A/N: Thank you so so so much for your wonderful reviews! :]:]:]
Dear Guest: All I can say is... keep calm and read on ;) And to everyone else who might be worried: do I seem like the kind of person who would ruin a wedding? An engagement, sure. But a wedding? lol
A little late, but I guess it's never too late to wish everyone a Happy Easter! :):):)
Chapter 26
"Where are we going?" Elena asked, still smiling, although there was a trace of confusion in her tone now that she had asked the question three times already and was yet to receive an answer.
She was holding onto Damon's hand as they were trudging through the forest after leaving the house over an hour ago, the lush green beauty of their surroundings beginning to get overshadowed by an unsettling feeling stirring up within her.
At first, Elena was certain that Damon had some kind of a surprise planned, since he'd proposed for them to go for a walk in the exact moment when the clock had struck noon.
For some reason, however, he hadn't warned her they were going into such a remote part of the forest. After a few minutes the hem of her pastel dress was dirty, her sleeves were getting caught in the branches and the fabric was beginning to tear in several places.
She would've thought it all part of the adventure if it wasn't for Damon brushing off everything she was saying and merely glancing at her over his shoulder from time to time. Something was wrong.
"Damon," Elena said with a frown, but this time instead of limiting herself to trying to draw his attention she stopped abruptly in her tracks, causing him to stop too.
"We're not there yet," Damon said dispassionately, turning around to look at her and Elena blinked, caught off guard by the strange way in which he was looking at her.
From the moment they had met, every time he would look at her, she always felt like he was looking at and into her. But now it felt as if he was looking through her, without seeing her at all.
"But where are we going?" Elena repeated her question, beginning to worry that Damon might've had some unpleasant conversation in the morning that was now affecting his mood. But if that was the case, why wouldn't he tell her about it right away?
"You have been whining since we left," Damon said with sigh, giving her a sour smile. "Aren't you tired of your own voice by now? Because I am."
Stupefied, Elena was staring at him for a longer while before she chuckled weakly. Surely, he must have been joking and she almost, almost-
But then Elena's smile faded when she noticed that Damon's only reaction to her laughter was a blank stare. He took an unhurried step closer to her.
"Damon, what's going on? You're acting strange."
With a sinking feeling, she tried to interpret the look in his eyes, suddenly struck by the thought that after having an entire night to be alone with his thoughts, Damon might've changed his mind about their wedding. Perhaps everything he'd said yesterday had been said on an impulse or out of kindness and now that he had time to think it all through, he was disappointed and upset.
But she couldn't believe that was it.
"Strange? How?" Damon asked, grasping Elena's hand and she thought he was merely taking her hand in his, but then she grimaced, his fingers closing around her wrist in a painful grip.
"Damon, you're hurting me," she whispered in bewilderment not understanding what was happening.
Everything he'd told her yesterday, everything that had happened between them since they had met, it was all beautiful and genuine. She felt like she knew him so well. It might seem naïve after such a short amount of time, but she was certain she knew him and even if she was yet to see him upset, she was sure this wasn't how he would behave if he was upset. He wouldn't lash out at her like that.
"I'm hurting you?" Damon snarled in a detached way that made Elena cringe. "I saved your life!" He added with a sardonic grimace that made no sense, because it didn't look his, it didn't look like he meant either his facial expressions or his words.
Elena felt a dull headache beginning to pulsate in her head. She felt like she was listening to a stranger. She held her breath when he inched his face closer to hers.
"And you didn't even thank me yet," Damon said in a low voice that Elena couldn't decide if it was more thrilling or menacing, his words and tone clashing with the proximity of his lips, with the fact that they were about to kiss, with that serene, undaunted certainty that he loved her and she loved him.
"And you didn't even thank me yet," Damon repeated, a peculiar, automatic quality to his voice.
Elena's eyes flickered to his and she was under the bizarre impression that he was waiting for her to say something, as if he couldn't proceed with his lines until she engaged in the exchange. As if... as if he was reciting the words instead of saying them.
"Why are you being like this?" Elena asked quietly with a frown, trying to free her hand.
"Because I'm tired of pretending to be someone else," Damon replied with a sneer that looked plastered onto his face in such an artificial way that Elena couldn't even find it in herself to start being afraid, because the overwhelming confusion was taking up all the space in her head.
