The CW owns the Vampire Diaries, I don't even care all that much anymore…

A/N:

On the prison world and real world time: 1 month in regular world time = 1 year in prison world. So Bonnie and Mina have been gone for three months in Damon's world, but only he knows that. Bonnie still thinks it's been seven years because she hasn't gotten back yet.

On Kai: Kai escaped back to the real world just like he did in the show, he left shortly after Damon was sent back and is off being a baddy somewhere.

On Mina's birth: Yes, Bonnie was alone, Yes it was a regular birth. She went to the hospital, she read all the books on midwifery and hospital procedures (?). She had nine months to prepare. Yes, the mess was cleaned by the prison world;s renewal system. Yes Mina has grown up in the prison world, Yes Bonnie has aged, and Yes she has taught Mina enough about the real world that she in her tiny little mind knows this place is special.

Will Mina show any of her parents' characteristics? OoOoOoO.

Mina was clairvoyant. Her parents didn't know it at the time, but the reason she had wanted to see her daddy was because she had seen him in her dreams. She doesn't tell her mother about the dreams, she knows everything from Mommy, and if the one time she asked her about dreams Bonnie told her that they weren't real, well then, Mina believed her.

Who else?

But Mina's dreams were visions. Premonitions of things to come. They got stronger every year. She had been seeing a mysterious man in her dreams, and as foggy and foretelling as they were, she never thought she would actually see him in the daytime. Let alone find out that the mysterious nice man who in her dreams lived in the same house as she and her mommy would actually be her daddy.

Mina didn't really know what love was, but she knew she loved the man with the white skin and the blue eyes. She knew she loved him because he loved her mommy and blue was her favorite color.

They had spent a long time in the car today, longer than she and mommy had ever been in the car. Mina didn't mind however, it was fun listening to her favorite music on the tapes she and mommy had made, singing loudly, even if she didn't know the words.

They stopped at a lot of fun places too, spent times in hotels and big swimming pools and really nice rooms. She was even able to get a few new dresses and some yummy snacks too. Yesterday she and mommy had went to a foggy place where they walked around outside a lot. Mommy had found a cave and they went inside. When she asked why they were there Mommy said it was because they were going to find a special rock that they could use to go to the world where Daddy lived. Mina was quiet after that.

She could feel the funny rock from where she sat on the ground carving pretty pictures of her new family together. Mommy never asked her where to find it so she just sat and drew pictures on the walls. She had seen pictures like the ones she was drawing now. Last year she and Mommy had gone around looking at pictures drawn on the inside of caves. Mommy said that a long time ago, there were people who lived in these caves, and they couldn't put what they wanted down in words, so they used pictures. Mina liked those pictures, even better than the ones in the museums. Bonnie had told her that those people in the caves made the paintings with their families, just like she and Mommy did. It made her feel warm inside to know that they had families and love like she and Mommy.

After Bonnie prayed over the rock for a few minutes, Mina felt the Power flowing out of the rock and into her. She knew things were going to be different from then on. Soon they would see the man from her dreams.

Back in present day Mystic Falls, Damon blindly wrapped the fabric of his tie into the appropriate knot for this century. As he did so, his mind drifted to a different time. Back then he hadn't been able to eulogize his mother, he hadn't been able to do what he needed to do for his family, and now he had a family of his own.

He had spent that night on his bed watching the videos. He was alone in the house and didn't need to fear being over heard. There were so many videos. Many of them featuring his beloved little girl, Mina.

It was as if Bonnie had sent them here to him. She had catalogued every important detail of her young life from first smile to first steps to first words. Watching them, he felt as if he too could share in the joy of raising his daughter.

Damon stared at the little brown angel. He had somehow forgotten how to breathe when he first saw her in person. She was so beautiful. The science of it all was completely beyond him, but the fact that he could have had a part in making something so pure and so beautiful and so… human nearly brought him to his knees.

It made his heart ache to see the woman he'd left behind so alive and full of live. For three years in her world she had been on her own in raising their daughter. For three years he had been unable to hold her at night, when she would cry in his arms; for three years he hadn't hear her nightly confession and for three years he hadn't been able to give his.

That all changed one night when he heard her voice broken and shaking on the tape he was watching. It was a Thursday night, and they had all just come back from ringing Kai to take the power out of Sherriff Forbes' super cancer. He had killed a man that night, put him out of his misery really. But the way Caroline looked at him, it was if he had taken away her only hope. The looks Elena had tossed him were even worse. It was like she blamed him afresh for all the bad things that had happened in their life, but really she was just bitter.

Elena of all people, saying that he had been the one to ruin their lives. Pfft. It was her fault. She couldn't make up her mind which Salvatore Brother she wanted. It was her fault that Bonnie had died to save Jeremy for her and so had to become the Anchor just to be able to be seen again. It was her fault that she let herself be possessed by Kathrine and couldn't be there when her friend was overwhelmed by the Travelers who ultimately killed her when they brought the Other Side crashing down around her.

