This chapter is for my OC, Mallorie Whitmore, who would have been paired with Enzo St. John.
_
October 6, 2011
Damon was afraid to click the 'call' button.
Sheriff Elizabeth Forbes had acquired for him the phone number of the woman he was trying to reach. All he had to do was press the stupid button, tell her what she needed to know, and everything would be fine.
He wasn't sure he believed that.
He already felt like crap. Just last night, he and Elena had broken up, with Damon proclaiming she needed to stop defending him, that he didn't want to change her, that he preferred to let her go. It killed him inside but he knew, he just knew it was what needed to be done.
Damon should have been feeling happy considering that today, Katherine was on her deathbed. Today, the woman who tormented him and his brother would die and he'd have some peace. He would have loved to be at her side, tormenting her, but Liz had asked him to give her a break when she handed the papers detailing the contact information he requested.
He might as well face his fears.
The button was pressed. He waited. Waited some more. At last, he heard her soft voice, "Yes?"
"Hey," he said, as gently as he could muster. "Hey, Mal."
There was a beat of silence. "What the hell are you calling me for?" she sneered, voice laced with a venom he'd never heard from her. "Fifty years after you ruined my life, just the way yours was ruined, and you have the audacity to try and bother me? You know what, fuck you–"
"Wait," he blurted out before she could hang up. "It's about Enzo."
"Oh," she replied coldly. "So you want to talk about Enzo? Yes, Damon, let's talk about Enzo, the friend you left to die in that horrible, horrible building."
"He's alive, Mal."
Another beat. "That's impossible. I don't appreciate prank calls and you digging up old history just to hurt me."
"It's not a lie. I saw him with my own eyes. Heard his voice. He's alive. Does the name Wesley Maxfield ring a bell to you?"
"Maxfield," she repeated, tone much different. "It was my mother's maiden name. The Maxfields were long-time friends of the Whitmores."
"Yeah, well, turns out the Maxfields were running Augustine these past few years. Someone saved Enzo that night. And they've had him in that same cell ever since. You interested now?"
She hesitated. "You killed almost my entire family that night, Damon. And since then, I've heard you killed my brother, his wife, his twins, their spouses. Why the hell should I believe you?"
"You're going to have to trust me on this one. Come to Mystic Falls. You won't regret it. You can show up at the Boarding House whenever you're ready."
She hung up, and left him wondering if she was still calling bullshit, or beginning to have her doubts.
"Here," said Damon, offering Enzo his few drops of the week to ensure he didn't desiccate.
"Thanks, mate," said Enzo, reaching around the bars to accept the droplets onto his fingertip, then placing it in his mouth. "Only one more month of this and we will be free. I can smell it already."
They heard footsteps overhead. The door to the dungeon opened, and Dr. Whitmore trailed in, though he wasn't alone this time.
"Woah," said the young man behind him. "That is insane. This place is so cool..."
The girl with them looked around uncomfortably, observing the dark stone. "I don't like this. This doesn't meet any of the criteria for human research, it's filthy and it smells in here and... oh, god, they look terrible."
"I thought I looked quite dashing," said Enzo, eyeing her suspiciously. She shifted her gaze to her feet.
"We can't feed them more than a small ration each day," said Dr. Whitmore, "or they'll be too strong and escape."
"As any caged animal would want to," said the girl in disbelief. "Dad, when you said you were doing secret research, this isn't–"
"Shut up, Mal," said the younger man, moving closer to the bars. He smacked his clipboard against Damon's cage, expecting him to flinch. "They're so human-like. Dad, can I–?"
"You can take the lead on today's dissection," said Dr. Whitmore. "Mallorie, you will stay down here until you feel comfortable with your lab environment."
"No," she said firmly. "No, screw this, this isn't what I got my degree for. Just yesterday you told us vampires were real, that they were monsters, but this?" She gestured toward Enzo, who looked the most pale. "This is unethical by human standpoints and considering they look exactly like humans, I don't care what they are, all that matters is that I feel uncomfortable, I feel like this is wrong, and I don't want to help with this! You said we'd find cures for diseases; I expected to work on rats, not vampires!"
