Hi!

Thank you so much for your reviews! It's good to know that you're able to visualize what I'm writing :)

Dear shoppe69, as always thank you so much for the great betaing!

Please let me know what you think about chapter 11...

xoxo Giuna

Chapter 11

After a long and peaceful sleep, Elena opened her eyes with a smile on her face. She lay on her back with Damon's strong arm tightly around her waist. Smiling even brighter, Elena accomplished to roll onto her side to watch the gorgeous man right next to her. Face to face, Elena examined his relaxed features and instantly knew that he had woken up too because his arm pulled her even closer against his body.

Elena observed a slight smile twitching in the corner of his mouth and thought that she had never before paid attention to how young he looked. This was a rare moment. He had never told her at what age he had been turned into a vampire, but he couldn't have been much older than she was these days.

She acknowledged to herself that she actually didn't know anything about his past. But she had so many questions.

When the curiosity inside her became uncomfortably strong, she reached out her fingers and caressed his cheek in a very soft way.

When Damon eventually opened his eyes, he looked straight into Elena's. Her glowing eyes examined him warm and lovingly and were accompanied by an intoxicating smile on her lips.

"Good morning, sunshine," he said huskily and moved his hand in small gentle circles over the small of her back.

"Mhmm…morning," Elena whispered as a prickling shiver ran through her whole body. How was he able to know what she liked before she even knew it herself?

"You slept well?" he asked her, enjoying the way she was already responding to his soft touch.

"I... did... indeed," she answered brokenly, causing him to grin cockily at her.

"You?" she managed to ask.

"I always sleep like a little baby," he assured her, shoving his hand further downwards.

Jesus! Even though he was only touching a tiny little part of her body, she felt each and every nerve reacting to him.

Wait a minute… what did he just say? He slept like a little baby? A picture of a black haired baby stole itself into her mind and suddenly she remembered what she had been thinking of before Damon's, admittedly successful, distraction.

With all her strength she freed herself of his grasp and climbed straight onto his stomach.

"There's no need to hurry, Elena," Damon teased her but immediately sensed that she got something on her mind when her facial expression changed from completely eased to a questioning look.

"Ha, ha," she mocked and grinned back at him. She folded her arms over his chest and rested her chin on top of her arms, staring up into his aquamarine blue orbs.

"You comfortable?" he wanted to know, her almost naked body pressed on his completely naked body distracting him immensely. Unfortunately, she didn't seem to be interested in what he got on his mind since he had noticed her turning in his embrace only minutes ago.

"Oh yes, thank you!" She teased back but got serious the next second. "Damon, I wanted to ask you something. It might be kinda personal for you and if you don't want to answer it, I'm totally fine with it. Just consider me a little curious, okay?" she said sweetly and hoped he would at least let her pose her question.

Damon narrowed his eyes, but he didn't look upset. He was rather curious himself what kind of question she would have.

"Okay…, go ahead." It sounded more like a question than an answer, but Elena could work with it. Since this was the first time she would really get to know him better, assuming that he would answer of course, she didn't want to push too far.

"You know, I wonder how old you really are. Or better, how old you were when you were turned into a vampire. You never told me your age. Earlier, when I looked at you, you seemed so young and this brought up it up," she explained and smiled at him encouragingly.

"Ha, suddenly I'm looking young? Wasn't it you, little Missy, who laughed at me, calling me oh-so old?" he grinned at her and tapped his forefinger on her nose.

Elena pouted and stared at him quite bugged which made Damon laugh even more.

"Damon, please. This isn't funny. If you don't want to answer the question, fine, but this is important to me," she pointed out and started to push herself up to climb off of him, but Damon stopped her, holding her tight against his body.

"I'm sorry, Elena. If you want to know so badly, I'll tell you."

Elena's expression softened immediately, her eyes mirroring her excitement perfectly.

"I'm listening," she smiled and waited.

"I was turned into a vampire in 1864, when I had just celebrated my 25thbirthday," Damon revealed with a smile on his face, but Elena suddenly looked very sad.

"Oh…" Elena was at a loss for words.

"What's wrong?" Damon furrowed his eyebrows in confusion.

"It's nothing. It's just weird to finally hear it. I mean…1864? It's been such a long time ago. Somehow it is hard to comprehend that you've already lived for so long," she realized and couldn't stop herself from thinking of her own future. Was she also going to look back on decades or even centuries at some point in her life?