He blamed her for their deaths, it was her shoulders that the blame for all the bad things in their lives should be placed squarely on. But if it wasn't for her and her being acutely unaware of the pain of people who were not her, he wouldn't have been allowed to live four years with the woman who had turned his soul inside out.

Damon had made it abundantly clear that he wasn't going back to her, and if every day he saw her and she gave him one of several different looks that even when nasty meant that she still wanted him to come back to her, then so be it. Every day he would tell her where she could get off.

Bonnie had always been a religious person. Every Sunday she would get up, quietly, and change into her Sunday best. She would leave without saying goodbye and he would feign sleep, listening to her hum whatever worship song she would be singing that day.

She was incredibly dedicated to that God of hers. And even when it made Damon sick to his stomach to see her reading the Bible every day, to watch her pray every night and see her put her faith in some, Big Man in the Sky instead of trusting him, it made him mad.

But still, she never pushed him to believe, never asked him to come with her to Church, never tried to share her faith with him. Only when he asked would she reply with some answer that he couldn't press her into arguing with him over. She didn't want to argue about her faith, and so she didn't. He wanted her to, to be sure, he did. But she never budged in her opinions, never swayed in her faith. And that made him curious.

What did she see in God that she didn't in him? Wasn't he good enough that she didn't need her imaginary friend to help her along?

Still, she never complained when he stole secretly to Church after her, when he would creep up to the doors and listen just outside of them to hear her singing with such joy. She hadn't always had faith like that, when they first came she was just as lost as he was, but somehow she found her Way. He could feel it in her, that there had slowly, steadily been a hole in her that was closing. He didn't want it to be because of Him, but it was. She was healing, she was getting stronger, and in some ways, he believed that He was preparing her.

That's where he found himself tonight. The old Church in Mystic Falls. He could still her singing, still see her joy. Using his predator stealth he crept into the Church, and he didn't burn alive.

Score one for the Big Man.

He sat there for some time, quietly, imagining all the time they would spend here whenever Bonnie and Mina came home to him. He already knew that Bonnie would never ask him to come here with her, but there would be no questions about Mina's attendance. He was sure she would take Mina with her and enroll her in Sunday School and Bible Study, make her a good little Church girl.

It took some minutes to realize what had happened to him. He was smiling. He was hoping. For a future with his wife, with his daughter, with his family. He would find a way to get Stefan (lol not Stephen) to come, if anyone could use a dose of hope it was Stefan's forehead.

There was a Bible in the pew next to him. God must be having a laugh on him, sticking him with a woman who loved Him more than she loved him, giving him hope and a daughter, and then telling him to wait.

On the inside Damon was burning, but not with rage, with despair. How long? How long would he have to wait? How many more birthday's, how many more big moments, how many more nights would he be without the woman he loved in his arms?

It hurt, his heart hurt and he didn't know what to do. He didn't realize his fingers had closed around the Bible, or that the moment it touched him, the pain didn't go away, but it became that much more bearable.

Sitting on the edge of the bed that night, he felt even more lost. Sherriff Forbes had died and he was at a complete loss. He could feel his heart breaking as he shifted his weight from the bed to the floor, and knelt beside it.

"Oh God, help me, I know You're there."

He didn't know why he chose this moment to believe, but it just happened like that. He was about to get up to leave when he heard Bonnie's voice in his head. She usually ended her prayers with a very specific ending, and he realized now that if he was going to do this, he was going to have to go all the way.

He thought back to the Man on the Cross, who looked on the outside the way he felt on the inside. Maybe they could come to some sort of understanding.

He sighed, then held his breath and blurted out quickly,

"InJesusnameIprayamen"

He didn't feel any different, but if Bonnie's faith had taught him anything, it was that these things take time. So he left off at that and didn't worry about it. A big step on his part, because like it or not Damon was a Class A Worrier.

She was reading a coloring book at the time when he first saw her. Her little head was covered in soft wavy brown curls and she looked so intently on her work that he didn't want to disturb her. He had crept into the kitchen after sending Stefan off to find Caroline, but he hadn't heard back from him yet.

"Call me back, brother" he said before hanging up.

He felt like he had grown roots, for he could not move from that spot.

It couldn't be true, this wasn't real, he had to be dreaming.

"Mina…" he breathed.

She looked up at him and he felt the white hot iron of hope sear his innards. She was so beautiful, which meant that she looked as little like him as possible. Only the slope of her nose and the curve of her chin spoke of his mischievous genes, but the rest was all Bonnie.

Time had taught him caution, so when he heard her voice, he was unwilling to believe it was really her. It wasn't until she had come crashing into his arms that he believed it. Tears were pouring from both of their eyes, and he finally felt like he was home.

What did you think?

4GMK