Based off of 7x09, just to keep us occupied until January.

Stefan is lost, trapped inside his own personal hell for a constant eternity. He's losing all hope of seeing Damon and Caroline again, when an unexpected visitor helps him see the light again...

Oh, and I would just like to add, if anyone has an opinion, could they put it more diplomatically please? It's not the majority of people here, most readers are polite if they review, which is greatly appreciated, I just would like it if people didn't say f*ck you over something I have written. I have written it that way to show my views on the show, and I wouldn't say that to any other author with a differing opinion, so if anyone who has said something like that in the past on here, please be mindful of that, words like that can be unintentionally offensive. As I said, this isn't aimed at 99% of the readers. Thank you for reading.

Anyway, rant over. I hope you enjoy this oneshot. Thanks for reading guys, this is just something I am hoping may happen. Merry Christmas!

Disclaimer: I don't own tvd, it belongs to Julie Plec and L.J Smith, I am just using the characters for my own stories.

Silent Night.

He is gone. Lost in an endless blizzard of torment. Gone in a second.

That was all it took. One swift stab from one vengeful heretic, with one soul-stealing sword and it was lights out for him. He doesn't really remember what happens.

He just keeps staring at Caroline, her face etched into his memory as he drifts away, fearful and resisting. The next part, the part where you lose yourself, he can't really remember either. Just wakes up on the ground to the sounds of screaming. Wakes up to find a festering wound in his chest, and blood coating the air, his clothes, his skin, everything.

The world tips and turns as he staggers about, before he trips and falls again face first into water. He gets up and spits a mouthful of it back out. He frowns at the taste; it's thick, cold and tastes like rust, and that's when he realises what it is really is. Blood. Blood of the innocent, and of course, he isn't surprised, because this, this represents every life he has ever robbed of living.

The blood, drying on his hands, his lips, the fading screams. It's everywhere, pervading his senses in any way it can. The monster, the Ripper, he's back, and this is his own personal hell, not because he's the Ripper. It's because this is a world where he can't stop being him.

It's not real, not real not real not real...

His mind screams at him to make up for the silence. To make up for the horror, the gore lay splayed out around him in a way it never has been before, to recoil, to reject the truth of what he has done.

Oh, he knows. Knows that this can't be real, deep down. But it doesn't matter.

Because it has already long passed. This is a foreshadowing of an event that has already happened and an event that will surely happen time and time again afterwards. It is a past that he can never run from, a part of himself that he can never deny, and when you are trapped in your own mind, you can no longer hide from these things.

You can no longer hide from the truth, and that is a lesson Stefan Salvatore knows he will become very well accustomed to learning.

-X-

He has been here days.

Days and he is already insane, though the absence of time caged within his own mind, the never-ending hours suggest that his perception of the future is far beyond warped. The deception of eternity is his insanity, and yet he can count the days he has been trapped inside a magic stone to atone for his sins.

If this is the key to redemption, he thinks, then these hateful witches aren't as powerful and knowledgeable as they seem to be.

Is redemption repeating past mistakes until you can no longer erase the blood tainted images from your mind? Is it forcing you to commit unforgivable crimes without your control?

Because if it is, then it is not the very thing he thought he had been achieving these last decades, and is something he can easily live without. This is a reform that will only make him the worst version of himself. This is a reform that sometimes can make him force men to watch their wives die before he claims them.

Another time, it forces him to bite into a man's neck and rip it clean off. It isn't inside his control, nothing is, and neither is the guilt, and as the head rolls to the ground, rippling the puddle, only this time the guilt intensifies. Because he sees someone watching him that wasn't there before. This person is a reflection of himself, tall and proud, smudged in the shadows, a dark secret hidden in the recesses of his mind.

But then, in the blink of an eye, the figure vanishes, and he is alone and forgotten once more.

-X-

There are twenty five more deaths of twenty five more people he has already killed before hell steps up its game.

