~ Vervain ~

There is a sprig of lavender-colored flowers, flecked with blood, sitting on a corner of the sheriff's desk.

His curiosity getting the better of him, Damon cautiously reaches out and prods it with his fingertip. It doesn't burn him. Not even when he picks it up.

"Hey, does this look like vervain to you?" he asks, holding the sprig out toward his brother.

Stefan looks at the flowers for a long moment. Then, frowning, he reaches out to touch them. He lets out a sharp hiss of pain and snatches his hand away.

"Ouch. Yes, that's vervain."

"Huh. Weird."

"What's weird about it?"

"Well, it's not burning me... which means someone is dying from secretly being in love with me."

A moment passes in awkward silence. Before Stefan has adequate time to come up with a reply, the door swings open and Liz enters the room.

"What are you two doing in my office?"

"There's a-" Stefan starts, but Damon cuts him off.

"Where did this vervain come from?"

"It doesn't matter," Liz replies, barely glancing at the flowers in Damon's hand.

She doesn't know that he is a vampire, and therefore does not understand the significance of him being able to touch that particular sprig of vervain.

"It matters to the person who is dying of Hanahaki Disease, I'm sure," Damon says.

While Damon is reasonably sure who the flowers belong to at this point... of course getting her to admit it isn't going to be that easy.

"What makes you so sure the person is dying?" Liz asks, plucking the sprig from Damon's fingers and tossing it carelessly onto her desk.

"Whoever it is coughed that thing up in one piece, which means they are very close to dying."


Liz is nothing if not stubborn, and she seriously considers continuing the argument in hypothetical terms. However, it's fairly obvious from where the flowers were found that they belong to her. Furthermore, there is a reason that the Salvatore brothers are here, and she won't find out what it is until after this conversation is over, because Damon is not the type of person to let something like this go before he finds out the truth.

She sighs and says, "I am not dying."

Damon practically radiates pity as he opens out his arms to her.

"Come here."

She doesn't move toward him, but that doesn't stop him from closing the small distance between them and drawing her into his arms. She doesn't resist being hugged, but hesitates a moment before wrapping her arms around Damon's shoulders and leaning into the embrace.

"Shh, it's okay," Damon murmurs into her hair as he holds her tightly against him. "I'm about to tell you something that's going to make you hate me."

Liz startles at this pronouncement and tries to pull away from him, but Damon doesn't let her go. She barely has time to process the thought that she assumed he'd ask her who she was in love with or take a guess at the person's identity, but what he actually said is so far outside her expectations she doesn't know how to react to it.

Someone else in the room does have a decisive reaction, though.

"Damon, no!" Stefan snaps.

Ignoring his brother, Damon lowers his head to whisper in Liz's ear, "I'm a vampire."


Damon loosens his hold somewhat, subtly letting Liz know that if she wants to escape from his embrace, he will let her. He half-expects that not only will she want to get away from him, she'll also try to kill him.

She doesn't.

(At least not immediately, he thinks cynically to himself.)

After taking a moment to process this revelation, Liz exhales heavily. He can hear the foliage rattling in her lungs.

"But you were holding the vervain," she says, an accusatory note in her voice.

Ah, so that's why she's not attempting to murder him yet. She doesn't believe that his confession is true.

"Yeah," he says. "That's how I knew."

"Knew what?" she asks, drawing back slightly and looking up at him with a frown.

He watches her expression change as the pieces put themselves together in her mind.

"How I knew it was me," he replies belatedly, even though he's sure she already figured out what he meant. He glances at the sprig of vervain on her desk, and says, "By the way, why would you just leave that laying around where anyone could see it?"

"I didn't think anyone would come in here before I got back from the bathroom. I was planning on disposing of it properly," Liz replies defensively. "And now that that's settled, what did you two come here for?"

Stefan, who has been standing by awkwardly during all of this, jumps at the chance to explain what the issue is. (More vampire problems, of course, because what else would it be in this town?)


Liz slides out of Damon's arms and moves to stand behind her desk. She drops the blood-flecked sprig of vervain unceremoniously into a biohazard bag (which she locks in a drawer of her desk, to be disposed of later) as the three of them begin to discuss solutions for the situation at hand.

And that's it. No dramatic declarations of feelings from either of them, much less both. It's definitely nothing like the scenes from TV shows and romance novels that occur at the resolution of a Hanahaki Disease story arc. They simply carry on with what's necessary to safeguard their town. The vampire revelation (and perhaps other parts of the conversation) will have to be revisited some other time, when there isn't an active crisis going on.

She doesn't even realize how much easier she's breathing until much later.

~end~