Author's note: Thanks for giving this story love, everyone!

Thank you for your incredible support of this weird little story. It means so very much. :)

Damon had been home for a few hours at this point – if one can call it that. It was an apartment that he hastily acquired after learning that returning home to Mystic Falls was still not an option. He'd always been an adaptable sort, though – content to wander and explore – so this hadn't hit him nearly as hard as it had someone like Stefan, who liked to lug all his hoarded belongings with him and form deep, rooted attachments to physical places.

No, the displacement had barely inconvenienced him – perhaps under different circumstances, it would have ignited the spark of his seemingly perpetual sense of adventure. Instead, it felt like 'just one more thing,' because Damon's concept of home wasn't physical. It wasn't a concrete place.

His home was a person.

A person who'd consistently seen through all his defenses, his sarcasm, his standoffish attitude, his claims of being cold and unfeeling. Someone who considered him worth saving – who somehow found and consistently fought for the good in him.

Who loved him, and chose him, even when he didn't deserve it. Who made him want to reach into the best parts of himself – dusty and buried deep inside – to meet the faith in her eyes. His home was the girl who was somehow able to intuit the real him that he tried desperately to hide from the world – and embrace the most vulnerable parts of him with compassion, understanding, love.

And she'd been compelled – practically rewired to hate him.

By choice.

After the flannel hellscape of that Groundhog Day-esque prison world in which he'd been trapped with Bon-Bon and that jam-obsessed psycho, Kai, he had no home to return to.

Because Elena was his home, and she wouldn't let him in.

And he'd tried to get through to her – to remind her of the magic they created and shared when they were together – how everything faded into the background in the world that they'd built that was all them.

A magical space full of hope and infinite possibilities and love.

And then she'd risked her life – nearly died – to get it back, and reality came crashing down. She was happy without him. Her life was healthy, whole. All he'd ever brought her was death and pain. He could imagine her life being normal and vibrant if he'd never come to town and started all that chaos and opened the tomb, attracting Katherine and Klaus and everything that turned her life into a tragic whirlwind.

So, for the first time, perhaps ever, he lied to her.

"It started to rain…"

"It got cold and muddy. You were miserable, so we got into the car, and drove home."

He scoffed, sitting up on the bed to take a swig of the bottle of bourbon on his lap. Damon Salvatore finally became 'the better man.' Being selfless sucked.

Maybe it was the tumult of emotion that the evening brought, but Damon hardly noticed the body suddenly appearing in his room, until it jumped on top of him.

"I thought we could skip right to the good part this time," Elena said with a decidedly cheeky smile and a wink as she crossed her arms over his chest, lifting herself at her elbows to bring her face close to his.

A quick glance around the room told her exactly when she was. There was only one brief period when Damon had this apartment, and it was when Mystic Falls was dangerous for any member of the undead – lest they be forced to relive their human death, with permanent consequences if they didn't escape the anti-magic barrier in time.

Miss Cuddles sitting in the corner suggested that he was already aware that Bonnie was alive. His visibly heartbroken demeanor told her that this was before he was aware that she was falling in love with him again.

Combined with the Damon of a previous visit revealing that she appears when he needs her most, Elena was quickly able to deduce the exact temporal placement of her appearance.

It was the night he lied to her about their beautiful meteor shower date and chose to let her go – for 'her own good,' apparently, again, she scoffed. And yet, that was the moment when everything clicked for her. The monster in her memories would never have done something so selfless and sweet – that night, he turned her entire world upside down and reignited within her a burning desire to know him.

Very quickly, it began to consume her like the mightiest current.

"Elena?" Damon asked, initially bewildered, before the merge of memory to which he was now many-times accustomed took place. "How did you get in here? Did you break into my apartment?" Even he had to admit that she looked curious and thoroughly unsatisfied with his answer when he lied to her about the turn of events on the night of the meteor shower of yesteryear, when they promised each other forever, but her showing up in his apartment, on his bed, on top of him, was completely unexpected.

Hope began to flutter in his chest. Was she starting to remember? Did her momentary trip across the border actually trigger a way to break the compulsion?

"Just give it a second," she said confidently, choosing her words deliberately. "It'll clear up," she winked to the raw and unapologetic hope reflected in his eyes, right before he shut them tightly.

In that instant, memories flooded him. Elena visiting him in an array of different scenarios. Always wearing that same dress.

Always ardently in love with him.

He opened his eyes again, but they appeared guarded. The sight of him gazing at her this way broke her heart.

"Hey," she greeted softly.

"Hey," he echoed coolly – at least that was his outward demeanor. Beneath that, Elena could plainly see how hurt he was.

