THE IMPLANT

Disclaimer: The Vampire Diaries does not belong to me. Original characters, such as Kaitlyn, are mine.

AN - This MPREG one-shot story takes place after the dinner attended by Klaus, Elijah, Damon and Stefan. It involves Dr. Meredith Fell, Alaric's new love interest. In this case, Stefan didn't go to the cave where Bonnie and her mother were unconscious with an opened mystery coffin. A review by BOOKSvsFICS prompted this idea, and I ran with it.

KAITLYN

Young Kaitlyn Fell used caution as she drove the huge motor home around a curve in the road. This large vehicle was really intimidating compared to driving the car she was used to. It was only her second time behind the wheel of the RV, and that first time, the drive had been short. It was bad enough that she felt nervous about driving the big rig, but tonight she was having to drive it on a dark, winding road lit only by the headlights.

"Where are you now?" came Meredith Fell's impatient voice over the cell phone ear piece Kaitlyn was wearing.

"I just went past the intersection of Dusty Lane." She uncurled the white-knuckled fingers of her right hand and took her hand off the wheel long enough to brush a long lock of dark brown hair back from her face.

"Well, hurry it up. I've got him. We're near the side of the road a bit south of there. Joe will be beside the road looking for you."

"I'm coming," Kaitlyn said. She shook her head a bit, worried and nervous. Why was she allowing Meredith to get her involved in this escapade? Okay, she did know the answer to that. Cousin Meredith had paid for her education as a registered nurse and then as an anesthesia nurse. And she was family. She was overpowering when it came to talking Kaitlyn into doing things she wouldn't otherwise do. What Meredith wanted, she usually got.

Kaitlyn didn't know why they were doing this tonight. Meredith had just spent hours doing emergency surgery on a patient of hers. She must be weary. She shouldn't be undertaking this project. But Meredith had had the vampire followed by Joe and Orin for several days and tonight the opportunity had presented itself. Surely, there would have been other opportunities coming up.

"I should be out with my friends," she whispered to herself as well as addressing the RV. She worked during the day at the local hospital and often spent evenings out with co-workers. "But no, I'm out here this evening, wrestling you around. And I'm getting ready to violate the rights of some person. Hell, not even a regular person! Some vampire! Why a vampire, I ask you? This has got to be dangerous, not to mention illegal."

"I can't hear you. What'd you say?" Meredith asked in her ear.

"I was just talking to this monster vehicle," Kaitlyn said, glad the older woman hadn't heard her words.

The vehicle's headlights spotlighted Joe standing on the grassy shoulder of the road, so she eased the RV mostly off the pavement onto the grass. Putting it in "park," she turned on the emergency flashers, and then she moved over, opened the door and let down the steps.

In a moment, with no other vehicles in sight, Meredith and big Orin came out of the dark woods, carrying between them a body. As they managed to get it up the stairs and into the RV, Kaitlyn could see it was a male, a young guy. They laid him on the floor and brushed bits of dirt and dried leaves from him. Shot with vervain, he had collapsed there in the woods.

"Get going, Kaitlyn. You know where to go," Meredith ordered.

The younger woman hurried back to the driver's seat and soon had the vehicle easing on down the winding road. She felt very aware of the fact that there was an unconscious vampire in the RV with her. A real undead blood-sucking neck biter. As far as she knew, she had never been close to one, although she knew this little town of Mystic Falls was rumored to have them. Of course, she knew it wasn't just a rumor. It was a fact and the Fell family, one of the town's founding families, knew the truth. The family's shame was that cousin Logan Fell, deceased news reporter, had died a murdering vampire.

She finally pulled into the campground that Meredith had chosen, and she maneuvered the big rig into the site already paid for. In fact, Joe's car was parked there, also. With a nervous sigh, she left the driver's seat and she and Joe got out to connect the RV to the electricity hookup at the site.

Once inside again, they made their way toward the back area. Lights now lit the vehicle's interior. Orin and Meredith were now in what was the bedroom, which took up the whole back end of the vehicle. There was no bed there, however. The room, with its windows covered, was now a small operating room.

