AN: I wrote this ages ago and just wasn't sure if it was done, and I think I'm finally okay with it. You'll pick up on the timeline of this pretty quickly, and things diverge from the story line significantly, but I sort of like it. I think it could have been a real possibility, and I sort of liked delving into Damon's head a bit. That and I got to create Nat Bel, which is perhaps my favorite character that I've ever made. Let me know what you all thought!
"You Don't Know My Friends"
He'd said it before he even knew he was saying it. The Irish hunter bastard had tugged on that rope one too many times, and his senses had fled him, or at least, that is what he would claim later, when what he'd said had sunk into the grey matter of his brain. He'd blame it on blood loss. He would blame it on the pain from the skewering he'd sustained. He'd blame it on so many different things, but when he'd leaned back against that wooden brace, he knew. He knew that he wanted it. He knew that when that that accented son of a bitch claimed them his friends, that he wanted it.
His friends.
His friends. He did like to take care of what was his, that much hadn't been a lie, and somehow over the course of the past couple years, they had become his to protect. That was why, when the hunter had disappeared down the well, he'd stayed behind. He had to take care of what was his, and the blonde bitch on the floor, for all her faults, was his. So, he laid there a long while, let Stephen go after his Elena, and played the role of diligent brother. Why? He knew why, but he wasn't admitting it. He knew that there would come a time when the hunter was right. They would be the death of him. He would die for them, for any of them, and that a complete stranger dickbag could tell was frightening.
So, he rolled himself forward far enough to pluck the spines from Rebecca's back. Saying that he wasn't giving up was harder than he thought it should have been, because if he was again telling the truth, he was giving up. He was waving the white flag because if he couldn't have the woman he loved because of guilt, and if he couldn't have his brother at his side because he loved the woman, then he really had no desire to continue forward in the never ending cycle of pain and death and loss. He'd said a few times that he loved being a vampire, couldn't see why anyone would give it up, that it was the highlight of his existance. It wasn't true.
He lied a lot. He lied to himself and Elena and Stephen and Katherine all those years ago. He lied because Damon Salvatore was a liar. He had to be. If he told the truth, people might be able to see the truth, and that twisted little secret would remain his until the day he died. Damon cared. He fucking cared. And that, well, that was something then, wasn't it? So, he did the one thing that was left to him there on that spit of an island. He initiated damage control procedures. He tucked his head between his legs and kissed her veritable ass good-bye. He said goodbye to Elena and the hauty blonde slowly coming to herself on the ground in front of him. He said goodbye to his brother, who despite all Damon's attempts at making up for the way he'd been all those years ago wouldn't forgive him for doing the thing he told him to do: feel. He said goodbye to Caroline and Tyler and even the walking blood bag. He said goodbye to all of them. He even said goodbye to the Bennett witch in his head.
A few hours later, when they inevitably regrouped, Rebecca would tell them all that they had lost Damon, that he'd been taken or killed or some other manner of rediculousness that she'd agreed to because he was just so god damn pathetic. He would never know that both the Bennett witch and Little Gilbert died in the cave. He wouldn't know. They wouldn't know that he was drinking his way through all of the gin joints and whiskey rooms in all of Rio de Janero. They wouldn't know that he was also actually drinking his way through Rio either. They would hear rumors about a vampire whose rath was unlike any that had been seen in decades, but they would think it was Klaus, on Tyler's tail once more or maybe even Elijah-because who was that well controlled all the time?
No, the next time any of them would see Damon Salvatore it would be completely and totally by accident. There had been rumors about a witch who could restore the soul lost when vampirism killed you, and Damon had gone sniffing because he was just that fucking dumb. He'd kicked the door down, took a couple wide legged steps into the darkness of the witch's home, and rolled his head on his neck much in the way he always had when he was doing something he knew was wrong. The quirk of his lips died the moment he saw Stephen. Died the moment Elena said his name. Died when he used all that blood he'd been drinking by the corpse-full and just disappeared.
He'd always told Stephen that they were strong on the human brand of sangrino, but the man had always known that. Damon also knew though that he would always be stronger than his baby brother, thought he'd been strong enough to forget about him. Seeing Elena had ached somewhere in his chest, but it had been the way Stephen looked at him, complete shock and awe and hope. It fucking broke him. It killed him.
Your friends are going to be the death of you.
