Author's Note: Have you guys recovered from the finale yet? I know I certainly haven't, and I probably won't. Ever. My favorite fictional character of all time is dead, and even though I know he's going to come back, that still doesn't make the pain of his death any less real. I had to write this to get some of my feelings out. I'm not yet sure how long this will be, but I aim to update at least once a week during the hiatus. I hope you enjoy reading it, and please let me know what you think!

Forever and a Day

Chapter One

Elena's breath stuck in her throat, a reminder of the life that still burned in her body. She stared up at the ceiling of the bleak hotel and focused on nothing but the beat of her own heart, slower than normal, and the steady rush of air in and out of her lungs.

Each breath hurt like daggers to the chest, like cold water rushing into her lungs. Her body itched with flames, that phantom pain that would not go away.

She knew she was alive.

Infinitely alive, her life stretching out before her with no end.

Alive.

The word made Elena want to vomit. She felt the bile, thick and acrid, rising up in the back of her throat. The burning sensation in her chest spread throughout her body, from the bottom of her toes all the way to the top of her spine.

The word—alive, alive, alive—taunted her with its simplicity. A little more than a year ago, she would have begged to be alive, to feel her blood rushing through her veins, to be human again.

But now that word was a never-ending dirge at the back of her mind. It was torture, she thought, to be alive. There was nothing good about being in this world.

Not anymore.

She closed her eyes and pictured him. She didn't mean to, of course, because even the mere thought of his name sent cords of pain ripping through her entire body, tearing her apart from the inside out. His name—the name she still couldn't bear to speak, not since that night—curved out her insides, lined itself along the sides of her veins, her very heart, the inside of her skin.

Whenever she thought of him, she found herself consumed. She fell into the memory of his blue eyes, the darkness of his hair. She felt the weight of his body against hers, the ephemeral pressure of his lips against her own. His mouth caressed every inch of her body. His hands trailed fire down her sides.

For a moment, the memory made her forget that he was gone. That he was never coming back.

But then the rush of recollection flooded into her mind, and the bubble burst. His touch faded away from her skin. His voice, so clear to her for three years, was nothing more than blank static. She could no longer recall the exact tenor of his voice, nor feel the exact vibration of his words against her skin. The precise color of his eyes dissolved.

Elena felt nothing—nothing, that is, but the burning sensation in her lungs. The sensations of being alive—of having life coursing through her veins—were omnipresent. She was acutely aware of her own immortality, and she hated it, hated it more than she hated anything else in this world. The hate washed over her, a forest fire that was destined to destroy everything in its path.

As she burned, Elena could no longer fathom her existence. She should not be here. She should be with him. Wherever he was.

That was the plan, wasn't it? That was the whole point of going on that crazy suicide mission with him, so that they would be together until the end—whatever that end meant. If they lived, if they made it back to Bonnie in time, then they would do it together. If they died, if they were on the other side when it collapsed around them, then so be it. So long as they were together.

The whole point was to be together and now he was there—wherever there was—and she was here. Alone.

Elena knew that wasn't entirely accurate. If she turned her head, she would see her brother's duffle bag lying next to his bed, his clothes haphazardly spread over the coverlet. If she focused her ears, she could hear Stefan and Caroline's muffled conversation in the next room. If she walked downstairs, she would see Alaric at the bar, nursing another draught of whiskey.

But she was incapable of doing any of that. All she could do was count the tiles on the ceiling over and over again, trying to distract her mind from her body.

As she counted the tiles—one two three four five six seven eight nine ten—she felt the fire in her lungs begin to abate. The bile in her stomach settled. Her breathing became a constant rhythm in her ears, reminding her that she was still alive and he was not.

She tried to feel nothing, but the fire raged on.

"Elena?"

An indeterminate amount of time passed before her name reached her ears. It could have been seconds. Hours. Days. Months, for all she knew. She opened her eyes, seeing the whiteness of the ceiling once more.

She did not respond. It took far too much effort to respond.

"Elena?"

She recognized the voice. She still did not care enough to acknowledge it.

"Elena, talk to me. Please," said Jeremy, his voice raising an octave in his desperation. "I can't do this without you. None of us can."

Elena began counting tiles once again. She couldn't have gotten through the last three years without him by her side. Now that he was gone… she couldn't see why she should even bother. There was no point. Not when caring about people only got them killed.

