her out of the place where cosmic knowledge seemed to penetrate everything.

She took the girl's hands in her own, hoping to at least offer some measure of comfort. The paradox she described sounded cruel and awful, indeed.

"It's okay," the girl murmured, evidently guessing her thoughts. "We're still together – in a way, he'll always be a part of me, just definitely not in the way that either of us wanted."

"What happened?" Elena asked.

"We were fighting a monster, a few of us," the girl began. "It was a monster that was capable of erasing someone from existence entirely. Then, in a convoluted series of events, another monster brought some of them back – and he," she bit her lip, not knowing if this Elena was familiar enough with the mechanics of the Gemini coven to understand, "cast an old curse that was originally placed on a coven, forcing us to merge –"

"Like the Gemini coven?" Elena's eyes widened in surprise. "I didn't realize it was a curse," she added morosely. "How awful. I knew some members of it, back in college," she added with a touch of deep sadness, thinking of Luke, Liv … Jo. She missed her old mentor dearly, owing much of her passion for medicine to the brilliant powerhouse whose tour de force presence easily dominated any lecture hall she was in.

Jo Laughlin was an utter inspiration, and Elena missed her dearly. The night that Kai had placed her under the sleeping spell, she had to say goodbye, however temporarily, to all that she knew and loved.

But the entire world, Elena reasoned, had suffered with Jo's loss, who was as much an inventor of invaluable medical equipment as she was a brilliant physician. And yet the world continued to turn, and there was hardly a whimper to acknowledge such profound loss – outside of her immediate social circle, and those in the world of medical academia – it appeared that her beloved mentor was profoundly undervalued.

Perhaps things could be different this time.

Maybe they could –

"Are you okay?" asked the girl, sensing Elena's disappearance into her reverie.

Embarrassed, Elena reached out contritely. "I'm so sorry – yes, I'm familiar with the Gemini coven. I was just thinking of those I knew. I –"

"Jo?" the girl asked knowingly, tiling her head to the side.

"You know about her?" Elena asked, bewildered. Ever since she passed, Alaric had all but barred mention of her, despite making one of the twins her namesake, fearful that any reminiscing would shatter his heart anew, and he would be left but a hollow husk, when he had to be a father. The years following Jo's death had been unkind to him, Bonnie explained during their ingredient-gathering trips – and he had, in turn, become quite callous.

He let his rage out on all the supernatural, despite his own daughters being siphon witches. Bonnie even told her that he once gave into his hatred so maliciously that he staked – someone. Bonnie was tight-lipped about the vampire's identity, evidently having gotten caught up on the moment, and revealed the information unintentionally.

Perhaps it wasn't anyone she knew, since all her friends, sans Stefan and Enzo, were there to greet her when she finally awakened. Maybe it was one of the new friends they'd made and lost, like Mary-Louise and Nora – heretics who were once bitter enemies but managed to become almost companions.

"Yeah, I heard a lot about Jo Laughlin," the girl said simply, refusing to elaborate more.

"Who told you about her?" Elena asked, both with ardent curiosity and in hopes of getting a little additional information from her mysterious interlocutor.

She simply shook her head and tapped her lips with a sad caricature of a smile. "I can't," the girl explained. "She won't allow it."

"Who's she?" Elena finally asked, her patience getting the better of her.

The girl sighed. "A witch. I've been on her hit list ever since I made that artifact – a crude parody of an ancient relic, mind you. Mine doesn't work exactly like those ancient ones do, but at least it gets the job done. She's been trying to make it so that I was never born – thus erasing my impact on history."

Elena gasped, unconsciously drawing her hand to her mouth. "How cruel! Is she afraid that you'll damage the timeline?"

"No," the girl scoffed. "She's afraid that her biggest and cruelest pet project will be reversed. The second Althea's coven learned about what I made, they immediately set about making that reversal happen, and as a result, she turned her attention to me."

Elena drew closer on instinct. They were finally getting somewhere. "What does she not want reversed?" she breathed, her voice barely a whisper.

The girl opened her mouth to speak, but immediately looked distressed. Instead, she pulled Elena closer, to whisper in her ear.

"Another poem?" Elena laughed. "I never heard that one. Who wrote it?"

"It hasn't been written yet," the girl answered cheekily. "At least not in your time."

"Are you a poet?" Elena prodded, wondering if perhaps her charming interlocutor had been the originator of the mysterious rhyme.

"No!" the girl laughed. "Not at all. My expression's more in the," she bit her lip, wondering if she'd be giving away too much information, but then smiled, "the visual arts."

"Painting? Sculpture?"

"Painting," the girl confirmed. "Runs in the family," she smiled sadly.

"Did this witch know your parents?" Elena asked, almost timidly, having just learned that someone had spent years trying to pretend this girl had never been born. "Did she hurt them?"

"No," the girl replied, shaking her head. "They were long gone before I came on her radar." At Elena's stricken look, she took her hands in her own soothingly. "Hey, it's okay. Witches had been trying to destroy me for years – before I was even born. I'm tougher than I look," she grinned reassuringly.

As soon as the three newcomers entered the space, everything appeared instilled in chaos. Bonnie was both physically and magically wrestling an Expression witch. Elena and Damon seemed caught in an intense exchange.

Sheila immediately cast a barrier spell around their perimeter in the tunnel. Seeing that Stefan was about to step forward to disengage his brother and Elena, she held him back. His head was hardly cool enough at the moment to deal with this present matter in a way that wouldn't be damaging. "Wait," she hissed. "Stay and observe. We need to figure out what's going on before we come bouldering in."

"Why are you doing this?" Elena asked Damon, her voice laced with tears, completely unaware of the new arrivals. None of this – none of any of this made any sense to her. How could there be such an abrupt change between the man who killed Vicki Donovan and terrorized the town and this – him. And yet, there was something achingly familiar – something she had first seen in her kitchen, when he was the only person to see right through her – how much of a shell she'd become, how the hobbies of her past life were hardly of any interest.

"You know, you should quit cheerleading. You looked miserable out there."

