He watched her from a distance. The way she swayed in the breeze, dancing on the wind, hair fluttering like blissful feather. She was as delicate as a flower, soft as its fragile little petals, pure as the fresh, crisp air, more beautiful than a thousand stars. She captivated him, the way she moved, the way she smiled, the way she glowed when she laughed, a beautiful melody singing out her soft, sweet lips when she spoke. And she didn't see him. Not anymore.
Her body swayed gracefully to the side as she stepped down the street. He watched her with his unnatural hazel eyes, captivated in her grace, her beauty, and her pure essence as an earth-bound angel. And just a simple action as walking down the sidewalk made his world just slow down. He watched it in frames, a slow progression, and life itself becoming so slow it almost stopped. Her movements and body made all those old memories resurface, like thick, deep battle scars still festering decades after the war.
"Brother," a deep, smooth voice sounded unexpectedly. Of course Stefan Salvatore knew to expect him. 200 years with someone and you know them better than yourself. He didn't need to turn to know the source of the voice.
"What are you doing here, Damon?" His eyes never left her soft skin and she turned almost towards him and lit her face brightly in a smile.
"Closure, brother. Isn't this your area of expertise?" Finally he glanced up at his older sibling and for the first time in a long time he saw that familiar empty and broken expression on his brothers face. It was too familiar because it mirrored his own.
"We can't interfere, Damon." His words felt so unnatural slipping from his lips, empty and emotionless when everything inside him was dying in heartbreak.
"Relax, Stefan," his brother knew what he was doing; they both has made this decision a long, long time ago. "I just wanted to see it with my own eyes." Damon stood quietly by his brother. It was just the two of them now. He and his brother had almost a century and a half at odds. Now, they had to stick together just to keep themselves together.
"She's still beautiful," Damon spoke quietly. His brother's gaze was now on the same figure as his older brother: the beautiful woman that had stopped at a butcher shop and through the finger-print-stained windows could be seen twirling her hair impatiently as she awaited her purchase.
"She always was," Stefan replied back in the same tone. He wanted to stay and watch her until the end of her last breath. He could be her guardian-her guardian angel. But his brain interfered, and he knew this last goodbye has finally passed. This was his closure.
"Don't let her see you," his brother spoke almost inaudibly, and when the younger Salvatore glanced at the space the darker figure had once stood, there was nothing but an empty breeze in the space his body had only just been.
He heard his brother's worries, hell, he spelled out these risks when they devised this plan. He knew he was right in his decision to do what he did all those years passed, but it didn't make a difference in that moment. He had waited too long. Stefan Salvatore had waited too long to see those eyes again, spent too many nights trying to erase that radiant smile out of his mind but being haunted by her laughter. He'd ached for too long to feel that soft, warm skin again, and lose himself in her enveloping, brown eyes.
So if he had a chance to see her again just one more time, he was going to take it. And this would be the last time. He knew that. This was his last goodbye.
It was getting too risky now, they'd spent too much time stationary, and everyone was beginning to notice the two young men who never aged. The next time Stefan Salvatore would return to Mystic Falls, Elena Gilbert would no longer be alive. No one in the town would.
From the distance, he heard the bell chime of the butcher-shop door as she danced her graceful way out the door, completely unaware of the lone, young man watching her from afar. She lost her focus for a moment, distracted by a friend walking past her and bumped into another man. Stefan's eyes had to close for a moment. He felt it as her body came into contact with the stranger for just a second. The way her gorgeous body bounced in astonishment and shock as she registered the mass she just collided with as being another human being, the way her hair twirled gracefully around her soft, pink skin as she flung her look back to the other human, to identify the stranger with whom she'd just bumped into in her momentary distraction. Her gasp rang through space like a bell, crisp and clear. A doomed bell that rang for two heart broken brothers who loved the same girl, and let her go all the same.
Stefan had to close his eyes for a moment. It was tears that were causing this reaction. He didn't shed those tear-tears were for regret, and despite all the pain it caused him, he could never bring himself to regret his decision. But as he still felt like his dead, still heart was collapsing in his chest, and his veins rubbed together in the mirrored agony of his heart, he just had to blink for a moment.
