Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“No.” Damon says firmly. “No way. Absolutely not. We’re not doing this.”

In what universe would this be considered a sane and/or rational approach to picking a boyfriend? What happened to ripping the petals from a flower? Or catching tigers by their toes?

Or—and this is a little outlandish, but desperate times and all that— flipping a coin?

Who the fuck jumps straight to memory projection, of all things?

He gets up to leave, but, of course, the doorway is blocked by one of those magically invisible walls Bonnie’s so fond of. Fuck.

“I don’t see what the big deal is,” Elena refutes, arms crossed over herself in a smarmy, self-righteous way, one that reminds Damon far too much of that Lexi bitch—it’s quite fitting though, really—and makes him feel just a slight bit more murderous than usual.

“I need to make my choice, and this is how I’m going to do it.”

Doesn’t she get it? Damon doesn’t want to be chosen. Doesn’t want to ‘win’ this sick competition designed to tear him and his brother apart (again).

And it’s not like he hasn’t told her that. He has. Multiple times. All of which very recently. At the Original Witch Bitch’s ball, the morning after that, on that road trip to Denver, then again in Kansas….

Damon’s perfectly rational thoughts aside, it’s not like anyone in their right mind would willingly give a witch their blood for such an invasive spell, anyway.

“Come on, Damon.”

Oh.

Well, he said right mind, okay? That definitely doesn’t apply to whatever’s going on in the Wonderful World of Saint Stefan at the moment.

“Damon, if you don’t add your blood, then all these memories will be from Stefan’s point of view only.” Elena tries to cajole him, to no avail. Stefan’s perspective is often hilarious, hence Damon’s frequent re-readings of his brother’s journals. Watching the movie adaptation of those journals is sure to be a hoot, so there’s really no need to show Damon’s side of things.

“Show me that you can be the good guy. Give yourself a chance.” Great speech, Elena. Can they skip to the part where this never happens? Damon’s just about to suggest this, but his gaze accidentally flickers over to Stefan, and the dark bags hanging under those usually bright green eyes, the circles weighing the kid’s brow line down even further than usual.

He’s hanging on by half a thread.

At best.

Fighting his basic instincts and nature just so he can go back to being good ol’ bunny-munching, diary-writing, forehead-brooding Stefan, boyfriend material for Bella Swans everywhere.

And it’s killing him. (Which ‘him’ Damon means, it isn’t certain.)

The heartbroken look in his brother’s eyes is more convincing than any words could be. Damon’s helpless against it.

Always has been.

Fuck Elena and the rest of these childish busybodies he’s planning on brutally murdering later. If Damon’s perspective will show anything (besides sex, war, torture, drinking, etc.), it’ll be the truth behind ‘Ripper’ Stefan. How Damon’s always seen it. How Stefan can learn control.

But in front of this audience?

Why can’t it just be him, Stefan, and (if they must,) the witch?

Can’t they get rid of the irritatingly self-righteous peanut gallery? With a short glance to his hand, squished up against an invisible barrier, and then another to the expectant stares of the knock-off Scooby Gang, it becomes apparent to Damon that, no, the hecklers seem to have set up shop in his drawing room indefinitely.

Great. Just great.

So, it brings him to the real question(s):

Would Damon rather keep his secrets, or his brother?

Is Stefan’s sanity worth more than the safekeeping of a few traumatic memories?

Yeah, Damon would say it is.

He’s absolutely gonna regret this—he does, already—but his life is already a whirlpool of regrets. What’s one more?

With a huff of exasperation, he gives in, biting into his hand while shooting the group a look of annoyance.

As he drips his blood over the amber gemstone, he realises he needs to double check some things: “You’re telling me that we’re trapped in here, until we get through mine and Stefan’s greatest hits?” At Bonnie’s nod, he groans. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

Stefan frowns, his new mental state giving him the perfect chance to redecorate his forehead with more of those lovely creases. “I-it’s going to show Ripper-me, isn’t it?” He asks, tone cold and fearful.

Elena reaches over to him, rubbing his arm softly. It’s strange, how unaffected Damon is by the action. “Don’t worry Stefan. We’ve seen your darkest side. The Ripper isn’t you. We know that.” Damon holds back a snort at Elena’s words. It wouldn’t help, not at this point. “Anyways, Bonnie says that a lot of the memories will be from your human years, because those ones are the ones that really shaped you as a person.”

Silence douses Damon like cold water. Now there’s some fine print that wasn’t properly disclosed.

He probably should have guessed that. He’s not an idiot. A spell revealing some of his best-kept secrets? There’s far more content in his short human life than his century and a half of immortality. 

“You’re fucking kidding me.” His voice is devoid of any emotion. “The defining moments of my human life? Does this thing have any censoring? At all?”

Jeremy groans. “Oh great.” He says, but his reluctance feels a bit forced. “This is just gonna be Damon’s sex tapes, isn’t it?”  Ha. Joke’s on him, ‘cause Damon was technically still a virgin when he met Katherine. He tuts at the kid. “Not talking about sex, Little Gilbert. I’m talking about the fact that we’re all gonna be watching men get blown to bits left, right, and centre, and that’s not really something I’d like to experience with an audience, if I can help it.”

He’s not just talking about war, either. Damon‘s known death since long before his own. Has known cruelty in every sense of the word, known malice like it’s his own reflection — preserved, immortal, unchanging.

The earliest memory he has is the taste of his own blood on his lips.

Fuck. He is so fucking screwed. 

Stefan takes the long stretch of silence to speak up. “I don’t really want to watch a replay of 1864, to be honest. Is there any way we can skip things?” Right. There’s that, too. They’ve sworn to never mention the incidents , and both Salvatores have long since gotten over them—dead, gone, and buried, the way their corpses should have been—but there’s still a decent chance it’ll show up, and that’s gonna be… embarrassing. Humiliating. Awkward.

Caroline scoffs. “Don’t be ridiculous, Stefan. We’re here now, and this is happening. Besides, we can’t just pick and choose the memories. That might influence Elena’s choice for the worse.” The blonde chides pointedly, before jumping the gun, crushing the hunk of amber in the centre of the room, effectively starting up the first string of memories.

Damon and Stefan just look at eachother, wide-eyed and dreading. This isn’t going to end well, not at all.

The wall of bookshelves flickers out, morphing into the setting of the opening scene. Of course, it’s life-size, because watching his life in miniature wasn’t bad enough….

The group find themselves watching a stern-looking Giuseppe and a (very) young Damon Salvatore sitting in a drawing room of the old Salvatore mansion.

“Is this you, Damon?” Alaric asks, looking at the young boy curiously. The child has warm, tanned skin, noticeably different from the pale vampire slouched on the chaise, as well as a mop of near-black curls that flop down his forehead, not quite covering a familiar pair of bright blue eyes.

“Yeah, it is.” Damon stiffens as a pained scream echoes out from another room. “And Stefan will be here any moment, if I’m not mistaken.”

A dark-skinned woman, in her mid-20s, exits the room directly to the left of young Damon, wiping her hands on a towel. She speaks with a slight French lilt to her words. “Mr. Salvatore, sir, both mother and child are well as can be expected. Miss Liliana shall need her rest, but you both may see the bébé boy now.”

Caroline lets out a squeal of delight. “Oh my god, is this gonna be baby Stefan?? That’s so cute!” She shoots Stefan a fond look, which he returns, though his smile is definitely tighter.

“You had French maids?” Matt asks, surprised.

“Just Lucille.” Stefan says, shaking his head.

“She’s a witch,” Bonnie comments, as the view follows Giuseppe and Damon into Lily’s bedroom. Bonnie tilts her head. “So is she,” her forehead crinkles in confusion as she looks towards the woman propped up in the bed. “Does that mean—“

“She lost her powers, when she left Marseilles.” Damon interjects. “The gene went dormant, so no, neither of us inherited anything.”

November 1, 1846.

Lily holds the bundle containing her youngest son close to her chest, as she leans against the headboard tiredly. Her dark hair clings to her porcelain skin, soaked through with sweat and tears.

“You have done well, Lily.” Giuseppe’s gruff voice rings out, his Southern accent forced. “It seems our voyage to the Colonies was a wise decision.”

“America makes my teeth hurt,” Lily grumbles.

“Ooh! New game! Drink every time Lily complains about something hurting because of America!” Damon takes a swig from his bottle of bourbon, pleased with himself for having the forethought to grab it from the cellar this morning. Stefan frowns, before snatching the liquor from his brother’s hand, ignoring the affronted glare he receives. No way is he doing this sober, either. “It really was Mother’s catchphrase, wasn’t it?”

Giuseppe excuses himself from the room for some reason or another, leaving just Damon and his new brother with Lily.

“Damiano, come meet your little brother.” Lily smiles, holding onto the lumpy wrap of blankets.

“Yes, Mama,” Damon says, and he crawls onto the bed, scooting around to get a better angle to view the bundle in her arms. The baby is a small, red-faced thing, all wrinkled and squashed looking, with a large tuft of blond hair sticking out. Damon’s reserve is obvious as he leans forward, frowning down at the baby. “He is so…tiny. And wrinkly.”

“As were you, years and years ago.”  

Damon looks up at her, expression one of sheer doubt.

“Would you care to hold him? I’m afraid I am quite tired. It has been a long day.” Damon’s eyes widen in awe of this responsibility. “Could I?” He gasps, before making grabby hands at the newborn. Lily chuckles softly, weak and exhausted as she shakily transfers the baby into Damon’s arms. The young boy manoeuvres the child carefully, holding him awkwardly but securely in the crook of his arm, much like the way his mother had showed him. “What is his name?” Damon asks, playing with the tufts of hair on the baby’s head. Lily hums. “I haven’t decided. Do you think you could help me?” Damon doesn’t look up, but he nods anyway. “Peloso.” He suggests.

Stefan snorts.

“It means hairy. Or pelosa. Like testa pelosa. Because he has a furry head, like he is wearing a woolly crown.” Lily chuckles. “What about Stefano? Do you remember the silly painting of your grandfather’s grandfather? Back in Florence?” “He had lots of hair!” Damon exclaims. “He did, indeed. And his name meant ‘crown’. I suspect he looked quite similar to your brother as a baby.”

Damon looks down at the bundle in his arms. “Stefan Salvatore.” He whispers.

Baby Stefan opens his eyes, two pools of soft infant-blue, the kind that will change over time, until they slowly reveal their final colour. Damon wishes that he and Stefan could have the same ice blue eyes, but he knows he’ll love whatever colour his brother’s turn out to be, just because they’re Stefan’s. The baby mouths at the fabric on Damon’s arm. His little hand breaks free from the swaddle to grab onto Damon’s finger as it strokes his little cheek. A look of wonder crosses Damon’s face. “Hello, brother.”

Caroline squeals. “Oh my god that was adorable!”

“You wanted to call Stefan hairy?” Elena asks incredulously.

Jeremy lets out an amused noise. “Kinda suits him, to be honest.” Damon tips his drink towards Jeremy, giving the kid a nod of approval. The hero-hair isn’t a new thing. It’s been that way since day one.

“Wait,” Matt begins, looking between the brothers, “How old are you guys? I mean, Stefan, you’re physically 17, right? So what does that make Damon?”

”25,” Damon nods.

Tyler blinks a few times. ”So you’re eight years older? That’s a bigger gap than me and my uncle Mason had.”

”Seven and a bit,” Stefan huffs. “I was only a few weeks from my eighteenth.”

Jeremy claps him on the back in sympathy.

”Forever a child,” Damon toasts. “Eternally hormonal and filled with angst!”

Alaric frowns. ”Is that true?” He asks. Damon just shrugs.

“I dunno,” The vampire says. “But it makes sense. Hasn’t fully gone through puberty yet, poor kid. Permanently stuck with those rose-coloured glasses, right, Stef?” 

Stefan rolls his eyes. “Shut up, Damon.”

“See?” Caroline claps, changing the subject before she can think too hard about her own immortality. “That wasn’t so bad now, was it?”

Damon just sends her a dark look. It only gets worse from here.

Chapter Text

“Ooh, next one’s starting!” Elena leans forward, shushing everyone as the makeshift cinema screen is completely engulfed in black.

1848

The scene shows Damon hunched over by a tree in the fields, bending down to pick up a hawk chick that had fallen from its nest, cradling it in his little gloved hands as he manages to climb the tree just high enough to place the bird back in its nest. Satisfied with his work, Damon jumps down to the grass, where he stumbles into a crouch, and his face is suddenly level with his father’s knee.

“Noooo!” Caroline lets out a dramatic wail once she realises her favourite Salvatore isn’t making an appearance in this memory. “I wanted more baby Stefan! Can we go back? Please, please, please Bonnie?”

The pouting quickly turns into grumbling when Bonnie shakes her head.

“Sorry, Care. I don’t control the memories from here. But, hey! We might get to see toddler Stefan now!” The witch shoots Stefan a cheeky grin, and he just sighs, resigning himself to his fate by slouching so heavily that he becomes part of the couch itself.

“Father.” Young Damon stands, acknowledging the man looming over him.

“Finished with your schoolwork for today, Damon?” Giuseppe arches a thick brow.

“Sí—uh, yes, Father.”

Giuseppe smiles knowingly at the boy’s slip up. “I have been meaning to ask whether you have had any part in your brother’s…difficulties…in his speech development, but it seems that I needn’t bother after all.” Damon flinches, noticing the riding crop at his father’s side.

“Not gonna lie, he’s kinda creepy,” Tyler shivers at the disappointed expression Giuseppe wears. Both Salvatores nod in agreement.

“What’s he talking about? I don’t speak Gone With the Wind.” Jeremy strategically ignores the laser beams shooting from Caroline’s eyes when she slowly turns to face the boy, staring him down with her very best ‘Head Cheerleader Glare’.

“Giuseppe… had very high standards for us, growing up.” Stefan says with a wince. “He was quite stern, and set in his ways about a lot of things. I think he saw it as an insult, whenever either of us did anything he deemed ‘foreign’. And when I was a baby and going through the whole imitation phase of learning to speak, I can imagine Father wasn’t exactly… impressed with my vocabulary.”

“That’s our Stefan, multilingual from birth!” Damon mocks, but his tone slips into something embarrassingly soft and (dare one say) fond.

So, to lighten the mood, he brushes off the moment of vulnerability with a cocky smirk. “Fun fact: Stefan’s first word was a baby babbled attempt at saying coniglietto.”

Matt, invited for reasons Damon will never understand, is somehow the first to catch on. “That’s Italian for bunny, right?”

Then, when everybody looks at him with matching dubious expressions, he rushes to his own defence. “Hey! It was like the first thing we learned in 9th grade Italian! I know things!”

“Jeremy’s first word was ‘dick’,” Elena helpfully supplies.

“And it’s the only one he’s learned.” Damon adds with a snarky grumble.

Jeremy opens his mouth to refute that claim, but a second later, he shuts it, giving the others a good idea of what his retort would have been.

“Pardon me, Father, but I do not understand.” Damon’s voice shakes slightly, his accent thickening as he speaks.

”It’s-a me, a-Damon!” Bonnie mumbles, not realising that she’s spoken aloud until Jeremy begins to shake with laughter beside her. “Ha— whoops?” She smiles sheepishly, visibly relieved when all Damon does is roll his eyes at her.

Giuseppe wastes no time in grabbing the boy, yanking him by his skinny bicep. Damon yelps as he’s dragged towards the fence roughly. Grabbing the post with both hands, Damon braces himself for what is next. His shirt is ripped away from his skin, revealing an array of yellowed splotches and thin, striped scars, splattered lines of various pinks, browns, and reds dancing across his back. The wounds are raised, angry, and not yet healed despite the aged bruises that accompany.

Damon flinches, downing more of his bourbon. He’s gonna need another bottle very soon, at the rate this is going. Those injuries look… awful. Even by his standards.

He makes a point of not looking around him, because he can feel those pitying stares, and it’s making him want to throttle somebody.

“Oh shit,” Tyler whispers, barely audible over the muffled gasps of the others. 

“Damon, wha—”

Stefan is, naturally, ignored.

Giuseppe holds Damon’s head down against the wood of the fence post, and brings his crop down onto the boy’s back, hard and fast, repeatedly. “‘S bad enough, having a foreign disgrace of an heir, but I will not have you corrupting Stefan as well!” He ignores Damon’s cries as he rants.

“Oh my god!! Did this really happen?!” Elena asks, fearfully pleading for this to be false.

Damon snorts. No, he just conjured up the visuals of an entire memory, all for the laughs.

In truth, Giuseppe was actually a very mild-tempered man, who thoughtfully founded the Mystic Falls knitting circle back in 1845, when he learned that there were freezing orphans living on the streets during winter. 

Stefan’s forehead, now a sentient being, wriggles itself into a deeper frown.

“This was all because I didn’t speak right?” He asks, just aching for something else to feel guilty about.

Well, too bad, so sad.

Damon’s not playing into his brother’s hands (this time).

“No, this was because dear ol’ dad was an abusive dick.” Damon retorts, nipping his brother’s spiral in the guilty little bud. “You know as well as I do that he didn’t need an excuse to treat me like crap.”

“Yeah, but…. I didn’t thin— I had no idea it was so bad. You’re like, nine….” Stefan frowns, retracing his memories in an attempt to make sense of it all.

Damon shrugs. “He was a foul bastard. Besides, you never angered him like I did, Golden Boy. Be glad you only got time-outs.”

“I can’t believe someone would do that to their own kid,” Jeremy says, shaking his head in disbelief. 

“Hey, I got off easy here,” Damon responds, “I didn’t get whipped until I was at least fourteen.”

What? Why's he getting all these looks of horror? He said at least, right? Geez, what's it cost to get some optimism around here?

Ignoring the room full of Negative Nancy's emo cousins Nelly, Neville, and Norbert, Damon turns back to the screen with an unamused huff.

Eventually, Giuseppe grows tired of the abuse, and promptly releases Damon from his hold, letting the bloodied boy drop to the ground with a dazed groan.

“You may only return home when you are ready to start acting like a true American.” He spits out, then promptly turns around, leaving his beaten-down son on the edge of the fields.

“Giuseppe Salvatore, ever the patriot.”

A little while after, Damon manages to pull himself up onto his feet, and though he stands rather shakily, breaths rattling around as he groans, he is eventually able to hold himself upright without the support of the fence. Casting a long and conflicted glance in the direction of the Salvatore mansion, his expression turns into a look of sheer determination, and he begins to hobble the opposite way, breaking out in a mangled run as he enters the woods behind the estate.

“What are you doing?” Tyler asks, eyeing the makeshift screen sceptically.

“Painting my nails,” Damon says sarcastically, rolling his eyes. “ What am I doing, what does it look like I’m doing?”

“It looks like you’re running—well, hobbling— away.” Alaric comments, jumping in just in time to quell the bickering before Damon can fall victim to yet another werewolf bite.

”10 points to the history teacher!”

Damon runs, sobs wracking from his small body as he finds himself moving deeper into the woods. He makes it a few more steps before collapsing in on himself, hitting the leafy ground with an audible thud, and an anguished groan.

“Trying to.” Alaric amends.

Caroline winces. “I never thought I’d say this, but I’m starting to feel sorry for you, Damon.” A few of the others nod in misplaced sympathy.

”Yeah?” Damon asks. “Don’t.”

”Damon—“ Elena begins, but is distracted by movement on the screen, and trails off.

Blinking in and out of consciousness, Damon whimpers as footsteps approach his prone form, each step jolting his fragile body and making him ache for a death that does not come.

“Please, help me,” he groans, able to make out two small feet—decidedly not his father’s—as their owner comes to a stop only a metre away from him.

“Oh,” Bonnie gasps, sensing the familiar aura seconds before the newcomer’s identity is revealed.

Stefan has a similar reaction, looking as though he’s on the verge of some huge breakthrough.

Elena turns to her friend, worry stretched across her face. “What is it? What's the matter?”

Eyes completely transfixed on the screen, Bonnie doesn’t look away as she murmurs, “Emily.”

“Wait—who’s Emily?” Matt asks, looking at Tyler in confusion. The hybrid shrugs.

“Bonnie’s ancestor.” Caroline lets the boys know. “We did a séance to meet her last year.”

Bonnie flinches, unconsciously bringing a hand to her neck at the reminder. Completely by accident, she catches Damon’s eye when she notices the way he tracks her movement, a grim purse to his lips.

“Oh— Ohhhh!” Stefan snaps his fingers as he finally comes to the revelation he’s been sitting on for the last few minutes.

They all sit there confusedly as a gleeful (and just slightly sadistic) shit-eating grin lights up his face (a nostalgic reminder of the seventeen year old boy he still wears the skin of) and he stares at his brother triumphantly.

“What?” Damon frowns at the boy, but Stefan just keeps smiling that sweet, secretive smile (showcasing those vampire fangs disguised as human teeth), as if to say ‘I know something you don’t know’, and with a shake of his head, the boy promptly refuses to elaborate on the matter.

Brat.

“I didn’t actually believe you, y’know.” Bonnie admits, looking at Damon consideringly, like she’s reevaluating his worth⸺perhaps upgrading him from emotionless serial killer to emotionless serial killer? (question marked and underlined, naturally).

(“What? What are you talking about? Why is Emily there?” Elena glances between the pair, wearing frown lines that rival some of Stefan’s best. They deepen when it becomes clear that she’s being ignored by both parties.)

“I know you didn’t,” Damon smirks. “Doesn’t make it any less true.” 

“What's going on? It's rude to have your own conversation in the middle of something.” Elena interrupts, all huffy because she’s out of the loop, and clearly not the subject at hand (seriously - Damon and Bonnie hate eachother. Why would they be having a discussion if it wasn’t about Elena? They have nothing else to talk about! The least they could do is tell her what’s going on!).

“Oh look, something’s happening.” Damon deflects, staring intently at the memory.

He’s been doing a great job of ignoring Elena so far this week, and somebody should really be rewarding him for his efforts⸺why does she have to stick her nose into everything ? Her inability to butt out is what brought them here⸺or at least compliment him on his impressive display of self restraint when it comes to doppelganger territory.

But nooo.

It’s still the same mantra of Damon-bad-Damon-steal-Elena-from-Stefan-Damon-evil-must-be-stopped.

It’s getting exhausting.

Emily crouches down beside the bleeding boy, frowning as she examines his wounds. “Wait here.” She tells him firmly, getting up and running away before Damon can reply.

“Oh, yeah, ‘cause I was going anywhere like that,” Damon quips, but it seems that the rest of the room don’t have a sense of humour, proven by the twin indignant glares he receives from Regina George and Doppel-Gretchen Weiners.

“She was helping you, Damon. You don’t need to be so rude about it.”

Right. He’d forgotten that you really can’t be completely and utterly hilarious these days without the risk of offending the stampede of teenage girls on their moral high horses. Bummer.

Damon begins to wonder whether the girl would even return to him, and he begins to feel more alone than ever before. The pain is getting to be unbearable by the time the girl returns, clutching a hessian bag as she kneels back down. “You came back,” he breathes, surprise evident even through the rattling of his tone.

A wry smile spins on the girl’s lips. “I said I would.”

Reaching into the bag with shaky hands, she pulls out an array of jars and bandages, placing them on the emptied sack before she begins to nervously babble. “’M sorry, but I dunno any good healing spells yet, so I’ve brung Momma’s magical remedies. They work well enough, but only on flesh wounds, so if you broke a rib—“

“Are you a witch?” Damon asks, still-teary eyes wide with wonder. The girl’s eyes widen as well, though for different reasons.

“Please, you cannot tell anybody!” She begs. “They’ll hunt me down and kill me if they found out!”

Damon’s face shifts with understanding. “I’ll never tell.” Damon promises.

“This is gonna hurt real bad,” She warns. “It heals you faster, but not without cost.” Damon bites his lip and nods for her to apply the creams.

“Ooh, another game: Drink every time a witch references the balance!” Damon announces, a desperate attempt to draw the attention away from his younger self screaming and writhing as Emily applies the poultices to his back.

The girl finishes as quickly as she can, face scrunching up at the sounds of Damon’s pained cries. The instant she finishes, she sits cross-legged and pulls Damon’s head onto her lap, humming to him softly. “I’m sorry it hurt you so bad, but it's over now, and the skin is all healed up.”

“Thank you, Miss.” Damon mumbles into her knee, once his tears begin to subside. She helps him onto his feet, holding him steady once he is upright. “You won’t tell anyone I cried, will you?” 

“You promised to keep my secret so I’ll keep yours,” she smiles softly, masking her slight confusion. “I’m Emily.”

“I’m Damon,” he reaches for her hand, pressing a kiss to the back of it like he’d been taught.

Emily giggles at the gesture, smiling happily at being treated like a real lady for the first time. She grabs a rag from her sack and pours some water from her canteen onto the cloth before handing it to him. “You should clean up the last of the ointments. I’ll get your back.” He gives her a grateful smile and starts to wipe his face and chest as she takes a long sip from the canteen. When he hands her the rag to get his back, she swaps the canteen for it so that he can take a drink.

“Who hurt you?” Emily asks curiously as she cleans him off.

“My father,” Damon admits, only because they’ve promised to keep each other’s secrets. “But you can’t tell anyone that either.”

“I won’t tell,” she promises. “Are you running away then?” He looks at her, bewildered. “I could help you find a place to hide,” she suggests.

“I was running away, but…” Damon hesitates.

“But what?”

“No one’s ever been so nice to me before,” Damon tells her softly. “I have a little brother. He’s not yet two years old. Someone needs to be nice to him. I have to go back so I can do it.”

Damon very pointedly does not acknowledge the puppy dog eyes Stefan is giving him from the other sofa. No need to give the kid any more ammunition for his rifle of self-hatred. All he'd do is use it to shoot himself in the head.

“You’re very brave,” Emily says, and she leans forward to hug him. He looks at her with a momentarily puzzled expression but soon catches on, copying her and holding her tight as he sinks into the embrace. “You’ve never been hugged before, have you?” she whispers sadly.

Damon shakes his head where it rests on her shoulder. “Not that I can remember.”

“Then you can teach your brother about hugs too,” Emily says with utmost certainty. “And…if you wanna come back here sometimes…maybe I could help you practise so you can teach him better?”

“I’d like that,” Damon smiles, still not letting go. “I can try and come after my lessons some days?”

“I’ll keep an eye out for you,” Emily smiles. “But I need to get home now and put this stuff away before Momma notices it missing.”

“I should get home for supper too, before Father hurts me. He wants me to be more American, and won’t be pleased if I stay out sulking like a melodramatic European.” Damon says sadly as he reluctantly pulls away, turning to head back home.

