A/N: Thank you so much for all the awesome reviews! :) :) :)
An anonymous reviewer asked about Klayley, so I just wanted to respond to this here and say that I'm afraid we won't have time to delve much into Klaus' suddenly busy & complicated (yes, that's sarcasm, because I think this is OOC, but that's another story lol) love life. The other reason is that I don't ship Klaus with anyone on The Originals... To end on a positive note, however, I'll say that one of my three favorite scenes of S1 was a Klaus/Hayley scene in 1x20 ;)
BTW Since I can't reply to you directly, I just wanted to give a shout-out to all the anonymous reviewers (and also the reviewers who have their PMs blocked ;): thank you so much for your support! :)
Disclaimer: The Vampire Diaries belongs to L.J. Smith & CW.
Chapter 14
"It's a rollercoaster," Damon said evenly, glancing around the dark, empty amusement park with his eyes narrowed.
He wondered if it was because of his vampire past that the nightfall itself seemed to be eliciting a vague impression of memories hovering close, just barely out of reach. Or perhaps he was just thinking in fictional clichés. Then again, when his eyes drifted away to a grainy path leading toward a water ride, he felt as if the shadowy road really reminded him of something. "So, Damon, tell me. What is it that you want?"
"Yes, that's what I said," Stefan replied with a shrug. "A rollercoaster down the memory lane."
Damon shifted his eyes to him, trying to keep a straight face. "I thought you meant it as a metaphor."
"Well," Stefan cleared his throat, doing his best not to smile, "I thought a rollercoaster sounded more appealing than a stroll. And..." He paused in an exaggerated manner before continuing, "I also thought that maybe I'd figure out something cooler to do while driving here. But I didn't."
Damon chuckled weakly. "Alright. Let's do that," he said, getting into one of the trains. "Just don't use this as a date idea," he added and Stefan, who was about to go switch the rollercoaster on, stopped in his tracks and turned around.
"Why?" He asked with a small frown, genuinely curious.
"It's creepy," Damon said with a shrug. "Fake, lonely. And it has an apocalyptic vibe to it," he said offhandedly, resting his arm on the back of the seat and glancing up at the night sky above.
Stefan stared at him for a second. "Well, I'll keep that in mind," he said at last with a small grimace, still rather confused by such an interpretation. "Thanks."
Having turned the machinery on, Stefan quickly came back and jumped into the train next to Damon, the rollercoaster already slowly moving forward.
"Close your eyes," Stefan said and Damon stifled a smile.
"Thank you, but I'm not scared," he said, amused.
"That's not my point," Stefan said in all seriousness, pulling the safety bar down. "Caroline read an article online about recovering lost memories by listening to the stories about the past while in motion."
This time stifling a smile didn't work and Damon chuckled out loud.
Stefan smiled, but then frowned noticing that the expression on Damon's face immediately changed, as if his own laughter somehow dismayed him.
"You can't live feeling guilty all the time," Stefan said on an impulse in a hushed, serious tone and Damon's eyes darted to him. "Elena said someone told you about-" he started to explain, but Damon cut him off.
"I know what you're all trying to do and I appreciate it, but-"
"No, I actually think you don't know what we're doing," Stefan interrupted him with a small, mirthless smile and Damon looked at him in grim silence, his eyebrows furrowed. "You think we're trying to tell you that it doesn't matter or that it's OK or that whenever you did something wrong you weren't being yourself and so it doesn't count. But that's not it."
"Isn't it?" Damon asked quietly with a weak, sad smile.
The coaster sped up and Stefan thought that perhaps by "motion", the author of the article didn't mean "55 miles per hour doing upside down loops," because he found himself unable to speak until the ride ended.
"That was fun," Damon said with a smile that didn't reach his eyes and pushed the safety bar up, but before he stood up Stefan continued their interrupted conversation.
"What we're trying to tell you is that that's not the whole truth about you and that you can't make assumptions based on dry facts that you don't even remember." Stefan paused and looked at Damon who was staring straight ahead, his forehead creasing in a pensive grimace. It wasn't very clear if he was waiting for him to stop or to continue, so Stefan decided to do the latter. "Do you want to operate on dry facts? Fine. I killed more people that you've met," Stefan said in a low, slightly strained voice and Damon blinked, glancing at him out of the corner of his eye. "Now, what was your first thought when I said that?" Stefan asked and Damon shook his head. He opened his mouth to undoubtedly say something dismissive, so Stefan cut him off and just repeated the question.
