Hurt and Heal

Fight

Damon had a headache. His skull felt overflowing and as if someone was drilling through it. He also felt sick to his stomach. It was clear: he hated being human more than anything else in the world. And it just had to be the day of their great plan – "Kill Trotter" – the name needed work, but the plan was good enough. Bonnie had pieced it up together with him last night so it had to work out. Now if only he could turn vampire again, but he couldn't. Caroline had been kind enough to try it, then Klaus too and he just couldn't keep the blood down, hence he couldn't fucking turn back!

A low groan slipped past his lips as the incessant throbbing in his skull reached new pitches, his hands tightened and he could feel the bones cracking and the tiny jolts of pain shooting through his body as he made himself bleed. Once upon a time – Fucking YESTERDAY! – that kind of pain was no even registered, now he could feel it through him and it just angered him further. Klaus was next to him, nursing a glass of very fine whiskey and frowning in worry. He might have had a point there, considering that what they'd face was for all intents and purposes a monster, but Damon couldn't find it in him care enough about his soon-to-be-dead prospect. He was human. And he hated it!

He looked at the door of the boarding house as it burst open and in came Blondie accompanied by Bonnie Bennett. He was about to make one of his usual jabs when he saw what she was holding in her arms. He'd known, for a while actually, what rituals employed, but never in his relatively long life had he ever imagined that he would see the Bennett witch, the thorn in his side with her righteous attitude and perpetual disapproval of all things bad, carrying a human skull, a few years old at most, a jar full, fresh and still warm, worth of human and goat blood and another jar of ... whatever insects those were. Those items, in combination to the already installed cauldron in his library, spelled danger, and darkness, and unnatural use of magic, and power beyond belief. If the witch got this spell – ritual, whatever – right, then he was not above begging her to marry him. Strong, bitchy women seemed to be his type after all. A flash of Katherine's vampire face, from back in 1864, her eyes red her mouth bloody as he kissed her caused his equilibrium to shift momentarily and his heart to ache once more. Katherine's dead...

"Damon! You with us or still mentally murdering someone?!" he hears a voice, snappy and sarcastic, yell in his direction and turns to see Caroline, hands on her hips, scowl of worry on her face, teary eyes almost running and with the fiercest determination that he has ever seen. He remembers wondering, in those months after the 'cut in half, but not quite' incident why he had even entertained the idea of being friends with her, but this, this image of fear being conquered and then pure will power chasing the enemy away, is exactly why. She is a small thing, weak and frail and full of sunshine – no, Klaus, you didn't patent the expression! I can still use it! – but she is a hellfire when she wants to be.

"I'm here." He grumbles, still angry about his 'condition', but more than willing to aid them in this nigh suicidal mission. Bonnie starts explaining the ritual again, in full detail. It involves Klaus and Caroline standing in the hexagram while she chants and does some shit or another with those ingredients she's gathered there. He is supposed to have been the one making sure the witch lives so all of them could too, and while that's still the case, the premise had changed a bit. Instead of betting on his vampire power and speed, now they count on his soldier training, century and a half worth of Intel on how to kill and sheer luck. Maybe one of them can make it out of this alive, because he sure as hell doesn't have any prospects. He might just write his testament down now. 'I leave my alcohol collection to my best buddy Alaric, should he ever return to the land of sanity, my wonderful tub to Blondie and my car to no one. Bon-bon gets to keep my underwear drawer blah and blah and blah.' He didn't have many possessions to give after he died, why would he have?