Fuck that, he thought. Not this time. So he'd run. He hadn't expected to be followed, not after all those years and all the blood and all the time that Damon had spent precariously trying to forget about them. So when the door to his apartment was kicked in, and he found himself pinned to the exact same lazy boy that Rick had always sat in, he was more than a touch shocked. "Where were you!" His attacker raged, voice so very familiar. Almost as familiar as the bite and tang of blood in his mouth when a really familiar fist found purchase in his jaw time and time again.
"Stephen!" That was Elena; he would recognise that voice until the day he actually did die. "Stop it, Stephen!" And just because she'd said it, Damon was alone again, leaning back into his chair, the familiarity of the beating bringing a quirk to his lips. He'd missed his brother, even if the man hated him.
"Hello, brother," he murmured, tasting his own blood on his tongue and trying to decide who he'd eaten recently that tasted so much like stale whiskey before he realized that was all him. He almost liked that idea. Rick always smelled like stale whiskey.
"Where have you been, Damon; we looked for you everywhere?" Elena was the one who spoke, but Damon ignored it. Instead, he reminded himself why he'd left. Why he wouldn't let himself be sucked back to Mystic Falls. "We needed you. I needed you!" Her voice rose with each accusation, and he tried to think up wickedly edged things to respond so he wouldn't feel so damnably screwed in the brain pan.
"I told you I'd leave one day," Damon said, pupils blowing as he tried to convince himself that what he was saying was true. He was sure, with as much blood in his system as he had, that he could compel the two vampires to disappear, forget him, and leave him the hell alone. It seemed a good idea, and he sat upright, taking in the broken way Elena was holding her shoulders. It had been years, and the woman was just as beautiful as ever, would always be this beautiful. That ached deeply, and he groaned.
"Answer her, Damon," Stephen said quietly, not even able to bring himself to look at his brother. You don't know my friends. His own words echoed in his mind. And he didn't. Not anymore. Bennett and All American Boy would be older now, out of college and maybe with baby versions of themselves. Caroline might have left Mystic Falls, looking for Tyler or Klaus or both of them, because they were all fucking blind if he was the only one that noticed that Klaus had helped Caroline time and time again. Elena and Stephen were here together, so obviously they were just that again. Maybe he really had sired her into loving him. That thought burned him more deeply than he could have imagined, but he was happy for them. Happy that they had found each other again, happy that he got to see it one more time before he sent them away.
"Listen to me," he said, pupils blowing wide as he stared the both of them down. "You are going to walk out that door. You are going back to wherever you call home, and you are going to forget that-" He was cut off when a smaller fist slammed into his jaw once, firmly, too small to really do much damage.
"That's not going to work anymore," Elena said as she stood in front of him, and for the first time, he could smell the vervain in her system. He eyed his brother and taking a deep breath, it was there as well. "Why did you run? Why did you leave us to Silas?" She asked, tears making their way down her cheeks. "We needed you, Damon, and you were just gone."
The thought of Silas was one that he hadn't considered. Had they failed so miserably that day that Silas had been raised and the world had gone to complete shit? Had he been so oblivious that there had been a veritable apocolypse going on back home? A home that he had ignored all news of for the past eight or nine years...or was it ten? Had it really been that long? He tried to pull the date from the air around him, but when one didn't age, the years stopped mattering.
He leaned back in the chair, making sure the switch was firmly in place, and gave Elena - his beautiful Elena - the sarcastic smirk that had become nearly his trademark over the past few years. "Dabbling in the vervain then, are we?" He asked, ignoring questions that might make him want to turn that switch back on. He was the master of that switch, the fucking Picasso of the switch, and he'd be damned if he didn't exercise that control at all times. ...the death of you.
"Silas can't touch your mind if you have vervain in your system," Stephen said softly, that look on his face that he always had when he felt betrayed playing across his face. Damon had missed that look, even if it was always directed at him. There had been so many times that he'd been given that look, so many that he deserved, so many that he hadn't. Some deep part of him told him that this time he probably did.
"So the dead man walks." Damon muttered to himself. The dead hadn't risen in mass, so the man had to be less than the legend.
"Not anymore," Stephen answered quickly, eyes sliding to Elena like he was guaging her reaction to something, as if he was waiting for her to be something she wasn't. The switch in him quivered ever so slightly.
