A/N: I wanted to update sooner, but got caught up writing a later chapter... so you can have that to look forward to :)

~3~

Damon couldn't sleep. His bedroom seemed to draw his infant brother's cries into it; they slithered in under the door as a soft, fitful stirring, then crescendoed into a piercing wail that came to blast right into his ear. He could hear a nursemaid tending to the child, but always after the cry had already shocked Damon back awake. He suspected that at this rate he would not dream a single dream the entire night.

By some early hour, moonlight illumined his room with a distracting brightness. Too gone with exhaustion, he did not rise to draw the curtain, but rather turned in his bed with his eyes squeezed shut, willing himself to oblivion. What seemed like hours, though were probably minutes later, Damon saw his brother's face inside his mind's eye, awake and content, uttering not a sound. Stefan was usually, in fact, a pleasant baby. In his fading thoughts, Damon wondered what bothered the child this particular night.

A sudden scream broke the night. With a sharp intake of breath, Damon started awake once more, and before he even knew what he was doing, he was up and out of his bed, storming out of his room and into the nursery, preparing in his barely-awake temper to reprimand his brother for his selfish shrieking.

The door of the nursery stood ajar. Damon edged inside, guided by the sounds emerging from a cradle across the room. He didn't feel he knew a lot about babies, but even Damon recognized that this cry was unfamiliar, and not the usual sound his brother made when unhappy.

Reaching the bassinette, he peered inside. The moonlight drained color from every surface, but he imagined the infant's face to be a ripe red to match his squinting eyes and distorted, screeching mouth.

"What is the matter with you?" Damon asked in a loud whisper. "I'm trying to sleep!"

The only change this admonition inspired was a renewed vigor to his brother's cries, who seemed not to care at all that he might have disturbed anyone's sleep. Damon huffed with frustration and reached into the cradle. The shadow cast by his own arm confused his destination, and his hand met not his brother's soft body, but the inside wall of the cradle. Something sharp pricked his thumb and he drew his hand back swiftly in surprise, hissing at the sharp pain.

Just then footfalls sounded behind him and Damon turned to find his mother entering the room.

"My angel. Did your brother wake you?"

Damon barely heard her question. "There's something in his bed. It pricked me." He held out his hand, as proof. She reached out to take it.

"Oh, my dear, I am so sorry," she said, rubbing his fingers between her hands. "Thankfully it did not draw blood." She bent to kiss Damon's fingers, then released him and touched a hand to his back. "Do you think that might be what has upset your brother?"

Damon supposed it might be, but his mother didn't wait for a response. She bent to the cradle and lifted Stefan out of it, drawing him close to her bosom. The babe, sensing comfort and imminent nourishment, refocused his energy into kneeding his mother's breast, his searching mouth emitting no more than half-hearted whimpering.

Damon watched her take his brother across the room to the rocking chair, where she sat and with one hand pulled the ribbon at the neck of her nightgown. She pulled the neckline low, exposing a breast that glowed milky white in the moonlight. With growing fascination, Damon watched his brother fasten himself to his mother with a pint-sized ferocity and begin to suck, drawing nourishment from her with blissful, silent abandon. Thus settled, his mother spoke almost absently, a hand supporting her infant son's head.

"I wanted to keep him with us," she said softly, "but your father thought we would be disturbed less if he slept in the nursery. Not so, I think."

Damon sat on a stool beside the rocker and for several quiet minutes watched his brother guzzle his fill. His mother broke the silence, after a time.

"I held you so once, Damon. You do not remember it, but I do, every time I have you in my arms. I remember holding you when I hold your brother, and it's a kind of gift you give to him. I have loved you so dearly that I wanted another, that you might never be alone."

At last the infant slowed his voracious feeding and fell away from her breast, replete with a full belly, his recent trauma naught but a forgotten dream as he slept. Damon felt drowsy himself, eyes heavy with the rest they craved. He did not notice his mother right her gown, nor the whisper of her feet touching the floor as she stood. As in a waking dream, he stood at the touch of her hand on his elbow and crossed out of the nursery toward bed and rest. As his head sank against a pillow and a blanket materialized up around him, he might have said, "Stefan can sleep with me," but he could not remember later if he had spoken the words aloud or merely dreamt them.