It's a bit odd for me to write this because I'm normally too caught up with Damon and Elena to care about the other characters on TVD. But lately I've been thinking about these two and felt like a story was due.

GONE AWAY

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"I know you. I know you better than anyone else."

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It felt like a dream. At least, she thought it was. Was it, or was it? She didn't quite understand. There was quick motion, a blur. She was falling before she knew it. Falling very far; too far and too deep to describe. She was running in sync with someone else after that. How could she run when she just fell? It didn't make sense.

Then she saw the vision of a man. There was a handsome man, standing in the middle of a clearing in the forest, waiting.

He was quite a vision indeed. Tousled brown locks, a firm, proportionate figure. But she couldn't see his eyes. His lips were curled in a smile too genuinely sweet to be thought of as foreign to her. He wasn't foreign, he was known – at least, to her. But then she had never seen him.

How could she know someone she had never seen before?

She was a human, not some witch. She lived in a normal world, one without supernatural beings. She was no longer bound to any immortal self. She was back to mortality, like all her friends around her. It was a stretch, but when she awoke back as Caroline Forbes the human girl, she didn't remember a thing that happened in the past five years. The memories she had were just of her childhood. There was a missing link, but somehow that empty void was filled with just things which were almost artificial – thoughts of having Tyler Lockwood once as her boyfriend, Matt Donovan as her best male friend. She remembered Elena Gilbert, because they were good friends once, as was Bonnie Bennett, her other good friend.

She didn't remember anyone else. She recalled briefly someone named Damon, but all she knew was that he was a hot guy who tried to hit on her, succeeded for a brief period of time, then forgot about her. She couldn't remember his last name. There was someone related to him who was very important to her, but for the life of her, he couldn't surface clearly in her mind.

But he always appeared in her dreams. Like that one.

Dashing, prince charming. He was someone similar to a prince in her mind. She couldn't put her finger on why she forgot just this one man. She supposedly loved Tyler with all her heart, at least before they decided to mutually part ways. She still loved him to some extent, but not with that passion. It died away. But then she was recalling a person in her life whom she maybe, just maybe, could have always loved, from the very start.

Sometimes he wouldn't just be standing in the forest clearing, waiting. He would walk towards her, and hold out his hand. He would wave her over, but she would not be able to go any closer. She longed to see his eyes, because she knew that once she did, she would know who he was.

Why did he disappear from her life? She somehow felt that the only thing she was sure of him, was that he was someone very important to her. She never acknowledged it in the past, but he was more important than most people. He was family. He was home, even.

But she didn't know anything other than that. She didn't know why he would erase her memory of him. He did, however.

Because Stefan Salvatore knew. He couldn't outrun his past, because it would catch up to him. So he planned, secretly, to make her forget him. He told only one person of his plan – Katherine Pierce.

Funny, how that happened. After all, that devious woman was the only one who knew history enough to find him a solution to his problems. She knew far more than he still did, because of all the years she had on him, but that was it. She would remain as distant as a wall which separated two rooms. He would not allow her to be more than a business accomplice, much to her chagrin. It was difficult for her, but she would do anything for him, if she was honest with herself. So it was that she helped him. And it worked, but it went wrong.

Somehow, Mystic Falls was no longer a town crawling with abnormal creatures. Everyone was cured of having any unusual power or ability or being. They all became humans, even Damon. And they all didn't mind.

It was some sick dream, at least to Stefan. How could he remain in his immortal body when everyone else was so happily human? He screamed at Katherine, aghast at her mistake, though he knew this was her plan all along.

"You wanted me to cure your little Caroline. Well, it couldn't be just on her. It had to be everyone in town."

"You-!" he wanted to hit her, punch her, do something. But he couldn't vent. Not when this had solved his problem.

It was the worst decision he ever made. He lived everyday in regret and sorrow. He wondered why he ever asked Katherine to help him to erase Caroline's memories of him. He should have been more of a man. But he couldn't stand it. He realised something bigger than anything he'd ever experienced which shocked him to his core.

He loved Caroline Forbes.

More than he loved Elena Gilbert.

More than he thought he loved Elena Gilbert.

All that time, all that time.

Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years – what did it tell him? That from the very start of his relationship with Caroline, he may have dismissed her, but he could not shake her.

And even more so when she became just like him. Their relationship was so pure, so true. How could he have seen her in that way? No, he didn't see in that way just yet. But he had loved her.

And then one day came when he realised that he loved her with a great passion. It was when Elena was fanning over his brother. He kept turning to one person – Caroline. It was her who could understand him and care for him beyond belief. She allowed him to be close, closer than anyone else in her proximity. Klaus Mikaelson stood no chance. Tyler Lockwood was gone with the wind, deciding to be with some other girl. She was left alone, just like him.

It was Stefan who did the impossible and kissed her right on the lips one midnight when they were sitting on the rooftop of her house. She looked at him, surprised and enchanted at the same time. Her blond curls glistened in the moonlight and her chestnut eyes bored into his dark, grey ones, and he felt as though he was home, for the first time in his life. It was as though he was free.

They stared intently into each other's gaze for several electric seconds, and Stefan couldn't stand it. He pulled her in for the second time, and when he did, she melted into him like butter in the sun. He held her as close as he could and grasped her desperately, as though the repercussions of his actions were sinking deeper into his conscience by the minute. She touched his face, traced the edge of his jaw, and kissed him sweeter than he ever imagined possible. There were millions of stars in the sky all around them, and it was magic.

It was magic, even for someone like him who had seen so much and done even more. It was the most magical night of his life. When he pulled away after minutes of almost eternal bliss with her in his arms, he smiled at her, and was rendered speechless when she smiled back.

"I—"

"You don't have to say anything," he stopped her. "Can we just keep this between us? And let me remember you this way."

She blushed, but the Caroline in her snapped awake and she held his hand, squeezing it. "You know I can't do this. Not when I've always said that Elena is your soulmate."

He nodded, and looked ahead at the sky beyond the houses in front of them. "I know."

Somehow, his memory of her was left as is. He checked on her sometimes, hoping that she was as happy as she looked on the outside. All his other friends were fine, as was his brother. It didn't matter that he was different and away from them. He could deal with that. But that he was away from her, was the difficult part.

He was so tempted to reveal himself to her again. But that would render everything he had done useless. And how much more stupid could he get?

He tried to focus on the positives every day, but the optimism would only last for so long. Maybe, he thought, one day.

One thing he didn't know about her was that she thought of this missing man in her life every day. She didn't ask any of her friends about him because she was afraid she would discover something horrifying.

Stefan Salvatore and Caroline Forbes were once destined to be eternally together.

He didn't know that, and neither did she. But would they ever find their way back?

Only one can hope.

A/N: I'm not sure how far I can go with this story – it will probably just be what it is now – a brief one-shot. But we'll see how it goes. Reviews, please?