title: tell me i'm your national anthem
summary: in a new world where there was so much immorality and wrongness, he was the only one who met her gaze unwaveringly and held out his hand as if nothing had changed.
notes: this was written after 4x04 so it's not up to date. i kind of like it though as it's all pre-sire bond.
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It was heart-wrenching, and she felt it in fragments when a window in her heart opened and allowed the onslaught of emotions she felt for him rush in; it happened suddenly and without warning.
She was blindsided, never knowing that when she looked up, it might be his wide, unreadable eyes instead of his brother's narrowed, perplexed ones.
(Sometimes, when she looked at her boyfriend, she saw his eyes. And that's what made her feel those emotions to their greatest extent, when Stefan was right in front of her, and yet he was not on her mind.)
Whenever she found herself alone with him, there was an air of wrongness, of disobedience and immorality that she frequently shunned in others. But there were small moments in those meetings in which the window opens, and her emotions overrode what was Good and Bad in her mind, black and white. She balanced on the murky line that did not give way to the former or the later; she hung in a perpetual nothingness when he enveloped her, when her eyes met his and her emotions poured out and when she could barely remember her name let alone what was right.
He felt her changing in the way she moved, in the way she felt, in the way she perceived every aspect of the world as if she was seeing it for the first time. And he moved fluidly with her, holding out his hand to steady her when she was pushed away from this new understanding that tore at her steams. When others raised their eyebrows or tilted their heads, he nodded to her, affirming what she was feeling was not something to be guilty about.
In those moments, he didn't love her any more or any less than he had. He merely felt through her those feelings that he once felt, letting her in turn influence his outlook on life once again.
It was strange to embark on the transformation with her as she revealed the limitations and strengths of blinding compassion. It reminded himself of the intense burning he had felt, the passion in which he devoted every ounce of his being to one thing and didn't look back. Their fires, while different, burned in the same dimension.
When his brother appeared in the shadows, he turned his head. He did not push her, he did not seduce her, he merely encouraged and offered the facts that he knew and waited.
And when she permitted, her joined her in the dance that was her new being.