He should have suspected something was wrong when he was no longer made to tear into humans like tissue paper, when he managed to find a small house by then, abandoned by his victims and lost to age, but he is so relieved to be free of his monster that he doesn't let himself think about it. He showers, scrubbing the blood away, again and again until he rubs his skin raw and the only blood left on his skin is his own. Then, he pours a basin of water and he scrubs his clothes clean, because it's bad enough that he's using these dead people's facilities, but using their clothes would be like a slap in the face to them and their memory.

He pulls on his damp clothes, and shivers. Good. He deserves this, to feel pain in this house.

For the first time since coming here, he thinks of Damon, and wonders what hell he must be going through. It certainly can't be as bad as this one, Stefan is far more corrupt than his brother ever was.

He yearns for Caroline, as if he could ever stop. His sunshine girl, positive and happy. Not a day goes past where he doesn't think about how grateful he is to have her in his life. Not a minute passes, where he doesn't wish she were with him, getting him through this.

"Stefan." His head jerks up, fixating in front of him. There she is, girl of his dreams, as though cast there from his thoughts. Barefoot, limp hair, tired eyes, dirty, ragged dress. Still beautiful.

Still feels real. He thinks as he approaches her, the blood soaked monster that he is. Still her. She may be part of his hell, but if she is his hell then he will embrace it with open arms.

"Caroline." He croaks out. "Caroline, you're here." In wonder he touches her face, a starved man, deprived of love. "Please help me get out of here."

She smiles softly, and he lurches forward and presses himself against her warmth, craving it, reveling in it. "Stefan -"

She gasps in pain as heat floods through his hand. He frowns, looking down, and then chokes in horror when he sees her heart in his hand.

"No, no no no, Care -" and then she topples, he reaches blindly for her and his bloody fingers sweep through pure air.

And then his world turns black as he falls backwards into a solid wall of water.

-X-

The water makes him scream.

Scream of a past he ran from a long time ago, and thought he had buried deep within himself.

He struggles, kicks, claws uselessly, but he is as trapped as he was back then in that safe.

Nora was right. He decides. After this, he will never be the same.

He flails upwards into the never ending water, fighting unconsciousness with all his might, when his hand brushes against something. He turns to see it, and then yells silently in horror when he sees Caroline, floating there in the water. She is bloated and grey, still wearing that tattered dress, with that red hole in her chest from where he stole her heart.

"Caroline," he whispers as her body floats away. He pays for the simple pleasure of saying her name when more water invades his insides and they explode in agony.

"Torture, isn't it?" A soft voice murmurs behind him. Stefan frantically waves his arms around to turn towards his visitor, and chokes on more stale water as a result when he sees his doppelgänger counterpart.

"The never-ending days, the same cycle over and over again, the never knowing, the loneliness." Silas continued, seemingly oblivious to Stefan's shock. Not only at seeing the man again, but at him being able to speak underwater on top of that. "You never get used to it."

Stefan kicks away, trying to put as much distance between himself and Silas, who merely smiles a disproportionate smile in the murky water. "I wouldn't bother if I were you. There's nothing better down there then up here. Your mind," he wrinkles his nose and blows a bubble out through his mouth. "Is a very boring place, Stefan. I'm not surprised your personal hell isn't chess."

"What - what are you -" Stefan manages to say before his lungs completely fill up with water and prevent him from taking the breath necessary to speak.

"I'm the next part of your little hell hole you've got geared up here. Seems I really left my mark on you." The unnerving smirk is back full-force.

"No, no -" he hiccups as his lungs contract uselessly. Silas rolls his eyes. "This isn't real. There isn't any water choking you, just breathe."

Stefan spews out a lungful of water, and then, carefully breathes it back in again, and air rushes through as well. Now, he feels icy in his insides, but for a whole other reason than because water filling them up. Maybe because Silas was actually telling him the truth.

"Oh, God help me." Is the first thing that comes out of his mouth. Silas only seems to find it funny and laughs.

"Looks like you need somebody to talk to."

