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Note: This chapter has been revised. Nothing's new, it's just better writing.

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Fifty Shades of Grayson

Silence.

Time slowed, stopped, or did whatever it did when your heart snapped in half like a twig; I shattered like a mirror being thrown against a wall. Everything as I knew it was completely and irrevocably lost as I repeated the same five words in my mind: he slept with your sister.

"Say something," Damon begged me. My ears throbbed and my mouth was so dry. I was frozen. "Anything. Please, Madeline, talk to me."

"I...I don't..." It was like the wind was being taken out of me. I couldn't breathe. "I don't have anything to say. I-I have to—"

"Don't do that." Damon grabbed my arm and stopped me from leaving, but I couldn't bear to look at him. If I stayed under the same roof with him any longer, I would start crying. If I started crying, I would never stop. "Don't shut me out, Madeline. Please, I need you to talk to me!"

I still avoided his gaze. "Damon, there's nothing I can say. You...I...I need to leave. Now."

"No, please—"

"Stop!" The word came out more abrasive than I meant it to be as I ripped my arm out of his grasp and turned to him, my eyes burning with a hatred that I didn't care to feel. Damon silenced upon seeing me, the guilt obviously consuming him. "Just...stop."

This time, when I tried to leave, he let me go. I ran out of the study as quickly as I could. My heart was pounding in my ears and my world, as I knew it, had been entirely flipped upside down. I was weak, damn it, and I realized that. If this had happened with anyone else—before I really fell in love with Damon—this wouldn't have been a problem. "Good riddance," I'd say. "Have at it. Take her. I never liked you anyway." I'd brush it off and act like it didn't matter because it wouldn't have.

Then, the very sister that betrayed me somehow thought it best to confront me.

"Madeline," Elena began, stopping me in the middle of the Salvatore hallway. "Madeline, please. You have to understand—"

"Oh? Do I now?" I whispered, holding back a hysterical laugh. Elena fell silent. "Funny! I wasn't aware that you controlled my every action, Elena! I certainly don't factor into any judgement calls you make!"

"Madeline." Damon was behind me now, and the two were boxing me in. I looked between them, disgusted with myself and the both of them at this point. He inched forward carefully, a sorrowful look on his face. "We never meant for it to happen."

"Yeah, she just accidentally found her way into your pants, right?" I laughed, but tried to calm myself down. I felt like I was internally heating, about to implode. I looked beside me and saw the stairs leading to the second floor, and I realized exactly what I needed to do. Before I went up, I sighed. "Save it, Damon, I can't talk about this."

I fled up the stairs at a normal human pace, straight into Damon's bedroom. I tried to remove all of my things as fast as possible, throwing them into the duffle bag I kept behind the chest where my clothes were kept. He had cleared a few drawers out for me, like most couples do when they spend almost every night together. As I thought about it, I came up with one question: how long have I been sleeping in a bed that my sister and my boyfriend had sex in?

I knew I had to leave, get out of the house as quickly as I could. I didn't care where I went, as long as I didn't see Damon and/or Elena for a very, very long time. But where could I go? Caroline's? Though it wasn't nearly as far as I wanted, it seemed like a great place to start.

"What are you doing?" Elena asked. I didn't even bother looking up as I ransacked the drawers for anything that was mine.

"Stop this." Damon moved closer to me, I could tell. "You don't want to move out, Madeline, at least not tonight. It's late."

"You can't hate us forever," my sister commented. At this, I stopped packing and looked up at Damon and Elena, who were standing right beside each other like they were the new "It" couple of the month. It sickened me, and I was sure I made that clear on my face.

"I can't hate you forever?" I repeated, dumbfounded with her words. This caused me to explode. "Elena, you had sex with my boyfriend! You! My sister! My own flesh and blood!" I looked at Damon next. "And you. You...you..."

He stepped forward, reaching out for me. "Madel—"

"Don't touch me!" I shrieked, causing him to freeze immediately and look up at me with confused and hurt eyes. He acted like he was the one that was going to break, and I couldn't stand it. I'd known, from the very beginning, that he had been madly in love with a woman that looked exactly like my sister and yet, I never saw this coming. And no matter how hard I tried to prepare myself, it was pointless. The two vampires were quiet as I zipped up the duffel bag beside me. "I'm not staying here anymore. In fact...I think I need to leave for a while. And I don't want to hear from you two. Ever."

"Madeline, please," Damon tried as I moved past him and rushed down the stairs. I didn't want to listen to him or anyone else, for that matter. The second I reached the bottom stair, Damon was in front of me, and I realized that if I left it this way, he would only come after me. I didn't want him to—I didn't want to see him. I couldn't.

"After everything we've been through..." I whispered quietly, feeling a stab at the place where my heart should be. Damon looked at me, his eyes misting over. I shook my head at him. "This is it, Damon. I can't forgive you anymore...not after this. I-I'm leaving."

And with that said, I opened and slammed the front door in the same second and was pleased to find that he didn't come after me. It sank in right when I hit the cold air. My sister slept with my boyfriend. My boyfriend slept with my sister. And as hard as I tried, there was no stopping it—the tears kept coming...and coming...and coming.

"They told you, didn't they?" I looked up to see Stefan walking up to me as I braced myself on the ledge right outside the front door of the Salvatore house where the moonlight hit my face and lit up my tears. I sighed.

"You knew?"

He put his hands in his pockets and slowly walked over to me. "Not until Elena blurted it out when she was emotionless. But yes, I knew. I was giving Damon a chance to tell you before I did."

I stared at him, incredulous. "Does everyone know about them?" Stefan fell silent. "Great...that's just...great."

"What they did was wrong on so many levels," Stefan said after we had a brief, peaceful moment of silence. "And it proves that you deserve better, Mads."

"Was it because..." I trailed off, and wiped my cheeks free of the wet tears. "Was it because I didn't sleep with him? Is that why he had to go to Elena?"

