YW

Damon Salvatore left Mystic Falls convinced it was the right thing to do. He told himself that putting distance between himself and Y/N would keep her safe. That hurting her once was better than giving the universe another reason to take someone he cared about. He was wrong. In the year he was gone, everything changed. Someone close to Y/N was killed. She barely survived what came after, and when grief slowly separated her from the people she once considered family, it was Rebekah, Elijah and Freya Mikaelson who refused to let her face it alone. Even Klaus — despite Y/N still not entirely trusting him — became someone she could rely on when the danger didn’t end with the funeral. Stefan misses her. Bonnie misses her. Caroline does too. But guilt has a funny way of keeping people silent, and after enough unanswered days turned into months, Y/N stopped waiting for any of them to reach out. Then Damon comes home. Expecting the same girl he left behind, he instead finds someone quieter, guarded, and surrounded by people he never imagined would be the ones to pick up the pieces. Now, with old enemies resurfacing, buried grief threatening to pull Y/N under, and feelings neither of them ever managed to kill, Damon has to face the one truth he spent a year running from— Leaving was never what protected her. Staying might have.