"I don't need anybody to talk to here." Stefan says tersely. "And I don't need an evil doppelgänger who drowned me in a safe and stole my identity." He swims away into the water, desperate to get away.

"Well you clearly needed someone to help you learn reality down here." Silas calls out after him. "'Specially on how to get out of here."

Stefan stops swimming and grits his teeth. The man had a point, since he'd helped him speak and breathe in the water in the first place, however annoying he may be. "Okay. How do we get out of here, then?"

"Face the fear, face the punishment. Drown." Silas instructs, before sucking in the water himself. Bubbles float out of his mouth and he begins to sink.

Stefan looks at him dubiously. Then facing his nightmare, he swallows the water and sinks into ink after his doppelgänger.

-X-

It's not like he's enjoying Silas' company. Not in the slightest.

But it's nice to have a companion in a world where there are supposed to be none. However, it doesn't mean he has to talk to him, just simply the presence of another is enough for him to tolerate the man.

"Okay." Silas begins. And now the torture begins. "Since you're not initiating any conversation -"

"Because I don't like you." Stefan interrupts, moving slightly ahead.

"Then it's up to me to do the honours." Silas continues, as though he hasn't said anything. "What sort of things have you experienced here?"

Stefan looks at him. "I'm not in the mood to share."

"Oh, come on! What's that modern era therapist crap? Sharing is caring, or whatever," he rolls his eyes. "what have you done in the time it took me to find you?"

Stefan stops and turns around to face him. "How are you here?"

Silas halts too, and cocks his head to the side innocently. "Excuse me?"

"How are you here with me?" Stefan repeats impatiently. "If I have to answer your questions, surely you should answer mine."

"I believe I asked you something first." Silas replies quickly. "And besides, telling you that would take hours of explaining, immense background detail and boring analysis that I'm sure -"

"Okay! I get it!" Stefan snaps. He folds his arms and sits on a tree stump. "Hopelessness. Insecurity. Loneliness."

"Okay, yeah, I assumed that without even asking." Silas sighs, having the audacity to look annoyed."That's the point of the stone. To make you feel like that."

"Well, it's what I've experienced!" He yells crossly. This is what Silas brings out in him. Fear of the unknown, anger, revenge, and it is why Silas is here. "Every single day, all these hellish designs to make me feel lonely and unwanted, like a monster, like you, and every time I'm pushed towards that belief a little bit more and it kills me!"

Silas sighs irritably, then steps closer to him. "As much as it kills me to say this Stefan," he stops and swallows, as though it really is difficult to form the words. "You aren't like me. You never were and you never will be."

"You don't know what I'll be." Stefan says softly. He feels defeated.

"Yes I do. Did you cheat on your girlfriend? Did you set out to live and achieve something impossible? Consciously act immorally to shame your family? No, you never have, and I doubt it has ever even crossed your mind. Your soul is good, Stefan. It's a blessing and a curse, but it will always be good, and it will always prevent you from being me." Silas practically growls the words at him. "Never assume that the same face hides the same soul."

Despite all the awful things he has actually done, Stefan smiles, and hope begins to inflate in his chest. Maybe Silas is part of his hell, but maybe he is also there to help him endure it.

"I don't even know how long it's been here." Stefan mutters. "Sometimes it feels like weeks, other times just hours."

"Hmm." Silas smirks, then leans forward. "How long have I been dead?"

Stefan pauses, before answering. "Nearly two years." He admits.

"Sounds about right." To Stefan's immense relief and horror. Relief because maybe the warping of time isn't making him insane after all, but the horror strikes him because he really doesn't think he could endure two years here, forgotten, like Silas has. But then again, he didn't think he could endure a day in that safe, yet here he is, three-month prison escapee.

"Every day repeats itself." Silas says. "It's horrible, constantly reliving your greatest fears."

At Stefan's confused look he laughs. "Oh, you haven't gotten to that stage yet. You must have been a right old sinner."

"Not funny." Stefan scowls. "How can I control it?"

"You can't." Silas says sombrely. "You just have to find distractions."

