In which I try and fix the gaping plot holes I left in the first version. And someone does something about that damn sire bond.
"So where are we going?" Elena asked, once they'd pulled on to the main road.
"Wherever you want," Damon answered breezily. "World's your oyster, and all that."
"I don't have a change of clothes," Elena said. "And now is really not the time to go sight-seeing."
"We'll go shopping tomorrow," Damon said. "We'll head to the lake-house. Ours, not yours."
"I didn't know you had a lake-house," Elena remarked.
"Well, I'm not sure Stefan even knows about it," Damon explained. "Father might have taken him there while I was away, but I never told him about it. It was kind of our place."
Elena's brow creased thoughtfully. From what she had gathered, Damon never got along with their father, and she knew their mother had died when Stefan was very young.
"Whose?"
"Mine and Katherine's," Damon said, after a short hesitation. "We sort of ran away for a few days."
"Just a few days?" Elena asked, trying to keep any sympathy out of her voice.
"We both knew it couldn't last long," Damon said with a shrug. "I was a solider on leave; I wasn't supposed to be chasing girls. It was supposed to be Stefan. It was always Stefan."
"She did love you," Elena said, gazing out of the window. "She told me when she brought the cure. She said it was okay to love you both, because she did."
"She was messing with your head," Damon said bitterly. "Doesn't know the meaning of the word."
Elena didn't argue. Damon knew Katherine better than she did, after all.
Still, Katherine's actions when it came to the Salvatore brothers were a mystery to Elena in general, and she had long since written off any hope of understanding them.
All the same, it did puzzle Elena that Katherine would come back into town, with Klaus on her heels, and make such an obvious play for Stefan. Surely if she loved Stefan as much as she claimed, she wouldn't put such a large target on his head - Klaus had made no secret of the fact that he would threaten those Elena cared about to get what he wanted.
He had already killed Katherine's family to get revenge; why wouldn't he go after Stefan to get to her?
She didn't bother asking Damon this though. While Damon had insisted, after Katherine had rejected him once and for all, that he hated her and wanted nothing to do with her, Elena knew he still loved her.
That much had been made obvious when Katherine admitted that she knew using the dagger on Elijah would kill Damon.
Damon had reacted with anger and cold hatred, but Elena had seen the pain he had tried to mask and the alcohol/blood binge that had followed.
What really confused Elena was that she had confronted Katherine on that point before Damon had, and she had seen the shock and horror in Katherine's eyes when she realised what daggering the Original could have done to her former lover.
It had disappeared quickly, of course, but it had been there - and if she hadn't known, why tell Damon that she did?
Again, Elena had never voiced this question to Damon. She knew that Katherine was the Queen of Manipulation, and she would never forgive herself if she inadvertently helped the older woman play her best friend again.
"So how far is it?" Elena asked, changing the subject.
"Not far," Damon assured her. "I want you to go ahead and take a nap," he told her, his voice soft and hypnotic. "Your energy levels are hell for the first few days."
"I'm not tired," Elena murmured, her eyes fluttering shut of their own accord.
As Elena dozed off beside him, Damon kept one eye on her, feeling increasingly worried. Although it was instinct for a vampire to seek out their sire after turning, it could normally be overridden by other bonds, and that Elena had not then asked him to get Stefan once she'd got hold of him was concerning.
His suggestion that she sleep was little more than a test for the thought that had been niggling at the back of his mind - a thought that was so obscure that he couldn't work out how it had appeared in his mind to begin with.
When Elena fell asleep almost immediately, he was almost certain he was right. Not that Elena wasn't tired - she was, of course she was - but she wasn't tired enough to fall asleep that fast - almost on command.
Checking once more that her breathing had evened out, he dialled Bonnie's number, unsurprised when it went straight to voicemail.
"Good evening Miss Bennett. Before you delete this message immediately, let me assure you that I would not be doing this unless it was necessary, believe me. I need you to find a way to break a sire bond. Not entirely sure we need it, but if we do, we need it sooner rather than later. Caroline and Stefan can fill you in on why, I'm sure. They'll freak out as soon as you mention it, so tell them I'll be a good boy and we'll be home before they know it."
