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Chapter Text

August 2017

Charlottesville, VA

Damon was out of breath after lugging boxes and suitcases and crates of god-knows-what up three flights of steps into their new married-student-housing apartment on UVA's campus. His current load was the last. Four boxes balanced precariously on top of each other, in his arms, because goddammit Damon Salvatore was not going to make one more undignified trip up and down these goddamned stairs.

(And it was a freaking dump. He'd tried to buy them a nice, respectable house on the edge of town, but Elena was excited about being NORMAL. A nice, normal medical student with her nice normal human husband. Normal medical student's spouses, apparently, were not millionaires. Damon's insistence that he was a bona-fide millionaire fell on deaf ears. He was welcome to donate his ludicrous housing budget to feed-the-starving-children or save-the-animals, but for now they were getting by on Elena's stipend and his salary at the downtown C'ville bar she'd allowed him to buy.)

He wished he could blame Elena for all the boxes and suitcases and god-knows-what, but most of the crap he was carrying was actually his crap. Damon'd always said Stefan was the pack-rat, but Damon himself had collected a ridiculous amount of stuff over his 178 years on this crazy planet. 25 years as a human in the 1800s. 153 years as a vampire. And he'd always had his own room to return to, in the boarding house, a room that any human descendants/keepers of the family estate were too afraid to mess with. Mystic Falls had been home for the last eight years, since he'd come back to rescue Katherine from her non-imprisonment in the tomb under the old church. Since he'd met Elena, and rekindled his relationship with his brother. Since he'd become part of a community of vampires, humans, werewolves, witches, hunters, and council members. In those eight years, Mystic Falls had been home. A real home. The boarding house had been a real home. And all the people of the town -- including those he'd die to protect and those he'd tried to kill and those he actually killed (some a few times because death doesn't always stick in Mystic Falls) -- they had become a ramshackle family. The town had become one big person he would fight to protect.

But now, he'd given the boarding house to Caroline and Ric, so that they could start their "school for the young and gifted" aka baby witches. Elena said she wanted to return to Mystic Falls someday, when they were "real grownups." For the next few years, they were supposed to live in married student housing while his wife -- that sounded weird -- got her medical degree.

And anyway, this version of Damon Salvatore wasn't such a bad-ass-town-protector.

No, Damon Salvatore was a vampire no longer. His brother had ripped away Damon's superpowers when he forced the cure on him. And then Stefan -- his hero hair extra heroic that night -- had taken Damon's place in front of the hellfire. That idiot had thrown his life, literally, into hellfire, so that hell-and-Katherine-Pierce would be destroyed forever.

And Damon was stuck on Earth in his wussy human body, now lurching into his and Elena's new apartment, totally out of breath. And sweating. As a vampire, he'd barely sweated.

Right this second undignified sweat was running down Damon's forehead, and in fact all down his body. Great sheets of sticky wetness.

"Lena," he grunted as he dumped the boxes unceremoniously on the ground. "That's the last of it."

Elena sat in a sea of open boxes. She looked up from the box she was unpacking, smiling at him, gorgeous as ever in her tank top and cut-off denim shorts. Her hair was pulled up in a messy ponytail. Then she gasped and rushed over to him, her eyes all wide-open in concern.

"Oh God, Damon. Are you okay? Why didn't you ask for help? Did you carry four boxes up the stairs at one time?"

He rolled his eyes and asked for a towel.

Elena went into mother-hen-mode as she rummaged for a towel and then poured him a glass of water from the Brita pitcher in the fridge. (Apparently, he needed to add tap water to the long list of things that could kill, or at least maim, him now that he was human. Elena was very interested in safe drinking water.)

"I'm fine," Damon said as ran a towel over his sopping wet hair and face. He gulped half of the glass of water down. "Seriously, Elena. You don't need to worry about me. I didn't want to make 20 more trips so I just loaded myself down for the last few trips."

"You are not invincible," she snapped.

"So I've realized," he said. "And you mother-henning me is only going to make me feel like even more of a pathetic waste of space."

"Babe," she said with just a tinge of pity.

"Don't," he said as he pulled his black T-shirt off. He noticed that his abs were not as ripped as they used to be. He'd heard a lot of humans talk about going to the gym. Elena ran every morning. Was he really going to have to start exercising if he wanted to be able to take his shirt off in front of Elena without her having to pretend he was still sexy? Was he going to have start eating salads?

Being human sucked.

Damon sat down in the arm chair that had been in his old bedroom, and picked up a book from a crate, trying to pretend he was reading and not just desperate to sit down. In truth, he just wanted to catch his breath. Luckily for him, the book he'd randomly chosen -- a first edition of Jack London's Call of the Wild -- was one of his, and therefore it was amusing.

"Damon," Elena said, still standing over him, her expression now a mixture of pity and reproach. "You can talk to me."

"Just going to read some Jack London, babe. Did I ever tell you I partied with him?"

"You did not! I don't believe that."

"I did. He was smart."

"You're making that up," Elena said, laughing now.

Damon flipped to the front of the ancient book and held it out for her to read. "Read the dedication," he said with a slow smile, his eyes flirting with her for the first time all day.
Elena ran her finger along the brittle paper, reverently, as she read aloud, "For Damon, who enchanted me with stories of demons and darkness and grand, never-dying love. Jack"
Damon smiled, remembering the rugged novelist, who had ideals and more demons than he wanted. "It was the turn of the century. The last century. I met him in a saloon in Chicago. We spent a good many nights sipping bourbon and telling stories. He thought I was telling him fiction, of course."

"Of course," Elena said. Then she got a look of pure horror on her face. "You didn't eat him, did you?"

"No!" Damon said with a laugh. "Not even snatch and erase."

"And you didn't turn him?"

"No." After a pause, he waggled his eyebrows saying, "I did turn Zelda Fitzgerald."

"You did not."

"You've heard the stories. The woman was crazy. Doesn't that sound like a vampire gone wrong?"

"Seriously, Damon, did you turn Zelda Fitzgerald into a vampire?"

He broke out laughing as he shook his head violently. "No, my love. I did not turn Scott Fitzgerald's wife into a vampire. I did party with them, a lot, in the '20s. I knew Hemingway too. He was a prick. But I liked Scott."

"Really?" Elena said. "Why haven't you told me any of this?"

Damon shrugged. "We were always in the middle of a crisis, weren't we?"

She laughed as she returned the Jack London book to the crate and sat on Damon's lap.

He continued, "I mean, what with moonstones, doppelgangers, Original vampires, curses to break, blood sacrifices, werewolves, hybrids, witches up to all manner of shit, Gemini twins, ancient proto-vampires ..."

"There hasn't been time to talk about my literary heroes and whether you may have been drinking buddies with them?"

"Yep," Damon said.

"Did you sleep with any of them?"

"Probably."

Elena slapped him. "You don't know?"

Damon chortled. "Lena! I didn't sleep with Jack or Scott. Or Papa Hemingway. As far as the ladies, yeah, there's a good chance I screwed some of them."

"But you don't know?"

"Who I slept with in the '20s?" he asked, incredulous.

"Caroline always called you a man-whore," Elena said with reproach as she got up off him and returned to her unpacking ritual. "But do me a favor and no more carrying four boxes up three flights of stairs. Okay?"

"I'm fine!"

"Damon, you could have fallen backwards, and then you know what would have happened?"

"What, Elena? I could get a boo-boo?"

"You could die in a really stupid way!"

"Fuck!" he shouted. "Don't remind me!"

"Damon!"

"I was a human for 25 years and I never once died until my jack-ass of a father shot me through the chest," Damon said, getting really riled up, so riled up that he decided to bound out of the armchair, into the kitchen. Opening the fridge, he stood for a moment in front of this newfangled ice box, basking in the cold air radiating from it. Elena didn't realize how good they had it in the 21st century. "You don't need to baby me. I survived the Civil War. I think I can manage some stairs in the cheap-ass student apartment buildings."

"Again with the Civil War bragging!" she shouted from the living-dining-room.

"You want a beer, babe?"

"Are they cold yet?"

"Frosty," he said as he popped the tops off two bottles and carried them out to the living area. "Lena," he said as he handed her beer bottle to her.
He kissed her on the cheek, then took a long drag of his drink. "Now that hits the spot." Normally he was a bourbon drinker, but it was damned hot outside, so this ice-cold beer felt damned good. Also, another annoying thing about being human is that he had about 1/20th of his normal (vampire) drinking tolerance. He could no longer drink bourbon like it was iced tea.

Elena wrapped her arm around Damon's waist and leaned into him. "I'm not trying to baby you," she murmured, "It just seems like you're not adjusting as easily as, um ..."

"As you?"

She bit her lip. "It's to be expected. I was only a vampire for a couple years. You ..."

"Haven't been human since 1864," Damon said with a smirk.

She nodded. "I just assumed that you forgot a bunch of stuff. About being human. The mundane stuff."

Damon couldn't help smiling. "That would be true. I definitely seem to have blocked out all memories of sweating like a pig. Do I smell bad?"

"A little," she admitted, knocking him playfully on the shoulder. "Me?"

"Truthfully?" Damon said, kissing her sweaty shoulder. It was so hot in here. "A little."

Elena laughed, and this time it was like music. Purely happy laughter. "I keep forgetting to wear deodorant," she admitted. "I don't think I wore it the whole time I was a vampire. I hope I didn't smell awful!"

"You smelled great. You still smell great. But anyway, vampires don't need deodorant," Damon said. "I don't actually have any. I've been stealing yours."

"What?"

"I didn't know what kind to buy. There's so many options," he sputtered. "It wasn't a thing in my day. We wore cologne, and splashed it all type of places. This roll-on crap you get at the drugstore? Not invented then. I tried the cologne thing last week but I could still smell my sweat."

Elena's laughter erupted into musical glee. "Oh my god, Damon. Have you been too embarrassed to ask for help buying toiletries?"

"I prefer to be all-knowing."

 "You're an idiot. Are you afraid of CVS?"

"I'm above CVS," Damon said, his eyes on fire looking at her, drinking her in. She was just perfect.

Elena started laughing so hard she spilled her beer all over the both of them.

Damon put his beer bottle down on the card table Elena had erected as their "dining room table," then rescued her dripping bottle from her grasp.

Damon kissed this beautiful, perfect girl, pulling her towards him. He kissed his girl like his life depended on it. He ran his hands through her messy hair. He could feel her smiling as she kissed him back. "You're beautiful," he whispered between kisses.

"You're beautiful," she breathed back.

Damon was about to pull Elena towards the bedroom. (There was no bed, but he could throw her down on the cheap carpet and make love to her. Human lovemaking was not as fast or intense as vamp-sex, but it was one thing that he liked better as a human. Somehow it felt extra real.

Something made human lovemaking, and human orgasms, so much better than anything he'd experienced as a vampire. He'd almost forgotten the intense, uniquely human, passion he'd shared with Katherine, and the two other women he'd fucked during the war?

And with Elena -- this was a hundred times better. He'd loved Katherine, he'd died for her. He'd lived again for her. But he'd never known Katherine. She was a mystery. Elena, his Elena, was real.

He was dying to throw her down on that cheap carpet and ravage her. Their sex life had been good when they were vampires, but now -- it was magical. Was it his newfound mortality, or their shared human frailty, or the terrifying idea that one day their lovemaking could produce a little Gilbert-Salvatore?

He was about to wriggle out of his jeans when someone knocked on the door. He must have left it open when he'd come in with the boxes. Dammit.

"Hey, I guess you're our new -- " a youthful, clear voice cried out from the open front doorway. "Oh, god, sorry!"

Elena pulled away from Damon, laughing in an embarrassed sort of way.

He whipped around to stare at the interloper. Who just went around walking into people's homes, unannounced? At least in the 1800s his family had slaves to answer the door. Wow, that was racist. But if he called them servants he was pretending like his father had paid them, and well, he hadn't.

At their front door stood a girl about Elena's age, wearing a set of teal scrubs. Her long blond hair hung in two braids on either side of her head. She had a nose-ring. Doctors these days were allowed to have nose rings? Damon wondered if there were any tattoos hiding under the scrubs.

"I am so sorry," she said in a rush. "I saw you guys carrying boxes up early this morning, when I was off to the hospital for my shift. And I thought I'd come introduce myself, now that I was home again. But, well, I can come back."

Damon was all for her leaving and coming back, preferably knocking on the door and offering them a bottle of wine type of coming back, rather than barging in through open doors. But Elena was rushing over to the girl and shaking her hand and smiling, trying to put her at ease. Of course, she'd not interrupted anything important.

"So sorry," Elena was saying. Why was she apologizing? "We're newly-weds. I guess we're pretty revolting."

"Oh not at all! I know how that goes. Johnny and I have been married for a few years, but yeah, there's that newlywed phase where you can't keep your paws off each other!"

"I'm Elena. Elena Gilbert. I'm starting at the med school in the fall. First year."

"Alice Salisbury. Third year in med," the girl with the nose-ring said as she shook Elena's hand. Then she looked expectantly at Damon.

"Damon," he said with a tight smile.

The girl scrunched up her eyes in thought. "Damon Gilbert? I went to middle school with a Damon Gilbert. Did you grow up in Portsmouth?"

Damon laughed, a real laugh. "It's Salvatore. Elena kept her maiden name. Very feminist this one. Of course, where I come from, women always take their husband's name, but Lena here is a modern, liberated woman. She even votes."

The girls broke out in laughter. Elena glared at Damon. He raised his eyebrows suggestively.

"And where are you from?"

"All over. Military brat," he said, so used to lying about his background that it was second nature. "But I never went to middle school in Portsmouth. Or anyplace called a middle school. And of course, I'm not a Gilbert."

Alice smiled. "Well, now that we've got that sorted. . . Johnny sent me up to find out if you guys want to come down to our place and order a pizza. Maybe get some beer, play some cards? It's been a while since we had fun neighbors and, I don't know, we saw you pull up and you looked fun."

Elena and Damon exchanged a look. She wanted to go. He could almost hear her pleading with him -- this was exactly what she'd been hoping for. Normal human neighbors. Pizza and beer and no supernatural nonsense. It had been months since Stefan died and Hell was extinguished. They'd all been picking up the pieces. Elena had been holding her breath, as if she expected that any morning she'd wake up to a new disaster, a new doppelganger plot or evil witch come to doom them to gloom. But each morning the sun had come up, and there had been no supernatural nonsense.

Damon felt like he was a soldier who'd come back from the war and was having trouble adjusting to normal life. Elena must feel the same way -- especially because the last time she'd had a chance at a normal life with him that life had been ripped away from her. She'd spent several years in a sleeping-beauty-like-coma. Damon knew it was difficult for her to trust in tomorrow when experiences like sleeping-beauty-comas had been her normal.

But for months the sun had kept rising and setting. For months, they'd quietly prepared to leave Mystic Falls, so that Elena could start medical school and the highly esteemed, but not too distant from home, University of Virginia. (Caroline had compelled the Dean of Students to believe that Elena had finished her undergraduate work, which she would have if that asshole Kai hadn't put her to sleep for four years. It killed Damon that he couldn't do the compelling.)

They'd gotten married in a small ceremony right before they'd left home. Caroline had officiated.

And now, here they were in this crappy married student housing complex. Being invited for pizza and beer by a seemingly nice and non-dangerous neighbor. As much as Damon wanted to fuck Elena on every surface of their apartment (right now, seriously, her cut-offs hugged her ass just right) -- he grinned at Alice.

"How about I kick it up a notch? I've just some good bourbon in the bedroom," he said.

"That sounds great!" Alice said. She was a bubbly one. Damon had to remind himself that it was no longer okay to snap her neck if she got too annoying, or possible to compel her into talking less. "How fancy."

Damon nodded. The bourbon would save him from drinking any more foul-tasting beer. And it was spiked with vervain.

You could never be too careful, and if Alice and Johnny were vampires, it was best to find out now. On second thought, he should probably wear a button-down shirt so that he could hide one of Ric's retractable stakes under his sleeve. Staking a vampire pretending to be a med student sounded like fun, but Damon hadn't killed a vampire since he'd become a newly minted human and he honestly didn't know how it would go down. Maybe he should bring along a few syringes of vervain. Weaken the hypothetical vampire before the staking.

But that sounded like less fun.

(Of course, there was no way in hell this girl was a vampire. She was far too perky. But you could never be too careful. And 153 years as the walking undead had taught Damon Salvatore to never assume that anyone -- human, witch, vampire, werewolf, fill-in-the-blank monster -- was what he/she/it seemed. Sure Katherine had fooled him once or twice, but even that manipulative bitch eventually showed her stripes. Damon Salvatore was no fool, so he would bring along his family's vervain and his best friend's Indiana Jones weapons. And if there was no threat, at least he'd avoid dying stupidly.)

But ... fuck. Being human was downright pitiful. So fucking vulnerable. Damon hated being the prey instead of the predator.

Chapter Text

CHAPTER 2

Charlottesville, VA

November 2017

            When Damon had agreed to be the local bar owner/normal human husband of Elena's normal-human-life fantasy, he hadn't anticipated how boring running a bar would be.

Sure, over the last eight years, he'd spent half his time at the Mystic Falls Grill, but he never had to do any work. Damon hadn't held down a job since his time as a soldier in the Civil War. (If he didn't own his own business, he wasn't sure how to even fake a 21st century resume. So at least Elena's human fantasy husband didn't need to be a lawyer or architect or whatever other bullshit she might dream up.)

            When on a bar stool, he was usually recuperating from supernatural battle, goofing off with Ric or Stefan or Elena or, back in the day, Liz. Or hatching the latest iteration of his new and improved, evil master plan. There was always something to think about, or at least drink about.

            Now, Damon Salvatore's days and nights blended together, one into the next. One long, never-ending hour of mundane.

            Until he'd lost track of the time of day, or what day it was, or even what month it was. Two months in, and it seemed like a lifetime of boredom. Always the most tedious work to complete. Liquor to order. Food to stock. Food to cook. Paperwork to read about bullshit food preparation regulations. Cooks to fire. Bartenders to fire. Drunken college students to throw out on the curb.

            Everyone who worked for him was a fricking idiot, and he couldn't even compel them into being competent or, at the very least, not 100% stupid.

            Damon wasn't sure what he missed more - compulsion or biting people.

            Probably a tie between compulsion and biting women's necks.

            This damned bar would be as bad as a Gemini prison world if not for the fact that he could walk out the door.

            In any event, today was a Thursday afternoon in November, three months into his term of normal-human imprisonment. And Damon was bored. No Liz Forbes to pretend to be outraged at his behavior. No Stefan to brood at him with his hero hair. No Ric to commiserate on the next barstool. Not even the ever judgey Matt Donovan.

            And no Elena until 8 pm.

            Like almost every weekday, Elena was stuck in class all day and study groups all evening. She'd show up around 8, at which point he'd try to get her to go out for a steak dinner or a greasy burger at the place down the street that made burgers much better than his line cook did. But lately Elena kept insisting that they go out for salads. Salads! Or sushi. Sushi! Damon tried to be as worldly as the average 25-year-old man he was impersonating. And it's not like he'd never eaten sushi before. When it was first hip in the 1980s (outside of Japan for the first real time in the life of sushi), Damon had enjoyed grossing out women by popping raw fish into the mouths and claiming it would make them sophisticated. He'd even compelled some to believe that the fish was alive and squirming in their pretty, lipsticked mouths. That was hilarious. The best thing about compelled girlfriends is that even if you forced them to eat live squirming fish, they couldn't dump you.

            But Damon had never actually enjoyed eating the raw, non-squirming fish. He couldn't fathom how anyone, alive or undead, got any pleasure from this strange food. If someone had offered it to him as a boy in the 1840s, he would have laughed in their face.

            On these human dates with Elena, he found salad and sushi equally annoying. Because now that he was human, he was hungry for non-human-blood-food. He'd forgotten what human hunger felt like. And eating sushi or salad for a goddamned dinner, especially when said dinner was at 8:30 after he'd been on his feet all day, sucked balls. Because Damon was always starving by 8:30 pm. And he was tired, tired like he hadn't been since 1864. And cranky. And lonely. And instead of getting to eat a half pound of burger, piled high with lettuce, tomato, mushrooms, onions, and mayo - Elena kept forcing him to eat this stupid chick food. And he believed it was impossible, even for a tiny girl like her, to get filled up with a salad or a few measly rolls of rice wrapped around raw, spicy tuna. Wasn't she hungry? Seriously, Elena's idea of a proper human diet was almost as bad as Stefan's animal blood vampire diet.

            Damon had begun hiding Twinkies and cookies and beef jerky in the far reaches or the cabinets, so that when she fell asleep, and he inevitably couldn't sleep 3 in the morning, he could satisfy his cravings for real food. Elena frowned on processed foods, and had a special hatred for Twinkies, which Damon maintained were one of the best things the 20th century had offered humanity. She liked to throw away his junk food, telling him that his arteries would thank her in 20 years. Medical school seemed to be making her paranoid about his health. Now that they had their fairy tale ending, she would prefer that he didn't die from heart disease. Sometimes Damon bit her just for spite, but his teeth didn't extend into fangs anymore and Elena just slapped him away and continued with the lecture.

            Damon smiled and nodded while she exorcised her paranoia, daydreaming about how sexy it would be to bite her neck and suck her blood gently, lovingly, as he shared his blood with her at the same time, moaning as she drank from his wrist.

Even if she threw away his Twinkies, Elena Gilbert was just so damned beautiful, and she'd chosen him.

            The exquisite Elena Gilbert had chosen him, out of all the men on the planet. And she could have almost anyone. Damon Salvatore, reformed serial killer that he was, to spend her human life with. Sexy or not, he knew that he was damaged goods, and he knew that now that she was human again, she wasn't obliged to spend her life with him. But she wanted him. (Stefan, admittedly was not an option anymore, but nevertheless years ago she'd chosen Damon years ago over Saint Stefan. Theoretically she could have dumped him to hook up Matt Donovan or any of the countless guys in med school who worshipped her. But instead she'd said yes to his proposal. She'd cried at their wedding. He'd tried not to cry but he'd teared up during his vows. It was a long time coming. 153 years to wait for a girl like this to fall in love with him.)

           No, Elena was his. For reasons he sometimes understood and sometimes was breathless at the leap of faith she'd taken in falling for him. She was still so young, still hanging onto so much innocence and a deep, almost psychotic belief in the goodness of people, despite losing every relative except her brother. Despite losing her brother before Bonnie brought him back from the dead. Besides dying and coming back to life more times than a twenty-five year-old girl should imagine might possibly happen. Despite being a human sacrifice for a 1000 year-old original hybrid, and then subsequently the kidnap victim and doppelganger pawn in a series of supernatural hijinks perpetrated by a series of less and less comprehensible monsters. Somehow, throughout all those bloody years, Elena had maintained her belief that almost any villain could be saved if you just loved him enough. She'd maintained her faith in humanity and monsters, a faith Damon wasn't sure he'd ever had. And somehow along the way, Elena Gilbert had decided that even Damon, the bad Salvatore brother, was worth saving.

            This seemingly fragile girl had maintained her faith, optimism, and purity even when her first love, his dear blood addict of a brother, went full-blown Ripper. Damon had watched as Stefan stomped all over Elena's heart, emotionally terrorizing her, and almost killed her. Even as Damon was fighting tooth and nail to save his brother's girl, Damon was falling even deeper in love with Elena.

            It wasn't until Damon watched Elena survive Ripper Stefan that he knew she was the girl for him.

            Somehow along the way, Elena had loved him enough to want to save him and to want him to be her life. She'd believed hard enough in them, fervently, stubbornly, against all reason. She'd transformed him. She'd seen a future with Damon.

            A lot of people might think Damon had stopped killing indiscriminately because he was afraid of losing her. Or because she was his conscience.

            But that analysis of their relationship - which basically said they were a codependent mess, with Damon unable to be halfway decent without Elena in close-proximity, and Elena stuck as a little mother or enabler or some such bullshit.

            No - Elena was more than an angel on his shoulder. Anyone who thought that's all she was, or thought she was naive for loving him, they didn't know his girl. They didn't know the quiet strength of Elena Gilbert. And they didn't see the beauty of Damon & Elena. Even as humans, they were a force to be reckoned with. When he was with her in their crappy apartment, Damon knew he was part of something magic. It was almost supernatural, his need for her, and his intense thankfulness for knowing her.

            So, for Elena, he'd work long hours in a stupid bar. For her he'd eat salad or raw fish for dinner.

            And for her, he'd wake up early every morning. She'd decided when they moved here that the crack of dawn was a great time to run for five miles. He figured he owed to her, that he had to at least try to exercise, since he was breaking her diet every night. Besides, Damon had been in good shape when he'd turned human - his vampire body had functioned perfectly, and he was vain enough to want to keep himself trim.

            The first few days of running had been hell, but after that he'd gotten used to it. And each day it was easier to breathe while jogging. Each day his muscles ached a bit less than before. Until their morning run became not painful at all.

            Morning runs were Damon's favorite part of his day. Other than sex.

Jogging was such a modern activity, but it reminded him of riding his horse when he was a boy. Maybe he should buy Elena a horse. Hell, he could buy her a whole horse farm. He wasn't sure if she'd ever ridden. It didn't seem like kids did that very much anymore. Unless they were rich, or pretentious, or lived in Kentucky coal country.

            Damon liked the quiet of their morning runs, as they roamed around C'ville, finding new coffee shops and dive bars and hookah bars, and stores that sold stupid things like designer olive oil or vaping cigarettes. They didn't talk much on their runs, and always finished their loops at 7-11, so they could treat themselves to Slurpees. They never altered this morning ritual.

            It felt very peaceful. Very married. Even when Damon had gotten three hours of sleep, he let Elena drag him out of bed at 7 am, so he could feel like they fit together perfectly.

###

            This afternoon, Damon found himself bartending while his lone cook slaved in the back, frying up burgers and onion rings for the smattering of college students who apparently had nowhere better to be at 3 in the afternoon. Damon had been on his feet behind the bar since they'd opened for lunch at 11.

            He was reading a Jack London book, and trying to ignore a whiny coed, who'd been sitting across from him at the bar for the last hour, alone, nursing cheap whiskey.

            "So, this place is all yours?" the painfully skinny blond girl asked.

            Damon glanced up from his book long enough to nod. She was dressed in sweats and her long, straight hair hung in oily strands, as if she hadn't bothered to wash or comb it in a few days.

            "What's your name?" the girl asked. She may have been flirting, but she was the kind of girl who was so bad at flirting her intentions were unclear. Regardless, Damon was so not interested, and so sick of the awkward attempts at flirtation directed at him, from many college girls, and a few college boys.

            None of them seemed to see his wedding ring off the bat, or maybe they didn't care. Maybe he should have spent the 20th century wearing a wedding ring to pick up chicks. But alas, it was too late for that cheap trick. Even if Damon wasn't a one-woman type of guy (at least when the woman was Elena), these kids seemed so young.

            Painfully young. Had he ever been that young? Maybe in 1864, but, really, Damon Salvatore had never been this kind of young. This kind of young hadn't existed in 1864, when he'd been 25 for the first time, or in 1854, when he'd been 15, or 1844, when he'd been 5.

            Elena had never seemed this young either, even though she'd been 17 when they met, a year younger than the UVA freshmen who flashed their fake IDs at Damon.

            Damon didn't care enough to tell the obviously underage to get lost. He served anyone who asked for a drink. Who the hell cared about teenagers drinking? He wasn't their brother or father. Though, if he'd knocked up either of the two human girls he'd slept with during the War, maybe he was the great-great-great grandfather of one of these idiots. Damon shivered at the thought.

            "Aren't you going to tell me your name?" the pathetic girl on his barstool asked.

            "Damon," he said, before going back to his book.

            "Aren't you going to ask my name?"

            He smiled but said nothing.

            "It's Marjorie."

            "Pleasure."

            "So, Damon. Aren't you kind of young to own a business?" she wanted to know, sipping her stiff drink and pasting on a fake-grownup expression.

            "Looks can be deceiving," Damon said.

            "How old are you?"

            "Well," he said with a sly smile. "I was born in 1839, so you do the math."

            The girl giggled. "You're cute," she said, slurring her words just a bit.

            He waggled his eyebrows at her and tried to return to Jack London, but she wasn't letting him alone.

            "You want to know why I'm here?" she asked.

            "Not particularly," Damon said.

            She kept talking anyway. "My boyfriend dumped me," she told him.

            Damon laughed harshly. As a vampire and then a newly re-humanized Damon in Mystic Falls, he'd spent plenty of time on the other side of the bar, overstaying his welcome on a barstool as he unloaded his personal problems onto bartenders. He'd never realized how annoying or uncomfortable for bartenders everywhere this practice of drunk people must be. To have to listen to this crap and not be an asshole. To be expected to dispense wisdom gleaned from many years of listening to other drunk people bitch. To be a therapist!

            Damon couldn't help laughing at the tipsy coed. He guessed he could knock therapist off his list of possible career choices if bar owner didn't work out.

            "It's not funny," Marjorie whined. She gulped the last of her drink down.

           Damon filled up her glass with top-shelf bourbon. Marjorie'd been drinking rail liquor all afternoon. So, he figured giving her a proper drink would make up for his utter lack of interest in her personal life.

            She gave him a watery smile and just stared at him, her pale blue eyes ridiculously big. She'd probably be pretty if she washed her hair and put on a nice dress instead of the sweats she was wearing now. A little makeup perhaps. In another life, Damon could have made a nice compelled girlfriend of her. She was probably quite tasty.

            And just the right amount of insecure to be manipulated easily.

            But that was another life.

            Now all he could say was, "Drink up, sweetheart. You'll feel better when you don't feel anymore."

            "Aren't you going to offer me some kind of patented bartender wisdom?" the girl asked.

            "I'm a bit short on wisdom these days," Damon said. But he did manage a real smile for the poor girl.

            A couple frat boys came up to get refills of their beers and pick up their onion rings. Marjorie glanced at them hopefully, but they didn't seem to notice her.

            After they'd sat back down at their table, Damon leaned towards her and said, with his most charming smile, "You can do better than those douchebags."

            Marjorie smiled shyly.

            Damon munched on a bowl of olives and cocktail onions as he sipped his whiskey sour. Light on the bourbon. Heavy on the ice and sour mix. His alcohol tolerance seriously sucked, and since bartending was absolute misery while sober, he had found that weak mixed drinks were the best way to maintain a buzz without ending up falling down drunk.

            His first few days working here for an eight-hour shift, he'd tried to drink his normal whiskey neat. That had resulted in Elena having to rescue a sloppy drunk Damon at the end of the end of the night and then force-feed him gatorade and aspirin in the morning, to ward off the mammoth hangover he woke up with.

            Marjorie kept staring at him. She thought she was being sly about it, but 178 years had taught Damon more than Marjorie's 20-some had taught her.

            He tried to go back to reading his book, but then she insisted on chattering. She wanted to find out what he was reading, and initiate all sorts of random small talk.

            "You're not from here, are you?" she asked after a while.

            "I'm from a lot of places," he said.

            "Where were you born?"

            "Mystic Falls," he said. And almost as a revelation he said, half to himself, "That's my home." When she looked at him blankly, he said, "It's a tiny, nothing town, a couple hours south of here."

            "I've never heard of it," the girl said.

            "Probably best for you," he said wryly, thinking of all the people who had died at every town event for eight years. Donovan had wisely decided to put a temporary moratorium on all town events. He'd told the town council that they just needed to get through a year without civilian deaths and then they could try another Founder's whatever.

            "And are you here in Charlottesville by yourself? Or did you bring someone?"

            Grateful he had a ring to get him out of this awkward pickup line, he raised his left hand and waggled his silver wedding ring at the poor coed.

            She tried to cover up her disappointment. Damon wished he could compel her to have some self-respect. Or at the very least he wished he could compel her to offer up an artery for his afternoon snack.

            Damon leaned towards the slack-haired blond girl and murmured, "You could do better than me too."

            The girl looked like she was about to cry.

            "Don't cry," Damon said. "Seriously, I'm a mess. I don't know why Elena puts up with me. And you clearly have a lot going for you. What are you studying?"

            Which of course was the wrong thing to say because it led to a long-winded explanation of what Cultural Anthropology was and why everyone should care a whole hell of a lot about it. Damon was about to die of boredom when the front door swung open and in walked a witch. A most welcome witch. Several days earlier than they'd expected her.

###

            "Bon-bon!" he shouted, leaping over the bar and running towards her. She'd been traveling for months, overseas. He grabbed Bonnie in a bear hug and swung her around. "God, when did you get heavy, woman?"

            Bonnie glared at him as he put her down. "It's not my fault you've lost your super strength, asshole," she snapped.

            "You look good," he said. "You okay?"

            She smiled a brave smile. "I'm pretty okay."

"I'm just saying, if you need someone to talk to about the absolute torture of waiting decades until you can see the love of your life again, I know a couple things."

            She laughed roughly. "Like how to become a serial killer and lose all touch with anything good in your personality?"

            He shrugged. "If that's the direction you want to go in, I'm your guy. I also learned how to dance. And you can't deny I'm a phenomenal dancer."

            She rolled her eyes. "So, this is the bar?"

            He waved his hand in a flourish. "This is the bar."

            "It's nice," she said half-heartedly.

            "It's hell," Damon said, rolling his eyes. "Can I get you a drink?"

            Bonnie nodded and followed him back to the bar.

            The blond girl was watching them, rapt with interest, as Bonnie grabbed the seat next to her.

            Damon poured a bourbon for Bonnie and freshened up the lonely girl's drink. "This is my friend Bonnie," he said. "And this is Marjorie, one of my most loyal patrons. Her boyfriend just dumped her, which clearly makes him an idiot, because she's well versed in Cultural Anthropology and she's had about six shots of bourbon in the last hour and has yet to fall off her bar stool. I like a woman who can hold her liquor."

            Bonnie gave Damon a look, as if to say he was being insensitive to the poor girl's plight. To Marjorie, she said, "You'll have to excuse Damon. He's just an asshole to everyone. And he's doesn't have a leg to stand on when it comes to romantic entanglements."

            Damon glared at Bonnie.

            Bonnie continued, "This idiot was so hung up on this one girl, who screwed him over in his youth, that he almost burned down his whole life. And mine."

            "Bon-bon, we don't need to dredge up old pain. I moved on to non-sociopathic women."

            "How long did it take you? 145 years? 150?"

            Damon shoved a bowl of peanuts at Bonnie. "Why don't you fill your mouth with something besides venom?"

            She stuck out her tongue at him before popping a peanut into her mouth.

            "When did you get back?" Damon asked after a while.

            "Last week."

            "And the trip was good?"

            "Have you been to Prague?" Bonnie asked.

            "Of course," Damon said, pouring a shot of bourbon into his Coke.

            "I thought that was going to be my favorite part. But I think Egypt beat it out."

            "Those crazy pyramids do have a way of putting things into perspective. There's something about standing on the ground and seeing this massive thing that people built. When I saw them the first time, I just felt tiny. And it was nice to feel like an ant," Damon said. And then he added, absentmindedly, "You didn't happen to bring Caroline with you, did you?"

            Bonnie shook her head. "I tried to drag her along? But she hasn't gotten out of bed all week."

            "What?" Damon snapped, his brows rising up violently. Stefan would kill him if Caroline wasn't all right in the end.

            "Ric took the girls to visit his parents," Bonnie said, fatigue invading her voice, the same dull tiredness that crept into any of their voices when they talked about anything Stefan-adjacent.     "She's alone at the boarding house. Caroline flat out refused to go with him. She said she was going to get ahead on the paperwork for the school."

            "Who's Caroline?" Marjorie asked.

            Damon's eyes widened at the blatant eavesdropping. Ignoring her, he said, "So what's the problem? Paperwork is like porn for Blondie. She lives to organize."

            "You know what the problem is," Bonnie said, popping more peanuts into her mouth.

            "Ooh, did she get dumped too?" the increasingly annoying blond anthropology coed said, butting in with such audacity Damon had to stop himself from grabbing her throat and squeezing.

            "No, goddammit, she did not get dumped!" Damon snapped.

            The girl looked like she was about to cry.

            Bonnie glared at him.

            "What?" he said. "She's the one who's butting into conversations and accusing my brother of dumping Caroline?"

            "She's not accusing anybody of anything," Bonnie snapped.

            "Your brother dumped Caroline?" the girl asked incredulously.

            Damon couldn't take it anymore. Instincts took over. Grabbing Marjorie by the shoulders, he looked hard into her eyes and said, "You are going to get up and walk away. You are going to forget this entire conversation. And then you'll go home, take a shower, do your hair up nicely, put on your best dress, something with a short skirt. And make sure to show off your boobs. They're nice. Then go out dancing. You'll shake your ass even if you're normally terrified of dancing. You'll meet a nice guy, not like your asshole of an ex-boyfriend. You'll choose a guy to talk to that will actually give you the time of day, so best look for a 6 or 7. Maybe an 8. You'll flirt effectively with him. And you'll leave me the hell alone."

            Her eyes didn't dilate. But she nodded nonetheless, got up, and walked out of the bar without saying another word.

            Bonnie burst into giggles. "Did you just try to compel that poor girl?"

            Damon waggled his eyebrows, saying, "Old habits die hard."

            "And did you suggest that she needed to find a 6 or 7, possibly an 8?"

            "She's not bad looking, but she's nothing special. And she's kind of weird. Hot trumps weird, but she's not hot she goes after a 9 or 10, he's not going to give her the time of day."

            "Damon!"

            "You have to admit I gave her some good advice about washing her hair and finding a sexy dress," he said, tossing an olive up in the air and catching it in his mouth.

            Bonnie laughed and laughed. "I have to call Elena and tell you tried to compel somebody."

            He grinned. "It worked."

            "So why did you need Caroline here?"

            Damon groaned. "I've got a health inspector coming tomorrow. I could use some real compulsion. Somehow I don't think that little trick is going to work."

            Bonnie raised her eyebrows. "And what in god's name is wrong with your kitchen?"

            Damon shrugged. "I have no idea. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. I haven't read the rulebook."

            "Damon!"

            "What? I never said I wanted to own a fucking bar. If anyone dies of food poisoning, you can blame my wife. And then you can hire her to deal with the sick people."

            Bonnie raised her eyebrows. "Okay," she told him. "That's so completely irresponsible I don't even know what to say."

            "I have millions in the bank. It's not like I couldn't hire someone to run this dump. OR get me out of food poisoning lawsuit. Why can't I just be a retired vampire?" he grumped.

            Bonnie shook her head. "In the interest of not having anyone die of food poisoning, why don't you show me the kitchen?" she asked. "I'm sure we can sort this out. And then we might want to think about a different long term career choice for you."

            "And what's your career choice?"

            "Shut up."

            "You shut up."

            Bonnie smiled. "I missed you, Salvatore."

            He grabbed her waist and hoisted her over the bar, hiding his groan as he mildly strained his back. "Right back at you, Bon-Bon," Damon said, wrapping his arm around her waist. "Elena's going to lose it when she sees you. She'll be here around 8."

            Bonnie grinned and squeezed him back before dragging him into his hellhole of a kitchen.

Chapter Text

Chapter 3

November 2017

Mystic Falls, Virginia

      Elena arrived at the Salvatore house around midnight.

      As Bonnie had described the state of Caroline’s grief and depression, Elena felt sick with guilt. It wasn’t a good time to take a week off classes, or even a day, but it also wasn’t a good time to care more about classes than her friend. Especially when said friend was widowed because of Elena. So, Elena felt bound to seeing Caroline.

      Elena was hanging on by a thread in all her classes, struggling to keep up after missing the last couple years of college. Technically she shouldn’t even be in med school. She should be finishing her sophomore year. But Ric had helped her forge transcripts and Caroline had compelled the admissions committee, so that she could live her dream.

      But fuck that. Elena and Bonnie and Damon spent all night and the next day and into the night, talking about what to do with Caroline before Elena grabbed the car keys and left, not listening to Damon’s pleas to slow down, get some sleep, go in the morning. She hadn’t slept the night before and she wasn’t going to sleep until she knew Caroline was okay.

      The door of the Salvatore boarding house was unlocked. When she walked in, it was quiet. Too quiet.

      The fire was out, and the house was cold, as if no one had bothered to turn on the heat since Ric and the girls had gone to visit his parents. The downstairs was in disarray — boxes of school supplies strewn all over the living room and library, some opened, some not. It was chaos, which was not like Caroline at all. The tables piled high with collections of grimoires, vampire hunting equipment, and a random assortment of witchy talismans and potions. Elena thought she spied a human scalp with hair still clinging to it, and wondered why Caroline and Ric thought they should give their pupils nightmares before they even began their studies.

      Elena yelled out Caroline’s name, but found her nowhere. She was about to start searching the grounds when she checked once more in Stefan’s old room. And there she was. She’d almost missed her because her old friend was so still.

      For a moment, Elena was afraid Caroline was dead. She was gray and partially shriveled.

      Desiccated.

      Halfway under the covers. No wonder she hadn’t answered the phone. She wouldn’t have been able to if she’d tried.

      Elena rushed to the bed, shaking her vampire friend, trying to wake her, but afraid she would break her, somehow, that Caroline’s body would crumble. But Caroline’s body was hard, like a raisin. Elena began to cry as she held onto Caroline, unsure what to do.

      Caroline must have refused to feed, or even move, and so she’d ended up in Stefan’s old bed, drying into a vampire mummy. Lost in so much grief that she’d allowed herself to die bit by bit. Had she done this on purpose? Caroline was always so strong, so plucky, so damned optimistic, it could drive a normal person insane. It was hard to imagine how she could just lie in bed long enough that she’d dry into a vampire raisin. But maybe without the girls and Alaric, without Elena or Bonnie or even Damon, the quiet had begun to close in on Caroline. Maybe Care needed people to talk to in order to be optimistic. Maybe she needed someone to take care of, to focus her nervous, control-freak energies on.    

      After what seemed like an eternity, her friend’s eyes opened. Caroline was still in there. And she looked terrified.

      Elena panicked. She thought of running down to the fridge for blood bags, but she didn’t want to leave Caroline for even a moment. Her friend looked like a wounded animal, or a child. Elena wasn’t strong enough to carry the vampire downstairs in search of blood. So, Elena did the only thing she could. She found a letter opener on Stefan’s desk, sliced open her palm, and offered her own now-human blood to Caroline. This girl she’d known since birth, who’d once been an annoying normal cheerleader, who was now an eternal monster (thanks in large part to Elena). But most of all, she was her friend. Most of all, she needed Elena.

      And so, Elena let Caroline feed on her blood.

      There was a long moment when she held her hand to Caroline’s lips and nothing happened. Caroline remained rigid, only her eyes alive. Then her tongue darted out of her mouth to lick Elena’s blood off her palm. Elena cupped her non-bleeding hand behind Caroline’s head, lifting her head slightly so that she could drink. Caroline began to suck, first slowly, then faster. She was clearly starving. Elena tried not to gasp as Caroline drank from her faster and faster.

      Elena was trying to breathe slowly and evenly, telling herself that Caroline would never hurt her, that she’d offered her blood to Stefan and Damon years ago, and she’d been fine

      Then Caroline bit her. Hard. “Caroline—” Elena snapped, before she could tell herself to be gentle and forgiving.

      Caroline pulled back, looking like she’d been struck. “Oh, god, Elena. I’m so sorry! Oh god, I could have hurt you,” she said in a hoarse, croaking voice. And with that Caroline was crying.

      “Care — stop it. It’s fine. I’m fine. Let’s just get you downstairs and look for a blood bag. Do you think you can walk?    For a long moment, Caroline looked vacant, almost confused. Then she nodded and leaned on Elena as they made their way down to the big refrigerator in the lower floor, which was thankfully still full of blood-bags.

      They loaded themselves down with A-positive, Caroline’s favorite, and then settled in the living room. Elena draped blankets around Caroline, who still was freezing to the touch. She built a fire while Caroline lay on the couch, rehydrating and re-nourishing herself.

      “We should binge-watch TV. There must be a million things I missed while I was sleeping. There’s still a bunch of pop culture references I don’t get,” Elena said, babbling because she didn’t know what else to say. “Like, did Parks and Rec end?”

      Caroline started giggling, but there was no humor in the giggle.

      “What?”

      “You found me vampire-desiccating in my bed, and now you’re worried about Parks and Rec?”

      “It’ll be fun, Care. Remember fun? It will be non-vampire related, non-magic related, non-life-threatening fun. I’ll make popcorn,” Elena insisted, feeling a bit of actual hope in her voice, mixed with her frantic desire to distract Caroline, and herself, from grief and all things that go bump in the night. “Maybe I can even find some nail polish. We’ll do a makeover. You could use it, no offense.”

       Caroline nodded, her face still void of emotion, but she smiled a small smile. She went back to slurping A-positive as Elena got them set up with popcorn, candy, wine, nail polish, and ten hours of Parks and Rec.

###

            It was three in the morning, and Damon was still at the bar. The building was empty except for him, and all around him he smelled the stench of cigarettes, liquor, and beer. Music played on the record player he’d lodged behind the bar — sad old honky-tonk from the ‘40s. Contemporary pop played on his speakers all day and night long, and he was sick of it. He was sick of modernity. So, he’d bought an old record player at a store downtown that catered to hipsters and pretentious college students. He’d spent hours thumbing through the racks of records, assembling a collection that ranged from classical to Elvis. Maybe Damon was an old man at heart, but he’d never been able to connect, truly connect with music after that first wave of raw and simple rock’ n’roll. Sure he could dance to modern music. But right now, when his very soul hurt, he needed something real.

            He’d been drunk hours ago, when he’d done shots with a few douchebag college students and hustled a couple of particularly entitled frat boys at pool. Now he was just numb and exhausted. He’d sent his staff home when the bar closed at two, and was now cleaning up and balancing the register because Elena was in Mystic Falls and their crappy apartment was just too quiet without her.

            Damon had felt useless as Elena was rushing around, packing a suitcase, fretting about how this trip might make her flunk one or two or every single final exam. Damon had suggested that once they got Caroline back on her feet, Blondie could compel Elena’s professors into thinking Elena was a model, straight-A student (though in truth she was barely passing). While Elena fretted about her personal inadequacy, Damon wished he could be the one to compel the teachers. He wanted to fix everything for his girl. And he hated feeling so damned useless all the time.

            Like, for instance, right now, as he was trying and failing to take inventory of his alcohol. His mind kept wandering. As he lost count of his liquor bottles for the third time, he cursed and he started over. Again. He couldn’t blame this on alcohol. He was completely sober.

            Had he gotten stupider when he became human? His memory used to be better. Three times as fast. Everything about his mind used to move more swiftly. Everything used to be so fluid.

            Dammit. He’d lost count again.

            He missed Elena. It had only been 24 hours, but he felt her absence profoundly. When she was in the coma, he’d gotten used to her not being there. He’d gotten used to not speaking with her for all those years. But now — it was like a part of him was missing. And he felt this paranoia, like maybe she’d disappear again. Or end up in another magical coma. Maybe she’d be kidnapped by a crazy vampire, or Klaus, or some witch interested in her doppelganger blood.

            Or, maybe she’d just wise and leave him.

            Why should such a nice girl, with such a beautiful future ahead of her, tie herself down to a reformed serial killer? Damon kept waiting for her to smarten up and realize that now that she was a human, she could do better than Damon Salvatore, born in 1839, a felon dozens and dozens of times over, and loaded down with an insane amount of emotional baggage. If she wanted a nice normal human husband, she should try someone completely different. Someone who had never been a vampire. Maybe never even tried to snap someone’s neck. Someone who hadn’t even daydreamed about murder.

            Like that guy she’d dated briefly in college, when she’d thought Damon was dead and Alaric had compelled away her memories of their dysfunctional relationship. Liam, the stupidly cocky pre-med sophomore, the kind of cocky you can only be when you’re young, spoiled, and have never been tested.

            Last week, Elena had let slip, oh so casually, that Liam was once again her classmate. He’d graduated with honors from Whitmore, then spent a few years volunteering with Doctors without Borders before enrolling in UVA’s medical school the same semester Elena did. Damon found the timing suspicious. Maybe he was working for some supernatural … something.

            If only Damon could compel the dirt out of idiot-Liam. But Damon was nothing now. No powers. No skills. A useless waste of space.

            Maybe Caroline could interrogate Mr. Future Doctor. But Caroline wouldn’t get out of bed.

            On impulse, Damon snatched his phone off the bar and began dialing.

            It took a few rings, but Alaric answered. “Damon!” came Alaric’s peeved voice over a scratchy connection. He sounded half-asleep. “Do you realize what time it is?”

            “Well, hello to you too.”

            “Seriously, man. What’s going on? Did you drunk dial me?” Damon could picture Ric’s eyes wide and angry.

            “I’m not drunk,” Damon snapped. “Do you know how much hangovers suck? I’d completely forgotten about hangovers. I’d forgotten about regular headaches too, and paper-cuts. And illness! Do you know that I had a cold last week? It was almost as bad as a werewolf bite.”

            Alaric sighed. “Is this an emergency? Because in case you haven’t noticed, I have kids to wake me up in the middle of the night.”

            Damon felt rage bubbling up inside him, the same rage he’d been suppressing all day. “I was just trying to figure out why in hell — in hell — you decided to leave Caroline at my house all alone for weeks on end,” he snapped. “Do you know that she won’t get out of bed?”

            “What?”

            He pounded on the bar in frustration, wanting to freaking murder his best friend. He wanted to grab Alaric by the throat and just squeeze until the other man couldn’t breathe, until he was gasping and scared, until he felt as helpless as Damon felt right now. But all Damon could do was say, “Elena took off all her classes today to go make sure that the mother of your children is not dead, or flipping her switch, or eating the gardeners.”

            He could hear Alaric deflating. “Fuck,” his friend whispered. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

            “And I don’t need to remind you what happened when Caroline’s mom died,” Damon murmured, his voice soft but threatening.

            “Look, I’m sorry. I just. My mom has been begging to see the girls, man,” Ric sputtered.

            “Why not bring Caroline? Mothers love Caroline.”

            Ric groaned.

            Damon poured himself a real drink and gulped it down.

            Finally, Ric said, “She wouldn’t come. The last time we visited, my mom was commenting on how young Caroline looked. She wanted to know if she’d had plastic surgery. She thought it was a bit early to start going the plastic route.”

            Damon stared around the empty bar. This was a problem he was far too familiar with. He’d never known a vampire who had children, human children that is, children who would someday look older than their mother. And he’d never known anyone who could maintain the same cover for more than a few years. For most of his vampire existence, Damon had lived on the fringes of the human world, not interested in pretending to be one of them. Stefan was different — he tried out many lives over the years, but these identities he created for himself couldn’t last. You had to move on before the locals became suspicious. When the brothers returned to Mystic Falls over the centuries, they didn’t use the same identity from generation to generation. They might use their real names, but it was understood that they were now the sons or grandsons of their former selves.

            Damon poured himself a drink and asked, “When did your mother start asking strange questions?”

            Damon could hear Alaric getting up, rummaging around. He seemed to be pouring himself a drink. “I don’t know. It’s not like she actually suspects something, or it even matters that much to her. She doesn’t know about vampires, so she doesn’t have any reason to be suspicious. She just noticed that something was up. But it got Caroline all upset,” he said after a long pause. “I mean, the age thing has always been an issue. My mom was furious when she found out about Caroline. Thought I’d seduced a student. And she doesn’t know that the girls are really Jo’s, you know.”

            “I didn’t,” Damon said, wondering why he’d never asked. It was funny, now that he was human, that he cared about stuff like Alaric’s mother.

            “I mean, what was I supposed to tell her?” Ric was going on. “Should I say: Mom, my wife was brutally murdered by her sociopathic witch-syphon brother, but not before her bizarre coven, who all also died at the same time, magically transported two fetuses into a college student/vampire?”

            Damon nodded. “So, what does she think?”

            “That I cheated on Jo with Caroline. We hadn’t told my parents about the pregnancy anyway. They’re old fashioned. They weren’t at the wedding, so they don’t know all the gory details. And then when Caroline was pregnant, I tried to act like it was a new relationship, but my mom can tell time apparently. She realized the babies were conceived while Jo was still alive.”

            “So your mom thinks you’re an asshole who cheated on his fiancé?” Damon asked.

            “Seriously, man,” Alaric was saying, “Can you just be helpful? For once? Just once. Just tell me how to deal with this problem.”

            Damon considered it as he poured himself another drink. “Plastic surgery isn’t a bad idea. But other than that, I don’t know, man.”

            “How long could you do it?” Ric asked. “When you were a vampire? How long before people got suspicious?”

            “That I wasn’t aging? Five years. Sometimes less. Sometimes more. But I rarely stuck around that long anyway. I was in Mystic Falls for eight. That’s probably a record. But you have to realize, I was 25 when I turned.”

            “Why does that matter?”

            “Because dear, sweet Caroline was only 17. The older you are when you turn, the longer you can stay in one place. I look 25, but I can easily pass for 30, and maybe even 35. If I wanted to appear older, I could dye my hair. But if your baseline is 17? There’s less wiggle room. When Caroline is supposed to be 30, or 40, she just won’t look that old. At some point, you’re going to have to pretend to the world that Caroline is someone else. A niece. A cousin. A friend of the girls. Your daughter. Maybe someday your granddaughter. At some point, she can’t be their mother.”

            Ric sighed.

            They talked on the phone about meaningless bullshit for another few minutes before Damon decided to force the issue. “Look, I’m glad you’re doing the family thing. Yippee for family. And grandparents. You’re creating wonderful memories for Lizzie and Josie. But dude, I need you back in Mystic Falls tonight. Caroline is drowning. She needs her children.”

            Ric sighed. “I thought Elena was with her,” he said, voice dripping with physical, mental and emotional fatigue.

            Damon shook his head as he forced himself to push away the bourbon, to stop drinking. He needed his wits about him. After a pause he said, “Elena can stay two days. Max. Then she’s in danger of flunking out of something-something-anatomy.”

            “What about Bonnie?”

            “Bonnie is grieving too. She helped me get the bar in shape so I could pass a health inspection, and then she took off. Something about promising Enzo she’d backpack through Mexico. She’s treading water, man, and I get the impression that if she stays in one place too long she’ll explode.” It had also seemed like Bonnie didn’t want to be around him and Elena, that seeing them together, and happy, and married, reminded her of what she didn’t have, and what she’d lost when his brother had killed Enzo.

            And oh yeah, Bonnie was getting the cure for Enzo before Stefan had killed him. Bonnie and Enzo were supposed to have exactly what Damon and Elena had right now. So it was all awkward.

            “What about you?” Alaric asked now.

            Damon frowned. “You want me to talk to Caroline about her feelings?”

            Alaric laughed. “You are occasionally not a complete dick. You could try. I can’t leave tonight. My parents are getting old. I want them to know my kids. And in case you haven’t noticed, we haven’t had any opportunities for vacations. Ever.”

            Damon could feel his eyeballs want to pop out. “Stefan is going to come back from wherever the fuck he is and kill you if you don’t get on a plane tonight!”

            Alaric was quiet. Too quiet. Then he said, “Screw you.”

            “What?”

            “Screw you. You are the most selfish person in the history of selfish people,” Ric, his voice devoid of emotion.

            Damon wanted to throw his glass across the room, but realized if he did that he would have to clean it up. Being responsible sucked balls.

            “My brother died so that we could all have these nice normal lives,” he said softly, menacingly. He spent all day every day trying not to think about Stefan. If he thought about Stefan, he started imagining taking off his daylight ring so he could go burn up in the sun. But he didn’t need a daylight ring anymore. A sunburn wouldn’t kill him, so he’d have to slit his throat, or jump off a building, or maybe just drown in the bathtub. Swallowing hard so he wouldn’t let these feelings out, Damon said, “We owe him.”

            “And what are you doing today, Damon?”

            “I’m training a bar manager,” Damon said, trying to sound busy and important.

            “What do you think you could possibly teach a bar manager? Does the person have experience?”

            Damon laughed roughly. “He has five years.”

            “Sounds like he should be training you. Why don’t you just leave him alone, and go visit Caroline,” Ric spat out.

            “She doesn’t want me. She wants her kids.”

            “If you’re worried, go talk to her. Relieve Elena. Be human. Or at least pretend to be,” Alaric said.

            Damon could feel his voice about to break as he said, “But Stefan —”

            He could almost hear his friend shaking his head. “Stefan wanted this. He found peace.”

            “She’s a widow,” Damon said softly. “She’s my brother’s widow. And it eats me up inside. Because it’s all my fault. It should have been me. But he just insisted on being a fucking martyr, with his hero hair and his holier-than-thou ideals.”

            Damon could hear Alaric pour himself another drink. Was this his third drink? Should he worry that his friend might be an alcoholic? Good god, was Damon even Damon anymore if thought about shit like that? “Look, man. It’s not your fault,” Ric was saying. “You tried to sacrifice yourself, right?”

            Damon nodded, unable to speak.

            “He just beat you to it,” Ric said softly.

            Damon put his head down on the bar and cried, covering his phone’s microphone so his friend wouldn’t realize how much his soul was breaking, how much Damon couldn’t do this, couldn’t live this life his brother had forced on him.   

Chapter Text

  November 2017

      Elena and Caroline were halfway through the third season of Parks and Rec, and a case of wine, when the front door of the Salvatore house flew open. Elena jumped half off the couch. Caroline was asleep, her head on Elena’s shoulder, but she didn’t wake up, even as Elena’s whole body began to shake with a mixture of relief and overwhelming emotion. As Damon walked in, it was like something inside her, deep, deep inside, broke open, and she began to cry. Like she felt able to cry. By being here, he was somehow giving her a chance to stop being perfect.

      Tears fell down Elena's face as she tried to extricate herself from Caroline without waking her friend.

      “What’s wrong?” Damon whispered.

      Elena just shook her head as she finally managed to get up. He wrapped his arms around her.

      “What’s wrong, babe?” he asked again.

      “I don’t know,” she whispered, trying and failing to stop crying.

      “Let’s get you to bed,” he said after a while, his voice soft and gentle as he guided her upstairs to his old room. Laying her down on the bed, he said, “Just the way I left it. Weird being here though, like this.”

      “Human?” she said.

      “Yeah. And married to you.”

      He climbed on the bed and lay down beside her, propping himself up on one elbow.

      She let herself cry. Ugly tears. She let herself sob, until she felt empty and naked inside. When it felt like there was nothing left in her, she muttered, “It’s all my fault.”

      “No, it’s not,” he said.

      “You think he died for you, but it was my body trapped in the school,” she said.

      Damon sighed. “He was protecting the whole town, Elena.”

      “He wouldn’t have been here if it weren’t for me. Neither one of you would have stuck around,” Elena said.

      “I don’t think playing this game is helpful,” Damon snapped.

      She frowned at him. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten all the things you did when I was asleep. If I’d been awake, you’d never have killed Tyler. And if we hadn’t been together, you’d have left long ago.”

      Damon sighed again and threw up his hands. “I’m sorry for reverting to being a sociopathic murderer.”

      “I know you’re sorry,” she said, too exhausted to put much feeling into her words. “Everybody’s sorry. It’s just — you and me are playing happy human house and my friends are miserable. Caroline is a fucking widow. I don’t know to handle that. How am I supposed to handle that?”

      His eyes were sad and extra blue as he kissed her forehead and lay his head down on the pillow. “I know I don’t deserve you,” Damon said. “But if you’ll let me, I’ll try my fucking best to be worthy of you.”

      Elena bit her lip and reached her hand out to touch his face. “You are worthy. But it’s not about me. You’re worthy of this life.”

      “You just forgive a lot. More than he should.” He closed his eyes, as if willing himself to be different.

      “No,” she said, kissing one eyelid and then the next. “I always saw it. You always had this light inside you. You always had this capacity to do good things. To be a hero. Even when you were a sociopathic murderer.” She kissed his throat, then moved to the side of his neck and ran her tongue over the skin covering his carotid artery. She could no longer feel or hear the blood pulsing inside him.

      His eyes still closed, he smiled just a tiny bit. He was so damned sexy when he felt guilty about something, not because of his guilt but because of his all-too-human-vulnerability. He was so damned sexy when he was vulnerable. And human. She’d loved vampire Damon with all her heart. He’d made her feel larger than life. He’d given her a passion and a love that consumed her. Sometimes he’d made her feel like she was in free-fall, plunging head-first into the unknown. But human Damon — he inspired a whole new sensation. He still made her feel reckless. His love, and her love for him, still consumed her. But instead of being larger than life and inspiring that feeling within Elena, he made her feel equal to life. He made her feel alive, human, feet firmly on the ground. He made her feel like everything she did mattered.

      Years ago, Alaric had told her that because she was human again, and her life was now finite, her life had meaning again. Damon must feel the same thing. She knew he’d loved the infinite, and vampire strength, and vampire speed, and the extreme superpower tha was compulsion. She knew he’d even loved being the predator. The top of the food chain. But he’d been willing to give it all up for her. Even though Stefan had forced the cure on Damon to save his brother from sacrificing himself, Damon had chosen that life years ago. It had been his choice to be human. It had been his choice to have this one life with her.

      Elena could feel her blood pulsing throughout her body. She could feel her whole body tingle as she ran a finger down his chest. His black t-shirt clung to his skin. “It’s weird being human again,” she murmured. “When you turn me on, it’s like I’m buzzing. And I feel this urgency.”

      He smiled more. He opened his eyes and his eyes were smiling. Damon said, “I used to be able to draw it out forever. Even with super fast vamp sex, I could make it last.”

      “I know,” she said with a laugh.

      “But now …”

      “It’s like every part of your body wants it right now?” she said.

      “Yes.”

      “Me too.” Elena sat up, pulling her blouse off in such a hurry that she popped a button off. She threw it on the floor as she straddled him and grabbed his t-shirt, pulling it up and over his head with less grace than she’d like but she couldn't wait, not one more second. Her body wouldn’t stop buzzing. In fact, everything was getting faster. If they didn’t act fast, her heart might jump out of her chest.

      Damon laughed as he sat up to help her strip his clothes from his body. She kissed him, and there were lots of emotions running through her. She still felt a little sad, a little guilty, a little confused. But she also felt head over heels in love with this reformed murderer, despite knowing exactly who he was, this man who had given up depravity for her, who had remade his life for her, who was now willing to be ordinary for her. Because she knew she hadn’t really changed him — she’d just brought him back to the man he’d been before Katherine, and years without meaning, had stolen his humanity. She’d watched him turn human again. Even back when he’d still been a vampire, Elena had watched that humanity trickle in until it was a flood of goodness. She wasn't an idiot. She knew he'd never be a saint. Even as a human, Damon Salvatore was a mercurial pool of emotions and intentions. He had the capacity to do terrible things, and there were very few people who he cared enough about to not sacrifice.

      But she had accepted all that and more when she'd decided to let herself love him.

      And now Elena Gilbert had one human life to share with Damon Salvatore. And that one human life was awesome. And he was sexy as hell. And his eyes — his eyes still gave her butterflies. She could imagine him giving her butterflies when she was 60 or 80 or 100.

      Very sexy butterflies.

      She kissed him like her life depended on it. He wrapped his arms around her. She could feel him hardening beneath her. And then they were a flurry of activity. Him yanking down her skirt and flipping her over so that he was on top of her. Her gasping as their lovemaking began in earnest. Her running her nails over his back. Him kissing her naked breasts like they were sacred objects. Her grabbing his face clumsily and kissing him deep and long as she felt her body and soul shudder. Worn out, she collapsed against the pillow and then Damon was biting his lip to keep from screaming out (and waking Caroline). His eyes almost popped out of their sockets. Her body tensed as his did. She thought she was done, but his frantic, frenzied, somewhat inelegant climax made her crazy again. As he collapsed on her in exhaustion, she arched her back once more, reaching towards him.

      Damon laughed as he raised his head from her chest, to look at her. “Really?” he asked.

      Elena felt like every part of her was on fire. She nodded and whispered, “Kiss me,” her voice shaking as the orgasm built within her.

      He kissed her. She tasted blood where he'd bitten his lip. It was a strangely familiar taste. Not exactly how it had tasted during her vampire years. But close enough. The blood turned her on in a whole new way. She ran her tongue along the tiny cut. “You know I never thought I’d like being a vampire,” she whispered as the climax hit her hard and fast, like a bus driving off a cliff. “But you were there. You helped me like it. I remember the blood. It was insane how good it made me feel.”

      She closed her eyes but knew he was smiling. Elena lost all control. She was hurtling through time and space. She was everywhere at once. She was fast and slow. She was breaking into a million pieces and then reassembling bit by bit, limb by limb. She was consuming him.

      When she opened her eyes, she realized that she’d bitten him harder than he'd bitten himself. Elena could still taste the mix of salty and metallic. He was laughing as he wiped the blood off his lips. “Oh babe,” she said, climbing off him so she could lie down beside him. “I guess I’m still a vampire."          

      “Nah,” Damon said, lifting his arm so she could rest her head on his chest as he pulled her close and held her tight. “I’m just that sexy.”

      And she laughed. Was it possible to laugh in a specifically human way? Because even though she’d bitten him, every part of her felt human. Small, finite, clumsy, fragile. Yet this mortality was her greatest gift. Her breakable body gave her a power she’d never felt as a vampire. The power — the intense need —  to make the moment matter. To find meaning in all the little things that make a human life worth living. Like the way his chest hairs tickled her cheek. Like the way she could feel him breathing hard. His sweat now mixed with hers. His clumsy humanness mixed with her clumsy humanness. Damon's monstrously big bed felt like her whole world.

January 2018

###

      It was eight o’clock on a Friday night and Damon stood behind the bar with his new manager, Sajen, a bespectacled guy, who’d shown up for his shift wearing shorts. Again.

            Damon never wore shorts and didn’t understand them on men. Or women unless they had great legs like Elena. Really, there was only a small portion of the adult population that should ever wear short pants. Or yoga pants for that matter.

            “Seriously, dude,” Damon was saying now as Sajen mixed margaritas for a group of pretty little coeds. “Couldn’t you wear a pair of jeans?”

            Sajen shook his head. “These are comfortable.”

            “It’s January.”

            “They’re still comfortable.”

            “And you think this is the way to pick up women? You’re single, right?”

            Sajen nodded. “My life’s a little complicated right now. Don’t know if I’m dating material.”

            “Well, the shorts don’t help. Short pants on kids, fine, whatever, maybe not in January. But you? This is the kind of crap your generation pulls that I don’t get,” Damon said as he sipped a club soda and then grabbed his cup full of olives, to munch on in frustration. "Pretty soon you're going to be coming to work in flip flops and talking about hashtag this, hashtag that."

            Sajen frowned. “Aren’t we the same age? You’re thirty, right?”

            Damon shrugged. His age was getting to be a complicated matter. Truthfully he was 178 years old. Biologically he was more like 25. But if he claimed to be 25 now, citizens of Mystic Falls (those who weren't dead of a litany of supernatural causes), would be confused. Because that was Elena's age. And Stefan's fake age. If Damon was 25 now, he would have been 17 when he moved back to Mystic Falls. But it was only Stefan who'd claimed to be a kid. Damon had been his guardian. So when Caroline had compelled the DMV, Social Security administration, and passport office to forge his paperwork and official identification, they'd settled on 30. Which made him 22 when he'd reemerged in Mystic Falls. “I’m an old soul,” he said at last.

            The coeds came to collect their margaritas. One lingered at the bar, looking up from her drink every so often at Damon or Sajen. Damon twirled his wedding ring. Sajen was wiping down the bar, seemingly oblivious. Damon murmured to him, "That is a girl waiting for you to make a move."

            Sajen shook his head. "You make a move," he snapped.

            "I'm married," Damon was saying when Sajen smacked the bar in frustration. He was staring at the main entrance like there was a snake coming in the door.

            “Oh fuck,” Sajen said.

            Damon whipped his head around to see a pretty woman with curly red hair leading a red-haired child inside and towards the bar.

            “Whatever happens,” Sajen was saying, “I’m sorry.”

            The woman rushed right up to them and threw a child’s backpack on the bar, almost knocking over a beer bottle that belonged to a yuppie who had been sitting there for an hour, looking more and more pathetic. The bag had a picture of that damned singing snowman on it.

            The little girl looked embarrassed to be there. She was about five. Or eight. Or ten. Damon didn’t really know how old kids were supposed to look.

            “It was your weekend,” the woman sputtered at Sajen. “And I’ve decided that we are sticking to the original schedule.”

            “But we already switched,” Sajen sputtered back. “I don’t have a sitter.”

            “I don’t care. I have a date.”

            “And you have to throw that in my face?”

            Damon would have laughed if this situation didn’t affect him negatively. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he snapped. “Am I to understand that you have a kid and that this woman thinks she can drop her off in my bar? My bar.”

            The woman laughed unkindly. “Not my fault where he works.”

            “Molly,” Sajen began, but the woman was already walking away.

            She turned back for a moment to hug the girl and then tell Sajen when and where she was picking the kid up on Monday morning. As she walked away, Sajen stared blankly at the woman's retreating back.

            Damon examined the tiny human she'd left behind. The girl wore a long-sleeved t-shirt advertising the mining-craft video game Sajen talked about all the time, and shorts. Seriously. It was January. What was up with this family? Her red hair was in braids on either side of her head, tied with white yarn. Something about that yarn, the hair so bright it looked unreal, and the girl's defiant expression reminded Damon of a child he'd known many years ago. The Forbes girl, the youngest, who liked to follow Damon around when he supervised the slaves in his father's orchard. Before the war. That girl must have died a hundred years ago, at least.

            This girl looked up at him defiantly. “I’m Alex,” she said. "And don't call me cute. I'm going to be six next month."

            “I’m guessing you’re still too young to work the bar or wait tables.”

            She shrugged.

            Sajen cleared his throat, saying, “I had no idea that was going to happen.”

            “Clearly," Damon snapped. “This is the kind of thing I could get sued for you. You do know that?”

            Sajen nodded.

            “So do you have someone to call, to come get her?”

            Sajen looked terrified and Damon was relieved to see that he still had the ability to instill fear in others. Sajen hurried around the bar and picked up the little girl, placing her on a bar stool, promising to find someone. He began a flurry of phone calls. No one was available to watch the kid tonight.

            As Damon was trying to decide what to do about this situation, he poured a glass of milk for the child. He had to admit she was a pretty child. A brown-haired, brown-eyed woman, with perfect olive skin, sat down on the next barstool, raising her eyebrows at this little scene. Elena smiled at Damon, saying, “You guys stopped checking ID’s?”

            He grinned at her, noticing once again how beautiful she was, how her hair framed her face, how her perfect breasts seemed to spill out of her v-neck top. Was she wearing some sort of special bra? Man oh man, he loved the modern world.

###

      As Damon climbed into their bed at two in the morning, Elena felt nervous. And young. Younger than she’d felt in a long time. She had something to tell him, and she wasn’t sure how he was going to react. She’d felt a bit strange, just a bit off balance, for weeks now, and this morning she’d been a mess, but she’d written it off as nerves over her first big test of the spring semester. Even if it wasn't the first morning she'd spent bent over the toilet. But then, tonight, while babysitting Sajen’s daughter, something had clicked inside her. A realization.

      She felt drawn to the child in a very specific way.

      Elena had taken Alex to see the new Pixar movie, and then out for ice cream even though it was too late for a five-year-old child to be awake. When it seemed like Alex was forcing herself to stay up, Elena suggested they go home to Sajen’s apartment. But Alex would have none of it. She wanted her dad. She’d been promised her dad. Elena remembered all the nights she’d waited up for her own father, who, to be fair, had been torturing vampires rather than doing something as simple and honest as pouring people drinks. Still, she understood the girl’s plight.

      Alex became quieter and quieter as the evening wore on.

      So, Elena convinced Damon to let Sajen off early. As she watched father and daughter walk out the door and into the winter night -- Sajen carrying the tiny backpack on his shoulder -- Elena felt empty. And then she felt all too full. She practically ran to the bar’s bathroom, throwing up all her popcorn and ice cream as soon as she reached the toilet.

      Now, Damon snuggled up against her and kissed her shoulder. He felt so warm and so … innocent somehow. “You saved my ass tonight,” he said.

      “It was fun,” she said, wondering how long she could delay a serious conversation.

      “Spunky kid,” he told her, stroking her hair.

      Elena felt her body tense.

      “You okay?” her husband asked.

      She sat up and turned on the light. She wanted to be able to see his face, to know if he was lying at any point during this conversation. “When we got married, we talked about kids. But I never knew if that’s what you really wanted. I mean, you’re Damon Salvatore. Vampire or not, you’re not the kind of guy who coaches Little League.”

      He laughed. “Yeah, I’m not going to coach Little League. Or peewee soccer. I think I’ll avoid coaching in general.”

      Elena gulped. “But kids? You, um, you want…”

      “Lena,” he said softly, kissing her face. “I already said yes.”

      “And you’re sure?”

      Damon sighed. “I’m not sure I'd make a decent father. But I could be better than my jackass of a father. And I meant what I said. I want you. Human you. I want us to be real people, and be a real family. Kids are part of that. And I know how much you want it.”

      “But you want children? You’re sure?”

      “I’m not saying it needs to happen today,” Damon said, running his hands over her tender breasts. “But yeah. Especially if they look like you.”

      Elena took a deep, shuddery breath as she turned towards him and pulled his hands from her breasts until they rested on her still-flat stomach. “It’s happening today,” she murmured.

      He frowned, clearly confused.

      Then his eyes widened. Damon Salvatore looked terrified. Still, he didn’t pull away. He rubbed her stomach cautiously.

      “Elena,” Damon said. “Can you be completely clear and obvious with me. Like, assume I’m a total moron.”

      She smiled and nodded and tried to tell him but nothing came out.

      “Are you, um, you know,” he stammered.

      She nodded. Again, she tried to speak, and again, she failed.

      “Like, maybe, possibly, pregnant?” he finally got the words out.

      Elena sucked in her breath quickly, trying to maintain her cool, terrified that he was not happy about this news. Terrified at that word being said out loud, period. She still wasn't sure how she felt about this word, this whole situation.

      “I took a test tonight, after I dropped Alex at the bar,” Elena finally whispered. “So, yeah. That’s what I’m saying.”

      He sat up. His face was unreadable. She lay very still. “How long have you known?” he wanted to know.

      “Today. Tonight really. I should have realized earlier. I’m a freaking med student. But I guess I wasn’t looking out for it.”

      Damon nodded. “You were sick this morning.” Now he was shaking his head, as if he was amused about something. “And yesterday morning. And the morning before that. And you haven’t been eating much for weeks. You looked awfully pale when you dropped off Sajen's daughter. But that wasn't in the morning."

      "It isn't always in the morning. Even if they call it morning sickness."

      "Elena," Damon said, "Why didn’t we catch this? Aren’t you on that pill thing?”

      Elena realized she was freezing. She pulled the blanket around her shoulders. Damon held onto her, wrapping his arms around her, kissing the back of her neck. “It’s okay, Lena. We can do this.”

      “How am going to finish med school?”

      “We’ll get a nanny or something.”

      “But then I’ll never see our kid!”

      “So you take a little time off.”

      “But then I’ll never finish school. I’m supposed to be a doctor.”

      Damon laughed. And then he put his hands on her belly, caressing it more confidently. “Can you feel it yet? The baby?”

      “Moving?”

      “Yeah.”

      Now she laughed. “It’s too small.”

      “Is that why you don’t look pregnant?”

      “Uh huh. Don’t you know anything about pregnancy?” she asked.

      He ran his fingers lightly from her still-flat stomach to her swollen breasts. “The last time pregnancy was relevant to me ... it wasn’t a matter discussed by men. Ever. It was a miracle or a curse, depending. But it was never discussed.”

      “No health class in 1864?”

      “This would be covered in health class?”

      Elena laughed a little harder this time. “Did you ever want to be a father, back then?”

      Damon was caressing her breasts now, both of them. “Yeah,” he said softly. “I mean, I figured I would, after the war. Before I knew what she was, I was all set on asking Katherine to marry me. That would have been a disaster. But having a family, and being the kind of father I didn’t have… Yeah. I thought about it.”

      “And now?”

      “Is this why your breasts have been bigger lately?” he asked, cupping his hand around her right breast, as if measuring it.

      She slapped his hands away. “Damon! Be serious.”

      “This is a valid question.”

      “Yes. And they’ll get bigger.”

      “That sounds fun.”

      “They actually hurt a lot.”

      “Is something wrong?”

      “No. It’s another thing you should have learned in health class.”

      “How long do you think you’ve been, um—”

      “Pregnant?”

      “Yeah.”

      “I think it happened that week we went home, to take care of Caroline.”

      His hands froze. “That was two and a half months ago.”

      She nodded. She turned towards him, biting her lip, trying to gauge his reaction. He looked terrified. “If you’re trying to do the math, I think the baby will come in August. And yes, I should have realized sooner. I completely missed two periods and I was just too busy to notice it as an issue. You see, when you’re on the pill you can miss a period.”

      “And you’ve been taking this pill?”

      “It’s not 100 percent.”

      “We need to get you to a doctor,” Damon said. “And a witch.”

      Elena laughed. “I don’t need a witch.”

      “You used to be a vampire, Elena. And you’re a doppelganger. There’s stuff about your biology that a doctor isn’t going to be able to understand.”

      She shook her head, but Damon was insistent. He wanted to call Bonnie right that minute. Elena convinced him it could wait until morning. And then he wanted to move to one of those nice houses on the edge of town, the sort of house that would have room for a nursery. And a yard. Children should be outside, he said.

      “We can get it a horse. I had horses when I was a kid. And I bet I still remember how to fish. Maybe we should move out to the country. More room to explore.  Do you want to ban all video games? I can read it Tom Sawyer, and you can read it those Harry Potter books. Do kids still read Tom Sawyer? Do you want to ban cell phones too?”

      Elena laughed and laughed. And then he kissed her belly and she could swear she felt a fluttering, even though it was far too early.

Chapter Text

February 2018

It was a rare lazy Saturday morning, and Damon wished it could go on forever.

He’d been sprawled in bed, half-asleep, for what seemed like hours, just lying with his arms around Elena, imagining what it would be like when her belly was full to the brim with baby, or what it would be like to be woken up by a manic two year-old pouncing on his stomach. This new development, this impending baby, was terrifying and inconvenient, and shattered what little sense of normalcy he had. Of course having a baby was normal. For humans. It was just not the kind of normal Damon Salvatore had ever considered having, after he died for the first time. And back then, during his first human life-time — it was a different world. A world without ultrasounds or the opportunity to register for things like bottle warmers, jogging strollers, or baby monitors. Hell, there was no electricity to power most of the gadgets they’d found at Babies R’ Us, and people didn’t “jog.” They ran — from bears or vampires, or after a deer they were hunting. But they didn’t “jog” at six in the morning to blow off steam or keep in shape. They didn’t talk about “getting in shape.” No one needed a jogging stroller. Maybe if iPods had been invented earlier.

His was also a world where fathers were seldom involved in raising children and never involved in the pregnancy. Every time Elena mentioned a pregnancy symptom, he felt embarrassed, like he should excuse himself from the room. Except he was usually the only one in the room. She didn’t want to tell anyone yet. Something about jinxing it, and the threat of miscarriage early in any woman’s pregnancy. And worries about what two years of vampirism, the cure, and then several years of a sleeping beauty curse could do to a fetus. Elena wanted to be absolutely sure. She didn’t want any sad looks if she lost the baby. And she didn’t know what to tell her professors. Before she’d gotten pregnant, Damon had secretly wondered if one or both of them had been rendered sterile. They’d been abominations of nature — why would nature return them perfectly to their initial forms? So they’d gone thirty miles out of town to see a doctor, confirm the pregnancy and get prenatal care. Everything looked fine. Like she’d thought, Elena was 10 weeks along. The baby was healthy. No clue if it was a boy or girl, but apparently it was healthy. Elena had said they’d wait for the end of the first trimester three more weeks to share their news, three more weeks.

Damon had insisted they call Bonnie, but she was unreachable. She’d ended up at some monastery in Peru, after backpacking through South America. No phones. No internet. They sent emails, but heard nothing. Damon went so far as to call the police in a town two miles from the monastery, but since no lives were in danger, and Damon couldn’t compel anyone to do as he asked, no police officers were motivated to go find Bonnie. The idea that Bonnie’s life could be in danger, because of vague reasons Damon couldn’t explain, didn’t interest the Peruvian police. Short of flying to Peru, he was out of options. So Damon and Elena waited. It seemed more dangerous to contact another witch. The ultrasounds were normal. The gray-haired lady doctor was encouraging. Even Damon saw no evidence of magical foul play.

At 13 weeks, Elena decided, again, to tell no one. She liked that the baby was their secret, for now. So here they were, 16 weeks along, an island to themselves. Damon didn’t know what to think. He didn’t even know how to think these days. He just knew that he loved the woman in his bed.

Damon’s phone buzzed him out of this half-sleep, half-consciousness. The room was filled with mid-morning light. Elena’s side of the bed was empty, but she must be home because he heard water running in the bathroom. Damon reached for his phone and groaned, putting it back down without answering. Two text messages from Ric, one from Caroline, and one from Matt. He was avoiding all of them. He struggled to have a real conversation with anyone who knew him well, without spilling the beans about Elena’s pregnancy, or acting like he was hiding something and therefore making his friends suspicious. So he’d been pretending to be busy for the last few weeks.

“Lena!” he called out as he lay back down on his pillow. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” she yelled back.

“I thought the morning sickness was over,” he yelled over the water.

“It is.” She stood at the bathroom door, looking lovely with her extra curves. She wore a red negligee, which clung to her swollen breasts and her slightly rounded belly. In the last couple weeks, that belly had begun to protrude, not enough to be stand out unless you were looking for it. Most people probably just thought she’d put on a little weight. But Damon was looking for her belly, and it made her more beautiful. Every time he saw Elena, his heartbeat quickened. She was damned sexy. Regardless of whether she could fit into those skinny jeans of hers. (And she couldn’t. She’d done a lot cursing about this, as she resorted to wearing long shirts over unbuttoned pants.)

“You’re up, finally,” Elena said. “I talked to Caroline while you were sleeping. She says she’s fine, but I don’t believe her. She’s paranoid that there’s a mysterious vampire in town, but she has no proof, and there’s no bodies, just this vague sense of foreboding. So I called Jeremy and insisted that he come home to help with the school. Since they’ve finally got students, I figured that he could teach hunting, or just wrangle the kids. Then I called Matt, to remind him to check in on Caroline from time to time. Matt says she’s perfectly fine. He had dinner with her, Ric, and the girls last night, and I should just calm down or come see her myself. He did point out that no one has heard from Bonnie in a while. So I called Jeremy back. He got a postcard from Bonnie last week. He thinks Bonnie just needs a break from all of us.”

Damon sighed, wondering if the flurry of text messages he’d gotten this morning were in response to Elena’s flurry of phone calls.
His eyes were drawn again to his almost naked wife. Wife. That sounded strange. Mother sounded even stranger. “Is that new?” he asked, pointing at the negligee that barely covered her torso.

“You like?” she said shyly.

“I like,” he said, standing up so he could grab her and pull her gently onto the bed. She fell on top of him and they both laughed.

“It’s new,” she said, and now her voice held a hint of embarrassment. “Can you believe that this is a maternity item? Even my lingerie doesn’t fit quite right anymore. I think it’s my boobs.”

Damon grinned. “You keep being this sexy, and I’m going to want to make another baby.”

Elena laughed and reached for his face, saying, “There’s another health class you must have missed.”

“Lucky I married a doctor who can teach me everything.”

“Not a doctor yet,” she said, and now her mouth was smiling but her eyes were not.

Damon traced his finger from her throat to her breasts, and then around each nipple, carefully because her breasts were always sensitive these days. “Don’t you worry, Elena. You’ll be a doctor. You’ll be fine. I read this article in The New Yorker —“

“You read The New Yorker?” Elena said with a laugh, reaching her hand up to tousle his messy bed-hair.

“You have no idea how boring the bar is before six,” Damon said. “Anyway, there’s this thing called a stay-at-home dad. Have you heard about this?”
Elena raised her eyebrows.

“Well, it was news to me.”

“Sometimes it feels like you didn’t live through the last century and a half.”

“Let’s just say there were things I wasn’t paying attention to. My point is — I’m not entirely sure what a play-date is, and I’m terrified of the idea that someone is not only making music for children, but insisting that parents and children gather together to listen it. But maybe there are non-music related outings. And if it kept you in med school —”

Her eyes got large with wonder, or shock. “Damon Salvatore wants to be a stay-at-home dad? I don’t know what to say.” He waggled his eyebrows at her. “It’s not like I’m doing anything that awesome at the bar. The point is, you’re going to be a doctor. I could be this SAHD — that’s a thing people say — or not. But we’ll figure it out, because we’ve dealt with vampires, werewolves, Originals, Silas. All those annoying Travelers. Both of us have died and come back, multiple times, and we figured out how to be human again. So a baby? One human baby? We can handle that.”

She smiled, with her eyes this time. Elena leaned down and kissed him fiercely, deliberately. Holding onto his shoulders, digging her nails into his skin just a tiny bit. “I’m so glad you’re awake,” she whispered into his ear before running her tongue along his earlobe. Damon moaned. “I’m just so horny today.”

The last two or three weeks had been made up of a lot of horny days for Elena.

Damon moaned as Elena moved from his ear to his neck. The time she spent on his neck, tracing his arteries and veins with her tongue: it was like an inside ex-vampire joke, and it was also heavenly.

All of a sudden Damon was aware of Elena’s belly pushing into his abdomen. It seemed rounder than yesterday. Fuller. “I love pregnant-you,” he breathed.
This belly was deliberate. It was a statement.

It was a miracle.

She writhed around on top of him, naked except for the thin sheaf of red silk. He tried to breathe deeply in and out, to keep his body from going crazy, but he was fighting a losing battle. He didn’t want to behave like a fifteen year-old schoolboy. Damon Salvatore was better at sex than that.

He closed his eyes, searching for composure.

But Elena took control, and soon he was inside her. Still cautious and slow. “You don’t have to be so careful, Damon,” she said between moans of pleasure. “I’ve never been so ready. Just fuck me. Fuck me. Fuck me!”

Damon laughed. In his long life, he’d never had sex with a pregnant woman. It had just seemed wrong. Until now.

He rolled her over so that he was on top. As she arched her back, her belly met his abdomen. It felt like life itself was reaching up to touch him. He kissed her. He was sweating like crazy and a few beads of sweat dripped on her. She laughed in delight. He laughed too, as he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. He kissed her again, a hard kiss, full of all the things he wanted to say.

The moment stretched and stretched. It felt like it might last forever.

But then it was over. He fell on her for a moment, shivering with aftershocks. Then he shot up. “Sorry,” Damon said as he rolled off his pregnant wife. “I forgot.”

She laughed, saying, “It’s fine. I’m not that fragile. The baby isn’t that fragile.”

He raised his brows but said nothing. After a while he reached for the sheet so he could wipe the sweat off his face and body. “You got me excited. I’m sweating like a pig.”

“I know. You hate perspiration.”

Damon turned his head to look at her, considering. She was sweaty as hell too, though he didn’t think anything could ever make Elena seem like a pig. “I know I’ve bitched and moaned a lot about not being a vampire.”

Elena raised her eyebrows as she said, “A lot.”

“Yeah. Well. That’s what you get when you marry a guy who was a vampire for a century and a half. But what I’m trying to say is that there is something nice about sweating. Or being cold.” He pulled her closer to him and she snuggled into his chest. “You know how you’re always cold as a vampire?” She nodded. “But it’s a different type of cold, right?”

“Yeah. I never thought about it, but it is. I never shivered.”

“Exactly. It’s this dull ache of cold. It’s not the kind of cold you feel when you’re human. Like last night, when you decided we had to walk home because I was drunk and it would sober me up?”

She laughed into his shoulder.

“153 years as a vampire did nothing to prepare me for walking home at two in the morning in February in Virginia,” Damon said. “Cause when you’re human, what’s so miserable about being cold is that you’re actually warm inside, so it’s kind of like ice fighting with fire. And when you’ve spent 153 years not feeling that — at first it seems awful. Eventually you can appreciate the cold.”