He shook his head immediately. "Don't internalize this, Mads. You did absolutely nothing wrong. Damon did what he did, and so did Elena. They can't take it back and...frankly, Damon had this coming. At least Elena and I were broken up when they..." For the sake of my state, he didn't finish the dreaded sentence.

I sighed heavily. "But I..." I shook my head. "I love him."

Stefan looked at me while I tried desperately not to break down in front of him, but I felt like I was literally going to fall apart. It was one thing to lose someone with death, it was another to lose someone because they didn't want you anymore. To me, losing someone because they didn't want you anymore was one of the worst things on this Earth.

"Come here." Stefan pulled me into his arms for a comforting hug, and I didn't object to it. My friendship with Stefan never failed; he protected me, and I would do the same for him...not that I was any useful. He, after all, was a vampire while I was an uncoordinated, ill-equipped human. After a few minutes of letting me cry on his shoulder, Stefan pulled away and gestured to an SUV in the driveway he had pulled up. "Listen, I'll get Silas and we'll dump him together. After that, you, Lexi, and I will go out for a drink in...some exotic city. I'll get you away from here for a while. Does that sound good?"

He gave me a sad smile, trying to make me feel better. I was about to say no when I realized that life wouldn't wait for me to get over Damon. I had to pick up the pieces and dust myself off before I made a bigger and even stronger wall yet again.

So I gave him a smile back. "It sounds perfect."

Bang.

"What the hell is going on over there?" I shouted as I woke, trying to get Damon's attention.

"I'm trying to get us out, Madeline," Damon hissed, almost sounding as if he were in pain. I rubbed my head and sat up to get attuned to everything again, but that's when the memory struck me. Or, well, I had fallen asleep and experienced the memory, but I was only now remembering it. There was a deep pit in my stomach thinking about the terrible feeling I had of being betrayed. It ripped at my core, creating a sick feeling in my stomach.

There was another sound, but this time, it wasn't useless. A rock broke from the wall, and I could see Damon's quick fingers pick it up.

"What are you going to do with that?" I asked as I climbed to my feet.

"You see that bullet casing over there?" Sure enough, the bullet that Aaron had fired at Damon obviously left a trace, and for some reason, Damon was intent on getting the casing. When I thought about what he could use it for, I realized that it wasn't an entirely feeble attempt. His hand snuck out of the bars and he reached for the bullet, screaming at the pain it caused him to stretch so far. Eventually, he got it within his fingers, and the next thing I knew, the sound of a rock hitting the metal bars repeatedly was followed by an array of bright sparks.

But it wasn't enough.

"Damon—"

He didn't listen to me. Instead, he covered the sounds of my protests by kicking the door repeatedly, his grunts audible with every boot. I winced each time, and only when the cage door slowly swung open did he stop.

"I did it," he whispered.

"Yeah. Violently," I added. Damon immediately walked out of the cage and towards mine to face me. His eyes lingered for just a moment. "What the hell are you waiting for, Damon? Get on with it! I actually do have to pee so..." I complained, gesturing for him to move it alone. A smile twitched at his lips before he set to work on the door of my cage, but nothing he tried seemed to do the trick. I watched with sympathetic pain as he grunted over and over again, failing at getting me out. He didn't listen to me, no matter how many times I spat out his name.

Finally, I settled upon yelling, "Damon! Damon, stop! Stop!" With a snarl, he looked up at me. "It's not working. You need more strength."

"I'll feed them," he said through his teeth, looking behind him at the door. "I'll find someone and I'll come back—"

"The vervain's out of my system." I swallowed, thinking my decision over. God, I'm really doing this. Hesitantly, I stuck my arm out through the bars and offered my wrist. "Here. Drink."

Damon looked up at me with electrifying eyes as his fingers closed down on my wrist softly. "But you said before—"

"I know what I said." I shook my head. "Just drink, Damon."

He was reluctant, I could tell. But after my memory...after what I had learned from Bonnie, I realized that if I had known any of that, I never would have left, no matter what the circumstance. In a way, he actually did the right thing. I was too stubborn to listen sometimes.

"You're sure?" Damon asked me quietly. I nodded, and he just looked at me a little while longer until I saw the veins appear underneath his eyes and his fangs extended. It was almost like a warning to me, and sure enough I gasped slightly, no matter how hard I tried to hold it in. Slowly, Damon tilted his head down, brought my wrist to his lips, and I turned my head just as I felt his fangs sink into my flesh. I winced at first, feeling some amount pain, but then it felt...oddly pleasurable. Eventually, he came to a stop, and he cleaned up all the extra blood that he missed. When it was over, I opened my eyes to find him staring at me with interested eyes.

"What?" I asked, bewildered with his reaction. "What is it?"

"Your blood." He released my wrist gently. "It's...sweeter."

"Err...thanks?"

He shook his head. "No, it's just...it's different, that's all." Damon cleared his throat and tried again at the locked door. Within a few seconds, he had it cracked. Damon grabbed my unbitten wrist and led me out. "Come on, let's go. Elena's—"

"Wes took her," I interrupted him. "I saw him take her, but I don't know where."

Damon took a second, probably devising a plan, before nodding. "Okay. We'll find her." The next thing I knew, he slid his hand into mine and pulled me along with him on a wild goose chase across campus. However, no matter how high or how low we looked, Elena was nowhere to be found. When the two of us, defeated, realized that she probably wasn't on campus, we climbed into his car and hit the road back to Mystic Falls.

It took us a short while to reach our hometown, though it should've taken us longer but Damon's driving was impulsively fast. Enlisting Stefan into finding Elena seemed like a good place to start; plus, Damon and I were still in the same clothes we'd been in for two days. As Damon and I finally walked into the boarding house, we ran into someone who happened to be on her way out.

"Katherine?" I noticed, looking at her with surprise while she gave me and Damon a disgusted look.

