Title: Wings of a Butterfly
Author: Traxits
Fandom: The Vampire Diaries (TV series).
Pairing: (eventual) Damon Salvatore/Jeremy Gilbert.
Chapter Rating: Mature for graphic descriptions of violence.
Chapter Content Notes: Graphic description of violence, wounds (esp. gunshots), American Civil War era battles, underage (sixteen) drinking for medicinal purposes.
Chapter Word Count: 2998 words.

[[ … Chapter Two: Burning … ]]

"Your father teach you to shoot?"

Jeremy looked up from the musket he had been wiping down. He nodded. "Yeah." He had gone to Civil War reenactments regularly with his father until the car accident, and it had been kind of their thing, studying the family history. Jeremy knew for a fact that several Gilberts had fought in the war, and they even still had one or two of the old rifled muskets in storage at home.

His fingers tightened around the gun in his hands. He'd never expected to be ordered to fire at a person, although he'd also never been as grateful for the training his father had given him. He shrugged a little, reaching up to readjust the hat on his head.

"Father believed that every man should know how to shoot." Jeremy glanced up toward Damon, who was nodding, a wry smile on his lips.

"Sounds like mine. … What do you think? Two more days? Three?" Damon leaned back against the trench wall, gun propped up just beside him. He arched an eyebrow. "Until the reinforcements get here," he clarified, seeing Jeremy's confusion.

Jeremy shrugged. He couldn't remember how many days he'd already spent in the trench with Damon and Henry and Charles and everyone else. At least two, but no more than four. It was difficult to keep track when they were sleeping in shifts, when the day was broken up into sleep, shoot at charging men, clean and reload the guns in the trench, when he spent the entire day thinking, 'this is it; I'm going to die here.'

"Maybe," he finally said.

Damon reached over and put his hand on the back of Jeremy's neck, forcing him to look up. "They will be here," he said firmly, and Jeremy bit his bottom lip. Either Damon was getting better at lying or Jeremy was simply getting more desperate to believe him. Damon squeezed a little more, and it was strangely comforting.

Only after Jeremy nodded did Damon let him go, leaning back to look up toward the sky. Jeremy did the same, but he couldn't seem to enjoy it the way Damon did. He just kept wondering— if he died there, in the trench, a bullet in his chest or worse, died at the mercy of the 'first aid' he could expect— would his ring bring him back? Did the entire situation count as supernatural, since he wasn't even supposed to be there?

"Something green."

Jeremy blinked slowly, furrowing his brow as he tilted his head over to look at Damon. Damon's eyes were closed, but he had that same smug grin on his face. Jeremy sighed, but he couldn't stop the faint amusement at the sheer incredulity of the situation. "We're playing again?"

"Come on. What else do you have to do? You going to clean that gun again?" Damon reached over and pulled the hat off of Jeremy's head, plopping it down over his own face instead. Jeremy snorted and dug around beside him until he found a hat of his own to put back on.

"Fine. Something green. Tree leaves."

Damon resettled the hat until he could pull it low over his eyes. "You only said that because I was looking at the sky. No."

"Grass, then."

"What? Can you see any grass from over there?" Damon was laughing though, and Jeremy basked in the sound of it. It was addictive, given that he'd never seen or heard Damon so open, so human. But Jeremy could see why Katherine would have wanted to turn him, even if she hadn't originally had plans on keeping him— Elena's journals and overheard snippets of conversation had filled in what no one wanted to tell him.

Damon was so eager to please, a strange mixture of confident and desperate. He was almost surreal, addictive even without the powers that he'd gained as a vampire. Jeremy was fascinated, and for a moment, he simply watched Damon laughing at him, not even caring that Damon really was laughing at him. He felt the faintest beginnings of a blush, and he quickly looked away, reaching up to push his hat back a little on his head.

"All right then. Not grass, not leaves. Something... green." Jeremy considered his options. Almost everything was gray and brown, dirt and sand. He sighed, but he couldn't shake the smile he had. "I give up. What is it?"

Damon peered at him out from under the hat, and then he reached out, pushed Jeremy's hat off, and plopped the kepi back on top of Jeremy's head. "You, kid. Green as they come." And with that, he was chuckling and pulling a couple of biscuits out of his pack. He offered one to Jeremy, who took it hesitantly.

He hadn't gotten used to hardtack yet. Not knowing what was in it, not with how hard they really were. He licked his lips, studying it as he turned it over in his hands. Damon had already started on his, muttering something about how they were at least soft enough to eat as they were.

Jeremy didn't want to think about having to eat them if they got any harder. He nibbled lightly on the edges, trying not to think of lard and salt and cornmeal, trying to remind himself that it was the only food he was going to be getting for a while.