Hanging up, Damon heaved a heavy sigh. If there was a sire bond between him and Elena, he'd have to be careful how he worded things while they were away.
An ironic smile quirked on his lips as he turned off the main road. Stefan would have a laughing fit at that.
Damon? Careful?
Elena's words in the hospital came back to him.
"I'm your best friend. Of course I have faith in you. One of us has to."
Damon had turned his humanity off because of Katherine, when the pain of being without her became unbearable, and he had turned it back on for her as well.
Even without emotion, his love for her couldn't be denied. When he learned that she wasn't in the tomb, the pain had shattered through his walls, letting in decades of guilt.
Elena had reached out - despite everything he had put her through in his desperation to get to Katherine - and given him just enough strength to hang on.
Even still, he almost turned it back off again, until Stefan had his relapse.
He knew that Stefan would never believe him, but Damon had genuinely been trying to help him. He'd just failed to take into consideration the fact that helping a relapsed addict was not the same as helping a newbie.
Stefan had later used the fact that he'd stayed in town and stepped in to help Elena as proof that he had fallen in love with her, after Isobel had opened her big mouth.
How Isobel had known, Damon had no idea - he hadn't even come to that conclusion himself.
Truthfully, he had stepped in because - promise of eternal misery or not - at the end of the day, Stefan was still his younger brother.
But Elena was definitely the reason he didn't switch it off afterwards. She was like a ray of light in an otherwise dark world, the only person to still see any glimmer of goodness in him and draw it out like a magnet.
It was no wonder, really, that he had thought himself in love with her.
And then it changed with one kiss.
Because Elena was good, and pure, and warm, and compassionate, and everything Katherine wasn't.
But Katherine … was Katherine.
And in spite of everything she had done, and in spite of Damon's utter loathing for her actions, she still held his un-beating heart in her vice-like grip, crushing it to dust over and over again.
It would make more sense for him to be in love with Elena, and far less painful, even if she still didn't return that love.
But then when did he ever take the easy route in life?
Besides, not being in love with Elena was going to make things far less complicated if he was right about the sire bond.
A sire bond was - at its core - an intrinsic desire to make your sire happy, even if the sire's wishes weren't voiced aloud, so if Elena thought - or knew - that Damon was in love with her, and that the one thing that would make him happier than anything would be if she felt the same way, the bond could well convince her that her love for him, though platonic, was actually something else.
The worse part was that Damon wasn't certain, if he had been in love with her, if he would have been able to do the right thing and push her away.
God knew if Katherine suddenly offered herself up again …
Then again, she had done that, and he'd been able to push her away.
Maybe he had more self-control than he gave himself credit for.
The road changed beneath them from tarmac to dirt, causing the ride to become a little bumpier. Elena stirred, but didn't wake, and he couldn't help the fond smile that crossed his face.
It still surprised him how much he could love her, without actually being in love with her, and it suddenly occurred to him that this was how Stefan felt about Caroline … and how he must have felt about Lexi.
For a long time, Damon had justified the death of his brother's best friend, as 'for the greater good'. Killing her meant that Sheriff Forbes and the rest of the council would never suspect them and, indeed, he had become a trusted ally.
But if the pain Stefan felt was even a fraction of what Damon had felt when he thought Elena was dead …
Elena had been nagging him for weeks about talking to Stefan.
Maybe she was right.
Later, he decided, pulling to a stop outside the cabin.
Before he woke Elena, however, he made another call, this time to Liz.
When she answered, her voice was thick, as though she'd been crying.
"Damon? What's happened now?"
"Well, first of all, Elena's not dead," Damon said, as gently as he could. "Meredith did it again."
There was a pause on the other end of the line, and she let out a small sob. "Oh, thank God! Why didn't she say anything?"
"Because Elena didn't know," Damon said. "She stuck her in a storage closet and ran for it. Elena's sleeping off the transition right now; what's going on with the council?"
"The picture you sent did the job."
Alaric had left them one last gift before he left to kill Klaus - the whole town council had been told who the vampires were.
