Chapter 7
The vampires were halfway back to the house when Damon began to shake uncontrollably in the backseat of the SUV. Stefan stared at him. "Damon, are you okay?" he asked.
Of course Damon couldn't answer, but Katherine turned around at the concern in Stefan's voice. "Stop that right now, Damon," she ordered. "Stop shaking." If anything, Damon started shaking more violently at her words. He wished that it meant that he was regaining control of his body, but he didn't think so. Shaking crazily was not what he would be doing right now if he had a choice in the matter. He could think of several better plans off the top of his head – attack Katherine, attack the warlock, hell throwing himself out of the car sounded like a solid idea at this point. But he still couldn't do any of those things.
He saw Jonas turn and quickly glance back at him from the driver's seat. "It's the magic," he said. "His body is reacting against it. You need to end the spell now."
Katherine looked stubborn. "Not until we get back to the house. He'll be fine."
Damon felt a shooting pain in his skull, followed almost immediately by a second one. His hands came up to clutch his head, and he distantly heard himself groan in pain. Fuck, he thought. He might not be able to control his body, but he could feel what it felt and right now everything fucking hurt.
Stefan was looking worried. "Katherine," he said urgently. "I think something's really wrong with him."
"He's fine, Stefan," Katherine said soothingly. She glared at Damon. "He's just being a drama queen."
Jonas' voice was low and insistent. "He's not faking, Katherine. If you want him to survive, you need to remove the spell."
"I'll end it when we can secure him at the house," Katherine said.
"He's not going to escape, if that's what you're worried about," Jonas countered.
"Fine," Katherine conceded after giving Damon a long stare. "You're the expert. But it's on you if he escapes."
"That's fine," Jonas said. "Do you remember the phrase?"
Katherine just glared at the warlock. She twisted the new ring on her finger and spoke a strange phrase that Damon didn't think he would have understood even if his head hadn't been exploding with blinding pain. He thought the end of the spell should have brought relief, but instead it brought a wave of even more excruciating pain. Every muscle in his body locked in protest, and his eyes rolled back in his head as he passed out.
•••••
Elena sat slumped on her couch, trying desperately to process the day's events. Bonnie had taken Caroline to her house, and Elena was planning to go over there later and try to help her friend through her grief. But first she had to sort out her own thoughts. She couldn't believe that Stefan would betray her like that, but she had seen it with her own eyes. She was sure that he was back on human blood again, but how could even that be enough explanation to justify him joining with Katherine? "Stefan," she whispered sadly to herself. She turned to Jenna where her aunt sat next to her on the couch. "How could he do this to me? To all of us? How could he kill Caroline's mom?"
"I don't know, honey," Jenna said sympathetically. Elena saw her glance at Ric for support.
Elena looked at Ric, too. "Could Katherine be controlling him somehow?" That was the only explanation she could come up with, but she had met Stefan's eyes as he stood on that stage. He hadn't been her Stefan, the boy she loved, but he hadn't looked truly out of control, either. Maybe this was Stefan the vampire, the side of him that he had always tried so hard to suppress around her. She had known that side of him existed, and she felt terrified that this was who he really was. A killer.
"I don't know," Ric answered finally. "Maybe."
"There has to be something we can do." She knew she was pleading with Ric to offer her some hope.
"Elena, we're kind of severely out-gunned here." Ric sounded apologetic, but Elena knew he was right.
Jenna spoke up then. "It can't be a coincidence that Katherine took out all of the members of the Founders' Council."
"And she was sending a message by doing it publicly," Ric mused. "We need to figure out what she's up to."
"I know," Jenna answered. "But where do we even start?"
Elena barely heard her aunt and her teacher's words. She couldn't think about the big picture. Stefan's betrayal was consuming all of her thoughts, and she cast around for something, anything else to think about. Unfortunately, she couldn't get her mind to travel very far. "What about Damon?" she asked abruptly. "His eyes. Did he look . . . wrong to you? Like it wasn't really him?"
Ric frowned. "I'm not sure. I thought maybe something was wrong, but I think we're probably grasping at straws here. We have to assume they've both joined with Katherine."
Elena nodded. He was right, of course. But she couldn't shake the sense that there had been something wrong with Damon, and she refused to let go of the hope that she could get Stefan back, get both of them back. It was all she had.
•••••
Katherine frowned down at where Damon lay on the floor of his dungeon cell, unmoving. Jonas had told her that the potion and spell would have rather severe effects on a vampire, but she was disappointed to find out that he had not exaggerated. Damon had seemingly not stirred since he had passed out in the car. She nudged him over onto his back with her foot. "Damon," she said, her voice loud and tone disapproving. When his eyes remained closed, she knelt down and slapped his face. "Wake up," she ordered.
Damon did open his eyes at that, although Katherine noticed that he didn't move any other part of his body. The look in his ice blue eyes stopped the words that were on the tip of her tongue. He looked lost, and she saw pain, fear, confusion, betrayal, hopelessness spiraling in the depths of blue. The fight and fire that he had shown since the day she had captured him were gone, and Katherine wondered why she didn't feel a sense of triumph. It looked like she had finally broken Damon, and hadn't that been her goal, after all?
She stood up with a flourish to hide her confusion. "Give him some blood," she ordered Marcus as she swept from the cell.
•••••
By the time Marcus had forced two bags of blood down his throat, Damon could finally move a little and speak again, even if the walls and floor of the cell were still spinning around him. Occasionally, a bolt of strange, unnaturally colored light would flash somewhere within the range of his vision. This was one hell of a withdrawal or detox or whatever you wanted to call it, although nothing could be worse than the potion itself and being Katherine's puppet. "Go away," he muttered at the other vampire. For once, he just wanted to be alone.
Marcus just shrugged and tossed another blood bag onto the floor next to him. "Have it your way," he said. "I have better things to do anyway." He turned on his heel and left the room. Damon heard the lock click closed behind him, and he closed his eyes.
Damon curled into a fetal position. The blood had restored some of his strength, although he still felt horribly weak, but his thoughts were far worse than the lingering pain and weakness in his body or even the crazily spinning room. It wasn't so much that he had killed; Damon had killed countless people in his long life, and he could simply add the guilt for these deaths to that guilt. It was the way that Katherine had managed to violate him completely, to steal every piece of his will. Katherine could control him, use him, and now there was no going back to his old life. Elena had seen him kill Carol Lockwood, seen him stand there and do nothing while his friend Liz Forbes was killed. The only small mercy was that Katherine apparently hadn't known about his friendship with the sheriff, since he was sure that she would have made him kill Liz himself if she had known. No, there was no going back now. Damon tried to tell himself that he didn't care about Elena or Liz or Alaric or anyone in Mystic Falls, but he was alone and he couldn't lie to himself in the dim light of the dungeon with the strange flashing colors marring his vision. He cared. And for some reason, he couldn't flip the switch and make it stop.
And worse than any of it, Stefan had betrayed him utterly. Stefan had held him down while Katherine had forced that potion down his throat. Damon tried to tell himself that his brother wasn't in control of his own body, but he knew that Stefan hadn't been under the influence of any potion or spell. He had just been under the influence of Katherine, and he had chosen Katherine over Damon with full knowledge of what she was. All Stefan's words about how Katherine would try to break them apart, how they needed to stick together, had been nothing more than words, and he had betrayed Damon again. Damon curled in on himself in utter despair and tried to stop the tears from flowing. He felt completely alone in the world.