"Why," Damon muttered reluctantly. "My first thought was why," he said, giving Stefan a mockingly questioning look.
"But somehow that's not what you're asking yourself when thinking about your own actions," Stefan said in a low, but firm voice. "You just take them at face value, not caring about the context."
Damon rolled his eyes. "Fine. I'm only half-evil," he said with a sardonic grimace. "A reformed villain. Not the only bad person on the entire planet. I get it. So what?" He asked, shifting in his seat and turning his head to look at Stefan, his eyes glimmering challengingly. "What does it change? Those people I killed are still dead. And semi-good or half-exonerated, I'm still messed up and who knows when some other dark secrets will resurface or when I'll lash out or start spiraling out of control or God knows what else. And I can't risk-" He stopped abruptly is mid-sentence and looked away, his jaw clenched.
They were both silent for a while, the night around them just as silent, except for the quiet sounds of cars passing in the distance and a muffled, jingling noise of decorative light bulbs that were hanging over the haunted house entrance, clinking against each other in the wind.
"I said it before," Stefan finally said, breaking the silence, "but... accidentally to the wrong... very wrong person, so perhaps I should repeat it now." Slowly, Damon shifted his eyes back to him. "Ever since the first time I noticed Elena falling for you," Stefan spoke in a low, even voice and Damon's mouth twitched and he looked away, finding it easier to listen with his eyes fixed on an unidentifiable point in space, just like Stefan's were. "I've been waiting for you to screw something up so badly that she'd hate you. So I've been waiting and watching you do all these horrible things and every single time I thought that you'd gone too far, you were there for her. Sometimes in ways better than I ever was. And after awhile I just stopped waiting for you to fail because I liked the person that you'd become and I didn't want to lose that person." Stefan trailed off and drew a breath, squinting into the distance. "So if that's what you're afraid of, then no, don't be," he said, his voice becoming stronger, each next word surprisingly easier to utter than the previous one, as if he had crossed some invisible border, "you're not going to destroy her, because she already saved you and you saved her. You no longer are the person that could destroy her and she no longer is the person that could be destroyed." Stefan stood up and jumped out of the train. "You can't change the past," he said, turning around and waiting for Damon to look at him. "No one can. I would've, for a million reasons," he whispered with a wistful grimace, "but it's not possible. It's not that the past doesn't matter. It's just that the past is the past," Stefan said, wrinkling his forehead, trying to put his thoughts into words as precisely as possible. "You can't be putting it now over the present. The past is not more important than the future. It's not about not feeling guilty or feeling guilty every breathing second. Neither hiding from it nor drowning in it is an answer. It's about dealing with that guilt and drawing conclusions. That's where you are. That's your starting point. Not some darkest night in 1977, but today. That's all that we're trying to say. That you should pick up where you left off, because you've earned it."
Stefan looked at Damon unblinkingly for a longer while, his eyes shining with utmost seriousness and sincerity. Regaining his composure and shaking himself out of the strange, indescribable state he had been in for the last few minutes, Damon at last rose to his feet and stepped out of the train.
"You've lost me half way through that monologue, but don't let this stop you from continuing," Damon said in a mockingly tactful manner, but then after a few heartbeats he felt the grimace on his face fade into a faint smile that did reach his eyes.
With an inward sigh of relief, Stefan smiled back.
xxxdelenaxxx
Elena and Alaric were sitting in the car, waiting for Enzo, who had gone inside Dr. August's house ten minutes ago, to come back.
Shaking his head, Alaric couldn't help thinking that he was doing a really poor job of being the responsible adult here, seeing how he was making pretty much the same mistake for the second time on the same evening. Unless of course worrying about Enzo was a mistake in and of itself.
"I don't trust him," Alaric grunted, his eyes fixed on the porch, a grim expression on his face. "He agreed to that too easily," he added, resting his elbow on the side of the door, absently rubbing his chin with the backs of his fingers.
Elena shrugged. "I think it just proves that the only reason why he came up with that mass-annihilation plan in the first place, was that he felt like he didn't have anything else to live for," she said resolutely, glancing at the clock. She was beginning to feel guilty about this entire endeavor and she just hoped that their plan would work, because if it didn't... Neither Alaric nor she had been invited into the house, so if Enzo didn't come back within a reasonable amount of time they'd really have a problem what to do.
