Salvatore Garden~Is It Ending, FINALLY?
There was a new tension in Abigail. Only one shadow left. One more trauma, one more lesson her mind needed to teach. She'd expected the first four, but the fifth had surprised her. What new shock would come from the sixth?
"Abigail?" The voice, very young truly drew her up short. She opened her eyes and saw five year old Stefan Salvatore standing in front of her. Surely this wasn't the last. Not even her own mind would force her to relive his descent.
She struggled to stay seated, to not flinch. He was still a child, after all. Even if he became a nightmare, he wasn't at this point. "Stefan." Her voice was thick with the fear she was desperate to hide.
"You and Damon left me, Abi." He accused, the dark eyes she knew as a child lightening before her eyes. "We played together for awhile, but then you left me behind."
"You didn't play very nice, Stefan." She whispered, knowing this child would transform. "You scared me."
As she knew would happen, he began to morph from a sweet looking five year old to thirteen to seventeen in quick succession. Skipping over the years they hadn't interacted.
"Ah, Abigail," his voice sounding more like her living nightmare than she wanted to admit. "I only wanted to show you how much I cared." The longing was there, like it had been when he lured her to the office. Her fear was choking. She had to keep chanting to herself that it was all in her mind, he wasn't real. "You didn't like it?" The mocking tone, another reminder.
"No, I didn't." She stared back into his eyes as she fought against her terror. "You ripped apart your father and Sallie, not to mention the rest. You painted the walls with their blood, Stefan."
"For you." He answered, smiling brightly. "They would have stood between us. They would have stopped the inevitable. We are meant to be, Abigail. This," he gestured at their surroundings, "is temporary. You will be mine."
"NO!" Her scream shocked her and startled him. "I will leave this place, but you and I, Stefan? This madness inside you, this obsession? I will NOT allow the fear of you to trap me. You are NOT the brother I loved."
Her power, coming at last to drive away the terror and darkness, made Stefan Salvatore crumble to dust. A light breeze finished him, by scattering him across the gardens. She smiled.
She had conquered her inner demons. She fought the horror of a nightmare come back to life. And as she considered all her progress, she felt the pull. The feeling that she'd known all her life. How waking from exhaustion after the darkness descended into fully realized form felt.
Closing her eyes in the realm that Emily Bennett had created, a deep sigh escaped her lips, and when she reopened her eyes, she was lying in the middle of a foreign bed, in a strange room.
Glancing around to get her bearings, a noise from outside the windows shattered the peace of her room. She sat up and tried to place the noise. The booming reminded her of the drummer boys that always marched with the newly recruited soldiers leaving home. They would parade through town, past the house so many times that she'd lost count. This noise was similar, but also patently different. There were other noises co-mingling. Music?
Carefully stepping down from the large four-poster bed, she stepped to the window. Searching for the source of the noise, she soon became distracted by the view. It was entirely different from what her new house should have been looking out on. A dark black road with yellow lines down the middle ran through what should have been her fields. Someone had commandeered her land. For a road.
The noise was gone, until there was a strange roar gathering strength. Red and fast, obviously some type of carriage, but horseless and loud. She watched as a couple walked into view, behind a strange sort of pram, their clothes so strange. Was that woman wearing very tight pants?
Abigail stepped back and tried to settle the realization that she had been trapped for far longer than she'd expected. With no idea of the year, she also acknowledged she was still a prisoner. Out of her mind, but trapped inside her house. At least until she could figure out clothes and some idea of when she'd reappeared.
Mystic Falls, VA~End of January 2010
Damon woke up at noon, feeling like something was different. Something atmospheric. As though the air had been sucked from his room, his bed, and his lungs.
It wasn't Stefan's fight for control. That was becoming any day that ended in 'y'. It wasn't Elena's drama with her parentage-Ric, John, Isabelle-Seriously call Maury.
What was the old saying? It felt like someone had walked across his grave. And that's when he knew. Abigail Morgan. The only person who would walk on his grave and hurt him by doing it.
He left the house and ignored taking the car. Her house, how many times had he revisited in his dream, was now backed up to a road. If she woke and he was sure she had, she must be reeling from the conundrum. The room she was in overlooked it. Cars, pop music, people in strange clothing-she was probably being overwhelmed by all of it.
He saw, as soon as he arrived, how the football players had gained entrance. The back servant entrance, the one he'd taken great pains to secure before he left town and her, had been jimmied. Idiots. Sighing he knocked. She was awake and she had a right to turn him away. Minutes passed, and he grew anxious. Was she alright? As he began contemplating breaching the door, he heard a light step inside.
She was coming, but she wouldn't know who was waiting on the other side. Taking a deep breath, and hoping he could control his voice, he called out to her letting her know it was him, The steps stopped coming.
Abigail was on the servant's stairwell. She had heard the knock and started down, curious, but cautious. Hearing Damon's voice, still as familiar as her own, stopped her. She closed her eyes. Was she prepared to see him again? He was still a vampire and they were still estranged. She knew he was also probably the only person who knew she was here.
She continued down the stairs and made her way to the door standing between them. Before she opened it, she had one question. "Are you alone?" She whispered, her hand unknowingly pressed to the same spot on the door that mirrored his.
Closing his eyes at the sweetness of the sound of her voice, here in the real world, he smiled. "Yes, Abi, I'm alone." He heard the key turn in the lock on the other side. The hinges didn't squeak as she slowly opened it, years of idiots breaking and entering.
The light slowly fell across her and he was reminded of her size. So petite, yet so deceptive in that tiny body held fire that could bring a grown man to his knees. As the light hit her face, she offered a shy smile, the fear she'd shown him during his other visits was gone. She must have worked hard to make that possible. Her eyes, clear green, nearly glowed in the light and he was distracted by her face. The same beautiful woman he'd left for war. He drunk her in like a man dying of thirst. Even her outfit, out of place in this time, was perfectly her.