"Actually, I'm not alive, Elena. Actually, I'm pretty dead," Damon reminded her nonchalant.

"Please don't say that. For me, you are more than alive," she whispered and had a hard time to keep her tears from falling.

"Hey, Elena? Why are you crying?" he asked with his voice full of concern. He tried to make eye contact with her, but Elena just shook her head and wiped her tears away.

"I'm sorry. It's just... ever since my parents died, death is a hard topic for me. My stupid mind just imagined what it would be like if you were really dead, I mean not here anymore. I'm not even able to cope with the imagination…," Elena admitted sadly, unfolding her arms and turned her head to the side with her cheek resting on his chest, so that he couldn't see the tears escaping her eyes yet again.

"Shh," he hushed her and stroked her head as he felt the salty drops of grief trickling down onto his skin.

"I'm not going anywhere, not without you," he promised her quietly and noticed the ambiguity of his sentence only when his words had already escaped his lips.

With tears still running down her face, she lifted her head and glanced at him.

"I know, this is going to prove that I'm completely messed up, but I'm glad that I won't be alone if something happens to you and that we're going to die together." She bared herself to him and attempted to make it better with a smile, but she failed miserably since even more tears flowed down her cheeks now.

"Babe, breathe!" he ordered softly. "I know this is new for you, but the last thing you need to worry about is your death, or mine for that matter. We have all the time in the world," Damon pleaded and caressed her soaked cheeks, making a mental note to himself that he urgently needed to talk to Stefan. If, on the long shot, Elena would die, his brother needed to promise Damon to kill him for good, so he wouldn't be doomed to spend an eternity mummified.

Elena nodded silently, absolutely oblivious to what he was thinking, and when she attempted to smile again she was more successful.

"What was your life like in 1864?" Elena wanted to know, trying to distract herself from her current thoughts.

"So, we're back on track then?!" Damon smirked slightly and rested his head on his pillow while his hands tenderly slid up and down Elena's back. She moved back into her previous position and rested her chin on her folded arms again.

"We are," she confirmed, her voice still shaky but calmer.

"Well, what was it like? Actually, it was pretty good. My family was one of the founders of my hometown Mystic Falls. We lived on a large estate with staff and all. We happened to be very wealthy. Okay, Stefan and I didn't get on well with our father since he had different plans for our future than we had, but from what I've witnessed the last century, this seems to be a problem which re-appears in each generation. However, it brought Stefan and me closer together," Damon explained and silently asked himself, what else he was willing to share with Elena at this point.

"Somehow that sounds so normal…," Elena wondered.

"It was, apart from the lack of cars, cell phones and the web," he joked and grinned at Elena.

"Must have been hell on earth," she giggled slightly, pondering on her next question.

"You can't miss what you never had. But to be around when all those game-changing inventions were made was really cool!"

"It must have been amazing," she assumed and tried to imagine what it must have been like for him.

"What happened to you, Damon? What changed in your life so that you're here now? I mean, from what you told me, you didn't know anything about vampires, or did you?" she mused and searched his eyes, not sure if he was going to answer her question. He had told her before that he had been turned into a vampire against his will, maybe this was too personal.

Damon stared back into her eyes, his expression unreadable.

The seconds went by and he remained quiet, but then he took a deep breath, rubbed his palms over his face and grimaced as if to collect himself.

"I haven't talked about it for ages, actually not since I'm a vampire, Elena, but I guess since I know a lot about your past, you deserve to know something about mine," he remarked while Elena quietly smiled back at him.

"Okay then… In the summer of 1864 a young woman named Katherine moved into town, and because we were one of the founding families she stopped by to introduce herself. At first sight, Stefan and I knew that she was different from all the other women we had met so far. Not just because of the obvious attributes, like her striking beauty and her outstanding manners, no, there was something else about her that made her very alluring…"

"Did you fall for her?" Elena interrogated curiously.

"Nope, I didn't, but Stefan did. I was more interested in her best friend, Sophia," Damon reported nonchalant but the dark shadow that flashed over his face didn't slip Elena's attention anyway.

"So, Katherine was a vampire?" Elena questioned, intentionally avoiding the subject Sophia.

"Exactly. At first she kept it a secret, but with her growing interest in my brother it wasn't possible to hide any longer. Right from the word go Stefan was fascinated about it and for him, being so desperately in love with her, it was only a matter of time to become a vampire too."

"Wow. What a proof of love. I mean, according to the movie industry it's not a very pretty ritual, is it?" she mused and glared at him quizzically.

