Hey, everyone. I didn't really expect to update this so quickly but I figured...I already had it written and I'm kind of bored right now so why not? Enjoy this!
Disclaimer: Chapter 1, please :)
The More You Ignore Me, the Closer I Get
"I missed you, too, buddy."
"I can't believe it." Stefan pulled away from his long embrace with Damon and looked him in the eye, still reeling over the fact that his brother was standing in front of him. "I thought you were gone."
"Well, you didn't think I was gone-gone. I promised you an eternity of misery." Damon smirked and Stefan laughed feeling the comforting hand of his elder sibling as he managed to spin a joke about their treacherous past. But none of that mattered anymore. He was back.
"What about Bonnie?" Stefan asked, remembering his witch friend that had died alongside Damon. Instantly, the dark-haired Salvatore's face dimmed and Stefan realized he had said something wrong. "What is it?"
"She sacrificed herself so I could come back." He swallowed. "But I don't want anyone to know. There's no sense of making this harder than it already is."
Stefan stammered, "W-What are we gonna tell people?"
Damon opened his mouth to try to come up with a lie that he knew would devastate others, but less than it would devastate them with the truth. He scrambled, but eventually came up with, "We'll...tell them that she wasn't there with me. That I was alone."
"Where?"
"Mystic Falls, 1994."
"Mystic Falls, 1994?" Stefan repeated, astounded at the statement. Damon nodded grudgingly.
"I know. If a bunch of witches are gonna get together and create some space...time purgatory, you'd think they'd pick a better year than the one Kurt Cobain killed himself in. The whole thing was very depressing." Damon sighed and took a long sip of his bourbon. Stefan shifted.
"So how did you get back?"
"Long story, big flash of light, two decades worth of jet lag...I will explain all of my adventures in that flannel hellscape but first..." Damon trailed off with a sigh. "There's someone I gotta go see."
Damon didn't give Stefan a chance to intervene before he turned his back and moved to walk out of the Salvatore mausoleum, so he just had to call out to his brother's back, "Damon, Madeline took all of her memories of loving you away."
The other vampire stopped cold and turned around. "She did what?"
Stefan nodded. "She...uh, she had Alaric do it. Elena convinced her that it would be a good idea and she...she went along with it. She knows who you are, but she doesn't remember loving you. At all."
Damon let out a frustrated groan. "Why the hell does this always happen to us? I mean, again? This has got to be some sort of record!" Stefan stayed silent, realizing the justified anger coming from his brother, but eventually, Damon relaxed. "I just need to see her, Stefan. Our eyes will meet, fireworks will go off, and the balance of nature will be restored. That's what happened last time."
"This isn't like last time." Stefan shook his head. "She didn't know who you were last time, but she still had feelings for you somewhere. This time, Alaric took away all of those feelings. She reset, Damon. When you see her, she's going to act like she did when you first met."
Damon stared at his brother, more furious at the situation than with him. "She loves me. I'm going to marry her."
"He's back?"
Talk about a freaking cherry on top. In the midst of probably the toughest week of my entire life where I have discovered that there is an alter ego inside of me that keeps escaping at random times to kill people, I learned that my ex-fiancé, the man I loved enough to compel every trace of loving him away because it had taken too much of a toll on my sanity, had risen from the dead. Elena and Alaric told me this information in the confinements of his office.
Elena nodded. "I know. I never expected it to happen. Caroline told me this morning when Stefan called her."
"H-How is that even possible?" He died. So did Bonnie. "And Bonnie? She's with him?"
Alaric and Elena exchanged glances until Alaric finally responded carefully, "Um, no. According to Stefan, she wasn't with Damon over there."
"There?" I repeated, confused.
"In Mystic Falls." I waited for Elena to get to the punchline. "1994."
I let out a deep sigh, the information burning a whole through my head. "So...they time-jumped back in the past?"
"Stefan said it was more of a prison," Alaric replied. I shook my head in disbelief and leaned back on the couch. "So...when are you going to go see him?"
My eyes flickered up to meet his and I paused, thinking of an answer. But with everything going on in my life, when did I have the time to think about my love life? I was a real-life Norman Bates; I was the serial killer. Eventually, I knew I had to respond, so I summed up my thoughts all in one sentence.
"I have way too much on my plate right now. I don't have the time to think about...my dead, not dead fiancé." I shrugged. Elena straightened, uncrossing her arms.
"Mads...I wanted you to take away the memories because I didn't think there was a chance that Damon was going to come back. I would rather you be happy then spend your life missing someone who was gone, but...he's not gone anymore." She looked at me with pleading eyes. "Forget what I said before, I-I think you should ask Alaric to compel them back."
