A/N: Thank you so much for your wonderful reviews! :]:]:]
I know, I know, two chapters in a row with no DE scenes. Believe me, I feel guilty without being told that I should lol But we're going to make up for it later, I promise ;)
Disclaimer: The Vampire Diaries belongs to L.J. Smith & CW.
Chapter 12
"Alright. So... this is kind of awesome, but... it doesn't make any sense," Jeremy allowed after a long moment of silence that fell after Caroline had proposed they should write down everything they knew in bullet points. "Or at least I don't see how this is relevant to what we're going through," Jeremy added with a grim sigh, glancing at the door as if he was hoping Bonnie would knock on it any second. "You mentioned some kind of a deal with Klaus. Does the fact that his child seems to be turning Matt's words into physical objects affect that in any way?"
"It's not really a deal," Caroline grunted impatiently, glancing at Stefan who was sitting across from her, his head propped on his elbow. "We just promised him that Bonnie would put a permanent cloaking spell on the baby and in exchange, Klaus would lend us a page from his mother's grimoire that contains a swapping spell that could transfer the Travelers' spell from Mystic Falls to another town."
Jeremy narrowed his eyes at her. "Bonnie doesn't even remember who she is and you already signed her up for doing magic and helping Klaus?"
"Hey, I didn't sign her up for anything, OK?" Caroline protested. "He politely asked if she could do it-"
"He asked you if she could do it," Jeremy corrected with a grimace. "And please give me ten minutes to process the idea of Klaus politely asking for anything."
Caroline huffed in exasperation, shooting Stefan a pointed look when he smiled briefly at Jeremy's words. "He knows Bonnie lost her memory," Caroline continued in a reasonable voice, "and it's not like he gave us a deadline and threatened to kill us if we don't deliver," she said, rolling her eyes. "Because of some stupid prophecy, the witches of New Orleans are hell-bent on killing that baby and I'm sure Bonnie wouldn't have anything against doing a spell to protect an innocent child if she got her powers back."
"Unless the witches of New Orleans have a point," Jeremy observed wryly.
"Did you seriously just say that?!" Caroline widened her eyes at him.
"I'm not trying to beat the evil step-mother stereotype, so I can be saying whatever I want," Jeremy snapped, causing Caroline's eyes to widen even more, but before she had a chance to retort, a knock on the door interrupted them.
They exchanged questioning glances before Stefan stood up and went to open the door.
"Bonnie!" Jeremy screamed as soon as he saw her, even before the realization fully registered in his mind.
Almost tripping over his own feet, he rushed toward her and pulled her into his arms.
"Bonnie!" Caroline cried out, unceremoniously snatching Bonnie out of Jeremy's embrace and hugging her herself, without giving Bonnie a chance to say or do anything as she was being helplessly squeezed in a series of affectionate hugs.
With a nervous laugh, Caroline finally released Bonnie, but then she froze, because of how very pale Bonnie looked.
"Her heart!" Jeremy whispered hoarsely in dismay, struck by the realization when Bonnie's hand flew to her chest and she winced. "Bonnie has a coronary heart disease!" His mind reeling, Jeremy gently sat Bonnie down while she was trying to catch her breath.
Without thinking twice about it, Caroline sank her fangs into her hand and then, to Bonnie's horrified bewilderment, pressed her wrist to her mouth, rather harshly ordering her to drink when she noticed that Bonnie was about to put up a fight.
"It's OK, this will help you," Jeremy said earnestly, kneeling in front of Bonnie and hoping that the look in his eyes would convince her that it really was OK, even if the entire situation must've been feeling completely surreal to her.
"I'm your best friend, I wouldn't hurt you!" Caroline said hastily, removing her hand once she was certain that Bonnie had taken at least a couple of sips, if only because she'd had no choice. "Now you're all healed up!" Caroline said with a strained, cheerful smile that slightly faded when Bonnie stormed to her feet, motioning for all of them to stay away from her.