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm tired of lying, Elena," Damon said with a trace of angry earnestness in his voice. "And now that you agreed to marry me, I may as well tell you the truth," Damon continued with indifferent sternness. "Did you really believe that little story about me conveniently forgetting a few minutes of my life right before finding you in the river?" He snorted dryly, lifting his hand to her face. "When you hit your head against that stone I thought you were dead. I burned all of your blood-stained clothes. I threw your body into the water, but then you started moving. I have to say, I couldn't believe my good fortune when it turned out you forgot what had happened earlier."
Elena's face drenched of all color. Somewhere half-through Damon's speech she started having troubles following it, because what he was saying was completely abstract and absurd.
And there was also his hand lingering in the air near her face as if he was conflicted about what he wanted to do with it.
"What is it that you're saying?" Elena asked in a gasp, her eyes shifting to Damon's hand curling up into a fist instead of lightly grazing he cheek, like he'd done so many times.
Damon narrowed his eyes at her, tugging her toward him when Elena took an instinctive, wobbly step back, her heart pounding in her chest, shock and confusion bringing tears to her eyes.
"And you still don't remember, do you?" Damon tapped her nose with a condescending grimace before grabbing a fistful of her hair and trying to kiss her.
Despite everything, there was still an intrinsic sense of safety in his closeness, nonetheless, Elena gathered her resolve and pushed him away.
"What are you doing? What are you talking about? It's not true!"
She exhaled sharply. It was all some kind of a horrible nightmare she was going to wake up from. This wasn't Damon and this wasn't what had happened. It wasn't.
"We met in the forest," Damon reiterated with chilling calmness. "You seemed to be on the run, but I was in the mood to have a good time, so-"
Elena interrupted him with a stifled sob, covering her ears and shaking her head in desperate denial.
Her heart couldn't deceive her like that. It wasn't possible. With every fibre of her body she felt they belonged together. She loved him with all her heart and she felt that love emanate from him. She couldn't be that wrong.
She tried to force herself to remember something, anything that could shed any light on the events of that day when they had met, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't remember anything.
"And so I politely asked you not to scream," Damon continued, grabbing Elena's wrists and backing her against a tree.
She winced when her back collided painfully with the uneven, spiked surface.
A few green leaves floated down, some of them getting caught in Elena's hair and for a fleeting moment she wasn't sure she didn't only imagine anyway, she thought Damon froze, as if caught off guard by the sight. However, soon enough all traces of reverence were washed out of his gaze.
"But you did anyway," he seethed into her ear and Elena shuddered.
She didn't know what frightened her more: everything that she was hearing or the fact that in that moment, not in any moment, she couldn't make herself to feel any differently about him. There was only excruciating confusion raging in her head and a warm glow of love in her heart that she refused to believe she was the only one feeling it.
"This can't be true," Elena said in a voice heavy with tears. "I don't believe this."
"So I had to calm you down," Damon continued, ignoring her words. "I hope this time I won't have to do that."
With a smirk, he dragged his lips across her cheek, but before he kissed her, Elena slapped him.
xxxdelenaxxx
Caroline was waiting patiently for Klaus to walk out of Hope's room, but after an hour she decided to check if in order to avoid confronting anyone else this evening, Klaus didn't decide to read to Hope all the storybooks cover to cover.
Quietly, she pushed the door open, peered inside and chuckled under her breath at the sight of both Klaus and Hope fast asleep, Klaus' face buried into a stuffed bear Hope was holding in her arms, another bear lying on top of the book that seemed precariously close to sliding off Klaus' chest and onto the floor.
Stepping inside the room, Caroline carefully removed the book and the toys and gently moved Hope's head from Klaus' shoulder onto the pillow, turned off the lights and tried to wake Klaus up in a variety of decent ways, but to no avail.
After a few unsuccessful attempts, Caroline resigned herself to using her vampire strength and speed to transport Klaus out of the room and into the guest bedroom where she unceremoniously dropped him onto the bed.
She raised her eyebrows at him seemingly not waking up at that and merely burying his face in a pillow with a muted groan instead.
"I hope you're just avoiding talking to me, because considering your enemy count, being a heavy sleeper is not a promising way to survive."
"I did, however, get an upper hand quite a few times pretending to be one," Klaus replied in a muffled voice without moving his head.
"I'm not sure or rather I'm sure I'm not interested in detailed recapping of any of those situations," Caroline retorted.
