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Chapter Text

Bonnie told Elena it would be like this. She said it would be instantaneous, and she wouldn’t remember anything from the sleep. Despite her friend’s warnings, Elena thought there had been some sort of problem with Kai’s spell when she opened her eyes as quickly as she’d closed them. One second, she was dipped down in Damon’s arms, and the next, she awoke. The closed coffin door, however, told her that the time had come and gone as quickly as her friend promised. Bonnie Bennett was dead. Elena squeezed her eyes closed for a moment, letting a couple tears pour from the corners of her eyes. Bonnie told her there wouldn’t be a way around it, but still, she hoped she’d wake to her best friend’s smiling victorious face. She’d imagined Bonnie’s proud expression after finding just the perfect loophole. Life didn’t work that way, though. Sometimes, they didn’t prevail.

Elena allowed herself another few seconds before she grew claustrophobic. She lifted the top of the coffin up, which, luckily, her friends had the right mind not to seal. She sat up in the bed and happily discovered that she wasn’t sore or unable to move after… however many years of not functioning. How many years had it been? A horrific image flashed before her mind of Bonnie, taken by some fatal car accident or untimely disease not long after Elena fell asleep. She looked around the family crypt. It was definitely dustier than it once had been. By her lack of welcoming committee, Bonnie’s death was not expected: a fact that pointed both to horrific car crash and content old age.

As Elena stretched and moved to climb out of the coffin, she found a cream envelope on her stomach. Elena’s heart leapt at her boyfriend’s familiar handwriting on the outside. Elena. She tore it open and found a short script on a piece of paper.

“Stay there. I’ll come get you.”

Elena smiled down at the note. Sure, there wasn’t much fanfare to it: no “my love” or “I have been waiting decades for this moment”, but there was time for a sappy reunion. Elena imagined Damon’s beautiful face, hopping out of whatever car would be considered “classic” now. She wondered if he would still don his signature leather jacket, or if he’d adapt to some futuristic bad boy style that didn’t exist when she fell into the coma. She looked around the crypt and spotted a couple of bottles of water in the corner waiting for her. She smiled at the gesture and hopped out of her resting place to take one.

Elena opened the door to the crypt and looked around. The cemetery was for the most part untouched by any indication of time passing. It looked bigger, certainly, but perhaps graveyards would always be something timeless. At least she was in Mystic Falls. Her town was here and okay, in whatever time she’d woken in. She sat down on the steps and sipped the water, waiting for her rescuer. Elena contemplated what a world looked like without Bonnie Bennett in it. If she was dead, Matt might be, too. What if Bonnie died alone in her house? Her thoughts ran away from her for the next half hour as she waited.

Suddenly, she spotted a familiar face. Caroline walked up wearing quite the bold outfit. The blonde’s jagged sleeves and exposed midriff startled Elena for only a second before she sprinted toward her and enveloped her in a tight hug. Though it had only felt like hours since Elena last saw her, she held her tight. Caroline may be immortal, but her eyes demonstrated a deeper wisdom. The vampire pulled away with tears streaming down her face. They weren’t only grateful or happy. They were mourning.

“I’m sorry. I’m so happy to see you, it’s just… it’s bittersweet, you know?” she said, wiping her face.

“I know, Care,” Elena said. Caroline lit up.

“I’ve missed your voice so much, Elena,” she hugged her one more time.

“Where’s Damon? His note said he’d come get me,” she said, holding up the card. She wasn’t sure if she imagined a falter in Caroline’s smile. The blonde took a quick look at the card.

“He’s out of town, actually. We didn’t know—I mean, she was obviously getting sicker, but we didn’t know it’d be today, you know? I’m gonna take you to him, though!” Caroline said, gesturing for her friend to follow her. She offered her a small package of crackers, which Elena took gratefully. She kept her head on a swivel as they walked toward the cemetery parking lot, looking for any changes in her surroundings. There were certainly many renovated buildings, but the quaint charm of her small, Southern town remained mostly untouched from what she could see.

“How long has it been?” she asked.

“Uhh… fifty-five years? Yeah, she just turned eighty.” Caroline’s eyes fell to the ground as she referenced her late friend.

“I’m glad,” Elena said, relieved it wasn’t a freak accident. “Was she happy?” she asked. Caroline’s breath hitched at the question, but she was spared from answering it when Elena laid eyes on her very fancy, strange looking car. Rather than row seating, it had seating like a limo, with very few controls up at the front.

“Wow, Care. Does it fly?” she asked. Her friend laughed.

“We’re not there yet. They all drive themselves, though.”

Elena crawled in the back and spotted the dashboard covered in touch-screen functions. There wasn’t a button in sight. Caroline hopped in the other side and sat still for a few seconds, staring at Elena like she wasn’t sure how to say what she had to say.

“Alright, you’ve got a face. Beyond the situation we’re in. What is it?” Elena asked. Had Damon desiccated like he said he might? Was he far away because he was rotting away somewhere?

“I have something for you,” Caroline said. She reached under her seat and pulled out an envelope and a stack of journals. The journals had a few multicolored post-it tabs stuck to a few pages inside. Elena looked at her confused. Caroline shoved them into her hands.

“Look, I will answer all of your questions about the future, but first you have to read that. The drive to Damon is only an hour, though, so I tabbed the sections I think you should read before we get there,” Caroline instructed.

“How organized of you,” Elena said, flipping open the top journal. Property of Bonnie Bennett. Elena’s heart stopped.

“She really wrote everything down?” she asked through watery eyes.

“Everything,” Caroline confirmed. She started the car, though Elena had no idea how without a key, and the car pulled itself out of the parking lot. Elena opened the envelope and resisted the temptation to look at the buildings nearby. There would be time for curiosity about the future. Now was about Bonnie.

Elena leaned back in her seat and pulled the letter out of the envelope. She recognized the scrawl resembling Bonnie’s handwriting, but it was different. Narrower. More careful. Her eyes skimmed to find a date. December 14^th, 2068. Bonnie had written this when she was over seventy-five years old. Elena tried to wrap her mind around what Bonnie may have looked like or sounded like when she wrote the letter. Did she have laugh lines and silver hair? What did she seem like after a long life?

Dear Elena,

It’s such a weird feeling to write to you again. Once I retired, I stopped writing. Though I have no doubt my stories of water aerobics, gardening, and jigsaw puzzles would have been real page turners, it felt like as organic a stopping point as any. Today, though, my doctors told me that the cancer is spreading. It might be a few years, or a few weeks, but, little do you know where you are, you get to come home soon. Before things start to get bad, I thought I’d write to you one final time. I guess I want to... contextualize some things you’re about to read.

As odd a sensation as it must be for you to read the words of an old, dying woman, I can promise you: it’s just as strange writing to you. I feel twenty-five again. I can feel the excruciating grief and guilt from my younger years of missing you. I have had a wonderful life, which I can count myself lucky for as it is. My biggest piece of unfair luck, though, is I never had to face you. I never have to see your expression as I give you the explanation I feel I owe you. I understand if you don’t want to read them all right away, but maybe someday, when you’ve been back for a while, you will want to.

Please just know that the decisions I’ve made were never easy, and you never left my mind. More than anything, I hope your second chance at a human life brings you even half the joy mine brought me. I will always appreciate our friendship and, even more, the gravity of the adjustments you will have to make now. You’re Elena Gilbert, though. You find strength in the most impossibly difficult situations. I’m sorry I contributed to making this one. I love you. I will love you forever.

Take care,

Bonnie  

Elena squinted at the letter in confusion. She looked up from the letter to find Caroline crying softly, reading one of Bonnie’s journals herself. Any questions Elena had about Bonnie’s oddly ominous note got stuck in her throat. Caroline lost her friend today. She decided to leave her to her grief, and read for her own answers. She flipped the cover open and began to read.

March 8^th, 2018

Dear Elena,

I don’t know how to begin to tell you this…

Damon sat on the ground for hours staring into bitter blackness. His eyes drifted out of focus and stayed there, forcing his surroundings into a blurry watercolor in the dark. His vision fought to clear, but he wouldn’t let it. He couldn’t be here. He couldn’t look at the wall in front of him. If he let himself see the cracks, he would come back to his body. So, he sat, letting Mystic Falls grow fuzzy in his retinas. He cursed his sharpened senses, willing himself to not feel the wet grass beneath him or inhale the smoke from the fire. The fire that killed his brother. Did it hurt? Probably not, right? Maybe for a second. The pain as the fire seared Stefan’s nerves didn’t have time to register before his new human future fell victim to the hellfire.

Damon cradled his legs to his chest and waited. Waited for what, he didn’t know. To get hungry? Tired? Some reason, any reason, to get up. There never would be, though. There’d never be a reason to get up again. He disassociated for hours, thinking of nothing. The sharp March windchill creeped through the fabric of his suit. He welcomed the numbing cold. More numbing, more numbing.

Damon remembered he existed when he registered somebody kneeling down in front of him. He said a silent prayer as to the identity of his observer. Please let it be death. Let it be death. He reluctantly refocused his stare. Before him was the pained face of the next best thing. His best friend, Bonnie Bennett.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” she said. She let out a steady, relieved breath. At least he wasn’t indulging in somebody’s Carotid in typical Damon grieving fashion. The solace dissipated as her tired green eyes met his glassy blue ones. The man in front of her was a shell. He gripped his legs so hard his fingers went ghostly white. He only then noticed he was cradling himself, rocking back and forth, too fast to be comforting. Bonnie rested her hands on his knees, but he didn’t respond to her touch.

“Alaric and Caroline are taking the twins out of town for a while. She’s… well, it’s just us now,” she said. Caroline. Damon didn’t reply. He wanted to tell her to stop talking. He wanted to beg her not to remind him of the sister-in-law he gained and lost in a day. Was she wailing, or were her tear ducts as dry as his own? Bonnie searched her friend’s eyes for any sign of life, but she didn’t find any.

“Let’s go home,” she said. Home. It hadn’t been their home since they were in the prison world. Damon’s mind woke up slightly. After hours of disassociation, a single image came to his mind: Bonnie, radiant in her pale pink knit top, throwing her arms up in victory as she beat Damon in Tetris for the first time. Her wide, perfect grin as she spewed taunting smack talk his way.

Damon released the tight grip on his knees slightly as Bonnie stood. The ghost of a memory ignited something in him strong enough to force him to swallow the lump in his throat and take her outstretched hand.  She pulled him up and lead him back to the car. Damon’s senses slowly woke up as he registered the crunch of the leaves under his feet and Bonnie’s hand on his arm. She had such small hands. He felt where the pads of her fingers gently guided him to the passenger seat. He became aware of how cold it was. What time was it? Late. So late.

They shared long, sorrowful silence in the car. Damon shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and he resented the witch for waking him from his stupor. He became too aware of the fabric of his suit scratching at his skin. The coat, button up, tie, and tight, hard shoes constricted him. He wanted to crawl out of them. He wanted to crawl out of his skin. He stole a glance at Bonnie, ready to glare daggers at her for being responsible for pulling him out of his state and forcing him back into his life. His cursed life, rotten like black produce left in the bottom of a forgotten drawer. Let me out. Let me fucking die.

When he saw her soft cheek, his anger got stuck bubbled in his chest. She was crying. Certainly not for his brother? Not after Enzo? His face twisted in confusion. He registered the sound of the tires slowing to a stop on the gravel of his driveway. He didn’t look away from her. He didn’t want to see the house he shared with Stefan. The painful flood of memories would cripple him. He stayed staring safely at Bonnie’s tears rolling down her soft cheeks. She wiped them from her face quickly.

“Are you ready?” she asked. Damon couldn’t find his vocal cords to respond. Even if he could, he didn’t know what the answer was. His hand found the door handle, despite feeling as if he had no control over his movements. He wordlessly followed Bonnie up the walkway, imagining his brother waiting for him on the other side of the door. Stefan would be reading a book, maybe, pouring him a drink. He’d tell Damon some good news or propose a game of catch in the yard.

When they crossed the threshold into the house, though, there was no Stefan. There were only reminders of his absence. His jacket was draped over the back of the couch. His shoes were kicked in the corner of the foyer. The air smelled faintly of his cologne. Bonnie saw Damon’s eyes flicker around the mementos. Finally, his gaze landed in the direction of upstairs. He would have to walk by Stefan’s room to get to his own. His sunken eyes revealed how close he was to falling to pieces.

“Wait here,” Bonnie instructed. Damon didn’t react. He only continued to stare into the parlor at the two used glasses on the table. With one last aching glance at her best friend, Bonnie ran up the stairs.

When she came upon Stefan’s open bedroom door, she looked inside for a long moment. It’s true, whatever fondness she felt for him had been irrevocably damaged when he tore Enzo’s heart out, but, after watching nearly all of her closest friends play humanity switch roulette over the years, she’d slowly grown accustomed to seeing them as different people. The Stefan she knew, before Enzo, who held her while she cried, earned the respect of her Grams, and had been a friend to her over the years was the one who resided in this bedroom. Stacks of books were piled on his end table and desk. Her eyes wandered over to his bed. On his bedspread were six ties, tried on and discarded. She imagined Damon helping him choose the perfect one for his wedding. She closed her eyes for a moment, thinking of the kind of husband he would have been, the kind of father he would have been. Maybe she even would have forgiven him one day. She closed the door, keeping the room of memories out of Damon’s sight for the night.

When she came back downstairs, she spotted him holding his brother’s favorite bottle of bourbon. Her stomach filled with nerves. She knew his process. With his brother gone, Damon’s drunken stupor would last weeks. She could only hope it wouldn’t start tonight.

“Damon?” she whispered.

When he turned around, the exhaustion was all over his face. He needed sleep more than whiskey. He put the bottle down and looked at her for a long moment. He felt grateful for her presence in the room. She was something to pay attention to that wasn’t the ghost of his brother filling every corner of the large house. She was something grounding. She nodded toward the staircase, and he followed her silently up. His feet felt heavy. Everything felt heavy. The clothes on his back and the watch on his wrist crushed him. He felt ready to crumble beneath the weight of the grief.

When they reached the top, he craned his neck to look over at his brother’s room and found the closed door. He looked back at Bonnie with quiet gratitude. She nodded in the direction of her old bedroom when they were in the prison world. How easy it was to sleep under the same roof again.

“Okay. I’ll see you in the morning,” she said. She turned and took a step down the hall when Damon caught her wrist in his hand. She looked down at his hand on her skin and saw his knuckles go white with the firmness of his grip. She looked up into his petrified eyes.

“Don’t leave me alone,” he whispered. His expression was raw and begging. His voice sounded wrong, cracking as he spoke for the first time since he watched the flames consume Stefan. She swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded.

“Okay.”

He dropped her wrist and looked down the hallway toward her room. He pointedly avoided looking at his own. Stefan’s ghosts were all over it.

“One second,” she said. Without waiting for a reply, she walked into Damon’s bedroom. She walked past his giant, unmade bed to his dresser and fished out two of his soft cotton v-necks. He wasn’t exactly a basketball shorts or sweatpants kind of guy, so she gave up on the pajamas mission and walked to the bathroom. She grabbed his toothbrush and facewash from the counter and left the room, closing the door behind her. She nodded toward her room with patient concern, like she was guiding a lost child through a grocery store.

Damon followed her back to her room and sat on the edge of the white guest bedspread while Bonnie disappeared into the bathroom. He kicked off his dress shoes and shrugged off his suit jacket and let them fall to the floor. He fiddled with the tight knot in his tie until it came loose enough to pull above his head. If he had the energy or the anger, he would have thrown it, but he had neither. Anger would come. The numbness still choked him.

Damon managed to kick off his suit pants when Bonnie walked back into the room. She wore only his dark green V-neck, which ended at her upper thighs. If there was a time for blushing, this wasn’t it. When they made eye contact again, they felt the overwhelming grief fill the space between them. She handed him his dark blue t-shirt and crossed the room to the other side of the bed. She crawled under the covers as Damon switched shirts. They slowly sank back onto the pillows.

Bonnie turned off the lamp and dared a glance at Damon. She was still waiting for him to freak out. She was waiting for the screaming, killing relapse, and his fist in a wall. Maybe he might chuck alcohol into an open flame; he liked that. Instead, he laid there, staring at the ceiling, completely shattered. The moonlight coming in from the window illuminated his pale, clammy skin. His hands shook at his sides. His whole body began to shake until he lost it.

Damon cried. His heavy tears intensified until they were accompanied by booming sobs as he purged the first wave of devastation from his body. Bonnie leaned toward him and wrapped him in a hug as he crumbled. She wordlessly stroked the back of his head as his tears soaked her sleeve. They laid this way for a long time, as Damon let out the grief into her arms. He wrapped his arms around her waist tightly. His grip begged her not to let go. She rested her leg on his waist and gently grazed comforting fingers up and down his back. Damon’s shirt bunched up around her waist, but neither of them noticed. They clung to each other desperately. They were alone now.

Bonnie knew better than to try to provide words of comfort. He wouldn’t have accepted them anyway. He would just retreat into himself. She just held him until he fell asleep with red eyes against her wet shirt. In the morning, he would groggily head downstairs to begin his long drinking binge. In the morning, she might say she’s sorry. In the morning, they certainly wouldn’t talk about what happened here. In fact, they wouldn’t talk about it for a long time.

Chapter Text

Elena cried so hard she choked. When she learned of Kai’s spell what felt like only hours ago, she had to come to terms very quickly with all of the humans in her life she may never see again. Certainly Bonnie, but also Matt, Jeremy, and Alaric. Stefan, though, she never expected. She imagined seeing his beautiful face, eternally young, eternally warm with radiant affection wrapping her in a hug as he told her everything she missed.

Caroline moved to sit next to her friend, holding her close.

“Care, I am--,” Elena started.

“It’s okay. It was a long time ago.” Caroline had her fill of condolences half a century ago. She missed her husband, she always would, but she could only handle so many losses today. The women held each other for a few quiet moments, and the cruelty of Kai’s spell set in in a new way. Even a grief expert like Elena felt overwhelmed as she attempted to rapid-fire process and compartmentalize the losses of two of the people she loved most in the world. She considered asking Caroline about the fate of the others, especially her brother, but she decided to wait. She let herself believe it was only Bonnie and Stefan’s graves she would be visiting soon. She would let herself believe until she saw Damon, and he could cradle her in his arms as she learned the truth.

Elena looked down confused at the diary. There weren’t any more sticky notes in this one. Caroline reached over and handed her the next journal.

“We only have an hour till we get there. Reading about Bonnie and Damon drinking their sorrows for nine months? Not so efficient. You can always go back,” she promised.

“But she stayed with him?” Elena asked. Her heart warmed at Bonnie’s compassion. It was just like her to take care of Damon that way. Caroline smiled at her sadly. Elena attributed it to her fresh grief for their friend.

“Yeah, she stayed with him. They pretty much turned the boarding house into their own two-person grief-filled frat house. They just compelled groceries, booze, and clothes where they needed them. They just finally took time to process everything. You, Stefan, Enzo...” she trailed off.

“Bonnie and Enzo. It’s weird to think about,” Elena remarked, looking down at the next journal in her hand. Caroline laughed. It was knowing and humorless.

“Yeah. It is weird to think about now,” she agreed. She pointed to the next journal. “Are you okay to keep going? We can pull over if you need a minute.” Elena shook her head furiously.

“No, I want to see Damon,” she said. Elena was no stranger to grief. She would process the news about Stefan in due time. She needed to get to her boyfriend. Caroline gave her another sorrowful, encouraging half-smile. She nodded and moved back over to the other side of the car, where she continued to read Bonnie’s diaries in another time.

Elena looked down at the journal in her hand. It had only one sticky note on the first page. The leather front cover had been personalized with an embedded script.

Bonnie Bennet

2019  

“This is cute,” she commented. Caroline looked up at her, and saw the journal displayed in Elena’s hand.

“Damon got it for her.”

January 1^st, 2019

Dear Elena,

Happy New Year! Damon’s been on a mission to keep me from leaving Mystic Falls... He is actually driving me crazy.

“Bon Bon, what are you even gonna do on your big solo world tour? I don’t know if you’ve heard but the world? Kind of a big place,” Damon complained. He leaned over the Mystic Grill’s green felt covered pool table. He’d compelled management to give them free reign over the place for Bonnie’s last night in Mystic Falls. He would have done something more elaborate, but it’s where she wanted to be. She wanted to embrace the familiarity of her hometown before embarking on her great adventure.

Damon pulled the cue back and hit the white ball with a loud clang. Two solids fell into pockets in the table. He smirked victoriously and opened his mouth to gloat. When he looked up expecting to find Bonnie’s familiar scowl, she wasn’t in front of him. He scanned the Mystic Grill until he spotted her bent over the bar. She dug around for the perfect bottle to commemorate the occasion.

He tried to look anywhere but at the curves in her hips as she leaned over to rifle through the alcohol. Her legs looked long in her short jean shorts and her short white sneakers. Nearly a year cohabitating, and it had become harder to ignore how breathtaking she was all the time. Hot, dull guilt rose in his gut.

“You could walk around, you know,” he called over to her, annoyed by the feeling.  She ignored him. He rolled his eyes and turned back to face the table. He tried not to think of the way her simple white tank-top clung to her waist. He studied the formation of the balls too carefully, convincing himself to be more invested in the game than he was.

“What brand do you think?” she yelled over her shoulder.

“I’m not helping you pick your poison until you tell me why you’re doing this stupid Eat, Pray, Love shit,” he yelled back.

“Don’t bitch when you don’t like it, then,” she retorted. They had fallen into this easy back-and-forth over the months. It took the first two months to get him to smile. She credited their HGTV marathons for bringing her Damon back to the surface. Judgmental, opinionated, funny and too aware of it.

Bonnie walked back over to the pool table carrying a bottle of silver tequila and two shot glasses.

“I’ve already told you why. Several times, in fact!” she said, opening the cap and taking a drink from the bottle. She grimaced, sticking her tongue out the same way she always did when she drank straight liquor. An involuntary grin spread across Damon’s face at the sight. She was a wimp sometimes.

Bonnie handed the bottle to him wordlessly and grabbed a pool cue. He scrunched his nose up at the smell of the tequila but drank from it anyway. It was her last night after all, and God knew she’d endured enough whiskey for him.

“Okay, fine. Until you give me a good reason you’re doing this,” he amended.

“Damon, my answer is the same. Enzo wanted me to go live my life and see the world. Get the hell out of this place…” she leaned over the pool table, assessing her angles.

“Well, Enzo wanted to fuck my mom, so let’s not weigh his judgment too heavily,” he retorted. Bonnie whipped her head in his direction. It was a risky joke, and Damon waited for her to respond with a cautious smirk on his face. She cracked a smile and swatted him on the arm.

“Ass,” she chastised, returning her focus to the game. “Look, I’m done with the crying and Rocky Road parts of grief--,” she began.

“And those suppliers will thank you. I got a call the other day; they’re worried they’re going to have a shortage in Virginia,” he interrupted.

“I’m ready to move on,” she finished, hitting the ball. A stripe sank into the corner pocket. She celebrated with a small victorious hop. Damon watched such a classic display of Bonnie’s competitiveness, and felt warm with tequila and affection.

“And by move on, you mean move out. Bonnie, the world is boring, trust me. I’ve seen it all, and you’re far better off right here in Mystic Falls, the most happening place on the planet,” he said, stretching his arms out wide to show off their empty Mystic Grill.

“You’re full of shit,” she chided. He raised his hands in faux offense.

“Alright, alright. Proposal! I win, you stay. You win, you go,” he offered, talking a step closer to her. She had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes.

“I see we’re at the bargaining stage,” she observed. “Sorry, Damon. No dice.” He sighed.

“Fine, if you’re making me resort to Plan C... I’ll just get you so hungover tomorrow you can’t fathom getting on a plane,” he said. He grabbed the liquor and poured two shots.

“Good luck,” she said. She almost meant it. She accepted the tiny glass in his hand, and they clinked them together in a toast, tossing the liquor back in unison.

Four hours and an exorbitant about of tequila later, Bonnie had destroyed him at darts and they’d raided the Mystic Grill kitchen, Bonnie climbing onto Damon’s shoulders to get the “good stuff” Jeremy told her was hidden. They’d cleared the tables to make their own dance floor and spun around to the music together, mocking each other’s moves. They’d laughed loudly, joked too much, and played their own game of Would You Rather: Mystic Falls Edition.

Around 1 in the morning, Bonnie found herself glaring at the vampire beneath her.

“Right foot Grey Goose, Bon Bon,” Damon repeated, laughing as he held himself up on one hand and a contorted splits position. Bonnie had wanted to play Twister, but they didn’t have a mat, so she arranged a bunch of alcohol bottles on the floor in a small grid: six rows of four. She concentrated as she weighed her next move. Her arm was threatening to give under her weight. Her mood wasn’t helped by Damon’s knowing, mocking look at her predicament. She could either settle into a comfortable position on the other side of Damon, or put herself in a worse spot, but make him more likely to fall. She weighed her defensive and offensive positions.

“I heard you,” she snapped at him. “This is ridiculous. You’re wearing a leather jacket and tight pants. You drink constantly and never stretch!” her breath reeked of alcohol as she complained.

“You can whine all you want, but you challenged a vampire to this,” he teased. That settled it. She was determined to wipe his stupid signature smirk off his face. Bonnie put her foot behind her next to the Grey Goose so she was hovering above Damon, restricting his movement. Her arms wobbled slightly as she clicked the button on the randomizing app on her phone.

“Left foot Jack Daniels,” she instructed. Damon didn’t move, but just looked up at her, waiting patiently for her to collapse on her own. He yammered to kill time.

“Okay, would you ratherrrr... wake up every day to a loop of Caroline’s saying, ‘Seriously!?’” he mocked her shrill tone, and Bonnie bit back a smile. “Or get an appendectomy every time one of Jeremy’s girlfriends dies?” She couldn’t keep the short, barking laugh from escaping her lips. Her inability to act annoyed by Damon’s jokes was a direct result of her alcohol-infused lowered inhibitions.

“Does my appendix just regrow every time?” she asked.

“Don’t think too hard about it.”

“Full recovery time?”

“Yes.”

“Damn it, Damon, left foot Jack Daniels!” she scolded as she caught onto his distraction. Her forearm shook, lightly grazing his shoulder.

“Fine, Rush-y. I’m thinking about where to put my foot. Is that okay with you?” he asked, continuing to delay.

“It’s not my fault that thinking is such a long process for you,” she bit back.

“Not your fault, but clearly your problem,” he moved his foot with ease, shifting his weight like it was nothing. Bonnie glared and hit the button again. Left hand Bicardi. She whipped her head to the Bicardi column, realizing there was no way she could pull it off.

“Uh, oh…” Damon mocked her fate. She could smell the booze on his warm breath. She huffed at him before moving her hand in a fast, desperate motion. She couldn’t hold herself up long enough, though, and she fell down on top of the vampire, sending the bottles rolling in every direction. They burst into fits of giggles as Bonnie’s forehead rested against Damon’s chest. She breathed in the cool smell of him. She almost resented the tequila for being so strong, as it disguised the usual combination of vanilla soap and a hint of whiskey in his scent. She brushed off the thought as fleeting and unimportant, too buzzed to reflect on how comfortable he was to lay on. Neither of them made an effort to move.

