* I don't own The Vampire Diaries or any of it's characters, I hope you all enjoy my first time writing about them!
March 12th, 1957
It was later than normal when the door to the basement finally opened up. Enzo and Damon had come to realize over the years that a late start to the day meant one of two things. Either Dr. Whitmore and his colleagues had come up with a new theory and were doing some last minute research before they started cutting into them, or someone new was being added in.
It had been a while since a new vampire was brought down to the basement, number 22137, and he hadn't lasted long before ripping out his own heart. Enzo and Damon had never got a chance to learn his real name. Dr Whitmore hadn't been pleased with the loss of his new test subject and had taken his frustrations out on Damon's right eye and his left lung the following day.
When they heard the two sets of feet accompanied by rubber dragging on the concrete, they knew it was the latter. Damon's stomach dropped at the first sight of their new neighbor, it was a girl. Her long, dark brown hair hung limply past her shoulders, obscuring their view of her face. Her slim body was wearing a casual blue sweater, black slacks, and saddle shoes that continued to drag across the floor. The men opened the cell on the other side of Enzo and unceremoniously dropped her in on her face, earning a whimper from the unconscious girl.
"I thought you doctors were supposed to be gentlemen? You don't treat a lady like that." Enzo growled at the two behind the bars as they locked the girl's cell door.
The doctors didn't respond as they took a few notes, observing the girl, before leaving again.
"Hey? Hey, wake up. Are you alright, darling?" Enzo called gently from his cell as Damon stared as her still form. He had never seen them bring a female vampire down before. It sickened him to think of the kind of experiments they would be performing on her since she had specific parts that he and Enzo did not.
It was close to an hour later before she stirred. A slight shuffle, a pained whimper, and then a startled gasp before her body moved out of sight. They still hadn't gotten a good look at her face. "Wha- what's happening? Where am I? Daddy? Daddy!"
If he hadn't felt like he'd been kicked in the gut before, the sound of her voice, sure got the job done. Scrambling at the bars, Damon strained to get a better look into her cell. It was her voice, and now that he thought about it, her build and hair color. "Katherine," he said with a sort of desperation that he hadn't felt in about 90 years.
"Calm down, darling. What's your name?" Enzo asked, speaking over Damon.
There was a long silence before she answered. "I'm Elena. Why am I here?"
"My name's Enzo, that's Damon. The doctors will tell you that you're here in the interest of science. But the truth of the matter is that they get off on torturing us vampires." Enzo's voice stayed calm and even as he spoke.
"Vampires? Are you kidding me? I'm not a vampire. I'm a senior in high school."
And just like that, the phantom kicks to Damon's stomach turned into a wooden stake. "What's the last thing you remember before waking up here?" He asked, still trying to get a good look at her. At this point, all he could see was her left foot sticking past the wall.
"There… um… there was an accident," her voice quivered as she spoke. "I think it was a day or two ago. I was driving with my boyfriend on our way to the movies… and there was a truck… I remember screaming and glass. Then I woke up in my bedroom. I thought it was a nightmare, but Daddy was there and said I was in an accident. He said everything was going to be okay. I felt really strange. The lights hurt my eyes, my ears were buzzing like a radio trying to find the right station, and my mouth really hurt. He gave me a thermos, told me it was medicine and that I had to drink all of it. I did, and then… he said he had to give me a shot… I don't remember anything after that until I woke up here."
"Hate to be the bearer of bad news," Damon said as he sat with his back to the far wall, giving himself the best view of her cell door, "but I'm guessing you died in that car accident. The thermos your father gave you was blood so you would complete your transition. And the shot he gave you was vervain, so he could knock you out and bring you here."
"No, that doesn't make sense. People don't just die in car accidents and wake up as vampires-"
"You're right, they don't." Damon interrupted. "For a human to become a vampire, they need to have vampire blood in their system when they die. So tell me, has your father given you any other kinds of medicine lately?"
She went silent. Not speaking at all for a long time as Damon and Enzo tried to draw her back into their conversation. After a while, she gave a humorless chuckle.
"What's so funny, darling?" Enzo asked, from his spot next to the bars.
"I finally figured it out," she chuckled again. "I must have hit my head during the accident and was put in the psychiatric ward for observation. That's why you two believe you're vampires. You're both sick with similar delusions. All I have to do is prove to them that I'm alright and they'll let me go home. So, you two can go ahead with your crazy talk while I return to the real world."
Damon wanted to feel insulted by what she said, but all he could feel was pity for the girl that had Katherine's voice. She was a new vampire with no idea what had happened to her and was going to be receiving a vicious wakeup call when the doctors took her to that room. She hadn't wanted or asked for this. If he had to guess, her father had been giving her vampire blood without her knowledge as part of an experiment. When she finally realized that he and Enzo were telling the truth, it might very well break her.
