This little one-shot has been haunting me for a while. I'm fascinated by Damon's experience as a soldier, why he went to war, why he came back, what that meant for him and his father and Stefan. Mostly thought, I wanted to take a look at Damon at his most innocent (it's a relative thing with Damon, go with me), before he knew that vampires existed and he just wanted to be a good brother and catch that mysterious house guest of theirs. So here we have it. Forgive me any historical inaccuracies or linguistic anachronisms. Please enjoy.
The war was not as advertised.
Damon had been promised glory. It sure wasn't slavery or the Southern way of life or state's rights that had enticed him to step up and lay his life down for the Confederacy. No, he'd been promised excitement and danger and women who couldn't resist a boy in gray. And when he'd swaggered up to that registry book in the town square, signed his name with a flourish and become a soldier in the 42nd Virginia Infantry, he'd seen a promise in his father's eyes. If Damon could do this, that promise said, if he could serve his family and his town and his state with honor, maybe that would be good enough. Maybe after years of disappointment, after years of failure, if he could just be brave enough, strong enough, tough enough to march off and kill some blue coats for God and glory, maybe that would be enough.
So Damon had donned that gray suit, pulled the slouched cap over his curls and said goodbye to Stefan. "Don't kill them all, Damon," the boy said jealously. "Just hold them off until I'm old enough to come fight, too. Just imagine how many we could take down together!"
Damon just laughed. "No promises, brother, but I'll try to save you a Yankee or two." He clapped his brother on the shoulder, then thought better of it and pulled him into a rough hug. While he had no intention of dying out there, it was better not to leave with regrets.
Releasing his little brother, Damon turned to his father, standing stiff and straight as a ramrod. Father studied his uniform, pulled Damon's hat out of his eyes and smoothed his lapel. "Your mother would be proud, seeing you like this."
"I shall endeavor to bring honor to our family and to the Commonwealth," Damon said stiffly, hoping it was the right thing to say.
"If you work hard, don't let yourself get distracted by a pretty thing in a skirt, you could be an officer. Then you'd really be someone," Father said.
Damon smiled, thin and tight, shifting his rifle to the other arm. "I should go join my troop." He turned to go.
"Regiment, son. It's called a regiment," Father called. As Damon marched away, he heard Father's last muttered comment to Stefan. "Best make your peace now, boy; that's likely the last we'll see of your brother."
The glory, the excitement, the adventure, the women Damon had been promised? There was no glory in being an infantry grunt, no excitement in digging latrines, and no adventure in dragging their sorry hides all over the Virginia countryside. As for women? Damon went months without seeing anything prettier than the Fell boys who had marched off to war with him. But those weeks of boredom, of drilling and marching and marching until blood filled his boots and his skin turned brown as an Indian under the hot Virginia sun gave way to a week of pants-pissing terror. The Seven Days Battle, they called it, but Damon knew it for what it was: hell.
The days were bad enough, full of smoke and gunfire, of shoving cartridge after cartridge into his rifle and hoping he would be faster than the other poor bastards. Those boys in blue were even younger than he was, even more frightened than he was, but he killed them all the same. He prayed that every bullet had his comrade's name on it instead of his own. But the nights when fire licked the sky and the canons grew silent, those times were the worst. That's when the ghastly surgeons plied their trade and hacksaws ground through bone; that's when the dying on the battlefield realized no help was coming and they would die there, alone and crying only for a drop of water, a friendly face to ease their passing. Those nights, Damon clutched his rifle to his chest, pale Yankee faces with bullet holes between their wide eyes haunting his thoughts as he waited for dawn. Mostly, he waited for the killing to begin again, because the killing was easier than the dying.
The war droned on. Somehow, Damon always lived to see another sunset. Some days, they fought. Some days, they sat. Some days, they marched, making their way down the coast to Georgia, where the heat was stickier than peaches but the arms of the camp followers gave a respite from the blood and the mud and the ghosts. The letters gave comfort, too, the notes that found their way to him in fits and starts. The letters from Father were predictably bland, speaking of home, of who had died and who had lost his legs, of which slaves had run away and reminding him of his duty to serve his family. The letters from the girls back home were predictably dull, full of chatter about how they could no longer get ribbons for their hair or sugar for their tea, how they prayed for his safe return. But the letters from Stefan, written in his careful hand, those were the ones he read over and over in the light of the cook fires. They made him laugh, the stories about his studies and hunting and being thrown by his horse and dragged through the square with his ankle caught in the stirrup while Johnathan Gilbert chased behind, flapping his hat and impotently trying to grab the mare's bridle. Then there were the stories of their house guest.
"Her dark eyes laugh always, as if at some unspoken jest at her interlocutor's expense," the letter read. "Her lips curl with the promise of sweet secrets. Her manner is bold, her words direct. Sometimes she shocks Father, outrages his sensibilities, yet he lets her stay. I know not why; Father does not suffer outrage lightly. Whatever the cause of his behavior, I am glad she stays. Never have I met a creature so alive as this Miss Katherine Pierce." Holding the letter close, Damon could imagine the bells in her laughter, the smell of magnolias on her fair skin. Finally, little Stefan might become a man. Damon was glad for his brother.