"The bad guy growled at you, and what, you think I should have been there to be your hero again, Elena?" He asked, voice clipped and forcing the worlds past his lips. He had to get them gone. They had to leave, and he had to keep on living. They had to leave before Nat got back to the apartment. The image of the red headed vampire flashed across his mind, quirking his lips ever so slightly. Natalin Bel had been a serving girl in the house of Robespierre during the Terror. The man had found both her exotic hair and her pale green eyes too much to resist, bedding her and sentencing her to death shortly after.
She had been awaiting her end at the guillotine when he had found her. It was something that she took great pride in, her sire. Dark eyed and dark haired, the original had enjoyed her spirit and offered her his wrist and a length of rope. She'd taken both, and a few short days later, she was being taught the finer points of murder by none other than Elijah during his darker years.
Damon had found her lounging naked in a gin joint, sipping from a well aged little old brazilian man, the head of a much younger man between her knees and a bloody smile on her face. He'd fallen in love with the idea of her almost immediately. She was the Vampire Queen of Rio, and she'd tell anyone with an ear exactly what she wanted to do to them. Most of the time that involved draining them dry and leaving their corpse in the street. They'd hit it off right away, a whirlwind of sex and blood ensued, culmulating in their shared lair and mutual respect. The sex was good. The blood was better.
No, it would be best if baby brother and the charicature of Katherine was gone when Nat found her way back from wherever she'd found herself during the day.
"My hero?" Elena said the word slowly, as if she was trying to taste it. "My hero that left while my brother died, while Silas took over my best friend's mind. Do you know what happens when a witch thinks your trying to keep her from everyone she loves?" Witch? The little Bennett witch had sided with Silas? Well, if that hadn't gotten messy, he was sure nothing ever had in the past.
"Jeremy and Bonny are dead, Damon, and I needed you," her voice was broken, small and tinted with a sense of betrayal. Damon's heart fell a little at that. He had a soft spot for the little Gilbert a mile wide. Alaric had loved him, and anything Alaric loved Damon had to have a bit of a weakness for. Wasn't that why he'd stolen the man's recliner when he'd left?
There were things in Elena's voice that Damon didn't want to face. One thing in particular. They weren't his anymore. The woman in front of him and his brother weren't his to protect anymore. He'd left them. Left them to their own devices to drink and whore his way through much of the world. They hadn't been the death of him, not yet, but they weren't his friends anymore.
You don't know my friends.
The words echoed in his memory. The hunter hadn't known his friends, but now Damon had none. His face darkened at the thought. He didn't, not anymore. He had Nat and he had the blood. He had revelry in the darker side of his soul, and over the years there were things that made him doubt if the lighter side even existed. Why he'd gone to that witch...
"Damon?" Stephen called his name, that half-worried and half-guarded. Damon looked at him, feeling his eyes narrow and the lost expression on his face fade away. "Why?" The word was what haunted him at night. It was the question that echoed in his brain each time his memories flew to the people he left behind.
Your friends will be the death of you.
He knew why. He would know until his dying breath what type of coward he was. He would know when he ran. He would know when he left them in his own lair. He would know when he ran until he found Nat. He would know when he helped her tip back the head of a particularly beautiful young woman and drank until the blood was pulling back and her body was limp.
So would she.
She would know when he pushed her back against a wall and bit into her neck. She would know when she let him. She would know when he was so drunk off of blood and sex that he couldn't see straight. She would know, and she was see to it that it never happened again. She was the Queen of Rio and no one took anything from her.
That was why, hours later, when the blood and the booze wore off, he knew why she wasn't there. He knew and there was more panick in him than he'd ever admit. He found them where he'd left them. Their apartment door was closed and locked, something that Nat never did unless she was entertaining. The door was locked and barred. The wooden door splintered under the force of his shoulder.
Nat was reclined in her chair, one leg thrown over one of the arms, very much in the position she was in when he first saw her. This time, though, she was clothed and smirking down at the pair that were on the floor in front of her. Elena was unconscious, her neck bent at too far an angle. Nat hadn't ever played well with other women. There was no stake in her chest and no blood on Nat, which led him to believe her heart was still in her chest.
"Nat," he said softly, eyes widening as Stephen's met his. "Didn't tell me you were having a party."
"You, blue eyes, didn't tell me your brother was so delicious," Nat replied, rolling her head on her shoulders and smiling at him with red tinged teeth. Nat had always been a dainty drinker when she didn't plan to kill. Damon almost missed the bit of dried blood that still clung to Stephen's wrist.
