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Damon stood there in the cave with the bodies of a two-thousand year old witch, a hunter whose name he didn’t even know, Jeremy Gilbert, and Bonnie Bennett. The end of the Bennett line. And a now human Elena who had taken the cure from the ancient witch, who incidentally was an exact copy of his brother, as she killed him. And this was not at all going the way he would have expected. He was still trying to come to terms with the completely clusterfuck this had become while Stefan tried to calm Rebekah down in a nearby cavern, and Elena was going on about him taking the cure from her like she took it from Silas. “I told you, Elena. I don’t want the cure. I /like/ being a vampire. It’s who I am.”
“But I love you, Damon. The sirebond is gone and I love you. Just take it and we can have the perfect human life we always wanted,” Elena begged him. At least something good could come of this. Of losing her brother and one of her best friends. At least she would still have him. And countless lives would be saved in the future if he was human too.
“That you always wanted Elena. That’s not the life for me and you know it,” Damon said firmly, refusing to budge on this one. No matter how much he loved her, it wasn’t worth giving up everything he loved and living a miserable life that he would hate.
“If you don’t…then they died in vain, Damon. Please…don’t let them have died in vain. Let us make /something/ good of this,” Elena cried.
“Don’t you put this on me. I’m not the one that killed them. They died to cure /you/. Not me.”
“I know how much you love me. Would you really be alone and a monster rather than be with me?”
That was the breaking point for Damon. The moment he realized exactly who she was. When his eyes snapped wide open. “I don’t,” he said hollowly. “I don’t love you,” he told her, completely honestly, hearing all conversation from the next cavern stop.
“What? Of course you do. I /know/ you do…”
“Why? Because I’ve let you manipulate me so completely for so long?” Damon asked as the memories came into stark clarity. From the moment Isobel spilled that he was in love with her. All those times she’d said things like ‘don’t make me regret being your friend.’ ‘How can you expect me to care about you when you act like this?’ ‘You can’t do things like this around me.’ “Because I’ve just capitulated to your every wish, becoming a puppet under your control? Well you’ve gone too far this time. I see you now. Who you really are,” Damon said with narrowed eyes.
“What are you talking about? I’ve never tried to manipulate you. Just show you that you can be a better man. And if you’re human…”
“Then I’m not me anymore,” Damon said firmly. “But you don’t care about that. You don’t care what I want, how I feel, why I do what I do. You never have.”
“How can you say that, Damon?” she asked horrified. She felt like she was falling apart. Bad enough she lost Jeremy and Bonnie already, but without him to lean on she would have nothing. She /needed/ him. Couldn’t he see that?
“Because you’re selfish and spoiled. As bad as Katherine ever was, if not worse,” Damon said matter-of-factly. “This whole stupid quest, just because precious Elena couldn’t accept her new reality. Because you wanted so badly to be human again. Like you’re the only vampire who never wanted to be one.”
“Klaus was the one pushing this,” Elena pointed out.
“I’m not here for Klaus. Stefan’s not here for Klaus. Jeremy and Bonnie…they didn’t come here…to their deaths…for Klaus. We came for you and you know it. But it’s not just this. God, Elena! You knowing slaughtered thousands, maybe millions, of innocent vampires by killing Kol. You, who always insist that there’s another way without having to kill anyone, and we /had/ another way. One that we were in the process of pulling off. But you were too impatient to do it the hard way. You didn’t want to wait. You wanted to complete Jeremy’s hunter’s mark the quick and easy way, no matter how many innocent people had to die.”
“No, that’s not…”
“How many times has everyone had to drop everything and /risk/ everything, just because precious Elena couldn’t cope? But you know what gets me the most, Elena? How many times have I said, and /proved/ that I loved you human or vampire?”
“And yet you tried to force me to become a vampire less than a year ago,” she snapped. Forced the blood down her throat before she went to meet Klaus for that ritual.