"And now he does?" Alaric asked skeptically, giving Elena a questioning look. "What makes you think so?"
Elena tilted her head to the side, her eyes wandering around the dimly lit street. "We talked and maybe also seeing Damon again made a difference? I don't know. I do know," she continued before Alaric managed to interrupt her, "that he walked in there knowing that should anything happen, we wouldn't be able to rush in and help him."
"That makes it even more suspicious," Alaric observed wryly.
Elena shifted her eyes to him. "I can't say I fully trust him, but... During our car ride to the bar we were talking about the past and... he could've brought up some complicated matters, but he didn't. He was actually being more diplomatic than Caroline," Elena added with a small sigh.
Alaric arched an eyebrow. "Is that difficult?" He asked with exaggerated uncertainty and Elena stifled a smile.
"I'm just saying that his anti-Augustines ideas aside, he didn't do anything wrong so far. He's been through a lot. He likes Damon-"
"Yeah, well, Klaus likes Caroline," Alaric cut in with a hint of sarcasm in his tone. "Do you see where I'm going with this?" He sighed and Elena rolled her eyes with a weak smile.
They were both silent for a few seconds, just staring out of the windshield.
Elena leaned her head against the headrest. "Do you remember-"
"Smoky Mountains," Alaric said and glanced at Elena, returning her smile when she smiled at him in slight surprise that he had immediately guessed what she was thinking about.
"It was a good day," Elena said a little dreamily, but then hastily checked herself, "I mean-"
"Except for Klaus in his murderous mode, Stefan in his martyrish mode, aggressive hybrids in transition..." Alaric trailed off with a wave of his hand.
"Yes," Elena said, closing her eyes with a slightly embarrassed smile. "Except for all that. I just liked how we were being a family in all of this," she added after a pause in a low, thoughtful voice.
"We are a family. For all eternity. And I'm very grateful for that," Alaric said in a matching tone and they exchanged warm smiles. "Especially," he added with a flicker of a smile passing through his face, "that not only do I have two bright kids, but now I also got a classically devious son-in-law as a bonus."
Elena grinned but then they both jumped in their seats when someone knocked on the roof of the car.
"You could've at least been waiting at the ready," Enzo said, a little upset, when Alaric and Elena jumped out of the car. He ushered a half-conscious girl he had been carrying over his shoulder into the backseat and threw a set of car keys to Alaric. "Take the other car," he muttered, shooting Alaric a look before getting into the driver's seat.
Alaric was about to protest, but Elena silenced him with a pleading look and Alaric rolled his eyes and got into the other car while Elena got into the car with Enzo and the girl.
"How did you do it?" Elena asked, glancing worriedly over her shoulder at the girl, whose face was obscured by her long, blond hair, speckled with dried blood and in disarray.
"I knocked, some people opened the door, I shot them all, went in-" Enzo glanced at Elena who narrowed her eyes at him in a small, exasperated smile. Enzo rolled his eyes. "One of the windows was ajar. There was no one downstairs."
Elena opened her mouth to ask something yet, but incoherent, grumbling noises from the backseat drew her attention to the rescued girl.
"You're safe now. Everything is going to be OK," Elena said reassuringly, reaching out to help the girl turn around and sit up as she was apparently trying to do. "We'll take you to a hotel- Rebekah?" Elena's voice rapidly changed from soothing to sharp and Enzo's eyes darted to her.
"You know her?"
"Yeah," Rebekah replied before Elena had a chance to. She grimaced and blinked a few times, trying to get rid of a strange, unpleasant feeling of having salt in her eyes. Literally. Rebekah gritted her teeth at the memory. "I killed her," she muttered, pulling herself to an upright position and leaning her back against the back of the seat. She glanced at her leg that still hurt, even though the wound was almost healed.
"When I was human," Elena clarified, glancing at Enzo.
"You had vampire blood in your system," Rebekah pointed out, pursing her lips.
"You didn't know that," Elena said with a wry smile.
Rebekah shrugged.
"Should we drive her back?" Enzo asked in a stage-whisper, leaning toward Elena.
