Bloodlines

Chapter 19: The Cell

Beta: PrincessOfSilence

Disclaimer: I own nothing of TVD or TO. I only own my characters and my plot.

The sounds of a gate being opened and rough hands on his arms made Damon open his eyes even though he was still very weak. Time managed to somehow move so slowly that he could have sworn that it would freeze soon. His double vision settled and he was able to focus on Wes sticking a needle into his arm.

"What the hell are you doing to me?" His voice was quiet.

"Vervain." Wes replied and injected the vampire. "To keep you calm."

"Wes? Why am I here?" The vampire asked and he took in his surroundings. He was still in the same cell, but he didn't know for how long. It had felt like an eternity and he was hungry.

"I lost a test subject last night, and you're gonna replace him." Wes backed away and locked the cell gate, leaving Damon to his own devices. The batch of vervain was so strong that he felt himself slipping into unconsciousness once again. His head leaned against the cold, hard floor of the cell, wishing that he was snuggling into a warm pillow in the bed that he shared with his wife at home. His eyes blinked lethargically a few times before finally closing and his entire body fell slack.

"The number you have dialed is not in service at this time. Please check the number or-"

"Dammit." Cassandra hissed as she hung up and tossed her phone into her bag. She was at her wit's end because Damon never came home last night. She didn't panic at first; she figured that maybe he spent the night up at the college, but when she tried to call him she got the same automated greeting the past eight times she called. She felt it in her gut that something was wrong and she even thought that the baby felt it as well. The entire night she was kicking wildly, as if trying to tell her mother that things weren't well.

Cassandra rubbed her hand over her stomach, observing a moment of peace before slinging her bag over her shoulder and traipsing downstairs. Looks like she had to go to Whitmore and play detective for the day. She mentally scolded herself for leaving Damon at the college, but she didn't have time to worry about what she should or shouldn't have done; she had to find her husband and fast. She blew past Stefan, Katherine, and Caroline who were in the living room, but she stopped just at the front door when she saw something that made her walk back to where the trio was.

"Is that a..." She saw the large safe that Stefan was trapped in on the floor of the living room and she looked between the three faces. "What the hell is this thing doing in my house?"

"Your house?" Katherine stressed.

"Yes, my house. I live here."

"Well, so do I. Does that mean it's my house too?" She pouted.

"You do know that because you're human I can just lock you in there and you'd never see the light of day again, right?" Cassandra pointed to the safe and Katherine gulped nervously. She knew that Cassandra would do it and she didn't exactly have people looking after her. The only one might be Stefan, but even that wasn't entirely true.

"I'm having Stefan deal with the source of his PTSD." Caroline announced.

"And you know that this will work, how exactly?" The hybrid raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure that you're not suppressing your feelings after what happened to Jesse last night?"

"That's what I asked," Stefan piped up.

Caroline crossed her arms over her chest, a glare in her bright blue eyes. "I texted you last night. I said I was sorry about blowing up at you."

"And I didn't answer because I knew that you would be looking for an apology and I'm not giving you one. No way in hell."

"So, you're just going to pretend that killing Jesse was okay?" She hissed.

"No, it wasn't okay, but I did what I had to do. Maybe if you'd take your blonde head out of your ass, you'd see that." Cassandra growled back, her double set of fangs beginning to show. She was not in the mood for any kind of confrontation with anyone.

"What's got you?" Stefan asked, taking his gaze off of the safe.

"Damon didn't come home last night. I think Wes did something to him." She frowned.

"Wes?" The blonde asked.

"Yes, Wes. They guy who turned Jesse into a vampire blood sucking machine. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to find my husband." She adjusted her bag on her shoulder and brushed past Caroline, knocking her shoulder. Once she reached the front door, she glanced over her shoulder at the blonde. "Oh, Caroline, if I accidentally rip the heads off of someone else you have a crush on, you'll have to deal with it."

Aaron kept his head down and his eyes on the floor as he schlepped to his dorm room. He avoided groups of chatting friends and couples who exchanged chaste kisses on the campus greens. He rubbed his tired eyes that had large purple bags underneath them and he scratched at the stubble on his chin that was growing in. He fished around for his key in his pocket and unlocked his room. Once he was inside, he closed the door behind him and he tossed his backpack on his bed. He slumped down at his desk and started doing some homework when he suddenly felt like he was being watched. He whipped around to see Cassandra lounging on his bed.

"Hey Aaron," she waved coyly.

He was out of his chair and backed into a corner in seconds. "How the hell did you get in here?"

"Well, you move so slow that anyone could have slipped inside your room." She grinned and the teen rushed to his door, but Cassandra blocked his way. Her slender fingers wrapped around his neck and she slammed him into the wall.

"Where is he?!" She growled angrily as Aaron tried to escape her harsh grip on his neck.

"W...what are you talking about?" He stammered.

"Did I stutter? I asked you a question and I expect an answer or else you won't have a tongue anymore." She hissed. "I'll ask you one more time. Where. Is. He?"

"I don't know who you're talking about." He rasped weakly.

"You clearly don't value your life very much. You're testing my patience which is already wearing thin." She leaned in closer, so she was inches from his face. "Where is Dr. Maxfield?"

"Cassandra!" Elena shouted as she walked in the door of Aaron's dorm room.

"Oh, hey Elena. I figured you got my messages." The hybrid smirked while still holding Aaron in a bruising grip.

"I did. Just please put him down." The vampire begged and closed the door behind her so any hall mates wouldn't hear what had happened.

Cassandra sighed and rolled her eyes, her fingers loosened around Aaron's neck and he crumpled to the floor. "Fine."

Elena rushed to him and compelled him to forget what had happened. She sat Aaron on the bed and looked to Cassandra. "What is the matter with you?"

"Damon was with Wes last night. Wes is Aaron's guardian. That means that this little squirt knows where Wes is." She told her.

