A/N: Thank you so so so much for all the fantastic reviews! :]:]:] And so here it is. The last chapter! :D There will be just one more update after this one in the form of a rather long, (hopefully) fun and (mostly) very happy epilogue! ;)
Disclaimer: The Vampire Diaries belongs to L.J. Smith & CW.
Chapter 21
Tucking a pillow under her cheek, Elena smiled at the clock, following its leisurely, ticking movements in the darkened room until the silence brightened with the noise and the alarm went off exactly at 4am.
She turned on the radio and jumped out of the bed almost tripping over the shoes on the floor in the process. Laughing under her breath she drew the curtains open.
The sky was still draped in black, but the horizon was vibrant with neon signs and glittering letters.
"...and clear sky in Las Vegas today. A perfect day for a wedding!" The voice on the radio announced.
"A perfect day indeed."
Swirling around in surprise Elena found herself in Damon's arms.
"What are you doing here?!" She stared up at him, smiling and pushing him away at the same time. "You're not supposed to see me!"
"In your wedding dress," Damon pointed out, brushing strands of hair off her forehead. "And I may need to double-check..." he said, looking her up and down before sweeping her into his arms. "But I don't think you're wearing it at the moment."
"I'm certain we're the only people in the world who get married at 6am," Elena said with a smile and then laughed when they fell onto the bed.
Damon propped himself on his elbows and looked down at her. "7am." He gave her a lop-sided smile and kissed her. "I rescheduled."
Elena clapped her hands. "That's great! So we have an extra hour. You can help me pack," she said, stifling a laugh when he pouted. "Speaking of, you didn't tell me yet where we'll be going on our honeymoon," she added, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him down for a series of soft kisses.
"And I'm not going to tell you. The honeymoon is supposed to be a surprise and you already know too much about it," Damon said, twirling a lock of her hair around his finger.
Elena pursed her lips in confusion. "I don't know anything about it," she protested.
"You know who you're going with," Damon pointed out and she laughed.
With a grin, he leaned down and nuzzled her neck eliciting a series of giggles that suddenly quieted down, Elena's arms tightening around him. Damon lifted his head to look at her.
"Sometimes I'm afraid that I laugh too much," Elena whispered, cradling his face in her hands. Damon brushed her cheek with the backs of his fingers."That I'm too happy," she added, her voice barely audible.
"I'm not worried and I'm happier than you," Damon said with a small shrug, brushing her hair behind her ear with a single finger.
Elena smiled. "You're not happier than me." She pressed the tips of her fingers to his lips stopping him from interrupting her. "I'm the happiest, because I'm going to marry you."
"And I'm going to marry you, which makes me happier," Damon retorted, pressing a kiss to the tip of her nose.
They both laughed and just looked at each other for a while. Then Elena gasped, remembering something. "We didn't write our vows!" She said, grasping Damon's shoulders.
"Traditional ones are just fine. Or we can improvise," Damon offered turning his head right and left and pressing a kiss to each of her hands.
Shaking her head, Elena rolled them over, pushed Damon on his back and sat straddling him."We need to at least rephrase 'until the death shall us part'," she said with a sigh.
"I'm conflicted," Damon said, mirroring Elena's contemplative expression. She gave him a questioning look. "I don't know if I can't concentrate because this is too long or too short," he said in a perfectly serious tone, catching the hem of Elena's nightshirt between his fingers.
Elena shook her head in mock exasperation. "We are going to sit here until we come up with something good," she said resolutely, thrusting up her chin. She closed her eyes, her forehead creasing in thought.
"And for all eternity we shall never part, because even in death you are my life," Damon said after a moment of silence and Elena's eyes snapped open and she stared down at him without blinking. "Or should it rhyme?" Damon asked, squinting.
"No," Elena said quietly with a small smile. "It's perfect."
"It's true," Damon said in a low voice, sliding his fingers into her hair.
"It is true," Elena whispered back, leaning down and pressing her cheek to Damon's chest, closing her eyes when his arms wrapped around her.
They didn't say another word, didn't move for an hour.
xxxdelenaxxx
For a few heartbeats the crypt was completely silent and Bonnie shuddered when the silence was suddenly broken by a hollow sound of Stefan falling to his knees, his hands hovering aimlessly in the air as he stared down at Elena's and Damon's bodies lying motionlessly on the ground.