“If he does, come back here tomorrow and I’ll heal you again,” Emily promises.

“Won’t your Momma hurt you for it?” Damon asks worriedly.

“No, Momma never hurts me bad.” Emily assures him. 

“Okay good. I don’t want you to be hurt too,” Damon says with a slight smile. He darts back to give her one more hug, a quicker one this time. “I’ll see you soon, Emily.”

“Bye Damon,” she waves, watching as he walks away.

“That’s actually really sweet,” Alaric blinks, shocked at how… harmless Damon looks. “And sorta sad. No wonder you’re such a clingy drunk.” He jibes, not wanting to come off as pitying to the vampire.

“Is that why you babied me so much?” Stefan asks his brother. “You didn’t have anyone to do it for you?” Damon just nods, before frowning at his empty bottle accusingly. Seems like he’s going for a bottle per memory. Possibly more, considering how these are the milder ones.

“You didn’t want her to tell anyone that you cried? That was your number one concern?” Matt asks, his voice wearing down Damon’s already limited patience. Thankfully, St. Stefan recognises this, and heroically comes to his brother’s rescue. “As boys, we weren’t allowed to cry back then. It was a sign of weakness, and we couldn’t be real men if we were weak.”

“But that’s not fair!” Elena protests. “You were kids!” 

Stefan just shrugs. “It was a different time.” He tosses Damon a fresh bottle from the barcart, grinning when he catches the reluctant twitch of the elder Salvatore’s mouth, a teensy little microscopic quirk in the upwards direction (for Damon, that was practically beaming to the highest heavens).

“Can we do a Stefan memory now?” Damon bats his lashes and pushes his bottom lip forward, suddenly becoming the height of innocence as he does.

“I told you, I don’t control them,” Bonnie sighs, questioning all her life’s decisions (how the hell did she even get to the point where this was her average Saturday afternoon?). “But the spell shows an equal amount of both your memories, so we’re guaranteed one of Stefan on his own at some point.” 

“Besides, what important memories am I gonna have as a toddler?” Stefan asks. “You were seven in the first one.”

Damon grumbles, knowing he can’t do anything about it but still making sure to express how absolutely not okay he is with this whole shindig. It does nothing to ease his temper.

Chapter Text

“Does anyone want to tell me exactly how I’ve ended up in this mess?” Damon says after a minute or so, providing the idiotic teenagers (and Alaric) with some of his iciest glares.

At least Bonnie has the decency to look somewhat guilty about it.

The same can’t be said for Elena and Caroline, who are both glaring right back at him with their chins jutted out in a bratty fashion, one that means defiance , though petulance works, too.

Dumb, Dumber and Donovan are definitely completely clueless; all three sporting matching expressions that are somewhere between concussed and constipated, yet also both at once. But that could just be their resting faces. Damon doesn’t care enough to spot the difference.

Alaric, their resident psychopath, hopped up on as many herbs as he’s had drinks, looks about equal parts guilty and disappointed, but there’s a terrifying blankness behind his eyes that has Damon averting his gaze almost immediately, choosing instead to look at Stefan, neck-deep in his own misery, wallowing in self-hatred.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what he’s thinking—Vampire Barbie won’t let Damon into her craft closet anymore (something about glitter bombing Stefan or using all her limited edition Taylor Swift notepaper to write fanmail addressed to Elijah), so he can’t make that helpful chart cross-referencing all Stefan’s brooding faces for easier translation— but he seems quite a bit closer to the oh-so-noble saint of self righteousness, hero of the story, the saviour of mankind they all love and worship, so on and etcetera.

Which means he’s gonna be extra insufferable from here.

If that’s even possible.

Damon takes the first swig from his third bottle of the day. “I mean, c’mon. Really? What were you trying to achieve here?”

“Oh my god, we’ve been over this!” Caroline huffs, severely unimpressed with Damon’s interruption of her new favourite TV drama. “Elena needs to make her choice, and to do that, she needs to know just who it is that she’s choosing!”

She doesn’t blink. Not once. She just stares at Damon expectantly, folding her arms over her chest and waiting impatiently, because she knows this is happening, no matter what.

“A,” Damon matches her tone, note by note, measure by measure, “As I’ve said already, I am no longer interested in chasing after Elena’s affections. B, what gives any of you the right to sift through our minds and watch it like a fucking soap opera? Will it make me redeemable? More human? Seeing me get beaten up by my dear old dad? Because let me tell you right now, that’s giving Giuseppe way too much credit.” Damon clenches his fists, willing the remains of his control over his temper to hold the fuck on.

Somehow, he is able to.

Whatever storm was brewing inside him simmers down, and he can think clearly for the first time in… well, since his damn humanity switch began malfunctioning and all those warring emotions slipped on through without warning. It’s just so quiet in his head.

Is this how less attractive, more mentally stable people feel?

Oh god, what does that say about him?!

Rational thought processing now intact, Damon turns to the witch. “Bonnie, please. There has to be a way to stop the spell.”

Bonnie shakes her head, uncomfortable and almost apologetic. “The spell is cast, it’s out of my hands. I can no longer affect it. We have to let it run its course.”

Stefan sighs and looks pleadingly to his brother. “This is for the best, Damon. I don’t think any of us want to see all the horrible things you’ve done, but it could be a good wake-up call.”

There it is.

“Oh really, just show off every shitty thing I’ve ever done in my entire life to make you feel better about yourself? Please, Stefan, you just want to re-establish your claim as the ‘good’ brother.” Damon glares, furious. 

“Well,” Stefan drawls, adopting a darker tone, “It’s not exactly like you were out feeding the homeless before you came back to Mystic Falls. Hell, you were a monster only a few months ago!” 

“Oh yes, the evil older brother and his long-suffering saint of a younger brother.” Damon shoots back. “Let’s not forget, Ripper, which one of us is enough of a monster to leave Klaus Mikaelson impressed.” Low blow, but it isn’t like he’s lying.

“We know you’ve done a lot of horrible things in the past, Damon. And we’ve seen Stefan’s darkest side.” Elena tries to offer her reassurance, placing a hand on Stefan’s forearm in support. “But just because you used to be a monster, doesn’t mean it’s who you are anymore. You’ve come such a long way these last few years. It’s okay to let yourself be seen. We aren’t here to judge you. Either of you.” She adds, having the afterthought to promote her own special brand of fairness and equality.

“It’s not like I really want to see my past, either, Damon.” Stefan says, sitting calmly. “But this is for the best. You want to be more than a monster? Prove you’re capable of it. Prove to me that you can be the brother I used to have.”

Damon frowns then, a look of defeat clearly written on his face. He’s being manipulated. He knows he’s being manipulated. But… he wants to give in just as badly as he wants that stupid barrier spell down.

Pathetic, isn’t it?

That after all this time, part of him still yearns to be seen? To be noticed, acknowledged, understood?

Bones and all.

He just wants Stefan to know him.

To realise that Damon can’t be the brother Stefan used to have.

Not anymore.

“Look,” Caroline starts, interrupting Damon’s uncharacteristic brooding session, “It really doesn’t matter what you two want. This is for Elena. Okay?” She pops a piece of popcorn into her mouth and faces the screen, waiting for it to start up again.

When the memories don’t return, and the group is left sitting in awkward silence, she speaks up once more. “Besides, we can’t back out now. So there’s no use fussing over it.”

And that is that.

1851

A middle-aged man leads five-year-old Stefan around a pasture on the back of a shetland pony, while Damon stands outside the field, leaning against the fence with a bored expression.

“Marengo!” Stefan looks at the screen fondly. “Man, Marengo was the best pony.” Damon raises his mostly-full bottle in solidarity.

“He’s so fluffy! ” Elena lets out with an ‘aww’, and Caroline echoes the sentiment. Girls, Damon thinks. He’ll never understand their need for squealing.

“Damon, Damon!” Little Stefan calls out, dropping the reins to wave at his brother as Marengo dutifully walks around the paddock. Damon waves back, before folding his arms over the railing. Stefan begins to wobble slightly, pulling a terrified expression that has Damon failing to hold in his laughter, and he snickers at the look on his brother’s face.

“I always told you so.” Damon comments. “You looked stupid like that.” Shame they don’t have any photos of Stefan’s scared face. It’s definitely on Damon’s list of favourite expressions.

Wait… maybe…

He whips out his phone, opening the camera app subtly (don’t want the others to get any ideas), and points it at the projected memory, snapping a few photos.

It’s a nice surprise when his phone doesn’t explode.

The collision of magic and technology is always a little iffy.

Typically speaking, spells crafted before the invention of the camera won’t be disturbed by the use of cellphones, computers, or anything of the like.

But not always.

Some spells, no matter how old or new, are created with the underlying intent of complete privacy and secrecy in the most basic forms. It’s very hit or miss, whether magic will spontaneously blow up Damon’s phone, just for being an unidentified creation, a potential threat that risks exposure. It’s also beyond annoying.

Damon stumbles back laughing, catching sight of a large turkey milling about. He turns away from his brother and bends down to stroke the bird’s neck and back, smiling softly.

“Hello pretty girl,” He says to the turkey, who coos in return.

“Why’s there a turkey just chilling in your backyard?” Tyler asks, to no reply.

Half a minute later, Tyler halfheartedly slaps himself on the head once he realises. “Ohh, right. Duh.”

Behind Damon, Stefan slows Marengo down to a halt, and clambers down from the pony’s back. Pouting, he runs over to the fence, and, ignoring his instructor’s protests, Stefan awkwardly crawls between the rails, hitting the ground on the other side with a little ‘oof’. “Daym. Daym!” Little Stefan calls as he gets up and rushes to his brother, jumping on the older boy’s back.

“This is like, the cutest thing I’ve ever seen!” Caroline squees, and the other two girls nod. See? Squealing. Absolutely unnecessary.

“Shouldn’t you be finishing your lesson?” Damon asks his brother, who clings to his back, arms around Damon’s neck.

Stefan frowns. “But you weren’t watching.”

Damon sighs and waves the teacher off with a sheepish smile. “I cannot watch you all the time, Steffy. Sometime you must learn to do things on your own.” Stefan frowns even further, then uses his little legs to push off the ground and knock both himself and Damon over. “No! Not today!” The boy cries out, rolling off his brother and lying in the dirt, flat on his back.

Caroline leans forward, pressing her chin onto her hands. “I’m actually obsessed. I want one.” Stefan looks at her weirdly, but he smiles anyway.

The turkey coos curiously, and waddles over to the younger Salvatore, peering over him. Stefan pulls a fearful expression once again, to Damon’s amusement. “Damon…?” Stefan says, locking eyes with the bird, who coos gently, ruffling its tail feathers. Many moments pass, before the bird is lifted up and cradled in Damon’s arms. “Stefan, this is Sami. She’s very friendly.” Stefan scampers upright, cautiously watching as his brother strokes the turkey in his arms.

“Hello, Sami.” Stefan reaches a hand to the bird’s back and copies Damon’s motions. “You should consider yourself lucky that Sami has already eaten today,” Damon notes offhandedly.

“Why?” Stefan stares up at his brother, big green eyes round and sparkling.

“Well, it just means that she is not so tempted to eat you. Little boys are her favourite meal. Especially ones getting up to mischief.” Damon nonchalantly tells his brother, who lets out a squeak and backs away.

“That’s so mean!” Elena chides gently, to which Jeremy adds with a smirk, “Do it again.”

Damon grins widely.

“Damon!” Stefan juts out his bottom lip, and crosses his arms with a petulant huff.

“Stefan!” A voice barks, causing both boys to stiffen. Damon quickly kneels down to let Sami free, but she decides to stay close, preferring to peck at his heels.

“He just keeps popping up out of nowhere,” Alaric muses, watching as Giuseppe appears before the boys, his shadow covering them.

“Look at the turkey!” Jeremy points at Sami, who seems to be fluffing her feathers and standing in perfect parade rest, copying both Damon and Stefan.

Giuseppe rolls his eyes. “Damon, send that blasted bird away.” Damon frowns for a moment, then, clicking his tongue to garner Sami’s attention, he jolts his head towards the stables. “Off you pop, Sami,” he says, hiding a smile when the turkey obeys his command with a little coo, strutting off through the dirt.

“How on earth do you train a turkey?!” Bonnie asks, more than slightly incredulous. Damon just shrugs. “It wasn’t actually that hard. A bit of feed and some pats was really all it took. Sami was a good bird.”

Stefan giggles, bringing both hands up to cover his mouth.

“Stef, you look like a doll,” Damon comments. “No, really, it’s ridiculous.”

Giuseppe turns his steely gaze back onto his youngest. “Stefan. It is only 9:45. Shouldn’t you still be in your riding lesson?”

Little Stefan pouts. “But Damon wasn’t watching me!” He protests.

Giuseppe raises an eyebrow. Damon drops his head in exasperation.

“I think that you are a little too old to need your brother’s presence every step of the way. Don’t you agree?”

Stefan pouts. “B-but—“

“You may make good use of this free time by spending the morning revising your hymns. And perhaps a letter of apology towards Mr Sanders for disrespecting his teachings would not go amiss. Off you go, son.” Stefan dutifully obeys, scampering off towards the large white mansion, grumbling quietly.

“I was locked in my room for hours after that.” Stefan remembers, looking to his brother. “And forbidden from speaking directly to you the whole day.”

“He always came up with the most creative punishments.”

Sami the turkey comes strutting back, head held high as she sashays towards Damon. She stands at his heels, staring menacingly up at Giuseppe.

“Is she glaring ?” Elena bites back a smile at the turkey-turned-bodyguard’s behaviour. “Is that even something turkeys can do?”

“Damon!” Giuseppe barks. “You continue to disgrace yourself with such foolishness each day! Do you have no shame? Roaming around like some common slave boy!”

Damon hangs his head, and looks at Sami, who has started to nuzzle at the boy’s ankles.

“Oh. Is this going where I think it’s going?” Ric asks.

“Probably.” Damon replies.

“You seem quite eager to partake in bucolic life. I see no reason to deny you the full experience. Come along, son.” Giuseppe doesn’t wait for a reply as he marches towards the large shed. Damon looks to his turkey for a moment, before following his father, Sami at his heels.

“Father?” Damon asks, noticing an axe set out by a tree stump. A slave grabs a squawking Sami and holds her down on the stump. Damon’s eyes grow wide. Giuseppe picks up the axe and holds it out to his son. “Any day now, Damon.” He says expectantly.

“I-I…. I can’t!” Damon looks up, betrayal written all over his face.

“Do you wish for your mother and Stefan to go hungry?” Damon shakes his head. “Then I need not ask twice.” He shoves the axe into Damon’s grasp. Shaking, Damon grits his teeth and stares at the turkey he had befriended and named months before, when she was just a poult.

Slowly, he raises the axe and brings it down swiftly on Sami’s neck, the action producing a loud ‘thwack’, along with a distorted squawk and a spurt of blood, which splatters across Damon’s cheek.

Everybody flinches, while Damon just takes another swig from his rapidly emptying bottle.

Damon emotionlessly pulls out a handkerchief and brings it to wipe the blood from his face. Giuseppe pats him on the back and walks away as a farmhand seizes Sami’s corpse, kicking the head aside, he starts plucking feathers, while Damon just stares at the tree stump.

“What did you think was gonna happen?” Matt asks, his tone like nails on a chalkboard. “I mean, you had to know that wasn’t gonna end well.”

Damon doesn’t bother dignifying the mutt with a glance. “I was eleven and I wanted a pet. I wasn’t exactly imagining that I’d have to slaughter her 8 months later.”

The scene blends into another, the field reforming into an elegant dining room. All four members of the family sit with large meals in front of them. Giuseppe is smiling at his family. Stefan beams back and sneaks a potato off his plate, and while Lily placidly returns a neutral smile, Damon just stares down at the tablecloth. 

“She’s so gorgeous,” Bonnie breathes out dopily, before she can help herself. A moment later, her cheeks darken with a furious blush.

Giuseppe lifts his glass in a toast. “If I could take just a moment to say how thankful I am to the Good Lord for giving me a beautiful wife, two fine boys, a table filled with fine food, and a stomach big enough to fit it all in.” He jokes, but only Stefan laughs. Lily keeps smiling thinly, and Damon’s sullen expression is unmoving. Giuseppe notices this.

“Son, eat your dinner please.” He says.

“I cannot.” Damon bites out.

“What’s the matter, sweetheart?” Lily asks carefully.

“Sweetheart?” Caroline mouths to herself, grimacing at the possibility of someone calling  Damon a sweetheart.

Giuseppe cuts off Damon’s response. “It is not an invitation, Damon. Eat.”

Stefan looks around confusedly. “Why is he not eating?”

“Because this is Sami! ” Damon exclaims, trying to make his brother understand. Little Stefan just looks confused and flustered.

“That animal was put on this Earth to be sustenance, not your friend,” The Salvatore patriarch announces. “Now you clean your plate or you will spend the night in the root cellar wishing you had.” Giuseppe threatens. Damon gulps, but looks to be seriously considering the punishment for a moment.

“Mother, please do not make me eat her!” Damon pleads with Lily.

Jeremy raises an eyebrow. “Top ten things I never thought I’d hear Damon say.”

Lily pauses, darting a glance to her husband before she responds. “You heard your father, Damon.”

Damon sighs in defeat, and reluctantly picks up his fork to eat his meal. He slowly finishes his dinner, chewing mechanically with a dark expression on his face as he does. “I finished.” He says. “May I be excused?”

“In a moment,” says Giuseppe, as he finishes his own meal. “Lily, a bourbon please?”

The boys watch as their mother slowly rises out of her seat, nodding at Giuseppe as she exits the room.

Giuseppe smiles and gestures to one of the slaves in the room to offer him a cigar. Once received, he holds it up for inspection. “Took this out for a special occasion today. But in the process, I discovered quite a bit of money missing from my bureau.” 

Stefan is visibly confused with the change in conversation and turns to his brother for advice, but Damon remains silent. Giuseppe also looks at his elder son. “You would not know anything about that?” 

“No.” Damon’s voice is level as he maintains eye contact with his father. 

  “Stefan, have you been rummaging around your father’s bureau?” Stefan shakes his head, obviously copying his brother’s quietness from moments before.

Giuseppe smiles as if telling a joke. “Well it did not just grow legs and walk off, now did it?” He puts the cigar in his mouth, and gestures for Stefan to bring him the pack of matches sitting on the mantle. Both boys sit in deafening silence while they wait for their father to speak again.

After a few puffs, Giuseppe asks, “Which one of you did it? Confess here and now, like a man. Who took the money?”

  Damon speaks up earnestly, “It was not us.”   

“To think of all the work your mother has put into grooming you to be proper young men of society. Do you really want to put her through the heartache of thinking that she is a complete and utter failure?” 

“Turns out asshole dads have been giving the same lectures for centuries.” Tyler rolls his eyes.

“No.” Damon says.  

“Then what would a man do?”   

“He would tell the truth.” 

“And the truth is?”

Damon hesitates, before breaking the staredown to look at Stefan, who gazes back with a timid expression. Damon caves under those puppy dog eyes almost instantly, and, letting out a sigh, he turns back to his father.  “I took it.” 

Giuseppe looks down but doesn’t seem surprised. It’s obvious he already suspected as much. “I didn’t raise you to be a thief. But I also didn’t raise you to be a liar and you have told the truth here today. Have you learned your lesson?” 

Damon nods but doesn’t relax or drop his gaze. His father takes another puff of the cigar and suddenly snaps forward to grab Damon’s arm. “This is to make certain you remember it.” 

He yanks the boy’s sleeve up, and presses his still lit cigar to his son’s arm, persisting even through Damon’s screaming. Giuseppe then repeats this twice more, for the ‘three times he had to ask’ before he got the truth.

Damon trails a thumb over the inside of his right forearm, circling the faint scars unconsciously. They had healed long before he turned, leaving three circular marks not even magic had erased.

Stefan watches the screen curiously. ”You never actually stole the money, did you?”

”Nope.” Damon shakes his head.

”Then why admit it?” Caroline asks, looking smug, like she’s just figured out all the world’s secrets.

Damon rolls his eyes. “You saw his face. He’d already decided it was me. There was no point denying it and letting him go after Stefan, as well.”

”It was a noble thing you did there,” Alaric nods his approval.

”Woah, hey. Don’t go getting the wrong idea now.” Damon glares. “It wasn’t noble. I just wasn’t a big enough jackass to let a five year-old take the fall.”

”Still—“

Damon shuts him up with a look.

“Dry your tears, son. Men don’t cry.”

  Damon sniffles once, and pulls down his sleeve, quickly wiping his face as his mother enters the room with a glass of bourbon. “I am sorry, dear. I am such a fool, I had poured you a glass of scotch and was nearly back before I remembered you asked for bourbon.”

  “I forgive you, dear.” Giuseppe looks at her, indulgently.  

Lily smiles at his words and sits back down across from him. “Damon, you look simply exhausted. Not hungry, even for dessert?”

“No thank you,” says Damon. “May I be excused?”  

Lily looks at her husband, and after his nod, she says, “Of course, sweetheart. Sleep well.”

Damon nods, and skulks out of the room, footsteps silent as he goes. The screen fades to black.

“Mom… she had to have known, right?” Stefan says, breaking the awkward tension that had settled over the room. “The liquor cabinet was in the next room, and you were screaming.”

“Not like she could’ve done anything,” Damon snorts. “He w—“

“Oh, it’s not over!” Caroline interrupts, gesturing to the flickering candle moving across the screen.

The screen is slowly lit with a warm glow as Stefan toddles down the staircase into the kitchen, wearing a red striped nightshirt that reaches down to his shins, where a pair of long red socks cover the rest of his legs.

“Were those seriously your pyjamas?” Matt huffs out a laugh.

Stefan looks around confusedly, it’s clear he is not sure where to go next.

He places his candlestick on the big wooden table in the middle of the room, and begins to scour the benches, looking for clues. An idea seems to come to him as he lays his eyes on the large wood stove, easily the most obvious thing in the kitchen.

Careful as to not wake the household, Stefan creeps over to the appliance, noting a pot sitting on the still-warm stovetop, with a lid covering its contents. Frowning, Stefan hesitates with a hand over the lid. He slowly brings his little fingers to the copper, but relaxes when he is able to grip the handle without it burning him. He lifts up the cover, and lets out a muffled gasp when he sees the stew made from the leftovers of Thanksgiving dinner, completed with turkey bones poking out, alongside a wooden spoon.

Wasting no time, he scurries out the side door, cradling the pot like his life depends on it. He then freezes momentarily, face scrunching up into a grimace. Looking down at his muddy socks, it seems he didn’t think this through. He looks around frantically, whispering for his brother. After a minute of receiving no reply, he trudges up onto the back porch, leaving tiny muddy footprints on the wood as he does. He sits down, holding the pot on his lap with his legs dangling off the edge, and whispers for his brother once more.

“Wait. Why are you calling for Damon?” Jeremy asks.

Stefan just shrugs, and tilts his head trying to remember. “Uhh… Oh. I wanted to cheer him up by having a proper funeral for Sami, but he wasn’t in his room— that usually meant he was down with the animals. So I decided to wait for him.”

Damon, who is intently watching a frustrated little Stefan with barely-veiled amusement, doesn’t look away as he pipes up with: “You totally ate the stew.”

Everybody looks at the elder Salvatore confusedly. “What?” Tyler is the first to ask.

“Twenty bucks says Stefan got bored, which means he got hungry, ergo, the greedy little troll ate the stew.”

“I’ll take that bet,” Caroline says. “That doesn’t sound like something Stefan would do.”

Stefan smiles at the blonde sheepishly. “That’s… exactly what happened. Sorry Care.”

Damon smiles triumphantly.

The memory speeds up into timelapse, and a small clock pops up in the bottom left hand corner. It doesn’t make it past five minutes before Stefan sneakily dips his finger into the pot, and sticks it in his mouth.

The timelapse starts again.

This time, Stefan manages to last 8 minutes before he twirls the wooden spoon and picks up a chunk of turkey meat. Licking his chops, Stefan brings the utensil to his lips, humming contentedly when he tastes the stew. He repeats this action until he is sure there are no more pieces of turkey left. At which point, he pouts, brows furrowing in the same brooding fashion that his older self is so fond of.

Damon snorts. “Classic.” He sneakily whips out his phone again to capture the image.

Still pouting, Stefan hurries inside to replace the pot exactly where he found it. The boy retrieves his candlestick and pulls off his socks before creeping up the stairs and back into his bedroom, where he blows out the candle and the screen is engulfed in black once more.

Chapter Text

1852

The scene opens immediately after the last, with a clearing surrounding the waterhole hosts a large group of children and teenagers, each dressed in their best daywear. The girls seem to have gathered away from the boys, and most sit in small circles, chatting away. A young red-haired girl in a sage-green dress kneels behind an older girl, braiding her hair while the other girls watch on and copy.

“Oh, just look at those dresses!” Caroline gushes at the array of frocks — each skirt flouncing and swaying with the smallest movement.

“Geez,” Tyler says, “Was heatstroke not a thing back then? How much stuff did you guys have to wear?”

“Not as much as girls did, thankfully. Well, post-breeching, that is. Before that, it was the same,” Stefan dutifully shares.

“Breeching? What’s that?” Matt asks.

“Uh, it’s like… as babies and toddlers, all children—boys as well as girls—would wear dresses, until we were ‘breeched’ at around five years old, which meant boys started wearing breeches, or similar knee-length trousers. Then at about fourteen, we wore regular trousers.” Stefan looks at the screen, ignoring Matt’s dubious expression. “So I would’ve just graduated to breeches in this.“

“That’s not what you used to call them,” Damon butts in tipsily. 

Stefan frowns. “Breeches? What else would I have called them?” 

Seeing the wide grin on his brother’s face, Stefan’s certain he’s made a big mistake in asking. 

“I can’t believe you’ve forgotten! And you were so excited about finally getting to wear your big-boy knickerbockers, too!” The only possible description for the vampire’s smirk right now is pure evil. 

Elena's eyes sparkle hearing this, and she nudges her not-ex-but-not-boyfriend playfully. Bonnie stifles a laugh and catches Jeremy’s eye, mouthing ‘big-boy knickerbockers’ with a grin. 

The elder Salvatore keeps rambling on. “I remember having to wear those fuck’n….” He reaches through the drunken haze of his mind, delving into his earliest memories, the ones of the first place he ever called home. “Like… frilly drawers. Big ol’ Granny-chic ones. Under a tunica or belted shirt or whatever.” The bottle in his hand sloshes as he makes a set of vague gestures to accompany his explanation. “Man, I hated those. They were like… regular pantalone, but with these… completely unnecessary, not to mention itchy, lacy little trims at the knees. Ugh.” He shudders dramatically.