"That doesn't mean you come in here and nearly kill him." Elena fought.

"Oh, don't turn into Caroline, Elena. It's not like you. You would do the same if it was Stefan." The hybrid glanced at Aaron who's gaze was shifting between them.

Elena swallowed her next argument, knowing that Cassandra was right and she sat beside Aaron. She gently placed her hand on his shoulder and spoke softly to him. "Aaron, we need your help. Cassandra's husband went to talk to Wes last night and she hasn't seen or heard from him. So, she's a little worried and wants to find him as soon as possible. Do you think that you could help us find Wes?"

Aaron's weary gaze looked to Cassandra who was standing with her arms over her chest. A sullen expression was now taking the place of her once confident disposition and he couldn't help but feel sorry for her. He nodded and got up from his bed. "Yeah. I think I know a place where we can look."

Subject 21051 has been conscious for approximately thirty minutes and is showing signs of alertness. Skin is pale from lack of blood. Last time blood was consumed is unknown.

Dr. Maxfield continued to take his notes while he watched Damon try to sit up in his cell. These notes were essential to his research and would someday change the way that people look at medicine. He studied journals upon journals of vampires in captivity and it amazed him how these creatures were able to regenerate themselves so quickly. Damon leaned weakly against the bars of his cell and pursed his lips.

"Just so you know, didn't end well for the last Augustines. You're inviting bad karma in by holding me here." He coughed.

"Is that what you told Dr. Whitmore?" Wes inquired and Damon audibly groaned.

"Dr. Whitmore wasn't much for conversation." That name brought bile up in Damon's throat. He remembered exactly what he looked like even though he wasn't a member of Augustine anymore. The first night he met Dr. Whitmore, he already knew that he was in for a world of hurt.

Damon yanked at his restraints that kept him tied down to a gurney in Dr. Whitmore's lab. He'd been drugged with vervain, but it was slowly disintegrating in his veins. All he wanted was to get out of this place and have a hot meal. Dr. Whitmore moved closer with a flashlight, shining it in the vampire's eyes to check dilation and then lifted up his shirt where the metal bar over his chest allowed him.

"As much as I would like a free checkup," he grinned and locked eyes with Dr. Whitmore. If he could compel himself out of here, then he would be a free man. "You're gonna let me go.

Dr. Whitmore simply smiled and patted Damon on his shoulder. "That's a good try." He then pulled his sleeve up slightly to show the vampire a wrist watch. "I'm wearing vervain." He then probed Damon's stomach with his cold fingers and the vampire shifted uncomfortably.

"You know, most people would buy me dinner first." He quipped.

"This isn't a personal matter. It's for the advancement of science." The doctor replied.

Damon's expression hardened. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Dr. Whitmore pulled Damon's shirt down and turned his back on the vampire to his table full of tools. Each one gleamed dangerously under the bright lab lights. "You're a vampire. Your blood heals others;your body heals itself. You'll regenerate parts of internal organs after I remove them."

"Listen. How I got this amazing body has nothing to do with science, so running-AAH!" Unbeknownst to Damon, Dr. Whitmore had chosen a sharp scalpel and he drove it into Damon's eye. Blood spurted from his socket and Damon's screams echoed off the walls of the lab.

"You talk too much." He unstrapped the vampire and he fell to the floor, still writhing in pain.

"So you Augustine freaks are still at it, eye exams and that sort of thing?" Damon spat.

"Jesse was proof that my research goes far beyond that. I trained him to crave vampire blood instead of human blood. Now, I'm ready to take my research to the next level." Wes explained as he jotted down some more notes. He then closed up his notebook and left Damon on his own.

Aaron led the girls to the Whitmore house and they both raised an eyebrow when he fished a set of keys from his pocket to open the front door. They exchanged a glance and a shrug with one another as Aaron opened the door. The teen stepped inside and Cassandra followed, but Elena was caught behind the barrier.

"Oh, um...you know, when you said that Wes was probably doing research I didn't realize it would be here at Whitmore House." The vampire kicked her foot against the barrier and Cassandra bit her lip nervously, not sure of how to get Elena inside without being obvious that she had to be invited in.

"Oh, yeah. This place is like a second home." Aaron obliviously looked around the house, feeling a sense of comfort warm his soul.

Elena shuffler her feet awkwardly. "Mmhmm."

Aaron finally turned around and raised an eyebrow at Elena. "What are you waiting for?"

"I-"

"Elena has this weird thing...she likes to be invited into homes because she has manners." Cassandra interrupted. "I don't have any." Elena gave Aaron a charming smile and laugh which made him wave his hand, gesturing for her to come inside.

"Come in." He said and Elena took one very careful step over the threshold. She sighed thankfully and closed the door behind her.

Cassandra's eyes scanned over photos that were on the mantel of the fireplace. "So, who owns this place?"

"Not to sound like a douche, but technically, I do." Aaron replied and both girls gave him a confused look. "Yeah. It's part of the Whitmore trust that I inherited when my parents died. Yeah, don't hold that against me. Usually when people find out that my name's Aaron Whitmore—"

"Wait. Hold on." Elena's eyes were nearly falling from her sockets. "Your last name's Whitmore? So you, like, own this school?"

Aaron chuckled and watched the girls make themselves at home around the house. "That's what they think."

Elena was looking at some plaques that were hung up on the wall when she noticed a framed picture with a plaque that read 'Whitmore House - 50th Anniversary Commemoration.' Normally she would have continued looking at the other plaques, but a man in the photograph made her stop dead in her tracks. Shaky hands reached up and grasped the plaque, taking it down from the wall so she could have a closer look and her suspicions were confirmed.

"That's my dad." She spoke and Cassandra's attention was suddenly jarred from a painting she was admiring.

"Grayson Gilbert was one of the best doctors the Augustines ever had." Wes' voice made the trio freeze in their spots.

Busted.

"Where the hell is Damon?" Cassandra was itching for a fight with the doctor.