Dr. Whitmore cast her a significant look. "They're hardly better than rats. More fascinating, but more monstrous. Pick one, Aaron."
"That one!" said Aaron, jabbing his finger at Enzo.
His father smiled darkly. "A fine choice."
He had Mallorie step back as Enzo was released from his cage and brought upstairs. Her father closed the door behind him, leaving Mallorie stuck with Damon.
"Who're you?" he asked boredly.
She sank to the floor across from him, already beginning to tremble. He figured she was cold on top of being scared. "Mallorie Whitmore."
"That your dad?"
"And my twin brother. I-I didn't know, I'm not sure what he's–"
A loud scream echoed through the chamber as the dissection began. Mallorie's hands flew up to cover her ears, and she began to tear up. "Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god..."
"Hey," said Damon, trying to get her attention on him. "Tell me, what did you get your degree in?"
Her mouth quivered. "Human Physiology."
"What about your brother?"
"Aaron got his in Microbial Biology."
"And why does your dad want you here?"
"We're taking a gap year before medical school. Still waiting on acceptances. Aaron wants to be an orthopaedic surgeon, I wanted to–" she flinched at the sound of another scream.
"Tell me," urged Damon. "What did you want to be?"
"I wanted to be an obstetrician and neonatal surgeon," she said weakly. "My mom, she um, she hemorrhaged giving birth to us. For as long as I can remember, my dad wanted us to do something in medicine. He said we needed research and lab experience beyond what we did in college, he said we could help him cure some diseases, but I never, never..."
Damon had a feeling she could easily be swayed to let them out. "Your brother sounds like a dick."
She half-smiled. "He's older, he thinks he's better at everything. But he graduated magna cum laude– high honors. I graduated summa cum laude– highest honors. My dad asked me to join him here first, he only wanted Aaron to join when I told him he'd be jealous." The smile dropped. "I can't support this. My mother wouldn't have supported this. She was an oncologist, and in the journals she used, I read that she stood very firmly by 'do no harm' to anyone. My dad never told her about this research, and I think I know why. She wouldn't have been okay with it, no matter what vampires have done. One creature should never hurt another this way, never do something against their consent. All species understand it. I don't care if someone is a murderer, if I am a doctor, I have to treat them all the same, I can't be sadistic, I can't be violent, and I certainly can't stand by idly as someone is being kept in a cage and being treated like a lab rat."
Enzo screamed again, and Mallorie covered her ears once more.
They hadn't seen her for several days. Damon had relayed the information to Enzo, who worried that they'd never get another chance to speak with her now that her father knew how adamantly she was defending them and their rights despite knowing nothing about them.
"She's a human," said Enzo quietly. Damon wasn't sure why he looked so forlorn. "She's kind, she's innocent. We stick to our plan, Damon. Don't rely on her, don't get her involved when she doesn't want to be. We can't put her at risk."
The door opened again. This time, Aaron was leading Mallorie in. "Here," he said, carrying in a chair for his sister to sit in. "Holler when you want to get out. And remember, Dad's gonna check your notes."
"I know," she said flatly, waiting for him to leave before she turned to the two vampires, "How can I rescue you?"
Enzo was stunned. "Rescue us?"
"I'm sorry I hadn't come," she said. "I had to let them pretend they were convincing me about you two being monsters. I told them I didn't understand why they were treating you like that and they came up with all this evidence and I said I'd ask you both about the bad things you'd done to learn more about vampirism... to see if you'd tell me the truth... they're convinced that I'm going to bend to their will after a long discussion today. But I won't. So, tell me all these awful deeds, I don't care if you did them or not, just so I can write something down. And then, I want you to tell me about you. And I want you to tell me how I can help you get out of here."
"Got the keys?" asked Damon, gesturing toward the lock.
"I can get them when they trust me. So go on, shoot some awful things out at me or I'll just make them up myself."
"Easy," said Damon. "Write this under the 'Damon' column: sliced off someone's head, uh, you can write that I killed my father and drained him of blood, I rip people apart then put them back together when I feel remorse–"
Enzo smacked his hand against the bars. "Stop. Stop. No, you need to leave. You are putting yourself in danger by pretending. We will get ourselves out. All you must do is make sure that when your father's New Year's Eve party occurs, that you are long gone before midnight."