"I don't know what's going on here, but-" Bonnie drew a breath, shifting her eyes between Jeremy, Caroline and Stefan, and she was caught off guard by a sudden sense of peace that contrasted so dramatically with what she had just felt during the bizarre moments of being forced to drink someone's blood. Drinking blood made her feel as if she was lost in the dark, but now, that she was looking at their faces it felt as if the lights were turned back on and she saw she was, surprisingly, somewhere safe and familiar. "Some psychopath named Enzo who said he was a vampire shot Elena with a werewolf venom and he said he won't give her the antidote unless I'll use magic to vanquish some anti-vampire organization," Bonnie said in one breath, her voice shaking.
She was half-hoping for her speech to elicit a laugh, but it didn't and so, with a resigned inward sigh Bonnie told herself that perhaps it was time to stop deluding herself that it might.
xxxdelenaxxx
He must've known all that at some point in time, because he was reading this story now like a dispiriting poem he had begrudgingly memorized and long since forgotten. A story of Katherine Pierce. Pages after pages of facts and rumors, a long list of places visited, neverending lists of alleged victims, alleged lovers. Family trees, trees showing people she turned who then turned other people... Tables of crimes that seemed nigh impossible to be attributed to just one, frail girl with Elena's face, no less. Elena's face. Elena.
"That's not Elena," Damon thought as soon as Amanda put into his hand a faded portrait from 1864. The resemblance was uncanny, he'd give it that. But the look in the girl's eyes was unmistakably different.
He also remembered Caroline mentioning a Katherine, which made it even more obvious that Elena and that girl were two different people and although it was strange they looked so similar, he was certain there was an explanation for that, probably not more bizarre than the explanation for the existence of vampires.
"She turned you into a vampire in 1864," Amanda continued weaving a story and Damon did his best trying to appear like he was interested in it.
And he was, to some extent, but there was also that inexplicable, overwhelming sense of exhaustion that made him impatient to close this subject and talk about something else. He listened to Amanda while looking at Katherine's portrait, trying to infer the actual true story out of it, but his mind was coming out blank: no images, just sounds, just some torn out pieces of angry conversations, accusations, screaming, shouting...
Gun shots.
And then silence, only silence, nothing but silence stretching and stretching and stretching into all directions, into a prolonged, blinding, deafening nothingness that was hurting every cell of his body until it burst into whiteness – then darkness, angry and suffocating, impossible to break through and it felt like he was drowning in a sea of black tar that was pulling him in, pulling him under, until he couldn't breathe-
But then...
"I think you're gonna be the one to save him from himself."
Suddenly, the darkness was gone and he felt as if an impossibly heavy weight was lifted off his shoulders.
"Damon?" Amanda looked up when the portrait fell out of Damon's hands and he straightened up with a frown.
"It won't be because he loves me. It'll be because he loves you."
"Are you OK?" Amanda asked watchfully, placing her hand over his.
Damon blinked and then slowly, so slowly as if he was just now making some kind of a shocking, exhilarating discovery he whispered. "I have a brother."
"Yes, you do," Amanda confirmed, even though she wasn't sure if Damon had meant for his words to sound like a question. "Here-" she started, reaching for one of the volumes sitting on the table, but then she trailed off when Damon's attention shifted to a set of photographs on his left hand side. "These are all from New York," Amanda said with a small sigh, glancing up at him. "We used to have two units in that area, both collecting visual data."
It didn't really look like anything at first sight. Or perhaps it just didn't make sense and that's why he couldn't make out a definite shape on the first photograph. If it wasn't for evidence markers, he wouldn't be able to tell that it was in fact a human body splayed over the blood-soaked pavement.
Damon let the picture slide onto the table before he looked at the next one, a pair of glassy eyes staring up at him. Another discolored photograph was showing two people, lying almost side by side, a pool of blood in between them.
Each picture was neatly marked with a date and his name. A few pictures had a question mark next to his name. Several, an exclamation mark followed by a reference number. Some had copies of eye-witnesses' written testimonies stapled to them.
Clenching his teeth almost to the point of crushing them, Damon blinked rapidly, looking at the photographs, one after another, with increasing speed. Torn necks, severed heads, bleeding wounds, empty, lifeless eyes blending together into one revolting image.
Every new picture appearing in front of him felt like a backward caress. Like he was losing something... losing the right to something... He'd give everything to bury his face in Elena's hair right now and hold her, hold onto her... But at the same time he felt like he shouldn't ever do that again. A bitter, sickening feeling of horrified disbelief and guilt was taking away, bit by bit, that thrilling, carefree sense of joy and wonder that had been accompanying him for the last several hours.