His pale eyes graced back over to where the beautiful woman had been, but as he searched for her radiant smile, she was gone.
In that moment which Stefan had distracted himself, the angel which he'd been watching had made her way out of his sight back into that forbidden heaven that was her life and not his to share.
The moment was gone, and now that his empty, hazel eyes glazed over the empty street, he had only the memory of what was and will never be to occupy the rest of his existence. It would have to heal those fifteen years he'd spent wishing he could have died for her just so he wouldn't have to live the rest of his existence with only her memories.
He stayed in his seat, watching the street for some time, the shadows of passer-byers and still structures alike stretching and reaching across pavements and cobblestones. The air was crisping, birds migrated across the sky, families reunited as they made their ways home, and she never reappeared. Stefan finally stood silently, feeling after all this time that perhaps this visit wasn't a good decision at all. With an empty heart, and a lifeless existence, Stefan Salvatore hung his head down low and his heart ever shattered as he walked slowly across the street. The light was beginning to fade with the sun over the looming horizon. The air was chilling by the hour, not that it mattered to a vampire. He heard the whispers and he wove gracefully yet slowly through the light crowd. "Who was this stranger? He looked so familiar? Had they met him before? How did a stranger so young just appear uninvited?" Because a face like his was not one to be forgotten easily, and so the handsome vampire kept his pained eyes low, his modest, cotton collar close to his neck, and his cool, soft voice silent as he weaved over the cobblestone. Of course it would be so easy to just run. If he took off now, it would be so quick the distracted masses wouldn't even notice. He would just be there and instant, and not the other. He'd done just this for a vast majority of his existence, disappearing without a trace, never to be seen again.
He was almost at the street corner now, the corner that lead to the small path between the streets of traditional homes where happy couples and warm families lived, and loved, and spent there days in blissed ignorance of the treachery of their existence. He was so lost in the closeness of his destination; he lost his sight for a moment. His distraction was mere a fraction of an instant, so brief, it was almost inexistent, even for a vampire, but in the instant of distraction, he didn't see the young, little girl run in front of him, and the instant later he stopped instantly as his legs collided with the soft cotton of a young girl's dress, and his eyes watched in horror as she bounced off the force of his feet, slowly falling backwards and towards the floor. In that instant he forgot his human façade and flew forward in his vampire speed, his hands catching the young child's arms softly just before her young body crashed into the hard, dirty floor.
"Uh-oh!" The young girl cried in astonishment in big bright eyes at her tall savior. Stefan Salvatore opened his mouth to reply, to forgive the innocent child for the accident but stopped when his eyes met her bewildered face.
Warm, bright, brown eyes bore back into his. Her soft, pink skin glowed warmly with a familiar warmth. Her graceful little smile with her astonished, big brown eyes, and childish, melodic voice brought the universe crashing down around him. She looked just like her.
"I-I, I'm sorry!" She pleaded back with his hands still around her arms. Stefan slowly let go of her little hands He opened his lips once more to speak, but the words were not his to mouth. This angel in front of him was unmistakable.
"Umm…ok, I have to go now," she started, backing away a few steps from the frozen, handsome, young stranger. She turned on her stumbled feet, ready to run away when her big, brown eyes lit up, and her face glowed brightly in happiness, and she raised her hands in excitement.
"Momma!" She ran off around him and Stefan became paralyzed in realization. He heard the young child collide with a human presence behind him, and his ears rang with the sound of such a familiar melodic voice.
"Baby, where have you been? Did you knock this nice young man over? Does your father know you ran off?" If Stefan had a heart beat, it would be racing not, pumping loudly, aggressively in his chest. Faster, faster, ready to explode as he slowly rose to his feet, his back still to the child and her mother he had just been watching from a distance just a few moments prior.
