Oh my God, my twenty-fifth story! I feel like I've grown so much, as a writer and a person, since I joined this website, and I'd just like to thank anyone who ever reviewed or favorited a story of mine, if you're reading this. Oh, wow. Twenty-five. Big milestone. Anyway, thank you!
Dedicated to: pariswindspeed, for being there to share my long rambly A/Ns, and Hellscrimsonangel, for yelling at me to do this already.
Disclaimer: If I owned VD, well...then, um...wow. Almost everything would be different, actually. So, uh, yeah, I don't own it. I also don't own Andrew Belle (oh, how I'd like to), or his song, "Replace Me." Pity poor me. But on the bright side, I have actually started working on my own first for-real book, and I'm so damn excited! Can I get a Yay, Lady Shaye? No? Oh...um...okay. *depressed* *brightens* Alrighty, then, let's get on with it! Yay for Daroline goodness!
Anyway, who's ready for my super-long rambly A/N? I'm told they're quite adorable, but hell, what do I know? Um, yeah. So. Let's get this thing started.
I originally was not going to write a sequel, but a few people asked, and I too felt that this story was far from finished, so I decided so let Damon make a stupid decision and suffer the wonderful consequences of it.
Now, this is definitely not quite as angsty as its predecessor. It's actually pretty damn light, though I think that I stayed in character (I hope so anyway), so if you're expecting more of Damon's angsty world then you're not quite going to get it.
Warning: If you read this without reading its predecessor, you are going to be fucking confused.
Pairing: Damon/Caroline, my fucking tragic but beautiful OTP
Rating: Um, I guess T? For language and vague sexual scenes.
Summary: "Damon, why did you resurrect me?" she asks, and there are more questions in those six words than he knows how to answer. / Her eyes glimmer and glitter bright blue, and he thinks he sees something like redemption in them. / He sees salvation in her smile. / Sequel to "a sleepy kisser, a pretty war".
I'm fighting sleep right now, don't matter why or how
I walked through the thickness of your heart
Straight through the middle of your deepest darkest dream
I wrote the melody that brought you back to life, love
Come hear it for yourself, oh my love
Come hear it for yourself, oh my love…
I fell like Jack for Jill, and you came tumbling after…
Damon divides his life into four books. When he is lying in bed at night and not thinking about the things that he's lost (her) and he doesn't want to dream (nightmares of her) and he has nothing better to do, he categorizes his life. It wastes time. Keeping him from thinking (about her).
Book One is short and useless. He is human and twenty-four and in love with a beautiful (but cold and heartless bitchy) woman that chooses his brother every time. He saves her and dies for her and loses her anyway because he loves too hard, too fiercely, too desperately, too passionately, too lingeringly. Always has, always will. It's short and depressing and he doesn't think on it all that often at all.
Book Two is longer, and spans the most years, he thinks, but it is probably the least important. It means nothing. It is years of drinking and searching for Katherine and compelling girls and traveling across the world—Prague later means the most to him—and knowing nothing about life. It means nothing and it is nothing but a bunch of memories that he no longer bothers to remember. (He's too busy remembering her.)
Oddly, Book Three is different. In the plot sequence of his life, it's probably the climax. It involves doppelgangers and witches and that stupid little town of his and a blond cheerleading vampire who married a werewolf but loved a vampire first (under compulsion and despite earth-shattering pain, she loved him still, but he conveniently forgets that first part and only remembers the second). It has a wedding and ripped up plane tickets and spilled wine and a wedding speech and a heavy ring and a small outdoor ceremony on a sunny day.
It ends when she dies twenty years later, and Lockwood kills himself three days later for her, and Damon finds out a little over a year later.
Honestly, it's such a waste. She dies for wolf-boy, and then he commits suicide? What's the point of her death? Her death is for nothing, and it's all just such a waste.
There's a break then. In-between those points. Where he wanders in bars and writes letters to a little seventeen-year-old girl named Diana that, were he not a vampire, could be his daughter by looks alone. They're short letters. They discuss her mother, his long-lost lover, and her bright smile. She does not talk about her father at all, and he learns to avoid the subject of Tyler Lockwood. Perhaps she feels abandoned by his suicide, but she's being raised by Bonnie Bennett. And if Judgy can do something good, it will be for this girl.
He can tell that she's incredibly bright, and also a pretty happy teenager. She's not crowded by the angst that Bonnie and Elena and she lived through. No werewolf-vampire fights, no ghosts, no doppelgangers. She is being raised in a happier world. The last vampire-werewolf standoff was a year ago, from what he can tell, when she died for Lockwood, protecting him until a stake went through her heart.
Yes, she will grow up happily. She will be a good person one day, he knows this. He also knows that she was going to turn when she became eighteen so she could be with her family forever, but that she doesn't want to do it anymore without her mother there.
(A little girl is nothing without her mommy.)
He thinks it but doesn't say it or write it. He refuses to acknowledge it.
That is the turning point. It is the combination of so many things: the fact that she died for nothing, and that Diana is so lost without her, and that he is so lost without her.
Book Four begins then, when he finds a dark witch to help him raise the dead.
He does whatever she says. He lies and kills and steals and hurts and maims and does whatever Miss Witch-Bitch asks so that he can have her back. She doesn't list a price, only that when she needs something, she will ask for him.
(He doesn't care. He'll do anything. But he doesn't say that part out loud. Somehow he thinks Miss Witch-Bitch already knows.)
She requests that he leave her alone to perform the spell, saying that there are some things that he must not witness. He does not question this, instead going to a local gas station (being somewhere in Prague, he really doesn't know what anything is, which is kind of sad considering how long he's been here) and waiting for her to contact him.
He's halfway drunk and over half a day has passed, and it is dusk when she texts his disposable phone.
It is done. My place. Come quickly. She's waiting for you.
He leaves the bar he wandered to some four hours ago, faster than a blink of the eye, a fifty left on the countertop. (He did learn some things from her. Not that he's a goody-goody or something, I mean, damn it, he's Damon freaking Salvatore, but still. He can do good things, contrary to the popular belief of some, ahem, um, Stefan.)
