A/N: Thank you SO MUCH for all the fantastic reviews! :]

This chapter got a little out of control length-wise, but I'll try to keep chapters a bit shorter in the future ;) Also, I forgot to mention this at the beginning, but there may be some spoilers for The Originals later in the story :)

Chapter 4

"He's still unconscious, I can't- Oh my God," Caroline gasped and stopped dead in her tracks, staring at Elena who had to dismiss a hopeful thought that she was misinterpreting the expression in Stefan's eyes that terrified her so.

"Where is Bonnie?" Elena asked, hit by the realization, her eyes flickering between Caroline and Stefan.

If she was awake and they looked so dismayed it could only mean that they hadn't found a magical solution to her predicament. If she was awake, it meant that Bonnie... that Bonnie... Elena shuddered. "Where's Bonnie?" She repeated in a faltering voice.

Caroline glanced at Stefan. "Bonnie's fine," she said with a quick, impatient half-smile, leaping toward Elena. "How are you feeling?"

There was something so alarmingly gentle about the way Caroline asked the question that it only strengthened Elena's suspicion.

"What's going on?" Elena asked, her voice which she hadn't been using for five years coming out hoarse from a failed effort to shout. Glancing over Caroline's shoulder, Elena looked at Stefan, his face pale. "Where is Damon?" Elena whispered, stepping out of Caroline's embrace, her knees buckling when she tried to walk, but she grabbed onto the wardrobe to steady herself. "Why am I wearing his ring?" She asked, her voice shaking when her eyes fell onto her hand with Damon's ring on her finger.

She suddenly felt like the ground was vanishing from under her feet. If Bonnie was fine, but Stefan and Caroline were panicking at the sight of her...

"Oh, he didn't!" Caroline exclaimed angrily, but then quickly changed her tone noticing that Elena and Stefan both looked like they were about to collapse even without her giving them more reasons to worry.

"He didn't what?" Elena asked, turning around so fast she almost lost her balance.

Clinging to confusion, she was waiting for Stefan or Caroline to say something that would put her mind at ease, but Caroline seemed nervous and Stefan was still eerily silent, as if he was trying to wrap his mind around something that was escaping his comprehension and his obvious inability to even smile at her after her five-year-long absence made Elena's feel more and more frightened with every passing second.

"He didn't tell you?" Caroline asked back, not sure what she should say right now in order not to make everything even worse.

She really didn't think Damon would just go ahead and kill himself without waiting for his mother to at least consider Stefan's plea. And where was he anyway? Then again if Elena woke up to the sight of him with a stake in his heart or to the sight of the pile of ashes on the bed that would've been rather morbid, so perhaps it was for the better that he had gone somewhere-"

"He didn't tell me what?" Elena demanded, quite literally shaking Caroline out of her feverish reverie. "Where is he?"

A noise from downstairs that both Caroline and Stefan caught caused them to rush downstairs before Elena had the time to get an answer to her question.

Out of a habit, she wanted to zoom after them, but she almost tripped over her own feet instead. Biting her lip, she tried to overcome the dizziness that accompanied her since she had opened her eyes and with a determined frown, she followed Stefan and Caroline holding onto the walls in the corridor and then the banister on the stairs.

"What the hell happened here?!"

By the time Elena got into the leaving room Caroline was questioning Jeremy who was sitting on the edge of the couch, a bloody gash on his head.

Involuntarily, Elena's eyes traveled around the room for a few seconds, greedily taking in all the details, the reality, reality around her suddenly overwhelming and so, so beautiful and yet she couldn't even bring herself to smile, because everything was falling apart before she could start hoping that the worst was over.

"Elena!" Jeremy cried out, jumping to his feet and running to her.

"Jeremy, what's going on?" Elena asked, grabbing onto his arms when he hugged her, hoping that maybe he could explain to her what was happening, but her question rendered Jeremy as speechless as Stefan and Caroline were.

Elena was about to repeat her question, but then suddenly everything faded to black and it was only for Jeremy catching her in time that she didn't crash to the ground.

xxxdelenaxxx

Damon's eyes flickered open, but they burned so much that he had to close them and brace himself for the pain before opening them again.

He dragged himself to a sitting position and for a few seconds he was able to fight the pain, but it quickly began becoming more and more intense. It was filling every cell in his body, destroying it and leaving only excruciating sensation of every part of him being torn apart, repeatedly.

