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varymydays
E-Mail: ljrizzy [at] gmail [dot] com
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Other Characters: Peter Parkersaved
Character Name: Damon Salvatore
Series: The Vampire Diaries
Timeline: very end of 3x09
Canon Resource Link: Damon Salvatore Wiki
Character History: [/cracks knuckles. Damon is a vampire well over 150 years old, and the show reveals plenty about his past, as well as giving him tons of material so there’s a lot to go over. I’ll try to summarize the important parts, but I’m always happy to elaborate or give more.
Content warnings for mentions of or allusions to assault, murder, abuse, dubious consent, rape, torture]
This piece of shit was born in Mystic Falls in 1839. His father was abusive and controlling. During one dinner, his father burns him with a cigar as punishment, and Damon was clearly afraid of him. His mother died when he was young (or so he thought. canon later shows otherwise, but as far as this Damon knows, she died). Damon was incredibly close to his brother, Stefan Salvatore, growing up. They counted on each other. Damon fought in the Civil War for the South, but he hated it and had no desire to be part of it, which is why he ultimately defected. This led to his father’s opinion of Damon worsening, while simultaneously elevating Stefan further as the favored son. This is the start of what will become the theme of Damon’s life, and a source of a lot of his manpain and bitterness (It’s always Stefan~~).
Katherine Pierce waltzes into Mystic Falls like the badass, manipulative lady vampire that she is. Damon is never compelled once. As the hopeless romantic that he is, he falls deeply in love with her. He embraced her vampiric nature and willingly let her drink from him. He is willing to do anything and everything for her, including keep the fact that she is a vampire a secret from the town and his father. Damon wants to become a vampire to spend eternity with Katherine. At the same time, Stefan has fallen in love with Katherine too, but he is not as receptive to the fact that she’s a vampire. Stefan reveals the truth to their father as a consequence. Both brothers are shot and killed in their attempt to rescue Katherine, who has been imprisoned by the townspeople of Mystic Falls. They die with vampire blood in their system. It means that when they wake, they’re in transition.
However, Damon saw Katherine ‘die’. As far as he knows, she is dead, and he has no desire to exist for an eternity without her. He’s ready to die so he won’t have to see what that is like, but Stefan refuses to lose his older brother. He brings Damon a bleeding woman, begging his brother to feed too, and forcing it on him despite Damon’s protests. When he completes the transition, Damon hates his brother, and he promises him an eternity of misery for forcing him to turn. His hatred is also influenced by the fact Katherine turned Stefan too, and Damon thought it would just be the two of them for all eternity (he’s just that bitter over it). Damon and Stefan run into each other a few more times throughout the years, but they never reconcile fully (Damon makes mistakes, Stefan makes some, too).
In the 1950s, Damon is lured back to Mystic Falls where he is incapacitated and handed over to a doctor who was part of a secret society called Augustine. The Augustine society was aware that the supernatural existed, and they wanted to study it. They did so by torturing and experimenting on vampires, which is what happened to Damon for five years. He was tortured and experimented on alongside another vampire named, Lorenzo "Enzo" St. John. They come up with a plan to escape. Damon slaughters the entire Augustine New Year’s Eve party, and he tries to free Enzo, but can’t. In order to survive, he turns off his emotions so he won’t care about leaving Enzo behind, and he can escape the burning building. He then dedicates his existence to murdering the rest of the Augustine society members until there are none of them left. With his emotions off, he continues to be a terror throughout the world, killing people without care, including the pregnant wife of one of his only remaining, living family members.He’s a great guy. Thankfully, the baby survives.
Hello, brother.
It’s not clear when this happened within the canon. However, at some point, Damon finds out that Katherine actually did survive. He believes she’s still trapped in a tomb. The tomb was created to save the vampires of Mystic Falls, in case the townsfolk ever found out and decided to mob and murder them (which they did thanks to Stefan). Upon finding this out, it becomes his purpose to find a way to free her, because he genuinely believes they will live happily ever after in the eternity he was promised when she initially turned him. Despite being the cynical, violent serial killer that he is, Damon willfully clings to any hope of being loved by the ones he’s in love with, and this is a pattern he demonstrates over and over again.
When he first ends up in Mystic Falls again, he runs into Elena Gilbert before even Stefan does. She is the spitting image of Katherine, which leads him to talk to her despite the fact his emotions are still turned off. He says he hopes she has everything she could ever wish for and then compels her to forget ever having met him, because why not. This is a tidbit only revealed later within the series, and Damon does not mention or make any reference to having met her earlier at any other time.
Within the canon itself, he initially shows up as a villain, leaving a trail of dead bodies behind him. He’s behind the ‘animal attacks’ that Mystic Falls has to be on guard against. Fog seems to follow him. When he discovers Elena and Stefan are together, you better bet there’s more bitterness (cause y’know, it’s always Stefan~~). Damon fights against his brother, physically as well as emotionally. He attacks him, manipulates his dreams, and kills his brother’s best friend, Lexie. He causes problems for Elena, like turning Vicki Donovan into a vampire and sending her to the Gilbert house. Vicki dies because of him (and she is only the first of many). He compels Caroline Forbes to be in a relationship with him, making her forget what he wants her to forget, feeding from her, and being an abusive fuck toward her. He quickly gains an antagonistic relationship with Bonnie Bennett who gets a bad feeling about him from the start.
Fool me once, shame on you.
Damon’s status as the main villain begins to change due to several events. Elena shows compassion towards him when he does not deserve it, and she helplessly affects him despite his smarmy attitude. His brother doesn’t try to kill him despite everything Damon has done to him. Damon starts to express some regret for some of what he has done, like killing Lexie. He slowly starts to open up to his brother again after decades of being at odds with him. After Elena discovers some of the truth about Katherine and is upset that Stefan didn’t tell her, Damon saves Elena from a car crash, and they go on a road trip together to a bar. After this, Elena saves Damon’s life.