The two men, Orin the big guy and Joe the smallish one, then carried the limp body to the back room. They proceeded to remove the young vampire's button-down shirt, which, oddly, had a scorched cuff on the left sleeve. There was no undershirt.

As a nurse, Kaitlyn found it disturbing to see how they handled him, not even supporting his head, which flopped forward or backward as they manhandled him. They hefted him onto the operating table, where his arms hung over the sides of the table until supporting armboards were put in place.

"Start the I.V." Meredith ordered Kaitlyn. Meredith herself was fooling with a set of instruments and other equipment.

Kaitlyn pulled the I.V. pole over near the right side of the table. Hanging from the pole was a clear plastic bag of fluid, already containing the botanical drug vervain. Kaitlyn swabbed the arm near the elbow with alcohol and prepared to stick one of the slightly bulging veins. Her hands were shaking.

"Hurry up! We don't want him to wake up," Meredith fussed.

This dire warning only made Kaitlyn's hands shake more. Stick the vampire's arm, she urged herself. He's out cold. He won't feel it. He won't suddenly rear up and sink fangs into my throat! Hurry, or he might. Oh, God, how'd I get into this mess?

She punched the sharp needle through his skin and it went right into the vein she was aiming for. With relief, she taped it in place and adjusted the drip rate of the medicated fluid. She noted the one ring he had on his right hand, but she made no move to remove it. Normally, jewelry was removed prior to surgery. Well, this case was not "normal." There was no wrist watch on either arm.

"How fast should it be going?" she asked her cousin, who told her. She adjusted the drip, wondering how the medication was going to circulate in his body when his heart wasn't beating. She didn't dare ask Meredith. He already had vervain in his body. Would this additional amount overdose him? Can a vampire be overdosed? With a nervous sigh, she put a surgical mask over her nose and mouth as the others were doing.

The sudden ringing of a phone made all of them jump a little. It was the patient's cell phone in a pocket of his jeans. No one made a move to answer it or turn it off. After a brief moment, everyone went back to the job at hand.

There was no anesthesia machine in the room, just a small table for Kaitlyn to use if she wanted This seemed totally weird to her. She had nothing to give the patient except the I.V. medication and an extra syringe of the drug. She had nothing to monitor his condition with. No paper on which to record his vital signs.

"It feels wrong not to have ECG leads on his chest or an oximeter to put on his finger. No blood pressure cuff. No stethoscope to listen to his heart!" she told Meredith.

"You don't need them, Kaitlyn. Use your head. His heart isn't beating and he isn't breathing," Meredith fussed. She was scrubbing the fellow's abdominal skin with a clear liquid germ killer.

Kaitlyn sat down on the provided chair at the head of the table, the traditional place for an anesthesia person during most surgeries. She looked down the length of the young man's body. He was lean and muscled from his shoulders to the beltline of his low-rider jeans. She glimpsed a bit of the white underwear.

Her eyes came back to his chest, which had no breathing movement. He had a few hairs around his nipples and some more between his navel and his belt, but otherwise his torso was mainly free of hair. She had to assume vampires had the usual pubic hair. With his arms out on the boards, she could see his armpit hair. Did he use an anti-deodorant? He seemed to have no body scent at all. All in all, it was weird. If she hadn't known that Meredith planned to catch a vampire, she would have thought, by the look of him, that he was a regular human.

Out of habit, she put her hand under his chin and lifted it a bit, tilting his head back a small amount. If the patient were human, this would make his breathing easier. Then, she reminded herself that he wasn't breathing, anyway. She glanced down his body again and watched Meredith and Joe, both now wearing sterile gowns and gloves, lay sterile surgical drapes onto the patient, exposing just his abdomen. Orin moved around the room as the "circulator," doing other necessary things.

Kaitlyn's attention came back to her patient. Under her hand she could feel his flesh, not warm and not cold. Just cool. He had a nice, unblemished complexion. There was a smudge of dirt on his left cheek and the tip of his nose; she gently wiped it off. She could just feel the beard stubble under his skin. He had shaved recently, this evening, probably. She couldn't remember ever seeing an illustration of a vampire with a beard.

