Dedication: To my favorite Jedi Master/Ninja Warrior. May the force be with you buddy. You will be sorely missed. Tuesday mornings just won't be the same without you. RIP Trey. :(

Chapter Three: April, 1997

Sophie's green eyes blinked up at him, shining against the moonlight from her bedroom window.

"And then what happened?" she asked, sprawled out on her stomach, chin in her hands, and kicking her feet back and forth.

Damon smiled at her. "So each night, Scheherazade told the king a different story. And each night she didn't finish it, because she knew that if she did, the king would kill her."

Sophie nodded seriously. "That's really smart."

Damon nodded. "It is smart. She told him stories about magic..." and at that, Damon produced a quarter from behind her ear, earning a delighted giggle from the girl. "...mermaids, and thieves. Love stories, and fairy tales, and even stories about genies. She told him a different story for a thousand and one nights."

"Wow." Sophie breathed, playing with the quarter and looking suitably impressed.

"Yeah. Now, eventually she ran out of stories. But it didn't matter. At the end of the thousand nights, the king had fallen so deeply in love with her, that he decided to marry her. For real this time."

"And they lived happily ever after!" Sophie said, getting up on her knees and bouncing up and down a couple of times.

Damon grinned. "That they did," he agreed. "And now its time for little princesses such as yourself to go to bed."

"Are you going to tell me stories for a thousand nights?" Sophie asked, leaping back towards her mountain of pillows.

"I'll tell you as many stories as you like, Cira. Forever and ever if you want."

Sophie rewarded him with a brilliant smile, and Damon let himself bask in her warmth; in the smile she had just for him. Damon pulled the covers up to her chin, and carefully tucked the blankets around her. He placed a kiss on her forehead, and waited until her eyes had shut before turning for the window.

He nearly fell over when he saw Katherine Pierce standing there, leaning against the wall, wearing the same dress she'd been wearing the night she'd been taken from him.

Damon froze. "Katherine?" he whispered in shock.

Katherine only smiled softly at him, and gracefully stepped forward. She reached up and pulled Damon into a long, lingering kiss. Damon could only wrap his arms around her, intent on never letting go.

After a few long seconds, Katherine pulled away, still smiling. "It's been far too long, Darling. I've missed you."

Damon couldn't do anything but stare at her in amazement. "How..."

Katherine just patted his cheek and moved around him, eyes on Sophie. "Hello, child." she said, as she knelt down by the side of the bed.

Damon could smell Sophie's fear and uncertainty about the new stranger in her bedroom, but watched with pride as she sat up and plastered on one of her brilliant smiles for Katherine, being polite to someone Damon obviously cared about. "Hi."

Katherine turned her gaze to Damon. "She's delicious." she moved to sit on the bed next to the girl. "I can see the attraction."

Damon narrowed his eyes as Katherine turned her attention back to Sophie, looking at her the same way she'd once looked at their servant boy: like something to eat.

"She's a child, Katherine. Not a piece of meat." Damon pointed out. Sophie's gaze was skittering between the two vampires, and Damon hated that the carefree expressions from before were suddenly buried under wary fear. Sophie didn't know what they were, and if Damon ever had his way, she was never going to find out.

He'd decided the first time he'd ever met her, that he would die to protect her warm innocence.

Didn't mean she wasn't smart enough to make her own conclusions from a conversation like the one happening over her head.

Katherine's eyes narrowed, and Damon could see the predator beneath the brown pools of wonder he'd fallen in love with so many years ago.

"She's human, Damon. Humans are meat."

"Not Sophie." Damon insisted. "Not his human."

Katherine cocked an eyebrow at him. "You know her name. You're telling her bedtime stories...is there something you want to tell me?"

"She's mine, Katherine. And we're not eating her." Damon said forcefully. As much as he loved the woman in front of him, he wasn't at all surprised to find his loyalty fell to the human child.

Katherine's eyes softened to something like sympathy. She reached back and began stroking Sophie's hair, like a beloved pet. "She's human." Katherine said again. "You can't get attached to them. It doesn't end well."

