Chapter 20! When I started writing this, I had a plan and knew it was going to be long, but I didn't imagine it would be quite this long or that I would have so much feedback along the way. Thank you so much for all the reviews, I'm glad you're enjoying the story, because I'm absolutely loving writing it.

Of course, special thanks to all those fantastic writers who have inspired me, discussed the characters with me and filled my head with a thousand ideas.

x-x-x-x

He could tell that even she was shocked by her own words; the way her shoulders tensed, her heartbeat raised, and her breathing paused. Had she really just implied what she had inferred that she was thinking of a future in hundreds of years? With him? The mere thought would probably make his heart sing if he let it. But he cast aside such fanciful thoughts, perhaps she was trying to be witty?

Either way, after her reaction to future plans at the quarry he wasn't about to jump into that discussion. Especially not after the day she had had.

"I don't want to find Katherine, 'Lena," He confirmed, his voice slightly stern to get the message across but his thumb resuming the stroking to show the softness with which he intended the words to come across, "but I do want to know what the bitch is up to."

She softened at his resumed affection and seemed to pick up on his desire to bend the topic away from his history with Katherine.

"Why would Katherine want a device that would kill vampires, or why would she want John, vampire hater extraordinaire, to have it? Surely, he would use it to kill her?" She queried.

Damon shrugged slightly, "I don't know, but I think I know how to find out."

Elena made a sound in response, almost a questioning grunt, and he was distracted from scheming for a moment to consider just how cute the sound itself was. He imagined small, fluffy animals made similar sounds- not that he had had any affection for such creatures. That was more Stefan's department.

"We give them the invention."

"No". Her voice was louder than either expected, and she instinctively reached for one of his hands and grabbed it tightly.

If he hadn't already admitted to himself that he loved this girl, he would have done it at that moment. It was a long time since he felt so needed.

He kissed the top of her head before continuing, "After, of course, we ensure we won't be harmed by its effects."

She seemed to relax at that, instead responding with curiosity, "How do we do that?"

"Bree has a plan." She'd shared it with him earlier that day, she had been tinkering- a potential potion or spell that would make vampires temporarily immune to the device's effects. It wasn't a sure thing, but they could test it before handing the device over.

Elena nodded, reaching forward for whatever she had been looking at before he sat on the bed. She lifted a page out and showed it to him,

"I think my dad had vampire patients." She said, as she spun around on the bed, now sat cross-legged facing him as she watched him read.

The document he had handed her certainly looked on the surface like doctor's notes, except the text described the patient healing when stabbed with any metal or plastic weapon but being unable to heal after a wood injury. These notes were experimental and focused entirely on a vampire's ability to heal.

x-x-x-x

She watched his face as he read, the way his eyes scanned the page so quickly and the way his brows furrowed in confusion, raised in understanding, and then bent in curiosity. His expressive face and his clear intelligence as he read such dense medical notes fluently were both incredibly attractive, and she felt the growing desire to kiss his cheeks as he bit the insides in concentration, or his eyebrows as he raised them.

As she fought the desire to kill every inch of his face, she watched the dark lines start to appear around his eyes. Logically, she knew she should feel fear. Instead, her attraction grew. Reaching out, she took his face in her hand, stroking her thumb gently across the appearing lines.

"What's wrong?" She questioned softly,

"He didn't have vampire patients, 'Lena. He had vampire subjects. Test subjects. He tortured them." His voice was filled with such certainty, almost venom, but there was something else there. A softness in his eyes as he tried to offer her compassion, it was her father she was discussing- her real father, not John- and something more. A pain, a fear. She'd seen it before, when she'd held him on the floor in the middle of the night at the college.

Could her dad have tortured vampires? She knew he'd been part of the council, but Liz had told Damon they hadn't had a vampire attack since the 90s. How could her dad have been torturing vampires?

"Did your dad ever work at Whitmore college?" Damon asked, again his voice measured and controlled. This time though he didn't look at her, his eyes back down to the file in his hands. He seemed to be planning, scheming and Elena was glad for it- having to plan had pulled him from whatever dark place he had been the previous night and she wasn't ready for him to go back there.