Liz had called Damon in a panic while he was on his way to move the coffin, terrified - not just for her daughter - but her best friends' children as well.
When Alaric had turned up, Damon had goaded him the best he could, until the other man's true face emerged, at which point he took a picture and sent it to Liz, in the hopes that learning that Alaric was a vampire would discredit his work.
"You're sure?" Damon asked.
"Well, Pastor Young doesn't seem convinced, but the others have settled."
Damon breathed a small sigh of relief. "Well, there's one thing I don't have to deal with. Jeremy was still at the boarding house when I left; I've taken Elena out of town to help her learn control, she's so scared of hurting anyone. I know Caroline's going to need you, but if you can just keep an eye on …"
"What's wrong with Caroline?"
Damon paused. "Well, I assume she's pretty upset about Tyler."
"What about Tyler?"
"She didn't tell you yet," Damon said with a sigh. "Klaus is dead, Liz. That's why Rebekah went after Elena; to kill Ric because Ric was the one who killed him."
"Yes, I understand that," Liz said, a little sharply. "What does that have to do with Tyler?"
Of course Caroline hadn't told her mother.
"Well, when an Original vampire dies, their entire sire-line dies," Damon said. "Obviously we're not Klaus's sire-line after all, or we'd all be dead already …"
"So Caroline's safe?!"
"Caroline's safe," Damon said. "I sired her. Not intentionally," he added, belatedly realising that Caroline might not have told her mother how she turned either. "I gave her the blood to save her life after the accident. She wasn't supposed to die. So she's safe. But Tyler was a hybrid. He was definitely sired by Klaus."
There was a beat of silence in which Liz digested this and drew her own conclusions. "What do I tell Carol?"
"Tell her that I did everything in my power to stop it," Damon said.
Tyler Lockwood hadn't actually crossed his mind, driven mostly by self-preservation, but that would hardly make Carol feel better.
"And that I'm very sorry for her loss," he added. "And keep an eye on Jeremy for me please? Not sure Stefan's in any state to do it."
"Of course," Liz said. "If Elena starts worrying, tell her that Miranda and Grayson would always have handled it better than I did."
"I will, Liz; thank you." Damon hung up the phone, glancing across at his passenger. "Wake up, Sleeping Beauty," he called. "We're here."
Sleepily, Elena's eyes fluttered open, and she stretched lazily. "Guess I'm more tired than I thought."
"Yeah, about that," Damon muttered. "Inside, we need to talk."
"Isn't that usually my line?" Elena asked, getting out of the car.
Every sense and nerve seemed to be on high-alert, and her eyes darted around her, seeing further into the dim light than would normally have been possible. The noises of the surrounding woodland were piercing, she could hear the water in the lake lapping against the docks somewhere nearby, the light breeze caressed her and made her shiver, even though it wasn't too cold, and her entire being seemed to vibrate with energy. "That nap did wonders."
"Uh huh," Damon said. "Come on." He took hold of her arm with uncharacteristic tenderness, or so she thought, until she looked down and saw his fingers digging into her flesh.
"Do vampires just … not feel pain?" Elena asked.
"Depends how much blood we've had and what kind," Damon answered shortly, loosening his hold a little, "and what's doing the hurting and how new you are. For the first week or so, your body is incredibly sensitive, but your pain tolerance is incredibly high. On top of that, you've fed on human blood in the last few hours. You'll be very aware of touch, but there's little that'll hurt you right now. Outside of a vervain shower." He opened the door to the cabin and let her inside, before releasing her and disappearing in a blur of movement.
When he finally stilled, all of the thick, heavy curtains were pulled shut, and the lights were on.
"You've been here since 1864," Elena said, looking around. The light fittings were electric instead of gas, and the décor was outdated, but only by a few decades or so.
The only exception was an armchair by the fire, which looked as though it had been there since the beginning.
Damon shrugged. "I came back now and then. Stefan had the Manor, then the Boarding House, and our nieces and nephews never liked me, so I came here." His eyes lingered on the armchair, before they hardened and he turned to her. "We need to talk."