Klaus lifted his cheek from the pillow and shot her a smirk over his shoulder. "Completely innocent, all of them, I assure you." With a sigh, he sat up and rubbed his eyes. "So what's the plan?" He asked, watching Caroline sit on the edge of bed. "Your turn trying to get me on board with my high–minded brother's terrible idea?"
"Whether it's a terrible idea it's up for a debate," Caroline said, squinting into the distance. "Either way, I'm postponing that conversation until tomorrow. I'm too tired today." She turned her head to look at him.
Klaus' lips curled up in a pout. "And here I was hoping for some persuasion attempts."
"I'm better at violence than persuasion," Caroline deadpanned.
"Violence is a form of persuasion," Klaus argued, his eyes laughing.
Caroline narrowed her eyes at him when he reached out to catch a lock of her hair in between his fingers.
"My mom would not approve of this conversation," Caroline muttered, trying to keep amusement out of her voice. "Or that," she added, glancing at Klaus' mouth before he brushed his lips against hers in a brief kiss.
"I think your mother likes me."
Caroline snorted before she opened her eyes. "No. She tolerates you because I like you."
Klaus smiled pensively with a glimpse of mischief in his eyes. "Hopefully both parts of that sentence are going to improve over time."
Then his smile turned into a frown and he looked startled and uncertain for a second when Caroline placed her hand on his cheek.
"That's not true, what you said earlier. There are things you can be proud of. Like not having a father to speak of, yet becoming the best father anyone could wish for."
Klaus stared at her for a few moments in silence before straightening up with a half-heartedly dismissive smile. "I suppose recklessly saving the child's mother no matter the cost is enclosed in the definition?"
"Of course it is." Caroline rose to her feet and walked up to the door. "As for the cost..." She turned around before stepping out of the room, a small smile flitting across her face. "You can have a thousand more birthdays," she said, mimicking Klaus' tone, her eyes warm. "Or a couple of dozens that count."
xxxdelenaxxx
Elena winced when she was tossed against the wall as soon as they entered a small cottage that looked abandoned and desolate, layers of dust covering pieces of washed-out furniture.
"This isn't you," she repeated stubbornly when Damon turned her around, trapping her between a discolored wall and his body.
She was beginning to feel afraid, but not because of him, but because it was becoming appallingly clear to her that something was very, very wrong, that what was happening was beyond their control and that she didn't know how to stop it.
"How do you know?" Damon snorted wryly. "It's been four days since we met."
"Five," Elena whispered automatically and Damon's mouth twitched, but his eyes remained fixed on her in a cold-hearted stare.
His eyes. Elena's eyes widened in dismay, because only now she realized how dark Damon's eyes were. She could barely make out any shade of blue. His light blue eyes now looked almost black.
She reached out to touch his face and gritted her teeth when he flinched at her touch before resuming his coercive stance and seizing her hand.
"Something happened to you," she murmured, more to herself than to him, her mind reeling. "What happened?"
"Nothing happened. This is who I am," Damon said through his teeth, lowering his mouth to hers.
"I wish this could help," Elena whispered, tears rolling down her cheeks and Damon looked momentarily half-mesmerized, half-perplexed by her tears that apparently prevented him from kissing her.
"This is not a fairy tale, Elena," Damon said in a grim voice, his gaze curiously drawn to her tears as if he was trying to decipher some mystery confined inside them.
Elena shook her head. "No," she agreed and then tipped her head forward, her forehead almost hitting his. "What we have is better," she said, holding his gaze. "It's real."
She pressed her lips to his and started kissing him. Damon seemed stunned, the grip he had on her hand loosening and Elena used her newly regained freedom of movements to cup his face in her palms.
There was suddenly a deafening noise in Damon's mind, growing more unbearable with every second, as if millions of tiny wheels in his head were grating against each other with increasing speed.
"Stop!" He growled, pushing Elena away.
Her head hit the wall right behind her and she grimaced at the dull pain that for a few moments made her feel unpleasantly dizzy.
"Elena!"
She wasn't sure if it was because of the pain, but for a second she thought that Damon's voice sounded like his real voice again. She blinked a few times, feeling his hand on her cheek, but then the look of concern on his face was replaced by a scowl and after abruptly turning away from her, he covered his face with his hands.
"Damon?"
Damon murmured something in response, but Elena couldn't make out the words.
She took a few unsteady steps toward him and tentatively touched his shoulder.
He didn't react to her touch which was still better than flinching, so Elena slowly walked around him, keeping her hand on his arm.
