A/N: Not super happy with this chapter but really wanted to get the last one uploaded. I've had this ending in my head since the beginning.

Thank you endlessly for the reviews and coffees. I feel so lucky!

Six months ago.

"Elena…" It was the fourth time he'd said her name – left it hanging there, down the line, over the miles. "You know it hasn't been working. We can pretend but," he groaned, dragging a hand down his face in the reflection. He looked haggard: humanity and arguments in the lines around his face, the pale hollowness of his under eyes.

"I thought you were figuring things out? That's why you left."

Damon winced at the frailness of her voice. "I did leave to figure things out, Elena, but I shouldn't have had to. It should be enough to just be there…" He let 'with you' drop into silence, the insinuation palpable – stiffening in a tension that made him pull the phone away from his ear.

"So, this is it," she said at last.

"Surely you saw this coming?"

"I know we're not the same as we were Damon," a tired laugh, an exhale, "I stopped waiting for you to propose a year ago."

"I'm sorry," he told her. There was nothing else, and he was.

"Me too."

The line died and his reflection began to cry. He was alone. Mystic Falls was all cobwebs of their old life now – even Matt had fucked off to Washington or somewhere, fell in love, probably had a blonde-blue eyed kid running about.

"Fuck you, Stefan," he croaked like he did sometimes when he was angry at him, the martyr. "Look at the sad shit you sacrificed yourself for?"

Their wedding photo smiles on the mantel piece – Stefan and Caroline, him and Bonnie. He cried for his once best friend, then too.

"I'm a mess, Bon-bon," he whispered at his hands, the familiar comfort of that nickname choking a little. He scrolled for her number and tapped before reason clawed him away. It rung twice – then a male voice.

"Who is this?"

"Is this not Bonnie's-"

"Who the fuck are you?"

There was a scrabble and faintly, before the line clicked off and he was alone again, he heard her say his name. He imagined it; he was sure. Some sort of emotional crux, like when he hears Stefan. He deleted the number sat in the wine cellar, drinking Bourbon until his pathetic human body passed out.

/

Relly's a little firecracker in the mornings, dancing and singing, her hair wild and untamed.

"Shh, crazy girl, you'll wake Damon up."

Her daughter puffs out her chest and yells: "Wake upppppp, Damon!"

"Relly!" Bonnie scolds but scoops her up and blows a raspberry on her stomach, eliciting even more noise.

Damon emerges zombie-fied, his hair nearly as big as Relly's. "I didn't realise I ordered a new alarm clock," he grumbles, his voice thick with morning.

"You've naked," Relly giggles and she's trying, she really is, but Damon's clearly kept in shape all these human years, the dips and curves of his torso just as she definitely shouldn't have remembered.

Damon's eyes round. "Oh, right, yeah, sorry," he hurries and falls back into his bedroom.

The differences between the arrogant look at how hot I am vampire and the blushing, slightly awkward man sometimes startle her. That teasing, flirtatious smirk she'd accepted as his face comes in flashes – what's taken residence recently is that goofy, love-sick grin directed at her daughter, maybe even at her. He's happy and that makes her heart swell… and shatter because she hasn't told him yet.

Fleeing Atlanta gave Bonnie her spirit back. She caught it in the air and it carried her home.

"Okay, I'm decent. Pancakes?"

Relly's face splits into a grin, bouncing on the front of her toes, curls launching forward. Damon holds out his hand, Relly takes it, and the shy, pleased smile in his mouth is near-crippling.

It was always a return ticket. They left but like a damned elastic band, they have to spring back. Her work, Relly's school, the smattering of friends she's collected over the years… even her baby's dad. One month. That's all she'd stolen.

Today, Bonnie. But every morning this week she's woken with this resolve, and every evening, when they're curled in their respective chairs and his brow is furrowed above his glasses (his eyes have been giving him trouble recently) – she can't do it. The words are there; they dissolve with the wink he offers before lifting the scotch glass to his mouth.

"You shouldn't drink so much," she said last night instead.

"Shit, Bon, I'm so sorry." He placed the glass on the table, eyes melting with concern.

"It's okay, I know you're not-" she swallowed, "I just mean for your health."

