A/N: I got the prompt for this fic about a month or two ago (from Benedicte! vicar-of-rometumblr) but I kept putting it off and wrote other fics instead of it because of how emotionally draining it was to write. But, it's just been sitting on my desktop all this time, pleading to be finished.

Elena has chosen to be with Damon and Stefan is planning to leave Mystic Falls.

For the lovely Benedicte:

Oh tell me now where was my fault?

In loving you with my whole heart.

He's sitting on the floor with his back against his bed when she makes it up to his room. Maybe waiting for her, she thinks as she hovers by his doorway, maybe hoping she wouldn't even come.

"Hi." She whispers.

He looks like he hasn't sleep in days, like he hasn't moved from where he's sitting for a week. Devastated, really. He just looks devastated. It makes something inside her, everything, hurt; she was the one who had put that there.

"Hi." She repeats and steps further into the room. He swings his head up and his eyes are dark slits, like he's struggling to look at her. To not.

"I just…I'm just here because…"

"Don't." He cuts her off and tightens his face visibly, his jaw locking.

Don't what, she wants to ask. Hurt you. Leave you for your brother. Stop loving you.

"I didn't want this." Is all she finds herself saying and can't bear to look at him but it feels as though she needs to preserve it, for some reason. Store it inside of her memory just so she wouldn't let herself forget how much she had hurt him. Was hurting him.

He laughs only once, almost spitting it out and he rolls his eyes around, looking back at her. They're filled with tears, his chin quivering. She can tell he's trying hard not to fall apart in front of her; she wonders if it would be cruel of her to fall first.

"Of course you didn't."

She frowns, close enough to him now, to make out the dark lines on his face, beneath his eyes.

"Stefan-" She starts but then he's suddenly reaching out his hand, his fingers finding the bump of her ankle and nothing else but pure instinct gets her to shut her eyes and move closer towards him.

"Just…don't say anything."

She wonders if it's possible to speak out the way your heart just breaks. The way it pushes so heavy and hard against your chest, you think it might be easier if you pulled it right out yourself.

"You know I loved you. With everything I had, I loved you. I will always love you."

He begins to weep against her leg, silently and she claws at his head with her hands, her legs trembling, "I do, I do." She breaks.

She sinks down to the floor and folds herself around him, buries her face into his neck. Breathing his scent in while knowing how much it would hurt later, the way she would wash it all off.

"It's not enough, it's not enough without you." He breathes.

She only squeezes him tighter.

"Then don't leave. If it's not without me, stay. Please Stefan." She knows what's she asking, understands the selfishness of it but doesn't care. The desperation was sinking in. Taking over rational thought. Control.

And she clings to him, sitting on his bedroom floor, crying too, "Please. Please." She repeats.

Time passes, she doesn't know how long but there isn't light breaking through the crack of his curtains when she eventually lifts her head from where it's been smothered against him; his room was dark, silent. She hates that this is going to be the way she's going to leave it, remember it. They had laughed in this room, loved.

"It'd just be for a few months… I need to be alone for a little while, Elena."

His voice startles her even though they were still wound around one other and she detaches her arms away from his body like she's snapping off twigs from a tree, the cracks they make as they leave, silent. I need to be, she hears though he won't say, away from you.

She nods when she's sitting just barely far enough from him, with her feet crossed and looks to the floor.

"I'm…I'm going to miss you." She whispers and wipes at her cheeks, letting her hair fall like a shield around her face.

But his hands are suddenly stinging at the sides, lifting up her chin and he kisses her forehead, "You're grieving this too," He breathes and lets his face rest there as she dropped her hands.

"I'm just so sorry." She cries, shaking her head, "I'm so sorry for doing this to you."

He kisses against her hair again and again, doesn't stop until she's sobbing, heaving from her chest, "I'm so sorry."

"We loved each other," He starts, "We do love each other in a way that nobody else will ever understand and just because this is happening or because I won't be here with you, doesn't mean that will change or it could happen again, Elena. I'll carry you with me…everywhere, everywhere I go."

She's silent for a long moment but eventually lifts her head from where it's been ducked to the floor. Her eyes are bloodshot, her face a mess and he knows that it might take her longer to recover from this than he realized.

"Promise me you'll come back." She whispers, staring at him.

He nods and closes his eyes, sensing suddenly what was to happen next; what was inevitable to happen next, "For you." He breathes, hearing how she moved her legs around to stand, pulled back her hair from her face. She takes a couple steps back and he's finding it hard not to push himself forward and lie across the floor.

"Stefan…look at me," She says, her voice so soft and clear and he finds himself lifting his head before he's ready to, staring up at her, memorizing things he already knows off by heart.

"Don't make me watch." He manages as she steps back towards him, leaning down beside his head.

"No," She whispers, kissing his cheek, her nose brushing along the skin, moving for his lips, "I'm making you keep your promise."

It's what hurts the most he thinks, when he's still sitting there on the floor; too scared to move, hours later. How she had kissed him, how she had whispered, I love you.

How she had left.

A/N: Gah, okay…go watch 2x14 or something. Seriously, go.