Sorry for the wait! This is the final chapter, enjoy:)
Damon POV
I recognise the instant Elena notices my presence. She is stood watching the flames of my fireplace whilst nursing a crystal glass of bourbon. From my stash. If the constant rescues of her from the ridiculous life and death situations she gets herself into as well as my whipped dog imitation weren't enough, the fact that I am not ripping out her heart for drinking my alcohol is solid proof of my love.
I hold my breath as I watch her shoulders tense slightly. Her knees bend as she dips into a slight crouch – a predators position. She doesn't turn to face me though, which would be too obvious a move. My heart swells with pride as I let out a pleased sigh.
The tension in her chest immediately alleviates as she turns to face me. She can recognise me from a sigh? Maybe she knows me better than I think. Don't read too much into it, Damon. You're on a mission.
"You. Me. Right here. Right now"
"I don't know what you're on about, but I'm here for the alcohol – not the stellar company," she frowns.
"I was on my way to yours anyway, so you've just saved me the trouble. Thanks for that by the way."
No need to inform her that I know she's been here every night at the same time and that I'd been relying on her pattern to put my plan into action.
"I probably wouldn't have been home anyway, I haven't been there much." She replies with a sickly sweet smile.
I grit my teeth. This was never going to be easy.
"Listen, I've let you have your fun, but now I'm bored and I'm actually finding myself missing your incredibly dull, overly-moral personality so -"
"Lemme just interrupt you and guess - you want me to switch my humanity back on. Why would I do that Damon? Isn't this what you want? Elena Gilbert, with none of the frustrations, none of the hang-ups..."
She slinks closer to me until we're inches away and I can smell her honey and vanilla shampoo. The smell of innocence contrasting with the look in her eyes of pure sinfulness.
"If that's what I wanted, I still have Katherine's number. Why would I go for the copy when I can have the original?" I struggle to say the words, my whole body fighting against the idea of hurting her.
She doesn't even flinch.
"Your Katherine digs don't hurt Damon. I don't care. Wow for a man whose lived for so long, it's actually quite impressive how you've remained so dim. So anyway, this has been fun but I better be off. Places to go, people to see and all that."
Her hasty exit tells me that my words had some kind of effect. I don't even turn to watch her leave, just concentrate on watching the flames of the fire until 5 – 4 – 3 – 2 annnd 1.
"What the hell?! DAMON"
I can't help but smile as I hear the stomp of her heeled boots approaching me.
"Oh yeeah. I think I neglected to mention that I was actually anticipating your presence tonight and had my old friend witchy Bennet put a spell on the door. Couldn't have you storming out on me, could I?"
Her eyes narrow as she glares at me, her chest heaving with anger, which actually only serves to amuse me further. I can't help but rub salt into the wound by adding:
"Oh and that's not the end to her useful talents! I actually persuaded her to spike your drink with a spell. Hopefully that will stop you from drinking my bourbon. Its expensive stuff – too sophisticated for your teenybopper tastes."
Ignoring my drivel about her age, she attempts to conceal the panic that is clearly visible in her eyes and asks, "What spell? What have you done, Damon?!"
Her voice goes eerily high at the end and I almost feel bad for her. But I reprimand myself. This needs to be done.
"Well that bourbon that you've just drank has given me free access into your head. I can traipse across all your memories, create new ones – it's like compulsion revamped for vampires. I'm in control of both of our minds. I've gotta say I was impressed. But judging from your facial expression – which is hilarious by the way – I'm going to take a guess and say you disagree."
She collapses onto the sofa, her inner turmoil visible on her face.
"Let's get started then, shall we." I stroll around the room desperately trying to avoid eye contact with the only face that can make me question my motives.
"I'm not sure completely how this works. Miss Barmy Bennet said that I just needed to concentrate and think of a memory involving the two of us to get started. Not very specific instructions really. Let's just try this out. But what memory to think of? We've had so many, this may be difficult."
"Maybe the one of you killing my brother. Or the originals ball. That was a good one." Elena spits out, her judging eyes staring right at me.
"Interesting ideas, but I'll pass thanks...here I've got an idea."
The antique gold of the walls disappear as they're replaced by a familiar looking hall. The Persian rug from underneath me vanishes and is replaced by a cool marbled floor. I glance around me, feeling disorientated and baffled by the audience around me until I stare up above me to a vision in blue silk descending down the staircase towards me.
"Looks like it worked, Elena." I peek around me, but no one in the vicinity seems to hear my voice as they stare at the stunning brunette – who is currently glaring at me (the phrase if looks could kill pops into mind).