"Damon-"
"That voice... my voice... no, no..." he muttered without looking at her. "There is a voice in my head," he repeated, uncovering his face and Elena's eyes widened at the sight.
His face looked as if he was fighting a high fever. The shade of his eyes was lighter, but they were blood-shot and there were drops of sweat on his forehead.
"What voice?" Elena asked, trying to hold his gaze, but with a grimace Damon shoved her to the side.
He dashed outside, but then came back and ran into an adjacent room. Elena rushed after him, but Damon slammed the door shut in her face before she managed to step inside. A moment later, she heard a quick, quiet, grinding noise and when she looked down she saw a key being slid under the door.
"Hide it somewhere," Damon rasped out to her through the door.
Elena placed her outstretched palms on the wooden surface, sliding them down in sync with what sounded like Damon sliding to the floor, his back against the locked door.
"Elena, take the key. Don't give it back to me. Don't open the door."
"Why? What's happening?" Elena asked, looking at the key, then back at the door.
After a moment of hesitation she picked up the key and closed it in her hand. For a few moments all she could hear was Damon's labored breathing on the other side.
Kneeling down, Elena sat on the floor as close to the door as possible. "Damon?"
"You need to get away from here, Elena." Damon's voice was steady, too steady, as if he was desperately trying to keep it that way, as if something terrible was going to happen if he didn't. "You need to get away... from me," he added after a pause with a trace of grim disbelief in his voice. "Elena."
Elena's head snapped toward the door. "No," she replied immediately, thinking that the way in which he was saying her name now was enough to make her stay, because there was truth in that and only in that and everything that sounded differently was fake and false.
"Yes," Damon insisted firmly. "It's not safe for you here, Elena. I don't know what's happening, but it's not safe."
Elena opened her mouth to speak, but before she managed to say anything, she heard Damon slam his hand against the door, causing it to rattle.
"Give me the key!" He shouted and Elena bit her lip with a grimace, her jaw clenching.
She suddenly remembered what Hazel had said after she'd burned her hands. That she'd heard a voice in her head. And now it seemed that something like that was happening to Damon. The realization was far from reassuring, but at least it provided Elena with some kind of an explanation that gave her hope that she was right not believing Damon's behavior to be of his own accord.
"Elena, run." Damon's voice shook her out of her brief reverie and she felt a pang of pain at the difference in his tone that made it clear that his harsh words hurt him as much as they hurt her. "Please. I will hurt you," he added with ominous certainty and the door rattled again.
Elena held her breath, looking sadly at the door. But then she rested her forehead against it with a sigh and closed her eyes to keep tears at bay. "I'm not going anywhere. I'm not leaving you."
Damon's forehead fell against the door on the other side, Elena's words echoing through his head, making the pain in his chest even more acute. He felt completely unable to control what was happening and yet there was light in her words that felt almost tangible and he wanted, with all his might, to cling to her words, to hear them instead of that nagging voice in his head.
Elena started trying to explain to him that she knew it wasn't his fault, trying to remind him what had happened with Hazel, but at some point she realized Damon wasn't listening to her. He resumed pounding on the door, attempting to threaten her to give him the key. But the more she listened to him, the more rehearsed his words sounded. Some of the lines she was sure he was repeating exactly the same way he'd said them before and she tried to hold on to the thought that this madness that made people do and say things they didn't mean was only temporary.
It was difficult to imagine how this was possible at all, but if in case of Hazel it lasted only for a very short amount of time, perhaps in case of Damon it also wouldn't last for too long.
Despite Damon's recurring fits of anger, Elena didn't move away from the door and kept leaning against it, comforting herself with the thought that during the moments when he was quiet, he was touching the door in the same spot, in the same way that she was touching it.
Damon's breathing on the other side was often the only sound in the cottage, but it never was the only sound for long. Most of the time, he'd continue trying to convince her that he was merely toying with her, that everything he'd said to her earlier in the forest was true and that it was his moments of clarity now that weren't real.
However, Elena remained sure that she had a palpable proof of the truth in her hand. And even without it, she knew what to believe. Clutching the key to her, she soon ceased trying to reason with Damon and settled for just keeping her odd watch by the door instead. She knew he could feel her presence just as she could feel his. And it was enough to survive, for now.
