A/N: Back in England and ready to continue this story. As one lovely reader commented, Damon was not prepared to fall in love with a five-year-old.

He looks human. She wasn't sure if that was even possible, vampires blending into the world's fabric unnoticed, but with Damon, it's in his eyes. The icy blue has softened into something sky-like, searching, unclouded by hunger and impulse.

The man tilts his head to her stare and Bonnie flits upwards, glancing in the rear-view mirror at her chatting five-year-old, throwing her legs like she's on a swing. Relly's as fascinated by him as me. Age has begun to assert itself in the corners of his eyes, somehow making him even more handsome. The phrase like fine wine comes to mind and she frowns inwardly at her superficiality. How ridiculous to come home, unannounced, to just admire the face she'd kidded herself she'd forgotten?

Bonnie waits for a lull in her daughters' monologue. "I didn't expect you to still be here."

Her words make his hands sigh against the steering wheel; his eyes flicker in tentative pain. "I tried leaving. Many times."

"But?" she prompts.

Damon shakes his head, "It sounds stupid but leaving felt like I was forgetting him."

"Stefan."

He exhales in answer. "This is our home."

Bonnie shifts to the window – the dull buzz of main-street fading into suburbs, forest, where she laughed, cried, lost, loved, died. There are pieces of her all over this town.

"Who's Stefan?"

They share a smile at Relly's perpetual curiosity. Bonnie's loves that about her – the world is too rich and hidden to not want more.

"Stefan's my brother," Damon answers, and there's honour in his voice.

Her next question is anticipated but no less painful. "Is he having tea with us?"

She readies the words to tell her daughter another person she loved isn't here anymore, winces in the inevitable why, mommy. It's always quiet and hurt like the person left because they didn't want to meet her, the best thing she's ever done, her little world.

"Stefan's actually on a very brave adventure right now," Damon says instead.

"Oh," Relly chews on her lip, "Do you miss him?"

"All the time."

And Bonnie reaches over to Damon's lap, the hand lying limp atop his leg, and squeezes warm, pulse fuelled fingers. He tenses like someone hasn't held his hand in a while.

She knows he's aching to ask the question – how he looks at her baby girl and sees a half of someone he doesn't know. But she's not ready yet. Maybe it's selfish but she wants to be Bon-bon again.

Even if just for a day.

/

They rattle over the gravel to Amaryllis' sudden intake of breath. "Mommy this is a castle."

Bonnie laughs in agreement, "It's definitely a big house." She glances at the man pulling the car into park. "Is Elena here?"

Like Damon, she's been holding onto a question and that was hers. The last thing she heard was that the brunette was in London for work, she'd assumed that he had followed, as he had always done, Elena his life-line.

"She's in London," Damon says simply, hooking a finger around the door handle and swinging out onto the drive.

"And you…?"

He smiles at her over the roof of the Camaro, sad and weighted, "Mystic Falls is where I'm meant to be."

The Salvatore Boarding House had always been occupied with guests both welcomed and unwanted, now it's just him. Her eyes sweep over its vastness then Damon, suddenly so human, and he says, "I've been alone for over a century, Bon, six months isn't a big deal."

"Are you okay?" she asks without thinking but he doesn't respond. She hears the shopping bags being lifted out of the trunk and onto the gravel and unbuckles Relly's seatbelt.

Her daughter pulls on her t-shirt, lifting her mouth to Bonnie's ear, her breath hot and tickly, "Why is Damon sad?"

She curves a hand over Relly's cheek, pushing the curls away from her forehead. Her sweet, caring, little girl. "We'll cheer him up, don't you worry."

Relly beams and wiggles to be free of the car seat, hopping out of the Camaro with a slam of her new sneakers. They light up on impact – tiny stars barely luminous in the bright morning sun. They were a bribing present: come with Mommy on a trip across the country, we're going to stay in the empty house that belonged to Mommy's Gram's.

Driving the rental car past the 'Welcome To Mystic Falls' sign was like entering into a black and white photograph; you know it did happen but the past feels too disconnected to the present, it's like you're not even there.

Only when she saw Damon gaping at her in the fruit and veg aisle did the colours come pooling in.

"This is much bigger than me and Mommy's house," Relly announces.

Bonnie feels suddenly nauseous at Damon's quirked brow, afraid of what her daughter might say.

"Mommy sleeps in the living room when Daddy-"

"Relly?"

"Hm?" Her daughter falls back into step – well, skip – with her mother.

Bonnie can see the cogs whirring in Damon's brain. "That's enough, please."

"I was just going to tell him about my Princess bed," she sulks, dragging her feet over the stones and carving a trail.

"A Princess bed?" Damon calls, turning from the key in the front door and her daughter's lip retracts a little.

"It's pink and has a curtain," she begins, rushing up to meet him at the wooden porch. The lock clicks and he pushes on the door, exposing the dark beams of a hallway Bonnie hasn't entered in six years.