"You don't need to worry about Damon. He's being well taken care of." Wes replied and he took a few steps forward, a hand behind his back. "What I am more concerned about is why Dr. Grayson's daughter is a vampire."

Elena's hands shook as she held the picture and her gaze was distracted for a moment when she looked down at the picture. Wes pulled his hand from his back, revealing a full syringe of vervain. Before anyone could act, Cassandra's hand wrapped around a lamp that was resting on a table and she hurled it across the room. Elena ducked and it hit Wes, making him drop the syringe.

"Elena, run!" Cassandra shouted and pushed the young vampire for the door. Elena rushed out and Wes took a stake from his ankle to make an effort to stab her as she whizzed past him. She was out the door before he could aim at her, so he went after his next target. Cassandra was so worried about getting Elena out of the house that she hadn't realized that Wes had crept up behind her.

"No!" Aaron called out, but Cassandra already felt the crushing blow of the stake in her back. He had tried to warn her and he stood in shock as Cassandra fell to the floor and Wes picked up his syringe. "What the hell are you doing?"

"I'll explain it all to you, Aaron. I promise. But first," Wes crouched down to Cassandra and plunged the syringe into her neck roughly. Almost immediately the concoction took effect. Vervain seemed so foreign to her body after not ingesting it for five months and her limbs grew weak in seconds. Eyes drooped and she was unconscious even before Wes could administer the entire dosage.

"Don't worry. You'll be with Damon sooner than you expected." His final words brought her some amount of comfort that she would see her husband, but she couldn't imagine the condition that he was in when she'd get to see him.

"Come on, Cass. Wake up." Damon reached through a small barred opening in his cell and gently shook his wife's arm. Wes had dumped her in the cell next to his a few moments ago and she had yet to wake up. Her skin felt cold and her heart was beating lethargically. He soothingly rubbed his thumb over her skin and she groaned quietly, her body moving about and waking up. She opened her eyes and focused her blurred vision to see Damon across from her, separated by thick bars.

"Hey," he greeted her as calmly as he could.

"Damon?" She questioned groggily, but realized that they had found each other once again. Finding her strength, she pushed herself to move closer to him and she grasped his hand tightly. "Oh my God. I was so worried. Are you alright?"

"I'm fine." He assured her and got to his feet. "Wes injected you with vervain. Maybe when it wears off, we'll be able to..." He grabbed the cell bars and tried to bend them with all of his strength, but they didn't budge. "Break through these."

Cassandra slowly sat up, her brain was still foggy from the vervain. "What the hell is going on? Why are you here? Why am I here?"

"Wes is carrying out the grand Augustine tradition. Getting his kicks off vampire torture." Damon explained and sat back down.

"Did he tell you that?" His wife wondered.

"He didn't have to." Damon shook his head. "I've been here before."

"What?" Her concern grew with each passing second. The vampire nodded solemnly. He'd spent enough time in Augustine that he could recall each painful memory. How he was cut open and gutted, dissected like a frog in biology class, and his organs being taken out, poked at and put back in his body before being sewn up and left to rot in his cell in a pool of his own blood.

"Someone in my family sold me out to the Augustines in 1953. Every day, this nut job Dr. Whitmore tortured us, cut into us, took pieces of our eyes out, pushed us to every limit he could imagine, and he had quite the imagination." He blinked the memories away, but he knew that they would always be there to haunt him in the end. Cassandra cringed at the images that she conjured up in her mind and she could only imagine how much worse the reality of Damon's experience was. "Kept me in this very cell, and don't think I haven't appreciated the irony."

"How long were you here?" Cassandra asked softly.

"Five years, give or take." He answered.

"How did you not go completely insane?"

A small smile tugged at Damon's lips. "Believe it or not, I made a friend."

Dr. Whitmore roughly shoved Damon into his cell and the vampire crumpled weakly the ground. He'd been in the lab all day and achy from being stabbed and poked by the doctor. His wounds still bled and he could have sworn that his intestines were put in the wrong way. The vampire laid on the floor, spent and weak as Dr. Whitmore locked him in his cell and he hardly noticed that someone resided in the cell next to his.

"Welcome. Dr. Whitmore never gets tired of watching us vampire heal, but he gives us one glass of blood per day, just enough to keep us alive." The inmate who had dark hair and equally dark eyes spoke, but Damon was too tired and frustrated to listen. He bent down, pressing himself close to the opening that linked his and Damon's cells and offered his hand. "Pick yourself up, soldier. My name's Enzo."

"He was a soldier in Europe during World War II." Damon added.

"How did he end up here?"

"Dr. Whitmore was working in a battlefield hospital when he discovered Enzo was a vampire, so he drugged him, locked him in a coffin to ship him overseas. He'd been here for ten years by the time I joined the party."

"Ten years? In this place?" Cassandra winced at the very thought of spending even a day in Augustine.

Enzo sat against the wall of his cell and sipped slowly at his glass of blood. Vampires in captivity were given a small glass of blood at the end of each day with just enough to keep them from desiccating. The smell of it caught Damon's nostrils and he grasped his glass. He chugged down the blood and Enzo tsked at him before taking another small sip. "You're doing it wrong. You're living for the moment. You need to live for the future."

Damon tossed his glass aside. "What future?"

"The one where you get your revenge." Enzo replied. "For instance, in my future, my revenge will start with killing Whitmore's dog and mailing it to his house postage due. Go on. Picture your revenge. Use your imagination."

The thought of revenge never crossed Damon's mind when he was in cell mostly because he never believed that he would get out of his unfortunate predicament, but when Enzo had shared his plan, it gave Damon a new sense of hope and he smirked for the first time since he was in captivity. His hand grasped a small rock on the cell floor and weighed it.

"I can see it." He proclaimed and turned to use the sharper edge of the rock to carve into the cell wall.