Quickly, he finds himself waiting outside of the small room, third floor, fifth from the left, that the witch had sweet-talked/spelled her way into renting for the time being. The motel is crummy and smells suspiciously like some kind of insect or cockroach spray, but he doesn't question it. He doesn't care, honestly. (He's only ever really cared about one thing, the one thing that he can't deny but does his damn best to do so.)
She's inside of this room. Living (not really), breathing (not necessarily), being (can't deny that one there).
He straightens his shirt (black V-neck, some things never really change) and trademark black leather jacket, makes sure his black jeans look proper and unwrinkled, and checks his black dress shoes for scuff marks. (This is Damon Salvatore here. Old habits die hard, and looking amazing is simply just one of them.)
Hesitating for a few seconds, he gently pushes the door open.
Miss Witch-Bitch is standing in the middle of the living room, which is the center of the small motel room, and there is a girl standing there next to her. For a second, despite his memories which will never die, despite the long nights he's spent thinking of her and only her, despite the picture he still carries in his wallet after all of these long months in which he's lost almost everything else, he almost doesn't recognize her. Her hair is still dyed black, and her eye makeup is darker than he remembers it, and she is still wearing a wedding ring.
Lockwood's wedding ring.
He almost breathes out her name, but he can't.
Because he's pinned to the room's door by the throat before he has the chance. Her fingers tighten around his neck, and he chokes out some kind of version of what the hell?, and her eyes darken and become black. She resorts to her vampire face, and actually looks very attractive that way, and that's when he knows that he's going crazy (if he hadn't already when he'd heard about her death a while back).
She staggers back a few seconds later, and her face becomes normal again, though frozen in shock and fear. "Damon," she breathes as he coughs, though he doesn't need to. It isn't as though he needs air, and besides, she barely even broke the skin with her nails. It's repaired itself before a drop of blood can mar his clothes, and before he even takes a breath.
"Damon," she repeats, seeming in awe of him, and shocked that he's simply there.
He can't help it. He feels a smirk coming over his face. "You just gonna keep saying my name, Blondie?"
Crossing her arms over her chest—and she doesn't notice it, but her black skinny jeans, white sandals, and midnight blue (kind of like his eyes, he notices, but surely that's just coincidence) short-sleeved blouse are absolutely covered in blood, probably from her own fatal injury in the first place—she glares at him, and it feels just like it used to be. "Why—why don't I remember?"
He raises an eyebrow, though inside he feels elated. They're actually speaking. "What don't you remember?"
Biting her lip, she shrugs. "I just—I remember—"
"Do you remember the wedding, Vampire Barbie?"
"Yes. Yes, yes, I remember that. Tyler and I…on the estate…yeah." She scrunched up her eyes, and he forgot how adorable that looked on her, with the wrinkle coming across her forehead. "I remember adopting Diana."
He asks the telling question. "How old is Diana, Barbie?"
"Ten. She's ten."
His heart sinks. Not just because she's wrong about that, but because she still thinks that her husband is alive. She doesn't remember dying for wolf-boy, she doesn't remember the werewolf-vampire standoff that ended her supposed-to-be-immortal life, she doesn't remember losing her life. She doesn't remember her daughter growing up. At all.
The witch looks at him pointedly, no longer silent. "Salvatore, I expect you to be at my beck and call when I ask for you," she says so sweetly that it gives him goosebumps—or it would if it could. She reminds him of what an evil Bonnie would have been like.
"Of course," he says, his eyes still trained on her. He thinks, dreading it, that he'll have to explain this to her. That she's lost her husband to a handgun. That her daughter has aged so much. That she can't remember several years of her family's lives together.
That's his new job.
But he signed up for this. So he'll deal. He always has, no matter the cost, despite whatever Lady Luck fucking threw his way.
The witch leaves silently, and he's not even sure of when she left. But he knows that she is looking at him with a strange expression on her face, lost and scared and unsure of why he won't respond to her about her daughter's age. "Damon? Isn't that the right answer? What's wrong?"
There, in that musty motel room, he sits her down at the coffee table covered by magazines and ash trays, and explains to her how old her daughter is, and what's happened over the past seven years that she knows nothing about. Those bits are kind of sketchy, since he never checked in on her. But he knows how long she's been dead (he knows it like the back of his hand, probably better) and he knows how Diana is doing, how she is coping, and he knows some of the better things to say in comparison to what some others would have said.
She cries and he taps her shoulder and hands her a fucking frilly margarita—the kind she's always liked—because it's the best that he can offer. He's never been a good-with-comforting kind of man. Reassurances he can do, but comforting was always more Stefan's thing.
Which brings him to Stefan. What the hell is he going to think of this?
Oh, who cares. (Certainly not him. He never gave a shit about anybody, or so he'll have you—especially her—believe.)
She downs the margarita, extra salt and extra dry, in just a few swallows, and turns to him, eyes glittering with tears suspiciously again, even though she stopped crying a minute or two ago. "Damon, why did you resurrect me?" she asks, and there are more questions in those six words than he knows how to answer. He says the only thing that he can.
"People need you," he says honestly, not mentioning the specific names.
"Who?" she presses, forcing him to choose: hold his silence or know her disbelief at the fact that he could love (and it's always the disbelief that hurts the most, this he knows from experience, thank you, Miss Gilbert, that will be all, please exit center stage in all our lives now, thanks).
He shrugs. "Judgy misses you. Your daughter, obviously. Elena. Stefan. Others."
(He's always been better with holding his tongue than dealing with more hurt that he will later claim to be nonexistent. It's easier, and by now it's a habit.)
"What about Tyler? Where is he? How's he doing?" she asks, and he winces.
He oh-so-casually forgot to mention the death of her husband of several years.
Her werewolf, idiot husband that got her killed and then made her death meaningless by killing himself.
Dumbass.
