Whiskey Kisses

by Moon_Willow_23

Summary:

It was hard to watch someone go through so much pain, Elena decided, and she couldn't stop it as the tears began flowing down her cheeks. She was vaguely aware of Bonnie coming up on her right side, an odd vial of something green in her hand as she moved towards the bed. It was all she could do to hope, wish, and pray that whatever Bonnie's plan was worked.

OR

Picking up where Cocoa Buzz left off, Elena Gilbert is seventeen, pregnant by her vampire boyfriend Damon Salvatore, and just trying to survive life while being at the top of Klaus Mikaelson's Murder List.

Notes:

A/N: Welcome back, sweets. The next leg of our journey has begun, and here we stand on the cusp of a brand new adventure. As we start down this road, take nothing for granted because not everything is at it seems...XOXO

Chapter 1: Mystic Falls Courier: Founders Day Special Edition

Summary:

"Pulitzer and Hearst, they think we're nothin'/Are we nothin'?/No!/Pulitzer and Hearst, they think they got us/Do they got us?/No!/Even though we ain't got hats or badges/We're a union just by sayin' so.../And the world will know!"
-"The World Will Know," from Newsies

Notes:

A/N: Sweets, you would not believe how much of a pain this newspaper segment was to create. I had a beautiful newspaper done in a template that would not transfer in any way shape or form other than what I was able to salvage to reconstruct this by hand...so to speak. It was far more arduous that I'd anticipated, but I got it done just for all of you. I hope you like it! Enjoy this special edition of the Mystic Falls Courier!

P.S. Some of the images stop showing up after a few days, or at least that's how it's looking whenever I check on this chapter, but I do try updating the links so that they'll show correctly whenever I notice. So, if you don't see the images, just give it a day or so, and then try again. Best of luck to you, sweets!

P.P.S., I think I've found a work-around for my disappearing images, sweets! I've linked the photos where they should be so that you can at least open and view them if they won't show up in text the way I'd like.

Friday, February 26, 2010

Mystic Falls Courier Special Founders Day Edition

Special Issue #150

Christian Fell Fire Decimates Former Medical Clinic Former town clinic of the late Dr. Grayson Gilbert destroyed   As the Founders Day fireworks boomed overhead in town square last night, another booming sound joined them. An explosion occurred at the site of the late Dr. Grayson Gilbert’s medical clinic. A spokesperson for the fire department insists that faulty wiring in the basement is to blame and that no foul play was involved. “It’s sort of bittersweet,” says Elena Gilbert, one of the co-owners of the building and Grayson Gilbert’s daughter, “My dad loved this place, but my brother and I had been planning on renovating it this summer anyway.” “Neither of us plans on going to medical school,” adds Jeremy Gilbert, “but we both felt that our dad’s clinic could be turned into something for the community.” The only recorded injuries from the event were to Richard Lockwood, mayor of Mystic Falls, and John Gilbert. The two bravely rushed into the burning building to make sure that it was clear of people. Mayor Lockwood was taken to Mystic Falls Hospital to be treated for a concussion and minor smoke inhalation, and Mr. Gilbert for a minor abdominal injury. “I’m just so thankful for the heroic actions of Damon Salvatore and Alaric Saltzman,” says Carol Lockwood, wife to the mayor and witness to the event, “If it hadn’t been for them, both my husband and John Gilbert would most certainly be dead.” “It was what any decent person would’ve done,” assures Saltzman, “I’d do it again if I had to, and I’m just glad that everyone came out of this safe.” Damon Salvatore was unavailable for comment.
		Above: Elena Gilbert, Miss Mystic Falls 2010
		Caroline Forbes The Royal Rebel A fairytale with a modern twist, Elena Gilbert sits down with the Mystic Falls Courier to discuss the goals of her reign as Miss Mystic Falls
		Every year, the citizens of Mystic Falls gather together to crown a new queen during the Miss Mystic Falls pageant two weeks before Founders Day; for the high school girls who compete for the title, this isn’t just some beauty contest. Upon being crowned queen, Miss Mystic Falls immediately becomes a representative for the town for the year of her reign, and this year’s queen is no exception. At seventeen, Elena Gilbert has been through much more than most of us could ever imagine. After losing her parents, uncovering her own secret adoption, and reconnecting with her birth parents, one might even wonder why she would bother to compete at all. I most certainly did, so I decided to sit down with Elena and asked her all about her plans for her reign as Miss Mystic Falls 2010. “I expect that most people probably believe that I only continued with the competition because my mom (the late Miranda Sommers-Gilbert) won when she was my age,” Elena tells me, “but that actually had very little to do with my decision. Ultimately, I did it because I love this town and want to show all those who may follow in my footsteps in the future that you can make it through anything, defy whatever life throws your way if you’re determined enough and belief in yourself.” While this sounds like a standard pageant queen answer if there ever was such a thing, I am quickly assured that there is a hidden meaning behind her words as she giggles mischievously before offering me one of the freshly baked biscotti in a little basket on the coffee table to go with the cup of coffee she offered to me when we first sat down.	After accepting the baked treat, I ask Elena what her plans are, as Miss Mystic Falls, post Founders Day where she is set to be the centerpiece of the annual parade through town. “Every Miss Mystic Falls takes up a cause, my mom’s was the old community garden in town square that was drown out ten years ago, but my cause is a little more unorthodox,” she says, pausing to take a sip from her mug of hot cocoa before continuing, “I plan on working towards making Mystic Falls a safe space for families of all shapes and sizes.” I ask her what she means by this, and she smiles over the edge of her mug as we are joined by the Salvatore brothers. Damon sits down beside Elena and presses a kiss to her hair, and I feel it as Stefan mirrors him with me. Elena asks me to repeat my question; she turns to Damon, and I can see the silent conversation happening before my very eyes. The couple nods at one another, an agreement having been reached, and then they both turn towards me with wide smiles. “Well, the so-called traditional nuclear family isn’t nearly as common as everyone thinks. I was the product of an unplanned teen pregnancy adopted by a married couple struggling with fertility issues; you yourself are a child of divorce; and Damon has been Stefan’s legal guardian for most of their lives,” she says, “So many families Cont. Page 4

Above: The Gilbert clinic before the fire

Time to Get Groovy 60s Decades Dance gets date	2 for $20 Special Mystic Grill debuts new dinner deal	Car Crash Injures Three Teenagers One, with major injuries, still in hospital
Tanith Fell	Timmy O’Brien	Christian Fell
Break out your best retro duds for a swingin’ 60s party! The next decades dance will be held on April 26, 2010, at Mystic Falls High School. Be there or be square!	Perfect for date night or just a causal dinner between friends, try the new 2 for $20 deal at the Mystic Grill! Two entrées, two beverages of your choice, and either an appetizer or dessert to split! Valid weekdays between 5-10pm.	A Founders Day car crash involving teenagers sends one to the hospital with potentially life-threatening injuries. Page 3

 

 

Friday, February 26, 2010

Mystic Falls Courier

Special Issue #150

Marsha Mallow Carnival Craze Arrives in Mystic Falls Just because Founders Day is over doesn’t mean the fun has to end
Over the next few days, the annual Mystic Falls carnival is set to thrill guests with exciting rides, tasty food, and fun midway games. After the spiked funnel cake fiasco of last year where the entire funnel cake stall was shut down due to all the product being alcohol infused, it was almost certain that this year’s carnival would be cancelled. However, a change of heart seems to have struck the faculty at Mystic Falls High School because the good times will roll as scheduled. The carnival will, as in years previous, be overseen by our very own Miss Mystic Falls 2010, Elena Gilbert; reports indicate that this year’s carnival will be much more family oriented than the “Celebration of Grease,” of last year under the direction of Blair Fell which, while profitable, failed to go over well with Reverend Alan Young and many amongst the Founding Families. “It’s not about having a bold, daring theme or trying to do anything for shock value,” says Gilbert, “It’s one event where a person’s age doesn’t matter. I want this year’s carnival to be one that I would feel comfortable bringing my own children or grandparents to if I were in that position.”	There will still be rides, of course, but a fair few more will be geared towards children and families than last year. “I spent this past New Year’s Eve at Disney World’s Magic Kingdom with my family,” Gilbert adds, “and I got a lot of inspiration on that trip. Yes, it’s fun to have fun, but it’s even better when everyone gets to have fun together.” The addition of a teacup ride for this year’s festivities suddenly makes a lot more sense. As for the midway games, Gilbert says that she almost nixed those in favor of a larger dining area near the food stalls. “I seriously did think about it, but my boyfriend talked me out of it. He’s always wanted to win a girl a prize at a carnival, and I could never deny him that...especially when I already know where whatever he wins me is going." Eats Alley is perhaps the part of the carnival that our queen is looking forward to the most. "I try my best to eat healthy, I really do, but I have a weakness for strawberry cheesecake funnel cake. I was heartbroken last year when we didn’t have any funnel cake at all, so I went into this planning on bringing	it back,” she says, “Of course, there will also be a few adult-centric offerings along the alley this year. Courtesy of the Mystic Grill’s new bartender, Greg Langley, there will be a stall for specialty drinks and made-to-order cocktails. So that everyone can experience the skill that Greg brings to bartending, there will be a few virgin options on the menu, but he will be carding anyone who orders as per Sheriff Forbes’ request.” So, bring the kids, the in-laws, the whole family! This year’s Mystic Falls Carnival is fun for all ages! See you there tomorrow night!                             Above: Last year’s carnival

Above: Annual Mystic Falls Historical Society’s Volunteer Day benefits local restoration projects
Ruth Fell The Mystic Falls Historical Society Invites You to the Annual Volunteer Day: This year’s project breathes new life into Mystic Falls Park
That time of year is upon us again. The Mystic Falls Historical Society’s annual Volunteer Day is happening on March 5, 2010, in town square. This year, we are working to build a new children’s park. Donate materials, donate food and drinks for the volunteers, or donate your time. This worthwhile cause will bring joy to the children of Mystic Falls for years to come. “It’s always important to give back to the community,” says the First Lady of Mystic Falls, Carol Lockwood, who will be hosting the even alongside Elena Gilbert, our Miss Mystic Falls queen, “and what part of our community could be more deserving than our children who haven’t had a public space meant for them since the storms that drowned the community	garden and playground a decade ago?” “Our children are our future, and providing them with a safe space to play and socialize with one another is just one way in which we can start giving them a chance at making that future a good one,” Gilbert adds, “We’re hoping to raise enough money to build not just a park, but a children’s park with two separate playgrounds. One would be for older, school-aged children while the other would be for babies and toddlers who still might need a little help or closer monitoring while they play their little hearts out before naptime.” Come on out and help build towards a better future!

Tanith Fell Annual Mystic Falls Masquerade Ball Join us for a night of mystery and romance in the gardens of the Lockwood mansion   The theme for this year’s masquerade ball at the Lockwood mansion is Romance in the Garden, and everyone is welcome to attend the event on March 24, 2010. Hosts Carol and Richard Lockwood promise a wonderful night of music, dancing, and enchanting fairy lights in the gardens of their home. Proceeds from ticket sales will go towards the children’s park project. The dress code for the event is semi-formal, as always, and masks are required. Tickets will be available for purchase at town hall starting March 10, 2010. Festivities begin at 7pm.                                                                                           Above: Last year’s masquerade ball

Friday, February 26, 2010

Mystic Falls Courier

Special Issue #150

Christian Fell Founders Day Car Crash Injures Teens, Sends One to Hospital with Life-Threatening Injuries Three others sustained minor injuries                                                             Above: Caroline Forbes (Left, pictured at this year’s Miss Mystic Falls pageant) is in critical, but stable condition at Mystic Falls Hospital. Dr. Elizabeth Corday, Chief of Trauma Surgery at Duke University   Between the revelry of the fireworks display and the fire at the Gilbert building, another incident occurred during last night’s Founders Day festivities. Less than a block away from town square, four teenagers were involved in a single-vehicle crash. Seventeen-year-old Tyler Lockwood, was taken to the hospital to be treated for a concussion. Matthew Donovan, 17, was a passenger in the car and was taken to the hospital as well for a broken arm. Stefan Salvatore, 17, sustained no major injuries but is, “bruised up real good from his seatbelt,” says his older brother, Damon, who assures us that all three boys are recovering well. The same cannot be said for the fourth teenager involved in the accident. Caroline Forbes, 17, was taken to Mystic Falls Hospital and rushed into emergency surgery. Sheriff Forbes was unavailable for comment at the time, but according to Damon Salvatore, acting on Sheriff Forbes’ behalf as a spokesperson for the family, Caroline was treated for internal injuries and is on the mend in the Intensive Care Unit with the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours being critical. “She’s a fighter,” Salvatore had to say about the victim, “If anyone could go through all this and come out the other side smiling, it’d be Caroline.” Reports indicate that neither speed nor alcohol was a factor in the accident, and preliminary drug tests have all come back as clean. A spokesperson for the Lockwood family tells us that Tyler Lockwood, who was driving the car, had been on the edge of a migraine all day and was potentially set off by the loud fireworks display. The sheriff’s office does not believe that there are any signs of foul play, and it is believed that the accident was caused by mechanical error. While medical emergencies cause only 1.3% of automotive accidents, it is always better to be safe than sorry. According to Dr. Elizabeth Corday, Chief of Trauma Surgery at Duke University, all passengers regardless of age or size should wear a seatbelt while in the car. Dr. Corday also says, “If one of those lights on your dash comes on, especially if you don’t know what it means, it’s just safer not to drive at all.”

Coleen Sterns Lyman Named New Timberwolves Head Coach After an exhaustive search, Mystic Falls High School has selected its new head football coach   After coach William Tanner’s sudden death resulting from an animal attack last September halted the Timberwolves’ ’09-10 season, a new head coach has been named just in time for spring training to begin. Derek “D-Line” Lyman has been the team’s defensive coordinator for the last three seasons and says he is more than ready to get to work on improving the Timberwolves’ gameplay during the off season. “These kids have the skills,” says Coach Lyman, “but what they lack is the effort…for now.”

Above: Derek “D-Line” Lyman has been named the new head coach of the Mystic Falls High School Timberwolves football team.

Above: The Falls where local teens have been known to throw parties   Ringo Matchinga Campers Beware: Animal Attacks on the Rise Animal Control Services recommends staying out of local woods unless absolutely necessary While most anyone who has grown up in and around Mystic Falls enjoys hiking, fishing, and camping in the nearby woods, recent animal attacks in the area have made the woods unsafe according to wildlife officials. It has been recommended that, for the safety of oneself and others, no one camp in the woods until further notice. Local teenagers are also being asked to hold their parties elsewhere until the animal, thought to be a wild black bear, has been caught. As recently as last week, a number of campers were found mauled to death in the woods just outside town. Last fall, a mountain lion was discovered lurking on the outskirts of town and was pinned as being the killer of high school history teacher and football coach William Tanner and of motorists Darren Malloy and Brooke Fenton all in the same week. The mountain lion was also suspected in the mauling of the late Victoria Donovan who was lucky to have survived her attack with minimal injuries. Uncommon in the region, reports indicate that the mountain lion escaped from an improperly secured zoo transport passing through the area. Both Animal Control Services and the local Fish and Wildlife Services officials remind everyone not to feed wild animals. If and when possible, bring your pets and their food in at night so as to not tempt an animal into getting too close, and be sure to call ACS in the event that you do see a wild animal where one should not be.

Friday, February 26, 2010

Mystic Falls Courier

Special Issue #150

Left: It’s official, folks! Mystic Falls’ new princess will make her debut in October of this year. Right: Proud expectant parents, Damon Salvatore and Elena Gilbert
Royal Rebel: Royal Baby Alert (cont. from Pg. 1) Miss Mystic Falls reveals her biggest secret ahead of campaign for supporting all families
Caroline Forbes	don't get the support they need because they don’t fit the traditional image of a nuclear family.” Elena turns towards Damon with a soft smile, and I watch as his hands move to her slightly rounded stomach. I smile, already used to the sight myself, and there is no denying the pure love and adoration in either of the two’s eyes as they gaze at one another. “I want to leave behind a legacy that I know my own daughter will be proud of…we both do.”	Despite the hardships that one might expect for a teenage pregnancy, Elena shows no fear. In fact, she actively embraces the challenges before her. “Maybe things would be different, I’d be more worried if Damon hadn’t already finished school and we weren’t already so financially secure,” she admits, “but not worrying about whether I can do all with my life that I want while raising a family is allowing me to help other families who do have those worries.” When asked to elaborate on her statement, Elena adds that, “It would be pointless for anyone to deny that there’s a major income gap in Mystic Falls that leaves lower income families, particularly those with single-mother households, at a distinct disadvantage. Focusing the help where it’s needed most not only eases the burden on parents but also sets children up for a more successful future.”
Yes, that is correct. Mystic Falls has its very own Royal Baby on the way. The main driving factor behind Elena’s choice for her Miss Mystic Falls reign goals is that she and boyfriend Damon Salvatore are expecting their first child, a daughter due this October. “To say that we were shocked when all the tests came back positive would be an understatement, but this has been the best and most amazing surprise of both our lives,” Elena tells me. “It was completely unexpected, but we couldn’t be happier about this.” Damon adds, and his expression shows that he means every word. The couple tells me that they started to suspect that Elena was pregnant after she began feeling not herself in the week leading up to Christmas, often growing tired after minimal activity. “We’d been doing all we could to practice safe sex, but no contraceptive method is 100% effective,” Elena says of her pregnancy, “We picked up a few tests when we went grocery shopping for Christmas dinner, and I took the tests as soon as possible. We started making plans the moment we quit crying happy tears. Our little girl is our very own personal miracle, and we can’t wait to be able to hold her.” As to how the expecting parents are already sure that their baby is a girl, Elena explains that they took doctor’s advice and went through a series of genetic tests at twelve weeks due to Damon not knowing much about his family’s medical history after losing both parents before the age of twenty. “Because of the testing that was done, my doctor was able to verify for us that the baby has XX chromosomes, so that means we’re having a girl,” she says, “We picked a name for a boy and for a girl almost as soon as we found out that I’m pregnant, so we’ve been calling her ‘Eva’ (pronounced Ava) almost from the start.” When asked as to whether they hope to use the boy’s name they picked sometime in the future, the couple merely exchanged a small, knowing smile before nodding. “We definitely want more kids down the road,” Elena says, “and we’ve even discussed adoption because sometimes all a child needs is a loving home where one didn’t exist for them at the time of their birth.” Adoption, as many may recall, is something near and dear to our 2010 queen’s heart as she herself was adopted as a newborn. “If there would’ve been more support, more options at the time, I doubt my parents would’ve kept my adoption a secret for so long,” she adds, “It’s just one of many areas where our community needs a bit of help when it comes to offering support during one of the most challenging parts of a person’s life.”		“It was completely unexpected, but we couldn’t be happier about this.” - Damon Salvatore
		As for her plans post-reign? Elena beams as she tells me about her plans to finish high school and enroll in college, though she has yet to decide on a major, while Damon embraces the role of stay-at-home dad. “It was his idea,” Elena says with a laugh as I ask as to how eager Damon is to take up full-time parenthood, “While you might already be calling Eva a princess because I’m the reigning Miss Mystic Falls, she’s been Daddy’s Little Princess since the moment he found out about her.” As for whether the couple intends on getting married now that they have a little one on the way, they both assure me that it has been discussed. “My parents spent nearly eighteen years apart because they felt pressured about getting married once my mother found out that she was pregnant with me, and they’ve both told us not to feel like we have to do anything, ‘for Eva’s sake,’ so we’re not rushing into anything,” Elena insists, smiling fondly over at Damon as he smirks beside her, “Plus, I’ve been told that a proper proposal takes a lot of planning and should come as a surprise.” Whether or not wedding bells are on the horizon, Elena assures me that she still intends on putting the community of Mystic Falls second in the coming months only to her pregnancy. “I want what every mother wants for her children, for them to grow up in a safe, welcoming, and loving environment,” she says, “Mystic Falls is my home, and it’ll be my family’s home for years to come. I want to show not just my daughter but everyone in town who doubts it that Mystic Falls is more than just the Founding Families and fancy parties. There’s an old proverb that says, ‘It takes a village to raise a child,’ and it’s high time that our own village takes it to heart. If we as a community fail our children, then all our children’s failures rest on the shoulders of us all.”

Notes:

A/N: Sweets, none of the authors of each of the articles have names that I came up with, not even Marsha Mallow; each one is an actual Vampire Diaries character, whether it be an adaptation of a novels character like Christian or characters whose names we only see in passing like Marsha's. Until next time...XOXO

Chapter 2: Love Can Make You Hostage

Summary:

"All around the world, statues crumble for me/Who knows how long I've loved you/Everywhere I go, people stop and they see/Twenty-five years old, my mother, God rest her soul..."
-"Fly," by Sugar Ray

Notes:

A/N: Okay, sweets, after that thoroughly exhausting creation of a newspaper that, in the words of Captain Jack Sparrow, I hope that everyone saw because I will not be doing it again, here is the first chapter of this second story. Enjoy!

            Damon Salvatore was many things, but it wasn’t often if ever that he was the sacrificial lamb upon the altar. This was how he felt as he lurked around a corner near Richard Lockwood’s hospital room, watching and waiting for an opportune moment. Finally, he heard the mayor ask his wife to give him a few moments alone with their son, and Carol replied that she was going to get herself a cup of coffee before asking Tyler if he wanted anything to which the boy asked for something to drink. Once the woman had left, Damon quickly slipped into the room and closed the door without a sound. He could hear Tyler being lectured by his father for the previous night’s car crash, and it was hard for the vampire to suppress a snort of derision at this.

            “-an you even think for a moment as to how reckless what you did was?” Richard was asking his son, “From what your mother tells me, Caroline could’ve died, Matt broke his arm, and Stefan is just lucky that he didn’t get anything worse than some bruises. Can’t you be responsible for once in your life, Tyler?”

            “Well, that’s rich seeing as how the accident was your fault, Richard,” said Damon as he stepped into the light to make his presence known, “You both got hit by the Gilbert device last night, as I’m sure that at least you are aware, and there’s a reason for that.”

            “How’d you…You weren’t around when we set the thing off,” the mayor realized, “You’re one of them, aren’t you?”

            “If you’re struggling to say the V word in front of your son, you should’ve told him the truth a year ago when he turned sixteen as is the normal custom,” Damon said, shaking his head as he continued, “Either way, yeah, and you can’t say anything without exposing yourself now. I know you’re not like me, but every blood Lockwood is something just as…preternatural if you will. Your brother’s on his way up from Florida, and you can verify it all with him when he gets in, but you all carry a specific gene that causes your quick tempers and aggressive tendencies; it’s a little thing called lycanthropy.”

            “Werewolves?” Tyler asked suddenly, looking between his father shaking his head and Damon nodding his, “What? I love the Underworld series. So, if we’re werewolves, then the V word that my dad says you are but won’t actually say means that you’re a vampire?”

            “The attacks from 1864 weren’t started by vampires, Richard, because they didn’t start until after George Lockwood came home from the war. The vampires were here for a few years already, I know Pearl and Annabelle were, and the attacks started before the arrival of Katherine Pierce who turned most of the vampires that were rounded up both back then and last night,” Damon said, “There is a reason that no other ‘animal’ attacks like those of 1864 happened after George’s death; werewolves only trigger their curse if they kill someone, and no other Lockwood had done so until Mason’s incident from last summer which, for the record, I’m fairly certain that a vampire orchestrated. Now, seeing as how you permanently killed the vampires that were burned in Grayson’s clinic last night and, let’s not even debate this, it was your idea to use the clinic in the first place despite the fact that the building belongs to two legally orphaned children, you might’ve triggered yours, too, Richard.”

            “Wait, you burned down Elena’s dad’s clinic?” Tyler said with a snort of disappointment, “That’s a real dick move, Dad.”

            “You’re taking this a lot better than I thought you would,” Damon noted as he looked over at the younger Lockwood, “When did you start to suspect something wasn’t normal?”

            “Honestly, I’ve been suspicious ever since Stefan cut his hand back in September; we all saw him bleed, but then it was like nothing had happened a few minutes later,” Tyler admitted, “With as fast as you and Elena got together, that only made things worse…So, hang on, if you’re a vampire, how’s she pregnant? Is it like in those Twilight books?”

            “Not exactly, but kinda,” Damon shrugged while Richard gaped like a codfish in his state of shock, “The spell that created vampires is powered in a very particular way that makes it possible for Elena and me to have kids, much like it’ll do for Stefan and Caroline once they’re ready, but this was still completely unplanned because we didn’t know it was possible until a week after the baby was conceived. It’s one of the main stories in today’s paper, by the way, so you don’t have to keep the baby a secret anymore.”

            “Is Elena okay? I mean, if that thing hurt me and my dad half as bad as it did you and Stefan, it must’ve hurt her, too, right?” Tyler asked, but Damon shook his head.

            “Since John knew when the device was being set off, he gave us a heads up, and Elena and I were in Charlottesville with Isobel getting ice cream when that all happened. She’s fine, other than her being worried about John because Katherine Pierce, the vampire who turned at least twenty-five people in 1864 though that number could be higher or lower, is back in town and attacked him last night. John’s also fine, and he’ll be good as new as soon as he’s had a bit of either mine or Isobel’s blood,” he explained, swallowing a smirk as he saw the confusion on Tyler’s face, “Vampire blood is only capable of turning you if you die with it in your system. Otherwise, it works to heal injuries; the spell that created vampires in the first place was meant to protect the ones it targeted, not hurt, and the only thing it can’t cure is cancer. That, for some ungodly reason, it makes worse.”

            “Katherine Pierce?” Richard finally seemed to be coming around, so Damon turned towards him and nodded, “You said my brother’s incident last summer, the one where he killed his friend in self-defense, was likely orchestrated by a vampire. When we talked back in August about what’d happened, Mason mentioned that he had a new girlfriend, Kathy, who was the one to bail him out but still needed my help because he didn’t have a lawyer down in Florida and didn’t know who to trust. Could that’ve been her?”

            “We think so, as she told Isobel that she was making her way down to Florida the last time they talked,” the vampire agreed, “Just to be clear, none of us are on Katherine’s side, but she’s rather unfortunately a member of our family whether we want her to be or not. Isobel and Elena are descended from Katherine’s daughter, Nadia, who was taken from her five-hundred years or so ago shortly before Katherine herself was turned. She’s also something known as a doppelgänger of the First Immortal woman, Amara, and looks identical to Elena because she’s one as well. I wouldn’t ordinarily lay all my cards on the table if I had another choice, but we’re potentially all going to die if we don’t work together.”

            “This Katherine, she’s that dangerous?” Richard asked, but Damon shook his head ruefully.

            “I wish that Katherine Pierce was our only problem,” he said, chuckling darkly, “When the Original vampires were turned by a spell cast by their witch mother a thousand years ago, it came out that one of them was the byproduct of an affair that the mother had had with the local Alpha werewolf. Klaus Mikaelson is the Original Hybrid, but his werewolf half was bound shortly after this was discovered. There’s a ritual to break this curse, but it involves him killing a vampire, a werewolf, and a human Petrova doppelgänger while a witch channels the power of a full moon through the same moonstone that his mother used to bind his lycanthropy. He lost the moonstone five-hundred years ago when his brother gave it to Katherine to keep her safe, if only because Elijah’s in love with her and went as far as going back to Bulgaria, tracking down her daughter, and raising Nadia as his own to prove it, and Katherine had it until 1864 when she bartered it away to George Lockwood to get his help in smuggling her out of town before Emily Bennett could seal the vampires away in the tomb beneath the old Fell’s Church and before the Founding Families set the church on fire. Whatever happened to the stone after she gave it to George, I don’t know, but she got Mason to trigger his curse likely with the intention of using him to either get the stone or serve as Klaus’ werewolf sacrifice in the ritual, and I’d think you’d be as willing to let that happen as I am since it’d be Elena that Klaus would be killing for the doppelgänger requirement.”

            “I think I know where it is,” Tyler said suddenly, “There’s this old box in our attic, an antique jewelry box or something, and the only thing in it is this white, oval-shaped stone. I found it a few weeks back helping Mom look for Found-”

            “Shh!” Richard hissed, cutting his son off, “Your mother’s coming up the hall.”

            “Yeah, if you can hear that as clearly as I can, you definitely triggered your curse last night,” Damon told him, “Assuming you don’t want Carol knowing about all this just yet, let’s just pretend that I’m a concerned friend of the family who just stopped by to see how you were doing, okay?”

            “Deal, but only for the sake of my son and my brother.” Richard agreed, and all three men shared a nod just before the door opened to reveal the Lockwood matriarch who was surprised to see the person standing at the foot of her husband’s bed.

            “Oh, Damon, I didn’t know you’d come up to see Richard?” she said, her tone indicating to him that she hadn’t yet seen the paper.

            “Elena’s sitting with John, and Liz is sitting with Caroline while Stefan’s back at their place packing an overnight bag for him and her since Liz can’t stay because of work, something of which I can assure you she’s not too happy about right now, so I thought I’d stop in to see how you three were doing,” Damon said, noting Tyler’s apparent amusement at how smoothly he shifted from old and powerful vampire to youthful, smalltown charmer, “It’s been a pretty wild night, hasn’t it?”

            “It has,” Carol agreed, walking over to her son and handing him the bottle of blue Powerade she’d brought back with her, “How’s John doing? I didn’t realize that he’d gotten hurt last night until Christian Fell started asking questions earlier.”

            “He’s doing fine now, but we think some sort of beam or pipe must’ve been exposed enough to slice into his side. He didn’t even notice anything himself until he got home, and Elena and I both were terrified when we found him on the kitchen floor,” Damon told her, a relieved smile spreading across his face as his phone buzzed and he took it out to glance at the text he’d received, “Speaking of Elena, that’s her asking about breakfast. I’ve gotta get back to her and get her fed, and she says that Isobel’s here to sit with John, so I’ll just see myself out. Get well soon, Richard, and I hope that you and your brother can work something out where it doesn’t take something like this for the two of you to see one another more often. I don’t know what I’d do if Stefan and I were ever that badly estranged again.”

            “Oh, I’m sure Elena can find her own breakfast,” Carol said, a fake laugh tinting her words, “I don’t think I’ve ever known another man to spoil his girlfriend the way that you do, Damon.”

            “Not that any of that’s not true, but we agreed we’d keep as close together as possible for the next little while,” he chuckled, winking over at Tyler as Carol briefly turned towards her husband to hand him his cup of water, “What with the story in the paper today and everything, we’re expecting a lot of questions, comments, and concerns from pretty much everybody.”

            “About the clinic?” she asked, but Tyler merely snorted, “What is it?”

            “Mom, how about we let Damon get back to Elena, and I’ll run downstairs and see about getting you and Dad a copy of today’s paper?” he offered, and Carol nodded confusedly as Tyler got up to follow Damon from the room.

            “Would it be too much to ask for you to record her reaction and send it to Elena?” the vampire asked once they were in the hall, and the untriggered werewolf chuckled.

