A/N: Thank you SO MUCH for all the fantastic reviews! :):):)

This awkward moment when we realize that maybe we should've done certain things Caroline's way... lol

Disclaimer: The Vampire Diaries belongs to L.J. Smith & CW.

Chapter 11

Having come up with an excuse about there being a problem with their reservation, Elena grabbed her jacket and hurried out of the room, her exit not raising anyone's suspicions if only because Stefan and Jeremy were too engrossed listening to Caroline telling them about her conversation with Matt and about what Matt had told her about Klaus' infant daughter apparently performing some magical tricks in the magic-free Mystic Falls.

It was news startling enough, but Elena wasn't even able to properly wonder about any of that, shaken up by Enzo's phone call. He had threatened to hurt Bonnie if she hadn't showed up alone at a designated place within half an hour and with Damon and Alaric gone, she had decided it was best to just go without letting anyone know what was going on.

Half way through the city, the dusk making it fairly easy for Elena to zoom across the streets without the unusual blurry movement being noticed whenever she would stop or continue on, she began questioning her decision of going alone. Perhaps it wasn't the wisest thing to do, but somehow she believed she could get Bonnie out and bring her to safety on her own. She wasn't really taking into consideration any other option, such as joining Bonnie in being held hostage, or whatever it was that Enzo was doing. She couldn't figure out what his intentions were, although she was hoping that she could at least talk him into letting Bonnie go.

Without much trouble, Elena found the isolated five-story building that looked like it was about to fall apart on the spot. She rushed in and up the stairs onto the top floor, not sure what to expect, her expression brightening at the sight of Bonnie looking safe and sound if a little tired and distressed.

"Bonnie!" Elena exclaimed, running to her without even bothering to look around the place. Bonnie's eyes flew to her in surprise mixed with anxiety that Elena seemed to completely ignore as she hugged Bonnie with a happy smile on her face. "Are you OK?" She asked breathlessly, drawing back and taking Bonnie's hands in hers.

Strangely, an image of a black crow surrounded by white feathers floating in the air flickered across Bonnie's mind and she flinched, causing a small frown to appear on Elena's forehead. But the frown faded when Bonnie hastily squeezed Elena's hands, both in a reassuring gesture and also in some abstract hope that it would trigger more images to spring into her mind.

"I'm OK," Bonnie said with a faltering smile, feeling suddenly annoyed that she couldn't remember anything. What if there was something important she should remember? What if she needed to remember? A familiar... comfortingly, thrillingly, painfully familiar sense of responsibility settled over her and she felt shivers run up her spine at the sound of a voice in her head. Unknown and yet so overwhelmingly warm, the voice that made her think of soft pillows, cozy blankets, hot chocolate and fairy tales. "I'm so proud of you."

Elena smiled, but then out of the corner of her eye she noticed Enzo watching the scene with a mildly sardonic expression on his face.

"What are you doing?" Elena asked with a frown, giving him a questioning glare. "Do you know what she's been through? Why are you putting her through this? She never hurt you in any way. If anything, she actually made it possible for you to be here right now, so you should rather thank her instead of scaring her," Elena said, almost in one breath, not letting go of one of Bonnie's hands.

Bonnie's eyes flew to their hands. There was some kind of a clue in there. She didn't know what it was, but she had an abstract feeling that if she understood the meaning of that one clue, everything else would fall into place. "When I touched you, I saw-"

"He wants me to blow up a few buildings and a bunch of people and he says that I'm a witch," Bonnie said on an impulse, interrupting her own train of thought, following an inner urge to clarify the matter, to have someone tell her that she was not a witch, so she'd stop thinking about that, because she was beginning to drive herself crazy wondering about this ridiculous idea being true.

"So Grams is telling me I'm psychic." Bonnie shuddered inwardly at the sound of her own voice in her head. So lighthearted. So... similar to what her voice was like in the last three months. And yet she knew this voice in her head was her voice from long ago. From... before. But not just before the memory loss. Bonnie drew a breath, feeling the tears gather in her eyes. The other before. Before-

"You want her to do what?" Elena asked incredulously, widening her eyes at Enzo and to Bonnie's distress focusing on Enzo's request and not on what troubled Bonnie most. "You want to blow up all the Augustine quarters?" Elena asked in quieter voice, wrinkling her forehead. "Kill everyone involved? Is that it?"