There were so many mysteries to be solved. Lost memories, the baby and now this mystifying condition that seemed to be affecting people in town. Was there any connection between any of these elements? If she and Damon could regain their memories, perhaps then everything else would be easier to figure out. Elena frowned. If Emily knew about the baby, if she could heal Hazel's hands, maybe her gift could also help to retrieve forgotten memories?
But then Elena's frown deepened when a thought sprung to her mind, something that she only realized just now. Why would Emily say that Elena and her baby weren't from here, weren't from... now, whatever that meant, but that's what she'd said, why would she say it as if it was a surprise to her as well? As her sister's handmaiden Emily should obviously know where Katherine's sister was from.
"Why are you still here? Elena." Damon's voice sounded simultaneously upset, resigned and amazed and Elena smiled brokenly, flatting her hand against the door.
"I'm practicing the vows we're going to make," she said quietly, marveling inwardly at how quickly she seemed to adjust to this bizarre situation, almost as if she was used to such extraordinary calamities coming her way. "Till death do us part." Elena kept her hand in place imagining Damon's hand on the other side, a quiet, scraping noise indicating the slightest movement. "And it seems to me both of us are still very much alive."
xxxdelenaxxx
"Are there any wild animals around here?" Jenna asked, glancing over her shoulder as she was helping Stefan arrange all the branches they'd collected in order to start a fire.
"Not any that would up the ante for Silas or Katherine," Stefan replied somberly.
Jenna snorted. "Right." She walked a few steps backwards to sit on a wood log nearby. "Why did Jeremy want to come here again?"
"I have no idea," Stefan replied sincerely in an utterly serious voice, eliciting another smile from Jenna that turned into a bored grimace when John walked up to them.
"It's getting dark," John observed, glancing at the sky and taking a seat next to Desmond and Lily.
"Are we waiting for Bonnie or are we going to do it the old-fashioned way?" Jenna asked, pointing to the bonfire.
Stefan smiled.
"We can try the old-fashioned way," Desmond offered, but the conversation came to a halt when Lily suddenly cut in.
"Do you remember when once in the summer we wanted to make a bonfire? But it was raining all week and then..." Lily trailed off, her expression momentarily falling, whether at the rest of the memory or the guarded expression on Stefan's face, it was difficult to tell.
"Weather can be tricky," John said conversationally, poking the already arranged branches with a stick.
"Yes, let's talk about the weather," Jenna scoffed.
John gave her a questioning look.
Stefan watched Lily avert her gaze, Desmond instinctively reaching out for her hand as if he was afraid she might storm to her feet and take flight.
"I remember," Stefan said under his breath without any specific color to his tone, but the words were enough to make Lily's eyes dart back to him.
After holding his mother's gaze for a few moments Stefan looked down at the bonfire, not sure if he was ready or even wanted to believe the sincerity of the tears that he noticed welling up in her eyes.
"I just wanted you to know that... that it's all coming back to me, I don't know why and... and I want you to know that I'm... I'm very proud of you," Lily said in a low, faltering voice, looking at Stefan who stilled his movements. "You stood by each other. Even when I wasn't there for you, you were there for each other. You had each other through all these years. And I'm very grateful to have such..." She drew a shallow breath. "Such wonderful sons."
Stefan's eyes remained fixed on the ground for a longer while before he finally looked up. There was a certain amount of exaltation to Lily's voice that felt familiar yet now that he didn't trust it, there was also something off-putting about it and he wasn't sure whether he felt anything at all at the thought that her words might be genuine.
Either way, she probably deserved the truth.
"Is that what you think?" Stefan asked, ignoring the way in which Desmond's eyes flickered to him, wordlessly asking him not to say anything hurtful, because a trace of sharp detachment in Stefan's tone seemed to signal the possibility.
Lily looked at Stefan in silence.
"Because the truth is that we weren't there for each other. Not always, at least," Stefan murmured with a pensive frown. "Not when it mattered. Not when we should have most. There were no miracles, no rescues, no celebrating every passing year of immortality. If that's the story you're trying to believe then I'm sorry, but it wasn't the case. There was grief, solitude, anguish, guilt, anger and bitterness." Stefan stood up. "But it has changed," he said, holding Lily's gaze. She looked at him without blinking. "What you said is true now and if you're grateful for that, then you should thank someone who made it happen. Unfortunately, it's probably a little late for that." Lily's mouth twitched when Stefan added. "Because you'd have to thank Elena."
xxxdelenaxxx
Elena soon lost the track of time, each hour dragging mercilessly, measured by cruel words she didn't believe, interlaced with brief moments where Damon continued imploring her to leave.
