So I had this idea yesterday and one thing led to another and here we are. This is an AU of what if Damon did leave after season 3? Since I hate what the show started doing with him after season 4, I just felt like it wasn't Damon any more. What I love about him is that he's this delightfully complex character who is willing to anything and everything for the ones he loves. So when the whole thing with Enzo came up, I was like, there is no way he would leave him behind. Season 5 just annoyed me a lot so yeah. In my AU, both escape and separate after a while to do their own thing but meet up every now and then and hang and just get drunk and party. I wanna continue this but it's my first Vampire Diaries fic so I left it at a place where it felt right and I'll continue it if I get reviews. Fair warning, this turned out to be a Denzo fic.


Throughout his life, Damon had known only one constant. Pain. Whatever happiness had come his way was fleeting and to assume things may ever be different would make him little more than a fool.

So he accepted his fate, learned to live with the pain, the loneliness and decided to simply take each day as it came. To smile even when his heart was breaking, joke and throw a little sarcasm into every situation, to hide it all and never let anyone in. Because why grow attached to something if it will only ever fade away? Why let someone in, when the second they get in close enough, all they do is leave or die and leave nothing behind but a hole in his life where they belonged? One of the only ties he could never bring himself to break was his brother. Stefan was his only family, all he really had left. He would be damned before he hurt his brother irreversibly, be it physically or emotionally. Lexi had to go because all she did was push him away from his brother and get him on the bunny diet. He never learnt control because it was always one of two extremes for him, ripper or rabbit food, quite literally and all Lexi did was further his addiction seeing as he wasn't able to cope with the high of human blood when he did have it.

Coming back home to Mystic Falls, for the first time in years, decades really, he broke his rule. Instead of remaining aloof and distant as he planned, he became attached. He befriended people, helped willingly whenever he was needed. Oh he killed, was menacing and manipulative. Played the villain to perfection when he had to. But his flaw was that he cared too much. He always had. The links in the chains controlling his emotions slowly rusted and broke the longer he remained. If there was one thing he prided himself upon, it was control. The fact that he, unlike Stefan, controlled his bloodlust, never giving in for a second, refusing to allow anything to have power over him. The irony was in the fact that even as they called him heartless for his actions, called him a monster, it was the monster who hurt the most, who would smile through the tears and fight tooth and nail to keep the walls of steel surrounding his heart strong and protected at all costs. The monster, who was called upon to protect them.

He supposed he wasn't much more than a fool then. He allowed himself, for once, to care. Allowed himself to become a part of their family. He stripped down his walls, little by little. Let them carve their own little places in his heart, feeling stronger with the knowledge that, at times, he would have someone in his corner fighting for him for once, but feeling all the more vulnerable because when you let someone in, they are in a unique position where they can do irreparable damage.

Perhaps the best thing to happen to him in this town was Alaric. Ric had somehow become his best friend, his drinking buddy and his confidante. He trusted the man implicitly, in a manner he had only ever trusted one other over fifty years ago. But in doing so, he allowed himself to relax. To become complacent and let his guard down. He had been practically asking to have his fragile heart ripped to shreds once more. And then it was.

He almost felt sorry for the Mikaelsons. With parents like theirs, it was no wonder that they were so messed up. Esther was obsessive in her need to kill her children and would complete her task by any means necessary. Which, of course, included turning Alaric into a vampire who's sole purpose was to kill what remained of the Mikaelson family. Guess who won the award for 'Mother of the year?' Not her!

He had been slowly dying on the inside as he watched his best friend look at him with pure hatred, as if all they had been through meant absolutely nothing at all. Nothing remained of the man he knew in those eyes and his cracked and frayed heart shattered a little more at the loss of his best friend.

