4. Hero.

Damon felt how thin Mimi was, how cool she was. He could hear Mimi's irregular and sped up breathing, her frantic pulse, and he could almost taste her fear and panic. He could feel the spasms that shook Mimi's body.

He could slowly get her to calm down and then even fall asleep, and he could feel her hanging on to him with everything she had. He stroked her for a while after she had fallen asleep.

Then he put his hand on Mimi's neck and clasped it tightly, twisting quickly and efficiently. Mimi went completely limp; he could no longer hear her pulse, and she was no longer breathing. He had snapped her neck, and she had noticed nothing.

 He got up and carried Mimi wrapped in a medbay on a blanket. Adam was already there. Damon lowered Mimi onto the bed and gently supported her broken neck. He effectively secured Mimi in shackles and stripped her of her clothes—bloodstained scrubs.

He gently ran his hands over Mimi's body, feeling everywhere. He knew she had several bullets in her, and her body was covered in scars, stitches even, but he had to get a good idea of what was going on, so first, he took a CT scan of her entire body. Samuel was on his way, but it would take another six hours.

 The scan was done quickly, in about 15 minutes. Damon instructed Adam on what to get ready and what to take out of the drawer. Once the scan was complete, Damon moved Mimi directly into the operating room. He snapped Mimi's neck again as he noticed she was healing.

He couldn't use the meds yet, as this girl was a walking pharmacy. Then, he started dissecting all the bullets that were found in the scan. He looked through the results, tried to fish out the bullet with as minor damage as possible, and then fixed it at the same time if he found any problems with the internal organs. He was operating as fast as possible but as cleanly as he did not want anymore possible infections on her. He was very strict about hygiene. Samuel arrived while he was still in surgery.

Samuel asked, "How many bullets? What's the situation?"

Damon was just fishing another bullet out; it wasn't easy because this one was lodged in the liver, and Mimi's liver had already taken a hit, anyway. Fine, he should probably put some more of his own blood in here. He got the bullet out in the end.

Damon grunted and pointed to the container where he dropped the bullet.

Mimi's healing ability wasn't working, and Damon had repaired some of the internal damage with his own blood, but he still had to stitch Mimi up. Again, the liver got some of his blood, but no. Damon stitched a few more stitches into it to keep it from leaking everywhere. Samuel was ready if he was still needed for surgery. 

Damon said: "I've kept her neck broken. I haven't given her any drugs, and we'll see how she feels when she wakes up. If the rage is down, then good. Soon, all the physical damage will be repaired. It won't be long now, so I'll be fine. And as for the chemical damage, well, that will take time. This girl is a pharmacy, and then all the breakdown products and stuff on top of that. And as she chops med little like she wants, there is no telling what her blood is filled with."

They moved Mimi to the patient's bed, and Damon was loading up the fluid and nutrition drip when he heard Mimi's heartbeat. She would still be in restraints, at least for the duration of the IV. He would sit by the bed, Mimi would get fluids and nutrition, and then he would have to see what was next, how to help her get off those drug residuals.

I woke up. I did not feel much better. My rage had disappeared or decreased, which it did now. My neck was really sore, and I knew what had been done to me more than once. But it didn't matter. Always just fewer drugs. I still felt the effects of the drugs very strongly in my mind and everywhere. Panic was trying to push at the surface and without my rage, well, I had little to fight it with.

I could feel the stitches in my stomach, and I knew I had been cut and stitched, but when I wanted so badly to pluck the damn stitches out. As I said, my senses were still in overdrive, and even the mere smell of Medbay made my stomach almost turn upside down, but I didn't throw up. I felt like my body was so badly in overdrive that I was overwhelmed by these sensations.

I still felt the muscle aches from the poison that Krycheck put in me. Nausea, photophobia. Cramps in my muscles, achiness of my bones. All of them were present. I was helpless, in pain, and I was tied up. I tried to keep myself under control and calm, and it took a lot of energy. I wondered when the panic would really hit. Damon and Samuel came to my bedside.

"How are you, baby?" Damon asked.

