A time comes, at which Damon has to admit that he's changing. It scares him like nothing else, because he mustn't change for Elena; he won't change for anyone but Katherine.
His outside was frozen the day she left him, his inside the way she taught him. Safely kept till she comes back
He says he wants to have fun, wants to pull all- nighters, wants to experience something new, but reality is, that he follows the same path every time. Wrong. He followed.
Then Elena came. He wanted to impress her, not just for some quick fun, but for something that goes deeper; to an extent he doesn't even know himself.
He doesn't kill anymore without a reason, without thinking about it.
He sometimes will let go his control. Everything and everyone around him has been controlled, manipulated, used for his plans, always, and hardly anyone has ever noticed;but the most important thing has been, of course, self-control.
Never let down the mask.
He had fun with humans and left them back empty: sometimes lifeless, sometimes with there feelings hurt deadly and for everyone he made up a new version of Damon.
Then Elena came and looked through his walls and saw him and took down his mustn't have permitted this; it had been good walls, gestures layered on words. He doesn't believe he will get them so impenetrable again.
Anyway it is too late because Elena saw him in a way he hadn't been seen for a hundred and forty-five years, with his grief and his guilt. He remembers how Stefan told him he could just turn off the pain, but he knows it isn't true. His pain is with him all the time and sears into him deeper and deeper. Maybe he can't turn it off, because he thinks it's gonna make some things right again, as some sort of catharsis, but he knows it's impossible.
Nothing will ever make right again what happened.
Anyway, Stefan. It's not safe anymore to think about him either. He has saved his little brother's life over and over again. This only happened because death would be far too good for him, not because Damon cares about him. Even the thought is so absurd that Damon smirks. His trademark smirk with whom he lies to everybody, even to himself. He's trying not to think anymore, he exerts his superhuman senses just to have something to do.
Through the open window, from a house down the street, a song comes in. Change.
With a fury that frightens him, he jumps on his feet and slams the window shut which shatters into a thousand shards. Of course simply because he's heard this stupid song for too many times, because he isn't as immune to Taylor Swift as he claimed. He lets himself fall onto his bed again and is forced to listen to the song that fits his situation in a twisted way.
Nothing's working anymore, not even the simplest things. But…that is impossible, his plans always work because they have to. Because otherwise he'd lose his routine. And then he would…
He looks at the shards of the window pane. Because he would shatter, if he'd move to hastily, if he'd change. He would splinter into fragments that could never be glued together again.
He mustn't change, but Damon knows: It's too late.