"Damon, Wes knew Elena's father. They worked together. Elena saw a picture of her father in the Whitmore house. Wes said that Grayson was an Augustine, too." Cassandra said.

"People are full of surprises," Damon sighed. Cassandra stood and took hold of her own bars. She yanked and pulled and tugged at them with all of her might, but they wouldn't move. She was actually breaking a sweat as she tried to get herself out, but her efforts were only exhausting her body more. She plopped down on the floor, defeated and she had to lay down to conserve her energy.

"We have to get out of here. No one knows where we are." She said and the terrifying realization that she and Damon would be part of Dr. Maxfield's research scared her. "What if we're stuck in here forever? What if...oh God, what if Wes finds out about the baby? I don't even want to imagine the things that Wes will do to her...to us. I don't want to stay here anymore. I just want to go home." She buried her head into the crook of her arm as she laid on her side and Damon approached her seeing that she was getting upset.

"Oh, hey." He approached the bars that separated them and wanted nothing more than to break them and hold her close. "I am so, so sorry I got you caught up in this. Hey. Look at me. Hey." He reached forward and took her hand in his, squeezing it reassuringly. Cassandra lifted her head and wiped away a few tears that had stained her cheeks. Her nerves were unwinding and her fears grew each passing second that she was in her cell and she had to let herself cry even if it was for a moment.

"I'm scared, Damon." She whimpered and Damon's heart broke in his chest. Cassandra was always strong and rarely did she ever succumb to the forces against her, but he could see the fear in her eyes and it saddened him greatly.

"I know you are, but I promise you I will get you out of here, ok? I'll get you out of here." She nodded and took his hand in both of hers. She scooted closer and leaned her forehead against the bars. Damon copied her and where the bars had an empty space between them, they could feel their skin touching.

Enzo stood with his arms through the bars of his cell while Damon was huddled on the ground in his. He'd endured a long day of torture and the pain ran so deep through his body that he wasn't sure if he'd ever feel right again. He didn't know how much longer he could endure being a prisoner of Augustine; he didn't even know how long he was in captivity for. All he knew was that his days were long, dark, and filled with torture.

"You much of a sports fan, Damon?" Enzo asked, but he received no answer from the raven haired vampire. He shrugged and continued speaking, hoping to make time pass a little faster. "Neither am I. Any other interests? Fine wines, travels, cars?" He cast a sideways glance to see that Damon was having trouble staying awake. "I'm partial to Jaguars myself, convertibles, the kind you take on a Sunday drive to impress a pretty girl. Ever done that?"

The very thought that Enzo put in his head painted a very nice and homey picture for him, so he willed himself to finally speak. "Once or twice."

"Oh, come now. Got to be more than that." Enzo said with a hearty chuckle.

"Well, the girl I loved was more of a horse and carriage type girl." He answered.

"What, just one girl?"

"Never met another one like her." He smiled weakly at the image of the one girl who ever meant anything to him.

"Tell me about her." Enzo requested, but saw that Damon was a little too weak for now to tell his story. "Okay, I'll go first. There was one. Her name was Maggie."

"Where'd you meet her?"

"Here of all places. She was working for Dr. Whitmore."

"Charming?" Damon wondered.

"Oh, she was. Very." Enzo looked off to the side and smiled. "She was kind to me. She used to sit here in the hallway taking notes while she observed me."

Damon raised an eyebrow. "That's how you fell for her?"

"Oh, she was also stunningly beautiful." He recalled. "You have to understand she wasn't part of the torture and the experiments. For the longest while, she didn't realize that Dr. Whitmore was doing more than just observing my behavior. I didn't have the heart to tell her;I was just so glad of her company, you know?"

Damon nodded sympathetically. "Yeah."

"When she finally realized what was going on here, she couldn't bear it. So she said she was sorry, and she left." He finished and pressed his face closer against the bars in hopes that he'd see Maggie again, but he knew that she was gone forever.

"Well, you know," Damon piped up and turned over on his stomach. "It never really would have worked anyway. You're a vampire, she's a human. The relationship would have been doomed from the beginning."

Enzo shook his head and met Damon's blue gaze. "You need a more positive outlook, mate." The vampire rose to his feet and copied Enzo's posture against the bars of his cell. For a few moments, he rested there until Enzo's voice jarred him from his daydream. "Your turn."

Damon smirked and tilted his head. "What's not to tell?"

"Come on, mate. I told you my story. I want to hear yours. Who was that one girl that captured Damon Salvatore's heart?" The raven haired vampire took a few moments to gather his thoughts before speaking.

"Her name was Cassandra and I met her when her father brought her to our home to discuss business. She was beautiful, so beautiful. Dark, long curls, warm, brown eyes and a smile-a smile that lit up a room." Just thinking about Cassandra made Damon feel better and he wondered about her. He'd seen her a few nights before he was captured. They went to a drive in movie, sat on the hood of her bright red Chevy Bel Air, and caught up after not seeing each other since the forties.

"She knew how to play football." Damon added.

"Did she now?" Enzo smirked at that. "A woman playing football. Imagine that."

"She threw the ball so hard that she jammed my brother's finger." He laughed, remembering the first day he met her and she watched eagerly as he and Stefan tossed around a football. She had managed to snatch it from Damon after he made a wise crack about how women were too fragile to play sports and he became more enchanted with her wit and charm. She then showed off her skill by throwing the ball to Stefan so hard that his finger swelled the following day.

"So, what happened to her?" He knew that question was coming, but no matter how much he prepared himself for it, it still hurt.

"We grew apart. Turning into vampires changed us both and we were separated for a long time. Whenever we managed to find each other, it was always the wrong time. I'd be with someone or she would be with someone and we never went back to the way we were." He answered sadly and closed his eyes. "I saw her a few nights ago and I miss her."

"I'm sorry, Damon. Maybe when you get out of here, the time will be right and you'll sweep her off her feet." Enzo's hopeful attitude made Damon smile and he hoped that he was right.