Bonnie stole a glance up at him under heavy lashes to find his eyes closed. His right arm was folded under his head and his left laid at his side. She wondered if he’d fall asleep this way.

“You went to Amsterdam with her in the coffin, you know,” she whispered. Her voice was soft and careful as she broached the subject. She’d hinted for him to come along with her a few times over the months, but he never acknowledged them. Time was running out. If this was truly their last night, she wanted to know. The two had single handedly pulled each other up out of a deep, dark pit. For nine months, they used each other as foot holds until they crawled up to the surface and found themselves again: without Enzo, without Stefan, without Elena.

Damon clenched his jaw a bit but did not otherwise react. She sighed and rolled off of him to lie on her back next to him, staring at the ceiling. She couldn’t stay in the Salvatore house another year. Obviously, unlike some people, her liver needed to remain intact, but moreover, she couldn’t stay in a town that felt like a daily memorial. If there was a life after her strange, grief-filled adolescence, it was time to find it, with or without the man next to her.

“I’m just saying, you can come,” she tried again despite herself. Her ego would cringe in the morning. Then again, he’d been begging her to stay in his own Damon way: beneath the guise of mockery and light-hearted jabs.

“Oh, I can?” he asked, dodging the question. She rolled her eyes. He was so high maintenance.

“I want you to come,” she admitted. She elbowed him lightly to make herself feel less desperate.

When she rested her forearm back on the floor, her pinky lightly grazed Damon’s. He turned his head to steal a look at her. Her skin was covered in a layer of goosebumps as the Mystic Grill air conditioning turned on in a low hum. His eyes wandered down the raised hairs on her arms and down to where their hands touched slightly. He wondered if she even noticed. When he found her face again, the witch radiated peaceful contentment from the energy in the air, the alcohol in her blood, and the man lying next to her. Damon locked onto her warm eyes and knew that a single day without her would be miserable, let alone months.

“It’s not about Elena. She’s not exactly going anywhere,” he admitted. His voice cracked on Elena’s name. It was harder to say than it used to be.

“Then what is it?”

“Oh, is it the heart-to-heart portion of the evening?” he asked. It was a warning. It was the low growl a dog gave when you got too close to its face. Don’t come closer.

“Don’t deflect,” she pushed.

Damon’s eyes flashed with annoyance, and he back up at the ceiling to avoid her stare. All she ever did was call him out. Most times, he welcomed it. Other times, he wanted to get up and walk away. He wanted to throw her out of his life and return to an easier time. A pre-Bonnie era when morality didn’t matter and feelings could be buried beneath the right combination of self-medication and a cocky demeanor.

Of course, he’d thought of her offer to come on her world tour. She was the only person on the planet he even wanted to be around. As he felt her pinkie rest against his, he knew that if he left with her, he would cross some invisible checkpoint he could never come back from. Better to stay here, drink for fifty years for his brother, wait for Elena to wake up, and then... stay. Stay the same. Fight with his girlfriend, love her, fuck her, die with her. It sounded easy. So easy. Elena saw him, and said it was okay. When Bonnie saw him, she made him ask himself all of these infuriating questions. Why does he feel this way? How can he change it? How can he be better? She was dangerous. Too dangerous.

“I haven’t left Mystic Falls since Stefan died,” he spewed obvious sentimental drivel she could buy. It wasn’t exactly a lie. He wasn’t enthusiastic about the idea of leaving the house behind. Stefan’s shoes were still in the corner. His jacket was still over the couch. His room remained behind the closed, wooden door.

“I know, but... don’t you think you deserve to be happy?” she asked. Damon’s heart thudded fast and loud in his chest. He felt grateful she didn’t have his hearing. “Besides, when Elena wakes up, you’re gonna stick that fancy little syringe of Stefan’s blood in your chest, and you’re gonna live a normal life of saving up for trips and waiting in lines just like the rest of us. Maybe you should get one last world tour vampire style,” she pitched. His anger gently dissipated. She wanted him to come because she loved him. It wasn’t her fault he didn’t know how to let her.

“And when did you come to the conclusion that I deserve to be happy? Not exactly rolling in the good karma department...” he trailed off. He still couldn’t meet her face. The conversation had veered into the place where he couldn’t look in her eyes.

“A few years ago, one breakup from a Katherine in an Elena suit had you off the rails again. You lost your brother, and you haven’t hurt anybody,” she said. He let out a humorless laugh.

“I haven’t killed anyone. That’s quite the low bar you’ve got for me,” he said.

“I special ordered it,” she teased. The joke was enough to dissipate some of the discomfort between them. She rolled onto her side to face him and folded her arms beneath her head. He missed her smallest finger.

He didn’t want her to go. She didn’t want him to stay behind.

Damon let out a long, quiet breath. He felt both touched and terrified by Bonnie wanting to spend the next small chapter of her life with him next to her. Still, it felt like an unavoidable crash. Would they loathe traveling together, fight, and hate each other forever? He didn’t think about the alternative. He just felt a tingling where her finger had rested against his.

He met her eyes and blurted out his answer before he could think himself out of it.

“And how would you compensate a tour-guide who can compel you free drinks and first-class plane tickets?” he asked. Bonnie’s eyes widened. A small smile spread across her face as the quiet realization of his acceptance hit her.

“My company obviously,” she replied. They joked; it’s what they did. Neither would acknowledge the mix of excitement and quiet trepidation resting in their guts.

“Alright, Bon Bon. You obviously can’t live without me,” he teased. It came out more seriously than he intended. They locked eyes for a hair too long before she gave him a light, familiar smack on the arm, breaking the tension.

“We missed midnight,” she commented.

“Happy New Year, Bonnie. Tell me I don’t have to wake up early.”

“Flight’s at 4 PM.”

“Good. I can sleep this shit off.”

“Are we sleeping on the floor?” she asked.

“Why not? Unless you want the pool table,” he nodded toward the green felt. She shook her head slightly and repositioned herself on the hard wood floor. She hiked her leg up slightly, and Damon’s eyes involuntarily ran over the goosebumps on her skin. He rolled his eyes and shrugged his jacket off and tossed it on top of her.

“A kinder, gentler Damon.”

“That's a new record for how fast I regret doing something nice for you.”

She stuck her tongue out at him lightly and covered her torso with the leather. Her eyelids grew heavy as she felt sleep slowly take her. The tequila rested warm in her limbs, and the smell of Damon’s jacket filled her nose.

“I think I’m going Caroline alarm clock, by the way,” she murmured drowsily.

“Really? Dead girlfriend appendectomy all the way,” he disagreed, throwing his arm over his eyes to shield them from the warm overhead lighting.

“Masochist,” she said before her eyes closed shut.

Damon peaked out from beneath his arm to see her breathing deeply. Her head rested against her hands in a make-shift pillow. An etching of her last smile faded as sleep took her over. He thought about taking in this view every night in shared hotel rooms in Bangkok, Auckland, and Cape Town.

You have no idea, Bon Bon.

Chapter Text

Elena’s eyebrows rose in surprise. Bonnie and Damon traveled the world together? She flipped through the later pages of the diary before it was snatched out of her hand.

“Caroline!”

“We’re on a schedule, Elena,” the blonde reminded, pointing to the next journal in the stack: 2020. There was one single tab stuck out roughly in the middle.

“We’re skipping a year and a half? They’re back in Virginia?”

“No, they’re still abroad here,” Caroline casually corrected. Elena felt a bubble of discomfort rise in her stomach.

“That’s a while,” she said. “What did they do?”

“You know. Empanadas in Argentina, sky diving on the Australian coast... they rode elephants somewhere, too.”

“Wow...” Elena trailed off. “So, here, Bonnie’s... 28?”

“Yeah, that sounds right. Oh, actually, I think there’s a couple pictures in the back,” she said. Elena flipped to the back of the diary and spotted three glossy photos.

In the first, Bonnie and Damon sat in a big, green car wearing t-shirts and dark sunglasses. Two gorgeous lions laid in the grassy background. Bonnie made a dramatic growling face at the camera while Damon feigned biting her cheek with mock ferocity. Bonnie looked physically older, but she radiated a youthful, freer energy. She was free of getting her friends out of their many vampire messes. She was free to enjoy her life. Elena noted with an odd pit in her gut that she was enjoying it with Damon. She flipped the photo over and found Bonnie’s neat script. Safari. Tanzania. August 2019.

Elena flipped to the second photo, in which they simply smiled in big winter coats in front of the Northern Lights. Somebody else took this one. They must have made friends along the way. The thought made Elena feel lonely. Damon had his arm snaked around Bonnie’s waist, and she leaned into him slightly. He didn’t wear his signature smirk, but a wide, toothy grin. His glee reached his eyes, and the sky created a bright green halo around them.

Elena moved to the last picture and found Damon lifting Bonnie up bridal style. She kicked her legs out straight, throwing her arms in the air dramatically. They stood in front of some large body of clear water, as Damon’s pale feet were half-buried in white sand. Bonnie wore a yellow bikini that complemented her pastel nail polish and contrasted Damon’s black trunks. He was in the middle of saying something to her, and Bonnie had her head thrown back laughing beneath a large sunhat.

“Where’s this?” she asked quietly, showing Caroline the picture.

“Somewhere in the Canary Islands. Lanzarote, I think? Yeah, that’s where he taught her how to drive stick shift,” she confirmed.

“Good memory,” Elena commented.

“No, I wasn’t... well, I was still doing my own thing then. I just reread these recently to tab them for you.”

Elena nodded, understanding. Eventually, she would have to hear about Caroline’s own journey over the years and how she navigated her own grief of losing Stefan.

“There are photo albums at—uh, somewhere... we can dig them up if you want to see more,” Caroline added. Elena stared down at the delighted amusement in Damon’s expression.

“Maybe,” she whispered, running her fingers over their smiles. She felt inexplicable apprehensive nerves in her stomach.

“You said Damon’s out of town?” Elena asked.

“Uh, yeah,” Caroline said, trying to keep her voice even.

“Does he not live at the Boarding House anymore?”

“No. No, somebody else lives there now.” The blonde ran her hand through her hair uncomfortably.

“Who?” Elena asked. She knew her tone was demanding, but she was growing tired of being kept in the dark.

“She can explain it better than I can,” Caroline said. They looked down at the diary in her hand. Elena held back an irritated sigh.

“Where are they here?” she asked, flipping open the journal to the tabbed note. She found herself wondering what the method was behind her friend’s tabbing system. What made these memories important to read before she got to Damon?

“Portugal.” 

May 20^th, 2020

Dear Elena,

Damon and I are being summoned back to Mystic Falls, and you’ll never guess why…

“And Guest? Are you kidding me?” Damon glared, throwing the invitation back on the table.

“Gee, I wonder why he wouldn’t like you. Let me think…” Bonnie said, picking it back up to put on their fridge. She hung it by two magnets she had bought in Tokyo and Prague. The invitation displayed a glossy picture of Matt grinning with his arms around a woman in his lap. Matthew Donovan and Stephanie Scott Would Like to Cordially Invite you…

“'Bonnie Bennett and Guest’. Ungrateful little shithead,” Damon muttered.

“Maybe they wanted me to keep my options open and bring somebody who doesn’t call my friends shitheads,” she said, taking a seat opposite him at their small two-person dining table.

They’d rented a small Airbnb near Lisbon for the month. Sure, Damon could have compelled them the finest place in the city, but she wanted to maintain a semblance of a 20-something backpacking feel to their trip. They stayed in a small studio with a king bed low to the ground in the corner, a tiny bathroom with one sink, and a small kitchen they could only comfortably navigate one at a time. Damon bitched about it nonstop.

Damon ignored her suggestion. They both knew she wasn’t going without him.

“Why are they even having a wedding? Donovan has two friends and half as many parents.”

“Maybe she’s got a big family or a ton of sorority sisters or something,” Bonnie shrugged, absent-mindedly organizing their playing cards.

“Ooh, I could get behind that…” he trailed off suggestively. She resented the twinge of jealousy. It’d become impossible to ignore in seventeen months.

“I’m not bringing you if you’re just gonna ogle the hypothetical sorority girls,” she snapped.

“When I’ve got the hottest date there? Please,” he said. She raised her eyebrow at him and smirked.

“And hey, maybe he’ll shoot this one too, and we won’t have to go,” he added. Bonnie’s face fell into disapproval.

“And that’s why you’re ‘And Guest’.”

The pair got ready for their evening out relatively quickly. Bonnie had been in the bathroom for only twenty minutes when she stepped out to find him buttoning up his white shirt.

Damon’s eyes traveled up her body a little too slowly. Bonnie donned a white sundress. It was snug on her waist and flowed out around her hips, hugging her chest in a halter collar. She’d grown her hair out since Stefan’s death, and Damon smiled slightly at the sight of her big curls framing her face. Her high cheekbones glowed under a light layer of bronzer.

“What?” she asked at his wide eyes. She walked up to him and finished buttoning his shirt for him.

“Nothing,” he dismissed.

She gave him a wary, skeptical stare, but didn’t push it. Damon blinked down at her. She smelled of her citrus lotion and argan oil. He knew he’d forever associate those scents with her rich warm laugh.

Damon put his hands on her shoulders and slid them down her soft arms. These touches happened frequently and felt near involuntary at times. He stopped when they met her wrists and dropped his arms back to his sides. He never let his fingers reach her hands.

“Ready?” he asked.

“I guess,” she shrugged apathetically. He playfully shoved her shoulder, and she gave him a teasing smile.

They made their way out of their temporary home and onto the busy night streets of Lisbon’s City Center. Bonnie came alive in Portugal. The warm air enveloped her as she heard the chatter in a language she didn’t understand. Damon slung his arm over her shoulders, and she reached hers around his waist. They were constantly weighing these gestures internally. Hands were too intimate. Leaning her head on his shoulder would push it. This, though, felt okay. They walked a tightrope finding reasons to touch each other and never talking about it.

“For the wife?” a flower vendor asked, holding roses out to them.

“No thanks,” Damon dismissed. They quit correcting people a while ago.

Bonnie pulled Damon along as they turned down a side street. They smelled street food nearby and heard the loud sounds of partying tourists.

“Where’d you hear about this bar anyway?” Damon asked.

“Some guy recommended it when I grabbed breakfast the other day,” she answered. Damon rose his eyebrows.

“Some guy, huh?”

“Yes, Damon, on occasion, men talk to me,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“I haven’t seen it.”

“That’s because they think I’m ‘the wife’ when I’m with you,” she said. She said “the wife” in the vendor’s thick Portuguese accent. It was just absurd enough to keep the conversation light. Damon chuckled lightly at her.

“You are so shitty at accents,” he said.

“I am not.”

“Do Klaus.”

She looked up at him and saw the corner of his mouth twitch with amusement. She put on the best British accent she could.

“Caroline, love, give me a chance. I’ve only killed two people today!” she mimicked.

“Oof,” he remarked, biting back a louder laugh. They walked up to the entrance of the bar, and Damon glanced down at Bonnie. The red neon sign cast a brilliant glow over her, turning her dress into a soft pink beneath it. The glance turned into a gaze.

“You are familiar with doorknobs, right?” she teased. She pointed to the handle. “They look kind of like that.”

Damon made a dramatic show of opening the door for her.

“Smartass,” he murmured as they stepped through the threshold.

The bright energy between them was zapped completely as Damon’s face fell at the sight in front of him. The bar was fairly empty but for a large group of men helping themselves to the liquor. He grabbed Bonnie’s hand, lacing her fingers with his own firmly as he looked at the man in the center of the room. She looked up at him to find a stiff smirk on his face. Whatever warmth he was portraying didn’t reach his eyes. She felt the familiar gush of wind hit her back as vampires sprinted to stand behind them, blocking off the entrance. They were surrounded.

“Rolf!” Damon yelled warmly, pretending not to notice the enclosure. He tugged Bonnie closer to him and stepped slightly in front of her. The gesture was just protective enough to keep her on her guard, but subtle enough to not be overt. She squeezed his hand to tell him she understood. They were in danger.

The man in front of them was handsome, blonde, and visibly older than them both. He raised his arms warmly, and Bonnie recognized him immediately. He was the random flirty patron who recommended the bar. She cursed her own naivety. They had gotten too comfortable feeling safe.

“Damon! We’ve been waiting!” he yelled. “Come on, have a drink with us.”

Bonnie recognized Damon’s disguised discomfort in the clench of his jaw. He led her closer to the group. His stiff arm held her close, not letting her stray from his side a step.

“It’s been a long time, man. I’m sorry; we’ve got reservations in fifteen. If I’d known you were here...” Damon trailed off, embracing the man in a one-armed hug. Bonnie caught the lie about the reservations and subtly scanned the room. There had to be twenty men around them. They all stared at her and Damon shamelessly.

“Oh, of course, of course. I never could get you in one place too long,” Rolf said. His voice was honey, rich with charm. “And who do we have here?” he looked down at Bonnie.

“Brianna Forbes,” she lied smoothly.

Rolf looked away from her dismissively in a second.

“I forgot you always keep your blood closer than we do,” he said, looking down at their entwined hands. He gestured toward a girl seated at the bar. “She’s been pleasant company, though, I will admit.”

Bonnie’s eyes found the girl and bile rose in her throat. She couldn’t have been older than twenty. Her dark skin was riddled with bites, old and new. Her eyes were lifeless and sunken. She recognized the vacant expression of somebody compelled to be quiet and wait for instructions. Rolf’s words sunk in. You keep your blood closer than we do. Did Rolf think she was a compelled human blood bag like Caroline was when they first met? She turned her glance back to the vampire in front of her, keeping her face blank to hide her revulsion at the comment.

“I can’t believe you’re here!” Damon said with fake surprised delight. “I thought Kol was the source of your bloodline.”

One of Rolf’s followers brought them two glasses of bourbon. Damon accepted the glass with his free hand but didn’t sip from it.

“Oh, no. He and my sire were friendly, but I’m a Rebekah baby, for lack of a better term. I heard about your doppelganger girlfriend taking Kol out, though. Impressive. You like them fiery, huh?” Rolf glanced down Bonnie again for a fleeting moment.

“Elena is quite the woman,” Damon said, drawing his attention back from the witch beside him. She recognized the tactic but felt a dull throb of jealousy anyway.

“I liked them fiery once, too,” Rolf said. Venom infiltrated his careful tone, and Bonnie felt Damon tense next to her. “Imagine my delight to hear you were right here in Portugal, not far at all.”

“You aren’t still on that old misunderstanding, are you?” Damon asked, trying and failing to keep it casual. He could feel more vampires encroach closer on him and Bonnie.

She mentally debated herself. She could probably take them all, but not without risking one of them pulling Damon’s heart out on their way down. She ran through spells in her head when she felt a needle pushed into her neck from behind. Before Damon could register what had happened, she lost all functionality in her body. Rolf hit her hard in the face and she tumbled to the ground.

Damon threw himself at the man in a rage when his minions grabbed him from all sides, and he felt the familiar feeling of vervain darts in his back.

“Not at all,” Rolf sneered. Everything went black.

Damon came back to consciousness slowly, expecting to be on the far edge of the bed he shared with Bonnie. Instead, he felt the flat, hard table beneath him. His shirt had been cut open and chains were wrapped tight around his wrists, ankles, and shoulders. The restrictions were overkill. He’d been pumped with so much vervain he couldn’t bust out of yarn if he wanted to.

“It wakes,” Rolf sneered down at him.

Damon’s head fell to the side weakly, looking for Bonnie. She was stiff at the feet of Rolf’s human. He listened carefully and found her quick heartbeat. Relief washed over him. He kept his face blank, looking back up at his captor. If he knew what Bonnie meant to him, he would hurt her more.

“Fast-acting paralytic. Don’t worry. It won’t last longer than a day.”

Bonnie was completely frozen. She laid there, eyes closed, trapped in her own body as she heard the men talking. She willed herself to use magic, but she couldn’t make it happen without her voice functioning. Damon experienced sleep paralysis sometimes. He rarely talked about it, but she felt a pang of sympathy for it now. She was in a nightmare.

“I see you’re not over it,” Damon coughed out.

“She was my wife. Would you be?”

“I didn’t know it was her, man, I promise.”

“I don’t care.”

One of Rolf’s men walked over with a jar of vervain flowers, a pair of thin, black gloves, and a sharp knife. Rolf took them without thanks.

“For a long time, I asked myself, ‘What kind of a man is Damon Salvatore to run off without even an apology?’” he said as he tugged the gloves onto his hands.

“I don’t know why I left. You’re being so reasonable,” Damon said. Rolf ignored him.

“So, I thought I’d ask you myself.” Rolf picked up a single vervain flower in his gloved hands.

“Ask me what?”

Rolf brushed the tip of the vervain flower along Damon’s neck. He suppressed the yell that threatened to escape his lips. He let long, harsh breaths out of his nose. Rolf lifted the flower back off his neck.

“What kind of man are you, Damon?” he asked coolly. Damon clenched his jaw. His expression set into firm obstinacy.

“Handsome, athletic, good in the sack...” he began. Rolf shoved the vervain flower in his mouth, then placed his large hand over his face, plugging his nose and keeping his jaw closed tight. Damon felt the searing pain fill his mouth as blood pooled around his tongue. He choked on the vervain, feeling bits of the flower fall down his throat. His chest burned as his insides ripped apart. It was like breathing in broken chips of glass. He fought to spit the poisonous flower out, but Rolf held his mouth firmly. He looked down at Damon like he had inconvenienced him with his non-answer. After a moment longer, he let go of his face.

Damon sputtered out the flower in a pool of thick blood. He tried not to think about the small bits of his tongue he felt expel from his mouth with the purple petals. The bloody mess dripped down his chin, and he ferociously shook his head back and forth to get the poison off his face. He glared at his torturer and waited for him to gloat in the same way he’d taunted Mason and his other victims over the years. Instead, Rolf kept his voice unsettlingly steady and repeated the same question.

“What kind of man are you, Damon?”

Damon’s voice was garbled from the damage in his mouth but remained defiant.

“Well... I’m a hell of a bowler,” he replied. Rolf took the knife this time and dug it deep into his chest. Damon shouted out as the blade cut into his heart, ripping it apart inside him. He pulled hard against the chains, but they wouldn’t budge.

Bonnie listened helplessly as the cycle went on for almost fourteen hours. At first, Damon’s replies were taunting and amused.

“What kind of man are you, Damon?”

“Ask your wife.”

Screaming.

“What kind of man are you, Damon?”

“I think I’m a Samantha, but Stefan makes a strong case for Carrie.”  

Screaming.

Around the seventh hour of torture, his quips grew tired and unoriginal.

“What kind of man are you, Damon?”  

“Italian-American. Sound out my last name, dumbass.”

Screaming.  

“What kind of man are you, Damon?”  

“Gemini. You?”

Screaming.

For a few hours after that, Damon refused to say anything. He just withstood the pain, falling in and out of consciousness. Soft tears escaped the corner of Bonnie’s eyes as she heard the sounds of the blade digging into his body and his skin sizzle beneath the flowers. Rolf took no breaks. She could have fallen asleep, but she forced herself to stay awake. She couldn’t leave him alone.

“What kind of man are you, Damon?” Rolf repeated for maybe the seventieth time.

“Please stop,” he begged.

“What kind of man are you, Damon?”

“What do you want me to say?” he whispered. Rolf slowly dragged the blade down his cheek. This tactic was the worst. When he stabbed him, the pain was fast. When he dragged it out, the anticipation of when the long slices would end drove Damon crazy. Rolf lightly cut all the way down to his collarbone before he let up.

Damon had fallen deep into a dark place inside of himself. His own voice whispered in his ear the million answers he had to the question. He thought of the man who let his mother die with no forgiveness in his heart. He thought of the man who’d cowardly crawled into a coffin, leaving Bonnie for years. He thought of every life he’d ever taken.

“What kind of man are you, Damon?”

If Damon had any ounce of energy left in him, he would have been furious at the tears that stung his eyes. If he had any energy left in him, he would worry about Bonnie overhearing him. He didn’t. All that was left was the hollow voice in his head that finally escaped his lips.

“I’m... nothing. Nothing. She’s going to regret every second she’s wasted on me,” he choked out the confession.

Rolf relented for the first time, nodding slowly. He put the knife down and took off his gloves.

“Ah. You feel unworthy of the doppelganger,” Rolf remarked. Damon laid there quietly for a long moment.

“Yeah. The doppelganger,” he whispered.

Rolf waved his friend over, who handed him a new knife. It was black with an odd writing on the blade.

“I picked this up from a witch in Asia,” Rolf said, admiring the knife in his hand. “She spelled it, so your vampirism won’t heal the scar. Impressive magics. It was a shame to kill her, but hey, can’t have her reversing it for you,” he said.

Bonnie thought back to the moments Damon ridiculed Stefan and Klaus’s decisions to mar their immortal bodies with tattoos. He took pride in his clean, untouched skin. She felt fury boil inside of her and daydreamed of the slow, painful death she could give this vampire.

Damon cried out as Rolf carved into his abdomen. He couldn’t tell what the man was writing, but he felt the strokes of the knife cut large words across his stomach. He tried to retreat further into himself. He closed his eyes and thought about Stefan. He heard his brother’s laugh in the back of his mind, faint, but warm. He thought of the time Bonnie fell asleep on his shoulder on the overnight train from Budapest to Prague. He thought about the drunken, victorious kiss she planted on his cheek when she won a blackjack tournament at a pub in Scotland. It was almost enough to dull the searing pain of the blade carving into him. Almost.

The feeling in Bonnie’s hands slowly began to come back. After fourteen hours on the ground, she fought every instinct to squeeze them into fists just to move. There were eyes everywhere. She knew they’d dose her again. She cautiously wiggled her toes in her heels.

Rolf gave the knife back to his friend and stretched his arms wide. He was stiff and tired. He was a surgeon who’d come out of a fourteen-hour procedure.

“Pack it up. Let’s go,” he commanded to the others. They were hunched over in their chairs, bored and exhausted.

“You’re n- not gonna kill me?” Damon choked out, quiet and broken.

“Why would I when you can live with this reminder?” the man replied. After one final look, he turned his back on Damon and gestured for the others to follow him out.

Bonnie slowly opened her eyes as the vampires headed toward the exit. She didn’t know if she could walk. She didn’t know if she could get out. What she did know was that she couldn’t let him escape. She opened her shaky hand in his direction and whispered through half-frozen vocal cords.

“Incendia.”

Rolf caught fire immediately and burned from the inside out. His echoing screams created a cold delight inside her. She waved her hand softly, so the fire spread through the vampires surrounding him. Some ran at her, piecing together what had happened, but they weren’t fast enough. Bonnie muttered more spells under her breath and threw them through the air into the fast-spreading fire. She mustered her strength and rolled herself onto her hands, achingly pushing herself up off the ground. She swayed on her knees, but her adrenaline surged at the sight of Damon trembling and the flames creeping toward him.

Bonnie climbed to her feet and stumbled over to Damon, holding herself up on nearby tables and chairs to help her along. She saw the vampires fall to the ground one by one. Their skin turned lilac and veiny as the fire consumed their bodies and the walls surrounding them.

