Chapter Text
Damon took a few deep breaths in the protected cavern while he waited for the first wave of the hellfire to pass. He knew that compelling his brother away was the right thing to do. He couldn’t have lived with himself any other way. That didn’t make it any easier to leave Elena though. To know that he would never see her again. That one day she would wake up to a world where he wasn’t. He wondered if she would have someone compel her love away again. He wasn’t sure if he wanted her to or not. The idea of her forgetting him tore him apart, but her living the rest of her hopefully long life with that kind of grief weighing on her wasn’t much better. She was human now though. Maybe that would help. Knowing that she wasn’t facing eternity alone.
Once the first wave passed, he stepped out, dragging Katherine, who had just woken up, along with him, waiting for it to come back before he killed her. He cursed when he heard Stefan coming up behind him and just barely avoided the needle that his brother tried to stab him with. He threw Stefan back into the protected cavern and breathed a sigh of relief when he could still hear his heart beating strongly. That meant that he was just unconscious. Hopefully he wasn’t hurt too badly. At least if he didn’t wake up on his own, there were people out there who knew the plan and would likely come down to check things out. He didn’t have much more time to think before he saw the fire roaring back through the tunnels and stabbed the knife into Katherine’s heart just before it reached them.
The next thing Damon knew, he was floating in a bright white space. He hadn’t quite gotten his bearings yet when he heard a cacophony of whispering voices. He was still trying to separate all the voices talking at once when they stopped and only one voice rang out. He couldn’t tell if it was masculine or feminine, but it said, “Damon Salvatore, you have earned a chance few ever do.”
“What chance?” Damon asked confused.
“Your final act of selflessness makes you ineligible for hell, but you aren’t redeemed enough for peace either…yet,” the voice explained. “You will be sent back to the moment you first met your soulmate. You will have more time to decide where you will go. We will meet again then.”
“Wait! What do I…” Damon was cut off when he found himself lying in the road as he caught his first glimpse of Elena. He made a quick decision to play it the same as he did last time. Elena had told him how much she cherished this memory once she got it back. “Katherine,” he forced himself to say as he moved over to her.
“Um…no, I…I’m Elena,” she said as she looked around nervously and Damon resisted the urge to grin at her. He had to play this cool.
“Oh. You look…I’m sorry. You just…really remind me of someone,” he told her, shifting nervously, trying his best to keep everything the same as before. This was his first impression and he wouldn’t be taking it away this time. “I’m Damon.”
“Not to be rude or anything, Damon, but…it’s kinda creepy that you’re out here in the middle of nowhere.”
Damon gave a little chuckle as he smirked. “You’re one to talk. You’re out here all by yourself.”
“It’s Mystic Falls. Nothing bad ever happens here,” she said as though it should be obvious. ‘Oh if only you knew’, Damon thought wryly. “Got into a fight with my boyfriend,” Elena said sheepishly.
“Bout what…may I ask?” Damon asked raising his hands in a gesture that meant that he wasn’t prying and that she was free not to answer. He already knew that she would though, just as he already knew the answer.
“Life. The future. He’s got it all mapped out.”
“And you don’t want it?” Damon asked knowingly.
“I don’t know what I want,” she said with a shrug.
“Well that’s not true,” Damon said with a lop-sided smile. “You want what everybody wants.”
“What? Mysterious stranger who has all the answers,” she said teasingly.
He huffed a laugh. “Well let’s just say I’ve been around a long time. I’ve learned a few things.”
“So, Damon. Tell me. What is it that I want?” she asked with a smile and god Damon could just drown in that smile after so long.
He took a few steps towards her, reciting the words that he could never forget even if he tried. “You want a love that consumes you. You want passion. And adventure. And even a little danger.” He forced himself not to wince at the last part. Last time around she’d had a lot more than a little danger. She’d had nothing but danger. He would protect her from as much of that as he could this time.
“So, what do you want?” she asked with a smirk of her own, but before he could answer, a horn honked. “That’s my parents.”
Damon smiled as she turned back to him and he said, “I want you to get everything you’re looking for.” This time he didn’t compel her to forget. “But for now, don’t tell anyone you met me? I don’t want anyone to know I’m back in town just yet.”
Elena chuckled. Mysterious stranger was definitely right. She had no problem keeping his secret though. It wasn’t as if he’d hurt her and she was definitely more than a little intrigued by him. She hoped she would see him again. “Okay, Damon. I won’t say anything. See you around. Maybe.”
Damon watched her walk off, back to her parents car as he slipped into the woods and let out a heavy breath. He hoped that he wouldn’t regret not compelling her later. He had no intention of letting his brother weasel his way into her life first though. Not this time. She’d told him once that if she’d met him first things would have been different. This time she would remember that she had.