"Why did I kill all those people?" Damon asked, storming to his feet, accidentally knocking out the chair, a sleeve of his shirt swooshing over the photographs and documents on the table, sending some of them floating briefly up in the air.
"Because that's what vampires do," Amanda said with a resigned sigh, standing up as well. "But you're not a vampire anymore," she added with a small, encouraging smile. "That's the most important thing. Now you can make up for all of it."
"Make up?" Damon repeated with a derisive grimace. "Those people are dead."
"Yes, they are, but..." Amanda drew a breath, slightly narrowing her eyes at him, "you can help us keep other people safe. By finding ways of protecting them. By getting rid of monsters. Some of them didn't choose their fate, I know that," she amended, prompted by a guarded look in Damon's eyes. "But unfortunately it's irreversible. At least until we find the cure for vampirism, which we didn't yet. We don't know how you became a human again, but maybe one day you'll get your memories back and we'll find out how? Maybe it will be a breakthrough. But until then-"
Amanda fell silent when a muffled, strangled noise cut her off.
"What was that?" Damon asked, barely above a whisper, glancing around the room, trying to figure out where the sound was coming from.
"I hope you know that I shouldn't be telling or showing you any of that," Amanda said in a low voice, giving him a wary look. "We have a small laboratory in the basement. Sometimes we bring test subjects in."
"Test subjects. You mean vampires?" Damon asked, recalling what Elena and Alaric had told him about the Augustine Society and its torture chambers.
"Not just any vampires," Amanda said after a pause. "My father only brings special cases in here. The vampire that we have in here now is a very old vampire. Even older than Katherine Pierce." She hesitated for a second before she asked. "Do you want to go see it?"
xxxdelenaxxx
His phone conversation with Caroline was a little nerve-racking, but Alaric expected the conversation with Elena to be much worse. First of all, he hadn't told Caroline what Damon and him were really doing. Second of all, Caroline was more enraged about Enzo daring to pull a stunt like that than about Elena being in real danger, since obtaining Klaus' blood to heal her once they got her back was going to be, according to Caroline, "easier than winning Miss Mystic Falls". Third of all, Bonnie was safe and that put everyone back at the hotel in a good mood.
Having convinced Caroline that they should focus on Bonnie while Damon and him would handle the Enzo situation, Alaric decided to try a slightly risky approach and he just hoped that he wasn't being overly optimistic about it.
Glancing at Dr. August's house with a frown, Alaric called the number Caroline had given him.
"I want to talk to Elena," he said sharply when Enzo answered the phone.
Enzo was about to point out the lack of manners evident in the missing greeting, missing introduction and an openly unfriendly tone, but Elena, who was sitting right in front of him immediately recognized Alaric's voice and without a word just snatched the phone out of Enzo's hand. Enzo gave her a mockingly confounded look that turned into a sincerely angry one when Elena told Alaric right away that she was fine and that the werewolf venom wasn't real.
Enzo stormed to his feet, trying to get the phone from her, but then his hand stopped in mid-air when the expression on Elena's face changed from a mildly defiant into a horrified one.
"He is where?" Elena exclaimed with a grimace. "Why? What are you doing there?" She asked incredulously.
"We wanted to check if maybe Bonnie was there," Alaric explained in a worried, self-berating tone. "I know it was stupid."
"Tell Damon to get out of there!" Elena said in an agitated tone, scanning the space around her with unseeing eyes.
Enzo narrowed his eyes at her and started listening in to the conversation, trying to understand what was going on.
"Yeah, well, there's a little problem with that," Alaric said with an irritated huff. "We lost the connection, something must've happened with the device-"
"You're not serious," Elena cut him off with a mirthless snort, her hand flying to her forehead as she kept shaking her head with a disbelieving grimace on her face. "We need to get him out of there!"
"I know, but-" Alaric drew a breath and squeezed his eyes shut for a second, utterly embarrassed and angry with himself for letting this happen and not even remembering what he had been thinking. "I haven't been invited in and-"
Enzo rolled his eyes and groaned under his breath. Elena's eyes darted to him.
