DAMON'S POV

She was moving her fingers. Every single one of them was twitching lightly while resting on the couch, next to her body. I didn't know what to do. Thinking about her waking up with only me in the room, half drunk before noon, made me nervous. Maybe because I didn't want her to see me in this state. I didn't want my face to be the first thing she sees after months of being dead. Or maybe I just didn't want the responsibility of caring for her right now.

Caring for people is not something I'm good at. Or, better to say, showing them that I care is what I have a problem with.

So I called for Stefan, thinking he would know what to do. He always knows what to do. More precisely, he knows the right thing to do. By the time he came down, all movement stopped. Bonnie was still again, in the same position we left her in when we brought her here.

Jeremy came downstairs as well, when he heard me calling for Stefan and so did Caroline, who was with my brother at the time. I wonder when she came in. Maybe I've missed her, it's not like she would stop by to let me know she's here. Or maybe I forgot seeing her all together.

She called Elena, and now she's standing in front of me. When she first came in, I almost didn't recognize her. She was all blurry and fast and loud. She came to a halt when she saw me standing there, her voice became more silent and distant. She bowed her head down.

She's been ignoring me since then. Maybe she figured out that's the best thing she can do, act like I don't even exist. Sometimes I do the same.

I go from one extreme to another - from pretending I don't exist at all, to pretending I'm the only one whose existence matters. I wish I could land in the middle, but ground is so soft there and my legs refuse to stay steady, so I fly away.

It's strange. For the longest time she's been the center of my universe. Every one of my thoughts revolved around her - how to impress her, how to come closer to her, how to make her love me. I was convinced loving her is the reason why I've been born, that, in a way, she's responsible for my very creation. Waiting for her seemed like centuries when, in reality, it's been no more than two years. Hearing her say that she loves me and that she's choosing me, having her by my side was one of the most fulfilling experiences in my life. The amount of happiness she brought to my life was so intense it had hurt me. Not the thought of losing her or having her ripped away from me, not even the thought of her changing her mind and realizing she's made a mistake when she chose me - but the mere fact that she's mine now was sometimes too painful to stand. It's like smiling too wide and feeling the skin in the corners of your lips crack. That's when I would have to shut down for a moment. I would forget her - that she chose to be with me - and then I would be okay. Pain was just pain again.

So you would think that hearing her say that it's over would push me off the edge of sanity, but it didn't. Once it came I realized I've been expecting it all along.

At first, I started panicking. I wanted her to stay, just like I wanted her from the beginning. It took me time to realize it isn't like it was in the beginning, it wasn't pure desire, but the fact that I got used to having her there. It was purely selfish, my tendency of trying to stop people from leaving me. I push people away, I don't even let them come close, to cut off every possibility of them leaving. But some, like Elena, wiggle their way in. Those people I try to stop from leaving any way I know how.

It's a bipolar madness I've been stuck in my whole life.

Then came relief. It's like waiting for a tsunami when all you actually get is a little tiny wave that just washes over you. You don't lose as much as you thought you would, so the small loss you do feel makes you actually happy. It's crazy, how emotions escalate, how in some situations actually losing something, a feeling that should make you feel incomplete fills you with joy instead.

Then, finally, it came. Nothing. Pure emptiness. That's what scared me the most. So I decided to drown it.

Stefan looks at me closely. His brows furrow when he smells the alcohol on me. "Are you sure you didn't imagine it?" he sounds almost caring. Almost.

I know that he pities me.

All the eyes in the room are on me and they pity me.

I pity myself as well.

I can feel myself sobering up. Her figure is sharper, and when I look at her closer, I feel nothing and it crushes me.

I don't miss her. I should be missing her. I should be rolling in self pity and tears and I should be writing poems about the cuteness of her cheekbones and I should be leaving desperate messages in her voice mail.

Why am I not doing any of those things? Why am I not trying to win her back?

I pour myself another drink before saying, "Stefan," I do my best to put a smirk on my face, to sound like a condescending asshole I usually am, "Why in the world would I imagine Bonnie Bennett moving her fingers?"

After few seconds of thinking this over, he seems to agree with me. So do everyone else.

Fair point. I've never cared for Bonnie Bennett or anyone else for that matter. All I've ever cared about is me and people who can give me what I need.

They start discussing what I've seen, glancing at Bonnie every now and then.

I take my drink and leave the room, assuming my usual position of the one who doesn't give a fuck about anything.


I'm not sure what's going on with Damon. This is not a side of him I've ever seen before. I thought he will lash out now that Elena broke up with him, like he usually does, but he's unusually calm. His face does not reveal sorrow, or that he's doing his best to hide it. He does look like he's trying to hide something, though, something he's ashamed of. Something he doesn't understand.

