A/N: Thank you so much for all the amazing reviews! :] Every single one of them makes me very, very, very happy! :)
A shout-out to Ani: I'm SO glad if this fic is working the way it's supposed to, i.e. helps healing our broken DE hearts, at least a little ;] Thank you so much!
Chapter 9
"Sorry for being late, but we were held back by a shark," Damon said, tossing Hope's swimming tube on a seat next to Liam, interrupting his scrutiny of Elena's legs.
"No problem," Liam said evenly, wiping drops of water off his face.
"It wasn't a real shark." Hope was quick to clarify, climbing over Liam onto the other side of the bench.
Grimacing a little, Liam brushed the sand from her flip-flops off his white clothes.
Elena's eyes darted between Damon and Hope as she had an unclear suspicion something was up.
"It was a mechanical shark." Hope widened her eyes at Liam, apparently expecting a more enthusiastic reaction than a mildly bemused look on his face.
"It was a shark speedboat, but it did look pretty real," Elena said with a smile, taking a seat across from Liam and next to Damon who had her hand clasped in his and didn't let go of if even when they were seated.
Watching Elena out of the corner of his eye, Damon wondered if she'd be trying to snatch her hand free, but it seemed that she was more amused than annoyed by having her hand made unavailable to her and even slid her fingers in between his, effortlessly reaching for a glass with her left hand. He smirked to himself. Her vintage moral notions aside, she was a good sport most of the time.
"The water was splashing all over the shark and everyone in the boat!" Hope continued, trying to demonstrate the splashing by placing one of her sand molds in the middle of her plate, grabbing Liam's water glass, pouring the water onto her plate and then splashing it over the sand mold with a spoon.
"Sounds fun," Liam said stiffly, turning to Elena.
Now that he thought about it he wasn't sure why, but he had actually expected her to come alone. There wasn't much catching up they could do between a bratty five-year-old and a guy who looked at him as if he was contemplating one hundred and one ways to kill him.
"Are you here by yourself?" Elena asked conversationally, kicking Damon under the table to remind him that he'd promised to behave.
But of course it was probably naïve of her to believe that he would, she thought, taking another sip of her water in a feeble attempt to justify her gasp with thirst when without a warning her foot got caught in between Damon's feet.
"It's so humid today," she muttered into her cup, quickly realizing that sitting next to Damon was a bad idea.
She held her breath when he placed his hand on her thigh and even though he wasn't, at least not yet, doing anything with it, she found it very difficult to focus on the conversation while her imagination was prompted to start conjuring up highly distracting images.
"I'm visiting my parents," Liam said, glancing uncertainly at Hope who started stashing everyone's cutlery on her plate.
Elena kept glancing at her, rather puzzled herself, because she wasn't sure where this behavior was coming from. Up till now Hope had been a very well-behaved child.
"Oh, they live here? How nice." Elena smiled, surreptitiously trying to push Damon's hand of her thigh.
Unfortunately, her ministrations only resulted in him sneaking his hand underneath her dress, so his hand was still on her thigh, except that now there wasn't a layer of fabric between her skin and his hand. She blinked rapidly.
"Yes, I grew up here, actually," Liam said, glancing at the waitress who just walked up to them.
"May I have onion rings, tomato soup with sour cream, macaroni and cheese and strawberry ice-cream?" Hope recited, abruptly drawing up her legs to sit cross-legged on the bench, a sudden movement causing one of her flip-flops to catapult itself into the air and land in the middle of Liam's plate.
Hope froze for a second, caught off guard by the sight, but then she laughed, apparently delighted by what had happened, glancing at Damon for what looked like approval, which only confirmed to Elena that some kind of a secret alliance was going on here.
Oh, Damon could so consider himself very much in trouble for making a child his partner in crime, Elena thought with an inward huff.
xxxdelenaxxx
"Pretzels or peanuts?" Klaus repeated the flight attendant's words, because Caroline was so engrossed in trying to find something in her purse that she hadn't even noticed someone had asked her a question.
Her head snapped toward Klaus. "What?" She asked with an impatient grimace.