"Smile Elena, this is your big moment! You remember Miss Mystic Falls 1.0 right? I think I prefer the next year though. . ."
By this point, she has reached the bottom of the staircase and grips onto my arm. Her nails dig into my flesh deliberately – which I don't remember from the first time I experienced this memory.
"What's the point of this Damon?" She whispers venomously.
"Don't bother whispering," I chastise, "They can't hear us." As if for dramatic effect, we walk past an applauding Jenna and Alaric and my heart drops to my stomach.
"And in answer to your question, I had an amazing idea to remind you of all the good parts of feeling emotions in order to persuade you to flip the switch. I'm a genius, I know." I smirk.
The song begins as we begin to dance. Our hands almost touching as we circle round. The fiery passion between us crackles as our fingers itch to touch. Our eyes never leave each other, as we remain engrossed with one another.
"Do you feel that?" I say softly, my voice heavy with fervour.
"That's desire Damon. I don't need to flip my humanity switch to feel lust."
"It was more than that for me. This was the moment where I realised that I loved you. After Katherine and after I promised myself that I would never risk caring again, there you were, proving me wrong."
I pull her closer to me as we spin around, twirling effortlessly. Elena is silent. Not wanting to look into her doe-brown eyes and remember the vacancy of them, I close my own eyes allowing myself to enjoy a moment of nostalgia and happiness.
They fly open when I feel myself being pulled into a vortex of darkness. We fall together, clutching onto one another until we fall back into the boarding house. She's still sat on the sofa, no longer wearing her ball gown.
I must have lost concentration. Damn it. I feel a little breathless and peeking at Elena, she looks similar.
"Damon, you need to stop this. Let me go. I'll leave town and you can stop putting yourself through this torture."
Had that whole experience had no effect on her? A flare of hope in my stomach is almost crushed but I won't give up. I'll never give up on Elena.
I ignore her. "Let's go again." I close my eyes and search for another memory, determined to break through the empty shell to my Elena.
I pause when I feel her hands on my shoulders. "Stop Damon." Preparing myself for more protests, I am surprised when she begins to kiss my neck. She licks along my chin and raises her mouth to suck on my ear lobe. I temporarily lose myself in the sensations before I catch myself.
"Elena, we can't..." My voice is husky.
"Don't you remember the last time we were in this room? You said you had never seen me alive. We danced and we..."
"and we made love for the first time." I finish for her, "which I can't do again until the real Elena comes back to me."
Her hands move from my shoulders down to my chest as she slips her hand under my shirt and uses her nails to caress my chest before continuing despite my interruption.
"Don't you remember how good it felt? You don't need to show me that memory. I remember how it felt to touch you, lick you, feel you. And I also remember how good you made me feel. How you touched me. Mmmm. Come on Damon, you can't tell me you don't want to."
She presses her body tightly against mine – her crotch against mine - and in between pressing light feather kisses to my chin, she whispers: "I can feel that you want to."
I growl before speeding her across the room, until I'm pressing her against the wall. She makes a sound – a cross between a surprised gasp and a breathy moan. My knee rises to rest in between her thighs, pinning her to the wall. She bends down and writhes against my knee and I feel my control slowly slipping away.
"Come on Damon." Leaning forward until our noses brushes against each other, she pleads with me in a deep, low voice that goes straight to my groin.
Fuck it.
Next thing I know, I'm the one pressed against the wall and her tongues in my mouth as we aggressively battle for dominance. I faintly hear the sound of buttons scattering on the floor and feel a rush of air when my shirt falls to the floor.
What has she got against Varvatos?! I growl and return the favour, ripping straight through her tank top, my mouth going dry at the sight of her lacy, black bra.
Our hands and mouths explore each other until her voice breaks me out of my trance.
"That's more like it..."
Shaking my head through the fog, I break away from her. Elena looks up at me confused, but I can still see a hint of smug satisfaction in her irises. This is not my Elena. This is not who I want.
I roughly push past her and venture to the other side of the room, ignoring her taunts.
"Oh you spoil sport. I never thought you'd be the fun sucker with too many morals. Talk about role reversal." She leans against the wall, poised unabashedly in her bra and jeans.
I turn away in an attempt to calm myself and on auto pilot, I pour myself a glass of bourbon, gulping heavily.
I whirl around at the sound of her laugh. Her facial expression confuses me. Her mouth is curled into a smile, her eyes widened with amusement. I'm perplexed until I notice what she's looking at. My eyes travel down the glass of bourbon in my hands.
Shit.
What is it about this girl that leaves my mind so foggy that I can't concentrate on the simplest of things. Don't drink the spelled alcohol, Damon. You had one instruction.