"Frankly, I can't ever see how I would love someone like him." I stood up from the couch. "Actually, I can't see how I would ever love anyone. I have spent my entire life heartless and cold. I happen to prefer myself that way and I can't see how that can change...with some pretty-eyed vampire."
Alaric sighed heavily. "I get it, that's how you feel now, Mads. But if you thought there was a chance you'd see Damon again, you would have never asked me to compel away your memories of loving him."
"But I did ask. And you did compel me."
"Damon is going to kill me!" Alaric shouted. Elena looked at him from the side.
"Technically, you're unkillable—"
"Elena, you're not helping," Alaric hushed her. She shrugged and removed herself from the conversation. I crossed my arms and stared at him.
"I'm a strong non-believer in the whole 'soulmate' business, okay? What do you think is going to happen if I see him? I'm going to look into his psychopathic eyes and see the good in him at last?" Both Alaric and Elena said nothing and I looked back and forth between them. "He kills people. That's what he does. And he enjoys it—that I remember."
Suddenly, just as I said the last word of my argument, I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. I pulled it out and read it over.
From: Sebastian
I'm on call. Meet for coffee in an hour?
I looked up at Elena and Alaric and shook my head. "I'm sorry, I have to go. I have something more important to deal with. As for removing the compulsion..." I tried to come up with the words but eventually just shrugged. "I'll let you know if I change my mind. I just can't do this right now."
I left before Elena or Alaric could ask me what I meant, but it all seemed futile when Elena followed me back to the dorm a while later. An hour was too far ahead to go straight to the campus coffee shop to get a drink with Sebastian so I decided to relax for ten or fifteen minutes before heading out. Luckily, when Elena returned to the dorm to join me, she didn't ask why I was acting so strange. However, I could see the guilt written all over her face for a reason unknown to me. It wasn't her fault I didn't want to remember. Well, truthfully, I wanted to remember, I just didn't want to remember right this moment. Too much shit, so little time.
"I'm going to take a shift at the hospital today," Elena informed me as I put my laundry away. "Apparently there's something weird with Jo going on. Alaric said he tried to compel her but she couldn't be compelled."
I lifted my eyes. "Vervain? But then she would know about..."
"Yeah." Elena sighed and sat down on my bed. "And...where are you going?"
"Out." I shut the drawer I had been putting my shirts away in and turned back at Elena and the empty laundry basket. "I'm meeting with Sebastian for coffee."
"Mads—"
"It's not what you think," I told her immediately, seeing the look of distress on her face. Elena arched an eyebrow.
"Then what is it?"
Before I had the chance to give her a vague, non-descriptive answer so that I could put some ease to the curiosity and suspicion that surrounded my sister...practically 24/7, there was a knock on the door. Elena didn't move, and I looked at her with incredulous eyes.
"No, Elena, you don't have to move," I deadpanned as I moved towards the door. "I've got it." With a sigh, I spun around and reached for the doorknob. "Who is it?"
"Hey, it's me." I stopped, frozen, with my hand just about ready to twist the knob and pull the door open. But hearing Damon's voice, I stilled and listened to him as he continued, "I just wanted to talk."
"N-No," I stuttered as I stepped away from the door. "I can't. There's somewhere I need to be."
"Are you insane?" Elena rose from the bed. "Open the door, Mads."
"Elena, so help me God," I hissed at her angrily, low enough so Damon couldn't hear, "Do. Not. Test. Me. Right. Now. Back off."
Elena could see the sincerity in my eyes, and we heard Damon say on the other side of the door, "Look, Madeline, I know why you did what you did." My sister stepped away, obviously peeved that I was making a choice for myself and she knew that I would stop her if she tried to open the door. I felt confined, trapped in a corner with no way out. I rarely ever panicked, but this was one of those times.
Damon continued, "It's not real. You know what's real? The way you felt for me. The way I felt for you." He paused. "Baby, we're fated for each other. And there's nothing you can do to stop it...so let me in."
"I have..." I trailed off and gulped down what was catching in my throat, "...things to deal with, Damon. This can't be one of them right now."
"Oh, come on, Madeline," Damon begged through the wall. For a moment, I actually forgot about everything else—this Norman Bates complex, Sebastian, my sister standing only ten feet behind me... "I'm sure by now you've compelled enough people to know it's just a way of covering the truth and no matter how badly you want it done, it doesn't make it any less of a lie and you know it."
He had a point, I realized. Cautiously, I took a step forward, thinking that it'd be okay to just open the door for a minute, just to see how it all played out. My hand was right at the knob, just about ready to touch the cold brass, until I heard Damon's sharp whisper and gasped and pulled away.
