All right, this is centered around Stefan's and Damon's feelings in eighty years when they're still living and Elena has died. I took Elena's promise from the books and kind of worked it in here, too.

Tonight: Stefan

I remember the times we spent together,
All those drives,
We had a million questions all about our lives.
And when we got to New York everything felt right.
I wish you were here with me
Tonight.

Ten years. It's been the longest ten years of my life. Everything I've done since then has been to keep that promise, the hardest promise I've ever made in my long life.

"Will you promise me something, Stefan?" Elena asked, her voice fragile and weak. Her soft hand was in his, just as it had been for the last seventy years of their life together. Though they were lovers throughout that time, Damon was also a large part of her life. And that's how he knew that her time with him was coming to a close. And how he knew what she would ask.

"Anything, love," he whispered back, tears filling his eyes. He might have grown accustomed to human blood, thanks to Elena's daily doses, but he wouldn't flip that switch with her. He refused to not feel when he was with her, even when things got really hard. Like when she'd started getting sick and nothing the doctors gave her worked.

"I...I want you to promise me that you'll watch after Damon. Make sure...that someday he tries to be happy again."

He nodded, gently placing her hand back on the bed next to her. Her labored breathing was enough for him to know that she needed more rest; he wouldn't have her in pain in the end. Besides, he would know the moment her heart started to slow just from the sound echoing in their secluded mountain home.

Fading into the shadows, he left the room without a sound. He had to call his brother, bring him to say his goodbyes. Damon wouldn't forgive him otherwise.

That was our last full day together. The next afternoon, Elena passed away surrounded by the people nearest and dearest to her, lying in the bed we'd shared since she'd graduated from college. I didn't care that I shared her last moments with the others; she'd needed them more than anything else.

Damon, however, hadn't come.

It's the one thing I regret, not making him come to see her one last time. But I understand his curt response, even today. He had snarled into the phone that he didn't want to have his last memory of her be crowded with all the rest of "those people".

"You could have turned her. You could have let me turn her. Years ago, we could have made it so that this never would have had to happen. And now you want me to watch her die, surrounded by all those people? You can go to hell and stay there, little brother." He said the last words with so much disgust, Stefan knew that there was no way to change his mind.

But I wish I had. That might have been the only thing that could have made it easier on Elena. She would have loved to see him one last time, I'm sure of it.

Our time together was perfect, though. Our years were beautiful and someday, when it's my time—despite being a vampire—I'll get to meet her again and see her the way she was meant to be seen: wearing a halo with beautiful wings sprouting from her back.

I remember the days we spent together
Were not enough
And it used to feel like dreaming,
Except we always woke up.
Never thought not having you here now
Would hurt so much.

I smile up at my ceiling as I lie in our bed. Sometimes, I can still smell her throughout our house. Since I have no real reason to eat, our kitchen is untouched, lingering traces of her scent fading until human senses couldn't even pick it up on the best day.

But I smell her and I remember.

I never thought that her videos—the first from our wedding, the last from one of her last days—would be able to make me feel any better. But now that I've grown used to being alone once more, they were the only thing that could keep me going most days.

I might just put another one in now. I think I want to watch the last one. She told me that she didn't want me to remember her that way, as a "shriveled, old woman". But I will always love her and she will always be the most beautiful woman in the world to me, no matter what she looked like or how long she's been gone.

I turn on my computer and quickly get the video running. Immediately, I am met with the most beautiful eyes in the world. I was the one holding the camera, but she's the one making it shake. Emotion overwhelmed me most of those days; I'd been unable to keep steady.

"Stefan, don't. I don't want you to remember me this way!"

"I want to remember every moment of the time I get with you. Nothing is going to be forgotten. Not if I live only a day or millennium after you."

"Well, you could at least not film right in front of my face. That light hurts my eyes."

I laugh to myself as our argument is ended by her frail smile. Love fills my heart just as it breaks again.

I know that I'll never love someone else ever again. I know that she was the last person for me for the rest of my life. I'll always be true to her, whether she's in my arms or just my memories.

Pain suddenly rips through me, but I welcome it. She wouldn't have wanted me to ever become unfeeling. She'd want me to be the Stefan she fell in love with forever, and I refuse to do anything to disgrace her memory.

Tonight I've fallen
And I can't get up.
I need your loving hands to come and pick me up,
And every night I miss you,
I can just look up,
And know the stars are holding you,
Holding you,
Holding you tonight.

I try not to cry out as the pain becomes more physical than it's ever been. It tears through me until I fall from the chair, the feeling worse than any vervain or wooden stake I've ever felt. I lay there on the floor, cringing at the feeling of having my heart torn from my chest. I wonder if this is karma, attacking me for taking a real life from her. She could have had a human life, but I took it from her.

The only thing I left her with was her humanity.

I wish with all my heart that one of us had been born in a different time, that we could have married as adults, had children, grown old together. Maybe I would have even had the easier time of dying first. Maybe we could have lived in one town our entire lives and had neighbors that knew our names.

Stefan, please don't do this to yourself.

Her voice rings clear in my head, dragging me from the worst of the pain.

I'm with you, I promise. And you need to overcome this, just like you always do, to protect Damon. I want him to be happy someday.

She's right. I can't break the only promise that's ever meant something. I have to get up. I have to be strong. My angel is watching over me and I won't cause her tears. I caused her enough of those when she was tangibly next to me.

I. Will. Not. Give. Up.