I know that Damon being an emotional invalid is a popular opinion shared by the many, but that's far from the truth. Damon's specter of emotion is too big for anyone to comprehend. It's too big for him to comprehend as well, which is why he often behaves like it doesn't exist.

If there's something Damon hates, it's not knowing what's going on.

I can smell alcohol on him. I could have smelled it all week long, which is not unusual. Damon likes to take his poisons daily, alcohol is just one in the row among the many. But there's been too much of it lately, even for him. I should have known.

Despite the popular opinion, I don't know everything.

I'm quite sure he's not lying about Bonnie, he has no reason to. But I'm not quite sure he had seen what he claims he had, but then again, he is right as well - among all things, why would he imagine that?

Elena left the room not that long after Damon did, but she went in the different direction, which is why I feel free to go to look for her, leaving Jeremy and Caroline alone in silence.

I don't search for a long time when I find her in front of the house, sitting on a small wall surrounding the entrance. Some time ago she told me that's one of her favorite places on the property, even though she didn't know how to explain why. Some things don't require an explanation, they just are.

I walk over and sit next to her without saying a word. She's looking right ahead, her eyes stuck somewhere between the sky and the trees, maybe at the very spot where the last branch ends and endless sky begins. Or maybe at that one spot where it looks like the pointy end of one especially long branch is touching the cloud.

Sometimes you can look at people for years and never actually see them. That's how I feel lately when I look at Elena. Like I'm not really seeing her. Like I'm missing a vital piece of the puzzle that would make the picture complete.

"I'm a horrible person," she says all of a sudden. My eyes are still on her presence, but she never moves hers to look at me.

I'm not sure how to reply to that. Denying the fact seems awfully simple and not quite enough, but I don't have any bigger words to use. I don't know how to comfort her.

"I thought things are going to be quiet for once," her eyes fall from whatever she's been looking at. She lowers her look and I can see sadness pouring from the corners of her eyes. She has too much of it, more than enough for a couple of lifetimes. "Then Silas appeared, and everything he brought with him.."

Silas. We're still not quite sure what happened to him. By all means, he should be dead, but you never know how far immortality extends. When me and Elena jumped into the time hole, he had jumped after us, but too late. The hole started closing and it sew him in half. Damon buried the lower part of him in the woods by the bridge, but his upper part had disappeared. Maybe it's wondering somewhere in time, who knows.

She starts crying. Not hysterically or loudly, she doesn't even sob, but lets tears roll down her cheeks before yelling, frustrated, "How does one not notice that her friend is dead?"

I don't know. I don't know how to answer that question in a comforting way because I've been asking myself the same question. How do you just get used to not having someone in your life, especially when that someone was there since you can remember?

"Elena, - "

"No," she interrupts me, this time looking right at me, "Don't you dare tell me everything is going to be okay," she spits at me.

There are tear stains on her skin. Slimy, white marks all over her blushing cheeks. Her eyes are big and puffy, storing more tears than you can imagine.

Her whole body is being shaken by sadness.

There's something different about people when they're sad. Some morphed, fucked up idea of beauty. It's inappropriate and inexplicable, but it's there. No one talks about it, but it's there.

The fact that people carry their souls on the palm of their hands when they're sad. It's like they cough it up and blow it in the air.

"My best friend died," she tears her look away as the next words come out through her teeth, "And I didn't even notice."

She's angry at herself.

I want to ask her is that why she broke up with Damon. Is that why she feels like she's losing herself? Or is there something more to it? Is this just a bit of what she really feels?

I want to dig through her. I want to read her like an open book. I want to crawl under her skin and live there, as a part of her flesh, so I can touch her veins and get lost in her blood, because that's the closest I'll ever be to her heart.

I want to travel through her body and make her heart beat again. I want to hear its melody, all the different tunes it plays as her mood changes. I want to hear her shallow breathing when she's cold.

I want to rip her piece by piece and then sew her up again into the girl I know she can be, not this patched up doll whose insides you can see through her torn patches.

I want to make her complete again.

She looks at me again and in that moment, when I look into her eyes, she looks so much younger than I've ever seen her. I haven't met her this young, but at the same time I have a feeling I've seen that face before.

So soft and so rough, clean with fresh stitches and marks and sunburns, with a smile turned upside down and withering look in her eyes.

"What kind of a monster does that?" she asks before her head crashes on my chest and she soaks my shirt with her tears.


DAMON'S POV

I can hear them in front of the house. She's crying in that quiet, desperate way she usually does, and he's doing his best to comfort her. He always knew how, without even trying. To me, it always seemed like his arms are home to her - when she's there, she's at peace. You can see it in the way her face changes.

