Guilt

Just a little one shot set at the very end of season 2 episode 12: The Descent (yes I know the exact epoisode it was... sad really). And why? Because I'm a TOTAL softie and seeing my favourite character (Damon :D) actaually cry while killing someone come on... (major spoiler alert if your crazy and haven't seen it yet!) Rose's death was pretty beautiful you have to admit!

Anyhow...

Disclaimer: CLEARLY I don't own The Vampire Diaries... oh, but the things I would do if I did... A girl can dream!

(Damon POV)

I stormed out of the house and out into the cold, crisp night air. I had to be alone, I had to find a way to make myself forget. A way to turn off all my emotions like I used to do so easily in the past. Something told me that this time it wasn't going to work. I'd never felt so much guilt and regret before, it was almost embarrassing to admit. In fact, it was embarrassing to admit, even to Elena who I was most comfortable talking to about things like this. It was all just too much, I even had to fight back tears when she'd comforted me. After several hundred years of nothing bringing you to tears, you kind of forget how to stop it when the flood gates finally open.

This was all so stupid, it wasn't like I hadn't killed people before, even people who I knew personally. For example, I'd ended up killing Stefan's friend Lexi when she came by to visit to try and prove to the Sheriff that I had been 'all for' getting rid of vampires. I hadn't felt anything close to this then... actually I'd hardly felt anything at all until my brother got all worked up about it and came after me.

It suddenly hit me like a blow to the face how awful I'd made him feel. Now I knew what it was like to lose someone you were so close to I was beginning to feel the guilt for what I did. Well thats a few months too late! Even so, it was just another example of how I always manage to screw things up. How do I keep doing that? I'm an idiot- that's how- and I'll probably never change. This time though, because of my general habit of not thinking before I do something, Rose was gone, dead, never coming back. Nothing I can do about it now.

I could still hear the sound the stake had made when I plunged it into her heart, ringing in my ears. I shook my head and took another sip of the sweet, numbing alcohol I held in my hands. At least it might help ease the pain a little, although I still doubted it would make much of a difference. Instead of waking up tomorrow 'still guilty and still depressed' I would just wake up 'still guilty and still depressed with an added hangover.' At least the headache would distract me a bit.

No matter how much I drank, the memories never went away. It was so fresh in my mind that I could replay the whole thing as though it were one of those awful, tragic movies that just about everyone cries at the end of. The last thing I'd said to her in person was "just sleep." Of course I didn't ever intend on letting her wake up, she was going to sleep for eternity. I guess it's almost poetic when you put it like that, not that I was thinking of any deep meanings to my words at the time. I was still trying to bring up the courage to put her out of her misery.

And that's what really got me about all of this: since when did I find it difficult to take a life? Never, that's when... except tonight. At first, I tried to convince myself that it was because I was killing her for the greater good, of her own will rather than for my own sadistic pleasure, but deep down I knew that that wasn't the case. In fact, it was pretty much the opposite. To face fact's, I had well and truly cared about her, even as more than a friend.

Just imagine it; painfully striving through life knowing every day that the girl you love and will love forever is completely out of your reach and that's how it will always be. Elena... so beautiful and perfect- makes sense she'd fall for Stefan... Although there will never be anyone on earth that could ever take her place, I couldn't help but feel that given time Rose would have very nearly matched up. She would have made me happy or at least as happy as a man can be when his true love doesn't feel the same. I know I could have made her happy too. She was so alone in the world, spending her life on the run must have been awful, not to mention she had just lost her one and only companion when I first met her. I wasn't sure why, but from that moment there had been something, the same thing I had seen in Elena though admittedly not as strong. It was a connection of sorts, drawing me to her and making me feel like I would do anything to protect her... I guess I failed.

I took yet another gulp of my drink, the pain still refusing to subside. The guilt was eating away at me. It was my fault. Everything. ALL. MY. FAULT. I was the one who gotten obsessed with taking the werewolves down and I was the one stupid enough to provoke Jules on a full moon. She came after me not Rose. She didn't do anything and she didn't deserve to die...

