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"I TALKED TO CAROLINE," Damon swishes the bourbon in his glass around, not sparing Rose a glance as she joined him in the living room. "She said Tyler was all locked up."

"So, it was Jules, the other werewolf. The one who attacked you." She says it like a question, but it's simply a confirmation as she sits down on the other side of the couch Damon's on.

Damon winces, but reaches behind him and hands her her own glass. "Yeah, I'm sorry. I picked a fight with her. She was coming after me."

Rose shrugs as he pours her drink. "All's well that ends well,"

"You all healed?"

"Yeah," She looks at him, borderline confusedly. "Seems that way."

"Rose, uh," He hesitates, hoping she can't hear the lie in his voice. "I'm happy the legend was fake. Maybe it was all just some werewolf defense thing to stop vampires from wiping them out."

She grins, oblivious to his thinly veiled hostility. "Lucky me," Rose shifts, adjusting her position on the couch. She clears her throat softly, garnering Damon's attention lazily. "I'm going to stay and help you." 

Damon narrows his eyes at Rose, his disbelief and confusion weaved into the twist of his frown. "Help me do what?"  

"Whatever it is you're planning with the Originals," She's overly confident, a clear overcompensation of her fear and something they're both aware of in the moment. She poses as a threat to him now that she's made it known she's aware of where his loyalties lie, and he could disregard her allying herself to him and get rid of her once and for all. 

"Really," Damon smirks slightly, tilting his head as he searches her gaze for any dishonesty. "Why?"

She shrugs, letting out a somewhat shaky sigh. "Because I like you. I believe in friendship. I happen to have a vacancy in that department, and I don't think you're particularly overflowing with applications at the moment."

He raises an eyebrow at her, a humorous look taking over his previously solemn one. "Just friends? I am a married man, after all."

"I admire your loyalty, Damon." She responds, her brows twitching with a million unasked questions about his words. 

He hums, satisfied with her answers. "You're making the best decision, Rose." Damon reaches over, clapping his hand down on her shoulder, causing her to groan as a sudden pain pulses through her shoulder and down her arm. 

She tugs at the fabric of her robe and pulls it off her shoulder, revealing the previously healed bite bubbling up like poison underneath her skin. She looks at Damon in utter shock, only to find that there's not a single modicum of surprise on his face. 

Dread pools in her stomach, and she swallows roughly around the lump in her throat. She's only just realized, and is perhaps too late to prevent the fact that she's allied herself with a man who knows much more than anyone else realizes. 

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Their smiles stretch across their faces with ease, an almost childlike innocence still gleaming in their eyes. Their fingers are intertwined, holding each other as close as possible just for the sake of it. It's a moment they'll never forget, even if it seems minute at the time. 

Rosemary looks up at Damon, her eyes swimming with unbridled mirth. "Tell me how much you love me,"

Damon chuckles, dropping her hands in favor of wrapping his around her waist and hugging her to his chest. "I love you to the moon and back a thousand times over." 

"More," She demands softly, her happiness a warm embrace that he never wants to leave.

"I love you, Rosemary Salvatore, so much so, that I feel like I'd die if I went a day without you. How I ever went the first fourteen years of my life without you, I don't know, but I can't imagine the rest of my life without you by my side." 

She buries her satin-gloved hands into the loose fabric of his cream colored shirt and holds on, as if bracing herself for his poetic praise.

"I sometimes sit and wonder if it's truly possible to love someone so much without going insane, but I always remind myself that the only way I'd possibly lose my mind was if you left me."

"Never," She whispers, chin resting on his chest as she looks at him dreamily. "I will never leave you, Damon. I swear it."

He smiles, an unexpected but welcomed comfort coming from her promise. "I look at you, Rosemary, and see my entire universe. It's there, in your smile and your eyes. My entire world is embodied in you and everything you do. You hang the stars in the sky, and make the trees move with the winds. Everything about you, Ro, I love. Even the things you say are flaws, I embrace them because it reminds me that you're here with me and you're real, and not some figment of my imagination." 