Damon could see the effort it was taking Sophie to hold still. She was trembling slightly, and that just made Damon angry. "Doesn't end well? Like it didn't end well for us?"

Her eyes narrowed again, and Damon could feel her anger even as she continued to gently stroke Sophie's hair.

"The thing about humans..." Katherine said, as she ran her fingers down Sophie's jawline. She let the palm of her hand rest against Sophie's pulse. "...is that they're so damn delicate. One, tiny twitch of your fingers..."

Damon lunged forward as Katherine tightened her grip on Sophie's neck. Sophie let out a surprised squeak before a loud crack sounded throughout the room, bringing Damon to a stunned halt.

Sophie dropped onto the bed like a marionette whose strings had been cut. Her neck was bent at an impossible angle, and her eyes were open, expression fixed on the far wall. Behind the cooling gaze, Damon could still see the residual fear, forever etched into her eyes.

As Damon's heart shattered, and his emotions shut down, he turned on Katherine. Red clouded his vision, as he grabbed her by her neck and threw her through the window.

She was already standing when Damon landed in front of her. "You killed her!" he yelled. "Why?"

Katherine just stood there calmly, and Damon hated her for it. "It was for your own good. I could feel your emotions from the street, all warm and fuzzy as they were. If I could feel them, then other vampires could too."

"For my own good? She was mine, Katherine! Mine!" Damon knew he sounded like a bratty child, but he didn't care. "She was the only thing in this damned life that wasn't touched by darkness. And you took her from me." he let his voice get low and dangerous. "And I can't let you live for that."

"This is exactly what I'm talking about, Damon. You got so attached to a human that you are willing to turn on your fellow vampire. On me? Other vampires would have sensed the good feelings inside you, and they would have used that against you. She would have died a horrible and painful death." Katherine met his gaze. "Would you have been able to survive that? I did this for you. This way, her death was quick and painless. And now you can move on with your life."

"Like ripping off a band-aide."

"Exactly." She smiled at him, sympathy back in her gaze. "I can imagine how you must feel, but believe me, it's better this way. Please, learn from my mistakes. I can't bear to see you in the same pain that I went through."

Damon ran forward, intent ripping her head off. Katherine, however, was older, and therefore faster. She moved so fast that Damon didn't even see her. He spread out his senses, looking for the woman who had killed his reason for existing.

She'd disappeared.

Damon closed his eyes, and then turned back to the house, once it was clear Katherine wasn't coming back. It didn't matter. He'd spend the rest of time hunting her down and killing her slowly if that was what it took. He'd make her know just how much Sophie meant to him.

"D...Damon."

A weak whisper that Damon would know anywhere suddenly filled the air around him. Damon's eyes snapped open, to see Sophie standing in front of him, wearing jeans and a tee-shirt, not the clothes he'd tucked her into bed with.

However, it was her pale complexion, weak voice and glazed eyes the concerned Damon the most.

Sophie took one step towards him, pain etched into her soft features. The most graceful human Damon knew pitched forward towards the ground in a weak flail of arms and legs.

Damon caught her just before she hit the ground, and pulled her close. Sophie had always been warm, like she had her own little sun deep inside her somewhere, but now, she was cold. Her icy skin had tiny droplets of sweat clinging to it, and when Damon wrapped his arms around her, he could feel the slight tremors running through her tiny body.

"Sophie..." he whispered, pushing sticky strands of hair off of her face.

"H...hurts, Damon." she choked out. "Make...m...make it stop."

Tears filled her eyes as she gazed up at Damon, begging to make the pain stop. Pain Damon couldn't see.

"Where? Sophie, where does it hurt?"

"Every...where. P...please. Please, make it stop."

Damon didn't know what to do, and only clutched the girl in his arms all the more tightly, whispering sweet nothings of comfort in her ear. She whimpered and keened, small pained noises that made Damon flinch every time.