Damon relaxed against the couch with her reassurance. "I'm cold, come and sit here."

The words made her chest flutter. "Get a blanket."

"You don't want to snuggle?" He teased, smirk pushing against his mouth.

"When have we ever snuggled?" Bonnie eye-rolled, lifting the book to cover his frame. Something about the evening intensified his attractiveness, his smell, everything. Probably the low light – and the pink gin tingling about in her head.

"Wasted opportunity, if you ask me, Bon-bon."

Bonnie turned the page. "You're being very Damon, tonight."

He laughed. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You know… vampire Damon," she hesitated, "Flirty."

"Ah."

She lowered the book, risking a glance. The man wiggled his eyebrows like an idiot. Bonnie told him as such.

"You break my heart, you Bennetts."

"Hmm, Relly told me she had to tell you off today."

"Snitch," he muttered and the loose smile in his words is something she'd never seen on her daughter's dad.

"Fine," she snapped her book shut, "I'll come and sit with you."

Maybe it's selfish? Hiding her suitcase and boarding passes under the bed, pretending this isn't just a dream and reality always comes knocking? It's Friday now and they leave tomorrow. She just hasn't been able to tell him – even last week – she couldn't ruin it, give him, them, this thing they've carved, a count down.

Because more than anything, she's scared of what she'll realise when she's up in the air, Relly watching Disney movies beside her, princesses and princes falling love, happily ever after. She wants that for her baby girl… why can't she risk it for herself?

/

"Damon do the teeth thing!"

"Ah, hear that Bon?" he shouts, "Your daughter likes the squirty cream fangs."

Relly's tongue pokes out, tracing the motion, as he turns the blueberry smiles in vampires.

"Et voila."

"Yay!"

"Don't worry, yours are cream free," he calls to the footsteps nearing the kitchen doorway, "Just blueberries for Miss-" He stops short at Bonnie's face, "What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"You look like you've been crying."

Relly picks her head up to frown at the woman. "Mommy?"

"I'm fine, baby."

Liar. Damon leaves the plate on the side and takes Bonnie arm, ushering her into the hallway, away from the kid. Only when Relly resumes chattering to herself does he speak, arms crossed, brow low. "What's wrong?"

She shakes her head, pulling away from his gaze, chasing the portraits of Salvatore's past.

"Bonnie," he tries again, softer, "Let me make this better."

Her eyes brush close; a breath. "I should have told you weeks ago. I'm sorry."

"Told me what?"

"My… the flight…"

And the little world they've built unravels. Just like that.

"When is it?" he says at last.

"Tomorrow."

He's staring at the spools of the last month, watching them tumble, taking the little girl, he's grown to love, and the woman, he's probably always, with it.

/

Their last day is happy, despite everything. A tender happiness, absent of too much eye contact or adult conversation but Relly is spoilt and tickled and loved and listened to until she's a dead weight against Damon's thigh.

She's hurt him. She can see it in his gaze, the hand that picks at Relly's hair, and Bonnie's never felt more cruel, taking her from him… taking him from her.

"We'll book another trip back soon. Maybe Easter or-"

"Does she know?" Damon interrupts.

"She knows it's just a holiday. Not forever."

"Yes, but does she know tomorrow?"

The word seems to tear in his mouth. "I told her this morning but I don't think she understood. I think she thinks that you're…"

Damon waits, eyes rounded, for Bonnie to finish. She doesn't. She can't.

"You'll visit, right? I – we- both- want – need - you in our life now."

He inhales, the air between them threatened by his next words. "Bonnie, I have to tell you something."

"I know," she breathes, "But you can't."

/

He doesn't sleep that night, just lies coffin-like as he used to as vampire, time eating but never lessening. They'll hug and he'll want to kiss her but won't, will want to tell her the thing she's asked him not to, and won't. Amaryllis will say something like 'remember to watch Frozen, okay?', which will make him laugh then but devastate him later when the house is empty and echoey and he's wondering how he lost literally everyone.

At six am, he pushes up from the covers to make them breakfast. He spends way too much time collecting random paraphernalia for a fairy-queen pancake, complete with cucumber stick wand. It looks shit and he walks to the trash can, flipping the lid to empty it in, pausing only when he hears the floorboards sigh.

