AN: Thanks for the kind and wonderful reviews!
As the dinner guests began to file into the hall to investigate the sound of chaos and unexpected company that had settled into the foyer, Damon felt shocked and paralyzed with silence as Sarah's shocking confession echoed inside of his head. Starring down into the young girl's large angry brown eyes, he could see the reflection of the pain and fury that was raging inside of her. While some small part of him sympathized with the fact that she was genuinely suffering some type of emotional turmoil, he refused to believe that there was any truth to her statement. He knew that it was impossible for her to be his niece, and that Enzo must have manipulated her into believing that Damon was responsible for whatever tragedy that had befallen her parents. Turning his piercing cold stare towards his former best friend, the brooding vampire was unsettled to find that all traces of amusement and arrogance had disappeared from his face and had been replaced with a stony and grave expression. Enzo was either committed to seeing this particularly sick and distasteful joke to the end, or there was something going on that Damon wasn't privy to. Either way, he was desperate to talk to Elena, and being distracted by Sarah and Enzo was something that he was 'definitely' not in the mood for.
"Listen. I don't know what kind of con Enzo has convinced you to run, and frankly, I really don't care. I have more pressing matters to attend to," he informed stiffly.
Watching the testy exchange between the feisty photographer and seething vampire, Bonnie felt her heart slowly plummeting into the pit of her stomach. The Bennett witch had a feeling that the discovery of his great niece existence wasn't going to go over well with Damon, but the fact that he was clearly in denial was a very troubling sign. She knew that the discovery of Sarah's existence would leave him emotionally and mentally unstable, and despite her strong desire to be the shoulder he would need to lean on, she knew that intervening between Damon and a dark family secret was potentially dangerous. A part of her wanted to take him aside and break the news to him as gently as she could, but it was obvious that the time for that had come and gone. The only thing left to do was witness the explosion of anger and betrayal that was going to strike at any given moment.
Damon took a step forward to move past Sarah when she suddenly blocked his past stubbornly with a steely look in her eyes. She was surprisingly fearless given the fact that she was, once again, standing toe to toe with a very powerful vampire. A week ago when Enzo had inexplicably decided to come clean about her real family, she had been shocked. It had devastated her to hear the truth, but she knew that she wouldn't be able to move on with her life until she faced the two men that were responsible for destroying her family. It had taken Sarah quite some time to gather the courage and the strength to confront her past, and she was determined not to to leave the Boarding House until the man responsible for leaving her an orphan looked her in the eyes and admitted to the horrible things that he had done affecting her life.
"I am not letting you go until you take responsibility for what you have done," she growled dangerously before reaching into her purse and pulling out two photographs, "These people were my parents. I know absolutely nothing about them other than the fact that were responsible for conceiving me. This was my mother Gail and this is my father Zachery Salvatore. Ring any bells?"
As Damon's icy bye gaze fell on the images in Sarah's trembling hands, he felt all of the blood slowly drain from his pale face. Starring at the young girl, he felt his mouth grow bone dry as his initial disbelief turned into horror. Almost immediately, several different emotions overwhelmed him and multiple questions danced throughout his head.
How was this possible? How could she have survived the brutal attack? Who was behind saving Sarah's life and why had her existence been kept a secret for so long?
Before he could find the words to respond to her testy interrogation, Stefan began to speak.
"Sarah, I know that you blame Damon for what happened to your parents, but there is something you need to know," he said quietly, "Damon didn't know that you survived your mother's attack because I kept it from him. I allowed him to believe that you died with your mother."
Damon suddenly snapped back to reality and faced his brother who's eyes were filed with shame and guilt.
"Now would be a really good time to explain to me what the hell is going on?" Damon suggested quietly with a dangerous edge in his voice as he glared at his younger brother with anger and confusion etched in his handsome face.
Feeling a lump form in his throat, the younger Salvatore brother was completely speechless as he struggled up to come up with an explanation. He had always known that there would come a day where Damon would find out the truth, but Stefan never thought that day would come this soon and would involve having to confess in front of people that were a mixture of associates and close friends.
