A/N

Thank you to everyone who is reading, following, favoriting, and especially reviewing! I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get this new chapter up. Life has been a little crazy. I was hoping to get the next scene finished to post with this one, but it was just taking me too long to find time to do that, so in order to tide you over for a bit, here is Damon's POV. He's the most fun to write anyway. I'm curious to find out what your guesses may be for what Matt is up to and what's going on with the phone call at the end.

Happy reading!

-Norah

March 2018

Mystic Falls, VA

Damon and Elena were back in Mystic Falls, camping out in his old room, stepping over schoolchildren on their way to the kitchen. How long they'd stay in their hometown, he didn't know. Until the magic crew said Elena was out of danger. Elena hadn't left Charlottesville quietly. Lots of noise, indeed. It was all "I've got school, Damon," and "maybe I just imagined it," and "pregnancy hormones can do all sorts of strange stuff, so that vision thing means nothing," and "you already got me pregnant, and now you're making me flunk out!" Caroline had offered to compel her professors into giving her straight A's and forgetting that she had missed any classes, but Elena was having none of that. Damon would have drugged his wife, to get her out the door, if Meredith hadn't warned that no sedative was safe enough for the baby. He'd finally had to get Jeremy to fake-cry about how worried he was about his big sister.

Their party was on a Friday night. In the wee hours of Saturday morning, Damon and Jeremy finally coaxed Elena out of the apartment and into Damon's Camaro. Bonnie flew in on Saturday, and essentially put Elena on house arrest at the boarding house. So far, Bonnie and Alaric thought she could be in danger of a. losing the baby, b. getting possessed by weird demon powers, or c. hurting herself if a vision brought on a fainting attack or told her to jump off a bridge. All weekend, Elena moped in Damon's old bedroom, studying for anatomy tests she was supposed to take that week, pouting, and generally being angry at everyone else in the house.

All weekend, Alaric tried to give Damon advice on being a "dad." Even the word "dad" seemed strange, far too modern, far too cutesy. Damon didn't listen to much of Ric's advice, especially after he learned that it was no longer kosher to spank your own child. Seriously? The kid was supposed to sit on a chair in "time out"? Possibly counting to 100? Alternatively, the kid could stand in a corner on one foot? None of it made any sense to Damon. And these modern people thought they could protect children from bad parents? How do you legislate about meanness, cruelty, or being an asshole? His father was miserable sonofabitch, but he hurt Damon with his words, not his fists. By demeaning his character every step of the way, by attempting to control his mind, by making him feel like nothing. Like less than nothing. But spankings? Those hurt a little, and usually stopped him from doing stupid shit, but they didn't scar him. Damon supposed he was lucky in that way — Giuseppe Salvatore was a lot of things, but he wasn't physically abusive. Tommy Fell's dad used to beat him, hard. Some nights he'd climb in Damon's window and they'd stay up late talking by candlelight before Tommy fell asleep on the floor. Damon and Stefan's nurse — a mulatto slave rumored to be the child of their uncle — rubbed salve on Tommy's cuts and bruises, cursing Mr. Fell under her breath. Damon would never beat his kid. He'd seen the damage first-hand.

But smacking a child's butt with his open palm? Or even a belt? That seemed a perfectly effective way of stopping little baby Salvatore from pulling hair or running into traffic. Instead he should make her stand on one foot in corner?

So, he tuned out Ric, and he definitely tuned out Caroline. Bonnie was a little better, probably because she had no kids of her own and therefore wasn't hell-bent on giving him unsolicited advice. She had told him she was excited to see him as a dad.

Dad. That seemed weird. Wrong. Every so often, he daydreamed about just taking off for parts unknown. Maybe Australia. He'd only been there once. Damon Salvatore was not meant to change diapers. Or coach little league. Or be a good person. He was not the good brother. And let's face it, human Stefan would be a far better father than human Damon. Sometimes Damon felt like he didn't deserve this life.

But it wasn't Stefan. Stefan was dead. And long before his brother died, Elena had chosen Damon. He'd gotten the girl. He could never leave Elena. And now a baby? A piece of him inside her? A piece of Damon that would live on after he was dead. It was like immortality, without the murder and sucking blood part. This baby was so good, sometimes it hurt him to think about it.

But then there was the magic. Damon was terrified of the magic. Not because he'd care if his kid could do spells or not. He of all people knew that there was nothing wrong with the supernatural. And witches came in handy. But he wanted a different fate for his child. He didn't want his daughter to have Bonnie's adolescence, to be on death's door perennially, or even to die like Bonnie had, in service of her magic.

