Nashville, Tennessee, 1976
To call the bar a 'Hole in the Wall' would have been too much a compliment. It smelled of, in no particular order, alcohol, vomit, sweat and sadness. All in all, it was a pretty brutal place to spend a Saturday night.
She looked around with a smirk. This fangled Countrypolitan fashion/music fad was greatly to her liking. Everyone was in tight jeans, stylishly cut plaid and flannel shirts, and Cowboy boots and hats that looked fit for a runway as opposed to a rodeo. And the music wasn't all that bad. Sure, all the songs were still about heartbreak and booze, but at least they were upbeat sounding. She really hadn't cared for the more depressing, 1950s era stuff, but she sort of liked this.
Taking a sip of her Bourbon, her eyes drifted to the slumped over and completely passed out figure at the other end of the bar. Even as a sloppy, drunken mess he was still gorgeous. For all the world, she wanted to go over, wake him up and talk to him. But, well, that wouldn't end well. Not for anyone.
All Katherine could do was sigh. The space of the wooden bar counter suddenly the longest distance in the world. That was proof of how badly this whole thing had been handled on her part. Damon Salvatore, the sweet, innocent and polite young man that she had utterly destroyed. Sure, it was over a hundred years later, his hair was different and he dressed to blend in, but, well he just looked broken.
To sum it up, the world was writing songs of love but not for him. It actually made her feel. And feel bad. That was rare. Maybe it was because even she, in her near infinite sociopathy, could recognize that she had possibly permamently damaged something beautiful.
He was the oldest. That had led her to believe he'd get over her. How wrong she had been. Katherine rubbed the bridge of her nose as she pulled her Cowboy hat down some. Looking at him, it was evident that happiness was completely gone from his life. She wasn't even aware it was possible for a Vampire to drink himself out cold, but well, he had done it. That was impressive, but not for anything or reasons good.
Damon stirred slightly in his seat, but it was just him twitching in his sleep. Katherine recalled that was something he had done even in his human days. It was just as adorable as it was back then.
She sniffed the air slightly, focusing on him. He still smelled sweet. He didn't smell of the rank bar, but instead of Virginia. Of cotton and roses.
The worst part of it all, besides not even being able to strut over in her tight denim shortskirt and drawl out a lust-filled "Howdy", was the fact that she knew when he woke up, he'd long for her. Damon lived in a terrible cycle. Booze, loneliness, death, longing, repeat. This wasn't what she had in mind for him when she had turned him. He'd been filled with such potential, so many gifts. The very world and all its light and treasures could, and should, have been his.
And now?
He was passed out drunk in a bar in Tennessee.
And all she could do was sit and watch him stumble farther down his self-destructive hole. The hole she had pushed him into.
She couldn't take it anymore. Rising from her stool, Katherine slowly slinked over and plucked his Cowboy hat from the dirty floor and placed hit softly on his head. He looked so...young. After all this time, his youth refused to abandon him. At least that brought a smile to her face.
Before she turned to leave, and float away to the bright lights and harsh neon rainbows of another city, Katherine pressed the index and middle fingers of her right hand to her lips, kissed them slightly before pressing them to his shoulder.
"This will sound terrible, Damon," Katherine whispered to herself. "But...please don't stop looking for me. One of these days, I'll want to be found."
She left the bar with her hands in her pockets, the tears in her eyes making it too blurry, and too painful, to look at him.