He was wearing his normal clothes now, and his voice was a doctor's voice again. 

I said, "I'd feel better if I could get these restraints off. I can't say I feel terribly well; those stitches irritate me. "

Samuel smiled and asked, "Do you feel wise now?"

I looked at Samuel for a moment and chuckled. I was trying to sound reasonable, coherent even though I felt not so damn coherent.

I said, "I don't feel wise. I feel like my senses are on overdrive, and I feel every wrinkle in my bedding, and the lights are dazzling, and I'm nauseous, and panic is setting in. My muscles cramp, my bones ache, my mind is not really operating as it should."

I was a bit confused and just let it all come out.

Damon said: "Honey, the shackles will stay on for the duration of the IV, and just so you know, my vampire side woke up. So, at some point, I might taste you. And let's see if we can get those drugs out of you somehow, maybe by draining your blood, but I don't know if they're in your blood or your tissues. "

Oh, nice to have a vampire to drink from me. Fine, we'll be a blood bank then.

I said, "You probably want to drink my blood, but since I don't know how these drugs affect you, it might not be wise. "

Damon sat down next to my bed, stroked me, and said, "Let's take some blood tests soon and see what we have."

I tried to wrench my hand free of the shackle and only managed to cut my wrist. It didn't heal. Damon smelled my blood and stood up; he had a strange look on his face and went wandering off somewhere. Samuel put a plaster on my wrist. Then Samuel went to see what Damon was doing.

Damon found a jar and put his fangs through the lid of the jar, and something poured into the jar in a steady stream. Damon had tasted a strange taste in his mouth when Mimi had slit her wrist. He had smelled Mimi's blood.

The most accurate way, he had ever smelled blood, and he had noticed that his teeth were leaking - they had never leaked before. Some strange substance was coming out of the jar in a steady stream, and the pressure that was under his eyes was slowly beginning to equalize. He did not know what the fuck was wrong with him.

Samuel came over, smiled, and said, "Oh, you're one of those vampires. Well, it might be good if we could find out what you're doing now; probably something for Mimi, but it could be anything from an anticoagulant to an anesthetic. You, Damon, are a tooth vampire. You have teeth that manufacture substances. And they react to Mimi's blood."

He paused, clearly happy about this. He watched at his time as Damon emptied his fangs, feeling an ache and pressure easing under his eyes. Samuel commented as he watched the vampire.

"Congratulations. You just can't help it if, at some point, you have to drain all the chemicals directly into Mimi's vein. I wonder how she'd feel about that. It's an instinctual thing. I knew a tooth vampire once; her name was Matilda, and she was an excellent healer because of her teeth, but then she died, and I never met another one until you. I want to study you and that ability at some point."

Damon was silent. Tooth vampire. He'd heard of them and thought Nicholas himself had personally slaughtered every single one of them just because they might one day turn on him. Again, this was something new to him; he was actually very curious about this ability of his and how he could best use it. Damon now looked at the jar as his teeth settled. He opened the lid and sniffed.

This was an anesthetic, and he already knew that for sure. According to his teeth, Mimi should sleep well. Damon tested. What else he could do? He went over to Mimi and pulled the patch off her wrist so he could smell the blood. He concentrated, bent down, and licked the blood. He bit her wrist to get more blood in his mouth. He tasted her blood, and it didn't taste much like blood, but now he felt something inside him processing and analyzing the blood.

Damon and Samuel went off to talk about something, and I tried to find some position where something didn't tear or outright hurt. I couldn't. I just had to endure. Ten weeks. I knew I was subjected to the occasional sample when Krycheck gave permission and wasn't programming me himself. I also knew that he was a subordinate, follower, or protégé of the guy who originally programmed me to kill Nick. Dr Kendrick's protégé. Anyway. I hated the brainwashing attempts. I was finding just how many things there are in the world that I could hate. 

And drugs in general. I didn't want to be this fucked up. I was in my own head, and I was just trying to get through it. Then Damon returned, took the patch off my wrist, sniffed, and licked. He also tasted and bit and really sucked my blood. The bite marks disappeared, as did the original wound. He said nothing, but went for another walk. He somehow healed my cut with his bite. 