His lips were light pink, not blue as would be expected if someone hadn't been breathing for some time. She carefully lifted his upper lip and looked at his teeth. They were clean, white and even. His eyeteeth looked a bit longer than the other teeth, but they certainly were not fangs. Where did the fangs come from? Did the eyeteeth change?

She did notice the faint scent of wine. And asparagus? Had he just eaten a dinner of real food, not blood? Did vampires eat real food? There was so much she didn't know. Didn't want to know.

"What's his name?" she asked her cousin.

"What?" Meredith asked, not looking up from what she was doing with Joe's assistance.

"What's his name?" Kaitlyn asked again. She really wanted to have a name for him.

"Stefan Salvatore," Meredith muttered.

Stefan, Kaitlyn thought. That's nice. She looked at his lightish brown hair, combed just so, short and upswept in a style common these days for guys. There were a couple of bits of dried leaves, which she picked off. He had narrow sideburns in front of his ears, dark eyebrows and dark lashes. There was a little brown mole on the right side of his jaw. She had also noticed a tattoo on his right shoulder. A rose? Who knew vampires got tattoos!

She carefully lifted one of his eyelids. Hello, Stefan, she silently said, looking at his eye. The dark pupil was really dilated. What little she could see of the iris looked dark green. Was he aware? What if he was aware, but totally paralyzed? That was an anesthesia nightmare. Paralyzed but awake during surgery and suffering a lot of pain. Was it possible the poor guy was really awake?

She had nothing to tell by. No monitors. In a way he looked really dead with no heartheat, no respirations, pupils fixed and dilated. But she knew Meredith had dealt with vampires and she claimed this one was not really dead. Or at least he could be revived and would be just fine. According to know-it-all Meredith.

Kaitlyn closed the staring eye and turned her own eyes to the operation. She knew that Meredith was putting certain things into the young man's abdomen.

"I don't really understand why you're doing this," she ventured to say. "I mean, I know you've been working for several years on abdominal pregnancies. And I know you said you've made some discoveries, but why would you choose to put an embryo in a male and why a vampire?"

"I've already done successful trials on human females who had had hysterectomies. Got several healthy babies and the mothers didn't die of complications. Of course, I did have some fatalities, but that's to be expected," Meredith said in an even tone, not interrupting her work. "I'm pretty sure I've worked out how to have a male carry an embryo and have it develop into a fetus, but for reasons I'm not going to explain, I think a male vampire has a good chance of doing it.

"Stefan is a young, healthy male who won't die of hemorrhage. Besides implanting the embryo, I'm putting in small reservoirs of drugs that will protect the embryo from his male hormones and his vampire immune system. The reservoirs' pumps will deliver the drugs over many months. I'm putting them deep so he won't know they're there."

"Won't he wonder about the various incisions? Oh, forget that. You told me he would heal quickly. But what about the scars? What about soreness?"

"He won't have any scars. He should heal in minutes, leaving no scars. Maybe a tiny amount of temporary bruising. We're going to distract him from abdominal soreness, if there even will be any," Meredith assured her confidently. "We're going to put him back in some woods to let him recover. He'll know something happened, but he won't be able to figure out what. I'm planning a distraction."

"What if an animal attacks him while he's unconscious?" Kaitlyn asked.

"Animals don't seem to feed on vampires."

Kaitlyn didn't ask anymore questions. She didn't understand her cousin. The woman was brilliant. She'd finished medical school at a young age and had trained to be an obstetrician/gynecologist. She had then concentrated on infertility problems.

After a few years in practice she had added the specialty of pathology and she was presently a medical examiner for Mystic Falls and the county. Her work load with this was light, which was good, because she had office hours and did surgery at two different hospitals.

In secret, she was experimenting with this abdominal pregnancy thing. She would lose her license and end up in prison if anyone found out some of what she had done. In fact, Kaitlyn knew the same could happen to her with connection to this case. It was frightening.