The door down the hallway opened and the vampires stopped their chatter hearing footsteps make their way down the hall until Dr. Whitmore stood between their cells with a key ring in his hands. His gaze shifted from Enzo to Damon, from Damon to Enzo as if to see which one was ready for more torture.

"Who's next?" He asked the two vampires who were looking at him tensely without saying a word. A few more silent seconds passed and Dr. Whitmore moved to Damon's cell.

"21051, you seem to have more energy." He put the key in the lock on Damon's cell and he gulped nervously, not wanting to be tortured again.

"I take that as an insult!" Enzo shouted and rattled the bars loudly. Dr. Whitmore paused, the key still in the lock and Damon held his breath. "I have far more energy than my neighbor here. I can't believe you didn't notice."

Dr. Whitmore removed the key from Damon's cell and he walked over to Enzo's, unlocking the door and grabbing him firmly. "Your turn then."

Damon looked on in shock as Enzo took the bullet for him, literally, and couldn't believe that he had let his friend do that for him. He angrily punched the bars and growled as he paced around in his cell. Not long after, he could hear Enzo's screams of pain and that made him pace more, guilt eating away at him that Enzo was enduring the harsh experiments of Dr. Whitmore.

It seemed like hours until Dr. Whitmore hauled a barely standing Enzo back down the hall and he tossed him in his cell wordlessly without so much as a second glance. Enzo groaned lowly on the floor, his shirt and skin are covered in thick, red blood and he hugged his knees to his chest. The doctor locked the door and walked back down the hall, but Damon's shout stopped him.

"Why are you doing this to us?!" He demanded and Dr. Whitmore turned to face his test subject.

"Because, 21051, I'm seeking out the smallest indivisible unit of your biological makeup, and once I can understand you from a cellular level, I can put you to use." It hardly made sense to Damon, but that was the only reason Dr. Whitmore would give him before he left the two vampires alone.

"All hope isn't lost." Cassandra's voice made him turn. "Stefan knows that you didn't come home. I told him, so he'll realize that we both didn't come home soon. And Elena knows that Wes is up to something too. We both came looking for you."

"Points for optimism. But unfortunately, Stefan doesn't even know this place exists and Elena is just as clueless as my brother." Damon told her with a frown.

"You were here for five years, Damon. How did he not coming looking for you?"

"In the first year, I'd thought he'd rescue me. He didn't. Once I escaped, there was no point in giving him more to feel guilty about, so I never told him what happened here. I never told anyone."

"Why not? You could have told me." She said, but Damon didn't answer. She didn't like this dark secret that he kept from her. She much preferred when they were honest and open with each other, but clearly Damon had other plans because he was keeping his past locked in his closet.

"Well, you did escape from here." She said, trying to cut the awkward tension between them. "How'd you do it?"

"They let us out of the basement once a year." He told her. "Every New Year's Eve, the Augustine people had a little cocktail party with a vampire buffet on the side. We were weak from vervain injections, half starved from living on a glass of blood a day, chained up like animals. This little annual shindig is where Dr. Whitmore got to show all of his Augustine friends what he'd found in his research. He let his guests drink from us to demonstrate the healing power of vampire blood."

Damon and Enzo watched dozens of well dressed Augustines mingled with one another. They ate, they drank, they laughed while the vampires were left in a cage to observe what outside life was like. Shackles were clapped around their wrists and they were weak from only having a glass of blood a day. Some Augustine members drew closer to the cage, eager to see what a vampire actually looked like and some were quite surprised how human they had looked. They pointed and whispered to one another and Damon felt like he was on display at a zoo.

The cage door was unlocked and Enzo was yanked outside and led to the middle of the room where people gathered around him. Enzo's heavy shackles nearly weighed him down, but Dr. Whitmore just took up the vampire's hand and a knife. He held Enzo's hand over a pyramid of glasses and cut deeply into his wrist. His crimson blood flowed into the glasses, spilling out of them before continuing to the

bottom tiers of the pyramid until each glass was full. Dr. Whitmore then gestured for a female member of Augustine to come forward.

"Mrs. Fell has generously offered her hand for the purpose of this demonstration. Please observe." The woman offered her hand and Dr. Whitmore used the same knife to cut across her palm. She visibly winced and her hand bled, but Dr. Whitmore handed her a glass of vampire blood, explaining that it would heal her. She hesitantly drank from the glass, taking a few dainty sips and Dr. Whitmore took up her hand to show the rest of his guests. They all watched in amazement as her hand healed before their very eyes.

"The dermal layer is completely healed, no nerve damage, no muscular damage." He showed them and they all clapped for the doctor's research.

"But on the plus side, that's how Enzo came up with his plan." Damon added.

"What was it?" His wife asked.

"Each day we got one cup of blood to sustain our bodies and to stop us from desiccating. Enzo figured that if I took his ration of blood everyday for a whole year, I'd be strong enough to fight by the time next New Years Eve came around. So, for 364 days, I had two rations of blood while Enzo had none." Damon explained.

"Did it work?"

"More or less."

"Well, how did you get out?"

"It doesn't matter, Cass. I got strong, I got out. It wasn't pretty. All you need to know." He hissed lowly and began pacing in his cell.

"Yes, it does matter. Damon, you kept all of this from me. I never knew about this place and that you were tortured. I have a right to know how you got out." She snapped back at him. He didn't answer her, but she could still hear him pacing back and forth. So, she sat down against the wall of her cell and crossed her arms over her chest defiantly.

"Wes is gonna come back down here, and we'll both be the newest Augustine experiment. You have to tell me how you got out of here, Damon." She grumbled.

"You don't want to know, Cassandra." He growled.