"Distractions?" Stefan sees Silas' dark look and decides not to pry. "Is that how you endure it? The loneliness?"

"Oh, I got used to loneliness a long time ago, but I'm not always alone. I see other people. I even see Katherine sometimes." He replies nonchalantly. Stefan's eyebrows spike up.

"What?"

"Oh, you know, brunette, snarky, looks like Amara. You should know, you killed her too."

"Yeah, yeah, I know that, it's just -" Stefan struggles for words. "How's that possible?"

"These worlds, they interlink. They're not as personal as you would think. She's not that bad, you know. We speak a lot when we see each other, before the link breaks and we're alone again."

"Oh." Stefan frowns guiltily. Katherine was someone he had forced himself to forget a long time ago, although wasn't someone he necessarily didn't miss. "Uh, how - how is she?"

"Oh, she's good. She sees Nadia sometimes as well, so that puts her at ease. But I sincerely hope we don't run into her here because she hates you."

"Oh." He says again. "Okay. Well," he clears his throat. "Fair enough."

Silas smirks snidely, and Stefan feels his face heat up. "Wait, is this all just another part of my imagination? You and her used to guilt trip me because this place is designed to keep me regretting my life?"

Silas deftly steps to the side of another deadened tree trunk, still smirking.

"Possibly."

-X-

"So," Silas begins conversationally as they wade through some sort of ankle deep mud pit. "We never got onto the topic of why you're actually here. And how."

With several hours of swimming through bloody pools and avoiding imaginary villages Stefan has already torn apart, not much more has been said, and it has been both blissful and alienating.

"Oh, what with the adjusting to my hell, tolerating you, and the fact that I don't trust you, I didn't get round to saying anything about it." He shoots back spitefully.

"Well now we've established a frenemy type of relationship, I think it's time to share. What happened to get you sent into the stone?" It's no surprise that Silas knows about the Phoenix Stone. He's probably older than the thing, or it's part of Stefan's own knowledge and imagination, and he's using it to interrogate him.

"Come on, don't make me repeat myself." Silas adds snarkily.

Stefan thinks of Lily, ice cold and dead in her coffin, of Julian's crazed stare and Valerie, the young and naïve girl he used to know and sighs impatiently. "It's a long, complicated story."

"I've done long and complicated. Stone for two thousand years for loving the wrong woman, remember?" Silas smirks, and then sits down, indicating a space next to him for Stefan.

Stefan bites his tongue, then goes and sits next to him. "It starts with my mother." At Silas' confused look, he continues, with the shortened version. "She didn't die when I was ten, she became a vampire, which I found out last year. She left me and Damon, found a new family, which consists of vampires who are witches." He begins to realise that telling this story is good, refreshing. Helps him lift a weight off his shoulders.

"Witchpires?" Silas snorts. "I've clearly been missing out."

Stefan smiles. "Heretics. They were siphoners, not witches, so could draw magic from themselves. Anyway, I met one of these heretics whilst she was still human, the year before I met Katherine, actually. She was sent by my mother to check on me." He breathes in deeply again. "I got her pregnant." Silas' eyes widen slightly. "She was going to come and tell me, but my mum's boyfriend stopped her. He beat her until the baby died, so she and my mum wouldn't return to Mystic Falls." Silas looks almost sympathetic, and it is a completely surprising aspect to see on a cold and lonely man like themselves.

"Julian, the boyfriend, got trapped in this very stone in 1903, the year my mum and the heretics were sent to a prison world, due to their...murderous tendencies. My mum and the heretics got out, and they brought him back. After Valerie, the girl, told me what happened, I went after him, but, after my mum died, again," he closes his eyes and clenches his jaw. "He went even more insane and stabbed Damon with this sword, that attached to the Phoenix Stone, sent us here. I'd kidnapped one of the heretics to lure out Julian, but her girlfriend found out and stabbed me with the sword in revenge." He sniffles slightly, refusing to show weakness, and moves to stand up, when Silas grabs his shoulder.