His heart was pounding in his chest, faster and faster, so fast he was sure that soon it'd break out of his chest.

"It's going to hurt like this every time."

Damon's eyes wandered around the empty room, amorphous splashes of red and white obscuring his vision, making him feel as if he was trying to see after gazing at the sun for hours.

A few feet away there was a chair, a dark-haired girl was straddling it, her eyes fixed on him, her voice laced with a strange mixture of hatred and exhaustion.

"Who are you?" Damon asked, struggling to keep his eyes open, certain he had never seen her before.

"Didn't Jeremy introduce me? My name's Sarah. Sarah Nelson. Does it ring any bells?" She asked levelly, her voice indifferent, but her eyes were shining and the pain in them seemed so raw that for a few moments Damon forgot completely about every inch of his body hurting more than he'd ever think it possible to imagine and all he concentrated on was trying to guess what had happened to her, what he had done.

She paused. "I see it doesn't." The sardonic hint in her voice felt forced, angry, awkward. "What about Sarah Salvatore?"

Damon blinked, the sweat weighing down on his eyelids, so heavy he could only see a blurred shape of her when he tried to keep his head from lulling to the side.

"No? Nothing?" Sarah stood up. She walked toward him, but the closer she was the less clearly he could see her, the pain increasing with every second. "What about Gail and Zach?"

She held her breath, her nails digging into her curled up hands, but she didn't get to see the impact of her words in his eyes, because the poison struck again and Damon tumbled to the ground.

xxxdelenaxxx

His arm draped around her, Jeremy looked at Elena almost not believing that she was really here, looking at him and talking to him just a few minutes ago.

"So it's a magical poison that causes unbearable pain and kills a vampire, then revives him only to kill him again and the pattern continues for several hours. I get that," Caroline said with a frown, glancing at Jeremy in the rear-view mirror. "I mean, I don't get it, but let's assume I do," she added with a huff. "What I really don't get, however, is why would your girlfriend carry something like that with her?"

"And I don't get why you didn't tell me that Elena was linked to Damon, not to Bonnie and that Bonnie is a vampire!" Jeremy retorted, shifting his eyes between Caroline and Stefan who turned his head to look at him over his shoulder.

"Technically, Bonnie is a witchpire," Caroline clarified tartly. "And we only found out about Elena being linked to Damon yesterday. Now answer my question."

"Why would your girlfriend do that to Damon?" Stefan asked, his eyebrows knitted together as he tried to guess what Jeremy was keeping from them, because it seemed clear that while he was shocked by what had happened, he was avoiding answering their questions.

"I don't know," Jeremy said sincerely, looking Stefan straight in the eye, but then he remembered something. "She said... Right before I blacked out I heard her say that... he killed her parents."

Stefan leaned his head against the headrest and looked at Caroline who was tapping the steering wheel while waiting for the green light.

"Well, I guess we can't rule out the possibility that it's true. Looks like she probably only hooked up with you to get back at him," Caroline concluded flatly, ignoring the expression on Jeremy's face.

"You can't know that! You don't know her. Sarah's not like that-"

"Sarah?" Stefan cut Jeremy off, almost jumping out of his seat while turning around to look at him. "How did you meet her?"

"Yes, Sarah Nelson," Jeremy said cautiously, regarding Stefan with a frown on his face. "Do you know her?"

"It's Sarah Salvatore and no, we don't know her and you failed to answer Stefan's question," Caroline replied sternly.

"Sarah Salvatore?" Jeremy echoed, perplexed, completely taken aback by the revelation. "What do you mean by that? She can't be related to you. Sarah's not a vampire."

"No, she's not," Stefan said gravely. "She's Zach's daughter."

Jeremy widened his eyes at him. "Your uncle's daughter? So she's... your niece?"

"More like a great-great-great-great-great-great niece," Caroline corrected. "Are you going to tell us where did you meet her?"

Jeremy considered dodging the question again, but being stuck with Caroline in a car he didn't think he could avoid giving her an answer for much longer. "I met Sarah in the AVS," he said, his voice quiet enough to make the unfamiliar abbreviation sound suspicious.

"In the what?" Caroline asked with a grimace.

"In the Anti-Vampire Squad."

Caroline's foot hit the brake so hard that the car came to a sudden stop, tires screeching. "In the what?!" She repeated, turning in her seat to give Jeremy a bewildered look.

