AN: Here it is! The long-awaited epilogue. Appropriately, it takes place a year later! I just wanted to say, THANK YOU to everyone who has read, reviewed, favourite and/or alerted for this story. I hope you enjoyed it! Here it is

Sigh no more

BDBDBDBD

My heart was never pure – you know me.

It had been a year since everything changed.

Bonnie, outwardly, was surprised that it had lasted that long. When she laughed with Elena and Caroline over milkshakes at the Grille and they teased her about how drastically different things were, she played along. You used to hate him, Caroline would laugh and nudge her in the shoulder. Remember when you set him on fire? Elena would make a face. Outwardly, Bonnie would nod and agree – it's so weird that things are so... stable.

But inwardly, it was so easy. So simple. Like everything had clicked into place.

Sometimes, she still caught him looking at her like she was glowing – like she was humming with that special incantation that could pull his heart to beating. He had never looked at Elena like that, never Katherine. That look was reserved for her. His eyes weren't intense or wide – they were soft and focused. They didn't dart with premeditated plans, with calculations of who to kill and how and how fast and when. They were calm, and when they set on her, they were at peace.

"I'm going to college in the fall," Bonnie had announced soon after he had returned, wrapped up in his arms on a rainy day. They lay in bed with the curtains billowing, the floor getting wet, and neither of them willing to break the hypnotic lock of their embrace. She had expected him to make some snarky remark, to turn up his nose at her silly mortal activities. She had steeled herself for his response.

"Alright," he had said.

"That's it?" She quirked a brow, "You're not going to try to stop me?"

"I have two doctorates and a law degree," Damon said simply.

"What?" Bonnie gaped, leaning back off of him so she could get a good look at his face. "It doesn't count if you compelled them out of the admissions officer."

"I didn't."

"Or the professor."

A grin. "I didn't."

"Doesn't count if you slept your way to a degree, either," Bonnie muttered, resting her head on his chest again. Sometimes she forgot how much older he was than her.

"Doesn't count if you do, either," Damon retorted, tapping the small of her back lightly.

"I wouldn't have to," Bonnie said. He started tracing circles on her back and they were silent for a while, listening to the rain.

"Even if your professor is hot?" Damon said.

"Hotter than my boyfriend?" Bonnie had retorted.

Damon grinned. "Alright. I give you permission to attend college."

"Gee, thanks," Bonnie snorted.

"As long as you don't sleep with any of your professors."

"I'll try to keep my pants on."

"And I get to pick your courses."

"You can pick one," Bonnie conceded, "elective."

"History," Damon grinned, shifting to pull her more flatly on top of him.

"Fine," she smiled back. Then he lowered his lips to hers.

It had been such a short and simple conversation that she hadn't expected him to remember. But sure enough, come September, she was sitting in her history class, checking her phone for texts from Damon when in walked the professor.

All eyes snapped to him but hers. It wasn't until he had scrawled his name across the chalk board and cleared his throat that she looked up.

"You can call me Professor Salvatore," he said. With a smirk. From the back of the room, Bonnie rolled her eyes.

That night, they made love in her single bed and she refused – refused – to call him that.

The next day she dropped his class.

"I'm overqualified to teach history anyway," Damon had conceded.

"Only because you've lived it all," Bonnie had retorted. "I should get a history degree just for sleeping with you. Ancient history."

Damon had smirked and, for the rest of the term, referred to their night time activities as 'extra credit'.

He bought a house off campus where she spent most of her weekends. She made new friends. She dragged him to a Halloween party where she dressed up as a vampire and he was her victim. They laughed at inside jokes, held hands under the table in the library and made love in the most random of places.

Once, they did it in the rain at midnight on top of the tallest building in campus. Bonnie thought they would get caught, so Damon engulfed them in fog. She muttered about him only using his powers for evil. He muttered that he loved her. And she accepted it.

She missed Elena and Caroline who had both taken a year off to figure out what they wanted to do with their lives.

"The boarding house is empty without you two," Elena had said over the phone.

"Mystic Falls," Caroline had sighed, "is boring."

"Let them be lonely," Damon dismissed their complaints with a wave of his hand and a kiss on her cheek. "I did without you for over a hundred years, surely they can last a few more months."

