Hi all! I'm back with my second TVD fanfiction. As the summary says, this collection will show Stefan's love for Elena in the various forms she has been through.
I would have liked to write the first chapter about the first time Stefan noticed Elena, but L.J. Smith has already written it from his point of view, so I chose this incident — after Stefan saves Elena from Tyler. It was the first time Stefan showed his love for her anyway.
So read on! And please review. :)
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters. All the dialogue you recognised, and the plot, belong to L.J. Smith as well.
"And then, helplessly, he bent his head down to her lips." — The Awakening
Stefan could feel his whole body tense as he heard the bathroom door open. All of his muscles seized up as his sharp ears caught her near-silent footsteps, and her soft, subtle perfume wafted tantalizingly to his nose, as heady as old Black Magic wine to his inhuman senses. It took him all his self-control to not turn to her and let his eyes feast on her beauty.
Knowing that she must be in need of something to cover herself, given the way that brute Tyler had manhandled her, he gestured towards the velvet cloak he had put out on the back of the chair while she had been washing herself.
"You might want to put that on over your dress."
Don't look. Keep control.
He could not afford to make any mistakes tonight, now that she was alone with him, not after the strange vertigo he had suffered tonight. He did not know what was happening to him, and he couldn't help be afraid of himself.
He heard her put on the cloak, the soft rustle of the velvet against her skin reaching his ears. Then he heard her coming towards him. He tensed even more.
She was so close to him now, Stefan's canines tingled involuntarily. She stared at his mahogany dresser, inspecting the little tokens he had collected all his five hundred years old life. He wondered vaguely if she was genuinely interested in them, or if she was only trying to bait him into reacting by handling his things.
"What's this?"
He looked at her, distracted out of his musings.
"A gold florin. A Florentine coin," he said automatically. A last token of his home before he had left.
"And what's this?"
Stefan would have smiled at the curiosity in her voice had he not been so strung up. How he would have loved to sit with her and talk about these things, to tell the story behind each— Stop, he told himself forcefully. Stop thinking that way, right now.
He barely managed to string together the answer, caught up in the storm going within him. "A German pendant watch. Late fifteenth century," he said distractedly. She should not be here. She must leave, before he did anything he regretted, before he lost control...
"Elena—" he began.
She had reached for his iron coffer.
"What about this?" she asked. "Does it open?"
Stefan felt a white-hot flash of panic, and then, using his fast reflexes, he had jumped towards it, his hand protectively placed over the lid.
"No." She couldn't see it; it would shatter all the walls he had so carefully built around himself. He couldn't let her see that he cared. The apricot ribbon that he had taken home with him on the second day of school... He could not let her see that he cared so much about her, already.
"That's private," he said, hoping that the emphasis would stall her, and heard the strain in his own voice. This wasn't what he wanted, to keep secrets from her, to keep himself from her, but this was what was good for her.
He was very careful only to touch the iron surface of the coffer, carefully avoiding her delicate fingers. His hand itched to reach hers, to brush her rose-tinted skin with his thumb... even his self-control was hardly enough now.
She had noticed his gesture. He felt the hurt, the anger in her before the words came.
"Careful," she said harshly. "Don't touch me, or you might get a disease."
Squeezing his eyes shut as her words slashed through like a whiplash, he turned away towards the window.
He could see her reflection on the slightly misted glass. He knew that she knew he was watching; she walked to the middle of the room with an air of self-consciousness, her pale hand clutching the dark cloak to her throat. Stefan watched her reflection in fascination, watched the regal air in which she held herself (just like a princess, he thought), her beautiful hair spilling onto her back, shining like old gold. Her agitation somehow accentuated the power and dignity in her character, showing him how different she was from Katherine, even though they were externally alike enough to be twins.
And then she looked up at the trapdoor in the ceiling. Through the reflection, Stefan saw the dark velvet slip, exposing her pale white throat as she craned her neck upwards. He gasped. Fine blue veins were discernible against the porcelain skin, pumping her blood, her rich red blood...
It happened so fast that he didn't even register it. In one fluid movement, he had turned around, and was staring at her, at her exposed throat, the flow of blood in which was an irresistible pull for him. He felt his canines lengthening, saliva filling his mouth. Elena was looking at him with a confused expression, but he was past caring...
Elena. That name brought him to his senses. He was thinking of hurting Elena. He was thinking of bleeding her. With a supreme effort, he brought himself back to control, feeling the walls snap back to place, shielding the passion, the desire.
"I think," he said, "that I had better get you home." He needed to get her away to safety, away from the danger that was himself. Fast. Before he lost it.
He had been trying to shield his probing senses, to stop himself from feeling her hurt and anger that only made him feel so very guilty, and had so far been rather successful in his attempt. So her next words came like a bolt from the blue.
"Why do you hate me?"
He stared at her. Did she is really think that he hated her? Could he ever hate her? Could anyone hate her?
At that moment, several reactions crossed his mind — he felt like telling her what he really thought of her, or to laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of her accusation, or maybe just disappear into the night, melt into the darkness, soaking in the guilt of having acted so terribly with her that she thought she hated him. Instead, he settled for the simplest answer.
"I don't hate you," he said, hearing the stunned quality of his own voice.
"You do," said Elena. "I know it's not… not good manners to say it, but I don't care. I know I should be grateful to you for saving me tonight, but I don't care about that, either. I didn't ask you to save me. I don't know why you were even in the graveyard in the first place. And I certainly don't understand why you did it, considering the way you feel about me."
Stefan could see how she had seen his actions. Of course, he had strictly ignored her, rejected her advances, but it had been for her own good. Oh, if only she could see how everything about her called to him, from her looks to her aura to that sweet honeysuckle drawl of her voice...
He simply shook his head.