"What the hell happened to you two?" She knotted her eyebrows together while we came to a stop and turned to face her. I frowned.

"Thanks," I murmured sarcastically. She shot me a cat-like smile, her less-than-innocent eyes blazing into mine.

"Ditto," Damon shot at her.

Suddenly, Katherine gasped and pointed between the two of us and down at our entwined hands. "Oh my God! Are you two, like, together again?" she asked, feigning the preppy, human-girl attitude that most teenagers of the current generation seemed to possess.

Damon answered for us. "That's none of your business, Katherine."

She beamed, looked over at me, and whispered quietly, "For the record, I was always on your team. You're the better sister."

I looked over at Damon, who was blatantly rolling his eyes at his former vampire ex-girlfriend, but then I looked at Katherine and cleared my throat. "Uh, okay. Speaking of sisters, have you seen mine?"

"No. Not that I've been looking," she added with a snort.

"Stef?" Damon shouted up the stairs. "You awake?"

Katherine, who was on her way out at the time, turned around at us and shot another smile. "You know, he hasn't seen her, either. I know because we were together. All night."

While Damon stood, frozen as he thought over the words, I waited for it to click. "Wait a second..." I trailed off. Then, Damon wrinkled his nose in absolute disgust, and I widened my eyes. "Katherine! No, Katherine, you didn't! Tell me you didn't!"

"Oh, but I did."

"Look," Damon said quickly, trying to shake off the dirty feeling that I knew we both had. Katherine and Stefan? Ew. "Mads and I have had a really tough couple of hours so if you're implying what I think you're implying—"

"Why?" she interrupted, giving a look of feigned confusion. "What were you thinking? That our hot, naked bodies collided in one unforgettable night of passion—?"

"Katherine." I shuddered. "Please...please stop. I beg of you." I didn't want to hear about this right now, so bright and early in the morning. Since Katherine looked like Elena, all I was picturing was Elena and Stefan and...oh, God, it was gross.

Damon nodded. "Yeah, I agree. I'm gonna barf," he murmured.

However, the new human just laughed at our misery and sickness. "You know, you two should really try it sometime." And, with a wink, she turned around and headed for the door. Meanwhile, I widened my eyes in alarm at her blunt suggestion.

"Kat—"

"My work here is done. Too-do-loo," she chimed before leaving. I felt Damon shudder beside me.

"Katherine and Stefan? I...I can't think about that right now. Come on."

He pulled me upstairs with him, but when we went to Stefan's door, Damon heard the younger Salvatore taking a shower. Deciding not to disturb him and figuring that we could change while Stefan was washing the stench of Katherine off of him, Damon took us across the house to his bedroom. When we got inside, all I could picture was the memory that I'd had—the clothes that I threw into the duffle bag and the somberness of the room as I left.

"Different than you'd think?" I heard and promptly realized that I had been too quiet and was staring too long. I looked behind me at Damon, who was taking his shirt off, so I immediately turned my back to him and cleared my throat, feeling uncomfortable.

"A little."

"There's some of your clothes in the third drawer," he told me, but I raised my eyebrows without turning around. Didn't I pack up all my stuff and run like a bat out of hell?

"I have clothes here?" I couldn't stop the inquiry from coming out, no matter how hard I tried.

"Yep." Damon sighed, and I felt his presence beside me than. He walked towards the chest that I was slowly inching towards myself, and he opened the third drawer. I peered inside, noticing that it looked mostly like scraps—denim jeans and some old t-shirts...maybe even a piece of nightwear here and there. It looked like a ghost drawer.

I reached inside and grabbed the denim jeans and a washed-out shirt. "Uh, thanks." He nodded at me, and I looked around the room for a private spot to change. "Where do I..."

"Bathroom." He smiled and pointed behind me, where there was a large master bedroom with a wide threshold and no door. I began to panic.

"But the—"

"Sliding doors," he interrupted, and that's when I noticed the knob-like dents where the doors could be slid to meet each other and close off from the rest of the bedroom. I turned at him with a grateful smile.

"Thanks." He nodded, and I walked over to the bathroom to change. When I finished getting dressed, I pulled back the sliding doors with all the strength in my upper body. They were surprisingly heavy...actually, it wasn't all that surprising considering the style of the house. Damon was sitting on the edge of his bed, rifling through his phone when I stepped out. The second he saw me, he slipped his phone back into his pocket and we walked over to Stefan's bedroom to try again.

Fortunately, when we arrived, he came out of his shower fully dressed with a towel thrown over his shoulder. When he saw us, he was instantly bewildered. "Madeline? What the...?" He looked over at Damon. "Where the hell have you been?"

"Oh, you know." Damon shrugged. "We were both held against our will, I was shot in the head, and now we can't find Elena," he said nonchalantly. "How was your evening? Anything out of the ordinary?"

"Yeah, Stefan." I crossed my arms. "Have something to confess?"

"Hold on a second." He held his hands out and arched his eyebrows. "What do you mean you two can't find Elena?"

"Dr. Douche decided to take her while Damon was out. Didn't tell me where she was going," I explained. "I thought that maybe she escaped or something...you know, but we checked the dorm and here but obviously..."

"Wait, are you talking about the Whitmore bio teacher?" Stefan asked.

"Dr. Maxfield." I nodded. "AKA Dr. Douche. But titles aren't important, he just spent the last few hours keeping me locked up like an animal." I was quiet for a moment before adding, "Oh, yeah, and Damon, too."

Damon tossed Stefan his jacket. "put your hero hair on, Stefan, let's go get Elena."

"You just said you don't know where she is," Stefan accused him.

"We don't. Which means that we've got to find us some leverage. Come on," he urged, but I didn't follow him as he walked out. Instead, I looked back at Stefan and slowly began to realize what I'd voluntarily signed up for.

"He's...talking about killing someone for answers, right?"

"Probably," Stefan agreed.