"He says I'm a witch," Bonnie blurted out, feeling a little awkward and guilty for probably coming across as insensitive and only concerned with this aspect of the situation. But it really wasn't because she didn't care about Enzo's atrocious designs. They were obviously not going to happen, that's why she thought it was more important to discuss the other matter. She needed to know that she wasn't a witch. And she wanted Elena to say it. "Then we'll find another way, OK?"

Elena shifted her eyes to her and Bonnie froze at the glimpse of anguish and hesitation in Elena's eyes, as if she was trying to find the right words to say what Bonnie desperately didn't want to hear.

"Just answer one question. If the situation was reversed, would you do it for me?"

"Let's not get too dramatic over this," Enzo cut in. "After all, it's for the common good," he said, walking up toward them and stopping a few feet away, a small, crooked smile flitting across his face.

"A mass-murder can hardly be in anyone's best interest," Elena said with a mirthless grimace. "They did horrible things to you, but it doesn't mean you have to do horrible things to them. That way you'll only become just like them."

Enzo rolled his eyes. "I'm sorry, but I've developed low tolerance for banalities. And I don't doubt that morality talks may have some charm in an afterglow, but unless that's where we're headed I suggest you give up on trying to save my soul."

Elena narrowed her eyes at him. "Let Bonnie go."

"That's exactly what I called you here for," Enzo said with a glint of amusement in his eyes. Elena gave him a wary frown. "Looks like we're stumped, due to Bonnie's magical indisposition, so I figured it'd be better to send her off to brainstorm ideas with everyone on how to get her powers back while I wait here with a leverage."

Elena snorted mirthlessly. "That's not a very impressive plan," she said flatly while Bonnie just stared at her, taken aback by the sudden realization that Elena wasn't arguing the point at all, wasn't even surprised in the slightest by Enzo's repeated mentioning of Bonnie being a witch and of some alleged powers.

"Really?" Enzo questioned in mock surprise. "I actually thought it was a pretty good plan, especially considering that it included setting a non-negotiable deadline for your dependable circle of friends to come up with a solution," he added and then before Elena had the time to dwell on an ill-boding note in his voice, a dart gun appeared in Enzo's hand.

Bonnie yelped in horror, her eyes flying to the dart which on impact with Elena's skin injected a dose of yellowish liquid into Elena's arm. Elena gasped in surprise, but then her eyes widened in dismay when Enzo nonchalantly confirmed the first thought that had sprung to her mind.

"Werewolf venom."

"What?" Bonnie asked with a grimace, the words feeling both familiar and foreign, a nauseous feeling coming over her.

"I have the antidote, but unless you come back here along with your magic I'm afraid I may forget where I put it," Enzo said with a small smirk that didn't reach his eyes. "And without the antidote, she's going to die. I'm sure your friends can fill you in on how this works in greater, rather horrific from what I've heard, detail. Just ask them about a werewolf bite," he said with a wink. "Now off you go," he said, waving his hand at Bonnie in a farewell gesture and glancing at his phone. "There's a cab waiting for you downstairs. I'll keep in touch."

Bonnie stared at Enzo in aggravation, not knowing what to do, feeling as if something was boiling inside her, something more than emotions. It felt as if it was just beneath the surface, but nonetheless unable to break through it, some kind of anger and yet not really that.

"Bonnie, go," Elena said softly, giving her a reassuring smile while pulling the dart out of her arm and throwing it away. "Just go. Don't worry about me. I'll be fine," she said quietly, but when Bonnie just kept shaking her head at her, refusing to move, Elena's expression became serious and she repeated, very firmly, "Bonnie, go."

Reluctantly, Bonnie made an effort to move and with tears in her eyes, telling herself that going to get help was a more rational thing to do than staying here and arguing with a madman, she ran to the door.

Elena looked after her and when Bonnie left, she slowly sat down in a nearby chair, clutching her arm with her other hand.

xxxdelenaxxx

"Thank you."

