AN. Back to Damon on the other side. Imagine Damon on a spirit walk.

He pulled the unicorn to a halt when he came up to the towering gate. Another thing intestines was good for beside resurrection circles – reins. He'd fashioned a braided, rather stylish if you asked him, set of reins from the small intestines of a witch he'd run into some days ago. It really made the difference, bad enough he didn't have a saddle, but no reins? What was he, a caveman?

"You are ethereally beautiful," he said in awe, looking up at the woman poised delicately at the top of the gate looking down at him. All behind her was a field of flowers stretching as far as he could see. "Are you a gargoyle?" He'd seen some weird shit recently – she could very easily be a gargoyle. Five minutes ago he'd seen a dog doing handstands on the back of a unicycle. A dog that had tasted just marvellous, by the way. Like eating a circus, or a pack of skittles… He was drinking the rainbow, literally. What was there to rule out a hot, half naked gargoyle-woman at the top of a gate?

"You too," she called down, plopping something that looked like a grape into her mouth.

"I know. Thanks…" He studied the gate and the woman. "You need to open this."

"Why?"

"I need to find Bonnie."

"Why?"

"I don't remember, exactly."

"What are you?"

"What are you?"

"I'm the Gardener."

"The guardian?"

"The Gardener," she repeated and jumped down from her lofty pose. She floated down as gently as a snowflake.

"As in, you do the gardening?" Now that she was on a level with him, he still couldn't tell what it was she was eating. It was a while since he'd had fruit. "What are you eating, plums?"

"Wishes," she answered.

"Wishes?" His gaze swept up her neck looking for a pulse and finding only one weak, paltry hum.

"Wishes from the garden."

She really was beautiful. Skin like alabaster, green eyes so larger he could see himself reflected in them. A flimsy piece of white chiffon did nothing to hide her body, her slimness, her soft little breasts and cherry red nipples. Her hair was like red metal alloyed with strawberry and gold, and his eyes drifted down to the thatch between her legs… "Can you open the gate? Please?"

"I can't."

"Do you know Bonnie? She'll vouch for me, open the gate."

"Bonnie?"

"She's just like you."

"Like me?"

"Ethereally beautiful. But she's lost and she needs me."

"Are you the vampire?"

Eh? What the fuck? He still hadn't been able to retract his fangs. He was veritably dripping blood. What was confusing them? Couldn't she see the blood on him? Unicorn blood, eagle blood, acrobatic dog blood, sheep-man blood, centaur blood, midget blood, flying squirrel blood, six-legged raccoon blood… "No. Vampire? What's that?"

She eyed him over sceptically. "A vampire is a monster without a heart."

"I've got a heart." He put a hand to the left side of his chest. "Right here."

"But it doesn't work."

"Neither does yours. Are you a vampire?"

"No!" her limey green eyes widened in horror. "I'm a gardener."

"But what's a gardener? Maybe I'm supposed to be a gardener too."

"My heart doesn't work because I was born dead, here in the Garden" she said easily, "I've never been to the human world. I'm one of the neutrals."

"Neutrals?" Damon tried to look interested. The gate looked ominous… stretching up to high heaven as it was, and he wasn't completely sure he could jump it. He wasn't completely sure he wanted to. A small instinct was telling him – get permission. And he'd get it. Some, daft, bird-brained, crazy beautiful gatekeeper wasn't going to cut him off at the knees. "Are there are more like you?"

She pouted, clearly suspicious of him. "A neutral…" she started slowly "Is someone who's neither dead or alive. Someone who exists outside those confinements…"

"Like you?"

"Yes. And all the other stillbirth witches. We're trapped here in the Garden."

Boo hoo. "And who else?"

"Klaus."

"The hybrid? He's here?"

"No, but he's allowed to enter because he's neutral. He's alive and he's dead at the same time. You have to be perfectly balanced in order to enter. Not good, not evil. Not right or wrong. Not alive or dead. Balanced. "

"Sounds complicated…to be neutral."

"It's not… Do you know Klaus? He's very handsome."

How is that relevant? You stupid little… His hand shot through the gate to grab at her neck and break it. Ah… His hand passed right through her. You're Damon-proof.

She giggled. "That felt funny!" she blushed, her face glowing like sunset. "You tried to touch me!"

"I did."

She was still giggling. "You feel like lightning."

He'd heard that exactly twice. "Thank you."

"Lightning on fire."

Okay…? "And you fell like air. You're not real."

"I am!" she looked flustered. "It's because you're on the other side of the gate."

"Is it?"

"Yes."

"Open the gate, then."

"Why?"

"So I can kiss you."

"What's that?"

… "What's what?"

"To kiss? A kiss? What is it?"

"A kiss is the same as a touch. Only I'd touch you with my lips."

"And it'd feel the same?"

"Like lightning on fire. Even better."

She turned her cheek and pressed it to the space inbetween the bars. "Kiss me then."