"Oh, I can hear you breathing," Damon moaned longingly. "You have no idea how long I've wanted to hear you breathe."
Hell. I could feel myself falling, spiraling into someone I hardly knew with just a freaking sentence. This couldn't be happening right now. I couldn't be doing this right now. I had to focus on something more important than him. But there was a devil's advocate on my shoulder, telling me just how much I wanted to open the door and see where it led. With my own testimony, with my sister's, with Alaric's, with Stefan's...how could I deny what was just beyond a door? Frustrated, I set my hand on the wall and kept it there, trying to recover my breath. I barely heard it, as I supposed Damon had the same way, but I could hear the sliding of his palm up against the wall and I knew that his hand was just on the other side. Right out of reach, right for the taking. All I had to do was open the goddamn door.
"Just open the door, Madeline," he whispered. "And everything can go back to the way it was. Except, now, it can be forever."
But it couldn't, could it? Not with this...murderer inside of me. Whoever Damon loved before, that girl was human. For whatever reason, I loved him back, but I knew what he wanted from me. He wanted to marry me. He wanted me. But how could I do those things when, almost every night, I blacked out and killed innocent people? If there was a chance for us at all, I needed time to figure out how to fix myself before I could be with him.
So I moved away from the door, only to hear Damon kick it frustratedly and bang his head on the wood. I stood still, imagining him outside frustrated and furious.
"Just open the door, Madeline. Please," he pleaded softly. I didn't move. "Or at the very least, step aside, because I'm gonna kick this door in."
I couldn't let him do that, and I knew he was not empty with his threats. So I stepped forward, slowly and carefully, and unlocked the door for him to decide. But my head started spinning and my heart, dead as it was, started racing, and I couldn't decide. I watched as he twisted the knob and pushed open the door, but before my eyes met his, I fled.
Elena stood up from her bed, watching just as Madeline vamp-sped out of the room and left her with Damon, who stepped through the threshold of the dorm room. He looked to the side to the window, watching as the curtain blew from the wind outside where Madeline escaped. Damon and Elena stood staring at each other.
"Sorry," Elena apologized to him, clearing her throat. "I would've stopped her if I really thought she'd run scared like that."
Damon frowned. "Stefan told me that this is your fault." Elena avoided his gaze. "Is that true?"
Elena took in a deep breath and avoided his eyes. "Uhm...maybe a little..."
"Elena," Damon growled, "How dare you?"
"It was her decision!" Elena tried to defend herself. But there was that guilty conscience in the back of her mind that knew she hadn't exactly helped the cause. "I mean...I mean, I-I was the one who pushed for it, yeah, but I thought I was doing what was best for her. You were gone. It destroyed her."
"That doesn't give her the right to go memory-wiping herself again!" He let out a frustrated sigh. "I can't believe this is happening. Twice! This has got to be some sort of sick joke."
"I'm so sorry, Damon," Elena apologized again, seeing the distress on her ex-boyfriend's face. "Believe me, if I thought you were going to come back, I never would've suggested it. But you need to realize...it was bad." Damon listened and watched as Elena shook her head reliving the memory of her sister. The brunette vampire sat down on the edge of her bed and looked down at her hands. "I tried everything. I mean...for the first few weeks, she was distracted enough because I was teaching her everything you taught me when I became a vampire. But eventually, I had nothing left and she spent...all of her time thinking about you. She wouldn't even take her ring off."
Damon threw his hands up. "Of course she wouldn't take her engagement ring off, Elena! It was the last thing I gave to her...you know, before I died!"
Elena stood up abruptly. "And if you didn't come back? Would you rather her live an entire eternity holding onto the memory of loving someone that was never going to come back? She fell off the deep end, Damon. She started attacking people...t-taking drugs to see you! I found her one night, sitting on the floor, weeping over that ring. She was a mess."
He stepped forward. "But I am back, Elena. So there's no reason to weep."
The brunette bit down on her lip. "That's the thing...she told me and Alaric she doesn't want to get her memories back."
"Why not?"
"I don't know! She said she has more important things to deal with!"
"What the hell could be more important than me?"
"Seriously?" Stefan disapproved as I sighed and leaned back in the outside patio chair in front of the coffee shop waiting for Sebastian to show up. "You jumped out of a window? What if somebody saw you?"
"I'm a little out of practice with panicked escapes," I murmured flatly. I could hear Stefan's obvious distaste through the phone line. "I didn't know what to do."
"Look, he's been trapped alone over there for months. He just wants to see you."
"But I don't get what seeing me will fix! He said something about us being 'fated' for each other." I grimaced and leaned forward on the table. "Stefan, you know I don't believe in fate. Damon knows that, too. Everyone knows that!"
