A/N: This is just a small one-shot about the way Damon feels about Elena and their story. I haven't really followed the books on this. I'm basing it after Shadow souls and they've rescued Stefan but Damon did not get turned human, that bit just annoyed me. So for the sake of this story, let's pretend that Damon asked Elena to choose and she picked Stefan leaving Damon a bit lost, yeah, that sounds good ANYWAY this is just Damon reflecting on their story and what got him to the place he's at. Revieeeeeeeeeeeeeeews please:D
He stared at them; the couple so in love, so in love that the princess had died, and died again for the prince. For her prince. Their story was a fairy-tale really, a fairy-tale come to life. The princess had been lonely, so she'd locked her heart up in a tower, a tower that only her prince had a key to. When the princess met the prince, it was love at first sight, the kind of love that hits you like a massive yellow Robert E. Lee high school bus. Their love was one for the story books, tender and pure, when they kissed, sparks ignited. Everything should have been perfect, except the prince had a dark, dark secret. He'd been bewitched by a maiden a very long time ago and turned into a monster, a monster that preyed on the living. Except he didn't, prey on the living that is.
No, the prince fought his curse every step of the way, choosing instead to weaken himself and drink the blood of animals. When the princess found out she should have hated him, ran away screaming and climbed back into her tower. But she didn't; she fell even more in love with him, because even though he could have submerged himself in the darkness, he'd always stayed true to the light.
Everything was brilliant for the prince and princess, all through the land people saw their love and looked up to it, noticing it for what it was; fate. The princess had healed the prince, healed him of the pain he'd been in for the past five centuries, helped him realise that his curse did not make him a monster. The prince had helped the princess; had unlocked the door to the tower where the princess had kept her heart locked for so long. They had both healed each other, redeemed each other.
Although this is where the happily ever after should have come in the story of the prince and princess, it did not. There was something lurking in the darkness, something powerful; the only thing powerful enough to come between the prince and princess. Although the princess had not known it, the darkness had come before her prince, had been sitting, waiting and watching. The darkness had seen the princess, seen her for what she really was; which was not the perfection that the prince and everyone else in the land thought her to be. It saw the darkness that lay nestled in the very core of the princess's being and embraced it, revelled in bringing that darkness out. The thing lurking in the darkness was the dark knight.
The dark knight was darkness personified. He revelled in the darkness, embraced it and controlled it. Making it his home. His great power came from the darkness, the power he had gained when he too had been cursed by the same maiden as the prince. The dark knight and the prince were brothers. Brothers torn apart by the love they had for the same maiden, the maiden who had first bared the curse. The prince and dark knight, looked similar, both lean and aristocratic in looks; but where the prince had brown wavy locks and oak green eyes, the dark knight had eyes the colour of the midnight sky, and hair to match.
The dark knight thought he hated the prince with all his being, when really he just needed someone to blame. He was determined to steal something from the prince, something that would leave the prince broken, just like the dark knight was. The dark knight had spotted the princess first, so there for claimed her as his, believing that the prince had stolen her off him, and that he was only taking her back.
The dark knight finally appeared to the princess, his dark beauty chilling her to the bone. He told the princess of what she could have, if she would only become his dark princess. He told her that he would give her the world, make her feel things that no one else could and the princess didn't doubt it, so powerful was the dark knight. But she rejected him, claiming that her love for the prince was too strong and that she could never leave him. The dark knight made a vow then, to not give up until she was his.
He carried on appearing to her, whether she knew it or not. He invaded her dreams, the one place where she could not hide from him. Whereas in the real world, the princess had pushed him away with an iron fist, in her dream she embraced him, embraced him and his darkness, let him show her things she'd never seen before and make her feel things that even the prince couldn't make her feel. The princess stopped denying it, the wildfire chemistry between them, the spark. The dark knight helped the princess too, saved her really; when a jealous princess from another land, heard of the love between the prince and princess, she vowed to destroy it. She stole a journal of the princess's, containing details about the prince's curse, and threatened to expose the prince as what he really was. A monster. The dark knight appeared to the princess in her time of need, he gave her a proposition. His help for a price; a small donation of her blood.
The princess was enraged and leapt from the tower of the jealous princess's home; where she'd been trying to acquire her journal back. The dark knight saved her of course, instead, pulling her to him and leaping himself from the roof. Being in such close proximity to the dark knight shocked the princess; she was shocked at the chemistry that had built between them. In that moment she only wanted one thing from him; a kiss. But the dark knight did not comply; instead, he slunk back into the shadows with which he had become accustom.
The dark knight surprised himself and the princess by stealing back the diary for the princess for no price, no deal, no nothing; he did it purely for the princess. It was around then that the dark knight realised that he would do anything for the princess, even though she was not his. It was that night that the princess was killed, cursed, just like her prince and her dark knight.