            “Don’t worry, this is gonna be a moment I think I’m gonna wanna relive until whenever I become a dad.” Tyler told him, and the two went their separate ways as Damon turned left to make his way back to John’s room while Tyler went right towards the elevators.

❌⭕❌⭕

            Elena could hear the whispers as soon as she and Damon walked into the Mystic Grill that morning, and she knew that there was no way that Damon couldn’t hear them even better as they slid into a booth across from Bonnie and Jeremy; as unsettled as the green-eyed witch had been when she’d initially found out about Elena’s pregnancy, she’d been more than willing to join them and her boyfriend for breakfast when Jeremy had called her from the hospital that morning. All of them had been expecting the whispers, but most of them running on fumes wasn’t a part of the plan. Damon let them know that Stefan was back at the hospital with Caroline, pressed a kiss to Elena’s hair, and hurried off to the bar with a soft promise that he’d be back soon.

            “So, while I know you read over it before she sent it off for publishing, have you seen Caroline’s article in print yet?” Bonnie asked, sliding that morning’s edition of the Mystic Falls Courier across the table to Elena as the doppelgänger shook her head.

            “It looks perfect!” Elena breathed out excitedly, flipping directly to the fourth page of the paper where the second half of Caroline’s article, the pregnancy announcement, was the only story, “I have to thank her again when Damon and I go back up to the hospital in a little while.”

            “Elena, you can’t be serious,” Jeremy cut in, shaking his head at his sister, “You’ve been up all night sitting with John, so you should probably go home and get some rest before you go back up there. Your body’s supporting two people, not just you, so you need to get sleep at some point.”

            “Don’t worry, she will,” Damon said as he rejoined them at the table and slid a glass of blackberry ginger ale over to Elena who accepted it with a small smile, “We’re going to the boarding house after breakfast so that we can both get some sleep. Liz let me know that the cleanup crews haven’t finished at the house from Katherine attacking John last night, so going home technically isn’t possible right now.”

            “You’re sure it was Katherine?” Bonnie wondered, and the two nodded.

            “We saw her, talked to her just before we found John, and he told us that he invited her inside on accident thinking that she was me,” Elena confirmed, “She knows about Eva, and she’s pissed because she thinks that Klaus is gonna kill me and leave Eva without a mother just like her being sent away from home and getting herself turned to escape Klaus basically left Nadia without a mother five-hundred years ago.”

            “Wait, so she doesn’t want you to die?” Jeremy asked confusedly, Bonnie’s expression matching his, but the other couple merely shrugged.

            “She’s under the impression that Klaus is gonna kill Elena either way, but Elijah says he’s got a plan, so I have to trust that he means what he says about not letting Elena die,” Damon told them as he took a drink of his bourbon, not caring that it wasn’t even noon, “I had to tell Tyler and his dad about all this an hour ago, hence why I’m having a drink already when it’s barely just half-past nine o’clock. Surprisingly, Tyler took it all a lot better than Richard, but they’re both very willing to help us if it means we keep any of the two triggered and one untriggered Lockwood wolves from dying at Klaus’ hand.”

            “Two?” Elena sighed as Bonnie balked, “Killing the vampires from the tomb triggered the mayor’s curse?”

            “Hey, we’re people, too, Bon-Bon,” snorted Damon, and Bonnie rolled her eyes at the nickname, “He’s gonna talk it over with Mason tonight, and Tyler’s already told me where the moonstone is in the event that we need to move it.”

            “The Lockwoods still have it?” Jeremy said with surprise, “That’s a good thing, and it’s one less thing we have to worry about, I guess.”

            “Yeah, and we also got confirmation on Isobel’s theory that Katherine was behind Mason triggering his curse last August because he told Richard about his new girlfriend, Kathy, who bailed him outta jail when it happened.” Damon added, and the other couple swore under their breaths.

            “We’re sure that Tyler’s curse is still untriggered, right?” Bonnie asked, and Elena nodded.

            “I acted as a lookout while Care fed from Damon just before we left the hospital,” she explained, “She’s all healed up now, more or less, and if she were to somehow die and go into transition to become a vampire, her death wouldn’t be Tyler’s fault. It has to be the werewolf’s fault that the other person died for the curse to get triggered according to Isobel’s research.”

            “What this also means is that Caroline will be okay enough to get released from the hospital in time for the carnival tomorrow night,” Damon tacked on, turning from Bonnie and Jeremy toward Elena as he continued, “Ruth called to check on you this morning, by the way, and she says that she can always supervise Blair and Tina setting up the carnival if you want.”

            “Fuck no!” Elena snapped quietly, “I’ve put too much effort already into planning this damn thing to let either of those jealous, petty, annoying bitches ruin it. I’ll call Care from the car and tell her that I can’t come back up tonight, she’ll understand, and we’ll go see John for a couple of hours after lunch.”

            “I told her that’s probably what you’d say,” he chuckled, “I think she was honestly a little relieved about it…Waitress incoming.”

            The conversation died down as their server appeared, and the quartet placed their orders before switching topics to the carnival itself. By the time breakfast had ended, Bonnie had established herself as being Elena’s right-hand woman for the event and had drawn up a list of things Elena wanted done. As Damon paid the bill, Elena hugged her brother and best friend goodbye and thanked them for coming out to breakfast with them as a means of showing their support for her pregnancy. Jeremy insisted that it was his duty as the only maternal uncle to always be there for his sister and unborn niece, and Bonnie offered a small smile.

            “I was worried about all this, you and the baby, but then I read Caroline’s article,” she admitted, “I had no idea that Damon was so happy, so excited to be a dad; I was so scared that he’d leave the two of you on your own, but reading his opinion in the article and seeing the two of you together these last few weeks, I know now that he’d never do anything like that. Damon isn’t my mom and would never abandon his daughter the way Abby abandoned me.”

            “Whatever your mom’s reason for not coming home, I can’t understand it,” Elena replied, “but I’m glad that you can tell how happy Damon and I both are for Eva’s existence. He’s gonna be an amazing dad, I already know it, and I can’t wait for everybody else to see that.”

            Smiling over at Damon as he made his way towards them, Elena knew that she meant every word. All four of their children were going to be incredibly lucky to have Damon as their father, not in the least because of how determined he was to be nothing like his own, just from the sheer amount of love he held for each of them even when none of them had yet to be born. If his actions weren’t enough to convince people, she thought to herself, then maybe she’d just have to post a photo online of his collection of parenting books.

 

            Thankful for the small supply of clothes that she still kept at the boarding house, Elena crawled into bed in hers and Damon’s room less than half-an-hour after leaving the Grill, unaware until she was underneath the thick duvet as to how tired she was. After going more than twenty-four hours without sleep, the softness of the mattress and warmth of the blankets brought her exhaustion down on her like a landslide, and she was asleep as soon as her head touched her pillow. Damon curled up beside her, more than happy to get a few hours’ sleep himself, but the sound of someone trying to sneak through the garage door had him out of bed and making his way downstairs less than an hour into their nap. He’d been meaning to grease the hinges, but now he was glad that he’d been so busy with every other part of his life to bother. Peering into the parlor, he rolled his eyes as he saw Katherine lounging on one of the sofas.

            “Don’t you know how to knock?” he asked her, and she smirked and batted her eyelashes at him.

            “The door was unlocked, so I thought that meant you wanted me here,” she said, the seductive purr that used to hold so much power over him falling flat, “Where’s your little human copy of me at, hm? Maybe she can join us?”

            “Listen good, Katherine, because I’m only gonna say this once,” Damon growled, vamping across the room and grabbing his maker by her throat, lifting her off the ground and pinning her against the wall, “Stay the hell away from Elena and Eva, or I will kill you.”

            “Oh, whatever has become of my sweet, innocent Damon?” she lamented playfully, eyes narrowing as she pushed him to the ground and straddled him for a moment before he flipped them over and glared down at her, “That’s more like it!”

            “What are you doing here?” he asked tiredly, letting her go as he stood up and blinking in surprise as she looked up at him with a sadness he hadn’t recalled ever before seeing in her eyes.

            “I wanted to apologize,” she said, shrugging slightly as she got to her feet and straightened her clothes, “I know you probably don’t believe me, but it’s true. When I started all this back a hundred-and-forty-five years ago, I thought it’d all be so simple. Convince a werewolf to help me, get said werewolf the moonstone, turn a few potential vampire sacrifices who would be able to be tricked into dying for my sake, and come back to bring it all together once a new doppelgänger surfaced. I had no idea that, by choosing you as one of my potential ritual sacrifice candidates, you’d be tied to Elena by your soul or that the two of you would be so sexually insatiable that you’d get her pregnant this early on and create a risk that you weren’t even aware of at the time. Once you’re as old as I am, you can’t shut your emotions off anymore; you feel them whether you want to or not but just have a better chance at ignoring them. Sadly, I can’t ignore the guilt I feel at knowing that I’ve set another little girl up to live the life my own daughter did as I know that I’ve basically ensured that Elena will die before Eva’s first birthday. I promised myself when I turned that I’d never let another little girl go through that, but look what I’ve done. I’ve never thought of anything I’ve done before as being particularly monstrous, not even when I admittedly killed innocent people, but to hurt a little girl, to hurt so many little girls, I’m just as bad as my father.”

            “So many little girls? Katherine, what are you talking about?” he wondered, and she scoffed as she wiped away the tears that had begun to fall from her eyes.

            “Emily was never supposed to die the way she did,” Katherine admitted, “Damon, she was my friend. Pearl, yeah, I sold out her, her daughter, and all the others, but Emily was supposed to be safe here. We came here because her grandmother had told her about the power that this place held, and she was supposed to be able to channel its power to protect herself. I didn’t tell anyone about Emily’s magic, and I never would’ve done anything that would’ve gotten her burned at the fucking stake in front of those babies. I was there when all of them were born, did you know that? When it was just us, they called me Aunt Kathy, and I loved those children. Sophia, the oldest, was named after my sister, and I was the one to find her before she got married and tell her exactly how important her bloodline and name are, how all the Bennett women should always keep their name. I may be descended from Amara, the First Immortal woman, but Emily’s line is descended from Qetsiyah, the witch who created the immortality spell in the first place. Her descendant and Emily’s ancestor, Ayanna, was the witch who gave the spell to Esther Mikaelson that created the Originals; the Bennetts have blood as powerful as me and Elena or you and Stefan…yeah, I found out about Silas’ doppelgängers a few years after I left Mystic Falls, and that’s one of the reasons I never reached out to either of you. If I’d gotten tied up with Stefan again, everything would’ve gotten thrown off course, and we could all very well have ended up dead. Now, Elena will no matter what I do, and you’ll have to be a single parent if you even survive losing her.”

            “She’s not gonna die,” Damon said, unsure how much he should tell Katherine but not wanting to show too much empathy based on her apparent guilt as she’d just admitted that she’d used him and had never loved him after all, “When Elena was three, Mikael, as in the Original, came looking for her thinking that killing her would stop Klaus once and for all. Elijah beat him to the punch and convinced John to convince Grayson and Miranda to enlist Abby Bennett to help them stop Mikael by any means necessary. Whatever Abby did, it worked and she survived, but she ran off and was never heard from again after she called to say that it was done. Ever since then, John’s been working for Elijah to keep Elena from dying in Klaus’ ritual. Elijah says he knows you’ll be pissed at him if he lets another one of your family members die when he has the power to stop it, and I’m thinking that he has one other motive for doing all this.”

            “Elijah?” she gasped out, and Damon nodded, “Elijah Mikaelson, the Original? We’re talking about the same man who stood by as his brother murdered my parents and sister?”

            “Yes, and he’s also the same man who searched everywhere he could think in Bulgaria until he found your daughter, as an infant, and took her to raise her as his own. He turned her when she was at the end of her life, by her own request, and it’s clear that he loves you,” the blue-eyed vampire said, “Honestly, if he loves you and Nadia half as much as I know that I love Elena and Eva, I think he’s hoping that, by saving Elena’s life and proving to you that he’s sorry for everything that went wrong, you’ll be willing to take him back and that the three of you can be a proper family.”

            “He…he found my baby? He raised my baby?” she wondered, and he nodded, “Why would he…Does she know about me?”

            “He turned her because she wanted to go out and look for you herself,” Damon chuckled, not used to Katherine being struck dumb by anything, “He told John a while back that he’d come to Mystic Falls after you’d made contact with us, so he’s potentially already on his way here. I’m sure that you could sneak a peek into his thoughts and find out where he is now if you wanted.”

            “How would I do that?” she asked, “Even the most seasoned witch has trouble breaking into an Original’s mind.”

            “Katherine, you knew all the signs of soulmates when we met, and you had to have had some thoughts or dreams over the years that you know weren’t your own. Elijah’s looked through your eyes enough times that he knew where and when Elena was born when he contacted John, and the fact that he admittedly can’t bear the thought of losing you for a second time speaks volumes on its own. Just close your eyes, focus on Elijah, and let your soul show you what you wanna see…Okay, yeah, that sounds a bit corny, but it works.” he told her, and she nodded slowly before doing as he’d instructed, opening her eyes after a few moments with something between panic and joy shining in them.

            “He’s already in town,” she said, springing up from the sofa and vamping over to Damon, beaming as she pulled him in for a hug, “I need to see him, to figure out what he knows and make sure that he takes Elena’s pregnancy into account. Thank you, Damon, for telling me. It means a lot that you didn’t lie to me out of spite.”

            She pressed a quick kiss to his cheek before vamping from the house, and he chuckled as he looked up to see Elena in the doorway. She smiled at him, and he met her halfway before wrapping his arms around her and dropping a kiss onto her hair. Their hands met, fingers threading together upon contact, atop her bump as they stood there in a loving embrace. She was proud of him for not losing his temper with Katherine, and she hoped that this was perhaps one threat neutralized now that Katherine knew what Elijah had been doing ever since they’d parted ways.

            “Sorry if I woke you, kitten.” he said, but she shrugged in response.

            “I woke up the second you got outta bed, baby, but I didn’t bother coming downstairs until I heard your thoughts turn to homicide when you realized that Katherine was in the house.” she told him, grinning softly.

            “Yeah, well, I stopped myself when I remembered how damn difficult it is to get blood outta antique Persian rugs,” he told her, though they both knew he didn’t really mean it, “I’ve got good news, though, if you wanna hear it?”

            “What is it?” she asked, as he’d been blocking her most of the morning as to give her space with her own thoughts while she sat at her father’s bedside.

            “Jake called this morning while I was bouncing between hospital rooms. In less than two weeks, our house will have power, water, and a working HVAC system. Jake says the cosmetic stuff should start soon, and we can more than likely move in before Fourth of July with as good of shape as the spell brought everything back,” he told her, “By the time it’s all said and done, even the pool will be finished in time for us to actually enjoy it this summer.”

            “At least if I’m gonna look like a beached whale this summer, I can do it in the comfort of my own home,” Elena joked, raising an eyebrow at Damon as he rolled his eyes, “What? It’s not like we don’t already know that I’m gonna get fat. “You saw what I looked like when I was almost to the end of my pregnancy with Andy, so there’s no way you can deny that it’s gonna happen with Eva.”

            “I stand by what I said about this right after we saw your vision,” Damon said, his smirk softening into an adoring smile as he spoke, “I don’t care about the weight gain, the size of your baby bump, or the width of your ass. If you wanna think that you’ll look like a beached whale, fine, but just remember that you’ll still be the sexiest beached whale that I’ve ever seen.”

            “If anyone but you said that, I’d call them crazy,” she chuckled, kissing him lightly before leading him back towards the hallway and staircase, “C’mon, let’s get back upstairs.”

            “You still tired?” he asked, but she just shrugged.

            “The nap helped, but we both still have that hospital smell on us, and I think we could do with a shower to get rid of it,” she replied, a flirtatious grin on her face, “What’d you think?”

            Rather than answering her, Damon grinned back as he scooped her into his arms and vamped up the staircase and down the hall towards their room. He’d never thought that a confrontation with Katherine would actually ever lead to sex with Elena, but he wasn’t about to turn down the opportunity presented to him. Sexually insatiable, as Katherine had called them, was an apt term for the two of them. Sure, both he and Elena could be temporarily satisfied after lovemaking, but it was never long before they both wanted more because they could never get enough of each other. He hoped that there never came a time when they didn’t want one another so passionately, and he knew that Elena felt the same way.

❌⭕❌⭕

            It was late in the night when Caroline noticed Stefan getting antsy. She knew that it couldn’t have been easy for him to stay in the hospital with her, and she loved him for staying as long as he had in spite of this, but she didn’t want him making himself miserable for her benefit. Getting an idea, she turned towards him, but he shook his head at her.

            “With Katherine out there, it’d be too dangerous.” Stefan insisted, but she rolled her eyes.

            “From what Elena said when she called earlier, I don’t think we have to worry about Katherine as much anymore,” Caroline told him, “You can’t stay much longer before all the blood in here makes you fall off the cliff’s edge you’re balancing on, sweetie, and I love that you love me enough to put yourself through this, but I don’t want you hurting yourself for me. I’ll be fine for an hour or so if you need to go hunt, I promise, and you can come straight back once you’re done, but you need to go out and get some fresh air.”

            “Alright, but call me if you need anything,” he replied, pressing a soft kiss to her lips as he got up from the chair beside her bed, “I mean it, even if you want me to run up to McDonald’s and get you an Oreo McFlurry because hospital food sucks, just let me know.”

            “Mm, I know you mean it, but I won’t make you run all the way to Charlottesville tonight, Stef,” she giggled, “I love you.”

            “I love you to, angela mia,” he said, sneaking one last kiss before leaving the room, “I’ll be back soon.”

            Sighing to herself once Stefan had gone, Caroline decided to close her eyes and try getting some more sleep. Despite all the healing that Damon’s blood had done to her body, she still felt very drained and was fairly certain that it was in part from Stefan’s own distressed state. The only times that he’d left her since the crash had been while she’d been in surgery and while her mother had been at her bedside; while she wasn’t sure what she’d ever done to deserve Stefan, she was certainly glad that she had him. Things with Stefan were different than with any of her previous relationships, and she was sure that it was only partly because of them being soulmates. To him, she wasn’t just another chick with blonde hair and moderately sized boobs. Stefan made it a point to remind her that he’d never once thought her stupid and always considered her to be smart in ways that a lot of people tend to underestimate. He also balanced her out when she became too neurotic, and he did it with such little effort that she almost never noticed it herself until well after the fact. Conversely, she knew that she brought out his fun side that he usually kept buried out of fear that he’d fall off the wagon if he didn’t, and she kept him from becoming too brooding and neurotic himself. With these thoughts drifting about in her mind, Caroline slipped into a contented slumber and only awakened when the door creaked ever so slightly about half-an-hour after Stefan had gone.

            “Stefan, there’s no way you’ve been gone long enough to be okay,” she said as she tried to sit up, going still as she saw that the person who had entered her room wasn’t her boyfriend, “Elena? I thought you weren’t coming back up tonight because you weren’t gonna let Blair and Tina ruin the carnival?”

            “Sorry, Caroline, but I’ve weighed the options, and this needs to be done.” the brunette said, walking towards the bed slowly, and the blonde’s eyes narrowed.

            “What needs to be done?” she asked, and the brunette smirked.

            “I’m Katherine, I assume you’ve heard of me, and you’ll thank me for this later.” the vampire said, grabbing the pillow from the chair that Stefan had vacated as she neared Caroline’s bedside and placing it over the blonde’s face.

            Caroline screamed and fought as hard as she could, but she was no match for the vampire smothering her. Katherine held her down with very little effort and turned towards the figure standing in the shadows as Caroline’s arms fell motionless at her sides. The figure moved into the light, holding out a hand as Caroline stopped breathing. Katherine tossed the pillow back into the chair as she made her way over to her companion, her hand slipping into his with ease.

            “You’re sure that this was necessary?” she asked him, and he nodded.

            “Darling, I wouldn’t have suggested it if it wasn’t,” he assured her, “The young Miss Forbes only had a few months left before she would’ve sought to do this herself, so I don’t see any harm in speeding things up a bit when it won’t have any serious impact on the future.”

            “We should go,” Katherine said after a moment, “It won’t be long before Stefan comes back, and he’ll be furious if we’re still here. Add to it that he doesn’t know who you are, my love, it’ll only make things worse.”

            “Do you have any idea how much I absolutely adore hearing you call me that once more, my dear?” Elijah asked, a loving smile on his face, and she nodded as a matching one appeared on hers.

            “It’s probably the same way I feel every time you call me your ‘darling Katerina,’ and five-hundred years without hearing you say it makes my ears hunger for it almost as much as I know that my body still craves your touch.” Katherine said with a soft giggle, snaking her arms around his neck as she spoke.

            “Nadia is out on a blood bank run and won’t be home until morning at the earliest,” Elijah replied, gathering her in his arms before she could do more than nod in agreement, “Why don’t we see if we can make up for lost time?”

            The couple vamped away into the night, and Caroline lay dead in her hospital bed. An hour passed before she woke, her eyes adjusting to the harshness of the lights that she hadn’t remembered having before, and the memory of what had just happened to her flooded back. Trying to stay calm, she grabbed her phone from the bedside table and called Stefan.

            “Hey, angel, I’m on my way back now,” he greeted, seemingly unaware of what had happened to her, “Did you think of something you needed after all?”

            “Yeah, um, can you break me outta here and take me to the boarding house?” she asked, “Katherine just stopped by, and, well, we don’t have to wait until August for me to turn anymore.”

            “Oh, God! I’m on my way. Just…just get dressed and be ready to go when I get there. I’m so sorry she did this to you, angel.” he replied, but she made a sound of indifference.

            “If we hadn’t already been planning this for August, I think I might be a little upset, but what’s a few months in the long run? I said I didn’t wanna be any physically older than you than was necessary, so I think we can let this one slide,” she told him, “Funnily enough, Katherine told me I’d thank her for this one day.”

            “That…that sounds about right for Katherine; although, that does beg the question as to how she knew you had Damon’s blood in your system,” he said, and she agreed, “When we get back to the boarding house, I’ll call and ask Damon about it. Maybe he said something to her this afternoon? I don’t know, but we’ll figure it out, I promise. I love you, Caroline.”

            “I love you, too, Stefan, and I’ll see you in a minute,” she said, ending the call and getting dressed as he’d told her to, eyes going wide as she gently pulled out her IV and watched how quickly the pinprick puncture on her hand healed itself before speaking her thoughts aloud, “Cool.”

 

            It took less than half-an-hour for Stefan to return to the hospital, get Caroline and their overnight bags, and get back to the boarding house. Not initially realizing that Damon and Elena were just upstairs in their room, neither of them made any effort to be quiet as they made their way down to the cellar where Stefan grabbed one of Damon’s blood bags from the refrigerator and handed it to his girlfriend. She waited until they were in the kitchen before tearing the bag open and draining it of its contents. Stefan couldn’t remember the last time he’d watched another vampire feed, but he could only assume that it hadn’t been nearly as arousing as it was when the other vampire was Caroline; he wondered if blood sharing would be different for them now that she had turned, and he’d almost asked her about it when he noticed Elena’s purse on the counter. Instead, he vamped up to his room to retrieve an item he hadn’t thought he’d need for a while longer and returned before the blonde had finished the blood bag. As she licked her lips, savoring the taste of O- on her tongue, Caroline felt a new weight land on the index finger of her right hand and glanced down to see a lapis lazuli ring.

            “I knew we were waiting until August, but I had Sheila make this for you when she, Bonnie, Elena, and I were all equally curious as to whether the daywalking charm in Emily’s grimoire was real. It worked on the ring Elena got Damon for Valentine’s Day, so I have no doubt that yours will be just as effective.” Stefan told her, and she smiled softly at him.

            “Did you make this the way you made my locket and earrings?” she asked, and he nodded before quickly snatching the locket from around her neck, “Hey! What’s that for?”

            “Sorry, I just remembered why I made you that locket,” he said, grabbing the rubber dish gloves from beside the sink and sliding them on before emptying the contents of Caroline’s locket onto a paper towel and promptly throwing the dried purple flowers into the trash, “If you’d kept that on any longer, you’d be in so much pain, angel.”

            “The vervain,” she breathed out as he put the now-empty locket around her neck once more, “I’d completely forgotten about it when I was getting dressed. I’m just so used to wearing my locket that I didn’t think twice about putting it on when I saw it.”

            “In answer to your question, yes, I made the ring myself,” he told her, pressing a kiss to her hair as she leaned backward into him, “Do you like it?”

            “I love it,” she said, smiling teasingly at him, “So, there’s no getting rid of me now. Are you okay with that?”

            “As much as I wanna rip out Katherine’s throat for doing this without your consent, I’d much rather take you upstairs and show you exactly how okay with this I am, angel.” Stefan smirked as she turned in his arms, and Caroline giggled, pulling him in for a heated kiss just as a voice rang out from the doorway.

            “I don’t care how much you wanna do that, you’re not doing it while we’re home, too!” Damon called, eyes catching on the empty blood bag in Caroline’s hand and the new ring on her finger as Elena went wide-eyed upon hearing his train of thought, “Tell me the crazy bitch didn’t do what I think she did!”

            “She did, and she told me that I’d thank her for it later,” Caroline replied, turning in Stefan’s arms once more to face the other couple, “Did you tell her that I had your blood in my system?”

            “No, I didn’t say a word about that to anyone other than Bonnie and Jeremy at the Grill this morning,” Damon insisted, “Given how this is Katherine that we’re talking about, it wouldn’t be of any surprise to me if she’s already got spies around town.”

            “What if Elijah told her to do it?” Elena wondered, “I mean, we know that he’s been making his own decisions based off decision-driven divination, so what if he’d already known that Caroline would be in the hospital and willingly take your blood to heal herself and decided to weigh his options? Having another vampire on our side in the event that it takes a fight to make Klaus listen to him isn’t the worst idea even if I don’t particularly agree with it.”

            “If I told you to kill someone, would you do it?” Damon asked her, and she shrugged.

            “Probably not if there was no just cause for it, but someone in Caroline’s situation is different,” Elena explained as all three balked at her shrug, “We already knew that she and Stefan had plans to do this over summer break anyway, so rushing the timeline slightly isn’t as big a deal in this case. If it were something like this, then, yeah, I probably wouldn’t hesitate because I trust you to know what might happen if I do.”

            “You guys knew?” Stefan asked, and the couple nodded.

            “We weren’t sure as to exactly when, but it seemed pretty obvious that Care wouldn’t wanna be any older than you are physically.” Damon shrugged, and the younger couple gave half-nods in response as he was correct.

            “What do we do now?” Caroline asked, looking from her boyfriend to their brother and sister one by one, “Where do we go from here?”

            “All we can do is wait,” Damon said, arms locked around Elena with his hands over hers on her bump, “Richard and Tyler are supposed to have spoken with Mason about all this either tonight or do so sometime tomorrow, and all we can do is wait to see what either they or Katherine and Elijah do next.”

            “Until then, I vote that we all go back to bed,” Elena added, yawning as if to prove her point, “I have a carnival to finish putting together in a few hours, and I so don’t wanna put any more off on Bonnie and Jeremy than I already have or, God forbid, actually let Blair and Tina help.”

            Agreeing with Elena’s suggestion, Stefan told them that he and Caroline would head up as soon as his girlfriend had finished off another blood bag. With as newly turned as she was, she would be exceedingly hungry for while longer. Bidding the other couple goodnight, Stefan vamped down to the cellar as Caroline sat down at the kitchen table. Just when they’d thought the craziness had run its course, the other shoe had to drop. For what it was worth, he thought to himself as he sat in the kitchen with his girlfriend as she downed another bag of blood, at least it was something he couldn’t be overly upset because he could’ve easily named a hundred things Katherine could’ve done that would’ve been worse than turning Caroline a few months early. Maybe, once Klaus had been handled and freed from his curse, he and Damon would have to send her a fruit basket or something to thank her for bringing them to their soulmates.

Notes:

A/N: Alright, sweets, I know, Katherine Pierce is not the apologetic sort...but what if she is and just has never had a reason to feel guilty for her actions until now? I've never understood how a vampire could just stop caring, more or less, after they reach about five-hundred, and it's shown time and time again that all of the Originals care, love, and feel very deeply. Thus, I have elected to remedy this plot hole by stating that vampires of a certain age can still feel, they just have a better chance at ignoring their feelings than younger ones. As for Caroline's turning...c'mon, did you ever think I wasn't going to give you that? Until next time, sweets...XOXO

Chapter 3: Opens Up One Eager Eye

Summary:

"99 Decision Street/99 ministers meet/To worry, worry, super-scurry/Call the troops out in a hurry/This is what we've waited for/This is it boys, this is war/The president is on the line/As 99 red balloons go by..."
-"99 Red Balloons," by Nena

Notes:

A/N: I apologize, sweets, for how long this chapter took. I wanted this and the next chapter to be ready to go at the same time, but my computer did an update overnight and erased half a chapter because it couldn't find my last save, only the one from an hour or so before, so I had to rewrite some bits. I do hope that it all turns out to have been worth the wait. Enjoy!

            Saturday morning, Caroline and Stefan called Liz to the boarding house to tell her what had occurred the night before in Caroline’s hospital room. Much like Damon and Elena, she was only a bit surprised at the news. She, too, had figured that Caroline would turn sooner rather than later and had already accepted the fact that her daughter was now a vampire. Caroline was slightly offended that she was so predictable for her family members, but Damon could only chuckle as he watched his little sister pout.

            “Honestly, Barbie, it wasn’t all you,” he told her, “Not only do I know my brother better than probably anyone other than you, but Elena and I’ve had the same conversation. Barring any sudden and extreme circumstances, Elena will turn the September after she turns twenty-five.”

            “By then, our youngest will be at least a year old, I’ll be done with school, and we’ll have the time for me to adjust without putting any of the kids at risk,” Elena confirmed, smirking as she saw both Stefan and Caroline’s jaws drop, “I said I saw a vision of mine and Damon’s future when I found out I was pregnant, didn’t I?”

            “How many kids do you plan on having exactly?” Caroline wondered, “I mean, I obviously know about Eva, and I know about Landon because of Stefan’s thoughts not having a filter, but those two are the same age.”

            “At the moment, we’re only planning on four,” Damon said, amused at the reaction they were getting, “but we really don’t know what might happen beyond six years from now. We could have more kids beyond that, but what we know is that, in the vision we saw, Elena will be heavily pregnant with Baby Number Four in five-and-a-half years.”

            “Four kids in six years?” Elena nodded as Stefan shook his head in disbelief, and a snort of laughter from the hallway door got everyone’s attention as they all looked up to see Katherine leaning against the doorframe.

            “I’ll repeat what I said yesterday,” she smirked, “The two of them are sexually insatiable.”

            “What are you doing here again?” Damon asked, sound tired rather than angry or worried, and Katherine shrugged.