"You can't save her." Katherine said, suddenly appearing in front of him again. She crouched down in front of him. "It's better this way."

"It's not better this way." Damon insisted. "She's supposed to live."

"One day she'll die." Katherine said practically. "One day. And maybe she'll die of old age. You and I both know that it's more likely she'll be hunted and killed for the attraction you have with her." She met his gaze while he continued to rock Sophie's shivering body. "You are not a good man, Damon. You never have been. And you're enemies will become her enemies. She will die, and you will continue. It is the natural order of things. Best to just kill her now."

Damon didn't even have a chance to open his mouth before Sophie's back arched up over his arms. Her heartbeat stuttered once, before stopping completely.

Which is when Damon jerked awake in his hotel room, breathing hard.

A few seconds later he was out the door, headed to Sophie's house.

O~O~O

Deanna wasn't all that surprised when she walked into her room, hot cup of coffee in her hand to find Damon standing in the middle of her bedroom. She'd gotten used to him appearing at random intervals, and had grown to accept his constant presence.

After quietly shutting the door so as not to wake up Valerie or Daniel, Deanna offered Damon a sleepy smile in the early morning light and took a sip from her coffee.

"Morning." she said between a yawn, setting down her coffee and turning to pull her hair up into a pony tail.

"She's gone." Damon said, voice cracking on the end.

Deanna finished tying off her pony tail, and then turned to look at Damon. It was then that she noticed the disheveled and panicked look on his face. For the first time since she'd known him, he wasn't acting as the calm, cool and collected...whatever he was. It was slightly unnerving to see someone so constant and predictable so panicked and scared.

Because the only expression she could positively identify was fear.

"Damon...are you okay?"

Damon lunged forward, pushing her up against the wall, putting his face up close to her own. For the first time since she'd met Damon, she felt tiny tendrils of fear coil under her skin.

"You. Are. Not. Listening." Damon ground out, holding on to Deanna's shoulders so tight she could feel bruises starting to form. "She's gone. I can't find her, and I can't smell her and..." He let go of her suddenly, and pushed away from the wall, running his hands through his hair.

Deanna pushed her coffee cup at him, forcing Damon to either take it from her or drop it, and then sat down cross legged on the middle of her bed. She waited until Damon had taken a sip before she asked, "Is there something or someone in town I should know about?"

"No." Damon said, feeling the caffeine flow through his system, calming him slightly and clearing his head.

Slightly.

Sophie was still missing.

Deanna cocked an eyebrow. "Are you sure? Last time there was an old...friend of your's in town, Sophie almost died."

"I know what happened. I was there too, remember? This town's been quiet. Boring, actually." Damon snapped at her. "There's nothing and no one here."

Deanna nodded. "Okay. So how do you know the Davies didn't just go out of town? I know they were talking about going to Dallas to visit some family..."

"Sophie would have mentioned it. Plus, it would leave a trail. A scent." Damon started pacing her room. "There's just...nothing."

"What could that mean?" Deanna asked, puttering around with something at his back. Damon didn't even turn around.

"I...I don't know. I've never, not been able to track someone before. Everything has a scent, and everything leaves a trail. Her house still smells like her, but...after you leave the property there's just...nothing." He turned to her, begging. "There's never been nothing before. And I looked and I looked..."

Deanna just nodded her understanding. "I don't get what you want from me, Damon. If you can't find her, what makes you think that I can?"

"I had this...dream." Damon started, and Deanna tilted her head, a soft, amused smile forming on her lips. "Shut up." he said, seeing the skeptical look on her face. "I know what you're thinking. But Sophie was in this dream. And she was in so much pain..." he drifted off, staring out the window, the sound of Sophie keening in agony rattling around his head.

"Damon?" Deanna whispered, bringing him back to the present.

Damon turned back to her. "She was begging me for help. And I couldn't do anything." Deanna just blinked at him. "I want you to do the thing you do with your brother."

Deanna shook her head. "My dreams are...I don't know. I'm not actually sure they are dreams. But I can't turn it on and off. And I most certainly can't aim it at other people."

