A/N: warning for potty-mouth language in places.

Chapter one: Déjà vu all over again

Damon snapped his eyes open brutally awake in an instant. He had a moment to catalogue the deluge of different sensations assaulting his brain, hard ground underneath him, the tickle of grass stems against the back of his neck, cool fresh air and the taste of morning dew on his lips and then there was a wet, whiskered muzzle in his face, a blast of hot breath across skin and an equine snort.

"What the fuck?"

Damon launched himself into a sitting position, almost distractedly shoving the horse out of his face as he blinked bleary eyes and took in his surroundings. He was in a field, or a pasture, or some kind of big open grassy space. There was a copse of trees in the distance and the blackened remnants of a small campfire, all grey ash and scorched stone, a few feet from his position. The sky was heavy and overcast, dully glowing with pearlescent cloud. The big chestnut bay that had woken Damon stood beside him, black tail twitching as it bent its huge head and started chewing on his hair. Jerking his head away from the horses thick, rubbery lips Damon turned around and stared.

"Milo?"

The horse tossed his head, whickered in contempt and wandered off towards a patch of wild flowers but Damon had seen enough. This horse was a dead ringer for his old horse Milo. The horse he'd broken in himself as a foal and taken with him when he went to war. It was then that Damon noticed what he was wearing. The grey, threadbare, messily darned uniform of a confederate soldier, his fabric cap crumpled on the grass behind him obviously pressed into service as a makeshift pillow. Just the feel of the rough, abrasive wool of his old uniform was enough to send a shiver down his spine. He plucked at the sleeves, fumbled to undo the brass buttons and poked at his string vest covered flesh underneath.

What the hell was going on?

The last thing he remembered was waiting to die in the basement of the boarding house, his body aching with a raging fever and his thoughts skidding together in a thunderous cacophony of pain and a distant sort of regret. Was this a delusion then? Had the were-bite dementia dissolved his mind to a nostalgic sludge, forcing him to relive abstract moments of his long inglorious life before he finally rotted away to nothing? If it was then he was seriously disappointed. There were way more interesting parts of his life he could be reliving than memories of a god damned horse.

Rising unsteadily to his feet, and kicking out the kinks in his muscles, Damon figured he might as well make the most of this fairly benign hallucination while it lasted. He bent down and picked up the slightly blood stained knapsack lying in the grass next to his discarded blanket and peered inside. A wave of nostalgia poured out as he discovered a twine bound stack of battered letters from Stefan that he almost remembered receiving with desperate joy during his time on the frontlines in Georgia. There was also some hardtack and basic rations, and a canteen, sadly only containing water, beside a mealy apple at the bottle of the knapsack under a spare shirt and undergarments.

It was an exercise in delving the far reaches of his memory trying to saddle up Milo after, what was it now, maybe seventy years without riding a horse? But he managed in the end and Milo, contentedly munching on the apple, seemed inclined to be patient. Once he was mounted on the horse however he actually found himself smiling. He used to love to ride back in the day and, hallucination or not, there was something incredibly peaceful in the sensation as Milo started off at a lazy pace in a basically westward direction. Damon had no idea where he was going after all, and as this was all just a figment of his dying mind's imagination anyhow he figured any point of the compass was as good as any other.

A few miles down the wide dirt road he came across just beyond the grassy meadow Damon began to suspect he knew where he was after all. He was on the long road back to old Fell's Church. Which was just peachy-keen. Obviously his tendency for masochism extended to his subconscious as well, because dying demented clearly wasn't enough. Oh no. Now he had to start having vivid flashbacks to god damned 1864 as well. And this was the year 1864, of that Damon had no doubt. There was no other year it could possibly be; his prior human existence had long since distilled into a sliding blur in his mind after all. 1864 was where it all ended and began. There was no other time and place his mind would regress to right now, when he was likely dying for good, than 1864's Fell's Church.

All the same riding into the centre of the old town was surreal. The town's central square was at least familiar, as was the clock tower, but as he looked left and right at wooden awnings swinging in the light breeze above the apothecary and the Fell's General Store (which in his reality happened to be a swanky Apple boutique) and caught the dung-heap reek of horse crap lying in the road instead of the much more familiar sting of car exhaust fumes hanging on the air, Damon felt a bubble of hysterical laughter rise and lodge in his throat. This was worse than Mystic Fall's Founder's Day pageantry. The dress and trappings of his youth were completely alien to him now.