Elena stifled a smile. "No," she said with a sigh, crossing her arms over her chest. "I'm over it."
"Rebekah?" Enzo squinted into the distance. "As in Klaus' sister?"
Rebekah shifted her eyes from her leg to him, a grimace of pain swiftly turning into a grimace of irritation. "No. Rebekah as in Rebekah," she said, annoyed. "And who are you? Elena Gilbert's worshiper no.8?"
Enzo glanced at Elena, an amused smirk flitting across his face.
"Really?" Elena shook her head with a humorless snort. "We just saved your life. Maybe you could afford being polite for five minutes."
"I'm Enzo," Enzo cut in, before Rebekah had a chance to retort. "As in Lorenzo. But my friends call me Enzo," he added, giving her a narrowed-eyed look over his shoulder.
Rebekah gave him a thin smile. "Cute," she said flatly.
"All I meant to clarify through my question," Enzo continued, "was whether you were an Original."
"I am," Rebekah snapped, tossing her hair behind her shoulders. "Do you want an autograph?"
Enzo smiled briefly. "No. I want to know how one crazy human doctor could capture an Original vampire?" He asked, his tone turning serious.
Elena's eyes darted to him, a frown flickering across her face at the realization that his question was in fact a very valid one.
"Well, obviously he couldn't," Rebekah said, annoyed, hissing a little when her leg accidentally brushed against the back of one of the front seats. "They've been tracking me for a long time and they certainly weren't human."
"What?" Elena and Enzo asked almost at the same time, exchanging slightly confused, grim looks.
"Wait." Elena shifted in her seat, turning toward Rebekah. "How do you know they weren't human? You were captured by the Augustines. They most certainly aren't vampires. This makes no sense." She grimaced, glancing at Enzo.
"I didn't say they were vampires," Rebekah said. "Well. They probably were, judging from the speed and strength. But... they were more than that."
"Now this is making even less sense," Elena said with a frown. "Are you saying they have vampires working for them? Why would any vampires work for an organization that's trying to obliterate the entire vampire race?"
"And you what, attended their founding meeting that you know for sure what they're doing?" Rebekah asked, arching an eyebrow. "When I was there I heard a few things," she added, leaning forward and propping her elbows on Elena's and Enzo's seats, the pain in her leg and in her eyes subsiding, the tension in all of her muscles ebbing away. "I could either focus on pain or on gathering information," she added hollowly with a vacant look that disappeared when she blinked. Enzo glanced at her in the mirror. Elena was also looking at her in silence. "Maybe they do want to get rid of vampires, like you say," she continued, resuming a more energetic tone of voice. "But maybe just because they want to take over our place."
"In what sense?" Elena asked, perplexed.
"Replace regular vampires with... super-vampires," Rebekah replied and Elena gave her a long look to double-check that she wasn't joking. "I'm not making that up," Rebekah said, irritated. "They discovered that if you die with more than just one kind of vampire blood in your system, you become something more than just a regular vampire," she said and both Elena and Enzo began listening to her more intently. "They already created those kind of vampires. Apparently, the more different types of blood, the more power. They can also control those vampires, I don't how, but they can."
"But they hate vampires," Elena repeated, still confused as to how what Rebekah was saying could possibly be true.
"They hate vampires who kill innocent humans," Rebekah said sardonically. "Not slave-like, robot-like vampires who kill other vampires."
"I'm glad we've arrived at this conclusion," Enzo said after a moment of complete silence that fell in the car. Elena and Rebekah shot him questioning looks. "That Enzo was right from the beginning," Enzo said with a mocking smile.
"About what?" Rebekah asked with a frown, raising an eyebrow.
"That we should just blow them all up. Obliterate the Augustines before they obliterate us," Enzo said, holding Elena's gaze for a second, his eyes completely serious. Elena shook her head with a grimace.
"I agree with that," Rebekah said with a shrug. "I'm in."
Enzo looked at her over his shoulder. "And just like that, you can call me Enzo."
Rebekah bit back a smile.
"Well, actually, nothing's changed. That is still a bad idea," Elena said, giving Enzo a pointed look.
"So how do we do that?" Rebekah asked, ignoring Elena. "Do you have a phone?" She suddenly asked with a hint of anxiety in her tone, having checked her pockets and not finding anything in them.