            “If you’re expecting me to go along with Elijah’s plan, then I’m going to be sticking around for a while and figured that I might as well see if I could be of help in any way,” she said, both of the Salvatore brothers nodding in agreement, “I doubt I need to remind you boys of what tends to happen when I get bored.”

            “I’m not buying it,” Elena said, eyeing her ancestor suspiciously, “Where’d Elijah have to run off to that he wouldn’t take you with him and instead left you behind to babysit us?”

            “Nadia’s boyfriend called and asked her to meet him in New York; as we hadn’t told her about me being here yet, Elijah couldn’t make her stay without guilting her into it, and this Gregor person is someone Elijah doesn’t really trust and isn’t entirely sure wouldn’t track Nadia down and interfere in our plans if she didn’t go to him,” Katherine admitted, “Elijah had a witch friend of his check the potential outcomes and decided to head Klaus off at the pass by going to him in Greece instead of waiting for their meetup in Boston.”

            “Well, I guess if you’re gonna be here and wanna help…” Elena trailed off, taking out her phone and sending off a quick text, “It’s all gonna depend on whether I can convince Isobel to let the fact that you tried to kill my father two days ago and technically killed Caroline last night go, but I might have an idea.”

            “Hey, it wasn’t my plan to turn her,” Katherine said in her own defense, “Elijah insisted that it was the right move, and you all want me to trust his plan, so what was I supposed to do?”

            “See? I told you!” Elena said to Damon with a grin, shaking her head his miffed outward expression as she turned back to her ancestor, “Right now, it’s probably still too early to let Caroline out in public, but they’ve probably noticed at the hospital by now that she’s missing. Could you, I can’t even really believe that I’m asking you this, could you stay with her today while we finish up getting everything ready for the carnival tonight?”

            “Of course,” Katherine agreed without hesitation, “While it wasn’t my blood that turned her, I’m the reason that she turned, and that makes her my responsibility anyway.”

            “Why can’t Stefan stay with me?” Caroline asked, and Damon sighed.

            “Sadly, Elena’s right in asking Katherine to stay because both Stefan and Liz need to be seen without you in public so that nobody thinks that either of them broke you outta the hospital last night,” he told her, “If the Lockwoods show up, especially Mason or Carol, hide down in the basement until they’re gone.”

            “Okay, Carol I get because it’d be bad if I ate the mayor’s wife, but why Mason?” Caroline wondered, and Katherine sighed.

            “Fuck!” she swore, getting raised eyebrows from all five of the others standing in the kitchen, “That dumbass has been trying to find me ever since I left him in Florida at the end of last summer when I started back up this way. I still need him to get the moonstone, unless one of you has an in with the wolves that I don’t know about, but if he sees Elena and thinks that she’s me…”

            “Tyler Lockwood is one of mine and Caroline’s oldest friends,” Elena said, not too worried about Mason herself, “Tyler knows that I couldn’t have been in Florida in August because I was here moping and mourning my parents, and Damon’s not likely to leave me alone for very long. Besides, even if Mason did think that I was you, he’d have to admit to sleeping with an underage girl, and we already know that me being pregnant is the only reason that Damon’s publicly acknowledging the fact that he did just that. Trust me, we’ll be fine.”

            “Tyler and his dad are also going to get us the moonstone so we can lock it in the safe so we know exactly where it’s at when we actually need it,” Damon added, “Given how most spells like this have an anchor, I kinda figured that Elijah’s plan would involve it one way or another.”

            “Okay, so, I just have to keep her in the house and keep away from the Lockwoods,” Katherine shrugged, “I can do that. Is there a particular time at which my babysitting duties end?”

            “Hopefully, by lunchtime if we’re lucky, either me, Stef, or Isobel will have compelled the nurses and doctors on the ICU floor to think that they discharged Caroline last night but lost all her paperwork and have to refile it,” Damon said, getting a nod from his brother, “Once the coast is clear, Stefan will come back for Caroline and bring her to the carnival. Then, you can go back to doing whatever it is you had planned with Mason.”

            “Hell no,” Katherine replied with a snort, “Look, I’ll stay until she’s clear to rejoin society, but I’m not getting involved with Mason Lockwood again. If he finds out that I’ve been playing him this whole time, or if he thinks I lied about my age because I look like Elena’s twin sister, that bastard could very well try to kill me. I don’t want to die or want to know what Elijah would do if I did.”

            “Then go shopping in Richmond or something, but you can’t stay here because the only sibling Elena has is Jeremy, and it’d be suspicious if she suddenly had an identical twin sister,” Damon retorted, turning towards Elena as he caught her thoughts, “You can’t be serious? We’re not gonna Hayley Mills/Lindsay Lohan this, are we?”

            “If I can get John and Isobel to agree to it, then yes,” she said, looking from him to Katherine as she spoke, “Saying that you’re my long-lost twin and that we were separated at birth is the only surefire way we have to make sure that you can stay in town and not raise anyone’s suspicions while we wait to see what Elijah has planned and figure out how to handle Klaus.”

            “But Isobel and John aren’t likely to agree without some major convincing because I stabbed John and cut off his finger two days ago,” Katherine added, shaking her head, “It’s probably one of the more insane plans I’ve ever been a part of, but I think you’re right in saying that we don’t have much choice.”

            “I’ll talk to them,” Elena said with a sigh, not fighting it as Damon vamped from the room and returned seconds later with her jacket and baby pink beanie, “Now, though, I have to finish setting up the carnival I’ve worked so hard planning before either of the Fell girls can ruin it.”

            Katherine watched as Damon and Elena made their way into the garage, Stefan and Liz each said their goodbyes to Caroline, and the kitchen empty to where it was just the blonde newborn and the brunette quintenarian vampires. For all she’d said that she could handle it, Katherine was feeling uncertain as she stared at the blonde she’d turned the previous night. While she would’ve certainly killed and turned Caroline herself to serve as one of Klaus’ sacrifices had she not spoken to Elijah beforehand, she didn’t regret turning her because she knew it would make Stefan happy and probably improve the blonde’s life in the long run. Perhaps she could’ve been quicker with the way she’d killed Caroline, such as snapping her neck, but it was too late to wonder about that. Now, if only Elijah could’ve told her what she was supposed to do next!

❌⭕❌⭕

            An hour after leaving Katherine in charge of Caroline at the boarding house, Elena was on the midway with Bonnie discussing the events of the previous eighteen hours. Bonnie, like most of the family had been thus far, wasn’t surprised with the decision that Caroline had made in completing her transition. As it turned out, it had been Katherine posing as Elena while talking to her brother and Bonnie at the hospital the previous evening that had let the vampire know about Damon’s blood being in Caroline’s system. Katherine apologizing and asking to help, now that was a surprise.

            “She needs this plan to work as much as we do,” Elena explained as they divided up the prizes for each of the games, “The only way she gets to be a family with her daughter and her soulmate is if Klaus is satisfied enough with her helping to find an alternate means of breaking his curse in which nobody needs to die.”

            “Ya know, it was freaky, now that I know it was her and not you,” Bonnie said, and Elena rolled her eyes at Bonnie’s inability to say the word “baby” when talking about Eva, “She wasn’t just looking or acting like you, Elena, she was you…half-vampire fetus growing inside of you and all that aside.”

            “She’s been watching us all for months, so I’m not that surprised,” the doppelgänger noted, “Hey, I moved the student booth inside the cafeteria, just to get it out of the way, but everything looks alright, right?”

            “Everything looks great, Elena, so stop stressing,” Bonnie replied, looking around after a moment, “Hey, where’d Jeremy and Damon get off to now?”

            “Who do you think I had move the student booth?” Elena smirked, grabbing a box of prizes and indicating another for Bonnie to grab, “Take those down to the High Striker while I get these to the Ring Toss, okay?”

            “Should you be lifting that?” the green-eyed witch wondered, getting a chuckle in response.

            “Your Grams taught me a featherlight spell, so this ways practically nothing so long as all the prizes stay inside this box,” Elena said, “It’s the only way Damon agreed to take the student booth inside and leave me out here with just you. I told him that two witches with a tendency to set things on fire could handle themselves, but we are talking about my boyfriend after all.”

            Bonnie snickered in agreement, and the two set off with their respective boxes. Meanwhile, inside the school, Damon had decided that it was time for him to have what he considered to be an important conversation with his brother-in-law. Even before Katherine’s return and subsequent attack on John, though she had apologized even if Damon didn’t quite believe her, it had been something that he and Elena had been discussing and knew that they would need Jeremy’s cooperation to get it done.

            “How attached are you to your parents’ house?” Damon asked as they set up the student booth where Elena had told them to place it, and Jeremy raised an eyebrow.

            “What’d you mean by ‘attached’?” he asked, and the vampire shrugged.

            “I mean, like, are you planning on spending the rest of your life living in it?” he elaborated, and then it was the teenager’s turn to shrug.

            “Honestly, I hadn’t really thought about it,” Jeremy admitted, “I mean, for most of my life I assumed that Elena and I would split everything 50/50 when Mom and Dad died, and one of the two of us might move into it then, but then Mom and Dad died last year which just screwed everything up because I spent most of the year strung out and chasing after Vicki while Elena moped. Now, their will says that we’re still supposed to split everything, but Elena gets her shares in June when she turns eighteen. Until Christmas, I kinda just assumed that Elena would keep the house because she’s the oldest, but you guys have your own house and don’t really need it. Why are you asking me this?”

            “Perfectly honest, Elena and I think that the house should be signed over to either John or Jenna for real and not just as a trustee,” Damon explained, walking with the fifteen-year-old through the high school hallway as they made their way back outside to their girlfriends, “While we don’t think that Katherine plans on sneaking into the house to kill anybody now that she’s talked to Elijah and found out his plan, what she did on Friday and what Noah did back in December is enough of a reason to want ownership of the house changed. Every vampire who’s been invited inside from the time your parents took ownership of the house would have to be reinvited, me, Stefan, Isobel, and Caroline included, but it would make it harder for anyone we don’t know or trust to get in if we knew all of the vampires who had access to the house.”

            “Anna and I talked at the Miss Mystic pageant when she apologized to me for everything dealing with the tomb, and she told me that sometimes vampires will compel their way into people’s houses. How can we stop that?” Jeremy wondered, and Damon chuckled before holding up a black leather bracelet with a large, half-dollar sized medallion on it, “What’s that?”

            “This is a bracelet that your girlfriend and her grandmother oh so graciously made for you,” the vampire explained as he fastened it around the teenager’s wrist, “The medallion was steeped in liquified vervain, and the chord is enchanted to only let you, me, Bonnie, or Elena take it off you for any reason. They’ve got a little locket that they’ve done the same thing to for Jenna, and Ric had them put his ring in the pot with your medallion just to be safe. John wants that done with his new ring, one which he’s planning on talking to Sheila about once he’s out of the hospital, and will give you your dad’s ring once he’s got his.”

            “Does Elena still have vervain in her locket?” the teenager asked, but the vampire shook his head, “Why not?”

            “Witches can’t be compelled, so Elena took the vervain outta her locket a few days after she set Ben’s ass on fire for him and Anna not leaving you outta the tomb situation like they’d been told to do,” Damon said with a shrug, “She’s only still wearing the locket because it’s one my grandparents made for my mother to commemorate my birth and one that I had enchanted six ways to Sunday by Sheila’s mother back when I was planning on giving it to my niece, Zach’s aunt, because I was worried that Stefan’s time serving in World War II might’ve thrown him off the wagon.”

            “So, it’s sentimental but it also keeps Eva safe? I get it,” Jeremy chuckled, “Alright, so I see your point about the house, but which one should it be signed over to exactly?”

            “We haven’t asked either of them about it yet,” Damon told him, “Elena and I wanted you to be the first person we talked to because it’s just as much your house as it is hers. If you want my opinion on the matter, I think Jenna’s the better choice because she’s already living in the house whereas John lives mainly in Richmond and hasn’t shown any indication of wanting to move back to Mystic Falls anytime soon.”

            “That makes sense, but I did overhear Jenna and Ric talking about them getting a place together over the summer the other night. Apparently, the four of them have been talking about John and Isobel moving into the house to be closer to you, Elena, and the kids, and all of us being there would be kinda weird since I’m the only one not involved in their freaky love trapezoid or whatever it is at this point,” Jeremy replied, which was news to Damon if his wide-eyed expression was any indicator, “So, if they’re planning on doing that, then maybe Uncle John is the better option?”

            “I’ll have to tell Elena and see what she thinks, but just remember that you don’t have to feel completely powerless here either,” he told the teen, “Judges tend to start taking the minor’s opinion of where and who they wanna live with around age twelve, so you don’t have to live with John and Isobel if you’d rather stay with Ric and Jenna or vice versa.”

            “How do you know this stuff?” Jeremy asked, slightly in awe of his vampire brother-in-law.

            “It’s been about eighty years since I’ve actually practiced, but I did go to law school at one point,” Damon chuckled, “I keep up with case law just in case one of my various nieces or nephews needs help. If he hadn’t tried to kill me and wouldn’t have been above outing me as a vampire on the stand, I probably would’ve sued Joseph for custody of Zach’s dad and aunt back in the late 40s.”

            “You and Stefan have done so many cool things that I might almost wanna consider being a vampire,” Jeremy replied, shaking his head as they stepped out into the sunlight and made their way over to the midway area of the carnival, “but I don’t think Bonnie would be okay with it.”

            “Oh, I really don’t think Sabrina would be okay with that, kid,” Damon said, sighing as he heard the sounds of an argument involving his girlfriend a few yards ahead of them, “Okay, we need to move a little faster before your sister sets either Blair or Tina Fell on fire.”

            Increasing their pace to a light jog, the two arrived just in time to watch as Bonnie pulled Tina Fell back towards where Blair was standing a few feet away while Stefan steered Elena away from the gathering crowd as to not let anyone else see the orange embers dancing in her dark topaz eyes. Nodding to his brother, Damon opened his arms towards Elena and let her fall into him as he pressed a kiss to her hair before leading her over to the assemblance of picnic tables beside the entrance to the alley of food stalls. He’d heard what the blonde Fell cousin had said, but he’d also seen the smirk that the brunette one wore and knew that Blair must’ve played her own part as well.

            “Baby, calm down, please?” he spoke softly as he sat Elena and himself down at one of the tables, “The stress isn’t good for you or Eva, and there’s no real sense in letting whatever that jealous bitch said get under your skin when you and I know the truth, alright? You’re not a slut, Eva is most certainly mine, and I’ve been completely sure that you and I will be getting married since that first morning I woke up with you in my arms.”

            “Blair said that everyone who at least believes that Eva’s yours think that I got pregnant on purpose so you’d stick around and take care of the two of us,” Elena said quietly after taking a few moments to calm down, “I know it’s not true, everybody in the family knows that we really weren’t expecting this to happen, but do these people think so little of me that they’d actually believe that I would try to trap a man with a baby at seventeen when I was very clear about not wanting kids this soon when I was still with Matt? I’ve grown up here, lived here my whole life, and even one person in this town actually believing that I’d ever be after your money…I’m not gonna lie, baby, it hurts. How could anyone actually think that I’m just-just some gold-digging whore?”

            “Well, trust me, with the sheer number of lectures and snarky comments I’ve gotten from you over how much money I’ve spent on you, not counting anything meant for Eva and Landon or for the house, I know better than anyone that you’re not interested in me for my money. If anything, you’re clearly dating me for the homemade hot cocoa on demand and the amazing sex,” Damon said as she let slip a light giggle at his words, though he sighed as his phone went off alerting him to a new text message from Carol Lockwood, “What in the hell does she want?”

            “It’s probably nothing good, but you should go see what she needs before she tries going to the boarding house and finds Katherine and Caroline,” his girlfriend said, pressing a short kiss to his lips, “Stefan, Bonnie, and Jeremy will be here with me, so you go deal with the First Slut while I finish setting up my carnival because we have a date tonight that I’m not missing.”

            “Meet you on the midway at sundown?” he asked, a boyish grin tugging at his lips as they stood up from the table, and she nodded.

            “I love you,” she told him, smiling at the way he let his hand linger on her bump, “Be safe, watch your back, and remember that I’ll know if you do anything stupid.”

            “Like I could ever forget that,” he chuckled, kissing her one last time, “I love you, kitten, and I love our little princess. I’ll try to get back as quickly as I can, so please don’t let yourself get too stressed out while I’m gone.”

            Elena sighed as she watched him leave before returning to the midway where Stefan and Jeremy were placing the last of the boxes of prizes at their intended booths for the game operators to put them up where they were meant to hang. She had half a mind to tell Katherine what Blair and Tina had said, potentially even to tell Isobel, but she didn’t want the girls dying because of her and decided to shake the idea from her mind. Looking down at the clipboard that Bonnie handed her, she ran down the list of things to do and took a deep breath. They were already halfway done, but there was still more work for her to do if she wanted this to be the carnival of her dreams.

❌⭕❌⭕

            Arriving at the Lockwood home, Damon was quickly shown into the living room by a frantic Carol who wasted no time in demanding to know why the Gilbert device had affected Richard and Tyler the same way it had affected the vampires from the tomb. After repeating the same cover story he'd compelled one of the doctors to tell Carol two days earlier, Damon considered it a small miracle that he managed to get her to calm down without a compulsion, and he was sure that his dealings with Carol that day would end in either sympathy sex with Elena, laughter from Elena, or some combination of the two. Knowing that he had at least a 66% chance at getting laid, he steeled himself as best he could for whatever the First Lady of Mystic Falls had to throw his way and accepted the cup of tea she offered with a gracious smile.

            “So, I overheard at the hospital earlier that John Gilbert should be discharged in the morning,” she said, changing the subject, “I bet Elena must be happy about that.”

            “I think she would be if she took the time to think about it herself today, but she’s been much too busy with the carnival,” he replied, “I was there with her helping out until you asked to see me about the device, and I promised her that I’d be back soon so she wouldn’t overwork herself.”

            “Ah, yes, I can’t imagine that it’d be good for her or the baby,” Carol said smoothly, and Damon resisted the temptation to roll his eyes as he realized what her real angle was, “Speaking of the baby, does John know about it? That might be enough to send him back to the hospital with a heart attack!”

            “Actually, John was one of the first people we told about her,” Damon said, stressing the gender of his daughter, “He’s thrilled, just like we are, though we do all agree that we wish this could be something we were talking about in a year or so rather than right now. Still, despite all that, Elena and I are excited about becoming parents, and John and Isobel both say that they can’t get upset without being hypocrites. Eva’s not even born yet, but she’s already got so many people who love her. It’s incredible, really, and I’m already looking forward to getting to spend every day with my little girl once she’s here.”

            “I’ll admit, I was surprised when I read that you plan to be the stay-at-home parent while Elena goes to school,” she told him, and he was sure that this was the most genuine that Carol had ever been with him, so he wasn’t surprised when the other shoe dropped in the second half of her blatantly obvious backhanded compliment, “Most men of your age wouldn’t even think of doing that, and I was…well, I found it quite refreshing to see a man take such an interest in raising a child. Whether the child is his or not, it isn’t all that often a man willing to set aside his own goals and career to tend to the home.”

            “Carol, I know what you’re implying, and I’ve already had to keep Elena from clawing out Blair and Tina Fell’s eyes once today,” he said with a sigh, “Eva is a hundred percent mine, and Elena in no way intentionally got pregnant to force me to marry her. I know that, at least on the outside, our relationship looks very rushed, but Elena’s been my best friend for most of the damn near year that we’ve known one another and knows me better than anyone, my brother included, just as I do with her.”

            “A year?” Carol asked, confused, and Damon nodded as a melancholy smile made its way across his face, “I thought you only moved to town in September?”

            “Towards the end of last school year, both Stefan and I started getting burnt out on city life and wanted something quieter. Zach offered to let us come to Mystic Falls, see what we thought, and move here permanently if we liked it well enough, so we came into town for the weekend but spent it in the house because of rain. I came back a few weeks later while Stefan was at school finishing up his finals; since I’m his legal guardian, whatever I decided was what we were doing, and he’d already agreed to that much. When I got here, well, the town just felt like home; the only real issue was that Stefan and I felt uncomfortable overstaying our welcome with Zach because he wasn’t exactly looking forward to having roommates after living on his own for so long,” Damon said, spinning the tale that he and Elena had crafted to explain away the estate being rebuilt in such a short amount of time, “Zach helped me by getting the blueprints for the old Salvatore estate from the archives, and I took the plans to one of my usual contractors, flipping vacation rentals is really popular in the real estate market right now, to get the job started. Sadly, at least for Zach, he never got to see the finished product because of that accident out on the interstate back in October, but the whole project should be completed sometime early this summer. Anyway, right after work began, I was in town to sign off on some paperwork for Jake, my contractor, and was making the drive back to the boarding house when I decided to pull over, get outta my car, and just stare up at the stars for a while because you so rarely get to see them in the city. After a few minutes, I heard talking and looked up to see a girl walking down the side of the road with her cellphone up to her ear. Elena was talking to Bonnie about some fight she’d just had with Matt and was waiting on her parents to pick her up when she looked up and saw me. We were both surprised to see someone else standing out on the side of an otherwise deserted road, but we got to talking after a minute. She left when her parents got there to get her, and we didn’t even think of telling each other our last names let alone exchanging numbers before she got in the car, so I wasn’t entirely sure who Zach meant when he called to tell me that Grayson and Miranda Gilbert had been killed in a car accident and that their daughter, Elena, had been the only survivor. It wasn’t until she came by the boarding house in September, almost four months later, to return a book that Stefan had leant her that Elena or I realized who the other was, but everyone had started in on pressuring her to dating my brother to the point that we decided it’d be best to just be friends. Now, Stefan didn’t like that one bit because it was obvious to him that Elena would’ve made a different choice if she hadn’t been so worried about what everyone else thought at the time, and then the fight happened.”

            “The fight?” Carol wondered, getting a small nod from Damon, “Tyler mentioned something about Elena’s wreck in December happening after a fight between her and Stefan. Is that the fight you’re talking about now?”

            “Yeah, and it was…well, let’s just say that I’m glad that I wasn’t actually home for the fight itself. Stefan had apparently lied about being over an ex-girlfriend while still keeping her picture in his journal, and Elena had just had enough by then. She started to drive home, very angry and not at all thinking straight, and a deer leapt out in front of her. She swerved to avoid it, but she rolled her car in the process. Now, I was supposed to be on my way to Atlanta for a meeting with a new investment project, but I’d turned around because I realized that I’d forgotten to pack my phone charger and ended up coming upon the wreck. She was terrified, Carol, stuck upside down with a jammed seatbelt; I got her to calm down and put her hands on the roof before I cut through her seatbelt with a pocketknife, and I asked her what she was doing out there when the last thing I knew was that she was at my place with my brother. Elena told me about the fight, about the deer, and then she asked me to take her with me wherever I was going; she didn’t even know what my plans were, but she didn’t wanna be anywhere where Stefan could’ve found her and tried forcing her into ‘working things out’ in some lame attempt at salvaging their relationship because she wasn’t gonna keep going through the back-and-forth that they had been because he wouldn’t just be straight with her.” Damon admitted with a wry chuckle, still mildly upset with himself for not being more careful with the compulsion he’d placed on Elena that May night.

            “Teenage drama never really changes, does it?” Carol said with a chuckle of her own, “So, you took Elena with you to Atlanta?”

            “Yes and no,” he told her with a grin, “The meeting got cancelled about the time we reached the city, but Stefan had gotten the bright idea to try calling Elena to apologize. She wouldn’t talk to him and asked me to answer the phone, so I answered it on speaker just to see what he’d say when he thought she couldn’t hear him. He royally pissed her off by demanding I bring her back as if she was somehow his possession, and she told me she didn’t care where we went but that I was not to bring her back to Mystic Falls until Sunday evening. I took her shopping in Buckhead, it’s the ultrarich part of Atlanta if you weren’t too familiar with the area, and picked up a few things for myself since all I had in my bag were clothes for the meeting. We grabbed lunch before driving four more hours to Tybee Island where I have a beach house; it was nice, just getting to hang out with my best friend without anyone making snide remarks or rolling their eyes.”

            “And it allowed you to make your move, didn’t it?” Carol replied with a knowing expression, but Damon shook his head.

            “I actually didn’t even think about it,” he admitted, “Elena and I went to dinner and watched the island’s Christmas parade that night, and then we went back to the beach house and sat outside on the A-frame swing I have by the pool. We were just talking about how we needed to spend more time together, and she just looked at me and said that sitting beside me on that swing was the only place she wanted to be right then. I kissed her, light and gentle so as not to completely scare her off, and then she kissed me back. I let her call all the shots after that because I was terrified of losing her if I started moving to quickly or something, and it took me a good five minutes to accept that it hadn’t all been a dream when I woke up the next morning holding her in my arms. Based on both ours and Elena’s doctor’s estimations, Eva was conceived sometime that weekend.”

            “You really do love her, don’t you?” Carol smiled softly, and the vampire nodded without hesitation because there was no doubt as to his feelings for his girlfriend.

            “I do, and she somehow loves me in spite of how many times we’ve gotten into arguments over how many times she thinks I’ve gone overboard in spoiling her. I thought she was about to shove me into the marina when I rented out a yacht our first night at Disney World to take her on a dinner cruise across Seven Seas Lagoon, and she surprised me by actually being happy when I bought her a new car for Valentine’s Day a couple weeks ago,” Damon said, chuckling as Carol gaped in surprise, “Enough about me and my relationship, though, because I’m sure you’ve got an actual reason why you asked me to come over so urgently?”

            “Oh, um, yes, I do,” she said, taking a moment to collect herself before continuing, “Richard insists that he’s physically alright, but he wants to take a leave of absence for a few months and maybe see a specialist just to be sure that his lungs are clear. While he’s recuperating, I’ll be serving at interim mayor, so I’ll need someone to take over leading the Council until Richard’s back at work. I’d like for that person to be you, and, before you say anything as to you only having been here less than a year, the Fells are too busy with the historical society to take over…not to mention the in fighting over who would get the job…and Liz gets busy as sheriff and can’t possibly do both jobs. What do you say? Will you do this for me?”

            “Whatever you need, Carol, sure,” he said as he heard a door somewhere near the back of the house open and close, “The Founding Families have always considered it our duty to protect this town from…well…anyone who would seek to do harm…Is it safe to talk about this?”

            “What was that? Like seven?” he heard Tyler ask, and Mason chuckled before responding.

            “Six. I don’t count that last one. You basically crawled it!” the older Lockwood teased the younger, “I think Grandma Lockwood passed you in her walker.”

            “Grandma died, like, eight years ago,” Tyler replied questioningly, “You do remember leaving town right after your own mom’s funeral, right?”

            “Oh,” Carol said as she got up to close the living room doors, “That’s probably just Mason and Tyler back from their run. Tyler’s missed having his uncle around, but I can’t say the same for myself…Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. Mason’s a good man, though perhaps a little misguided sometimes.”

            “I meant my Grandma Lockwood, your great-grandmother, punk,” Mason told him, “That old broad’s still alive and kicking; she’s the one who made her husband take her name rather than take his and that’s now in the retirement home in Chesapeake.”

            “Oh, yeah, okay,” Tyler said with a short chuckle of his own, “Shoes off. My mom…the mud…yeah…”

            “Yeah, yeah, I know. I did live with your parents for a while, ya know,” Mason replied, the cedar bench in the hall creaking as he sat down, “So, this anger and aggression you said you’ve been feeling, you notice any difference when you exercise?”

            “Is he involved with the Council at all?” Damon asked, though he was sure he knew the answer based on how willing Mason had been to sleep with Katherine despite knowing what she was even before he triggered his curse according to what she’d told them of her time with the werewolf, “Richard only mentioned that they hadn’t spoken regularly in years, so I wasn’t really sure what the story was there.”

            “Dude, I play three varsity sports, work out four days a week, and run the other three,” Tyler scoffed, “I’m gonna say, ‘No.’”

            “Alright, well, explain to me what’s going on then. Do you have episodes? What happens exactly?” Mason asked, and Damon felt sure that he was trying to see if Tyler was showing the signs of untriggered lycanthropy.

            “Oh, Mason had no interest in it when he still lived here, though I think things might’ve been different if my in-laws had told him the truth when he turned eighteen…I know that sixteen is the usual age, but, starting with Mason’s age group, a lot of the Founding Families started thinking that it was better to not say anything unless it became absolutely necessary.” Carol admitted.

            “Starts out normal, but I can get angry over nothing. I’m an angry guy, I don’t know. I do know that it just amplifies, and then I just go off,” Tyler explained, “I got into a fight with Matt a few weeks ago at the Kick-Off party, and I know that I could’ve seriously hurt him if Mr. Saltzman hadn’t separated us. Hell, I know that the only reason I didn’t go after him, after Dad quit yelling at me to yell at Damon Salvatore, is because my friend Elena talked me down.”

            “Is Elena a friend or a friend? You know what, we can discuss that later, so let’s focus on your episodes first,” Mason replied, and Damon held back the growl that crept into his throat, “Do you black out at all?”

            “No offense, Carol, but that’s the worst idea anybody could’ve had,” Damon snorted, listening to Tyler and Mason as he spoke to Carol about the Founders Council and a possible expansion of their member roster, “Bill’s run off to Atlanta with his boyfriend and only sees Caroline when the court order says he’s supposed to, Grayson and Miranda are dead, Zach is dead, and Richard could’ve died on Friday; what would’ve happened if the Council would’ve been down that many members at one time? I should tell you that, because of my involvement, Stefan knows about all this, and Elena knows about it as well because she and I don’t keep secrets. I’d have to confirm with Liz, but I think she’s told Caroline now that Caroline’s spending most of her time with Stefan and is bound to hear something. If we want the Council to survive, we have to tell them when they’re old enough to understand…and adding in some new blood, like Alaric and Isobel who know their stuff and, at least in Ric’s case, make their own weapons, could also be a good option.”

            “Elena Gilbert is very much so just a friend. She’s actually Matt’s ex, so it would’ve been a real dick move on my part if I’d asked her out after they broke up, and she’s having a kid with Damon now, so we’re seriously just friends,” Tyler clarified for his uncle, having seen the familiar blue Camaro in the driveway when they’d returned from their run and knowing that Damon was in the house and could hear him, “As for blackouts, I mean, yeah, but I prefer redouts. It’s like I’m just blinded by rage, all I can see is red, then it’s over until the next time.”

            “Your friend’s pregnant, and the father is that guy your mom hasn’t shut up about since I got here? Whatever, I guess. So, is there a pattern with your episodes? You know, like, is this happening once a month, only at night, or something like that?” Mason asked, and Damon swallowed his smirk.

            “I don’t really know,” Tyler said, though Damon knew the kid was lying through his teeth since he’d known since the previous morning exactly what was going on with himself, “All I know is that I lose myself, ya know? For that time, I become something else, and I hate it.”

            “I see your point, and I’ll ask around about adding Alaric to the Council…and Isobel if she sticks around, I suppose, but Richard and I still don’t plan on telling Tyler anything about all this until next February if it can be avoided until then,” Carol said to him, “Mason…well, telling him at this point might be beyond anything we need to do, but I suppose we should if he takes up an interest in it or some other miracle. He’s more concerned about catching his next wave than civil service. More tea?”