"So, this is the night," Elena breathed, both to Damon and to herself. "The night I tried to get my memories back by crossing over the border to Mystic Falls," she said sadly.

He nodded. "I take it this is the 'last bump' you told me about?" he prodded. "Unless you were holding out and there's more."

"No, that's it – that's it until Kai –" she began quietly.

"Kai!" Damon shot up, alarmed. "I met him! That pork-rind munching psycho freak is the one who put you under the sleeping spell?" All anger and hurt immediately forgotten, pulled her onto his lap, gently cradling her cheek with one hand, while the other arm was wrapped around her protectively.

Elena's heart was instantly transformed, transfigured into softness, warmth – a gooey kind of romance that enveloped her whole. She marveled at how quickly he forgot his own pain when her safety came to question, and resolved to help soothe that ache as quickly as she could. She leaned into his touch, nuzzling her cheek against his hand, then turned her head to kiss the pulse point of his palm. "I'm so lucky to have you," she whispered. "I love you so much."

A pleasant jolt ran through him at the sensation. He met her gaze sadly. "Then why did you –" then he hardened. "Nevermind, it's not important –"

"Yes, it is," she gently interrupted.

"We've got other matters –"

As much as Damon loved to tease her about this – remind her both when it hurt and when that pain began to recede – everything always faded into the background when she was in danger.

"Nothing is more important to me than you," she said firmly, cupping his cheeks. She took a few seconds to collect herself, her eyes closed of their own volition as her forehead found his for comfort. Going back to – that place – was always difficult for her. She idly traced her thumbs along his cheekbones – an effort to soothe both him and herself. "I've lost a lot of people –"

"I know, Elena –"

"No, you don't. I've lost a lot of people, but nothing could have prepared me for losing you," she choked, her voice shaking. "I was lost, adrift, undone. Dying. Every day. I knew grief – I've gotten it down to a science, but this wasn't grief. This was something else. It felt like half my soul was ripped out and all I had – all I had was an eternity to be spent as this empty thing – without –without –" she whispered, heedless of the tears rolling down her cheeks at the memory alone.

"So you needed to forget, to feel whole again?"

"That wasn't why," she said vehemently. "That – I can't even call it grief. That death, that soul-ripping death – it began to fundamentally change who I am. I needed to see you. To feel you there. I didn't care that you weren't real. It was the only way to survive. So, I started seeking out ways to…" she trailed off, choking on her shame.

"It's okay, Elena. Tell me."

"I became violent. Perpetually hungry. I began attacking innocent people, day after day – and the Damon in my head – the you in my head – the only thing in this whole world keeping me afloat told me I had to stop, that I had to accept – but I couldn't. I couldn't accept that you were –" she squeezed him impossibly tight to herself. "This was the worst thing that ever happened– worse than Wickery Bridge, worse than..." she trailed off, desperate to stifle a particularly potent sob. "Nothing in this world could be worse than losing you," she murmured into his chest through the onslaught of her tears as he held her close, stroking her hair to comfort her. "And when I realized that I nearly killed those people – and each time, I came closer to killing someone – I realized that I would make their loved ones feel what I felt. I was this nexus – this spreader of pain and misery. I would deprive people of the one they love most, and make them feel like this empty, aching thing – this ball of pain. It would all come from me. It would be all my fault," she said emphatically as she pulled back, gazing into his eyes, desperate for him to understand. "It was the only way to save them," she whispered. "To keep others from feeling how I felt – I had to sacrifice what meant the most to me in the world. My love for you."

"I always told you that you had way too much empathy. Should have just turned it off. Done the Eat, Romp, Kill Tour," he said softly, gingerly wiping the tears from her cheeks, at once touched at the depth of her attachment to him and horrified at the pain she went through. He smiled at her, hoping to ease her out of the dark place the mere memory of his loss inspired.

Of course, she'd choose the dumb humans over her own feelings, he scoffed. She never knew how to put herself first. That was why he always made sure to do it for her. He'd be lying if he didn't admit that he loved her compassion – the beautiful, clever, kind, warm, insightful girl who saw through his defenses and found someone worth saving – someone to love. Elena's empathy was such a fundamental part of who she was that when she turned off her humanity – and therefore the ability to feel love – she became nothing but a bland and empty husk.

She laughed through her tears, pulling him into a vice grip again, unable to let go. Any time she remembered how it felt to lose him, something primal within her surfaced, and all she knew was that she could never let it happen again. No matter what it took. No matter – she'd pay any price, becoming anything, just to keep him alive.

The thought chilled her. For all the times that Damon would have committed untold horrors to save her back when she was a human, she now knew she would do exactly the same for him, regardless of his wishes.

He forced blood down her throat to keep her from dying during Klaus' ritual. She tried to have Alaric force the Cure down his to save him from a werewolf venom-laced bullet.