"Well, this makes things a little more fair, doesn't it? You have free access into my head and now I have the same with yours. I'm suddenly feeling a lot more optimistic about tonight, Damon."
Crap crap crap. I'm panicking and I don't even bother to hide it. Before I can even begin to conjure up a plan, she pulls me into her own mind and I find myself free-falling again, with nothing to hold onto but Elena.
"You weren't here for this when it first happened, so enjoy" She tells me.
I struggle to adapt to the change in surroundings, glancing around multiple times before realising my whereabouts. She didn't ease me into it at all, did she?
Elena and I are standing at the side of the graveyard watching a younger looking Elena stood at her parent's coffin. An audience are sat behind her on chairs as I recognise Jenna, Sheriff Forbes, the town mayor and a stoned-looking Jeremy. Elena sobs her way through a speech, trying to stay strong and ignoring the traitorous tears that cascade down her face. I yearn to reach out to her, hold her in my arms and comfort her.
"Do you really want to ask me why I won't switch my humanity back on?"
Before I can even reply, she seizes control of the memory and we fall into yet another heart-wrenching scene.
"This one is from last week. You didn't realise I was there but I was drawn to it. Curiousity, I suppose"
I recognise Jeremy's memorial. The audience for this funeral is similar but it is the line of chairs at the front of the church that draw my attention. The row of chairs for the family that should have been there to say goodbye to a young boy lost too soon. Empty seats for Alaric, Jenna, Elena's mom and dad, Anna, Vicky, John and of course Elena. It had been Stefan's soppy idea which I couldn't find myself to argue with.
I watch myself listen to the speeches being given for Jeremy, all the talks of tragic loss and an unfair situation. My face is hard, my jaw set and eyes emotionless.
The only difference I realise from seeing this memory again, is Elena stood in the corner. One foot in front of the other as if she is fighting to urge to claim her rightful seat, fighting the desire to make a speech for the brother that for a long time, was the only thing holding her together.
I have to say something. "Elena, if you were there, that means that part of you feels. Part of you – "
Interrupting me, she growls and changes our surroundings again.
"This one isn't a memory. This is a dream I had at one point."
I almost scoff when I see what her wishes were for the future. It's the cliché white picket fence, Victorian house with a big garden. I follow an older-looking, human Elena. She walks into the house, her ponytail swinging behind her and her slightly larger hips swaying.
I follow her up the stairs coming to a halt when I see three young children rushing towards her, screaming in that annoyingly cute way that only kids can.
I'm taken aback at the sounds of screams and yells and laughs as they clutch onto their mother.
"Mom, Grayson hit me again!"
"Dad says we can have chocolate for dinner, can we really? Can we really?"
"Please kiss it better, mom, it hurts"
I pay special attention to the little boy – whose age I would put around five – as he stays quiet and simply hugs his mom as if it's been years since they've seen each other. I notice his raven black hair and piercing blue eyes as he smirks a hello to his mother.
I circle round the group and notice Elena's smiling face, her eyes crinkled in happiness as she struggles to calm her children down.
Weirdly, I don't feel as if I'm intruding. I feel like I belong and this is where I am meant to be.
Elena's humanity-less voice breaks my through my stupor as she says, "why would I want to dream of a future that I can no longer have? At least this way I don't care about it."
I suddenly feel a determination that takes control of my body as I gather all my power as I pull us out of her mind and into my own.
I watch the smiling Elena disappear, the yells of the children cease as we fall away. The scene begins to fade and I swear I see the raven-haired boy give me a sad smile before it fades to darkness. Something inside of me breaks and I lose sight of the dream that we both shared.
Using all my energy, I reveal my first memory to her.
"I don't want you to get a big head, but I figure that you should know that my happy moments all revolve around you."
She stays silent and I feel optimistic that I'm breaking through to her.
"Okay okay I regret telling you that, I can already see your head getting bigger. If you don't be careful, our egos will be so big that they won't fit in the same bed together and that would be a travesty wouldn't it?" I wink at her, babbling on in an attempt to conceal the vulnerability I feel showing this memory to her.
"You were dying. You're showing me a memory of you dying."She whispers softly as we watch ourselves lie on the bed in my room, clutching each other for comfort.
"Ah yes. I may have been on the brink of death that night. That detail seems vaguely familiar."
"You were in so much pain that night. It was the same night that Jeremy died – temporarily of course – and that Stefan gave into the blood. Why are you showing me this?"
"I think you're being a little pessimistic here, Elena. I thought I was the cynical one. Is that all you remember from that night? Not one other thing..."
"It was our first kiss."