She nodded before adding, "He did. Before he set up his practice back here, he studied and worked there."

Damon's dark veins flashed again before disappearing, he was clearly fighting to keep himself in control and she felt lost, like she didn't have enough information to help. Letting her hand fall from his face, she moved the file from him and laid one of his hands onto her lap. She began to trace the lines on it, as she had when she had needed comfort, weeks ago.

"Elena," he was barely whispering, and she had to focus to hear, "many, many decades ago a group of doctors at Whitmore College captured and tortured vampires in the name of science. I thought they had been destroyed, but when I saw your father's basement, I recognised something. These notes confirm. He was part of that group."

He was looking at her sympathetically, like this would be difficult for her to hear. It was, but not for the reasons he likely suspected. She didn't know how to process that her dad might have done that, she couldn't start to yet, because all her mind could focus on was how he could possibly know about such a group. Had he been one of their vampires?

Throwing all other caution to the wind, she threw her body forward. Wrapping her arms around his neck she engulfed him in a hug that caused him to topple backwards. They landed awkwardly on the bed, having banged into the wall, with him behind her. She let out a loud wince, as part of their weight landed on her hand.

Shit, she'd forgotten about that.

X-x-x-x

He made the decision within milliseconds of hearing her wince.

He used his speed advantage to move them, whisking her up so they were sat on the floor again. His back against the wall and her between his knees. Just as they had that night. He wasn't sure why he'd chosen the floor over the bed; the bed was far comfier. But for this conversation he wasn't sure he could risk seeing her face, and this spot felt familiar. It was a safe space, their safe space.

He hoped it was the first of many.

After giving her a few seconds to get her bearings from the sudden movement, his arms still around her shoulders, he spoke into her ear.

"Please, 'Lena, let me heal your hand." She didn't respond, and he was thankful for their positioning for the rejection in her eyes would have burnt into his memory if he had seen it.

He considered backing down, but he knew if he did, they'd have this fight a dozen more times. The girl was a walking magnet for danger- she'd been kidnapped and threatened too many times in the past month to count. Not to mention every single one of her family seemed at least slightly murderous and psychotic. Maybe not Jeremy and Jenna, but then again he was pretty sure both would happily stake him if he hurt Elena.

He'd let them.

"Lena. I hurt you, and I want to fix it. Not because every time I remember it cuts me into a thousand pieces, because I deserve that. No, I want to fix it because I want you to stop hurting yourself with it."

She shook her head slightly, causing the pit in his stomach to grow. "What if I turn?" She asked, meekly.

"To turn you have to die. If you choose not to heal and die, you're dead. Everyone who loves you dies a little bit inside too. If you die with vampire blood in your system, at worst you get an extra day to say goodbye to those people. At best you get years or even centuries more in which they can continue loving you. Where's the downside?"

Her head tilted slightly, as if she were actually considering his proposition. Then she nodded.

x-x-x-x

What he said was logical, it seemed sinful for how close to cheating it felt. Could she really heal any injury if she had him by her side?

She agreed with his logic, but she'd have probably said yes anyway. Her hand hurt like hell, and the painkillers she'd taken upon returning home were starting to wear off before she'd even knocked it again.

Besides, she wanted him to focus back on what he had said about her father and Whitmore and there was no chance he would do that whilst focusing on her injury. He might go down a rabbit hole of self-loathing again and try to push her away again.

He responded to her nod quickly, and his bloody wrist appeared in front of her face before she could change her mind.

What did she do with that? She didn't have fangs so she couldn't bite. She tentatively leant forward slightly and licked some of the blood with the tip of her tongue. It tasted metallic at first then slightly sweet, almost floral. She had barely a drop on her tongue, but it felt like small, metal flowers sprouting there. It was such an unusual sensation.