She was on the twentieth tile when Jeremy spoke again.

"I'm hurting too, you know," he said. "I miss Bonnie."

At the mention of her best friend's name, Elena closed her eyes. She could see Bonnie so clearly, her kind face full of desperation and concern for her on the last day of his life. She recoiled from the image, snapped herself back from the anger that threatened to overwhelm her.

She didn't want to be angry at her best friend for saving her and not Damon. She couldn't.

It was far easier to feel nothing than to feel that.

"She was the love of my life," continued Jeremy. Elena let her breath out slowly, focusing on that hole in her chest. It splintered, widened. "I already lost her once… and I can't get through it again, Elena. Not on my own. I need you."

And I needed him.

Thirty tiles. Thirty-five. Forty.

"You remember what you said to me once? About our parents?" asked Jeremy. "They would have wanted us to stick together, no matter what."

Elena felt Jeremy's eyes on her. She could almost see his expression, eyes wide, pleading for her to listen. But she couldn't listen, not when it made the horror of it all the more real.

"You're all I have," whispered Jeremy, his voice breaking. "Please don't shut me out."

"I'm shutting everyone out, Jer," said Elena. Her voice was rusty from misuse—how long had she been lying on the bed?—and the affectionate nickname, once so welcome on her tongue, tasted like acid. "Don't take it personally."

Jeremy tried to talk to her, to beg her to listen, to open up to him, but Elena took her word seriously.

There were 126 tiles on the ceiling.

Caroline burst into her room some measure of time later, wasting no time in plopping herself down on Elena's bed. Everything was suddenly too bright, too loud, too alive, with Caroline in the room. Elena found it difficult to keep herself still.

"How long are you going to be like this, Elena?" she asked. "You can't stay in bed forever."

Elena shrugged. Who says? she wanted to ask, but that would have meant opening her mouth, and that was still too much effort for her.

"I brought you some food," said Caroline, undeterred by Elena's silence. She placed a mug of warm blood on the nightstand, the scent tantalizing Elena's nose. She found that her mouth watered in spite of herself, her stomach grumbling under the stress of her self-induced fast.

"It's been days, Elena," said Caroline. "You haven't eaten, you haven't talked to anyone since we got to this hotel. You need to know that we're all here for you when you're ready to talk."

Here for her.

The thought made Elena want to scream. She knew that her friends and her family were all here for her, that they would welcome her back with open arms whenever she chose to accept that fact. All she needed to do was open up and they would come running.

She knew that, and she couldn't act on any of it. She wouldn't.

Opening up to people only got them killed. That was a truth she should have learned when her parents died, but it only took until now for her to realize that, to truly etch it onto the inside of her mind.

If she needed her loved ones to be safe, then she must stop loving them. It was as simple—and as hard—as that.

The worst day of loving someone is the day that you lose them.

Her own words rang in her head, interrupted only by Caroline's voice. If that was true… if her words rang as accurate now as they did then—and she knew in her bones that they were right—then the only solution was for her to stem the flow of that love and replace it with something else.

After all, love brought nothing but pain.

"We all know how you feel," continued Caroline. "We all lost someone. We all miss them. But we can't let that stop us from living our lives. We have to keep going."

That was easy for her to say. Caroline's bubbly personality, her optimism in the face of all the shit they had to deal with on a daily basis, was never going to disappear. Even at the end of the world, with fire raining down on her from all sides, she would still insist that things would get better.

Elena used to admire that quality about Caroline. It used to be a quality she wished she could have herself, but now her optimistic voice grated on her ears. She tried her best to shut the cheery voice out of her mind. Her words with Jeremy had not just been an idle threat; she fully intended on carrying them out until the end.

"I know you're going to try to shut us out," said Caroline, "but one day, you'll realize that you need us. And we'll be there. No matter what."

Caroline reached out and rested a hand on Elena's shoulder. She flinched back as though she had been burned. Caroline's hand slowly withdrew, and she let out a sigh that fell on Elena's ears as heavily as though she had screamed at her.

"We all love you," said Caroline softly, then got up and left. She hovered at the threshold. "We'll never stop."

Elena blocked those words out of her mind and focused on the darkness at the back of her eyelids. She could see nothing, hear nothing, be nothing.

