CHAPTER TWENTY ONE | GRADUATION

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EVELYN STEPPED OUT OF THE SHOWER AND ALL SHE COULD HEAR WAS MUSIC BLARING FROM DOWNSTAIRS. A small grunt of irritation left her lips as she wrapped a towel around her body and headed down the staircase in the direction of the music. When she entered the parlor, she saw Stefan sat on the couch while Lexi danced to the music.

"Could you guys be any louder?" The brunette vampire scoffed as she wandered over to the liquor and poured herself a glass just as Damon walked in.

"Damon! Help me celebrate my 17th high school graduation!" Stefan called out gleefully in the direction of her older brother, he just turned off the music. "Hey. You remember my friend, Lexi, of course?"

The blonde vampire chuckled sped toward Damon and pinned him against the wall with her hand clenched around his neck. "What's up, Buzzkill?"

"Eve, Stefan, you just gonna let her enact her ghostly revenge?" Damon spoke in a strained voice as he glanced between his brother and the brunette.

"I mean, you did kill her so, what goes around." Evelyn trailed off with a smirk on her face as Damon gave her a pointed look.

"Let be very clear; whatever time I have left, I sure as hell don't plan on wasting on you. You got me?" Lexi spoke in a vicious tone that caused a sigh to leave the Salvatore's lips.

"Yeah. Got ya." As soon as Lexi released her grip on his throat, he gasped. "So, if you and Ric and little Gilbert are all flesh-like and real-seeming, that means something went horribly wrong when Bonnie tried to put that veil up. And here you two are, having dance party USA."

"What?" Evelyn's eyes widened fearfully as she glanced over to Damon. "Something horribly wrong, like what?"

"You know, Damon, you're right. How selfish of me to be indulging in these precious moments with my formerly dead best friend. I should be sacrificing my own happiness for the good of others, right?" Stefan gasped. "I should be upstairs grooming my hero-hair."

Damon furrowed his brows toward his younger brother. "Are you drunk?"

"I don't know, Mom. Am I?"

Damon stepped forward and snatched the bottle from Stefan. "Well, I guess that's one way to celebrate our supernatural apocalypse." He took a swig from the bottle. "Now, care to hazard any guesses on what the hell went wrong?"

Shortly after Lexi and Stefan excused themselves, a knock on the door caused Damon to roll his eyes and wander over to it, though he wasn't prepared for who he saw. "Vaughn?"

The vampire hunter from the island of Nova Scotia simply lifted a gun and shot Damon straight in the shoulder. "Got a little message for you, laddie. Straight from the mouth of the witch Qetsiyah." Evelyn stepped forward and bullet the bullet from Damon's shoulder as he cried out in pain. "Yeah. Borrowed it from my jarhead friend, Connor. Shoots wood like lead."

Evelyn gritted her teeth and stared straight toward the vampire hunter. "You've got about ten seconds to leave before I rip your throat out."

"You can't, sweetheart. Thanks to your little boyfriend here, I'm already dead." Vaughn tilted his head toward Damon. "He didn't kill me. But, he left me in a well on that island, where I starved to death. There I was, all alone on the Other Side, 'till Qetsiyah found me and reminded me of my supernatural destiny— to cure Silas, and then kill Silas. End of stor—"

Vaughn immediately started to gag and then dropped to the ground to reveal Stefan behind him with Vaughn's heart in his hand.

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Evelyn gasped out and dropped herself backward on her bed, though she couldn't resist listening in to the conversation that had started to take place in Damon's bedroom. She had never really been the one to listen to private conversations, but she couldn't help herself.

As she listened, all she heard was Damon urging Elena to take the cure. She seemed hesitant considering the large number of vampire hunters that had gathered in Mystic Falls on Qetsiyah's behalf to retrieve the cure and cram it down Silas' throat.

Damon even tried to use the sire bond to get Elena to take it, but since she turned her emotions off, the sire bond was gone and Elena was free to make her own choices.

Evelyn finally lifted herself up from her bed and wandered down the hall into Damon's bedroom. She leaned against the wooden doorframe and then chuckled. "What's this? A local cure debate and I didn't get an invitation?" She heard a small chuckle escape their lips, but Damon's smile turned into a grimace. "What's wrong?"

"What? Nothing." Damon quickly defended himself, but the brunette vampire ignored him and stepped closer.

"Don't lie to me." Evelyn yanked the collar of his shirt down and saw a large wound, similar to a werewolf bite, on his shoulder. "You have got to be kidding me. Is this— Vaughn's bullet was laced with werewolf toxin."

The doppelganger's eyes widened in panic as she glanced at the wound on Damon's shoulder, and then began to pace the room. "We need Klaus. We need his blood."

"Klaus would rather see me die." Damon gritted his teeth. "Plus, Klaus is a thousand miles away sipping hurricanes on Bourbon Street."

"Well, I'm not letting you die. We're going to sort this." Evelyn spoke as if she was determined.

"What about the cure?" Jeremy Gilbert's voice echoed throughout the room. Damon's eyes widened fearfully as Evelyn and Elena nodded in agreement.

"Jeremy's right, if you're human the werewolf venom won't hurt you." The doppelganger glanced back to the Salvatore with a hopeful look on her face.

