A/N: Normally I can't stand writing flashback episodes and technically this one didn't even really need to be a complete chapter but for the sake of some epic brother-bonding and a little more insight into Elena's feelings I decided to turn it into one. I hope I managed to do a half-way decent job with the flash-back bits. If not, hopefully all the Defan love makes up for it. Enjoy & be sure to review and let me know your thoughts! P.S – Elena's diary is written before she knows for sure that Ric is the killer.
1912
"But I'm strong;
Strong enough to carry him
He ain't heavy, he's my brother"
I get a message alerting me to the news that Ric is being held in jail after being accused by the psycho doctor of being Mystic Falls' resident serial killer so I've come down to the station to see if I can talk Liz Forbes into setting him free.
"The cell is for his own good" she says, the crazy-doctor lady shot him and then used my blood to heal him right back up again.
"Are we gonna ignore the part where he was one of the killers victims?" – "Well Dr. Fell suggested his wounds could have been self-inflicted" of course she did. Because she's cuh-razy!
"Stay out of this Damon. You getting involved it only gonna make matters worse" oh yeah right, cause that's gonna happen.
"Don't make me put you in that cell with him" well okay then I guess I'm staying out of it. No way am I goin' back in a cell. Ever. The cellar of my house I can handle. Barely. But a cell? Like an honest to goodness cell? Not so much. Not even for Ric. Sorry buddy. So I'm just gonna...go now.
Ah lovely, Elena's here. Looking very alive and very grumpy. "Were you just with..." – "Ric's fine" at least she's talking to me, kind of. "Sheriff wants me to stay out of it" – "But you're not going to...are you?" no, obviously. I'm just gonna work it from the outside.
"Seems just as good a plan as any" – "Your friend is in jail for murder you have to do something" yep I know. I'm just trying to rile you up a bit, seems like that's the only way you'll talk to me these days.
"Well I guess I could rip out Dr. False Accusation's throat, maybe her tongue. You know I could chew it up into tiny little pieces; feed it to the squirrels" yummy. Add some extra, flavour, to Stefan's diet.
"Stop it Damon" – "Guess me staying out of it suddenly seems like a good idea doesn't it?" I may as well be the one to bring up the elephant in the police station 'cause she's sure as hell not gonna do it. "I saved your life last night. You're welcome" not that I'll ever get a thank you from the girl with the biggest death with I've ever seen. Not that I even need one.
"You know you could show a little compassion for Bonnie" she's all indignant and righteous, standing there with her arms crossed and her judgy little eyes flaring and it's getting a tiny bit exasperating. "Her and her mom must really be hurting right now. Should I send lasagne?" the woman is still alive. Kinda. She's just, upgraded, to one of the walking dead. How can she hate me for this?
"Now you're just being mean" yeah yeah, I get it "I'm mean, you hate me; the earth, is back on its axis" god I worked so hard. We worked so hard, to get to where we are now. Where we were? I don't know. But to go from just a few nights ago; kissing on her front porch to this? Yeah. It hurts.
She turns back around to face me, "You know if you keep pushing people away you're gonna end up alone" and then she turns and walks away again. What does she mean? I'm not pushing her away, am I? She's the one who's mad at me. Right? Maybe she doesn't hate me. Although that's probably just wishful thinking.
Either way, I have murders to solve, a best friend to rescue from jail and a brother to teach because his incessant ring-tapping is driving me insane. Busy man, busy day.
"Dear diary, a chipmunk asked me my name today. I told him it was Joe. That lie, will haunt me forever" I mock him when I find him sitting brooding in front of his journal.
"What do you want?" I want you to help me solve a murder brother. I wander over to his bookcase in the hopes that the journal I'm searching for will magically jump out at me but no such luck.
"What are you doin'?" – "Diggin' up clues...we have a whodunit in town. Hey, do you remember when we came back for Zachariah's funeral?" – "Vaguely" great well when was it? I am beyond useless with dates; I barely even remember my own birthday half the time.