"Can't blame me for wanting to keep you to myself," he said with a smile, trying to diffuse the woman. There was nothing in the way she lounged that would suggest that she'd snapped Elena's neck or spent the better part of the past few hours draining Stephen down to dregs. Damon gave his brother a long look, telling and demanding. His skin had lost all color, the circles under his eyes hollow and sunken, lips chapped and dry. It took a lot to dehydrate a vampire that quickly.
"Your mine, not the other way around," she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. She was a queen, he decided then, in that moment. There was nothing to bind her to anyone, not anyone that would have her anyway, yet she claimed anything around her as her own. Elijah had been right to leave her alone in Rio.
"Doesn't mean I have to like sharing you," he crossed the room and kissed her, running one hand up and down her arm and letting the other cup her neck. Stephen made a little distressed sound in the back of his throat, and Elena shifted, drawing a deep reflexive breath as she woke. Nat purred low in her throat, pleased with the tickle of stubble against her flesh. That was something that he had liked about her the first time he'd met her. She was vocal, and Damon liked to be encouraged. Now, it was obnoxious.
"Ugh, you bitch," Elena said on her first breath, drawing in a gasp between the words.
"Elena-" Stephen and Damon warned at the same time.
"Let the girl speak, boys," Nat said with a smile on her thick lips. "Men, am I right, sweetling?" Elena glared darkly at her as she helped Stephen to his feet.
"This is what you left us for, Damon? A vampire slut with poor taste?" Damon winced at the stiffening of flesh beneath his hands. Nat's face was as unchanging as it ever was, but the tensness to her was deadly.
"Poor taste?" Nat asked, inclining her head to glance between Elena and Damon. "Oh, I don't know, I think you're all delicious." Damon knew it was coming before the sharp pang of fangs against his neck bit deep. He stood there, impassive as she sipped delicately at his neck. A groan built deep in his stomach, but he bit it back. The memory of Elena taking blood from him was fresh in his mind, hot and heavy and so very different that the way Nat sipped.
She pulled away, and he could feel the upturn of her mouth. He didn't need to look at her to know that she was staring at Elena over his shoulder. "I think I'll keep you, Damon. You taste better than your brother." Elena made a noise behind him, and Damon quietly prayed that she just stayed silent.
"It's all the bourbon," he said, knowing that she would relax at that. She didn't disappoint. A rough laughter danced around his ear before she settled back into her chair, looking up at him with eye ringed in black.
"You do know how to please a woman," she said, her eyes scrunched up in mirth. "You've been a wonder, so much alcohol in you that I could get drunk just drinking." Her eyes sharpened then. "But you keep the worst friends."
"They'll be the death of me," he said, a wry smile on his face. He looked back over his shoulder at his brother and Elena. Responsibility flooded his veins and made him uncomfortable. "You want to keep them?" He asked Nat. It was an offer he knew he wouldn't let come to fruitition, but she liked the little nicities.
"Hm," she made a dismissive little hum under her breath, a finger on the tip of her chin. "Would it please you?" For a moment, Damon could pretend that she was really asking, really offering to keep his brother and Elena should he wish it.
"I left that life behind," he gave her a wide smile. "I found something so much more enjoyable."
"I do love your way with words," she said, and waved a hand dismissively. "I suppose they can go, if only because I'm so taken with you. See them out of my country." Damon nodded, gave her a kiss beneath her ear, and turned toward Stephen and Elena. He wished he didn't expect their disappointed looks. He wished he wasn't disappointed with himself. There would be no quietly leaving.
"Come on," He murmured to Stephen as he hooked an arm beneath his shoulder. "Bitch later," he hissed across at Elena. She glared at him but held her tongue. She'd either grown in the past years or the ache from her broken neck reminded her to stay silent.
Out in the sunlight, Stephen struggled a bit, refusing to let either of them support him. Annoyed, Damon pushed him into a alley, knowing that Elena would follow. "Stay." He commanded, his compulsion flaring on instinct.
Back out in the alley, he flashed a smile at a little mamasita that he'd seen a time or two around the cantina he frequented. The woman came as willingly as any woman can come under compulsion, following just a step behind him back into the alley, a pleasant smile on her lips and a sway to her step.
"Drink," he said, giving the woman a gentle push towards his brother. Stephen glared over the woman's shoulder. "You're as weak as Elena pre-vampirism. Drink." He knew that the girl would flinch, and he was pleased when she did. The sooner they wanted to leave, the better off they all would be.
"I can find my own blood, Damon," Stephen groused, but he looked down at the woman and muttered and apology.
