give me just one reason this damn world's worth fighting for
The Player
User Name/Nick: Tiffany
User LJ: arcesso
AIM/IM: to boldly trek
E-mail: live.infamy [at] gmail.com
Other Characters: Dean Winchester, Claire Bennet
The Character
Character Name: Damon Salvatore
Character Journal: miseternity
Canon: The Vampire Diaries
Age: approximately 170-175, appears around 25.
From When?: I'll be taking Damon from 1.14, before he can open the tomb and discover that Katherine was never inside. At this point in canon, he's been betrayed by Bonnie, Elena and Stefan and he's pretty much given up on anything that's worth anything other than Katherine.
Abilities/Powers: Standard Vampire Powers:☑ super speed
☑ jumps very high
☑ compelling - a form of mind control and memory erasure
☑ super strength
☑ drinking blood :| and thereby, REQUIRING blood for sustenance
☑ enhanced sight, smell, taste, hearing
☑ kentucky frying in sunlight
☑ a weakness for witches
☑ looking like a freaky monsters with black and red and veiny eyes
☑ sneaking. yes, this is a special ability.
Special Damon Powers:☑ creating and controlling fog.
☑ summoning and controlling crows -- yep. he's a disney princess.
☑ making panties drop -- no seriously, his levels of charm belong here
☑ has a ring that allows him to walk around in daylight without becoming kentucky fried damon.
Power Limitations: Damon's abilities are pretty reasonable, considering the nasty effects that can come with being a vampire. See: need for blood. Considering he can't alter reality or hurt the wood, I'd prefer if his abilities weren't limited. Obviously, if you feel it necessary, just lemme know what powers you'd like limited and I'd be happy to provide.
Inventory 1 shirt, charcoal button-up
1 jacket, black leather
1 pair of pants, black
1 belt, black leather with a silver buckle
1 pair of work boots, black leather
1 ring, silver with a heavy, dark blue stone, pictured here
Personality: On the most basic level, Damon Salvatore appears to be a lot of things. He's cocky, full of himself, dismissive, brilliantly conniving and witty. He's essentially, as Ian Somerhalder put it, "[a] sort of wacky old world combination of Cary Grant and Mick Jagger." He can seem even sociopathic at times, which he explains is a part of being a vampire -- there's a switch you can shut off that just makes you stop feeling. Early in the season, Damon really seems to make use of this switch, acting unequivocally charming in the same breath that he's ripping out throats. He asserts his power and takes what he wants because he wants to be the Damon that Katherine will come back and love. Even later into the season, Damon carries around with him this devil may care attitude that he works incredibly hard to maintain. He acts like he views people as pawns on a chessboard and treats them as such, coming off superior and careless.
But, Damon admits that he stopped turning this "switch" off. That he began to care about people -- that he cares about his brother, about Elena, and even in some strange ways, about Alaric. He cares enough about him to watch his back, anyway. What he really wants is just acceptance -- from Katherine, from Stefan, from Elena. He wants to be seen as a person again, because he spent so much time trying to shut that part of him out. He wants to be the kind of person that Elena seems to believe he has in him.
Despite the fact that at one time, Damon truly did love his brother, and despite the fact that he's learning to do it again -- slowly -- Damon has a deep-seated despise of Stefan. It began in the 19th century when Stefan and Damon were feuding over Katherine's affection, it culminated when Stefan convinced (read: forced, in Damon's mind) Damon to complete the process of turning when Katherine initiated it, and it bred slowly over the next hundred and forty years. Now, it's taken form in a mounting jealousy that Stefan believes he can play the good guy when really, when he gets his hands on human blood, he's far worse than Damon is because he's out of control, and that he, in his vegan, good guy act, has Elena while Damon has an empty tomb and an ex-girlfriend/maker who could have come found him at any time and never chose to. He sees what a horrible person Stefan can be underneath it all, and hates that just because he does a better job of wrapping it up, Stefan always seems to come out ahead.