"1912" – "So much for vaguely" I chuck the era appropriate diary at him, "1912, or as I like to call it: the last time Mystic Falls had a serial killer on its hands" someone was killing council members back then too. One of them was Zachariah Salvatore, technically he wasn't really a Salvatore but the family name had to go somewhere.
I knew Stefan would return for the funeral so I followed. Hadn't seen him in person in a very long time so I figured I'd stop by and say hello. Also, I thought it might have been him who did it; there was a point where he kinda had a thing for killing the Founders. And family members, come to think of it. Although I can't really get judgemental on that front, I have been known to kill off a few family members myself mostly when they were trying to kill me, or, sell me, but that's a completely different topic.
I was an uptight douche back then but when Stef asked me to go for a drink with him, he told me that he'd missed me and dammit if I hadn't been alone for 50 years and I'd kinda missed him too. Crazy, right? Anyway, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
"Whadd'ya say brother, you wanna go get drunk?" – "I get it. You're bored, your best friends in jail and you don't have anything better to do with yourself" well yeah. Obviously. "And I was hoping you could help me solve a murder" I take the journal back and walk away. He follows in less than three seconds and we head for the Grill.
"Ooh, she-devil nine o' clock" Barbie Klaus. Conversing with Mrs. Mayor, honestly what's with all this making nice with Originals that's goin' on in this town?
Stefan starts his damn ring-tapping again and I tell him to stop it because otherwise I'm gonna pull the thing off and then we really will have issues.
"You know, quitting blood cold turkey after a Ripper binge, probably not the best approach. Every time you play that all or nothing game you eventually leave a trail of bodies so I'm thinking now's a good time to pay our old friend moderation a visit"
Apparently though, my brother doesn't wanna talk about his inability to be a vampire and refers back to the murders instead. I, however, am convinced that we can do both. Solve the mystery of the killer and solve Stef's blood-aholic issues.
I've decided the time has finally come to stop preaching to him and start teaching him instead. But I let it go for now, plenty of time for that later.
"At least in 1912 they killed a Salvatore" – "Which Salvatore would that be?" oh great, I forgot she was here. Wonder what she wants this time? "Your family owned the logging mills back then?" huh? Rebekah says she just wants to know the town history but something seems fishy to me.
"You know you don't have to disguise your true motives Blondie Bex; if you want more sex just ask for it" – "Not enough liquor in the world" ooh I'm hurt! "Aw come on, it was too good for you to be this hostile" maybe if I sleep with her again she'll tell me what she's after. Nah, probably not. And I got in enough trouble the last time I did that so I don't really wanna go through that again.
Stefan gets up and moves to the other side of me "he's jonesing for some O-positive" I explain to Rebekah. "I'm not jonesing" yeah, you are. Rebekah asks if they caught the murderer back in 1912 but they never did. Eventually the council just wrote it all off on vampires.
"Yeah maybe it was a vampire, Damon" Stefan's got his accusatory tone of voice on, "don't think for a second you didn't cross my mind too brother. But these murders weren't your style were they?" nope. No ripped off limbs to be seen for miles. At least...not until later.
"Plus there were no other vampires circulating then" – "Well there was one other vampire. Do you remember Safe?" oh do I ever. Yes, I remember Sage. How could I forget?
Sage is the vampire who taught me how to be a better vampire. As I said, back then I was a complete dick, mostly due to the fact that I hadn't had sex in about half a century. I was 'saving' myself for Katherine. Hey, it was a different time back then okay!
On top of that my brother had damned me to a lonely existence that I despised and Katherine was all I had to live for. I drank blood to survive and that was the extent of it. Sage changed all of that for me and I never looked back.
Of course I was still all caught up with getting Kit-Kat out of the tomb, but I learned to stop hating who I had become, and start embracing my eternity instead. Which is exactly what my brother needs to do. He's a vampire, we need blood to survive but we don't have to kill. We don't have to hurt. We don't have to rip apart.