Damon stopped abruptly on the third step leading onto the porch of Dr. August's house, blinking against the faint light emitted by the dark blue lanterns hanging in a row near the door.

"Not just for this, Damon. For everything."

Damon drew a breath glancing around the dimly lit porch. Slowly, he took another step, relieved, that the memory didn't fade when he moved.

"I don't know what I'd do if you weren't here."

A faint smile of amazement flitted across Damon's face when for the first time the memory didn't last for a split second, but instead it lingered and he could almost see the entire scene play out in his head.

Watching Damon out of the car, Alaric noticed that he stopped in the middle of the porch and instead of knocking on Dr. August's door, Damon just stood there and Alaric wondered what was going on.

"Damon?" Alaric asked over the microphone, his voice in Damon's ear shaking him out of his reverie.

"Shhh," Damon made a low, hushing noise. "I think I just remembered something," he whispered, his voice shaking a little with excitement.

Alaric frowned, beginning to worry that he might've done something very, very stupid agreeing to this entire plan. It wasn't just one of his and Damon's usual reckless interventions, because Damon wasn't exactly himself right now. Not stopping a two centuries-old badass vampire from walking into the lion's den might be a questionable idea. But letting into the lion's den a human whose available life experience was limited to health issues and being in love was probably downright inexcusable. Alaric rubbed his forehead in a nervous gesture. He wouldn't blame Elena if she suggested to Bonnie that she should kick off getting reacquainted with her magic by setting him on fire.

Taking a deep breath, Alaric quickly suggested that they should call the whole thing off, but Damon hushed him again. Then, to Alaric's confusion Damon turned around and walked back and forth, up and down the porch steps a few times.

"What are you doing?" Alaric hissed into the microphone, seriously considering getting out of the car, grabbing Damon and driving back to the hotel.

"Does our house have a porch? I mean... does my house have a porch? Are we living together with Elena?" Damon asked barely above a whisper, his eyebrows furrowing in thought.

Alaric ran his hand through his hair, snorting humorlessly. "Damon, this is really not the best time for that. Yes, Elena's old house had a porch, if you must know, but-"

"Alright, calm down," Damon muttered through his teeth, reluctantly letting go of the memory, but storing each glimpse of it safely in his mind. He wasn't going to forget again what he had just remembered. It was difficult to be certain, but from the sound of the conversation, from Elena's reaction to his kiss, he strongly suspected it was their first kiss. He wished he could just run to Elena right away, ask her about it and tell her that it was the clearest and longest memory that had come back to him so far.

Trying to put himself back into a more appropriate mood, which wasn't easy after having just experienced something so thoroughly enjoyable, Damon raised his hand and knocked on the door, a little too energetically, he thought, and knocked again, this time in a more erratic way.

After a while the heavy door opened with a muted sound and Amanda appeared in the doorway, her expression quickly changing from mildly curious to startled and horrified.

"What happened? Are you OK?" She exclaimed, immediately ushering Damon inside and looking him up and down with worried eyes.

"You were right," Damon said in a slightly croaking voice, clutching his bleeding neck. "They're not... people," he whispered, wincing. He should've prepared a better speech and he kind of had prepared it, but the newly recovered memory was distracting him so much that he felt like the most devious thing he was currently capable of doing was to keep himself from grinning. "They are..." Damon trailed off, seemingly struggling to find the right words, but Amanda didn't appear to be waiting for any additional explanations.

"I was trying to warn you," she said, leading him into an oppressively bright living room and sitting him down on a cushioned couch.

"I know, but I thought..." Damon shook his head, as if it was increasingly difficult for him to speak. "They said... that I'm one of them and-"

"You're not," Amanda interrupted him in a firm voice. "Not anymore," she added before leaving the room and telling him to wait while she'd go get a medical kit.

Damon looked after her, frowning a little and wondering what it was exactly that she had meant. "Not anymore?" He asked when Amanda came back into the room.

She gave him a quick, uncertain look before setting a disinfectant, gauze pads and bandages and a few other things on a coffee table.