Taking a deep breath, Damon explains to her what happened to her spouse, and she doesn't cry like he expected she would. Her eyes are drier now, and she doesn't seem to notice the dark eye makeup streaking down her face in sync with the tear tracks of earlier. (She used to be so appearance-fixated, convinced that if she looked good, the world would think she was the best. It was a vain hope, at least when Elena was in her life. No amount of charity function successes would ever change that, in comparison to Elena, she would always be second best. Maybe she decided it was no longer worth it.)
She doesn't cry, anyway. She gets angry instead.
"Damon! What the hell!" she's pinning him by the throat again to the wall, and her vampire face flashes before she returns to her normal face again. She's really pissed this time, instead of just hurt and confused and lost like the first time. "I was—I was at peace! I didn't…I didn't know any of that. Why the hell did you bring me back?"
He tries not to notice, and cringe, when her nails draw enough blood to stain his v-neck. (He fails. That was a nice shirt, damn it. He's appearance-fixated, too, and definitely vain, and screw you if you wanted differently, Elena.)
"I did it for your family," he says softly. (Damon Salvatore does not freaking murmur. That ended in Book One, when Katherine stopped hiding the bitch that she was, and he stopped being the vulnerable, soft, easy-to-use human that he hates today when he looks back on it all.)
"My family? Come off it, Damon. You only ever do anything for yourself," she snaps. "My daughter is moving on, or she needs to, at least, and she would if you'd give it time. People move on. Bonnie's moved on, I'm sure. Stefan and Elena aren't here, and they both would be if they knew about this, so they're obviously not involved. What do you want from me?"
I-want-to-hold-you-forever-and-never-let-you-go-and-call-you-by-name-and-say-you-are-mine-and-listen-to-you-agree.)
He straightens his facial expression, composing himself, and forces her fingers backwards until they snap, one by one, until even her thumb is broken. She does not cry out in pain like she would have done so many decades ago; instead, she calmly releases him and fixes all five of her fingers. (It makes him think of the ancient Chinese tradition of breaking all of the young girls' toes until they hobble. The Chinese seemed to think it was very sexy to watch a girl with a high arch hobble around on her big toes. He fights the urge to think sexy as she forces her fingers back into their normal positions. But there's something about watching her doing this, watching her do anything at all—a thrill he thought he'd never get again.)
"I want you to fix your daughter," he says coolly, fighting the inner turmoil inside until none of it shows.
She grits her teeth. "She would've fixed herself, given time. Besides, she doesn't even know I'm here, does she?"
Silence.
"Thought so. Damon, I'm not doing this to her. I'm not making her see me again and then have her watch me die again—getting staked, werewolf bite, whichever. It's not happening."
He answers her coldly. "Mystic Falls has had very little supernatural activity lately, according to Diana's letters. The last vampire-werewolf standoff resulted in your death, and since then, most of the vampires have moved on, and so have the werewolves. Bonnie is the only living witch in town. And as far as she could tell, there are no vampire hunters. No threats."
"But with Elena, that won't last for long," she retorts back just as frigidly, though he can sense her resolve weakening. "With Elena comes trouble, you know that."
"Elena is living in Greece at the moment with Stefan," he responds quietly, the chilly tone gone from his voice. "She hasn't been to Mystic Falls since your funeral, though she and Bonnie keep in touch, or so I've heard."
Her tone turns to curiosity. "Did Bonnie ever get married?"
"Yeah. New guy to town from Washington, been married five years. He was widowed, no kids, had to move somewhere far away after his first wife died. Not a supernatural. Normal, but he understands, I think. Diana's letters said he's a good guy, doesn't feel burdened by her being there. Makes sense. Judgy would pick a good guy—it's kind of implied with the nickname I gave her, Barbie."
She bites her lip. "What about—what about you and Elena?"
"Over. It's always been over. You knew that," he adds almost-gently, but doesn't tell her why.
(It's better she doesn't know why, that she just thinks that Elena finally chose Stefan. It's better she doesn't know that he ended things between him and Elena. For so many goddamn reasons, it's better, but right now, not one of them seem to mean anything to him other than a source of pain he should be used to by now but isn't. But he holds his tongue.)
She doesn't ask. She just makes herself another margarita and hands him a glass of bourbon before he can even request one. (He wonders why the motel has so much alcohol, then actually uses his brain and decides that the witch is literally a lifesaver, in more ways than just revivification.)
They spend that night talking away, discussing changes, and after three hours pass, he thinks that it's the longest conversation they've ever had. (He conveniently forgets the conversations they had when she was human, when he abused her for his own gain, when they would spend all night talking about stars and people from the past. He told her about meeting JFK, she told him he was born under a lucky star. She asked questions about his presidential meeting…he just laughed at her prediction and told her he'd never been lucky.)
They discuss presidents and wars and books; all very big stuff, stuff you don't have to concentrate it, stuff that won't make you (her) cry.
The moon goes down and he knows that the sun is rising in a couple of hours, so he hands her her old lapis lazuli ring. (He doesn't tell her how he got it, stealing it from her mom's house along with a few photographs, and she doesn't question why he has it, or why he's worn it all this time.) And they go back to their conversations, helping her catch up. It's the most he's spoken to anyone in months.
It's nearing dawn when they stop, and she goes to the window, peering through the grimy, unclean glass, staring at the sun. "It's hard to think that I've haven't seen a sunrise in over a year. And it's even harder to think I can't even remember a sunrise for seven, nearly eight years before that." The sun shines on her through the filthy window, and it touches her skin and her shimmering hair and her eyes glimmer and glitter bright blue and he thinks he sees something like redemption in them. But the moment passes.
He raises an eyebrow. "Of all the things that you can't remember, you're thinking about sunrises? Blondie, please."
Crossing her arms over her chest, she turns to him and sticks out her tongue childishly. Kind of caught off guard by the juvenile gesture, he laughs, catching himself mid-snicker. He's surprised. He hasn't laughed in…well, months, really. Diana's funny in her letters but she's not that funny. (She must have picked up Lockwood's sense of humor. That would explain it.)