Rebekah follows Stefan and I to the dart board, "why are you so grumpy?" she asks him, "he's on a master cleanse, trying to be a better man and all."
"I'm just not interested in slaughtering innocent human beings anymore" and therein lies the problem. Who said anything about slaughtering? You see the issues I'm having here?
I take his journal and start reading from it, "Dear diary, Damon has lost his way. Though I have pulled my own life together, he continues to waste his" harsh. Yeah. That's why he's the out of control Ripper and I'm the master of self-control. Because he 'pulled' his life together. Bravo Stefan.
Rebekah steals the journal from me and continues where I left off "his bitterness consumes him, he is nothing but blackness and bile" yeah, I've read it all before. Stef's got a whole lotta journals and I'm kinda nosy. Also I tend to have a lot of time on hands. Honestly, sometimes I think I should take up a hobby.
"You're doing it again" I tell Stefan's annoying new habit. "I need to uh, I gotta get out of here" I get him to admit that he's freaking out which is Stage One in my master plan and then Rebekah and I follow him outside, I wasn't really planning on using her for Stage Two but she's here and I guess she'll come in somewhat useful.
"So he doesn't want to drink human blood?" – "Ah, he has an eternally guilty conscience" there's a girl getting out of her car so I speed up in front of her, compel her to keep quiet and then I bite her.
"Damon stop" Stefan comes and pulls me away, "Sorry brother, its dinnertime. Have a bite" boy looks like he's either gonna pass out or have a full-blown panic attack and we have got to get this right.
"It's tough love Stefan. You're not gonna survive this cold turkey thing you never do. It's time to get that monkey off your back" – "No. No" Rebekah threatens to kill the girl and I tell him that he can save her.
Stef's all about bein' the good guy so he won't be able to resist the opportunity I'm presenting him with and he needs to see, needs to be shown that he can stop. That he doesn't have to drain them dry. That he doesn't have to be the Ripper. That it doesn't have to control him. Eventually he takes the bait I'm offering and I send Rebekah away.
"All right that's enough you're gonna drain her" I get him off but he tries to come at me.
"I said that's enough. Hey, you wanna fight hunger or you wanna fight me?" he calms down and backs off and I bite into my wrist to heal the girl.
Well, that went as well as could be expect-"What are you doing?" ah fuck. Elena. Of course.
"Stefan?" she whispers at him, and yeah, this is probably gonna just undo everything that is good about what I've managed to accomplish here tonight. "What are you two doing?" ah 'Lena. We're doing what vampires do sweetheart.
"Relax Elena" I hold my hands up because I know she's scared even though she knows she has no reason to be. "Just a little experiment, there's no need to make this more dramatic than it needs to be" she looks thoroughly disgusted which, is just not good, so not good.
But you know, if you're gonna hang out with vampires then you're gonna see blood. Matt leads her away and I turn back to my brother.
"So that's gonna take a little time. Stefan, hey wait. Stefan wait" but he doesn't wait. This time though, I go after him. Back in the day, once Sage had taught me the perks of being a vampire, I thought I might be able to share my experience with my brother, and maybe not be so lonely anymore. Yeah. It didn't really turn out that way.
I find him back in front of the fireplace, "they let Ric go" I tell him but he doesn't reply.
"I know it might now seem like it but you did really well tonight. I mean, before you know it you're gonna be the King of Moderation" and still only silence greets me. God it's hard being all supportive and such. Let's try a different approach.
"Elena will understand" – "it doesn't really matter what Elena thinks" aha! He speaks!
"Ah-ah, none of that. No more no humanity Stefan. There is a road called recovery and we are on it"
"Why do you even care huh? The whole brother-bonding thing? Getting Elena to hate you? What you feel guilty because you kissed her is that it Damon?" hell no I don't feel guilty because of that.
I'm doing it because I get it, the lashing out, the anger he's feeling, the hurt, the rage. It's easier to focus on that, to focus on everything that is not the pain. Trust me; I wrote that fucking book. But I also know that there's only so long you can keep that up before it does indeed consume you and turn you into 'blackness and bile' and I won't let that happen to him. Not again.