“Lacero,” she said in a cracked, hoarse voice. The chains fell into tiny pieces around Damon and clattered on the ground. Bonnie couldn’t hide the horror on her face as she looked down at his stomach.

“That bad, huh?” he whispered. She composed herself and grabbed him by the arm to help him to his feet.

“We need to get out of here,” she said, watching the flames encroach on them.

“No. Wait,” he groaned. Bonnie looked up at him incredulously when she found his eyes locked on the young woman Rolf had compelled. She’d forgotten about her. The girl had been silently sitting in that chair for over half a day since they arrived.

Damon grabbed the side of the bar and walked over to her, stumbling and weak. Bonnie followed him, trying and failing to help him along as her legs shook beneath her. When they approached the compelled girl, she stared up at them blankly.

“What’s... what’s your name?” Damon asked, spitting blood out onto the floor. She looked up at him with wary, wide eyes.

“Danielle,” she replied in a voice was devoid of life.

“How long have you been here?” his tone was shockingly gentle beneath the pain.

“A few weeks, I think. Maybe a month.” He looked at her skin marred by scars from bite marks. Rolf never bothered to heal her. Damon put a hand on her shoulder and looked deep into her eyes. He mustered up the miniscule amount of energy he had left to compel her.

“Danielle... you are going to go home. Portugal was beautiful. The beaches were pristine. You skinny dipped. You loved the food. You enjoyed every moment. You were attacked by an animal and hospitalized. It’s okay, though. You don’t remember the pain. In fact, it’s given you a new lease on life. You are more grateful and optimistic for the future than you ever have been. You’ll always remember the sand between your toes, the architecture, and the friends you made. You’re going to have... a wonderful life,” he promised in a raspy voice. A small smile spread over Danielle’s face.

“It was beautiful, wasn’t it?” she asked. Before he could answer, she walked over to the door. She stepped over Rolf’s corpse as she left the burning building.

Damon slumped against the bar, ready to fall to the ground. Bonnie caught him, slung his arm around her shoulders, and let him rest some of his weight on her. They interlaced their fingers as she supported him. She was stiff and aching, but she could move again.

Bonnie looked up at him with big, teary eyes. He was in too much pain to return her glance. He was too focused on remaining conscious. She let herself indulge in staring up at him for a few seconds as they hobbled toward the exit.

In that moment, Bonnie Bennett fell in love with Damon Salvatore.

Her new realization kept creeping up on her as she parted the flames around them and helped the vampire hobble back to their little temporary home. I have to get him back. I love him. I think there’s some O Positive in the fridge. I love him. He needs to shower, too. I love him. I wonder how long it’ll take for him to heal from this. I love him.

He didn’t speak until they reached their studio. They’d drawn the attention of locals and tourists alike in the harsh light of day, but they kept inching home, ignoring their shocked expressions. Their horrified eyes kept falling to his stomach under his open shirt.

Bonnie fumbled with the lock as Damon swayed on his feet.

“Can’t believe you got to kill him,” he growled.

“You can take my next revenge murder, then. We’ll call it even,” she replied. A weak smile danced on his face.

Bonnie held him up as they crossed their small apartment to the bathroom. She flicked the light switch, and pale, florescent light filled the room. Damon leaned back against the wall while Bonnie turned on the shower. He stared into the bathroom mirror at his mangled body. In a grossly neat script, large across his torso were three simple words.

Not worth it.

Bonnie grabbed his face in her hand and roughly turned it toward hers. The pads of her fingers pressed into his cheeks hard, though she was careful to avoid the gashes in his skin. She looked in his eyes wordlessly. Damon nodded weakly and turned his back toward the mirror.

She helped him into the shower, and they sat on the floor fully clothed as the hot water washed the blood from Damon’s pale skin. He looked like he was going to pass out any second.

“Do you remember...” he faded a bit before catching himself. He blinked hard to stay awake. “Do you remember that night you found me and El- Elena dancing? At that frat party?”

Bonnie felt hot saliva in her mouth at the mention of her friend. He never talked about Elena anymore.

“Yeah,” she whispered.

“That night, we were looking... for people she could feed on. Bad people, you know? Like Dexter. Thought it’d be easier for her if they sucked,” he said. Bonnie nodded, unsure what to get from the story. He continued.

“We saw some frat guy drop a roofie in this girl’s drink,” he was whispering now. Bonnie leaned closer to hear him over the water pouring down on them.

“She fed on him, and we... drank and danced all night. But we—we never checked... do you think she got home?” he asked. Damon’s eyes were half-closed by now, but she could see in his expression what he wanted. Absolve me. Forgive me.

Bonnie inched closer to him. She sat on her knees between his legs as the water soaked through their clothes. She brought her hand to his face and rubbed some blood out of his cheek with her thumb. Damon leaned into her touch.

“I hope so,” she whispered.

He brought his hand up to meet hers on his cheek. It was intimate in a way they’d never been. The gesture was tender and infused with deep appreciation.

“You never lie to me,” he observed.

“It’s not really my way.”

“No, it’s not,” he agreed. His eyes began to close, and Bonnie held his head up.

She looked back over her shoulder at the doorway. There was blood in the fridge, but she couldn’t get herself to move. She wanted to show him how significant what he did tonight was. She wanted to show him that a man who took care of a stranger after fourteen hours of torture with no expectation of reward was a good man. That was the kind of man he was.

Bonnie inched closer to him and clumsily placed her legs on the outside of his until she was straddling him, sitting tall in his lap. She held his puzzled, weak eyes and tilted her head to the side so her neck was outstretched in front of him. His lips parted, surprised and confounded.

“I trust you,” she said.

Damon cautiously closed the distance between them, waiting for her to withdraw the offer. When she didn’t, he hesitated only one more second before he sank his teeth into her flesh.

It hurt, of course, but not too badly. It wasn’t the first time he drank from her. Years ago, in a rage over Emily’s deception, he bit her for only a moment before Stefan had stopped it. It was feral and angry then. This was different. Damon put his hands on either side of her waist for seemingly no reason at all. As he drank slowly and cautiously, Bonnie held onto his shoulder with one hand and placed the other on the cold, slick acrylic wall behind him.

Bonnie closed her eyes, focusing on the feeling of his hands and his torso pressed against hers to ignore the pain where his teeth sunk into her neck. He released her from his mouth quickly, but they stayed in that position for a moment longer. Damon felt tempted to lick the bead of blood that trailed down to her collar bone, but he didn’t. He brought one of his hands from her waist and swiped it away with his thumb.

Bonnie pulled back slightly to meet his eyes, but she found his expression looking her up and down. Her wet white dress clung to her skin, and she felt naked beneath his gaze. He was frantically searching for injuries. He noticed the bruising around her eye had already begun.

“I wish I could kill him,” he growled. He wasn’t blood thirsty on his own behalf, despite his own far worse wounds. He wanted to avenge the swelling on her face.

“We’re okay,” she assured him.

“I guess you regret inviting vampire public enemy number one along with you on your big world tour, huh?” he tried to keep his tone light, but she heard the insecurity in his voice.

“Not exactly,” she whispered. He broke into a small smile as he remembered her saving him from the prison world.

“And Elena would never regret a second with you,” she said, glancing at the words carved into his stomach.

Damon shook his head with a humorless laugh and pulled her into a tight hug. They cradled each other on the shower floor. Damon winced when she pressed against some of his worse injuries, but he didn’t loosen his grip. They listened to each other breathe under the crashing water. It ran bloody down the drain.

“I wasn’t talking about her,” he whispered in her ear.

Bonnie’s heart leapt before she was hit with wave of guilt. She pressed her face closer into Damon's neck. Long sobs tumbled out of her mouth as the night's events hit her. The water went lukewarm, but they didn’t move.

They made it out.

They were okay.

They were in love.

Chapter Text

Elena’s breath hitched as she reread the end of Bonnie’s entry over and over again.

I wasn’t talking about her.

She brushed her fingers along the indentations where Bonnie’s pen pressed against the paper all those years ago. An image flashed in her mind of her friend putting these words to the page as Damon slept soundly with his head in her lap.

“Did they ever get rid of the scar?” she asked quietly. Caroline looked at her, bewildered by her first question. She expected anger. She expected her to demand to know how far this went. She didn’t expect immediate concern. She forgot how much Elena loved Damon. Elena loved Damon with every part of her soul.

“No. He still has it.”

Elena felt a physical pain in her chest from reading about the torture. She felt both gratitude toward Bonnie for protecting him and crippling, burning jealousy. Water droplets fell down on Bonnie’s confessed feelings, and she realized she was crying. When had she started?  She looked up at Caroline, unsure how to begin to sift through the chaos. An hour ago, Damon had her in his arms, promising her forever. Now, Stefan was dead, and Bonnie had fallen in love with her boyfriend. She wiped the tears from her cheeks furiously.

She got lost in rapid-fire thoughts. Bonnie fell for Damon. Okay. That was okay. She could handle that. Maybe he felt something back, too. It would hurt. God, it would hurt, but she could handle that, too. If Damon could love her after so long with his brother and never throw it in her face, she could accept whatever connection he had once felt with Bonnie. This was so long ago, anyway. Fifty years. Practically another life.

An optimistic voice in her mind told her that, perhaps, Caroline was having her read these excerpts because one of Bonnie’s dying wishes was to confess her fleeting, though intense, long-dead feelings for Damon. Maybe that was it.

Another part of her brain started to rework the fantasy she’d replayed over and over as she waited for him in the crypt. The image of Damon lifting her off the ground in a warm embrace and kissing her fiercely was slowly replaced with an image of him grieving in her arms. The smell of bourbon on his breath. Constantly feeling on edge, waiting for the impending self-sabotage. Helping him recover from the loss of the other woman he lov—.

She stopped, shaking the worst-case scenario out of her head. No, it couldn’t be that. Bonnie felt guilty about a moment in Portugal and wanted her to know about it. That’s it. Caroline would drop her off and Damon would crash into her with decades of longing, and he would take her home, wherever that was now. He would teach her about this new world she had woken up in. He would make her laugh and tell her about all of the ways he missed her. He would confess that, yes, he needed to put her in a mental box for a while because, yes, it had been too painful to live without her, but he never forgot her for a moment, and while he may have lived his life, as she told him to do, she was the greatest love of his existence, and that had never changed. It would happen just like that. It would.

She thought about Bonnie’s letter.

My biggest piece of unfair luck is I never had to face you.

Caroline gently pulled the diary from her hands and replaced it with the next. Elena looked up through blurry eyes at her friend’s face. She finally figured out the expression Caroline had been trying desperately to suppress since she picked her up.

Pity.

April 3rd, 2021

Dear Elena,

I’ll just start from the beginning.  

“Do you want to do it alone?” Bonnie asked.

She and Damon stood shoulder to shoulder outside of Stefan’s bedroom door. It had been three years since she closed it. Through nine months of mourning and drinking, Damon never took the leap to go inside. Now, he stood outside the room after two years traveling the world with the woman beside him. He looked down at her. She had her hair back in a bun and exhausted bags under her eyes. She never could sleep on planes, and the flights home from South Korea were long. She was dead on her feet from sleep deprivation and didn’t have a stitch of makeup on. She was breathtaking.

Damon looked back at the door and placed his hand softly on the wood.

“No,” he replied simply. She took his hand in hers and gave it a light squeeze. She prepared to drop it, but he held onto her. She tethered him here.

When Damon opened the door and flicked on the light, memories hit him like a furious ocean wave. The room smelled like his brother and his musty journals. The floorboard creaked in the same place it always had when he stepped on it. He took a slow tour of the room, looking at the framed photos around the room one by one with Bonnie beside him. Caroline was a heavy feature in the pictures. Her bright grin lit up every edge of the room.

The corner of Damon’s mouth twitched as he picked up the picture closest to the bed. Damon, Bonnie, Caroline, Alaric, and Stefan had gone to the grill the night before three of them went off to Europe after Jo died. In the picture Alaric snapped, Caroline had her arms tight around Bonnie’s waist, and Stefan grinned at the camera with his forearm resting on Damon’s shoulder. Damon threw bunny ears up behind Bonnie’s head, and she dug her elbow into his side, seeing right through his predictable antics.

Damon grinned down at the picture and angled it for Bonnie to see. She rested her head lightly on his shoulder and burst into a short, loud laugh at the memory.

“God, Stefan and Caroline were so awkward that night,” she said.

“It’s because he did that whole ‘I will wait for you’ Nicholas Sparks speech. He was such a fucking sap.”

They continued to walk silently through the room inspecting every photo and trinket until Damon spotted it. His brother’s journal laid open on his desk. His breath got stuck in his throat as he walked over to pick it up. He dropped Bonnie’s hand so he could flip through the pages to the last page with writing. Stefan had kept these journals for well over a century, and Damon always made fun of him for it. Why write it all down when there’d never be an end? We’re immortal, brother! Quit writing everything down; it doesn’t matter. None of it matters.

Except there was an end. It all mattered.

His eyes flickered over to the shelf of Stefan’s diaries. He’d never exactly respected his brother’s privacy regarding the journals. He’d flipped casually through them over the years. He resolved that he would read them all again. Sometimes drunk, sometimes not. Sometimes to Bonnie, sometimes to himself. He would keep his brother alive in the only way he could.

Damon carried the journal over to Stefan’s bed and flipped over the pillows to their dust-free sides before leaning back against them. Bonnie laid down next to him, looping her arm through his. She drew comforting patterns on his bicep with her thumb. These were his brother’s last words. The fact lingered in the air around him, biting and tragic. He began to read aloud. The words echoed through the otherwise silent, still room.

“This time tomorrow, I will be a married man. I’m sure I’ll be nervous when the time comes, but I’m not yet. Knowing that Da--,” Damon’s voice cracked. Bonnie laid her head on his shoulder and strengthened her grip on his arm.

“Knowing that Damon will be next to me, marrying me and my best friend, will inevitably make tomorrow the greatest day of my life. It’d be easy to sit here and claim I have no regrets about the years I’ve known Caroline. Obviously, everything worked out. I could look at every bump in the road as just another part of our journey here. All’s well that ends well. But that would be a lie. I don’t regret the days she doubted marrying me or the times we hurt each other, no matter how hard they are to think about. I regret that I didn’t make her my wife sooner. I didn’t see her. Really see her. Tomorrow will be the only measure I can take to rectify that mistake. I will look at her and promise her a future, even if I couldn’t give her the past. I will love her kids like my own. I will make her laugh. I will hold her. I will love her until I take my last breath on this Earth.”

Damon cast a look down at Bonnie. She was fast asleep, breathing deep and twitching occasionally. It was easier to look at her when she was asleep. He didn’t have to worry about darting his eyes away at the right intervals.

He disturbed her slightly as he reached over to turn the lamp off. She unconsciously shifted onto her side and laid her head on Damon’s chest. There was something so comforting about lying there listening to her heartbeat, surrounded by tokens of his brother’s memory. Peaceful. He lightly stroked her hair as he felt her chest slowly rise and fall against his side.

He wondered what Stefan would say to him at that moment if he were still alive. What would he say if he knew Damon had fallen in love with Bonnie? Would he scold him? Tell him he’d managed to do the one thing that would both hurt Elena and tie Bonnie’s human life to his chaotic, doomed existence? Maybe he would tell him that he wanted him to be happy, and Elena wanted him to be happy, and everything would work out okay. He chose to believe the latter as he rested his hand lightly on Bonnie’s hip. She was drooling on his favorite shirt. He didn’t mind.

When Bonnie stirred hours later, her body flooded with panic. The wedding was today. Her eyes settled on Damon’s watch. 5 AM. She thanked her jet-lag. At least it was good for one thing. As her heart rate steadied, she realized Damon’s watch was in view because his arm was draped around her torso. His face rested in the crook of her neck, and she could feel his steady, warm breath on her skin. She froze in place, noting his left leg sprawled out across hers. He sleepily pulled her in tighter, pressing his chest hard against her back.

She meant to ask if he was awake. She meant to inch out of his grasp. She meant to leave to make breakfast or find something else to do to busy her hands and mind. She didn’t mean to weave her fingers into his. She didn’t mean to let her eyes flutter back closed as she fell into an indulgent second wave of sleep against him, lulled by the warmth of his body around hers. Sometimes she got too tired to fight. Sometimes she succumbed to what she didn’t mean to do.

When they finally woke, panicked at the late hour, they untangled from each other quickly. They didn’t talk about it. They never did.

Bonnie adjusted Damon’s tie as they walked up to the Lockwood mansion. They were so, so late. Bonnie’s pale green dress ran down to her heels, and the slit down the side revealed her long legs with every frantic step. A silver bracelet Damon bought her in Thailand dangled on her wrist as she ran her hands down the fabric of his suit.

“Nobody strained any brain cells on venue selection, did they?” he asked.

Bonnie looked up at the house. It’d been done up in a classy display of twinkling lights and a carefully curated entrance of draped pink and white silk. A rolled-out carpet led to the front door, surrounded by striking green foliage and pale pink flowers. The house looked different done-up like this, but it still reminded her of where she was: back home. Back to reality.

“Are you gonna judge the whole time?” she asked. He raised his eyebrows. Do you even know me? they asked. She shook her head, tightening his tie around his neck. They walked arm in arm through the elaborate path and into the crowded great room. They were relieved the ceremony hadn’t begun without them. Bonnie’s relief was quickly replaced with vague discomfort. They recognized nobody. Stephanie’s family and Matt’s cop buddies flooded the old mansion they’d spent so much time in over the years.

“Are we mingling or being wallflowers all night?” Damon asked.

“Oh, it’s in my hands?”

“Well, I can be your super-stud arm candy if you want to be passed around to tell old high school tales. Then again, Donovan actually splurged for the open bar! Best contribution he’s ever made to the world.”

She did a long scan of the room and, just as she was about to resign herself to cozying up to the bar all night, she spotted a familiar head of curly blonde hair. Her heart skipped a beat. She hadn’t seen or heard from Caroline Forbes in almost three years.

Bonnie’s stomach turned to knots. She’d tried to be understanding of Caroline’s sudden absence, and for the most part, she was. She couldn’t help but feel abandoned, though. She hadn’t seen the girls go to Kindergarten. She hadn’t been able to gush to her about all of her adventures abroad or confide in her about the strange relationship she had built with Damon. She used to think bitter thoughts after a shot too many. She’d reflect on how devastated Caroline had been when Stefan did exactly this: disappearing without a trace after Damon died.

Caroline exchanged small talk with Matt’s dad, nodding politely at whatever he was saying through a proud grin. Bonnie’s eyes traveled over her. Her smile didn’t quite meet her eyes. Her wedding ring stayed firmly planted on her left hand. Her hair was unwashed, her nail polished chipped, and her dress an old one from high school, clearly fished out of the back of her closet that morning. This was far from the Caroline who spent two months minimum preparing for any even semi-formal event, let alone her friend’s wedding.

Her resentment faded as she looked at her friend’s weathered appearance. Many people would look at Caroline’s convincing, polite smile and think she was fine. She knew her better than that. Caroline was falling apart at the seams, held together with water and off-brand Play-Doh.

Damon put a comforting hand on the small of Bonnie’s back. She looked up at him, confused.

“Your heartrate is…” he pointed toward the ceiling and whistled. Of course. He could tell she was nervous. He could always tell.

“Wanna talk to Barbie? Or try to avoid her in what will likely be a five-person groom’s side?” he asked.

“Yeah, let’s say hi,” her voice cracked. Damon took her hand in his own and brushed her thumb with his. This kind of gesture wasn’t uncommon since Portugal, but Bonnie couldn’t help but feel the crushing weight of her typically buried guilt. Engaging in such a display in front of strangers in Greece was one thing. Caroline was another. She held tight anyway, not willing to pull her hand away. If she pulled away, she would have to admit it felt wrong to do. She’d have to acknowledge the guilt. She’d have to acknowledge why it was there.

When Caroline spotted Bonnie, she uttered excusing words to Mr. Donovan and pushed through the crowds to get to her.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, throwing her arms around her the second she was close enough to reach her. Bonnie hugged her back with her free arm. She realized how much she desperately missed Caroline as she inhaled the familiar scent of her perfume. There had been a hole in her life where Caroline belonged. Caroline, who called her every day she mourned Grams. Caroline, who helped her mother through her transition, and told her off when she decided to leave again.

“Hey, Care. How are you?” she asked, warm but shaky. Caroline smiled at her softly then turned to Damon, dodging the question.

“Hi,” she said. She gave him a light, fast hug. She couldn’t look at him long. He was her brother-in-law for only hours. He was a walking reminder that she hadn’t been Stefan’s wife longer than twelve hours. She hadn’t been Caroline Salvatore long enough to binge all of the Harry Potter movies, do a ten-thousand-piece puzzle, or drive to Miami. Damon was her tragically temporary family.

“We’ve missed you, Blondie,” he said, returning the brief embrace. Caroline’s eyes flickered down to their entwined hands, but she didn’t comment.

“I saw your travels on Bonnie’s Insta. I assume you compelled all the tourists away from the Colosseum?”

“Yeah, that one took a while,” he said. He’d wanted her to enjoy it without the crowds. Caroline nodded, a little too knowingly. She looked back at Bonnie with a million apologies in her eyes.

“Bonnie, I--,”

“It’s okay. I probably would have done the same thing,” Bonnie said. Caroline shook her head, smiling at her attempt.

“You don’t have to let me off the hook like that. You still came to our wedding,” she said.

Bonnie faltered. She wasn’t talking about Enzo.

The ushers opened the doors to the back yard, sparing her from finding a way out of the topic.

The three were seated together in the second row, only behind Matt’s dad and a few aunts and uncles. It was a relatively small ceremony; only about thirty people filled the short rows in the crowd.

“So much for sorority sisters,” Bonnie whispered. Damon smirked at her and put his arm lazily around the back of her chair.

Matt stood at the altar, wearing excited nerves on his face. His father stood behind him, holding a bible. Seeing that he was doing the ceremony brought a smile to Bonnie’s face. Matt deserved his dad in his life. Alaric stood in the groomsmen line and sent them a small wave. Damon nodded back at him.

The wedding was quick, and for that, all three of them were grateful. Caroline’s hands balled into fists throughout the ceremony. The vows reminded her of her own: the many promises she and Stefan made to each other they never got to fulfill. Bonnie leaned into her, and Caroline rested her head on her shoulder.

As Damon watched Matt and Stephanie devote their lives to each other, cruel, intrusive thoughts flooded his mind. They had only been back home a day and he found a small voice in his head asking the question he’d avoided for years. What were they doing?

They’d spent nearly three years at each other’s side. Three years of loaded silences and too many mornings longing to close the small gap between them in their shared beds. Three years and not one acknowledgment of the future. They were just friends. Best friends. Best friends who never corrected anybody who thought they were more. Best friends who could not imagine a day without each other. Best friends whose stomachs felt acidic when they saw others flirting with or staring at the other. Bonnie was almost thirty. Her long-time friend was getting married right before her eyes. How long could she play G-rated house with her comatose best friend’s boyfriend?

He physically shook his head, willing the small voice to leave him be and let him fall back into blissful denial.

He dutifully clapped as Matt kissed his new bride and hazily returned to the reception, sitting with Caroline and Alaric at the end of a table. Damon was acutely aware of their old friends’ eyes following his and Bonnie’s every move. When she took a sip of his drink or he brushed her elbow with his own, their eyes followed. He grew increasingly agitated by the attention.

Matt and Stephanie waved the other couples over as their first dance concluded, and Damon took the opportunity to lead her away from Alaric and Caroline’s prying gaze. Matt’s unyielding adoration of his new bride shown all over his face as he clumsily led her around the dance floor. The sight made Damon queasy. He put his back to the newlyweds and placed his hand on Bonnie’s waist. She took his outstretched hand with her other and placed her other hand lightly on his shoulder.

“You’re pissy,” she observed as they swayed to the music.

“We’re a damn sideshow. Barbie could have brought Klaus and they’d still write in a notebook every time we blink at the same time,” he said, bitterness on his tongue.

Bonnie rested her head on his shoulder and brought their joined hands to Damon’s chest. Damon moved his hand to the middle of her back, tracing small patterns through the fabric of her dress. It wasn’t the standard Mystic Falls slow dance, where they were supposed to bust out the intricate choreography their small-town events had them learn. They simply traveled in small circles together. They had to remind themselves to continue to sway so they would not simply be holding each other in the middle of the dance floor. Damon almost forgot about his outburst as they danced silently for the minutes that followed.

“Don’t be mad. It’s just weird for them,” she whispered. Her voice was serene and calm as they moved.

“What is?” he whispered without thinking. She pulled her face away from his shoulder and looked him in the eye. She swallowed, thinking of the possible answers. How close we’ve gotten? How comfortable we are now? How aware I am of you at every moment? 

The music stopped and everyone around them clapped. They stayed where they were, a question hanging over them. A bell rang, indicating everybody should return to their seats for dinner. Bonnie broke the eye contact and shuffled toward their table toward the safety of their old friends.

The four exchanged pleasant catch-up over the meal. Caroline and Alaric gushed about their daughters. Co-parenting was suiting them well and the girls were loving school, though Caroline had to compel a couple of people already to forget about the occasional display of magic. Alaric was even seeing somebody, though it was too early for a wedding date. Damon was notably absent from the conversation, his mind far away as he reflected on Stefan’s journal entry and Donovan’s beaming face.

“So, Bonnie. Now that you’re back from your grand world-tour, are you re-enrolling at Whitmore?” Alaric asked, taking a sip of his champagne. She spared a glance at Damon’s contemplative expression as he sorted through his thoughts.

Bonnie took one, broken breath.

“Actually… I got into UVA,” she announced. Damon’s head whipped fast toward her. His mouth fell open slightly. Caroline ran around the table, delighted.

“That’s so amazing, Bonnie!” she said, squeezing her tight.

“Wow, congratulations!” Alaric said.

“Thank you,” Bonnie smiled stiffly. She was aware of Damon’s eyes locked on her.

“So, you’re moving to Charlottesville?” Caroline asked.

“Well, I’m too old for the dorm life. I don’t exactly wanna be the beer buyer. But maybe an apartment off campus--,” she began.

Damon got up suddenly and walked toward the house. A few of the wedding guests watched him with judgmental eyes as he disturbed the dinner.

“Excuse me,” Bonnie whispered, following him back into the house.

She searched around the main floor of the house until she spotted him through a familiar pair of glass French doors.

She walked into what was once Mayor Lockwood’s study, pulling the doors closed behind her. The room remained much the same: a couch in the center, the desk near the window. Now, Matt’s case files and notes sat on the desk, along with photos of him and his new bride. Damon ignored his surroundings, staring at the blank wall away from her.

“I see we’ve reached the part where you run away,” he said.

“I just got in last week. I was going to tell you--,”

“You didn’t even tell me you applied,” he said, spinning around to face her. To anyone else, they would see pure rage on his face. She saw the heartbreak and betrayal beneath it. She crossed her arms defiantly.