"No, Mads, that's how you felt before you fell in love with Damon. He's right, you're fated for each other. It's sort of like...the doppelgänger curse with me and Elena."
"You and Elena aren't dating," I pointed out. Stefan took in a deep breath.
"Fine. That was a bad example. Doesn't make it any less true."
"So, what, we stare into each other's eyes and all my memories come back along with my feelings for him?"
"No," Stefan said with an obvious tone. "But even if they did, would that be such a bad thing?"
"It's impossible. Highly unlikely. Borderline insane. Stefan," I took in a deep breath, "there is something...wrong with me. I'm not talking about emotional 'wrong', I'm talking about mental 'wrong'. I woke up in a forest last night with a bunch of dead bodies around me!"
"What?" Stefan gasped. "Are you okay?"
"Other than the guilt I feel for killing five people? Six, if you count the man I killed at the Whitmore corn maze. Oh, and God knows how many more with all these blackouts I've been having!"
"Did you tell anyone else?"
"No. No one but you and Sebastian know." Stefan didn't say anything and I stopped to explain. "Buckner. Dr. Buckner from Whitmore Hospital. Elena set me up with him at the swimming hole, remember? You ditched me with him."
"Why does he know?" my friend asked, immediately surprised. I sighed and attempted at the story, but eventually just gave him a quick run-down.
"It's...not even all that clear to me yet. But he knows what I am and he knows about Pure Bloods. His mother was one and she went through the same thing I am." I leaned back in my chair again with a disgruntled groan. "I can't deal with Damon and whatever the hell is going on with me all at once. Damon's just going to have to wait. Besides, I don't even know what to tell him. He's expecting me to continue on like we just got engaged when...the truth is, I don't want to marry him. I don't want to marry anyone."
Stefan hesitated. "Please don't tell me you said that to him."
"He's gonna have to hear it sooner or later, Stefan. I don't want to get hitched."
"Madeline, he'll be heartbroken if you tell him that." Guilt wasn't really my thing in certain circumstances. Innocent blood on my hands? Hell of a lot of guilt. Ex-fiancé who couldn't handle hearing that I didn't want to marry a man I didn't remember? Not so much. Sympathy and empathy were two words in my vocabulary that were a little blurry. "Listen, what do you want to do? You're going to have to talk to him eventually."
In the distance, I spotted Sebastian coming towards me, unbuttoning the cufflinks around his wrists and rolling his sleeves up to seem more comfortable. I straightened and responded to Stefan quickly.
"And today is definitely not that day. I've got to go, Stefan. Talk to you later." Without waiting for a goodbye, I hung up the phone and watched as Sebastian came up to the table and pulled out a chair to sit down. I gave him a small smile. "Hey."
"Hey. Sorry I'm late." He shook his head and adjusted in his chair. He pulled out a pager and put it on the table, staring at it with a sigh. "Work never ends. This is what you'll look forward to in med school."
My smile was half-hearted now. "Looking forward to it."
"Professor Saltzman," Damon announced as he watched Alaric step through the threshold of his own office and recognized his best friend sitting at his desk with an open bottle of bourbon. As he spoke, Damon poured. "What, couldn't compel yourself a PhD?"
Alaric smiled. "I can't believe you're back."
"I am." He slid the bourbon he poured to Alaric, who grabbed it and sat down on the chair across from his desk. Damon took his own bottle and drank.
"So..." Alaric started. "How the hell are you?"
"Well, let's see, Ric. I clawed my way out of some retro-pocket universe only to find that I needed to compel myself a new change of clothes because this anti-magic hamster ball is keeping me from going home. And then I find out that my ex-girlfriend, rather than doing anything about it, decided that it was the best use of her time to make my best friend compel my beautiful and lovely fiancée to forget that she ever loved me." He laughed bitterly. "I'm great, Ric! Thanks for asking!"
"Look, Damon—"
The vampire interrupted him. "I know she was a train-wreck without me, okay, but...a full mind erase? Seriously? Why not just send her back to that alternate reality hell she was in last summer?"
"She loved you," Alaric defended himself. "Too much. And it was killing her."
Damon smiled. "Well, I'm flattered. But I'm back." Dramatically, he switched to an upright position and leaned over the desk. "So, let's get this uncompulsion on the books, huh?"
Alaric nodded. "Fine. As soon as Mads tells me that's what she wants."
"Right." Damon snapped his fingers. "Here's the thing, she's not gonna want to be uncompelled if she can't remember why she'd want to be uncompelled." He hummed as he walked around Alaric's desk and held up his hands in demonstration. "Chicken. Egg."
"I know." Alaric sighed. "And I'm sorry."
"Sorry? She won't even see me, Ric!"