And when she told him she was sorry about Katherine's demise, he looked almost stricken, touched – so vulnerable, and real, and raw. At the time, she thought that they'd made a connection. He made her laugh, and they touched each other's hearts. A small part of her had even wished she had met and gotten to know him instead of Stefan. And then when he showed his malice, she assumed that it had all been a lie – a cruel and cunning act.

But perhaps it wasn't?

And now he would be dead because of her, too. Because she impulsively consented to the exchange.

Just how many more people would she kill?

"Saving your life is the best thing I can do with mine, in this world, or any other. I love you, Elena – who you are now, and who you will become, no matter who that is," Damon smiled, and this time, it appeared genuine.

"But –"

"I love every version of you, and you'll be okay," he said with a bit more urgency, sensing that his words were falling on deaf ears. If she had been so hard to convince that first time, why was he so naïve and hopeful that he would be able to do so within a span of one conversation now? Because he had no choice, he reasoned.

Elena squeezed her eyes shut, letting the tears cascade down her cheeks, and prayed that her future self would find a way to save Damon.

She found herself realizing, with stunning clarity, that she wanted to know him.

"How do I take her place?" Damon asked the witch, without taking his eyes off Elena.

"Just step into the circle, and consent to have the temporal magic taken away. You have to search within yourself, and really mean it," the witch groaned under the strain of Bonnie's painful search of her psyche. "The transfer will be instantaneous."

"Damon, wait!" Bonnie called, having finally discovered the counter-spell for the wood-attraction enchantment. She tossed the witch aside, running to her friend's side. She placed her hands on either temple, closing her eyes, and whispered, "phasmatos finem incantantionis lignum attractionis." For a second, her eyes beheld an otherworldly shade with a spark of gust of wind, and just as suddenly all reverted to normal. "The wood-attraction spell is gone," she spat, looking at the witch, then softened, looking at her friends again. "Elena's right, Damon. We deserve to say goodbye to her. Bring her out." She had no intention of letting either of her friends die, but Damon was a vampire, with superhuman speed at his disposal. Once he made the decision to step into the sacred circle, she'd only have seconds to stop him, and she had hardly the strength to knock him out after mentally wrestling for so long with the witch.

This would allow her to regroup, and for them to plan.

"I'm ready," Elena whispered, ardently hoping that this was not the last time she saw him.

Damon nodded, allowing his vampiric features to take over. Elena watched in fascination as crimson flooded his eyes, and dark veins appeared across his face. His fangs elongated, piercing his waiting wrist. "Sorry I don't have a glass for you," he smirked, as his face returned to normal.

"That's okay," she smiled through her tears, finding herself surprised that it was genuine.

She took his wrist, but before she could bring it to her lips, he pulled her closer to place the gentlest kiss on her forehead. To him, the gesture was achingly familiar – a relic of yesteryear, when he despaired that his love would never be returned and that he would forever be alone, forgotten, unwanted. Since then, he'd had his heart's truest desire, much to his everlasting surprise. If only it could last.

To Elena, the gentle touch only filled her with more grief and determination. She would have faith that her future self would find a way to reverse this.

She had to.

"Bye," Damon whispered as he pulled back, an echo of a memory teasing his mind as Elena pressed his wrist to her lips and drank. Unable to resist, he added with laced affection. "And I still want you to get everything you're looking for."

"But you're clearly a witch," Elena prodded, confused. "Why would witches be so eager to destroy you?"

"It's a long story," the girl sighed. "I'm more than a witch. I'm –" she stopped suddenly, as a feeling of profound discomfort coated her features.

"Is someone hurting you?" Elena asked, worriedly. "Is that why you look so distressed when you answer questions sometimes."

"Not exactly," the girl replied, her breath shuddering with relief as she looked around wildly. "She put a kind of psychic barrier around me whenever I enter the Astral Plane – there are certain trigger words, ideas – they're almost like taboos. If I say them or allude to them too much, I'll be kicked out, and getting you back here would be that much more difficult. I see it shake and dissipate with warning when I come close to violating one."

"This is about me?" Elena asked, bewildered.

"There's so much you need to know, Elena," the girl breathed, desperation clearly written on her face. "You're here for a reason – even the loophole that allows your psyche to demerge was placedfor a reason. Youhaveto learn that –" she stopped again, gritting her teeth and visibly frustrated.

"How do you pull me in here, anyway?" Elena asked curiously, tilting her head to the side to study the girl.

"Oh!" she smiled finally, evidently relieved that she can perhaps tell her this. "Looks like this isn't a trigger! So, the way I pull you in is by calling –"

Suddenly, the Astral Plane around Elena dissipated, and she distinctly felt herself being pulled.

Elena's eyes widened as she dropped Damon's wrist, becoming unfocused just like before – when her soul re-merged with her future self.

"A swirling world I've seen before," she breathed, walking forward, looking at Damon and yet not seeing him. "And in it was a metaphor," she continued, as the air in the room seemed to dissipate with tension. The only truly focused party was Enzo, who was apparently recording the entire exchange on the mobile phone Bonnie had given him. Bonnie had to admit that he had gotten surprisingly good with technology very quickly.

"A thousand hopes, a million dreams – all vanquished, ripping at the seams. Their souls in silent woe abide, awaiting justice on the Other Side," she whispered, falling into Damon's arms, who caught her swiftly and with profound worry on his face. Last time, she seemed a lot more alert.

"Elena?" he whispered nervously, wrapping her in his embrace. "Are you okay?"

She gasped, closing her eyes tightly, as memories of her younger self's detached psyche flooded her consciousness. Like before, it only took a few seconds before her dark eyes fluttered open, taking sight of her favorite gaze in all the cosmos, brighter than all Blue Giants and more vivid than a Summer sky. She drew close to kiss him, allowing herself to get lost in it before they had to deal with the inevitable.

"I love you, too," she whispered when she had to finally pull away to breathe. "And you're an idiot if you think I'm letting you go through with this," she added, affectionately cupping his cheek. "You made me a promise, remember?"

Stefan watched the entire exchange, profoundly bewildered and disturbed. This was real. All of it was real. They really loved each other – in the future. In about a decade. Or maybe even less? His brother really came back to save him.