            “Ah, no, but thank you,” Damon replied, smiling politely whilst eavesdropping on Tyler and Mason’s conversation in the other room, “I really do need to be getting back to Elena, helping with the carnival and all that.”

            “Oh, of course,” Carol agreed, rising with him as he stood up from the couch and reaching out to shake his hand, “I probably won’t make the carnival, what with having to get Richard home and settled tonight, but Mason and Tyler should be there.”

            Nodding, Damon paid his parting pleasantries as Carol followed him to the front door. Before he could leave, however, Tyler jogged up to him with a small wooden box in his hands. It took the vampire all of ten seconds to realize what the box contained, and Tyler’s subtle nod was all the confirmation he needed.

            “Hey, Damon, my dad told me to get this to you when I saw you next, so here you go,” the teen said as he handed over the box, “I guess I’ll see you and Elena at the carnival tonight?”

            “Yeah, we’ll be there,” the vampire said, pausing as his phone alerted him to a new text message from Isobel, one which made him smirk, “and it looks like Caroline will be there as well. She was apparently discharged last night, but there was some sort of paperwork screw-up that Liz has been dealing with this morning. Isobel’s got her calmed down now, so everything should be fine.”

            “I’ll text Matt and let him know. He’s manning a ticket booth tonight just to escape his mom’s fretting over his broken arm,” Tyler said with a relieved grin, “See you later, Damon.”

            Damon nodded and gave the teen a half-wave before leaving the house. As he went, he could feel a pair of eyes watching him and figured that it was Mason; the vampire assumed that the middle Lockwood werewolf knew what was in the little wooden box and was probably panicking now that he no longer had access to the moonstone. Smirking to himself, Damon got into his car and drove off to the boarding house after sending Caroline a quick text letting her know that he was on his way but needed Katherine to wait until he got there before she left.

            Pulling into the garage, Damon parked and vamped inside the boarding house with the little wooden box. Finding the two female vampires in the parlor, sitting by the fireplace with a bottle of vodka between them as they giggled about something that he really wasn’t sure he wanted to know, and he cleared his throat once to get their attention. Caroline blushed upon seeing him, embarrassed at being caught, but it was with a mere eyeroll and smirk that Katherine vamped over to the sidebar and set the vodka bottle beside his bourbon and Stefan’s scotch.

            “What’s so important that I had to stay until you got here?” she asked, and he held up the wooden box.

            “One moonstone, as requested,” he said, opening the box to reveal the milky white stone nestled inside the velvet interior, “Richard had Tyler give it to me when Carol called me over to discuss me taking over leadership of the Council for the next few months. Mason was there, though I only heard him rather than saw him, but I think he might’ve also followed me here.”

            “Why would he do that?” wondered Caroline, and Katherine and Damon shared a look, “What am I missing?”

            “She told him to get the stone for her,” Damon said, indicating Katherine with a nod as he continued, “so he’s probably scared shitless right now because his nephew just gave the moonstone away on his brother’s orders. Of course, none of the Lockwoods know that we’re all on the same team now, and Mason certainly doesn’t know that his beloved Kathy is already shacking up with her Original boyfriend.”

            “I don’t think that ‘boyfriend,’ is the right word,” Katherine said, holding up her left hand were a diamond ring sparkled in the light, “He asked me this morning before he left for Greece; it’s his way of promising me that he’s going to come home.”

            “Okay, congratulations, but be that as it may, you’re free to go,” Damon chuckled, shaking his head as Caroline giggled, “I’m gonna lock this up and then take Care Bear down to the carnival since she’s no longer on house arrest thanks to Isobel.”

            “Give me your phone,” Katherine demanded, and he sighed before handing the requested device over and watching as she tapped away for a few seconds, “Here, I sent myself a text from your phone so you now have my number. Let me know what Isobel and John decide, alright? Oh, and, while I know you might be hesitant to do this given the fact that she’s pregnant, you should know that Elena’s blood is strong enough to enhance all of your powers while it’s in your system. You were turned directly by doppelgänger blood, the same thing which turned the Originals a thousand years ago, and the power of our blood doesn’t diminish with time. If Mason does see Elena and completely freak out, you might need the boost.”

            Damon nodded, filing the information away for later, and Katherine vamped from the house moments later. Shaking his head in disbelief, Damon looked to Caroline only to find her staring back at him impatiently. Sighing, he led her out to his car, unable to fault her for her excitement at being allowed outside for the first time since turning. He could still remember what it was like to go out for the first time with a daywalking amulet, and Caroline’s eagerness to get back to her friends was adorable to him. As he drove the two of them back towards the high school, Damon felt certain that he had most definitely lucked out with his little sister.

Notes:

A/N: Oh, the drama! Don't worry, sweets, there's more where that came from, and Carnival Pt. 2 is on its way! Until next time...XOXO

Chapter 4: Trapped in a State of Imaginary Grace

Summary:

"Moving forwards, using all my breath/Making love to you was never second best/I saw the world thrashing all around your face/Never really knowing it was always mesh and lace..."
-"I Melt With You," by Modern English

Notes:

A/N: Alright, sweets, it's time for Carnival Pt. 2 and for Elijah's lament. After this chapter, things will be diverging from canon a bit more than usual, but this won't be for long. Enjoy!

            He was going to kill his little brother. Alright, even Elijah knew that he wasn’t about to go to such an extreme measure against Klaus no matter how angry he was at having to leave his home so early. It wasn’t even Klaus’ fault this time, not really, but that didn’t mean that Elijah was any less upset by the whole ordeal. Gregor, however, he still might kill because this was all most definitely that boy’s fault if it were anyone’s. Sure, he knew that Nadia held some affection for the lad in spite of knowing that he’d spent more than a century using her, but he felt certain that his daughter’s feelings were tenuous at best because she knew that her boyfriend had largely only began his relationship with her because the Travelers were looking for the doppelgängers as well. Sighing, Elijah leaned back in his seat as he settled into his thirteen-hours-long flight from Richmond, Virginia to Athens, Greece and thought wistfully of what he had been forced to leave behind…more specifically who.

❌⭕

            Elijah had been sitting at the kitchen island, a warm mug of AB- and the Friday morning newspaper in front of him, when he heard pacing on the front porch. His initial thoughts were that either Nadia had accidentally killed someone and needed his help covering it up, something which hadn’t happened in over a century that he could recall, or had otherwise managed to do something which he had pointedly told her not to as it would interfere with his master plan. Sighing to himself, he made his way to the door at a human pace as to make his daughter wait in agony for a few moments longer only to freeze upon opening the door and finding the last person he expected staring back at him.

            “Katerina,” he breathed out, amazed that she was there before him, “However did you find me?”

            “You already know the answer to that, my love,” she told him, her words tinged by a hoarse tone indicating that she had been crying, “I know what you’ve done, I’ve seen everything, and I can’t even begin to understand why you would do any of it after how I treated you, after all the things I said when we last saw one another…but you have no idea how much it means to me that you did.”

            “I-I-I’ve done quite a lot in five centuries, darling, so could you be any more specific?” he asked, still somewhat dazed by her sudden appearance.

            “You ensured that I got the moonstone because you knew your brother wouldn’t be able to break his curse without it and wouldn’t kill me if I didn’t tell him where it was; you covered my tracks for centuries so he would never get close enough to find me; and you raised my daughter, our daughter when you had no obligation towards her whatsoever but made sure that she knew why I couldn’t be with the two of you and that I would’ve done anything to be there if I could’ve been,” Katherine replied, her dark eyes pleading with him as he stepped out onto the porch, “Can you forgive me?”

            “Скъпа моя Катерина, аз ти простих преди петстотин години, докато стояхме в къщата на родителите ти, заобиколени от ужаса, който брат ми остави след себе си. Не си направил нищо лошо и никога не съм ти се сърдил,” he said, pulling her into his arms and speaking softly in her native tongue as she clung to him, “Обичам те, скъпа моя, винаги и завинаги.”

            “И аз те обичам, Илия, винаги и завинаги,” she breathed out, creating just enough space between them that she could see the relieved, teary smile he wore just as she pulled his face down to hers for their first kiss in five centuries, “Приключих с бягането. Аз съм точно там, където искам да бъда.”

❌⭕

            “Sir,” Elijah turned as a female flight attendant came up to him, pulling him from his thoughts, “can I get you anything to drink before takeoff?”

            “Scotch on the rocks,” he answered, smiling sadly down at the lock screen on his iPhone as he switched it into airplane mode, “This is about to be the most taxing three weeks of my life, and I fear my brother already knows it.”

            “I’ll have that drink right out to you then.” the flight attendant said with a soft, polite smile before disappearing down the aisle while Elijah thought back to when the picture had been taken.

❌⭕

            His lunch entirely forgotten about, Elijah could only describe himself as being totally and incandescently happy as he and Katherine cuddled together on the sofa in the living room as the late afternoon sun shone through the window above the gas fireplace and the French doors on either side, warming them as she listened to him detail his plan for keeping everyone alive whilst still breaking his brother’s curse. The only thing missing, as far as either of them was concerned in that moment, was their daughter who Elijah had told Katherine was out on an errand in the northern end of the state and wasn’t expected to be home until the following morning. Katherine was excited to finally meet her daughter, but they had agreed not to tell Nadia that Katherine was there so as to not distract their daughter from her mission. Elijah had seen vampires older than Nadia get sloppy when distracted, and he wasn’t about to put their family or his plan at risk even for this.

            “So, we use the Lockwoods to resurrect Ansel and then use Ansel to break the curse,” Katherine repeated once he’d told her the plan, shaking her head and grinning at him, “I’ve always known that you’re entirely mad, my love, but this might actually work!”

            “Of course, I would still like to speak with young Elena and make sure that she’s willing to go along wit-” Elijah paused as he noticed the slight frown that crept across his beloved’s face, “What is it? I wouldn’t let her die, I promise.”

            “It isn’t that, and I know you wouldn’t,” she told him, getting up and vamping into the kitchen before returning with the newspaper and turning to page four where Damon and Elena’s bold pink pregnancy announcement stood out against the black-and-white of the page, “I’m just worried as to how the magic might affect her baby.”

            “Dear God, how did I not know about this?” he exclaimed, blinking in astonishment as he read the second half of Caroline’s article, “To my best knowledge, both Elena and her daughter should be safe. The amount of blood required by both spells is minimal, but I’m afraid that I must reevaluate parts of my plan now that I know of this.”

            “You have to go see your witch,” Katherine realized, getting a small nod from him, “It’s alright; go if you need to, and I’ll see what I can find out about whether either of the older or younger of the Lockwood men currently in town has triggered his curse while you’re gone.”

            “Be careful, my darling?” Elijah said, gently cupping her face, getting a soft smile and nod from her, “I promise to be back as soon as I can, and I will tell you the moment I know if anything changes as to the plan.”

            With one final kiss between them, the couple left the house and went their separate ways. Contacting Greta, the witch currently under his employ, he hurried off to determine whether Elena’s child would change his plans. Katherine, knowing that they should always have a backup plan in case of emergencies, went to the hospital to check in on the Lockwoods. A few short hours later, they had regrouped and decided on turning Caroline Forbes a few months earlier than she would’ve elected to turn on her own.

            Elijah could tell that Katherine hadn’t been entirely sold on his decision to turn Caroline, or rather to have her turn Caroline, but she had agreed that it was necessary upon their return home. It was with her reaffirmation of her trust in him that five-hundred years’ worth of emotion broke through every dam that either of them had ever put in place, and the two fell into bed where they spent hours sharing blood just as much as they made love. Waking Saturday morning with Katherine slumbering contentedly by his side, her dark curls fanned out on the pillow beneath her head, he pressed a kiss to her hair before carefully extracting himself from their bed and making his way into their bathroom for a shower. Ten minutes later, as he started the coffee pot, his cellphone rang. Seeing that it was Nadia, he answered immediately, excited to tell her of the surprise he had waiting for her upon her return home.

            “I’m so glad you called, little one,” he said by way of greeting, “I have news which I think you’ll like.”

            “Dad, whatever it is, it’ll have to wait,” she replied, and his heart sank, “Gregor called and wants me to meet him in New York; since he missed Valentine’s Day, he wants to make it up to me. I think we both know what happens if I don’t go.”

            “Of course, you’re quite right, my dear,” he said, knowing that he would be forced to leave as well, “How long do you expect to be gone?”

            “I’ll probably be back before Easter, but not before St. Patrick’s Day,” Nadia said glumly, “Three weeks, perhaps? I really wanted to be home when Mom got there, but I can’t risk Gregor getting to her or Elena.”

            “You’re quite right, Nadia, and I will go to Greece to ensure that your uncle doesn’t walk into any Traveler traps,” he agreed, glancing up as Katherine entered the room with an expression of pure heartbreak on her face, “I shall see you at Easter.”

            “I’ll see you in a few weeks, Dad,” Nadia said as she ended the call, “I love you, always and forever.”

            “I love you, too, little one,” Elijah said before placing his phone on the counter and opening his arms to Katherine who wasted no time at all in rushing into his embrace, “Always and forever.”

            “I can’t go with you,” she told him, which he already knew, but he nodded nonetheless, “I’ll stay here and keep an eye on things until you get back…You will be coming home, won’t you?”

            “My darling Katerina, there is no place on this Earth that I would rather be once I assure that my brother isn’t setting us all up for disaster,” he said, pressing a light kiss to her lips as a lightbulb went off above his head in the metaphorical sense, “Give me a moment, just a moment, and I shall prove my intentions to you.”

            “What are you doing?” Katherine asked with a soft giggle as she watched him vamp into his study, head tilting curiously as she listened to what sounded like Elijah unlocking a safe before he vamped back into the kitchen and knelt before her whilst holding a black velvet box containing a solitaire diamond ring with smaller round-cut diamonds trailing down the sides of the band with a little fleur-de-lis containing a diamond in each of its petals on either side of the main solitaire, “Боже мой!”

            “Katerina Petrova, I have never loved another woman in five centuries the way that I love you, and I will always return home to you because you are the other half of my very soul. I’ve put off asking you this for long enough, especially if you ask our daughter, so I ask you now: will you marry me?” Katherine felt the happy tears spring to her eyes as she nodded emphatically, unable to form any vocal response until he placed the ring on her left-hand ring-finger.

            “Come home safe,” she told him, a radiant smile on her face, “and then we can start thinking of potential wedding dates.”

❌⭕

            They’d taken the picture that was now the background and lock screen of his phone moments later; it had been her idea, naturally, to take the photo of the two of them sharing a soft kiss in their kitchen so that he would have proof that it hadn’t all been some fever dream or that she would be gone again when he returned from Greece, and he couldn’t wait for the next three weeks to be over and done with so that he could go home. With as well as he knew her, Elijah felt quite strongly that Katherine would want an April wedding, close to the date on which they had first met, and he had every intention of giving his beloved whatever she wanted. After five centuries apart, there would never be another point in their lives when he wouldn’t seek to prioritize Katherine’s happiness so long as he had his way, his brother be damned.

❌⭕❌⭕

            Back in Mystic Falls that night, the carnival was in full swing. Having Caroline back took a little more of the workload off Elena, and the fledgling vampire was proving quick that her formerly controlling and perfectionist nature as a human had manifested itself in her control over her bloodlust. After restocking the midway booths with more prizes and sending Jeremy to show Carter, one of the carnival workers, where the busted speaker in the karaoke room was after the man kept flirting with Bonnie despite her disinterest, the group had gathered to watch Tyler as he participated in an arm wrestling match. The girls and Jeremy were there to support their friend, but Stefan and Damon were both curious as to see how much ability an untriggered werewolf had.

            “Kid’s got strength.” Damon noted as Tyler beat yet another competitor, but Stefan merely snorted off to his left.

            “He’s a triple-letter varsity athlete,” Stefan replied, “Of course, he’s got strength. His hearing’s basic, but that’s to be expected.”

            “He’s got some semblance of a healing factor,” Caroline added, “Matt’s arm is broken, and I nearly died, but both of the other two people in the car are just fine, and one of them is a vampire while the other is an untriggered werewolf, so what’s that say?”

            “Oh, look, there’s Mason!” whispered Elena excitedly, all eyes turning to see Tyler’s uncle step up to be his next challenger.

            “Well, here’s our first chance to see a werewolf in action,” Jeremy murmured, “How long you give Ty before he loses?”

            “Five,” Bonnie said, getting strange looks from her friends before continuing, “Four. Three. Two. One.”

            As Bonnie finished her countdown, Tyler’s arm hit the table. Victorious, the older Lockwood chuckled and clapped his nephew on the shoulder. Werewolves were strong, there was no denying it for any of the observers who knew the truth about the Lockwood men, but all six of them wondered how that strength compared to that of a vampire.

            “Okay, okay, he’s the champ,” Tyler laughed, turning to the crowd, “Who’s got next?”

            “I’ll go,” Stefan called out, shrugging as he shared a look with his brother, “and Damon’s after me no matter who wins.”

            “You already know I’ll beat you,” Damon chuckled, which was true as Stefan was well aware that his brother was significantly stronger than him due to both his age and diet, “but, sure, you’re on, little brother. Let’s see if you even make it that far!”

            Stefan went over to where Mason waited, and the five watched with bated breath as the match got underway. Stefan put up far more resistance than Tyler, but he too fell to Mason’s strength and turned towards Damon with a knowing look. Nodding, the older Salvatore moved Caroline and Jeremy so close to Elena that they were practically in front of her before he walked over to take his little brother’s place. He couldn’t risk Mason seeing Elena, mistaking her for Katherine and letting his rage take over if only because he couldn’t risk the werewolf accidentally harming Eva.

            “Your brother’s not bad,” said Mason as they got into position for the match, “He’s not as strong as I am, but that’s not all that surprising.”

            “No,” Damon replied, smirking as the match began, “It’s really not.”

            If Mason had even an inkling as to what Damon and Stefan were, he didn’t show it as he tried forcing Damon’s arm onto the table. The vampire put his full strength into the match, smirk still in place, and pinned the werewolf’s arm back until Mason’s skin made contact with the tabletop. Letting go of Mason’s hand, Damon shrugged as the man stared at him confusedly. Cheers of shock and awe broke out around the room, and Damon beamed as he felt the familiar weight of his girlfriend press into his side. Looking down, the vampire smiled into the kiss that the doppelgänger pulled him into and gently placed his hand over her bump.

            “C’mon,” she said with a light laugh, “You’ve had your fun, and now it’s funnel cake time.”

            “Alright,” he grinned, turning to the waiting crowd, “Sorry, folks, but you heard the lady. Whoever’s next gets to challenge Mason because I’ve gotta go buy a funnel cake for my girls.”

            Soft laughter echoed through the room, and Damon chanced a glance over his shoulder as he and Elena neared the door. Staring at the young brunette with something between betrayal and rage shining in his eyes, Mason had definitely noticed how much Elena resembled his missing girlfriend. Rolling his eyes at the werewolf, Damon pulled Elena close and pressed a kiss to the top of her head as the chatter of the crowd faded into the cacophony of sounds coming from the larger crowds outside the school. He completely put Mason out of his mind until he and Elena were seated at one of the picnic tables with two funnel cakes in front of them because Elena hadn’t been able to choose between her preferred strawberry shortcake and the spiced caramel apple flavor that had caught her eye.

            “So, when are you gonna tell Stefan that you totally cheated to win that match?” she asked him with a giggle, thinking about the reassuring kisses that had turned into blood-sharing for them in Alaric’s classroom earlier that afternoon, and he smirked at her as he plucked one of the thinly sliced strawberries from atop her funnel cake.

            “Eh, I’ll tell him tomorrow,” he said, snickering as she mock-glared at him for stealing the red fruit, “He’d probably get way too concerned about whether I should even be feeding on you at all given Eva’s already drawing more blood from you than she’s putting out thanks to my genetics.”

            “It was my idea, and he really doesn’t wanna piss me off, so I think we’ll be fine,” she told him, “It’s good to know that my blood’s capable of something helpful and not just breaking hybrid’s curses or creating vampires.”

            “Your blood is good for more than that, kitten,” Damon said, this time taking an apple from the second funnel cake, “Your blood is keeping our daughter alive; your blood is keeping me from ever even being capable of turning off my humanity. Your love, however, is what keeps me from wanting to, and we both know that dealing with people like Carol never makes that easy. I love you.”

            “I love you, too, baby,” Elena replied, giggling again after a moment as a thought struck her, “I still can’t get over the fact that she asked you to take over the Council; isn’t that the definition of situational irony, creating a Founders Council to stop vampires and then putting a vampire in charge of it?”

            “Well, she had to do something after she implied that Eva’s not mine,” Damon said with a snort, “Don’t worry, I set her straight before I left. I think we know where Blair and Tina’s rumors got their start, though, and I say we just sick Ruth on them again.”

            “We could,” Elena replied, smirking fondly at him, “or we could just wait until Eva’s born so everyone can see how she looks just like her daddy? Trust me, there will be no denying that she’s yours once she’s born; everything from her hair to her eyes to her smile is all you, baby.”

            Falling into a contented silence, the couple ultimately wound up sharing both funnel cakes before taking a stroll down the midway. They stopped at the High Striker where, even holding back most of his strength, Damon still made the weight hit the bell at the top with a single swing of the hammer. Elena clung proudly to her oversized teddy bear as they walked down to the Ring Toss booth where the vampire proceeded to win an equally large stuffed dog for his girlfriend. She wasn’t technically keeping either prize, they’d already agreed that one would go in each of their two eldest kid’s nurseries once the renovations on the house were complete. It all felt so much like a normal date between two normal people that the pair of them had a brief moment where they weren’t supernatural beings with immense power and were just a young couple out at the local carnival. Then, always Elena’s least favorite part, reality came knocking in the form of Jeremy running up to them as Damon debated whether he wanted to play the Milk Bottle Knockdown game.

            “We’ve got a problem!” the teenager said, breathing heavily as he came to a stop in front of his sister and brother-in-law, “It’s a big problem.”

            “What happened?” they asked as one, and Jeremy took a deep breath before explaining as quickly and as quietly as he could manage.

            “Tyler’s uncle got pissed after you guys left the cafeteria; he threw his next match and went out into the hall, and Tyler went after him. They got into an argument, and Carter, that carnie I took to fix the karaoke speaker earlier, tried to break it up before they did any real damage. Carter got bloodied up pretty bad, and Tyler saw Mason’s eyes turn a golden-yellow, like Ric and Isobel said that werewolves’ eyes do when they’re angry. Tyler and Mason left, but Stefan, Caroline, Bonnie, and me came into the hall before Carter could clean himself up, and Caroline couldn’t stop herself. She’s a mess, crying and completely sick with herself, so Stefan took her home. Bonnie and I weren’t sure what to do next.” Jeremy told them, and the couple sighed.

            “We need to see the body to determine how we handle it,” Damon explained quietly, steering the Gilbert siblings towards the school building, “Elena, you don’t have to go with me to the body. I can always send Bonnie to you, and you ladies can act as lookouts if you’d prefer?”

            “I’ll see it because you’ll see it,” Elena reminded him as they stepped into the hallway, “Let’s just get this over with before someone else sees it and panics.”

            Making their way over to where Bonnie stood beside the unmoving body of Carter, the trio frowned at the bloodied mass of flesh. Elena wasn’t sure that she’d ever get used to the sight of dead bodies, but she was oddly relieved that Carter had been beaten so badly that the two pinprick marks Caroline had left were almost lost amongst his other injuries. Damon appeared to agree and glanced around at the ceiling and space above the lockers to confirm that there were no cameras in the hall before nodding to Bonnie who knelt beside the body.

            “What’s she doing?” Jeremy asked his sister, watching as his girlfriend waived her hand over the bitemarks.

            “Bonnie’s casting a glamour,” Elena explained quietly, “She’s masking the bitemarks so only the wounds from the beating are visible. The less vampire attacks we have on record right now, the better. Plus…it gives us leverage.”

            “Leverage?” her brother wondered, getting nods in response.

            “Tomorrow night’s the full moon,” Damon told him, dialing Liz’s number as he spoke, “If this doesn’t get reported to the Lockwoods as a vamp attack, then Mason has to spend roughly twelve hours wondering if he forced his nephew into triggering his curse. If he suspects something about me, which I think he might after I beat him in that arm wrestling match, then he’ll come looking for me in order to confront me. Plus, this happened because he assumed that Elena’s Katherine and got pissed that she kissed me.”

            “That’s what caused Mason to lose his shit?” Bonnie scoffed, shaking her head as she rejoined her best friend and boyfriend while the vampire spoke to the sheriff, “You think Carol would’ve made sure he knew about Eva by now!”

            “Actually, she and Tanith Fell are apparently where Blair and Tina got the idea that Eva’s not even Damon’s,” bit out Elena, still angry over the mere notion of her not being faithful to Damon being suggested, “He set her straight when she invited him over to ask him to take over leading the Council while she serves as interim mayor while Richard’s on sabbatical…and that’s totally a cover for him adjusting to being a werewolf.”

            “Okay, so Liz is on her way,” Damon said as he pocketed his phone and tossed Jeremy his keys, “Jer, take Elena out to my car, would you?”

            “I’m not leaving,” Elena said firmly, taking the keys from her brother, “This is my carnival, and I’m not leaving now. Jer, you and Bonnie go wait at the doors for Aunt Liz; make sure that no one tries to come inside until she gets here, alright?”

            Jeremy and Bonnie each gave a nod before walking down the hall away from the body. Turning to Damon, Elena handed him back his keys. She knew that he wanted to keep her out of as much Council business as possible before her birthday, they’d discussed it before, but this incident was personal. As much as they wanted to be able to work with Mason, the werewolf had very nearly caused his nephew to trigger his curse, had unintentionally caused Caroline to make her first kill as a vampire, all because he just assumed that she, Elena, was Katherine without ever talking to her. She didn’t blame Katherine or Damon for Mason’s actions, the werewolf was an adult who should’ve had the sense to at least try confronting her in private if he thought she was Katherine rather than lashing out at poor Carter and Tyler, and it was clear that Damon understood as much as he wrapped her in his arms and pressed a kiss to her hair. Breathing in the scent of his cologne, she took a moment to calm herself down knowing that the increase to her blood pressure wouldn’t be good for Eva or for her chances of not burning down her school. She only hoped that Stefan was having some luck convincing Caroline that Carter’s death wasn’t her fault.

❌⭕

            Back at the boarding house, Caroline had finished off the bottle of vodka that she and Katherine had started on earlier in the day. It didn’t as much as get her tipsy, and she wasn’t sure if that was a good thing. Stefan was on the sofa beside her, but they hadn’t said a word to one another since he’d initially gotten her calm back at the school. Sitting there, the silence was becoming unbearable for the first time in their relationship, and the blonde sighed.

            “I know you said that I’m not a monster for what I did, but why doesn’t it feel that way to me?” she asked, and he smiled sadly at her as he pulled her against his side before pressing a kiss to her hair and setting the empty vodka bottle on the coffee table.

            “Angel, it’s because you’re a good person,” he told her, shuddering as some of his Ripper days flooded his memory, “Trust me, if anyone’s gonna know what it’s like to be a monster in this mess of a family, it’s me. You didn’t want to kill Carter, but you’re still so young, so new to this life that your instincts overpowered your control for a moment too long. Until you turn into Ripper me, killing for the fun of it, you’re never gonna be a monster.”

            “Is there a way to keep me from losing the ability to care?” she asked, and he nodded.

            “We can’t do it right now, there’s no telling if Damon and Elena are coming here tonight or if they’re going back to her place, and I really don’t think either of us wants Liz overhearing, but we can make it to where you never have to worry about that.” Stefan said, picturing as sanitized a version of what they’d have to do as he could, and she smiled smally.

            “Stefan Antonio Salvatore, it’s not nice to tease a lady like that!” Caroline giggled, and he merely shrugged and offered her a smirk.

            “Why don’t we get changed and head back to the carnival?” he replied, “Damon says your mom’s already cleared the scene, and Bonnie’s glamour spell covered the bitemarks, so it’s all being chalked up to a drunken brawl that got outta hand. Liz knows the truth, and she doesn’t blame you either…I think she might be gunning for Mason Lockwood considering it’s almost entirely his fault for assuming that Elena was Katherine…Anyway, why don’t we go back and finish out the night the way we planned? I can ask Damon where he and Elena are staying tonight, and then we can decide if we’re locking your humanity in the ON position tonight or tomorrow night, okay?”

            “Okay, but I’m still mad,” she agreed, frowning down at her bloodstained top, “This is one of my favorite shirts.”

            “I’ll ask Damon if he can get the stains out,” Stefan told her, pausing as she looked at him strangely before explaining himself, “Even before we turned, Damon had become a bit of an expert at getting blood out of clothes. I, uh, wasn’t the most coordinated child and got picked on by the neighborhood bully a lot as a kid. I mean, Damon broke my nose the first time he tried teaching me how to throw a punch because I ducked way too late. If Katherine turning me hadn’t cured that, well, you’d be dating a rather clumsy idiot, angel.”

            “You’re adorable, and I’d still love you even if you were the clumsiest vampire on the planet,” Caroline said with an adoring grin, “Thank you for giving me yet another reason to fall even more in love with you today than yesterday; I can’t wait to see what you do tomorrow.”

            After pressing a soft kiss to his lips, Caroline vamped upstairs to hers and Stefan’s room to find a change of clothes. Stefan followed soon after, but he paused as he caught sight of his girlfriend standing in the middle of their room wearing only a clean pair of jeans, socks, underwear with a lace trim, and a matching bra. This wasn’t what caused him to stop in his tracks, as he was used to the sight though always fond of it. No, it was the thin line of green ink peeking out from under the left cup of her bra that had his attention. He knew about the star on her foot, body ink was something that the two of them had always had in common even before they’d started dating, but this was new.

            “Did you get a new tattoo?” he asked, a mischievous smirk tugging at his lips as she jumped, surprised by his presence.

            “I got it last week, and you have no idea how hard it was to block you out the whole time it was being done,” she answered, smiling as she turned towards him and lifted her bra away from her skin enough to reveal the long-stemmed red rose cupping her breast, “Damon’s blood made it heal faster, and then I turned, so it doesn’t even sting anymore. Like it? I got the idea from yours, but it’s near my heart just like you always will be.”

            “Woman, you give me another reason to love you every day, and I can’t wait to see what you come up with next,” he chuckled, pulling her in for a soft kiss as she readjusted her bra, “I love it so much, and now I’m thinking I should get another one myself, one to represent you.”

            Caroline kissed him back, and he could tell exactly how much she liked the idea of herself as the inspiration for his next tattoo. As they parted, both of them hoped that Damon and Elena were planning on going back to Maple Street that night. They weren’t sure how much longer they could wait, both to share blood and to have sex for the first time since the blonde’s turning, but both felt entirely certain that they didn’t want to wait any longer than was absolutely necessary.

