With orange-red sunset sky as background, the Lion of Venice seemed to be bathing in flames. The flickers of setting sun, that seemed to be giving all its fiery glory now before it rolled over the watery horizon, shone brightly against the gold of its form. It was painful to look at it, but I did, nonetheless. Deep down, I wondered if I had grown wings as well. If I had been freed from the chains of Mystic Falls that weighed heavily on my heart for the last six months I had been away. I visited many places, but none of them brought me inner peace. Wherever I went, there were always some faces, conversations or memorable places that reminded me of that small, suffocating town in Virginia, the decades I had been living in a bloody haze before returning there, and the gaping interstice between those two versions of me. Whatever I tried to busy my mind with, it always steered back to the last talk I had with Elena before leaving her and my brother behind.
"You can't be serious… Damon… you can't…" her gaze dropped to the floor, as if the ground was gaping open under my feet, her eyes were darting sideways as she tried to understand how I could be saying it. Guilt gnawed at me like a rabid wolf, but I had to do it. I couldn't accept what she decided to offer, not like that, and not anymore.
"For those three years you were what I wanted – by any cost, no matter what. No morals, no restraints. And I was wrong." My voice was quiet, but she shook her head and peered back at me as if I had been yelling, her eyes wide in shock and pain I could barely take. My heart was shaking like a caught bird.
"But you have it now! I love you, I said I loved you! You don't love me anymore? What happened to you, Damon? Please… what happened?"
I slowly shook my head, unable to find my tongue right away. "I realized many things I would have loved to ignore, were I the same. But things changed. I love you, Elena." I took her by the shoulders, holding her eyes with mine. She was shaking. "And because I love you, I can't let you do this to yourself. Time will pass, you'll come to regret it. Not your love for me, perhaps, but letting Stefan slip away without giving your unresolved feelings for him another chance to find clarity." I fell silent for a moment, waiting out the sharp pain that spilled over my solar plexus. She opened her mouth to object, but I didn't let her put in a word. If she did, I would have lost it and stayed, and let it all roll downhill sooner or later. "You still love him – don't even try to convince me otherwise because I know you too well. And I know my brother even better. I can't let you do this to both of you and to me. I have enough on me to live with. The two of you need time to sort it all out, and so do I. I need my time alone – I never had a chance to get to know what I had become while I'd been here. We all need this. Please, Elena… let me go."
She cried. She cried a lot, and so hard I feared her heart would bust, but most painful was my brother's face when he saw me off. Elena couldn't make it outside, and I was grateful not to have to see the pain in her eyes she blamed me for. Stefan's face was dumbfounded, and his eyes were red. He didn't say anything – neither of us needed to. He heard our talk, and it was enough. He didn't want me to go away, but knew it was the only right way. Band-aids we tried to apply to our relationships during the past year were not going to help any longer.
"Don't disappear," he asked quietly when I pulled the Camaro door open. I nodded and drove off.
Orange flames of the setting sun spilled over the flickering waters as though it rolled into them, still burning brightly from beneath the surface. The Lion of Venice now looked solemn against the darkened violet sky, like the last standing soldier after a grand battle. There was laughter and rustling of wide dresses and cloaks of the masks gathering for another part of the magical ritual of the Venice's Carnevale. The scene assembled in the middle of Piazza San Marco was lit up and ready for the show. The tourists laughed, clicked their cameras, hugged and kissed. Some professed their undying love for each other in bad Italian. It seemed funny that people felt the need to do it in a place they deemed special, as though to carve it into some annals of time. I could not judge – none of my loves ended up immortal, after all.
The masks struck poses for dozens of flashes shooting every second, then went on strolling to be stopped a few feet further and pose again. Some tourists wore masks to get into the spirit of the event. I didn't. I felt I had no need for a mask until I knew where my true face was among the disguises I used to wear.
The edge of the café chair cut into my shoulder-blades uncomfortably, I shifted turning towards the scene and Saint Marc's Basilica. The backs of the tourists concealed the scene from my view, and I only caught pieces of the show in Italian, but the golden wings of the angels decorating the church still blazed in the fading fire of the sun. Another half-an-hour, and it will be dark. Humans will light the fires of their own to compensate for the day that died out to be reborn after the masked mystery played out. I always liked it better in the deceiving flares of the night's lighting.
The sounds of the show and pieces of unfinished conversations in different languages filled the air around me, somehow making me feel at home. Venice was the only place I never felt lonely in the crowd, as bizarre as it might seem. When the velvet dark blue claimed the sky and first stars twinkled there, I got up and relocated – leaning a shoulder against one of the columns of the Doge's Palace, I observed the remaining part of the masquerade show on the assembled scene, then more pictures taken. White blinding flashes exploded from every direction, accompanied by laughter and joy.
