Author's note: Lauren, one of my Betas, says you need a hanky for this chapter, so grab a box of tissues before you read.
Chapter 007
He Still Can't Be Selfish
November 20, 2155, 3:00 p.m.
The Basement Cell in The Salvatore Boarding House
It's been almost exactly 145 years since Elena killed Jeremy while Kol was possessing her body, triggering The Hunter's Curse. That's 145 years of Damon watching the woman he loves suffer the torment of hallucinating the people closest to her telling her their deaths are all her fault.
Damon thinks, 'Did we make some bad decisions in the long run? Maybe, but it can't all be placed at Elena's feet.' He meant it when he said everything that happened that week was a direct result of Katherine turning herself into a vampire and then running from Niklaus. The hybrid never would have come to town if the older doppelgänger hadn't forced him to wait to free himself from the curse his mother placed on him.
Katherine has shown up a few times, but Damon just barely missed killing her twice, so she got the idea that he is unwilling to have anything to do with her and that if she tries to approach Elena or him again he will not hesitate to kill her and be done with her once and for all. He's heard she hooked back up with Elijah who along with Niklaus had followed Damon and Elena to every town and city they've lived in for the last century and a half.
They aren't obnoxious about it, but Damon still finds it annoying that they're keeping an eye on the two of them. He figures the originals were waiting to see how long it took for them to break The Hunter's Curse. Damon managed to find a couple of potential Hunters through the years, but he usually found them right after they wound up dead without activating The Hunter's Mark.
He thought for a while that Niklaus might be responsible for their deaths, but he never found any proof to suggest the hybrid actually was behind their deaths, so Damon just kept searching.
Two weeks ago, he hit pay-dirt and found a potential hunter before the teen died and compelled the boy to kill a baby vampire Damon made for just that purpose. So now he's lifted The Hunter's Curse.
He smiles widely and thinks back to arriving back at the house afterward to find his girl smiling for the first time in a century and a half. "They're gone, Damon. The only person I see right now is you."
He smiled broadly and nodded deeply before he told his love, "I know, I found a potential hunter and arranged for him to kill a vampire. I even held the vampire still to make sure there would be no chance of the vampire killing the newbie."
Elena grinned and told him, "I'm free. Thank you."
He just nodded and opened his arms for her, which she happily ran into. After one of the best hugs of his long life, Damon leaned down and kissed her, and it was glorious. For the first time in 145 years, her kiss wasn't hesitant and scared, it was loving and inviting and just a touch rough.
Damon picked her up and carried his wife to their bedroom where he slowly stripped her of her clothes and then proceeded to kiss and lick every inch of her starting at her feet and slowly moving his way up until he reached the juncture of her thighs. He ripped off her panties and then kissed her nether lips before parting them with his fingers and licking a long slow stroke the entire length of her slit. Then he zeroed in on her clit and began licking and sucking on it.
I gave up trying to get away from other people having sex over a century ago. So, despite the fact, I very much wanted not to have to see anyone having sex I knew that the still unknown force just wouldn't let me leave the room. I tried once and then stopped trying because all it would end up doing was further aggravate me.
I looked up at the ceiling and pursed my lips together when Damon slipped two fingers inside his wife and pumped them before scissoring them a few times. Because she was so tight when she became a vampire, she's still just as tight 145 years later, so he still had to prepare her. He slowly added a third finger before softly biting on her clit, which sent her over the edge screaming his name, "Oh Damon!"
The sound of his name when she screamed it in ecstasy is now forever ingrained in both our minds. I find it annoying, but Damon cherishes the memory.
He kissed, licked, and nibbled the rest of the way up her body before looking into her, no longer haunted, eyes and then he leaned down and kissed her while he took his length in his hand and guided it to her entrance.
He pushed in slowly while he enjoyed every inch of his wife's warmth and wetness until he finally bottomed out. Elena wrapped her legs around his waist and told him, "Not slow this time, Damon, make it fast and hard. We have forever left to go slow, right now I want it fast and furious."
He smiled and kissed her before pulling almost all the way out of her and then slamming back into her setting a pounding rhythm. She came twice more while she scored her fingernails down his back, drawing blood each time before he finally fell over the precipice and came harder than he had in a really, really long time, like 145 years long.
Almost collapsing on top of her Damon just barely managed to roll to her side, so he was beside her and not on top of her. Then he pulled her into his arms, kissed the top of her head, and let sleep take him before he dreamed about what the future held in store for them.
