Maribel never thought she'd be imprisoned.

She'd never been detained by the police. Never drove over the speed limit. Never got caught drinking while underage. Never even parked where she wasn't supposed to.

And now she was rotting in a cell, her vision so blurred, she was sure she had brain damage. Whatever he'd injected her with was keeping her too weak to try and escape. So, instead, she lay curled up, a buzzing filling her ears and making it hard for her to know what Damon and Elena were saying.

"Maribel," pleaded Elena. "Maribel, wake up. You can't go to sleep."

"I know," she said softly, leaning up against the bars. The cold metal soothed her slightly. "Oh, I feel so sick..."

"Damon, we have to get out of here," pleaded Elena. "She's gonna die. Can you reach her? Can you give her some of your blood?"

"Maribel," urged Damon. "Get as close as you can to this side." He waved his hand out, doing his best to signal where he was.

"I don't think I can move," she said weakly. "My head hurts so bad, if I move I see spots."

She could hear Elena rattling the bars of the cage as hard as she could. "WES!" yelled Elena. "LET US OUT OF HERE! Maribel will die if you don't!"

"I don't think he cares about me anymore," whispered Maribel.

"Maybe when the vervain wears off, we'll be able to break through these," said Damon, imitating Elena.

"Why are we even here?" demanded Elena. "Why are these cells here in the first place?"

"Wes is carrying out the grand Augustine tradition," said Damon. "Getting his kicks off vampire torture."

"Did he tell you that?"

"He didn't have to," said Damon. "I've been here before. Someone in my family sold me out to the Augustines in 1953. Every day, this nut job Dr. Whitmore tortured us, cut into us, took pieces of our eyes out, pushed us to every limit he could imagine. And he had quite the imagination. Kept me in this very cell, and don't think I haven't appreciated the irony."

"How long were you here?" asked Elena. Maribel was just as curious, but was too weak to express it.

"Five years, give or take."

"Damon, how did you not go crazy?"

"Believe it or not, I made a friend. His name was Enzo. He was a soldier in Europe during World War II."

"How did he end up here?"

"Dr. Whitmore was working in a battlefield hospital when he discovered Enzo was a vampire, so he drugged him, locked him in a coffin, and shipped him overseas. He'd been here for ten years by the time I joined the party."

"Damon," said Elena slowly, "Wes knew my dad. They worked together. He said that my dad was an Augustine, too. I know that my dad was a vampire hunter, but he was also the town doctor. He was kind and gentle and loving. He wouldn't be part of a place that would cut your eyes out."

"People are full of surprises," said Damon. "I am so sorry I got you caught up in this. I promise you I will get you out of here, okay? Okay... I'll get you out of here."

Elena sighed. "I know. Damon... how did you survive all those years?"

"Enzo's friendship kept me alive, he gave me a reason to hang onto my humanity even when I thought I'd be a prisoner forever."

"Wait," mumbled Maribel tiredly. "Your brother... he can get us out, right? If he notices you guys aren't coming back... are his memories back?"

"His memories are back, but I've got some bad news for you, Beli, Stefan doesn't even know this place exists. Memories or not he isn't coming to rescue us."

"But you were here for five years," said Elena, stunned.

"Yeah, and in the first year, I'd thought he'd rescue me. He didn't. Once I escaped, there was no point in giving him more to feel guilty about, so I never told him what happened here. I never told anyone."

"So you got out on your own," managed Maribel trying her best to inch toward the other side of the cell. "How?"

Damon continued, "They let us out of the basement once a year. Every New Year's Eve, the Augustine people had a little cocktail party with a vampire buffet on the side. We were weak from vervain injections... half-starved from living on a glass of blood a day, chained up like animals. This little annual shindig is where Dr. Whitmore got to show all of his Augustine friends what he'd found in his research. He'd let his guests drink from us to demonstrate the healing power of vampire blood. One year... I remember his volunteer. He called her Mrs. Fell."

"No," whispered Maribel, closing her eyes.

"Yeah. Your family was one of the many sponsors."

"I'm sorry," she said, shaking her head.

