Forever Is Not Enough

The Porthole

1922 - Chicago, Illinois

A vampire who has completely deserted their humanity is highly uncommon. One who lives forever learns very quickly that something they need more than anything – more than blood even – is a reason to live. If one truly feels nothing, no misery and no joy, then what is left? And there the problem lies: a vampire cannot truly live without their emotions, but that means that all of the pain and guilt lingers like phantoms in the shadows of their mind, just waiting for a beam of light to fall upon them.

This leads to the existence of the dangerous sort of vampires like Elena Gilbert. She could never find the balance between feeling and unfeeling. Every feed, every kill piled upon their conscience and the only way to bury her guilt was to feed. This meant that Damon spent his days trailing behind her with a broom, sweeping her messes under the rug and pretending that she was not making him crazy. Over and over she would promise to behave; after all, even without emotions, they were not animals.

Uncommonly, Damon was the better sort of vampire without his emotions. He never had any trouble controlling himself. Nobody would ever guess that the handsome man walking down the street drank blood to live. He never spilt a drop, and he never left any witnesses behind.

Chicago was the perfect place for both of them to relocate once they had reunited. The city had become a hub for the supernatural over the last century, and with such a large populous, nobody was the wiser to the things that go bump in the night. Elena's recklessness was a much smaller threat to their well-being in such a place.

They found a small bit of happiness there, though there was always a barrier between them; unspoken resentfulness lurking inside of them both. Neither of them ever bothered to acknowledge their feelings. Once they spent a couple of years feeding and compelling and dancing and drinking until everything was a blur, they seemed to forget about them altogether.

It was a clear summer's night. Elena was surrounded by noise and people, encompassed by the hot air and warm bodies moving all around her. They were buried deep in the Earth, in a club called The Porthole. The only way into the club was down a series of stairs through the back of a restaurant called Bon Ton. Nobody could say how deep in the ground it really was, but it was not until you were halfway down the stairs that one could hear the low rhythm of the music emanating from its walls. The place was dingy and poorly-lit, not to Elena's taste, but it was Damon's favorite. "Full of dames dumb enough to offer their necks for free," he would always say. He wasn't wrong, of course. Plenty of humans had a morbid fascination with the dark depths of the supernatural, and sometimes they ventured into them willingly, hoping for a little excitement perhaps.

Elena had not yet indulged that night, though she was quite hungry. Damon promised good news, and she hoped that they could share a glass of homemade whiskey and maybe a tall, dark someone in celebration of whatever it was. The only problem was that he was almost two hours late.

For the greater part of the evening, she sat stone-still, watching the crowd move around her and imaging ways to torture Damon when he finally showed his face. I could kill every thing in this room, she thought. See how he likes cleaning that up. Her daydreams only grew more malevolent as each second passed, until she discovered a much more entertaining course of action. She had not seen him at first. People moved across the floor like ripples in the water, slowly swaying back and forth to the smooth music that filled the air. Then the crowd broke apart for only a moment. His his eyes cut across the empty space and pierced hers. She sat captivated for a moment before she grabbed her drink and moved to a table with a better view, off to the far-right of the stage. He really was something to marvel at.

A small band flanked him on each side as he crooned into the microphone before him. His voice was deep and slow, running over her skin like soft velvet. She felt quite hypnotized by the sound of it. His skin was dark and glowing like bronze in the low light.