If she nearly burned the world down, at least to her, just to hallucinate him, what would she do to keep him safe?

They were, in many ways, so similar – two halves of a whole.

"If I had any idea that you could be back," she whispered into his chest, still holding him close, "I would never have gone through with it. I'm so sorry I hurt you."

"But you clearly love me again," he said, pressing a kiss into the crown of her head. "Does this mean that we'll break the compulsion?"

"It's not a regular compulsion," she admitted reluctantly. "Ric only used it to speed things along - to seal and reinforce it - and once an anchor was chosen, the rest of the memories had a domino effect. It's more akin to brainwashing. But it was structured in a way that once the compulsion breaks, everything falls back into place without the reinforcements holding them back."

Damon allowed himself a horrified moment to take all that in. "But you obviously remember now. So something happens, and you'll get your memories back?"

"Eventually," she conceded. "But not before I fall back in love with you," she breathed, pulling back again to gently cup his face, urging him to look at her. "Because it'll always be you. Even if my mind is deliberately rewired to hate you, I'll always find you, and choose you, and fall in love with you – in every time, in every world. In every possible scenario. In every imaginable Universe. There's no reality where I can imagine not choosing you. I can't live without you. You're my other half, Damon."

The world seemed to stop for several whole seconds for Damon as his mind feverishly worked to process her words – the whirlwind of juxtaposition from thinking Elena would never love him again, that he had to let her go, again, for her own good, to this – this declaration of love that was so encompassing.

"There is no world," he said emphatically, letting his own hands cradle her cheeks in turn, his eyes darting between hers. "No reality without you, okay? You're all that ever mattered or will matter to me. Letting you go was the hardest thing I've ever done, because all I've ever wanted was for you to be happy. That's all that matters to me. I just want you to be alive, safe – happy."

"And you really thought I'd be happy without you? I thought you were supposed to be smart," she baited, basking in his presence, gazing at him adoringly.

"In my defense, I just came back from a hell-loop dimension where I was forced to watch an illiterate witch mangle crossword puzzles day in and day out," he snarked.

"We'll save her," she breathed, knowing Damon was a lot more worried than he was willing to express.

"Good. Because that annoying bear's cramping my apartment's style."

"I'm sure Miss Cuddles appreciates you giving her a good home until Bonnie comes back," she teased. "And Gummi misses you, too."

"You mean Gummier, the Second Coming," he corrected wryly. "Since Gummi left this world with a non-aquatic Viking funeral."

"Not my best moment," she winced. "But I'm sure Jer and Matt are taking good care of Gummier and his home."

"Ugh, I don't want to think about what Beavis and Butthead are doing to all my stuff," he groaned.

"Maybe there's something else you'd like to think about then," she whispered sultrily into his ear, before pressing herself against him, and pulling him into a passionate kiss.

Damon responded immediately, adjusting her on his lap so that she was straddling him. He rolled his hips, with the evidence of his arousal pressing into her, making her gasp, arching her back with need.

He could have kicked himself – but he knew he needed to ask. "Any idea if you had a good, long night' sleep tonight?" Damon breathed between trailing kisses down her neck her collar bones, to the tops of her breasts. "Please tell me you slept through the whole night, Elena," he breathed.

"I woke up," she frowned. "I woke up in the middle of the night – after dreaming of a moment when we promised each other forever," she said dreamily. "I realize what it means now, but at the time, I couldn't puzzle it out."

He reluctantly pulled back, awash at once with joy and disappointment. "Then we need to use whatever time we have left tonight to figure this out since we're so close to Whitmore. Tell me everything – everything – and I mean everything you know about this spell on the way to the Occult Studies department."

"So, everything?" she grinned, despite her very obvious frustration.

"You can leave out some bits about Kai's creepy jam fetish, or I'll never get hard again," he told her pointedly.

Damon's mind was spinning as they snuck onto campus in the middle of the night. Kai linked Elena to Bon-Bon, to supernaturally sleep for the rest of her life? How long did Bennett witches live, anyway?

They had to stop this. There was no way – absolutely no way – he was going to spend nearly a century without her.

He'd tear the whole world apart before he let that happen.

On top of that, Kai would murder the entire Gemini coven at Ric's wedding.

That little weasel had to be stopped. He'd happily drag him into the new millennium just to tear his throat out himself if he could remember to once Elena disappeared. And that was the problem. All this information would be gone as soon as the Elena from his time woke up.

No matter what they did – any new method they tried – always ended up the same. The memories were gone, and so was all physical evidence of changes.

The timeline fought to remain intact.

As they neared the Occult Studies office, they heard quiet voices coming from inside.

"Is someone in there?" Elena asked, confused.

