You have been forewarned: major character death.
Fear is the most elegant weapon, your hands are never messy. Threatening bodily harm is crude. Work instead on minds and beliefs, play insecurities like a piano. Be creative in approach.
...
It will be demonstrated that nothing is safe sacred or sane. There is no respite from horror. Absolutes are quicksilver. Results are spectacular.
-Jenny Holzer, '15 Inflammatory Essays'
Witches fingers, dark and delicate, could snap, could break. Long and spindly, always reaching their dark thin fingers, wavering in the wind. A crisp crack and a hand tumbles down hitting the grass with a springy bounce before settling. The earth will open soon, swallowing the witch's hand and it will once more emerge from her peeling skin. Skin so dark and paper thin.
A river birch without its plush green leaves, dropping dropping dropping branches and sticks and bark. He lets his finger peel back the witch's skin, it comes off in sheets and falls to the ground, bark once more. Peeling, peeling, always peeling, the river birch is never smooth but gnarled fingers scritch and scratch and peel.
This is how she finds him.
He can feel her approach, like light and love and warmth but with such strong overtones of death. He didn't want this woman, could have gone his entire life without this woman; he wanted her. She was supposed to be here today, in the graveyard underneath the river birch, she was supposed to be here with bundles of flowers tucked underneath an arm like a goddamned candy striper passing out meds. But she isn't here. She is.
He doesn't look at her, one hand still gripping the bark of the river birch as though with just one tug he could rip a hole through time and space. No, he doesn't look at her but he sees her. Rich dark hair tumbles down from a pale crown, river runoff from a coal mine twisting and twining and cutting across the earth. Her eyes are brown yellow hazel, so many colors and so many lives, the entirety of time melded into one small woman. She is the culmination of centuries and her eyes reflect the depth of time. A pert upright nose, thick black lashes framing wide eyes, and a strawberry pout are all such lies. They all hide teeth, sharp teeth made for cutting through the muscle and sinew of a paper covered banquet. She is DANGER DANGER DANGER gliding toward him in that graceful way that ballerinas move without actually moving.
"Hello," her almost musical voice, a melting pot of accents and cultures, stands in such sharp contrast to the sounds of the witch's hands crashing together, the peel of the bark by heavy hands, the stillness of the graveyard. "I suppose I'm not surprised to see you here, I'd figured we'd hear from you eventually." Arrogance drips off of every accented word, god if he could just rip, rip her tongue from her predator's mouth, her eyes with their huntress' gaze from their sockets.
"I'm more surprised to see you," he rasps, fingers itching to peel, peel, peel. God, where is she. Is that all he is to her? So little that she would send her false child? He can feel her sharp eyes on him, like a hawk watching a blind vole come to ground. His fingers grasp desperately for the bark, the witch's skin, he just wants to peel it all away, to feel the smooth, pale skin of his one-time lover, his one-time friend. All he can feel is the false child's calculating gaze, assessing. God, does she do anything else? Can she not glance, or look, or even stare?
"Damon," he laughs, loudly and with effort, spitting bile and acid into each word, "he died last year. He and Elena," he's struggling to find the words to explain what she already knows, ripping through the bark of the river birch, hunting, hunting, HUNTING, for the skin of his lover. And she knows! She knows and she knows. This petulant child standing before him, composed of centuries and stardust and an all encompassing light shrouded in the deepest of nights, did she have to stare at him like that? God, does she do anything else? Can she not glance, or look, or even gaze?
"They lived through everything, gave up an eternity for a time bomb, gave up me, for something so finite. For love," he hates the word, wants to scrub it from history and leave it without meaning, shape, or form. "They didn't have as long as they'd expected. You know why?" Wide eyes don't give her the chance to answer. He knows she doesn't care, that she knows the story, but she doesn't know that he doesn't care. Joke's on her now, he chuckles to himself, gleeful to have the last laugh, his fingers curling around the never ending peel of the bark. The witch's skin that peels like sticky notes, a never goddamned ending stack of sticky notes, falling away until it's grasped by a witch's hand and they return to the tree together.
"Cancer! She died of cancer at 52. It felt so, I don't know, ridiculous? After everything that we all went through, cancer just felt a little ridiculous." Stefan chuckles humorlessly and jumps when another hand falls. God, how he hates river birches. "Damon drank himself into the grave after that. I almost wish he'd just committed suicide as awful as it sounds because then it would have been over and he wouldn't have made the rest of us miserable for the last seven years."
