DPOV

Future Damon, or Elena, or whoever the hell is bored enough to read this, just know that this was not my idea. I'm currently so angry at myself for agreeing, once again, to what seems like any crazy idea that happens to pop into her head, and yes Elena, if you're reading this, that her is you.

So I'm writing this because I lost a bet. There's no need for details as I'm sure whoever's reading this already knows, and if you don't, you never will, so don't ask.

I'm supposed to be writing my… feelings at this current moment in time. Whatever's on my mind was the deal.

Only problem is, that there's never anything else on my mind but her.

Elena Gilbert.

There's no way I'll ever be able to put into words everything she makes me feel because I discover some new way to love her every day. I can only try to write down how much she means to me, how much she will always mean to me.

If I'm reading this sometime in the future then I hope you're still as insanely happy with the girl who is currently at your side, as I am right now. If she's not, get your damn ass in gear and find her because nothing will ever matter again if you don't. If you've hurt her, if you've left her, I don't care what she's done or what you've done, you are nothing without her and you better not rest until you make it right again.

If, Elena, you are reading this, then I hope you know every day how much you mean to me. I love you. So much sometimes, that I can hardly function when I think about losing you. I didn't know what it meant to truly love someone until I found you and I'll love you even after the day I die.

So, this next part is for you, Elena. I hope you're reading this with me or whilst I'm out shopping for something for you to wear in the bedroom. I know you're laughing right now and I'm still sure it's the most beautiful sound I'll ever hear.

Anyway, here goes…

Poets often describe love as an emotion that we can't control, one that overwhelms logic and overrides common sense. It is a feeling that erupts within the soul, takes over every action, every thought, until it is recognised and abated by either reciprocation or rejection.

I never understood why people would want to die for the ones they loved. It never made sense to love someone so much, that you would willingly give up your life so that they could live. If you loved them that much, surely you'd want to live for them, live with them, not die for them.

If the person I loved with every fibre of my being, died, so that I could live, it would be in vain. I would follow them into darkness if only to stop my heart from beating, so I would no longer have to feel it breaking.

I had believed, foolishly, that what I had with Katherine was the type of love I had once scoffed at. I would have died for her, I did die for her. I would have been anything, done anything, just to know that she would still laugh, still smile.

I had believed that I was in love. I had thought that I could never feel more strongly for anyone than I did for her. I was an idiot.

I spent 145 years searching for a feeling that I thought would make me whole. 145 years of looking for a woman I thought loved me as strongly as I thought I loved her. I just wanted to be loved.

It wasn't a big thing to ask for. Most people go through life loving and being loved without ever having to search for it, to try for it. To live everyday just trying to be accepted enough, to be worthy enough, to feel it for even a second.

I won't pretend I have never been loved. My mother loved me as though I was the sun. I remember every detail of every precious second I spent with her. I remember her smile, her laugh, the twinkle in her eyes as I ran towards her. I remember the soft bell tone of her voice whispering stories as I fell to sleep, safe in her arms. I remember her perfume as she led me through the intricate gardens next to our home and the smell of freshly baked cookies as she worked tirelessly in the kitchen.

I remember her love.

It is the only aspect of her that grew weaker by the day and it was the one I desperately clung to, praying that I would feel it again, if only once more. In 145 years she was the only one who ever truly gave me that feeling.

I was terrified that I would forever wander throughout my life without ever feeling what many take for granted every day.

Then I met her.

It wasn't love at first sight, I never felt the head over heels sensation of falling. I can't pinpoint the moment it happened or the reason it started. I could only recognise the feeling she gave me; love.

Oh, she didn't love me. Not when we first met, and not for a long time after that. No, it was my brother for which her affections were held. She hated me like the thousands before her had done when they had met me.

I was the other brother, the evil one. The one you ran from but never ran to. I didn't blame her. I was different when we first met. I was evil, I was callous, I was a monster.

She changed me, slowly at first, but more completely than anything or anyone had ever done before.

It was funny really. When she entered my life, it was I who was screwed up. I was the murderer, the senseless killer. I used her friends, killed her brother, hurt her in ways that any normal person would never be able to recover from. She should have hated me, despised me, found a way to end me. I would have let her.

