Chapter Text
Damon was sitting in the boarding house on his second bottle of bourbon when Bonnie walked in. He wasn’t drinking quite fast enough to be drunk, but he was certainly tipsy. He’d been expecting her, just not quite so soon. He would have thought she would be comforting Elena for longer. “How is she?” Damon asked hollowly, not even looking at her yet.
Bonnie scrutinized him for a moment, not even having stepped fully into the room. Just looking at his back and shoulders. When he spoke that was her cue to head the rest of the way in. “She’ll be okay. How are /you/?” she asked concerned, taking the drink he held out to her on autopilot. Even if she didn’t intend to drink it, she’d long learned that he felt better when his company had a drink in hand. He would finish it for her later if she didn’t.
“I’ll live,” Damon sighed. It wasn’t his first disappointment and surely wouldn’t be his last. In fact, his life was a long string of them. His life that now had an expiration date. That was the worst part.
“You want to talk about it?” Bonnie asked carefully. Such things could go either way with Damon. He would either clam up or open up. Some people were more likely to get one over the other. She was usually more likely to get the opening up side ever since their stint in the prison world where they had nothing to do /but/ talk to each other and open up, but it would still depend on his mood. She’d gotten Elena’s side, but wanted to hear his too. Even if she was already sure she knew part of it.
“She agrees with Stefan,” Damon huffed. “That I was always a monster until she got her hooks in and changed and molded me into a better man.”
“Which just proves that she’s never understood or accepted you,” Bonnie said knowingly. She’d heard chapter and verse about that subject ever since Stefan sacrificed himself for Damon after a nice little speech that ripped Damon’s heart out and proved that all the progress they’d made was nothing but a lie.
“She wants a /puppet/, not a boyfriend,” Damon said bitterly. “I can’t live like that. I /won’t/ live like that.”
“I don’t blame you,” Bonnie said sympathetically. She’d come to understand him over time. How he thought. Why he did the things he did. Opening her eyes to the realities of the world had helped the most with that. Elena though…she still saw the world through those rose-colored glasses and probably always would.
“And now I’m stuck as a miserable stupid human, and for what? Nothing,” Damon snapped as he got up to pace, refilling his drink on the way. “It’s not like I even got to make the choice for myself. Stefan just shoved the cure in my neck and tossed me aside like I was nothing.”
“Well you /did/ say you were going to take it,” Bonnie felt the need to point out. He hadn’t mentioned his anger at this part before. All the focus had been on waking Elena up. Even just to find out how she really thought of him and whether they had a future or not.
“Yeah, which was stupid to begin with and I probably would have changed my mind before going through with it,” Damon pointed out. “But that’s beside the point since I was going to take it for /her/. To spend a human life with her. But Stefan went and dosed me when we thought she’d still be in that coma for another sixty years. He would have doomed me to a human life without her. And why? Because he couldn’t trust me without him or Elena here to hold my leash. To keep me under control. To pull on those stupid little puppet strings that I was stupid enough not to see.”
“Well he did need to get you out of the way,” Bonnie reminded him. “Not that I agree with him sacrificing himself like that, of course, but I’m talking about his point of view.”
“If he could inject me with that damn cure, then he could have injected me with vervain just as easily,” Damon huffed.
“I can’t argue with that,” Bonnie admitted. She had nothing else.
“As if it wasn’t already bad enough that he told me that I didn’t deserve to be saved before, but I did now…because I was letting them control me…apparently I didn’t deserve to be saved as myself. Only if I was defanged and turned into a weak helpless miserable /human/.”
Bonnie winced unconsciously as Damon’s glass shattered in the fire, making it flare from the little bit of booze left in it. No matter how many times he did that, it would always startle her. “I wish we could take it back,” Bonnie said sadly. Not that she thought there was anything wrong with being human, but what mattered was that he did. Once again, Stefan had forced a life on him that he didn’t want to live. One would think he’d have learned his lesson when he forced Damon to become a vampire, but apparently not.
“What if we can?” Damon got an idea that might have been the booze talking, but now that he’d latched onto it, it wasn’t going anywhere.
“What do you mean?” Bonnie asked confused. The cure was designed to prevent him from ever becoming a vampire again. Even magic couldn’t undo that.
“You could send me back. Back before that whole disaster,” Damon said. He knew there was magic that could allow time travel.
“Damon, no. The natural order. I can’t…”
“Back before Enzo died,” Damon added. Not just to manipulate her into doing it either. He’d been thinking more and more about Enzo today. The one person who always accepted him. Who always cared. Even when Damon didn’t deserve it. Even when he would have been well within his rights to just kill him; he still cared. The one person he loved more than he could ever have loved Elena. Or Katherine. Or anyone else. The one that he loved enough to let him have the happiness he deserved with the love of his life that he was planning this with. Just as long as he still lived. As long as he still existed in the world. That was all Damon needed. He’d always known that he could never have him. He just needed him to be okay. To be happy. To have the life he deserved.
“I…I don’t…” Bonnie definitely faltered there. She hadn’t even let herself consider that before. Time travel was so far against the rules that her mind hadn’t even dared. Granted, trying to bring him back the way she did was way against the rules too, hence why her mother had burned his body so she couldn’t. Something she would never forgive her for. But time travel was worse.
“I can save him, Bonnie. I promise you, I will,” Damon said earnestly as he took her hands. “He was my best friend. I would do /anything/ to bring him back. To give him the happiness he deserves. To give you /both/ that happiness.”
“I-I’ll see what I can find,” Bonnie promised. “It might take a while for me to find and/or write a spell, but I’ll do my best.”
“That’s all I can ask,” Damon said relieved. He had hope now. Something that he hadn’t a little while ago. Hope was usually Enzo’s specialty, but since he wasn’t here, Damon would take it up. For now. He just knew that he couldn’t live the rest of his life as a human. Doomed to die in a few short decades, assuming he survived that long in the first place which wasn’t a given. And worse, he would have to live it in hiding anyway. It would barely have been worth it for the perfect life with Elena if she’d been all he’d hoped she was. It definitely wasn’t worth it alone. Not by a long shot. Nor was it worth it to be her puppet.
“I should go get started looking,” Bonnie decided. Now that the idea was in her head, she was impatient and eager to get started. “But not a word to anyone,” she said seriously. She wasn’t going to risk being stopped again. “If certain people find out, they’ll stop me by any means necessary.”
“Mums the word,” Damon promised. He wasn’t going to take that risk either. It was all he could do not to rip her mother’s head off when she burned Enzo’s body and prevented her from bringing him back then. The only reason he didn’t was for Bonnie’s sake. If Bonnie wanted her dead for it, which came very close, he would have done it so she didn’t have to, but it was her choice. “Just remember I’m on a timeclock now,” he felt the need to add.
“Yeah, don’t go getting yourself killed before I figure this out,” Bonnie snorted amusedly. “I’m almost tempted to lock you up downstairs so you can’t do anything stupid,” she joked.
“No need to get drastic. I’ll be careful. Promise,” Damon huffed a laugh. He wouldn’t risk screwing this up for anything. He didn’t even plan to leave the house. As long as it could be done in the next few weeks. He didn’t think he could stand being cooped up longer than that, but hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.