The Elephant In The Room
A Damon-centric coda to episode 2x18 "The Last Dance".
Damon had expected he'd fall into an exhausted sleep the minute his head hit the pillow. Really, with everything that had been going on tonight at the Decade Dance and after… Bonnie dying, Elena's devastation about it, her desolation and fury of which he'd willingly borne the brunt of, the clarifying words he'd said to Stefan that had been long-overdue ('I'll make all the life and death decisions while you're busy worrying about collateral damage. I'll even let her hate me for it. But at the end of the day I'll be the one to keep her alive!') and last but not least Elena's surprising understanding of what he'd had to do, her face when he'd made clear where his allegiance – and his love - lay ('I will always choose you!'), her quiet acceptance of it… all that should have been more than enough to do him in for the night.
Damon should have been exhausted to the bone. If not from the events of tonight then at least the three or four shots of Bourbon he'd quickly downed after Elena had left his room should have finished him off. He should have been dead to the world (and all its problems) right now.
But he wasn't.
He was tossing and turning in his big and empty bed, wide awake and unable to find the much-needed rest.
Because he wasn't done yet. There was one thing, one major life-altering fact, that Damon hadn't allowed himself to think about all night. He'd done everything in his power to stop that one game-changer from entering his mind. He'd known he'd have to keep that thought far away or else he wouldn't have been able to go through with everything.
But now the silence of his empty bedroom had nothing to offer to keep that thought away for longer.
"Oh damn it!" Damon sat with his back against the headboard, eyes focusing on nothing in particular, just staring into the darkness.
He hadn't seen this coming, none of them had. This was a cruel twist in plot that none of them had been able to foresee. And tonight none of them had seemed to be willing to analyze it just yet. Nobody had lost a word about it. It was like a giant elephant had suddenly stepped into the room, into their midst, that nobody was willing to acknowledge yet.
Damon wasn't willing to do so either, in fact he'd rather have his eyes poked out again, but he couldn't stop his mind from going there eventually.
"Damn it," he swore again and closed his eyes. It didn't help, the thought was still there. "Damn it, Rick! How did this happen? You can't be possessed by Klaus! I need you with me in this fight, not on the opposite side! I need you to… I just need you, damn it!"
Damon scooped down until he lay flat on his back. He stared at the ceiling, shook his head as if to clear it, he even closed his eyes again. But the image remained the same.
All Damon could see in his mind was the face of the one person that had called himself his friend, only now a cruel smile twisted his lips in a way that Alaric's had never done before.
It was Klaus' smile.
"I need you back by my side Rick," Damon whispered into the darkness of his room. "I can't do this without you. And I swear, I'm gonna get you back! You are not going to die. Not like this, and not now. I'm gonna get you back!"
With the promise still hanging on his lips Damon finally drifted off into troubled sleep.
The End
Sorry that this is so short, much shorter than my usual one-shots, but that's all I came up with for now. I just wanted to adress the issue, I wanted someone, preferably Damon, to at least acknowledge the problem that Rick being possessed by Klaus is.
Comments, anyone?