One day, a new letter came. A letter with a ticket on a northbound train and a promise of a whole month of leave. As he rode the rails, crammed like cattle into a car with his brothers in arms, Damon wondered if they would know him back home. Would Father still think him too soft and silly to survive, a fop more interested in new cravats and new dances than doing his duty? Would he still see a boy worthy only of scorn or would he see a battle-hardened man who knew how to survive? Would Stefan still see his big brother, or would he see something harder and older, something changed by the blood of those pale and doughy Northern boys who had died simply because they were on the wrong side?
Certainly, Mystic Falls had changed little enough as he wended his way through town on his way to the Salvatore estate. There was the church, neat and trim, though now widows in black streamed in and out of its doors. There was the square, occupied now only by old wizened men poring over the lists of the dead. Finally, there was home, all gleaming columns and sprawling fields, all industrious slaves and gentility. But most of all, there was Stefan, grinning like an idiot as he ran up the drive to his brother. As they clapped each other on the back, Damon knew that nothing of substance had changed. As long as his brother was here, this would be home. And as long as Damon could find home, everything would be all right.
Stefan chattered in his ear, bubbling over with news and stories as they walked up the drive. Father stood on the porch, arms folded across his chest. "Son. Welcome home." He stared at Damon's shoulder, frown deepening. "But where is your chevron? Did they run out of stripes?"
Damon twisted his cap in his hands, forcing himself to meet Father's gaze. Again, his best was not enough. Surviving when so many had not, all the boys who had died at his hands defending the great honor of these Confederated States, none of it was enough. Of course it wasn't, because he hadn't marched back with a chevron on his shoulder and a saber on his hip. "I have not been promoted, Father. I remain a private first class."
"Damon's name was placed on the Roll of Honor twice for his courage and deportment in the field of battle," Stefan piped up. "You saw it in the papers as I did, Father."
"But not brave enough," Father said. "Never quite brave enough, are you?" His back was straight as he strode into the fields, never looking back.
"Don't listen to him. He's just cross he's too old to fight. But you must tell me everything! How many have you killed, brother? What is it like out there? Is it true what they say about the women who follow the camps—Hooker's Army?" As the questions pelted him and Stefan drew him into the house, Damon chanced to glance up and meet a pair of laughing eyes watching him from the window above.
The days passed, too swift and too sweet to last. The brothers rode out together in the misty mornings. They spoke of war and blood, of guilt and survival. They spoke of women and their ways, Stefan's questions ever more pointed, ever more fervent, to Damon's amusement. Miss Katherine was every bit as enchanting as his brother had claimed, full of fire and verve. She was entirely too much woman for his brother to handle. But the only way his brother would learn was by being burned.
Nights were spent in awkward conversation in the parlor until Father stumbled up to bed after his fifth snifter of brandy. Then the room came alive. They played at cards, the Salvatores and Miss Pierce, they jousted with their words under the watchful but indulgent gaze of the handmaiden. Damon played the piano, or they danced to music only they could hear. Most of all, they laughed. Damon saw his brother falling in love with the laughing woman, but he couldn't ignore the way her eyes fell upon him, or the heat that raced through his own veins when they danced.
Damon tried to leave Miss Katherine to his brother; tried to acquiesce. But his brother couldn't run with this spirited filly. So when she'd barged into their game, stolen their ball and disappeared with a chuckle so rich and so full it made Damon's body clench with desire, he had to chase her. He caught her that day, tugging the football from her grasp and teaching her to throw it, how to wrap her slim hand around the unwieldy ball and hurl it with all her fragile might. But when he tried to teach her the rules of the game, how points were scored and what was off-limits, she'd stamped her pretty little foot.
"I have no interest in rules, Mr. Salvatore. I care only for what pleases me. And just now? That includes you. But no more rules," she said with a toss of her curls.
The day came when Damon was to return to the depot, climb onto that southbound train and return to the front lines, back to this last stand of the Confederacy. He meant to go back. He donned the uniform, those dusty grays, jammed his hat on and tucked his gauntlets into his belt. He said his goodbyes, one stiff and formal, one with a bone-cracking hug, one with a brush of his lips across the back of a perfumed, lily-white hand. He set his feet on the road.
The train whistled in the distance, beckoning him to the mud and the blood and the last gasp of a moribund way of life, back to die for a cause he did not believe in, all in the hopes his father might mourn him with love. Ahead of him was certain death. Behind him, laughter caught on the breeze, her throaty chuckle, his brother's delighted mirth.
If he turned back now, he would never earn his father's love, never quench that disappointment in his eyes. If he turned back now, he might not be the man his brother dreamed he could be, might not be the big brother Stefan deserved. If he turned back now, he might never catch the woman who watched him with laughing eyes when she should be watching Stefan.
The Confederacy could fall without him. Damon turned and walked toward the laughter in the garden. He was simply having too much fun to return to battle.