ALMOST IS NEVER ENOUGH | TVD [4]

XI • THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE

eleven. things we lost in the fire

Lockwood Residence

Damon and Minerva are still standing around the unconscious bodies of Rosie, Stefan, Isaac and Caroline and the near-dead bodies of Matt and Bonnie. Damon looks around to realize that he is in fact in the real world, also by Minerva's wail which helped. Minerva mentioned him once more, gesturing him to heal Matt and Bonnie, which Damon does; he worriedly walks over to Matt, who is also laying on the floor unconscious, "Donovan. Hey, wake up." Damon bites his left wrist and puts it to Matt's mouth to heal him frantically, "You do not get to die. Donovan, drink. Come on."

As Matt wakes up, Damon pulls back his wrist and looks over at Bonnie, who is still sitting on the floor with her back to the wall, a large bloody smear above her from where her head slammed into it, "Bon." He makes his way over to her, bites his right wrist, and puts it to her mouth worriedly as well, "Bonnie. Bonnie. Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to..." Bonnie coughs as she wakes up, "I didn't know where I was. I didn't know I was out--" Just then, Isaac stakes Damon severely through the back and knocks him out.

Later, Damon wakes up chained to the railing of the staircase by his wrists; he looks up at his metal chains and sighs, "Oh, yep. I saw this coming."

Rosie is pacing around the living room, consumed in her own concerned thoughts, while Stefan is safe and soundly asleep on the leather two-seated couch, dreaming intensely, in which he can hear the sounds of water bubbling as Bonnie, Nora and Mary Louise are chanting the resurrection spell from the Phoenix stone around him. Meanwhile, Damon is calling out either Stefan and Rosie's name, causing him to stir in his sleep. Not for long, Stefan suddenly wakes up and finds himself alone in the living room.

He perfectly hears that Rosie is now in the main front hallway with Damon, so he gets up from the leather couch to join them, still concerned for him.

"No vervain this time? We switching up the menu?" Damon seems unnerved by how calmly Rosie and Stefan are acting right in front of him, "Hm?"

Rosie shakes her head, "We don't intend to torture you, Damon."

"Yep, we just wanted to make sure you had a chance to calm down."

"Oh, I'm calm, alright." When the couple remain awkwardly silent, Damon becomes truly confused by them, "No, no, no. You're going to say to me. You're both going to say to me, I screwed up so bad. I nearly killed all of our friends because I thought I was stuck in a fake hell-world."

Rosie's face is grim, but it's clear that she's sympathetic for him, along with Stefan, who spoke, "You don't have to explain. It wasn't your fault."

Damon turns completely confused and stunned by this uncharacteristic reaction, frowning up at them, "Huh?"

"It was an honest mistake. You're getting a pass." His brother told him.

Damon, still puzzled by these words, thinks Stefan is playing a joke on him, "Wait. You skipped a bunch of stuff. First, I'm supposed to say I see the error of my ways, and then you tell me that that's not good enough, and then you judge me harder. And then I say something mean, but true, that totally throws you off balance. Why are you skipping it?"

Stefan kneels down in front of his brother so he can look him dead serious in the eye, soft green meeting ice blue, "You came out of the Phoenix stone, but you thought you were still inside of it. Everybody understands."