When your kingdom falls and your family fade
Well it wasn't your fault.
It was never your fault.
They take her mother's body away too quickly. Liz Forbes has only been dead for a moment it seems (in reality, it's been about four hours) when the nurses tap softly on the door. It's time to roll her body down to the morgue and Caroline knows this, really she does, but it's all they can do to gently pry her away. It requires Stefan's help of course; he slips in before either of the two women can touch a shoulder or an arm, and wraps arms around her from behind.
His hands lock around her wrists, tucking them to either side for the nurses' sake rather then her own. It's a gentle action but also precaution should all of her emotions merge into one singular force of bloodthirsty fury. It's unlikely; Caroline is a force of nature but a disciplined one. Exceptions can be made though, for the people you love.
The nurses nod respectfully, cluck their tongues and tuck the bedclothes in, pulling the sheets over Liz's closed eyes and her daughter nearly breaks beneath the weight of it all.
She's not done.
Caroline's not done living and reliving those final memories, though her mother's mind has gone blank and empty, skin cold as ice. They don't get to tell her when to let go, she thinks; don't they understand that she could drain every last drop of blood from their necks and live forever in this hospital room? That they don't have the right to do anything she doesn't want them to do? Between the tears and the weak struggle she tries to throw up against Stefan's grip, Caroline searches the room for Damon.
He'll get it, she bets. He'll understand. He's an asshole and all he ever sees is Elena, but her mother had been high on his small list of people to give a fuck about and he'll fight for Caroline to stay. Just to stay here. She thrashes about calling his name but he's not there.
He's gone.
What she doesn't – can't – see is that Elena has pulled Damon out into the waiting room and even though it's been four hours, he has yet to sit up from where is head is buried her lap. Instead Caroline assumes that just like everyone else, he has given up. Reached some kind of acceptance within himself and let it go. But she can't.
She can't let this go. She'd accepted her father's decision. She's lost countless people throughout her short immortal life. Even Bonnie she'd handled with more grace. But this?
She can't let it go.
Every single undead cell in her body screams. It matches the sound her vocal chords make when the orderlies arrive to help roll her mother down to the morgue. She's about ready to launch from the weak wooden chair but Stefan catches her, crushes her against his chest in a way that would break human bones.
Mom. The word is a mantra in her thoughts and a shout on her lips.
"Mommy,
Don't leave me here
I can't do this without you.
I can't live forever without you."
No one hears but Stefan and no one understands but him. Eventually it's just the two of them alone in an empty room; his pounding heart and her wheezing sobs. It's not fair and Caroline knows it. Her mother has died a perfectly normal, completely un-supernatural death and she should be happy that Liz has even gotten that sort of peace. But it is unfair, and she's not done. She's not done loving her mother and now she's gone.
When there are no more tears left to cry, only hiccups and shaking, Caroline decides to give up too. She is tired. She is empty. She clings to Stefan and whispers for him to take her home. He scoops her up into his arms and he does.
Stefan is terrified.
It's not because he hasn't dealt with this sort of grief and agony before because in his 160 something years that's pretty much most of what his life has been. No. He's terrified and scared and all sorts of other unsettling emotions because it's never been this wretched.
It's never been someone else so wounded, so burdened, so absolutely undeserving with no way to stop the pain hurtling towards her at break-neck speed.
Not even Elena.
Loving Elena had been an exhausting endeavor, filled with heartache and blame and death on all sides. He had grieved for her in every loss and felt it genuinely echoed within himself. He had grieved even deeper for their destroyed relationship and the chance he'd obliterated to love a woman of such extraordinary caliber. But Elena had chosen this, despite it all, out of love. She had chosen destruction in small ways, little by little, and the aftermath of every choice had shaped their world piece by piece until it was too late to look back.
Caroline hadn't. She'd simply existed in her bubbly little high school cheerleading uniform, desperate to take over the town and be adored. In this moment, walking through automatic hospital doors carrying his best friend, Stefan has never felt so completely overwrought with an emotion that isn't guilt or shame.
It is terrifying.
It is beautiful.
Maybe it's exactly because Caroline had never chosen this life. She'd never fallen in love with a vampire, never desired immortality, only to have it forced upon her anyway like a bad accident. She'd never purposed to dance with the devil. Maybe it's because, since her death, she's been a better person in the past few years then Stefan has ever dreamt of becoming; more controlled, more devoted, more driven. Maybe it is a culmination of every little thing that has taken place between them that makes him ache for what she's lost, makes him want to erase all of the bad and replace it with good. Makes him want to be the best kind of good he can be, for her.
She clings to him like a sleepy child, pale fingers gripping the collar of his jacket. Her nose is buried into the fabric and he doesn't know where to go at first. Take her to the car, yes, but then where? Back to her home? Or back to his?
His, he decides, because even though they've just kissed today it's not awkward between the two of them. She can sleep in his bed, use his shower, wear his clothes. And she can't be alone right now in the house her mother used to live in.
