Previously: Damon doesn’t know if he’s going to tell Elena about The Cure, Mama Salvatore got Stefan to switch his humanity back on (oh, and she’s also the vamp who sired our Enzo AND her family of vampires are also witches), Caroline is on the run and Stefan goes after her.
The Plan: Stefan will find Caroline, convince her that his mother was unsuccessful in turning his humanity back on AND hole up in a B&B for sexy times. Except that it’s not REALLY for sexy times, it’s so that Damon and Elena can trap them there, drain Caroline and starve her until she’s vulnerable enough to finally start dealing with her shit.
It works until it doesn’t; Caroline picks up on how Damon and Elena are really on trying to open HER wounds, and are leaving Stefan alone. Elena brings a letter that Liz wrote to Caroline a few days before she died…and Caroline sets it on fire. That was a dumbass move, Elena. You needed to wear her down a bit more first. OR MAYBE MAKE A COPY OF THE LETTER?
Damon brings Bonnie coffee (aww!) except that it’s because he needs a favor (dammit Damon!). People always be needing favors from Bonnie and she’s DONE, especially after Damon tells her how he gave Lily the Ascendant. He’s all, “Don’t sweat it, she still needs you to do the spell” and Bonnie’s like, “Yeah jackass, which means she’s going to COME FOR ME.” She tells him to get it sorted. This new Bonnie Bennett can stay forever and ever, amen.
Damon is feeling guilty for not telling Elena about The Cure (why did Bonnie ever think it was a good idea to bring this back?). They’re on Caroline-Watch and play a bit of What Would Your Life Look Like if You Were Human? Caroline speaks for all of us when she shouts from her room that this is TORTURE. She tries putting the moves on Stefan but he’s not really into it. Dammit Stefan, you’re not really selling this whole “broken humanity switch” thing, bro. She distracts herself instead by messing with Damon and Elena, crooning about how he can never give her what she REALLY wants. God I’m going to miss her.
Lily has asked Bonnie to meet her for lunch (it’s all very civilized) but Bonnie’s too busy snooping around Chez Salvatore, while Matt stalls her at The Grille. Enzo shows up for his Abandonment Confrontation with Lily and has no patience with her inability to grasp the concept of potato skins. She tells him that the reason she wasn’t there for him when he awoke from his transition was because the Gemini Coven imprisoned her and her vampire family. Enzo realizes that the betrayal and loss he’s felt for over one hundred years are unfounded and is Team Lily once again. This should go over really well with Damon and Stefan. She mentions that her lunch date hasn’t arrived and Enzo knows full well that it’s all part of a bigger deception, courtesy of Damon. He escorts her back to Chez Salvatore and sure enough, the Ascendant is gone.
Lily calls Damon while he’s in the middle of a Very Important Conversation with Elena. He’s pushing her to admit that she would be happier as a human. She pleads with him to lay OFF already, that she’s made her peace with it, especially since it means she gets to spend all eternity with him. (I dunno, girl. An eternity of each other’s annoying habits? Y’all might want to have separate suites at some point.) Lily is super pissed at Damon’s part in taking the Ascendant from her and threatens to destroy the Cure if he doesn’t get it back. Which, I mean, isn’t REALLY a problem right? Because Damon is definitely leaning toward NOT telling Elena anyways, he just doesn’t feel like a TOTAL dick having it in his possession. He finds Bonnie doing a spell to destroy it and tries to stop her.
She’s basically like, Oh so you’re fine with me dying AGAIN so that you can, what, let Elena grow old and die while you continue to live FOREVER? She calls his bluff by holding out the Ascendant to him and he walks away.
Caroline tries her seduction of Stefan one more time and is rebuffed. She tells him that she can hear his heartbeat and that she knows he has his humanity back on, proceeding to snap his neck and break down the door. Once on the road she gets herself pulled over so that she can finally eat, but the cop who’s pulled her over is…her mom. Caroline hasn’t left the B&B, she’s having a dream, and her mom is yelling at her, saying she’s not her daughter, that her daughter isn’t a murderer. When she wakes up Stefan pleads with her to let her memories come back so she stabs him. He grabs her hand and takes her into a memory; it’s a few days before Liz dies and she shows him the letter she’s written to her daughter. She also tells Stefan that she hopes he and Caroline become more than friends. Stefan wants to get it right, he doesn’t want their relationship to start from a place of mourning (which is understandable but sometimes we can’t control these things). Caroline is trying to get into the memory to talk to her mom, to read the letter and she can’t. But her switch has come back on, she’s crying and saying that she ruined everything. Oh Caroline.
A bit later Stefan is outside of her room with Jo and Alaric. He wants to go home and let her be by herself but they leave; she clearly needs him and he just needs to suck it up. She’s reading all of the police reports for all of her Murder Spree victims and sifts through the ashes of her mom’s letter. Stefan approaches her and she begins to unravel. She clearly is going to need more time to unpack this entire series of escapades and she leaves after promising Stefan that she wouldn’t flip her switch again.
Damon returns home and tells Lily he doesn’t have the Ascendant. She drops the box with the Cure into the fire while Elena is upstairs opening up a tiny box containing…the Cure. Lily knows that what would really hurt Damon is not having Elena for the rest of eternity by his side. I guess we now know where Damon gets his sneakiness from. She twists the dagger a bit more by informing Elena that Damon was never going to tell her that he had it.
Enzo meets Lily by the side of the road. She had gone for a walk to clear her head and ended up tearing off the head of some poor man in his car. She literally went from “Oh I’m so terribly sorry to have startled you” to HUMAN PRAYING MANTIS in a BEAT. She’s devastated and Enzo comforts her. She needs her people back and FAST.
Elena and Damon have an awkward talk about the Cure and he admits to being selfish but now he wants her to have it. She says they’ll give it to someone else. Then he comes up with the brilliant idea of taking it TOGETHER. Hmm. I seem to remember that it’s only ONE dose and that your actual age catches up with you, which would result in Damon dying. So what now?
Thoughts:
- “I had to vampire-proof a B&B, do you have any idea how many people you have to compel to make THAT happen?” See, now that’s a side-plot I would’ve liked to see.
- “The phrase small world comes to mind.” “So does epic understatement.” I need more of THIS Enzo.
- “How does it feel to know that you can’t give someone you love the life she really wants?” Caroline doesn’t hold any punches and I’m here for it.
- “This better be a pocket dial.” Damon is at least respectful enough not to say “butt dial” to his 170-yr old mother.
- “For the first time I’m putting me first.” You can’t tell, but I’m totally giving Bonnie Bennett a fist-bump.
About the Contributor:
Amanda Reid is an East Coast girl living in California who will never stop missing a true autumn. She’s a bookseller who specializes in kid and teen lit, and she bakes a damn fine pie.