"You were a vampire before, but you're not anymore," she said somewhat grimly, pouring the disinfectant onto a gauze pad and tilting Damon's head to the side with her hand to give her access to the wound. She grimaced at the sight. "I don't know how it happened, how it is possible. There was never a single suspicious thing about any of your medical tests results," she continued, putting the gauze pad down and reaching for an antibiotic ointment.

"Wait. What are you talking about?" Damon asked, hoping that Alaric was able to draw better conclusions from this conversation than he was. "If there was nothing-" Damon hissed for effect even though the cleaning of the wound didn't really burn much. It even made an image or two flash across his mind and he always welcomed these: someone dragging him away from a stained-glass window... shoving him against the wall... "You're not dying today!"

"Sorry," Amanda muttered with a weak smile, her hand that was holding his head in place feeling awkward and cold on his cheek.

"How do you know that I was a... a... a vampire?" Damon asked, trying to pronounce the word with as much disgust as he could muster, thinking that he shouldn't have let the conversation go astray. He should've asked about Bonnie right away.

Amanda sighed under her breath, putting the ointment away. "My father and I... We... It's not just medical research that we're doing. I mean, it is medical research, but our specialization is a little unusual. My father's been involved for years with the Augustine Society which was founded to research supernatural species and estimate their medical usefulness for humans."

"The Augustine Society?" Damon asked, arching an eyebrow and trying not to move his head at all, because Amanda's thumb was already precariously close to his bottom lip and it felt more uncomfortable than he had ever thought possible. "Was it your father who founded it?"

Amanda smiled. "His father, my grandfather founded it, yes. My father took over when... my grandfather died of a vampire attack," she said with a clear note of anger in her voice. "One of his patients broke loose and attacked him."

"Broke loose?" Damon echoed, trying to keep contempt out of his voice.

Amanda's eyes darted to him and he wondered if he hadn't said something wrong or at least hadn't controlled his tone of voice enough, because there was a flicker of wariness in her eyes when she looked at him, even if it only lasted for a second.

"Vampires are animals," Amanda said sternly, cutting a larger piece of gauze and covering the wound with it. "Worse than animals. They're monsters. And that one was very strong. Anyway." She reached for a first-aid tape to secure the gauze with it. "The society has different units and each unit has a different scope of work. For example my father's unit is working on a cure for vampirism. There are units working toward finding ways of using vampire blood to cure diseases. There's also a unit that's working on a vaccination against vampires and a unit lobbying in favor of protective legislations, such as putting vervain in tap water everywhere."

Damon listened to her in silence, becoming more and more certain with every passing second that he should ask about Bonnie immediately and if she was here, get both of them out of here as fast as possible and then get Elena and everyone else out of this crazy town even faster than possible.

"Yes, but... how do you know that I was a vampire?" Damon asked, watching Amanda put the tape away and pour some water into a glass, the sight reminding him of her splashing the poisoned water on Elena and he gritted his teeth at the memory.

"Initially, I wasn't helping my father in the laboratory," Amanda said, filling the second glass. "I started by organizing his archives. My family has been documenting everything, they've written and gathered volumes on supernatural history and supernatural species, including... biographies of vampires."

"All the vampires in the world?" Damon asked dubiously.

"No, of course not," Amanda said with a small smile, glancing up at him. "Only the famous ones."

xxxdelenaxxx

"You don't have the antidote," Elena stated in an even voice, watching Enzo sit down at the table across from her. "The only antidote is Klaus' blood and I don't see how you could have it."

Enzo glanced at her with his eyes narrowed, a smirk playing about his lips. He reached down into a large paper shopping bag and produced cookies out of it. "I'd say impressive work, Miss Holmes, except that you're still clutching your arm," he said offhandedly.

Elena frowned, her eyebrows knitting in confusion. She looked at her arm and slowly removed her hand that she had instinctively put over the wound... only to discover that there was no wound on her arm at all.

"Did you really think I'd shoot you with werewolf venom?" Enzo asked, leaning back in his chair and leisurely crossing his outstretched legs one over the other.

Elena blinked in bafflement, shifting her eyes to him.