The thought of her in one of his t-shirts yields ungodly things from his male anatomy completely inappropriate for the situation, and not to mention new. He shoves the thought aside and buckles her into the front seat because she's about as limp as a rag doll and won't even lift her head to watch the road. The car is chilly, the weather foggy and glum and the drive back to the boarding house seems to take forever. He counts thirty seven sniffles from Caroline's nose on the way there and craves a drink from his brother's stash. Anything to numb the pit in his stomach.
Upon arrival, he scoops her up once more out of the passenger seat and heads for the front door. The boarding house is almost silent but his vampire hearing picks up quiet voices a level above them in his brother's room. Elena and Damon, both exhausted and mournful, just having arrived home themselves. They speak lowly to each other until there is prolonged silence and Stefan thinks maybe they've fallen asleep until two pairs of footsteps pad into the bathroom and the water begins to run into his brother's large tub. A bubble bath at 3:30 in the morning.
Stefan wonders momentarily if Elena knows how completely normal this is for the two of them, and then figures it doesn't matter. It's evident now that they are two pieces of the same puzzle, cut from opposite ends of the same cloth. For Stefan it's not even uncomfortable anymore, but rather familiar. The sounds of the two of them interacting make the boarding house feel like home – the way it should be.
"Are we going to sleep?" Caroline mumbles in his arms, and he adjusts her frame against this chest.
"If you want. You don't have to stay with me, there are other rooms."
"Yours." She sighs and he obliges her wish, propelling them up the stairs and into his sanctuary. Everything is kind of a mess; the past few days have been so full of her that he's been home to change, drink and sleep and there are jeans on the floor, his latest journal propped open on the desk. She's too exhausted to look around though and he sets her down on the side of the bed so he can take off her boots.
"You don't have to –" she starts softly but he does, unzipping and setting each one next to the bedside table.
"Would you like to change?" he asks, prompting her to look numbly down at her clothing, carefully chosen this morning and now completely irrelevant.
"Yes. Yes, sure I guess, thanks."
He finds a clean white shirt folded in one of his dresser drawers and grabs a pair of sleeping pants that will probably fall right to the floor off her narrow hips. Setting them into her open palms, he heads for the bathroom with a small smile to give her privacy.
The reflection that greets him in the mirror is exactly what he expects: weary, battered down. He has half a mind to stand in the shower until the sun comes up just to soak the sadness out of his bones but there's a girl with red-eyes in his bedroom waiting and he knows this is it. This is the time for him to follow through; to be there like Liz had asked for the one person who's consistently been there for everyone else. He scrubs his face and brushes his teeth in three minutes because she needs him now and even if the feeling in his chest is intimidating, he can do this for her.
"You can come out, Stefan." She calls out and he opens the door to a dark room. It's lit only by the moonlight streaking through the drapes. Sure enough, his too-big pajama pants are piled on the floor. She's curled herself into an inconceivably tight ball under his comforter that he discovers once he's stripped down to his boxers and slipped in between the sheets. Her toes are tiny icicles that brush against his calf and he burrows in deep until their faces are inches apart.
"I guess it's a good thing that I pre-planned the funeral," she says quietly and he sighs.
"Care-"
"I know Stefan." Her voice cracks on the last syllable and it breaks his heart so much that he has to touch her, to absorb at least a tiny bit of her sorrow. Her breath grows shallow as his fingers brush along her cheek. His eyes find her sad ones in the shadows
"Is there anything I can do? Anything that isn't planning or pretending?" He asks. A long moment passes and silence blossoms between them so that he thinks she may have fallen asleep.
Hold me." She replies finally, and makes room for the arms that move forward to encircle her. He doesn't hesitate in pulling her into him, so that her hair splays out across his shoulder and he can feel the pounding of her dead heart against his ribcage. She wraps her arm completely around his chest and buries her face into his skin.
They settle into silence once more and eventually her heartbeat mellows out and exhaustion sucks her under. Stefan lies awake long after she's fallen asleep, sliding strands of her hair between his fingertips. It's horrible timing, he knows, but somehow this feels exquisitely right as though they'd been traveling towards this place all along and he'd been wearing a blindfold.
His heart feels bruised because Caroline's is broken. It'll take time the way all healing does but the memory of Liz and her last request is more then enough motivation. Not that he'll even need it. Somehow the woman who's hopes he'd dashed years earlier has twisted his soul around her finger with her bright white smile and devotion, her sass and her sharp wit. She deserves the world and more; at the very least he'll be there to hold her hand until her loss stops stinging and she can breathe again. And maybe he surmises quietly, he'll love her the way she deserves to be loved.
She sighs in her sleep and he presses a finger to the baby-soft skin of her temple, wondering how he'd missed how earth-shatteringly beautiful she is. He thinks, despite the circumstances, this might be the most important thing that he has ever done.
Maybe, just maybe, he'll get it right.
All your worries will escape through the door
And you'll wake up all alone on the floor
It's not too late.
Just rely on me now.
Gabrielle Aplin – "Alive"