Damon Salvatore; Better Man. O/S post 3x21
The weeks leading up to the finale are always distracting for me. I can never seem to keep my mind off what kind of cliffhanger I'll be left with for my favorite couple . This was just some soul soothing for myself, as I try to forget all the potential things I'm dreading in the finale. I don't believe anything in this O/S will actually occur, but I did read spoilers before writing this, in case you want to skip reading. This is kind of inspired by the ideas, and blog posts of one of my favorite TVD authors. While I doubt she would see what I've written here as a possibility for the next episode, I feel the need to acknowledge her quietly. Big fandom hugs to all.
Damon Salvatore; The Better Man
He can do this. Or at least that’s what Damon Salvatore tells himself as he watches Elena Gilbert interact with his brother, Stefan. It’s the first time, however, that he’s actually believed it. It’s the first time he’s understood that he is capable of making a sacrifice this big. He doesn’t want to walk out the door with the word martyr stamped on his back. He isn’t one. He loves his brother. He loves her. He can walk away from them. He’ll be alright.
She’s not ready to choose him, but she doesn’t want to lose him either. She doesn’t need to worry about that. His heart belongs to her, and he’ll make sure she knows it. He takes comfort in the fact that she’s given him half her heart in return; that she respects him - that she loves him. She hasn’t told him so, but she doesn’t need to. She loves him, and that knowledge will stay with him always. It will sit with him, and be a far greater companion than the women he’ll slake his lust with, and the bourbon he’ll consume while he’s gone.
When Damon finds the right time to say goodbye, he stands before her, more and more certain that what he’s doing is right. It’s going to hurt. There’ll be pain. But he’ll survive, he always has. They always do. She’ll have Stefan. This is what’s right, he tells himself. He’s making the decision for all of them. They’ll be okay. There is only the quietest flicker of doubt in his mind as he tells her he’s leaving.
“You’re not losing me, Elena,” he tells her, pulling both her hands against his chest with one hand, while forcing her to look at him with the other. “I’ll be here if you need me. All you have to do is call. You’re not losing me.”
When Elena puts her arms around Damon, to hold him, she knows that this time she’s not comforting him; she’s comforting herself. It’s the first time she’s hugged him because she’s needed it, rather than because he needs it. She holds onto him, not wanting to let go; feeling selfish for every minute that passes like this because she knows this must be hurting him as much as it hurts her. She doesn’t want to lose him, and even though he tells her she’s not losing him; that this is right for all of them, it doesn’t feel right. How can it be right if he’s not here?
She wants him to stay. She even lets the words slip from her mouth. He gives her a wicked grin, and makes a comment she knows is intended to lighten the mood. It’s his smile that makes her choke on her tears. She’s going to miss every smug look she’s grown used to when he’s gone. The thought that he’ll never do that eye thing with her; tease her, or kiss her again, makes her feel as if her world is ending. She feels suspiciously close to begging him to stay, but how can she?
She knew she needed to pick one of them; to make a decision. But Damon is making the decision for her. Maybe she should thank him. But she doesn’t. Her sorrow is so deep she can’t find it in herself to utter a word of gratitude. He’s being the better man, just like she’d asked him to be. She’d never thought that his being the better man would break her heart.
“It’s okay to love them both.”
She remembers Katherine’s words from the day she thought Damon would die. Is it okay to love them both? Is it really? It doesn’t matter, because she does, and she can’t stop. She mumbles something about Katherine into his shirt, and he tells her she’s not. That’s right, she’s not Katherine, but right now she wishes she was. She’s been selfish lately. It’s not a feeling that sits comfortably with her, but she’s lost so much already. She wishes she could give in to the selfish need to have both of them, but she can’t. She’s not Katherine.
Before he leaves, he brushes her tears away, and kisses her gently on the forehead. When he walks out the door, she flies into the arms of his brother, looking for comfort. It doesn’t come. In fact, right now, her place of comfort doesn’t feel quite as comfortable anymore. She quells the panic, and the urge to run after the other brother. He’s gone already. How can she ask him to come back? It wouldn’t be fair. It wouldn’t be right. She loves Stefan. She’ll always love Stefan. She was safe with him. She was going to be fine.
“He’ll be okay, Elena,” Stefan tells her.
His gentle smile doesn’t reassure her. Damon left so that they could be together. She can’t help but think Stefan is somehow missing the gravity of the situation.