"Looks like it," Damon whispered, stealthily opening the door, only to find two familiar, very blond heads huddled together in an intense conversation, while sorting through what clearly appeared to be restricted material.

"Well, if it isn't the Creepy-Culty Lannister Twins pilfering through some stolen loot," he announced loudly, eliciting a shocked gasp from each of the twins, both of whom were stunned into utter silence for several whole moments, clearly thinking themselves far too clever to ever be caught.

"I wonder if this is where he got those herbs for me," Elena muttered to herself.

"W-what are you doing here, Damon?" Luke stuttered, relieved to have finally found his voice after several agonizing seconds spent in terror.

"Just researching a spell. You don't bother me; I don't bother you," he said flippantly, then turned on them with a menacing grin. "Unless you want to help – to get me out of your hair faster and all. I'm told I can be quite," he stepped forward, taking a pencil off the desk to throw it at Luke, lodging it into the wall only centimeters away from his head. "Disruptive."

"Damon!" Elena growled, feeling the swell of guilt in her stomach at everything she'd put Luke through. "Stop it."

"What kind of spell?" Luke asked, swallowing thickly.

"So, kind of you to offer help," Damon said with an obnoxious grin, making a show of taking a seat behind the desk. "I've had a recurrent night-time visitor."

"Sorry, Whitmore Medical Center's your best bet to help with adult bed-wetting," Liv snarked to hide her terror, rolling her eyes for emphasis. Perhaps to human ears, her attempts at sounding casual would be effective, but Damon's supernatural ears picked up the slight tremor in her voice.

"Cute," he smirked. "Not that kind of visitor. Mine was placed under a sleeping spell, and now she visits me when I need her. When I'm with her, I remember every previous time she came, but only while she's here."

"You have a Specter visiting you?" Liv perked up, as much as her forcibly blasé demeanor allowed her to.

"A what?" Damon queried, bewildered.

"A Specter," Liv repeated, audibly annoyed. "Exactly what I said. It's a magical being whose consciousness is unstuck in time, so they visit their Twin Flame during moments when called by them."

"Unstuck in time?" Damon asked dubiously. "What, like Billy Pilgrim?"

"Wow, our resident vampy bad boy knows how to read," Liv said drolly. "Bet you didn't know that Vonnegut was a Gemini witch."

"Why the hell would I know that? It's not like he had any of the telltale signs: weird, creepy, and obsessed with following the hive-mind," Damon sassed, though the knowledge was certainly curious.

"We're not obsessed!" Luke pouted, affronted. "It's not our fault our coven makes us merge! It's -"

"Luke, shut up!" Liv hissed, annoyed at her brother's complete inability to grasp the concept of privacy and not sharing their family business with annoying vampires. "Anyway, it's not exactly like Billy Pilgrim. He couldn't exactly give away all the family secrets. Just inspired by it. Your Specter shows up when you need her to, in a disordered way. When you get your memories back, though, they come from the perspective of her timeline, not yours. Is it really trippy?" she asked, grinning for the firs time all night.

Damon just nodded, processing the information.

"Who's visiting you?" Luke grinned even wider than his sister, his earlier terror forgotten in light of this exciting information.

"It's –" Damon began.

"Don't tell them it's me!" Elena screamed, interrupting Damon in panic. "So, no big deal, buuuut," she forced a very obviously nervous smile, "Luke kind of hates me – because I spent those four months without you emotionally blackmailing him into giving me herbs that allowed me to hallucinate you."

"Wow," Damon replied, genuinely surprised that his normally sweet, compassionate girlfriend could be so ruthless and diabolical.

"Yeah, they made me suuuuper-violent, which is why he wanted to stop. But then I not only guilted him, but threatened him a bunch of times," she said – very quickly – futilely hoping that if she said the words fast enough, he wouldn't hear them all, and then not know the full extent of how horrible she was.

"I'm impressed," Damon allowed, smirking in her direction.

"Please don't be," she groaned.

"It's kind of hot," he teased with a grin.

Elena laughed. "Is that some kind of kink of yours?" she queried, feeling the tension at his lack of judgment roll off her.

"Don't know yet. Let's try it out," he said with a suggestive wiggle of his eyebrows.

Luke grinned even wider. "She's here, isn't she?"

"Just say it's someone that you knew when you were human," Elena pleaded. "There's no way they'll help you if they know it's me. They're still really mad."

Damon rolled his eyes, not seeing why he couldn't rely on old and trusted tactics like threatening witches to do his bidding, but fine. He was not in the mood for an argument, and he especially didn't want the Magical Barbie Twins to know that much about him.

"What the hell's a Twin Flame?" he instead asked, deflecting.