The spirit of celebration soothed me. I had a faint awareness that I had something of my own to celebrate as well. I didn't cave – I was still as far from the swamp of Mystic Falls as possible despite every other short conversation I had with Stefan on the phone since my day of departure where he was trying to lure me back. He and Elena were doing better, from what he told me. From what I sensed, Elena gave up on believing I made a mistake and was going to return shortly with apologies about how much of a fool I had been, and finally started to give in to her heart matters that needed resolving. Stefan and Elena were still travelling through a deep and dark forest of their tangled relationship, but this time holding hands without me in the middle. She had started her college with Caroline and Bonnie, and Stefan went there every weekend to socialize. They seemed happier, calmer, stable. As for my own pain, it dulled, and I learned to just let it be. It stabilized, I guessed.
Masks flashed back and forth like visions while I stood there in the shadows, surveying the Square. Seemed like the darker it got the more and more faces showed up. The dresses and costumes changed with the day morphing into the night – now they glistened like starry skies. After a while, I noticed a female figure among the diversity of masks in the motley crowd. The skirt of her dress hid under the soft folds of a velvet coat with a hood concealing the upper half of her face undoubtedly covered with a mask. Her lips and chin, though, were open, and I felt a quiver of unknown origin travel through every nerve in my spine as I could not drag my eyes away from her. She just stood there like a frozen image from the past in the animated sea of gleeful faces and colorful masks. And suddenly nothing else existed. Like a tunnel vision, I only saw her in the blur the rest of the world turned into. So she found me, I thought as my heart picked up. Good thing she couldn't hear it now. The part of me didn't let me believe it was truly her before she gave an imperceptible nod and slid into the crowd, moving like her feet never touched the ground. Only the frantic thrashing of her human heart gave away her anxiety that disguise hid so well.
I took my time following her along the dark streets of Venice where the times seemed to lose their solid frames, intertwine and coat the stony walls like mist caressing the pavement. It was hard to tread after her, like swimming through thick syrup – as hard as I knew it would be when I left her every call and message unanswered. Although, I was guilty of coming nonetheless. Was it too stupid of me to hope she would never find me here in her human state? She was Katherine, after all.
I caught up with her on a small arch of a bridge that by luck was empty. The tourists stuck to the squares and main streets to be a part of the carnival. When she faced me, her glistening lips wore a smile. The shadow under her hood hid her eyes from me, but I was sure they were dancing with triumphant content. I didn't like it – it was the proof of my weakness. Why did I follow? Why not just let her steal away into the misty streets and disappear from my life?
"You didn't return my calls, how rude." Her voice was purring.
"I've been having too good a time to."
She gave a soft laugh. "I could tell by that long face you wore until you saw me. Damon, Damon… Tell me, could you ever miss me in the crowd?" She rocked on her heels a little, flirtingly like she used to back in eighteen-sixty-four. I thought I couldn't, but did not tell.
"What was the emergency?"
She cocked her head, biting her lower lip. "I missed you."
"That's getting old." I smiled a cold smile, for a moment believing in my act. "Not as many boy-toys now to keep you busy?"
"Ouch," she drawled, not really affected from the sound of it. "Aren't you happy to see I'm still alive? It never comes easy even as a vampire." I emitted a hem, placing a hand on the handhold of the bridge, averting my eyes to the flickers on the water. The distant sounds of the Carnevale spread over the canals. Her warm hand clad in a long, black-silk glove brushed against my cheek and turned my face back to her. Her hood fell back and I saw her eyes now – they sparkled from the almond slits of the mask. She stepped closer, her heart racing. I felt her trembling. The unusual vulnerability in her scared me. I had known her to be human for half a year now, but had never let my mind wrap around the fact.
"I have no one in the whole world, Damon. Never had. It was just you and your brother I hoped to still care at least a little. And now I'm human. It's like dying before you're dead. I…" Her hand fell off the side of my face to my chest. "I'm scared. I've never been so scared since I turned." A tear rolled down to her chin from the rim of her mask. I clenched my jaw, hating to admit to the ring of compassion tightening around my heart. I was mad at myself for it, but what we had between us was never under my control. On that bridge with her standing before me, I realized I never would be able to control it. And, no matter what, I wouldn't want to learn of her demise. My teeth gnashed together, I regarded her sharply, inwardly pained and angry with both of us for it.
