A/N: This is a fill for softly-me's prompt, my whole life revolves around your absence. I own nothing, obviously.
Years later, when Elena tries to describe the turning point in their relationship, she talks about that night at the tomb. She explains that she first felt something real, something deeper, for him when she saw him standing in the dark, face raw with heartbreak. She says that he looked like his whole world had ended.
That is not the case.
He never has the heart to tell her that what they've become was based on a misunderstanding, but he knows it just the same. Because finding that tomb devoid of Katherine didn't change a damn thing about his world. His world had always revolved around Katherine's absence.
At first it was little things. He'd fall asleep with her in his bed and wake up alone. She'd disappear for two days and slip into the house in the middle of the night, with flushed cheeks, a bloodstained dress, and a wicked grin. It was like a game, and they were playing at romance and adventure and adulthood as if they'd done it all before.
Then it became something else. What started as a dalliance became a compulsion, and the more he wanted the less she gave. Even when he got to keep her until sunrise, she withheld things from him. Thoughts, plans, feelings – all were demanded of him and denied from her. Even his own mind became a sea of forgotten moments and lost determination. The absences then were maddening. He always felt unfinished.
But he had always been a quick study – it was a product of being especially eager to please and especially able to disappoint. So he learned that to love was to give yourself up completely and receive nothing to fill in the carved-out spaces in your soul. He learned that if he expected too much he would lose everything, and to only be partially satisfied was better than to be totally empty. He knew that his love wasn't enough, was never enough for Katherine, that he was found wanting – but he took that lesson in stride too. This was the way the world worked. Well, not the world – Stefan's world looked much more like Katherine's. Stefan could expect things, could demand them, could want. Damon couldn't. And that was fine.
When Katherine vanished from their lives, as good as dead for 145 years, Damon didn't forget any of his lessons. But he tangled his existence around one truth, warping his soul to fit the contours of his purpose – Katherine was gone, and he needed her back. He felt her absence like another unnecessary heartbeat, punishing him with its relentless rhythm. He carried it through the aging of the world, enduring and relishing in its acute torture.
So when he emerged from that tomb without Katherine, it didn't take him long to realize that nothing had really changed. This pain, this guilt, this vacuum in his chest, that had been his companion this last century. Not Katherine. He hadn't lost anything he hadn't already been without.
And when he kissed Elena on her porch, he found something. A flickering hope that clicked into his chest like a clasp, completing the chain of his existence. He felt overwhelmed, heavy, dizzy with everything he suddenly could have.
But Elena had been Katherine, and he had gained something else. Something he wasn't looking for. Katherine wasn't gone anymore. But by appearing herself, she had taken Elena away. He could have screamed with agony.
He could have cried with relief.
It was always Stefan. It would always be Stefan. And even if Katherine was here, she wasn't really here, not as he'd imagined she would be. But somehow that was all he had ever really expected.
Because if there was anything that terrified Damon more than an eternity alone, it was the possibility that he could get what he wanted.