He didn't respond. "On the plus side, that's how Enzo came up with his plan. One of us would get both rations of blood for a year... building up strength so that we'd be able to escape the following New Year's Eve. I beat him in rock-paper-scissors. I got both rations."

"So, did it work?" asked Elena urgently.

"More or less."

"How did you get out?"

"It doesn't matter, Elena. I got strong, I got out. It wasn't pretty. All you need to know."

"Wes is gonna come back down here, and we'll both be the newest Augustine experiment. Maribel would die or— or we could be made to kill her! You have to tell us how you got out of here, Damon!"

"You don't want to know, Elena," he said more sharply.

"Why? You think I'm gonna judge you? Damon, I love you. I love you and these people tortured you for five years. Whatever you had to do, I don't care."

"Alright," decided Damon. "Alright... the Augustines' next party was in 1958. I'd been drinking Enzo's rations for an entire year. I mean, he kept a few drops here and there so he wouldn't desiccate, and as he starved himself, I got stronger from all the extra blood just like he said I would. But when I was able to attack the Augustines... a fire was started. I tried to free Enzo, but the cage had been laced in vervain. I couldn't open the door. Enzo trusted me with his life. The fire was getting out of control, I would have burned up or they would have captured me again. There's no way I would have ever gotten another chance of escaping. So I chose to save myself. And I knew if I was going to save myself, that I had to stop caring about Enzo. So I turned off my emotions. After that, everything was fine." He repeated more softly, "Everything was fine."

"Survival instincts," muttered Maribel tiredly, finding it odd that Elena didn't immediately comfort him, given a second ago she claimed she wouldn't judge him. "You did what you had to do. I hate to be the bearer of bad news after a sad story but that's not gonna help us right now."

The door above opened. Maribel tried to crawl away in case it was Wes, but instead saw Aaron.

"What the hell is this place?" he asked.

Elena shuffled to her feet. "Aaron?"

"Great," said Damon, presumably rolling his eyes. "Mini-Wes."

Aaron seemed offended by this. "I didn't know what Wes was doing, I didn't even know there was a basement down here. Maribel, why are you here? Wes said you're not a vampire."

"Vampire sympathizer is apparently just as bad in his book," she muttered.

"Aaron, you have to help us," begged Elena. "Especially Maribel, she's human, she can't heal from injuries, she hit her head really hard and I think she might be dying!"

"I wanna know the truth, first," said Aaron, withdrawing a gun. "When you met at Megan's memorial, you asked me a bunch of questions." He tried loading the gun with wooden bullets, but dropped a few as he did it.

Damon snorted. "Slick hands, cowboy."

Aaron glared at him. "Yeah? Well, I've never used a gun before... and I never killed anyone either unlike you."

"What are you talking about?" asked Elena.

"Wes said a vampire killed Megan."

Damon scoffed. "And you thought it was Elena?"

"No," said Elena. "Megan was inside this house. I hadn't even been invited yet. You just—"

"Wes also said a vampire killed my parents," continued Aaron. "Maybe that was you, too."

"No, Aaron. That's impossible—"

"Why else would you be so interested in me?"

"Calm down," urged Damon as he started to raise his voice.

"Why else would you pretend to be my friend?" demanded Aaron loudly. "She's a vampire!"

Damon shouted, "Not the one that killed your parents. That was all me."

Aaron turned his attention to him, holding the gun toward him. "What did you just say? Start talking."

"Damon, what are you doing?" Elena hissed.

"In 1958," said Damon, "after the fire, Enzo was dead, so I had to take on my revenge plan solo. I wanted to take out the entire Augustine society and every member of the Whitmore family. He seemed to find that boring. So I decided I'd kill everyone except one person. I'd let that person grow up, start a family, and then I'd start killing Whitmores again. And then I'd take out the generation after that, leaving only one person to carry on the name, and then I'd take out the generation after that and so on, and so on, and so on. And that's exactly what I did."

Aaron spoke shakily, "How many Whitmores have you killed?"

"Since 1958? I lost count."

"When was the last one?" demanded Elena. He didn't respond. "Damon, when was the last one?!"

