disclaimer: these characters do not belong to me. no copyright intended.

for amy, who prompted it's my party and i'll cry if i want to. this is set in the future; it also involved too much math when it came to liz forbes' possible age. title is from boomkat's the wreckoning.

—

and my life would stay the same

—

Caroline likes to tally her days up as though she's in prison. Damon remarks about this every five or so years, or every five minutes, going so far as throwing her calendars in the garbage or burning them in the fireplace. The kindest act he's done is giving one to some school children at the start of their semester in France. Kids who have a clock ticking away deserve a reminder that their days are numbered, he says.

In Italy, she hosts a party in a grand villa Damon's compelled the owner to give them. She doesn't condone that sort of trading, always going as far as asking people and buying things for herself, like a normal person. But it's her birthday present, even if he doesn't say it, and Damon being a d-bag to everyone else is sometimes the way he expresses his friendly feelings towards her. His lessons in communication haven't improved, even with all their global hopping.

She's outside, on the front porch steps, nursing a glass of alcohol in her hands. She's watching nothing, just like she has since they left Virginia a few months ago. It's night, her favourite time of the day, because nothing happens, yet everything does. It occurs when no one's looking, where no one can see it transforming, and there's a surprise left when the lights flicker on. She likes the surprise; she's starting to find them hard to come by already.

What isn't a surprise is him leaving the party to share the same space as her. As creepy as it sounds, she smells him before she hears him, that roll of his eyes, the raise of his eyebrows, the gesture of his hand. "Don't you think you're a little too old for parties?" He stands beside her, leaning against a pillar. His eyes dart to her but they linger on the distance, possibly trying to find what she's looking at so he can berate her.

She doesn't glance at him. Her fingers grip the glass a little tighter, getting ready to prepare herself against any of Damon's comments that hurt worse than wooden bullets. Caroline rolls her eyes. "It's not like I can turn sixty-nine any other year."

"It's not like you're going to look sixty-nine," he says. She glares, which causes him to roll his eyes at her for her benefit. She thinks that's her birthday present, him teasing her like this, except swap teasing for taunting and judging. She's gotten this gift every year. "It's another notch on your bedpost, Barbie. You'll get over it."

She turns back to watch the lawns, the darkness creeping slowly up towards the porch and the bright lights. Her party is filled with so much light it still attracts darkness, even after all these years. "Maybe I won't." She purses her lips and intends to leave it at that, to have Damon sigh like usual and walk off with some quip about how she's a stuck-up Barbie. But she sighs, exhaling, and feels more tired than she should be at her age, "I don't like being dead. I don't like that I can't see wrinkles on my face. I have no grey hairs, Damon! Everyone I know is turning old and shrinking."

Damon moves and sits beside her. He's fast, even when he doesn't tap into his vampire lightning speed. He's too close to her, knee bumping against hers. His arms settle on his knees, his back arching, like he's just some regular guy who sits like he's got all the time in the world to relax, like there's no werewolves or hunters or witches sniffing around for the scent of him. "While you're still tall and hot, I get it." He shrugs, glancing away from her. "You're having a midlife crisis a decade or so too late."

She frowns, turning to look at him. She looks at his profile, her eyes settling on his cheek where there should be a scar from a run-in with a werewolf who liked to get friendly with vervain-tipped knives. "This isn't a midlife crisis."

"No?" he turns to her, eyebrows raised for once in genuine interest. Or maybe he's judging her. Damon's only stayed consistent with that. He sized her up from the moment he first saw her in the Grill, and he's doing it to her now, on her sixty-ninth birthday in Italy. He's capable of making her feel seventeen and vulnerable without even trying.

"No."

"Then what is it?" he speaks to her like she's a child who doesn't know anything, not what he knows, anyway. He always has all the answers, and it always ends with them losing something, even if it's temporary; a bit of skin, a minute of breathing, someone they care for.

"It's me being fed up with everyone I know dying. I'm alive, but I'm not living."

He does that really annoying eyebrow thing that makes her want to rip all the fine hairs from his forehead and strangle him with them. She's sure it'll be possible in a few centuries. "Maybe it's because you refused to leave Virginia, let alone Mystic Falls. To live, you need to move."

She glances away, her voice quieter, "My mom's there."

"And soon she won't be."

She drops her glass. "Damon!" Her hand goes out to shove him, hitting him as hard as a brick falling on a toe. He doesn't budge, which pisses her off, and she thinks about pushing him again, but she goes to pick her glass up — or the pieces of it. She leaves it on the ground.

"It's the truth," he says, shrugging, but his mood has changed. Damon Salvatore has a soft spot for Liz Forbes; he always has and he always will. Caroline thinks he only sticks with her and Stefan because of some weird promise he must've made to her mother. "Face it, Barbie. She's not going to live forever. And you need to start living before she realises how you're wasting your immortality."

She glances away, feeling her eyes become wet. She tries to think of anything else but the inevitable; bunnies, Bambi, Stefan's hair being spiked into a mohawk, Damon actually grinning with something genuine for the first time in twenty years.

It doesn't work.

Her hands go to wipe her eyes. She makes a point not to look at Damon or even see him from her peripheral. She expects him to walk away.

She feels a nudge at her shoulder, something soft, something very unlike Damon. "Look," he sighs. "I didn't have the chance to tell Daddy Dearest about what happened to me, let alone have him accept me. I know she'd want to know you're going to live eternity to the fullest. Not moping around like some child."

Looking at him, she frowns, stressing, "But I am a child, Damon." Over the last seven decades, Caroline hasn't felt herself change much. She's lived more than she ever thought possible, seen more things than she knew existed, yet she still felt insecure at times, neurotic at most, and she knows she will always be a control freak. Seventeen forever and she now understands why Stefan's so serious and broody. Damon, at least, is out of his teens - or so she assumes, since half the time he acts like a child.

"That's only because you choose to be one," he says, his voice strangely kind. "It's your sixty-ninth birthday and you're spending it out here sulking like a teenage twit."

"I needed a breather."

"You've got eternity for that, Caroline." She hates how soft his voice is, how he's so understanding when she doesn't want him to be at all. She's had these talks with Stefan, but he's never touched on her mother or her disappointing her mother's last wishes for her to simply live and be okay. She knows she'll never be okay, not in this lifestyle.

"If we survive it," she says.

"Chin up," he taps his own. He'd go for hers, but she thinks he knows she'll bite his finger off if he tries it now. "We've survived Stefan's One Direction phase —" Damon planted the posters all over his room in London, which is something she would say if she wasn't in her dark little hole of self-pity, but he's got a lopsided tilt to his lips that tells her he's thinking it, "— we can survive anything."

She really does try not to smile. "I'm stuck," she sulks.

"So," his hand goes to rest between her shoulder blades. "Get moving," he says, giving her a little push. "And call your mom, too. She's been threatening to shoot me if you don't at least let her sing happy birthday."

She stays seated with him for a few hours - not without giving him a push in the shoulder first, sending him sprawling on his side, for the shove she knew she needed all this time. He's such a d-bag for waiting so long to give it to her.