When Ric buried the white oak stake into a helpless Klaus' heart, something in him mourned as Rebekah did, for the unnecessary loss of someone who made things fun. Who indirectly gave him a purpose. It was the part of him that was still human even after all this time, that admitted that he could identify with Klaus even just a little bit because both were forced into becoming monsters, thrust into lives they had never asked for. It was that which led to him holding back Rebekah, pushing her as far away from Ric as he could because despite all that she and her family had done, no one deserved to have their brother murdered in front of them. He had experienced that pain, nearly a hundred and fifty years ago and wished it upon no one.

Even as Ric rushed after her, somehow, he knew the Original barbie would make it out alive. He, on the hand... well, he wasn't sure what he was more afraid of. Dying alone, slowly and painfully because his sire was dead, or at the hands of his best friend.

His conversation with Elena went exactly how he expected it to. Why on earth would she choose the monster, the villain of their little fairy tale? No, those like him didn't get happy endings. They didn't deserve happy endings. But he still had one other phone call to make, someone else whom he couldn't die without saying goodbye to. He dialled one of the few numbers that had been engraved onto his heart because no matter how they were different, there were some whom he could never let go of no matter what happened. Because there were some who never let go, never pull away even when there's no reason to stay.

A ridiculously british accent answered the phone and he smiled without meaning to. It had been so long since he had spoken to his other best friend. So long since he had seen his face and he missed him. He missed him so much because they had both been each other's salvation. Had represented hope where none existed and that was something neither of them could ever let go of.

"Enzo?" His voice cracked ever so slightly on the name, something which was picked up immediately by the vampire in question.

"One and only, love. What's the matter and who do I have to kill? If it's that damn doppelganger who turned you in the first place, you know I'll do so with pleasure." Damon could hear the smirk in his voice and dammit it hurt so much knowing he'd never get to see it in person again.

"As awesome as that would be, this is about something else. Look, there's a ninety-five percent chance I'm going to die tonight and I just, I couldn't not tell you. I couldn't do that to you. I had to- I don't know, say good bye, do something! I just, I couldn't go without saying goodbye." His voice cracked and he ran a hand through his hair, trying desperately to find some kind of balance, some way to steady himself because it wasn't supposed to be like this. After a moment's silence where he could practically hear the gears turning in Enzo's mind as he tried to process this information, he was completely unsurprised to hear the profanities bursting from his friend's lips.

"God-fucking-dammit Damon! What the- you can't drop this on me like that! Where are you? I'm coming to you. I have to come to you. This isn't- damn it! Where are you Damon? Just, where are you?" Through the rage, shock and utter disbelief, Enzo was reduced to only just being able to ask him where he was so he could come to him, desperately pleading, with everything in him. Damon knew that tears were pouring down the other vampire's face, they were slowly dripping down his own. They should have had more time. Why didn't they have more time?

"No where you can reach in time. I just- I needed to say goodbye. The chances of me surviving are little to none. I just needed- if I make it out alive I'll come find you. You know where."

"I'm giving you a week Salvatore. You damn well better be there." Damon swallowed harshly, trying to find his voice.

"I'll be there. Bring on the darkness?"

"And keep the blood flowing." Enzo said in reply, voice rough as he spoke before he shut the phone. Damon sensed the footsteps before he heard them and watched Ric speed into the room. Death via best friend it was.


Going back to Mystic Falls with the body of his best friend in the back seat, Damon was honestly quite certain there was nothing left in his heart to break. The tears that refused to stop dripping from his eyes contrasted greatly with the hardened expression that adorned his face. Everything inside him was a raging storm of grief and rage and an unending torrent of self hate. Maybe if he hadn't killed Ric so many time they wouldn't be in this position. Maybe if he had figured out sooner that Ric hadn't been having those herbs Bonnie gave him... burning questions of why he was so cursed that everyone around him paid the price scorched trails through his ravaged mind as he raged at the universe and otherworldly powers that demanded so much from him.

When he understood what Meredith Fell had done, what her actions had led to, even as he rejoiced, something inside him broke and shattered. Elena lived but Ric still died. His friend died in his arms and it was most likely while hating him. His thoughts whirled around to form an incoherent mess until all he wanted to do was destroy everything around him. To find an outlet for the emotions that raged inside that wasn't blood and sex. At least, not blood that he had any intention of drinking.


