Author's note: Hi beautiful souls! So, I made a teensy boo-boo in the previous chapter's author's note (thanks for pointing it out, Jenna!), and accidentally wrote that Elena's awake. To be clear, she isn't. That particular section was just pasted from AO3, which is ahead in chapter count, and I didn't notice. To compensate, here's another chapter for you lovely folks! :D
Just a reminder that this story ends at 11 chapters, so we're almost there! With that said, there's definitely going to be a sequel. :D
Truly grateful for all the lovely support, y'all. :)
December 1958
The air was stale.
It hung oppressively, permeating the atmosphere.
This was the very first thing Elena noticed after she materialized on Earth again after her brief period on 'Hypnagogia' following her last visit to Damon.
Her dark eyes quickly scanned the poorly-lit environment as she sought him out. Cold, damp conditions. Stark, unwelcoming stone walls. Bars enclosing whoever was inside. Was this some kind of prison?
A sense of foreboding settled in her stomach. There was really only one place she could be –
"Katherine?" She heard a weakened, pained voice, nevertheless filled wonder, whisper from the floor to her right.
His voice.
She involuntarily flinched at the name but managed to hide it to some degree. Her hands sprang to her lips of their own volition as her eyes rapidly filled with tears. He looked so weak – almost broken, struggling to sit upright. His skin appeared to be entirely too dry, almost like he wasn't quite on the verge of desiccation, but soon would be. She instantly realized when – and where – she was. If the carved 'DS' on the wall behind him wasn't a clue, the visible state of his health certainly was. These were the Augustine cells in Whitmore Hall's basement.
How long had he been here?
"Five years, give or take."
Five years. That was right – he told her. Five years of brutal torture at the hands of a so-called 'scientist' – an empathy-devoid psychopath tainting everything within his profession.
Absently, she could have sworn she heard screaming coming from the distance. That must be Enzo. She squeezed her hands into fists, her nails forming crescent-shaped indents on her skin. All their attempts to save him led to her immediate disappearance from this realm – new evidence of their failure agonizingly carried at sonic speed.
Perhaps they could now? They'd rewritten the timeline once before. Maybe the Specter spell wouldn't see this as a danger to itself. Maybe she could save them both, if they made some kind of emotional promise to let events with Kai play out as they did before?
From what she was able to deduce from Luke's excited jabber and Liv's less-than-enthused delivery, the Specter spell is chiefly concerned with maintaining its own existence – keeping that very loop sacred and impervious to change.
"Am I dreaming?" he murmured, inadvertently cutting through her reverie, his expression awash with such hope that it was almost painful.
Immediately, she sank to the floor next to him and gently cupped his face. He looked so fragile in this moment – which was almost terrifying to her. She'd never seen him like this – not even when caught in the throes werewolf venom, confessing ardent love, regret, and hope to her in pained delirium.
Without another thought, she captured his lips with hers, pleased when he immediately responded, as though drawing strength from her embrace. It only took seconds for him to stiffen with the onslaught of memories from the merge of consciousnesses.
"Elena!?" he gasped, his expressive eyes sparkling in sheer delight that belied his physical condition.
"It's me," she breathed, kissing him again, letting her fingers trail through his hair in the manner she knew he found comforting – three strokes between her fingers, followed by five with a flat hand.
He pulled her closer as the kiss deepened, her lips swallowing his moan before he abruptly pulled away, the joy she'd only seen reflected in his gaze only moments before replaced by horror. "You have to get out of here!" he whispered, pushing himself to stand, and feebly trying to pull her along. "You have no idea where you just landed yourself!" he hissed, voice filled with venom that she knew wasn't directed at her.
"I have some idea," she replied sympathetically, gesturing to the 'DS' carved on the wall. "I've been here before, remember? With you?"
"No, you've been in this physical cell, Elena," Damon refuted adamantly. "But you have no clue what goes on here – and I won't let them –"
"Hey. Easy," she soothed, returning to stroking his hair to calm him. "No one but you can see or hear me, remember? They won't know I'm here."
"That we know of," he insisted, despite mentally admitting to himself that her logic was sound, but he wouldn't take the chance. "There could be an exception – there's always an exception – to every rule!"
"Damon!" she exclaimed, growing desperate as she deduced where this sudden change of mood would likely lead. "I'm perfectly safe here. You're the one who isn't. Maybe –"
His eyes suddenly grew hard – determined. He spoke with strong, emphatic clarity. "Maybe we'll change everything, and stop the spell, and you'll never turn into a Specter –"
She'd seen that anguished determination in him before, when he used the sire bond to send her away, and it riled her then as much as it did now.