“It’s one of the best universities in the country, Damon. You can’t be mad at me for--,”

“Stop, Bonnie. I’m not mad you’re going to college! You died. You got stuck in a prison world. You spent three precious years of your twenties taking pity on a vampire. Your life has been delayed enough. Go forth. Drink cheap beer. Get a nose ring,” he waved her off.

“Is that what you think this has been? I felt bad for you?” she asked, stepping toward him.

“Why don’t you tell me what it’s been?” he glowered

Bonnie’s mouth shut hard and fast. She hugged her arms closer to her and looked around Matt’s office to avoid his gaze. She took a deep breath and forced herself to meet his furious, vulnerable eyes.

“I can't,” she whispered.

“Why?” he asked, taking a step toward her. She stepped back to keep the distance between them.

“If we say it, it’s real. And...” she trailed off.

“We have to stop?” he finished.

Damon pinned her beneath his stare. The knowledge that she planned to leave pushed him to shatter the illusion they had created the last few years. It was an affront to the silent deal they had slowly made over their time together.

“But I am. I’m stopping it,” she said firmly.

“Great. ‘Thank for the good memories, Damon! See you when I see you.’” he mocked her in a cold, unfeeling imitation. He let out a short, disbelieving laugh. “Guess I had it coming, huh?”

They both shared a silent moment, recalling when he’d abandoned her to desiccate. Bonnie shook her head and dropped her arms to her side.

“It’s not like that. It’s not revenge. UVA is an hour away, Damon. I can visit, and we’ll still talk. We’ll still be--,” she began.

“I am begging you to say friends.”

They looked at each other for a long, tense moment. She threw her arms in the air, exasperated.

“How about you say something then, Damon? Say her name.”

“What?” he asked. He looked away from her, revealing the truth behind his feigned misunderstanding. He knew exactly what she meant.

“Say. Her. Name.”

“Bon Bon--,” he began, walking across the room toward her. He took her elbow in his hand, but she ripped her arm from her grasp.

“No, Damon. No ‘Bon Bon’. I’m tired of it. I’m tired of covering everything in five fucking layers of irony and your stupid nicknames. When we were in 1994, she was all you could talk about. After Stefan died, our conversations were a series of drunken eulogies for them and Enzo. Now? Nothing. Not since Portugal and barely before that! Say her name,” she demanded. Damon crossed his arms and glared at her, planting his feet.

“Elena,” he said in a voice dripping with resentment.

They went silent. The ambient noise of the ceiling fan overhead filled the study. The stillness in the air felt palpable as they acknowledged the long-unspoken truth.

“She wanted us both to be--,” he began.

“Not with each other!” she interrupted.

“You don’t know that,” he said, desperate and longing. He felt embarrassed by the tone, but he shook it off. If she was moving on, then he was going to make her admit all the possibilities she was turning her back on.

“And what? I get old? We move around when people catch onto you not aging? I die, and Elena comforts you?” she asked in a cracking voice. He grabbed her shoulders.

“Don’t stand there and list all the big cons of loving a vampire when you were prepared to do it with Enzo.”

“I’m not here to keep her side of the bed warm!” she yelled, pushing him backward. Damon glowered at her.

“I’m giving you a chance to take that back,” he growled. Her breath hitched. She wasn’t a placeholder. They both knew that. She grabbed at reasons, desperately hoping one would hold true.

“I’m sorry,” she said, reaching out to him. He pulled away from her.

“Don’t you think I’ve tried not to?” he asked, his voice naked and raw. “Don’t you think I fought it? Every second for three years, I’ve tried.”

Bonnie bowed her head down at the floor.

“I know you did. I know I did. But… going away like that together…” she whispered.

“And whose idea was that!?”

“I know! I know. God, I feel guilty enough, please. I never thought we—I didn’t expect--,” she paused and gathered herself. “I know we tried, but we should have tried harder.”

Damon shook his head furiously and held her face between his hands. He looked exhausted.

“Well, I’m done. I set a new record in ‘Damon doesn’t do the selfish thing’. Three years. Congratulations, Elena, you got my best effort, but I’m done. Be done with me.”

Bonnie leaned into his touch, and he stroked her cheek with his thumb. She felt the familiar hum of her skin beneath his warm hands. She closed her eyes hard, willing herself to scrape together the will power she had left.

“I can’t do this to her,” she whispered, looking back up at him.

“Do what to her? Because, Bonnie, we might as well be fucking. You know that, right? There’s nothing we can do to her that we haven’t already done. I already love you. You think ignoring that makes this any less of a--,” he didn’t finish the sentence, but the word hung in the air. Betrayal.

She wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her forehead into his shoulder.

“I love you, too,” she whispered, her voice small and profoundly sad.

He held her close, wrapping his arms around her and pressing his cheek into the top of her head.

“I know I left, and I know I let you down, and I know I’ve fallen apart when you needed me, but I won’t leave again. I’m here, I can do this right, I know I can. I’ve never known that before, but I know now. I know I can do this,” he said. She nodded slowly against his shoulder.

“I know... this isn’t—it's not about you. I just— she will never forgive me. She will have time to forgive you, but—,” she stumbled through her thoughts. He felt so right holding her. He felt solid. The guilt ripped apart her gut.

Damon pulled away from her gently, holding her arm in one hand and lifting her chin up with the other.

“What do you want, Bonnie? If finding your own normal Donovan and living a guilt-free life is what you want, look at me and tell me that.”

Bonnie brought her hand up to his face, brushing the tips of her fingers along his hairline.

“I don’t lie to you, remember?” she said.

“It’s not your way,” he quoted her, daring to smile softly.

“I’ve never been happier in my life,” she confessed, feeling her heart race as she realized what she was doing.

“Then rip a page out of the Damon Salvatore playbook and choose yourself for once,” he pitched.

“I still want to go--,” she began.

“I’ll go with you to Charlottesville,” he said dismissively, like it wasn’t even a consideration.

“You want to?” she asked.

“What’s another city with you? College towns have good bars, anyway. If you’re ready,” he said.

“Ready for what?” she whispered. Damon’s gaze darted between her eyes and her lips. He took the tip of one of her curls between his fingers and moved his other hand down to her waist.

He brought his face to hers, slowly, holding her gaze. He gave her one last chance to pull away. She didn’t wait for him to. She met him in the middle and held his cheek in her hand as she brought her lips toward his. She chose him. They chose each other.

Damon and Bonnie kissed each other slowly, feeling themselves shattering an invisible line they’d carefully kept between them. As they fell into the kiss, it hit them how long they’d wanted to do it—far longer than they had ever known. The kiss was every kiss they could have shared making pancakes together in 1994. The kiss was a kiss of forgiveness after he recited the letter on his porch. The kiss was in front of the Eiffel Tower, on a canoe in Croatia, and in the sand in Bali. It was every goodnight and good morning they had ever squandered.

As they pulled away from each other, Damon thought of the words he had read the night before. His brother’s only regret, in a long and complicated relationship with Caroline, was not marrying her earlier. He emphatically understood that now.

Bonnie grinned, and a light laugh escaped her lips.

“What?” he asked, beaming back at her.

“We’re so stupid,” she said.

“I know.”

Damon kissed her again, lifting her up by the backs of her thighs. She wrapped her legs around his waist as he walked her over to the couch in the middle of the room. She waved her hand at the door, pulling her mouth away from his only long enough to murmur a spell.

“Claudo.”

She pressed herself against him again as fast as she could manage. The door locked itself, and a curtain closed on the glass.

Chapter Text

“Stop it, Caroline!”

Elena crossed her arms and squeezed her hands into defiant fists, staring pointedly at the floor through wet eyes. She was too afraid to look out the window. Yet more unknown. The list of things she felt sure about in this new world grew shorter with every word she read. She’d imagined Damon, Stefan, and Caroline telling her the tales of Bonnie’s long life on an elderly Jeremy’s wraparound porch. Sure, life had changed for the humans, but her three vampires would always be the same. The discoveries piled up, shattering the carefully curated illusion Stefan’s death, Caroline and Alaric’s kids, but more than anything: that the man she was on her way to see had once loved her best friend as much as he loved her. Maybe more, a cruel, distorted voice whispered in her ear.

“Just one more. Please. You can decide if you want to keep going after that,” Caroline plead. Her attempts to shove Bonnie’s next journal in Elena’s hands were fruitless, culminating in a naïve effort to simply place it in her lap.

“No,” Elena hissed, sweeping the journal to the floor. It fell to a random page, and she spotted the date: 2025. She didn’t know if Bonnie instructed Caroline on which days to show her, or if Caroline devised the system herself, but one of them decided she needed to jump forward again. She felt more irritating tears spring to her eyes. Bonnie and Damon’s relationship was the theme of these excerpts. They must have still been together four years later.

“I can’t imagine how hard this must--,”

“He talked her into it, Care. He didn’t-- he wasn’t even a little bit torn,” Elena’s voice was brittle with exhaustion and rejection. Caroline put her hand on her knee, and begrudgingly it. The vampire’s firm grip helped more than she expected it to. She comforted her with the patience of a mother of two and a grandmother of more. Elena saw wisdom and compassion in her eyes: an old woman trapped in the body of a teenager.

“Of course, he was torn. I know he was. He just--,”

“I can’t believe you’re defending him.” Elena interrupted. “I thought if I could count on anyone to be mad at him with me, it’d be you. You hate Damon.”

Caroline looked away from her in guilty avoidance.

“It’s been over fifty years... for me and him, too,” she said.

Elena leaned her head back against the seat, squeezing her eyes shut as the realization hit her: Caroline knew Damon longer than she had ever known her. She probably even loved him more. The thought made her feel horribly alone. Even the person taking the time to walk her through the confusion, her lone guide through this new, ruthless world, made less sense to her than ever. She wasn’t a college sophomore anymore. She got married. She created life.

“If you just read this last one, we can stop. There’s more, but we can stop if you want to,” Caroline said.

Elena took long, deep breaths as she sat up, looking down at the fallen journal. Bonnie had wanted her to know all of this. Bonnie, who had done nothing wrong except fall in love with the one person Elena thought, and deep down hoped, she wouldn’t.

Sometimes, pain was faultless. Damon and Bonnie had put her life before their own on countless occasions. They had earned happiness. They had earned the right to love each other. That fact only made it worse. The anger, hurt, and blame had nowhere to go. The feelings tried to push their way out, onto Bonnie, onto Damon, onto anything she could point to. They could only go inside, down her throat like razorblades, tearing fresh, fine cuts on her insides.

“Why don’t you just tell me what it says?” she asked quietly.

Caroline’s green eyes bore into her with annoying, stabbing sympathy.

“Please don’t make me.”

February 5, 2025

Dear Elena,

My tongue is blue, and my yard is a mess.

Damon rolled onto his side and brought his hand to the opposite side of the bed, expecting to touch a familiar bare shoulder or a fluid silk scarf. Instead, his open palm collided with the abandoned mattress. He blinked hard, letting his heightened senses take in the familiar sound of a running shower and his girlfriend’s off-key singing.

He cursed to himself before flinging the covers off his naked body. He tip-toed out of their small, light blue bedroom and snuck past the framed photos of their travels lining their short carpeted hallway. He silently pushed the door open and walked into a thick cloud of steam.

Willow Smith’s belting voice crackled out of Bonnie’s phone speaker on the marble bathroom counter. Damon wrote a message on the mirror with his finger as he listened to her butcher the vocals. He rubbed some of the drowsiness from his eyes and turned to peak around the shower curtain. Bonnie faced the wall opposite him, and he grinned. He took any opportunity he could to scare her. He’d hide behind doors or in their closet and leap out at her, waiting for her familiar screech and begrudging smile. “Jumpy” had joined his nickname repertoire for her.

Damon pulled the curtain back quietly and stepped into the small shower behind her.

“Excuse me, pardon me. In a serious rush over here,” he yelled suddenly, reaching around Bonnie to grab a bottle of shampoo. She screeched and leapt in the air as Damon made a show of rearranging as many of their products as possible, flailing his arms around her abrasively.

“Damon!” Bonnie yelled, spinning around. She collided into his bare chest and let out a loud, frustrated groan.

“Hi, Puffy,” he grinned, lightly patting her shower cap. He pressed a kiss to her forehead, and Bonnie rolled her eyes as she caught her breath.

“What are you doing?” she asked, swatting his hands away with exaggerated annoyance.

“Well, apparently we’re in a big rush this morning. Had to jump right in the shower and snub my painstakingly thought-out plans to make you breakfast in bed,” he said.

“Oh, I have to lay there and wait out your beauty sleep? I would have starved,” she said, grabbing her body wash.

He wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed the back of her neck softly.

“Maybe I had other plans for you,” he said. Bonnie smiled softly despite herself.

“More than breakfast?” she asked, lathering her shower puff.

“I had dessert in mind,” he said, snatching the puff out of her hand. “Let me help you with that. It looks heavy.”

“A gentleman,” she said. She handed him the puff and wrapped her arms around his neck. He lightly scrubbed her back as she planted soft kisses on his collarbone.

“Excited for tonight?” he asked. She leaned her cheek against his shoulder and closed her eyes, feeling him gently run the soapy netting down her spine. She hummed, content and quiet.

“Definitely.  I expect many, many over-the-top gifts. Fine jewelry, hand-crafted Belgian chocolates, a pony...” she teased. He shook his head.

“This whole thing is unfair, you know. All these big events at once. I’m gonna run out of gestures. I haven’t even thought about graduation.” he said.

Bonnie put her hands on his chest and brought her face up to his.

“You’ll think of something,” she whispered as she leaned in to kiss him. She felt the shower puff tumble down to her feet as he put his hands on her face, returning a kiss enriched with familiarity and longing. They had kissed over a thousand times in the last few years, but he always felt just a little more in love with her on this day. The proverbial ticking clock hanging over their head made him hold her tighter, touch her longer, and watch her closer.

Bonnie smiled as he placed his hands on her waist and moved his lips along her jawline. She wrapped her arms around his neck, perching herself on her tiptoes to close their ever-inconvenient height difference. Damon took advantage of the easier access to her neck as he nipped at her skin.

The doorbell rang, barely audible over the water, but loud enough to register muffled through their bathroom door.

“You’re fucking kidding,” he groaned against her neck.

“I was going to tell you... she’s definitely early. What time is it?” she asked, stepping back onto her heels. Damon didn’t need to ask who “she” was. He often called Bonnie’s best friend “that stray who eats all of our food”. Monique was a staple at their dinner table ever since she and Bonnie met at the UVA bookstore.

He brought his wrist up to his eye line, squinting at it with pseudo-contemplation.

“Quarter till there’s not a clock in here, Bonnie.”

“Will you tell her I’ll be out in five minutes?” she asked.

“Are you serious!?”

“You barely got wet,” she dismissed with a wave of her hand.

Damon stepped under the stream of water, making a spectacle of the gesture as he leaned his head back and felt the boiling water coat his face. He shook droplets onto her face from his newly soaked hair. She raised her eyebrows at him, the only hint of amusement on her face.

“Way to commit to the bit,” she said. Damon sighed and bent over to grab the puff from the shower floor. He placed it in her open hand.

“Fine,” he grumbled, stepping out of the shower.

“Maybe I’ll just answer the door in my towel!” he shouted over the curtain as he wrapped a towel around his waist.

“Maybe you can fuck right off!” Bonnie yelled back as she turned back into the stream.

“Green is your best color,” he teased with a smug, knowing smile.

“Damon?”

He turned back around to see Bonnie’s head poking out of the shower curtain. Her pastel shower cap brought out her warm green eyes, and the affection in them shone bright. It was enough to give his stomach a little flip.

“Thank you,” she said in a sing-song tone.

Damon let go of the doorknob and backtracked over to her to give her one last quick kiss on the lips.

“Yeah, yeah,” he replied.

Bonnie watched after him as he closed the door and spotted Damon’s message on the mirror out of the corner of her eye.

Happy Birthday, Baby.

Damon took his sweet time getting dressed to punish Monique for her early arrival. By the time he swung open the door with a mop of wet hair and his signature black button down and pants, she was dramatically tapping her foot. Her long box braids cascaded down the top of her bright blue scrubs.

“About time!” she huffed, holding up two heavy grocery bags. She pushed one into his chest, and he caught it with annoying ease.

“Moo, why are you on my porch?” Damon asked, exasperated.

“I’m vetoing Moo.”

“You can’t veto Moo. You already vetoed Mo-Mo and interchangeable Curly and Larry. You get two vetos,” he held up two fingers, and stepped to the side to let her through.

“God, I need alcohol to deal with you. Where’s Bonnie?” Monique asked as she stepped into the foyer. She kicked off her shoes with familiar exhaustion and nudged them against the wall with her foot. She was in her last year of medical school getting her hours in doctors’ offices specializing in elder care. If her patients were jarred by her septum piercing and the forearm tattoos peeking out from under her sleeves, they weren’t skeptical for long: her dazzling smile and unparalleled bedside manner had every patient in the office smitten. She often joked that Bonnie would be one of her first clients, though she was only five years older than her.

“In the shower,” Damon said, closing the door behind her.

Monique rose one eyebrow at his wet hair.

“And my wait time becomes clear...” she teased.

“How I wish you were right.”

Damon opened his arms and pulled her in for a rare hug.

“Congrats on your residency, Baker,” he said. She returned the hug with a smile.

“Thank you. Goodbye, Charlottesville; hello, VCU Family Medicine. Now I just need Bonnie to get the DuPont offer and we can start picking our little Golden Girls house to retire to in in some ritzy Richmond suburb.”

“... And where am I in this scenario?” Damon asked.

“Women live longer than men. Nature will take care of you,” she replied simply.

Bonnie came rushing out, wrapped tightly in an orange towel. She tracked wet footprints along the hard wood floor.

“Happy Birthday, old lady!” Monique ran and hugged her.

“Wow, thanks,” Bonnie said, returning the hug.

“I can’t believe I’m letting you do a fucking movie night. Dom was pissed you didn’t want a party,” Monique said. She lifted the shopping bag onto Damon and Bonnie’s kitchen island and began unloading snack foods and a homemade white cake with Bonster's Birthday written clunkily in icing.

“Please tell me there won’t be some surprise at that BSA thing Friday,” Bonnie said, taking the lid off the cake.

“You’re spared. He knows you don’t like your birthday. He and Gabby will just buy you an extra shot at Trinity.”

“Good. All I want is you, Damon, and Caroline with some sappy nineties movies, sweatpants, and this cake that was clearly made with love,” she said, taking a small finger of icing from the corner. It was electric blue and poorly spread.

“Ooh, the elusive Caroline whose calls you always pick up, but I have somehow never met. Be honest. You’re embarrassed of me,” Monique said, perching up on one of their bar-stools.

“Extremely,” Damon said, stealing a sugar cookie from the box. Monique glared at him as he left the room to take a proper shower.

“She’s just busy with work,” Bonnie said, trying not to cringe and expose the lie. She couldn’t exactly say she was a mother of two. Tonight, Monique would meet a woman frozen in her seventeen-year-old body. Even if she stuck on a few more years, Josie and Lizzie were too old now to be Caroline’s.

Bonnie felt the familiar pit in her stomach that arose whenever she had to face the blatant disconnect between her human life and the lives of the two vampires she loved. She put on a smile.

“Are you nervous?” Bonnie asked. After hours of shopping and walking around campus, she and Monique stood in front of a tall shelf of cheap liquor. Bonnie assessed two bottles in her hand: Pink Lemonade New Amsterdam and Red, White, and Berry Smirnoff. A couple of years prior, she discovered how crazy it made Damon if she brought home a bottle of liquor he deemed “liquid garbage”. She would down it as he sipped fine, aged whiskeys, and revel in the way he squirmed with discomfort. Since, she made it a regular practice, picking out the most sugary anti-Damon bottle of liquor she could find before every major event.

She held them out in front of her in a silent request for her friend’s judgment. Monique tapped her chin with her finger, feigning deep contemplation.

“Smirnoff for the joke, Amsterdam for your taste buds,” she confirmed.

Bonnie nodded and put the pink lemonade vodka back on the shelf.

“A little nervous. It’s not really real yet. It was always ‘get through college’. Then ‘get through the MCAT’. Then ‘get through med school’. I forgot about the, you know...”

“Doctoring?” Bonnie asked, as they walked over to the snacks.

“Yeah, that.”

Bonnie grabbed a bag of Peach Rings for Caroline from the wall of candy. It was her little gesture to assure Caroline she hadn’t forgotten about her, and their traditions withstood the time they spent apart. Bonnie looked around at the poorly lit liquor store. She already felt nostalgic for this classic, seedy college town establishment and its sticky floors as her time at UVA came to a close.

“How about you? Is the wait killing you?” Monique asked.

Bonnie hesitated for only a second as she decided the best way to phrase the lie that tumbled from her mouth with ease. She lied to her too often: about her past, about her powers, and about Damon. Monique thought she just wasn’t one to share: a cagey woman with a difficult past she wouldn’t pry into. For all of her song and dance about being blunt and unfiltered, Monique was empathic, intuitive, and considerate. Bonnie wasn’t surprised she wanted to work with the elderly.

“Yeah, the interview was intense,” she kept the lie vague. This one felt worse than those she’d told out of strict necessity.

“I don’t know how you guys do it. Brain teasers in business attire? No thanks,” Monique said.

“Well, at least I’ll die without having given a rectal exam. That’s a perk of my field,” Bonnie smirked playfully.

“Alright, bitch! Had to go for the fingers in the ass. I’ll remember that,” Monique replied, throwing her arm around her shoulders as they got in line. Bonnie leaned to rest her head on her friend’s arm with warm familiarity. Her father had never been very physically affectionate, or maybe he was, but he was gone so often, she didn’t remember too much hugging in the house. Now, she clung to touch like a lifeline, still scarred by her mom’s absenteeism, reveling in loving gestures from those she trusted.

“I’m sure they’re gonna call. Nobody engineers the chemicals better than you engineer the chemicals,” Monique assured her in her own way. Her complete lack of understanding about Bonnie’s degree became a running joke between them long ago.

Bonnie grinned. She wasn’t wrong. After over a decade of practicing magic and wielding the natural elements, she thrived when manipulating them in research. She almost never used magic on her work, though she cheated once or twice on the more brutal labs.

When their turn came, Bonnie put the bottle of pure frat party liquor on the counter and pulled out her wallet.

"$17.99,” the cashier said in a flat voice. She gave him her card and pulled out her ID. He waved off the gesture, not bothering to card her. Bonnie felt taken back and shoved the card back in her wallet. It stung. She felt stupid that it did.

“Blondie!” Damon said with a boyish grin on his face. Caroline returned it and gave him a hug as she walked in through the threshold. She stopped being surprised by how much easier smiles and affection came to him now. He was still Damon: five feet, ten inches of pure sarcasm and deflection, but he was happier, more content and open.

“My least favorite brother-in-law,” she said.

“Also, your favorite,” he corrected.

“Uh-huh, sure. Where’s the birthday girl?” she looked around the house. She had never been to their new place.

“Shopping. They’ll be back soon. Blood?” he asked.

“Please,” she nodded and walked into the living spaces. Damon disappeared into their room; they had a mini fridge in their closet for his blood, just in case they had guests.

Caroline looked around their little home. It was a small rental house with just one bedroom and bathroom, and notes of Bonnie and Damon’s style were all over the place. They left the deep maroons and large paintings in the Salvatore mansion, which Matt, Caroline, or Jeremy checked in on every week or so. Damon brought the bar cart, however, and kept in the corner with a vase of orange tiger lilies next to a glass bottle of Stefan’s favorite bourbon. The black leather couches, clearly a Damon selection, were offset by Bonnie’s cream throw pillows and blankets. Plants and candles covered the coffee and end tables, bringing Bonnie’s spells and connection with nature to every room.

Caroline picked up a framed photo of the couple from an end table. Bonnie and Damon were looking at each other, unaware of the camera pointed at them, at some little Charlottesville bar. Damon had a faint touch of pride in his smirk as Bonnie laughed hard at something he said. They looked utterly enamored with each other. Caroline wasn’t surprised they had framed it.

“O-Neg with your name on it,” she whipped her head around to find Damon holding up a glass. He slid it across the bar, and she walked over to the kitchen before perching herself up to sit on the counter.

“How have you been, Care Bear?”

“Ooh, he cares,” Caroline teased.

“Occasionally,” Damon shrugged and leaned against the fridge, sipping from his own glass.

“It’s been good... I actually met somebody,” she said. Caroline regretted sharing the second she did, as Damon’s eyes lit up at a whole new subject to tease her about.

“Ooh, Barbie’s breaking her celibacy. Does this mean you’ll quit mailing us your cross-stitches? Because there’s sex sublimation and then there’s pushing your shitty crafts on the rest of us.”

“I can’t believe I haven’t missed you,” she said.

“Human?” he asked.

“Vampire, actually... which is somehow both simpler and more complicated. I didn’t want to bring more vampires into the girls’ lives, but he’s nice. He was only turned like twenty years ago. Very much not having centuries of emotional baggage, which is a plus, since that’s apparently my type,” she huffed, almost sounding annoyed with herself for her taste in men. Damon snorted at the reference to Klaus and his brother.

“But it’s the first time since... it’s just nice, you know?” Caroline said. She cut herself off before she could say Stefan’s name.

“I do,” Damon said. It was as much as he would ever say to tell her that his brother would want her to be happy, that he wanted her to be happy. It was enough.

“So, what’s my cover story for today?” Caroline asked. Her tone revealed deep-rooted bitterness.

“Ooh, sour grapes... somebody’s jealous that Bonnie went off and found herself a new bestest friend. Maybe you just got too boring. What do you think?” Damon asked. Caroline ignored the predictable jab.

“It’s just annoying, okay? We were in diapers together! I was there when she got her license and when she won prom queen and when she and Jeremy--,”

“Please don’t finish that sentence,” Damon said. Caroline crossed her arms, irritated.

“Now I’m some lame teenager ambushing her birthday.”

“We’re going with twenty-three and a baby face, but don’t let me interrupt your pity party,” Damon said, walking over to the sink to rinse his glass.

“What else are you ‘going with’?” Caroline asked with sarcastic air-quotes. Damon spoke louder over the running water.

“Bonnie suggested we say she was friends with your older sister,” he said. Caroline looked discontent, though likely no explanation would have satisfied her.

“Some mythical older sister? Seriously?” she shook her head.

“I mean I suggested we say she was your babysitter...” he trailed off with a wry smirk.

“Screw you,” Caroline said. The words lacked punch as she sipped the blood.

“Sooo... Can I see it?” she grinned with pure excitement. Damon couldn’t help but return it.

“Fine. But I swear to God, Caroline, if you--,”

“I won’t!” she said, crossing her heart with her hand.

When they heard the front door push open, Caroline passed Damon her glass quickly.

Later, he mouthed at her. She nodded, and he rinsed all evidence of the blood from the glass.

“Care!” Bonnie yelled as she turned the corner. She nearly tackled her to the ground in a tight embrace.

“Happy Birthday, Bonnie!” Caroline held her tight back.

Caroline introduced herself warmly to Monique, and they began chatting about themselves, steering the conversation toward Bonnie, their safe middle ground. Monique suppressed any surprise about Caroline’s obvious age difference, and Caroline held back any harbored jealousy.