He shakes his head in disbelief at himself and her for putting him under such a spell. "I would die for you, Rosemary, or kill if you asked me to. It will always be you, no matter what happens to us."

She lays her cheek against his chest and hums softly in contentment. "When you were in the war, I'd wonder what you were doing. I thought about you fighting on the frontlines and dying so much I nearly convinced myself you were gone. The thought of you dying would make me wish I had taken the bullet for you instead." 

His arms tighten around her at her words, hating the thought of ever losing her.

"My devotion to you, Damon Salvatore, has driven me mad." She whispers, and drags her mossy, ocean eyes up to his arctic ones. "And if it is insane they want to call me, let them. Because I will never stop loving you." 

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Damon walks into his bedroom, a fresh blood bag in hand to hand over to Rose.

"I was born in 1450. That makes me 560 years old."

He raises his eyebrows at her words and grabs the empty glass from her hands, squeezing the blood into it. "Well, if you were a bottle of wine," 

"So I can die," She interrupts his sarcastic retort before he can continue, looking up at him through her sickly haze. "I've lived long enough."

"You know, if you're going to be maudlin, I'm just gonna kill you myself. Just to put me out of your misery." He grimaces, rolling his shoulders back. "Come on, it's just a little werewolf bite."

She rolls her eyes at him, but she's smiling ever so slightly. "Just a little fatal werewolf bite."

"Well, according to legend, which is a notoriously unreliable source," He shrugs at her ire and thrusts the blood at her. "Drink up. Blood heals."

He watches her drink it, and she seems to hesitate before she swallows it, a grimace of pain washing over her pallord features. "Yeah. It does feel like it's working."

He gestures towards her shoulder. "Let's have a look," He pulls back the sweater she's got draped loosely around her and his eyes widen at the sight of the hideous wound growing larger on her shoulder.

"How is it?"

Damon shakes his head, grateful she can't see it. "Definitely better. Right Elena?" He looks up, having heard the girl enter the room. 

"It's... not bad." She tenses, forcibly tearing her attention away from Rose to Damon after her pitiful lie.

"Where's Stefan?"

"He left. I need you to talk to him. He's convinced that he has to find Isobel, but I think that's going to upset Elijah."

It won't, he thinks. "No can do, I'm with Stefan on this one. But if you could play nurse for a little while,"

"It's unnecessary," Rose calls, drinking more of the blood Damon gave her and ignoring the glare he gave her in return.

"It is necessary. Elena's a do-gooder. It's in her nature, she just can't resist." He supplies, rolling his eyes at he passes by said girl.

He walks down the hallway, stopping when Elena calls his name.

"Damon, is she gonna die?" She lowers her voice, her eyes darting nervously to the room Rose was in.

Yes. "Probably. The wolf bite caused some sort of infection, and it's only getting worse."

"Like poison?"

He looks at her incredulously. "I don't know, Elena, I'm not an expert in the field." The expert isn't answering his stupid phone, Elena, so Rose is going to die.

"I'm sorry."

"Death happens. We come, we go. The sooner she dies the better," He shrugs her appalled look off, turning around to leave. "It's gloomy as hell in here."

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She speeds through the destruction of the house, not dwelling to look at how he lives now. She is curious, very much so, but she knows she doesn't have the time. Not yet.

She follows the destruction up the stairs to a large room, with a four poster bed in the corner. There's a fire place, and a deep tub in the bathroom that she knows he had probably specially requested. 

She sets the note down on his side table, with the small vial of blood and the ring she'd been tasked with. She hears a faint crash from upstairs and hopes that the vampire isn't too deep in her hallucinations. She wouldn't be spared if there was any long-lasting damage done, no matter how much pull she had with Klaus. 

With a longing sigh, she looks around the room. Her hands caress the pillows on his bed and she steps around the bottom of the bed, wrapping her hand around the wooden post.