"You're going to go home. I'm going to stay here with Jeremy. I'll help him complete the mark. I'll teach him how to hunt. I'll protect him."
Except this time, there was no sire bond to keep Elena compliant, and she reacted with immediate aggression. "Stop it!" she cried, covering his mouth with both hands as soon as she realized his intent to trigger the failsafe in the spell that would send her away instantly, at once relieved and horrified that she was actually physically stronger than him in his current condition. "Don't you dare!" she growled.
He only stared at her defiantly for a few solid moments, before a delightedly wicked gleam sparked in his eyes as Elena felt his fingers on two particularly ticklish spots on either side, causing her to withdraw with a yelp. "That's not fair –!"
"We'll change everything," he continued, as though uninterrupted, just as before. Elena's heart sank with dread. "We'll keep the sleeping spell from ever being cast," he delivered with smug finality and waited.
And waited.
The moment hung in tense silence, wrapped in trepidation, as Elena feared her departure and Damon, her staying.
After several silent seconds passed, she released a shaky breath. "I'm still here. Why?"
"I guess it called my bluff," Damon growled. "Whoever designed this 'smart spell' should probably help Donovan activate a second brain cell. Might actually make him useful, or at least learn how to spell 'annoying douche' - or finally beat Dora the Explorer on easy mode. What? Miracles can happen, Elena. Maybe he'll finally help Dora save those mermaids," he sassed with a wave of his finger.
Elena praised her own restraint and loyalty toward her childhood friend in slyly converting her escaping laughter into a smile that almost looked admonishing – almost. Based on Damon's answering smirk, however, she quickly deduced that it did nothing to fool him.
Now emphatically relieved that she wouldn't be instantly sent away, she took a seat on the cool stone next to Damon, taking one of his hands in both of hers to play with his fingers. She noted the dirt underneath his fingernails and absently wondered how often he and Enzo were allowed to bathe – or what conditions passed for bathing in this horrible place. There was no offending body odor, though that could perhaps be attributed to lack of sweat, she wondered. Damon once told her that a healthy supply of blood kept him functioning like a human being, so she inferred that a lack of blood would have the opposite effect. If there is no sustenance, the body would have nothing to eliminate as waste, nor could it spare what few fluids it was given to produce sweat to cool itself. And since the body was undead, nothing deteriorated.
"Are you okay?" she asked, immediately feeling stupid for her question.
"Dandy," he replied with a smirk just skirting dryness, to Elena's answering reluctant smile. "Worst game of Doctor ever, though," he admitted, shaking his head in mock-disappointment, to lean in for a conspiratorial whisper. "I think he scored negative points in Med School for sexy-times. This guy's got nothing on you, baby. Technique's too sloppy, too. All blunt force with none of the finesse. Save me from being bored to death."
She drew her eyebrows together in pronounced consternation, Damon's attempt to lighten the mood in the face of his torture having the opposite of his intended effect. "That's exactly what I'm trying –"
The playfulness in his features faded almost as quickly as it appeared, the blues of his irises suddenly serious, vulnerable. "I will be when I know you're safe."
Her hand found his cheek. "And what about you?"
"Oh, I'll be fine. Just about to ring in the New Year with the no-humanity special right up until I meet my dream girl," he replied wryly. "Turns out literally. You made quite the impression on teenage me."
"Likewise," she murmured with vast outpouring affection, pulling him in for another slow kiss, savoring the feeling of his lips on hers. One thing she realized from her dalliances with Damon as the Specter is that these moments were fleeting and chaotic, and they had to seize them whenever they could. Her disappearances, though at times predictable – guided by threats to the Specter spell's existence – nevertheless seemed erratic. She pulled away when her lungs demanded air, gingerly pressing her forehead against his. Letting her mind wander for a moment, she imagined staying – wondering if her presence would allow Damon's humanity to return faster. Would he still go on his killing spree in New York? In 1994?
She let the daydream fade with a jolt to focus on the Damon before her, vowing to take whatever time she could get.
"Where were you just now?" he asked, watching her carefully.
"Just dreaming," she confessed in a hushed whisper. "Wishing for more time with you."
Damon took her hand in his, bringing her palm to his lips to press a kiss into the pulse point, his blood deprivation doing absolutely nothing to hide the smug smirk that appeared when Elena shivered in response. "We'll have a lifetime once we wake you up."
