Author's note: Whoa. New story. I don't anticipate this one being super-long…perhaps four chapters or so. I know I still have a kind-of-canon season 6 story going, and I promise I'll get back to it. It's just kind of a complex plot to be working on mid-deadline. As for this one – it's just kind of one of those plot bunnies that just won't go away, so I gave in.

This is the prologue. If y'all have read many of my stories, y'all know the drill. Prologue = short. The next chapters will be longer.

Warnings: angst, alcohol use, mild language, possible character death

I don't own TVD. I just borrow the characters on occasion. I'll put them back later, I promise.

Damon stared into her face. The face that he'd dreamed about every night over the last four months. The memory of that face had filled his every waking moment. He stared at her face as she stood in the hallway, one hand on the door, the not-quite relaxed at her side.

His eyes met hers.

Those endless depths. Pools of liquid chocolate. In what seemed like a lifetime ago, he'd watched the pupils dilate as she rode a wave of ecstasy beneath him. He'd seen those same eyes narrow to slits, casting daggers of anger in his direction. Those eyes had looked at him with so much love and desire and pleading, he'd turned into a different person from who he'd been when he arrived in Mystic Falls.

But now?

Nothing.

As he looked into her eyes, he saw nothing reflected back. Instead of love or adoration or even hate – she was looking at him with the same blankness that she might use when passing a stranger at the corner.

But she wasn't gone. She hadn't turned it off. He'd seen the spark of life when she'd spoken to future-doctor-cocky-pants. He'd watched her anger flare when he'd taken the opportunity to compel the annoying gnat into going and getting her a drink, her least favorite, he had to admit. And he'd seen the momentary look of desperation right before she almost killed herself in an effort to undo the damage she'd done to herself by choice.

She didn't almost kill herself to remember him. She just wanted to fix things. She didn't remember how much she'd loved him. She wasn't suffering.

Tonight he'd seen the glimmer of the promise of what her future would have been like if he and Stefan had never come to Mystic Falls. He'd seen what her life might have been like without Katherine's involvement. If she'd grown up, the child of privilege, following in her father's footsteps.

She had a future without him.

Even if he couldn't see one without her.

So he did what he had to do. He listened to her question. He heard the almost pleading edge to her voice, asking what happened that night. What happened on the very best night of his very long life. She was begging to know the answer.

And he lied to her face.

For an instant, a shadow of suspicion colored her eyes. But then it was gone. Just like she disappeared through the doorway.

He turned, knowing this would be the last time he'd walk down this hallway. He passed the pay phone she must have used the day Katherine had almost killed her. He looked beyond the hallway where she killed Jesse to save his life. He deliberately dodged the bottom two stairs where they once shared a very memorable goodbye when he'd driven up to surprise her one night she sounded homesick.

As he walked through her dorm which held a surprising number of memories for him, he knew it held none for her…or at least none of the real ones.

And it never would.

Elena quietly shut the door behind her, knowing her attempt was a lost cause. When your roommate was a vampire, the whole concept of sneaking in past curfew was a lost cause, even if you could compel the monitor at the front door to forget the rule infraction.

Sneaking wasn't necessary, though.

Caroline sat on the edge of her bed, staring into the last glowing embers in the fireplace. Without turning to look at Elena, she spoke in little more than a whisper. "Liam came by."

"Oh."

"He was worried."

"Oh."

Caroline spun to face her. Elena had been prepared to see a flash of anger. A flare of the Caroline-Forbes-fire she remembered so distinctly from high school. But there was nothing. "He was worried about you. He said you started acting funny when Damon showed up. He thought Damon might have made you do something you didn't want to do."

A surge of guilt flowed through her. Elena hadn't even thought to explain what happened between her and Damon to Liam. She just wanted to leave, and they left. Trying to explain why she was ducking out on the mandatory event with a guy she'd said was dead and now showed up, expecting her to be overjoyed, but she actually didn't remember…it was just exhausting as it sounded. And so she'd just left without saying a word.

"What did you tell him?"

Caroline paused, staring down at her hands, shifting uncomfortably as she considered her words. "I told him Damon wouldn't do anything to hurt you."

Elena bit back the words of surprise that threatened to explode out of her. For a moment, she wondered if Alaric had compelled Caroline too. "How do you know that?"

"Because it's Damon. And you're you."

"What does that even mean?" Elena felt the same panic welling up inside of her that she'd felt earlier that night on the Mystic Falls border.

"It means…." Caroline's teeth clamped down on her lip. "It means it's a long story." She met Elena's eyes with a look that begged her not to have to explain anything more. "Where did you go?"

"I needed some air."

"For three hours?"

"We went for a drive."

"And?" Caroline's eyes looked strangely hopeful.

"And." Part of Elena wanted to tell her what she'd done. What she'd almost done. She wanted to let Caroline know just how desperate she was…that she'd marched across the town boundary and almost drowned in her attempt to bring the memories back. But then she studied Caroline's face and saw the depth of sadness already there, and she knew that somehow…in some way…she was the one who caused it. And that made her think about Damon.

And the words he'd said to her at the door.

At the way he'd lied to her face.

The depth of sadness in his eyes.

She couldn't hurt Caroline tonight too.

"And nothing." She lied. "I didn't feel anything."

From here on out, the chapters will be longer. Thanks for reading! If all goes well, chapter one will go up tomorrow.