"The Augusts' house at Maple Avenue?" Enzo asked in a voice that sounded simultaneously a little amused and very irritated.
"Yes," Alaric confirmed before Elena reacted to the question.
"I can get inside," Enzo muttered with a frown.
"You've been invited in?" Elena asked with a ghost of a hopeful smile flickering across her face.
"Perks of being the most handsome policeman in town," Enzo said with a humorless smirk. "I knew you people were going to ruin everything," he added with an annoyed huff, producing car keys out of his pocket and heading out.
"We'll be there soon," Elena said hurriedly into the phone and quickly made to follow him.
xxxdelenaxxx
"What kind of nonsense did that idiot come up with?!" Caroline exclaimed in annoyance, pacing around the room and waving her hands in the air in exasperation. "Bonnie, you were not a part of any secret murderous group fighting anti-vampire organizations! You were just a regular witch! Well, not a regular witch. An awesome witch, but anyway. Just a witch! A good witch," Caroline went on with a radiant smile. "You did lots of wonderful things! Saved lots of people! Saved us so many times!"
"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" Bonnie muttered, widening her eyes at Caroline whose smile faltered a little. "Or less crazy?"
"You're not crazy!" Caroline said with a nervous chuckle.
"I know I'm not," Bonnie replied immediately. "You are!" She said, jumping to her feet.
Caroline shifted her eyes to Stefan who shrugged a little, mirroring her worried expression.
"Bonnie..." Jeremy quickly followed her toward the window. "Can you leave us for a few minutes?" He asked, looking over his shoulder at Caroline and Stefan.
They quickly agreed and said they'd be waiting in their room. Bonnie looked after them and when the door clicked closed, she crossed her arms over her chest and gave Jeremy a narrowed-eyed look.
"I don't think you're less crazy than them, just so you know," she said grimly.
"But at least you think I'm hot, so that's a start," Jeremy said, stifling a smile.
Bonnie blinked and then unsuccessfully tried to suppress a laugh. "What?"
"Well, you did think that before," Jeremy said with a small shrug.
"I actually said that to you?" Bonnie asked skeptically, arching an eyebrow.
Jeremy laughed briefly. "Actually yes, you did."
"Well, I guess I'll have to take your word for it, since your memory is obviously better than mine," Bonnie said with a sigh and then rolled her eyes and to Jeremy's delight returned his warm, bright smile.
xxxdelenaxxx
"What day is today? Thursday," Enzo answered his own question, reaching down and pulling a tablet from under his seat when they got into the car parked at the back of the building. He handed the tablet to Elena and started the engine. "Check the schedules in the NMA folder," he said, hastily turning around the building, tiers screeching.
Shifting her eyes from him to the tablet, Elena quickly found the folder that seemed to contain detailed daily schedules of all the members of Dr. August's family.
"It's 8.15 pm," Enzo said, keeping his eyes on the road and taking a left turn.
"Dr. August is supposed to be at the hospital until 11," Elena said, quickly looking through different tables. "His wife... It says a charity meeting every two weeks... She should be there until 9... if that's today."
"It is today," Enzo said after moment of consideration. "How fortunate. Probably only one person in the house. I'll get in, kill her, get Damon out. Wait at the end of the street and then follow us with your car," Enzo outlined the plan of action in a flat voice.
Elena's eyes darted to him. "Kill her? You're not going to kill anyone," she said in such a definite voice that Enzo couldn't decide if he found it more endearing or annoying.
"Amanda August is on my hit list anyway," he said in a comforting tone, despite the expression on Elena's face making it clear she wasn't finding his words comforting at all. "She's really into this whole anti-vampire crusade, so I'm not going to take my chances and give her an opportunity to shoot me with something."
"You're not going to kill her," Elena repeated with an incredulous grimace. "Can't you just get Damon out in a normal way under some pretext? Say that you need to take him to the police station to interrogate him? She knows you. She saw you arrest Jeremy. She won't be suspecting you of anything."
Enzo snorted under his breath and rolled his eyes. "Alright. Logical arguments don't work for you. Got it. How about this." He gave Elena a small, impish smile. "She's into your boyfriend."
