A/N: I just want to cry right now. But of course it will be OK. Damon & Elena are going to be OK and we are going to be OK, because THAT HUG was an endgame hug & as much as I'm not fond of the word, it really is fitting here: that moment was *epic*. And so heartbreaking I JUST WANT TO CRY RIGHT NOW.
Obviously, I couldn't sleep after watching the episode, hence this one-shot. I have a feeling it doesn't come any close to what the writers are actually going to do, but I definitely wish it would ;)
Summary: Post 5x12. Damon can't remember Elena's last words to him. One-shot.
Disclaimer: The Vampire Diaries belongs to L.J. Smith & CW. The title comes from the poem "[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]" by E. E. Cummings.
I Carry Your Heart With Me
Damon can't remember Elena's last words to him.
He drums his fingers against the polished surface of the black table in a bar somewhere north of Mississippi and tries to recall every stinging word she said to him that night when they saw each other for the last time... but he can't.
He doesn't analyze it at first. Neither does he analyze the fact that every time he tries to fall asleep he can't, because as soon as he closes his eyes he sees Elena's face. After all, it's nothing very strange, really, so what is there to analyze.
Gulping down the contents of the glass Damon leaves before Enzo comes back to the table. He thinks that maybe the alcohol will drown the words that are echoing in his head, because they hurt and yet they don't hurt as well as her last words to him that night would, if he could, damn his stupid suddenly selective memory, actually remember them.
But instead, day after day, all he can hear is:
"You and I... we have something. An understanding."
"I don't know what I'd do if you weren't here."
"Why don't you let people see the good in you?"
"You saved me."
"It's the most real thing that I've ever felt in my entire life."
"You're the one that made me feel most alive."
"I'm not sorry that I'm in love with you."
"I love you, Damon."
He tries to recall her last words, her almost too perfectly accurate break-up speech, because he needs that memory, because that pain is what needs.
But he can't.
xxxdelenaxxx
Damon starts drifting away in his thoughts and not only at night when he is all alone. But it doesn't intrigue him until it dawns on him that he isn't drifting away in his thoughts, not exactly.
"What's up with you?" Sometimes Enzo throws at him a question or a dark, curious look but he shrugs it off every time.
"Perhaps you should turn it off," Enzo offers one evening when they are on the road and only then Damon realizes he has been standing in some kind of a stupor staring at the blood on his hands.
But Enzo is wrong. He isn't contemplating the blood or feeling guilty.
He's having black-outs.
xxxdelenaxxx
Of course he doesn't tell anyone about that. Not that these days he speaks to anyone except for Enzo and Stefan on the phone sometimes, very rarely when he feels like making himself even more miserable and answering his phone to listen to a lecture for a minute and a half before he hangs up.
He keeps seeing Elena at night and it begins bothering him more than it did at the beginning, because now every time he sees her face she's crying.
"Why are you crying, Elena?" He mutters to himself abstractedly when he's lying on the bed in a hotel room miles away from where he wants to be-
Except that he doesn't. It makes no sense, really, because as much as he'd want to get rid of that feeling, he knows that's not going to happen, so this just makes no sense whatsoever that he actually doesn't feel that he would want to be in Mystic Falls right now.
He turns on his side.
And then it happens for the first time.
With a sharp intake of breath, Damon jumps on the bed and freezes, wide-eyed, his hand darting to his chest.
He blinks and frowns in confusion and then he's just sitting on his hotel bed for a long time without any clear thought in his head, just that intense, burning, pounding pain pulsating in his chest.
He laughs soundlessly, mirthlessly, because it's truly the most ridiculous thing ever. That phrase about carrying someone in one's heart? He knows better than doubting the truth of that, however he doubts anyone actually experiences this kind of thing in such a completely physical way, as if said person really was in one's heart.
xxxdelenaxxx
It doesn't take long before his careless indulgence in thinking about Elena all the time takes a toll on him. He should have seen that coming.
One day he compels away a girl he was about to eat and Enzo raises his eyebrows at him in a comically questioning manner.
But then it happens again and again and again and Enzo becomes less and less and less amused.
And to be honest Damon is not amused himself, because it's just such a natural thing to do. And it must be a reliable sign of insanity that he almost hears Elena whispering in his ear, telling him that's exactly who he is and who he wants to be, not for her, but for himself, because it's right and no, he may not want to do the right thing, but he needs to do the right thing, because that's who he is.
He is getting a major headache every time he starts analyzing that. Especially that he can't fight the nagging feeling that he completely identifies with what his resuscitated conscience aka imaginary Elena is telling him, because it's him, it's all him, it's like a thread hidden in the sand that he's now tugging on to see where it leads.
And where it leads, is someone he has never expected to see again: it's he himself from before Katherine Pierce arrived from and he dived into hell.
His memory is sure enough a wicked device if he can remember his ancient moral stands, but can't remember Elena's parting words from five weeks ago.
xxxdelenaxxx
The main reason why Damon's glad when he leaves Enzo behind is that now he has more time for having lengthy conversations in his head.
In fact, he's doing little else but lying in bed and having lengthy conversations in his head these days.
Lengthy conversations in his head... with Elena.
Except that she is not really saying anything. It's more like he is reading her thoughts. Or internalizing her thoughts or whatever the hell it is that he is doing while holding imaginary Elena in his arms and visualizing talking to her while she is quietly pressing herself as close to him as possible, nestling her face in his chest and breathing evenly and yet loudly enough for him to catch himself glancing around the room a few times because her breathing sounds so close, so real.