She was alone once again. Alone and safe.

Elena could not help but overhear Caroline's high-pitched conversation with Stefan in the next room, so she knew that Stefan would be paying her a visit, and soon. It seemed like they were all taking turns to pull her out of her despair—not that their whispered words, their gentle touches that burned like a hot poker on her skin, would make her forget that the one person she always needed with her was… gone, vanished into the darkness like he had never even been there at all.

Yet her friends would not stop trying. At least Stefan had the courtesy to knock on the door before barging right in.

"Elena?" he asked tentatively. She turned her head slightly to see him framed in the threshold. Even that slight movement caused sparks of pain throughout her body, so used to staying in one spot for an extended period of time.

She could not help but notice that Stefan looked just as awful as she felt. He was a marionette one inch away from its strings being cut. He was trying to keep his strings tethered to something, anything, but even she could tell that he was fighting a losing battle. She could see the rim of red around his eyes from her position on the bed.

"I'm miserable without him too," said Stefan. He teetered on his heels for a moment, looked like he was about to fall to the ground where he stood. His gaze darted around the room before fixing itself on Elena's.

"He was my brother," said Stefan. "For all my life… despite our differences… I knew he would always be there. Whether as enemies or friends, Damon was… the one constant in my life."

Stefan swallowed thickly, his Adam's apple bobbing in his neck. Elena found it easier to focus on those small details rather than focus on his words, but it was too late: she had already heard his name, and she felt the chasm in her chest widening. The bottomless pit of fire in her chest grew, overtaking everything in its path.

She felt herself consumed by it. She wanted to lie in it forever, if that only meant the pain would go away—but she knew, deep down, that it wouldn't go away. Not ever. Not for her, the girl whose life was a never-ending funeral.

"Damon wouldn't have—he—he wouldn't have wanted this for you, Elena."

Stefan's words caught in his throat. Damon's name curled tendrils around her heart and began to squeeze.

Elena couldn't breathe. His face burst into her mind, so fully formed that she almost thought he was standing right in front of her, exactly as he was on the last day of his life. She could almost reach out her hand and trace the curve of his lips as they formed that signature smirk. His eyes were so blue that she could drown herself in them. She could probably fall into those depths, never to return—not that it would be so bad, to drown herself in his eyes.

She saw his lips begin to move, to form words, sentences:

"I promise you, I will never leave you again," she read on the contours of his lips. "I will make it back to you. I promise."

Elena felt a scream begging to tear itself out of her chest, to be released into the world. Her head began to spin, faster and faster until she could not even see, until the only words ringing in her mind were his promise. His broken promise.

His lie.

"Damon is a fucking liar," said Elena, her voice low, hard, cold. She hardly even recognized it herself.

Stefan looked as though he had been slapped. Elena slowly began to rise from the bed, powerless to stop the torrent of anger rising up inside her. At the mention of his name, at the reminder that he was gone, dead, buried under several feet of rubble, the floodgates that held back the anger swelling inside her chest vanished.

"He promised," she said. "He said that he would never leave me again. He promised me two fucking years ago, and he never once broke that promise. Not ever, not even when I chose you, Stefan. He was there through all of it. Everything. And he said—" a sob rose inside her chest but she choked it back with a fresh tidal wave of anger—"he said that he would make it back to me. He lied."

"He didn't mean to—"

Elena laughed: a cold, high sound that did not even sound like herself. The void in her chest began to fill with a toxic fury, one that brought fire sparking through her veins. She felt alive, his blood rushing through her veins. His blood had given her life, cursed her to this eternity of darkness, and that was the one thing she could never forgive him for.

"Oh, sure," she said, her voice nothing more than a mockery. "Of course he didn't mean to, but he did. He lied, he said he would make it back to me, said he would return from his crazy hero trip—and he—he thought I could live without him. That I could survive if he didn't."

Stefan opened his mouth to say something, but Elena didn't let him. This had gone on far too long as it was. How long had she been holding this inside? She didn't know, and she didn't care to wait any longer.

"There were a million other goddamn ways to set off that explosion," growled Elena. Hot tears burned at the corners of her eyes, but she blinked them back. "A million ways, and he chose the one way that was bound to get him killed. And I—I went with him, damn it, because I needed to be with him. I couldn't let him die alone, I needed to lead him home and—"

A sob burst its way out of her chest before she could stop it. She curled her arms around her chest and kept going.

