He's been on the road for about an hour, dazed, and more than a little smug from a job well done. The others went philosophical on her death, generally cried a lot, and Jeremy packed his bags and went to find himself and the hairs on his bare face, but he got shit done. One point for Damon Salvatore.

A little abra cadabra, the good guys (or one good looking son of a bitch) win the fight, the princess comes back and they all lived happily ever after.

"As you know, I'm a subtle person, Bon-Bon; so, if you feel the pressing urge to thank me, later on, I will try to not be so opposed to a parade," he says, smug.

And it hits him.

When was it ever so easy? When shit didn't blow up in his face? How can he even trust a witch? He didn't see a thing. She could have organized a parade to keep him quiet and make him waste time so that when he managed to find a way he'd realize what an idiot he's been to trust her and it'd be too late to do anything about it. And Bonnie…if anything, she had a worst track record than his.

It's only nerves, he tells himself. He did it. He got this.

"Bonnie?" he calls, though he knows he's not gonna get an answer. "I'm just being paranoid," he chuckles nervously, "Right?"

He doesn't know if it's real or just his own imagination laughing at his expense, but he can feel the ghost of her fingertips on his arm and it scratches at the walls of his soul, like nails on a blackboard.

"I did this. Do you get it? You'll have come back, no matter how much you kick and scream!"

And yet something doesn't add up and he makes an abrupt U-turn, hands gripping the wheel so hard it feels like it's going to break like a dead branch under his long fingers as the shrieking of the tires against the concrete try to deafen him.

He'll get to the bottom of this. He'll have a nice chat with Lucy, one that involves her choking against the chair he'll use to trap her on the floor while he watches, placidly sitting on it and telling her about the endless list of depressed days and whiny people he had to endure since Bonnie is gone, about how fucking stubborn she manages to be even as a ghost, about how he won't like it one bit – and he'll make sure she won't either – if all this dedication and boring good will comes to nothing.

He drives so fast he takes down a signal in the way, ignores two red lights and almost runs over a stray cat, and when his boot collides with Lucy Bennet's door he's ready to kill first and ask questions later. Only, there's no one. And nothing at all. The bed is bare, all the cabinet doors are open, the little kitchen is empty, her little witchy trap is gone, and he can enter the house without permission.

Less than two hours and she took off, leaving him at square one.

"Fantastic," he mutters with a tense grin before kicking a chair away.

Bonnie takes a step back, like she's at risk of meeting his fury herself.

Damon takes his head into his hands, a chuckle escaping his lips while he tries hard to focus on what to do next. All his brain does is crush against the emptiness of Lucy's apartment.

He takes his phone from his pocket, calls her number to no avail. Tries again and then again, letting himself slide against the empty wall until he's sitting on the floor.

He does nothing else but call her number for twenty minutes until there's a pause in the signal and her voice breaks the monotony of the ringing sound in his tired skull.

"I'm going to assume something gave me away, because you can't be already back in Mystic Falls and you didn't have enough time to screw up."

"So you tricked me, huh?" he asks, trying to keep his rage at bay. He may not know where she is, but he has all the time in the world, and he has a good memory when it comes to grudges and loyalty to women.

"Something like that."

"She is your family and you just dropped her like a hot potato," he says, pulling the phone away from his ear. He heard a crack and he can see the break on the back of the phone. He takes a breath and tries to loosen the fingers around it before even the last link to that backstabbing bitch is lost.

"Not really. You're right, she is my family, and family protects each other."

"What does that even mean?" he asks, too angry to keep his tone in check, "Better dead than back with me?"

"When was she ever with you?" she asks back. "She was just the inconvenience you had to deal with to get into Elena Gilbert's pants." She says starkly. There's something hammering in his skull, trying to get out of his forehead and Damon presses the phone against it trying to get a bit of relief. Isn't Lucy right, after all? He has trouble breathing. Everyone is so dedicated to spite him and he should be flattered.