He pressed his heels into Milo's flank, nudging him into a faster trot just so he could get through town that much faster and kept his eyes dead ahead, studiously ignoring the few petticoated and parasol bearing ladies walking the boardwalks from one store front to another who looked up at his passing. He had no idea how involved this hallucination was going to get –it seemed pretty damned vivid already – but he didn't think he could handle talking to anyone just now. Hell he wasn't sure he even remembered how to talk to people in 1864. He'd absorbed way too many pop-culture references from the twentieth century in the interim.

Milo led him along the (not so old) Fell's Road, past the still standing church, along a sun-dappled wooded path to a place he had tried his level best to banish completely from his memory.

Home.

"Whoa boy," He pulled Milo to a halt as they broke from the trees at the edge of the Salvatore estate and Damon slipped off the horse's back.

His father's house stood, tall and proud and glowing in sunshine beyond the pastures, a distant memory no longer all that distant, and Damon felt his stomach cramp painfully with what he assumed was something akin to long buried grief. He wondered how he could be assaulted by a wave of buried memory within what was basically one long, delirium fuelled trip down memory lane in the first place. His feet rooted themselves to the ground and he jerked Milo back by the reins when the horse, recognising home, tried to move forward.

"I don't want to be here Toto," he murmured when the horse shook his head irritably clearly wondering what the freaking hold up was. The horse pulled forward again and this time Damon let himself be towed along. He kept a light hold on Milo's reins as he walked simply to help ground him as he approached the stables, every detail perfect beyond anything he consciously remembered. He could almost believe this was real except obviously that would be completely insane.

"Master Damon?"

A man in rough homespun looked up from mucking out the stables when Damon entered with Milo in tow. His weathered face was creased like old, stretched leather and his mutton-chops were a pure, prickly white. He pulled the flat cap from his head and used it to swipe sweat from his brow as he set aside the pitchfork and moved forward to greet Damon.

"You have got to be kidding me," Damon blinked and took a small step back without thinking. Like Dorothy in her red slippers Damon found himself chanting his own desperate mantra, except 'there's no place like home' became 'I want out of this fucked up nightmare now.'

"Master Salvatore didn't say you were coming home, sir." The old man told him smiling warmly with missing teeth. "This is a surprise." He swept rheumy eyes over Damon and Milo, assessing them both. The reek of manure and sweat rising from the man like heat haze off asphalt was almost overpowering. "You look well sir. I'm glad to see it. After what happened in Atlanta –well –our prayers have been with you and the rest of our boys fighting those damn Yankees."

The man – whose name Damon could not remember – looked at him oddly, the smile fading from his worn parchment face when Damon failed to reply to the cheery greeting. "Are you feeling well sir? You look a mite…out of sorts."

"God no," Damon barked out a laugh before he could help himself. Then he shook his head harshly and abruptly let go of the reins of his horse. The urge to run and hide was so powerful the muscles in his thighs had started quivering. He felt like prey, exposed and undone. His eyes darted nervously around the confines of the stable, hoping for some tell-tale inconsistency in the delusion he could use to break free. There wasn't any. This was the perfect prison of the mind. He kept backing away out of the stables and away from the man and the horse and all of this shit. He couldn't remember being this…scared in a very long time. Dying didn't disturb him – he had earned a long painful death after all – but this, reliving the humiliation, frustration and helplessness of his last months of true life?…no, this was beyond torture.

"Master Damon…?" The old man, whoever the hell he was supposed to be, queried again moving tentatively closer.

"Fuck it. I need to get out of here."

Turning jerkily on his heel Damon did something he hadn't done in well over a century. He turned tail and ran. Sprinting across the pastures he didn't notice in his panic that he ran only at human speed, his feet taking him not away from the estate but instead towards the house, as if his own body was conspiring against him.

He came to a halt at the edge of the manicured gardens of the house, near the hedge maze and the white faux-marble statuary where father had enjoyed playing crochet with undercover hell-spawn harlots. Leaning against a live oak with wide spreading branches Damon swallowed hoarsely, his throat raw and dry and his sides aching. He felt light headed and dizzy from what was really a very short run. He also realised he was hungry but it felt different from the usual thirst for blood. Instead of his veins burning under his skin and his jaws aching dully it was his stomach twisting in his innards that he was most aware of and a sensation of being empty that he no longer recognised as a normal symptom of hunger. Cautiously he glanced at his ring-less left hand and then up to the overcast but still bright enough to immolate sky.

