Chapter Twelve

The Man in the Cart

Mystic Falls, Virginia

1864

On a particularly cold day in December, a squeaking wagon uneasily made its way over the uneven roads as it traveled toward the small town of Mystic Falls. Before, the old rattletrap had been used to cart away bodies and injured men from the battlefield. If one looked closely, they might have noticed the faint bloodstains on the floor. Someone else might still be able to smell the metallic scent of vomit that had sunken into the cracks of the old wood and festered. One gifted with those supernatural abilities of seeing and hearing beyond might even hear the screams of men grasping at the limbs that they would soon lose. Or perhaps they would only hear the stillness of death, a limp hand dragging through the dirt and mud as the wagon headed back to camp.

The dirt road, lined with vast rows of tobacco, seemed unending. The cart's driver hunched over its reigns, his nose red from the cold. He threw a glance over his shoulder at the limp body splayed out in the back.

Damon's feet shook with every bump in the road. He was dressed in full uniform, his cap laying at his side. The soft gray fabric was stained red around his midsection, a wound screaming like hell beneath. His face looked sunken in, even though his body looked harder and broader than when he left home. His skin was pale, yellowed. Instead of wide, curious eyes looking at everything around him, they were fighting to stay open. Pain stained the whites of his eyes red and he looked at something unseen to anyone else, in a dream, perhaps. The red veins of sickness and fatigue had dulled the sharp blue of his irises. His eyebrows were drawn together in discomfort, revealing the dirt stuck in the creases of his skin.

"How much longer?" he groaned.

"The town is on the horizon," the driver replied. "We'll be there before nightfall."

Damon gritted his teeth. How long had he been tied to this cart? A day? A week? When he left camp, he was drunk on moonshine made of turpentine, lamp oil, and brown sugar. He had a hole shot in his abdomen. The doctors dug the bullet from his belly and rejoiced when he survived. Under Phineas' authority, Damon was granted furlough, where he would be allowed to recuperate at home, thus saving the Confederacy much-needed supplies and food, until he was ready to come back and fight again. In reality, he was granted the opportunity to die in his home, surrounded by his family.

Now the liquor was gone, and he was drunk on nothing but pain. He thought of his mother and how she detested the cold weather, imagining her coming down from the heavens and wrapping arms made of sunlight around him. His eyes opened once more, and he realized it was just his fever.

If his mother was the warmth, he thought, then his father would be the cold, piercing his skin like needles. He was struck by the question of whether his father was trying to use the cold to break his fever or if he was just trying to finish him off. Phineas' words bounced around his brain. "It's odd that you ended up here." Wasn't it, though? Everywhere he had ever been in his life had been odd.

Of course, his thoughts drifted to Elena as well, whom he realized, when he was coherent enough, was getting closer with every dull thud of his heart. When he was at his most delirious, and no longer had the mental strength to exercise such precise control over himself, his mind would wander to places he had never allowed it to go. He would find himself thinking of her billowing skirts and how he would like to slide his hand up into them and see what he could find hidden there. Other times he could picture her standing in front of him as he undid her corset stings, watching her relax a little with every move he made until it was just the bare skin of her back showing.

His mind would wander to other things, like the night she visited him in her nightdress and he liked to think of the way it would fall to the floor, leaving her standing there, completely open to him. He could picture the blush on her cheeks perfectly. He could see every bump on her skin rise from the cold touching her. God, he wished he could touch her, if only to hold her hand. The thought made his heart stutter.

"How much longer?" he groaned again.


Elena looked up impatiently from her book, biting down on her lower lip. Since Katherine had delivered the news of Damon's injury and impending return two weeks ago, she had not been able to keep her eyes from the window. Even though she could not know where he was exactly, she knew he was not far away. She was only reassured by reminding herself that she would see him soon.

There was a mix of anxiety and joy inside of her. Although Damon was coming home, he had been injured in a way that many men did not survive. His survival for this long had already been a miracle, and now the only thing anyone could do was wait to see if he survived the trip home.

When she first heard the news, she wanted to go wait by the road that entered town so she would be the first to see him, but both Katherine and John had forbade her from doing any such thing. Instead, she found excuses to do activities near the front of the house, so she would always be close by a window should he return that second.

Stefan looked up from the hangnail he had been picking at for the last hour, following her gaze. "Won't be long now," he sighed.

"You think I forgot?" she snapped. Immediately, she wished she could take it back, but she had been on edge for too long. Stefan was growing used to it.

"I just wish you would stop worrying," he said. "It only makes it worse for you."

"What if he is unable to make it?" she said, her voice becoming shaky. "What if he does not survive the trip? It is so cold out and he is already suffering."

"He survived this long."

The argument was one they had fought many times, but each time they both grew quiet in stalemate. Both of them were worried about the same thing, but only Elena was brave enough to admit it out loud.

Just as she opened her mouth to say something else, there was a knock at the front door. Stefan threw his quilt off, but Elena stood to stop him. "You were been attacked, remember?" she said, eyeing the bandage on his neck.

He sat down with a huff, but she never turned to see his dirty look. She flew down the stairs, holding the rail with both hands so as not to fall. Katherine had appeared behind her at some point, but she barely noticed. She threw open the door only to find the face of a stranger, not Damon. "Hello," he said, awkwardly. "I'm Private Martin, 19th Regiment of the Army of the Confederate States of America. May I speak with a Giuseppe Salvatore?"

As he spoke, her eyes drifted past his shoulders and landed on the cart parked in the gravel at the bottom of the stairs. A leg stirred over the edge of the stained wood and her heart leapt in her throat. Without a word, she shoved past him and towards the wagon. Somewhere in the back of her brain, she heard Katherine apologizing for her behavior.

Damon struggled to sit up. She gasped audibly at the sight of him. Aside from the bleeding wound in his belly, he looked sickly and malnourished. His body had changed since before he had been shot, and was slowly shrinking from lack of nutrition. Tears came to her eyes and she realized everything he had told to her in his letters was a lie, as she had suspected. He knew she would have been upset if he had told her of the conditions he was really facing.

She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him, kissing him on the cheek and burying her face his neck. She could only do it for a moment, lest she get into trouble, but she had to make sure he was really there.

Even though he was unsure if any of this was even real, he wrapped his arms around her as tightly as he could manage. The scent of lemongrass and clean linen filled his nose. He felt tears well up in his eyes as he grasped at this illusion, wishing so desperately for it to be real. All he could hear were her quiet assurances, but he had heard them so many times in his dreams, he could only brace himself for her to fall away into his subconscious, leaving him to be awakened by the bitter cold and harsh sunlight. "Damon?" he heard. "You'll be just fine now, Damon. You're home."

And just in case it was not his imagination and just because he was so desperate to say it, he tried to focus on her beyond his spotty vision. "I love you, Elena. I hope you know that I love you."