"You could try." Damon insisted. He hesitated for a moment before he asked softly, "Please."

Deanna looked at him, eyes full of sympathy and compassion. She knew how hard it was for him to say that one, simple word. Damon didn't beg, and he most certainly didn't say please. "Damon...you know me. You know that if I could I would..."

Damon sighed and began pacing again. He turned around when the sound of a phone ringing sounded through the room from the speaker of Deanna's telephone.

A woman's voice answered and Damon watched as Deanna forced a smile onto her face, even as he could see the worry and concern in her eyes. "Hi Jennifer, it's Deanna."

Jennifer's voice stuttered on the other end. "Uh, Deanna...this really isn't a...a good time."

Deanna and Damon exchanged a look. "Okay. Um, I was just wondering what Sophie was up to today. I was going to go see a movie and wanted to see if my very own personal movie critic wanted to come."

There was silence on the other end for a moment, before Jennifer said quietly, "Sophie's...we're at the hospital."

Deanna looked up to find her room empty, Damon gone. She shook her head, again, not surprised at his disappearing act, and then glanced back down at the phone. "What happened? Is Sophie okay?"

Deanna could hear Jennifer's deep breath on the other end of the line. "I don't know. She started complaining of a headache at about two this morning. By three she was screaming about the pain, and at four she just..."

Deanna was already reaching for clothes, throwing jeans on over her sleep shorts and digging through the pile of clothes on her floor for a sweatshirt. "She just what?" Deanna asked, shoving her feet into shoes as she looked around for her car keys.

"She just...stopped."

Deanna froze. "Stopped?"

"She...I don't know kiddo." Jennifer took another breath, and Deanna could hear Mike's voice on the other as well, muttering softly in the background. "She was screaming about the pain in her head, and then she just stopped moving. She closed her eyes, and we thought she'd finally fallen asleep. But we haven't been able to wake her up, and she's not responsive to anything."

"I'm on my way." Deanna said, grabbing her wallet off the nightstand.

"Deanna, sweetie, you don't have to come in..."

"Sophie's my friend." Deanna said, staring at the phone. "And you know me. I...I don't have a whole lot of those. Besides, you know as soon as I tell Val, she'll be in hovering over everything anyway, and guess who will be sent on coffee runs." Deanna gave the phone a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes when she heard Jennifer snort on the other end. "I'll be there soon. I just have to make one stop first."

"I'll let her know when she wakes up. She'll be happy to hear that."

Deanna nodded, knowing Jennifer couldn't see her, and then hung up. After scribbling a note to Valerie and Daniel, and leaving it on the side table in the living room, she ran out the door.

A few minutes later, Deanna pulled up outside a non-descript tan house in a quiet suburban neighborhood. A stout, African-American woman was sitting on the porch, looking like she was waiting for something. She held out a cup of coffee to Deanna as she jumped out of the cab of her truck and ran up the short driveway.

"I think you were right about Sophie and Damon..."

O~O~O

Damon was pacing the stark white hallways of the hospital when Deanna walked briskly around the corner, Damon the Teddy Bear held tight in her arms. She walked right up to him.

"How's she doing?"

Damon ran his fingers through his hair, for what felt like the hundredth time. "I don't know. She's really sick. The doctors...they don't know why. They're talking about doing a spinal tap..."

Deanna winced. "A spinal tap usually means they think there's an infection of some kind."

Damon just tilted his head at her and resumed pacing. He watched out of the corner of his eye as Deanna watched him carefully for a moment, and then walked into Sophie's room. That one move made him hate her, for just a moment. She had the freedom to be in her life, as a friend and not as a creepy older man who helped out one time.

He took a deep breath to get his emotions under control, and then spread out his senses, letting Deanna's voice wash over him, letting her words become soothing noise in the background, covering up the sound of machinery working away around him.

Damon had almost gotten his scattered and panicked emotions under control, emotions only Sophie managed to bring out in him, when she spoke up behind him.