Klaus turned away from Silas' unmoving form his eyes shifting slowly from Stefan to Caroline who stood frozen to the spot, eyes glued to Stefan's face, wide with fear but bright with a glimpse of hope shining in them as she was waiting for Stefan's expression to signal that it was OK to breathe, that she was wrong, that everything was going to be OK.
Jeremy let go of a breath he could no longer hold and blinked, tears welling up in his eyes before he allowed for the realization to sink in. Bonnie gritted her teeth, feeling his hand squeeze hers, nearly crushing her bones.
With a shaking hand, Stefan touched Elena's cheek briefly, but immediately withdrew, almost losing his balance as he fell back on his heels.
His eyes wandering frantically around the crypt, it wasn't the touch that made his head feel as if it was burning, each thought disappearing before it was even fully formed - it was the sight. The sight he couldn't understand, couldn't process, because it was so familiar and at the same time so utterly impossible.
That color – there was that color that his eyes couldn't see. The color that couldn't be more bland yet it caused him excruciatingly intense pain. The greenish shade of gray he couldn't name, couldn't interpret.
He had seen it before. He had seen it – but right now it couldn't mean- it couldn't be-
The neverending series of scenes and words kept replaying itself in Stefan's mind and that exactly what it was: a neverending series of moments. They could never end. It wasn't possible. All the memories that he had... They were alive in them. They were undead.
He had seen people shrink into these dark, grayish shadows of death. With dismay, with relief, with regret, with indifference, with despair... he had seen people fade. Vampires weren't turning into ashes when they died, but their skin, their faces were turning the color of the ashes. He had seen it. But it was not what he was seeing right now.
It couldn't be.
xxxdelenaxxx
When they ran out of the chapel Damon swept Elena into his arms and twirled them around a few times before he started strolling down the street.
"Are you going to carry me around like this for the entire day?" Elena asked with an amused smile, clasping her arms around his neck.
"Day?" Damon gave her an incredulous look. "I just promised to cherish and hold you for all eternity."
Elena buried her face in his shoulder and laughed.
xxxdelenaxxx
"Bonnie?" Caroline prompted in a faltering voice, but hopelessness felt so strange to her that she immediately resorted to something more familiar. With a frown on her face and a commanding tone to her voice she repeated sharply. "Bonnie!"
There was no reason to move, Bonnie knew, but everyone was looking at her, so she moved, taking a few soundless steps toward Damon and Elena.
Everyone was looking at her, but no one dared to say a word. Bonnie looked between everyone from under her eyelashes. They all knew and yet they were all waiting for a miracle. She was a miracle-maker. They were waiting for her to make everything right.
She looked down at Damon and Elena's faces – and abruptly averted her eyes, tears blurring the sight of her best friend's face barely recognizable, robbed of shape, devoid of color. Lifeless.
Klaus stepped forward, mentally going through that list of words he had carried with him for a thousand years. Words that had lost their meaning suddenly, gradually, a long time ago; that had been rendered illegible, washed off by tears, by blood. A collection of shells he no longer cared for but kept nonetheless, and only recently they all started coming back to him. He hadn't felt anything for so long. So many words, just words, but now they were beginning to feel again. He was beginning to feel. And he could even name them now, he could remember which was which, match each emotion with its name and be quite certain he got them right.
It must have been compassion, Klaus realized with numb astonishment, that he was feeling. He took a step, leaned down over Elena and pulled the stake out of her heart. No one else had done it yet, so he thought he could as well do that, even if it accomplished nothing. Caroline glanced up at him, distraught, her face stained with tears. Not a muscle in Stefan's face twitched.
"There must be something we can do," Jeremy said and Bonnie squeezed her eyes shut, tears rolling down her cheeks at the clear, determined tone of his voice. So heartbreakingly childish in its well-trained insistence that there was always something to be done – even if the very people who had taught him that were now lying motionlessly right in front of him on the ground, draped in irreversible silence.
xxxdelenaxxx
"Truth or dare?" Elena asked, splashing a little bit of water with her foot and straightening her arms over the sides of the bathtub.
"Truth," Damon replied, catching her foot and pressing a kiss to each of her toes.
Elena tilted her head to the side, the lacy veil that was still clasped into her tied-up hair half-submerged in the water. "What is my most annoying trait?"
Damon leaned his head against the back of the tub and smiled. "You don't have any."
"Hey, that's not an answer!" Elena swam across the bathtub straight into Damon's arms.
He kissed the top of her head. "That's the truth. Truth or dare?"