Damon laughed out once before he answered. "No, actually it's not. You have to die with vampire blood in your system and when you come back to life you have only a couple of hours time to feed on human blood to complete the transition. If you don't, you'll die for good," he explained as a matter of fact, but Elena's eyes widened with compassion.

"Oh my God, Damon, that must have been horrible," she assumed shocked and caressed his cheek tenderly.

"It's okay, Elena. Don't worry. It happened a very long time ago and besides, it sounds nastier than it actually feels," Damon tried to calm her down as he took her hand in his and kissed the back of it gently.

"So... it was Katherine who turned you?" Elena asked.

"Indeed."

"That means she was the only vampire around?"

"More or less…"

"More or less?"

"Yes, because when she turned me, she had already turned my brother."

"Err? But why did she do it when she was in love with your brother?" Elena had a hard time wrapping her head around it.

"She did it on Stefan's request, because he was too much of a coward to do it himself." Elena stared at Damon totally confused, a question mark showing on her face.

"How did he get the idea to do that to you?" she demanded almost annoyed.

"He thought he would do me a favour. You know, as a vampire you're able to turn off your humanity. All your emotions can be switched off and all that is left inside is sheer numbness," he elucidated and internally prepared himself for her next question, he knew would be unavoidable.

"What happened to Sophia?" Elena whispered in a soft voice while her eyes mirrored the sadness she noticed in the blue ones right in front of her.

Damon closed his eyes when a flood of pictures and emotions rushed through his mind. Sighing heavily, he knew he would never be truly ready to talk about her ever again, but how could he expect from Elena to open up to him when he wasn't able to do it himself?

"She died, Elena," Damon jumped to the end of his story but he knew he needed to explain it further and even more so when he saw the shock on her face.

"Sophia and I had a thing for each other, right from the beginning. Whenever Stefan and Katherine met, she came along to meet me.

For me she was different from the other women in Mystic Falls and for the first time thinking about marriage didn't seem odd anymore. Sophia was beautiful and kind and used to laugh a lot. Being with her meant to have a great time and I was lucky she liked my company, too. The months went by and our relationship grew stronger every day, so I decided to ask her the question of all questions and Sophia said yes. We were incredibly happy and had already planned our whole future. Sophia always talked a lot about her dream to have kids. She was so passionate about it that at some point, I couldn't wait for the moment we would be parents. I had never considered myself being a father, but with her enthusiasm it suddenly felt natural. Katherine and Sophia used to quarrel over this topic a lot. Due to their past they were like sisters, and from the moment I knew what Katherine was, she didn't have to hide her nature anymore and her need to turn Sophia too, became overwhelming.

However, Sophia was intent on staying human. She would have never given up on her wish to become a mother.

A couple of days before our wedding day, we prepared the house I bought for us on the outskirts of Mystic Falls to finally move in. We had an appointment to meet there, but I was late. Katherine had just told me that she had turned Stefan into a vampire. It had been their way to get married… Anyway, I was late and when I reached our house, I heard Sophia screaming inside and I ran as fast as I could.

Just when I stepped over the threshold a man grabbed me and another one punched me in the face. They held me in place while a bunch of other men searched the house for valuable things. Sophia still screamed and I was fighting like crazy to free myself. I wanted to help her so urgently, but they kept me in check. At some point, two men dragged her across the floor where I stood, and when I saw the knife on her throat the rush of adrenaline made me stronger. I knocked one of the men out and kicked the other badly so he wasn't able to stand up anymore.

There was only a short distance left between me and Sophia, and I guess I will never forget the desperate look on her face. She was so frightened. I almost crashed against her and the man standing right behind her, but the moment I pulled her out of his grip and into my arms I felt something warm soaking my shirt. With a nasty grin on his face, the man witnessed her collapsing into my arms. It was her blood which had soaked my shirt. The fucking bastard had cut her throat. I think they had planned on killing me too, but Katherine showed up, and well, did what I hadn't been able to do myself. In her rage, she slaughtered them all.

After realizing that I had lost Sophia forever, I burned down the house and secluded myself from my family and friends. That was when Stefan came up with the idea of turning me. Katherine had been more than eager to help him. I know she blamed me for Sophia's death just like I blame myself. I guess for her I was the one who had stolen her opportunity to turn Sophia, because without me she would've had more time to persuade her to get turned.