"A kiss doesn't work like that."

She pulled back. "How does it work then?"

"For a kiss to work, I've got to feel something too. I can't be kissing air while you get lightning on fire. It won't be fair, and kisses have to be fair."

She took a step back, frowning. "If I let you in… You'll run off to your Bonnie and you won't bother with me anymore."

"No!" his face became a mask of horror. "Bonnie's a shadow compared to you. She doesn't smile like you. She scowls. She's angry all the time, and she hates me."

"Witches are always angry."

"She set me on fire once."

The weird woman gasped. Then she laughed… "She can't set you on fire! You are fire! And lightning! You're the most powerful thing I've ever seen. "

Thank you.

"And everything beautiful."

Thank you. "Open the gate."

"The witches won't like it if I do. They told me–"

Look into my eyes. Don't resist. You want to make me happy. You want to do everything I want. You–

The gate swung open.

Right.

He took a cautious step towards the threshold, expecting thunder, fire… something. Quickly he slid through the slim space, holding his breath, waiting for… divine punishment, hail and fire from the sky… something.

She giggled. Took his hand and started swinging it as if she was six years old. It was cold. Just like his. And hard, just like alabaster itself.

What kind of creature was she? Fashioned out of living marble. Sculpted so perfectly beautiful…

Gargoyle.

She kissed him. Just like that, she planted her lips on his. Chaste, cold, lifeless… When she pulled back, she stared into his eyes for a moment, eyes narrowed. "You taste like death."

Flattering.

"It the flavour of my chapstick." According to Saturday morning cartoons the only way to kill a gargoyle was to wait for them to turn to stone and then go wild with a sledgehammer. He fixed his face into a smile to mask his annoyance. No sledgehammer…

He started walking, hoping she'd leave off and return to her post back up on the gate. He'd wanted to get pass the gate, not a chaperone to follow him along talking nonsense and kissing him whenever they felt like.

"Why does Bonnie hate you?"

One of his fangs cut his tongue by accident. Again. Not the most convenient thing in the world, inch and a half razor sharp fangs. Good for murder, bad for everything else. "Because…" Memories of that other life were hard. "I tried to kill her a couple of times. And I killed her grandmother. By accident."

"But now you love her? Why?"

Complicated. "I've spent my whole life wanting what I couldn't have. I'm done with that. I need to have something. I need to own something or I'll…"

"You'll what?" the snowflake girl spun around in a circle in front of him.

He side stepped around her. "I'll explode and kill everybody."

"Oh?" she frowned and made another circle around him. He wanted to grab her by the hair and rip her pale, pretty throat out. "Who says you can have Bonnie?"

"I say I can have her. I already have her. I just need to find her…" The Garden was curious enough now that he took the time to take it in. Half was a field of flowers, the other half a cemetery. He was walking down the cobblestone path that divided the two, dragging his fet in the gravel… At the end of the path, in the middle of it all, a giant tree.

A big, giant tree.

A big giant tree that seemed to call his name.

Da-mon. Sal-va-tore.

Strange.

He'd experienced stranger, but a talking tree was definitely in his Top Five of Strange. "What is this place?"

The girl disappeared behind him. He felt her fingers on his shoulders… "The Garden," she answered.

"Whose garden?"

"Nature's. I have to keep it organized."

"Organized?"

"Yes. I keep the good people," she pointed to the flowery half, "separated from the bad people."

He needed to be out. To be free. To feed. "I can hear the Tree."

She laughed, her voice like a sprinkle of dew. "Everyone who belongs here can hear the Tree."

"I don't belong here."

"Of course you do." She pointed to the darker cemetery half to his left. "You're one of the bad people."

It's a strange thing looking at your own grave. The scent was overpowering and he had and a devastating urge to vomit. "How deep did you bury me?" Whatever the answer was, it wasn't deep enough. He could see worms churning the dirt at the surface. Feel, the maggots wriggling through the soles of his sneakers. He could hear the drone of flies… The headstone was moss laden and cracked. 'Here lies Him.'

"Forgot my name?"

"Your name doesn't matter." She was less happy now, and she stood a good bit away from him, arms folded over her chest, mouth pinched. Stonier. Definitely, a gargoyle.

"It matters to me."

"What matters to you doesn't matter."

"Says who?"

"Everyone that matters. Only good people matter."

"What did you bury in here? It stinks."

"This," she tapped the ground with her delicate, ballerina foot, "is your soul," and she spat at least a mouthful of phlegm down on his grave, "You piece of shit."

In sharp contrast, Bonnie had a nice little plot going. The soil was nice and fresh and in the centre of the square was a lily. A beautiful lily. A little frail, though… One of the petals had fallen. Another was on the verge of withering. There were five other petals holding strong though.

"No tombstone?"