"And then there were two." The wind picks up, scattering skin and hands and Stefan whines with displeasure. Her dress swirls around her knees, loose brown curls whip and swirl around her face, and she is power. Raw and unforgiving and uncompromising. She had once whispered the words that had driven him mad, softly calling over the breeze, that his love was trapped in a river birch. Peel, she'd commanded, peel the skin of the witch who has cursed you, peel for your lost love until every river birch has skin as soft as hers, until every dry and cracking witch's hand has been shed and then the curse will be broken. He knows it was her, this smug and powerful child is why he has peeled every goddamned river birch in the southeast for over fifty years.
"Will you tell me about her?" a quiet begging ends the sudden gust of wind, his words only heard by the swift cushioning of the breeze. The tempest in her eyes softens, the lines between her heavy brows smooth back to reveal her youth. He can't bear the soft cock of her head, so akin to her father. A ghost of a smile appears, wistful and loving.
"She and Daddy are in Cardiff, there's a large collection of Turners making the rounds so they've gone to see them. Do you know of J.M.W. Turner, Stefan?" Her soft face conflicts with her taunting words. Taunting him with the images of her and him together. He can remember almost nothing but river birch and witch's hands and peeling skin, but he can remember her face when he walked away. He can remember being tired and stressed and so worn out. He knows that was a mistake.
"Such a weathered crown sits upon your head of stone," each word is punctuated and emphasized, her hand stretches over the back of his, the pads of her calloused fingertips pressing hard against his bleeding nails. He must keep peeling peeling peeling. The witch's hands never stop falling falling falling. Her other hand, her left hand, her loyal hand, her loving hand, her sharp nails and diamonds and gold. Her fingernails press through his shirt, his skin, his chest cavity like a hot knife through butter. Her fingernails, shaped into ovals and painted a deep emerald green, rip through layers of epidermis, through veins and muscle, breaking bones and bending cartilage in their wake.
Her hand holds his heart, tightly within her grasp and he can imagine her pianist's fingers, long and elegant, soaked in blood and time and dust. She is an eternity, wrapped in love by her and him. They will never give way to time, the odd trio, never give up each other for the tick tick tick of the clock, letting seconds, hours, days just waste.
"It's time to stop peeling the river birch, its skin is only bark and its branches are just that." Quietly commanding, his world. Just. Stops.
Peace. Peace. Peace.
For a second the urge to rip just falls away and he can hear everything. The steady in and out of her breathing, the birds, the wind in the leaves of the river birch.
His heart leaves his chest cavity with a wet sucking noise, like the soaking smack of a plunger losing its vacuum after a toilet well plunged. A look of desperation, of lost causes and unfulfilled dreams, crosses his features one last time before he hits the base of the river birch. She lets the organ drop from her fingertips, suddenly disgusted that it even once held a purpose of being gripped in her hand.
"Your father is going to be cross about that one." She's cleaning her hand on Stefan's shirt, threadbare and full of holes, trying to remember to scrape the blood out from beneath her emerald nails when she can reach a tool later. Standing, with a supporting arm on the peeled river birch, she reaches her clean hand out to take her uncle's arm, tucking it in his elbow. He offers her two bundles of flowers, peonies based on her mother's direction, reserving the bouquet of sunflowers in the crook of his free arm.
"Oh, I doubt Daddy will mind too much. To be honest, I hadn't even planned on telling him." Enzo eyed the young woman on his arm, the one that called him uncle and kept secrets for just the two of them, the one that took so much after Caroline despite the two not sharing a drop of blood, the one that smiled at him like he had given her the world with a bright red cherry on top. "I might have to kill you if you tell mum, it's the absolute worst when she's mad at me." She sighed and pouted, tugging lightly on his arm to emphasize how much she hated Caroline's disappointment.
"She's going to find out eventually, sweet." He'd keep his mouth shut, Rebekah would too, but death has such a way of soaking into everyday conversation with them. He couldn't place what Caroline would feel in relation to Stefan's untimely death, especially at the hands of her adoring step daughter, despite being her closest confidant.
"I'm counting on eventually," Hope muttered. Enzo tutted and patted his niece's arm in both a comforting and condescending manner. They completed their task quickly and quietly, he'd promised Rebekah that they'd be back before their reservation in Richmond, and god forbid he was late for date night. Hope gagged but climbed into the passenger seat, happy to be leaving the small town and happier still to be leaving behind the river birch.