"And I left him," she said. "I left him there in Mystic Falls. If I had only stayed with him—if I hadn't let Alaric convince me to leave him—we might be together right now. But he's dead, just like my parents, Isobel, John—like everyone else in my life has died—he's gone and he's not coming back and I—"

That terrible night filled her mind and fueled her words. She remembered it all too well: her desperation when she got back to Bonnie in the forest and saw that Damon had not returned yet. The panic when Bonnie grabbed her and pulled her to the other side, because goddamit, she was supposed to live or die with him. There was not supposed to be this awful limbo, this in-between.

The second she crossed the line from the land of the dead into the land of the living, she knew—she knew that he was not going to come back to her.

Elena no longer knew what she was saying to Stefan. They were nothing but empty words. Just something about her not letting Alaric lead her astray—it was Stefan's fault that Damon was gone because of course Damon wouldn't have done some crazy thing to save the town if it wasn't his brother's life on the line—his touch still burned a brand along her skin and she wanted to never forget it, not ever, for as long as she lived. Which was forever. An eternity alone. Without him.

The last person in her life, the constant, the cornerstone—he was dead, vanished into mist for all she knew. Her life was nothing but a goddamn horror show, full of death and blood and pain and misery, and the only way to stop it—the only way to stop the grief from overwhelming her—was to shut it down, to never give herself the opportunity to hurt the same way again. To be alone was the safest way to live.

"Leave!" screamed Elena. "Why don't you all just leave me the fuck alone before all of you die too?"

"Elena, stop!" yelled Stefan. He grabbed her arms, trying to get her to calm down, but his touch made her skin crawl. Any human contact was too much. She wrenched herself away, finding purchase on the closest thing she could find: the desk lamp.

She threw it and watched it shatter on the wall above Stefan's head. He ducked down to protect himself from the brunt of the glass, and when he straightened up again, she could see the pain written all over his face. Elena couldn't bring herself to care. She looked around for something else to smash.

A second later, Alaric burst in, Jeremy and Caroline at his heels. His eyes were wide with desperation, his face lined with pain. He reached out a hand to her, but she shook her head, backed away against the wall. She felt like a caged animal, one second away from an attack.

"Elena," cried Caroline. "What's going on? What are you doing?"

"What I should have done a long ago," said Elena, breathing heavily under the weight of the emotions coursing through her brain. She found it difficult to move, let alone think or breathe. "I'm leaving. Now. Before I can cause any of you more pain."

Elena caught the slightest glimpse of Jeremy's face falling, Caroline's face contorting into tears, before she whooshed herself away. Their faces were nothing but blurs at the back of her mind, a memory of a life, long since gone.

The scenery whirled past her, nothing but the sound of her own feet slamming into the ground at an inhuman pace reverberating in her mind. She closed her eyes as she ran. Tears, hot and wet, ran down her cheeks, and she was powerless to stop them. She didn't even want to, as Damon's face in the last moment of his life flashed before her eyes.

"Damon, I—"

She needed to say it, he just needed to hear it, he needed to know one last time. He must know that she loved him, that he was the only reason why she was doing this. There was no other option for her but to die at his side—and then live once more.

They would do this. Together.

Damon stared at her, his eyes full of love and admiration. He was never more in love with her than in that moment, Elena decided, as his lips quirked upward even in the midst of his fear.

"I know."

She had never loved him more than she did just then.

The last thing she felt was the insistent pressure of Damon's hand on top of hers, comforting and solid, before they burst through the side of the Mystic Grill. The heat of the explosion grazed her cheeks and all was dark, burning with heat and fire and ash.

Elena tried to block out the memory, tried to focus on nothing but her feet on the pavement. She felt her heavy footfalls in her very bones. Her feet moved to the same drumbeat: he's gone—he's gone—he's gone—gone gone—gone gone—

The tears slipped down her cheeks one after the other, a never-ending torrent. She felt her heart beat with every fall of her feet on the hard concrete.

The anger flickered at the back of her mind, disappeared slowly, gradually. All energy, all emotion, all life drained away, leaving nothing in its wake. That hole in her chest at once began to spread, engulfing all. She was bare, empty. Nothing.

In that moment, Elena was gone.