He hadn't known he died. How could he not know? Damon wasn't sure, to be truthful. It was like a sharp pain, followed by nothing but silence. He had felt the pain, trying to protect Elena from her little brother, the vampire hunter. Was this what Death felt like? He had been at Death's doorstep many times before, but this time, he felt different. He felt at peace. He had died doing something good. There was no one to worry about now. Damon was free.

If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn't be filled? Elena had saw those silver blue eyes dim, like the sun vanishing behind a cloud, and he crumpled to the ground. Elena could faintly hear Stefan screaming over her own voice screaming. She had ran to him, pushing Jeremy away as far as possible.

She was close enough by now to see that it wasn't as simple as that. The stake, which was proper javelin size, had gone through Damon's shoulder, which must of hurt like hell , in addition to having splattered a blood drop right at the corner of his mouth, but that paled in comparison to the pool of blood that was quickly growing underneath him. But far more annoying than that was the fact that he had closed his eyes against her. That was how Elena thought of it. He was shutting them out deliberately - maybe because he was angry; maybe because of the pain in his shoulder.

"Open your eyes, Damon." Elena had said, flushing, because that was what he wanted her to say.

She was about to shake him hard when something lifted her into the air, into Stefan's line of vision. Stefan was in pain, his face twisting in a grimace, but surely not as badly as Damon, so she was looking back to curse Damon when Stefan had interrupted her.

"Elena, he can't!"

For just the tiniest fleeting instant the words sounded like nonsense to her. Not only garbled, but meaningless, like saying someone couldn't stop their appendix from doing - whatever it was an appendix did. That was al the respite that she got, and then she had to deal with what her eyes were showing her. Damon wasn't pinned by his shoulder. He'd been staked, by her own kid brother who had turned into a vampire killer, just slightly to the left of center of his torso.

Exactly where his heart was.

But more importantly, he had been protecting her.

The stake was meant for Elena.

Suddenly, her knees could no longer hold her up as she crumbled to the ground.

Stefan had knelt beside her and looked at her with agony and compassion. And now, with one gentle pass, Stefan was closing those eyes - forever.

Elena knew what he was thinking.

Everything had become strange and dreamlike. Nothing made sense anymore. Stefan was carefully laying Damon's head down - he was letting Damon go.

Even in her fuzzy world of nonsense Elena knew she could never do that.

She wouldn't let Damon go.

Not a chance in hell.

People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist.

We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in the ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.

She bent down and kissed his cold, lifeless lips, a stupid action, but she couldn't help but hope that true love's kiss could bring him back. She was willing to try anything at this point.

He was watching.

He was watching her crumble, crying over his dead body.

Even Stefan had tears in his eyes.

Slowly, he reached out to touch her, to feel her skin beneath his fingertips one last time. Only his fingers didn't even graze her, they went right through her, like a knife slicing paper. He watched in agony as his brother closed his eyes. He was giving up. He knew the truth that Elena refused to believe.

In an odd sensation, he had felt Elena's soft, cherry lips against his own. It was weird, how he could feel her, but she couldn't feel him.

And then something tore him from the image he was looking at.

In some strange way, Damon felt cold. Not just a chill, but cold. Like an ice cube being put down your shirt, or a snowball. And then, it was as if he was in a badly written doctor show, where they were trying to save the one that couldn't be saved. It was like shocks of electricity that shook his core.

And then, as if he was being pulled back from the darkness of Hell itself by one last electric shock, Damon's body jerked and he drew a huge, ragged deep breath, his eyes popping open at the sensation.

Damon Salvatore stared into the eyes of Elena Gilbert, his brother Stefan, and the little witch Bonnie, who looked like she was about to pass out. Was it her, that brought him back?

"Breathe again, Damon." Stefan said after regaining his composure. He helped his brother up into a sitting position and clapped him on the back a few times.

Damon had no choice but to do as he was told, feeling his brain about to explode at the sensation of not having any oxygen.

"It's not a luxury anymore, brother." Stefan whacked him on the back again. "You have to constant breath."

Well what the hell was that supposed to mean? Damon thought.

And then his brain caught up with the rest of his body and Damon had a very dreadful revelation.

He was human.