"Hey, Aaron," I said with a smile as I sat down next to Aaron and pulled out the earbud from his ear. Aaron jumped out of his skin at the movement, recovered, and then it sank in that I had been let out of that stupid cage.

"Madeline..." He trailed off slowly, studying my innocent smile. Sure enough, when he looked over my shoulder, I had no doubt that Damon was behind me. I could feel Damon sit down next to me and Aaron finally growled, "And you."

Damon smiled. "Pop quiz, Aaron. So someone very important to you gets kidnapped by a mad scientist. Now do you: A, go back to watching a Friends marathon; B, call the cops; or C, kill someone close to that mad scientist?"

"Personally, I'd go with D, putting Aaron Whitmore in a cell with no food and see how he likes it." I kept my smile on my face as Aaron looked at me and swallowed, almost guilty. I shrugged. "But that's just me."

Aaron didn't respond to either one of us; like a coward, he got up from his seat as quickly as he could and ran, but Stefan stopped him instantly.

"Sit," he demanded. I patted the spot next to me that Aaron had given up, and he had no choice but to sit back down with a sigh. Stefan, meanwhile, sat in the chair adjacent to the couch me, Damon, and Aaron were getting comfortable on.

"Elena," Damon ordered. "Where is she?"

"I have no idea where Wes took her," the human defended himself.

"Well, they're not in his lab, so...where else could he hide a vampire?" asked Stefan. Aaron crossed his arms rudely.

"I-I'm sorry, am I supposed to know who you are?"

I leaned forward and clarified, "That's Stefan. Damon's brother."

"You know, you should watch your tone with him. He's kind of in the midst of a psychotic break," Damon quipped, leaning over to look at Aaron with a sick, sadistic grin. Stefan blinked.

"I'm sorry...I'm what?"

"Oh, come on! You don't think I know about you and Katherine?"

Stefan groaned while his brother chuckled to himself. He gave Damon a weak smile and shrugged. "Oh, I see. You're jealous."

Damon frowned. "More like disturbed."

"Okay, so...this might be a stupid question, but I'm kind of wondering...what does that say about you and Audrey?" I leaned forward on my knees, waiting for the answer, when something hit me. "Wait a second, where the hell is Audrey? I haven't spoken to her since I called her and invited her to the party but she told me she couldn't come."

"We had a fight," Stefan explained. "So she went back to her house and...now she's probably at school. I haven't talked to her either." I frowned. "What?"

"So your solution to this was to sleep with Katherine?"

"You're jealous over this, too?"

"Stefan, it's not jealousy! I'm actually disgusted by it." I shivered just at the thought. "Besides, I'm kind of disappointed in you."

"How are you not dead?" Aaron blurted out, taking out entire focus from the conversation at hand away as he looked over at Damon. "I shot you."

Damon looked around cautiously. "Well, that's because you went for the head. You gotta go for the heart. Mads, slap the back of his head for me."

"I'm not going to—"

"Here. I'll do it." He leaned over me and whacked Aaron right in the head like a disapproving father. "Go for the heart next time. Now where's Elena?"

"I have no idea. All Wes told me was to go about my life as usual."

"Well, you're going to call Wes and you're going to tell him that if he doesn't give us Elena, the next experiment that he conducts is going to be sowing your arms back on," Damon threatened, and I knew it was definitely not an empty one. Aaron, clearly affected by the threat, pulled out his phone and got up to dial Wes's number.

"Do you have Elena?" Aaron asked the second he got on the phone. Damon and Stefan could probably hear Wes on the other line, but I couldn't. "Uh...Madeline Gilbert and Damon and Stefan Salvatore are going to kill me unless you give them Elena...or they're right in front of me and Damon's imagining what my kidney would taste like." After a brief pause, Aaron finally hung up the phone and looked at the three of us waiting for the result. "He said to meet him in his classroom in an hour and, if I'm safe, he'll give over Elena."

After we received the compromise, we decided to head over to the science building. I expected Aaron to try to make a move and run, but I think he knew inside that two vampires would definitely be able to catch him.

"You three want to give me a backstory about how you all know each other?" Stefan asked, feeling left out.

"Aaron and I met at this society party thing that Katherine dragged me to," I said. "And then he showed up at the cages yesterday, shot Damon in the head, and left me there to rot."

Damon sighed and, this time, cut out all the bias—well, all of my bias. "Aaron is Aaron Whitmore and he comes from a very long line of vampire-probing, blood-testing, organ-removing freaks called Augustine."

Stefan looked at his brother with confusion. "Why do you know this?"

"Because I was their test subject in the fifties."

"What do you mean 'test subject'?"

"Meaning, I donated my body to science. Except, I was alive...and it was against my will."

"Wait." Stefan pulled us to a stop. "Hold on a minute. How do I not know about this?"

Damon sighed heavily and moved us along again. "Oh, don't get all guilt-ridden, Stefan, on me. We were on the outs back then. And by the time it was over, you know, it was over."

"Why don't you finish the rest of the story, Damon?" an angry Aaron Whitmore probed. I stood silently, not wanting to get in the middle of a brother-tiff or talk to the human ex-friend that decided to leave me in a cold cell for his uncle to do whatever he wanted with me.

Stefan eyed the human next to him with an incredulous look. "I don't recall saying that you could talk. Did I say that he could talk?" Damon and I both shook our heads.

"No."

"I don't remember anything."

"I didn't think so." Wow. Sassy Stefan was fun.

At last, we finally reached the science building and we all promptly walked to the Applied Microbiology class that Dr. Maxfield had so thoroughly embarrassed me in on our first day.

"Which one is it?" Damon asked me.

"Right here," I said, gesturing to the classroom right beside us. Aaron led the way inside, but when we were all inside of the classroom and Damon shut the door, the person we were expecting to find was not the person sitting in the top row of seats in the classroom.