"Ding ding! It was the first time I got an inkling of how much you could like me, if you just let yourself – ignoring all the times I could smell how turned on you were around me of course." I smirk and do that "eye thing" she hates to love.
"Stop joking around, Damon."
"Okay fine. Who's the fun-sucker now? This night I told you something that I want you to remember now. I told you that if I had –"
"If you had chosen differently, you wouldn't have met me."
"Ah so you do remember. Looks like it was as a profound moment for you as it was for me. Good to know."
"Why are you reminding me of this, Damon? It's not one of more obvious choices that you could have shown me."
My voice is intense as I reply, "I need you to remember that for me, all the pain, all the grief and all the guilt was worth suffering so that I could feel the love that I felt – that I feel – for you. And for so long I thought that I wasn't going to be enough to bring you back but I need to know that I've tried. If you really loved me then come home to me, Elena."
Before she can trivialise my confession, I pull her with me as we plunge into the darkness when I change the scene yet again.
"Elena, you showed me your dream for the future so I want to show you mine."
I am mesmerized by Elena as I watch her reaction to my vision.
She seems almost hypnotised as she watches a couple on the beach, who roll around on top of each other as they laugh. The man unties the string of her bikini and the brunette playfully slaps him on the arm, reminding him that they are in public. They start to argue and Elena listens intently to their disagreement.
"Come on babe, it's been almost two days since we've had some alone time!"
"It wasn't my idea to go visit Caroline and Stefan!"
"Well it wasn't mine! Why would I want to listen to their idiocy about who has shinier hair? I'd have much rather spent the time with you in our hotel room - "
"We're on holiday, Damon! We might as well have stayed at home if you just wanted to have sex. It takes us days to resurface!"
"Oh the assumptions! I was going to say braiding our hair and telling each other our inner feelings. You dirty-minded girl!"
"Grr, you frustrate me, Damon. Sometimes I think you just want me for one thing..."
"Yes Elena, I went to all the trouble of fighting over you with my brother for years and battling the most dangerous creatures that you attract like a magnet from the blooming original toothfairy to Klaus, just for sex – which I could get from any other girl. You underestimate my charm."
"Eurgh, I can't deal with your sarcasm sometimes!" She jumps up and starts marching away from him.
"ELENA!" He shouts after her desperately.
"What?!" She whirls around to face him again.
Seeing his facial expression, she sighs and they speed towards each other. Reaching each other, their lips lock together and her legs raise to wrap themselves around his waist. Breaking away from her lips, he says: "I was just going to tell you that your bikini top is still undone. Might have been a bit of a shock to the locals."
"Shutup asshole and take me back to the hotel room."
The couple disappear inhumanly fast and Elena turns to look at me, a lone tear travelling down her face.
"I agree that there is no point in dreaming of things that can no longer happen. But this is still possible."
I take her into my arms and we descend into the darkness for one last time.
Resurfacing back in the boarding house, I feel exhausted. We sit on the sofa and I don't say anything, just watching Elena's face.
"What's going to happen? If I switch it back on?"
"It will slowly come rushing back. All the grief and sadness. I'm not going to sugar-coat the bad. But Elena, the good will come back too."
We sit in silence as she contemplates my words until, unable to bear the quiet, I start talking again.
"The switch stops working after the first few years. You can't do this forever. The longer you wait, the harder it'll be to come back."
I cup her face in my hands, gently lifting it up until she is looking directly into my eyes.
"Please Elena. Come back to me."
Much like in the dream, a solitary tear travels down her face and I begin to see evidence of light in her heart of darkness. I pull her into my arms and feel wetness on my own cheeks. We stay in this position for a while until she leans back in my embrace and asks,
"Stefan and Caroline, really?"
I laugh, a relief present in my heart that I thought had been forever extinguished.
"Well, I've always thought his saint-like character might be the perfect balance to her neurotic-like nature."
She catches my eye and gives me a watery laugh.
"What do we do now?" I struggle to catch the words and realise that Elena is afraid of the answer.
My tone is light, "well, we need to sleep, shower – possibly together in the interests of saving the environment of course – and eat."
"Damon, please."
"I don't know, Elena. I really don't. I guess we cry, we grief, we wallow in sadness.
Yeah, we do all that so that we can live – with some fights and make-ups thrown in – and so that we can feel."
...and done! Sorry if you don't like this chapter, it's a little rushed I know and I took some artistic license with the spell but I have exams coming up so I wanted to get this done. I've got some ideas for an AU/AH story, so hopefully you'll read that once I start writing it.
Anyway, please review and let me know what you thought of the end:) Thanks x