Forever

The next thing I remember is waking up to see Elena’s face hovering over me. “Rena, you’re awake! Can you walk? Hurry up, we have to go!” were the first words out of her mouth.

“Go where?” I asked groggily, sitting up slowly.

“To find Stefan and Damon!” she said, grabbing onto me and pulling me up with both hands.

“Where-where are they?” I asked, still a bit fuzzy on the details.

“Dupree’s witch put a spell on him, and he kind of just… vanished… with Damon. And Stefan went to find them,” she said, tugging on my arm and pulling me toward the door. “There’s blood in my car that you can have. Come on!”



When we finally re-entered Mystic Falls, Elena pulled straight into the Salvatore house’s driveway. “Wait, why are we here? I thought we were looking for Damon and Stefan,” I said, and Elena shrugged.

“I don’t know. Stefan said that this is where Dupree would bring Damon… I don’t know why,” she said, and I didn’t question it.

“So are we just going to walk right in?” I asked, and before Elena could answer, I heard her let out a small gasp. I turned to see Dupree walking straight toward us.

“Ah hello, Serena, dear. Good of you to join us,” he said in his cold, hard voice. The moment his words reached my ears, chills erupted all over my body and the little hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

“Where is he?” I whispered, and a sinister smile spread across his face.

“Oh you mean your Salvatore? He’s fine… for now. As is yours, Elena. I decided to wait until you arrived to begin… playing with them,” Dupree smiled wider.

“Where is he?” I asked again in a louder voice, my cheeks quickly growing red with anger.

“He is safe. But if you keep using that tone toward me, I assure you that he won’t be,” Dupree said, and I shut my mouth at once. Something about the way he spoke told me that he completely meant every single word he said.

“Now if you’re done being snotty, follow me and I’ll take you to your precious Salvatores,” he said in a much less terrifying voice. He made a gesture toward the Salvatore house and began walking. Elena and I both followed at a safe distance behind him.

As soon as I walked into the house, the strong scent of vampire blood slapped me in the face. Something deep down inside of me told me that it was Damon’s. I followed the scent and found both Damon and Stefan sitting on the couch in the sitting room. Elena ran to Stefan and I ran straight to Damon.

“Serena! Oh, Rena, I thought you were dead… I don’t know what I would have done-” he began, but I put a finger to his lips to stop him.

“I’m here. I’m okay. What about you-” I began, and glanced down at his shirt and gasped. His shirt was completely saturated in blood. “Damon, what happened to you?” I asked, and he smiled down at me.

“I’m fine, sweetheart. It looks a lot worse than it was, it’s healing already. Really, I’m fine,” he said, lifting up his shirt to expose a deep cut that ran from his chest to his hipbone. He was right, it was almost healed already.

“What happened?” I asked, and he shook his head.

“It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that we’re both okay,” he said, pulling me close to him in a tight hug. “Listen close, Rena. Everything’s going to be okay. Bonnie’s going to kill him. She’s waiting outside somewhere with Caroline. They’re going to wait until the next time he goes outside and then she’s going to work some witchy spell on him and kill him. We’re going to be okay,” Damon said in barely a whisper, his face buried in my hair.

I nodded as we pulled apart and he very subtly winked and nodded back. He took my hand and sat me down on the couch. We sat in silence for just a few moments and then we heard footsteps on the stairs.

“Now,” Damon whispered, and with a look at him, I realized he wasn’t talking to me. He was talking to Caroline, wherever she was, outside.

In the next second, something that sounded like a rock hit the front door. I didn’t turn around to see him, but I heard Dupree continuing down the stairs and then opening the door. Then I heard Bonnie’s strong voice chanting from somewhere very nearby. It wasn’t until I heard Dupree begin yelling in pain and fall to the ground that I finally turned around. Dupree was curled in a ball just inside the door and Bonnie was standing right in front of him holding a thick book and chanting in a foreign language.

Damon stood up beside me, and despite my attempts to hold him back, walked over to stand above Dupree’s slowly dying body. “You don’t come into my town and start killing people and going after the ones I love without consequence. I’m not sorry,” he said, staring down at Dupree’s almost lifeless figure. Dupree made a move to grab Damon’s leg, but he wasn’t strong enough. With a final gasp, his figure stopped moving completely and Bonnie stopped chanting.

“He’s dead,” Bonnie said, and Stefan rose from the couch and walked over to the body, as if he needed to know for sure.

“He is dead,” Stefan said; as if to 100% confirm it to everyone else in the room.

“We need to bury him,” Damon said, and Stefan nodded. Without a word, together, they picked up the body and carried him out the front door.



Two hours later, I heard Damon’s car pulling into the driveway. Moments later, Stefan and Damon walked in the door. Damon came straight over to where I was sitting on the couch, grabbed my hand, and led me outside. He took me straight to the thick oak tree in the backyard and sat down under it. I mimicked his movements at once.

“Before you say anything, would you mind taking that shirt off? In all honesty, it kind of makes me uncomfortable,” I said, gesturing down to his severely bloodstained shirt.

“Oh yeah, sure,” he said without much thought. He slipped the shirt quickly over his head and when his gaze floated back up to my face, he saw the wide smile there and returned it.

“The blood didn’t bother you at all, did it?” he asked, and I shook my head with a laugh.

“Nope, I just like you better with your shirt off,” I said, and he laughed too.

“You know what? You’re gonna get it!” he shouted, jumping on top of me and knocking me flat onto my back, causing me to giggle uncontrollably.

“I love you,” he whispered, his face just centimeters above mine.

“I love you too, Damon,” I replied, leaning up just slightly so that I could kiss him.