A/N: Ah, my poor Delena heart is full of feels after watching the new episode which I'm not going to spoil but would love to talk to anyone and everyone about! I know I promised a lot of you that this chapter would have all the answers but I got confused, that's next chapter (sorry!) but hopefully you will all enjoy this one all the same.
It's Always Darkest Before The Dawn
I will always choose you – Damon Salvatore
I was going to tell her earlier, after the sex that was more than sex but then everyone came home and I didn't get a chance and now I never will, now she'll never know.
I lean my forehead against the invisible blockade and try to gasp air into my lungs. This cannot be happening. I have to get out of this fucking house. How did she do this?
"Bonnie! Bonnie Bennett I know you are out there I can hear you. You come back here right this fucking second and let me out of this goddamn house" I scream out into the black night but Bonnie doesn't appear.
"How can you do this?" I yell at her. "You're sending your best friend off to die. She's going to die, do you understand me?" I continue my tirade. If I can just get out of this house right now then I can make it on time I know I can. She just needs to let me out of the fucking house.
"Please Bonnie I am begging you. I am on my knees begging you to just let me save her. Please I can do this I know I can just let me save her" I plead and beg and I am on my knees. I don't know if I can ever get back up because she's not letting me out of the fucking house.
After what feels like long minutes or hours but is probably only seconds Bonnie finally comes out of the darkness. "I'm really sorry Damon" she cries at me "I have to go" and then she turns and runs back into the night. I roar unintelligible words after her but she doesn't come back and after a few minutes I manage to pull myself upright again.
I need to.
I need to drink. I need to think. I need to understand. I need to drown. I need to die. I need to feed and feed and feed until I can't fucking see anymore.
I need to rip someone's head off. I need to murder my brother. How could he do this to me? How could he take her from me?
I need to snap ten thousand necks. I need to burn this town to the ground. I need to burn this house to the ground. I need to destroy the world. I need to rip it apart.
I need to.
I need to flip the fucking switch.
I try. I really do try. I try to flip the switch harder than I've ever tried to do anything in my whole damn life but I can't. I can't flip it because it's fucking broken. She broke it and she's gone and she can't fix me.
So all I know is rage.
I snap my head up when Jeremy begins to walk towards me with his hands held out in front of him.
"Damon"
I flash my fangs at him, veins running underneath my eyes as I step towards him menacingly. "You need to get the fuck away from me before I do something we both regret" he looks at me with a terrified expression and hurries away as quickly as he can from my line of sight. Must be something I said.
I need someone to let me the fuck out of this house. But I'm stuck here. I wonder how long she plans on keeping me trapped in here. I walk over to the alcohol tray and drink straight from a bottle of bourbon and then I turn and hurl the entire thing into the fireplace.
It's not enough.
I pace and slam my first through the wall over and over and then I rip my piano to shreds and the wood slices in my palms and I relish in the letting of someone's blood. I don't know how long I pace and cause destruction to my house because I broke the fucking clock earlier.
I feel like a caged beast. Why won't she let me out of the fucking house? I spin around wildly to face my brother when he comes rushing into the house.
"You can't be in here" I tell him dumbly.
"You have to go outside. You can't be in here. You've not been invited in. Stefan you can't be in here" I move towards him and he looks at me sadly.
"I'm sorry Damon she-" I snap his neck to cut his words off and he didn't even have time to blink. God I do love that sound though. Next in line please. I move towards the door but I still can't get out.
"Bonnie you come here and let me out right now and I promise not to kill you" I shout out into the night. I know she's still out there somewhere; I can hear her.
Only I don't have time to think about that, I don't have time for that to matter because Katherine is walking up the stairs. And she's carrying Elena. My Elena. Elena is in her arms.
Elena is dead. Elena is dead.
I take unsteady steps backwards and hold my arms out against Katherine as if she can somehow make it go away, make it not true. And then I sink to my knees on the ground because it is. It is true. Elena is dead.
Katherine lays Elena down in front of me and I growl at her before scooping my beautiful girl into my arms and laying her down on the couch. I sit back down on my knees beside her and take her hand.
This cannot be happening. This is a very, very bad dream. The very worst kind of dreaming. The ones where you just know that you're dreaming but you can't wake up. That's what this is. That's what this has to be. There's really no other option.
"Damon I'm sorry" Katherine says softly, placing her hand on my shoulder. I drop Elena's hand and stand up.
"Stop. Touching me" I say as I snap her neck in a flash.
I don't know where Caroline and Jeremy are but if they know what's good for them then they'll stay the fuck out of my way. I walk back to the front door where Bonnie is standing outside on the steps.
"It's done Damon, you can come out now" she tells me softly.
I take two quick strides towards her and flash her a predatory grin as fear washes over her face and she takes a couple of shaky steps backwards. The demon in me demands to have her blood. The monster in me demands that I snap her neck or rip her heart out. I reckon I could probably do it before she managed to witchy-migraine me.
But the sane part of me; the humane part of me; the man in me knows that she is my friend. That she is, that she was Elena's best friend and that I can't kill her so instead I run away as quickly as I can. I run through the forest and smash my hands into trees at the same time. I think I may have knocked a couple of them over actually.
