A/N: I've been working on a couple of longer stories (including the sequel to "Blood and Ashes" for those who have read that story), but this one-shot popped into my head today and insisted on being written down. So here it is. It's a little different from what I usually write. I hope you like it, and if you do (or even if you don't), I would love a review.

Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I don't own The Vampire Diaries or Damon. I do own Rebecca.

Fade to Blue

Damon Salvatore was quite a sight to wake up to after three hundred years. As Rebecca gasped her way back to life beside her brother Elijah, one of the first people that she saw was the black-haired, blue-eyed vampire, and she wondered what kind of world she was waking up in where she was lucky enough to see a face like his. She learned quickly that it was a world just as ugly and brutal and painful as the one she had last died in.

She learned about the man and woman who had awakened her, vampire and doppelganger, Damon and Elena. She learned that they were pursuing her own brother, Klaus, to rescue another vampire, Stefan, Damon's brother and Elena's boyfriend, who had given up his soul to save Damon's life. She saw both the bond between Damon and Elena and the horrible tension between them, and she watched as Elena played on Damon's emotions, as she manipulated him to play the role that she wanted him to play in this drama. Rebecca knew that Elena didn't toy with Damon on purpose, that she acted from her own guilt and ignorance and soul-crushing pain, but she felt for Damon nonetheless as she saw him buffeted by the power of his own emotions and Elena's. And as months wore on and the crazy, epic quest continued, she realized that she had fallen for Damon. She loved the intensity that he brought to everything that he did, his fearlessness, his sarcasm, and of course his stunning body that she had seen just enough of to fuel every fantasy that a woman who was either seven hundred or a thousand years old (depending on whether you counted the dead years) could have.

And she watched as the smart, funny, insanely beautiful man who made her want to live slowly faded. A drunken Damon had confessed to her one night what had happened between him and Elena when he lay dying of a wolf bite. He had told her how Katherine had saved him, only to condemn him with her words, "It's okay to love them both. I did." Those words had ensured that Elena would see any feelings for Damon as turning her into Katherine, ensured that Elena would stay loyal to Stefan to the bitter end, ensured that Damon's love would remain unrequited. Voice breaking, Damon had admitted that he had thought he would be okay with that, thought he could go on like before, but it had gotten harder and harder as they had searched for Klaus and Stefan and he had realized just how lost his brother was, how alone he was. She watched him blame himself for all of it, and the fire in his eyes dimmed day by day. It was almost imperceptible, and she didn't think anyone else noticed.

One of the pitfalls of eternal life was that the desire to live wasn't always as resilient as the body. Before Klaus had killed her, she had seen generations of vampires come and go. She knew all the danger moments – when you first had to disappear completely from the lives of friends and family, when those friends and family died and left you with nothing but memories, when the world had changed so much that memories became the stuff of history and legend – and Damon had made it through each of those with his will to live intact. Now, though, just when she had been brought back to life and she wanted him to show her how to live in this crazy new world of the twenty-first century, she could see that will fading.

Still, she had hope. He teased her, drank with her, christened her with the modern nickname of Becca, and she pretended that she didn't know just like he pretended that he was fine. She hoped that maybe she could make him fine again, that maybe he could move on from Elena and love her.

Then the battle with Klaus came. The casualties were high on both sides. Their side had lost Bonnie and three other witches, Tyler and most of his pack of werewolves, Jeremy and Matt and various other humans whose deaths Klaus (or Stefan?) thought would break Elena's will to continue. Katherine was finally dead, along with a dozen other vampires who had joined the conflict on one side or the other. Damon had kept his promises and saved his brother, dragging Stefan away from Klaus just moments before the witches had struck the killing blow against her own brother, but the backlash of the spell had hit the Salvatore brothers with full force. They had found both of them unconscious, bodies shredded by the power of the magic unleashed, Damon sprawled on top of his little brother to protect him with his own body. And that protection had made a difference, as Stefan had woken up a day later while Damon remained in a coma a week after the battle.

But Damon was a vampire after all, and they had gotten blood into him almost immediately after the fighting, even before the retching and the crying had stopped (hell, the crying still hadn't stopped). Becca knew that his body was healed now and the question was whether Damon wanted to come back to that body, whether he wanted to return to the eternal life that had brought him very little happiness.

