AN: I'm really sorry I didn't upload this chapter yesterday like I wanted to, but I had a bit of trouble writing this one. The words just didn't want to come out right. I hope I did okay and that you enjoy the way I had things go on. Like always I want to thank all of you: reviewers, both anonymous and not, and everyone else.
PS: anyone else cried like a baby watching 6x02? I know I've been traumatized. Fear not however! My faith in Delena has not vanished, we'll just have to steel ourselves for a lot of angst.
Damon could not believe his eyes. She was right in front of him. His Baby. The only constant in his life for the past fifty-something years.
"How?" He rasped with what little voice he had at the moment.
Elena looked sheepishly at him, as if embarrassed. "After you..." she gulped, still uncomfortable with the word "...died, I had no idea what to do." She whispered with eyes filled with tears.
Damon, noticing this, walked up to her and tightly gripped her hand. When she raised her head and looked him in the eye, he smiled at her reassuringly. He was here now, and while he couldn't erase the pain she had felt for those four months, he could promise her that nothing would ever divide them.
She took a deep breath before going on with her story. "I couldn't go back to the Boarding House and I had nothing of yours to hold on to." She said squeezing his hand. "Matt brought me some of your things but they weren't enough. Nothing was enough. After a while I realized that I needed something that would last longer."
"So that's why you wanted to talk to Caroline's mother." Intervened Alaric, as if only now remembering that strange phone call. Enzo, meanwhile, just stood there witnessing the scene. He had never stopped to think that others might have suffered because of Damon's death. Maybe because he had immediately started searching a way for him to come back.
Elena sniffed and looked at Alaric. "I asked Caroline's mom if she could bring me the Camaro." She threw a look at what remained of the car. "It was a total wreck, obviously." She murmured before turning to Damon. "I started reading books to learn how to repair a car. It wasn't easy but in a month I found all the pieces I needed." She gestured toward the boxes neatly piled in the back of the barn. "They are all originals."
Damon looked at her in adoration. He couldn't believe what she had done. "You are amazing." He softly said.
Elena smiled at him. "Yeah, well," she shrugged "I didn't do much. I had the body of the car re-painted so it was back to its original light blue and I started working on the interiors."
The three men looked at the car to see that, in fact, it had been re-painted and the seats looked brand new, as did the wheel and the dashboard. They would need to take out the seats again if they had to work on the insides but Elena probably hadn't thought of that. It didn't matter though, they would just have to start over.
"So that's it." Concluded Elena looking at the three men. "I really wanted to give it back to you in one piece, but I think that maybe you three can work on it together and, you know, bond over it." She said with a bright smile, moving past the doom and gloom as Damon would say.
Enzo and Alaric looked at each other dubiously, assessing the situation to try and see if Elena's plan could work. They weren't sure it would but they were at least willing to give it a try. Furthermore Enzo had always loved sport-cars and this Camaro was just a beauty. He could already picture him and Damon riding around with the top down. Of course Damon would probably insist on Alaric tugging along but, whatever, nothing was perfect.
Damon looked at his two friends and decided that no matter what he was going to make this work. He was not about to lose one of them. He hardly had any friends so he figured he should do everything he could to make sure the three of them could stay together. He smiled at Elena.
"Don't worry, we'll figure this out." He said winking at her.
Elena smiled and after pecking him on the lips, she left leaving the three vampires to work on the Camaro.
"So," Alaric cleared his throat to break the silence "how are we going to do this?"
After three hours they could say that a lot had been done. They had taken out the seats, no one wanted to ruin them while working, and opened the boxes on the back of the barn to start working on the electronic parts of the car. Thanks to Alaric's strength they had lifted the car to put the tires back in their place so now the Camaro looked almost as good as new. Except for the engine.
Currently Enzo was up to the elbows in the engine to put it in the right place. He had decided he wanted to be the one to connect it so that they could start the car, since Alaric knew almost nothing about engines. Damon, in the meantime, was almost invisible from his place under the car, checking the breaks. He surely didn't want to repair the car only to end up wrapped around a tree when he realized he had no way to stop.
A click could be heard around Enzo's hands when he finally finished positioning the engine. He took his hands out of the hood and wiped them on a rag nearby. He turned toward Alaric who was lazily sitting on top of a box while sipping from the bottle of beer he had purchased in a town nearby before setting to work.
"Are you going to help us or do you intend to stay there doing absolutely nothing?" Asked Enzo mildly upset.
Alaric regarded him with a serene expression. "I'm a history professor." He said as if that was all he needed to say. At Enzo's confused look he went on. "Apart from driving them I know nothing about cars or how to repair them."
"So what you are saying is that you're completely useless?" Smirked Enzo grabbing a bottle of beer and opening it.
Alaric glared in his direction. "I didn't hear you complaining when you asked me to lift the car. Alone." He pointed out testily.
Enzo grinned while sipping his beer before raising an eyebrow in his direction. "You're right." He lightly said surprising Rick. "I am the brains and you are the muscles."
Alaric huffed derisively finishing his bottle and setting it down on the ground. "You wish." He laughed. "I don't think you even know what the word 'brains' mean."
Just when Enzo opened his mouth, ready for a smart comeback, they were interrupted.
"Oh my God!" Exclaimed Damon, sliding out from under the car. "Do you guys never stop with this bickering?" He regarded them with wide eyes and slightly parted mouth, once again stunned by the fact that he had never noticed their behavior before it was pointed out to him.
"He's the one who started it." Snapped Enzo pointing his bottle at Rick who looked at him with disbelieving eyes.
"How did I start this?" Belted Rick. "You are the one who called me useless!" He said standing up and turning toward Enzo.
"That was just stating the truth." Responded the older vampire moving closer to Rick and looking up at him.