"Why?" she asked. "What's happening at midnight–?" She made a face, "Sorry, your name? I don't wish to refer to you by a number."
He smiled weakly. "Enzo. Better you don't ask questions, love, just trust us. Get out of here, don't come back. Don't put yourself in danger."
"But I want to help you!" she insisted. "I can't be complicit in this!"
"Absolve your guilty conscience– you've done nothing to us. Please... before you get hurt, you ought to leave."
Damon tried to look at Enzo, but couldn't, wishing he could glare at him as if to say, 'Why the hell are you trying to shoo her away when she's willing to help us?!' He had no way of knowing that seven years ago, Enzo had passed up an opportunity to escape, all to keep Maggie James safe. He couldn't bring himself to ask this girl to risk her skin for them.
"That's too bad," she told Enzo. "Because I am helping you." She scribbled Damon's deeds in her notebook, choosing to write random crimes under Enzo's name. "How did you two end up here?"
"A distant relative sold me out," said Damon. "Killed him before your dad brought me in to be another guinea pig. Your brother's had a lot of fun treating me like one."
"Aaron would do anything to make my dad proud," she said bitterly. "He's fascinated by his research, he only sees vampires as monsters and he's such a competitive, egotistical dick, he can't sympathize. He's enjoying the live dissections and it... it terrifies me how much he likes hurting you both. He doesn't see you as people. It sickens me. Human research has very strict guidelines and this is just horrible..."
"Love," insisted Enzo, "listen to me. Come here, come closer." She leaned over the bars until she was only a few inches away from him, "Trust me when I say we have a plan. We will execute it and we will be free. If you wish to help us, you need to go. You need to make sure you are nowhere near that party at the end of this month. If you continue to pretend, your father will find it suspicious if you leave early. And if you choose to stay... you may bear witness to awful things and I could not forgive myself if you endured that for us. Your worry is appreciated, and were we under different circumstances where you could safely free us, then I would be all for it. But we are ready to escape. And I don't want you caught in the crossfire."
"We could turn her," suggested Damon. "Her brother thinks she'll be down here for a while. We could give her our blood, snap her neck, have her become a vampire, and then she can free us without keys."
"You want to turn me?" said Mallorie nervously. Immediately, Enzo could tell she didn't wish to be a vampire.
"Yes," insisted Damon. "Come on, we can get out of here today, Enzo."
He hesitated. "Give me your hand, Mallorie." She let it into the cell, and he ripped off the bracelet she had on, figuring that like her father, the vervain was stored in there. "Leave this place, stop pretending, and do not come back, ensure you depart from that party early or do not attend at all, if you are able to."
"Enzo!" said Damon angrily as Enzo placed the bracelet back on her and shooed her out of the cell. Mallorie was unable to resist his command, and made for the door, knocking hard to alert her brother that she was done.
"So?" asked Aaron when he saw her. "The verdict?"
"You and Dad are sick," she said coldly, shoving the journal into his hands. "I fucking quit."
Damon saw her near the beginning of the New Year's Eve Augustine Party. She was staring uncomfortably at the cage where he and Enzo were being kept, likely present against her will. She continued to drink, until at last she began to sway... though Damon and Enzo could sense she wasn't drunk. When she passed by, clinging to her brother's arm and insisting he take her home, her cup smelled of only water. Not the alcohol she'd been pretending to drink.
He saw her again as the fire raged behind him, consuming all of Whitmore House. She and her brother had returned at the sound of alarms going off, flames visible from the window of their home.
"What happened?" she cried, stunned to see that Damon was alone. "Oh my god– where is Enzo?"
"Mallorie, get back!" yelled Aaron, pushing her behind him. "Back off, vampire!"
"Aaron, stop!" she shrieked, shoving him aside. "Damon, what happened? Oh my god– our whole family was in there, my dad–"
"–is dead," confirmed Damon emotionlessly. "As is every other Whitmore present. Congratulations! Now you know what it feels like to be an orphan. I only have one more kill to make."
