Kismet | Damon Salvatore

Chapter 16

Damon was stressed.

He was having the hardest time figuring out how the hell he was going to salvage as much of her journal as possible. They'd done their best to dry the pages, but some were stuck together, others were completely wiped clean because of the chemicals, and a few had smudged so badly, the numbers and letters were completely lopsided.

He wished he'd paid more attention to Maribel's rants. Maybe if he had, he could remember everything she'd said perfectly. Maybe he could remember the numbers she shot out.

He transitioned to trying to fix the tape recorder. He forced Kai do to every spell he possibly knew to dry the tape and reverse the damage. Kai made his efforts, and some parts were able to be heard clearly, but not all.

He spent the night writing down everything he managed to understand Maribel saying in the tape, marking an asterisk next to words he knew he probably spelled wrong. Any number he could find, he'd circle for her to access easily. If she mentioned any 'law' or 'principle,' he underlined it so she could reference it again.

Sometimes he found himself smiling when she went off on a tangent talking about unrelated things, such as how Meredith would react if she could see her doing all this research in this prison world, day after day. How her mother would laugh if she saw her tending to a silly little garden in the backyard.

Hearing her voice even when it was garbled made him feel relaxed. Ever so often he'd stop the tape and listen upstairs, glad whenever he perceived a steady heartbeat as she tried to sleep.

"So, when's she gonna come out of her room again?" asked Kai as he devoured some pancakes Damon had made for himself and Bonnie.

Bonnie stared at him from across the table. "I don't know. And it's polite not to ask. She'll come out when she's ready."

"Well... we still need to get out of here. What are you doing to fix that?"

"I'm doing my research. And I'm going to be teaching her magic theory, too, so she can try and focus on something else. She's good at creating things, good at seeing patterns. She may be able to transfer her intelligence to this new topic and create the spell herself if I can't find it."

"Here," said Damon, offering a plate of pancakes. "She needs to eat."

"I'll take it to her, but I can't guarantee she'll touch them."

"You better make her touch them. She can't starve herself."

"I'm trying, Damon. Let me handle it."

"Well handle it better!"

Kai watched with great interest as Bonnie glared at Damon, who tried to turn away and withdraw from the conversation. "Genuine question," he said slyly, "but who's Maribel angrier at? Me or Damon?"

"She's mad at both of you," snapped Bonnie. "Don't think you're her favorite at all.

"Okay," said Kai with a smirk, finishing his last pancake.

Damon dragged him back to the garage after he ate, demanding he make several more tries to dry the journal or at least attempt to undo the damage. He finished transcribing the rest of the tape, managing to get a full five pages of things she'd said before it really did get too messed up to understand.

"That's the best I can do," said Kai, tossing the journal to him. "It's completely dry but I can't put the words back and I can't unstick the pages."

Unhappily, Damon started another page and transcribed everything he could gather from the journal, repeating the same process he did with the tapes of circling numbers and underlining important concepts.