She was afraid that she knew the answer, because she was watching him look paler and more distant every day as he lay in the middle of his huge bed. Elena wasn't helping as she flitted between Damon's room upstairs and the cell in the basement where they had locked Stefan the ripper, marking her territory with tears for both brothers. It was when Elena wasn't there that Becca picked up Damon's limp and lifeless hand and wished she could ask him to come back and be with her.

Finally she knew that Stefan had regained some control because Elena hadn't been back to Damon's room in many hours and the crying coming from the basement had a different tone to it. Becca brushed a lock of black hair from Damon's face. "Your brother is back," she told him, but he didn't stir. She had a bad feeling that he didn't want to watch Stefan and Elena rekindle their epic love story – and it would undoubtedly piss Stefan off if Damon up and died now, after everything. From what she had heard, Damon liked to piss Stefan off.

It was time to take, as they say, drastic measures. She was an Original, and she could force her way into Damon's mind if she had to, but she didn't want that. So she lay down next to him, took his hand, and asked for admittance as his friend, and to her surprise, he let her in.

She was on a beach, and Damon was sitting in a chair, holding a drink and looking out at the ocean. A second chair beside him sat empty. She tried not to notice that he was wearing only swim trunks, black of course, because that wasn't the point (although she was starting to like the way people dressed, or rather didn't, in this century). Looking down, she saw that she was wearing a flowing sundress. She wondered if that was her choice or his.

"This is a rather generic fantasy," she said. "I think I've seen this beach in – what do you call it – a beer commercial?"

Damon shrugged. "I'm a simple guy."

"No, you are not."

"Did you interrupt my beach vacation to tell me that?"

"Is that chair for me?" She knew that it wasn't.

He knew it too. "Sure, have a seat."

"It is very quiet here."

"I like quiet."

"Really? That is not what I have heard."

His smile was crooked and wistful, and to her it was still brighter than the sun. "Got me there. Maybe I'm tired."

"You are too young to be tired yet." She lied. She understood all too well what it meant to be tired of living and fighting. That was part of how Klaus had gotten the jump on her three hundred years ago. And she understood why Damon was tired of it all.

"I'm old enough."

"Talk to me when you pass five hundred." She didn't say "if" even though she thought it.

The waves lapped at the beach, and the sun beat down on them both. She watched Damon lie back and close his eyes. "Why are you here, Becca?"

"Are you coming back?"

She knew he was debating whether to lie to her. "Not planning on it."

She didn't know how to tell him that he would be missed, how to ask him to change his mind. Give or take, it had been half a millennium since she had bothered with emotions, including the dead years. It had been so long that she wasn't sure that emotions themselves hadn't changed. "That is unfortunate. I need someone to teach me how to use a computer."

Ice blue eyes rolled, but he smiled. "Anyone can do that."

"I am a slow learner."

"I doubt that. But I have no patience, so I'm not sure what you want with me." The smile was still there, however. "Besides, you have all your siblings back now. You can take a group class."

She raised her eyebrows in an expression she might have learned from him. "I will need a private tutor. I believe you are familiar with the concept of sibling rivalry?"

Damon laughed at that. It was a husky, beautiful, rare sound, and he followed with tentative words. "How is Stefan?"

"He will be fine. He might even be out of the basement by now."

"That's good. I'm glad." There was no sound but the waves and the soft wind, and she knew he spoke the truth.

"He will be angry with you if you do not come back."

"What else is new? He's always angry at me." He didn't say that Stefan had Elena to keep him company and comfort him, but she guessed that he was thinking it.

The quiet was growing on her, and part of her wanted to stay there with him, but she had felt the quiet of death for a very long time. She wanted to live with him, to explore her new world with him, not to die with him. Still if she could make him laugh again. . . . But she felt someone calling her back to the real world. She spoke reluctantly. "I have to go."

The sea and the sky could have been contained in Damon's eyes as they met hers. "Thank you for coming."

She wanted to tell him that he was unlike anyone she had met in centuries, but the right words wouldn't come. "I like your beach, even if it is from a commercial." She looked around one last time, pretending she wasn't fixing him in her memory. When you had lived as long as she had, eventually memories were all you had left. And then even they started to fade.

She opened her eyes, and she was back on his bed. Elena was staring at her, big brown eyes wide with shock and hand tightly clenched with Stefan's.

She felt a sick but horribly familiar sense of loss. Damon wasn't coming back. But then she felt movement beside her on the bed. She turned to meet sparkling blue eyes and a crooked smile. The smile was for her. "For the record, I would have put you in a bikini."