"Want me to turn you? I don't mind. There was no need for tears or reasoning."
She chortled with a wry, bitter sneer. "If that were so simple."
I opened my mouth to ask what that was supposed to mean when suddenly the sky exploded in hundreds of colorful lights, startling both of us. The fireworks were majestic, falling like a Technicolor rain and flaring against the watery surface of the canal. It mesmerized me, and I forgot about Katherine for a moment. A twinge in my forearm brought me back to earth, and my eyes down to see Katherine's hand fisting a syringe stabbed into my flesh above the wrist. I jerked my arm out of her grip and off the bridge railing, and staggered back, suddenly getting weak and numb.
"What… the…" I tried to grab the railing again, but my hand felt like cotton. It slipped off and I went down, knocking the back of my head against the white marble of the bridge and seeing dark red stars before the black figure of Katherine lowered beside me. Her gloved hand stroke my cheek – with horror cooling my insides, I realized I barely felt it. My ears were blocked as though I was in a taking-off plane. But I heard her voice from another world that was reeling quickly away from me as the rainbow stars exploded and fell over us.
"You still came to me, Damon. You still came…"
I woke up with the worst hangover I could imagine – my head weighed a ton, my body ached and whined, my muscles refused to cooperate. I was in a hotel room, as I reckoned. It was luxurious, large bed with red velvet canopy over me, and I felt I could lie there for another month. My eyelids were still sleep-heavy, but I could not let myself rest. Memories from the night before were tangled and somehow foreign. I might as well have seen it in a movie. I shifted and could not help a groan – damn, I felt so weak! So tired.
"Morning, Damon." Katherine sat on the side of my bed dressed in a red velvet bathrobe, her hair curled, her make-up in place. If not for that sweet hint of a scent that belonged to human nature, I would have thought I had been misinformed. Wrath spiked in me, I jerked to sit up and grab her by that hair, but my muscles only contracted painfully and I fell back on the pillows with a feral growl.
"What did you do to me, bitch?! Undo before I end your misery!"
She laughed and gave me a cordial look. "Does that look as a misery to you? You always end up underestimating me. Did you think I'd spent over five hundred years running on empty? Some coin here, an investment there, a house here and there, bank accounts, property… I'm quite a prize to be with. Even now. And especially now all of it comes in handy."
I growled again, angrier than before, and glared at her. "What. Did. You. Do?"
"Patience is virtue in all senses of the word, Damon. Like I said, I missed you. Something was missing from this new picture of my life." She made a round gesture with her arm and smiled. Something was amiss in that smile – it reminded the painted smiles of the masks I watched the day before.
"Excuse me for not feeling as happy about it. Now, undo this crap and let me go."
Her face turned more serious as she tipped her head to the side, scrutinizing me like a newly discovered bug, then leaned in and buried her face in the crook of my neck. I made to recoil, but couldn't. Her blunt teeth nipped the side of my neck, then tucked in. I hissed in pain, wriggling beneath her, the scent of blood percolated my nostrils. Astonishment sent my mind reeling. What the hell was that?
"Get off me, you sick bitch."
Slowly like a lazy cat, she slipped off, licking her crimson lips clean, picking the drops from the corners of her mouth with her fingers and suckling them. A complacent smile claimed her features as she hovered over me, her eyes locked with mine. She placed her palm on my chest and said, "Tell me you don't want to ever part with me, Damon." Something strange was happening in my head at the sound of her voice. It seeped through my skull and soaked my brains, drawing, pulling.
My mouth opened, my tongue moved, and words came out, "I'll never want to leave you, Katherine." I gasped, gaping at her satisfied face as she left a kiss on the corner of my mouth and sat back.
"Perfect."
My heart was fluttering in my chest, just like every fiber in my body oozed awe and stupefaction. What was it, compulsion? How the hell, she was HUMAN! Even now I smelled the human in her. How could it be? She watched me closely, and snickered.
"Relax, Damon. You can trust me, I won't screw you over like that blonde original slut would. And no, it's not compulsion… more like a connection. A special one. Took a lot of efforts, too, from me and a good friend of mine. Yes, it's very useful to have a few grand witches who owe you."
She fell silent as though understanding I needed a moment to process this. A witch. That explained it, as horribly wrong as it all felt. I narrowed my eyes at Katherine.
"Still, you're no longer a vampire. How come that witch of yours didn't turn you down with whatever unnatural crap you came up with?"