"21501." Damon's Augustine number? When I looked over at Damon, I found him staring at the man in the top rows with a paled face, as if he was seeing a ghost. When he finally said the name, I realized that it was exactly that.

"Enzo." His voice was barely a whisper. I looked up to Enzo, who just stood up straight and faced the four of us from where he was standing. Enzo? The Augustine vampire that Damon supposedly left to die in a fire back in 1958?

"It's been a while, mate," the British vampire agreed.

Uh oh.

"Who the hell are you?" Stefan asked, obviously confused. I, for once, was glad that I was not.

"Lorenzo. But my friends call me Enzo. Ah, kidding." The vampire made his way down to the floor of the classroom and threw a hard stare at Damon. "I don't have any friends." Politely, Enzo stuck his hand out for Stefan to take, but Stefan didn't bother with it. Instead, he turned to Damon for an explanation, causing Enzo to scoff at Stefan's rudeness.

"Enzo's another Augustine vampire." Supposed to be a dead one. "Or cells were next to each other. So we're here to meet somebody. Wes Maxfield. You know him?"

Enzo scoffed. "That's your first question for me?"

"I...I kind of have a question," I spoke up, immediately cursing my mouth for speaking. Nevertheless, I kind of did have a question. An obvious one. Damon, however, shook his head.

"Nope. She doesn't have a question."

I frowned. "Yeah. I do."

"No, you don't," Damon hissed, turning towards me with a hard stare. I realized quickly that I caught the attention of Enzo, who chuckled under his breath at the absurdity of me and Damon arguing about a silly little question. Despite my better judgement, I stepped forward.

"How did you survive the fire?" I questioned, no doubt earning a furious stare from Damon. I didn't bother to look back and find out.

Enzo gave me an impressed look. "Well, would you look at that. Damon actually found someone to confess his sins to."

"Uh..." Aaron trailed off. "Does somebody want to tell me what the hell is going on here?"

"I'd love to!" Enzo exclaimed with a smile, gesturing towards the seats in Maxfield's classroom. "Have a seat. I've been waiting seventy years to tell my story."

"This is ridiculous," Stefan muttered and turned to Aaron, holding out a hand. "Aaron? Your phone?" Hesitantly, the blonde human gave his phone over to the Salvatore and the pissed vampire stormed out of the classroom with it in his hand. Enzo gave a warning to the three of us left.

"I wasn't asking, you know."

Reluctantly, Damon and Aaron began to walk towards the seats to sit down while Enzo confessed his story to us. I, too, began to walk over to the comfortable lecture chairs, but instead of letting me go with Damon and Aaron, Enzo caught my hand and, in a few moments, there was an excruciating pain in my wrist. Unable to hold it in, I let out a cry.

"Enzo!" Damon snapped, his eyes flaring red with anger as he turned around and braced himself to fight Enzo for me. Enzo shook his head.

"Back off, Damon," he said calmly. I bit down on my lip to keep from letting out a groan at the throbbing pain in my wrist, feeling as if it were about to snap in half. "I'll break her wrist. And that's only the first thing I'll break."

I gave Damon a look, telling him to do as Enzo said and save me from a trip to the doctor's office. Damon, though hating it, backed off slowly and watched as Enzo pulled me towards the teacher's desk and lifted me onto it for safekeeping. He let go of my hand, which was luckily not broken but was very sore. I rubbed it as he climbed onto the counter with me and sighed.

"Damon and I had been locked in those cells for years," Enzo began. "Tortured, beaten...humiliated. But we weren't going to let them break us, no. We decided, if we were going to escape, we needed to work together. We needed each other."

Before Enzo could continue, Stefan walked back into the classroom and Damon stood up with his hands in the air, waiting for a response.

"He's not sending her," Stefan announced.

"Tragic," Enzo deadpanned. "Can I continue my story now, please?"

"Doesn't he know we have Aaron?" Damon asked, causing his brother to shrug.

"He doesn't care. He's willing to risk it."

Aaron intervened this time and, unsurprisingly, Enzo was growing impatient, like he was reaching a no-tolerance level. I swallowed and inched away from him, afraid of what he'd do to me next if they didn't pay attention to him. Aaron just complained, "What? Well, let me talk to him. He'll listen to me!"

"What part of 'he doesn't care' are you not registering?" an annoyed Damon snapped. It looked like he was about to continue, but before he could, I felt myself become weightless, and the next thing I knew, there were fangs piercing my skin for the second time in one day. Except, this time, it wasn't like how Damon handled me. This time, Enzo was practically ripping me apart with his teeth, draining the blood from my body with no remorse. I struggled, but it just hurt more. Eventually, Enzo let me go and tossed me down to the ground carelessly with a bleeding neck.

"Now where were we?" Enzo asked aloud, licking his lips free of my blood.

Damon growled and moved closer to him. "I was just about to murder you—"

Then, I felt myself weightless again, but this time there was no pain that followed. This time, Enzo was just pulling me around by the arm, warning with his eyes that he'd bite me again and perhaps kill me if Damon tried anything else.

"No...no, I don't think that was it." Damon's eyes flashed with anger again. I could practically feel Enzo's eye roll. "Oh, dear God. Look, she'll be absolutely fine. Here." This time, there was no pain, only the unwilling sound of my muffles as I screamed to get his bleeding wrist out of my mouth. However, I could not stop the rusty blood from sliding down my throat and healing my system. He finally pulled away from my mouth and sighed. "Good. Oh, right. I was telling my story and you're all politely listening for the sake of this beautiful young woman."

Stefan, Damon, and Aaron did not say anything more, and just listened to Enzo. Next thing I knew, he was shouting.

"So! I had given Damon all of my blood ration so he'd have the strength to escape and save me in the process. The plan began perfectly, didn't it? I was waiting in the cage for him to release me. I was waiting for my friend; my cellmate. The only soul with whom I'd connected with in all those years of captivity. Then a fire starts, burns out of control. But Damon just can't get the damn cage open. He looks me in the eye, as if he doesn't even recognize me, turns around, and saves himself; leaving me to die."