It wasn’t until he heard the car driving off that he remembered that this was the night of the accident. The one where she had almost died and had lost her parents. He rushed back out of the woods to try and stop it just in time to see the car hit the bridge and before he could decide what to do, it was already careening out of control which left him one option. He was already diving by the time it hit the water and was sinking fast. He tried to break the window first, but he couldn’t get enough momentum under the water to do it, so he just grabbed the door and yanked it off, unhooking her seatbelt and pulling her out and to the surface.
Elena regained consciousness just as they surfaced and she started coughing and flailing. “My parents!” she cried as she tried to get out of his arms.
“Elena, calm down,” Damon said firmly. “I’ll go back for them if you can make it to shore on your own,” he said sincerely as he took her face in hands.
“I can go back…”
“No,” Damon said. “And we don’t have time for arguments. You’ve already lost consciousness once and you might be injured. Go,” he gave her a push towards the bank and waited until she started swimming before he dove back down. When he got there, he could see that her mother was unconscious, but her father was still struggling with the seatbelt. At least his window was down so he wouldn’t have to show his strength to a vampire hunter. He reached in and yanked the seatbelt off, knowing that could just be passed off as adrenaline, unlike pulling the entire door off the car, and he pulled the man out. He could tell that he was in much worse shape even without the blood pouring from his head wound.
Just as Damon surfaced again, he heard another splash and saw Stefan jumping in and going for Elena. “Stef! There’s one more down there,” he called out as he swam that direction. Elena didn’t seem to be having too much trouble and if they could save both of her parents all the better. Even if they were vampire hunters and wouldn’t be likely to let him get too close to Elena. At least she would be better protected and have far less grief on her shoulders.
Stefan turned and looked completely confused at his brother, but when Elena pushed him away and asked him to help her parents, he decided that was the best course of action anyway and dove for the car. Once Elena could stand on the bottom, she waited for Damon to help him pull her dad out of the water, but he was unconscious now. They were just getting him up on the bank when Stefan returned empty-handed. “She was already gone,” he said sadly.
Damon sighed and tried to keep the irritation out of his voice as he said, “You should have brought her anyway. CPR might have been able to help.”
“Go back,” Elena sobbed as she ran over to Stefan and tried to push him back into the water. “Go back and get her!”
Damon went over and took her flailing arms, turning her to look at him. “By the time he gets there and back, it will definitely be too late. I’m sorry, Elena,” he said sympathetically.
“Why didn’t you bring her?” she cried as she started to collapse.
Damon caught her and lowered her gently to the ground before reaching into his pocket. “Oh crap. I didn’t think to dump my phone before I jumped in. Did you, Stef?” he asked hopefully, only for his brother to pull an equally waterlogged phone from his own pocket. “Knew I should have invested in the waterproof case,” Damon muttered before turning back to Stefan. “Why don’t you run back to the party and borrow a phone from someone to call 911. I’ll stay and take care of them.” He felt bad now for what he said about not bringing her mother up. He hadn’t meant to throw Stefan under the bus like that, and wanted to give him a chance to make up for it.
Stefan looked suspiciously at him, not wanting to leave his psychopath brother alone with two vulnerable humans, but when Elena yelled at him to go, he didn’t have much of a choice. He only hoped that they would both still be alive when the paramedics got there. Once Stefan was running back towards the bonfire, Damon turned back to Elena. “I’m gonna check on your dad. You’ll be okay,” he said gently as he moved over to the man that he wouldn’t admit scared the crap out of him. A normal vampire hunter wasn’t so bad, but this man had been an Augustine and after the horrors he’d experienced at their hands, he couldn’t help that sliver of fear he felt. Still, he hoped he survived for Elena’s sake.
He made a show of checking his pulse, despite the fact that he could hear from the heartbeat that it was way too slow. Then he pulled the eyes open and frowned worriedly when his pupils didn’t react at all in the light from the full moon. He pulled up his shirt and couldn’t help but curse when he saw the bulging black spot across his abdomen. Maybe if he’d been a doctor, he might be able to save him out here, but if the paramedics didn’t get here soon, he wouldn’t survive either. Unfortunately, Elena heard him curse and asked worriedly, “What’s wrong?” as she rushed over.
Damon took a few deep breaths before deciding that she deserved the truth. She’d never liked things sugar-coated and she hated lies with a passion. “His pulse is too slow, his pupils aren’t reacting to light, and it looks like he has some internal bleeding, probably from the seatbelt,” Damon told her. “Keep in mind, I’m no doctor, but…”
Elena broke down in tears and Damon couldn’t help but wrap an arm around him as she sobbed on his shoulder. “This is all my fault. If I hadn’t skipped family night. If I hadn’t fought with Matt and asked them to come get me.”