❌⭕

            Elena was supervising the booths inside the school being packed away when Damon appeared at her side holding a medium sized plush dolphin. He’d taken the stuffed puppy and teddy bear he had won earlier to the car, but the dolphin was new. She raised an eyebrow at him, but he merely smiled and pressed it into her arms before dropping a kiss onto her hair. Leaning into his side, she smiled down at the little plush toy and sighed.

            “You didn’t really think I wasn’t gonna win a prize for you, too, did you, kitten?” he asked her, and she tilted her face up to press her lips to his for a quick kiss, “I know how much you love dolphins, especially pink ones, so I couldn’t pass up the opportunity when I saw this little guy at the Milk Bottle Knockdown.”

            “Not even once,” she admitted, “Thank you, baby, for everything. Today’s been…crazy is an understatement, and I know that I’ve only been a small part of it for once. I know that it’s nowhere near official yet, we still have five months before it’d even be legal, but you’re the most amazing husband in the world.”

            “I try, but it probably helps that you’re the best wife in the whole damn universe,” he replied, his right hand linking with her left atop her bump, “and you’re gonna be the best mama too.”

            “C’mon,” Elena said after a few moments passed in silence, giggling as she pulled him out of the building, “They’re basically done in here, and there’s something I’ve been dying to do all night that we haven’t done yet!”

            Damon smiled amusedly as Elena guided him through the carnival over to where a majority of the rides were set up, wondering what she was so excited to do. When they came to a stop outside what looked to be the least popular ride in the whole carnival, he raised an eyebrow for merely a moment. Then, his eyes caught on the ride’s name: Ye Old Mill. It was one of the few brands of the old Tunnel of Love that were still as they had been at the turn of the century, and there was very little about the ride that was truly romantic in any modern sense. He could recall couples who used the ride as a means of sharing physical contact while on what were supposed to be chaperoned dates, and he himself had used it as a means for feeding more than once, but most early versions of the ride were just sparsely interspersed scenes of mythical creatures along dark tunnels that just seemed so endless to the average amusement park goer. He knew for a fact that there were less than a hundred still in operation and wondered just how hard it had to have been for the Mystic Falls carnival to get ahold of the one his girlfriend was steering him towards.

            “You have no idea how difficult it was to find one of these damn things to rent for today,” Elena said as she led him over to the start of the queue, “but I know how much you liked these when they were first around and knew I needed to get one.”

            Nodding along in astonishment, Damon followed Elena onto the ride and let out a contented sigh as she cuddled into his side once they were seated in the little red boat. What characters were featured on the ride’s walls, he couldn’t tell you, and even with his enhanced sight giving him excellent night vision, the only thing he could see in the darkness of the tunnels was Elena’s sated smile as she rested her head against his shoulder. For all Katherine had called them sexually insatiable, Damon and Elena were both perfectly content to just spend six-and-a-half minutes cuddling together in a tiny boat in near-total darkness. Yes, they both enjoyed sex immensely, especially with each other, but sometimes there wasn’t a substitute for genuine intimacy. For nearly seven minutes, Damon held Elena in his arms and allowed himself to enjoy the moment. He sighed as he breathed in the smell of her apple scented shampoo, a smell which had become such an integral part of his daily routine that he hardly knew what he’d do if he didn’t wake up each morning with apples being the very first scent he became aware of before being quickly followed by the Chanel perfume and bodywash that she had used every day since their first night on Tybee Island nearly three months previous. Briefly, as they pulled into the unloading dock, he wondered if this was something she felt, too, or if he was just being strange due to having the enhanced senses of a vampire.

            “It’s not just you,” Elena said with a soft smile as they walked towards the end of the lane where the large Ferris wheel loomed overhead, the darkened figures of Stefan and Caroline at the top of the ride not going unnoticed by the couple as they leaned into one another, “We’ve really only been apart once overnight since we started dating, the night you had to go on your blood bank raid with Isobel, and I spent that night wearing one of your shirts and snuggling to your pillow because I couldn’t fall asleep without you there. Being able to smell your scent, it helped.”

            “Speaking of falling asleep,” Damon replied as Elena tried and failed at hiding a yawn, “are you about ready to head home? The food stalls are all shuttered, the rides are being switched off as we speak, and I can hear Ric and Jenna making sure the school’s locked up until Monday morning. You’re done queening for the day, and I think we both need some rest after the way everything’s gone down the last few days. What’d you say, your place or mine?”

            “We’ll go to my house tonight, leave the boarding house for Stef and Care,” she told him, smiling knowingly up at the top of the Ferris wheel as they passed it on their way to the car, “You two are such complete saps, but I think that’s a good thing.”

Notes:

A/N: Fun fact, sweets, my own local county fair/carnival rolls into town the week of my birthday each year and has always been one of my favorite things to do at that time of year. It's probably for the best that none of my carnivals have ever been like this one, though, and I think you'll all agree. Until next time...XOXO

Chapter 5: She's on a Road, and It's All Uphill

Summary:

"She's a wild one,/With an angel's face,/She's a woman child in a state of grace,/When she was three years old on her daddy's knee,/He said you can be anything you want to be,/She's a wild one,/Runnin' free..."
-"Wild One," by Faith Hill

Notes:

A/N: Sweets, it's alright, I'm still alive! LOL, I know, it's been far too long since I've updated this story, but I'm here to tell you now that I've been hard at work putting this next bit together for you all! It's time for Elena to meet the Fleming family, my sweets, and for Damon to have another chance to see how parents are supposed to behave towards their children. Enjoy!

            Sunday morning, Damon and Elena drove over to Mystic Falls Hospital to pick up John and Isobel; while her mother had insisted that she was more than capable of driving them home, Elena just wanted to be sure that her parents would make it back to the Gilbert house in one piece and insisted upon them letting Damon drive. Entering John’s hospital room, Elena immediately sighed in frustration as she saw her mother arguing with her father over the latter’s reluctance to accept help in getting dressed. He hadn’t been healed yet, his discharge papers had been mildly compelled into being, but Elena knew that her stubbornness hadn’t come solely from Isobel’s side of her family.

            “Daddy!” she exclaimed, getting John’s attention, “You’re still hurt, and you’re gonna tear your stitches open if you don’t let Mama help!”

            “I thought I was just delirious the other night,” John said, awestruck by his new title but feeling duly chided all the same, “I’m sorry for worrying you, honey.”

            “Arms back,” Isobel told him, sliding his jacket onto his shoulders as he did as told, “See, now was that so hard?”

            “Why aren’t you surprised?” John asked her, and she merely smiled fondly over at their daughter.

            “I got over it after the fifth or sixth time she called me, ‘Mama,’ after they first got here the night you were admitted,” she said, “Damon had to do presswork for you, for the Lockwoods, for Liz and Caroline, and for Stefan and himself in addition to calming Kelly down before Matt let his broken arm speak for him by lashing out at his mother when she tried showing concern, so Elena and I had a lot of time at your bedside where it was just the two of us.”

            “What’s all happened while I’ve been in here?” John asked, having not seen Friday’s paper and having spent much of his hospital stay severely drugged, “Is everyone else okay?”

            “Why don’t we continue this discussion in the car?” Damon suggested, “We don’t need every gossipy nurse on the floor knowing our business, do we?”

            John agreed, and the four of them finished gathering his and Isobel’s things before making their way out to the parking lot. Isobel held onto John’s paperwork as they got into the backseat of Elena’s Kia Sorrento, and she was only mildly surprised that her daughter had gotten Damon to drive John’s car that Isobel had used to go to Richmond to pack their overnight bags back to the Gilbert house the previous night. As Damon pulled out of the hospital parking lot, John once again asked for an update. He knew from what Isobel had already told him that the Lockwood men had been just as affected by the device as any vampire and that Tyler had inadvertently caused a wreck that injured Caroline and Matt and would’ve injured Stefan if he hadn’t had his healing factor, so Damon skipped straight to the more pressing, unpublished issues.

            “Well, we have a copy of Friday’s paper at home that you can look over to familiarize yourself with all the necessary cover stories, but Richard Lockwood orchestrating the roundup Thursday was enough for him to be responsible for the deaths of every vampire that was caught. He’s triggered his curse, and his brother’s come up from Florida to help him adjust. I met with Carol yesterday and found out that Richard’s taking a sabbatical for the next few months while she serves as interim mayor, but she doesn’t know about the whole werewolf thing and thinks that her husband’s going for specialized treatment to ensure proper lung function since he was being treated for smoke inhalation at the hospital. While I was there finding out about all this, Tyler gave me the moonstone, and it’s locked in one of the safes at the boarding house,” Damon began, “Mason Lockwood is suspicious as hell of me because I was the only one he couldn’t beat in an arm-wrestling match yesterday at the carnival, including Stefan, and he threw a damn tantrum after he saw Elena kiss me and assumed that she was Katherine who, as Isobel suggested a few weeks back, was the one to orchestrate him triggering his curse. I might as well also add that she’s still in town but isn’t a threat anymore.”

            “The woman stabbed me in the stomach and cut off my finger!” John exclaimed, and Elena sighed.

            “She says she had a reason for it, and she actually came by the boarding house to apologize to us on Friday,” she told her father, “Damon sent her off to find Elijah, and she’s been brought in on his plans. Unfortunately, Elijah had to leave for Greece because he’s worried that Klaus is about to walk into a trap set by the Travelers since apparently he and Nadia both know that Nadia’s boyfriend has been using her to try finding Katherine, me, and Stefan for who knows how long. Friday night, after Katherine found out from Bonnie and Jeremy while posing as me that Damon had given some blood to Caroline, she and Elijah went to the hospital and turned Care…which, really, none of us were all that surprised by in the end. Caroline’s adjusting fine, she has her daylight ring already, and the only issue she’s had was last night when Mason’s tantrum turned into him beating one of the carnies, Carter, to a bloody pulp. When she smelled the blood, Caroline’s instincts overrode her control because of her age, and she finished the poor guy off, but Stefan got her home and calmed her down, and she’s so upset with what she did that she’s vowed to never take another human life again. Her main food source will be blood bags because Stefan says that she doesn’t really care for his diet. As for Katherine herself, she’s supposed to be sticking around to make sure that Elijah’s plans don’t get thrown into flux, but we need your help for her to do that.”

            “Why do you need our help?” John wondered, but Isobel sighed as she realized what Elena meant and caused him to realize the answer as well, “Oh, yeah, that does require us going along with the idea, doesn’t it?”

            “It’s a little Parent Trap, but twins separated at birth is the only way we don’t wind up with more questions if anybody sees her,” Damon said, wishing that there was an alternative himself, “She doesn’t want Eva growing up the way that Nadia did, without her mother, and she knows I’ll kill her if she tries betraying us, so Katherine’s no longer our enemy.”

            “If we have to go this route, then I guess we can always tell everybody here that Katherine was raised by either my parents or my sis- Oh, fuck!” Isobel swore, running a hand down her face as the significance of the date struck her, “It’s the 28^th, isn’t it?”

            “Yeah, but why’s that important?” Elena asked, and her mother sighed.

            “Can I ask the two of you for a really big favor?” she replied, “It’s my sister Tanya’s birthday, and we’re supposed to be having a family dinner tonight at my parents’ house. John and I were planning on telling them that we’re back together tonight, you aunt is the type to turn everything into a competition to the point that she and her husband got engaged at my undergrad graduation party and announced that she was pregnant with her firstborn at mine and Ric’s rehearsal dinner, but I had to tell your grandfather early and ruin the surprise because he called to see if I was still coming to dinner. I told him that I wasn’t sure, what with John being in the hospital, and would let him know as soon as I could, but…”

            “Where do they think you’ve been for almost two years?” Elena asked, “If we’re going with you two tonight, Damon and I need to know these things.”

            “Wait, you’ll do it?” Isobel let out a relieved sigh, “Thank you, baby girl, really. Um, well, I told your grandparents that Ric and I had a fight about kids again, and I cut myself before I left as an explanation for why Ric found blood in the apartment. When Ric and I fought about having kids, I panicked and ran away because my trauma and emotional baggage I never dealt with from giving you up hit me full-force; when I got my head on straight again, I went to John, the only lawyer I that I actually know and trust, and asked him for his help in filing for divorce from Ric…who I did tell them was more than okay with the divorce because he’d moved on, too. As for what they told your aunt, I have no clue. Tanya and I have talked since Christmas, but she hasn’t said anything.”

            “Yeah, we’ll go,” Elena said, Damon nodding along in agreement beside her, “So, who all are we meeting tonight?”

❌⭕❌⭕

            While Isobel gave her daughter, son-in-law, and boyfriend a crash course in her family and who would be in attendance for her sister’s birthday dinner, Katherine was curled up on the sofa in the family room of hers and Elijah’s house with a large photo album in her lap. Elijah had called her when he’d landed in Athens, letting her know that he was safe and would be meeting up with Klaus that night, and he’d mentioned during the call that he had brought several photo albums of his and Nadia’s adventures together to the house when he’d had it built. Seeing the way her fiancé had raised their daughter, Katherine couldn’t help but wonder if Elijah would be interested in having another child. It wasn’t something that she herself had considered for many years, centuries even, but she felt giddy at the prospect of giving her daughter not only a proper family but also a little brother or sister.

            A knock on the front door pulled her out of her thoughts, and Katherine sighed as she got up to see who had even managed to find her house. Approaching the door, Katherine stilled. Through the glass panes, she could see Mason staring her down with pure hatred in his eyes. Shaking her head, she turned and vamped into hers and Elijah’s bedroom. Grabbing her phone from the bedside table where she’d left it to charge, she called the only person she could think of who might be willing to help her.

            “Hey, Katherine,” she sighed in relief as Caroline answered, “I didn’t think you’d be calling me this early.”

            “Trust me, I’d have called Damon and Elena first if I didn’t know that they were picking up John and Isobel this morning,” she replied, “Mason’s found my house, and he looks pissed. There’s a full moon tonight, so that means he’s more dangerous now than at any point before moonrise. Please, I need you and Stefan!”

            “Oh, God,” the blonde said, and Katherine could hear Stefan in the background agreeing to go, “We’re on our way. Just…just be careful, okay?”

            “Okay,” the brunette said, ending the call, “and thank you.”

            Vamping back through the house, she ducked into Elijah’s office and opened the safe with the code he’d given her. Taking a bronze dagger from the safe, she closed it and made her way towards the front door after placing the dagger against the small of her back inside the waistband of her jeans. Elijah had come into possession of the weapon around the time that the two of them had first met in the late fifteenth century, and the blade had been infused with liquified wolfsbane during the smithing process. Caroline had told her to be careful, so the least she could do was ensure that she had a weapon that would work against Mason should he decide to attack her. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door and stared blankly at him.

            “What do you want?” she asked, hoping that he couldn’t hear the fear in her voice.

            “I’m just trying to figure out what sort of game you’re playing here,” he replied, anger punctuating his every word, “I talked to my brother last night, and he told me that you compelled Jimmy to attack me, that you were setting me up as a sacrifice for some dude named Klaus, and that you had been planning this ever since you left Mystic Falls in 1864. What the fuck?”

            “I hope you don’t expect me to apologize,” Katherine told him, “I’ve only ever apologized twice in five-hundred years and meant it.”

            “So, it’s true then?” Mason asked, “Everything Richard told me, I was just another part of your plan. I loved you, you realize that? I gave up everything for you, but what’s that gotten me, huh?”

            “Well, at the very least, it’s gotten you a way to forge a new bond with your brother given how he let his pride get the better of him and triggered his own curse by orchestrating another vampire roundup, and there’s always potential for your nephew to join you,” Katherine replied, shrugging as she feigned indifference, “I’ve had multiple men over the years tell me that they loved me, and your statement is just another in a long list of broken hearts and crushed dreams.”

            “You really are a heartless bitch, aren’t you?” Mason shook his head, looking around at the large house, “Who’d you steal this place from, hm? I don’t remember this being here nine years ago when I left for college.”

            “I am not a thief,” Katherine growled, not willing to allow the werewolf to denigrate the home that Elijah had built out of love for her and for their daughter, “This is my home, it was built for me, and the man who built it is the only man that I have ever truly loved.”

            “You stole the moonstone, didn’t you?” Mason asked, “You stole if from this Klaus guy before you ever turned, my brother told me that much.”

            “I didn’t steal it,” Katherine bit out angrily, fighting back stinging tears as memoires of the night Elijah had begged Trevor to hide her besieged her mind, “Klaus gave the moonstone to his older brother, Elijah, before he went down to Southwark because he knew how prone those brothel whores were to pickpocketing and didn’t want to risk losing it, but Elijah and I had a plan; he pressed the stone and one of his mother’s grimoires into my arms when he kissed me goodbye and promised to find me as soon as he knew if his elixir would work to ensure my survival in his brother’s ritual. He sent me away with our friend Trevor, but Trevor’s friend Rose-Marie was more afraid of Klaus than she was loyal to any of us and threatened to take me back herself come morning sun. I turned out of self-preservation, but I never took anything that wasn’t given to me.”

            “Wait, the brother of the guy you were going to sacrifice me to built you this house?” he deduced, and she gave a short nod as she spotted of Stefan and Caroline stepping out from in between the trees along the edge of the driveway, “But why would he go against his brother for you?”

            “He wouldn’t, and he hasn’t. Elijah loves me, he always has, and he hopes to make it to where Klaus doesn’t have to kill anyone to break his curse because he wants all his family to be able to coexist peacefully,” she said, eyes dropping from the vampire couple nearing the house to her engagement ring, “You say you love me, or did at the least, but you only loved ‘Kathy,’ not me. You don’t even know my real name, Mason, let alone who I really am outside of what I told you. I understand that you’re upset, and it’s the most normal way you could feel about all this, but the truth of all this is that I never loved you and was only doing what I believed necessary to survive. Don’t get me wrong, I like you just fine and think you’re a good person at heart, but everything from my heart to my soul has been tethered to Elijah Mikaelson since I was just a little girl. Mason, as much as I expected this to end in you dying, before I knew that Elijah had found another way, I never went into this wanting to hurt you.”

            Mason was silent, contemplating everything she had told him, and his silence only broke when an alert sounded from his phone. He glanced at the message, pocketed the device, and let out a sigh before looking back at the vampire standing in the doorway before him. He couldn’t determine how truthful or genuine she was being, but he knew he had to give her the benefit of the doubt for not denying that she’d expected him to die.

            “I can’t say that I trust you, but I don’t have time to stand here and argue about it either,” he told her, “That was Richard, and I’ve gotta go double check George’s old restraints in the old estate’s cellar before my nephew gets there with all his friends he’s invited over to go swimming…I never thought I’d reach the point of not understanding teenagers, but I think I finally have.”

            Shaking his head, Mason gave Katherine one last nod and hurried back down the front steps towards his Bronco; how he didn’t notice Stefan and Caroline, the doppelgänger wasn’t really sure but had no intention of bringing the matter up in case the werewolf was attempting to trick her. Until Elijah returned home, she would have to be more cautious than usual.

            “Try having to fake being one of them for over a century,” Stefan said as he and Caroline joined Katherine by the front door, “I’m just glad I’m physically old enough to make people believe that I’m eighteen at a minimum so I don’t have to go to high school on loop.”

            “I think you handled that well,” Caroline said to Katherine, largely ignoring Stefan’s commentary on Mason’s lament, “I’d still keep the knife handy though.”

            “What knife?” Stefan wondered, and Katherine showed him the bronze dagger.

            “Elijah had this made to defend himself against Klaus on the rare occasion Klaus ever got drunk enough to challenge him to a fight. When the blade was cast into the mold by the bladesmith, he requested that liquified wolfsbane be added to the mixture,” she explained, “One touch of the metal against a werewolf’s skin, and it burns just as vervain would against any of us.”

            “She told me about it yesterday when we were discussing werewolves over vodka,” Caroline added, “Silver doesn’t actually hurt them, by the way. It heals them.”

            “I’m not sure which surprises me more: that or the idea of you two as drinking buddies.” Stefan said with a snort.

            “Be that as it may,” Katherine replied, a mildly humored smile appearing on her face, “the two of you should go to this party or whatever of Tyler’s just in case people do need to be compelled to leave before sundown. From what I know of the Lockwood men, Richard and Mason would never forgive themselves if they killed any of those kids.”

            The couple agreed, and Katherine thanked them once again for coming over to back her up against the werewolf. They left a few moments later, and Katherine locked the door behind her as she returned inside her house and vamped back into the family room to finish going through Elijah’s photo albums. She had three weeks before her daughter would be home, and she wanted to know Nadia as best she could before their first meeting.

❌⭕❌⭕

            It was nearing sunset as Damon steered down the long gravel driveway of Isobel’s parents’ house. He followed John, his in-laws being in the car ahead of him, and Elena let out a nervous breath as the reality of meeting her mother’s family began to settle in for her as the large, white farmhouse came into view. This was where her mother had grown up, and these were people who’d wanted for Isobel to keep her. Elena really just wanted them to like her, it wouldn’t have been fair for her to ask her mother to choose, and she didn’t want for any of them to feel as though they were losing Isobel all over again after only just getting her back. Elena didn’t think she’d been as nervous as she was then since the first day of school after her parents’ accident.

            “Sweetheart, they’ll love you,” Damon said as he parked where Isobel told him to, “If they somehow don’t, then we’ll duck out early, and I’ll take you out for a nice dinner free of people that think we can’t hear them whispering about us, okay?”

            “Four more weeks, and we’ll be doing just that in Waikiki for a whole week,” Elena reminded him with a grin, and he couldn’t help but grin back as he vamped around to her side of the car to open her door, “The best part? There’ll be no Carol Lockwood to suddenly come up with something else she needs you for, so you’ll be all mine.”

            “I’m already all yours, kitten,” he said as she got out of the car and linked her arms around his neck, “You and Eva are more important to me than anything else that Carol Lockwood could ever come up with, and you’ll always be more important. I love you.”

            “I love you, too,” she replied, kissing him lightly, “but that doesn’t mean Carol doesn’t still annoy the hell outta me over her obsession with you.”

            “Alright, you two,” Isobel chuckled, “Remember, Tanya’s got four kids; Tara’s sixteen, Masie’s eleven, and then the twins, Freddy and Finney, are eight. Behave yourselves; the last thing I need is my sister claiming that my daughter and son-in-law scarred her kids for life.”

            “I thought Aunt Tanya was only two years older than you?” Elena asked, “She’d have been eighteen when her oldest was born, wouldn’t she?”

            “Yes, technically, but Tara’s only hers legally,” Isobel explained as the four of them walked towards the front door, “Eli’s first wife died when Tara was two, and Tanya adopted Tara as her own after she and Eli got married when Tara was four. If it’s any consolation, you’re still the oldest grandchild by a whole year.”

            The four shared a quiet laugh as Isobel rang the doorbell, and the two vampires could hear as someone approached to open it. They were greeted by an older man with dark hair graying at the roots, dark blue eyes that sparkled with mirth, and a warm smile. Isobel immediately hugged him, and Elena took a small breath as she laid eyes on her grandfather for the first time.

            “Izzy, I’m so glad you made it,” he said as he hugged his daughter tightly, “and, don’t worry, I haven’t told your mother who it was you were bringing along, just how many places to set.”

            “Well then, I’ll let you in on another surprise before Mom,” she giggled, indicating each person as she continued, “You already know John, but what you don’t know is why we’re officially back together. Spending time with each other while spending time with our daughter really made us realize what we’ve been missing all these years. As for these two, I’d like you to finally meet your eldest granddaughter, Elena Allison Gilbert, and her boyfriend, Damon Salvatore.”

            “I’m glad that all of you were able to make it tonight,” Alan said as he invited them inside, “Now, why don’t you all come in so I can get to know my granddaughter a bit before all her cousins arrive and try to steal me away for themselves?”

            “Alan’s always been a lot nicer than Penny has,” John said as the four of them followed Alan into the house, “Harpy would be an apt description for Penny…towards me at least.”

            “Is there room in your boat for two,” Damon asked quietly, “because that’s probably where I’ll end up after she finds out about Eva.”

            “Don’t worry,” John replied as Alan led them into the living room where an older woman, Penny, sat on one of two sofas with a cordless handset phone pressed to her ear, “There’s a flask full of the bourbon you and Elena got me for Christmas out in my car.”

            “-ell, that’s not an option tonight…No, the leaf only gives us two extra chairs, and there simply isn’t enough room for Tara at the adults table with everyone we’ve got coming to dinner…Yes, I do know that it’s your birthday…If you want to behave like this, then I suppose you won’t get to know who it is your sister’s bringing with her…I thought that might change your mind…No, I decided to make one of your favorites as it’s your birthday…honey bourbon glazed salmon with lemon-butter broccolini and rosemary-roasted red potatoes…Of course, I did! Have I even once forgotten your birthday cake in thirty-six years? I’ll see the six of you soon, Tanya.”

            Penny set the phone down on the coffee table and ran a hand along her face before looking up and seeing the four people standing beside her husband. Immediately, she jumped up and hurried over to hug Isobel, her thankfulness for having her daughter back after nearly two years evident as she held Isobel tightly. As Isobel took a step back from her mother’s embrace, she reached back and took John’s hand in her own. Penny noticed, and a knowing smirk appeared on her face.

            “Well, it’s only been eighteen years, John,” she said with a slight shake of her head, “Was this before or after you and Alaric settled your divorce, Isobel?”

            “After, and, for the record, you have your granddaughter to thank,” Isobel told her mother as she looked over at Elena, “It was her inviting me to Mystic Falls to witness both John and Ric get raffled off as prizes at a charity event that resulted in me accidentally winning a date with John in the first place.”

            “If I could just find girlfriends for Matt and Tyler and maybe a new boyfriend for Aunt Liz, my work would be finished!” Elena giggled, gaining Penny’s attention as the older woman’s mouth fell open upon seeing her eldest granddaughter for the first time.

            “Mom, this is Elena Allison Gilbert, my daughter,” Isobel introduced her mother to the couple, “and this is Damon Salvatore, her boyfriend…at least until late June at the earliest. At some point after that, I’m expecting the title ‘fiancé’ to become appropriate.”

            “She looks just like her Mama, doesn’t she, Pen?” chuckled Alan, and his wife nodded slowly as she looked Elena over and blinked tears from her eyes.

            “Welcome home, my darling girl!” she said, pulling Elena into a sudden, bone-crushing hug that only Damon’s soft smile assured the doppelgänger wasn’t a danger to their unborn daughter, “I just can’t believe that you’re finally here after all these years! Come, sit, and tell us all about yourself…you, too, um, Damon, is it?”

            “Yes, ma’am,” Damon said with a soft chuckle, the same Southern manners that Elena knew he’d had since childhood showing, and it appeared that this one simple utterance had already won him slight favor in Penny’s eyes, “It’s a pleasure to meet you both…”

            They talked for around thirty minutes, Damon and Elena telling her grandparents their established cover story just as they’d told it to so many people since December, and the two were just as charmed by Damon as the people of Mystic Falls had been in September when he’d first arrived in town. It was towards the beginning of their discussion that the topic of Damon’s age arose, prompting the entire conversation, and it was with only mild trepidation that the couple calmly stated that Damon was twenty-two…Elena didn’t think that it was necessary to mention to her grandparents that he had actually been twenty-five for a hundred-and-forty-five years.

            “That’s an age difference of, what, five years?” Penny asked, curious as to how the couple could’ve come together, “How exactly did the two of you meet?”

            “Both me and my brother, who’s Elena’s age, were born in Mystic Falls, but we left for D.C. when my mom got sick. After my dad died, Stefan and I were all each other had left, and we stuck it out in the city for a few more years before we both just got burnt out and went looking for something…different. Our Uncle Zach, who we hadn’t seen since Stefan was almost two and I was almost seven, invited us to spend a few days in Mystic Falls with him at our old family home. It rained the whole time, and Stefan had to go back to school when the weekend was over, so it ended up as my decision if we moved home. I decided that, yes, we were, and Zach helped me get the blueprints for the old Salvatore estate because none of the three of us thought that he really wanted the two of us living with him long-term. The night I finished the paperwork with Jake, my contractor, to start the build and told Zach that we’d be moving in with him that fall in time for Stefan to start school that year, and I stopped on the side of the road on my way back to D.C. just to look at the stars and really just appreciate being able to see them. I’m all alone in the middle of the road when, suddenly, I hear a voice and look up to see the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen walking towards me on her cellphone.” Damon began, smiling over at Elena as he spoke of their first meeting.

            “I’d been at a party that night celebrating the end of the school year, and I’d gotten into a fight with my boyfriend at the time, Matt, over the future of our relationship because I knew then that I wasn’t in love with him, that I didn’t feel anything for him the way he did for me; Matt’s still one of my best friends, but I can’t honestly see the two of us married with kids and just being the picture of the perfect American family like he wanted. I called my mom and dad for a ride home since Matt had been my ride there, and then my friend Bonnie called me while I was walking to meet them where they’d told me they’d pick me up from when I looked up and saw a guy with brightest, most beautiful blue eyes I’d ever seen just staring at me,” Elena took over, slipping her left hand into Damon’s right and running her fingers over his daylight ring, “Of course, no matter how attractive we found each other, we were both suspicious at someone else being out on the road alone at night and started questioning each other. He told me that he was just passing through town, I told him about my fight with Matt, and then he did something I didn’t expect by telling me that I was wrong in saying that I didn’t know what I wanted out of life because I ‘want what everyone wants.’ I asked him if he meant a stranger with all the answers, but that wasn’t what he was thinking.”

            “I do believe that I told you I’d been around for a while and had learned a few things,” Damon said with a fond chuckle, his tone softening as he continued, “and then I told you the truth. ‘You want a love that consumes you. You want passion and adventure and even a little danger.’ I wasn’t surprised that it took you a few minutes to let all that sink in, but I was surprised when you asked me what I wanted. Nobody’d asked me that and meant it in a very long time.”

            “My parents showed up before he could give me a real answer, and the last thing he said to me was, ‘I want you to get everything your looking for,’ and then we went our separate ways without as much as exchanging last names or phone numbers. Five minutes later, my dad’s car was sinking into the Mystic River, and I was the only one who stood a chance at getting out of the car before it went under completely. I don’t even remember how I got out, but I was found on the riverbank and woke up almost two days later in the hospital. I broke up with Matt after my parents’ funeral, and I spent the summer mourning. When school started, I met the new kid, Stefan Salvatore, and everyone was pressuring me to date him because he was interested in me. I gave in and went with him to the back-to-school party, but then I found out the very next day that Stefan is Damon’s younger brother despite Stefan having told me that he was an only child. Because of everyone telling me that it was what I should do, what my parents would’ve wanted me to do, I agreed to just be friends with Damon in spite of our mutual attraction and continued dating Stefan, forgiving him for lying about pretty much everything to that point. By December 2^nd, though Damon was still one of my best friends, Stefan and I had broken up and gotten back together at least twice. We were on-again, I guess, when I discovered a picture on his desk of his last girlfriend before me, and I was hurt because the girl looked almost exactly like me. I’d heard about her, Damon had mentioned her a few times, but Stefan insisted that she and I had nothing in common. I felt like he’d just been using me, and we fought. I left his house angry, though I’ve been told numerous times that it’s not a good idea to drive when that upset, and a deer leapt out at me. I swerved and ended up rolling my car, and then my seatbelt got jammed, so I was stuck upside down for a while until another car stopped. It just so happened that the person driving that car was Damon, ever my hero.” Elena said, squeezing his hand tightly.