Elena laughed gently. She turned her head so she could kiss him. Coming up for air, she said, “So you’ve found something you like about being human?”

“Possibly,” he said with a wry smile.

“Because you wanted this,” Elena said, kind but firm. “Remember when you told me that? When you insisted? I know there’s something good for you in this life, beyond me or kids, something for you. Something that Human Damon can do spectacularly.”

He was leaning in to kiss her when the phone rang. It was Alaric. Damon ignored the call. Then the phone rang again. The bar this time. “Sajen,” he snapped. “This better be good.”

“There’s a guy here who says he knows you,” his manager said in a rush. “I told him we weren’t even open yet, but he barged in anyway. He’s kind of scary. He says that unless you’re dead he needs to talk to you right now.”

Damon sighed. “And who is this jackass?”

“He’s got a weird name,” Sajen said. “Alaric, um —”

“Saltzman,” Ric shouted. “And tell him to get his ass down here so I can make sure he’s not dead.”

Damon sighed again. “I’ll be right there. Get him a bourbon. Neat. Triple. The best we have.”

He could almost hear Sajen nodding. “He’s not going to kill me, is he?” the very human and very untested bar manager whispered.

“He’s a friend. Harmless. Unless you’re a vampire.”

When he hung up the phone, he glanced at Elena wistfully. “I’ve got to go deal with this,” he told her as he scrambled out of bed, searching for clean clothes.

“Why is Alaric so upset?” she wanted to know.

“Probably because I’ve been avoiding him for weeks, Elena,” Damon said softly. “It’s hard to talk to anyone without spilling the beans.” Damon wondered how worried Ric had to be to drive all the way from Mystic Falls without telling him, or Elena, that he was coming. As wonderful and magical as these last few weeks had been, it was hard to keep the pregnancy a secret from everyone else in their lives. And he did feel cut off from the rest of the world.

She sat in bed, resting one hand on her belly. “It’s hard not to tell them, isn’t it?” Elena asked, her voice small, sad. Damon nodded. He was tired of arguing with Elena about when to tell the world. Every time they talked about it, she got so scared.

But now she looked determined, like she was bracing herself for something. “Okay,” she said softly. “We’ll tell them.”

“Really?”

“We can’t wait forever," Elena said with a shy grin. "I mean, look at me.”

Chapter Text

 Still February 2018

Later that morning

When Damon arrived at his dusty and dysfunctional place of business, he found his best friend at the bar, sitting there like he owned the place, topping off his own glass with a bottle of Damon’s best bourbon. He seemed to be deep in conversation with Sajen. Great. Who knows what seemingly innocuous details about Damon’s day to day life Ric was pulling from Damon’s bar manager, without Sajen realizing what was happening. ust before Damon reached them, Ric spun around, smiling, but clearly not happy. It was an angry smile. “Finally,” his friend said. “And I only had to drive all morning and terrorize your bar manager to get a face to face with you.”

“You’re such a drama queen,” Damon snapped. Now he was nervous about sharing the news. Why was he nervous? “I hope you’re planning on paying for that liquor.” To Sajen he said, “Couldn’t you have insisted he drink the cheap young stuff?”

Sajen shrugged and appeared to make himself busy by drying shot glasses. But he was clearly listening in.

“Seriously, man. I was worried,” Ric said, exhaustion creeping into his voice.

Damon rolled his eyes. “I’m fine. Why would there be anything to worry about?”

“Is Elena okay?”

“She’s um — ”

Ric’s eyes widened. “What? Some kind of side effect of the cure? I’ve been looking into this.”

Damon tilted his head towards Sajen, widening his eyes so he thought they might pop out of his skull, trying to remind Ric not to chitchat about supernatural things around non-supernatural people. “She’s fine,” he said.

Ric, looking relieved, reached for a clean glass behind the bar. “Good, because we have business to discuss,” he told Damon, grabbing the bottle and glasses. “Let’s get a table and I’ll fill you in.”

Sajen was staring. His mouth was actually open.

Damon glared at his manager, snapping, “Nothing to see here. Can’t you find something do in the back. Didn’t we get an order of chicken-something. I bet that needs attending to.”

Sajen grinned, “Chicken wings are thawing in the good refrigerator. I whipped up a marinade. My own recipe. You’ll like it.”

Damon rolled his eyes. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. What about fixing the dishwasher?”

“Did that. And I cleaned the oven and tinkered with the bad fridge so that hopefully we can start putting less perishable stuff in there and test it out.”

Damon sighed. “Well, aren’t you the epitome of resourcefulness.”

Sajen shrugged. “Ric was telling me all about Mystic Falls.”

Now Damon’s eyes were really popping out of his head. “Oh, really?” he asked, turning towards his best friend. “And what tidbits did you choose to share?”

“Oh you know, gas leaks. Animal attacks. Our tumultuous town.” Seeing Damon’s intense glare, he added, “Sajen had heard about the gas leaks. He was curious. I was telling him that we’re really back to normal.”

Damon smiled menacingly at both of them. “Well, now that we’ve all bonded so swimmingly, I think it’s time for Ric to go explore the exciting “big city life” of the town of Charlottesville, while Sajen gets back to work saving the world, one bad refrigerator at a time.” Ric looked like he was about to argue, but Damon added, “I’ll be along in a minute, brother. I’ve just got to be all owner-y, and then I’ll yours. We’ll even sightsee.”

Ric sputtered, “Oh no, I— ”

“I bet you’d like to see Monticello, huh, Mr. History Teacher?” Damon smirked.

“Oh no you don’t,” Ric insisted. “We have business to discuss. We are going to get a table at the back of the restaurant and you are going to put on your adult face, and you are going to listen to what I have to say. Which I dare say will be interesting to you.

Damon couldn’t take it anymore. He felt stuck to the ground, unable to follow Alaric anywhere, unable to discuss whatever goddamned business needed to be discussed. He’d been working up to this confession since he’d left the apartment an hour ago. He’d gotten lost on purpose so that he had more time to think, and if he was honest with himself, more time to avoid the words. And if he was really honest with himself, he’d been working up to this confession for six weeks, ever since Elena had told him she was pregnant, and especially since they’d gone to the doctor and seen that damned sonogram.

It wasn’t just Elena who was stalling. And he wasn’t stalling because he was afraid she’d lose the baby. He knew the pregnancy was going fine.

But Damon Salvatore: a dad? Jesus Christ, was he supposed to be a role model? Or at the very least a responsible adult? An adult who didn’t eat beer and twinkies for lunch, or accidentally serve alcohol to fifteen year-old girls. Or fantasize about biting the neck of any beautiful, and some downright plain, women. Or fantasize snapping the necks of bros and hipsters alike. Damon Salvatore, who was not a good person and had never claimed to be. Damon Salvatore, who loved to be selfish and relished his hedonism. Who was rash and unpredictable and thoroughly unreliable.

Damon felt like his whole life was going to change when he spoke the truth out loud. But he had to tell someone. He had to say these words. Two little words had been running through his mind for six weeks.

“Elena’s pregnant,” Damon blurted out before he could stop himself. “There. You happy? Now you know what’s going on. Now you’re in the loop,” he added in a snippy tone.

Ric just stood there, holding the bottle and glasses awkwardly, and gave him a blank look. Utter confusion all over his friend’s face. Like he’d never heard of pregnancy before. And then he grinned. The grin got wider and wider. “Well, damn,” Alaric finally said. “I didn’t see that coming.”

Damon stood awkwardly, unsure of what to do with his hands.

“Seriously brother,” Ric said, his voice kind. “This is good news. Elena must be over the moon. Did you guys plan this?”

Damon shook his head. “Apparently that pill thing is not one hundred percent.”

Ric laughed. “Yeah. Well, welcome to the world of modern medicine. Nothing’s as good as it’s supposed to be.”

Damon nodded. “Let’s get that table, Ric. There’s a good one in the back.”

“You’re going to be great at this, brother,” Alaric was saying as he followed Damon to the table.

As they were walking away, Sajen called out. “Congratulations, Damon! Alex will love to have a baby to play with. She’s already in love with both of you, especially Elena.”

Damon whipped his head around to smile gratefully at the man behind the bar. He could picture little Alex walking around the bar with a baby — his baby — clutching onto her finger, toddling alongside the older girl. Something about that image — about his unborn child having a playmate — made Damon feel less alone. And less like a freak of nature.

Chapter Text

February 2018

Charlottesville, Virginia

Still the same morning

Elena’s hands shook as she picked up her cell phone and dialed the familiar number. She sat at her kitchen table, 90% of which was covered in medical school textbooks, notebooks, and flashcards. She’d cleared off a small area in front of her for her plate of half-eaten scrambled eggs and un-touched kale. Kale was supposed to be good for the baby, and so Elena was trying to force herself to eat it for every meal. So far this morning she hadn’t managed to get one bite in her mouth, but at least it looked pretty on the plate.

Her hair, still wet from the shower, dripped on her shoulders. She was wearing her very first maternity outfit today, a purple v-neck blouse that hugged her boobs and belly, and a pair of jeans with an elastic waist that promised to stretch for the next five months. Even Damon didn’t know she’d bought these maternity clothes. Earlier this week she’d discovered that her jeans didn’t fit at all, not even if she wore them unbuttoned. She promptly raided Damon’s closet only to find that his pants didn’t fit her either. Damn him for staying in shape even though he ate Twinkies in the middle of the night (somehow believing she never noticed).

After much tugging and cursing, Elena had managed to get one pair of his jeans to work, albeit unbuttoned. These faded old jeans, with the one knee ripped out, were the ones Damon wore purposefully loose, for manual labor like burying corpses, and the occasional hike with her. She knew she had a week, two weeks tops, before even these jeans were too small. So she’d driven two towns over, to visit a mall where no one knew her. She bought pants with elastic waistbands, and blouses made of stretchy cotton-like material that allowed room for her belly to grow. Elena had stared at herself in the mirror, terrified at her image because she looked so pregnant. She’d assumed that maternity wear would aim to conceal her pregnancy, but it was the opposite. These clothes made her belly look huge: they accentuated her curves, her changing body, her expecting-ness. She’d bought the clothes but didn’t even have the nerve to show them to Damon. She knew that as soon as she put these clothes on she was admitting it, to herself and the world. She was about to become a mother, and these clothes sealed the deal.

For weeks, Elena had been afraid to tell anyone about the pregnancy lest she lose it. She refused to endure any looks of pity or concern. But these last few days, she’d realized that the baby was fine. The baby was growing. They were both healthy. All doctors appointments were textbook perfect. The terrifying thing wasn’t losing the baby. It was having it inside her. It was the prospect of giving birth to a new human being, of attempting to mother an innocent when she felt like all her innocence had long ago been stripped from her, layer by layer, piece by piece. What wisdom did Elena Gilbert have to share with a child? How could she pretend like the world was a safe place, or that this child’s life would not be meddled with by the supernatural? Elena liked to pretend that she was no longer supernatural, but the cure ran in her veins nonetheless. And she would always, always, be a Petrova doppelganger.

Damon had run out the door, to go calm down Alaric, while Elena was still lounging in bed, but once he was gone she knew that this was the day that everything would change. Once they told one person, they had to tell everyone. Secrets never lasted in Mystic Falls, or among Mystic Falls alumni.

And so Elena pulled out a big bag of maternity everything, which she’d stashed in their bedroom closet. She’d wondered who she should call first. She stalled by making breakfast, and by once again failing to eat her kale.

And now, she dialed the number. All she had to do was press “call.” After what seemed like an eternity, she pressed the button and listened as the phone began to ring, half-hoping it would go straight to voicemail.

“I’m already packing my bags, Elena!” her brother snapped at her.

“Jer,” Elena said, her voice shaky. “That’s not why I’m calling.” She rubbed her belly absently. God, it was getting big. Not huge, but noticeable.

On the other end of the line, Jeremy sucked in air sharply. “What’s wrong?” he asked, all concern. Ready for action.

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“Bullshit.”

She laughed, glancing down at the evidence of her pregnancy. Her laugh was shaky too. “It’s good news, actually.”

Elena could almost see her brother frowning. “Okay?”

“I’m um — well, we are — um, you know —“

“No, I don’t know,” Jeremy said, a mix of annoyance and worry in his voice.

Just spit it out, she told herself. But there was no going back from this. Of course, Damon had probably told Alaric by now. And this baby was coming in five months, regardless of what she said to anyone.

“Elena?” Jeremy said. Yes, definitely frowning. “Did Damon do something?”

And then she began to laugh, stupidly. All of a sudden she was babbling at him. “Yes. Damon did something. A good something. Damon did something magical, and you better be happy about it or I might just kill you. Though I don’t know how I’d manage it.”

“Okay?” Jeremy said with a humorless laugh.

“I’m pregnant, Jer,” she blurted out. “Damon knocked me up. That’s what he did.”

A long silence. Too long. And then, finally, he said, “Oh, I get it. A good something.”

Another long silence. She felt like she might cry. And then she was crying. “Is that all you have to say?” she blubbered at him, cradling her baby bump protectively.

“No. I mean. Congratulations!” Jeremy said, his voice light and kind. He sounded genuinely happy for her. “I’m sorry. You just caught me off-guard. I’m not used to normal people news. I’m used to werewolf emergencies or Klaus emergencies or Travelers taking over our town. But this is good. You’ve always wanted to be a mom. You’ll be a great mom. The baby will survive Damon.”

And their conversation went on like that until Jeremy had to go, so he could finish packing and hit the road. He promised to come see her before his final destination of Mystic Falls.

Elena was only slightly less nervous about her next call.

“Elena freaking Gilbert-basically-Salvatore!” Caroline snapped. “You sick-ed your brother on me! I do not need any extra help getting the school going. How many times do I have to tell you that I’m fine? I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine-fine-fine!”

“I’m pregnant,” Elena blurted out before she could stop herself. Her hand almost flew to her belly as she said the words.

Another long pause, and then Caroline squealed. “Ooh, goody. This is going to be so much fun. The girls are going to lose it. Does Damon know? Ooh, do you think Ric will kill him?”

Elena laughed. “Why would Ric kill Damon? They’re best friends. And we’re married. I’m not in high school anymore. I’m twenty-five.”

“He’s still your almost-dad. And Damon is still one-hundred-and-whatever years old. It’s kind of like he’s married to a fetus.”

Elena wanted to slap the phone but instead she laughed. Freely. It felt good to laugh. It felt good for this to be something to laugh about, not some solemn miracle. She could almost forget her terrible luck in all things.

“Seriously,” Caroline said. “Did you tell Damon yet?”

“Yes!” Elena said, laughing still.

“And?”

“And what?”

“And how did he take it?”

Elena smiled as she told her old friend, “Surprisingly well. He actually seems excited. He keeps having big ideas, strange random things, like getting a horse, or moving to the country so there’s lots of land to run around in, and a good climbing tree, and a brook. He actually has some good memories from being a kid, roaming around, being Huck Finn or something.”

Caroline giggled. “Good memories from the 1800s?”

“I didn’t say they were normal memories. Oh god, Caroline, this poor kid! When he grows up, or she, we’ll seem like such freaks, won’t we?”

She could almost see her friend shrugging through the line. “Damon, maybe. Well, Damon definitely. But you?”

“Um, let’s recap. I was a vampire for two years. I took the cure. Something that’s only been taken by a handful of vampires, most of whom are dead. So I’m almost weirder than a vampire. Except I don’t drink blood, so that’s a positive.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Caroline giggled. “You’re gonna be a mom! It’s the absolute best. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.”

Elena grinned but continued. “I’m not done, Care. And then I got to sleep in a coffin for five years. Oh, and let’s not forget that I’m a doppelganger, an exact replica of the vampire who turned Damon in 1864, and countless other human women. And the first ever one of me turned immortal and insane. Totally a normal soccer mom.”

Caroline giggled again. “First of all, normal is overrated and we both know that. Imagine how dull our lives would be if we’d just stayed normal. Second of all, you can make it sound less freaky when you talk to your kid. It’s all in the way you shape the narrative. Think journalism.”

“And let’s not forget that this baby was conceived by two people with totally unique and bizarre biology, since we both used to be vampires and took the cure. I didn’t tell you earlier because I was afraid I’d lose it. But I still don’t understand how I even got pregnant at all.”

She could almost see Caroline rolling her eyes. “The baby’s fine, Elena. No need to freak. But getting away from all that, how are you doing?”

“I’m fine. Morning sickness is gone. I’ve got my energy back. And I, uh, I had to buy maternity clothes, Care! Which was terrifying. I’m sorry I missed all that with you.”

“Elena,” Caroline said slowly, deliberately. “How far along are you?”

“16 weeks?” she replied cautiously, a little scared of her friend’s reaction. She stared at her round, growing belly, really taking it in for the first time in a while.

“16 weeks?! How could you not tell me? Or anybody! How long have you known?”

“A month a half.”

They kept chatting like for quite some time before Caroline said, “Not to burst the happy bubble, but I did want to run something by you. Remember when I said we had a new vampire in town? I was wrong. But there’s definitely something weird going on. I keep getting this vibe when I walk by the building where Matt and Vickie were ringing that bell.”

Elena frowned, trying to think what could possibly give Caroline a freaky feeling, thinking to herself that her friend must be imagining things.

Then she felt a flutter, in her belly.

Elena jumped. “Oh my god!” she whispered.

“What? What is it?” Caroline asked. “Are you okay?”

Elena nodded. When she realized her friend couldn’t see the gesture, she said, “I’m fine. I’m better than fine. Care, I just felt the baby! For the first time. It’s like it did a somersault inside me.”

She could hear Caroline clapping her hands. “Oh, that’s the best, isn’t it? Especially when they’re too little to kick you and have it hurt!”

“It’s. God, Caroline. It’s like the best magic in the world.” Elena was crying, happy tears.

Then she felt something else. A foreign emotion. A shadow. Worry. Elena tried to shake the feeling, but she couldn’t.

“Tell me more about what you noticed when you walked by that building,” she said, trying to keep her voice even. The baby flipped again. In approval of her question?

“I don’t know exactly,” Caroline said. “Spooky. Odd. Not flat-out terrified, but like I’m noticing something not right. Like I’m seeing a wall and one brick is missing.”

Elena shivered. She knew exactly how Caroline felt. The same feeling — anxiety laced with curiosity laced with a trembling uncertainty — was now racing through her. It was palpable. Distinct. It was real. Not because she heard her friend’s anxiety and felt worried for Caroline. No. This was coming from inside Elena. As if Elena herself had seen or experienced something real. She didn’t want to tell Caroline what she observed within herself. She didn’t want to admit to supernatural hijinks. And she didn’t want to consider that her baby was anything but 100% normal.

But Elena knew she had to say something. This could be important, especially for those left in Mystic Falls. Before she figured out what to say, Elena began to feel woozy.

“Elena?” Caroline was saying. When she got no response, her tone grew worried. “Lena! Elena! Elena Gilbert-basically-Salvatore!”

Elena could barely keep her eyes open. She was just so sleepy.

“Call Damon,” she murmured as she put her head down on table and fell asleep.

Chapter Text

Still the same morning in Charlottesville, February 2018

Damon climbed out of Alaric’s car and gestured up at the apartment building. “Here it is, brother, in all its glory.”

Alaric took in the shabby brick building, the little balconies hanging over the parking lot, the graduate students from the English department who were, once again, hanging out on the front steps smoking clove cigarettes and talking about moving to Canada to escape the current political system. He appeared underwhelmed. “It’s … nice,” Ric said with a half-hearted grin.

Damon rolled his eyes. “You’re a terrible liar. Come on up. Elena will love to see you. And you’ll see why I finally had to tell you.”

Alaric laughed. “This is going to be weird. Very weird. It’s almost like being a grandfather.”

Damon made a face. “Ugh. Gross.” His cell phone buzzed in his pocket. Several text messages coming in quick succession. He pulled out his phone and groaned for real. Showing it to Alaric he said, “Elena must be spilling the beans. Little Gilbert is sending me threatening texts.” Mockingly he quoted Jeremy’s words, “ ‘You better be good to my sister. I have a duffel bag full of weapons in my car at all times.’ Remind me why I’m not allowed to kill him again?”

Alaric slapped him upside the head, a little harder than was friendly or reasonable.

Damon’s phone buzzed again. “Care Bear!” he said as he and Ric began climbing the four flights of stairs. “Have you been talking to a certain wife of mine?”

“Where are you? Are you close to home?” she said in a rush. Damon’s insides froze. He knew this tone.

“Walking up the stairs. What’s going on, Caroline?” he asked.

“I was just talking to Elena. And she — I don’t know. She stopped answering. Then she said to call you, and I think she passed out. She sounded sleepy, really, really sleepy.”

Damon was running up the stairs now with Ric trailing behind him.

“What’s going on?” Ric shouted.

But Damon didn’t have time to answer. He ran like his life depended on it, wishing once again for vamp speed. Someone was coming down the stairs, in the opposite direction, and he almost tackled the dude in his efforts to get upstairs. It was his neighbor, Johnny, who kept his hair hippie-long and always wore Hawaiian shirts.

“Salvatore!” Johnny yelled as he got out of the way just in time. “You okay or just being a jackass?”

“Just peachy,” Damon yelled. “Altogether peachy!”

“Sorry man,” Ric said as he ran past Johnny. “He really needs the bathroom.”

Damon almost laughed. Almost. But now he was at his door. It was locked. He fumbled with his keys and wished that he could just break down the door. His hands shook — partly from worry and partly from frustration at his inferior physical self, but he got the key in the lock.

And there was Elena, his Elena, sitting at the kitchen table, her head resting on a medical text, beside a plate of half-eaten eggs and kale. Again with the kale? And was she wearing maternity clothes? Damon had gotten so used to his wife wearing baggy shirts and unbuttoned jeans that it was strange to see her wearing the clingy purple top that accentuated her stomach, even when she was slumped over a table.

He squatted down next to her, drinking in her scent of lilacs and rosewater and something earthy that reminded him of long summer days in the woods. “Lena,” he whispered. “Please be okay.” He placed two fingers on her carotid artery, relieved that she felt warm to the touch. Her pulse was there. Strong. “She’s alive,” he told Ric, who crouched down on Elena’s other side.

“Do you think she fell back asleep?” his friend asked, eyes full of worry.

Damon shook his head, rejecting that idea outright. “Oh, no, no, no! We are not dealing with that goddamned sleeping beauty curse again.” He rubbed her arm gently. No response. He rubbed harder. Nothing.

Then Ric pinched Elena. She gasped and sat up with a start. Damon pulled her up from the table so that she was standing, facing him. Then he pulled her towards him and buried his head in her hair.

Elena lifted her face to look at him, tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry for scaring you,” she said.

Damon shook his head and kissed her, hard, not caring that Ric was there.

“What happened?” Elena said after a while.

“You tell us,” Ric said. “According to Caroline, you passed out while you were on the phone with her. You look great, by the way.”

Elena smiled shyly. “So Damon told you?”

Ric nodded. Raising his brows he said, “Not that he would have had to. Now that I’m seeing you.”

“Are you okay?” Damon asked. When she nodded he added, “And the baby?”

“I feel fine,” she said. “But something weird happened. I think the baby can sense things.”

###

Elena perched on the edge of the exam table, wearing nothing but a paper gown. She felt exposed, and embarrassed, and just silly. Damon and Ric hadn’t taken her seriously when she started talking about knowing what the baby was feeling, or the possibility that the baby was psychic, or a witch, or any other strange supernatural thing. Neither one of them had ever heard of a fetus displaying supernatural powers in utero.

Ric talked about low blood sugar and Damon talked about how he wished he’d read those pregnancy books she’d asked him to read, and they’d both said that they’d never heard of babies being psychic from the womb. Damon did leave a voicemail for Bonnie, and Ric said he would talk to the witches they had working at the school. But they’d insisted on taking Elena to the hospital. Nine times out of ten it was medical, Ric said. He flat out refused to let Elena drive twenty miles out of town to see her regular doctor, and Damon agreed. Ric couldn’t believe that they’d both been ridiculous enough to sneak around at doctors’ offices several towns over.

He was putting his foot down. What if there was a real emergency, he’d chided them. Luckily this was just a minor fainting spell, but all sorts of things could go wrong in a pregnancy and it didn’t make sense to drive twenty miles out of town, or to sneak around period when they were married adults. It was funny to listen to Ric berating Damon for acting like a teenager, when they all knew that Damon had been born 130-some years before Alaric.

Unfortunately for Elena, the best hospital in town was the hospital attached to her medical school: UVA’s Medical Center.

Now she was alone in this damned room. Alaric had been getting annoyingly antsy, so they’d sent him to the cafeteria to get coffee for him and Damon. Damon had been waiting with her, but then he’d had to step out to fill out some insurance forms (complaining about his lack of ability to compel people and therefore get out of filling out forms).

Elena was texting Caroline, trading complaints about how much pregnancy sucked. Caroline also thought Elena was imagining these psychic or whatever feelings she’d gotten from the baby, chalking it up to hormone overdrive. Her dismissal drove Elena crazy. But it was fun to be able to share her pregnancy with her best friend, finally. She was giggling at Caroline’s stories when the door finally opened. The doctor was young-ish — maybe in her mid thirties, with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, and a vaguely familiar face. Did she teach at the medical school? So far Elena had managed to avoid seeing anyone she knew during this trip to UVA’s Medical Center. Clearly her luck was beginning to fade.

The doctor wasn’t looking straight at her, but rather at the file in her hands. “Okay, I see that you’re 16 weeks pregnant, Miss, um … Gilbert. Wait, Elena Gilbert?” And now the doctor did look her straight in the face. She stared, open-mouthed.

Elena still didn’t recognize her. The doctor was distinctly familiar, but she couldn’t place her face. She definitely wasn’t one of her professors this semester or last, but if she worked at the med school, this reaction couldn’t be good.

This was when it got weird. The doctor’s eyes grew teary as she said, “How? How is this?”

Yes, weird and confusing.

Damon came swinging through the door, his arms full of snacks. “Okay,” he said. “I’ve got Jello. I’ve got little packets of pretzels. I’ve got ice chips.”

Elena laughed. “I’m not in labor. I don’t need ice chips.”

“Huh. Is that a labor-specific food? Well, I’ve got a couple fruit cups and I even scored some ice cream for you. And these weird little flat cups of juice.” He dumped the armfuls of food and juice on the table next to the exam table. “Seriously, why do they only have juice in this shape at hospitals? Also, the best news is that I got this cute little nurse to fill out the forms for me. Every single one. And she was the one who gave me all this food. It turns out you don’t need compulsion if you can do the eye thing that I do.”

The doctor gaped at him. “Damon?” she asked.

He grinned and held out his hand. “I guess my reputation proceeds me. Damon Salvatore.”

The doctor shook his hand, holding on longer than seemed reasonable. “You’re so warm,” she said.

Elena’s eyes widened. “Is he sick? Oh, god, Damon! Maybe you’ve given me something. Or gotten the baby sick. Have you been sticking to the immunization schedule?”

Damon looked confused. “I feel fine.” He stuck out his tongue at the doctor and said, “Aaah. See. Everything’s fine.”

The doctor looked back and forth between the two of them before asking in a bewildered sort of way, “You’re both human?”

Elena froze. Did this doctor know something? Did she know who they were? Elena tried to think of something to say. She stayed frozen.

Damon locked eyes with Elena, giving her a small smile, an “it’s going to be all right” nod. Then he broke out laughing.

The doctor continued to stare at each of them in turn.

Damon kept laughing. Elena joined in. “Good one,” she said, trying to sound carefree.

“My mother used to say I was born in a barn,” Damon said, “but I think that was mostly concern over table manners and closing doors.”

Now the doctor laughed a little and said, “You guys are good. But seriously, neither one of you recognizes me?”

Elena frowned, trying to figure out again who the hell this woman was and whether she should be afraid.

At that moment Alaric came in the door. He was handing Damon a cup of coffee when he noticed the doctor. The doctor looked downright frightened now, her face white as a sheet. “Meredith?” Alaric said.

The coffee fell to the floor.

###

Damon felt like an idiot for not realizing it sooner. “Meredith Fell,” he said softly. “My favorite psycho doctor.” Alaric’s old flame.

“What the hell is going on here?” Meredith snapped, her voice shaky but authoritative at the same time. She walked towards the door, and Damon thought she might flee the room. Instead she closed the door, locked it, and turned back to face the three of them. “You,” she said quietly to Alaric, “you are supposed to be dead. We buried you. I mourned you. It took me years to get my head on straight after that went down.”

Alaric just stood there, looking not at Meredith but at the coffee swirling around his feet. He looked like he needed a drink, or fifty, before he could have this conversation properly.

“And you,” she said to Elena. “You are supposed to be a vampire. His blood turned you. I know because I stole it and gave it to you. And I watched you come into the hospital that night, DOA after a truck got run off a bridge. I remember how you struggled after turning. But you’re pregnant. At least your file says you’re pregnant. Vampires don’t procreate.”

Elena smiled shyly at her.

Meredith looked at her clinically. For the first time she approached the exam table. “Lean back please.” Elena lay down, her expression now terrified. Meredith placed a hand on Elena’s abdomen, feeling the round belly. “Well, you definitely didn’t have a figure like this the last time I saw you. What other symptoms have you had?”

Damon laughed. “She’s pregnant, Meredith. There’s no trick going on. You think we have nothing better to do than play pranks on you and hang out in the ER?”

“But how is this possible?” Meredith wanted to know.

“She’s human. We both are,” Damon said. He felt a weight lifting off his shoulders. As much as Meredith had driven him crazy back in the day, he was relieved to see her. If anything supernatural or just plain weird did happen during this pregnancy, they’d be able to discuss it with Meredith Fell. And they wouldn’t have to make up lies to explain other weird shit, like the fact that Damon had never been immunized except for a smallpox vaccine he’d received while serving in the Confederate Army.

“How?” Meredith asked, voice small.

Damon smirked at her, enjoying this moment, enjoying her confusion and the ridiculousness of the whole scene. “You move to Alaska and you miss out on the new developments. Though I do apologize for my buddy’s inability to pick up a telephone. Ric, are you telling me that you never thought to call poor Meredith here and say, hey, I’m not dead after all, so don’t be sad?”

Ric shook his head, looking shell-shocked and also furious at Damon’s insolence.

Meredith clutched her clipboard to her chest. “Could somebody just explain what the hell is going on?” she asked, voice tight, almost pinched.

Elena sat up and grabbed the clipboard out of Meredith’s hands. She pulled the other woman toward her in an awkward hug, made more awkward by the fact that she was still wearing nothing but the paper gown. “It is so, so good to see you, Meredith. You want to know what’s going on?” Meredith nodded. “After you left for Alaska, we found out there was a cure for vampirism. It’s a really long story, but there were just a couple doses. A few years ago, I took the cure. Last year, Damon did too. And as for Alaric — he was able to come back to life when the Other Side, you know the supernatural afterlife, was falling apart. That’s a really complicated story, but essentially Bonnie opened up a door and Alaric walked back into our world. He’s human too, now. And not insane.”

Meredith looked at each of them in turn, as if trying to decide what to do and what to believe. Finally she let out a long, shaky breath, and threw her arms around Ric. He hugged her tightly. He looked like he was shaking a bit. Every other woman Ric had ever loved was dead. Damon wondered how this blast from the past was hitting his friend.

Chapter Text

March 2018

Charlottesville, VA

“And why are you here again?” Damon asked the nosy doctor standing in front of him and his box of expensive bourbon and scotch. He waggled his eyebrows at her. “Don’t get me wrong, Meredith. You’re kind of sexy in an ‘I’m-a-psycho-and-notorious-busybody sort of way’. But I, madam, am spoken for.”

Meredith Fell rolled her eyes. “I’m worried about Alaric.”

“Get out of the way and pass me that box over there?” Damon pointed at a still unopened cardboard box. As Meredith pushed it towards him, he asked, “And what specific worry is it this time? Do you think he has an evil, vampire-hating dark side controlled by a 1000-year-old-super-witch?”

In the box he found a linen tablecloth, thankfully not yellowed, or too terribly wrinkled. Maybe he could iron it later. But he only had a couple hours to get everything ready. Ironing could wait. Damon shook the tablecloth out and laid it on the cheap end table next to their apartment’s front door. Anything cheap in their place had been bought by Elena at Ikea or Goodwill.

“No! Nothing like that!” Meredith frowned at Damon, who was pulling out carefully wrapped crystal decanters, unwrapping them, and placing them on this piece of crap table. “What exactly are you doing?” Meredith asked.

“Setting up a drink table for the party Elena guilt-tripped me into throwing for her and her little classmates. Apparently if I’m going to inconveniently knock her up during her first year of med school, the least I can do is provide a ‘we passed our midterms and are not total morons’ party.”

“Elena doing okay since her appointment last week?” Meredith asked.

Damon smiled, thinking of how happy she’d been lately, how happy they’d both been. “Yeah. No more weird shit. Still pregnant.”

“And what is she going to drink tonight?”

“Virgin daiquiris.”

“And what are these ridiculously expensive decanters for?”

Damon grinned. “How else do you expect me to serve bourbon and scotch?”

Meredith laughed. “At a college party? You put a bunch of cheap liquor bottles on the kitchen counter next to a stack of red solo cups and a random assortment of mixers. And you should probably offer tequila, or at least rum. And vodka, definitely vodka. Only old men drink whiskey.”

Damon laughed. “Old men have good taste. Tequila is common, rum is girly, and vodka tastes like rubbing alcohol. And we aren’t mixing sour crap or whatever into anything,” he snapped. “Pass that dusting cloth?”

When she gave him the supple white cloth, he wiped dust from his favorite decanter, then began to carefully pour a bottle of Parker’s Heritage into it.

“How much did you pay for that bottle? If it’s more than forty dollars, you shouldn’t serve it at a college party.”

Damon rolled his eyes and continued to pour. “Not a college party. They’re medical students.”

“You know it’s the same thing,” Meredith said.

Damon sighed and glanced up at her. “I know I’m married to a woman who’s barely more than a child. Yes, Meredith, I get it. I’m human now. I’m not an idiot.” He topped off the whiskey and sealed it with a stopper.

“That’s not what I was saying,” Meredith said, almost kind this time.

He ran his hands through his black hair. “You’re all babies. College kids. Med school kids. Middle-aged people with the beginnings of a gut. Old people dying penniless and forgotten in nursing homes. And I’m the old man who has been around since long before red solo cups. Back in the day, this is how we threw college parties.”

Someone cleared his throat. Damon whipped around to see Sajen standing at the front door with a cooler. “What are you talking about Damon?”

Damon glared. “Knock much?”

“Sorry, it was open,” Sajen said softly. Half-smiling, half-grimacing.

Damon glared at Meredith, who’d clearly failed to shut the door behind her when she came in.

“It’s fine,” he said, ushering his bar manager in. “Sajen, meet Meredith Fell, psycho doctor extraordinaire from Mystic Falls. Also Alaric’s ex. Who gets extra points for still being above ground. Meredith, meet my annoyingly competent bar manager.”

Sajen rolled his eyes as he came inside the apartment. “Aren’t you just a few years older than Elena?”

Damon sighed, forcing himself to not laugh maniacally at this nice-enough guy who knew nothing. Nothing. Nothing. “It’s all relative,” Damon finally said with a smirk and a lot of condescension. “Sometimes five years feels like five years. Sometimes five years feels like, I don’t know, 153. Like, say, you feel like you remember what civilization was like before the automobile.”

Sajen looked confused.

Damon went back to pouring alcohol. “You brought the makings of delicious, classy party food?”

“So I’m going to do cocktail shrimp, bacon-wrapped scallops, mini-quiches, and those little mini-hamburgers,” Sajen said, looking far too proud of himself. Then his face fell. “Oh god. I didn’t even consider asking. You’re not serving vegetarians are you? Or vegans?”

Damon laughed. “I don’t believe in vegetarianism. The way I see it, if someone is going to make the absolute stupid choice to only eat plants, they can eat before they come. They should be lucky I’m not eating them.”

Sajen scrunched up his face in more confusion. He seemed to be waiting for an explanation. When none came, he took his cooler into the kitchen. Soon they heard sounds of clinking and unpacking. The gas lighting on the stove.

Meredith sighed and murmured, “College parties serve chips and dip.”

Damon sat with his back against the door and looked at Meredith, really looked at her. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t recognized the doctor when he’d first seen her in Elena’s hospital room a few weeks ago. She didn’t look that much different than she had six years ago. Same dark hair pulled back from her face. Same expression of curiosity mixed with judgment. A little older. Sadder. Definitely more lines around her eyes and mouth. He even saw a few gray hairs sprinkled within her black hair.

Still, he should have recognized her.

Maybe it was because he’d met so many people in his long life. Most hadn’t stuck around for the next act. They’d come and gone and once they were gone it was like they’d never been in his world. When you live for almost two centuries, you forget most of your life. Unless it walks back in, like into a hospital room in Charlottesville.

“So,” he said after a while. “What is your specific worry about Ric?”

“I don’t know,” Meredith said, face scrunched up in frustration. “He just won’t talk to me. It’s like something terrible happened when I was away and he won’t let me back in.”

Damon raised his brows. “Have you told him what happened with your little Alaskan husband yet?”

“What do you mean? We got divorced. End of story.”

“Well, you seem to think he’s keeping secrets. And of course he is because that’s the way we live. But you, madam crazypants doctor, you are clearly hiding something too. Because the last time we talked, you stopped by my house to tell me you had fallen in love with another doctor, from out of town, and just had to move to Alaska that very minute. And I told you I thought it was a little soon, because Ric had only been gone a few months and you’d just met the saintly doctor, and I was having a rare moment of interest in someone else’s life. I figured Ric would want me to look out for you. And moving to Alaska seemed … imprudent.”

Meredith smiled sadly. “You want to know what happened?”

“I know Ric wants to know what happened. And I like gossip.”

Sajen yelled from the kitchen, “I know I want to know what happened!”

Damon laughed, glad that he’d not explicitly stated that Ric had been dead when Meredith left for Alaska, but instead had pussyfooted around the word with the euphemism “gone.” He stood up and began looking for his whiskey glasses.

Now Sajen was standing at the door of the kitchen with a mixing bowl in hand. “Seriously. This is getting juicy.”

Meredith looked Sajen up and down. “I want to know why you’re wearing shorts in early March.”

“They’re comfortable,” Sajen and Damon said at the same time, Damon’s voice mocking.

“Enough stalling,” Damon snapped. “Let’s hear the story. Ooh, did you kill him? Are you the new black widow?”

Sajen grinned, but Damon was only half kidding. Who knows, the guy could have been a vampire, werewolf, evil witch, siren, or any other creature that goes bump in the night. And Meredith did have a screw loose.

She smacked Damon upside the head, surprising him. Damon reached out reflexively, grabbed her hand, and spun her towards him until he had her in a headlock. Realizing what he’d done, he dropped his arms and let her go. “Sorry,” he murmured, only a little sorry. “Old habits die hard.”

Sajen gaped at both of them.

“A little jumpy are we?” Meredith asked.

“I haven’t been sleeping well since Elena had her little scare,” he admitted. Damon had insisted to everyone but Ric that there was nothing supernatural going on with Elena’s pregnancy, but he had a bad feeling that something was up. They were supposedly normal human beings, but they had been vampires. They had the cure running through their blood. Who knows what that magic could do a fetus? As far as he was concerned, the pregnancy was a bizarre miracle and they should expect weird shit rather than be surprised it. His very existence in the 21st century was beyond weird. Even if he’d lived to 100, human Damon would have died in 1939. And people of his generation didn’t live that long. 1900 would have been an accomplishment.

“Anyway,” he said, deflecting, “What the hell happened in Alaska?”

“My husband was boring, okay?” Meredith practically shouted. “All he cared about was work and money and ice fishing. He was bad in bed. And he wanted me to have a bunch of children. I wasn’t going to have kids with someone I didn’t love.”

Damon grinned. “That is so goddamned mundane it makes my head hurt. Like, the idea that shit like that happens is just weird.”

Sajen laughed. “The idea that people grow apart, or are boring, or one person wants kids? You can’t believe that happens?”

Damon raised his brows and smirked at Sajen. “Let’s just said I’ve had a more … colorful life.” To Meredith he said, “And why exactly are you hiding this dull as a doornail divorce from Ric?”

“Because I don’t want to give him the wrong idea.”

“Like you were still in love with him? Like he was better in bed than the boring guy? Like you missed him?”

Meredith shrugged. “Whatever. Anyway Damon, you have to tell me what he’s hiding from me.”

Damon shook his head. “Talk to Alaric.”

Damon began opening boxes at random. When he saw a few of Stefan’s journals at the top of one box, he shut it and shoved it in a corner. Seeing his brother’s belongings made his whole body feel tight. It was hard to breathe when he thought of Stefan. Damon was not going to work through those emotions today. Another box contained a bunch of old records. These could be fun tonight. “If anybody sees a record player lying around here, let me know.”

Meredith looked pointedly at Sajen. “What do you know about Alaric? Have you met him?”

Sajen nodded. “A couple times.”

“And what do you know?”

Sajen glanced at Damon. Damon glared at the punk. Sajen shrugged and began talking, apparently deciding that he didn’t care if he pissed off Damon. At times like these, Damon missed his fangs something awful. “Alaric has two kids. And a kind of complicated relationship with their mother. And he runs a school or something. At Damon’s old house.”

Meredith’s eyes were wide. “Kids?” she whispered. “Alaric Saltzman has children? With whom?”

Damon sighed. Apparently Ric had told her nothing about his new life. This was going to be interesting. And here Damon was thinking she was just worried about day drinking.

When Damon didn’t reply, Meredith turned to Sajen again. “Do you know who their mother is?”

“Damon’s incredibly bossy sister-in-law. What’s her name?” Sajen said.

Damon really, really needed to work on his scary boss persona. Sajen didn’t seem to fear him at all. Maybe if he snapped a busboy’s neck in front of his staff. Just one busboy should make the point.

“Damon doesn’t have a sister-in-law,” Meredith told Sajen, incredulous. She stared at Damon as if trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

Damon wanted to murder Sajen, then chop him up and put him in the quiche. Meredith too. “Caroline married Stefan,” Damon mumbled, completely drained of snark.

Meredith frowned. “Alaric had children with Caroline? Ugh. She was his student, Damon! She was in high school the last time I met her.”

Sajen grinned. “Now this is getting juicy. Ooh, was she underage?”

Damon contemplated getting a big grill for barbecuing human flesh. Whose flesh would depend on his mood of the day. “Are we seriously going to worry about the age difference between Alaric and Caroline and not between me and Elena?”

Meredith raised her brows as she said, “Trust me Damon, I worry about anyone stupid enough to get involved with you.”

“They didn’t even sleep together,” he told Meredith, realizing how Caroline’s pregnancy wouldn’t make sense even if he didn’t have an impressionable, supernaturally-clueless person hanging onto this every word and could explain the magic involved. “Alaric was marrying this other woman. She, um. Caroline was like their surrogate.”

“Wait, isn’t Caroline a —“ she stopped when Damon cleared his throat glared hard at her, cocking his head at Sajen.

“It’s complicated,” was all he said.

“So Alaric is married?” Meredith asked, her voice small and sad.

Damon shook his head. “Jo died. During their wedding. It was a bad day. I wouldn’t ask him about it.”

She nodded. “Okay, well, I guess that explains why he didn’t want to talk to me about his life. … So, we’re looking for a record player?”

“Yup.”

“What kind?”

“No clue. I’ve had so many over the years. I can’t remember which one I brought. Could even be a Victrola,” Damon said with half a smirk.

Meredith nodded as she began to open boxes. “So where is Stefan in all this. You haven’t talked about him at all since we ran into each other.”

Damon groaned. He glanced at Sajen, who looked terrified, as if only now realizing what he’d done by divulging Ric’s personal business. Damon had only told Sajen about Stefan’s death because he wanted to make sure that if Caroline called the bar Sajen would get Damon immediately. He never discussed his brother with anyone else in Charlottesville. Neither his death nor his existence was public knowledge.

Today Damon was supposed to be preparing for a party. He was supposed to be doing something nice for Elena and bantering with Sajen, and then drinking his good whiskey.

He had no interest in telling Meredith what had happened that day in Mystic Falls. 

He was bent over another damned cardboard box, ignoring her, but he could feel her eyes boring into the back of his skull. He shut his eyes, trying to ignore everything but his search for the record player.

But his heart was pounding.

As a vampire, Damon’s heart had beat at the same rate as when he’d been a healthy, well-exercised young man. As long as he kept to a healthy diet of human blood, his body functioned more or less normally, and his heart pumped blood around his body like a human heart would. But it had never sped up or slowed down. Anxiety had not affected his pulse. Neither had worry, fear, or exercise.

But now, it was like his heart betrayed him every time he felt anything. Elena assured him that it was perfectly normal, and that he must not remember his first stint as a human well enough to remember this feeling. He didn’t like it.

“Damon?” Meredith said, sounding scared. “Is something wrong with Stefan?”

Damon felt like his heart might explode. Or just stop altogether. It was getting difficult to breathe.

“Sajen?” Meredith asked.

“Not touching this one,” Sajen said. It sounded like their voices were coming from far, far away.

Damon tried to breathe in deeply, as Elena had instructed him the last time this happened. He couldn’t get a full breath in. Disgusted with himself, he kicked the box away, grabbed his car keys, and half-walked, half-ran out of his apartment. As he concentrated on running down the stairs without passing out or falling down, he could hear his long-dead father’s voice in his head.

“Women have attacks of nerves, Damon. Men do not. I did not raise my sons to be weak.” All of a sudden this inability to breathe, which Elena had described as a totally normal, run of the mill panic attack, was familiar. He remembered this happening to him once, when his mother was dying. Stefan had been kept in the dark, but he was a smart kid and began asking all sorts of uncomfortable questions. Their father refused to acknowledge anyone’s feelings, and so Stefan turned to Damon for all questions, all tears. One day Stefan begged him to take him to the midwife in town, believing that this woman (rumored to be a witch) could help. Damon did not believe in magic then, and he didn’t know how to tell his brother that their mother’s death was inevitable.

He’d fled to the barn, thinking that a ride on his favorite horse would make him feel better. That feel of galloping. Of being faster than the world itself. But Damon had collapsed before he could get on the horse. His father found him, and at first had shown genuine concern. He threw Damon’s arm over his shoulder and was trying to help him back to the house. But when the symptoms disappeared — probably because their conversation, and Damon’s fear of his father, had distracted him from his panic — the asshat had dropped Damon. Hard on the ground. “You disgust me,” he spat. “It is a good thing your mother is dying. She will not have to feel my shame.” And he walked away.

Thinking about that evil man helped somehow, in 2018. He felt more in control as he concentrated on that evil man. He knew he was a better man than his father. He knew that Guisseppe Salvatore’s opinions held no consequence. He was long dead, long irrelevant.

Damon climbed into his powder blue Camaro and turned the key. He was about to shift into first when Meredith came racing towards him and jumped into the passenger seats.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have known.”

“Out!” Damon ordered.

“Damon, are you talking about this to anyone?” Meredith said, her brown eyes surprisingly kind.

He looked away before his own eyes could reveal anything. “People die, Meredith. It’s the way of the world. When you’ve been around for as long as I have, you stop worrying about a pile of dust and ash.”

“He was your brother,” she said, softly, intently.

“He was a pain in the ass.”

“That too. But it’s okay to be sad. It’s better to talk about these things than to keep them buried inside.”

Damon smirked at her. “You are so right. I should be in touch with my feelings.” He reached into empty air, as if grabbing something invisible. “Ooh, there it is. Sadness. And right next to it, happiness. I am sad. I miss my baby brother. Boo hoo. Saying it out loud has solved all my problems. Now I am happy. … So why don’t you get out of my car and go Dr. Phil somebody else.”

He opened up the passenger side door for her and shoved her out of the car. Then he sped away, not sure where he was going. He felt like driving. Damon Salvatore loved to drive. He remembered the first time he’d sat behind the wheel a car. It was the turn of the last century and cars were new, exciting, bizarre. They terrified most people with their noise and their speed and the distinct chance they’d flip over or catch on fire. Only the very rich could afford such a crazy luxury. And only the most intrepid would think of driving it. But Damon Salvatore was not afraid. He had been dead inside for a long time, missing Katherine, wondering how he would get through the next century until he could open the tomb. As he slid the goggles over his eyes and started that ancient car’s engine, the automobile had roared to life. The sound almost overwhelmed his vampire hearing. But he didn’t care. This was the sound of pure, unadulterated power. This nonliving thing made him feel more alive than a horse ever had. And Damon loved horses, even now.

Driving the Camaro was nothing like driving that ancient, proto-car. It was smooth as butter. The engine sounded crafted, not itching to explode. The car glided as it accelerated. But he could still feel that pure, unadulterated power radiating through his whole body. As a refugee from the nineteenth century, he still appreciated the magic of the automobile, the way it seemed like something out of a Jules Verne novel. Driving could feel like a miracle if he let it. And right now, he felt great, as he broke the speed limit by at least 20 miles per hour. (He had not yet gotten into the habit of checking speed limit signs, and had amassed a great deal of speeding tickets since he turned human. He was used to compelling or eat idiotic traffic cops).

Oh yes, this car could go much, much faster than the first one he’d ever driven. Hadn’t 20 miles per hour been impressive once?

As Damon sped through the streets of Charlottesville, heading out of town, he relaxed, soaking in the feeling of power and invincibility.

###

Elena walked into a half-full apartment. For a moment she thought the party had started without her. This was inconvenient. She was out of breath, after climbing four flights of stairs with a baby pressing into her diaphragm and crowding out her lung space. She was sweaty, and had really been looking forward to a hot shower and maybe some hot shower sex. She was touched that people had come early, but she wished they’d just leave.

Then Elena saw Caroline’s worried face, and her heart sank. She glanced from Caroline to Ric, Meredith, and Sajen. All serious faces. Her heart sank deeper.

“What’s the emergency?” she asked, trying to keep her voice light, like the idea of there being an emergency was silly. Please let it be a shortage of alcohol or chicken wings. Though chicken wings sounded good. She bit her lip.

Caroline sighed. “Damon disappeared a couple hours ago. We don’t know where he is.”

Elena bit her lip. “What happened?”

Everyone turned towards Meredith, who appeared to shrink.

After an uncomfortable pause, Sajen said, “Meredith was asking questions about Alaric and —“

“What?” Ric snapped. “Why?”

“Because you wouldn’t talk to me about anything! I didn’t even know that you had children!” the doctor snapped back.

Elena rolled her eyes, furious with Alaric for not being upfront with his ex. Like somehow avoiding any conversation about his life was going to help anything. She understood that it was difficult to discuss Jo’s death, but seriously? “We are going to talk about this later, Ric. But what do you and Meredith have to do with Damon?” Elena wanted to know.

Ric shrugged.

Sajen said, “I mentioned that Caroline was Damon’s sister-in-law. Meredith didn’t know that Caroline had married Stefan.”

Elena nodded. “Or that Stefan was dead?” she asked.

“I’m so sorry, Elena,” Meredith said. “I tried to talk to him. I tried to get him out of that car. But he practically threw me out. And then he drove off. Fast.”

“Was he drinking?” she asked the doctor.

“I don’t think so,” Meredith said.

Sajen shook his head. “Damon never drinks before 5.”

Ric snorted.

“Oh my god, that is so not true,” Caroline blabbered. “Damon Salvatore is the most notorious day drinker I know.”

“I work with the guy every day and night,” Sajen said, sounding defensive. “He doesn’t drink before 5. He’s not a heavy drinker, period.”

Elena held up her hand before Caroline could continue this argument. “Care, people change. People’s tolerance to alcohol changes, you get me? Maybe a metabolism thing.”

Sajen piped up. “I used to be able to drink twice as much when I was in college. But then I got married and had a kid and I stopped drinking all the time. Now three beers and I’m wasted.”

Elena smiled at Sajen.

The door opened, but instead of Damon, Elena’s brother Jeremy walked in the door. “I came as soon as I finished showing the kids how to shoot —” He stopped mid-sentence when he saw Sajen’s wide eyes.

“You’re teaching kids how to use guns?” the bar manager said, looking disgusted.

“Oh, no,” Caroline said. “We are wouldn’t do that!”

“Crossbows are different,” Ric said.

“Also something we’re not teaching,” Caroline said, glaring at Ric now.

“Photography,” Jeremy said. “I’m teaching them photography.”

Sajen let out a breath of relief.

“Much better than crossbows,” Ric said. “Which we would never use at school.”

“Never,” said Caroline.

Elena sighed. This is why Damon had wanted to invite either only old friends who knew about the supernatural, or only clueless people from C’ville. She’d told him their friends were smarter than he was giving them credit. Damon had infiltrated the Founder’s Council, after all, fooling Liz Forbes for almost a year. In response to this party argument, Damon had said he was smarter than everyone else.

“Crossbows are different from guns,” Ric was saying.

Maybe Damon was right.

She tried to think where her husband might be. And as she pictured his face, she felt something inside her. The baby? “Ouch!” she cried out, putting a hand on her belly as she felt the baby kick for the first time.

Caroline was at her side so fast she almost blurred with vamp speed. “Come on, honey,” her best friend said gently. “Let’s get you sitting down. Now what kind of pain was that?”

Elena let her guide her to the couch and sat down heavily, needing to sit less because of pregnancy and more because of her worry for her possibly unstable, possibly drunk out of his mind husband. Though as soon as she was sitting, she realized that the baby was beginning to weigh her down. She was a little more than halfway through the pregnancy, she’d gained 12 pounds, and she was tired all the time. “I’m fine,” she said to Caroline, who sat on one side of her, and Meredith, who sat on the other. “I think that was a kick. I’ve felt her move before. But that was a real kick!”

Elena couldn’t help grinning as she pulled Caroline’s hand to rest on her round belly. “Come on, sweetheart. Kick again for your Auntie Caroline!”

At first, nothing happened. But then all of a sudden, Elena felt a quick thud from inside her. Crazy little alien resident of her abdomen.

Caroline squealed. She hugged Elena tightly. “Wow, you’ve popped since the last time I saw you!” the blond vampire said as Elena’s belly stuck out between them.

Everyone laughed.

“Wait!” Jeremy said. “She? As in you know the gender?”

“We found out last week,” Elena told him. He’d been so busy at the school, they hadn’t been able to talk all week.

Caroline squealed again. “I knew I was saving those baby clothes for a reason. And seriously, girls are just way more fun than boys. Dresses. Nail polish. Shopping. Crafts. So much better than trucks and skinned knees.”

Before Elena could point out how sexist this attitude was — or tell Caroline that she intended to give her daughter trucks and baby dolls, or insist that all children should have skinned knees — the front door opened.

Damon walked inside.

Elena’s smile faded as she scanned his face, trying to decide how worried she should be. He looked tired but okay.

Patting Caroline’s leg, she tried to pushed herself up off the couch. She failed. Oh god — this hadn’t happened before and it was so embarrassing. She didn’t want to call attention to herself, so she turned a little sideways, getting into a better position for hoisting herself up. If she couldn’t stand up now, what would she do at 40 weeks?

Damon laughed, seeming to realize the problem. He walked up to her and grabbed her hands, pulling her into a hug. His arms were firm but gentle. She smelled no alcohol on his breath.

Elena leaned into him, relaxing because he seemed steady, in control. And her belly up against his — it felt like home. 

“Where were you?” she whispered.

“Driving.”

“Why didn’t you return anyone’s calls?” she said as gently as she could.

He pulled away from the hug, keeping one arm slung casually around her shoulders as he turned to face the group. “Everybody can calm the fuck down,” Damon said. “I’m fine.”

Elena sighed, knowing she wasn’t going to get anything more out of him in front of an audience. And maybe not at all. Damon hated to share his feelings, and he tended to take care of others instead of letting anyone take care of him. Had she been looking out for him? Clearly not enough. She’d never thought that a passing question about Stefan would prompt this kind of behavior. She hadn’t realized he was still hurting this much.

###

That night Elena stood in her living room, sipping a virgin daiquiri, wearing a new dress that almost matched Damon’s ice-blue eyes. Her belly stretching the cottony fabric.

She was admiring their work. Their apartment was full of people. People from their old life. People from their new life. All here together. Damon had been afraid this get-together wouldn’t work, that they couldn’t introduce their non-supernaturally inducted friends to their friends from their old life. That vampire havoc would be wreaked, somehow.

But nothing strange had happened. People were talking genially. Drinking beer and bourbon and virgin daiquiris, eating the incredible appetizers Sajen had made, and rummaging through Damon and Stefan’s record collection. Somehow Damon had pulled himself together and was acting like nothing had happened earlier. She’d tried to talk to him but he’d insisted that all was well.

“Is this a first edition of Abbey Road?” she heard Sajen asking Damon.

Damon nodded, a sad smile on his face as he said, “Yeah. My brother was a fan.”

Elena wished once again that Stefan would be here to meet the baby. That he could be here to be part of his brother’s new life. Of her new life.

Sajen, now deep in another box, looked up in surprise. “Wait. Are they all first editions?”

Damon laughed. “It’s sort of a pass it down in the family type of thing.”

“This one looks really old,” the bar manager said as he handed an ancient to Damon. It was smaller than normal size, without a cardboard jacket, its paper cover brittle and falling apart.

Damon handled the record carefully, squinting to make out the faded label. If he and Elena were alone, he would have complained that his human eyesight was pathetic, that he missed his vampiric senses, and was terrified to go to an eye doctor in case he was told he needed glasses. Elena had assured him that his vision seemed perfect.

Instead of whining, Damon grinned. Wide. “Stravinsky. Oh, man! This was a big deal back in the day. Stravinsky’s freaking Rite of Spring. But not exactly 21st century party music.”

Caroline came to stand next to Elena. “How are you? Are you good? Is the baby good?” her old friend asked.

Elena rolled her eyes. She’d already told Caroline that both mother and baby girl were good. Fine. Terrific. Five times. No strange incidents in six weeks, since that one emergency room visit.

“It’s just so funny to watch Damon now,” Elena said, stealing a mini-quiche from Caroline’s plate. “For a long time, he just seemed lost. And it was to be expected. But now he almost fits here, you know? It’s like I’m seeing the Damon I knew, and I’m seeing this other person, at the same time.”

Caroline looked like she was about to reply when Matt came hurrying over to them. Elena noticed a med school classmate — a pretty girl with dirty blond hair and intense blue eyes, glaring at Matt’s back. Was she also glaring at Caroline?

Matt’s eyes were wide. He laughed as he said, “Look, Care, I’m sorry, but I told that chick over there that you and I have an on-again off-again thing.”

Caroline glared at Matt. “Why are you involving me in drama?”

“What’s wrong with Marcie?” Elena asked him, trying not to look at the girl.

“Chick’s a little nuts. I felt like I was on a job interview,” he said. “If I’d stayed there any longer, she would have asked for my social security number. Anyway, Elena, shouldn’t you be sitting down?”

“Why?” Elena snapped at him.

Matt looked confused. “You’ve having a kid. That’s what people do, right?”

Elena shook her head. “Maybe if I were nine months pregnant. But I’m just a little over five. Do you expect me to sit down for the next 18 weeks?”

Matt shrugged.

Elena stole a cocktail shrimp, a min-quiche, and two mini-burgers from his plate. Her feet were actually killing her, they seemed a tiny bit swollen, she was starving, and she was still traumatized by having discovered her first stretch mark that morning, but she wasn’t going to complain to him now.

“You just look, like, actually pregnant now,” Matt bumbled his way through a conversation that was clearly uncomfortable for him. “Last time I wouldn’t have known if you hadn’t told me, but now. … I thought — ”

Caroline laughed. “Donovan, you are digging your own grave.”

Elena held up a hand, silencing both of them. “How is the Mystic Falls policing going, anyway, Matt?” she asked, to get them talking about something besides her belly.

“It’s fine, actually.” Matt grinned. “A lot of car crashes downtown, kind of weird, but no gaping neck wounds, so I’d say that’s a win.”

“Why weird?” Elena asked.

Matt shrugged again, saying, “It’s all on the same stretch of road. A couple drivers have said it was like the wheel yanked out of their control.”

Caroline raised her eyebrows, asking, “Could it be a witch?”

“Doing what?” Matt said with a laugh. “Causing people to crash their cars on Main Street? Why would a witch do that?”

Elena felt the baby do a flip inside her. She could picture the stretch of road, even though Matt hadn’t said exactly where it was. She saw a car spin out of control near the building he’d rung the hellfire bell. Elena had this intense feeling of something missing. No — someone missing.

Elena tried to breathe.

Everything was okay. She was not going to pass out in the middle of her party.

She was most definitely not going to pass out in the middle of her party.

Grabbing onto Caroline’s hand, Elena managed to slump into Damon’s old armchair.

The room swam in front of her. Blackness invaded her sight. But it wasn’t too bad. Elena Gilbert had had her life drained out of her by an Original vampire when she was 17. She’d faced down Silas. She’d lost Damon and gotten him back from an alternate dimension. She could handle a little pregnancy-related dizziness.

Caroline knelt in front of her, saying something. Elena couldn’t focus on her words. The baby kicked, much harder than she’d kicked earlier. Elena gasped as she placed a hand on her belly.

Wasn’t it too early for such a strong kick?

Then her vision flashed. For just a moment, she didn’t see Caroline in front of her. She saw Bonnie. Bonnie talking to her, telling her that there was a problem in Mystic Falls.

The baby kicked again.

Bonnie disappeared.

Elena was struggling to stay conscious. Now Damon crouched in front of her, saying something. She wished she could understand what he was saying, but it was like an ocean of noise surrounded her, and his words were lost to her.

A lot of people huddled around them, but Damon yelled at the crowd to give her space. He stroked her cheek gently.

He reached for her stomach, cautiously, gently. As his hand touched her round belly, she felt a glow of contentment, or peace, or relief, or something mellow flow through her. She felt the baby again, but their little girl wasn’t kicking roughly this time. It was almost like the baby was reaching out her hand to touch her father’s hand.

Just like that, Elena could hear normally again.

“Elena?” Damon asked.

She tried to smile at him as she said, “I’m here. I’m fine. We’re fine. But we need to find Bonnie.”

###

Damon was trying to clear all the civilians out of the apartment. He’d almost accomplished his goal. Sajen and most of the med students were gone. There had been an uncomfortable situation when a classmate of Elena’s tried to get Matt’s phone number, but Caroline had compelled her not to like him anymore. Caroline and Jeremy were cleaning up in the kitchen. Ric was drinking too much and trying to avoid Meredith’s questions. Matt was filling a garbage bag with beer bottles.

“Are you sure you don’t need us to stay and help clean up?” their downstairs neighbor was saying to Damon.

“I am so sure that I don’t even need to discuss it anymore,” he said, guiding the pushy woman towards her exhausted-looking husband. “Please. Elena just needs to rest.”

“Liam!” Elena almost shouted as the couple finally left. “I’m fine. I was just a little dizzy.”

“And I think you should get checked out at the Med Center,” Elena’s old boyfriend from Whitmore College insisted.

Damon wanted to punch the guy every time he saw him.

“It’s a common symptom in the second trimester,” Elena insisted.

Damon lay a hand on the much younger man’s shoulder. “I think you need to leave,” he said, rougher than he’d intended, but he’d had it with this punk.

Liam shrugged off Damon’s hand, spitting out, “If you knew anything about medicine, you’d take her to the hospital.”

Damon glared at his insolence. “See that neurotic woman over there with the dark hair? That is a doctor. Elena’s doctor. And she says she’s fine. Hey Meredith! You finished medical school right? Took your tests, did your residency, the whole shebang?”

Meredith looked quizzical but nodded.

“If it’s between you and a first year medical student who’s cocky as hell for no good reason, you’d pick you, right?”

“Elena’s fine,” she said. “I’ll make sure she goes to the hospital if I have any doubt.”

Damon smiled humorlessly. “See, Liam. She’s fine. You’re wrong. So you can walk out the door.”

Liam didn’t move. He opened his mouth to speak.

Damon held up a finger. “No. You do not need to speak. Or think. You didn’t get the girl, and you feel bad about that. I get it. I’ve been there. I get that you are threatened by me. I was the mysterious ex who she said was dead, and you were the cocky new guy. And in the end, her feelings for me won out over whatever silly stuff went on with you.”

“Damon!” Elena snapped. A warning.

Damon shrugged.

Liam sputtered. “I didn’t get the girl? What does that mean? Elena and I were never a thing. I never made a play for her.”

Damon frowned. Oh shit. Had someone compelled Liam’s memories away. Yes, that sounded like something someone would have done. But no one had told him.

Liam went on, saying, “And why would she tell people you were dead? You’re clearly alive. An ass. But alive.”

Damon was trying to figure out what to do when Caroline came rushing up and pushed him away from Liam.

She looked straight at Liam and said, “You are going to forget this entire conversation. You were concerned about Elena. Dr. Fell told you not to worry. So you decided to go home and get some sleep.”

God, Damon missed compulsion.

Liam’s eyes were still dilated as he said, “You know, I think I’m going to go home and get some sleep.” He yawned. “Thanks so much for the reassurance, Dr. Fell.”

As he left, Damon slammed the door behind him. Turning to face the group, he said, “Okay, anybody have any ideas?”

“Is the baby a witch?” Caroline asked.

Elena shook her head. She stroked her belly, looking worried as hell. “Neither one of us has a magical bloodline.”

“But we do have magic blood,” Damon said, voicing his worries out loud for the first time. “We are the only two people on the face of the planet who have taken the Cure. We might seem like normal humans, but we aren’t. We have a spell inside us. Me more than you, possibly.”

Elena gasped.

Ric said, “I’ve never heard of this, but it sounds plausible. We should talk to Bonnie.”

“We have to talk to Bonnie,” Elena said. “I’m sure that’s what the baby is telling me.”

Jeremy cleared his throat. “How do we know the baby is telling you anything?”

Damon was wondering how he could get to that monastery in Peru. He hoped that Bonnie was really just isolating herself, and not in some sort of witch trouble. His phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number. He ignored it.

Elena’s phone rang, in the kitchen. Damon left the group so he could grab it off the kitchen table. Not recognizing the number, he answered anyway, just in case. “What?” he snapped.

“Damon!” Bonnie’s voice came across a crackly connection. He felt his chest relaxing. His whole body felt lighter. She was okay. And she was talking to him. “I just hitchhiked into town because I had the strangest feeling I needed to talk to you and Elena.”

“Bon-Bon,” he said quietly, “something’s going on and I’ve got the whole Scooby gang here. But I need you to tell me something before I put you on with everybody.”

“Okay,” she said, sounding confused but on board. “What’s wrong?”

“Did you get my messages about Elena’s pregnancy?”

“What?” Bonnie almost shrieked. “That’s great! It’s great, right!”

“It’s great,” he said, laughing. “But she’s having visions. Could our blood be magic, because of the cure? Could it make the baby a witch or something?”

“I don’t know,” Bonnie said.

“I need you to tell me if I need to worry about her losing the baby,” he whispered.

Bonnie let out a long sigh on the other end of the line. “I don’t know, Damon. Is she having pain or cramps?”

“No. Just a vision of you.”

“Well, it’s weird, but it doesn’t sound like a miscarriage.”

“Do witches ever have visions like these?”

“I’ve heard of pregnancy throwing off a witch’s magic, sure,” she said. “I think you need to stop worrying and let me talk to Elena.”

Damon walked the phone into the living room, hit the speakerphone option, and held it up in the air. “It’s Bon-Bon,” he said. “Say hello to all our annoying friends.”

“Elena!” Bonnie said, almost breathless in her excitement. “You’re having a baby?”

Elena grabbed the phone from Bonnie and they talked about the pregnancy for several minutes, how the ultrasounds had made it look like she had an alien inside her, baby names they’d discussed, the house on the outskirts of town Damon kept happening to drive by. But soon Elena’s face grew serious as she described the two visions.

“I think it has something to do with us destroying Hell,” Bonnie said.

“Please tell me that it’s really gone,” Matt said. “I can’t deal with more bullshit about that stupid bell.”

Damon’s face fell, imagining that his brother had died for nothing.

But Ric shook his head. “We’ve already looked into this. Bonnie, Dorian, and I have done a million tests. It’s gone.”

“It is,” Bonnie said. “But that was a big spell. It could have left an imprint. It could have done something we didn’t expect. Who knows. But we need to figure it out.”

“And someone needs to stop me from having these visions,” Elena said. “Seriously. I need to be able to go to class without worrying I’m going to pass out due to magic.”

As the girls began discussing baby names in earnest, Damon settled against the back of the couch, telling himself to breathe. He rested his cheek on Elena’s head. Her hair smelled like strawberries. New shampoo.

Bonnie was coming home, he told himself silently. Everything was going to be okay. Even as humans, he and Elena needed a witch. They thought they’d escaped their supernatural pasts, but they hadn’t. Not by a long shot. 

Elena squealed and grabbed his hand, pulling it to her belly.

His eyes widened as he felt it. A sharp kick. He’d felt their baby girl flutter around Elena’s womb before, but nothing like this.

She kicked again.

She was strong.

Good, Damon thought. He had a feeling his daughter was going to need to be tough as nails. 

Chapter Text

A/N: This story has been completed and posted on FFN for quite some time, and I kept meaning to come back and post it here. So if you'd like to read the rest, I'm hoping to get this whole, crazy-long fic posted in the next couple days. Here's the next chapter:

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March 2018

Mystic Falls, VA

Damon and Elena were back in Mystic Falls, camping out in his old room, stepping over schoolchildren on their way to the kitchen. How long they’d stay in their hometown, he didn’t know. Until the magic crew said Elena was out of danger. Elena hadn’t left Charlottesville quietly. Lots of noise, indeed. It was all “I’ve got school, Damon,” and “maybe I just imagined it,” and “pregnancy hormones can do all sorts of strange stuff, so that vision thing means nothing,” and “you already got me pregnant, and now you’re making me flunk out!” Caroline had offered to compel her professors into giving her straight A’s and forgetting that she had missed any classes, but Elena was having none of that. Damon would have drugged his wife, to get her out the door, if Meredith hadn’t warned that no sedative was safe enough for the baby. He’d finally had to get Jeremy to fake-cry about how worried he was about his big sister.

Their party was on a Friday night. In the wee hours of Saturday morning, Damon and Jeremy finally coaxed Elena out of the apartment and into Damon’s Camaro. Bonnie flew in on Saturday, and essentially put Elena on house arrest at the boarding house. So far, Bonnie and Alaric thought she could be in danger of a. losing the baby, b. getting possessed by weird demon powers, or c. hurting herself if a vision brought on a fainting attack or told her to jump off a bridge. All weekend, Elena moped in Damon’s old bedroom, studying for anatomy tests she was supposed to take that week, pouting, and generally being angry at everyone else in the house.  

All weekend, Alaric tried to give Damon advice on being a “dad.” Even the word “dad” seemed strange, far too modern, far too cutesy. Damon didn’t listen to much of Ric’s advice, especially after he learned that it was no longer kosher to spank your own child. Seriously? The kid was supposed to sit on a chair in “time out”? Possibly counting to 100? Alternatively, the kid could stand in a corner on one foot? None of it made any sense to Damon. And these modern people thought they could protect children from bad parents? How do you legislate about meanness, cruelty, or being an asshole? His father was miserable sonofabitch, but he hurt Damon with his words, not his fists. By demeaning his character every step of the way, by attempting to control his mind, by making him feel like nothing. Like less than nothing. But spankings? Those hurt a little, and usually stopped him from doing stupid shit, but they didn’t scar him. Damon supposed he was lucky in that way — Giuseppe Salvatore was a lot of things, but he wasn’t physically abusive. Tommy Fell’s dad used to beat him, hard. Some nights he’d climb in Damon’s window and they’d stay up late talking by candlelight before Tommy fell asleep on the floor. Damon and Stefan’s nurse — a mulatto slave rumored to be the child of their uncle — rubbed salve on Tommy’s cuts and bruises, cursing Mr. Fell under her breath. Damon would never beat his kid. He’d seen the damage first-hand.

But smacking a child’s butt with his open palm? Or even a belt? That seemed a perfectly effective way of stopping little baby Salvatore from pulling hair or running into traffic. Instead he should make her stand on one foot in corner?

So, he tuned out Ric, and he definitely tuned out Caroline. Bonnie was a little better, probably because she had no kids of her own and therefore wasn’t hell-bent on giving him unsolicited advice. She had told him she was excited to see him as a dad.

Dad. That seemed weird. Wrong. Every so often, he daydreamed about just taking off for parts unknown. Maybe Australia. He’d only been there once. Damon Salvatore was not meant to change diapers. Or coach little league. Or be a good person. He was not the good brother. And let’s face it, human Stefan would be a far better father than human Damon. Sometimes Damon felt like he didn’t deserve this life.

But it wasn’t Stefan. Stefan was dead. And long before his brother died, Elena had chosen Damon. He’d gotten the girl. He could never leave Elena.    And now a baby? A piece of him inside her? A piece of Damon that would live on after he was dead. It was like immortality, without the murder and sucking blood part. This baby was so good, sometimes it hurt him to think about it.

But then there was the magic. Damon was terrified of the magic. Not because he’d care if his kid could do spells or not. He of all people knew that there was nothing wrong with the supernatural. And witches came in handy. But he wanted a different fate for his child. He didn’t want his daughter to have Bonnie’s adolescence, to be on death’s door perennially, or even to die like Bonnie had, in service of her magic.

For his kid, Damon would choose boring over special. He would choose safety.

Damon pulled into the parking lot of the mom and pop grocery store he frequented whenever he was in Mystic Falls. He’d been supporting this store for 50 years, with anonymous donations and by compelling the owner to invest wisely in stocks and bonds. Damon still missed the old outdoor marketplace at the center of old Mystic Falls. As a child, he’d accompanied his mother on shopping trips. He missed bartering with the cranky old guy who sold the best cuts of pork, and mouthwatering sausage. He missed the sweet, genteel lady who always gave his mother extra strawberries because they were Stefan’s favorite. Mostly he missed the hustle and bustle of talk and laughter and barter, all with the sky above them and the ground below. But if he had to shop inside, he preferred indie stores like Beckman’s to the big grocery chains. These new stores with their constant air conditioning and cheap tile floors, their fluorescent lights making everything look a bit green — chain supermarkets always seemed wrong. And when you’re around long enough, you notice trends before they happen. By the early ’60s, Damon knew that the Safeways and Whole Foods of the world would take over the world. He couldn’t save all the mom and pop groceries. But he did save one.

“Damon,” shouted out old Mr. Beckman as he slid through the back door. Damon remembered this man running around the store as a toddler, playing with blocks behind the cash register as his mother rang up groceries. Mr. Beckman didn’t realize that the man he saw before him was the same man from earlier eras. When returned to Mystic Falls after a decade or more, Damon claim to be a different relative, the son, nephew, or even grandson of his earlier self. “Where have you been hiding?” the old man asked.

“Charlottesville, Mr. B.”

“Nasty town,” Mr. Beckman said, wrinkling his nose. “Full of hippies and pot smoke.”

Damon laughed, saying, “Elena’s in med school at the University there.”

“That’s right, you married the Gilbert girl. You treat her proper, you hear me! That girl has lost so many people, you must be extra careful with her. And I knew her daddy. Don’t think you ever met him, but he was a good man.”

Damon nodded, remembering Grayson Gilbert as a boy, and one long night on a barstool when the boy had been 19 and Damon had been too drunk to care who he was talking to. Damon had never told Elena that he’d known her father, not even the tiny bit he had.

He began wandering the aisles in search of chunky monkey ice cream, hot sauce to drizzle on said chunky monkey ice cream, and salt and vinegar potato chips to go on the side (dipping into ice cream optional). Elena’s cravings had gotten weird in the last week. He wasn’t sure if they were just normal pregnancy cravings, or had something to do with their magic baby giving her visions. But she was carrying his kid inside her ever-growing belly, so the least he could do was buy snacks and try not to throw up if she ate them in front of him.

Damon stood in the chip aisle, trying to decide between classic chips and the thicker kettle-cooked kind, when a familiar voice piped up behind him.

“Damon Salvatore?” the woman said, her voice soft and a little flirty.

He turned around to see a petite redhead with frizzy hair and freckles. Lindsay Fell — Council member, Meredith’s cousin, and also, incidentally, a friend of Damon’s compelled girlfriend Andie, the one Stefan had killed during a ripper binge years ago. Damon put on his best council-member/upstanding-founding-family-citizen smile.

“Lindsay Fell! Always a pleasure,” he said, not meaning a word of it.

“It’s actually Lindsay Washington now,” Her voice was annoyingly perky.

“You got married?” he asked, feigning interest in this social-climbing socialite. Unlike the Gilberts or Salvatores, the Fells had multiplied like rabbits over the years. They’d been the richest family in antebellum Mystic Falls, their wealth only rivaled by the Salvatores’. They were all snooty, and even those who had no money left thought they did. Lindsay’s father had been killed by tomb vampire ghosts a few years ago, but before that he’d taught history at the high school. Lindsay’s father was one of the least wealthy Fells of his generation. Like her father, Lindsay had always had something to prove, like she wanted the townspeople, especially the snobs on the Council, to think she was richer or more important than she actually was.

She was a great-great-whatever granddaughter of his old friend Tommy, who was long dead and buried. Damon had tried to look after Tommy’s descendants for a couple generations, but as the years went on, he’d grown to hate them all.

“We tied the knot last summer,” Lindsay said, looking into Damon’s eyes and then blushing, looking down, shy all of a sudden. She recovered herself quickly, giving him a flirty smile. “His name is Jim. He’s from Richmond. He just finished up his MBA at Harvard.”

“Good for him,” Damon said, choosing the kettle-cooked chips and hurrying to the cash register, hoping she’d get the hint to leave him alone.

Mr. B. began ringing up Damon’s ice cream, chips, and hot sauce. “I got that organic oatmeal for you, Mrs. Washington,” the old man told the Fell girl.

“Lovely,” Lindsay said crisply. To Damon: “Jim is actually a direct descendent of General Washington’s.”

Damon snorted. “You mean George Washington, first president of our country?”

Lindsay beamed at him, nodding her head enthusiastically.

He paid Mr. Beckman, telling him to keep the change, even though it was a hundred dollar bill, and walked towards the door. Lindsay followed him, like a puppy.

“I guess that means the rumors are true, then,” Damon said, opening the door for her and waving her magnanimously ahead of him. “Washington must have fathered a child with one of his slaves.”

She gasped. “Why would you say that?”

“Oh, you mean that your new husband is a descendent of George and Martha Washington?”

“Of course!”

“Because I wouldn’t judge. I mean, having mixed blood is nothing to be ashamed of,” he said as he stepped outside, squinting in the bright sunlight. It seemed different now. When he’d worn a daylight ring it had shielded him from more than just UV rays. It was like he’d never truly, completely been in sunlight as a vampire. For 153 years, Damon had not felt the warmth of the sun. Even if his skin could have tanned, he’d never have experienced that heat soaking into him, that feeling of every part of his body being made alive by the sun. Getting a nasty sunburn last summer had been a revelation. He’d failed to go inside when his skin started to feel raw because it was such an interesting feeling. He’d regretted it the next day, but in that moment, he’d felt like he was waking up from a long, long dream. Now Lindsay’s hair shone in the sunlight and she was almost attractive to him. Almost. “You wouldn’t have to worry about sunscreen. Oh —your kids could be really good at basketball. Was that racist?”

“Damon!” Lindsay snapped, looking like she couldn’t decide whether to laugh or slap him. “Jim is not black.”

“If he was a quadroon or octaroon you wouldn’t know. And since you are not a racist person, you wouldn’t care, would you Linds?”

She frowned, looking utterly confused.

“Did your daddy teach your American history class?”

“Why, yes he did!”

Damon laughed and laughed, the first time he’d laughed freely since Elena had almost collapsed at the party. “Too bad Ric wasn’t teaching at the school when you were in high school. Because you would have learned that George Washington had no children of his own. His wife Martha had children with her first husband, who died. She was a widow and married Washington, but they never had kids together.”

Lindsay bit her lip, thinking about this. “Well, then he must not be a direct descendent. I must have gotten that part wrong. Washington surely had a brother or an uncle or something.”

Damon raised his brows. “Or good old Jim fed you a line he knew you’d like, considering that, if I remember, you’re a Daughter of the Revolution and a Daughter of the Confederacy?” Damon had fought in the civil war on the side of the South, but even then, he’d known it was an unjust cause, or at least a stupid one. He was always baffled at southerners in the 20^th and 21^st centuries still clinging to the idea of how cool the confederacy was, saying the war wasn’t about slavery when every one of his contemporaries knew it was (even if they didn’t admit it), or holding onto an idealized version of the South (a South that had never existed in the first place).

Lindsay shook her head, saying, “Jim’s nothing like you, Damon. He’s stable and solid, but he doesn’t have much imagination. And he certainly doesn’t say things just to get a rise out of women!”

Damon waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “What are you implying, Miss Fell?”

She looked Damon up and down, as if undressing him with her eyes. “Nothing. But we should do drinks sometime. Or you could come by the house tonight. It’s probably been a while since you had a home-cooked meal, and Jim’s out of town.”

Damon raised his left hand, showing her his ring finger.

Lindsay gasped dramatically, grabbing his hand. She stroked his wedding band. “Damon Salvatore! What is this?”

He smiled, in spite of himself. “That, Miss Lindsay, is a wedding ring.”

Disappointment radiated off the little socialite as she asked, “And who’s the lucky girl?”

Damon’s brows rose. “Elena, of course!”

Lindsay’s eyes widened. “I thought she died. Wasn’t there an attack during a wedding or something?”

This silly girl would never know how close Elena had come to dying that day, or that she’d sort of died her junior year of high school, when an Original Vampire drained all her blood in a creepy ritual to break his hybrid curse, or that she’d actually died her senior year of high school, after another Original Vampire sent Matt’s truck flying off Wickery Bridge and Damon’s idiot of a brother saved Matt instead of Elena. Lindsay would never know that Elena had lived as vampire for two years, and then lain in a coffin for the next few years, her body cursed to sleep. Or that Damon himself was born in 1839.

But Damon just told Lindsay Fell, “That was a crazy rumor, wasn’t it? There was some trouble at a wedding. But Elena is fine.”

Lindsay smiled, looking genuinely relieved. “Thank god! I’ve felt so bad for that family. I went to school with Jenna and Jon, you know? And Miranda used to babysit me. Grayson was a good friend of my father’s. So much loss. It just started to break my heart.”

She was actually being sincere. Lindsay was almost never sincere.

“I’ll tell her you said that,” Damon said, wondering if he would.

“A Salvatore marrying a Gilbert. It does seem right. Founding families and all,” she said. “Where are you two love birds living, if not in Mystic Falls?”

“Charlottesville. Elena is in medical school at UVA.”

“And how’s Jeremy doing? Wasn’t he supposed to be dead too, at some point? But then it was all a joke? It’s really hard to keep track of what’s going on with the Gilberts.”

Damon sighed, sick of feeding bullshit to the ever complacent and gullible citizens of Mystic Falls. Though he did take some pleasure in lying to Council members, who thought they knew all of the town’s secrets and were thus even stupider than the other town citizens left completely in the dark. “Jeremy was acting out. He didn’t handle his parents’ deaths well. But he’s fine. He went to art school out west. He’s back now. I don’t know if he’ll stay. Look, Linds, I hate to cut short this long overdue reunion, but I need to get home. I’ve got some business to attend to.”

He tried to walk past her, but she grabbed his arm before he could get away. “Are you up to speed on Council business?” she asked.

Damon spun around. “What Council business? I didn’t think we had an active Council right now.”

She smiled grimly, saying, “We do. It just got started up again.”

“Who’s running things?” Damon asked.

“It’s that trailer trash sheriff. If you ask me, he shouldn’t even have a seat on the Council. It’s not like he’s from a founding family. He’s just not the right element, especially in leadership. He’s a nice enough young man, don’t get me wrong, very polite.” Damon could almost smell the condescension and classism oozing off this woman. Fucking social climber. She went on, saying, “But we have to consider the whole family picture. The trashy mother who abandoned her children.  And that awful sister of his. It was tragic what happened to her, but when you hang out with drug dealers in a cemetery. Well you know. But of course, it wasn’t really her fault. It all comes back to the parents. I don’t think the father was every married to the mother.”

A tiny pang of guilt zipped through Damon as he thought of Matt’s sister Vicki, of how he’d so callously turned her in a vampire after killing her druggie friends in that cemetery. As much as Matt drove him crazy sometimes, he found himself defending the new sheriff to this idiot of a Fell, saying, “Donovan may look like a dumb jock, but I wouldn’t discount him. There’s brains in there somewhere. And fun fact? He’s a Maxwell. His family was here before yours or mine. I mean  —” Damon cut off as he realized what Lindsay had said in between her classist nastiness. “Wait! Are you saying Matt-fucking-Donovan is running the Council and he didn’t tell me what the fuck he was up to?

Lindsay smiled maliciously. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“So, what’s he doing?”

“It’s strange,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “He’s investigating car crashes.”

Damon sighed, rubbing his eyes with his left hand as he clutched the damned pregnancy craving groceries with the other. He’d had a headache for the past two days. Elena had been moody and irritable. So, Damon had barely slept.

At that moment, his phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket. “I got the ice-cream, okay?” he said instead of saying hello.

“It’s not about the ice cream,” Elena told him. Her voice was strange. Was that fear or just exhaustion?

“I got the hot sauce and chips too. Salt and vinegar,” Damon said.

“It’s nothing to do with food.” No, it wasn’t fear. And she was clearly tired out of her mind, but that wasn’t what he was hearing. Elena sounded very young all of a sudden. She sounded young and helpless. “You have to get back here. Something weird is going on.”

Lindsay’s eyes were wider than ever. “Ice cream, hot sauce and potato chips?” she said with a fake smile.

Damon nodded, wishing she’d just leave him alone so he could have a proper conversation with his wife. God, he missed compulsion.

“You’re having a baby, aren’t you?” the silly woman asked.

He couldn’t help smiling as he hurried past her to his car, ignoring all subsequent questions about how far Elena was along and whether they had picked out a color scheme for the nursery.

He realized that it was a good thing, worth smiling about.

Damon and Elena were having a baby. Amid all this craziness, which felt more normal to Damon than any boring day at the bar: Damon Salvatore was giving Elena Gilbert what she’d always wanted. A family.

Chapter Text

The same day

Elena had been lying flat on her back on Damon’s bed for the last hour, wearing maternity jeans and a sweater pushed up to just under her boobs, revealing her bulging belly. Bonnie stood over her, murmuring the words to a spell, trying to make contact with Elena and Damon’s unborn child. Elena was getting bored. And cranky. And worried.

She stewed on a mess of worries, while Bonnie murmured incantations under her breath, while Caroline chattered about the Lamaze classes Elena really should have signed up for months ago, and how she should probably start interviewing preschools immediately, and how she shouldn’t feel bad if she laughed so hard she peed herself. Elena had not done this, but Caroline assured her it was a thing, pretty inevitable (even for pregnant vampires, though no one had ever heard of a pregnant vampire aside from Caroline), and totally normal, nothing to be ashamed of. Elena did not want to pee herself. She did not want Damon to witness her peeing herself. And she wanted off this goddamned bed.

At least it was comfortable. Everything Damon bought was expensive, well crafted, and well maintained. She’d tried to buy their bed in Charlottesville from a Mattress Warehouse, but he’d stepped in with his black American Express card and ordered them a mattress made out of some bizarre mixture of goose down, memory foam, and materials created in space. According to Damon, half the royalty of Europe had this exact type of bed.

“Can I please get up?” Elena asked, trying not to whine. Her back was actually beginning to ache. Why was everything uncomfortable lately? Even on this incredibly expensive mattress.

“Not yet,” Bonnie said, distracted as she placed a crystal on Elena’s soon-to-be outtie belly button. “I’m still trying to coax her into talking.”

“You can actually talk to her?” Elena said, perking up, imagining what kind of conversations she might share with her daughter someday, willing herself to believe that there would be that someday.

“Ooh, goody,” Caroline said, looking up from the stack of math tests she was grading. “Tell her to describe the womb experience. I’ve always wondered about that.”