"Please, please no," said Mallorie, shielding her brother. "Damon, please, please no, I'm begging you–"
"I made a promise to Enzo," he said darkly. "After I'd taken out the entire Augustine Society– which I just did– I'd kill every member of the Whitmore family... except one person. And I'll let that one person grow up, start a family, and then start killing Whitmores again. And then I'll take out the generation after that, leaving only one person to carry on the name, and then I'll take out the generation after that and so on, and so on, and so on... so choose, Mallorie. You or your brother. Who lives? Who dies?"
"I'm not making that choice," she whimpered. "I can't– I won't– I tried to help you, that– that has to count for something–"
"And you failed to help us," said Damon. "Enzo was such an idiot for worrying more about you than about us. If he'd just convinced you to turn, if he'd let you risk your neck to save us, none of this would have happened. He wouldn't be dead. Do you want to be a vampire, Mallorie?"
"N-No, I don't–"
"Does your brother want to be a vampire?"
"Never!" said Aaron furiously. "Now, back off, or–"
"STOP!" screamed Mallorie, pushing him to the floor as Damon made to advance. "Stop, stop, stop, I pick me! Kill me, kill me please! Don't hurt him, please don't hurt him! Just kill me and be done with it!"
"Hear that?" he said to Aaron, who was staring at him fearfully from the ground. "She thinks your life is worth more than hers. Aren't you lucky."
He pushed past Mallorie, yanking Aaron up and feeding just enough to knock him unconscious, tossing him to the floor, groaning. Mallorie was screaming her head off, hoping someone, anyone would hear them. She knew something was different about Damon and she knew that he was being serious when he said he'd kill her. She didn't want to die, she'd never wanted to die.
"Is this what happens to the people who care too much?" she said weakly as Damon licked his lips, grabbing her shoulders and pushing her hair away from her neck. "We just... die?"
"You do," he said, pretending to feel pity. "It's your fatal flaw."
She closed her eyes, bracing herself for a bite that didn't come. He caught her off guard, suddenly pressing his wrist to her mouth. She flailed, muffled cries allowing his blood to slip past her lips. Her eyes were wide with terror when she realized what he was going to do, and with not an ounce of remorse, he snapped her neck, dragging her dead body with him before her brother could open his eyes again.
He didn't know what'd happened to her afterward. He left her in the woods with nothing. She didn't know anything about vampires, she didn't know that she'd burn in the sun, didn't know what her powers even were, or how she could control herself.
Mallorie had woken up before the sun rose. She killed a college student walking home from the library, gossiping over the phone about the fire at Whitmore House. She hid in one of the abandoned dormitories during the day, and at night, went home to retrieve every journal her father had left behind, so that she might learn what it meant to be a vampire.
In the first year, she managed to hone her skills, and even found a witch in Mystic Falls willing to make her a daylight ring when she saw how lost and confused the girl was. She'd thanked the woman by giving her all the money she could possibly need to take care of her little girl, a gorgeous two-year-old named Sheila.
She made a plan for herself to track down Damon so she could kill him for his crimes. She couldn't go back to her vampire-hating brother, and she had no other family to turn to. She might have had one cousin left on her mother's side, but she didn't know where to find them and they certainly wouldn't want anything to do with her when they learned who she was. He'd left her completely and utterly alone.
She hated what he'd done to her. What he'd done to Enzo.
She hadn't been able to go through with it, hard as she tried. She didn't like the feeling of killing, though she'd already done it several times as she learned to control her bloodlust. She hated Damon with a passion, but she knew that murdering him wouldn't bring Enzo back. It wouldn't bring her peace. So, she left it alone. And came to realize later on that it had been a mistake. She should have preferred to die trying to kill him than sit back and try to live her life as a vampire, miserable as she was.
Aaron tried to find her, but was never able to. Seven years after he last saw his sister, he was married. Two years later, his wife gave birth to fraternal twins Aaron and Sarah Whitmore. Mallorie had been tempted to go and meet them, but opted against it.
She came to regret it when, two decades later, she learned that her brother and his wife had been killed. Her niece, Sarah, hadn't attended her parents' funeral.