She pulled his wrist to her mouth and licked it with less abandon, beginning to kiss and suck slightly at the wound even as she felt it close under her tongue. As the sensation of the flowers abated, she became more aware of the world around her again.

She was sitting very snuggly between Damon's legs, and she could feel how aroused he was. If that hadn't been a dead giveaway, at some point she'd heard him moan and his head tilt back, hitting the wall. Wiping her lips, she smiled to herself.

"I guess vampires like sharing blood as much as they like drinking it." She joked, lightening the atmosphere as best she could.

She heard him chuckle to himself, then sigh. "Not usually like that. It's personal between vampires, but with a human? It's not... It's not usually like that."

She shrugged, slightly proud that she had him stuttering and sighing. She felt so incredibly sexy in that moment, even dressed so casually, because she could make a guy who looked like Damon sound like that. Not once has she ever denied how incredibly attractive he was, nobody ever could, but he wanted her.

"So, tell me about my father." She said, leaning back against him and letting the tension drop out of the air.

x-x-x-x

If he'd thought for a second that he might be able to have her tonight, that sentence had immediately ended the fantasy.

The vixen wanted him as much as he wanted her, he could smell it. But she obviously wanted to talk more. He hadn't really expected anything else; she wasn't ready and she had told him as much both explicitly and in a thousand signals.

Sure, she'd slipped up earlier with the comment about the future, and she's been willing to drink his blood. But she wasn't there yet. She would be one day though, and with every step she took towards being his he could feel that time coming sooner.

"In the 1950s, I became aware of a group called the Augustine's. They captured vampires and tortured them, operating out of Whitmore college. I was able to kill a lot of them, and those that escaped I've killed since." He paused, scanning through his own words in his head. He'd omitted a lot of details, was a lie by omission still a lie?

He didn't feel he was ready to open up to the truth. He should have known she wouldn't give him an option.

"You were one of those vampires, weren't you?" Elena knew him far too well, and he had no idea how. He wondered briefly if she were somehow psychic, but he knew better. She paid attention to the details, to the gaps in his words.

Biting his lip, he prayed she would still be in his arms by the end of this story. He knew the chances were slim. He couldn't look at himself for decades after this, how could she- someone so caring- look at him once she knew?

"I was. I was captured and held there for about five years. I managed to escape, due to the help of a friend. He, he didn't make it. That's when I started killing them." He was still leaving gaps, and he wanted to kick himself for it. She would know, and she'd be more disappointed in him for not telling her the truth. But the words just wouldn't come out.

She was quiet for a while, before asking, "Would you have killed my father, had you known when he was alive?"

"Yes." He answered without hesitation, "You found me at the college because my first instinct upon realising they were still active was to go and kill them all."

"Why didn't you?" She asked, unexpectedly.

"I don't know. I was mad at myself for failing, trying to find a plan that couldn't fail this time. Then you were there and, I don't know why I didn't follow through." He did know; he'd been distracted by her. She had become his focus, and then he was needed. He'd been surprised he had been so easily distracted though; at the time he didn't know why she had that affect on him.

"You will." This wasn't a question.

Without seeing her face, he wasn't sure how much judgement it came laced with, but the sound was soft, and she hadn't stopped affectionately playing with his fingers- a gesture he was starting to adore.

"When I know Mystic Falls is safe for everyone you care about, yes I will." He responded.

There was no point lying, he was going to do it one day. If he was lucky enough that they did eventually end up together, she was going to have to accept that. He hoped she could.

She reached into a pocket for a tissue, then wiped her eyes. He hadn't realised she'd been crying. Was that for him, or for her father?

"Good."

x-x-x-x

Coming downstairs to get coffee, she had a smile on her face.

She had no idea why; the past few days had been in the top 5 most traumatic of her life. Obviously, her parents dying topped that list by a country mile but that didn't mean she hadn't been through the wringer recently.

So, her birth mother was an emotionless psychotic bitch who was scheming with her birth father and look-a-like ancestor to kill her kind-of-but-not-really-sort-of-boyfriend, the same man who had been tortured by a vampire-hating group that her adoptive father was part of.