"A few months ago," said Damon. "Her name was Sara. Had to go all the way to Charleston to find her. It was a weekend trip. You didn't know."

"But we were together a few months ago."

"Starting the summer of our lives."

Elena's voice was laced with disgust. "I had no idea!"

"Told you it wasn't pretty."

Maribel flinched as Aaron fired the gun, shooting Damon in the head and rendering him unconscious. He then stormed out, leaving them alone.

The door opened once again, a few minutes later. This time, it was Wes who came in. He made a beeline for Elena, who cried out a second later, then went silent. The cell door was opened, and Wes dragged her body up the stairs by himself.

"No," said Maribel. "Wes, let her go! Don't take her! She's a kid—" she grabbed onto the bars tightly. "Wes, please."

"You're coming, too," he said. Once he'd set Elena down upstairs, he walked back down, unlocking her cell and hoisting her up.

She saw the keys dangling from his belt as he forced her to walk upstairs with him. She waited until they were through the door to reach for them, planning to grab them then throw him down the stairs, giving her enough time to grab something to use as a weapon. With any luck, the fall would hurt him badly.

She was too weak to do any real damage to him. She was able to get the keys, but he simply grabbed her first, shaking her so hard her teeth chattered, then letting her fall back down the stairs. This time, there was a loud snap, and she cried out in pain as her ankle broke.

"Stupid girl," he said, marching down to rip the keys out of her hands. "Now you can stay here to rot."

She wasn't sure how much longer she'd remain conscious. The pain in her ankle was blinding, so overwhelming that she feared her injuries would overtake her and she'd die limp on the dungeon floor. She did her best to ignore the pain, trying to climb back up the stairs in the hopes he hadn't locked the door because he thought she wouldn't make it up there.

Unfortunately, it was locked. She slid her body carefully down the stairs, forcing herself to crawl around looking for any small or sharp objects that could be of use. She found a tiny metal rod, and crawled to Damon's cell, doing her best to try and pick the lock. The only problem was that she'd never picked a lock in her life, and had no way of knowing how to do it successfully.

She transitioned instead to trying to wake him up. She knew he wasn't permanently dead because of the lack of grey skin and bulged veins. She did her best to drag him as close to the bars as she could, using the metal rod to dig into the bullet hole, trying to remove it from his head. It reminded her why medicine simply wasn't for her. She swore she saw part of his brains.

But, at last, she removed it. The wound closed, and he soon gasped and awakened.

"Feed on me," she offered, reaching her hand in. "Considering how much I've bled, I may not have much vervain left. Either way you have to try, you have to be strong enough to break out. Wes took Elena and my ankle is broken and I can hardly see your face right now, I need you to heal me."

He accepted her offer, grabbing her hand and biting into her wrist. She whimpered in pain, turning away and hoping this would be enough. She crawled away from the door as he stood up, rattling the bars so hard, she had to cover her ears and close her eyes. The sound was making her headache worse.

At last, it seemed it yielded the desired results. The cell door broke open. Damon walked out and immediately knelt down in front of Maribel, biting his hand and giving her a chance to drink. She accepted immediately, sighing and taking as much as she could until the buzz in her ears stopped and the pain radiating throughout her body subsided.

He helped her to her feet, leading her out of the dungeon and back through the hallway to the lab. He set her on a lab bench. "You got it from here?"

"Yeah," she said, still tired. "I'll look through his stuff, maybe there's something that can tell us where he might have taken Elena. If he has another lab, for example."

"Let me know if you find anything. And don't get yourself killed in the next twenty-four hours. If your sister finds out you became a vampire against your will with my blood in your system, she might just do a seance to get Ric to kill me from the Other Side."

She smiled weakly. "I'll try my best."

If there was something non-scientific Wes happened to be stellar at, it was keeping a thorough documentation of every official paper he ever came across in his life. While Maribel's bills were all tossed in one box divided only by the months they were due, he organized them by date and time. He was meticulous about color-coding and filing every shipment file and future order notes to ensure he never ran out of any materials.