"Why? Do you think I'm going to judge you? I thought we were past that." She wanted to reach through the bars and smack him if he even answered that he thought that she would judge him. His silence made her heart drop in her chest and she saw out of the corner of her eye through the opening between their cells that he was sitting with his back against the wall too. His hand was right by the opening, so she slid her hand through the bars, placing hers on top of his. She felt him tense and almost pull away, but he didn't.

"Damon, I love you," she started softly. "I love you with all my heart and these people tortured you for 5 years. Whatever you had to do to get out of this place, I don't care. Just please tell me."

He felt her warm hand on his and he laced their fingers together as she spoke to him. He wasn't sure how she would react to the next story that he was going to tell her, but she asked to hear it. "All right. The Augustines' next party was in 1958. I'd been drinking Enzo's rations for an entire year. I mean, he kept a few drops here and there so he wouldn't desiccate, and as he starved himself, I got stronger from all the extra blood just like he said I would."

Both sets of eyes fell closed and Damon painted a picture for Cassandra of that very New Years Eve party. He was letting his walls down willingly for her to see what had really happened on that night, no tricks, no illusions, just the ugly reality of what unfolded that night in 1958.

Dr. Whitmore weaved his way through the crowd of people and approached the cage. Inside, Enzo was barely standing up straight from lack of energy while Damon looked visibly stronger and more determined than ever before. Tonight would be the night that he and Enzo would escape this God awful place and take their revenge on everyone that caused them pain.

"Ladies and gentlemen, as it is almost midnight, I think it fitting that we toast the New Year with a glass of vampire blood, wouldn't you agree?" Dr. Whitmore's question caused the crowd to ooh and applaud, eager to get their share of the curative blood that ran through the vampire's veins.

He unlocked the cageand took Damon to step outside to donate his blood. While he locked Enzo back in the cage, Damon forcibly pushed his hand through the cuff of his shackle. His bones cracked, breaking under the force, but Damon didn't stop until his hand was freed. Dr. Whitmore finally turned and noticed that Damon was lifting his hand to show him how the bones healed and reset themselves. The vampire held Dr. Whitmore with a threatening glare and he smirked evilly.

"Now you see it." Damon furiously poked Dr. Whitmore's eyes hard enough to destroy the sockets and for blood to gush from his eyes. An eye for an eye, Damon figured as Dr. Whitmore howled in pain. The vampire then buried his fangs into the doctor's neck to finish him off.

The guests started screaming in terror and began to run. Chaos had erupted in the Whitmore house and people were trampling one another to get away from the freed vampire. One guest tripped over her own feet and knocked a candelabra onto the floor, causing a fire to catch on the carpet and spread throughout the room. Damon paid no heed to the fire as he killed each guest in attendance. Some met a quick death by a snap of the neck, while others screamed as they felt their blood leave their veins. The fire had grown so much that the house's structure had begun to creak and moan under the harsh heat. Damon finished off his last victim and dropped them to the floor triumphantly. He stood and let the taste of fresh blood linger on his tongue as he stood drenched in the blood of his victims.

"Damon! We got to get out of here!" Enzo panicked and Damon rushed to the cage. Both men grasped the bars to break them, but they were burned as soon as they touched them.

"Vervain!" Damon growled as he pulled his hands away but tried several more times to break the bars, but the vervain was too strong for them to maintain their grip.

Cassandra still kept her eyes closed and clutched Damon's hand tightly as she watched everything happen. It was like she was in the Whitmore house with him and Enzo as it was burning around them. Her stomach twisted when Damon couldn't break the bars and she had a sinking feeling of what Damon would have to do next, but she remained silent and continued to watch.

Damon felt Cassandra's grip on his hand tighten and he knew that she was having a hard time witnessing everything, but he continued with his story because she desperately begged to hear it. "Enzo trusted me with his life. The fire was getting out of control, then I would have burned up, or they would have captured me again. There's no way I would have ever gotten another chance of escaping."

"What did you do?" Cassandra's voice was small and meek, wishing that she never asked what had happened.

"I chose to save myself."

Damon and Enzo kept trying to break the bars, but the vervain burned their skin more and more each time. The raven haired vampire then stopped altogether and took in the burning house around them. They didn't have much time left and he knew that this wouldn't end well for the both of them if they stayed here. He backed away from the cage, a look of complete defeat on his face and he shook his head, knowing what he had to do.

"Damon." Enzo called fearfully.

"I'm sorry, Enzo."

"Damon, please."

"And I knew if I was going to save myself, that I had to stop caring about Enzo. So I turned off my emotions." Damon added and Cassandra knew what was coming next, but she couldn't make herself back out of his memories. She had to see, she forced herself to stay and watch.

Enzo was now looking at a man who he didn't recognize. His friend, his inmate was no longer there. A strange was staring back at him. The fire raged on behind Damon, the flames making the blood around his mouth gleam dangerously and the vampire gave one last emotionless glance to Enzo before turning on his heel to leave Enzo to his death.

"No. Don't! Don't! Don't leave me here!" Enzo begged desperately, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. "Don't go! Please! Damon!" He crashed his fists against the bars angrily as Damon continued to walk away from him. "Please don't leave me! Damon! Come on! Damon! Damon! Please!" Damon shut the door of the Whitmore house behind him, shutting out Enzo's screams and the roaring fire behind him. He stalked off into the night without a second thought about his friend who would burn to his death.

"I left my friend to die," Damon said softly, remembering the look of desperation on his friend's face as he turned his switch off. It was something that he would never forget in all of his years. "After that, everything was fine." He whispered and Cassandra was still speechless but she had opened her eyes. She hadn't realized it, but she was crying hot tears and she leaned her head back against the wall. She was in disbelief by what Damon had done to Enzo, but she saw that it was his last resort in order to save himself. She now knew why he had his emotions shut off when she met him in the seventies with Lexie. He had endured so much pain and guilt by letting his friend perish that he couldn't bear to let himself feel.

"Everything was fine." Damon hushed.

