You’re not alone! Oh, Damon, don’t you know that? I’ll never, ever let you be alone. Elena choked, wondering how to make him believe her. Just for a few more seconds…now.
Here, she sent in a telepathic whisper, I’ll give you my precious secret. I’ll never tell anyone else. Do you remember the motel we stayed in on our road trip, and how everyone — even you — wondered what happened that night?
A…motel? A road trip? He was sounding very unsure now. Oh…yes. I remember. And…the next morning — wondering.
Because Shinichi took your memories, Elena said, hoping that hateful name would revivify Damon. But it didn’t. Like Shinichi, Damon was done with the world now.
Elena leaned her cheek against his cold and bloody one. I held you, darling, just like this — well, almost like this. All night. That was all you wanted, to not feel alone.
There was a long pause and Elena began to panic in the few parts of her that were not numb or already hysterical. But then the words came slowly to her.
Thank you…Elena. Thank you…for telling me your precious secret.
Yes, and I’ll tell you something even more precious. No one is alone. Not really. No one is ever alone.
You’re with me…so warm…nothing to worry about anymore…
Nothing more, Elena promised him. And I’ll always be with you. No one is alone; I promise it.
Elena…things are beginning to feel strange now. Not pain. But I have to tell you…what I know you already know…. How I fell in love with you…you’ll remember, won’t you? You won’t forget me?
Forget you? How could I ever forget you?
But Damon was speaking on and suddenly Elena knew that he couldn’t hear her, not even by telepathy anymore.
Will you remember? For me? Just that…I loved once — just once, really, in my whole life. Can you remember that I loved you? That makes my life…worth… something… His voice faded.
Elena was so dizzy now. She knew she was still losing blood fast. Too fast. Her mind was not sharp. And she was suddenly shaken by a fresh storm of sobbing. At least she would never yell again — there was no one to yell at. Damon had gone away. He had run away without her.
She wanted to follow. Nothing was real. Didn’t he understand? She could not imagine a universe, no matter how many dimensions there were, without a Damon in it. There was no world for her, if there was no Damon.
He couldn’t do this to her.
Neither knowing nor caring what she was doing, she plunged deep, deep into Damon’s mind, wielding her telepathy like a sword, slashing at the wooden connections that she found everywhere. And, at last, she found herself plunging into the very deepest part of him…where a little boy, the metaphor for Damon’s unconscious, had once been loaded with chains and set to guard the great stone that Damon kept his feelings locked in.
Oh, God, he must be so frightened, she thought. Whatever the cost, he must not be allowed to go away frightened….
Now she saw him. The child-Damon. As always, she could see in the sweetly rounded face, the sharp-cheekboned young man that Damon would become, in the wide black eyes, the potential for his look of fathomless darkness.
But although he was not smiling, the child’s look was open and welcoming, in a way that Damon’s older self had never been. And the chains…the chains were gone. The great stone was gone too.
“I knew you’d come,” the boy whispered, and Elena took him into her arms.
Easy, Elena told herself. Easy. He’s not real. He’s what’s left of Damon’s mind, the deepest part of his hindbrain. But still, he’s even younger than Margaret, and he’s just as soft and warm. No matter what, please God, don’t let him know what’s really happening to him.
But there was knowledge in the wide, dark child eyes that turned up to her face.
“I’m so glad to see you,” he confided. “I thought that I might never talk to you again.
And — he — you know — he left some messages with me. I don’t think he could say anything more, so he sent them to me.”
Elena understood. If there was anywhere the wood had not reached, it was into this last part of the brain, the most primitive part. Damon still could speak to herthrough this infant.
But before she could speak herself, she saw that there were tears in the child’s eyes and then his body spasmed and he bit his lip very hard — to keep from crying out, she guessed.
“Does it hurt?” she asked, trying to believe that it didn’t. Desperate to believe it.
“Not so much.” But he was lying, she realized. Still, he hadn’t shed any tears. He had his pride, this child-Damon.
“I have a special message for you,” he said. “He told me to tell you that he’ll always be with you. And that you’re never alone. That no one is really alone.”
Elena clutched the child to her. Damon had understood, even in his dazed and confused state. Everyone was connected. No one was alone.
“And he asked something else. He asked if you would hold me, just like this — if I got sleepy.” Velvety dark eyes searched Elena’s face. “Would you do that?”
Elena tried to keep steady. “I’ll hold you,” she promised.
“And you won’t let go ever?”
“And I won’t let go ever,” Elena told him, because he was a child, and there was no point in frightening him if he had no fear. And because maybe this part of Damon — this small, innocent part — would have some kind of “forever.” She had heard that vampires didn’t come back, didn’t reincarnate the way humans did. The vampires in the top Dark Dimension were still “alive”—adventurers or fortuneseekers, or condemned there as a prison by the Celestial Court.
“I’ll hold you,” Elena promised again. “Forever and ever.”
Just then his small body went into another spasm, and she saw tears on his dark eyelashes, and blood on his lip. But before she could say a word, he added, “I have more messages. I know them by heart. But”—his eyes begged her forgiveness—“I have to give them to the others.”
What others? Elena thought at first, bewildered. Then she remembered. Stefan and Bonnie. There were other loved ones.
“I can…tell them for you,” she said hesitantly, and he gave a tiny smile, his first, just the corner of one lip up.
“He left me a little telepathy, too,” he said. “I kept it in case I had to call to you.”
Still fiercely independent, Elena thought. All she said was, “You go ahead, then.”
“The first one is for my brother, Stefan.”
“You can tell him in just a moment,” Elena said. She held on to the small boy in Damon’s soul, knowing that this was the last thing she had left to give him. She could sacrifice a few priceless seconds, so that Stefan and Bonnie could say their own good-byes. She made some sort of enormous adjustment to her real bodyher body outside Damon’s mind, and found herself opening her eyes, blinking and trying to focus.
She saw Stefan’s face, white and stricken. “Is he—?”
“No. But soon. He can hear telepathy, if you think clearly, as if you were speaking. He asked to talk to you.”
“To me?” Stefan bent down slowly and put his cheek against his brother’s. Elena shut her eyes again, guiding him down through the darkness to where one small light was still shining. She felt Stefan’s wonder as he saw her there, still holding the little dark-haired boy in her arms.
Elena hadn’t realized that through her link to the child, she would be able to hear every word spoken. Or that Damon’s messages would come in the words of a child.
The little boy said, “I guess you think I’m pretty stupid.”