He was going to lose his brother.

This was the Damon he longed to see since he'd been human, and he was going to lose him. The thought of his girlfriend suddenly changing affections paled woefully in comparison to the idea of Damon being gone forever.

And suddenly Stefan felt like everything was chiseled out of him and he was nothing but a hollow husk of stone.

"Yeah, well, maybe you shouldn't have made the deal with Grabby Witchy over there," he replied, trying and failing to look affronted.

"That was a teenage version of me, whom she manipulated brilliantly," Elena stressed, unwilling to let go of him. She may only be a human, but she dug her fists into his shirt deeply. No way was she letting him escape onto the magical circle. "Besides, me doing this would actually make more sense. If I'm gone, Klaus has no reason to stick around. No one will get hurt. If you sacrifice yourself, there's a good chance I'll die, anyway, just because we'll lose one of our best fighters," she attempted, having a sinking feeling it would fail. "Think about this logically."

"Logically!?" he barked. "Seriously, Elena? You have the gall to preach to me about logical behavior when it comes to self-sacrifices?"

She winced, conceding his point. Sure, she didn't have the most stellar track record, but her point was still valid. Maybe if she was able to stall him, the exchange would begin regardless. Pressing herself flush against him, she began kissing him ardently, trying to walk him toward a twist in the tunnels. Maybe if she distracted him sufficiently, and pressed him against the wall at just the right angle, she could break his neck and, therefore, keep him alive. She they both moved deeper in, they caught sight of the Lockwood cells, having the same idea of locking the other inside, unbeknownst to them.

In the distraction of Elena's soul re-merging, Bonnie noted with lament that the witch made her escape. She had a theory, but she wasn't quite sure. "Is there a way to save them, Grams? Can I do it?" she asked with marked vulnerability in her widening eyes.

"That's up to you, darling. You can save them both. There's a way out of this where no one has to die, but you know what you'd be giving up," her grandmother softly replied.

"I'd be giving up a lot more if I lost another friend," Bonnie smiled resolutely, through her eyes were filling with tears. Oh, she would miss it so much.

"It's not forever," her grandmother murmured, pressing a soft kiss to her forehead.

Bonnie nodded, knowing what she had to do. "Somnum nunc," he whispered in the direction of Damon and Elena, watching with satisfaction as they both dropped to the ground without consciousness. With a touch of worry, she noted the uncomfortable positions in which they both fell, and levitated them to rearrange them to rest comfortably in each other's arms, deciding that they'd probably like waking up this way.

Looking hesitant for a moment, she turned to her grandmother, taking her hand. "Grams…" she suddenly felt like a little girl again. She was so scared. What if something went wrong? What if she lost her magic forever?

"I would never let anything bad happen to you, dear. Go," her Grams shooed her, and without another thought, Bonnie stepped into the circle, allowing that her temporal magic be taken away.

As the party raged around him, a man in the body of his considerably younger self began to feel almost revitalized – as though his very soul were healed.

The witch did it. Perhaps she'd get to live, after all.

Bonnie opened her eyes in alarm. What was she doing in the tunnels? Oh God, she was surrounded by vampires – Stefan was here, and at least Damon was unconscious. Was he holding Elena? Did he kill her!? She'd end him for this.

She looked around wildly, her eyes stopping on her grandmother, feeling a palpable sense of relief and safety. "Grams!" she cried. "Be careful! They're vampires."

The room's conscious occupants – Stefan and a young woman she'd only caught glimpses of before with Jeremy previously – eyed her with alarm, bordering on fear. Another older man stood away from them, with a cell phone, watching the exchange with curiosity, though there seemed to be something almost sad in his features. She hadn't seen him previously. Idly, she wondered how she could have missed someone so attractive, before she forced her mind to focus on the matter at hand.

Her grandmother, strangely, looked quite serene and passive.

"Just calm down a moment, dear. It'll make sense in just a few minutes," she said.

Bonnie felt herself floating – peacefully – through everything. Was this what Elena felt? She was immersed, embraced in a profound sense ofknowing. Everything would be okay.

Suddenly, she was in a meadow – in the Astral Plane, Bonnie realized suddenly.

A rather shocked-looking teenage girl stood before her. "Wow! I didn't think I'd findyouhere! I wonder what you're tethered to."

"Who are you?" Bonnie asked the girl curiously. She was obviously a witch, but there was something almost – familiar – about her.

"One of your favorite students," the girl cheekily replied, producing a whistle. It looked so familiar.

Suddenly, the Astral Plane dematerialized, and Bonnie was whisked away.

Bonnie stood alert. Maybe her grandmother was enchanted? That had to be it. Maybe these vampires made a deal with a witch to cast a spell on her Grams, taking her consciousness. Oh God, she was standing in a magical circle. That's it! Time for answers. She turned to Stefan, her eyes narrowing, and icy rage filling her voice, "Phasmatos inc—"

Suddenly, the magic within her sang, nurtured, born anew. Nature was everywhere, after all – free, abundant. And just like that, Bonnie's soul was whisked away from the Astral Plane, and re-merged with that of her teenage self.

"Whistle…" she whispered, before shutting her eyes, as memories began to flood – and flood, and flood – until she realized where she was.

"Welcome back, my dear!" her grandmother cheered.

"You gave us quite the scare," Anna finally spoke, after being stunned into silence by the day's events.

"I wasn't worried for a minute," her grandmother rushed forward, taking the witch into her arms. "Your soul is tethered here by Nature – the magic that we practice. It's grown and nurtured in every witch it touches – but this is especially true for Bennett witches. I knew it was only a matter of time."

"So, my temporal magic?" Bonnie asked.

"Will come back," her grandmother finished. "Is already coming back. But the temporal magic you brought back with you couldn't be separated, so you lost that, too."

"So, I'm back to the power level I had as a teenager," Bonnie answered glumly.

"But with all that knowledge you gained. Don't worry, dear. It'll come back. You'll grow and cultivate it anew – and you'll have your friends to help you this time," Sheila urged.