            “I was supposed to meet for a potential new investing opportunity in Atlanta and was on my way out of town when I realized that I’d forgotten my cellphone charger. I was on my way back to my house when I saw an upside down car, and I stopped to see if anyone was in the car, was in need of help, or was already gone. When I saw Elena, when I saw how panicked she was, I didn’t even think. I got her to calm down long enough to put her hands on the roof of the car while I cut through the seatbelt with my pocketknife, and then I pulled her through the window. She was almost more of a wreck than her car, and she didn’t even have to tell me that she wanted to get away from my brother. I let her get in my car and set out for Atlanta, figuring that I’d just buy a new charger once I got there, but then the meeting got cancelled by the time we reached the city,” Damon continued, telling almost the exact same story he’d spun for Carol the previous day, “Elena still didn’t want to be any place my brother could find her, Stefan’s always been real big on trying to talk through problems even when the other person clearly doesn’t want to talk, so I told her we could go to the beach house I have on Tybee Island and then took her shopping. The first thing she said to me after seeing the beach house was that she thinks I’m pure evil.”

            “You are,” Elena replied, giggling as she took back over telling their story, “How could you not be for taking me somewhere so wonderfully beautiful and then expecting me to go back home just a few days later? Anyways, after I caught a short nap, we watched an episode of Criminal Minds, one of our shared favorite shows, and made plans for dinner. Damon took me out to one of his favorite places on the island, and we watched the island’s Christmas parade afterward before going back to the beach house. We were sitting together on the swing out by the pool when Damon said that the two of us should spend more time together, we hadn’t ever gone out together in Mystic Falls because Stefan hated us hanging out, and I told him as much before saying that with him was the only place I wanted to be. He kissed me, all soft and sweet, and then I kissed him decidedly less softly.”

            “John and Isobel already know what happened after that, and we won’t revisit it in depth as to spare them,” Damon said, John and Isobel both glancing confusedly at him before seeing the way Elena’s right hand ghosted across her stomach and remembering when they’d been told Eva was most likely conceived, “By the time we went home that Sunday, we knew that there was no going back to the way things had been before, and we haven’t looked back since.”

            “After only just two months together, as a couple, you’re already considering marriage?” Alan wondered, “Isn’t that a bit fast? When you marry someone, you’re agreeing to make a lifelong commitment to this person, and it can hurt pretty bad if you rush into things and it all falls apart later. Just as Izzy about her and Alaric.”

            “Well…” Elena began, pausing as she and Damon had a short, silent conversation, “The thing is, we already know that we’re stuck with each other for the rest of time in one way or another. For all we tried to be safe, we got a little surprise right before Christmas when we found out that I’m pregnant.”

            “You’re what?” Alan and Penny chorused, and Elena sighed before standing up, smoothing down her dress to reveal her growing bump, and curling into Damon’s side as she sat back down.

            “I’m pregnant,” she said, hands cradling the outward sign of her unborn daughter, “It wasn’t something we planned or even suspected until I started needing a nap after just a trip the grocery store, but Damon and I are more than thrilled about this. This isn’t something that either of us is taking lightly, I promise. Eva’s our baby, and we love her so much already.”

            “Eva?” Penny spoke this time, a smile tugging at her lips as the couple nodded, “You’re having a girl?”

            “I was so young when I lost my parents that I wasn’t aware of any health issues that run in my family, so Elena’s doctor suggested we do some prenatal testing just to be on the safe side, and one of those tests showed that the baby has XX chromosomes,” Damon said, his hands covering Elena’s, “We started talking names as soon as the pregnancy tests Elena took came back positive, and it took very little time to decide on Evelina Rosalia Salvatore, our little princess. I’ll be the stay-at-home parent while Elena finishes up high school and goes through college, but we live close enough to the school she’s applying to, Grayson and Miranda’s alma mater Whitmore, that there won’t be a need for us to move or for her to live on campus like there would be at some schools. Between both of our inheritances and the money I make off the various investment properties I own, we wouldn’t have to actively work even after Elena graduates college. We agree that it might be better if we were having this conversation in a couple years at least, but Elena’s pregnant now, so that’s just the way things are, and we have to live with our choices. I love Elena and Eva more than anything, they’re my whole world, and…and I never thought I deserved to, let alone would, have a family of my own.”

            “Hey,” the blue-eyed vampire, turned towards his girlfriend as he heard Elena’s soft voice, her every word an anchor tethering him to the present, “I’m right here. You’re better than him, and he has no power over you anymore, okay? For that matter, she can’t hurt you either, and I wouldn’t let them if they could because you deserve to be just as happy as the rest of us.”

            “Oh God,” everyone turned towards John as the words left his mouth, “You told me that you had every intention of not being the abuser you grew up with, Damon, but I didn’t realize you meant that you were the one your father was abusing. There was never any indication…God, I’m so sorry…for everything.”

            “There wasn’t anything you could’ve done, and nobody knew. My father was always clever with how he covered it up, whether it be with me or with my mother, and it was a long time ago. The past can’t be changed.” Damon replied, doing his best to ignore the sympathetic looks Penny and Alan were giving him, focusing instead on tracing the gordian knot of Elena’s ring.

            “It wasn’t just your father, though, was it?” Isobel said, having caught what her daughter had said when the blue-eyed vampire had tensed up towards the end of his declaration of dedication to his family, “Your mother was in on it, too.”

            “I don’t think she did it on purpose, there were times when she tried to stop him, but she all but offered me up in her place a few times by putting the blame for whatever had upset my father on me instead of admitting to whatever she’d done. At least once, he knew the whole time that it was her, but I got punished because I wouldn’t continue to defend myself after he threatened to hurt Stefan instead. If there’s one thing my mother and I ever truly agreed on, it was protecting Stefan for as long as we could.” Damon admitted, the Thanksgiving of 1851 flickering briefly through his mind.

            “If you’re going to give your sympathies for anything though, it should be for him putting up with me,” Elena piped up, diverting the attention away from her boyfriend before he could combust in embarrassment, “For all I’ve been helping him with his lack of self-worth and rampant trust issues, Damon’s had to help me with my lack of confidence and constant people pleasing. I admittedly spent three months going back and forth with Stefan just because my friends thought it was a good idea, then there was the whole debate about whether I should continue with cheerleading, and just a few weeks ago I wasn’t sure if I should continue with the Miss Mystic Falls pageant because everyone was telling me to drop out because I’d initially only signed up because my mom won it when she was my age.”

            “Miss Mystic Falls?” Penny smiled at her granddaughter, clearly getting that Damon’s past wasn’t something either of them were okay discussing in front of others, “That sounds exciting! How did the competition go?”

            “Well, Mom, why don’t you and Dad just take a look at the special Founders Day edition of the Mystic Falls Courier and find out!” Isobel said, grinning wildly as she took the folded up paper from her purse and handed it to her parents, “John didn’t get to see it until this morning, so I happen to accidentally bring it with me tonight since it was still in my purse from where he handed it to me after he finished reading it when we got home from the hospital.”

            The four watched as Alan and Penny skimmed through the paper, reading every article in which they spotted their granddaughter’s name. Penny audibly awed at the images Caroline had used for her article, especially at their pregnancy announcement photo. Folding the paper up upon finishing Caroline’s article, the two looked over at Elena in wonderment for the young woman. Pride shone in their eyes, but the sound of a kitchen timer buzzed before either could say a word about what they’d read.

            “That’ll be the salmon,” Penny said as she rose from the sofa, smiling warmly over at Elena as she stopped short of stepping into the formal dining room on her way to the kitchen, “Elena, I had no doubt that you’d grow up to be an incredible young woman full of beauty, kindness, intelligence, and promise. I consider it a privilege to be able to call you my granddaughter.”

            “I know she may seem a little cold sometimes, but you’ll get used to it,” Alan said, a fond and loving expression sweeping across his face as he watched his wife go from the room, not noticing how quickly Damon and Isobel’s ears perked up at the sound of tires on the gravel driveway, “Penny was raised in a very different sort of family than I was, very different world really. Tanya got us one of those kits for DNA testing, 23andMe, as an anniversary present a few years ago. Now, I’m descended mainly from English and Dutch famers, but your grandmother? We traced her roots all the way back to eastern European nobility…That’ll be Tanya, Eli, and the kids. I’ll be right back.”

            “You didn’t bring the paper by accident, did you?” John said to Isobel, the knock at the door calling Alan away from the living room, and Elena giggled as she watched the way her mother’s eyes sparkled with mischief.

            “Of course not,” Isobel replied, setting the paper down on the coffee table near where her mother had placed the phone, “My daughter has a feature written about her in the local paper. If you think I wouldn’t throw that in my sister’s face, you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”

            “After being saddled with half of your soul for almost two years, I think I know you better than you do.” John told her, and Isobel merely smiled, initially leaning in for a kiss but pulling back as Alan returned with six people trailing behind him.

            The youngest two were clearly the twin boys Isobel had spoken of, Freddy and Finney, and the two of them were whispering conspiratorially as they eyed Damon and Elena, the vampire noting to the doppelgänger that the boys were attempting to discern how easy the two of them would be to prank. The teenager, Tara, was also starring their way, but Elena was sure that it was more because of the handsome stranger than the girl who, as evidenced by the pictures hanging on the walls, looked like Isobel at seventeen. The younger girl, Masie, was all smiles as she bolted straight over to Isobel and threw herself into her aunt’s arms.

            “Aunt Izzy!” she chirped, and Elena thought it was sweet as she imagined Eva doing much the same with Caroline and Bonnie in just a few years’ time, “Nana said you had a surprise for my mama’s birthday!”

            “I do, sweetie, two actually, but why don’t we give your mom and dad just a second to settle in before we get into all that, okay?” Isobel said to the girl, smiling over the top of Masie’s head at Elena who, to her benefit, kept her response to nothing more than a smile of her own.

            “Of course,” Tanya said as she stepped out of her father’s hug to see Masie in Isobel’s lap, “We’ve barely made it through the door, and you’ve already gotten started on your cuddle-quota.”

            “It’s my duty as their aunt,” Isobel said seriously, though the mirth in her eyes betrayed her, “I get to snuggle them, spoil them, jack them up on sugar, and then send them home with you when it’s all said and done.”

            “I wouldn’t know anything about that, would I?” Tanya replied, pausing as she noticed who was sitting beside her sister, “Why, do my eyes deceive me, or is John Gilbert sitting in my parents’ house for the first time in eighteen years?”

            “Actually, Tanya, I was here a few weeks ago with Izzy when we first explained to Penny and Alan where she’s been the last two years…not that we’re getting into that with so many little ears around…but I am indeed here. Happy birthday.” John replied as he rose to greet the guest of honor and her husband, though Tanya appeared skeptical as she accepted John’s light hug.

            “John Gilbert…Where have I heard your name before, man, because it sounds so familiar?” Tanya’s husband, Eli, asked as he shook John’s hand, and his wife snorted.

            “He’s the one who knocked Izzy up when she was fifteen,” she said, earning an eyeroll from her sister, “Didn’t matter what Mom and Dad tried, they wouldn’t get married and gave the baby up for adoption. I’m not sure why he’s here now, though, unless…No, no way! You two? How?”

            “Well, I won a date with him in a charity raffle I was invited to by our daughter back in January, and we’ve been together ever since,” Isobel said, looking towards the dining room archway as her mother reappeared and looked about the room for a moment, “Did you need help with something, Mom?”

            “Actually, I was wondering if Elena could join me in the kitchen for a moment?” Penny asked, and Elena immediately rose from the sofa to follow her, stopping only to kiss Damon softly.

            Walking through the dining room and into the kitchen, Elena tuned out Isobel’s explanation for who she and Damon were to the curious Tanya and Eli and instead focused on the concerned expression her grandmother wore. The food smelled divine, and she was sure that dinner itself wouldn’t be an issue unless her aunt made it into one. So, unsure of what else it could be, Elena was at a loss for why her grandmother had asked for her.

            “I wasn’t sure if you intended on your aunt, uncle, and cousins finding out about little Eva tonight, so I felt it best to ask you in here just in case,” Penny began, and Elena gave a relieved nod and smile before answering her grandmother’s question, “When I had Tanya and Isobel, it was the seventies, and we didn’t realize exactly how bad alcohol could be for pregnant women. I confess that I didn’t do much research into it when Isobel was pregnant with you because of how young she was at the time, and I find myself at a bit of a loss. Because the alcohol is cooked out of it and it’s just the flavor that gets left behind, the bourbon glaze on the salmon shouldn’t hurt you, right?”

            “Yes, ma’am, it’s fine, I promise,” Elena said with a light giggle, “I’m not laughing at you, honest. It’s just, well, you’ve only just met Damon, so I wouldn’t expect you to know this, but he’s a bit of a bourbon connoisseur and has an extensive collection at home. Some bottles are for drinking, but some are specifically for cooking; it’s a rather large bourbon collection we have, and nearly all of it has been in his family for years. Before we knew I was pregnant, Damon was doing his best to teach me everything he knows about bourbon, with Mama and Daddy’s approval, and I was honestly a little upset that I’d have to put the rest of my bourbon-based education on hold for at least a year-and-a-half, maybe even a bit longer, but that all depends on how long I’m able to continue producing breast milk. I want to nurse Eva for as long as I can, and Damon says we have the rest of our lives for me to learn about bourbon, so I won’t as much as think about trying to rush back into it, and that he has a whole host of bourbon-based recipes he can teach me in the meantime.”

            “You know, when you first told me his age, I wanted to be so mad,” Penny admitted, chuckling as she shook her head, “I mean, he’s a grown man, and you’re still a teenager, but when I see the way he looks at you…I don’t know, I might just be a crazy old woman who hasn’t a clue what she’s talking about, but you can really see his love for you in his eyes. Your Grandpa still looks at me that way, usually when he doesn’t think I can see him, but it’s a look that has a way of making you feel special, isn’t it?”

            “It does, but practically everything Damon does makes me feel special,” Elena agreed, “I know that part of why he does it is because of his father, he wants to prove to himself that he’s nothing like Giuseppe and never will be, but sometimes he goes beyond what I think any normal man would do just so I feel even more special, more loved. We spent Christmas at the beach house, my family and his together, but we decided to surprise everyone with a trip down to Disney World for New Year’s Eve after my brother and I realized that we were the only two out of the six of us who’d never been before, and Damon spared no expense. Daddy couldn’t go with us, work stuff plus Mama needed his help with hers and Ric’s divorce papers, but my two best friends, one of whom is also Stefan’s girlfriend, my godmother Liz who’s Stefan’s girlfriend Caroline’s mother, Ric, and my best friend Bonnie’s grandmother Miss Sheila who’s practically adopted all of Bonnie’s friends as he surrogate grandchildren all drove down to join us. We had a massive three-bedroom suite in the newest of the Disney Vacation Club resorts, the view from every window was of Magic Kingdom, and he and I picked out special shirts for everyone to wear when we went to the park the next day. That night, however, Damon decided that it was the perfect time for a date night and chartered an entire yacht to take us out on the lagoon for a private dinner cruise; he even had a pink rose waiting for me just like the one in Beauty and the Beast because he knows it’s my favorite Disney film. When I tried telling him not to spoil me like I’m some sort of princess, he said that I’m his spoiled princess…and ever since the pageant, I’ve become his beloved queen while Eva’s our little princess.”

            “So, he makes a habit of spending exorbitantly on you then?” Penny wondered as she began plating the food, but Elena merely shrugged.

            “I know that I act like he does, but Damon’s not really that bad about spoiling me because he knows it makes me feel uncomfortable if he does it too often…Can I help?” she replied, smiling as she quickly washed her hands and jumped in to assist once her grandmother gave her a nod accepting her offer, “The night on the yacht was only our second time going out on an actual date where it was just the two of us and we did something other than stay at home…we agreed that our walks along the beach didn’t count because we weren’t ever more than fifty feet from the house. Everything else between that first night on the island and then had been either us curled up on the couch watching Christmas movies and drinking homemade hot cocoa, his nonna’s recipe, or going out to a town event that we were basically required to go to as members of Founding Families and all. He tries to take me out on a ‘real date’ at least once every two weeks, but Damon’s just as happy as I am with a quiet night at home.”

            “Speaking of homes, is Damon still rebuilding his family’s old estate?” Penny asked, and Elena grinned, “I’d love to hear more about it if he is as I assume that’s where Eva will be raised?”

            “We are, he’s actually let me take over a majority of the interior design decisions so he can focus on the barn, but where do I begin,” she said, excitedly telling her grandmother all about the mansion and grounds of the old estate as they worked together to get dinner plated and out to the dining table, “It’s the most beautiful neoclassical Victorian mansion I’ve ever seen, but I’ll admit that I’m probably biased…”

Notes:

A/N: Sweets, these next few chapters are going to move a little slow, honestly, but that's mostly because of how certain events are changing from cannon. Up next, Elena and Damon have a much needed conversation with a certain friend who remains confused, and Mason goes on an apology tour. Until next time...XOXO

Chapter 6: Turned a Corner in My Soul

Summary:

"Her daddy didn't like me much/In my shackled up GTO/I'd sneak out in the middle of the night/Throw rocks at her bedroom window/We'd turn out the headlights/And drive by the moonlight/Talk about what the future might hold/Down that red dirt road..."
-"Red Dirt Road," by Brooks & Dunn

Notes:

A/N: Sweets, I'm back...for now, at least. Moving is still an ongoing process, but I'm trying to find time to keep up with this series. I have so much to share with you all for this universe, and I can't wait to let you see what's in store. I hope you enjoy this addition, and I'll post another update soon!

            Actually sitting down to dinner with the Fleming family hadn’t been nearly as bad as Elena and Damon had thought it’d be, though the couple agreed they could’ve done without Tara’s running commentary from the kitchen table about how unfair it was that she was being forced to sit with her siblings instead of being included with the adults like Elena was despite the doppelgänger only being a year older than Tara herself. As they ate, the couple answered Tanya and Eli’s questions with their well-rehearsed cover story just as they’d done for Penny and Alan and for everyone back in Mystic Falls who it was necessary for them to tell. Damon and Elena avoided revealing her pregnancy to her aunt and uncle, but this was achieved almost too easily as Tanya was having much more fun interrogating her sister about John than anything else.

            After Tanya’s cake had been served, the glee with which her aunt blew out her candles reminding Elena of Caroline, the family began splintering off as they left the table. Eli and John followed Tanya and Isobel out onto the back patio with their coffee; Maisie and the twins went upstairs to their playroom; Tara remained in the kitchen to help Penny with the dishes; and Damon and Elena went with Alan up to the attic where a full set of nursery furniture sat in storage. Alan had made it all himself, he’d done so before Isobel had made the decision to have Grayson and Miranda adopt newborn Elena, and he insisted that Elena and Damon take the set for Eva’s nursery. The set consisted of a crib that would convert into a toddler or twin-sized bed to suit Eva’s needs, a combination dresser and changing table, and a glider rocking chair with matching ottoman all made from white oak. Elena and Damon had a short, silent conversation before telling Alan that they’d love to have the full set for Eva, and it made the young witch bloom with delight to see the smile that spread across her grandfather’s face at their acceptance of the gift he offered.

            It was shortly after this that the two vampires and their soulmates said their goodbyes to the human Flemings and started on their way home, to Richmond for John and Isobel, as they had both run out of clean clothes at the Gilbert house, and to Mystic Falls for Damon and Elena as the full moon began rising in the sky above them. As he drove along the dark road leading into town, Damon tensed. He knew that the Lockwood men were out at the old Lockwood estate in George’s old cell hidden within the mansion’s cellar. Even so, knowing that there were werewolves that close to not only himself but also to his unborn daughter left him unnerved. Elena noticed this and gently took his right hand in her left and placed his palm on her belly. Being able to feel the pulsing of the blood flowing between mother and daughter, it soothed Damon to know that his family was safe. It was only once they were inside the Gilbert house on Maple Street, doors locked tightly and alarm set, that he let out a sigh of relief and followed Elena upstairs to get ready for bed. He had to trust that Richard would keep his brother on a short leash, that Mason would realize any attempts at harming any of the Salvatores would cost him his relationship with his nephew forever, and not worry about the threat that werewolves posed to his family if he wanted to ensure their survival. Hearing the additional heartbeat in Jeremy’s bedroom, Damon chuckled to himself as he got into bed beside Elena who glanced curiously at him as he pulled her into his arms.

            “Looks like Bonnie’s staying over tonight, kitten,” he told her, and she grinned, “Get some sleep. Tomorrow’s your first day of school where everyone knows about Eva.”

            “Don’t worry, baby,” she giggled, “If anyone has anything negative to say about our little girl, her aunties and uncles will put ‘em in their place. They all already love her so much, and I don’t think I could hope for a better family for her than the one we’ve made.”

            With a soft, loving smile, Damon pressed a light kiss to Elena’s lips before turning out the lamp on his bedside table. He had promised Pearl that he’d take care of his family, of himself so that he could, and he had no intentions of breaking his promise. Only once he was sure Elena had drifted off to sleep did he let his mind wander to the black velvet box hidden in his safe at the boarding house and the diamond ring nestled inside of it. He only had to wait four more months to put it on her finger, but he knew that she was worth each and every day that lay in between because, to Damon Salvatore, the truth was that Elena Gilbert was worth everything.

❌⭕❌⭕

            When Elena returned to school, Damon expected that she might encounter negative comments and sideways glances, but he also expected for his brother, sister-in-law, brother-in-law, and their other friends to defend her. As the week trudged on, this proved to be the case for most of the time Elena spent at school. The most unexpected person, to both Damon and Elena, who was bold enough to say anything to her about her pregnancy that wasn’t positive was Matt; he didn’t keep it a secret how he felt, that he wasn’t sure whether the Fell’s claims that Elena had purposefully gotten pregnant so that Damon would marry her as soon as he could were as false as she claimed, and Elena was devastated by this. Her friends had done what they could to comfort her, Tyler among them as he shot glares at his best friend whenever he caught the quarterback staring at the expectant mother, but no attempts at comforting her they offered could soothe the stinging betrayal felt by her heart.

            “I just don’t understand how Matt could even think I’d do something like that,” Elena said to Damon as the two of them got ready for bed Thursday night, “He’s supposed to be one of my best friends, and he’s out there encouraging the belief that I would- Why can’t he just be happy for us? Why is it so hard for Matt to accept that we’re happy, that I’m happy?”

            “I don’t think it’s so much that he can’t accept that you’re happy, kitten,” Damon replied, sitting patiently beside her as his girlfriend got herself situated in their bed, “It’s more that he can’t let himself accept that you’re happy with someone who isn’t him. It’s been almost ten months, and Matt still hasn’t moved on from your breakup. He chalked it all up to you dealing with the aftermath of your parents’ deaths when you ended things with him, and he thought that Stefan was just a coping mechanism. When you and I got together, though, Matt had no idea what to make of it. From what he knew of me, you never would’ve willingly gone on a date let alone slept with me. Seeing us together these last four months, especially with how PDA prone we are, finding out about Eva was the last straw on the camel’s back for Matt, and he can’t help but let his confused emotions unleash themselves on you because you’re his brain’s easiest target.”

            “That’s part of the problem,” Elena said as she adjusted her pregnancy pillow beneath her, glad that they were in the king-sized bed at the boarding house instead of the queen-sized bed at the Gilbert house, “Matt’s judging me off what he thinks he knows about you, baby. Even Tyler’s taken the time to try to get to know you since the Founders Day Kick-Off party, but Matt doesn’t want to know the real Damon Salvatore. I’m pissed that he thinks I’ve turned into some gold-digging whore, that’s not up for debate, but what makes me even more just fucking furious with him is that Matt honestly thinks you’re the kind of man who’d let a gold-digging whore take you for everything you’re worth. Damon, you’re a good, honorable man, okay, but you’re not stupid. If either of us had even the slightest clue that I could’ve gotten pregnant that first night on the island, you wouldn’t have taken the risk.”

            “You’re right, not that I’d change anything even if I could now if only because I’ve seen the future that awaits us through your vision, but Matt’s refusal to get to know me is because of him not accepting that you broke up with him because you wanted to and no other reason,” Damon told her as she shifted her head to rest on his chest, “Eventually, he’ll learn that loving someone and being in love with them are two very different things, and he’ll be able to heal…You like your pillow, don’t you?”

            “It’s comfortable, and I know it keeps both me and Eva safe if you get outta bed before I wake up, but it puts too much space between us,” she pouted, glancing down at where the small wedge kept her from snuggling fully into his side the way she liked, “I’m glad we went with the travel-sized one, though, because I so don’t wanna think about trying to take one of the bigger ones with us to Hawaii next month for the babymoon.”

            “I’ll be right here all night, kitten, I promise,” he chuckled softly, pressing a kiss to her hair as her eyes fluttered closed, “Get some sleep, Elena, because tomorrow’s gonna be a long, long day.”

 

            Late the next morning, as Carol Lockwood gave a speech about the new community park that the Fell family had donated most of the money for, Damon and Elena were approached by Mason who had a nervousness about him that confused the couple. Elena set the volunteer sign-up sheet she’d been putting together down on the sign-up table before curling herself into Damon’s side, and it took very little for him to wrap his arms securely around her. Mason cleared his throat after a moment, and the couple waited to see what he had to say.

            “I…I’m sorry about what happened at the carnival,” he told them, catching them both off-guard, “I knew before I ever got to the carnival that night that you and Tyler have been friends since you were in diapers, Elena, and I don’t know why I assumed that you had to be Katherine. I could’ve put everyone in danger that night, Tyler especially, all because I didn’t take the time to ask even one question before I got angry.”

            “We took care of what happened to the carnie you beat up and that Caroline ultimately killed, and her mother’s already aware of what she, Damon, Stefan, my mother, and Katherine all are, so you don’t have to worry about it coming around to bite you in the ass,” Elena said after a moment, keeping her voice down as she spoke, “Aunt Liz also knows what you and your brother are, but she won’t tell, much like us, unless you make her. We have actual problems to face, like getting Klaus Mikaelson’s curse broken without any of us dying, and the best thing you can do is to help Richard get his werewolf powers under control as best he can.”

            “Richard and I leave in the morning,” Mason replied, “Once I get him to the pack I was traveling with before, I plan on staying for a month, getting him through his second full moon, and then coming home to help Carol out however I can. Richard doesn’t want her left without some form of protection until we know for sure that this Klaus guy isn’t a threat, but he knows that you’re not very likely to out yourselves to protect her.”

            “Depending on what was going on, we might,” Damon shrugged, “but I know that I’ll personally always put my own family first. Elena, our daughter, our brothers, Caroline, Liz, Bonnie, and Sheila are my priority…I made a promise to protect the Bennetts a long time ago, and they both know that I’d never let anything happen to them. Alaric’s got Jenna, and Isobel’s got John.”

            “You don’t extend the same protection to Caroline or Bonnie’s fathers?” Mason wondered, and Damon snorted.

            “I wouldn’t let him die if I could stop it, but I’m not gonna go out of my way to help Rudy after the way he’s treated Elena for the last fifteen years,” said the vampire, “Hating or blaming a little girl because of a decision his ex-wife made doesn’t fly with me. As for Bill Forbes, the same goes for him because, while he and I have far deeper issues than I have with Rudy Hopkins, he’s Caroline’s father, and I know how much it’d upset her if something happened to him.”

            “Speaking of Bonnie and Caroline…” Elena trailed off, and all three turned as the fledgling vampire and young witch walked over to them, “What’s going on, guys?”

            “I was just getting Bonnie away from the Grill before she set it on fire because of Sarah and Amie,” the blonde chuckled, “Stefan’s got Jeremy, but those two bitches just really need to learn to watch what they say and who they say it to if they wanna make it to prom.”

            “Oh dear God, what now?” Elena wondered, shaking her head at Bonnie’s annoyed expression.

            “Sarah tried flirting with Jeremy, oblivious to him having a girlfriend, and Amie had the audacity to call him damaged goods when she thought I couldn’t hear her,” Bonnie explained, “We’ve been together for two months, and it’s like they don’t even notice. I mean, it’s not like we’re either you and Damon or Care and Stef, but we’re not subtle about it.”

            “Trust me, Bon-Bon, they’re just jealous that you saw Jeremy for who he really is and got his attention before they could now that he’s started training with Ric, Stef, and me.” Damon chuckled as Mason furrowed his brow in confusion.

            “From what Elijah’s told John, where the Mikaelsons go there will soon be enemies that follow. Jeremy wants to be able to help, to defend himself at the very least, so the guys’ve been helping him learn how to do just that,” Elena said, turning from Mason to Damon as her explanation faded into a curious pause as she caught the edges of his thoughts before continuing, “I completely forgot that we were doing that tomorrow. Thank you, baby.”

            “What’s tomorrow?” Caroline asked, noticing the matching grins the couple wore, “Is it baby related or house related?”

            “Baby related,” Elena replied, “As of today, I’m fifteen weeks pregnant. We’re going to my OBGYN tomorrow for a 3D ultrasound, so we’ll actually get to see Eva in as much detail as is, at the moment at least, possible until she’s born. We scheduled it weeks ago, but with everything that’s been happening, the date had slipped my mind.”

            “I just happened to see Elena’s doctor over at the lemonade stand and remembered,” Damon shrugged, “Elena’s also having some routine bloodwork done, along with a few minimally invasive prenatal tests, so we’re probably going back to the boarding house and crashing for a bit after her appointment.”

            “Well, don’t forget that we’re going shopping on Sunday for nursery stuff,” Caroline said to her godsister, and the expectant mother smiled brightly as she nodded along, “Jeremy’s already said he’d paint whatever you wanted on the walls, and it’s almost time to start painting the house from what I remember, so we’ll be sending all the guys out to your grandparents’ place for your old nursery set before you know it.”

            “I can’t wait until the house is far enough along in the renovation process for you guys to come see it,” Elena responded with a light squeal, though she found herself being cut off moments later by a familiar voice calling for help, “We’ve still got another few days before the cosmetic stuff really begins, but it loo- Oh no, that’s Tyler!”

            Hurrying along at a human pace, the two vampires, two witches, and werewolf raced over to the Mystic Grill where they were met by Jeremy just inside the door attempting to restrain Stefan as Tyler attempted to stop the blood pouring from their friend Sarah’s side. A steak knife lay discarded on the floor beside her, and Amie was a few feet away glaring at Matt who looked horrified at what had happened to the girl moaning in pain on the floor. Mason knelt down beside his nephew and looked to Bonnie and Jeremy as Caroline began pulling Stefan away from the pool of blood perfuming the air. Bonnie got Mason’s silent message and moved over to the host stand where she grabbed a few cloth napkins before rushing back to the injured girl.