March 13th, 1957
When the door opened that morning, they were met with two doctors instead of one. Dr. Whitmore observed the three of them with his usual scientific indifference, the other man only gave Enzo and Damon a passing glance before looking into Elena's cell.
"Subject number 23723, get up. You're coming with us," the man said as he stared inside.
The was a rushed shuffling as Elena got up and hurried to grip the bars. "Daddy! Please, Daddy. I want to go home. I promise that I'm okay. I know my name, what day it is, who the president is, I even remember your favorite food and after dinner drink-"
"Be quiet, subject 23723, or my first experiment will be on your tongue."
There was a surprised gasp as she stepped away from the bars in fear. "Daddy?"
The cell door opened and the doctor, apparently Elena's father, pulled out a syringe before entering. Damon heard her give a small yelp as she was stuck with the needle, likely full of vervain, before Dr. Whitmore went in to help him lead the disoriented girl out to the cell. As they passed him, all Damon could do was stare as the two men lead her away, allowing him to get his first, unobstructed view at her face.
It was Katherine. But it wasn't. The woman he loved would never have been so vulnerable. She would have laughed at the irony of meeting him again in the cages, much like the one he and Stefan had tried to rescue her from before they died. Somehow, that girl had her face and had been turned into a vampire.
When she began to scream minutes later, Damon found himself gripping the bars so hard that they cut into his hands. A glance over at Enzo showed that he wasn't handling the young vampire's pained screams any better than he was, as his hands fisted against his skull.
~oOo~
It was hours and endless screams later when Elena's father dragged her back into the basement and dropped her into her cell. He placed a ration of blood within her reach before shutting the door behind him, then gave Enzo and Damon their rations and left the basement.
Neither man went for their rations with their usual enthusiasm. Their gazes were trained on the girl that was staring blankly out into the hallway. Blood had soaked into the stomach of her sweater, more blood dripped across her cheek from her left ear. But what kept Damon's focus were the tears that slowly dripped across the bridge of her nose and onto the concrete.
"Why aren't I dead?"
She spoke so quietly, if they hadn't been vampires, they would have missed it.
"My own father… just cut me open. He took pieces out from inside me. He talked like he was giving a school lecture. What he did… I shouldn't be alive right now. But my stomach healed. I can feel a dull ache, but it doesn't really hurt anymore. How is this possible?"
"It's possible because you're a vampire," Damon said quietly, after a brief hesitation.
She was silent again for a long while before she moved to sit with her back against the wall, her ration of blood in hand, while she looked out of her cell to observe Enzo and Damon. "How? Vampires are fiction, but I can't deny what my father did to me. When did all this even start?"
"Not quite sure where it started, darling," Enzo said as he slowly sipped his ration. "I do know that I've been around for a little over 50 years now, been here for 13 of them."
"And you?" She looked at Damon, who had finished his ration a little bit ago.
"I was turned just before the end of the Civil War in 1864, been here for about three years. The vampire that turned me was named Katherine, she was turned in 1492, I think."
She gave a slight nod in understanding before her eyes locked on her ration on blood, the veins slowly popped out and she wrinkled her nose in disgust. "Will I ever get used to drinking blood? I know that vampire's need to, but I'm not sure if I want to."
"It's known as an acquired taste. And when you became a vampire, you acquired it," Damon said, giving her a slight joking smirk.
To his surprise, the corner of her mouth lifted slightly in response before she slowly drank her blood. She grimaced slightly as she finished and set down her cup, but looked back over to him with a slight smile. "That may be true, but I don't think I have a taste for this particular blood. It doesn't taste right."
"That's because you're a new vampire. What you need is warm blood, straight from the vein. The fact that you haven't gotten that yet probably isn't a good thing."
"Or, it could be the best thing for her right now." Enzo said quickly, before she could panic. "You could become a fully functioning vampire on the small rations of blood since that is what your body is being conditioned to take in. But we won't know that until later on. If we're lucky, that may happen and we can get out of this hell-hole."
May 26th, 1957
It had been a long day of experiments for the three of them. This time, they had taken Damon and Elena up, leaving Enzo in his cell. By the time they were brought back down; Enzo looked like he wanted to be sick from listening to their screams, Damon couldn't see out of his right eye, and Elena was hugging her stomach where her father had removed part of her liver.
"I keep thinking about it," Elena said eventually as she looked into the hall at the two of them. "I couldn't figure out how the vampire blood got into my system in the first place. And then I remembered my daily shots." She looked at Damon directly now. "I was really sick when I was younger, the specialists said I wouldn't live past 14 years old. Then one day, he came into my room. Said not to worry and that everything was going to be alright. He gave me a shot, directly into my abdomen, above my liver. I felt better almost right away. Then every day after that, I would get a shot in the morning and another at night."