She never wore that expression while being with me. She rarely let me comfort her while she was sad, and God knows I didn't insist, because I never knew how to comfort her. My hugs weren't enough by themselves, and I didn't quite know which words to use to make her feel better. I often made her feel worse in situations like those, until I learned to keep my mouth shut. She never said anything, but I could have seen it in the way her body became rigid, tense. Like someone is poking her wounds with a sharp tip of the knife.

I'm not jealous, which is why I take another drink. I should be jealous. I should be think how that should be me out there instead of him, taking her worries away, even though I never knew how.

Instead I'm tired of feeling like this, like I have something to be ashamed of. I'm ashamed of accepting the fact that we were never a match for one other. That's quitting, surrendering, admitting that I've been wrong all those times I tried to convince her, and myself, that she belongs to me.

Maybe that was my problem, trying to make her belong to me, instead of letting her belong to herself. But I don't know how to not be possessive with the things and people I love. If I don't keep them on a leash, they are free to leave whenever they want, and I'm too selfish to let them. I'm too afraid of being alone.

Funny hearing that from someone who spent centuries all by himself, wallowing in loneliness caused by mistakes and bad decisions which made people run far away from me.

It doesn't bother me one bit, so I take another drink, telling myself this is the last one.

There's nothing to be ashamed of.

But there is. I spent so much time pining over this girl. If I admit that I've been wrong, it was all for nothing.

I take so many drinks I almost pass out. No one notices anything when I drag myself over to the piano. I'm not even sure who's in the room with me because all I can see are blurred shapes and thin, wavering edges.

I manage to place the glass on the top of the piano, how, I'm not sure. My fingers feel wobbly when I press them against the keys.

Playing this tune doesn't require much concentration, I know it by heart. It's been stuck in my head for half of a century now.

I don't know for how long I play, time is a lost concept to me, when I hear someone saying, "She's moving."

I don't stop playing but I do raise my head up which is when I realize I'm completely sober now. There's a commotion in the room, Caroline is on her knees, above Bonnie's body, her eyes shooting straight at her twitching fingers saying, "He's been right, she really is moving."

Jeremy is standing on the other side of the room, stunned, speechless.

I stop playing at the moment Stefan and Elena come into the room, their eyes filled with curiosity. Soon enough, curiosity grows into confusion.

I look in the other direction and see that Bonnie is no longer moving her fingers.

"She was moving them seconds ago, I swear!" Caroline exclaims, trying to convince them, and sounding awfully lot like she's trying to convince herself as well.

Silence fills the room. They're all looking at each other and I'm desperate for another drink but the bottle is empty.

"Damon," Jeremy says my name and I shoot my look straight at him, curious as to what he could possibly want from me, "Would you play again?" he asks.

It seems like an odd request at this moment, but I do as he asks because all I want is for this commotion to end so I can deal with my problems old fashioned way - by avoiding them.

"Here!" I can hear Caroline's voice again, "She's doing it again!" upon hearing those words Stefan and Elena rush over and, indeed, little witch is really moving her fingers.

I wonder how many times she did that while no one was looking.

I wonder how many times was I sitting here, intoxicated, playing some unimportant tune, and she was twitching there beside me.

It seems like she's dancing while I'm playing. She's my little marionette, her strings are in my hands, and as long as my fingers keep pressing the keys, she will keep moving.

"Just keep playing," Jeremy orders me. This would have bothered me before but now, out of some reason, I'm happy to oblige.

I'm happy. I definitely need another drink but it's like my fingers are glued to the keys - I can't stop playing. They keep moving faster, pressing more tightly, harder. It hurts me to play like this, with so much passion. The sound I'm creating is louder now.

And then, she wakes up.

She shoots straight up, sucking in more air than she could possibly need, filling herself up in case there's ever a shortage of air. Maybe she's just hungry for it, after all these months.

Everyone are cheering and hovering over her instead of giving her a moment, time and a space to breathe.

I stop playing.

All I can hear now is everyone saying her name repeatedly. All these voices saying just one word time after time after time. "Bonnie, Bonnie, Bonnie," and so on.

"Yeah," she says, like she's confirming that this is indeed her.

Everyone step back when she does so, after they're convinced she's really back.

"I can't believe it.." Caroline says with a teary voice, little drops of salty water filling her eyes, "You're back!"

Bonnie looks at her.. confused.

Like she's doesn't know why this girl is so grateful for having her back. Like she wasn't gone for more than five minutes.

Or like she's not aware that she's been gone.

"Yeah.." she says hesitantly once more.

Something's wrong.

She looks at them, at their smiling faces. She doesn't look at me, not even once, but I can see her expression all the way from over here.

"I just have one question," there's something different about her voice. It's stronger. More determined. Deeper. Her next question makes the time stop, "Who are you people?"