“Please tell me you’ve got photos,” Alaric grins, no doubt hatching an elaborate plan to attain any and all evidence of Damon as anything other than 25 years old and sexy as hell (he’s already made copies of some daguerreotype of a 22-year-old Damon all decked out in his brand-spanking-new Confederate uniform, complete with an award-winning scowl and a ghostly pale glare — oh, the days where cameras couldn’t capture his eyes as anything other than white, empty voids with a pinprick of black in each one).

“Nup! Sorry to disappoint!” Damon smiles back cheerfully and not at all sorry. 

There’s maybe four images in existence that show Damon under the age of ten. Sitting for photographers in those days was exhausting, not to mention ridiculously time consuming, especially when it involved coaxing a wriggly five-year-old to sit still for a silly tin photo that would inevitably come out looking like a promo shoot for Village of the Damned. Not Damon’s fault that those were the only times he was ever held as a child. He certainly wasn’t going to spend them sitting still, of all absurdities.

Thirteen-year-old Damon walks along the gravelly sand beside another boy his age, each collecting and inspecting a variety of sticks they find around the waterhole. 

“It’s absolutely ridiculous….” The other boy mutters, readjusting his pile of twigs and driftwood. “I blame Jon, the pretentious sod. Or Tobias. Ever since they finished their schooling, they’ve become such insufferable ratbags.”

Damon snorts. “Bold of you to assume they were ever tolerable to begin with.” 

“Oh, Ty-Ty, that’s your great-something-grandwolf, George.” Damon announces, feeling awfully charitable at this moment.

“Really?” The dog basically wags his tail as he watches the scene unfold with a new-found vigour. “Were you friends?”

The vampire lets out a distorted hum. “Yeah, mostly.”

”Didn’t you two have a falling out in the sixties?” Stefan questions his brother, who scoffs. 

“We were never that close.” They’d been pushed towards each other at social events by irritated and neglectful parents, and soon bonded over mutual daddy issues and having no other boys their age around. But they’d only really been friends by association.

The pair begin to march up the bank towards the several other children on the grass, and they grumble amongst themselves.

“Tobias is alright, usually. He doesn’t act as though he’s a gift from The Lord himself. Most of the time, anyway. Jon, however….”

“He’s a nutter from a long line of crazies,” Damon agrees. “Father thinks him a respectable young man, which usually suggests the opposite.”

“Wait, Jon as in Jonathan Gilbert?” Elena asks. “My ancestor?”

“Crazy journal dude,” Jeremy remembers.

“Yup.”

“Damon!”

“That’s my name.” Damon just takes a sip of his drink.

“He thinks himself too grown up to attend fencing lessons with us anymore, let alone play swords! He’s only sixteen, he has forever to go before he must become dull and bitter! I don’t see why he is so eager to achieve that early.”

Damon huffs a laugh. “He’s been dull and bitter for years now. I can’t remember him as anything else. And besides, it’s not as though he was much competition to us.” He looks up to see Stefan toddling over, with three other little boys at his sides. “Weasel incoming.”

“But it’s no fun only fighting each other. We need a new sport.”

“Daym!” Little Stefan launches himself at his brother, clinging to the older boy, his forehead barely reaching Damon’s stomach.

“Geez, you were tiny,” Bonnie comments. Stefan just looks at her until the witch gets it. “Yeah, yeah, pot-kettle,” she sighs, lips twitching despite herself.

“Steffy.” Damon shifts his pile of wood to one arm and uses the other to pat the child on the head like a dog.

“We wanna fight too!”

Damon hesitates before replying, “Father won’t like it if you get hurt.”

“Don’t care. ‘M not gonna get hurt.” George suppresses a snicker at the honest expression on Stefan’s face.

Damon bites his lip, looking between the small group. “You don’t know how to fence yet.”

“Then we’ll use our hands!” A short blonde boy interjects.

“That’s a Forbes. Hundred percent.” Damon claims. And no, it isn’t because the boy is blonde. Well, not only because of that. His no-nonsense attitude is also a pretty big indicator.

“Do you know how to fistfight?” At the four children’s blank looks, Damon lets out an exasperated sigh, dropping his load of sticks beside George’s haphazardly discarded pile.

“We could teach them,” George suggests offhandedly, drawing a frown from his friend. “Take two each, and show them how to throw punches ‘n that, make it a competition. Whoever’s the best teacher gets half of the loser’s allowance.” 

The younger boys nod eagerly, and Stefan stares up at Damon, widening his big, green eyes and poking out his bottom lip slightly. His floppy bowl-cut hangs down around the edges of his face, creating a sort of ruffled halo from his brother’s point of view.

Damon caves instantly.

“Alright, but you must promise to follow our instructions so that you don’t get injured. This is for sport, not violence.”

“Promise!” Stefan cheers, squeezing Damon tighter. 

George hums, evaluating the four young boys. “Right. Salvatore, I presume your shadow will be on your team, yeah? So I’ll take… Fell and Hamilton. That leaves you with Forbes and the duckling.”

“Quack!” Stefan grins.

“Did you jus—“

“Yep.”

The six boys split into two groups of three, and the screen follows Damon’s group, which consists of Damon, Stefan, and the blonde Forbes boy.

“Are you Patrick or Henry?” Damon wonders aloud as he kneels down, looking at the little Forbes.

“Henry. Patrick’s my brother!” The boy announces with a bright, toothy smile.

“Of course! Silly me,” Damon shakes his head. Stefan scowls at the exchange.

“Daym!” He grabs onto Damon’s raised knee and begins to shake it in an attempt to garner his brother’s attention.

“Hey! Easy there, Stef!” Damon reaches for Stefan’s hands and pries them off his leg, causing the younger boy to let out an exasperated huff.

“You’re my brother. Not Henry’s. So you gotta do what I want. And I wanna fight.”

Bonnie raises her eyebrows at the exchange. 

Rubbing the back of his neck, Stefan says sheepishly, “I forgot about my little codependency stage.”

“Little?” Damon snorts. “Dude, it lasted 17 years.” Part of that may have been on Damon. He was just as attached to Stefan as the boy was to him. But nobody needs to know that.

“Okay,” Damon gives in easily, “I want you both to stand sideways, with your feet shoulder-width apart, and without moving your feet, turn to face me. Good. Now, turn your left foot out— it’s the front one… not that far… that’s better, and then ball your hands into fists.” The boys follow his instructions and position themselves accordingly. 

“Good. Now, you are to push up onto the balls of your feet — no, not your heels, the balls…. It’s the big flat part of your sole near your toes. See how your heels are now lifted up? That’s what we want. Alright, show me your fists.” He adjusts the boys’ hands so that their thumbs wrap the bottom of their fists, rather than sitting inside the fist. 

“This is your fighting stance. The important rules are: don’t bend your wrists, don’t tuck your thumbs, keep to the balls of your feet and stand sideways. Very good. Now throw a few punches. Don’t use your whole body, we don’t want to be flailing like a fish now, do we?” Both boys giggle. Damon kneels down in front of them, holding out his hands as if they are targets. “Now, send your punches into my hands. Ready? Steady? Go!” 

Stefan and Henry giggle as they hammer their fists into Damon’s hands as fast as they can, showing the older boy no remorse. Eventually (that being ten minutes later) they grow tired, and by the time he calls for them to stop, they’ve long-since reduced themselves to sluggishly patting Damon’s hands with weak punches. As soon as they are freed, the boys flop onto the grass. 

“Very good. In fact, I think my arms may no longer work!” Damon stands over them, having tucked his arms into his jacket sleeves, making it look as though they have disappeared completely. “Now, I was going to show you some defensive stances, while I take the offensive, but how can I? I’m ‘armless!”

Stefan cackles madly. ”Noooo! Show us!” He cries out.

Damon shrugs his coat onto his arms properly, and eyes the heavily panting boys. “Are you sure you aren’t too tired?”

“We’re not tired!” Henry jumps up, grabbing Stefan as he does.The pair watch Damon expectantly. 

" Very well then. Show me your fighting stance." The boys comply, needing only minor corrections. In the distance, the other three boys can be seen trudging towards them.

"The stance always remains the same, but you must be quick if you are to deflect or avoid oncoming attacks. Use your forearms to block hits to the face, like this." He mock-punches close to Henry's head, and the boy acts reflexively, covering himself with his arms.

Stefan laughs. "To me! To me now!"

"That's so weird." Jeremy can't help but say.

"Huh?" Tyler asks, rolling his head along the back of the couch and facing Jeremy.

"What's weird?" Caroline helpfully translates her boyfriend’s grunt.

Jeremy waves a hand at the screen. "Stefan. Y'know, laughing. I didn't know he could do that." 

"Ha-ha," Elena says dryly. 

Damon lines Stefan up, and begins to throw soft punches that the boy easily deflects.

"More, more!"

Damon ups his strength the smallest amount, but still, Stefan chants, "Faster! More! More!" And Damon acquiesces, changing up the pace and direction of his hits.

"I think mine are broken," A voice from the side calls out suddenly, and distracts Stefan. “All they do is climb me. I’m not a tree!”

The boy spares a glance to his right, and randomly drops his arms just as Damon brings the heel of his palm upwards from beneath Stefan’s face. But with nothing to block the contact, Damon's hand connects with the underside of the 5-year-old's nose with a comically loud thwack.

"Ow!" Stefan grabs his nose with both of his previously forgotten hands, and falls onto his bottom.

”Woah!”

"Stef!" Damon scrambles to close the distance, and wraps an arm around the boy’s shoulder, cradling his brother. George reacts just as quick, sending the other three boys away and leaning down in front of the injured child, prying Stefan’s hands away from his (now bleeding) nose. The boy whimpers at the running blood, and wriggles his hands out of George’s grip, choosing instead to clutch onto Damon’s lapels.

”Cacchio,” Damon mutters, getting a good look at the blood covering his brother’s (and now, his friend’s) hands and face. “Stef. Steffy, can you breathe for me?“

”Mm-hmm,” Stefan nods.

”I’m so sorry, Bambi. I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry.”

”Wait. Bambi? Isn’t Disney from like, the 1920s?” Elena looks to Caroline, who shrugs.

”They copied me, duh!” Damon retorts in that specific tone of his, the one that leaves the others confused as to whether he’s being sarcastic or not. He’s joking, of course, but the coincidence is just so hilariously on the nose, pardon the pun.

”Let’s get him into the town.” George suggests, and Damon nods, lifting Stefan up and onto his hip. “You rode down, yes? Who am I kidding, it’s you. Obviously you rode down. We’ll take him by the physician’s, get him to check if anything’s broken.” Damon casts a look towards the woods with a frown, but follows George back to the corral without a fuss.

“Fear not, ladies and gentlemen, there’s nothing to see here! Avert your gazes and return to your businesses at once!” George’s announcement seems to draw more attention to the scene, oddly enough. Damon just sighs, and readjusts his brother.

When they reach the makeshift corral, Damon comes to a realisation concerning a shorter horse standing alongside his own, readily-saddled mare.

“I can’t carry Stef and lead Marengo at the same time,” Damon says, once atop the beautiful black mare with Stefan cradled in front of him.

George, climbing onto his own chestnut gelding, brushes the thought off. “Not to worry,” he puts the middle and index fingers of both hands into his mouth and lets out a long, sharp whistle. “Hattie! Harriet!” He calls out, waving to a younger girl, who runs over to them, her dark blonde ringlets bouncing all the while.

”Hello, Damon, Lady Astraea Cordelia.” Hattie beams, fluttering her lashes at the older boy, before dropping the expression and facing the one who summoned her. “George,” she grumbles.

”Don’t be like that, dear sister! We have a proposition for you.” 

Harriet perks up instantly, and reaches a hand to stroke Lady Astraea Cordelia’s forelock. “Oh?” She eyes Damon keenly. “And what would that— awh, what happened to the baby?” 

“Fought off a mountain lion. It doesn’t matter. Can you look after the Salvatore’s pony for an hour or so before riding it back to their stables?”

Hattie narrows her eyes. “Is the saddle astride or aside?”

”Astride, obviously.”

The girl grins when she hears the answer. “Good.” Then, she pulls her hand from the horse’s nose and looks at Damon, voice as solemn as her expression. “No harm will come to sweet little Marengo under my care, and he shall be discreetly returned to your family’s stables, safe and sound, at,” she pulls a large pocket-watch from the sash of her dress, “no later than five this evening.” 

George lets out an indignant scoff. “Is that Father’s missing—“ “—I haven’t a clue as to what you might be talking about, George, so if you please, do silence yourself.” 

Damon grins at Hattie’s audacity. “Thankyou, Miss Lockwood. I am much obliged.” He picks up her gloved hand in his, brushing a kiss against the back of it, which causes the girl to blush. “Now, we’d best be off. Good day, Miss.” He adjusts his grip on the reins and his brother, before nudging his horse along. George does the same, poking his tongue out at Harriet as he follows the brothers out. Harriet barely notices, her attention caught by the miniature horse entrusted to her for the afternoon.

”’Am’n?” Stefan mumbles once they’ve left the clearing, propping his chin onto his brother’s shoulder, facing the direction they came from. 

“Yeah, Stef?”

”Hur’s.”

”I know, buddy. I’m really sorry, it was an accident.”

”Y’h. Don’ wanna do ‘ny mo’ fight’n tho’h.” 

Damon presses a soft kiss to the boy’s head. “That’s okay with me. Let’s go get you healed up now, hm?”

”I’m sorry, Lady-what-now?!” Caroline bursts while the scene continues to play, now without dialogue.

”Lady Astraea Cordelia. A grand name for a grand horse, both fit for a grand young man such as myself.”

Bonnie coughs. “Ahem, pretentious much?”

”Always.”

”I can’t believe you broke Stefan’s nose,” Caroline changes the subject with all the subtlety of… well, Stefan catching the scent of human blood.

”I did not break Stefan’s nose, I mildly deviated his septum.”

”You totally broke my nose.”

”I barely displaced the cartilage! It wasn’t even noticeable. You know what? Maybe it’s your fault for having such a punchable face!”

”I have a punchable face?”

”Yes! And a weirdly breakable nose, too!”

”I was five!”

”And stupid!”

Before the fight can escalate from mostly-joking to mostly-serious, the figures in the memory begin to speak again.

”She has her heart set on marrying you, y’know.” 

”Harriet? She’s been saying that for years,” Damon dismisses. “She’ll grow out of it.”

”Doubtful. She’s even more insufferable because of it. If I have to hear another word on how exotic and dashing you are, I may hurl.”

Stefan giggles, the only sign that he hasn’t lost consciousness.

”Exotic and dashing?” Damon puts on a self satisfied smile. “She really knows how to make a man feel special,” he jokes as the boys pull up at the clinic and dismount.

The bell on the door to the physician’s office jingles when they enter, and an older boy peers out from behind a large oak desk. He instantly gets up and rushes towards the trio, questions pouring out of him. Damon sets Stefan down on one of the counters, and whips out a handkerchief to begin cleaning up his face.

”Goodness, what on earth happened to you three? Is that… what happened to the boy? Salvatore? Answer me! Lockwood, what are you doing here, off you go, this doesn’t concern you!”

“Oh come off it, Jon!” George snaps. “Where’s your father? Y’know, the doctor?”

Jonathan stutters at the brisk attitude. “He’s unable to assist at this time. ‘S why I’m manning the storefront. I’m also perfectly capable of resolving this little issue here, so why don’t we get started with it, hm?”

George scoffs. “We’ll get started with it when you attend medical school and come back with a degree. Where’s your father? I bet he’s in the back, isn’t he?”

”Not this again! I think I would know more about medicine than you, Lockwood. Yet you continue to undermine my accomplishments! I’ll have you know that the right touch is far more important than years of schooling. An—“

”—And the ‘right touch’ is only ever learned through those years of schooling.” A man of perhaps forty, with a greying head of hair and a matching beard, steps out into the main room. It is apparent that he is the official Doctor Gilbert. “Ah! Mister Lockwood, Mister Salvatore… oh, and the other Mister Salvatore. Steven, is it?”

”Stefan, sir.” Damon says quietly.

“Oh, of course. The Italians, right, yes….” Damon nods awkwardly, and turns back to his brother, ignoring George’s faux-swoon and his mouthing the words, ‘so exotic!’

“Oh dear, what seems to be the problem? Ah, is it your nose, dear boy?” Stefan nods.

Dr. Gilbert tuts. “Boys,” he says fondly. “Always getting into scrapes. Tell me, George, how’s that wrist coming along?”

”All healed, sir.” The future werewolf snaps to attention when addressed.

The doctor hums approvingly, and goes back to examining the youngest boy up close. “Ah yes, I see the problem.” He looks at Stefan. “Would you care to hear the prognosis?” Little Stefan nods. Doctor Gilbert‘s expression turns grave, and his hands falter by the child’s face. 

“It seems as though your nose is untreatable,” he begins, and a few feet away, Damon stiffens.

”What?” Stefan blinks at the man, who has stuffed his right hand into his coat pocket.

”Yes, yes, I’m afraid I have no choice but to amputate, and attach a new one. It should only take a moment.” He removes his hand from his pocket, bringing it up to Stefan’s face and waving it around before suddenly, he makes a popping sound and pulls his hand away.

“Oh!” Stefan flinches, and the doctor chuckles, and reveals his hand to the boy, with his thumb hidden between his fingers, wriggling like it wants to be freed. 

“And now, the brand new one!” He reaches his other hand into his coat pocket and swaps out his hands, creating the illusion of a new ‘nose’, which he firmly reattaches onto Stefan’s face, gripping the boy’s real nose between his pointer and middle fingers and wiggling it gently, readjusting the minuscule injury.

”Agh!” Stefan jolts at the sudden blast of pain, and Dr. Gilbert steps away to wash his hands while Damon rushes forward.

”He’s taken a nasty bump to his nose, upsetting the tissue around the cartilage of his septum, knocking it a bit, but it shouldn’t be much of a worry aside from a little pain for a few days. His bones are still quite weak at this age, and noses are always delicate features anyhow, quick to hurt and quick to fix, I say! Give it say… uh, two weeks, and if there’s still any swelling or dark bruising by then, come back in for a check-up. That should be all, yes?” The eccentric doctor looks at the brothers expectantly. As does George, who has been entertaining himself by writing his name on a piece of slate found on Jonathan’s desk, making the older boy scowl and scrub at the cursive furiously.

”Thank you Dr. Gilbert,” Damon nods and nudges Stefan, who is busy scrunching his nose and wincing when it hurts. But the child gives up that activity easily, and offers the doctor a gap-toothed grin.

”Thank you Doctor Gilbert!” He chirps, and bumbles his way to the store’s entryway, his brother not far behind.

Damon pauses. “Oh, and— Sir?”

”Yes, my boy?”

”D’you think— Could you please keep this from my father? It’d be best if we didn’t tell him.”

The doctor smiles. “Tell who, what?”

With a final nod, the boys leave.

”Man, Jonathan’s dad seems so cool.” Jeremy says.

Stefan makes a noise of agreement. ”He was. I did an apprenticeship with him. Great guy.”

”Wait so was your nose broken or not?” Matt asks.

”Technically, yes, there was a minor break, but not enough to require surgery.”

“I hate to say it — actually, I don’t — but I told you so.” Damon’s expression is smug, to say the least.

The scene shifts to the front gardens of the Salvatore manor, and then moves inside the mansion and into the well-lit parlour, where Giuseppe sits in conversation with a younger man, soon revealed to be none other than Jonathan Gilbert. Both men’s expressions give nothing away, but there’s some tension in the room that speaks for itself.

”Nasty little rat,” Damon glowers. “Always sticking his nose where it didn’t belong.”

”Damon! That’s my ancestor!” Elena chides.

”Yeah, and he was a self-righteous bastard who always had to be involved.”

Maybe it runs in the family? Part of Damon feels bad for thinking such things about the girl he loves loved, but then again….

It’s not like it isn’t true. 

Once the conversation is over, and Jonathan has been shown out, Giuseppe marches up the grand staircase.

“Damon!” He yells out. Footsteps are heard from the floor above, and only moments later, Damon appears before him, in a fresh set of clothes.

”Yes, Father?”

“I have just received some… unsettling news, regarding your brother. You wouldn’t happen to know of his whereabouts, would you?”

Damon blanches. ”Stefan has just been put down for a nap, it seems our time down by the waterhole has worn him out quite a bit.”

”Your time down by the waterhole, yes. And did you boys enjoy your afternoon?”

A weird look crosses Damon’s face, as his father has never shown any interest in him outside punishments or snide remarks. “Yes, Father, it was lovely. Why do you ask?”

Giuseppe hums. “Oh, no reason. Just that young gentleman, Jonathan, he came round just now, asking after Stefan.” Damon pales rapidly. “Imagine my confusion when he told me how my youngest son had to make a visit to the physician’s, not two hours ago, for a shattered nose! Hm?”

”Nothing was shattered! Or even broken! It was just a bump!” Damon glares defiantly.

“Just a bump, you say? If it were just a bump, there would have been no need for a trip to the doctor’s office, would there?”

”I wanted to be sure, that’s all. The doctor says it will be sore for a few days, but other than that, nothing’s wrong!”

”That’s not what Jonathan Gilbert told me.” As Damon goes to protest, Giuseppe cuts him off. “Nevertheless, I trusted that you would not dare to harm the boy nor allow him to come to any harm. It seems my trust has been misplaced.”

”But I’d never hurt Stefan on purpose!” Damon protests.

Giuseppe smiles thinly. “So you are admitting that you were the one to harm your brother?”

The boy stutters. “I-it was an accident! I didn’t mean to! I’d never want to hurt Stefan!”

Someone coughs pointedly.

”Yet you still did.” Giuseppe sighs, and folds his arms behind his back. “It seems I am at a loss as to how I should deal with your misbehaviour these days… such a shame, that all your mother’s hard work has come to this… wickedness. Perhaps a night in the root cellar will help curb your violent tendencies, no?”

Damon looks at his father with wide eyes.

“Go on, then.” Giuseppe steps to the side. Damon goes to pass through, defeat written all over him, but his father stops him. “Uh, uh-uh,” the man tuts. “I believe that you have something that you wish to ask?”

The boy sighs. “Father, may I please be shown to the root cellar for the night? It seems I have, once again, disgraced this family and your good name with my selfish ways and idiocy.” He recites dutifully.

”Yes, you may. This is disappointing, but no longer surprising behaviour. Off you go.” 

Damon slinks down the stairs and proceeds to the cellar door, placing his hand on the handle cautiously as the screen turns black.

Chapter Text

“Wait, why did you ask to be put in a time-out?” Elena frowns, seemingly unable to comprehend anything so complex as power plays and shitty parenting.

“Giuseppe’s nasty little way of conditioning me to behave. He’d tell me what to say, and then use my words against me. More convenient and socially acceptable than beating me into compliance on a daily basis, I’m sure.” Damon rolls his eyes.

Tyler lets out a low whistle. “That’s… really fucked up.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“This is all so wrong…” Caroline mutters.

“What was that?” Damon mockingly cups a hand behind his ear.

The blonde vampire stills, and takes a deep breath before she speaks. “Nothing,” she smiles sweetly, “just waiting for the next scene.” Sure. And Damon’s stone cold sober.

“Damon…?”

He sighs. Guess he’s Mr Popularity today.

Then: “Yes, Stefan?”

“How’d I not notice? How badly he treated you then? I mean, I-I thought….” Big, sad puppy dog eyes go rounder and wider as Stefan trails off mid-sentence. If Damon hadn’t known firsthand the kind of atrocities his baby brother is capable of, he’d never believe that this boy is the infamous Ripper of Monterey. Not with a pout like that.

“I didn’t exactly go flaunting it in town square or anything.”

“No, but—“

“I didn’t want you to know. So you didn’t.”

Wow. He’s really nailing the whole ‘feelings’ crap. Good for him. Only took 172 years and the right questions asked at the right level of sobriety (which, for the record, is close to none).

“No, I—“

“Stefan.” Damon effectively shuts down whatever guilty little shame spiral is spinning in the boy’s head by using his designated ‘big brother’ tone. And, alright. Fine. Maybe a tiny part of him is pleased that Stefan instinctively responds to it, even after all this time. “You were five years old and also the stupidest little troll to ever exist. I mean, you actually believed the doctor had amputated your nose and replaced it with one from his pocket, for god’s sake.” So quit feeling sorry for yourself, dumbass.

Stefan sighs and hides a smile when he hears the ‘troll’ comment for the second time today.

Despite how Damon may feel about this whole life story movie marathon, Stefan’s been finding the outcomes very pleasing.

Mostly, anyway. He’s still apprehensive about his own  memories being shown to all his friends, but he doesn’t really mind seeing Damon’s.

Some of it’s jarring, but watching the love and care his brother once had for him… he misses it. And from Damon’s reactions, he thinks maybe his brother does, too.

Besides Giuseppe’s abuse and all.

Which doesn’t make sense.

How could his strict, but f air,  father punish Damon without reason? He’d thought, way back when, that Damon was just as much an instigator in those situations. He’d actually seen enough to prove that. But this… this contradicts everything Stefan thought he knew about Damon’s childhood. And none of it’s adding up.

But all that aside… this thing, so far, seems to be doing the brothers some good, for once. And Stefan is even more certain that this will actually help him get his brother back.

Because maybe, just maybe, Damon’s finally ready to change for the better.

Ready to go back to the way things were.

“Tyler, your ancestors are my favourite characters in this,” Caroline says, turning to her boyfriend. Unease takes up residency in the pit of Damon’s stomach. Well, it renews its lease. Characters? Of course. Only Caroline would demand to see the literal story of their lives and pretend it’s a film. Probably suits her ‘Gone With The Wind’ fantasy.

“I thought baby Stefan was your favourite?” Bonnie jokes.

“Oh, him too. But how iconic is Harriet? Aside from her taste in guys, obviously .”

Damon rolls his eyes at that.

“Weren’t you two supposed to get married at some point?” Stefan asks his brother.

“Married?” Caroline whispers to herself as she scrutinises Damon. Then she covers her ears with her hands. “Lala-la-la-la-la-ba-ba-ba-ba. No. No spoilers!”

“What did she mean about the saddle?” Elena swiftly changes the subject.

Stefan, naturally, is the one to explain. “Astride is the normal way of riding. Girls were only allowed to ride sidesaddle.”

“Go Harriet. Girl power!” Caroline claps, relieved with the non-spoiler-y conversation.