"I'd wager that those shots were 100% vampire blood, taken from one of us." Enzo said as he sat in his usual spot against the bars.
"That man used me as a test subject without me knowing for almost 5 years," she scowled. "He knew the risks of what I could become, and did it anyway. And from what you two have told me, he could have let me die while I was in transition. Instead, he forced me to become a vampire and then brought me here. What kind of person does that to someone they claim to have loved?"
Both men had noticed that she had stopped referring to him as her father after the first time he had cut her open. Not that they could blame her. Damon knew all too well about the pain of a family member's betrayal, but at least that was spread between multiple people. His father killed him and stole Katherine from him, Stefan forced him to transition, and his great-great-nephew sold him out to this hell-hole for a payday that he never got. Elena, on the other hand, had all of that wrapped into one person who still tormented her daily.
When Elena remained silent, Enzo decided to answer her question. "If I had to guess, he did love you while you were alive. But once you died, he convinced himself that you were dead and that this new you wasn't the little girl he raised. All you can do now is keep your mind focused on the future."
"I have a future?" She said in a sarcastic tone that made Damon grin a little.
"Sure you do. Enzo's future involves sending Dr. Whitmore his dog's head in the mail and making him pay for the postage. I've got plans for his family for generations to come. But that's us, what do you want to do when we get out of here?"
Her lips quirked a bit as she leaned her head back against the concrete wall. "I guess it depends on how much time I have in that moment. If I have the time, I want to do to him what he did to me. Cut him open nice and slow, explaining my process in a clinical way while I do it, before he goes into shock and dies while I rip his insides outside. If I'm in a rush, I'll shove my hand into his chest cavity and squeeze his heart until it turns to mush in my hand."
"That's rather poetic, I approve," Enzo smiled at her and she smiled back.
"I never used to think about stuff like this. Even on the night I died. My boyfriend Matt was talking about our future together. School, house, kids, and me as his beautiful wife."
"Well, he had the beautiful part right," Damon smirked at her.
"Agreed," said Enzo.
When she laughed, Damon felt his undead heart stirring for the first time in close to 100 years. "You guys are only saying that because I'm the only girl you've seen in years that hasn't had a hand in cutting you open."
"Not saying that doesn't help, but you are beautiful Elena." He hadn't meant to say that, but the words had tumbled out before he could think better of it. And the blush he saw crawl up her cheeks from their limited blood rations made it worth it.
"You know, part of me thinks that this whole situation is my fault?" She said, gaining curious looks from the two vampires. "Matt and I got into a fight while he was driving. If I hadn't distracted him, I wouldn't be here."
"And what was the fight about?"
"Life. Future. He had it all mapped out."
Damon couldn't help but quirk the eyebrow of his uninjured eyes at her. "And you didn't want that?"
"I didn't know what I wanted," she shrugged.
"Well that's not true, you want what everybody wants."
"What, mysterious vampire with all the answers?"
If Damon hadn't known any better, he would have sworn that Elena was flirting with him. And he, unable to help himself, flirted right back. "Well, I've been around a long time, I've learned a few things."
Standing from her spot on the floor, Elena leaned against the bars with her arms hanging out into the hallway. "So, Damon. Tell me, what is it that I want?"
Standing, Damon mirrored her position at his own cell door, choosing to ignore the knowing grin from Enzo as his eyes locked on Elena, glad that his injured eyes had healed enough that he could fully see her. "You want a love that consumes you. You want passion, and adventure, and even a little danger," he told her, unable to keep the smile from his lips as she blinked at him.
She gave herself a slight shake, indiscernible to a human but obvious to a vampire, before smiling at him again. "So, what do you want?"
Strangely enough, he thought his first answer would be to have Katherine back, but it wasn't. More than anything, at that moment, he wanted to know what it felt like to hold Elena in his arms. To taste her skin beneath his lips. To hold her while she slept so she would know that she was safe when the nightmares that he knew plagued her every night came for her. He wanted her.
But he couldn't tell her that. Instead, he gave her his most charming smile and told her "I want you to get everything you're looking for."
Seeming overwhelmed, Elena cleared her throat before giving him another smile. "Well, I hope that all three of us can find that. For now, I'm going to try and sleep."
Damon watched her walk away from the door to the corner of her cell where she normally slept, propped up in that same corner. He kept watch as she slowly fell into her fitful sleep, whimpering every few minutes as the place they were trapped in invaded her dreams.
"Out of curiosity," Enzo asked quietly from the next cell as to not wake Elena. "What ever happened to that other girl? The one you said you hadn't met another like?"
"Believe it or not, I hadn't until she came here."