Katherine rolled her eyes and gave me a look people use for slow ones. "I'm still a doppelganger, remember? My blood is gold and liquid stars from the sky to witches. It's the better currency I ever had as a vampire. Besides, it's not as unnatural as you think." She propped a hand against the bed and looked at me slyly. "You still love me. It only works because you still do."
"No," I breathed, terrified by hearing her say it and my mind finding no objections to throw at me. No, I couldn't. I loved Ele—
Suddenly, I knew it was different. So different all along! I did love Elena, the kindness of her heart, the compassion she never lost, the capacity of her soul to love. I couldn't help but love all that, but Katherine… It was that heart-squelching, transfixing feeling that was a searing balm to my heart making it bleed but still beat no matter what. It was a part of me I could never rip out; no matter how many more people I came to love – she was always there to stay. That love was the intoxication I never managed to shake off, the feeling I couldn't help but compare every other to. A ragged groan rattled in the base of my throat, I threw my head back against the pillows, squeezing my eyes shut. My temples throbbed. I was afraid to look back at her and see her smile. That knowing smile.
"Of course, it was more complicated than just that," she continued in a casual tone. "I was the one who turned you, so it kinda works like a sirebond would."
Sirebond… now that was a sucker punch. I emitted another groan. "Stop. Just… stop."
She took my chin and forced me to look at her, her face serious and somewhat repentant. If it wasn't another of my delusions. It all seemed like one big, bizarre fantasy I yearned to wake up from. "Listen to me, Damon—"
"No!" I snapped and slapped her hand away, finally reaching for the ire in me. "No, you listen, I want to go away. Screw you and your tricks. I want to be no part of it."
She scowled, also annoyed, and took my face in her hands again, her eyes blazing at mine. "Listen to me." Her voice rang through my brain again, vibrating. I winced and slumped on the pillows, feeling miserable. She released me and drew in a calming breath before continuing. "You would never grasp even a tenth part of what it's like to be me, Damon. What it's like to run, hide, lie, change and keep my head above the water in this mess I call my life – and I want to live. I LOVE TO LIVE. I never got to, and it's the only thing I always wanted and never got. You think you suffered for more than a century while waiting to save me – well, guess what, I was never saved. I never lived, Damon. The closest to a life I ever got was that year I spent in Veritas with you and Stefan. The only. Time. A year. I died the same night you did – when I had to leave you two behind without knowing if I'd ever see you again. Just a year – out of five hundred. And it kept me going ever since." She averted her eyes, her hair concealed her face from me as she angrily wiped a stray tear off her cheek before looking back to me.
My face was a mask of stone, but on the inside, my defenses were failing. I wanted to blame that magical bond of hers, but that excuse was failing as well.
"And now – thanks to your former girlfriend – I'm human. And guess how it sucks in my case. Klaus is still out there – and if he knows that I – ME who fought his almighty will – am a walking magic wand again, I'm worse than I would have been if he just killed me. I need help, Damon. In spite of how screwed I am, I don't want to die."
We were silent for a while, regarding each other: she searched me, I tried to think it all over the best I could at the moment, at this crappiest of moments, hung-over and conflicted as a heating nuclear reaction. Where is the peace of mind I still had yesterday?
"Fine," I folded my arms. "You have my blood in your system now. Let me snap your neck and be done with that drama. You live, I leave, everybody's back to normal."
She gave the same bitter laugh I recollected from the night before on the bridge. "You think I didn't try, Damon?" her voice raising. "I was scared as hell to die and never wake up again – after all, no one was ever cured before – but I still did it. I tried every vampire I knew or could find. Nothing. Zilch. Nada. I died, I woke up – bang! – human. I wake up HUMAN, Damon. Every damn time, after every possible way to die I executed. Hell, in those few months I've died more times than in those five hundred years all together. I can describe every kind of death in scrupulous details, but I can't turn anymore."
I gaped at her, astonished. It made sense, I supposed. The cure, one and only, would do something like that to you. But it still was one amazing turn of events, and not in a good way. A small misplaced smirk blinked on my lips.
"At least you woke up… every time. You were lucky that cure didn't limit those deaths to some trial version of three or five max."
She grimaced. "Not funny. Anyway, I started visiting the witches I knew, best of the best. What they came up with is: I'll be needing Klaus's blood – I belong to his line – and Silas's – because his blood was in the cure. And, as you know, Klaus won't be happy to oblige, so…" She shrugged voila. I didn't get it.
"I'm not his best buddy, either. Tough luck."
"But Stefan is. Or used to be – which for vampires is as good as yesterday."
A hot bolt shot through me as I tensed and held out a finger in ireful warning. "No. You don't mean that. You can't."