After a few tense moments, Cassandra finally spoke. "I'm sorry about Enzo. I know you didn't mean to, but I know why you did it." His hand squeezed hers back silently and the two resumed their position with their backs against the wall.

Another hour or so had passed and Cassandra was just nodding off to sleep when she and Damon heard the creaking of a door opening down the hall. The couple rose to their feet, unsure of who was coming for them, but they had to be ready to fight back no matter who it was. Cassandra feared for the worst, thinking that Wes was coming to continue the work of Augustine and placed a firm hand on her belly.

As the footsteps drew closer, both husband and wife sighed in relief to see that Wes was nowhere to be found, but Aaron had come down to the basement. He was now standing in front of the couple's cells and looking inside unsurely.

"What the hell is this place?" He asked.

"Aaron?"

"Great. Mini-Wes." Damon droned sarcastically.

Aaron looked all around him, taking in their conditions. "I didn't know what Wes was doing. I didn't even know there was a basement down here."

"You have to help us." Cassandra leaned on her bars.

"I wanna know the truth. When Elena and I met at Megan's memorial, she asked me a bunch of questions. And at the party the other night, you were asking me about my parents." While he spoke, he was loading a gun with wooden bullets in his shaky hands. Never handling a weapon before made Aaron a little nervous and hr dropped a bullet on the floor.

Damon smirked. "Slick hands, cowboy."

"Yeah? Well, I've never used a gun before." The teen grumbled and looked to Cassandra who had backed away from him once he had taken out the gun. "And I never killed anyone either unlike you."

"What do you mean, Aaron?" She questioned.

"Wes said a vampire killed Megan." He said and aimed the gun at Cassandra.

"And you thought it was Cassandra?" Damon added, hoping to distract Aaron before he emptied bullets into his wife's head.

"I wasn't at the party the night Megan was killed. You're barking up the wrong tree, kid. So put the gun down before someone gets hurt." Cassandra warned darkly.

"Wes also said a vampire killed my parents. Maybe that was you, too." He kept the gun trained on her.

"That's impossible." She shook her head.

"Why else would you have asked me those questions about my parents? Why was Elena pretending to be my friend?"

"Calm down." Damon growled, growing impatient with Aaron.

"She's a vampire!" Aaron hissed angrily.

"Not the one that killed your parents." He jumped on the tail end of what Aaron said. "That was all me." Both Cassandra and Aaron were in complete shock at what Damon had just shared and Aaron moved himself away from Cassandra's cell and over to Damon's.

"What did you just say?" The teen now pointed the gun at Damon, who hadn't moved an inch. "Start talking."

"Damon, what the hell are you doing?" Cassandra wondered.

"In 1958, after the fire Enzo was dead, so I had to take on my revenge plan solo." Damon started.

"And what was it?" Aaron asked.

"That'd I'd kill the entire Whitmore family except one person. Then, I'd let that person grow up, start a family, and then I'd start killing Whitmores again. And then I'd take out the generation after that, leaving only one person to carry on the name, and then I'd take out the generation after that and so on, and so on, and so on." As Damon explained his entire plan, Aaron's face grew pale hearing that the person standing before him had taken out his entire family line. Cassandra couldn't even bring herself to speak, her gaze shifted nervously between Aaron and Damon.

"And that's exactly what I did."

"How many Whitmores have you killed?" Aaron's voice shook.

Damon raised an eyebrow and shrugged his shoulders. "Since 1958? I lost count."

"When was the last one?" Cassandra was surprised at how tense her voice sounded, but she grew angrier when Damon didn't answer her. "Damon, when was the last one?!"

"A few months ago. Her name was Sara. Had to go all the way to Charleston to find her. It was a weekend trip. You didn't know." He said and Cassandra leaned herself closer to the bars, unable to comprehend what she was hearing.

"A few months ago...that's when we first found out that I was pregnant! You left me sick, puking my brains out, and alone to carry out a personal vendetta?!" Her rage was rising and her gripped around the bars was so strong that her knuckles were turning white. "How could you not tell me about this?! What other skeletons do you have rattling around in your closet? I'd love to know!"

"Told you it wasn't pretty." Damon spoke and in a fury, Cassandra shook her bars wildly.

"I can't believe you! Thank God you're in a different cell because I was to strangle you!" She shouted and Aaron suddenly shot Damon in the forehead. The vampire fell to the floor and Cassandra crouched beside the opening of the cells.

"No!" Thick blood pooled around his head, matting his hair and she desperately reached for him.

Bright blue eyes slowly cracked open and Damon let out a low groan as he turned over onto his side. He grumbled some choice words under his breath and sat up. Pain swelled from where Aaron shot him, but at least he wasn't gushing blood anymore.

"Oh, ow." His fingers probed the bullet wound on his head and he dug around before he could grip the bullet and yank it out of the skin. He flicked it aside with an exasperated sigh and felt the skin on his forehead. It was slowly healing under his touch and he brushed away the dried blood that clung to his skin and hair.

"Guess I had that one coming. Cassandra?" He chortled to himself and expected to hear his wife make some sort of a comment, but he was greeted with an uncomfortable silence. "Cassandra?" He called and looked around curiously. His gaze searched her cell and he was then sent into a panic seeing that it was empty. He stood up and pressed his face against the bars. "Cass! Cass!" His voice echoed in the dungeon and his wife was nowhere to be found.

He suddenly felt like he couldn't breathe and that his entire world had crashed down on him. Cassandra was gone and Damon only had one guess as to where she was. She had to be with Wes, there was no other explanation as to where she could be and that scared the ever loving shit out of him. He gripped the bars of his cell and rattled them using all of his strength, but they barely budged. Damon shouted her name a few times more and he growled loudly, angry with himself that he managed to let this happen. Him getting tortured by Wes, he could handle, but his wife getting cut open and experimented on was a different story. The thought made him sick and he would never forgive himself for this. He roared like a caged beast as he tried to bend the bars apart, but just like how he remembered, they were unbendable. The cells were built to keep vampires in their place and they were doing their job. The vampire felt the skin on the palms of his hands shredding from yanking at the bars, so he let go of them and slumped to the floor in defeat. He looked down at his hands to see the skin broken in some places and calloused in others. He peeled off dollar coin sized pieces of skin as the feeling of helplessness and guilt crept upon him like the dark shadows in his cell. He had to get out. He wouldn't lose his wife and daughter to a madman like Wes.