She was enduring both, not moving from her spot by the door, watching shadows grow larger as the daylight was paling and the night was flooding the house through the windows.
A clock she didn't even notice until now struck midnight and in the eerie silence of the cottage the sound sent a tremor through Elena. She instinctively sat up hearing Damon apparently do the same on the other side.
For a few minutes they were both quiet.
"It stopped."
Damon's words were hushed and Elena pressed her ear closer to the door to make sure she'd heard him right.
"Damon?"
"That voice. It stopped."
Elena jumped to her feet, her hands shaking, causing her to drop the key a few times before she succeeded in inserting it into the lock.
She was acting with haste and on an impulse of hope and only after she opened the door it crossed her mind that it might've been a trick meant to make her open the door.
But Damon's reaction to her appearing in the doorway quickly dispersed any traces of uncertainty.
"No, no, Elena, don't do that! It may come back-"
Damon tried to stand up, tried to move away from her, but Elena's arms were already around him, locking him in a firm embrace.
xxxdelenaxxx
"Did you bring anything else?" Bonnie asked, arching an eyebrow and biting back a smile as she was watching Jeremy taking out of his backpack countless packages of graham crackers, bags of marshmallows and chocolate bars.
"I have a special ingredient that Sarah came up with-" Jeremy replied, stopping himself in mid-sentence, feeling everyone's eyes on him.
If he didn't know any better he himself would think that he was doing it on purpose, but he really wasn't. It wasn't his fault that for some strange reason he was thinking about Sarah more and more ever since she'd left with her parents. It was some kind of a perplexing paradox he couldn't make sense of. And the fact that she hadn't texted him even once since she'd left wasn't helping either.
"And that'd be the fifth time he mentions Sarah while we're here," Bonnie said flippantly, taking a look around as if she was making a general announcement.
"Hey, want to hear something more awkward?" Jenna asked, propping her elbows on her knees.
Jeremy gave her a weak smile.
"Do you know what is the one common trait all of my ex-boyfriends have in common?"
Jenna looked between Jeremy, Bonnie, Stefan, Desmond and Lily, making sure not to spare John a glance.
"If it's the fact they were or are all dead, everyone's exes around here have that in common, sorry," Bonnie said with a shrug.
"Way to ruin a joke, thanks," Jenna said with a sigh, returning Bonnie's smile.
"If you want to be original, go back to grad school," Jeremy offered.
Jenna was about to reply, but then everyone looked at Bonnie who jumped to her feet.
"Did you hear that?"
"Hear what?" Jeremy asked, wrinkling his forehead. "Hey!" He exclaimed with a hint of disappointment in his voice when Bonnie started the bonfire with a single flick of her hand, orange flames bursting high into the air. "I was going to do it a regular way."
"Before or after that bear eats us?" Jenna asked in a whisper that Jeremy would make fun of if it didn't sound sincerely horrified.
"What bear?"
"It's not a bear," Desmond said, stepping in front of the group, squinting into the distance and trying to make out the shape looming near the forest edge.
John started looking around in search of a weapon, but it seemed that apart from sticks and branches they didn't have anything they could use to defend themselves. Well, except-
"Can't you just... poof whatever animal that is, away?" Jenna asked hopefully, stepping closer to Bonnie who slowly shifted her eyes to her, but didn't get a chance to lament her magic deficiencies, because the sound of a familiar voice rendered her speechless instead.
"How is that possible?" Jeremy whispered in bewilderment, staring at the limping man who slowly approached them.
"If this makes you feel any better I'm just as surprised," the man replied, a signature hint of cool cheerfulness in his voice now balanced with grim austerity.
Holding her breath, Bonnie turned around.
Long dark hair and long beard made the man look almost unrecognizable, but his eyes and the contagious intensity of his gaze left no room for doubt.
"Do you know who that is?" Lily asked, shooting Stefan a questioning look and glancing at Desmond, Jenna and John who seemed just as clueless as her.
"That'd be... Professor Atticus Shane," Bonnie introduced him in a low, puzzled voice, completely stumped by the encounter.
The darkness and the beard obscuring the sight, Bonnie wasn't sure but she thought that Shane smiled.
"I always knew you'd come back for me," he said with sincerity that warranted a dead silence to follow.