I'm sure she had known that for me it would be more like a curse than the possibility to move on. It was her way to punish me," Damon ended, focusing on Elena's eyes again. She had remained completely silent for the while he had had been wrapped up in his past, not daring to interrupt him. They looked into each other's eyes for a couple of seconds, before Elena found her voice again.

"Damon, that's horrible. I'm so sorry something so terrible happened to you!" she whispered trembling, desperately trying to cope with the emotional roller coaster inside her. She totally shared Damon's pain and felt sad for him and at the same time it was strange to hear him talking about his one true love. They even had planned to build a family, but with the loss of his wife-to-be, all his dreams and hopes had disappeared into thin air.

However, what her shocked to the core was the fact that he still blamed himself for her death. Even after more than a century, he wasn't able to realize what she had known instantly: It hadn't been his fault.

"Well, you wanted to know," he tried to sound indifferent, but he couldn't deceive Elena.

"Yes, I wanted to know and I'm glad you told me. Please, Damon, don't try to hide your feelings from me. I'm not blind either. I see that it bothers you and that you're still in pain," she said gently and caressed his cheek with her fingertips.

Damon sighed heavily, having a hard time to push the unwelcome emotions away. Elena smiled at him encouragingly and brushed a butterfly kiss onto his lips when Damon closed his eyes, not capable of shutting out his feelings any longer.

"It was my fault, Elena," he whispered with tears shimmering in his eyes. "If I would have been on time, the whole situation would have turned out differently and maybe I would have been able to save her," he breathed and couldn't stop a single tear from falling.

"If and maybe are some pretty weak words to blame yourself for her death Damon. But I think I get it. It must have been unbearable, being so close to saving her only to lose her in the end," Elena swallowed as she tried to put herself in Damon's shoes. Just the simple thought of the situation heated her head up with adrenaline and it felt like it was going to explode soon, when another thought hit her. When Mason had kidnapped her a couple of weeks ago, Damon had felt beyond guilty too. Now she understood why. The guilt had been eating him up from inside right from the moment he had lost Sophia, and hadn't stopped until then.

Elena realized that she neither would be able to convince Damon of his innocence nor to give him the absolution he needed so badly. She simply thought about her own issue of truly believing that it hadn't been her fault that Mason had so easily been able to enter her life. And she had only felt guilty for two years, not for over 150 years.

"That's true," Damon confirmed her words, not knowing what else to say. He had known that it wouldn't be easy to talk about it, but the forceful emotions had still caught him off guard. He had never allowed them to show since he had been a vampire and at this point he remembered why. Those fucking heightened emotions just drove him nuts.

Damon stared back into Elena's eyes and was about to jump out of the bed to run from the situation, when the sight of her compassionate and understanding brown orbs quickly calmed him down. Another emotion shoved itself back into the centre of his crazy mind with such force that he instantly felt a little dizzy. It was the love for the woman who still lay on top of his body, although he had told her about another woman he had once loved.

"I love you," he assured her sincerely and caressed her cheek as tenderly as she had done it a moment earlier on him.

Elena frowned at the unexpected words but started to smile the second they sank in completely.

"I love you," she whispered in return and kissed him again. "I can't take the pain away Damon, I get that, but I want you to know that you're not alone in it. I'm here for you, I feel with you and understand you and although I know that you're not going to believe me, I need to say it anyway: Sophia's death wasn't your fault."

Damon frowned in wonder when the words he had never heard before entered his brain and swirled in his mind. Warmth spread from his dead heart down into the pit of his stomach and back up again, leaving a soothingly fuzzy feeling behind like he had never expected to ever feel again. Actually, it meant everything to him that she believed he was innocent. In some way she was right, she couldn't take the pain away because it was imprinted into each and every fibre of his being and probably always would be. Nonetheless, her words lifted a part of his burden, as if he would be finally able to make peace with his past. At some point in his existence, he had accepted that he couldn't change what had happened anymore, but it was only in this very moment that he was ultimately able to let go. He still felt sorry that he hadn't been able to save Sophia and that she hadn't been able to live her dream, but maybe, only maybe, after all those years of guilt and pain, he finally deserved to be happy.

"Thank you, Elena. It means a lot to hear it," he said softly.

At night, when Elena had already fallen asleep, he stood up again and went into the living room. Leaving the light switched off, he stared out of the window and down onto the illuminated streets. Damon imagined a picture of Sophia in his mind and wished farewell to the woman and the history they had together, promising that he would never forget about her, but letting her know that his heart belonged to someone else now. To Elena.