Huh, so he was remembering human hunger and human frailty was he? Even for his twisted subconscious it all seemed a little too cruel. He was dying insane and pathetic and only now could he remember what it felt like to be human again. That was some vicious irony right there. He'd almost be impressed except for the fact that, oh yeah, this was so not his idea of a good time.

"Ah but you must catch me first."

Damon's head jerked up at the sound of an all-too-familiar coquettish giggle. Oh fuck him, no. Not her. Damon had a moment to consider hiding behind the tree trunk or running the hell away again but it was already too late. A dark haired beauty in hitched up hoop-skirts, dark ringlets bouncing and smile as false as the rest of this travesty darted out of the maze and stopped short as soon as she saw him.

"Oh," Katherine simpered as she made a show of smoothing her skirts and brushing back her disordered curls. "Good-day to you sir," She offered up a dipping half-curtsey but Damon could see the sharp, keen, cruel intellect burning behind her eyes.

Damon stared. The last time he'd seen Katherine she'd been a prisoner in Ric's apartment compelled by Klaus to stay put until he commanded otherwise. He'd walked away from her fully expecting to never see Katherine again until the day someone finally staked her nasty, self-serving black heart and she ended up in hell right along with him. He should have known he'd never be that lucky. He should have realised that despite everything that had happened he couldn't hope to be free of her spectre even now. It was amazing how much he loathed just looking at her, even knowing she wasn't real.

"My name is Miss Katherine Pierce." Katherine was talking again and he thought that she had read something in his silence because she watched him with the sharp steadiness of a predator sizing up a potential threat. "May I enquire as to whom you might be?"

Somewhere in his hindbrain maniacal laughter threatened to drive Damon deaf. This was too much. He felt his lips pull back from very human teeth, but a snarl was still a snarl. "No one of interest to you, Miss Katherine," He spat, feeling more rage toward the visage of his first (stupid, misguided, wasted) love than he had for the real Katherine.

He pushed away from the tree and walked past the frowning vampire feeling fury quake his spine. How much longer did he have to suffer before someone ended him? He was dead and finished. He knew that. He deserved to suffer yes, but god damn this! He suffered all the time anyway. He suffered knowing his own stupidity had caused Elena so much pain. He suffered knowing that once again he'd failed when it mattered most. He suffered knowing he was dying a pathetic, broken wretch whose entire existence had been nothing but an exercise in futility. Why couldn't that be enough?

"Brother?" All suspenders and loose collared white shirt Stefan-not-Stefan appeared out of that damnable maze just to add insult to injury.

Damon barely acknowledged him. He didn't dare. All this was Stefan's damn fault. He'd prevented Damon from achieving a nice, dignified death by slow baking in front of the parlour window and locked him up in the basement just to draw out the ignominy. Figment of his imagination or not Damon knew if he was forced to look at Stefan right now he would kill him.

"Damon?" Stefan chased him down as he stalked over the wide expanse of lawn towards the big white house with its Corinthian columns and wonderfully nineteenth century vulgarity.

Damon spun around as he felt Stefan's hand clutch at his sleeve and shoved the stupid boy away. Stefan staggered, almost falling and his face, weirdly young looking despite the fact that real Stefan and memory Stefan looked exactly the same, was a mask of shock. Damon felt a savage surge of pleasure to see that. He reached out roughly to grab the boy (and he really was such a boy, funny how Damon had long since stopped seeing that in the real Stefan) and ended up yanking Stefan forward off balance, balling the loose fabric of his brother's shirt in his fists as he snarled in his face.

"Try that again and I will gut you brother."

"What?" The wide eyed look of horror that morphed Stefan's face was so different from the closed off, angry, passive-aggressive mask of indifference with which Stefan usually responded to his casual threats of bodily harm that Damon blinked and let go feeling a weird chill slide down his spine.

"Brother what is the matter with you?" Stefan gabbled smoothing down his shirt and staring at Damon as if he'd grown a second head. Damon licked his dry lips. Were hallucinations supposed to look so betrayed? Were they supposed to be this real? Behind Stefan's back, standing a few feet away, Damon spied Katherine watching him with the avid interest of a vulture eyeing its next meal.

"Leave me alone." He mumbled not sure if he was talking to Stefan or to Katherine, or even to the world in general. "Just leave me alone."

He turned then and stumbled up the steps and into the cool, darkened gloom of his father's house... or as he was beginning to suspect was more likely the case, the illusionary facade of hell itself.