Enzo sighed and rolled his eyes. "This is not a suicide mission," he said, widening and then narrowing his eyes at her. "I'm actually planning on having a life after this, life that potentially includes going out with some long-lost friends. Now," Enzo tapped the tabletop and slightly leaned over it, "how high, do you think, would be the chances of Damon hanging out with me if he found out I'd shot the love of his life with a deadly poison?" Enzo looked at Elena expectantly, as if he was really waiting for her to answer his question. When she just stared at him in grim astonishment, he drew back and grabbing a bag from the table tilted it into her direction. "Cookie?"

"Bonnie and everyone else will still think that you did shoot me and they'll be worried," Elena said slowly, regaining her composure.

"If you're suggesting that I should be worried, because they're going to be worried, I think you're missing the whole point which is, precisely, for them to worry enough to get to work and get Bonnie back in touch with her magic," Enzo said, taking a cookie himself. "These are really good, you should try one."

"How do you want them to do that?" Elena continued in an urgent voice. "Even if they brought Bonnie her grimoires, she wouldn't have a clue what to do with them! And as you probably know, there's no medicine that can restore someone's lost memories."

"That's not my problem," Enzo said. "I've got time. Well, I'd rather they figure it all out sooner rather than later, but if it will be necessary to wait, I'll wait," he said with a shrug, taking a bite of his cookie.

"And in the meantime you're planning on keeping me hostage?" Elena asked, raising an eyebrow. "You didn't even tie me up. I can zoom out of here any second," she said defiantly, straightening up in her chair.

"Are you suggesting I should tie you up?" Enzo asked, amused. "And why didn't you zoom out of here already if it's that easy?" He propped his elbows on the table, giving Elena a mockingly questioning look. "Humor me."

"Because I know why you want to destroy the Augustines," Elena said matter-of-factly, holding his gaze. "And I think I know why you think you have to do it and I also know that you don't really have to do it."

Enzo widened his eyes at her. "You do? I'm intrigued," he murmured with a wry smile.

"Maybe thinking about revenge was what kept you alive in that cell for 70 years," Elena said and not a muscle in Enzo's face twitched, but his eyes suddenly gleamed up with anger or interest, she couldn't tell for sure. "Maybe it was that anger that carried you through," Elena continued in a low, steady voice. "But now you're free. You don't have to hold on to that anger anymore. There are other things to live for. It's OK to let go of that anger, let go of the past." She drew a breath, half-expecting him to interrupt her, but he didn't. "I know that maybe you feel that if you let go of that, you'll let yourself down in some way. That you'll betray yourself if you let go of that anger. But this is not true." Elena gave him a faint, genuinely understanding smile. "There was a time when I felt like that too. I thought..." She averted her eyes for a second and when she looked back at him she noticed with a twinge of hope that he was listening to her intently. "I thought that I should always be exactly the same person that I was before my parents died. That I owed that to them. That if I changed, I'd be betraying them, betraying myself. But the truth was, I wasn't that girl anymore and it was OK to let her go. I wasn't betraying anyone by growing up. And you also won't betray anyone if you let that obsession with revenge go. Don't let them turn you into someone they thought you were when they locked you up in that cell," Elena said in an ardent voice and she could see in Enzo's eyes that he was at the very least noticing and accepting the sincerity of her concern. "Do you want them to win? They will only win if you let them finally turn you into someone you are not! I turned off my emotions when Katherine killed my brother," Elena said on an impulse, hoping that she was getting through to Enzo. "And when I turned them back on, the first emotion that came back... was hate," she whispered, almost choking on the word. "All I could think about was killing Katherine, because... almost every bad thing that ever happened to me and to the people I care about could be traced back to her. So I was clinging to that hate, I managed to convince myself that if I killed her, all that pain would somehow disappear. But the pain wouldn't have disappeared. The past wouldn't have vanished along with her. Instead, that hate would've just turned me into her. And that would've been an actual betrayal. Only if I did kill her then I would've lost myself."

Enzo looked at Elena in silence for a second and then spoke in a low voice, a hint of dark irony resonating in it. "I appreciate the cautionary tale, but... the logic of it escapes me, I'm afraid. If you had killed her, she wouldn't have been able to do what she did afterwards. Don't you think it would've been much better for you and a few other people had you killed her then?"