"And no one had to die," Bonnie sighed with profound relief.

"I feel like that was unnecessarily eventful," Enzo finally spoke, breaking the silence of the space, though he secretly loved the drama.

"Let's go wake up our sleeping beauties and get out of here," Sheila suggested. "This place always gave me the creeps. This is where the Original vampires were created," she mumbled, mostly to herself. "Steeped in all sorts of nasty magic.

They all found themselves recuperating at the Boarding House soon after, ultimately deciding to call the day a 'win,' despite losing their only lead in learning the identity of the time-displaced man who arranged this whole debacle.

At least no one died.

Damon and Elena sat cuddled in each other's arms on the parlor's couch, blatantly disregarding the stares of the room's other occupants, ranging from amusem*nt to annoyance to bewilderment. They were just happy that the other was alive.

"I can't believe you were going to lock me in one of those cells," Elena mumbled, snuggling into him.

"I can't believeyou were going to snap my neck, and lock me in one of those cells," Damon countered, placing a kiss on the crown of her head.

"I took a video," Enzo grinned. "All of this is so weird. You recited another poem – an even more abstract one this time."

"That's actually a really good idea, Enzo!" Bonnie beamed. "I doubt any of us remember any of the text, given everything else that was going on."

"You also said 'whistle,'" Sheila pointedly addressed Bonnie. "Any idea what that's about."

Bonnie only shrugged in return, unable to recall anything but the feeling of peace and a girl with stunning, blue eyes.

"Hey, why are you being so nice this time, Witchy Senior?" Damon asked Sheila, with eyes narrowed in suspicion. "I distinctly recall you being a lot more antagonistic my first go around."

"Maybe I would have been a lot friendlier, if you weren't such an asshole," Sheila sassed in response.

Bonnie was shocked that her grandmother even knew such language, but Damon only shrugged, conceding her point. He was kind of a massive douche back then – even he could admit it.

"Drinks? Pizza? 'We're all alive' party?" Anna suggested.

"It's not over by a long-shot," Sheila warned, pouring herself a tumbler of bourbon, much to Damon's chagrin. Why did everyone always go for his stash? Why not choose Steffie's? Maybe because Destroyer of the Deer Dominion had inferior taste in everything, he sulked.

"Aw, Damon, what's wrong?" Elena teased, kissing him on the cheek. "Did they not appreciate your jokes?" She knew that if she asked him anything that made him genuinely vulnerable, he'd withdraw within himself. That had to be done in private, with only trusted eyes and ears around. This – the world of banter and teasing – this was where he thrived. It was where they were first drawn to each other, at a roadside bar in Georgia – where an errant spark grew into the fiercest wildfire, beyond their strength or scope of comprehension.

It consumed them.

"No," he pouted in what he sincerely hoped wasn't a petulant voice.

"They don't know what they're talking about, humorless idiots," Elena reassured, kissing his other cheek.

"Jury's still out," Bonnie snarked, trying to get a rise out of him.

Damon mock-glared at his best friend, and then returned to kissing Elena, content for the first time in days. And as a bonus, Stefan didn't look like he was going to kill him. He almost looked … relived? Maybe everything would actually be okay.

"I told you I keep my promises," Damon whispered in Elena's ear.

"Yeah, like you could have predicted Bonnie's intervention," Elena rolled her eyes in response.

"Maybe I'm just that good," he leered.

"Maybe your ego's grown to natural disaster-level proportions again, and requires considerable cooling off," Elena replied, at which point, a few drops of water burst forth from her palm and onto Damon's face, shocking them both into silence.

"Ego sustained, one drop of ancient, elemental witchy-woo at a time," Damon quipped, grabbing Elena's palm and kissing its pulse point, earning a shudder and a jolty laugh.

Chapter 19

Chapter Text

After the initial bout of questions and their impromptu pizza party celebrating what Anna deemed their 'Yay We're Alive' status, Damon, Elena, and Bonnie snuck away into the library to discuss the turn of events and compare notes, as the only three temporally displaced persons in the household. Although they were aware that the vampiric element would almost certainly be able to overhear them, at least being in a separate room physically should enable them to have a much-needed discussion without constant interruptions.

Perhaps it was time to bring others in on their secret, anyway, and this current group at least seemed determined to help.

"What do you think your mention of 'whistle' was about?" Elena asked, happy that someone else was getting mysterious messages from that strange, disembodied plane.

"I'm not sure," Bonnie said, frowning. "But Grams told me about some divining aids I could use to try to suss it out."

"Do you think they'd work for me, too?" Elena asked hopefully.

"I don't know, miss Water Witch," Bonnie smirked teasingly. "I guess we'll have to try and find out. Grams also said that divination and clairsentience were part of the water spectrum, so as limited as your access is to that now, I'm sure it'll be better than nothing."

"Always, always, always left out of witchy-woo club," Damon said with the most dramatic of all sighs. "Maybe I'll be like Stef, and just rearrange my hair whenever I have to deal with the disappointment."

"I don't think the ozone layer could handle both Salvatore brothers exhaustingthatlevel of hair product," Elena smirked. "Really, you're saving the planet by resisting."

"You see? I provide brilliant, free entertainment, and I'm an actual, planet-saving superhero," Damon announced in mock-exasperation. "None of you appreciate me enough."

Elena allowed her hand to slowly slither the expanse of Damon's chest all the way to cup his face, leaning in to whisper sultrily into his ear, "I know one way to show my appreciation…" prompting his pupils to immediately dilate with desire as he pulled her flush against him.

"Please, stop," Bonnie deadpanned, looking horrified. "I'm still here, and there's been enough potential for trauma for one day." She narrowed her eyes with suspicion as they both separated with a laugh, trying to play it off as a prank, but she knew better. "Maybe next time, you'll listen to me and keep a steady supply of your blood in Elena, instead of waiting to playHuman and Vampire," she sassed at Damon.

"You told her?" Damon asked Elena, eyes widening in betrayal.

"No,youjust did," Bonnie smirked, then grew immediately stern. "Seriously, though. We can't have any more teenage mishaps, so keep it in your pants, please."