"Do you think…" she bit her lip, trying to work out the phrasing. "Do you think if we consciously try to get me spelled again, we'll be allowed to escape together? All three of us?
"How do you suggest escaping?" Damon asked dubiously. "Unless your Specter powers came with a Hulk upgrade, I doubt either of us can break out of here. We just have to find a way to get you out of here before he comes back."
She narrowed her eyes, feeling the same wild determination that once catapulted her toward an anti-magic border.
Feeling delightfully reckless and figuring she had nothing to lose, Elena jumped up to try the bars – once, twice – struggling with all her might. Nothing. Her strength resembled that of a regular human. Her third attempt rendered her so woozy that she slipped, the momentum dragging a jagged edge along her hand.
"Ow!" she hissed, watching the blood seep from her palm.
The scent of blood forced Damon's vampiric features to the fore, eyes flooding with crimson and fangs descending despite his internal protestations. "You all right?" he queried, the clear concern in his voice belying his body language, pushing himself into the wall before his hunger took control.
"I'm fine," Elena murmured, distracted as she watched the wound heal itself. "Look!" she cried in bewilderment, showing him the rapidly-disappearing laceration. "How is this happening?"
"We knew you weren't completely human under this spell," Damon speculated, finally regaining control as the wound closed and the separation to his blood-starved hunger abated. "Which raises the question —"
"What am I?" she queried, finishing his thought with a pensive frown, then immediately brightened. "I know how we can escape!"
He looked at her for several moments, calculating — the vampire within rejoicing at her predicted suggestion, but the man in love with her fearing potential consequences.
"Drink from me," she breathed, just brushing his lips with the palm of her hand.
"And if I drink the Cure from you now?" Damon countered, wanting to cover all possible outcomes.
"You said it yourself — I'm not human," she insisted. "Not in this form, anyway." When he refused to budge, she felt her impatience build. "Damon, you have to drink. Please!" she cried, growing visibly desperate. "You'll regain your strength! You can break us all out!"
"Or I could kill you! Elena, I'm so close to desiccation. My control isn't —"
"I trust you. You'll never hurt me," she replied, cupping his face in her softer hands, beckoning him to see her faith in him. "You're not capable of it, and you know it. If you couldn't hurt me with your humanity off, you'll stop yourself now. I know you will."
"Fine," he relented. "But you drink from me, too — just to be safe."
"Damon …" Elena cautioned. "You're blood-starved. I can't take any more –"
"Those are my conditions," he interrupted, his tone clipped. "I'm not risking you."
"Fine," she conceded, knowing precisely how stubborn the love of her life could get. "We'll blood share – but you're taking more from me than –"
"Nope!" he replied smoothly, positioning her in front of him. "I'll stop drinking when you stop, and not a moment later," he whispered in her ear, eliciting a quiet shiver as his lips caressed its outer shell. Before Elena could allow herself to fully absorb the moment, he pulled her back flush against his chest, bit into his wrist, and pressed it to her lips. Knowing that it was pointless to argue, she drank.
"I love you," he whispered her ear before his lips teased her temple with a soft kiss.
"I love you, too."
As Damon's fangs sank into Elena's soft skin, he felt the nectar of her sweet blood flood his mouth – pure ambrosia filling his senses. Even in his most vibrant memories, her blood didn't taste this good – this potent.
In that moment, he felt everything – her joy at their reunion, her anguish at seeing him so pained – but, most of all, her ardent love for him. It was all-consuming, all-encompassing.
It was the most real thing he'd ever felt, aside from his equally blinding love for her. Overwhelmed, he pulled her closer, and as the friction of their bodies close to one another continued to form, they were both suddenly overcome with yet another feeling.
Elena moaned into Damon's wrist, still drinking, as she felt his erection rub against her – the flow and exchange of each other's lifeforces mingling into a blinding explosion that left them teetering over the edge, ensconced in rapture and in each other.
The magic instantly reacted - molding, transforming - as though a torrent and a wildfire mingled together in a kind of impossible union, altering two magical signatures forever as a vampire fed from his Specter Twin Flame.
And just as suddenly, she disappeared without further preamble, leaving her aforementioned vampire bewildered at his newfound strength and a sense of aching loss that wasn't there only moments prior.
2017
The expressions of the three figures in Bonnie Bennett's bedroom couldn't be more different. One prone, two entirely too vigilant; one devoid of emotion, two visibly overcome with feeling.