For his kid, Damon would choose boring over special. He would choose safety.

Damon pulled into the parking lot of the mom and pop grocery store he frequented whenever he was in Mystic Falls. He'd been supporting this store for 50 years, with anonymous donations and by compelling the owner to invest wisely in stocks and bonds. Damon still missed the old outdoor marketplace at the center of old Mystic Falls. As a child, he'd accompanied his mother on shopping trips. He missed bartering with the cranky old guy who sold the best cuts of pork, and mouthwatering sausage. He missed the sweet, genteel lady who always gave his mother extra strawberries because they were Stefan's favorite. Mostly he missed the hustle and bustle of talk and laughter and barter, all with the sky above them and the ground below. But if he had to shop inside, he preferred indie stores like Beckman's to the big grocery chains. These new stores with their constant air conditioning and cheap tile floors, their fluorescent lights making everything look a bit green — chain supermarkets always seemed wrong. And when you're around long enough, you notice trends before they happen. By the early '60s, Damon knew that the Safeways and Whole Foods of the world would take over the world. He couldn't save all the mom and pop groceries. But he did save one.

"Damon," shouted out old Mr. Beckman as he slid through the back door. Damon remembered this man running around the store as a toddler, playing with blocks behind the cash register as his mother rang up groceries. Mr. Beckman didn't realize that the man he saw before him was the same man from earlier eras. When returned to Mystic Falls after a decade or more, Damon claim to be a different relative, the son, nephew, or even grandson of his earlier self. "Where have you been hiding?" the old man asked.

"Charlottesville, Mr. B."

"Nasty town," Mr. Beckman said, wrinkling his nose. "Full of hippies and pot smoke."

Damon laughed, saying, "Elena's in med school at the University there."

"That's right, you married the Gilbert girl. You treat her proper, you hear me! That girl has lost so many people, you must be extra careful with her. And I knew her daddy. Don't think you ever met him, but he was a good man."

Damon nodded, remembering Grayson Gilbert as a boy, and one long night on a barstool when the boy had been 19 and Damon had been too drunk to care who he was talking to. Damon had never told Elena that he'd known her father, not even the tiny bit he had.

He began wandering the aisles in search of chunky monkey ice cream, hot sauce to drizzle on said chunky monkey ice cream, and salt and vinegar potato chips to go on the side (dipping into ice cream optional). Elena's cravings had gotten weird in the last week. He wasn't sure if they were just normal pregnancy cravings, or had something to do with their magic baby giving her visions. But she was carrying his kid inside her ever-growing belly, so the least he could do was buy snacks and try not to throw up if she ate them in front of him.

Damon stood in the chip aisle, trying to decide between classic chips and the thicker kettle-cooked kind, when a familiar voice piped up behind him.

"Damon Salvatore?" the woman said, her voice soft and a little flirty.

He turned around to see a petite redhead with frizzy hair and freckles. Lindsay Fell — Council member, Meredith's cousin, and also, incidentally, a friend of Damon's compelled girlfriend Andie, the one Stefan had killed during a ripper binge years ago. Damon put on his best council-member/upstanding-founding-family-citizen smile.

"Lindsay Fell! Always a pleasure," he said, not meaning a word of it.

"It's actually Lindsay Washington now," Her voice was annoyingly perky.

"You got married?" he asked, feigning interest in this social-climbing socialite. Unlike the Gilberts or Salvatores, the Fells had multiplied like rabbits over the years. They'd been the richest family in antebellum Mystic Falls, their wealth only rivaled by the Salvatores'. They were all snooty, and even those who had no money left thought they did. Lindsay's father had been killed by tomb vampire ghosts a few years ago, but before that he'd taught history at the high school. Lindsay's father was one of the least wealthy Fells of his generation. Like her father, Lindsay had always had something to prove, like she wanted the townspeople, especially the snobs on the Council, to think she was richer or more important than she actually was.

She was a great-great-whatever granddaughter of his old friend Tommy, who was long dead and buried. Damon had tried to look after Tommy's descendants for a couple generations, but as the years went on, he'd grown to hate them all.

"We tied the knot last summer," Lindsay said, looking into Damon's eyes and then blushing, looking down, shy all of a sudden. She recovered herself quickly, giving him a flirty smile. "His name is Jim. He's from Richmond. He just finished up his MBA at Harvard."

