A/N: Hey all. This was requested by a few people on my tumblr page and so, here it is. Please keep in mind that it's AU and that I'm basing it loosely off of the 5x21 episode where Stefan dies and on a movie called "City of Angels"
Someone To Watch Over Me.
It only takes a minute. A second to watch your life flash in front of your eyes.
It only takes a moment to die.
And, Stefan Salvatore was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
He opens his eyes one last time before he begins to fade away and all he can see is her face, tears falling as she sobs against him.
"Stefan! Stefan, please don't go. Stay with me..Please! You have to stay with me." She cries out into the cold and dark parking lot, clutching on to him as if he's going to awaken, as if he's going to open his eyes. As if he's going to be okay. Although, he never does and the last thing he whispers in the cold air is her name..."Elena."
"Somebody help! Please, someone help me!" She screams as her voice echos into the dark and she feels the hot tears still escaping, turning into choking sobs as he beings to turn gray.
She wants to close her eyes and wish this all away, she wants to wake up and have it be a dream, she wants to do so many things. But, all she can do is scream out his name in a tormented agony, telling him to not leave her, not leave his brother, not leave his body.
However, she's too late as his soul slips away and he dies in her arms.
"Stefan?" Bonnie's eyes are watery and filled to the brim with tears. He watches them spill over as he asks about a solution, as he asks for her to save him from this fate.
"I lost it." She replies, her voice is soft and broken. Her eyes are darkened and regretful. She can't fix this, she can't save him and she knows that she'll have to live with the consequences for the rest of her life.
She feels his hands being placed on each side of her shoulders. He's ready to leave this earth, ready to clear himself of all the pain and his sins.
Ready to be free.
Although, he can see it in Bonnie's eyes. The hurt and sorrow. The misery and confliction. She doesn't want him to go. She doesn't want to watch him leave.
It kills her inside when he utters the words. "Watch over her for me."
"She needs you." Bonnie sobs, crying out in pain as she feels him pass through her, the anchor to the other side.
A long drawn out moment of silence falls upon the whole room as he leaves and it's like she can hear him whispering to her. "I'll watch over her, the best I can. But, please you need to do the same. Please, Bonnie. Do it for me."
The days and weeks fade away as the grief and denial becomes acceptance. The months slowly turn into years. And, he's lost track of time. Although by now he knows that time isn't important in heaven. All that matters is to watch over the one's he loves. So, he does.
He watches Damon leave Mystic Falls and sell the boarding house. He watches his brother turn into someone who he'd be proud of and he wishes he could be their the day that his brother finally finds the woman of his dreams.
He watches Caroline grieve over the loss of Tyler and finally move to New Orleans. Going in search of everything he thinks she's always needed, of everything he thinks that she needs.
Finally, he watches her. The love of his life, the one that he would die for over and over again, just to be by her side.
She finally gets another chance at living a normal life. She finally gets to be human again because of spell that Bonnie and a few other powerful witches had created.
He watches her life moving along without him.
Loving her silently from afar.
He's there when she finishes college. Clapping along side her brother, Caroline and Bonnie.
As she begins to grow older, he knows that she's much wiser and a lot smarter than she was when he had known her. And, he's proud of her for all the things she's gotten through, even though he had never really told her- he had always been proud of the young woman that she is.
He watches her fall in love again.
And, there's something about the moment in which the new love of her life bends down on one knee and asks her to marry him that he finds fairly humorous. "He's got it all wrong." Stefan mumbles to himself, sitting on their car as he looks out into the field that they're standing in, an outline of flowers and lights, filling the small space when he hears her laughter pick up and he sighs out a breath. "As long as she's happy. That's all that matters now." He silently reminds himself, slipping off their car and smiling back at them as he watches them run towards it, hand in hand, smiling about the future that they'll get to have.
Tragedy strikes them one night, though. On an old dirt road, he loses control of the car and Elena suffers the most.
"You need to do something! You need to save her!" Her husband shouts at the nurse, attempting to push past the nurses and doctors who are restraining him from his new bride's hospital room.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Donovan. It doesn't look like she's going to make it." They inform her husband of the bad news, watching him step outside of the waiting room, cursing God and everything else for his one mistake. "I was drunk and we were arguing. It happened out of nowhere. It was my fault!" He cries, turning around just in time to hear the machines begin to go off in her room, signaling her death and realizing that she too, is slipping away when he hears her flat line and the doctors who had rushed in call out "Time of death 11:08pm"
"It's too late for her now. I am so sorry." The doctor tells him as he slips out of Elena's room, watching when Matt slides against a wall in the hallway, crying.