"I don't think it was a total loss," Elena winced. "We found out that my first trip predicted Anna's participation –andher trustworthiness. I said theexactwords I'd end up repeating at her doorstep later – 'Anna help' – and now with this strange poem… We'll have to try to analyze it later."

"And my mysterious 'whistle' reference," Bonnie frowned. "I guess we should be grateful that my 'trip' only lasted for a few minutes. Grams said I almost set Stefan on fire."

"And considering that the top layer of his hair consists almost entirely of aerosol, he would have gone up in flames immediately," Damon quipped smugly. "We should all be grateful that I can't de-merge, too. Sexy as this body is, it's still a killing machine, especially back then," he nodded lightly, though both Elena and Bonnie could hear an undercurrent of self-admonishment in his tone.

"What makes you think you can't?" Bonnie asked through narrowed eyes, skepticism evident on her voice. "We just haven't triggered it."

"Then you should really get on finding out what it is, so we don't, or the body count in Mystic Falls might start growing like Stef's carbon footprint," he pretended to wince in a way that was actually a grin, hoping that this one would finally get a verbal rise out of his brother.

"I don't use that much hairspray!" Stefan growled from the parlor, though only Damon heard him, prompting a snicker.

"We'd get you back," Elena said softly, taking his hand. "You never would have hurt me, even then. I know that now," she breathed, meeting his suddenly vulnerable gaze, that felt so seen and understood and overwhelmed that he had to look away. She placed both hands on his cheeks, prompting him to look at her again, to feel the truth of the words in her eyes. "I just wish I knew it then, too."

"As long as you know it now," he whispered, taking one of her hands, and placing a kiss on her palm.

"Can we please focus?" Bonnie asked, trying to sound stern, though she was secretly touched by her friends' emotional display – relieved that all her friends were safe and sound and so very alive.

"I'll take daily doses of Damon's blood," Elena cleared her throat, flustered and a little embarrassed.

"It can still be duringHuman and Vampire," Damon wiggled his eyebrows suggestively, not embarrassed in the least.

"Well, we all know what the obvious permanent solution to this is, right?" Bonnie suggested logically, crossing her arms over her chest, hoping to please, for the love of all that is sanity-saving, lead the topic of conversation away from her friends playingHuman and Vampire, before the mental image is horribly embedded in her brain forever.

"Me turning Elena, because then my blood would become an everlasting part of her," Damon replied impatiently, as though she was missing something patently obvious. "But that's going to just invite the sire bond again. This is why we wanted someone else to do it, if it came to that."

"Actually, I may have an idea on how to break the sire –" Bonnie dropped her voice, leaning in conspiratorially to speak in a voice barely rising above a whisper, only to be interrupted by an alarmed Elena.

"No!Nonono,don't say out it out loud!" Elena all but screamed adamantly, placing a hand over each of her interlocutors' mouths, only partly aware of how insane her behavior must have looked, but entirely not caring.

"What? Why not?" Damon asked in amusem*nt after removing Elena's hand, to press a kiss into the pulse point of her palm, profound confusion written all over his features otherwise.

"Think about it," Elena replied despite the shiver coursing through her as she took her hands back, forcing her tone to stay calm and measured through even breaths. "We planned to keep the tomb shut –"

"What!?" Anna interrupted hotly, blurring into the room; a feeling of deep betrayal written on her face.

"Relax, we're opening it," Damon calmed her with a roll of his eyes.

"Because we have to – because it's apparently a Fixed Point," Elena continued trying to stress her point. "Not opening it would create a paradox, as we've so annoyingly learned, and keep learning," she muttered.

"This is the weirdest conversation I've ever been privy to, and I spent seventy years listening to the insane ramblings of actual mad scientists," Enzo remarked with trace amusem*nt, having finally raided a pantry filled with non-expired snacks for the first time in this millennium, and popping another pretzel in his mouth. Bonnie secretly sighed in relief that she wouldn't have to take this bag away, at least.

"Thenwe decide that someone other than Damon turns me, to avoid triggering the sire bond" Elena continued, her arms held dramatically wide in demonstration to really emphasize the importance of her point. Why was no one seeing this very obvious pattern? "And what happens? Boom. Damon has to turn me. No more plans. Just do it," Elena stated emphatically. "But don't talk about it first. Just," she sighed, sounding almost defeated. "Keep it to yourself."

"Well, obviously we weren't going to tell you, anyway, or it wouldn't work," Bonnie chided, smiling at Elena sympathetically.

"Just don't tell anyone. Don't say it out loud," Elena followed up quickly, her voice a hushed whisper. She appeared very distraught by this. Damon and Bonnie looked at her sympathetically, both wondering if her eccentric behavior was perhaps the result of prolonged exposure to the so-called 'Forms.'

"That's not how reality works, Elena," Damon smirked, though it didn't hold any malice. Instead, he pulled her onto his lap to stop her frantic pacing and pressed a soft kiss into her temple.

"Just humor me," she breathed into his neck, allowing herself to be held and comforted, running a hand through his raven locks to comfort him in return, though he didn't seem to need it nearly as much at the moment. "Please?"

"Fine," Bonnie agreed, with an affectionate roll of her eyes. Let it never be said that her friends weren't strange. It's not like she needed their cooperation for what she had planned, anyway.

That night, everyone elected to stay over at the Boarding House – there was certainly enough room. After their brush with near-death and devastation, they wanted to cling to each other and some normalcy – a feeling of safety – even of most weren't quite ready to admit that this was the case yet.

Elena stayed in Damon's room, though they both remembered it as 'theirs' from their life together in future years. They lay cuddled in each other's arms, scarcely having let go of each other for more than a few minutes after the ordeal in the Lockwood tunnels.

Their lead into the identity of the mysterious traveler who followed them was gone.

But they were all alive.

Bonnie's magic had receded to near-beginner levels, with a sliver of hope in the silver lining that she got to keep all the vast knowledge she obtained over the years.

But they were all alive.

It was early still, but they retired hours ago just to be together – to celebrate each other's survival – to bask in the happiness of having this chance, when a series of crashes were heard down in the parlor.