I need to get the fuck out of this town. I need to get far, far, far away from here. When I hit main street Mystic Falls I find a very unfortunate drunk man wandering down the road. Unfortunate for him that is.
I dart towards him and before he can even register I sink my fangs deep into his neck and I relish in the scream he lets loose. It gets cut short when I tear his throat out. I revel in the thrill of the kill. I delight in the embracing of the darkness and for a brief second I look around for my next potential meal.
And then I just feel sick.
I run towards the quarry and drop the dead guy to the bottom of it and then I come to lie down on the road that my dreams were made on. My dream is dead and gone. Elena is gone but I don't want her to be angry with me; I don't want to let her down.
And killing hapless strangers walking down the wrong street at the wrong time is letting her down. I'm not that person anymore, haven't been that person in a very long time and I don't want to let her down.
So instead I'm going to lie on this road and stare at these stars and I'm going to remember the girl of my dreams. I take my ring off and place it on my chest so that when the sun rises I can just burn and die on the dream road, and I'll do it without failing her again.
I want to go back to the start. If we could just go back to the start then I would tell her that I love her. It truly hurts my shattered heart that she never got to know that. That maybe she died believing that I didn't. Tears begin to escape my eyes at that thought and I've never wished for anything more in my life than I have just to be able to flip the fucking switch.
I fill my mind with pictures of her.
Elena on a dark starry night just like this. "Please don't make me forget." Elena crying in a cemetery because she missed me. Elena in a black lace dress. "I feel like I belong with him." Elena questioning me. Elena brushing her lips gently against mine. "Are we together?" Elena kissing me on this very road. Elena crying as I told her my history. Elena smiling and laughing and dancing with her friends on her birthday. Elena in holy fucking wow lingerie giving herself to me for the first time.
After that I can't think anymore.
I am weightless and I will blow away with the sun. I fill my head instead with the nothing that surrounds me and I listen to the sounds that I heard for all those nights in all those dreams.
It is so much easier to focus on the nothingness. Lose myself in the stillness of the night than it is to think. Thinking hurts too much. My heart hurts too much. Is it possible, to die from a broken heart? I guess for a human it is but I don't know if it is for a vampire. Sure fucking feels like it though.
An indeterminate amount of time passes by. Time passes and then there is a weight on my chest. There is a weight on my chest and a scent that smells just like Elena. I open my eyes and find her face smiling down at me.
"Are you real?"
I shake my head and bark a laugh at myself. "What am I saying? Of course you're not real"
I must be hallucinating and there we have an answer to the question I asked way back when. I am living undead proof that vampire can in fact, lose the plot.
I stand up in a flash and hallucination Elena falls to the ground with a bump.
"You are not real" I scream at her.
"You're not real. You're not real" I shout at her.
"You're not real, you can't save me. You're not real" I whisper at her and then I fall to my knees on the ground once again.
I fall because I think she actually is real. I fall because Elena is alive.
Elena is alive and I?
Well, I'm burning on my knees on the ground because I took my ring off and now I'm going to die and it'll be like some fucking twisted version of Romeo and Juliet and our fucking destines that were written in the stars are going to burn out miserably because I can't fucking remember where I put it.
"Damon! Damon oh my god Damon" Elena screams and runs over to me; throwing herself around me and somehow she miraculously stops the burning. How'd she do that? Is she magic?
"Damon? Damon are you okay?" Elena asks reaching up and clasping my face in her hands.
I glance down at my hand which has my ring firmly back in place. How did she? Where did she?
"I landed on it when you dropped me on the ground you big jerk" Elena answers my unasked questions with a grin and rocks back on to her knees on the ground.
"Elena?" I whisper at her and reach out to stroke her cheek with my fingers.
"I'm here Damon. I'm here and I promise I'm real. You're not dreaming" she says softly and takes my hand and places it on her chest above her heart. "Listen. Feel. I'm real Damon I promise"
I listen and I feel. I hear her steady human heartbeat and once again let it perform its healing powers on me. See? I knew she was magic.
"I killed someone" I whisper at her.
O-kay, that is totally not the first thing I wanted to say to her. On my list of 'Top 100 Things To Say To Elena When She Magically Returns From The Dead' "I killed someone" does not even rank in the top 50. But that's what came out so I guess I'm just gonna have to roll with it.
"Okay" Elena replies simply. She doesn't look entirely surprised by what I've said although she does look rather sad about it.
"I don't like it Damon but I knew it was a possibility and I'm sorry if it makes me a bad person but it's a risk I was willing to take to save your life" she reaches out and takes my hand in hers and gives me a sad little smile.
Yeah, well we'll deal with that in a minute; there are much more important matters to attend to first.
My mouth descends on hers and I demand entrance and moan like a girl when her tongue swirls around mine and we reconnect in a perfect harmony of twisting and twirling tongues as I kiss her long and deep until eventually she pulls away gasping for breath.
Elena jumps to her feet and holds her hand out for me but I am not moving.
"Damon?" She looks down at me quizzically, "aren't you coming?" she asks in a confused tone.
"Nope" I reply popping the 'p' and shaking my head to emphasise my point.
"O-kay, why not?" she asks looking down at me again and I jump to my feet and take a couple of steps towards her. There must be a predatory gleam in my eye because Elena backs up a little as I get closer and I grin at her.
"Because this is where I want us to make up from our second fight"