Her eyes scan every single detail she can store in the short-lived moment before they land on a withered, water-stained photo.

On his mantle, sits a photo in that familiar old-time sepia hue, and it's her– it's her face smiling next to his, she's in white and he's in a black suit. She grins, touching her lips as she feels her smile stretch across her face for the first time in a long time. She barely remembered getting that photo taken amidst their celebration, yet he's had it for so long. What had only been a passing moment had become a lifeline. 

All in the same breath, the thought pains her. To know they've been apart for so long, it's probably destroyed him as much as it has her. Perhaps worse, with his complete isolation from Stefan for so long. 

She touches shaky fingers to the photo and it shifts from its untouched, dusty spot. "Soon." She whispers, dragging her finger through the film of dust across his frozen smile. "Soon, my love."

She runs out of the bedroom as footsteps come down the stairs, and leaves as quickly as she'd come. 

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"It hurts,"

"Well then stop talking about it," Damon grits his teeth irritatedly and Rose rolls her eyes, half-delirious. He pushes past Elena, too exhausted to snark at her presence.

He tunes out of the conversation Rose is having with Elena, and his eyes fall to his mantle that has one thing sitting on top of it– the one thing that's been sitting in the same spot for 150 years, even in his absence.

His eyebrows furrow and he reaches out for the picture, his eyes immediately seeing the dust track through his face and the slight shift in its position on his mantle. 

"Who touched this?" His already grated-on nerves have snapped, and he turns to face the two girls that have gone silent at his unexpected interruption. Neither of them answer him, and he takes the picture off of the fireplace, holding it out for them to see. "Who touched this picture? Because it hasn't been moved since I put it here," 

Elena eyes him confusedly, shrugging his anger off. "Maybe you accidentally moved it or something,"

"No, no," Damon shook his head, eyes flashing dangerously. "You see, Elena, I haven't touched this picture in 150 years. It's been sitting here, in my bedroom." He gestures to the space they're occupying and sees Elena's eyes finally dart to the photo in his hands.

She sees Damon first, with longer hair than she's ever seen him with and curls that sit on his forehead. He's in a tailored suit that's clearly vintage, but fitting for the time. The whole picture is a time capsule from the past, now that she registers it fully. There's a hand on his thigh covered by a white, lace glove, and Elena follows the stretch of the arm up to the body its attached to. 

Her breath hitches at the sight of the stunning woman at his sidde, matching his smile by tenfold. Her white dress matches the design of the glove on her hand, draped elegantly across her lithe frame and bunched slightly from her seated position.  

If the photo wasn't as weathered, she was sure it'd take her breath away. 

"Which one of you moved it?"

Elena snaps from her stupor, suddenly understanding his hostility.

"None of us, Damon. We haven't been in here for hours and we didn't go anywhere near the fireplace." Elena shakes her head and watches him gently place the picture back down on the mantle.

When he turns back around, he's still glaring, his eyes darting across the room before they land on his side table. "Was someone in the house?"

Rose and Elena watch him confusedly as he rushed towards his table, his frame crowding it so they can't see what's caught his attention. 

Damon picks up the vial of blood and eyes the ring, taking the piece of paper out from under the small objects.

His eyes scan it briefly, and he feels an odd form of familiarity in the handwriting.

"Uh, Rose– Rose got out through the front door. I didn't think anything of it, I guess."

Damon nods silently, eyes still scanning the note as he re-reads it. 

'It's torture for me to leave you once again, but I promise I'll be home soon. The blood is the cure for Rose. He says it's the least he can do in apologies for the time being.

Cure her, Damon. I swear it's not a trick. Save her life, she deserves to have one after so long. It's about time you had a friend again, it's been too long since you allowed someone in as you have Rose. 

I will explain everything. I promise we will be reunited again soon, my love. 

Until then, X.' 

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author's note; hey xx 

edited and published; 1.6.22. 

- liz