"Just shut up, Elena!" A roar broke open as Ethan parted his lips.

"Do shut up, Damon!" The world fell deaf at Elena's shrill voice.

"You can't help causing a scene wherever go you, isn't it? You just had to behave this one day yet you chose to mess it up." The veins in his throat popped up.

"Guess, I learned from the best." She huffed feeling her blood boil under her satin skin.

"You, woman have ruined my entire life." He couldn't wait to utter those words which he knew might hurt her yet.

"Seriously?" She sneered feeling her brain bleed because of his words. "And, in that case I am not even sorry a bit, just so you know." She had to put on that smirk to make him realise his words had no effect on her.

"God, I'm so fucking tired of you and you being a bitch. I'm tired of literally everything." He screamed the same words he did thousand times before for her to understand better that she had no place left in his life anymore.

"What the hell are you even shouting for when it is me who has to tolerate an animalistic creature like you?" She knew he hated drama so dramatic was she chose to become.

"How dare you?" If eyes could kill, Elena knew she would be in graveyard by then.

"Can you, I don't know, stop being the worst person on this planet?" Her hands flew in the air. Oh, so extra.

"God, you are such an embarrassment to be with! For the love of God, I'm asking you to shut your mouth for one last time." His clenched fist hit the table before him. Had it been earlier, she would have run to wrap his wounded hand in hers but now, all she could do was stand and stare at the unknown man she once believed to know in and out.

"Why don't you be the first one to shut up for a change, Mr.Damon Salvator?" Her chest rose and fell due to her heavy breathing.

"Shut up. Both of you." Their untamed eyes turned towards the magistrate who have had enough of their melodramas.

"This is no way to act in a Court, you people." He reminded them and the duo had to look around in embarrassment trying to avoid each other's eyes.

"..Sorry." Elena was the only one to apologise to the magistrate while inserting hands in his pockets, Damon stood looking at the wall behind the middle aged man like a mountain which couldn't be shifted.

"Now, please.. respect the decorum of this Court and act matured in the way you both are expected to." The magistrate shook his head.

"Now, would you two tell the Court why both of you want to have this divorce?" She looked away puffing air out of her mouth whilst Damon looked down upon the lace of his shoes.

"Come on? You have to answer the Court without wasting its precious time?" Unease built up in the air as they both fidgeted in their own comfortable ways; away from one another.

"....I don't love him anymore." She took a while to answer.

Damon simply stared at his wife, hurt and betrayed. He had heard this answer a thousand times before but every time it felt like a fresh burn to him.

"And, you Mr.Salvator?" The magistrate had to ask that.

"..I don't love her either." He replied meeting the eyes of the magistrate to make him believe that he told nothing but the truth.

Elena had to look into the direction of her husband who was sitting on a chair beside her. She knew the love of her husband died many years ago but yet there was a guilty pleasure in hearing those words again and again just to feel her broken heart not mourn him; the heart which only and only used to beat for him and none. The magistrate sighed.

"That is no ground for divorce. People fall out of love but how you mend your broken marriage, that is wholly up to you. You have to state a legitimate cause which should end this marriage as per the Marriage Act otherwise this application for divorce is bound to be rejected." The middle aged man informed who had no interest in all the exchange of glaring happening between the young married couple on his other side.

"There is a reason," Elena initiated looking into the eyes of her husband. "I love somebody else."

Damon wanted to tear his eyes away but he just couldn't let her know that her declaration was having him weak like all the times in past but he was too manly to let that show up on his face. Her heart belonged to someone else and that someone wasn't him anymore. She had no effect on him and he was hell bent to prove it to her. His cold stone eyes averted to his lawyer and then to the magistrate who impatiently awaited his reaction to his wife's statement. There was a turmoil of emotions going on in his heart but one couldn't tell by one look into his eyes.

"And, I love someone else too." His proclamation had his wife's world shaken like it did all the times before in history whenever she saw her husband in another's arms. There was nothing for her to do and it was not her place anymore and thus, all she needed to do was nod slowly confirming the same.

Plot thickened.

"But sad enough that you two had a love marriage." The magistrate's eyes studied the silent language being spoken in between the two eyes whenever they met. "How difficult is it to keep a marriage alive when it began on a note of love?"

"It's..it's very difficult to return to the same house which once used to be your happy paradise and now it's nothing but a broken frame of forgotten memories. It's difficult for a wife to keep waiting for her husband to return home night after night when she clearly knows that he is out there giving all of him to another woman." Her voice was firm enough to again plant those seeds of never ending hatred in his heart. She couldn't just put the entire blame on him, he thought.

"No happily married man would like to spend his night anywhere away from his wife and even if he does...it's because he knows when he will come home at night, all he will see is the image of another man in his wife's eyes." She gasped the way her husband blackened her character before the world even though it had a handful number of people inside the room.