Silas only came back to tell him that he has the power to bring her back, but he won't, because in his sick head Damon is being too friendly with something he thinks is his. Stefan can barely look at him without screaming in pain. Elena is too concentrated on what's his gotten inside his pants to see what's inside his head. And Bonnie is too righteous to lower herself to live the life of a common mortal with a survival instinct.

"This is not about you. Get over yourself. This is about my cousin. I did exactly what you've asked for her. I gave her another chance at life."

It takes him a moment to absorb the words, let the hope flicker under the ashes of his burned out cells, but suddenly he's lightheaded and dead tired.

"I thought you said-"

"I said that I tricked you," she breaks his question, "Not that I didn't do what you asked. I just didn't do it the way you would have liked."

"I'm not following," he says between his teeth.

"No, you don't. I made sure you couldn't," she explains, "She'll come back. One day." She says, "She'll have what she deserves—a second chance, a blank page to rewrite her own story and be the main lead of it. No Elena to protect and pamper, no Caroline to console and indulge. No Damon Salvatore to clean up after."

The implications of her words are too crazy even for him. Bonnie will be so bored if he's not around. She should know. Everyone should get it into their stupid heads.

"She'll be born somewhere else. She'll have two parents and hopefully a happy life. Especially because you parasites won't be in it."

"You don't understand. She-"

"I do understand," she interrupts him again, "Oh, I swear I do. You think you've got such a good poker face? News flash: you don't. But Romeo and Juliet never did it for me. And as I already told you, the only way we're going to survive this is for us to stick to our own kind."

There is a pause. The sort of muffled sound that the silence makes when your head is underwater. It feels like being trapped under a sheet of ice, watching the distorted image of a black girl twirling on top of it while he hits his fists against it. He can't see her face from there, but the pattern on her dress is familiar somehow.

"You had your selfless wish granted. I won't hold my breath for your gratitude," she says. The twirling girl is crouched down in front of him, hugging her knees while she looks at him from between his open legs stretched on the floor. "She's gone, Damon. Deal with it."

#

Elena is rushing down the stairs, running to him, like he always pictured when she was with Stefan and he lingered around like a dog sniffing the leftovers. He's not so hungry anymore.

"Damon, you're back!" she says, her palm abandoning the handrail to go to him. "Why didn't you call?" she asks, but he doesn't stop to reply. He doesn't stop to meet his brother's eyes or answer Caroline when she asks, "Did she help you? Is Bonnie coming back soon?"

Can she stop being so blissfully hopeful already?

Somewhere inside his mind a voice is asking how come Stefan can manage to stay into the same house as Elena and him and not go nuts, but at this point he doesn't give a shit. At this point they actually got the big picture—that he tried. They clearly didn't get the detail—that he failed.

"Damon—" Matt tries to press him, too, but he's silenced when he walks past them all and starts up the stairs.

"Where are you going?" Elena asks again, frustrated by his silence and indifference.

"To put on my funeral dress," he answers, trying uselessly to sound light and unaffected. "I look gorgeous in it," he mutters to himself in front of his bedroom's door.

#

The bed is undone, because vampires have much cooler things to do than make their own bed. Elena's make up is abandoned on the dressing table. She sprayed a bit too much perfume. It makes him grimace. He takes off his jacket with too much haste and throws it on a chair. The neck of his shirt feels strangely too tight and he pulls at it, making a tear. He looks down annoyed but he can change later. What difference does it make?

There are two bottles of scotch in the nightstand on his side of the bed. The mere fact should have told him something. But right now he only needs a drink, not some useless soul-searching that won't change a damn thing.

He can hear voices downstairs but he chooses to tune them out. If they have something to recriminate, or feel like crying some more, they can go elsewhere. His house is not a grief counseling centre. He's got better things to do, like emptying his alcohol supply, for starters.

He's a man with a mission and this mission he can complete with no trouble at all.