“It’s weird seeing you as a human,” Alaric mentions, trying to keep the conversation from dwindling into sub-awkward territory. “How’d you get so pale? I thought it was a vampire thing, but Stefan, you’re roughly the same skin tone, right?” Stefan nods, giving a ‘more or less’ gesture.

“I dunno. Just happened, I guess. Magic’s weird.“

Bonnie lets out an affronted noise.

“At least I don’t sparkle,” Damon continues.

“I had a mole that disappeared,” Stefan recalls.

“See?” Damon tips his bottle towards his brother. “Weird.”

“So was that mole.”

“So is seeing you as a human. You’re all….” Elena searches for the right word.

“Nice?” Caroline offers. “Normal? Non-murder-y? Sane?” Damon would like to object to that last one. But he can’t really be bothered.

“…Yeah. All of that.” Elena finishes. “Is this what you meant when you said I’d like you in 1864?”

Damon frowns. He… doesn’t remember saying that, to be perfectly honest. Can’t think of a time when that wouldn’t be an insult. “When did I say that? 1864 me was a loser.”

Elena just looks at him, exasperated. How can he just disregard one of their best moments? She knows he’s still hurting about what she said in Kansas, but he should be over it by now. She is! Why’s he acting like none of that happened? “Damon. Come on, don’t do that. I get that you’re upset with me, but—“

“Upset?” He scoffs. “I’m not upset, Elena. You’ve actually pointed out quite a few things to me. I’m just not in love with you. Not anymore.”

She isn’t convinced. “Come on, Damon. That’s not true.” She laughs nervously, well aware of the peanut gallery around them.

“But it is,” Damon says slowly. “How many more times do I have to say it? I’m. Not. In. Love. With. You.” The tension in the room suddenly gets real awkward for some unknown reason, so Damon takes another drink, really starting to feel the whiskey’s effects by now.

“Well then, you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t believe you,” Caroline butts in. Damon shrugs. “You’re excused.”

Makes no difference to him, really.

It’s not like Elena had loved him back.

Not in any sense that wasn’t purely lust.

They were just each other’s backups for what they truly wanted.

He was her Stefan backup. Her bad-boy fantasy. She wanted to fix him, redeem him, save him, change him into something good. She wanted him to only exist to please her, serve her, worship her.

And she was his Katherine backup. A chance for him to be wanted, loved, accepted. To feel like he could be worth something. A chance to be chosen for once in his damned existence.

But it would always be Stefan.

And nobody knows that better than Damon.

So, he’s done the right thing for once, and moved on. Let Katherine go, for good. Stopped chasing a pipe dream, let go of the burning desire to make it all worth it, worth the pain, the heartbreak, the emptiness, all the torment he’s willingly endured in the name of love.

Call it personal growth, or whatever.

“Guys, can you just leave it alone for one day?” Ric rubs at his temples in a Stefan-esq fashion.

“Sorry, Ric.” Elena grimaces apologetically.

Damon, however, leers at his friend, batting his lashes innocently. “Anything for you, Ricky-Ric.”

1853

Six year-old Stefan, clad in just his nightshirt and nightcap, creeps down the hall towards Damon’s bedroom, where he opens the door with an ominous creak.

“You had a matching hat?!” Jeremy asks with a grin.

“Damon?” Little Stefan whispers, hovering in the doorway. When he receives no reply, he takes a few steps inside.

“Daaaaaay──monnnnn.” He approaches the bed, where all that can be seen of his brother is a mop of dark curls poking out from the white bedcovers. His next whisper is a harsh one, as he leans over his brother’s sleeping form.

“Damon!”

“Mmn… grhnn,” Damon mumbles as he begins to rouse. “‘T’s ‘t?”

“Damon, wake up!”

Damon moves to bury his face further into the sheets. “G’way St’fy. ‘M sl’p’n.”

Stefan doesn’t back down. “And I can’t sleep,” he hisses, “I had a scary dream. So let me in or— or…I’ll tell Father.”

“Th’s’tup’d. F’th’r w’ldn c’r.” But still, Damon shuffles around to make room for the boy.

Stefan drops the subject with a gleeful hum, and proceeds to crawl right across Damon’s body onto the other side of the bed, eliciting pained grunts from the teenager.

“Mng-rngh-AH—! Stefan! Gentle !” Damon chastises, but the younger boy just hums and continues to make himself comfortable, wriggling around and climbing all over his brother, who just wants to go back to sleep.

Stefan settles down quickly enough, squished against a (finally) sleeping Damon’s back, arm wrapped around him, and for a moment, all is quiet. Until—

“Argh! Stefan !” Damon hisses, trying to throw his brother off. “Keep your cold feet to yourself!”

Stefan doesn’t budge, and just hums happily. “‘M l’rn’ng to share. Sharing is caring. ” He burrows his face into Damon’s neck, and the screen dims.

“Seriously, you guys were so cute!” Caroline says. “How did this,” she waves a hand in the general area of the bookshelf-slash-cinema-screen, “turn into this? ” Gesturing pointedly between the brothers, she tuts with disapproval.

“I dunno,” Stefan shrugs. “Damon? Do you know what happened?”

Classic Steffy. Always evading. Always directing the blame onto Damon.

“Uhh… we died?” Damon guesses, ‘cause he’s really not sure what his brother wants him to say here. “And I hate to break it to you, Stef, but you’re not as cute as you once were.”

The younger of the brothers sticks his nose up in the air. “I disagree,” he sniffs haughtily, “I’m plenty cute.”

1853

Lily, cast in an angelic light, sits beside her boys, enjoying a picnic. Damon’s horse grazes nearby, swishing the ebony waves of her tail.

“So offended that nobody’s complimented Lady yet,” Damon pouts.

“She’s cool,” Jeremy (Damon’s new favourite) agrees. “Must’ve been cool, owning all those horses.”

“Thank you, Germy. It was, in fact, cool, having horses. Oh, hey, Stef! We should totally get horses again!”

“Oh my god, yes!” Caroline squeals.

Elena nods, and looks at Stefan pleadingly. “You totally should!”

“Dibs first ride!” Bonnie grins.

“Oh wait,” Damon falters. “We can’t have pets anymore. Stefan’ll eat them.” He glares at his baby brother.

“I won—“ Stefan lets out a heavy sigh. “I don’t even want horses again, so I’m not gonna bother arguing.”

1853

Stefan snuggled up to Lily in her bed while  Damon sits on a chair beside them, reading ‘Wuthering Heights’ aloud.

“That book was yours? ” Elena looks at Damon strangely.

“Yeah…?”

“Stefan lent it to me when we first met. I thought it was his….”

Damon rolls his eyes. Of course. “Stefan, have you been stealing my books to impress girls again?”

“…Maybe?” The younger vampire smiles sheepishly. “I didn’t know it was yours, specifically. I found it in the library here.”

Yeah, and Damon didn’t realise the diaries in Stefan’s bedroom cupboard were actually Stefan’s.

1853

Stefan learning to play violin, Damon accompanying him on piano as they perform for their parents.

1853

Stefan wields the bow of his violin like a sword, chasing after an amused Giuseppe.

1853

Stefan, seeing Damon limping, calls him over to help with his homework.

“Aww, you’re such a good brother,” Elena beams.

1853

Giuseppe ruffling Stefan’s hair as the boy hugs him.

“He switched up real fast,” Jeremy notes.

1854

Stefan watching from behind a tree as Damon kisses an unidentifiable girl in the woods.

“Voyeur,” Damon comments.

“Exhibitionist,” Stefan returns.

The memories slow down now, zeroing in on Damon’s perspective of the event. The close up shows 15 year-old Damon sitting beside 16 year-old Emily on a log, holding something to his chest.

“Hold on—“

“Wait— Is that—??”

“Oh god, no….” Bonnie hides her head in her hands. “The one time I wanted you to be lying!”

Stefan grins evilly. “This is so much better now that I know it was Emily.”

“I’ve brought you a gift. Close your eyes, and hold out your hands.” Emily looks like she wants to ask why, but she does what her friend asks. Grinning, Damon places the present in the witch’s hands, and she can’t help but peek. Damon smiles, watching as Emily’s face lights up and her mouth falls open. The fluffy little gift lets out a small meow.

“Oh my god, you didn’t! ”

“Oh, my—“ She gasps, immediately stroking the soft ebony fur, enraptured by the purring creature before her. Damon beams at the sight, his eyes shining with adoration for the girl next to him.

“I’ve heard that a witch needs a familiar.” He says, lips twitching when the kitten yawns, exposing a tiny pink tongue. He reaches over and scratches the cat behind the ears.

“Where did you find a whole ass cat ?” Matt asks.

“Oh, I’m basically a Disney princess. Animals flock to me.” Damon grins proudly (drunkenly). “And the barn cat was a total slut. This was the year I became a cat dealer.”

“Pussy pimp,” Jeremy mumbles.

“Thank you, Damon.” She looks into the wide, blinking eyes of the feline. “His name is Grimalkin,” Emily announces with complete certainty. Damon, long since used to this decisiveness, merely shakes his head. “Grimalkin. Bold choice.”

Emily laughs. “What was it you named your horse again? Lady Astraea Cordelia?”

With a click of his tongue, Damon replies, “Touché.”

Then, “I also brought some bread… Lou, from the kitchens, says you can mix it with water, or milk, for… Grimalkin, but cats are usually able to take care of themselves.” He unties the parcel from his suspenders and hands it over.

“You didn’t have to do all this for me.” The girl says sheepishly. Damon blinks. “I wanted to.”

“Aw, this is actually really sweet!” Caroline says, shocked.

Emily blushes and places Grimalkin in her lap, taking notice of the pale green ribbon tied into a bow around his neck. “What a lovely ribbon!”

“Pulled it right from one of Rosie Forbes’ plaits during last Sunday’s sermon.” Damon grins innocently when Emily shoots him—what is meant to be—an unimpressed look. He then repositions himself closer to the girl, leaning in slightly as he strokes Grimalkin behind the ears.

“She won’t be missing it. She has no use for two ribbons now that George Lockwood has snipped off one of her pigtails with his mother’s best embroidery scissors.”

“Hey— didn’t I do the same to you in the first grade?” Tyler asks his girlfriend, who scowls at the reminder before nodding. “Nice,” The hybrid smiles at the accidental tradition.

Emily rolls her eyes good naturedly and frees a hand so that she can clasp Damon’s, which causes the boy to blush a furious red. The flush darkens when Emily leans over and kisses his cheek, pulling away only the tiniest bit.

Vampire Barbie leans forward, watching intently. “I can’t believe I’m actually sort of invested in this!”

Smiling, all giddy with anticipation (again, voyeur), Stefan proclaims: “I would put them on a boat!”

Breath warm on his cheek, Emily whispers, “Thankyou, Damon.”

It takes a while for Stefan’s comment to make sense.

“…You mean you ship them?” Elena asks dubiously.

“…Damn. I really thought I had it that time.”

Elena pats his shoulder sympathetically.

The air between them thickens as Damon slowly angles his face towards her.

Bonnie groans.

“Aww! Kiss, kiss, kiss!” Caroline chants.

Quickly, as though scared to let the moment pass, Damon leans forward and presses their lips together in a short, chaste kiss. It’s over before Emily can even register what just happened, and both teenagers are left with flaming cheeks and sparkling eyes.

“Oh god, I can’t watch this,” Bonnie hides her face in her hands.

Elena turns to look at Damon curiously. “Why didn’t you say anything? About knowing— dating— Emily? Stefan told me she was Katherine’s friend, but—“

Bonnie, Damon, and Stefan all wince at that last comment. “For the record,” Stefan raises a finger, “I said she was Katherine’s handmaid. Not friend.” Elena doesn’t hear him, too busy looking hurt and confused. One might even say… jealous.

“It was only a few kisses, and I told Bonnie,” Damon shrugs. “She didn’t believe me.”

Bonnie rolls her eyes. “You told me that right after handing me a ‘sorry for ripping out your throat’ cake. Complete with a drawing done in icing. Of course I didn’t believe you.”

Caroline frowns. “Wait. You got one of those as well? I thought it was just a mean joke.”

Gasping, Damon looks at the blonde. “I would never joke about such cakes! I baked them from scratch and everything!”

Jeremy perks up a little. “Mine was so good. I even considered getting you to break my neck again, just so I could have another.” Elena glares at her brother, and Jeremy puts his hands up in surrender. “Kidding, kidding. Sort of.”

Ric looks at the vampire, beyond exasperated. “You’ve done the apology cake thing more  than once? Is it not easier to just say the words ‘I’m sorry’?” His expression is wounded, like he’s been cheated on. Poor guy thought he was the only one.

“It’s cute when you get all jealous,” Damon grins.

Damon and Emily kiss again, slightly deeper and for longer this time, blushing furiously when they pull away.

Bonnie fake-retches loudly. “Oh my god, eww!”

Suddenly, the scene zeroes in on Stefan, who watches the pair with a flabbergasted expression.

Caroline cackles. “Oh, this is gold! ”

“That’s so weird. You’ve made out with Bonnie’s many-greats-grandmother,” Matt comments.

“And I’ve made out with your mother, Donovan. Your point is?”

Would’ve gone further, too, but the damn teenagers just had to cockblock.

1854

Damon and George sit atop desks in the back of a small building undergoing renovation, watching a gaggle of girls crowded in a circle at the front, occasionally throwing Damon flirty smiles.

“Ugh, you’re impossible.“

“Girl’s brains turn to mush whenever you hand them a baby animal, see?” They both look to see Harriet in the centre of the group, holding a kitten with a lovestruck expression on her face.

“That’s a poor example, Salvatore. Hattie’s brain was already mush.”

Damon rolls his eyes. “If you give a girl a kitten, she’ll be so enamoured by it that she has no need to chase after you anymore, yet you remain in her good graces. It’s the perfect solution. Now Hattie will leave me—and by extension, you—alone!”

“I— I don’t think that is how it works.” George frowns.

“Of course it is! Now we have the freedom to go and do as we please!” Damon proclaims, loudly, alerting Harriet to his presence.

George jumps up and grabs his arm. “Incoming!” He hisses, and yanks Damon along as he rushes outside onto the grass.

The pair sprint down a dirt path into town, laughing breathlessly all the while.

“The perfect solution, you say?” George cackles, resting against the wall of the tavern to catch his breath.

“Oh, sod off, you.” Damon elbows him in the ribs with a smile.

1854

The memory changes, and Damon is standing in the woods, alone, looking around as though he’s waiting for something.

A quick transition shows the same thing across many different days, always of Damon standing there alone, waiting for something that never comes.

“Wh…?” Tyler starts to say, But the memory is over before he can get the words out.

1854

The screen blurs, and focuses back in on Damon joining Lily in the gardens, by a rose bush.

“Those roses are lovely,” Damon says, drawing his mother’s attention, “but I think the Lily far lovelier.”

Lily scoffs amusedly, and replies with an accented lilt, “You charmer.”

“Wow, you guys look so similar,” Elena breathes. “Stefan looks more like your father.”

“I do?”

Damon nods. “Same disappointed judgy face. Weirds me out.”

“That’s really not what I meant, but okay…” Elena trails off.

Damon grins, and Lily continues. “Have you been charming the girls with that smile of yours? Perhaps a certain Miss Lockwood?”

Damon swallows, and looks to his mother as they walk. “I have no feelings towards Harriet besides friendship, and occasionally, irritation.”

Lily chuckles. “She is rather infatuated, no?” They walk along. “I do quite like her though,” she says, “she has a certain… passion… about her. I find it refreshing to see. If I am to live long enough, it would be nice to have her as a daughter.”

He nods stiffly, but doesn’t reply, and they continue in silence.

A few minutes later, Damon speaks. “You called for me. Was it merely for a stroll, or did you have something on your mind?”

Lily sighs. “Am I not allowed to simply enjoy a walk in the sunshine with my eldest?” He just raises an eyebrow, and his mother rolls her eyes and pouts. “I wish you’d humour me sometimes. I do not always have ulterior motives.”

Damon raises both eyebrows. “But you do have them now,” he points out. “Don’t pretend you enjoy social niceties, Mother. I have seen you tip over glasses at luncheons just to move the proceedings along.”

Lily can’t help the sly smile that forms on her face at the memory. “I did not care to hear about the achievements of Marion Fell’s latest brood. There are too many of them and I have too little patience.” Then, “You are far too quick for your own good. It would do you well to take more time in figuring things out. Or at the very least, pretend.”

Damon stays silent, and Lily sighs before getting to her point. “I was hoping you could find your brother and invite him to my rooms later today, for some quiet playtime.”

Damon swallows. “Yes Mother. I’ll go collect him after our walk.”

Lily waves her free hand. “Oh, there is no need for all of that. You may go now.” A pained look crosses Damon’s face for a short moment, and he removes his arm from his mother’s grasp, quickly walking away, barely hiding a scowl.

“Oh, that’s cold .” Tyler whistles lowly.

The scene shifts, and Damon is kneeling in front of Stefan, tying his tie for him.

“Why do I have to wear this?” Stefan pulls at the offending garment.

Damon gently slaps his hands away. “Because Mother has invited you into her rooms for some quiet playtime after your lessons.” “Really? Me?”

“Yes, you! Who else would I mean?”

“I… dunno. Are you going to be there?”

Damon’s lips are drawn into a thin line. “No, Stefan. This is your time with her.”

“All by my own?”

“Yes.”

“But I’ve never done that before.”

“I know. Do you think you can manage it?”

Stefan bites his lip. “I dunno. I wan’ you there. Mamma not so fun.” He tugs at the tie again.

Damon grabs the boy’s hands and squeezes them. “That is because I am your big brother, which makes me the most fun of all. But our Mother is fun in different ways, and she loves us both very deeply.”

Stefan seems appeased by that, and allows his brother to finish fluffing him up for a few moments, before he says what has been weighing on his mind.

“What is a mother, anyway? What does she do?”

Damon falters, swallowing hard. “A—uh… well…. A mother is… very kind and loving.  She…she is the one to comfort you when you are sad, and… picks you up when you graze your knee. She sings lullabies when you cannot sleep, and is there to hold you if you have a bad dream.”

The younger boy frowns. “But that’s what you do. Why can’t you be my mother?”

“Hey, Stef, remember the time you told your friends I was your mother?”

“I’m pretty sure I said ‘Mother Duck’, actually.”

“Still. I’m your mommy .” His tone is mostly mocking, but something akin to fondness slips through.

Stefan’s lips twitch slightly. “Does that make me a son of a bitch?”

“It sure does!” Damon says loudly.

Damon hesitates. “Well,” he starts, “I am your brother. I cannot be your mother as well now, can I? And Mother is a very busy woman. Sometimes I will take on those roles when she cannot. But she always loves you and cares for you.” Stefan pouts.

“But I don’ wanna go without you! I want you to be my mother! I don’ know how to play with this one!”

“Which is why I have some advice for you. Would you like to hear it?”

Stefan nods eagerly.

“The most important rule to remember is to be quiet and calm, showing Mother your very best manners. She is very busy and spending time with her is a big honour. The next…. How are you faring in your French lessons?”

“ Pour les conversations, je suis parfait! ”

“ Très bien, Stefano. And if your mother speaks to you in French, would you be able to answer? ”

“ Sí …” Stefan trails off when Damon shakes his head. “Oh, err… oui, I can understand quite well.”

“ Very good .” Damon applauds.

Tyler blinks “Woah. Why can I understand you guys?”

“Subconscious translator. As the audience, we need to know all of the contextual stuff, to avoid misinterpretations. Stefan and Damon, since you guys know French, we’ll be able to understand things as you did back then. It’s also easier for us to gauge your facial expressions, and your thoughts, to some extent.” Bonnie explains. “I’m not entirely sure how it works on a practical level, but I guess we’ll find out as we go.”

Damon lets out a low groan. “That’s creepy. I’m hating this more and more.” He shudders, and takes a swig from his near empty bottle.

“Mother will be impressed if you speak to her in French, even if it’s just a little bit.”

Stefan nods. Damon scrunches his face up in thought for a moment.

“And if you feel upset at any point in time, you should quietly excuse yourself and return to me in my study. That is the same for if you are feeling like you want a hug, or to go and run outside. But you may ask Mother for a hug if you truly wish. She may say yes if you are really lucky.”

Stefan nods. Damon pats him on the back.

“I will take you outside to play after lunch, and then I’ll take you to Mother’s rooms. Off you go to your lessons now.”

Stefan gives his brother a big hug before bounding out of his room and down the stairs. The scene blurs.

Elena, unsure how she feels about not already knowing everything about the brothers, speaks up. “How many languages did you guys have to know? You’re both so young ! How did you learn it all?”

Stefan thinks for a moment. “English, then Italian, Latin, and French. Though Damon spoke Italian, then French and Latin and then English.” He drums his fingers on his knee and shrugs. “It was just… learned, I guess. I dunno.”

“Wait, why do you guys have different first languages?” Matt asks.

Stefan points to himself and says: “Born in America,” then he points at his brother, “born in Italy.”

Elena looks at them strangely. “I feel like this is something I should have known. How didn’t I know this?”

Damon shrugs. “I mean, it’s been said in pretty much every memory shown, so I dunno.”

“Sooo…” Jeremy pipes up. “What language do you think in?”

Damon isn’t sure whether he’s jumped from ‘a little drunk’ to ‘sloshed’ in half a second, or the kid is just making zero sense. Could be either. “Uh… what?”

“Do you think in English or Italian? ‘Cause you speak English more, but you knew Italian first.”

“I….” Damon falters. “Fuck. I dunno. Both? Neither?”

“Bold of you to assume he thinks.” Stefan, the comedian, quips.

“My god, Stefan Salvatore, is that you? Making a joke? I feel so proud.”

1854

The scene changes again, showing Stefan, who is sitting on the floor of Lily’s bedroom, playing with hand-carved animals.

“Where did you get those?” Lily asks the boy as she powders her face, which is much paler than in previous scenes.

“Damon made them for me all by himself,” Stefan tells her. “This is his horse, Lady Blah-Blah,” he holds up a horse with a curly mane.

“Do you mean Lady Astraea Cordelia?”

Stefan nods. “Lady Blah-Blah.” He corrects. “And this is Marengo,” he holds out a stubby pony figurine.

“Your brother is very good, isn’t he?” She breathes a little heavier.

“Mm-hmm! Damon’s the best!” Stefan nods happily. “He says he’s making me a whole menagerie. I already have three cats, four horses, one raven and two deer.”

“I was really into whittling for a while,” Damon says absently.

“Perhaps he would like a pocketknife for his birthday, do you think?"

Stefan shrugs. “I want a train set. And my birthday’s in November. Which means it’s more important because it’s closer to Christmas.”

Lily laughs. “Of course it does, dearest.”

“I think Damon’s sad that he wasn’t invited today,” Stefan mentions offhandedly, babbling away as children do.

“Oh?” Lily says.

“Yeah. He had a strange face on.”

“He understands, I’m sure. I could never do this with him, back when he was your age. You have been a much easier child than he ever was.”

Stefan looks at his mother oddly. “I am?”

Lily nods. “Your brother… well, he was always making a fuss, demanding attention… so troublesome. Before you were born, he used to sit on the floor, day in and day out, crying and begging to be held. He would do that for hours each day.”

“For hours? Is she kidding?” Bonnie exclaims.

“Nope,” Damon says cheerfully.

“You, on the other hand,” Lily continues, “have been a dream. Such a sweet, calm boy. No trouble at all.” Stefan preens.

The scene jumps forward a few minutes, and Lily is looking noticeably paler and her movement becomes more strained.

She rings a bell for Lucille , who enters swiftly. “Lucille,” she croaks out, “Take Stefan to Damon. I require a lie-down. I fear this town is becoming more and more disagreeable.”

Lucille looks on with concern, and picks up the boy, gathering his toys in the little basket before whisking Stefan away and up the stairs to the small room that serves as Damon’s study, where the older boy is looking over his papers with a tired expression.

The teen looks up with a frown as Lucille puts Stefan down on the ground. “Was he too rowdy? I thought I had tired him out.”

“He was fine. Your mother is not feeling her best, is all.”

Damon swallows. “That’s the third time this month. I struggle to believe America dislikes her so.”

Lucille forces a smile. “You need not worry, Mister Damon. ‘Tis but a chill.”

She leaves before he can reply.

“Stef? Hey Bambi?”

Stefan scrambles to grab a chair and joins Damon at his desk.

“I think I like having a mother,” Stefan proclaims.

“Is that so? Good for you.” Damon turns back to his work, while Stefan watches intently, leaning on Damon’s shoulder.

“Are you sure we’re watching this Stefan and Damon?” Tyler jokes.

“Ha-ha,” Stefan laughs dryly.

“You’re really rocking that bowl cut, brother.” Damon slurs.

“Thanks, Damon.”

“Speaking of haircuts, how strange is it to see Damon with curls ?” Bonnie asks. “Do you straighten it, or….”

“Pfft, what? No. I just grew it out this way. Not all of us spend eternity working on our hero-hair.”

Stefan sighs happily. “But you’re still my faaaavvvoourittteee .” He tips his head back over Damon’s arms until he’s successfully blocking his brother’s view.

The teenager smiles. “And you are mine, Bambino.” He kisses his brother’s forehead softly, before resuming his work.

The scene fades out.

“You guys view your parents so differently,” Elena says carefully, like she’s been thinking this for a while and only just figured out how to approach the topic. “It’s like they become different people whenever they’re around either one of you.”

“That’s a nice way of saying I have mommy and daddy issues,” Damon snorts.

“No, no, I didn’t mean it like that, ” she hurriedly amends, “just that— well… they sort of act as though you’re… some kind of demon.”

“Is he not?” Caroline looks genuinely confused and  Damon actually finds himself chuckling at her delivery.

“Caroline!” Elena chastises.

“What?” The blonde flips her hair. “I mean, it makes sense, right? That—“

“That my mommy and daddy didn’t love me and now I’m an evil, bloodsucking monster?”

Elena gasps. “Don’t say that, Damon!”

“Why not? It’s the truth! My dad hated me, my mom couldn’t give less of a shit, boo-fucking-hoo.”

“Damon, don’t say that. He was your dad. He loved you, in his own way. No parent could ever hate their child.” Umm… she’s met Mama and Papa Original, right?

Stefan shifts uncomfortably. “Elena…” he whispers in warning. The girl just brushes him off.

“Look, I’m not defending Mr. Salvatore or anything…” she tells the room, truly believing everything she’s saying, “but it was a different time, right? Stefan, you said so yourself. He wouldn’t do bad things to Damon without reason—not that I’m suggesting the reason would have been good enough or anything—but parents will always love their children equally, and endlessly.” Jeremy raises an eyebrow, but says nothing.