God, her life was insane.

However, she slept well last night. Damon had left to keep the night shift watching Anna. Jeremy and his new girlfriend were still at the boarding house as John was staying in the Gilbert house. They'd talked though, for hours, and she felt like for the first time Damon had made an effort to be honest with her. He was letting her in, and whilst she didn't like everything, she found it hadn't mattered.

She'd still wanted him to hold her, she'd still missed him when he left.

Turning into the kitchen, Elena was rudely reminded of that face as he looked up from his coffee to smile at her.

"Morning Elena." He said cheerfully. He looked like a smug bastard, and she wanted to wipe the smile off his face.

"Morning father. Kill any more vampires last night?" Her tone was fierce, and she felt like a lion roaring protectively.

To his credit, John barely flinched before recovering smoothly. "Ah, I see you've learnt a bit about your family history. To answer your question; no, I haven't, and I won't need to if you get Damon to give me the instrument. Otherwise, I might have to pry it out of his cold, grey hand".

Elena shot him a piercing look, trying to remain as fierce as she had felt moments ago, despite the picture of a desiccating Damon dancing behind her vision.

John frowned at her, eyes furrowed, "You actually care for him, don't you?"

She nodded slightly too enthusiastically. "I do, and you wouldn't want to hurt your only daughter, would you?" She tried playing on the connection, her voice a little too sickeningly sweet to be effective.

"Keeping him alive is hurting you. Gilberts and vampires don't mix. If you don't believe me; go read the Gilbert journals. They're at the lake house."

x-x-x-x

Caroline was left to be the one in charge, again. Both Bonnie and Elena had come up with lame excuses not to get involved with the pageant floats and she was stuck here.

She had a good team at least; Tyler was helping with design, working with Jeremy Gilbert. She couldn't help but smile as they worked together; it didn't seem long ago that they'd almost killed each other in the parking lot over Vicki Donovan of all people.

That was one person she was glad to see leave Mystic Falls, even if it hurt Matt.

Matt was there too, helping to do the actual construction. He was good with tools and his hands; he did keep his house in check as his mother so rarely graced them with her presence. He was helped by Anna, Jeremy's new girlfriend. Despite being tiny, she was proving to be strong. She also knew a lot about history and was helping them stay accurate.

The dream team had a lot of work to do and not long to do it in, so it was probably a bad idea to keep making eyes at Tyler.

They hadn't spoken one to one since their date, and he hadn't called or text. He was definitely interested, their eyes kept making and if eye sex was really a thing, they were going at it like bunnies.

He hadn't even glanced at any of the other cheerleaders here helping out, and some of them were dressed rather provocatively. One had even winked at him and waved, and he'd not even noticed!

It was like Tyler Lockwood had been replaced by an actual human boy. One who wanted her.

It was hours into construction when she announced they could have a break. They didn't really have time for a formal break, but simply put she couldn't take the tension anymore.

Waiting by a classroom door, she grabbed his wrist as he walked by and pulled him into Mr Saltzman's empty classroom. Standing in front of her, letting the door swing shut behind him, he looked magnificent. He was ridiculously muscular, his arms exposed and showing off his physique. She imagined those strong hands on her, holding her firmly, lifting her.

She didn't have to imagine for long. He stepped forward, wrapping one arm around her waist, the other strong hand on her neck, supporting her as his lips crashed against hers.

This wasn't like their previous kiss, it was instead a kiss filled with desire; he was showing her his passion, his need for her and she felt the same need growing as she ran her hand through his hair.

Biting his lip playfully, she explored all the new sensations his kisses brought her. He smelt intoxicatingly masculine, and as she inhaled his scent, she felt the warmth of arousal spreading. Leaning into him instinctively, her hips pressing against his she was rewarded with feeling his similar reaction.

She didn't think she'd ever wanted anyone more.

x-x-x-x

So, would you like to see more of Caroline and Tyler next? Or would you prefer to see what Elena and Damon do with the device and the journals?