As they exchanged pleasantries, Bonnie pulled the Smirnoff out of its paper bag and presented it to Damon by slamming it on the counter with a loud thud. She ran her finger along the kitchen island surface as she walked around it. She wore an expectant, pseudo-innocent look, waiting for him to react.

“You think you’re hilarious,” he said, walking over to her. Damon hooked his fingers through the belt loops of her jeans and pulled her toward him.

“Oh, I know I am,” she muttered before leaning up to kiss him.

“Booooonnie! Booooonnieeee!”

Bonnie looked up from the bowl of marshmallows she poured. Monique and Caroline were deep in a game of Cornhole in the small backyard. Their mutual competitiveness was oddly complementary in lieu of hostile, for which Bonnie was grateful. They sipped mixed drinks and laughed over the pop music playing out of Damon’s speaker. He sat in a chair next to their firepit watching the game with an exasperated look on his face.

Bonnie walked back outside and sat down on Damon’s knee, setting the bowl on the edge of the firepit with four roasting skewers. He put his arm around her waist without thought.

“What’s up, Mo?” she asked. Monique stood in front of their ivy fence, staring down the cornhole board next to Caroline. She tossed a bag and it landed on the board with surprising precision given the drinks she and the blonde had been mainlining. She gave a victorious little hop before turning her attention back to Bonnie.

“Tell your man to fess up about his skincare routine. I’ve known him four years and he has the same smug ass face,” she teased. Bonnie raised her eyebrows and looked down at Damon’s coy face. He was more flattered than alarmed, though Bonnie felt a pit in her stomach at the observation. The orange flames from the pit tinted his skin vibrantly, and the stringed tealights they set up outside were flattering on his bright eyes.

“I keep telling her, Bon Bon! It’s all genetics,” he flashed a proud smirk.

“Nope, you were built in a lab,” Monique accused. “You must be what Bonnie engineers! Boyfriend Laboratory #1423,” she said.

“Oh no,” Bonnie said with concern. She took Damon’s chin in her hand and moved his face around, investigating it at every angle.

“What?” he asked, puzzled.

“Your head is getting bigger,” she smiled, though a hint of sadness shined through.

“What movie are we watching? I brought The Notebook,” Caroline interrupted, changing the subject from Damon’s conspicuous immortality. She collapsed into one of the deep chairs around the firepit and grabbed a skewer and marshmallow.

Damon and Monique groaned loudly at the suggestion.

“Nothing with hospital scenes please. I need a break,” Monique said, taking the seat next to her. They were rather fond of each other already.

“But it’s so romantic. When they die together all old and grey at the same time...” Caroline trailed off. She loved that movie even more now; there was something comforting about a love story wherein nobody was widowed.

“That’s some sappy Damon and Bonnie shit,” Monique said, nodding over to the couple as she joined Caroline in roasting a marshmallow. Bonnie’s smile faded, and she fixed her eyes on the fence as she collected herself.

Damon noticed her stiffen and brushed his nose against her arm.

“Help me with something?” he murmured against her skin. She looked down at him and saw the concern in his eyes. She shook her head, trying to shrug off her embarrassment.

“I’m fine, Damon...” she whispered.

“Humor me,” he pushed, lightly patting her hip. Bonnie nodded, fully aware of the transparent effort to get her alone, but letting it happen anyway. Damon reached out for her hand, and they walked inside, closing the glass door behind them.

Bonnie flopped onto the couch, trying to unwind the growing sense of anxiety from the day. Damon sat next to her, wrapping his arm around her shoulder. She leaned into his neck and took a deep breath.

“You’re upset tonight,” he observed.

Bonnie sighed and brought her hands together in her lap to pick at her cuticles. Damon glanced down at the movement but said nothing. She did it whenever she felt overwhelmed.

“I got the DuPont offer this morning,” she confessed.

Damon’s jaw dropped, delighted. He pulled away from her to look at her with an awestruck, wide grin.

“Bon Bon! That’s--,” he stopped himself when he spotted the tears welling up in her eyes. He reached over to her cheek, and she dropped her head in it, letting the embarrassing, hot tears fall onto his hand.

“Okay, why aren’t we filing that in the Good Things folder?” he asked gently.

Bonnie let out a laughing sob and looked away, wiping her tears from her cheeks.

“It’s stupid. A lot of little things...” she trailed off. Damon waited, startlingly patient.

“I’m just getting older... and I didn't get carded! And they always card there, and now this fake backstory about Care, and we’re never going get old together and die all Notebook, and she’s noticing! Did you hear? She said you’re not aging. So, I’m just—I think we have to move, Damon. And I’m not trying to make you feel bad, I’m not, but I think we have to move, and I hate it because I love these people; I love Monique and Dom and Gabby and Lucas and all of the people from BSA and the people in engineering, and I want to take the job, but I love you, and I know that’s not our life, so I just--,” she sighed. The rant tumbled out of her mouth fast and desperate. She felt stupid for it all. The great Bonnie Bennett, who could hold off hellfire, who took on Originals, was being reduced to tears because she was going to have to move away from their life here. Damon’s expression was unreadable, though sympathetic, and she tried to recover.

“But anyway, it’s fine. Maybe I can see if I can get assigned to a different office. We can go back to Japan or something. It might not have the team I wanted, but--,”

Damon shook his head and kissed her forehead. She went quiet and accepted the comfort.

“Wait here,” he commanded. Before Bonnie could answer, he was already halfway down the hallway toward their bedroom.

“Alright, that was mysterious,” she yelled after him.

He came back with a manilla envelope in his hand with a bright red ribbon wrapped around it. He handed it to her as he sat back down and pulled her feet onto his lap.

“Open it,” he said.

“Is it going to explode?” she asked.

“Trust me."

Bonnie looked at him skeptically before picking up the package. It was almost completely flat and very light. She picked it up and shook it, listening intently like a child putting a shell to their ear at a beach. Damon shook his head at her.

“It’s beautifully wrapped. Truly your best work,” she said.

She tugged at the ribbon, making sure to dramatically throw it on the floor. She gave him one, last assessing stare. He rose his hands innocently.

Bonnie worked open the envelope and dumped the pile of papers onto her lap. In the pile were a bunch of documents that resembled tax records and other government forms.

“Oooh, paperwork!” she teased.

“Look harder, smartass,” he poked her in the side lightly, right where she was ticklish. Bonnie involuntarily recoiled and glared at him. She picked up the paperwork and began rifling through it, reading aloud as she skimmed the different forms.

“Damon Stefan Salvatore, born March 17^th, 1998 at Whitmore Hospital… Damon Stefan Salvatore, Social Security Number…” she trailed off. There was a driver’s license, a birth certificate, tax records going back years, a high school diploma, vaccination records, and even a degree from Whitmore all for Damon Stefan Salvatore.

“What--?” she started, looking up at him questioningly.

“It took me a few weeks. Side note, I’ve only ever seen the DMV in movies, and it is as depressing as everyone says,” he said. He tried to keep his voice lighthearted, but it shook slightly. Bonnie turned her attention back to the stack as she rifled through the last few papers. At the bottom, she saw it. Bonnie’s breath stuck in her throat as her jaw fell open.

Marriage License for the State of Virginia

Bonnie Sheila Bennett and Damon Stefan Salvatore

She looked up from the papers to find a small, black velvet box in Damon’s hand. He opened it to a big pale green diamond ring and, below that, an unmistakable little red tube of his brother’s blood. He sat next to her with a cautious, petrified look on his face.

“Damon--,” she whispered.

“Considering I’m a nineteenth century Southern gentleman at my core, it’s killing me to do it like this, but I hate seeing you all sad-eyes tonight. Just know I was gonna go big- you can ask Caroline. Sky writing or something. So, if you say yes, I will be surprising you with some horse drawn carriage kind of gesture, and we’ll just tell everyone that’s how I did it in the first place. And we can let the license lapse if you want to plan a wedding! I think we have thirty days to use it, but we can just get another one. It was more for the gesture,” he rambled, padding the time between the question and the rejection he waited for. He quieted down to find her gaping at him.

“I love you,” she said.

“Good start, good start,” he joked, a vulnerable, hysterical smile came and went on his face.

“I want to. You know I want to,” she said.

“Deceptively better middle.”

Bonnie picked up the ring from its box. It was gorgeous, the shade of her eyes, with a clean, silver band. She held it in her hand, staring at his choice for her.

“Are you sure?” she whispered. “You really want to... close all doors?” She remained intentionally vague.

“I’m not a prize--,” he began.

“Well, you don’t have to tell me that,” she said with a teasing smile.

“Walked into that one,” he genuinely smiled back. She was joking around. That was a good sign. When Bonnie panicked, she ran. When she felt comfortable, she joked.

“It’s not, ‘Welcome to Two Thousand Whatever, here’s your guidebook and complementary Damon,’” he said. Bonnie nodded. It was all that needed to be said about Elena. Damon wouldn’t ask if he didn’t mean it. She knew him well enough to know that.

“No more compulsion, no more super strength…” she said, smiling softly.

“Wow, you know what, you’re right. How had I not thought about my super strength? I’m taking this back,” he reached to take the ring back from her, but she pulled it away from his reach.

“Oh, no, no,” she shouted out. He laughed, his nerves falling away with every passing second.

Bonnie grinned and bowed her head. She stared down at her lap for a few seconds. When she rose her head again, she had a tear running down her cheek. Her words came out in a whisper.

“I don’t get the happy ending, Damon.”

Damon put his hand on her knee, brushing her jeans softly with his thumb.

“I know the feeling.”

Bonnie looked back down at the ring, turning it around in her hand.

“How’d you know my size?” she asked.

“I unraveled one of Blondie’s cross stitches to measure with some yarn while you were passed out. I thought you caught me for a minute, but you were just yammering in your sleep like always,” he said.

“It’s beautiful,” she said.

“Thanks. The green was a nod to the dress you wore the first time we…” he wiggled his eyebrows at her, and she shoved him lightly, laughing. She leaned her head against the couch and looked up into his bright blue eyes. They were optimistic, but cautious, imploring for an answer.

“Ask me,” she whispered. Damon lit up, sitting tall across from her.

“Yeah?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she confirmed.

Damon grabbed the ring out of her hand and moved her feet from his lap. He knelt on both knees on the ground next to the couch, holding the ring out to her.

“Bonnie Bennett, will you--,”

She tackled him onto the ground before he could finish the sentence. Government forms flung in every direction, raining down onto them as she kissed him. Damon smiled into the kiss, his stomach soaring with victory.

Bonnie held her hand out for him, and he slid the diamond onto her outstretched finger. She grabbed his face in her hands and kissed him again fiercely. Damon grinned into the kiss and sat up, pulling her into his lap with ease. Bonnie kissed his lips, his cheeks, his eyelids, his forehead; she planted them all over his face.

“You have to compel one more person for me, though. Before you’re forever out of mind control commission,” she said.

“Who’s that?” he asked, as if it mattered.

Bonnie leaned in and brought her lips to his ear. She whispered, giddy and childlike.

“Let’s wake up a judge.”

That night, Monique and Caroline spent an hour helping them throw together a makeshift wedding. Monique made “Bonster’s Birthday” into “Bonster’s Wedding” with some careful icing maneuvering. Caroline compelled a manager to open her store so she could get Bonnie a proper dress. Bonnie walked down the aisle, a white sheet folded on the grass surrounded by picked apart tiger lily petals, to the wedding march Monique found on Spotify. Caroline put them on the spot to say their own vows, just like Damon had done to her and Stefan.

Damon carried Bonnie through the sliding glass door back into the house, ever a traditionalist. They smeared blue icing on each other’s faces as Caroline took rapid fire photos on her phone, then they smeared more on her.

When their friends left, Damon and Bonnie sat up on their bedspread as she injected him with his brother’s blood. Even though she had seen the cure work more than once, she waited, breathless and worried, for him to come back to her. When he did, Damon spent his first night as a human, his first night as a husband, in the arms of his wife. They giggled when Damon got his first leg cramp in over a century and fell onto the shower floor. They decided they liked it down there more anyway. They sat naked on the floor next to the fridge and sprayed whipped cream in each other’s mouths. Damon predictably did a sloppy job, getting the sugary fluff all over her cheeks. When she made a jab about him needing to do cardio now, he chased her through the house, just to prove a point. When they fell into bed, she drew pictures on his back with her finger, and he tried to guess what they were. He called her a shitty artist. She called him a shitty guesser. They fell asleep with her curled up around his back, her leg hiked up over his waist, and his hand cradling her calf.

Bonnie would never hate her birthday again.

Chapter Text

Elena wretched into the dirt as Caroline held her hair bunched in one hand. She rubbed smooth lines up and down her back, and the velvet in her dress changed shades with every stroke. It was a routine they perfected when they were young, irresponsible drinkers in high school. They would frontload their liquor, proudly announcing their egregious shot count, only to end up way too drunk by eight o’clock. Caroline and Elena would stumble into the bathroom feeling nauseous yet wildly mature. Back then, it was too much peach schnapps that did Elena in. Now, it was finding out that her soulmate lived the human life he promised her with another woman.

The wet Virginia air exacerbated the sweat pooling on Elena’s neck as she expelled bile and crackers onto the side of the highway. She spat out hot saliva and ignored the water bottle in Caroline’s outstretched hand.

“Are we going to a cemetery?” she asked quietly, keeping her eyes glued to the dirty pavement. She was mildly aware that she would have a layer of dust on her dress where her shins laid. Caroline quirked her head, puzzled by the question.

“What?” she asked. “No, of course not.”

“You promise me he’s alive?” Elena asked. Her voice was urgent and sharp, daring Caroline to lie to her.

“Yes. He’s alive.”

Relief joined the looming betrayal in Elena’s chest. He was alive. It was a strange comfort: Damon, who had over the last hour broken her heart beyond repair, lived another day to do it again.

“Is he okay?” she asked. She didn’t know how okay she wanted him to be, but she knew she needed to know.

“I haven’t talked to him today,” Caroline said. Her voice cracked slightly, revealing the deep concern behind a carefully set neutral expression. Her eyes betrayed her as they flicked back to the car before returning to Elena’s face. She wanted to leave. She wanted to get to Damon. Elena realized it was taking all of Caroline’s patience to stay here, coaxing her through the bombs dropping on her life, instead of being with Damon, wherever he was, mourning her friend of a lifetime.

“Are you okay?” Caroline asked. Elena flinched at the maternal tone she used, like she was a little girl who scraped her knee bouncing on a pogo stick a hair too fast.

“Where’s my brother?” she asked. The perfect image of Damon’s arms around her as she discovered the fates of her human loved ones had dissipated. She had imagined the way he would brush her hair from her face as she waited with bated breath to find out her brother’s fate. She would have at least been comforted knowing her love had waited for her and would accompany her to any graves she needed to see. Instead, she sat on the side of the road, inches from puked up crackers, dirt embedded in her carefully chosen dress, waiting for Caroline to hit her with life ruining news yet again.

“He’s alive and healthy in Mystic Falls.”

Elena’s stomach gave its first joyous leap of the last hour. A flash of the teasing jabs she would deliver about how poorly he had aged crossed her mind. Jeremy, thinned hair on top, some thick bifocals, a hug without the same grip, but the same boyish grin.

“Matt?” she asked.

“The same. His fifth granddaughter was born yesterday,” Caroline said with a small smile.

Elena shook her head, overwhelmed by the surrealness of it all. She didn’t ask about Alaric. She knew she didn’t need to. She only hoped he didn’t drink himself into too early a grave.

“Are they with Damon?” she asked.

“I don’t even know if they know yet. I just came straight to you.”

Elena paused for a moment as she ran through a list of loved ones in her head.

“Who called you?” she asked.

Caroline’s eyes darted to the ground. She lost her composure for only a second, but it was enough. Elena had learned her friend’s tells before she learned multiplication.

“What?” Caroline asked in a high voice.

“You haven’t talked to Damon all day. Who sent you to me?” Elena sat up, swaying lightly on her knees. She felt renewed resolve. She didn’t know everything, and she wanted to.

Caroline looked back at the car.

“We have ten minutes.”

Damon sat on the very edge of the double bed. He put his palms flat on the soft, purple bedspread and pressed the beds of his fingers firmly on the synthetic velvet. His long, flannel pajama bottoms grazed his bare feet and the canary yellow rug beneath them. He felt his heartbeat thudding in his neck and hoped she wouldn’t notice. He could only compromise so much of the carefully curated image of himself he presented to her.

He forced himself to turn his head to face her. Her eyes were the darkest shade of brown he had ever seen, almost black and far unlike his own, but they reflected the same gross sense of pride and inability to show vulnerability he carried for over a century. Her thick curls were cropped short above her shoulders, barely grazing her own matching pajama top. He wanted to brush a stray lock of hair behind her ear. He wanted to rest his hand on her shoulder or pull her into his chest. He spotted the tension in her jaw and the betrayal in her eyes and longed to comfort her until it disappeared. He didn’t. He couldn’t. Not when he was the one who hurt her.

She cracked her knuckles one by one in a loud, unsettling display of her signature nervous tick. It always made Damon recoil. He would have commented on it under different circumstances.

She drew in a long, shaking breath and felt tears prickle in her eyes. She looked up at the ceiling, annoyed at the display, and willed them away. When she found her voice, it came out soft and low.

“Did you kill people?”

“Yes.”

October 14, 2027  

Dear Elena,  

I know I haven’t written in months.  

Damon dragged his foot on the welcome mat, scraping a wet orange leaf from the side of his mist-covered shoe. The full moon illuminated the sky and reflected off his bright white t-shirt. He worked late often, and the autumn days had grown shorter until he came home to a starry sky over the boarding house. He hadn’t minded the dark. His favorite part of returning to Mystic Falls was parting with city light pollution and lying on the rooftop with Bonnie looking up at the stars they had previously taken for the granted, laughing as they named the constellations all the wrong names.

That was when this move was just supposed to be temporary, when they had agreed a quiet house with a big yard and Caroline around the corner was a more peaceful place for her to be while she was on leave. Now, Damon hated those stars. He felt them looking down at their cold home, mocking him with the cruel apathy he once showed his own victims. They called him foolish for believing things could stay good, for thinking reality would not come out of the dark and pull him back to the depths of the darkness within him no cure could fix.

He crossed the threshold and tossed his keys on the foyer table. The loud clang of the metal colliding with the wood broke the silent air. Gone were the days he would come home to find Bonnie blasting some jazz or nineties grunge, her feet up on the coffee table and a wide grin on her face at his return. In their place was perpetual quiet, still and smothering.

He walked into the kitchen carrying several heavy grocery bags from his fingertips to his elbows, too proud to take multiple trips. In three years human, he still hadn’t gotten used to how heavy things felt in his arms and how strange it felt to get winded. He dropped the bags onto the counter, and the plastic handles left pink circulation lines deep in his forearms.

Damon surveyed the empty room. He always searched for hints as to what he might be walking into each night. He spotted an empty bag from their favorite sushi place on the table and clenched his jaw, throwing it in the garbage forcefully. He refused to spend any time wondering if she left it out for him to see. He turned to put away the groceries, opening the refrigerator door with strength that would have torn it off its hinges in his old body. It didn’t even shake.

He cooled when he spotted the top shelf of the fridge. A couple of months ago, the sight might have driven him to cry, drink, or both. Now, it was common enough that he only felt a twinge of heartache before going into the mode he always went into: focused problem-solving.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and messaged a group he called upon often.

Can one of you do a donation run tomorrow? I need to be at work all day.

They responded immediately. He had an unspoken theory they had set a different chime for him, ready to help whenever he needed. It made him love them more.

Caleb Knight:             I’ll come in the afternoon.

Monique Baker:          Anything else?

Caroline Knight:         How is she?

He shot back a short reply, never one for vocalizing gratitude.

Just got home. I’ll let you know.

His eye lingered a moment longer on the shelf. It overflowed with full bags of breastmilk thrown inside carelessly, eschewing its once careful order marked by Bonnie’s neat penmanship in black sharpie. He swallowed hard and closed the door quietly.

Damon left the kitchen and climbed up the stairs to the second floor of the house when he heard the familiar sound of splashing from their bathroom. He cursed internally. It was a bad night.

When he reached the top of the stairs, he saw the door wide open. She’d been inside again.

He peered into the pale green bedroom, begrudging yet overtaken by morbid impulsivity. He wanted to slam the door closed and curse her for leaving it open. He couldn’t. The room held him steady in the doorway.

The crib stood against the far wall with a baby blanket from Caroline draped over its side. It stood next to a large stuffed giraffe and a bookshelf he spent an hour assembling and grounding to the wall. Bonnie had filled his head with horror stories about cheap Ikea furniture falling on unsuspecting toddlers, and he made babyproofing the nursery his first task to prove he would be a better father than his own, testing every piece of furniture with weights far heavier than the baby could possibly be, sanding down every corner of wood that threatened to splinter.

A mobile of felt cauldrons, witch hats, and brooms gently hung over the crib. He remembered how hard Bonnie laughed when he brought it home.

“I’m just saying Bon Bon- you think you’re powerful? We train him up early enough, he’ll be magic-ing you under the table by sixth grade.”

A dark green frog clock covered in a thin layer of dust displayed an incorrect time on the wall, its second hand suspended by the dead battery. His eyes went to Miss Cuddles seated on a rocking chair in the corner next to a side table displaying a pile of Eric Carle books and a framed photo of Bonnie. She sat in profile eating a large bowl of cereal balanced delicately on her baby bump, a begrudging smile on her face as Damon stuck the camera leans too close to her face.

He closed the door without going inside.

Damon found her sunk to her chest in their deep bathtub. The hot water glistened in drops down her collar bone, and her eyes donned heavy bags beneath them. A few months ago, he would have stripped down and gotten in with her. Now, he leaned against the bathroom counter and crossed his arms, waiting to see if she would speak to him.

He watched steam rise from the scorching bathwater. She wasn’t allowed to take hot baths like this when she was--

“Are you hungry? I saw the fish downstairs,” he asked, interrupting his own thoughts.

“Oh, mercury, take me away,” she replied. Her words were even toned and factual. A smooth layer of nihilism coated her words these days, dull, bitter as cranberries. Her sarcastic humor lost its good-natured delivery. No more smiles. No more playful shoves. Just bleak, often crass observations. She sank deeper into the water, submerging her ears beneath the surface. She snuffed out Damon’s voice like candlelight dying beneath a glass lid.

“Alright,” he murmured. He dropped his hands to his sides and headed toward the doorway, already anticipating the rest of his evening: a date with a crude reality show and a glass of dark liquor culminating in dreamless sleep beneath his brother’s duvet.

“Leaving so soon?”

Bonnie sat up in the water, eager for a fight, perhaps anything.

Damon squeezed his eyes closed tight. He used to covet the nights she spoke. Now, he hated them more than the quiet ones. He resented the hope it dangled in front of him: the possibility they might make any degree of progress pulled away when her words were more closed off than the silence they filled. He refused to be a cartoon character tempted toward a convincingly painted landscape on a hard brick wall, hoping to find his wife deep inside the chilling, apathetic stranger in front of him.

“I’d rephrase that if I were you,” he growled into the doorway.

“Exiting the room promptly?”

Damon spun around to face her, lit up with anger. There was something so empty about his attempts to retain the intimidating ferocity of his old self. She was always more powerful than him, but now laughably so.

“Yeah, you’re one to talk,” he snapped without thinking.

“What’s that mean?” she asked. The edge in her voice was new. Anything other than dead and bleak was new.

Damon flinched. If he had learned anything from marriage, it was that some things couldn’t be unsaid. When he spat whatever impulsive thoughts crossed his mind, he could never pull them back inside himself. When the anger subsided and he remembered he would never hurt her, that he would do anything to protect her, she would remember the hasty, cruel words. They would play in her mind, burrowing into her subconscious. His chest rose and fell quickly as he breathed in air he now needed, trying desperately to hold onto self-control. It never had been his strong suit.

“Don’t stop there, Damon,” she pushed. “Why am I one to talk?”

The words tumbled out of his mouth, unchecked and furious as reason submitted to frustration.

“Grams dies, you leave for weeks. Abby’s turned—,

“You turn Abby,” she corrected. He pushed on, unbothered by non-existent guilt.

“--you dodge everyone but Caroline. You die, and you don’t let Little Gilbert tell anyone! This is how you grieve, Bonnie. You leave.”

“And here I thought I was right here.”

“Well, you might as well not be!” he shouted.

Bonnie sat up in the tub suddenly. Some of the water slopped out over the side of the porcelain.

“Get over yourself, Damon! I am not obligated to be okay for you.”

“You’re obligated to try!” he stuck his left hand in the air, flashing his wedding band at her. “I remember that clause.”

“God, you think I’m not trying? Believe me, I want to run! You think I love knowing you’re just sitting there waiting for me to get over it so we can have a replacement?” she shouted.

“Oh, don’t project that shit on me. I never said anything about trying again,” he waved her off.

“You didn’t have to!”

“Well, that would involve you looking at me, so, you’re pretty safe there,” he snapped.

“What do you want from me?”

“I want you to see that I am here! I was here with Enzo, and I’m here now. You don’t get to do this this time! You don’t get to disappear! Stop being your mom and wake up.”

The lightbulbs in the room suddenly exploded, cloaking the room in darkness. The water from the bathtub sprayed out of the bathtub in every direction, flooding the floor, soaking Damon’s clothes, hair, and skin. Bonnie stood in the now empty tub, bubbles running slowly down her body.

“Look at me, Damon!” she yelled. Damon met her eyeline, eyes narrowed and firm.

“No. Look at me,” she glowered.

He scowled, but obliged. His eyes ran down her body. Stretch marks covered her thighs and stomach, evidence of the baby who belonged in her arms. Her nipples were large, cracked, and sore.

“I am a faulty incubator.”

“Bonnie--,” he started.

“Stop!”

Damon’s mouth snapped shut as he watched her take slow, long breaths.

“I could tell you how it felt, you know,” she said, quiet and low. “You want me to talk so badly? I could go on and on about the pain. When mine was the only heartbeat in my body anymore. But what would be the point? You would have no idea.”

He flinched, resentful of the exclusion from her grief.

“But you know what the frustrating thing is, Damon? What I get to live with here in this graveyard of a house, hanging over me all the time?”

The words lashed at him. Their son’s nursery was a mere few feet from Stefan’s bedroom.

“What?”

“You took the cure for me.”

Surprise flashed across Damon’s face. It was the last thing he expected her to say.

“What? What does that have to do with anything?” he asked. Bonnie broke, shedding tears for the first time in weeks. She crossed her arms across her bare chest, suddenly vulnerable and aware of herself.

“Because I better make it worth it, right? Better make you happier than she would have! Wouldn’t want Damon to signing away his perfect life with Elena for nothing! But wait… she would have had your fucking Gerber babies,” she hissed.

“Is that what you think? I’m sitting here daydreaming about if I’d waited for Elena?” he whispered. His eyes welled up with tears. His defenses fell, and his expression revealed the hollowness he harbored each day.