Mostly, though, it's long-standing grudge holding over Katherine and their general state of vampirism. Stefan, who had embraced it, is now trying to get away with rejecting it and scorning Damon for embracing it like Stefan had wanted him to. It's ~unfair.~ For all of that hate, though, Damon still has the protective older brother instinct and if anyone but himself tried to fuck with Stefan, it would be their head on a platter. Damon is by no means the oldest vampire of the bunch, but he is easily one of the strongest, and he has a certain possessiveness over being able to make Stefan's life a living hell. Essentially, he loves his brother for reason alone that he is his brother, but he doesn't love the way he tries to hide what he is and gets accepted for hiding it. He would much rather see Stefan the bad guy and love him for that, but he simply can't approve of this trying to cover it all up and pretend it never happened.
Which brings me to the biggest point of conflict between the brothers: Katherine Pierce. The woman has Damon wrapped around her little finger in every sense of the word. She never compelled him, and he allowed her to feed on him while he was a human. When he finds out that she never loved him, he's crushed beyond belief because his entire existence had been engineered toward finding Katherine and he loses his very purpose to live. The one thing that had motivated him to think that perhaps living forever wouldn't be so bad apparently wanted nothing to do with him. For all of his excessive manipulating skill and intelligence, he's powerless against the games that Katherine continuously plays with his mind. All of the love he has for Stefan is dwarfed by his affection for Katherine, which is such an unhealthy obsession that he would cling to any feeble hope that she might return his feelings to any degree.
However, after 1.14, he also develops a kind of bitterness and resentment toward her for all that she put him through, thinking he could find her, pretending she didn't exist so that he'd continue searching, but all he requires is once solid push to convince him that she cares to some extent and he'd be hers all over again. This is also compounded by the fact that, between 1.14 and 1.21, he's grown to care a lot for Elena who, while she may physically resemble Katherine to the highest degree, is nothing like her. Katherine is selfish where Elena is helpful and genuine. She's, essentially, the better model, because she still has all that winning self confidence that attracted Damon to Katherine in the first place.
The only reason Damon doesn't hate the fact that he was turned for the first half of the series is his belief that he'll find Katherine and they'll be together. It's shown in 1.20 that Damon thought he had become an abomination -- he didn't want to turn, he wanted to resist the first feeding and die. It was Stefan who persuaded him to become a monster and Damon was initially horrified that Stefan would even consider doing it. So, as soon as Damon turned, he turned off his feelings so that he wouldn't have to address all of that self-hate. He accepted that he had become a monster. But, after so long, he realized that he didn't want to stop feeling. An eternity without pain would also mean an eternity without anything else, and he determined that the feelings were worth it.
That said, Damon hates himself for a lot of reasons. He pretty much lives to exercise his self-hate. In 2.01, he forces himself on Elena and kills Jeremy so that Elena will hate him and call him a monster because that's what he sees himself as. When he hits these pits of despair, that's what he truly believes he is -- beyond saving. A big part of the reason he spends so much time harassing Bonnie is that he likes knowing that someone sees him as a monster still and hates him, even when he's trying to be a better person. He self-destructs after he finds out Katherine was never in the tomb, trying to damage his psyche and himself in every way possible and reverting to what he was in the beginning of the series -- a hot mess of sociopathic issues. He acknowledges how pathetic it is that he was so lost and obsessed when it came to Katherine, and so he sets about showing what a pathetic mess he is by excessive partying and flagrant displays of how apathetic he is and how little he cares, when really all he's doing is showing how severely it's effecting him.
History: Damon was born sometime in the 19th century, the eldest son of Giuseppe Salvatore, who never really approved of him, exactly. He returns to Mystic Falls, their hometown, after what appears to be a long absence when he's 25 and a soldier fighting for the confederacy. He and his brother meet Katherine Pierce, a vampire, and her handmaid Emily Bennett, a witch, and immediately begin to fight over Katherine's affections. Katherine plays them both like a fiddle and after compelling Stefan for some time into allowing her to feed on him, and simply having Damon so intrinsically wrapped around her finger that he allowed it, she feeds them both her blood. It's that night that Jonathan Gilbert leads a siege on the vampires of Mystic Falls and locks them all in a church that he burns to the ground. Stefan sells out Katherine and her posse, Damon is horrified. They both try to save Katherine and get shot for their efforts. Damon is secretly aware that Katherine and her posse hid out in a tomb beneath the church with the help of a binding spell that Emily placed on it.
