AN: Thank you for all your reviews. I'm so honored you're all reading my work. :) This is a chapter I've had written for months, and I'm so excited that I can FINALLY post it. I know my last chapter was short, and it seems kind of like a space filler, but I made it worth it. I promise.

That damned old clock hung on the wall, ticking constantly. It was driving Damon crazy. There was nothing on the television. Thanks to Elena, the house was clean, the bed made, and the dishes put away. He thought about going into town, seeing what trouble he could get into there, but it already close to five. Elena would be home soon. She'd called him and told him not to cook. She had planned a night for them. So there went making dinner off his non-existent to-do list, too.

Damon began to rifle through the drawers to occupy himself. They were filled with a menagerie of tools, flashlights, candles, and just random crap. Obviously a bit of his doings. There had been two he'd discovered since he came home, garnering a sigh from Elena each time she caught him opening it. He'd learned since the accident that if Elena was anything, she was neat. She put everything in a place. It was like a thing with her. It kind of drove him up the wall, but he wasn't going to complain. In lieu of just rummaging through the junk, he pulled it from the cabinet. He balanced himself on his not-so-bum leg and hobbled to the table, dumping it across the cloth that covered it. Twice as much as what looked like was in it came out of it. Damon ran his hands over it, finding screwdrivers of every size, tiny hammers, nails, even a glue gun. The small pieces were set to the side to be put into a bag or something later. There was bound to be somewhere all this belonged. Not this drawer. It was bending the damn track it was so heavy. A piece of paper began to show itself as he whittled the pile down to bare basics. A flashlight, candles for the power outage that happened /all the time/ in Mystic Falls, and the glue gun- for whatever it was for. Damon narrowed his eyes at the tiny piece of paper. It wasn't anything but black and white. It didn't even make a picture, if that's what it was supposed to be. He studied it for a while, trying to decide what it was. He tossed it aside to a trash pile and began to reassemble the drawer when he saw Elena's name printed in white in the corner.

Elena Gilbert

12/14/10

A sonogram? Of a baby? They have a baby? Damon brushed a thumb over the picture, some sort of excitement and pure fear blazing through his veins. A kid. It was right there, barely taking shape. But it was a kid. He didn't quite know what to think. He started putting the rest of his mess back up, mind slightly whirling. Really turning. He was confused. Why didn't Elena tell him? It was a baby. Their baby. Was she trying to hide it? As if on cue, the sound of garage doors groaned throughout the house. Damon remounted the drawer, but he wasn't quick enough to get rid of his mess. A huff of slight disgust came from the foyer, and it was evident that he wasn't going to be getting away with this one.
"What happened?" Elena scanned the table as she entered the dining room, eyes critical as if a murder had just taken place on her kitchen table.

"I got bored, so I cleaned out a drawer," Damon said solemnly, tapping a finger against the miniscule portrait in his hand. He didn't look at her. He was still thinking.

"Well, I have dinner from the Thai place you love so much." Elena lingered at the table a second, eyes flitting to Damon's turned back as she went back into the kitchen. "They reopened today. Mrs. Naydarl sent her well wishes." The irritant squeak of Styrofoam reached his ears as Elena prepared a plate for him, but for the first time, it didn't bother him.

"Elena." The squeaking stopped, but the clanking of dishes took its place. She was busy. He needed her to not be busy. Within a moment's time, she was setting the loaded dish at the uncluttered end of the table, pulling at the tablecloth to make more room. Elena rose a brow, sensing his odd demeanor when she noticed he was still so quiet. That wasn't like him.

"What's wrong? Did I order the wrong thing again?" She started to investigate the plate, thinking she ordered that dish with the bean sprouts by mistake. It wouldn't be the first, and definitely not the last. But they always ate it. Damon pursed his lips in deep thought, then calmly flipped the paper up so she could see it. A icy silence flew through the room, the clock the only one who dared to speak. Damon waited, thinking she would explain, but she was so quiet it was as if he were alone. Elena's eyes were already glassy by the time he saw her. She didn't want to see it. It made her absolutely sick to think about it. Still.

"Please put that away, Damon."

"/Put it away?/" he rose a brow.

