ᴡᴀʏᴡᴀʀᴅ ⤕ ᴛᴠᴅ ³

seventeen

Damon slumped to the floor, groaning as he felt the wound in his stomach stitching itself back together. He sighed out at the relief before a hair-raising scream ripped through the air.

He turned, facing back down the road across the border where Billie had collapsed to her knees, hands cupping her eyes, shaking and hunched. He could see the blood dripping from between her hands and the steam rising into the air above her.

Enzo, on the verge of death himself, bent down to her, wrapping an arm around her waist and hauling her along the road. They still had too far to go. They wouldn't make it.

Damon took a step forward to go help them, but a hand on his shoulder kept him back. "You still have the vervain in your system." Stefan warned him, stepping up beside him and sharing a look before taking a breath and crossing back over.

He watched as they each took a side, Billie remaining completely unresponsive as they held up her weight and towed her back over the border.

He could hear her muttering under her breath as they lay her down on the floor. The sound of bones cracking and mending in her chest was piercing.

Damon bent to the floor, hands on her shoulders as he shook her lightly. "Billie?"

He tilted his head to the side, listening to her almost completely ineligible mutters. Her charred eyes were wide open, a sight too disturbing to look at for more than a second. "I can't... I can't s-see. I can't see."

His brows pulled together and Enzo spoke up from behind him. "I don't understand. Why aren't her eyes healing?"

Alaric's gasp from across the road brought them back to the present. Damon tried hard to get his thoughts straight and finally spoke up. "Ric's gonna be alright. We need to get her out of here."

⤕

"It's actually quite the phenomena. Her physical eyes are healed. They've regained a regular shape and should-hypothetically anyway, have clear vision again."

Damon ran a hand through his jet black hair. "That's all well and good, doc, so why the hell can't she see." He was testy, frustrated. This had never happened before, not that he'd ever seen anyway.

Jo shifted on her feet, narrowing her eyes at the vampire, before writing off his attitude as worry for Billie. "Think of it like this; the pencil's been sharpened but there isn't any paper to write on. The optic nerves behind the sockets were completely fried. They were practically disintegrating into her brain until you pulled her over that border... she would have been in agony." Her brows pulled together and she looked to the floor for a moment to recollect herself. "Even if her actual eyes are in good shape, there's nothing there to send visual messages back to the brain for her to see with."

"Accelerated healing aside, those nerves withstood severe trauma and in any other patient... they wouldn't have even made it to the hospital." She hesitated before saying her next words. "She's extremely lucky to be alive, Damon."

Damon looked away and into the window where Billie lay with her back to the door.

Her small body was pulled together, shivering despite the blanket on her. She refused to look at anyone who came in, save for Dr. Loughlan and her exams. She didn't speak.

"Will she ever..." He didn't finish, but his question was obvious. Jo took a quiet breath. She'd been thinking about that for a while. "It's difficult to say, it's not like anyone's ever done research on it."

She narrowed her eyes at Billie's back, thinking over whether she should speak her mind freely. The easy answer would have been no, but for both their sakes, she refused to give up hope on the girl.