“He never needed a reason. My existence was enough for ol’ Giuseppe to crack his whip.” Damon emphasises this with a cute little whip-cracking gesture.

But Elena remains insistent. “Look, I know you and your dad didn’t really get along, but trust me when I say this: Your dad loved you. Your mom loved you. Don’t think that you aren’t loved, Damon.”

Great, this is just great. Can they get on with the show now?

Chapter Text

1855

“Damon?” Dressed in his little red nightshirt and matching robe, eight-year-old Stefan hovers in the doorway of Damon’s bedroom, fidgeting as the older boy finishes his page and places his copy of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s ‘Self Reliance’, on the side table before looking up at his brother.

“Yes, Stefan?”

“Can I sleep in your bed tonight?” Big green eyes widen pleadingly, and Damon sighs, rubbing his brow bone.

“You are too old for that now, Stef,” he says, getting out of his bed to change into his own nightshirt.

The boy gasps at his brother’s claim. “Am not!”

”Are too!”

Just when Stefan’s about to hit him with a witty comeback (either ‘am not’ again, or something just as great - he hasn’t decided yet), Damon continues, “you have your own bedroom now. Use it.” He swiftly unbuttons and removes his shirt, which is then followed by his thin undershirt.

“But the-there’s monsters in my room!” Stefan protests.

Damon’s lips quirk up, and he pauses in his movements, standing there shirtless with a littering of scars and bruises on display.

“Oh woah.” Donovan’s voice is laced with a sickening dose of pity, and Damon’s hands itch with the need to snap the buffoon’s neck, but he’s trying to be a Good Person here, so he resists the urge.

“Shut up, Busboy.”

Yeah, Giuseppe liked to beat him ‘round, so what?

Stefan frowns when he sees the thin red stripes curling around his brother’s abdomen, but doesn’t want to say anything in fear of being impolite. Damon’s been particularly clumsy lately. Their mother says he’s growing so fast, his brain hasn’t had the time to learn to balance properly on his long limbs. Like a newborn foal.

“Monsters, you say?”

“Yeah,” Stefan nods emphatically, “real big ones that make all sorts of strange noises!”

“It sounds to me like you’re just scared ,” Damon teases, pulling his long nightshirt over his shoulders with a wince that he swiftly masks.

The boy vigorously shakes his head. “Am not!”

“Oh, really?” Damon grins.

“Yes, really!” Stefan bites his lip. “…But if I was a bit… wary… of those noises, what would I do?”

“Purely hypothetically?”

Stefan nods.

“Well…” Damon stops fiddling with the buttons as his expression turns solemn, “if you were to hear strange noises in the night, the wise thing to do would be to make even louder and stranger ones back, so that the monsters know you can’t be scared.”

“Really?” Stefan asks his brother, voice full of childish wonderment.

“Oh, absolutely.”

The boy blinks slowly, thoroughly considering the suggestion. It… makes quite a bit of sense, actually. If he was scared—which he isn’t—he would definitely choose to follow this extremely sound advice.

“Okay!” He chirps in satisfaction, and tilts the crown of his head towards Damon expectantly. The teenager rolls his eyes fondly and presses a kiss into the dark blonde hair, before gently ruffling it and saying: “Alright, off with you then,” as he herds his brother out of his bedroom and shuts the door behind him, closing the scene.

“Wow, you were gullible! ” Tyler laughs.

“I was eight!” Stefan protests, in a weak attempt to save face. “It sounded like good advice at the time!”

Damon snorts. “It was great advice! Your little growls….” He chuckles at the memory. “Priceless.”

“Well, it wasn’t very fun for me.” The poor little baby pouts.

“Worth it to get you out of my bed each night.”

“You had a lock,” Alaric states oh-so-observantly, “why didn’t you just lock your door?”

The vampire points to his pouting brother. “Because then I’d have to deal with that thing in the morning! Why would I wanna do that to myself?” It’s not the only reason, but most of the room accepts it, probably because they’ve finally seen little Stefan’s puppy dog eyes for themselves.

The next scene is set directly after the last. Moonlight casts an eerie glow over Stefan tossing and turning in his too-big bed, unable to fall asleep.

He wishes he could stay in Damon’s room. Stefan doesn’t like being alone in the dark.

Not because he’s scared or anything—because he’s not—but because he cannot stand being away from his brother for too long. Especially when he’s just bursting at the seams, itching to jump on the older boy’s bed and chatter away about inconsequential things he’s already told Damon but wants to tell him again, like how his tutor says his penmanship is coming along splendidly, and that Marengo looks extra fluffy with his long winter coat despite it being well into spring, or how he was watching the koi fish swim around and around and around their little pond and then a froggy jumped up onto a lily-pad and ribbited at him, or that he found an interesting rock in the gardens and could he please show his brother tomorrow, it’ll be worth it, promise; then Stefan would ask Damon more serious questions, like when Mother will be well again, because it’s been a fortnight and Father won’t give a real answer, and Damon will explain to Stefan why Father is acting strange and maybe Damon knows when Mother will be well, because Damon knows lots and lots of things, like how to tie his shoes, how to skim stones, why secrets must be kept and not shared, and—

(There’s an odd scratching at the walls. It’s insistent, demanding.)

—how to scare off any monsters that might be hiding in his room. The trick is to be scarier than them.

The scratching doesn’t stop. So Stefan clears his throat and decides to heed his brother’s advice.

”Grr,” he says into the night. The scratching quietens, but it’s still there.

”Grrrrrrr!” He growls louder this time. The scratching stops.

Stefan giggles when he realises Damon was right, and that strange noises do scare off the monsters. But the newfound quietness just emphasises the creaking coming from within his wardrobe door. 

That’s an easy fix, surely.

”Rouwgh!” He barks, “rouwgh rouwgh!” There’s a small gust of wind and a quiet click, then Stefan’s bedroom is engulfed in peaceful silence. The boy hums happily, and burrows into his blankets, drifting off to sleep.

The scene morphs into Damon’s room, capturing the teenager opening his eyes sleepily, woken by the array of strange noises made by his baby brother. There’s the faint sound of a raspberry being blown, followed by the giggles of a little boy, and Damon smiles to himself before shutting his eyes once more.

“Okay, that was so cute!” Elena smiles as the scene closes. Then her expression turns solemn. “Damon,” she begins, “I think we should talk about what we saw in the scene just before this.”

“Stefan’s cute little pyjamas? I agree. Let’s discuss.” 

Elena flusters, and says: “Wha— no, th-that’s not what I mean!”

“My cute little pyjamas?” He teases.

“No—well, uh….”

“Ohhh,” Damon wiggles his eyebrows knowingly. “You were totally perving on 15-year-old me just then, weren’t you? Little creepy, don’tcha think?”

He takes a moment to enjoy the wide variety of expressions Elena manages to convey in a split second, but it’s swiftly ruined.

“Dude, you’re like, 25, pursuing an 18 year old. That’s creepy .” Matt says.

Ugh. Should’ve let Kol kill the guy. It would’ve saved everyone so much inconvenience.

And by everyone, Damon means himself.

“A, I’m 171, and two, I’m not pursuing anybody.” Damon gives the busboy his best smile, one that’s just a bit too wide and unsettlingly sharp.

Elena sighs once she’s finally processed the entire scale of human emotions in ten seconds flat. “Guys! Can we not?” She asks.

Now, Damon’s not trying to be vain here or anything, but she seems just a little bit disgruntled with his ‘not pursuing anybody’ comment. Good.

“You have to stop doing that, Damon,” she continues, “stop pushing people away when they’re only trying to help you. We need to talk about what we saw.”

He just stares blankly at the girl. What were they even talking about again?

Elena lets out an even heavier sigh. “In that memory. You were covered in—in all those… scars,” her voice drops to a whisper, like it’s a curse and if she says it quiet enough, nobody will threaten her mouth with a thorough cleaning via soap-and-rag.

“…And?” He reaches for a bottle of cheap vodka — Blondie’s doing, no doubt. It’s a pathetic excuse for liquor, but that’s the least of his concerns right now.

(“Here we go again….” Bonnie mutters to Jeremy, who just sighs and sinks further into the couch.)

“I just— I think we need to talk about it. Address the situation.” She takes a deep breath. “It’ll be good for you, Damon. Trust me.”

“Thing is, Elena, I don’t.” He stares her down, eerily calm as her doe eyes widen and tear up slightly. “I don’t trust you, and I don’t need your input on my shitty childhood. I know what happened! I lived it! And thanks to you, I get to relive it all over again, only this time, I get a whole fucking peanut gallery. Count yourselves lucky that I haven’t killed any of you for pulling this stunt.” A smirk crawls onto the vampire’s face. “Yet.”

“Damon, it’s obvious that this is still affecting you!” Elena’s voice is shrill and reprimanding, and he hates it. “Everything you’ve said, everything you’ve done, it’s clearly just a product of your father’s cruelty! How could we blame you for that? First your dad, then Katherine…. It’s not your fault that they broke you, Damon!”

(“That’s….” Caroline tilts her head, “…not….”)

“‘Broke me?’” Damon laughs, sharp and incredulous with something offended about it, because how dare Elena assume he was ever fixed to begin with. “Please. Don’t give them the credit. That was all me.”

“You don’t really believe that, Damon. I kno—”

“You don’t know anything about me. That’s why we’re here, isn’t it? You’ve decided that you just have to know every sordid detail of my miserable, messed up existence!” He takes a swig from the bottle.

(“Maybe it wouldn’t be such a big deal if Damon hadn’t spent over a hundred-and-fifty years being a total psychopath,” Caroline mumbles to herself.)

”Stop saying that!” Her eyes are filled with holier-than-thou tears and she shouts with a passion Damon has never known—he thinks he’s supposed to be endeared by it, but honestly, it’s just sort of embarrassing—so offended on his behalf, like she has a right to claim his feelings as her own, Stefan-style.

“Stop bla—“

”—Seriously?” Barbie takes up her usual role of bursting Damon’s eardrums with her screeching. “Can you two just stop bickering for one second? Some of us are actually trying to watch the show here! We can discuss what a jerk Damon is later.”

Damon looks to the screen and yes, he can see another montage of fifteen-year-old him sitting down, doing absolutely nothing. Some show, alright.

“Good to know someone’s enjoying themselves.” He sneers at the blonde, who just flips her hair and turns up her nose.

1855

A series of moments flash by, all of Damon in the woods, either standing by or sitting on the log where he and Emily had kissed only a year earlier. In every snapshot, he wears a pained expression, lips pursed and eyes downcast as he kicks a foot through the dirt.

”Oh come on,” Damon groans, still rather pissed off. “I signed up for sex and murder, not teen angst!”

“Is that basically your whole life? Sex and murder?” Jeremy asks—too curiously, if Elena’s glare is anything to go by—tilting his head like a confused yet eager puppy wondering what W-A-L-K means.

The vampire simply smirks, and turns back to the screen, just in time to see a face peek out of the bushes near the tree his teenage self is leaning against.

A short whistle comes from behind him, and Damon grins, spinning around to see a familiar face beaming back at him.

”Oh god, please no!” Bonnie dramatically wails. “My eyes! I can’t watch them make-out again!”

“I can!” Caroline smiles cheekily, popping a handful of popcorn into her mouth. “I think it’s adorable! They’re definitely going on that boat!”

Stefan tips his glass towards her in acknowledgment, awfully smug about finally being hip-and-happening like the youth of today he so idolises.

”Yeah,” Witchy scoffs, “the Titanic!”

Stefan gasps at the slander. “You’re saying you don’t ship Demily? Fine. Then you can’t sit with us!” He immediately turns to Caroline for approval, grinning with pride when he’s met with two thumbs up and an encouraging smile. “I did it?” He checks, and Damon’s sure his little brother is only seconds away from blushing and giggling like a teenage girl at one of Blondie’s BFF slumber parties. Weird kid.

“Emily!” He exclaims. “You’re here?!”

“I’m here.” She smiles softly as she crosses the short distance to reach him, and Damon stands there, finding himself starstruck—and not for the first time—by this girl; his angel, and all her radiance. Absently, he notes that she looks more exhausted than he remembers, but it has no effect on how stunning she is; how beautiful she’s always been.

”Dude, you were so gone,” Alaric teases.

”Ew! No! Ew!” Bonnie fake-retches, and while he’s patting her back sympathetically, Jeremy mouths, “so gone.”

”Hi,” Emily says shyly.

Damon returns the smile, albeit more dopey than hers. ”Hi.”

There’s a split second where his eyes glint mischievously, and he barely hesitates before reaching out, pulling the girl into a warm, desperate embrace.

”You came back!” He whispers into the hug, unable to mask his surprise, and his hurt. “I wasn’t sure you would.”

”I didn’t intend on disappearing.” She squeezes his shoulders tightly, expression pained. “I…I was unable to venture past the wards for a time.”

Damon raises an eyebrow, though Emily can’t see it. “A long time,” he mutters petulantly, but squeezes back all the same.

”I know.” She pulls back just enough for them to stand face-to-face, an arm’s length apart. Damon’s hands gently stroke her back, an idle and unconscious movement neither one seems to notice. “I…I missed you,” she says softly, blushing as the young man’s face breaks out into a wide grin. 

“And I’ve missed you,” Damon admits freely. Then, less certainly: “I’d thought perhaps you didn’t want to see me anymore.” The defeat in his voice says it all. 

“Oh, Damon, of course I still wanted to see you!”

His face softens. “So you’re not— I didn’t ruin everything? W-with the… y’know? Th-the kissing?” He searches her eyes hopefully.

”Please say yes, please say yes,” Bonnie chants under her breath.

“You didn’t ruin anything,” Emily confirms, leaning forward just a little, breath mingling with Damon’s.

”Damnit!” Curses the witch.

Damon’s face heats up, a pink flush blooming across his cheeks and neck.

”Can I kiss you?” He asks, but Emily doesn’t reply, too busy pressing her lips to his.

The boy’s eyes widen for a split second before they flutter shut, and with a gasp, he melts into the contact, brain short-circuiting when he unconsciously trails a hand up her spine and around to cradle her cheek, thumb stroking her soft, dark skin as he instinctively deepens the kiss.

“Aw! I can almost forget that this is Damon!” Caroline comments. “They’re like, totally different!”

Bonnie grimaces. “I wish I could.”

Emily pulls him closer to her with a soft moan, pressing their torsos together and reaching up with one hand to sift through the dark curls at the base of Damon’s neck, dragging the other down to lay flat against his chest.

Damon shivers as the kiss becomes more and more heated, more passionate; every touch is like a storm, both a wildfire and a hurricane at the same time, colliding like lightning and he wants more, so much more.

The witch sits up straighter, glaring warningly. “Damon, I swear to god if you have sex with her—“

”Ye of little faith, Bon-Bon!”

It’s at this point that Damon notices his growing arousal, more so how it’s resting against Emily’s stomach, pinned between them as they kiss.

”Uh—um…” he stutters, turning redder than ever as he promptly pulls away from the embrace, and holds his cap over himself awkwardly.

Tyler and Jeremy burst out laughing at the scene. Bonnie looks a bit green—scratch that, Stefan looks a bit green, and Bonnie looks downright queasy.

”I should not be watching this,” Alaric mutters, bowing his head into his hands.

It takes Emily a few moments to figure out what has happened, but when she does, she lets out a little giggle, and a matching blush stains her own cheeks.

“Damon…?” She asks, finding his sheepish embarrassment adorable. When she steps closer and kisses him softly, he kisses back, but steps away right after, avoiding her gaze and mentally reprimanding himself.

“I-I’m, uh—“ Damon squeezes his eyes shut. “I’m gonna need… I’m gonna need a minute.”

”Oh my fucking god,” Damon groans, throwing a hand over his face and rubbing his eyes harshly, as though it will erase the humiliation he’s feeling.

Stefan, the smug asshole, snickers at his brother. “What was it you said at the beginning? Something about hormonal teenagers?” He teases.

”Just you wait, brother. It’ll be your turn soon enough.” That shuts the little brat up real quick.

Emily catches him by the arm. ”It’s alright, Damon. It’s natural. You have nothing to be embarrassed about.”

“Y-you’re sure?” He stammers, actually more embarrassed now that he knows Emily knows what happened.

“I’m sure,” she tells him, taking his hand, but keeping the distance between them if he’s more comfortable that way. She leads him over to their tree and pulls him down so that he’s sitting next to on the leaves. “We can just sit and talk like this if you’d rather.”

Damon keeps ahold of her hand, but still maintains a few inches between them. “How do you know?”

“…My mother told me all about how girls and boys get close,” Emily says, averting her gaze and studying the fascinating patch of grass at her feet.

“Oh.” He’s not really sure what to say to that, so he changes the subject. “How is Grimsy-whatsit?”

Emily huffs, relieved for the lighter topic. “Grimalkin is very well, thank you. He’s an expert mouser. And a wonderful familiar.”

Damon smiles. “Good, that’s good.”

It takes a little while for him to relax, but soon enough, Damon lets his arm wrap around Emily so she can cuddle up to his side. He still avoids any and all eye contact, but it’s progress.

“This is just so cute!” Caroline coos, leaning against Tyler. 

Bonnie sighs in defeat. “Okay, I guess it’s… sort of sweet.”

They sit like that for a long time, Emily under Damon’s arm, with her head on his shoulder. 

“I think my mother’s going to die soon,” he says all of a sudden. “No one will say it, but she’s dying.”

Stefan leans forwards, listening intently with his eyes locked on the screen. He doesn’t have many memories of their mother. Even less of her sickness. But now, he gets to share his brother’s. They’re a little… different… to his own, but Damon has a history of remembering things as worse than they actually were. It’s probably how he avoids feeling guilt.

“You never speak of her.” Emily keeps her voice neutral.

“There isn’t much to say. She barely tolerates Stefan, let alone me. She’s simply… neglectful. Detached. She rarely hurts me herself, but turns a blind eye when Father does. And I feel as though that is almost worse, in a way. Her quiet resentment. But still, she is my mother….”

”And losing her hurts.” Emily nods in understanding.

”’Barely tolerates?’” Stefan says incredulously. “She loved us, Damon. Both of us.”

The elder Salvatore sucks in a breath, only just able to stop himself from replying that no, Stefan, Lily was not some picture-perfect mother; an angel watching over her sons, protecting them, loving them, cherishing them. She never cared, not really. 

And honestly, Damon can’t blame her for it. It had been bad enough, having Giuseppe for a father, but actually being married to the guy? That had to suck even more.

Damon huffs a laugh, and holds the girl closer to him. “Except it doesn’t. Not really. Maybe that’s the worst part. I… I just worry about my brother. Stef… he doesn’t understand what is happening.” Damon takes a deep, shuddering breath. “How could he? He is just eight years old. He only sees what he wants to see.”

Elena reaches over and takes Stefan’s hand, stroking it gently. 

“He won’t be a child forever. They grow up, and learn.” Emily’s voice is soft, breath warm against his collarbone. She looks a bit conflicted, for some unknown reason.

“Yeah….” Damon sighs. “But he idolises our parents, and I fear that once Mother is gone, Father is all he’ll have. Stefan thinks him an honourable man. A nice man. And I don’t have the heart to destroy that for him.”

He gets up suddenly, grabbing a small rock as he does. He lobs the pebble at a nearby tree, chipping a piece of bark from the trunk where it hits.

Damon pointedly avoids the stares of the others. Why they’re so shocked, he isn’t sure, like… surprise! Damon wasn’t always a shitty brother!

When he turns back, Emily is about to speak, so Damon quickly pulls her up for a kiss, cradling her face in his hands, hoping to avoid the rest of the conversation.

But she’s impossibly stubborn, and clearly knows him too well.

”He’ll have you,” Emily says adamantly, still breathless and starry-eyed from the kiss.

He shakes his head sadly. “I may not be enough.”

The witch just shrugs. “I don’t believe that.”

She says it so flippantly, so honestly, that Damon is overcome by a wave of fondness.

“You don’t?” He murmurs against her lips.

Emily smiles and shakes her head, bumping their noses together with each movement. “My magical witchy-woo says so.”

The boy laughs, tipping his head back for a moment. “Are you ever going to let that go? I was twelve!”

“Not for as long as I live.”

”That could be forever!”

Emily scoffs, still smiling. “Witches don’t live forever.”

”Uh-huh,” Damon doesn’t sound convinced. He looks up to the sky, then down at a pocket watch he pulls from his shirt. Ten minutes. Fifteen, if he runs all the way home. “We still have some time before I need to go….” 

“Ew,” Bonnie mumbles.

He pulls Emily in for another kiss, this one softer at first, but it quickly deepens as both teenagers get lost in it. 

“Oh fuck,” Damon curses under his breath, only now remembering the significance of this memory.

They’re so wrapped up in each other that neither are aware of the footsteps approaching the clearing.

”Oh shit.” 

“What the fuck d’ya think yer doin’!” A cold voice yells from the trees, the intrusion causing the couple to jump apart. “Get away from my son, you dirty little nigger!”

”Woah!”

”What the actual fuck?!” 

“Seriously? That is so not okay!”

Damon immediately shifts Emily behind him to protect her from the threat. She’s trembling, and he isn’t much better.

“Em,” Damon mutters, quieter than his rapidly beating heart, “you need to run.” 

“Speak up, boy!” Giuseppe barks, staggering closer. Behind Damon, Emily curls the fingers of her left hand, and glares at the man smirking at her cruelly. Damon puffs out his chest, trying to appear bigger than he actually is.

Giuseppe scoffs at the sight, but he’s suddenly overtaken by a coughing fit and stumbles over his feet. Damon doesn’t miss a beat and takes the opening. Without another thought, he lurches forward, and tackles the monster that is his father.

”RUN!” He yells to Emily, and she does. She runs for her life, ignoring the bloodstain on her upper lip, ignoring the tears streaming down her face, sprinting the way back behind the safety of the wards, where she disappears from sight.

“She just left you there?” Elena gasps, oblivious to Bonnie’s scowls. Of course, the golden doppelgänger can’t fathom the idea of someone knowing when to back down, when to retreat. She just writes off these tactical plays as ‘not caring enough’. Because Elena still believes that if she tries hard enough, she can make everybody see reason.

And that’s what gets everybody killed. When the Least Valuable Player ignores their limits in favour of playing the diplomatic hero.

“Better me than her,” says Damon, then, noticing Alaric’s admiring glance, he glares. “Oh, don’t give me that look, Ric!” 

The coughing fit ceases, and Giuseppe wrestles Damon off of him, throwing him against the tree with a harsh blow to the head. The man then stands up, towering over his son with a slight sway to his balance. Damon’s not sure whether that’s from his world spinning, or because Giuseppe’s a miserable old drunk. Perhaps both.

”Wait, did she do that? Make his throat tighten or something?” Jeremy asks. At Damon’s nod, he grins. “Badass!”

”Fooling around with the slaves, are we? Have you fucked her yet?” Damon rapidly shakes his head, ‘no’.

Giuseppe snarls, shifting so that he’s resting his boot on Damon’s forearm. “Liar!” 

Stefan switches between staring at the screen and staring at his brother, both with a shocked puppy-dog expression on his face. Damon just flips Sergeant Sadness off.

Then his demeanour turns sickly sweet. “Poor little Damiano, so kind and innocent on the outside. So disgusting and wicked within.” He leans in close. “How long will it take before the devil takes over completely, I wonder. Do you truly believe yourself to be in love with this girl? A negro, a slave?”

“Uhh….”

”She’s not a slave!” Damon protests. “She’s free!”

“That’s even worse.” Giuseppe stomps down on the teen’s arm, making Damon scream out in pain. “She might have gotten away this time, but should there be a next… well, let’s just say she’d make a pretty penny or two. And that’s if I leave her alive! Let me be clear, boy: if I ever find you carousing in the woods with such low company again, I won’t be so lenient. Mark my words.” He spits in Damon’s face, and storms off.

”Oh my fucking god… are you kidding me?”

There’s a time skip, maybe an hour or so later, and Damon’s still against the tree, cradling his arm, and drifting in and out of consciousness.

“Oh my god, that was….” Jeremy trails off, speechless.

”Yeah,” Bonnie lets out the breath she’s been holding.

(Caroline just picks at her nails and mumbles, “I hate this.”)

”What was his deal with beating you up and then just leaving you in the middle of the woods?” Tyler asks.

”Hoped I’d lay down and die. Or become the victim of the only real animal attack in Mystic Falls.”

”What a dick!” Jeremy exclaims, clutching Bonnie’s hand.

(“I can’t believe this is actually happening right now,” Caroline mutters to herself with a roll of her eyes.)

”That’s so fucked up,” Matt shakes his head.

”Detective Dumbass, at it again.” The vampire  mockingly toasts.

“No, you know what?!” Caroline bursts, unable to push aside her discomfort any longer. “Screw you, Damon! This isn’t right! You…ugh! Just stop!”

“Caroline…” someone whispers.

”Woah, Barbie,” Damon holds his hands out in surrender. “Take it easy, okay?”

The group of spectators ogle them, more invested in this latest patch of drama than in watching Damon losing consciousness (again).

The blonde vampire just huffs, clearly not ‘taking it easy’. “This was a terrible idea!”

In his peripheral, Damon can see both Stefan and Bonnie nodding in agreement. There’s just one thing….

“Wasn’t this your idea?” He points out.

“That’s irrelevant!” She snaps back, and forcibly takes a deep breath, in an aggressive attempt to calm down. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this! This was to remind Elena of who you really are! But instead, it shows this!”

Alaric, the noble asshat, tries to intervene. “Caroline, that’s enough!”

”…What’s your point here?”

”Damon!” The history teacher hisses.

“My point, is that this… this is all wrong! I don’t like this! It’s making me feel sorry for you, of all people! That wasn’t supposed to happen!”

(Alaric groans. “I give up.”)

Damon sighs, and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’m so sorry I haven’t lived up to your expectations,” he drawls, “it must be so hard for you to learn that I wasn’t a total monster when I was a child.”

Caroline glares furiously, tears in her eyes. “That’s so not what I mean! You can’t make me feel sorry for you, Damon! You’re a horrible person! Just because your dad was an asshole, that doesn’t give you the right to be so awful to other people!”

”Caroline, nobody’s making you feel bad, or anything…” Bonnie points out.

”No, no, I get what she’s saying,” Matt jumps in with his unwanted opinion yet again. “How the hell is this supposed to show us what kind of people they are? I mean, they’re not even really people anymore… they’re vampires.”

Caroline lets out an indignant snort. “Are you serious right now?”

“Thanks, buddy,” Tyler’s voice is laced with sarcasm, and he has to blink a few times to get rid of the golden flash in his eyes.

