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Loving and fighting, accusing, denying
Can't imagine a world where you're gone
The joy and the chaos
The demons that we're made of
I'd be so lost if you left me alone
Devastated.
The best and perhaps the only word that could describe how Damon Salvatore was feeling at that moment. He had had his farewell with Elena a little over an hour ago and he was still in the family crypt, his back resting on the mausoleum wall, his clear, now dull and slightly reddened eyes were staring at the stone floor.
For an instant he wished his heart was made of the same material, maybe then, without feelings, it wouldn't be hurting so much, but he possessed no such curse, as a vampire everything he felt was magnified, so it hurt, hurt in a monstrous intensity, as if every drop of blood existing in his body had been drained, incapacitating him from any movement, a living mummy, trapped in his own body, if he could, he would be able to rip the source of it all out if it would make the damn pain go away, for his greatest fear, though he would not confide it to anyone, not even Elena or Stefan, was and always had been to be alone after losing the people he loved and at that moment part of that was happening.
He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply in an attempt to be able to calm down and maybe forget, even for a brief moment, the swirl of bad emotions in his chest, but quite the opposite, he instantly remembered Elena's words.
"Damon, this won't work if you just shut yourself off. I need you to live your life, to enjoy it. I want you to be happy."
Be happy without you? Ah, Elena... Please, my darling, that's crazy. He thought about saying it along with a million other things, but he didn't, the fear of seeing his girl shed another tear and turn it into something more painful than it was already being for both of them kept him restrained, deep down he knew he wouldn't be able to carry out her request even if his life depended on it.
"Now, how about that dance?" She suggested, smiling amidst her crying.
Dance? Yes, he really wanted to dance with her, but not at that time or in that way. Damon had given up being a vampire and practically proposed to her less than 24 hours ago, it was supposed to have been their big night, Elena owed him a dance, but doing it only in a dream wasn't part of the plan.
The Salvatore offered one of his hands in invitation and together, deeply engrossed in both love and sorrow, they began what would apparently be their last dance.
(...)
"Are you ready for this?" Elena questioned before Damon set her down again after the spin.
"Ready to spend the next sixty years of my life without you? Who can be ready for that?" He counter-questioned, rhetorically.
Spend four months trapped in an alternate dimension where every day was the same as May 10, 1994, with a not-so-friendly witch and a sociopathic siphon?
Easy.
He'd find a way out and kill the others in the process if it had happened three or more years ago and not five months ago. He had escaped from Augustine in the 1950s in a similar fashion, even though he thought he had killed Enzo, his ally and only friend, in the escape.
So sixty or seventy years would be nothing in the life of a vampire, a being cursed to exist for eternity, yet there was a moment, a situation, months ago, when he thought he could have died in peace, knowing she loved him back. Yet somewhere between his death and now, that wasn't enough anymore, he wanted more, he deserved more, a future with children and maybe a sly cat or a playful puppy next to Elena, it was the right thing after all they'd been through.
But no, life was not fair at all to him, in his mind he had managed to live again only to see the love of his life slip through his fingers like sand.
Now his hands were hugging his knees, like a small child lost in a big supermarket when he accidentally let go of his mother, he looked towards one of the stained glass windows stamped with crucifixes and other religious engravings, he noticed that the sun had already left the scene and was replaced by the moon. He had spent half the day reflecting, sitting with his dead relatives and Elena, something inside him said that it wouldn't be the first time nor the last that he would realize that he was doing something like that.