"We'll take both," Klaus said with a benign smile, taking two small bags from the stewardess and waiting for her to move onto the next row before presenting the two options to Caroline once again.
"Seriously?" Caroline narrowed her eyes at him before turning her eyes back to her purse. "And what do you even mean that casting the stupid spell over everyone can't be their only goal?"
Klaus glanced around, not very bothered but rather amused by how loud Caroline was speaking.
"Well, would you share all of your secret designs during the first conversation with a virtual stranger?" Klaus asked, reading the nutrition facts label on the back of the pretzels.
"If I thought I was speaking with someone as evil as me- Oh no!..." Caroline gasped, very gently taking a velvet drawstring pouch out of her purse and then picking up tiny pieces of paper, scattered at the bottom of her purse, and very carefully putting them back into the pouch.
Klaus raised his eyebrows, watching her for a few seconds with an amused expression on his face that became thoughtful the longer he looked at her.
"What is it?" He finally asked, peering into her purse.
"Nothing," Caroline grunted. "No, don't!" She exclaimed, making a few fellow passengers look at her.
She shot Klaus an indignant look, trying to get back one of the pieces he'd snatched out of her hand.
Ignoring her, Klaus narrowed his eyes at the scrap, trying to figure out what it was, but it was hard to tell anything based on a single letter that the piece contained that could belong to almost any word, really.
"It's a letter from my mom," Caroline said and Klaus' eyes darted to her. "Give it back," she added under her breath, low tone of voice failing to conceal a quiver in it.
"Why is it in shreds? Does it say something upsetting?" Klaus gave her a small, encouraging smile that turned into a frown when Caroline abruptly brushed off the tears that instantaneously flooded her eyes.
"I don't know what it says. I've never read it," she said under her breath, looking at her hands, her fingernails digging into the soft fabric of the pouch. "I tore it into shreds when my humanity was off," she added after a pause.
A flight attendant walked passed them again, asking them to buckle their seat belts. Slowly, the plane began to move.
Caroline didn't move, not until she felt Klaus' hands on her waist. She opened her mouth to protest, but then she realized what he was doing. The seatbelt clicked and Klaus leaned away from her.
"May I?"
Caroline's eyes flew to his open palm and she wrinkled her nose in confusion. She followed his gaze when he glanced at the pouch in her hand.
She shook her head with a grimace. "They are all like this," she said, trying to get back that one tiny scrap he already had.
But Klaus closed it inside his hand, his other one still outstretched toward her. Caroline gave him an exasperated look, but he arched an eyebrow at her, a ghost of a smirk flitting across his lips and she knew there was no point trying to argue, because he wouldn't give in.
With an annoyed huff, Caroline handed him the pouch.
Klaus reached into the suitcase under his seat from which he pulled out two passe-partouts that he placed on a lowered tray in front of him.
Caroline leaned her head against the headrest and closed her eyes.
xxxdelenaxxx
"I'm surprised you fight for him so much after he took everything from you," Lily said in a low, blank voice.
Her eyes were fixed on Stefan, but Bonnie felt as if Lily was simultaneously looking also at her, Jeremy and Sarah, aware of the slightest movement in her vicinity.
Stefan made a face. "You mean... that set of silver toy soldiers? I got them back, eventually," he said with a thin smile. "Can we go back to the topic?"
"Did he even ask you if maybe you wanted the cure?" Lily continued, ignoring him.
"Nope, we can't," Bonnie muttered, folding her arms and leaning back on the couch.
Sarah glanced at Jeremy who was watching Bonnie almost for the entire time without even realizing it. He couldn't put his finger on what it was exactly that was so different about her, except that she seemed completely unconcerned with everyone's opinion and seemed to be voicing things she would've just thought to herself before.
Or perhaps he just hadn't seen her in a very long while, Jeremy thought with a frown. Maybe she'd simply changed in the course of five years, not overnight.
"I don't think that's relevant at all, but yes, if you must know, I had a chance to take the cure and I decided not to take it."
"And what about Elena?" Lily asked, slightly tilting her head to the side.
"What about her?" Stefan asked, confused.
Jeremy raised his eyebrows a little amused when Bonnie loudly stifled a groan.