Kaitlyn suspected that Meredith held something incriminating over the heads of Orin and Joe. Orin Fell Smith was a cousin and Joe, real name Jose Pinto, was an illegal immigrant. In addition, Meredith paid them well for their loyalty and discretion. She was paying Kaitlyn well, for that matter.

Kaitlyn wondered what would happen if this procedure was successful. It was always possible the tiny embryo would not survive. But if it did, the young vampire eventually would have to realize that he had a "tumor" growing in his abdomen, one that moved. What would he do? Would he spoil Meredith's experiment by having the "tumor" removed? Or would he succumb to the wonder of carrying a baby and protect it?

While all these thoughts were running through her mind, she had both hands on his face, one on each side. Almost automatically, her thumbs were gently stroking his soft, smooth cheeks. A couple of times she used one hand to brush across his forehead and to run fingers along his eyebrows. Her finger traced the neat, straight nose. He was such a good-looking guy it was a shame he was a vampire. She wanted to talk to the "sleeping" young man, but she knew Meredith would ridicule that, so she kept her mouth shut.

After a while, Meredith said, "Well, I think that does it. I'll keep an eye on him as best I can during the months to come. Hopefully, he won't decide to leave Mystic Falls, but I've inserted this nice little tracking device along with everything else, so I should be able to follow him." She peeled the surgical drapes from the young man's body and cleaned off any blood. To the younger woman she said, "Kaitlyn, give him a bolus of vervain intravenously and then remove the I.V."

Kaitlyn had a syringe of the drug and she now injected it into Stefan via the intravenous line. Once the drug was in, she removed the needle from his vein. She watched the small puncture wound heal right before her eyes. Boy, if only regular people could heal like that!

"Okay," Meredith said, removing her gown and gloves. "Get him dressed, gentlemen."

Kaitlyn held onto his head, supporting it this time, not letting it flop around as it had when the men had removed his shirt. She watched them properly button the shirt front, but now they had to tuck it into his pants. Before, they had pulled it free. They decided not to just stuff it back under his belt. Stefan would be suspicious if they did that. Joe undid the belt buckle and zipper.

Kaitlyn found herself looking at the front of the underwear, but it was impossible to really tell what his private parts looked like. She wondered if they were just the same as when he was human. She knew vampires sucked blood from people, but were they also capable of having sex with people? She felt so ignorant where the vampires were concerned. While Meredith had studied them, Kaitlyn had deliberately avoided learning about them.

Orin easily lifted Stefan from the table by putting his big arms around the young man's chest and holding him up. Joe worked at pulling the shirttails down, and then the pants up. He zipped them up and buckled the belt. Then they put him back on the table.

"Kaitlyn, time to drive this rig. We're going to put him somewhere different from where we picked him up," Meredith ordered. "I'll direct you."

"We gotta disconnect the electric," Joe reminded her. He went outside to do that while Kaitlyn got into the driver's seat. Some of the interior lights stayed on using battery power. When the vehicle was ready, Kaitlyn slowly drove the RV forward from their pull-through camp site and then made her way toward the campground exit. Joe followed in his car.

Some minutes later, she pulled over to the side of the road where Meredith directed her. She then watched as Orin and Joe carried Stefan down the steps. Meredith went with them carrying a canvas tote bag and a flashlight. They disappeared into the nearby woods.

"Goodbye, Stefan," Kaitlyn said in a whisper. "I hope all goes well for you." She wondered what he was like awake. If he had a warm smile, a sense of humor. Or was he nasty and evil? Perhaps she would see him in town some day.

Meredith and the men were not gone long. When they returned, Kaitlyn drove the big vehicle back to the storage yard where it was kept and where her own car waited. Joe again followed in his car. All four of them collected the many intruments and cleaned up the operating room. Finally, they were ready to leave. Kaitlyn's active part in the venture was over. Her memory of it would last a long time.

STEFAN

The first thing he was aware of was the hoot of an owl not far away. Concentrating on his sense of hearing, he could not hear the heartbeat or respirations of anything bigger than a rabbit. He was alone. The next thing was the smell of dirt and dry leaves. He was lying face down on the ground. The third thing was the odor of alcohol, whiskey, to be exact. In fact, he could taste it on his tongue. What was happening? Where was he?