"Good for him," Damon said, choosing the kettle-cooked chips and hurrying to the cash register, hoping she'd get the hint to leave him alone.

Mr. B. began ringing up Damon's ice cream, chips, and hot sauce. "I got that organic oatmeal for you, Mrs. Washington," the old man told the Fell girl.

"Lovely," Lindsay said crisply. To Damon: "Jim is actually a direct descendent of General Washington's."

Damon snorted. "You mean George Washington, first president of our country?"

Lindsay beamed at him, nodding her head enthusiastically.

He paid Mr. Beckman, telling him to keep the change, even though it was a hundred dollar bill, and walked towards the door. Lindsay followed him, like a puppy.

"I guess that means the rumors are true, then," Damon said, opening the door for her and waving her magnanimously ahead of him. "Washington must have fathered a child with one of his slaves."

She gasped. "Why would you say that?"

"Oh, you mean that your new husband is a descendent of George and Martha Washington?"

"Of course!"

"Because I wouldn't judge. I mean, having mixed blood is nothing to be ashamed of," he said as he stepped outside, squinting in the bright sunlight. It seemed different now. When he'd worn a daylight ring it had shielded him from more than just UV rays. It was like he'd never truly, completely been in sunlight as a vampire. For 153 years, Damon had not felt the warmth of the sun. Even if his skin could have tanned, he'd never have experienced that heat soaking into him, that feeling of every part of his body being made alive by the sun. Getting a nasty sunburn last summer had been a revelation. He'd failed to go inside when his skin started to feel raw because it was such an interesting feeling. He'd regretted it the next day, but in that moment, he'd felt like he was waking up from a long, long dream. Now Lindsay's hair shone in the sunlight and she was almost attractive to him. Almost. "You wouldn't have to worry about sunscreen. Oh —your kids could be really good at basketball. Was that racist?"

"Damon!" Lindsay snapped, looking like she couldn't decide whether to laugh or slap him. "Jim is not black."

"If he was a quadroon or octaroon you wouldn't know. And since you are not a racist person, you wouldn't care, would you Linds?"

She frowned, looking utterly confused.

"Did your daddy teach your American history class?"

"Why, yes he did!"

Damon laughed and laughed, the first time he'd laughed freely since Elena had almost collapsed at the party. "Too bad Ric wasn't teaching at the school when you were in high school. Because you would have learned that George Washington had no children of his own. His wife Martha had children with her first husband, who died. She was a widow and married Washington, but they never had kids together."

Lindsay bit her lip, thinking about this. "Well, then he must not be a direct descendent. I must have gotten that part wrong. Washington surely had a brother or an uncle or something."

Damon raised his brows. "Or good old Jim fed you a line he knew you'd like, considering that, if I remember, you're a Daughter of the Revolution and a Daughter of the Confederacy?" Damon had fought in the civil war on the side of the South, but even then, he'd known it was an unjust cause, or at least a stupid one. He was always baffled at southerners in the 20th and 21st centuries still clinging to the idea of how cool the confederacy was, saying the war wasn't about slavery when every one of his contemporaries knew it was (even if they didn't admit it), or holding onto an idealized version of the South (a South that had never existed in the first place).

Lindsay shook her head, saying, "Jim's nothing like you, Damon. He's stable and solid, but he doesn't have much imagination. And he certainly doesn't say things just to get a rise out of women!"

Damon waggled his eyebrows suggestively. "What are you implying, Miss Fell?"

She looked Damon up and down, as if undressing him with her eyes. "Nothing. But we should do drinks sometime. Or you could come by the house tonight. It's probably been a while since you had a home-cooked meal, and Jim's out of town."

Damon raised his left hand, showing her his ring finger.

Lindsay gasped dramatically, grabbing his hand. She stroked his wedding band. "Damon Salvatore! What is this?"

He smiled, in spite of himself. "That, Miss Lindsay, is a wedding ring."

Disappointment radiated off the little socialite as she asked, "And who's the lucky girl?"

Damon's brows rose. "Elena, of course!"

Lindsay's eyes widened. "I thought she died. Wasn't there an attack during a wedding or something?"

This silly girl would never know how close Elena had come to dying that day, or that she'd sort of died her junior year of high school, when an Original Vampire drained all her blood in a creepy ritual to break his hybrid curse, or that she'd actually died her senior year of high school, after another Original Vampire sent Matt's truck flying off Wickery Bridge and Damon's idiot of a brother saved Matt instead of Elena. Lindsay would never know that Elena had lived as vampire for two years, and then lain in a coffin for the next few years, her body cursed to sleep. Or that Damon himself was born in 1839.