"Can we not talk about this right now?" Jeremy said, clenching his teeth. "That's beside the point."

"Is it?!"

"Caroline, let's drive," Stefan said, glancing at the cars behind them. "If Jeremy thinks he knows where she may be, that's our best bet and most important thing right now."

"No, no," Caroline waved her hands at him, too angry to just let it go. "Are you telling me, that while we all thought that you were the lucky one that got away, went to college and was living an all-around wonderful, normal life, the truth was that you were out there hunting vampires? Is that what you're saying?"

The sound of car horns started drowning their conversation, but it was only the buzzing of Caroline's phone that finally managed to draw her attention away from Jeremy.

"What is it now?" She muttered, getting the phone out of her purse and starting the engine.

"The AVS is not what you think it is. They're protecting people, trying to keep them safe. They're only targeting the vampires who are a threat-"

"Oh really? And how exactly are they determining that, if you care to share?" Caroline asked with utmost irritation only to change her voice to angelically sweet within a second. "Hi April. What is it?"

Jeremy threw her head against the back of his seat but then straightened up when Elena woke up with a gasp.

She looked around, catching a glimpse of the blur of green outside of the car window.

"Where are we going?" She quickly asked, her eyes moving between Jeremy, Stefan and Caroline who was glaring intermittently at her phone and into the windshield.

"What do you mean you let him wait in my office?" Caroline asked with a frown. "Why?"

"Where is Damon?" Elena asked, grabbing Jeremy's hand. "Please, tell me. I need to know what's going on. Why I keep falling asleep and waking up?"

"Kai linked you to Damon, not to Bonnie," Stefan said in a low voice and Jeremy wasn't sure if it was a good idea to just tell her that right now, because Elena's face drained of all color.

"What?" She whispered.

"We just found out about this yesterday."

"Fine. If he doesn't want to reschedule tell him to wait for as long as he wants, but not in my office," Caroline ended the call, tossing her phone back into her purse and then tossing the purse onto Stefan's lap. "She let him wait in my office because he asked her to," she said mockingly, shrugging her shoulders to express the complete weirdness of such a justification. "I like her, but I'll have to fire her."

Everyone in the car fell silent.

Elena stared at her hands. It was almost dark in the car, both sides of the road guarded by tall trees, the sun above them barely seeping through the windows and only from time to time.

"Promise me this is forever."

"He was trying to say a goodbye to me. That's why he said he needed to see me for the last time."

"I promise."

Elena lifted her hand that felt so heavy as if she was balancing a stash of bricks over it and touched Damon's ring on her hand with trembling fingers. "He didn't... He couldn't..." She blinked rapidly, tears springing out of her eyes when she abruptly looked up, her nails digging into Jeremy's arm when she latched onto it. "Tell me he didn't-"

"No," Jeremy shook his head. "It's not like that. Someone... someone's taken him-"

"Sarah Salvatore, whom Jeremy's been dating thinking she was just some random cute vampire hunter, stabbed Damon with a temporary death-inducing poison," Caroline blurted out, ignoring Jeremy glaring at her. "Now we're going to where he thinks they might be, which is some secret hideout for vampire hunters, because, by the way, your brother dropped out of college to pursue a career as a serial killer, so you might want to sue him for all that tuition money he'd probably spent on fancy crossbows."

Elena shifted her eyes between everyone in complete bafflement, but before she could ask any questions, her eyelids closed and she drifted into the cimmerian sleep yet again.

xxxdelenaxxx

The grains of dust on the ground looked disproportionately big when Damon's eyes snapped open.

Slowly, he lifted his cheek off the floor and hissed when the sun streaming through the window hit his face. He pushed himself slightly backwards to avoid the light.

"Where did you lose your ring?" Sarah asked noncommittally, her voice closer than before and when Damon looked up he saw she was seating on the floor across from him. Holding a camera in one of her hands, she lifted the mounting ring off the lens with the other.

Damon looked at his hands that looked so appropriately empty. "I didn't lose it," he said after a pause, his voice hoarse, the pain disappearing for just a split second upon waking up before it would begin rising again, like an inexorable tidal wave. "I'm sorry."

One of the screws slid out of Sarah's hand and dropped to the floor with a brief, clinking sound.

She stiffened, her eyes shifting to Damon who wasn't looking at her. "Why did you kill them?" She asked in a strangled voice, holding onto her camera.