"Yes, Damon. /Away./"

"Elena, you're supposed to be helping me remember things, not covering them up."

"I—I wasn't- didn't -think you needed to-" she swallowed, her happy mood now completely vanished and her brown eyes glued to the paper in his grip. "I didn't want to yet."

"So you're pregnant?" Elena blinked as she finally looked to the man standing in the room with her. If she was upset before, she was absolutely sad now. Damon narrowed his eyes at his wife, trying to understand what was the problem. Just tell him. That's all he wanted.

"No. I'm not pregnant." She reached over and carefully plucked the picture from him, calm, as not to make this situation explode. She didn't look at it. Couldn't. She slid it underneath a fruit bowl on the counter, as if that made the whole situation go away. "Are you going to eat?"

"What happened, then?" he pried. He wanted know, and she wasn't about to try to wave this away on him. He reached over, catching her wrist just as she turned to go back into the kitchen.

"Damon, don't. Not right now."

"Then when? Tell me, Elena. I need to know." She sniffed, blinking those round eyes twice as often, trying not to cry. God, she thought about her every day. She wished more than anything to see her again. But she couldn't, so she just tried to forget. But she needed to tell him.

"That's from three years ago, Damon," Elena swallowed, trying so hard to look Damon in the eye, but failing because the memories all but tore her to shreds. She hated them more than anything, and savored them all the same.

"Her name is Mary Jo, and she's our daughter."

Damon stared, unblinking.

"Mary Jo."

"Yeah," Elena nodded, smiling just a little. She really didn't want to talk about her. Thoughts everyday of how she wasn't here were bad enough. Damon was right, though. He needed to know. It just nearly killed her to. Picking up his hand, she gently squeezed it as if that was going to wake him out of his stupor.

"Tell me about her." He pushed the plate of rice from his spot on the table, hunger forgotten, and pulled the chair out, gesturing her to sit with him. She obliged, though the room felt like a leaf withering with her inside. She didn't know if she could. If so, she'd just sob the entire time. She found her phone in the confines of her back pocket and scrolled to the camera album specifically marked "Mary Jo." It was the best way to start this. For her at least. She silently laid the screen in Damon's hands. She looked at them all the time. The feel of her in her arms still hung with her like some torturous reminder. Her cry.

"She was so tiny," she began in a whisper. She touched Damon's hand, remembering how perfectly she fit there. Like two puzzle pieces. "You held her more than anyone. She loved you so much already. She saw you and would /smile/ so big." Elena choked a little, watching as Damon slowly flipped through the first photos of the reel. He was waiting on her to continue. She was waiting on her stability to rebuild so she could.

"She was sassy," she laughed lightly. "She only liked to be held over my shoulder. She would cry if I didn't. She hated things on her feet." Elena brushed her hands over her face and through her hair as she cleared her throat. "And she had this /one/ sound she made when she wanted you. Only you. No one else."

"So she liked me." Damon chuckled. Kids had never been his forte. They always gave him weird looks and ran the other way.

"Liked you? Loved you. Daddy's girl before she even left the hospital." She smiled at the thought, then began to play with her hands, eyes dropping to the table.

"So where is she?" Damon looked over to Elena, some sort of happiness there that she remembered from what seemed like a hundred years ago. /This was where you talk,/ she reminded herself, but her throat swelled. She took a breath, and instantly Damon knew.

"She was four months old, I put her in her bassinet for a nap." Elena brushed her cheeks, feeling the heat in them rise. "She was in the living room, and I was in the kitchen, cooking. I even made soup on the stove so it wouldn't be loud and wake her because she was such a light sleeper. I went back to get her for her supper, and she...she just...wasn't breathing." Elena covered her face, almost in shame. The memory was just as horrible as if it happened all over again. "She was right there, /in the next room/. It was /barely/ an hour-" Damon looked up to her just as she fell into a wave of crying. Arms folded around her, pulling her into his direction. Burying her face in his shoulder, she felt a level of comfort. Something that she'd not had in a while. But she had to tell him about his daughter's own death all over again, and that almost tore it all back down.