It hurts Stefan to know that she's about to suffer the same result as he. But, he's there for the unexpected moment, When her life slips away and she joins him on the other side.
She's dazed, her long brown hair is pulled back to one side when her brown eyes meet his and if it wasn't for the loss of her life or the tragedy that she just suffered in the most unimaginable way. He'd probably be smiling to see her there, beside him again.
However, his facial expression is ice cold, nonreactive because he never wanted this for her and his heart is broken in a million little pieces over seeing her standing in front of him now. Scared and confused, helpless.
"Am I dead?" Elena questions, watching as his head hangs low in utter despair when he truthfully admits. "Yes, you are. But, I'm here to help you through this. I'm going to get you through this."
It's a quiet night, as he watches her try to adjust to her own death, months after it's happened.
They're over the city, sitting on a ledge as she sudden smiles over at him. The first smile that he's seen in months, the same one that he had dreamed about seeing again.
"Does it get any easier? Living in the shadows of everyone else." She asks him, out of the blue. Looking out towards the city lights, the cars and people living their lives below them- oblivious to the angels that surround them.
"No. It doesn't just gets easier to live with. And, neither does the pain of knowing that we'll never be in their world again." Stefan admits, attempting to get up and backing away. He needs a moment, he needs some time alone to think because he hates how numb he's become to all of this, he hates that she's with him.
"I'm sorry." He finally utters out, watching her get up from the ledge as she tilts her head to the side, the cold wind blowing against their faces.
"For what?" She asks him, taking a step near him as he looks down at the pavement, exhaling heavily when he finally says. "For leaving you behind. For this this life that you're living now. For being the one person who selfishly wanted you here with me more than anything."
She pauses, pursed lips and watery eyes. As much as it's taken for her to comprehend that she's never going to see Matt again or be in the world of the living. A small part of her is being selfish as well when she says. "I'm not." She confesses. Taking a step to him, cupping his face into her own hands, watching the sorrow diminish away after a while.
"Elena! Don't say that. You could have had a life, you were-." He begins to say, feeling her thumb brush against his cheek as she softly whispers. "I know. But, everything happens for a reason, Stefan. As much as I didn't want it to be this way, it was my time to go and there was nothing anyone could do."
She's accepted it. Her fate, her death. And, he see's it now in her eyes.
However, he's the one still struggling with it. "I had a wonderful life. I had a full life, I had amazing friends and future planned. But, Stefan...When you died, none of that mattered to me. I may have looked happy on the outside. But, I died on the inside the day that you did." She tells him, wiping away his tears with her fingertips as she feels her own begin to fall.
"I know, I saw." He declares, seeing her face contort in pain as they both relive the memory of him dying.
"It was you." She suddenly hears herself say as his eyebrows furrow and he takes a step back.
"What are you talking about?" He asks her, hearing her let out a small laugh.
"The night I was having trouble sleeping, three nights after you had been gone. You were the one who was looking after me, weren't you? I felt you, Stefan. I felt your touch and the kiss you left on my cheek. You've been there for months, looking after me. Haven't you? " It's like her question to him falls upon deaf ears because they both know the answer. Yet, he gives her a simple nod and that's all the confirmation she needs.
"I've been watching over you for years now, hoping that you'd have a good life. I didn't want this for you, Elena. I didn't want your life to end up like this. I didn't want you to have the same fate that I did. I just loved you so much, I wanted to protect you from the world and I failed at it." He tells her, turning his back away when he feels her near him again. This time she places her hand gently on his shoulder. "Stefan, look at me. Please." She begs, the tears have returned when he turns back to face her, heaving out a breath.
"And, I never wanted to lose you in the way that I did. But, it wasn't your fault and as much as I want to blame everyone and everything- it's no use. Because, I finally understand why I'm here. After months of searching for an answer, I finally see why." She tells him, seeing the glistening of his green eyes in the moonlight above them when he asks her. "And, why is that?"
"To watch over you, like you watched over me." She replies, pulling him into her embrace and holding him in her arms as they stand on top of the building in the middle of an unnamed city, savoring the knowledge that they aren't alone anymore and that they have each other to lean on, that they have one another to look after.
A/N: And, that's it. Thanks so much for reading!