Groggy and weak, Cassandra's brown eyes opened to stare up at the blinding white light above her head. She squinted slightly, trying to calm her throbbing headache and she could hear someone humming quietly. She shifted, but only a little because her limbs were shackled tightly to the table that she was resting on. Panic suddenly struck her and she yanked at her tight restraints, but she was too weak to break them. A thick metal band was around her hips, keeping her strapped down and the cold, hard edges of the metal piece pressed painfully down on her bump. She remembered Wes coming down to the cells when Damon was still unconscious and he shot her with some kind of vervain dart to knock her out.

"What is this?" She wriggled under her restraints again as the humming grew louder. She turned her head to see another table like contraption similar to the one that she was tied down to and a young man was locked in shackles. He had olive toned skin with dark brown hair falling over his handsome eyes. He stopped his song to look at her and smile.

"Welcome. I'm 12144." He greeted politely and Cassandra's eyebrows scrunched up. It wasn't normal for anyone to refer to themselves as a number, unless he was a vampire in captivity much like how Damon was. She went to speak, but what came out of his mouth next, Cassandra was not prepared for.

"My name's Enzo."

No, it couldn't be true. Enzo had died in the fire when the Whitmore house burned to the ground in 1958. Damon said that he left Enzo in the house to save himself and that his friend perished in the fire. Enzo watched as Cassandra's lips opened and closed like a fish out of water and he straightened out his head, reclining back in his previously assumed position. Cassandra tugged at her bonds, feeling a strong wave a nausea come over her as Enzo went back to humming his haunting tune. The song was dreary and deep, as if perfectly narrating the dreadful thoughts that mulled over in Cassandra's mind. Could the Universe finally have caught up to her? Would this be her final resting place? Or would she and her unborn child become a torture victim of the Augustine society for eternity? Images of blood, scalpels, and organs lying on a table crossed her mind and she could only imagine what they would do to her. As soon as Wes would figure out about her pregnancy, she was sure that he would perform sick experiments on her little girl too. She closed her eyes and tried to block out the voices inside her own head, but they were quickly running amuck. Another strong onslaught of images and the sounds of a screaming baby struck her, testing her gag reflex and a small sweat broke out along her forehead. Her clammy hands clenched and unclenched, unable to do much more than that, and she could spot black dots prickling her vision. The stress of the situation and Damon's secret was bringing her to the boiling point. Her skin felt hot, her throat was closing, and the dots behind her eyes increased. Enzo mustn't have noticed because just continued to sing that damn song that was becoming louder and louder with each passing moment. She wanted to tell him to stop, but she was beyond responding. Glazed eyes were locked on the bright ceiling light and she could hear her heartbeat so loud that she was sure anyone in the room could hear it, vampire or not. With one final gasp, her eyes rolled back in her sockets and the world around her went dark, succumbing to her body's wish to shut down.

Oh boy, looks like Cassandra has gotten herself into quite a pickle! What will happen when Wes finds out about the baby? Will Damon get to Cassandra in time? How will Damon react to Enzo being alive and well? Who knows! Please review and I hope you all enjoyed this update :)

grapejuice101: Thanks for reviewing! Haha! A lot of people had the same opinion as you! They didn't want Elijah to walk away, but maybe he'll come to his senses soon!

snmuenst: Thank you for reviewing! Yes, the end of the chapter was a tearjerker :( Unfortunately, Elijah isn't taking what he wants.

binks13: Thanks babe! So glad that you enjoyed the chapter! I do understand why Elijah pushed Giuliana away, but he isn't realizing that he is hurting her by keeping her away from him :( Hopefully he'll realize it soon and some to his senses! I find that the Hayley/Giuliana friendship is growing on me a lot! They are a nice team together! And I was so excited to hear about the Originals being renewed!

SomebodyWhoCares: I wanna hug Elijah too! I think he might be okay with it...Klaus on the other hand, would probably attack LOL!

It me: I do agree that Klaus needs some loving and that he needs someone to love him, but he does a hell of a good job of making people hate him. I do want to write an Originals story, so maybe I'll wait and see what the second season has to offer me :) Thanks so much for reviewing!

Sexytime321: Glad that I was able to make your day by updating! I know the feeling when a favorite author of mine updates and I get so happy! I was able to update so often because I was off for a week. Not sure how often I'd be able to update when I go back to school, but I will try :) Thank you for reviewing!

twin of a sister: I love Elijah too, girl! Love, love, love a man in a suit ;) Thanks for reviewing, honey!

Whitttyyy76: Thank you for reviewing! The chapter was a tease, HAHA! Yeah, Elijah is a bit thick in the head, but let's hope that he comes to his senses soon! Hope you enjoyed this update :)

annie: Thanks for reviewing! I am so glad that you liked this chapter and I hope you enjoyed reading my update! Talk to you soon!

Guest: Here's your update! Hope you liked it :)

Guest: Thanks for reviewing! You are so kind! I try to add a lot of different dynamics to all of my stories and I am glad that it all blends together nicely.

Wholockian44: Aww, sorry that I made you cry! Elijah and Giuliana are really sweet together and I do hope that Elijah will say something too, LOL! Thank so much for reviewing!

NV1864: Thanks for reviewing! I sent you a PM, but I wanted to reply to you here too. You pronounce Cassandra's name like this: Cuh-ssun-dra

Mz1Direction: Thank you for reviewing! Hope you enjoyed this update :)