Although I would never have admitted it at the time, she and I had a lot in common. We both hid our emotions, showing no fear and staying strong no matter how much we were hurting on the inside. When we were together those walls just fell right down, especially in her last moments. I had given her a dream as a sort of goodbye. Elena had told me how badly she'd wanted to be human, how she'd wanted to go back home and walk in the sun and have everything back the way it was before she got mixed up in all of this vampire business. I had to let her relive that before she died. I'd put myself in the dream too, something told me she wouldn't mind too much. We sat out in a grassy field in the English countryside, surrounded by nothing but tree's and horses, the sun shining warmth and light down onto us. She'd always been breath taking as far as I was concerned, but I'd never seen her so happy or so beautiful as she was in that moment, it gave me the faintest bit of hope that she would die happy. I pulled her into an embrace as we sat in the grass and talked over the situation. She told me she wasn't in pain anymore and that she wasn't afraid to die, that she would see her family and her departed friend Trevor on the other side. Who was I to know that that was true? For all I knew she would fade out into a world of terrifying, blank nothingness, but I could never tell her that. She was finally happy.

And that's when I staked her.

I had to do it then, any longer spent with her would make me change my mind. I felt like I didn't have the guts to do it at first, but I managed it, letting tears betray me and fall down my face for the first time in many years. It was then that I fully realised what had been there all along: I loved her.

Of course, not quite in the way I loved Elena. That was out of this world, beyond what anyone should feel for anybody. But with Rose it had been complicated yet at the same time so... natural. Like how love was supposed to be, how it was for everyone else in the world. One one hand there was love for her as my companion, how we had found each other in our lonely existence. I loved her like a friend and felt protective over her. However, underneath all of that was something deeper, something I wish I'd had more time to uncover. I'd learned so much from her in such a short space of time and along the way I'd developed deep feelings for her. It was hard to explain, but powerful none the less.

It shouldn't have been this way, I shouldn't have gone out of my way to irritate Jules and Rose should still be here. Things could have been so different. I could have gotten Bonnie to make her a ring like the ones my brother and I wore so that she could go out in the sunlight for real. If Bonnie was being particularly stubborn and found a reason to refuse I could always have lent her mine. I trusted her enough to know she wouldn't run off with it and not come back. She couldn't do it. Even after abandoning Elena and I for fear that Klaus would come for us, she still came back to apologize... she was so loyal and I let her down.

I would have taken her back to England for a while. She could have shown me where she used to live, even though it would probably be different now. It's been 500 years or so after all. We could have sat in the fields and talked, just like in the dream. I could have let my feelings for her develop further, helping me take the pain away from the Elena situation. Maybe I could have eventually learned to love her more... we were vampires after all, we had a long time to adjust to things. We would find as strange sense of comfort in each others company just as we had before. I would be able to caress her lips with mine feeling the fireworks I hadn't expected to find, but became so used to in such a short time. I would tell her with absolute certainty that I wouldn't let anything happen to her- something like what just happened merely minutes ago. Maybe, just maybe I'd show her more emotion than I'd usually be comfortable showing. Perhaps I might have even told her I loved her... maybe she could have changed me for the better...

But none of this mattered. What was the point in dwelling on something that would never happen? She was gone and I was still here, right back to where I was before I met her: back to wasting my time on the worlds most amazing girl who would never love me...

I continued to drink, bottle after bottle emptied out rapidly until my vision finally blurred. I didn't know where I was anymore- the middle of nowhere. I'd probably been there before but couldn't recognise it in my drunken state. Finding nothing better to do, and partly under the influence of the alcohol, I lead down in the road. I was lost in many senses: I had no idea where I was and no idea what I was going to do now. I'd lost my reason. I'd lost my mind. I'd lost my Rose.

Okay then people! That was just a short little one shot... hope I didn't go to overboard or whatever :)

xx