Identities by asesina
a/n: I don't own TVD. This is just a oneshot about Stefan's new life and his attempt to forget his brother and the past.
Set after season 5, right before season 6 starts.
-0-
"Big brother, big brother
Don't worry a bit
Your flame has not faded
Since the day it was lit"
-Unknown Brother, The Black Keys
-0-
Stefan Salvatore remembered everything.
He remembered it all, even the bad stuff. In the beginning, he paced the halls of the Whitmore college, banished from his home, and he muttered to himself, pleading with Damon.
It was a litany of "I forgive yous" and "I'm sorrys", but that quickly gave way to resentment.
Sure, he could forgive Damon for the little things, the broken noses, the broken promises, even the broken hearts.
He couldn't, however, forgive Damon for leaving him.
Stefan left on a Tuesday, abandoning Elena and Caroline and a world without his brother in it.
Little by little, he began erasing the good things too, the "I've got your back", shoulder-patting brotherly stuff that just made him cringe.
That wasn't me. That was someone else, someone else's brother.
He chose a small town in Kentucky and applied for a job as a mechanic. It was easy enough; he'd had three human lifetimes to perfect the craft and people in small towns were notoriously easy to please.
With every turn of the wrench, Stefan began crafting a new self, creating Steven, a motorcycle nut from New Jersey, and the locals ate it up. He was running from a crazy ex-wife and a family that abandoned him after he dropped out of college, those stuck-up Northeastern bastards.
He chose a little apartment just on the edge of town and began filling it with license plates and touristy Route 66 plaques. It was all junk, but it was Steven's junk, and it was quickly becoming his.
He tossed out the old smart phone that used to ding incessantly with worried messages from Caroline, Elena, and even Matt, but he didn't know them, and they didn't know him.
Stefan carried a simple flip phone, and it hardly ever rang, except for Louie at the shop and a few persistent customers here and there.
Life became routine again, and Stefan even stopped looked at the calendar, but he slipped up once, just once.
It was June 28, Friday, and he stared at the date long and hard before he realized its significance.
Damon's birthday.
The beer bottle in his hand was suddenly a dead weight, and it almost slipped from his fingers, but he saved it with a white-knuckled grip.
Stefan Salvatore, an immortal, centuries-old being, suddenly felt light-headed, but vampires didn't fucking pass out.
He sat down hard, slammed the beer on the table, and felt a strange feeling rising in his throat. He wasn't sure if it was tears or nausea, but it was unpleasant and scalding, and he washed it down with the now-warm Guinness.
"Lighten up, brother," a voice taunted, and Stefan threw the bottle at the wall.
It shattered, but he never heard the crash. His mind was assaulted with the words and images he had suppressed for so many months now, the anguish, the disbelief.
He swore that he wouldn't cry, but a tear escaped, and he stood to his feet.
Suddenly, the world was still again. The afternoon light was warm and golden, and the dust motes danced across the rays.
Stefan took a deep breath. Damon was gone, and he was never coming back.
However, that didn't matter to a mechanic in Kentucky by way of New Jersey, a vagabond named Steven who had never heard of Mystic Falls or Elena or Damon Salvatore.
End.