Bonnie’s silence rang loud. Damon stepped backward away from her until he hit the bathroom counter behind him. He vaguely registered a small piece of broken lightbulb stick in his toe, but he didn’t feel the pain.

“You’re wrong,” he said quietly.

Bonnie watched him curiously as Damon turned away from her, leaning down against the bathroom counter. His forehead grazed the cold surface, and his fists unclenched slightly. He was exhausted. He spoke softly into the marble.

“This is my fault, Bonnie. I did this to you. The cure... what if I’m what happened? We didn’t—I didn’t think...”

Bonnie longed to assure him, but entirely lacked the energy to. Instead, she stood among the chaos of their destroyed bathroom, images flashing in her mind. Damon had sat behind her when she went into labor, his legs on either side of her own. His arm draped across her chest as she squeezed her eyes closed. Damon had placed his hand over her face at her request, and she held it there, her vision going dark, clinging to the only protection he could give her as he shielded her from having to watch them take their son away.

Damon looked up into the mirror, and they made eye contact through his reflection.

“Damon, I’m the one who couldn’t--. Every second, I remember everything I ate, every time I got stressed, every time I carried something heavy, every time I forgot to take my vitamins... it’s all over me, Damon. All the time. I can’t get away from it,” she said.

Damon stood there, entirely still as he watched tears fall down her cheeks and stick to her neck.

“So yeah, I see you getting out... into this delusion you’ve created that you need to keep everything together, running around with your daily to-do list and a glass of whiskey. But I can’t escape. There’s no place to run. Don’t you get it? Everywhere I go turns into where I failed him.”

Bonnie’s arms crossed over her stomach, her nails forming light half-moon marks in her skin. Her eyes fell to the floor, looking shamefully at the floor of the empty tub. She sank back to the bottom, holding her knees to her chest.

Damon’s eyes wandered to where his soaked white shirt clung to his skin. Thick, brutal scars peeked out from beneath the fabric: Not Worth It.

He pushed away from the counter and turned to face her. She stared blankly in front of her, not moving as he tip-toed around the broken glass on the floor, wading through the thin layer of water until he climbed into the bathtub and sat on his knees in front of her.

The night Stefan died, she found him in this exact position, gripping his knees, staring at the spot his brother had perished in the fire. Bonnie had pulled him away, bringing him far from the place of his death. She didn’t have such an escape. As Damon looked at her, it hit him how trapped she had felt. While he waited for her to leave the moment behind, she laid still, pinned beneath it, suffocating.

Damon reached out to touch her chin, gently lifting her face until she looked at him. They saw into the brokenness in each other. He moved his hand to cradle her cheek.

“You loved him more than anyone has ever loved anything,” Damon whispered. His hand caught her tears as they ran down his wrists.

“You didn’t do this, Bonnie. It’s not your fault. You didn’t do this.”

He put his other hand onto her own, pressing his fingers between hers until she loosened her grip on her knee to accept the touch.

“Yeah, well you didn’t either,” she said in a cracked voice. Damon blinked at her, a weight lifting ever so slightly as he heard the words he didn’t realize he needed.

“It just happened,” he muttered. Bonnie nodded along, letting the truth hit her ears. She might not be ready to accept it, but she could let it inside to sit with her. She could see how it felt to entertain. She let go of her knees and leaned into Damon somewhat uncomfortably, pressing her face into his damp hair. He squeezed his arms around her back. His eyes were wide and helpless. He repeated the words as they permeated his grief.

“It just happened.”

October 31, 2030

Dear Elena,

Caroline and Caleb are damn good pumpkin carvers.

Each of Damon’s nails had been painted quite sloppily in a different sparkling color. A glob of purple nail polish bled onto the cuticles around his thumb, coating his pale skin. A small hand dabbed at the excess polish with a paper towel with minimal success.

“What’s your system here?” he asked the girl next to him. They sat at the kitchen table together while Monster Mash played loudly behind them.

She looked up at him through confused brown eyes. She wore round, fake glasses that made her look comically studious beneath the lightning bolt Damon drew on her forehead with Bonnie’s eyeliner. She pushed the black sleeves of her black robes up to her forearms. Damon had secured a red and gold striped tie around her neck, and it dangled down the front of her white button-up.

“System?” she asked in a high voice. Damon had a way of speaking to children hyper-literally. He never watered down his language for her.

“Is this a rainbow? You’re going to run out of colors.”

“I have pink. And the silver one,” she nodded her head toward her beginner nail polish kit. Damon swore it was her hidden talent to perform basic tasks in whichever way created the most clutter. She had pulled out every single color from the sparkling aqua case Monique had bought her.

“What about the last two fingers?” he asked. She looked at him like he was just being stupid.

“Red and gold, obviously,” she said.

The corner of Damon’s mouth twitched. She and Bonnie had just started to read the Harry Potter series together. One hour before bed every night, she would run her finger along the bottom of the words, sounding them out. She was obsessed with the Hogwarts houses particularly, though Harry’s was her favorite, distinguished for bravery and boldness. She would pick up sticks from their front yard and wield them as wands, trying to use magic to put her toys away when Damon or Bonnie asked.

“Obviously. Did you want me to do yours before tonight?”

“No, thanks. Care is coming, right?” she asked nonchalantly, coating his middle finger with the silver.

“Yeah, why?” he asked, strangely offended.

“She’s better at it.”

Damon smiled at the kind of ruthlessness only children were able to conjure. Whatever hit his ego took, however, was overtaken by relief that she was expressing interest in spending time with Caroline. He would have to tell Bonnie about it.

“You promise you’re coming to the doors with me?” she asked suddenly for the fourth time that day.

“Yeah, peanut. I’ll be right behind you.”

“I just say ’Trick and Treat’ and they give me candy?” she furrowed her eyebrows as she moved onto Damon’s ring finger. He recognized the look in her eyes; she was running through the routine, hoping to not embarrass herself. She was tragically unfamiliar with the normalcy she should have had long before now.

“Trick or treat,” he corrected her gently.

“Trick or treat,” she repeated, nodding intently.

“That’s how it works. Which genius came up with that?” he smiled at her. She looked up at him and felt her anxiety ease back slightly, comforted by his assurance. She hoped the grown-ups wouldn’t make fun of her if she said “and” by accident. If they did, though, she knew he would stand up for her. She was convinced he was a Gryffindor, just like her, because of how brave he was. The other day, he had killed a spider in the sink that was as big as her fist, and he didn’t even look scared. He was a hero, and he would always protect her from the bad guys.

“I like it,” she agreed, smiling back at him. She finished applying the final stroke of gold nail polish to his pinkie finger and gazed at her handiwork. She pursed her lips and blew cool air over his fingers to dry them, like she had seen Bonnie do before.

“Alright, I need to feed you something green before we go,” Damon said, getting up from the table.

“Gummy worms!”

“Not that kind of green, hyper girl,” he shook his head. She jumped up from the table and ran over to him, draping her arms around his waist, pressing her forehead to his stomach.

“But we have to wait till they dry or you’ll mess them up!” she said, clinging to him with an iron grip. Damon recognized her transparent efforts to get out of eating vegetables; he knew her patterns by now.

“I’ll be careful,” he assured her. He walked over to the fridge with her attached to him, placing her feet on top of his as he stepped.

“Can it be green beans? It’s the best one,” she said.

“You got it,” he nodded and grabbing the bag from the produce drawer. He crossed back over to the stove with her holding onto him, tugging on his shirt lightly.

“Daddy?”

“Hmm?” he asked as he greased the pan and stirred in the beans absentmindedly.

“When is Bonnie leaving?” she asked.

Damon froze in place for a moment as dread flooded his stomach. Profound sadness washed over him as he thought about what to say next. He tried to give her an out, optimistically interpreting her question incorrectly.

“She should be home any minute. Five-thirty, remember?” he gestured to the clock on the oven, trying to keep voice even.

“No, I mean when does she go where all the moms go?” she pushed.

Damon sighed and turned the burner off. Kids loved to ask brutal questions. He remembered when she popped her head into the room once to ask Bonnie a question. He had been wearing only pajama pants as he rummaged through his closet for a shirt to wear to work. Daddy, what’s that? she had asked, pointing to the scars on his stomach. He had lied quickly. It’s just a tattoo. We can talk about it when you’re older.

 “Come here,” he said, lifting her into his arms. He walked her over to the table and sat down, holding her on his lap. She leaned onto his chest, listening to his heartbeat.

“We’ve talked about this before, remember? She isn’t going anywhere,” he said gently. She nodded, confused but relieved.

Damon held his hand up. She placed her palm flat against his, his hand easily swallowing hers. He playfully grabbed at her fingers with his before bringing her knuckles to his lips.

“She loves you,” he whispered. She nodded against her father’s chest, leaning into his comforting hold.

They heard the familiar sound of the front door opening and Bonnie’s shuffling footsteps as she sat her bag down on the foyer table.

“Hellooooo? I’ve been informed the cutest girl on the planet lives here! Do I have the right address?” she sang out.

“Go say hi, okay?” Damon nudged. She hopped off his lap and ran out into the living area. Damon followed, leaning in the doorway of the kitchen. Bonnie carried a large bag under her arm, and she smoothed out a stray baby hair curling around her ear. When she spotted her, Bonnie broke out into a huge grin.

“Oh, my goodness, is that Harry Potter!?” she asked, her jaw dropped in exaggerated amazement at the costume.

The girl giggled and nodded, reveling in her harbored secret: she was, in fact, not Harry Potter. Bonnie sank down onto her knees to get a better look.

“Harry, have you seen my foster daughter?”

“Noooo...” she erupted into a fit of giggles.

“Are you sure? Well, she’s exactly your height!” Bonnie said, putting her open hand on the girl’s head.

“And her eyes—they’re the same brown as your eyes, Harry!” she continued, pointing at the glasses.

“And she has a little birthmark right on her wrist, just like yours...” she went on, grabbing the tiny wrist with her fingers.

“Hey, wait a minute!” she said, as if caught by a stunning revelation. She gently took the glasses off the girl’s face, her mouth wide in pseudo-surprise.

“Marlena! Why are you dressed like Harry Potter?” she asked, smiling as she put the glasses back.

“It’s Halloween! Dad said,” Marlena told her, buzzing with excitement. Bonnie flinched so subtly most wouldn’t notice. Damon did, though. She nodded, covering the twinge of sadness in her smile with enthusiasm.

“It is? I completely forgot! It’s a good thing I brought this with me,” she gave the long bag over to Marlena. She tore the paper away until she recognized a slick, small broom. She beamed with awe. Nimbus 2000 was written in gold paint on the handle in Bonnie’s scrawl. Marlena squealed out a short thank you and immediately ran around the sitting room yelling about seekers and snitches.

Damon’s eyes darted to the floor as he felt guilt flicker in his stomach. In seven months, Bonnie never blamed him for the way Marlena hung on him, but never hugged her. She never made him feel bad about the way Marlena called him dad, while she was simply Bonnie. They knew it wasn’t his fault. It, of course, wasn’t Marlena’s either. They had once learned the hard way that sometimes things just happened. They hung in the air, cruel and blameless.

Bonnie walked over to Damon and put her hands on his chest. He held her hips lightly, running his thumb along the waistband of her pants.

“Way to one-up me!” he said.

“The scar was a nice touch, though,” she smiled, satisfied with her gift.

“How was the commute?”

“Getting easier. It gives me an excuse to blast that music you hate.”

“Pots and pans, keying cars, drilling teeth?"

“Yeah, that’s it,” she smiled as he leaned down to kiss her, chaste and healing.

“Hopefully you don’t have to do it long.”

“It’s okay. She’s comfortable here. I don’t want to uproot--,” two pairs of stomping feet walked through the front door, cutting her off.

“Carving station in the kitchen!” Caroline directed firmly. She had several bags of decorations, candy, and costumes in her hands, and Caleb walked around her, carrying seven pumpkins by himself.

“Caleb!” Marlena screeched, running after him, her broom held tightly in her hand.

“The Boy Who Lived!” he smiled at her as he unloaded the pumpkins onto the table.

“Can you make me fly!?” Marlena asked, beaming. Damon squashed a twinge of jealousy that always flickered at this ritual. Caleb would balance the girl on his fingertips far above his head, shuffling around the room, dropping and catching her at sudden intervals to dodge make-believe bludgers and other players. It was an activity only vampire strength and agility permitted.

“You bet I can,” Caleb promised. “Just let me help Caroline get everything together.”

“Why is he the favorite? I make her everything!” Caroline complained.

“And there’s nothing a seven-year-old appreciates more than decorative craft projects,” Damon covered quickly. He and Bonnie made quick, knowing eye contact. They decided together that Marlena’s traumas weren’t anyone else’s business, at least not now. Marlena was partial to men; she hadn’t met many in her life. Women often made her feel anxious and afraid. Her birth mother was the perpetrator of the emotional abuse she endured throughout the early years of her childhood.

“Caroline, we don’t even get trick or treaters here most years.” Bonnie said, eyeing the giant pile of Halloween goodies.

“Let me indulge! I’m trying not to think about the girls at some party right now... They could be TP-ing houses, throwing eggs...” she trailed off.

“Hooking up in some car and drinking cheap beer like you did?” Damon asked.

“So not funny!” Caroline glared at him.

“Nice nails, man. Steady hand,” Caleb pointed at the shimmering, dried globs of polish on his fingers. Damon elbowed him squarely in the chest.

Caleb took over making the veggies (Yeah, you thought I forgot, didn’t you? Damon had pointed at Marlena) and cleaned out the pumpkins, promising Marlena she could play with the “guts” when Caroline finished her nails. Marlena was a nonstop chatterbox, telling Caroline and Caleb all about the Hogwarts houses. (Bonnie would be in Ravenclaw; that’s where all the smartest people go. She’s a scientist, and she reads really big books.)

Damon walked out onto the porch and sat down on the ledge as Bonnie sifted through the various witch, ghost, and vampire decorations Caroline had carted over. The sun slowly fell behind her, illuminating her with a soft orange glow. Damon stared shamelessly.

“I looked at the costumes Blondie brought,” he said, swinging his leg around and leaning back against the post behind him.

“Do I want to know?” she asked.

“Fred and Wilma,” he shook his head. Bonnie let out a loud, short laugh.

“I know. I’m never procrastinating again. Maybe I’ll just pull out a suit. 007,” he said with a shrug.

“So, I’m Wilma alone? Where’s the loyalty?”

“Out the window when I’m at risk of wearing an orange dress.”

Bonnie inspected the decorations laid out on the ledge, at a loss of where to begin.

“Be my lookout?” she asked.

Damon nodded and craned his neck to check for Marlena’s peering eyes or some early trick-or-treaters. He gave her the all-clear nod, and Bonnie rose her hand. Everything went up in one swoop: fake tombstones laid in the grass, twinkling orange lights twisted around the porch, and spider webs covered the sides of the house. He rose his eyebrows, impressed. She had come a long time since pulling The Call of the Wild for him in his library.

“No need to rush back, right? We’re still decorating. It was a big job,” Damon said, reaching out to her. She closed the distance between them, and he ran his hands along her arms. Bonnie stroked his fingers with her own.

“Lucky for you, I find shimmering emerald nails a big turn-on,” she said. Damon grinned and leaned his head back against the post. Bonnie turned around and sat in front of him on the ledge, nestling back into his chest. His chin rested on the top of her head, and he wrapped his arms around her own as they felt the soft Autumn breeze on their faces. They enjoyed the rare, still moment when neither of them was at work or entertaining Marlena.

“This is where you recited your letter to me,” she whispered, letting her eyes close.

“I remember. Finally clawed my way out of that doghouse.”

“You’ve always been better at gestures like that.”

“Well, you don’t fuck up as much as me.”

Bonnie smiled and pulled his arms around her tighter. She felt comforted by the pressure of his grip. She inhaled deeply, bringing herself to vocalize her next sentence. Her therapist told her to reclaim what was good about that time, to stop burying things. She let the air out slowly.

“Remember when I told you I was pregnant?” she asked, keeping her tone conversational.

Damon hesitated for a moment, surprised, before he nodded slowly.

“Baby shoes in a box of single-malt scotch. It was clever,” he said back, mirroring her casual inflection.

“Yeah... it was till I ruined it,” she said. Damon shook his head at her as he brushed little patterns on her elbow with his thumb.

“You suck at secrets. You must have set a new record: how fast can someone blow their own surprise?”

“You’re so dramatic,” she waved him off.

“It was a generous thirty seconds.”

“Alright, I’m a ruiner; I know. I’m pulling this one off, though!”

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Care is carving it into the pumpkins. Nice, right?”

“So really, Caroline is pulling it off,” he said. Bonnie took the bait immediately and her eyes shot wide open. She turned to face him, defensive and annoyed.

“No! It was my idea, and I delegated--” she began, before spotting his shit-eating grin. She pursed her lips together. Five years of marriage and almost as many before that, and he would never quit messing with her.

“Ass,” she chided. She caught a fleeting expression in his eyes and latched onto it. There was something bothering him, something he was keeping from her. She raised her finger up to his forehead and pressed it firmly. It was something they’d picked up in the last few years, probing each other for information when they knew it was there. She dropped her hand and looked at him seriously, but he shook his head firmly.

“I don’t—” he began.

“What is it?” she interrupted. Damon sighed.

“She asked me again.”

Bonnie’s face fell, and she turned back away from him, leaning back into her spot on his chest. She wrapped her arms around herself, and Damon covered them with his own.

“I told her you’re not going anywhere, but...” he trailed off.

“We’ll tell the therapist next week,” she said, all business to stave off the pain.

“She loves you.”

Bonnie closed her eyes for a moment. Marlena had never said it. She heard her say it to Damon a few times as she fell asleep. She heard him whisper it back, hoping she wouldn’t hear. Him protecting her from the uneven affection made it harder.

“That’s kind of you,” she said.

“Bon Bon--,”

“It’s alright,” she cut him off, “Abby didn’t do a lot for my trust, either. And that wasn’t even close...” she couldn’t finish her sentence. She loved her foster daughter too much; it gutted her to talk about her life before. She felt Damon’s cheek press firmer against the top of her head. He, of all people, understood. She wondered how many people he flinched around over the years after a childhood with Guiseppi.

“Damon?”

“Hm?”

“I know it got rough there... for a while,” she said, moving slightly to look up at him. He looked back down at her and nodded. Though that time was behind them now, they didn’t talk about it often.

“I want you to know. Even if we couldn’t—even if we didn’t find her--,” she started.

Damon pressed a long kiss to her forehead, and Bonnie gripped his hand hard with her own.

“Me too,” he whispered. They sat there for a while, still, listening to the windchimes catch and watching dusk arrive.

The quiet was interrupted by the unmistakable sound of glass shattering. They sprang up immediately, parental instincts in full effect, and ran into the house. Caroline and Caleb looked on as Marlena stood in the middle of the sitting room, surrounded by shards of glass on the ground, the remains of a crystal vase on the table. The new broom laid on the ground, the most likely culprit. She lifted her foot to take a step.

“Don’t move!” Damon yelled suddenly. Marlena’s face contorted suddenly, her lower lip quaking until a heavy stream of tears poured from her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed. She hiccupped on each syllable, choking the words out through the meltdown.

“It’s okay, honey, just don’t move, okay?” Damon said.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Marlena repeated as she cried in the middle of the glass-covered floor.

“Hey, hey, it’s alright. Just close your eyes really quick, okay? Close your eyes and count to three. It will help you calm down. Daddy will come get you so you don’t hurt your feet,” Bonnie instructed. The words fell on deaf ears as Marlena sobbed harder.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“Mar, count for me,” Bonnie said firmly. Marlena finally nodded and closed her eyes, counting out loud slowly. Bonnie waved her hand, and the glass collected in a neat pile in a split second. Damon crossed the room and picked Marlena up into his arms, carrying her to the base of the stairs away from the evidence of the magic. He set her down gently, and when she opened her eyes, he tried to touch her cheek.

“Peanut, I promise--,” he tried, but she bolted up the stairs, crying loudly.

Bonnie and Damon looked back at the others, and Caroline waved them off. She was no stranger to crying children.

“We’ll take care of the glass.”

Damon and Bonnie ran upstairs and knocked softly on Marlena’s door before letting themselves inside. Marlena had hidden under her bed; tiny sniffles escaped from the gap between her bedframe and the floor. Her Harry Potter glasses had been discarded onto her pink rug.

“Marlena--,” Damon tried.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated.

Damon looked at Bonnie, at a complete loss of what to do. He wasn’t exactly known for his communication skills, let alone with traumatized children. Bonnie put her hand on his knee.

Let me try, she mouthed at him. He nodded and sat back against the wall.

Bonnie crawled over to the middle of the room, but stopped a few feet from the bed, trying to give her space.

“Sweetheart...” Bonnie whispered. Her palms developed a thin layer of sweat. She knew her distance from Marlena over the months was partially because she wanted to respect that she needed time to trust her. As Bonnie sat there, however, longing to put her hand under the bed, she knew there was more.

Her own mother had left her when she was so young she barely she remembered what she looked like. If Abby didn’t think she was worth mothering, how could she ever be expected to be worthy of mothering a child as beautiful, smart, and remarkable as Marlena? Bonnie knew she never truly processed the abandonment or the guilt she carried from it. If she had been a better child, maybe her mom never would have left, she used to wonder. That guilt was compounded when she reconnected with her as a teen. What had she done so wrong that her mom not only could leave her, but could go raise another child?

She knew she had demonstrated a remarkable amount of forgiveness toward her mom. She accepted the love Abby wanted to give when she wanted to give it, and never expected more. That’s just who Bonnie was... as an adolescent, she was always putting herself second, setting aside her own happiness and the things she wanted out of life for everyone else. She never sat and thought about that instinct or wondered if she had it because she didn’t feel worthy of those things: happiness, love, even life. If she didn’t deserve to have a mom, then what could she possibly deserve? She felt guilty for Grams’ death, turning that blame onto Stefan when she had told her to keep going with the spell. She felt guilty for her father’s, for not getting him out of this god foresaken town earlier. When she lost her son, she turned the compounded guilt deep onto herself. She thought, perhaps, she hadn’t deserved to know that beautiful boy anyway, for inexplicable reasons that had been so deeply burned onto her soul since her mother left that she never thought to question them.

But Bonnie was a grown woman now. She had died for her friends, she had saved her home from being engulfed in hellfire, she had taken on the devil himself and won. She had loved and been loved. She took this child into her care and promised to love her, even if that love was never returned. She had done more in this life than ever should have been necessary for her to believe she deserved love—and, certainly, that she deserved to give it. This knowledge was healing. She wasn’t a child anymore. She needed to let go of the erroneous idea that bad things had happened to her because she deserved them.

Even more, she needed to ensure her own daughter didn’t carry that with her throughout her own life. Bonnie heard Marlena crying under the bed and saw herself: a little girl wondering why her mom didn’t want her anymore. She felt so much love for this child it twisted her up inside, love that she never knew she could feel for another person. She wanted, more than anything, to protect her from the pain she grew up with, that had nestled inside of her, wrapping itself around her heart tight like vines. She opened her mouth and tried to vocalize, to any possible degree she could, that love.

“Marlena, I know... I know you haven’t been treated how you deserve to be. I know you’ve been hurt. Sometimes people hurt other people, even when they shouldn’t, and that is wrong. I know it’s hard to trust that you’re okay, even though you’ve been here a while. But your father and I will never ever hurt you. What happened with the glass- it was an accident. It happens to all of us, even your dad and me.”

The sniffling under Marlena’s bed grew quieter.

“But I’ll tell you, baby—it doesn’t even matter that it was an accident. No matter what you could ever do, we wouldn’t hurt you. You deserve to feel safe. I want to make you feel safe. And I know that I’m Bonnie and he is Daddy, and it’s okay. It’s all okay. I can wait. And it’s okay if it’s never. I just want you to know that I am always here to protect you and love you. I promise you. I’ll never hurt you, and I won’t leave. I will always be here. You will never know what it’s like to—to not have a mom.”

Bonnie’s voice broke. She thought about everything she needed her mom for. Quiet tears fell down her face. She swallowed back the emotion in her voice.

“I will be here for it all, Mar. I will take you trick-or-treating tonight. I will teach you to ride a bike. I will cheer you on at your first game. I will help you get ready for your prom. I will move you into your college dorm. I will hold you if you need me to, and I won’t if you need me to not. But I will be here.”

She looked back over her shoulder. Damon looked at her for a long moment, before mouthing to her.

Ruin it.

She nodded at him and wiped her eyes before taking a deep breath. She looked back at the bed.

“We’re adopting you, Marlena. We got approved last week.”

Marlena came crawling out from under the bed quickly: her hair messy, her face pink and puffy, her shirt wrinkled. She gaped at Bonnie.

“You’re adopting me?” she asked in a tearful voice.

Bonnie stared back at her in surprise and nodded.

“You’re my mom?” Marlena asked, small and hopeful. Bonnie bit her lip and nodded again.

Marlena ran straight at Bonnie and threw her arms around her.

Bonnie froze for just a second before she wrapped her arms around her daughter. They both shook as they grasped each other, and Bonnie pulled her head back only to kiss her on her cheeks and her forehead.

“I am.”

December 25, 2040  

Dear Elena,

It’s a big Christmas in the Salvatore house! Marlena got into Whitmore early decision on Tuesday, we just got approved to adopt Nolan, and it’s Tom’s first holiday with us.

A soft tapping on their bedroom door stirred Damon out of his light slumber as the early Christmas morning light peered in through the edges of their blackout curtains. He groaned as he rolled over to look at the clock. 7 A.M. He threw his arm over Bonnie and pressed a light kiss to her temple.

“I never cease to be amazed by your Super Dad hearing. Are we sure that cure worked right?” she murmured sleepily.

“Ask my salt and pepper stubble,” he grumbled as he reluctantly crawled out from their warm bed and put on pajama pants. The two had been up until two in the morning putting out gifts and stuffing stockings.

He opened the door to find Marlena with her arms crossed tightly in front of her. She wore the same scowl on her face just for him she had for a few days. Her hair had been cut above her shoulders, and she stood in the matching flannel pajamas her mom had given them the night before.

“The boys are getting impatient,” she said shortly.

“Merry Christmas,” he replied, running a hand through his hair, now sprouting a few greys.

“When are you coming down? I’d lie to them, but that’s more your speed,” she said coldly. She wouldn’t look him in the eye. He thought about keeping her there and forcing her to talk to him, but he let it go.

“Five minutes,” he replied. She spun back on her heel and stalked off without another glance. Damon groaned aloud as he crawled back in bed, burrowing his face under the pillows.

“Think it’s too late to have Caroline undo this whole thing?” he grumbled.

“Technically, no. Morally, yes,” Bonnie said as she sat at her vanity, unwrapping her hair in the mirror.

“I don’t know what to do with this! That girl’s never been mad at me a day in her life.”

Bonnie smiled smugly.

“Oh, is somebody not being hero-worshipped for ten minutes?” she teased.

“Quit enjoying this,” he bit at her.

“Marlena loves you more than any teenaged girl has ever loved her dad. She’ll come around; you just need to talk to her.”

Damon threw the pillow off his face and rolled over to face his wife as she buttoned up her top.