"Everything she is saying is the truth. Sarah is our great niece," he said quietly.
Those words completely floored Damon as he stumbled backwards, paralyzed with shock and horror. Starring at Sarah, Damon felt himself being violently pulled back into the past where he had fed brutally fed from Gail before ruthlessly killing her. He remembered how he had felt no concern for the fact that she had been carrying a child nor that he had just murdered her in front of the man she loved.
"You son of a bitch," Damon hissed, his face darkening with anger, "You kept this from me all of these years?"
Stefan opened his mouth to respond when, without any warning, Damon slammed his fist into the younger man's face, sending him stumbling backwards with blood gushing out of both nostrils. Using his vamp speed, Damon move to strike him again when Stefan tackled him, taking him down roughly to the ground. Gasps of horror and dismay filled the air as the two brothers began to fight violently. As they rolled around pummeling each other on top of shattered and broken glass, Alaric moved to intervene, but Jo held him back warning him that it was too dangerous. Bonnie knew that the former witch was right. A mortal man attempting to separate two feuding vampires wasn't just reckless; it was a death wish. Bonnie knew that if she didn't do something to break them up soon, things could quickly spiral out of control.
Stretching her hands out in front of her slowly, she quietly chanted causing both Salvatore brothers to drop to their knees clutching the sides of their head in agony as they were inflicted with a witchy migraine.
Gathering her gown into her fists, she lifted the hem of the dress over her ankles before marching across the room over to where Damon and Stefan was lying and moaning in pain with a no nonsense look in her olive green eyes. Positioning herself in front of the eldest brother, Bonnie realized that she was placing herself in a very precarious situation, but she had been left with no other choice. Damon was severely pissed off and beyond livid, but she refuse to stand by idly and watch as he regressed into his old self and beat his brother while blinded by rage.
"That's enough, Damon," she warned.
The seething vampire glared at the Bennett witch evenly as he slowly made his way back to a vertical standing position.
"Bon Bon, you and I are on really good terms right now, but if you don't move aside, I will not hesitate to go through you," he vowed coldly as he towered over her.
He shoved her roughly to show that he was serious, but Bonnie used her power to shove him back into a wall.
"Save your pathetic and empty threats, Damon. We both know that you aren't going to hurt me," she said with more confidence in her voice then she actually felt.
"Don't push me, Bon Bon," he warned dangerously.
She stared at him unmoved.
"You are better than this Damon," she insisted softly, "There are plenty of ways to deal with this situation, but violence isn't the answer."
Damon laughed harshly causing her eyes to narrow warily.
"Are you serious, right now? Bonnie, this isn't an after school special. I'm not just going to 'use my words' to deal with my brother who has lied to me for nearly two decades. I'm not just going to talk it out with someone who held his tongue when he watched me agonize over my knee jerk decision to murder a pregnant woman," he snapped viciously.
A flash of pain crossed her face, but she pursed her lips stubbornly as she refused to back down from him. Although his tone was biting and hurtful, she refused to let it bother her. If Damon needed to lash out at her verbally to get him through this shocking revelation, she was more than willing to be an easy target. Whatever he needed from her, she was there for him. She would always there for him.
Before anyone could say another word, Alaric cleared his throat uncomfortably as he took Jo's hand in his and smiled a little too brightly in Damon's direction.
"Listen guys, Jo and I had an absolutely wonderful evening, but I think that we are going to head home now," he said nervously as he slowly inched towards the front door.
"Yes, the party was really quite lovely. Thanks for the hospitality," Jo added uneasily as followed in her fiance's footsteps.