December 31st, 1957
The three of them had been cleaned up in the most minimal of sense. It was more to make sure that their abused bodies and scents didn't offend the members of the Augustine group. Damon was given a new white T-shirt and black jeans, Enzo got a pair of black slacks and a long sleeve shirt, and Elena was given a new pair of black slacks and a dark green shirt with elbow length sleeves. They were taken up one at a time, with Damon being taken first, followed Enzo and then Elena.
The display cage was barely large enough for the three of them to stand together without touching the bars, which were coated with vervain. Damon used this as an excuse to draw Elena to his side with his shackled hands. To his surprise, she leaned against him willingly. They both drank in the friendly contact, knowing that they had nothing to fear from each other and it would be a long time before they could do this again.
As the party began and members started gawking at them all night, Enzo and Damon had moved to shield Elena from their eyes. Damon had looped his arms around her back to hold her to his chest while Enzo stayed at her back glaring at anyone who came near them or if their eyes lingered on Elena for too long.
It became all the more difficult for her when her parents arrived. Her father looked at her with the indifference the three of them had come to expect from the doctor, but it was her mother that had Elena shaking in his arms. The woman looked at her with such disgust and contempt, that Damon couldn't help but think that his own father was a saint compared to this woman.
"Stop your snivelling, you revolting thing. You should be proud that you are part of a greater purpose." The woman said as she looked down her nose that the girl she had given birth to before taking a drink of her champagne and turning away to talk to another member. Damon didn't say anything as she clutched his shirt with her shaking hands. Enzo gently patted her back as the party continued.
At midnight, when Dr. Whitmore came to pull one of them out of the cage, Damon and Enzo were already moving to keep Elena away from the door so he would take one of them instead. Thanks to his scientific disinterest, he gave their interference no mind as he grabbed Damon and pulled him out of the cage. For a second, he could have sworn that Elena was about to follow him out until Enzo held her back. The blood he gave for the party made him light headed as he was forced to stand there and watch the humans that had tortured him for years, enjoy his blood.
He was returned to the cage, where Elena attempted to hug him with her shackled arms. The party lasted a few more hours before the majority of the members left for their homes. This left the three vampires standing in the vervain coated cage with Damon becoming more light headed by the second.
"You going to make it there, soldier?" Enzo asked, trying to make Damon focus.
"I'll make it," he muttered.
"No, they took too much from you. You need blood," Elena said, sounding slightly desperate. After a second of thought, she reached up to loop her bound hands around his neck and draw his head down to her shoulder. "Take some."
Damon shook his head, completely exhausted and not wanting to take advantage of her like this. She had no idea what it meant for vampires to share blood with each other. But she kept her hold on him, not letting him pull away.
"It's like Enzo said before, my body has been conditioned to survive on minimal blood, I'll be fine."
"Elena, it's not that…" he hesitated as his lips moved against the skin of her neck, revelling in the taste that he wasn't likely to experience again.
"Then what is it?"
Enzo answered for him, seeming uncomfortable with what was about to happen right in front of him. "Darling, blood sharing between vampires is a personal thing. Not something you do in the middle of a room while in a cage with another vampire."
"Screw personal. I think the three of us moved past that after doctors Hack and Slash spent an entire week doing experiments on our reproductive organs." She scowled slightly at Enzo before pressing Damon's face firmly against her skin and placed her lips against his ear. "Drink."
His eyes turned red and the veins popped out, despite his best efforts to hold back. He was so hungry and this beautiful creature in his arms was offering to give him what he needed. Feeling his fangs drop into place, he opened his mouth against her skin and felt the tell-tale pop that let him know that sustenance was coming. The first drops that hit his tongue had him groaning in response, it had been too long since he'd had warm blood from the vein and it made it all the more enticing that it was coming from Elena. He felt her shutter in his arms, having never been bitten by a vampire before and her first experience being blood sharing had him feeling amazing.
The urge to keep feeding was undeniable, he wanted this. He wanted her. But he forced himself to pull away before he took too much. The wound on her neck quickly healed and he couldn't help but duck his head to pick up the lingering drops before they could touch the fabric of her new shirt or anyone else could see what they had done. Enzo had kept his back to them, doing his best to give the two as much privacy as the small cage would allow.
Luckily, they had finished and were back into display condition by the time Dr. Whitmore came to take them back down to the basement, starting with Elena. Damon had to fight every instinct he had to attack the doctor when he led her away. He was stronger now, thanks to Elena's blood, but he wasn't strong enough to take down the cage door and go after them. But in that moment, he knew that he was done. He wasn't going to stand by while the woman he cared about was stolen away from him. Not again.
AN: The idea for this story came from wondering what would have happened if Damon and Elena had been kept by the Augustine group together for longer than a day. Then I decided that I didn't want Wes around (total ass) and thought about what it might have been like if Elena had shown up in the 50's, which turned into this. I'm sure many of you have noticed the changes here and there, but it was all for the story. What do you think of the first half of this long two-shot? Warm-Fuzzies and please review!