Slowly, he starts to integrate into the Scooby Gang instead of simply being antagonistic toward it, and there are times when they all have to work together.
Eventually, the tomb is opened and Damon is obviously happy about this end result. However, Katherine isn’t there. She escaped a long time ago, and she did not care about finding Damon. She didn’t care about Damon at all. This bit of news wrecks Damon. This forever happy, romantic ending he’d had in his head is shattered again as it had been when he was first turned and realized Katherine wanted Stefan far more than she wanted him. Elena hugs him after this discovery. Damon finds out Katherine always knew where he was but she didn’t care.
Damon spends the next few days drunk off his head as well as being a raging asshole to anyone that tries to talk to him. It’s revealed that Damon killed and turned Isobel Flemming into a vampire. Damon had no idea Isobel was Elena’s birth mother at the time, nor did he realize Isobel had been married to Alaric Saltzman, the high school teacher by day and vampire hunter by night. When confronted about this fact, Damon kills Alaric, but he was wearing a magical ring that brought him back to life.
The vampires that had been trapped in the tomb take up residence in Mystic Falls, and they kidnap and torture Stefan for his snitching all those years ago. Damon and Elena work together along with a reluctant Alaric (after Damon lies to him, of course) to save Stefan. It’s one of the first times Damon and Elena work together purposefully to save Stefan, and it will hardly be the last. Damon continuously attempts to keep Elena safe by taking her out of the plan as much as possible and not letting her get involved when he can. When they do save Stefan, Damon comes home to him eating as many blood bags as he possibly can. Stefan has a very dangerous addiction to blood, so this is no bueno.
Throughout the next few weeks, Damon and Elena are both focused on reaching Stefan to prevent him from falling off the wagon where his addiction is concerned. They go so far as to lock him up to try to starve him of blood. Stefan gets out and tries to end it all, because he can’t handle his own guilt. The truth comes out to Elena about Stefan forcing Damon to drink blood and complete the transition over a century ago. Damon tells him to stop feeling guilty for it. It’s another step that helps to mend the fences between them in a very significant way.
Toward the end of the first season, Damon finds out that the tomb vampires are planning to kill the members of the town’s Founding Families, and he actually tries to put a stop to it. John Gilbert uses a device to incapacitate all of vampires in town, including Damon. It’s because of Stefan and Elena, after convincing Bonnie to help, that Damon is saved. He goes to see Jeremy Gilbert and offers to wipe his memory of Anna, his vampire girlfriend who wasn’t as lucky as Damon. Damon offers to do it in case that would help ease his pain, having an actual sincere moment with Elena’s brother. He tells Jeremy that, Life sucks either way, but at least if you’re a vampire, you don’t have to feel bad about it if you don’t want to. When Damon steps outside, he thanks who he thinks is Elena for saving his life, and then kisses her. It turns out that it’s not Elena at all, but Katherine. Coughs.
Somewhere along the way, you decided I was worth saving.
Naturally, Damon later tries to make it all about the kiss that he believes they shared, and Elena has no idea what he’s talking about. When it comes out that Damon kissed Katherine thinking it was Elena, Stefan tries to attack him, and Elena tells them she’d never do that. When Katherine ends up at the boarding house where Stefan and Damon live, Damon and Katherine make out, but before it can move beyond that, Damon asks her for the truth. She tells him she never loved him, and Damon loses it. As he always does when he’s hurt, Damon lashes out, and he ends up in Elena’s room, incredibly drunk and angry and dangerous. He tries to make her admit she has feelings for him. He forces a kiss on her, and she tells him that it’s always going to be Stefan (See? It’s a theme of his continuous manpain).
Jeremy tries to stop Damon, and Damon kills him in front of Elena. This shatters what friendship and trust they had built. Despite this, they have to work together to find out why Katherine is in town. It leads them to discover the ‘sun and moon’ curse for the first time, and Elena manipulates Damon some to get more information about Katherine. Damon does genuinely apologize for what he did, and he tries to insist he knew Jeremy was wearing the magical ring that brought him back to life (but he didn’t). Elena tells him that he has lost her forever.
The Salvatores end up locking heads with the werewolves, specifically Mason Lockwood. They’re looking for a moonstone, because Katherine seems to want it, and they need to know why she wants it. Damon figures this all out by torturing Mason and then eventually killing him. Mason says Katherine needs the moonstone to lift the curse of the sun and moon because she loves him, but Damon knows better. Later, Damon and Stefan try to kill Katherine, but it turns out Katherine is always one step ahead. She’s linked her life to Elena’s, and everything they do to Katherine is also done to Elena. Katherine very easily plays Damon like a fiddle, toying with his emotions, making him react and lash out without thought. He threatens her again despite the fact Elena and Katherine are still connected.
After saving Elena from being kidnapped, Damon tells her that he loves her, and it’s why he can’t be selfish with her. He... then proceeds to compel her to forget everything he’s just said (because y’know messing with someone’s mind for your own emotional purposes is totally selfless, Damon. /ahem).
What I'm about to say is probably the most selfish thing I've ever said in my life: I love you
Rose is one of the two people who kidnapped Elena, because they wanted to deliver Elena to Elijah, an Original vampire. She survives, however, and sort of ends up being on their side. Damon develops a relationship with her where he clearly cares about her. In the process of trying to understand the curse and Klaus and what he’d need Elena for, Elena tries to turn herself over to Klaus. Rose is the one who warns Damon of this. Damon rushes off to stop Elena despite the fact she insists upon it, because she doesn’t want Klaus to hurt the people she loves. A werewolf named Jules ends up biting Rose, and a werewolf bite is fatal for a vampire. It’s a slow painful death where they lose all sense of reality. They’re in constant pain.