"I get it, Damon, but she has to deal with her own things right now." Damon stared at his friend with incredulous eyes, but Alaric didn't budge. "There's nothing more that I want than for her to be happy but...until she knows how she's going to get there, I'm not going to take that choice away from her unless she asks me to!"
Damon gulped down the rest of his alcohol. "It's not that I don't want Madeline to be happy, I just want her to be happy with me!" Alaric said nothing, and Damon gave him a small, drunken smile. "Come on, Ric. If you do this, you can be the best man at our wedding. Stefan won't be happy, but..."
"I said no, Damon."
The dark-haired Salvatore's shoulders slumped as he set down the bourbon glass and walked out. "Right."
"When I turned 18, I was desperate to find a solution to my mother's problem," Sebastian explained to me as we sat outside in the midday sun with two cups of coffee that we nursed as we spoke. "So I did some digging. Obviously, I knew the supernatural existed because of what my mother was. I grew up knowing that there were things that lurked around in the night, I just...didn't know the specifics. I managed to get it on good information that vampires existed, so I found one. His name was Klaus."
"Klaus?" I repeated, startled. Sebastian nodded and took a sip of his drink. "Klaus Mikaelson, the Original?"
"That's the one."
"Pretty impressive for an 18-year-old, tracking down Klaus," I noted, impressed. Sebastian shrugged.
"I had a lot of help. Anyways, the Pure Blood book said that the only way to get rid of her evil side was to die. I thought becoming a vampire would be the cheat around that." He stopped, looking painfully guilty for a brief moment before looking up at me with a melancholic smile. "I was wrong, of course."
"Your mother's evil side didn't go away?"
Sebastian shook his head. "No. Instead of showing itself to her to drive her mad, it merged with her. It became an alter ego, one that used her vampire powers to feed. To kill. She nearly slaughtered the entire west coast. It took on a life of its own, calling itself what she had been called in her alternate universe when she was sent away to become activated. It was angry with her for suppressing her darkest side for so long and...one day, it became strong enough to completely take her over. It shut off her humanity without giving my mother a choice and massacred as many people as she could."
I swallowed. "How'd you stop it?"
"I did everything that I could." He leaned forward with his hands cupped around the surface of his coffee mug. "I looked through every book I could find, talked with every witch I knew. It was extremely difficult because people have been so uneducated on Pure Bloods ever since they became so scarce, but I got a hit here and there every once in a while. Most of them were dead ends, but I managed to find a spell that would cleanse her and get rid of what was inside of her. It's a parasite, really, rooted in the darkest part of the conscience. It feeds off of your deepest secrets until it's strong enough to take on a life of its own. It's a punishment. The women that are chosen are supposed to be the most pure there has ever been. Magic like that retaliates when you cross it."
"So I have a parasite living in my brain by the name of..." I trailed off, thinking of the alternate reality I had been to so long ago. Eventually, I remembered. "Madeline Reichs?"
Sebastian nodded. "But this spell...it's risky. Too risky." He paused. "I tried it on my mom when I first caught wind of it. Had a witch friend help me out. She died, Madeline. She was too weak and...and the parasite was too strong."
I shook my head. "So what does that mean for me? Am I going to die?"
Sebastian removed his hand from his coffee cup and placed it on mine, where the warmth from the hot coffee sparked through me. But something happened—something that I didn't expect. I could practically feel something linking us, a connection of some sort. We were the same. I couldn't bring myself to tear my eyes from his.
"I will not let that happen to you. I promise."
Oddly enough, I didn't feel uncomfortable. I felt...safe. But the moment Sebastian ripped my hand from his, it hit me like a cold slap and I shuddered, shaking my head and stiffening up. He did the same, and we both looked at each other uncomfortably for a moment before I started again.
"So what are we going to do? I can find a witch and if you have the spell—"
Sebastian shook his head. "The spell has to be a last resort. We don't know how powerful Madeline Reichs has gotten yet. For now, the safest option is to subdue her as long as possible. It might give her a chance to grow her power but it's worth a shot. If we can keep her down long enough to find a spell that'll trap her inside, you can be safe and never have to know the risk of that spell."
"All right." I nodded. "So how do we do that?"
The moon was finally out in the sky as evening reigned upon Whitmore while I waited outside in Sebastian's car just ten or fifteen minutes outside of the Whitmore campus. We were at his house so that he could get something, but I had told him to go inside without me so that I could have a moment alone to myself. As hard as it was accepting the fact that I had a living, breathing parasite inside of me that wouldn't go away unless I forced her out (which could quite possibly kill me), all I could think about was this morning. All I could think about was Damon. Some sort of guilt was starting to creep up on me when I realized that...he did spend four months without me. Four months where he believed I missed him just as much as he missed me. And I did...until a few weeks ago. But I imagined that still hurt.