"A curtain?" Damon probes but Relly is too busy gazing at the extravagance of the Boarding House, her little mouth hung ajar.

She remembers the first time she stumbled into the vampire brothers' home, her expression much the same, albeit more fearful.

Damon shifts awkwardly on his feet – it's an action that looks so uncomfortable on the once brooding vampire that Bonnie smiles without thinking.

He drags a hand along the back of his neck, "I'll put the kettle on."

"Mommy," Amaryllis breathes, eyes trained on the staircase in delight, "I want to play hide and seek."

She glances at the open kitchen door, the clatter as he begins to put their shopping in the fridge, and feels dizzy. "You want to go and explore?"

Relly nods fervently.

"Okay, but if I call you downstairs, you come, yeah?"

Her daughter throws her thumb in the air then darts into the living room, skirting her hand over the red couch to reach the staircase. And if it wasn't for the running five-year-old, the Boarding House looks exactly as she left it.

Bonnie releases a breath and walks to the kitchen door, knocks lightly on the wood, and smiles again at Damon's twitch in surprise.

"It's nice to see you jumpy for once," she comments, joining him on the floor to put the milk away.

Damon brushes her arm as he reaches for the shelf. "Sorry," he says quickly, as if touching her is wrong now. "Where's Amaryllis?"

He says her name delicately, it's pretty, it's always been a pretty name but with Damon, the syllables are softer somehow. Bonnie watches the veins in his arms tense under the crate of beer: everything about him is softer.

"She's exploring. Sorry, I probably should have asked you first."

"I don't mind."

They're both saying sorry for the wrong things, it's treading on egg shells. So many elephants in the room that neither can breathe quite right.

A clatter from upstairs makes her freeze, eyes barrelled in sudden fear. Damon animates first, dropping the last of the shopping and hurrying out in the hallway.

She follows him up the stairs, comforted by the lack of wailing that usually accompanies her daughter's falls. Damon yanks open the door to Stefan's room.

"I didn't mean to," Relly rushes, staring at the collapsed pile of diaries then back at Damon. The man just blinks at the mess, almost stunned. "Don't be angry," she whispers into his silence.

"Relly, it's okay." Bonnie nudges past him, holding out her hand to lead her little girl out of the bedroom. Damon's still staring – the dust the journals have thrown up dancing in the air around his face. "Let's go play downstairs, okay?"

She nods, looking back at Damon in fear. "He's angry at me, isn't he?"

And Bonnie hates him, the man that made her daughter feel like this; made her look at another man with frozen eyes and recoiled hands, hands she's learned to clasp over her ears when he shouts too loud, when mommy shouts back.

"He's not angry, baby," Bonnie says softly, "He just hasn't been in that room for a while."

This seems to soothe her and she hops off the last step and flings herself on the couch, thumb in mouth. "Can I have some food now, mommy?"

"Sure, stay here, okay?"

She notices the photograph when she's by the fridge a second time – searching for some jelly to put in Relly's PB&J sandwich. It's her – younger and scowling at him, a leather clad Damon Salvatore, mouth thrown open in a laugh. There's a picture of Stefan too, on his wedding day, holding hands with Caroline whilst she grins in the background, bouquet thrust in the air. Both are flattened by magnets, the corners folded from age.

The guilt swells so violently she has to look away.

It had felt easy to leave, that's the worst part. Packing a bag and slamming her passport on the security desk, Where to? Anywhere. Stefan was dead, Caroline had the girls, Damon had Elena. With Enzo's ghost curled in her left hand, she boarded a plane and refused to look out the window at shrinking Virginia.

She Face-Timed Caroline once every few months and they'd talk about Stefan, how they never realised he was the once tying everyone together. Their lives whirred and Caroline moved to live near Rick and Bonnie boarded more planes and Damon… he was Elena's.

One evening in Paris she clicked on the brunette's name, secretly hoping she'd hear him, maybe that he'd grab the phone and sing her name in that way she pretended not to love. All these secrets – when she hung up, she promised herself to move on.

Sudden laughter interrupts her thought and she grabs the plate and nudges open the kitchen door. Across the hall her daughter is spinning, hanging off Damon's shoulders as she squeals and screams and almost passes out from giddiness.

"Mommy- I'm- flying-" she splutters between laughs, gripping the top of the man's head in terror.

"Damon, careful!" Bonnie's maternal instinct lurches but she can't help but laugh too.

"Okay, okay, fun police," he says and slows to a halt much to Relly's groan.

"Again, again. Please."

"Sorry, kid, I've got to stay in Mom's good books." And the wink he throws Bonnie's way is so Damon, she wonders how she survived for six years.

A/N: There will be two more parts to this mini-series, I think. Please do review!

You can also send me prompts for future one-shots over on tumblr: perpetualimaginings