“I don’t believe that you have always wondered about the womb experience,” Elena said.

“I have.”

“It doesn’t matter because we can’t actually talk to her,” Bonnie said. “She’s a fetus. She doesn’t use words.”

“Yet she gives me freaky visions and has me jumpy, and worried that something’s going to happen every time she kicks or somersaults,” Elena said. And just like that, the baby kicked. “Oof! Did your crystal feel that? Did she hear that?”

Bonnie shook her head, looking worried. “There just isn’t precedent for this. I’ve been talking to a couple Bennett witches, and no one has come across this exact thing. Some witches find their own abilities heightened, or drained, when they’re pregnant. But you’re not a witch. And I’ve never heard of a baby causing visions like these.”

Elena forced herself to lie still on this heavenly bed — a bed that made it comfortable to recover from gunshot wounds or werewolf bites, or moving your limbs for the first time in half a decade (after you wake up from a sleeping curse). But even here, her back ached, reminding her that she had another life inside her, a daughter already trying to communicate with her.

Elena wished her problem was an aching back, or some other annoying physical discomfort. She wished she was upset by how tired she felt lately, how nine pm felt like midnight. Or even that she was frightened of motherhood. Couldn’t she worry about all the regular, human things that human women worried about when pregnant? Wouldn’t that be enough?

When she first found out she was pregnant, she’d felt frightened of the future, for all the ordinary reasons. Those beautifully ordinary reasons. She’d wondered how she would finish school, if she should stay home or get daycare right away, if she should take up Damon on his sweet, though utterly ridiculous offer to be a stay-at-home dad. She’d read articles about bottle vs. breast, co-sleeping vs. sleep training, what kinds of strollers and cribs and baby monitors to buy, etc. etc. etc. She’d journaled about it. A lot. She’d done all this thinking and fretting and writing without considering the supernatural. How had she not considered the supernatural? She’d worried about losing the baby, but that was a medical thing. Even though her medical issue was that she had been a vampire for a couple years and then taken the cure for vampirism — she had simply been concerned that the Cure would have screwed with her biology too much to allow her to carry a baby to term. But this? She hadn’t thought about her baby being magical. And she hadn’t considered that she might end up right back in the middle of a supernatural plot.

Elena had begun apologizing to the baby every morning and every night. The baby deserved better than her and Damon as parents. Their baby deserved a better life.

Elena sat up, letting the crystal slide to the floor. She pulled her sweater down, noticing how prominent her baby bump was. Bonnie stepped back, saying, “Are you feeling okay? Do you need a cracker or something?”

Elena shook her head and swung her legs over the side of the bed. “I’m fine. Everybody needs to stop asking me how I feel. If I’m in pain, I will let you know.”

“Elena —” Caroline began.

Elena felt her voice breaking as she said, “It’s all starting, all over again. I spent years in constant crisis. One thing after another. Sometimes I didn’t even feel like a real person. The last couple years of high school I had no interests or hobbies outside of staying alive, keeping everyone else alive, and mourning an ever-expanding list of loved ones. And now with a baby? I can’t do this again. I can’t do this to her.”

Caroline smiled sadly, her eyes full of sympathy. Bonnie sat beside Elena, putting an arm around her. Elena knew if she let herself collapse into Bonnie’s hug that she’d end up crying, bawling in her best friend’s arms. So she pulled away and pushed herself up into a standing position.

“We’re not getting anywhere here,” Elena said. “And I’m going to go crazy if I have to lie in bed any more. Why don’t we go downtown, to the building I saw in my vision?”

“We need to stay here,” Bonnie said with a sigh. “I’ve got five types of protection spells on this whole house. I’ve spelled all the students, and anyone who enters this house, so they can’t discuss your whereabouts. This house is the safest place for you right now.”

“Why isn’t Damon under house arrest?” Elena snapped.

“Damon isn’t pregnant,” Caroline said.

“Damon has the Cure actively running through his blood,” Elena countered. “If another vampire tried to take it from him, he’d start aging and be dead in a couple months. But he’s allowed to go to the grocery store all by himself?”

Bonnie sighed again. “I’ve had protection spells on Damon since he took the cure. On you too.”

Elena rolled her eyes.

Caroline smiled way too brightly as she began to speak. “I know it’s hard. I know it’s awful — the waiting, the worrying. This all just sucks. But we want to make sure you stay safe. And, well, I didn’t want to say anything unless I was sure … but I spoke with Klaus yesterday, about the school. He asked about you, and I didn’t say much. Klaus used the word expecting more than once. I think he knows you’re pregnant.”

Elena swallowed, hard. It felt like ice was running through her veins. She hadn’t allowed herself to think about the Original hybrid, or any designs he might have on her baby, her lineage. When she’d become human again, she’d wondered if he’d come after her, wanting her human doppelganger blood to make more hybrids. But apparently there’d been some drama in New Orleans. When Elena woke up from her sleeping curse, Klaus was imprisoned by a New Orleans vampire who hated Klaus more than Elena did. Eventually, Klaus had gotten free, and he’d made no efforts to see Elena.

What could Klaus want with her baby? What would he do to make sure the lineage was safe, so that in 500 years another Petrova doppelganger would be born?

“I can’t just stay here for the next four months,” Elena said. “And what about the next 18 years?”

“It’s just until we get the visions under control,” Bonnie said.

Elena shook her head. She walked out of the room, down the hall, and headed down the stairs. Bonnie and Caroline yelled after her. Then ran after her. It was a flurry of sharp voices and nervous laughter. At the bottom of the stairs, Elena dodged Caroline’s twins, who were levitating their school books to float behind them as they chatted with another girl. It looked like Alaric was gathering a small group of children for a lesson.

She was almost at the front door when Caroline zoomed in front of her. Caroline looked fed up. “You can’t leave, Elena!” the blond vampire almost shouted.

“Yes, I can!”

Caroline’s face hardened into a determined frown. Her pupils dilated as she said, “You are going to go upstairs, lie down, and let Bonnie finish her spell. And you will not try to leave again until Bonnie says it’s okay.”

“Like hell I am!” Elena said. “Wait! Are you trying to compel me?”

Caroline looked quizzical. “Are you wearing vervain? I thought you took off your necklace for the spell.”

“I did. And I haven’t eaten it, or drunk it, since I found out I was pregnant. How could you, Care?”

“Then how?”

“You were trying to compel me!” Elena shouted. Alaric and the children stared at them.

Caroline laughed a big fake laugh. “Good one, Elena! Nothing to see here, kids!”

Bonnie joined them, whispering, “What’s going on here?”

Elena started to shake as she realized what had just happened. “I’m not on vervain, but Caroline’s compulsion isn’t working on me. Something really weird is happening.”

            She lay on Damon’s bed, curled into as much of a fetal position as her misshapen body would allow, deep under the covers, trying to stop shaking. Someone knocked on the door. Again.

            “Go away, Caroline!” Elena shouted for the eleventh time since she’d shut herself in the room. She burrowed under the covers, noticing that Damon’s comforter was lighter than a regular feather-filled comforter. It was almost as light as air. Had he bribed some witch to enchant the feathers to be extra light, extra comfortable?

            “It’s not Caroline!” a man’s voice shouted. Damon. He sounded tired, worn out, dragged down by the world. But he also sounded kind.

            “I don’t want to talk to anybody right now!” she shouted back.

            “You called me! Come on, babe. Let me in.” After jiggling the doorknob, he sighed and said, “Lena, did you lock the door?”

            “I need alone time.”

            “No, you don’t. Whatever the problem is, I can assure you that I’ve had worse days than you’re having today. Come on. I don’t have vamp strength anymore, otherwise I’d just break down the door.”

            “How sweet.”

            “I am sweet. For a reformed serial killer.”

            “Go away!”

            And he did, surprisingly, for a few minutes. But then he returned. There was more jiggling of the doorknob. Elena peeked at the door from under the covers. Had a he found a key? And then Damon pushed the door open, a glint of satisfaction and mischief in his eyes.

            He was so beautiful. She often forgot how beautiful her husband was, and then sometimes she’d see him, and this sensation would overwhelm her. This feeling of not being able to breathe because she was lost in his eyes. An impossible shade of blue. So light they would almost be gray. But they were too colorful to be gray.

            When she was twelve, her parents had taken her and Jeremy on a trip to upstate New York one time, to visit distant relatives. They’d gone ice skating on a real frozen pond. It was too warm in Mystic Fall’s area of southern Virginia for ponds to freeze solid in winter. But this pond up North had been solid ice. And the ice was blue, like Damon’s eyes. Damon’s eyes could often be cold. He shielded himself from disappointment, or from getting his heart broken, with sarcasm. He was the master of deflection, or pretending he didn’t care. But it was just because he cared so much. Elena had once thought Stefan was the brother that cared. He’d certainly seemed kinder and more compassionate. He subscribed to a moral code, most of the time. He gave a damn about more than two people. But Elena had come to know the real Damon, the man who cared so much, who’d been rejected so many times. And he cared. Oh god, Damon cared. He wasn’t a saint. His morality was questionable at best. But he gave a lot of damns.

            And he was hers.

            “Sometimes it pays to know how to pick a lock,” he said, holding up a paper clip he’d bent into an s shape.

            She smiled. A real smile. “Even vampires learn to pick locks?” she asked. “Or did you learn that as a human?”

            “I wasn’t that ballsy as a human. The first time, that is.”

            Elena laughed. Damon climbed in the bed beside her, pulling her close to him. He smelled like bread, like a bakery. And also windswept leaves. And ice skating. He smelled clean.

            She snuggled into chest. He ran his free hand all over, making her insides flutter, before he rested his hand on her belly, stroking gently. She could imagine him stroking the baby’s hair, soothing her to sleep. After a while, Elena said, “You did fall in love with a vampire, and you weren’t afraid of her. Sounds pretty ballsy to me.”

            He laughed. It was strange that they could talk about this so freely, that he could laugh so freely about Katherine, who’d smashed his heart into a thousand pieces on multiple occasions. “So did you,” he murmured. “Twice. And you weren’t nearly as frightened of us as you should have been.”

            She swallowed hard. She still didn’t know if he was over the whole triangle of it. If he understood. “What I had with your brother,” Elena said softly, tentatively, “It wasn’t like wasn’t anything like what we have.”

            She could feel him shaking his head. “You don’t have to apologize for it.”

            But she did. “It wasn’t real.”

            Damon laughed, but it wasn’t a real laugh. This laughter had a bite. A sour bite. “I was there. It was real.”

            Elena squeezed her eyes shut, trying to figure out how to explain. She hadn’t really understood it until she had woken up from the coma. Maybe she’d needed to work out her feelings in dreams for five years to finally understand them. “Maybe real is the wrong word,” she said as she opened her eyes, looking into those ice-blue eyes that seemed to compel honesty out of her. “Yes, I loved him. But it wasn’t an adult love. And it wasn’t based on real things. I didn’t get to know Stefan before I fell in love with him.”

            Damon groaned. “Lena. I don’t need to hear this.”

            “Well, I need to say it,” she pushed on, steadily, stubbornly. “I wasn’t in love with him as a person. I was in love with the idea of Stefan. He enrolled in school and started dating me because he was the in love with the idea of me. A good version of Katherine. And at first I liked him because he was the mysterious new guy. He was not Matt. He wasn’t a hometown guy. He had this mysterious past. And this presence. He acted like a grownup. Of course it turned out he was four times the age of my parents.”

            Damon laughed more freely this time.

            She smiled at him, continuing. “And then when I found out he was a vampire, it was even better. Weirdly. That makes no sense. But I liked the idea that he wouldn’t die. That I would always have him. And I liked the danger, though I never would have admitted it back then. I liked to feel alive because my life was always in danger. Which is crazy. But I liked the rollercoaster of it all. And then when he turned out to be so tortured — it was nice to be the person who could bring him back from the ledge. Even when I couldn’t. It was nice to think I could. I felt important. And for a seventeen year-old girl, feeling that important is intoxicating. And I cared about him. I did love Stefan. But after a while, it was like we were this boring married couple. We were just together because we were together. There wasn’t passion. We didn’t share any interests, beyond journal writing and staying alive. That’s just not enough, you know? We didn’t have fun together like you and I do. I saw Stefan with Lexi, and I was so jealous of their bond. Of the way she made him laugh. I thought I’d get there with him, eventually. I never did.”

            “So you settled for me?” Damon snapped, clearly only half joking.

            Elena sat up so she could look at him, really look at him. God, he looked young. Now that Damon was human, he looked younger somehow, like all the vampire magic was sucked out of him and she was reminded that when he’d turned he’d been nothing more than a young man. 25. Not a boy, especially by 1800’s standards. But still young. Still under his father’s thumb. In love with a woman who treated him like a servant. Who he let treat him that way. In love with danger and death.

            “I fell for you,” she said, tapping his chest. “You. Not the idea of you. I didn’t fall in love with you until I knew who you were, good and bad. I used to hate the idea of you. Before I knew you. Damon, I fell in love with you slowly. As we became friends, as I learned who you were, as I learned why I could trust you. And that’s why it’s real. And that’s why it’s a love that consumes me. That’s why it’s everything you told me I wanted. Remember telling me that? You got under my skin. You made me laugh. You had insights into my character that no one else did. You called me on my bullshit. You were honest. You were the most honest person I ever met. You still are. When you say thank you, I know you mean it. When you say you don’t hate someone, you really love them.”

            Damon laughed. “Well, I fell for you in a way I never fell for Katherine. She hit me over the head. You kind of snuck up on me.”

            She kissed him. He pulled her closer. It was sweet, almost chaste at first. But she opened her mouth and let her tongue dart inside his mouth, exploring his softness, his taste. She wrapped her leg around his and turned towards him, into him. She giggled as her belly bumped against him. It wasn’t that big yet, but it was bigger than it had ever been, and it was beginning to be a barrier between them. He was grinning as he ran one hand through her brown hair and let the other one tickle her belly.

            The baby did a somersault.

            “You are so damned beautiful, Elena.”

            “Even fat?”

            “Especially fat,” he said, laughing, his eyes devilish. But not red. No vamp face. How strange to kiss Damon, to make him moan as she did now, reaching down, stroking him through his expensive jeans. “Though I wouldn’t call it that,” he went on. “I’d say curvy. Voluptuous. And I mean, Jesus Freaking Christ, you’re carrying my baby. It’s me and you in there, babe. It’s us, all mixed up together. This belly,” he said, sitting up so he could kiss her belly. “I can’t wait for it to get bigger. I can’t wait to see you really curvy.”

            Elena laughed. Damon delighted her. She had never seen him happy like this, before she’d woken up from the coma. She’d never seen him as free with his emotions. “Well, it’s coming, babe,” she told him. “Just you wait.” And then she sat up. She pushed him down on his back, not particularly gently. She straddled him, sitting on his pelvis, feeling him stirring below her.

            She held his hands back behind his head as she leaned down and kissed his neck. Her belly grazed against his chest as she ran her tongue up and down his neck, tracing that familiar carotid artery.

            Damon moaned.

            She found the place where she would have bitten him, and she kissed him hard. Sucked the skin into her mouth. And then, surprising herself, she bit him. Not nearly hard enough to draw blood. But he moaned like she was draining him, like they were blood sharing.

            She moved down his neck to his throat, his Adam’s apple, his chest above his black t-shirt. “Take it off,” she murmured.

            He opened his eyes, grinning at her.

            And all of a sudden they were stripping off their clothes until they were naked. He was kissing her everywhere. Her neck. Her breasts. Her belly. When he moved beneath her belly, she felt her body burning up, fire racing through her veins before he’d even reached the spot he was looking for.

            Damon almost fell asleep after they had made love, and he’d lain in Elena’s arms, so peacefully. But something was keeping him from relaxing. “So anyway,” he said to her, after what felt like a lifetime, lying in this bed together, “In the spirit of honesty. … Why the hell were you hiding under a blanket? And what has Care Bear and Bon Bon so freaked?”

            Elena sighed, but said nothing.

            “Come on, Elena,” he said. “You called me.”

            “Caroline tried to compel me,” she began.

            Damon clenched his fists. “What the hell? Where does she get off?”

            “How many times did you compel her?”

            “Not the point.”

            “The point is it didn’t work. I don’t think I can be compelled. You should get her to try it on you. I think it’s the Cure. It makes us reject vampire blood, right? Maybe it makes us reject vampire powers too.”

            Damon let this sink in. It could be useful. If they were really uncompellable. But it also felt wrong. “What’s the problem?” he asked his wife.

            She smiled, but it wasn’t a real smile. “It’s the magic,” she said. “The visions. The magic baby inside me. Now this. It scares the hell out of me. I don’t understand it. I can’t control it. And it doesn’t make much sense.”

            Damon groaned. It didn’t make sense to him either. He held her close, not knowing what to say. Not knowing how to understand magic or its hold on them any more than she did. He didn’t want to bring anything up, but he had to. He didn’t think this could wait. “Look, I need you to talk to Donovan?”

            “Don’t mess with Matt,” she said.

            “He’s messing with the Council,” Damon said.

            “What?”

            “It’s something to do with those traffic accidents.”

            “Why didn’t he tell us?”

            “I don’t know. I thought he was done hating me. Apparently not.”

            Elena burrowed her way under the covers.

Chapter Text

May 2018

Damon was standing in front of his mirror, wearing a very expensive pair of jeans, buttoning up his black dress shirt, and considering the best way to murder the more annoying members of the Mystic Falls Founder’s Council. As he fastened the last button, he glanced into the mirror and saw Elena stirring in the bed.

Damn.

They’d been in Mystic Falls for two months now, and they’d settled into a routine of coexisting with Alaric and Caroline’s little witch school, reading grimoires day and night to find evidence of whatever witchy thing they were dealing with, venturing into town as little as possible (Elena had refused to stay housebound), and trying to interpret the visions Elena continued to get every couple of days. The visions didn’t make a lot of sense, but Elena kept seeing the old clock tower, where Matt and Vicki had almost brought about hell on Earth, and sensing a lot of power. A magical type of power. Bonnie believed that Mystic Falls had become a hotspot for magical energy, but didn’t know what their baby had to do with anything, and why she was so intent on telling them … whatever she was trying to tell them. Until they knew more, they couldn’t go “home” to Charlottesville. Not when Elena might be in danger, and not when the baby’s visions were the only clue to a potential disaster.

Nothing serious was happening. Which worried Damon. Weird mystical visions never just happened. Magic was never benign. Something was building. He could almost feel the town vibrating with … something. He hadn’t mentioned this to anyone but Bonnie, who said she felt it too. She’d wondered if either Damon or Elena might have some latent magical ability never explored in their earlier stints as humans. Something about Elena being a doppelgänger and them both having Traveller blood. Elena was a descendant of Amara, and Damon must be a descendant of Silas (since Stefan was his doppelgänger). Damon had laughed this off, but Bonnie said magic could show up late in life, or it could skip a generation. They could be carriers, which might explain their baby’s weird vision-giving abilities. Damon had shuddered, wanting as little to do with magic as possible. Magic always came with a cost.

Elena had been tossing and turning last night, unable to sleep. She’d said she was uncomfortable, and that was probably true, but Damon also thought she was worried as hell. She didn’t like to talk about her worries, but they lurked, always. And she was a terrible liar.

She’d finally fallen asleep, and then she was dead to the world. Damon woke up at eight, went downstairs for breakfast, came back to find her spread out across the bed, on her back, her belly sticking up in the air like a melon, the evidence of her pregnancy, refusing to be ignored. She’d kicked off the covers. He pulled a blanket back over her, then crawled in bed, beside her. He’d sat for hours, reading Gone with the Wind for the 19th time, until finally he crept out of bed as quietly as humanly possible, showered and then tiptoed around their bedroom as he got ready.

He was hoping to get out of here before she woke up.

“Damon?” she said, yawning, eyes bleary.

No luck.

“Hey babe,” he said, trying to sound casual as he rooted around in his dresser for cufflinks.

Elena glared at him at him as she sat up and stretched. “Where are you going?”

“Nowhere.”

“Then come back to bed.”

“I was just going to go down to the kitchen for a bite to eat. Maybe talk to Alaric. Try not to let him drink me under the table,” he said as he began fastening his left cufflink.

In the mirror, he could see Elena rolling her eyes. “You’re putting on cufflinks for Alaric?” she asked, incredulous.

Elena scrunched up her eyes as if she were confused. “You’re worried about Ric drinking too much?”

He shrugged. “I’ve heard there’s some sort of group people can go to. AAA or something?”

She laughed. “You, Damon Salvatore, who used to drink half a bottle of bourbon for breakfast, are worried about Ric, your drinking buddy, drinking too much? And you want to take him to an AA meeting? Two A’s. AAA is the company that comes out to change your tire if you get a flat tire, by the way.”

He considered this. “I can change my own tire. What kind of man doesn’t know how to change his own tire? Or woman for that matter. Another thing about the 21st century that makes no sense. I should make a list. And anyway, why would they choose such similar names?”

Elena sighed. “I don’t know, Damon. AA stands for Alcoholics Anonymous, that’s why it’s called that. But seriously. Do you really think he’s an alcoholic?”

He threw up his hands. “I don’t know, Elena. But I do know that he can drink an absurd amount of liquor without getting drunk, which means he must be drinking way more than anyone sees. I never thought of it when I was a vampire, because A: I didn’t care. And B: I just didn’t realize the magnificence of his tolerance. When I became human again, it’s like my tolerance went back to where it was in 1864. Which is way, way less than Ric’s. And here’s the thing about vampire drinking — you almost never get really drunk, so it’s easy to maintain a pleasant, non dysfunctional buzz. And, as you know, vampires are mostly drinking to quell the cravings or just avoid getting bored with the tedium of eternity. Yeah, maybe I was drinking to avoid my problems, like Ric is now, but it was different. … Also, I read this article in the New Yorker, and apparently alcoholism is a disease. It could even run in someone’s family. Like diabetes.”

Elena broke out laughing.

“What?”

“I just can’t believe you’re getting swayed by magazine articles. But really, it’s sweet that you care so much.”

Damon grinned. “So I can go talk to him?”

She shook her head.

He stopped grinning and glared at her.

“Damon, you can tell me what you’re up to,” she said, looking tired but determined. When he said nothing, she tried to get out of bed, but seemed to be stuck, unable to get free of the soft mattress. He almost laughed, but she gave him a look like she was going to kill him if so much as a chuckle escaped from his lips. He moved toward her to help, but she snapped, “I can do it, dammit!” After a minute of struggling, she hoisted herself out of bed. Oh man, she was looking really pregnant now. She was seven months along.

“No one is going to be confused about whether you’re pregnant or not,” Damon said with a smirk.

Elena gasped and walked over to him, more slowly than she used to walk, one hand on her lower back as she slapped him upside the head with the other hand. “You’re not supposed to say that!”

“What? I didn’t say you don’t look beautiful. You look downright gorgeous,” he said, and he meant it. The belly didn’t detract from her natural, effortless beauty. It added to it. He cupped his hands around her face, kissing her gently on the lips. Her belly pressed into him, keeping him from being able to pull her against him like he used to. Everything about her was rounder these days, her belly, her breasts, even her face. But she was more beautiful than he’d ever seen her.

As she pulled away from the kiss, she stayed close to him, her hands on his shoulders. She looked him straight in the eye and asked, “What are you up to?”

“Why do I have to be up to something?”

“You’re going somewhere,” she said, her voice serious. “And it has nothing to do with Ric.”

He sighed. “Fine. There’s a Council meeting.”

Elena’s eyes widened. “You got an invite?”

He shook his head. “I’m crashing. Again. Donovan conveniently forgot to mention it to me. Again. But Lindsay Fell told me.”

Elena laughed. “She still trying to sleep with you?”

He waggled his eyebrows at her. “Not my fault the ladies think I’m irresistible. Don’t worry though. She’s not my type.”

Another slap.

Damon grabbed her hand. “And, I talk about you to a nauseating degree every time I see her, to try to get her to take a damned hint,” he said in a rush. “So don’t worry your cute little pregnant self about Lindsay Fell.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Great.”

“But I’m coming to the Founder’s Council with you, Damon,” she said.

Damon groaned. “Not great.”

“I’m a founder too, you know,” she said.

“Well, I’m an actual founder.”

“Would you like me to explain that fact to the Council?” she asked him with a pointed look.

He sighed, pulling away. “You can’t come, Elena. I don’t want you around that many people. What if something happens?” he said, referring to the attacks she had when the baby had a vision, or gave her a vision, or whatever the hell was happening.

“I’ve gotten good at hiding it,” she told him.

“I really don’t want that many people seeing you. I just don’t think it’s safe.”

Elena got a steely look in her eyes. She looked like she was about to launch into some kind of impassioned speech, and Damon knew that if he didn’t relent, she’d argue so hard that he’d wind up missing the meeting. And he really needed to know what Matty Blue Eyes was hiding from him.

###

Elena and Damon slipped into Lindsay Fell Washington’s house, without even knocking. The idiot girl had left her door unlocked. The front room was deserted. They could hear fervent, not so hushed voices coming from a room towards the back of the house. The Council meeting must be in full swing, already.

“I never knew how great it was to be able to walk into someone’s house without being invited in,” Elena whispered to Damon.

He grinned, murmuring, “You have no idea how annoying magic thresholds were to deal with for a century and a half. Lots of awkward sort-of-entrances. Especially at first. And for some reason, compulsion doesn’t work unless you get them outside. I’ve never understood how that part works.”

They crept through the ostentatiously decorated parlor, full of civil war era artifacts and bad American folk art. Damon pointed at a rifle on the wall, which had a plaque underneath claiming the gun as Robert E. Lee’s. “Robert E. Lee never used that gun,” he whispered, disparagingly. “We didn’t have anything that nice back then. That’s a turn of the century piece.”

Elena stifled a giggle.

As they headed towards the voices, Damon placed a hand on her back and leaned towards her. “You sure you’re feeling okay?”

“Yes. Stop asking me that,” she snapped, trying to walk as quickly and effortlessly as she could. She wasn’t exactly waddling. Well, maybe she was a tiny bit. Her center of balance was just so … off. She’d gained 22 pounds in the past seven months, a fact she felt too embarrassed to mention to Damon. Not that he didn’t know she was huge. Elena sighed and sucked in her stomach. It did nothing other than make it even more difficult to breathe, so she let it go.

They reached a closed door. Damon swung it open. Always with the sense of drama and ceremony. She glanced at his face. He was grinning wickedly. He loved making a scene, and he loved upsetting people who he didn’t like.

There were about a dozen people in the room, some sitting, some standing. Matt was standing at the front of the room, giving some sort of speech, in the middle of a sentence. He stopped talking abruptly as they entered the room. His mouth hung open, and he looked like a child who’d been caught doing something very naughty.

“Elena!” Cynthia Fell shouted, delighted. “I’d heard you were expecting, but I didn’t know how far along you were.” This woman had been her third grade teacher.

Elena smiled shyly.

“Take my seat, sweetheart,” said a man with gray windswept hair and a kind smile. He looked familiar, sitting there in his t-shirt and jeans, much more casually dressed than anyone else at the Council meeting. Her eyes widened as she realized who he was.

“Mr. Forbes,” she said, moving to take the seat he was offering. She wished she could turn down his offer, but her feet were killing her. She carefully lowered herself onto the sofa, which was lower and plusher than she would have liked. Damon perched beside her on the arm of the sofa. She whispered to him, “He’s Caroline’s uncle. Bill Forbes’s brother. Kind of estranged from the family.”

Damon frowned at the man, as if he found him suspect.

“I don’t think we’ve met,” the man said, reaching out to shake Damon’s hand. “I’m Wally Forbes.” Yes, she was right.

“Damon Salvatore,” Damon said, returning the handshake, keeping his voice neutral.

“Any relation to Zach?”

Damon nodded. “He was my uncle.”

“We were in school together. I heard he left town, and then someone got word that he had died?” Wally Forbes pressed on.

Damon looked solemn as he said, “It was a car crash. A great loss. … But in any event, that was years before Matt Donovan took over the Founder’s Council without telling me. … Donovan, didn’t you promise to tell me the next time there was a meeting? Weren’t paying attention in our last little chat?”

Matt just stared at him, open-mouthed, before glancing at Elena. As if she was going to intervene. She raised her eyebrows and gave Matt a pointed look. “Not helping you out here, Matt. You didn’t tell me either.” She placed a hand on her belly. The baby was kicking. Roughly.

Matt swallowed hard before saying, “I told Jeremy. I thought, um, you know.”

Elena glanced around the room, not seeing her brother. “Well, if he were here, I’d tell him he should have told me too.”

Damon held a hand up. “Whatever. Just tell us why you called a meeting, and we’ll try not to kill you later.”

“What the hell, man!” Matt snapped. “You guys left town, and excuse me for not realizing that you cared about seats on the Council.”  He sighed and handed some papers to a Lockwood, who passed them to Elena and Damon.

Elena flipped through the comprehensive list of car crashes on the stretch of Main Street where the clock tower was. Damon began lecturing Matt on the importance of not creating a paper trail, and how he shouldn’t be making handouts in case someone not on the Council got ahold of them. Elena closed her eyes for a second. She felt weary of all things supernatural.

Matt yelled at Damon, telling him to stop being a dick. Elena opened her eyes, seeing how tired her old friend/first boyfriend/first lover looked. Also how very tired of fighting with Damon he seemed to be.

Matt started explaining about the latest car crash. The impetus for their current meeting. There’d been no meetings for three weeks, because no one had discovered anything new, up until now you could argue that they were just ordinary accidents.

But on Tuesday it had gotten weird.

“Wait,” Elena said, “You’re saying the car was floating?”

Matt sighed. “I’m saying two pedestrians said the car was floating as it ran into the clock tower. It was two in the morning. One of the pedestrians was a drunk high school student who is now getting extra visits with the school counselor. But —“

“But the other pedestrian was me,” Wally Forbes said with a wry smile. “And I don’t drink.”

Elena took this in. She examined Caroline’s uncle’s face, trying to figure out if he’d really seen something.

All of a sudden, a familiar feeling overtook her. Like she was floating. Like the world was slowing down. Elena gulped as she saw the crash, as she watched a Toyota Corolla levitate half a foot off the ground before it spun out of control and hit the tower.

She dropped her face from Wally’s, looking intently at her lap, trying to hide the fact that anything strange was happening to her.

The baby kicked, hard. Elena stroked her belly, hoping to soothe the little girl. God, it felt like the baby had eight feet, that’s how much she was kicking. Was she trying to get Elena’s attention? Elena didn’t feel worry or fear now, not from the baby at least. This was a different kind of flurry inside her. Excitement? Yes. The baby was excited. Maybe even happy.

What the hell?

“Elena?” Wally asked. “Are you okay?”

She smiled weakly. “Just the baby kicking. She’s an active little thing. Maybe she’ll play soccer.”

Several people laughed kindly. A Lockwood woman, sitting on the couch at Elena’s left, patted her knee and said, “I’ve been there, honey. Just hang in there.”

Elena smiled gratefully.

Lindsay Fell Washington cleared her throated loudly. “Can I get you something, Elena?” she asked. “A club soda? Saltines?” Her voice was far too bright, her friendliness so fake it seemed cartoonish.

Elena shook her head. Looking at Damon, who seemed genuinely worried, she grinned and said, “Damon, I’m fine. Calm down. You try having a baby live inside you.” Mild laughter. Once everyone settled down she said, “Matt, you have anything else for us, besides flying cars? Because, I, for one, am okay with flying cars. The ones that don’t hit buildings at least. Back to the Future promised me flying cars.”

Matt laughed. It was good to see him laugh. But then his face got serious again as he began talking about witches. He had a source who had him that two witches from out of town had arrived in town within the last two weeks, saying they were drawn to the area for reasons they didn’t understand. He had clearly been talking to Bonnie.

“Three witches,” Damon whispered to her. “And what the hell is he giving Bonnie’s intel to these idiots?”

Elena shook her head, whispering, “Five.” She’d run into Bonnie as she’d rooted around in the Salvatore kitchen for something healthy she could eat in the car on the way to Council meeting, before settling on chocolate Poptarts. As she placed her hand on her belly, the baby kicked, as if agreeing with her count. Of course, if she were being honest about witches new to town, she’d have to include her own unborn child, wouldn’t she?

Damon gave her a quizzical look. “Two more showed up this morning,” Elena explained under her breath.

She looked back at Matt, trying to figure out what game he was playing. And wondering if he realized that he was putting Bonnie and these newcomer witches in danger.

Matt passed out more sheets of paper. Elena glanced at the page passed to her by the Lockwood woman. The heading on the top said, “Animal Attacks.” Four people dead in the last two weeks. Two locals. Two campers from out of town. Elena had heard nothing of this. She really needed to get out more. All over the room, Council members sucked in their breaths. The tension was palpable.

Damon was grumbling about a paper trail as Elena said, “I’m less okay with vampires draining people in the woods.”

“Vampires?” Lindsay shrieked. “We can’t know for sure that it’s vampires.”

“Puncture wounds on the neck. All four bodies drained of blood. Completely drained,” Matt said.

“Maybe it’s a mountain lion this time?” Lindsay said hopefully.

“There are no mountain lions in our woods,” Matt explained. “That’s just a story we tell the general population.”

“A bear then,” Lindsay said, her voice insistent, frightened.

Elena started to laugh. Lindsay might be a few years older than her, but she had clearly never been part of Council business before. Her naïveté wasn’t charming. It was just stupid. Damon elbowed Elena as she told the socialite, “A bear would chomp all over those people. It wouldn’t just suck blood neatly out of their carotid arteries. Animal attack means vampire attack, in Mystic Falls at least.”

Damon put his hand on Elena’s shoulder, his touch gentle and protective, as he told Lindsay, “Bears do tend to chomp rather than suck.”

Wally Forbes spoke up. “And I know Mary Honeycutt’s mother. That girl and her friend weren’t attacked in the woods. They were attacked behind the movie theatre. Her mother thinks someone lured them back there. They were both sixteen.”

The room became quiet, solemn. Matt instructed them to flip to the last page of the handout, which held a photo of two teenage girls and a young man who appeared to be in his early twenties. The man had sandy blond hair, brown eyes, and a mischievous smile. He was giving bunny ears to both girls. Damon’s hand tensed on Elena’s shoulder. It was just a for a second. She glanced at him. His facial expression was completely neutral, not letting on that anything was wrong. But something was wrong. She knew it.

As the Council debated who this man might be, it became clear that no one knew anything. He looked a little like a lot of strangers, maybe, possibly a new bartender at the Grill, but that bartender was a good ten years older than the mystery man looked in this photo.

After several minutes listening to frenzied discussion, Damon cleared his throat. “Donovan, this isn’t exactly evidence. It’s a photo on a girl’s iPhone. It could be anyone. And this was clearly taken during the day. And seriously, why would a vampire allow himself to be photographed with victims he planned on killing later?”

Matt laughed. As Elena and everyone else stared at him, Matt just lost it, almost doubling over in giddy laughter.

Lindsay jumped into the conversation, with the eager pride of someone who thinks she knows something. “Come on, Matt! Damon’s right. Vampires don’t walk in the day.”

“Oh yes they do,” Matt said, pulling himself together.

Damon glared at him. “Sometimes,” he admitted. “But it’s rare. We don’t know how it  happens.”

“Daylight rings,” Matt said, his voice even, so even, as Damon glared at him. “They wear daylight rings,” he told the Council. “Sometimes it’s a necklace or bracelet. Look for someone new to town with gaudy jewelry.”

Damon let out an exasperated sigh, muttering, “That’s the ticket. Let’s profile random people based on gaudy jewelry.”

Elena narrowed her eyes, wondering what her old friend was up to. Didn’t he care that he might out Caroline? And seriously, what was up with Damon trying to discount Matt’s picture?

###

After reluctantly leaving Elena behind to get the real scoop from Matt, Damon drove home. He took the long way so that he could drive past the clock tower. No car crashes to witness. But his hands did tingle as he drove past. He told himself it was just because he couldn’t look at that building without thinking of Stefan, without thinking of his idiot brother sacrificing himself for Damon, so Damon could have a life with the girl they both knew Stefan still loved. That must be it. Nothing witchy.

Two unfamiliar cars were parked outside the boarding house. Well, the beat-up Camry looked familiar, but it couldn’t be. It wouldn’t be. Dammit, this day sucked.

As he walked inside, Ric called out to him, “Damon, you’ve got visitors.”

Damon sighed as Ric rushed over. His friend murmured. “One of them is that guy who works for you, with the constant shorts-wearing. He’s in the kitchen.”

“Has he seen anything weird?”

Ric shook his head.

“Cause he’s on vervain,” Damon said, already tired of all these situations. “I’ve got everyone I work for drinking it in their coffee. So if anybody does anything stupid, we’ll have to lock him up for a few days before Caroline can compel him.”

“Got it,” Ric said. “He’s seen nothing. I’ve got a dozen kids who I’ve had to stop from practicing magic though. Also Jeremy was in the middle of demonstrating how to decapitate a vampire, to some of the older kids. We had to clean that up before we let him in. Caroline insisted on giving him a tour of the grounds. So now everybody is supposedly doing math and reading Shakespeare.”

“Shakespeare? Your oldest kids are 12.”

Ric mulled this over for a minute before shrugging. “Everyone should read Shakespeare. When did you read him?”

Damon thought for a minute. “You know, I was 11 or 12. But back then people didn’t think kids were idiots.” He paused for a moment, realizing that he’d been ignoring an important detail. “You said two people. Where’s the other one?”

Ric smiled grimly, muttering, “That’s the one you should be worried about. That one couldn’t get in without an invitation. Which I didn’t offer. After an awkward moment, he said he’d wander around the grounds.”

###    

Damon found Sajen sitting at the Salvatore kitchen table, wearing a t-shirt and denim cut-offs and staring open-mouthed at his surroundings. At least it was almost warm enough for his outfit.

Standing in the doorway, Damon cleared his throat. “What are you doing here, Sajen?”

Sajen jumped at his voice. “Damon. Hey. I was just, um … Are you rich or something?”

He laughed. “My family made a fortune in logging. And cotton. And railroads.”

“Just that?” Sajen said nervously.

“Well, stocks of course,” Damon said. “Bonds. And for a while in the nineteenth century we owned a mortuary. Those are always lucrative.”

“But your apartment. It’s not like this. Like, at all,” Sajen said, brows raised. “It’s kind of a dump.”

Damon rolled his eyes. “Elena wanted us to be normal. Like there’s any such thing.”

“So, dude,” Sajen said. “It’s been two months. Everyone’s getting worried.”

“About what?”

“If you’re okay. If Elena’s okay. I mean, it’s kind of weird that you just left in the middle of the night and you haven’t come back. It’s been two months.”

Damon stared at the bespectacled man, confused at his concern. Why should any of this matter to him? Or to random bartenders for that matter?

At that moment, Bonnie wandered into the kitchen. “Bon Bon!” Damon shouted in relief. “You remember Sajen?”

Bonnie nodded, and then proceeded to rummage around the kitchen. “Yeah. I helped you hire him. … Did somebody eat the last banana?”

Damon smirked and said, “I’d blame Elena for that one. Have you noticed how much that girl can eat lately? And how fast she shoves it in her mouth? Unladylike, if you ask me.”

Bonnie walked over to him and smacked his shoulder. “I hope you haven’t said that to her face!”

Damon rolled her eyes. “Uh, no, I’m not an idiot. But speaking of idiots, I have one wandering around the grounds. Could you keep Sajen company for a bit?”

Bonnie smiled, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes. “Of course.” Whispering to Damon, she said, “Alaric told me. Be careful.”

“I’m always careful.”

Bonnie gave him a pointed look. “You’re never careful. And you don’t know what it’s like to take a vampire on as a human.”

###

Damon found his mystery guest staring at an old maple tree on the edge of the Salvatore land. Sandy blond hair. Broad shoulders. Somehow managing to look cocky even though he was just standing with him back to Damon. Without turning around, the man said, “Hello, old friend.”

Damon’s whole body stiffened. This didn’t make sense. It hadn’t made sense at the Council meeting. And it made even less sense now. But then he turned around, and Damon felt this absurd sense of relief flowing through his body. Without meaning to, he rushed to Tommy and threw his arms around him. Tommy laughed as he returned the hug. “I thought you were dead,” Damon said as he pulled away.

Tommy grinned. “I thought you were dead. I mean, there was a rumor going around that Stefan killed you in 1912. When he went off the rails.”

Damon laughed. “He had plenty of chances. Never did it. But the fire in 1915?”

“Wasn’t me.”

Damon nodded. “You kill any teenagers in Mystic Falls lately?”

His friend shook his head. Damon eyed him carefully, looking for any sign that he was lying. He knew this man. He should be able to tell.

After what seemed like a lifetime, Tommy said, “You know Mary Honeycutt was a descendant of mine? I never eat off the family tree.”

Damon nodded, considering.

“What about campers?”

“Do you know how bad people taste when they’re all sweaty and unwashed?”

“You’ve just described every meal I had in the nineteenth century. So, no.”

“Well, try it sometime. Campers are gross.”

Damon wanted to believe Tommy.

He’d turned Tommy two years after his own transition. He’d heard that his oldest friend was dying of consumption, which made him think of his mother, of how much he wished he could have saved her. So he’d visited Tommy in the middle of the night, offering him an out. Tommy had refused at first. He had a wife and baby son. But a few months later, Damon received a letter begging him to return. Once again, he crept in Tommy’s window in the dead of night. He fed his blood to his best friend before suffocating the fragile man with a pillow.

Whatever Tommy’s sins, Damon was to blame. And this seemed sloppy. Either someone new or someone trying to send a message. Tommy was neither new nor diabolic.

So he decided to play nice. To give him the benefit of the doubt.

They spent an hour talking about old times. Damon wouldn’t invite Tommy in, which pissed his friend off, but there were a lot of people, and irritating children, to consider. Damon brought out a couple chairs and a bottle of good bourbon, which they passed between them as they told stories of growing up in Mystic Falls before the war. Damon tried to make it seem like he was drinking more than he was. And he tried not to let his heart race.

Tommy was giving Damon hell about a girl he’d followed around like a puppy when they were fourteen, when Matt’s truck pulled up right beside them. Elena opened the passenger door, then began struggling to climb out of the truck. Damon realized his cover was about to be blown. He’d been trying to conceal from Tommy his humanness — they might be friends but Damon didn’t want such a big weakness to be known. There wasn’t an obvious way to tell if someone was human or vampire, without vervain. Vampire hearts beat. Their skin wasn’t absurdly cold to the touch. But if he was supposed to be a vampire, a pregnant wife was going to be difficult to explain.     

When Damon saw Elena, he just froze. Instead of rushing to help her, he stared at her huge belly and felt the world spinning.

Elena continued to struggle until Matt threw his door open and rushed over to help Damon’s wife.

Tommy leaned towards Damon and said, “You know, it’s weird, but that pregnant woman looks like Katherine Pierce.”

Fuck.

Damon said nothing.

Elena waddled toward them. Matt trailed after her. Both probably recognized Tommy from the picture on that idiot girl’s phone.

“Damon,” Elena said with a fake smile. “Care to introduce your friend?”

Tommy raised his eyebrows as he said, “And who might this lovely lady be?”

Damon said nothing.

Matt laughed for reasons passing understanding. Then he strode forward to extend his hand to Tommy. “I’m Sheriff Donovan,” he said with an air of importance.

“Tommy. Old friend of Damon’s.”

Matt frowned, saying, “How old?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Tommy said carelessly. “He got me drunk for the first time when I was ten. And I never would have learned to swim if he hadn’t pushed me into the river and promised me that I wouldn’t sink. He had to fish me out of the river, of course, but it got me over the hump.”

Elena’s eyes lit up and she clapped her hands together in delight.“Really? I’ve never met anybody who knew Damon that early. Except for Stefan, of course.”

“And you are?” Tommy said, clearly curious as hell.

“I’m his wife. Elena. Elena Gilbert. I never changed my name,” Elena said in a rush.

Tommy stared at Elena’s prominent belly, it’s bulgy-ness barely contained by her red blouse and maternity jeans. Tommy raised his brows. “And who exactly knocked you up?”

Fuck.

Elena sucked in her breath, as if she’d just realized what she’d done. She looked at Damon with an expression of utter helplessness.

Fuck. Fuck.

Fuck.

Tommy turned to Damon. Damon smiled weakly. Tommy frowned. Elena put both cradled her belly with both arms . Matt stepped closer to her, moving a hand dangerously close to his gun.

Tommy gave Matt a predatory smile.

Damon placed a hand on his friend’s forearm. “Easy,” he whispered.

“Whose baby is that?” Tommy whispered. “And since when do you go around marrying humans?”

“It’s a long story,” Damon said with a sigh. He wondered if he could get Caroline to call Klaus. Maybe an Original could compel Tommy to leave and never come back.

Chapter Text

(picking up right where we left off)

The baby kicked like crazy as Elena looked from Damon to old-friend-Tommy, and back again. She rubbed her belly, trying to soothe the little girl inside. Elena had never felt so vulnerable. She’d faced down plenty of villains. But she’d never had a baby inside her. She’d never had so much to protect, and so much to lose.

She settled her gaze on Tom. He looked back at her, appraisingly. Damon must not have told this “old friend” that he was human again, either out of fear of being attacked or concern that the vampire might steal the Cure from his blood.

Had this vampire actually known her husband as a child? How was that possible? How much did Damon trust him? Had he planned to tell him? Elena wished for the vampiric ability to grab Damon’s hand and whoosh him away from this scene. She also wished she had a stake in her purse.

Tommy. Why was that name familiar? Tommy, that was what Damon had always called that childhood friend. Tommy Fell, another founding family son. Damon’s best friend as a human boy. Could this really be the same friend? Damon had never mentioned Tommy Fell being turned. He’d said he was dead. But she could tell how well her husband knew this man. She’d only ever seen him so familiar with Stefan.

Tommy didn’t move to attack. As the moment stretched on without anyone speaking or moving or doing anything but scrutinize each other, the stranger smiled. Like he was enjoying this.

He even let out a little laugh. “Will someone just tell me what’s going on?” the sandy-haired man said. Turning to Elena, he asked, “Did the policeman knock you up?”

Just breathe, Elena told herself, as she felt panic building throughout her body. Any second she was going to start shaking, or giggle stupidly. Without taking her eyes off Tommy, she told Matt, “Get Caroline.”

Matt said, “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Now,” Elena said, keeping her voice even.

Matt cursed under his breath as he half walked, half ran into the house.

Damon stood and sauntered towards Elena. Coming up beside her, he threw his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close to him. She could feel his breath on her ear as he whispered, “Don’t worry, babe.” Damon grinned at Tommy, all mischievous and lighthearted, saying, “It’s kind of a funny story, old man. We met this witch a while back. She had a wicked sense of humor. It turns out all kinds of crazy things happen when you piss off a witch.”

Tommy frowned, still sitting in his chair, rubbing his hands together. He was quiet. Too quiet? His smile faded. “Why are you scared, Damon? It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you scared.”

Damon laughed, and it almost seemed carefree. “Nobody’s scared of you, Tommy. You’re not that impressive. Just do me a favor and be nice to my girl.”

Tommy snorted a laugh. Then all of a sudden he leaned forward,  examining Damon’s face with care and curiosity. Like he’d seen something. His eyes widened. The “old friend” leapt from his chair and zoomed towards Damon. Damon flinched. The man ran a finger along Damon’s jawline.

“Boys, boys!” came Caroline’s overly cheery voice. Elena smiled weakly at her friend, grateful they had some protection. Caroline was dressed in a blue sundress. She looked so young. She always looked so young. Forever seventeen. But below the friendly expression, and air of innocence, her eyes were made of steel.

“What is this here?” Tommy asked quietly, tracing Damon’s jawline.

Damon swatted his hand away. “Getting a little friendly, aren’t you?” he snapped.

“Did you cut yourself shaving?”

“No!”

“It’s a tiny cut, but it’s there. It hasn’t healed. What the fuck is going on?” Tommy said, his voice not quite menacing but not quite friendly either. This whole encounter was getting less friendly by the second.

The boarding house door flew open again. Bonnie rushed out and ran toward them. She was dressed in jeans and a faded t-shirt, but her hair flew behind her and she had an air of power, even regal-ness, about her.

Bonnie looked menacing. Unlike Caroline, she no longer looked like a child, but like a woman. “Let him go!” the witch shouted. Elena realized that during her time asleep, her old friend had really grown into herself. There was none of the novice left in her. None of the scared little girl who lost her grandmother and suffered because she wasn’t sure where her loyalties lay, because she didn’t trust herself. “I don’t know who you are,” Bonnie said, still loud though no longer shouting. Her voice was even, commanding. “I need you to step away from my friends. Hands up. Fangs in.”

Tommy stayed put, his finger still on Damon’s jawline, his touch seeming oddly familiar. “Or what?” he asked.

“Or this.” Bonnie raised her right hand and focused her eyes on Tommy’s skull.

Tommy clutched his head, cried out, and dropped to the ground. Elena began to breathe again.

“Sick-ing a witch on me?” Tommy screamed as the magical aneurism continued.

Bonnie smiled, a small smile, a wicked one.

Damon looked utterly defeated as he watched this strange vampire — who Elena surmised to be his oldest friend, a boy he’d once thought of as almost family — writhing on the ground. “Enough, Bonnie.”

Bonnie dropped her hand with a look of disgust. “So, who’s this idiot?” she asked.

“It’s fine, Bon,” Damon said, the defeat dripping from his voice. “I didn’t ask you to do that. Fell, I didn’t ask her to do that.”

Fell. Elena was right.

Tommy remained on the ground, clutching his head. “For fuck’s sake, she did it anyway, Damon. Do you know how that feels?”

“Yes,” Damon and Bonnie replied at the same time. Damon’s lips twitched into a tiny smile.

“What kind of witch are you working with? Is this the crazy one?” Tommy asked, still rubbing his temples. “That was some serious mojo.”

Damon’s brows rose. “Bennett witch. At my age, I don’t settle for anything else.”Tommy looked up, curious. “As in Emily’s family?”

Caroline had been hovering nearby, looking like she was trying to decide whether to attack or not. Now she zoomed over to Tommy and pulled out a syringe. Vervain? She was about to prick Tommy in the shoulder. He looked too weak from the witchy aneurism to fight her off.

“What the hell?” came another voice.

Caroline froze.

Elena glanced at the front door to see a bespectacled man in a t-shirt, cut-offs, and flip-flops standing at the threshold. His jaw hung open. He didn’t look like he understood enough to be frightened. He just looked utterly baffled.

“Sajen?” Elena asked. “What are you doing here?”

Sajen stood there, mouth still open, clearly unable to answer her question.

 “Oh great,” Damon snapped, his usual mouthiness returning. “Who was supposed to be watching Sajen? Can’t I leave someone in the kitchen for five minutes?”

Bonnie sighed, glancing at the poor clueless human. “I’m sorry, Damon. But Caroline was running outside like something was on fire, and I —“

“Had to stick your nose in?” Damon snapped.

Bonnie rolled her eyes.

Tommy scrambled to his feet, tackled Caroline, and disarmed her, knocking the vervain needle out of her hand. “You’re a young one,” he said as he easily tossed the blond vampire aside.

Caroline landed on her back a couple feet away. She climbed to her feet, fuming. If smoke could come out of her ears, it would be doing that now. Elena had to stop herself from laughing. She reminded herself that this situation could still fall apart into a million terrible pieces.

Damon threw up his hands, obviously annoyed out of his mind. “Could everyone stop the insanity and say hello to Sajen, my bar manager?”

Sajen smiled weakly. He raised a tentative hand in a tentative wave.

“Are we going to have a conversation about why that cut isn’t healing? Whatever it is, I’m going to figure it out anyway!” Tommy snapped.

“No,” Damon snapped back before whispering, “Clueless human behind you. Pull yourself together, man.”

“Not expendable?” Tommy murmured, so quietly Elena could barely hear him.

“No!” she and Damon shot back.

Sajen stood just outside the Salvatore front door, looking so ordinary, his clothes clearly bought at some bargain shop, his face scruffy with five o’clock shadow, as if he hadn’t bothered to shave before jumping in his car to come check on Damon. That’s why he was here, right? To check on Damon? Her husband was so clueless: he hadn’t realized he’d made a friend. And now the friend was unwittingly facing down a vampire. Who may or may not be one of the good ones. Who was definitely not inspiring Elena with confidence.

Fuck. Elena rarely cursed, even internally, but fuck, fuck, fuck.

Tommy was back to scrutinizing Damon. “Bar manager?” he asked. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

The baby kicked, hard. Elena placed a hand on her belly, wondering if the fetus was trying to tell her something. If she was, she was not being clear, not in the least.

“I own a bar,” Damon said. “This guy works there with me.”

“As in you have an investment property?” Tommy asked. “Or you have a job?”

“Both,” Damon said, his lips twitching into a smile.

“You have a job?” Tommy asked.

 Sajen snorted, seemingly in disbelief, of this or the whole scene. “Out of all of this, that’s the thing you want to talk about? That Damon has a job? By the way, who are you, and why did you just throw that girl on the ground. Is she okay? Miss?”

“I’m fine!” Caroline snapped, clearly bristling at the indignity of being thrown down so easily.

“You’re one of the school kids, right?” Sajen asked. “Damon, should I get Alaric, make sure she’s okay? Or maybe Caroline?”

Elena frowned. “Sajen, that is Caroline! You’ve met.”

The bar manager looked flustered as hell. “Oh, um, god,” he stammered. “It’s just been a while since that party, and I didn’t. I mean, you look so young. You looked different last time.”

Caroline sighed and muttered, “This always happens when I go out without makeup.”

Elena smiled sympathetically at her friend, knowing that the non-aging was beginning to catch up to her. At some point she would need to move and create a new identity. But Caroline wasn’t ready to give up her home yet, or her real self. Right now, everyone knew she was the girls’ mother. But in a few years, that would seem preposterous. There was talk, in a couple years, of her faking her death and then reappearing as a fictional Forbes cousin, someone who was supposed to be 17.

For some idiotic reason, Sajen pressed on, asking Caroline, “How old were you when you and Stefan got married?”

Elena and Damon glared at him.

“Oh, right. Don’t talk about Stefan. Very sorry. But seriously, how old are you? Can you even legally drink?”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Tommy interjected, looking both enthralled and excited. “Who had the misfortune of marrying Stefan? This feisty young one? And why is everyone getting married? We don’t do that.”

Elena grabbed Damon’s hand, willing him to maintain his cool.

Damon was grinning maniacally and saying nothing. She never liked it when he got this quiet.

Finally, she said, “Tommy, meet Caroline Forbes-Salvatore.”

“A Forbes?” he asked. “Interesting. My buddy here marries a Gilbert, and Saint Stefan married a Forbes. Very interesting. And where is the groom? On that note, why has no one mentioned him up until now?”

Utter quiet. Even Sajen had the good sense to keep his mouth shut.

Tommy laughed. Elena squeezed her husband’s hand, wondering why this old friend of his was laughing when it should be obvious what was going on. But then the vampire said, “Stefan went off the rails again didn’t he? Full ripper binge?”

Elena squeezed Damon’s hand again, and kept squeezing, hoping to keep him from doing something stupid in front of Sajen.

“Dude, have a little respect.” Sajen said in a low voice. Elena had never seen him angry before. But his mouth was set in a firm line and he looked ready to punch someone.

Tommy laughed again. “Dude,” he said, condescension dripping from his words. “You should show me a little respect. Damon, can you get your errand boy in line here? And tell all the children they can call me Mr. Fell or sir, but never ‘dude.’ ”

“Wait, he’s a Fell?” Caroline asked, and Elena could hear the Founder in her voice. In this moment, Caroline wasn’t terrified or angry. She was excited, and, no doubt, ready to tie Tommy down so she could listen to a story of what it was like back in the wild west days of Mystic Falls.

Damon gripped Elena’s hand so tightly she thought her hand would break. He was pale. Was he shaking? Or was that her? Elena tried to speak, but no words came out. Then the baby kicked. Hard. Not meaning to, she clutched her belly.

Damon let go of her hand and turned to face her. “You okay?” he asked. His hand brushed her cheek lightly.

Elena nodded. “She’s just kicking.”

“You don’t look like that when she’s just kicking.”

“She just kicked really hard. It’s over,” Elena said, though the baby continued to move around, as if she were unhappy about something. Could she hear what was going on? Elena had read that even ordinary fetuses could hear when they were in the womb. She was supposed to play classical music and talk to the baby each day, which she did. Damon had surprised her with a genuine love of Vagner and Mozart. She’d read that if you lived someplace noisy, like an apartment on a busy road with tons of traffic, that the baby would be able to sleep through noise. He would be used to noise from birth.

But could little girl Gilbert-Salvatore hear what they were saying? Or sense her mother’s fear?

Before Elena, Damon, Caroline, or Bonnie could do anything about Tom, the strange vampire whooshed from his spot on the lawn to right in front of Sajen. Vamp speed. Great.

“You are going to shut up right now,” Tommy hissed menacingly at Sajen. Elena couldn’t see his eyes from where she stood, but she’d bet everything she owned that Tommy’s pupils dilated as he spoke.

Sajen’s eyes were wide as he said, “How the hell did you do that?”

Damon let go of Elena and ran over to Sajen and Tommy. “Easy, buddy,” he said. She wasn’t sure if he was addressing Sajen or Tommy.

Sajen kept talking for reasons passing understanding. Why wasn’t he frightened. “Did you see that Damon?” he said.

Damon rubbed his eyes and chuckled.

“Did you see that, Elena? This guy just zoomed over. It was like magic!” When Elena and Damon didn’t answer, Sajen began to laugh. “Seriously, guys. What just happened? Bonnie, tell me I’m not crazy.”

Elena turned towards Bonnie, who shrugged.

Damon reached out towards Tommy, putting his hands on the vampire’s shoulders and lightly pushing him backwards. Tommy took a step back. “What are you playing at, old man?” Damon asked softly. His voice was different than it had been before. Menacing. Taunting. Less human. “You trying to get me in trouble?”

“I don’t know, old man,” Tommy said. “I’ve lost track of the secrets you’re keeping. From me. From him. Does your wife even know what you are? Do you give her vervain?” He shoved Damon, who stumbled backwards, clearly struggling to not fall over. Since he didn’t fall down, Tommy couldn’t have pushed him hard.

“Oh, she knows,” Damon purred.

“And what exactly are you?” Tommy asked.

“I’m the only one left who knew you before you were this,” Damon said, almost too quietly for Elena to hear. “I’m the reason you’re alive. Ish. And I know you better than you know yourself. So how about you settle down and be grateful I haven’t ended you for being a dick.”

Tommy laughed and assumed a fighting stance. “Come and get me, old man. Show me what you’ve got.”

Damon rolled his eyes.

Tommy grinned. “Because, see, here’s the thing. If you could do that, you would have done me in already. You would never have let witchy and blondie here do your dirty work. So either you’re afraid to show the missus what you’re capable of,” Tommy said, his voice rising on every word. He seemed thrilled at his deductive reasoning. Very self-congratulatory, that was the spirit of Tommy’s speech. “Or you can’t. And I’m pretty sure it’s the latter. There’s something wrong with you, Damon. I don’t know what it could be. Are you sick? Can we get sick?”

Damon said nothing as he unfastened his cufflinks and began rolling up the sleeves of his black dress shirt.

“And when you’re done explaining all that,” Tommy said, his grin widening, “You can tell me why preggo here looks like Katherine Pierce. I mean, if it weren’t for the gigantic belly on this one, I’d just assume you were back with that she-devil.”

Elena was trying to decide whether she was more upset at being called “preggo” or at how close Tommy was to figuring out their secret. She was watching Tommy, trying to gauge how much of a threat he was, when the baby began kicking like crazy. And then the world swirled in front of her. Elena struggled to stay standing, as images rushed through her mind. There was Tommy, in nineteenth century clothing, grabbing Damon’s arm and yelling something about Katherine. He was warning Damon not to trust the snake. Something about her being too good to be true. And how everyone in town knew she was playing both brothers. And there they were again, their clothing still old-fashioned but it was a different period, later. The kind of clothing people wore in movies that were set around 1900. Victorian. Tommy was cajoling Damon into a rickety-looking race car, clearly a very early model. Damon looked awful, wooden, emotionally shut down. Tommy was telling him that he needed to feel human again, to get his mind off the snake, and maybe driving this insane automobile would remind him he wasn’t altogether dead. And there they were, covered in soot from the car racing, talking a mile a minute, and Damon was smiling, laughing, looking young and alive again.

One last scene flew through her mind. It was hazier than the others.

Tommy stood next to Damon and Elena as something or someone came at them. Tommy threw himself in front of the two humans, snarling. Now Tommy seemed to be wrestling a person who was stronger than him. Another vampire? Someone older? Just as it seemed like the attacker, a woman, was going to win, Damon stepped into the fray and shoved a stake into the woman’s chest. The vampire writhed, turned gray, and went still. Damon jumped back, looking relieved, as Tommy sat up and clapped him on the back. “Thanks, old man,” Tommy told Damon as the vision faded.

Elena gasped and opened her eyes. She found herself on the ground, clutching her stomach. Damon had his arms wrapped around her, protectively. Everyone else was huddled around her, even Tommy and Sajen. Matt and Alaric had also joined the fray.

They all looked concerned. Even Tommy.

Elena locked eyes with her husband and gave him a shaky smile. “You can trust him,” she said. 

#          

Damon crouched next to Elena, trying to envelope her voluptuous body in his arms. He noticed how thin her arms were, still, despite the protruding stomach. How fragile she seemed, especially now, after she’d almost collapsed, and had to be lowered to the ground, her eyes rolled up into her head, her muscles slack. She had become better at hiding the attacks, so why was this one so obvious? It was as if the witch gods wanted Tommy to find out all their secrets. Damon was far too aware of Tommy crouching next to him, saying nothing. If this attack harmed Elena in any way, Damon was going to kill the vampire, friend or no friend.

Caroline, Bonnie, and Sajen were all huddled around them. Waiting. Elena was probably only out a minute or two. But it felt like a lifetime. When she finally opened her eyes, Damon let out a long, shaky breath. He hadn’t realized it, but he’d been holding his breath.

“You can trust him,” she said.

Damon glanced at Tommy, who looked equally bewildered. “You mean Tommy?” he asked softly.

“Of course,” she said. “Now somebody help me up or we’ll be here all day.”

Damon couldn’t help but laugh as he grabbed both of her hands and hoisted her up. Once on her feet she brushed dirt off her maternity pants and said, “I’m starving. There’s food inside, Care?”

Caroline nodded, smiling. “I’ve done extra shopping this week, just for you.”

“Good. Damon, why don’t you bring your friend in, and we can talk about this over dinner?”

Damon’s eyes widened. He whispered, “You want me to invite him in? You’re that sure?”

“Yes.”

Damon mulled this over. The house was in his, Ric’s and, Caroline’s names, which meant that only he could and Ric could invite a vampire inside. It seemed too big a risk, just letting Tommy in today. If they didn’t let him in today, they could always do it tomorrow. But they could never take back the invitation.

“Damon,” Elena whispered, grabbing his hand, pulling him towards the house. “I saw him saving our lives. And I saw you two, in the past. He was warning you about Katherine. He called her a snake. He was a real friend to you, wasn’t he? Even after …”

Damon nodded.

“It would be a show of good faith,” she said. “I think it’s what we’re supposed to do. I think the baby wants us to trust him. I think Tommy could be important.”

He nodded, then dropped her hand as he turned to the rest of the group. “Sajen, my friend,” he said, his voice kinder than he expected. “You have no idea what it means to me that you came all the way to make sure we were okay. But as you can see I’ve got a couple crazy friends here to deal with, and having you here makes me nervous about the bar. Okay? Can you go back and make sure she’s doing okay? Who did you leave in charge, by the way?”

Sajen stared back at them, incredulous. “Um, how about no? I’m not going anywhere.”

Damon glowered at the bar manager. “Get the hell out of here, or I will freaking fire you. You get that?”

“Look,” Sajen whispered to Damon. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but Elena needs to get to the hospital and this guy needs to leave. Like now.”

“Were you dumb enough to give this idiot vervain without telling him what you were?” Tommy said. “Also, I’m not a total monster. If Elena needs to go to the hospital, she should go. Hey Blondie, why don’t you take Miss-Not-Quite-Katherine-Pierce to the hospital?”

Caroline cleared her throat. “You know, he has a point. Elena let’s get you in the car.”

“No!” his wife snapped.

“Caroline's right,” Matt said quietly.

“ELena,” Caroline said, sounding really worried now. “Let the boys handle boy stuff. Bonnie can stay here and keep this asshole in the line.”

Sajen barked out a laugh. Though it didn’t sound like he found anything funny at this point. “What is Bonnie supposed to do? Unless she has a magical ability to fly around?”

Damon shook his head, telling Caroline, “I don’t want Elena out of my sight. Who knows who else is in town. Call Meredith. Get her over here. And tell her she’s going to have to watch her back when she gets here.”

Caroline ran inside.

“Who’d you leave in charge?” he asked Sajen, his voice sharp, businesslike. He never talked to Sajen like this. He rarely used this kind of tone with any of his staff. Which was weird. Was he being too nice to people since he’d turned human?

Sajen looked embarrassed as he mumbled, “Dougie.”

Damon laughed, not kindly. “Dougie can barely pour a drink without sloshing it all over the place. What do you think’s gonna happen if something happens while you’re gone? Like if a bar fight breaks out?”

“It’s Charlottesville.”

Damon glared at him. “How many fights did you break up last week?”

Sajen sighed, saying, “Three, but one was just a couple college girls shoving at each other.”

“And imagine how Dougie would cope with that? And, by the way, that sounds like the beginning of a porno, so how about you get your ass back to Charlottesville and see if you can get some action after you break up the next two college girls who shove at each other? There might be hair pulling next time,” Damon said, waggling his eyebrows as he pushed Sajen towards his car. “Okay, now everybody say goodbye to Sajen.”

Sajen was fighting against Damon, but Damon just shoved him harder. They were almost to Sajen’s old Camry when Elena sprang into action. Though “sprang” might have been too strong a word. She tried to run to them, but running didn’t work anymore. So she half-walked, half-waddled over to her husband and his favorite employee.

Elena grabbed Damon’s arm and said, “You can’t.” Her words sounded like ice.

Damon’s eyebrows rose. Shocked, he said, “I thought you’d be all for this.”

“Not like this,” Elena said, her voice still hard and icy.

She pulled Damon away from Sajen, until they were far enough to whisper without the barman hearing them. “Talk to him,” she whispered.  “Wait ’til the vervain is gone. I don’t know, Damon. Bribe him if you have to. But you can’t let him leave like this. He’s going to get five miles down the road and realize how fucked up everything is. And then he’s either going to be afraid of you or he’ll be so curious he’ll have to find out everything. Maybe he’ll come back to try to fight Tommy. Or he’ll try to turn us all in. If Matt brushes him off — and I’m not entirely sure he would be on our side, given the picture on the Honeycutt girl’s phone — Sajen could always go the police in Charlottesville.”

“You want me to trust Tommy, but not Sajen?” Damon asked, incredulous.

“Tommy is listening in,” she reminded him.

“That I am!” Tommy shouted. “And the only reason I haven’t ripped into anybody yet is that I’ve known you since 1845.”

“When my family came to Mystic Falls. Before it was Mystic Falls,” Damon murmured to Elena.

She smiled faintly, as if excited to learn this fact he’d never mentioned before, even in the midst of this hurricane of craziness.

“That’s a joke, right?” Sajen asked, still apparently clueless.

“Yes!” Damon and Elena shouted.

Tommy whispered something, clearly intending it for Damon’s ears, though Damon wasn’t close enough to hear. Trying to pretend that he still had vamp hearing, Damon rolled his eyes at Tommy, but said nothing.

Tommy narrowed his eyes at Damon.

“Are you guys into something weird?” Sajen asked.

And now Damon started laughing. Pure, stupid, unhinged laughter. As everyone watched him, he kept laughing, bending over when his stomach clenched he was laughing so hard.

 "Damon!” Elena said sharply. “This isn’t funny!”

Catching his breath, he said, “Oh, it’s funny. It’s so not funny, it’s hilarious.”

Tommy began to chuckle.

“You better settle down,” Bonnie snapped at Tommy.

“What about this situation is funny?” Elena kept at him.

“Well, let’s see,” he said, trying to pull himself together. “You want me to invite Tommy in, but you won’t send Sajen home. Sajen doesn’t know anything. Not even one lick. But you think we should keep him here until we convince him to not make a fuss. Or maybe you want to lock him in the dungeon.” Seeing the barman’s ashen face he said, “I’m kidding, Sajen. We aren’t monsters. It’s not like we’re vampires or anything.”

Sajen’s eyes widened.

“I know, that would be crazy, right?” Damon said, trying to reassure the guy, trying to figure out what he could possibly tell him.

Tell his friend.

Yes, Sajen was a friend. This is why he tried to never make friends. They were the worst kind of liability, second only to women he loved.          

After a long pause, he leaned towards Sajen and said quietly, “Can you come back inside the house? I’ve got a story for you.”

Sajen nodded, finally looking frightened. Finally, he seemed to take in the gravity of the situation.

“By the way,” Damon said. “Where’s Alex? Is she somewhere safe?”

“With her mother,” Sajen told him.

Damon groaned. “Really? Isn’t your ex a crazy person? Will she be okay if you stay the night?”

“I’m not supposed to get her until the weekend. And her mother is … well she is crazy. But she keeps her safe.”

“Really?”

"Don’t worry.”

Damon nodded, but felt like the gravity of the situation was beginning to weigh him down. If he got Sajen killed, the cute, albeit annoying, child would be fatherless. It was really his day.

Now Damon sidled up next to Caroline. “Elena wants us to invite this idiot inside. I know he didn’t make the best first impression, but you did come at him with a vervain needle.”

Caroline looked thoughtful. “Did she see something while she was out?”

He nodded.

“I don’t know, Damon. It seems like an awfully big risk to take.”

Damon shrugged, saying, “I know. But I’ve known Tommy Fell my whole life. He was a decent guy alive. He was a decent guy dead. He’s never screwed me over. If there’s anyone outside our little circle of misfits we can trust, it’s him. And if we don’t start showing him that we’re willing to trust him, and that we’re worth his trust, we could lose him as an ally.”

Caroline nodded. “He is a Fell. That’s something. I can’t wait to tell Meredith.”

He rolled his eyes. “Let’s stick to the matter at hand. Can I invite him in?”

Caroline let out a long shaky breath as she said, “Fine. Go with your gut. Or Elena’s gut. Or the baby’s gut. But be careful.”

Damon smiled tightly at her before running up beside Tommy, throwing his arm around his friend’s shoulder, and leading him to the front door. Damon pulled away so that he could open the door. He stepped inside and grinned, realizing this was his first time inviting a vampire into the boarding house since he’d become human again. There was something satisfying about having the power to deny or allow entrance. “Old friend, would you please come in?”

Tommy’s eyes widened as Damon stepped aside, giving him room to enter. Tommy stuck his foot towards the threshold, clearly still expecting to meet an invisible barrier. His foot went through. It was just air now. Tommy sucked in a quick breath as he stepped inside. “What the hell, man?” he asked Damon.

Damon grinned wickedly. “Welcome to the house of weird.”          

Chapter Text

Still the same day in May 2018 (again, picking up right where we left off)

Jeremy and a group of twelve-year-olds were huddled around the front entrance, and they all stepped back to let Tommy and Damon in. Jeremy and the oldest girl were holding crossbows. “What the hell, Gilbert?” Damon yelled at him under his breath. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Jeremy bristled as he said, “Ric went upstairs with the little kids. We were standing guard.”

“Well stand down!” Damon grabbed the crossbows from Jeremy and the girl, easily, their grips were ridiculous, and threw them in a corner. “Why don’t you go back to teaching them how to decapitate a vampire and then maybe later you can give a lesson on how not to get your weapon torn out of your hands. That was pathetic.”

Jeremy looked like he was about to say something.

Damon raised his hand, saying, “Not today, little Gilbert.” Seeing Jeremy’s distress, and knowing that the kid was probably worried about his sister, Damon relaxed his tone. “I promise you I’ve got this under control. Elena had a vision. We can trust him. I wouldn’t have invited him in otherwise.”

Jeremy sucked in a deep breath, not looking happy, but resigned. He stepped back, mumbling something about decapitating Damon if this whole thing went south. Then he and the kids scurried out, toward the back door.Turning to Tommy, Damon laughed and said, “In-laws.”

Tommy followed Damon into the library, whistling and whipping his head around to take in the ornate Sotheby’s auction of it all. “Nice little pad you’ve got yourself, old man. How exactly were you able to hold onto your family’s fortune?”

Damon laughed. “We scared them into keeping our secret over the years. And then I did a lot of the smarter investing. We would have lost this place during the Depression, if it was up to those idiots. You could have done the same with yours.”

“And done that to Bess and little Charlie?” Tommy snapped. “Better to compel myself into fancy hotel rooms. I’ve even got an Italian villa.” 

Damon raised his brows, saying, “So do I.”

“Finally got to the homeland?”

“Don’t know what I thought I was going to find there,” Damon said, feeling casual and cool and collected all of a sudden. Like nothing important was happening. “I mean, the Riviera is beautiful. Rome is fun. Italy is fun, period. But … I went to check on Stefan during the war, and on the way back I stopped into this village. My grandmother was from there. I’d learned Italian. I could more than get by. Introduced myself as a distant relative.” Damon paused, remembering how surreal it had felt to stand in that town, to speak with those humans who knew nothing of the truth of the world. To play human.

“And?” Tommy asked, his voice growing more casual by the moment. As if they were just two old friends, reconnecting, trading stories.

Damon said, “They were nice. I didn’t eat any of them. But it didn’t mean anything either. They didn’t know me. I didn’t know them. For so many years, nothing mattered. You know?”

Someone cleared his throat behind them. Sajen. Caroline was chasing after Sajen, and through the doorway, he could see Elena struggle to “hurry” (or walk faster than a waddle). She had both hands on her back, and she seemed to be leaning backward to fight against gravity. She also looked out of breath. As she approached, he smiled a small smile and mouthed, “I’m sorry about this.” This was not the sort of stress a pregnant woman needed.

But Sajen was continuing to be Sajen. “You mean the recession, right? And, seriously, what war has been anywhere close to Italy? And is eating people a joke between you people? Damon — gross. Seriously.”

Tommy began to laugh, like a hyena. Caroline slapped him upside the head. Damon glared at both of them.

“I mean, seriously,” Tommy said as his ridiculous laughter subsided. “How stupid does this guy have to be?”

“You didn’t believe me at first either,” Damon snapped.

“It didn’t take me this long to catch up,” Tommy snapped back.

Damon sighed.

“Also,” Tommy said. “How could you invite me in? Like seriously, why didn’t Elena have to do that? Or Alaric?”

“That’s what you’re concerned about?” Sajen said, increasingly obstinate. “Of course he could let you in. Now, Damon, tell me what’s going on! Or, or, I’ll just scream.”

Caroline slapped Sajen upside the head. “You will not scream. There are children here. Including mine. You will keep yourself together,” she snapped.

Sajen glanced around, as if looking for children, and his eyes landed on the corner had thrown the weapons. “Those are crossbows!” he shouted. “You guys actually teach the kids to shoot stuff here?”

“Everybody just simmer down for one damn minute,” Damon said, very tired all of a sudden and no longer enjoying the simple pleasure of catching up with an old friend. He’d only gotten five hours of sleep last night.

Being human was exhausting.

He had had it up to here with the human body’s dependence on sleep.

There was no easy way to break any of this news, to Sajen or to Tommy, and so he just began blurting out facts. “Sajen, I was talking about World War II. Stefan was in Egypt, but I stopped by Italy once the war in Europe was over. And I was talking about the Great Depression, the one that began with the stock market crash of 1929. And all of this is possible because I was born in 1839 and turned into a vampire in 1864 after my girlfriend fed me her blood and my asshole of a father shot me in the back. I turned Tommy in 1868, when he was dying of consumption.”

Sajen just stared, seeming like he might laugh, collapse, or run away screaming at any moment. Maybe all three in quick succession. Instead he stood in place, mouth gaping open, looking terrified. Disbelieving, but terrified.

Great.

Damon turned towards Tommy. “Elena got turned into a vampire a few years ago. Against her will. She had a tough transition. Soon after, we found out about a cure for vampirism. We tracked it down. It’s this ancient potion. 2000 years old. Witches today can’t replicate it.” Damon hesitated, not wanting to reveal that, technically, Tommy could take the Cure from him. Because then he’d start aging quickly and die, maybe before his child was born, certainly before she was a year old. Tommy wouldn’t do that do him. Of course. But still. It seemed too big a chance to take. Or what if Tommy got drunk and mentioned it to some random vampire who had no love for Damon Salvatore. So, he settled on the closest version of the truth that didn’t end up with some vampire sucking the youth and vitality out of him. “There were just a couple doses. I’m sorry if you were just thinking you’d want this. There’s no more. Elena took it. I took it to be with her. She wanted a family. I’d had enough eternity. I just wanted Elena.”

Elena walked up beside him and kissed his cheek. He put his arm around her and pulled her close.

“It’s my baby, Tommy,” he said.

Tommy’s expression was inscrutable. “But … that’s not possible.”

“When has impossible ever stopped me?” Damon said with small smile.

“Why didn’t you tell me when I first showed up?” Tommy asked, still incredulous.

“I don’t know, man. I’m not used to this. I mean, I’m not used to being less than,” he stumbled out the words.

Tommy frowned. “You thought I would attack you?”

“No.”

His friend pressed on. “The thought crossed your mind?”

Damon shrugged. “Maybe. It’s been a hundred years. How the hell am I supposed to know how you’re going to react to completely bizarre news?”

“You people are vampires?” Sajen broke in, his voice rising on each word so that he was shrieking as he said, “Like blood-sucking, killing, only in bad movies vampires?”

“There are some good movies. And even some good TV,” Tommy said, grinning.

Damon nodded. “I mean you have to love the classics. Bela Lugosi’s Dracula. Before that, Nosferatu, of course.”

“Yes. That was amazing. Worth living into the 20^th century to see that,” Tommy said in a rush. “I must have seen it six times in the theatre, and I kept thinking that I wished you could have been there to see it with me. You kids all grew up with movies and TV, right? You’re like actual young adults?” he asked, looking at Elena, Caroline, Bonnie, and Sajen.

After a pause, Elena broke into a grin and said, “We are bonafide millennials.”

“Well you have no idea how good you have it,” Tommy said, his tone warm and playful. “Movies — when I first saw them it was like watching magic. Or God. Or the devil. Something so far outside of what I grew up with. I mean, we didn’t even have a theatre anywhere close to Mystic Falls.”

Damon grinned. There was a pleasant warmth descending over him, and he was trying to let himself be. Let himself stay in the moment. “I liked the 1994 film version of Interview. Wasn’t that surprisingly good? The Lost Boys, of course. It’s not all Twilight.”

“And have you seen Being Human?” Tommy said. “The BBC one? It’s got a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost as flat mates. Funny concept, right? Except their vampires can’t look at crucifixes, which is totally weird.”

“Let’s not forget everything Anne Rice wrote until she found religion,” Damon continued the silliness until he caught Elena shooting daggers from her eyes and saw Sajen’s crestfallen face.

“Sajen,” he said as kindly as he could.

Elena gave Sajen a real smile. “Damon and I are humans now. We can’t bite or do anything bad, okay? But we were vampires. I was just one for a couple years. Damon was a vampire for a long, long time. No one’s going to hurt you. Not even Tommy.”

Damon nodded, adding, “Tommy was being a dick earlier, but he’s a good friend of mine. Maybe he was showing off. Maybe his quota of stupid wasn’t met for today.”

Tommy slapped Damon.

“Can everyone please stop hitting each other?” Elena said, voice shrill and had-it-up-to-here.

Sajen started looking around, eyes lit up with some fresh idea. “Where are they?” he asked, laughing a little.

“Where are what?” Caroline asked.

“The cameras. Are we on some kind of reality show? Hidden camera? Do I get a car if I figure it out?”

“Oh, Sajen,” Bonnie said. She looked like this whole situation pained her. “There are no cameras.”

He turned towards her, saying in the most pathetic voice, “It’s real? It’s all real?”

Bonnie nodded, patting his arm.

Oh god, was Sajen going to cry?

Thankfully he pulled himself together enough to a. not cry, and b. make a reasonable demand. “Prove it,” Sajen said to Damon, voice steady.

Damon raised his brows at Tommy. Tommy grinned maliciously, and then his face began to change.

Sajen let out a little shriek, backing up.

Tommy’s eyes turned red. Veins popped out of his face. He bared his teeth, revealing fangs.

Sajen backed himself into Bonnie. He was shaking. She caught him, murmuring, “You’re okay, Sajen. He’s not going to hurt you. He’s just offering proof. Hey, asshole, enough proof!”

Vamped out Tommy laughed and continued to snarl. Damon couldn't help but feel jealous, even wistful. (Though at least his favorite employee wasn’t afraid of him.) Finally, Damon snapped, “Enough!”

Tommy’s featured went back to human.

Sajen was leaning comfortably into Bonnie. Then he flinched and moved away. “Are you one of them?” he asked her in the saddest, smallest voice.

Bonnie smiled in sympathy. “No.”

Sajen looked relieved for the first time since they’d come inside.

“I’m a witch,” she said.

“Very funny.”

“No, seriously, she is,” Caroline said. She had scurried off into the kitchen and now returned with a tray of drinks. “I thought everybody could use a drink. Sajen, this is Damon’s best bourbon. Damon, no complaining. You’re at fault here. Somehow. You must be.” She served bourbon to everyone except Elena, who got a cup of steaming hot tea.

Now Sajen was looking suspiciously at everyone. He held his glass but refused to drink from it. “We’re going to revisit the witch thing later,” he said. “At least you don’t suck blood, right?” Bonnie nodded in agreement. “Okay, any other vampires in this house?”

Caroline put down the tray. Then she raised her hand, looking shy all of a sudden.

Sajen’s eyes widened, but at least he wasn’t shrieking or shaking. “That’s why you look so young?”

“Score one for the moron,” Tommy said, way too snippy. He sipped his drink. Damon smacked Tommy on the shoulder, almost knocking the glass out of Tommy’s hand.

“No,” Elena said. “Everyone here is human. Except for Caroline. And today Tommy, who is clearly just visiting and should seriously start thinking about ways to get back in my good graces.”

Sajen chewed on his lip, as if trying to figure out what to say next. Finally, he glanced from Tommy to Damon and said, “So you two are from the 1800s.”

“Yup,” Damon said.

“But when you turned human you didn’t turn a hundred and whatever?”

“No,” Damon.

Elena pulled Damon towards the sofa. She lowered herself onto the plush cushions, sighing in relief. He perched beside her on the arm of the sofa. Elena rubbed her lower back as she said, “Damon was 25 when he turned. He started aging from 25. So now he should be 26. In five years, he’ll be 31. Just like anybody.”

Sajen frowned.

“I know,” Damon said. “It’s weird.”

“And what can vampires do?” Sajen wanted to know. “And how can you walk in the sun? And why aren’t you sleeping in coffins all day?”

Tommy gave Damon a pointed look. Damon nodded. No need to give away all their secrets. “A lot of things you read in books, or see in movies, isn’t true. We don’t have to sleep in coffins. Some have to stay inside during the day. Vampires burn in the sun. But some have a friendly witch who can help them walk in sunlight. Needs to be a pretty powerful one, though.”

"So, no sparkling?” Sajen said, smirking just a tiny bit now.

Everyone chuckled as Caroline said, “I was disappointed, when I first found out. But no sparkling. Probably for the best.”

“Do you have to kill?” Sajen asked Damon.

Damon sighed. “No vampire has to kill. Everybody seems to slip up. Once. Twice. A thousand times. Maybe there’s some perfect specimen of morals and perfection out there.”

“Did you?” Sajen asked, clearly hoping that Damon was the exception.

Damon had never felt so guilty admitting it out loud. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Sorry buddy, but I had a few bad decades.” Sorry, Sajen, but you’ve been working in close quarters with a retired serial killer.

Sajen swallowed hard, turning to Elena. “What about you?”

She looked as sad as Damon felt, though she’d done so little killing in comparison to his. “Twice.”

Tommy whistled. “Only two? Even if it was just a couple years, that’s impressive, darlin’.”

“And I suppose you go around killing people willy nilly?” Sajen said.

“You know what I don’t do?” Tommy said, zooming over to him so fast that Sajen dropped his drink. “I don’t use the term ‘willy nilly.’ And I also don’t kill nearly as many people as you might think. Besides, all of our crimes pale in comparison to Stefan’s.”

Sajen’s eyes widened, as if he were only just realizing that Damon’s brother must have been born in the 19^th century too.

Caroline looked like she was about to cry. She clearly wanted to say something, but couldn’t because her lips were trembling. She was too busy holding back tears, to upset to defend her husband.

Damon was about to punch his asshole of a best friend when Elena grabbed both his hands in hers. He glanced down at her. She’d slouched back into the couch and she looked utterly exhausted. Her belly bulged in front of her, a symbol of all they had to gain and to lose. If he felt vulnerable, he couldn’t imagine how vulnerable she must feel. She didn’t want him to get his neck snapped. Or even get on the bad side of any vampire.

He let Elena hold onto his hands, but he did start shouting at Tommy. “Can you just stop mouthing off about my brother?” Damon almost screamed. He could feel his heart begin to race, but he breathed in and out, in and out, as Elena had taught him, on a 4-6 count rhythm.  As he inhaled, he let his abdomen and chest expand with air. I-2-3-4. As exhaled, he let all the air leave his chest.1-2-3-4-5-6.

“What?” Tommy asked, clearly confused.

Caroline was really crying now. Bonnie moved away from Sajen to comfort her friend. Elena cast a sympathetic glance at them.

Damon opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He couldn’t bring himself to say the words. The truth.

Caroline sank to the floor, she was sobbing so hard.

Tommy sucked in a breath and cursed softly. “Is he dead?” he asked.

Damon nodded.

“Really dead? Dead dead?”

“Yes!” Caroline shrieked. “And it was heroic. And noble. He saved Damon’s life. He saved Elena’s life. He saved our whole town. We wouldn’t have a home here anymore, without him. And there’d be hellfire on Earth. He was brave. And you keep saying these nasty things. For no reason.”

Tommy stuck his hands in his pockets and avoided looking at anyone.

A long moment passed, and then Sajen broke in, his voice hyper now, too excited. “That’s how Stefan died? Something crazy and magical? Like vampire related? Did I actually just say that? Whoa. Not a car crash?”

Damon snorted, saying, “Of course it wasn’t a car crash. He could have walked away from that. He did. On multiple occasions.”

“Damon, I’m sorry,” Tommy said haltingly. “I had no idea. I thought he’d just gone off the deep end again.”

“You’re a fucking asshole, is what you are,” Damon muttered. “I know you don’t like him, but Jesus. He’s my brother. I get to verbally abuse him. Me. Only me.”

“I’m sorry, okay?” Tommy said.

“What did he ever do to you?” Caroline whimpered from the floor. Bonnie had her arms around the blond girl, and Damon wasn’t sure when he had seen a more pathetic sight. Caroline just looked destroyed.

Tommy muttered something under his breath.

Damon cleared his throat, saying, “Don’t have the vamp hearing any more, man. Spit it out. You have something to say, spit it out.”

Tommy looked right at him, and his face went hard and his eyes went cold. They weren’t red, no veins popped out, but in this moment, he looked more like a vampire than Damon had ever seen him. He looked quiet, deadly. He looked dead. Tommy’s eyes looked so old all of a sudden. And before he spoke, Damon realized what he was going to say. He thought he’d kept the truth from his old friend. He’d thought he’d protected both of them.

“Stefan killed my parents,” Tommy said with a sneer. Then he set his glass down on the nearest table so hard that the glass broke and walked slowly towards the door. Shards and whiskey were everywhere. The brown liquid soon spilled over the edge and onto the carpet. Damon sighed, because he knew he would have to be the person to clean that up. No one else would try to get the stain out of the Persian rug. And it was one he’d bought himself, in Persia, in the 1970s, and shipped home. He was staring at the drink because it was easier to think about how to fix that, what stain remover to use, than to think about Tommy.

