You Once Loved Me

Something Blonde This Way Comes

Thal's P.O.V

It's been ten years since we got engaged. Ten years since my brother had a child. Ten years regrettably since I've seen that child. Rebekah sends me photos sometimes. She'll text them to me and I'll smile with a twinge of sadness. Not seeing my brother hadn't been quite a choice of passion. Damon and I had moved to Italy and Klaus was in the states, though I suppose if either of us had spent the least effort we could have seen each other. I wouldn't say I was still angry with him, my grudges never lasted long, but he hadn't exactly been forgiven either. At least not without some admittance of wrongdoing. For the time being I was perfectly adjusted to our life in Italy, Damon and I learned Italian together and had a small villa in the countryside.

We would see Stefan occasionally, he would come visit with Caroline, at least once a month. They lived in an apartment in the U.K. down the street from the university where Rick lived and worked with the twins. We'd been up there a few times, the girls were adorable, and referred to me as their favorite aunt which annoyed Bonnie to no end. It was inevitable though, Bonnie had stayed in the states and we would only see her maybe once a year, twice if we were lucky. She'd gotten married and had a toddler to take care of now. By our last phone call, it sounded like this was going to keep her from coming up at all this year.

"Whatcha thinking about?" Damon asked, I hadn't noticed him come into the room and jumped turning around.

"Oh, just about Bonnie. She says she may not be able to make it up this year for thanksgiving." I frowned. "I was thinking maybe we could bring the party to her? At least the two of us?" I said with a shrug as I placed a cleaned dish into the cabinet. Damon studied me for a moment, his ocean blue eyes searching my face.

"That sounds nice. I think Stefan and Caroline could get the time off as well." He took a dish from the rack as well and put it in the cabinet. "While we're there we could stop by Dallas" I stopped at his words. Dallas was where my brother was... not just him, but Rebekah and Elijah were there as well.

"Dallas isn't necessarily next door to Orlando." I replied, putting a wine glass into the china cabinet.

"It's closer than Italy though." Damon sighed and leaned against the counter continuing to look at me. "Babe, you can't ignore him forever. Believe me... brothers tend to stick around like a bad smell." The corner of Damon's mouth lifted. "And we could just make a huge trip of it. You know? Visit Klaus, Bonnie and... even Mystic Falls." He wiggled his eyebrows and I laughed.

"Alright... I guess, Mystic Falls first or last?" I asked as I put away the last of the dishes.

"Hmm, I'll check the flights." Damon pulled out his phone. We fell silent for a moment as I watched him. His eyes seemed zeroed in on the screen and unaware of the things around him. We'd gotten used to completely dropping our guard while in the house. It seemed to be a side effect of a decade of easy living. "How was the show?" His words startled me again and it took me a moment to register his question.

"It was good, I didn't win though." I had taken up painting. My brother seemed to enjoy it so much that I decided to try as well, and I wasn't half bad. Those were Damon's words of course, I hadn't won a competition yet, so I put that to his inherent bias.

"I'll have to compel them next time." He said without looking up. I smiled and wrapped my arms around his waist. He let one hand off his phone for a moment to put his arm around me before going back to looking up flight schedules. We were silent again before I remembered something.

"Oh! I met someone there." I looked up at Damon who frowned. "Not someone bad... well I'm not sure. She says she knew you from when you were human." Damon put his phone away and turned his full attention to me.