But more than that, I'm doing it because yeah, I feel guilty because I could have helped you before now and I didn't. I feel guilty because I let you walk away from me and a headless girl in 1912 and I did nothing to stop you. I feel guilty because if I had stopped you then you wouldn't have become the fucking Ripper of Monterey.
And I feel guilty because you are my brother and buried somewhere fucking deep underneath all the shit I feel for you, I fucking love you.
Wow. Did I just...oh what the hell it's the damn truth.
'Course none of this is what I actually say to my brother. He wouldn't believe me even if I wanted to. Which I don't.
"I let you walk away. I watched you go over the edge and I didn't do anything to stop you" – "You couldn't have" don't give me that, of course I could have. I have always been stronger than you little brother.
"I just didn't want to. But I want to now. Whenever you go too far I will be there to pull you back. Every second, every day until you don't need me" –"Why?" 'cause I just figured out that I sorta love ya?
"'Cause right now, you're all I got"
Well, I would say that the brother-bonding part of our day went spectacularly well. Now it's time to try and solve the murders because we're not really any closer on that front. Tomorrow's problem I guess.
I'm in a melancholic mood and sitting playing the piano, reminiscing about the times my mother would play for me when I was just a young boy with no problems or worries whatsoever, when Stefan comes through with information from the family archives.
"So now you wanna be helpful?" – "want me to go back to being mad at you?" eh, not so much to be honest.
Stefan says that they never arrested anyone for the 1912 murders, but they got a confession 10 years later from one Samantha Gilbert.
"That is very weird" – "Why?" – "Because I'm pretty sure I had already killed her" so she must have had one of the 'come back to life' rings.
"Jonathan Gilbert only made two of those rings. Jeremy has one of them and the others..."
"Alaric's"
Dear Diary,
Meredith Fell accused Alaric of being the Mystic Falls serial killer and he was put in jail, so Matt and I broke into her house to search for clues and she caught us there.
When we left the Police Station we were walking home and we passed the Grill, where Damon and Stefan were just out in the middle of the street, feeding on some girl! Stefan was covered in blood and I don't understand what was going on. Why were they doing that? Why would Damon encourage Stefan drink human blood? He said it was an 'experiment' as if I'm supposed to know what that means!
Matt brought me home and he asked me what it is about them, he said that doesn't get it, my 'thing' with them so I tried to explain it as best as I can, which to be fair, isn't all that clear because even I don't get it in its entirety, but some things I know for sure.
I know that, when my parents died and I met Stefan, there was something about him that felt safe, which I know, is crazy, but it's like I knew that he would always be there, that he would always love me. I knew that he would never die. Or at the very least, that it would be really difficult for him to die on me.
And it was the same with Damon. These people, they are the ones that are not allowed to die on me, the ones that aren't supposed to die. And it made it safe to love Stefan, safe to care for Damon.
And then Matt asked about Damon. I told him that Damon just sort of snuck up on me, that he got under my skin and no matter what I do, I just can't seem to shake him. And then Matt said that he thinks once you fall in love with someone he doesn't think you can ever shake them. But I didn't say I was in love with him.
More and more often people are confronting me with my feelings for Damon and more and more often I find myself confused. Sometimes I feel like I'm fighting a war inside of myself and I have no idea which side of me is going to come out on top. I know that I need to try and figure out what my feelings really are for Damon, but I'm not even sure how to go about doing that.
One thing, I know for sure though.
Lexi told me that when it's 'real' you can't walk away. And all Damon has ever told me is that he wants it to be real between us. Whatever it is that is between us, I can't walk away from it. No matter how many times I've tried to walk away from Damon, I just can't make myself do it.
Sometimes I feel like our relationship is like watching a car-crash in motion and yet I can't stop watching. I don't want to. So I guess Damon got his wish, because no matter what else is between us, I know it's real.
Elena