Damon and Stefan wake up from death to realize that they've become vampires, but the transformation won't be complete until they feed on a human. Damon refuses and decides to sit it out and wait for death, but Stefan goes through with it. When he discovers the enhanced senses and powers of a vampire, he encourages Damon to do the same and tempts him with blood. Damon gives in and the two become vampires. Some time in the next 140 years, they separate.
Fast forward to 2009. Stefan and Damon both return to Mystic Falls for separate reasons. Stefan meets Elena when he tries to save her and her parents from a car wreck, Damon just wants to wait for the night of the comet to get Katherine out of her tomb and then raze the town for their crimes. He kills a few people, taunts Elena and Stefan, and generally causes a raucous in the town. Stefan poisons Damon by giving Caroline, the girl he was routinely feeding on, vervain. They lock Damon up in the Salvatore boarding house and Damon starves for a while until he can summon Caroline to him to free him. He then feeds on Vicki Donovan, keeping her in the Salvatore boarding house with him during the daylight hours and feeding one another their blood. Damon turns her, and Stefan tries to prevent Vicki from feeding on human blood to complete the transformation. However, when out in the woods Stefan and Vicki are attacked by Logan, Damon saves Stefan and Vicki feeds on Logan to complete the transformation.
At a Halloween Party, Vicki attacks and the Salvatores and Elena are forced to kill her in front of Jeremy, Elena's brother who has a thing for Vicki. Damon erases his memories to "take away his pain" for Elena's sake. Damon gets in with the local vampire-hunting circle that is in the town's structure and throws a vampire friend of Damon's under the bus for all of the killings that he and Vicki committed. Alaric rolls into town with plans to kill Damon, and Damon reveals that the amber crystal he stole belonged to Emily and will free Katherine from the tomb when a ritual is performed. Emily, however, possesses Bonnie and destroys the crystal to prevent Damon from getting inside because she wants to protect her descendants from vampires.
Logan turns out to be a vampire and after kidnapping Caroline, tells Damon that he can free Katherine by getting Emily's spellbook and having Bonnie perform the rite. Damon and Stefan kill Logan and then Damon drags Elena down to George to meet some people at a bar in hopes of finding the book. Damon gets jumped by friends of Lexi's and Elena saves him. Damon kills the friend he went to see who set him up after learning the location of the book. A vampire that had been stalking Elena tells Damon and Stefan that the way to open the tomb is in Jonathan Gilbert's journal. Damon and Stefan and Elena make a pact to open the tomb together, but Elena and Damon betray Damon's trust because he finds them at the grave where they're supposed to dig up Emily's spellbook after Stefan gets him photocopies of John Gilbert's journal. Damon threatens to turn Elena, feeding her his blood, then steals the spellbook and leaves.
Anna, a vampire who also wants to get in the tomb, forces Damon into an alliance and they open the tomb with Bonnie Bennett's help. Katherine is nowhere to be found, and Anna reveals that in 1983 she ran into Katherine in Chicago and that Katherine knew where Damon was, but did not care. Damon, in a downward spiral, makes himself a bachelor up for auction at a fundraising event and confesses to feeding on Alaric's wife Isobel on stage in a roundabout way that just sounds like he fucked her. Which he did. He doesn't know that she's Elena's biological mother, and upon finding out, realizes what a tool he is. He then admits that he didn't kill Isobel, he turned her, because she came to him begging to be turned.
