Apparently, the sun and the moon are not in the same position everyday. They achieve exactly the same position only once every 30 days - they meet halfway after the sun goes down and before moon comes up - and the last time that happened was only few nights before our arrival.
The castle the twins live in is nothing like Hegemone's. While hers was light, full of fresh air and pleasing scents, this one is cold and dark. It's not poorly equipped, quite the contrary, all the rooms are filled with nice looking furniture. But there are no personalized items that would make this place a home, no sign of someone actually living here for years already. The furniture seems expensive and luxurious, but it's a necessity. The only room in the castle that's different from every other room is the one in the basement, where twins spend the most of their time. They don't sleep there, but sometimes it seems like they do - when I wake up they're there, and they stay there long after I go to sleep. Arden leaves that dark, confined space every once in a while, but Milly rarely does, unless she absolutely has to.
They have given us a place to stay in the castle and this time around we have separate rooms which is a good thing because I still don't know have I forgiven Damon or not. Part of me thinks I'm being irrational - all he did was save my life. Who knows what that boy would have done to me. Maybe he would just knock me out, or maybe he really would kill me as a punishment for being friendly with a vampire. I know nothing about their moral code and neither does Damon. We're in a world that's completely different from ours and the same rules we live by don't apply here. But the thing is, they apply to me - I can't just abandon them over night. And those rules never applied to Damon, even when they should have. It's hard to tell did he kill that boy because he didn't see any other way out or because he didn't even think about looking for another way. There's a difference between the two - the second one implies that killing comes so easy to him that he didn't even think about handling the situation differently, while the first one means what he did was necessary to save my life.
I'm never for killing anyone. I've been known to make my threats to Damon that I will take his life if he oversteps his boundaries. The thing is, I would never actually do it. I would think of a proper punishment, but I would never take someones life away. There's too much death in the world, I don't want to add up to it.
At the same time I can understand Damon's logic as well - sometimes it's kill or be killed. He lived longer than me, he went through things I can only read about in textbooks, he fought in wars and saw men die from a single bullet wound, which is like a mosquito bite to him. I don't believe Damon doesn't have a heart, nor do I think he's evil. Quite the opposite, actually. I think he has too big of a heart, and when feelings come to him, they come in such huge amounts that it's easier for him to shut them off than deal with them.
Stefan accepts them, he deals with them, he lets his emotions eat him up from the inside and then he slowly patches himself up. But Damon is not Stefan and he cannot be blamed for being unable to do what his brother can.
So yes, I can see Damon's logic behind his kill or be killed theory - after all, he's been on both ends too many times.
On the other hand, his behavior irks me. I don't know exactly when Damon started spinning in this circle, but it's high end for him to stop.
Maybe I've been wrong all along, saying I don't want him to change. Maybe I do - not to fit my standards, but to fit his. Once he stops hurting himself, he will stop hurting those around him as well.
He will stop hurting me.
That's what bothers me as well. Recently, his actions started to hurt me. Before I was annoyed, disappointed and angry for the things he did. Now I'm looking at them differently, now they hurt because he did all those horrible things and I don't want him to do them. Not before, not now, not ever again.
I don't want to see him lunging at me and snapping my neck every time I close my eyes. I don't want to hear him saying he had turned my mother into a vampire.
Which is another reason why I'm trying to stay away from him. Because I don't see or hear any of those things anymore. All I see now is Damon, a person behind a vampire, a boy little older than I am now, sitting behind a piano, caressing the keys with his fingertips. I can see the way he looks at me, like we're on the top of the world and as long as I'm sitting next to him, we're never coming down.
When I remember that look I can understand why Elena fell for him. Why she decided to look past every horrible thing he did, to her and to others. Why she decided to hurt a lot of people she cares about just to be with him.
I understand it, and it terrifies me.
We've been here at least a week in our time. With all of this free time on my hands I've managed to make myself a calendar and by my calculations we've been here for over a month.