So I pulled out my phone, pressed the 'Damon' button, and waited for him to answer. He picked up on the first ring.
"So you didn't forget my number. That's a good start."
I sighed. "I figured I'd see what happened when I pressed your contact information on my phone."
"And...what is happening?" He seemed so hopeful, it was almost discouraging. I shook my head and leaned against the inside of the car door and closed my eyes.
"I-I don't know anymore. I thought that I could avoid you...that it was best for both of us for me to figure out what I needed to and then deal with us but...it's not fair to you. I know that. I can't avoid you forever, even if I tried." I could practically see Damon's slick smirk, and it almost sickened me. "So I think we should see each other. I'm...not at Whitmore right now but I should be back soon. Can you meet me at the dorm room?"
"Yeah, yeah, I'll be here—there. I'll be there. Absolutely, in a bit. See you in a little bit."
"Okay."
"Okay." I hung up the phone listening to Damon's response and looked out the window of the empty driver's seat to see Sebastian walking towards the car. Unable to wait, I got out of the vehicle, shut the door, and walked around to meet him.
"Did you get it?" I asked.
Sebastian looked down at the box in his hand and opened it for me. Inside was a chain-anklet made from pure gold. When he gave it to me, I took it in awe, staring down at the piece of jewelry wondering why he had it lying around.
"It's charmed," he told me carefully. "It'll keep her down for a week...maybe a little more. But once she gets strong enough to overpower the magic inside, it'll be useless. In the meantime, I'll work on finding a spell to keep her inactive indefinitely."
I glanced up at him. "This was your mom's, wasn't it?" Sebastian nodded slowly as an answer to my question. "You tried it on her before the other spell?"
"Thought it would end it entirely." He shrugged. "But, in nine days, she started killing again and I knew that it wasn't gone. It was just more powerful."
"I...don't know what to say." I wasn't a sentimentalist. I didn't have compassion inside of me to sympathize with others. All I could muster was a: "Thanks."
"You're welcome." Sebastian gave me a weak smile and took the box from my hand, grabbing the anklet inside and putting the box under his arm. He held it up. "May I?"
I nodded and watched as he sunk down to the ground, right by my ankle, and I suddenly felt more awkward than I'd been in my entire life. He clasped the chain onto my ankle under my jeans and rose back to eye level, closer than before. I could practically feel the heat of his breath and I froze, temporarily incapacitated, but then the thought of Damon came rushing over my mind like a wave. This wasn't what I meant when I said I had more important things to do. If I kissed Sebastian, like he so clearly wanted, Stefan would be right about one thing—Damon would be heartbroken. Homicidal, even. Too much death had been on my hands lately.
"I-I can't." I stepped back and shook my head. He stared at me without judgement but rather disappointment in his eyes. "Could you...just take me back to Whitmore, please?"
A moment passed, an uncomfortable one at that, but finally Sebastian gave a soft smile and nodded. "Of course."
When I returned back to the campus, I walked down the hallway towards my dorm to find that it was already open. Cracked, just a little bit. I was expecting to see Damon inside, waiting for me, but instead, the room was dark and there was a phone lying on the floor alone and isolated.
"Damon?" I called out, wondering if he was in the darkness. But when I stepped inside, there was no one around.
The phone on the floor, however, was Damon's. And just like that, deep down in the pits of my stomach, I knew there was something wrong.
The sounds of loud tire screeching pained my ears as Elena swerved her car right in front of the border of Mystic Falls, blocking off the entrance that could be used by Tripp Fell, a new vampire hunter that was gunning for us and had managed to kidnap Damon from the dorms. As Elena came to the screeching stop, Caroline sighed into her phone.
"Sorry, Mom. Elena's auditioning for 'Top Gear'." Elena, Caroline, and I got out of the car and I listened, half-heartedly, as Caroline explained that her mom was helping to shut down routes into Mystic Falls so we could catch Tripp and get Damon back, who happened to also be with Enzo in Tripp's murder van where he drove vampires across the border to die. I was listening, but Caroline didn't seem to believe me. "Mads? Hey, Mads, are you okay?"
I turned around at both of my friends, my sister and the blonde beside her. They looked at me with concern, but I couldn't shake the worry that was starting to bud inside me. It was all very strange, worrying about someone you thought was a homicidal maniac.
"I want them back," I blurted out without realizing what I'd said. Caroline and Elena stared, confused, until I cleared my throat and said more firmly, "The memories. I want them back."
