Author's Note:

Bet you thought I was long gone and would never return to finish my story, eh?

Well luckily that is not the case. I did completely neglect my story, and I am so sorry for that, and I wish I could promise it happen again but my life is in a chaotic point right now of alway being busy so then these things happen. So I will attempt not to take so long with the few remaining chapters (the story is almost over!) but I can really promise it. =(

Nonetheless, I hope you enjoy the chapter. Please let me know what you think to my finally revealing the biggest twist to the fanfic-the entire backbone to why Damon is in the place that he is and why Bonnie caused Elle in the way that she did. Two big reveals in one.

The question is, after this development, do you think Elle is going to be able to bring back Damon? If not, what do you think will happen?

Leave me love!

-Liz

Chapter 20: Permanent Attachments

"Jeremy!" I shouted as my feet flew down the stairs, two steps here, and three steps there, it was a miracle I made it to the bottom in one piece. "Jere-oh!" Oh course as soon as the first syllable left my mouth the younger Gilbert was silently behind me-and not in a happy mood. The previous evening's argument obviously still plaguing his already muddled mind and possibly his physical body too. His skin looked like all the color had faded to the tone of ash. His eyes were dark and empty.

"What?" His voice was as cold and biting as his appearance. He took a big sip from a black glass. His dark red lips gave away his breakfast and it struck me for the first time that I'd never actually seen my current roommate actually ingest the core of a vampire's diet before.

But my focus now was not whether or not Jeremy Gilbert preferred A positive of O negative. "I wanted to talk to you," I started unevenly.

"Good. You're living under my roof. Its hard not to." He sidestepped away from towards the back of the kitchen area and I had to breathe in for a moment not to argue with the agitated vampire.

"I'm sorry," I blurted out before my stubbornness had a chance to hinder my mission. Jeremy didn't turn around but he did pause his movement.

"For what?"

Deep breath, Elle. "For…everything?" And it was true. "For being miss moping-all-day around here. For abusing this strange friendship we have going on. And for undermining Bonnie Bennett." He finally turned around at the last name mentioned. "She was special to you, Jere. And I trust you more than anyone else in this town, so I should be trusting you when it comes to the past too."

Jeremy just starred at me for a second, but then a smile broke his handsome face.

"Apology accepted," he said in a much better mood and his healthy pigment back in his skin. "And I guess I should apologize for being so defensive about Bonnie." I smiled at him in a silent acceptance. "I mean obviously something had to go wrong if Bonnie had intended for Damon to walk away from this and yet he ended up dead," he started. "But I just didn't like all the blame being put on her."

"I know," I sighed heavily, landing in the kitchen island's stool. I faced Jeremy but my hands were preoccupied with each other as my evening conversation with Damon plagued my mind. "Damon agrees with you, apparently."

The look on Jeremy's face was a pure reaction of surprise. "That's not Damon at all."

"I know," I muttered. "I wish everyone would stop telling me that."

There was a silence in the space or moment but when I glanced back up from my hands, there was a sad smile on my roommate's face.

"Did I fall in love with someone who died 17 years ago…or almost 200?"

He didn't say anything, but it was answer enough. I just felt my heart cramp on me all over again.

"Ok, I need to tell you something," he told me as he swiftly slid into the stool in front of me. It should have hit me as odd seeing Jeremy suddenly tear down all his human facades and let out his vampire characteristics so openly today, but my mind was far from his swiftness and silence and strongly focused on the dead man that was slowly destroying me from the inside out.

"Yes, if this Damon that you're in contact with is more of pre-vampire Damon than the Damon I met almost twenty years ago, then he isn't the same person." My eyes were burning with emotion but the face I saw when I glanced up at Jeremy had a strange reassurance behind the serious expression. "But one thing you have to know about Damon Salvatore is everything and anything he's ever done—both good and bad, has been for love."

I was feeling a headache coming on from the conversation.

"Listen, you have to believe this," he told me strongly. "Everyone was convinced he was a monster when he came here, but you'd have to see the transformation he went under in the few years that he met my sister."

"I know," I said quietly.

"No," he was abrupt. "I don't think you fully do. You're sitting here a complete disaster and mess over your broken heart…"

I frowned with pursed lips but stayed quiet nonetheless.

"So imagine if you essentially witnessed Damon being murdered and all those emotions in you were magnified a tenfold and left to fester in you for a hundred and forty-five years, only to then find out that person never died and was using you like a puppet for their own amusement."

"Perspective…" I whispered.

"If you're worried you won't love this vampire Damon as much as your limbo Damon, then that on your own accord. Just don't underestimate what Damon would or wouldn't do for someone who loves him even only a fraction as much as he loves you."

"I do love him."

"Not as much as he loves you," he was automatic to reply. "You can't beat the passion of a vampire, especially one searching for you for almost a century and a half."

"Do you know from experience?" I whispered back softly. Our eyes met, my moist, red and teary eyes to his soft brown and solemn ones."