Elena snuggled against him. "Dare."
"I dare you to kiss me."
Elena laughed. "First of all, that's the seventh time in a row. You need to come up with some other dare. Secondly, that's too easy."
"Easy?" Damon widened his eyes at her. "Close your eyes."
"Why?" Elena asked, closing her eyes nonetheless, still laughing under her breath.
"We'll see how easy it will be if you'll have to find me first," Damon whispered into her ear, kissed her on the cheek and then told Elena to count to ten.
When she finished counting, Elena opened her eyes and... started laughing again at the sight of Damon sitting right in front of her with bubbles all over his face and in his hair.
xxxdelenaxxx
Bonnie sat down on her knees between Stefan and Caroline while Jeremy was pacing around the crypt, refusing to look- unable to look- Klaus was watching all of them in silence.
"Bonnie, there must be something we can do," Caroline said in the most determined tone she could muster. "There must be," she repeated almost angrily, her hands curling up into fists.
Stefan heard everyone's voices, but couldn't make out any words. Everything seemed to be drowning in darkness, in some dark, heavy fog that was slowly rising around him.
Bonnie lifted her hand and slowly closed her fingers around Quetsiya's amulet she was still wearing around her neck.
She glanced at Stefan who was looking at Damon and Elena with unseeing eyes, eyes that were burning with pain, with sorrow, with grief encompassing him tighter and tighter until he felt he couldn't breathe.
He had wished for so many things when he was alive. He had wished for so many more after he had died. All the regrets that were weighing him down. He used to think that if he could perform a miracle of choice he would wipe clean all the blood stains, he would wipe clean that wall in Chicago, cleanse his soul, get rid of that fatal flaw.
But while that was the dream that would always linger on the outskirts of his mind, his heart had will of its own and if he could do one miracle...
The tears felt cold on Stefan's cheeks when they flowed, silently streaming down his face, dripping onto Elena and Damon's interlaced hands.
xxxdelenaxxx
She couldn't see her surroundings, couldn't touch anything at all, couldn't even imagine trying to, as if her body wouldn't obey her, as if it was no longer sheltering her, as if it was gone.
It was completely dark around her and Elena felt like she was adrift in some empty space with nothing to hold on to, nowhere to go. She didn't feel frightened, could almost grasp some semblance of peace until she realized she was alone.
It was a burning thought, like a scream that soundlessly erupted inside her, an excruciating, echoing pain-
"Elena..."
The pain was suddenly put on hold, like a broken spell and she was hanging in the darkness, in silence, holding her breath even though she didn't think she needed to breathe anymore. Everything that seemed so natural before now felt so distant... The empty space around her was perfectly still and she tried to concentrate on the slightest movement that would indicate that the whisper she had heard was real.
"Damon?"
Only after she said his name she felt relief flood over her that she still had a voice... or at least was able to say his name... even if she didn't have a voice anymore, because it suddenly seemed like the word wasn't spoken out loud, but rather emanated from her, carried her most ardent thoughts into the darkness in search of hope.
"Elena!"
Damon's voice streamed through her, through what she could only describe as her soul, the darkness around her still thick, but its hold on her subsiding like a vanishing flood.
"I can't-"
"I know."
They fell silent but now she could feel his presence, could feel them both as one in some strange, exquisite way and she suddenly felt entirely calm, even if she couldn't quite make out if there was more happiness or sadness in this silence now, because she knew he was close, she felt that he was right beside her, but she couldn't see him or touch him and with a pang of searing pain she realized she probably never would again.
"I love you."
"I love you."
The words floated between them, through them and even though she couldn't cry she felt the tears circulate in her consciousness with the fierceness of blood.
"You shouldn't have done it."
"I couldn't have not done it."
Elena couldn't hear either of them breathing, but Damon's voice seemed to radiate from inside her own heart.
"I'd rather be here with you than anywhere else without you."
"Elena-"
Damon trailed off and for a moment she was afraid that-
A sound, so quiet and soft like a distant echo of a pin dropping dispersed the silence for a split second.
"Elena, did you hear that?"
"Yes," she answered immediately and wasn't sure if it was the darkness or her heart that was pulsating with a fast but steady rhythm that reminded her of all those moments when she had nothing but hope to hold on to.
She imagined herself smiling when the sound broke into their silence again and then she felt a wave of warmth flood all of her senses when she suddenly imagined seeing Damon's face in front of her.