As the other dinner guest joined the couple in exiting the Boarding House as fast as they could go, the only people that remained behind were Enzo, Sarah, Jeremy, Caroline, Stefan and Kai. Turning her attention from the fleeing guest to Damon, she wasn't surprised to find his handsome face twisted with fury. He was breathing heavily and glowering at her unhappily as a ribbon of blood trickled untouched out of the corner of his mouth. She knew that he was angry with her for intervening, but she did what she felt she had to do. Damon had come way too far and evolved to the level where stooping to random and impulsive acts of violence was no longer acceptable behavior. Especially not towards those whom he claimed to love and care about.
As everyone began to file out the front door, Bonnie turned to leave as well, when Elena reached over and grabbed her hand, stopping her abruptly.
Please don't go, her brown eyes begged her silently as her grip on her hand tightened.
Bonnie inhaled sharply and dropped her hand, feeling very uncomfortable. Moments earlier, she had been making out with Damon and now she was holding Elena's hand as if she hadn't betrayed her in the worst way. The deception alone made her feel sick to her stomach.
Damon quietly closed the front door behind the retreating guests before turning his attention back to Sarah.
"I need to know how is it possible that you survived what happened that day in 1994."
"Well I was told that Uncle Stefan bought my mother to the hospital where he convinced a man by the name of Grayson Gilbert to deliver me post mar tum," she started.
Elena cleared her throat softly causing all eyes in the room to fall on her.
"Grayson Gilbert was my father," she revealed quietly, "Are you sure he was involved in this?"
Sarah turned her focus to the brunette briefly.
"Your father? I take it that you are Elena Gilbert. Enzo told me all about you as well. He thought it was fitting that I knew about the important people in my great Uncle's lives," she informed as she gazed at the other woman with a look of disgust on her face,"I must say that you truly have a particularly twisted taste in men. How messed up was your life that you ended up falling in love with two men who were not only both ruthless and cold blooded killers but brothers?"
Elena narrowed her eyes angrily.
"You don't know a damn thing about me," she said scathingly.
Sarah scoffed rudely as she folded her arms across her chest defensively.
"I know that the love of your life brutally slaughtered my mother, and the former love of your life compelled my father to forget that she and I ever existed," she growled harshly as the tears she had been fighting back spilled freely down her cheeks, "The man who murdered my parents, the man you love, took everything from me. I will never get to know about my mother. Ever. The fact that you could love a monster like him tells me everything that I will ever need to know about you."
Unable to remain calm and collected under the weight of her overwhelming emotion, Sarah Salvatore was turning to walk out the door, when Damon stopped her quietly.
"She liked pancakes," he said suddenly.
She halted abruptly, before facing him with a baffled look on her dark and pretty face.
"What?" she whispered, her tear streaked face filled with confusion.
Damon swallowed deeply before moving closer to Sarah, taking caution not to spook or frighten her. He had already caused her so much imaginable pain and he didn't want to cause her anymore. The last thing he wanted was for her to fear that she would suffer the same fate that her parents had at his hands, but he needed her to know that there hadn't been a day that had gone by where he hadn't carried the weight of her mother's death on his chest. While he didn't really suffer over taking Zach's life, Gail was different because she had been pregnant, and finding out that Sarah had survived and had been alive all these years left him filled with so many unexplained emotions swirling around inside of him. While he knew that he could never make up for murdering Gail, he knew that he could at least tell her surviving daughter something about her that had left a lasting impression on him.
"Gail, your mother...she loved pancakes and for the four months I was trapped in a hellish prison world with Bonnie, I made them for her every morning because it was the only way that I could express my remorse," he said with a rare emotional tremor in his voice, "If I could take it back I would, but I can't."
Bonnie held her breath as she stared at him wide eyed at his heartfelt confession filled with raw emotion.
"Is that true?" Sarah asked softly as she stared at Bonnie.
While she obviously didn't trust Damon, she had connected with the Bennett witch and felt that she would be honest with her no matter what. It was her sincerity and kindness that had drawn Sarah to Bonnie the night that they had first met.
Bonnie smiled tearfully and nodded.