Damon tries to find a way to heal Rose, but he’s not able to before she ends up being a danger to those around her. He sits with her as she is dying and expressing regret for no longer being human. He holds her, and he gives her a beautiful dream of a better time where she does get to be human… before he kills her to put her out of her misery. Again, Damon is hurting and grieving, and he (you guessed it) gets drunk and lashes out dangerously, violently. He lies in the middle of a road until an innocent woman stops to check on him, and he talks about how he misses being human more than anything in the world. Then he kills her. He continues to spiral, hurting and compelling another young woman to be his temporarily sort-of girlfriend (though not by her own choice, constantly compelling her to not be afraid of the fact that he’s a vampire etc). He makes a mess while Elena tries to convince him to be the better man.
The threat of Elijah and Klaus end up taking over whatever remaining emotional reactions Damon may have. They make plans to take out Elijah, and they manage to do so, at least temporarily. During this time, Damon fakes Bonnie’s death without telling Elena so that Klaus would think Bonnie was dead. He wanted her reaction to be real so he didn’t tell Elena (she does rightfully slap the absolute shit out of him for it later). Elijah ends up working on their side against his brother, Klaus, and they formulate a plan to stop the ritual from happening. The ritual would involve killing Elena, as well as killing a vampire and werewolf. On the eve of the ritual, Elena drinks an Elixir to keep her from dying in the ritual. Damon doesn’t trust it and rejects Stefan’s insistence that they let Elena make her own choices. He force-feeds her his blood, and Elena is obviously devastated because she doesn’t want to be a vampire.
Damon immediately regrets it later, afraid Elena will never forgive him/hate him for eternity. He attempts to break out the werewolf and vampire that Klaus plans to use in the ritual. He is able to free them, but the full moon comes and Tyler tries to bite Caroline. Damon blocks him, and he’s the one bitten instead. He thinks he’s stopped the ritual, but soon realizes he didn’t at all. Jules will be the werewolf killed, and Klaus turns Elena’s aunt into a vampire instead to use during the ritual. He’s angry that Klaus didn’t use Damon, but Klaus claims that Damon is as good as dead anyway (so again, Klaus, why not just use Damon? Except Klaus has to cause the most amount of pain...).
As the ritual starts, they’re able to find another way to save Elena from dying—by linking her life force to John Gilbert’s. It works, and human!Elena comes back to life after the ritual is completed. A funeral is held for John and Jenna, and Damon reveals to his brother that he’s been bitten by a werewolf and will die soon. He asks Elena for her forgiveness because “he needs it”, but she asks for more time and he agrees without revealing he’s dying (this is an example of a selfless moment, Damon.) Damon tries to kill himself the next day, so he won’t have to endure what Rose went through. Stefan locks him up so he won’t try anything like that again, but Damon gets sicker by the hour. He starts to hallucinate, and once he’s freed from where he’s locked up, he wanders around dangerously. Eventually, Elena gets Damon back into a bed where he is clearly dying. They share a moment as she holds him, and he admits that he deserves to die for everything he’s done. She kisses him as he lies there dying, and meanwhile, Stefan is selling himself over to Klaus so that his brother can have the only cure to a werewolf bite.
You should've met me when I was human. You would've liked me.
During the summer, Damon and Elena do what they can to try to track Stefan down. They spend much more time together, relying on each other in a way they never have before. It’s nearly impossible to find Stefan though, and he is mostly trackable by the bodies that he leaves behind. Damon starts to believe his brother cannot be saved, except Elena leads them out on a trip in the middle of the woods. Stefan is there, and even though he’s in his darkest place, he saves Damon, which leads Damon to believing that his brother can be saved (or at least that he should do everything he can to try after his brother saves his life again).
They are finally able to track Stefan down in Chicago. Damon and Elena come up with a plan that involves Damon distracting Klaus (and nearly getting killed) and Elena talking to Stefan. Stefan breaks it off with her, however, and they head back. Damon rebels recklessly because he feels like everyone wants him to be like Stefan, to be ‘better, good’. He ends up killing Alaric again, because Alaric tried to stop him from attacking and trying to kill Caroline’s father, Bill.
Damon and Elena are very clearly a team in these next few months, despite their occasional clashes. Klaus tries to use Elena as a human bloodbag to make his precious hybrids, and Damon finds her in the hospital, saving her and bringing her back to the boarding house. She was clearly upset that he wasn’t there when she needed him, and he promises her he will never leave her again. Damon helps train her so she can take care of herself, and Elena insists that if anyone can reach Stefan, it’s Damon.
Damon helps to free Mikael, a fearsome vampire who hunts other vampires; they believe he’ll be the key to defeating Klaus. Mikael does want Klaus dead, as it turns out Mikael is Klaus’ father. Mikael nearly kills Damon for information, but Stefan comes to the rescue once again, telling Mikael the truth about being able to lure Klaus. They decide to hatch a plan to end Klaus’ existence once and for all.
Damon and Elena contend with Klaus again, but this time Stefan is forcibly on their side, which complicates things. Both Damon and Elena want Stefan to be free from that control Klaus has on him, and more than that, no one wants Elena to be a bloodbag for the rest of her life. It’s settled, then: they decide to attack during a dance.
Damon and Elena make their own secret plan separate from what they have openly shared with the others, anticipating that Mikael would betray them. There were too many loose ends as it is. They work side by side to create bombs and prepare their arsenal. Damon asks her if she trusts him, and she says Yes without hesitation. They have come a long way over the last few months, and this moment is clear proof of that. Damon has Katherine take Elena’s place at the dance, and it’s Damon who will use a white ash oak stake to drive it through Klaus’ heart. The plan works perfectly. Mikael does ‘kill’ who he thinks is Elena, but it turns out to be Katherine who takes both originals by surprise and throws the bombs their way.