"Shh," he whispered in her ear. He couldn't help but feel the same. Those pictures were unlike anything he'd ever seen. The most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. He held her. He loved her. He knew it.

"I miss her so much, Damon," Elena inhaled. "I'm sorry." Damon frowned and gave a shake of his head.
"It's not your fault, babe," he whispered against her cheek. Damon watched the screen, illuminated with a picture of her and Mary Jo. Elena looked like another person. A glow about her that that child brought out. He believed she was perfect. She was beautiful. And at four months, it was obvious that she had her mother's curly hair. He brushed a palm over his face and kissed the top of Elena's head as a silent affirmation of grief. Damon wrenched his eyes closed. He hurt. For Mary Jo, the hole she tore in Elena's heart. And even in his, though he didn't recall a second of her existence. He loved her, God rest her tiny soul. Elena stirred, removing herself from Damon's grasp. He watched her carefully. Her eyes were red, soaked with tears. He stroked her hair, and she smiled the best she could. She felt alone. He could see it. She drifted across the room and picked up the hospital bag and dug through it, throwing things aside until she found what she was looking for. She held a silver ring, adorned with scrollwork on the sides. On top perched a blue stone. She stared it it for a long time, unspoken, before she could clear her throat.
"When she died, you wouldn't go to look at caskets with me." She brushed a finger over the piece in her fingers and glanced to him. "I begged and pleaded because I was so afraid to go, but you wouldn't." She rolled her lips, tears slipping down her cheeks again in the same paths warranted by the hundred before. "That was the first time you ever yelled at me. So I wrote you off in helping me and Bonnie went instead. When we got to the morticians, they wanted me to see her." Her lip quivered, and Damon's eyes welled up a little. "She was so peaceful, Damon. She looked like a little sleeping porcelain doll. I couldn't believe that I'd just held her a day ago. She'd just smiled at me. It didn't seem real." Elena closed her eyes, trying to stay together long enough to finish her story. "I was supposed to choose a casket. I did, but I couldn't bury her in the ground. It was January and snowing." She held the ring out to him, and carefully he took it as if it were a fragile thing. "I chose to have her cremated. And the lady helping me suggested these. Her ashes are in there." She picked her own ring off her right hand, showing one that mocked his, only much more feminine. "I had lapis put on top. Her birthday was in September. The diamonds are made from her ashes. What was left is in the band. And because the army is such an ass, you had some of them put in a vial so you could take her with you." Now things made sense to him.

"And I okayed this?" Damon chuckled a little, though it was wet with the salt water sitting in the back of his throat. This was never something he would have liked. Never.
"No, not at first. You had a fit. You flew into me about how burning her was wrong, and burying her was what we'd agreed on. You wouldn't even talk to me the next day, or at her funeral. But I didn't care. When the rings got here, I think that made it okay. But you were pissed at me for so long."

"I should've gone with you. You shouldn't have had to do that alone," he mumbled, pinching the bridge of his nose. His own stupid selfishness. He always tried, but it never failed to bring him down sometimes. Elena strung the ring onto the finger where the matching tanline awaited it, and he swallowed, feeling a sort of completeness that wasn't there before. She kissed it, then cradled his palm against her chest lovingly. Like she never even let any of it bother her. He was such an ass. How could she still love him after that?

"It's okay. It was hard, but we got through it." Damon shook his head.

"I should have been there for you. I can't believe that I did that to you when you needed me like that." Elena laughed a little, but the sarcasm was there.

"Me either," she spoke quietly. "I was so lost in all of it, felt like it was my fault she was gone. You tried, but I think you were just so upset shutting me out was all you knew how to do." Damon scratched his neck, too ashamed to look at her. How in the fuck had he gotten so damn lucky and treated her so bad? His own views of himself were crumbling.

"I can be good at that," he said solemnly, turning the ring around and around his finger. "Actually I sound like a Class A ass."

"You're not," Elena shook her head. She played with his hair, still sniffling as she buried her face in his shoulder, trying to pull herself together. She didn't seem to be doing a very good job of it. "You're actually better than anything I could have ever asked for." He kissed her cheek, somehow doubting that. He wished he could live up to it. So far, as what he'd heard, he'd let her down. And in no way was he proud.