I never thought I'd finish this chapter. It took forever. The really emotional ones always do. If you guys thought the last one was sad, you will probably be crying at this one. I hope you all don't hate me, but I felt I had to do it. Thank you to all the wonderful people who have reviewed, especially those who do it for every chapter. It is the only thing that gets me out of a writer's funk. I hope you enjoy.
Future Elena POV
Upon entering the boardinghouse, I race up the stairs to Damon's room. When I pass through his open door, I see him lying down with a book in one hand and a teddy bear with a blue bow in the other. He looks too cute clutching the bear tightly that I almost regret interrupting this moment. Once Damon spots me, he places the bear at his side, no longer holding it, but not too far away either. If I didn't know better, I'd think he was embarrassed. "Did you win a matching bear for yourself," I ask flashing my most playful smile?
Damon no longer appears embarrassed, only blissful and carefree. "Actually my date won me this bear," Damon replies putting special emphasis on the word date as if this is the first time he's ever said it.
His innocent joy puts a smile on my face. How could I not love seeing him so happy and at peace? He deserves it. They both do. I steer the conversation to a new topic, once I feel the familiar stirrings of jealousy, when I think of all the moments that I will never have with him, all the moments I could have had. I present my best fake smile and give him the low down on my night's activities. "Well I'm pleased to say that both of our nights were a rousing success. With any luck, this nightmare with Klaus will be over soon, and my work will be done," I predict feigning happiness.
Damon senses my less than upbeat mood and he questions me worryingly. "What happens then," Damon asks concerned?
I sidestep the issue by ignoring his true question. "You and Elena will live happily ever after," I reply, displaying a near genuine smile.
He rolls his eyes at my evasion and asks the more pointed question. "That's not what I meant, though I do appreciate your Disney like outlook. I meant what will happen to you," Damon questions slightly worried?
I'm treading on very dangerous ground as we speak. Damon will never accept what is going to happen to me. He might be able to see through a lie, but I hope a half truth will sound believable enough. "I'll leave. Once my job is done, there is no place for me here," I state sadly.
Damon's expression falls noticeably. He's disappointed and his voice betrays as much. "So you'll go back to your future, at least your altered future," Damon assumes miserably?
"Something like that," I evade masterfully with a false smile to convince Damon that nothing's wrong.
Damon appears in the midst of a deep inner struggle. He almost looks guilty, when he asks his next question. "I know it's a selfish request, but would you stay if I asked you to?"
He's really trying to just kill me. Of course I would stay if I had a choice, but that decision isn't mine. My heart breaks even further as I have to explain. My brave face falters as I speak and a few times, I have to look away just to shield myself from Damon's despairing eyes.
"Damon, please don't make this harder than it has to be," I beg. "You're supposed to be with Elena from your own time. It was selfish of me to kiss you the way that I have been, because this isn't my time. Every second that we spend together, I feel like a thief stealing from Elena the life that she should have. I can't do that anymore," I explain with a guilty conscience.
Once again I'm tormented by Damon's look of disappointment. I cannot understand why it matters so much if I stay. He still has current Elena. He doesn't need us both. After his initial distress passes, Damon tries to find a silver lining in my logic. "But we'll still see each other again, won't we? You have to return to some point in your timeline, which means that at some point you will show up again, right," Damon questions searching for some trace of hope that I can't give him?
I make one last plea for him to drop this, all the while knowing that my prayers will go unanswered. "Damon, you've had a great night, let's not ruin it with things that don't matter." My last comment only seems to have upset Damon further. He looks incredulous and angry.
"Don't do that. Don't say that what happens to you doesn't matter, because it does. It matters to me, so tell me the truth before I go out of my mind," Damon demands forcefully. He's now risen from his spot on the bed and he starts pacing back and forth. This really is driving him crazy. To my absolute dread, I realize I have to tell him the truth. I can't hide it from him anymore than I could hide it from Stefan.
I take a seat towards the front of his bed sensing that this is a conversation I should be seated for. "When the witches sent me back, they warned me that there were consequences to time travel," I inform Damon ominously. He stops in front of me, and I grab for his hand, hoping for the strength to continue. "Every significant moment of our lives informs all that we will become. By altering the events of the next year, I am changing who Elena will grow up to be. Surely you've noticed how different we are? I can't go back to my future, because I won't belong there any longer. It's not my life anymore it's hers."
My hope is that I won't have to explain any further. Dwelling on my future is a bleak prospect that I avoid at every opportunity, but Damon still doesn't understand. He proposes a crazy solution that I wish with all my heart I could say yes to. "Then stay," Damon begs. "Don't go. I know it will be confusing and bizarre, but I'm a vampire and you're a time traveler, at some point we need to grade on a curve when it comes to our perceptions of normal. Stay here with me. Even if we can't kiss anymore or flirt, stay here just to talk with me or joke with me," Damon pleads his case with fervor.
Tears fill my eyes and our gazes lock while I fight to tell him what I feel in my heart. "You must know that I would stay with you forever if I could. I wish, God you have no idea how much I wish, that things could be different, but I can't stay," I admit, my heart breaking at Damon's anguish.
"Why not," Damon asks, looking more like a little boy than a nearly 170 year old vampire?
"Because I don't belong in this time either," I declare to my own great disappointment. Now Damon just looks determined. He thinks that this is a problem he can fix, be the hero and save the day, but some problems can't be fixed.
Damon sits down in front of me and takes both of my hands and wraps them in his own. For a moment, I wonder if the man before is the one that Damon spoke of from 1864, before he was broken, when he thought he was loved. It kills me to think that my leaving might break him further.
"Neither do I," Damon's voice breaks through the silence. "I never belonged anywhere, but I think I belong with you. So wherever you're going, that's where I belong too," Damon clarifies.