Some vampires that got out of the tomb try to kill the Salvatore brothers because they feel they're to blame for being trapped in the tomb in the first place and are generally rowdy, so the boys put them down like animals. In order to get into the house and do it, though, they need Alaric's help, so Damon and Elena convince him to work with them. Damon and Alaric's life becomes a buddy cop movie as they break into the house and kill all the vampires except Anna and her mom. Stefan starts being a weird druggie about human blood because he had some of Elena's when he almost died, and Damon encourages it. It makes him bail on the Miss Mystic Falls pageant so Damon escorts Elena instead of Stefan, because Stefan is busy feeding on the blood of innocents. Yay good guys!
Isobel comes to town and horrifies Alaric, and it comes up that Isobel and Elena's uncle John are working for Katherine. Isobel tries to intimidate Damon into giving her a device created by John Gilbert, but Damon puts her in her place. Isobel then tells Elena that Damon's in love with her, and threatens Elena's life if Damon doesn't hand it over, so he does, but only after Bonnie had supposedly deactivated the spell on it. Turns out Bonnie didn't turn the device off and when the vampire hunting brigade turns it on during the Founder's Day celebrations, Damon gets trapped in a basement with the other vampires and they try to burn him alive. Bonnie uses witchcraft to help Stefan save him because she and Elena believe that he really might be a good person underneath it all.
Damon, on Elena's doorstep, thanks her for all of this and tells her that she motivates him to be a better person. They share a passionate kiss, but it turns out that it was Katherine masquerading as Elena. Caroline gets in a car accident and Bonnie convinces Damon to give her his blood because it'll heal her, disregarding any chance that she might die and then turn into a vampire on accident. Caroline recovers, and Damon meets with Stefan and they promise to, upon hearing the news that Katherine is in town, not let her come between them. When Katherine and Damon meet again, Damon becomes her uke bitch and asks her to tell him that she loved him all along and he'll forgive everything. She tells him she never loved him and he throws her out. He crashes into another downward spiral and forces himself on Elena, killing her brother to demonstrate what a monster he is, and tries to get everyone to hate him forever.
First Person Sample: Oh, come on. Bambi and his forest friends are Stefan's diet; I'd rather stick to the real deal. If you're going to knock me out and drag me back to your tacky forest lair, at least give me something to eat. Maybe an FYI as to what you want from me. Maybe you didn't notice when you were shooting me up with vervain, but I've been a little busy lately. I don't have time for these little ... games of yours.
Prose Sample: God, she was talking again. With an annoyed purse of his lips, Damon grabbed one of the pillows and pressing it over his ear, rolling onto his side and facing away from the source of what was apparently going to be extensive torment until he could get Elena and Stefan to give him the time of day. Tch. Like that was happening anytime soon. Well, they could take all the time they wanted, the pillow was working pretty well as a muffler and --
Dammit.
The hesitation in her pitchy voice an the subsequent raise of it meant she knew what he was up to. Soon, the pillow had been pulled away and she was demanding to know why Damon had stopped listening. He sat up slowly, giving her his most unimpressed stare and trying hard to keep from slapping her across the room. Again.
"Because," he replied blithely, not even bothering to hinder the annoyance in his expression. His tone was entirely bland, though, like he was dealing with a petulant child. "Your voice is grating and if I have to hear about your friends and who they're dating, I might honestly gag." He finished the dissuasive statement off with a tight-lipped, patronizing smile and snatched the pillow back as Caroline fell silent, indignation evident. "Now, run along and … do whatever it is you do to make Elena aware of my overwhelming presence in your life." When she didn't move, he raised his eyebrows, forehead creasing with an expectant look. "Go on."
When she still didn't budge, and in fact launched into a rant that resembled her actually trying to tell him that he had to listen to her when she droned, he'd had enough. Leaning forward, he snatched her wrist, pulling her closer and fixing his gaze on hers. His pupils dilated and his words came out softer, but far more pressing.
"Leave. Go tell Elena how much fun we've been having. And don't say a word about the bites. Don't take your scarf off, either." His pupils shrunk back to normal size and the intense look on his face morphed into a smile. "Okay? Everyone goes home happy."