"Well you didn't die," Stefan added. "Obviously."

Enzo inhaled sharply. "No. Unfortunately, I lived. I was spared by one of the scientists so I could spend another fifty years on a table being opened and closed." He paused for a brief moment and then spoke again, lighter this time. "Now that we've all been acquainted, I'm going to find something to wet my whistle. And she's coming with me."

He dragged me out of the classroom into Wes's personal office, despite the protests of Damon and Stefan. I wanted to run, but I was no idiot—not only could a vampire catch me, but any regular human could, too. When Enzo finally released me to rummage through Wes's things for alcohol, I touched the spot on my neck where I had been bitten to find crusted blood and no word. I sighed, exhausted.

"So...how long have you and Damon been a couple?" Enzo asked bluntly. I looked up at him and practically snorted.

"What?"

"You. Damon." He smiled, but didn't look up to meet my confused gaze. "How long have you been together?"

"We're not," I told him, finding the question just uncomfortably blunt. "Well, I mean, we were, but then he slept with my sister. And then I got sent to an alternate dimension by a creepy shadow-self...thing. So now I don't remember when we were together. I don't remember much at all." Enzo finally looked up at me, but I kept rambling nervously. "I mean, the memories have been coming back in bits and pieces so it's not all that bad. Oh! And I learned that the only reason he chose my sister over me was because my friend had a premonition that I was going to die if we stayed together so..." I found Enzo's irritated gaze and stopped. "I'll shut up now, then."

Enzo scoffed. "None of that strikes me as surprising. Damon sleeping with his girlfriend's sister? Actually sounds spot on."

I frowned. "What? Why?"

Finally, Enzo found the bourbon that he'd been looking for and, after beaming at it, looked up at me with the answer. "Well, love, Damon has no moral compass whatsoever. He's a monster. One of the things that I admire about him, I'll admit to it, but it's also very inconvenient at times." Suddenly, he grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the office in the opposite direction of the classroom. "Let's go."

"Wait." I tried to stop us, but he was too strong. "Wait! Where are we—"

Enzo clamped a hand on my mouth to refrain from me drawing attention by screaming, but I tried to even with his hand muffling my sounds. All that came out, though, were muffled cries for help that weren't audible to anyone. We finally stopped at a small storage closet, where he shoved me inside. I expected him to just shove me and leave me there, but Enzo kept his hand on my mouth and walked inside with me. His hand was only removed after he tied my hands behind my back with double-knotted rope, did the same with my feet, and he replaced the taste of his salted skin with the taste of adhesive duct tape that restricted me from making any sounds.

"I apologize," said Enzo, but I could tell he wasn't serious at all. "But I'm doing you a favor. I'm going to help you win your boyfriend back."

Though I couldn't say anything, I was cursing him out in my mind. He just shot me a sick smile before he shut me in the closet, despite my best efforts to get him to stop.

Then he shut the door and I was locked inside a more modern type of cell.

"New York?"

"Too close."

"Vegas!"

"No. Too tourist-y."

"Oh, come on!" Lexi and Stefan were sitting in the front of the SUV, arguing over where we would go after dumping Silas in the quarry. She looked back at me, wanting my input on things, but I was just sitting in the back looking out the window, minding my own business. Trying to pretend like I wasn't crumbling to pieces. "Madeline, where do you want to go? I think you would like Vegas. Vegas, right?"

Truth be told, I didn't care. As long as it was out of goddamn Mystic Falls. I turned to her with a small, weak smile. "Uh, sure. Vegas sounds great."

Lexi sighed as I tried to return to my solitude, but she wouldn't let me. "Listen, there's nothing I can say that will make you feel better about this. But you should know that you deserve way better than Damon Salvatore."

She scoffed. I lowered my eyes and remembered the story Damon told me and Elena when we had gone to New York. God, I was such an idiot! I didn't see it, even then! While Elena was making sexual innuendos at Damon and they were feeding off of the same person like they were having some kind of sex party, I made excuses for her. I thought it was because she was emotionless and that it was what vampires did. But I knew the truth now.

I cleared my throat and looked back up at Lexi. "T-Thanks, Lexi. I appreciate it."

She looked at my sympathetically, but really, after she turned around and started talking to Stefan again, I zoned out. It wasn't until the sound of silence in the car filled my ears that I actually paid attention. Stefan glanced over at the passenger seat, as did I, and we saw no one.

"See ya, Lexi." Stefan sighed.

"The veil?" I whispered, thinking aloud. I saw him nod.

"Probably. You want to sit up front?"

"I'll wait until we reach the quarry."

And that's exactly what I did. When we reached the quarry, both Stefan and I climbed out of the car, but I merely stood by while he grabbed Silas's remains out of the trunk and put them down on the ground. But the two of us were readily aware that something was wrong when the sound of broken stone was coming from the tarp we had wrapped Silas in.

"What was that?" I asked Stefan as I walked forward to the tarp. He shook his head, indicating that he didn't know, either, before he kicked the tarp and the sound came again. Broken stone. That could only mean one thing...

"Don't bother," said another voice just as Stefan opened the tarp to reveal the broken stone. "I'm not there."

The two of us looked up to see Elena standing right before us—only, it wasn't Elena. It was Silas, posing as my backstabbing sister. Stefan rose from his crouched position.

"Silas," he breathed.

I shook my head in refusal. "No. You were dead...or...or stone—whatever. The spell worked, we saw you."

"That's the funny thing about spells. They're bound by nature, and nature demands balance, so every spell has a loophole. The spell that turned me to stone was bound by a witch. A living witch." Bonnie? What the hell was Silas implying here? "So when that witch died, the spell broke."

I had to be hearing this wrong. "But Bonnie's not dead."