“It’s not fair. We tell her about you, she just wants to watch you float stuff all day. We tell her about me, I get iced out,” he complained.

“Well, to be fair, I float stuff. You--,” she started. Damon stuck up sarcastic air quotes.

“’Brought a painful death to everyone I met’. Yeah, yeah. So now I live with consequences, what, twenty years later?” he asked, as if the possibly was simply absurd.

“Yes. A resounding yes,” she said. She caught him out of the corner of her eye and saw his face riddled with anguish. She sighed and went back to him to lay on top of him. She rested her cheek on his chest and drew comforting shapes on his arm.

“I just want things to be okay before she leaves,” he said.

“I’ll talk to her. Mom magic.”

“This might be above your superpowers. She got her stubbornness from you, you know,” he said. Bonnie launched up, holding herself up above his face.

“From me!?”

“Yeah, from you,” he grinned, grabbing her sides. She recoiled and looked at him with playful shock at his audacity.

“From you,” she corrected, sticking her finger in his face. He opened his mouth and went to bite her finger, but she stole it back quickly. Damon leaned up suddenly, kissing her on the mouth before she could pull back. She shook her head at him and got back out of bed. She held her hands out and pulled him up, ready to entertain their too large family over the long day.

They walked downstairs to find the kids jumping up and down on the new couches, impatiently waiting to open their gifts. The Salvatore great room had a gigantic tree in the corner covered in homemade ornaments from a variety of school projects. Shiny bulbs hung by curly ribbons from the ceiling, and a pile of wood sat next to the roaring fire Marlena started. The old paintings that once hung from the walls were replaced with family photos from road trips, dance recitals, and swim meets. Nobody would know how many attacks had happened in that great room back when their lives were chaotic. To the naked eye, it was a home, albeit a nice and expensive one, for a normal family.

“It’s Christmas; it’s Christmas!” the ten-year-old yelled, jumping on the furniture.

“Get down, Nolan,” Bonnie warned. He leapt down, though none of his endless supply of energy had been depleted.

The kids wore identical pajamas, as was tradition in the Salvatore house. This year was Nolan’s choice, and he picked the latest Disney movie, an animated flick about aliens who, upon assimilation, found great passion for soccer. Marlena grumpily donned the flannel set, rubbing the sleepiness out of her eyes.

“Mar, will you help me out with breakfast? Boys, sort the gifts,” Bonnie said. They didn’t need to be told twice, springing to action as they shook and tossed the presents around. Marlena dragged her feet, following Bonnie into the kitchen. She didn’t know her parents had once spent the same day on repeat in this kitchen; she only knew they made a lot more pancakes than most parents.

“I know what you’re gonna say, mom,” she said, already annoyed. She turned on the burner and filled the kettle while Bonnie grabbed the hot chocolate mix.

“Do you?” Bonnie asked, raising her eyebrow at her daughter.

“You’re gonna say it’s not Dad’s fault, and it was a decision you made ‘as a unit’,” she added sarcastic air quotes around the last part. Bonnie smiled softly. She was so much more like Damon than she would ever know.

“I was going to say… that maybe you can take it easy on him today. It’s your last Christmas before you leave, baby,” she said softly.

“He should have thought about that before,” she snapped. Bonnie sighed and stared at her for a long moment.

“I’m sorry,” Marlena conceded. “I just can’t... I can’t believe he didn’t tell me before. I’ve always been honest with him. I told him about Hannah right away! And we could have gotten away with some shit if I hadn’t, you know?” she said. Bonnie shook her head at the comparison but ignored it.

“You should talk to him about it today.”

“Not happening.”

“Mar,” Bonnie said shortly.

“He was a vampire, mom. That’s not easy to just talk out over some hot cocoa.”

Bonnie walked over to her daughter and leaned her head on her shoulder. Marlena was a full head taller than her.

“Well, if you do, maybe you can go to Hannah’s later and you can get away from your brothers for a little while,” she said.

“Wow, look at this blatant bribery,” Marlena grinned. “Using my girlfriend against me…”

“I’m resorting to lazy tactics. It’s too early to mediate.”

“Fine, but there better be groveling.”

“Now you sound like your father,” Bonnie said, stirring hot chocolate in their mugs.

“Score one for nurture. Nature continues to trail behind,” Marlena said her favorite joke. Bonnie put her hand on her daughter’s back.

“He loves you. If we told you too young, you might have told somebody. And, honestly, he didn’t want you to be afraid of him,” she said seriously. Marlena nodded and put her arm around her mom’s shoulders. They finished preparing the hot chocolate together in silence and brought the tray out to the living room. They sat it where the extensive bourbon collection used to sit out. It now stayed in their locked liquor cabinet.

A lot of photos and presents later, the Salvatores sat at their dining room table, decorating the sugar cookies Damon and Bonnie had made the night before with a series of Christmas cookie cutters. The boys experimented with different amounts of food coloring in each bowl of powder sugar vanilla icing. Tom shed a couple of tears when his turned to brown, but Damon spread the icing on a reindeer-shaped cookie and saved the day, now an expert at navigating child breakdowns after ten years of experience.

As Bonnie watched the boys sprint out their sugar highs with the soccer ball and goals in the backyard, Marlena and Damon snuck upstairs. They sat on the edge of her bed. Still, tense silence coated the air around them.

Marlena drew in a long, shaking breath and felt tears prickle in her eyes. She looked up at the ceiling, annoyed at the display, and willed them away. When she found her voice, it came out soft and low.

“Did you kill people?” she asked. Damon felt shame pool in his stomach and hesitated only a moment before speaking. No more secrets.

“Yes,” he admitted.

Marlena’s breath hitched, processing the truth. She knew it was likely, but it was different to hear it in her father’s familiar voice. She looked up at him, feeling her fear strangely quelled by his kind eyes. They were the eyes of the man who held her when she cried, cheered the loudest in the crowd at her swim meets, and lifted her onto his shoulders in line at Disneyworld. It’s these images that kept her talking through the shock.

“Why’d you… turn back, or whatever?” she asked.

“I fell in love with your mom. I wanted to have you.”

“Do you… was it worth it?” she asked, strangely petrified of the answer. Her dad had never shown an ounce of disinterest in being her father, but her stomach clenched, waiting for him to tell her what a mistake it had been. She didn’t wait long. Damon didn’t hesitate for a second.

“Yes. Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“Do you wish I didn’t tell you?” he asked.

“I don’t know... But I guess that’s the burden of being the oldest, right? You gotta see how I handle it before you decide to tell the boys someday…” her eyes fell to the ground.

“I’m very familiar with the burdens of being the oldest,” Damon said, elbowing her lightly. She looked up at him and smiled. Her mom had once told her some of this: the way he caught his little brother’s beatings for him. But now the memory was repainted—in older clothes, in some different time.

“I feel like I never really knew you,” she whispered. Damon shook his head furiously.

“No. You did. You do. More than anyone, probably,” he spoke so earnestly she wanted to believe him. She waded back into safer territory.

“Are you super old?” she asked. Damon smiled softly.

“Define super.”

“Were you, like, around for poodle skirts and stuff?”

He laughed, warm and amused, breaking the tension. Relief flooded through them both, penetrating the air.

“Yeah, I’m super old.”

Marlena shook her head, trying to decide whether or not to ask for more specificity. Instead, a new question tumbled out.

“Did you decide to become one? Did you find a vampire and ask to be... converted or whatever?” she asked. Her dad froze and looked at her for a long, serious moment.

“Can I show you something?” he asked. She quirked her head at him before nodding her agreement.

Damon led her through the house until they stood outside a wooden door. She had lived in this house for ten years, and she was never allowed to go inside.

“The mysterious locked room, huh? I figured it was some weird sex thing,” she said.

“What? No, weirdo.”

She raised her hands innocently as he turned the key and opened the door.

Marlena looked around curiously, surveying the strange room around her. The furniture was outdated and dusty. The air was musty and suffocating, but oddly comforting. He had brought her to a frozen moment in time.

“What is this place?” she whispered. She walked around and picked up a framed photo of her parents, a blonde, and a handsome stranger. She put her fingertips on the glass above the blonde woman’s face.

“Who is this?” she asked. “I feel like... do I know her?”

Damon walked up behind her and took the photo from her hands gently.

“That’s Caroline. She and her husband travel a lot. Your mom and I always meet her whenever she’s in town,” he said, running his thumb over the photo.

“Why don’t you bring them here?”

“We didn’t want you to see her not age.”

“She’s a vampire?” Marlena asked.

“Yeah, she is. And you see him?” he asked, pointing to the man in the photo. She looked up at him curiously.

“That’s whose room we’re in right now. My brother, Stefan,” he said. He wore a small, sad smile: the expression of a man remembering someone he lost sooner than he ever anticipated. He replaced the frame in its rightful place so softly it made no noise.

“Your brother who died?” she asked.

“That’s the one. He, more or less, made me a vampire,” he said, walking over to a bookshelf.

“Why would he do that?” Marlena asked, trailing after him. She looked up at the shelf and gaped at the wall of journals. She grazed her fingers over the leather binding, awestruck. Damon grabbed one of the earliest ones, 1864, and held it out to her.

“He can answer that better than me,” he said.

“Wow...” Marlena whispered, gazing down at the dusty pages. Damon suddenly took her shoulders in both of his hands.

“Hey,” he said. She looked up at him with rapt attention.

“There’s a lot in here that I’m not proud of. A lot in here you might not want to know about me. There’s also stuff about me tied up with a couple of women who aren’t your mother. Before you even think about opening them, I need you to know something.”

Marlena looked up at him, her face patient, though her fingers tapped the journal in her hand, eager to read.

“What is it?” she asked. Damon looked at her with vulnerability she had never seen before. She realized he was pleading with her.

 “I am only me because of you and your mom. The person who raised you is not who is in these very over-written journals.” In typical Damon fashion, he deflected with a dash of humor. Marlena knew the trick well. She got it from him.

“Why are you showing them to me then?” she asked.

“Because I respect the woman you’ve become enough to give you the truth without spinning it."

She brought her hand to his own on her shoulder. She didn’t know what was in these journals, but she imagined he never wanted her to know any of it. He squeezed her shoulders before letting her go, dropping his gaze in preemptive shame for what she was about to learn, and walked toward the doorway.

“Dad?” she called after him. He turned back to face her.

“Yeah?

“Can I ask you something else? Unrelated,” she said.

“Sure," he said warmly.

“How old was mom when grandma left?”

Damon froze. He looked at his daughter. His beautiful daughter who looked nothing like either of them but shared so many of his and Bonnie’s mannerisms. He saw so much of her vibrant, brilliant mother in her, including the way she dodged eye contact when she felt most vulnerable. He knew from her expression that this exact question was somehow defining for her, though he didn’t exactly know why.

“About the same age you were. A little younger.”

“Is it why you picked me?” she asked quietly.

Damon looked at her intently, fiercely serious in a way they rarely were with each other.

“Never."

Hot tears sprung in her eyes. She shamelessly let them fall down her cheeks.

“Thank you.”

Elena closed the journal and found Caroline’s worried face.

“Are we here?” she asked in a voice hoarse from crying. The car had stopped in a parking lot. Caroline nodded. Elena turned around to look out the window behind her at a large building with glass walls.

Brookfield Assisted Living.

Chapter Text

June 5, 2069

Morning

Marlena tied her grey hair behind her as she collected the clutter around her mom’s bed. This particular tornado could only be created by her niece and nephew: stray half-eaten cups of Jell-o and nuts on the carpet they had tried to throw into each other’s mouths.

When Bonnie’s grandson suggested they play a game of Rummy (“one last game” went unspoken), her smile had faltered.

“I’ll hold the cards,” Damon had whispered in her ear. She relaxed. Holding up a fistful of cards was beyond her current capabilities. Her husband laid at her side for the next hour, picking up and discarding cards by her whispered commands, his arm wrapped around her waist, gentle but protective, as if holding her close to him could sufficiently scare off the tumors in her body.

Nolan finished tying his daughter’s shoes and pulled her up into his arms.

“Bye, Grams!” Emma waved her tiny hand frantically at Bonnie. Her grin revealed a missing bottom tooth and palpable innocence: the smile of a child ignorant to the uncertainty of seeing her grandmother again.

“Bye, honey,” Bonnie whispered, clutching her oxygen mask in one hand and her other son’s fingers in the other. Her eyes were riddled with happy exhaustion. At her request, Damon gave her doctor an earful when she protested the family visit. Sure, her grandchildren were loud and not exactly conducive to the healing environment, but healing had passed. Now, she just wanted to be with them.

Nolan shifted Emma’s weight onto his other hip.

“I’ll be back after I drop them with Hannah, okay?” he assured her. She nodded and smiled at him. Nolan was not one for affection: hugs and I love yous brought him discomfort, but he always showed up, kept his promises, and looked after her. He reminded her of his father in that way.

Jaden, Nolan’s son, ten and more keen to mortality than his younger sister, looked at her with a long gaze before running back to her side for another slightly too tight hug. Bonnie returned it with the little strength she had in her arms.

“I’ll take care of Emma,” he promised. Bonnie shook her head slightly against his cheek.

“You let your dad take care of you both.”

Jaden let go of her and, with a smile at his grandfather on the other side of the bed, let Nolan usher him out of the room. Marlena groaned loudly and fluttered about the room, cleaning frantically, the only thing she could fix.

Bonnie looked at her younger son with pleading eyes.

“Tom, take your sister to get some food before she explodes,” she said. He rolled his eyes.

“Come on, crazy,” he said to his sister in a tone infused with the balance of annoyance and affection only a baby brother could muster.

“Want anything, dad?” he added as he threw his jacket over his shoulders. Damon shook his head, but knew it was useless. Marlena would bring him something anyway. He hadn’t been good about eating lately, too focused on Bonnie to notice things like hunger cues.

Marlena put her hand on his shoulder for a fleeting second before they walked out of the room. Peaceful silence spread through the space, interrupted only by the sound of Bonnie taking shallow breaths from the oxygen mask in intervals. She shivered slightly, and Damon got out of bed immediately, his knees cracking slightly as he walked over to their closet.

“Purple or green?” he asked, running his fingers down the sleeves of two button-up sweaters.

“Dealer’s choice,” she replied weakly. He brought the green sweater back over to her and sat on the edge of the bed, lifting Bonnie toward him lightly to wrap the sweater around her before buttoning one button at a time. They had switched to these sweaters about a week ago when she got too weak to hold her arms above her head for pullovers.

Bonnie studied her husband’s face as he worked his fingers around the buttons. He had deep bags under his eyes reflecting distress and his unflinching efforts to hide it. In that moment, she pitied him more than herself. Every day for the last two weeks had potentially been the last day. He was plagued with a constant dread, an anticipation that each day would be the day he lost her. There were small moments he would even hope for that to be the case, craving a very human need for resolution and the finality of grief. The guilt on the heels of those moments ate at him worse than anything else.

Bonnie placed her wrinkled hand on his knee, and he looked up at her, sliding the last button through its loop. He shot her a small smile, as if he had done this every day of their lives. Nothing out of the ordinary, it said.

He reached for a slick piece of glass on their bedside table and laid back against the headboard. Bonnie rested her head on his shoulder, and he pointed the glass at seemingly nothing when a near-invisible screen lit up, and he selected the title of her favorite soap opera. He openly ridiculed it, but never dared to change it. It provided her sweet, necessary escapism.

“It’s a shame we destroyed the other side. I can’t finish Paradise Island over your shoulder,” she remarked, making light where there was none.

“I’m sure there’s plenty of terrible media where you’re going,” he replied, resting his cheek on the top of her head.

“I bet Elena will like it,” she said.

Damon flinched beside her. Elena had been the subject of their last dozen arguments before he finally gave up. Over the years, Bonnie had become arguably the most powerful creature on the planet. She fought hellfire in her twenties and, though her combative magic use was behind her, she’d honed and perfected her craft over decades.

“You can fight this if you try, Bonnie! Poof the tumors away!” he would plead. “Gloria slowed her aging down; I saw it. Don’t pretend like you can’t do this.”

Bonnie, however, remained indignant. At eighty-years-old, she felt she had cheated death enough times in her strange, supernatural life, and she wanted Elena to get to see her brother again. She had no intention of leaving her friend any more alone than she already had.

“You’ll tell her I recommend it when you pick her up?” she pushed.

If Damon had still been a vampire, he would have done what was necessary to force her to save herself, even if it meant she hated him, even left him. He would have trapped her in the basement until she saw reason or found a witch to spell the tumors out herself. Instead, he sat, an elderly mortal man, trying not to plague their final days with the quiet resentment that stirred at her decision.

Damon traced soothing lines up and down her back with his fingers.

“I’ll tell her,” he lied.

She brought the mask up to her face and took a small puff of oxygen.

“I’d be mad at me too,” she whispered. “But not yet, ok? You can be mad tomorrow.”

Damon closed his eyes and nodded gently. She was so sure today was her last. He believed her.

“Do you need anything?” he asked. Give me something to do. Give me something to fix.

He remembered the first time he was bitten by a werewolf. His brother had locked him in the cellar rather than permit him some touching bedside goodbyes because he was so committed to finding a way to save him. Damon felt like a failure for not doing that now. He wasn’t running out the seconds on the clock with increasingly desperate attempts to save his wife. Instead, he sat there, holding her, buttoning her sweater, holding her cards, helping her drink water from a straw.

“Just you,” she replied.

Damon gently shifted so they laid down on the bed, facing one another on their pillows. Bonnie held the mask to her face with one hand and drew small circles on her husband’s wrist with her other. She pulled the mask away and looked at him seriously.

“I will see you again,” she promised.

Damon looked away from her for a moment but forced himself to hold her eye. He didn’t believe her, of course, but he didn’t want to upset her either. He found his poker face and said nothing.

“You’re a good man. A good father,” she continued. He wasn’t sure if it sounded as if she was trying to convince him or herself, though he might have been reading into it. He brought his hand to her cheek and held it there, brushing her hairs with his fingertips.

“Save me a cloud,” he joked. Bonnie smiled. She didn’t have much energy to smile lately. Each one was a glowing victory. He ran his thumb along her laugh lines: decades of grins and laughter etched in her skin.

“You made those,” she whispered.

If Damon were still a vampire, he would have heard her heart take its last beat.

June 5, 2069

Afternoon

Elena could only register the sound of Caroline’s sharp heels striking the marble floors as she led her through the lobby of the facility. The walls surrounding them were either glass or a perfectly even layer of pure white paint. A thick wall of lavender air freshener coated the room, abrasive and artificial. Caroline tapped her polished fingers against a translucent screen, so thin and delicate that Elena wouldn’t have known it was there but for the text that appeared:

Visitors: 2

Room 817: Damon Salvatore and Bonnie Salvatore.

Caroline’s jaw twitched at the sight. The directory had yet to discover the truth: the room’s inhabitants had been halved mere hours ago.

Elena knew she would have time to gawk at the technology another day and turned away from the screen with disinterest. She imagined Damon showing off some device she couldn’t even fathom, pressing the buttons at random with one hand, holding her thigh with the other, laughing at her wide-eyed awe. She wasn’t ready to replace that memory with reality yet. She fixed her eyes on the wall behind her, and images of Damon and her danced against the white paint like shadow puppets. Damon, wrapping her in his arms. Damon, kissing her right behind her ear. Damon, telling her about his long friendship with Bonnie, the husband she married, the kids she had. She blinked away the fantasies as Stefan’s voice whispered in her ear.

“You don’t know what I look like when I’m not in love with you.”

Elena jumped at the sound of the glass doors parting as they were granted access inside. Caroline’s hand found hers, and she clung to it for dear life as she followed her down a wide hallway of dark wood paneling. The few staff members they passed stared at Elena’s strange, dated clothes. She was too numb to feel embarrassed by the attention. Her ears rang slightly, fixating only on Caroline’s footsteps to guide her. Her vision blurred in the corners of her eyes as she stared straight down the long corridor.

Damon grieved with Bonnie. Damon traveled the world with Bonnie. Damon fell in love with Bonnie. Damon married Bonnie. Damon had children with Bonnie. Damon grew old with Bonnie. She repeated the mantra quietly in her head as they turned the corners.

What am I going to do?

She pushed the thought out. Damon grieved with Bonnie. Damon traveled the world with Bonnie. Damon fell in love with--.

“Are you ready?” Caroline asked. She stopped outside a closed door and dropped her hand. An image flashed before Elena’s eyes of what they were walking into: Damon, old and withered, staring out a foggy window in a rocking chair, tapping his fingers against the light wood anxiously awaiting her arrival.

“Enough,” she replied.

As Caroline touched a button Elena could barely see, they heard screaming.

“Over my dead body!”

“I would oblige, but don’t you think Damon’s been through enough today?”

Elena recognized the second voice before the door slid open in front of her. She took in the crowded sitting room suddenly: people she’d only read about in Bonnie’s journals in the last hour were real, spread out in front of her. Two men sat on the couch next to each other, the younger of which had his face in his clutched hands, the older staring at the argument in front of him. Bonnie and Damon’s sons, she realized. An older woman stood protectively in front of the closed door behind her with a younger man at her side. In front of her stood Rebekah Mikaelson.

“You are not going in there,” Marlena hissed.

“Did I mention I was invited?” Rebekah asked, sounding almost bored.

“Get away from her!” Caroline yelled, sprinting at her with vampire speed, tackling her to the ground. Rebekah sent Caroline flying into the wall behind her, and the man next to Marlena, Caleb, Elena realized, ran to her side. Rebekah stood up, dusting off her bright red pants, when she spotted Elena in the doorway.

“Elena! Aren’t you a walking time capsule? You look almost as smashing as I did when I woke up in a box,” she said.

Caleb helped Caroline to her feet, leaving his hand on her elbow a hair longer than necessary, a gesture infused with subtle yet boundless intimacy. Elena realized that Caroline hadn’t seen her husband since they both lost their friend.

“What are you doing here?” Caroline glowered.

“Dad invited her.” Marlena spat.

“What- why--?” Elena began. She met Caroline’s wide, devastated eyes, and her jaw snapped closed.

“No... he—he wouldn’t do that,” she said firmly, though even she didn’t believe herself. If the last hour taught her anything, it was how little she knew Damon anymore. She shied away from Marlena’s furious, blame-ridden gaze.

Rebekah looked down at her nails, uninterested in her denial.

“Damon and I made a deal a long time ago when he planned on taking it with Elena. When he was ready to die, whether she died first or they wanted to die together, he’d give it to me. No reason I can’t get an early payment,” she said shortly. Elena slid down the wall behind her, sitting on the wood floor queasy and shaken.

Caleb crossed his arms and stood in front of the vampire a millennium his senior.

“You’re not going inside,” he said.

“He has fire, Caroline! Not as handsome as my brother, though, is he?” she asked.

Nolan stood up suddenly.

“For those of us who are a little behind, what with the grieving our dead mom and all, what the hell is going on!?” he asked, furious. Marlena took a step backward, so she leaned against the door behind her.

“She’s an original,” she said.

“I don’t know what the fuck that means, Mar,” he snapped.

Elena’s eyes widened with surprise, but Marlena stood steady, entirely unaffected by the outburst. They had this fight long ago. When Damon showed her their uncle’s diaries, she grew obsessed with the rich, undiscovered world. She read the stories of her parents teaming up to take down the evil creatures, watching as her father redeemed himself one day at a time, and felt deeper appreciation and love for them both. She eventually pursued her doctorate in folklore and mythology, learning every bit of information she could about the supernatural creatures her parents had befriended or battled.

When Damon and Bonnie told the boys when they were teenagers, Tom read the diaries, but felt uncomfortable by it all. He hid it in the back of his mind in some tiny drawer, simply requesting they didn’t discuss it in the future. Nolan, however, got through only a few volumes when he stormed out of the house. When he discovered the way his parents and their friends cheated and wielded death, arbitrarily choosing who got to live and who didn’t at times, he felt unsettled. His father’s history of violent murder and torture, however, made him utterly sick. He moved in with his godmother, Monique, when he was sixteen and studied to become a doctor just like her. Only years later did he recognize it for what it was: a strange effort he had taken upon himself to balance the scales of the lives his father took. He worked constantly and skipped most holidays, though he had frequent one-on-one dinners with his mom to make up for it the best he could.

Nolan stared at his sister, his exhausted eyes begging for a sufficient explanation for the disruption of their family’s grief.

“Dad invited her to take the cure from him... it would—it would kill him. He wants to die,” Marlena said.

Nolan looked down at his brother sitting next to him, but Tom rocked gently on his heels, staring blankly at the wall in front of him. When he looked back at Marlena, he began laughing, quietly and slowly at first until he grew so hysterical his stomach hurt. He took big gulps of air between fits of consuming laughter and doubled over. The sight was unsettling in the chaos, and Elena looked at the door behind Marlena, sure Damon stood behind it.

“God, what is wrong with you?” Marlena asked her brother furiously.

“What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you? Mom died today! She’s not even in the ground! And he wants to follow her right out?” he asked, incredulous. “Jaden starts middle school soon! Emma has been talking nonstop about him coming to see her recital!” Marlena rolled her eyes.

“You’re not the authority on grief because you bred, Nolan. Do you realize what he just lost? He and mom have been together--,” she began.

“God, stop defending him for once in your life!” Nolan yelled.

Elena blinked. His voice was so much like his father’s when he was angry. She remembered their own argument just like this one.

“Stop defending me!”

“I can’t!”

“Don’t you see?” he continued. “He’s still the same selfish piece of shit he’s been for 200 years. You read Uncle Stefan’s journals about them killing hundreds of people and still painted him to be the good guy! Because he put band-aids on our scraped knees? It doesn’t cut it! He wants to die? Let him. He’s not your hero,” he snapped. His shoe barely missed Elena as he stormed out of the room. The door automatically slid shut behind him gently, and Elena had a fleeting image of what it would have may have looked like in her time: swinging shut in a thundering slam.                                                                                                      

Elena glanced at the youngest son but found his blank stare was unchanged. His hands were clasped around each other so tight his fingers were pure white, and she noted he was the only child without a wedding ring. She wondered if he had someone to hold him tonight, or if he would grieve his mother how she grieved her own: alone, in too much shock to cry.

“Can’t you of all people understand family issues?” Caroline snapped at Rebekah, breaking the silence. The Original rolled her eyes, but rose her hands, conceding.

“I’ll leave when Damon tells me to,” she said finally before sitting on the couch beside Tom.

Elena noticed Caleb pull Marlena into a tight hug, the uncle Stefan couldn’t be, as Caroline walked over and held her hand out. She took it and allowed her to effortlessly pull her to her feet.

“Maybe this isn’t the right time...” Caroline began. Elena shook her head quickly.

“It’s exactly the right time.”

She walked toward the closed door but stopped suddenly in front of Marlena.

“I’m sorry about your mom. I know what it’s like,” she said.

Marlena blinked at her, wary and confused. She had placed the rage about the situation squarely onto this stranger’s shoulders: the reason her mother didn’t fight like she could, the other love in her father’s life. Elena recognized the look in her eyes. It was the same surprise Damon expressed the first time she extended kindness his way.