"If Saint Stefan spilled anything from my stash on any of my rugs again, I'll make those forehead wrinkles permanent," Damon growled.

"How are you going to do that?" Elena yawned, feeling sated from her favorite cardiovascular workout ever.

"I'm going to foundCounsel for Critters– legal representation for all the cute little animals of Mystic Falls. I'll just manipulate one of the pageant contestants to make protecting them her pet cause– and since Steffie has all this anxiety about breaking laws, he'll be caught in a perpetual loop of indecision," he said smugly. "You hear that, Stef? Stay away from my stash!"

"Let him be," she stretched lazily, gracelessly plopping on top of him to wrap her arms around his neck and press a kiss to his lips. "His whole world changed today."

"Yeah," he said sympathetically. "He lost you."

"But he got his brother back," she softened, now considerably more alert. "And we both know that matters to him a lot more."

No longer concerned with the fatalities of the Boarding House's antiquities, Damon and Elena resumed their earlier activity for several more rounds, until sleep beckoned them both.

Elena was back on the Astral Plane with the mysterious girl – except – no, this was a memory. Now that she was safely back in her body, lying cocooned in her beloved's arms, her subconscious felt secure to explore – to find the missing links of her strange journey.

The girl looked at her with astounding bravery, though the sadness in her clear, blue eyes was penetrating. It was so unfair that someone as young as she had to face those difficulties. Everything about her countenance sought to protect herself – even the way she wrapped her flame wings about her small frame. Such beautiful wings, with such exquisite, fiery-feathers.

Hope is the thing with feathers…

Hope is the thing with feathers…

HOPE is the thing with feathers…

All of a sudden, the striking familiarity in the girl's features became more recognizable. The almond shape of her eyes, her smile - so similar to Hayley Marshall's. The color - a clear, crisp, Mikaelson blue.

Elena shot out of bed, breathing heavily, her mind absolutely reeling. The co*cktail of emotions she felt were peculiar – she felt at once elated to have solved at least part of the mystery, yet anguished at what it most likely entailed.

"What is it?" Damon asked, alarmed, awakened by her panicked state. "Are you okay?" he breathed, wrapping her in his arms.

"I know why we have to open the tomb," she said with a slight tremble to her suddenly alert voice, a choked laugh sneaking through her defenses. "And you're not going to like it."

Chapter 20

Chapter Text

Hope Mikaelson. Elena's mind was awhirl, reeling with epiphany.

She had been meeting on the Astral Plane with Hope Mikaelson.

They were only able to travel back with the help of an artifact that Hope Mikaelson would someday craft, in an effort to save her beloved – in an ironic twist that would seal his death as a Fixed Point, rendering its undoing a paradox.

Elena shivered, feeling something deep within her soul reach for the poor girl, whose eyes expressed such penetrating sadness behind her veneer of determination and pluck.

The images swirled before Elena's eyes – elusive, mysterious, just beyond her reach – and yet she knew with perfect clarity precisely what they meant.

What they had to do.

With each second, she felt the details of the image fade into the mystical obscurity where all dreams go, leaving behind mere traces of imprints.

"Why wouldn't I like it?" Damon asked from his position next to her, his arms still tightly wrapped around her. She could see the visible concern in the depths of his cerulean eyes, no longer able to hide from her – no longer even wishing to.

A corner of her lips quirked into a lopsided smile. He might not enjoy the implications of her newfound revelation, but a part of her was certain that Damon would at least find humor in it.

"You're not serious," Bonnie deadpanned. She needed a drink. A stiff one. Maybe she'd been spending entirely too much time with vampires who used bourbon to self-medicate blood cravings.

After a nervous-looking Elena and a very visibly-moody Damon came downstairs nearly an hour prior, everyone in the Boarding House grabbed their caffeinated beverage of choice and assembled in the parlor for what was apparently story-time. Elena's second trip to that strange, ethereal realm – the one they'd playfully dubbed 'The Forms' because of its peculiar resemblance to those described by Plato, where all cosmic knowledge coalesces – brought back some information, and by the looks on the faces of the only two members of the household who already discussed it, the news would be divisive at best.

"Why wouldn't I like it?" Damon asked warily.

"Well, you might," Elena allowed, smiling impishly, and leaning forward to give him a playful shove. "It'd give you a lot of sass about."

"Like I'd ever have a shortage! Have you met me?"

"Then you might have an overabundance." She yawned, squinting against the sunlight in a manner he found adorable. "Enough to turn you into a veritable nickname factory."

"Sounds terrifying," he snarked, though there was an edge to his voice that suggested the statement was at least partially sincere. "You have me on the edge of my seat here."

"You'll never guess who I've been communicating with."

"The girl on the Astral Plane – she's Hope. Hope Mikaelson," Elena breathed.

"Of course!" Bonnie exclaimed, her eyes widening in recognition. "Now that I think about it, she does kind of look like Hayley and –"

"Klaus," Elena finished for her.

"Great," Damon snarked. "f*cking fantastic. So, we have to make sure that when a melodramatic Original Hybrid and an annoying werewolf don't love each other very much, they come together and form a widdle baby tribrid – because she apparently did something important."

"Tribrid? What!? What the hell is a tribrid?" Anna asked, becoming increasingly nervous, though the anxiety was quickly turning into annoyance when she noted that the three time travelers weren't paying attention to anyone but each other.

"Yep," Elena winced in her reply to Damon, after she and Bonnie stifled several laughs at Damon's descriptions of Klaus and Hayley, much to the growing discomfort of the rest of their interlocutors.

"Are we sure Katherine's the reason Klaus came to town? Maybe it was the tomb vamps getting a little too chatty about Katherine Pierce, whom they hate, having a human look-alike living in Mystic Falls?" Elena said.

"And yet another reason I'm thankful every day, that you weren't out with Stef the day they caught him," Damon said to Elena as he pressed a kiss into her hair.

"I mean – an easy solution would be to just let Elena turn this time," Bonnie suggested.