"You made breakfast," Bonnie says to the spread table, Amaryllis tucked behind her thigh, thumb in mouth.

"I did."

He's lost his appetite and so has the kid; she picks at the chocolate buttons of the crown, a pout pulling her face downward.

Damon taps her leg with his foot, "You all packed?"

She shrugs without looking at him.

"Relly," Bonnie prompts but the girl's frown deepens into a glare and she yanks her arm away.

Me and you both, kid.

At eight, he takes their cases from the spare bedroom and carries them to the front door. Amaryllis presents him a drawing – the three of them, Damon's head stretched to monstrous size it's comical.

"It's beautiful," he tells her and she barrels into his legs. He lifts his head to Bonnie but finds no words.

"Okay, baby, let Damon go."

He sags without the grip of tiny hands holding him steady – forcing a smile into his gums, his eyes, as he says, "I'll see you soon, I promise."

And then it's the Bonnie-goodbye. She folds around his neck, pushing onto her tiptoes to fit on his shoulder and they both inhale like idiots, too stubborn to say the right things.

"Eight years was too long," she whispers.

He kisses her temple and they part. The door closes and Damon's nails bite against his palms, fighting to yank it open again.

/

They're barely five minutes down the road when Relly starts screaming. Bonnie fumbles in her rucksack for Miss Cuddles but her daughter flings the bear on the ground, shaking with fury and pain. Her face is scrunched tight, her breathing collecting into near retching and nothing is making it stop.

"Relly, please, you need to calm down. I can't drive with you like this."

Her wails fight harder, pushing against her lungs like they did when she was baby. Bonnie blinks away her own tears. Fuck it, she thinks, and stops the car.

She doesn't give Damon time to react, thrusting her daughter over the door-way and into his arms. "I'm sorry she won't stop screaming. I think she just wants to say goodbye again and I didn't know what else to do – she's going to make herself throw up."

"Hey, hey, it's okay. I'm here, it's okay," he whispers into her hair, rubbing circles over her shivering back. He glances at Bonnie in concern. She sags against the porch, eyes pulling shut.

"I don't know how I'm going to do this."

"Then don't."

"What?"

"Don't leave. Stay."

Relly's subsided to a gentle sobbing now, buried in Damon's chest. "Damon, you can't say things like that in front of her."

"I'm not just saying things. I mean it. You said it yourself, you wanted things to be different for her… this is different," he even smiles, like it's easy, "This is good."

And her voice halves. "I can't risk it. What if one day you decide you don't want to do this; you leave and it breaks her." Breaks me.

He shakes his head. "I'm never going to leave."

"You don't know that."

"I do," he shifts Relly onto one arm, reaching for Bonnie with the other, "I do. Bon, these last few weeks I've been the happiest I've ever been. Do you understand that? I'm happy."

She wants to take his hand. She aches with the want. Relly tilts her head, pleading to her with raw eyes, "Mommy please."

Bonnie shifts back to Damon, desperate. "How do we know if we'll even work?"

"We were stuck together completely isolated for months-"

"That was then."

"Well then we'll make it work," he tells her, "We'll make it work for Relly – I mean – Amaryllis."

But she's snuggling into his chest again, arms tight around his neck. Her little girl has never let anyone else call her Relly, not even her dad.

"This is crazy, Damon," she says, softer.

His eyes twinkle, like he knows she's melting, "You and I both know crazier things have happened."

"But the flight?"

"Your excuses are getting weaker, Bon-bon," he sing-songs and twirls from the doorway to retreat into the house.

"Damon, you can't just abduct our child?" She finds herself laughing with the absurdity of the situation, only noticing the slip when he pivots to meet her stare, that happiness glittering. The same she'd seen after she hugged him returning from the prison world (the first time she realised she might love him a little bit).

"Okay," she says, more to herself than him, the former vampire now, much to Relly's delight, pretending to be a dinosaur, "Okay, we'll stay."

A/N: And they lived happily ever after. This may not be the last time we see this family… I just want to write a couple of other one shots first. Let me know if you'd be interested and please continue to review! Sorry for all the angst oop.

The next one will be in response to a prompt so if you have ideas, keep them coming!