And that's how she wound up at the Grille, nearing the end of her first year of school, making plans with Elena and Caroline for them to join her and sharing secret glances with Damon across the room. She sat there as they talked excitedly around her, as the room filled with familiar voices and scents. She closed her eyes and felt a warm comfort spreading from the center of her chest to the peaks of her cheeks. She thrummed her fingers lightly over her heart and knew, knew that she would never be alone or wrapped in the same kind of grief again.

Grams would always be with her, Bonnie had come to realize. And, she was secretly happy to say, Damon would be too.

With her eyes closed for a moment, Bonnie smiled and her cheeks lit up with that delicious pink. She would never know, but every eye on the room was on her: that glowing orb of goodness, of peace, of love.

BDBDBDBDBD

Love, it will not betray you, dismay or enslave you – it will set you free, be more like the man you were made to be.

It had been a year since he realized the little witch held his humanity in her hands.

Sometimes, he still touched her as if he couldn't let her go – as if he would be lost forever if he did, as if he could only be saved if he was still caressing that inch of skin, if he was still nuzzling that delicate nape. He got lost kissing her neck and jaw line, tucking her into his embrace. He could breathe her in for hours, it seemed, without realizing any time had passed at all.

His favourite past time was making love to her outdoors, in the elements, hearing her cries of pleasure and erratic heartbeat meld into an orchestra around him – it was a magical embrace he would never tire of, or tell her of. Knowing her like that, it would be his selfish secret, the one thing about her – the one understanding of her – that no one else would ever have.

The longer he spent with her, the more he could control the urges – to kill, to hurt, to damage. All the anger slid into chaotic passion which was slowly dimming into contentment.

Sometimes, he would catch a random person admiring her beauty and he would hold her hand a little harder, or pull her into a corner for a quick kiss, or wrap in his jacket to cover her in his scent. It was irrational, he knew. He often bit down on his tongue to keep from making a comment that would anger her – something that would have her waving that judgey little finger at him, yelling something about it not being the eighteen hundreds anymore and you don't own me, Damon! Sometimes, when a luscious co-ed smiled at him, he smiled back just to see what Bonnie would do.

She linked her fingers in his belt loop and tugged him closer, pressed her face to his chest like she expected him to embrace her, closed her eyes and inhaled his scent. Then she'd look up at him with one of those adorable Bennett smirks and he would forget that the co-ed existed at all.

Violence was his thing – aggression was a carefully honed talent. He liked to think of himself the Mozart of torture. But with Bonnie, it was different. If he was a killer, she was a soother. If he was a murderer, she was a lover. Whereas he was ready to rip the eyes out of any guy that looked at her wrong (or, let's face it, at all), she could steal all his words by reaching out and linking his hand with hers.

It was strange. At first, he thought it was a spell. Later, he wondered if she even realized she did it at all. She didn't, he concluded at last, one night as they were covered in fog, her excited laughter disappearing into his kisses. It was him, he realized. He loved her.

He kissed her, stared at her, wrapped his arms around her and refused to let go, until he was certain she knew in her heart of hearts – that he really was hers, after all.

The first time she let him bite her, he was overwhelmed by the taste of oranges. Everywhere, the sweet citrus seemed to light him up on the inside. He craved her always after that, and they had settled into a comfortable habit of him drawing from her lip, her neck, the inside of her thigh, the nook of her elbow or wherever he happened to be kissing her to confusion, every other morning. He always ran a fang over his tongue and kissed her hard afterwards, watching her heel before him with a deep, deep satisfaction that was more than feeding from someone he loved.

It was his way of protecting her.

She cradled his black-veined face and told him she loved him before she went to class.

And it stunned him every time.

The luck of it all. The unfairness. One tragic mistake years ago, and he would never have had his Bonnie at all. When he thought those thoughts, felt her lying lifeless in his arms again, heard her strangled cry as he attacked her – he hated himself.

And he cherished her all the more knowing, knowing how undeserving he was of her love; and knowing that she never thought the same.

On her nineteenth birthday, he had traced a hand over the curve of her hip as they lay in bed. She was on her stomach, highlighting a psychology book until she had pink marker all over her hands and a bit, amazingly, streaked across her cheek.

"You're getting old," he had said with a frown.