"That's so last decade. That's why I hate dying. When you come back you're always behind on everyone's relationships. Granted, when you died your sons were still happily single, which makes me wonder what are your sources? Enzo? Stefan's diaries? Elena's diaries?"
"I burned my diaries," Stefan cut in and shrugged when Bonnie gave him a surprised look.
"Elena burned hers too. Along with my comic book collection," Jeremy said with a sigh.
Sarah bit her lip, stifling a smile. "Is this like a local tradition or something?"
"Yes and if you want to be a rebel around here you drown your diaries," Bonnie said matter-of-factly. "Steven's Quarry if a good place to do that. It's very deep. Ask Stefan. He spent three months in there."
"Three and a half," Stefan amended.
"How can you not see that love brings nothing but pain?" Lily interrupted the exchange, ignoring the humorous interlude.
"Really?" Bonnie sat up, shotting her an irritated look. "Having two children who adored you was that painful? So what if your husband was a monster? Get over yourself. No one is always happy. Life is made of happy and horrible moments. That's the way it is."
Memories of Bonnie risking her life, sacrificing herself so many times, flickered through Jeremy's mind. And that one frightening day when she had wanted to end her life. She was so strong to survive it all and Jeremy scowled at himself struck by the sudden realization that in five years he hadn't got a chance to tell her how much he admired her for that.
"But it doesn't have to be that way," Lily interjected smoothly in a chillingly unfaltering, convincing voice. "Suffering is too high a price for those specks of happiness. They aren't bright enough. Sooner or later they're swallowed up by the darkness. I offer you an escape from all the pain. This spell is your, this spell is everyone's best chance."
"That's why you came here?" Stefan asked with a grimace, his eyebrows furrowed. "Then I'm afraid you misread by message. We're not interested in learning more about your cause, so we could donate our lives to it. We're interested in you reversing the spell that you cast on Damon, forgetting about the cure and leaving Mystic Falls. Three simple tasks. Failure to complete any of them will result in the rest of your friends finding themselves decapitated."
"Are you threatening me?" Lily asked with an unpleasant, mirthless smile. "Do you really think you stand a chance against me? Very well. If you choose suffering over freedom, then all of you shall suffer."
She rose to her feet.
"Now you're threatening us," Jeremy said, exchanging looks with Stefan and Bonnie who both seemed frustrated and disappointed that the meeting ended up leading absolutely nowhere.
Slowly, Lily turned toward him. "Do you know where does the Gemini coven's name come from?"
"Other than the whole twins thing?" Sarah offered, squinting.
Lily's smile chilled her to her bones.
"Witches from the Gemini coven could move freely between the world of the living and the world of the dead until the passage was sealed by one fraction while the opposing fraction was banished from the coven. But those who sealed the passage are all dead now. The only remaining Gemini witches are the ones who always wanted to keep the passage open."
"Too bad that the Other Side collapsed," Jeremy said, giving her a sour look.
"The Other Side?" Lily arched an eyebrow. "The Other Side was just a purgatory. The world of the dead is a permanent place where the souls find eternal peace."
Stefan frowned. "I'm not sure what you're getting at."
"Accept my offer, let go of love. If you don't, all of your beloved dead will suffer for it. They'll be ripped out of their eternal peace and thrown into darkness and chaos where they'll be tormented until the end of time."
"You can't do that," Bonnie said with a dangerous glint in her eye. "You said the passage was sealed. You don't have enough power to unseal it."
Lily laughed dryly. "We've been absorbing magic for five years now. But if you're skeptical... I'm yet to choose who will pay for Astor's death. Should it be your grandmother?"
Jeremy felt his heart clench at the sight of a change in Bonnie's expression.
"Don't you dare mention her!" Bonnie jumped to her feet, a gust of fiery wind swishing across the room and straight at Lily who turned the direction of it with an unhurried flick of her hand.
"Or perhaps your parents? Your aunt? Vicki? Anna?" Lily looked at Jeremy who stared up at her in barely concealable dismay. She shifted her gaze to Sarah. "Or maybe your parents?" Then to Stefan. "Your friend Caroline's mother? Lexi? I shall send you a... note once I choose," she said, giving Stefan a cold final smile before leaving the house in a stygian blur.
xxxdelenaxxx
The weather announcement shook Caroline out of her shallow sleep and her eyes fluttered open. She wrinkled her nose and sat up a little straighter, colliding with an open tray in front of her.
