(There's nothing here for me anymore, Stefan.
Every inch of this house is filled with memories of the people that I loved that have died.)
Damon can feel her shutting down, the house not yet ablaze but all her organs already aflame and melting into pain, craving the oblivion.
(They're all dead. Everyone is dead.)
Damon suddenly feels tiny jabs inside his eyelids. Yes, everyone is dead. Yes, his best friend is dead. And yes, the damn kid is also dead. Everyone keeps dying on her, on him, on everyone in this fucking town. But he won't let that in right now. He needs to focus, so he shoves it all in his special box to rummage through later, like always. Right now he needs to focus on Elena .
(Elena, I need you to calm down.
No, no, no, i can't, I can't. It hurts. Just make it stop, please, make it stop. It hurts. )
He sees her bending and snapping, being torn like a paper doll.
(I can help you.
How?
Turn it off. Just turn it off. Everything will go away. It's what I want you to do. Turn it off.)
He can see her eyes glaze over, can pinpoint the exact moment the fire starts to dim, not completely doused but lulling to a faint smoke that lingers in her chest and shines through her once bright brown eyes. The first time they met, surrounded by white fog and shoved to the deepest recess of her heart. The banter and acting like twelve year olds asphyxiating slowly, the stolen touches that none of them could control, hands on each other's face and arms and chests, first consoling and gently teasing, then sure of themselves, setting ablaze with each trail of fingers through each other's spines, feathery touches that sent each other's pulse thrumming (dead hearts beat slowly he always thought, but his tried desperately to leap to his throat, rendering him speechless).
They walk away from the house without looking back, side to side and his brother behind them, not able to resist looking back, still trying to cling to remnants of an old life that can no longer claim them.
He doesn't look back, doesn't see the wood and mortar and bricks bend and collapse, but he can hear it, feel it in the tips of his fingers and in his heart. The house burns down, collapsing in a heap. His heart stays up, but you can see the tiny fissures in it, the foundations threatening to break. He holds them together because walking right beside him is another fragile heart, all but vacant, every room in it echoing the dull noise of oblivion, all but one, crammed to the brim with love, pain, passion, laughter, tears. The whole spectrum of emotions in the tiniest of rooms. She thinks it will hold, he sees it in the sharp setting of her jaw and apparent blankness of her eyes. But he can still see the dull smoke in them and he knows he just has to be patient.
The fire will come back to her, flame by flame, igniting her bones. She will be whole and healed again.