'Ello!
This one's kinda in the same vein as the other I just posted, but with a I-won't-describe-it-to-you-no-matter-how-much-I'm-dying-to twist. I think my muse has absolutely barricaded happy fics. Oh well, I'll take what I can get.
This, again, takes place some indefinite time in the future.
Disclaimer: Boy do I wish I didn't have to disclaim. They're really, no matter how much I wish it, not mine.
Happy (hopefully) reading!
then
"I can't live without you," Stefan murmured into her hair. His back was against his headboard, and he jostled Elena when he reached an arm to pull the covers up around her. "I know that you could," he continued.
"Stefan," she interrupted, trying to move out of his grasp to face him, but he held her firmly.
"I'm glad that you can, Elena," he silenced her, kissing her hair and rubbing her arms. "That's the way it should be. You should be able to continue even when the one you love is gone. That's human. But me being what I am, I couldn't."
She acknowledged his admission by silence before finally speaking. "I can't turn," she told him, honesty cracking her voice.
"I know."
now
With Damon, just before dawn, he walked to the woods. Silently, they sat beside each other on the edge of the foliage, each propped against a tree. When the first blistering rays of UV light fell on them, he gripped his brother's forearm with a ringless hand.
They awaited the inevitable with their faces titled upwards.
~V~
"Are you crazy?" Caroline demanded, standing over them with a very large beach umbrella behind her. "I know Elena's dead, and I miss her, too," her voice broke and she shook her shoulders, recovering, "but you can't just off yourselves!"
"Sure we can," Damon said. The elder vampire tilted his head up to his progeny, black humor ever-present in his bluer-than-blue eyes.
"Caroline—" Stefan started, sounding heavy.
"I need you," she persisted, voice honest and humble. She turned slightly to Damon. "And Jeremy needs you."
"I don't swing that way," Damon responded. Caroline wrinkled her nose at his childishness.
"Not like that, he's into Bonnie. He needs a mentor. You know he's gonna wanna turn or something stupid now, you're gonna have to talk him out of it or snap his neck or whatever it is you'll do as a mentor."
She waited impatiently for consent. "Look." She put a hand on her hips, balancing the umbrella with the other on her shoulder. "You two can't abandon me, I'm still new to this. I can't do eternity by myself."
"It's easy," Damon said, lounging against the ground in the way he had that made him appear like he'd be perfectly content to spend the rest of his eternity in that exact spot. "Eat whoever you want, whenever you want, and stay away from pointy wooden things."
"You were never by yourself," she insisted, "you always had Stefan."
Stefan turned his head and Damon was silent for long enough for Caroline to begin hoping she'd won. Then, "You can't guilt trip me, Caroline, I don't care."
"Bullshit," she spat at him. "That's disproven by your being here in the first place." Giving up on him, knowing the one she really had to convince was the younger of the two, she shifted again to Stefan. "Stefan, you can't leave me. You promised you'd help me." Tears weighted her tongue. "If you die, I have to die, too." She gulped. "And I don't want to." Stefan had always invited guilt trips, she hoped that wasn't about to change.
Stefan bowed his head, his shoulders tense. Caroline watched the burnt skin on the back of his neck flake off as new skin grew underneath. "Caroline, you don't understand."
"Yes, I do. I really, really do." She sounded so much like pre-vampire Caroline that Damon winced. Stefan looked up at her, acknowledging her pain over losing Matt. "I know it's not exactly the same, but I do understand."
His green eyes mirrored hers so well that for a moment Caroline was almost certain they'd been made to spend eternity side by side. She was in the market for a new best friend.
He sighed and looked down again. "I can't live without her."
"Yes, you can. You have to. Turn the switch off, do whatever you have to do, just don't leave me."
She knew she'd said the wrong thing in the middle of that last sentence, from the moment his head snapped back up, but Caroline Forbes was never one not to continue sticking her foot in her mouth.
"No," he growled, causing Damon to quirk an eyebrow and Caroline to shudder. "I will not become that monster." His eyes slide to Damon, who responded, "Gee. Thanks."
"Then don't!" Caroline whined. "No one's forcing you to! I just can't be a vampire without you. Or Damon," she added pointedly, staring down the vampire in question. "Don't make me."
For ten minutes, less than a blip of eternity, but the longest time period of any sort in Caroline's afterlife, there was silence.
And then finally, "Fine," Damon agreed, curtly. And then dismissing the ordeal easily, and sealing Stefan's agreement as well, "Where'd you get that thing?"
Caroline jumped minutely before answering, indicating the umbrella with a small wave of her hand, "I stole it from the McCullough house down the street. Tacky, isn't it? Now put these on," she ordered, tossing their rings at them. Both brothers obliged. Damon with a bit more finesse than Stefan's last fumble of doubt.
Relieved, Caroline smiled brightly.
Stefan turned wearily to Damon, who shrugged.
Two brothers, one girl. This could work.