Chapter Text
I met Damon Salvatore when I was very young; not yet on the cusp of being a woman, but nearing the end of my childhood. I was twelve, and he was beautiful.
That day, that first day, I knew he was different, inhuman. Something about his pulsating being; the way the sunlight played against his skin, the way the rays seemed almost afraid to touch upon him. He was fascinating and I was entranced.
Damon sat below our tree, biting into an apple like he had any business, any right, to be there. He was waiting for me as I walked out the back door, just sitting and eating, jaw clenching and smirking that way he always did. Those playful eyes, so deceptive in every way but absolutely irresistible, even then. When I stopped short, leaning against the old rusted bench just ten feet away, he beckoned me forward. Before I saw the motion of his fingers, I felt it, felt the tugging at the back of my mind and the weight of my body pulling towards him. When I didn’t move, when I resisted, I watched as his eyebrows knitted, thick black hairs pulling close and eyes brooding.
“Come here,” he’d said, his voice strict and softly demanding. “Please,” added as an afterthought; too hard and agitated to be pleading or persuasive though that had been the intention.
I shook my head, fingers gripping tightly to the cold solid bench, and fought the urge to obey. He stood then, long legs pushing off the ground so quickly I missed the movement. And then he was in front of me, another movement I didn’t catch. Peering at my face, all trace of humor gone (never good-natured, but welcomed anyhow). Curious and prodding eyes searching for something. His stare cold and icy blue.
When his fingers held my face, I was afraid. He tried to be gentle, I was sure, but his desire hindered the ability. Those fingers dug into my cheek, unclipped nails almost drawing blood. My heart hammered as he leaned forwarded, nose flared and eyebrows drawn.
He sniffed. And then that word.
Witch.
That day changed my life. But it wasn’t a change that happened immediately.
Witch, he’d said. Uttered with such unbridled conviction it resounded in my head for years.
I’d never had any particular interest in magic or witchery. Outside of the occasional feigned death-like sleep in imitation of that sleeping beauty or dramatic dive to the floor after eating a “poisoned” apple or two, I hadn’t given it much thought. And even then, I was always the princess; never the evil witch.
After that first encounter, I’d talked to my parents about the intruder, about the young man who had entered our yard. They hadn’t believed me, or so they said, but still they kept a watchful eye. I could sense the wariness behind their easy smiles and laughter.
The next day I noticed a distinctly different taste in my morning hot-chocolate; a bitter additive I couldn’t quite chase.
It was a year later that I saw him again.
It was summer. I was at camp, my thirteenth birthday nearing. At first, I mistook him for a counselor. He was dressed in khaki shorts and a loose fitting grey t-shirt, obviously too old to be a camper and, in this location, he couldn’t have been a random passerby. We were in a secluded woods, privately owned by the camp; people did not simply stumble upon us.
He was standing at the far-side of the lake, again underneath a tree, leaning against its rough trunk. I was in the water, diving and swimming with the other girls with whom I shared a cabin, and trying to ignore the boys showing off near us. I was underwater when I felt that tug, that frightening compulsion. It was keeping me below the surface, pulling me further down, forcing me to stay there despite all instinct, despite the burning in my lungs and the unwelcomed warmth in my stomach. And then Becky pulled my arm. She was pale and freckly, all red hair and big green eyes, and as my head cleared the water, the buzzing in my ears receding, she was all I could see. It was only a moment longer before I noticed the smirk on her face. Less than a moment longer and she was pushing me back under.
Later that day, still dressed in his counselor get-up, he approached me. It was after dinner and all campers and counselors were being treated to a big bonfire. No one sees you when everyone sees you, he’d later tell me. That seemed to be Damon’s motto, always hidden exactly where you could see him.
He sat next to me on one of those big logs the camp used for seating. “Witch,” he’d said, his words formed around the S’more stuffed into his cheek. The campfire’s light, like the sun, only just touching his skin.
I was thirteen and Damon Salvatore had tried to kill me.
It was my sixteenth birthday and also summer solstice when I next saw Damon. It was then that he revealed himself and all that he was. He revealed a bit about myself too. And it was just fifty-seven minutes shy of midnight.
There was a party for my birthday that Saturday. A big deal. A sort of conjoined end of semester party, as well. Most of the kids in my grade attended. Several other kids had been there too. As I learned later, it was then that Damon was granted eternal access into my home. Careless of my parents to have thought he was a friend from school. My father had been reluctant, Damon said, but easily persuaded.
All this I found out as Damon sat at the computer desk in my room, just after midnight. He was the first to wish me “Happy Birthday,” but that came later.
He opened with, “Bonnie, you’re a witch.”
It was the most he’d ever said to me, and a completely unnecessary statement of fact. I already knew. After all these years of one-worded accusations, I had gotten the message. Strange happenings and a short conversation with my grandmother had confirmed it. Being a witch was hereditary, though it didn’t touch every generation.
Deathbed confessions were always interesting that way. Interesting and unsatisfying. Useless, really, except that I was stuck with a houseful of dusty old books, gleaming crystals, and jars of what I could only describe as various kinds of sand. My parents thought it was ridiculous. Yet they allowed it. With the same eerie sense of faked nonchalance, they accepted my grandmother’s dying decree that I inherit her worldly possessions and ‘spirit of self.’ It was silly and weird, my mother had said, but both words were often used to describe my grandmother in life, why would it be any different in death?
I didn’t tell them the way I felt when she had finally passed. The rush of energy. The added levity to my body and
gravity of mind. I didn’t tell anyone. And yet, all this Damon had already known.
The second full sentence he spoke to me was, “I’m a vampire.”
The third, “I need your help.”
If it wasn’t for Damon, I wouldn’t have taken such an interest in my grandmother’s things. But the days that followed his reappearance, days that could have been spent enjoying the summer with friends, were spent cooped up in her old house, going through her stuff…my stuff. Damon was there, of course. Standing alongside me and boxing up ancient books and papers; some he could read, written in Latin he told me, others he pushed under my nose, asking me to decipher the foreign scribbling. I couldn’t. It frustrated him.
After everything was packed and moved into my parents’ attic, Damon disappeared for some time. With him he took a ring, one of many trinkets my grandmother had gifted to me in death. It was just a gaudy old thing, I thought, and Damon did posses a certain charm. At sixteen, and even now, I found myself disarmed by him. Though I hadn’t forgotten the near drowning at camp those years ago, with Damon in front of me, so close and seductive, it was hard to place the necessary amount of importance on that event.
Before he left, he bid me to learn. Begged, begged as much as Damon ever could, for me to read those books. Full of spells, is what he said. Spellbooks. I could be a great witch. I wouldn’t need a teacher. It was in me, this magic, I just had to try.
“I need your help,” he said again.
And then he was gone.
I knew it, I knew it, but I suppose I never really understood the power of it.
Damon had made it easy to accept.
Grandmother had made Damon’s presence and accusations real.
And the first spell brought me proof.
All it took was one very obedient feather.