"Wait, what?" Caroline blinked while I nodded. Not only was I starting to feel some emotion that I was unaware of, I owed it to myself to explore every option in my life. I couldn't lead Sebastian on if Damon was still in my life, and vice versa. It was unfair and irrational and...wrong.
"If Damon survives this, I want Alaric to compel them back. I didn't...fix what I needed to fix today, but I will. Soon. And in the meantime, even though I can't...even begin to possibly imagine how the hell I came to love someone like Damon Salvatore, it seems only rational that I know the full story before I make a decision. Just like I asked myself."
Caroline and Elena exchanged glances, but I already knew what Elena thought. Caroline, however, I did not. She stepped forward and touched my arm gently with a smile.
"I just have to ask a favor first." I waited for her to begin and watched as she started to make her teasing face. "Can I be your maid of honor? Because I think it would be awkward for Elena to be it because...well, you know, she did sleep with the groom. Repeatedly."
I gave a look of distain to Caroline, who just smiled as if she knew something I didn't.
Minutes passed, and it was eventually informed to me by Elena that Alaric, Damon, Tripp, and Enzo had all crossed the border. Worried about everyone involved, I went out to see if I could find them at the other entrance to Mystic Falls off of Route 9, and when I got there I found the remnants of a car crash that looked like a van. However, there was no one around—not even dead bodies. That was a good sign, I hoped, but nothing was definite. I went back to where Caroline and Elena were in a flash, still hating the feeling of vamp-speeding but it saved me a hell of a lot of time.
"There was a crash on Route 9," I told my sister and Caroline as I approached them. Elena was just hanging up her phone. "But no one was there. Was it them?"
"Yeah," Caroline stated sadly. "They had to get out of there."
"Well? A-Are they okay?" I stuttered.
Again, Caroline and Elena exchanged glances, but this time it was not light-hearted as before. This time, it seemed serious. I waited, unable to deduce whatever they were about to tell me but was only left to know that it was bad. I imagined the worst—everyone dead. But Elena stepped forward to explain.
"Stefan said that, uhm..."
"Elena, spit it out." I swallowed. "Please."
"Alaric crossed the border." Caroline stepped forward to save my sister from having to explain and I watched them both with confusion. "But Jo was there and she saved him."
"That's good, right? That's good."
"Yes, Madeline, he's okay."
"So why do I feel a 'but' coming on?" I looked between them. "Seriously, guys, what happened?"
"All the magic stripped away," Caroline replied. "But Jo saved him just before he...died."
"I..." I trailed off, breathing slowly. "What?"
"Alaric's not a vampire anymore, Madeline." Elena looked at me with despaired eyes, but I already had come to that conclusion. I already knew what she meant. "He's human."
"I was this close." Damon pinched his fingers together. "This. Close."
"I know." Stefan sighed. "I'm sorry."
"Oh, I got it. Everybody's sorry. You're sorry you gave up on me, sorry that you turned Enzo into that hunter guy. Ric is sorry for the compulsion. Elena's sorry for coming up with the dumbass idea. I'm sure if Madeline could remember, she'd be sorry, too."
Stefan toyed with the alcohol in his hand and avoided Damon's gaze. "You've got to understand how hard it was for her."
"I am so tired of hearing about how hard it was for her," Damon snapped out of spite. "It was hard for me as well."
The younger Salvatore looked up. "At least you knew you had a home to come back to. She didn't have anything; to her, you were just gone. Besides, this wasn't just about you, Damon. She lost everything that day. She lost her friend, she lost you, and...and she lost her life." Damon pursed his lips in thought, but Stefan continued. "At least, if you were around, she would've had you to spend eternity with and that wouldn't make it so unbearable. And even if you had died and she had stayed human, she would've been able to hold onto that part of herself that she loved. But she didn't have either."
"You think I planned for it to happen?" Damon said quietly. "The last thing I wanted for her was to become a vampire. You know that. I wanted her to be human, but we were both fooling ourselves into thinking that we could last forever when she only had so long. But I didlose my life that day. For real. And then I come back to find that she's been living happily without me? I don't want her to be happy. I want her to be miserable just like I am."
Stefan waited for Damon to finally stop his spiteful rambling, unamused. "You done?"
"Yeah. I'm done."
"Good. Now quit stalling." Damon and Stefan looked at each other as Stefan gestured outside. "There's a girl you need to go see."
"What if it doesn't work? What if what we had isn't strong enough to break the compulsion?"
The bronze-haired vampire grimaced. "You did it before. You can do it again."
With the words of inspiration, Damon downed the rest of his alcohol and left it on the table he and Stefan had been sitting at in the middle of the Whitmore tavern. He moved towards the door.
"Here goes everything."