When he cuts himself off, she has this amused look in her still-too-blue eyes, like she always knew that he could laugh. And he sees salvation in her smile.
He ignores it.
"Are you thirsty?" he asks, hoping to slake their vampire tendencies before they head back to Mystic Falls.
"Yes," she says, not even bothering to hide it, and he wonders how much she changed after he left. She no longer seems afraid and ashamed of her needs, nor is she overly into it and loving the bloodlust, as he was for a very long time before he finally got control of himself all those decades ago.
They leave the motel with very few words after that. They go into a hospital, and she struggles for a minute to control her face at the scent of blood all around them—it has been several years without blood for her, after all, even if she wasn't there for it—but she regains power over herself and smiles bravely at him. They find blood bags, and she devours three of them before ten minutes have passed. Having sated herself, they leave the hospital and board a plane that he reserved tickets for several days ago. Hours pass, and once the plane stops, she demands that they stop at a store. She buys a blue dress with short sleeves off-the-shoulder that end at the elbow. It is the same bright blue as her eyes, and it ends at her knees.
He thinks that she wants to look nice for Diana, because he will not consider the alternative. (There is no way that she is dressing up for him.)
They find his car in the airport parking lot he left it at several months ago (thank God he compelled those repo cops), and she climbs willingly into the passenger seat. "Where are we, anyway?" she asks, and when he tells her that they are in New York, she does not beg to go to the capital city. When he questions this odd behavior of hers, she says that she went ("what must be, well, when I do the math, nine?—") years ago, and that she really doubts much has changed about it in less than a decade.
He doesn't tempt fate, knowing that she might change her mind, and drops the subject.
"What am I going to say to her?" she whispers to herself after a few minutes of nothing but the sound of road and tires.
He shrugs, knowing that she doesn't expect a response, but he gives one anyway. It's odd; he almost likes helping her. Cue the dramatic shudder. "I don't know. Who? Diana?"
"Diana. My mom. Bonnie. Everyone." She catches his eye. "Is Matt still…you know?"
"Alive?" he laughs. "Yeah, think so. Haven't heard anything about his death, anyway. Why, you still got a soft spot for the pretty boy?"
"Like you're one to talk," she shoots back, adding mockingly, "pretty boy."
He clutches his chest, faking a fatalistically wounded heart (forgetting for a moment how hers was, and immediately feeling guilty about it but hiding it well because he's always hidden his guilt, always), and she bites back a laugh (he lets it assuage his guilt just a little bit).
After a moment, she says, mostly to herself but also to him, "I miss him. He was Tyler's best man. He used to be my best friend and my boyfriend, all wrapped up in one. He was the normalcy that I needed in my life when my days became…kind of hellish."
"As opposed to before you had him, when you were covered in bite marks and were being compelled by a vampire to let him drink your blood? That wasn't hell?" he asks. It's odd. He wants her to be mad at him.
(Two souls, two hearts, both throbbing even when they've stopped beating, both needing to be more than second best. It's easier to push away than to get shoved yourself, he knows this. Survival of the fittest, even when your heart says to save them instead and hold them tight and never let them go.)
She doesn't get angry, like he expected. In another time, in another place, she would. Instead, she just shrugs it away. "So you fucked up my life, too," she states simply, tonelessly, like she's trying really hard not to laugh at him, and she's fighting back a small amused smile but not completely winning against it, and he almost feels offended. "Do you want a medal?"
"They're giving those out, now?"
"No. They'd run out too fast. But I thought I could get one especially for you, since you're the one that started it all."
"That's me. I enjoy being the catalyst."
He always enjoys this casual banter between them, though he'll hide it well enough. He schools his expression to look slightly annoyed, and sees her (out of the corner of his eye) look at him (out of the corner of her eye).
She snickers, breaking the silence. "You would. You always did like being the beginning of something, the absolute center of attention."
"What can I say? The beginning's always the best part."
"Really? You really think that? I always preferred the middle, myself."
(Me too, he thinks, thinking of the beginning, middle, and end he gave them a long time ago, and how the middle was kissing and memories of the beginning and her saying she did really love him once. But he doesn't say anything more, and especially not about that.)
She breaks the silence again. "So. What should I tell them?"
"I don't know. What do you normally tell the important people of your life when you come back from the dead? Didn't you do this once before?"
She glares. "Yes, but then I wasn't dead for a year, and I remembered the past seven years of my life. Bastard."
"You can throw names at me all you like, Princess, but this doesn't change our predicament. Can we get back to the problem at hand?"
"What else is there to say? I'm tired and I'm still hungry and I'm about to see my little girl, who somehow became a seventeen-year-old adult over the years that I can't remember. No more tea parties. No more coming to me after nightmares. No more being a mother," she sighs, and he notices that now she's mostly talking to herself.
"You're still her mother," he offers. "You're just not her mommy anymore. But you'll always be her mom."
"Think so?" she looks up, voice (heartbreakingly, but he won't admit it because he doesn't have a heart, not anymore, he just can't, can he?) hopeful.
"I'm nearly two hundred years old, Blondie, and I still miss my mother," he says. It's the first time he's spoken to anyone but Stefan about their mother in decades, and he thinks (though he doesn't want to) that it must mean something that it's her he's speaking with about it.
She looks at him for a second with sympathy, but she must know—she always knows—that he doesn't want her pity, so instead after a moment she brightens. "Thank you. That helps, kind of. What am I going to say to my mom, though? I mean, she's just so much older, I don't know what the shock would do to her."
He grunts, looking out at the empty stretch of backcountry road ahead of them. Just fields of impossibly bright green grass on either side of them. "Have you met your mom? She's one tough old bird. Age hasn't really changed her, you know, at least not according to Diana's letters."
Smiling, she nods. "Thanks, Damon. Can we put the radio on?"
