Emma Sommers

Amara

Enzo POV:

Thank God, Klaus was nearly done prepping for this cursed sacrifice. I didn't know how much longer I could keep living like this. Not that I should be complaining, Amara had it worse, she had it far worse than anyone should have.

I know we were doing this for Emma, so her niece could escape a fate she did not deserve but that didn't mean Amara deserved it any more than she did. She had already suffered for centuries, more than that actually nearly 2,000 years had passed of a never-ending nightmare for her. All because some pathetic excuse for a man seduced his fiancé's handmaiden. She never had a chance but still, she is punished harsher than Silas, having to experience every supernatural death while he just dries out and slumbers.

Useless Prick.

It was hard for me not to relate to her, I spent years feeling sorry for myself... 50 plus years of torture and captivity, like I was the first and only person who ever had something terrible happen to them but compared to Amara those fifty years would be nothing more than a blip. and all she wants now is just for it all to be over, to finally rest and be at peace.

She deserved it and god did I want to give it to her, to help her end things on her terms but still Damon and I kept intervening, preventing her every desperate attempts at escape.

I was beginning to feel more and more like my Augustine captors, a comparison that made me sick to my stomach.

"What's wrong with you?" Damon asks finding me after Klaus has left.

"Not a thing, mate," I tell him but he tilts his head at me clearly not believing a word out of my mouth.

"Almost at the finish line here, you should be ecstatic," he tells me.

"Yeah, ecstatic that the woman we've been guarding and keeping prisoner for over a year is soon to be sacrificed, can't wait," I tell him dryly.

He comes closer to me searching for something on my face I'm sure isn't there.

"Oh, son of a bitch," he complains, some sort of realization coming over him.

"What?" I ask.

"You like her, you went ahead and developed feelings for the crazy pants suicidal doomed sacrificial lamb, what the hell were you thinking?!" he shouts at me.

I shake my head, no he's wrong, it's not that.

"No, alright, I'm just capable of basic empathy unlike you," I argue.

"Please, take it from a guy who also once fell for that face, it's only gonna end in heartbreak," he warns me.

"Trust me I know how this ends, alright, you don't have to remind me," I tell him.

"No? Then I guess I also don't have to remind you who we are doing all this for," he tells me.

"I'm well aware, relax, not going to do anything stupid," I tell him.

He scrutinizes me for another beat before choosing to believe me, "better not," he says before leaving me alone.

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It had been a week since Klaus visited us and still, I could get Damon's words out of my head.

I tried arguing with it but every time I had to chase her down and she'd look up at me with those big doe eyes swimming in unshed tears it became harder and harder to deny.

We had made it through another day when I went and sought out Damon.

I poured myself a drink and took a seat by him in the living room.

Staring into the fire, I avoided his eye line as I finally let the truth tumble out of me, "I think you might have been right... about... Amara and my feelings for her," I admit.

"No shit, Sherlock," Damon says sounding like he saw it coming from a mile away. 

I finish my drink and he holds out a mostly full bottle for me to top myself up with.

I accept the bourbon and pour myself another glass.

"Question is, what are you going to do about it?" he asks.

"Nothing," I sigh, "you and I both know how this ends. Hell, it's how she wants it to end as well but I want her to find peace before it happens, she deserves at least that," I explain to him.

"Any idea how you're gonna achieve that?" Damon asks mildly curious as this past year had been the furthest thing from peace he and I had experienced in some time.

"Elena," I tell him.

"What?" Damon asks halting his own drink mid-air and narrowing his eyes at me a bit.

"I think it would help if she could meet who this is all for, see who she would be saving in order to hold on a bit longer," I explain. 

"Are you insane?!" Damon exclaims.

"Listen," I say trying to explain further but Damon quickly cuts me off.

"No, you listen, you are not bringing Emma's little niece here. A, the kid knows zip about the supernatural. B, how exactly are you gonna explain a grown woman having her exact face yet somehow only being 9 years older than her?" he asks before tilting his head at me.

"Unless you were going to go with the truth that she was born around the year 100?" he asks as if it would be preposterous.

"Lastly, Amara isn't exactly the most stable person to be interacting with an innocent child and there is no way in hell Emma will ever agree to it. I mean Vincent Van Gogh only saw the gravestone of his stillborn baby brother, born a year earlier with the same name, and it screwed him up so much he later cut off his ear... you want Elena to interact with a suicidal copy of herself that is going to die so she might live and somehow have that not permanently scar her?" he asks me.

"She needs a reason to hang on, just telling her about Elena is too much of an abstract concept, she needs to see her, even if it's from afar, we need to make Elena real to her," I argue.

"Please, Damon. I haven't felt this way since Maggie and she died before I could... point is she's gone and Amara will be soon as well at least help me give her last days more meaning than Maggie had... still can't believe I lost her to a run of a mill slip and fall," I tell him.

He's quiet, something a little uncommon for my old friend to be but clearly he has something on his mind.

When he catches me watching him he seems to snap out of it.

"I'll talk to her, Emma," he tells me.

"You will?" I ask surprised by this sudden 180.

"No promises and I don't see her agreeing to this but yeah... I'll see what I can do," he tells me.

"Thank you, my friend," I tell him and for the briefest moment, I swear I catch a flash of guilt come across his face but just as quickly it disappears and I'm left doubting if I ever saw it in the first place.