I've lost yet another month of my life and who knows how many more I'll waste here. Time keeps flying by and I'm too busy trying to stay alive or to come back from the dead that I don't have any time to actually live.
I mark the beginning of another day on my self made calendar and put it on the nightstand next to my bed. I can't be in this room anymore, so I make my way to the basement to see what the twins are up to.
We don't know much about them. They don't talk about themselves a lot, or how they ended up here. Milly is always busy with something, trying on new spells, reading books, searching for something that, according to her, none of us would understand.
In the meantime Arden is either out, doing whatever he's doing, or in the back corner of the room minding his own business. Sometimes he looks up at his sister, scowls at her and sighs before looking away.
When I come downstairs I find Milly all alone on the floor with a book in her lap.
"Hey," I greet her since I'm pretty sure she didn't even hear me coming in. Either that, or she's pretending that she didn't notice me.
She jerks her head up, surprised to see me here. I guess she really didn't notice me and by the look on her face I can tell that she wishes I'm not here at all.
"You're vampire pet is not here," she says stiffly, her voice hardening at the word vampire.
I open my mouth to say something, but she cuts me off.
"And no, I have no idea where Arden is."
That's not what I wanted to ask. I wanted to tell her for the hundredth time that Damon is not my pet, but now I see there's no use to it. It's clear to me that she doesn't think I would have another reason to be down here.
With Milly you never know - sometimes she's cranky, sometimes she's a delight to be around. But she doesn't like Damon, or better to say she doesn't like the fact he's a vampire. She doesn't know Damon well enough to dislike him for him. And she instantly lost some respect for me for associating with him.
"I wanted to ask you something," I shoot at her.
She lifts her head up in surprise, but she doesn't look too happy for having to communicate with me. "Yes?" she furrows her brows.
"On our way over here we were attacked by a group of boys. Their faces were covered in something and there were heavy weapons in their robes. Do you know anything about them?" I ask to clear this Damon situation in my mind once and for all.
"Oh, yeah," her face lightens, "Don't worry, they're harmless," she shrugs.
Something heavy falls on my heart. "Really?" I ask in surprise, having a hard time believing that.
"No, of course not," she rolls her eyes at me as if she thinks I'm stupid. She probably does. "We call them Savages. They're stuck in time, I think, so they hunt everything that's not human. Every other species is like an animal to them. Which is why they attacked you, I guess."
"Is there any reasoning with them?" I swallow.
"Not that I know of," she shakes her head, glad to be of help, even if it's to me. She likes to share her knowledge, or she just like having all the answers. "They don't even speak our language. I doubt you would be able to communicate."
She waves her hand and a bowl of sweets appears next to her.
I frown. "How did you do that?"
She looks at me dubiously like she can't figure out why I'm asking that question. She starts assessing me - I'm a witch, I should be able to do everything she's able to do and yet, I'm asking her such a simple question.
"I summoned it, of course."
"Which means it had to come from somewhere," I clarify.
Nothing in this world disappears. Everything we remove has to go somewhere. If we give someone life, we have to take it from someone else. If we make a bowl of candy appear in front of us, that means we took it from somewhere.
"That's what summon means," she takes a candy from the bowl and pops it into her mouth.
"You do that a lot?" I sound more horrified than I actually am.
"Oh, relax," she brushes my concern off, "It's not like I do it with money. Mostly food."
"But you can never know who you're taking it from! You could be taking from a starving family! If you take it from a store, you could get someone fired!" I rage at her, but she doesn't seem to be affected by my words at all.
She stays quiet for a while, but then her face hardens and she finally spits out harshly. "Why should I care for a world that abandoned me?"
All the words, angry, terrifying words that were spinning in my head, disappear.
I don't know what to say to that. I don't know how exactly she was abandoned, and I guess it doesn't matter, because I don't say anything.
"If you're done wasting my time, please leave, I have work to do."
DAMON'S POV
Everything I do is like a double edged sword. I solve the problem with one edge, but inflict pain on myself with the other.