"It's like your soulmatiest soulmate," Luke said dreamily. "You can have a few soulmates, but only one Twin Flame."

"… Right…" Damon said dubiously, really not enjoying witchy labels and all their ridiculous, esoteric associations.

"So, who is it?" Liv asked, trying and failing to sound uninterested.

"A girl I knew when I was human," Damon replied with a casual shrug, a successful attempt at looking nonchalant, though neither twin appeared to be buying it.

"All right, keep your secrets," Luke grinned, a wild look in his eyes.

"Is everyone here a meme?" Damon scoffed.

"It's a Lord of the Rings reference," Luke pouted.

"I know that," Damon replied in frustration, grabbing the bridge of his nose as he forced himself to take a calming breath. "I just meant that for you two, wasting my time and not letting me get to the point is like second breakfast to a hobbit. Happy?"

"Yes!" Luke beamed. "Okay, what do you want to know?"

"How to wake her up," Damon replied simply, with far more desperation than he ever intended.

Liv and Luke looked at each other silently, evidently warring to see who would take the lead to deliver the disappointing news.

Apparently, Luke pulled the metaphorical short straw, because he took a lengthy sigh before speaking. "It's – complicated."

"So uncomplicate it," Damon said, clipped.

"If your Twin Flame's been turned into a Specter and you say she's asleep, someone probably cast a really nasty spell on her. If it's the one I'm thinking, then trying to lift it is akin to performing open-heart surgery on all involved parties at the same time. The witch, the Specter, anyone else that may be involved. You really have to know what you're doing. One wrong move, and everyone dies," he said solemnly.

Damon's entire demeanor sank with despair, his head in his hands. He was quiet for several long moments, before rubbing his face to jolt himself into alertness. "How do you know so much about this spell?"

"It's a Gemini coven specialty," Liv supplied with a half-hearted smile.

"Of course, it is," Damon groaned. "Because the only thing you two needed was to be even more creepy and weird."

Elena took a seat on the arm of the chair, wrapping an arm around Damon's shoulders for comfort. He responded by pulling her into his lap and burying his face in her hair.

"We're not going to give up," she whispered in his ear, taking comfort in his closeness.

"I know," he replied, pressing a soft kiss to her lips, before turning to the twins again. "Tell me more about this spell. Maybe there's some kind of clue that could provide – some kind of insight."

"The Specter spell was created as a way to combat the adverse effects of another spell – a sleeping spell I suspect was involved. But it comes with certain clauses in mind, to help preserve the timeline," Luke revealed.

"Is that why I forget what I learn from her, unless we're together?" Damon asked.

"Exactly," Liv said, narrowing her eyes in contemplation. "But there are always traces. If she touched something – altered anything in some way."

"How does the spell know what to erase?" Damon pressed, not yet ready to move past this point.

"I don't know – it just does," Liv shrugged.

"So, it works off probabilities, then," Damon murmured to himself. "Like a quantum computer?"

"Sure, whatever," Liv supplied with an ostentatious roll of her eyes.

"The spell's not completely deterministic – so it's "chaotic" – which really means it's probabilistic. Because how can it determine if something would alter the timeline with perfect accuracy? It probably quickly calculates probabilities. But certain conditions are meaningful, and others are completely negligible."

"I think I liked it when you threatened us more," Liv snarked.

"Wow, witchy blonde Daria's defensive sarcasm hurts so much," Damon mock-pouted, then recovered with an eye-roll, focusing again on the situation at hand. "Like if you're trying to predict the trajectory of a ball, whether or not other balls are flying next to it without touching it in any way is a negligible matter. Yeah, they all have small forces acting on each other, but ultimately it doesn't matter. But say you change the medium through which the ball is thrown – from air to water – then the change is significant. If there's wind, compared to how much the ball weighs, that can create an impact. But balls are small and slow-moving, so if you know all the factors, your prediction's always going to be correct. But what if it's something tiny, like a particle? Or something that movies at enormous velocities, like three planets orbiting each other? Or an electron being observed?" Rose teasing me didn't matter for several whole days. Stef's dumb idea wouldn't have worked, anyway, so what's the harm in him trying it?" he pondered aloud, knowing very well that they had no idea who Rose was. "The Specter remembering her dreams did. So, is this the case of ball or the photon? Does it know with perfect accuracy or does it calculate probabilities? If the spell calculates the probabilities of whether or not a change we make is significant enough to keep," he paced, then stopped. "Is it ever wrong?" he asked suddenly.

"Not that we know of," Liv said.

"But would we even know? Or has timeline been altered irrevocably? Does your witchy-woo Spidey-Sense get all tingly when you're around something that's been affected by a Specter?" Damon pressed.

Elena stepped forward and passed her hand through Luke.

