A/N: Thank you SO MUCH for all the beautiful reviews! :):):)

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Chapter 10

"And then they lived happily ever after," Damon concluded with a quick smile, shutting the storybook closed and tossing it onto the nightstand.

"But they just met!" Hope protested, wrinkling her nose in confusion. "They should go to a ball or defeat a dragon first!"

She reached out for the book, but Damon snatched it out of her hands, thinking about turning off the lights and leaving the room with a self-explanatory 'good night,' but Hope was looking at him so sincerely puzzled that he changed his mind.

"Fine, you're right, but..." He bent down on one knee next to the bed and looked at the book with a pensive expression on his face, his eyebrows knitted.

Hope scooted closer to him, propping her head on her elbows.

Damon grimaced. "Elena's very sad tonight and I'd rather go to her than read this." He drummed his fingers over the hard book cover and looked up at Hope.

"She said she was OK when I hugged her," Hope said in a worried tone, visibly saddened by his words.

"Well, she's OK, but she lost something that was important to her and that's why she's sad." Damon put the book away and this time Hope didn't reach for it again.

"What did she lose?" Hope asked, tilting her head to the side. "Can we get it back?"

"I don't know," Damon said with a frown, rising to his feet.

Hope followed him with her eyes. "We should try. I'll help."

Damon smiled at her weakly and then grabbed her Harley-Davidson Bear and threw the toy into her arms.

It wasn't entirely accurate what he'd said about Elena losing something tonight.

Hope laughed briefly and rolled onto her side, leaning her cheek against the Bear's head. "Good night."

The loss of the cure wasn't just Elena's loss.

"Good night," Damon replied, turning off the lights and walking out of the room.

He stood motionlessly by the door for a few more seconds before slowly walking away from it.

It was a loss to both of them.

xxxdelenaxxx

It looked as if someone was deliberately swinging glimmering torrents of rain against the windows and Enzo watched the raindrops collide with the glass in detached fascination. Could fascination be detached? He kept catching himself hoping that every single thought, every emotion was a good sign. Maybe the spell was wearing off? Or maybe he was unconsciously breaking it, somehow?

"I'll never understand why Lily hasn't kicked you out yet." Gretta dropped her jacket onto a couch and sat down on the edge of a chair.

"Maybe because she isn't embittered with me for not being interested in dating her?" Enzo offered without turning his gaze away from the window.

"One of these days she's going to realize she's been giving shelter to a backstabber," Gretta said coolly after a long pause.

With an exasperated sigh, Enzo turned his head toward her, his sardonic smile faltering a little at the sight of a blood-filled syringe she was nonchalantly holding in her hand.

"It's been five years of uninterrupted bloodshed. What reasons do you have to actually call me a traitor, pray tell?" He widened his eyes at her in a mocking manner.

"Oh, I don't know," Gretta put her finger to her chin in feigned consideration. "Maybe it's the fact that your participation in said bloodshed was limited to digging the graves?"

Enzo threw out his arms with a lop-sided sneer. "Someone had to do it."

"Right. Is Lily home?"

"What's in the syringe?" Enzo asked offhandedly, narrowing his eyes at her.

Gretta snarled humorlessly. "Like you don't know."

"What are you going to do with it? It's not enough to use it for the spell. Not for the no-love one anyway," he murmured somberly.

Gretta gave him a caustic smile. "Someone's been eavesdropping."

Enzo ignored the remark. "Are you sure you didn't start absorbing stupidity instead of magic at some point?" He asked with a trace of irritation in his voice. "That'd explain why you'd be as stupid as to think that unsealing the passage between the world of the living and the world of the dead is a good idea."

Gretta laughed dryly. "There you go again. Someone should lock you up, open up you brain and research that," she said with a spiteful glint in her eye.

Enzo's mouth twitched, but he held her gaze without blinking.