Absently, she reached out to close it, but her hand got suspended in the air when her drowsy gaze fell onto a black passe-partout splayed over the tray, countless tiny pieces of paper glued to it, arranged in what couldn't possibly make any sense, couldn't possibly be put back together like that, letter by letter, word by word, as if Liz was speaking to her through time, through whatever worlds were between them now.
My Beautiful, Brave Daughter, My Dearest Caroline
Tears blurred Caroline's vision before she managed to get to the second line of the letter. Her hand flew to her mouth and she stifled a sob.
She looked at Klaus who gave her a her a small, encouraging smile. "Read on, love."
xxxdelenaxxx
Damon didn't even try to be very stealthy about it, she had to give him that, because as soon as they walked out of the restaurant, Hope started running and hopping around them, boasting happily about being 'bad-mannered, loud and annoying' and heading straight for the toy store for her 'reward'.
"I can't believe you did that!" Elena whispered resentfully, glaring at Damon and shaking her head in astonishment while Hope was busy running between the shelves, picking out dolls. "Bribed a child into being rude!" She clarified when Damon pretended to look completely baffled by her accusations.
Damon smirked. "First of all, she thought it was just a game, second of all, the doll is a reward for playing the game, not for being rude, so it's all perfectly didactic, don't worry."
Elena narrowed her eyes at him in indignation, but then smiled brightly at Hope when she ran back to them carrying at least ten dolls in her arms.
"I can't choose!" She said with a pout, sincerely perturbed.
"Don't have to. We can take all of them," Damon said with a dismissive wave of his hand to Hope's absolute delight and then went straight to the cash register before Elena had a chance to admonish him again.
She still intended to do that once they were out of the store, so when on their way through a park Hope jumped onto a swing, Elena wanted to resume the discussion.
However, as soon as she opened her mouth to speak, Damon spun her around and she landed in his arms, the movement reminding her so much about their last dance that she was momentarily rendered speechless.
"It was a fun day, admit it," Damon murmured, his lips hovering over hers, his eyes boring into Elena's eyes with intensity that made her heart race.
"Yes, fun and enlightening," Elena said and Damon's mouth stretched into a lop-sided smile when she gracefully locked her arms behind his neck. "Now I know what type of parent you'll be."
Damon rolled his eyes, nestling his face in her hair. "Is this the cure conversation?"
He could feel Elena stiffen in his arms and the realization that his tone might've hurt her affected him more than he thought reasonable.
"You wanted to take the cure with me," Elena said quietly, slowly threading her fingers through Damon's hair, the setting sun draping a red glow over them. "Even if you don't feel why right now, you must remember that you wanted to take it."
Damon didn't say anything, but Elena could feel him draw a breath and wrinkle his forehead. She wondered if it meant he was trying to remember or rather that it simply upset him to think about it. She also wondered if he was analyzing why he was holding her in his arms in the first place, why he was drawn to her, hardly let go of her hand all day, felt the need to constantly be so close to her.
Damon frowned. His ears curtained by her hair, Elena's voice sounded a little like he was hearing it over the phone and the sudden, abstract impression rippled through his thoughts with strange force.
"I'm telling you, it's the most real thing that I've ever felt in my entire life."
The words flew to him, blazed across his thoughts before disappearing in a flash, washed away by a wave of aversion toward thinking about the past, by the overpowering sense of exhaustion layered with pain.
But it was a spell.
Only that he didn't care.
But how could he not care? Wasn't the fact that he didn't care also a part of that spell to begin with?
"I've never got to tell you..."
Damon closed his eyes and just listened to Elena's voice, slowly gliding his hand up her back until it got tangled in her hair. "What's that face?"
"Do you know when I first realized that I was in love with you?" Elena asked quietly, tightening her embrace around him.
The more he tried to think about any of it the more hazy his mind was becoming and the only way to clear it was to think about something else, something that didn't require feeling anything.
