Set in 2x22
Stefan... Thank you very much.
Adjusting to our reality, part 29: End it now
There had been a funeral.
Jenna. John. Even Jules.
Funny that they all were "J". Not so funny that they were dead.
Damon had watched Alaric, neutral face on, as he always did when he didn't want anyone to catch a glimpse of his true feelings. He had watched Elena, tired of all that. He hadn't cared enough to watch Tyler. After all, the werewolf had bitten him. Because Damon had been kind enough to free him too, and not only Caroline.
Soon there would be another funeral.
His own.
Well, he was most likely to be buried silently near the family vault. Stefan would tell everyone he was gone, since nothing was waiting for him in Mystic Falls. He'd say that, and everybody would believe he had only given up on Elena, and had left not to suffer from what he couldn't have. Ric would forget him with time, or maybe he'd wonder once in a while how came Damon never came to visit. Stefan might tell them the truth, ten years later. Or twenty. Or the day of each of their friends' death, just before the fateful moment.
He had told Stefan so. His brother had promised they'd find a cure. As if there was one.
For now, the pain wasn't much. It hurt, sure, but he was still conscious. He hadn't begun to hallucinate. Yet. He knew he would, at some point.
Damon, a glass of bourbon in hand, looked through the window.
The sky had this color, this normal, plain color. Same as always, when the weather was the same as this day's. Same as always, since his life had always been dramatic. Maybe grey. Maybe blue. Maybe white. Frankly, he didn't care. He looked. Didn't mean he saw.
There was nothing to be seen. No future. No prospects. No plans.
Damon was going to die, once more.
And this time, he'd die for good.
No love for him. He had had none, he had none, he would have none.
Maybe Damon Salvatore wasn't supposed to be loved.
He'd die alone.
Might as well end it now.
The vampire drank the last of his bourbon.
He put down his glass.
His fingers went to his daylight ring. It was cold. It had always been cold, heavy, not discreet at all.
Damon closed his eyes, and touched the lapis lazuli stone, with the silver "D" in the middle. "D". Damon. Dumb. Desperate. Disappointing. Detestable. Disrespectful. Desillusioned. Disdainful. Dreaded. Damaged.
Dead.
Because all that mattered was that he'd be dead by tomorrow.
How pointless had his life been?
Damon opened his eyes. He went to the window, rested his forehead against the glass, and looked at the reflexion of his eyes. All he saw in it was tiredness. He took a step back.
The ring fell to the ground.
He waited for the sun to burn him to the bone.
It hurt. No matter. The vampire was used to being in pain, now. A little more, a bit less, it was all the same. Pain was pain. Pain was his life up to this point. And since he was dying, pain was his life and that was all. A summary of his life, written on a sheet of doom, with an ink of fate, had surely been drenched in pain, when the great book of the world had yet to be put together.
His skin was burning. Understatement of the year. He had this feeling, as if slow, hot, hungry worms were eating his flesh, starting from one point and then circling around his face, his hands, every part of his body that wasn't covered by clothes, leaving behind them a gaping hole.
He was near to catching fire.
The blood in his veins, so cold usually, heated up. A wave of warmth flowed from the veins to the heart to the arteries, and soon became a wave of heat, and then a wave of fire. Entering his heart, the floof of burning blood collapsed against the heart valves.
Let's destroy this heart that made you so pitiful, Damon. You'll only feel better. Dead, but better.
A door slammed.
Thrown out of the daylight, Damon began to heal. Someone was pining him to the floor. He rose his eyes, and saw Stefan, angry as hell. His brother had saved his life, once again. And he was forcing him to live, once again. Or at least he was trying to. Which was useless. There was no cure to the werewolves' poison. Both of them knew it.
Stefan said something about not letting him die, about a promise, about what he owed him. Damon looked away.
Even if he could be saved, he had nothing to live for.
"Katherine never loved me. Elena will never love me. Alaric won't ever know I love him. What's the point to fight anymore?"
Stefan looked at him, bewildered. His face went from frowning to mouth wide open, to blank, to confused. Unless all of that was part of the confused face.
The younger Salvatore had heard something unbelievable. He had heard something about his brother being in love with his best friend. He had heard something about Damon loving a man. He had heard... more than being in love with a man, he had heard Damon being honest about it.
His grip loosened, but he reacted fast enough to punch his brother when he tried to go into the light once again.
Damon fell again, and his brother decided to lock him up in the basement, until he found a way to heal him. There had to be a way. Every magic had a loophole. Every rule had a weak point.
As long as Damon was alive, it had to be possible to save him.
Before leaving, he still needed to ask.
"Do you truly love Alaric?"
The words were so strange when he said them, but he didn't care. If his brother loved the teacher, then be it. He couldn't say he was disappointed to hear that Elena was all for him either. If Damon was in love with Alaric Saltzman, all of them would be happier. Unless Ric didn't want of him, of course. But that wasn't his juridiction.