"This isn't a grave." Snowflake answered. The girl was a snowflake with breasts, red hair and a scowl. "This is life. Bonnie's still in the light."

"Why are the petals dying?"

"She touched the darkness."

"Me?"

"Magwyr." Snowflake turned some loose dirt over with her toes. "Magwyr's going to drain all the life out of her."

"It'll work," he grunted as he packed in dirt around the base of the lily. "When something… When something dies and rots, you can use it as manure."

"You can't mix–"

"I know what I'm doing Snowflake."

"You're not a Gardener."

"I watch the channel all the time and I used to grow tomatoes, so fuck off."

By the time he finished hauling dirt from one end of the Garden to the other, his need to feed multiplied tenfold, so at the actual point in time when he was talking to the tree, he couldn't decide if he was hallucinating or not.

The tree spoke with a soft English accent. A Manchester sharpness to it… "You," the tree greeted him.

Damon shuffled, "Me."

"They really aren't picky about who they let in here…"

We've covered that.

"How'd you get the sheepman to let you pass?"

"Killed him."

"And the Weeping Sisters?"

"Killed them two. Gave them something to really weep about." And he couldn't help the grin that spread over his face. "Your gargoyle though, is perfectly inedible. Stronger than she looks." His jaw still hurt where she'd punched him. Strong, for a girl. And not a vein on her anywhere… "Go easy on her for opening up the gates for me. It's the natural effect I have on women."

"Nice, Damon. That's real classy. Now start talking about my mother."

The tree… was a lot like the sheepman. The first one he'd killed all the way back at the unicorn ranch. Annoying.

"What is it that you actually do here?"

"Well…" the tree shook it's leaves in a pompous huff. "I grant wishes and requests made by the servants of nature. Even though you're not one, I'll do you a solid."

"You'll give me a wish?"

"I'm going to give you a wish."

"I need two, actually."

A branch lowered itself in front of him. It was laden with the same fruit he'd seen Snowflake eating at the gate. Small, purple… just like a plum…

"Take one," the tree ordered. "Make a wish and swallow."

Make a wish and swallow. Of all the possible scenarios he could think up to go with a line like that, a magic tree in the middle of a hill dangling its plums in front of his face was not included.

He grabbed two.

"I said one."

"And I took two. Look at that. I'm Damon Salvatore. Him. This shouldn't shock you."

"It really shouldn't," the tree pulled up its branch and gave a disappointed shudder. "You're a bad seed, Damon."

"Yeah, but who are you going to tell?" He put a plum in his mouth expecting to taste the rainbow… It tasted like regular plum, with salt and pepper and just a hint of blood.

I wish that Magwyr completely and irrevocably dies in every possible realm that exists and that she never interferes with Bonnie ever again.

"Granted. Shocking, though," the Tree commented.

"What?"

"A selfless wish. I'd been expecting you to wish yourself back to life. I mean, a vampire makes all the effort to break into the Garden and doesn't wish to be alive again? That's crazy."

No. Crazy is talking to a tree and wishing on plums.

"You do knowthat I'm not actually a British tree, though, right? Your puny, limited brain isn't capable of perceiving the majesty of my being and therefore you feel the need to translate me into something that makes sense to you."

"British trees with magic plums doesn't make sense to me."

"This is your delusion. Don't ask me to explain it."

Whatever. "Get ready for wish number two."

"Going to wish yourself back home to Mystic Falls?"

"Home's where the heart is, haven't you heard?" He put the second plum in his mouth.

'I wish that I was wherever Bonnie is right now.'

"Clever. But that's against the rules. I can't do teleportation, sorry."

But you can kill Magwyr, just like that? You suck, magic tree. You really suck.

I wish I can go back in time to before I met Katherine.

"I don't alter time."

I wish I was two inches taller.

"You should have drunk more milk when you were a child. I can't change that."

I wish Klaus dies–

"No negative wishes about Klaus. Period."

"Fine." I wish that… I… A new kind of pain was starting up in his gums. If he didn't get some blood in him soon he'd end up feeding on himself. 'I wish for… more wishes. Unlimited, unrestricted wishes. I want to own you."

"Seriously?"

"Had to try." I wish for Bonnie to become so supremely powerful that not even I can kill her. I want her to be the strongest witch in existence.

"Another selfless one? Granted."

Damon swallowed the plum, felt it go all the way down. "I… Do you know where that scent is coming from? It's not me is it…" he sniffed his jersey. Yes. The lusty aroma of death and decay. A maggot crawled around his ear, tickling him. "And would you be so kind as to point in the direction of the nearest watering hole. I need a wash."

"That you do." The tree nodded some branches to the east. "Head east for a couple of miles until you reach a nest of dragonflies. Talk to the hivemaster, tell her I sent you and you shouldn't have a problem. They'll guide you anywhere you want to go. Go find your girl, Damon. Godspeed."

Talk to the hivemaster… Right. And I just follow the dragonflies...