"I'm sorry." He whispers, and Stefan can tell he genuinely means it. For exactly what he is apologetic for, he doesn't know. For his part in his suffering? For everything he experienced in his life before vampirism? He smiles, anyway, before standing back up, the moment over.

"Anyway, it's your turn. How did you get here?"

Silas smirks. "We're all here."

Stefan frowns, confused. "What?"

"All the people Bonnie refused to save, all the people lost to Oblivion, we all ended up here. The Phoenix Stone became our punishment."

"Okay." Stefan nods. That makes sense, he supposes. Sort of. "But, don't you need a body to get sent into the Stone? A body to be stabbed so the soul can be conducted through the sword to get here?"

Silas smiles mysteriously. "Or, I'm not real and this is all part of your mind convincing yourself of a perfectly good reason as to why you have to put up with me."

Stefan angrily kicks at a tree stump. "Every time you give me some cryptic response it makes me feel even more insane! Why can't you just tell me why you're here, if you're even real or not?"

Silas rolls his eyes. "Because it shouldn't make a difference. I'm here, in your head, and there's nothing you can do about it. And besides," he adds, in a more serious tone.

"By the time you find out it'll be too late."

-X-

He has lost track of the time passing in agonising cruelty before life comes calling to bring him back.

Nevertheless, by this time, he has grown slightly resentful of the people who have become his family, for them taking this long to find him, for abandoning him, though he knows that that may not be simply the case. But he couldn't blame her. Never her. For Caroline there are a million excuses because nothing short of an explosion would stop her from achieving something she wanted, and so he knows that if she couldn't bring him back, then there was no way the others could.

He is walking through that very first bloodbath, Silas, whom is now more a mild irritant than anything, by his side, when he feels it. His body, returning to him, and his vision begins blurring.

The relief he feels is overwhelming.

"What's happening?" Silas asks. "Stefan?"

"I think I'm going back." He can hear the joy in his voice himself. No more hellhole, no more tortuous devices designed to unravel him, no repeating the same, horrific days again and again.

"Finally. I don't have to put up with you anymore." He jokes, though oddly, something inside feels... out of place when he says it, and he knows it's because he doesn't mean it. Silas, whatever he represents in Stefan's life, has become a companion, a purpose to play in here.

"Oh, I'll always be here to annoy you, shadow self." Silas says. "And you wouldn't be even hallucinating me if I wasn't real, would you?"

Shock shoots up Stefan's spine. "But, hang on, so when you said you saw Katherine, everything you said, I thought you said that was the part of my hell -"

"If you'd thought about it, I never was, not really. You were never truly afraid of me. You were afraid of what I forced upon you - the loneliness, and you're afraid that you're like me, so I couldn't have been a hallucination, could I?"

Stefan opens his mouth, and then closes it. The reason he had been able to get through these last few months was because he thought that Silas was only being nice because his mind willed him to be. But he had always thought of Silas as evil, so he wouldn't have known what a nice version of Silas would be. "No, I suppose you couldn't."

Silas smiles. "Great, now that that's been cleared up, get out of here before I change my mind and decide I'd like to keep you here to entertain me."

"But -" Stefan looks at the gateway, dazzling bright. "What'll happen to you?"

He shrugs. "Stuck here probably. Or I may actually find peace, you never know. All I know is that you deserve a second chance to kill that bastard whilst you still can. Now, go."

Stefan looks back at him one last time before letting go and freeing his mind.

-X-

He wakes up starving.

Starving and screaming as his soul finds his body again.

"Stefan! Stefan!" Someone shouts, grabbing his arm, trying to calm him down. He thinks it might be Bonnie. Hunger surges, blood pounds in his ears and he jumps up, fangs out, grabbing onto the nearest food source, before he remembers, remembers the pain of killing, and stops, inches away from Bonnie's neck.

"Blood bag, get a blood bag." Someone else mutters, before he feels someone, Damon possibly, grabbing him under the arms. The next thing he knows, a blood bag is stuffed into his hand, and he bites into it, satiating his hunger even as it burns in his mouth.