Halfway through the first bottle he can swear on anything alive that he doesn't care that he failed the other – less important, not relevant to him at all – mission. Two more sips and he can swear he doesn't even remember what the other mission was to begin with. Something to do with someone he never cared for. Who gives a shit.

He's on his knees, sitting on his heels, watching the second bottle in his hand like it's his only life line and the noise of the opening door is something he can easily ignore.

"Damon?" Elena's voice is soft but unwavering. She sounds like something to fall into, but it would be just another thing to weight down on his chest in the morning. And they have a party to attend. Why should he go anyway? He's having plenty of fun on his own.

He can see her out of the corner of his eyes, walking around the king-sized bed and sitting on the floor next to him, legs tucked under her.

"If you cry now you'll water down your drink, and I know you like it straight."

He chokes on bitter laughter and falls back to sit on the floor, too, but he doesn't turn to look at her. His eyes cannot move from the amber liquid in the bottle.

He feels miserable.. Why? He felt great just one moment ago, he felt wonderful. He's gonna feel like that again once Elena leaves him alone and lets him dry this second bottle.

"I'm sorry," she offers weakly. But up until now she could barely pay attention to something that wasn't the styling of her hair so he doesn't feel obliged to pretend he believes her.

"Really?" he asks flippantly, "What for?"

"For being so eager to sacrifice myself on the altar of goodness," she says, making him blink and put the bottle down. "For being so righteous," and he turns his head slowly. "So untouchable. I didn't mean to." She explains, with her quiet tone and her brown eyes mottled with green, "And I swear, if you make a dirty joke about this last thing I'm going to kick your ass, while I still can," she adds with an insecure smile.

He is a little put off, too surprised and too scared to not miss the beat. His brain is slow in giving the answer.

"I always knew you liked it rough," Damon says, his voice raspy.

Their eyes lock together and they share a smile before she rolls her eyes.

"Asshole," she mutters.

"I'll try not to take that as a suggestion," he says.

She uses her hands to push against his shoulders but he's fast to catch them and trap them between his. His touch burns a little, but in a good way. His insolent grin falters on his face, and she knows that there is no way around this goodbye. And it's going to hurt so much more because she never knew she could ever care this much.

It would have been easier if she was able to pass her goodbye through his sleep, but vampires don't dream and she wasted her words and her pain on nothing. It would have been easier if she had never seen the emptiness made by her absence, but Damon was too stupid to just let her have her way out.

"This is it?" he asks "Fade to black and end credits?" fingers gripping her hands tights. He's wishing so hard she's going to tell him Lucy got it wrong, or that she found a way to cheat death. He feels like a stupid kid too scared to let go of the idea of Santa Claus.

How strange that when they had a chance to touch each other they could never run fast enough, and now neither is able to let the other go.

There is something in his eyes. There is sadness and there is longing. There are long days she can never be part of. There are nameless girls with dark skin, and when they turn their heads and he can see their faces his heart shrinks a bit more every time.

"I guess so," she says, incredulous that she'd give anything just to have a few more days to call him names. And touch him. And burn a little, together.

"Tell… Tell Elena that I'm sorry," she says, trying to offer a smile. "I understand that…she is angry at me. Tell her that she was never the pathetic kind; though, I won't argue that she can be selfish and impulsive," she adds with a choked laugh, her eyes becoming glossy from the unshed tears.

"I don't like where this is going," he says, recognizing his own words, shaking his head like he can stop it all. Her voice, her fading away into a life where he can't reach.

"Don't let it go to her head, but…I never knew what she meant to me either…" she continues, hunching her own shoulders , defenseless.

Damon pulls her towards him, holds the back of her head in his hand so that he can speak against her mouth and fix his eyes into the green, letting it engulf him completely.

"It wasn't supposed to be like this." Falling in love was not supposed to feel like dying. "I hate you so bad," he says, breath smelling like alcohol, voice getting thinner like his vocal cords being cut with a butter knife.

"Me too," she says, smiling though the tears. "You have no idea how much I-" and suddenly her chest rises like air is being stolen from her. She turns her head to look back where, in Damon's eyes, there's only an empty wall.