But finally, he had to look up. Tommy was at the front door. “I didn’t know you knew,” he said.

“Clearly,” Tommy snapped.

"He was my brother,” Damon barked at him. “What was I supposed to do? Give him up?”Tommy laughed humorlessly. “You could have put him down.”

“Tommy!” Elena shouted from the couch. “There was a lot of good in Stefan. And I’m going to remind you, again, that he’s dead and that his widow is collapsed on the floor. Crying. And she’s one of my best friends. Damon might be putting on a brave face for you right now, but losing Stefan was like losing a limb. And… you’ve caused a lot of trouble already. You were invited in because I told Damon to invite you. I told him to trust you.” Tommy’s expression softened just a tiny bit. And when Elena spoke again, her voice was kinder. “I’m so sorry about your parents. My parents died when I was 16. It was devastating. We’ve all lost parents here. We’ve all lost a lot. I’m so sorry, Tommy.”

Tommy nodded, though what he was nodding at Damon didn’t know. After a moment’s hesitation, he walked out the front door of the Salvatore boarding house. Tommy didn’t slam the door, but it swung shut behind him nonetheless.

 ###    

That night

It was midnight. Elena lay awake next to Damon, fidgeting in bed. She couldn’t sleep. Part of it was that she was as big as a whale now and it was just so hard to get comfortable. But she couldn’t get Tommy’s face out of her mind. She couldn’t forget how lifeless he’d seemed as he told Damon that he’d known the big secret all along. She couldn’t forget that behind the cold exterior was an expression filled with pain and longing and confusion. The expression of a much younger man. Even a child.

“You need to sleep,” Damon murmured. “Hell, I need to sleep. Gone are the days when I could go a week at a time without closing my eyes. Those were the days.”

“Good old vampire days?” Elena asked, turning over to lay her head on his shoulder. Her belly rubbed up against his torso. Damon reached his arm around her shoulders to pull her towards him, gently caressing her gigantic stomach at the same time.

“No more vampire days,” he said, and his voice dripped with exhaustion. “I’ve lost my stamina. Hell, maybe I’m getting old.”

“You’re twenty-six!” Elena said laughing.

“Maybe that’s old,” Damon said.

They lay there in silence for a long while. She wanted to bring up Tommy, but she didn’t know how. Especially now that the drama involved Stefan killing Thomas and Cornelia Fell. Holy fuck, Stefan! Was his past ever going to stop haunting them? Not that Damon was some angelic vampire with a heart of gold. She’d had a very, very uncomfortable conversation with Josie Lockwood the other day. Tyler’s first cousin who had moved back to town after being gone for all of high school. Josie had stopped by the boarding house, sick with grief about her cousin’s death, anxious to talk to his friends about who he’d been as an adult, and to find out if anyone had a lead on his mysterious death.

Elena had sat with her and Caroline in the parlor, eating more than her share of the chocolate chip cookies Caroline had made specifically for Josie’s visit. Caroline had done most of the talking. Elena had a response going through her mind, which of course she couldn’t voice out loud: “My husband killed him, but he didn’t mean to so I’ve tried to forgive him and sometimes I feel like I have forgiven him and other times I want to claw his eyes out for the crime, and other times I feel so guilty for not being around to stop his spiral into serial-killer-ness, that it almost seems like I killed Tyler.”

Damon’s hand was still on her stomach when the baby began to kick. She kicked forcefully, rhythmically, but not too hard. It didn’t hurt. It did feel deliberate.

“Is she playing the drums in there?” Damon asked with a little laugh.

“And you wonder why I can’t sleep,” she murmured.

“Seriously, maybe she’ll be a musician. That’s a perfect 1-2-3 rhythm. Feel it, babe. It’s a waltz.”

“So, she’s going to be an old-timey musician?” Elena asked, placing her hand on top of Damon’s so that they could feel the kicking together. He was right. The baby kept at this same steady beat. 1-2-3. 1-2-3. 1-2-3.

“Well I’m her father and I am old-timey. Didn’t you once call me an antique?” he quipped back at her. “Besides, our first dance was a waltz. I saw the way you looked at me. And me, oh man Elena, seeing you in that dress, dancing without touching you at first. That freaking dance. Elena, good God.”

“The simple intimacy of the near-touch,” she breathed, feeling the familiar Damon butterflies fluttering inside her. Yes, they’d been together for years. Yes, they’d risked their lives for each other, and argued bitterly about things like her wanting to sacrifice herself to psychopaths like Klaus. Yes, she knew Damon better than she would have ever known a normal human husband. And yes, they were married and expecting a magical child. But even so, sometimes he just had to say her name and she was 17 again. On fire again. In love with her good-guy boyfriend’s bad-boy brother. Right now, just his gentle, not particular sexual, hand rubbing her pregnant belly — it was enough to consume her with lust.

Elena tilted her head up and kissed him. He leaned into the kiss. It was sweet and slow and sexy. Oh, Damon was a good kisser. Sometimes it sucked to have to deal with his 179 years of baggage. The murders alone were enough to weigh a girl down. But other times, like right now, she opened her lips and he darted his tongue inside her mouth and his tongue managed to be urgent and gentle, impulsive and patient, all at the same time. No one had ever kissed her like Damon kissed her. Moments like this, she was glad she’d married a man who’d been honing his kissing and lovemaking techniques since the 1850s. Maybe once you go vampire you can’t go back.

Speaking of lovemaking. It had been a while. And all of a sudden, Elena was horny. And not just regular horny. This was urgent. This was supremely important.

She managed to roll on top of him — it was easier than trying to sit up first — and then she was straddling her beautiful husband. He smiled up at her. She clumsily pulled her nightgown off. It wasn’t a sexy one — she’d taken to sleeping in Mumu-type attire. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t made any advances in the last couple weeks, beyond kisses and gentle caresses. Elena managed to get the damned frumpy nightgown off.

Was he frowning at her. She longed for vamp sight. Elena gazed down at Damon, trying to figure out why he was frowning at her. That was a definite frown. Was she getting too fat? Could he see the stretch marks even in the dark? Was her bulging belly no longer a turn-on? This morning when she’d looked at herself naked in the mirror, she’d had the distinct impression that an alien was protruding from her torso. Maybe Damon didn’t find her pregnant body cute anymore.

“What’s wrong?” she asked him, a nervous school girl all over again.

“Nothing. We should just get to sleep,” he said. He sounded cagey.

“Damon!” she snapped. “We haven’t had sex in two weeks. That’s a record for us. Actually, we’ve been setting records for 10 days.”

“It has not been two weeks,” he protested.

“The last time we had sex was the night after Jeremy’s birthday.”

“Well, there’s a turn-on. Let’s definitely have sex while we talk about your brother.”

“Do you not find me sexy anymore?” she said, tears coming to her eyes. Damn hormones.

Damon laughed and it was genuine. He sat up and kissed her hard. He was all urgency and as his crotch rubbed up against her pelvis, she could feel that familiar swelling. “You are so damned sexy you have no idea how hard it to resist you. Even in that goddamned ugly nightgown. Or is it a night shirt?”

“I found it in the attic. One of your relatives wore it I guess. Whenever Mumus were a thing,” Elena said, her voice evening out. She was relieved, but still confused.

“Honey,” Damon said as he ran his hands down her arms in a subtle but sensual manner. “I just don’t want to hurt you.”

“Or the baby?”

“You think you can’t have sex with a pregnant woman?”

Damon sighed and said, “It’s not like I have experience in this arena. Or ever had buddies who had kids. Except for Alaric, and Jo was gone before she’d gotten, um, you know.”

“Big?”

“Into the seventh month,” Damon said judiciously. “Anyway, I don’t want to cause premature labor, or poke the baby.”

Elena broke out laughing. And then she maneuvered off him so that she could slide out of her granny panties. She began tugging at Damon’s boxer briefs.

“Honey,” he said again. Almost whining this time.

“Shut up,” she ordered as she yanked off his underwear and straddled him again, rubbing against him deliberately, until her body was gently riding his. She felt his cock swell against her. Fast. Yes. She had him. As she eased him inside her, Elena said, “You need to read the books I gave you. And you need to trust me when I say that I’m a medical student, I’ve read those books and my real textbooks, and we’ve got a long way to go until we worry about sex triggering labor. If I was on bed rest, or had a high-risk pregnancy, then your concerns would be valid.”

 “Yes, doctor,” Damon moaned as he began to thrust, still beneath her but matching her rhythm. “You’re extra sexy when you get all smart on me.”

“And seriously, are you that much of an idiot that you think your penis could poke the baby? Like touch her?”

And now Damon gently lifted Elena up and turned her over so that she was flat on her back. He climbed on top of her and grinned down at her with his most devilish smirk. He did that eye thing, as if daring her to slide away from him.

“Wait!” she said. “What about the perfect waltz rhythm?”

Damon frowned at her.

“Do you think the baby is trying to communicate with us?”

“Through a waltz?” he asked, incredulous, and clearly way too turned on to think straight.

 “Stranger things have happened,” Elena said.

“Is she still kicking?” he asked, putting his hand on her belly. “I don’t feel it.”

“I think she’s swimming now,” Elena said, noticing that her insides seemed to be swishing.

“Then I’m going to say that we’re fine. No visions. Maybe she’s just going to be a kickass drummer when she grows up. Anyway, no visions, right?”

“Right,” Elena agreed.

He leaned down to kiss her but, at this angle, couldn’t quite reach her face over top of her belly. So he kissed her belly. And he kissed her breasts, suckling on one nipple with such a light, gentle touch, she could bear it. Her nipples were painfully sensitive, but Damon had learned how to tend to them. “Honey,” he said now in a strained voice. “I’m sorry to act like a horny teenager. But if I don’t get in you right now I’m just going to – “

She laughed, and whispered, “I want you too, honey.” Her voice wasn’t as horny as before. There was still the same tone, but she was being gentle.

When had she started calling him honey? It almost seemed to safe a term. Or too suburban. But at some point, in the last couple months, their relationship had morphed into something where they weren’t just consumed by a deep, mystical passion, and they weren’t just protecting each other from the forces of darkness, and they weren’t just soul mates, or ex-vampire refugees in the normal world of Charlottesville. They were protecting each other from all the little things – Elena lecturing Caroline on how to clean the kitchen so that the strangely neat-freakish Damon wouldn’t spend all evening trying to stop himself from re-cleaning the kitchen, only to end up doing it anyway. And Damon protected Elena from her pregnancy mood swings by distracting her, making her laugh when she thought she would go crazy over something.

And he was just so soft and kind with her – he’d always loved her, but she’d never realized that Damon could spend an hour at a time without snark.

“Honey,” she said now, “if you don’t start right now I’m going to explode.” Soon he was thrusting with an almost desperate focus. Not since the first time they’d done it after she’d gotten out of the coma had he fucked her like this. Like he was a man who’d been starving for sex.

“Elena,” Damon screamed out. She was about to tell him to be quiet, that they were far from alone in this house. But then he moved his hand to her spot, and she didn’t care anymore. She screamed with pleasure. Damon thrust deeper and then, inside, he was hitting the other magic spot, and Elena cried out even louder. She was a woman drinking water from a stream, after a year of thirst. It was pleasure so intense, it was almost pain. But it wasn’t. It was ecstasy. It tore apart her conscious mind. As she came, she felt him quiver, she heard him moan, and then it seemed like Damon’s mind was exploding too, and they were merging.

After a moment that seemed to last two centuries, he rolled off her and collapsed on the bed beside her. Husband and wife lay sweaty, panting, spent.

“That was insane,” her husband said.

“Yeah.”

“Do you think we woke anybody up?” he asked.

“Bonnie is a light sleeper.”

“Yup,” Damon said, as if knowing this from experience. Sometimes Elena was still surprised that Damon and Bonnie were friends, since they’d spent so much time hating each other.

“And Caroline has vamp hearing,” Elena said.

“Doesn’t mean she’d wake up from a deep sleep,” he told her.

She thought for a moment about multiple embarrassments and then grinned. “I don’t care. That sex was worth it. It was … psychedelic.”

“You wouldn’t know what psychedelic felt like if it bit you in the ass.”

“But you would?” she joked with him.

“Of course. I’ve done it all, Lena,” he said. She could see him smirking in the dark. “And that was like LSD and heroin and ecstasy and cocaine all mixed together with a side of moonlight and a shot of witchy wu-wu. Now that I’m human I don’t think I’d want to fuck with any of that stuff. I do not have time for rehab. But I guess I don’t need to, as long as you let me have sex with you,” he said, looking over at her and doing that eye thing that was Damon’s patented sexy look.

She laughed and laughed as she settled her naked, sweaty, fat body into his. She closed her eyes not because she was trying to sleep but because she now felt like she had to. She was no longer fidgety. No longer uncomfortable. No longer worried. Tommy would be found. They’d solve the mystery. Their baby would be fine. As long as she had Damon to lean into. As long as she could depend on him. As long as he found her irresistible: everything would be fine.

Chapter Text

June 2018

Mystic Falls, Virginia

It was a Wednesday morning. Two weeks had passed since the drama of Tommy's arrival and abrupt departure. No one could find him.

Elena sat in the kitchen of the Salvatore boarding house, sipping mint tea and devouring a plate of deviled ham. She'd spread several medical texts over their large kitchen table. She was behind, and the semester was over, but she'd managed to pass every med school test she took. If she passed her finals, her favorite professor had promised her that she'd pass the semester. Be a second-year in the fall. Of course, going back to school posed a million logistical issues: classes started when the baby would be three weeks old, and they hadn't even thought about daycare. And she'd been kind of busy lately. But now, with seven weeks to go until the baby was born, Elena wanted to dig into her schoolwork. She wanted her life back — that life she'd had with Damon in Charlottesville. Their crummy apartment. Her classes. His bar. Their human friends.

Elena felt a need to prove that she could do more than wreak supernatural havoc. So she'd been studying since six that morning.

"You are seriously weak," Alaric said as he and Damon came in through the back door, both dripping with sweat. "How many times did I drop you?" He grabbed a bottle of water out of the fridge, took a long swig, and tossed another bottle to Damon.

The baby kicked. Elena placed a hand on her engorged belly as she grinned at the two men. She couldn't believe how big she'd gotten. At 33 weeks pregnant, her belly didn't fit under the table anymore, so she was sitting farther back, her belly brushing up against the table's edge, her arms stretching to her work.

Damon rolled his eyes as he chugged his water. "I can't get it right. I'm moving too slowly. Fighting — it feels like I'm moving my limbs through molasses."

"Better get over that, brother," Ric said. "We don't know what we're up against."

Damon came to stand behind Elena. He leaned down and kissed her head. "Babe, you still think I'm badass, right?"

Elena giggled. "Like when you freaked out about getting a blister?"

Damon ruffled her hair, muttering, "You suck, you know that?" And then to Ric, he said, "At least I run faster than you. Helps to be young. Ish. What are you now, 40?"

Alaric broke out laughing. "And when is your 180th birthday?"

At eight, witches began to show up, trickling into the boarding house until there were twelve, including Bonnie. Though Bonnie did not live here, she and the witches who'd been mysteriously drawn to Mystic Falls had taken up residence in the Salvatore boarding house, during the day. Bonnie's house wasn't big enough for twelve witches (including her). All twelve had spent the last two weeks reading grimoires and drinking Damon's fourth best bourbon. Every witch except for Bonnie was a vampire hater, so they kind of brought the mood down. Their were three Bennett witches, and Elena thought they should be nicer, since Damon had saved Emily Bennett's children, and ensured, over 153 years, that each generation of her family would survive. They weren't any nicer. Caroline had to remind Elena that Damon had also turned Bonnie's mother into a vampire, in order to save Elena's life.

These witches were prejudiced. They had made many rude remarks to both Caroline and Damon. Since Damon had spent 153 years as a vampire, they counted him as one, despite his biology. The witches were polite to Alaric and Elena, since each had spent a short time as a vampire. But the witches gave them both a wide berth, as if they were afraid that vampirism might be catching. Bonnie remained neutral, saying she needed all parties to cooperate, and almost everyone was now, also, pissed at her.

The witches were lost in their research. The problem with this research? It was going nowhere.

Lots of trying:

Trying to find out what a ley line actually was.

Trying to find any spell about changing ley lines.

Trying to find a locator spell that didn't include an item owned by who you were trying to locate, in case Tommy Fell was the key to the mystery.

Trying to find the other vampires who seemed to be lurking around Mystic Falls.

Trying to find a way to communicate with Damon and Elena's baby.

Trying to find a way to close the magic hotspot.

Trying to figure out what they should be looking for.

So basically, the witches were drinking and reading and talking, and getting nowhere.

Around nine, a grandmotherly witch wandered into the kitchen, telling Elena that she needed to make some tea. "I can make you a cup that will be good for the baby," she said.

Elena, suspicious of anything for her baby not FDA-approved, politely declined. But it was awkward having this woman in there, just waiting for her tea kettle to whistle. After a few moments, Elena said, "Are you guys making any progress?"

The witch looked at her intensely. "I'm beginning to think it's a very basic question."

Elena frowned. Damon wandered into the kitchen and began poking around in the fridge. "Didn't I get some soda?" he asked.

"You drank it all," Elena said.

"Do you know how annoying it is to not be able to crack into the good stuff this early?" he grumbled.

"So what's the question?" Elena asked the witch.

The woman smiled, saying, "What is magic and where did it come from?"

Elena laughed. She thought it was a joke.

The witch did not laugh with her.

Damon glared at the woman, whose red hair seemed to shimmer in the morning light.

"Vampires wouldn't understand," she said.

Damon held up his right arm, which bore a nasty cut. "Got this when I was training this morning. Not a vampire anymore."

"Once a vampire, always a vampire," the woman said. Turning to Elena, she muttered, "At least your parents didn't live to see the choices you've made, dear."

"BONNIE!" Damon bellowed. "If you don't get this bigot out of my house, and all the rest of her friends, I swear to God I will show you that I don't have to be a vampire to inflict pain."

Bonnie came running, two grimoires clutched in her hands.

"You know what the real question is? Why are you people such dicks?" Damon was asking the red-haired witch.

"What's going on?" Bonnie asked.

"Your vampire-hating friend here is telling Elena that her parents would hate her for being a vampire back in the day. Or loving me. Or any number of vampire-sympathetic choices."

Bonnie sighed. Turning towards the red-haired woman, she said, "Out. Now." When they were alone, she said, "I'm sorry, Elena. I'll talk to them. Again."

Damon's face was red. "I want them out, Bon-Bon."

Bonnie shook her head. "I can't."

"Like hell you can't," Damon snapped. "I'll go throw them all out myself. And then I'll show them how once a vampire is always a vampire when I slit their fucking throats."

"It's too important," Bonnie said.

"Caroline says we might be overreacting," Damon said. "Has a super villain come to town? A few cars crashed on the stretch of road where Hell was destroyed. Witches, vampires, and possibly werewolves are showing up like tourists, drawn here for reasons passing understanding. Also a seven and a half month old fetus gives nonsensical visions to her mother. Weird? Yes. The end of the world? Not really."

Bonnie sighed. "Caroline is wrong and you know it. The ley lines are shifting. Something is happening, and these witches are powerful. I need them. Here." Bonnie Bennett was convinced that Mystic Falls had become a magical hotspot. Ever since the car crashes began, Alaric had been researching ley lines — mystical, invisible lines that snake all over the earth, kind of like magical latitude and longitude. If lots of lines point to one place, that spot might have a lot of magic. Maybe a lot of witches live there, or vampires, or werewolves. Or maybe there's something in nature, in the place itself.

"Mystic Falls has always had a few lines pointing towards it," she said. "Maybe that's why so much has happened here. But now, we're seeing something else. seeing something new. The lines had turned into a spiral. The center of the spiral corresponds with the center of downtown Mystic Falls."

Damon nodded. He stood behind Elena, hands on her shoulders, rubbing her tense muscles absentmindedly. "You tell them to watch their mouths, Bon-Bon. You tell them I can poison their bourbon, or stab them in their sleep. And the whole slitting throats thing is very enticing."

###

"Everybody needs to stop running, stop levitating objects over their heads, and start using a freaking inside voice!" Rick yelled from upstairs. Elena sighed. Ric had lost total control of his group of older kids.

"Red group!" came a shrill, authoritative voice. The voice of a woman who will not back down. Ever. "Back with Mr. Saltzman! You should be ashamed of yourselves. The green group is younger than you, and you are setting a HORRIBLE example." Caroline was a way better disciplinarian. Being a vampire didn't hurt.

Elena opened up her anatomy textbook and groaned. She was having a terrible time with this subject, because she'd been unable to dissect any corpses since April. Before that she'd had to run from several anatomy labs: the smell of formaldehyde and the image of an open cadaver made her throw up.

Ric's students were now running in circles directly above her.

Elena wanted to go out back and tell her brother he should cut his meeting short with Matt. So he could help Ric. But Matt was becoming an increasingly tricky person to understand and a potential adversary. After Damon had refused to give Matt or the Council any information about Tommy, Matt had decided that he was going to reinstate his no-vampire-friends policy, and that included former vampires. They didn't think he'd try to hurt any of them. But he was the head of the Founder's Council.

If the occasional body didn't keep turning up in Mystic Falls, Matt couldn't have kept the Council's interest. However, in the past two weeks, Matt and his deputies had discovered two bodies drained of blood and one ripped up by an animal. Damon had gone down to the coroner's to view the corpses. He was sure the really torn-up one was a werewolf kill. A deputy had found it in the woods one day after a full moon.

So Matt had the Council panicked. Nobody in the Salvatore house wanted the Council involved. In anything.

Jeremy was their only hope. Matt still liked Jeremy.

And so Elena put up with the sound of Ric's kids doing whatever it was they were doing.

###

"I swear I am going to kill every single witch in this place!" Caroline said as she stalked into the kitchen and started searching for a clean glass.

Elena looked up from her anatomy textbook and giggled as she asked, "What have they done now?"

"They keep whispering behind my back. About me. And I can hear them. They must know that I can hear them," Caroline grumbled. "Are there no clean glasses in here?"

"Damon did the dishes last night."

"Well, he should have done them again this morning," her friend snapped.

Elena sighed, saying, "Damon is not your housekeeper."

"That's not what I mean," Caroline said as she found one clean whiskey glass at the back of a cabinet. She stomped over to the freezer, reached in, and pulled out a bottle of chilled vodka. Caroline often drank bourbon and Scotch with the boys, but being a 21st century girl she still preferred vodka. She poured herself a glass full of the clear liquor, downed it in a few seconds, then poured herself another.

She set the glass down on the kitchen table and sat across the table from Elena, sipping from her drink as she fumed.

"My husband stays up an extra hour every night, just cleaning and tidying. When was the last time you vacuumed?" Elena asked.

"I vacuum!"

"When?"

"I don't know. Last weekend. I distinctly remember vacuuming last Sunday. When was the last time you vacuumed?"

Elena raised her brows and gave Caroline her best imitation of Damon's glare. With a side of his devilish charm meant to convey that whomever he was talking to was an idiot, and that Damon would do whatever the hell he wanted, with whomever he wanted, for as long as he wanted, and he didn't have to explain himself. "That's for me to know and you to … dot dot dot. Oh for god's sakes, I'm going to have a baby in seven weeks, Caroline!"

Caroline laughed. And then Elena laughed. And then Caroline said, "Were you doing Damon?"

"Totally."

"That was a good Damon."

"Thank you," Elena said. "Now, what's the real problem and why are you mad at my husband?"

Caroline sighed, saying, "He gave me this house for the school. And now all these people have taken over, and I just want to do a good job with the school. And I'm failing. And I just locked them in a room, telling them that whoever magicked the lock open would get an A."

Elena's jaw dropped. "That probably violates like eight different child protective laws."

"That's what compulsion is for. It won't work on the kids, but it will work on CPS."

"Caroline!"

"Okay, okay. I haven't actually locked them in a room. They're taking a test. I just can't get the image of Stefan murdering Tommy's parents out of my mind," her friend told her. "I can't look at my students without thinking of him. You know one of them is distantly related to the Fells? And I can't look at my girls. And I just feel sick inside. I mean, I forgave him for so much, but when somebody just shows up and tells you what Stefan did? To their family? It's Dorian all over again. And it makes me sick. Especially because this was Damon's best friend's family. What if Tommy had been with them?"

"Care," Elena said softly, reaching across to lay a firm hand on Caroline's shaking hands. Caroline's skin felt like she'd been walking outside on a winter's day. Vampires ran cool`. "You are not responsible for Stefan's crimes."

Caroline's eyes were wet. "What if I end up like him?"

"Not possible," Elena said.

"But don't you think that his problem was that he wouldn't let himself be himself?" Caroline asked. "So it's a control thing, right? And I'm a control freak."

Elena shook her head. "It wasn't the same kind of control thing."

They sat in silence for a couple minutes, before Elena realized she was starving. She tried to get up and failed. Caroline came around to help her friend. They were both laughing. Way too hard, as if the laughter was taking over their darkness, just for a moment. "I can do this!" Elena said, trying again, refusing help, but couldn't get out of her seat. She was laughing so hard, tears came to her eyes.

Caroline said, "Moving around was hard for me, even though I was a vampire."

"I would have thought your vamp strength would have taken care of this," Elena said.

"Scootch forward and swivel your feet," the blond vampire said. "It's all about finding your center of gravity. That's why it was still hard as a vampire." When Elena finally stood up, Caroline gave a little cheer.

Elena rolled her eyes, saying, "How much do you think I weigh?"

"I don't care!"

"I weigh 155 pounds!" Elena said. She saw Caroline's eyes widen. "I saw that look. You're surprised. And you think I'm fat. You've thought I was fat for a long, long time. I started out at 122. That's 33 pounds and I've got seven weeks left. This is a disaster. And I want to devour all the ice cream in our freezer. And we have a lot of it. I keep making Damon get more."

"You were tiny to begin with. Skinny woman gain more."

"How much did you gain, Caroline?"

Caroline said nothing for a minute. Then, cautiously, she said, "You can't use me as an example. I'm a vampire. I didn't gain much because I was dead. Ish."

Elena refused to drop this one. "Seriously, Care, how much?"

Caroline was looking uncomfortable as she said, "This is why you never argue with a pregnant woman."

"This isn't an argument with a pregnant woman!" Elena hissed. "I'm not some woman being rude at a cafe. You're my best friend and you won't tell me and the more you don't tell me the more I wanted to know and —" Elena stamped her foot as she whipped past Caroline and made a beeline to Damon's fruit bowl. "I'm going to have an orange instead of ice cream," she said. "Good for vision and vitamin C. And I don't know that simply because of med school. I know that because Damon is getting all health conscious. Just in the last couple weeks. He's been asking me the strangest questions about saturated fat. He threw out three pounds of bacon, which Alaric got on sale. I think Damon's afraid of ruining his perfect body."

"Oranges are a good snack," Caroline said.

"For fat pregnant women?"

"You aren't fat, Elena!" Caroline cried out in total frustration. "Right, Damon?"

Elena whipped around to see her husband standing with a bemused look on his face. He had his car keys in one hand and an ancient, worn copy of The Great Gatsby in the other. "Elena, you're beautiful now. You were beautiful before. I've never seen you not beautiful."

"Do you know how much weight I've gained?" Elena shouted.

Damon came over to her and kissed her gently on her lips. "You are not fat, but you are loud, and bordering on disorderly, and given that my house is full of witches who hate me, and children who frankly frighten me," he whispered, "I'd rather you not start a riot. So how about you come out with me? I've got a mission you can tag along on. Care Bear, can you hold down the fort while I take my girl out?"

Caroline beamed at Damon. Then she did something unexpected. She zoomed over to Damon and gave him a sweet little peck on the cheek. "Have I told you lately that I kind of like, you brother-in-law?"

Damon grinned and kissed Caroline lightly on the cheek, with the certain grace that only exists in a European man, or an American man born before 1900. "Thanks, Caroline," he said. "For everything."

Every time Damon said thank you, you knew he really meant it. And every time, Elena smiled.

###

Damon revved the Camaro's engine so hard they swerved in the driveway, almost fishtailing, before they sped away from the house.

"What's the hurry?" Elena asked.

"Nothing."

She glanced over and saw that his calm demeanor had disappeared. As he drove, Damon clenched the wheel. He looked … flustered. And Damon Salvatore was never flustered.

"Should I be worried?" she asked.

"No."

"I'm worried."

Damon sighed, saying, "There are four stupid problems I need to get a handle on, all at the same time, and I can't get a handle on them." His knuckles were now white: he was clenching the steering wheel that hard.

"Are we in danger?" she asked softly. She put a hand on her belly, rubbing gently. The baby remained still.

Damon yanked the car over to the side of the road, coming to an abrupt stop. He yanked the book off her lap. He opened it up to a random page and began reading aloud. Damon had landed on the first of Gatsby's crazy, larger than life parties. Damon read fluidly. But his face was weird. He was concentrating awfully hard for someone reading a novel, especially someone who'd learned how to read before the California gold rush.

After a long pause, Damon said, "Does it mean anything if lately I get a headache after reading, sometimes? And it's easier to read if I hold the book farther away from me. Isn't that an old person thing?"

Elena couldn't help but laugh. She softened when she saw his look of embarrassment saying, "You're hardly old. Well, not biologically anyway." When she saw him looking increasingly flustered, she said, "Oh, honey, it's fine."

"It is not fine," he pouted.

Damon Salvatore wasn't used to human frailty.

"This is not a big deal," she told him, hoping to talk him down from the ledge. "Worst case scenario, an eye doctor says you're a little far-sighted, prescribes you a pair of reading glasses. But it might be nothing. Maybe you're just stressed and that's why you have a headache. And paranoid."

Damon glared at her.

She said, "Best to get over your vanity right now, old man. Forty is coming sooner than you think."

Damon laughed, but then he sighed and said, "That's not the worst of it. I have a sore throat. Sajen's having a crisis at the bar. And apparently people are supposed to file taxes in April, and if you don't, you get all sorts of threatening letters."

Elena frowned, trying to figure out which of these problems was an actual crisis. She settled on the IRS. "We didn't file taxes?"

"We! That's a very good point. You and I are married, and therefore you are equally at fault," Damon said, pulling back onto the road. He drove towards the highway at a normal speed.

"Are we going to see an accountant?"

He shook his head. "Nah, now that I think about it, I'll get Care Bear to compel someone for me. We're going to my bar to have a conversation with a bartender who keeps grabbing asses. Seriously. This is the crisis that Sajen has been unable to cope with it. What am I paying Sajen for?"

Elena laughed. A road trip to Charlottesville to deal with an ass-grabbing bartender sounded awesome. As in fun. She almost remembered fun. As they left Mystic Falls behind and headed for the interstate, Elena smiled. She reached over to run her fingers through Damon's hair. She tried to kiss him on the cheek, but she couldn't manage it — her bulky body just couldn't manage to stay in the seatbelt and pivot towards him. So she settled on saying, "I love you." He smiled.

###

"What?" Damon snapped, answering his phone without checking to see who it was. He and Elena were almost to Charlottesville.

"Mr. Salvatore?" came a woman's voice.

"Possibly," Damon said, not wanting to commit. This woman sounded like trouble. And a buzzkill. He'd been enjoying a fun road trip, Elena feeding him salt and vinegar potato chips and beef jerky, while she sang along off-key to Brown-eyed Girl. She'd also eaten an entire jar of olives and recited the names of all the bones in the human body. Which was oddly sexy. And she'd decided to list her favorite Damon moments. Her antics had almost distracted him from his litany of stupid human problems.

The woman pressed on, her voice needling into him."You own a drinking establishment in Charlottesville with the rather odd name Diabolical Plan"?

"Your Diabolical Plan," he corrected her. "The 'your' makes all the difference."

"I'm sure it does, Mr. Salvatore. In any event, I need to speak to you about Maria Linney."

"She's one of my bartenders," Damon said as he swung off the interstate and onto the main road leading into Charlottesville.

"She shouldn't be!" the woman said.

"What business is it of yours?" Damon barked.

"I'm her mother," the woman said.

She sounded like she was about to start crying. Damon glanced at Elena, who was clearly listening in. This woman was loud. Damon had no idea what was going on with Maria and her mother, but he had no interest in getting involved in their petty drama. So instead of continuing this sham of a phone call, he said, "Oh no, can't hear you. Going through a tunnel." He made some whistling sounds before hanging up.

Elena had her brows raised in disapproval.

"Oh, hi, judgy," Damon said, smirking. "I've missed you."

"You're going to be a father soon," Elena said. "Seems like you could have a little sympathy."

"When our kid is 21, she better damned well be able to talk to her boss without mommy or daddy being involved," he said, continuing to smirk.

Elena kept her brows raised but said nothing more. After a couple minutes, Elena said, "It's been a while since we've seen the place. It'll be weird to be back there."

He nodded. Charlottesville had become home — their shitty apartment, his grungy bar, her fancy medical school, her favorite sushi restaurant, his favorite burger joint. But after two and a half months in their home town, Charlottesville seemed like a dream. He'd become accustomed to the boarding house again. He'd begun to think of it as his again.

He drove down the main drag of Charlottesville, and tried not to feel deprived. For all his bitching about the tedium of running a bar, Damon Salvatore desperately wanted their life here back. He wanted Elena able to study without being interrupted by mystical visions, or vampires pissed at his dead brother. He wanted their kid to have normal problems, like getting in trouble for beating up another kid in preschool. And Damon wanted to redo the menu for his bar.

And so driving down this road, the road that led to Your Diabolical Plan, felt painful. He was afraid he'd never get the tedium back. Never get the plan.

Beside him, Elena's hand twitched. He saw it out of the corner of his eye.

Fuck. She was having a vision. They'd been happening more frequently, and lately Bonnie and Damon had noticed this tell. A tiny flick of her hand.

The timing now. Incredibly inconvenient.

Elena's eyes were open as she stared into space. He pulled over to the shoulder, placing one hand on her shoulder and one hand on her belly. "Elena," he said. "Honey, come back to me. Please." When had they started using this pet name? It seemed far too cutesy, even wimpy, for Damon Salvatore to call anyone "honey" without irony, and even worse for him to allow her to call him "honey" back. But at some point he'd become less of a tough guy. At some point he'd become a husband. They'd spent so much time lately tending to each other that even "babe" sounded harsh. They'd needed a kinder endearment. "Honey," he said to her, "I've already got to deal with an ass-grabber and an irate mother. Just wake up. Please. We can be magical later."

Damon swore he heard a baby's laugh. He felt a kick. And another. And another. The baby was kicking in perfect rhythm. A waltz. Damon had opened his mouth to say more when his vision blurred. The world swam before him. He wasn't in the car anymore.

Damon was inside Diabolical, wiping down the bar stools. He was chatting with Sajen, who was taking inventory. The door opened, and in came a tall man wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and a baseball cap. The man grinned at Damon.

"Daddy, look!" a small child cried out. He looked behind him to see a girl with dark brown hair and extraordinarily blue eyes sitting on the bar, grinning, and waving her hand wildly at his oldest friend/potential nemesis. She looked to be about four years old.

"Summer!" he said without having any control over his speech. "Get down from there."

"But it's Uncle Tommy!" she said.

And now the vampire was zooming towards his daughter. Damon searched himself for a stake, but found nothing. What was wrong with his defenses?

Tommy grabbed Summer off the bar and swung her around. She giggled in pure delight. Damon wondered if he could snap one of the bar stools' legs in half to make a stake. He decided it was unlikely that he'd break it, and then he'd just look like an idiot.

Sajen said, "Mr. Fell, how's business?"

"Fine, Sajen, just fine," said Tommy as he threw the little girl up into the air. The way you throw a baby. But by the time they're four years old, children don't get thrown like that anymore. Too heavy for their human fathers.

He'd never considered that a vampire might want to play with a child. And not eat it.

Damon couldn't help but be dazzled by the way Tommy tossed his daughter in the air — it was a display of strength, but also grace and kindness. He was jealous.

Summer laughed, peals and peals of laughter. And then Tommy was bringing her down to earth and giving her to Damon. He cradled his child protectively in his arms before adjusting so she could sit on his hip.

"Now what have I told you about playing with vampires?" Damon said, again having no control of his speech.

"Only play with Auntie Caroline and Uncle Tommy," the little girl told him, solemnly, as if this was a lesson she'd learned and a rule she would obey. "Otherwise, fry their brains."

Damon raised an eyebrow at Tommy, who laughed and said, "Damon, don't feel bad if you can't keep up. It's not just that you're human. You're 30 now." Tommy scrunched up his face in mock horror, as he pulled a paperback book out of his back pocket. Damon was trying to say something more to Tommy, but the dream faded. Back in the real world, he opened his eyes, sucking in a sharp breath.

Elena was looking at him appraisingly. "You okay, honey?" she asked. He was half-lying down, with his head on her belly. She was running her fingers through his hair.

Damon sat up abruptly. He felt his heart racing. What the hell had just happened? "Did you see her?" he asked. "Were you there?"

Elena shook her head. "I just felt myself getting really sleepy. I thought maybe I'd take a nap. And then I think you put your hand on my belly. She started kicking."

"In perfect rhythm."

"Yes!"

Damon pressed on. "And then what?"

"Then I woke up," she said. "Before you did."

"She gave me a vision," Damon said. He smiled at the image of that mischievous little girl, the child who climbed up on bars and loved to get thrown into the air by vampires. The preschooler with presence. Their daughter had seemed genuinely happy. She didn't seem ruined by them and their world. "What do you think of the name Summer?" he asked.

"Did she tell you her name?" Elena asked, breathless.

She listened intently as he explained the dream. Finally she said, "You saw our baby. You really saw our baby." Reverence in her voice.

"She was perfect, Lena. Like this miniature image of you. But with blue eyes," he said. He could still picture the girl, as if he were still holding her on his hip. How had he known how to hold her so effortlessly? How had he felt so capable? It wasn't just his voice in the vision. His whole manner had felt foreign. "I felt like a father," he said softly. "Honey, I felt like a dad. I never thought I could feel that way"

She kissed him sweetly on the lips. "I thought of the name Summer," Elena said. They'd gone through a slew of baby names but couldn't agree on anything. "Last night. I was thinking of a way to honor both my mother and Jenna. They were Sommers women. It didn't quite work as a first name. Unless you took off the 's.' And I thought we could spell it like the season. So you know how to pronounce it. Besides, she's going to be born in summer. Added points."

He laughed. This was insane. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"It was after you went to sleep. I snuck out of bed to have ice cream and pickles. It actually tasted good. I thought pregnant women eating that particular combination was just an urban myth. But it was awesome."

Damon laughed. He kissed her, and this time it was deep kiss, a fierce kiss, a kiss laced with passion, devotion, and a little desperation. He hoped he'd seen the real future, that this version of their daughter could exist. The memory of her face, her happiness, and his easy-going nature, and that glimpse into an ordinary day in their lives — the whole thing warmed him up inside.

As Damon pulled onto the road to drive the remaining 1.3 miles to his bar, he felt human. In a good way.

Chapter Text

Later that day, June 2018

Charlottesville, VA

Damon felt an odd sense of deja vu as he wiped down the bar and bar stools. It was broad daylight, the bar still closed to the public, as Sajen inventoried liquor bottles and Damon cleaned with the meticulous care no one else seemed to show. So much like Damon's vision. Or dream. Or whatever it was. However, there was no little Summer climbing around on the bar's counter, or giggling at her vampire "uncle." Summer was still in her mother's womb, and the two Salvatore women were taking a nap back at the apartment while Damon dealt with Diabolical.

"Tell me again why I should care if Simon grabs women's asses?" Damon asked. "Is it only women, by the way?"

"It was," Sajen hedged.

"But?"

"Yesterday he grabbed my ass."

Damon broke out laughing. Sajen turned beet red and then he spun around, presumably to inventory their vodka. Damon used the opportunity to check out his bar manager's ass. "Not bad," Damon said. "In the '70s, I would've totally tapped that."

Sajen turned back to face Damon, his face now redder than red.

Damon gave the naive young man his patented flirty eye thing.

Sajen turned pale.

Damon laughed. He couldn't stop. He laughed harder than he had in a long time, certainly more freely than he had since he'd found out Elena was pregnant.

"Um, you know," Sajen stammered. "That's just not my thing."

Damon made his eyes extra seductive.

Sajen went pale.

Damon smiled knowingly, letting himself radiate an air of mystery and maybe a little danger. After an uncomfortable pause (for Sajen), Damon relaxed his expression. He gave his friend a genuine smile. "Relax," he said gently. "I'm married. Unlike a lot of men of my generation, I actually take that seriously."

Sajen seemed to be breathing again. He said, "Were you trying to flirt with me?"

"Maybe."

"Because I am completely supportive of everybody LGBTQ, whatever, you know, and if that's your thing, then I'm cool with it. But I don't like dudes."

"What does LBGTQ even mean?" Damon asked. "Oh! I get it. We're being politically correct. It's the letters on the gay pride stickers. Ah, Sajen, you want to know if I swing both ways?"

Sajen shrugged before saying, "Um, well, you were hitting on me, and, and, uh, you were looking at me … like you look at women. But it's all good. And it's not really my business because, unlike Simon, you didn't grab my ass." Sajen tried to smirk. "No sexual harassment suit coming!"

Damon stopped himself from doing the eye thing again, and instead said, "You've never been with a guy, have you?"

Sajen shook his head.

"And that makes sense. Because you're straight. And if I had lived a human life in the 1800s, I probably wouldn't have undressed any men myself. But I've fucked a few men."

"That's nice," Sajen said.

"The B in those letters, it's Bisexual, right? Vampires, we don't really do labels. Especially not about sex. When you live as long as I have," Damon explained with a gentle grin, "you don't think about judgy people. I like women. But in a century and a half of hedonism, I got bored sometimes. And sometimes you meet a beautiful man, you share a conversation, you share a bed. Or there's always threesomes. Foursomes. Orgies. There's a lot of sex to be had. Especially in the '70s."

"Not gonna lie to you. I'm a little uncomfortable hearing your sexual history, Damon," Sajen said, clearly trying to be light, flip. "I mean we're friends and all, but guys don't actually talk like this."

"Sure they do," Damon said, reaching for the new menu he'd wanted to review for days. "Just not guys you hang with."

"So we're cool?" Sajen asked.

"Of course," Damon said, skimming the menu. "Give me a pen. Not that one." He held his hand out commandingly, until Sajen gave him his favorite felt tip, which Damon kept behind the bar for his personal use, allowing no one else to use it.

Sajen frowned, saying, "None of your life makes sense. Putting sex aside, it's just weird how old you are. Do you ever think about it, like when you hang out with me or Elena?"

Damon nodded, beginning to mark up the menu. Typos, misspellings, and punctuation errors galore. What were they teaching in American high schools and colleges these days?

Sajen just kept babbling. "Up until two weeks ago, I thought we were the same age. You told me you graduated from college in 2009. Just like me. But you didn't, right?"

"Of course not," Damon said, distracted by the freaking number of misplaced commas.

"When you were you born?"

"June 18, 1839."

"Wow."

"I am a freak of nature, my friend. What are you getting at?"

"Hey. Your birthday is in ten days," Sajen said.

"Stopped celebrating birthdays when I hit 100. Please do not get a cake and put 179 candles on it," Damon said with a sigh.

"When did you graduate from college? And high school? Cause my dates are 2005 and 2009, and I was born in 1987. So we're not peers. At all. But I thought we were, and we still look the same age. And everything about this is weird."

Damon snorted. "Of course we're not peers. Let's see - high school didn't really exist back then. I had tutors, and when a schoolhouse opened in Mystic Falls, I went. With Tommy and Stefan. You took a completion exam, whenever you were ready, and a college entrance exam. I did that when I was 16. I went to college. UVA in fact. I got kicked out after a year."

"You must remember a lot of stuff. Like, you remember disco and the Civil War?"

"Yup," Damon quipped, "I remember the fall of slavery, and the invention of bellbottoms, and the fall of communism. They are all clear as day." He took a deep breath. "Now let's talk about how to spell étouffée, and why the French use accent marks." Damon held up the menu, but Sajen ignored him.

The manager seemed extremely curious about something. "What were you doing in 1864?"

"What do you think?" Damon snapped. "Now cheese and fries are still spelled the traditional way in every dictionary imaginable. We do not sell 'cheez friez.' "

Sajen rolled his eyes, saying, "I thought it would make us sound fun."

"It makes us sound stupid," Damon said curtly. "You've also called the apps "hor d'oeuvres." You can't go low and high at the same time. Let's stick with 'appetizers.' We're a dive bar that's started serving good food, not a French restaurant, and we don't need to be pretentious." Damon couldn't believe how much he was enjoying this. Did he actually care about the bar? And if so, when had he started to care?

"Fair enough," Sajen said, as he began wiping down the whisky glasses.

"I've marked at least eight typos and punctuation errors, and I'm not finished with the first page." Damon squinted at the menu. "Now it's nine. Punctuation is not a choice, and you don't put commas anywhere you feel like."

Sajen laughed. "I never would have pegged Damon Salvatore for a grammar Nazi."

Damon raised his brows, saying, "I was taught to write a century and half before spell check. And I had a very strict tutor. Not to mention a dick of a father. And grammar mattered back then. It's not like I had a lot of skills. If I couldn't speak and write like a gentleman, I wouldn't be anything."

"Your family was rich, even back then?" Sajen asked.

Damon nodded, returning to the menu. "You really want to serve escargot?"

"I make them good, nice and tender. Never tough," Sajen said, obviously proud of himself for this very particular skill. "And we'll be the only bar in town to serve them."

"Fine," Damon said. "Try it for a week and see if anyone orders it. As long as we fix all these damned typos. Seriously Sajen! Have some pride in the details."

"So what were you doing in 1864?" Sajen asked as he stacked napkins. Damon finished with the menus, moving around to the other side of the bar, pulling out pretzels and oyster crackers to leave at either end of the bar.

"Meaning who I was sleeping with?" Damon quipped.

"No. That would be rude. Except you were just bragging about orgies. Were you having orgies in 1864?" Sajen asked, half flippantly.

Damon bit his lip, thinking for just a moment of what it would have been like to have Katherine, Pearl, Emily Bennett, and Honoria Fell in his bed all at once. Then he remembered that Honoria was Tommy's mother, and cringed inwardly. He told Sajen, "Just one woman. One very skilled and seductive woman."

Damon crouched down behind the counter to count jars of olives and cocktail onions. "We could use some better green olives," he said. "This brand is passable, but there's an American company that sells olives grown in the south of Spain, and they are just perfect. It's the texture that makes the difference. You don't want an olive that is the least bit mealy."

"So who was this woman?" Sajen asked, crouching down to look at the mediocre olives.

"Miss Katherine Pierce," Damon said with a bitter laugh. "The woman who strung me along for 145 years."

Sajen startled so much he hit his head. "She was a vampire?" When Damon nodded and grunted his assent, Sajen asked, "Did she turn you?"

"Yup."

Sajen put his hand on Damon's shoulder, and left it there awkwardly. "You turned your brother, didn't you? Like you did to Tommy?"

Damon shook his head as he snatched Sajen's hand off his shoulder. "Katherine turned both of us. She played with both of us, like we were toys."

Sajen stood up and pulled Damon to his feet. "So she was a bitch. But you've got Elena now. And Elena is almost perfect."

Damon remembered the first time he met Elena, how he'd thought she was Katherine. Life was weird. And Elena put her doppelganger to shame. He sat himself on a bar stool and said, "Give me a bourbon. Neat. And in answer to your next question, about my profession in 1864. Of course I was a soldier. I was 21 when the war broke out. And no, I did not seize on a feeling of moral superiority and fight for the North. I was a Southerner; I was trying to please my father. I was a confederate soldier. And then I deserted. Not for morals, but for cowardice. Though I never liked owning slaves."

Sajen looked shocked. "You owned slaves?"

"My father was a wealthy plantation owner. Of course he owned slaves. I was the eldest. I would have inherited it all. If he hadn't shot me in the back." Damon downed the bourbon.

A few minutes later, Simon, the groping bartender, came in to pick up his paycheck.

"Hey, Mr. S.!" Simon shouted out as he came into the bar. "How's it hanging?"

Damon glared at the idiot. Everything about him was ridiculous. His hair was '60s era long, and uncombed. He was wearing a t-shirt that said, "Porn Star in Training," and his jeans were three sizes too big.

Damon glanced at Sajen, waiting for him to take over. Sajen gave a nod to Damon, as if reminding him that he was the boss. "You, Simon, are not getting paid today," Damon snapped. "I am holding onto your paycheck until you've gone a week without grabbing anyone's ass."

Simon stared blankly.

"Dude, I've got nine different people with written complaints about how you grabbed their ass. Are you saying you didn't grab anyone's ass?" Damon barked.

Simon shrugged.

So Damon launched into a lecture about how groping and grabbing of asses could create a lawsuit, and what sexual harassment was. Sajen had made Damon read a pamphlet earlier. His lecture may have become slightly less instructive when Damon broke down in the middle of it to laugh his head off. Sajen stared with disapproval. Simon sort of smiled, like he wasn't sure if he was allowed to smile or not, or whether or not he was in trouble.

Damon drank two more bourbons during the whole ordeal. Finally he said, "I don't want to fire you because you bring in business, and the customers who you don't grope love you. But if you grab one more ass, I will kick your ass to kingdom come and make you work naked." At which point Sajen cleared his throat and Damon threw the idiot out of Your Diabolical Plan, saying he could come back to work tomorrow, when he wasn't dressed like an idiot.

###

Damon felt lighter than before. More than buzzed. Less than drunk. Sajen put on a pot of coffee and ordered him to drink coffee, cutting his boss off from alcohol.

Damon doodled on a napkin.

When Sajen returned he handed Damon a coffee and asked, "So, are you excited about the baby coming soon? Or terrified?"

Damon laughed saying, "I don't know. I mean, you spend 153 years thinking you've got no legacy other than a house — "

"A mansion."

"Yeah, whatever. And some stocks and bonds. And a lot of murders." Damon quipped.

Sajen blanched.

After an uncomfortable silence, Sajen said, "If you're trying to make me hate you, it's not going to work."

Damon glanced up from doodling to see that Sajen no longer looked appalled.

"You've been a decent guy for as long as I've known you," the bar manager said. His voice serious, no-nonsense, and overly direct, as if he were speaking to a child or an idiot. "That counts for something, in my book. You said being a vampire doesn't change who you are. It just amplifies it, right?"

Damon nodded and returned to his drawing. He started shading in the figure. It looked — not familiar but important. Significant. "You ever see this symbol?" he asked Sajen as he held up the napkin.

Sajen held up a hand. "Focus, Salvatore. I'm making a point. And here it is. This, right now, today, this is the real you. You're not perfect. You contemplate murder WAAAAY more than the average human. You were completely incompetent when attempting to discipline Simon. And you're rude to a lot of people. You seem to group people into two categories — the handful you like, and the rest of the planet who are here to either do your bidding, get out of your way, or be the objects of your disgust."

Damon laughed. He traced the symbol he'd drawn. He was about to call Ric to find out if he knew about it, when Sajen cleared his throat and continued his analysis of Damon's psychotic personality.

"But today," Sajen said, "You've also spellchecked the menus. And worried about commas. And worried about Elena. And didn't you get an extra protection spell put on the apartment before she entered?"

"Three spells," Damon said, absentmindedly. He began looking for the good rum. "Do you have a point?"

"You're not a psychopath, Damon. I don't think you ever were. And you know how I know? Because I know human Damon. You're not crazy. Maybe when you were a vampire there was more murder and chaos. But I bet you weren't as bad as you think. You're sarcastic and rude, and way too interested in planning ways to kill people. But when it comes down to the important stuff, you're a decent guy."

Damon smiled shyly at his bar manager. He was more than touched. And he wanted to believe that Sajen was right. But Sajen barely knew him. You couldn't be right about somebody who was 179 years old after knowing them for a few months.

Damon hopped over the bar and began wiping down a table. As he moved the cloth in precisely circular motions, he began to feel … off.

A particular feeling came over him. He was floating. The world swam in front of him. Then it went dark. And he was somewhere else. It was all black, like he was in space. He saw Summer first. Her hair was in pigtails and she was grinning from ear to ear.

"Daddy!" Summer yelled. "Can you hear me?"

"Jesus, girl. I could hear you a mile away," he said, laughing. This time he was in control of what he said.

Her voice was pure excitement. And he could sense her power. Had he sensed this kind of power before? Not consciously, but thinking back, he'd noticed something in the boarding house this morning. When he went to say goodbye to Bonnie, he'd tousled her hair. He felt … a vibration. Like when he'd driven by the clock tower lately.

But Summer was different. She didn't make him vibrate. She made him warm inside, like a perfect summer day. She made him want to sing. He tightened his grip and pulled her towards him.

And then the vision shifted. He saw Elena sitting at their kitchen table in the apartment here in town, drumming her fingers on the table. She had a piece of paper clutched in her hand. Damon could read it clearly, much more clearly than if he'd been there in real life. A phone number. No name.

He glanced at Elena more closely, at her protruding belly and long hair pulled back in a pony tail. This was today. He recognized the clothes she'd been wearing all day — maternity jeans stretched hard, and a deep red maternity blouse that, in the past couple weeks, had tended to run up on her belly, so that her belly hung out a couple inches below the shirt. At times like this, when she thought no one was looking, she didn't bother to adjust it. Elena looked exhausted, sitting at their kitchen table. Damon cocked his head, wondering how much weight Elena had gained, and if she was really doing okay. He had no idea what was normal and why he should care. But she looked huge. Huge, huge, huge.

He looked around for Summer. He didn't see her. Then he felt her. A steady vibration from Elena's belly. He came over and touched Elena's belly. He couldn't really touch her, but when his hand got close, he saw Elena jump and look around.

Elena didn't hear him yelling at her. "Stop!" Damon yelled anyway.

Damon groaned as he watched his wife dial the number into the phone. If she was doing this in secret, it could not be good. And Elena had a history of making crazy decisions without consulting him. Or anyone.

Summer seemed to be kicking hard inside her, but Elena continued. She looked like she might doze off when the phone started ringing on the other end. The noise startled her out of the trance.

Damon heard a familiar voice answer the phone. A smug British voice.

Damon woke up screaming. "NO NO NO NO NO!" He was on the floor. His head throbbed. He felt his forehead. A big bump was forming.

Sajen stood in front of him, holding out an icepack.

"You hit your head on the table," Tommy said. Damon glanced over to see his old friend sitting beside him. "I tried to feed you my blood but you coughed and spit it out, like it was poison. Want to try again?"

"Are you trying to turn him back?" Sajen asked, handing the ice to Damon, who just held it in his hand. He was so unfamiliar with being a human that he didn't know what to do with it. "Ice, Damon. Put it on your head or I will. That was a nasty fall and you passed out."

Tommy laughed, saying, "No, I'm not trying to turn him, you idiot. I'm trying to heal him." Tommy bit into his wrist and held it out to Damon. Dripping with blood.

Damon shook his head. "Won't work. The Cure is like anti-vampire blood. We can't be healed that way. Not anymore." He put the ice on his forehead. "Fucking-A! Human injuries feel different from vampire injuries, in case anybody was wondering. This is nothing, but it sucks."

Tommy shrugged. "Everything about you is weird these days."

Damon gave his old friend a once-over. "You come to kill me for keeping Stefan's secrets?"

Tommy laughed, though it wasn't a happy laugh. After a too-long pause he said, "No. We can talk about it later. It just got too peculiar in your house. I got jumpy."

Sajen cleared his throat, saying, "I'll give you guys some privacy."

Damon shook his head. "Call Caroline. Tell her that she needs to get here ASAP. And I'm going to kill her if she gave Elena her boytoy's phone number. I do not want the New Orleans contingent here. Tommy, can you vamp speed across town? I'll give you the address. Sajen. Paper. Pen."

Sajen fumbled below the bar before pulling out an old menu and a pen. Damon scribbled his address and a rough map of onto the top of the paper.

Tommy took it, but he didn't move. "What's going on, Damon?"

"Ever heard of Klaus Michaelson?" Damon said, tiredness creeping into his voice. "Elena called him. Sajen, where's my fucking cell phone? I need to call her and find out what's going on inside that pretty head of hers."

When he opened his phone, he groaned. Five missed calls from Elena. More from Bonnie, Caroline, Jeremy, and Ric. Dammit. Something was going on. He tried Elena, but it just rang and rang, with that distinctive beep that means the person you're calling is on the other line.

"Who's Klaus Michaelson?" Tommy asked.

"Are you serious?" Damon snapped as he tried Bonnie. Straight to voicemail. "You've heard of Klaus, right. The Klaus?"

"The guy who's supposed to be the original vampire?" Tommy asked, incredulous. "I thought he was a myth. Like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny."

Damon shook his head, wondering what else Tommy and the rest of the vampire world didn't know about. "I'll tell you about the fucker and his crazy, like seriously insane, family later. Right now I need you to vamp speed over to Elena. I'm giving you my permission to enter my home, so that should work as an invitation, if you need it." It hurt Damon to realize that this was the best way to get to her, and that he couldn't do it himself.

Tommy nodded grimly.

###

Damon watched Tommy blur out the door, almost knocking down two members of his waitstaff who were arriving for their shift. God, he missed being a vampire. It wasn't just the obvious things, which he'd known in advance he'd miss — like vamp speed. It was also the perks of vamp speed. The ability to appear and disappear, almost by magic. To shock people, and make them uncomfortable just by arriving.

"What was that?" Maria asked Libby. "Was that a person?"

"I didn't see anybody," Libby said. "But I felt something. Wind?"

Maria frowned. Then she looked around the room, noticing Sajen on the phone in frantic conversation, and Damon, who was still sitting on the floor with an icepack on his forehead. He'd given up on his phone, temporarily, because no one was answering.

Unless Klaus was in town, which was doubtful, Tommy would get there first. The plan was for Tommy to bring Elena to Damon. Then they needed to find a safe house. The boarding house wasn't an option. Klaus knew exactly where it was. And while Klaus didn't know where the apartment or bar were, he knew they lived in Charlottesville and that Elena was a med student at UVA. Klaus could go to the University and poke around, compel someone until they told him something. And if he knew Damon owned a bar … a simple public records search would reveal the name and address. Because Damon was too stupid to ever consider using an alias.

"What happened to you, Mr. S.?" Maria asked, pointing to the ice pack he still held to his forehead.

Damon muttered a litany of curse words before scrambling to his feet and throwing the ice pack on the table. "Oh, man," Damon said, feeling woozy. Had he stood up too fast? Was his head broken? "I'm fine, girls," he said to Maria and Libby. He tried to stay standing, but the world swam. Another vision? Damon glanced around for Sajen, but the manager had stepped into the back, probably so he could speak openly, once the girls arrived.

Damon felt really dizzy now. This feeling wasn't like Summer's visions. It hurt and it felt more … localized.

He swayed on his feet. Closing his eyes, Damon felt himself falling before slender arms caught him on either side. "There you go, Mr. S. You are going to just sit here in this chair. That will be more comfortable than the floor. And Libby's getting another ice pack."

Damon opened his eyes to see Maria looking at him carefully. "Follow my fingers," she said, holding two fingers up in front of his face and explaining three times how to follow the fingers with his eyes not his head. She pulled a mini flashlight thing out of her purse. The kind that doctors use. "I'm pre-med," the girl said. "Lucky, huh?"

"You should talk to Elena," Damon said absently, remembering Elena's excitement during her sophomore year, when she was discovering how much she liked medicine. (Of course, he'd missed the beginning of her excitement. Damon had been in a prison world, and then after that Elena wiped her memories of him. But all that year, as Jo mentored Elena, as they dealt with the loss of Liz, and no-humanity Caroline and Stefan, Damon's psycho mother, and as Elena had fallen back in love with Damon, and Damon had fallen even harder for her than he had the first time — studying medicine had grounded Elena. Now that he thought about it, her studies had grounded him too. It was nice to have something mundane to worry about. Like today when he'd spent so much time marking up the menu for typos and comma errors.

"How is Mrs. S.?" Maria asked. "Her pregnancy okay? We've been worried. I mean, Sajen said you were fine. But, you know, we all like you guys. You're family. Is she on bed rest?"

Damon laughed. "She's fine. Just taking a rest at the apartment. She might be here in a bit. No bed rest. We just needed to deal with some family stuff."

"When's the baby due again?" Libby asked as she returned, handing Damon a fresh ice pack.

Maria grabbed his wrist and Damon grabbed her. He was about to stand up and flip her when he realized that a barmaid was probably not a threat to him. Human or not, he was still Damon fucking Salvatore, and he didn't need to flip a girl. "Just taking your pulse," Maria said.

He let her go, mumbling sorry. "Get me a drink, Libby?" Damon asked.

"Oh, no, not going to happen," Maria said. "Get him an ibu profen."

Damon glared at her. He tried to look murderous.

She laughed at him.

"Go get ready for your shift, Maria," Damon ordered. "I'm not dying here."

The girl nodded and went to the back to get apron on. She was just coming back to the bar, to clock in, when Randy Paul, a good old boy from Alabama who was easily 25, wandered in the door. Maria rushed over to him, and the two began making out in front of everyone. Libby tittered and glanced at Damon.

Maybe this was what had gotten Maria's mother's panties in a twist. Damon shrugged and decided not to care unless a lawsuit came into play.

###

After she hung up with Klaus, Elena felt something open up inside her. As if something wanted to get free. It felt — amazing. It felt warm and kind and innocent. It felt like the world might be an okay place. Then she felt a sharp pain. The baby kicking? It wasn't an ordinary kick. This felt different. A different kind of sharp. But then it was over. She rested a hand on her protruding stomach and rubbed gently. "It's okay, little one," she murmured. "I haven't done anything stupid. It's going to be okay. We need all the help we can get."

She tried Bonnie again. Nothing. She tried Caroline and Jeremy and Ric. Nothing. She took a deep breath as she dialed Damon's number, preparing for him to be pissed off, royally pissed off, at her for calling their once enemy. But it had to be done. She'd seen a vision of Mystic Falls without Klaus. Even with all those witches, their preparations weren't enough. She's seen, and felt, the whirlpool of magical energy. Bonnie and the witches could hold it back for a while, but that's all they could do.

Elena knew that a more radical fix was needed. Klaus would protect her, because of her doppelganger blood, and the baby, because her bloodline would eventually produce another doppelganger. Caroline told her that Klaus had changed. Softened up after his daughter was born. That he wanted to be a good person, some of the time at least. And there was supposed to be a new member of the Original family — a witch who'd gotten some sort of immortality without turning into a vampire. She must be a really powerful witch, with that bloodline, and she'd been around for 1000 years.

Elena knew Damon wouldn't approve of her reaching out to Klaus. But she was desperate. She'd stolen his number out of Caroline's address book last week. After her vision today, after she'd tried for half an hour and failed to get in touch with anyone, including Damon, Elena took matters into her own hands.

That pain again. It wasn't a kick. It was more like really bad cramps Elena was sitting at their kitchen table and she clutched her belly. But as soon as it had started, it was gone. She was still breathing hard from the strange sensation when someone started pounding on her front door.

She managed to get to the door. The mysterious Tommy Fell stood there, just on the other side of the threshold. "Well, you have been getting into all sorts of trouble, haven't you?"

###

When Elena and Tommy walked in, she saw Damon at his familiar spot at the bar. Randy Paul stood at the opposite end. It was just after 3, so they'd just opened. If Damon was so worried, why hadn't he shut down for the day?

She could smell the cooks starting up the grills in the back. Elena sighed with envy as she watched a plate of cheese fries being delivered to a table of college girls. She had to force herself to not steal their fries, or lick her lips.

"Hey Mr. S.!" called out a young black man, tall and lanky, flanked by four frat brats. They sauntered over to Damon's station, making eyes at the females as they walked. "Where've you been, man?"

A couple weeks into his tenure, Sajen had noticed general insubordination, and that no one really treated Damon like the boss. Despite Damon's occasional threats of inventive ways he might kill his staff, if they kept acting like idiots. Sajen had fired most of the staff, rehired better people, and decided that everyone would call Damon "Mr. Salvatore." At first, Damon had jumped every time he'd heard that name, thinking of his father. But he told her that no one in the bar spoke to him like the townspeople or slaves had spoken to Guisseppe, no tones of reverence or fear. Eventually they all started with this "Mr. S." thing, and Damon got to feel like the cool young owner, the guy you looked up to but didn't fear, the man the boys might want to be.

Damon smiled and said, "Had to take care of some family business. Now, gentlemen, what are we drinking?"

"Tequila shots," Johnny Rocket said.

But Jaime shook his head. "No. We want to drink what you're drinking."

Damon laughed. "You can't afford what I drink."

"What does he drink?" an unfamiliar kid said.

"Top shelf bourbon," Jaime said. "Neat."

"As opposed to messy?"

"As opposed to on the rocks or with soda," Damon said. "Didn't your father teach you how to drink?"

"Come on, Mr. S. Give us some of the good stuff!" Jaime said.

Damon pulled out a bottle from behind the bar, saying, "Your wallet," as Elena walked up to him. She gave him a hard, angry look. Damon hopped over the bar to kiss her sweetly on the lips. As they broke apart, he slung an arm around her waist, pulling her towards him, as he whispered, "If I didn't love you so much, I'd have to kill you."

"Hey Mrs. S.!" Jaime said. "You are looking wicked pregnant."

She laughed, leading Damon away from the bar to a table in the corner. "If you were so worried, why haven't you shut down the bar?"

He rolled his eyes. "Klaus is not self destructive enough to strike us in a public place, with all these people. It's fine. We're safer this way."

Elena was about to explain her vision when the abdominal pain returned. This time it was bigger, harder. She gritted her teeth to avoid crying out. But oh man, Elena wanted to scream. It was a weird pain. Damon looked at her, clearly concerned. She held her breath until it passed. "I need to sit down, honey," she told him.

He pulled out a chair and helped her into it. She sat with both hands on her belly, trying to figure out what this could be. It wasn't the baby kicking. No, this was more like something tightening.

"What were you thinking?" Damon said.

"Summer gave me a vision," Elena said, "The people we have in town, the defenses we've built. It's not enough. I saw the whole town swallowed up by magic. Becoming … something else. And who knows if that's where it ends. Jesus, Damon, it could take over the whole world. It could take over everything."

And then the pain came again. She tried to focus on her breathing, tried to be mindful of where she was and what her body was doing. Beneath her hands, she felt her abdomen tightening, getting hard. Really hard.

Oh, shit.

Elena started doing the lamaze breathing she and Caroline had been practicing. How far apart were these contractions? When the pain passed, she looked into Damon's beautiful ice-blue eyes and said, "Get a pen and paper. And Meredith."

He frowned. "What's wrong?"

"I'm in labor."

"What?" he asked, almost shrieking. "Isn't it too early?"

She shook her head. "It'll be fine. It's late enough. This happens all the time."

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"Yes," she said through gritted teeth. She was trying so hard not to scream. But she couldn't hold it any longer. Elena grabbed both of Damon's hands in hers, squeezed them so hard it was like lemons for lemonade, and she screamed. Everyone was staring at them. Elena didn't care. She had a baby inside her, a baby determined to come out into the world. And if Elena needed to scream, she would.

Chapter Text

(picking up immediately where we left off)

June 2018

Charlottesville, Virginia

Damon's shoes were still wet. And sticky.

Back at the bar he'd felt shell-shocked, even numb at the idea of the baby coming early. As he'd put his arm around Elena and led her towards the front door of the bar, listening to her litany of instructions and marveling at how calm she was, he'd noticed Sajen, Tommy and his staff scurrying around, trying to help or at least get out of the way. Damon felt like he was watching from afar.

Surely that was some other guy leading the pretty girl out of the bar, opening the door for her, telling his manager to stay behind to man the business. Some other guy about to be a father. Some guy with a less fantastical past. Some guy born at the end of the 20th century, who'd never died, never drank anyone's blood (because that would be crazy), someone who had never murdered anyone, either for sport, spite, or necessity. Damon Salvatore was not supposed to get this life.

He didn't deserve this life.

They were almost out the door when something wet gushed all over his Louis Vuttions. And just like that Damon was jolted out of his trance. "What the fuck?" he shouted.

Elena glared at him, saying, "The fuck was my water breaking."

"That is incredibly gross," Damon told her, making a face as he cautiously picked up his foot, testing out the damage, wondering if the shoes would ever be wearable again. "Whoever designed women's bodies could have left that out."

Elena glared harder. "Would you rather have this baby inside you, trying to force its way out?"

Damon shook his head.

He realized that he needed to shut up.

"Care to go back in time and have all the months of pregnancy, would that be fun? Big pregnant belly on Damon Salvatore? Unable to fit into your fancy black shirts?"

Damon shook his head again. After a long moment of them standing there, facing off against each other, he gulped. He felt less numb, and began to experience some kind of unpleasant human emotion he hadn't experienced in at least a century and a half. Was he nervous? That couldn't be it. Surely, he'd been nervous at some point during the 21st or 20th centuries. Panicked? No, that wasn't it either. And this was nothing like a panic attack. But it was nonetheless frantic and unpleasant. "We're not at the hospital," he rattled out the words to Elena, way too fast. Damon felt altogether too fast. "Your water broke, and we're not at the hospital. Fuck."

"It's okay. We've still got hours to go," she told him.

Damon sighed, opened the door again, and ushered her out the door.

"Sajen!" he shouted. "Get whoever you like the least to clean this up over here!" And then they were out of the bar. Damon let the door swung shut behind him. "But once your water breaks the labor will go faster," he told Elena.

"Did Damon Salvatore, badass ex-vampire, actually read one of the pregnancy books I gave you?"

He rolled his eyes. "I skimmed. Slow night at the bar."

Elena kissed him sweetly on the lips, her hugely pregnant belly pushing into his body, reminding him of everything he'd built, and everything he had to lose. "Everything's fine," she said, pulling him towards his car.

Damon blanched at the idea of icky bodily fluids getting on the Camaro's seats. "Maybe we should call an ambulance."

"It's not an emergency," she said, her arm still wrapped around his waist, her voice remarkably light. Almost casual. "It's —" but then she was digging her fingernails into his waist, where a moment ago her hand had rested gently. "Fuck fuck fuck!" Elena shouted. A group of college students walking on the other side of the street stopped to stare at them.

"That sounds like an emergency," Damon said, but Elena just shook her head. Once the contraction had passed, she opened the car door and tried to lower herself into the passenger seat. Damon sighed and helped her. He could get the car detailed later.

Now he paced outside her room, calling Bonnie for the tenth time. He'd been sitting in a chair next to her bed, trying not to flinch every time Elena cried out in pain. Nothing in his upbringing had prepared him to be in that room. Nineteenth century men never entered birthing rooms, and even though centuries separated him from that time, it just felt weird. A doctor had come in to talk about doctory things, and Elena had told Damon he should take a break, try to reach people.

He'd felt grateful for the escape, telling himself that he was doing a good deed by getting Bonnie and Caroline here. If her mom and aunt couldn't be with Elena right now, at least have her two best friends could be beside her, in the birthing room. Women were surely much better at this whole ushering a baby into the world thing.

Damon wanted to thwack whichever modern, new age psychologist had decided that men should witness the miracle childbirth. (And get it on their shoes.)

Damon hung up on Bonnie's voicemail for the tenth time. He hadn't been able to reach anyone in Mystic Falls, and was getting worried. Nobody was answering their damned phones. So either they'd all decided to go on a movie date together, or something altogether unpleasant was afoot. If he found out that they were all seeing the latest superhero movie, or getting pedicures in some underground salon without cell service, or had just failed to master the art of charging their freaking phones, Damon was going to freaking murder them. All of them. He could always blame it on Klaus, so Elena wouldn't kill him for killing her baby brother again. And Ric for the third time. And finally following through on his (mostly joking) threats to murder Bon Bon.

He glanced around the hall in a huff, trying to decide if he should stay here, lurking, or go to the gift shop to get Elena the magazines she'd asked for. Suddenly a group of people streamed out of the elevator. When Damon saw Bonnie and Caroline rushing towards him, with Jeremy, Ric and the girls close behind, he felt like he could breathe again. Had he not been breathing before?

"How is she?" Caroline asked. She looked worried. Why did she look so worried? Nobody else seemed particularly out of sorts, but Caroline had a terrible poker face, and maybe the rest of his idiot friends and family were just better at hiding their distress. Damon forgot about wanting to murder people. For the moment.

Damon shrugged at her. "I don't know. Elena says everything's fine. But the doctors got all serious when they realized how early the baby was coming. So either Elena is lying when she says that 7 weeks premature is no big deal, or these doctors are overreacting because they're dicks."

Caroline plastered on a fake smile and said, "I'm going to check on her." When Jeremy followed, she spun around, saying, "No men except the father. You can stay out here."

"Like hell I will!" Jeremy snapped.

Damon rolled his eyes.

"Fine," Caroline said. "It's up to Elena if she wants to kick you out."

After those two entered Elena's room, Damon turned to Bonnie and Alaric, asking, "Should I be worried?" When neither of them responded, he said, "So you finally got my messages? You better not have been in a movie theatre, seeing the goddamned superman-spiderman-ironman-whateverman movie with your ringers off."

Bonnie shook her head. "There's something with cell phone service in Mystic Falls. I don't know what it is, but we didn't get any messages. The baby told us. Your baby is a genius," she said with a grin. "She reached out to me."

"Bonnie passed out!" Josie said.

Lizzie chimed in, saying, "It was freaky."

Damon laughed, glancing from Bonnie to the twins. "Summer's done it to me twice today."

"Who's —" Bonnie started to ask when she grinned wider than he'd seen her grin in a long time, and as she looked up at him, her hazel eyes positively sparkled. "You named the baby?"

Damon waggled his eyebrows. "She kind of named herself. After Elena's mother, her maiden name. Sommers, but without the S. …In any event, my daughter, Summer Salvatore is a genius. I'm thinking Harvard at 12."

Alaric raised his eyebrows as he muttered, "Please don't try to get Caroline to compel a dean to make this happen. And how exactly does a fetus name itself?"

Damon laughed. "Okay. So, you know how our lives are never normal. Even when we think they are, and life seems boring and mundane, nonetheless weird shit happens?"

Bonnie and Alaric nodded fervently. Even the six-year-old twins [check age] were nodding knowingly. Josie and Lizzie stood on either side of Ric. Josie hung onto Ric's hand and only snuck shy glances at Damon, but Lizzie's posture and demeanor was oddly adult. Noticing Damon looking at her, the child stared back, and something about her expression was very Caroline. Lizzie might not share genetic material with Caroline, but she'd clearly learned from her mother how to stare someone down.

"Dude, do you have a point?" Alaric cut into Damon's thoughts.

"Of course I do, dude," he snarked back. "So Elena and I have been going back and forth about names for months. And frankly, I was tired of the discussion. Miranda and Jenna would both have been fine. They might be a little modern for my taste, but it's her mother and aunt. I'm not a heartless monster. Well, not this decade. What possessed Elena to think that Lily was a good idea is beyond me. I hope my mother burned along with hell itself. And seriously, this stupid human bullshit of trying to figure out the perfect name for our human lovechild. It's a whole ordeal, involving very little sex. Then Elena found the old Salvatore bible, with and endless list of Salvatore women's names, each more Italian and ridiculous than the last… I lost interest in this months ago."

Bonnie glared at him. "So you're a dick. We know this. How did the baby name herself?"

"Oh. I had a dream. Or vision. Or whatever the fuck we're calling them."

"Really?" Bonnie asked, looking all excited for some reason.

Damon nodded and explained what had happened on the way to Charlottesville, how Elena had seemed like she was going into a trance but then Damon had passed out and "met" his daughter by interacting with her in a vision, which seemed to be a scene of the future, when she was about four.

"Do you think that exact scene is going to happen?" Ric asked, incredulous.

Damon shrugged. "How the hell am I supposed to know? I figured Bon Bon would know."

Bonnie shook her head, looking utterly confused. "Damon, this is unprecedented. I haven't been able to find anything about what the baby is doing, not in a single grimoire that I've searched so far."

"What about all your creepy occult books, Ric?" Damon asked, getting thoroughly annoyed.

Ric shook his head. "Sorry, brother. Nothing yet."

"Why haven't any of you witchy-folk created magic stuff Wikipedia?" Damon snapped at Bonnie. "Wouldn't that be easier than sifting through musty old books?"

Ric laughed.

Bonnie glared at them both, saying, "Remember how I can make the right book fly off the shelf and open up to the right page?"

"Great idea. Love that trick," Damon said sharply. "Do that."

"I already have, you idiot."

"And?"

"Again, I've found nothing. Not yet. And, Damon, we've talked about this, so I don't know why my not knowing something is suddenly news to you."

Damon narrowed his eyes. "Well, I know what you've said. I just …."

Suddenly he realized that in all their talks about the magic baby they'd never laid the subject completely bare. Perhaps he'd never asked the right questions. "Are you saying my kid is so freakish that she's doing things that no other fetus has ever done? In the history of witches?"

"I don't know if she even is a witch," Bonnie said. "She could be psychic. She could only have very specific precognitive abilities."

Damon took a deep breath. "I know we specialize in finding out about things that no one's ever heard of, like curing vampires or resurrecting two thousand-year-old assholes. Stuff that makes us sound batshit crazy to the rest of the supernatural community. … But seriously, this can't be one of those situations. It's just some visions!"

Bonnie looked oddly serious now. Solemn even. "It's not just some visions, Damon. You have the Cure in your body. So does Elena. So does … you called her Summer?" Damon nodded. "Nobody else in the world is directly linked to this particular, very powerful magic. Summer is directly related to one of those batshit crazy situations you just mentioned."

Damon — who had suspected for a while that the Cure probably had something to do with his daughter's strange prenatal abilities — found himself floored, nonetheless.

He'd known Elena's pregnancy was weird, but he'd been telling himself it was just because Summer had information for them, about the weird magic hotspot shit going down in Mystic Falls. The strange thing was the hotspot, not his daughter. Being a witch wasn't completely weird. While Damon wouldn't wish the burden of magic on his kid, Damon had known scores of witches in his day; he and Elena could handle a little witch.

"No Bennett witch has ever given her parents visions from the womb?" Damon asked, voice small. Scared. "Not even one?"

Bonnie bit her lip. "Not as far as I know," she said, just as softly.

He glanced at Alaric. "What about the Geminis?"

Alaric shook his head.

Damon thought he might have to sit down, but little Lizzie Saltzman reached out and squeezed his hand. She steadied him. Her touch was gentle and firm at the same time. He looked at her in shock. "Uncle Damon, don't worry," Lizzie said. She was missing two front teeth.

Her smile was a perfect mix of Ric, Jo, and Caroline.

###

As her labor progressed, Elena tried to tune everyone out. She found it was easier to keep her eyes closed.

The baby was coming faster than she'd anticipated. Usually, first-time mothers labored for hours, even days. Yes, she'd been having some contractions for a couple hours before realizing it and rushing to the hospital, but even so she'd expected to settle in for the night. But here they were, 60 minutes after Damon had rushed her into the maternity ward, and Elena's contractions were a minute apart.

And they were hard.

Rough.

She soon had no choice but to scream. And then came a point when screaming no longer helped, when she had to retreat deep within herself.

After a few minutes of Jeremy awkwardly standing near her and making awkward small talk about teaching the twelve-year-olds how to use crossbows, which Elena could tell was freaking out the nurses, she'd kicked him out of the room but begged Caroline to stay. It was sweet that her baby brother wanted to be here for her, but she really didn't need him to witness her giving birth. Or hear anything else about a goddamned crossbow.

This was more pain than she'd ever felt — well that wasn't exactly true. Elena had lived an unlikely couple of lives with an unlikely amount of physical pain. But this was a different kind of pain. Childbirth was actually worse than Klaus draining every ounce of blood and life out of her — the Original had been remarkably delicate and smooth about the whole thing. A wooden splinter darting into or near her vampire heart did hurt more. But the splinter she kept thinking about — Damon had dug that splinter out in a minute or two. Childbirth kept going on and on. Hours of it. Every time a contraction subsided, there was only a brief respite before another, inevitably came. Childbirth was a pain that you couldn't just grimace through for a bit. Childbirth was a pain you had to endure.

And so Elena went within.

As the contractions got closer together, it seemed that she was in almost constant pain. The brief respites between the contractions were now so short. Less than a minute. Elena had almost forgotten what it was like not to be in pain.

What had life been like when her womb was not clenching and unclenching? When her body was not trying like hell to force a tiny life outside into the world, to force this baby girl from Elena's warm, dark, womb into the brightness, the craziness, the danger.

As a contraction passed, Elena opened her eyes, blinking in the harsh hospital light. Caroline was holding her hand, her expression overly serious. "Care?" Elena asked hoarsely.

"You're doing great, sweetie," Caroline said with a fake smile.

They were alone in the room now, no doctors, no nurses. So she couldn't be so dilated that the birth was imminent. There couldn't be an emergency. Elena glanced at the monitors, and all the baby's vitals looked good. Great even. Her vitals were good as well. But still. Something about Caroline's expression worried her.

"What's wrong?" Elena asked.

"Nothing's wrong. Why would anything be wrong?" Caroline said. She was such a terrible liar. "Except that your hospital gown is the exact wrong color for your complexion. That is a travesty."

Elena began to smile when she felt her entire body clenching, hardening. Without meaning to, she was screaming. "Where's Damon?" she managed to yell in the midst of her general screaming.

Caroline rolled her eyes. "He's having a weird nineteenth century man crisis. He keeps coming in, and then leaving after a few minutes, and saying that it's fundamentally distasteful for him to be in here. He even quoted his father. It's weird."

When the contraction passed, Elena started to laugh but her laughter turned into tears. "Get Damon," she blubbered to Caroline. "Tell him he's not his father, so he deserves to be in here."

A minute later Caroline dragged Damon into the room, holding onto his hand like he was a child. Elena glared at him. He sat down on the edge of the bed and kissed the back of her hand. Caroline lingered by the door.

And then another contraction. Elena grabbed Damon's hand like her life depended on it. He managed to stretch out on the bed, lying beside her, holding her close to him as the pain shot through her body. When it had passed, she said, "It's a weird pain. Do you remember when Kai kidnapped me, and he tricked you into staking me, and there was that sliver of wood near my heart that you had to get out?"

Damon chuckled. "You mean the nonexistent wood that you made me dig all through your chest for, freaking me out like no one else could, asking if there was anything important I needed to say, and then laughing like a crazy person because it was all a joke?"

"Oldest trick in the book," she said.

"One of those moments when I knew you were the girl for me, because you were just as crazy as I was."

"Am I still crazy?" Elena asked. "Or was that just vampire Elena?"

Damon sat up to look at her, thoughtful all of a sudden. "Vampire Elena is still in there. You just have to let her come out."

"And eat people?" she said with a grin, and then started to scream.

"It's okay, honey," he told her — his voice so gentle — letting her squeeze the life out of his hand as he threw his other arm around her shoulders so her head rested on his shoulder and his whole body seemed to envelope hers. "You're doing great. And it's not about eating people. Vampire Elena: She's like this other Elena. She's you, but freer. Like when you give yourself permission to be truly alive. When you don't worry about what other people think. When you don't let every minute of your life be consumed by responsibilities and morality and judgy people. When you drink and dance and are completely in the moment, at home in your skin, and you revel in it."

As the pain lessened, Elena smiled, and tilted her head up so she could kiss him. It was a light, sweet kiss. "That day, when Kai kidnapped me, I really did think I was going to die. And when you pulled those shards out, I've never felt so alive. I think that's why I kept it up, why I tricked you. And now, honey, right this minute, I feel pretty damned alive."

Damon laughed. Even Caroline laughed, from her position lounging on the doorframe. But Elena noticed that Caroline's expression was still grim. "Care, what's wrong?" she asked, as another wave rocked her body.

"Nothing's wrong!" Caroline chirped.

Elena could see Damon's head whipping around. "Caroline," he said, his voice low and deadly. This was vampire Damon's voice, though not the fun, flirty vampire Damon. This was vampire Damon right before he killed you and didn't even bother to make a joke about it.

Caroline sighed, saying, "There's nothing wrong. The doctors just think the baby is bigger than they had expected it to be, and it's kind of weirded them out."

"What?" snapped Damon and Elena at once.

Another contraction started, and Elena tried to listen as Caroline explained that even though they knew Elena was only 33 weeks pregnant, the baby was the size of a full-term baby. So they didn't know if they ought to be worried about a preemie, or worried that a preemie was the size of a full-term baby.

Elena tried not to think about the reality of a baby born seven weeks early, of the possibility that Summer would need to be in an incubator, or worse, on oxygen until her lungs could fully recover. She hadn't lied to Damon when she said that the baby would be fine. Long term risks at 33 weeks were minimal. But she'd been bracing herself for a stay in the NICU. Maybe weeks in the NICU. If Summer was the size of a 40-week baby, then maybe her lungs would be fully developed. Could Elena and all her doctors have gotten the dates wrong? No. Every ultrasound and test had shown this development, had pointed to a conception in November and a birth in August. But it was June.

This was getting weird, like everything else in her life.

"So she's going to be a sumo wrestler?" Damon asked.

"Damon, you are a complete moron," Caroline snipped at him.

"Care," Elena said through gritted teeth as a contraction passed. "Is there anything else wrong? Or weird?"

The blond vampire shrugged. "One of the doctors said something about a machine going haywire. She was really annoyed about it. I think she fixed it. No, she got another one."

Damon frowned. "Bonnie said cell service was disrupted in Mystic Falls. Now a birthing machine?"

"Do you actually think that there's something called a birthing machine?" Caroline said, incredulous.

"Oh, fuck you!"

"Been there, done that. Not pretty," Caroline muttered.

Elena laughed. Then she screamed. And then she screamed some more. And then she couldn't stop screaming.

The contractions had been coming in predictable waves, but now something in her body was heating up. She couldn't do anything but scream.

This felt primal.

"What are we supposed to do?" Caroline asked Damon. It was strange to see Caroline look so helpless. She usually knew how to take charge of every situation. But Elena's old friend looked … scared.

Damon cradled Elena's body as he said, "Go get some fucking doctors. And some fucking nurses. And some fucking non-broken machines. And you need to compel a doctor to give us real answers."

"Good idea!" Caroline said brightly.

"Seriously, Care?" Damon snapped, as Elena continued to scream. "This is vampire 101. Now chop chop."

As Caroline ran out of the room, Damon kissed Elena's hair, whispering, "It's going to be okay, honey. We're going to see our little girl really soon. And I already know she'll look just like you, with my eyes. So she'll be perfect."

Deep within herself, Elena found a place of calm. It had nothing to do with Lamaze breathing. It had nothing to do with the epidural she'd refused for some bizarre reason.

It had a lot to do with Damon's calm voice … and her innate faith in herself, knowledge that she was strong, that she had been tested, that she had proven herself time and time again.

Elena Gilbert always, without fail, endured.

She did feel extraordinarily alive.

In this place of cool clarity, she could feel all the facets of herself fitting together — the scared, lonely girl who lost her parents, the seventeen year-old who sacrificed herself to save her friends, the vampire who found that she felt more alive in death than she'd ever felt before death, the nineteen-year-old who jumped in Damon's car so that they could drive into the Grill together, blow themselves up together, the twenty year-old who jumped off the clock tower one last time, with him, before taking the cure, the woman who'd woken up from a coma to discover she was now twenty-five, the girl who got to marry her true love, the twenty-six-year-old medical student, the woman who taught 178-year-old Damon how to be human again.

"I have to sit up," she said, between gritted teeth.

"No, you should —" he sputtered

"Damon, shut the fuck up. Help me sit up." And so Damon was climbing off the bed and standing in front of Elena, grasping her hands in his, pulling her up so that she was truly sitting, helping her scoot forward. "Get my feet in those stirrups," she ordered, and he complied, looking completely, utterly confused.

"Why do you want to sit up this way?" he asked.