Special Notes:
User Name/Nick: Tiffany
User LJ: arcesso
AIM/IM: to boldly trek
E-mail: live.infamy [at] gmail.com
Other Characters: Dean Winchester, Claire Bennet
The Character
Character Name: Damon Salvatore
Character Journal: miseternity
Canon: The Vampire Diaries
Age: approximately 170-175, appears around 25.
From When?: I'll be taking Damon from 1.14, before he can open the tomb and discover that Katherine was never inside. At this point in canon, he's been betrayed by Bonnie, Elena and Stefan and he's pretty much given up on anything that's worth anything other than Katherine.
Abilities/Powers: Standard Vampire Powers:☑ super speed
☑ jumps very high
☑ compelling - a form of mind control and memory erasure
☑ super strength
☑ drinking blood :| and thereby, REQUIRING blood for sustenance
☑ enhanced sight, smell, taste, hearing
☑ kentucky frying in sunlight
☑ a weakness for witches
☑ looking like a freaky monsters with black and red and veiny eyes
☑ sneaking. yes, this is a special ability.
Special Damon Powers:☑ creating and controlling fog.
☑ summoning and controlling crows -- yep. he's a disney princess.
☑ making panties drop -- no seriously, his levels of charm belong here
☑ has a ring that allows him to walk around in daylight without becoming kentucky fried damon.
Power Limitations: Damon's abilities are pretty reasonable, considering the nasty effects that can come with being a vampire. See: need for blood. Considering he can't alter reality or hurt the wood, I'd prefer if his abilities weren't limited. Obviously, if you feel it necessary, just lemme know what powers you'd like limited and I'd be happy to provide.
Inventory 1 shirt, charcoal button-up
1 jacket, black leather
1 pair of pants, black
1 belt, black leather with a silver buckle
1 pair of work boots, black leather
1 ring, silver with a heavy, dark blue stone, pictured here
Personality: On the most basic level, Damon Salvatore appears to be a lot of things. He's cocky, full of himself, dismissive, brilliantly conniving and witty. He's essentially, as Ian Somerhalder put it, "[a] sort of wacky old world combination of Cary Grant and Mick Jagger." He can seem even sociopathic at times, which he explains is a part of being a vampire -- there's a switch you can shut off that just makes you stop feeling. Early in the season, Damon really seems to make use of this switch, acting unequivocally charming in the same breath that he's ripping out throats. He asserts his power and takes what he wants because he wants to be the Damon that Katherine will come back and love. Even later into the season, Damon carries around with him this devil may care attitude that he works incredibly hard to maintain. He acts like he views people as pawns on a chessboard and treats them as such, coming off superior and careless.
But, Damon admits that he stopped turning this "switch" off. That he began to care about people -- that he cares about his brother, about Elena, and even in some strange ways, about Alaric. He cares enough about him to watch his back, anyway. What he really wants is just acceptance -- from Katherine, from Stefan, from Elena. He wants to be seen as a person again, because he spent so much time trying to shut that part of him out. He wants to be the kind of person that Elena seems to believe he has in him.
Despite the fact that at one time, Damon truly did love his brother, and despite the fact that he's learning to do it again -- slowly -- Damon has a deep-seated despise of Stefan. It began in the 19th century when Stefan and Damon were feuding over Katherine's affection, it culminated when Stefan convinced (read: forced, in Damon's mind) Damon to complete the process of turning when Katherine initiated it, and it bred slowly over the next hundred and forty years. Now, it's taken form in a mounting jealousy that Stefan believes he can play the good guy when really, when he gets his hands on human blood, he's far worse than Damon is because he's out of control, and that he, in his vegan, good guy act, has Elena while Damon has an empty tomb and an ex-girlfriend/maker who could have come found him at any time and never chose to. He sees what a horrible person Stefan can be underneath it all, and hates that just because he does a better job of wrapping it up, Stefan always seems to come out ahead.