"Not in Rio," Damon said simply. "Nat owns this. She owns everything here. You, me, that tasty snack you're parktaking in." The woman faltered in Stephen's hold, and Damon was only partially surprised when Elena had to pull them apart. "Still peckish?" He asked, giving a significant glance to the darkness that ringed Stephen's eyes.
"Fine," he said, pushing past Damon and into the street, the stagger gone from his step.
"He's not fine," Elena corrected, following her lover out into the sunlight. Damon sighed and bit into his wrist. Nat didn't like her pets disappearing unless she was the one to say the magic words. The woman took his wrist delicately and without question before he compelled her to go home and sleep.
Stephen was standing out in the street, the rock in the middle of a river of people, fingers laced behind his head. Elena was beside him, hovering just a few feet away but never touching him. Damon considered that a moment. In the past, Elena would have been molded to him, making sure he was fine and well and thoroughly aroused before she danced just out of reach again.
Damon snorted. Yeah, he might have some unresolved feelings as far as Elena was concerned.
"Got anymore Scoobies holed up in the Mystermy Machine, or is it just you two?" Damon asked, clapping Stephen on the back in a half friendly, half force show of annoyance.
"Just us," Stephen answered. He was much calmer now, his eyes back to as normal as they ever were. He turned toward Damon, a lost look on his face. "It is just us, Damon."
Something in the way he said it stuck firm. "It's just you." He murmured. When he'd left there had been the Bennett witch, Mini-Gilbert, and Caroline, if you weren't counting the unsteady truce that had been made with most of the originals. "What happened?" He'd asked before he realized he even cared.
"The spell Bonnie did killed her," Elena answered, and when Damon looked at her, it was clear that the woman was still pained by it, even after years. "Jeremy's gone, and Caroline needed a break after Bonnie." Her voice hardened. "I think she's somewhere in Egypt with Klaus."
"Egypt," Damon repeated, as if that was the most important part of the conversation.
"Or Jordan, by now." Elena said, still firm and as unyielding as Katherine.
"Petra's pretty this time of year," Damon murmured. He'd left and they'd all died.
Your friends will be the death of you.
The Irish fucker didn't know how wrong he'd been. Damon turned from them, wandered a few steps down the street and scrubbed at his face. "Let's get you home," he finally said, turning back toward them.
"We're not going home, Damon," Stephen said. "We were here for a reason."
"You were here for a reason, and then I had to fish you out of the hands of Natalin Bel. You're done here," he told them. They shared a brief glance before Stephen's jaw tightened.
"No, we're not." He said. "We've just got different priorities."
"Fuck your priorities. My priorities take...well, priority!" Damon was talking with his hands again, he knew, as he waved them through the air. Nat wasn't a fan, and he'd have to break himself of it again soon. Or leave, something echoed in the back of his head. He could leave. Nat didn't chase anything. She sent people to chase things, but the effort wouldn't be worth it, not worth him. He wasn't a shiny new toy anymore.
"No, Damon, they don't," Elena said, taking the place at Stephen's side that he'd thought she'd have taken sooner. "Stephen's do." He raised an eyebrow at his brother, who just let his gaze fall.
"What the hell?" Damon asked, exasperated already. He'd been back in their lives less than a day and they'd already thrown his world upside down. "Am I talking to Stephen or am I talking to the Ripper?" He asked, knowing that his brother would flinch. He wasn't disappointed.
"I'm...getting worse," Stephen said uneasily. "The switch is-"
"Not an option," both Damon and Elena cut him off. They shared a brief look before Elena went on. "We're going to figure this out without it."
"The urges or the guilt?" Damon asked. He'd known Stephen long enough to know that it was one of the two.
"Both," he muttered, eyes coming up to meet Damon's. "In the alley it was the blood. Now it's the guilt."
"What? You feel guilty for draining some vamp-whore?" Damon asked, arms spread wide. "She's either sucking on or being sucked on every night in one of Nat's bars. You didn't even do enough damage to keep her out of her games later."
"I still did it, and I would have," Stephen said. "We've got a...system." He eyed Elena uneasily, who just shrugged a shoulder.
"It works," Elena offered, but Damon knew that it wasn't enough. Just getting by had never been enough for his baby brother.
"No, it doesn't," Damon sighed, letting his head fall back a moment to try and ease the steady ache that was starting between his shoulder blades. There was an itch at the back of his throat that told him he was thirsty. "What were you doing with the witch?" He asked.