"Because it's very interesting," Gretta continued. "How you maintain all these romantic notions despite losing ability to love." She smiled at his mildly confused expression. "You seem to think that we want to open the passage out of some kind of desperation? Because we care for those who died?" She made a sad face and then laughed harshly. "You may find it quite disappointing that it's simply a strategic move. Were you under the impression our fraction always consisted of just Malcolm, Astor and me? The rest of the coven fought us so hard, because we were a legion." She stood up. "And that legion is coming back tonight."

xxxdelenaxxx

Bonnie poured hot water into a cup and watched the steam for a few seconds. It used to calm her when she was a child, watching her grandmother brew tea.

Smiling faintly at the memory of her conviction that swirls of steam hovering above tea cups were a language ghosts could read, Bonnie picked up her tea and marched back to the living room.

"Creepy cliché ahead, watch out!" Jeremy called out to her as soon as she turned on the lights upon entering the room, but Bonnie jumped up almost spilling the tea anyway.

"Really?" She frowned.

Here went her quiet, cozy evening. If there was one thing she wished to keep avoiding forever it was Jeremy. Ever since she'd turned, she couldn't figure out if she suddenly started hating him or... was back to not hating him.

"Breaking into people's houses is what they teach at anti-vampire camps?" Bonnie asked, slumping into an armchair and placing the tea cup on the small table next to it.

"Actually, yes, but since you don't look very impressed anyway, I think we can skip talking about that." Jeremy stood up and sat down on a couch closer to her.

Bonnie took her cup into her hands and gazed into it. "What do you want to talk about?"

Jeremy was silent for a while before he spoke in a low voice. "You are the one who said we didn't break up."

"So you're here to officially break up with me?"

He couldn't see her eyes, so he wasn't sure how half-hearted her smile really was.

"I never intended to break up with you," Jeremy said after a pause, watching Bonnie's face, but she seemed determined to keep it unreadable. "Why didn't you call me when you came back?"

"I was glad that you were free from all this," Bonnie replied quietly. "And I wasn't sure if I was still the same person..." She stopped herself in what sounded like mid-sentence and for a second Jeremy thought she intended to say something more but she didn't.

"Why didn't you talk to me when I came to say good-bye to Elena?"

Bonnie's head snapped up. "I just told you. One day wouldn't fix anything. You still already had a life somewhere else and I was still lost."

"You didn't feel like you needed to call me?" Jeremy's voice was so low she couldn't tell his exact tone.

"You weren't calling me day and night either," Bonnie deadpanned.

"I was."

His voice was quiet, his smile sad and Bonnie half-wished for them not to continue, while the other half was making her hold her breath.

"I..." Jeremy trailed off with a sigh, not knowing if saying it was a good idea, but at the same time it seemed like the best thing to say, maybe the only one that could take that frigidly composed look off Bonnie's face. "After you died, I was paying for your phone, so I could call you every day. I must've left you over a hundred angry messages." He smiled weakly, but then continued before Bonnie's reaction could disappoint him. "So what you were going to do tonight?"

For a few moments Bonnie seemed not to have heard him, but then she pulled herself out of her reverie and shifted in her seat with a frown.

"Read," she said with a shrug, avoiding looking at him. "I found a grimoire hidden in a cover of another grimoire. It's about mind connections. Damon and Elena were spending so much time in each other's heads in the last five years that I thought I'd read it to make sure if it wasn't potentially dangerous or anything."

"Sounds fun."

Bonnie snorted. "You're not going to stay here and read with me, are you?"

"Only if you have Doritos," Jeremy said with a cautious smile.

"Nope. Just blood and tea."

Jeremy winced. "Can I at least order a pizza?"

"No. The last pizza guy I ate didn't taste good at all," Bonnie replied flatly, flipping her grimoire open.

Jeremy chuckled, the tiniest smile on Bonnie's face making him feel like a huge weight was being lifted off his shoulders.

xxxdelenaxxx

The room was eerily quiet, the silence softening a little when Damon opened the balcony doors, letting the ocean-scented wind push the curtains to the sides. The sea was darker than the sky, invisible, humming horizon that sounded simultaneously so close and so far.

Elena was curled up on the side of the bed, her head nestled in a pillow and Damon watched her while drying his hair with a towel, trying to sort out all the thoughts that were swimming around in his head today.