Surrounding a magically comatose Elena, Bonnie was the very picture of determination, while her lover paced about nervously.
"You're being reckless," Enzo worried. "You heard what that jam-obsessed psycho said: if you mess with the spell, both of you die."
"Since when do we take the word of every lunatic we encounter so seriously?" Bonnie countered. "Don't you trust me?"
"Of course, I trust you!" he insisted. "But I just think you need to think this through, gorgeous. I won't lose you," he told her seriously.
"Enzo," she groaned, half-admonishing and half touched – much more so than she cared to admit. "You don't have to worry so much –"
Her defense was interrupted by her ringing phone – Valerie's name lighting the screen.
"See! Even these portable contraptions think you're being ridiculous," Enzo insisted smugly.
"Now's really not a good time, Valerie," Bonnie rushed, answering the phone, and immediately regretting that she didn't text her this information instead.
"Wait! Don't hang up! We have to talk !" Valerie urged.
"Look, I'm doing something really important right now, and whatever it is that you need to tell me, I doubt it supersedes –" Bonnie began
"You're trying to wake Elena up – I know ," Valerie rushed. " But you have to listen to me –!"
"How did you know that?" Bonnie interrupted in a daze, putting Valerie on speakerphone. Across the room from her, Enzo's expression suddenly shifted from smugness to a decidedly concerned curiosity.
"Because I know about this spell – the one cast on her by Kai, and another later added to alleviate some of its more … nefarious … side-effects," Valerie explained, the edge of her tone twisting with discomfort.
"What do you know about it?" Bonnie demanded, though her voice lacked ire – instead, replaced with an almost hidden desperation. "What second spell?"
"I'll …" Valerie began, then paused, assessing the best course of action to continue, then stopped. "Wait, am I on speaker?" she asked, with notable annoyance.
"Yep," Bonnie replied dryly. "My ever-so-overprotective boyfriend insists on being involved on every step of the process," she explained, doing her very best to shoot Enzo an annoyed look that instead appeared grudgingly affectionate with a twist of amusement.
"Fine," Valerie huffed. "Then at least put me on facetime so we could see each other. I'm trying to get the first flight out, but it's taking longer than expected." When Bonnie hung up and reconnected on a video call, her face appearing on her phone, she continued. "I'll start at the beginning. The spell Kai cast was used as a negotiation tactic. Once a certain condition was met, the victim was released, almost like a hostage situation. It also came in with a built-in sense of urgency, because the longer someone spent in its throes … well, it was nicknamed the 'Sanity Syphon' for a reason," she explained with a building grimace.
Bonnie paled instantly. "How long would that take to happen?"
"Not long," Valerie replied quietly. "Sometimes as little as a few months. We don't know what happens on that plane – where they're sent. But I've heard it described as a kind of mind-death. There's this perpetual sense of monotony – nothingness. Mostly isolation with nothing to stimulate thought or feeling."
"So, our Elena might not be …our … Elena anymore," Bonnie breathed, falling into a seat on the couch under the weight of the thunderous blow.
"And this is where I have some good news," Valerie attempted with as much cheer as her normally deadpan demeanor would allow. "Some of the demands were too difficult to carry out quickly, so since necessity is the mother of invention, someone came up with a spell to counteract its effects."
"What spell is that?" Bonnie asked dubiously.
"It's not very well-known outside of the Gemini coven –"
"The Specter spell?" Bonnie interrupted expectedly, finishing for her.
"Yes?" Valerie apparently only found the wherewithal to say, completely taken aback. One of the reasons the spell enjoyed such unbridled success was that very few knew of its existence.
"I had a …" Bonnie struggled for a few moments to find the correct word to describe their relationship, her heart clenching in empathy for what befell him and the rest of his family. "A friend," she finally concluded, settling on a term that was perhaps too generous, but the magic that hummed around her confirmed its rightness all the same. She smiled almost reluctantly in wistful recollection. "He wouldn't shut up about it."
Valerie nodded with a sympathetic pang. "He died at the wedding, didn't he? Along with everyone else – except for the twins?"
"In manner of speaking," Bonnie breathed, recalling that Luke merged with Kai, gifting him his inherent empathy, however briefly - though that died with Kai, as well.
"I'm sorry," Valerie replied earnestly, pushing down her own confusing feelings about the fate that befell all but two of her former coven – and the irony that the two remaining Gemini witches happened to be siphoners – a condition for which she was excommunicated. "Should I take this to mean that you're familiar with the spell?"