"If you didn't kill me yet to find out, then carry on," Damon said, feeling as if white-hot flames were bursting inside every cell of his body.

Sarah glared at him. "Do you think I won't kill you just to get this answer out of you?"

Damon looked up at her and something in his eyes made her hesitate. "That's not what I meant," he said, struggling for his words not to mingle, his vision becoming completely blurry again. "I meant that there was no reason. Wrong time, wrong place..." He grimaced. "No light... I would've undone it if I could. I'm sorry." He bent over, biting back a scream. "You have a right to kill me," he whispered in a raspy voice.

"Do you think I need your permission to do that?" She wondered briefly if that was his way of asking for forgiveness. "Or maybe you want to play a martyr?"

The deathly poison took over Damon again and he fell to the ground, his hand falling limply to the side, within the scope of the sun rays, his words drowning in the sound of his sizzling skin a moment before his heart stopped beating:

"I just want Elena to wake up."

Sarah stared at him for a second and then walked up to the window and drew up the curtains, blocking out the sun.

xxxdelenaxxx

Elena's car that Sarah had apparently taken parked next to a shabbily looking building seemed like a rather clear indication that Jeremy's intuition was right.

"Stefan and I are going in, you and Jeremy stay outside," Caroline ordered, looking around the desolate parking lot in the middle of nowhere.

Elena gave Caroline an incredulous look. "I'm going in!"

"I'm the only one going in," Jeremy interrupted with a grimace. "I'm the only one Sarah will listen to."

"Are you sure about that?" Caroline fumed, annoyed. "Because last time she saw you she knocked you unconscious and left you bleeding on the ground."

"I think Jeremy and I should go in," Stefan offered, receiving an impatient glare from Elena who after a moment of consideration decided that there was no point discussing anything with anyone.

"Elena!" Caroline called after her when Elena broke into a run toward the building's door. Caroline zoomed in front of her.

"Caroline, I need to go in there!" Elena said, her tone firm and determined, her eyes sparkling with tears.

"But you're human and-"

"She's human too!"

"She's a vampire hunter!"

"And I'm not a vampire!"

Caroline huffed in exasperation and opened her mouth to continue arguing, but then her eyes flew to Stefan who called out her name.

Elena glanced at Stefan over her shoulder and then walked passed Caroline who seemed to have given in and reluctantly concede with Stefan's wordless plea that they should let Elena go in if she wanted to.

Jeremy rushed after Elena while Caroline shot Stefan a glare and then headed back to her car.

"If no one needs me here, I guess I'll just go to my meeting," she said, pulling the car door open.

"Caroline-"

She got into the driver's seat and started the engine. "Oh and don't forget to ask her to be nice." Caroline shot Stefan a quick, artificial smile. "Maybe it will work this time."

xxxdelenaxxx

Absently playing with the parts of her disassembled camera, Sarah looked at Damon, trying to remember what she was trying to accomplish.

It had felt like the right thing to do, like fate when she had realized who Jeremy was. She had joined AVS just so what had happened to her wouldn't happen to any other child's parents. She hadn't been thinking about revenge, not until it had almost literally knocked on her door. Only then had she started wondering that maybe she owed that to her parents.

But now that she was so close to executing justice it felt like such a hollow achievement. She didn't care about his apology, sincere or not. But what if killing him would just mirror his actions? What if it'd be just as senseless? Would it make her any better? Would it even at least make her feel better?

"Sarah."

She shuddered, Jeremy's voice shaking her out of her thoughts and when she turned around she saw someone run past to her.

It was the girl she recognized from Jeremy's pictures and Sarah followed Jeremy's sister with her gaze, watching her fall to her knees next to the man who had killed her parents, gathering him into her arms, cradling his head into her chest as if he was the most precious person in the world.

"Sarah, please, you don't want to do this," Jeremy said, approaching her carefully. "I know why you're doing it and I understand, but this is not going to change anything, it's not going to help. It will just make you feel worse."

"I'm so sorry this has happened to you," Elena spoke and Sarah shifted her eyes from Jeremy to her. "But when he did it... He was in a very dark place. He was all alone. His humanity was turned off. He wasn't being himself. He would've reversed it if he could."

"How are you awake?" Sarah asked and Jeremy noticed that she seemed tired, as if it's been three sleepless nights and not four hours since he'd seen her.