It hurt him seeing her so devastated by the loss of the cure. It must've had something to do with that love he remembered, but still couldn't grasp. He thought that maybe he could imagine what it felt like, if he kissed her again. He didn't think she'd believe his scientific approach, but it really was true that the closest he'd gotten to understanding what she was talking about was when he'd kissed her.

"I hope you're not asleep yet," Damon whispered, leaning over Elena and pressing his lips to her cheek.

He frowned when he tasted dried tears on her skin.

"No," Elena mumbled into the pillow, nightmares starring Kai being the last thing she wanted to experience tonight. "We should've called Liam's parents."

Damon fell onto his back with a sigh. "The hospital will call them," he said, narrowing his eyes at the dark ceiling.

He couldn't care less about the guy, and might even be tempted to consider being dead the dude's best quality, but if his death made Elena sad then he'd at least refrain from joking about it.

"It won't matter to them who calls them, especially that they didn't know you anyway, did they?" Damon continued after Elena hadn't replied to his previous statement.

"No, they didn't," Elena confirmed gloomily.

Damon turned his head, watching her for a few seconds, remembering waking up with her in his arms or his face in her hair. Even if the spell was still in place, at least today he managed to overcome those strange inner blockades keeping some of his memories at bay. Now he could remember everything clearly and the memories alone were enough to make him wish he could feel everything he remembered.

"But it'd still be better-"

"Elena, would you let me take your mind off the sad events of today?" Damon asked courtly, nuzzling her neck, his hand sliding down her arm.

He was certain most of her sadness had a different source than the death of the Ivy guy, so he decided to risk aggravating her a little in order to hopefully make her smile.

"Can you really think about that right now?"

Damon smiled. A grumpy retort was good enough for a start.

"Obviously," he muttered against her skin with a smirk Elena could imagine only too well.

Carefully gathering her hair to one side, he planted open-mouthed kisses on her cheek and along her neck, successfully interrupting Elena's attempt to turn toward him with a glare.

"You need to stop doing that," she whispered, a little too breathlessly to sound convincing.

"Why?" Very lightly, Damon ran his fingers across her cleavage before letting them roam lower so boldly it caught Elena off guard.

"Damon!..."

She thrashed against him in an apparent effort to sit up, but he used the movement to his advantage, rolling her onto her back and trapping her underneath him instead.

"Elena!" His voice was cheerfully mocking and she actually did smile after looking up at him for a second with a stern expression on her face.

"If this is your idea of old-fashioned seduction, then it's not very subtle," she stated, narrowing her eyes at him.

"Your idea of torture isn't very subtle either," Damon quipped. "For how many more nights do you intend for us to be sleeping in one bed without doing anything other than sleeping?"

"Right now we're talking, not sleeping," Elena pointed out, reaching out and wrapping her hands around Damon's neck.

He smiled. "I know and it is very enjoyable, however, there are other, even more enjoyable things that we could be doing." He traced the outline of her lips with his fingertips. "And I'm hurt by your assumption that your mood isn't my primary concern," he added when Elena snorted under her breath.

"Because it is?"

"You said my feelings were off, not my humanity, so I don't think caring about how you feel is outside of the realm of possibility," Damon argued with a trace of humor in his voice, fumbling with the strap of Elena's nightdress.

He could tell her smile was still a bit desolate, but at least it seemed like he was succeeding in diverting her attention from her dreams of ordinary human life slipping through the reality's fingers yet again.

"I guess I deserved that," Elena said with a small sigh. "For you to say that you care about me," she clarified when Damon seemed a little confused by her comment.

He considered her words for a moment and then returned her smile. "Well, that makes two of us. I probably deserved finding out that you only realized you loved me a few hours after seeing me naked."

Elena laughed and he felt a twinge of warmth in his chest, because this time there was more joy in her eyes when she smiled at him.

Elena smacked him playfully on the shoulder. "Your interpretation is way off."

"It's a fact," Damon insisted, leaning down to trail kisses across her collarbones.

He smiled against her skin, intrigued by the realization that it wasn't her labored breathing but rather how the tension seemed to ease off her entire body that made him feel so happy inside.