"Why not? He won't kill your brother."
"Use your Elijah buddy. Don't you even dare to think of Ste—"
"I can't use Elijah," she said in a raised voice, glaring back. "I need Stefan's help on this one, and no, I'm not stupid. So, I needed a leverage." She wiggled her brows expressively. My breath hitched as the flaming wave of hurt and betrayal encompassed my sternum, making it hard to even look at her. "No, no-no-no," she straddled me hastily and took my face in her hands. I was shaking with disgust for both my weakness and her web of lies I was bound to get stuck in until my dying day. "No, Damon. It's not that. You made me say it. Were it all hopeless, I'd still try to be with you." I wanted to say it was a lie, but no sound came out through the blockage in my throat. "I didn't come for you for a reason. Had you not come, I'd leave it be and rested in my misery, as you called it. But you came. You still came."
"Did it ever occur to you I only came for the carnival?"
She smiled and stroked my cheeks. "You were Tuscany-bound when I sent you the first message. You changed the tickets and came here." Damn, I thought weakly and felt sickness rolling up and down in me.
"This is all very touching, really. I almost cried a couple of times." Katherine and I turned to the new voice and saw Rebekah leaning against the doorpost, her arms folded, a deceivingly sweet smile on her lips.
Indignation blasted on Katherine's face. "I told you to wait for me."
"Why would I listen to a human brunette slut," Rebekah said, strolling in, and plopped on the foot side of my bed with nonchalance of a girl on vacation. Katherine was shaking with anger, I could sense it with all my cells. As for me, I went beyond anger. I yearned to rip their spines out and tie them in a bow if only I could. "Ugh, relax, tiger," Rebekah said, eyeing me like I were their balky pet. "Unless you want me to rip something important off before you serve me."
"What kind of a fucked-up scenario is this?" I asked, grinding my teeth. Katherine rolled her eyes and stared down at her hands intertwining on her lap. Rebekah hemmed and sprawled across the bed next to my legs.
"The rather simple kind," she said, stretching. "You know what the slut wants, and I want Klaus chained in a locked casket for Christmas."
I sneered evilly. "More strife in the royal family? Tell me more. Good old Klaus took down your puny Donovan boyfriend?" In a flash, she was next to me, squeezing my throat to the size of a drinking straw, still smiling like a lady on a tea party.
"Don't make me regret keeping your body in one piece, Salvatore." I grunted, futilely gripping her wrist. "Good boy." I sucked in a ragged breath once she released me, while she made herself more comfortable on her stomach, deliberately pressing an elbow into my side, knowing I couldn't shift away. "Matt has nothing to do with it. But Klaus needs to learn his lesson. He…" Rebekah's beautiful face lost a tad of its confidence, and now there was cold rage shining through her eyes. "He daggered Elijah. He would've done the same to me, had I stuck around for it. I want my freedom, Damon, whatever the cost. So, be a good boy that you are and don't get on my nerves unless you want your pretty face rearranged."
I gave a defiant smirk. "You too gonna compel me now?"
"I could," she said, smiling. "Sometime this afternoon to wash my feet. Once your vervain doping runs out. Have a cute reunion, you two." She slid off the bed and headed to the door. Before stepping out, she turned. "Oh, and I don't suggest you run to pick a ring for your slutty lover girl here. She suggested you as a leverage for Stefan's cooperation. I thought it was rather smart." She smiled her taunting approval, and left us alone. Katherine looked at me with fright and shook her head at the searing disdain etched into my scowl.
"No," she said, pleading, and straddled me, holding my face in her hands to stop me from trying to turn away and push her off. "No-no-no-no. She doesn't know what she's talking about, Damon." Her voice fell to the faintest of whispers. "She wants to kill me for every wrong breath I take. Please, Damon. I wasn't lying to you."
"Shut up, Katherine."
"No, listen to me. I have many faults on me, but least of all I wanted you hurt." She leaned in closer. "I have vervain. You'll have to act like I did with Klaus if she dares compel you, but it's better to have your will intact." Sounded wonderful now that SHE had a way to compel me. I felt conflicted again, balancing on a thin, sharp blade between giving her the benefit of the doubt and a seething urge to kill her for this trap. She shook her head a fervid no again as if on cue, and locked her eyes with mine, "You need to sleep now." I wanted to fight it and tensed at first, but her voice pulled at my mind again, filling my eyelids and muscles with heaviness until I succumbed and relaxed.
"I know you don't trust me," Katherine said from a distance as I drifted away. "But this time is different. I love you, Damon. You'll know."