Damon rushes up behind Klaus with the white oak ash stake, taking Klaus by surprise and very nearly killing him, ending it right then and there. What they don’t know is this act will kill Damon if he does so. Katherine tells Stefan about this caveat, and Stefan stops Damon before he can drive the stake into Klaus’ heart. Klaus takes this opportunity to grab the stake and kill Mikael instead. Damon has no idea why his brother stopped him from killing Klaus, but he’s clearly upset as Stefan leaves.
Elena calms him down and tells them they both have to let Stefan go as she cradles his face. Damon desperately clings to every single scrap of affection that Elena shows to him, and this is the last memory Damon has before he ends up in Wonderland.
Abilities/Special Powers: Damon is a vampire. As long as he gets a steady flow of blood in him, his body operates like it normally would if he were still alive. There are limited ways to kill a vampire, including taking off their head, setting them on fire, and wood through the heart. A werewolf bite will also eventually kill a vampire. Without blood in him, Damon would be far more susceptible to injuries and be far weaker.
-Super strength: Vampires are stronger than humans. They can pick them up completely off the ground by the throat, toss them around the room, and rip organs out of their bodies without much effort required. If they're more emotional, it seems to make them a little stronger in that moment. Also, as they grow older, they become stronger.
-Super speed: They can travel faster than the human eye can see, appearing as a blur to the average human as the vampire covers large distantces in an instant.
-Super agility: They can jump super high and land on their feet when jumping down from incredibly high distances (like a cat).
-Super senses: All of a vampire's senses are enhanced. Vampires can hear incredibly well like whispered conversations through buildings. However, they can also turn their audible sense of hearing off to ambient noises if they want to focus on something. Vampires can see in the dark, and they can smell blood from miles away.
-Super durability: Vampires can continue to fight even when incredibly injured and in a lot of pain. They can push through most wounds to keep going.
-Healing factor: Vampires are immortal which means they do not age, do not get affected by illness, and cannot be killed by most injuries, and they can also heal quickly from almost any wound.
-Compulsion: This is a vampire's ability to compel another person to do what they want them to do, feel what they want them to feel, or to forget or to believe something. It's mind control. People can be protected against this if they have vervain.
-Dream manipulation: This is not an ability explored much in canon, but vampires have the ability to enter someone's mind while they are sleeping to manipulate the dream they are having. Damon does this to Stefan early in season 1 to turn his dream into a nightmare like the nice bro that he is.
Third-Person Sample:
Damon lies on his back in the garden, very aware that he's not where he should be even before he's opened his eyes. He had been thankfully asleep in his bed after a night full of heavy drinking. The feeling of Elena's hands against his neck remained with him even as his chest tangled with sheer, sharp anger, because Stefan stopped him from killing Klaus. Now they're all back at square one, and Klaus is still an issue, and his brother went AWOL (again). And sometimes he forgets how much caring, and trying, and being involved is actually really damn exhausting especially since this isn't what Damon does. This is for Stefan, the brother that's good, that tries, that deserves to be happy with Elena.
It doesn't matter how it twists his gut up to think about it or to see them together. It doesn't matter except it does. Elena asks him Where were you? with tears in her eyes, and he knows he will never leave her again.
Still, he's not used to it. He spent several decades without feeling or caring about anything or anyone. He killed without thought. He had no ties. It was lonely and empty and terrible, and he knows it. His back feels flat against the pavement. It's with a grimace he realizes he is not in his bed, and he sits up abruptly with a groan.
"Okay, I didn't drink that much," Damon says, shoving himself up to his feet in annoyance, because what. the. hell. This is not anywhere in Mystic Falls. This is not anywhere Damon remotely recognizes, and being kidnapped? It's not really his thing. That's more in Elena's wheelhouse. Elena- If he's here, what is happening to her? She's the one people want. She's the one Klaus would still love to get a steady supply of blood from, and he's terrified underneath it all. He shoves down the panic because none of this makes any sense so clearly none of it is real. Someone's screwing with his dreams. Someone spiked his drink. Damon is obviously hallucinating. He's done that before. Being transported to some other world against his will with no idea of how he's gotten here? Nope. That's new. That is not possible.
This? This is not real.
There's a whiskey bottle in his hand. He'd fallen asleep with it wrapped around his palm. It stays there as he uses that vampiric super speed to dart him around in every direction, looking for a road or a sign, finding that nothing about this places looks like any place he knows exists. He stops abruptly and lets out the longest sigh before he e glances down at the bottle in his hand after a moment, locking his jaw.
"Well, Toto, looks like we're not in Kansas anymore."
He lifts up the bottle to take a swig out of it. Whatever the hell's going on, he's going to need to be a lot drunker to deal with it.
First-Person Sample:
[Damon has not quite made it into the mansion yet. He's on the steps, drinking from the bottle directly when he pulls out the communication device. It takes little effort to skim through previous entries, and- and he's not completely sure his own brain could come up with all of this. If this is reality, he has to work fast. There has to be a way out. There's always a way out. There are always answers, and he's going to find them and play nice until he understands more about the way this place works.]
Question #1, for the masses: How drunk do you have to be for this place to start making sense? Because I'm starting to think this poor, lonely bottle's not gonna cut it.
[He sends the camera a slow but charming smirk as he leans back against the steps with his elbows propped up behind him.]
Question #2, what's the one thing you wish someone had told you on your first day in the merry old Land of Wonder, but failed to? Because I really hate being kept in the dark.
[Damon points a finger at the camera, toasting the bottle in its direction before he takes a drink from it.] Go. Best answers get... a pony. Or first invites to the big party.
