The Sting of the Truth

The church was beautiful, though he wasn’t certain what the name of it was. Getting there had mattered, not the name. That and he hadn’t been particularly religious since coming to the concusion that no gods existed. Not the Christian God the English had brought to his people in Ireland nor their ancient gods that his mother had told he and his brother tales of (despite her being English herself).
  Damon had to fight to allow himself to feel the beauty of the place as well as the sting of rejection that still lingered.
  It had been two years since Laura Reynolds had looked at him after a nine year relationship and then just…walked away. No explanation for what had changed suddenly in her when they had spoken of him sharing blood with her to extend her mortal life. He just came home and she was loading the last of her things into boxes in her car and drove off without saying anything.
  They had not spoken since that day.
  When the wedding invitation had shown up, Damon wondered if it was an olive branch of sorts. An extension to make peace between them when Laura had never allowed it even though he had tried. Every time he had reached out, she had pulled back, so he had just…stopped.
  He was a predator by his nature, but he was no bastard of a man like some. So he tucked his own pain away and resolved to perhaps never having his questions answered.
  The music that heralded the bride rang out and he rose mechanically with the rest of those packed into the church to stand, turning his head to look at her. She looked beautiful as she always did to his eyes, even though the white of her dress made her already pale skin turn her into a ghost. Her dark hair was longer than it had ever been with him and coiled into an elaborate coif atop her head, delicate tendrils curling around her round face. Damon’s fingers itched to touch her just one last time but her hand was already settling into the hand of another man.
  She was no longer his and had not been for a long time.
  Watching her settle her hand comfortably in Richard Fairfield’s and say the vows to bind her to him in sickness and in health made the stinging pain inside of him all the worse. He didn’t fight it, however. Damon had chosen to live close to mortals, to entwine his life with theirs for as long as he could until he needed to move on again. That was the choice he had made when he had left Ireland so many long years before.
  It was a pain as bad as spending so many years knowing his brother was out there and never trying to find him because of a promise he had made. Yet he let himself feel it, let it settle deep into his old bones and curl its claws into his lungs, his heart, his soul.
  Pain was a reminder that he was a part of the world and not just some casual observer. It kept him from becoming a man entirely out of time.
  When the ceremony was done, he debated leaving before she saw him. To be casually petty to have appeared at the wedding and leave before ever speaking to her. Damon had never been a petty man, however. Entirely too honest, usually, which was more of a problem for him given what he was.
  So he waited until the other guests speaking to the new bride and groom had died down before approaching. Laura’s face bloomed with a soft, sad smile as she caught sight of him and she touched her husband’s arm, saying something to him that he could hear despite the distance still between them.
  “That’s him. Let me speak to him alone, please, Rich.”
  To his surprise, the new husband kissed her on the cheek and left, taking the few straggling guests along with him towards the reception hall. Leaving only Damon and Laura there, standing outside of the front of the church.
  “I didn’t think you would come,” was the first thing she said.
  Shrugging, Damon replied, “I assumed the invitation was an olive branch after you avoided talking to me.” Those words hit their mark, because she flinched.
  Laura folded her hands over each other, nervously picking at her fingernails just as she used to when they were together. Then she shook her head and muttered, “I was scared, Damon. You were offering me eternity and I…I started thinking about it a lot and I got scared.”
  “You could have talked to me, Laura,” he said. Then he frowned and asked, “Unless…were you scared of me?”
  The concept seemed foreign. Laura had never been afraid of him, not even when he had his fangs at her throat. She had once unravelled beneath him in their bed from him grazing his fangs over her the delicate skin above her collarbones. Yet the look she was giving him now of guilt and fear said that she had been.
  That stung worse than her leaving without ever telling him why.
  “I would have never hurt you, Laura,” Damon insisted. “I may have killed people in my time but never because they merely annoyed me or a foolish reason. Did…did I do something that made you think that I would?”
  “No,” she replied, tears in her suddenly ragged voice. “Never. I just…I got in my head and couldn’t get out. So I ran away and I just…I hoped you wouldn’t chase. And you didn’t.”
  Damon huffed out a breath at that and grumbled, “I may be a monster, but I’m not that kind of monster.” When she looked at him in outrage despite the tears glimmering in her eyes, he added, “I know what I am, Laura, and I accept that. I’ve been a predator since my sire made me in a Irish farmhouse bed and I made my peace with that long ago.”
  I’m only sorry that you abruptly realized that you are prey and it scared you.
  He didn’t say that part out loud.
  Instead, he shrugged and asked, “So…are you going to run again?”
  Laura let out a little bark of a laugh and then shook her head, blinking several times to get rid of the tears in her eyes. “No,” she replied after a moment. Then she smiled at him and said, “I’d like you to stay. Get to know Richard, he’s a good man.”
  “I’m aware,” Damon said. “I already looked into him.”
  It had been when they had started dating, admittedly, and not after being invited to the wedding. Just because he had given her space didn’t mean that he had entirely ignored what she was doing with her life. He had not been a stalker, following her day and night, but merely an observer checking in ocassionally to make sure that she was safe and happy. And investigating the man that had become such a large part of her life half a year after she had left him had been part of that.
  Richard Fairfield was a good man. One without blood on his hands and without the weight of three hundred years of life behind his eyes.
  Laura gave him an frown and then asked, “You’ve been watching out for me? Even after I just left?”
  Shrugging, he replied, “You leaving never made me stop loving you, Laura. I still do. Always will until time makes my earliest memories fade.” It had already begun happening to some of his earliest recollections from when he had still been mortal. That was why Damon had taken much more to journaling than he already had been, preserving what memories that he could on paper since his mind was naturally shuffling some of them aside.
  She gave him a smile then, that soft smile that had once been just for him, and then held out a hand wrapped in delicate lace towards him. “Can we still be friends, Daman?” she asked, voice low as she used his birth name.
  Damon did not hesitate to take her hand in his own, smiling down at her as he replied, “I would like to remain friends.” Then he offered her his arm, saying, “Come. I shall return you to your husband like a gentleman.”
  Laura laughed and tucked her arm into his own, her body warm as she leaned into him for a moment. And Damon breathed out slowly as taking her back to her new groom felt like a knife. Yet he let himself feel it and would continue to let himself do so.
  Pain was a reminder that he was still somewhat human.