I saved her life. She should be grateful, and I should feel good about myself. But she doesn't feel grateful, and I feel shame because of it. I feel like I've done yet another bad thing, with best intentions, because I saw judgment in her eyes.
She won't talk to me. She won't even look at me. Maybe that's for the best.
I'm spending my days outside of the castle walls, hopeful no one will find me until I want to be found.
I notice Arden about two miles away from the entrance, crouching against a wall, his body covering whatever his hands are busy dealing with. I speed over to him, hoping to achieve the element of surprise, but I realize that is a bust even before I stop moving.
"Hello, Damon," somehow he notices me without turning around. I stop in place, hovering over his crouched body. I peer over his shoulder.
"What are you doing?" I ask, not trying to hide the lack of trust in my voice.
"Gardening."
Indeed, there's a row of flowers planted along the wall. Giant white flowers with petals big as bird wings. I haven't noticed them before and I've been walking around here almost every day since we arrived. They must be new.
He takes one of the flowers in his hands, inspecting it gently. He's pulling his fingers over the length of the petal, feeling its thickness by rubbing them with his fingers.
"I'm having a small get together," he plucks the flower from its stem and puts it in a linen brown bag hanging from his shoulder. "A ball of sorts. I'm growing these plants to make drinks out of them."
Making drinks out of flowers seems highly unlikely, but I've learned to question nothing here.
Arden plucks few of the flowers and puts them in his bag.
"Won't your sister be angry you're bringing people over?" I ask when he gets to his feet.
He frowns at the thought. "Milly and me have a pact - she doesn't get angry over my parties, and I don't get angry at her for trying to take us to the place we came from."
"You mean home?" I push him, smelling something fishy here. We know nothing about the twins, who they really are or how they came here.
"No, not really," he starts walking towards the entrance, so I follow him, "This place isn't home any less than Earth."
"You don't want to go back?" I don't even try to hide my surprise.
"Why would I want to go back to the world that sent us away in the first place?" he furrows his brows as if he's trying to answer his own question, like he himself doesn't have an answer yet.
"How did you come here anyway?" I decide to push my luck.
Arden smirks, like he knows I'm using this situation to get some answers. "Our parents sent us," he starts.
He doesn't think I'm special, nor does he find a friend in me. He just has to tell something to someone, I think. He has to get it out.
"Well, our mother did. Both of our parents were witches as well and we were one big happy family until our father passed away. Our mother became ill from depression. She even stopped using magic, which is when our uncle made a suggestion we move away. So we did, and she started getting better. She started dating again, and we were fine with that. We were old enough to understand that life goes on and that she needs company. But there was one big problem," he sighs, his face adapting an expression that is a mix of sadness and pain. "He was completely mundane. Human. He knew nothing about the existence of the supernatural world and our mother acted like she doesn't either. I never used my powers much, I was very secretive about them. I liked having a secret. But Milly.." he shakes his head, "She used her powers for everything. Not in public, but in our home, even in front of John," he looks at me, realizing he never called him by his name before, "Our mum's boyfriend," he clarifies. "Once she even started levitating french fries because she was too lazy to use her hands to put them in her mouth," a soft smile climbs up his lips at the memory, "Of course, John started noticing something's off about us. Milly and mum started getting into fights - mum wanted her to stop using her powers and Milly insisted that her powers make her who she is. She wouldn't stop. She said it would be like a betrayal. Not just to our father, but to everything he had taught us and to everything we grew up to be. Which is when our mum decided to send Milly away, because she was too afraid she's going to drive John away with her behavior. She woke me up in the middle of the night to ask for my help. She stopped using her powers so she needed help with such a big spell. I was baffled. I didn't understand anything at first. She was frantic, saying we have to hurry, that I have to decide am I going to help her or not. So I listened to what she had to say, and said that I will help her," he looks away from me, into the distance, like he can see something I can't. "But only if I go as well. She went pale. She explained to me that she would be sending Milly to another dimension, so she can never come back and that I'm a good boy who's in control of my powers and who understands how important this is to her. But I insisted, I told her that the only way to get rid of Milly is to get rid of both of us."