Elena blinked back the tears, still not able to think about those nightmarish eventswithout feeling as if someone was ripping her heart to pieces. "No," she whispered with certainty that made Enzo look at her with renewed intensity. "It would've been better for her, not for us. She was given a chance to die having apologized and being forgiven, but she wasted it. As for us, we have survived. And we got back everything that we had lost and more. And you can too. You can have a new, happy life." A weak, sour smile flickered across Enzo's face, but despite him doing his best to retain his sardonic attitude, Elena could see in his eyes that her words weren't falling on deaf ears. "Stop living in the past, Enzo. Get out of that cell and look around. You're free now. You can choose your own future. It's all in your hands. It's all up to you."

xxxdelenaxxx

"We aren't able to identify all the vampires in the world," Amanda said with an audible hint of regret in her voice. "You can even know someone for years and never realize they're vampires. They learned to adapt really well. Some of them can walk in the sun. They can eat regular foods. And there's nothing in their appearance that might alert you at first glance. That's why they're so dangerous."

Adjusting the hearing device in his ear, Alaric squeezed his eyes shut, hitting his head against the headrest. "Damon, ask about Bonnie and get out of there," he said in a low voice, scolding himself inwardly for allowing for this to happen in the first place. The last thing they needed was for Damon to hear about his life from someone who was likely to present it in the worst way possible.

"Is Bonnie here? Is she safe?" Damon asked, instinctively following Alaric's advice and also because a part of him didn't want to continue the conversation.

"She wasn't with you? With them?" Amanda asked in what seemed to be a sincerely surprised tone of voice, the lack of worry, paradoxically, making it sound even more sincere. "She disappeared from the hospital a few hours ago. I figured they took her."

"No," Damon murmured, looking away in disappointment, although he quickly reminded himself that it wasn't exactly bad news. Maybe Bonnie had run away on her own, distressed by all those bewildering developments? Maybe she just needed some time alone.

"So you knew who I was throughout this time?" Damon asked almost absently, trying to think of a way to get out of this house as soon as possible.

Amanda sighed. "Yes."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

Amanda snorted weakly and shook her head. "What was I supposed to tell you? You're human now, but you used to be a monster, a vampire, a serial killer." She reached for one of the glasses on the table.

Damon grimaced in puzzlement. "Serial killer?" He echoed, thinking that she must've been going for some kind of a metaphor there.

"Damon-" Alaric started, blinking rapidly, but then a sudden clatter reverberated in his ear and he couldn't hear another word, just a series of incomprehensible noises. He groaned under his breath in frustration.

"I'm sorry," Amanda said, biting her lip in an apologetic grimace, having spilled water onto Damon's shirt. "So much for a drink. I'll get you a new one. A new drink and a new shirt."

"No, wait," Damon said, stopping her. "What did you mean by a 'serial killer'?" He insisted, so unpleasantly baffled by the expression she had used that he didn't even realize that the water had just severed his electronic connection with Alaric outside.

"I guess I could show you what we have about you in our archives," Amanda said after a pause. "Articles about alleged animal attacks, photographs of your victims, portraits, pictures of you, even some footage from the 1970s. But I don't know if that's really something you'd like to see. Although..." she continued after a moment of hesitation, either ignoring or perhaps actually encouraged by Damon's eyes shimmering with dread. "Maybe it'd show you, without a doubt, that what we're doing here is for the common good. That it wasn't me who was in the wrong throwing vervained water at that woman. I can show you what we have in our archives about her too."

"I don't think Elena's been a vampire for very long," Damon blurted out in a low, gentle voice, only after saying the words realizing that his tone might've given him away.

But Amanda seemed too hopeful about the possibility to share whatever it was she thought she knew about Elena to pay much attention to the reverent way in which Damon had uttered Elena's name.

"That's what she told you?" she asked with a sour smile, shaking her head. "She's been a vampire for longer than you were. She's 500 hundred years old! And her name isn't Elena. Guess she lied about that too." Amanda huffed in indignation. "Her name's Katherine and she's one of the most vicious vampires I've ever encountered in my research."