Stefan watched his brother leave and couldn't resist the smile on his face. Sure, the situation Mads and Damon were in was a sticky one, but Stefan was positive the two could work it out. He hoped they would, at least, and he would do everything to help. But the second he looked out the window in front of him and saw a certain red-haired girl walking the streets of Whitmore, he realized that his priority was no longer on Madeline and Damon. Damon was back, and that meant he had amends to make.
So he rushed out into the night and stopped Audrey just as she walked by him without noticing. "Hey."
The human girl turned around at him with a skeptical look. Though her expression was nonchalant, Stefan could easily tell that she was still angry. "Hey, yourself."
Audrey turned to leave, but he called her back. "Don't...don't leave. I want to talk to you."
She hesitated before turning to come face-to-face with him, merely a few feet away. "I heard about Damon. You must be thrilled."
"I am."
"So, what, is this your last stop on the apology train?"
Stefan scoffed, but he understood her frustration with him. But there was no anger built up inside of him left; all of it disappeared with Damon's appearance. He wanted to make amends; he wanted to be happy again.
"Audrey...I want you to know that I still—"
"Whatever you're about to say..." Audrey cut him off, holding a hand up and avoiding his eyes. "Don't...don't say it, Stefan. I don't want to hear it." The two looked at each other for a passing moment, silence filling the space between them that Stefan had intentionally created back when he was heartbroken over his loss. There was no chance of removing that space, not that she saw. "Matt and I are together and I've moved on, just like you wanted."
Stefan stood there for a while, feeling enormously hurt for a brief moment until he realized that he brought it upon himself. And he could see it in her eyes—she spoke the truth. She seemed happier. She moved on.
He pursed his lips. "Okay, then."
She nodded. "Okay, then."
"So..." He stopped her as she tried to turn away and leave yet again. "Can we just move past this? Please?"
"You think I haven't tried to?" She scoffed incredulously.
"Look, Audrey...just tell me what you want me to do." He sighed. "You don't want to be with me. I get that. But just stop making me guess so that we can go back to being friends again. I want to be friends."
"Yeah, well, I don't," the human snapped. Stefan straightened, now hurt twice over. She saw the look in his eyes and realized her abrasiveness, so she dropped her voice to a lower tone and looked down at the sidewalk with the shake of her head. "I don't want to be friends. Not anymore."
Audrey turned, right on her heel, and Stefan was forced to watch as the girl he loved walked away from him just like he had done to her.
I pulled the heavy box of Damon's things that Alaric had given me from my closet and onto the bed so it landed on the mattress, making it roll. With curious eyes and hands, I reached into the untouched box and examined the stuff that I had spent long trying to push off. There was a dress inside, as pure as I had been as a human, a copy of Gone With the Wind, a ripped button-down shirt, and oddly enough, my vervain necklace. I lifted it up, careful not to touch the charm, but it surprised me. Why would it be in the box of things that reminded me of Damon? All I remembered was finding it in a drawer somewhere and asking Stefan for some vervain. None of that had to do with Damon.
Then again, I didn't remember sleeping with Damon a few months ago, either. I didn't remember grieving so terribly that I took drugs to see hallucinations of him. I didn't remember anything I loved about him at all. I didn't remember love.
And finally, the last thing that I found was the one that mattered most—the satin box closed and practically screaming for me to open it. With a hearty sigh, I grabbed the box in my hand and I pinched the opening, just about to see the diamond sparkling in the dim lighting of the dorm room, but there was a knock. I dropped the box in my hand like it was scorching hot and I froze, staring straight ahead with my back to the door. I knew who was on the other side of it and I closed my eyes.
There was no way to get the memories back this time. This time it was permanent, that was made clear to me by Elena when she told me she had spoken with Alaric. He felt terrible, but what could he do? I asked for this. I did this to myself. And now I had to live with it.
So I turned around, walked up to the door, hesitated at the doorknob, but found the courage inside of me to pull it open.
Thanks for reading! Review, please!
Momsen-xxxx: I know! This is exciting stuff!
SomebodyWhoCares: Yep :)
grapejuice101: A whole boatload of drama actually. Here's the update!
IDFWU: I KNOW ISN'T THIS WONDERFUL? Well, it could go both ways. By the way, your username is pretty awesome :)
Estrelinha19: Thanks! Sebastian's a pretty cool character to work with. He's almost like a human Damon which is pretty fun.
Guest(x2): I think that was the same review just tweaked the second time but let's just wait and see what happens. I have a hell of a lot planned for Mads and Damon in the future. Thanks for the review(s)!
Adela: A whole lotta goods there. No need to wait for this one but the next chapter hasn't been written yet so unfortunately there is going to be a small wait.
alyssadavis25: Thanks. I try my best :)