Elena looked up at him from the tablet, caught off guard by the argument. "I'm sorry, but that's still not a good enough reason to kill her," she said slowly with a hint of sarcasm in her voice, although for a moment she wondered just why exactly Damon and Alaric had gone there in the first place. If it was only to check if Bonnie was there, why they hadn't just said so instead of pretending they were going to a store.
"Why are you making this so complicated?" Enzo asked with a grimace.
"Me?" Elena gave him a pretendedly surprised look. "You're the one who chose to discuss your plan with me," she added and smiled inwardly at a glimpse of consternation that flashed in Enzo's eyes.
xxxdelenaxxx
"She's hurt," Damon gasped out when he finally found his voice, not knowing if he was more shocked by the sight of a semi-conscious blonde girl tied up to an operating table, her shin split open and held open with metal clamps, a bone clearly visible in between bloodied, pulsating fibers – or a completely detached way in which Amanda was explaining the impressive self-recovery of a fractured bone. "She's in pain."
"Do you have any idea how much pain she's caused?" Amanda asked, slightly widening her eyes at him. "How many people she killed?"
"I did too," Damon said tonelessly, his throat contracting at the memory of the photographs.
"Yes, but you're human now," Amanda said, stifling an urge to roll her eyes.
"And if I wasn't I'd be here instead?" Damon asked, but it didn't really sound like a question.
"I'm trying to help you," Amanda said with a frown. "When we realized what you were before, my father wanted to lock you up right away, just in case. I convinced him to give you a chance."
"A chance?" Damon shook his head with a grimace. "Who do you think you are? You capture people, torture them-"
"They're not people!" Amanda interrupted him in an agitated voice. "People don't do things like that," she said, gesturing to the bandage on Damon's neck, but then she trailed off, struck by a sudden thought. "Why are you really here?" She asked, squinting.
"I'm trying to find Bonnie," Damon replied with a frown, glancing at the operating table, wondering if he should try to free the girl right now or perhaps leave first and then come back here later with Alaric.
"I know, but... I thought you were also trying to escape them," Amanda said, her voice acquiring a steely quality. "That you understood what they were, that you decided you didn't want to have anything to do with them. But it seems that you're blinded. Is it because of her? Yesterday you didn't even know she existed! Didn't you just see all those proofs, read all those accounts of her actions? She's a monster! And she enjoys being one!" Amanda shook her head with a disbelieving, humorless snarl. "You're going to go back to them, right? Fine. Your choice. Go," she said in irritation and Damon decided that perhaps it was best to go before she'd change her mind. If he tried to free the girl on the table now, no doubt Amanda would just stab him with one of those handy syringes that were laying around and then he'd just end up trapped here and unable to help anyone. Coming back later when there'd be no one in the house seemed like a better idea.
"This is wrong," Damon couldn't stop himself from saying, glancing around the white-washed laboratory before taking a step back. "This is not the right thing to do, not the right way." He turned around.
"I'm sorry that you don't see it, but we're only trying to help. Help humans, but also them. One day we'll find the cure for vampirism and then they'll be given a chance to be normal again. We will free this world of monsters, this way or another," Amanda said decidedly and Damon turned his head to look at her and reply, but then flinched when she leaped toward him and inserted a needle into his arm.
With a stifled groan, Damon pushed her away, pulled the syringe out of his arm and threw it away.
"What did you do? You said I could go and then-"
"I'm not stopping you," Amanda said, straightening up. "I'm really just trying to help you," she said, widening her eyes at him, her voice heavy with conviction and desperation.
"How? By poisoning me?" Damon asked with a wry grimace, relieved that he wasn't feeling weak or drowsy just yet and that perhaps he could still get out of here before whatever Amanda had injected him with began to take effect.
"That's not a poison," Amanda said, wrinkling her nose. "That's a vaccine."
Damon blinked, giving her an irritated, questioning look. "Against what?"
"We didn't find the cure for vampirism yet, but we found a vaccine against vampirism," Amanda said in a calm, firm voice, holding Damon's confused gaze. He was looking at her with a grim frown, trying to make sense of what she was saying. "Thanks to this vaccine, they won't ever be able to turn you into a vampire again."