"I thought I just-"
"-saw you," Damon completed her sentence, his voice laced with careful amazement and Elena's heart began pounding faster and faster and after a moment she realized that she was feeling as if she was inside of her body again, undead, alive.
"How-" Elena started, but trailed of when the sound returned.
It was a steady pattern now, a quiet tap... tap... tap... every couple of seconds or so. Like falling raindrops.
But it wasn't the sound that made Elena's heart soar. It was the returning image of Damon, the sight of him, a glimpse of light accompanying the sounds. It was not only the silence that seemed to be breaking, cracking like thin ice. It was also the darkness.
"Elena, look."
She subconsciously followed the direction she was supposed to follow even though she didn't give it any rational thought, didn't really know where to look.
Suddenly, she saw a flicker of light somewhere far, far away in the darkness. A flicker of light like a faint glimmer of a shooting star, like a translucent raindrop illuminating the darkness for a split second while dropping from the sky to the ground.
"Elena."
When the flicker of light briefly brightened the darkness again, Elena looked down and saw her hand clasped in Damon's hand.
She wasn't sure if he said the words or if she did, but she willed herself to cling to his hand, to his presence next to her, straining her vision to capture the appearing and disappearing light at the end of the darkness and every time the light appeared she felt them both move a little closer toward it.
And the closer they were, the brighter the light was becoming, the more tangible was Damon's hold on her hand, the clearer his face when she was smiling at him, his voice louder and louder to her ears.
The darkness seemed to be trailing behind them, but not fast enough to hold them back. The light was guiding them away from the empty void and the silence and when at last they found themselves very close to it, the glow became almost unbearable.
They took one final step and the glittering rain wasn't showing them a path anymore, but washing over them like rain and it didn't take long for it to finally sweep them off their feet and carry them away into the blinding brightness.
xxxdelenaxxx
"Stefan."
Caroline's voice seemed to drag him out of some king of a reverie and Stefan blinked, subconsciously noting something strange about Caroline's tone, something that reminded him of Elena's voice when she had come to the boarding house for the first time and was trying to draw his attention to him while he was busy glaring at his brother.
"Stefan."
Now it was Bonnie and Stefan wished they would just leave him alone. Leave him alone to... to... to grieve. To grieve. The words rolled mutely over his tongue with nauseating bitterness and he shook his head as if trying to shake them off his mind.
"Stefan."
Stefan gritted his teeth at the sound of Klaus' voice, because it was the last sound he wanted to hear right now and he opened his eyes to tell him just that, but then the words escaped him at the sight, his breath catching in his throat.
Stefan blinked, not daring to believe that what he thought he was seeing was real. But when Elena's hand trembled again he suddenly noticed that her skin was not ash-gray anymore. Then his eyes darted to his brother's face just in time to see Damon's eyelids twitching.
"What's happening," Stefan whispered, blinking rapidly, remnants of tears rolling down his face, falling onto Damon and Elena's hands.
And then Stefan noticed that when that was happening, his tears seemed to rush over their skin like a glimmering fever returning the color of their skin to its regular shade.
"Oh my God!" Caroline exclaimed, covering her mouth with her hands when all of a sudden, Damon and Elena's eyes simultaneously snapped open.
They stared at each other for a few seconds, gasping for air before Caroline's voice made them aware of their surroundings.
"Elena!" Jeremy leaped to his sister's side, helping her to sit up while Bonnie reached out for Damon's hand.
Stefan was shifting his eyes between them, the realization slowly breaking through his grief, fear, pain until all the doubt was erased from his mind thanks to Caroline's excited exclamations, Bonnie and Jeremy's laughter and his own eyes confirming that what he was seeing was really happening.
On an impulse, without thinking twice about it, Stefan launched himself forward not colliding with Bonnie and Jeremy only because Caroline managed to pull them aside.
And Caroline couldn't help grinning through her tears seeing Stefan's arms lock around Damon and Elena and hug them, cradle them both to him in the same way he had done when they had gotten him out from the bottom of the quarry. Only this time no lingering grudges or regrets would follow, because they were all in a better place now.
Klaus looked between all of them, his eyes eventually returning to Caroline and remaining fixed on her, thinking that he had never seen her smiling as elatedly as she was now while exchanging happy smiles with Stefan before Stefan drew back and looked at still rather dazed Damon and Elena, his voice warm and shaking a little when he said with a radiant expression on his face:
"Let's get you home."