“First of all, that was a choice between vampire or /dead/, not vampire or human. Second of all, even then, I know it was wrong and I’ve apologized until I was blue in the face. And it’s a mistake I did /not/ repeat when you did eventually turn, so that’s proof I learned my lesson,” Damon snapped. “I loved you unconditionally. But you’re standing here, surrounded by people who literally died for your selfishness, and demanding that I sacrifice everything I am for you to love me. And if this was the first time, I might even be able to chalk it up to the grief talking, but ever since we learned about this cure, you have been practically hounding me, no matter how many times I said I didn’t want it. And I still supported you having it, but that wasn’t good enough.”
“Okay, Damon please…” Elena fell to her knees as the tears rolled down her cheeks.
“No, Elena. I’m done. My eyes are open now. That’s twice I’ve been fooled by someone with your face. The first forced me to become a vampire against my will, now you want to force me to become human against my will. Unlike some people, I learn from my mistakes. I was a fool to believe that you were nothing like Katherine. I guess the doppel apples don’t fall far from the tree after all.” He turned and walked away, still numb in some ways, at the complete mess that this trip had become. But also grateful for it. It kept him from making the biggest mistake of his life.
Stefan listened to everything Damon said, put the perspective to her actions, not just since she became a vampire but since day one. Especially the way she played him and Damon against each other for so long while trying to make her choice. In hindsight, he could see the selfishness in everything she did. Could see her manipulations and her cruelties. The way she repeatedly ripped both his and Damon’s hearts out. And now trying to force him to take the vampire cure, to make him human against his will…not to mention the obvious emotional blackmail that was just beyond the pale…Damon was right. She was as bad if not worse than Katherine. He rushed out after his brother. To make sure he was okay. To make sure he didn’t just go somewhere else to fall apart which would be just like him. He’d come to understand a lot more about his brother these last couple years, especially as they cleared up misunderstandings from the past. He wasn’t going to risk losing his brother again for her. He would stand by Damon’s side in this.
Stefan found Damon standing at the cliff’s edge, looking rather lost and he put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “You’re right,” Stefan said sadly. “We’re both better off without her.”
“It’s not so much that,” Damon admitted. “Not sure that’s really hit me yet, you know?”
“Then what is it?” Stefan asked curiously.
“I made a promise to Emily back in eighteen sixty-four. It doesn’t matter if she betrayed me with the amulet, she was still my first friend. The Bennett line stretches back over two thousand years. All that magic is now lost forever. And Jeremy…I know I may not seem like it, but…I bonded with the kid. And he was just a kid. Thrown into a world that he had no business in.”
“Because of me,” Stefan sighed sadly. “I’m the one who put that on him.”
“To save Elena,” Damon pointed out. “It’s just…it’s all such a waste, you know?”
“Yeah. It is,” Stefan agreed. “But we can’t just leave her out here. With Rebekah. We have to at least get her home.”
“Yeah, I know,” Damon said, shaking off the melancholy as he turned to head back to the cave. “But then I might need to move on. Forget Mystic Falls for a while.”
“Yeah. Me too,” Stefan nodded. “Why don’t we hit the road together? Have a brother’s roadtrip.” He didn’t want to give up all the progress that was made with Damon being a better person. Or maybe he’d find that he was wrong about even more than he already knew and Damon always /was/ a good person. Either way, this was long overdue.
“Yeah. We can do that,” Damon slung an arm over Stefan’s shoulders as they walked back into the cave. Only to find Elena and Rebekah both gone and the bodies still there. It then became a race for the boats. At least there was one left, but they’d obviously already left. And Elena wouldn’t have left with Rebekah of her own free will. Once they got back to shore they called Rebekah and were filled in on the deal she’d made with her brother. She delivered a human Elena, and he let her take the cure from Elena and go in peace. If they wanted her back, they would have to fight Klaus for it.
“What are we gonna do, Damon?” Stefan asked him worriedly.
“How many more people are we going to lose to keep saving her?” was all Damon asked, and it was never brought up again.