But then he chuckled wryly and Jeremy blinked when Shane tapped him lightly on the shoulder while passing him on his way toward the bonfire.
"Kidding," Shane said with a wink, glancing between Jeremy and Bonnie before helping himself to a chocolate bar.
xxxdelenaxxx
"Elena, I'm so sorry," Damon whispered vehemently, cradling her face in his hands, his eyes shimmering with dismay. "I'm so sorry I hurt you."
He didn't even remember too clearly what had happened, his own words a nagging, meaningless noise. But he felt he had done, had said some repulsive things, Elena's tear-stained cheeks and her disheveled appearance the best indication of that.
Without thinking, Damon automatically tried to pull a torn sleeve of Elena's dress back onto her shoulder.
"You didn't," Elena said reassuringly, placing her hand on Damon's cheek, her other hand clasped around his neck. "It wasn't your fault. It was... it was just some kind of a malady."
She reminded him of what had happened to Hazel, hoping that it was enough to convince him not to blame himself. But a broken, guilty look didn't seem to be disappearing off his face.
"What if it will happen again?" Damon inched his hands away from Elena's face as if he was suddenly afraid to touch her, his forehead wrinkling in a horrified scowl. "What if this time now wasn't the only time when something like that happened? What if this... this malady took over me before? Will take over me again?"
He gritted his teeth as the revolting words he'd said earlier started coming back to him. How could he possibly say things like that? Why? They weren't true. They couldn't-
Damon blinked rapidly, suddenly finding it difficult to find a rational explanation for saying such appalling things if they weren't true. Ice-cold shivers ran up his spine at the unimaginable thought, but then his eyes darted to Elena when she hastily made him look at her, her hands on his face.
"You can't think that, Damon. You know this is not true. You know you couldn't do something like that. You can't start thinking otherwise. That's what this malady seems to be about. It made Hazel hurt herself and now you. It's trying to break you by making you believe the things about yourself that aren't true! You have to stand by what you feel, what you know it's true."
Damon stared at her in wonder, Elena's words managing to get to him in a way he didn't think possible. The words themselves wouldn't have convinced him, but the way in which she was saying them, with so much faith, so much love. He believed every word. He would always believe her every word, he thought with calming relief.
He felt that what she was saying was true, her every word erasing doubt from his mind, straightening out the distorted image, making him feel that he knew who he was again.
"I trust you. No sickness is going to change that."
Elena trailed off when Damon's lips fell onto hers and he kissed her tenderly before whispering against her lips.
"Thank you, Elena."
She opened her eyes prepared to smile and offer him a warm-hearted, mildly amused 'you're welcome', but when their eyes met she forgot what she wanted to say.
Damon's hand was weighing heavily on her shoulder in a protective, comforting gesture and it felt so endlessly soothing to be feeling his palm against her bare skin.
They survived this awful day and only now she felt how exhausting this day had been. But now they were looking into each other's eyes again. Just like she'd wished for before, all the bad things were just a bad dream or at least worth as much as a bad dream. There was nothing that could truly come between them. There was nothing that could wipe out this sublime, shared feeling burning within them.
"Elena..." Damon whispered huskily, petrified in the strangest, most unexpectedly sensuous way by the focused expression on Elena's face, her eyes boring into his with intensity that made his heart hammer in his chest, his blood rushing through his veins like scalding wine.
He wanted to repeat that this wasn't safe, that she should get away from him... But they were stranded in a remote house in the middle of the wild forest, in the middle of the night. There was no light except for the stars outside and it felt so utterly impossible to spend all these hours until dawn on two sides of a locked door.
His eyes already closed, he felt Elena's mouth against his, the kiss sharpening all of his senses. He could hear her lips moving against his, Elena's quietest, stifled moans reverberating in his head with the loudness of church bells.
Nestled tightly in Damon's arms while they continue kissing, Elena's hands slid under Damon's shirt and she smiled feverishly against his lips, startled by how intoxicating it felt to toss his shirt to the side of the room and press her lips to his chest.
Damon's fingers weaved their way into Elena's hair and he gingerly brought her lips back to his, kissing her relentlessly on the mouth while cradling her to him.
Everything seemed to be happening in a haze of frenzy, their touch delirious, inexplicably impatient, yet it was filled with such pristine clarity, every moment of it, that when they looked into each other's eyes in between ardent kisses, there was no mist, no fog, just the purest color of their eyes shining with the need to be as close as possible, not even a tinge of air separating his skin from hers.