"You said," Elena said, sinking on to the couch. "What is it?"
Instead of sitting beside her, Damon nudged the coffee table forward and perched on the edge, so his knees were just touching hers. "I think a sire bond might have formed between us."
Elena stared at him for a few seconds. "A sire bond? The thing between Tyler and Klaus?"
Damon grimaced. "Not exactly. From what we saw of Klaus's hybrids, a sire bond formed with all of them, which I assume has something to do with the werewolf Alpha Male thing. Between vampires, it's much rarer; there has to be an emotional connection first, and even then …"
"So why are you so sure there's one in this case?" Elena asked.
"It's more of a hunch," Damon admitted. "But you called me, and stuck with me …"
"Because you're my best friend."
"And you agreed to this little road trip …"
"Because you said you could help me!"
"And you fell asleep in the car instantly," Damon finished tiredly. "I said that I wanted to take you out of town, and you let me. I told you I wanted you to take a nap, and you did. This is dangerous, Elena. I don't want you to end up feeding on people because I want you to learn, I want you to do it because you want to learn."
"But I don't know what I'm doing," Elena protested. "I need you to help me …"
"… and I will, Lena, I promise," Damon said with a sigh. "But I'd rather take precautions against a sire bond unnecessarily than not take precautions and wish we had later."
Elena sighed. "Fine. What do we need to do?"
"You don't need to do anything, but listen," Damon said. "The thing that would make me happiest in the whole world, Elena, would be if you did not do anything you don't want to do while I'm helping you through this, alright? Do you understand me?"
"Yes," Elena said. "I understand."
"Good," Damon said, with a note of finality. He was tempted to tell her he wanted her to have perfect control, and never go too far when feeding from someone, and handle the bloodlust with all the grace and poise of someone who had been doing it for five hundred years rather than a few days.
But that would only end badly, he knew.
Sooner or later, they'd break the sire bond (if it did exist) and she'd be right back, where she started.
"Am I going to have to become nocturnal?" Elena asked. "Stefan and I never really talked about it," she added, when he raised an eyebrow. "I asked a few questions when I first found out, but I got distracted by the whole Katherine story."
"You can't go out in direct sunlight until we get you a daylight ring," Damon said. "If there's enough cloud cover, we can go outside. But we don't need to go out to work on your control issues; I'll run to the nearest town and get some blood bags."
Elena nodded. "How long before I need to feed again?"
"Depends on what you're drinking," Damon answered. "Human blood, you can get away with a couple of bags a day. Other than that, your body will function normally, so, yes, you will still need to go to the bathroom."
Elena felt her cheeks heat up. "How did you know I was thinking that?"
"Everyone wonders that," Damon said. "That, and can I still have sex, but you know the answer to that one."
"Will I still get hungry?" Elena asked. "I mean for normal food?"
Damon frowned. "Kind of. If someone puts your favourite meal in front of you, or you're thinking about it, you'll still want to eat it, and your stomach will still make those cute little gurgles it's so fond of …"
Elena smacked his arm, rolling her eyes at his smirk.
"But you won't get hungry if you go without food," Damon finished, his smirk turning into a full-out grin. "You don't need it, but you'll still enjoy it."
"What about taste?" Elena asked. "The blood in the hospital didn't taste like it did before."
"That's because you're a vampire now," Damon said. "Your taste buds have altered."
"So that's why you like pickles so much," Elena teased.
"No, I like pickles because they're awesome," Damon corrected. "I still can't believe you don't."
Elena laughed, but it broke off with a yawn. "How am I still tired?"
"I wasn't lying about your energy spiking and falling," Damon said, his grin softening. "Your emotions will be a bit of a rollercoaster as well. Let me know if you need a shoulder to cry on."
He punctuated the offer with a wink, and Elena reacted with a cursory eye-roll and a giggle, but she knew he wasn't joking around or being flippant.
She had a theory that this was what Damon had been like as a human, before he turned, and she was flattered (and a little overwhelmed) that he felt comfortable enough in her presence to show the humanity he hid so carefully from the rest of the world.