"I don't hate you," he repeated softly. I love you. From the time I first saw you.
But Elena's lapis eyes were full of hurt and suppressed anger, which was now spilling to the surface.
"From the very beginning, you've avoided me as if I were… were some kind of leper," she went on. Stefan flinched. "I tried to be friendly to you, and you threw it back in my face. Is that what a gentleman does when someone tries to welcome him?"
She was right, of course. His behavior had been inexcusable, even by the teachings of his tutor. But sometimes... you just had to act like that. For the better.
He tried to say something, to explain, at least at some level, why he had acted like that, but Elena swept on, her fury echoing through the silent room.
"You've snubbed me in public time after time; you've humiliated me at school. You wouldn't be speaking to me now if it hadn't been a matter of life or death. Is that what it takes to get a word out of you? Does someone have to nearly be murdered?" She paused for a breath, her cheeks flushed, he lips trembling. "And even now," she continued bitterly, "you don't want me to get anywhere near you. What's the matter with you, Stefan Salvatore, that you have to live this way? That you have to build walls against other people to keep them out? That you can't trust anyone? What's wrong with you?"
This time, he didn't try to speak. What could he say? Everything is wrong with me. I am a creature of darkness. I am a monster.
"And what's wrong with me," Elena went on, more quietly, filling the momentary silence, "that you can't even look at me, but you can let Caroline Forbes fall all over you? I have a right to know that, at least. I won't ever bother you again, I won't even talk to you at school, but I want to know the truth before I go. Why do you hate me so much, Stefan?"
She couldn't see, could she, that he was only with that Forbes girl because he didn't care a penny about her, and that looking at Elena each day, feeling her aura, brought an onslaught of terrible memories, increasing the burden of guilt he had carried for half a millennium by a hundred times?
Bleakly, he looked at her. She deserved the truth, at least some of it.
"Yes," he said, taking care to steady his voice, "I think you do have a right to know. Elena." He looked at her then, meeting her eyes directly. "I don't hate you," he continued, feeling the truth in his words. "I've never hated you. But you… remind me of someone." Katherine. Oh, Katherine!
Her eyes widened; she hadn't expected this.
"I remind you of someone else you know?"
"Of someone I knew," he said quietly. Five hundred years ago. He saw Katherine's sweet face as he spoke, her big blue eyes and innocent smile, and the love with which she used to look at him.
"But," he added slowly, speaking spontaneously now, as the observation dawned upon him. "You're not like her, really. She looked like you, but she was fragile, delicate. Vulnerable. Inside as well as out."
"And I'm not." It was a statement more than a query. She knew she was not frail.
He almost laughed, but there was no humor in the sound; the pain was too much. How had he not seen the differences straight away? Yes, Katherine was like a beautiful porcelain doll. And as much as Elena looked like her, there was a fire in her. Katherine would never have stood before him and argued like this. Elena was, and the varied behavior was not due to the difference in the time period alone.
"No. You're a fighter. You are… yourself." She was a unique breed, exotic and irresistible.
"You were very close to her?"
More than anyone else. Perhaps. The image of sleek dark hair and midnight eyes flickered across his mind, but he forcefully pushed it away."Yes."
"What happened?"
Ye Gods, did she have to ask that? The pain thundered over him with the intensity for an explosion, the regret, the guilt. And that broke the dam of memories. Katherine's face, lips turned down in dismay, tears clinging to her lashes, saying that she chose them both, Damon and him... the lemon tree, the pile of ashes underneath... the fight, stabbing Damon and getting killed in return... and the reawakening...
The flood of dark thoughts encompassed him for so long that he struggled to speak, rendered mute. But at last he managed, "She died."
Elena let out a long breath. "That must have hurt terribly," she said softly, "I'm sorry."
But Stefan barely heard her. He had been sucked into a vortex of pain and misery, as memory after memory flicked through before his eyes — the failed love, the guilt, the anger, hatred, the regret, five centuries of lonely wanderings, cut off from humanity, as a monster, a hunter.
"Stefan," Elena whispered. He heard her voice through a haze of grey noise — his own pain that cut him off from this world. Somehow she had moved close to him. He felt her lay a hand on his arm. "Stefan, I know how it can hurt—" she began.
"You can't know," he exploded, all his grief and guilt turning into a white blaze of fury. He was sick of this, the pity and consolations. Nobody could know how it felt, to bear it all for half a millennium, your own misery killing you slowly, with each painful memory as fresh as yesterday...
He looked down at her hand, and a string of feelings rushed through him. It reminded him of Katherine. Still dizzy with the whirlwind of emotions within him, he shook it off with all the roughness he could muster, trying to make it a final step for her to leave him (he could not let another tragedy happen by letting her close to him), and raised his own hand —
— and suddenly, he was clasping her delicate, soft hand in his, their fingers intertwined. He stared at them in bewilderment. He had been keeping up his walls so well; how did he let this happen? But now that he could feel the warmth of her skin against his, he just couldn't let go.
Slowly, he looked up from their joined hands to Elena's face. Empathy swam in the lapis lazuli of her eyes, empathy, not pity, and love. Stefan stared, and all in a moment, he was lost.
"Elena—" he whispered. I surrender. I am yours.
He could feel the anguish shattering all his barriers; the need to hold her, to be with her, to let her comfort him, was stronger than anything else. It overwhelmed him. And he knew then, that he was too weak, that he was defeated. He couldn't fight any longer.
You were always too weak, brother, Damon's voice mocked him, but for this once, Stefan welcomed his weakness. His eyes caught up in Elena's entrancing eyes, he helplessly lowered his lips to hers.
Fireworks burst all around him as Stefan let himself drown in the sweet sensation of togetherness. For once after five hundred long years, Stefan Salvatore was not alone.