“You know I don’t mean you guys,” Matt tells them unconvincingly. “Just that…all this is doing is making us feel sorry for Damon over stuff that happened a century ago, when he’s not even the same guy that we’re seeing.”

Jeremy makes a strained noise and says, “I don’t know, man. I can see the similarities… it’s not like he’s an alien.”

Damon throws his hat into this little debate. “Let’s make some things clear: I’ve never once asked any of you to feel sorry for me. I’d rather you didn’t, to be perfectly honest . I won’t make you like, pity, or even tolerate me. That’s your problem, not mine.” He lets out a dry laugh. “But don’t you worry Blondies, it’ll be easy to hate me again soon enough.”

“Don’t do that,” Elena chides. “Don’t joke about this.”

“I’m not joking, Elena,” he says. “Caroline can hate me all she wants. I really don’t care.”

The blonde vampire glares, affronted with a chance of brattiness.

”Look, guys…” Alaric starts again, “this is some heavy shit we’re dealing with right now. But please, can we tone down the melodrama? It’s not doing anyone any good.”

“Yes, Ric.” 

“Sorry, Ric.”

“Yeah, sorry Mr. Saltzman.”

“Only because you asked so nicely….”

Alaric’s intervention seems to be conveniently timed, because something moves on screen, and they’re all sucked back in, argument paused for now.

A glimmer of something enters Damon’s vision, like a crack in a stained glass window. He then flinches when a cold, invisible hand touches the fresh bruise on his cheek.

”Shhh,” the voice belonging to the hand whispers, “I’ve got you. I’m gonna heal your concussion first, ‘kay?” 

“O…okay.” 

The invisible witch gets to work, and Damon’s head tingles a bit, gradually becoming clearer by the minute. 

“He threatened you, Em. You need to get out of here. Now!” He rasps. 

“He won’t see me,” Emily reassures the boy, “I can’t hold the spell for much longer, but I need to fix your head.” 

“You have to go before then. We can’t risk it!”

”Shh, I know. I know.” 

Stefan watches with misty eyes. Not knowing about this part of Damon’s life hurts. Damon knew every detail of his brother’s first heartbreak, from the moment it occurred, but it’s taken over a century and a half for Stefan to learn anything about Damon’s. He’s also finding it difficult to resonate with Jeremy’s claim about the similarities. Because that’s not true at all. But they’ll see, in time.

Damon bites his lip as a jolt rushes down his spine. “…I- we cannot see each other anymore, Emily. It’s too dangerous. I’m so sorry….” He breathes heavily. “I won’t risk your life.”

The hand brushes away a curl on his forehead, and it’s soon replaced by a cloaked pair of lips, which gently kiss Damon’s brow. “I know.”

A tear falls out of nowhere, landing on Damon’s forehead. He sighs. “I hate him.”

One more tingling sensation reaches Damon’s head. And one more tear falls. Then a drop of blood joins it. The tingling moves to his arm, but there’s a grunt from the witch.

“What’s the matter?”

”I-I can’t cloak myself and heal you at the same time,” Emily says anxiously, and another drop of blood falls on Damon’s white shirt. “Your concussion is healed, but your arm… I am not strong enough.”

”Then go,” Damon whispers, “I cannot return with my arm healed besides. You need to get back to safety.” He tears up slightly, but pushes it away.

”Awh,” Caroline finds herself reluctantly swept back into the magic of the show.

“…Fine. But only because you asked so nicely.” The sensation in Damon’s arm stops. “And because you are my best friend.” 

“And you are mine.” Invisible lips brush across his, and another tear falls—it could be from either teenager at this point.

”Goodbye, Damon. Thank you.”

Damon shifts himself against the tree so that he’s sitting upright, but he cannot feel her ghostly presence anymore. “Goodbye Emily,” he whispers into thin air. “Thank you for everything.” The scene blurs, then ends.

“Shit… that’s… a lot,” Alaric breaks the quiet. 

”You can say that again,” Jeremy sniffles. There’s not a dry eye in the room.

Though Damon’s only a little teary due to the abomination of booze he’s been drinking. No other reason.

The witch hiccups. “Okay,” she admits, wiping at her eyes, “maybe I didn’t totally hate Damon and Emily together.”

A small smile blooms on the vampire’s lips. 

”I can’t believe you never told me!” Stefan says, ruining the moment with his scorned righteousness.

Damon has to forcefully tamp down the seething anger exploding within him in order for his voice to speak in words and not growls. “You were eight. I didn’t tell you lots of things, dumbass! If I had, you would have run off to tell Father straight away.”

”But you could have told me when I was older! You could have said something in 1864, when Emily was literally in our house!”

”You were just as bad at keeping secrets then!” Damon snaps, and he doesn’t know why his brother looks so surprised about it. “Do you know what would’ve happened if I told you? Do you even care? Giuseppe would have killed Emily, or worse, if he realised who she was! Not to mention if Katherine found out!”

“You could have told me.” Green eyes meet blue, and the whole world stops. “I would have kept it a secret.”

“Now, Stefan, we both know that’s not true,” Damon drawls. “You had too much faith in our Father’s teachings for that.”

He lets his brother chew on that for a moment.

”For what it’s worth,” Bonnie starts, glancing at the blank screen, “thank you. For protecting Emily. I—I don’t wanna think about what would’ve happened to her otherwise.”

Damon nods stiffly and takes a swig from the shitty bottle of vodka. He should probably cut himself off soon. “Can we have a Stefan memory now? Or just one with less angst?”

”And we can break out more snacks,” Caroline suggests, motioning to the entire grocery store she’s dumped in the parlour. There‘s even a mini fridge. And it definitely isn’t one of the Boarding House’s several. Did she bring that from home?

The group falls into uncomfortable not-quite-silence, passing out packets of chips and lollies and chocolate like they aren’t questioning their entire basis of morality.

“Psst! Hey, Jer!” Stefan whispers across the coffee table.

”Mm?” The kid stops shovelling biscuits into his mouth, and looks back at the vampire like a deer caught in headlights.

”What similarities were you talking about just a minute ago?”

Jeremy blinks, and manages to swallow most of his mouthful of crumbs. “Hrngh…unhh….” He holds up a finger, and lets the vampire wait patiently as he swallows the rest. “You don’t see it?”

”No…?”

”Really? C’mon man, it’s pretty obvious.”

“Not to me,” Stefan says defensively. Jeremy shrugs and starts on his next biscuit, only stopping when he’s hit with a realisation. This time, he doesn’t even bother to finish his mouthful as he loudly proclaims, “oh my god, I’m surrounded by oblivious idiots.” Then he pauses. “Obliviots?” 

“What’s an ‘obliviot?’” Elena turns her attention away from staring mournfully at Damon. 

“You,” her brother crunches around chocolate chips. “And Stefan, and Matt, and Caroline, and Damon’s drunk ass,” Jeremy ignores said vampire’s offended scoff, “and Ric, but I’m pretty sure he’s just stoned on anti-evil herbs.”

“Whad’ya mean, Jer?” Tyler asks. “Why don’t I get to be one?”

”You’re on team… not obliviots. Trust me, it’s way better.” Jeremy smirks. “You’ll see.” He gestures to the lit up bookshelves.

1855

Inside a small, old-fashioned schoolhouse, a group of 17 girls and boys sit on either side of the room; on the right, Damon, George, Jonathan, and Tobias have taken over the tabletops of the bench desks, while Stefan and the other four boys around his age sit cross-legged on the floor in front. On the left, Harriet sits atop a desk in the same fashion as her brother, but the other girls have chosen to sit neatly on the bench seats or cross-legged on the floor.

“I love Harriet,” Caroline sighs, keenly watching her new idol.

“She is kinda awesome, isn’t she?” Bonnie agrees.

Stefan looks at the screen thoughtfully. “How’d she get away with all the things she did? Like ignoring gender norms and everything?”

“Hattie? Nobody was suicidal enough to rock that boat,” Damon says, “She was top of the food chain.” He snorts. “Literally.”

A man sits behind an upright piano in the front corner, and a stern-looking woman of roughly thirty stands at the front of the room, passing a cane between her hands.

“Good morning, children,” she greets.

“Good morning Ms. Rosmerta.” The kids chorus back.

“It pleases me to tell you all that, after much consideration, we have been granted permission to expand our repertoires with more vibrant, modern dances, such as the Polka, the Redowa, and the Galop. I’m sure you all agree that we’ve simply exhausted our specific variation of the Lover’s Waltz, yes?” The children nod and murmur in agreement. “Very well then. Let us move on to the playful exuberance of the Bohemian Polka. The usual partners, please,” she instructs, and turns to the man at the piano when all the children get up off the chairs, tables, and floor excitedly.

“You guys had dance lessons in school?” Bonnie asks, trying to picture Matt, Tyler, and Jeremy attending such a class. If her mind goes straight to tutus and tiaras, well, that’s nobody’s business but hers.

Damon shakes his head—an action he probably should have thought through beforehand, since the world starts to go all Magic Faraway Tree on him, rapidly spinning him into dizziness and then past that—and says: “We used the building for… pretty much everything. Founder’s kids were far too high-class to attend lessons in something so common as a schoolhouse. We had tutors and governesses and all that crap.” He waves a hand to help his drunken mind articulate.

“I went two or three mornings a week,” Stefan corrects, “but only for a few years, and more for the social aspect than anything else.”

”Weird.” Donovan says.

The boys proceed to clear the desks on their side, pairing up on either end of each table to carry them off to the sides before venturing to the left side of the room. The girls step away easily, allowing the boys to start clearing their tables, but—

“Hattie, stop.” George hisses at his sister, who has started carrying the other end of the table from Damon. “That’s our job.”

The young girl rolls her eyes. “And I’m perfectly capable of doing it for you. Besides, Damon and I work well together. Isn’t that right, Damon?” She smiles sweetly at the dark-haired boy, to which Damon blushes and looks back to George apologetically.

”Dude, how easy was it to make you blush?” Alaric asks.

”So easy,” Stefan answers for his brother. “He used to be really shy.”

Hey! Defamation, anybody? 

“That’s not true,” Damon denies, then stops to think for a moment, “okay, maybe it’s a little bit true.” More like selectively introverted. People suck. Some just suck less than others.

“Well… she does have a point there,” Damon says with a shrug as he and Hattie place the table down along the wall. “Harriet is a much more cooperative dance partner than you, Georgie-dear.” He ruffles his friend’s hair with his good arm, giving the other boy a wry smile as he then offers Harriet his arm and leads her onto the newly-cleared dance floor.

“I resent that!” George huffs, and stalks off to find his partner, a pretty blonde with a scowl and short curls. She reluctantly accepts his offered arm, and they join Damon and Harriet in the centre of the room. 

“Where’s the baby?” Hattie asks a bit too loudly, looking towards the front of the class, where Stefan stands crankily beside a mousy haired girl. She spots him and waves, but Stefan pouts back at her.

“I’m not a baby!” He insists, crossing his arms and puffing out his chest to convey how truly grown up he is.

Harriet smiles like she doesn’t believe him. “No, you most certainly are not!” She teases. “What are you doing so far away from your partner? Go on, Matilda won’t bite.”

“Though Stefan may,” Damon whispers, watching amusedly as his brother grits his teeth and hesitantly steps closer to the girl beside him.

“Don’t step on my feet this time,” Stefan warns Matilda, who scoffs.

“Then don’t put your feet where I’m supposed to step!” She snipes. 

“Wow, you really never liked dancing,” Elena comments.

“Hated it.” Stefan agrees.

“Aw, your little scowl!” Caroline points out with a grin. Damon secretly snaps yet another photo of Stefan’s trademark frown, planning on documenting his brother’s brooding through the ages.

“Spitting image,” Damon nods. “You seriously haven’t changed a bit.”

It’s sort of true. Stefan might consider himself to be all Grown Up and Full Of Wisdom, but to Damon, his brother is still—and will always be—that pouting child on the magical flatscreen, with big, sad eyes that sparkle like emeralds, still visible, even from underneath the fat, fuzzy caterpillars fused to his forehead.

Ms Rosmerta turns back to her class, eyeing the 7 pairs—plus the one group of three—consideringly.

“No, that just won’t do,” she says, more to herself than the children. “We simply do not have enough space for all the couples to dance at once. So, to start, let’s have you four,” she points to the older boys and their partners, “on the floor, while the littlies watch on for the moment, hm?”

Stefan eagerly scampers off to sit on a table surrounding the edge of the room, and the rest of the younger kids follow his lead, though not quite so energetically.

“Take your positions, please.”

Harriet pulls Damon by his left hand to the front of the cleared space, and the other three pairs settle into a diamond shape; George and the blonde girl behind and to the left, Jonathan and a dark haired girl at the back, and Tobias with a brunette girl stand behind and to the right of Damon and Hattie. The boys have turned to face the children sitting along the right wall.

Harriet watches Damon concernedly. ”Are you sure your arm is alright?”

The older boy offers a stiff smile . “It is. Just a bit sore from the surgery.”

She winces empathetically. “Tell me if it hurts to dance at all.”

”Miss Lockwood, you wouldn’t be going easy on me now, would you?” He raises an eyebrow. 

“Not a chance, Mr. Salvatore,” she teases in return. 

“Why are they always at the front?” The brunette girl complains behind them, adjusting Tobias’ arm beneath hers.

Harriet flips her golden-blonde ringlets, and settles her hand back on Damon’s shoulder. “Because, Honoria, we’re just better than you.”

“What kind of a name is Honoria?” Jeremy asks with a grimace. “It sounds like a disease.”

Stefan huffs out a laugh. “I always wondered that myself.”

“Should’ve asked her before you, y’know,” Damon mimes a vampire attack, “ripped her head off.”

He’s gifted an array of dirty looks for that.

“What?” He asks innocently. 

The man at the piano begins to play, and Damon grins at Stefan, who is bobbing his head along to the upbeat tune.

“Gentlemen, as always, must listen to my instructions so that the ladies are able to follow your lead. The main step is a hop followed by a chassé.” Ms Rosmerta demonstrates the step for the class. “Starting on your left, moving forwards, please. Six, seven, eight. Step-and-chase, step-and-chase….”

The four pairs repeat the step over and over, achieving varying degrees of smoothness. Damon and Harriet take to the rhythm instantly, laughing and gliding across the floor with a certain grace and fluidity no other pairing seems to manage.

“Huh. It’s not a vampire thing,” Ric acknowledges. “It’s a Damon thing.”

“What is?” Matt rubs his eyes like the pitiful human he is, barely able to stay awake for more than a few hours, poor diddums.

“He’s like a cat.”

The vampire tips his head back over the leather arm of his reading chair to grin slyly at Matt and Alaric.

Donovan makes a noise of strained realisation when he sees Damon’s smile, too big and too sharp in a way that wouldn’t look out of place if it were floating upside-down in midair along with a set of slow-blinking yellow eyes. “Okay, yeah, I can see that.”

“And back-chassé, back-chassé….”

Damon can feel the music humming in his veins, and raises a mischievous eyebrow at his partner. She can feel it too. The itch to move, to dance a more complicated rhythm. The older boy wastes no time in twirling her around him — once, twice — neither missing a beat when they spin back into position, eyes sparkling and grins widening. It’s not much, but it’s still a thrill. George snickers from behind the pair.

”Ooh!”

Stefan rolls his eyes. ”Yeah, Damon also really hates dancing, if you couldn’t tell.”

”Mr. Salvatore, Miss Lockwood, there is no need to show off!” Ms. Rosmerta tiredly calls out, and Damon turns bright red.

”My apologies, Ms. Rosmerta!” He calls back. “We merely slipped for a moment. Won’t happen again!”

”Yeah, ‘just slipped’ while still hitting each step perfectly,” Bonnie giggles.

The dance teacher huffs, unamused. “Don’t make promises you cannot keep.”

”Wouldn’t dream of it!” Harriet grins, making George and Damon laugh.

“We should dance this at our wedding,” she then says with a smirk, which widens when Damon huffs in exasperation.

“You know very well that I’ll never marry, Miss Lockwood.”

The idea of marriage, in all its constricting absurdity, has been the cause of more than a few bouts of panic for Damon over the years. And boy, does Harriet love to tease him over it.

“You never wanted to get married? Like, ever?” Elena looks at him in disbelief. 

“Ugh, nope.” Damon lets himself shiver disgustedly. “I saw enough of my parents’ shit-show to know I wanted nothing to do with it.”

“They weren’t that bad, Damon.” Stefan tuts.

“Uh, yeah they were,” Damon replies in the same tone, “there’s a reason Lily was a hermit.”

Consequence of an arranged marriage. And a teenage bride in a foreign land. And Giuseppe Salvatore. Add a disappointment of a firstborn, a few more miscarriages, a couple hundred blows to the face, a miracle baby, and that about sums it up.

Stefan frowns. “No—but…sh—” He trails off.

“Step-and-chase, step-and-chase, step-and-chase, step-and-chase, all the way around,” the music slows down as the teenagers finish their final loop, coming to a stop in the same positions they started in. “And now swap with the littlies.”

George joins Damon and Harriet as they head over to where the younger kids are getting up for their turn, including a reluctant Stefan who just glares at the group.

Damon crouches down in front of his brother, the Lockwood siblings flanking either side. “Stefan, it’s your turn now. You have to get up, buddy.”

The child shakes his head stubbornly.

“Stefan….” Damon warns.

“No!”

“Why not?”

Stefan scuffs his shoe against the floor.

“I hate dancing! I hate girls! I don’t wanna be here!” He mumbles. 

“I wholeheartedly agree,” George quips, “save for the bit about hating girls. Girls are fantastic! I love girls!”

Hattie snorts. ”Pity, because I can assure you that girls do not return those feelings of yours, brother-dear.”

Tyler grins, watching his distant grandfather and aunt bicker.

”Huh,” Damon says, realising just who the Lockwood siblings are reminding him of.

Damon glares at the Lockwoods. “You two aren’t helping!” George raises his hands in surrender, and moves away to go talk to the other two boys. Except, it looks like he’s talking at them, instead, smiling smugly in the background of the scene. 

The teenager turns back to his brother. “I’m afraid you don’t have a choice, Bambi. We are here until lunchtime. Where would you rather be?”

The little boy grumbles incoherently. “I dunno.”

”Well, if you figure it out, we may be able to go wherever it is in an hour or so. How does that sound?”

”…Better.”

Damon grins and slaps his thighs. “Excellent! Then how about you go and join the others on the floor now?”

Stefan juts his bottom lip and roughly shakes his head. “No!”

He glances behind his brother to see Harriet stifle a giggle, and that makes him scowl deeply.

“Stop laughing at me!” He protests, stomping a little foot on the bench seat. Hattie quickly attempts school her features. Emphasis on ‘attempts’.

”I’m not laughing!” She laughs. The boy’s brows furrow even further, before he redirects his attention back to Damon.

“‘S not fair!” Stefan whines. He doesn’t want Hattie to laugh at him like he’s a little boy. He’s eight years old! He’s not a child!

Steel blue eyes turn on his brother. “I know. But I also know that Mother is looking forward to seeing you dance in this event, and you want to impress her, don’t you?”

Stefan meekly nods. 

“Then you can imagine what a mighty shame it would be if you didn’t learn these steps in time—”

”—Bu-but—“

”—Though if you really don’t want to dance, I suppose we could pull you from this class, and you won’t have to perform for your dearest Mother. I’ll go let Ms. Rosmerta know….” He makes a show of turning and slowly walking over to the teacher, while the child worries his bottom lip and pouts grumpily.

”I do not miss the days when I had to do so much needling just to get you to cooperate,” Damon comments, “those damn puppy dog eyes.”

Damon only makes it two strides before Stefan cries out to his brother: “I’ll do it!”

The teenager grins and rushes back to his brother, picking Stefan up and onto his hip like a toddler, ignoring the burn in his right arm. “You will? Excellent! Mother will be so pleased!”

Stefan beams, but then notices Harriet’s amused expression and immediately wriggles out of his brother’s grasp. 

“But…I don’t wanna dance with Matilda. She’s gross.”

Damon bites his lip, and looks towards the centre of the room, where the younger children have all paired up. Matilda, the girl from earlier, is standing beside a tubby, red-faced boy. “Well you seem to be in luck, because Roger has beaten you to it.”

His brother’s eyes widen hopefully. “Does that mean I—“

”—No. You cannot sit this one out. You need to learn the steps. Perhaps there’s a broom around here somewhere….” Damon trails off. The little boy’s expression scrunches up once more.

”I don’t wanna dance with a broom!” He complains. “Ev’ryone’s gonna laugh at me!”

”Well, I don’t know of another solution,” Damon admits, looking to Harriet for help.

Harriet chews her lip thoughtfully. “Stefan, would you like to dance with me instead?” 

Stefan gasps. “Could I?”

She’s not the worst girl in the world. When she’s not treating him like a small child, that is. And she’s definitely not gross, either. Maybe it’s because she’s one of the big girls. None of them are gross, not like the little ones. And Harriet’s the least gross of the lot. She has pretty hair.

“Of course!” She extends a gloved hand. “Mr. Salvatore, it would be an honour and a privilege if you were to have this dance with me.”

Frowning, the boy replies, “I’m supposed to ask you to dance. Not the other way around.” He extends his own tiny hand, and looks at her posh-ly. “Miss Lockwood, may I have this dance?”

She smiles, and takes the offered hand. “You may, Mr. Salvatore.”

Harriet allows the boy to yank her out onto the floor, and they join in on the dancing while Damon watches amusedly. Stefan looks even tinier than usual when compared to the young girl in his arms—or maybe he’s in her arms—and it’s quite frankly hilarious to witness them clomping all around the circle. The boy is just so enraptured with Harriet, like a love-sick puppy dog.

“ Oh. My. God.” Bonnie’s mouth falls into a wide smile.

There’s a crunch by Damon’s ear, and he startles at the unexpected noise.

“If you aren’t careful, she’ll switch brothers.” George whispers, far quieter than his open-mouthed chewing on whatever brown sludge Damon has the misfortune of seeing on his friend’s tongue. “Better get a move on with it.”

“Don’t be crass.” Instinctively, he reaches a hand to George’s chin and shuts the twit’s mouth for him. And when he doesn’t let go, George crunches even louder in retaliation, something Damon can actually feel happen underneath his fingertips. They stay like that for a few moments, and George swallows his mouthful, which feels even stranger under Damon’s palm.

He’s not really sure why he hasn’t removed his hand yet.

”Wait….” Bonnie tilts her head.

Damon squishes George’s cheeks with a smirk. “And close your mouth while you eat!” He drops his hand, and clears his throat. “Honestly, what are you, an animal?” Damon jokes.

”Yes.” George deadpans. He pulls out a brown paper bag, and offers its contents to his friend with a little shake. “Spiced nut?”

“No, thank you.”

Then, “it’s May,” Damon frowns. “Where on earth did you get those?”

”Tobias. The Fells’ cook loves me.”

”You’re a glutton.”

George doesn’t deny the claim, he just hums and  gestures towards their siblings instead. “They look ridiculous,” he scoffs. “Especially Hattie. Messing about with two brothers? How vulgar! It’s a scandal! An outrage!”

A few pointed glances turn on Elena, who looks back, shocked and hurt at the unspoken accusations.

”Spreading rumours about your sister again, Georgie-dear?” Damon raises an eyebrow. 

His friend smiles slyly. “Of course. If I don’t do it, who will?”  

The scene pans over to Stefan and Harriet.

”How is your mother?” Hattie asks gently, hopping around the circle with the smaller boy.

Stefan shrugs, concentrating on their feet. “Father says she’ll be well again soon enough.”

With a tight smile, the girl says, “I’m sure he’s right. I keep her in my nightly prayers, wishing good health and a speedy recovery.”

”Thank you, Miss Lockwood. My brother is truly mad to rebuff a lovely girl like yourself.” Stefan sticks his nose in the air, and says, only a little pointedly, “I would never do the same.”

Harriet laughs. “Would you now? I have to say, I’m flattered, Mr. Salvatore.”

”Good. For I intend to woo you, Miss Lockwood.” There’s an absolute certainty in Stefan’s voice that only a confident eight-year-old boy could ever manage to pull off.

“Woo me?” Harriet raises an eyebrow.

The boy nods solemnly. 

“Well, I feel rather honoured,” Hattie replies, “though I’m afraid Damon is the only young man I’ll ever find myself wooed by.” There’s an undertone to her words that Stefan completely misses.

”It’s because I’m short, isn’t it?” Stefan misses a step, too busy feeling sorry for himself, but Hattie quickly fixes their timing. “I’m still growing!”

Harriet smiles. “It’s not because of that, no.”

”Then why?” The music slows down, and so do the children.

”Well… I’m quite a bit older than you, Stefan.”

The dance finishes, and at Ms. Rosmerta’s dismissal, Stefan herds Harriet back to their brothers, jabbering away.

”That doesn’t matter to me! You could be forty and I’d still fancy you!” 

“What’s this?” George asks around another mouthful of sweets, as Stefan clambers onto the table and squeezes himself in between the boys.

”Stefan’s going to woo me,” Harriet says simply, eyeing her brother’s poor manners with distaste as she reaches into the bag and steals a few nuts for herself.

Damon raises an eyebrow. ”Is he now?” Stefan just smiles sheepishly, and plunges a greedy little hand into the paper bag.

“Told you so,” George coughs.

”No—Stef! You don’t need any sweets right now!”

”Oh god, you and your sugar highs,” Damon shakes his head. 

“I wasn’t that bad!” Stefan protests.

”Yes I do!” The last few children filter out of the schoolhouse, and Stefan jumps off the table, suddenly jittering with energy.

Damon sighs, and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Let’s go. We are meeting Father in town, remember?”

”What a coincidence,” Harriet says, “so are we!”

”’What a coincidence,’” George mocks.

“What a coincidence!” Stefan chirps, eyes wide with the hit of sugar, arms up in the air expectantly. “Damon, lift me!”

“Why? You have all the energy in the world, Stef. One mile shouldn’t be an issue.”

Stefan pouts, arms still in the air as Damon walks past him and offers his elbow to Harriet.

“Come on, duckling, I’ll carry you,” George crouches down, still cradling the bag.

”Yay!” The kid jumps on with a grin, and the four exit the building.

”Spiced nut?” George offers, the bag resting against his shoulder.

Up ahead on the trail, Damon calls out, ”No more sweets!”

He’s ignored.

Stefan wiggles his greedy little fingers. “Ooh, don’t mind if I do.”

The scene closes on him happily munching away, as George gives him terrible advice on how to woo Harriet.

Chapter Text

“‘Not that close,’ my ass,” Stefan chuckles as the screen shifts once again. 