"Don't worry, I'll never catch up to you," she had said, not lifting her eyes from her homework as she waved her ankle in the air, "you'll always be an old pervert."

Damon smirked, his hand coming to rest on her butt. "But you won't always be my jailbait arm candy."

She hit him with her foot. "Shut up."

"I'm serious," Damon said, his voice lowering. He squeezed her thigh to get her to look at him, and she rubbed his arm absently with her foot.

"It's called growing up," Bonnie pointed out.

"Bonnie," Damon said, a warning tone in his voice.

She turned to look at him at last, her scowl less threatening with the pink streak of highlighter across her cheek. "Damon."

"I just need a date," Damon said, his eyes falling to her form. She watched him looking at her, stopped moving as she listened to his words. "Just tell me when. Counting down will make it easier."

"Make what easier?"

"Waiting to turn you." He didn't meet her eyes.

"You are not turning me," Bonnie frowned. "Damon, look at me."

He did then, and his eyes were back to their crazy, psychotic state.

"Damon, I'm not going to be a vampire."

"Bonnie," Damon said, his look turning fierce. "You're mortal."

"So?"

"You're fragile." Damon said, "Anything can happen, anything can hurt you!"

"I'm a witch." Bonnie pointed out, "I can take care of myself."

"I can't lose you." He said quickly, almost speaking over her. "Don't make me."

"Vampires die too," Bonnie muttered.

"Not as easily," Damon shook his head. "You could be gone like that," he snapped his fingers. Then he met her eyes again, and the stark honesty there startled her. "I will protect you, mortal or not. But I would worry less if you weren't so... mortal."

"I'm a witch," Bonnie said at last, turning to face him. She sat up in front of him and placed a kiss to his forehead, one had sliding down to trace his jaw. "I can't be a vampire and a witch."

"Then be a vampire." Damon said, but even he knew that wasn't an option for her. Bonnie was a witch. It was what made her, her.

"How old were you?" Bonnie asked, twisting his hair between her fingers. "When Katherine turned you?"

"Twenty seven," Damon said.

"Eight years," Bonnie nodded solemnly. "You think you can keep me alive that long?"

Damon smirked, rolling his eyes. "If I must."

"We'll find another way," Bonnie said, lowering her mouth to nip at his. "I'm not going to leave you."

"If you do," he said, his voice low, his forehead pressed against hers, "You will regret it."

"Shut up." Bonnie said, nipping at him again, tugging at his lower lip with her teeth. "All you really want is a sexy, un-aging, indestructible girlfriend. Right?"

"Sounds perfect," Damon smirked against her lips. She felt his hand on the small of her back pulling her closer.

"I'm sure there's a spell for that."

"You and your spells." He groaned.

"You love my spells," she said and he swallowed her words on a kiss.

And that's how Damon ended up back in Mystic Falls, shooting pool with his brother when he could have been kissing his witch under a waterfall. Bonnie and the girls were catching up over French fries, excitedly planning a life that Damon dreaded – because it meant sharing Bonnie, it meant putting her in harm's way again to protect her hapless friends.

There was a witch in Chicago, Stefan had confided in him, that he had met in the 1920s. She had a spell that kept her from aging or getting ill.

They were planning a field trip to see her that night without letting the girls know. She had made him a vampire with a human heart. It was only fair, he would tell her when he presented her with the spell, that he make her an immortal witch.

"I can't risk it," Damon had said. "She'll want to come along, and..."

"And you don't want to put her in harm's way," Stefan had shook his head. "Be careful, brother, before you start caring too much."

Too late, Damon had thought as he missed his shot. Stefan moved to take his shot, and Damon barely heard the cue ball connect and fall into the side pocket.

Because Bonnie was in his sight. She was laughing and smiling. She paused to tap her fingers to her heart, as she often did when she thought of Grams – though she didn't know he knew. He felt a twinge of regret just before she closed her eyes and smiled. She was stunning. Every man in the room was looking at her, every eye glowed to that delicious caramel-rose glow.

And for once, Damon thought as her green eyes snapped open and met his and his alone, he would be generous and let them.

The End.

AN: Once again, thank you for reading! I am considering writing an original story in the future; a link will be up in my profile if you're interested. Yay for Bonnie and Damon; it doesn't seem like it's gonna happen anytime soon on the show (boo) but a girl can dream!