Mostly, though, it's long-standing grudge holding over Katherine and their general state of vampirism. Stefan, who had embraced it, is now trying to get away with rejecting it and scorning Damon for embracing it like Stefan had wanted him to. It's ~unfair.~ For all of that hate, though, Damon still has the protective older brother instinct and if anyone but himself tried to fuck with Stefan, it would be their head on a platter. Damon is by no means the oldest vampire of the bunch, but he is easily one of the strongest, and he has a certain possessiveness over being able to make Stefan's life a living hell. Essentially, he loves his brother for reason alone that he is his brother, but he doesn't love the way he tries to hide what he is and gets accepted for hiding it. He would much rather see Stefan the bad guy and love him for that, but he simply can't approve of this trying to cover it all up and pretend it never happened.
Which brings me to the biggest point of conflict between the brothers: Katherine Pierce. The woman has Damon wrapped around her little finger in every sense of the word. She never compelled him, and he allowed her to feed on him while he was a human. When he finds out that she never loved him, he's crushed beyond belief because his entire existence had been engineered toward finding Katherine and he loses his very purpose to live. The one thing that had motivated him to think that perhaps living forever wouldn't be so bad apparently wanted nothing to do with him. For all of his excessive manipulating skill and intelligence, he's powerless against the games that Katherine continuously plays with his mind. All of the love he has for Stefan is dwarfed by his affection for Katherine, which is such an unhealthy obsession that he would cling to any feeble hope that she might return his feelings to any degree.
However, after 1.14, he also develops a kind of bitterness and resentment toward her for all that she put him through, thinking he could find her, pretending she didn't exist so that he'd continue searching, but all he requires is once solid push to convince him that she cares to some extent and he'd be hers all over again. This is also compounded by the fact that, between 1.14 and 1.21, he's grown to care a lot for Elena who, while she may physically resemble Katherine to the highest degree, is nothing like her. Katherine is selfish where Elena is helpful and genuine. She's, essentially, the better model, because she still has all that winning self confidence that attracted Damon to Katherine in the first place.
The only reason Damon doesn't hate the fact that he was turned for the first half of the series is his belief that he'll find Katherine and they'll be together. It's shown in 1.20 that Damon thought he had become an abomination -- he didn't want to turn, he wanted to resist the first feeding and die. It was Stefan who persuaded him to become a monster and Damon was initially horrified that Stefan would even consider doing it. So, as soon as Damon turned, he turned off his feelings so that he wouldn't have to address all of that self-hate. He accepted that he had become a monster. But, after so long, he realized that he didn't want to stop feeling. An eternity without pain would also mean an eternity without anything else, and he determined that the feelings were worth it.
That said, Damon hates himself for a lot of reasons. He pretty much lives to exercise his self-hate. In 2.01, he forces himself on Elena and kills Jeremy so that Elena will hate him and call him a monster because that's what he sees himself as. When he hits these pits of despair, that's what he truly believes he is -- beyond saving. A big part of the reason he spends so much time harassing Bonnie is that he likes knowing that someone sees him as a monster still and hates him, even when he's trying to be a better person. He self-destructs after he finds out Katherine was never in the tomb, trying to damage his psyche and himself in every way possible and reverting to what he was in the beginning of the series -- a hot mess of sociopathic issues. He acknowledges how pathetic it is that he was so lost and obsessed when it came to Katherine, and so he sets about showing what a pathetic mess he is by excessive partying and flagrant displays of how apathetic he is and how little he cares, when really all he's doing is showing how severely it's effecting him.
History: Damon was born sometime in the 19th century, the eldest son of Giuseppe Salvatore, who never really approved of him, exactly. He returns to Mystic Falls, their hometown, after what appears to be a long absence when he's 25 and a soldier fighting for the confederacy. He and his brother meet Katherine Pierce, a vampire, and her handmaid Emily Bennett, a witch, and immediately begin to fight over Katherine's affections. Katherine plays them both like a fiddle and after compelling Stefan for some time into allowing her to feed on him, and simply having Damon so intrinsically wrapped around her finger that he allowed it, she feeds them both her blood. It's that night that Jonathan Gilbert leads a siege on the vampires of Mystic Falls and locks them all in a church that he burns to the ground. Stefan sells out Katherine and her posse, Damon is horrified. They both try to save Katherine and get shot for their efforts. Damon is secretly aware that Katherine and her posse hid out in a tomb beneath the church with the help of a binding spell that Emily placed on it.