DW username:
varymydaysE-Mail: ljrizzy [at] gmail [dot] com
IM: n/a
Plurk: varymydays
Other Characters: Peter Parker
savedCharacter Name: Damon Salvatore
Series: The Vampire Diaries
Timeline: very end of 3x09
Canon Resource Link: Damon Salvatore Wiki
Character History: [/cracks knuckles. Damon is a vampire well over 150 years old, and the show reveals plenty about his past, as well as giving him tons of material so there’s a lot to go over. I’ll try to summarize the important parts, but I’m always happy to elaborate or give more.
Content warnings for mentions of or allusions to assault, murder, abuse, dubious consent, rape, torture]
This piece of shit was born in Mystic Falls in 1839. His father was abusive and controlling. During one dinner, his father burns him with a cigar as punishment, and Damon was clearly afraid of him. His mother died when he was young (or so he thought. canon later shows otherwise, but as far as this Damon knows, she died). Damon was incredibly close to his brother, Stefan Salvatore, growing up. They counted on each other. Damon fought in the Civil War for the South, but he hated it and had no desire to be part of it, which is why he ultimately defected. This led to his father’s opinion of Damon worsening, while simultaneously elevating Stefan further as the favored son. This is the start of what will become the theme of Damon’s life, and a source of a lot of his manpain and bitterness (It’s always Stefan~~).
Katherine Pierce waltzes into Mystic Falls like the badass, manipulative lady vampire that she is. Damon is never compelled once. As the hopeless romantic that he is, he falls deeply in love with her. He embraced her vampiric nature and willingly let her drink from him. He is willing to do anything and everything for her, including keep the fact that she is a vampire a secret from the town and his father. Damon wants to become a vampire to spend eternity with Katherine. At the same time, Stefan has fallen in love with Katherine too, but he is not as receptive to the fact that she’s a vampire. Stefan reveals the truth to their father as a consequence. Both brothers are shot and killed in their attempt to rescue Katherine, who has been imprisoned by the townspeople of Mystic Falls. They die with vampire blood in their system. It means that when they wake, they’re in transition.
However, Damon saw Katherine ‘die’. As far as he knows, she is dead, and he has no desire to exist for an eternity without her. He’s ready to die so he won’t have to see what that is like, but Stefan refuses to lose his older brother. He brings Damon a bleeding woman, begging his brother to feed too, and forcing it on him despite Damon’s protests. When he completes the transition, Damon hates his brother, and he promises him an eternity of misery for forcing him to turn. His hatred is also influenced by the fact Katherine turned Stefan too, and Damon thought it would just be the two of them for all eternity (he’s just that bitter over it). Damon and Stefan run into each other a few more times throughout the years, but they never reconcile fully (Damon makes mistakes, Stefan makes some, too).
In the 1950s, Damon is lured back to Mystic Falls where he is incapacitated and handed over to a doctor who was part of a secret society called Augustine. The Augustine society was aware that the supernatural existed, and they wanted to study it. They did so by torturing and experimenting on vampires, which is what happened to Damon for five years. He was tortured and experimented on alongside another vampire named, Lorenzo "Enzo" St. John. They come up with a plan to escape. Damon slaughters the entire Augustine New Year’s Eve party, and he tries to free Enzo, but can’t. In order to survive, he turns off his emotions so he won’t care about leaving Enzo behind, and he can escape the burning building. He then dedicates his existence to murdering the rest of the Augustine society members until there are none of them left. With his emotions off, he continues to be a terror throughout the world, killing people without care, including the pregnant wife of one of his only remaining, living family members.
Hello, brother.
It’s not clear when this happened within the canon. However, at some point, Damon finds out that Katherine actually did survive. He believes she’s still trapped in a tomb. The tomb was created to save the vampires of Mystic Falls, in case the townsfolk ever found out and decided to mob and murder them (which they did thanks to Stefan). Upon finding this out, it becomes his purpose to find a way to free her, because he genuinely believes they will live happily ever after in the eternity he was promised when she initially turned him. Despite being the cynical, violent serial killer that he is, Damon willfully clings to any hope of being loved by the ones he’s in love with, and this is a pattern he demonstrates over and over again.
When he first ends up in Mystic Falls again, he runs into Elena Gilbert before even Stefan does. She is the spitting image of Katherine, which leads him to talk to her despite the fact his emotions are still turned off. He says he hopes she has everything she could ever wish for and then compels her to forget ever having met him, because why not. This is a tidbit only revealed later within the series, and Damon does not mention or make any reference to having met her earlier at any other time.
Within the canon itself, he initially shows up as a villain, leaving a trail of dead bodies behind him. He’s behind the ‘animal attacks’ that Mystic Falls has to be on guard against. Fog seems to follow him. When he discovers Elena and Stefan are together, you better bet there’s more bitterness (cause y’know, it’s always Stefan~~). Damon fights against his brother, physically as well as emotionally. He attacks him, manipulates his dreams, and kills his brother’s best friend, Lexie. He causes problems for Elena, like turning Vicki Donovan into a vampire and sending her to the Gilbert house. Vicki dies because of him (and she is only the first of many). He compels Caroline Forbes to be in a relationship with him, making her forget what he wants her to forget, feeding from her, and being an abusive fuck toward her. He quickly gains an antagonistic relationship with Bonnie Bennett who gets a bad feeling about him from the start.
Fool me once, shame on you.
Damon’s status as the main villain begins to change due to several events. Elena shows compassion towards him when he does not deserve it, and she helplessly affects him despite his smarmy attitude. His brother doesn’t try to kill him despite everything Damon has done to him. Damon starts to express some regret for some of what he has done, like killing Lexie. He slowly starts to open up to his brother again after decades of being at odds with him. After Elena discovers some of the truth about Katherine and is upset that Stefan didn’t tell her, Damon saves Elena from a car crash, and they go on a road trip together to a bar. After this, Elena saves Damon’s life.