"And here I was, so moved by your speech to save mankind. Sounds like Vaughn's awake." Damon rolled his eyes and pushed past the girls.

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Panic coursed through Evelyn's veins as she and Alaric desperately tried to track down Damon and Vaughn. She knew that Damon didn't want to take the cure in order to remain alive, but she wanted to find him before he did anything stupid and got himself killed.

"Where'd you put Silas?" Vaughn stood opposite Damon over the quarry. He then shot him once more in the chest. "One more jolt of the werewolf toxin and you'll be dead within minutes."

"Or, you could die now," Evelyn smirked before she sped over forwards as Alaric grabbed hold of Vaughn's body and throw him into the quarry.

"Oops," Alaric smirked as he heard the splash the vampire hunter's body made into the water below.

"One slight problem—" Damon muttered out as Alaric held up the cure in his hand.

"You mean this?"

"Yes. Yes, I mean that." Damon panted as Evelyn's arms wrapped around him. She tried to comfort him as best she could, but she knew that he was dying.

"Listen, you need to take the cure, Damon. Klaus isn't responding and I really, really need you to stay alive, okay?" Evelyn cried as she glanced between the small dose of the cure and then to Damon.

"No, no. It's for Elena. I can't. I don't want to." Damon's weak voice continued to protest, but every moment that he defused to live, it brought him closer to death.

"Please, I don't want you to die. After everything that we've been through. Just take it, Damon!" Evelyn's screamed louder as eyes began to pour with tears while Alaric took her phone and rang Stefan.

The minute Stefan answered the phone, Alaric started to explain the situation. "Damon won't take the cure. He wants it for Elena."

"Alright, just hang on a little longer." Stefan breathed out anxiously. "Caroline's calling Klaus again."

"Stefan, we're past the point of hail Mary phone calls! What do you want us to do? Stand here and watch him die or force-feed him the cure?" Alaric waited for a response but nothing came apart from the call ending.

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Klaus had turned up in Mystic Falls just in time. He saved the rest of the vampires from the fallen witches that Caroline had murdered and handed Damon some of his Hybrid blood, which healed the wound within seconds.

The earlier events had put everything into perspective. Damon realized how much he needed Evelyn, and Evelyn realized just how hopelessly devoted she was to Damon, especially his survival. The group sat in the Boarding House talking about life on the Other Side when Elena entered and caused the conversation to grind to a halt.

"Hey, uh, Evelyn? Do you mind if I talk to you for a minute?" Elena hesitantly asked the brunette who's mouth gaped open in confusion.

"Sure." Evelyn lifted herself up from the couch and wandered into a room with Elena, so they could speak privately. Though, the two girls knew that despite their private conversation, it would surely have dozens of silent participants.

"I wanted to try and make amends with you. I said some horrible things even when my humanity was off. Thing's that just really weren't true." Elena began to speak while Evelyn sat down on the arm of a nearby couch. "I wanted to fix things in the only way I know possible. By stepping aside."

"What?" Evelyn's raised an eyebrow toward the doppelganger. "Elena, what do you mean?"

"You're in love with Damon, you admitted it once before. And, I know that he's in love with you, too. I knew the moment that he managed to hold the compulsion when you asked him to. He's in love with you, Evelyn." Elena blurted out. "Please, just can you tell him how you feel before it's too late. Don't waste any more of your life denying it."

"Elena." Evelyn grasped the doppelganger's hand and smiled. "I just want you to know that I don't hate you. I hated the person that you were without your humanity, but as we all know, that wasn't you. It was the darkest parts of you."

The doppelganger smiled in return. "Damon's lucky to have you, Evelyn. Now, go make him see that."

With Elena's advice ringing in her ears, Evelyn got up to her feet and headed straight for Damon's bedroom. She was determined to make him see how she felt and she prayed to God he felt the same.

"Oh, there you are. I wanted to apologize." Damon began the moment he felt Evelyn's presence at the doorway. "—For earlier. I know you wanted me to take the cure. I just— I couldn't do that, Evelyn."

"So you'd rather have died? I could've lost you, Damon!" Evelyn fired back hysterically as she stepped into the room. "I would never let that happen. Not again."

"Don't you see?" Damon stepped forward and grabbed hold of the brunette's hands. "Me becoming human, you staying you—you'd have lost me either way. I'd rather spend an eternity with you, than a handful of years where I get old and sick and incapable of looking after you the way you deserve to be looked after. I'd rather die right now than to never get the chance to spend the rest of my life with you because I want an eternity with you, Evelyn Austin. I am in love with you. Madly, deeply and completely in love with you. I always have been."

"You know, you've been a pain in the ass and a damn right reckless piece of shit. You drive me insane and I can't seem to stop thinking about you. You know, when I turned all I could think about were the what if's. What if I found you again? What if you and I could be together forever? What if I just admitted what I wanted? So, that's exactly what I'm going to do. I want you. I'm in love with you, Damon Salvatore."

Damon suddenly crashed his lips onto Evelyn's as she held his face with both her hands. She held him tightly, afraid that this moment was a dream and that it would abruptly end and she would wake up within the confines of her bed. She always dreamed that she and Damon would make their way back to each other, and they finally did.

Right now, things didn't seem to be so twisted.

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