Shrugging, he flips it on and lets it rest on some classical channel, and watches out of the corner of his eye as she falls asleep to Tchaikovsky and Bach. (In the back of his mind, where he keeps enough useless Blondie information to win a contest one day, he finds a small, short but crystal clear as-if-it-was-yesterday memory that recalls how she, as a human during one of their all-night talks, commented on how she loved Swan Lake. Some things just don't ever change.)
The day becomes the night, and Damon senses the creatures outside of the car, in the forest and the ditches and the fields, inhuman and dangerous just like them, but none more so and none quite as much. Were he Stefan, he would rebuff his nature right about now and start sipping bunny blood from a carcass, but his days of rejecting his nature are over. (Emotions, however, are another story.) Instead, he just watches a raccoon crawl across the road and then drives past.
She doesn't wake up until they hit the Mystic Falls town limits, and that's only because he shakes her awake. It only takes one (gentle) push and her eyes pop open, still impossibly bright blue in the dress (in anything, in shorts and a t-shirt, in burlap, anything), and Mozart is playing one of his finer (in Damon's opinion) pieces.
"We're here," he says, and he only says it once. She sits up, ramrod straight, the small cloud of warm air on the window left by her breathing being the only sign that she was ever leaning against the window, leaning away from him (story of his life), leaning away from the town (story of her life, though she gave up long ago when she said yes to Lockwood's proposal and therefore lost her dreams, and for this he may never forgive himself—but then again, there are a lot of things he can't ever forgive himself for, though he'll never say it).
"Okay," she responds quietly, and doesn't say anything else until they reach Liz's house.
As far as he can tell, the old woman refused to be put in a nursing home despite the lack of company. Diana's letters describe Liz as he expected: kind of hunched over, short dark blonde hair turned light gray, but ferocious and tenacious and brave. That last bit, he thinks, can only demonstrate the saying: like mother, like daughter.
Barbie rolls down the window and looks at him. "My mom first," she says clearly over the whipping breeze, though he'd hear her if she whispered it. She's making her voice strong, convincing herself to be strong, and he'll let her. "Then Bonnie and Diana. I want them to get some sleep. Mom won't care." She looks out the window, toward the bright gleaming white-yellow-blue-ish stars, the navy black night. It must be past midnight now.
He doesn't argue, simply parks outside of Liz's house—Blondie's old home—and gets out of the car, zipping to Barbie's side and opening the door for her. She isn't surprised by his chivalric act—somehow, he thinks that he's never surprised her with anything but his dislike of Twilight (which she admitted several years ago, before he left, was rather childish and untrue, so it doesn't even really count if she gave in).
Nodding to him in gratitude, she climbs out. They walk up the path and she knocks on the door.
It takes nearly twenty minutes, but the door opens, Liz behind it.
There are tears and long explanations and fuzzy things that Damon has never been fond of, really.
He just wants a bourbon, honestly. It feels like it's been years since he had one, though it's only been like a day when he thinks about it.
Once Liz and Barbie stop crying, he asks if they can get some damn sleep already, because he hasn't slept in days and he shouldn't have to deal with crying women these days. Liz just glares at him, but Princess only laughs and tells him to go upstairs—"Unless my old room's been taken?" she asks inquisitively, turning to glance at Liz.
Liz shakes her head. "Never touched it," she says, a tinge of hoarseness and lingering grief in her voice, and Damon feels kind of sorry for her in the back of his mind, behind wondering how Barbie's room has changed since he's last been in it.
He tucks that behind the other emotions he will never (does never mean always now to him, or something?) think about and things he will never say (not out loud, and never acknowledged to anybody else but him), and climbs up the stairs to Princess's old room. He remembers this, from nighttime pleasures and fierce, passionate kissing (and other things) and waking up to the sunlight streaming through her window.
There are a few things he doesn't remember being there, of course. A poster of Paris, the Eiffel Tower. Tickets to a New York Broadway show taped to her wall. A painting—Picasso's La Vie—on the wall, a new dresser in the corner, a jewelry box on a shelf, a book on the desk. Gone with the Wind. He shakes his head, wondering if she ever saw him reading that. He flips it open. The bookmark is left at his favorite part. Go figure.
A keychain, a pair of earrings, a CD, an unmade bed. Just like she left it.
A photo, on the bedside nightstand, next to the lamp. A picture.
Of him, which surprises him. Well, the two of them, really. She's wearing a pretty dress, kind of a metallic-gray-white-blue thing, with a white jacket and a gray scarf around her neck, covering her delicate white (still human, blood pulsing in it) throat. His shirt and jacket are black and buttoned, and his gaze is distant, as if he's looking at something far away. Her eyes are on only him. Their arms are interlocked. He picks it up, studying it.
"Our first Founder's Party," she says from behind him, and he almost jumps but doesn't, though she's gotten a lot quieter than he ever thought she would. (She's always been loud, but not now. Time changes even those physically frozen in it.) "We went upstairs and you found that stupid crystal. Stefan vervained me and therefore you. And you tried to kill me. All in all, quite eventful," she adds, rather cheerfully, too.
He pauses. "I did a lot of stupid things back then," he says, trying to apologize without saying the words. He's never been a sorry kind of man, at least not with words. He doesn't beg forgiveness. (Only from her, and even then, he can't used the proper words to apologize.) "A lot of things that I'm not proud of."
"Psshh, yeah, duh," she dismisses his words with a wave of her perfectly manicured, black-nail-polished hand, fingers flawless and long (and he aches to suck on the tips like he did so many years ago, and watch her arch her back before he bit the skin just underneath the nail and drank her nearly dry, though this time he swears he would be tender and more careful, and let her bite him in return). "Who would be proud of it? But at least you're sorry."
See? She always understands, even without his words. Sometimes a little too well.
"It was my fault anyway," she adds, mostly for his benefit. No longer thinking out loud. She's obviously come to this conclusion before. "I decided it would be a great idea to date you, to get back at Elena. After that first night, I was pretty much asking for it."
Okay. Maybe she doesn't understand completely.
