A/N: This will be a multi-chapter story that is intended as an accompaniment to Season Three. How far it will go - whether or not it will accompany the whole season, I'm not sure but I intend to at least cover the episodes that have aired so far.

She wakes up feeling empty inside. Just like every other morning. It's a strange feeling, where you feel your external body but can't feel the blood rushing it it, can't feel your heart beating. It's painful, being awake. Where conscious thought floods back in and she can feel the absences and the fatigue. The mental pain of it all is so strong she feels she was sure that if someone severed off her arm with a saw she wouldn't even feel it. That kind of mental pain could drive a person mad after enough time. That's why falling asleep is all she has to keep her sane. She doesn't even have nightmares because the exhaustion of being awake is so great that when she does finally sleep, often after crying her eyes dry, she doesn't dream. So each morning it's a struggle to get out of bed and not stay there long enough to fall back asleep. Only one thing really gets her up – she has to find Stefan.

She doesn't know why she dresses for the party in Stefan's room. Perhaps she's hoping the familiarity of his place, the smells of his clothes and candles, the reminder of him will get her through this night that she's dreading. Or perhaps it's just that in here, it's easier to pretend that he's right there with her.

Everything seems to stop for a moment when she sees the necklace and for a moment she can't think. She picks it up and it's familiar in her fingers; the metal somehow has warmth to it and it's an accustomed comfort. She hadn't realised, until she lost the necklace, how much of a habit it had become to grasp it in her fingers and hold it during a time of stress.

"I am happy. Thank you."

It wasn't Stefan. But it was the next best thing. It gave her hope.

Stefan is fueled on blood alone now. He hasn't turned it off, his humanity. Though it would take away the pain, he won't allow himself to. He couldn't let himself go to that place and forget why he's doing all this in the first place. Forget what it was to love.

"Once you can hurt, you can love. Love, Stefan, that's the point."

The pain is terrible. But the love, he never wants to forget what real love is. The love he has for Elena. For Damon.

His short time with Elena made the entirety of his previous decades worthwhile. He would wait a million years for that kind of happiness. And he would go through the pain, to remember what that love felt like. To remember her.

Klaus complains regularly about how depressing Stefan is. "You're stuck in this for the long haul, mate. You might as well make the most of it."

When he kills Andie, all he does is think of Damon and not of what he's doing because otherwise he couldn't do it and he knows that he has to. So he thinks of how much he loves his brother. He thinks of his favourite memories: playing football together in the gardens, racing on horseback through the river during sultry summer evenings, sharing a bed at night as they grieved for their mother when Stefan was no more than a few years old and took comfort in the presence of his big brother. "We'll always have each other, won't we, Damon?" He remembers asking. Damon sighs. "Yes, Stefan. Always. Now go to sleep." And though Damon's tone implies impatience that an innocent Stefan didn't pick up on, when he cuddles against his big brother, putting his head on the same pillow, Damon doesn't move away.

There Andie stands in front of him, laughing and catching her breath. "We have been looking everywhere for you!"

The muscles in his jaw tense and twitch as he thinks of Damon; the blood rushes to his eyes.

"Is that all you want me to do, just get on with my life?"

It doesn't even occur to her that a few months earlier she admitted to Stefan that she wanted to stay human and therefore it went unsaid that their time together was limited. Every instinct in her now compels her to find Stefan because she can't live, really live, without him and it's not just that they're not together but it's knowing that he's suffering somewhere, doing things he doesn't want to do, in places he doesn't want to be. She remembers telling Jenna that she won't be "one of those girls" whose life falls apart because of "some guy". But he's not just "some guy" and her life was already falling apart before she met him. It was he who put the pieces back together for her.

"I just want to know that he's alive."

She couldn't believe Damon, when he told her. She could believe that Stefan, her Stefan, was responsible for those horrific murders. She's seen Stefan in his darkest period, she was sure. He couldn't go any darker than that. But when Damon, a person, the one person who knows Stefan, really knows him, better and for much longer than she does (it's something she doesn't even like to admit to herself, that Damon knows him better) tells her to give up, that it's hopeless, it feels like a punch to the torso, winding her. She feels the necklace around her neck and clutches it because if that could return to her, surely Stefan could to and it's all the hope she has. If she loses her hope, she knows she has nothing left.

Out of complete desperation, he calls her even though he knows he shouldn't. He's like a windshield of shattered glass and she's the safety film on either side holding the shield in one piece. He just needs to hear her voice.

She hears the phone vibrating from the bathroom but takes her time to get to it, nearly missing it. After all, she's not in the mood for a conversation. She supposes she picks it up out of habit perhaps or crazy hope that a Divine voice on the other side will tell her…what? That it's a bad dream? She doesn't know. She just hopes ridiculously for a miracle. She utters a weak hello to the unknown caller.

The silence on the other end is louder than any other response she could have heard. It speaks volumes, and she just knows. It's like she can almost feel him. And she says all that she can think to say.

"Stefan? Stefan, if this is you, you'll be okay. I love you, Stefan. Hold onto that. Never let that go."

The tears well up in his eyes. When he's forced himself to hang up without saying a word to her, he breaks. He falls to his knees, his hand holding the phone dropping lifelessly to his side. And he sobs. He looks up at the sky, and stares, pleading to an unknown element for help. He doesn't get anything in response. But a thought occurs to him as he's begging to the stars that Elena lives under the same sky. Thinking of it like that, she doesn't seem so far away. And he makes himself breathe, taking deep gulps of air and replaying her voice and her words in his head. It gives him the strength to get back on his feet. And he carries on.

Elena puts down the phone. When she goes to bed, she falls asleep just a little more quickly than last time.

He's alive.

A/N: The writing style is different to my other stories thus far. Reviews, positive or negative, would be much appreciated for this. Does the style work? Also, I was unsure about the brief flashback to Stefan and Damon after their mother's death. Does it work? Is it too cheesy? Comments would be brilliant.