I was laid over the sofa, playing with the wisps of my hair as Damon paced beside the fire.

"These past few weeks have been torture." Damon admits as i nod slowly.

"So much to do with equal consequence." I agree as he turns with his ever present smirk.

"How's that going for you? The stress i mean, I practically want to tear hearts out for the relief." I laugh lowly as i take another sip of my drink. Damon is cool and collected as he asks.

"I'll admit it's been difficult, greed never comes without its own price. I want Klaus, i want you. It seems i can't have both without the cost of myself." It slips from me humourlessly and thankfully Damon wasn't the type of person to delve into sorrow. He drank it away and that i appreciated.

He refilled my drink.

"I want Klaus dead but want you alive. I can't have both either." His truth reminds me of home. Knowing at least he still cared for me.

"I want to be good. I really do. I want the world to see me as life and not death. I want peace, a home to sit and watch the sun before it implodes. But i can't seem to help myself. No peace without conquer. I'm dying to revert back to old ways. Send army's of the dead storming through the streets. Take over and bow to none. I just don't want to be that person anymore." I grasp the bottle now instead.

"Then you should do something you have never done before." Damons words force my attention to him.

"Like what?" I ask calmly.

"Surrender." He shrugs.

"Leave Mystic Falls and all its current horrors. Go somewhere where you can be the person you want. Then come home to me when you know." I ponder the possibility of it.

"If you stay here someone you really care for is going to end up dead, at the price of saving the other. No one said you had to make that choice." I had decided it. Indulged myself in a war that was not my own.

I just didn't want anyone to die.

I couldn't stand loss. Grief. Pain. It had torn at me once and so id never cared enough to experience it again.

But now i was at a risk of losing two major cares in my life.

"I love you Damon. I'd kill anyone at your request. Your a brother to me, your blood will not spill unless mine does to. But i love him to, in a whole different way. It's tearing me apart." Sorrow washes to irritation.

Damon stops his pacing choosing to pull me down upon the sofa.

"I know Eris. I love you to. That's why im telling you. The best thing to do for yourself right now is take some time." He sours at his own words, as if the thought of me leaving burdened him himself.

"You know i hate to see you leave. But we bring out the worst in each other and everyone wants us to be on the straight and narrow." Maybe we did, bring out the worst that is.

How i had treated Klaus this morning all in my efforts to see Damon.

I'd felt rotten in the moment, hated the way his face fell trying to understand me.

But i had gifted him his chance as most told me to do.

I hated to admit i had never felt more normal, more at home. Maybe it was why i had been so panicked, so eager for him to leave in replace for Damon. Whom would help me be myself no matter the outcome. Who would alleviate stress.

"Let's drink more, talk less." I offer as he nods without complaint.

"Hey you remember that time you bit that witches ear off?" I turn at the sudden change of topic, raising my brow towards Damon.

I chuckle despite myself.

"Do you remember the time you locked Katerina in the tomb and facetimed me to laugh?" I recall as he rumbled with laughter.

"One of my biggest achievements." I shake my head at his words.

"No your biggest achievement has to be sleeping with that Princess, didn't she offer you an estate in her court for your performance?" I muse sipping on my drink.

"Maybe i would be living their if you hadn't slept with her father and then destroyed his empire. Burning that estate to the ground." I only remember it as he says it.

"Oh yes! That was amusing." Damon rolls his eyes but joins me in my amusement anyway.

"Lets play a game. One thing in your life you could change? What would it be?" I ask as he slouches back in a seat he had taken.

"I live by a moto of no regrets. Makes guilt easier to dismiss." He shrugs as if he can't think of anything.

I decide to go first.

"Well I'd have never left the hut the night of my turning. Maybe i would have become someone easier to love, maybe my plague would have been something different." I shrug lightly as he looks to me.

"I wouldn't have called you back to Mystic Falls. Everything that had happened to you, all the misery here. You wouldn't have gone through it, its my fault you did." I shake my head at him swiftly taking his hand in my own.

"We suffer through pain and misery, a downfall of being alive to the extent we are. We can not hope to avoid it, but are we not stronger for enduring it?" I ask lowly, contemplating it myself.

"Are you? Are you stronger?" He questions.

"I'm drinking my weight in bourbon, here with you. I'd say life is as it was always meant to be." The right people but the wrong place. And the worst time.

"I love you Damon Salvatore and i apologise that i have prevented you from killing the person who threatens the woman you are in love with." He sets down his drink.

"Why does this sound like a goodbye?" I close my eyes hoping to cancel care in its awakening but i should have known i never could when it came to Damon.

"Because it is. I hope all comes out well for you my friend, my best friend. And i will see you again, i won't let anything stop me from doing so." I stand and lean towards him, placing a kiss on his head.

"I'm afraid its time to get my affairs in order, lest they catch up to me and make me change my mind. I'll see you soon Day." A tear manages to slip through my façade.

"Goodbye Eris, i'll miss you."

"As will I."