Lazily running her fingers through Damon's damp hair, Elena bit back a smile when she felt him catch a strap of her nightdress between his teeth and drag it off her shoulder.

"Maybe we should give it a try? Maybe if I drank the rest of your blood..." Damon suddenly proposed, struck by a thought, lifting his head to look at Elena whose face fell a little.

She shook her head. "No, you know that for the cure to work you'd have to be the first person to drink my blood and you'd have to drink all of it." She paused, absently grazing his chest with her fingertips. "You said you didn't want the cure."

"You said I wanted it," Damon countered, glancing at her hand on his chest.

Elena's eyes flew to his when he caught her hand and pressed it to his heart.

"I remember saying I wanted to take it for us."

Elena smiled brokenly. "Doesn't matter now," she said barely above a whisper, her voice breaking.

"Don't say that." Damon cupped her face in his hands and her tears-filled eyes shifted back to him. "If the cure only works as a whole, they won't be able to do anything with that single vial of your blood either. The only thing they can do is use it as leverage, so there's a chance we can still get it back."

For a second Elena's eyes lit up, but then she sighed sadly. "Even so, they'd probably demand some nefarious things in exchange."

"Your tone seems to imply I wouldn't do whatever was necessary," Damon offered, wiggling his eyebrows to cheer her up.

"Damon!" Elena whispered in a scolding tone and then pulled his face down for a kiss.

Half-way through the kiss she seemed to have second thoughts and Damon smiled inwardly in amusement at the realization that she'd probably kissed him on an impulse, like she would've had under spell-free circumstances.

Ignoring her attempts to break the kiss, Damon pinned Elena's hands on either side of her head and kissed her fully on the mouth over and over again, his body pressing against hers.

Elena tried to remind herself that it wasn't the best idea, but Damon's kisses felt so passionate and sincere that all she could think about was that perhaps all the spell had done was plant a false conviction in his mind, make him think he didn't love her and the whole absorbing all the love out of someone aspect of it was just a ruse.

"I think I'm falling in love with you."

Elena froze, not sure if the words weren't just a figment of her imagination.

"It's true," Damon added, sensing her hesitation.

Elena's eyes fluttered open and she looked at Damon, searching his face for a confirmation and finding it so easily it made her feel scared that she might be wrong, that she might simply be seeing in his eyes what she wanted to see.

"How do you know?" Elena asked in a hushed tone, afraid to even blink to miss any second of this moment, her eyes locked with his when Damon pulled them upwards into the sitting position.

"Because..." He trailed off, his eyebrows furrowed.

It could be because of the spell, but he rather thought that it was because this feeling was impossible to close it in just a few words that was the reason why he didn't think he could find the right words to describe it. But he wanted to describe it for her. Just like he wanted to feel it.

Something warm seared through him, painful but not unpleasant, just the opposite, in fact. Damon repeated the words to himself just to check if it was really the realization that he wanted to love her that ignited the feeling.

"Because I remember all the reasons why I loved you," he said at last, smiling at how simple and obvious this answer was.

Elena's mouth twitched into a nervous, happy smile, but she looked almost afraid to believe his words. "Damon, you don't have to-"

"They say you don't love anyone for any specific reasons, but I don't think that's true," Damon gently cut her off, pushing unruly strands of hair off Elena's eyes. She drew a breath and listened to him in silence, his voice growing simultaneously stronger and quieter with every sentence. "Even if you feel that immediate connection the moment you see someone, it's everything that happens afterwards that matters. I remember... I remember everything that you said to me, did for me. Your eyes when you looked at me. Everything you made me feel, everything you taught me." He took Elena's hands in his and squeezed them tightly, exchanging a warm smile with her. "Even if they really took my love for you away... I can't see how with all the memories, with you being you, being here, this love wouldn't come back to me. It's like... When we kiss, I can't feel anything else for you than what I know you feel for me. In those moments, I feel it's the same feeling."

"Even if you're just making a case for us to get back to making out, it's working," Elena said in a matching tone and then smiled an amused, feverishly happy smile that he returned.

