A/N: So I'm new to this fandom and I never thought I would write anything for Vampire Diaries. I never thought I would watch it either. But here I am! This story is AU in that it takes place in the somewhat distant future. You'll catch my drift. I hope. (Gulp) If you want to get into the mood for the story, go ahead and play the Avett Brother's "If it's the beaches." Thanks for reading.

Chapter One

Sometimes they send one another postcards. Glossy tourist attractions on one side not withstanding, this is how they know where the other is and they need to know where the other is to inhale and then exhale. Of course, you can only say so much on a postcard but that is why they choose those four by six pieces of thick paper. There is protection against saying too much. They are careful even with thousands of miles constantly separating them. They are careful with their words instead of careless.

So Damon writes about the gelato in Rome and the macaroons in Paris. But they still know one another too well: when he receives the card with a lovely shot of the golden gate bridge on one side and her scrawl on the other (Everyone has dogs here. It's tempting to get one too, but I don't) he knows what Elena is really telling him (I still don't understand the concept of eternity but I am learning a little more every day and the life span of a dog is but a breath in time). Postcards keep them safe, apart but not without one another, hands brushing, lingering, aching to grab hold but unable or unwilling to lace fingers and truly touch.

Damon knows that Stefan and Elena exchange letters, long letters with numbered pages. He knows because occasionally he sees his brother and Stefan doesn't try to hide it. Neither of them have her so why shouldn't he leave a letter out for Damon to find and read? Why shouldn't he mention Elena's favorite coffee spot in San Francisco or that she learned to love oysters? Stefan becomes the gypsy, showing Damon all his wares and Damon nods and sips his drink and lets it go because it is all so stupid.

He read the letter about the coffee shop and the oysters, too and he felt only sympathy for his brother because it was so clear that in these letters Elena was trying to give Stefan what he wanted, pieces of the girl he rescued under the Wickery Bridge, the first time, but not the second. Elena can only give him pieces of that girl in letters because Stefan will never hold or kiss or touch that girl again because she is dead. That girl once promised, "It will always be Stefan," but that girl couldn't understand what a word like always really meant. She did not have the capacity for such a vow, not before she died and woke up, gasping for breath, to a new life where always meant something wholly different. Damon can't bring himself to tell his brother this. Let him keep his letters and his fantasies if they make him happy.

The ache for Elena is constant and sporadic all at once, like an illness one grows so used to over time that he never sees a doctor over it. Damon still remembers what it felt like to be sick, if he tries hard enough–a darkened room, cool hands against his forehead, and scratchy pajamas. He remembers the werewolf bite too–their first kiss.

I like you now, she said then.

Still human, it could only be about the now and not about the always. She said as much when she said goodbye to him, years ago. "Can't we just find our way back to one another someday?" she cried to him with such passion it made him ache. "We have all the time in the world, Damon!"

They fought then, bitterly and cruelly, until too much was said to be undone. That was their problem; they said too much, loved too much, fought too much, wanted too much until they were so far away from that moment in front of the fireplace, the summer before she went to college, when she chose him. They destroyed whatever they built.

It took a year for her to even contact him after that, via postcard, where she could not say too much.

I like it here. One sentence and a return address in San Francisco written with a bleeding pen. But he knew her heart; he could trace her face in the dark and he knew what she meant: I miss you but I like my life now. I'm living it. And we can be in touch but only a little. If that's enough for you.

He wrote back: I'm glad and he knew that she would know how much he missed her and yet how happy he could be for her even if her life did not include him. Even if it hurt him. Even if. He considered adding: And if you're ever in Barcelona... but didn't because she very clearly set a boundary and holding his tongue on that first postcard opened up an old wound when he remembered telling her fiercely: It's because I love you.

And her harsh response: Maybe that's the problem.

So he didn't add his comment about Barcelona, his allusion to them ever being together again. He just stuck his hand in his pockets, searching for Euro coins to pay for a stamp for a postcard with two words on it.

She replied. Do you like Barcelona? which meant: Are you happy? Because I hope that you are.

Some days, his next postcard read because he could be content but never happy without her.

Maybe that's the problem.

Why he is thinking about that night, so many years and fights and make ups later, is a mystery to him and he turns his pillow over so it is cool against his cheek, as if this will be the thing to help him sleep tonight.

And these postcards, exchanged now for years, a whole stack...Maybe he is as stupid and as hopeless as Stefan. Because no, it won't always be Stefan. But maybe it won't always be Damon either.

He sighs and the sheet shifts and he cannot get comfortable or fall asleep because of the fucking postcard he pulled from his small mailbox in Rome this morning. His undead heart lifted when he saw the glossy image of a trolley and he smirked at their unsaid contest for the cheesiest of tourist attractions marking their correspondences. Silently competing at something so stupid made it easier somehow.

This time, in her sometimes illegible writing, he read: I still haven't ridden a trolley. Have you ever? I guess I'm waiting.

Though he translated every single one of her other postcards, hell if he knew what this one meant and now hours later, unable to sleep, he still doesn't. He'd liked to shake her.

What are you trying to say?

What do you want?

But.

He did that once before, just after she graduated college, while they were looking for a place together. He felt like he was in his own personal version of Goldilocks; she did not like any of them. This one was too big; this one was too small. This one had too much light; this one not enough. And on it went until one day he finally yanked the wheel of his beloved car and pulled over to the side of the road. He was frustrated and confused and he couldn't read her face anymore so he half yelled, "What will make you happy? What the hell do you want from me?"

"Free," she cried as if she'd been waiting for him to ask the question. "I want to be free." Her doe eyes looked ashamed then, wishing she could pull the words back into herself, the words that started the unwinding of what was once two inseparable people wrapped together (always touching, even if it was only pinkies, or a foot pressed to a calf) now on two separate sides of the world, sending one another the occasional postcard.

Damn her. He doesn't want to remember. Damn him too. He doesn't want to forget.

So he does not sleep but instead turns her words over in his mind, trying to parse out their meaning.

A/N: So since this is my first foray into this fandom, I would so appreciate your thoughts on this! I'm pretty insecure about this.