"You could say that." I saw Jeremy's expression, and it was so solemn and empty in that moment that I didn't even think about it before I stood up, took one step forward and wrapped my arms around Jeremy Gilbert's upper body.

He stiffened immediately, but at the same time he didn't push me away.

"You don't know how great of a person you are." He didn't budge for a moment, but then as the words must have sunk in and he realized I was in no hurry to release his cool body, he very slowly and even awkwardly brought up his arms and returned the embrace. It felt so strange to have someone's powerful arms around me, and I realized in that instant that this was just a glimpse of what it would feel like to have Damon hold me in the real world, his muscles strong and unbreakable, his skin cool under the cotton of his shirt, and his chest completely and utterly silent with a beating-less heart.

"Thank you," I said finally when the two of us parted up and Jeremy met me with a soft smile.

"So what's your plan for bringing back Damon?"

It was as if my whole body started beaming in elation. "Figure out what went wrong with Bonnie's spell and figure out how to fix it so we don't bring back anything besides Damon."

"So we should start with this." He pulled a folded pack of papers from his back jeans pocket. He unfolded the papers and placed them in front of me. It was the entire spell Bonnie had cast on Damon with some notes and explanations on parts of the spell. My eyes went big.

"You wrote this?"

A sound came out of his mouth like the beginning of a chuckle. "Last time I checked I wasn't a witch. But our new friend Byanca is." Something curious stirred in my mind at the mention of the same teenaged girl who had been possessed by the late Bonnie Bennett the first time I had encountered the young witch. It wasn't even that she was significantly younger than myself, she just had a strange innocence to her, and her intense fear of vampires at our second encounter made her cooperation with Jeremy over these detailed notes all the more curious. "Did she say anything about the spell?"

"Only that it's extensive and had different parts to it."

"Which is old news," I finished. "The spell was supposed to link Damon and Klaus and then in a different step, protect Damon so when Klaus staked him on Klaus would go down." There was finally silence between us again as I read over some of Byanca's notes. "I wonder if Bonnie even knows what went wrong with the spell…" my words suddenly trailed off at the second page—part II of the spell. My eyes flew over the strange sketch and words of something I hadn't noticed in Bonnie's grimoire where the original spell had been inscribed.

"What?" Jeremy broke the silence as he watched my eyebrows furrow in curiosity.

"Bonnie had to call on another Bennett witch's magic to run the spell that protected Damon," I began. "In order to do that, she needed something that Damon would have had on him that also had that witch's magic in it for it to separate Damon and Klaus."

"What about an ancestor?" Jeremy suddenly chimed in. I glanced up at him as something struck me that we were about to find this missing piece of the puzzle.

And then it suddenly struck me.

"Oh my God," I blurted out at the realization. "Damon's daylight ring."

"Emily Bennett made his ring." Jeremy watched me as everything all cleared out in my eyes in that instant and came crashing down on my like an avalanche of snow and ice.

My hand flew to the collar of my shirt and fumbled over and under the fabric until the cold, heavy ring came into contact with my fingers and I raised the chain around it over my head and into my palms on the island surface. "Damon didn't know Bonnie was planning on saving him so he wouldn't be at risk of telling Stefan or Elena," I started. "So he knew he'd never see the sun again when he said goodbye to Elena."

"Bonnie had everything planned."

Finally our eyes met as Jeremy put it all together too. "Except for Damon taking off the one thing that was supposed to save his life."

My whole body felt numb and time slowed down to a slug's pace. My heart beat loudly in my ears, my breath was loud and rugged…in…out…in…out.

Damon had not sacrificed himself after all—he had unintentionally committed suicide. The irony of it all was he did it with a ring created purposely to protect him from the sun and he'd almost committed suicide with the very same ring years before. And here I had been desperately searching for what caused his death…and it had been hanging around my neck the entire time.

"Elle?"

I had Damon's mistake—Damon's killer dangling from my neck as the only physical remnant of him. But this token was the very thing that caused him and I to never meet in the physical world in the first place.

"Elle?"

But if Damon's ring was meant to save him and he didn't wear it… "That's why Bonnie was afraid I'd bring back Klaus," I suddenly blurted, completely absent from Jeremy's worried expression or voice. My heart was blasting loudly in my ears, my eyes was blurring over with my mind, my head was swirling with the thundering realization that this was the missing key to the entire puzzle—the one thing that went wrong and destroyed everyone's happy ending almost two decades ago.

"Damon's ring was supposed to save him…it was supposed to ensure Klaus, who's life was linked with Damon, would go down alone when either of them ended up staked—but since Damon never had his ring…"

"They're still attached," Jeremy finished. Finally I snapped my attention from the strange abyss of pure dread to see all the emotions currently running through my veins mirrored on Jeremy's very torn face.

He knew exactly what this meant now.

It all made sense. Why Bonnie wanted to stop me. Why Damon was neither dead nor alive. Why I couldn't bring him back.

"If I try to bring back Damon…" our eyes locked and I saw the pang of guilt, fear and pain in his eyes. I didn't need to finish the sentence on his accord. He fully understood the situation. "I'll bring back both of them."