Elena spread her legs and motioned for him to stand in front of him. "Because this baby is coming. Now." And then she grabbed his hands, tight, and screamed like she'd never screamed before. And when the pain peaked in a terrible crescendo, she pushed.

"Oh, no, we are not doing this," Damon was saying. "We are waiting for a doctor to come take care of this."

As the contraction passed, Elena laughed. "Can you see the head?"

"Oh no, I am not looking down there."

"You've never had a problem looking down there before."

"There's never been a strange creature trying to come out before."

"Really?" she snapped.

"Yeah," he snapped back.

And Elena screamed bloody murder. She clenched his hands so hard she thought she might break bones. And, again, she pushed.

"Now what are we doing here?" Dr. Heygood said briskly as she walked into Elena's room, flanked by several medical students. Elena recognized a couple of them from her classes. Great. Now when she finally went back to school, she'd have to see these fresh-faced twenty-two-year-olds sitting next to her, and she'd know they'd seen her vagina.

Damon stepped aside, muttering, "Elena decided to start pushing, just cause."

"Well, let's see how far you're dilated," Dr. Heygood said. She was nice but all business, and Elena was fine with that. "Oh, my, that looks like ten centimeters. And there's the top of the head. Mr. Gilbert, would you like to see the head?"

Damon shook his head, looking like he was about to be sick at the mere thought of seeing a head coming out of Elena's vagina. "Salvatore," he corrected. "She's Gilbert, I'm Salvatore."

"Oh, I'm sorry. … Is another contraction coming, dear? Oh, yes. Push. Now. One good push."

"Elena here thinks women shouldn't change their identities just because they marry a man. Now in my day."

Elena screamed.

"Let it out, dear. Push! Now, Mr. Salvatore, come back here and hold your wife's hand and stop whining about the downfall of the patriarchy. It is the 21st century after all. I'll have you know that I'm old enough to be your mother, and I kept my name when I got married."

At this, Damon broke out laughing so hard he cried, no doubt wanting to tell the doctor that he was old enough to be her great-great-great grandfather. But he finally complied, coming over and letting Elena hold his hand like her life depended on it, squeezing it so hard she thought she was throwing everything of her into him.

When the contraction passed, Elena noticed Caroline standing by the door of the room. "Care," she said, exhausted but exhilarated. "Get Bonnie and then both of you get over here."

So now she had her love and her two best friends. Bonnie rubbed her forehead while Damon and Caroline allowed her to pummel their hands. Elena figured Caroline's vampire hands could stand more abuse than Bonnie's could.

"Three more pushes," Dr. Heygood yelled, as Elena screamed louder than she thought possible.

This was nothing but primal.

As the baby's head pushed through, Elena felt more alive than she'd ever felt.

And then the shoulders were out.

And then then Dr. Heygood was pulling the baby out all the way. Elena saw nurses come forward with blankets to clean off the amniotic fluid. For one terrible moment, it was deathly quiet in the delivery room. And then Summer opened her mouth and screamed. Everyone in the room, who must have all been holding their breaths, breathed out a sigh of relief. And then there was a lot of chattering and laughing and congratulating. Damon was kissing Elena, then he was cutting the cord.

The doctors and nurses were rushing around, administering the tests they would administer to every newborn. Elena realized that the reason so many people were in the room, beyond the fact that UVA's medical center was a teaching hospital, was that Summer was premature. A pediatrician from the NICU and his own students were there to make sure she was okay.

"Is she okay?" Elena asked Dr. Heygood, feeling like she might start bawling if she got the wrong answer.

"She's fine," Dr. Heygood said. She was right beside Elena. Her smile was genuine, unguarded.

"Seven pounds two ounces," a nurse called out.

Elena's eyes widened. "At 33 weeks?"

Dr. Heygood raised her eyebrows. "That is one healthy 33-weeker!"

The pediatrician was bringing the baby over, grinning from ear to ear. "Nine out of ten on the APGAR. You'll notice that her skin is slightly translucent, as we'd expect on a baby this young, but other than that, she's behaving like a full termer. Excellent lung capacity," he said, as Summer wailed plaintively.

The doctor handed the baby to Damon, whose expression was nothing short of wondrous. Summer was swaddled in a hospital blanket, the blue and white and red stripy kind all newborns receive, and topped off with one of those silly newborn hats. Damon stood stiff and awkward, cradling their child. He clearly didn't know how to hold a baby. But he smiled at Elena, shyly. Could Damon Salvatore be shy?

Damon took two steps towards her, and now he was sitting down on the side of the bed, tentatively passing the baby to Elena, as if this tiny little creature might shatter into a thousand pieces.

Elena took her daughter into her arms, greedily. Knowing how important skin to skin contact was, especially to preemies, Elena unwrapped the swaddling and lay her baby naked on her chest. She pulled her hospital gown aside so the little girl could feel her mother's skin or her skin, feel the rhythm of her heart and the tempo of her breathing.

Without any fanfare, the doctors, the nurses, and her two best friends fled the room, so that it was just the three of them.

Their family.

Elena and Damon had made a new family.

"Summer Gilbert Salvatore," Damon said with a particular amount of pride, "Meet your mother. You will discover that she's a badass."

Elena laughed. "Did we really do this?"

"I think we really did. We made this."

"Your daddy's a badass too," Elena whispered in her daughter's ear. She felt Damon stiffen beside her. "What's wrong?"

"You want her to call me daddy?"

Elena laughed and laughed. This alive-feeling thing — it just kept going on. She was reveling in the moment. She was completely at home in her skin, with her daughter resting on her breast, with the love of her life sitting beside her, holding her hand. "That's what you are, silly. Now come here. If you give her your finger, she should wrap her little hand around it." As Summer's little hand grabbed Damon's pointer finger, Damon gasped.

"How did you know that would happen?" he asked. She had never seen him so full of wonder.

"Do you feel extra alive too?" she asked.

He grinned and nodded.

"So, Damon Salvatore, badass ex-vampire born in 1839: you feeling human right about now?"

He reached out to stroke her hair out of her eyes. His ice blue eyes were extra blue. Was he crying? Yes, he was blinking back tears. "The worst kind of human," he murmured. "All ooey gooey and about to write bad poetry about how much I love my girls."

Chapter Text

June 2018

Charlottesville, Virginia

Summer was five days old, and Elena still thought it was hard to tear her eyes away from her baby. But right now, at 2:43 in the morning, she'd gladly look away if only she could sleep. She'd missed a lot of sleep due to vampire shenanigans when she was human the first time, and she'd had to pull a few all nighters for med school over the past year and a half, so she'd thought she could handle sleepless nights. She was wrong. This exhaustion, it was like nothing she'd ever known. She felt drained. And now Summer was literally draining her.

Elena sat at the kitchen table in their little apartment, wearing one of Damon's button-down shirts and his loosest pair of jeans — the faded blue jeans he kept around to wear while burying corpses and other physical activities. She still couldn't fit into her own non-maternity clothes, or even button up these particular jeans. She'd opened up the shirt enough that Summer's little mouth could latch onto her breast and drink. At least the baby had stopped crying. Finally. Breastfeeding had hurt like hell at first, but now it just felt strange, this pressure, this little person sucking sustenance from her body.

Elena thought she'd managed to not wake anyone else up — Damon had slept through the crying fit like it wasn't happening and she'd let him, because he'd been up two hours ago. At midnight, he'd kissed Elena sweetly before putting her back to bed, holding Summer against his chest like he'd been doing it for years. So Elena thought she was alone in her awake-ness.

But now Bonnie stumbled from her "bed" on their couch, into the kitchen, bleary-eyed and pajama-clad.

"I'm sorry," Elena whispered.

"Don't worry about it," her best friend whispered back.

Elena smiled.

"I didn't want to ask in front of Damon," Bonnie murmured as she sat down at the table, across from her. "But, any word from Klaus?"

Elena shook her head, looking down at the tiny human being in her arms. "When I spoke to him he was in Europe. He said he had some matters to attend to before he could come 'rushing to Mystic Falls to save you lot from your own destruction, again.' And he needs to collect his sister from somewhere. He was kind of vague on a lot of details. There's something up with the Michaelson family, that's all I could piece together."

Bonnie frowned. "The witch sister, right? Not Rebekah. Because Rebekah might still want to murder you."

"The witch sister. Freya. They thought she died when she was a child. She didn't. It's very complicated. Like everything to do with that damned family. Am I crazy for calling him? I mean, I think I was already having contractions. I just didn't know what they were, because I'd never had a baby before," Elena said, laughing at herself, in spite of herself. These last few months had been so crazy. It was difficult to know if up was up or down was down, or if her ideas made any damned sense. "By the way, it is so weird. Labor, I mean. It's weird. I mean, on the one hand it's probably the most normal thing I've done in the last eight years. Compared to being drained of all my blood and dying at the hands of an Original, only to be resurrected by a spell you and my birth father performed, in which he sacrificed himself to save my soul from vampirism, I understand that childbirth is run of the mill. But still – contractions were something out of this world."

Bonnie laughed, before getting up from the table and returning with two glasses and a jug of orange juice she'd dug out of the fridge. They sat in silence for a couple minutes, sipping their juice, before Bonnie tilted her head and got that half smile on her face that always signaled something to Elena. Her friend was worried about something, and feeling awkward about it. Elena leaned in, instinctually.

"Is she the reason you called Klaus?" Bonnie asked.

Elena frowned, baffled by the left turn in conversation Bonnie had just taken. Then she realized what her friend was talking about. "You mean Freya?"

"You wanted a better witch?" Bonnie asked. She bit her lip, looking smaller than she usually looked these days. Less self-possessed. Ever since Elena woke up from her long sleep, she'd been amazed at how confident Bonnie was, in herself, in her gifts. At how well she knew herself. But now, Elena could see the teenage Bonnie, the girl who had never trusted herself enough.

Elena reached out to grab her best friend's hand and squeeze it, tight. "Not a better witch. Your magic is … it's extraordinary, Bonnie. Do you remember when you woke me up, and you said you thought you'd finally figured this magic thing out?"

Bonnie nodded.

Elena squeezed her hand again. "You have. And you trust it. Didn't you tell me a long time ago, in what seems like another life, that magic doesn't work if the witch's confidence is shaken? Something like that. … And maybe it's my connection to Summer, but when I saw you putting up the extra protection spells at the hospital, after she was born, and here, when we brought her home — I could feel the power. It was tangible. It was … it was big."

Bonnie squeezed back, smiling a bit and saying, "So why do we need the mysteriously alive, non-vampire-immortal witch sister?"

"Because she's 1000 years old," Elena said in a rush. "And she was trained by a very powerful witch. Her aunt, I think, Esther, the Original Mother's sister? Who may have been more powerful than Esther. Their line, I don't know anything about it before Esther's time, but my guess is that they are descended from powerful people. Like you're descended from Quetsiya. It might be helpful to have another line, right? This Freya chick, she knows things that we don't know. And we need help. Summer doesn't think we'll make it if we do it on our own."

"Summer is five days old."

Elena raised her eyebrows and gave Bonnie a pointed look. "So now we're going to pretend that she's just a normal baby? I heard you and Damon talking last night. And she gave me another vision, just now, before I woke up. Well, she was crying, so she sort of woke me up, but I was waking up anyway."

"What was it?"

Elena stalled for a minute.

She noticed that Summer had fallen asleep nursing. Elena adjusted the dark-haired baby so that she was now sleeping against her shoulder, feeling the weight of her little body. She was tiny of course, but Elena could still feel the magnitude of her, of this little person resting on her body, this little person who depended on her. Even if she was a magic baby, in most ways her daughter was an ordinary infant who depended on Elena and Damon for food, diapers, clothing, shelter, and affection. Elena kissed her little head.

"Elena!"

Elena glanced up at Bonnie, and now she didn't feel so sure of herself. Partly because the vision had been confusing. "It was weird. I felt like I was flashing through different time periods. I don't know why I thought that, exactly, but the clothes kept changing, the hairstyles, the buildings. It was like in a time travel movie, where the story keeps changing time periods. Anyway, I saw what seemed like ancient Native Americans, and they were doing some awful ritual. A woman was being sacrificed, I think. And then she screamed words in a language that I've never heard. She died, and everybody else turned into … something. And then I was someplace else. But I don't think it was a different place. I think it was a different time. I'm not exactly sure why I think that. But there was this man. He looked like a Viking. He had a sword …" She trailed off, trying to figure out why this image seemed familiar, why someone in that scene from so long ago had looked familiar.

"Elena?" Bonnie asked. "What's wrong?"

"I didn't see his face. But he was stabbing someone. Someone I recognized. Finn! Then Elijah. Then, yes, definitely it was Klaus. They looked different. Their hair was long, and their clothes. They were … unwashed. But it was them. Definitely."

"So you saw someone stabbing the Originals?"

"No, I think I saw someone making the Originals. I think I saw the ritual that turned the Michaelsons into vampires."

Bonnie's eyes widened. Then she grinned. "The other ritual? It was in the same place?"

"I think so."

"Could have they have turned into wolves? Was that what happened?"

Elena thought about it. It had all happened so fast, and she'd never seen a werewolf transformation up close. But after a minute she nodded.

"Then it sounds a lot like the story Alaric told me about how werewolves came into existence. Remember when he went down to New Orleans, to bring them a relic from Tyler's family? They'd made some discoveries. And here's the thing. If those two ceremonies happened in the same place, then they were both in Mystic Falls. All the magic that was needed for those spells, it must have come from somewhere. Magic isn't made. It just is, it's in the earth. Maybe Summer's trying to tell us that there's an … imbalance in Mystic Falls. Maybe so much has happened there that magic is just going haywire. I've been thinking about recent events, about ley lines reshifting after we annihilated Hell. But maybe it's bigger than that."

"So why are you smiling?"

"Because this is exciting. You're studying to be a doctor, but magic is what I do. And Summer, brilliant little baby that she is, she's giving us an edge. Maybe she's even protecting us." Bonnie positively beamed.

###

Damon cursed at the diaper again. Why did the damned thing keep leaking? Wasn't its sole purpose to stop things from leaking? And yet he had a baby's urine all over his jeans. And this was his third outfit of the day. And human beings were disgusting, even if this one happened to be his own child, even if she was looking up at him right now, looking him straight in the eyes, her blue eyes freakily familiar. Was she smiling? Did she think it was amusing to pee on his favorite jeans?

He found himself wishing that Summer would start wailing, so Elena would jump out of their bed, and come to his rescue. He'd been in charge of the baby all afternoon, and there had been urine and spit-up and two more disgustingly soiled diapers, and yet his daughter hadn't cried once. She'd just stared at her father, like he should know better, like he should be better. And Elena stayed in the bedroom, curled up beneath a blanket her own mother had made for her years before.

"Listen, you little urchin," he said as he managed to get the new diaper velcroed down, "If you are a powerful witch, the least you could do is toilet train yourself. I mean, seriously, it's been six days and you're still in diapers?" Summer started squirming around. Damon wrestled her into a new outfit, a fuzzy yellow onesie with ducks all over it. "Okay, that's pretty fucking cute."

Laughter. Damon glanced up to see Bonnie standing at the front door, laden down with bags, laughing at him. "You know you're so adorable with her I want to take all these videos of you and use them later, for blackmail?"

"I am not adorable."

Bonnie raised her eyebrows. "Sure. You're a scary vampire who might kill me in my sleep. I'm terrified."

"Thank you," Damon said with a grin as he picked Summer up off the changing table and held her against his chest in a position that was becoming frighteningly normal. "So what did you get from the outside world?"

"Food. Some clothes for Elena," Bonnie said as she walked towards the kitchen table and threw down her bags.

"What does she need with new clothes? That woman has a lot of clothes already," Damon asked, incredulous. "Are you telling me you went outside, where it's dangerous, and you know that someone might want to target you, and you decided to go clothes shopping for my wife?"

Bonnie glared at him. "I can take care of myself."

"I know."

"Careful, Damon. I might think you care."

"Very funny."

"Elena needs clothes that fit her because she just had a baby and her maternity clothes are too big but her regular clothes are too small. And you have her on house arrest because you're paranoid about something happening to her if she goes out, so I went shopping."

Damon frowned. "Won't that chub just, uh, go away, in a couple days?"

"The thirty pounds of weight she was carrying around in addition to your baby, because you knocked her up?" Bonnie asked, looking at him like he was a crazy person. "Do you have any idea how the female body works?"

Damon raised his brows, saying, "I've been told I missed out on a lot of health class lessons."

Bonnie grinned wryly. "Speaking of lessons, I want you to think of anything Emily Bennett may have taught you back in the day, anything she might have let slip that would give us any more information about the magic hot spot in Mystic Falls. Anything you know about Katherine's arrival that you've never thought was relevant."

"What else could I possibly tell you?"

Bonnie shrugged. "Just think about, okay? I have this hunch that the past is the key to this whole mess. Elena told you about her vision, about the Originals being turned in the same place that the werewolf curse originated, and we're pretty sure that's in Mystic Falls, close to the clock tower?"

Damon nodded.

"Any visions of your own to report?"

He shook his head, wishing he had something to report. Maybe he was too tired to have a vision. Or maybe Summer just wanted to torture him for some reason. Was that why she kept peeing on him?

"Anyway, I got something for you too," his best friend said with a grin, pulling out a DVD.

"The Godfather?"

She pulled out two more. "Parts one, two and three."

"Three is terrible."

"So you've told me."

"Why?"

Bonnie pulled him over to the couch. "Because you need to relax."

"If Elena catches us watching something violent in front of the baby — "

"I gave her a sleeping potion. She needed to rest, utterly and completely rest, and I whipped up something that will let her do that without leaving any hangover?"

Damon raised his eyebrows. "Maybe you should sell this stuff. You could make a killing. I'm picturing you on an infomercial, spouting a bunch of fake science mumbo jumbo. Do you have a lab coat? I bet Caroline could sweet talk the FDA into licensing it as a medicine.

"Damon!" Bonnie chided, looking disapprovingly at him.

"What? Compulsion solves almost every problem."

She rolled her eyes. "How about we stick to the Godfather trilogy. Start with part one?"

Damon tried to contain his enthusiasm as he put the DVD in the DVD player and turned on the TV. Then he felt a trickle of wet. "Fuck!" he said, pulling Summer away from his shirt before her pee could soak into him, but it was too late. "Why don't these diapers work?"

Bonnie giggled. "We talked about this last night. You're not putting them on tight enough."

"No, you were putting the diaper on too tight. It was hurting her. Her poor little legs."

Bonnie giggled again. "So much blackmail material."

"I will kill you in your sleep."

"By fastening a diaper too tightly?"

And he just lost it, all of a sudden he was laughing and laughing. And laughter was a glorious thing. Almost as good as compulsion.

###

Seven days had passed since Summer was born, and nothing had happened. Damon was starting to wish that something would happen. Nothing major. Nothing cataclysmic. But he'd take a minor attack by an incompetent witch. Or a few suspicious bodies turning up, looking like vampire kills. Or werewolf kills. Or naughty witch kills. He'd take Alaric or Bonnie having a minor breakthrough, some leyline discovery maybe. Anything that would tell him what they were up against, or give him something to do, or someone to fight. He would love to stake a vampire with one of Alaric's fancy toys, right about now. Because this waiting, this wondering, this worrying that something might happen to his family, this undefined ick — it was driving him crazy.

"Hey Mr. S." came a girl's voice behind him. "We're out of limes."

And just like that, he was pulled out of his head. Damon laughed as he said to his waitress, "Libby, go ask Sajen. I think he has a secret stash of limes. No idea why he needs secret limes. If you ask me it's deviant. But they're somewhere."

Damon was at work in case Klaus or anyone equally nefarious showed up. Elena was home with the baby and Bonnie, so that hopefully the trifecta of threshold barrier, protection spells, and Bon Bon's magic would protect them. But truth be told — Damon was glad to be at work. To have something mundane to do with his time, with his hands. And if Klaus or anyone equally unsavory showed up, his employees were probably safer with Damon there than left to be clueless and undefended on their own.

The waitress/UVA sophomore grinned. She was about to walk away when she turned back and pulled out her phone. "Look at this adorable picture of Summer." She showed him a photo of Elena and Summer sitting on the front steps of their building. Elena was grinning ear to ear. He wasn't sure when he'd seen her look so … light, as if she wasn't worrying about anything. Of course when he was home, he wasn't letting her out of the apartment. The threshold barrier that would protect them against unwanted vampires, along with a big portion Bonnie's elaborate spell work, would only work if they were inside. But looking at his girls in the sunlight — It was beautiful. They were beautiful. And Summer was looking right at the camera. Everyone who met the baby kept talking about how strange it was that she kept her eyes open as much as she did. How it seemed like she was actually watching people. Apparently most newborns kept their eyes shut most of the time. Of course, Damon knew nothing about babies. He hadn't had much contact with a newborn since Stefan was born in 1847.

"So, I put it on Facebook, and I tried to tag you and Mrs. S., but I couldn't find you. You are on Facebook, right?" Libby asked.

Damon opened his mouth to say something inane and then closed it again. Why was this employee talking to him about social media?

"I mean, I can't believe we're not Facebook friends already! Or on Instagram!" Libby chattered on. "So, you have to tell me, do you have your accounts in different names or something? Cause some people do."

Damon laughed and shook his head. "Sorry, sweetheart. I don't have any accounts."

Libby's eyes widened in surprise. "What about Twitter?"

Damon shook his head.

"Snapchat? Tumblr?"

"No. Don't you have some limes to go look for? Aren't there customers just dying for a wide variety of drinks that come with lime wedges stuck onto their glasses?"

"Are you one of those people who is against social media?" she asked, looking more and more confused.

Damon raised his eyebrows at her and gave her an especially condescending smile as he said, "Lib, I was born before the Civil War, so it all just seems a little stupid."

Libby stared at him in blank, utter confusion. "Come on, Mr. S. You're not that old."

Damon laughed, enjoying her confusion. After a moment, she laughed as well. It was fun to just blurt out the truth sometimes, to someone you know would never believe that you were an ex-vampire, born a century before the first computer, fifty years before radio transmitters, and just two years after the first commercial telegraph machines. Damon remembered his father talking about those newfangled telegrams when he was a boy. They were primitive communication devices by today's standards — they used Morse code to transmit messages for God's sake — but Guisseppe Salvatore "didn't trust those ungodly machines" and felt sure that the devil might send a "devious message to some poor, misguided soul."

Clearly still confused, Libby said, "So what about Mrs. S.? She must be on Instagram, or something. I really want to tag her, so everyone who knows you guys can see your adorable baby." Elena had been on at least one of those sites in high school, and even in college when she'd just been another quasi-normal, functional-vampire coed. (Though he didn't think she'd had much time for posting selfies or photos of her dinner. Not since her first couple years of high school, before she'd met the Salvatore brothers, and been inducted into the world of weird.) But then Elena had been cursed to sleep for five years. When she'd wokedn up, it had been hard enough to resume a normal life without having to invent five years of social media posts so that her account didn't look strange. So she'd never started up again Facebook, et cetera. He'd never thought to ask her if she thought she was missing out on some important part of her life.

"Don't you still have some limes to wrestle out of the clutches of Sajen's secret lime stash?" he snapped at Libby.

Libby, looking mildly offended at his tone, began to turn away from him. But then someone else was running up to Damon, creating a little breeze, as if this person were moving just a tad faster than humanly possible. Damon was so familiar with the ways vampires move that he knew without looking that A., this person was not a threat to him, and B., that if she'd moved any faster she would have blurred. Which could be an inconvenient threat to Damon's cover as a normal-fucking-person.

"Seriously?" he said to Caroline, when she almost knocked into him. "Didn't anyone ever tell you not run indoors? Walking feet, isn't that what you tell your freaking students?"

Caroline stuck her tongue out at him. "Shut up. I'm saving you a lot of trouble," she murmured. Then Caroline turned toward Libby, with a determined look on her face. "Now, you, hon, what's your name?"

Libby stared at Caroline. "What's your name?"

"I asked you first."

"Well, I asked you second. And I don't think you're old enough to get in here," Libby hissed. "This is a bar. And he's married."

Damon chuckled. He'd tried to convince Caroline to dye her hair, to put some streaks of gray in, anything to look older than 17, but so far, she had not listened. To Libby, he said, "She's fine. She just looks young. And so, so not into me. While I'm sure Elena appreciates you having her back, you don't have to worry about this." Turning to Caroline, he snapped, "Anyway, Care Bear, what's the crisis you're speeding over for? Did you want to lecture me on the importance of keeping in touch on Instagram? Do you know where the limes are? Cause there's nothing else going on here."

Caroline gave a big fake smile to both Damon and Libby. Then she held out her hand towards Libby and said, "Give me your phone. Now." Caroline's eyes dilated as she spoke.

Libby stashed her cell phone in her pocket and gave Caroline a nasty look.

"All the staff are on vervain, idiot," Damon whispered. "And why do you care about her phone? Or her?"

"Okay, let's do it this way," Caroline said. "I'm sorry. That was rude. But Elena doesn't want any pictures of the baby online. At all. You get me? So you need to delete everything you've posted everywhere. And then you need to talk to all of your little friends and tell them to do the same. Not just photos, I'm talking about any mentions of the baby. Elena and Damon are the kind of responsible parents who want to preserve their child's privacy. So no social media. No digital footprint. Not this young. You get that, right?"

Libby nodded, "So sorry, Mr. S. You could've just said so."

Damon rolled his eyes. "Limes, Libby. That's what you're doing now. And while you're at it, we're short on lemons and cocktail olives."

"After deleting your plethora of social media posts," Caroline hissed.

"Fine. Whatever," Damon mumbled. "Do both tasks. Just go. Elsewhere." After the silly waitress had trotted off to the back, Damon turned to Caroline and snapped, "What was that about? Since when are you the digital privacy police?"

"Do you really want anyone who can search the internet to be able to find out that you and Elena had a baby?" Caroline asked him softly, pulling him towards an empty table in the back. "Besides the fact that you're both supposed to be vampires and therefore infertile, Summer is a freakishly magical baby."

Damon sat down across from Caroline and smiled a genuine smile at her as she pushed her slightly messy, blond hair out of her eyes. She wasn't her usual, perfectly coiffed self today. "I hadn't thought of that. But I suppose there's plenty of tech savvy vampires out there."

"Or witches. Or wolves. Or whatever," Caroline added.

"Has Ric found out anything new about what's happening in Mystic Falls?" Damon asked. "Bonnie could use some backup."

Caroline shook her head. "He's been preoccupied with sending all of our students home for the summer. Luckily, it's just a week early, but it doesn't look good, you know, to the parents."

"What did you tell the parents?"

"They're all witches. They know that there's something going on in Mystic Falls. We downplayed it, because we don't want them afraid to enroll in the fall. We said we're taking extra precautions to ensure the safety of all students, out of an abundance of caution. We said we don't think anything bad is going to happen, but we're shutting down early just in case."

"Sounds reasonable."

Caroline nodded, but then she rested both elbows on the table and rubbed her eyes. "How is it possible for me to be so tired if I'm a vampire. I don't actually need sleep. And I haven't done any ass-kicking, or gotten stabbed or shot at. I haven't even run from anybody in a long time."

Damon reached out and squeezed her shoulder, gently. "Even vampires get tired. Believe me, I know. And you do need sleep. You need to rest your mind. Didn't we ever tell you that?"

Caroline frowned, as she murmured, "I don't know. Maybe. It's been a long time since Vampire 101. I mean, it's not like I don't know that sleep feels good. But it's always just felt like this luxury, or this thing I do to be extra nice to myself. Like getting a manicure." Glancing at her fingernails, with their chipped red polish, she said, "I can't remember the last time I did my nails."

Damon laughed. He raised a hand in the air and shouted, "LIBBY! Margarita for the lady, and a bourbon neat for me, right over here. Stat."

Libby scurried over and whispered to Damon, "Are you sure you don't want me to card her?"

Damon whipped around to glare at Libby. "Are you freaking kidding me? She's 26."

"But I don't want to get in trouble for serving — "

"But I'm your goddamn boss, and I think I know how old my sister-in-law is," he almost shouted. "The only trouble you're going to get in is from me. Now, if you don't get the drinks and lose the attitude, you're going to be out of a job. You get me?"

Libby's eyes widened. "Your sister-in-law? Oh, god, Mr. S., I'm so sorry. Why didn't you just say so?"

Damon laughed humorlessly. He was far from ashamed of being related to Caroline, but he avoided talking about his brother at almost any cost. "Because I shouldn't have to. I am your fucking boss and you should just do as I say without meddling, or worrying, or posting it to Instagram."

Libby nodded, looking petrified.

"By the way, did you delete all your social media posts of the baby?" he asked.

She nodded again. "And I spread the word to the other girls."

"Thank you, Lib."

"Margarita and a bourbon neat coming up," she said in a shaky voice. "I'll make sure they use the most expensive stuff we've got."

"She wants it frozen, with salt," Damon said.

"Thank you Libby," Caroline said, reaching out and grabbing Libby's hand, giving it a quick squeeze. "You're fine."

After they'd gotten their drinks, Caroline said, "Well, you're testy."

He rolled his eyes. "Maybe I wouldn't be if you'd order your margaritas on the rocks like a civilized person."

"I'm serious."

"You think you're tired?" he said with an exhausted smile as he sipped his drink, forcing himself to not drink it too quickly. "Try having a newborn get you up every few hours. It's not just me, of course. 'Lena and I are trading off. And Bonnie's helping. But I would give anything for some vamp stamina right now."

"But you just said — "

"And I meant it, Caroline. Of course you need sleep, and come to think about it, that might be an argument for vampires not being all that different from humans. But, right now, if I was a vampire, I wouldn't need as much sleep. And that would be nice. Sooo nice."

Caroline raised her eyebrows at him as she said, "Well, I can tell you, it was exhausting when Lizzie and Josie were born. And I was a vampire. Just be glad you don't have two."

He laughed and said, "I'll drink to that."

Caroline raised her glass and said, "How about we drink to how great you and Elena are going to be at this whole parenting thing?"

Damon kept his glass on the table. "Elena, maybe."

Caroline brushed the hair out of her eyes and fixed him with a steely expression. "Don't be so sure."

"Come on, Care!"

"You're going to be a great dad. I've already seen you with her. You're a natural."

He searched her face, looking for a hint of insincerity, but he found none. "It's funny that it's not as bizarre as I thought it would be. I didn't think I'd know how to hold an infant. I haven't since …"

Caroline looked at him expectantly. "Since when? You weren't around when the twins were babies. ... Oh, god. Did you have some girlfriend back in the 1930s or something, who had kids?" she asked, her tone light.

Damon rolled his eyes. "Uh-uh-uh. Fuck, no. I stayed far away from any women with children. I was talking about. … "

"Stefan?" she asked, her hand shaking as she took a sip of her margarita. "What was he like as a baby?"

"Oh you know, broody, perpetually furrowed brow. Hero hair from the start."

"Seriously."

Damon tried to remember. Some details of his first human life were clearer to him than anything that had happened this century. Or the last. And others were gone forever. 178 years was a lot of time to try to hold onto memories. He didn't remember much of Stefan as a baby — he'd been only eight years old himself — but there was this one morning, when Damon was sitting in the parlor with his mother. Stefan was sleeping in a bassinet. He woke up screaming, and Lily just started crying too. "I remember holding him," he murmured to Caroline, "and getting him to stop crying by singing him this lullaby my mother used to sing to me. And when he calmed down, he looked at me. Summer looks at me the same way."

Caroline giggled. "Damon Salvatore sings lullabies?"

He was about to threaten her with retribution if she repeated this to anyone, when Sajen came stamping over to their table. "Did you yell at Libby?"

Damon shrugged.

"Damon! Did you curse at her?"

"Oh, for fuck's sake, Sajen!" he snapped. "She started it."

"She cursed at you?"

Damon's eyes were so wide he thought they might pop out of his head if he had to deal with another second of this. He took a deep breath as he looked up at his friend. "She was insubordinate. And if you haven't noticed, I have a lot going on right now, so can you just handle her hurt feelings and leave me out of it?"

Sajen pushed his glasses up the brim of his nose and gave Damon an overly concerned look. His shorts today were particularly loud. A Hawaiian floral print. "Is everything okay at home?"

"Yes!" Damon hissed. "Look, buddy, why don't you take your judginess and your concern and go do something useful. Isn't there a box of spices you've just been dying to unpack? And while you're at it, maybe tell Miss Uppity back there that I'm extra obnoxious today because Summer had me and Elena up five times last night."

Damon heard quiet laughter directly behind him. Recognizing the person laughing without needing to turn around, Damon tensed up. "Sajen, get the hell out of here. Care and I have to talk to someone," he said, looking hard at his bar manager, trying to tell him with his eyes that this was important and a little dangerous, but that everyone was safe, that Sajen needed to stop arguing with Damon, that Sajen needed to trust Damon, that the clueless human just needed to leave.

Sajen looked confused, and like he was about to say something.

"NOW!" Damon snapped, not caring if he offended his friend, because he didn't want Sajen mixed up in vampire business.

Sajen muttered something under his breath, which was no doubt rude and insubordinate, before spinning around and stalking back to the kitchen.

Caroline was staring over Damon's shoulder, and forcing a smile onto her face. "Won't you join us?" she said to the man who was still chuckling.

Damon sat very still as the newcomer pulled up a chair to sit between him and Caroline. "Klaus Michaelson," he said to the thousand-year-old vampire, who'd been frozen in time in the body of a young man all these years. Damon was careful to keep his voice even and measured. "Long time, no see."

Klaus laughed again, that condescending, irritating laugh. "Damon, always a pleasure," he said in his smug British accent, his words dripping with sarcasm. "Human looks … passable on you."

Caroline cleared her throat. She was giving Klaus a reproachful look.

He smiled indulgently at Damon's sister-in-law. "You are as ravishing as ever, love. As always, death becomes you."

A woman pulled up a chair and sat down across from Klaus. She appeared to be about 30, though Damon knew she was over 1000 years old. She had blond hair, and her expression contained equal amounts teenage spunk, old age wisdom, and a surprising vulnerability.

"You must be the witch we've heard so much about," Damon said to the stranger.

The woman smiled, and it was almost a friendly smile, but her eyes, those eyes seemed to bore into his skull. She must be a particularly intense Michaelson.

Chapter Text

Damon and Caroline stared in disbelief as the mysterious Michaelson witch sister plunked a funky ashtray-like object in the center of their table, before pulling out a pouch and dumping some herb-looking things into the ashtray thing. She didn't even have the courtesy to use a lighter, or pretend to use a lighter. No, she blinked and the herbs caught fire; soon she was fanning the flame.

"Sweetheart," Damon said with a long sigh. "This is a non-smoking bar."

"Not today," she said with a brisk smile. "And don't call me sweetheart."

Damon felt closed in between the two Michaelsons — with Klaus on his left and the freaky witch sister on his right, as if these millennium-old people might smother him, or swallow him up.

Klaus rolled his eyes as he gestured towards the woman. "May I introduce my sister Freya? She's burning sage, nothing more, nothing less. An old trick of our mother's. Since I didn't think you would agree to go somewhere more private, this is our compromise."

Freya gave Damon a hard look as she said, "This will stop us from being overheard. Who knows who might be lurking here."

"It's a college bar," Damon snapped. "They're idiot kids. And anyone who's not, who might possibly be in the know?" He rolled his eyes as he made his fingers into air quotes. "You've just broadcast to them that we're supernatural. Because regular people don't burn dried up grass-looking stuff."

Freya shook her head. "That's part of the magic. It creates a fuzziness, a barrier against unwanted interest."

"And let's be honest about what we are. Supernatural?" Klaus said, voice dripping with condescension, as he made air quotes of his own. "I think one of us is, currently, nothing more than a run-of-the-mill, boring, weak little human. Am I right?"

Caroline laughed, and said sarcastically, "Klaus, you are so funny. I'd forgotten how funny. But isn't sage the same stuff that your mother burned when she was plotting to kill all of you? So that you wouldn't overhear her devious plans?"

Klaus glared at Caroline as he said, "Well, love, she was a bloody terrible mother, but she was a talented witch. So we'll use her tricks. Now, on to more pressing matters."

Freya cleared her throat. "I need to talk to your witch," she said, abrupt and blunt in her tone.

"We'll take that under advisement," Damon said, glancing at Caroline, who nodded.

"And I'd like to talk to the lovely Elena," Klaus said, his smile heavy on the charm and extra devilish.

"She's got her hands full," Damon snapped.

"Well," Klaus snapped back. "She called me. I was in Paris. I would have been happy to stay in Paris, eating lots of French things, maybe even a croissant or two." He paused for effect, before adding, "French women have this splendid taste. Did you ever get a chance to try them, Damon? Too late now, of course. Pity. I don't know if it's the pastries, or the wine. Maybe it's the cheese. But, anyway, Elena sounded desperate. And scared. And had lots of interesting things to say about how the world might end. So, I dropped my women, and my croissants, and I flew here. I don't think you want to know what I had to do for those first-class tickets on a completely booked flight." Klaus smiled in that particular way of his, as if he wanted you to think he was the devil, but admire his charm and beauty at the same time.

Damon tapped his fingers on the table before downing the last of his drink. "I could order you drinks." He glared at both Michaelson siblings, in turn. "But with the sage, no one would be able to hear me call out your order. Pity."

Klaus smiled that annoying smile again as he said, "I could always drink you."

Damon tried to come up with a reply to that, as he wondered how much Klaus would have to drink to steal the Cure from Damon's body. Wondering if Klaus knew the Cure worked like that. It was a shame he couldn't turn Klaus human without killing himself. Damon forced himself to show no fear on his face, or in his body language. He held himself very still this straight-backed chair. Were all his chairs so damned uncomfortable?

Damon glanced at Caroline. Her eyes were wide, but she was in the process of plastering a calm look onto her face.

In a second she went from worried, insecure child to the poised, in control, overly confident Caroline Forbes. "Boys, boys," Caroline said, all smooth and seemingly clear-headed. "Let's all simmer down. We all want the same things. Now, Freya, that's your name, right? I agree that you need to meet Bonnie Bennett, our uber-talented witch."

"And she is a direct descendant of the witch Qetsiya?" Freya asked.

Damon and Caroline nodded. After a pause, Caroline said, "Qetsiya actually came back to life for a bit, and confirmed that, in person."

Damon laughed. "That woman was completely, utterly insane. But apparently without her we wouldn't have our Bon Bon."

Freya looked unamused. She opened her mouth as if to say something more when a small, red-haired person ran up to Damon and wrapped her arms around his middle.

"Alex?" Damon almost shrieked, as he patted Sajen's six-year-old daughter on the back. "What are you doing here?"

"My mom dropped me off. She said I had to spend the weekend with my dad," Alex told him, pulling away so she could look at Damon. "She says she's doing her taxes, and it's hard. But I think it's because Mark doesn't like me. And he is sucky. Not funny at all."

"SAJEN!" Damon bellowed. "Oh, wait, he can't hear me because somebody is paranoid."

"Uncle Damon, what's wrong?" Alex asked.

Klaus laughed his condescending laugh again. "And who might this be?"

"The daughter of my bar manager," Damon said. He was about to get up to take Alex to find Sajen, when he saw Sajen running towards them anyway.

"Alex!" Sajen shrieked. "What are you doing here?"

"Mom's busy all weekend. With sucky Mark."

Sajen rolled his eyes. Glancing at the burning sage with an expression of disapproval, he said to the table at large, "Uh, what's this? You know this is a non-smoking bar?"

Damon glared at him. "I think I know that, idiot. Now scram, we've got private business here," he snapped with a dismissive hand gesture, hoping that Sajen would get the hint that he was not supposed to know anything. The last thing Damon needed was for Klaus to figure out that his bar manager was in the know, or that Damon cared about him in any way. That this goofy, unguarded, overly decent, and overly trusting man was his friend and confidante. Better for Klaus to think he was nothing, because being Damon's friend was often a dangerous role to play.

Another reason not to make friends.

As Sajen led his daughter away, Caroline said, "Is the spell not working?"

Freya sighed and told her, "It's working. This doesn't make us invisible. It just makes people less likely to notice what we're doing. I think the child must have come inside the bar, and seen Damon, and decided to come over. The spell wouldn't stop that. And then her father —was that her father, must have seen her, probably before she got to the table, and so his attention followed the child."

Caroline murmured, "She's about the same age as the twins. We should get them together for a playdate."

"Maybe Hope can attend as well," Klaus said with a smirk. "Dammit, why didn't I order a drink?"

"I think playdates can wait until after we save the world. Again," Damon said briskly. "And don't even think of drinking from any of my staff. They're on vervain."

Klaus raised his eyebrows. "Testy. Testy. What kind of monster do you think I am?"

"An arrogant one who shouldn't discount me," Damon said, raising his own eyebrows at the 1000-year-old hybrid.

Freya held up her hands in frustration, giving both men a hard look. "Let's focus on what's important here. No one is going to eat your wait staff, Mr. Salvatore. And no one is going to harm you or your family. But if I am supposed to help you get to the bottom of this mystery, if we are going to close up the hot spot of magical energy in Mystic Falls, which I believe threatens the entire world, I'm going to need to see your wife, your child, and your witch. Preferably together. Because it sounds to me like your fates are all linked. So, we could sit here, making nasty little remarks to each other, playing stupid games, each of us trying to pretend like we don't need the other. Or you could take me to Elena."

Damon was trying to think this over, without appearing to take anything Freya said seriously. Then she reached out and grabbed Damon's hand, his left with her right. Damon tried to shake her off, but she was strong. "What the fuck, lady?" he hissed.

"You're giving off a strange energy, Mr. Salvatore," Freya said. "I wanted to ascertain if I could feel anything by touching you."

Damon shot a glance at Caroline, who was trying to maintain an even expression. "Sorry, Miss Michaelson," Damon quipped, as he stared at her hand on his. "But I'm married."

Freya dropped his hand and glared at him. "Not that," she hissed. After a long pause, she added, "I can tell that you are not a witch."

"No," Damon said, getting nervous now.

"You are not a vampire, but you were."

"Where is this going?" Damon asked.

"And you don't have any magic lineage?"

He shook his head.

"Except for Silas," Caroline breathed. When everyone looked at her, she jumped a little in her chair, as if surprised she'd said anything out loud, and proceeded to guzzle her margarita.

"Silas?" Freya asked. "What could Damon Salvatore possibly have to do with Silas?"

Damon sighed. "My brother was his doppelgänger. So he must have been a direct descendant. That's the way it works, right? Which would make me a direct descendant too, since we had the same parents. Is that where you're going, Care Bear?" He glanced at Caroline, who nodded. Damon frowned as he continued talking. "But Silas lived almost 2000 years before I was born. It couldn't possibly mean anything. There's way too many generations in the way … Anyway, why do you care?"

Klaus opened his mouth and then close it again. He looked dumbstruck.

Freya frowned. "That is interesting, and something that my brother could have shared with me."

Klaus shook his head. "I didn't know anything about this connection. Why the hell didn't you lot tell me?"

Damon glanced at Caroline, who shrugged. He turned back to Klaus and said, "Nobody knew anything about this until months after you'd left Mystic Falls. What are we supposed to do, get on the phone and call you every time something weird happens? We'd never hang up the phone."

Klaus actually laughed at that. But his eyes were particularly wide and he looked spooked as he muttered. "This is all getting strange. Who would have thought that Stefan … Downright bizarre."

Freya didn't look spooked. She looked excited. Exhilarated. "I have heard tales of Silas' doppelgängers cropping up every few hundred years. This is fascinating. If you're right…." She trailed off.

Damon gulped as he said, "I'm right. Silas told my brother, Qetsiya confirmed it, and we know that his true form did look like Stefan. Exactly. But why does this matter? We're talking about one ancestor thousands of years ago."

Freya smiled, and all of a sudden, she looked delighted. "This is no ordinary ancestor. Doppelgängers are powerful magic. And you and Stefan were full siblings? You shared both a mother and a father?"

Damon nodded. "But neither one was a witch. And my brother wasn't."

"And you aren't," she said. "Though I do feel something, more than I should."

"Like I said lady," Damon quipped, trying to lighten the mood. "I'm married."

Freya rolled her eyes. "I'm talking about the kind of energy I feel when I'm around another witch. You don't have nearly enough magic radiating off you to be a witch. But you do not feel like a typical human should feel. You don't feel like a vampire either. I'm not sure what's going on with you, Mr. Salvatore, but I think we would be foolish to discount the direct link to Silas. And what's more, we have in one location the descendants of Silas, Amara, and Qetsiya. Coincidences are a myth, by the way."

"Ooh," Caroline almost shrieked, clapping her hands together. "You, Elena, and Bonnie! You're like the holy trinity. Or maybe the unholy trinity." She looked delighted with herself.

Klaus frowned. "Who the hell is Amara?"

Now Freya looked shock. "Do you pay no attention to history? Or anything outside whatever melodrama you've created, or which is going on around you at the moment?"

"Easy," Klaus hissed at his sister. A warning.

Caroline laughed. "You know how in the legend Silas was supposed to marry Qetsiya, and become immortal with her, but then he changed his mind, because he was in love with someone else? That was Amara. She and Silas became the original immortals, and there was some kind of balance thing that happened, and I've really never understood it. But Elena is her doppelgänger. Thus, the unholy trinity."

Freya nodded. "Exactly. But there's more. You and Elena have both taken the Cure. That magic is very powerful, and since only a handful of vampires in the entire world have ever been cured — I've no idea if it's contributing to the current situation. But we shouldn't discount it either. And, to top it all off, you've brought a new life into the world, one who carries in her blood not only the lineages of Silas and Amara, but also the particular magic of the Cure. This child also seems drawn to Qetsiya's descendant, Miss Bennett. Yes? Some of these visions involve her?"

"Are you saying we've created this magic hotspot?" Damon asked, feeling terrified of the very idea. "Just by being together?"

Freya shook her head. "No. I don't think so. Something else is at work here. That's why I need to talk to your witch. And your wife. There's a reason that your child has been giving visions to Elena."

Caroline glanced at Damon, inclining her head as if he needed to speak up. Damon glared at her.

"What?" Klaus snapped. "What vital information are you withholding?"

Damon sighed, at both Klaus and Caroline before turning back to Freya. "I've gotten them too. The visions."

Freya's eyes widened. She set her lips in a way that suggested she was sure of something, or perhaps that she'd reached a decision. The ancient witch reached for his hand again. Before he could pull away, she had him in an iron grip. Then she'd taken both of his hands in hers. He tried to speak but felt the power of speech fading away. In fact, everything was fading away. The world went black. Damon felt his whole body, maybe his whole soul, relaxing, falling into the blackness, giving into Freya's power.

Then a dark-haired girl of eleven or twelve came running to him. She was slender and graceful, dressed in blue jeans and a white t-shirt. Her eyes were blue. His blue. "Daddy!" she said, throwing her arms around Damon. "Oh, Daddy! Are you okay?"

"Summer?" he asked.

She pulled away enough to look up at him, grinning. "It's me."

"But you're a baby."

"In here I can be anything," she said with a laugh. "But I'm really a baby. Don't worry."

"Is Freya seeing this?" he asked.

"I don't know."

"We probably shouldn't trust her," he said, more to himself than his daughter.

She shook her head, disagreeing with him. "She's not bad."

He looked at Summer, just drinking her in, wondering if she'd really look like this when she was eleven. Kissing the top of her head, he said, "You look so much like your mother. I'm going to have my work cut out for me when you're a teenager."

Summer frowned. "I don't get it."

"Stopping all the boys who'll try to climb in your window," he said, laughing.

She shook her head. "I don't get it."

And Damon realized that just because he was seeing an eleven-year-old girl, that didn't mean that Summer could think like a girl on the cusp of puberty. Babies don't understand about teenage boys. Relief coursed through his body. Maybe, even though Summer could do all these things a newborn baby shouldn't be able to do, maybe even thought she could appear to him in the form of a child or a youth, she really was just a baby.

So, Damon pulled her close to him, letting his arms envelop her, and tried to include in this hug every bit of protection, every good thought, every ounce of love he could send through their weird, freaky link.

I'm a dad.

Damon allowed himself to savor this moment.

"Daddy loves you," he whispered to his daughter, seeing now a double image, this girl and also his tiny (real) baby. "Don't you worry about anything. Mama and Daddy are going to fix this. You just worry about eating and sleeping and looking cute. We'll keep you safe. I promise. I'll always keep you warm and safe."

###

Elena was curled up on her couch, her baby in her arms, her best friend sitting beside her. She and Bonnie had spent the afternoon binge-watching a show on Netflix, and eating a lot of junk food. Bonnie was catching the former-vampire/restored-human/brand-new-mother up on seasons of TV she'd missed. Because she'd been in a coffin in a storage unit for five years, instead of living in a college dorm with Bonnie and Caroline, or later going to med school, or starting a career, or having sex with Damon in various outdoor locations, or running like mad from a list of insane, progressively weird supernatural creatures.

"What I don't get," Elena told Bonnie now, gesturing to the episode of White Collar that was playing on her TV. "Is how this show got so dark and gritty. It was so much more fun when I was awake the first time. More cat burglary. Less guns." They were in the middle of the fifth season.

Bonnie laughed and said, "Matt Bomer is still hot, so that's good enough for me." She took a big spoonful of cookie dough ice cream before passing the container to Elena.

Elena giggled.

She gave an appreciative nod at the graceful con man on the screen, before scooping up a bite of ice cream, and reaching her spoon around Summer (so she could get that wonderful creaminess inside her mouth).

"You know, when I was asleep, I used to dream about food sometimes," Elena murmured. She'd never told anybody this particular fact, because it hadn't seemed that important, and she didn't want Damon to feel any worse about his inability to get her out of that coffin. And when she'd woken up, Bonnie and Caroline and Damon had all been in so much pain. Complaining about dreams seemed selfish. But sitting here with Bonnie, Elena felt freer to be herself, freer to be vulnerable, or trivial, or selfish. So, she went on. "And it was awful, because I knew it wasn't real. It almost hurt, to see ice cream in that dream, to taste it, but it never tasted right. There was a hint of flavor, vanilla or chocolate or cookie dough, but not the real taste. And eating never made me feel full, or satisfied. Whatever magic you did to freeze me in time so I wouldn't age — it meant that I didn't need to eat. Which was good, of course. My body wasn't withered when you woke me up. You guys didn't have to hook me up to feeding tubes when I was in there. So, I know it's stupid to complain. My body wasn't actually hungry, so it didn't actually matter. But I think my head was obsessed with the idea of food. The idea of any sensation. I'd dream of kissing Damon, or slapping with him, but my sense of touch was muted. I could feel his skin on my skin, but at the same time I knew it wasn't real. Muted, that's the word. When the wind blew really, really hard, like hurricane winds I felt it, but it felt like a gentle breeze. It was so close to real, but not, and that was the infuriating part of it."

Bonnie was staring at her with a mixture of compassion and curiosity. "It makes sense," she said after a long pause. "You were in the most extended dream that I know of anybody experiencing. When vampires are locked in a coffin, and desiccate, they don't dream. They're in too much pain, because they're starving, craving blood, so your experience may be unique. I wonder if the sensory stuff you're describing — things being real but not quite, is present in all dreams. But you noticed it when you slept for five years, instead of eight hours."

Elena laughed a little to herself, and then took another big bite of ice cream. She let herself moan with pleasure at the taste and texture. "Maybe you're right. All I know is, Bonnie, you have no idea how good it is to eat and have the food be real. Or feel how expensive the leather is on this sofa. That specific texture, the silkiness of fine leather. Damon picked it out behind my back, that's the only reason we have this sofa. I wanted to go to Goodwill."

Bonnie pulled Elena into a hug. Elena felt like her friend was cradling Summer too, like she was wrapping her arms around the both of them. "You know," Bonnie said at last. "I kind of do know. Not the exact sensations you experienced. But I was dead. And then I was the anchor. I know what it's like to find the so-called normal world foreign."

"Oh, god, I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking!" Elena said, sitting up a bit so that she could put her arms around Bonnie now, to hold her friend instead of being held. Bonnie had been through so much, sacrificed so much, and she hated the idea of Bonnie having to take care of her more than Elena was taking care of Bonnie.

"No," Bonnie said firmly, "That's not what I meant. It's just weird that our lives are so fucked up that we can both understand this."

Elena laughed. "All the more reason to eat lots of cookie dough ice cream. Especially because I just had a baby, so nobody expects me to be skinny," she said, giving a Bonnie a mock-serious look as she took a huge bite, then passed the container back to her friend. "And your body is perfect. I don't think you could get fat if you tried. So, anyway, how many more seasons are there of White Collar? And, in other events I missed, I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me how Donald Trump became president. Witches? Did someone turn him into a vampire? I mean, is he compelling Paul Ryan?" she asked. Before Bonnie could reply, both their cell phones began to go off.

"Caroline?" Bonnie asked, her smile disappearing as worry took over her face. "Slow down. What happened?" She got up and started pacing around the kitchen.

"Sajen?" Elena asked, even more surprised that the bar manager was calling her. "Tell me Damon's okay."

"I um," the bar manager said.

"What's going on, Sajen?" Elena shouted into the phone.

"I don't know. There's something funny happening with a couple people with British accents. They were sitting at a table with Damon and your blond friend who looks super young today. They were burning herbs or grass or something, like who does that? I told them to stop, but Damon told me to scram. And I got the impression from him, though he didn't tell me, that if I knew what was good for me, I'd stay away from these British people."

Elena sighed. "Sajen! Did you call me up about herbs? Or did somebody hurt Damon?"

"I don't know. But they all got up, and Caroline said they needed to use the back room, and she wasn't going to discuss it with me. She even tried to compel me, so I went along with it, pretended like she did compel. Damon said to do that, if I ever thought some vampire was doing that. Safer not to give away that I'm on vervain. Do you think I did the right thing?"

"Sajen!" Elena shouted in exasperation. "Why are you calling me instead of Damon calling me? Is Damon in trouble."

Sajen sighed, saying, "I think Damon passed out. … So, yeah. Caroline and the British guy were walking with him, with his arms thrown over their shoulders, like you do when someone's really drunk. But Damon never day drinks. And Caroline said he had not passed out, but his eyes were closed, so clearly, he something was wrong. Also, my ex dropped off Alex at the bar, totally unexpectedly, and if there's going to be a vampire showdown, I'd prefer my kindergartener to be, well not here."

Bonnie, standing behind Elena, cleared her throat.

Elena turned to look at her best friend, whose face was grave. "He seems to be okay," Bonnie explained, her voice calm. Too calm, like she was fighting to keep her emotions in check. "However, there's craziness afoot. Klaus and his sister showed up. The witch, not Rebekah. The witch, whose name I think is Freya, did something to Damon. Caroline thinks he's having a vision, and that's why he won't wake up. The witch isn't going to say what she thinks is happening unless we show up."

Elena nodded.

Sometimes these visions lasted a while. She should know. They were incredibly inconvenient. As soon as Summer started to talk, Elena was going to have a long talk with her daughter about more convenient methods of communication.

"They want both of us to come," Bonnie continued in her falsely calm voice. "But I told Caroline that's not acceptable. Caroline agrees. So, I'll go. You stay here. As soon as I know anything, I'll call. As soon as Damon wakes up, I'll have him call you. It's going to be okay. If the witch did this to him, I'll reverse it, or I'll make her reverse it. If Summer's giving him a vision, he'll wake up on his own."

Elena shook her head. Vehemently. "I'm not staying here. Not if Damon's in trouble."

"Damon will kill me if I bring you." Bonnie's eyes were clearly pleading with hers.

Elena stuck out her tongue, not caring if this made her look six years old. "Just do that witchy thing," she told Bonnie, trying to make her voice light. Even airy. "Where you give him a terrible headache and drop him to the floor."

"That's a brain aneurism. Now that he's human, it would kill him," Bonnie told her, voice slow and exaggerated. "Besides, if you come, what do we do about Summer?"

Elena sighed, and said, "I guess we'll have to take her with us."

Bonnie raised her eyebrows, and opened her mouth to speak, but Elena cut her off. "I'm not leaving her with anyone else," Elena insisted. "And besides, if this incredibly meddlesome baby is giving Damon this vision, maybe she can wake him up. We might need her. And by the way, this family spends way too much time in forced sleep. I really need to take that up with … someone."

###

When Elena and Bonnie rushed into the bar, Elena clutched Summer close to her chest. Her diaper bag hung heavy on one shoulder — filled with diapers, wipes, extra clothes, pacifiers, vervain, and a variety of wooden stakes. Despite the warm weather, she wore long sleeves so she could hide one of Alaric's ninja-like weapons under her right sleeve. Nights when she couldn't get back to sleep after she'd nursed Summer and finally gotten her down — Elena had been practicing the punch and stake move on a practice dummy Damon had set up in the corner of their living room.

"I don't see him anywhere," Bonnie whispered.

"Sajen said they'd taken him to the back room," Elena whispered back.

A waitress, whose name Elena couldn't remember, came rushing up to them. "Mrs. S! It's so good to see you. Oh, she's adorable. Can I hold her?"

"No!" Elena almost shouted.

People turned to look at them.

Bonnie put a comforting hand on the girl's arm, as she murmured, "She hasn't slept in two days. She didn't mean to be rude."

Elena almost laughed at this mundane excuse. Because that was supposed to be the problem, right? Or else it should be that Summer wouldn't latch onto her breast, or that she and Damon were arguing about the proper way to sleep train, or diaper rash, or the fact that she was afraid she'd never lose the baby weight.

But instead her problem was that two members of the Original family were visiting, and her husband had been put to sleep, magically, either by his infant daughter or a thousand-year-old witch.

Sajen ran over to them. "I'm glad you're here," he said, almost breathless with excitement and worry. She recognized his expression — she recognized that feeling of exhilaration and wonder you get when you're new to the supernatural, and you're getting your first glimpses into the rabbit hole.

"Back room?" Elena asked.

He nodded. "And while you're back there, can you get somebody to make cheese fries and sliders. I've got orders piling up, and Caroline won't let me back there, and I told her it's my kitchen, well sort of mine."

"Are you serious?" Bonnie asked incredulously.

"I know!" Sajen said, clearly not understanding Bonnie's tone. "I'm trying to run a business. And she's threatening to tie me to a chair and muzzle me, though she was really nice about it."

"You are serious," Bonnie said, laughing now. "Your big concern is cheese fries?"

Sajen paused for a moment, clearly thinking, before adding, "And sliders. And onion rings. And I need more limes for margaritas, and I'm pretty sure they're back there."

Elena grinned, in spite of herself. She lay her free hand on Sajen's forearm, telling him, "I'm sure Damon is glad you're taking his business so seriously. But right now, we have a various serious situation back there. Those people are … well, they're a big deal. So you're going to have to tell everyone the kitchen is closed. Make something up, the stove's not working, whatever. Cheese fries are going to have to wait."

She smiled at Sajen once more, before following Bonnie behind the bar and through the kitchen door.

Damon was slumped against Caroline. They sat at the staff's break table. Caroline had her arm around Damon's waist, and was letting his head rest on her shoulder. Elena's heart broke as she saw him like that — he looked so young, so vulnerable. His expression was oddly peaceful. An unfamiliar woman with short blond hair — presumably the Michaelson witch — sat at the table with them. Her eyes were closed, her hands reached out towards Damon, though she was not touching him. She seemed to be chanting under her breath.

Klaus was the only person standing. He lurked by the fryer. When he saw her, he smiled his most charming smile. "Elena!" he said. "Now, this is nothing to worry about."

Without really thinking about it, Elena handed Summer to Bonnie, careful to support her head during the transfer.

She knelt down next to her husband. Whispering to Caroline, "Thanks for taking care of him," Elena reached for his hand. At first nothing happened. Then she squeezed. And for a moment she slumped towards Damon, as a million images flooded through her brain. There was something really, really important here. She felt herself falling towards the most important image. Just as she was about to pass out, she felt him squeezing her hand back. He was pulling her back, just as she was pulling him to the real world.

Elena's head snapped back with a jerk. She was fully awake. Still holding onto Damon's hand. They were clutching each other like their lives depended on it, like Damon was her life boat, and she was his. When she opened her eyes, she was staring into his blue eyes, the kind of blue she could get lost in. But she never got lost, because he was always the one to pull her back.

He had pulled away from Caroline, and was reaching out towards Elena with both arms. She kissed him, just a simple, chaste kiss, because there were too many onlookers. "Thank god," she muttered. "You had me scared."

"What are you doing here?" Damon whispered. "You shouldn't be here. Klaus just showed up, ambushed me, and his sister did something."

"They're right here," Elena whispered back, knowing that it didn't matter how softly they spoke. Klaus could hear everything.

"It's not safe for you," Damon said, glancing now Freya, and then at Klaus. "Where's Summer?"

"I've got her," Bonnie said, coming over and crouching down next to Elena.

"You two have got to be kidding!" he snapped.

Elena thought Damon might start on a rant about how she cared nothing for her own safety, but the witch interrupted her. "We're lucky your wife came," the mysterious stranger said. "I think she woke you up."

"Only after you used your witchy juju to put me to sleep!" Damon shouted. "Oh, by the way, honey, meet Freya, the Michaelson witch. She's as untrustworthy as the rest of them."

"Now, now," Klaus began, crossing his arms and somehow making his stance menacing.

Freya held up a hand, silencing her brother. "Mr. Salvatore, it was not my intention to put you to sleep. I'm not sure how that happened."

"Then what were you trying to do?" Bonnie asked, her voice firm, her tone making it clear that she was not to trifled with.

"You must be the Bennett witch," Freya said, eyebrows raised. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Answer my question." Bonnie cradled Summer in her arms as she stared down the millennium-aged witch.

"I was trying to go into his mind, so I could understand why I felt traces of magical energy coming out of him. But something stopped me. Blocked me."

Damon gave Elena's hand another squeeze before he pulled away and stood up. He walked over to Freya and pulled her chair away from the table. "Stand up," he said in a low, dangerous voice.

Elena felt her throat constrict. What did he think he was doing, taking on this witch?

Freya stood up. They were about the same height, but power seemed to radiate off her. Elena knew she could flatten Damon is she wanted to. This was no ordinary woman, and he was crazy to get so aggressive with her.

"It was Summer," Damon hissed. "Who doesn't think you're bad, by the way, but who didn't want you anywhere inside my fucking brain. And while I was in there, I saw some shit, some shit you might want to know about, but you're not going to get unless you start giving something to me."

Elena gulped. She knew what Damon was talking about. She'd seen it too, inside the flashes of visions. And she understood what he was trying to do. Just as his plan was making sense to her, she realized that she needed to keep her mouth shut. Klaus and Freya might think Elena was an easier target, for getting information out of, so it was best that they have no idea that Elena had shared Damon's visions, at least at the end.

"If you saw something," Klaus snapped, coming to stand next to his sister. "Just tell us. We're all on the same team here."

Damon shook his head. "Not after your witchy sister tried to get into my head without my permission."

Elena stood up, took Summer from Bonnie, and went to stand at her husband's side. In a moment, Bonnie and Caroline joined them.

"Elena," Klaus said. "Be reasonable."

She shook her head. "I am being reasonable. This is our leverage."

Chapter Text

The same day

June 2018

Charlottesville, Virginia

Damon held the baby as he paced around their apartment's living room. He hated waiting, and Klaus being in town was making him itchy and extra grumpy. Klaus and his screwball of a sister were holed up in the fanciest hotel Charlottesville had to offer, but they weren't far enough away for Damon to feel safe, comfortable, or not itchy. As he propped Summer on his shoulder and patted her back, wondering once again what the point of burping a baby was, she spit up all over his Louis Vuitton black t-shirt.

"Fuck," he muttered, walking over to the couch where Elena and Bonnie were sitting. They had been sitting there for three hours, watching some television show about a man who was always dressed in a suit and hat, very 1940's, though the series was set in the present. And there was something going on with the FBI. Maybe the well-dressed, seductively attractive man was an FBI agent? Damon noted that the TV costume designers had gotten his vintage look right. Damon had once owned a suit just like that.

Damon sighed and handed his daughter to Elena. He unceremoniously pulled off his designer t-shirt, tossing it into a laundry basket they'd decided to store in the living room for exactly this reason. The whole room was far too messy for Damon's taste, but he was almost too tired to care. Almost.

He began to tidy, partly out of habit, partly because every piece of laundry he threw in the basket (and every grimoire he arranged in the bookcase, in alphabetical order, going by last name of the witch who'd authored the spells) made Damon Salvatore feel just a tiny bit safer.

Elena eyed his bare chest. She grinned, and her expression was almost hungry. "Thanks for the show, babe," she said with a laugh. He grinned to himself, noticing how huge her breasts were, swollen with milk. She wasn't wearing a bra beneath her white t-shirt. Definitely not. "I can give you more," he told her.

"Yes, please." Elena giggled. Like a school girl. Not a medical school girl. Or a mother. But the high school girl he'd first met a decade ago.

Bonnie groaned, waving her hands around like she was shooing flies away. "I'm still here, you idiots."

Damon rolled his eyes and sat down on the couch next to Elena, so that his wife was sandwiched between him and the witch. He kissed Elena on the mouth, lightly at first. But his girl leaned into the kiss. Soon he was pulling her to him, until Elena was sitting on his lap and they were both cradling Summer.

"Seriously!" Bonnie snapped, as Damon cupped one hand around Elena's breast, gingerly, knowing it was sore to the point of exploding.

"Bon Bon, you are welcome to get off my couch and go do something judgy and/or witchy somewhere else. I'm sure the kitchen table could use some judgment." After Bonnie stormed into the kitchen, flinging open the fridge and slamming it shut, Damon murmured to his wife, "What size are these girls, now?" His voice low, almost hoarse. "I think we may be in 'D' category."

Bonnie grabbed her laptop and a grimoire off the table, noisily making her way into the apartment's only bedroom. She shut the door loudly enough to make a point without actually slamming it.

"Bigger than my bras," Elena said as she got up, holding Summer to her shoulder like a pro, and then depositing her in the baby swing next to the couch. Miraculously, their little girl didn't cry. When Damon glanced at Summer, he saw her eyes closed. She must have fallen asleep. Maybe burping served a purpose after all?

Elena pushed Damon down so he was lying flat on the couch, then climbed on top of him. She ran her tongue over his bare chest. He sighed and shivered at her touch. She bit down on his nipple just a bit, then pulled away, looking at him, her brown eyes wide, curious. "Do you miss vamp sex? I mean, I know you do, you've told me. But do you still miss it?"

He laughed. "Yeah. But this is nice too."

"And I'm your first human, as a human. Which should make it special. Because Katherine was obviously — "

He laughed again as he cut her off, "Was not my first, Elena. You know that."

"What?" she said, shock all over her face. But she continued to sit on top of him, her crotch on his. She was almost too much for him.

He reached up to stroke her breasts, one hand for each tit, marveling at the size, and also at the idea that they were now nourishing another human being. "What kind of magic is it that makes these do what they do?" he mused. "Anyway, I'm sure we had this talk."

"We definitely didn't. I just figured Katherine was your first."

Damon broke out laughing. A complete guffaw. "Oh, for god's sake, Elena. Didn't you screw Matt when you were 16? Even Stefan wasn't a virgin when he slept with Katherine. And I was 24 when I met that tramp. Have a brain!"

She glared at him.

Hard.

"I'm sorry, honey," he told her. And then he laughed again. "No, I'm not. You're an idiot if you think I lost my virginity to Katherine Pierce when I was 24. There were girls during the War, and one before I left home. Nothing earth shattering or serious. But there were a couple girls. Or three or four. Something like that." Elena looked hurt, which didn't make a lot of sense, considering they were talking about stupid trysts that had happened during the late 1850s and early 1860s. He'd never considered being jealous of Donovan, so how? could she be jealous of girls who were long dead, over a century dead? "However, and this is what I want you to hold onto, none of them, including that vixen, compare to you. In bed or out of bed. Or on couches." He pulled Elena to him, reaching under her shirt with one hand while be struggled to undo his belt with another. She leaned into him, whispering something about how she shouldn't be surprised he was a whore as a human.

Damon was kissing his wife like tomorrow didn't exist (and maybe it didn't) when the front door of his apartment swung open.

A loud, amused male voice called out, "Well, this is awkward."

Ric. And his friend was not alone.

Elena jumped up, off Damon. Face beet red.

Summer started crying.

Damon groaned. He sat up and fastened his belt, glaring at the small group of people crowded around his front door. They were gawking and rolling their eyes, and just generally being pests.

Jeremy. Ric. Caroline. Tommy. Sajen.

"As always," Damon said, dryer than dry. "You people have impeccable timing."

###

The apartment was packed. But thankfully there was not a Michaelson in sight.

Caroline sat on the floor between Elena and Damon, having placed Summer on a soft cotton blanket, which she'd said was good for swaddling, whatever that was. She seemed intent on tickling Summer's toes. Summer seemed to like the tickling. The rest of their Scooby gang were squished together on the couch, or sitting in hard-backed chairs they'd shoved into the living room, making a sort of circle that included the couch.

Damon wrapped his arm protectively around Elena as everyone waited for him to explain the vision he'd gotten, the details of which he'd insisted on withholding from Klaus. After what seemed like forever, Damon mumbled, "I don't understand a lot of the vision. But Elena —"

"I saw it too," Elena jumped in.

"So there's that. Anyway, something's going to happen in Mystic Falls. There was this big, gaping hole where the clock tower is, and it was swirling, like a black hole. At least the way black holes look in movies. Does anybody know what they really look like?"

"I don't think that matters," Elena said with a laugh. "But I saw this swirling hole before," she added. "In a different vision. The day Summer was born."

"Yes. So there's that. Anyway, there were twelve people around it, holding hands, chanting. Witch language." Damon turned to Bonnie, who sat on his other side. "What is it called, that weird language you people speak in your witchy spells?"

Bonnie shrugged. "I've never heard a word for it. Maybe Freya knows. But anyway, who were these twelve people?"

"Well, we were there," Elena said, her voice cautious, frightened even. "Me. Damon. Bonnie. And —"

Caroline looked up from her spot on the floor. She stopped tickling Summer so she could glance from Elena to Damon and back again, her face utterly confused. "But you're not witches. That awful Michaelson witch confirmed that."

Damon shrugged as he said, "That doesn't seem to matter. And if you were paying attention, you'd realize she said that I had more energy than a normal human should. But yes, not a witch. Dammit," he muttered, almost to himself. "That would be cool. All that power. Bon-Bon, I'm seriously jealous of you right now. I could take down — "

Alaric cleared his throat and looked pointedly at Damon. "Brother," Alaric said with a firm shake of the head. "I'm okay with you not having all that power. I'll sleep sounder at night if Damon Salvatore is merely human."

Damon rolled his eyes. "Anyway. Care Bear was in the circle. Also Klaus. And of course that damned Freya. And then some people we don't recognize."

Elena shook her head. "You saw Caroline. I saw Tommy. And neither of us saw them both. So the visions aren't exactly the same. And I think that's important. Though I have no idea what it means."

"What about this information is useful?" Alaric said now. "If we're keeping it from Klaus, it needs to be something that he could actually do something with. Something he wants to know. But it's not exactly news that you and Elena would be part of whatever this is. If Caroline or Tommy was in the circle, it sounds like you need a vampire for this recipe. Maybe it doesn't need to be any particular vampire. If Klaus was in the circle, I'm guessing Original Vampire is also an ingredient."

Damon nodded as he leapt up, ran to the kitchen, and brought back the notebook he'd borrowed from Elena's backpack earlier. Flipping past her anatomy notes, he found the drawings. The impeccable, unbelievably detailed and not-sucky-at-all drawings. "I don't know how I did this. Never been an artist, or tried it. But I could remember their faces perfectly. The other people in the circle, the ones I've never met. Somehow, I could draw them. This is them."

Bonnie, who was looking over his shoulder, gasped. Audibly. She grabbed the notebook out of his hand, flipping from one page to the next. "These are incredible, Damon. I've heard of witches being able to do this, create a likeness after a powerful vision. You, well you've got something. It seems to be all precognition. Visions. Vision-related abilities. That kind of thing."

"So I'm not going to be able to throw shit around with my mind?" Damon said, trying hard not to sound like a disappointed five year-old. He felt like a kid who'd seen a toy in a shop window, and been told he'd never have it.

Bonnie shook her head. "Nah. Nothing you or Elena have done suggests anything that would help in a fight. … Though you might know who we're fighting, or who's on our side. That could be helpful."

Flipping to the last page, she was about to hand the book to Ric. (Who looked incredibly eager, like he was a kid on the verge of a discovery.) But suddenly Bonnie pulled the notebook, holding tight to the last drawing. Bonnie's hands were shaking. After a long moment, she whispered, "I know this woman."

Damon, Elena, and everyone else leaned in to stare at the portrait of a middle-aged Latina woman with her hair fixed in two long braids.

Ric snapped his fingers. "I've seen her too!"

"Around the boarding house," Caroline chimed in. "She was barely rude to me. I almost like her."

"Her name is Perla," Bonnie breathed. "And she's a very powerful witch. Probably one of the most powerful witches I've ever met. And that's saying something, since we're counting Qetsiya and Silas in that group. She's not quite on their level. But Perla's as good as me. And she's been doing magic a lot longer."

"She doesn't hate vampires," Caroline said, looking giddy. "That's good, right? She was just a tiny bit standoffish to me, nothing worse."

Damon rolled his eyes. "I don't know why her treatment towards you matters, but congratulations on finding a witch who's not a total dick."

"I'm just saying," Caroline whined. "It might be nice if we had a coalition of people who don't want to kill me."

Damon sighed. He nodded. He caught a glimpse of Summer over Caroline's shoulder. The baby was staring at him, or at least she seemed to be. Elena had told him that at this point the newborn could only see vague shapes and colors. But Damon thought his little girl could see him as well as he could see her.

He crouched down next to Caroline, pulled Summer to him until he was enveloping her with his body. He'd put on a clean shirt before beginning this little meeting, but still he could feel Summer's baby-warmth through the thin material of his t-shirt. Damon kissed his little girl on the top of her head.

He was about to climb back up on the couch, when he noticed Caroline's expression. The eternally 17-year-old blond-haired girl looked genuinely frightened. Damon threw his free arm around his sister-in-law, pulling her to him as he said, "Caroline Forbes-Salvatore, we are not going to let anything happen to you."

"Seriously," Ric chimed in, voice grave but calm. "We're in this together."

Elena nodded, but she seemed lost in thought. After a moment, she brightened. "If this Perla woman is powerful, she's got to be from an important line, right? Like the Bennett line, but from … what country is she from?"

"Peru," Bonnie said, frowning. "What are you getting at?"

"The witches in the circle, I think they're representatives of the major witch lines." Elena said in a rush. "Freya's line is super important, right?"

Bonnie nodded.

"And you're descended from Qetsiya. So maybe Perla is descended from some other ancient, super bad-ass witch."

Damon frowned. "What about us? And Klaus? And Care Bear."

"Or Tommy," Elena corrected, glancing at Damon's old friend, who was straddling one of their Ikea kitchen chairs. Tommy had been abnormally quiet during this meeting.

Bonnie cleared her throat. "I think Ric's right and vampires are part of this recipe. Vampires were created in Mystic Falls. And all of my research is pointing towards the idea that the problem is that there is an imbalance of energy in Mystic Falls. Over the centuries, witches have drained so much magic from the earth there, magic is going haywire. That's why all these vampires and witches are flocking to our town.

Sajen coughed. Damon glanced at his bar manager, who was sitting on a wooden chair, looking incredibly uncomfortable. Out of place. Damon had been the one to invite Sajen to this little meeting. Since Klaus had shown up at the bar, Damon wanted to make sure that Sajen was up to speed. But now he wondered if this was all too much for the human. "Vampires were created in Mystic Falls? Seriously? Not in Egypt or Rome or someplace important to human history. Or Transylvania. That would make sense."

Damon laughed. "Yeah, I know. I always thought Transylvania was too on the nose, but Paris would make a lot of sense."

"Anyway, if we can get back to the point," Alaric said. "It makes sense that Klaus, an original vampire, would be present, and that a regular vampire would be in this circle too." Looking at Tommy, he added, "I know Caroline was turned in Mystic Falls. Were you?"

"Yes," Tommy said softly. "And we were born in that town, to founding families."

Alaric nodded, and began to flip through the notebook, staring thoughtfully at each of Damon's sketches. "Now this is interesting," he said as he passed the notebook to Caroline. "Doesn't this guy look a little like Tyler Lockwood?"

Caroline nodded, passing the notebook up to Elena and Bonnie, who huddled over it. "I think it does," Bonnie said, after a long pause. "If he's a Lockwood, he could be a werewolf. So maybe a wolf is another ingredient. And maybe the other people are powerful witches from powerful lines. I wonder if it's the sheer energy that's necessary, or it matters that the power comes from different places. Different lineages. If you're making a recipe, it might be helpful to have variety.

Elena was now studying the last drawing in the notebook. "Damon," she whispered. "This person looks a little like you."

He grabbed the notebook, not sure if he saw any resemblance. He was sure that he had never met the person in the drawing, so it wasn't some cousin of his who'd been turned into a vampire without his knowledge. Probably just Elena imagining things.

"This is all getting really complicated," Caroline said. "Like stupidly complicated."

"Magic needs a balance," Bonnie said. "If you think about it that way, it makes sense."

Caroline rolled her eyes, muttering, "If you think about it Bonnie, magic makes no sense. That's why we call it magic."

"I agree with Caroline," Sajen said, grinning for some reason.

"I think the takeaway is that we need an expert on witch history," Alaric said to the group at large. "We should talk to Freya."

Damon shook his head vehemently.

"Is anybody in this room a thousand-year-old witch?" Alaric snapped. "Nobody? Shocking to think that Freya could help. Could tell us shit that we don't know."

"Not yet," Damon cautioned. "Leverage. Remember leverage."

Chapter Text

June 2018

Charlottesville, VA

Damon was at the bar, ostensibly working. Mostly just beating Sajen and a group of drunk frat boys at darts. Originally, they'd been playing for money, but then Damon began to empty everyone else's pockets. The frat boys had whined, and they'd switched to playing for Sajen's mini-quiches.

"Quiche Lorraine, right here, baby," Damon said as he aimed, squinting carefully at the dartboard, breathing in deeply. As he exhaled, he let the dart fly. Right into the bullseye.

The boys groaned. "It's almost as if you have some kind of supernatural gift," Sajen said with a wicked smiled.

"Oh no, my friend," Damon laughed. "I am but a man."

"Okay," Sajen conceded. "Then you're cheating."

"You can't cheat at darts, and believe me, I've tried. This is a carefully honed skill. You see, boys," he said, turning to the frat contingent, "When you have a century and a half to kill, you learn to focus. You develop a skill. And maybe you want to be good at throwing things," Damon said, momentarily thoughtful, as he considered the exact trajectory needed to throw a stake at a vampire's heart. "Hitting a target, on the first try, with a nice clean blow. That can be useful."

"Dude!" Preppy Number One said with a laugh that was somehow as preppy as his popped collar. "You're like thirty."

Damon glared at him. "Dude? Seriously?"

"Sorry, Mr. S."

"Whatever. When you're an actual grownup with actual grownup concerns, you'll get it. Time is weird."

Sajen raised his eyebrows at Damon and grabbed the dart from him. His dart landed on the outskirts of the target. "Fuck! Why don't I have 150 years of experience throwing darts?"

Damon was about to come up with some clever remark when his phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket, glanced at the caller ID, and answered. "Ric?" He was walking outside almost as soon as he saw who it was, wanting to get someplace where he could talk to his friend privately. "How is it coming with the witches? Have you found anyone else, has anybody else shown up, from the drawings?"

"Well, it's funny you say that."

Damon groaned. "What's wrong?"

"We have a little situation. And I need you here. Like now."

"I can't leave Elena alone!"

"You're at the bar. When you first picked up, I could hear stupid people talking in the background."

"I'm working. But I can't leave Elena and the baby alone in Charlottesville. Not fucking safe. And didn't you think it was a bad idea for us to be in Mystic Falls, anyway, me, Elena, or Summer? Didn't you have some grand theory about how we might upset the balance of nature even more and bring about the apocalypse?"

"Damon!"

"I'm not coming."

"Damon! Caroline is with Elena. She can stay. I need you here because you are the only person who can handle this particular, rather delicate situation. I need you."

"Why? I'm not a witch. I don't know what the fuck is going on with magic in Mystic Falls. I can't even fight. I'm basically useless. Pathetic. You're better off with me here. I get myself killed, and then I've failed Elena, for the 18th, maybe the 20th time."

Ric sighed deeply, and murmured, "It's about your family."

"My dead family? You're calling me about a graveyard situation?"

"No. Somebody's alive. And he's here. He didn't need an invitation to get in the door, so I'm sure he's human. And we need him because he's in your drawings. He's not talking to anybody unless it's a Salvatore. He's on some mission to find his family. I don't think he knows anything about vampires. Or witches. This is some kind of genealogy project."

Damon felt like he couldn't breathe. When Stefan died, he'd felt like he lost the last link to his human self. His original human self, that is. They'd been sure the Salvatore line had died out with Zach and Sarah. Their father was one of four children, but the other three died in infancy. Their grandfather, who Damon had never met because he was dead two years before Giuseppe and Lily married, had had two brothers. Both lived to adulthood, back in the old country. But he'd left that life, and that family, behind in a small Italian town. He'd boarded an ocean liner, traveling in steerage all the way across the Atlantic, to the promised land of America. Damon had actually met a few distant cousins in that Italian town, when he'd made a little pilgrimage of his own, after the Second Great War. But the familial relation was so distant, it didn't mean anything. Plus, Damon was a vampire then. He hadn't felt much in common with measly humans.

But, this. A Salvatore who'd shown up at his house. Wanting to talk to him? And maybe even important to their plot to save the world. (Again.)

"You okay, man?" Alaric asked, sounding genuinely concerned.

Damon shook his head vehemently before realizing that Alaric couldn't see anything over the phone line.

"Seriously, Damon, what's wrong?"

Damon found enough breath to choke out, "I'll be there, okay? Is that good enough for you? But I want you to send somebody else to look after Elena. Caroline stays. But I want backup. Maybe Bonnie."

"Bonnie's kind of integral to our operation. And she's keeping Freya in line. More or less."

"Well, who else do you got?"

"Caroline can handle it."

Damon groaned. "I know Blondie's a badass. Stefan taught her well. But Klaus is still in town, and the bastard just refuses to leave. He keeps trying to finagle a way inside my apartment. Come to think of it, who knows who else might show up? We've got a newborn, for fuck's sake. I'd like some extra muscle."

Ric hmm'd, and Damon could almost see him shrugging his shoulder, admitting defeat. "How about Jeremy? He's good with a crossbow, and he is a hunter. If you're worried about vampires, he could be useful. He's got this spidey sense about them."

"Fine. Whatever. Send Little Gilbert and his crossbow. And whatever other lethal toys you can think of. Also, if you go into my room, there's a copy of Hans Christian Anderson. Send it with Jeremy. I was going to read it to Summer, so maybe Elena can get started on it."

"That's adorable."

"Shut it."

###

Elena shut the door as her neighbor left the apartment, forcing herself not to smack the silly woman on the back with her front door. Elena let the fake smile fall from her face. "Oh my god," she said to Caroline. "Can you believe that woman?"

Caroline shrugged. "She seems nice. She brought you a really nice baby monitor. And that box of baby clothes is all six months and up. You're going to go through the newborn clothes so fast, you'll be glad to have those around Christmas."

Elena sighed as she made a beeline for the freezer. "What kind of ice cream do you want?" she asked her friend. "I need something to make me not want to talk about how ugly her sweater vest is. I mean, seriously. It's not Christmas. But it had a snowman."

Caroline laughed. "Yeah, that was weird. I don't know where you even get that. Like, say I was in the market for a sweater vest with a pumpkin on it, which store would I visit?"

Elena felt herself mellowing out. Summer was napping in the bedroom, and now that their visitor had left, the apartment was starting to feel more relaxed.

She dug out tubs of mint chocolate chip, rocky road, and some weird gelato that was called salted caramel (did anyone really need salt in their ice cream?). "I don't know what I'm going to do when Summer's in school, and I have to socialize with mothers on a regular basis. I mean, I've never spoken more than three words to Tabitha in 3C, and now she decides to drop in all the time? Three times this week."

"She came today because she had presents for you."

Elena knew she sounded like a bitch. She knew she was being unreasonable. But it was also unreasonable for Tabitha in 3C, and her gigantic 9-month-old baby to come visiting three days in a one week.

Caroline sighed and then said, "Two scoops of the salted caramel."

"When did salted ice cream become a thing?"

Caroline looked thoughtful. "I guess you were in the coffin. A lot happened in the world. When you woke up, I didn't think to tell you about food. Should I have?"

"Probably not."

As Elena began scooping out ice cream for both of them, Caroline gave her a look. "You seem pissed that she's trying to bond with you. And that's kind of silly, because it's good to bond with other moms. And we can forgive her awful fashion sense because she means well. And she's nice enough to bring presents. I used to do coffee with a couple of the women in our neighborhood when the girls were little. The nice ones, who didn't judge me, even though they thought I was way too young to be a mom or with 'Professor Saltzman.' That was when Ric and I were trying to make it work, make our family as real as possible. I'd take the girls for walks, I met up with a couple of the other moms, and it was nice. It was pleasantly normal."

Elena laughed, as she brought the bowls to the table. She began devouring her ice cream, but Caroline picked at hers. Elena knew that when you were a vampire, food was delicious, but it didn't make you feel full. So, while Caroline as a human might have devoured her salty caramel whatever, Caroline the vampire just wanted to sample. For the undead, food was purely about sensual pleasure.

"It's not that I hate Tabitha in 3C," Elena tried to explain. "It's just that her biggest concern is what kind of baby monitor to buy, and whether she should make her own baby food or buy it from the store. And does it have to be organic? And is she a terrible mother for letting her baby cry it out so he'll go to sleep? I don't. Well, I do care about those things. But — "

"But they pale in comparison to the fact that your baby has yet-to-be-defined magical powers, which are almost definitely connected to a magical crisis in Mystic Falls? Oh, and we definitely don't want to reopen Hell, even if Bonnie says that's impossible. Still, however, a thing I think about. And then there's Klaus."

Elena nodded. "Et cetera. It's not that I hate that woman. I just. I mean, I can't be her. Not even if I'm human. I can't ever be her. I can't ever be a person whose biggest problem is baby food."

"I get you," Caroline said as she licked her spoon. "When I was pregnant, we had to deal with heretics. Then Lily and Julian's weird romantic whatever. Then Damon was stuck in the phoenix stone. And some other enemies. It gets very tedious to list all the shit that happened that year. And when I finally gave birth, the twins almost killed me, by unwittingly siphoning the vampire magic out of my body. I told you that, right? Or did I leave it out, like I left out the salted caramel craze? It was a busy year."

Elena giggled. "Weirdest birth, ever. You told me. Cause if they took all your vampire magic, you just got back to being dead-dead, right?"

"Seriously, Stefan had to compel the entire hospital, so nobody would think it was weird that sometimes I'd go all gray and veiny. He was such a badass that day. Wasn't he great when he took charge?"

Elena nodded, feeling, once again, the absence of Stefan. He should be here. But she was glad that Caroline could talk about Stefan without losing all of her Caroline-ness. That she could tell this story, and smile, even if the memory was wistful. She was still Caroline. Still a bright beacon in the darkness.

"You know I love you, right?" Elena asked her friend. "I'm glad we can be abnormal together. "And I can't imagine doing this whole motherhood thing without you."

Caroline flashed a million dollar smile as she said, "I'm glad you're back. It was kind of cold out here without you."

Someone knocked at the front door. Expecting Tabith from 3C, Elena dropped her head to the table. When she looked up again, Caroline had opened the door, and Elena's brother was walking inside, holding a duffel bag in one hand and a cross-bow in another.

"Jeremy?" Elena squealed, jumping up to hug her brother, but stopping, afraid of being stuck accidentally by an arrow. "What are you doing here? And why are you armed?"

Jeremy frowned. "Didn't Damon tell you?"

"He said he was going to Mystic Falls for a couple days," Elena said with a small smile. "The connection was bad, so he said he didn't have time to explain. But I told him we'd be fine. Not to worry."