He couldn't move and he knew why. Vervain. Someone had injected him with the stuff. He hadn't been paying any attention to possible attack. He'd been walking around in the woods, thinking and brooding, after Damon had walked away from him. After Damon had ascertained that he, too, loved Elena. After both of them had left Klaus to deal with his siblings. For Stefan it seemed like his life was just one problem after another right now. And here he was recovering from being shot with vervain.

He opened his eyes and found that his head was turned to his right. Light from an almost-full moon shown on him and lit the area. Lots of trees still laden with Fall leaves. Was it the woods were he and Damon had been walking, the one between his own home and the Mikaelson house?

His right hand was about a foot from his face and under the hand was a whiskey bottle. He could see part of the label; a brand of scotch. He normally didn't drink scotch, preferring bourbon. He sure as hell hadn't bought this bottle. So someone had put it in his hand. Despite the fact that he could taste the stuff, he didn't feel like he had drunk much of it, if any.

The fourth thing he became aware of was abdominal discomfort. Damn, he was lying on something hard, a rock or something. He wanted to move, but he couldn't yet. Aside from the uncomfortable pressure of the thing under his belly, he felt no other injuries. He knew his shirt was damp and cold underneath him, though.

As he lay there with many thoughts and questions running through his head, he became aware of another scent, a subtle one. He concentrated on it. He had smelled it before. Where? It wasn't exactly perfume. It was more like the scent of shampoo or soap or skin lotion. That was it! Skin lotion. Elena had used it a few times, but it wasn't her favorite. Elena wouldn't leave him lying in the woods, loaded with vervain.

Some other woman had touched him. He was sure the scent was on his face, more specifically near his nose and mouth. What woman had had her hands on his face while he was out? Had she kissed him? He certainly hadn't bitten her. There was no taste of blood in his mouth. They hadn't had sex, he knew. He couldn't get it up when he was vervained, not until the drug totally wore off.

Was that the reason for the whiskey in his mouth and on his shirt? To try to hide the scent of someone who had touched him? Or to convince him that he was drunk and had passed out in the woods?

He wondered how long he had been out. He was sure the moon had been low before and now it was beyond overhead. Had he been unconscious for two or three hours? Damn! It would have taken more than one shot of vervain to keep him out that long. Why had she or they done it? He wished he knew.

Finally, the vervain began to wear off and he could move. The first thing he did was roll over onto his side and look to see what was under him. It turned out to be three things, two stones about the size of his fist and a piece of broken tree branch lying on the ground. Whoever had dumped him here had not bothered to check the ground first and didn't care what he was lying on.

The aroma of the scotch increased and he realized the dampness of his shirt was spilled whiskey. He hadn't done it, he was sure. What kind of game was someone playing with him?

Slowly, he sat up and looked around. The leaves on the ground were disturbed by at least a couple of people moving around. He wasn't surprised by that. Someone had to drag or carry him here. Seeing no drag marks, he assumed he had been carried.

He looked at his clothes. They looked and felt normal, so he decided that he had not been undressed and then dressed. That was a relief. Except for his abdomen, no other body parts were sore. That too was a relief.

He reached into a back pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He had missed two calls and one text message. He looked at the time and saw that he was right. He's been out cold for a little over three hours. He speed-dialed a number, returning Damon's call.

"Where the hell are you?" Damon demanded, having noted the caller I.D.

"I'm not sure," Stefan said, looking around.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means I'm in some woods, but I don't know what woods. Someone vervained me over three hours ago and I just woke up. I can't hear any traffic noise or see any lights. Maybe I'm not far from the house or maybe I'm miles away. I just don't know."

He looked up through the leaves of the trees and could see stars. If he could find a clear place he could find the direction "north," but then what?

"Have you got GPS on that phone?" Damon asked.

"No, I got rid of the phone that had it. Look, I'm going to start walking. I can't be far from somewhere. Someone had to carry me to where I am. Stay on the phone with me, okay."

