Hi! :D

I think I intended to write happy Stelena fic but it didn't really turn out that way. And I really should have posted this before tonight's episode aired, because now it's AU, but just slightly. This was written post 2x10 (The Sacrifice) with the intention that it would be set an indefinite time in the future.

Oh, the title is borrowed from "She Loves You" by the Beatles. That song just seemed really appropriate and wouldn't get outta my head.

Anywho, I think that's all you need to know; at least, that's all I can remember that you need to know, so I'm goin' with it.

Disclaimer: Not mine. :(

Happy (hopefully) reading!


She loves him. She really, really loves him.

But she knows she can't face eternity.

Not without shutting it off. Not without flipping that switch that Damon will probably never stop insisting that he doesn't need on. She couldn't feel, like she does now, for more than one lifetime. Her emotions are about to combust within her as it is. And she won't flip the switch. She's met Katherine. Their looks are all they need to have in common.

She's thought of it. Of that future with him, smiling sunshine at him and drinking deep red wine out of furry glasses. She's thought of several weddings (if the Cullens did it, why can't they?) with Damon always as the best man and Caroline as the best woman because, eventually, Bonnie will be dead.

And so will Jeremy.

And so will Jenna.

And Alaric.

Dead like her parents. Dead like Stefan's dad. Rotted in a grave, covered in dirt, and clutching secrets fit to turn them.

Elena can't live in a world where everyone, including herself, is dead.

Stefan understands.

It pains him, but he understands. He understands that endless lives of his hands playing in her hair and several million twists of a lapis lazuli ring around her left ring finger and half a dozen funerals and no births would be entirely too much for her to bear. He hardly bore it himself. The world made it easy for him; his selfishness gave him an eternal brother and prejudice with a (cruel?) twist of fate lost him a father to watch wither. Add a mother already dead and a family limited by the time and the universe had, if such a thing were possible, aligned perfectly to welcome him into the undead folds.

But really, he never would have wanted to turn her. That isn't to say that he wouldn't have—or that he wouldn't have been undermined by Damon—but he wouldn't have wanted to. Upon request, he would have eventually acquiesced. And loved Elena for eternity.

For an eternity that wasn't ever theirs to have.

He knew, he thinks, when he came that he couldn't have what he wanted. Not for more than a few years, a decade tops. What he loved about loving Elena was only humanly possible. And what he wanted was to love loving Elena (he would always, no matter what, love her, but there was more to it than that). So, only the impermanent thing they'd started would do, for both of them.

To turn her would destroy them both, although in the most beautiful, most precious way he can think of.

For that reason alone he is surprised Damon hasn't done it already.

He doesn't know where they go from here. He doesn't know if they go from here. Compulsion is always an option. "You will forget…" is easy and Damon will do anything Elena asks.

He wishes she hadn't brought it up.

But now, from the foot of his bed, on the night he was released from the tomb, the night Katherine finally died, the night Klaus revealed himself, and the night Elijah made a move none of them expected, she's leaning towards him, coming at him, moving to press her lips to his as he gives him ring one last twist and reaches for her hair.