Up the boarding house driveway, Abigail noticed everything that was out of place. Furniture on the lawn, paintings on the roof, and Damon's car crashed into a potted plant. The list went on, but ended the moment she met the bloody trunk of the Camaro.
"Hey. Sorry about the mess. I let Enzo drive last night. He's a little out of practice. Almost ended up in the damn foyer." Damon stood up from the couch, swaying slightly. "Oh, Aaron's out there too."
She sounded more like Alaric than herself when she asked, "What happened?"
"Well, last night, we hunted him down, and I ripped his throat out. I just figured it's time to shove the last branch of the Whitmore family tree into the..." He picked up one of the only unbroken bottles in the room and tilted it toward her. "Woodchipper."
"So, Elena breaks up with you, and your first instinct is to go on a killing spree?"
Enzo walked up behind her. "It was my idea if it makes you feel any better."
"Aaron cut off Augustine's funding. He was trying to make up for... everything." She turned back to Damon. "Guess you've finally found yourself a murder buddy."
"Oh, you know how it goes. I left him for dead, he tried to kill me, we worked things out." He shrugged. "You spend 5 years with someone in a dungeon, you have a pretty unbreakable bond."
Enzo walked around her, looking her up and down. "I hear Dr. Wes Maxfield fancies you. You haven't heard from him by any chance, have you? Bloke's next on the Augustine hit list, and he's a slippery little devil."
"No, I haven't." She looked down at the glass and liquor covered rug. "So, you're just going to kill off Augustine and then go back to your sadistic, psychotic old self?"
He smiled at her, just like he used to. "I happen to like my old sadistic self, Abigail. In fact, I miss that guy. That guy was dumb enough to try and change himself to get a girl."
"Damon-"
"Turn that savior complex onto someone else."
Enzo draped his arm around her. "What do you say? Shall we get you a new hobby?"
"Get off of me." She pushed him away. "Come on, Damon. You're better than this."
He pushed past her. "On the contrary, I'm better like this."
Abigail slammed the door that connected her and Elena's dorm room to Bonnie and Caroline's. "Where is Elena? She's not answering any of my calls."
Caroline didn't look up at her. "With Stefan. Something about Enzo."
"Oh, I know all about that!" Her voice was several pitches higher, soaked in sarcasm, and digging at the way Caroline had greeted her. "Which you would know if you would look at me, if you would answer the phone, or if anyone, you know, cared to ask why I haven't been here."
"What is going on?"
"Enzo convinced Damon to kill Aaron and every member of Augustine," she explained. "The only one left is Wes."
"So much for our fresh start."
"Fresh start? What are you talking about?"
"Whitmore's Annual Bitter Ball, a night to celebrate broken hearts, jilted lovers, and bitter singles." She walked to the door. "I'm late to pick up my dress; yours is on your bed. If you cared to ask why it was there."
The first voice Abigail picked up on as she approached the crowd belonged to Damon. "I'm here for you, not her, you idiot. I have a hit list. I can't find my last target, so I need a witch."
"Damon?"
He faced her, revealing Jeremy and Bonnie. "Oh, hey! You major in occult studies. Do you know any witches around here?"
"Wh-"
He dropped a scrap of bloody fabric into the palm of her hand and folded her fingers around it. "That is Wes' blood, Enzo kept it as a souvenir, it should jump-start a locator spell. Tick-tock."
"Are you deaf?" Jeremy asked. "None of us are going to help you."
Abigail put herself in front of him. "And you're not going to hurt him."
"Or what? Elena would hurt me? Dump me?" His expression fell into seriousness. "Been there, done that, wrote the country song."
"Kill you. She would kill you. And I would help."
"Cool, me and all her doppelgängers could start a baseball team on the Other Side." He patted her shoulder. "Ric'll buy you some peanuts and Cracker Jack, you won't care if you ever get back, and you guys will root, root, root for the home team!"
"If they don't win, it's a shame. For it's one, two, three strikes, you're out at the old ball game!" Enzo smiled, looking between them. "What have I missed? She denied your request yet? Can we get on to the fun bit?"
Bonnie furrowed her eyebrows. "Who the hell are you?"
"I'm the one who gets people to do things they don't want to do." He grabbed Jeremy in a chokehold. "Like this..."
"Stop!" Abigail yelled. "Stop. I'll help."
His smile was new to her, but when it grew on his face she was not surprised. "Well, Abigail, find me a witch to do a locator spell on the elusive Dr. Wes Maxfield. If it's not done by midnight, he's dead."
Liv was working, so instead of a dress she was wearing a white button down tucked into black pants and instead of letting her tight curls free she had them tied back. She was still easy to spot as she entered a back room, probably because of the curses she was muttering under her breath, and definitely because of the way she pushed the door open.
"Where the hell have you been, Abigail?"
"All hell's breaking loose in my life, and I need your help because you're a witch." She pointed at the door. "Now."
"Even if I wanted to help, I couldn't. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just some freak, okay?"
"No, you aren't." She took her hand. "Come with me."
Liv resisted what little force she was using on her. "I've told you about all of the horrible things I've done. You know I can't control any of it."