            “What happened?” he barked out, looking from his nephew to the blond quarterback, “Someone say something, damnit, alright?”

            “Dumbass wouldn’t shut his fucking mouth about something he doesn’t know a damn thing about, and we got into a fight. Sarah tried to break us up, and we knocked a box of silverware over on top of her on accident.” Tyler said, and Elena rolled her eyes as she turned towards her ex-boyfriend.

            “Matt, grow up already!” she snapped, “I didn’t break up with you because of Damon, and I didn’t trick him into getting me pregnant. The girl you fell in love with, the little girl who wore her hair in pigtail braids and who would knock you over the head with a plastic shovel if you took her toys in the sandbox, that girl was gone before my parents ever died. When I decided that I was going to break up with you, I told my mom that I couldn’t lie to you anymore when I knew I wasn’t in love with you, that I never had been, but that I didn’t want to hurt you. She told me it wasn’t about not hurting you so much as it was about setting you free. I broke up with you because you deserve better than a lie, than a loveless relationship continuing for the sake of simplicity. As for what happened between Damon and me, we might’ve discussed marriage the day after we had our first date, but neither of us ever intended on me getting pregnant this young. Neither he nor I would change any of it now, but we’d had a plan. Originally, we were going to get engaged on my birthday, wait about eighteen months before getting married, and then not even attempt at starting our family until after I had finished undergrad at the least. Even the best laid plans get utterly fucked up sometimes, Matt, but you can’t stay stuck in the past or hung up on What Ifs to the point that you alienate yourself from the people who care about you!”

            Before Matt could respond, EMTs made their way into the restaurant and got Mason’s help lifting Sarah onto a stretcher. He was rambling off facts about Sarah’s condition that flew right over Elena’s head as she watched the scene play out, but it all seemed to make sense to the EMTs as they began moving back towards the door with their patient. The werewolf kept pressure on the girl’s wound, but he turned towards his nephew as he climbed into the back of the ambulance parked just outside the door.

            “Ty, tell your mom that I promise I’ll be home in time to drive your dad up to the clinic,” he called, and Tyler nodded as he realized that his uncle was going to make sure that Sarah survived if only so that he, Tyler, didn’t trigger his curse, “I’ll be home as soon as I can, alright?”

            “Alright, Mason,” he agreed, “I’ll let her know.”

            The ambulance doors slammed shut, and the seven of them were left standing around the pool of blood on the floor as Liz and her deputies filed in to take statements and assess the scene. Elena and Damon were among the first to be let go, the couple using the incident as a plausible reason to leave the Historical Society’s Volunteer Day festivities early despite Elena having such a large role in the event as 2010’s reigning Miss Mystic Falls; they knew that Caroline and Stefan had gone back to the Forbes house and didn’t bother considering following suit by going to the Gilbert house. It was only upon collapsing together onto their bed at the boarding house that Damon pressed a kiss to Elena’s hair and whispered softly to her.

            “Everything you told Matt, the plan that we had before Eva, you know I was serious about that, don’t you?” he asked in what was barely a whisper, “That was the life I wanted to be able to give you, kitten, not that I’d change the way our lives are now, but I really did wanna give you the perfect life you deserve.”

            “I don’t want ‘perfect,’ baby,” she replied, snuggling into his side and placing her right hand on his left cheek, “I love every messy, complicated, imperfect thing about you, about us, and I can’t imagine being happy with my life going any other way.”

            “You can’t love everything about me, Elena,” he said with a snort, “I am more than aware of the less-than-desirable traits I possess and things that I’ve done. You know better than anyone what I’m capable of, I’ve never hidden that from you, and I don’t expect you to be okay with any of it.”

            “Everything you’ve ever done has either been to save your own life, to take the life of someone who deserved it, or to lash out at someone who was a threat to you who should bear just as much responsibility for the lives that were lost as you do…perhaps even a bit more, it you want me to be honest. Stefan didn’t have to say what he did that day, and we both know that he knew exactly how you’d take it,” she told him, lowering her hand to his collarbone, “Even with what happened to Vicki, he shouldn’t have pushed you the way he did. He shouldn’t have forced himself into the place that was always meant to be yours. He shouldn’t have ever touched me.”

            “You don’t believe that, not the last part anyways,” Damon replied, and she shrugged, “I know you just as well as you know me, and I know that you don’t regret dating my brother.”

            “If you hadn’t compelled me the night we met, I probably wouldn’t have ever gone out with him,” Elena admitted, both of them dissolving into giggles as she continued, “but I think we both know that either I’d have gotten pregnant before Halloween or we wouldn’t have Eva at all. Plus…Stefan and Matt both taught me something about myself, about what I’m willing to put up with in a relationship versus what I’m not, and I don’t think that I’d have been ready for you if I hadn’t gone out with both of them first.”

            “What do you mean?” Damon wondered, leaning back against the pillows behind him as she curled into his chest, each of them keeping one hand on Elena’s small but well-defined bump, “Are we talking about sex or something more?”

            “Oh, I don’t think anything could’ve prepared me for what it’s like to have sex with someone like you, someone who doesn’t act like I’m made of glass the whole time and wants me to get just as much pleasure out of it as you do, but that’s not what I was thinking, baby,” Elena answered, grinning up at him, “No, what I mean is that I didn’t know what I wanted when I was with either of them but learned what it was that I didn’t want with anyone. They taught me what I do want, and that’s someone who respects me, trusts me, is honest with me, but doesn’t treat me like a child or a damsel in distress. You do get overly protective sometimes, and understandably so given our new normal, but I think I’d have more of a problem with it when you do if I hadn’t dealt with Stefan’s overbearingness just like I had to deal with Matt’s too-politeness.”

            Damon hummed in agreement, understanding what she meant, and the two of them sat in silence for several minutes as they relished in having a moment to themselves. Though he didn’t bother to voice his thoughts, as he’d already told her how he felt before, Damon knew that he wouldn’t have been ready for Elena if it hadn’t been for the likes of Katherine, Sage, Charlotte, and even Bree, as much as he had begun to regret that relationship since the previous Christmas, being in his life when each of them had been. With Katherine, he’d wanted someone, anyone really, to love him because he’d felt as though no one ever would after his own father destroyed his reputation. With Sage, he’d been lost in adjusting to his new lifestyle and trying to convince himself that Katherine would still choose him if he freed her from the tomb. With Charlotte, she’d been sweet and doting as a human and had been exactly what he’d needed when his doubts about Katherine began creeping up on him once more; as a vampire, however, she’d become not only a slave to his whims but also overly clingy and suffocating. With Bree, he’d been looking for a good time rather than a long time and had had some hopes of convincing the witch to help him break into the tomb early. With Elena…he felt like he could be himself without the fear of judgement or of not being enough weighing him down if only because he knew that she didn’t judge him for the things he’d done or what other people thought of him; Elena would also never tell him that he wasn’t enough for her and actively made it a point to tell him that she loved him for who he was at least once a day.

            “Yeah, and I’ll keep doing that until you finally believe me without me having to say it,” she said, her voice breaking through his thoughts just as the sound of a vehicle coming up the driveway caught his attention, “Stefan and Caroline?”

            “No,” he told her, scoffing lightly at the audacity of the person dropping by the boarding house unannounced, “I’d know the sound of that old rust bucket anywhere after being forced to hear it whenever I was keeping an eye on you for the last year.”

            “What the fuck?” Elena replied, sitting up and maneuvering herself off the bed, “Matt’s actually here? I swear, he wasn’t this stupid when we were dating!”

            “Honey, you know I believe you, but I think he lost a few brain cells somewhere along the way,” Damon said, getting up and vamping around the bed to Elena’s side, “No fires today, not outside of a fireplace at least, alright, kitten?”

            “Stay with me, and I won’t torch the house.” she stated, and he nodded as they moved towards the bedroom door with their hands clasped together.

            The walk from their bedroom to the front door was one that either of them could’ve made in their sleep, and Elena leaned heavily into Damon as they made their way towards the sound of the old brass knocker being pounded against the door. As they stepped into the front hall, however, Elena stopped Damon short and turned to him with an almost hesitant expression. Catching her thoughts and nodding, he pressed a kiss to her temple.

            “I’ll go make your cocoa,” he said softly, smiling into the light kiss she pressed to his lips, “I’ll bring it to you in the parlor when it’s ready.”

            “Thank you,” she replied, watching him vamp to the kitchen before turning back towards the door, walking forwards, and opening it to greet her ex who, for reasons indiscernible to her, looked surprised to see her, “Hi, Matt, is there something I can help you with, or are you just here to call me a materialistic slut again?”

            “Oh, um, I uh-I didn’t realize you’d be here,” the blond admitted, “I was actually hoping to speak with Sal- with Damon, but I didn’t think that-”

            “That what?” Elena asked, snorting and rolling her eyes at the tinge of pink coloring Matt’s cheeks as she spoke, “We live together, dumbass, whether we’re at my place or his. That’s the kind of thing that happens when you’re having a baby with someone.”

            “Sorry, I just- Sorry,” Matt said, and she sighed before moving to let him into the house, “You know what, maybe it’s better this way? I…I still have a lot about all this that I don’t understand or can even begin to comprehend, and I have a few things I know I need to apologize to you for, so…can I come in and talk, maybe, to both of you?”

            “Damon’s in the kitchen, so follow me,” she told him, unsurprised when Damon asked to change rooms upon hearing Matt’s admission at the door, “Stefan and Caroline are at her house, so you don’t have to worry about anyone but the three of us being here.”

            Matt said nothing but continued silently following Elena through the boarding house. He hadn’t ever been inside the house before, and his first impression was that the place was very dark and very dated. It didn’t seem to him like a place that was either fit for raising a child or somewhere Elena would want to be if given another option. He wondered if his confusion showed on his face when Elena turned towards him, chuckled, and shook her head at him with something akin to fondness in her eyes.

            “Trust me, Damon and I agreed that we weren’t staying in the boarding house long-term within three days of finding out that I’m pregnant,” she told him, “Our house, the one Damon originally came to town to build when we first met, won’t be ready for us to move in until closer to our birthdays…Damon’s birthday is only four days before mine, you know?”

            “And, on his birthday, Damon will be turning…” Matt trailed off, and Elena sighed.

            “He’ll be twenty-three,” the witch replied, knowing that the physical age difference between Damon and herself made some people question their relationship, “and I’m fully aware that we have a five-year age difference.”

            Matt said nothing at this, though Elena could tell that he was definitely considering saying something as they walked the final few feet of hallway that led to the kitchen. Damon was pouring hot cocoa into mugs as they entered, and the vampire chuckled fondly as Elena clapped her hands together excitedly. Carrying the mugs over to the kitchen table, Damon watched as Matt sat down across from them with mild hesitation while Elena pulled Damon down beside her before taking a deep drink from her mug. The blond stared at them with such curiosity and confusion, so the vampire waited for him to explain his reason for seeking out Elena and himself.

            “I…I originally came here to ask you, Damon, why you haven’t threatened to kick my ass yet,” Matt admitted, a long sigh escaping his lips as he continued, “Tyler and I went to the hospital to check in on Sarah after Mason let us know that she was in recovery. Mason…I’ve known Mason Lockwood my entire life, and I’ve never seen him the way he was today. He didn’t yell at us, but he did lecture me and Tyler about our behavior; he told me that, from what little he knew of you, I should consider myself lucky that you haven’t already confronted me about what I’d been saying both to and about Elena for the last week. Until Mason reminded me who I was saying these things about, I hadn’t even thought twice about it.”

            “Now that you have thought about it,” Damon asked, though he had a fairly good idea, “what have you realized about the last week?”

            “Elena, I’m so, so sorry,” Matt said as he turned towards his ex-girlfriend to apologize, “You’ve been my best friend since we were babies, and for me to say the things I did, to accuse you of the things I did, or to take Blair and Tina’s comments as having even a modicum of truth, I don’t even know why I did it. I know you, and I know that you’d never go looking for anyone to take care of you or willingly, purposefully get pregnant while still in school.”

            “That is why I haven’t kicked your ass yet,” Damon told him as Elena merely took another sip of her cocoa, “I know why you did it, you wanted to hurt Elena so that she would feel just as bad as you’ve felt for the last ten months, but I also know that Elena’s the one person you’d never be able to forgive yourself if you ever seriously hurt her…emotionally or physically, but your body would be long gone if I ever found out that you’d placed a hand on her because that’s something I won’t tolerate, not after watching my father physically abuse anyone who stood in his way. Honestly, I know what you’re going through, and it’s not a fun feeling. You thought that you’d found The One only to have your dreams of a happy future crushed into a fine powder. Everything you thought you had all planned out for your life is just…poof…gone, and I can’t stay mad at you long enough to kick your ass because I get it.”

            “You do?” Matt wondered, confused, and Damon nodded.

            “Yeah, and it fucking sucks, man,” the vampire chuckled, “ My father made everyone who came into contact with me think the worst of me for more than half my life, and I thought my first real girlfriend was the one person who didn’t believe him. I thought she was the one for me…and then I found out that she was sleeping with my best friend. When he and I tried to get her to make a choice between the two of us, she faked her death to avoid it only to tell me to my face that she’d never loved me when I finally found and confronted her. Elena…Elena pulled me from a very dark place, and I have no doubt that you’ll find someone someday who can do the same thing for you, but you have the chance to do something I never did, Matt.”

            “What’s that?” the blond asked, curious, and Elena looked over at Damon with a soft smile on her face as her boyfriend answered.

            “You have the chance to get yourself out and start making yourself a better person before she meets you. Before Elena and I met, before she let me tell her about the things I’d been through, I’d been holding on to so much anger and pain that it nearly killed me. You can start trying to let go of some of that now, find what makes you happy outside of being in a relationship,” he said, pressing a light kiss to Elena’s lips as he turned towards her, “I might not ever think to change a thing about how my own life made me who I am today, but I wouldn’t wish my life on anyone else. As much as I know that she makes me a better man, I still can’t help but think that Elena deserves better than someone as broken as me.”

            “I’ve told you before, baby, it’s not about what I deserve,” the witch said softly, “It’s about what I want, and you never need to worry that what I want won’t be you.”

            “Huh,” Matt voiced after a moment, a fond chuckle tinting his words, “Caroline was right. You two are sickeningly adorable.”

            “Little secret?” Damon replied as Elena rolled her eyes, “She and Stefan aren’t any better sometimes.”

            “Tell you the truth, I never saw that one coming,” the quarterback admitted with a snort, “Stefan’s so quiet and brooding, and Care’s just…not any of that! How’d they end up together exactly?”

            “Stefan asked Caroline to be his date for the 50s dance in an effort to apologize for how standoffish he’d been at the beginning of the school year, and they ended up having a better time than I think either of them counted on at the dance,” Elena told him, Damon grinning at the memory her words dredged up for them both, “We didn’t realize how close they’d gotten until I walked Damon out to his car one night only for us to find Stefan and Caroline making out on her front porch.”

            “She’s good for Stef, though,” Damon added, still grinning, “I haven’t seen him this happy in…years! Was there anything else you wanted to know? I’m happy to answer any and all questions to the best of my ability.”

            “Actually, um, yeah,” Matt replied, taking a long breath before asking a question that had been plaguing his mind for three months, “How’d things go from Elena/Stefan, Damon/Caroline back in September to Damon and Caroline hate each other to Elena and Stefan are ‘just friends,’ to Elena/Damon and Stefan/Caroline? I don’t understand how that all happened.”

            “I never really wanted to date Stefan, and he didn’t necessarily want to date me as it happens,” Elena began explaining, pausing as she noticed that Matt had yet to touch the mug before him on the table and quietly mumbled out a warming spell as Matt himself scoffed loudly at the notion that she hadn’t wanted to date her ex, “No, I really didn’t…Drink your cocoa; it’s Damon’s Nonna’s very old Salvatore family recipe, and I promise that you’ll love it.”

            “I remember what you were like when you and Stefan first got together, so how is it that you didn’t wanna be with him?” Matt asked as he took a drink, eyes widening at the taste before looking over at Damon in pleasant surprise, “This is the best damn hot cocoa I’ve ever had. Your grandmother knew what she was doing with this recipe.”

            “Thanks, man, but it’s not anything super difficult,” Damon chuckled, earning a grin from Matt as Elena rolled her eyes at his good-natured teasing, “I’ve managed to teach Elena how to make it on her own, but she still insists that I just make it better somehow.”

            “Anyways,” Elena said, returning to the original conversation, “I had no interest in Stefan when I first met him. Bonnie and Caroline both thought he was hot and wanted to know everything about him, but I really didn’t care. After he showed an interest in me¸ the two of them started pushing me to go out with him. It started out as just seeing where things went because it’s what everyone was telling me to do…but then I went to return a book that Stefan had leant me and found out that the guy I’d met four months earlier was actually Stefan’s older brother and legal guardian who’d been in town in May to finalize the reconstruction of the old Salvatore estate for the two of them so that they wouldn’t be in Zach’s hair the whole last two years of school that Stefan had. Matt…I might’ve lied a little bit when I told you that Damon had nothing to do with our breakup, and I’m sorry. I never cheated on you, let me start with that, but the conversation I had with Damon when we first met was one of the deciding factors in me finally plucking up the courage to end things with you because Damon was the first person to tell me that it’s okay sometimes to just say, ‘Fuck how other people feel and think. This is my life, and I’m going to do what makes me happy, what I want to do.’ By the time we’d met again in September, I was too entrenched in my grief, my need to keep everyone at a somewhat normal-feeling level had overridden my common sense. So, with only mild regret on my part now, Damon and I agreed to just be friends. I was with Stefan, and that made everyone but, a bit ironically, me and Damon happy, so I tried to make things work. Stefan would tell me something, lie about something in his past, and then shut me out whenever I discovered another lie until whenever he wanted to patch things up, and we stayed in this holding pattern until December 3^rd when, after I slept with him because it seemed like a good idea and logical step at the time, I found a picture on his desk of a girl who looked identical to me but with extremely curly hair; the note on the back said it was a picture of someone named ‘Katherine,’ and I knew that she was the ex who’d two-timed him with Damon and made their relationship so strained.”

            “Wait, the girl you thought was your One who cheated on you with your best friend…that was this Katherine chick, right?” Damon nodded as Matt shook his head in disbelief, “And you’ve just ever so conveniently managed to knock up a girl who could be her identical twin?”

            “Those two facts are, a surprise to everyone it seems, not at all related,” Elena broke in, rolling her eyes at her ex, “Before you go and accuse Damon of being some sort of pedophile, let me also add that Katherine’s a very different person from me. It wasn’t until a few weeks after finding her picture on Stefan’s desk that I found out that the reason Katherine and I are identical is because she’s my twin sister. Mom and Dad adopted me, but one of our mother’s cousins adopted Katherine, and we were raised separately our whole lives. She graduated high school early, got her emancipation by the time she was sixteen, and left out on her own because her dad was a complete ass. She met this great guy who loves her more than anything on this planet, but his brother scared her one night and threatened to kill her, and her boyfriend wouldn’t choose sides because he and his brother were as close then as Damon and Stefan were when she first met them. So, Katherine ran away and ended up stumbling across the Salvatores who took her in without hesitation. This was within the year before Giuseppe died, and Damon had just come home from the army to discover that his own father had destroyed his reputation and made it impossible for him to find a girlfriend in their town because the old bastard was bitter about being cut out his mother’s will for being an abusive jackass. Katherine thought Stefan was cute and a nice distraction, and then Damon just reminded her so much of Elijah that she pounced the second she got the chance.”

            “When my dad died, everything went south, and Katherine actually faked her death,” Damon took over, mentally adding military paperwork to the list of documents he’d need his friend Will to make for him before his and Elena’s wedding, “It was just a few weeks ago that we found out that she’s been alive and well this whole time, and she managed to reconnect with Elijah who’s made it as clear as can be that he’s never letting her slip away a second time because he was stupid to do it the first go-round and promised to handle his brother. Before I knew about Elijah and anything about her past, I hated Katherine for what she’d done to me; I was pissed the first time I saw Elena because I thought she was Katherine…then, however, she opened her mouth. Katherine Pierce has never once been even remotely insecure in the entire time I’ve known her, and Elena sounded way too unsure the night we met to be her. Elena’s care for other people, I don’t have to tell you that it shows in every aspect of her being when she lets it. Katherine didn’t grow up with the sort of secure, loving environment that produces a person like that, and I knew that Elena wasn’t Katherine just by how much she could care about a stranger she’d just met. It was one of the first things to draw me in, and it’s still one of my favorite things about her.”

            “The night I found Katherine’s picture on Stefan’s desk, I left here pissed beyond belief and wrecked my car avoiding a deer or something of a similar size that jumped out in front of me; don’t ask what it was exactly, because I never got a good look. The car flipped, I was stuck, and I was sure I was about to die on the side of the road when Damon rolled up on his way back here to get his cellphone charger. He got me out of my car, asked me what’d happened, and didn’t try to make me go back once I told him I didn’t wanna be anywhere that Stefan could find me for a while,” the witch said with a fond smile over at her boyfriend, “He took me shopping in Atlanta after the business meeting he was going to got cancelled, something about the owner going with a different investor, and then we went down to the beach house Damon owns on Tybee Island; it was the best spur-of-the-moment, next-to-no-planning idea either of us has ever had.”

            “There’s exactly one aspect in which Katherine and Elena are truly alike, and it’s not what you’d expect,” Damon chuckled, watching the way Matt’s eyes bugged out at his words, “The both of them refuse to let anyone stop them from getting what they want when it’s something they know without a shadow of a doubt that they want. I had no intentions whatsoever of starting any romantic relationship with Elena less than twenty-four hours after she broke up with my brother, but Elena had other plans and was the one to initiate the sex that first night. I woke up that Saturday morning holding her in my arms and couldn’t help but think, ‘This is what I want the rest of my life to feel like.’ Of course, I thought I’d lost her two hours later, so you can imagine my surprise when she told my brother, who’d tracked us down even after the disaster of a phone call he’d made the day before, that she wanted nothing to do with him beyond him being my little brother because he didn’t care about her enough to tell her the truth about anything.”

            “Well, to be fair, I was still really pissed at Stef when I said that, and he’d just called me a backstabbing, two-timing whore,” Elena shrugged, “We’re better now than we were then, but I spent a good four days flipping between wanting to kill him and wanting everything to just be a peaceful transition from lovers to friends. After Stefan left, more like after I threw him out, I reassured Damon that he wasn’t just some rebound hookup for me, and he promised me that I wasn’t any sort of Katherine replacement for him. We went for a walk along the beach, talked about what we imagined our future would be like, and even discussed kids after we saw this adorable little boy destroying the sandcastle his parents were building all in the name of ‘helping’ them build it. Maybe it’s the orphan thing, or maybe it’s the having a little brother who blames you when things don’t go his way thing, but Damon and I have always understood each other better than most other people. When the breeze started to pick up, we went back to the house, and he made me this very same cocoa for the first time. I told him he was evil for ruining all other cocoa for me, he told me that I knew I loved him then freaked out over saying it, and then I told him that he was right. I do love him, and I’m pretty sure I’d loved him for a while already by then but had a hard time separating my own personal feelings from my desire for everyone else to be happy.”

            “I couldn’t believe it, honestly, and it took her repeating herself a few times for me to understand that it was all real,” Damon admitted, “I already knew that I’d fallen completely, utterly in love with Elena by this point, and knowing that she felt the same way…I didn’t hesitate to tell her how I felt for once. We still don’t know if it was that day sometime or if it was the night before, but little Miss Evelina Rosalia was already conceived by the time we arrived home that Sunday.”

            “Okay, so that explains how you two ended up together, but Stefan and Caroline?” Matt wondered, and the couple shrugged, “Was it really just the dance?”

            “We don’t know,” Elena told him truthfully, as they didn’t know how Stefan had discovered his and Caroline’s bond, “Like I said, we caught them making out on her front porch one night, and they’ve never shared exactly how they got together with us. I know that Stefan loves her, and I know he definitely loves her more than he ever could’ve loved me. Christmas morning, Caroline got into a fight with her dad and stepdad over Stefan…I wasn’t aware that the Forbes and Salvatore families had any sort of beef, but apparently Bill hates them for some reason…and her dad kicked her out of his house. Stefan had dropped her off on his way to Tybee Island because Bill was going to bring her home when he came back for the Founder’s Day stuff, but Stefan drove four hours to get Caroline and bring her down to the island because we all knew that Aunt Liz wouldn’t be able to go get her.”

            “When she and I were together, Caroline and I were a mess,” Damon explained as best he could, “As much as she’d pushed Elena to go out with Stefan, she’d been pissed that Elena’d actually done it just as I was upset that Stefan had tried to poison everyone including Elena against me. We were together for all the wrong reasons, and we’ve both acknowledged that we never should’ve even hooked up because we both acted out of anger and jealousy.”

            “But the four of you…everything’s solid now? Nobody’s stuck in a situation they don’t wanna be in or looking for a way out from something worse?” Matt questioned, and the couple nodded as matching smiles of contended adoration overtook their expressions.

            “I can only speak for my brother and Caroline so much, but they’re both very secure in their relationship and in their relationships with Elena and myself,” Damon answered, pressing a soft kiss to Elena’s hair as he head dropped onto his shoulder, “As for the two of us, I know that I’m very happy with how things are and excited for everything still to come for the two of us and our family.”

            “I’m not entirely happy, but Damon already knows this,” Elena shrugged lightly, a teasing smile tugging at her lips, “I won’t be happy until our house is ready for us to move in and for me to put Eva’s nursery together the way I want. I’m technically early as far as all the stuff I’ve read says, but I’m apparently already nesting. My doctor says it’s normal and could be being brought on early because of us building the house together, getting everything ready for the last phase of that, but I’m just so ready to get everything done so that Eva comes home to, well, a home. My mother said just the other day that Damon’s got the patience of a saint with me because he didn’t even seem the least annoyed when I bitched for two hours about how none of the sample stains for the new hardwood floors were the right tone and shade.”

            “I would’ve only been annoyed if I hadn’t agreed with you,” Damon noted, “We found the right one in the end, though, and that’s what matters. Besides, you put up with just as much from me. I was the one who spent almost all day Tuesday pissed off at the builders on the barn for putting the stall posts in too close together and having to redo them all.”

            “Barn?” Matt asked, confused, and Damon chuckled while Elena merely grinned.

            “We’ll do a housewarming party over the summer, probably, so you’ll see what we’re talking about,” she said, confident for the first time since having gone public with her pregnancy that she did actually have all of her friends supporting her, “and you’ll see Tyler’s mom at her most jealous. It’s bound to be the most entertaining part of the summer!”

Notes:

A/N: Matt is getting there, sweets, but he has a long way to go before he's completely okay with everything. We will see how Steroline came to be in the coming chapters, and Elena's plans for Grayson's old clinic will start to become clear. Stay tuned and get ready for some excitement...XOXO

Chapter 7: Now My Heart Beats True

Summary:

"Well, the whole town's talkin' 'bout the line I'm walkin'/That leads right to your door/Oh, how I used to roam/I was a rolling stone/I used to have a wild side/They say a country mile wide/I'd burn those beer joints down/That's all changed now/You turned my life around..."
-"Brand New Man," by Brooks & Dunn

Notes:

A/N: Hello, sweets! I am alive, I swear! I finally got my files back and have been able to work on this some more, so here we are after a long, long wait! Enjoy, and I promise that it won't take so long before the next update!

TRIGGER WARNING: THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS MENTIONS OF ABORTION, ECTOPIC PREGNANCY, MEDICAL MALPRACTICE, AND INFANTICIDE!

            Two-and-a-half weeks after Matt’s surprise visit, Damon found himself leaning against the doorframe of Elena’s study and just watching his girlfriend as she flipped through page after page of printouts and highlighted sections at a time in bright yellow. The color-coded sticky tabs had to mean something, he was sure of that much, but they’d agreed to block one another as best they could if she was working so that his thoughts and ideas wouldn’t interrupt hers. Ever since Elena had decided against medical school, she’d wanted to get back into her creative writing but had complained to Damon that she didn’t have anywhere quiet or private enough to do so; naturally, Damon had to find a solution because he wasn’t about to not do whatever he could to make Elena happy. Thus, with a little help from John, Isobel, and Alaric, he had transformed the unused bedroom closest to his and Elena’s at the boarding house into a home office for her use. She could stay at her desk for as long as Eva would let her, and Damon always made sure to check on her every half-hour even if he never actually spoke to her when he did. Sometimes…sometimes he just liked to observe her mid-project and remind himself how lucky he was to have her as a partner.

            “You are lucky to have me as your other half,” she said with a smirk, their mental walls having come down while he’d been staring at her, “but I’m just as lucky to have you as mine.”

            “What are you working on today?” he asked, chuckling softly as he walked over to her desk and peered down at the printouts in the binder before her, “Medieval foundling wheels?”

            “It’s part of a larger plan, one which I still have to run by my brother since this has absolutely nothing to do with my writing,” Elena explained, leaning back in her chair and brushing a hand over her well-rounded bump, “I want my dad’s old clinic to be of use to the community, but I’m not about to sell it to any of the developers who think Mystic Falls is ‘stuck in the past’ and want to build for profits instead of for people…I don’t care if one of those offers was from Starbucks, I’m not selling.”

            “So, if not a coffeehouse, then what are you thinking?” Damon wondered, remembering the day that the coffee giant had sent a representative to make an offer to buy the Gilbert clinic after the story of the explosion had caught the eye of a friend-of-a-friend of someone in the company who specialized in expanding the brand’s reach, “We haven’t told Jake anything other than to work on doing some restorations to the outside of the building, but what do you want to put inside of it?”

            “Well, since the unit next door has been unoccupied since Mrs. Baxter moved to Williamsburg to be closer to her daughter and grandkids, and since Mr. Fletcher closed down his shop after his ability to see even with his jeweler’s loop was too straining for him, half the strip that my dad’s clinic sits on is empty. If we bought those units, we could expand into them and have enough space for us to create something like this,” she flipped to the front of the binder where the words Mystic Falls Family & Children’s Center were printed at the top of the page with a sketch of the proposed new center beneath the name, “Jeremy drew that for me, but he doesn’t know the full extent of what I’ve put into this already, and I’m a little worried that he won’t agree.”

            “Baby, go back about two steps for me, please, because I’m not fully understanding everything you’ve put into this.” Damon said as he moved behind her, his hands settling on her shoulders as she leaned into his touch, “How does this relate to medieval foundling wheels?”