1855
The next scene opens up on Stefan and Damon a few months later; Damon is sixteen, and Stefan eight. Stefan is sitting by himself on the back of Marengo as Damon holds the reins, walking them in a circle on the grounds just beyond the stables right up against the forest. 

“Lynchburg?” Damon asks.

“West,” replies Stefan. “Will you give me the reins now? I can do it!”

“Almost done. Roanoke?”

“Farther west. This is too simple.” Stefan leans back in his saddle, looking impatient.

“Charlottesville?” Now Damon is smiling at his brother’s frustration.

“North,” Stefan sighs, seeming resigned to the quizzing.

“Raleigh?”

“You are trying to trick me! That’s south, it’s the capital of North Carolina.”

“You are too quick for your own good, Stefan. If you know your geography, how are your multiplication tables?”

“I received the highest marks in class!”

“I have no doubt. This should be easy then.” Damon hums, stroking his nonexistent beard. “Four times four?”

“Sixteen,” Stefan declares proudly. 

“Too basic then. How about five times six?”

“Thirty. Mr. Nolan said fives and tens are the easiest ones to memorise.”

“He’s right of course. Seven times eight?”

“Fifty six, of course.”

Damon chuckles. “Of course. Have you done the double digits? Eleven times twelve?”

Stefan’s face scrunches up in concentration. “One hundred and tw-no, one hundred and thirty two.”

“Not bad at all. So we’ve done history, French and Italian, Latin, grammar, geography, and math. You have proven your intelligence and dedication to your studies. I’m sure you will be a natural at riding as well.”

“Stefan, you were adorable!” Caroline coos. She’s right; his cheeks are full and round, flushing pink from the fresh air, framed by a soft looking mop of hair that curls slightly around his ears.

Stefan glows at the praise, but Damon stops and holds the horse steady to look up at him with a keen eye. “So how is it that you cannot show such brilliance when it comes to memorising your dance steps?”

Stefan gapes at his older brother, before immediately protesting to Damon’s laughter. “How is that the same? Books don’t have cooties, girls do.”

Tyler lets out a bark of laughter, muttering something about words of wisdom under his breath.

“Someone should write this stuff down,” Matt suggests.

“Already on it,” Caroline says, cutting off half-hearted protests from Stefan, scribbling in a notebook she got from who-knows-where.

After another loop around the ring, Marengo slows to a stop, letting Stefan dismount with a little stumble. The scene shifts to a few minutes later, showing a stablehand taking Marengo from Damon.

Both boys walk back to the estate in silence. 

“Damon?” Stefan ventures after a while.

“Yes?”

But Stefan just shakes his head and says, “never mind.”

Damon opens his mouth like he wants to ask but he stays silent.

The silence is broken when they reach the estate. “You go wash up before you visit Mother, alright?” 

Stefan’s lips tighten. “I don’t think I’ll have the time to see Mother today.”

“Whyever not?”

“I’m busy.”

“Busy? With what?”

“Important things.” He speeds up as they reach the front door, brushing past Damon with all the ease of a nobleman’s son. “If you’ll excuse me.”

Damon sighs, watching his brother go.

“You were avoiding her,” Damon surmises, though part of him has always known.

“I was avoiding her,” Stefan nods.

A quick transition shows Damon, minutes later, sneaking in the back door through the Salvatore kitchens. There are only two women inside, one at the counter and another standing by the stove.

He closes the door gently and grabs a roll laying on the counter, holding a finger to his lips to hush the scullery maid peeling potatoes. She grins and says loudly, “good morning, Mister Damon.”

“Sneak 100,” Jeremy mumbles.

The older woman spins around from the stove, an exasperated look on her face, looking about to scold him. 

“Thank you, Lou!” Damon calls, cutting off any potential reprimand from the women, buttering his roll and dodging as she tries to swat him with a wooden spoon.

She calls after him, “If you weren’t a growing boy, I would have your hide!”

“Uh-uh,” Damon grins, biting into his pilfered roll, “I’m a growing man now, Lou-lou.”

The younger woman giggles, while Lou just rolls her eyes. “Well, you incorrigible young man, your father wants to see you in his study.”

“Do you perhaps know why?”

The younger one shrugs.

Damon waves the ladies off with a thank you and makes his way to his father’s study. Outside the door, he straightens his clothes once more and takes a deep breath before knocking. 

“Enter,” intones a deep voice. Damon opens the door to find his father sitting in an ornate armchair, glasses on and journal in hand. Damon comes in to stand across from him.

“Father.”

“Damon,” Giuseppe greets. “Have you finished transferring those records for me?”

“I have two columns left to fill,” Damon says, and Giuseppe nods appraisingly. 

“Very well then,” the man sets aside his writing materials, giving his eldest his full attention. “Damon, you will finish those by this evening. We have an important meeting at noon tomorrow, I want to receive those documents before then.”

“Yes Father.” Then, “…We?”

“Yes, ‘we’. I cannot possibly have my heir shirking his duties now, hm? You’ve done the work, I expect you to be capable of following through with the clientele.”

“Yes, Father,” Damon masks his surprise with practiced ease, “Of course.”

Giuseppe turns back to his journal with a disinterested hum. “Very well. Dismissed.”

As Damon leaves the room, his silhouette morphs into Stefan’s next memory.

The year is 1856, and Stefan is rushing through the front door of the Salvatore house, ignoring the comings and goings of the maids as he disrupts the household without a care.

“Wow, you’re really in a rush, huh?” Elena pokes her boyfriend—ex-boyfriend, technically, but she’s holding out hope for reconciliation —‘s side.

”Damon!” The boy yells up the staircase, not even waiting for a reply before he’s running to search for his brother in the library. But Damon’s not there, either. So Stefan scours the halls of the ground floor, peering into each room (giving the viewing party a thorough tour of the house) and sighing dramatically when he sees no sign of his brother. 

“That’s a lot of sitting rooms,” Alaric says when little Stefan reaches a third.

“Oh, but Ric!” Damon gasps, scandalised, “Don’t you know? It’s terribly important to have at least four sitting rooms in every respectable household.”

Stefan frowns, fingers twitching on his knee. “But we had five…?”

“Yes, and that was more than any other family in Mystic Falls.” Damon rolls his eyes. “A more era-appropriate version of a dick measuring contest.”

Bonnie pulls a face. “Ew.”

Eventually, Stefan gives up on the ground floor and hurries up the stairs to search the next level, still calling Damon’s name. Of course, the hallways of the manor weren’t built with the consideration of clumsy eight year olds running up and down them in mind, so Stefan comes to a snag. Literally. He trips over his own feet, knocking a gaudy vase off a small and rickety table as he falls flat on his face.

“Oof,” Matt cringes.

The kid immediately bursts into tears, looking in shock and horror at the dust and shattered pottery surrounding him. The slam of a door jolts him out of his shock, and he leaps into action.

“No! No, no—“ Stefan scrambles to pick up the broken pieces, nearly hyperventilating as he futilely attempts to piece the vase back together. 

“Stefan Antonio!” Giuseppe’s voice rings out.

“Antonio?” Bonnie raises an eyebrow. 

“My middle name. I think it’s after our great-grandfather?” Stefan turns to check with Damon, who nods. “Damon’s is Francesco, after our grandfather.”

Damon scowls. “Seriously? Is nothing private anymore?”

“Nope!” Caroline smiles sweetly.

“I can fix it! it’ll be alright, I can fix it—“
Stefan’s cut off with a yelp when a hand grabs him too tight by his arm, yanking him upright like he weighs no more than a rag doll. 

The memory goes hazy from there, sounds and shapes twisting and distorting into no identifiable scene.

“Gaps in his memory?” Alaric asks. 

“I guess,” Bonnie says. “Stefan?”

“I don— I don’t know. I don’t remember.” Stefan’s face scrunches up into a mildly constipated expression, trying to force himself to recall.

”Selectively repressed memories.” Caroline suggests. “It’s common in child abuse victims.”

Stefan scoffs. “I’m not a child abuse victim. Our dad was a good man.”

“Dude,” Damon deadpans, “he literally killed us.”

“Yeah, but—“

The jumbled-up memory fades out, and a new one fades in.

“Your dad killed you?” Tyler asks, incredulous. 

“Yup,” with a pop of the ‘p’. “Good ol’ bullet through the chest.”

“I gotta say, I’m not even surprised. Your lives make for some pretty good television.”

Damon tips his bottle at the knock-off Derek Hale. 

The next scene opens with a view of Lily’s bed, where Stefan is curled into the frail woman’s side, sobbing.

“Aw,” Elena coos sadly.

“Damon says… he says that Father is… c-cruel to- to h-hit me. T-that it wasn’t my f-fault.” Stefan sniffles, rubbing the irritated red splotch on his upper arm.

Lily purses her lips. “And do you believe that?”

“I-I don’t know….”

“Do you believe that your loving father is cruel? That he was not well within his right as a father to ensure you learn from your mistakes? To better you?”

“N-no! Of course not!” Stefan knows that Father only wants what is best. That he broke the vase, and therefore must be punished. It was a silly mistake, but now Stefan knows to be more careful. He’s learned his lesson; if he’s good, Father won’t have to discipline him again. It’s just upsetting that he was bad in the first place. 

“Then you needn’t worry yourself with your brother’s lies. Damon… he will say and do anything to get what he wants. He will deceive you into blindly trusting his every word. I know you love him, Ange, but that’s the truth. He’s fooled himself into thinking he deserves lenience for his own wickedness, and he’ll do the same to you.”

Oh. Stefan’s hiccuping breaths even out a little, and he furrows his brow. So that’s why Father has to discipline Damon so often. He hasn’t learned from his mistakes, not like Stefan has.

“Oof,” Jeremy lets out a low whistle, “that’s harsh.”

“She did love to be in full control of everything,” Damon muses. “Even if it meant flat out lying.”

“Maybe,” Stefan starts, pointed smile ready to inflict some Ripper wisdom,  “if you just behaved for once, she wouldn’t have to.”

There’s a few more minutes of sniffling, before Stefan leaves his mother’s rooms, wiping his red-rimmed eyes on his sleeves. The boy looks up at his brother, and then promptly looks away, muffling another sniff. Damon sighs.

“Are you feeling a bit better?” He asks, and Stefan nods stiffly, still not facing the teenager. It seems like Damon’s going to have to be the one to carry this conversation. “Would you like to go feed the ducks?” 

Stefan doesn’t reply, biting his lip and decidedly not looking his brother’s way.

“Stef?” Damon’s tone is soft, and he kneels down to Stefan’s height.

“No,” the boy says, “I would like to be left alone for a while. Excuse me.” He strides off, leaving Damon crouched on the floor, dumbfounded.

Damon shakes himself out of it and barges into his mother’s rooms, no regard for proper etiquette. He looks to Lily with a hardened expression. “Why do you defend him?” He asks. “Why do you act like Father is some saint when you know just as well as I do that it’s the opposite?”

Lily sighs. “Of course you were eavesdropping.”

“Why do you defend Father?” He presses.

His mother rolls her eyes. “I do not wish to fill Stefan’s head with slander. I cannot very well influence the boy against his own kin, no?”  Oh, the irony is delightful.  ”When I am gone, your father will be the only parent Stefan has.”

“These lies you tell, they are harming Stefan. You’ve tricked him into believing he deserves to be hit for a little mistake.”

“Don’t pretend to be concerned for Stefan’s sake, Damon. You’re upset that I’ve loosened your hold on your brother. That he is resistant to your influence. Once again, only ever thinking of yourself.”

Damon scoffs. “That little trick of yours stopped working on me long ago, Mother. Speaking things into existence doesn’t make them any more true.”

Lily narrows her eyes. “You truly are your father’s son,” she says softly, as though the words are anything but a harsh blow to Damon’s gut. “Your temper does you no favours.”

”And your lies do naught but ease your conscience. You may say what you wish about me, but Stefan doesn’t deserve the same.”
The scene fades to black, ending on a still of Damon, eyes blazing with fury and lips spewing righteous, angry truths.

“God, you were such a dick to her,” Stefan says. “Would it kill you to be nice for once in your life?”

Damon pretends to consider the question for a moment, answering with certainty, “Yes.”

“Well,” Caroline says hesitantly, “she was kind of gaslighting you, Stefan. I mean, your mum said she didn’t want to turn you against a member of your family, but that was exactly what she was doing.” She then shudders, as if agreeing with Damon goes against her entire constitution. It probably does, if Damon’s being honest.

Stefan’s eyes flash, and for a split second he’s more monster than man. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he grits out, taking a few deep breaths. “Let’s just move on.”

Chapter Text

March, 1856
Stefan knocks on his mother’s door, walking in when she calls for his entry. The room is dimly lit, and Lily looks more frail than ever, barely skin and bone with a bright red flush to her cheeks. She holds a handkerchief to her face, and manages to lift her other hand to stop Stefan when he goes to climb onto the bed. The rings on her fingers slide around the knuckles with more ease than the effort of movement itself is for Lily.

“Wow, she is not looking so great,” Matt says, then hurriedly tacks on, “I mean, no offence.”

Stefan waves off the apology. “No, you’re right. I-I never really realised how sick she must’ve been back then.” It’s certainly bittersweet, hurting him as much as it heals, but every painful memory serves to remind Stefan exactly why doing this is so important to him. Granted, maybe it isn’t the best idea to confront his past when he’s still so screwed up emotionally. And maybe, once or twice, he’s caught himself considering calmly detaching Bonnie’s head from her body, just a little bit, just enough to stop this spell, but after the year he’s had, Stefan thinks he deserves a little credit for not actually doing it.

Because yeah, he’s a bit of a wreck right now — when is he not? 

If Stefan were to get a little philosophical, he might muse something like how it is at one’s lowest point that they are open to the greatest change or another little nugget of Klaus’ mumbo-jumbo wisdom (that he likely bastardised from one of Elijah’s lectures, the plagiarising prick), but he’s not, so he won’t.

“Non, my sweet ange, you mustn’t come so close,” Lily says in a tired, raspy tone.

Stefan takes a step back and looks at her with wide green eyes. “Are you feeling even more poorly?”

She nods, and her son’s face scrunches up. 

“But it’s been so long,” Stefan whines, his pout audible. He sinks dramatically into the chair beside her bed.

”Only a little while longer, my dearest.”

Stefan brightens at that. “Then you’ll be all better?” He asks, and Lily offers a noncommittal hum in response.

“I’m sorry you had to see her like that,” Elena says, squeezing Stefan’s hand. “Both of you.”

“Tell me a story,” Stefan commands his mother. “One with a brave hero, like me.”

Lily smiles indulgently. “As you wish, my dearest.”

The scene fades out as she begins.

Stefan leans over to snatch Damon’s emotional support bottle for a minute, getting a half-hearted (and still damn painful) kick to the shoulder from his miserable older brother.

His only comfort is that if he’s going through hell right now, Damon’s right there with him. 

May, 1856
Damon and George race the home stretch of their trail ride, neck and neck through the woods surrounding their properties until Damon decides to play dirty, reaching out with his crop to jab George’s shoulder and spurring Lady on at the same time. George yelps and steers his horse, a handsome bay named Charleston, away from his friend’s unsportsmanlike attack as Damon laughs his way across the finish line.

“Hey,” Jeremy says, “who looks older, me, or Damon in this?”

“You,” Stefan easily answers, and most of the room seems to agree. Except Bonnie.

“Eh,” she wiggles her hand in a so-so motion, “About the same. Stefan looks way older than both of you, though.”

“Dirty cheat!” George curses, to which Damon sticks out his tongue.

“I’m simply making use of the resources at my disposal.” He slows to let the other boy catch up. 

“It was a cheap shot and you know it.” They stop at the corner where their estates meet. “You’re attending the ball this evening, aren’t you?” George asks.

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether Mother’s decided to kick it yet.”

George grimaces. “That’s delightfully morbid. Shall I put the Salvatores down for two, then?”

“Three, actually. My father’s brought home some business associate from the city and wants to introduce the fellow to Fells Church’s high society.” Damon picks at a loose thread on his glove, looking up to meet George’s raised eyebrow.

George hums. “Well, best hope John Gilbert’s staying home tonight, then.”

“I thought you Lockwoods were rid of any vermin?” Damon asks mockingly.

He personally doesn’t care enough about Jonathan to hate him, but George more than makes up for Damon’s indifference, holding a strong enough grudge for the both of them and a small village.

“Ah, well… you know how it is,” George makes a vague gesture that does absolutely nothing to specify what he's talking about. “You can catch ‘em all you want, but they’ll keep on coming back.” 

“Five-thirty, then? I’ll bring the arsenic.“

The boys go their own ways from there, the scene following Damon’s return to the stables, where he passes Lady’s saddle and bridle off to a stablehand before he returns her to her stall.

There’s a man by the stall next to Lady’s, tall and sandy haired with a bright, chiseled smile, which he offers freely to Damon. 

“Oh my god, I forgot about this guy!” Stefan whispers with an evil little grin.

“You must be Damon,” the man holds out a hand. “Sebastian Harding.”

“Pleasure,” Damon greets, damningly aware of the strength in Sebastian’s grip. “From the city, right? The town planner?” He remembers his father mentioning as much. Sebastian Harding, Richmond’s finest up-and-comer at just 24 years of age. 

Of course, this information was swiftly followed by a lecture on all the ways Damon has managed to disappoint his family this past month, so he’d paid the words little mind — until now. 

If he’d known that this was the man his father praised, however… he would’ve realised that Giuseppe was quite frankly underselling Sebastian’s best qualities. Namely, the lethal combination of an artfully lopsided grin and a matching head tilt. Absently, Damon wonders whether he could pull it off himself. Perhaps he’ll seek out Harriet’s advice tonight.

Sebastian’s smile grows wider. “That’d be me. Town planning and finance.” 

“Whew,” Caroline fans herself. “I take back what I said. This was the best idea.”

Bonnie snorts. "I'm sure teenage Damon agrees with you."

"What?" Blondie pauses mid-fan.

"What?" The little witch should not be able to look that innocent. 

Damon nods and returns the smile, albeit a little dopily, but Sebastian doesn’t seem to mind.

“This is gonna be so good,” Stefan cackles knowingly. Damon isn’t so sure he agrees. “What happened to him? I mean, you guys were like this,” He crosses his fingers together with a sly grin. 

“Uh, it was 150-something years ago, Stef. He’s dead.” His tone doesn’t waver. 

“No, I mean—“ 

“I know what you mean.” Damon tries to keep his body language and facial expression perfectly blank, but he can’t be rid of the tension in his jaw when faced with this particular aspect of his past.
 
He’s over it now; it doesn’t hurt anymore, certainly not like it did at the time, but he doesn’t want to see it. Not with an audience. Not when he knows how it ends.

“We should ride sometime,” Sebastian says, brushing a strand of hair out of the way. “Perhaps you could show me the sights this town has to offer?” 

Damon must be coming down with something, because his head starts to feel a little bit fuzzy. “Yes,” he replies breathlessly. “Uh- I mean, yes. We should.” 

Sebastian smiles. Goodness, does he do anything else? “Splendid. This time tomorrow?” 

He shakes his hair out of his face again, and Damon’s mouth suddenly goes dry. He thinks he remembers nodding, but cannot be sure. 

He realises, abruptly, that he feels like a child caught with their hand in a jar of sweets, unable to resist the temptation (temptation of what?). He needs to leave now. 

“I should,” Damon points a thumb out behind him, “…yeah.” He makes the world’s quickest exit, barely taking in his surroundings as he somehow makes it back to the house. Up in his bedroom, he unconsciously goes through the motions of undressing before flopping back onto his bed with a groan, hands sliding down the warmth of his red cheeks. The heat must be getting to him. Yes, that’s it, it’s the heat. The heat is why he really needs a lie down. 

The scene fades out, and Stefan bursts out laughing, with Bonnie half a second behind him.

“I don’t get it,” Matt admits.

Stefan grins at him, eyes sparkling. “You will.” 

For once, Caroline is completely silent.

June, 1856

“When will you return?” Damon asks, looking up at Sebastian from where he rests on his elbows in a sunny field. 

“Eight months or so, perhaps less.” Sebastian pulls a flask from his satchel, grinning as he flops down beside Damon — close, too close (not close enough), their thighs resting against each other’s. 

“Why?” He asks with a smirk, “Scared you’re gonna miss me?”

Damon ducks his head, flushing. “Mayyybe,” he draws out, a small, secretive smile dancing upon his lips.

“Here,” the flask is thrust into Damon’s hand, Sebastian’s fingers grazing his. Every nerve in Damon’s body is set alight with the touch, and it burns, more than the alcohol does down his throat.

“You can always write me, you know,” Sebastian leans unnecessarily into his space to retrieve the flask, not moving away once he does, just holding Damon’s heavy gaze as he brings the rim up to his mouth, throat bobbing with each sip. He’s practically hovering over Damon by this point. 

“I-“ Elena starts.

A single drop of whiskey misses Sebastian’s lips and Damon licks his own, some delayed reaction that has Sebastian eyeing him with keen, enraptured approval. Sebastian leans even closer, and it’s tempting, so tempting, for Damon to drop all his carefully constructed walls and, against his better judgement, welcome the invasion with his arms wide open.

They’re hurtling towards something unspeakable, something that burns within him like wildfire. And he knows he shouldn't indulge himself this way... he knows it's shameful, dishonourable, wicked…

But he’s never been very good at resisting temptation. 

Before he can take that leap himself, Sebastian’s leaning forward and pressing their lips together, and all Damon can think is oh.

“Woah,” Tyler blinks, “plot twist.”

Caroline tilts her head, as though the puzzle she’s been working on is suddenly falling into place, but doesn’t quite match the picture on the box. “Huh,” she says, verbose as ever.

“I knew it,” Bonnie’s grin is smug, “I so knew it.”

"Somebody stake me," Damon groans.

When Sebastian kisses him, it feels like having a headrush, but somehow in a good way. Damon finds himself leaning forward automatically, his mind shutting off and his body taking over as he melts into the kiss. 

Sebastian makes a soft noise. It causes Damon to draw a sharp breath, which breaks the kiss for just a moment before he presses in again. Bast’s other hand comes to land on his knee, just the tiniest bit of pressure for leverage, and a zing of heat rushes through Damon’s spine. 

And then his brain catches up with his body.

He pulls back abruptly, scrambling away from Sebastian, and it feels like the ground has been pulled out from under him.

Shame begins to rise within him, for having acted on his perverted impulse. Maybe he is just as awful as Father says.

“Good Lord,” he mutters hysterically, pulling at his hair. “What have I done?” 

“Damon.” Hands grasp his shoulders. “Damon, calm down.” 

Calm down? He’s perfectly calm. Honestly, the discovery of this new flaw is hardly a surprise; he’s always known that he was built wrong, that something inside him didn’t fit — that’s not new. It’s just putting a name to that faulty piece. 

“I’m sorry— I—“ But why hasn’t Sebastian decked him yet? Damon just— just…

Oh. Sebastian kissed him. 

“Damon?” 

Back in the present, he’s greeted with that gorgeous, gorgeous smile, and he can hardly remember what he was so fussed about in the first place. The world has changed since then.

"Yes?" He blinks, leaning into Sebastian's touch. He shouldn’t. Allowing this — seeking this — could ruin the both of them.

“Do not run from me now,” Bast whispers, warm and gentle. “We have plans this evening, remember?”

— But wouldn’t it be worth it? To ruin and be ruined in turn… how glorious that sounds.

A slow smile crosses Damon’s lips, bearing the ghost of his future’s trademark smirk. 

-

The scene meshes into the next, and Damon lets his head thunk back against the tree he's pinned against as Sebastian’s lips move down from his jaw to his neck, his hands coming around to caress the man’s back and shoulders. It's all he's capable of in his blissed out state.

"Do we really have to see this?" Matt pulls a face.

Sebastian's knee pushes between Damon's legs, and Damon's whole body shudders. He muffles a moan into the crook of Sebastian's neck, which earns him a nip to his own. 

"Shh," Bonnie doesn't tear her eyes away from the screen. "Don't interrupt the show." 

Damon tries to stay quiet, for fear of breaking the spell they're under, but by the time hands reach waistbands, he can't hold it in any longer.

"Kiss me?" He asks hopefully, looking up at Sebastian like a starving man would a feast. 

"Cannibalism analogy." Jeremy nods. "Nice."

Sebastian eagerly complies, hands remaining on his waistband all the while. Damon melts into the kiss, aware of nothing but every point of contact, each sending their own bolts of lightning straight to his abdomen.

He can't remember why this was ever a bad idea. His 'right' mind must be wrong, for this is incredible.

And, still basking in the glow of several dumbfounded expressions, Damon turns to his brother and bats his lashes. “‘Nother bottle please, Stef.”

The buzzkill, of course, frowns. “You don’t need any more.”

“Ugh, Stefannnn,” Damon whines, “are you really gonna make me sit through this sober?” Rude little brother. 

Stefan tilts his head, vaguely amused, albeit irritated. “You’re four bottles past sober.” 

“Nuh-uh!" Lies and slander! "It took me until the third to get even a little tipsy!” What does he take Damon for? A lightweight?

Stefan eyes him carefully, evaluating the trustworthiness of his brother’s claim. Finally, he sighs. “Just— just wait a few minutes, okay? You’re drinking all the good stuff, and I don’t wanna have to deal with you getting bitchy once we run out because you drank it all in the first few hours.”

The audacity of that kid…. 

"Fine." Whatever. Damon doesn't get bitchy, that's defamation.

"Uh... Since when do you like guys?" Elena jumps at the bit. She's been squirming in her seat for the past few minutes, he's surprised she held out this long.

He makes a show of leaning back with a smirk. "All vampires are at least a little bit bisexual."

"You're human in this," Matt oh-so-cleverly points out, ruining the bit. "And anyways, I don't buy it. You seem so... y'know... manly. Macho."

Um. Isn't that kind of the point? Besides... "Two guys. That's twice as 'manly'."

Stupid Dumbovan. Do they not teach footballers how to count anymore?

"Wait... Damon has a point," Jeremy says, heavily considering his bullshit logic. "And why is everyone so surprised, anyway? I thought we all knew about-" 

The kid slaps his hand over his mouth so fast it's absolutely gonna leave a mark. Shame. And here Damon's actually curious about what he was gonna say. It's not like he hides his many, many homoerotic sexcapades, but he certainly doesn't flaunt them — there's no telling which prejudiced bastard is on vervain. Still, he never pegged the little stoner for very observant.

The more you know.

