A/N: YO! Here is the first chapter in my one-shot series for Vampire Diaries. I got the idea after reading LycoX's possibilities and Wolfish Possibilities, so it is going to be somewhat like that.
Please read and review! Also, I take ideas on what my next one should be (long as it isn't anything after season 5, cause season 6 and 7 just don't do it for me)
Chapter idea: Damon goes to Jeremy and apologizes for snapping his neck and ends up having a heart to heart with him.
Jeremy opened the door, curious as to who would be on the other side when he opened it. But, when he saw who it was he scowled and attempted to close it only for a hand to block the door from closing on him.
"What is it? Come to snap my neck again, dick?" Jeremy snapped with a growl.
"Nope," Damon said, "I'm here to do something that I have hardly ever done in the past."
"What's that? Kill someone, pretty sure that you've done that before," Jeremy taunted.
Damon scowled, "No, I wanted to apologize for snapping your neck and trying to kill you."
Jeremy, stunned at this sudden apology, backed away from the door and accidently let Damon in the house.
"Look, kid," Damon said, in a tone that was gentler than his usual gruff tone that he used for dealing with everyone but Elena. "I'm not going to apologize for being an absolute dick, but the one thing that I shouldn't have done is snap your neck, you didn't deserve it-you weren't the one who pissed me off."
"Then why'd you do it?" Jeremy asked, emboldened enough by the apology to not be as scared in Damon's presence.
Damon sighed and moved a hand through his hair, thinking through what he had to say. "I was trying to turn it off that night. I didn't want to care about anything or anyone."
"What does that have to do with killing me?" Jeremy asked, honestly curious as to the answer, not having heard about this.
"In order to turn your emotions off as a vampire, you need to feel an extraordinary amount of pain, regret, sorrow, and grief. Killing someone who didn't deserve it who happened to be Elena's brother, would have done it as I would feel all that." Damon said honestly.
"But, then why'd you say it was easier with it turned off when I asked you after Anna's death?" Jeremy asked, wanting to know why he'd have said such a lie when he had seemed to be so honest when he answered.
"Because it wasn't a lie." Damon continued before Jeremy could override the explanation with a question again, "It is easier to go on with it turned off, and sometimes you need to turn it off. This is the truth. I never lied to you that night about anything that we talked about."
"If the price to turn it off is so high, why would you go through with it at all?" Jeremy questioned further.
"For one thing, sometimes you pay the price without meaning to, like Anna's death for you was the last straw, and if you had come back as a vampire everything that you had felt would have been amplified, meaning you would have felt enough to flip the switch." Damon explained plainly, not bothering to sugar coat anything.
"You still haven't answered why you would flip the switch, if you know the price and everything?" Jeremy asked, wanting more insight into Damon that he would probably never have another chance to get.
"Because sometimes, in order to go on with your life, you need to. Sometimes, something so bad happens, that there is no other alternative but to flip the switch in order to move on and deal with the emotions later." Damon explained.
"What could have happened that would make it so that you would have so much knowledge over how to flip the switch, because that sounds like you've done it more than once?" Jeremy asked, continually prying for more information.
"Fine, you want an example, I'll give you an example. In the 1950s, I was captured by an organization known as Augustine and tortured for five years straight, only one other vampire there with me that I became friends with. I finally escaped later, but in order to do so, I had to leave my friend to die. I couldn't do that with my emotions on, so, in order to survive, I had to focus on all of my grief, rage, sorrow, guilt, regret, and every other bad emotion I had until it became so much that I had to shut it off." Damon said, reliving that moment in his head not for the first time.
Jeremy flinched back at the explanation. "When did you flip it back on after that?" He asked, wanting to know how long it took him to finally start being able to process it.
"Do you want the nice answer or the truth?" Damon asked, not being anything but blunt. He wasn't going to sugar coat any of this conversation from the kid.
"The truth," Jeremy said, suppressing the part of him that had him wanting the sugar coated version.
"The truth is; I didn't have anything worth turning it on. I felt that Stefan deserved more misery than ever, so he was out, my best friend had died, the girl I had turned to be with forever I had thought was dead, and I had nobody else to turn to, there was no point to turn it on only to get more miserable. Plus, turning it on makes it sound like a switch, it's not." Damon bluntly explained before continuing, interrupting the question that was sure to come. "Flipping the switch is shutting out all your emotions because you don't want to feel anything anymore. After 50 years of having it flipped, it doesn't come rushing in as you might expect, but it instead comes in gradually, as it can be handled and processed. It was only during Founders' Day that I realized that I had actually started flipping it back on when I had gone to thank Elena, and turns out, it was only the bitch instead, shocker," Damon said bitterly.
Jeremy had picked up on something after that, something that Damon wasn't saying. "You hate having the switch turned off," He realized. And, when Damon didn't say anything against it, Jeremy bulldozed on, "So, why would you flip the switch back off if you hated your existence like that?"
Damon, still serious because of the conversation that they were having, decided to continue his policy of honesty in this discussion and answer seriously. "The woman I had loved but who didn't love me enough to actually tell me that she was alive decided that she wanted a quick lay again, I being the idiot I am, decided to not take her up until she answered a question I wanted-needed the answer to." Jeremy had heard enough about Katherine and her history to know what Damon had asked as well as a guess as to Katherine's answer. "'It was always Stefan,' that was her answer. Then, I come to Elena, the only good thing to happen to me in 50 years, the girl who was convincing me that humanity is worth having, and she says the exact same thing as the Bitch."
Jeremy had nothing to say to that. After all, what could you say to something like that.
Before he could say anything, Damon had left and his sister had come in the door.
"Was that Damon?" She asked before he could say anything, "What did he do? Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, Elena," Jeremy said, shrugging her questions off, still a bit in shock at the conversation that he had just had with Damon.
"Are you sure? You look strange?" Elena pressed.
"I'm fine. Damon didn't do anything to me," He answered.
"Then why do you look so shocked?" Elena asked, wanting to know what her boyfriend's brother had done to Jeremy.
"Because he apologized," Jeremy finally answered.
At that, Elena stopped asking questions because her mouth had dropped open in surprise and Jeremy walked back up to his room.
Done! Hope you all enjoyed it. This is just how I imagined a conversation between Jeremy and Damon going where Damon apologizes for his actions knowing what we know about him now.
Please tell me what you think! Did I get the characters right, because both of them are actually a bit hard to write? Let me know what you think!
