A/N: So I know there are a lot of these stories but the idea came to me in a dream, oddly enough, and it just demanded to be written. It's actually an exceptionally hard story to summarise but basically it's a 2 book story, book 1 is an amalgamation of Seasons 1 & 2 and book 2 dovetails into a semi-original plot with help from Seasons 3 & 4.

It is slightly AU so there are a few minor adjustments, character differences etc. And most importantly it's Delena all the way. I absolutely love this chapter it turned into one of my favourite pieces of writing ever, so if you're reading it I hope you enjoy. I do not own The Vampire Diaries.

Dreams In Technicolor

The Beginning Of Everything. Maybe

After all the dreaming I come home again – Adam Duritz

It all started in a cell in 1953.

Well, that's not strictly true actually, it all started a long time before that, but the dreaming, the dreams started in a cell.

They didn't come frequently at first, back then it was only once every few months, infrequently enough that I still woke up gasping for air, trying to figure out why they felt so damn real.

I'm lying on the road, in the dreams, all I can see are the stars above me and I don't know where I am, but I can feel the cool night breeze on my cheek, I can hear the whispers of the wind in the leaves of the trees in a forest behind me, if I listen closely enough I can hear the running water of a river somewhere nearby.

There is silence, darkness and bright golden stars above me and I feel strangely peaceful. At first, I thought I understood the dreams. I thought my mind was simply giving me a reprieve from the torment, from the hell, from the torture, that my body, my mind, was going through stuck in that impenetrable cell with only a ration of blood to stop me from drying out completely.

It made a lot of sense, when you look at it that way, in my dreams I could taste freedom, I could feel the air, I could exist somewhat peacefully, yeah, it made a lot of sense, until it didn't.

It stopped making sense when the dreams evolved, I was still in the same place, still lying on the ground staring at the stars up above me when I heard a voice, a girl's voice, I couldn't see her, couldn't move from the place I was lying, but I could hear her. And what I could hear, well it confused the hell out of me at first.

"I know Bonnie, you're right. You and my mom both are. I just can't bring myself to tell him. At least, not tonight. I'll call you later"

That was it, that's all I got, at first, but it was enough. I'd recognise that voice anywhere, Katherine. At least, that's what I thought, in my dreams. But when I woke up that first night, gasping from the sheer delight of hearing her voice again, I realised, that it wasn't Katherine.

Sure, the voice is basically identical but if you just listen closely enough, then you realise that the tone is a little different, whoever the hell the girl in my dreams is, she's not Katherine, her voice carries an innocence that Katherine could never pull off, she just sounds a whole lot like Katherine.

"Bad dream mate?" my cell-mate, Enzo, my best friend, my only friend, asked me that question every single time I woke up heaving from that dream and I could never figure out whether to answer in the negative, or the affirmative. All I knew was that I wanted to sleep more; I wanted to stay inside that dream forever. My sleep was the only place I ever found peace in those days.

Before the night that ruined everything, before the night I got my freedom back, before the night I had to leave my best friend to die to save myself, before the night I flipped the switch on my emotions, one night before I had the dream again.

I hadn't had it, in months, I kept hoping, wishing it would come back and it never did, until that night, I think, in hind-sight, it was giving me something to live for.

Because when I realised that I was going to have to either die in that fire with my best friend or leave him behind, I nearly made the choice to stay. I thought maybe it would be best if I let the fire consume us both, put us both out of our misery and die together, comrades until the bitter end.

But then I remembered the dream, I knew that there was something important, something so important, something that was bigger than me, bigger than Enzo, that I had to do, even though I had no reasoning for this other than my own personal insanity, but maybe I was just looking for a reason to walk out those doors.

The only way I could do it though was to flip the switch. And I did, I flipped it, and I walked away from my best friend, the only friend I ever really made, sans-Stefan, my brother, but he doesn't really count because, well, he's family and we hate each other these days. The point is I flipped the switch and I walked away, and after that, well, after that everything was fine.

I forgot about the dreams, forgot that I'd decided I had some kind of destined-purpose in life, I forgot about everything that didn't involve feeding, killing and fucking pretty girls. That's the thing about being an emotionless creature of the night, if you flip the switch on your humanity, there's nothing left to feel, and I could have remembered the dreams, if I wanted to, but at the time, I didn't want to, because remembering the dreams, meant remembering Enzo, meant remembering what I had to do to survive, meant remembering watching my best friend go down in a blaze of fire.

Yeah, everything was fucking fine. Until they came back.

Boy did they come back, I managed to get all the way until the late 80's without having that damn dream again and then one night, I woke up gasping for air just like I did all those nights in the cell and it all came flooding back in.

I nearly killed myself right there and then. That flood of emotion, feeling so fucking much, after such a very long time of feeling nothing, was almost too much to handle, it was almost too heavy a cross to bear.

So I concentrated on one thing, I learnt one new thing from that dream that could have changed everything, or could have changed nothing. I'm still not sure.

Nothing else changed, scenery was the same, I won't bore you with all the details again, I was still lying in the middle of the road, still couldn't see her, but one line, the delivery of two simple, simple words, two words, one name, changed everything and nothing all at once.

"I'm Elena" who the fuck is Elena?

This question has tormented me for years, I never got any more than that, the dreams came in startling frequency but nothing else ever changed and I thought one day I might just go out of my damn mind with all the questioning over who the fuck this Elena girl is and what the hell she wants with me.

I knew, in every part of me, that these couldn't just be dreams, something, someone, some power, I don't know, was bringing them to me, there was a purpose, a reason, and I don't just say that because I'm a man who needs a purpose in life, although that is true, but I already have a purpose, had a purpose, I'm not sure which yet.

My purpose, my goal, was Katherine, rescuing Katherine from the tomb she's managed to get herself all trapped up in for the last 150 years. Or at the very least, it was my purpose, until I found my waking, and most of my nights, thoughts consumed by someone entirely different, by someone called Elena, a girl I don't know, have never met and truth be told don't even fucking know for sure exists.

Yeah, great one Damon, real smart. That's what you get for believing in dreams you know.

You get confused, you get conflicted, you get twisted in what's real and what's make believe, you get lost in a land of dark starry nights and voices that feel like velvet running over your skin, you blur the lines between sanity and insanity, reality and fiction, you start to wonder if you're really losing the plot, you start to wonder if it's possible for a vampire to lose the plot. I haven't decided the answer to that question yet, I'll be sure to get back to you on it.

After I got my emotions back a hundred fold, all at once, cheers for that dream, real sweet of you, I dealt with the things I had done. I tried to move past things that were, well, in the past, I let myself feel the guilt, the shame, the regret, I finally let myself enjoy the freedom that I had, and I started building my walls so high that no one would be able to climb them.

It's easy to pretend to be a vampire with your humanity off, and I knew, that for what was coming, that's what I'd have to do, because I was going to have to go back to Mystic Falls, not for another 10 years or so but a man needs time to plan, deceive, learn how to fake it til' you make it.

Yep I was going back to Mystic Falls, my birthplace, my hometown, the place I was born, the place I died, the place I was born again, kinda. Going to rescue a girl out of a tomb and then probably gonna burn the place to the ground when we were done.

See Katherine was never one for my emotional side, she got whatever emotions she needed out of my brother, I was there purely for her pleasure, but I figured that was good enough for me, it's not like I wasn't a mutually beneficial partner in our sordid, twisted little ménage a threesome.

Of course by this point we're only in the fucking 90's, the dream's been back for a decade, but when we hit the late 90's it changed again. The actual dream itself didn't change, words were the same, I only ever got as far as "I'm Elena" but the frequency of them sure as hell changed.

Every. Fucking. Night.

Yeah, you heard me, every damn night they came, torturing me, tormenting me, twisting me up inside, every night I woke up with this unexplainable need to suck all of the oxygen in the room into my lungs, this desire to just be able to breathe, which, ironic, because I don't actually need to fucking breathe.

It didn't matter that the dreams were the same, that nothing ever changed, it didn't matter that they came every night, that nothing ever happened, that voice, that silky, velvety voice was destroying my mind, my everything.

So I decided that I needed to do something about it, crazy thing is, what the hell are you supposed to do about a fucking dream?