“Elena, no,” Damon said sadly, pushing her away enough to look in her eyes. He wouldn’t take her memories. He knew how she felt about compulsions, but surely this one little one would be okay. Once he caught her eyes, he brought his power to the surface. “This is not your fault. This was a simple accident. There is no one to blame.”
“Just an accident,” she repeated in something of a daze. “Not my fault.”
Damon let his power wane as he pulled her close again and she resumed sobbing. “The ambulance should be here before too much longer. Hopefully they’ll be able to help him.”
Stefan was back a moment later and stopped short at the sight before him. Damon was comforting her and the man hadn’t been eaten. His confusion reached a whole new level. “Damon, we should go…”
Damon shook his head. “I’m staying,” he told Stefan. “I’m not leaving her alone like this, and they’ll want to talk to me anyway.”
“Just make her forget, and lets get out of here. We don’t need to be involved,” Stefan said worriedly. Was his brother just being sadistic and waiting for more victims? Waiting for them to have hope and then snatch it away? Had he caused the accident to begin with even?
“I’m not taking her memory either,” Damon said firmly. “Go if you want, but I’m staying.” She would hate him messing with her memories and he’d long ago promised never to do that to her. That had been the main reason he’d forgiven her so easily for erasing him after he’d ended up in the prison world. If she had gone that far she must have truly been desperate. At least when he lost her, he’d had hope that he would see her again, even if it would take decades.
Stefan huffed and came over to check on her father himself, quickly coming to the same conclusion that Damon had. His chances weren’t good even if the ambulance got here now. He watched his brother warily, wondering what game he was playing as they waited, but not wanting to say too much in front of a human that Damon was refusing to compel for some reason.
They only sat there for a few minutes until they heard the sirens and since Stefan was the one without a sobbing girl in his arms he got up and ran to the road to flag them down. A team of paramedics was coming down the hill with loaded gurneys as the sheriff pulled up and Damon almost smiled at the sight of one of his closest friends after so long. Her death had been one of the more difficult that they’d dealt with, but at the same time, one of the easiest. At least it had been of natural causes rather than supernatural, though he did question if all the times she’d been given vampire blood to heal her from other injuries caused it sooner than it would have happened. Just in case, he would do his best to keep her away from the stuff.
Four of the six paramedics went to Grayson Gilbert since he seemed so much worse off while one of them came over to check on Elena. The last grabbed a handful of blankets and started passing them out as Liz came down the hill. Damon wrapped the blanket around Elena’s shoulders before his own, appreciating the reprieve from the cold and wet. “She lost consciousness for a bit right after it happened,” Damon told the paramedic that was looking Elena over.
“Are either of you hurt?” Liz asked Damon and Stefan and they both shook their heads. “Okay good. So what did happen here?”
Damon took the lead since he’d been here longer. “I saw the car go off the bridge and jumped in after it. The man there,” he pointed to Grayson, knowing that he wasn’t supposed to know any of these people, “motioned for me to get Elena first, so I did. She woke up as we reached the surface and implied that she’d be okay to swim, so I let her go and dove back down for him. Just as I was coming back up with him, my brother got here so I sent him down after the woman, but it was too late.”
“And you just happened to be here at just the right time to catch it?” Liz asked suspiciously.
“I can’t speak for him, but I was just out for a walk, trying to familiarize myself with the area. We’re here visiting family,” Damon told her.
“Yeah, I was doing the same,” Stefan told her. “I didn’t see it, but I heard the splash and then her yelling so ran over as quick as I could.”
Liz nodded, not seeing anything suspicious other than the extreme coincidence. She would be questioning Elena a bit more thoroughly once she was up to it though. “What are your names?” she asked.
“I’m Stefan Salvatore and this is my brother Damon,” Stefan told her, noticing that his brother was rather distracted and kept looking back at Elena.
“You’re visiting Zach then?” she asked.
“Yep. Good old Uncle Zach,” Damon said with a lop-sided half smile.
Liz nodded. She would have to tread carefully if she happened to find anything suspicious. This was a founding family after all and Zach was on the council. “Okay. Good enough. I assume I can find you at the boarding house if I have any more questions?” They both nodded and she headed over to Elena to see how she was now that the paramedic seemed to be finished with her.
Damon wanted to say goodbye to Elena, but she was busy and probably not in any shape for chit-chat at the moment. She remembered them mentioning that she and Jeremy had stayed with Liz for a while after the accident and Liz knew where to find him now if she asked. Not that he was expecting meeting him to be on her mind for a while.