"Are you making him choke it down dry? That's a bit cruel, even for you, Lieutenant." Henry offered a grin as he slid down to sit just on the other side of Jeremy. He held out a cup of coffee for Damon, who took it gingerly. The expression on Damon's face as he sipped it almost took Jeremy's breath away. He'd certainly never seen Damon so pleased about something as simple as a cup of what must have been truly awful coffee.

Damon dunked the biscuit into the cup, held it there, and after he pulled it back out, he sighed and held the cup out to Jeremy. Jeremy watched him chew the softened biscuit, and he shook his head. He could barely manage to keep the biscuit down with a few mouthfuls of water. He didn't want to think about how hard it would be to keep down coffee on top of that awful mixture.

"See? I'm not that cruel." Damon cast Henry a look, and he handed the cup back. "Who's on watch?"

"Charles."

A nod, and then Damon shoved the last of the biscuit into his mouth. He swallowed, and Jeremy struggled to keep from grinning at the expression he had as he finally got the thing down. He pointed a finger at Jeremy, who held up his hands in surrender, still working to keep his face as neutral as possible. Damon studied him carefully, and then he leaned back.

He took the hat from Jeremy's head, and he headed down the trench as he pulled it on. Jeremy reached up to brush his hair out a little, and Charles offered him the hat that Damon had shoved off of him once already. Jeremy offered him a smile and pulled it on.

"What was the game?"

Jeremy looked up from the piece of hardtack and blinked slowly before he realized what Henry was asking him about. "Oh, that Damon and I were playing?" When Henry nodded slowly, Jeremy felt a blush on his face. "Something my mother taught me. It's called uh.. I Spy? You say the color of something that you can see, and the other players guess what you're looking at."

Truthfully, he probably shouldn't be teaching them the game at all. He was pretty sure that it didn't exist in the late 1800s, or at least, not in that form. But he couldn't see how it would hurt to teach a few soldiers a simple child's game. Anything to relieve the stress.

Henry smiled, perhaps a little indulgently. Jeremy was very aware that none of them believed that he was eighteen. They all tended to treat him as a combination son-younger brother. He didn't really mind, but he had to admit that after only having Elena his whole life, it was strange to suddenly have so many people giving him that same, older-sibling smile.

"It's... It's just something take my mind off of it, you know?" Jeremy scraped one of his fingers down the side of his biscuit.

"Worse than you thought it would be?"

Jeremy laughed faintly, rolling his head back to look up at the sky. Henry had no idea how awful it really was. He didn't realize that the entire group of men would be suffering from diet deficiency before long, or that the North was going to win, or that a ridiculous number of men would be slaughtered before the entire thing came to an end. He pulled his jacket a little closer around himself and shrugged. He gave up on the biscuit, shoving it into one of his pockets.

A sharp whistle from down the trench, and Jeremy and Henry exchanged looks before they both grabbed their guns and headed down to where Damon and Charles were peeking over the edge. Jeremy frowned as he realized that they weren't looking toward the Union soldiers, but instead toward where Damon had shown him the reinforcements would come from.

"Is that—?"

Damon nodded quickly, a grin on his face. "It is. They made it. They're probably going to come in once it gets dark. No use turning themselves into target practice. All the same, get everyone up and on the line. I want cover fire in place in case they need it."

Henry nodded and hurried back to check the length of the trench. Jeremy took up position, laying the gun out over the dirt just on the outside of the trench. He closed his eyes for just a moment, calming himself down, and when he opened them, he smiled faintly at Damon who was positioned just beside him. They stayed like that for longer than Jeremy would have liked, an hour, two maybe.

"How many men do we have, Damon?" Jeremy kept his focus on the other side of the field, on watching for any sort of movement.

"Not enough. Most of them are dead." Damon leaned back just enough to look up toward the treeline behind them. "There's something wrong." He kept fidgeting, and Jeremy followed his gaze, his brow furrowing.

There was only one horse that they could see, pacing between the trees. One figure with the musket across his lap. He dismounted, tied the horse to one of the trees, and waved toward the trench. Damon hesitated, then waved back.

"He'd better be waiting..."

"Lieutenant!"

It was all the warning they got— all the warning they needed, they were so keyed up. Immediately, they opened fire on the charging line, and Jeremy wondered where his conscience had gone, that he didn't feel as guilty as he knew he should have. He felt useful, even knowing that the Union had to win the war. He felt as though he were defending his home, protecting people he knew. He swallowed the feelings, pushing them as far back as he could.

Their entire group was almost mechnical, firing, reloading, aiming, and repeating. Jeremy focused as best he could, and he would have done quite well, had it not been for the scream. He was pretty sure that he would hear that scream in his head for years.

He jerked up to his feet the moment he heard it, spinning around to see the man, the one from the treeline that they had been so sure was reinforcements, clutching at his leg. Jeremy cursed under his breath, dropped the gun, and he scrabbled out of the trench to grab the idiot who had charged toward the trench while under gunfire. Or had his sprint caused the gunfire?

There was no way to be sure.