"We can't do that," Elena argued, shaking her head vehemently. "Remember how Klaus couldn't create hybrids because he didn't have my human blood – but he stillkept trying?At this point, without fatherhood softening him, he'll still keep trying, no matter how many werewolves he kills in the process. Him realizing that he needs my blood is the only reason Tyler survived. If I turn during the ritual, I can't even imagine how much that would decimate the entire werewolf population."

"So?" Damon drawled. "Big deal. Lyco-wood the jock, Lyco-wood the surfer, and a few other wolf boys have to bite it. Big deal. At least their gross teeth wouldn't be able to kill us anymore. Score for the vamps!"

Elena shot him a look. Clearly this approach wasn't going to work on him, so she opted for another tactic that he would find more digestible in an effort to spare some werewolf lives. "Okay, fine. In that case, I'd like to turn when this body fully develops its prefrontal cortex. In fact, I think I'll bump it up to twenty-six, just so I can officially mark myself safe from being hit on by Leo DiCaprio. He'll probably take one look at me, and throw a bunch of AARP cards at me while hissing and planning to have me escorted to the nearest nursing home."

"Someone's been taking her pre-med classes seriously," he purred, pressing a kiss to her cheek.

"Okay, everyone, stop!" Stefan barked, looking immediately apologetic at his tone. "Can someone please explain what's going on?"

Damon ran a hand through his hair, his heart clenching a bit at his brother's obvious distress. Stefan never did handle change very well – not even as a child when his toys were taken away. This was becoming a lot more volatile than he anticipated. In fact, this entire exercise was starting to give him a pounding headache, but he agreed to be supportive for their exposition dump.

"Great," Damon deadpanned. "So now we have to make sure Klaus' spawn comes into existence. Why, exactly?"

Elena bit her lip, trying to concentrate – willing her mind to move past the block that disconnected her from the cosmic knowledge to which she was exposed while her psyche demerged from her past self. Bonnie and her Grams mentioned that Water magic had a strong psychic and divinatory component, and if she were to just try to open herself up to the scraps to which she had access – yes – she could feel it flowing through her, and the walls seemed to almost disintegrate, if only for a moment. "I think she created something – some kind of artifact – that allowed us to travel back in time in the first place. So, if she's never born, then –"

"Another paradox," he groaned, lying back to cover his face with a pillow. "I see Darth Witchy altered the deal again."

"Did she?" Elena asked dubiously. "I mean, she did tell you that you'd have to –"

"I'm just going to say this once: I came back to save you and Stef. f*ck the Universe, as far as I'm concerned," he asserted, finally sitting up to look at her again, his entire demeanor reverberating with seriousness.

"In order to maintain the, uh," Elena said, chancing a nervous look at Damon to make sure he would behave and was instead rewarded with an eye-roll for her efforts, "structural integrity of the Universe, we have to make sure that Hope Mikaelson is born."

"Hope Mikaelson?" Stefan asked, utterly confused.

"Mini-Klaus. Triple threat in the vampy-wolfy-witchy department," Damon explained, looking visibly displeased.

"Wait wait wait – Klaus Mikaelson's going to have a child?" Anna asked. "As in a child?" She queried, emoting rocking a baby, "or a Childe?" She clarified, revealing her fangs.

"Who the hell is Klaus Mikaelson?" Stefan pleaded, exasperated.

"Funny you should ask that –" Damon began, his growing smirk an indicator that the conversation was finally becoming fun for him, which probably meant that it would be considerably less fun for Stefan.

"He's one of the Original vampires," Sheila interrupted, hoping to put poor Stefan out of his misery, while half-heartedly shooting an admonishing glare at Damon. That boy really did love to cause mischief, even with his humanity, she concluded. "Vampires were created in this town by their mother, Esther, using the blood of one of Elena's ancestors, which makes her the key to –"

"I heard of this!" Anna beamed, happy to find herself on the more knowledgeable part of the information spectrum again. "The Sun and the Moon curse! The doppelgängers blood will break the curse, allowing either vampires to walk in the Sun, or for werewolves to not be beholden to the Moon!"

"Nope!" cried the elder Salvatore with entirely too much smugness in his tone.

Sheila's eye twitched, hungering to give a certain undead someone a supernatural aneurysm.

"Actually, that's not exactly true," Bonnie explained with a sympathetic wince. "It's just a cover that Klaus and Elijah propagandized to have vampires and werewolves look out for the doppelganger. The real purpose of the spell is to –"

"Give the most melodramatic supernatural ever his wolf side back. Basically, Esther gave him a time out, and sent his wolf nature back to its room for being a brat. Breaking the curse isn't going to do anything for vampires or werewolves –" Damon began.

"But it will make it possible for him to impregnate Hayley" Elena interjected. "Which is really our goal. Does this mean all the other stuff has to happen, too? Do all those hybrids have to die? Maybe we can just … I don't know … set them up as soon as the ritual's over?"

"You want us to pull a Sebastian and serenade him into more-than-kissing the girl'? Damon looked like holding on to the contents of his stomach took true Herculean effort. "Didn't we veto that really gross and disturbing plan?"

"We can still save Jenna, right?"

"Probably. Unless her dying is important. Someone will need to, though, if we open it, so how do we choose?"

"This is just like the Trolley Problem!" Elena's visible excitement waned with a visible wince when she realized how inappropriate her reaction was.

"Someone misses her Philosophy class," he purred, trailing kisses down her neck, only to find that she was entirely too engrossed in the discussion this time. With a sigh, he pulled back.

"Well, Jules killed Rose, right?" She asked pragmatically, hating the turn of the conversation and the position it placed her in. "But maybe we could research? Like a really bad werewolf, who hurts children – or –?"

"Aren't you supposed to be all about redemption and forgiveness and giving people a million chances?" he teased.

Elena dropped her face into her hands. "I hate this," she mumbled into her palms, the words barely intelligible.

"So, f*ck them. Let's leave the tomb closed. Do we really need to attract that whole mess?"

"What does any of this have to do with opening the tomb, anyway?" Stefan asked.