"It's mind-bending, isn't it Mr. Salvatore?"

Damon whipped around to see a short, stout African-American woman sitting in one of the ugly, uncomfortable hospital chairs, looking at him knowingly. She smiled at him, and Damon got the impression she was laughing at him. "Amazing how you didn't lose your ability to love, isn't it? And you thought Katherine was the love of your life." she clicked her tongue at him. "Not even close."

"Who the hell are you?" Damon growled, stalking towards her. Instead of intimidating her like he'd wanted to, Damon saw her eyes crinkle even more.

"I'm a friend."

"Who ever said I needed a friend?" Damon snapped.

"Well now, I never said I was your friend, did I?" When Damon just continued to glare at her, she sighed, as if all Damon was doing was inconveniencing her. "I'm here for the girls. Not for you. I don't generally make it a habit to socialize with vampires."

Damon just raised an eyebrow. "That's not something one of the girls would tell you. They don't know."

The woman shrugged. "Maybe Deanna knows."

"No. Her brother told her there's no such thing. Stupid schmuck. He doesn't know about half the things that linger in his world." Damon gave the woman a wry smile. "She believes what he says."

"True." She chuckled and tapped the side of her head. "I have a gift. It lets me know lots of things creatures like you and people like them are not likely to say out loud. Deanna's world rises and sets with Dean. It has for as long as I've known her."

"You're psychic."

She shrugged. "Among my many talents. Soul-reading and dream walking being a few of them."

"Dream walking?" Damon asked, interested now in the infuriating woman in front of him. "Like what Deanna does?"

She laughed at him again. "Deanna's not a dream walker."

"She talks to her brother..."

"Have you ever heard of broken souls, Mr. Salvatore?" she asked, leaning back in her chair and regarding him with a curious look. Damon shook his head. "I didn't think so. We'll use Deanna and Dean as an example. Do you know her story?"

"Yeah. A fire in her nursery back in '83 killed her mom and separated her from her father and brothers. She communicates with her brother through her dreams. How is that not a dream walker?"

"Because Deanna is not walking through her brother's dreams. That pipsqueak of a child can't even fathom the amount of power that would take to do something like that."

"Then what..."

"Dean and Deanna are twins. In most cases, every person starts off life with their own soul. With twins however, each one holds half of one soul. Now when a soul is broken, like say, one twin getting violently ripped from the other..." she looked pointedly at Damon, who nodded his understanding, "...the two halves will attempt to find each other, leaving an empty space within each person. Dean and Deanna will never be completely whole, not until they are reunited with one another."

"That still doesn't explain the dreams."

Her eyes twinkled. "They aren't dreams. Dean and Deanna's soul has been trying to re-connect with itself for years. They are actually visiting the astral plane of lost and wandering souls."

"You're kidding." Damon said, laughing. "The 'astral plane of lost and wandering souls'? Do people actually pay you for this crap?"

The woman's eyes flared with anger and annoyance. "They do when I'm right. Tell me, can you feel when your girl needs you the most? Can you tell when she's upset, or happy or scared, just by looking at her. Do you feel alive being around her, after a century and a half of death?" Damon stared. "Am I wrong?"

"You can't know that?"

"The thing about vampires..." the woman said, "...is that they've been around for so long, and they know so much, they let some of the tiniest details about themselves just slip through the cracks. For example, do you know what happened to your soul when you decided to become a vampire?"

When Damon didn't answer, she just continued. "See, the human soul isn't meant for the kind of stress that vampire blood puts on it. So what happens is, it shatters. Into millions of pieces. And maybe some of those pieces find their way back to one another. Maybe some of them don't. What you end up with is pieces of a soul just floating around in limbo. And those pieces, like I said before, will try to put itself back together. With a vampire, even if they manage to find themselves, your body can't hold a soul anymore, so it has nowhere to go."

"Make your point." Damon said, rubbing his temples in annoyance.

