"The prince is never going to come. Everyone knows that; and maybe sleeping beauty's dead."
― Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat

Damon sat on his bed staring through the window. Sometimes he wondered why the hell he didn't throw his ring away and die into the sun.

Alaric was gone, as was the Elena he knew.

She didn't even tell him to his face that it was Stefan, always going to be Stefan.

Then she had died and he had thought he would have died right away.

She was going to become a vampire; she was going to become the only thing she had never wanted to be.

How could Stefan have saved Matt first? Oh right, he respected Elena's decisions, he thought, which is one of the reasons that led her to choose him. He chuckled to himself, who was he kidding? He would never respect Elena's decisions if her life was in danger; it wasn't like him to do that.

"If I had met you first..." oh the irony of it, he sighed.

The worst thing though is that Elena's transition had complicated everything. He could not live now. He could not let her alone. She was going to be so lost and vulnerable... She would deny her new nature and Stefan and her friends were not going to help with that. He was the only one who could help her to embrace her new nature.

He didn't know how to do it though, staying was pure torture. He couldn't look at her in the eyes, he couldn't watch her and his brother again but he would have to do it.

Damon sighed again, to someone watching his life from the outside he must look like the greatest masochist ever since Jesus-Christ. Images of him and his mother hugging and laughing ran through his head, what had gone wrong? When the hell that was his life had begun? He was a nice child, stubborn and impulsive but generous and brave. Then she had died leaving him alone... He had never found someone to love him after that. Elena only cared for him, after everything they had gone through, all she did was care. It broke his heart. Damon thought it was pretty ironic to find out that a heart that doesn't beat can still break so many times and so loud. Katherine had only been the beginning of an eternal nightmare he couldn't end.

The only decent thing in his life was Alaric and he was gone forever, along with Rose and Andie. He felt cursed; he couldn't even come close to happiness without everybody involved in it dying.

It was going to take him a few days and a lot of alcohol to get out of his room and face reality. He thought about Elena waking up, how her head will hurt so much because her senses are going to be heightened, how she will refuse to accept reality to finally realize that she couldn't die. She couldn't do that to them, not after all the people that had died to protect her, she owned them that much.

She had told him to feel again but everything had been so fucked up since he did, if she was right and it was the best option why was he crying alone on his bed with bourbon next to him?

He was so incredibly exhausted from live, he felt like he had lived eight millions of years and even breathing was a hard task which demanded a lot of efforts from him. How many times can a heart be broken before it can't be pulled together again? Damon didn't know the answer to that question but he knew he was over the limit; his heart wasn't going to come back whole this time. There were too many open wounds, too many scars, too many tears rolling down his cheeks.

He thought about his mother again and he cried harder. He had promised her to lead a happy life and to be a good man, to take care of his little brother the best he could. He had failed her in every single way.

Oh, how he wished he could leave in the morning and get far away from Mystic Falls but he couldn't. He had promised Elena he would always choose her and never leave her. His love for her was so selfless that he was ready to destroy himself completely in order to be sure she gets her happy ending. He didn't matter anymore; he wasn't going to come back. Elena would change, Rick was a phantom –maybe he was with Jenna now- but him... then it suddenly hit him: the person that had disappeared last night was he.

Damon Salvatore, after surviving everything you can imagine, was gone. It was over, he gave up. The Damon he knew had been hurt too many times to survive.

What was he supposed to do now? He would stay; help Elena if she needed him then, when assured she is going to be fine, leave for good this time. He will leave everything in Mystic Falls: the unloved child he never got over, the brother who never really understood, the woman who lied to him for more than a century and the one who didn't want to love him. Everything was staying here while he and his Camaro will go somewhere else to be somebody new: somebody out of his perpetual misery, somebody calmed, somebody who would find peace and that –maybe- will end up being loved by some generous and giving creature of this earth.

It was either that or to die into the sun, he could always go back to the second option if the first one didn't work out.

But all of that couldn't happen immediately and he knew it. So he would put back his heart in the little box where it had been for so many decades. He would let the pieces there to assure that nobody would screw with it anymore.

He would be the kind friend, the good brother, the fair looser. Then, when everything is in place, he will leave with the sun waking up and without making a single noise. No goodbyes, no tears, no "I care about you, I'm sorry it's not enough".

He will stop to torture himself; for once he will put himself first and stop being the tragic anti-hero who is, in fact, the unknown hero of the movie.

But that would have to wait so Damon just lied on his bed, looking at his ceiling with tears in his eyes wondering if he had really been that much horrible as a person to deserve eternal unhappiness.

"This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."
― T.S. Eliot