Wait...

Fire. It feels like fire. Vervain.

He spits blood out of his mouth, but it's too late. His vision goes foggy, and he sinks backwards into the person behind him, limp and weak again, and this time it is hard not to feel resentment towards his friends for not trusting him as he falls back into darkness.

The next time he wakes up is a much warmer reception. The hunger is gone, and he has a shirt on and he's lying on the sofa in the Boarding House.

"Stefan!" Caroline exclaims, alerting him to her presence. She is bright with happiness and worry. He grins, before struggling into a sitting position off of the sofa.

"Caroline." She moves to hug him, but he tenses up, the sudden memory of her murder still fresh in his mind. She pretends not to notice his behaviour, but he notices her noticing. "How are you? What happened?"

"Um, yeah, I - I just -" he swallows. "I'm alright, considering."

She senses his apprehension, she doesn't believe him, and draws back, looking upset, and he quickly reaches for her hand.

"What happened in there," he whispers. "The things I experienced..." He looks at her in the face. "It changed my beliefs, my perception on everything. I will tell you what happened, but I - I can't, not now." She nods empathetically, but he can tell she's disappointed. "but I love you."

She smiles reluctantly. "I love you too."

It's then that Damon interrupts, though lacking his usual flare. The stone has changed them both for the worse, and they will both never be the same again.

"Welcome back to the land of the living, brother." He smiles softly.

"When did you get back?" Stefan asks. Damon shrugs. "A few days ago. The mean girls had the Stone, so we couldn't get out, then when Bonnie finally got the Stone and resurrected me, Julian stole your body, intending to burn it, but -" he shrugged and smirked.

"We burnt him." Caroline jumps in rather excitedly. "Sort of. We couldn't find his body after the building collapsed, so we don't know if he's dead or not."

He laughs, but they don't, so it falls into nothing. The tension and guilt he feels is obvious to them.

"I'm sorry, Damon." Stefan whispers tightly. Damon slowly approaches him, looking sombre. "I'm so sorry -" then he's cut off because he's pulled him into a hug, made awkward from his position on the sofa, and that is when he knows his brother understands.

"It's okay, Stef." He whispers.

But they both know it isn't. It really isn't. And it won't be for a very long time.

-X-

There's a party not two days after, celebrating their return.

Crazy amount of people, DJ, alcohol... he has a sneaking suspicion that Caroline has had something to do with it.

But he isn't ready. He still dreams of a man with his face whom he left behind, and the agony of the Stone, and if the last time he had PTSD is anything to go by, being in a crowd full of people for hours on end won't end well.

He heads outside, to breathe with freedom and looks up at the sky. The sky is there again, and it is beautiful.

"Stefan," Caroline approaches him, looking worried. In her long silver dress, she is what he always dreams of, but she is also obviously heavily pregnant. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," he sighs, and then reaches for her hand, keeping his arm away from her chest. He doesn't trust himself yet, and it is something he will always hate about himself. "I just needed some time to... think."

She leans over and kisses his cheek affectionately. "Alone?"

He smiles. She always understands. "I'll come and find you in a minute."

She leaves him to his own mind alone again. He breathes the fresh air deeply, and looks back up at the night sky.

He has time, so he thinks of his double for the first time since coming back, wondering what'll be next in store for him. It's taken him two years, but he can strangely say that he can forgive Silas, and be grateful for his help. He hopes he finds happiness, and then laughs aloud. He never thought he'd think that.

I forgive you. He thinks to the world, the only messenger he has.

He hopes that the world takes pity on them both.

Thank you for reading everyone, I hope this sort of satisfies everyone until the next episode. I was thinking about bringing Silas back, but to be honest, I've written a lot of alternative stories on this site like Beautiful Darkness, where he does come back, so I wanted to do something different. I probably won't be writing anymore until January so I can focus on work, etc. Please drop a review, tell me what you think, and I hope everyone has a good Christmas and enjoys their holidays!