"They are linked," Jeremy said before Elena had a chance to answer. "Every time the poison stops Damon's heart Elena wakes up."

Out of the corner of her eye, Sarah saw Elena press her lips to Damon's forehead, tears rolling off her eyes onto his closed eyelids.

"He said he wanted me to kill him so you could wake up," Sarah said, a twinge of sympathy breaking through a strange sense of numbness that had overcome her the moment she'd put her bleak plan into action.

Elena's head snapped up. "No, please, don't do that." She drew a breath, feeling her mind cloud over, a signal that the sleep was coming. "Jeremy," Elena shifted her eyes to him, quickly taking Damon's ring off her finger and sliding it back onto his. "Tell him not to-"

Elena's head dropped onto Damon's chest in the very moment when his eyes fluttered open, his arms instinctively reaching out to keep the person in his arms from sliding to the floor, the realization who it was hitting him a second later and his eyes went wide.

"Elena." He wrapped his arms around her, gently stroking her hair with his hand, his eyes wandering all over her face.

Jeremy walked up to Sarah and looked at her, but her eyes were fixed on the scene in front of her.

She wasn't sure if she was that touched by this strange tragedy playing out before her or perhaps the pity was just an excuse that let her release herself from that abstract inner sense of duty to punish someone whom she didn't know, who didn't know her, but had got to change the course of her life, not for the worse or for the better, but change it nonetheless and she'd never be able to recover and get to know that part of her that belonged to the life she'd lost, that she could understand through the parents she'd never met.

"You should've told me."

Jeremy's voice was quiet and Sarah's eyes slowly moved away from Damon and Elena to look at him.

"I didn't know how," she said, blinking back the tears at the sudden, feverish realization that he was not judging her, or suspecting she'd spent the last two years just scheming behind his back. He understood. "I didn't know what to say. And right now I don't know what to do."

Jeremy gave her a faint smile. "I think you do."

xxxdelenaxxx

Caroline stormed into the room, stopping April from saying anything despite her attempts to do so and heading straight for her office.

"I'm sorry I'm late, but I had an unnatural disaster to attend to," she said, entering her office with a smile and deciding that if the mysterious investor turned out to be rude and unpleasant she'd just sign April up for an assertiveness training instead of firing her-

"I have to say the biscuits were terrible, tea dreadful, but we quite enjoyed spelling the most difficult words in the Sustainability Plan."

Caroline turned on her heel before she reached her desk, coming face to face with the guest who rose from his chair, a smirk playing about his lips.

"Klaus!" She gasped.

"We have a present for you!"

Caroline jumped up, caught off guard by her swivel chair spinning around to reveal another guest sitting in it.

A light-haired five-year-old girl slid off her chair and handed Caroline an envelope.

Caroline's eyes moved between Hope and Klaus. "A present?" She asked, perplexed and then smiled at Hope, taking the elegant envelope out of her hands.

Klaus clasped his hands behind his back and raised his eyebrows, a smirk not disappearing off his face.

Caroline opened the envelope.

A folded piece of yellowed paper slid out of it and she stared at it for a while before she looked up at Klaus, beaming.

xxxdelenaxxx

"I can't stay here," Sarah said, glancing at the boarding house and then looking back at Jeremy.

"Of course you can," Jeremy said in a reassuring tone, refusing to let go of her hand. "It's more your home than mine," he added with a weak smile that faded off his face when Sarah cut him off.

"He killed my parents! You were right that killing him wouldn't change anything and I'm glad I didn't do it. And I feel really sorry for your sister both because of her coma and because she loves him. And I'm sorry for hitting you and lying to you, even though... I wasn't lying about everything." She held his gaze for a few seconds before looking away. "Enzo showed me this house and I could've come here any time in the last five years. I guess I couldn't decide what to do and then you started insisting on taking me to your home town and I thought it was a sign..." She trailed off and drew a breath. "I have to go."

"Enzo?" Jeremy asked, confused but then brushed it off, focusing on the more urgent matter. "No, Sarah, wait." Jeremy ran in front of her. "Everyone understands why you wanted to do this. Please, don't leave. Caroline just called. If she really has the spell, Elena's going to wake up. I want you to be here where it happens. I need you. Stay here for me. If it wasn't all an act, these two years-"

"I slammed you against the wall and knocked you unconscious," Sarah said, something in her face softening despite her abrupt tone. "You're awfully quick to forgive things."