But Damon just told Lindsay Fell, "That was a crazy rumor, wasn't it? There was some trouble at a wedding. But Elena is fine."

Lindsay smiled, looking genuinely relieved. "Thank god! I've felt so bad for that family. I went to school with Jenna and Jon, you know? And Miranda used to babysit me. Grayson was a good friend of my father's. So much loss. It just started to break my heart."

She was actually being sincere. Lindsay was almost never sincere.

"I'll tell her you said that," Damon said, wondering if he would.

"A Salvatore marrying a Gilbert. It does seem right. Founding families and all," she said. "Where are you two love birds living, if not in Mystic Falls?"

"Charlottesville. Elena is in medical school at UVA."

"And how's Jeremy doing? Wasn't he supposed to be dead too, at some point? But then it was all a joke? It's really hard to keep track of what's going on with the Gilberts."

Damon sighed, sick of feeding bullshit to the ever complacent and gullible citizens of Mystic Falls. Though he did take some pleasure in lying to Council members, who thought they knew all of the town's secrets and were thus even stupider than the other town citizens left completely in the dark. "Jeremy was acting out. He didn't handle his parents' deaths well. But he's fine. He went to art school out west. He's back now. I don't know if he'll stay. Look, Linds, I hate to cut short this long overdue reunion, but I need to get home. I've got some business to attend to."

He tried to walk past her, but she grabbed his arm before he could get away. "Are you up to speed on Council business?" she asked.

Damon spun around. "What Council business? I didn't think we had an active Council right now."

She smiled grimly, saying, "We do. It just got started up again."

"Who's running things?" Damon asked.

"It's that trailer trash sheriff. If you ask me, he shouldn't even have a seat on the Council. It's not like he's from a founding family. He's just not the right element, especially in leadership. He's a nice enough young man, don't get me wrong, very polite." Damon could almost smell the condescension and classism oozing off this woman. Fucking social climber. She went on, saying, "But we have to consider the whole family picture. The trashy mother who abandoned her children. And that awful sister of his. It was tragic what happened to her, but when you hang out with drug dealers in a cemetery. Well you know. But of course, it wasn't really her fault. It all comes back to the parents. I don't think the father was every married to the mother."

A tiny pang of guilt zipped through Damon as he thought of Matt's sister Vicki, of how he'd so callously turned her in a vampire after killing her druggie friends in that cemetery. As much as Matt drove him crazy sometimes, he found himself defending the new sheriff to this idiot of a Fell, saying, "Donovan may look like a dumb jock, but I wouldn't discount him. There's brains in there somewhere. And fun fact? He's a Maxwell. His family was here before yours or mine. I mean —" Damon cut off as he realized what Lindsay had said in between her classist nastiness. "Wait! Are you saying Matt-fucking-Donovan is running the Council and he didn't tell me what the fuck he was up to?

Lindsay smiled maliciously. "That's exactly what I'm saying."

"So, what's he doing?"

"It's strange," she said, narrowing her eyes. "He's investigating car crashes."

Damon sighed, rubbing his eyes with his left hand as he clutched the damned pregnancy craving groceries with the other. He'd had a headache for the past two days. Elena had been moody and irritable. So, Damon had barely slept.

At that moment, his phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket. "I got the ice-cream, okay?" he said instead of saying hello.

"It's not about the ice cream," Elena told him. Her voice was strange. Was that fear or just exhaustion?

"I got the hot sauce and chips too. Salt and vinegar," Damon said.

"It's nothing to do with food." No, it wasn't fear. And she was clearly tired out of her mind, but that wasn't what he was hearing. Elena sounded very young all of a sudden. She sounded young and helpless. "You have to get back here. Something weird is going on."

Lindsay's eyes were wider than ever. "Ice cream, hot sauce and potato chips?" she said with a fake smile.

Damon nodded, wishing she'd just leave him alone so he could have a proper conversation with his wife. God, he missed compulsion.

"You're having a baby, aren't you?" the silly woman asked.

He couldn't help smiling as he hurried past her to his car, ignoring all subsequent questions about how far Elena was along and whether they had picked out a color scheme for the nursery.

He realized that it was a good thing, worth smiling about.

Damon and Elena were having a baby. Amid all this craziness, which felt more normal to Damon than any boring day at the bar: Damon Salvatore was giving Elena Gilbert what she'd always wanted. A family.