Jeremy shrugged. "Well, I'm here. And Damon always worries. You should expect him to overreact when you're involved." He threw his duffel and his crossbow beside Summer's now-empty baby swing. "Is that ice cream on the table?"

Chapter Text

the same day

June 2018

Mystic Falls, Virginia

Pulling up outside the boarding house, Damon struggled to find a parking spot. He finally did, then stomped into his house, which was almost overflowing with witches. He glared at a group sitting by the fire, reading grimoires. His fire. Which was burning like crazy, a real roaring mess of burning wood, even though it was ninety degrees outside. Witches. "Do you people realize that you're not supposed to park on the grass? There's at least four cars out there that are parked on the grass. Someone's going to have to reseed the lawn."

"And who are you?" asked a witch Damon had never seen before.

"Who am I?"

"Well, I can tell you're the grass police, but I don't believe we've met."

"It's my grass. ALARIC!" Damon shouted for his friend as he turned his back on the idiots and stomped into the kitchen. "Has anybody seen Alaric?" he asked the room at large. Two women sitting at one end of the table, looked up. They appeared to be studying tea leaves. They shook their heads. "What about Bonnie?" They shook their heads again, then returned to their reading. Quite uninterested in Damon.

A teenage boy sat at the other end of the table. He glanced up from his phone. He was smiling, like what he was saying seemed ridiculous to him, as he told Damon, "Mr. Saltzman got all twitchy a little bit ago, went into the woods with a crossbow. Something about physical education, mapping out a route, planning out archery classes for the fall. For kids? In the woods? This is a really weird school."

Damon stared at the kid, his mouth turning up, into half a smile as he watched the boy's confusion, his perplexity. The stranger seemed about eighteen.

This must be the mysterious Salvatore on a genealogy mission, who wouldn't speak to anyone unless they shared his last name. The idiot whose mere destabilizing presence required Damon to drop everything, leave Elena 100 miles away, and come here to deal with more idiots.

The kid was an outsider. A total non-magical person, who'd never been initiated into what the real world actually was. How did this kid even find his way to Mystic Falls?

This idiot was one of the twelve he'd seen standing around that bizarre black-hole-like thing, one of the twelve portraits Damon had in Elena's old anatomy notebook. Damon had dismissed the resemblance earlier, when Elena had said the young man looked like him. He'd dismissed the idea out of hand. All his family was dead. Even extended family. Any passing resemblance between him and a drawing—pure coincidence.

But now this kid was here, and he did look a bit like Damon at 18.

"Who are you?" Damon asked.

The kid started grinning. "You're Mr. Salvatore."

"I am. Did you park on my lawn?"

"Um, I don't think so."

"You don't think so? Why the fuck is that a hard question?" Damon glanced at the witches, who were still examining their tea leaves. "Seriously, ladies, either he parked on the lawn or he didn't."

"I don't know, Damon," one of the women told him with a bemused look on her face. She was a Bennett witch, a third cousin of Bonnie's. "You can probably afford to replant some grass. Don't you have millions stowed away somewhere? Seems like grass is the least of anybody's concern. Seeing how we're here trying to save the world."

"Knowing you, I bet you parked on my lawn just to spite me. You and your judgy little friends." Damon snapped.

The witch glared at him. "The only judgy person I see in this house is the one who stormed in the door and started yelling at people who may or may not have marked up the lawn." She turned to her fellow tea-leaf reader. "I mean, seriously. Am I wrong?"

The other witch hmm-hmm'd.

Damon wished he could make his face go all vampy, those familiar veins bulging, that tingle of blood rushing to his eyes to make them go redder than red.

"Wait!" the kid shouted. The boy looked like he might wet himself as he brushed his black hair out of his eyes. "Your name is Damon Salvatore?"

"Ding, ding, ding! You've got it. And you care why?"

"That's so weird that your name is Damon. I knew it, I knew we had to be related."

Damon raised his eyebrows and gave the kid his best "I'm not at all interested in what you're saying but I'm still going to look at you to show you that I think you're an idiot" expression.

"How cool is that?" the boy said with an annoying amount of verve and enthusiasm. "Are you into genealogy? Because I am. And I found this place by going to the special collections in the Culpeper County library, where I found my great-great-great-grandfather's birth certificate. I knew there was this whole part of my family that I'd never met, and something felt missing, like if I could just meet somebody, maybe it would make sense. See, I'd managed to track down the rest of my lineage, but nobody knew anything about this guy's father. Because my great-great-great-grandfather was born out wedlock, you know he was —"

Damon rolled his eyes. "A bastard. You can just say a bastard."

"Well, I guess, but it's not a very nice term and I don't want go around passing judgment on whether people got married or not."

Damon laughed as he opened up the fridge. He was starving, but there were slim pickings in the boarding house's refrigerator. Were the witches eating Alaric's food, on top of everything else? Finally, he pulled out a pack of hamburger meat, an onion and a tomato. "You want a burger? I'm pretty good with burgers. My bar manager has drilled the proper procedure into my head."

"You own a bar? That's so cool."

Damon nodded. "It is infinitely cool. So cool that I had to fire a waitress today because her mother has been calling me every day for the past two weeks, telling me this sob story about how her daughter was on the dean's list before she started working for me, and now she got a C+ in astronomy, which by the way is never going to come in handy, not in her whole life, unless she decides to go into the occult. So I'd say a C+ is plenty good enough for astronomy. And then the mother is also worried that her precious little girl is having a torrid affair with one of my bartenders, and the whole thing got so tedious that I finally lost it today, and just told the poor girl to leave and not come back. And I felt like an asshole. Don't know why I should care, but for some reason I do. But that mother's voice, it was like fingernails on a chalkboard. So yeah, it's cool. Burger?"

"Sure."

"But back to your bizarre notion that you need to be politically correct when speaking about your ancestor. Nobody cares. He's long dead. His slutty mother and sleaze-ball dad are long dead. When was he born, 1776?"

The kid laughed. "Slightly more recent."

"Huh. Do you like your onions fried up, or raw?"

"Fried."

"Good man." Damon nodded his approval as he threw onions for both of them into his frying pan, then went about shaping the burger patties.

"According to the birth certificate," the kid went on, "this dude was born in Culpepper in 1863."

Damon froze. He was in the middle of shaping a patty, and for a long moment he couldn't do anything other than hold that ball of the meat in his hand. Then he smacked it down on the cutting board, and began to aggressively flatten the meat. "So what exactly were you looking for in this library?"

"I was looking for the name of my great-great-great-great-grandfather. He was the loose end on my family tree. I didn't even have his first name, but I knew his last name was Salvatore, and I knew he was a soldier in the civil war, who had a fling with my great-great-great-great grandmother. When she realized she was pregnant, she tried to track him down, but the war was still going on, so she didn't have any luck. Family legend says it would have been a bigger scandal if there wasn't a war going on. And once it was over, she couldn't find him. She thought he'd died in battle."

Damon balled up the meat and then pressed it and flattened it down so profoundly— that he had the disturbing feeling he was reaching into a vampire's chest, ripping out the heart, and crushing it. "Fuck," he muttered to himself. "Fuck, fuck, fuck." Even as his rational brain was telling him that this was nothing. Had to be a coincidence.

Not turning around, Damon said, "And what did you find at the library?"

"That was the coolest thing. I found the kid's— the lovechild's birth certificate. And it had both his parents names. Even though all the men in my family line have had the name Salvatore, nobody ever knew where we came from. It didn't matter to my father or granddad. But to me, I don't know, I wanted to know who I was, and if there was this huge chunk of my family that was just a mystery … especially the chunk that gave me my last name, you know?"

Damon nodded, though he didn't know which statement, if any, he was agreeing with. He refocused his energy on the burgers, finally throwing the first two into the frying pan, with the onions. Washing his hands, trying to sound casual, he asked, "And what was this mystery father's name?"

The boy laughed. "That's the awesome part. It was Damon Salvatore. Do you think you're named after him?"

Damon searched around for a spatula, found it, and began fiddling with the burgers so he didn't need to turn around. "Who knows? You don't remember the sexually liberated mother's name, do you?"

"Joanna Murray."

Damon sucked in a quick breath. "Jesus fucking Christ," he muttered to himself. Well, he tried to mutter, but he actually shouted.

"What's wrong?'

"Nothing!" Damon snapped. "Just burning some onions over here." After a long pause, he asked, "Kid, what's your name?"

"Nate. Well, Nathaniel Brian Salvatore, if you want to get technical. Fun fact, I'm named after my great-great-great-grandfather. The original Damon's son. So here we are, Damon and Nathaniel, in the same kitchen. This is so fucking awesome, I think we need to commemorate this historic meeting of weird names." He grinned wide at Damon. "Should we take a selfie?"

Damon caught himself staring at the kid. Looking Nate Salvatore over closely, he noticed the way the kid's mouth turned up in a half smile. His eyes were an impossible and familiar shade of blue. Nate raised his thick eyebrows, quizzically, in a mixture of amusement and mischief, so that his whole face came alive. The boy seemed to be laughing at Damon, without opening his mouth.

"What are you laughing at?" Damon asked, his voice so quiet it was almost a whisper.

"I'm not."

"You are. Don't bullshit me. What the fuck is so funny?"

The boy shrugged as he raised his brows even higher. "I don't know, really. It's just, this whole situation is ridiculous. I was weird to come here, wasn't I? Maybe I shouldn't have. I'd been thinking about it for a while, and then I just up and did it. And this house — I don't know what the hell is going on here, but it's not normal."

"And you find that amusing?"

"Yes."

"Not scary?"

The boy shook his head.

The kitchen door swung open and Bonnie and Alaric shuffled in. He had a crossbow slung over his back, and Bonnie was carrying an ancient grimoire. "It was definitely a werewolf kill," Bonnie said to the room at large. "Damon! What are you doing here?"

"Werewolf kill? What the hell is going on in this house?" Nate Salvatore asked.

Damon started laughing. And he couldn't stop. He tried. But he just couldn't stop.

Bonnie glanced from Damon to Alaric and finally to Nate. "Oh god, I'm sorry. I didn't know we had a guest. Who is this?"

Ric frowned. "Well, he's somebody who just showed up, claiming to be related to the Salvatores. He was here, and I was trying to deal with it, and then you called, and I rushed out. Damon, did you figure anything out."

In between giggles, Damon managed to say, "Oh, I figured a lot out."

"Care to explain?" Bonnie asked.

Damon kept laughing.

Ric sighed and yanked Damon out of the kitchen, up the stairs, into Damon and Elena's bedroom. Bonnie followed. She shut the door behind her and stood against it, leaning back, crossing her arms.

Ric sat down on an easy chair, as Damon sprawled out on his bed, staring up at the ceiling.

"Whatever's going on," Ric said. "It seems like it's better if it's just the three of us talking about it, away from prying eyes."

"Especially away from that poor cousin of yours."

"He's not a cousin," Damon said. "He's a descendant."

"What?" Bonnie asked.

"He's my great-great whatever grandson."

Ric laughed. "How is that possible?"

"Do I need to teach you about the birds and bees?"

"But if you had a kid out there, why didn't you ever say anything?"

"I didn't know, obviously."

"Well, it couldn't have been with Katherine," Bonnie said, "And I thought she was the only—"

"For fuck's sake!" Damon shouted. "I was twenty-four when I met Katherine. Do all of you girls really think I was celibate all that time, until I finally started screwing an evil vampire? Does that make sense?"

Ric rolled his eyes. "We are so terribly sorry that we weren't thinking about your sexual prowess and how much tail you got in the 1860s."

"So you thought I lost my virginity to Katherine too?"

"Brother, I have never, not once in all the time I've known you, thought about how you lost your virginity."

"Fine. Good. I guess. In any event, I think this kid is telling the truth. He's dug up an old birth certificate, for a Nathaniel Salvatore, born in 1863, in a town a few hours from here, to Joanna Murray. Father was one Damon Salvatore."

"And you knew this woman?" Bonne asked.

Damon nodded. "During the war. But I never knew she was pregnant."

"But the date makes sense?"

"Unfortunately, yes."

"What do you mean?" Bonnie asked, incredulous. "This is incredibly cool!"

"Which part? The fact I'm a great-great-whatever grandfather and you guys can tease me viciously about it? Or the fact that a completely hapless fool of a manchild is sitting downstairs, in my kitchen, with a couple of mediocre witches, probably commenting on how 'weird' everything is and how exciting it is, and how he's going to have a story to tell people back home. Oh, and by the way, he may be tweeting about it right now. Somebody might need to confiscate his phone. Or, and this is a great one, maybe it's the fact that I have to tell Elena about the bastard child I apparently fathered back in 1864."

Ric furrowed his brow, as if considering. Finally he said, "On the plus side, this makes Elena a step-great-great-whatever grandmother, and we can tease her viciously about that. And technically Summer is the half-sister of the kid you fathered in 1863. Which makes her a great-great-whatever aunt to this kid. When she's old enough to understand familial relations, she will probably find that funny."

Damon groaned. He lay down on the bed, closing his eyes.

"What's cool," Bonnie said, "is that he's your family. You thought you didn't have any left. And now he's here, and you can get to know him."

"Bon-Bon, I am not interested in having you put a positive spin on this."

"If it wasn't for you, and your lack of preparedness, he wouldn't be here. You literally created him, and his life, and his father's life, and his grandfather's life. All these generations, you did that. Most people don't get to see that, see their impact on the future."

#

Charlottesville, Virginia

Elena walked into the posh hotel, feeling under-dressed in her jeans and t-shirt. She carried a backpack, because Caroline thought she was going to the University library, to study. The air conditioning was so cold in here, it shocked her. And in that moment, she considered turning around. Going back to Caroline, Jeremy, and her baby. Or maybe heading to the library after all, to actually study. But as she was considering these options, a man walked up to her. He smiled a charming smile. He held out a hand.

"Elena Gilbert," Klaus said. "I knew I could count on you."

"For what?"

"Well, to see sense, of course. Instead of jumping to conclusions like that foolish husband of yours."

Elena frowned. "You're expecting me to do something stupid."

"Of course not. Your judgment is impeccable."

She glared at him. "Where's your sister?"

"On a telephone call. Her girlfriend wants her to return to New Orleans. It's very tedious. She'll join us, very soon. Shall we sit?" He motioned to a pair of armchairs in the corner of the hotel lobby. Out of the fray.

Elena followed him, not knowing why, but feeling like she had to. They were getting nowhere without him. And now there was a new development. Damon was still in Mystic Falls, and since he'd arrived magic had started going even more haywire, as if something about his physical body was stirring up magical energy. Bonnie had no clue what was going on, but Freya might.

"How is Summer?" Klaus asked.

"She's good. She's growing. I can tell, just a tiny bit every day. She's two weeks old today."

"This is the part of the conversation in which you show me the adorable baby picture."

Elena smiled, and was pulling out her phone, when the world began to go dark. She struggled to stay awake, but she couldn't. Klaus was saying something, but she couldn't hear him. Everything went black. And then Summer was standing in front of her, or at least a vision of how Summer would look around four years old.

Chapter Text

still the same day

June 2018

Mystic Falls, Virginia

Damon sat in a booth at the Mystic Grill, staring into his glass of bourbon, wishing he had his old tolerance back. He wanted to down this drink, and the next, and the next, and sink into that lovely state of a vampire's intoxication, where you're buzzed but awake at the same time. A vampire uses the alcohol to take the edge off, but that edge always remains.

The boy was outside, calling his mother to let her know that he was okay.

Pulling his eyes away from the tumbler, Damon sighed. He took a small sip, then pushed the drink just far enough away that he would have to reach to get it, just close enough that it was accessible if he needed it, if he couldn't do without the buzz. This conversation was too important to screw up with booze. He'd have to sublimate some other way. Damon motioned a waitress over and ordered an extra-large plate of cheese fries. Healthy diet be damned.

When Nathaniel Salvatore came back inside, brushing his hair out of his eyes, shoving his phone in his pocket, and smiling shyly at Damon — something hit Damon hard in the chest.

This boy was a part of him, just as much as Summer was a part of him. Before this moment, Damon had thought he was telling Nate the truth because he needed the kid to save the world: Nate was in that vision, and the vision suggested he was important, part of the team. These practical reasons were still valid. But Damon knew now, as the teenage boy came bounding over to him (this kid was downright buoyant) that he cared about the kid. That he'd already accepted him as family. And as much as he didn't want to tell Nate the truth, as much as his heart broke to burden him with this knowledge (like he'd burdened Sajen), as much as he wanted to keep him out of it (like he'd tried to keep Sajen out of it), as much as he wanted this strange wacky kid to keep all his innocence and all his purity — Damon also wanted to tell him.

He wanted the kid to know who he was. He wanted to be seen. To be heard. He wanted this kid, this child of his line, to know his true identity. Not the mostly fake identity he'd created (with some help from Caroline) to blend into 21st century society: the military brat born in Virginia in 1987, who grew up all over because his family traveled around, who attended NYU from 2005-2007, before dropping out to start his first bar (a flop), and a couple years later, after the death of his parents, coming home to Mystic Falls as his kid brother's legal guardian.

No, he didn't want Nate Salvatore to know that Damon. That Damon might be good enough for his employees, or his neighbors in UVA's married student housing, or Elena's super dull med school classmates. But it wasn't good enough for this boy. Nate had come looking for him, though he didn't know it. Now that he was here, he deserved something real.

"This place is awesome," Nate said as he slid into the booth across from Damon. "Old school."

Damon nodded. "Listen, kid, this is going to be a bit of a — "

But just then the waitress came over with an enormous plate of cheese fries and a bottle of mustard. "Damon, do you still like to dip these in mustard?"

Her name tag said Amber. He couldn't remember ever seeing this girl before, but he nodded. It was the absolute right thing to do with cheese fries.

"That's so weird!" Nate said. "I like that too."

"And how's Elena?" the girl was going on for some reason, like they were old friends. This was exactly why he hated small towns.

"She's fine."

"Did she have the baby?"

"Yes," Damon said, shoving a cheese fry into the mustard and then into his mouth. "Now, I'm sure you have some pressing business over on the other side of the Grill."

The girl laughed like he'd told a joke. "Isn't he great?" she asked Nathaniel, who was now enthusiastically dipping a handful of cheese fries into yellow mustard. "His wife and I went to high school together, but of course it was a bit of a scandal, because she was originally with his brother, and then there's the age thing, but I always knew you and Elena would end up together because you had the chemistry. You were … like Mystic Falls' Romeo and Juliet."

Damon felt like his eyes were going to pop out of his skull. Finally he took a deep breath and then looked her straight in the eyes, focusing intently on her pupils, just like he were trying to compel her. "Amber, here's what you're going to do. You're going to find something else to do with your curiosity and enthusiasm. Somebody out there is in desperate need of a refill, or a dessert menu. Go."

"We don't have dessert menus."

Damn fake compulsion.

Damon felt the almost primal urge to reach out, grab her by the throat, and lift her high in the air. "But I bet they're in need of a service you can provide. And that way you can leave me alone. And maybe later, after work, you can go read The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, and then you'll realize that nobody should actually want to be them."

"Rude!" Amber snapped, snatching up the mustard.

"Leave the mustard!" Damon said. She set the condiment back down, glaring at him as she turned away.

A moment later she turned back around. "Maybe Romeo and Juliet was the wrong example. Actually, now that I think about it, you two are totally Pacey and Joey."

Damon couldn't help glancing at Nate, and saying, "Do you know what a Pacey is?"

Nate shook his head.

"You know, from Dawson's Creek?"

Damon did not know. He raised a hand and pointed away from the table. "Go. Now."

"Rude!"

When she was finally gone, Damon pulled the briefcase from the seat beside him. He shouldn't be doing this in a public place. It would have been smarter to keep Nate inside the boarding house, or take him someplace where they were alone, on a deserted road perhaps, in case Nate freaked out and started screaming. He should also have a friendly vampire on hand, ready to distribute a friendly dose of compulsion.

But Damon wanted to Nate to feel safe. If he did this here, in front of half of Mystic Falls, the boy would know that Damon trusted him, that Damon was willing to lay a bit of his life in his descendant's hands.

And if the kid did run, Damon had both Caroline and Tommy on speed dial. If it came down to it, he could overpower Nate physically. Tie him up. He still knew how to fight.

From the briefcase, he drew an ancient silver case, about the size of his palm. He laid it in front of Nate, and gently opened it, the silver plate revealing a glass plate beneath it, which displayed a faded daguerreotype. The picture showed Damon dressed in his Confederate uniform, a half-smile on his face, which he'd held for 30 seconds because the daguerreotype process had taken that long. The only photograph he possessed from his first human life. It was evidence of the real Damon Salvatore — he might be technically human now, but he didn't always feel it, and he was a century and a half away from this idiot.

"This is the Damon Salvatore you've been looking for," he told Nate. "Your ancestor, the philandering Confederate soldier."

Nate picked up the daguerreotype gently, with obvious reverence. "Wow," he breathed. "I can't believe you have this. Did you know who I was talking about?"

Damon nodded. He gulped and tried to speak, but didn't manage a single word.

"Oh I get it, cause he's your namesake!" Nate said, bubbly for some reason. "That is so cool. And he looks like you! Do you see it? Same eyes. Same nose. Hair's a little different."

Damon snorted. "Modern haircare products dampen the curl. At a certain point, you realize you don't want to look like an idiot kid for the rest of your life."

Nate glanced up from the picture, brows raised, looking quizzical, then laughed, for reasons passing understanding. He went back to studying the 157-year-old relic. "Any idea when this was taken?"

"July 6, 1861."

"That's impressive. Does it say on the back?"

"No."

"Well how do you know? Can I take it out to see if it says that?"

"No!" Damon snapped, snatching the daguerreotype from his idiot great-great-whatever-grandson. "The daguerreotype is printed on glass. You'll break it."

"But how can you be so sure of the exact date? Did your father tell you? Ooh, can I meet him?"

"That fucker is long dead, and believe me—you're better not knowing him." Now Damon leaned in, and whispered conspiratorially, "I know the date because I was there."

Nate's eyes widened, and he looked like he was about to laugh.

Damon continued. "I remember everything that happened that day, because that was the day I marched off to war with a bunch of other idiot kids. On the wrong side. I even knew it then, but I joined to please my father, and so I wouldn't disgrace him, or my town, or my state."

Now it seemed that Nate might laugh or scream. Like he was struggling to decide between the two opposite reactions.

Damon set the daguerreotype down on the table gently, grabbed his great-great-whatever-grandson's shoulder and hissed, "Don't scream. Or get up and run away. Don't start giggling maniacally. Don't do anything that is stupid, or could possibly be interpreted by anyone in this freaking townie bar as weird. You got me? You're safe. I can promise you that. If you weren't safe, I wouldn't be telling you this here, in public."

"Uh, dude, I don't know what you're smoking, but I think you're kinda crazy."

Damon laughed but kept ahold of the kid's shoulder. "I wish I was. Now, you're not going to scream or do anything stupid?"

"You really believe this?" Nate asked. "Like, you honest-to-God believe that's you in the picture? How exactly do you think you've been alive since the 1800s?"

Damon let go of Nate's shoulder, because he didn't know what this particular physicality was going to accomplish. "It might sound crazy. But I was turned into a vampire. And then I was turned back into a human, many years later."

"That does sound crazy."

"Well, sometimes life is crazy. Actually, it's crazy most of the time."

Nate tilted his head to the side, as if considering. "Maybe you could see a psychiatrist?"

Damon sighed. He opened up the briefcase again, retrieving more of his evidence. On the table he tossed several more photographs that spanned the 20th century. "This is me and my brother Stefan in 1912, here in Mystic Falls. It was the first time I'd seen him in almost 50 years. He was turned into a vampire too. We were in love with the same crazy bitch." The ancient photograph was fraying around the edges. "I didn't know he had this. But I found it in his room."

"That does look a lot like you. Doesn't prove anything though."

"Here we are in New Orleans. 1942. Right before he went off the join the war effort, driving an ambulance in Egypt. Note that we look exactly the same, though these are obviously from different eras. Vastly different styles of clothing."

"Are these staged?"

"Why would I go to the trouble?" Damon snapped. "Here we are back in Mystic Falls, again, in 1994. And, at last, color photography. Though of course that had been in use for decades. We just weren't speaking in those decades."

"I don't know what I'm supposed to say," Nate muttered, looking down at his hands.

"I can prove this to you, without a shadow of a doubt," Damon said. His backup plan was to get Tommy or Caroline to show young Nate what a vamp face looked like. He also was planning to get Bonnie to show off some magic, maybe that feather trick Elena always talked about. "But this first conversation—I wanted it to be just you and me."

Nate began to appear more and more uncomfortable, looking everywhere but at Damon. Finally he glanced at the door, saying, "Maybe I should just get out of here."

"Nathaniel Salvatore," Damon said, his voice a little sad, definitely devoid of color. "The world is a much more complicated place than you know. It makes perfect sense for you to be skeptical. I was too, at first. I laughed in Katherine's face. She was—a vampire. The first I ever met. But she wasn't crazy. She was sadistic and selfish, but she wasn't delusional. She opened my eyes to what the world really is. There is so much more to reality than you know. There's a dark underbelly that exists all around you. Vampires. Witches. Lots of other things that go bump in the night. And unfortunately, because of circumstances beyond my control, I need to tell you the truth. Look man, I'm sorry that this little adventure of yours is turning weird. I'm sorry you're getting more than the usual road trip hijinks. And I'm sorry that I can't just make you see it by vamping and showing you my fangs. Because that would be simpler and so, so much more fun. Believe me."

This did get a panicked look from Nate.

Damon smirked. "Settle down, kid. I'm not a vampire anymore," he said. Then he pulled back his lips on the right side of his mouth, revealing normal human teeth. He didn't mention to Nate that he could have done this as a vampire, provided that human blood was not too near, and also that his emotions were not on high alert. "See? I'm no threat to you. Believe me, I'm much more used to people feeling threatened by me, instead of laughing at me. This whole human second chance thing? So weird."

Nate laughed. Then he told Damon, condescendingly, "Of course you're not a threat. Because vampires aren't real. You've been reading too much Twilight."

Damon glared at him. "Really? That's your point of reference? The sparkly Mormon vampires? Can't your generation read Bram Stoker or Anne Rice?"

Nate sighed. "Look, I'm just going to get out of here. It was nice to meet you, Damon. Maybe I'll see you around, at a family reunion or something."

"Wait," Damon said. He pulled a spiral notebook out of his briefcase. Flipping past Elena's anatomy notes, he landed on the ridiculously well-drawn portraits of the twelve people he'd seen, in his vision, the people around that bizarre magic-black-hole-thing. "I had this vision thing. Elena and I both did. My wife, that's her name. The story behind these drawings is really complicated, and frankly it starts to sound stupid when you try to explain it. But the punchline is that when I came out of the vision I was able to reproduce exactly what everyone in the vision looked like. Even though I can't draw. Some I knew, some I didn't. There's bad mojo brewing in Mystic Falls, and Mystic Falls could be just the beginning. All of the people in these drawings are important." Damon said this in a rush, knowing that he wasn't making much sense.

Nate smiled at him now with that smile you give to crazy people. "Okay. I'm just going to get up and walk to my car."

"Stop!" Damon said, softly but firmly. "I don't care if you think I'm crazy. I don't care if you're uncomfortable. I need you to get over yourself. Look at this drawing." He shoved Nate's portrait in front of the real Nate.

"That's me," Nate said softly, sounding a little scared.

Damon nodded. And then he started talking, rambling, about the distant past. He thought if he could tell Nate something about Joanna Murray, maybe that would prove something. And he didn't know what else to say, because he had no concrete information to explain why Nate was in the vision at all. Except for the family link. Which didn't make a ton of sense anyway. "I don't know what specifics you might know about your great-great-whatever grandmother. Joanna. But I remember her. She was a redhead. Creamy skin. Really pale, burned easily. She was tiny, just over five feet. Feisty. Spirited. Young. I think she was 18 or 19 when we met. I was 22. I wish I could say that she was the love of my life, but that would be a stretch. It's funny to think what would have happened if I'd known. About the baby. Because maybe I would have married her. Maybe we would have had this nice little family, a boring, predictable life. I would have stayed human, and been dead by the end of the century. But it could have been nice. She was nice."

Nate was staring at him now. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but no words came out.

Damon went on, rambling. "Joanna was a sweet girl. I didn't know her that long. A couple months. Then my regiment moved on. But I'm sure she made a good mother to the original Nathaniel. And I like to think I would have done the right thing. But even then, I was looking for something different. I was looking for Katherine Pierce, whether I knew it or not. Danger. Mystery. Darkness. Secrets. The bad girl. I was looking to be swept up in something greater than myself. I was not looking for an ordinary life."

Nate nodded, and then seemed to catch himself in the act of nodding, in the act of going along with what Damon was saying. He stopped himself. Raising his eyebrows, he said, "So you've seen a photograph of her. Maybe your ancestor described her in a journal."

Damon laughed. "No. And definitely no. My ancestor, which is me, was not fond of keeping a journal. My brother Stefan kept hundreds of journals. They were never particularly insightful, or really honest, but I guess it passed the time. So, Nathaniel Salvatore, you have a decision to make. You can cooperate now, or later."

The kid's eyes went wide.

"Wait. Nathaniel. Is it possible that Joanna named her son after Nathaniel Hawthorne? The writer?"

Nate's eyes went even wider. "How did you know that?"

"Oh, for fuck's sake!" Damon hissed. "How many times do I have to explain this? Hawthorne was my favorite writer at the time. Not his novels. His short stories. They were so damned creepy and beautiful, at the same time. I had a copy, a collection of his stories, that I'd brought to war with me, and I remember reading them to her, late at night, after banging her. So maybe she named the kid after Hawthorne."

At that moment, Damon heard deliberate footsteps coming from behind him, as if someone was walking over to their booth with a great deal of purpose. He whipped around to see Matt Donovan looking all serious. Matt's mouth was set in a narrow, worried line. Clearly there was a situation that needed to be attended to, one that worried Matt. But at the same time, Donovan's expression radiated disdain and disapproval.

"Salvatore," said Matty Blue Eyes. "Can I have a word?"

Damon sighed. "I'm in a very important conversation. Can this wait?"

Matt shook his head. "Uh, no. Seriously, dude, you need to get up and come with me."

"Seriously, Donovan. You need to not call me dude. Have a little respect for your elders. And whatever you want to say, you can say it in front of Nate. He's a Salvatore."

"Really?" Matt said, incredulous.

Damon nodded. "Long story."

Matt shrugged. Apparently on the list of weird things that could happen in Mystic Falls, Damon having a long lost relative was pretty low. "Klaus called. Elena's passed out, and she's not waking up."

"Is she okay?"

"As far as I can tell she's fine, just sleeping."

"And he called you? Why? Does he even remember who you are?"

Matt smiled for just a moment as he said, "He actually does remember. I got a lecture about staying away from his sister. Can you believe that? Like I'm still pining after her? Like she even matters to me?"

Damon had to laugh. But then he returned to the matter at hand, because he was getting concerned about Klaus's intentions. What game was the immortal hybrid playing? He asked Matt, "But why did he call you and not me?"

Matt looked serious now. "He tried your cell a bunch of times. Then he tried Bonnie, and Alaric. Nobody was picking up. And then he deduced that there must be a problem with cell service in Mystic Falls. So he called the station. I guess he didn't know the number to any other landlines in Mystic Falls."

"And you didn't notice this problem earlier? Klaus Michaelson has to tell you about cell service in your own town, Sheriff?"

Matt glared at Damon. "You know I can punch you now, right? And you'll feel it. I have a strong right hook." Leaning in and whispering, he said, "You can't hide behind the big bad vampire anymore."

Nate sucked in his breath. "What did you say?" he said softly, looking up at Matt with a mixture of fear and exhilaration.

"Shit," Matt said, looking genuinely chagrined. "Um, I meant. Well, you know it's um, metaphorical."

"It's okay," Damon said, rubbing his tired, tired eyes. "I've been trying to tell him the truth. For some reason, he doesn't believe me."

Nate stared up at Matt, his eyes pleading for answers. "So you believe him?"

Matt nodded. "I've seen a lot of stuff. It's real. It sucks, a lot, but it's real."

Damon wanted to keep talking to Nate, but now there was an unconscious Elena to deal with. "There's got to be a landline here," he said. "In the back. In the kitchen or staff room or something. Do you have a number I can reach Klaus on?"

Matt nodded, pulling a slip of paper from his shirt pocket.

"Keep an eye on this one while I make the call?" Damon asked Matt, not quite believing he was asking Donovan for this favor. Donovan hated him. He could easily poison Nate's mind against Damon. But the alternative, letting Nate run off or do something stupid, that was worse than anything Matty Blue Eyes could say.

Damon was walking towards the Grill's kitchen when he heard a voice behind him, calling out for him. A familiar, irritating, smug, British-accented voice. Klaus. Great.

Chapter Text

The same day

Location unclear

It was a bit like waking up from that five-year coma. She had this distinct feeling of her mind traveling, not through space or time but through this murky darkness that separated one world from another. Elena tried to scream, but she found when she opened her mouth that there was no air in this place. This place between places. This liminality. This in-between-land. This place of being on the verge of being someone else. She felt like she was waking up. It was either going to be the best thing or the worst thing. Her heart beat fast, and it was a human heartbeat, at least she could tell that. At least she wasn't waking up as something else.

A small hand gripped Elena's left hand. She managed to turn her head and glimpsed a teenaged Summer smiling at her. "Don't worry, Mom," this impossibly aged girl said. Her daughter looked so peaceful. Like this journey was chill, ordinary, and awesome all at the same time. "You've got this."

"You'll protect me?" Elena asked in a small voice, feeling younger than this too-old Summer.

"I'm just a baby. I can't protect anybody."

"But—"

"You got this, Mom. You'll protect me."

And then Elena did wake up. She climbed through the murky sort-of-nothingness, and through a wooden floor (right through the very solid floorboards, like she was made of water. She pulled herself up onto the wooden planks, and now she was in charge of her body. Now she could breathe. Let out a little laugh of relief. And then she was really laughing, doubling over, because this was insane, and because somehow Summer had made her feel safe, and because even though she should be afraid, she realized that there was nothing to fear in this place. She wouldn't get stuck in some crazy prison world, because this wasn't that type of place. She wasn't dead. She wasn't among enemies.

This was her place.

This was a porch she knew intimately. These floorboards had supported her through all those normal, blissfully boring years of childhood and early adolescence. They'd supported her through her first big loss—the one she thought she'd never get over, the one she'd been convinced would be the worst thing that ever, ever happened to her. And these floorboards had stood steady beneath her as she'd learned the truth about the dark underbelly that swam below all that dull stupid normal crap like kissing Matt, or breaking up with Matt, or sitting on the porch swing with Bonnie for hours, studying for Algebra tests, and sitting next to Caroline as they argued viciously over cheerleading routines and gave each other's wardrobes backhanded compliments. These floorboards had cradled Elena as she fell in love with vampires, and then fell in love with the idea of loving vampires. As she fell head over heels into the supernatural. Because running for her life, and sometimes dying—that's what made Elena Gilbert feel alive again.

Elena knew she was safe because the only thing that had ever threatened this porch was her own grief. She'd set fire to her old life, not the other way around.

It was a sunny day wherever she was. It smelled like jasmine and mint. She blinked in the sunshine, and glanced around her. Yes, the Gilbert house was indeed intact. The neighborhood seemed quiet but real—old Mrs. Thompson was puttering in her garden next door, as a 50's era convertible sped down the street. The teenage boy driving it looked like he was having the time of his life, and the girl beside him had decided to stick her feet out the open window in blatant disregard for her own safety were they to crash. They waved to Elena. She waved back, though she'd never seen them before in her life. It was Mystic Falls, and it always paid to be polite to your neighbors, whether you knew them or not.

She was about to knock on her own front door when the door flew open and several people flooded out. They stopped cold when they saw Elena. Elena felt her breath leave her as she stared at the woman before her. She'd almost forgotten her face—not this woman's photograph face, but her real, in the flesh, three dimensional face. "Mom?" Elena asked. Miranda Gilbert grinned and pulled her daughter to her, enveloping her in the best of hugs. Enveloping Elena in what felt like pure love, pure adoration. As she threw herself into her mother's arms, she had a fleeting image of herself cradling Summer. She'd never doubted that her mother loved her, but only now did she understand what Miranda's hug meant. What that mother's love was in tangible, practical terms.

A man joined the hug, wrapping his arms around both women. "Dad?"

Her dad cried into Elena's hair.

She caught another familiar face out of the corner of her eye. Auburn hair glinting in the sunshine. That smile that could make Elena feel alive and young at the same time. And now she was reluctantly letting go of her parents to throw herself into Aunt Jenna's arms, into the arms of the last person to be a real parent to her. Incredibly the love fest wasn't over, as Uncle Jon/her "real" father spilled out of the Gilbert front door, and Elena found herself running into his arms too. He seemed content and at peace—neither of which she'd ever seen before, and she found that she had no resentment left for her. His last act on earth had been to sacrifice himself to save her human soul, and he'd given her a year of being human that she wouldn't have had otherwise. A year to grow stronger so that when she did get turned into a vampire, she could survive, and eventually when she reclaimed her humanity, she found that she'd never lost her soul. Alive or dead or alive again, Elena had kept being Elena, and she had many people to thank for that, but among them was Jon. Who'd also given her another gift—his acceptance. He'd told her that he would be proud of her whether she was a vampire or a human. When Elena had feared that her own parents might hate her for her vampire-sympathizing choices and eventual undead status, she'd at least known that she had one parent who would approve no matter what, even though he'd spent almost his entire life hating vampires.

After she pulled away from Jon, Elena turned back to her parents. This time shoving her hands into the pockets of her jeans. "Where am I?" she asked them. "Are you real."

"Yes," said Grayson Gilbert.

"Am I dead?" she asked, panicking despite her earlier certainty that she was very much alive.

"Oh, honey, no!" Miranda Gilbert said in the kindest, warmest of tones. "We're in the liminality, the place where those at peace can touch the living."

Elena tried to wrap her head around this. "So peace is real?"

"Absolutely," her dad said. And now he was ordering Jon and Jenna around so that they could all sit on the porch and talk. Soon her aunt and uncle had brought chairs for themselves and Grayson. Elena and Miranda sat side by side on the porch swing as Jenna passed out frosty glasses of cold lemonade, and then scurried into her own chair.

"That's really a remarkable baby girl you've brought into your world," Miranda murmured. "She came to talk to us earlier, so we'd know to expect her. Of course we knew you'd had a baby. We like to keep tabs on our kids."

Elena frowned. "I'm not going to wake up tomorrow and found that she's freakily aged up, and she's not a baby but 15 and surly, am I?"

Miranda shook her head. "No. I think it's the magic within her that helps her appear to you as a child or a teen, but it's all subconscious. It might be our minds that are interpreting her as older. But her conscious mind is a baby's. She will grow at the usual rate. When she starts talking, I imagine it will be the same as any baby. She'll know Mama and Dada and milk."

Elena put her head on her mother's shoulder. "How can you be so sure?"

Grayson laughed. "Sheila Bennett comes to dinner at least twice a week."

"We've also met Emily Bennett and Jonathan Gilbert," Jon piped up. "Those two are intense. They scare me, frankly."

Jenna sighed dramatically as she said, "Jonathan Know-It-All Gilbert refuses to speak or even look at me because I was a vampire for what, five minutes."

"Try thirty seconds," Jon said, bitterness creeping into his voice. "Your transition doesn't count, just the seconds from when you fed to when you were killed by Klaus. Our esteemed ancestor is a bigot, and I'd prefer it if we didn't let him in the door."

Grayson threw up his hands. "His journals taught you everything you ever knew."

"Exactly," Jon spat back.

And it was this weird little exchange, with her family acting like a real family and not some idealized, super huggy version of her best memories—that convinced Elena that this encounter was real. Maybe the porch wasn't actually her childhood porch. But she was communicating with her long dead parents, her aunt, and her biological father.

But something her real father, Grayson, had just said made her blood turn to ice. "Do you hate me?" Elena asked her dad. "For what I am?"

"What?" barked Grayson and Miranda at the same time.

"For being a vampire, because I was, even if I'm not now. And I can't make that part of myself go away forever, regardless of my human status. And I fell in love with a vampire, and then his more dangerous brother. I married Damon, and all of my choices from the first day of my junior year—I don't think they are the choices that you would approve of. I know you love me. But I deliberately turned my back on the council. And I turned my back on your legacy, not because I don't love and respect you. But because I think hating vampires misses the point."

Miranda pulled Elena into a fierce hug and said, "We're proud of you."

Grayson looked serious. A little sad. "I spent years screaming at you from this place. And I'd be lying if I said that I didn't wish a different life for you. Because I'm your dad, and you suffered so much. But, you had more information than I ever did. I never made friends with a vampire. I never considered that one could have humanity. I won't disavow my whole life. And I can't say that I approve of everything. Still deciding on that son-in-law. I mean, he's way too old for you, honey."

Everyone laughed.

But Grayson went on. "I can't give you a blanket statement of approval. I can't say I would have done everything that you did. But I can say that I'm proud of your compassion and the moral stand you took. Because I was a bigot. I did some horrible things to the vampire we had in custody. I thought he had no soul, and therefore was not deserving of my kindness, mercy, or even my humanity. I didn't realize that in torturing him—in the name of science, in the name of curing humans—that I was the predator and he was the prey. You, my little girl, you saw something in the vampires that I never did. You saw their souls. You saw their potential. And you saved your husband from himself."

Elena breathed out a sigh of relief. She jumped up and threw herself into her father's arms. And this time she held onto him like her life depended on him. She sobbed into his blue collared shirt. "Thank you," she murmured finally, pulling herself away, sitting down beside her mother again. Miranda patted her affectionately on the knee.

Then Jon was saying, in a rush, "This is a lovely moment. But we have to focus here. Okay? So no more personal growth or mending fences, not until you listen to what I have to say."

Elena frowned but nodded, and then waited expectantly.

Jon seemed to be pausing for dramatic effect, even though he'd said there was no time for wasting. She was about to slap her biological father when he said, "In the last 24 hours, we've been visited by a lot of witches. Much more powerful witches than Sheila Bennett. And much older. I'm talking millennia old, okay? And we've been trying to get through to you. Stefan Salvatore's tried to reach out to Damon. The Bennetts have been calling out to Bonnie. Nobody was getting through. And then somehow, Summer managed to knock you out. And so we're here. But I don't how much longer Summer can keep you down. Especially if anybody is trying to wake you."

Elena felt her insides go cold again, but this time it had nothing to do with parental approval. "What's the message?" she shouted at Jon. "Just tell me the goddamn message before you lose your connection to my mind or something. It's about the magic in Mystic Falls. The hotspot."

Her family all nodded.

Grayson cleared his throat. "Hotspot is an interesting term. But you might want to think about it in simpler terms. There's just too much magic in Mystic Falls, right now. It's overflowing. It's creating havoc. Cars flying into the clocktower. Cell phone service disrupted. Mini blackouts. We're also seeing a lot of medical issues. Heart attacks. Seizures. And then there's all the supernatural creatures and witches that are being drawn to the town subconsciously. The air is literally crackling with magic, and too much magic isn't good. The magic needs to be contained, or if not contained it needs to be distributed in some other way. So that this small town is not overflowing with energy. If you don't handle the problem, the magic will explode, like a giant star overheating and turning into a supernova. And then you may have a black hole on your hands, a gaping vacuum where our town should be."

Elena couldn't breathe. This was worse than she'd expected. She had so much to say, but she couldn't speak. Finally she croaked out, "Is there a fix?"

Miranda pulled her even closer to her as she said, "Yes. There seem to be several options. I'm not sure of what is actually right. But the ancient witches are confident that Bonnie and that Michaelson witch, and all the others working with them, can find the right course of action. There's no way for these witches to talk directly to any of you, and even if they could get a line to Bonnie, apparently it would take too long to explain everything, and the line can't stay open that long. Or Bonnie would die. So the point is, if you understand what the problem is, then you should be able to fix it. And the living have to fix this anyway. It's your world now. And you, all of you, must make the decisions. You have to save yourselves. You're all grown up now, Elena, so you have to save yourself."

Elena gulped but nodded.

Jon began talking very quickly. He wanted to give a history lesson. He said the key to everything lay in the past. The distant past. "We always thought that supernatural problems were just bad luck. Some evil vampires show up during the Civil War, and they're like any vermin. Once you have roaches, you always have roaches. They always seem to return. But after I died it became obvious to me that the problem in Mystic Falls predated Katherine Pierce. The vampires didn't bring the danger to Mystic Falls. Our danger—our magic actually—attracted them. Just like the out of control magic is now attracting random vampires and witches. Werewolves too."

"How?" Elena said.

Jenna surprised her by chiming in. "Look at our town's history and you'll see a pattern. Supernatural people always end up there. Like the witches who relocated from Salem in the 1600s. Even you being born here, because you're a doppelganger. Big world changing catastrophes happen in this sleepy little town. The Travelers. Silas. The destruction of both the Other Side and Hell. So there has to be a reason. I studied people in my PhD, understanding what people want and why they do stupid things—that's what studying psych is all about. So this stuff all happening here, not in New York or Paris or Jerusalem, it has to be for a reason. Too many big things have happened in Mystic Falls for it to be a coincidence."

Miranda was nodding vehemently and Elena, who had her head on her mother's shoulder, could feel her mother nodding, and her tension almost vibrating off her as Miranda said, "Vampires were created in Mystic Falls. So were werewolves."

Elena pulled her head from her Miranda's shoulder and looked her mom straight in the face. "I knew it!" she said. "I knew werewolves had to be here too."

Miranda nodded and then continued with her story. "Those spells wouldn't have worked if it weren't for something that happened several thousand years ago. You're familiar with how Cade created Hell?"

"Yes," Elena said. "He was being burned to death. And in his fury at the people executing him he cried it. Pain and anger and bitterness, it all got channeled into a burst of psychic energy. And he created Hell. And he was the first psychic, so the first witch. Right"

Grayson laughed humorlessly. "Well, that's partially true. And it's what he truly believed. But he didn't do it alone. And he wasn't the first. Witches have existed as long as people have existed. They are the servants of nature. They are as natural as anything on Earth. And you can't have humanity without witches. They're here to make sure that there is a balance. Witches and psychics are the same thing. Psychics don't have control of their powers. Witches created a system to control, but their power is in using psychic energy. They channel it into spells and such. Cade never met another psychic, so he believed he was the first. And he was very powerful. Apparently in every generation, there are several witches all over the world who are the most powerful. And if one does a really, really big spell, he can link with these other witches. He or she won't know that they're doing it. They draw on each other's power and this collective power makes something like creating Hell possible."

Elena tried to understand. She felt like she was almost understanding. "But what does this have to do with Mystic Falls?"

"One of the powerful witches of Cade's generation lived here, in a tiny American Indian village, thousands of years ago," Grayson said. "When Cade screamed his pain into an accidental spell, creating this other world that is known as Hell, he unconsciously channeled him. His name was Áłtsé hashké. And this allowed Áłtsé hashké to do some powerful spell here. And that's why all these other supernatural people have been attracted to this place. And incidentally, we can thank these ancient witches for you and Damon getting married, because vampires couldn't have been created if it weren't for Hell being created. Basically, Áłtsé hashké's involvement meant that Mystic Falls became a supercharged hotspot for magic. Esther was a powerful witch, but her spell to make her children and husband vampires—it couldn't have happened anywhere else. Being here made her superpowered. It made her magic brighter and more powerful."

"Okay," Elena said, feeling more confident in her understanding of the issues, feeling like she knew what questions to ask, and like she was almost on equal footing with her father, knowledge-wise. "I've got at least three questions for you. Number one—"

But she never got the question out. Because a voice was calling her, and a hand was reaching through the porch's floorboard, yanking her forcibly from the porch swing. Her mother tried to hold onto Elena, but she wasn't as strong as the man who was pulling Elena through the floor and through the murky nothingness, and back into the real world. Elena woke up. She opened her eyes and blinked in the light—not as bright as the light she'd left, but not as mellow either. She was lying on Damon's bed, in the boarding house. Damon was sitting beside her, squeezing her hand so tight it hurt. He was crying. Meredith Fell was on her other side, with paddles in her hands, objects whose meaning Elena couldn't quite register. Behind them, Elena saw a crowd of worried and relieved faces. Caroline. Bonnie. Alaric. Jeremy. Klaus. Freya. And lurking towards the back was Matt. Why was Matt here? In the same room as Klaus Michaelson?

"Damon!" Elena shouted, sitting up so fast and turning towards him so abruptly she knocked him off the bed. "How could you?'

"How could I what?" her beautiful husband asked from his undignified sprawl on the floor. "How could I save your life?"

"Save my? What? I was fine! It was. You don't know what you did."

Bonnie cleared her throat. "We had to."

"But my dad. My mom and dad were there, Bonnie. And they were telling me how to save the world. And Summer took me there. I was fine. And I needed it. It's not just the saving of the world. I needed to talk to my mom some more."

Meredith placed a gentle hand on Elena's back and another on her neck. Checking her pulse? "We didn't have a choice. I thought I was going to have to pronounce you dead. Your heart stopped. Twice. We got you back the first time. But the second time you were out for six minutes. Much longer and you'd be brain dead. Frankly, it might explain why you saw your parents. Like somebody seeing a tunnel and a white light when they have a near-death experience."

Elena frowned, trying to take it all in. She felt fine. But now her whole body was vibrating with fear and exhaustion. Damon climbed back up on the bed beside her and wrapped his arm around her. His embrace was both like and completely different from her mother's.

"Honey," he said softly. "What did your dad tell you?"

Elena took a deep breath. "A lot. It's about magic. Why we have so much here, and how it happened."

Chapter Text

That night, still June 2018

Mystic Falls, Virginia

Damon sat in an uncomfortable chair in Elena's hospital room, holding the baby, watching his wife sleep, reassured by the monitors that his girl was okay. Elena, of course, had not wanted to come to the hospital. But Meredith Fell, ever the annoying, uppity doctor, said it was just plain common sense. Anybody whose heart has stopped for a minute, and then—an hour later—for six whole minutes, should stay overnight in the hospital. Damon, for once, couldn't agree more with annoying, uppity doctor.

Which was why he was hanging out in a dimly lit room in Mystic Falls General, watching his wife sleep. She'd been kicking off the covers every so often, so he periodically he'd been rushing over, cradling the baby in one arm, to pull the covers back over Elena, making sure to tuck the blanket around her shoulders, to cover her feet so that they weren't cold. Her dark hair fell over the pillow like she was a mermaid, and sometimes he had to remind himself to breathe, because she was just so damned pretty, and because he was so damned afraid of losing her again.

It was two in the morning. Meredith had peeked in several times, to check on Elena, but all had been fine. His girl was practically un-killable.

Still. This had been the worst day for Damon Salvatore since the day his brother died. For those six minutes, today had tied with the day Stefan, in overall suckiness. Damon was still struggling to breathe deeply enough, to believe without a shadow of a doubt that he and Elena and Summer were all alive, and that the world continued to spin on its axis.

After what seemed like ages, Elena's restless sleep calmed down. Now she wasn't kicking or rustling. She lay motionless, except for her chest rising and falling with breaths, in and out. Alive, but peaceful. Truly asleep.

Damon sat as still as his wife, one of Bonnie's grimoires on his lap, as he fed three-week-old Summer her first bottle of formula. She was lapping up the manufactured milk like it was heroin.

Struggle as he might to stay put in this damned chair, it was getting harder. His damned back had been bothering him a little all day, and now it seemed to be getting worse.

Once Klaus had parked unceremoniously in Damon's grass, outside the Salvatore house, Damon had insisted on being the one to lug Elena from the backseat of Klaus's rented Bentley, throwing her up and over his shoulder in the ultimate guy move. Damon had carried his wife inside, through the door of the boarding house, and up the stairs to his old room. When Damon reached the halfway mark from first floor to second, he buckled just a bit beneath Elena's deadweight. Klaus had tried to take her from him. But Damon had waved the fucker off. Thinking about it now, his back had been twinging ever since, but he'd ignored it.

A twinge was nothing compared to what Elena had gone, through. He'd almost lost her.

A twinge was the least he could offer his wife and his child.

But now, as he sat in this hard-backed chair, that stupid twinge was turning into something else. The dull ache all over his lower back continued. But then, every so often, a sharp pain intruded. A jolt of terrible-ness. But then, just as quickly as it came it would go away. He had no idea if he'd actually hurt himself, or this was just a normal amount of human discomfort. After a century and a half of vampirism, muscle pain, any amount of muscle pain, was just plain weird. And deeply embarrassing.

Thinking that some movement might help, he tried to get out of this damned evil chair. But his back was not cooperating.

"Fuck," Damon said, louder than he wanted to. He glanced at Elena, but she slept on. If he could put both his hands down and brace himself, he could push himself up. Surely. Damon Salvatore could not be felled after carrying one damsel up one lousy flight of stairs could.

But the problem right now was that he had to stand up and hold onto Summer. Could he put her on the ground for just a minute? Probably not the best idea. And wasn't Elena terrified of the germs the baby could pick up in a hospital? Somehow the healing place was the place you could get sickest. So much irony. She did not think this irony was as funny as Damon thought it was. But of course she had grown up with modern medicine: all this was normal to her.

Here was the kicker—what if he put the infant on the floor, then stood up, and was unable to bend down to pick her up again?

What if, regardless of how many ways he attempted to get up from this chair, he couldn't, and had to call a nurse? Or was found, by a nurse, sprawled out on the ground?

Being human suuuuucked.

"Fuck," he said again. Slightly louder. He was reminded of the million times Vampire Damon had flung all manner of humans and supernatural creatures over his shoulder. Vampire Damon had suffered no ill effects from the physical efforts of carrying a damsel up the stairs. Yes, definitely another reason to hate being a human. Could this symptom of humanity be worse than the symptom of not being able to compel people?

After what seemed like a lifetime of trying, he finally managed to propel himself up, out of the chair, without dropping Summer. He groaned deep and long as he stood up, but the pain was a little better. He decided to take Summer for a walk. Maybe the hospital had some vending machines. Ooh, maybe they had Cheetos. And Cherry Cokes. Maybe even Twinkies.

#

Unfortunately, he'd barely gotten out of the hospital room before he ran into one Klaus Michaelson.

"Mother fucker," Damon said. Very much out loud. "What are you doing here?"

"I thought I'd check in on the lovely Elena."

Damon frowned. "Look, Klaus, it's just you and me now. You can drop the nice guy act. I know you're a psychopath.

Klaus feigned a look of shock.

Damon went on. "I'm tolerating you being here, in my town, out of respect for Elena and Caroline's insane desire to see the best in you, and because you might be useful. But I know that you've always got a scheme. It might be a scheme within a scheme within an evil plan. But you've always got something going on. Like you're playing some giant game of chess and we're all just the pieces in your game. So just level with me, cause I'd rather just skip over all the bullshit. For once. Just be honest. Be your actual shitty self. I don't care if I like you, or if you're a good person. I just want to know if you're going to fuck me over."

Klaus barked out a laugh, and then clapped his hands together several times in mock applause. "Such a charming speech, Salvatore."

"Are you here for her doppelganger blood?"

Klaus shook his head, flashing one of his trademark condescending smiles. "It's your lucky day. Hope's blood would do the trick, for creating hybrids, if it came down to that. But, to be completely and utterly frank, since it seems like you're particularly excited about honesty—I've lost my taste for siring a hybrid army."

Damon laughed derisively.

"Taunt me all you want, with your pathetic attempts at disrespect. You see, Mr. Salvatore, there are better ways to build allegiance to me, or to control the masses. It's not as fun if it's not real. And magic always comes with a price. Tyler Lockwood and his little friends broke free of the sire bond. You may remember? Caused me all sorts of trouble and complications. It caused Tyler his poor, dear mother. So sad. That lad was a thorn in my side for years. His idiotic attempts to get revenge—ultimately the whole lot of them were a giant pain in the arse. More trouble then they were worth. By the way, Damon, thank you for helping me out with that thorn."

"What?"

"Weren't you the idiot vampire who killed Tyler Lockwood?"

Damon was shocked at the accusation for just a moment before he sucked in a breath.

In all the craziness of the past couple years, he'd almost forgotten that he'd killed Tyler. Of course, he'd killed a lot of people over the years. He really was a terrible person.

"Are you feeling guilty?" Klaus taunted him. "Come on, the lad was a walking disaster. Emotionally stunted and dysfunctional to the core. And not in an interesting way. I say: Bravo."

Summer started to fuss, and Damon began bouncing her lightly on his shoulder. He didn't know what to say to Klaus's many remarks, or what to think about what the hybrid was telling him.

"Of course you know first-hand the downsides of the sire bond," Klaus was going on with his monologue. For some reason. "The lovely Elena was sired to you, and you didn't like it. Ultimately, sire bonds are unreliable. They are either weak, unpleasant, or they lead to a dozen of your sirelings attempting to murder you in the forest."

Damon glared at the eternally twenty-two year-old Original, choosing not to comment on the sheer stupidity of Elena being sired to Damon. It had been ludicrous, really, like some cheap plot device designed to make them both doubt her love for him, and to keep them apart a little longer. As if God or whoever had wanted them to suffer some more, instead of just being happy.

Finally Damon said, "But what about Summer? Are you going to try to control her life, so that in 500 years you'll get another Petrova doppelganger? Because if you think that you can do anything to my little girl, you should leave town right now."

Klaus shook his head, and placed a very unwanted hand on Damon's shoulder. Looking straight into Damon's eyes, which was unsettling as hell, he said, "Of all the things the malicious things I could possibly do to you, that is the one thing you don't have to worry about. Freya believes Elena's blood can no longer create a doppelganger line. Something to do with the Cure. Very tedious explanation. Besides, I am a father now. I no longer take any pleasure in putting children in harm's way, even if their parents make me furious. Summer is safe from my malice. Though I do have to say, your attitude is a tad suicidal. If I were you, I would think a little harder before you speak."

Damon glared at him. "Why are you still here, Klaus? What business do you have in the hospital? If you want to know where they keep blood bags, I'm happy to tell you. I'd much rather have you drinking from blood bags than from the nurses. So I can help you with that. But you can't talk to Elena right now."

Klaus shook his head. "Let her rest. I want to talk to you. Father to father."

Damon frowned. He searched Klaus's face for evidence that he was lying or manipulating. But for once the hybrid seemed sincere. And tired. Had he looked this tired the entire time he'd been back in Virginia, or just right now? Did Originals need sleep?

"Fine," Damon said. "What is it?"

Klaus pulled a page out of his pocket and handed it to Damon, his hand brushing against Damon's as he passed it to him. Damon felt a jolt as skin brushed against the hybrid's skin. And then warmth rushed through him. Trust. As if someone or something was telling him to trust this man, this strange immortal holdover from the Dark Ages. Still keeping one hand on Summer, he clumsily opened the paper. It seemed to be a spell, torn out of a grimoire. His eyes were so tired, and the blue ink so faded, that he struggled to make out the words scrawled on the parchment. "What am I looking at?" he murmured.

"It's from a grimoire. One of my mother's books," Klaus said.

"I don't really speak witch," Damon said, still squinting at the words, trying to decide if this page was written in English.

"It's a spell to let magic flow back into the Earth. We need to make this happen."

"Oh really? Just because you say so?"

"You bloody idiot. Our interests align, this time. There are a lot of witches in your house, who we need to bring over to our side. The last of the ones you drew in your little notebook showed up tonight. Three of them, together. And very wily, those three, I can tell."

Damon frowned. "How do you know about those drawings?"

"Elena."

"Of course," Damon said with a bitter laugh.

"The point is that alliances are being formed. And you want me on your team."

Damon glared at Klaus. His back began to twinge, even more than before. It was a sharp, nasty, distracting pain.

Klaus looked suspiciously at Damon. After a moment, the Original Hybrid ran a hand through his uncombed, wavy blond hair, and walked over to Damon's side, standing too close for Damon's comfort. "You're favoring one side of your body. What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Nonsense. You've injured yourself. I can hear your quickened heartbeat." Klaus bit his wrist and held it out to Damon, clearly expecting Damon to latch on and drink the healing vampire blood, lapping it up a wounded animal would lap up water.

But Damon shook his head.

"Don't be a child. Just take it. Then say thank you."

"Won't work. The Cure means that my body rejects vampire blood. I'll just cough it up, like it's poison."

Klaus raised his brows. Then he laughed. "It really sucks to be you, doesn't it?"

Damon turned and walked away, thinking he should get Summer away from this maniacal bastard.

"Damon!" Klaus shouted after him. Then the bastard vamped away. Damon thought Klaus had grown tired of his pathetic human-ness, that he'd left him in peace. Damon wandered down to the empty waiting room, and sank onto a couch. He began to burp Summer, realizing that he didn't have a burp cloth, that she might ruin his designer black shirt. Surprisingly, he didn't much care. Before he got a burp out of her, Klaus returned. Vamping around so he deposited himself right in front of Damon and Summer.

Damon sighed. He missed the speed of immortality. And now he couldn't get away. He'd never been a match for Klaus, but now his odds against the Original had gone from 1:100 to 1:10,000. Hell, maybe his chances were more like 1:1,000,000. "What?" Damon growled.

Klaus raised his eyebrows, looking pleased as hell, as he held out an icepack,. "Access to ready-made ice was a bit later than my time. But I seem to remember how good a bowl of snow felt on a bruise. And once my father was laid up, his back aching. He was unable to walk. It was the best week of my young life. In any event, he seemed to find moments of comfort when my mother brought him bowls of snow."

Damon considered how long he'd have to wander around the hospital before he could find a nurse, a doctor, or an icepack of his own. Reluctantly, he took the ice from the man he still thought of as an enemy. With his free hand, he tried to prop the icepack between his lower back and the chair.

"There is only one major thing we have to decide. The details can vary. The spells can vary. But at the end of the day, do we contain the magic, or do we let it go?"

"Let me guess. You want to trap it? For your own use? You want to use it to get even more powerful, and you'll justify this with your typical, paranoid, egotistical —"

Klaus shook his head. "You always did think the worst of me."

"When I met you, you wanted to sacrifice Elena. And then you did. You drank every drop of her blood!" Damon spat out. "Seriously? Why should anybody trust you? Everybody, from now until the end of time, should run screaming from you. You're a fucking psychopath."

Klaus grinned, big and wide, like being called a psychopath was the ultimate compliment. "Is that all?"

Damon wanted to hit him, but he didn't think engaging in hand-to-hand combat was wise while holding his three-week-old baby against his shoulder. And he had experienced that very intense moment of trust, when his hand had brushed Klaus's.

Finally, Damon gave up. He slumped back against the chair, and into the melting ice, mumbling, "But you do want to trap the magic?"

Klaus shook his head. "No. And neither should you."

"Why not?"

"Because you want Mystic Falls to be safe. You don't want the same supernatural drama to continue to plague this town, with one big bad after another showing up in this little podunk place for no apparent reason. If the magic gets contained, it will be tied forever to your sweet little town."

Damon frowned. He glanced down at the paper again, bringing it closer to his face until it was just a few inches from his nose. It was written in a language foreign to him, which looked a bit like German, but which was not German. But the illustration was clear. Magic was being poured into Earth, but not getting stuck in one place. It was going everywhere. "So," Damon said, "the alternative is let the magic flow free. Where exactly?"

"Everywhere. It will flow into the Earth itself, and link up with other magic, and it will increase the amount of magic over the whole planet. But not create a problem for Mystic Falls specifically."

Damon dropped the paper to his lap as he said, "And why do you care about Mystic Falls?"

"I was born here too, if you recall."

Damon shrugged. "A thousand years ago. I don't think you'd give a damn if the whole town burned to the ground. Had you even been back, in those thousand years, until you decided it would be fun to kill Elena in your freaky ritual? And would you have stuck around later if you didn't have a weird obsession with being friends with my brother?"

Klaus cleared his throat. "I can't be the one to suggest a plan. None of the witches will trust me. They won't even trust Freya. Apparently she's guilty by association. But they might trust you. They might trust Elena. They'll definitely trust the little Bennett witch, so it would be very helpful to get her on our team."

"What do you gain by doing this?" Damon asked Klaus, knowing that this couldn't be about Klaus wanting to be generous to any of them. And Klaus definitely didn't care about Mystic Falls. "What favor do you want from me, Klaus?"

Klaus laughed humorlessly. "No favor," he muttered. "It's my daughter. This is my way to save her, to save my whole family. I can't see Hope right now, can't be in the same room with her. It's all very complicated and dull and ridiculous. But you see, I'm carrying energy from a witch called the Hollow. It infected Hope, and we managed to take the energy out of her. My siblings and I split it between four of us, so none of us can go near her, or near each other. The Hollow created the werewolf curse, which, by the way, is one reason for the particularly strong and problematic magical signature that looms over Mystic Falls. Freya and I believe that if I'm here when the magic is released, the Hollow's spirit will go back into the Earth. Magic in the Earth is neither good nor bad. It's just the way one wields it. So I win, you win, Hope wins. But you have to convince the witches."

Chapter Text

July 2018

Mystic Falls

Damon's bedroom was as pristine as ever. He kept telling her that this was her room too, but she didn't feel it, regardless of the fact that she'd lived here before. Elena lay next to her husband, who was tossing around in his sleep. Summer had woken up around midnight, fussy as hell, and Elena had struggled to stay awake for the whole hour her daughter fussed and whimpered and was not interested in milk or even the boob. Once the babe finally fell back to sleep, and was securely in her bassinet, Elena couldn't fall back asleep, to settle down, to even close her eyes.

And so she lay here. Wondering why he had slept so soundly through the crying, but he was so obviously not peaceful. He kept kicking her feet, and then rolling over, and kicking from behind. Since she'd had the vision, or been sort of dead, visiting her parents, Jenna and Jon, he'd only wanted to talk about magic and plans and how to stop the end of the world. He hadn't wanted to talk about them, or him, or what he dreamed about when he was tossing and turning. It had been two weeks, and he didn't seem to have gotten any rest.

When she'd woken up, he'd been white and shaky, but hiding it. They'd said she almost died, twice. They said the second time she was as good as dead. Meredith thought Elena may have actually died. That she'd crossed the death threshold for a few minutes. How else had she visited that ultimate of other sides, peace?

Jeremy'd told her how he'd felt during this minutes. Terrified. And angry. At what, he wasn't sure. Maybe the universe. Maybe their father, for some inexplicable reason. Maybe Elena herself for accidentally almost-sort-of-maybe dying. Maybe at Damon and Meredith for accidentally turning her into a vampire. Maybe at Quetsiya for inventing the Cure. Definitely at Klaus's father and mother for creating vampires, without which his family would never have disintegrated into supernaturalism and tragedy. Definitely at Stefan for not saving Elena the night she drowned in the river. Seriously, he'd been a 167-year-old vampire and by Jeremy's calculations 11 times stronger than the average human. So Stefan had no good reason for not being able to save both Elena and Matt Donovan from drowning.

Bonnie'd felt robbed. She'd been on the verge of losing Elena, when she'd just gotten her back from the coma. Bonnie was sick of losing people period.

Caroline did not have time for feelings. She was busy creating elaborate systems of flashcards, phone trees, and a "stay alive manual" with which to approach the next, inevitable, crisis.

Freya did not seem to have feelings at all.

All Klaus wanted to talk about was the diabolical plan he'd roped Damon into, which involved tricking the witches into believing that they had actually decided, on their own, that the right thing to do was to release the magic, currently tied up in the magic hotspot in Mystic Falls, and let it flow freely into the whole Earth, rather than containing it an artifact or an alternate dimension. It was very important that the witches didn't believe that this idea was actually Klaus's idea. They were supposed to get tricked into thinking that they'd come up with it on their own, of Klaus or Damon or Freya. They were supposed to decide that it was actually safer to let the magic go free, and then just trust the magic. Because magic was groovy. Klaus certainly had feelings, desperate, crazy feelings, about his daughter and his family, running deep, but he only wanted to talk diabolically.

Damon said he was fine. Fine. Fine. Fine. Why wouldn't he be fine? Elena had been okay. No death. No brain damage. Even a helpful vision. Win, win, win. Damon was a winner winner chicken dinner, and therefore entitled to a chicken dinner.

Damon was not fine. Instead Damon was rashly following Klaus into a rabbit hole of insanity, recklessness, and other dysfunctional behavior. Just this week, the two of them had gone on a four-day bender, Damon playing Klaus's wingman while they swept through a number of the neighboring small towns, so Damon could help Klaus chat up the ladies (though keep his hands off them, he'd promised) and Klaus could snatch, eat, erase, and screw. Damon was using the Original to relive vampirism, vicariously.

When her husband didn't come home last night, Ric had had to track him down, drag him out of a bar in Richmond mid-morning, almost ending up pinned to the wall by Klaus, but getting his best friend and himself out safely by threatening to sic Caroline on him, with her flashcards and her disappointed eyes, and her annoying belief that somewhere, deep inside a blackened heart, Klaus had a soul. A soul that could be saved. With flashcards.

Elena closed her eyes and tried to remember the words to a lullaby her mother had sung to her when she was a little girl, about grains of sand and drops of water in the sea, a little you, a little me. Because now, for the first time in a long time, she could remember her mother's voice. The pitch. The timbre. The way she over-enunciated the endings of words. The way she couldn't help smiling, even just a little bit, as she said Elena's name, so that even if she wasn't looking directly at her mother, she could hear the smile.

Then, all of a sudden, Damon shot up straight in bed, panting, opening his eyes, looking around like he was under attack. Elena wrapped her arms around him, "Hon, you're okay. You're okay."

He shook his head like he was trying to wake up, or shake something out of his hair.

And then the baby started wailing. Damon apologized as Elena jumped out of bed, picked up Summer, and climbed back into bed, next to him. He was still sitting up, looking both stricken and embarrassed. She was careful to support their daughter's head as she scooted into him, bare leg right along his bare, hairier leg, thin cotton panties against his boxers, tank top against his bare chest, arm pushing against his arm, invading his space, insisting on being near him, until he wrapped his arm around her. Damn, he was sweaty. As they drew closer to each other, they drew their little family together. It was the three of them against the world, after all.

"You've barely touched me in two weeks," she murmured, as Summer calmed down. She offered the babe the boob, but she turned her face away, closed her eyes, content perhaps to just be close to her mom.

"That's not true," he said.

"What was the dream about?"

"Nothing."

She looked at him hard, surprised, again, at how little she could see in the dark. Human night vision was truly laughable. "Bullshit. You wake up like the house is on fire. You're sweating buckets. You stay out with Klaus doing god knows what for four freaking days. You've gotten suckered into his scheming, and I can't figure out why. And you're not talking to me."

Damon opened his mouth as if to speak. Then shut it. Then opened it again. Then shut it.

"What?" she snapped. "Tell me what is so terrible that you can't tell me."

Sighing loudly, he said, in a measured voice, "You almost died. And it was because you don't trust me."

Elena frowned. "I almost died because my parents needed to talk to me."

"You were with Klaus."

Elena frowned again. "You realize this doesn't make sense. Logically."

"If you'd been with me, I could have gotten you out of it earlier. I'm sure of it. I've done it before. But you were with him. You went behind my back to talk to him."

"The him that you've been running around with for more than half a week, playing pretend vampire? The him that you've decided to follow into insanity, lying and attempting to trick witches who are probably smarter than you?"

"That's not the point," Damon snarled.

She waited. And she waited. And she waited some more.

Then in a small voice, a voice with almost no edge, he murmured, "I thought you were gone for good. And I didn't know what to do. How to take care of this little child, without you or my brother. I don't know how to be good without you. It doesn't matter that I'm a human now. Humans have an incredible capacity for cruelty. Hell, I could probably figure out how to eat people even now. Without you keeping me in check, she probably wouldn't even want me as a dad."

Elena turned to him, tears in her eyes. And she kissed him softly on the lips. As she leaned into him, Summer's body brushed against his. As all three of their bodies touched, Elena could feel a spark run from the baby, through her body, into Damon's, and then it was all around them.

"What the fuck?" he said, as he looked around the room. Light was dancing in the air.

"The magic's getting out of control," she said.

He nodded, pulling her and their child closer to him, wrapping himself around both of them. She never felt safer than when she was with him. Strange, because he used to make her feel so unsafe. So alive but off balance. Now, he had brought her into a new balance, a new equilibrium. Stefan had been the one to make her start feeling alive again, to fill her with pinpricks and feelings and warmth. But Damon had been the one to make her feel free. To sizzle. To come to terms with her darkness. To stop trying to always be perfect or do the right thing. She wasn't afraid of him anymore.

"I'm not going anywhere. And you are a decent person in your own right. Summer's going to love having you for a dad. Nobody else in preschool will have a Civil War vet as their dad."

He smiled just a tiny bit, and kissed her again, his tongue darting into her mouth. "I'm also dashing and very rich."

Elena was laughing, and then the dancing rays of light all around them started spinning. This couldn't be good. She could hear Summer's voice inside her head. Summer's teenager voice. "You guys have to decide something soon. So maybe you need to see."

#

Fourteen years later

June 2032

New York City

Elena was in the middle of a 12-hour shift and her feet were killing her. It had been a crazy night in the pediatrics ward. She hadn't sat down for even a second in the past six hours, and she doubted that she'd sit down once over the next six hours. Left to her own devices right now, Elena would be curled up in bed in their Soho apartment, watching Netflix with Damon, listening to his stories of the insanity that was his bar life, especially now that he was driving back and forth a couple times a month between the original Diabolical in Charlottesville and Diabolical the Sequel in Soho. She'd be peeking in on Summer every so often, praying to all the ancestral witches that whatever madness that was happening in Mystic Falls this month wouldn't affect her daughter this time.

There had been too many nights when Summer had woken up, sweating so much the sheets were soaked. The fourteen year-old would sit up with a shock, like a vampire just woken from decades of slumber, filled with insane energy and a manic gleam in her eye. Those nights, Summer stayed up for hours scribbling her visions into her notebooks, before finally exhausting herself and falling back to sleep. Damon would hover. Elena would pretend not to hover. But Summer would always, somehow, manage to go to school, to function in the normal world. Her attendance was a million times higher than Elena's in high school. At least the trouble was limited to Mystic Falls, and a handful of young witches. Summer was alive, and surprisingly okay. Bonnie was living a nice, normal life, because somehow the Bennett line had been unaffected. Ric and the girls were treading water in Mystic Falls, but they were surviving.

Summer's dreams had been quiet for months, even with the hoopla currently sweeping through their hometown. Elena could fantasize, now, about kissing her daughter's non-sweaty forehead. About rushing back to Damon, jumping back into bed with him. Kissing him fiercely. Leaning her curvy body into his still muscled form (though if she were honest with herself he was a bit softer, squishier in the abdomen, than he'd been fourteen years ago). To be really honest, she was a bit squishier too.

Dr. Gilbert imagined herself in bed with her husband, turning down the volume on his laptop any time an action scene got too loud, whispering that they must not wake Summer. She had no intention of turning off the 28th season of Supernatural. It was especially fun when they showed vampires, because the vampires looked nothing like real vampires. Damon liked to remind her that at least they didn't sparkle.

Still, as much as she wished she were home right now, Elena loved being a doctor. She hated missing time with her husband and daughter, but she wouldn't trade her long days and nights at the hospital for anything. Because ten minutes ago she'd diagnosed a ten-year-old boy with fungal meningitis (a tricky diagnosis to get right), and begun treatments that would likely save his life. Now, she leaned against the high desk at the nurse's station, sipping an apple juice out of one of those weird, shallow hospital cups, and scarfing down a handful of pretzels.

"Dr. Gilbert?" came a soft, hesitant voice from behind. Elena turned to look at the third-year medical student, short and slender with a dark brown pixie cut. This timid girl had been assigned to shadow Elena while she completed her pediatrics rotation.

Elena grinned at her. "Nancy! You know you can call me Elena."

The girl laughed nervously and shrugged. After an awkward moment, she murmured, "I wanted to make sure that you didn't mind giving me the day off tomorrow."

"I'm not even going to be here. It's my husband's birthday party."

The girl smiled shyly. She was single, about 25. Elena wondered what it would like to have been so carefree and unattached at 25. "How old is he going to be?"

"The big 4-0," Elena said, then caught herself. "No, I'm really tired. We already did that one. He's 45." She kept a straight face, while thinking it was ridiculous that she had to lie about so many things, just to go about her daily life. Even Damon's official age was a lie— Chronologically, he was closing in on 200. Biologically, he was 40, just a few months older than she was. But, because of Damon posing as Stefan's guardian, all those years ago, the town of Mystic Falls believed him to be several years older than Elena, Caroline, and Bonnie. Caroline had made a bunch of super logical arguments about the age thing, and somehow she'd won out when they were forging the documents with the help of Care's compulsion, making him "born" in 1987, and currently aged 45, officially. "Anyway, he's not liking anything about the 40s," she said wryly. "Damon is philosophically opposed to the aging process. But we've doing a little party, a double birthday actually, because mine is four days later. Nothing big. Just a couple old friends and my brother."

"How old are you going to be?" the girl chirped.

Elena glared at her. In the last few years she'd finally begun to realize why it was impolite to ask a woman her age. "40," she muttered. As she looked at Nancy, who was not particularly pretty, but still so fresh-faced, Elena couldn't help feeling envious. It wasn't just that the girl's face was unlined. She radiated a kind of youth Elena hadn't possessed since her parents died when she was 16. There was something open about her. This girl was an innocent. This girl seemed to have never known darkness, had probably never felt the intense relief of surviving an attack on her life. Had probably never known how important love was. Elena rubbed her tired eyes, which were dry and irritated from wearing contacts all day and night.

"Oh, shit, sorry," Nancy said, biting her lip.

Elena waved off her worry. "Don't be silly. It's actually a privilege to get old. Though I wouldn't say I'm old. You'll be surprised. 30 and 40 come faster than you think. And, this will sound crazy, but there's a million times when I wished and hoped that I'd just be able to grow old. Cause it's our mortality that makes us—" She cut off her babbling when she saw the girl staring open-mouthed at her. Elena forced a laugh. "Yeah, I guess I'm tired."

Nancy smiled like an idiot. Then she hit her palm to her forehead. "I almost forgot! There's a teenage girl downstairs, asking about you. I didn't recognize her."

Elena frowned. She didn't know any teenagers other than Summer and the two friends her daughter had. "Did she give you a name?"

"Lucy Forbes."

Elena raised her brows. Could this be? "Send her up."

"Really? She looks like trouble. She's wearing leather pants, and she did not take kindly to me telling her that she couldn't come up without a pass. I mean, it's the middle of the night. I can tell her to come back later."

Elena laughed. "I think I can handle myself."

Nancy nodded, mumbling an apology, before running off, presumably to find this Lucy.

Elena tried not to let herself get excited. But she did. She let herself hope. It had been a long few years.

The elevator opened. A young blond woman burst forward, tears running down her face, barely letting the doors open as she ran to Elena and hugged her so hard that Elena almost fell back.

The year they'd both turned 30, Care had celebrated her birthday and promptly decided that continuing on with the status quo was too much to hope for. There was only so long that she could continue to pass for a normal human, when she was, biologically, forever seventeen. Makeup and professional clothes could only take her so far. Even if the parents at the school knew she was a vampire, the rest of Mystic Falls didn't. Stefan once told Elena that he was never able to pass for more than five years or so. Caroline had been pretending to be human for 13 years, pushing it by anyone's standards.

So Caroline and Klaus had packed up, left town, and left behind her girls, Ric, Elena, Damon, Summer, and their hometown. Which was in a tailspin by that point anyway. Elena'd had little contact in with her best friend in last decade, as she'd learned just how different vampire lives could be from humans. While Elena had been raising her child, moving home to Mystic Falls, building her medical practice, and then facing the difficult decision to leave, Caroline been touring Europe with a 1000-year-old vampire-werewolf hybrid. For the past decade, Caroline had only seen her girls in the summers. Each June, she sent plane tickets so Lizzie and Josie could spend the summer in abroad. Paris. Venice. Shang Hai. Now Caroline had become a true vampire, a creature who existed outside of the regular world, cut off from her human past, her human family, and even her home. Caroline might be living a wonderful life in many ways, but she could never have another child, and for the last ten years, she hadn't even been able to be a real mom to the twins. Elena had only seen her three times in the past decade, when she was able to leave her family and her work for a girls' weekend in Boston, or a week in Paris.

Elena grabbed Caroline's hand, told the nurses and her med student that she had a family matter to attend to, and dragged her friend into the elevator, then to the cafeteria, where Elena bought a questionable-looking hamburger. This many hours into her shift, she was too desperately hungry to be picky about what she ate. Caroline sipped nervously at a diet Coke as Elena downed two more apple juice cups.

"So you decided to go with the story that you are actually your own cousin?" Elena asked between bites of the lukewarm, overcooked burger.

"It's the perfect cover when I go back to Mystic Falls. It explains why I look like, well, me."

Elena sighed. "I mean, I'm thrilled you're back. And it doesn't matter here. But if you go to Mystic Falls, and honestly it's not safe for you, put on a wig and some big, ugly glasses. Like the ones Russian spies wear in the movies."

Caroline laughed. "But that's the beauty of not being human. It sounds so crazy to believe that vampires exist. Klaus and I decided that enough time had gone by, that I don't have to worry about all the bullshit. It's like when Stefan and Damon came back in 1912. In another 20 years, I'll be able to go by Caroline Forbes again, as the love child of the original Caroline and that awful British guy she ran off with. Humans are idiots. They never figure out anything real. Present company excluded, of course."

Elena thought about this, decided it was reasonable, decided not to be offended by her friend's last comment, then decided she was a little offended but would let it go. Elena Gilbert was nothing if not an understanding friend, who had no problem being the bigger person. She was actually pretty damn awesome, she decided. Caroline must love having her for a friend. She took another bite of her burger. "Why are you drinking diet?" Elena asked after a while. "You can't get fat. You might as well have the good stuff. You know I daydream about your figure."

Caroline laughed, saying, "I got used to the taste when I was human. Now regular just tastes … wrong. And we've had this discussion before, so clearly I've been away too long. But, we digress. How's Damon?"

"Grumpy. Every day there's a new annoying thing about being old. He keeps hurting his knee. And strangely, this may be related to an old war injury, that healed, and then didn't bother him for a hundred and whatever years, but now that he's getting older, it's flaring up. Isn't that weird? But otherwise he's good. The bar's good. Sajen's handling stuff in Charlottsesville. And the book is selling."

"And Summer?"

Elena grimaced. "She says she's fine. But she's way too powerful for her own good. No visions for six months, so that's something. Sometimes I'm afraid she'll explode, but Bonnie says that's highly unlikely, and literally speaking impossible."

Caroline nodded. "Hope is suffering something fierce. Klaus still can't get near her. But they talk on the phone and video chat and Holo-chat and sometimes some witchy thing where she sends her body into our bedroom. I know Ric is worried about her. She's still living at the school, and commuting to classes at Whitmore, because she's too unstable to be in the dorms."

#

June 2032

Mystic Falls

Damon sat in the backyard of the rebuilt Gilbert house, floating on a blow-up boat, in the pool he'd sneakily installed after the construction on the house was done. After their third kid was born—with Elena in her residency and him struggling to keep the Diabolical in Charlottesville financially solvent while he started up a new bar in Mystic Falls—they'd had to give up Elena's grand plan of living off their incomes alone. With two kids in daycare or preschool, and Summer starting at the Salvatore school, they just couldn't make it. Doctoring didn't start paying well until the residency was complete, so Damon would've had to give up the bars and land a regular, annual-salary-plus-health-insurance job. Instead, they sold a few stocks and dipped into his ample savings. Then, Damon decided, fuck it, if he was already dipping into the Salvatore millions, he might as well splurge on an in-ground pool.

Damon sipped his whisky sour as he opened his ancient copy of Call of the Wild, squinted, held the book at arm's length, squinted some more, sighed, pulled his specs out of his pocket, and slipped them on, sighing involuntarily as the page came into focus. Absently, Damon rubbed his salt and pepper beard, wondering if his old buddy Jack London had ever worried about getting old. Pretty boy Scott Fitzgerald had definitely bitched incessantly about the indignity of the aging process.

Alaric strolled into the Gilbert-Salvatore backyard, holding up a bottle of good bourbon. "So how's 40 feeling?"

Damon glared viciously. Then he grinned wickedly, since, after all, Ric was pure silver now, and altogether grizzled. "A lot better than 55 looks on you. I mean, damn, brother, you are seriously old."

"And I am fine with that."

"Just keep telling yourself that."

Ric gave him a condescending look. "I am mortal, and therefore my life has meaning. Middle age, old age, death, it's all part of the package."

Damon rolled his eyes and took a long sip of his drink.

"You, on the other hand, spent two many decades frozen. You can't handle time."

"Fuck you."

"Come here, buddy, let me get you a real drink."

Damon laughed as he paddled over to the edge of the pool. He was putting his book, spectacles, and drink on the concrete, jumping into the cool water, feeling his shirt cling to his back and chest, wondering if he should have taken it off too, and preparing to pull himself up, when his four children came running out of the house, all in bathing suits. They sprinted for the diving board. Summer tried to get on the board to dive first, but Stefan Jr. shoved her out of the way. Rose jumped into the fray, grabbing hold of Stefan's longish blond hair. Nine-year-old Gray stood apart from his older siblings, looking sad and helpless.

"Hey!" Damon shouted, swimming over to the deep end, abandoning his book and drink. His three oldest spawn kept fighting. "Hooligans! Stop it! Or I am going to have to take away your phones, your laptops, your hologram projectors, and any other means of communication with the outside world."

"For how long?" Gray asked eagerly.

Summer jumped back, hands up in the air. Rose and Stefan Jr. continued to tousle.

"Maybe FOREVER!" Damon shouted, and finally, his two most problematic children stopped fighting. Rose dropped her fingers from her brother's hair, and Stefan backed away, hands in the air.

He heard someone erupt in laughter. In the sliding glass doorway that led from the house to the backyard, Elena stood, giggling, as if she were about to fall apart in glee. God, did she look pregnant. She was wearing a bikini top that just barely contained her swollen breasts. She was still slender, almost girlish, but her belly hung over her flowered skirt. Even the fifth time around, it never failed to amaze him, this miracle of life inside his girl.

He pulled himself out of the pool and ambled towards her, throwing serious-dad-glares at Summer, Stef, and Rose, and wrapping an arm around Grayson in a quick, one-armed hug, whispering to the sweet, shy boy, "Thanks for keeping your head," and kissing his dark hair oh so briefly, before turning towards his beautiful Elena. If it wasn't for her swollen belly and a few faint lines around her eyes and etched into her forehead, he'd mistake her for the 17-year-old girl he'd first fallen for. He wrapped one arm around her and kissed the top of her head.

"You are dripping," Elena said. "Like full-on dripping. Get a towel."

Damon did not get a towel. Instead he pulled her closer, wrapping his arms around her curves. She shrieked at the cold, but she was smiling, and she pulled him closer. He leaned in for a kiss, full on the mouth, and felt her mouth open up to his tongue. As Damon deepened the kiss, he felt that familiar tingling beneath his swimming trunks, and thought for a brief moment that he might take her upstairs. But then, as he pulled away and opened his mouth to whisper his plan to his lovely wife, he noticed Bonnie coming up behind Elena, her toddler daughter on her hip. Bonnie rolled her eyes. Damon rolled his eyes right back at Bonnie, saying, "You have the worst timing."

Elena threw her arms around her best friend.

"Ugh. You're getting me wet!" Bonnie gasped.

He leaned in and kissed his best friend's cheek. "Thanks for coming."

"How could I miss it?" Bonnie said with a twinkle in her eyes. "Old man river. I couldn't miss you turning 40. Or 45. Or 193. Depending on who you ask, of course."

Stefan came running up with Jack London's book and Damon's specs. "Seriously, Dad, you're going to break your glasses, or someone's going to step on them. Again. You could just keep them on your face, you know."