"Damon has done a lot of horrible things to a lot of people in the past, including me. He turned my mother into a vampire, I lost my grams trying to help free one of his former flames, and he actually tried killing me once. At one point, I had actually tried to set him on fire and I was ready to watch him die, but I didn't," she paused smiling fondly.
"Why didn't you?" Sarah asked, her voice filled with tears and barely above a whisper.
Bonnie turned and faced Damon with a tender smile on his lips.
"Because, that night he was saved. He was saved by a girl who loves him and a girl that made him change into a better person," she said softly, and a ghost of a smile touched Damon's lips, " I know that it may be hard to believe, but he isn't the same monster that committed that unspeakable act nearly twenty years ago. You can hate him, but you will only be hating the person that he use to be. Not the person that he is now."
Sarah watched the looks being exchanged between the vampire and witch and while she wasn't exactly clear on what the dynamics of their relationship was, it was more than obvious that the witch and the vampire had some strong and present bond. While she was beyond confused and mystified at how someone as sweet and genuine as Bonnie could be friends with a murderous bastard like Damon, she knew that their bizarre friendship was the last thing she should focus on. She had come to the party to get answers and a sense of vindication and peace, but that didn't happen and the fact that she was still left with all of her unsettling and conflicting feelings caused her to exhaled sharply with frustration.
"I thought that looking into the eyes of my parents' killers would somehow help me come to terms with my past, but it hasn't. I still don't feel any better. I still feel so...empty," she revealed sadly as she choked back a sob, "I just need time to come to terms with all of this."
Stefan took a step in her direction to comfort her, but she whirled around and bolted out of the front door before anyone could attempt to stop her.
"Some family you have here, mate," Enzo said quietly before going after the distraught orphan.
As Damon silently watched their retreat, he felt a single tear escape the corner of his eye. The pain and the regret he had suffered from his actions from all of those years ago was suddenly resurfacing as he try to come to terms with the fact that he had just spoken to the lone survivor of his brutal deeds. She was a lovely girl, beautiful, forgiving and sweet. It was hard to believe that someone like her could be related to someone like him with a murderous and vicious past. He knew that he wanted to get to know her more and become a part of her life, but those were goals for a different day. Right now, his main desire was to follow everyone else's foot steps and get the hell out of the Boarding House. After Stefan's betrayal, all Damon wanted was to be where he didn't have to look into the faces of the person that had hurt him the most.
"Damon, I'm here if you need to talk," Elena offered softly as she rested her hand on his shoulder.
The dark haired vampire shook his head sadly as he turned around to face her.
"I'm sorry, Elena. I just can't be here right now," he whispered thickly as he combed his fingers through his thick black hair with a distraught look on his pale face, "I just can't.
"I know that you are angry about Stefan's decision to keep this from you, but you have to know that he only did it so that he could protect Sarah. He wasn't keeping this incredible secret to hurt you," Elena tried gently.
Damon felt his anger slowly surface as he glared at his lover.
"You are the last person to defend his decision, Elena. I wasn't even dead for half a year before you decided to convince my best friend to wipe all traces of our relationship from your memory,' he said stiffly, "I guess you didn't do that to hurt me either."
Bonnie swallowed nervously as she realized that the argument was about to get very ugly, very quick. Damon wasn't really behaving like his best self and she could tell that he was blinded by rage which meant that all of his many emotions were colliding together and he wasn't aware that he was lashing out at Elena who was only trying to help.
Stunned by the harshness that she heard in the tone of his voice, Elena struggled to hold back the tears that were threatening to fall from her eyes. She knew that he was understandably upset over the events that had just transpired, but she didn't understand why she was suddenly being made the target.
"You told me that you understood what why I did what I did and you forgave me for my decision, Damon. You said that we could get past it," she said, her bottom lip trembling dangerously.
