I Will Never Leave You

Chapter Twenty Four

Chapter Twenty Four

            Her hand was soft and cold, unnaturally cold in his. He was moving his thumb in slow circles over the back of it and his eyes were trained onto her. It was hard to look at her like this but it was impossible to look away.

            He knew it had been too good to be true, he had done too much to deserve to be happy like he had been. Someone like him would never end up with someone like her that was just how it was. No matter how much he changed, no matter how good he tried to be for her he would never be good enough to deserve her.

            At the time he had thought that giving her the blood instead of forcing her to drink it meant he was truly changing because of her. But he was wrong, it wasn’t him changing at all. If he had truly changed he wouldn’t have wanted her to become a monster like him, he wouldn’t have pushed her to become a vampire if he was truly a better person.

            Suddenly his head was filled with a searing pain. It felt like every cell in his brain was splitting open and after only a couple second his vision began to spot. His free hand clenched into a fist and it took all his concentration which was fading fast to drop her hand before he crushed it. The pain was pounding through his head but it didn’t fade over time, instead it seemed to be building.

            He couldn’t help the grunt of pain that escaped his lips as he fell against the floor. Soon his vision disappeared entirely and for a second all he saw was black before he started to see flashes of something else. He saw Elena with her long brown hair falling over her face sitting in a graveyard and writing in her diary, he saw her running from him, he saw himself biting Caroline, Elena kissing Stefan, her slapping him as he tried to kiss her. As he saw more and more it started to become impossible to really process what it was he was seeing.

            Then a pain even worse than that in his head exploded in his chest. His eyes flew open and he was able to see just long enough to see he chest completely unmarked. After only a second of wondering where this pain was coming from passed before what he was seeing began to flicker like the image on an old TV without a signal. One moment he was laying on the hardwood floor completely alone and paralyzed by pain for an unknown reason and the next he was standing in what he recognized to be his own driveway as Klaus drove a stake into his heart.

            Part of him was sure that it wasn’t real, part of him knew that he was safe in his house and that if Elijah’s plan had worked Klaus would already be dead. But then there was another part of him that believed that he was dying because of the piece of wood the original hybrid was shoving into his chest. The pain certainly made it feel real.

            He felt something soft and warm touch the side of his face but when he looked for the source he saw nothing. All he saw was Klaus laughing at him as his vision became fuzzy and everything began to fade into black.

          And then he heard her voice, “Damon, Damon what’s going on? What’s happening? Can you hear me Damon?”

            Her voice started as a whisper, almost too soft for him to hear but gradually it became clearer.

            When he opened his eyes again he found himself staring into the soft brown eyes he loved so much. They were as wide and watery as tears were beginning to well up in them. They were a beautiful sight, made even more so by the fact that he thought he would never see them again. The pain had disappeared completely and aside from being breathless, confused and on the floor he was completely fine.

            Acting on complete instinct he covered her hand, which had been resting on his cheek, with his own. It was no longer cold and lifeless however it was just as soft.