"Mommy, I ran into him, and I," the young child was out of breath. "I almost fell, but then, but then mommy, he saved me!" Her excitement was vibrating off her excited voice, and as Stefan finally turned towards the two humans, the mother was looking down at her rambunctious child, laughing at her happiness and excitement.
"How heroic," the mother mused finally looking up.
Her brown eyes met his hazel ones, and the whole world vanished around him besides his frozen body, and her warm, familiar but slightly older one.
She wasn't beautiful anymore after all.
She was breathtaking.
Her eyes starred in to his, and he felt like his body had detached back into those fifteen years past.
"Elena, look at me," he whispered to her. She wanted to resist, not look into his pained eyes, but she knew it didn't matter anymore, and so, swallowing her tears, she tilted her teary, pain-stricken face up to his, and her broken, brown eyes met his for the last time. This was a goodbye.
He swallowed back roughly, and a sour, burning tear slid down his skin as his lips met hers for the last time. She let herself be all absorbed into the kiss, loosing herself, loosing her own identity in the last moment of passion. But it was over so soon, and as much as they wished it would last forever, she opened her eyes finally and the eyes she had just looked ito were replaced with someone else's.
And he watched. Stefan watched as his heart felt apart like he knew it would as he let his brother erase every last memory of them from her mind. And as his brother starred into her eyes and her expression went blank, and Damon spoke those words they'd recited so many times, it couldn't have hurt more if they had left Stefan's own lips.
"You never loved me," he had started. And Stefan had to try to swallow back that black that had grown out of his heart and into his throat. "You never were friends with me. You never cared about me, and we never had a moment. You never met either me," it was getting to the part. Stefan could watch all his brother's past disappear from this girl's eyes, and his was soon to follow. "And you never met Stefan."
He couldn't do it anymore, his eyes had collapsed and he couldn't breathe no matter how hard he tried. "You never loved him, you never dated. If you ever saw us again, we will just be strangers now. After this moment, you will never remember our names again, you will never remember the sound of his voice or the sound of mine. Two years ago you never met Stefan, and you never heard of me. You broke up with Matt, you dated new guys, but they didn't last. You partied, but you stayed respectful. You aunt died in a car accident, but you loved and took care of your little brother as best you could. You graduated with good grades, and you had a great summer in the sun. Now you're awaiting college letters, and you're going to move to the school farthest away from here and never think about it again. Maybe one day you'll come back, but you'll never remember the past two years here, and you will never remember Stefan, and you will never remember me."
"I'm…sorry," she started slowly. Their eyes were locked, and Stefan's breath was frozen in his throat, his mind and body locked in on her presence as she looked quizzically into his beautiful hazel eyes. He needed to scream at his brain to move, to feign a breath, a blink, something not to frighten her as he simply starred paralyzed. She looked closely into him, brown eyes feeling strange and strained before warming, her face pinking, her skin glowing and her smile spreading as that beautiful blush made her cheeks radiate.
"I'm sorry," she blushed bashfully, and he couldn't help but break a smile across his cold, dead lips. He listened to the sound of her heartbeat and she gathered herself in that slow second, and his ears were mesmerized when he didn't catch just one beat, but a very small, very faint second in the background.
"Woo, this pregnancy thing must be making me see things," she was smiling back up at his eyes. "I'm sorry, you just look so familiar…"
But this was the end. This was a dangerous game he played, and it had already ended. She won the game fifteen years ago, and he had said his last goodbye.
"Do I know you?" She asked low with a smile.
He felt his world brighten, if even just in that moment.
"Sorry," he answered with a single step back and the brightest smile breaking his eternally youthful features. "You must have me mistaken for someone else." And without another word, and nothing more than one last smile to the mother he still loved and the beautiful child he would have loved to be his, he turned and walked away, a smile on his face, and her smile in his mind.
He finally felt his heart again. It hurt and it was damaged beyond recognition, but for the first time in a long time he knew it was still in him to heal.
He would survive this.
Because she was happy, and she was healthy, and she got everything she ever wanted that he could never give her.
He would heal. Eventually.
She was worth it.