"Yeah. Go for a walk, little brother."

Stefan found where his handlers had walked and he followed. His position turned out to be in a small hollow. When he climbed out of it, he was able to spot a distant light, a house or a street light. He told this to Damon. In fact, as he walked toward the light, he saw the headlights of a vehicle move by. There had to be a road there and it was close. Walking on, he came to the road, but he still didn't know where he was.

"I'm on the road. I can see lighted clouds in one area. It has to be from a town. It could be Mystic Falls," he told Damon. "There's a house close to here. I'm going over there and see if anyone's home and ask where the hell I am."

From the wary man in the farmhouse, Stefan learned that he was on one of the country roads south of Mystic Falls. He was just far enough away from home to be in a very rural area.

"I'll come get you," Damon said.

On the drive home, Stefan related what he knew. He was frustrated and concerned because he didn't know what had happened while he was unconscious. Damon asked questions, but for the most part, Stefan didn't know the answers.

Damon told him that Bonnie and her mother had opened the mystery coffin, but they had been knocked out when it opened explosively and didn't see who or what was in it. Now, it was empty. What had been unleashed?

In addition, Elena had called, very upset. Hours ago, Alaric had been critically stabbed at her house. Because of his ring, he had survived. For a couple of reasons, Meredith Fell was the suspect.

"We'll come back in the morning and look for tracks of a vehicle and from shoes," Damon said, speaking again of Stefan's mystery. "Maybe we can at least tell how many were involved when they put you there."

At home, Stefan undressed to take a shower. He stood in front of his full-length mirror and studied his body. He had small, faint bruises on his abdomen. After some consideration, he thought a couple of them didn't match up with where the rocks and piece of branch had been pressing against him. Odd. He picked up his phone and called Damon, rather than just yell and hope he heard. Besides, he didn't want to alarm Damon who might think he was in trouble. He asked him to come up to his room to see something.

In a minute, Damon walked into the room and saw his nude brother standing in front of the mirror.

"You called me up here to see you buck-naked? Or am I supposed to be in awe of your buff body? What do you want?" Damon asked, his tone snarky.

"What I want you to see are these bruises," Stefan said.

Damon squinted at the reflection of his brother's abdomen in the mirror.

"The light is lousy here. Lie down on the bed if you want me to see whatever," Damon grumbled.

Stefan lay flat on his back on the bed. The reading lamp beside the bed offered better light. "Count how many bruises you see. Even the faint ones."

Damon leaned his hands on the bed and scrutinized the skin of his brother's muscled belly. All the bruises were faint. He counted and said a number.

"That's more than there should be just from me lying on two rocks and the piece of wood. What made the other ones?"

"Probably wounds, but the locations don't mean a thing to me. Hold still. Don't get up yet," Damon said. He leaned down closer and sniffed.

"What the hell, Damon! Don't bite me!" Stefan said, alarmed.

"I'm not going to bite," Damon growled. "I'm smelling something. It smells like alcohol."

"It's scotch," Stefan reminded him.

"No, it's something else. I'd say someone wounded you and then cleaned you up. Or you were wounded and some one else cleaned you up."

"That's weird. I don't have any blood on my clothes. If what you say is true, then they undressed me and then took care dressing me again. Damn," Stefan said, frowning.

"Yeah, it's weird. Hold still," Damon said, leaning closer.

Stefan watched his brother close his eyes and sniff all over the abdominal skin, like a dog or cat sniffing at an unfamiliar scent on a shoe or pants leg. To his surprise, Damon then sniffed his chest. Opening his eyes, the older brother lifted each of Stefan's arms and sniffed.

"Several humans have had their hands on you. At least one woman and maybe two men," Damon said, straightening up.

"Okay, come smell my face. Tell me what you smell." He held his breath so it didn't add to the smell. He could still taste the scotch, which he now suspected someone had put in his mouth. And most of his sense of smell was overpowered by the whisky around his mouth.

Damon leaned on the bed close to Stefan's shoulder and bent down close, sniffing Stefan's face from his jaw to his cheeks to his forehead.