Slowly, he starts to integrate into the Scooby Gang instead of simply being antagonistic toward it, and there are times when they all have to work together.
Eventually, the tomb is opened and Damon is obviously happy about this end result. However, Katherine isn’t there. She escaped a long time ago, and she did not care about finding Damon. She didn’t care about Damon at all. This bit of news wrecks Damon. This forever happy, romantic ending he’d had in his head is shattered again as it had been when he was first turned and realized Katherine wanted Stefan far more than she wanted him. Elena hugs him after this discovery. Damon finds out Katherine always knew where he was but she didn’t care.
Damon spends the next few days drunk off his head as well as being a raging asshole to anyone that tries to talk to him. It’s revealed that Damon killed and turned Isobel Flemming into a vampire. Damon had no idea Isobel was Elena’s birth mother at the time, nor did he realize Isobel had been married to Alaric Saltzman, the high school teacher by day and vampire hunter by night. When confronted about this fact, Damon kills Alaric, but he was wearing a magical ring that brought him back to life.
The vampires that had been trapped in the tomb take up residence in Mystic Falls, and they kidnap and torture Stefan for his snitching all those years ago. Damon and Elena work together along with a reluctant Alaric (after Damon lies to him, of course) to save Stefan. It’s one of the first times Damon and Elena work together purposefully to save Stefan, and it will hardly be the last. Damon continuously attempts to keep Elena safe by taking her out of the plan as much as possible and not letting her get involved when he can. When they do save Stefan, Damon comes home to him eating as many blood bags as he possibly can. Stefan has a very dangerous addiction to blood, so this is no bueno.
Throughout the next few weeks, Damon and Elena are both focused on reaching Stefan to prevent him from falling off the wagon where his addiction is concerned. They go so far as to lock him up to try to starve him of blood. Stefan gets out and tries to end it all, because he can’t handle his own guilt. The truth comes out to Elena about Stefan forcing Damon to drink blood and complete the transition over a century ago. Damon tells him to stop feeling guilty for it. It’s another step that helps to mend the fences between them in a very significant way.
Toward the end of the first season, Damon finds out that the tomb vampires are planning to kill the members of the town’s Founding Families, and he actually tries to put a stop to it. John Gilbert uses a device to incapacitate all of vampires in town, including Damon. It’s because of Stefan and Elena, after convincing Bonnie to help, that Damon is saved. He goes to see Jeremy Gilbert and offers to wipe his memory of Anna, his vampire girlfriend who wasn’t as lucky as Damon. Damon offers to do it in case that would help ease his pain, having an actual sincere moment with Elena’s brother. He tells Jeremy that, Life sucks either way, but at least if you’re a vampire, you don’t have to feel bad about it if you don’t want to. When Damon steps outside, he thanks who he thinks is Elena for saving his life, and then kisses her. It turns out that it’s not Elena at all, but Katherine. Coughs.
Somewhere along the way, you decided I was worth saving.
Naturally, Damon later tries to make it all about the kiss that he believes they shared, and Elena has no idea what he’s talking about. When it comes out that Damon kissed Katherine thinking it was Elena, Stefan tries to attack him, and Elena tells them she’d never do that. When Katherine ends up at the boarding house where Stefan and Damon live, Damon and Katherine make out, but before it can move beyond that, Damon asks her for the truth. She tells him she never loved him, and Damon loses it. As he always does when he’s hurt, Damon lashes out, and he ends up in Elena’s room, incredibly drunk and angry and dangerous. He tries to make her admit she has feelings for him. He forces a kiss on her, and she tells him that it’s always going to be Stefan (See? It’s a theme of his continuous manpain).
Jeremy tries to stop Damon, and Damon kills him in front of Elena. This shatters what friendship and trust they had built. Despite this, they have to work together to find out why Katherine is in town. It leads them to discover the ‘sun and moon’ curse for the first time, and Elena manipulates Damon some to get more information about Katherine. Damon does genuinely apologize for what he did, and he tries to insist he knew Jeremy was wearing the magical ring that brought him back to life (but he didn’t). Elena tells him that he has lost her forever.
The Salvatores end up locking heads with the werewolves, specifically Mason Lockwood. They’re looking for a moonstone, because Katherine seems to want it, and they need to know why she wants it. Damon figures this all out by torturing Mason and then eventually killing him. Mason says Katherine needs the moonstone to lift the curse of the sun and moon because she loves him, but Damon knows better. Later, Damon and Stefan try to kill Katherine, but it turns out Katherine is always one step ahead. She’s linked her life to Elena’s, and everything they do to Katherine is also done to Elena. Katherine very easily plays Damon like a fiddle, toying with his emotions, making him react and lash out without thought. He threatens her again despite the fact Elena and Katherine are still connected.
After saving Elena from being kidnapped, Damon tells her that he loves her, and it’s why he can’t be selfish with her. He... then proceeds to compel her to forget everything he’s just said (
What I'm about to say is probably the most selfish thing I've ever said in my life: I love you
Rose is one of the two people who kidnapped Elena, because they wanted to deliver Elena to Elijah, an Original vampire. She survives, however, and sort of ends up being on their side. Damon develops a relationship with her where he clearly cares about her. In the process of trying to understand the curse and Klaus and what he’d need Elena for, Elena tries to turn herself over to Klaus. Rose is the one who warns Damon of this. Damon rushes off to stop Elena despite the fact she insists upon it, because she doesn’t want Klaus to hurt the people she loves. A werewolf named Jules ends up biting Rose, and a werewolf bite is fatal for a vampire. It’s a slow painful death where they lose all sense of reality. They’re in constant pain.