Damon's hands glided along Elena's body back and forth as if he didn't want to leave any part of her skin untouched. There was no shred of fabric left between them when they crashed onto the bed in an embrace, his hands roaming over her skin with breathtaking confidence, as if it was a map he somehow already knew by heart, Elena's arms wrapped around him, her nails digging into his back, tentatively and then hard enough to draw blood.
It wasn't pleasure or pain, it was both, more than both, more than everything, these moments of them moving together in the humming quietness of open-mouthed kisses.
"Elena... I love you," Damon whispered into Elena's ear, burying his face in her tangled hair.
She panted the words back to him before crying out, breaking through the dark, through the night, crashing into a blinding dome of light and floating back into Damon's arms, drifting to sleep with his lips on her cheek and her hand on his heart.
xxxdelenaxxx
Thanks to a terse text from Enzo, Caroline already knew Enzo, Isobel, Miranda and Grayson were on their way back to Mystic Falls, so when she parked her car in front of the boarding house she wasn't surprised by seeing one of the cars in the driveway. The second one, however, made her pause.
When she walked inside, she noticed a bag left in the hallway and after taking a closer look at the airport straps she thought she knew exactly who had arrived.
"Is Alaric here?" Caroline asked, marching into the dimly lit parlor where Enzo was sitting on the couch near the fireplace, his legs outstretched, a drink in his hand.
"Upstairs," Enzo grunted, his eyes fixed on the ebbing fire. "With Isobel."
"Is that why you look depressed? Don't worry. One day you're going to meet someone who will want to go on a second date with you," Caroline said with a thin smile.
But then she grimaced, perplexed by Enzo's unresponsiveness. She watched him for a few moments trying to figure out the reason for his mood.
"Do you know what Damon and Elena wrote in their letter to me?" Enzo asked, making slow, round motions with his hand that made the remaining few drops of bourbon in the glass swim from one side to the other.
Caroline slumped onto a couch across from Enzo."That you have 48 hours to move out?" She offered after a moment of mock-consideration and frowned when Enzo tossed a folded piece of paper at her.
She was about to scold him, but there was something so disquieting about his demeanor that she just unfolded the letter instead.
But before she started reading it, Enzo quoted out loud, his voice uneven and wry.
""There's a scrapbook that will never be, in which you are that crazy uncle who comes to a Thanksgiving dinner dressed up as Santa Claus-""
"Listen, I had a really long day and apparently, it's not even over yet, so-" Caroline tried to interrupt him, but Enzo continued, ignoring her.
""Who brings age-inappropriate presents and makes everyone laugh.""
"Right," Caroline muttered, glancing at the letter and putting it away on a small table nearby. If he was going to recite the whole thing anyway, there was no need for her to read it. "Are you going somewhere with this? Or is this just a side-effect of drinking alone?"
Enzo tore his gaze away from the fire and looked at Caroline so acutely that she felt a twinge of cold at the foreboding feeling she got. She'd never seen such a gloomy, resigned look on his face before.
"OK, if you're trying to freak me out you're succeeding," Caroline frowned, still hoping that he was going to say something inconsequential that would allow her to just roll her eyes and go home.
"Stamina vitae," Enzo spoke after a longer moment of silence, bringing the glass to his lips but not drinking from it. He raised his hand and sloppily pointed in the general direction of the back of the house. "Thread of life. You've got to appreciate the irony." A vacant expression flickered across his face. "And the irony of the letter. Irony everywhere," he whispered through his teeth with a darkly derisive grimace.
Caroline widened her eyes at him. "The weird magical thread in the garden? Isobel and you figured out what it is? Tell me!" She exclaimed impatiently when Enzo said nothing for a longer while.
"A life created in the future can't be born in the past. That thread appears as a sign of a space-time continuum anomaly."
Caroline grimaced in confusion. "A space-time continuum? A life created in the future? Born in the past?" She shook her head. "What are you talking about?"
Enzo looked at her, his expression acquiring a layer of exasperation that made him deliver an abrupt explanation that made Caroline's head spin.
"Elena must've been pregnant when they went back in time. And if the child will be born in the past, and it will be because that was a one-way trip," he trailed off for a second before saying the final words in a despondent, gruff whisper. "The child will die. Right after being born."
The fire died down but Caroline didn't even notice the room growing completely dark. Slowly, she leaned against the back of the couch and remained completely quiet for a very long time.