It's been eighty years. They should both be dead, buried in graves from different centuries.
They are dead, in a way. But they're still here. They're still walking the earth.
"Nothing has changed, Damon," she whispers one night as they sit under the stars in a town outside of Vermont. They've been on the move for so long now. After everything they'd both been through there, Mystic Falls no longer feels like home. They've seen the world together, all the sights life has to offer.
"Everything has changed," he answers, locking his fingers through hers. She shakes her head.
"We're still here. We'll be here forever. People we love are going to come and go. We should be long gone by now," she tells him. He looks at her. Somehow, he knows that this goes beyond anything she has ever said before about wanting to die. Somehow, he understands this time.
"It should have ended," she whispers, more to herself than anyone else. He watches as a lone tear trickles down her cheek. He knows she is thinking of Jeremy and his recent death. He lived a long life, but the poor kid couldn't hold off the inevitable forever. No one can. Except them.
Damon shifts so he is looking right at her, right at the girl he fell in love with years ago. She brushes his hair from his eyes.
"I love you more than anything," she tells him, a glimmer of a smile turning up the corners of her lips. "But we can't run from everything forever. We can't live forever, Damon."
His breath catches, because this is what he has thought about for so long, the thing that has haunted his dreams, his nightmares.
Death.
"I've seen everything there is to see," she continues. "I want the last thing I see to be you."
This is how it is supposed to be.
"You know something?" he smiles slightly, a catch in his voice. "I have seen this whole damn world a thousand times over. I've been everywhere, Elena, done everything. And nothing in the universe has ever seemed as beautiful as you."
She smiles back at him, because she knows what he is implying.
"It's time for us to go," he agrees, his voice barely a murmur in the night.
Together, they make their way back to Mystic Falls. The journey takes much longer than it should have, because every few miles they stop and just sit together, enjoying the world as a human might.
Finally, they arrive in the place where they know it all must end, where it was supposed to have ended years ago.
Wickery Bridge.
The sun is coming up. She slides her ring off of her finger slowly and watches as he does the same. He grabs her hand and laces their fingers together. Intertwined. He turns to face her and stares into her eyes.
This is what it means to be human.
She is crying now as she watches the sun rise in the distance. They both are. He gently touches the side of her face and focuses her eyes on him.
"This is how it was always supposed to be," he whispers. "Just you and me."
The sun casts a light over both of them, but they do not scream. The last thing they see is each other. She looks at him as she takes what she knows will be her final breath, and whispers the only thing that has ever mattered to him, that will ever matter.
"I love you, Damon Salvatore."