“He’s your brother,” she says. “I never wanted this to happen.”
“In sixty years or so, this will be water under the bridge,” he tells her.
***
Damon’s barely been gone a week, and she’s in trouble - if such a mild word can be used to describe the position she’s in. Elena just sees this as one more thing that’s been taken from her - her right to die a natural death.
“Elena’s in transition,” she hears Stefan tell Damon over the phone.
She doesn’t want to complete the transition, but Jeremy has asked her to. He won’t survive losing her. She couldn’t say no. She paces restlessly, while the brothers continue their conversation. Damon will come back now. She knows it’s wrong to be happy about this when they’ve just said goodbye, but she can’t stop herself. Damon’s return might just be an upside of her turning.
“Damon wants to know if you…need him to come back,” Stefan says to her quietly, the phone in his hand.
She looks between the phone, and his face. He’s kidding right? Damon is asking if she needs him to come back? The thought almost makes her hysterical. She holds in the laughter, however, when she sees the same question on Stefan’s face. They’re serious. Of course she wants Damon to come back. She really, really doesn’t want to do this without him. She already craves the sight of his face, and the sound of his voice in a way that is just as terrifying as the changes she’s going through right now. But they’re asking her if she needs him to come back.
Her guilt wars with her desire to see him. Would he be better off staying gone; better off without her? The thought hurts, but she repeats it over and over to herself, evaluating the truth of it. It had been so hard to say goodbye. Does she have a right to ask him to come back? Damon told her she’d never lose him, but does she have any right to hold him to that? He stopped loving Katherine. Would he stop loving her too, if she gave him long enough? Is that what she should do? Give him time? If he stays gone long enough, will he forget her; forget how much he cares for her?
“Tell him I don’t need him to come back,” she tells Stefan.
She turns away from him before she reveals the disappointment, regret, and heartache she feels at the thought of not seeing his brother.
***
Days later she lies down on her bed feeling as if her grief might just swallow her whole. She is mourning her old life; mourning being human, and mourning the presence of the Salvatore brother she knows she is supposed to try and live without. She is tired; tired of being her. She is weary; bone weary, soul weary, and just too weary in general for someone who had just been granted an eternity to live.
There’s been too much drama in the days since Damon left for her and Stefan to discuss their relationship, but she knows he expects things to return to the way they were; or something like it. But things will never be the way they were. She still feels the same way she did before Damon left - torn. She never made her choice, and ever since Damon asked her indirectly if she needed him to come back, it’s been bothering her more and more.
Sixty years. She was supposed to be water under the bridge between them in sixty years. That would hardly be the case now, though, would it? Was it really right that she’d let Damon make the choice for her, when she was going to be around for so much longer than they had all anticipated?
She closes her eyes, seeking respite from both her inner and outer worlds, but instead she sees images of a moment she doesn’t remember. At first she thinks she is dreaming, but when she opens her eyes, the images keep coming. It takes her longer than it probably should to realize Damon compelled her. And what he says to her in the moment before he tells her to forget is absolutely heartbreaking.
“It’s because I love you, I can’t be selfish with you. I don’t deserve you. But my brother does.”
Did he leave believing that? Did he leave believing that Stefan deserved her more than he did? The thought brings forth a new bubble of grief to the surface. She reaches for her phone; scrolling down until she sees Damon’s number. She stares at his name on the screen. How many times has she said to him, “Be the better man, Damon?” Too many. And when he’d finally shown her that he was indeed, the better man, she’d let him leave. It was his choice. The fact is cold comfort.
In this precise moment she understands that the only thing worse than spending her human life with the wrong person, is to spend her vampire life with the wrong vampire. She dials Damon’s number. She doesn’t know if Damon is the vampire she’s meant to spend eternity with or not. But she does know that question will plague her constantly unless she finds out. She still doesn’t want to lose Stefan, but she sees the two brothers with greater clarity now. If Stefan is the man his brother seems to think he is; if he is half the man that Damon is - he’ll understand that she needs to do this. And they’ll work it out.
“You okay?” It’s the first thing Damon asks when he answers her phone call.
“Fine,” she breathes.
This is the first time she’s felt…like she can breathe, in days, and she takes a moment to do just this.
“Elena?”
“Damon, I need you. I need you to come home.”