Resurrection | Damon Salvatore [2] DISCONTINUED

Chapter Two

   In the back of the store, Helena had an office with personal grimoires and a photo book that Damon found more interesting. He grabbed it from the shelf and took a seat on the desk, immediately passing to the first page. It was a book filled with family pictures, beginning from the Sixties. Damon saw a young Freya, and stopped at that page just to press his fingers against the page. She looked so alive, so happy, with nothing to worry about. 

   Each page he passed showed another scene of the Beauchene family, smiles and laughter and little moments in their life in which Damon was not in. Birthdays, reunions, school plays and school projects, vacations, little moments in which seemed perfect for a picture. The vampire let out little smiles, little laughs, imagining those moments in which Freya was alive and present in those moments. He let out a sigh as he realised that she was supposed to be dead, six feet underground, bones and dust. If not, she was supposed to be an elderly woman with great-grandchildren and needed help to move around. She wasn't supposed to be resurrected; she didn't need to suffer again.

   Damon sighed and straightened his back, laying the book on the desk. "You've been watching me for ten minutes," he said, turning his head to look at Helena on the doorway. "What is it?"

   "Why are you here?" she asked with curiosity in her tone, taking a step inside the office. "I told you to never show your face in front of me again."

   "Well, I wan't planning on seeing you again," he responded with a sigh. "You aren't exactly the person I was wanting to see when I came back to Provincetown."

   Helena glared at him, shaking her head. He could see that she was looking for words to say, something to yell at him. For a moment, he was expecting for her to march over to him and slap him, but all she did was sigh and take a seat on top of the desk. She looked down at the book and let a smile break on her lips. "This was on her fifteenth birthday," she said, lifting the book for her to get a closer look. "July 6th, 1968, Wednesday. It was hot and we decided to spend the day at the pool. Afterwards, when we got home, Ioanna gave her a homemade cake. It was chocolate with pink frosting and Happy Birthday written in pink. A simple cake, but she loved it!"

   "She told me about that day," Damon mumbled, looking down at the picture when Helena put down the book. "She said she almost made Frederick drown."

   Helena let out a short laugh, one that was a mixture of enjoyment and sadness. "It was an accident," she said. "She hadn't grown into her power, and we didn't know how powerful could she be. It turned out that Freya was just as strong as Ioanna, if not stronger."

   "Ioanna was strong," he said, recalling the day he found out about her being a witch. "She praised Ioanna for her strength whenever she spoke about being a witch. When I complimented her on something, she would say that she was better."

   The witch nodded, her smile spreading into a grin. "Ioanna was one of the most powerful witches that I have ever witnessed," she said. "She had the power of twenty witches combined, like a tornado that destroyed everything in its path. Freya was just like her, strong and fierce and took shit from no one. I think you became a part of her the moment you two met, you became her strength, her fierceness, and her power. And it sounds silly, but you made her grow into herself, become the happiest that I have ever seen."

   "You don't hate me?" he asked, raising a brow. "You don't hate me because I'm a vampire?"

   "I don't hate you because you're a vampire," she said, quietly. "I hate you because you shut everything down the moment she died. Ioanna told you to be stronger, I told you to be stronger, but you shut everything down."

   Damon let out a chuckle and shook his head. "So, you kept tabs on me?"

   "We all did," she responded with a sigh, standing from the desk and walking over to the other side of the room. There was a small bar there, with drinks from all over the world. She served two glasses, then handed one to Damon. When he took a sip, he knew the taste too well to figure out that it was bourbon. "But, we lost you sometime around 1984."

   "Yeah, I was in one of those binges where I turned off my humanity and did whatever the hell I wanted," he explained with a smile. "Sorry."

   "I don't blame you," she said, laying her feet on top of the desk as soon as she took a seat. "I wish I could turn off my emotions, stop myself from feeling all of this pain."

   Damon watched her, curious. He laid the glass on the desk and leaned forward, scratching his chin. "Where's... Uh, where's everyone else?"

   "Ioanna died in 2004," she said with sadness in her tone. "Arthur followed a few days later. Rohan and Thomas are living in Maine; she stopped doing magic after Freya's death. They have a big family, seven children, around twenty-three grand children, and six great-grandchildren. Frederick is still alive, used the same spell as me to stop himself from ageing. I don't know where he is, but he needs to know that Freya was resurrected."

   "Locator spell," the vampire said with a shrug of his shoulder. "Either that or months looking through a phone book."

   "You think I haven't tried a locator spell?" she huffed and rolled her eyes. "He's hiding from me, Damon. He doesn't want to be found!"

   "He doesn't know Bonnie," he responded, grabbing the book filled with pictures. He took the picture that held a photo of Freya and Frederick, and pushed it in his back pocket. "When we get to New Orleans, I'll have her do a locator spell on him. If we find him, well, I'll look for a way to contact him. We have a Bennett witch with us, I don't think he'll be expecting that."

   Helena stared at him for a couple of seconds. "How can you still care for us after so long?" she asked, shaking her head.

   "Because of Freya," he said, then downed the rest of the drink. "We'll need to get going if we want to make it to New Orleans in the next few days."

   "It takes twenty-three hours to make it to New Orleans," Helena said as she followed him out of the office. Bonnie and Stefan were standing by a table, the same one where Helena and Bonnie did the spell. "If you need more ingredients for spells, grab them now, Bonnie. If you need blood..." She glanced at Stefan and then at Damon. "Well, you're gonna have to go to a blood bank because I'm not sharing any of mine."

   Stefan let out a chuckle and nodded. "We're not, uh, thirsty. But, thanks."

   "I told you her jokes were the worst," Damon said, shaking his head.

   Helena smacked him in the back of the head as she walked by, then grinned when she took a stand by Bonnie. The two witches began to grab what Bonnie would need on their trip. Free ingredients was a blessing, considering that there were a few that were too expensive and were sold only through special connections. What surprised Damon the most was when he saw vervain sitting in a tub as if they roses. He passed by them, not wanting to get burned because he was curious. While Bonnie and Helena got what they needed, he and Stefan decided to go to the closest gas station to refill the tank.

   "Can I ask you something?" Stefan asked, glancing at his brother with an arm resting on the window. "Where's Elena?"

   Damon let out a sigh and shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know," he truthfully answered. "She broke it off with me when she realised that I still thought about a dead girl that's now not so dead. The last time I spoke to her was before I left."

   Stefan nodded. "You have no idea where she is now."

   "I compelled her to forget about me," the vampire responded with another sigh. "She's human, Stefan, and I can't give her everything she wants now. She wants a life, a future, a family. I can't give her that."

   "And you think you can give it to Freya?"

   Damon stopped thinking for a moment, letting his brothers' words sink in. He didn't think about the possibility of that, because all he was thinking about was being with Freya. The vampire bit the corner of his lip and sighed, shaking his head. "I'm not going down there to be with Freya, Stefan," he confessed, his chest aching. "I know that I can't have everything I wanted with her; I've known ever since I met her in 1976. I'm going to New Orleans because I need to save her." He glanced over at his brother and gave him a small smile. "I couldn't save her before, but maybe I can save her this time."