"You've certainly been with a woman. Didn't Elena use something that smelled like that?" Damon asked, still sniffing.

"She did. I remembered that. Some kind of hand lotion. But she doesn't use it now," Stefan said, feeling uncomfortable with his brother so closely sniffing him.

"Hm. Interesting," Damon said, still sniffing the faint scent, barely hidden by the alcohol of the scotch. Since Damon's mouth was so close to his brother's, and out of a warped sense of humor, he suddenly touched his lips to Stefan's, lightly brushing them. Then he stood up, grinning widely.

"Eww! Did you just kiss me?" Stefan said, wiping a hand across his mouth and grimacing.

"Hell, I can't get that close to a mouth and not kiss it," Damon said, laughing.

"I'm your brother! And we aren't the Mikaelson clan." Stefan sat up and swung his legs over the other side of the bed away from Damon.

"Oh? A little incest going on there?"

"I suspect. Anyway, you confirmed what I thought. I have more bruises than I should and some woman had her hands on my face," Stefan said, heading toward the bathroom and a hot shower.

"Let me see if there's any different scent on your clothes," Damon said. He went to the shirt, jeans and underwear strewn on the floor and picked up the shirt. After a quick sniff of the back and sleeves, he said, "Same two guys." After picking up the jeans and smelling from the knees to the cuffs, he said, "Hm. Another woman helped carry you. Different from the one at your head."

"So, at least four people. They vervained me, took me somewhere, stripped me. Put bruises on my belly, dressed me and put me in the woods, drenched in scotch and lying on rocks," Stefan said, having paused at the bathroom door.

"Yup," Damon agreed, nodding and rolling his eyes.

"Why? Why? Why?" Stefan muttered.

"After you wash off that whiskey, take a smell of your clothes. Maybe one of us will run into someone we can match the scent to."

"Hm. I will," Stefan said.

Damon and Stefan stared at each other for a long moment. They were both wondering the same thing. Any trace of the bruises would be gone in a few hours, but someone had tried to keep Stefan from noticing the extra bruises and the other alcohol smell. They hadn't thought of the touches to his skin beyond his abdomen or the scent on his clothes, except for the front of his shirt. No one had washed his face.

With a shrug, Damon left the room and Stefan went into the bathroom for a nice hot shower and scrub-down. He felt violated, even though he had no idea what had been done to him.

.

The next morning they went to the place where Stefan had awoken. When they examined the spot closely, they found that the two stones didn't match any others in the woodsy hollow and the broken piece of tree branch didn't match the trees growing in the area. These items had been brought there and placed under him. Why? To divert attention from the earlier bruises?

They checked from there to the road. They saw the footprints of at least three people, one a man with large feet. They also saw the tire marks of a large vehicle, a truck or bus. Beyond that, they didn't learn anything.

As Damon drove them home he said, "Look, unless something else happens or you remember something, we might as well let this go. If you feel that you haven't been hurt physically."

"I feel perfectly all right," Stefan said with a shrug. "The little bruises and soreness are gone. Wondering what happened bothers me, but what can I do about it? I don't have a clue pointing toward anyone."

"All right. It's over and done with. And besides, I'm damned concerned about that doctor our friend Alaric is sort of dating. I just don't trust Meredith Fell. I want to find out what's going on with her. She could be a murderer. It could have been her that stabbed him yesterday."

"I hope you're wrong," Stefan said. "Poor Rick has had rotten luck with the women he's fallen for." Also, he wondered about Klaus and his awakened siblings. He and Damon speculated about what happened at Klaus' house after the two of them had left. And who had been in the mystery coffin?

With these thoughts in mind, Stefan mostly forgot about the strange episode that had happened to him in the woods.

A.N This story is not likely to have a second chapter, at least not for several months when Stefan might notice something. Maybe then. Fact: An abdominal pregnancy occurs when the fertilized egg ends up in a woman's abdomen instead of in the uterus. Such pregnancies are moderately rare and they can be dangerous for the mother and the baby. Current, men do NOT get pregnant. But we have imaginations.

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