Turns out the future held more pain and heartache because Damon woke from his sleep when Elena got up and pulled on his shirt. It was common in the last 145 years for her to leave the bed in the middle of the night because even her dreams weren't safe from the hallucinations of those she had loved and lost, so he just watched through slitted eyes while she padded through the room in the dark and headed out and down the stairs.
Rolling over and looking at the clock he saw it was a few minutes before sunrise. He rolled back over, but then he heard her open the French door leading out to the garden. That was a new behavior, and for a good reason, he got a terrible feeling, so without stopping to throw on some clothes he ran down the stairs and out into the garden to find her standing there looking at the horizon as if she were waiting for something. She turned to look at him and said, "I love you, Damon." And then the sun began to rise, and he realized what was happening.
I don't think he'd ever moved as fast as he did that morning when he grabbed her and ran with her back into the house and down to the basement where he lay her down on the cot and then closed and locked the door of the cell.
Weary and dreading the answers Elena would give as to why she just tried to kill herself, he went back upstairs trying to close out the sound of his lover's tears and find her ring. He discovered it a few bushes away from where she had been standing, so he brought it back inside and went to put some clothes on. Then with a heavy heart and a bad feeling, he walked down the stairs and into the basement to find out what her reason was.
Looking at her for a minute laying there motionless Damon then asked, "Elena, why? You're finally free, why would you try to kill yourself?"
She looked up and frowned, "I think I'm supposed to tell you it was because I'm so overcome with grief about Jeremy's death, but really I just felt I had to do it."
He sighed and thought, 'Dammit, it's like I thought. Kol compelled her to kill herself. The ass is probably the only reason she didn't try to off herself during the curse. He wanted her to suffer and then only after she was free she would kill herself.'
Elena began trying to kill herself two weeks ago, and Damon sighs while he looks at the love of his undead life sleeping in the cell again. Every time he lets her out she waits until dawn and then tries to kill herself. Using the Sire Bond didn't work either, so he is so desperate that he goes and sees who he believes is Niklaus to see if the hybrid can compel her to disobey Kol's compulsion. Damon's never heard of such a thing working before but as I said he's desperate.
Niklaus' blue eyes that Kol is still borrowing widen when he opens the door and finds Damon on the other side, but he motions the younger vampire inside with a smirk on his face. Although they had been following Damon and Elena, this is the first time in almost two decades that they're in the same room with each other.
Kol's smirk grows before he asks, "To what do I owe this unexpected surprise, Damon?"
He decided on the way over here not to mince words or pussyfoot around the heart of the matter, so he just tells the original, "I think Kol compelled Elena to kill herself once The Hunter's Curse was lifted. Every morning for the last two weeks she's tried to kill herself. I'm hoping you can compel her to ignore or disobey Kol's compulsion."
Kol smiles but shakes his head and lies through his teeth, "Even if that would work, which I'm fairly certain it wouldn't, tell me why I should help save the girl responsible for the deaths of not one but two of my brothers. What's in it for me?"
Damon doesn't have much to offer the immortal hybrid, but he tried like hell all day to come up with a reason, so he tells the older man the only thing he managed to come up with, "Kol wanted her dead and Kol killed Caroline, consider this your last chance to get one up on your brother."
Inside Kol is laughing because he realizes just how desperate Damon must be if that's the response he gives. On the outside, however, Kol frowns and says, "It's only my last chance because the Gilberts set a trap for my baby brother and then actively sought to end him, a feat they actually managed to pull off. Furthermore, if Elena hadn't sought to end my admittedly annoying younger brother, Caroline would still be alive. I'm sorry, Mate, but I'm not inclined to help the woman who helped murder Finn and Kol in cold blood and indirectly caused the death of the only woman I've loved in over a millennium."
I frown because my former friend has gotten just a touch too good at playing his role as his brother in the last century and a half, which only got better when the Mikaelson's found a spell to allow Kol and Niklaus to share the same body so that now Niklaus can advise Kol just as Elijah does. Kol's still in control of the body but Niklaus is with him, and they can converse in their head.
That said, Damon is utterly clueless that he's standing mere feet from the man that compelled his wife to kill herself.
Just then Elijah comes into the room and nods, "I'm afraid I must agree with my brother Damon, as fond as I was of Ms. Gilbert, she, how does the saying go? She made her bed, and now she must lay in it. This situation is of her own creation, and we've spent 144 years without our two brothers by our sides. So far as I'm concerned, she's lucky she got to spend that long with you. If Kol had survived, she likely wouldn't have lasted another week after she tried to kill him."
Kol just nods with a satisfied smirk on his face that Damon absentmindedly finds strange, so the younger vampire leaves with no hope of saving the woman he loves unless he keeps her locked up during the daylight hours for the rest of eternity.