Damon glared at his eldest son. The kid was 13 going on 165. He looked and acted far too much like his uncle. Not wanting to shove the damned things into his dripping wet pocket, which was clinging to his right nipple, Damon reluctantly slid the wire-framed spectacles over his nose and ears. Again, he felt the sense of relief at having the world come into focus. He'd put off booking an appointment with an eye doctor as long as he could, until he finally broke down and submitted to the brutal eye exam last year, only after Elena badgered him relentlessly every time he held a Diabolical bar menu at arm's length to read the lettering he himself had designed. He still hadn't admitted to anyone how shocked he was when he got the damned prescription filled, because the world looked foreign to him. He'd forgotten that leaves on trees were supposed to be distinct rather than blurs of green.

Bonnie grinned even harder at him.

"How was the drive down from New York?" Damon asked, trying to remind himself that Alaric was right. Time was passing, seemingly faster and faster each year, and he could either fight it, or enjoy the ride.

"Uneventful."

"How's Theo?" Damon asked.

"He's here. He has a lot of questions about the 1860s."

"I should go say hi, and then see if I can figure out where Caroline is," Elena said.

"Where are they coming in from?" Bonnie asked.

"Tokyo," Elena said. "Apparently Hope is apprenticing with some trendy Japanese artist. So they were visiting with her. She's really happy. And Caroline was making me feel so boring." She lay a hand on Damon's shoulder, squeezing just a bit of affection into him, and then kissing Bonnie's daughter on top of her head. She walked slowly, heavily. She hadn't gotten this big in her other pregnancies, but it was different this time, with two little ones growing in her womb. After having four kids in five years, they'd discovered that Elena's insane fertility seemed to be linked to the magic that had flowed out of the hotspot, and attached a little of itself to them before flowing freely into the earth, mixing with the elements and transforming their world in little, mostly insignificant ways. They'd been using three types of birth control for years, but somehow, these little babies just wanted to be born.

Damon watched her go, marveling at how young she still made him feel, especially when she wore a cotton skirt that clung to her ass. "Is it just the 1860s he wants to know about? Why not World War II?" Damon asked Bonnie. "And again, the 1970s were awesome. So much sex." Her husband was a high school history teacher. When Theo had proposed a few years ago, she'd had to tell him the truth about the supernatural. She thought it would be too cruel to bring an innocent into the fray if he didn't know how to defend himself. She'd called Elena, in tears, saying that she'd told him she had to talk to him about something before giving him an answer. Bonne'd been sure that Theo would take back the proposal, run away from her as fast as he could. Instead Theo Edwards had embraced the supernatural with the fervent excitement of a child or a convert.

Bonnie began listing the historical eras Theo was most interested in. She and Damon stood for several minutes in easy conversation, while she held her child on her hip and his insane creatures chased each other around the pool. It was the most ordinary, and ridiculously strange, of all backyard barbecues.

"Alice set the curtains on fire last week." Bonnie murmured. "And not with matches. She was furious that I stopped her throwing peas everywhere, at dinner. And then the curtains were on fire."

Damon raised his eyebrows and stared in shock. Alice, still perched on Bonnie's hip, was three-and-a-half. Exhibiting magical abilities that young—it was unheard of. Well, Summer had done shit like that at three, but his eldest was no ordinary witch. "What did you do?" Damon asked.

"I started reaching out to covens for advice. This kind of early magic is becoming almost commonplace since, you know. I was still terrified. I mean, this shouldn't be normal. Nobody knows what's going on. Something is. The problem is, we don't know what it means and where it's leading. It's happening more and more lately. Magic is just plain weird, especially this year. And nobody knows if it's bad or not. So I've been worried, but Theo has been so excited, like this is extraordinary, and well, magical. Like he's just found out Santa Claus is real. He's thrilled to have another witch in the family. He started reading my grimoires, though I don't know what he thinks he's looking for. Oh, and did Elena tell you the other news?"

Damon shrugged, having no clue what she was talking about. But then Bonnie put down her kiddo and raised her arms in a gesture of look-I'm-surprising you. She looked happy as hell as she said, "Ta-Da!"

Damon frowned, not sure what joke he was supposed to be in on.

"Don't you notice anything?"

"About what?"

"My figure?"

"Sorry, Bon, but I'm just not into you."

Bonnie slapped him. She turned so that he could only see her in profile. And a lightbulb clicked on in Damon Salvatore's ancient head. The bump was subtle, but it was there.

"Oh, I get it. You're fat."

Bonnie turned towards him and slapped him again.

"I mean you're pregnant. Congratulations on having a good reason to be fat. Am I right?"

"Yes. And you're an ass."

"Noted." Before Damon could say anything more, Gray and Stefan sprinted past him, making a bee-line for the pool.

"No running!" Elena yelled. She'd returned to them with a pitcher of sweet tea.

"Stefan, don't be an ass!" Damon yelled, as Stefan did a canon ball right next to where Gray was treading water, splashing the younger boy and making him sputter.

"Listen to your father!" Elena yelled. "Summer, watch your brothers."

"There's a lot of witches pregnant this year," Bonnie murmured. "It's being talked about."

Chapter Text

the same night

July 2018

Mystic Falls, Virginia

Damon woke up to a flurry of noise. Elena and Summer stirred beside him—Elena burying her head in his shoulder, Summer making little smacking noises with her lips—but neither of his girls woke up. How could they sleep with all this racket? Downstairs, someone screamed in pain. Then a chorus of other voices. Raised. Frantic. But not in physical pain. Damon was familiar enough with the sounds of human suffering to recognize the difference. Nonetheless, these voices were angry, and growing angrier by the second. Now they shouted at each other, over top of one another, in a loud, obnoxious argument.

Damon didn't care. He wasn't interested in the shenanigans, which were no doubt started by some stupid, judgy, petty witch doing something stupid, judgy, and petty. Possibly being mean to Caroline. Maybe Care Bear had bitten her in retaliation, causing the idiot to shriek. That would be fun to watch. Normally, he'd storm downstairs, self-righteous and furious at the assorted idiots. He'd want to kill the screamers, or at least threaten to kill them, for waking him up in the middle of the god damn night, and especially almost waking up his baby. He'd stomp into the room, trying to put the fear of Damon Salvatore into them. When he got really mad, he felt like a vampire again, as if his body and spirit were swelling up and tapping into that supernatural strength and particular inhuman fury. At times like those, he remembered what it was like to be more than himself.

But right now: no rage. He lay in bed, only mildly interested in the source of this drama. He understand what they were saying. That was strange. He should be able to, right? With a shock, he realized he'd been expecting to have vampiric hearing at his disposal: in his barely awake state he'd forgotten that his ears were so much weaker now. Because he'd spent the vast majority of his life as a vampire, sometimes, instinctively, he still expected those old heightened senses. It's not like he'd forgotten he was human. He'd simply forgotten that human hearing sucked. Normally, a realization like this would drag Damon into despair, inadequacy, and pangs of regret. Not tonight.

Lying in bed with Elena and Summer—both miraculously still asleep—Damon Salvatore felt so damned warm.

The sun from that backyard party still lingered. The contentment of floating in the pool, his pool, of seeing Elena pregnant again, her eyes not haunted like they'd been through almost all of her pregnancy with Summer. It was a relief to see his wife happy, in a simple, uncomplicated way. He knew it was just a vision, at best a possible future, but he was already getting attached to that horde of kids he'd seen in the old Gilbert backyard, "his" kids. Three? Four? Five? Plus the unborn twins. When he'd talked to "his" kids, and yelled at them to behave, he'd felt so natural. He'd felt like … a dad. A real dad.

Downstairs, the shouting continued. He ignored it. He lay on his back—arm around Elena, Summer curled up on his chest, Elena's arm draped over both of them. Elena had seemed on the verge of waking, but she'd settled down, her breathing returning to a regular in and out rhythm. She seemed peaceful, more peaceful than she'd been in a while, even in sleeep. He glanced at Summer. She was awake but quiet—eyes wide, looking straight at him. Was she smiling? Elena claimed their baby was too young for smiles, but right now she seemed to grin.

There had been another dream. Or vision. Or whatever. Both visions had felt like memories, but they'd shown him the future, not the past. He hadn't liked the other future. It wasn't terrible. He'd lived through worse. But his whole body had felt tenser, achier, older even. His life had felt smaller. It was the middle of the night, and they were living in a cramped apartment in Brooklyn. Elena had been working—something doctory. He'd been home with Summer. Those other kids hadn't existed in that future. Remembering it, Damon felt their absence like someone had taken a knife and sliced out several small pieces of him. But Summer had been there, sitting next to him on the couch. She was the same age as the Summer in the pool party vision, and her physical appearance was the same, but her expression was shockingly different. Older, sadder, a little closed off. She'd had told him about some kind of weird, disturbing dream. He'd sat up with her, trying to distract her with old movies, showing her The Philadelphia Story because Cary Grant was an old friend. He wanted to prove to his daughter that the suavest of suave movie stars had actually learned something from her old man, having imitated Damon's mannerisms unconsciously when he'd unwittingly become friends with a vampire. Grant had been 18 or 19. Far from a movie star, performing with a vaudeville troupe and even moonlighting as an advertisement for a Coney Island racetrack, for which he'd worn a sandwich board and giant stilts.

Summer was unimpressed. She'd teased Damon, saying he was uncool, even unhip, because he was hanging onto the past, and didn't know anything about her favorite YouTube stars. She'd called him a relic of the past, and she'd called him "dad." Damon had felt like a real dad in that future too.

But he preferred the pool party future. By far. All those kids—he hadn't known he wanted more children until he saw them running around, teasing each other, giving him lip. If you'd asked him yesterday, he would have said that he could tolerate one more kid, no more, but he'd prefer to be done with babies. Summer was plenty. Frankly, the size of that family was terrifying. Ridiculous. But while he was there, hanging out in that backyard, it'd felt right. Even his body had felt different, like something about that future was inevitable, or correct. Like he belonged in his body, in a way he'd never belonged, not in any place or any time. And there was something else, some other sensation he couldn't put his finger on. What was up with that?

Their bedroom door burst open.

"Damon! Elena!" Bonnie shouted as she barged in.

"Shhh!" He glared at Bonnie, whispering fervently, "Seriously Bon-Bon. We've got an infant."

"We've got a situation," Bonnie said, loud as fuck.

Now Elena was really stirring. She moaned something about wanting to go back to sleep, and something about it being pretty.

"Lachlan disappeared," Bonnie said.

Damon sighed. "Is that a thing or a person? And why is it my problem?"

She glared at him. "The witch from the town near Stone Henge. And it matters because he's in your drawings. He's in the circle of 12."

"What do you mean disappeared? Like he didn't come back to the house when you expected him? Because I don't think that's cause for all this fucking screaming downstairs, and then you barging into my room and chastising me."

Elena opened her eyes and yawned. "Bonnie? What's going on?"

"I'm trying to report an emergency, and Damon's not taking it seriously."

"That's because I don't think some Stone Henge witch being out late is an emergency."

Bonnie sighed, loudly, in an obnoxious display of frustration. "He's not out late. I'm trying to tell you that I was talking to him, and he just disappeared. Like he was there. And then he started screaming like his body was coming apart. And then he wasn't there."

Elena grabbed Summer and held her tight.

Damon sat up, climbing out of bed. Elena followed. "You mean he just vanished?" he asked, thinking that this sounded crazier than a lot of crazy things he'd witnessed. "Like poof, he's gone?"

Bonnie nodded.

"Like he teleported?" Elena asked.

"What?" Damon snapped.

"Star Trek. You know Star Trek."

Damon shrugged. "Not really my thing. I mean, here I am, alive for a hundred and however many years, and I've seen how things don't really change that much, and I'm supposed to believe that in a couple hundred more years we're going to be flying around the galaxy, and hanging out with aliens with funny ears or funny foreheads? And outlaw money? And we're all happy with each other and kumbaya? I mean, seriously, that's not the way history works."

Bonnie let out that big annoying sigh, again. "Damon. Shut up." He started to open his mouth to say something snappy, but she held her hand up. "I'm serious. Shut up. Your feelings about a TV show are irrelevant. One of our witches just vanished in front of my eyes. I didn't think that was possible. So cool it on the color commentary. And come downstairs so we can talk about this. Now." Glancing at Damon's bare chest and boxers and Elena, dressed only in one of his t-shirts, she said, "You might want to put some clothes on."

Downstairs, it was chaos. Nobody knew where Lachlan had gone, or if he was even alive. Cell phone service was completely down. Ric made frantic calls on the landline, only in place because of the school, trying to reach someone, anyone. They'd learned nothing except that Matt Donovan and most of the police force were out of the police station, having gone downtown to investigate a series of car crashes.

Caroline and Tommy volunteered to put their vamp skills to use, leaving the house to go vamp speeding around town, in an effort to find Lachlan and/or learn about any other weird shit that might be happening in Mystic Falls. Part of him wished he could go with them, even though he'd be more liability than help. But the other part of him was glad he didn't have the skills to be useful out in the dark, because that meant he had to stay here, with Elena and their child, and strangely enough that was a larger, stronger, more vocal part of his mind.

So he joined the remaining group, all sitting around the fire with tumblers of good bourbon—which Damon had reluctantly donated to the cause of chilling-everyone-the-fuck-out. The group listened to Damon and Elena explain their weird dream-vision-future-memory things.

A witch from Peru, or Argentina maybe, whose name Damon couldn't remember, was saying, "How do we know that these aren't just dreams?"

"Because they're part of a pattern of visions, which have been going on for months," Bonnie said, sounding tired, and fed up with this woman who'd been asking annoying questions for the past ten minutes.

"And because Damon and I had the same visions," Elena said.

"That's not what I heard," the annoying witch kept at it. "Weren't you in a hospital and he was at home?"

"In one," Elena snapped. "The other we were together and saw the exact same things. And for the vision where we were separated—we were seeing ourselves in different locations, but it was part of the same life, happening on the same night. The facts of that life were the same for both of us. Like we just had one kid, and we lived in New York. And I knew that Damon was home with Summer. He knew I was at work."

The South American witch barked out a laugh. "Honey, I don't give a damn how many kids you have or where you live."

Damon stood up, trying to look menacing. Bonnie shook her head at him. He took a step closer to the brat, regardless.

"Perla," Bonnie said, teeth gritted. She looked pissed. "You need to adjust your attitude when you talk to my oldest friend. Elena knows you don't care about how many kids she might have in the future. What she's trying to say is that all the details about their life were the same, in both of their visions, regardless of whether they were in the same room together. So they were seeing a vision of the same future. And we care about these two futures because they reflect the outcome of our choice, the one that we're going to have to make really soon. Maybe sooner than we thought, considering that Lachlan vanished. And if that's not obvious to you, then you're not paying attention."

Ric nodded. "We've gotta decide what to do about the magic hotspot. It's like the road's going to split, and we go down one path or another."

"Not just us," Elena said. "Maybe the whole world."

"Bottling up the magic," Ric went, continuing with his point, "that's the future where they were in New York with one kid. If we let the magic flow back into the Earth, that's the future where they have a whole gang of kids, and they're living here. Damon and Elena saw what their individual lives would look like. Of course a lot of that is only relevant to them. But there's important clues here, about what the whole world would look like. What's the best choice."

"It's obvious," said one of the most annoying witches, a man descended from Cade who'd come to Mystic Falls all the way from the city in the Mediterranean where Cade's village stood thousands of years ago. "We have to contain the magic. Perhaps the safest way would be a pocket dimension."

Damon snorted. "Did you not hear about Mystic Falls being all but un-liveable?"

"One town, Mr. Salvatore," the Cade-fill-in said in an irritatingly calm, but melodic voice.

"Don't you think that problem, whatever it is, could spread to the rest of the world?" Ric snapped.

"It's a good point," Bonnie said. "One we should to consider. I know that most of the witches here are in favor of bottling the magic, and I'm inclined to agree with them, even after these visions. But we shouldn't rush into anything."

Damon felt his eyes bugging out of his head. He glanced at his wife, hoping for her support, but she wouldn't meet his eyes. Elena was cradling Summer and being way too quiet. Damon had no clue what she was thinking, but she seemed sad. Looking back at Bonnie, he said, "Bon, are you crazy? In that future, I had the impression Mystic Falls could explode at any moment. Bottling magic, containing magic, whatever the fuck you want to call it—it never works. It always gets out, somehow. If it doesn't happen on its own, some idiot will come along and free it. If you think you can trust magic to stay put, you're stupid."

Bonnie glared at him. Damon glared back.

Ric cleared his throat. "Damon's an ass, but he's right," he said, looking first at Bonnie but directing his words to the group. "We also can't trust people to behave rationally. Sooner or later, someone will do something stupid. Maybe it's love. Maybe it's revenge. But bottling up all this energy, it's not going to work. It's not natural, so it won't last. Didn't this whole hotspot issue come about because magic in pocket dimensions, specifically the Other Side and Hell, didn't stay in those pocket dimensions?"

"You both have a vested interest in this town," Cade-fill-in continued in his calm, melodic voice. "I understand. And I mourn with you. But you can't risk the world for one town. And these visions do not foretell an apocalyptic future. As far as lasting in the long-term, Hell endured for 6,000 years."

"Here's the thing," Bonnie said, "There's no perfectly safe option. But that other future, with the magic flowing free, where you saw us all together at a pool party? I know it looked idyllic, but it's potentially more dangerous. Witches showing powers much earlier than normal, and—"

"Are you kidding me?" Damon almost shouted.

Bonnie glared at him. "That's serious, Damon. And all those new witch births. It's like you saw a future where magic was in the drinking water, and that's just 14 years in. What about 100 years? What about 200? How many witches will there be then? In case you haven't noticed, we are just as destructive as vampires. No, we're probably worse. We created vampires, after all, witches did that. And werewolves, and Silas, and god knows what else. What if we transform the world into something crazy? If a pocket dimension gets unstable, we can deal with that. But this other thing, it's not tied to one place. It's the whole world. I don't know how we can fix the whole world. I'm sorry, Damon," she said. Then she looked at Elena. "I'm sorry, Elena. I want good things for you. But I can't ignore—"

Elena nodded, saying, "She's right," in a clear, calm voice.

Damon groaned.

"We can't prioritize our own happiness over the whole planet's wellbeing, Damon," his annoyingly selfless wife said.

"Because a few toddlers did some badass magic?" Damon laughed. He couldn't help himself. "That doesn't sound particularly dangerous. You know what sounds dangerous? Creating a pocket dimension destined to make a whole town uninhabitable, within only 14 years. Not 6,000 years in the future. 14. What do you think 100 or 200 years after that looks like? All roses and kitty cats? Huh?"

"But how can we—" Perla was saying when she started gasping, somehow in pain. Next she screamed and convulsed. As if someone were yanking her in all different directions. She fell to her knees, her shrieks primal now. The edges of her body started to flicker: she was becoming less solid. Bonnie reached her arms out, trying to grab her, when Perla went poof. She was gone. It wasn't like a vampire speeding away. You could always see a little of that, even with human eyes. Vampires went so fast that they got blurry, but left a trace, if you knew what to look for. This was different. Perla had been there, in all her annoying brattiness, and now she wasn't.

Someone shrieked like a frightened child. Damon glanced to his left and saw Nate Salvatore sitting beside him. He'd almost forgotten that his great-great-whatever-grandson was in the house. The dark-haired kid, who looked so much like Damon at 18, was freaking the fuck out. He was the youngest person in the house, other than, of course, Damon's infant daughter. Summer, cradled in Elena's arms, was also crying. Plaintively. Elena stood up, bouncing their baby lightly on her shoulder, looking like she too wanted to wail.

Damon reached for Nate, pulling him into a fierce hug without really meaning to. It just sort of happened. He patted the kid's back, letting him sob into his designer t-shirt. He whispered promises he couldn't keep, swearing that everything was going to be okay. Damon knew he might be lying, but he promised safety and good things anyway. In this moment, he felt something for Nate that seemed brand-new. Since he'd met the kid, Damon had felt a bond. But not a paternal bond. More like he was Nate's cooler older brother. Despite all the years he'd spent on this planet, despite being far older than any normal father or grandfather, Damon barely felt old enough to be Summer's dad, let alone a great-great-whatever grandfather, and so he'd been interacting with this kid like he would with Jeremy. Or Stefan.

But in this moment, he felt the almost 200 years that he'd lived building up inside him, until he was a father to that illegitimate kid born in 1863. And a grandfather to the next generation. And a great grandfather. And so forth. Time swelled up inside him, making him more aware of his mortality and his connections to his family. He was responsible for Nate. He was responsible for a whole lineage. Just like he was responsible for Summer. He'd take care of this kid, keep him safe. Somehow. This new feeling, it was linked to the visions, though he didn't understand how or why. Maybe it was the fact that in that future he'd been human longer, a father longer, connected to his humanity in a way 2018 Damon wasn't.

When Nate finally stopped sobbing, he pulled away from Damon. But his great-great-great-grandfather kept one arm slung around the kid's shoulders, trying to make Nate feel safe and protected.

They sat quietly, listening to the witches and Ric throw around all sorts of theories about what was going on, fighting with each other about whether to stay put or go out looking for their vanished comrades. Two idiot witches ran out of his front door, despite Bonnie and the others yelling at them to come back.

"It's 1:05," Ric was saying.

"Why does that matter?" an annoying person asked.

"Because I think people are vanishing on the hour. I think the first one was at midnight, and this one was at 1:00. So maybe we need to be prepared for this to keep happening on the hour."

More arguing.

"Granddad, what's going to happen?" Nate asked.

Damon felt the breath sucked out of him at the word granddad. Nate had called him that before.

Ric snorted. Elena giggled. Everyone who wasn't laughing outright was smirking. Damon found himself smirking back. At least the tension had broken.

Ric said, "You better watch yourself, kid. No telling what Damon might do to you if you call him that again."

Damon shook his head and ruffled the kid's hair. "Nah, it's okay," he said. "I kind of like it."

Bonnie's eyebrows rose so high, he had to laugh. "Really? Can I call you that?"

"No," Damon snapped. "Now, back to the matter at hand. Ric, good idea to pay attention to the time. If you're right, we have 55 minutes until somebody else goes poof."

"Now it's 54 minutes," Ric said.

Damon rolled his eyes. "Nobody likes a smart-ass. So let's just wait and see on that. But—if those two idiots don't come back, it could be one of them, and then we won't know."

"Were they in the drawings?" Bonnie asked.

Damon frowned, then shrugged. He wasn't sure.

"It could be Caroline or Tommy," Elena piped up. "We know one of them will be in the circle."

Damon nodded as Bonnie said, "Actually, we've got several people not accounted for. Klaus and Freya. And there's the werewolf that nobody's seen yet, except in Damon's drawing."

A slightly less annoying witch, young and pretty, said, "We don't know for sure that he is a werewolf."

Damon groaned. This scenario contained far too many unknowns.

He tried to remember more clues from the visions, hoping to recall a crucial detail, some forgotten key to figuring out the whole fricking mess. He knew which future he wanted. But talking about how his personal life was better in the pool party future—that wasn't going to sway any witches. Or Elena, for that matter. She was so predictable that he felt like an idiot for not seeing this coming. Elena always focused her energy, to annoying degree, on protecting others, wanting to making sure that everyone but her was okay. She never remembered to take care of herself.

He knew there was something special about the pool party vision, beyond how happy his family seemed. Some reason that it had to come true. Damon had felt safe and warm like he'd never felt before, not even as a child. Like there was something in the air. What could that mean? And how was it relevant to anyone else?

Somehow, the specific sensations of the visions seemed important, like maybe there was a clue in sensory details. In both futures his body had felt older, maybe a little heavier, like he'd put on a bit of weight in both, not a lot, just enough to notice, for his abs to be squishier. In New York he'd felt exhausted, drained, his muscles tense all over, his back aching. He'd felt older than in the other future, though he'd been exactly the same age. It was probably a result of stress, but it could also be relevant, somehow. He couldn't put his finger on the particular sensation that seemed so important but so subtle.

# # #

Two hours later, with two more witches vanished, the group had split up into clusters of two or three. Elena sat at the kitchen table, nursing Summer, while Ric made bacon sandwiches.

"When you were talking about that future where you had that big family, and we were all hanging out in the backyard of your old house, happy, like it had never burned down, I thought about Jenna," Ric said, slathering mayo on his toast. "What do you want on your sandwich?"

"Just lettuce and tomato. And the bacon. Don't forget the bacon."

He grinned and went back to assembling the sandwiches. "I'm embarrassed to say that I don't think of your aunt that often."

"It's been a long time."

"It has. But she meant something to me. A lot. I want you to know that."

"I do."

He brought the sandwiches over and sat down across from her. "But as you guys were talking, I was picturing myself with someone there. It wasn't Jo. Or Isobel. Jo would have made the most sense, seeing how she's the mother of my children, and I've never been more serious about anyone. And then Isobel—we were together for years, before everything got insane. So I could imagine that, her with me, like in another life she didn't go looking for vampires. Where she stayed mine, human, where the woman I married didn't disappear."

"I wish I'd met that woman," Elena said, beginning to burp Summer.

Alaric's smile was so sad. "Me too. But she wasn't there, not in my imagination. It was Jenna. Without thinking about it, I pictured her. And I've been trying to figure out why. I mean, she didn't know who I really was, not until the very end. So there was only a certain depth that we ever got to. But here's the thing, Elena. You made that future seem so normal, when you talked about it. Damon too. Happy. Simple."

Elena felt tears welling up in her eyes. She blinked them away, but she couldn't look at her old guardian as he spoke. When she finished burping Summer, she lay the baby against her shoulder, feeling her daughter's breathing become slower, more rhythmic. Now, Elena looked down at the table, focusing on the grain of the wood, on the way the grain swirled in places.

"And that kind of future, it made me of Jenna. If she had lived, and I could have could have gotten out, I could imagine an uncomplicated life. With backyard barbecues. And sunshine."

Elena nodded. But then she shook her head. Looking up at him, she saw the gray hair, the lines etched into his face, the way his eyes reflected the horrors he'd seen. Alaric had changed a lot since coming to Mystic Falls as a history teacher, and newbie hunter. God, it was almost a decade ago. Now he seemed drenched in sadness and regret, and guilt. Survivor's guilt probably. She knew a lot about that. It was probably the reason for all the drinking, which even Damon now viewed as a problem. Elena wondered what Jenna would think about this man. "You guys were cute together," she said finally. "And I know she cared a lot about you. But I don't think Jenna was the one. Not for you. I think you actually need someone darker. Or maybe more complicated. Maybe complicated is good."

"Maybe complicated makes me want to throw myself off Wickery Bridge some days." He took a huge bite of his sandwich.

Elena forced a laugh. "Ric, you're not normal. But that's not as a bad thing. You're braver and smarter and more compassionate than normal. And also crazier and more tortured. There's a reason you ended up with Isobel, why you were drawn to her and she was drawn to you. There's a reason you became a vampire hunter when she disappeared. Most people don't do that. It wasn't an accident that you came here. And fell for Jo."

Ric shook his head. "I don't know about that."

"Jenna, she was pure light," Elena said. "She was sunlight. And yes, fairly normal. Someone who was a lot of fun at backyard barbecues. But you guys wouldn't have fit. Not in the long term. It would've been like me getting back together with Matt."

Ric chewed his sandwich, seeming to think this over. "You really don't wish for some normal life with a guy like Matt? Or some guy you went to college with? Or another doctor, someone you haven't met yet?"

Elena, also chewing, pondered the question. "No," she said after what seemed like forever. "I'm glad I'm with Damon. I'm glad I've had this crazy life, and that my husband was born in 1839. I mean, it's been crazy. Too many people have died. I've died. Damon's died. There's been so much suffering since I met him and Stefan. So, I'm not happy about that, of course. I wish Jenna were here. And so many people. I miss Jon sometimes. I even miss Mayor Lockwood every so often. But even so, I'm grateful for my life. This is going to sound cheesy, but I have an epic love story. And I wouldn't have had if there wasn't something inside me that craved darkness. That craved danger. That wanted someone like Damon. I felt more alive in death than I did before that."

Ric burst out laughing. "That does sound cheesy."

She laughed along with him. "I know. But with Damon, everything is so much more real. He pushed me to be myself. I think before I knew about vampires, I was this smaller version of me. Repressed, maybe? I was always trying to do the right thing for everybody else. I was always trying to be good, to be perfect. Stefan put me into this box, like I was a symbol for everything he lost, everything he wanted back. But Damon, he let me explode. And that could have been the worst thing. It almost was. But then it wasn't. And I'm going to be a better doctor for having been a vampire, and loving vampires, for loving him especially. Sometimes complicated is good."

Ric put his hand over top hers. "I get it. I really do. I like you guys together. Nine years ago I would have thought differently. I don't know about me. But I like this you."

She smiled at him, shy now for blurting out her real thoughts. She was hoping they were done talking. She felt naked.

But Ric didn't stop the conversation. "Here's the other thing. Why do you want the shittier future?"

Elena sighed. "It's safer. For the rest of the world. We can't take a risk just because we're going to be happy and have a nice barbecue. Also, there were four kids. And two more on the way. I'm not sure it's such a perfect future."

He snickered. "You'd be a great mom to ten kids."

"No. Not going to do that. Six is the absolute limit."

"But a family, that's what you've always wanted. Children, as in more than one. Right?"

"It's too risky."

"Is it?" he asked. "Or are you too caught up in your own martyr complex to see this rationally? Because from both your account and Damon's, the New York future seems more dangerous."

Elena rolled her eyes. "That's not what the witches say."

"Witches can be wrong, Elena," her old guardian told her. "Jo grew up in a coven that expected her to literally merge with her twin brother. Then they bred another pair of twins to do the same thing, when the first set didn't turn out right. Personally, I think their prejudice against siphons is the reason Kai ended up a serial killer. I think they treated him like he was evil and that stripped him of his humanity. Then you've got Esther, and Quetsiya, Silas, Cade, the sirens."

Elena held Summer closer to her bosom. "I'm not saying they're perfect. But I get where they're coming from. All that magic, loose in the world. What if it creates new creatures, worse than vampires? Or it makes witches even more powerful? Too powerful. And then they create a super-vampire. Besides, I'm not being a martyr. It wasn't a terrible future that I saw in New York. Damon and I were married. We had Summer. She was fine. I was a doctor. It wasn't perfect, but it was fine. A lot better than most of my past. I can't demand that the world give me this perfect life. One kid's enough. She was healthy. Damon was very clear on that."

Ric frowned. "She was tortured with nightmares and visions."

"Well, who isn't a little tortured?"

"I know!" Ric laughed harshly. "The Summer who lived in Mystic Falls with her multitude of happy, non-tortured siblings, and her carefree parents. And you know what, it's not just your family. It's mine. It's my girls. And Hope Michaelson, by the way. I don't like her dad, but I've met her, and she's an innocent. They're all in danger. And from what you said, maybe more kids."

There was a sound of air whooshing through the room. Elena whipped her head around just in time to see Klaus Michaelson standing at the kitchen door, looking murderous. "What's this about my daughter?" he asked in a low voice, too calm and measured to be anything but dangerous.

Chapter Text

A moment later

Still July 2018

Mystic Falls, Virginia

Damon wasn't sure exactly how it happened. No. Strike that. He had no fucking clue what happened in the moments after Klaus snuck up on them, making it clear he'd overheard the conversation Elena and Ric were having about the visions.

There was a flurry of voices, yelling, anger, so much emotion that Damon could feel the emotions of witches, vampires, one Original hybrid, humans, and possibly a wolf. Emotions bouncing off the walls, bouncing into him, threatening to overwhelm him with their cacophany of confusion, anger, hatred, sadness, regret, excitement, downright thrillingness, general nervousness, and then also a good amount of fear with equal doses of adrenaline. And beneath all that a general layer of exhaustion due to lack of sleep and too much reading, too much talking, too much bickering.

But soon the bickering of this assortment of so-fucking-loud idiots had given way to complete insanity. Klaus was engaged in a frantic discussion about the future of his daughter and his own cursed immortal body. In record time, he'd jumped to the conclusion that he would only accept the future behind door number two. Meaning the pool party future. Magic flows into the earth, and there may be a lot of freaky consequences down the road, but in fourteen years, Summer is safe, Hope is safe, Caroline and Ric's twins are safe, Mystic Falls is safe, and the Earth is not experiencing any sort of apocalypse. Oh, and Klaus gets to have an actual relationship with his daughter because he was right about the hotspot sucking out his magic curse whatever thing. In the pool party future, he bellowed, Damon and Elena had both said that Klaus was able to be in the same room with Hope.

For a brief moment, Damon was sighing in relief, realizing that his fledgling truce with Klaus might work out after all. They seemed, at least right now, to be on the same side.

But then the witches caught onto what Klaus was actually saying. And two dozen people were invading Damon's goddamned kitchen. And they became incredibly, stupidly disrespectful to Klaus, which of course never goes well. (Don't any of these people understand basic decorum and the right way to go about human interaction? Not that Damon is an expert when it comes to not pissing people off. But still. Seriously. Witches: You can do better. And Klaus: You're a thousand years old for god's sakes. Is it too much to ask that some point in the last millennia you mastered the art of polite conversation?)

But no. Cool heads did not prevail. Damon's increasingly aching head began pounding with the onslaught of every emotion under the sun.

Damon began to see colors sparking out of their heads, their mouths, their ears. Did anyone else see the colors? Was he having a stroke? Or was this more weird magic? Maybe both?

Klaus began mouthing off about how every single witch better bow down to him or he would begin ripping them apart, one by one, limb by limb. Klaus's villain grin was extra wide and extra wicked.

Alaric was yelling for people to talk one at a time.

The twins had woken up and were clinging to Alaric, looking too frightened to cry.

Baby Summer was oddly quiet.

Elena looked like a deer caught in headlights.

Nate grabbed Damon's hand and held on tight, like a child would, like Stefan had a century and half ago when their mother had died. Nate's expression was young and terrified and confused, his eyes pleading with Damon. His whole body seemed be saying: take care of me.

The witches began chanting. Klaus fell to his knees, gripping his head and screaming in the familiar vampire affliction of "witches are giving me an aneurism." Damon winced in sympathy, remembering that particular sensation of hell on earth. All sorts of colors were coming out of the witches and flowing into Klaus. But as the colors got close to him, they became muted, pastels instead of primaries. Klaus was on the floor, which surprised Damon, because even this group of powerful witches shouldn't bring an Original to his knees, not that quickly. But Klaus had full-on collapsed. The most-annoying-witch in the room (currently) bent down to say something snarky to him, and then Klaus lunged at her.

In a blur, he grabbed her, used vamp speed to push the young, red-headed, fragile looking woman roughly across the room, shoved her up against the wall, and bit her neck in a quick snatch and eat, pulling back after just a few sips, wiping the blood off his lips and daring anyone to come closer. Damon wanted to laugh. He almost wanted to clap at Klaus's control of his bloodlust, and his manipulation of this scene. "Witches always forget to drink vervain," Klaus said, his voice low, mocking, at once light-hearted and dangerous. "I know, I know, you can't be compelled, so what's the point of drinking vervain tea or lacing your wine with it? This is the point. So back up, loves. Happy to rip her throat out if you move a muscle towards me and my new little friend."

As the physical confrontation quieted, and the witch hostage remained pushed against the wall and subdued by Klaus, the verbal debate started up again. For reasons passing understanding, Alaric pulled out a crossbow that was stuck under the kitchen table (really, Ric?), and declared his intention to shoot anyone who tried to hurt anyone else, regardless of whether they were a witch or a vampire, or even a human.

Just when it seemed like nobody was going to be killed, at least not in this hour, Freya dropped to her knees, screaming in pain, as if she was being torn to bits. And then she was gone. And Klaus was yelling. Again. Making threats. Again. Slamming yet another stupidly mouthy witch against the wall. This time he was drinking her blood with gusto.

"Honey," came a whisper to Damon's left. Damon realized that he was still standing in the kitchen door. Elena had crept toward him, Summer attached to her chest in one of those newfangled baby carriers. Summer was sleeping. (Really? Only a magical kid could sleep through that ruckus.)

"You okay?" he whispered back, wrapping his arm tightly around her waist. His other hand remained in Nate's grip. Why hadn't he grabbed her before? Damon's first instinct was always to protect Elena, and now there was a baby to fret over, but he felt off his game. Everything was happening so fast. Nothing made sense. And the colors. How could he concentrate with all these damned colors?

Damon's eyes were still on Klaus, but he could feel Elena nodding. And then she whispered, "Summer needs some air."

"What?"

"Air. It's good for babies. Come on."

Damon's family crept to the front of his massive house. The front door was wide open. Damon gulped in some courage as he grabbed Elena's hand with his left, and held onto Nate's with his right, and hurried with them to the door. Stepping over the threshold was —

As soon as they were outside, he leaned in towards Elena and whispered, "Did you feel that?"

"The magic on the threshold?"

"Yeah. What's up with that?"

"No idea."

"So what's the plan?" he asked.

"I heard Summer's voice inside my head. Her teenage voice. She wanted us to get the fuck out of the house."

"She said fuck?"

"Yes! Clearly your bad influence."

Damon laughed at that. Maybe not a full-on laugh. More like a chuckle. But still.

Just as he was trying to figure out why Summer wanted them out of the house, and whether he was terrified of or in awe of the baby girl's gifts—there was another blur of vamp speed.

Tommy stood in front of them, looking windswept and like his eyes might pop out of his head.

"You have no idea how happy I am to see you," he said in a rush. "We're going to have to do this one by one." Reaching towards Nate, he grabbed him roughly, pulling Nate's hand out of Damon's grip. Damon was so weak. Damon was nothing. "I'll be back for you in a minute, Damon. Now kid, hold on tight."

"What? What do you mean?" Nate sputtered.

"Where are you going?" Damon snapped.

"No time to explain," Tommy said. And then he and Nate were whooshing away. Tommy was dragging Damon's blood away with him at maximum vamp speed, and somehow Damon could feel the loss, could feel his great-great-whatever's grandson hand still in his, almost. But it wasn't. Because Damon was nothing.

In just a few seconds, he was back for Elena. She shook her head. "I don't think it's safe, for the baby."

Tommy rolled his eyes. Before she could say anything more, and before Damon could say anything at all, Tommy grabbed Elena in a bear hug she couldn't escape from, not with her puny human strength, and with just a quick nod at Damon, his oldest friend whooshed his wife and child away. Once again, Damon felt impotent. For just a second, he wondered if he could trust Tommy. But then colors surrounded him, and it was like something, someone, was telling him to trust his old friend. This long-lost almost-brother.

Before Damon could figure out what to think about the ever increasing weirdness, Tommy came back for him.

"Are they okay? Cause those are my family, you fucker. If you—"

"Stop your whining." Tommy spat out the words. "I've got that idiotic sheriff standing watch over all three of them. They are fine." He flung an arm around Damon's shoulders. For just a moment it was a friendly half-hug. But then Damon could feel Tommy's vampire strength, pulling Damon closer. He wouldn't be able to get out of his friend's grip if he tried. "You ready, old man?"

"Always," Damon said, trying to grin rakishly. Before Damon could say anything else, Tommy was whooshing through space at an impossible speed. The woods were a blur. Damon couldn't help but love the speed. Even if he wasn't the one doing the speeding, he loved this particular sensation of moving faster than a man should be allowed to move. He loved feeling like more than a man. Damon Salvatore—impossibly human after all these years—closed his eyes and sighed with pleasure. Noting, from long experience of doing the vamp speeding himself, that this particular journey spanned about three or four miles.

When they stopped moving, he opened his eyes to a bizarre scene in downtown Mystic Falls where the old clock tower should be. But wasn't.

"Jesus Christ," he full-on shouted. "There's an actual whirlpool in the center of my town."

"You see why I came to get you?" Tommy asked.

Damon nodded, speechless, as he observed the reason-defying landscape of Mystic Falls.

It wasn't nighttime anymore. They'd found their way from night into morning. It was around four in the morning, so still early. Yet it was summer, so the sun was about to rise. The sky was mostly dark, but beginning to lighten in the east. Traces of pink mixed with deep blues. Somehow, it not being night made this even stranger, because if this swirling thing could keep existing long enough to make it into day. Into the light of true reality, it would seem even more real … Damon felt like his head might explode. Directly in front of him was a clusterfuck of the bizarre. Instead of that damned, historically complicated clock tower, there was something super magical.

A whirlpool was the closest word he could find to describe what was happening. The magical hotspot must have opened up, swallowed up the whole building, and left a gaping hole. Which hadn't filled up. Instead it seemed like the magic was swirling around and around. Nothing else was getting sucked into it. Not yet. Five people stood around. Four witches whose names he didn't know. And Freya. They seemed like they were part of a larger circle. Yes. Of course. This was the circle he'd seen in his vision. All of those witches were supposed to be there. And eventually, he'd end up in that circle, along with Elena and almost everyone he cared about.

"Elena!" Damon bellowed. "Nate!" He thought he might pass out from worry, but then he saw his family running towards him, Elena just in front of Nate. Elena's arm protectively around Summer even though the baby was still secured in that newfangled carrier thing. She ran up to him, looking terrified and exhilarated at the same time. Extra alive. With her free hand, she reached out for him, and soon he was pulling her towards him. This perfect girl. No, not a girl anymore, not for a long time. All those years ago, Damon might have fallen for his brother's girl. But this was a woman in his arms, a woman he was kissing like his life might depend on kissing her just right. A woman who he was wrapping his arms around, pulling her as close as he could without crushing the baby. Their baby.

The baby laughed. An impossible sound. Gurgling. Like innocence breaking free, sneaking into this strange, strange twilight. As Damon drew back, looking down at his daughter's face, he was certain that she was smiling at him. And that laugh. Elena said she wouldn't laugh for months. Well, take that baby books. His kid was a fucking genius. Harvard at 12, definitely.

"You okay?" he asked Elena.

She nodded. "Never better." And she was smiling. Sincerely smiling. She didn't look afraid anymore. God, he loved her when she was as crazy as he was.

"What about you?" he asked Nate.

The boy gulped. But then he forced a smile onto his face. "I'm fine, Granddad. You worry too much."

Matt Donovan, who had run up behind Nate, lost it then. He just lost it. He started laughing so hard he doubled over.

Tommy raised a brow. "Really? You're going to let that slide."

Damon raised a brow right back at him. "Whatever. At a certain point you have to embrace the weird."

Elena giggled. "Well, what is Nate going to call me?"

Nate's face erupted in the cheekiest of expressions. "Grandma of course."

Elena slapped him. Mostly playfully.

Damon laughed. "You know, I think Granny might a better fit for Elena."

"How about Nana Elena?" Tommy asked.

Before Elena could slap Tommy, someone cleared his throat behind them. It was a loud, obnoxious throat clearing, the kind of noise made by someone who wants you to turn around and listen to whatever inane thing they want to say. Someone who wants you to know that they've overheard you.

Sighing, he turned around. The rest of his group of misfits turned around with him.

The man was mildly familiar. Mid-fifties. Slim build, but Damon could tell he worked out. Close-cropped gray hair. Jeans. Polo shirt. Glasses. And an expression that reminded him of … someone. Someone he had known once and hadn't liked. Someone he'd tried to kill.

"Mr. Forbes," Elena whispered. "What are you doing here?"

Caroline's uncle smiled, smugly but sadly. "Watching my town get destroyed."

"What do you mean?" Elena said, trying to feign innocence. Which was ridiculous. Because a freaking-whirlpool-black-hole-magic-hotspot was currently going berserk in the middle of the block.

Forbes laughed. "Elena Gilbert. Your mother raised you better than that. Now, tell me what you know."

Elena sighed. "We don't know anything, Mr. Forbes."

"Call me Wally."

Damon glared at the man. "We don't know anything, Wally. Now why don't you run along and find something productive to do." He snapped his fingers, as if he'd just thought of something. "The Founder's Council should be alerted. And you are just the man for the job."

Wally glared right back at him. "They're already here," he said, gesturing to a knot of people on the other side of the street. Lindsey Fell waved at Damon and Elena. "Enough of them at least. Where have you been, Salvatore?"

Damon shrugged. "We've got a newborn. Can't exactly be wandering around all night, can we?"

Wally looked like he was about to say something, but then his gaze fell on Nate and Tommy. "And who are these people?"

Tommy held out a hand. "Tommy Fell. Relation of the founding family. My ancestor left the area in the 1800s." Wally, seemingly reluctantly, shook his hand.

Nate opened his mouth. Closed it again. Opened it again. Closed it again. Just when Damon was about to say something, his great-great-whatever grandson said, "Nate Salvatore. From Culpeper. My ancestor was a bastard love child. See there was this Salvatore who fought in the Civil War, and then he met this girl—"

Wally looked thoroughly annoyed with all of them. "Elena, do you really expect me to believe any of this nonsense?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, first of all, your husband is not who he claims to be. And I believe you know that."

Elena bit her lip. "What are you talking about?"

Matt cleared his throat. "Look, as hilarious as this all is, we've got a situation."

Damon nodded. "Yeah, there's a fucking magic whirlpool in the center of my town."

"It's not your town," Wally snapped. "It's mine."

"You haven't lived here in years!" Damon shouted.

"You're a vampire!" Wally shouted back.

Damon rolled his eyes. He pulled back his lips to reveal human teeth. "Now, I could do that anyway, if I had the right amount of control. But give me some vervain and I'll prove I'm a human."

"Zack was the last of his line," Wally said in a rush. "He was my friend. And I know that something happened to him. Something that wasn't a car accident."

"Zack was an idiot," Damon hissed. "There's a lot of stuff he never knew."

"I've seen your photograph," Wally hissed back. "From 1864. I don't know how it happened, but one of those vampires who got put in the tomb, one of them must have turned you."

"Do you realize how crazy you sound?" Damon said, rolling his eyes. "Matt, vervain. I know you've got some on you."

"He's not a vampire, Mr. Forbes," Matt said. "But we have a situation. Well, we have a least two situations."

"Vervain, Matt!" Damon, Elena, and Wally Forbes all snapped at exactly the same time.

Sighing, Matt reached into his uniform's jacket pocket, producing a handful of purple flowers.

Damon grabbed the flowers, rubbing them between his hands. For a second he anticipated the familiar burning sensation of fresh vervain on his skin. But, of course, nothing happened. For effect, he rubbed the flowers all over his face, and then began to nibble on the purple tips. It was actually a pleasant taste.

Wally looked genuinely shocked. "But, but, but."

"Human," Damon said, as he handed the bunch of flowers back to Matt. Matt wiped them on his pants a couple times before shoving them back in his pocket.

"But I saw your picture. It was you. And this kid, he called you Grandad. You're, well it just made sense that you were. You're not hum-"

Elena put a hand on Wally's shoulder. "This isn't the time, Mr. Forbes. If we all survive this, Damon can prove it to you again. But for now, just let it go. We're all on the same side. We have to save our town."

"Again," Damon and Matt said in unison. And they grinned at each other, which was rare.

"So," Matt said. "Now that we're done threatening each other. What I was trying to say is that a couple witches took Caroline."

"What?" Elena shrieked. She glared at Wally Forbes. "And you're making accusations against my husband instead of worrying about what is happening to your own niece?"

He threw his hands up in the air. "Anything happening to my niece, it's news to me."

Tommy looked solemn. "It's why I came to get you. We were arguing about what to do with the magic hotspot. I want to bottle it. She doesn't."

"Are you serious?" Damon snapped. "How can you be on the witches' side?"

Tommy shook his head. "I'm not on anybody's side."

Elena grabbed Damon's hand and squeezed it hard. "Let's just focus. What happened to Caroline?"

"A couple of those witches who've been staying at your house," Matt said, looking downright murderous. "They did that witchy thing that Bonnie does sometimes. You know? She was screaming, down on her knees. Then one of them had a syringe. Dosed her with something."

"Vervain, probably," Tommy murmured.

"Vervain?" Wally said in a strangely high voice. "Why would anyone dose my niece with vervain?"

Fuck.

Wally turned towards Damon. "What did you do?"

"Matt, can you give me that vervain again?" Damon asked, trying to keep his voice cool and collected.

"Where did they take Caroline?" Elena asked Tommy and Matt.

But they both shook their heads. "No clue," Matt murmured.

Fuck.

"Any idea why they took her?" Damon asked.

Matt shook his head. "Not even a tiny bit of an idea."

Tommy sighed. "I think I know. Those witches. They're not supposed to be in the circle."

"What circle?" Wally Forbes asked.

"Later," Damon snapped.

"I need to know what's going on?"

"You want your niece back alive?" Damon shouted. "Then shut up and let the grownups sort this out."

"As I was saying," Tommy went on. "Caroline and I were in the middle of a discussion about what to do with the magic. And if you interrupt me again to ask what magic I'm talking about, Forbes, I swear to God I will snap your neck. Never did like your family anyway. So, as I said, I believe that the logical thing is to bottle up the magic. At first I wanted to do anything to protect my hometown." When Wally seemed about to open his mouth, Tommy held up a hand. "Not a word from you, Forbes. I don't care if you think you are an expert on every last person born in this stupid town. However, after some reflection, I decided that the safest option was to tuck away the magic. And if that makes this town unliveable, well it's a small price to pay for saving the world."

"But it's not going to work!" Damon felt like screaming. "It's not going to work."

"Could everyone please stop interrupting?" Tommy said, looking condescending as hell.

"He's right," Matt said softly. Damon turned towards the quarterback, shocked. "Damon's right. Caroline told me everything, about the two dreams. And she and I both agree that Damon's right. Pushing that magic into something, it's not going to work. Not for long. I don't care if you put it in a knife or a pocket dimension, or an actual bottle. Sooner or later, it'll break open. Or, more likely, some stupid vampire or witch or ghost will decide to mess with your knife or your dimension or your actual bottle. And then out comes the magic. There's always somebody stupid enough to do something, doesn't matter how dangerous it is."

Damon felt like kissing Donovan. He settled for slapping him hard on the shoulder and saying, "Finally. Somebody who sees sense. And it's Matt Donovan." He stopped himself from saying how unlikely and bizarre it was for Matt Donovan to say something intelligent.

Elena frowned. She looked like she didn't know what to say. Before she could go on about how she had to be a martyr, Damon said. "Okay, so why does any of this have anything to do with Caroline getting abducted?"

Tommy sighed. "Well, we'd been talking about this. Pretty loudly. Caroline was mad. Because she said the same stuff Matt did. But then there's also her girls. She's very worried about what will happen to the twins. Because in the visions, it seemed like they were pretty bad off. It wasn't just Summer?"

Damon nodded. After a moment, Elena nodded too.

"So anyway, she stormed off. And I had seen something in the distance. Looked like a vampire moving around. I was going to investigate. And that's when they took her down. I came running. And they were yelling at me to stop, because they were on my side. That's what they said. They said I had to do my part. And then someone vamped to them. And then they got vamped away."

When Tommy stopped talking, there was a long pause, as everyone tried to digest the information. Finally Elena said, "They must think that you or Caroline is the deciding vote."

Nods all around. Damon realized that this issue was the reason for his and Elena's visions of the circle being different. If Caroline was in the circle, it would mean the future he desired, desperately. If Tommy was in it, his life would be a lot shittier. A lot emptier. All those children who would never exist. And he would never have a chance to feel free, light.

Damon sighed. "So we have get Caroline back. Doesn't matter what side you're on. I think we can all agree that we need to make sure she's safe." Part of him wanted to take Tommy down, but a much bigger part realized that he didn't want to be the kind of person who would betray his best friend.

"Of course," Elena said. "Tommy, did you see any other vampires?"

He nodded. "I think there's a few prowling around."

Damon glanced back at the whirlpool, with the five figures still around it. They seemed to be trapped in the circle. He wondered which side each of them was on. And he wondered how this was all going to work. Were they just going to get into the circle and take a vote? That seemed ludicrous. But this whole thing was ludicrous.

Before he could say anything more, he heard the sound of wind beside him. He looked over to see one very irate Klaus Michaelson.

Only Wally Forbes looked truly shocked at Klaus's sudden appearance. "Who the fuck are you?" he spat out.

Klaus smiled malevolently. "Wouldn't you like to know. And you are?"

"Wally Forbes."

Klaus raised his eyebrows, and his smile turned slightly less evil. "Any relation to the lovely Caroline?"

"My niece."

"Well, in that case. I won't kill you." Sticking out a hand, he said, "Klaus Michaelson." They shook hands, Wally looking a mixture of frightened and outraged. "Now, has anyone figured out how to get to my sister?" Klaus asked.

Damon realized that he hadn't even tried. Oh well. Klaus was here now. He could do the heavy lifting.

Matt swallowed hard, saying, "Nobody can get in. A couple of my guys tried. They got thrown back. Busted up pretty bad. Not dead though. Caroline tried. Same."

"So maybe the circle wants Tommy?" Elena asked.

But Tommy shook his head. "Not right now it doesn't. We both tried. Both got repelled."

"And then apparently Caroline was abducted by a group of witches and vampires," Wally Forbes added.

Klaus groaned. "Does anybody know where she is?"

They all shook their heads.

Klaus looked profoundly disappointed with all of them. "So, to recap. Nobody can get into the circle unless they're pulled in. None of you have done any investigating beyond a couple of you throwing your bodies at what is clearly a magical force field, and getting repelled. Oh, and I see you roped off the area, Donovan. That's definitely going to help. And Caroline gets abducted and you just stand around chatting about your hairdos?"

Damon wanted to hit Klaus. But listening to his lecture, he realized that Klaus had a point. He nodded grimly. "Yeah, that's about right. So what we need to figure out is where these witches would have taken Caroline."

"How do we know she's not dead?" Nate asked, looking terrified.

Damon wrapped the kid in a tight, one-armed hug. Seeing Elena's equally terrified expression, he threw his other arm around her shoulders. "They took her alive. If they wanted her dead, they would have staked her. It wouldn't have been any more obvious than what they did by taking her down. So she's alive. Maybe being tortured. But we'll get her."

Elena nodded. "She's probably close. She could be anywhere, but let's think about the most likely places."

Wally let out this little whimpering noise. His face was white. "Who turned my brother's only daughter into a vampire?" he whispered.

Damon didn't know what to say. Should he deny what Caroline was? He was the one who'd said they could have staked her. Part of him wanted to rub it in Wally's face. But the man looked devastated. Small. Damon thought of Liz. She'd never mentioned this brother-in-law, but she'd be furious at Damon if he laughed, or continued to be an ass to Bill's brother.

Klaus, unfortunately, had no such scruples. He laughed, as if this was the most fun thing he'd ever discussed, and then he said, "That would be Damon here."

"I knew it!" Wally shouted. "I knew it. You are the son of Giuseppe Salvatore, who supposedly died in 1864."

Damon sighed.

"Again," Elena said, her teeth gritted now. "This is not the time. Klaus, we're worrying about Caroline now. We'll answer your questions later." She snapped her fingers. "The old Forbes jail cell. Nobody's used that in years. And it's just a couple blocks away."

"How do you know about that?" Wally asked.

"How do I know anything about anything?" Elena snapped. "And for the record, Damon saved Caroline's life, with his blood. He didn't kill her. He didn't turn her, not on purpose. That was somebody else." And in that moment of self-righteousness and extreme irritation, she looked a bit like her father. Her birth father, that is, Jon Gilbert.

Chapter Text

July 2018

Mystic Falls, Virginia

Less than an hour later

When they returned from rescuing Caroline—much easier than expected because her captor had left her alone, weakened by vervain, but alone and unprotected—they found a lot more people gathered around the hotspot. This was going to be difficult to explain. Caroline decided that as many townspeople as possible should be compelled away from the area. There was no reason for the whole town to learn that the supernatural existed. And these people had stayed in the dark this long, maybe they could continue to live their blissfully normal, ignorant lives, never questioning why their town had so many gas leaks, or why every town celebration ended with at least one person brutally murdered. Why not let them continue to be normal?

So Matt expanded the perimeter, making sure that innocents couldn't get close enough to see anything. Tommy, Caroline, and Klaus roamed around the street, finding people who were already gawking at the magic whirlpool, and compelling them to go home. Most of them obeyed. A few, mostly Council members, were on vervain. But none of them realized they were being compelled. They just thought their compellers were bossy. Those who knew Caroline expected nothing less. If she had two friends going around talking to people just like she was, then surely Caroline Forbes was in charge of this whole plan to send them home.

There was a lot of standing around. Tommy was standing next to Damon and Elena as something or someone came at them. Tommy threw himself in front of the two humans, snarling. Now Tommy seemed to be wrestling a person who was stronger than him. Another vampire? Someone older? Just as it seemed like the attacker, a woman, was going to win, Damon stepped into the fray and shoved a stake into the woman's chest. The vampire writhed, turned gray, and went still. Damon jumped back, looking relieved, as Tommy sat up and clapped him on the back. "Thanks, old man," Tommy told Damon, and Elena realized that this exact scene had happened in her vision, the day she met Tommy. The vision that had convinced them all to trust Tommy.

But it wasn't just townspeople and rogue vampires who were here. Bonnie and the witches arrived. Elena had expected arguments about what they were going to do with the magic to break out, again, but everyone was strangely quiet, solemn. Maybe it was because soon after the witches arrived, two more people were sucked into the circle around the whirlpool. Klaus, who she once saw as the ultimate villain of her story, and now saw as just another screwed up, mostly evil person with an awful lot to atone for. And Bonnie. Bonnie was taken right along with Klaus. She kept telling herself that Bonnie would be fine. That she'd seen Bonnie in one of the visions, and in the other she'd known that Bonnie was alive and well. She told herself that Bonnie was not in danger. But seeing her best friend stuck in that circle, unable to escape the magic force field—Elena couldn't breathe when she looked at Bonnie so near the whirlpool.

I'm sorry, she whispered in her head. I should have kept you out of all of this. This is all my fault, she whispered silently. Because it always came back to Elena. She was the doppelganger. She was the magnet for bizarre supernatural elements showing up in her hometown. She was the reason that Stefan had come back and Damon had stayed. She was the reason Katherine had come back, and Klaus, and Rebekah. If it wasn't for her, Bonnie's mother and Caroline would still be human. Matt's sister would be alive. Tyler might have never even triggered his werewolf curse. Jeremy could be living a normal life. And if wasn't for her just having to have a baby, a baby who of course had to be magical and weird (if also perfect), Elena felt sure that this hotspot wouldn't be about to explode. Or implode. Or whatever it was doing. Because Summer was linked to the magic. And even if it wasn't Summer's fault, Elena was surely responsible for the Other Side and Hell collapsing in her town. Because none of that would have happened if she wasn't a magnet for the supernatural and the just plain weird.

So Elena couldn't look at Bonnie. And she was just as quiet as everyone else.

She and Damon and Nate had sat down on a bench, and they sat their silently. Damon had an arm around her. Summer had grabbed hold of his finger.

"She's such a pretty baby." Elena looked up to see Alaric and the twins standing in front of them. She smiled sadly. "I should take her, Elena," he went on.

Elena just stared at him. He had to be crazy.

"Who knows when you're going to be zapped into that circle," he said.

Elena glanced from him to the twins. "I'm good with her," Lizzie said. "She likes me."

"She likes me better," Josie said with an exaggerated pout.

Elena had to laugh. "I'm sure she likes both of you. But I'm not letting go of my baby."

But Damon was kissing Elena's head, then Summer's, and murmuring, "He's right. Who knows what's going to happen that close to that thing. She'll be safer with Ric."

Elena frowned, not wanting to let her child go. "What if she's supposed to be in there with us?"

Damon shook his head. "Nice try, honey. But she wasn't in the vision."

Elena sighed. He was right. But still, the thought of letting her baby go—it was terrifying.

Ric looked at his watch. "It's 5:58, Elena. We need to do this now."

Without arguing any more, she unstrapped Summer from the baby carrier and handed her carefully to Ric. Damon pulled a pacifier and a fuzzy toy rabbit out of his pockets. "She likes these," he said. "And she likes it when I sing the 'Five Little Ducks' song, but I make it 'Five Little Vampires."

Elena nodded. "There's milk in bottles in the fridge, back at the house. And if she gets fussy, you just have to take her for a drive in the car, and put on NPR. It bores her right to sleep."

Ric, holding Summer like a pro, grinned at them. "Guys. You need to chill. You'll be out of there in no time. And I'm pretty good at keeping kids alive."

Elena was just about to say something about not letting the baby drink any bourbon when screams of pain erupted beside her. And there was Damon falling off the bench, curling into a ball. Beside him, Nate was screaming bloody murder and thrashing around. Damon was much quieter. He was trying not to scream, and so he was almost quiet but then the screams ripped out of him before he shut his mouth, biting his lip so hard it bled.

Elena knelt down beside him, reaching out to touch him, but he was fading, splintering, not quite solid. And then they were both gone. Elena collapsed on the ground, sobbing. She had been trying to keep it together for so long, and now the tears were flooding out of her, and she thought she might just melt into the ground. Ric was saying something. But she ignored him. Summer was crying, but Elena could not pull herself from the ground.

Everything was so hard. It had been so hard for so long. Ever since her parents died when she was seventeen. Elena tried to be strong. She tried to be brave. She tried to do the right thing, to hang onto her morals, and her hope, and her faith that somehow the sun would keep coming up, day after day. But every time she felt like she had won, like they'd defeated the bad guy and the world was okay again, every time she was getting her footing and learning how to live in a new reality—the ground opened up. And, inevitably, everything got weird again. It was like her whole world was like that gaping hole of magic where the clock tower should be, like the ground below her was just an illusion. That gaping hole was always there, ready to suck in any semblance of normal, ready to knock her off her feet, ready to throw more chaos into her already chaotic life.

So, no, Elena Gilbert would not get up off the ground. Because there wasn't any point. Whatever she did would end up being undone. Might as well just lie here, get some rest. Because this was supposed to be her happy ending. A husband. A kid. Medical school. Her friends and brother safe. But the calm never lasted. Instead of doing an internship over the summer, Elena Gilbert was back in Mystic Falls dealing with a fucking black hole of weird magic. Trying to save the world. Again.

Even though she didn't have proof, Elena Gilbert was sure, down to her bones sure, that this situation was all her fault. Somehow. It was always her fault.

There was a whoosh of air beside her. And then a gentle hand on her back. A familiar scent of lilacs and O-positive. "Elena," her other best friend murmured. "He's okay. They all are."

"I just. It's just."

"I know. It sucks to be us today. But get up. Please."

"Why?"

"Well, for starters you're scaring your daughter and mine," Caroline said, her voice gentle but firm. Slightly perturbed.

Elena scrambled up to a sitting position. Caroline sat beside her, and threw her arms around her. "I'm scared too," she whispered.

"It's just that these things keep happening. And every time I get my life back together—"

"Some new terribly supernatural thing happens?" Caroline said, laughing a little.

Elena nodded. "I'm tired. Do you ever feel like you're eighty?"

"All the time."

"But at least you're not actually getting old."

"Appearances," Caroline said.

They sat like that for a long while. After what seemed like forever, Ric sat down beside Elena. Summer reached out her hand to Elena, and Elena let her baby wrap her whole hand around her little finger. "This is going to be okay," Ric said. "Both of you, I want you to know that. This is going to be fine. And when you get in there, you'll know what to do. Whatever you do, it'll be the right thing."

On the other side of the street, there was a scuffle. Shouting. Tommy was wrestling with young dark-haired man who looked remarkably like Tyler Lockwood. The stranger pulled out a stake, but Tommy was stronger. Caroline let go of Elena and flashed over to them, helping Tommy subdue the guy and yelling for wolfsbane. No one had wolfsbane, but one of the witches who hadn't been sucked into the circle managed to bring down the guy with a witchy aneurysm. Once he was definitely down, and Caroline was tying him up (because of course she'd brought rope), Elena and Ric ran over the group.

"We found our Lockwood wolf," Tommy was saying. "I was beginning to think he didn't exist."

"Is this the man from your vision?" Caroline asked.

Elena nodded.

The werewolf looked frightened and angry and confused. "Ungag him," she said. When his mouth was free to talk, she said, "Do you have any idea what's going on here?"

"No," he spat out. "But I can smell vampire on you, so I'd rather not talk to you either."

She rolled her eyes. "You might want to get over yourself."

Elena went back to sitting quietly with Ric and Summer while Caroline explained what was going on to the new arrival, her voice the height of bossy and condescending.

It was almost seven, broad daylight, a real morning, a real day, when Caroline and Tommy started talking about what they were going to do about their predicament.

"Do you think we'll get a choice?" Caroline said. "Or will one of us just end up in there?"

Tommy shrugged. "Since one of us was in one vision and the other one in the other, my guess is that they were actually seeing two futures. Obviously, whichever one of us is in there, we'll be the deciding vote. But if there's two futures, there's got to be a choice, right?"

Caroline nodded. "Any chance I can change your mind?"

Tommy scrunched up his face in thought. "Any chance I can change yours?"

"No."

"And if I say I've been on this planet longer? A lot longer."

Elena laughed to herself. When they both looked at her, she said, "It doesn't matter. Caroline has seen more than you have. You've lived this ordinary vampire life. Until a couple months ago, you thought Klaus was a myth. Caroline has seen it all. Originals. Silas. The Other Side and Hell going away. She even hired a siren to be her nanny."

Caroline giggled.

Tommy said, "Then maybe you should be the one in there."

Caroline grinned, a ridiculously huge and self-satisfied grin.

And then she doubled over in pain. So did Elena. And the werewolf.

This pain. It was like nothing Elena had ever experienced. It was worth than dying. It was worse than giving birth. It was worth than having shards of wood close to her heart. It was worse than any torture anyone could dream up.

It felt like every fiber of her body was ripping apart. And it felt slow. Like this process was lasting a day, a month, maybe a whole lifetime. While she was screaming, she thought that maybe she would actually die. Maybe they were all dead. Maybe Damon only appeared to be in that circle. Maybe Damon was dead.

Elena kept screaming.

Then, all at once, she wasn't anywhere. She didn't have a body. She was pure thought. It was kind of nice. Almost peaceful. Then she felt herself zooming toward the magic, faster than vamp speed. It drew her close to it, like the magic was a magnet and she was a piece of iron.

Before she could remember what it was like to have a body again, she had a body. She was standing next to Damon. Well, sort of standing. Half bent over, dry heaving. Damon's hand was on her back. "Hey, hon. Glad you could join us," he said, his voice light. She breathed in deeply, decided not to throw up after all. Turning towards him, she was relieved to find that she could touch him. Elena threw herself into Damon's arms, letting herself cry into his designer t-shirt. She could feel him shuddering a little, could feel a few of his tears falling into her hair.

"It's okay," she whispered. "We're going to be okay."

"So touching," Klaus yelled from across the whirlpool. It was loud. She could barely hear him. "Now that everyone figured out how to join us, shall we begin?"

"Doing what?" Damon snapped.

Several witches began chanting. Lachland, the druid witch from Stonehenge. Perla, the snippy witch from South America. Cade's descendent, the witch from North Africa.

"Stop!" Klaus said. "Stop. Stop. Stop. You're all bloody idiots."

They kept going. Elena noticed that Bonnie was not chanting. The voices kept going. Elena didn't know the words, and yet she almost knew them. She realized, without understanding why, that if she wanted to join in. She could. And, as if to prove her mind's point, the Lockwood werewolf began chanting, his voice rising and falling with witches'. He couldn't possibly know this spell. Yet, somehow, here in this circle he knew the words. He was an equal to the witches. Right now at least.

"They're trying to bottle up the magic," Damon said. "But nothing's happening. There's not enough of them. That's what it's got to be."

Elena nodded. She had meant to join their efforts, hadn't she? She'd said that bottling the magic was the safest thing. But now? When it was really happening. How could she do that to Summer? To Damon? To herself, even? Elena felt frozen between acting and not acting.

"It's not going to work with four people," Bonnie said.

"Join us," Perla said before going back to the chant.

But Bonnie shook her head.

"Bon-Bon?" Damon yelled out. "What's going on in that head of yours?"

Bonnie frowned. "I don't know. Something doesn't feel right."

Caroline squealed in delight. "Because it's not right. And Bonnie, I know I'm biased. Of course I'm thinking about my girls. And of course Damon is thinking about his own family. But it's not just that. Every time any witch has stored some magic away for safekeeping or creating some pocket dimension, every time in the history of the world it hasn't last. If we do this, it's a ticking time bomb."

"Yes!" Klaus yelled. "Beautiful and brilliant."

Freya began chanting different words. They were beautiful. They felt magical, like they were unlocking something inside Elena. The words felt right. Klaus and Damon joined in. Nate joined in. Caroline joined in. The last witch joined in—an ancient Native American woman who had told Elena that her tribe was responsible for creating werewolves.

Elena stayed quiet. But every part of her body wanted to join Freya's chant. The other chant, it had felt wrong. She knew now what Bonnie meant.

This felt right.

Suddenly there was color everywhere. Elena could feel all this magical energy coming from the whirlpool. And somehow she could see it. It was beautiful. She glanced at Damon. He was crying. He looked happy, overcome with emotion. He squeezed her hand, leaned in to kiss her, chanting even as his lips met hers. She could feel his lips moving as he kept his mouth on her mouth.

When she began to chant, it felt inevitable. It felt wonderful. It felt like she'd taken some wonderful, wonderful drug. As Elena's voice joined the chant, she felt a power shift. The other, uglier sounding chant, was being drowned out. And the colors were now streaming out of the hotspot, flowing into the earth and into the air. And it felt right. It felt so right to Elena. Tears were now streaming out of her eyes.

Across from her, she watched Perla freeze. The woman stopped chanting the bottling spell. She looked confused, glancing around the circle, as if unsure of what she should be doing.

Elena smiled at her.

Perla nodded. She opened her mouth to chant once more, but now she was chanting Freya's words. She was helping them let the magic flow free.

Soon the other witches followed suit, and the entire circle was united in this one glorious chant.

The magic had slowed down. It was just trickling out of the hole now, like it was almost used up. They kept chanting.

With one last burst, the last of the magic flew out of the whirlpool, throwing itself at Elena as it rushed towards the earth. Damon threw his body over Elena's, as if he were trying to shield her. But nothing bad happened. It felt electric, that magic flowing through her. Pure energy. She didn't want it to leave. But it did. As quickly as it had come to her, it left her. She could feel it beneath her feet, could feel the Earth rattling with all this energy it had been missing for so long.

"It's like it went back where it was supposed to be," Elena mumbled, leaning her head on Damon's shoulder.

He nodded. "I think it went home."

They stared at the place where the whirlpool had been. No trace of the supernatural remained. The clocktower hadn't reappeared, but honestly, good riddance to that thing. In its place was just dirt. No grass or flowers. Just dirt.

"Did you see those colors?" Damon asked.

"Yeah. They gone for you too?"

He nodded.

Now people were running to them. "Thank god," Ric said as he and the twins reached them. He handed Summer to Elena, then threw his arms around Damon in a surprisingly heartfelt hug.

"It's okay, buddy," Damon said. "You knew I was coming back."

"I've learned to never be too sure of anything," Ric said, before enveloping Elena and Summer in a hug, then throwing his arms around Caroline, who had already been swarmed by her girls and Klaus.

"So that's it," Damon said, one arm around Elena, the other arm around Nate. "Everybody survived. I get the future I want. And we should get breakfast. I'm starving."

"Don't we need to do something here?" Nate asked. "I think Sheriff Donovan is about to explode with concern."

Damon rolled his eyes. "If he didn't want to explode with concern, Donovan shouldn't have taken a job as sheriff in Mystic Falls of all places. Seriously. If the guy wants a quiet life, he should just move the fuck away. Maybe work at a bookstore. Assuming he can read."

Elena slapped him upside the head. "Seriously?"

"Sorry. Whatever. Matt is great. He's so nice. But I think if I have to stay in this town for another minute, I'm going to explode." He beckoned Bonnie over to their little group. "Bon-Bon, you are my new witchy hero. Well, honestly you're always my witchy hero."

Bonnie grinned. Soon she and Elena were hugging like they might never let go of each other. "You're okay," Elena said.

Bonnie laughed. But she was crying as she said, "So are you."

"Bon-Bon, what do you say we get the hell out of this place?" Damon asked.

Bonnie took a deep, shaky breath. She looked like she was overwhelmed by everything that had happened. Finally, she said, "Yes. Please."

"Where to?" Elena asked.

"Home," Damon said. "Home for now, at least."

"The boarding house?" Nate asked, confused.

Elena shook her head. "He means Charlottesville."

"Ric? Care-bear?" Damon was yelling. "Tommy? You guys want to go celebrate at my bar? Klaus, you were right about all this shit, so I'll even let you come."

Ric grinned as he began to herd Caroline and the girls towards his truck. Klaus was sticking close to Caroline. Ric seemed too happy to even glare at Klaus as he said, "I hid a bottle of really, really good bourbon in your kitchen. For just this moment."

Chapter Text

EPILOGUE: PART 1

Two months later

September 2018

Charlottesville, Virginia

They were out of olives. There was a slim possibility he'd find a jar in the back. But Damon was 93% sure that they were out of olives. It was a Friday night in September, early enough in the semester that college students were exceedingly carefree and therefore in need of copious alcohol. And now everybody who ordered a martini, all night long, was going to complain about the lack of an olive on a little toothpick. Damon leaned against the bar and grinned. His biggest problem of the night was olives. Tomorrow night it might lemons. Or his bartenders breaking into his secret stash of really, really good bourbon. Or Elena getting a B on a test and freaking out about it because she felt like she had something to prove to all these normal med students.

This was awesome.

He stood behind the counter, surveying his bar. Elena and Bonnie were sitting at a table with a bunch of Elena's nerdy, med school friends. They were doing shots, and shouting gleefully at each other, toasting god knows what. For just a second, he wished for vampire hearing so he could listen in on their ridiculous conversation. But almost as soon as the thought came to him, it was gone. Replaced by this gigantic sense of relief. Watching Elena happy. Free. This triumph, over the magic hotspot bizarre crisis, felt different from any previous triumph Damon had experienced. In the past, when they'd defeated a villain or got past a crisis, he'd always found himself waiting, watching, wondering what was going to get fucked up next. There was always another proverbial shoe to drop.

In the past, crises were never over. There were lulls in the action. There was one perfect summer years ago, when he and Elena had first gotten together. But their problems were never over.

This time? It was different. He could feel the magic.

Radiating through the ground, beneath him.

In the wind rustling his hair.

Sometimes in his skin, his heartbeat, all the way down to his bones.

He didn't really know what these sensations meant. He did know that he felt safe and warm, like he'd never felt before. Like the world was happy. Like peace could exist.

Therefore, tonight, and most nights lately, Damon Salvatore allowed himself to breathe.

"You never told me what Bonnie's husband was like."

Damon raised his brows and turned to look at Sajen, who was mopping up a spill behind the counter.

"What?"

"You said she had a husband."

"In the future?"

"Yeah."

Damon laughed. "I didn't see him. But he was cool with her being a witch. He was fascinated by vampires. She seemed happy. Why?"

"No reason," Sajen mumbled, going back to the spilled wine.

Sitting lazily on a barstool, Tommy Fell shook his empty glass at Damon, the ice cubes clinking together. "Another Scotch on the rocks, remember?" he said, voice light, teasing.

Damon, who had been preoccupied with the olive situation, reached for a bottle of Scotch.

"Not that one," Tommy said.

Damon reached for a more expensive bottle.

"Come on, now, don't skimp on the good stuff for your dearest, oldest friend. I have some truly, truly embarrassing stories I could share with your staff. Or your wife for that matter. April 1896 comes to mind," Tommy said wickedly.

Damon rolled his eyes. "Is my dearest, oldest friend going to pay for a two hundred dollar glass of Scotch?"

Tommy shook his head. "Not all vampires are rich. But seriously, old man. Come on, sit and have a drink with me."

Damon poured a glass of his best Scotch for Tommy and a seltzer water for himself, before walking around the counter so he could sit with his friend. "Cheers," he said, smiling and meaning the smile.

"That's not a drink," Tommy whined.

Damon shrugged. "You've made me toast three times already. I'm pleasantly buzzed. Any more, and it's not pretty. Thank you, human tolerance. Let's toast to that." They both laughed as they clinked their glasses.

"So you've got a thing for Bonnie?" Tommy asked Sajen, who was still mopping up the spilled wine behind the counter.

"What? Why? No!" the bar manager sputtered.

Damon chuckled. "Just ask her out."

"Well, I can't do that now, can I?"

"Why?"

"She's practically engaged."

Damon full on laughed. "She's not scheduled to meet this hypothetical guy for almost a decade. It's not exactly adultery."

"But. Well, it's like she's fated to be with this guy. I'm not messing with that."

"I don't think that's how it works," Damon said.

"You said she was happy."

"In a decade, wasn't it?" Tommy asked. "So you think sweet Bonnie should just sit around waiting for this man to sweep her off her feet in ten-fucking-years, but in the meantime she's supposed to be a nun?"

Damon raised his brows and took a sip of his seltzer, wishing it was bourbon. "The man has a point. A lot can happen in ten years, especially for a human. And take it from someone who's been around a long time, there's no sense in just sitting around and waiting for some future. I wouldn't wish that on Bonnie."

Tommy chuckled. "Oh yes, right here. Example A in why you shouldn't put your life on hold for a lover. What was it 150 years you waited for her?"

Damon shrugged. "Almost."

"This idiot," Tommy was telling Sajen, "was miserable for a century and a half because he believed his life had no purpose, not until he could let a certain evil vampire out of a tomb. And it all depended on a comet! And I'm still fuzzy on the details, but apparently she wasn't even there when you did break into the tomb? Like she'd already gotten out?"

Damon sighed, not gutted by Katherine's betrayal anymore. When he thought of her, there was just this big empty place inside him. For a century and a half, Katherine had been everything to him. She'd been larger than life, everything worthwhile and real and beautiful in the world. Now he just felt the absence of his feelings for her. Like love was cancelled out and it wasn't even hate. It was just nothing. "She was never in the tomb. The bitch was free the whole time. Turned out to be evil incarnate. But the punchline for you is that sitting around for a century or even a decade waiting on your soulmate, it really sucks. It kind of drains everything that's good out of you, because your life in that time, it doesn't matter. You're just waiting for life to matter. I don't want that for Bonnie."

"You think she'd say yes?" Sajen asked.

Damon sighed. "No idea. I can go ask her if you want, but that's kind of sixth grade. Or so I'm told. Tommy and I had a different educational upbringing."

"So I shouldn't ask her?"

"You should."

"Why?"

Damon sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. It was in need of a cut. If he didn't do something about it soon, he'd be sporting a mullet. "Because you're a good guy. You are exceptionally decent. Bonnie's been really, really unlucky in love, to this ridiculous extent. Betrayals. Death. Resurrection. Her death couple times. Art school that turned out to be vampire hunting, but the point is he was gone. And then Enzo. That was really bad. I wouldn't want her to end up with just anybody. So as long as you're you, and you're careful with her heart—just go ask her out."

Sajen nodded. But he made no move towards the table where Bonnie and Elena were now getting even drunker. He was now picking up tiny shards of the glass wine bottle someone had knocked over.

"Hey Mr. S.," a waitress said, coming up to the bar. "I need two orders of chili fries and some escargot."

"Really? Escargot?"

Sajen giggled. "I told you it would be a hit."

Damon rolled his eyes, but took the order to the kitchen. After handing the orders to the new chef, he was walking towards the back room when he heard rustling. And whispers. Fucking college kids. He flipped on the light, hoping to blind them with their own shame. "All right, whoever you are, get the hell out of my back room."

Silence.

"Now."

More silence.

Damon slammed the door behind him and stormed into the cupboard, stalking to the far corner, where the voices seemed to be coming from. His eyes widened. It wasn't college kids. It was Caroline Forbes-Salvatore, shirtless, clutching a jacket over her breasts, and Klaus freaking Michaelson standing next to her, his hand casually on the small of her back. Smirking.

Damon sighed.

Caroline bit her lip.

Klaus smirked so defiantly, Damon could almost hear the smugness radiating off him.

"Have either of you seen a jar of olives?" Damon asked.

Caroline shook her head, apparently having lost her capacity for speech. Which was almost more shocking than finding his brother's widow making out with a thousand-year-old Original hybrid, in Damon's place of business, surrounded by stored food and cheap beer.

Damon threw up his hands, unable find anything to say that would make this situation less weird. As he walked back to the bar, he yelled out, "You break anything, you buy it."

"Always the charmer, aren't you Damon? What? Leaving so soon?" Klaus yelled in a taunting voice.

Damon flicked him off.

Back at the bar, he found Sajen and Bonnie chatting quietly. She looked happy. He looked nervous. They were chatting about movies, and what Bonnie was going to do with her time now that she didn't have to save the world from an insane magic hotspot. Nothing substantial. No talk of a date.

Damon leaned in, glancing at both of them in turn. Finally, he said, "Sajen has a question for you, Bon-Bon."

If Sajen could look murderous, he would have. But his glasses were on askew, and he was still wearing the damned shorts, and his t-shirt showed an image of the girl from Star Wars, the one with the funny hair. It was hard to look murderous while wearing short pants, a geeky t-shirt, and glasses about to fall off your nose.

But Bonnie just smiled, looking expectantly at Sajen.

Finally, the bar manager gave an exaggerated sigh and said, "Doyouwannagooutwithmesometime?"

Damon tried not to laugh. He failed.

He looked at Elena again. At the med school table, his wife had been stuffing her face with cheese fries. She seemed to be trying not to laugh at something Liam had said, at least not so hard that she would spray him with cheese fries. She looked so damned young. He was glad they'd been able to get a sitter for tonight, even if that sitter had to be Freya Michaelson. Elena was still afraid to leave Summer with someone who couldn't protect her. Just in case.

Now Bonnie frowned in confusion, looking back and forth between Damon and Sajen. "What?"

Sajen let out a deep, shuddery sigh before mumbling, "I thought you might like to go out with me." He looked like he might throw up at any moment.

But Bonnie smiled.

It was the biggest smile Damon had seen from her all night, and that was saying something. He hadn't seen her purely, simply happy in a long time, and all night she'd been giddy.

"Yeah," Bonnie said. "That would be nice." And then she leaned over the bar and kissed Sajen, right on the mouth. It wasn't a chaste kiss. She grabbed him by the hair and smooched downright aggressively. There was definitely tongue going on. Sajen gave a little moan. She pulled away, and his face fell. But she smiled wickedly, hopped up on the bar, wrapped her legs around him, pulling him closer, rubbing her body up against him as she kissed him with utter abandon.

Elena cheered. Caroline cat-called. Damon shook his head in disbelief. Little Bonnie Bennett. Who knew.

#

October 2018

Elena Gilbert loved her life. She was sprawled out on the floor of their tiny apartment in married student housing, attempting to study human anatomy. But mostly she was watching Damon play with Summer. He was sitting next to her, one hand resting casually on her thigh. The other in front of their four-month-old baby girl, wiggling and waving, trying to get her to crawl to him.

"She's way too young to crawl," Elena said, giggling. Now Damon was making faces at the baby.

"She's right," said their supernaturally-clueless human neighbor, now a med school graduate and resident at UVA's medical center.

"My kid's a prodigy," Damon said, before sticking his tongue out at Summer, who laughed in the most delightful way. "She named herself, for crying out loud."

"And how exactly did she do that?" the medical resident's husband asked, slurring his words just a bit. They'd dipped into Damon's good bourbon.

"Oh you know, the usual way. Visions. Magic running amok. A few witches. Original Vampire getting all up in our business. Old friend of mine from Civil War days. Kid needed a way to communicate, and while she was doing it, she let slip her name."

Elena kicked Damon. Hard. "My husband, ladies and gentlemen. Once again resorting to utter lies in order to make up for the fact that he doesn't have any interesting small talk."

#

October 2018

It was a rare Sunday morning when Elena had nothing to do, no urgent tests to study for or research to conduct. So she sat at a table at the bar, with Bonnie and Caroline and Jeremy's new girlfriend, a Bennett witch named Susie who was five years older than him and smelled like trouble, but was sweet enough. Everyone was else was sipping bloody Mary's and devouring omelets, but Elena was nursing a club soda and picking at her food. Her stomach felt a bit off. Maybe she was coming down with something. But nothing too bad. Because this was a glorious brunch.

The boys were shooting darts and laughing raucously, even Alaric. It was nice to see him happy. It was nice to see all of them happy.

Bonnie was holding Summer on her lap, bouncing her up and down, as she told them all about her date with Sajen last night. "He wanted to celebrate our one month anniversary. And it was really sweet. Flowers. The best French restaurant in town. Really good sex."

Caroline lost it. She laughed so hard she had to put her head down on the table.

"It was," Bonnie said, defensively.

"We believe you." Elena giggled, grabbing Bonnie's hand and giving it a squeeze. "It's just the way you said it."

Caroline was now laughing so hard she was crying. When she came up for air, she said, "Who was better, Enzo or Sajen?"

Everyone froze. Bonnie just stared at her friend, her mouth slightly open, shocked into silence.

Caroline looked devastated. "I am so sorry. How could I say that? It's so incredibly insensitive."

Bonnie smiled sadly. "No. I'm glad you said it. It's good that we can laugh about him."

Caroline bit her lip, looking hopeful.

Elena tried a bite of eggs, but felt ill immediately. She managed to gulp them down before she spat them out.

Caroline said, "So I guess we're not getting an answer on that?"

Bonnie raised her brows, shook her head.

"I bet it's Sajen," Caroline went on. "It's always the guys you don't expect to be good, who are really good. I mean Stefan, good god, he was like heaven. Elena, you know what I mean?"

Elena did. Their lovemaking had been slow, patient, but intense. Matt was her first lover, but Stefan was the first grownup, the first to make her orgasm, the first lover to make her think that sex was more than sweat and awkward positions. That it could be a melding of souls. But then Damon, well, Damon had blown her whole world to pieces the first time they went at each other. Her fingernails had drawn blood, and it was so intense, so primal, that somehow the blood had felt necessary. But she didn't know how to respond to Caroline.

Eventually she just rolled her eyes and changed the subject. "What about Klaus?" Elena asked, trying not to sound judgy. Probably failing. It still bothered her, seeing her friend with that snake.

Right on cue, Klaus turned and waved at the girls' table, then threw his dart without even looking at the target, hitting the exact center of the bullseye. Smug bastard.

Caroline smiled wickedly as she said, "Sometimes the guys you think will be good, they live up to your wildest expectations."

Klaus, who must have heard her, grinned and winked at the girls before leaning in to say something to Damon, probably something incredibly inappropriate and demeaning to women everywhere.

"What about Damon?" Susie the Bennett witch asked.

Elena actually laughed out loud. She felt so damned free. "On a scale of one to ten?" she asked, doing her best imitation of the Damon eye waggle.

Caroline pretended to throw up.

"Twelve," Elena said.

"I really, really don't need to hear about this," Bonnie was saying. "It's like hearing about my brother's sex life."

"Sorry, Bon, but what I'm saying is, he's good," she said. "He's like a drug."

Caroline giggled like a teenager.

Bonnie cleared her throat. "But the point I was trying to make before we got derailed completely—it's this one month anniversary business. Is that a thing? It was kind of cheesy. And kind of early to be celebrating an anniversary."

They debated the issue, deciding in the end that the one month anniversary date was sweet, but maybe Bonnie and Sajen should wait until the six month mark to celebrate again.

As she noticed Caroline running her tongue over her lips, Elena could tell she was jonesing for something stronger than vodka and tomato juice. She remembered that parched feeling. Caroline stared at Elena's neck, right where her carotid artery was.

Elena frowned and shook her head. A barely perceptible signal. But Caroline's eyes widened. She nodded, a barely perceptible reply. Furtively, the gorgeous young vampire pulled a flask out of her purse, glanced around to make sure no one was watching, and poured fresh blood into her Bloody Mary.

The blood was surprising pungent. As Caroline stirred her drink, Elena felt her senses on overdrive. That metallic scent, it was everywhere, clogging the air that Elena tried to breathe in. This scent was going to overpower her. It was just too much.

In a second, Elena was pushing herself away from the table, rushing to the bathroom as fast as she could without making a scene. She almost knocked down two college girls in her mad dash for the toilet.

"Mrs. S.?" one of them called out. "You okay?"

But Elena had no time for niceties.