"Is it?" Damon asked with a glimpse of mischief in his eyes.

Narrowing her eyes at him in mock exasperation, Elena abruptly leaned forward and kissed him, her hands falling softly onto his cheeks.

"When I think of love, I feel nothing," Damon said, not quite breaking the kiss, because his lips were hovering so close over hers that they were still touching. "But when I think of you, I feel everything."

Slowly, Elena's arms locked around him, her eyes not leaving his and they looked at each other for a few seconds before their lips met in a heated, dreamy kiss.

"You never heard what I said to you after I died, Elena," Damon said, sliding his hand into her hair and brushing his thumb across her cheek.

Elena's expression immediately changed at the recollection. She felt her heart break just thinking about those excruciating moments when she was sitting in the crypt, in the darkness, crying, choking on her whispered words, hopelessly pleading for him to come back.

"I know you were there. I couldn't feel you, but-"

"I touched your hair," Damon said, repeating the gesture.

Elena grimaced, blinking back the tears. "I knew that."

Damon leaned his forehead against hers and Elena instinctively closed her eyes, the memory seen through his eyes appearing in her mind:

"You are by far the greatest thing to ever happen to me in my 173 years on this earth. The fact that I get to die knowing that I was loved, not just by anyone, by you, Elena Gilbert, that's the epitome of a fulfilled life. It was never gonna get any better than this. I peaked. I love you, Elena."

Elena's eyes snapped open, filled with even more tears than in the memory.

"When we got back together, before I got memories back, you had to remember for both of us," she whispered feverishly, grabbing Damon's hands, tears rolling down her cheeks. "Now I can love for both of us."

Damon smiled faintly, leaning down to kiss her hands before letting go of them to take her face in his hands. "Elena, but that's what I'm trying to tell you." He slid his thumb across her trembling lips. "I love you."

xxxdelenaxxx

He couldn't get out of the house, he couldn't call anyone and his powers were being used to unseal the border between the world of the living and the world of the dead to bring back more insane heretics. Granted, the other fraction wasn't any better. That entire coven was messed up. All covens were. Magic was a messed up phenomenon to begin with. He was starting to see the appeal of being human and for the first time he felt like he understood why Damon wanted to take the cure.

"I hope it won't take too long," Enzo muttered, shooting Gretta an impatient glare. "I have things to do."

She continued stirring the blood in a pot, the fire underneath appearing out of nowhere, making the blood boil.

"It will take a mere-" Malcolm started, but then all of a sudden a blinding light blazed through the room.

Enzo's eyes widened at the sight of all the windows breaking, shattered glass crushing to the ground, the defeaning noise augmented by an earth-shaking gust of wind that dived into the pot, causing the blood to burst, but instead of it spilling all around the room, it seemed to disappear in thin air.

Lily, Gretta and Malcolm exchanged angry looks, but not without a glint of apprehension in their eyes.

"What just happened?" Enzo asked curiously.

"Someone hijacked the spell," Gretta said through her teeth, her eyes wandering around the room in an effort to come up with a solution, but judging from her expression it seemed like there was none.

"What does that mean?" Enzo continued, trying not to sound amused despite the idea sounding rather amusing to him.

"No one knew we were going to do it," Malcolm argued, giving Gretta a questioning look.

"One person did," Lily said evenly, glancing at Gretta who exhaled in frustration.

"That's not possible," Malcolm protested. "They cut his head off, there's no way-"

"He must've been hiding somewhere," Gretta said darkly, "and now with the power of the spell he'll be able to-"

"Wait," Enzo interrupted her, blinking in disbelief. "Who are you talking about?" He asked angrily even though he was quite sure he already knew the answer.

xxxdelenaxxx

His eyes snapped open and he looked at the ceiling, blinking a few times before his eyes adjusted to the darkness.

When they did, he looked down at the girl sleeping in his arms. Lifting his hand, he picked a single strand of her hair and pulled on it.

Elena grimaced in her sleep, snuggling closer to him.

Kai snickered to himself. That was going to be so funny.