In Damon's opinion his love should be free, though, and now he's faced with the hardest decision of his 313 years on this earth: Keep the woman he loves more than life itself locked up like a prisoner for the rest of eternity or set her free. The selfish part of him wants to keep her locked up, but while he looks through the window of the cell she's currently locked inside of, he knows he still, even after all these years, can't be selfish with her, so he leaves her there to go prepare.
He goes to the store and buys all his wife's favorite foods and then heads back to the house and cooks everything just the way she likes them. Then he sets the table and lights some candles just before the sun sets. When everything is ready, he goes down to the cell and wakes his love up, "Elena, time to get up, Mia Tesoro."
The younger vampire rolls over and looks at her savior with such sadness in her eyes, and he knows he's made the right choice. The woman he loves deserves to be free once and for all. She's suffered too much in her life.
He flips the lock and opens the door before telling her, "I made you dinner."
She smiles slightly and gets up before taking his outstretched hand. Leaning down he kisses her tenderly before leading her out of the basement for a final time and up to the dining room.
She gasps when she sees all her favorite foods, and if she realizes that this is his way of saying goodbye she doesn't comment on it. He's grateful for that small fact.
Damon helps Elena sit and then starts filling her plate with Fettuccine Alfredo, roasted vegetables, and string-beans with roasted almonds. For dessert, he has homemade gelato in her favorite flavor, blood orange.
They say little while they eat, and Damon is so sick with what he's about to do that he can barely keep the food down.
She 'Oh's' and 'Ah's' over the blood orange gelato, and when she finishes her last bite she smiles at him, and he burns the smile into his memory before she says, "Thank you that was awesome, Damon."
He just nods and then takes her hand and leads her up the stairs to their room. He slowly removes her clothes one article at a time, taking the time to kiss each inch of newly exposed skin, before laying her on the bed and quickly stripping his own clothes. The time weary man spends an hour just kissing and licking every inch of her he can touch before she begs, "Please, Damon, no more teasing," so he brings his mouth to the juncture of her thighs and unceremoniously sucks her clit into his mouth.
I look away with tears in my eyes while he sucks and flicks her nub with his tongue. After a few minutes of doing that he uses his fingers to prepare her one final time. He makes her cum twice before he deems her ready, and then he kisses his way up her body and leans down and kisses her senseless before he enters her slower than he ever has. For once she doesn't complain about his going too slow, and she seems to just be enjoying their closeness as much as he is.
Damon slowly begins pumping in and out of his wife while his hands roam over every inch they can reach, only stopping to toy with a nipple and pinch it lightly. He leans down and sucks it into his mouth and flicks his tongue over the tight peak several times before switching breasts. When he slowly begins to increase his pace, he pulls away from her chest and just watches her face while he causes her to shatter into a million pieces.
He follows his lover over the edge and tells her, "God I love you more than I've ever loved anyone before. You're my life, Elena."
She has tears in her eyes before she tells him, "I love you more than I've ever loved anyone else too, even more than I loved Stefan and Matt combined."
Strangely her words heal an old wound he didn't even realize was still there, so after he leans down and kisses her, he rolls to the side and pulls her into his arms.
He couldn't sleep right now if his life depended on it, so he just lays there with his eyes closed trying to memorize how she feels in his arms. A few minutes later she sighs and falls asleep.
Damon just holds his love for a few hours while tears pour from his eyes. Finally, he knows if he waits any longer she'll wake up, so he reaches over to the drawer of the bedside table and takes out the stake he put there earlier. Gently rolling her onto her back, he then leans down and kisses her one final time before closing his eyes and plunging the stake into her chest.
He's never cried like he's crying right now while he feels her body turn leathery under his. Finally, about ten minutes before sunrise he gets up without opening his eyes and covers her with the sheet, so he can't see her desiccated form lying in their bed.
He looks down at his hand at the ring that has rarely left his finger in 290 years and slowly takes it off before placing it on the bedside table. Then with tears streaming down my face, I follow him down the stairs. He's still naked and smelling of Elena while he walks to the French Door and opens it walking into the garden to wait for the sun to rise.
He turns a moment before the sun rises to see Niklaus standing in the shadows. When the original notices that Damon has seen him, the ancient man takes a step closer, and the younger man's eyes widen in understanding when Kol says, "Hello, Darling. Seems you've ruined my well-laid plans, but watching you burn will suffice."
Damon doesn't get a chance to reply to Kol's words because the sun slowly reaches and breaches the horizon. Damon manages to whisper, "Elena, I love you," and then searing pain rips through his body until a vast nothing takes over.