Abigail woke up with Damon's body pressed against her back, smiling as she rolled over to see the blue eyes she'd come to love as a girl blinking awake in the early dawn light.
"Morning," his voice was rough and a little hoarse, and his arms didn't lessen their hold on her. "You didn't make a sound when I got into bed last night."
"Must have been tired from all the -" she didn't have a chance to lie, not when his mouth met hers and silenced her in the most effective and best way possible. He was rolling her onto her back before she could pretend to want to know how their plan had worked or failed, she didn't have a chance to feign interest in what Elena or Bonnie had been through - not when his fingers were ridding her of her clothes as fast as he could - his own already gone before he'd joined her in bed. And then he joined her in earnest and she forgot she was supposed to pretend anything at all, because it was just the two of them and nothing else mattered - nothing else existed outside her house, or her bedroom, or her bed.
It doesn't last - the bubble they're in, almost as soon as they peak the real world breaks through with Damon's phone ringing and ringing and ringing.
Abigail doesn't have his hearing, the enhanced senses that come from his "condition", but she doesn't need them. She can read Damon Salvatore like a book - just as she accused Katherine Pierce of being able to - and she knows, from the flash of anger and pain, that Elena is in danger and he'll be rushing to her aid. It doesn't hurt as much, doesn't cut as deeply this time, perhaps, she thinks as he's dressing and promising her that he'll be back - safe and in her arms - that it's because she's made peace with the reality of what they are to one another.
"Of course," she murmurs, as his lips absently kiss hers in parting, agreeing with his promises made out of some misplaced loyalty that he assumes she wants to hear. "Of course you'll return to me, Damon." But she doesn't truly believe it, not when she can see the fervor lying behind the burning blue orbs that she watched come awake in the dawning light of morning, not when she can see how badly he wants to rush away - from her and to Elena Gilbert. "Go, save her." Because he needs to hear it, to hear her release him, she gives him that. Just as she once gave him the freedom to choke the life from her lungs, because in the end, Abigail would refuse him nothing, but this will be the last time she promises herself as she watches him leave her to go rushing into whatever danger lies ahead. Because this time she knows for certain that she doesn't NEED him, not really, no matter how much her mother wanted her to think she did, no matter how badly the tiny shred of what was left of her former self wanted to hold tight to him - she didn't.
Damon and Stefan watched as Bonnie did the locator spell. They watched as Jeremy pinpointed the isolated house on the map and gave them the address to GPS it. And as they rushed forward for a rescue road trip, neither one of them mentioned the tiny elephant in the car - it was as if Abigail Morgan was still locked in her own mind, in Morgan House waiting for another year's worth of moronic football players to break in and stare at her body in awe.
Abigail was true to her word, while Damon rushed to whatever damsel in distress situation Elena Gilbert was in, she immersed herself in her grimoire while also trying to find something interesting to watch on television. It was as she was settling in with an early dinner, having found a movie that looked somewhat promising, that she felt a flash of pain so severe that she thought for a moment she might actually be in danger of dying.
Radiating from her heart, she felt as if someone were stabbing her straight through her chest - the pain causing her to gasp for breath and bringing Cat running to her side. Sweat and tears ran down her face, as Abi tried to focus and figure out what could be causing her so much agony. She saw a flicker of Damon's face, but that made no sense, he wasn't anywhere near her and while she'd heard of heartbreak, this was ridiculous. Then a flash of Elena, Stefan, and a third face, a woman with dark hair cut in a haphazard way, before it all went dark.
Abigail's dreams, because when everything went dark she couldn't possibly end up having peace - heaven's no-, were a riot of bizarre. She watched as Elijah walked through a house, a house where Elena and the woman with the dark hair in the strange cut were waiting with a man.
Abi has difficulty concentrating on what's going on, the residual pain lingers from whatever forced her into unconsciousness and makes listening to the back and forth, the push and pull between the four hard to keep track of. Elijah walks up to the man, who seems terrified and that should be warning enough for Abigail, but somehow it isn't - when he raises a hand and moves it, the man's head is gone. It suddenly becomes clear to her, what Marcel told her, what Gloria kept saying - they were all dangerous.
It wasn't over, not by a hint of imagination. Damon and Stefan arrive and then a fight. Vervain in Elijah's face, and then - the pain he must have felt as Damon used the wooden coat rack to stake him through his heart - was that why - but then the scene shifted again -
In a bedroom, Elena and Damon are alone now, and Abigail has no difficulty hearing this time at all.
Damon is staring at Elena Gilbert like she is both the sun and the moon, and as Abigail watches and listens, she hears him loud and clear:
"I just need to say it once. You just need to hear it. I love you, Elena. And it's because I love you, that I can't be selfish with you. Why you can't know this. I don't deserve you... but my brother does. God, I wish you didn't have to forget this... but you do." He was compelling her to forget, Abigail knew it, but it didn't make it less real to her. Didn't make her unhear it too, and didn't make her resolve soften about how she felt after he rushed off again. If anything it made her realize how right she'd been.
Before Abigail could wake up, before she could shake off the pain and pressure that had built inside of her, the scene shifted again. Back to that dirty house where Damon had played hero for Elena, where Elijah had been left for dead, and as she watched he pulled the wood from his body and stood - the pain easing from her own chest as he relieved his and she knew when he'd said 'soon' this is what he'd meant.