Prompt: Stefan, weep little lion man, you're not as brave as you were at the start at the VD Comment Ficathon
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Here's a story:
There once was a boy named Stefan Salvatore.
He died.
(Want another?)
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In 1920, everything Stefan owned had a bloodstain.
The worst were the stains around the neck, the collar of the shirt.
Blood dripped down the necks of his meals, down, down, down his own. He left them drained on the streets, eyes unseeing, parents left looking for them. Dead as a doornail. The only reminder was the red, blood red spots on his white high collared dress-shirts.
He once whined about it to his brother.
Damon told him to invest in a bib.
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Elena Gilbert.
Even her name sounds like a second chance.
Elena.
And her eyes are a warm brown and her lips are inviting and her smile is never hard or mean. She loves with her whole heart and fights with everything that's in her and she foolishly believes that that is always enough. She's an angel. She is, in essence, everything he thought Katherine was.
Or, well, everything he wishes he thought Katherine was.
There's a part of him that's convinced that after everything, Elena is what he deserves.
Stefan's very good at lying to himself.
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There was a time when Stefan Salvatore could rip a throat out and drain it while musing on the economic situation of the nation.
Killing was nothing. Humans were nothing. He lived on a day to day - neck to neck, actually.
(There was a nun once, the red oozed out over her habit, patterns forming. He wondered if she saw the face of God when she died.
He left her face down in an alley.)
He glosses over those years with a vague, "I wasn't always this good."
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He always tells Damon to face the past. Own up to his boatload of mistakes.
(Stefan is constantly on the run from his own.)
Sometimes the irony threatens to suffocate him.
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In 2010, Stefan uses bleach and detergent and softener and soap and water and tears and tumbling and scrubbing but -
The bloodstains still won't come out.
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