Damon deserved to be loved. Stefan was aware his brother had to behave more than he did, but he wasn't such a bad guy. If only he could be loved back, for once in his life, maybe Damon would become a good guy. You were not a good guy when you were never allowed to be happy.
The older Salvatore, sitting against a wall of the cell, snorted.
He wasn't going to discuss his sexual orientation with Stefan, if that was what his brother wanted.
Frankly, he believed only Alaric could make him love a man.
Ric was so much more than just anyone. For decades he had believed he would only love Katherine. Elena wasn't to be taken into account. Sure, she was different from Katherine, but it was their likeness that had caught his attention in the first place. If she hadn't been the evil-and-selfish-hag's doppelganger, he might not have ever looked at her.
Alaric was worlds apart. Damon loved him because he loved him. Nothing more.
"Not your business."
Stefan looked at the ceiling. Of course it wasn't. But Damon was dying. It wasn't as if he was asking him to be mean.
"Not mine, but Alaric's, for sure."
Suddenly the older Salvatore was at the door, his hands on the bars of the door.
"You won't dare to!"
"To what, Damon?"
Stefan took a step back, and reached for his phone. He dialed the hunter / his brother's crush / his history teacher / Elena's sort-of-stepfather's number. If ever Alaric went out with Damon, he wouldn't know how to call him anymore, but eitherway.
"Fuck, Stefan! I'm dying! Whatever the outcome, it won't do any good!"
Damon's voice was almost shattering. There was fear, incredibly strong fear, in his voice. Stefan almost hung up when he heard it. His brother wasn't usually so frightened to get what he wanted most in the world. Maybe it was because this time, he cared so much he couldn't bear to risk it.
Stefan surprised himself thinking it might be a good thing if Damon and Alaric actually dated.
The teacher picked up his phone.
Apparently, he had had a lot of drinks during the day. Who could blame him?
This time too, Stefan almost changed his mind. Was he really willing to give them a chance when Ric already had a broken heart to heal, when Damon was about to die? If his brother could tell the teacher how much he loved him, which wasn't sure at all, what would happen? Would Alaric welcome this heart? Maybe he wouldn't. Hopefully – neither him nor Damon had been likely to fall in love with each other. If Damon had nonetheless, maybe there was hope. And then what? Happily ever after? Damon was still dying. The power of love was great and all, but Stefan wasn't really positive it would be powerful enough to save an infected vampire. This wasn't a lovey dovey sappy romance novel. Love was powerful, indeed, but not for this kind of situations.
Anyway, he needed someone to keep an eye on his brother while he'd search for a cure. Alaric Saltzman, history teacher, Damon's best friend, vampire hunter on occasion, was a perfect fit.
Confessing or not was up to Damon.
Stefan warned Ric of his brother's state, and surprisingly the drunkness in the man's voice disappeared. Actually, it was a bit creepy. As if every feeling had been shut down to leave room for seriousness. It was surely the phone that made him hear that. Because if it wasn't, it was creepy.
Stefan hung up.
He looked at his brother, coughing blood in his cell, the infection on his arm growing bigger with time. He had to hurry and find a way to save Damon.
"You stay here. Ric's on his way."
"Where would you want me to go, seriously? You locked the cell, if you forgot."
"Sorry, my bad. I should have said: you stay alive. If I come back and find you dead, I'll resent you for the rest of eternity. Same thing if you ask Alaric to kill you."
Damon grinned, but it was a grin of despair. He didn't know such a thing existed before. You learned something new everyday, even on the day of your death.
"He'll have to, at some point. Unless you want him to die instead, while I'll go rabid and slaughter every soul that crosses my path?"
Stefan rolled his eyes. It wasn't funny, and Damon knew it.
The older Salvatore watched him as he left.
Maybe he should try and rip his own heart out?
Sadly, he wasn't sure he could pull such a stunt. At some point, his hand would let go, as life would be leaving him. Then he would begin to heal. Damned accelerated healing.
And Stefan, who had called Ric.
As if he didn't have enough to deal with.
Death wasn't enough of a punishment, maybe.
The vampire sighed.
He knew his brother only wanted to help him. But Stefan was convinced he could find a cure, when there was none. And even if there was one, they had less than a day. They wouldn't make it.
Confessing to Alaric would only make things worse.
A dying man's confession was only selfishness.
It'd be better if he kept his mouth shut.
It'd be better if his soon-to-come hallucinations let him be quiet about his feelings.
He hoped so.
He had already confessed to the wrong person once, he wasn't going to do a hallucinated confession of love on top of that.
Damon heard footsteps coming from the ground floor. Certainly Alaric's.
As he listened to their sound, a steel grip seized his heart. It was cold, it was strong, it was merciless. He knew what it was. It was love.
Maybe he'd die from a heart attack? It would have been nice if he could. But vampires didn't die from heart attacks, did they? If he had, he could have bragged that love had killed him. Again.