"I know someone who can help you."
"Abigail..."
"Liv, please. It's about my brother."
In an upstairs room, Bonnie prepared everything they needed for the spell. She explained it all, but Liv was still looking at her with the same expression, Abigail was sitting with them rather than pacing as she wanted to, and Damon was standing by the door watching them silently. That was the action that worried her the most.
"Concentrate. Focus on tapping into your power, listen to the sound of your heart beating, the sound of your lungs filling with air. Just relax." Bonnie sounded more like Grams than she ever had, not in the little ways they'd all noticed before, but in one that was so grand that it was like she was sitting in the room. "Repeat after me: Phasmatos Tribum, Nas Ex Veras, Sequitas Sanguinem."
Damon groaned. "How long is this going to take?"
Abigail looked over her shoulder at him. "Longer if you keep talking."
"I missed this." He put his hands over his heart. "Our banter."
"Well, I didn't." A breath, a horrible, painful breath, brought her focus back to the table. "Try again."
The candles in the room flared up, the electricity popped, and the chandelier fell from the ceiling.
Through the darkness, Damon asked, "Is that a good sign?"
Liv stood up. "I can't do this."
Bonnie reached out to stop her. "Just concentrate, you can do it."
"I can't do this!"
"Liv!" Abigail grabbed her shoulders. "Try again..."
"I can't do this! Don't you get it? I've done horrible things. I've set buildings on fire, I've hurt people." She broke free of her grasp to motion around at the damage she'd caused. "I can't control any of it."
Damon's phone rang. "Witchy hotline. Damon speaking, how may I help you?"
It was Enzo, and even though they still had an hour until his deadline, he didn't sound like he had much patience left. "What's taking so long?"
"They seem to have lost motivation. Maybe you can inspire them."
"With pleasure." Enzo's voice was louder, and not just because Damon had put him on speaker. "Let them know that Jeremy will be dead very soon."
"Thank you." He hung up the phone.
"What are you doing? Damon, call him back right now and tell him to stop!" Abigail was yelling so loud that if anyone was on the second floor they would have heard her, but he was looking at her as if she wasn't. "Damon! Call him back right now or I swear I will-"
"Just so you know, cooperation's not optional."
"I've done bad things, too." Bonnie coaxed Liv back to the table. "I've broken windows; I've set more fires than I can count."
"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"
"I'm saying I learned how to control it. I can teach you the same thing."
Abigail pulled up a picture of Jeremy on her phone. "This is my brother Jeremy. He's brave, he's kind, he's funny, he's-"
"He's cute."
"Yeah, he is," Bonnie said. "And his life is literally in your hands."
She looked up with tears in her eyes. "Okay, but if I go all Carrie and burn the school down, it's on you."
Before Abigail followed Damon out of the room, she said, "Thank you, Liv."
Although Whitmore House looked almost exactly as it had when Abigail was a child, it was in shambles. They hadn't been there for a moment of action, but they didn't have to be to see how close every single person inside had come to death. That didn't seem to matter to Damon, because as he looked from the left to the right, he was laughing.
"Looks like we missed all the fun, Abigail."
She fell to her knees next to her siblings. "The spell worked. Wes is in Richmond."
"Brilliant." Enzo joined Damon in the doorway. "I'll drive."
Stefan took one long step toward the Gilberts. "Hey, Damon, don't bother coming back."
Damon turned his back on them. "I wasn't planning on it."
It had been a week since Damon left with Enzo, and Abigail had spent every day of that week searching for them. Stefan helped, he did, but not as much as she was expecting him to, the only help Caroline had given came in the form of one message from her mom, and Elena hadn't done anything. So, the moment she entered the boarding house to find them studying, she froze. There was nothing there to ease her nerves, no one to put on a brave face for, and not one single thing she could think of other than if that was what they had done when she was the one who needed to be found.
"He's off the rails. Missing persons and animal attacks." She dropped a stack of police reports in front of them. "All of the victims were found inside their homes without their head and their skin was desiccated."
"Damon's feeding on vampires..." Stefan flipped through the folders. "I shouldn't have let him go."
"No one could have stopped him from going after Wes."
Caroline closed the book in her lap. "And you're not turning Damon's roosting chickens into a Stefan Salvatore guilt trip."
Elena moved closer to him. "Wes must have given him whatever he was going to give me."
"Good news, bad news. Bad news is that when this happened to Jesse, we had to kill him, but the good news is..." Caroline trailed off. "I'm sorry, usually there's some good news."
Abigail was shaking her head without even realizing she was doing it. "He never gave up on me, I'm not giving up on him."
Elena looked up at her. "There's nothing to save, Abigail."
"I know that he crossed the line with Jeremy, but he has crossed many lines before."
"You mean when he actually killed Jeremy?" Elena stood up, the contempt rising in her voice as she did. "Yes, I recall."
"You have never closed him off like this."
"I mean, obviously, I still care about Damon..." With a shrug, her voice turned soft. "I guess I got my hopes up too many times. I want off the emotional roller-coaster that is his redemption. It's just dizzying."