"Your niece is OK," Elena said in a low voice, glancing fleetingly at Rebekah over shoulder. "Unless you wanted to book a manicure," she added, turning her gaze toward the window.
"You're not really good at sarcasm, you know," Rebekah said sharply, looking at Elena for a few moments in silence before adding under her breath, her tone serious and sincere. "Thank you."
xxxdelenaxxx
The after-hours visit to the amusement park had passed in a rather gloomy atmosphere, despite Stefan trying to lighten the mood by switching to telling childhood stories of the rare, amusing sort. Unfortunately, while he could tell Damon wasn't exactly not enjoying hearing about being chased off the strawberry field with a spork, choking on the flour or getting stuck in a Christmas tree, he seemed stubbornly determined to hear about the less pleasant events.
And for better or worse, it wasn't like he had an enormous amount of stories to tell, Stefan realized with a sense of bleak wonder. He was surprised how little he knew, now that he tried to recall everything in the chronological order. After their falling out in 1864 it was almost fifty years before they had seen seen each other again in 1912. Then another thirty years until their meeting in New Orleans... and he still wasn't quite sure what had happened then, why Damon hadn't shown up on that train station. Perhaps that was what he should've asked him about instead of chattering about the sire bond for the whole time the last time they were there.
"A traumatic year, I'm guessing?"
Stefan blinked and straightened up, giving Damon a slightly befuddled look.
"1942," Damon said, squinting. "You fell silent for..." he glanced at Stefan's watch, "nine minutes," he said with a faint half-smile, glancing around the dark street. Somehow everything Stefan was saying was evoking quite vivid images in his head, as if he was not just listening to him, but remembering. Although that was perhaps more wishful thinking than anything, because all he could see was exactly what Stefan was saying, nothing more. Still, the images felt real and it seemed that he was making out the details, like colors and scents on his own, even though of course he could just be making it all up and he didn't think it made sense to waste time on confirming whether a library door was brown or black.
Stefan shook his head, quickly pulling himself out of his reverie. "No. I mean, yes, it was. It was... war, after all, but... It's just that I realized how many years we've really been apart. I didn't even know about you being captured by the Augustines until a few months ago. I didn't know lots of things," he added slowly, looking away.
"Considering the gaps, I'd say that's probably true about both of us," Damon observed after a pause when they stopped at the top of the stairs, looking down at the football field below.
Stefan suppressed a smile, averting his eyes to the ground.
"What?" Damon asked, eying him suspiciously, a flicker of a smile flitting across his face.
"It's nothing, really," Stefan said with a pensive smile. "It's just that you're very much like you'd been before we turned and it just feels a bit odd, after all these years. And I don't mean that you've changed that much," he amended with a small grimace. "I mean that at some point we stopped saying things out loud and somehow, maybe because of that we stopped hearing them."
"That actually makes sense," Damon observed cautiously and Stefan laughed briefly under his breath.
"No, I think sometimes it's just easier not to read between the lines, not to look at what happens through other people's eyes," Stefan said and after a moment of silence they started walking down the stairs again.
"Could you punch me?" Damon asked when they stepped onto the dark grass of the dimly lit field. "Is that so shocking? You mean you've never punched me before?" He raised his eyebrows at the comically puzzled expression on Stefan's face.
"Well, it happened," Stefan admitted. "A few times." He looked at Damon for a second with his eyes narrowed and then asked, biting back a smile. "You don't actually think a punch in the face will bring your memories back?"
"Who knows? Why not give it a shot?" Damon asked, extending his arms in a shrug.
Stefan shook his head, still finding the idea as ridiculous as amusing, but conceding nonetheless. Damon stumbled backwards a little when he punched him.
"Did it work?" Stefan asked, looking at him expectantly.
Damon ran his hand over his jaw. "Yes," he said with a brief grimace. "Now I don't need dental insurance anymore."
Stefan chuckled. "I told you it wouldn't work."
He turned around and smiled at the sight of a football lying on the ground. "Lucky us," he said, picking up the ball and tossing it to Damon who caught it and blinked, momentarily startled by a shred of an image flashing across his mind. A large white house... blindingly green grass... that silly hat...
"Come on," Stefan prompted, waiting for the ball and Damon threw it to him with a smile and then took a few hasty steps backwards when Stefan started charging forward.