Bonnie nodded automatically, visibly perturbed. "When gushing about how 'romantic' the Specter spell was, Luke – predictably, now that I really think about it – neglected to mention the severity of the spell that necessitated its existence. How effective is the Specter spell in counteracting the effects, really?" she asked, open worry marring her face.
"Allegedly? Excellent," Valerie replied with a helpless shrug. "Most Specters that we know of were woken up in a matter of months, though. Elena's been asleep for years at this point."
"So, what does that mean?" Bonnie asked, frowning.
"No one knows, really," Valerie explained. "Specters, they … they tap into something ancient. Powerful. They grow stronger over time."
"So, what does that mean? That they become impossible to wake up after a while? Because I'm not going to stop trying –" Bonnie cried adamantly.
"Most of them are killed before they're given a chance to wake up. Some have disappeared, and no one knows where they are," Valerie interrupted bluntly. "They're…" she trailed off, wondering how best to phrase the complicated speculations that have arisen about Specter lore over the years. "The Specter spell was created..." she stopped again, taking a deep breath. Her eyes darted curiously over a tumbler on the wet cart in the background, emanating spectral magic, but she ignored it for the moment.
"Cat got your tongue, love?" Enzo queried sardonically.
"It was created," Valerie continued, making sure to infuse her voice with adequate annoyance, "to soothe the effects of the Sanity Syphon, by letting the spelled detach from time to visit their Twin Flame instead of suffering the spell's effects – by tapping into an ancient form of magic. As you can imagine, that came with a particularly nasty sense of potential consequences."
"I'll say," Bonnie agreed. "That kind of time manipulation could … wow," she trailed off, her mind spinning at all the possibilities.
"Exactly," Valerie concurred. "One of the tenets of the spell is that it must ensure its own existence. No matter what happens, it'll erase anything that could potentially create its own causality paradox."
"How do you know so much about this spell? Even Luke didn't, and he was obsessed with it," Bonnie pondered, then her eyes suddenly widened in recognition. "It was you! You're the one who stole the spell! He mentioned that it was a witch who was kicked out of the coven in the nineteenth century."
Bonnie would hear the grin in Valerie's voice if she didn't see clear physical evidence. "Guilty," she purred. "Let's just say I've had more time to analyze this spell than any witch in the past two-hundred years."
"Okay, and? What does any of this have to do with Bonnie's latest traipse into reckless martyrdom?" Enzo scoffed, earning an annoyed smack against his chest from his girlfriend.
"There's a third part of the spell," Valerie admitted after hesitating for a few moments.
"Are you trying to win some kind of bloody contest for 'slowest reveal,' love? Please get to the point," Enzo said, exasperated.
"The Sanity Syphon comes in three generations," Valerie replied, with an emphatic eye roll. "The first was the sleeping spell, itself. The second, was the creation of the Specter. And the third was deemed too dangerous and locked away in an infamous vault – a collection of forbidden magical items or beings, sealed for the benefit of mankind. How fortuitous that it had recently been opened by the same careless group from which I'd finally disentangled myself!" she deadpanned.
"It's in the Armory?" Bonnie breathed. "The third part of the spell is in the Armory?"
"Gold star!" Valerie groaned flippantly. "Wait for me! Don't do anything without me! I mean it –"
But any further protestations from the Gemini siphoner witch fell on deaf ears as Bonnie leveled her boyfriend with one of her bossiest glares to date. "We're going to the Armory, Enzo. We've got a spell to steal."
December 1958
Damon had never in his life recalled being quite so strong – absolutely teeming with power. The very molecules around him sang with life. He brushed it off as excitement, because only hours from now, he and Enzo would finally escape this hellhole.
They'd be free. And then, they'd have their revenge.
Meanwhile, outside, a magically-induced fog gathered.
Why, yes! Those are Damon's fog powers suddenly appearing at the end there. :D
And yep, Valerie's the one who stole the Specter spell in the first place. Luke mentioned in an earlier chapter that someone in the Gemini coven ran off with it, and we know from canon that Valerie's a former Gemini witch, excommunicated from the coven for being a siphoner.
The position in which Damon and Elena blood-share was inspired by one in Florencia7's super-brilliant Before We Sleep.
Beautiful thanks to Oiselet for being a delight, and her lovely feedback. She recently updated her very awesome Bob's, a chapter for which she diligently read hours and hours and hours' worth of romance novels as 'research' for all your smutty needs, so make sure you check it out. :D
Enormously grateful for you lovely folks. Much love, all! :D