"Where I'm going Damon, you can't follow me," I tell him hoping he finally puts the pieces together.
"Where is that," Damon asks petrified? It is only now that I realize he knows. Maybe deep down, he always did. He sensed that he couldn't keep me, but he just didn't know why. This is Damon's greatest nightmare realized. His face stares back at me expectantly. Damon knows what I'm about to say, but he needs to hear the words to make it real.
"I honestly don't know," I confess thoughtfully. "The witches said that at some point, I would change too much, and my very existence would become a paradox. They said I would cease to exist once the events that made me who I am were undone. I don't know if there's a heaven for time travelers, or if I'll simply be erased, but regardless of where I go, you can't follow," I finish gloomily.
It's amazing how even a supernatural creature can act so human at times, even going so far as to progress through the five stages of grief. Knowing Damon, he will be stuck in denial and anger for a while. All I hear in Damon's voice is disbelief and despair. "No, I don't accept that. You're eighteen years old. You're entitled to a life," Damon yells, either to me or to the universe.
I struggle to find the words that will make him understand. Whatever has happened, I don't regret a moment of it. "Don't you see Damon," I ask pleadingly for him to open his eyes? "I had a life, but my mistakes cost me everything that mattered in it. If I had been willing to make some hard choices, things would have turned out differently. I could never accept the idea of a necessary evil until it was too late. If I had listened to you and let Bonnie sacrifice herself to kill Klaus, none of the rest of it would have happened. The life that I had I ruined," I confess a truth that I never admitted to anyone before, not even myself.
Damon goes into full protective mode once the words come out. "No, Stefan ruined it. Klaus ruined it. You were a victim," Damon tries to convince me.
All these words, all these feelings, and Damon still doesn't see the point. "Even if that were true, it doesn't change the fact that I am at the end of my existence," I remind Damon sadly. "I know the deal I made, and I would do it again without blinking. You need to accept that our time together is limited. In a few weeks, I won't be here anymore," I state strongly, so Damon knows how serious this truly is.
Acceptance is a step clearly a ways off, because Damon still appears trapped in denial, and his every word feels as if my heart is being squeezed within my chest. "I can't accept it Elena. It's not fair. You made some mistakes. I've made thousands. Why is your life any less worthy than mine? How can you fade away, while I'm still here? You deserve a second chance," Damon reasons desperately. I know that if there was anyone around to offer a deal, Damon would have moved right on to bargaining.
"This is my second chance Damon, can't you see that," I ask Damon hopelessly? "Those two months after I lost you. Do you know what I prayed for every night? It wasn't more time. I prayed for one more day with you and with all the other people that I love. Do you realize what a gift this has been for me? I was reunited with the people who I thought I had lost forever, and I was given a chance to apologize for all the ways that I failed them or wronged them, and I got to look them in the eyes and tell them how much I love them. No one could ever ask for a greater gift, and I would trade however many empty decades I'm owed in this mortal existence just for one more day here with you," I promise.
Throughout our entire argument, I feel that Damon is forgetting one key point that might cheer him up. "Besides you're not really losing me, tonight proved that. My current self will still be here. You have a chance to have something real with someone who loves you, isn't that enough?"
I have been the one doing all the explaining, but now it's time for me to understand. Damon's reasoning for fighting me isn't just about what's fair or what's right. He's afraid of what he'll lose if I go. "That's just it. She doesn't love me. You love me. She likes me, she wants me, but she doesn't love me," Damon elaborates.
"Yet, she doesn't love you yet," I remind Damon vehemently. "I am living proof that there is hope," I tell him encouragingly.
Bitterness fills his voice in a way that I haven't heard since our fight on the porch the night Caroline was turned. "Hope hasn't always panned out for me in the past, so forgive me if I don't' trust it. How can you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt know, that she will pick me in the end," Damon questions fearfully?
This part is easy to answer. The words flow from my lips freely and I can't feel sad about my circumstances anymore, because I got exactly what I wished for.
"From the moment I came here, my biggest goal, after saving everyone's lives, was to stop her from making my mistakes," I begin. "In that task I succeeded beyond my wildest hopes. Your Elena is so far ahead of where I was in this time. She accepts that she has feelings for you. I didn't accept that until days before your death. You should trust her feelings more than you trust mine, because she is better than me. It's only fitting that she deserves a better life." Damon looks like he is about to rebut my claim, but I put two fingers to his lips silencing him and then presenting him with a choice.
"So the way that I see it we have two options, option A) we keep fighting about this right up until the moment I'm gone, thereby ruining our last days together, or option B) we accept that time is too precious to waste worrying about circumstances we can't control or change." I lean forward until our two foreheads and touching and I whisper a soft plea. "I'm begging you my love to choose option B)."
Damon knows he can't fight me, not on this. How could he argue with me loving him too much to want to fight with him in my last days? It takes all his strength to do it, but he partially concedes with a heavy heart. "Because I love you, I won't fight with you anymore, but I can't give up either. I don't know how, so I'm going to look for another way, a spell, something to give you the life that you deserve." It occurs to me that this is the first time that he has told me he loves me in this time, and my heart fills again at the familiar words. I place the tiniest kiss on his lips before pulling away.
"I think I can accept that compromise on one condition," I offer.
"What's that," Damon asks, clearly willing to give me the moon if I requested it.
"Let me stay with you, just sleeping in this bed together. I may not be willing to keep kissing you for Elena's sake, but I don't want to waste another night without you," I finish explaining, hoping for a yes.
Damon's arm reaches to lift me up. He lays me back down on his bed and crawls in next to me. I snuggle up to his chest, and just as I'm drifting off to sleep, I hear Damon whisper, "I will be here as long as you'll have me."
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