"You're staring." She said, as she did the same to him. Tall, dark, and handsome. The same piercing blue eyes. The same smirking mouth. A mouth she'd never kissed. Never given in to what she hoped she was seeing reflected in his own eyes. "Do I have to invite you in again? I believe it has been awhile."
Damon chuckled and stepped inside as she moved out of his path. Was he imagining the look of longing she'd given him? He was certain it was matched in his own. Why had he wasted any time on Katherine? When this angel had been waiting, he'd spent time searching for something stupid. Kicking himself, he followed her back to the room he'd placed her in. Still her safe space, clearly.
She sat on the bed and watched while he tried to decide where to sit. Finally giving him a favor, she patted the bed next to her, reminding her of the bench in the garden. He sat, still watching her.
"I'm sure you have questions." He said, drinking her in, but knowing her insatiable curiosity may need satiated first.
She gave a light laugh. So different from the dark humor she'd shown when he was last with her. "Of course," her smile held. "I'll get to them, but aren't you curious about anything?"
He hadn't expected that. Her offering a glimpse into what she'd gone through over the course of a hundred plus years to get here. He WAS curious, but mostly he was overcome with the urge to touch her. Her hand, her face, her hair, any part she'd allow. Turning toward her, he held out his hand, wondering if she'd accept the offer.
Abigail looked at his outstretched hand and smiled sweetly. Placing hers gently inside, she felt what she'd always felt when they had touched before everything went downhill. Calm, peace, and the absolute certainty of the rightness of them. She noticed a ring on his hand, one she'd only seen in a dream. Touching it gently he stilled completely, reminding her that he wasn't human any longer. She shook her head and glanced up at him.
"This ring?" She asked, catching him off guard with the personal question. She still wasn't asking the general questions he expected.
Damon shifted her hand into his other one, and held the hand wearing the ring up so it caught the sunlight. "My daylight ring. It lets me come out in the sun." He watched her face for signs of fear or the flinch of discomfort. Nothing aside from her normal curiosity. "Emily made one for me and one for Stefan."
Even the name in this world no longer scared her. Abigail nodded at the knowledge. She smiled and asked another question. "How long have I been-" She searched for the best word, "indisposed?"
Now he looked truly nervous. "One hundred and forty-six years." His hand was rubbing soothing patterns on hers.
She looked ruefully at their hands. "I'm an incredibly slow learner." She was doing the math in her head. "It's 2010?"
"Yes," he confirmed, reaching with his free hand to tilt her face up so he could keep looking into her eyes. "I'm sorry you were alone so long."
Licking her lower lip, she considered whether she was ready to share her experience with him. She didn't realize that she'd unknowingly drawn his attention to her mouth. A mouth that if he was honest with himself had haunted more dreams than he could count. This mouth. Naturally red, full lower lip, that he'd always wanted to taste, but never took advantage of any opportunity. Before he made his thoughts and wants align, he was leaning in. His hand still held her cheek, his eyes locked on hers, and as his head dipped he felt her hands reach for him. Saying a silent prayer of gratitude, their lips met.
Their first kiss should have happened earlier. The town of their youth had long assumed had. But if Damon were being completely honest, having their first kiss now, knowing that his senses were a million times more advanced and that they'd longed for it for so long made it explosive.
Human Damon would have been distracted by errant thoughts of inferiority or fear. Vampire Damon knew she was enjoying it as much as he was. He could hear the pounding of her heart. See the dilation of her pale eyes. Smell her arousal. And feel how her skin grew warmer. He could enjoy the taste of her. The softness of her lips and the sweetness of the touch of her fingertips along his neck.
Human Damon would have squandered this kiss. Vampire Damon felt EVERYTHING and shared it right back. His hands slid into her hair, always so tempting, feeling the silky curls wrap around his fingers.
Abigail sighed into his mouth and he took the opening as an invitation. Damon's tongue slipped inside and if he thought her taste was overwhelming before it was NOTHING to the real taste of her mouth. He growled and she chuckled, pulling back.
"That was-" She began.
"Too long in the making," he finished. Pulling her to him and kissing her again. As her skirts tangled against him, he realized that Abigail wasn't used to this. Any of this. Reluctantly pulling away. "I'm sorry. I got carried away."
She was breathing heavily. Her eyes almost black, bottom lip bitably swollen, and he wanted her so badly it hurt. She swallowed hard and he thought about all the other parts of her he wanted to kiss. Her jaw, her neck, down her collarbone-
"I'm overwhelmed by so much, Damon." She said, breaking his train of thought. "That kiss isn't on the list."
Groaning with longing and the fight that he was waging internally about keeping her inside this house and making her his, over and over. "Not helping, Abi," he said in a strangled voice. "I need to find you some suitable clothes and come to take you out into your new world. Tempting though it may be to stay locked in your castle."
Abigail knew he was right, but that kiss and the one that followed broke loose something. They wanted each other, so badly that she shook with need. She needed to learn about this new version of Mystic Falls, however, and it appeared he was volunteering as her guide.
"Fine," she said in a pout. She moved away and let him stand. "One stipulation, Damon."
He stood and looked at her, waiting.
"No pants, please?" She asked, thinking of the tight fit that woman with the pram was wearing and cringing.
His smile was breathtaking. "No pants." He assured her, dropping a light kiss on her lips. "I will be back soon, Princess. And I'll bring you some food, you must be hungry."
She was, but not for food. As he left her, her smile held. Abigail Morgan was awake and she planned to make her new life fully lived.