But her question sparked so many memories that the words "I love you" spoken in her voice began echoing through his head with stubbornness of an aggravating tune that just wouldn't go away.
Damon winced, the words making him feel almost physically unwell. For a few seconds all he could see were black stains dancing in front of his eyes, dull ringing filling his ears.
But then Elena spoke again and some strange, unyielding need to hear exactly what she was going to say seemed to put all the disruptive images and noises on hold.
"It was my birthday."
It wasn't a voice over the phone anymore, but right next to him, her breath warm against his skin, one of her hands gripping his shoulder, her other hand cupping his cheek, trying to see his face, his eyes.
He raised his head, just enough to look at her, his cheek still touching hers.
"Your birthday?"
He looked genuinely puzzled as if he tried to pinpoint the moment she was referring to, but couldn't do it.
"I got you something."
Elena smiled brokenly. "Yes. When you gave me back my necklace."
"I know I promised not to buy you anything, so don't worry, I didn't pay for it."
Damon lifted his head higher, his eyebrows furrowed, his eyes darting between Elena's face and their surroundings.
"You stole it?"
"That birthday?" Damon frowned. That strange, long, sultry summer that started with a death-bed pity kiss and ended with Stefan killing poor Andie for effect.
"No."
He remembered Elena's flimsy dress, so white it almost blinded him when he'd walked up into the room and found her standing in front of the mirror.
"Found it."
That memory wasn't as impossible to recall as some of the others. It didn't held as much pain, perhaps because it wasn't immersed in love, but rather tinged with bitter sadness. It wasn't his mirror or his room and she wasn't his and it never crossed his mind she might've already loved him then.
And only now that her words were registering in his mind, some adverse mechanisms were beginning to fight the memory, trying to push it into the same off limits compartment where other good memories seemed to be.
"That conversation that we had," Elena continued, her fingers skimming across Damon's face, her heartbeat quickening when she noticed that he was visibly shaken by her words. "Later I always thought how we weren't speaking about the necklace at all. That it was my heart that you found, not stole." She gave him a brief, bright smile, holding his face in the palms of her hands, her gaze darting between his eyes and his lips.
He remembered her hands on his face, her arms around him, so many times. At first those gestures were only sympathetic, only kind. Like when the tomb had turned out to be empty... and for seemingly no reason whatsoever he'd followed her out of the dark...
Then accidental, unconscious, unplanned... "You need to stop doing that." And yet he'd welcomed each with open heart until he'd run out of hope and then, and then suddenly, after, only after he'd stopped believing in everything from hate to love, she'd come to him, looked at him with more love than he'd ever seen in anyone's eyes before.
"You."
The onslaught of emotions elicited by the memory caused him to almost lose his balance and Damon stumbled backwards, his hands flying to his head, because it suddenly felt as if all the pain gathered inside it and his mind was about the burst.
"Do you want to know what I think?"
"Damon?" Elena gasped, grasping his arms, watching him with terrified eyes.
"I don't think I've ever seen you more alive."
Damon winced, those tiny shoes, tiny red shoes on her dark blue dress, the hardly perceptible pattern he hadn't noticed at first, that he'd never forget...
Her eyes. Her beautiful, warm eyes. Right after he'd initiated a turn, whirling her away from him, her hand clasped in his. Her eyes were so lost in his when he'd hastily brought her back into his arms, their lips meeting in the most tranquil, passionate kiss that he'd spent an eternity waiting for, that he'd wanted for it to last for the rest of eternity. With her. Only with her. He'd never let her go.
It felt as if molten metal was running through his veins, but he'd fight for it, he wouldn't let this memory to be annihilated by some spell.
"Damon!"
Elena watched Damon's face contort. She didn't know what was happening or how she could help him. Reaching out, she tried to wrap her arms around him and hold him.
Damon drew a raspy intake of breath. Just like that evening when he'd stood frozen to the spot, staring into the fireplace, because it was all over, everything was over. He'd gazed at the logs of wood, burning, turning to ashes like his dreams. How could he have ever believed that she could've loved him out of her own free will?
But then she'd stormed into the room, as if she'd been looking for him, for so long.