"Alright, that's it." Spoke Damon putting down his tools on a nearby box and walking to stand between the two vampires. "You two need to stop this."
"Then choose one of us so that the other can leave." Said Enzo still locked in a stare down with Alaric.
"Yeah, choose Damon so this dick can go back to wherever he came from." Agreed Rick in a tight voice.
Damon stared at the both of them, not understanding how the two of them could make him do something as stupid as this. He squared his shoulders and growled, "I have no intention of choosing one of you, dammit!"
Both Enzo and Rick turned to look at him. Why? Why couldn't he just tell them who he wanted as friend and get rid of the other?
Damon saw their confused expression and took a deep breath. He wasn't good at the whole emotional talk, he was the kind of guy who preferred to show his feelings through his actions instead of spelling them out through his words. This time, though, it looked like he had to just get a hold of himself and state clearly what he thought of this absurdity.
Steeling his resolve he looked Enzo in the eye. "Do you know why I bought the Camaro?"
Of all the things Enzo was expecting this surely wasn't one of them. He furrowed his brows in confusion and waited for Damon to explain himself.
"You said you liked convertibles." Said Damon with an even voice. "That day while we were prisoners of the Augustines, you asked me if I had a favorite type of car and I told you I was more a horse and carriage kind of guy, do you remember?" At Enzo's nod he continued. "You told me you liked sport-cars, especially convertibles, so you could drive around the pretty ladies with the top down."
Enzo didn't know what to say. He thought Damon had just forgotten everything about the things he had said in those days. After all, when he had abandoned him he said he had turned off his humanity.
Damon swallowed before going on. "Do you realize what that means? Even though I had my emotions switched off when in 1967 I saw that Camaro, I bought it because there was a part of me that still cared about you, Enzo." He said without faltering. "Something inside of me told me to buy it just because I remembered that you would have liked it."
Enzo remained silent. Without giving him the time to reply, Damon turned toward Alaric who had listened in silence while he talked to Enzo.
"And you." He said pointing at him. "Do you think it's a habit of mine to ask vampire hunters to store their weapons in the trunk of my car?" He asked raising an eyebrow. "I'll give you a hint: no. I did it because I trusted you. Because you saved my life not a day after I told you I had slept with your wife and then turned her into a vampire, just to kill you soon after. For God's sake, Rick I even talked to your grave! I don't do this kind of things for just about anyone."
Finished with his speech he turned and walk to the car, sitting down on the hood previously closed by Enzo. He clasped his hands on his lap and looked at the darkening sunset.
"I never had a lot of friends growing up." He softly said. "Not when I was human and certainly not after I was turned, so if you think I'm going to choose one of you it means that you understand nothing about me."
Alaric and Enzo looked at each other in silence before moving to sit each on one side of Damon, Enzo bringing his still open bottle of beer and two others he passed to Damon and Rick. The three of them drank together in silence for a while before Damon resumed talking.
"For sixty years I thought you were dead, Enzo." The aforementioned vampire lowered his gaze to the bottle he held between his hands. "When I turned my emotions on, I had to live with the knowledge that I had left my only friend to die in a fire."
He took a long gulp from his bottle. "You had been the only human I had allowed to become my friend, Alaric. I always knew you were going to die one day, but I didn't expect that day to come so soon."
Neither did Alaric. He had never wanted to become a vampire, but he surely hadn't wanted to die so soon. Especially not while trying to kill his best friend.
"And now I found out that you didn't die." Continued Damon lightly bumping his shoulder against Enzo's. "And you came back to life as a super vampire that, practically, cannot be killed." This time he nudged Alaric between his ribs. "Do you really think that I'm going to waste my second opportunity by choosing only one of you?"
The three vampire raised their bottles to drink. Both Enzo and Alaric thought about everything Damon had said. When he put things in that perspective the two of them really looked stupid. All this time they had done everything possible to decide who was Damon's best friend, when really it should have been obvious that this was how it was going to end.
Maybe they could make this work. If Enzo had been able to move past the whole fire thing, and Alaric had forgiven Damon for killing him, twice, then surely they could find a way to coexist. The alternative would have been to lose Damon and that really wasn't a choice. Damon wasn't the only one who didn't have a lot of friends.
Enzo had spent the better part of his life in a cell, tortured by psychopaths. Seventy years spent like that really didn't give you much of a choice when it came to friends. Add to that the fact that he had no family and all that remained was loneliness. So yeah, maybe Alaric could be a little uptight sometimes and way too moral for his tastes. But it was clear he cared for his friends, and he had no qualms about staining his hands with blood if it was to protect them. Enzo could surely use a friend like that in his life.
As for Alaric, sometimes he felt like the only adult in their group. He cared about everyone in their little group of misfits, but they were all so young. Some of them would always be young no matter how many years went by. And yes, Enzo had a tendency of snapping people's necks before thinking about the situation. But he was loyal to a fault, that he was certain of. Alaric appreciated loyalty in a friend. Sometimes that was all that mattered. In the end it was clear what was going to happen.
It seemed like Team Bad-Ass would no longer be a duo.
Alaric leaned forward a bit to look at Enzo. "It looks like we got off on the wrong foot." He said making Enzo look at him with a slight tilt of his head. "I would like us to start over, Enzo."
Alaric reached out with his right hand. Enzo looked at it before one side of his mouth lifted in a crooked smile. "I suppose we can do that, Rick." He smirked grasping his hand tightly.
After that, almost as if reading each others minds, the three vampire raised their bottles and clicked them together. Damon was glad with how things had been resolved. It wasn't going to be easy but they had an eternity ahead of them to get close.
Hiding behind a tree nearby, Elena happily smiled at the three men in her life.