"Did you feel that?" Damon asked.

"Yes," Luke said, bewildered. "I felt – something."

"The tumbler?" Elena suggested.

"At the Boarding House," Damon replied with a shake of his head. "Same with all the shirts you destroyed. And that notebook you wrote in."

"This is so cool!" Luke gushed, never having been exposed to the effects of the Specter spell before, which was legendary in their coven.

"You're like Bubbles and Buttercup banded together and ate the third one because she actually knew how to act normal," Damon sassed. "You think my … whatever you called her … being under a fucking sleeping spell is cool? Maybe I think using your entrails to crochet looks cool."

"You know who the Power Puff Girls are?" Liv asked with a barely-restrained snicker, no longer even remotely intimidated.

"There's also the matter that time passes differently for the Specter," Luke enthusiastically offered, also choosing to forgo Damon's interruption to his nerding out.

"How?" Damon asked.

"Well, they're based on a different plane of existence," Luke elaborated.

"So, like time dilation?" Damon frowned contemplatively.

"What?" Luke asked dubiously.

"Like visiting different planets in Interstellar?" Damon elaborated, forcing himself not to sound condescending, but it was becoming increasingly difficult.

"Yeah! Exactly!" Luke exclaimed.

"So, the spell's probabilistic in how it interprets potential threats to the timeline, and there's a Lorentz factor involved in the place the Specter's sent between visits," Damon summarized.

"I don't know what those words mean, but I'll say yes," Luke shrugged.

"How is it cast?" Damon asked curiously. "Does it work like a simulation? You plug in some initial conditions –"

"I'm going to stop you right there," Liv said. "We have no idea. It's very restricted, and it takes a certain level of maturity, trust, and ability to be taught it, since it could come with so many consequences."

"There was a rumor of someone stealing a copy right before she was excommunicated from the coven in the nineteenth century," Luke excitedly rounded on Liv, looking very much like Caroline when she had a hot piece of gossip. "Some siphoner witch."

"Oh, that's right!" Liv replied with almost excitement, which was actually a really big deal for her.

"We know you're lying, by the way," Luke turned to Damon, with a sassy grin of his own.

"About?" Damon asked casually, though not with a hint of patience, while Elena was visibly panicking.

"The way the spell works – the Specter can only appear to her Twin Flame during the periods before she was actually turned into one, so she couldn't have been some human you knew before you were turned and visit you now," Liv revealed smugly.

"I never said she was human," Damon insisted, raising on eyebrow in what he thought was a sure victory.

"Whatever, Damon. There's only one person whose guilty conscience would make you lie about her identity," Luke said, though not unkindly. Tell Elena that I'm sorry to hear that someone cast the Sanity Syphon on her, and that I forgive her. I've had my own dark periods."

"Well, I don't forgive her," Liv scoffed, her arms crossed over her chest.

"That's because I'm not a bitch like you," Luke teased.

"What's the Sanity Syphon?" Damon paled, not even remotely concerned with the twins' banter.

"Nasty, nasty spell," Luke said sympathetically. "It was created to look like an innocuous sleeping spell, but it's a covert torture curse – in that it forces its victim into expanded periods of mind-numbing monotony, nothingness. The witches who had fallen prey to it had all come out completely insane – and that was only after a few months. That's how we learned that time passes differently on the realm where they're sent."

Elena was listening to them describing that horrific place so casually – the one that seemed to rob her of all joy, all will, all capacity to feel – until she was called to Damon.

"That's why a remedy was created. The Specter spell allows one to be soul-called, spending time with their other half – their Twin Flame. But since they can only travel to points before the spell was cast – their own past – the original creators of the spell had to make sure that they wouldn't destroy spacetime by creating some kind of weird paradox," Luke explained.

"So, me killing that chatty monstrosity and saving Elena from this spell could – what – create some kind of paradox that could destroy the Universe?" Damon asked.

Luke just shrugged, far more interested in the emotional aspects of this particular tale than the technical.

"Does the Specter get stronger with time?" Damon asked, pivoting when an idea took hold.

"Yeah, supposedly," Liv supplied. "Specters naturally work against the spell's programming to maintain the timeline, because they're unstuck, and even their existence is so volatile. Like, then being able to leave imprints is a loophole to this – they always look for loopholes."

"Will you remember this when Elena wakes up?" Damon queried.

"No idea, but you definitely won't," Liv snickered.

"On that note, we're going to bid you lovebirds goodniiiight," Luke sang, desperately hoping that he'd remember this conversation. A Specter! How romantic. He hoped he'd get Specter visits someday – not that he wanted his Twin Flame to be placed under the Sanity Syphon or anything. Maybe there was a way around it? Just getting fun visits without all the sad mess? Yes, he'd look into this, for sure. "Come on!" he beamed at Liv. "I have an idea, and I need to go write some notes!"