"How could you say that?" Abigail's voice was stark against the silence. "We aren't talking about the person he used to be, we're talking about the person he has become because of you."
Stefan rounded the table to stand next to her. "I'm not willing to lose that person. I have to find him."
It was Elena who said, "I'll come with you."
"What the hell?" Abigail laughed. "Now you want to help?"
"I want to help Stefan."
"Elena-"
"I'm going to get some clothes and you'll pick me up at my dorm?"
The slam of the front door came with a question from Abigail, "Why is she so mad at me?"
Stefan responded with a silent shrug as Caroline said, "I don't know. Tyler needs help looking for Matt."
"Well, I need help figuring out what the hell is wrong with my sister."
The loft welcomed Abigail and Bonnie in a silence that was far more comfortable than the one that surrounded them in the car, but she destroyed it when she said, "Something is wrong with Elena."
Bonnie turned away from the windows. "What do you mean?"
"I don't know. Maybe nothing is wrong with her, nobody else seems to think so." She stopped in the space just before the kitchen turned into the living room. "Maybe, maybe everything I have done is catching up to me."
"No, no." Bonnie was right in front of her, but she sounded as if she was in the hall. "Abigail, you weren't you."
"You know, all of you say that, and maybe it's true, but turning off my humanity changed me." Her vision blurred. "How couldn't it?"
Bonnie grabbed onto her shoulders, and repeated the magnitude of her statement, "You weren't you."
"That doesn't make me feel better! I don't feel like I've made up for anything. I don't..." Breath seemed impossible; however, she managed to say, "I don't feel anything other than what I did before."
"I'm sorry..."
"It's not your fault, Bonnie!" She stepped back, just out of her reach. "It's no one's fault but my own. Because I did this... all of this."
"Abigail-"
"I turned into what all of you were afraid of. What Alaric was afraid of. What I was afraid of." Her eyes moved from the hardwood floors to the brick walls, from the brick walls to the books, from the books to the pictures, and then they landed on Bonnie. "And no one understands what I never had to say to him, so I really don't know how any of you could possibly think anything other than-"
"Say it."
"What?"
"He's here. He wants you to say it." The silence let Bonnie reach out for her. "For me, not him."
"No..."
"Say it." The room fell silent. "Say it!"
"He saw the best and the worst in me all at once and he understood it. All of it. No one ever had. Which meant that everything I had done and everything I was ever going to do, had been forgiven." She was bearing more of herself to anyone since him, more of herself than she thought she ever would again, more of herself than she thought she had. "And, finally, I knew someone that same way. Finally, I had a reason to try that had nothing to do with myself. Finally, I knew all that I ever needed to."
For hours less than Abigail had spent alone but hours more than she expected, Bonnie sat with her. She didn't tell her anything Alaric might have said, she didn't take to the same tactics Elena had used night after night, and she didn't avoid anything. All of that meant she was there for her because she wanted to be, and there wasn't much more she could ask for.
Caroline standing in front of the Salvatore's fireplace was Abigail's signal that she was the last to arrive at Damon's homecoming. It hadn't been pleasant, she could tell from the empty glasses and the look on her face, but she knew it was better that he was locked in the cellar of his own home rather than in a farmhouse with Dr. Wes Maxfield and the Travelers he was working with. Still, when Caroline faced her, she knew there was a conversation they couldn't avoid any longer.
"I'm sorry, Caroline." She took the drink she silently offered her. "I, uh, Bonnie and I talked and I realized I've been... I've been treating all of you differently than I should be."
"Look," Caroline sighed. "I can't even possibly begin to understand all that you've been through, so I really should cut you some slack every once in a while. In other words, I'm sorry, too."
Stefan joined them from the basement, finding his favorite spot on the couch with ease. "Thank you for all of your help, Abigail."
"Of course." She moved her eyes to Caroline who had sat down next to him. "So, did you guys find Matt?"
"Yes, and Tyler was right. Nadia's been compelling him to forget things."
"What kind of things?"
"Who knows? He tried to message me, but Nadia stopped him." Caroline offered her phone to her. "'Help. K' was all I got."
She read the message twice, something about it settling just behind her next question, "What about Elena?"
Stefan looked from Caroline to Abigail. "You're right; she's acting strange. She kissed me. I mean, I stopped it, obviously. I couldn't do it to Damon."
"But she could? She knows that would destroy him. What does..." She paced in front of them. "What is she doing?"
"That's what I mean. It's like she's given up on Damon." He leaned forward so that his elbows were resting on his knees. "He thinks that she was trying to get me to kill him tonight."
Caroline's expression was still holding onto the one it found the moment Stefan revealed Elena had kissed him, but she was shaking her head. "She may be mad at him, but she would never want him dead."
"Matt texted you 'Help. K' before Nadia stopped him. 'K' as in Katherine. When Katherine was dying, Nadia was going to put Katherine's spirit inside of her body, but that didn't happen because Katherine had a change of heart. No..." Abigail stopped in her tracks. "Oh, my God."
"You don't think that-" Caroline laughed to mask her true feelings; the ones Abigail was so acquainted with. "It's Elena. We know her..."
"That's what's wrong with Elena: she's not Elena."