I’m sorry about Katherine. You lost her, too.

Without waiting for a response, Elena walked to the door and searched for the translucent button to open it, her first minor adaptation to her new world. She took one last deep breath before opening the door.

The minimal hospice equipment stood in place in the middle of the small bedroom, and the bed remained unmade on both sides. Two elderly people, a woman and a man, sat at a small table for two. She clenched his hand in her own and cried as he flipped through what appeared to be a large photo album from closer to Elena’s time.

Only when he looked up at Elena did her breath catch in her throat. Unlike Caroline and Rebekah’s unchanging bodies, Damon’s only resemblance he shared with his younger self were his surprised, clear blue eyes on her. He was seventy years old now, wearing his same signature black t-shirt without the leather coat.

“Wow... I mean, I knew you would look the same as the photos, but it is strange in person,” the woman said. She looked at her only for a moment before turning her attention back to Damon, who looked and felt as if he had seen a ghost.

“I’ll just go... brainstorm my excuses,” Monique said hastily, squeezing Damon’s hand with one last assurance before walking to the door. She stopped in front of Elena and smiled at her.

“She was so sad to never see her best friend again,” she said, putting her hand on Elena’s arm.

“I think that’s you,” Elena whispered, touched by the affection and warmth in her expression.

Monique looked back over her shoulder at Damon.

“See you later, dumbass,” she called, walking out the door without looking back, clearly unaware of the conversation they had all been having just outside.

“Bye, Mo Mo,” he muttered. Elena recognized a twinge in his new voice, older and hoarser than the one she knew, but no less recognizable: the tone he used when lying. There was a tragic finality to his goodbye as he watched the door close behind her.

The silence in the air felt tangible. Elena imagined she could grab it and feel the unpleasant sensation of a pudding between her fingers. Damon was already looking away from her, down at the photo albums to distract himself from the discomfort of her presence. She walked, tentative and quiet, to the table and sat down where Monique had been.

She took the corners of the album and slid it in front of her. She recognized it as a classic Caroline Forbes Scrapbook down to the looping embroidery border. Her lips parted slightly when she looked at the photo in the center: the make-shift aisle, the picked flower petals on either side. Bonnie in her wedding dress, Damon in a suit, Caroline and Monique in street clothes beside them. The officiant must have taken the photo, she realized, as she saw the tealights and ivy wall Bonnie described in front of her eyes.

“It’s the suit I wore the night Stefan died,” Damon said quietly. “It was the only other time I wore it. Monique found it in the closet. She offered to be my best man.”

Elena cleared her throat lightly. Of course, that’s how it all started: Bonnie comforting him through Stefan’s death. She grazed her fingertips over the image of her friend on her wedding day. Bonnie looked up at a young Damon with a loving, dazzling grin on her face in profile.

“It’s how I imagined it,” Elena whispered.

“Right... your forced march down memory lane,” Damon said, squirming slightly in his seat.

“You didn’t like the idea?” she asked, looking up at him.

“I knew it’d be painful.”

Elena shook her head.

“You think you can talk about my pain right now?” she asked.

Damon looked away from her swiftly, ashamed.

“I deserve that.”

Elena faltered, unsure if he did. She doubted she could look at an old man and yell at him or cry at him or whatever she needed to do. She knew what she wanted to hear, of course. She wanted to hear that Damon never would have fallen for Bonnie if Kai hadn’t cast the spell on her. She wanted to hear that he never even thought about Bonnie that way before, not for a second, not in the prison world or ever after that until she had been gone for years. She doubted, even if she could pry these magical answers from him, that they would be true.

“Did any of her diary entries tell you what I did for work after I became human?” he asked.

Elena rose her eyebrows at the segue but searched her mind for any detail. It didn’t seem important at the time, but she realized how little she knew about his human life outside the family.

“No, they didn’t.”

Damon stood up and walked to the other side of the room. She watched his steps, slower and slightly pained. He opened a cabinet and pulled out some thin tablet. With a few careful strokes, he pulled up what appeared to be a legal document. He crossed the room and sat on the edge of his bed, holding the tablet out to her. She read the slim screen in her hand.

Title Deed for: The Mystic Grill

To Certify That: Elena Gilbert is now registered as the absolute owner...

“I bought the Grill. Not exactly a bar in Tribeca, but... anyway, the bourbon collection is better now,” he said.

“What?” she replied. It was the last thing she expected him to start this strange reunion with.

“Caroline and Not-So-Little Gilbert have been working together to put together a new identity for you. Bonnie was... they knew you’d be coming home soon.”

He fell into himself for only a couple of seconds, but his expression became vacant. Elena saw a glimpse of the pain beneath the charade he was putting on. It occurred to her that this conversation, even this gesture, was something for him to get done. He continued, distracting himself from the ledge of grief he stood on the edge of.

“You’re Jeremy’s granddaughter: eighteen, recent grad. Figured you wouldn’t want to do the whole Stefan goes back to high school thing, right?” he asked. Elena smiled, remembering Stefan, a 150-year-old man, sitting in on high school classes and reading The Odyssey for the fiftieth time.

“Please, no,” she shuddered.

Damon couldn’t smile, not today, but he softened slightly. He had forgotten how comfortable she could make people.

“It’s yours,” he said, nodding toward the deed.

“Damon...” she whispered, tears prickling in her eyes as she looked down at the screen. It was a piece of the promise he made to her: the only part he didn’t break.

“You can run it, sell it, buy yourself some time before college. Whatever.”

Elena stared up at him seriously. It was a look he had seen so many times, but so long ago.

“And this has nothing to do with the Original in your living room right now,” she said.

Damon’s eyes widened slightly; he had been caught. The last thing he needed was an Elena lecture. He stood and walked to the other side of the room, avoiding her glare. She shook her head in disbelief.

“Of course, you’re giving me your money! You don’t plan on being around long enough to need it,” she stared daggers at his back. Damon turned around and leaned against the far wall. He crossed his arms, set in his stance, bracing himself for an earful that would do nothing.

“Do you want me to remind you how much it hurts to be an orphan?” she asked, rising to her feet suddenly.

“They’re a lot older than we were,” he said calmly. He fixed his eyes on Bonnie’s disheveled side of the bed.

“It doesn’t matter!” she yelled.

“You don’t underst--,” he began.

“What are you thinking leaving them like this!?” she interrupted him. She felt disappointment coursing through her.

“I can’t stay for them, Elena!” he shouted, pushing himself away from the wall. She faltered beneath the volume. While she knew it was Damon, there was something disturbing about an old man being this angry with her. He continued, his voice gravely and emotional.

“I know I’m not going where she is. I know I don’t deserve that,” he said. Elena’s chest clenched at the sureness in his voice.

“But I can’t be here and have hope that I might see her again. Thinking there’s a chance...” he trailed off. Light from the window illuminated his wrinkled, devastated face. “I just want it to be over.”

Elena walked toward him slowly and reached out her hand to comfort him.

“Don’t give up, Damon, not when there’s so much more--,” she began, but Damon threw his hands up, dodging her touch.

“Do you even hear yourself right now?” he yelled. “I was with Bonnie for fifty-five years, Elena. Do you know how long that is? Can you even begin to understand that?”

Elena swallowed hard. Of course, she couldn’t. She had been in intense love more than once in her life, but nothing lasting that way.

Damon knew, rationally, that he lived a long time before he loved Bonnie, but he couldn’t remember any of it now. He spent half a century at her side. Time before or after her didn’t feel real.

He breathed hard as he fought the sobs that threatened to spill out of him. If he cried, he wouldn’t be able to stop. Elena’s eyes bored into him with palpable empathy. He began pacing the room with a furious burst of energy.

“I can tell you about the final years, and they weren’t pretty. Holding her while she puked her guts out and realigning her hips on the kitchen floor after the radiation fucked up her joints so bad. Fifty years, Elena. It was the way we picked at each other for something to do. When we’d listen to each other talk about shit we didn’t care about. How aware I got of her... how much water she drank, what kind of day she had just by the way she walked in the door... When I felt like nothing. When I just sank and I knew I wasn’t worth any of it, that all I’d ever been was an anchor to her, to everybody. I knew I cheated somehow, slipped through the cracks, and I was waiting for somebody to catch me and say, ‘This isn’t your life. You thought you could have this?’”

He caught his jagged breath and realized he was crying. Elena gripped the fabric of her dress at her chest, as if she could will her heart not to break if she held it together with her hands.

“But then she’d find me,” he whispered. “She would smile at me, and her nose would scrunch up, and I got to delude myself another day. Maybe I did get to have my life. Maybe I even deserved it. Maybe I wasn’t damned.”

He looked up at her blankly, almost forgetting she was there.

“People your age look at us with a foot in our graves and think that we’re these never-ending supplies of wisdom thinking wistfully about the lives we used to have. You think we’re so grateful to still be kicking, so grateful for our monthly visits. So grateful that, when people we love die, we’re okay. I mean, we have to be, right? We’ve been bracing ourselves! We’re all at the end here. So you think I should, what? Keep chugging for bingo?” he asked.

“Damon--,” she tried.

“After all, I knew this was coming! Why don’t I just sit down and shut up and hug the kids and stay content in the background? I’ll follow her out soon enough. Why inconvenience everyone by pressing the gas?” he spat. He walked away from her, lying on the bed dismissively. He switched his own pillow with Bonnie’s and laid his head down, inhaling the smell of her hair. He made one thing clear: Elena was free to leave.

She nodded slowly and walked back over to the small table. She picked up a glass of water in her hand, inspecting it carefully, before she sent it flying across the room. It shattered against the far wall, raining glass down on the carpet in tiny shards. Damon jolted and sat up, stunned.

“And what about me, Damon? What about me?” she asked, crying hard. “Do you have any idea what today has been like for me? I get it. I could never know what you had. I didn’t have half a century with you. But I know something about pain, and not because I could fill this entire room with Gilbert obituaries. Because I love you. I love you so much, more than I thought I could ever love anyone or anything. And I woke up in a world where you look at me and there’s... there’s nothing,” she said.

“Elena...” he said, gentler.

“Do you know the first thing I thought when I found all of this out?” she asked, tears unashamedly falling down her neck. Damon swallowed the lump in his throat.

“What?”

Elena smiled a rueful grin, reveling in her own stupidity.

“’I hope Damon’s okay’.”

He bowed his head, hiding his shame from her.

“Fine, you think you’re done,” she said. “You think your kids don’t need you anymore, and you’re wrong. God, Marlena is out there ready to fight an Original to keep her out of this room! They need you. I need you, Damon. I need you to be alive. I know this obviously can’t be the same, and I know I was a pit stop on your way to Bonnie--.”

“You weren’t—," he tried to comfort her, but she cut him off. The words she longed to hear when she walked in, that she was more than a footnote, that he maybe even loved her comparably to Bonnie, would just ring like pity now.

“If you think that you owe me anything... anything for everything we’ve been through together, for the day you put me through then please don’t go,” she begged.

Elena sat on the edge of the bed facing him. She took his hand in her own and held it tightly. An image flashed in her mind of them in exactly this position. He had kept her from burning up in the sun when she fell victim to the Hunter’s Curse. She remembered taking his hand in earnest gratitude, so thankful that he wouldn’t let her choose to die.

If it wasn’t for you.

Damon looked down at her young hand in his own before meeting her eye, finally forced to face the wreckage she woke up to.

“You got through Stefan,” she plead. “You can find something to live for now; I know you can.”

“I got through Stefan because of Bonnie,” he whispered. Elena nodded, her signature empathy bleeding out of every bit of her.

“I know she did. I can help you, though... we can figure out what you want to do. Do you even need to be here?” she asked, gesturing around the room.

Damon shook his head. Of course, he didn’t need to be there. Bonnie was sick and ten years older than him. They had moved there for her comfort, but he could certainly live alone. He could move out and do whatever he wanted. He simply had nothing he wanted.

“You can leave,” she pushed. “We can travel. You can teach me about the world.”

Elena clung to the image she once had. It was different now, of course. Damon thought about what it would look like, some Into the Wild journey. Them, driving around, her helping him up mountains, him guiding her through the world’s changes. He looked into her eyes and saw the fear in her. She needed a Salvatore. Stefan found her in the middle of grief for her parents, and she hadn’t been without one or both of them since. She likely couldn’t imagine what a life without them could even look like. He gently put his other hand on hers.

“I can’t think of anything more unfair to you,” he said.

Elena snatched her hand back suddenly, stung by the rejection. She knew deep down what a terrible idea it was, how it would keep her from building her own life, but the hurt consumed her anyway. She looked away from him and wiped her eyes.

Damon had lied to Bonnie the last few weeks. She thought he would pick Elena up himself, filling in explanation as she flipped through the diaries to guide her. He told Caroline that it would be too painful, that he would take care of Elena after getting through the first day, but it would be too fresh right then. She understood and promised to help Elena through the initial shock. Of course, Damon had no intention of getting through the first day.

He looked at Elena and faced the promises he broke to her and Bonnie.

“I’ll stay,” he whispered.

“Really?” she asked.

“I’ll find a reason, like you said. At least for a little while,” he promised.

It was enough. The best he could do, even. She nodded at him sadly.

“I probably shouldn’t see you again after the funeral, right?”

The air stilled. Only the quiet ticking clock in the corner filled the silence.

“Probably not,” he said.

Elena nodded and stood. She pointedly left the deed to the Grill right where it was as she walked toward the door, tiptoeing around the glass on the floor. She froze in the doorway, facing away from him.

“I’m sorry, Elena.”

“Bye, Damon,” she said, without looking back.

The door slid open to tense quiet. Marlena and Tom sat on the couch, arms linked, waiting for the news as Caleb and Caroline whispered in the corner, trying to figure out what to do. When Elena walked in, everyone turned to face her suddenly.

“Rebekah, will you drive me to Jeremy’s?” she asked.

Marlena let out the breath she held and cried with relief onto her brother’s shoulder.

Rebekah looked up at Elena and felt a surprising wave of empathy overcome her. She remembered what it felt like to wake up after ninety years to discover Stefan in love with another woman, navigating the changed world. Elena hadn’t experienced time changing like she had.

“Of course,” she whispered.

Elena knew that Caroline gave her a goodbye hug and filled her ears with promises to see each other soon, but she didn’t really register them. The weight of the day began to crush her, and it hit her that she had been running on adrenaline to get her between pages of the diaries, to get her to Damon, to keep him alive. Exhaustion, hunger, and a desperate need to shower collapsed on her. As she and Rebekah walked through the halls to leave the facility, she unashamedly fell onto the vampire, holding herself up on her shoulder. Rebekah wrapped her arm around Elena’s waist and held her up, guiding her away from the wreckage of her life as if she had been physically injured.

When they got there, Elena ran into her brother’s older yet unmistakable embrace. He had his guest room decorated just like her adolescent bedroom to ease the transition, finding furniture and knickknacks in antique stores. Over the next month, Caroline helped her navigate the new technology, policies, and norms, though Rebekah became her unlikely crutch, guiding her through the changes.

One day, Elena found a book left on their porch: “A Guide to 2069 for Elena Gilbert”. It was filled with brochures, receipts, and news articles over the decades. In the front over, in handwriting she would always recognize as Damon’s despite it not being signed, read a simple: Thank you.

Medicine had changed far too much in the last half-century and, though she could learn new things, she found a nostalgic simplicity in language. Stories were timeless. She registered in college as a writing major and wrote short stories and entire novels about vampires loosely based on her own life. They sold well, and Jeremy framed her first book review with pride.

Gilbert’s voice reminds us of our grandparents. A truly old soul infusing her work with timeless themes and old-school language. A writer to look out for.

April 7, 2084

Damon stared up at the flickering lights in his hospital room with an odd sense of calm. He was surprised he regained consciousness at all, but at least earlier today he felt like he was dying. Now, he felt rather exhilarated. He was immediately skeptical, as he was toward all good things in his life.

“Am I getting better, or is this the final burst of energy before the light dims?” Damon asked, looking over at his oldest son in the chair at his bedside. Damon was treated like a king by the entire staff in the last day, as he was the Doctor Salvatore’s father. His room was more done up than the others. The framed photo of him, Bonnie, Stefan, and Caroline sat on his bedside table, and a blanket Caroline made him and Bonnie for their anniversary laid on top of the sterile hospital bedding.

Nolan hesitated and glanced at his sister next to him.

“Give it to me straight, doc,” Damon pushed. Nolan cleared his throat and put on his doctor voice he’d perfected over the decades.

“It’s not looking good, dad.”

Damon nodded and exhaled slowly. He wasn’t afraid of death necessarily. Just what came after.

“You called Elena and Rebekah?” he asked Marlena.

“Yeah, they’re on their way. Tom and Jaden are waiting for them out front,” she said. She looked between her father and her brother, feeling the heavy weight in the air of their lifetime estrangement.

“I’m just gonna go wait with them,” she whispered, excusing herself.

Nolan brought his chair closer to his father’s bed and rested his forehead against the edge, hiding his face.

“It’s alright. I’ve been around too long,” Damon said, patting his son on the back.

Nolan cried softly into the blanket.

“I managed to squander it anyway,” he said.

“No, no, don’t feel guilty, Nolan. It’s okay.”

“How can I not?” he asked, looking up into his father’s warm, forgiving eyes.

“Because I deserved to feel what I did. I got off easy with your cold shoulder,” he said matter-of-factly. If Damon got to marry Bonnie and have three beautiful children, he got more than he ever deserved as far as he was concerned. He didn’t want his son to carry the heavy guilt he had about Lilly.

“It’s okay,” he assured him. Nolan nodded and wiped his eyes. He looked up at his father in a way he hadn’t in many years: a childlike confusion looking to his father for promises of an easier world.

“What’s next?” he asked quietly. Damon rose his eyebrows. Nolan never wanted to know about the supernatural. He pretended it didn’t exist at all possible moments.

“Your mother thought I’d join her where she and Monique are. ‘Peace’, Anna called it. Halos and harps.”

Nolan looked at his dad with pity.

“You don’t think so,” he said.

Damon gave him a tight smile.

“I guess I’ll find out.”

Suddenly, a loud message flooded through the room. Doctor Salvatore to oncology. Doctor Salvatore to oncology.

“I can get someone else--,” Nolan started, but Damon shook his head quickly.

“Go be a hero. I’ll be here when you get back.”

Nolan wasn’t so sure about that, but he nodded in agreement when his siblings walked inside. As left the room, he spotted Rebekah and Elena talking quietly. He nodded at them briefly before getting to his next patient.

Elena was in her mid-thirties now, her hair cut short and her parents’ signatures tattooed on her wrists. She looked toward Damon’s room, vaguely nauseous and filled with dread. She held Bonnie’s journal tight to her chest. She had been reading it in the car ride over, teardrops falling on her friend’s script slowly.

“Which one is that?” Rebekah asked. Elena smiled soft assurance at her, trying to appear more together than she felt.

“An earlier one. They’re in the Canary Islands,” she said. She looked down at the passage and read aloud in an imitation of Bonnie’s voice. “He’s a billion years old; you’d think he’d have bothered learning some Spanish.”

She smiled as she put it in her bag to take back home with her. She had all of Bonnie’s diaries on their bookshelves next to Caroline’s journals she wrote for her and the guide Damon made. Rebekah looked at her, unconvinced.

“You don’t have to come inside if you don’t want to,” she whispered. Elena closed the gap between them and laid her head on her shoulder.

“You’re a sweet liar,” she replied. Of course, she had to go. She hadn’t seen Damon in fifteen years, not since they buried Bonnie. There wouldn’t be time later, only now. Rebekah wrapped her arms around Elena’s waist and held her there for a comforting beat.

“Besides,” Elena continued, “This is a big day for you. How can I miss it?”

Of course, she never wished anything bad on Damon ever. Sadness cloaked the entire day, and guilt was omnipresent in any excitement she felt about it. She wanted this for Rebekah, though, and practically, their daughters were getting older. They would notice Rebekah wasn’t aging soon.

Rebekah held her hand out, and Elena took it gratefully as they walked into Damon’s room.

“Well, don’t you look terrible?” Rebekah said. Damon rolled his eyes and looked over at Elena.

“I didn’t realize it was possible for your taste to get worse,” he said. Elena walked over and sat on the edge of his bed opposite his children.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Something like that. I read your books. That one inhumanly handsome vampire character. Tell me it’s me, not Stefan,” he said. She smiled and took his hand in hers. He turned back to Rebekah.

“My kids have started calling you the Angel of Death, you know,” he said.

“This is the last time I’ll come knocking,” she replied.

Marlena pulled a syringe from her pocket she stole from a nearby supply closet and held it out to Elena in a steady hand.

“Go ahead,” she whispered. She had read enough to know the cure wouldn’t kill her father right away. The stroke’s impact on his body would take him before this would.

Elena looked to Damon for confirmation, and he nodded. She pulled the cure from his veins, and he closed his eyes. It felt right that she would take it from him. He remembered Bonnie on their wedding night, sitting on their bed in their tiny apartment in Charlottesville when she injected him with Stefan’s blood. He teased her when she struggled to find a vein.

“Well, you should have asked your pre-med girlfriend to do it then,” she had joked.

Damon fell back asleep.

He woke to a familiar song, one of a couple dozen from an old CD collection he had kept on repeat in the prison world. He blinked hard, staring up at the ceiling of his bedroom in the Salvatore mansion. He looked around either side of him, taking in the surroundings. The room was different now. He had long ago passed the boarding house to his daughter. Gone were his great-grandson’s toys and photos of Marlena and her wife’s travels. Instead, his old minimalist furniture stood in their place: his giant square bed, his full-length mirror. The music sang out from downstairs.

What a man, what a man, what a man, what a mighty good man.

Damon sat upright and swung his legs over the side of the bed with surprising speed. He looked down at his hands grasping the side of the bed, wrinkle-free and strong. He flexed them carefully, adjusting to the change in his grip strength. He looked down at his body, decades younger in soft pajama pants and a green t-shirt. He lifted his shirt up slightly. The scars that had marred his skin for fifty years were gone. Whatever relief he might have felt was replaced with wariness. At least he would be able to survive Hell in his old body. Maybe he could even outrun his torturers sometimes, if such a thing were possible.

As he got to his feet, his knees cooperated without emitting their usual clicking sound.

What a man, what a man...

He walked slowly down the stairs toward the music, taking in the house around him. There were no framed photos or backpacks strewn about. Marlena and Hannah’s white couches were replaced with his old red ones, and heavy curtains draped across the windows.

The blaring music and smell of pancakes wafted in from the kitchen, and his breath hitched. He kept his guard up, cautious and unsure, as he poked his head around the corner. His jaw dropped slightly, but he tempered his excitement, forcing it down with rationality.

Stefan stood at the kitchen island, flipping pancakes as he whistled to the music in a green flannel.

“I was expecting hot pokers in the ass. I don’t know why I didn’t prepare for a Phoenix Stone situation,” he said. Stefan raised his head to look at his brother, and he smiled.

“You’re not in Hell, Damon,” he said, so genuine it hurt. Suddenly, Damon wished his Hell was anything but this. He longed for plain and simple torture, not something wearing his brother’s face.

“That’s exactly what Phoenix Stone Stefan would say,” he retorted, trying to emit a calmness.

Stefan scraped the pancakes onto a plate and turned the music off before walking over. Damon flinched and took two steps backward. Stefan stopped, giving him space.

“Are you afraid, Damon?” he asked.

“Well, now that you bring it up, I’m not exactly confident about this situation.”

Stefan shook his head.

“I’m not asking you if you think you’re in Hell. I’m not asking if you doubt me or you’re waiting for me to hurt you. I’m not asking about your thoughts. Do you feel afraid?” he asked, pointing a finger at Damon’s chest.

Damon squinted at him, trying to find the angle, trying to figure out the psychological torture.

“Just tell me what you feel,” Stefan instructed.

Damon let himself stop thinking for just a few seconds and recognized what Stefan was talking about. His entire being radiated a blissful calm. He looked at his brother, confused.

“There’s this feeling you get,” Stefan said. “You just know you’re okay, your loved ones are okay, and the pain is over.”

Damon quirked his head to the side. He felt logically apprehensive, but not emotionally. It was the strangest thing to reconcile.

“It’s peace, brother,” Stefan finished.

Damon’s stomach flipped. He knew he could be lying. Maybe this is exactly what Hell did: made you think you escaped it. He closed his eyes and listened to his every instinct, but nothing told him to be afraid. He felt content.

“Really?” he whispered, small and childlike.

“I promise,” Stefan said.

Damon broke out into a grin and pulled his brother into a tight hug, if nothing else, deciding to allow himself a moment of delusion, even if it wasn’t true. His entire life he felt the Stefan-shaped hole in every moment. Certainly, the big ones like the moments his children became his, but also the small ones, too. Every time he felt lost or confused, he found himself looking to the air next to him, waiting for his brother to appear and help him. Living without Stefan was living without a part of himself.

“I missed you,” he said. Stefan nodded into the hug.

“I missed you, too.”

“How did I sneak in here!?” Damon asked, breaking away to pick up one of the pancakes.

“You know how,” Stefan smiled, proud.

After Elena left his and Bonnie’s room fifteen years ago, he sold the Grill and began working closely with Caroline and Caleb. He had gone through all of Stefan’s old journals and even flew to his apartment in Chicago to gather the names of his brother’s victims and the few he could piece together of his own. Together, he and Caroline tracked down their families and, with research and compulsion, looked to see what they needed. Most of the time it was money, and they had a small Salvatore fortune to tap into. Whatever each victim’s family was missing suddenly became theirs. They attributed the sudden blessings to miracles, some from God, others from luck.

“Elena told me to find something to live for. Better than oil painting and jigsaw puzzles,” he shrugged, brushing off the act. They both knew it didn’t fix what they had done. Sometimes, though, the choices people make had value independent of their results. Damon had tried. It was enough.

They heard the familiar sound of the front door open, and Damon looked at his brother, confused.

“You didn’t think I picked the 90s, right? I hate this shirt,” Stefan said, tugging at the button-up. Damon’s heart fluttered at the slightest indication of hope.

“I’ll see you later, brother. Lexi is making dinner! Come by,” Stefan said before disappearing suddenly.

Damon watched the still air where he stood just a moment ago with confusion. His body sprung to life with nervous tingles and the gnawing worry this was all some sort of trap.

She was behind him. He didn’t see her, but he knew she was there. He squeezed his eyes closed. One last chance for deception. Maybe he would turn around and find a guillotine or--.

“Damon?” he heard. Damon turned around so quickly he almost stumbled.

“The one and only,” he replied softly.

She was young and healthy, younger than when they got married even. She let out a single sob of relief before she ran at him and jumped into his arms. He held her close, her legs tight around his waist and her arms around his neck. Damon’s eyes were wide as the surrealness of holding his wife again set in. She was shaking against his chest, and he held her tighter to calm her. She held her forehead to his neck, and he let his eyes close, feeling her close against him. She was here. She was okay.

“You made it,” she whispered.

He nodded gently, pressing his hand to her shoulder blade. He fell to his knees, and they hugged each other on the ground. They didn’t know how long they sat there. Time didn’t matter anymore.

“I made it.”