Elena watched them leave morosely, wrapping her arms around herself for comfort. "So, that's it, then. Waking me up is too dangerous, and there's no way to stop them spell."

"Watch me," Damon replied defiantly.

"Damon, you can't!" Elena cried. "The Universe –"

"Fuck that! I'll burn everything down to save you – spacetime, all of existence, the Universe. I don't care," he growled, grabbing her shoulders.

"You can't!" she pleaded.

"I can. You lost this fight a long time ago," he told her gently, pulling her into his arms. He smiled softly at her, his forehead resting on hers. "We both did. Because it'll always be you – in every time, in every world," he breathed, echoing her words from earlier in the night. "In every imaginable Universe. There's no reality where I can imagine not choosing you, because I can't live without you. You're my other half."

She gasped through the smile that rose on her face all on its own, pressing her lips to his in a soft kiss. "There is no world – no reality without you in it," she whispered through the tears now multiplying like budding hope in her eyes and rolling down her cheeks.

"I love you," Damon murmured as he felt the form in his arms become increasingly ethereal. "I'll save you, Elena.

"I love you, too," she whispered as she felt the world around her dematerialize. "And I'll always find you."

Elena bolted upright. Two consecutive dreams, both terrifying her to her very core. The first was heavenly – a night of wild laughter and unending passionate love, promising forever. Yearning, safety, happiness, passion, adventure. This avenue was dangerous, and yet – she it was too late to resist. The spark was reignited. She was already becoming consumed by it.

While the first dream terrified her in its scope of happiness, the second chilled her with its seemingly unending capacity for misery.

It was that field again.

Every time – every time she had it, and planned to look into it, all memory of it was gone. Not this time. She got up, determined, and grabbed every journal she had, describing it in vivid detail in all 20, then placed them all over the dorm. Now one couldn't 'mysteriously disappear' like they had in the past.

Next, she grabbed Caroline's Multimedia textbook and wrote about it in the margins. Surely, someone as anal-retentive as Caroline would make sure to find her book, right? She wouldn't simply let it disappear. Sure, she'd yell at Elena for defiling it so, but desperate times, and all.

Satisfied that she did all she could to document the existence of her most haunting and mysterious nightmare, she took the last remaining journal and began to write.

It started to rain. My very being was alight with romance, like happiness was created for this very moment, and pulsated everywhere through space and time, with our promise of forever as its origin.

She put the pen down, and stared at the paper, her hands shocking with an epiphany both euphoric and devastating.

Everything she believed was a lie. She had to find him again.

The following night, Luke and Liv returned to the Occult Studies department to engage in some light theft of magical wares, feeling curiously unsettled.

"Your vibe's really weird," Liv scoffed.

"How so?" Luke asked, opening a potion bottle to try to identify the contents using a sniff test, and immediately changing his mind when he found that it was mostly just methanol.

"You feel – like Damon, a little? You have the same energy surrounding you that he does," Liv explained warily. "Ew, you don't have a thing for him, do you? He's such a douche."

"He's hot," Luke admitted. "But no, he's not my type."

"It's weird, because I only noticed it today. Or last night?" she frowned, taking a step closer. "And it's mostly coming from this spot," she said, touching the same place on the shoulder blade where Elena's hand passed through him.

"So my shoulder wants to fuck Damon?" Luke deadpanned.

"No, your shoulder has the same energy that constantly surrounds him," she said mostly to herself. "It has a weird magical signature."

"Oh my God!" Luke beamed. "Tell me you're thinking what I'm thinking, Liv, come on! I know you are."

"You've watched too many gross romance movies," Liv scoffed. "And your Specter obsession is getting out of hand, seriously. You always think it's a Specter!"

"Not always!" Luke pouted. "How can you not be obsessed? Love being the only power strong enough to withstand the horror of the Sanity Syphon - to heal, to save. To change the Universe," he sighed.

"More like to specifically not change the Universe, because there's a clause that prevents them from doing so," Liv pointed out pragmatically.

"Maybe so," he reluctantly admitted, then smiled cheekily. "But as the lore goes: Specters grow stronger with time, and no one knows what they can ultimately be capable of."

"There's almost no way," Liv said emphatically, by now used to this refrain, though something in her subconscious tickled her that this time Luke could actually be right. "That spell is so rare."

"And yet! Both are memories from last night are fuzzy," he said smugly.

"Yeah, because we drank," Liv shot back.

"Barely! We're usually able to put away at least three times that, and yet we black out? Come on, Liiiiiiv," he shook her excitedly.