Damon and Stefan wake up from death to realize that they've become vampires, but the transformation won't be complete until they feed on a human. Damon refuses and decides to sit it out and wait for death, but Stefan goes through with it. When he discovers the enhanced senses and powers of a vampire, he encourages Damon to do the same and tempts him with blood. Damon gives in and the two become vampires. Some time in the next 140 years, they separate.
Fast forward to 2009. Stefan and Damon both return to Mystic Falls for separate reasons. Stefan meets Elena when he tries to save her and her parents from a car wreck, Damon just wants to wait for the night of the comet to get Katherine out of her tomb and then raze the town for their crimes. He kills a few people, taunts Elena and Stefan, and generally causes a raucous in the town. Stefan poisons Damon by giving Caroline, the girl he was routinely feeding on, vervain. They lock Damon up in the Salvatore boarding house and Damon starves for a while until he can summon Caroline to him to free him. He then feeds on Vicki Donovan, keeping her in the Salvatore boarding house with him during the daylight hours and feeding one another their blood. Damon turns her, and Stefan tries to prevent Vicki from feeding on human blood to complete the transformation. However, when out in the woods Stefan and Vicki are attacked by Logan, Damon saves Stefan and Vicki feeds on Logan to complete the transformation.
At a Halloween Party, Vicki attacks and the Salvatores and Elena are forced to kill her in front of Jeremy, Elena's brother who has a thing for Vicki. Damon erases his memories to "take away his pain" for Elena's sake. Damon gets in with the local vampire-hunting circle that is in the town's structure and throws a vampire friend of Damon's under the bus for all of the killings that he and Vicki committed. Alaric rolls into town with plans to kill Damon, and Damon reveals that the amber crystal he stole belonged to Emily and will free Katherine from the tomb when a ritual is performed. Emily, however, possesses Bonnie and destroys the crystal to prevent Damon from getting inside because she wants to protect her descendants from vampires.
Logan turns out to be a vampire and after kidnapping Caroline, tells Damon that he can free Katherine by getting Emily's spellbook and having Bonnie perform the rite. Damon and Stefan kill Logan and then Damon drags Elena down to George to meet some people at a bar in hopes of finding the book. Damon gets jumped by friends of Lexi's and Elena saves him. Damon kills the friend he went to see who set him up after learning the location of the book. A vampire that had been stalking Elena tells Damon and Stefan that the way to open the tomb is in Jonathan Gilbert's journal. Damon and Stefan and Elena make a pact to open the tomb together, but Elena and Damon betray Damon's trust because he finds them at the grave where they're supposed to dig up Emily's spellbook after Stefan gets him photocopies of John Gilbert's journal. Damon threatens to turn Elena, feeding her his blood, then steals the spellbook and leaves.
Anna, a vampire who also wants to get in the tomb, forces Damon into an alliance and they open the tomb with Bonnie Bennett's help. Katherine is nowhere to be found, and Anna reveals that in 1983 she ran into Katherine in Chicago and that Katherine knew where Damon was, but did not care. Damon, in a downward spiral, makes himself a bachelor up for auction at a fundraising event and confesses to feeding on Alaric's wife Isobel on stage in a roundabout way that just sounds like he fucked her. Which he did. He doesn't know that she's Elena's biological mother, and upon finding out, realizes what a tool he is. He then admits that he didn't kill Isobel, he turned her, because she came to him begging to be turned.