Jeremy hauled him up and pushed him toward the trench. He did his best to keep low to the ground, but all the same he was a target. He should have been expecting to get hit. Should have, but he wasn't.

The bullet tore through his shoulder just as he crashed into the trench, and he kept staring at the blood spilling onto the dirt under him. He reached up to touch it, and his eyes widened as he realized that there was a piece of his shoulder— not huge, but enough that blood seemed to just keep pouring out of it— missing, from the fleshy part, thankfully, but it was missing all the same. He swallowed, feeling his stomach rolling, his throat tightening, and he gasped desperately even as heat started to prick at the backs of his eyes.

The man he'd pulled down was in the dirt— must have passed out— and Damon was shouting, reaching up to touch Jeremy's shoulder lightly. Something wet slid down the sides of Jeremy's face, he could feel it cutting tracks through the dirt streaked over his face, and he was struggling to get enough breath in his lungs to ask Damon how bad it was. He didn't want to lose his arm.

He didn't want to die, not like this. When Damon pulled back, Jeremy clutched at his arm. He was going to die in the bottom of a Civil War trench, and the only person who was going to be with him was someone who had already killed him once. But so help him, Jeremy couldn't let go.

He was only vaguely aware of Henry working on the fire, on making it hotter even as Damon flipped out a knife to hand to him. An Arkansas Toothpick, some part of Jeremy's mind labeled it, and when it passed by his head, he started laughing. DEO VINDICE was etched into the blade. God will vindicate. With God as our champion. He couldn't stop laughing as the various popular translations came to him.

He was hysterical.

Then Damon touched the wound a little too hard, and pain simply blossomed from it. Jeremy screamed, his fingers digging even harder into Damon's arm, and he blinked, trying to get the yellow and red circles out of his vision. He couldn't see around them, couldn't breathe with the way his throat kept trying to close up. Damon put a tin cup to his lips, and he drank greedily until the burn of it scorched down his throat. Whiskey.

"Don't cut it," he whispered, and he was sobbing, even as Damon murmured something to him. Assurances, probably, knowing Damon. He'd keep promising that he wouldn't right up until he actually did it. Jeremy shook his head, struggling to sit up. He could smell the blood, smell what whiskey had spilled from his lips and down the front of his shirt, smell something burning.

"I-I don't wanna die, Damon..."

"You're not going to die. Shh... It's all right. It missed the bone."

Jeremy screamed when Damon cut the sleeve at the seam on his shoulder, pulling it open, exposing it to the frigid winter air. Vaguely, Jeremy realized that if anyone was going to 'doctor' him, it had to be Damon or Henry or one of the guys already in the trench. No one could risk spurring on another Union attack by changing trenches, so there would be no surgeon coming over.

Damon talked to him the whole time, laughing and joking with him. Telling him things like, "See, you'll have a manly scar to show ladies. You can charm them with more than just your pretty face." He ruffled Jeremy's hair, and Jeremy was vaguely aware that Damon had Jeremy's head in his lap. "You'll be a real heart breaker."

Jeremy groaned, and then he was aware of Damon peeling the shirt further from the wound. Henry was back, something in his hand, and Damon took it from him. Jeremy felt Henry straddle his chest, hold him down. He bucked, and Damon whispered to him a little more. Henry pushed a piece of twisted cloth into Jeremy's mouth.

Then the bastard pressed that hot knife to his shoulder.

Jeremy screamed for all that he was worth into the rag, alternating between that and biting until his jaw ached. He kept sobbing until he finally had no fight left, and Damon was still stroking his hair out of his face— he didn't know where his hat had gone. He sagged against the ground, gasping, his breath hitching just when he thought he'd finally caught it. Henry's weight disappeared, and Jeremy heard him ripping some fabric.

Damon passed him the knife, and Jeremy lay there, still shaking, his head on Damon's thigh. Damon didn't move him, just kept lightly brushing his fingers through Jeremy's hair. He was sweating, but he was freezing at the same time. He couldn't breathe, couldn't think enough to tell Damon that he was cold, but apparently he didn't have to.

"Such a brave boy," Damon murmured, and he leaned over just enough to pull the closest blanket over. "Should have left him up there."

Jeremy shivered, realizing in that moment that he wished he would have. He felt Damon checking the wound on his shoulder, and he reached up to rub his eyes. He didn't have any tears left, didn't have any strength at all. But Damon wasn't asking him to be strong. None of the men had. They had all gritted their teeth and borne it as they were forced to practically torture him in order to stop the bleeding.

He wondered if stitching wouldn't have been a better idea.

He felt his shoulder throbbing, and he whimpered. Damon's hand lightly petted his head, the pads of his fingertips rubbing slightly with the motion. Jeremy drew a deep breath and relaxed into it. He slept that way, his head on Damon's thigh, Damon's hand in his hair.

Even with the gunshot, Jeremy felt strangely safe.