"The tomb vampires will spread word of my existence, which'll draw Klaus to town. And Katherine will realize that her cover's blown, so she'll come back, too."

"I think we found our vampire sacrifice!" Damon beamed.

"Katherine … what? Katherine's not dead?" Stefan asked, ashamed of feeling something akin to hope fluttering in his heart.

"Nope, and our sociopathic sire isn't in the tomb, either." Roasting Katherine or Stefan always put Damon in better spirits. He took a walk to the wet cart to pour himself a dram in celebration of this small victory.

"I second Katherine being sacrificed," Anna said.

"What about Anna?" Elena argued. "She deserves to have her mom back."

"Why does she need to have her back now?" Damon scoffed. "She could wait."

"Bonnie was specifically sent back to make sure we do this."

"Can't we just – I don't know – 'She's All That' Klaus to Hayley? Let Blondie give him a social makeover – wait, no, I think I just made myself sick. The most annoying person I've ever met being tutored in social graces by the second most annoying –"

"Damon! Stop. You owe her an apology for using her as a blood bag – or at least stop being so mean. I thought you got along now."

"Ugh, I know. I'm just –"

"Being an ass?" She teased, squeezing the body part in question.

"Why, Miss Gilbert!" He clutched his hand to his heart, theatrically scandalized. "Are you making inappropriate advances in an effort to persuade me to your side? I've half a mind to contact vampy HR about this." His eyebrows wiggled in a particular way then, giving his gaze a decidedly scorching tone. "Of course, I could overlook it just this once…"

"We need to focus on this," Elena said, with a heroic attempt to keep desire out of her voice, fighting with all her might to prevent her eyes from traveling to his lips.

"Fine," He groaned, feeling the situation spiral increasingly out of control. "So much could go wrong," he finally whispered, after a few moments of silence, staring into the night through his window. The moments seemed to stretch into eons before he faced her again, his expression intense. "I won't lose you."

She smiled, taking his hands in hers to trace soft patterns on his palms. "You can't. I'm kind of a vital ingredient here."

"It doesn't make you immortal. The Humorless Man in the Iron Mask came close."

"But he failed, and I won't lose you, either," she soothed, cupping his cheek. His own hand covered hers when he turned to press a kiss into her palm.

"Yeah, thanks to Bon-Bon, who's now back to her origin-story power level."

"Nope, having Klaus and Hayley just hook up won't cut it," Bonnie said. "Althea was pretty insistent that you two were on the verge of causing a paradox.

"Althea? Now there's an Althea!?" Stefan looked positively nonplussed.

Enzo chuckled, finally emerging from the kitchen. "You're handling this worse than me, mate. Have you considered yoga? Or at least some breathing exercises? Or at least not being an uptight little b–?"

"Okay, that's enough!" Sheila shouted. "I can't believe that in a room containing immortals literally hundreds of years old, I'm still somehow more mature than the lot of you vampires combined."

"Blood cravings stump emotional development?" Damon suggested, completely making the explanation up. "It would explain why Steffie –"

"Oh, for the love of – I can't believe I'm saying this – stop picking on that poor, creepy ripper boy. You're not as funny as you think you are."

"I most certainly am! I'm hilarious. Tell your grandmother, Bon-Bon. Tell your ancestor how horrific her judgment in humor is."

Bonnie pursed her lips. "Okay, let's just take a minute to breathe. First things first, we need to open the tomb. Anna, I suggest you and your mom leave town, at least until we manage to pacify John Gilbert – you didn't exactly escape with your life intact last time," she explained to an increasingly pale Anna. "Your mom stole a device from his ancestor, so we'll need that just in case the tomb vampires decide to start a Founders Day Parade massacre again. No need to warn us. We know. Just get out of here."

"Ugh, I forgot all about that douche." And just like that, the celebratory bourbon in Damon's hands became one of commiseration with his own sense of annoyance.

"Do you think we'll be able to save him this time?" Elena asked hopefully. Being here, in this time - when so much more of her family was alive - filled her with a peculiar and poignant feeling that she had been afraid to name, and yet it was so familiar. All she knew was that she had to save them. She couldn't let anyone else she loved die - not for her.

"How do you propose we do that if you intend to stay human after the ritual for your 'Save the Werewolves' campaign?" Damon sassed.

"I know you don't like this, Damon," Elena soothed, taking her hands in his. "I don't like it, either. But let's figure the rest out later, okay? United front while we explain?"

He rolled his eyes theatrically to mask the building anxiety in his heart. "Fine."

"Great!" She chirped and reached forward to kiss him on the lips, this time allowing it to deepen and transform in a much more cardiovascular endeavor.

"That's easy. Elijah's elixir –" Elena began.

"No," Damon said flatly.

"Damon, you promised –"

"Absolutely not. I'm done with this farce."

"Maybe you had the right idea with the popcorn." Anna winked at Enzo, seeing at least someone had his priorities straight. "These are probably the most entertaining few nights I've had all year."

"We have no idea what it does!" Damon exclaimed, growing increasingly agitated.

"He's a thousand years old, and he said it'll bring me back to life!" Elena cried.

"And you don't think it's weird that we've never come across a similar item, before or since?"

"We've also never come across artifacts that send us back in time, and yet!"

"I don't care. I'm not taking the chance –"

"Damon, come on –" Elena pleaded.

"You're doing it again! Even after I told you what it did –" After what he went through when he thought he'd killed her - the tumult of numb nothingness, his heart an empty, unbearable chasm that sent him raging straight toward Julian's vampire fight club to extinguish its existence.

"I'm not doing anything!"

"Yes, you are! We're back for a few days, and you're already falling back into old patterns! I told you – I'm not going to lose you," Damon growled, and walked out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

"I'm not…" Elena said weakly, sinking onto one of the couches to slide her face onto her waiting palms. Was she?

"You kind of are," Bonnie soothed with a sympathetic wince, placing a hand on Elena's shoulder. "But we all have things to work through."

"So, you mean to tell me that all of you Melodrama Queens outlived me? Seriously?" Anna snarked after Damon's exit left the room in stunned silence, completely nonplussed. "How is that even possible?"