Some vampires that got out of the tomb try to kill the Salvatore brothers because they feel they're to blame for being trapped in the tomb in the first place and are generally rowdy, so the boys put them down like animals. In order to get into the house and do it, though, they need Alaric's help, so Damon and Elena convince him to work with them. Damon and Alaric's life becomes a buddy cop movie as they break into the house and kill all the vampires except Anna and her mom. Stefan starts being a weird druggie about human blood because he had some of Elena's when he almost died, and Damon encourages it. It makes him bail on the Miss Mystic Falls pageant so Damon escorts Elena instead of Stefan, because Stefan is busy feeding on the blood of innocents. Yay good guys!
Isobel comes to town and horrifies Alaric, and it comes up that Isobel and Elena's uncle John are working for Katherine. Isobel tries to intimidate Damon into giving her a device created by John Gilbert, but Damon puts her in her place. Isobel then tells Elena that Damon's in love with her, and threatens Elena's life if Damon doesn't hand it over, so he does, but only after Bonnie had supposedly deactivated the spell on it. Turns out Bonnie didn't turn the device off and when the vampire hunting brigade turns it on during the Founder's Day celebrations, Damon gets trapped in a basement with the other vampires and they try to burn him alive. Bonnie uses witchcraft to help Stefan save him because she and Elena believe that he really might be a good person underneath it all.
Damon, on Elena's doorstep, thanks her for all of this and tells her that she motivates him to be a better person. They share a passionate kiss, but it turns out that it was Katherine masquerading as Elena. Caroline gets in a car accident and Bonnie convinces Damon to give her his blood because it'll heal her, disregarding any chance that she might die and then turn into a vampire on accident. Caroline recovers, and Damon meets with Stefan and they promise to, upon hearing the news that Katherine is in town, not let her come between them. When Katherine and Damon meet again, Damon becomes her uke bitch and asks her to tell him that she loved him all along and he'll forgive everything. She tells him she never loved him and he throws her out. He crashes into another downward spiral and forces himself on Elena, killing her brother to demonstrate what a monster he is, and tries to get everyone to hate him forever.
First Person Sample: Oh, come on. Bambi and his forest friends are Stefan's diet; I'd rather stick to the real deal. If you're going to knock me out and drag me back to your tacky forest lair, at least give me something to eat. Maybe an FYI as to what you want from me. Maybe you didn't notice when you were shooting me up with vervain, but I've been a little busy lately. I don't have time for these little ... games of yours.
Prose Sample: God, she was talking again. With an annoyed purse of his lips, Damon grabbed one of the pillows and pressing it over his ear, rolling onto his side and facing away from the source of what was apparently going to be extensive torment until he could get Elena and Stefan to give him the time of day. Tch. Like that was happening anytime soon. Well, they could take all the time they wanted, the pillow was working pretty well as a muffler and --
Dammit.
The hesitation in her pitchy voice an the subsequent raise of it meant she knew what he was up to. Soon, the pillow had been pulled away and she was demanding to know why Damon had stopped listening. He sat up slowly, giving her his most unimpressed stare and trying hard to keep from slapping her across the room. Again.
"Because," he replied blithely, not even bothering to hinder the annoyance in his expression. His tone was entirely bland, though, like he was dealing with a petulant child. "Your voice is grating and if I have to hear about your friends and who they're dating, I might honestly gag." He finished the dissuasive statement off with a tight-lipped, patronizing smile and snatched the pillow back as Caroline fell silent, indignation evident. "Now, run along and … do whatever it is you do to make Elena aware of my overwhelming presence in your life." When she didn't move, he raised his eyebrows, forehead creasing with an expectant look. "Go on."
When she still didn't budge, and in fact launched into a rant that resembled her actually trying to tell him that he had to listen to her when she droned, he'd had enough. Leaning forward, he snatched her wrist, pulling her closer and fixing his gaze on hers. His pupils dilated and his words came out softer, but far more pressing.
"Leave. Go tell Elena how much fun we've been having. And don't say a word about the bites. Don't take your scarf off, either." His pupils shrunk back to normal size and the intense look on his face morphed into a smile. "Okay? Everyone goes home happy."
Special Notes: