Abigail's Magical Prison~Date Unknown
Abigail had no indication of the time that had passed between Damon's exit and when she began contemplating her real predicament: how to leave her cage?
She was still seated at the window, but she had replaced the ribbon in her book. Instead she sat gazing at the garden below. When she'd lived in the real Salvatore house, her view had been a constant source of pleasure. During summer she could look out on blooming flowers and flitting birds without sinking into the heat of the day. As the days grew shorter and autumn turned the trees and bushes from blooms and greenery to the colors she adored, she could believe that God painted the world for her own enjoyment. Winter's cold made life barren in the garden, but with it came the marvel of nature's ability to shed its past to prepare for the future. And as spring bore fruit, her view sprang back to full green and blossoming life. Even the night gave her beauty, for above the trees shown the stars and moon shining down on the garden and creating a visual magic all its own.
Not knowing the true passage of time was both a blessing and a curse she had realized early on. A blessing because she couldn't focus on how long her stagnancy was and shouldn't be bothered by the inability to move forward. The curse was that she needed that constant rhythm of time to know how to measure her progress. Without the steady tick of a clock and knowing the running of day to night, Abigail couldn't shake the feeling of wrongness.
As she sat in thought, the ever present shadows returned to the garden. Six shadows always hovering at the very edge of her view of the garden. Abigail knew that attempting to focus fully on them would offer no satisfaction to their identities. They had arrived at the same time that she added the view.
Abigail hadn't lied to Damon when she told him she didn't know how she created the view or corrected the imperfections of her room. As the wrongness of the room had bothered her, she had found herself remembering how her real room had looked and things began changing. Thinking about how much she missed seeing the garden, she woke one 'morning' to find the view had manifested itself during her 'sleep'. None of it made sense, but that's how it worked. Her clothes had changed in the same way, she'd gone to sleep thinking that she hated to dress like Katherine, and when she woke, her clothes had been replaced.
She wondered when the room would begin to feel too small. Cabin fever was a term she once read or heard, if her memory served. When would she want so desperately to be set free, but would remain trapped? A slight panic settled over her. What if being put here to fix herself only served to break her further?
Mystic Falls, VA Mid-September 2009
When Damon returned home after the ill-fated dinner party, he was alone. He'd happily dropped Caroline off at her house and carried on to the boarding house. He was sitting on his bed, contemplating what he'd learned after dinner. Abigail was still trapped in her own mind and in her own house. Another ball to add to his juggling mess.
He wasn't too surprised when Stefan sought him out upon his return home.
"Is it true?" Stefan asked, entering without knocking. He stood leaning against the wall beside the door.
Damon considered his answer and chose honesty. It had been nearly 150 years after all.
"Yep." He answered, looking up to gauge his brother's reaction. Would he be able to see if the obsession started to creep back into baby brother? "Abigail Morgan is alive, and apparently still unconscious, in her own house."
Stefan moved to his brother's bed and collapsed beside him. "And you never felt the need to share this little tidbit because?" Was his tone casual because he was casually interested or had Stefan become a better liar than Damon would ever give him credit for being?
Damon looked at the sprawled body next to him and thought about the tableau they might present to an unknowing stranger. A normal older brother and younger brother carrying on a late night conversation? Little would they know.
"You were a monster when you turned," Damon began. "Between your blood lust and obsession with revenge you had this insane desire for HER. She wasn't simply innocent, brother, she was defenseless. Emily helped me hide her." He explained, basic facts without embellishments.
Stefan appeared to be processing the information. "Why is she still there? Did I-" he stopped and Damon knew he wasn't imagining the pain in Stefan's face. "Did I break her, Damon?"
Damon once again went through the options for his answers. One by one he chose against each one, and went with the truth, brutal as it was. "Yes." He answered, using the force of his words to extract every ounce of his brother's pain to give himself the pleasure he desperately searched for all these years. "You broke her, Stefan. You-killing our father in some macabre Shakespearean tragedy to transition with his blood. And then you killed Sallie and the rest of the inhabitants of our home, only to use their flesh and blood to make the walls drip with gore. Walls of a room that you baited her to, like a spider would a fly." He savored the agony on Stefan's face. "You outdid anything I could ever hope to think of, brother. Romance and Valentines are red and pink, but cleaning that gore, I saw a darkness that I could never hope to surpass. And you offered it to her as a courting ritual, Stefan. Did you ever, during all those detoxes you've coped with over the years, ever THINK about Abigail?"
Stefan's eyes were pinched with pain, clearly he'd locked these memories away. Damon was painting a horrifyingly vivid picture that had those memories rushing to the surface. He saw, through a haze of pain and angst, her face when he'd greeted her in the doorway of his father's office. How she'd been terrified and stunned at the rampage of blood and gore. And he remembered her entire bearing shutting down. The light dimming in her eyes. Her face, usually aglow with interest and an intelligence that he'd always found intimidating, gone in an instant. She folded and he'd caught her. Holding her small warm body, a feeling had coursed through him-NEED, not for blood, but for HER.
"I didn't," he groaned, confirming for Damon what he already expected. "I never thought about her."
"That makes two of us, brother." Damon said, hardly lying at all.