Jeremy smiled. "You have no idea."

xxxdelenaxxx

"Where is she?" Damon asked, pacing around the living room so fast he nearly put out the fire every time he walked near the fireplace. "How long does it take to drive here from the mayor's office?"

"I don't know, but I bet it takes longer than three minutes and thirty six seconds," Stefan said after consulting his watch.

Damon narrowed his eyes at him and then sat on the edge of the couch next to Elena, who hadn't woken up again since Sarah had given him the antidote and his temporary deaths had stopped.

But then Caroline had called.

Very lightly, Damon brushed Elena's cheek with the backs of his fingers.

And in that moment he started believing in miracles again.

"I'm here!" Bonnie called, running into the room, barely able to catch her breath.

Damon jumped to his feet. "Well, Bonnie apparently got here in less than three minutes," he said, giving Stefan a meaningful look.

"I zoomed here," Bonnie said a little giddily, before checking herself. She wasn't supposed to enjoy being a vampire. Especially not after being repugned by the idea of being a vampire for so long.

"And Caroline's driving," Stefan said defensively.

"Hopefully here and not to New Orleans," Damon retorted.

Stefan's mouth twitched. "Are you trying to say something?" He asked with a frown.

"Other than what you've already inferred, no," Damon said and then leaped to the door when it opened and Caroline walked in, carrying something in her arms.

"This is the first time you've ever run to the door to welcome me," Caroline said, tilting her head to the side and giving Damon a stiff smile, before helping Hope climb off her arms and onto his.

Confused, Damon opened his mouth to speak, but Hope cut him off.

"Hi, I'm Hope. What's your name?"

Damon looked at her, blinking.

"Here," Caroline said, waving a piece of paper in front of Damon's face. "The spell."

Damon grabbed the piece of paper and to Hope's delight dashed to the living room so fast that it felt like being on a roller coaster.

Stefan glanced at them over his shoulder and then turned to Caroline."So where's the catch?" He asked with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes as he was trying to convince himself that Caroline's eyes were glimmering with joy just for the obvious reason of Elena being about to wake up.

But then he noticed that Caroline's face fell and he gave her a questioning look.

"Klaus wants Elena's blood," Caroline said in a low voice.

Stefan sighed. "Of course. To make more hybrids."

"Well, that probably too, but first of all, he wants the cure to reverse some Crescent Curse that his aunt put on Hayley's pack five years ago."

Stefan looked at Caroline, considering her words for a few seconds, but then a familiar adorable half-hearted sheepish expression on her face made him smile a little. "And let me guess. You just asked him to be nice?"

But Caroline seemed far from amused and instead of smiling back at him she winced. "Not exactly." She bit her lip. "I just didn't think he'd care much for Damon's suburban bliss!" She huffed in frustration and then lowered her voice to a hesitant whisper. "I just wanted to buy us some time and..." She took a deep breath. "I might've told Klaus that your mother also wants the cure and she'll stop at nothing to get it."

xxxdelenaxxx

Hope was sitting on the couch, leaning forward and watching Bonnie with wide eyes, fascinated by the strange-sounding words and the flickering candles.

When the chanting stopped, she shifted her eyes to Elena and thought it was funny how she couldn't differentiate between the sleeping girl's and Damon's fingers, because they were so tightly intertwined together.

Damon's eyes were fixed on Elena's face as he was hovering over her, his heart hammering in his chest.

Suddenly, the candles burned brighter and Hope's eyes widened even more. She held her breath, just like Damon and Bonnie did and then she almost fell off the couch in glee when the sleeping girl opened her eyes and woke up from what Caroline had said was a really, really, really long sleep.

When Elena's eyes fluttered open the ceiling above her looked so far away that she thought she'd have to remember about that the next time she'd be imagining it-

Suddenly, there was a hand on her cheek and Elena shivered, feeling the warmth radiate through her and she was afraid to move, so the sensation wouldn't disappear, the intensity of it taking her breath away, as if it was completely real, as if-

Her eyes widened slowly when Damon's face appeared right above hers and she lifted her hand to touch his cheek, his chin, his mouth...

His name on her lips and hers on his drowned in broken laughter, in healing tears when Damon pulled Elena into his arms and all the hours they'd lost disappeared when they kissed.