It didn't take her very long to find where he kept a folder of all the lab locations he'd worked at including where he received shipments and which buildings he had access to depending on necessity of certain microscopes or just extra equipment.

Most of the listed addresses were somewhere on campus or back in his hometown, neither of which were reasonable places for him to have taken Elena. At last, she came upon an address whose zip code she recognized, belonging to a building in Mystic Falls.

A quick internet search matched the address to the practice of Dr. Grayson Gilbert, a property she knew had been closed down after a fire in the basement left the building unstable.

Meredith sent her Damon's phone number after Caroline didn't respond quick enough (presumably because she was searching, too).

"Hey," she said when he answered. "It's Maribel. Listen, he has an address on file that I think could be the one he took her to. Her dad's old clinic in Mystic Falls. I highly doubt he's in any of the other campus buildings, he'd know I'd find that in two seconds checking the key card system."

"I'll go there," he said. "Look at you, Baby Fell. Maybe there's a reason for me to let you live."

"Very funny. Go find her, and let me know when she's safe."

Aaron contacted her first, letting her know Damon had safely retrieved Elena. He also let her know that Wes was gone. He'd taken matters into his own hands to cut off Augustine's funding permanently, and was going to do his best to make sure Maribel still had a steady enough income for her research (though he made no promises that he'd manage to get it all to her without it first going through another PI). She appreciated his efforts all the same.

The following day was quiet, after a ridiculously long call with Meredith telling her what'd happened. She caught up on her lectures at home, resting and letting the vampire blood leave her system. She texted Caroline asking how everything was, and received a very brief message about Katherine Pierce dying. She didn't inquire any further.

"Well, this looks all packed up."

She looked up as she finished taping the last box to be moved to her lab and out of Wes's. "Yeah," she told Damon. "It's official, paperwork was submitted to cut the funding. And no one knows where Wes is." She shrugged. "He'll be found eventually."

"What happens to the money?"

"Aaron cut it off, he's doing his best to make sure it gets to me. I was looking through some documents before I burned it all and I can't believe how much my family donated to this back in the fifties, when my dad and his brothers were little kids. Seems the funding stopped after 1958 following the fire, but still, to think my grandfather and grandmother supported this... I don't like it. Based on the fact they died when I was little, I can assume they weren't present that night you escaped, but they might have been the previous year when 'Mrs. Fell' offered herself as a volunteer. That must have been my Grandma Aurelia. I never really knew them... always interacted more with my mom's parents. Anyway, I'm rambling... I'm sorry about all this."

He just nodded. "Enzo's alive."

She set the tape down. "How do you know that?"

"He was in the Gilbert clinic with Elena. We got into a fight, then he left. Didn't find that in the documents?"

"No, he only ever refers to them by numbers. I had no idea. Are you going to try and talk to him? Is he going to come after the people Wes associated with?"

"Probably," said Damon. "If I were you, I'd recommend Aaron change his name and leave town."

"I'll tell him. He'll be happy to leave. But what about me? Even if I didn't help with this, Wes stole my research and I was his associate."

"Are you scared, Beli?"

"A little bit." She set the box aside, allowing Damon to see she had a half-empty bottle of whiskey hidden behind it, which she'd been drinking as she packed.

He raised his eyebrows at her. "Drinking while handling lab equipment? I thought only one of the Fell sisters was an alcoholic."

She rolled her eyes. "I'm not an alcoholic."

He noticed the grim expression she had on as he nudged the box of equipment closer to her little pile by a cart with two shelves. "Do you know where Wes is?"

"No," she said honestly. "And I don't want to. You know," she started to rant, despite knowing Damon probably didn't care and likely had other things to worry about, "He was a selfish egotistical man, I didn't care to think about it too much because I wasn't planning on being more than his fuck buddy until Meredith got me thinking about the future. He left me to die because he was doing something morally wrong and I got understandably upset. Now I have to clean up his mess, take over his classes, and pray like hell my lab doesn't get shut down, too. I earned a drink." She popped open the bottle and drew a sip.