"My point is, it will find another body to inhabit, often sharing space with a soul already there. And those two souls will eventually, fuse together I suppose, creating one complete entity." She looked at him pointedly. "When she smiles at you, you feel like the sun is shining, even in the dark of night. When she laughs, you know that, even for a moment, your world that was flipped upside down by your change, is suddenly right again." When Damon looked away, she nudged his shoulder slightly. "You know that when she looks at you the way she does, like you are the sun in the center of her universe, that someone, somewhere along the way decided that you did something to deserve the precious gem that she is. And you know you'd kill and die to protect that gem."

Damon looked at her out of the corner of his eye. "When she was three, she just walked right up to me. Kids don't do that."

"And you just stopped questioning it. You got addicted to her warmth."

Damon was silent for a moment. "The dream I had..."

"She needed her other half." the woman said gently. "She called out to you the only way she knew how."

Damon didn't offer any more, and neither did the woman, both sitting in silence, the sounds of the hospital moving around them. Finally, Damon glanced over at her. "What happens when she dies? She's human. What happens then?"

"To you or to her?" she asked.

Damon looked down at his hands. "I don't want to lose her. Ever."

"Are you willing to take the steps to make sure that never happens?" she paused. "Is she willing?"

"She doesn't know." Damon whispered. "She doesn't know what I am."

"Are you going to tell her?"

Fire flared behind Damon's eyes. "Not if I can help it."

She snorted. "Uh huh. Well, good luck with that." She got up to walk away, and paused halfway down the hallway. She turned to look at him. "As I said before, I usually don't make a habit to associate with things like you. And I don't usually encourage others to associate with you either. That being said, I...I'm glad Sophie has you to protect her."

Before Damon could say anything else, she turned on her heel and briskly walked down the hallway. Damon just leaned back against the wall, letting his mind process all the new information.

He was still sitting there when Sophie's heart monitor started to flat line.

O~O~O

It was late.

Not that Damon's visits had ever been at any normal hour, but still.

Damon glanced over at Sophie's sleeping parents, making sure his compulsion was holding, before settling gently on the edge of her bed, pushing her hair off of her sticky, fever warm forehead. He inhaled, looking for her scent over the smells of the hospital and the fluids they were pumping into her system. The illness made her smell like nothing...and Damon's skin crawled with the wrongness of it.

He watched her breathe, her breaths weak and uneven. It made his chest clench to see her like that.

Still, he'd rather see her breathing, even fighting for breaths, than to see the line of heart monitor go flat again.

Even if it had only been for a few seconds, and even if her heart had started again on it's own, before the doctors and nurses could even reach for the crash cart, Damon knew he would be dreaming about that sound for years to come.

Meningitis.

The invisible enemy that had attacked his girl.

The enemy he couldn't fight for her.

Damon remembered it from his time when he was human. They'd called it brain sickness then, and he still remembered the frightened, panicked rambling of the little boy who'd lived in his village. He'd been in so much pain, and the doctors hadn't been able to do anything for him.

Damon remembered he'd died in agonizing pain and debilitating fear.

He shook his head. It wasn't 1864, he reminded himself. Doctors knew what to do now. They'd help her.

They would.

Sophie stirred slightly at his touch, arms tightening around her bear. She frowned slightly, and a single word escaped from her lips, almost like a sigh.

"Damon..."

Damon leaned down so his head was next to her's on the pillow, and began whispering softly in her ear.

"Come back to me, Soph. I don't know how to do this anymore without you."

Sophie twitched slightly, before opening her eyes to tiny slits. Damon forced a smile onto his face. "There's my girl."

"H...hurts." she choked out.

Damon reached over to get her a sip of water, and then held it for her to drink from. She winced in pain, and Damon fought the urge to flinch. Seeing her in pain physically hurt. He ignored the traitorous voice in his head that said he could take the pain away. The problem was, with every spasm of pain in her tiny body, the idea was becoming more and more attractive.

The question was, could he do that do her?

Sophie grabbed onto Damon's hand, and held on tight. "Don't let...go." she whispered, as if it took all her strength just to get those few words out. Damon knew it probably did.

He covered her tiny, delicate hand with his own. "Never. I'm right here. Not going anywhere."

She was silent for a moment, just letting Damon rub circles onto the back of her hand, before she closed her eyes against another wave of pain, and said again, "Hurts."

Damon glanced over at the pain medication that supposed to be helping her. He frowned at it, as if willing it to work better. "I know it does, Cira. It'll get better soon. The doctors are going to make it all better."

Dull, glazed green eyes looked at him under thick eyelashes, her eyes barely open. "Prom...ise?"

Damon smiled for her. "Promise.

Sophie's eyes drifted shut, and her fingers went lax around Damon's hand. Damon pressed his fingers to her pulse point, and began counting heartbeats.

Some time later, the hospital door opened quietly. Damon glanced up, prepared to compel anyone away, when Deanna walked quietly through the door. He relaxed slightly as she handed a cup of coffee to Damon and then sat down softly on one of the chairs.

She stared at the wall for a moment, before she spoke, her quiet whisper echoing softly around the room. "I heard you met Missouri."

"Crazy cat lady who spouts off crap from fortune cookies?"

Deanna's soft chuckle seemed to bounce off the walls, eradicating some of Damon's tension as it hit. "That'd be her."

Damon was silent for a beat, before he glanced over at her. "Has she told you about the astral plane of..."

"Lost and wandering souls?" Deanna finished. She flashed a crooked grin his way. "I love her to bits, but some days I think she's been sniffing paint."

Damon nodded. "You think it's true?"

Deanna shrugged. "It would make sense. I told you before I didn't think my dreams were actually dreams. Besides, Sophie doesn't like people. Or, strangers at least. Yet she adores you. And Missouri said that children tend to avoid you like the plague. She said it's an ingrained sixth sense. But Sophie..." She drifted off for a moment, before speaking again. "I think that everyone is connected in some way. Would it be so bad if she was the other half of your broken soul?"

Damon shook his head. "For me? No. No, it really wouldn't. I'm not so sure how healthy it is for her."

Deanna was silent, before she took a deep breath. "Missouri said...she said your kind has the ability to heal."

"No."

"No, you don't?"

"No, I'm not going to heal her." He sighed, and wiped a hand over his face. He hadn't decided until right then that he wasn't going to.

"Why?" Deanna asked. "If it will help her, then why..."

"Because I won't taint her like that." Damon interrupted. "I don't use the few abilities I have on her. I won't. Sophie is my...friend because she chooses to be. Not because of anything I've done to her."

"Taint? You think your magic would hurt her?"

Damon laughed at the naive child sitting next to him. "It's not magic. It's my blood. I could feed her some, and then she might heal. But if she didn't, and if she died, she'd become the kind of creature that I am. I won't do that to her."

Deanna was quiet, before she got up to walk out the door. "But she'd be alive." she whispered, before slipping out into the hallway.

"No..." Damon whispered to the quiet breathing of the three humans in the room. "No, she really wouldn't be."

O~O~O

Deanna found Damon three days later, pacing the outside courtyard behind the hospital. She leaned against a tree, and watched him walk up to one side, and then turn to make a complete circle before starting again. Deanna's first impression was that he looked like a caged animal. Eventually he glanced up at her and fixed her with predatory glare that only cemented her assumptions.

"What?"

"There's no need to get snippy." Deanna said, toying with some lint she'd found in her jacket pocket. "I just thought you might like an update on your girl."

Damon moved so fast, Deanna wasn't sure she hadn't miscalculated how far he was from her. "What happened? Is she okay?"

Deanna blinked calm, patient eyes at him and smiled. "The antibiotics are working. She can go home tomorrow. She's gonna be fine."

Damon breathed a sigh of relief before leaning back against the tree for a moment before getting up to begin pacing again. "I can't...can't do this. Not...not her."

Damon could feel Deanna narrow her eyes at him, and wondered vaguely when it had happened that he'd become almost as comfortable with Deanna as with Sophie. "Do what?" he heard her ask, cautious disapproval thick in her tone.