"What?" he asks, scared, and uses his hands to forcefully turn her face towards him. The splinters of green are fewer and fewer in Elena's eyes and he knows what that means, "Don't." he begs shaking his head before his voice turns hard, "Don't go. You own me. You own me big time and I swear to God if you leave me now I'll hunt you down and ruin your next life, too," and under the threats and the anger she can see his young pain. A pain so raw and real, every time the pin of the record player meets the scratch and the Otis Redding song gets stuck on the same word (wanting). He's following a girl through the crowd, he stops when she kisses her boyfriend on New Years Eve of 2030 but he doesn't take his eyes off her. "Do you fucking hear me?" she does. He calls her name year after year, and it's never her and she hears him. "There's not a rock large enough for you to hide under, Bonnie!" he promises.

Bonnie wants to crawl out of her skin and get under his, she wants to make a promise of her own, too, but her time had ended and it's fine because the last thing she saw was Damon Salvatore holding on to her like she was everything that mattered in this life.

She never knew.

"I'll find you!" Damon takes her by the shoulders, tries to shake her back into those limbs again, roars like a dying lion while, "If you try and leave me now I'll find you and-"

"Damon, stop! Stop!" Elena's wide eyes look up at him while he keeps her pinned on the floor of their bedroom, breathless and unnerved. "She's gone, Damon!"

He blinks down at her, his fingers too rigid to let go immediately, but he eventually pulls back and lets her put herself back together.

"She's gone," she repeats, trying to make the words sink.

"Of course," he says, scratching his head, looking lost and on the verge of madness, "Of course, she's gone. Just like that. Not even the decency to say a proper goodbye."

"No," Elena says, meekly, "No goodbye," she adds lowering her eyes. It's upsetting to see Damon falling apart for someone that is not her. She feels a bit like throwing up. She feels a bit like it doesn't matter where his heart is, as long as she can keep him.

He drags himself up, doesn't even deign himself to look at her, just reaches for the bottle once again. His balance is a bit off but something he'll recover soon enough thanks to his healing factor.

"Damon," she calls him, "Damon," but ignores her like she's a mosquito bothering him in a summer night and he needs to get out of the room to breathe again because the air is oppressively stuffy.

"But she said something else…" she admits as last pitiful attempt to capture his attention, raising her eyes to see him turn around slowly on his heels, face twisted with distress and something awfully akin to hope, "In my head, while she was going away."

"What did she say?" he asks, breathless. One knee trembling like it's about to give out under the weight of an unbearable hope. Scared shitless.

"Unless I find you first."

But one day I'll see you face to face
Then we'll say things we meant to say
It's too late for now but not always
We'll meet again and then we'll start from these unfinished memories

#

There is no reason good enough to die, because we are meant to live forever. Whatever has killed me, did not succeed. I loved you even when I didn't, and you have made my life worth its while.

#

Final Note: I started this fanfiction because I was angry to see Bonnie sacrifice herself for the uptenth time for Elena, like she ever did the same for her, like her life wasn't worth at all, which was exactly how it was, she didn't value herself and so I decided to let her face the pain of her choice with this story, I wanted her to see that she was wrong to play God and to suffer the slight of seeing how easy it is for the one she gave it all to get over her death (because this is basically what happened in canon too, the ones she did it for, Elena and Jeremy, were the quickets to get over it). My plan was to have her disappear and die permanently, but because you all were so invested in the story and the show does damage enough, I decided to cheat myself and leave an open ending. And maybe one day they will get their chances.

I hope you're not hating me too much right now. I am thankful for taking the time to read and review this story, the support I got meant everything to me. Thanks to those of you that voted for me in the Bamon Awards 2016, I wasn't hoping for so much but you did it and I'll be forever grateful.

As usual a big thanks to Syeira Lei for being the best beta ever.

The song I used at the end of this chapter is "Unfinished memories" by Eowyn