"Seeing if she can fix it," Stephen said, and for the first time since Damon had drug him from Nat's, his brother had a hopeful look on his face.
"You think a witch can fix your self control problems?" Damon asked, half exasperated. "It's never worked before, what makes you think it will now?"
"She can restore humanity. She can flip the switch for you," Elena said. "If she can do that, maybe she can shut off the hunger."
"He's an addict, not a glutton!" Damon shouted at her. "If we're doing to do this, we're going to do it my way," Damon muttered, eyeing the two carefully. "We find somewhere secluded, where we can lock him up and let him detox. Fuck Lexi, but she had a way with fixing my brother."
"Why do you get to just walk back into my life?" Stephen asked, rising to his brother's controlling nature. In the next instant, he knew why. He knew because he'd forgotten, just for that infantismal second he'd forgotten about the burning in his throat and the desire to just...tear into the nearest thing with a beating heart.
"That's why," Damon answered, his light blue eyes the most serious Stephen had ever remembered seeing them. Then again, his brother always could read him just as easily as one of his journals.
And Damon had tried. He'd tried for the better part of fifteen years. Caroline had come in and out of their lives several times over the years, and each time she was softer and softer toward the original vampire that ghosted her steps. Elijah had come and gone, offering words of encouragement that had failed as miserably as anything else. It was in Sao Paulo that in happened.
Another set back. Another village destroyed, and another week of Stephen rocking back and forth in his own mind, drowning in the blood and the screams and the terror.
It wasn't anything unusual. Stephen broke all the time anymore. What was truly unique about that moment, about that time in Sao Paulo, was that Damon broke with him.
He'd left in the middle of the night, leaving Elena to deal with another few days of Stephen's guilt phase. Two days of traveling and a long week of worship at the alter of Natalin Bel, he was free to do as he wanted in Rio, and what he wanted was to kick in the door of a witch that had been spared his wrath years in the past.
Nadi Moraes had been a busy little witch, and she was as powerful as anything Damon had ever felt. There were old energies in Brazil, pure energies that she could feed on that made her more formidable than the Bennett witch could have ever hoped to be.
She was a fair being, as far as witches went, and she listened when he pleaded. She acknoweldged when he begged-damn it he wasn't begging, but he was. And, in the end, she looked at him with her dark, knowing eyes, and she nodded. It was as simply as that.
"This will end you," she murmured, drawing a blade across his palm and letting the blood pool in a stone bowl at their feet. A fire was the only light, and it sent eerie flashes up and across both of their faces. "Is an end worth a new beginning?"
"A lot of things were supposed to kill me," Damon said, giving her a smirk he didn't feel. His blood kept flowing, kept filling that bowl at his feet as he held his palm out in front of him. He ignored her question until it was clear she wasn't going to let it go. "Yes," he admitted, a pained look on his face at admitting it.
"Tell me why," she demanded, and he obeyed, despite the repetition.
"Because he's my brother," Damon said, half exhausted and half sickened with himself. "Because they're the only...people I've ever had." And it was true. It was sad and it was pathetic, but it was true. And yet, Damon Salvatore protected his own, because of his secret. The one secret that everyone would know now, or at least, everyone that mattered.
"They will be the death of you," she cautioned, one last time as the blood from the bowl started to spill over the sides, following lines and structures into the very air that no one could see but the witch, looping up and around them, defying gravity and any other law of physics that science demanded be obeyed.
He nodded, staring off at nothing, his body lighter than it had ever felt. It was true. That Irish bastard had been right. The death of him. He could feel it in the pull of the blood, the vague fuzziness to his vision. His head swam, but just over Nadi's shoulder, he could have sworn he could see Rick standing, just there.
The man had been pushed to the back of Damon's mind for so long that it was almost painful to see him. Yet there he was, his hands in the pockets of a leather jacket, and that little forehead crinkled smile that Rick only gave him when he'd done good. Something snapped in him, and Rick was gone. Smoke or ether or just a hallucination.
"Death is final, Damon Salvatore," Moraes said, giving him one last out. "Know that before you let your friends be the death of you." He nearly laughed at that.
"You don't know my friends."
AN: As I said before. It took a long time for me to decide that this was where this piece ended. I'm debating doing a follow up piece, sort of a real "fuck you" to the idea of death, given that Vampire Diaries does that nearly on a weekly basis. Let me know if you liked this enough to want to see more of this Universe.