Nor had she attended her brother's wedding, or the baby shower for their son, Aaron Whitmore IV. Mallorie had always considered meeting Sarah, to see if she could find out why she'd detached from the family. Is she like me? Does she not share the same ideas as him?
It didn't end up mattering. Her nephew and his wife were killed, leaving their little boy in Sarah's care. Recently, she'd learned of Sarah's death, once the boy was already a student at Whitmore College, the sole heir to their fortune.
She assumed Augustine had died with Enzo. With her.
How wrong she'd been.
Damon heard his doorbell ring minutes after the house was emptied out, Katherine having passed and everyone gone home to rest. Stefan was upstairs with her body, likely grieving, if he was still pathetic enough to do so.
When he saw Mallorie standing there, just as she'd looked fifty years ago, he felt a rush of guilt washing over him. Those eyes were as sad and scared as they'd been the day he force-fed her his blood and condemned her to life as a vampire, a creature she never wished to be. A creature she only ever considered being when she was planning to save them. And even then she hadn't liked the idea of it.
"Where is he?" she demanded. "You said Enzo is alive. Where is he?"
"Guess we're skipping the greetings," he said, stunned when she brushed past him with her suitcase.
"You earned no greetings," she said coldly. "Where is Enzo?"
"I don't actually know," said Damon. "But he's alive, and we can find him."
"Good," she said. "I need to see him."
"Listen, Mal–"
She whirled around, jabbing a finger in his face, "Don't. I don't care what you have to say, I don't care about anything that involves you, Damon. All I care about is seeing Enzo because he didn't deserve what you did to him, and I didn't deserve what you did to me, either."
"I couldn't save him," said Damon. "I had to turn my humanity off, it was the only way I could leave him behind."
"You should have preferred to die trying! Clearly someone showed up to save him."
"And then what? I would have stayed in Augustine another fifty years?"
"He was your friend! He was kind, he was good–"
"You knew him for two days–"
"And in two days he treated me with respect and though I hate that he didn't let me help, though I hate that because of his goodness I was saddled with guilt that has only magnified over the years, I still care about him a hell of a lot more than I ever cared about you. I did nothing to you and you chose to inflict on me this– this curse, something I never asked for, as punishment for the deeds of my brother and father. It wasn't on me. And yet you forced me to choose between myself and my brother, knowing that I would never stand for his death despite how awful he was. You tormented me, and then you went through with your promise and you killed all of my family, every last one. I hear there is one left. My distant grand-nephew, a boy so broken that he likely won't even want children of his own. Thus the Whitmore line endeth here, congratulations. You got what you wanted. Now let me get what I want and have some peace by knowing Enzo is alive so I can go back to living a life I hate every single day because I didn't ask for this, I never wanted this, but you still decided that I deserved to be punished for a crime I didn't commit."
Damon was speechless. Stefan had come downstairs at this point, eyeing them closely. "Hello," he said cautiously to the youngest vampire. "I take it you're Mallorie."
"Yes," she said tightly. "And you must be Stefan."
"You're welcome to the guest rooms on the first floor," he offered cordially.
"Thank you," she said, side-eyeing Damon. "I won't be here long. Perhaps a night or two. I appreciate your hospitality."
She walked past, dragging her suitcase to find a room. Stefan raised a brow at Damon, who scoffed, "Don't give me that look."
"Sounds to me like she's got a lot of resentment," said Stefan. "You hated me for taking that choice of turning away from you. And then you went and did it to her?"
"My humanity was off, Stefan," he said. "I didn't care about how she felt."
"Well, if you want to get rid of her, I recommend you find Enzo and re-introduce them. She's obviously filled with unresolved guilt and anger that's only grown over the last half-century. Deal with her or she's going to become the next problem and I'd rather we didn't get to that point."
"Don't worry, brother," muttered Damon. "She'll be out of your hero hair soon."
_
This story would have been very happy and honestly, there wouldn't have been much to write. As soon as Mallorie would have found Enzo, she would have taken him the hell out of Mystic Falls and they would have lived happily ever after. Mallorie's faceclaim would have been Camille Pidoux!