She made it inside the bathroom just in time to fling herself in front of a toilet and throw up violently. As she sat back, she felt the cold tile floor beneath her. She tried to slow down her frantic heartbeat, telling herself that she was okay. Behind her, the door opened.

Caroline sat down beside Elena, stroking her hair gently. "What's going on?" she asked.

Elena shook her head. "Stomach flu, I think." And then she was leaning over the toilet again, retching. Caroline held back her hair.

"I don't think this is the stomach flu, sweetie."

Elena shook her head.

"I think you're pregnant."

"No!"

"Elena."

"It's the stomach flu."

Caroline, still sitting on the floor next to her, pulled Elena toward her in a one-armed hug. "I've actually been thinking you were for a couple weeks. Have you looked at your boobs lately?"

Elena glanced down, not seeing a difference significant enough to mean anything, medically speaking.

"In the visions," Caroline went on, "didn't you see several children born right in a row? And a boy who wasn't that much younger than Summer?"

"But that's just it. I can't be. I'm on three different kinds of birth control. I'm taking extra precautions, after that damned vision."

"Stuff happens. Life happens. No birth control is 100%. You wanted to be human, remember? And you and Damon absorbed all that magic from the hotspot. This is not a normal birth control situation."

Elena threw up once more. When she sat back down, she leaned her head on Caroline's shoulder. Caroline threw her arm around Elena again, holding her tight. "I can't be pregnant, Care," she murmured. "I've just gotten my life back. I'm back in school. We're adjusting to being parents. There's no supernatural catastrophe. I can't have another baby so soon. I just need a little time. I don't care what was in the vision. I'm not getting pregnant again until I've graduated med school. Three more years, minimum."

"But I think—"

"It's the stomach flu. Or food poisoning. That's all."

#

October 2018

Mystic Falls, Virginia

Damon spent Halloween sitting in his old living room, by the fire, recuperating from the last couple months of insane business at the bar, drinking too much with Ric, hearing how the school was going, and how difficult it was to raise twins who were also magic siphons, reading some vintage Anne Rice and thinking about how just once he'd like to read a vampire novel that got it all right. Anne Rice got a lot of it, so brilliantly that he wondered if she'd met a vampire or two in her day. But her vampires had to sleep all day in coffins. What was up with that? Maybe Damon should write her a letter, explaining what details she'd gotten wrong.

Caroline and Elena had taken the kids out to a movie, and so Damon didn't have to move until trick or treating. He'd been maintaining a pleasant buzz all day. Bonnie was a bit of a buzz kill, because she was holed up in the kitchen with stacks of grimoires and legal texts, insisting on being productive, and coming into the living room every so often to suggest that Damon and Ric switch to iced tea. They had not switched to iced tea. Bonnie was considering applying to law school, so that she could one day defend witches in court, witches who'd gotten on the wrong side of the law and did not want to ally themselves with vampires in order to use vampire compulsion to get charges dropped. It was a cool idea, and considering all the Bennett witches who'd been burned over the years, Damon got it. But today: today was not a day for being productive.

The fire was so warm it was stifling. He was just thinking that this was a perfect day when all of a sudden someone was knocking on the door. No, not knocking. Pounding. Banging like the world was about to end. Damon sighed.

Ric struggled to his feet and struggled to the door.

"Hey, is my granddad here?" came a voice. And then Ric was laughing, because of course the term of endearment was ridiculous. And then the kid was shrieking. "Look, seriously, you gotta tell me if my granddad is here, because if he's not then I, then I—"

Damon leapt to his feet, ran to the door, pushed Ric out of the way, grabbed Nate's hand, and pulled him into the house. "What happened?" he asked, closing the door, swaying a bit on his feet.

Nate did not appear to be hurt or sick. He looked pale and scared shitless. And now he looked suspicious. "Are you drunk?"

Damon held his thumb and forefinger up and apart in the universal signal for "little bit," as he said, "Mildly buzzed. Not a problem. Now what's up?"

"Um, well, you see."

Damon shook his head. "I really don't see."

"I set my roommate's bed on fire."

Alaric, who had sat back down on the couch and helped himself to some more bourbon, laughed out loud.

"Really?" Damon snapped at Ric. "Am I going to have to be the mature person in this discussion?"

Ric looked properly chagrined. "I'm sorry, Nate. Why don't you just tell us what's going on, and we'll help you figure it out?"

Damon nodded. Looking back at Nate, he said, "Did anybody get hurt?"

"No."

"Did you get caught?" Ric asked.

Nate shook his head.

Damon felt like he was in new territory. Paternal territory. Was this the kind of thing he was going to have to deal with when Summer went to college. "Okay, so why the hell would you do such a supremely idiotic thing? Does he snore? Does he eat your food without asking or replacing it? Ooh, I know, has he been stealing your paperclips?"

"Damon!" Ric snapped. "Be nice."

"You don't get it," Nate was saying.

"No, I don't."

"I didn't do it on purpose."

Damon screwed up his face in concentration, trying to figure out what was going on. "How does somebody set a bed on fire by accident? Were you smoking? You know, that's really bad for your health. So maybe you want to stop that."

Ric deadpanned, "Damon Salvatore. Tobacco PSA."

But Nate wasn't laughing. He began to cry. Instinctively, Damon pulled him into a fierce hug. "It's okay, buddy. It's okay."

"I wasn't smoking. I wasn't even drinking," Damon's great-great-whatever grandson blabbered into his shoulder. "I was. Mad. I guess. The guy's just a douche. And he locked me out of our room all night, because he was hooking up with a girl. And he didn't even have the good manners to ask me ahead of time. And I had to sleep in the lounge."

"Sounds like a douche," Damon murmured.

"Sounds like something your granddad would do," Ric muttered.

"And then, I finally got back in. He went to take a shower. I had this bottle of water. And I accidentally spilled it on his bed. And now I'm freaking out, because he's going get all mad me, about water, when he's the douche."

Damon's eyes widened. Water on the bed. Shit. He knew where this was going.

So did Ric apparently. "Did the water catch fire?" Alaric asked.

Nate pulled away, looking shocked. Rubbing at his damp eyes, he said, "How'd you know?"

Damon gulped, thinking of all the witches he'd known over the years, how many had died young, or had miserable lives. Magic always came with a price. This wasn't what he wanted for Nate. Nate was supposed to be living a carefree college existence, getting into a reasonable amount of mischief without being arrested or expelled. When the kid went away to school at the end of the summer, Damon had given him a a gold card, a huge box of condoms, and a signed first edition of Scott Fitzgerald's first novel, which was a fictionalized version of Scott's time at Princeton and, in Damon's opinion, the college novel to rival all college novels. He'd told Nate stories of his time at UVA 1856, before he got kicked out, and his vampire escapades at college campuses he'd loitered around, over the decades. He recommended Tri Delts as the most fun sorority girls, if you wanted no strings attached. He'd also told Nate that he should actually go to class, because otherwise his parents were wasting their money. That seemed like grownup, responsible advice. When Nate asked what he should major in, Damon had shocked himself by recommending a solid liberal arts background, which was the foundation of a gentlemen's education. Claiming, and possibly meaning it, that the nineteenth century had gotten that right.

Damon had worried about a whole list of rules Nate might break at William and Mary. He hadn't considered that Nate would manage to break the freaking laws of physics, by setting his roommate's bed on fire with his freaking mind.

"BONNIE!" Damon shouted.

And then the little witch was running into the living room, looking perturbed to the extreme. "If you guys need me, you could come get me," she said. "You don't need to scream across the house." Seeing Nate, her brows rose in surprise. "Nate! You okay?"

Nate just shook his head.

"Bon," Damon murmured. "Is it possible there could be some active witch blood in the Salvatore line?"

She frowned. "You're not talking about you?"

Damon placed a hand on Nate's shoulder, squeezing just for a moment, trying to reassure the frightened kid, and while Alaric repeated Nate's story to Bonnie.

Bonnie smiled at Nate, a really, really big smile. "It's going to be fine." When Nate looked like he was about to cry, she reached out, grabbed him by the shoulders, looked him straight in the eyes. "I promise." He had a good six inches on her, but in that moment, Bonnie looked massive. Fierce and protective and so far from the teenage witch Damon had once terrorized.

"What's happening to me?" Nate asked.

"You're a witch," she said, gently kindly. "I think your abilities must have been triggered by the hotspot, all that magic coming out. You know, Damon, maybe that's why he was there, in the circle. A witch from Silas's line. Why didn't I think of that before?"

"I should have thought of it too," Ric muttered. "It makes perfect sense."

Damon waited for an outburst from Nate, or tears, or, at the minimum, sheer disbelief and denial.

Instead an expression of wonder and exhilaration danced across Nate's face. He was grinning like crazy, staring at his hands like they were magical. And well, Damon realized, they were. "This is awesome," Nate said quietly. "So what else can I do to my douche roommate?"

Bonnie gave Nate one of her best disapproving looks as she began to lecture him about the responsible use of magic, the real danger of misusing one's gifts, and how witches were the servants of nature and therefore could NOT go around setting fire to people's beds just because.

#

December 2018

Charlottesville, Virginia

As she pulled on Damon's jeans — the loosest pair, which he only wore for hiking or burying bodies—she found that she couldn't quite fasten the button. Elena sighed, left the jeans unbuttoned, and searched around for a blouse that wouldn't be too tight on her chest, or show off the fact that she'd lost all self control, taken to eating so much ravioli and spaghetti and all manner of carbs-and-dairy-ridden Italian food. She was stressed out. She'd spent all semester playing catch up, and operating on little sleep because on top of med school she had this tiny human to take care of. She was too exhausted to exercise. Every time she tried to run she felt like she might pass out. So it was no wonder that her waist had thickened, that her stomach was no longer flat. Over the summer, Elena run off a lot of the baby weight. But once October rolled around, and the med school stakes were rising, Elena lost all her self control. Hence the cravings for Italian food. Especially Sajen's recipes, which Damon helped to fine tune, building on his childhood memories of his mother's, and also a slave woman's, best dishes.

Unfortunately Elena was running out of blouses that could hide her stupidly fat stomach, and her equally stupidly big breasts (which she blamed on breastfeeding).

Damon wandered into the bedroom, a seven-month-old Summer crawling behind him and squealing with delight. Her husband stood behind her, pulled her closer to him, and rubbed a hand absentmindedly along her rounded belly. "I like you like this," he whispered, kissing her gently on the shoulder.

"Late for my exam?"

"Pregnant."

Elena laughed humorlessly. "I'm not pregnant."

He kissed the other shoulder. "I beg to differ."

"I've just put on a bit of weight. Haven't had enough exercise lately."

"You're a doctor, Elena."

"Not yet. And I won't ever be if we keep having babies so close together."

"The vision said otherwise."

"Screw the vision."

"Don't you remember those kids? Those beautiful kids?"

Elena shook her head. Those kids could wait a few years to be born.

She pulled away from Damon, searching his side of the closet for a button-down shirt she could wear to her exam. Glancing back at him, he looked hurt. And then she noticed Summer. Her baby girl, barely six months old, was pulling herself up on the bed post. "Look at her!" Elena squealed, dropping down to her knees to watch Summer pull herself up to standing.

She scooted towards her baby girl, reaching out a hand to ruffle Summer's thick, wavy brown hair. "You are incredible, my love," Elena whispered.

Damon knelt beside Elena, reaching out a hand to their daughter. "She's perfect," he breathed.

"She's early on her milestones," Elena said, staring at her child in rapture. "But she's just a normal little girl. No more visions. No more communicating with us with a teenage voice. She's just a baby. A smart baby."

Damon kissed her shoulder, then moved his lips slowly up her neck, until he got to the spot where her carotid artery was visible, if you knew what to look for. He nibbled at that spot, and she moaned a little, remembering the ecstasy of blood sharing. "You're perfect too, my love," he murmured. "You have no idea how insanely lucky I am."

#

She walked out of class with Liam, into the fresh, cold air. It smelled like snow. And a hint of woodsmoke. Elena felt free in a way she hadn't all semester. Maybe not since she was seventeen. "That was it. That was the last exam of the term," she said, feeling like she might faint from relief.

"How'd you do?" Liam asked.

"I aced it."

He grinned at her, then asked about Damon and Summer. She was showing him photos on her phone he said, "So when is the next one due?"

And her face fell.

Back home, she found the apartment empty. Damon was at work. Summer was with the sitter. Elena carried her bag from the pharmacy into the bathroom. After taking the test, she waited the three minutes indicated on the box, feeling like she might explode if time passed any slower. Finally. Two lines. Dammit.

The next test was also positive.

So were the next four.

Elena sat on the bathroom floor, crying, partly because she wasn't ready to be a mother again, and partly because she felt so stupid for not realizing the truth. When everyone else knew it. Liam knew it. And Elena was just so terrified of losing control. Again.

Damon's jeans were so tight on her. Even unbuttoned they were uncomfortable. How could she have been in such severe denial?

All of a sudden, Elena felt a ripple inside her. Like her insides were doing a backflip. Shocked and awed, she stopped crying. She placed a hand on her belly, noting how round it was. Doing some quick mental math, Elena realized that she was about five months pregnant. Yes, of course she was feeling the baby move. That was to be expected. And maybe, probably, she'd been feeling movement for weeks. Early fetal movement, which wasn't kicking, wasn't anything super obvious, and therefore easy to overlook. Her stomach had been rumbling a lot. Butterflies, she'd thought. Nerves.

Five months along before a second year medical student realized she was knocked up. Jesus. It was amazing how much could be hidden by men's jeans, baggy shirts, and an unhealthy dose of denial. Five months.

Her insides rippled again, and wriggled, and flipped. "Hi baby," she whispered. And she remembered the boy with sandy hair, from the vision, the boy not much younger than Summer, who'd been such a troublemaker. She remembered his mischievous grin, and how full of life he was. How much like Damon he was, but then he was different as well. He was his own person. He had a certain gravitas. But right now, he was a blank slate. Just a tiny piece of her and Damon, tumbling around her womb. Elena grinned. Screw getting straight A's this year. She wouldn't give Summer back for all the A's in the world. As she cradled her belly, she felt downright maternal.

"I love you, baby," she said, not a whisper, but a confident declaration. "You are wanted." The baby fluttered inside her again. Elena felt something waking up inside her. Something to do with the magic that had embraced her and Damon before it flowed into the earth. Elena hadn't wanted to think about the implications of that magic, or admit, even to herself, that she felt different. She didn't have any magic powers after all. Neither did Damon, despite his obsession with tapping into psychic power, especially since Nate had developed startling new witch powers. Damon had roped Bonnie into teaching him some incantations, and letting him study her grimoires. Despite Damon's best efforts, the spells didn't work for him. He was just human. Elena was just human.

But—something important had happened to her that day in July when they set the magic free. She hadn't wanted to acknowledge it. Hadn't mentioned it to Damon, and had ignored his statements about feeling different. They both seemed particularly attuned to the elements, to nature. They could feel nature in a way they never could before.

Right now, as her second child fluttered inside her, Elena felt fertile. She could feel the earth reaching up to her, supporting her, embracing her. She felt one with the trees and flowers, with animal mothers everywhere, with women everywhere. She felt suspiciously connected to the world. She felt extra alive. How had she ever imagined that this would be a bad thing?

#

Later that night, Elena burst into the bar, making a dramatic entrance, grinning at everyone. She was carrying Summer on one hip. Elena was no longer dressed in Damon's button-down and his loosest, still-couldn't-button over her belly jeans. She'd bought a new dress, a deep purple maternity dress that accentuated her curves. Damon looked up from the pool table, where he was playing with several frat boys. Her husband's eyes lit up at the sight of her. She spied a thick wad of cash on the table, and rolled her eyes. They were playing for money, which meant that Damon was all but stealing from these naive college kids. Damon's reflexes and aim were almost supernatural. Regardless of his current human status, Damon did not play pool, or shoot darts, or shoot for real, like a human. A century and a half of vampire life had honed his fine motor skills. He couldn't shove a stake into a vampire's chest with the same strength, and he wouldn't be able to catch an arrow in mid-air. But he played pool about the same as he'd done when he was a card-carrying member of the undead.

Elena rushed to greet him anyway, despite his questionable morals. Summer reached out for him, babbling nonsense syllables, and Damon took her, holding her little body to his chest like she was the most precious thing he'd ever held. After a moment, he reached out for Elena's belly, stroking it warily, as if he didn't want to jump to any conclusions. But Damon Salvatore was grinning. He looked like he was trying not to show emotion, but like he couldn't help it.

"I like the dress," he said. "A big improvement over today's earlier outfit."

Elena smiled sheepishly before holding out a small bag. Damon adjusted Summer, so that she was sitting on his hip, then grabbed the bag. He pulled out a black t-shirt, in his size. "Daddy squared?" he read, glancing back at her, as if he didn't get the joke immediately. "Oh, shit, you mean we're having a second kid."

Elena nodded, tearing up, not sure what to say. She'd been so mean to him about this for weeks, accusing him of pestering her, of not caring about her career.

"You're sure? You took a test?"

Elena nodded again, waiting for an angry outburst.

But Damon just laughed, pulled her close to him, kissed her deeply, passionately but solemnly at the same time. When they finally came up for air, Damon murmured, "And you're okay with this?"

"Very. I mean, it's not ideal for my grades. But once I realized I was really pregnant, everything changed. And oh god, touch my belly. He's moving, right now." Damon grinned like he'd just won a trip to Disneyland. Gingerly, he touched Elena's belly. A moment later, he jumped back in surprise.

"That's our kid?" he whispered.

"Our little boy."

"How can you know it's a boy?"

She shrugged. "Just going by the vision. But we'll have to schedule a sonogram. I'm sure I can get us in on Monday. And then we'll know. It's late enough that we'll be able to tell the sex."

Damon's eyes widened. "Just how pregnant are you?"

"The OB will tell us for sure. But I haven't had a period since the hotspot."

Damon laughed. "So why exactly is it news to you that you're pregnant? It's Christmas in a couple weeks."

Elena shook her head. She really had no words.

Damon shook his head right back at her. Then, that huge Disneyland grin back on his face, he yelled out to the entire drinking establishment, "I'm going to be a dad again! Free drinks for everybody!"

And people were cheering. Rushing to the bar. The staff and regulars were swarming around Elena and her little family. Two waitresses fought over who could hug Elena first. Sajen gave a huge whoop and ran over to throw his arms around Damon in a massive bear hug, and then kiss Elena on the cheek, telling them how excited he was and how he would babysit any time.

After her parents died, she'd felt so alone. Cut off even from Jeremy and Jenna. But now, she was anything but alone. She was connected to all these disparate people, and to the earth itself, to wind and fire, dirt and ocean waves. Summer reached for Elena. As she took hold of her baby girl, noting the weight of her, and wondering how much longer she'd be able to pick her up, she also noted how good it felt to hold her girl against her curvy, motherly body. The baby inside her did a flip, as if he too had something to say.

Summer smiled at Elena. Her expression had a bit of fire in it. Was that mischief in her eyes? Elena groaned, thinking of all the havoc Damon Salvatore's children could wreak on her world. But then Summer's smile turned innocent, open, beautiful. She opened her mouth, and nonsense babbling came out.

Elena kissed her baby's head. "Yes, sweetie. That's right. I'm your mama. And I'm right here."

Chapter Text

April 2019

Mystic Falls, Virginia

It was strange to be in the Salvatore house on a school day. Ric had a group of elementary-aged witches in the library where Bonnie Bennett, special guest speaker, was teaching them to levitate feathers with perfect precision. Elena peeked her head into the room a few times, watching the children's pure amazement and wonder as they learned to control their powers, to make something beautiful out of abilities that must frighten them. Running below their excitement was a sort of peace. Like, as long as they were in this school, sheltered from the world of judgement, fear, or shame, all was well. They were safe, loved, protected, and accepted.

Caroline and Ric's twins were siphoning power from magic amulets (allowed only during class) and giggling as they made their feathers dance around the room. Ric sat on the edge of a table, watching his daughters being kids. At the end of the day, Lizzie and Josie were just kids. Elena imagined herself sitting on the edge of that very table in four or five years, watching her own daughter learn to control her magic.

A child gave out a great peal of laughter.

Elena was still afraid of the burden of magic, for Summer or any child of hers. The life of a servant of nature was often filled with pain, difficult choices, and a delicate balancing act—a witch had to choose between what was right and what was easy, between her friends and her morals, between the safety of herself and her loved ones and the safety of the world at large. Power meant that you had to choose a side, and whether you were a witch, a vampire, a wolf, or a human with knowledge, it was impossible to not choose a side. Even if you thought you weren't choosing a side, you were.

So Elena didn't know whether she wanted any of her children to have magic. But standing here, watching her best friend walk around the room, murmuring instructions to each young pupil—Elena felt like their future would be okay, either way. Because Bonnie had made it. She'd survived it all, even death. And she was stronger for it. This confident, self-assured woman—who spoke incantations with precision and smiled at each child with quiet kindness—was a force of nature. Elena had loved her friend long before Bonnie had learned to use her powers. She would love any version of Bonnie. But this Bonnie was a woman who Elena not only loved but admired to the point of awe, not for her power but for what she did with it. For staying good. Bonnie would not be this version of herself without witchcraft, without overcoming darkness and villains repeatedly, withstanding pain and death, and being forced to make those agonizing choices.

Down to her bones, Elena wished that Summer's life would be less eventful than Bonnie's or Elena's. Less pain, grief, and moral ambiguity. But looking at Bonnie now, Elena had hope. No matter what the future held, Summer would thrive. She'd be happy, strong, and brave. She'd make the right choices in the end. Because she had parents who'd been through hell and back. And she had Bonnie, Ric, Caroline, Jeremy. A family of survivors. Even in the darkest of times, there had been laughter. But hopefully, the dark times were not returning. 2032 had seemed wonderful. Hopefully this would be a future of floating feathers, children giggling, and quiet family moments by the fire.

Back in the living room, Elena kissed Damon's forehead, ruffled the hair of their sleeping baby, then sat down on the floor. It was spring, but the morning was chilly and damp. The fireplace had been lit, for warmth, but also because in this house it just felt like a fire should always burn. Summer, ten months old now, had pulled herself up on the arm of the sofa and let go, seemingly surprised that her legs held her up. She'd learned to walk just last week. Their daughter toddled over to the fireplace and crashed right into the magic barrier, which Bonnie'd helped the school children put up. A group project to protect the babies from the flames. The school children adored the Salvatore babies.

As Summer ran into the magic wall, she laughed, peals of pure innocence ricocheting throughout the room. She clapped her hands, another new skill. She struggled to her feet, toddled the few steps back to the magic barrier, fell down, laughed even louder, and clapped once more. She'd been playing this game all morning.

Damon, stretched out on the couch with their second baby on his chest and a book over his face, startled awake. The book fell to the floor, but his arm had been wrapped protectively around the baby. The baby stayed right in place, not even waking. Summer looked over at Damon, clapped some more, before scrambling to her feet with more confidence, toddling into the barrier, falling down, and laughing with the true abandon of a child who knows only innocence and love.

"That hasn't gotten old, Summer?" Damon asked, amused.

Their biggest baby clapped her hands and grinned. Their littlest baby, two weeks old today, made little mewing sounds and burrowed his head further into Damon's shoulder.

"He needs a name," Elena said.

Damon nodded.

"I'm fine with Stefan," she said, meaning it. "I think it would be lovely to honor your brother."

Damon frowned, stroking the wispy, sandy strands of hair on the little one's head. "It just doesn't feel right."

"It doesn't feel right Stefan being gone," she said. "That's what doesn't feel right."

"It doesn't feel right to saddle him with that name," he told her. "I don't know what we were thinking, in that freaky vision world. Also, how do we even know he's the same kid?"

But Elena knew. "I can feel it," she said, for the hundredth time. "I don't know how to explain it, but he has the same energy."

Damon raised his brows, unconvinced and skeptical.

"And you feel it too," she said. "You just won't admit it, because you're upset about the name. Is it because of my history with Stefan? Because that's all it is. Ancient history. A girl's love. I chose you, Damon. It will always be you. Even if he were here."

Her husband smiled wryly at her. "Nah, I don't think you're holding a candle for my baby brother. But it is nice to hear how amazing I am." She could tell he meant it. Which was not a surprise, after all this time. But a relief nonetheless.

"So what's the problem?" she pressed.

Damon frowned.

Elena was struck by how human Damon looked. Completely comfortable with the fact that a child was sleeping on his chest. He'd been wearing the same shirt for three or four days. Bleary eyed from just waking up and from getting up several times a night over the last weeks. Black stubble threatening to turn into a beard. The beginning of a tan all over his skin. Vampires weren't snow white like in the movies, but they didn't tan. Overall, his physical appearance was not that different from the years she'd known him as a vampire. But she was struck by the fact he was no longer frozen in time. Damon had been changeless. Now, changes were creeping in.

If she looked closely, she could see faint new lines on his face. He complained about not having time to exercise and was furious that he'd gained five pounds. But it wasn't these minor changes that made her look at Damon Salvatore and think: human. It was how he held his body, how he was so at home with a baby on top of him, so at home in the world itself. As a vampire, Damon had possessed a restless energy, even when sitting still. He'd always been buzzing with a need to do something, to fight something or someone, to prove himself. Was it the bloodlust? The magic of vampirism flowing throughout his body, keeping dead flesh alive? Was it the loss of Katherine, or her betrayal, or the endless drama of their lives—always propelling him forward, on to the next scheme, the next crisis, the big moment?

Whatever had been buzzing inside of the vampire she'd fallen in love with—it was still there, but it was quieter. Maybe humans were meant to fit into the world more easily. Maybe it had nothing to do with being human, and Damon was just happy now, with their life. Maybe he finally believed he was worthy of her, that he deserved this life, this happiness.

But he still couldn't decide about the name. They'd been agonizing over for months.

"If I thought you didn't want to name him after Stefan, I'd just drop it," Elena said. "But part of you does. And clearly some version of us chose that name."

Damon sighed and sat up, cradling their unborn baby to his chest. "I'm torn because it seems like I'd be this giant dick if I didn't want to name him after my brother. He literally died so that I could have you. And I wouldn't have you, I wouldn't have anything, if it wasn't for Stefan. He was such a sap, but he believed I could be good. Ish."

Elena laughed. "But?"

"I don't want my kid to be like my brother," he said, adjusting their son, kissing his head absentmindedly. "There was lots of good in Stefan. Loyalty. Way too much compassion. An annoying desire to do the right thing. He had that whole noble gravitas going on."

"But then there's blood addiction?" she guessed.

He nodded. "Yes, and the fact he buried every negative feeling he ever had so deep, and fought against his nature to an annoying degree, to the point that he would feed so hard he'd rip people's heads off. Lots of people's heads. That wasn't just a chemical imbalance. That was some serious, fucked up darkness. And a severe lack of self awareness. I mean, he never stopped lying to himself. And I don't think we need to weigh this kid down with that name."

Elena nodded. She didn't know why she hadn't considered the name more carefully. "You are so fucking right," she said, laughing at her own stupidity.

Damon laughed as well. Elena didn't curse much, and he thought it was funny when she did. "Watch your language in front of impressionable children. I don't want you being a bad influence, Dr. Gilbert."

"So what do we call him? Is there another name from your family? Obviously not your father, I'm not that stupid."

Damon shook his head as he cradled the baby to his chest and climbed off the sofa, joining his family on the floor. "I'm thinking we don't do a family name this time. Let the kid be his own person. What about Joey?"

Elena smiled as she reached for the baby boy. Holding him, she could almost feel the Earth's magic reaching for her, supporting her, making her feel whole and somehow less complicated. "Joey," she whispered in her baby's ear. He opened his eyes for just a second, looking at her with brown eyes very much like her own. "Joseph Gilbert Salvatore. Yeah, that sounds just right."

#

September 2020

Charlottesville, Virginia

Elena sat in the upstairs bathroom of their new two-bedroom townhouse, surrounded once again by pregnancy tests. Once again, she was crying.

A soft knock on the door. "Honey," Damon said from the other side of the closed door. "Everything okay?"

Elena just kept crying.

"Mama okay?" Summer asked, her sweet voice a punch to the gut.

And then, as if to add another punch, there was Joey's voice. "Mama! Mama! Want Mama!"

"I want Mama!" Summer shouted.

Elena snorted out a laugh. "Damon, you better not be letting them play on the stairs!"

"You better come out of the bathroom so you can see."

She rolled her eyes, but climbed off the cold tile floor and opened the door. Yes, there was Joey crawling up the stairs and Summer, on the landing, two years old and doing a little dance. "Mama came out!"

Damon sat beside Summer, smiling up at Elena. He and both children were splattered in spaghetti sauce. Damon had mashed peas stuck in his hair. Apparently dinner was going smoothly without her.

Joey waggled his eyebrows in a remarkably good imitation of his father, especially because he was not yet a year and half..

As if on cue, Damon waggled his own eyebrows. His wore jeans so tight it wasn't fair, and a t-shirt he'd gotten when he and Bonnie had gone around town to the hipster thrift stores. Black lettering on the white t-shirt: It took me 180 years to look this good. Well, it had originally said 80, but Damon had used a sharpie to turn 80 into 180. He thought it was hilarious.

Elena smiled sadly as she said, "I'm not pregnant."

Damon smiled sadly back at her. "I know."

"Really?"

"I've learned to read the signs. But hon, it's okay. We've got our hands full right now. You've got another year of school left."

Elena bit her lip. "She was supposed to be born this month." The girl in the vision, Rose. Their third prophesied child. A spunky troublemaker who looked a bit like Isobel. "And now I know that she won't be. Obviously. But I keep thinking I'll get pregnant any minute, that she's coming."

After Joey, Elena had stayed off birth control, deciding to accept her uber-fertility and to have faith that no matter how many children she had in a row, she would graduate medical school. Elena Gilbert had survived vampires, werewolves, Katherine, the Original Family, Silas, and a whole litany of supernatural villains. She could handle university classes while caring for multiple children. But here she was, letting nature take its course, and nothing was happening.

Damon stood up, wrapping his arms around her. The children, who didn't understand what was wrong, clung to their parents' legs.

"I'm sorry," Elena murmured into his shoulder, relieved at how solid and warm he was. Damon made her feel safe.

"Don't be an idiot. There's nothing to be sorry for."

"I wasn't ready last time. I didn't want him. But he's perfect. This time, I wasn't going to fight it."

"I know," he murmured back, kissing her hair. "Maybe we just didn't have sex on that one night. Maybe the kids wore us out and we fell asleep early. Or maybe the universe knows that we've got our hands full with these two hellions."

#

October 2020

The Salvatore School

Mystic Falls, Virginia

The front door of the Salvatore house was almost closed, but not. Slightly ajar. And as Elena approached the house on this warm fall evening—holding tight to her two year-old daughter's hand—she was struck by a memory of her first visit to this particular house. Was it more than a decade ago? Yes. Eleven years. That Elena Gilbert, barely a high school junior, had been insanely young and insanely foolish, walking uninvited into the house of a "boy" she barely knew.

A house of vampires.

It was the era of "before." Before she believed in vampires, or witches, or werewolves, or any other creatures that go bump in the night. Before she knew how dark the world could be.

She'd been looking for Stefan that day, but found an empty house. Well, an empty mansion. And then she'd found Damon, or rather he'd found her, mysteriously materializing right in front of Elena. Smirking. She hadn't known he'd existed until he was standing there (because the one time they had met previously, Damon had compelled her to forget). "I didn't know Stefan had a brother." "Stefan's not one to brag." Until he was showing her around the house. "This is your living room?" "Living room, parlor, Sotheby's auction." And making her uncomfortable on purpose while undermining his brother's love life. "I see why my brother's so smitten. For a while there I never thought he'd get over the last one." Elena remembered Damon's impossibly blue eyes as he charmed and unnerved her. As she wondered if Stefan and Katherine's failed romance was as bad as her and Matt's. Because she assumed that it was a run of the mill high school love story. It couldn't possibly be as bad as her breaking up with Matt because their relationship was boring and it seemed meaningless after her parents died.

When Stefan had eventually shown up that day so many years ago, he'd been rude to both Elena and Damon. A little scary. Understandably furious at his evil, diabolical brother. And Damon had been horrible back then. Unbeknownst to her teenage self, Stefan didn't want his brother around Elena because said brother was way over twenty-five, and had been spending his time, lately, slaughtering innocent people in the woods, on the road outside of town, anywhere he could. Damon was a freaking villain back then, with no redemption in sight. He was compelling Caroline and therefore basically vampire-date-raping one of Elena's best friends. Bodies were piling up, and soon after this particular meet-cute Damon would kill nephew/uncle Zack, turn Vicki, and kill Stefan's best friend Lexi. He was a bad guy, and Stefan had every right to be angry, to not trust him, to want to protect Elena. Elena had every right to be terrified of Damon when she learned who and what he really was.

But now, as she walked up to the Salvatore School, Elena was struck by the fact that he'd made her feel alive that day. That spark of passion and danger had changed Elena's life, for good and bad, propelling her into a complicated life where darkness was normal, morals were ambiguous, and Elena was neither pure nor perfect. She remembered that afternoon so clearly, his smirk, how he hadn't scared her but he had made her uncomfortable, unmoored. Her future husband had made Elena feel like she'd just fallen off a boat and was scrambling to find land, or to figure out how to swim. If she'd been honest with herself that day, she'd have said she was drawn to him, from that very first meeting. However, teenage Elena Gilbert had almost never been honest with herself.

"Auntie Care! Auntie Care! Unca Ric!" Summer yelled, breaking Elena out of her thoughts. And then breaking free from her hand. And running into the house ahead of Elena.

"Auntie Care! We're here!"

And now Elena was chasing the toddler into the cavernous library, where the Salvatore School's "Back to School Night" was taking place. She wished she hadn't worn heels. It would be much easier to catch up with her daughter if she'd had the good sense to wear flats.

The library was packed with men in suits and women in tasteful dresses. Caroline had emailed a dress code, feeling like the clothes worn by the current and prospective parents would somehow set the tone for the whole evening. The school had been open for three years, but this was the year Caroline was trying to expand and make the school a little glitzy.

Elena almost crashed into a perfectly coifed, middle-aged blonde who looked like a fifties housewife, down to the single strand of pearls and the fake smile. She was in the middle of a conversation with a hippie-looking waif about Elena's age, and seemed to be saying something condescending to the poor woman.

"Excuse me?" said the perfect one. "I didn't realize this was an event for toddlers."

Elena mumbled an apology and was about to get as far as she could from this agent of darkness when the woman said, "I don't want to hear apologies. I would just appreciate it if you kept your children in line. There are standards for decorum in public. My son would never have behaved that way, even at that age. He's sixteen now and we're aiming for Princeton, so perhaps our expectations are different. Of course, he didn't grow up around any of you people. Maybe you have different standards. This is all so new to us."

Elena gaped at her. "You people?"

In a stage whisper, the perfect one said, "We don't have any other wizards in our family. We didn't know about his difference, until just a few months ago when he made a table fly and caused quite a disruption. We're not like you."

The hippie giggled.

Elena frowned, biting her lip to keep from laughing out loud. She glanced around the room, looking for help, but didn't see Caroline or Ric. "Ma'am, your son is a witch, not a wizard." And then Elena couldn't help herself. "There aren't any wizards, not in the real world. This isn't Hogwarts."

"Are you mocking me?" the woman asked.

Elena shook her head, putting on her most innocent smile. "Goodness, no!"

She should shut up, now. Right this very second.

But it had a long day. Elena had been going off four hours of sleep all week. Joey and Summer were both teething. Her final year of medical school was stressing her out, partly because she was studying for her boards, and partly because the professor overseeing her current clinical rotation was so intense and moody she was beginning to think that he might actually be a vampire. Elena spent entire days fantasizing about staking him. And on top of that, Damon had decided that he was going to open a second bar, in Mystic Falls, so that they could move home and she could do her residency at Mystic Falls General next year. Which would be great, but he'd taken to staying up late, eating junk food, and obsessing about the punctuation on a menu for this currently imaginary bar. Not to mention Damon's other obsession, attempting every position in the Kama Sutra. As a human. He'd done the whole list as a vampire, of course, but human sex was different. And it wasn't that Elena didn't want to have sex with her husband; he was really, really good in bed. But she was so tired, and when she lay down, all she wanted to do was sleep. But then he was there, smirking at her, doing the eye thing, and every time, she let him seduce her. His eyes were just too pretty.

So Elena was tired and frazzled and forgetting how to be polite.

She gave the woman her best Damon smirk before saying, "Why would I mock you? I should be asking you for parenting advice, clearly. Here I am, letting my child run rampant, causing disruptions and chaos everywhere we go. No decorum whatsoever. Shame on me for saying anything to you. After all, I'm not a respectable member of society, like you. I'm just a freak who knows the proper terminology, and knows how ridiculous it is to hear you call your son a wizard."

"You are—"

"But wait, there is something. What is it? Oh, yes. I'm also a fourth year medical student married to a man who is, almost definitely, far richer than your husband. My father was a doctor, my family was one of the founding families of Mystic Falls, and I know more about the truth of the world than you will ever know."

"Wow," said the hippie. "She really pissed you off."

Elena grinned. It felt good to say the things that were in her head. It had taken a long time to get here, to be confident enough to tell this stupid lady off and to like herself enough to do it. "Look, lady. You can stand here all night, making a face like something smells bad, throw passive aggressive insults at everybody you see, but it's not going to change the fact that your son is different. And it's not a bad thing. Being a witch. But it's not something that his prep school can deal with. Magic is dangerous and it always comes with a cost. Your son is lucky that there's such a thing as 'us people,' so when he makes the next table fly into the air, he can learn how to make it land on the ground again. Safely. Without killing anyone or further embarrassing you in front of your friends."

"Why! I never! I don't know who you think you are, young lady, but I've had quite enough of you uncouth people, whatever you want to call yourselves."

"You're mean!" Summer shrieked.

The woman's perfectly bobbed hair turned from blond to hot pink.

"Oh, Summer!" Elena hissed. "Turn it back."

Summer was giggling and giggling. The hippie also began to giggle.

Elena wondered how funny Caroline was going to find this.

Probably not funny at all.

"Care Bear!" Damon yelled from the entrance. "Sorry we're late. Joey, for reasons I will never freaking understand, set fire to my suit. My best suit. Luckily, I hadn't put it on yet. So I'm going to grab him a snack in the kitchen, cause Elena said maybe magic happens when you're hungry, and then I'm going to come and hobnob."

Someone cleared their throat loudly, almost aggressively. Elena whipped her head around.

"What a damned shame," said the tall, dark-haired woman with high cheekbones. She looked familiar. Her low-pitched voice, with its slight southern accent, made Elena think she should recognize this woman. Though Elena didn't think they knew each other well. This was someone Elena crossed paths with, without ever spending much time together. "To think Damon could have just gone up in flames and made us all a little happier."

"Hayley?" Elena asked. "Hayley Marshall?"

The woman nodded. She looked younger than she ought to look, only nineteen or twenty, but then Elena had heard that the werewolf had been turned into a hybrid years ago. Something to do with Klaus's mother trying to kill Hayley, or her unborn child, or maybe both of them. It was hard to keep up with the Originals and their endless family drama.

"This one yours?" Hayley asked, pointing at the still giggling toddler.

Elena grinned. "Yeah. Her name is Summer."

"I like the pigtails. She looks about two?"

"Yeah. Twenty-seven months," Elena confirmed. She was trying to figure out what specific problem Hayley could have with Damon. But the general problem with Damon was that there were so many ways he could have screwed someone over in the last century and a half—it was hard to know up front why a given person was mad at her husband. And how big a deal it was. For the sake of Caroline's party, Elena hoped it was a small deal. "Caroline told me that she finally convinced you guys to send Hope here. And I've heard Hope's an amazing young witch. She's doing well at the school, Caroline says."

Hayley smiled tightly. "Caroline's perkiness, and her ass, may have convinced Klaus. But Alaric convinced me."

Elena couldn't help laughing out loud.

Hayley pointed at the pink hair. "I love the color."

"Pardon me?" the awful woman said, looking offended to be pointed at. And apparently still unaware of what had happened to her hairdo.

"Hope had a lot of accidental magic and flare-ups at that age," Hayley murmured. "I liked it when it was funny. They're not common at all though, in young children. You're got a special witch on your hands."

"Ah, the lovely Elena Gilbert." A brown-haired man, dressed in an impeccably tailored suit, exponentially more expensive than Damon's best tailored suit, walked up to Elena and Hayley. His pocket square probably cost as much as Elena's dress. He kissed Elena gently on the cheek. Smoother than smooth, with an even smoother British accent. "Or should I say Salvatore?"

"Elijah," Elena said. "It's good to see you." She meant it. Elijah was still the genteel, honorable Michaelson of her youth, though Elena now saw the vampire as a more complicated, less perfect, less trustworthy person than she once had. She thought there was a lot of good in Elijah, but she wouldn't willingly put her life in his hands. "And Gilbert's still correct. I kept my maiden name."

"How charmingly modern of you."

"Don't get me wrong, Elijah. It's lovely to see you, but what are you doing here, at Back to School Night?"

"I'm merely taking an interest in my niece's education." Elena noticed his hand on the small of Hayley's back. Huh. That was interesting. Elena was clearly behind on her understanding of the romantic entanglements of the Original Family.

With a whoosh, Klaus appeared next to his brother. "Elijah says he merely wants to ensure that Hope will study the classics, not neglect her Shakespeare or her Beowulf, but I think he's here to check up on me. Make sure I'm not eating the locals, that sort of thing."

The fifties-housewife-wannabe gasped and fiddled with her strand of pearls. "What on Earth? And where did you come from?"

The thousand-year-old hybrid took in the sight of this silly woman, eyes widening at her increasingly neon pink hair. "Wouldn't you like to know? You insufferable little thing, insulting a doppelganger of all people. Really? In front of my brother, who has a special place in his heart for Elena, and all the Petrovas, really. Word to the wise—He's not nearly as nice as he seems. Yes, of course, Elijah's refined and polite. You'll never see his fangs. That doesn't mean he won't use them. It's sure dumb luck that you're alive."

"Have you been drinking? What on Earth is going on at this school?" the now blue-haired woman asked the room at large. "Who are these people?"

Damon, wearing his second-best suit, with Joey sitting on his shoulders, finally sauntered up to Elena. Joey was eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich that his dad must have made him in the kitchen. A blob of jelly was dripping into Damon's hair. Two years ago, Elena couldn't have imagined Damon letting anybody drip any sort of food on any part of him, let alone into his freshly washed hair.

She wished she could talk to Stefan for just one moment, so she could tell him how different his brother was, now that Damon was a dad. How he packed their lunches for daycare, and stayed home with them three days a week, because there wasn't much going on in the bar before five, how he took them to story time at the library every week, but had been kicked out of the children's museum after having a loud argument over the historical accuracy of an exhibit on the invention of the telephone. Truthfully, Damon and the kids had been kicked out of a number of places in Charlottesville for a number of reasons, but he kept taking them out places because he said otherwise he'd just end up hitting his head against the wall out of boredom. She wished she could tell Stefan that his brother wasn't afraid to be a father anymore. That he seemed to fit into the role. He seemed to think he was worthy of their kids. And the kids adored him because he let them break rules left and right, and he made them laugh, and when they were scared, he made them feel safe. She wished she could thank her first love for what he'd given her, the chance to know this version of Damon Salvatore. Right now, this version of Damon was glaring at the pretentious, pink-haired harpy. "Who the hell are you?" Damon snapped.

Caroline scurried over to their little group, looking like she wanted to kill all her friends.

"Now, I'm sure we can work this out. What's the trouble?" she asked. Her eyes went wide, wide, wide as she noticed the woman's hair turning from hot pink to a bright Van Gogh yellow. "Oh my!"

"Ms. Forbes-Salvatore," the woman said. "Who exactly are you letting into this school?"

Damon smiled, a small smile. A dangerous smile. "Summer, baby, can you make it polka-dotted?"

Summer giggled and clapped. Blue polka dots broke out throughout the yellow hair.

Hayley rolled her eyes. "Damon Salvatore. The boy who never grows up." And she gave Elena's husband a look of pure, unadulterated hatred.

Damon frowned at her expression. "Hayley, right? Hope's mother?"

Hayley nodded and glared at him.

"What did I ever do to you?" he asked.

And then it hit her like a sack of bricks. Elena realized exactly what he'd done. Hayley had been Tyler's friend.

That's why she'd been in Mystic Falls in the first place. And Damon, being Damon, had killed Tyler Lockwood. His emotions had been off at the time, Elena had been in a magic coma, and there were so many extenuating circumstances, including the fact that the literal devil was manipulating him. But nothing excused the fact that he'd killed someone. Because Tyler was a person. A boy Elena had grown up with, who she'd known since they were babies. Matt's best friend. Caroline's first love. Hayley's friend. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Elena hated it when she was reminded of all the terrible choices Damon freaking Salvatore had made over the years. She gulped, but then she stuffed her emotions down as best she could. This was not the time to scream.

Moving closer to her husband, Elena whispered in his ear. "Tyler. You killed him."

Damon's face fell. He had the good grace to look ashamed as he nodded solemnly at Hayley. "You can kick my ass about that later," he said softly.

Hayley glared some more.

"Now, now, we can all get along. It's not like anyone can do anything to change that bit of nastiness, or bring the annoying idiot back," Klaus said. (Klaus Michaelson, unlikely diplomat.) "And young Miss Salvatore is quite the lovely young witch. That's an impressive display of early magic. Summer, love, I would be delighted if I could see stripes."

Her daughter obliged with black and white stripes.

"What exactly is happening?" the woman said shrilly. "Why are you all staring at me? And, please, who are you people?"

Klaus smiled. His dangerous smile was much scarier than Damon's. "It never fails to amuse me how stupid human beings can be. Who are we? We are people who you should not call 'you people.' "

Damon exchanged a smirk with Klaus. He reached his hand out to the awful woman with the striped hair, as if to shake. "Damon Salvatore. You're standing in my house. And I've been around since before the Civil War, so you don't want to mess with me."

The woman's black and white brows rose almost to her black and white hair. Clearly confused. She made no move to shake Damon's hand.

"And as for me—" Klaus began, but Caroline slapped him on the back of his head.

"Would you just shut up?" Caroline sighed.

"You'll have to forgive my brother," Elijah said, condescension dripping from his voice. "He never has mastered simple manners."

"I'm so sorry, Mrs. Fitzgerald," Caroline said in a rush. "Mr. Salvatore is my brother-in-law. He may have offered Mr. Michaelson some bourbon earlier. Clearly they over-indulged. Mr. Michaelson is one of our biggest donors, as well as a parent at the school. We wanted to extend a warm welcome to him." Caroline gave them all her most dazzling smile. "Perhaps it was a little too warm."

Mrs. Fitzgerald looked from Klaus to Damon, still baffled.

Caroline move to stand directly in front of Mrs. Fitzgerald, looking her in the eyes. "Don't be afraid. Nothing upsetting is happening here."

"I am not afraid," the woman parroted back, compelled.

Caroline knelt down, looking closely at Summer, who unfortunately could not be compelled. "Sweetie, can you turn it back? To the right color?"

Summer giggled, clapped her hands. The woman's hair turned blue with silver lightning bolts.

Caroline looked like she might scream. "Elena!" she hissed. "Did you not read the part of my email where I specifically said that children should be left at home?"

"Our sitter fell through," Elena said. "And you told us that we had to be here, under penalty of death."

"I didn't mean it literally! And why don't you have a backup sitter? I always have two backup sitters. At least. Sometimes three or four."

Damon's brows rose. "Caroline. You are not the model childcare hirer." Turning to Klaus and Elijah, he said, "Do you know that she hired an actual siren to be her nanny? Like a siren from Homer? They're real. Who knew?"

Klaus smiled in the most delighted way. "I hadn't heard that story. Do tell it, Caroline."

Caroline glared at them all. "I. Am. Working. And you're all being horrible, completely, totally, horrible people, who make a bad impression on impressionable people like Mrs. Fitzgerald. Now, Mrs. Fitzgerald, we are going to get you sorted."

Haley turned to Elena. "Why are you here anyway? They're a little young for the school. Unless there's a preschool?"

Damon laughed. "Caroline insisted. Apparently we ought to be thinking ahead. Gifted children need special attention. Blah, blah, blah. She made us feel like we would be the worst parents in the entire world if we didn't come. And now she's not happy."

Caroline looked very close to smacking Damon in the face.

Klaus flashed her a ridiculously charming smile. When that didn't make her stop glaring, he leaned in and whispered something Elena couldn't hear with her pathetic human hearing. Caroline blushed deeply and smiled just a little, to herself. Klaus let his hand linger on her shoulder a touch longer than was appropriate for Back to School Night.

Alaric, who finally seemed to notice that there was a situation going on, hurried over with the eight-year-old twins. One brunette, one blonde. They looked nothing alike. "Care, I thought the girls could fix this little … whatever … we have going on. Klaus, stop looking like you're enjoying it. Lizzie, take her right hand. Josie, take her left."

"Gently, girls," Caroline whispered.

The twins siphoned Summer's magic out of the awful woman's body. Slowly, the lightning bolts faded away, and the woman's silver hair turned back to blond. After she'd praised her girls and promised them mounds of gold stars, Caroline compelled Mrs. Fitzgerald to forget that anything strange had happened.

Now she asked brightly, "Who has a question I can answer?"

"Are you offering Latin?" Elijah asked.

Alaric and Caroline began explaining that they only had so many teachers, so presently they couldn't offer languages, or A.P. physics, or A.P. calculus. Elena had no idea why anyone thought ten-year-old Hope would be taking senior-level calculus in the fifth grade, but apparently both Klaus and Elijah believed the littlest Michaelson was a prodigy. A prodigy in all things.

Klaus was now pondering hiring a private tutor and Mrs. Fitzgerald, for some bizarre reason, was trying to negotiate a tutor-sharing situation so that her son could also study Latin, French, physics and calculus. Now, the stupid woman was giving her phone number to an Original hybrid and inviting him to her home, to discuss the matter further.

Klaus pulled Caroline towards the snack table, claiming that he needed her to help him sample the refreshments and keep him from sampling what he wasn't allowed to eat. Mrs. Fitzgerald wondered aloud if he might be diabetic, which was a pity because he was so young and handsome.

Elijah was grilling Alaric on the school's finances, and wondering why the massive donation from "Niklaus" hadn't been enough to cover a Latin teacher.

Damon took advantage of Caroline not paying attention to what they were doing and herded their two little children upstairs, so they could bounce on his old, giant bed and not turn anyone else's hair pink.

And, for some reason, Hayley dragged Elena towards the decanters, insisting that they both deserved a tall drink of good whiskey as a reward for participating in Back to School Night.

The two women sat together, drinking expensive liquor and talking about their children, how their lives were so much stranger than they'd ever imagined when they were children themselves, but how some things were normal. Even little witch prodigies had trouble sleeping through the night, and teething, and learning how to go down the slide without mama. As Hayley gave Elena advice on potty training, Elena looked around at the room.

The library was packed. With parents, teachers, and the two counselors Caroline and Ric had had the good sense to hire. She saw Jeremy across the room, leaning on a bookshelf, looking so grownup and confident as he talked to a pair of nervous-looking fathers. Jeremy taught vampire hunting and therefore his talking points were probably the reason for their nerves. Her little brother was no doubt explaining his methods for teaching students how to stake with good form, or something equally horrifying, having no idea that he shouldn't be so truthful tonight. Jeremy waved at her before going back to his animated conversation. Elena waved back.

As she listened to Hayley's instructions on how to make playdough and slime from scratch, Elena grinned. Partly because she did want to try Hayley's slime recipe. Summer and Joey would love that. But mostly because the Salvatore School was thriving. This old library was positively buzzing with energy and excitement. Mrs. Fitzgerald aside, the parents seemed thrilled to be here, to have a safe place where their bizarrely gifted children could learn to embrace their powers. So they could be as spectacular as Bonnie Bennett. Yes, this school was a magical place. Not because of witchcraft, but because Caroline and Ric were working so hard to make their little corner of the world a better place to live. They were giving their daughters a better life, a better chance at hope and happiness, at not ending up insane or at the mercy of vampires or mean ghosts. And they were inviting all these other kids along for the ride.

Elena was profoundly proud of her friends.

Chapter Text

(so maybe I got carried away with epilogues, and was having a hard time saying goodbye to the story...)

June 2030

Mystic Falls, Virginia

Elena got home from a 12-hour shift at the hospital to a suspiciously quiet house. She climbed the steps of the rebuilt Gilbert house, her feet sore, her mind and body exhausted. They'd been living here for eight years, and it finally felt like theirs. Like Damon and Elena and their children were living in their own home, not her parents'. When they'd rebuilt the residence, they'd tried to mimic the original perfectly, but it never felt quite right. The details gave the fraud away. The smells. The way light reflected off window panes. The porch steps refusing to creak because the wooden boards were too new. But last year they'd torn out the shrubbery and let the children plant an eccentric, bizarrely plotted, frankly ugly herb garden with all sorts of magical plants. When Damon had jokingly suggested painting the house red, she'd laughed. But then she'd latched onto the idea, insisting that they look at a million color swatches until they found the perfect shade of blood red. And so, while the neighbors thought the Gilbert-Salvatore family simply had awful taste, their house was now a tribute to their vampire heritage.

Elena threw her bag on the couch. Still quiet in here, but she heard voices in the backyard. Making her way towards the kitchen, she stepped over clothes, toys, and snack wrappers. Couldn't Damon ever make the kids pick up after themselves? Just once?

The noises coming from the backyard were shrieks of excitement. Of course. It was the first real pool day of the summer. Still in her scrubs, Elena slipped off her shoes, and peeked outside. Seven year-old Gil and six-year-old Lucia were splashing around the shallow end, squabbling over the orange noodle like it had magic powers.

Joey had a friend over, the new kid with the spiky hair and the earring, who'd transferred to the Salvatore School after his public school expelled him for setting fires, accidentally, with his mind (though of course the old principal was convinced he'd used matches and lighter fluid). Joey and his friend were taking turns doing cannon balls in the deep end, making sure to splash each other with each dunk.

Damon stood at the edge of the pool, wearing nothing but black swimming trunks. No design, nothing special about them, but judging by the quality of the material she was sure they cost a hundred dollars. Coming up behind him, she kissed him on the back of the neck. He twisted his head to look at her, brows raised. "Damn, woman, I am losing my touch."

"I snuck up on you again?"

He nodded and turned his attention back to Joey and his friend, whose cannonballs sent waves throughout the pool, so spectacular that Elena suspected they were using magic to amplify their landings.

Sandy-haired, restless, their oldest son always looked like he was contemplating a prank. Unlike Summer, he didn't telegraph his viewpoints. He was all about the long game, often the long con. It was obvious that he was, genetically speaking, the boy named "Stefan Jr." from the vision. He looked exactly the same and even shared some of that boy's personality traits. But not all. The boy in the vision had been a ballsy trouble-maker, but also serious, solemn, reminiscent of his namesake at the same age (according to Damon).

Joey Salvatore was lighter, sillier.

In real life, Joey's serious streak and fierce loyalty did remind them both of Damon's brother. He had an instinct to defend whatever or whoever he determined to be right, and to judge evildoers harshly—this self-righteousness was not directed at immoral vampires, but rather the Mystic Falls Founder's Council, which continued to glorify the antebellum South and pretend like slavery either hadn't existed or wasn't that bad of a thing.

But other times, Joey was whimsical, outrageous, unburdened. He was downright joyful. Maybe it was the fact that he was conceived so soon after Damon and Elena's bodies had been flooded with magic, but Joey radiated life.

"Mom! You're home!" Summer yelled, running out to Elena. "So what do you think?" She twirled around, showing off a purple bikini and the new, barely-there curves of her almost-teenage body. She'd pulled her dark hair was up in a high ponytail, reminiscent of Elena's cheerleading days.

"Absolutely not!" Damon snapped, arms crossed, pointing at the house.

"Mom!"

Damon cleared his throat and sounded about ninety as he said, "Young lady, you march yourself back inside, and don't come out until you're wearing something that doesn't make me want to throw myself into a fire."

"Dad!" Summer shrieked, hands on her hips, looking just as furious and stubborn as her father. Her blue eyes looked so much like Damon's, and the rest of her so much like Elena, but Summer's expression differed from them both. She was her own person, getting herself into far more trouble at school than either of them had when they were her age. Despite all of Damon's vampire antics, he'd been a polite, well-mannered human child. Summer was anything but. She delighted in telling everyone she met, adults and kids alike, exactly what she thought.

Elena giggled, throwing an arm around Summer's shoulders. "I bought the bikini for her, hon. Remember our girls' trip to the mall last week?"

"How could you, Elena?" Damon looked like she'd just staked him in the gut. "She's indecent."

Elena shook her head. But then she frowned at her daughter. "Bonnie's mother stopped by the hospital earlier today," she said quietly, so none of the other children could hear. "Apparently she's here, visiting the grandkids. They might all stop by tomorrow. She's promised not to kill your father, which is a good thing." Damon laughed, but managed to look good and ashamed for turning Abby into a vampire almost two decades ago. "But she also said that you wrote to her. About climate science? That you want to organize vampires to care about the environment?"

Summer nodded. She loved math and science, and had recently become obsessed with climate change. "Vampires would make the perfect climate activists," Summer said. "People who can actually remember what the world used to be like, because maybe they lived through the industrial revolution? And they're planning to be on the planet forever? Those people ought to take an interest in the climate. And politics in general. And by the way, do vampires even vote? Did you vote, Dad?"

Damon just stared at her. "No. I didn't vote. I still don't vote."

"You didn't vote in the last election?" Summer hissed. "Do you know how incredibly irresponsible that is?"

"I don't care," he said in a low, angry voice. "What I care about is you writing to vampires about the fucking climate! You don't even know Abby, not really, not in a way that counts. What if you offended her? What if unbeknownst to us, she'd flipped her humanity switch and decided to come after you because, oh, I don't know, she has a whole litany of reasons to not trust me or your mother?"

Summer gasped. "But she's Aunt Bonnie's mom! She'd never do anything to us."

Luckily the younger children were making too much of a ruckus in the pool to overhear anything.

Damon's face fell. In the heat of the moment, he'd clearly forgotten that while they had given Joey and Summer a PG-13 version of Damon's long life as a vampire and Elena's short stint as one, they'd left a lot out. Including who had turned Bonnie's mother into a vampire.

Elena pulled Summer closer to her. "When you hang around with vampires, things get complicated and confusing. Impossibly complicated situations happen. All the time."

Damon nodded. "I'm sorry, sweetie, but you can't just go writing letters to vampires, even if you know them. Not unless it's Aunt Caroline or Uncle Tommy. And even then, you should check with us first. Just in case. Because weird shit happens."

#

July 2030

New York City

It was strange to be in New York again. Over the decades, he'd spent so many nights in this city. But not many lately. Not a single night since he married Elena. Modern New York was jarring to him, a place out of time. He kept expecting to see flappers with bobbed hair and those tempting fringed skirts, Model A's and Renaults running alongside horses. Or else the grunge of the 1970s. That whole decade was filthy and wonderful. This current New York City, with every walking around so clean and fresh smelling, without any fringe or feathers, looking down at their smart phones instead of really seeing the bustle and insanity of the city—this New York seemed wrong.

Nonetheless, Damon Salvatore was here, on the stage of a university auditorium, wearing a tailored suit, his hair still inky black but his scruffy beard an equal mix of salt and pepper. Laugh and worry lines etched into his face showed a record of his years as a human. He gripped the podium, surveying the crowd, which filled up most of the medium-sized auditorium. They weren't here just for him. He was part of a panel of authors at this college literary festival, probably the least interesting and least qualified person on this stage. But the crowd, nonetheless, took Damon Salvatore's breath away.

Elena grinned at him from the front row, flanked by their children and Tommy. Her hair pulled up in a French twist, and her voluptuous curves hugged by an incredibly sexy black dress. That dress was just not fair. Especially when she was sitting down in the front row, and the dress rode halfway up Elena's thighs, taunting him.

Tommy Fell held Damon and Elena's youngest kid tightly on his lap. Somehow he managed to lounge in his chair with the elegant, casual grace of a vampire who'd long ago accepted himself and felt at home his beautiful body. Only a vampire pushing 200 could be so damned at home in his own skin. Damon's oldest friend wore an amused expression. Also skin-tight leather pants, and a Rolling Stones t-shirt that clung to his perfect abs. Six year-old Lucia—whose inky black hair matched her solemn, shy expression—squirmed on his lap, wriggling, trying to get free. The kid was plenty old enough to sit in her own damned chair, but she was also a wanderer, and Tommy seemed to be using his vampire strength to prevent the escape and inevitable mayhem of Damon's youngest hooligan.

Tommy raised an elegant eyebrow, as if telling Damon to get on with it.

On Tommy's other side, a young man waved at Damon, wriggling his fingers almost flirtatiously, before returning those fingers to Tommy's hair. Damon wasn't sure what to think of his old friend's new fling-this manchild who'd come of age in the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, who'd fled when the beheading started and seemed to have been hopping from party to party ever since, crossing continents. In another life, Damon might have thought Jacque was a lot of fun. But in this life, he worried that the vain, selfish idiot was a bad influence on Tommy, and on Damon's impressionable children. Summer, in particular, found vampires far too fascinating.

Jacque blew Damon a kiss, and then grinned at him in this overly delighted, overly innocent way. Tommy laughed, and blew Damon a kiss of his own. A second later, Grayson and Lucia followed suit, loving to imitate "adults."

Damon rolled his eyes and opened his advance copy, preparing to read the opening pages. No, that wasn't going to work. Was the book's typeface this tiny yesterday when he'd practiced? He held it at arm's length. He squinted. Fuck. Must be the light. No, the light on this stage was damned perfect. Damon's spectacles sat in his jacket pocket, waiting for just this moment, but he'd been hoping to get by without them today. He stalled some more.

The college student at the edge of the stage was looking at him, clearly confused. She held up a plastic water bottle. He shook his head.

He was much less vain than the version of himself from that prophetic dream. That vainer dream version Damon had waited until he was thirty-nine, one year from now, before he even visited an eye doctor, and only because Elena had forced him to. In real life, he'd become plagued with headaches around thirty-five, miserable each night when he sat down at his computer to write the first draft of this book. As he'd squinted at the text on his computer, he'd remembered that afternoon by the pool. The way the world was fuzzy, and then it wasn't, his immense, blessed relief when he slid on his dream spectacles. So he'd scheduling an appointment four years early. The optometrist had laughed at his nerves, saying he should count himself lucky to have made it this long without glasses. Damon resisted telling the man how old he really was, or lecturing him on how rare spectacles were in a small town in the 1850s or '60s.

But fuck! Half the audience was college kids, and in his fantasy Damon Salvatore was the young, hip author who all the kids wanted to be like. Despite all his maturity, he still worshiped youth. He squinted at his text one final time. Still blurry. He cursed under his breath, then pulled his wire-rimmed specs out of his suit pocket and slid them on, sighing involuntarily as the first page of his book came into focus. He stole a glance at his beautiful wife. She was smoothing down her dress, which clung to every curve, and was right now threatening to ride scandalously high on her thighs.

She mouthed, "You look beautiful. Own them."

Two seats down, Tommy Fell gave Damon a hard look which clearly meant Damon was an idiot, and that if the reading didn't start soon he'd be jonesing for some AB-. "You're gorgeous, old man," Tommy mouthed.

Damon stifled a laugh. At first it had been a joke that he was going to write a vampire novel. He'd been complaining, again, that authors never got it right, and Caroline had suggested he just write his own damned book instead of complaining about Twilight again. So he'd joked about it a lot. But then one night at the bar he began jotting down ideas on the back of napkins. Soon, every night, he found himself lost in this story. It was cathartic to lay all the insanity down and make sense of it, to put Katherine to rest by making her a fictional character. He'd never thought of himself as a writer. That was Stefan, all those damned journals. But his brother had never once written the truth, and Damon knew that he could. Damon could lay it all bare. He could write himself as a monster in those monstrous years, and it felt good to do it. Like he was taking control of the past. It felt like he was finally the master of his own destiny.

He cleared his throat, leaned into the microphone, and began reading the opening to his thinly veiled memoir, marketed to the world as a juicy vampire novel.

The first time he saw his lover for who she really was—a vampire who'd died and been reborn to the night, some four hundred years before his birth—his world cracked open. Suddenly, there were possibilities he'd never dreamed of. Magic and myth previously reserved for children's stories, or the mad fools locked up in asylums. Darkness he'd never allowed himself to contemplate.

Though this dark-haired beauty with perfect olive skin appeared to be younger than him, barely old enough for a debutante ball, this was a creature out of time. She'd witnessed Columbus sailing for the Americas. She'd danced with Louis XIV and seduced Alexander Hamilton. She had cheated death over and over. She always looked out for herself. She was more than a woman. And her blood offered him the chance to be more than a man.

#

After the reading, they all hung out with Bonnie and Sajen, chatting about the reading, their assortment of children, and a bartender who Sajen wanted to fire from the Charlottesville location. Sajen was holding his and Bonnie's youngest daughter on his hip. The little girl was two and named after Bonnie's grandmother. Sajen's other arm draped lazily around Bonnie's waist. He was the only man in the auditorium wearing shorts. Damon had to applaud his commitment to his particular brand of fashion. Their older daughter, who'd just turned six, was huddled with Gil, Lucia, and Joey in some kind of fervent discussion that they seemed to think was secret.

Damon feared the four of them might be plotting world domination.

Tommy began talking excitedly about nightclubs. He was insisting that Damon come out dancing with him tonight, and was not taking the almost-forty-and-I-didn't-sleep-enough-last-night excuse as a legitimate excuse. Tommy had a list of clubs, some of which Damon remembered, some of which he'd never heard of.

Out of the corner of his eye, Damon saw Summer talking to the teenage son of one of the other authors. She was twirling her hair between two fingers, laughing at a joke that could not possibly be funny enough to warrant such peals of laughter from his little girl. As Summer moved on from her hair to fiddle with the spaghetti strap of her sundress, Damon noticed once again that the neckline was not the neckline of a child's dress. When he'd told Elena that the dress was more suitable for a hooker than a seventh grader, she'd laughed and called him an ancient prude.

He surveyed the boy his daughter was talking to. He looked sixteen, maybe older. Far too old for his daughter.

Damon found himself drifting over to the pair of them. "Damon Salvatore," he said, interrupting the boy mid-sentence and shoving his hand toward him. "The dad."

The kid laughed and shook his hand with the air of a privileged white boy who'd learned how to shake hands and talk to his father's business partners before he'd learned to tie his shoes. "Prescott Walters," he said smoothly. "And I know who you are. I read your book."

Damon couldn't help grinning. "What did you think?"

"It was brilliant. Like it was so modern, but it wasn't. There was this feeling like you were reading a diary from somebody alive in the Civil War. But then you weren't. It was like Hawthorne and Bram Stoker meet Fitzgerald and Jonathan Saffran Foer."

"Thank you," Damon said, sincerely. Though the explanation was damned pretentious.

"Of course my mom doesn't know I read it." Preston dropped his voice, conspiratorially. "She put it down after the second chapter. Said it was inappropriate."

Damon waggled his eyebrows, giving the kid his best wicked expression. "That's why I stopped reading aloud where I did, today."

Even Summer laughed. She'd read the whole book, though she'd told Damon that she pretended it was fiction because otherwise it was just too gross.

Elena came to stand next to him, linking her arm in his. "Whatcha up to, honey?"

"Meeting Summer's new friend. This is Preston. And this is the mom."

Elena rolled her eyes as Bonnie and Sajen meandered their way over to join the party.

"Are you giving this poor boy the third degree?" Bonnie asking, struggling to keep from breaking out in laughter.

"Never," Damon said, turning his attention back to Preston. "Now, buddy, how old are you? Eighteen? Twenty-five?"

Summer glared at him. If eyes could shoot daggers …

Preston smiled amiably. "Sixteen."

"And you know that my daughter is all of twelve?"

Elena elbowed him hard in the ribs.

The arrows shooting metaphorically out of Summer's eyes had morphed into heavy wooden stakes. "Dad," she snapped. "It's not like you have any ground to stand on. When you and Mom started dating, she was eighteen and you were like 171 or something."

Damon raised his brows and gave her a hard look, allowing his anger and disappointment to shine through. Regardless of the fact that nobody would believe that claim, their children had been taught to be more discreet about their parents' backstories. "I was twenty-three, thank you very much, and your mother was legally an adult."

Prescott made an excuse to leave, having suddenly and conveniently seen an acquaintance from his Vermont-based boarding school.

Before Elena could chew out Damon for his utter lack of boundaries, he was saved by his literary agent. Richard sauntered over, looking very New York and overly intellectual with his hipster glasses and his fashionably rumpled suit. He wanted to introduce another fledgling writer to Damon, a forty-year-old African-American man with a giant Afro—a high school history teacher named Theo. He'd just signed with Damon's agent, and was working on a book about the Confederate regiment that Damon's character had fought with in the Civil War, and a similarly "ordinary" Union regiment of Blacks. Theo was eager to compare notes on the period and this particular group of foolish young men.

Sajen went red when he heard the man's name, and disagreed with everything the poor guy said, glaring at him and being so unfriendly that the poor teacher finally got the hint and went away to talk to someone else about historically accurate period details. Damon had to run after him, shoving his card into the poor man's hand, and apologizing for his rude friend. "I think he started drinking a little early, man. But I'd love to talk about this stuff later."

When had Damon become the diplomat?

"Sajen, what's wrong with you?" Bonnie was ranting. Their two year-old began to whimper and then full-on-cry, probably because Bonnie was raising her voice.

"He's the guy," Sajen whispered. "The guy you're supposed to marry."

"Well, I'm not going to marry him now, am I?"

Sajen frowned, looking so young. "What if you do?"

Bonnie softened, leaned in and kissed her husband of ten years sweetly on the mouth.

"The visions aren't foolproof," Elena told Sajen, gently. Wistfully. Damon knew she was thinking about the daughter who never was, Rose. That in a way she still mourned for a child who had never truly existed. "It's confusing because we did let the magic out. Lots of things have come true. But not everything."

Tommy said, "Maybe you just did something different, man. One little thing, everything changes. I read an article. It's something to do with butterflies."

Bonnie rubbed Sajen's shoulder. "You asked me out."

"That's right!" Damon burst out, remembering that night at the bar years ago. "You'd been pining after her forever, but you didn't make a move until we told you about the visions. Because you got jealous of some dude named Theo, who by the way none of us had ever met."

"And maybe we still haven't," Elena said, giggling. "How do we know that man's even the right Theo? You might have been rude to that poor man for no reason whatsoever." She trailed off, staring at something in the crowd. Damon swore under his breath as he realized that their two oldest children had gone rogue. "Summer! Joey! What are you guys doing?" Elena shouted. They looked back at the adults, but didn't come running. "Seriously?" Elena said. She managed to grab Gil before he could go off on his own, and held his skinny frame tight against her body.

Damon was about to run after his idiots when they finally turned around. Each child was dragging a grownup-sized person behind them. And then he saw Caroline's smile, bigger than the sun, as she hung onto Summer's hand. She smiled like she was coming home, like seeing them all made her whole again. Caroline, frozen in the body of a high school junior, appeared to be only a few years older than Summer. For the first time, it was unsettling to see them side by side.

Klaus's grin was smaller, smugger, but there was something light, almost friendly about the way he allowed Joey to pull him towards their family. Joey, always fearless, had grabbed the hand of an Original vampire like he was any ordinary uncle. Like Klaus Michaelson was not scary in the least. Damon wondered if he needed to lecture the kids on just how dangerous "Uncle Klaus" could be. Because, seriously, Klaus was only mildly reformed. The guy wasn't living on bloodbags, and Caroline had admitted a few months ago—on the phone with Damon when Elena didn't know she'd called—that Klaus had gone on a murder spree recently, after running into a frenemy he'd known while hanging round the court of Richard the Lionheart. This guy had, shockingly, betrayed Klaus before Klaus had the chance to betray him, and then run for over 800 years. Caroline and Damon had had a long talk about morals, vampire morals, and where to draw the line. She'd taken a short break from Klaus but gone back to him. The guy was a magnet for her, and a guide down the rabbit hole of a true vampire life.

Klaus smirked at Damon. "Has it only been five years? The human body, it really does begin to break down after thirty. Pity. But at least you're still pretty. For now."

Damon rolled his eyes. "Don't you have a list of enemies in New York to murder? Couldn't you be doing that instead? Or maybe somewhere in this city there's somebody in desperate need of a villain monologue?"

Klaus tutted, looking even more pleased with myself. "Don't get your panties in a twist. You look even sexier than you did ten years ago. Now it's just dad sexy. And besides, how could I miss this? It's not every day you get to hear an ex-vampire reading from his memoir, which everybody assumes is a novel. Because obviously death is death."

"Do you ever get tired of yourself?" Damon snapped.

"Of course not. And I'm also dying to talk to your agent about my own memoirs."

Caroline was going nuts over Bonnie's little Sheila. Care and Bonnie were shrieking, throwing their arms around each other. Caroline was holding little Sheila, cooing over her adorable toddlerness, and then heaping praise on Bonnie and Sajen's older daughter Emily, and on Damon and Elena's brood of hooligans. This was Care's first time meeting Sheila, and she cried unabashedly as she introduced herself to the tiny beauty.

"This is your Aunt Caroline," Bonnie said. "Remember her from Skype?"

Now Gil and Lucia were throwing their little arms around Caroline, and she was crying again, saying that she couldn't believe how big they were. She was overwhelmed at Gil's exhaustive knowledge of the stegosaurus, which he dumped on her ears as if she'd asked for a book report. She'd left Mystic Falls when Elena was pregnant with him, and she'd only seen the two little ones a handful of times. The last time they'd seen her, they'd met up in Charlottesville. Gil had been in kindergarten. Now he wanted to tell Aunt Care everything about second grade, which to hear him talk about it, was almost college. Lucia in turn had questions about what she needed to do to make sure she was Miss Mystic Falls when she was old enough.

Caroline hugged Elena with abandon, and the two women held onto each other for such a long time, Damon thought the hug might never end.

Damon stood watching this reunion, feeling like the world was right again. The ground stood extra firm beneath his feet.

Caroline finally pulled away and began grilling Elena about her medical practice. When Caroline was convinced that Dr. Gilbert was not disgracing the town of Mystic Falls by providing shoddy care or creating any paperwork nightmares, she moved onto Bonnie, her Occult Studies classes at Whitmore, her law practice defending witches.

The girls moved onto Ric's engagement to an accountant, a woman new to Mystic Falls, who believed the Salvatore School to be a school for troubled rich kids, who thought the supernatural existed only inside children's books. Elena was trying to convince Caroline to please, please, definitely not throw a scene at Ric's wedding—no matter how jealous she was of this stepmother her girls were gaining as a teenagers. Bonnie chimed in to assure Caroline that the twins had already been incredibly snippy and unwelcoming to the poor clueless accountant, so she needn't fear losing her place in their hearts.

Summer snuck away to talk to that damned sixteen year-old again (who clearly did not know who he should be afraid of, if he didn't find Damon Salvatore intimidating). Joey and Tommy had also snuck away. Damon was waiting for women to begin shrieking and find out that these two idiots were dumping ice down their backs, or something equally moronic. Damon didn't have the energy to try to stop them. He'd been up late, preparing for the reading. Summer had woken up in the middle of the night, with some bad dream about the girls at school being mean to her. And then Gil and Lucia had woken up at 6:30, as they always did, and insisted on breakfast.

So he let his oldest son tiptoe with his vampire uncle towards the stage. At Damon's feet, his littlest kids sat, playing cards with Bonnie's kid and trying like hell to get their little friend to wager money.

#

The event was dying down when Caroline pulled him outside, claiming that she had to talk to him about a surprise she was planning for Elena. Sitting outside on the steps of the university, Caroline began to cry.

She babbled about how jealous she was of Elena and Bonnie, all the things she was missing out on, how she missed her daughters something fierce, and she'd give up the young body for the chance to do carpools and go to every single swim meet. And she might be eternally hot, but she now looked the same age as Lizzie and Josie, and sometimes that made her want to throw up. She felt absurdly guilty for not having any stretch marks, or any evidence on her body that she'd ever carried twins. Here she was with her best friends, her family, but she looked young enough to be Elena's daughter. She was just a freak who drank blood because nothing tasted better. Caroline was ugly crying now, snot running down her nose.

Vampire emotions, Damon thought. They could be like knives.

Damon remembered how intensely he'd felt everything as a vampire. A few years ago he'd gone to therapy because he thought he was depressed. He kept telling the therapist he felt muted, like he couldn't really feel. After months, the therapist decided that Damon was not depressed. He said that Damon didn't understand what normal was. And a light bulb had lit up in Damon's ancient head. He didn't have a mental illness. He was just human. His biology no longer produced the colorful emotions he'd grown accustomed to over a century and a half. For the first couple years, even though the blood wasn't ruling him anymore, he'd still felt things more intensely than a human should. Out of habit. But the longer he was human, the farther away he traveled from those vampire highs and lows. His emotional peaks and valleys became smaller, gentler. It had been hilarious, when he'd realized that the psychiatrist was right. He didn't need medication. He was just human.

But Caroline wasn't human. And even as a human, her temper had run hot. Right now, she looked like she was ready to explode.

"Hey," Damon said, pulling her into a bear hug. "I get it. Believe me, I get it. It's hard to keep ties with humans, after this many years. It's been twenty years. Of course you're feeling it." He understood Caroline's plight as a vampire much better than Bonnie or Elena did, which was probably why Caroline had wanted to talk to Damon about this.

"It's just, I saw Elena, and she looked old. And it looked wrong. And I almost said something. But I bit my tongue. Because it would be rude. ... I don't fit anymore. And you guys, with the kids. I always knew she'd be the perfect mom. But me? I'm a vampire who can't be around my own children unless I'm pretending to be someone else. And sometimes that just kills me. And then sometimes I'm with Klaus in Tokyo or Paris or Peru, and it's this incredible life, and I don't miss Mystic Falls. And then I feel like I'm worse than shallow. Like I'm a kiddie pool."

"You aren't a kiddie pool," Damon murmured. "You're the best vampire I ever made. Stefan would be proud of you. And your mom, she'd love to see you as a mother. Because you're incredible."

Caroline shook her head. "No. I'm not. I'm not around."

"The twins love you. And they understand. It's hard, of course. It sucks that the world is like this, that we have to hide our true selves. I mean, I'm still hiding. You saw me up there, reading from a novel. I lie every day in a million ways. But your girls, every summer they spend with you and Klaus, adventuring around the world, they come back so freaking excited to tell us every single thing they did. They. Will. Not. Shut. Up. They've got this intensity when they get back. And I know where it comes from. You only get a certain intense brand of life from hanging out with vampires, especially vampires who revel in it."

After a long while of neither one of them saying anything, Caroline began telling him about her plans for surprising Lizzie and Josie over the weekend. She was going to pretend to be a Forbes cousin.

Damon tried to listen, but he was exhausted, wondering how much coffee he'd need to consume to keep up with Tommy at the clubs tonight. Caroline didn't look tired. She looked fresh and effortlessly beautiful. Just like the human girl he'd met twenty-one years ago, sans her cheerleader's outfit. High school junior. Miss Mystic Falls. Queen bee of the school. And one of the bossiest creatures to grace the Earth, whether she was alive or aliveish. Caroline Forbes. Forever seventeen. Frozen in time.

Damon felt that old, almost forgotten pull towards the unknown. Towards blood. Towards adventure. There was a pit in his stomach. Where regret lived. Where he still questioned, from time to time, his decision to be a human again, to live this life as a husband and father and business owner, a man who filed taxes and obeyed traffic laws and had a primary care doctor, an optometrist, and an orthopedist for his knee.

But these days, vampirism was not as seductive as it use to be. All of his loves were here. Nobody was angry at him for killing or abducting anybody. He had a life, in a way he'd never had before, not as a human the first time, and definitely not as a vampire. His life was full. Never boring. But much less bloody. Damon Salvatore's life was full to the brim.

Chapter Text

(I promise, this is the final piece.)

2034

Mystic Falls, Virginia

Summer sat next to her brother on the porch swing, holding her cards close to her chest as they played gin rummy. She stared out at their boring, small-town street. Mrs. W., out for her daily exercise, waved at them before returning to speed walking with tiny weights, which she pumped back and forth while she walked. The twins were on a blanket at her feet, building a tower of Duplos. And knocking it down. And building it again. The babies were on repeat.

Their mother came rushing out the door, dressed to the nines in a red dress and heels, carrying a new purse their dad had bought her, which probably cost as much as a car. Her hair was pulled up in a French twist, revealing the nape of her neck. Sparkly diamond earrings dangled from her ears. Summer was struck by the fact that Dr. Elena Gilbert still looked young and pretty, not at all like a mother to a sixteen year-old and five other children.

"Are you sure you guys are going to be okay with the little ones tonight?" Elena asked. "We're going to be very late, and you know, I can call a sitter. Maybe we couldn't get anybody, but I could try."

Summer laughed.

Joey rolled his eyes, saying, "We got it, Mom."

"There are four of them and only two of you."

"We'll be fine, Mom," Summer said. "We'll even promise not to burn down the house, which is more than I can say for some people."

"Ouch!" Joey said with a laugh. "You know, while we're at it, we'll make sure not to invite any vampires inside. Wait, didn't you invite both Uncle Stefan and Dad in before you knew what they were? Yeah, that's what I thought. So we won't do that."

Summer nodded. "I think it was actually Dad's murderous phase, and Uncle Stefan tried really hard to convince Mom, to make his evil brother wait outside. But she invited him in anyway. So we won't do that either."

Joey nodded earnestly. "We also won't make out with any vampires, regardless of how sexy and pretend-young they seem."

Elena looked like she couldn't decide whether to laugh or scream.

Before either Salvatore kid could say anything else, their dad sauntered outside in a freshly tailored, black, Italian suit. He was adjusting his silk tie. Damon Salvatore was still trim, his hair inky black with just a bit of gray at the temples.

Summer wished she could come along to this fancy benefit instead of staying home, babysitting everybody else.

"What's this about my murderous phase?" Damon asked, delight glinting in his eyes. Like it was the height of awesomeness for his children to be talking about his evil past.

"Didn't you have one?" Joey asked, sticking his tongue out at Summer when she smacked him on the shoulder. "What? You thought it was hilarious until Dad came outside."

"I had several," Damon said.

He'd stopped lying to them altogether in the last year. To her and Joey at least. He wanted his oldest kids to know everything he'd done, so secrets wouldn't slip out and shock them at inopportune moments. Like last year when Klaus Michaelson visited with Aunt Caroline. And, he wanted them to be afraid of vampires. Especially Klaus Michaelson.

"Damon," their mother murmured. "Now is not the time."

Damon raised his brows, giving Summer and Joey a hard look. "That pesky humanity switch, it causes an awful lot of chaos. But even when your emotions are on, the blood, it makes you a little crazy. Sometimes you just don't care, because you're you and they're not you. Predator. Prey. It's all very messy and complicated, and it tends to end with blood. Which is why you should be wary of vampires. And never invite anyone in. Right, Elena?"

Their mom nodded. "If it's not Uncle Tommy or Aunt Caroline, be very careful. Arm's length. At least."

"Don't you think you're being a little hypocritical?" Summer mumbled.

Damon shook his head. "We're being practical. I've seen how you look at that new teacher at the Salvatore School. He's older than I am."

"Really?" Joey asked. "I thought he was 100, tops."

Summer put her cards down on the floor, casting a spell wordlessly to keep anyone else from picking them up. "He was born in Greece in 1785."

"You little tramp!" Joey almost squealed.

"Joseph Salvatore!" Damon snapped. "Manners around ladies."

"I'm not doing anything! I just ask questions. And ew, like I want to be with someone older than Dad. Even 100 would be gross. No offense, Mom."

"You are not going to 'be with someone,' " her dad said with exaggerated air quotes, "anyone at all, no matter who or what they are, until you're at least 100."

Elena cleared her throat. "Are you two watching the twins? They're about a foot away from the steps."

"We've got it under control," Joey said.

"Well, I know you think you do, but in a second, they could topple over the edge, and then it's a call to 911, and then—"

"Elena, honey, breathe." Damon wrapped his arm around her waist. "They put up a threshold barrier. It extends to all the way to the edge of the porch, and stops at the steps. So much cooler than those tacky baby gates. Have I told you guys lately how much I love having witches for kids? Now, you know the rules. No booze. No boys. No magic the neighbors can see."

Summer said, "Joey's the one with a boyfriend," as her brother shoved her so hard she almost fell off the porch swing. "Ouch, I think he's cute."

"We're not, we're not anything!" Joey shouted.

Elena knelt down in front him of him. "You should bring him by for dinner sometime."

"He's not …"

"Whoever he is, I'd like to meet him."

Damon cleared his throat. "But not tonight. No booze of any kind. No drugs of any kind. No boys of any kind, no matter how cute they are. No vampires. No magic the neighbors can see. No behavior that could warrant a visit from the police, or a call from some idiot on the Founder's Council. Lindsey Fell has been asking too many questions lately. I don't want to hear her needling little voice, telling me that something strange happened. Got it?"

Summer and Joey gave their dad their best jaunty salutes.

#

An hour later, Summer and Joey were playing yet another game of gin rummy. The sun was setting, the pinks and purples dramatic, as if the sunset was making a statement.

It was just the two of them on the porch now. The twins were napping. Gil was curled up in his bed, reading the latest young adult vampire novel (where, once again, the author got vampires all wrong). Lucia had holed up in her bedroom, obsessed over her home manicure set.

The two oldest Salvatore kids debated whether to throw the party they'd been itching to throw, and wondered how much liquor they could steal without their parents catching on, and lamented how boring their stupid, small town was.

A sizzling sound made Summer glance up at the porch's magic barrier.

"What is that?" her brother asked.

She shook her head. No idea. But a feeling washed over her, cool and trembly, chilling her down to her bones.

Above the boring, stupid houses, the sky began to flicker. So many colors mixed into the sunset, colors that shouldn't be there. Summer could feel magic in the air, breathing, crackling, whispering its secrets to her. She couldn't understand them, but they were there.

Suddenly, a ball of fire burst through the barrier and landed at their feet.

"Oh shit, we're actually going to burn down the house!" Joey shouted. "Water, we need to get water."

But he didn't move.

They stared, transfixed, as the ball of fire dissipated, leaving only a piece of paper at their feet, charred around the edges, but otherwise intact. There was writing on it, flowing cursive that was a little old fashioned looking, as if the writer had practiced their penmanship with someone very old or very finnicky.

Gingerly, Summer reached for the paper. It was cool to the touch.

There's old magic brewing. Magic we don't entirely understand. Not even the old ones. Witches are connecting with other witches, all over the world. We need you. Both of you.

- H. M.

"Hope Michaelson," Summer whispered to her brother.

"You sure?" he whispered back.

She nodded. They hadn't seen her in years, not since she'd graduated high school. There was an air of mystery and importance surrounding the young woman. Even when she was much younger Hope had carried herself differently, like she existed outside of the rules set for everyone else. Summer supposed that's what came from having a father who was over 1000 years old, and being the only vampire-werewolf-witch trybrid in the world.

"She always looks mean," Joey whispered.

Summer stared at the note, not knowing what to say. Plenty of people came looking for their parents, desperately needing Damon or Elena to help with something. Nobody important ever came looking for her or Joey, or wrote to them, or considered them assets. Or considered them at all, unless it was to talk about how they couldn't believe how grownup they were, while never treating them like they were anything but silly children.

"Why us?" said Joey. "We're just kids."

Summer shook her head. Again: no idea.

The sky all around them was swirling.

"Kids with the Cure running through our veins," she murmured finally, when the silence became thick, threatening to overtake them. Their magic was stronger than almost everyone they'd ever met. The witches at the school all said they were special.

Summer glanced at Joey.

He was grinning his biggest grin.

She grinned back, as she felt the magic crackle inside her.

The future was writing to them, not to Damon, not to Elena. The future was reaching out to the next generation, with balls of fire, and cryptic messages, and perfect penmanship.

It was their time.

Their adventure.

Summer Salvatore was feeling epic.