Damon reached out for it. Skeptically, she handed it over, surprised when he drew a sip, too. "I broke up with my girlfriend," he said, causing her eyes to widen, "because it was the right thing to do. Then we got into a fight because she kept trying to justify what her dad was doing in Augustine, and then she was definitely judging me for leaving Enzo behind and for having been killing Whitmores, and then she started complaining because she found out Stefan slept with Katherine the day before she died. And then I tried to fix things and I told her I need good in my life because without her there's just darkness and she didn't want us to get back together. She says she doesn't want to be the only thing I live for, and she gave up because she can't change me, because she doesn't know 'who I'll take it out on' each time we break up."

Maribel hummed. "Well, she's right."

"Excuse me?"

"She shouldn't be the only thing you live for. I mean, listen to yourself, Damon. This is insanely toxic. Even you have to be able to see that. You're both very dependent on each other to the point you are miserable when you're not together and that's really... not... normal. If there isn't goodness in your life unless she's with you, then you're headed down a very bad path. If nothing else can excite you then what's the point of anything? What if— god forbid— she dies or you never get back together after this? Is your life just not gonna have meaning? Are you going to cease existing? Surely you like living for one reason or another outside of Elena. Surely Stefan means enough to you that you'd live for him. Elena shouldn't be the only reason you try to be good. Besides, I'm surprised Elena isn't accustomed to all..."

She gestured in his general direction, "that. You're both vampires, she understands it's your basic nature to want blood and to be a killer. She knew you were a killer before she started dating you, she knows you're a killer now. She chose to date you anyway, so I don't get why it's a problem now. Either way, you two shouldn't be trying to change each other. If you can't accept each other as you are considering the type of creatures you are then why be together at all? There are good vampires but they were good before turning and they're good after turning and they are that way because they want to be, not because someone asks them to be. If you put on a good boy act just to please her and make her happy then you're just being fake. You're putting on a mask and being a different person for her and in the long run that's gonna drive you fucking crazy. If you can't be genuine with your partner, it's not healthy.

"As for who you'll take it out on, I assume she means someone like Aaron, what with your revelation about killing the Whitmores? Listen, I don't give a shit about the people you already killed, it's in the past and it's not like there's anything I can do to change it. It's hard to be upset about something like that when it already happened. Like, it's wrong, but what else can be expected from a vampire who was tortured by that family for five years? I can't claim that I wouldn't do the same thing if I'd been in your shoes. I will tell you one thing, though. Aaron helped us and he's not part of this. He didn't even know vampires existed until Wes kidnapped us. So retaliating against him is not only useless but it's cringey."

He blinked. "Cringey?"

"Yeah, 'cause if you kill him 'cause you're mad at Elena or whatever then you're as pathetic as guys who punch walls when they're angry. Cringey. You want revenge? Fuck it, go after Wes for all I care. Aaron's the reason Augustine has been permanently shut down. That should at least count for something. Obviously I can't control what you do, and I'll be really frustrated and hurt if I find out he's dead but I know it's useless to try and beg you not to hurt him. So instead I just hope you see reason in what I said. I don't think killing him will bring you the satisfaction you seek."

"You know," he said, "I liked you better when you didn't psychoanalyze me. Or, in general, when you didn't talk back."

"Well, I'm not in the habit of letting men talk over me and control me. Then again, you seem like the type who hatesbeing challenged. You hate when people do the opposite of what you say, as if you have any right to control them. You strike me as a manipulative, obsessive, big secret-keeper, probably had mommy and daddy issues, and you probably don't trust easily."

He rolled his eyes. "First your boyfriend tries to give me a real lobotomy, and then two seconds later you try to give me a magical one."

"I'm just telling you the truth, how I see it," she said simply. "You and Elena are toxic for each other and you both have things to work on. I think some time alone will be good for both of you. You genuinely need to find a reason to live outside of a relationship. I struggled being alone for a while but I learned to enjoy my own company and to be happy without depending on another person for joy and satisfaction. Give it a try. You might enjoy it."

She drew a longer sip from the bottle of whiskey, surprised Damon hadn't outright stormed out. "Look, if you stay, I'm just gonna keep talking," she said, taking a moment to breathe before she drank again. "When I get tipsy, I won't shut up."