"You were testing her," I state.
I did a lot of horrible things. Things I can't even look back at without being disgusted with myself. I've hurt my own blood several times through centuries. But I could never imagine my life without Stefan there.
He didn't necessarily have to be there with me, at the same place. For a long time he wasn't. We were apart. But I knew that he's alive, that I'm not alone. I don't know how I would have felt or what I would do if one day he left our world. And I can't imagine being the one to send him away.
"Yes," Arden confirms, "She was ready to lose one child, not both of them. Well," he laughs painfully, "I guess that, in the end, she was. You and your witch, I get it why you want to go back. You have a family there, you have someone to come back home to. I don't. My home is here, with Milly."
"So why does she want to go back?" I ask curiously. It's she who their mother wanted to get rid of. I can't see any reason, except revenge, for her wanting to go back. And if they've been here for years, their mother is most likely dead.
"When we woke up here, when I explained to Milly what had happened, she didn't believe me. She said our mum would never do that to us. She didn't believe me for a very long time. I think she still doesn't believe me. She wants to go back to make things right. She feels as if our mum is the one who needs to forgive her, not the other way around."
That's some twisted logic, but I know all about twisted. I can see sense in it.
"Enough about us," Arden says cheerfully, changing his whole demeanor. "I have to tell you," he grimaces, cocking his head to the side, "I've seen a lot of weird things over here, but a vampire in love with a witch? Honestly, my friend, that exceeded all of my expectations."
I stop in track, my face getting paler than I thought possible. "Excuse me?" I bark at him.
His expression becomes serious as he puts his hands in front of himself, taking a defensive stance. "Don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against it. It's the ultimate rebellion against nature, as if one day water decided not to take the fire out. It's almost poetic. But it's still surprising."
"Look," I force the words out of my mouth, sounding angrier than I actually am, "I don't know what you think is going on here, but no one is in love with anyone. Actually, we hate each other. Until we came here we couldn't stand to be in the same room."
"Really?" he cocks his eyebrow. He sounds like he doesn't believe me.
I don't believe myself.
"Yes!" I say, raising my voice, "We're forced to work together here in order to survive. Like you said, it's unnatural for us to have a relationship of any kind."
I don't want his stranger to know how I feel. Not until I know for myself.
And not until she knows it as well.
"Oh," he exhales, "Then you wouldn't mind if I asked her to accompany me to my ball?" he makes it sound like it's a question, when it's really not.
I start walking, passing by him, so he doesn't see the panicked expression on my face.
"No," I say when I reach the entrance.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
"Matter of fact, you can ask her now. Bonnie!" I scream her name, waving her over. She's just getting out of the basement. She looks surprised to see me here, and that I'm talking to her.
What do you think you're doing?, my inner voice screams at me.
"Arden needs to ask you something," I say to make her come over here.
She probably wouldn't even come if I asked her to come for me.
Her face falls out of relief, like a great burden had just been taken from her back. Arden appears next to me, flashing her a bright smile.
She starts walking over to us.
"Bonnie," Arden says her name sweetly, "Do you know how to dance?"
She seems to be taken aback by that question. I can see her giving me a quick glance from the corner of her eye. "Yes, I do," she squeezes out.
"Ah!" Arden exclaims, "Perfect. I'm throwing a small gathering in few days. Would you do me the honor of accompanying me to it."
She looks uncertain about it. She doesn't know how to respond to such a strange request.
"I really have no one else to ask, and I'm tired of going alone. Everyone always bring somebody. I promise you're going to have a blast," he tries to convince her.
She wiggles her lips.
She's thinking it through. I can see the wheels in her brain spinning.
"Okay," after a while, she smiles lightly, "I'll go."