"I'm not sorry that I'm in love with you."
There was no pain that wouldn't be worth remembering that.
Blinking back the blinding darkness clouding his vision, Damon yanked Elena toward him, her breath catching in her throat when his hands flew to her face to cup her cheeks.
"Damon-" Elena whispered, his name still lingering on her lips when he kissed her.
All the words felt empty, he couldn't grasp the meaning of them, 'love' was echoing dully with vacant importance, everything felt distant and unreal.
Except her.
She was real.
She was the most real thing he'd ever known. When he kissed her, his every thought was clear, infused with light. He knew why he wanted to live. He knew what it meant to be alive.
Elena sighed into his mouth and he pressed her closer to him, tremors rushing simultaneously through them both, miniscule shock waves surging through every nerve, every bone.
When was that moment, Damon tried to think, when was that moment when he'd first realized he loved her? Maybe finding that moment would ensure some kind of victory over this spell that was scorching his thoughts, fighting to keep his heart bare. If he could recover that moment of realization, maybe everything else would fall into place? Maybe unlocking that memory would unlock the feelings she was telling him about, feelings he could see in her eyes, feel in the way she kissed him.
His eyes closed, Damon let the kiss overtake all of his senses, Elena's soft lips molded perfectly against his, trembling when he deepened the kiss, so sweet he couldn't get enough of the taste, couldn't get enough of her, her name a myriad of glimmering lights in his mind's eye and he felt he could predict the slightest movement of her body, every tilt of her head, he felt like every atom of him knew the way in which she clung to him, with her arms, her mouth, her heart beating furiously against his chest.
Then suddenly, in the dimly lit interior behind his closed eyelids he saw a moment materialize itself.
"Are you coming?"
A dark, narrow corridor illuminated by an old, dust-covered light-bulb, uneven stone walls and the hard, cold floor.
He'd locked the cell's door and wanted to leave.
Elena slowly shook her head. "I'm gonna stay here."
He wanted to go.
In the weak, tired light from above the door, far away from her, he could still see every line of her face, her eyes gleaming with determination, refusing to close despite the exhaustion, her dark locks falling over her shoulders, unusually curly, a solitary reminder of the Miss Mystic Falls dance.
He wanted to leave.
But he stood motionlessly for another second, looking at her as if he was standing on the edge of a precipice, staring into the unknown, the unexpected, the inevitable.
The realization was like a thread pushed with a dream-thin needle through every inch of his body all at once.
Without a word, he sat down on the floor across from her, his head tilting helplessly toward her, meeting her slightly mystified gaze.
There was nowhere to go without her.
Elena's eyes slowly fluttered open when Damon broke the kiss.
"It was the night of the Miss Mystic Falls dance," Damon said in a cracking whisper, brushing Elena's cheeks with his thumbs. "You were so brave that day, so beautiful and when we went downstairs, so tired. You said you were going to spend the night by the cell's door and in that moment I forgot why we were there, what happened, what was going to happen and what would never happen and the only thing that was clear to me was the realization that I loved you, more than anything in the world."
Elena laughed brokenly and Damon leaned down to kiss the tears off her face, but then they jumped up at the sound of Hope's loud scream.
"Elena, watch out!"
Before they managed to even turn their heads, Elena felt a sharp pain in her back, as if someone stabbed her.
Damon immediately pulled her away from the shadow behind her, shielding her, but it was too late.
Liam raised his hand that was holding a syringe, the red liquid inside it glistening in the fading sunlight. "I'm sorry." He shook his head, utterly bewildered. "I don't know why I'm doing this."
"No," Elena whispered, paling from shock.
Damon's eyes widened at the realization. The cure.
"Please-" Elena started, hoping against all hope that compelled or not, it might be possible to reason with Liam, but then suddenly someone appeared right next to him.
"It was very smart of your Bennett witch friend to put a protection spell over you," Gretta said, looking between Damon and Elena with a catty smile on her face. "Too bad it can only keep supernatural creatures away."
Without turning her eyes away from them, Gretta snapped Liam's neck and with the blood-filled syringe in her hand she disappeared into the darkening evening air.