Pacing in his room, a glass of bourbon clenched tightly in his hand, he allowed the rage to fill him, to slowly build up until all he knew was red and his hands moved of their own accord, destroying everything in his room with a reckless abandon. In his rage he didn't care if he got hurt, if splinters pushed themselves through his fragile skin. For once, he embraced the physical pain, far preferring it to the emotional one.

Through the haze of red that clouded his mind he barely heard Stefan enter the room, only realising it when his brother pushed him up against the wall trying to snap him out of it. The words he was saying barely penetrated the cloud of pure anger that engulfed him but he understood their purpose which was to calm him. At that the rage built up again and within the blink of an eye it was Stefan who was being slammed against a wall.

"Don't you understand? He's gone." He snarled at his brother, trying to make him understand the magnitude of what he had lost that night. "He's gone and he's never coming back and once again, this town and its people have taken away anything I cared for. Don't you get it? Elena, as always, chose you and I lost one of the only friends I have in this God forsaken town. I have nothing left here. I never did." The realisation washed over him and he stepped back from where he had been holding his brother in place. "I have nothing left here." He repeated, his voice soft with understanding. He straightened suddenly, a new clarity in his eyes has he looked over at his confused younger brother upon whom comprehension was slowly dawning of what Damon was saying.

"Damon? You know that's not true. I know we may not have always seen eye to eye, but you're still my brother-" he was cut off by Damon.

"Save it Stef. This way you get what you want, that was the deal remember? The one who Elena doesn't choose, leaves. Isn't that what you wanted ever since I came back? Besides, you can have Elena. She's only ever going to choose you anyway. I'll leave after Ric's funeral. He deserves that much." He didn't let Stefan get a word in, speaking in rapid sentences even Caroline would be impressed with since it beat 'teenage fangirl' and rushed off into the night.


He stepped outside the boarding house, duffle bag in hand, two days later, his resolve stronger than ever. There wasn't any reason to stay and besides, he had made a promise to be somewhere within a week. He threw the bag in the trunk, trying to ignore Elena as she came tearing up the driveway, having recently adjusted to vampire speed.

"How can you just leave? After everything?" She burst out.

"Very easily. All I have to do is get in my car and drive." Damon smirked. "It really isn't all that hard to be honest. Anyway, I'm going to be late, so see you all in fifty years?"

Elena spluttered, shocked that he could be so callous and act so indifferent about everything. "No! You can't leave! Not now after I remember!" It was annoying to see her act as if those memories meant that much to her considering she couldn't even admit to remembering the time he told her he loved her.

Damon sighed, "look, it doesn't matter what you remember or what you don't. You chose Stefan, yes it sucks, I'm moving on. I'm no one's first choice, at least no one who's alive and in this town. Don't tell me you need help adjusting because you have Stefan, Caroline and Tyler to help you along with Bonnie. Its more than any of us got. You don't need me."

"How can you say that? It changes everything! And Tyler's dead! He was definitely part of Klaus' sire line."

"It's Klaus. Chances are, he's not dead. The body didn't burn up. The Original Hybrid will turn up sooner or later. Hopefully sooner for his sister's sake." He mumbled the last part to himself but Elena caught it with her newly enhanced hearing.

"Rebekah? Since when do you care about her? She's tried to kill me!" Her voice was full of disgust and something akin to hate that he was just too tired to put a name to.

"Since she saw her brother die! The loss of family isn't something to be happy about no matter what they've done. And I can't stay in Mystic Falls anymore, not even for you." He got into his car, ignoring the young vampire's protests as he did so, switched on the radio and just drove, feeling truly free for the first time in a long while. He had five days to reach a particular bar in New York and he was not going to be late.


Well, that's all for now. If you read this far, do let me know what you thought and if you want me to continue because I'd really like to continue but I'll only do so if I know people will read it.