The scene changes to nightfall, and Damon enters the mansion with wavering steps and a heavy heart. Someone's going to notice. How could they not? Damon's changed irreversibly in the past few hours. It may as well be written across his forehead, it's that obvious. He just needs to make it to his bedroom, then he can sleep off whatever devil overcame him today. He has to. He'll pray extra hard, be more obedient, anything to be rid of the stains on his ledger.

"You're home late."

If he thought his heart was heavy before, it's now plummeting into the ground. N o need to bother praying - he'll be dead come morning. 

"Sebastian invited me out for a drink before he leaves tomorrow." Voice even, standing steady. Nothing suspicious going on here, honestly.

"Hm." Giuseppe shifts to get a better look at him. His clothes are still slightly rumpled, even after his attempts to smooth them, but that shouldn't be a big deal. "And that's all?"

"Yes, Father." He turns towards the stairs, not noticing his fatal mistake.

"Oh no," Stefan mutters as he catches sight of his brother's neck. "Damon, you idiot-"

"What's going on?" Caroline follows Stefan's gaze, and gasps.

His mistake being that in turning away, he accidentally revealed to his father the cluster of bruises decorating his neck and collarbone. There's no question of what they are.

Giuseppe narrows his eyes. "I expect you to return home by sunset each night, unless I say otherwise. We will revisit this curfew once you leave for college."

"Yes, Father."

"Fine. Off with you now." He watches closely as Damon hurries up the stairs, suspicion clear on his face. 

"Huh." Things make a lot more sense now.

December, 1856

Giuseppe is having a hushed conversation with old Dr. Gilbert when Stefan knocks on the door to his study, glancing fearfully between the two men as he waits to be acknowledged. This meeting has something to do with Mother’s health, he’s sure of it.

With a harsh whisper and an air of finality, Giuseppe ends the conversation in favour of attending to his youngest.

“Stefan,” he greets. “I was under the impression that you had gone over to the Forbes’ for the day.”

 The boy shifts where he stands. Okay, so maybe he snuck home when Mrs Forbes wasn’t looking. “I came back to visit Mother, but I was stopped in the hall before I could. Is something the matter?”

Giuseppe looks uneasy. “She is very ill, you know this.”

Of course he knows that! He’s a smart boy. But… “She was feeling better just this week!”

“Stefan!” His father says firmly. “That is enough.”

“If I may, Giuseppe?” Dr Gilbert steps in as Stefan’s bottom lip begins to wobble. “Stefan,” he crouches down so they are level, “I hear you’re thinking of becoming a doctor like myself?”

He’s confused with the change of subject, but nonetheless pleased to speak of his bright future. “Yes, sir.”

“Well, sometimes as a doctor, when we least expect it, patients can take a turn for the worse.” 

Stefan sucks in a breath. This isn’t going to be about his bright future, then.

“Unfortunately,” Dr Gilbert continues, “this seems to be the case with your mother’s condition.” 

“—Richard,” Stefan’s father hisses.

The doctor continues. “I have a very important job that needs doing, but I am short an apprentice. Now, you are a little young for the role, but perhaps this may be a good first step towards an apprenticeship in the future. Are you interested? It could mean the world for your mother’s health.”

Oh. “Yes please, sir.” Stefan does a very good job of not seeming too eager. This is a solemn occasion, after all.

“Very good. Now, I need you to run down to the florist and purchase some cream violets. They’re for a tonic your mother needs. Do you think you can do that for me?” He holds up a quarter for Stefan to take.

“Yes, sir.” Stefan vows, gripping the quarter like his life depends on it. “I will be fast as lightning.” 

“Good man. Off you go.” He’s sent off with a pat to the shoulder and a mission to complete.

Stefan scratches his eyebrow as he watches the memory, guilt an old friend carving deep into his bones. He knows now, that it wasn’t his fault— it was a fool’s errand, after all— but a part of him can’t help but think what if.

A new scene emerges to show Damon hopping down from Lady’s back. He brushes snow from her back and strokes her forelock tenderly. “Thank you, my Lady.” He murmurs, and the horse presses back against his hand, demanding more attention.

The quiet spell is broken by a wail of his name. Damon whirls around to find Stefan rushing through the door of the stables, tears on his cheeks and wilted flowers in his hands. “They’ve taken her! Mother has been sent away, Father says she’s not coming back!” 

Damon’s face cycles through many expressions until horrible comprehension dawns on him. Seeing his little brother’s tears, he falls to his knees and wipes the boy’s face, pulling him into a hug. “Shh, Stefan. You will be fine.”

Stefan clings to his brother, despair staining his shirt. “I didn’t get to say goodbye, I was getting her the flowers! The flowers that were meant to make her better!”

A few sniffles echo around the room. They’ve all lost people, and to see a young Stefan’s heart break in real time, well, it hits a little too close to home. 

Patting his back, Damon doesn’t say a word as Stefan bawls his heart out, just holds him tight as his own tears threaten to fall. His little brother eventually lets his sobs fade into soft hiccups and passes out in his arms. 

Damon gathers him up and brings him inside to rest in bed. He doesn’t say a word to any of the workers in the estate who offer their condolences, nor does he respond to Lucille’s teary hug. 

He maintains his stoic expression all the way to his room, eyes red-rimmed and clearly displaying his grief. He shuts his door and stands still as a statue in the middle of the room. Then, all at once, he collapses to the floor, muffling sobs into his hands and letting his tears fall at last.

He’s mourning the mother he never had just as much as he is the one he’s lost.

“Oh,” Bonnie breathes, almost too quiet for even vampires to hear.

December, 1856

Damon finds Stefan in their mother’s room in front of a floor length mirror, attempting to tie his own tie. “What are you doing?”

“Borrowing one of Father’s ties for the funeral.” Stefan’s face is screwed up in concentration.

Pulling his own tie from his neck, Damon says, “He will skin you alive. Take mine.”

Then he turns his little brother around and kneels in front of him, removing their father’s and looping the ends of his own tie around Stefan’s neck. 

“Did you finish the speech?”

Damon’s eyes squint as he searches for a response and settles on an unconvincing, “Not quite.”

“It’s an important speech,” little Stefan chides. 

“I will finish it, Stefan,” Damon reassures. 

A beat passes as Stefan lifts his chin for his brother. “Father said we’re not to cry.”

A brief expression of frustration crosses Damon’s face before he responds. “That is because Father is incapable of human emotion. You are ten, you cry if you feel like it.” 

Stefan shakes his head, calmer than before. “I don’t think I will.”

“Why is that?”

“Because Mother’s angel told me that everything would be all right.”

Damon’s voice goes even gentler. “When was this?”

“Last night. In my sleep. She visited me. Did she visit you?” Stefan sounds hopeful, as if their mother would obviously have visited Damon. 

“...I must have missed it.” He finishes the knot and ruffles Stefan’s hair. “There, be on your way.”

-

A crowd of mourners in black make their way out of the cemetery, shooting looks at Damon as he stumbles over a rock, making his way to his mother’s grave with a bottle still in hand.  

Damon approaches the freshly dug grave to see that only Stefan has remained by the mound of dirt. He does not look up at Damon’s approach. With a voice colder than he’s ever used, Stefan says, “you missed your speech.”

“I still can’t believe you did that, and showing up drunk on top of it!” Drawn back into the memories, Stefan can’t help but get upset. He needed his brother, and Damon let him down.

Eyes regretful and voice rough, Damon only says, “I know.”

“Why?”

“I could not decide what to say.”

Finally, Stefan looks up, sniffling. “You could have just said goodbye!”

Damon looks stricken, and lost in the face of his brother’s comment. He makes to say something but notices Stefan’s gaze catching on something behind him. Giuseppe has just finished thanking the last guest and is making his way over. 

Stefan wipes his face of tears and rushes to his father. Giuseppe hugs him tightly before ushering him aside to be brought back to the estate. He waits until only he and Damon remain before speaking. 

Giuseppe sighs, a pantomime of a concerned parent.
“Just when I thought you might cease being a disappointment. I gave you a chance and you may as well have thrown it back in my face. Can’t even rise to the occasion for your own mother’s memory."

Damon says nothing, jaw clenching.

“What did she do to make you so weak? So heartless?” Giuseppe punches him, hard, and Damon falls to the ground with a wince, clutching his cheek. “I can’t even bear to look at you. Don’t bother coming back until you are ready to apologise.”

He glares as his father storms away, face already blooming with bruises.

“I don’t think Jeremy or I could have spoken at our parents’ funeral,” Elena offers. “Jenna and John barely got through their eulogies. What’s important is that you tried.”

“Thanks,” Damon says, uncharacteristically soft.

Eventually, Damon sits up, turning away from the bottle and towards the wooden cross that will soon be replaced by a proper headstone.

“Hello, Mother,” he says eventually, lips curling into a bitter grin. “I’m sure you know by now that I missed my speech. That once again, I’ve failed you. I did not intend to, but I suppose that means little now. Our intentions are merely dust in the aftermath of our actions.”

The room is silent as everyone listens closely. Stefan is particularly attentive, leaning forward on the edge of his seat.

“No flowery words could change the fact that you’re no longer with us. That is, if you ever were.”

Lily was ill for a decade, if not longer. For more than half of his life, Damon‘s had to watch as his mother withered away. It was slow at first; a susceptibility to fevers and winter chills, complaints of aches indistinguishable from those of melodrama. Only after Stefan was born did Lily’s grievances hold any weight, and it only declined from there.

“I found your secret drawer, you know. The false bottom, the letter from your sister. I know you planned to run away, to leave us behind. And… and I hate you for it,” his breath hitches, “but I cannot pretend I don’t understand. Father was killing you for years, consumption just dealt the final blow.” Damon pauses, deep in thought. “But he was killing me, too. Still is. And you never cared.” 

Damon watches as tears run down everyone’s cheeks, rolling his (unrelatedly wet) eyes.

“So I’ll promise something you never did: I will always care. I swear to you that I will keep Stefan safe, like you should have done for me. So goodbye for now, Mother, and may your soul rest easy in Heaven.”

He dusts off his trousers and makes to leave.

December 1856

Stefan watches his brother and father argue, head darting back and forth between them as he tries to follow along. 

“There is no need!” Giuseppe snaps, exasperated. “Do you expect me to keep the woman on? Like some freeloader? Is that what you’re suggesting?”

“I’m suggesting that we send Lucille off with a little more than just the clothes she wears!” Damon snaps right back. 

Stefan tunes them out at this point, preferring the company of his own grief to that of his family. Why can’t they just be sad like normal people? Mother wouldn’t have wanted for them to argue. She also wouldn’t have wanted for Lucille to be let go, but Father is not to be convinced. 

He repeatedly presses his fingers to his ears, distorting the noise until it’s all a garbled mess. There. Much more pleasant. 

After another round of yelling back-and-forth, Giuseppe lets out a heavy sigh, and Stefan looks back up to see him pinching the bridge of his nose, a rare gesture of him actually conceding to Damon’s perspective. That, or Damon’s just decked him, which is honestly far more likely.

“Fine,” Father says tiredly, “have it your way— any severance that woman receives is to come from your own pockets.” 

“I remember Stef being so impressed with me after this,” Damon muses, tucking the rim of his not-so-empty bottle under his chin. “Only to now find out that he wasn’t even paying attention.”

Stefan shrugs, grinning innocently at his brother. 

Wow. Did Damon really manage to persuade Father? That’s incredible! Father never changes his mind! How did he do that? 

“Yes, sir.” Damon nods, and Stefan’s never been more proud of his big brother. 

-

“That was amazing!” Stefan gushes, following Damon up to his room, hesitating for only half a moment when Damon starts moving the bed. “You were all like ‘no, I suggested,’” he puts on a surprisingly accurate impression of his brother, “and Father actually listened to you! How do you do it?” No really, how did he do it?

Damon kneels down beside a loose floorboard and grins back up at Stefan. “I may have a few tricks up my sleeve,” he admits, and Stefan frowns, leaning over to inspect the cloth on his brother’s arms.

Damon laughs and pushes him away by the head. “Not literally, Bambi. It’s a turn of phrase.”

The ten-year-old pouts. “You’re a turn of phrase,” he grumbles, using George and Harriet’s favourite insult.

“And you spend too much time around the Lockwoods.”

“Says you! They’re your friends,” Stefan scoffs, affronted. “Your only friends,” he adds with a thoughtful hum.

"Oh, burn," whistles Tyler.

“They’re not my only friends,” Damon carefully unpacks the contents of his little hollow under the floor.

“Yes they are,” Stefan watches on curiously. “Name one other friend.”

“Hmm… Sebastian,” Damon says with a smile.

“Sebastian doesn’t count. He was working with Father! I have far more friends than you.”

Damon just shrugs and goes back to pulling out his treasures.

It mostly looks like junk to Stefan; an old stack of letters, a roughly carved ‘D’ that Stefan made him, some suspicious looking cloth-wrapped packages Damon bats his hand away from, a very dusty journal Stefan’s never seen his brother use, three rings on a rusted chain— one bearing the family crest, the other two unknown— a woven bracelet or two, a braided rope of horse hair from Lady’s mane, and finally, two jam jars wrapped in old flour sacks, each jar completely filled to the brim with coins. 

Stefan’s eyes practically bulge out of his head at the sight. “You do realise you just showed me where you keep all of your money, right? I can nick some whenever I want.” 

“You do realise you are too small to lift my bed, right?” Oh, so that’s what that was all about. Stefan kind of just assumed it was an odd Damon-thing. “And besides,” his brother continues, “if you take any, I won’t have as much to spend on your Christmas present. You’d just be stealing from yourself.”

Well, he does make a compelling point there. 

"Heh, compelling."

Damon tips out a pile of coins, counting them out. “How much do I give her?”

“A dollar?” Stefan suggests.

“Imagine getting paid a dollar as severance today.” Alaric says. 

“No, more than that.” Damon shakes his head. “I want Lucille to have enough for a month. That’s about as much as she can carry, sadly. Any more, and people will start asking too many questions. Do you think five dollars would work?”

Stefan doesn’t get a chance to answer, not that he’d ever bother anyway. Not when his brother gets like this. When Damon’s brain starts moving, it doesn’t stop. He’ll ask a question, then have it and the next two solved before Stefan’s even had a chance to process the first. All he can do is sit and wait for Damon to remember that he's not the only participant in this conversation.

“…Round up to seven? It’d be better to have most of it in smaller coin…. Stef, do you have an old map of the east coast? One with railway lines?” 

He knew those would come in handy! Rushing to his room, Stefan rummages through the absolute chaos of his desk drawer, pulling out a roll of several maps.

“Hoarder,” Damon coughs.

“Neat freak,” Stefan coughs back.

Rushing back to Damon’s room, Stefan unrolls his collection of maps until he finds three that match what Damon’s asked for. 

“Ideally, I’d want to send her to Louisiana. Aunt Madeleine lives there.”

“Aunt Madeleine?”

“Mother’s sister. Lucille would have known her when they were children.”

“That’s brilliant!” Stefan doesn't say so, but he's never heard of an Aunt Madeleine in his entire life.

“But the journey is long and it may be dangerous for a woman like Lucille to venture that far south.”

“‘A woman like Lucille’? What do you mean?”

“Y’know… coloured.”

“Oh, right.”

“This is so dated,” Caroline shivers.

“So the other option is to send her north,” he taps a point on the map. “Illinois. Safer journey, French colonies… it’s familiar, but there won’t be anybody she actually knows.”

“Hmm,” Stefan thinks. “How about Colorado?” He shuffles his maps to find one that shows the whole country.

Damon raises an eyebrow. “Colorado?”  

“Yeah!” Stefan nods emphatically. “The Wild West!” He sighs dreamily. “It’s the greatest place on earth!”

“How would you know? You’ve never left the county.”

“I just know,” Stefan insists. “Lucille would love it there. We could even visit her!”

Damon shakes his head. "You and your obsession with cowboys." 

"The Wild West," Stefan mimics his past self, sighing just as dreamily.

“Stefan—“ Damon sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Just choose. Louisiana or Illinois.”

“…Louisiana. I’d rather Lucille find someone she knows.”

“Alright, Louisiana it is,” Damon marks out some routes on one of the maps, packs the coin into a small drawstring bag, and bundles it all up with one of the letters from his stack. “Let us say goodbye now, shall we?”

-

The scene changes, and the boys are now standing out the front of the estate, saying their goodbyes to a tearful Lucille, while Giuseppe watches his sons, smoking a cigar.

“Here. It isn’t much, but it should be enough to get to Louisiana. Aunt Madeleine’s there, did you know?” Damon closes Lucille’s hands around the parcel.

“I heard,” the woman smiles weakly, “Thank you, dear boy.”

“The maps were mine!” Stefan pipes up. 

Lucille crouches down so that she’s level with the ten-year-old. “And thank you, my sweet. What generous boys you two are. Your mother would be so very proud.” 

Her praises set off Stefan’s own tears, and he’s immediately enveloped in her arms. “Oh hush, child.” 

“You be gentle,” she whispers to him, “And listen to your brother, yes?”

He nods, and Lucille lets go, turning back to Damon with a smile.

“You are all grown up now, my beauty. Be good.” She pats his cheek, smiling fondly. 

“I shall try,” the words get stuck in his throat, but he means them all the same. “Merci, et soyez bien dans vos voyages.”

“Et toi, et toi aussi.” 

“Stefan! Damon!” Giuseppe barks from the front of the manor, seemingly at risk of emoting himself. “Come along now.”

“Bienvenue!” Stefan waves, only to be nudged by his brother’s elbow. “Oh! Uh— Au revoir!” He corrects himself, and the screen fades to black. 

Matt sits up. “Did Lucille ever make it to Louisiana?”

“Yup. Had a kid and everything. Her family still runs a cutesy little storefront in the Quarter.” Damon then frowns. “Huh. Wonder if she ever knew Klaus.” There’s a thought. 

“You kept track of her?” Stefan asks, surprised. 

Damon just rolls his eyes. “I keep track of everyone, Stef.” At his brother’s dubious expression, he pastes on a flippant grin. “Besides, getting on the good side of witches is just common sense.” 

“You? On multiple witches’ good sides?” Stefan scoffs.

“It’s more likely than you’d think.” Poor baby brother, whom witches won’t even give the time of day. He can pretend he’s the harmless good guy all he wants, can play the part so seamlessly that it blends into his own sense of self, but he can’t fool a witch who actually knows a grimoire from a cauldron.

"You're not on my good side," Bonnie frowns.

"We're literally best friends."

"Mm, I don't think so."

"We'll get there."

Chapter Text

“Why did that sound like a threat?” Bonnie eyes the smiling vampire warily.

“Did it? How… strange.” Damon pauses, mostly for the drama of it all. “But if you think about it—“

“—I’d rather not—“ 

“—We’re already halfway there. The whole sharing secrets from my tragic teen romances-“

“—Wasn’t much of a secret—“

“—And we’re even having a little slumber party.”

“Nope.” Bonnie shakes her head, hair whipping as she does. “Nuh-uh, not doing this. There is no universe in which you and I are ever, even remotely friends.”

January, 1857
Damon’s just settling down for bed when his door swings open with a bang. 
“I can’t remember what she looked like!” Stefan wails.

“You were such a drama queen,” Damon takes the hundredth photo of little Stefan. Alaric looks at him suspiciously, but thankfully none of the loudmouths notice what he’s doing.
Turning to face his brother ever-so-slowly, Stefan raises an eyebrow at him. “Are you being the pot or the kettle today?” 

“Stefan? What do you mean?”
Stefan runs up to the bed and clings to Damon like a lifeline. “Mother! I’ve forgotten what she looked like!” 
“Oh, Stefan.” Damon strokes his brother’s hair. 
The boy’s voice comes out in heaving sobs, 
“You got so much time with her, and I didn’t! It’s not fair! I don’t have enough memories of her!”
Well. Damon wouldn’t exactly say he spent much time with her at all. Certainly not as much as Stefan seems to think. He was always… too much, he thinks, for their mother to handle. She never needed that sort of stress. So he just hums and rubs Stefan’s back.

“What did she look like?”
He drops a kiss to his brother’s head and whispers, “Me. She looked… exactly like I would, were I a woman.”
Stefan blinks up at him, trying to puzzle it out. “But you’re not a woman. How can I imagine you as a woman if I can’t remember what that looks like?”
“Well…” he does have a point. And photographs only go so far - what with the painfully staged, stiff and sombre nature of them. “Here’s what. Go and fetch your drawing things, and I’ll help you draw her. How does that sound?”
“Oh, yes please!” Stefan’s eyes light up as he smiles. 
Damon nods towards the door. “Go on, then. And be quiet.”
Stefan presses a finger to his lips and tiptoes away. 
When he returns, Damon is sitting cross legged on his bed, and the lamps around the room have been relit. He pats a spot beside him for Stefan.
“I want to do the shoulders and head only, like a portrait.” Stefan says, sketching some guidelines and boring holes into Damon’s face.
“Alright. You are the artist, after all.”
“I’ll start with the head. Turn a few degrees to the left. My left, not yours!”
“Her face was a bit softer than mine,” Damon remembers, allowing himself to be instructed, “a bit rounder, with a sharp jaw. Fuller cheekbones, too.”
Stefan hums, tongue sticking out of his mouth as he concentrates on his work. “Like this?” He shows the drawing to Damon. 
“Hmm, a bit thinner on the chin. Here, let me.” 
Together, they work on sketching each feature until Lily’s face looks back at them wistfully. It’s a bit wobbly; the shading a bit too harsh in areas where Stefan got impatient, the proportions ever so slightly off, but overall…
“It’s… perfect,” Stefan breathes. 
“We did it!” He cheers, a decibel too loud. Damon futilely clamps a hand over his brother’s mouth. Both boys freeze at the sound of footsteps approaching Damon’s room, too clipped and self-assured to be one of the servants.
“What are you two doing at a time like this?” Giuseppe says, entering. “What are you holding, Stefan?”
“A drawing,” Damon says evenly. “It was my fault— I encouraged him.”
“Hand it here.” 
Stefan obeys, pouting just a little bit. 
“Hm.” Giuseppe grunts, scrutinising the sketch. “And this was so urgent it could not wait until daylight?”
Damon deflates. “No, it wasn’t, Father. We’re sorry.”
“To bed, the both of you. If I must lock your doors, so be it.” He pockets the sketch and shoos Stefan out, leaving Damon alone in the dark.

“I didn’t know you could draw.” Jeremy tells Stefan.
“Haven’t done it much since I was human. Little bits here and there.”

March 1857

Damon, George, and Harriet are sitting around the table underneath the gazebo in the Salvatore’s gardens, stewing over textbooks and sharing a bowl of fruit. They each have a bubbling glass of cordial, diluted with soda water. Harriet had started out with the adults and Stefan, but quickly excused herself, citing that she was required to harass the boys. Now, she does just that, having a grand old time. 

“Love her.” says Caroline.

“Why are you even here?” George says, wrestling a slice of apple away from his sister, who sits atop the table like Queen Muck. “Don’t you have needlework to do? Parents to suck up to?”
Damon raises an eyebrow, watching the exchange. It’s far more invigorating than his studies, and entertaining besides.
Harriet sniffs. “I grew bored.”
Damon puts on his best smile, batting his lashes at Harriet. “Miss Lockwood, since you’re here to save us, would you be so kind as to explain question C to me?” George scoffs, but Harriet happily takes a look at his work, always eager to one up the boys. She skims over it, before groaning.
“You’re supposed to be expanding and resolving the equation, but here, and here, you’re just writing in the answer.”
George gasps, points at Damon accusingly. “How dare you answer the question!”
Harriet hits her brother with the workbook. “Honestly, must I be plagued with both the beauty and the brains of the family?”
Damon frowns. “Resolving the equation, is that not what I did?”
“Yes, but you’re pulling the answers out of thin air! If you follow the formula, you have the working to show for it.”
“But I am correct, no?”
“That’s not the point!”
“If I solved the equation, and did so correctly, how can I be wrong?”
“Flawless logic,” George smiles, raising his glass in approval.
“Because you’re using nonsense techniques!”
“But the nonsense techniques worked?”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean you can disregard all the working.”
“…Can we move onto any other subject?” He groans. 
George grins, and chucks him a grape. It hits Damon’s forehead and bounces right off. “I’ve told you before, you’re simply too pretty for mathematics.”
“Too true.” Damon agrees.
“Don’t be so arrogant,” Harriet admonishes him, “your head barely fits through the door as is.”
“That’s from all the knowledge I hoard.” he smirks at her.
Harriet smiles back sweetly—a warning sign. “Such as what?”
Blushing red and flustered, Damon stutters out, “uh—in Spain, the rain falls mainly in the plains.”
Her grin widens. “Poetic, yet untrue. The Sierra de Grazalema accumulates the most rainfall per annum.”
Damon leans back, impressed. “I suppose you aren’t just a pretty face.” he concedes.
“And I suppose you are.” Hattie mimics him, holding eye contact. From this angle, the light catches slight golden flecks in her otherwise grey eyes. He didn’t know eyes could do that.
“I suppose I am disgusted.” George interjects.

The group laughs.

A little while later, Stefan comes running up to the gazebo, face flushed and hair a mess.
“Save me, brother!” Stefan pants, interrupting their study.
Damon scoots over to make room. He was supposed to be having morning tea in the front gardens with Father and the Lockwoods, including Mr Lockwood’s sister from Danville and her husband. Surely it isn’t going that badly.  “What’s the matter?”
Stefan ducks under the table and wriggles out to sit beside Damon, peering over his shoulder at the work. 

“Hey,” Damon says, poking his side. “I asked you a question.”

”Everybody wants to pinch my cheek and tell me what a handsome young man I am!”

George clutches a hand to his heart. ”Oh, the hardships of youth.”

”It is a hardship, thankyou!” Stefan misses his sarcasm completely. “One day my cheeks will fall off and there’ll be nothing left to pinch! What happens then?”

“Well,” Damon frowns, “by that point you’ll be too old to have your cheeks pinched anyway.”

”I remember the day my cheeks fell off. A symbol of womanhood, I hear. Or, manhood, in your case.” Harriet amends, seeing Stefan’s horror when she mentions the ‘w’ word.

”But,” Damon glares at her, “that is not for a while yet, so your cheeks are safe from any separation from the rest of your face. Why don’t you go back and make the most of it?” 

Stefan sighs, and wiggles back out the way he came. “Alright.” he says, and turns to each of the older teens, tilting his face expectantly. They take great pleasure in pinching his cheek one by one. Stefan runs off, and the scene ends.

”Ah yes, puberty: the time when your cheeks fall off.” Alaric says wisely. “A big day.”

”Very true.” Damon agrees, and the scene flicks to the next.