Silas shrugged. "Oh, it doesn't matter, does it?" We were all quiet. "And here's where the mystery of me comes full circle. I created the immortality spell two thousand years ago. I could never die. So nature needed to find a balance—a version of me that could die. A shadow-self. A doppelgänger."

Oh, that's wonderful. "So this is finally your real face?" Stefan asked, surveying Elena's face that we knew too well. "You're another one of them?"

"Not exactly." And, just like that—in the blink of an eye—Silas was no longer Elena anymore. As he transformed himself, he became the very person that I was standing next to. The person I called my friend.

"Stefan," I whispered.

"Hello my shadow-self," Silas mused to his doppelgänger as he walked forward. I looked between them.

"T...Two..." I trailed off, but before I could say anything more, Silas plunged something into Stefan's stomach, and it was all downhill from there. I screamed and kicked for Silas to let him go, but there was nothing I could do. Silas was the very first immortal being—I was a human, and a weak one at that.

"Do you have any idea what it's like to starve for two thousand years?" Silas hissed in Stefan's ear.

"Madeline," Stefan choked out as he fell to the ground. "Run!" I looked up from Stefan to see Silas staring at me as if I were his next meal. "Run!"

I had no choice but to listen to him. But as I tried to run, Silas grabbed my arm tightly and tossed me to the ground so I landed with such a hard impact that I was sure I had a broken bone somewhere.

"You're not going anywhere, Miss Gilbert," Silas warned me. I was only left to watch in agony as Silas dragged Stefan's weak body into the safe that was originally intended for the immortal, himself, and locked him inside. He pushed, and Stefan tumbled down to the water screaming, causing me to scream out for him. This couldn't be happening. Stefan and I didn't deserve this.

Once Silas finished with Stefan, he bent down to look at me. "Please," I said, letting out a shaking breath as I tried to crawl away from him, but inevitably failed. "Don't do this. Let me go. I don't have anything you want."

Silas tsked. "You don't know the half of it. Besides, there's nothing you can do now." He reached out and touched my cheek, causing me to shudder immediately at the cold and heartless touch. I tried moving away again. "I'm afraid I have bigger and better plans for you. I hear your boyfriend cheated on you with your sister? Quite the scandal. You must be heartbroken." I watched as a smile overcame his face, and I fought back the bile in my throat. "Don't worry. I'll take all that pain away. Promise."

The memory came to me after Enzo shut the door and condemned me into darkness. But when I snapped out of it, I was determined not to let it slow me down. My hands and feet were tied, bound so tightly by Enzo's strong knotting, and I found it impossibly painful whenever I tried to struggle with it. I was hardly giving up, so I managed to force myself onto my feet and I stumbled around the closet hoping to find a light switch somewhere so I could see what my options were. Eventually, I slammed myself into the wall on accident, and after a few moments of sliding, I felt a light switch poke at my shoulder. Relieved, I maneuvered myself along to flip it upwards.

The lights came on, and I breathed a sigh of relief—or, well, one close to it since the duct tape was so restricting.

I looked around the closet to find something to help me—scissors, glass...anything. But as far as I could tell, there was nothing useful enough to cut through strong binding rope.

Then, something interesting caught my eye towards the floor. The shelves in the storage closet were made out of the rusty old metal shelves with bolts lined evenly in them, but there was a side of one shelf that had a dented and somewhat sharp corner. It looked like it could potentially cut through the ropes and help me get out, so I decided to go ahead with it after one more sweep to see if there was anything more definite. I hoped over to the shelf and fell headfirst to the floor, but despite the pain, I sat up and wiggled my body to get the ripe by the sharp edge. I knocked some things over, sure, but I was getting somewhere.

For the next few minutes, I spent my time lifting my body up and down so that the edge would cut the ropes. It was working, but it wasn't going all that fast. By ten minutes, I was completely worn out from all the lifting, but I had to keep going in order to free myself. I pushed and pushed and pushed and a few minutes later, the ropes split in two and my hands were free. I hastily began to untie the ropes from my feet and ripped off the duct tape from my mouth last. The second I was free, I jumped up from the floor and bolted to exit, only to have it open and cause me to run smack into the person who found me.

"Madeline?" Damon asked, holding me upright as I recoiled from bumping into him. Again, I breathed a deep, deep sigh of relief. "Are you okay?"

I nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine, Enzo just—"

As if the past few days weren't filled with enough surprises, Damon pulled me forward and planted one right on my lips without hesitancy at all this time, cutting my sentence off entirely. I wasn't objecting to the kiss—it was nice and all, but I literally just spent fifteen minutes practically doing horizontal squats to get myself out of rope. I wasn't really feeling happy to be kissed.

So when he pulled away, I just moved on. "How did you find me?"

"Enzo gave me a choice," he said. "You or Elena. He would only tell me where one of you were."

I looked up at him. "And you chose me? God damn it, Damon! What about Elena? I was perfectly fine!" He gave me once of his looks, as if telling me something without the words. I sighed. "Sorry. What I meant to say was thank you, but seriously?! Elena's still in danger!"

Damon shook his head. "Don't worry about it. Stefan just called while I came over here to get you and said that he found Elena, himself. She's safe." I closed my eyes and took a moment to myself to bathe in relief before Damon continued. "Enzo was...poisoned by Wes or something. I don't know, but bottom line is, he's out."

"That's good. Really good." I rubbed my hands, trying to remove the red rings that had been created by the ropes, but it was useless. It would only go away with time and some lotion. Suddenly, I felt Damon reach forward and start to rub circles into my wrists for me, relieving me of the chore. I closed my eyes again and breathed slowly, trying to get rid of the claustrophobic feeling of being locked in a closet.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Damon whispered. I opened my eyes again.

"Yeah. I'm fine. Enzo just ties ropes ridiculously tight." I chuckled against my better judgement, but when I looked up, I found Damon staring at me. In an attempt to desperately get him to stop looking at me like he was in love with me, I sighed. "Please stop that."