She had seen glimpses of it around other people - Jeremy, in the wake of Jenna and John's deaths; Stefan, when they weren't at each other's throats; Ric, in the strange friendship/brotherhood that shouldn't have formed and yet was a stronger bond than anything she could have predicted - but she was the only person he let all of his walls down with, and she alone saw how vulnerable he truly was.
Not against stakes or werewolves or hybrids or Originals, but against his own heart, his own capacity to love so strongly that it consumed him, and she silently swore to keep that humanity alive, in the same way Lexi had sworn to draw out Stefan's all those years ago.
"Come on," Damon said, oblivious to her thoughts. "Let's get you into bed."
"In your dreams," Elena shot back.
"Now when did I tell you about those dreams?" Damon let her up the stairs and along the corridor. "This is my room, in case you need me. As for you … I wonder …" he pushed open the next door along, and stopped. "Guess Father did bring Stefan here after all. It was a nursery last I saw it."
Elena peeked past him into a teenage boy's room, frozen in time, and similar to Stefan's room now, but far less cluttered. "I don't think so."
"No?" Damon asked. "Heaven knows what my little brother left in there."
"Exactly," Elena agreed. "I'd wind up snooping, and that's not right, not without his permission."
Damon shrugged. "Suit yourself. In that case …" he crossed the hall and pushed open another door. "Mama's room."
"Your parents didn't share a room?" Elena asked curiously.
"My father was very old-fashioned in his habits," Damon answered. "It was considered improper for married couples to share a room unless they were trying to conceive." He glanced back at Stefan's room. "She had Stefan's room prepared as soon as she found he was on his way. She wanted us to spend our childhoods here rather than the Manor, running around, fishing, etcetera, etcetera."
"How old were you when she died?" Elena asked softly.
"Six," Damon answered bluntly. "She died a few weeks after Stefan was born … childbirth wasn't exactly safe in those days."
The room was beautiful, full of darkly stained wooden furniture, and looked as though it had been taken from the pages of a Jane Austen nodded - which she supposed it had.
A huge bed took pride of place, neatly made, with a large, elaborated carved chest at the foot. The window was framed by thick, floor-length curtains made of red velvet, and an armchair of the same colour sat beside it, turned to face the waning moon. There was a desk in one corner, littered with yellowing paper and writing implements, and above it, on the wall, was a framed portrait.
Elena took a step into the room to examine it. She had never seen a picture of Damon and Stefan's mother before, and captured in paint it gave more detail than a black-and-white photograph could ever have given.
Her eyes travelled over Maria Salvatore's laughing figure, seeing Damon's eyes and Stefan's smile, her black hair tumbling over one shoulder and mixing with the tousled curls of the child in her arms.
"A woman named Elsie painted that," Damon told her, coming to stand beside her. "She was one of the maids. Well, a slave, technically, but Mama never liked the idea of that. She had no control over the family finances, so she couldn't pay them, but she always treated them as equals. In some ways, I'm glad she wasn't around to see me join the army. She said that people were people, that they bled and cried and laughed as we did; she would never have supported the Confederacy."
"Neither did you," Elena said with certainty. "She would have understood that you didn't have a choice."
Damon gave her a small smile. "Mama always disliked the formal family portrait that Father had commissioned - said it was too stuffy - so she asked Elsie if she would paint a less rigid one in exchange for some proper art supplies."
"Your father's not in it," Elena remarked.
Damon snorted. "Father would never have agreed to it."
Elena nodded understandingly. "She was very talented."
It was a rather transparent attempt at changing the subject, but it wasn't an empty statement. The painting was so vivid that she thought if she just closed her eyes and concentrated, the laughter of mother and son would once again ring through the room.
"Yes," Damon agreed. "And very kind. She practically raised me and Stefan after Mama passed." He cleared his throat. "You're welcome to stay in here."
"Damon, I couldn't …" Elena began.
"Yes, you can," Damon said firmly. "The guest room won't be made up, and you need your rest." His voice softened. "She would have loved you, Elena. She'd be the first to ask you to stay here if she could. Trust me."