Damon didn't want to think about the rest, about his princess and the events that had followed after her being turned into a vampire. He didn't want to think of the events that had lead him to be sitting in this tree, in the form of a crow, watching them. He wasn't supposed to be here; he was supposed to be long gone, bleeding the women of Paris or Tokyo, New York or London. He should be somewhere, anywhere, just not here.
They thought he'd left; Stefan and Elena. After they'd rescued Stefan from the Dark Dimension, after Elena had said those words; those words he'd never really forgive her for saying. It's Stefan, I'm so sorry Damon, but it's Stefan; I choose Stefan. The words were the story of his life, he should be used to hearing them by now, but even now, hearing them still felt like another piece of his heart was breaking, that the chains holding his soul together were crumbling, leaving him even more fragmented. After she'd said those words, after she'd made her choice, no matter how very wrong it was, he had left; or so they'd thought.
Really Damon had just hidden his power and watched them from a distance, watched her from a distance. He watched her continue on in her life in a way that he could not. He watched her love his brother and he wondered if she'd ever felt that way for him, even for a moment. I would be nice to think that she had. He still had his memories, memories to last him through the cold, lonely nights when he watched them. He had memories of when she was his, when Stefan hadn't been around and it had been just them; Damon and Elena at the edge of the world.
Damon shook himself from his daydream only to realise that they had gone; at some point during his daydream they'd left the park. It was dark now; maybe he'd been daydreaming for longer than he'd first thought. By the colour of the sky, he guessed it was probably around midnight. The witching hour; Damon's hour. He took off into the sky and flew to the one place he would never go to again; even though that was where she always was. The boarding house. He'd promised himself he would never go there again; never step foot on Stefan's territory; but Damon had never been one to follow the rules, even if they were set by him.
He perched on a branch on the tree that stood close to the bedroom window; the open bedroom window. Stefan was a fool leaving the window open like that when they were sleeping. Didn't he know what was lurking in the dark? Or more importantly, who? Damon changed back to his human form and flashed his signature lightning smile at nothing in particular. He was going to do it tonight, do what he had promised himself he would not. He was going to get close to her, closer than he'd been since she'd made her choice. Since then he'd only watched her from a distance, stayed just far enough away that she would not notice that he was still there, lurking in the darkness once again.
He walked slowly across the branch that lead to the window; well as slow as Damon Salvatore can be. He got to the end of the branch and with the careless he'd always possessed, vampire or not, jumped through the window and into the room, landing without a sound. He stared around for a moment, only a moment, then he let his eyes rest on her; carefully avoiding the man sleeping next to her. Damon was good at that, blocking out and ignoring things that caused him pain. He stared at her, sleeping soundly in his brother's bed, their bed now. Her blonde hair was spread across the pillow and her rosy lips were turned up in a small smile; as though she was dreaming something, something nice. For a moment he was tempted to enter the dream, to live the happiness with her. But no, that wasn't his place, not anymore. She didn't want him, didn't want his fantasies and dreams, and as much as it hurt him and he should have been angry at her, a man scorned, he just couldn't seem to stay away.
He stalked over to her, moving with the grace of a panther on the prowl. He stared down at her serene face, all worries covered under a soft blanket of sleep. He couldn't help but wonder if she ever thought about him; maybe when she saw a crow she'd stop and think for a few seconds, smile at their time together that seemed like it had been in another world, well, it was really. He reached down and touched her cheek, tracing her cheekbone with the softest of touches, so soft that she should not have been able to feel it, to feel him.
He could have had her, he thought bitterly, if he'd appeared to her first, before Saint Stefan had got it into his head to come to this small town in the middle of nowhere, or as some people called it Virginia. Him and Elena could have been good, no, they could have been epic. He knew she'd felt it too, he could tell by the way her heart literally skipped a beat whenever he was near and how he could make her shiver, just by speaking to her.
He could still have her, he thought manically to himself. All he had to do was press down a little harder on her cheek and she'd wake. He could take her; blood and body, and she would be his. No thoughts of Saint Stefan would enter her head; it had always been that way with them, he was the only one who could completely banish Stefan from her head. He could do it. He could do it now; and have her for the whole of eternity.
But he couldn't.
Elena had chosen, and she'd chosen Stefan. Damon and Elena could never be more than a few stolen moments of passion. A mere speck on the timeline of her live. He would fade eventually; he would fade from her head and her heart, whereas Stefan would stay there, imprinted for eternity. Damon could never really have Elena; he was nothing more than a footnote, in Elena's history.
Because he was the Dark knight.
And really, the dark knight would never get the princess. The dark knight could never be the prince.