"Whatever. I'll need to see a lot more evidence if I'm to believe that Damon fucking Salvatore's being visited by a Specter," Liv said with a lot more bite than she felt.

"You're just jealous," he smirked. "And hey! So am I. I wonder who cast it."

"Who cares?" Liv said, eyeing some dry herbs. "Do you think there's any mugwort?"

"Found some rose petals! I'm going to go do some divining on love! Ten bucks says he has a Specter. See you later, sis!" he exclaimed, kissing Liv on the cheek, and dashing away from the scene.

Damon Salvatore was so lucky, Luke sighed as he entered his dorm, ignoring the probable existence of the Sanity Syphon as the motive behind casting the Specter spell.

Having a Specter was so romantic.

He arranged the circle of salt, spread the rose petals, lit the candles, and began to meditate. Soon, he'd have his answer.

This one's admittedly a bit on the long side, but that's because I wanted to expand some of the lore and give Damon and Elena a cathartic moment, so here we are. :D

One of the reasons I picked 6X7 is that I feel Damon genuinely had a right to feel slighted here, and a lot of that has to do with him not having the whole story. Elena gets a lot of hate for this - and I honestly don't get it. This is a woman whose entire existence exudes empathy. Yes, she would sacrifice everything to keep people from getting hurt - especially since it's so closely tied to her trauma, since she blames herself for her parents' deaths and spreading pain. She's shown a very strong capacity for self-blame in the series, and is one of the few characters to not only refer to herself negatively a lot, but correct others when they try to suggest that this isn't true. (Also why i never got the self-righteous/holier-than-thou thing. People who are self-righteous think they're good. Elena consistently insists that she isn't. Not that I'm saying that's healthy, either. It's a trauma response. Girl needs therapy.) But, objectively speaking, yes, human lives are more important than someone holding on to the memories of a dead boyfriend, and committing murder (and she was very close to a killing spree) to keep them would be selfish. She made the selfless move - she chose to keep people safe from her in exchange for a part of her that's important to her - remember, she even told Ric that doing this made her sad, because she didn't want to forget - but she had to stop hurting people. The dead can't feel pain, but the living can. We owe it to the living to treat them well. So, why she gets hate for this, I'm not sure. Under very extreme duress, she chose to give up a piece of herself to save lives. Why a writer would get some heat, I get. It's sloppily-written. The first part of the season focuses on her turning into a monster and being distraught by this, but then when Damon comes back, the narrative shifts to "Elena was heartbroken," completely forgetting that the actual motive was to save people, not make life easier on herself. It was a sacrifice. Why? I don't know. Maybe the network had issues with them going so dark with its main female lead, but it was stupid, and it made her look a lot worse. But, I wanted her to be able to explain herself. Damon fell in love with her for her empathy. For better or worse, she's someone who acts on it. Consistently.

I introduced two new concepts here, so I'll try to very, very briefly elaborate. "Chaos" in science refers to a system being probabilistic rather than deterministic – so it's not anywhere as dramatic as some might think. For something to be 'deterministic' means that it can be predicted with perfect accuracy. That's it. Classical physics is deterministic because it deals with relatively not-too-big and not-too-small items moving at relatively slow velocities. A ball's trajectory is easy to predict. Per the Copenhagen interpretation (and I'm being very specific, because the Many-Worlds interpretation is actually deterministic) of quantum mechanics is "chaotic" (probabilistic), which means that results can't be predicted with *perfect* accuracy, but rather with probability. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, for example, shows that in quantum mechanics, we can't know both the position and momentum of a particle at the same time. If we know more of one, we know less of the other – we know the probabilities. When one is normalized at 100% (or equal to one), we have no knowledge at all of the other.

The other is the Lorentz factor (or, more specifically, Lorentz transformations), which comes from special relativity – it refers to time dilation and length contraction, but since the story's only concerned with the former, I'll focus on that. Much love to you absolute darlings. :D With that said, not every factor leads to significant impact. Some are negligible and some aren't. The question is which is which. Does it spell know?

I have a thing where I make all girls good at math to harmful annoying stereotypes, but since Damon correctly quoted the velocity formula to Galen Vaughn (literally, the only character in the series to science correctly – please don't mention Stefan's ball-of-cliches horrendous comet speech in S1 – I like to have Damon make fun of him for it when he finds out in other stories :D) in S4, he's my mouthpiece for physics in my stories. Would it have been cooler if it had been Elena, Bonnie, or Caroline, instead? Sure. But, I love Damon, so if they had to give it to a male character, I'm glad it was him. :D

I had such a blast writing Luke and Liv. So much fun. :D

Reviews are absolutely expressions of love, so I'd love to hear all your thoughts, opinions, feelings. Much love, all. :D