"Let me guess," said Damon, reaching for the bottle again, "next you're going to rant about how little you were loved as a child."

"Mm, no. We're still focusing on you. And your violent reactions to stuff. I mean, you know killing people is wrong, Elena knows it, too. She doesn't want to kill because she doesn't like to kill, but you like to kill, you just get lazy when it comes to the disposing of the bodies. Like, I really don't get why she's with you if she's so against killing. If someone is problematic, you don't date them, end of story. You don't try to fix people or change them. You either love all of them or don't love them at all, especially in a supernatural world where you have so much other shit to consider."

She hopped up onto the lab bench, reaching for the bottle. "With Wes, I think it was going to be futile trying to pull him away from his research. I, personally, know that I need someone who can do what they love and still have enough time and motivation to commit to me and love me, too. I'm aware of what I do want in a partner, and what I don't want in a partner. You have to know your preferences, too. You know right from wrong, you shouldn't be killing innocent people, but you're a vampire. Regular rules don't really apply the same way. So you should want a partner who can just respect that they can't change that about you.

"Do whatever the fuck you want because you want to do it, not because you feel like you have to in order to fill a requirement for someone else or to make someone else happy. If you want to be a murderer, go for it, just date someone who doesn't care that you are one or better yet find a girlfriend or boyfriend who will kill with you. 'Cause if you suppress all that for somebody then you just become a ticking time bomb. But then if you don't want to be a murderer that's okay, too, being a decent person isn't shameful. You can be a vampire and not be a total monster. But you have to choose that. It's all about choice, and you," she drank again, "have a choice. You choose the path you follow."

"Yeah," he mumbled to himself. "I don't want to live up to anyone's expectations. Hey, Light Weight, I think you reached your limit."

She ignored him and drank again, watching him closely as she chugged far more whiskey than she should have. "Living up to expectations fucking sucks, whether you live up to a parent's expectations or to a partner's. Both are bad and fucking suck. Nobody should feel trapped in a relationship or like they can't be free to be who they wanna be. You need a partner who's willing to deal with the consequences that come from your behavior if that's what you wanna do. To summarize, you and Elena seem cute and all but you're not good for each other if you're trying to change one another. Meredith told me about what it was like after she turned, you wanted her to embrace what she was and be more like you but she didn't want to be that way, she didn't want to hurt people."

He snatched the bottle away from her before she could drink again. "Come on, I'll take you home."

"Nope," she said, climbing off the lab bench. "I gotta take these boxes to my lab."

"You can do that when you're sober. Come on. On the off-chance you still have vampire blood in you, I need to take you home so you don't do something stupid and come crying wondering why I healed you in the first place."

He dragged her back to her apartment against her will, holding her arm tightly so she wouldn't fall face-first onto the floor. "You have terrible tolerance," he said when she fumbled with her house keys. "This is insanely pathetic."

"Meredith's the experienced drinker, not me," she said, finally managing to open the door. "Come in. I have more booze."

"You shouldn't drink anymore. If you get turned into a vampire because of alcohol poisoning, you'll feel like a complete idiot for the rest of your life."

She didn't make it to the cabinet with her liquor. She stumbled onto the couch, sighing when she got into a comfortable position, her head propped up on a pillow.

"You're not gonna kill me?" she asked tiredly when he started heading for the door now that he knew she was just going to go to sleep.

"No," he said. "I don't want to have to dig a hole for you. Besides, you just spilled your guts to me. I think it might be more fucked-up to kill you after you dropped every last truth bomb you had in you."

"I'm just drunk," she said, closing her eyes. "I don't even remember what I said."

"Drunk people are more truthful. Everyone around me, even Stefan, is always trying to change me and make me be 'good.' But I like myself the way I am."

She curled up. "That's what matters."

Damon left as soon as she dozed off, figuring she wouldn't have a single clue what they spoke about when she awoke.

But she remembered everything.

-

A/N: This chapter was insanely long, forgive me. But I hope you enjoyed ;)