"What are you talking about?" he scoffs. "You never did anything wrong. You only did what I made you do. It's not your fault that I was a bastard to you. I'm usually like that to everybody, you just happened to catch me during one of my bad da-…years."
She bites back a smile, rolling her bottom lip between her teeth. "You were kinda dumb back then." It's the most acceptance, the most "okay, you're right, it wasn't my fault" that he's going to get from her, and he takes it.
"Can't help it. But at least now I have hope."
"Why's that?" she breathes, and he hears the hesitance in her voice, clear as crystal. She isn't sure she wants to know. (She thinks he'll say, "Elena.")
He wants to say something smartass, something to make her slap him playfully on the arm and end the moment, something to stop these stupid, gushy, all-too-revealing words from leaving his mouth. "You're here now," he states simply, and curses himself.
She stops breathing for a minute, but it's okay, it's not like she needs to anyway. Then a small smile crosses her face, and she raises an eyebrow at him. "Wow. How long've you been totally into me?" she teases.
Damon half-shrugs with one shoulder. Play it cool, Salvatore. Tomorrow you can pretend this never happened. Tomorrow you can run away, like you always do, run back to Prague, let her be with her daughter and forget all about you all over again. "Eh. Thirty, thirty-two years, maybe? Maybe more. Probably more, actually, when I think about. There was a reason I hated wolf-boy, Princess."
Her mouth almost drops open, he can see her fighting the urge. "Okay," she says, taking a deep breath inside and closing her eyes. They open, still incredibly blue, beyond belief, so much so that it scares him. "Okay," she repeats a little shakily, then smiles up at him. "I think that I can work with that."
"What do you m—"
She cuts him off with a kiss, the first one that they've had in over thirty years. Oddly, it's in the same damn room as where they first had sex, and her mother is still downstairs, albeit older and less likely to point a shotgun at him if they're caught (can she even still lift that damn thing?), but he can't help noticing the similarities.
It's the same damn bed, now more creaky and dusty than he remembers, that they fall onto, still kissing like horny teenagers. They make out for a while, him on top of her, repeating the positions of their first memories together, and he thinks maybe in the morning he will steal Liz's cereal again and watch her gag at the soggy food while she eats her cinnamon toast. Maybe they will discuss the difference between Stephanie Meyer and Anne Rice, and the clear winner. Maybe they will go to the next Founder's Party together, eternally young, forever arguing, always touching: small brushes to the small of her back, her fingers combing his hair from his face, eyes meeting as his hand skitters it way up her thigh under the table and she giggles before telling him repeatedly in hushed whispers to "stop it, Damon!"
Maybe they will make new memories in this godforsaken town, where everybody who knows them is either dead or doesn't care what they are anymore.
Or maybe they could go back to Prague, or to somewhere else they've never been together. They could travel the freaking world together, take it by storm. God knows they're capable.
They do things together in that room, with her mother just downstairs, and he tries not to think those two dreaded words (making love) that girls are so damn crazy about. Yet somewhere, for some reason, they're the ones echoing in his head, and probably not hers (he's afraid to, but he hopes anyway, despite all of those contradictions, all those rumors that he should freak out at hte mention of those two words, that they are in her head as well).
She's lying halfway on top of him, on his left side, head resting on his chest directly where his heart should be (and he's crazy, he knows, but it almost feels like it's beating again, pulsing with excitement and desire and want and need, hammering for her), legs wrapped around his, fingers making indescribable designs into his chest. His shirt and jeans and shoes somehow got removed, though he doesn't remember it, and so did her dress and small heels.
A tangled lace of arms and legs, they do not try to separate.
It's nearly dawn, and they've spent hours lying there, and he hears Liz sleeping on the couch, breathing kind of heavily, as does Barbie.
It strikes him that all this time, he's never called her by her name. He's been afraid to. It's like a sudden truth, a reality: she is here, actually still alive-ish again, holding onto him and kissing his throat, the side of his neck, the place under his ear that makes him shudder that no one else has ever found on their own, yet she found it thirty-something years ago during their first night together, and she's never stopped using it since to make him purely just melt in her arms.
She is the only person that he's ever been sort of human…ish with since Elena. Human in the emotional way, not the helpless, weak way. Human in the way of intense, intimate hearts and souls bared, clashing together and yet somehow never letting go and not wanting to, either. In the way of stretching forward, reaching outward, letting yourself be hurt. In the way he's not all that fond of, except when he's with her.
He turns his face to her, and her eyes are closed delicately, but he knows that she's not sleeping. And it hits him that he doesn't feel like sleeping anymore, or drinking his damn steady friend, the bourbon. He feels like ravishing her again and telling her those three words he's only ever whispered to Katherine (under compulsion, though he refused to admit that it was compulsion for decades) and Elena (out of mixed-up emotions that he thought were love but really weren't) and a grave (out of grief and maybes and never-weres-but-could-be-nows).
He feels like whispering them in her ear and feeling her stiffen in his arms for a reaction, then completely melting and murmuring them back in that throaty, seductive voice she mastered when she was sixteen.
He feels. That's new. And that's enough.
Sunlight hits them through her dusty curtains, and he can see every single particle of dust floating in the room. It's surreal, kind of amazing, the sort of thing that he marveled at when he first turned: super sight, superhuman hearing, that kind of ability. Even though he hated himself when he turned in the beginning, he did enjoy those perks, and he still does.
(She makes him feel. He can't let go of that, not quite yet, it keeps lingering in his head, those four forbidden but wonderful words: she makes me feel.)
"I've been into you, too," she says without opening her eyes, stretching in his arms kind of lazily, like a cat after a nap in the sun.
He regards her with a casual smirk, and she must know him too well because she smirks back without even opening her eyes, reaffirming the idea in his head that she has far too much insight for her own good. "For how long?" he wonders casually, trying not to put as many sentiments as he feels into the words.
"How long do you think?" she asks back, her eyes flickering open into catlike slits. It's oddly somehow kind of sexy in the way only Vampire Barbie can be. "You were the first guy I was seriously with. I had boyfriends, sure; I had sex, obviously; but you were...different. And it wasn't just the compulsion. It was just…attraction. And people say that attraction and chemistry doesn't make love, it doesn't necessarily mean anything, but, hey, you've gotta start from somewhere, right?"
(He thinks she's just admitted that at one point she loved him, but she's already said that before, so he doesn't interrupt, instead just basking inside in the sensation of knowing, for sure...no take-backs left for her to give.)
"Besides," she says, looking up through her eyelashes at him, hair dark and black and beautiful and swirling on the pillow underneath her, and he thinks she looks like a mermaid, and a pretty (no, gorgeous, lovely, exquisite) one, too. "I was attracted to Tyler, too. I thought, maybe he could fill the void. And he did, for a long time. I loved him, I did. He was my husband. He was the father of my daughter—not biologically, of course, but, still, nevertheless, he was a good father. A great one, even."
She pauses and looks up at him, say her next words to him carefully, her voice quiet and soft (but he'd still be able to hear her across a crowded room, and not just because of his vampire hearing).
"But I didn't really love him the way I loved somebody else from my past."
She breaks it to him gently because no one's ever said something like that to him before. She's always known the right things to say, and how to say them—catching and berating him for pulling shit with her, calling him out on not telling her things he needed to say at the time, consoling him for losing Elena even though she clearly thought her friend belonged with Stefan, etc.
"What's that supposed to mean?" he croaks out, feeling oddly like he's been hit by a truck. One of those damn eight-wheeler things, the ones you can't get up immediately from even if you're a vampire. It's odd, because it only feels like the truck has hit the center of his chest, and maybe a little bit to the left. Cliché of all clichés, but that's him in love. Damon in love is not always a pretty sight to see, and even worse to experience, and he knows this almost as much as he knows the color of Vampire Barbie's blue, blue, goddamn blue eyes. Those eyes that make him crack and break and want to die and live at the same time. Those damn fucking eyes of hers, so mersmerizing and singular and absolutely just always simply hers (just like him, he's hers too, totally and completely, her little slave).
Twisting her lips into a crooked, casual (God-it's-gorgeous) smile, she sneaks her way back into his arms and curls up tight in them, and he's stricken by the fact that he, Damon Salvatore, is cuddling. And not minding it in the least. It's enough to stop him from continuing his questions, which is a good thing, because an inquisition is not the best way to get answers from Barbie-doll here. Princess talks when she wants to talk, which is usually often, so he won't have to wait long.
Closing her eyes again, she confirms his theory and simply murmurs deliciously into his ear, "It means you and I are going to get up when we feel like it, go find my daughter, explain what's happened, and spend all the time that we have left together, as a family, maybe, if you want."
He can't help but close his eyes, too (thinking, yes, that's what I want, yes, thank you for asking, yes, yes, yes), imagining all of it: him, her, and Diana, planning a lunch, meeting with Bonnie, going to Paris to see Stefan and Elena, adopting another child maybe when the time is right, helping Blondie recover her memories maybe, helping them both move on from wolf-boy's loss.
"It's kind of unreal," she says, practically reading his mind, as always, "but it's like I don't even miss Tyler much. I remember marrying him and being with him and being kind of happy, but it's like I didn't even know him that well. I helped him and he helped me, but we weren't that good for each other, you know? We were comfortable. But we weren't…we weren't happy."
"You wanted screaming and fighting and kissing in the rain," he mumbles sleepily, and he can see through his almost-closed eyes (he's content enough to sleep now, and it feels different but good) that she smiles.
"I knew you listened to Taylor Swift!" she whispers, like she's revealing a secret that she already always knew.
He half-shrugs drowsily, doesn't contradict her and her full-of-wonder tone. "Kept the girls interested, at the time. And I live for being interesting. Always have."
"I know you do." She goes quiet, and then keeps going, back to their original subject. "And I miss Tyler, but I feel at peace with losing him, because even though I loved him, that part of me is in the past now, and I belong with someone else."
He notices that she's careful not to say you, because maybe she thinks that he's scared of commitment.
Please. He's not some seventeen-year-old boy. He's not scared, no longer afraid of anything but her rejection. Fearing nothing except hitting the ground (because he's already fallen), fearless of everything but the knowledge that he's reached too far and given up too much, and that all he'll ever have left will be a bottle of bourbon and a few of her frilly drinks. He'd take a stake for her, but what he needs right now is her reassurance. God, it's like he's turning into fucking Stefan. (And it's like somehow, he doesn't even mind being turned into a freaking sap.)
"Not me?" he asks, his voice as close to gentle as Damon Salvatore will ever get.
She smiles, eyes closed. "It's always been you. Dumbass," she adds, deciding that she has to put that in there, to let him known again how she thinks of him. She sighs, and turns her face into his chest, taking a deep breath. "God, do you like shave your chest or something? It is fucking unreal, how smooth you are," she exclaims, her throaty and sleepy voice like a cat purring in his ears. Like relaxing music. Like Swan Lake.
He laughs, noting that she's moved on to a lighter topic and deciding to go with it. "Glad you like it."
"Never said I like it."
"Didn't deny it."
"Yeah, you're right, I didn't," she replies tiredly, and he's surprised by how easily she gives in.
Well, she did just come back from the dead, and if he can say so himself, he's rather good at exhausting people, even other vampires. Especially other vampires, actually. Her in particular. She's always been…different, in bed. Fun, but amazing. No-words amazing. Kind of startling, actually, but that's always been her. Startling, just like him. A great team, when he thinks about it.
"When should we get up to go see Diana?" he asks instead of continuing the argument like he would have done so long ago, running his fingers through her black hair.
She makes some kind of contented noise, doesn't answer, and falls asleep right there, with him stroking the curls at the ends of her hair. And eventually, he falls asleep too.
They'll figure it out when they wake up. They have all of eternity, after all.