"I'm sorry." Damon avoided his eyes, knowing exactly what he was doing wrong. "It's just been so long, Madeline. And you don't know how good it feels to know that you know the truth."

"The truth doesn't mean anything," I told him quietly, locking our eyes together. "You...you have to decide for yourself what you want. I won't do to Elena what you two did to me." It's a little late now, something in my subconscious snarled at me, but I pushed it into the deepest, darkest corner of my mind.

Damon nodded. "I understand." He dropped his hands and jerked his head back. "Come on. Let's get you back."

"I'm going to pick up Elena and then we'll be heading home," Caroline promised me as we spoke over the phone. "We should be back in a few hours."

I sighed and sat down on my bed, all freshly showered and dressed for bed. I tucked my legs underneath each other and got comfortable before I spoke again. "Okay. Bonnie's out with Jeremy, I think. She'll probably get back to the dorm around the same time as you two. How's Elena doing?"

"She's fine. Stefan rescued her, so she's safe. I just talked to her actually, and...well..." Caroline trailed off, making me highly suspicious of the way she seemed to back out of the sentence like she wasn't sure if she could tell me or not. I frowned.

"What is it?" I urged, thinking that something was desperately wrong. Did Wes somehow manage to turn her human or something drastic like that? "What's wrong?"

"I don't know how you're going to feel about this," Caroline began, making me more nervous. "But...Mads...Damon broke up with her. Just an hour ago."

And I sat there, my heart pounding in my ears so hard that I was going to become deaf. I tried to contain myself and my intrigue, my confusion, and my hopefulness.

"What?" I stuttered, partially unable to grasp the concept of what she was telling me. Was this my fault? Did I somehow give Damon the impression that I wanted him to break up with her—I mean, I did on some level, but...well, I didn't exactly mean for it to happen. I wanted him, but at the expense of my sister's feelings? I wasn't the same kind of person that she was, I couldn't hurt her for my own selfish gain.

"Yeah. I'm heading over there to pick her up now. She's really torn up about it." Caroline paused. "What about you? Are you...okay?"

After a long moment of thought, I realized that I needed to form those thoughts into words before Caroline thought I was dead or something. Immediately, I drew in a sharp breath. "Nothing I can't recover from," I mumbled. Suddenly, there was a sharp knock on the door, and I decided to end the call with Caroline before answering the knock. "Listen, Caroline, I've got to go. I'm extremely tired."

Caroline sighed as I got up from the bed and moved towards the door. "Yeah. Don't wait up for us, just go to bed, Mads. We'll see you in the morning." I thanked her and we said our goodbyes. The knocking on the door just kept coming and coming and coming relentlessly.

"Relax!" I hissed under my breath as I threw the phone down on the bed and opened up the door. But the second it swung open and I realized who it was, I froze. "Damon?"

"You were right. There was absolutely nothing selfless about my act to choose her because I thought you were in danger," he blurted out, his eyes wide and crazy. I didn't dare say anything. "And I shouldn't have slept with her in the first place. It was a horrible, drunken mistake that I never plan on making...ever again for the rest of eternity."

I exhaled. "Damon..."

"I need to say this, Madeline. I need to tell you what I wanted to say the night you left me. You may not remember it but—"

"I remember it," I told him softly, nodding. I swear, I saw a fraction of a smile, and then a darkened look. "Sorry. Continue."

"There's no excuse in the entire world that could ever make up for what I did," Damon told me slowly, trying to come up with the words. I could tell this wasn't rehearsed, but rather impulsive. "It's what I do. It's who I am. When you pushed me away, I snapped and I did something that I have regretted since I realized I'd done it. And with everything that's happened with you...I just..." He trailed off, almost at a loss for words, but I didn't dare try and help the situation. He had to come up with them on his own. Finally, Damon looked up at me and just breathed, somewhat dazed, "I love you, Madeline. So much more than you will ever be able to know."

We stared at each other, both of us completely silent and still. I wanted to say something, but there were no words that I could express. What was I supposed to say? I loved him back? It felt odd to say it out loud, and I suspected that he didn't really need to hear it at all. Once he surged forward and captured me with a kiss, we were both gone. No more words, just actions. I didn't object this time or think about Elena or frankly ponder anything else at all—he was my only focus. It felt so good to be kissed and know that it was because someone loved you unconditionally, not because of a trance or because you were a damsel in distress or even because of a passionate anger. This kiss was truly, purely, and solely because he loved me.

"Wait." Finally, I had to object, because I felt a nagging pit in my stomach where guilt would normally be. Damon seemed annoyed, but complied with me as I asked, "What about Elena?"

I wanted to hear it for myself. I wanted to hear him say it; I wanted him to tell me the reason himself. "I broke up with Elena when I got back to the house tonight. It was something that I've needed to do for a long time. I just didn't know how to."

"Do you love her?" I asked quietly, instantly regretting it when I said so. A flicker of emotions crossed Damon's face until he finally sighed.

"In a way," he agreed. "But it's different with her."

"Different?" What an excuse. I should've been immediately offended.

He chuckled, finding my objection somehow amusing. I wanted to be angry with him, but he pulled his hand up and brushed a strand of hair out of my eyes with a smile and shook his head. "If only you remembered everything, you would know why it's different. Madeline, telling you that I love you was never enough. It will never be enough."

I paused. "Oh."

"Mmhmm." He leaned forward and kissed me again, this time pulling me even closer than before. I was finished with my petty objections, finding no other reason to stop him from continuing to kiss me.

I don't want you all to get your hopes up...things come crashing down in Mystic Falls as easily as they get going. Thank grapejuice101 for bringing Damon and Madeline together at the end. I originally planned on having them separated until further notice, but...hey. There you have it.

Love,

BellaSalvatore1918

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