Damon at the brunette feeling conflicting emotions. The truth was that he had a lot he needed to get off his chest to his girlfriend, but after everything that had happened that night, he wasn't in the mood to go tact to tact for Elena. He knew that it was important and rather urgent that they had a meaningful conversation about their relationship, but at that particular moment, he was tired of talking. Starring at her, he knew that the last thing he wanted to do was say anything hurtful that he couldn't take back back, so he forced a smile before moving closer to her and placing an tender kiss on her forehead.
"Listen, Elena. It's been a really bad night, and I need to get out of here, so if you don't mind, I'm going to go for a drive and clear my head," he informed quietly, "We can talk when I come back."
Stepping through the glass and scattered debris on the floor, he was heading towards the door when he stopped suddenly. Glancing at the Bennett witch, he felt a lump form in his throat as a sudden urge overwhelmed him. When they had been marooned together in the prison world, Bonnie had a way of calming him whenever he would succumb to his uncontrollable anger. There had been nights where he had fallen apart over the thought of never seeing Elena again and he would be damn near inconsolable. Bonnie would always crawl into bed next to him and hold him comfortably. Sometimes he had violently banished her from his bed, but there had been the rare occasions where his pride had taken a back seat to his need for human contact, and he would submit to her warm embrace that would inevitable lure him into a deep sleep. As he stared at her, he swallowed the huge lump that had formed in his throat as he realized that uncontrollable urge he was feeling was to find solace in the Bennett witch's arms.
"Damon," Bonnie started quietly.
"Save it for the ride home, Bon Bon," he mumbled, "Since I'm heading out, I'll drop you off back at your place."
Bonnie felt her heart skip a beat. Even though Damon's offer was innocent enough, she knew that walking out with him was a show of where her alliance resided, and picking Damon over her best friend wasn't something she was ready to do.
"Elena, if this isn't okay with you, you know that you can tell me right?" she asked her voice soft yet firm.
The brunette forced a smile with tears reflecting of her doe like brown eyes as she grabbed her best friend's hands and held them tightly.
"It's okay, Bonnie. He needs a friend right now. He needs you, so just be there for him and don't let him go over the edge," she pleaded desperately, "Promise me that you will look after him and that you will do whatever it takes to keep him from spiraling out of control."
"Elena," she repeated weakly.
"Promise me," she insisted loudly drawing several concerned gazes in their direction.
Bonnie closed her eyes and swallowed with great difficulty. Deep down she knew that the one that that could keep Damon from going over the edge was to give into the sexual and emotional desire that was raging like a uncontrollable inferno between them, and promising that she would do whatever it took wasn't exactly adhering to her particular set of morals and the girl code. However, starring down at her friend's face streaked with tears, she knew that she had to do what she could do to assure Elena that Damon would be okay, so she nodded.
"I promise."
The two girls exchanged a long hug both trying to disguise their emotion. Seconds later, Bonnie gathered the fabric of her dress between her fingers before following Damon out the door.
Elena watched the door slowly close behind the Bennett witch before for the sob she had been holding escaped her lips. She had witnessed the way that they had looked at each other, and the last thing she had wanted to do was send them off together, but she loved Damon enough to let him go because she knew in her heart he would always come back to her. What concerned her was where was Bonnie left in the equation. It was clear that their was more than just friendship between them and
Kai watched as Jeremy collected his sobbing sister in his arms trying his best to comfort her. Stroking her hair tenderly, he could tell that Jeremy wished that he could take away the hurt and confusion that Elena was currently feeling, but the truth was that he couldn't. Damon had done the one thing that no one had ever expected and had walked out on Elena. He knew that Damon was furious with Stefan, and Elena's defense of him didn't help matters any, but he didn't think Damon would ever turn his back on Elena. The fact that Bonnie had followed him had revealed that alliances had shifted and relationships were now in question. Kai didn't know what was going on between Damon and Bonnie, but he was determined to make sure it didn't escalate. Damon may have thought he was on the fast track of wooing Bonnie into his bed, but unbeknownst to the vampire, the Gemini witch had tricks of his own up his sleeves.
See you soon, Bonnie Bennett, he vowed quietly disappearing out of the Boarding House.