Damon tries to find a way to heal Rose, but he’s not able to before she ends up being a danger to those around her. He sits with her as she is dying and expressing regret for no longer being human. He holds her, and he gives her a beautiful dream of a better time where she does get to be human… before he kills her to put her out of her misery. Again, Damon is hurting and grieving, and he (you guessed it) gets drunk and lashes out dangerously, violently. He lies in the middle of a road until an innocent woman stops to check on him, and he talks about how he misses being human more than anything in the world. Then he kills her. He continues to spiral, hurting and compelling another young woman to be his temporarily sort-of girlfriend (though not by her own choice, constantly compelling her to not be afraid of the fact that he’s a vampire etc). He makes a mess while Elena tries to convince him to be the better man.
The threat of Elijah and Klaus end up taking over whatever remaining emotional reactions Damon may have. They make plans to take out Elijah, and they manage to do so, at least temporarily. During this time, Damon fakes Bonnie’s death without telling Elena so that Klaus would think Bonnie was dead. He wanted her reaction to be real so he didn’t tell Elena (she does rightfully slap the absolute shit out of him for it later). Elijah ends up working on their side against his brother, Klaus, and they formulate a plan to stop the ritual from happening. The ritual would involve killing Elena, as well as killing a vampire and werewolf. On the eve of the ritual, Elena drinks an Elixir to keep her from dying in the ritual. Damon doesn’t trust it and rejects Stefan’s insistence that they let Elena make her own choices. He force-feeds her his blood, and Elena is obviously devastated because she doesn’t want to be a vampire.
Damon immediately regrets it later, afraid Elena will never forgive him/hate him for eternity. He attempts to break out the werewolf and vampire that Klaus plans to use in the ritual. He is able to free them, but the full moon comes and Tyler tries to bite Caroline. Damon blocks him, and he’s the one bitten instead. He thinks he’s stopped the ritual, but soon realizes he didn’t at all. Jules will be the werewolf killed, and Klaus turns Elena’s aunt into a vampire instead to use during the ritual. He’s angry that Klaus didn’t use Damon, but Klaus claims that Damon is as good as dead anyway (so again, Klaus, why not just use Damon? Except Klaus has to cause the most amount of pain...).
As the ritual starts, they’re able to find another way to save Elena from dying—by linking her life force to John Gilbert’s. It works, and human!Elena comes back to life after the ritual is completed. A funeral is held for John and Jenna, and Damon reveals to his brother that he’s been bitten by a werewolf and will die soon. He asks Elena for her forgiveness because “he needs it”, but she asks for more time and he agrees without revealing he’s dying (this is an example of a selfless moment, Damon.) Damon tries to kill himself the next day, so he won’t have to endure what Rose went through. Stefan locks him up so he won’t try anything like that again, but Damon gets sicker by the hour. He starts to hallucinate, and once he’s freed from where he’s locked up, he wanders around dangerously. Eventually, Elena gets Damon back into a bed where he is clearly dying. They share a moment as she holds him, and he admits that he deserves to die for everything he’s done. She kisses him as he lies there dying, and meanwhile, Stefan is selling himself over to Klaus so that his brother can have the only cure to a werewolf bite.
You should've met me when I was human. You would've liked me.
During the summer, Damon and Elena do what they can to try to track Stefan down. They spend much more time together, relying on each other in a way they never have before. It’s nearly impossible to find Stefan though, and he is mostly trackable by the bodies that he leaves behind. Damon starts to believe his brother cannot be saved, except Elena leads them out on a trip in the middle of the woods. Stefan is there, and even though he’s in his darkest place, he saves Damon, which leads Damon to believing that his brother can be saved (or at least that he should do everything he can to try after his brother saves his life again).
They are finally able to track Stefan down in Chicago. Damon and Elena come up with a plan that involves Damon distracting Klaus (and nearly getting killed) and Elena talking to Stefan. Stefan breaks it off with her, however, and they head back. Damon rebels recklessly because he feels like everyone wants him to be like Stefan, to be ‘better, good’. He ends up killing Alaric again, because Alaric tried to stop him from attacking and trying to kill Caroline’s father, Bill.
Damon and Elena are very clearly a team in these next few months, despite their occasional clashes. Klaus tries to use Elena as a human bloodbag to make his precious hybrids, and Damon finds her in the hospital, saving her and bringing her back to the boarding house. She was clearly upset that he wasn’t there when she needed him, and he promises her he will never leave her again. Damon helps train her so she can take care of herself, and Elena insists that if anyone can reach Stefan, it’s Damon.
Damon helps to free Mikael, a fearsome vampire who hunts other vampires; they believe he’ll be the key to defeating Klaus. Mikael does want Klaus dead, as it turns out Mikael is Klaus’ father. Mikael nearly kills Damon for information, but Stefan comes to the rescue once again, telling Mikael the truth about being able to lure Klaus. They decide to hatch a plan to end Klaus’ existence once and for all.
Damon and Elena contend with Klaus again, but this time Stefan is forcibly on their side, which complicates things. Both Damon and Elena want Stefan to be free from that control Klaus has on him, and more than that, no one wants Elena to be a bloodbag for the rest of her life. It’s settled, then: they decide to attack during a dance.
Damon and Elena make their own secret plan separate from what they have openly shared with the others, anticipating that Mikael would betray them. There were too many loose ends as it is. They work side by side to create bombs and prepare their arsenal. Damon asks her if she trusts him, and she says Yes without hesitation. They have come a long way over the last few months, and this moment is clear proof of that. Damon has Katherine take Elena’s place at the dance, and it’s Damon who will use a white ash oak stake to drive it through Klaus’ heart. The plan works perfectly. Mikael does ‘kill’ who he thinks is Elena, but it turns out to be Katherine who takes both originals by surprise and throws the bombs their way.