She also isn't crying anymore and he thinks it may be because he stopped killing people, but then there is also that strange vibe of resignation to her lack of tears and he wonders if it may be because she accepted the fact that she can't talk.
And of course there is nothing weird or ridiculous about the fact that he spends hours analyzing why he's imagining imaginary Elena imagining that she can't talk in his imagination. Right.
What is even more ridiculous is the fact that he finds it somewhat unsettling.
"Great," Damon mumbles, tucking the pillow under his cheek. So now he's worried, because he can't get a figment of his imagination to talk him. He rolls over from his back to the side-
And springs upward, that overwhelming warmth spreading almost painfully across his chest again.
Damon places his open palm over his heart and thinks that despite the popular belief he must not be very smart if it took him weeks to figure out what is triggering these bizarre 'I-heart-Elena-attacks'.
"What's that face?"
Preparing for the action as methodically as possible, Damon slowly leans down and then rolls onto his side again.
"I'm happy."
His heartbeat goes wild and he feels as if the warmth in his chest exploded into flames that are now surrounding his heart.
Damon rolls over again. And again. And again.
And then-
His eyes widen slowly, so slowly he can feel the tears of cold freight form in his eyes long before the realization slashes every atom of his body in half like a knife.
And then he remembers-
He presses his hand to his heart, nails digging into the flesh through the fabric of his shirt. His mind is reeling, all the puzzle pieces swirling around like a mad cauldron of riddles and he's dissecting every detail, every piece of information, every memory, every second, putting it all together, bringing together all the seemingly disjointed elements.
All the hotel guests are startled awake in the middle of the night by the horribly loud sound of shattering glass when Damon crashes through the hotel window, zooms into his car and drives back to Mystic Falls in a flash.
Because he finally remembers Elena's last words to him:
"Damon, thank God!"
xxxdelenaxxx
"Hey!" Jeremy blinks in complete bafflement and indignation when Damon literally breaks into Bonnie's house, grabs her by the arms so violently and starts shaking her so hard Jeremy is almost certain he can hear her teeth chatter.
But then Jeremy drops the tray with coffee cups he's holding in his hands and Bonnie's irritated expression vanishes off her face in an instant when Damon says in a voice that is both bright with fiercest hope and heavy with excruciating despair:
"Katherine's taken over Elena."
xxxdelenaxxx
It's almost like a spy movie and Damon has to hand it to Caroline that the attendance on her friends' emergency meetings could only drop below 100% over her dead undead body.
He also has to hand it to Matt for shockingly becoming the most helpful person he has ever encountered and when Matt places the mystery dagger in his hand Damon thinks that, except for Elena and Stefan, Matt Donovan is probably his favorite person in the whole entire universe.
"Maybe I should do it. I can get close to her easier," Stefan offers, glancing between Damon and Bonnie, but Bonnie shakes her head.
"It's not like it was with the passenger in Matt's body," Bonnie explains in a low, solemn voice. "Matt was still inside his body when he was being possessed. But Katherine had Elena sealed off her body. She had her gone. Completely gone."
"I don't understand," Caroline says with a frown. "What do you mean she had her gone? Are you saying Katherine's taken over Elena's body so completely that Elena is no longer even in it?!" Bonnie nods and Caroline begins to panic. "So how do we get her back?! Where is Elena's spirit or whatever it's called?! Where is she?!"
"She's here," Damon says quietly and Caroline's eyes dart to him, to his hand covering his heart in an awkwardly protective way.
Caroline looks at him in silence for a second and then slowly shifts her eyes back to Bonnie.
"When Katherine's witch completed the spell Elena should've died. But she didn't," Bonnie says with a faint, warm smile. "She found somewhere to hide."
xxxdelenaxxx
It is Katherine, but it also is Elena's body and stabbing Elena's body is not a pleasant thing to do.
Fortunately he has a vast experience of doing unpleasant things, so following Bonnie's instructions with utmost diligence, Damon twists the dagger in Elena's chest and watches Katherine fade away from Elena's eyes.
Then he feels a strange pull, like a momentary storm crashing through him and he recognizes the feeling, remembers that it felt like that when Elena hugged him, wrapped her arms around his neck for the last time.
When Elena's eyes flutter wide open, Damon's hand is still gripping the dagger in her chest, but he quickly regains his composure and pulls the dagger out, throws it away.
Elena stares at him and he stares back. And then she exhales and her eyes light up and Damon's heart begins hammering in his chest, but this time instead of Elena's spirit gallivanting inside his heart and mind, it's real Elena's hands that wrap around him when he pulls her into his arms, crashes her against him in a hug, presses feverish, impatient kisses to her face, her hair, her hands, bites into his wrist and presses it to her mouth and she drinks, the gash in her chest healing.
"I'm sorry it's taken me so long," Damon whispers against her lips between kisses, cupping her face in his hands, stroking her hair.
Elena smiles through her tears and says in a voice that rises and falls despite her efforts to keep it strong and steady:
"I love you, Damon. I can't live without you. I need you and you need me, but not because I make you a better person, but because I know that you are that better person. You give my influence over you way too much credit and your own influence over yourself not nearly enough. You're good, Damon. Not because of me, but because of you. It's in you. There's been an awful lot of darkness around both of us, but it can't get to us if we don't let it in. We can survive anything together. We always survive."
Elena's fingers dig into Damon's shoulders when he cradles her to him and kisses her ardently on the mouth. She laughs brokenly, bursts into tears and says shakily, choking on her tears like he is on his: "That's what I wanted to say after 'Damon, thank God'."