They see Diana and figure things out, and there is more crying and hugging and long explanations that he still shouldn't have to deal with. This time, he actually does get to steal some bourbon, from Bonnie, whose husband actually is kind of nice. Not as cool as Alaric, of course (nobody could ever be as good of a drinking buddy, or a friend, as Alaric), but still okay to drink with and talk to while the girls were busy having a sob-fest.
Diana likes him on the spot, and he likes her, too. Even if she did pick up Lockwood's (lack of) sense of good humor, she's still fun. Sarcastic when she wants to be, and she looks a lot like Princess and him. Like she actually could be their child.
It is then that Book Five, the epilogue to this fucking series that he has come up with in his head, begins, and he decides that it will by far be the very best one, because he has Diana sitting across from him and Blondie in his arms, only one ring on her hand (wolf-boy's wedding ring for Barbie given to Diana so she'll have a piece of her father with her always), head on his chest, sitting in his lap, stroking her hand up his thigh and making his leg twitch and giggling about it, making him smile and laugh and do other things he thought he could never do again.
She jokes, in the middle of their conversation, that she'd like to go see her own grave, and that maybe that could be where they celebrate her next birthday, and Bonnie, her husband, and Diana obligingly laugh. But he doesn't. Not because it isn't funny—because Barbie is always funny, always has been—but because he realizes that he's never said her name to her, never called her by name, not once since she was revived and brought back from the dead-dead.
Now that she's undead but still here, he thinks that maybe he should start.
He pulls her back, his arms resting where they curl around her stomach, her back to his chest, and he whispers into her ear her name, and nothing else. No smartass remarks, no cold words, no take-backs, no getting scared and running away like he did once before (only then it was her that left, and him standing alone in his room with his best impression of a fish, dropping his jaw when she told him she'd once loved him), just her beautiful name. Eight letters. Exquisite.
He likes the sound of it.
(Maybe one day she will at last find peace and return to the dead-dead, though she's assured him that she won't until he's dead, which will be never if she has anything to say about it. So he really doesn't have to worry about losing her.)
He stops thinking of the future. So many maybes that he really doesn't give a fuck about, not right now, not when he has her in his arms. He's spent (wasted) enough time thinking about might-have-beens and should-bes. He's with her now, this absolutely incredible woman whose resurrection is a miracle, and he stops thinking about his debt to the witch and everything else in his life that doesn't consist of her, just her and only her.
He likes the sound of her name so much. He decides to say it again, just for her reaction, quietly enough just so only she can hear him in this room where they are the only two vampires.
"Caroline," he murmurs in her ear again, and she shivers, trembling with some emotion that starts with an 'l-o-v-e' and ends in a 'the-only-emotion-he's-felt-for-her-since-forever-because-she's-the-only-one-that-has-always-understood-and-accepts-him-for-what-he-is-and-loves-him-just-the-same-despite-all-of-it-and-besides-she's-perfect' that makes him shake too.
He feels her shaking, and he feels his hands trembling a little too, and she places her hands on top of his on her stomach, and he thinks that maybe (no maybe about it, they fucking will be) they could be happy.
Because even if you fall for someone you're wrong for, in the end, maybe you were soulmates all the time, always meant for each other, forever and always. Maybe you were just too stupid to realize it before.
And Damon has a habit of being too stupid to grasp life-changing things about his emotions. This should come as no surprise, that he never realized that, even though in some ways they're the wrongest couple that ever existed, in so many others, they're just perfect, and that makes up for it all: the bad past, their bad beginning and tragically sad ending, and their fucking perfect middle. It starts them over.
"Damon," she whispers back, lightening the moment though they can both still feel the seriousness of it all.
And he laughs.
(Book Five is going to be fucking incredible. And it is going to fucking last forever, damn it, because they are and always were meant to last forever.)
You're blaming this all on yourself
But the photograph that's on your shelf
Is of a younger, dumber version of myself…
Who says we're wrong for opening the wrong doors
Lock up, swallow the key, you'll never replace me
'Cause we've all fallen for someone we're wrong for…
'Cause back then I told you, if you fall I'll fall too.
—Andrew Belle, "Replace Me"
Okay, so, there you have it! My sequel. I hope it wasn't too fluffy or too bad for you. If it was, you can just stick to other VD writers, I suppose, because fluff is my drug!
To those of you who liked Tyler, I'm sorry. And if you like Elena...well, I recommend you never read my stories, okay? Just go ahead and set you up there, find yourself somebody who likes Elena and read their things, because I just...well, I don't like her. She's turning Damon into a lovey-dovey romantic doormat, and honestly, if she would just go ahead and pick Stefan then the triangle would be over, the heartbreak would be done, and I'd certainly be very happy.
Ahem. Sorry. I try not to, but I tend to go into anti-Elena rants on very short notice. :)
All right, then, so you guys know what to do, yes? You just click that little button below and tell me what you thought! Yes, yes, that one right there, below this message? Yeah, this one. Responses, requests, critiques, questions, comments, anything! But if it's a stupid question that was answered by the fic itself or by its predecessor, be forewarned that I'm not gonna answer it without heavy disapproval. Because honestly, if you people don't read it, what's the damn point?
Sorry. I go into stupid-question-rants too. *blushes*
And, now that you guys have read my excessively long A/N, I think I'm going to go start writing something else, because my muse is...well, flying all over the place, quite frankly.
Review, pretty pretty pretty please? Don't feel afraid to critique, but if you flame me, you're gonna make me cry. And I've already cried twice in the past week. That's what I get for watching The Phantom of the Opera, and then the ending of The Patriot. I am such a masochist. *sigh* Anyway, that was my pathetic attempt for plead for reviews, or at least for some sort of response.
Now, my lovelies, I have to go and babysit an evil cat (my friend is a semi-sadist, and somehow it's directed only towards me), so if I don't return, I'm sorry, and if I do, I will be covered in scratches anyway.
Anyone feel like crying at the thought of that? I do.
God, this thing is long. I'm ending it now. Farewell, my lovelies!