Damon rushes up behind Klaus with the white oak ash stake, taking Klaus by surprise and very nearly killing him, ending it right then and there. What they don’t know is this act will kill Damon if he does so. Katherine tells Stefan about this caveat, and Stefan stops Damon before he can drive the stake into Klaus’ heart. Klaus takes this opportunity to grab the stake and kill Mikael instead. Damon has no idea why his brother stopped him from killing Klaus, but he’s clearly upset as Stefan leaves.
Elena calms him down and tells them they both have to let Stefan go as she cradles his face. Damon desperately clings to every single scrap of affection that Elena shows to him, and this is the last memory Damon has before he ends up in Wonderland.
Abilities/Special Powers: Damon is a vampire. As long as he gets a steady flow of blood in him, his body operates like it normally would if he were still alive. There are limited ways to kill a vampire, including taking off their head, setting them on fire, and wood through the heart. A werewolf bite will also eventually kill a vampire. Without blood in him, Damon would be far more susceptible to injuries and be far weaker.
-Super strength: Vampires are stronger than humans. They can pick them up completely off the ground by the throat, toss them around the room, and rip organs out of their bodies without much effort required. If they're more emotional, it seems to make them a little stronger in that moment. Also, as they grow older, they become stronger.
-Super speed: They can travel faster than the human eye can see, appearing as a blur to the average human as the vampire covers large distantces in an instant.
-Super agility: They can jump super high and land on their feet when jumping down from incredibly high distances (like a cat).
-Super senses: All of a vampire's senses are enhanced. Vampires can hear incredibly well like whispered conversations through buildings. However, they can also turn their audible sense of hearing off to ambient noises if they want to focus on something. Vampires can see in the dark, and they can smell blood from miles away.
-Super durability: Vampires can continue to fight even when incredibly injured and in a lot of pain. They can push through most wounds to keep going.
-Healing factor: Vampires are immortal which means they do not age, do not get affected by illness, and cannot be killed by most injuries, and they can also heal quickly from almost any wound.
-Compulsion: This is a vampire's ability to compel another person to do what they want them to do, feel what they want them to feel, or to forget or to believe something. It's mind control. People can be protected against this if they have vervain.
-Dream manipulation: This is not an ability explored much in canon, but vampires have the ability to enter someone's mind while they are sleeping to manipulate the dream they are having. Damon does this to Stefan early in season 1 to turn his dream into a nightmare like the nice bro that he is.
Third-Person Sample:
Damon lies on his back in the garden, very aware that he's not where he should be even before he's opened his eyes. He had been thankfully asleep in his bed after a night full of heavy drinking. The feeling of Elena's hands against his neck remained with him even as his chest tangled with sheer, sharp anger, because Stefan stopped him from killing Klaus. Now they're all back at square one, and Klaus is still an issue, and his brother went AWOL (again). And sometimes he forgets how much caring, and trying, and being involved is actually really damn exhausting especially since this isn't what Damon does. This is for Stefan, the brother that's good, that tries, that deserves to be happy with Elena.
It doesn't matter how it twists his gut up to think about it or to see them together. It doesn't matter except it does. Elena asks him Where were you? with tears in her eyes, and he knows he will never leave her again.
Still, he's not used to it. He spent several decades without feeling or caring about anything or anyone. He killed without thought. He had no ties. It was lonely and empty and terrible, and he knows it. His back feels flat against the pavement. It's with a grimace he realizes he is not in his bed, and he sits up abruptly with a groan.
"Okay, I didn't drink that much," Damon says, shoving himself up to his feet in annoyance, because what. the. hell. This is not anywhere in Mystic Falls. This is not anywhere Damon remotely recognizes, and being kidnapped? It's not really his thing. That's more in Elena's wheelhouse. Elena- If he's here, what is happening to her? She's the one people want. She's the one Klaus would still love to get a steady supply of blood from, and he's terrified underneath it all. He shoves down the panic because none of this makes any sense so clearly none of it is real. Someone's screwing with his dreams. Someone spiked his drink. Damon is obviously hallucinating. He's done that before. Being transported to some other world against his will with no idea of how he's gotten here? Nope. That's new. That is not possible.
This? This is not real.
There's a whiskey bottle in his hand. He'd fallen asleep with it wrapped around his palm. It stays there as he uses that vampiric super speed to dart him around in every direction, looking for a road or a sign, finding that nothing about this places looks like any place he knows exists. He stops abruptly and lets out the longest sigh before he e glances down at the bottle in his hand after a moment, locking his jaw.
"Well, Toto, looks like we're not in Kansas anymore."
He lifts up the bottle to take a swig out of it. Whatever the hell's going on, he's going to need to be a lot drunker to deal with it.
First-Person Sample:
[Damon has not quite made it into the mansion yet. He's on the steps, drinking from the bottle directly when he pulls out the communication device. It takes little effort to skim through previous entries, and- and he's not completely sure his own brain could come up with all of this. If this is reality, he has to work fast. There has to be a way out. There's always a way out. There are always answers, and he's going to find them and play nice until he understands more about the way this place works.]
Question #1, for the masses: How drunk do you have to be for this place to start making sense? Because I'm starting to think this poor, lonely bottle's not gonna cut it.
[He sends the camera a slow but charming smirk as he leans back against the steps with his elbows propped up behind him.]
Question #2, what's the one thing you wish someone had told you on your first day in the merry old Land of Wonder, but failed to? Because I really hate being kept in the dark.
[Damon points a finger at the camera, toasting the bottle in its direction before he takes a drink from it.] Go. Best answers get... a pony. Or first invites to the big party.