            “On top of operating a low-to-zero-cost daycare and preschool, as we wouldn’t need to charge to keep everything afloat but could charge a significantly smaller fee than what even the daycare run by the church does just to appear normal to the public, I was thinking that we’d also offer parenting classes, a shelter for people trying to get out of abusive relationships with or without kids who have nowhere else to go, resources like job counseling and financial planning for people who’ve been down on their luck and just need a little help figuring things out, and then…I really want to have a baby box,” Elena explained, turning page by page through the binder until she reached the one she’d been highlighting on when Damon had entered the room, “Baby boxes started as foundling wheels in the Vatican in roughly 1189 because Pope Innocent III was horrified at the number of dead babies being fished out of the Tiber River because they either weren’t wanted or couldn’t be cared for by their mothers. Baby boxes or hatches are the modern version of this, and, yes, we have safe-haven laws, but these laws require that the baby be surrendered at a designated location such as a hospital, a fire station, or another EMS location equipped with newborn safety devices, and none of the ones around here have that. An hour either direction, maybe you find one there, but not in Mystic Falls or anywhere else in Nelson County. I just…ever since I had my vision of the kids, I’ve just known that Landon’s birth mother is going to abandon him. I can’t tell you how I know, but I know that’s what’s going to happen. Every time I think about it, all I think about what could’ve happened to me if my parents, any of them, hadn’t had the option of an inter-family adoption or if Grandma and Grandpa hadn’t been okay with taking care of me while Mama was in school. I know that we’ll be able to protect Landon, to give him a loving home and family, but what about every other child who doesn’t have that chance? Every mother who feels she needs to give up her child for one reason or another but is too scared to go to a hospital or firehouse where, despite the fact that she can’t be charged for abandoning her child, she still stands a higher chance of being seen? If we also operate a small neonatal clinic with a nurse’s office for the preschool, I would think we could qualify as an EMS location that could have a baby box. It could help Landon, should we have this done by October, but it could also help so many other kids. What do you think?”

            “I think that it’s a brilliant idea, that I can compel our way into where we want to be with the project if the need ever arises, and that you’re still too good for me, but that last one’s neither here nor there,” Damon replied, leaning around Elena to press a light kiss to her lips, “but I also think that you need to give your brain a break for a bit. Dinner’s ready, and you’ve been in here since lunch.”

            “I’m sorry, baby,” she said while standing up from her chair and leaning into his side, her head dropping onto his shoulder as they made their way out of her study, “I got the idea after reading an article in one of those magazines at Dr. Spencer’s office this morning, and I let myself get carried away a bit. She was nice, by the way, and going to see her wasn’t as scary as I thought it’d be.”

            “I don’t think you got carried away; all your planning looks well thought out and reasonable. I’m just glad you like going to see Dr. Spencer,” the vampire said, still surprised that he’d finally found a therapist who happened to be a witch and didn’t need to be threatened or compelled into keeping their secrets, “You know that I’m always willing to listen, but having someone completely on the outside of the situation can be a big help sometimes.”

            Elena smiled softly and nodded, but she didn’t respond in words. Dr. Leanne Spencer was a middle-aged woman whom she and Damon had been introduced to by Katherine after having told the vampiress of Elena’s pre-December suicidal contemplations. While Katherine herself had never used Dr. Spencer as a therapist, she trusted the witch’s discretion as the woman owed her a life debt that she hadn’t collected on until she was made aware of Elena’s circumstances. It would still take a little more convincing for him to truly believe her, but Damon was starting to think that Katherine didn’t hate Elena and want her to die anymore.

            As they entered the kitchen a few minutes later, the smell of peppers and spices perfumed the air. Elena turned curiously towards Damon, and the vampire chuckled fondly at her expression. The meal he’d cooked wasn’t one he typically made, but he’d started listening to Katherine’s suggestions where things like Elena’s mental and physical wellbeing during pregnancy were concerned after he realized that Katherine would know all about what it’s like to be pregnant. The fact that she, like Elena, enjoyed her food on the spicy side didn’t hurt either. Sitting at the kitchen table once their food was plated, Damon couldn’t help but admit to himself that Katherine had indeed been right because, if her smile and the way she seemed to move to a song only she could hear was any indication of how she felt about the meal, Elena really liked the chicken curry.

 

            The following night was the charity masquerade. It had been nearly three weeks since the carnival and Mason Lockwood’s arrival in town, three weeks since Elijah had gone to Greece to warn Klaus of what the Travelers were undoubtedly planning, and it was only with mild strangeness to the whole situation that Katherine sat cross-legged on Damon and Elena’s bed whilst her doppelgänger readied herself for the party in the ensuite bathroom. Katherine wouldn’t be attending the masquerade, though she was tempted to after Elena had told her how Carol Lockwood had been the one who’d started the rumor that Eva wasn’t Damon’s child, but she would be keeping an eye on things from a distance just in case they did need her help. Elijah and Nadia were both due back within the next day or so, and she wanted them to come home to everything being perfectly in order and not at all falling apart the way she so dreaded. Looking up as Elena padded back into the bedroom in search of her shoes after just under fifteen minutes, Katherine grinned artfully at her doppelgänger’s choice of dress.

            “Making a statement, are we?” she asked, and Elena smirked as she smoothed down the fabric clinging tightly to her body and showcasing her still-small-but-growing-and-defined bump.

            “Carol might’ve shut her mouth, at least when she knows what she says has a chance of getting back to me and Damon, but others haven’t,” Elena replied, opening the closet door and stepping inside as she decided on which shoes to wear, “Damon and I aren’t ashamed of Eva, we never could be, and neither one of us has any problem making it abundantly clear that nobody’s getting trapped by her existence. Red or black?”

            Katherine looked at the two near-identical high heels Elena held up for her to chosen from, pursed her lips as she considered her options, and nodded appraisingly. Elena’s dress was a knee-length black off-the-shoulder style, accented by her silver jewelry, and the brightest thing about her appearance to this point was the ruby red lipstick she wore. Katherine knew which shoes she would wear if it were her, but she wasn’t quite as sure that her younger doppelgänger would agree.

            “Red,” she told her, explaining her reasoning as best she could, “Pink and red used to be seen as very masculine colors because they’re considered strong. However, no one deals with more red in their lives, not even vampires, than women; I mean, if a woman becomes a vampire, she’s generally had to deal with her menstrual cycle before turning and therefore never escapes blood. Much like the color red, you are very strong, Elena, and wearing red sends a message of strength. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that red is Damon’s favorite color, and I’d be willing to bet that those shoes would definitely be classified ‘Fuck Me,’ heels. From what I remember, you want him just about any chance you can get at this stage. Then again, you two are already so sexually insatiable that I don’t even think you’d really need the shoes, but they can’t hurt.”

            “Katherine!” she giggled as Elena blushed in embarrassment, though Katherine noted that Elena slipped on the red heels anyway.

            “What?” Katherine chuckled, “Damon’s not even home yet. He’s still checking on your house, but I don’t think he’d care even if he was since you’re already pregnant. It’s not like everybody in this town isn’t already aware that you two make the term ‘fuck like rabbits,’ look tame.”

            “You do realize that, on the most basic of levels, Damon and I are literally just a younger version of you and Elijah, right?” Elena replied, and Katherine rolled her eyes.

            “Trust me, I know,” Katherine admitted, her annoyance giving way to tempered affection as she continued, “I’m just glad that the two of you figured things out a lot sooner than we ever did.”

            “He’ll be home soon,” Elena told her, and Katherine nodded gently, “He’ll come home to you, Nadia will follow along shortly thereafter, and we’ll all be there to help explain to Klaus if need be exactly how his curse can be broken without anyone dying…and then you and Elijah can be the ones fucking like rabbits.”

            “Okay, I deserved that one,” the older Petrova laughed, and the younger merely smirked before making her way over to her vanity table and grabbing the bottle of Coco Mademoiselle off the table and spritzing a bit onto herself, “I know this is probably a lot to ask given everything else we’ve got going on, but will you at least try to have fun tonight? You need to take every chance you get to just be happy with the ones you love, something I learned way later in my life than I wish I had, because there is nothing more precious than family.”

            Turning back to face Katherine, smiling as she sensed Damon pulling into the driveway, Elena nodded. When the bedroom door opened a few minutes later, the younger Petrova wasted little time in crossing the room and wrapping her boyfriend in her arms. Katherine left quietly, the couple trusting that she would be there if they needed her during the night, and Elena handed Damon the rhinestone-encrusted silver mask she had picked for the evening. Tying the black silk ribbon just under her hair, Damon affixed the mask to Elena’s face before slipping on his own black mask dotted with a silver shimmer Venetian pattern along the sides. Running his hands across Elena’s bump, Damon pulled his girlfriend close and pressed a soft, lingering kiss to her neck before wrapping an arm around her and escorting her downstairs to the garage.

            “Mine or yours?” he asked, chuckling as she raised an eyebrow at him before taking her keys from her small purse and tossing them to him as she walked towards her Kia without a word.

            Getting in the driver’s seat of Elena’s car, Damon couldn’t help but let his mind flicker briefly to the two car seats sitting in boxes in Elena’s office that he knew he would be installing into the car by late September; as much as he was personally enjoying Elena being pregnant, one look at the soft smile on her face told him that he wasn’t alone in his excitement for the day they would be able to put their two oldest children in those car seats and bring them home for the first time. For the rest of the drive to the Lockwood mansion, Damon told Elena how their own home was coming along and how soon they would be able to start decorating the interior. By the time they returned home from their babymoon trip, they would be able to begin making the old manor house feel like a proper home for their family.

 

            Arriving at the Lockwood mansion, Damon and Elena were quickly swept up in society mingling. There seemed to be no shortage of people looking to get even just a moment with the reigning Miss Mystic Falls, and most of them were, surprisingly enough to the couple, not staring at her rounded bump in disdain. Stefan and Caroline were able to relax and just have fun instead of hovering around Damon and Elena, though they remained ready to spring to their defense, and even John and Isobel appeared to be having a good time. Any questions about why everyone suddenly seemed so supportive ended up being answered a couple of hours into the ball when, while Damon was in the middle of a conversation with Tyler and Jeremy over near the bar, Elena was approached by a nervous Carol Lockwood accompanied by Liz whose confident smirk left Elena both curious and alarmed.

            “Aren’t you just glowing!” Liz cooed as she hugged her goddaughter, and Elena smiled at the compliment before the sheriff dropped the proverbial other shoe, “Sweetie, I was just talking to Carol, and she says she has something to say to you. Will you hear her out, please?”

            “Of course,” Elena answered, turning to face the interim-mayor, “and the ball is wonderful, Mrs. Lockwood; it’s a shame Mr. Lockwood had to miss this one.”

            “Yes, that is a shame, but he’s doing well with his pulmonary rehab, and he’ll be here for the next one,” Carol said, leading Elena over to a cream-colored velvet settee a few feet behind them as Liz excused herself to go greet some of her deputies who were in attendance, “I wanted to apologize for my hand in the rumors that Blair and Tina Fell have been spreading. I believe that they might’ve overheard Tanith and I discussing your feature in the paper, and I think they took a few things that she and I said out of context.”

            “Mrs. Lockwood, I’m going to stop you right there before you make either of us sound like idiots that I know we’re not because Damon tells me everything. I doubt that Blair and Tina could’ve taken anything ‘out of context’ because you yourself implied to Damon that Eva isn’t his the day you appointed him the new head of the Council whose meetings he's not bringing me along to because he doesn't think I need the added stress right now but will if I say I wanna go,” replied Elena calmly, not raising her voice as to avoid bringing attention to herself, “Damon also told me how he corrected your thinking and explained exactly how we know not only that Eva is his but also when and where she was conceived. Not a single thing about Eva was planned prior to me getting two positives on the home pregnancy tests I took the Monday before Christmas.”

            “Oh,” Carol’s expression fell momentarily before morphing into something akin to a soft resignation, “I will admit that I was more than a bit shocked when I first saw the article. I did wonder as to whether the sudden timing of your pregnancy had any correlation to how suddenly you and Damon seemed to start dating, but Damon explained so much more about your relationship to me the day after the article was printed. Elena, I truly am sorry for what mine and Tanith’s speculations caused. I promise you, I had no idea that Blair and Tina would hear any of that and start spreading their own version of events, and I’ve been trying to correct their antics ever since Damon informed me of the incident during the carnival setup…I’m just so sorry if you’ve felt unwelcome in your own town or if you’ve thought that anyone thinks less of you for being pregnant. I can assure you that neither of those things is remotely true and that, should anyone claim to not like or think less of you, they’re more than likely jealous that you're having a baby with a wonderful man who loves you in ways nobody else could ever truly understand. I, for one, think that you're an amazing young woman with a big heart, a sharp mind, and a gentle soul that will make you an incredible mother.”

            “Thank you, Mrs. Lockwood, it means a lot to hear you say that, to know that you don’t think that way about me,” Elena said after a moment, silently weighing the pros and cons of bringing the mayor in on her pet project before deciding to just tell her, “The kinds of attitudes you mentioned, though, that’s what I hope to get rid of for others who find themselves unexpectedly becoming parents. Damon, Jeremy, and I have a plan for my dad’s old clinic; none of us are exactly interested in med school, but we are all interested in being of service to the community. Jeremy’s approved of all my plans, he’s even drawn up some concept art for me, and Damon’s got our contractor on speed dial by now, so we’re hoping to move forward with our new low-to-no-cost daycare, preschool, in-need shelter, pay-what -you-can-afford pediatrics clinic, and education and outreach center in the very near future.”

            “Grayson’s clinic won’t be big enough for all of that, will it?” Carol asked, curious, and Elena grinned.

            “No, it won’t be, but one of the suites in the row is already vacant, and the other is currently up for sale,” she answered with a soft chuckle, “I’ve already set up a time to meet with the planning and zoning board, Jeremy’s doing some larger concept drawings for me for any potential presentations that we might have to do, and Damon’s making sure that I don’t overwork myself. He had to pull me away from a stack of research about two-inches thick solely on medieval foundling wheels last night so I’d eat dinner…I know that sounds like a really weird thing to do research on, but I promise that it’ll all make sense once we’re up and running.”

            “Well, it sounds like you’ve got everything all figured out, Elena,” for the first time, Elena felt that Carol spoke with a genuine sincerity and smiled politely, “I understand if you don’t believe it right now, not after how awful I’ve been since December, but I truly do understand why you’ve chosen the focus for your time at Miss Mystic Falls that you have.”

            “You do?” Elena asked, curious as to what the older woman was thinking.

            “Yes, I do,” Carol told her, nodding smally before explaining what she meant, “Have you ever wondered why Tyler is an only child? Richard and I had plans for a much larger family than what we had, but you know the saying: Men plan, God laughs. Tyler was three when I got pregnant again, but I had what’s known as an ectopic pregnancy. The fertilized egg implanted in my left fallopian tube, but my OB was no help because he was too scared to even mention termination because of the way the law was written at the time. Your dad…Grayson didn’t hesitate when Richard and I asked him for his opinion after my doctor kept delaying treatment. He called a friend of his in D.C. and set up an appointment at a clinic under a false name so that no one would have to know that I’d even gone. We made all the plans that we could and thought we’d just try again after a few weeks. Then, the day before we were supposed to go up to D.C., the egg had grown too big and burst through the fallopian tube. I was rushed into emergency surgery and nearly died on the table. Afterwards, I didn’t understand why, but I was terrified by just the mere thought of getting pregnant again. Richard suggested I go talk to someone, a professional, and see if they might be able to help me make sense of things since nothing was easing my fear or dulling it with time. I was diagnosed with a form of PTSD called secondary tokophobia; turns out, there’s a legitimate fear of pregnancy, and the leading cause is complications from a previous pregnancy. Richard was…he was actually really amazing through all of it, and he made the decision that we weren’t going to try again because he refused to force me into a situation where I would never be comfortable just so that he could say he had another heir to carry on his legacy. We considered adoption, surrogacy, and even fostering children, but then my mother-in-law died and left us with custody of Mason for the next three years. By the time things had calmed back down, we just decided that Tyler was meant to be an only child and accepted that another baby wasn’t the cards.”

            “Have you ever told anyone about this before now?” Elena asked softly, but Carol just smiled sadly and gave a short nod.

            “Your mom and dad knew; Miranda eventually told me that Grayson had filed an ethics complaint against my doctor for being a danger to his patients,” Carol said, and Elena blinked in mild surprise, unsure of how she hadn’t ever realized this before, “They used to alternate with Richard and I as to who would take care of Matt and Vickie whenever Kelly went off on a bender or left town with another boyfriend. Your mom, she knew that having those two around would help. I guess all the time I spent helping to raise her is why I was always so disappointed in how Vickie turned out in spite of anything Miranda, Liz, or I did. It wasn’t that I didn’t think she was good enough for Tyler, not really, so much as it was that I knew that they weren’t good for each other. I just wish I could’ve done something to help her before she gave in to her demons.”

            “Mrs. Lockwood, thank you,” Elena said after a moment, smiling widely as she rose from the sofa and looked around as if she needed to find her boyfriend, “You just gave me the best idea, and I’ve gotta go ask Damon about it before I forget.”

            Carol smiled back, and Elena hurried over towards the bar where she was relieved to see that Matt had joined Damon, Jeremy, and Tyler’s conversation. Jeremy was talking about the drawings he had done for Elena’s prospective community help center, and Damon was smiling encouragingly at the youngest of their group the way any good older brother would do. It warmed Elena’s heart to see this, and she was relieved for the ease of segue if offered her.

            “Speaking of our new project,” she broke in, curling into Damon’s side as she spoke, “I was just talking with Ty’s mom and got an idea that I wanted to run by all of you.”

            “All of us?” Matt asked confusedly, and Elena nodded.

            “Damon and I talked about adding a crisis counseling center to the project, and I want to name it in Vicky’s honor,” she explained, watching as their mouths dropped in awe, “Nobody needed help but got overlooked more than Vicky, and I want everyone to remember why we’re doing this in the first place. Vicky’s gone because no one bothered to help her or even told her once that she was capable of helping herself. I don’t want her death to be in vain, and I think that opening the Victoria Donovan Crisis Center would be a good start.”

            “You really want to put my sister’s name on this?” Matt wondered, tears welling up in his eyes, and Elena nodded.

            “Vicky was my friend, too, and she deserves to be remembered. Yes, she might’ve ultimately been the reason why she's not here anymore, but she wouldn’t have reached that point if we’d all been a little kinder or more supportive of her when we had the chance,” Elena said in a firm, gentle tone that Damon knew meant she was also saying this to him, “Besides, Vicky would love how much the idea of her name being used to promote something good for this town would irk the Fell cousins.”

            “That she would absolutely fucking love!” Matt chuckled, blinking away tears as he gave his consent to the name, “I’d have to run it by Mom to be sure, but I think it’s a great idea, Elena, and I just wanna thank you now for not letting anyone forget about her in the future.”

❌⭕❌⭕

            Matt went off to find his mother a few minutes later, eager to tell Kelly about what Elena had asked permission to do. Tyler was called away by his own mother around the same time, him being her co-host for the party due to his father and uncle both being out of town, and sighed before going to her. Jeremy, with minor prompting from Damon, got up the nerve to ask Bonnie to dance without having to be goaded into it by Caroline, leaving the couple all alone near the bar. A silent conversation passing between them, Damon and Elena made short work of making their way around the party and giving parting pleasantries to all those necessary before stopping to let their friends and family know that they were heading home. After her end-of-quarter exams finished the next morning, Elena and Damon would be heading to the airport to fly off to Hawaii for their babymoon, and the couple still had packing that needed to be done.

            Arriving back at the boarding house, Damon suggested to Elena that they wind down for a bit before worrying about packing their bags. Giggling, Elena followed his lead as they removed their party clothes and masks. Elena sat down at her vanity to remove her makeup, and Damon moved about in the bathroom behind her as she did so. She paused upon hearing the water in the bathtub turn on, but she smiled upon entering the bathroom and seeing Damon adding her favorite lavender bubble bath to the tub. It didn’t take much more for him to convince her of his idea, and she let out a soft yawn of contentment as she relaxed into him a short while later.

            From the actual act of bathing to just cuddling contentedly in the warm, soapy water, there was an intimacy about the whole thing that was different but no less enjoyable from when they had sex. Yes, it was all very sensual, but there was no sense of urgently needing to have sex on either side. Both were content to just hold one another and exchange soft kisses; neither felt the desire to be anywhere but where they were in that moment. As they sat in a sea of lavender bubbles, both their hands over her bump, Elena stilled. A sudden fluttering had shot through her womb, and she grinned as she realized what it was.

            “Did you feel that?” she asked Damon, giggling as the fluttering hit her a second time, “She’s moving!”

            “If I wasn’t a vampire, I probably wouldn't have, but I felt our little princess moving alright,” he said with a chuckle, “God, this is like her first heartbeat all over again! I know she’s in there, I know she’s real, but it just feels so much more true every time. We made a person, one that’s half-you and half-me, and she’s moving around inside you. I love you so much, kitten.”

            They remained like this until the water began to grow cold. Only then did Damon pull the stopper and help Elena rise from the tub as it drained. The two of them dressed in a comfortable and contented silence broken only by Elena’s occasional giggle as she felt Eva move. If anything was certain, she was sure that her daughter would seldom be content to remain still once she was born. It was as they were going over their packing checklist that Damon suddenly stilled, and Elena froze as well when she realized why. Someone was using the brass knocker on the front door, but no car had come down the drive. Whoever was at the door wasn’t human.

            A short, silent argument ensued as Damon and Elena debated which of them should answer. Elena won out with her points that one, only the vampires who’d lived in Mystic Falls within the last six months knew that the house was no longer human-owned, meaning all others would assume the need for an invitation, and that two, she was more than capable of defending herself against all kinds of creatures with her tendency to set her enemies on fire. Damon trailed closely behind her, ever present as her shadow as she made her way downstairs. He slipped off to the side when they reached the door, keeping himself out of sight for whoever waited on the other side, and Elena gave him a quick nod before opening it.

            “Hello?” she called, not seeing anyone outside but not moving from within the safety of the house, “I heard the knocking, so I know you’re there!”

            A rustling sound off to her left got her attention for a moment, and she stepped one step out the door with Damon’s approval, but the person who rushed towards her from the right found himself flying back as Damon vamped in between Elena and her would-be attacker. The two began to fight, but something about the way the attacker moved told Elena that he wasn’t a vampire. She would’ve made a further determination if she’d had the time, but the sound on her left returned, and a second figure charged towards her. As Damon turned to dispatch of this new second figure, Elena screamed and watched as her boyfriend suddenly fell to the ground. The first figure stood up, brushed himself off, and grabbed the shiny, silver syringe sticking out of Damon’s right shoulder. Though she felt the fire swirling within her, burning bright and prepared to torch the two mystery men, Elena felt a prick against her neck. The fire died, and her last thought before losing consciousness was that she hoped whatever they used to knock her out didn’t hurt Eva.

 

            When Elena woke, it wasn’t groggily the way she had when Ben and Anna had kidnapped her back in December, and she wasn’t sure if she should be grateful for this. On full alert, her hands on her bump, she looked around for any sign of her kidnappers. A surge of relief flooded through her, and she knew that Damon had sensed her waking. Her hands, she noted, weren’t bound while her feet were tied together at the ankles. She made a face to herself upon realizing that, even with as relatively small as her bump still was, she still wasn’t able to lean down to untie her feet herself. A flash of movement caught her eye, and she looked up to see a man she didn’t recognize in the least entering from another room.

            “What do you want?” she asked, half-tired and annoyed, half-scared for her unborn daughter as she tried hunching over slightly to obscure her stomach, “What did you give me?”

            “Shh,” the man said, kneeling down to untie her feet, “One little sip, just a taste couldn’t hurt.”

            He grabbed for her arm, but a voice, female and agitated, made him stop short. Looking up, Elena saw the owner of the voice as she entered from the same direction the man had. She, too, was not anyone Elena could ever remember seeing, but she hoped that they were at least as monologue-prone as her usual enemies so that Damon would have enough time to reach her. She could tell that he was already on his way, but she had too much of her focus on protecting her baby to pinpoint his location.

            “Trevor, have some control, will you?” the woman said, clearly annoyed with her male companion who frowned at the floor.

            “Buzzkill,” Trevor mumbled, “I never get to have any fun with you around, do I?”

            “Shut up,” the woman shook her head at Trevor before turning to Elena, “Oh my God, you really do look just like her.”

            “Ah, so this is a Katherine thing,” Elena mused, realizing that she shouldn’t have been so surprised at this, “If you wanted to see her, all you had to do was ask. I had just had lunch with her this afternoon, and then she helped me with my outfit for a charity event I attended this evening.”

            “I don’t want to see Katherine,” the woman sneered, “but this would all go a lot smoother for everyone if you’d just shut up!”

            “Everybody always says that, but then they go and ask me questions.” Elena snarked back, but this didn’t go over as well as she hoped as the woman reared back and slapped her.

            “I said to shut up!” she ordered, and Elena did as told if only to protect her daughter, but she could feel Damon’s rage spike as he registered the slap that she had just received and knew that he would need extreme emotional tempering if they wanted to leave for their trip on time without leaving a murder in their wake.

 

            Hours passed, and Elena was growing restless. Trevor had gone to sulk in another room after the woman, who Elena had learned was called Rose, had scolded him for not wanting to go through with her plan. Apparently, the two of them had gotten on Klaus Mikaelson’s bad side some centuries previous and hoped that they’d be able to buy their freedom if they were able to produce a Petrova doppelgänger; this had led to their plan to hire a few werewolves to kidnap her, but the werewolves had gone once Rose had paid them for bringing Elena to her. Rose was hoping to give Elena over to Elijah as a way of brokering peace with his brother, which made the witch force down a laugh as she knew the Original would just return her to Damon, but neither of her two kidnappers seemed to know that causing her any sort of harm wouldn’t help them in their quest. Rose was pacing back and forth in front of where Elena sat on the couch, and Elena was torn between keeping silent the way she had since first meeting Rose or asking why she was there other than because she was Katherine’s doppelgänger. Eventually, her curiosity won out, though she kept her arms wrapped tight around her abdomen as she spoke.

            “So, I heard what you said to Trevor,” she said, fighting back a smile, “You want to give me over to Elijah Mikaelson? Why?”

            “Do you have any idea who the Mikaelsons are, stupid girl?” Rose asked in response, “Have the Salvatores taught you nothing?”

            “Stefan’s taught me basically jack shit,” Elena retorted, snorting as Rose blinked in surprise, “but Damon’s taught me more than you even apparently know. Honestly, I’m curious as to which one’s gonna get here first. Elijah’s flying home from Greece, but slapping me pissed Damon off pretty good, so it might all come down to location and which of them is closer to this place.”

            “How do you know where Elijah’s been?” Rose asked, and Elena smirked as she heard Damon telling her through their bond that her rescue was imminent.

            “He tells his fiancée everything, and she was all too happy to tell me how excited she was to have him home after being apart for three weeks when she and I had lunch this afternoon,” Elena said calmly, remembering the way Katherine had told her how she hoped to spend the week that Elena and Damon would be off on their babymoon, “I’ve also heard them on the phone, and, if my boyfriend and I are half as sappy as they are, I consider myself lucky to love and be loved that much.”

            “You told me earlier that you had lunch with Katherine this afternoon…” Rose trailed off, and Elena continued smirking as the door flew open to reveal not only Damon, but also Katherine, and a man she could only assume was Elijah.

            “Why, hello, Rose-Marie,” the Original said with amusement, “If you would please step aside, Damon needs to be getting Elena home. In her condition, a decent night’s rest is imperative.”

            “Condition?” asked Rose confusedly, and Elena sighed as she stood up from the couch and pushed back the cashmere, zip-front hoodie of Damon’s that she’d pilfered after their bath, revealing her bump in all its glory, “Pregnant? She’s pregnant? How?”

            “Rose, I know you’ve been a vampire for a long time, but really?” Katherine snorted, stepping purposefully towards Elena and murmuring quietly to herself for a few moments before returning to a normal volume, “Elena, it’s okay. Whatever they gave you to knock you out wasn’t anything that could hurt Eva, and she’s just as strong and healthy as she was a few hours ago when you were at home. Your family is safe, and everything’s going to be just fine.”

            “Thank you,” the younger Petrova said, turning from the elder doppelgänger to her kidnappers as Trevor joined them with his mouth agape, “The long explanation takes several books, research papers, and rather personal stories, so I’ll give you the short version in that you lose a part of your soul when you become a vampire, that part becomes your soulmate, and one of the benefits that mated vampire or vampire-human couples have by completing each other’s soul is the ability to have natural children. Damon and I weren’t aware that we are soulmates, let alone that having a baby would be possible for us before I turned, until after we conceived our daughter.”

            “And we’ll be leaving Katherine and Elijah to explain everything else to you because Elena needs her rest,” added Damon as Elena walked over with Katherine and immediately curled herself into his side, Katherine mirroring her actions with Elijah as Rose and Trevor looked between the couples in confused wonderment, “Not only does she have an English exam in the morning, but we also have a flight to Hawaii to catch.”

            “Go enjoy your babymoon,” Katherine told them, motioning for the younger couple to leave, “We’ve got this handled, so don’t even worry about it. We’ll call Stefan and Caroline if we find that we need an extra set of hands or two.”

            With one last look at the scene before them, Damon gathered Elena in his arms and vamped from the house. Elena snuggled against him as he ran, closing her eyes rather than attempting to see anything as the world blurred past her face. By the time he set her back on her feet, they were on the balcony of their bedroom at the boarding house. Damon opened the door, and Elena went straight inside and over to the bed. She tugged off the hoodie and slipped out of her Minnetonka slippers before climbing into the bed and getting under the covers. She didn’t care if they weren’t finished with packing; the adrenaline had left her, and she was exhausted.

            “It’s alright,” Damon told her as he locked the doors behind them and moved the last of their luggage from the bed as he joined her, “I have the list and can finish up while you’re at school. I’ll get everything in the car, come pick you up after your exam, and then we’ll head straight to the airport.”

            Elena nodded, scooting as close to him as her pregnancy pillow would allow, and closed her eyes. She felt a soft flutter in her womb and smiled. She hadn’t felt Eva move since her kidnapping hours earlier, and the little flutter was even more reassuring than Katherine’s spellwork. By this time the next night, she told herself, she and Damon would be going to sleep with the sound of the ocean acting at as a lullaby. She couldn’t wait for their babymoon where they would be far from the craziness of Mystic Falls.

Notes:

A/N: Now, sweets, you all know how much I love a good Elijah-Pulls-Out-A-Heart scene, but I chose to not have one here because I didn't think it was necessary. Elijah is trying to put forth the notion that no one needs to die for Klaus to break his curse, so killing two werewolves wouldn't help...nor would it help what he's planning for Rose-Marie and Trevor in the next chapter. Don't worry, though, because he will be ripping out some hearts in the not-so-distant future. Until next time...XOXO

Notes:

A/N: Well, sweets, what else is there to say? I shall leave you with this: “Whiskey, like a beautiful woman, demands appreciation. You gaze first, then it’s time to drink." — Haruki Murakami.

Until next time…XOXO

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 2 of Various Tonics for the Soul