She didn't though.

She forgave me, understood me, helped me to stop the downward spiral I was falling helplessly into.

She saved me.

I never planned on falling in love with her, but from the moment we met, it was clear neither of us could control what was happening to us. I don't believe in fate or destiny. I don't like the idea of something else controlling my actions, but I was drawn to her irrevocably. I saw that mirrored in her too.

I watched her fight it, deny our attraction, our longing to just be. I understood why she did it. No one could love someone like me. It was insane to love the person who had caused so much heartache to befall such an innocent life.

So I woke up every morning alone, hopeless. Feeling like the love of my life, my entire existence, was waking up with the wrong man, the wrong brother. But, at the same time, I found myself hoping that she'd still find happiness, even if it was never going to be with me.

It was easy to love my brother, logical. He was the obvious choice, the easy choice. The choice everyone else had made.

(I should have known, Elena, that you never were one for doing the expected.)

She saved me and made me the person she believed I always had been. She also exposed Stefan, and everyone else, to the person he really was inside.

That was the hardest part; the guilt. In feeling for me, she pushed Stefan towards his true nature.

Not deliberately, her selflessness was the reason she stayed with him for as long as she did. We broke our hearts to save his.

Then I got bitten. I don't regret saving Caroline and Matt. I'm actually friends with them now, don't even ask how that happened because I'm confused just thinking about it. Blondie's alright. I'm glad, as crazy as it sounds, that she turned. She's stronger for it and she's the closest thing to a sister I've ever had. Matt, well, he's still annoyingly human, but I guess he's not so bad either.

Alaric is still my best friend, my drinking buddy and my less handsome, but still totally badass, side kick. Bonnie, well, Witchy's the same as always really. She hates me less now, and, in truth, we've reached a grudging respect for one another. That's not to say she doesn't use her witchy juju to migraine me every once in a while. She reckons I deserve it, I reckon she's just jealous that she can't have my body. Sorry, I'm all Elena's.

And Tyler? I've forgiven him. It wasn't really his fault and he's pretty useful now that he's a hybrid and Klaus has finallydecided to leave us alone. He still smells like wet dog though, oh well, you can't have everything.

(On a side note, if this is being read by anyone other than me or Elena, drop this book now, erase what you've read from your mind and pray to god you never let anything you've just read slip from your mouth, because it will be the last thing you say. Have a nice day.)

Anyway, back to me getting bitten. Well, Elena being Elena, she just had to let Stefan look for a cure and put herself in danger as I slowly went insane. As I died.

I can't say I wasn't afraid of death. I didn't want to die when I had finally found something worth living for. I deserved to. It would have been justice for all the lives I had taken, for all the hurt I had caused.

But they didn't let me die. They sacrificed their love and Stefan his freedom, in exchange for my life. She did it to save me. He did it to save me.

I never wanted to be saved, but they just had to go and do it anyway.

That's why, when he left, we both struggled with the overwhelming guilt of the grief our feelings for each other had caused. I shouldn't have loved what was never mine to love. I should have walked away the moment I realised, but I didn't. I couldn't.

To walk away from her would have been to walk away from the feeling I'd been searching for since my mother had died.

She was my heart and without her, I could never be whole. Without her, I would never be me.

I have no idea how we work.

We don't agree on much, in fact, we rarely agree on anything. We fight all the time and we challenge each other every day. I constantly want to either kill her or kiss her.

I can't concentrate when she's around. I can't breathe when she isn't. She is everything and I will never want for anything, as long as she is with me.

That's the thing, she's my other half. It's so clichéd but so undeniably true. She is everything that I'm not and when she's gone I'm not whole. Before I met her, I walked through life thinking that was it. I was always going to be alone, unloved, a soulless vampire with nothing but the blood and lingering screams of my victims reverberating through my veins to keep me company. I thought I was living my life as was expected of me.

But now, I know that I have never really lived.

I couldn't live before because I hadn't met the one person I never knew I always needed.

(Because I do need you, Elena.)

I need her more than I need anything. It's terrifying and it's crazy, it's ridiculous, but I wouldn't want it any other way. I wake up every morning and the first thing I want to do, is see her face.