"This." Damon waved his hands around the clearing before turning to face her. "I can't lose her."

"So what? You're just going to walk away?"

Damon let his gaze flicker over her. "It'll keep her safe."

Deanna sighed in frustration and pushed away from the tree. She took a few steps before whirling back on Damon. "This wasn't your fault. Kids get sick all the time. And kids get meningitis from time to time. You can't predict these things."

"Are you going to tell me that Amy wasn't my fault?" Damon asked, looking up at her and then back down at the ground.

Deanna looked at him incredulously. "How do you go from jilted, revenge driven lover to meningitis?"

Damon glanced at the ground before looking back up at her. "I'm not a good person. I've told you that before. No matter what Sophie might think. I'm not even a person." Deanna opened her mouth to say something before he cut her off. "I thought I was going to lose her. And the only thing I could think was that I could save her. But saving her would doom her soul. I can't...won't do that to her. My mistakes are eventually going to catch up with me. And then what, huh? One day I won't be able to save her? One day she will die, and there isn't a damned thing I can do about that."

"So leaving is your answer? Instead of trying to protect her from your 'mistakes', you're just going to leave her defenseless and vulnerable?" She walked up so she was standing in front of him, cold fury shining in her eyes. "Everyone dies, Damon. Even you, Mr. Invincible Ninja. It's called life."

"I'm not going to die." Damon said, looking at her square and seeing her fight not to back down from his obvious challenge. "I'm pretty much the definition of forever. And if leaving will keep my mistakes from coming after her, then yes, I'm going to leave. And I'm not going to look back."

Deanna stopped him from walking away when she said, "And what about Sophie?"

"I am doing this for Sophie." Damon said, walking around her. "Since apparently my soul is connected to hers, it is my responsibility to protect that. I don't want her in my world. You don't want her in my world."

" And what am I supposed to tell her when she wakes up and asks where you are?" Deanna asked, running around in front of him. "Am I supposed be the one to look at her heartbroken face and tell her that her best friend...her soul mate, chose to walk away? What then?"

He shook his head. "Tell her whatever you want. But I can't come back." he took a deep breath, gathering his courage, and then lifted Deanna out of the way as if she weighed nothing. "Honestly, I should have walked away a long time ago."

"You are selfish." Deanna whispered. With his hearing, Damon heard her as if she were yelling in his ear. "Things get hard, so you give up. She needs you too, you know. If Missouri is right about her, which she usually is, she's going to need to there by her side."

"She needs to be human more." Damon said over his shoulder. "Besides, maybe it's time you stop chasing phantom family members and focus on those who need you here. Like Sophie."

Before Deanna could say anything else, he stalked off into the night.

Every step he took from Sophie, felt like a shot through his heart. His heart that he had given up on almost a century before.

It was then, that he decided the crazy, trailer park psychic had it all wrong.

It wasn't broken souls that caused empty spaces, it was broken hearts that destroyed people.

He just hoped it wouldn't destroy her.

Cira: Sun

Author's Note: I want to apologize for falling off the grid. As you can see from the dedication at the top, life sorta got in the way, and honestly, I didn't really feel like writing for a long time. This chapter was actually inspired by Trey, a toddler that I've known since he was born, and I figured that if real life couldn't have a happy ending, then Sophie damn well could. Kinda. Plus it gave me a way to lead into the chapter I wanted to do before, and didn't finish because the world decided to screw up.

Sorry.

Anyway, I'm back now, and should have chapters up and going soon. Thank you all for your patience. It really means a lot. And thanks for letting me rant a little bit.

Also, a guy that I teach with is Italian, and I explained Sophie and Damon to him. I asked him what he would call her, if he were a vampire, and he said he'd call her his sun. His reason for living. Cira is Italian for sun, and I thought it would be appropriate seeing as Damon is Italian. Also, I find this interesting, Salvatore is Italian for Savior.

Coincidence? I think not. :)