"I have loved to the point of madness; that which is called madness, that which to me, is the only sensible way to love." – Françoise Sagan
Damon's breath came in white steamy wisps, slowly intermingling with the biting chill of the evening air.
He flitted away to a remote point in the distance, swerving effortlessly around the black, twisting forms of the trees and the underbrush. Likewise, his mind's eye roamed, straining to close in on the briefest flickers of happiness, far from this wretched and godforsaken place. His happiness. A place where his brother wouldn't dare to tread, where Damon Salvatore actually got a happy ending.
Sighing, he realized that happy endings just didn't exist for him.
He had surrendered everything he'd been to appease Katherine. And as the stone to her prison was heaved out of place, he had thought that maybe—just maybe—his efforts had not been in the utmost vain.
Damon finally came to a standstill at a point where the torchlight began to fade away and lingered there in the unknown reaches of the darkness. Gentle murmurs abounded somewhere behind him, not quite out of vampiric earshot. He rolled his eyes and tried tuning them out.
Love. He knew not the word.
In his mind, it accounted for the darkest of pains. Love had torn apart his soul, one stitch at a time. Like so many infatuated fools before him, Damon had suffered in love and for love; if anything, he was a classic textbook example. And over the years, he had accumulated so much bitterness in his heart, he had often wondered whether Katherine might not find him a changed man, undeserving of her affections.
Would she have appreciated his prolonged suffering in the first place? Did it really matter now?
Damon stared blankly ahead.
Because in the end, he thought, he was a Salvatore. Once he committed himself to anything, there was no turning back. And like a true Salvatore—oh, how he would have made his poor father proud!—he had evolved. He had adjusted in order to find the strength to trudge onwards, to return to the arms of his dear Katherine. Ironically, in the process, he had lost everything that had made him Damon Salvatore. His pursuit of Katherine Pierce had meant signing a deal with the devil herself, and now…well, he was a monster.
Regrets threatened to consume him whole. To take it back, take it all back now…
In the back of his mind, Damon registered the sound of pine needles crunching softly underfoot. He'd braced himself to run but stood strangely rooted the spot, as two warm sleeved arms quickly enclosed him in their embrace.
Elena.
Her heart beat a steady tattoo against his chest, urging his own back to life, a gentle reminder that somehow in the midst of this madness, there was hope yet.
She was too good to him. Far too good.
"…I'm sorry," she whispered presently, laying her head within the crook of his head and neck.
And he was sorry, too. Sorry he had not seen her sooner.
The haze lifted from his vision, and his grip sank in. He was not going to let her go anytime soon.