Let me tell you what I did. Night after night after night I roamed the damn country. I must have lay down on every fucking road that America has to offer a man, underneath the stars, contemplating whether the sounds were just right, whether the water was close enough, whether the stars looked the same.

For 12 years, I lay on every road I came across underneath a blanket of stars and waited, hoped, prayed that my dream would just come to life and give me a fucking break. I hadn't decided what I was going to do with this, figment of my imagination, if she did in fact come to life, for a while I thought maybe I would just kill her and be done with it, surely her death would mean the end of the endless cycle of tormenting dreams, but I quickly discarded that idea as one of the worst I've ever had.

Like I said, I was so sure that there was a purpose to this dream, there was something bigger than me, bigger than life itself, I was convinced. And so I took myself on a road-trip, literally, and I never found her.

Are ya surprised? 'Cause I wasn't. What the hell did you expect? It's a goddamn dream, no more, no less, there's no purpose. There's no destiny. There's nothing magical about a fucking dream. I don't know why I had it, don't know what it was trying to tell me, don't know who the hell Elena is or if she ever fucking existed.

So I gave up my fruitless search, I went back to lying on roads for the sheer hell of it, because it helps me find answers, lying there underneath the stars, questioning your life, your beliefs, your battles, your hopes, ambitions, dreams, purposes, whatever, trust me, it's one of the best feelings in life. If you've never done it, you should.

Go, right now, find yourself a nice deserted road, on a cool dark night, lie down on it and think yourself into oblivion underneath a canopy of stars. Oh, and if you hear a car coming, get the fuck up, I'm not telling you to go die, I'm telling you to live.

Unless you're a vampire, in which case stay where you are and eat whoever is insane enough to stop for a mad-man lying in the middle of a damn road. They probably had it comin'.

Regardless, I'm deviating from the point here; I gave up my fruitless search, and returned my thoughts to pastures greener, to purposes I knew and understood, to the reason I've lived for so fucking long. It's time to save Katherine.

When I made the final decision to come back to Mystic Falls, the dreams stopped. One night they were there, the next night, gone, up in a poof of smoke as if they never existed in the first place. Maybe they didn't. What the hell do I know anymore? All I know is that they stopped and I was grateful.

And now I'm back in Mystic Falls, my little brother is here as well, though he doesn't know I'm around, I'm not ready for anyone to know I'm back yet, not ready for him to know why I'm here. He doesn't deserve to know shit.

I don't know why he's here exactly, seems awfully coincidental that he just happens to turn up in town right around comet-time, but I'm sure he doesn't know about the spell Emily Bennett cast to save Katherine, and the others, in the tomb, that was my deal with her, and I don't think she would have told Stefan. Never much liked him. Never much liked me either, truth be told, but I promised I'd protect her family and in return she saved the vampires, and now I'm gonna save Katherine.

I've come to lie on this road, there's something, vaguely familiar about it, I can't tell if it's because I've been on so many fucking roads that after 12 years they all just blur into one and the same, or if it's because I've probably done this exact same thing on this exact same road once or twice before, a century and a half ago.

Regardless, there's something a little familiar about it and I bask in that familiarity, it feels like coming home, which in a way fits because I have, come home. So I'm lying, gazing at the stars, tracing patterns into the sky with my fingers and contemplating my reunion with Katherine when the most unexpected thing happens.

"I know Bonnie, you're right. You and my mom both are. I just can't bring myself to tell him. At least, not tonight. I'll call you later"

Am I dreaming? Is it back? Please tell me it's not back.

But I can move. I'm so fucking confused, I don't know whether this is the dream and it's changing or whether this is real or if I've finally just gone insane. But I can move and fuck me if I'm not gonna find out more than her name.

I stand up and walk over to the voice, the voice that I've heard so many times on so many different nights, the voice that has given me, joy, tears, life, purpose, never-ending sorrow and a whole pyramid of other emotions that I can't name right now.

She looks just. like. Katherine.

But I already know she isn't. I ask her though, just in case this is a really, really bad fucking game.

No she says.

"I'm Elena" yes. Yes you are.