His eyes met her and there lingered a spark which once used to magnetise two hearts together but now, it only crushed them like glass pieces.

"Well, marriage is no child's game and it cannot be finished by an utterance of few hurtful words." Both the husband and wife seemed annoyed by the magistrate's stubborn decision.

"But those two people at least need one thing in common to stay together which is love and we don't have that. The difference between then and now is that I don't care about her anymore and I am quite sure, she too doesn't." Ethan stood up from his chair not caring if it was insulting the institution of marriage, or the magistrate or his wife or he, himself.

"There is nothing left in this marriage. It broke a long time ago and now all it has is the ashes of this dead marriage. Why can't the death of love be a reason to get separated from one another when the kindling of such an emotion was the root of everything?" Elena pressed getting the middle aged man to think harder.

"All right," the man continued "If that is so, you people are given a span of a month to reconfirm your decisions. Stay together for this one month as cohabitants, try harbouring those feelings back, think about everything from the start and at the end of it, if both of you still want this divorce then you will have it." Her husband sat down with a thud, defeated. This was not what both of them expected.

"But we don't need time? We are sure about our decisions. We want this marriage dead, legally." She tried one last luck at persuading the determined man who by then started scribbling words on the order copy.

"Mrs.Scott, it's not you who decides but this Hon'ble Court does which needs time. Just a month, it is. If you still crave this divorce after a month, then there's no denial that you both will get it and in case your minds change, you get one another. Aren't you two so sure that these 30 days are going to keep your decisions firm?" She sighed in defeat and by the time, her husband had his forehead hidden in the web of his hand.

"Good." The man smiled eyeing the couple who refused to look at each other, sitting stoned on their chairs.

"Whenever you're starting to get annoyed by each other, remember how you felt when you first started talking and how beautiful everything was." The words had the couple sourly glance at each other.

❥

The least Elena expected while walking out of the Court after her divorce application was heard was to find her husband hug another lady just outside the Court. She froze in her track, dead. She had seen them hugging a hundred times before her eyes but there was some more assurance put into the passionate hug from her husband's end this time. She wanted to look away and not face them ever again but for some reason, she kept staring to let her heart die one more death. Stupid, her heart ached but the language had become unreadable to her.

"Don't worry, Damon," Taylor, the lady who replaced her in her husband's heart uttered cupping his face the way she used to. "A law can't force two people to stay together who don't want to. There's always a way out. Why are you worrying so much? It's just a matter of 30 days? Only. If we could wait a year then we can for another 30 days." She kissed the skin in between his eyebrows.

"I won't lose you, right?" He asked holding her closer in assurance that she won't slip away.

"You will forever have me by your side." Damon planted a kiss on his new love's forehead and Elena took a step back. She could immediately fall on her back had not a strong muscular arm supported her back.

As soon as Damon's eyes fell on his wife standing a little away, his jaw had to get stiff and arm definitely needed to grab Taylor's waist tighter, the way he held his wife's once. But what caused his senses to go crazy was when he saw his wife turn around and smile celestially at the man holding her back. He tried to stay calm and not let the world know how much he hated that particular face in the world as Stefan wrapped his arm around his wife. He wanted to scream but silence was a much easier option.

How worse could it get if they asked one another if the other one was doing okay? It was inevitable for both of them to have flashbacks of the day when four years back they held one another's hand with lips whispering promises as they became Mr and Mrs.

As Elena took shelter in her new man's arms, the pressure upon Taylor's arm increased so much that she was almost at the point of crying for the way Damon held her but she promised to stay beside him, so she better say nothing.

"Let's go." Damon forced a smile on his face; his eyes still learning how Stefan's hand was moving on his wife's back.

"Let's go?" Stefan, on the other hand questioned whispering into Elena's ear tickling with some warm air and she had that broad smile on her face. Her smile twice as bigger as Taylor's.

"Sure. It's going to rain, I guess." Elena smiled noticing the dry leaves flying away as the wind picked up its speed.

On the other hand,

"Damon, it's going to rain!" Taylor grinned pinching the cheek of her lover as she started walking wrapping hand around his bicep.

"I guess, it is." He smiled as she caressed her fingers around his bicep.

The couples parted ways towards their respective destinations holding someone in their arms they weren't meant to or who knows, they didn't want to. The wind carrying the dust made it impossible for anyone to see anything clearly but Elena, just for once, had to turn around while walking slowly, fingers entwined with Stefan's long ones only to watch Damon stepping away with the love of his life and it was not her.

Fighting with his judgement, Damon, after a jiffy, had to turn around too only to find out his dear wife moving away holding the love of her life and it was not him.

They were a ticking time bomb; preparing for the end before they even began. Falling out of love is one of the most painful things one can experience. The whole body aches from the inside and it's not the kind of pain one could heal by putting ice or a band-aid over.