These men were not in a very talkative mood. Damon wandered the medbay with a frown, and Samuel browsed the medicines I had brought. There was a surprisingly magnificent collection. I tried just to be; I didn't want to keep my eyes closed as I didn't want to fall asleep; I was cold and uncomfortable. 

Damon felt a headache coming in between his eyes. He rubbed it casually as the ache slowly spread throughout his head and now even up to his teeth. Mimi tried to lie still, and Damon sensed her distress. The pain was really spreading to his fangs, and he could feel them coming out.

Damon wandered around for a while rubbing his forehead, then he came and unlocked my shackles, turned me on my side and came to lie beside me, sinking his fangs into my neck, it didn't hurt nearly as much as I would have thought and he couldn't have put them in terribly deep. There was a velvety feeling as he started to drain my veins of something that felt like velvet. The feeling was incredible. And I couldn't help falling asleep immediately.

Damon realized his teeth were reacting with Mimi's blood, and Damon felt his mouth crack. He had to put this directly on Mimi. Damon went over to Mimi's bed and put the side down. He untied Mimi and turned her on her side, facing him, and then he positioned himself next to Mimi so that Mimi's neck was just the right biting distance.

Samuel came over to lift the side up. Damon didn't say a word as he positioned Mimi's head so that he was able to bite his fangs straight into the vein. He sank his teeth into Mimi's neck and the substance flowed. Mimi sighed once and went limp in his grip. Damon felt the pressure settle, and Mimi was already in a deep sleep.

He himself drifted off into slumber and soon became unaware of anything, as if his fangs were just doing what they were supposed to do. This was their purpose, their reaction to Mimi's blood, to the drugs and compounds in it, a process that could not be stopped.

When Damon's fangs pierced the vein wall, they released a specific compound that relaxed the vein and caused it to expand and thicken so that the teeth could not penetrate it. The vein wall thickened tenfold and expanded at least fivefold so the teeth could enter the vein correctly. Mimi's vein also grew attached to Damon's teeth, where the teeth had pierced it, so it sort of took root. The teeth were now firmly attached and didn't come out easily.

Damon himself fell into a kind of sleep as he let his teeth work. His brain went to sleep, and only the part controlling the teeth was active. He soon did not know the world or what his teeth were doing.

Now and then, millimeter-sized sensory cell clusters at the tips of the teeth would take a sample of Mimi's blood, and the teeth would react by adding a new substance or changing the ratio of existing substances. The teeth knew what the blood should be, and they neutralized, digested, and removed drugs, compounds, and degradation products from Mimi's blood.

Damon was Mimi's biological half, and this was an adaptation to the fact that if Mimi had a problem, he would often have a solution. The teeth kept Mimi asleep by giving her a "velvet" tooth-made precision sedative to which Mimi had no resistance and which would not let the nightmares come through.

Samuel watched as they both slept. Mimi slept on the strength of what Damon was draining into her veins, and Damon himself was in a kind of economic mode. This was fascinating, and Samuel knew all he had to do now was wait and let Damon's teeth do whatever they were doing and then watch Mimi's state afterward. Samuel dimmed the lights in the medical room, closed the door, and went to Adam. Adam was making dinner.

"Adam, did you know Damon is a tooth vampire? That means his teeth are making substances for Mimi. Right now, at this very moment, Salvatore's teeth are embedded in Mimi's throat and leaking God knows what substances. They're both kind of dormant. It's fascinating, and when I get into the study of Damon's substances and teeth, my theory is that the substances are made in the sinuses and the frontal sinuses, and nowadays, they can be imaged very accurately. Oh, that."

Adam shrugged his shoulders at everything that goes on in this pack. Tooth vampires. He had never heard of one, but apparently, now there was one in their pack. He concentrated on making the meat sauce and didn't even think about what a tooth vampire was. What mattered was that Mimi was cared for, home, and safe.