The field was only dimly lit and so when Damon fell, his foot getting tangled in some wires near the crash barrier, Stefan didn't really see, only heard a muted, jarring noise when Damon's head hit a metal post. He was about to make a joke about clumsy humans, but his breath caught in his throat when he noticed that Damon wasn't getting up. He zoomed to him and when he leaned down, he saw blood oozing out of the back of Damon's head.
"Damon!" Stefan's eyes wandered all over Damon's face, rising panic fighting a flicker of hope that this was only a stupid practical joke. But the blood was real enough and Stefan felt cold shivers ran up his spine. He ripped his wrist open and pressed it to Damon's mouth, telling himself that it just wasn't possible for such a silly accident to-
Damon's face twitched and Stefan sighed with relief, even though he could tell that Damon hadn't drunk any blood and actually began coughing it up, seemingly choking on it, as if he just wasn't able to swallow any.
"You should drink some," Stefan insisted in a worried tone when Damon seemed to fully regain his consciousness. "Just in case. You may have a concussion."
Damon's eyes blinked open and he did try to drink, but then pushed Stefan's hand away with a grimace. "I can't," he whispered through his teeth, a deep frown appearing on his face.
"Why?" Stefan asked automatically, the first thought that came to his mind being that Damon didn't want to drink vampire blood, but then Damon continued:
"They injected me with something." He drew a breath and leaned his head against the pole behind him. "A vaccine against becoming a vampire," Damon said dejectedly, his eyes grim.
Stefan's eyes widened in bafflement. "What?"
"I can't be turned into a vampire," Damon said tonelessly, closing his eyes for a second before opening them again, looking up at the stars above and scanning the football field with unseeing eyes.
The sky was clear, tinted with a shade of blue. Blue. For a second his surroundings flickered like a broken movie screen and everything was bright, so very, very bright and blue before the colors returned to normal.
Damon froze, took a sharp intake of breath and held it, trying to get hold of jumbled thoughts blurring across his mind, tugging on every inch of his body as if he was suddenly overpowered by a burning fever.
"No, Damon, no! Absolutely not!"
Stefan slumped down onto the grass across from Damon. "It doesn't sound like it was your decision," he said, studying Damon's face with anxious intensity, conflicting thoughts clashing in his head. It wasn't exactly bad news and yet, at the same time, it was probably the most horrible news, especially from Damon's current perspective.
"You lied to me."
"I didn't," Damon whispered almost inaudibly, a feverish smile flitting across his face, before it turned into an incredulous grimace. He blinked a few times and shuddered, as if he was trying to shake off some strange feeling. "It wasn't," he mechanically answered Stefan's question without even consciously acknowledging it.
"Does Elena know?" Stefan continued asking, only after a second noticing that Damon's mind seemed to have wandered elsewhere.
All of a sudden, Damon looked pale, his eyes visibly ablaze. He quickly rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand and then looked around again, his breathing becoming audibly uneven.
"Damon?"
Damon's eyes darted to Stefan and for a moment he stared at him as if he was looking at a ghost. "Sheila..." he whispered at last, laboriously, as if the name was difficult to pronounce. He frowned and his breath hitched in his throat.
Slowly, Stefan narrowed his eyes at him. "You're not funny," he said slowly, a hint of uncertainty in his voice. He really hoped the night wouldn't end with them rushing to the ER and him explaining to Elena how Damon got a concussion, but it was becoming apparent that such a turn of events was unavoidable.
"No," Damon muttered, shaking his head. "Sheila... She brought us back."
Stefan blinked and then it suddenly dawned on him of whom Damon might be talking about. "Bonnie's grandmother? She brought you back from the Other Side? You remember that?" He asked with a hopeful smile, his eyes lighting up at the happy thought that they'd return to everyone with such an important memory recovered.
"No," Damon murmured absently.
Stefan's eyebrows knitted in renewed confusion. "No?"
"I don't remember that," Damon whispered, blinking rapidly and sitting up a little straighter. He kept narrowing and widening his eyes and Stefan began to think that he should just call an ambulance instead of engaging in a pointless discussion, but then Damon amended. "I don't remember just that," he said and Stefan froze, struck by a strange note in Damon's voice. Glancing up at the sky and then shifting his eyes back to Stefan, Damon whispered in an electrifyingly careful voice. "I remember everything."