And I look at her, curled into me, as though she'd never belonged anywhere else as perfectly as she did beside me, and it hits me all over again.

I love her.

(I love you, Elena.)

I will never be able to fathom how I managed to have her love in return, but I've never been more thankful for anything.

So, at this moment Elena is downstairs, no doubt congratulating herself on her brilliance and doing a little victory dance.

(Our song is the next on your playlist, so I'm assuming you want me to hurry up and sweep you off your feet. Yes, ma'am!)

She's just finished packing and we're about to go travelling. Where, I can't tell you. We're starting in Georgia, where we go after that will remain a mystery to these pages until I decide to write in here again.

I'm going to ask her to marry me tonight.

I have never been so nervous in my life. I'm a vampire and I'm practically having a panic attack at the thought of asking a teenage girl to say 'I do'. It's not her answer to my question that I fear.

I know she loves me. She shows me every day that her feelings for me are as strong as mine are for her.

But asking her this will bring up the biggest issue in our relationship.

She's human.

I'm not.

If I could change for her, I'd do it in a heartbeat, no pun intended. I would swim oceans, trek deserts and join Team Twilight for her if it would mean I could be what she deserves.

But I can't.

I told her it didn't matter. It was her choice. I would stay with her no matter what she chose, until her dying day, however far away that may be. It wouldn't matter if she was old and wrinkled or forever young. She is always beautiful to me.

(You will always be beautiful to me.)

I don't want her to turn because she thinks it's what I want. Of course, it iswhat I want. Just the thought of losing her tears me apart inside, but I won't be selfish with her.

She deserves to live, to have kids and grow old with a man who is worthy of her heart.

I can't be that man. I can't give her, no matter how much I want to, what she deserves, what I know she wants.

She will never have my kids and I can never grow old with her.

So, if she decides to stay human, I'll stay with her until her eyes close for the last time. If she decides to turn, I'll make sure she knows how much I love her every single second of forever.

If she decides to leave… I will let her go.

Because she made me understand that love is not about dying to save someone or fighting to keep the one you love by your side.

It's about knowing how to be completely selfless with someone else. It's finding the courage to love someone so completely, that you'll do what's right for them no matter how much it hurts you to walk away.

If she asked me to leave, I would, because I love her so much that I would break my own heart to keep hers beating.

So, I'm about to go downstairs and ask the love of my life to marry me and make me the happiest man alive, well, the happiest non-living, living dead man.

And I'll say again what I said before. If she's sitting with you and she wants to be human, it's her choice and you will love her with every fibre of your being. If she's a vampire, she's probably kicking your ass just to prove she can and you'll love her for the rest of forever for it.

If she's not with you… if she decided to live, then you let her go. I'm shaking writing this because I can't imagine the pain you're going through, the pain someday I will have to face.

Be thankful for everything she gave you and never regret a moment of pain because she was, is, worth every second of it.

If you're reading this and she's…if she's…gone…

I can't…

She's probably made you promise to live. To move on as though you won't fall apart as soon as she breathes her last breath.

I can't tell you what to do because just thinking about her no longer existing is making me want to rush downstairs, right now, and turn her just so I'll never have to lose her. I can deal with her hating me forever as long as she continues to exist.

All I can ask is that you try, just try to carry on.

It will be the hardest thing you'll ever do, but it's for her.

If you, Elena, are reading this and I'm not there…

If I've left you, if we've argued, trust me, I'll be coming back because I don't know how to live without you. You are everything to me. I love you and that will never change.

You can kick my ass as much as you want for being the first rate jackass that I know I am, and I'll apologise for the rest of my existence if it means you'll share it.

If I'm not there because I've died…

Don't you dare f*ing give up. I mean it, Elena. Don't. You. Dare.

I will fight to get back to you again if I can, but I can't die knowing you will follow.

You will see me again but it will be a long time from now and I want you to live. I want you to fall in love again and do everything we never got to do. I want you to be happy.

Just, please, don't give up.

I love you, Elena. I always have and I always will.

So, thank you for loving me and pushing me to be the better man.

Yours always,

Damon.

(P.S. Our songs just starting…)