Slowly Elena nodded. "Alright. Thank you."
"You're welcome," Damon said, leaving her side to rifle through the chest of drawers on the other side of the room. "Here. It's a little old-fashioned, but it'll do for tonight." He handed her a white nightgown, and gestured towards another door she hadn't noticed before. "There's a bathroom through there, but this is one of the rooms I didn't change the fittings in. There's electricity, but no modern shower or anything, so if you want, there's another bathroom along the hall."
Elena smiled weakly. "Thanks. I'm sure I'll be alright."
"Okay, yell if you need anything," Damon said, kissing her forehead. "We'll start training tomorrow. Goodnight."
"Goodnight, Damon," Elena echoed, hearing the door click behind him.
Peeling off her still slightly-damp clothes, Elena slipped the nightdress on, surprised at how comfortable it was, and how well it fit her.
Retrieving the cell-phone Meredith had left her from her jacket, Elena perched on the edge of her bed and stared at it for a few minutes.
She wanted to call Stefan and scream the truth at him until he believed it, but she didn't have the energy.
She wanted to call Jeremy and beg him to tell her that Mom and Dad would still have loved her, even as a vampire, and that he did too, but she couldn't face it.
Instead, she began sending tests to everyone and anyone that mattered.
Bonnie - I know you know by now. Please don't hate me. I'll call when I'm ready - Elena x
Caroline - Thank you for trusting my judgement; keep an eye on Stefan for me - Elena x
Matt - Caroline will explain. Please don't blame yourself; I'm glad you're okay and I'm so sorry you got dragged into this. I'll call when I'm ready - Elena x
Jeremy - I'm a vampire. Stefan will explain. I'm safe, I'm with Damon. I love you. I'll call when I'm ready - Elena x
Once the last text had been sent, Elena carefully pulled the curtains closed, making sure there were no gaps, and climbed into bed, burying her face into the soft pillows for a moment, before returning to the phone.
Stefan -
Elena stared at the screen for several minutes, waiting for inspiration to strike, but she couldn't seem to find any way of putting her thoughts and feelings into words.
Everything had magnified since she turned, and her feelings for Stefan were no exception; it didn't seem right, or even possible, to spill it all out in a text message.
Stefan - When you're ready, we need to talk. In the meantime … please tell me that you don't hate me - Elena x
Sighing heavily, she leaned over to set the phone on the nightstand, but it vibrated in her hand twice, in quick succession, and she hastily checked the messages.
One from Jeremy … and one from Stefan.
She read Jeremy's first, her heart thudding in a way it had no right to anymore.
Lena - No matter what, you're my sister. Adoption didn't change that, you being a vampire won't either. I love you too - Jer xx
A knot seemed to loosen in Elena's stomach, and she opened Stefan's message as well, needing and yet dreading to see what he had to say.
I could never hate you, Elena, and I'm so sorry if I gave you that impression. This is difficult for all of us. I can't do this anymore.
A sob bubbled up in her throat, and she tossed her phone onto the nightstand, closing her eyes against the onslaught of tears. She'd needed something, anything, to tell her that she hadn't lost him, that she could still fix this, but all it had told her was …
I can't do this anymore.
The words were solid, and final, but there was something about them that niggled at the back of Elena's mind.
It wasn't like Stefan to be so blunt by text.
In person, maybe but he wouldn't say something like that via text, not after kissing her so desperately before leaving to face Alaric.
Then a memory of a conversation returned to her, across the months of their separation, from a time when all they had to worry about was Katherine (not that she wasn't a substantial worry).
"Today when we're fighting, if I say "I can't do this anymore, Elena", what I'll really mean is "I love you"."
If Stefan really thought she was in love with Damon, especially after everything that had happened with Klaus, he would never rock the boat by telling her that outright.
But if she knew Stefan at all, he would find some way of telling her, even if it was in a way she might not recognise.
Grabbing the phone, she typed the words Fine, Stefan, whatever and sent the text, before settling down to sleep, a slight smile contradicting her tear-stained face.
"And when I say, "Fine, Stefan, whatever", that means "I love you too"."