Forever Is Not Enough

The Man in the Cart

1864 - Virginia

On a particularly cold day in December, a squeaking wagon made its way over the uneven roads as it traveled toward the small town of Mystic Falls. Before, the old rattletrap had been used to cart away bodies and injured men from the battlefield. If one were looked closely, they might have noticed the faint bloodstains on the floor and sides. Someone else might still be able to smell the metallic scent of vomit that had sunken into the cracks of the old wood and festered. One gifted with those supernatural abilities of seeing and hearing beyond might even hear the screams of men grasping at limbs that they would soon lose. Or perhaps they would only hear the stillness of death, or a limp hand dragging through the dirt and mud as the wagon headed back to camp.

It was unlike any of those days, though, when Alaric Saltzman looked sadly at his best friend who lay limp across the length of the cart. He was dressed in full uniform, and looked much worse than when he first arrived. Now, the soft gray fabric was stained around his midsection and Ric worried for the hundredth time whether or not that stain was smaller when they left camp. Dirt and liquor also stained his clothes. His face looked sunken in, even though his body looked harder and broader than before. His skin was pale, and maybe even a bit yellowed, but Ric couldn't tell if that was because he had looked at him for so long. Instead of wide, curious eyes trying to see everything around him, or looking at something unseen to everyone else, in a dream, perhaps, they looked as though they were fighting to stay open. The red veins of sickness and fatigue had dulled the sharp blue of his irises. His eyebrows were drawn together in discomfort, revealing the dirt stuck in the creases of his skin.

Ric spoke to the man driving the wagon. "How much longer?"

"The town is on the horizon," the man replied. "We'll be there before nightfall."

Ric sighed with relief and he relaxed a little. When they left a week ago, Damon still had a hole shot through his abdomen, but he was laughing and talking. The doctors and nurses, who were incompetent in treating anything in any way other than sawing wounded limbs from bodies, rejoiced when they saw Damon survive his injury. They fed him cheap liquor and he allowed them to dig the bullet from his belly. Still, he was unwell, and although they said if he lived, he might fight again, they were more concerned about the fight already ahead of him.

Under Elijah's authority, Damon was granted furlough, where he would be allowed to recuperate at home, thus saving the Confederacy much-needed supplies and food, and allowing him to die with his loved ones if things went badly. Ric was given the mission of delivering Damon to his family, along with his furlough papers. A week ago, Damon would joke about how this living situation was worse than the one at camp, but now he couldn't even form coherent thoughts.

While Ric worried about of his friend's deterioration, Damon's mind ventured into other galaxies. He thought of his mother and how she detested the cold weather. He imagined her coming down from the heavens and wrapping arms made of sunlight around him, but then he would come back to reality and realize it was just his fever. Sometimes he would slip further into the depths of sickness and imagined the cold trying to penetrate his skin was his father, and he was struck with the question of whether his father was trying to use the cold to break his fever or if he was just trying to finish him off.

Elijah's words bounced around his brain. "It's odd that you ended up here." Wasn't it, though? It struck him at that moment that everywhere he had ended up in his life had been odd.

Of course, his thoughts often drifted to Elena as well, whom he realized, when he was coherent enough, was getting closer with every dull thud of his heart. When he was at his most delirious, and no longer had the mental strength to exercise that precise control over himself, his mind would wander to places he had never allowed it to go. He would find himself thinking of her billowing skirts and how he would like to slide his hand up into them and see what he could find. Other times he could picture her standing in front of him as he undid her corset stings, watching her relax a little with every move he made until it was just the bare skin of her back showing. His mind would wander to other things, like the night she visited him in her night-dress and he liked to think of the way it would fall to the floor, leaving her standing there, completely open to him. He could picture the blush on her cheeks perfectly. He could see every bump on her skin rise from the cold touching her. God, he wished he could touch her, if only to hold her hand. The thought made his heart stutter.

Ric leaned down from his place on the bench to put a hand on Damon's shoulder. "We're almost there, kid," he said. "Damon? Can you hear me?"

Elena looked up impatiently from her book and towards the window, biting down on her lower lip. Since Katherine had delivered the news of Damon's injury and impending return two weeks ago, she had not been able to keep her eyes from the window. Even though she didn't know where he was, she knew Damon was not far away. She could only reassure herself by reminding herself that she would see him soon. There was a mix of anxiety and joy inside of her. Although Damon was coming home, he had been injured in a way that many men did not survive. His survival for this long had already been a miracle, in fact, and now the only thing anyone could do was wait to see if he made the trip home.

When she first heard the news, she wanted to go wait by the road that entered town so she would be the first to see him, but both Katherine and John had forbade her from doing any such thing. Instead, she found excuses to do activities near the front of the house, so she would always be close by a window should he return that second.

The window she gazed from that day actually faced the back of the house and now she only looked there out of habit. Katherine had shooed her out of the parlor earlier, and so she joined Stefan, where she could freely worry and fidget.

He followed her gaze and shut his book softly. "Won't be long now," he said.

"You think I don't know that?" she snapped. Immediately, she wished she could take it back, but she had been on edge like this for a long time. Stefan was growing used to it.

"I just wish you would stop worrying," he said. "It only makes it worse for you."

"What if he doesn't make it?" she said, her voice becoming shaky. "What if he doesn't survive the trip? It's too cold out and he's already suffering."

"He's survived this long."

It wasn't a new argument they were having. They'd gone over it many times, but each time they both grew quiet in stalemate. Each was worried about the same thing, but only Elena was brave enough to admit it. Just as she opened her mouth to say something else, there was a knock at the front door. Stefan threw his quilt off, but Elena stood to stop him. "You've been attacked, remember?" she said, eyeing the bandage on his neck where nothing but clean skin and useless ointment hid.

He sat down with a huff, but she didn't turn to see his dirty look as she flew down the stairs, holding the rail with both hands so as not to fall. Katherine had appeared behind her at some point, but she didn't care. She threw open the door only to find the face of a stranger, not Damon. "Hello," he said, awkwardly. "I'm Private Saltzman. I was assigned to escort Private Salvatore from our camp."

The man was attractive. He was older than Damon, but more ruggedly handsome. Elena looked him up and down for a moment, expecting him to show her where he was, but when he only stood there, she shoved past him and towards the wagon. Somewhere in the back of her mind she heard Katherine apologizing for her behavior.

Damon sat with his eyes closed and his legs hanging off the back of the cart. His head leaned against the wood that held up the cover fabric. She gasped audibly at the sight of him. Aside from being shot, he looked sickly and malnourished. His body had changed since before he had been shot, and was slowly shrinking from lack of food. Tears came to her eyes and she realized everything he had told to her in his letters was a lie to appease her worry. He knew she would have been upset if he had told her of the conditions he was really facing.

She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him, kissing him on the cheek and burying her face his neck. She could only do it for a moment, lest she get into trouble, but she had to make sure he was really there.

Even though he was unaware any of this was even real, he wrapped his arms around her as tightly as he could manage. The scent of lemongrass and clean linen filled his nose. He felt tears well up in his eyes as he grasped at this illusion, wishing so desperately for it to be real. All he could hear were her quiet assurances, but he had heard them so many times in the past few days he could only brace himself for her to fall away into his subconscious, leaving him to be awakened by the bitter cold and harsh sunlight. "Damon?" he heard. "You'll be just fine now, Damon. You're home."

And just in case it wasn't just his imagination and just because he was so desperate to say it, he tried to focus on her beyond his spotty vision. "I love you, Elena. I hope you didn't forget that I love you so."