A/N: I recently saw the spoiler for TVD S7 that Damon and Stefan are on the run. In this one-shot Stefan and Caroline are on the run. Please if you are reading it leave a comment. It feels really nice when you receive feedback on your work.
They are star-crossed lovers in Lisbon, childhood sweethearts in Dresden. In Amsterdam, they're newlyweds spending their honeymoon sailing the canals and, in Dover, an estranged couple rekindling lost love amongst the port's quiet idyll.
Around the world they have all these lives they pretend to live. Caroline, as it turns out, is quite the storyteller.
Often she borrows from history, takes a page from literature. He's the modern day Anthony to her Cleopatra. Napoleon to her Josephine. In Italy, they are a not so tragic Vronsky and Anna, trysting and lying low in a small town, and, in the seedy London underground, a less punk Sid and Nancy.
Sometimes, when the mood strikes, there's the filmic meet cute. A spilt coffee. A stuck elevator. A mixed up laundry. He's a teacher, she's a student. He's the businessman, she's the small town girl.
In rare times, it's easy. They fell in love and that's that. But 200 years has taught him that nothing ever is simple and that these are the times when he learns not to ask about the quivering of her lips, the death of her smile, and why her pauses seem to go for an eternity.
These are the times he wishes that things are different. Not for him, but for her. She could have had it all, without pain and without complication. She could have had it easier if she weren't sent to her demise with a pillow to the face and the blood of the undead flowing through her veins.
Sometimes, he wishes.
In a supermarket in Shibuya, he stands alone with a shopping cart full of stuff Caroline had randomly tossed in. A loud mechanical voice is speaking in the native tongue overhead, drowning the chatter of the busy patrons. He scratches his jaw, watches these humans bustle about without a heed of him, and still it throws him off a bit, not being Stefan Salvatore.
You live a life bigger than the whole world and you think there's nothing that can hide you anymore. You spend your years making yourself disappear and you know there's nowhere you can run away.
Yet here he is now, not wanting to be found.
He wonders then who he's supposed to be now, which tale she has playfully spun, and what loaned life he's going to live. This kind of uncertainty is mechanical voice speaks again and he realizes it's been the third time since his little storyteller has left him to scour for the ketchup. In a second, he catches her sweet laughter four, five aisles away from him and that's when he remembers what makes losing everything worth it.
She's chatting with a local woman when he finds her and he stops a couple of feet away, leaning his elbows on the cart, lacing his fingers together just to watch her golden curls bounce on her back. It doesn't take long for her to sense his presence and she turns her head, hiding her blinding smile behind her slender little fingers.
"Hey you."
The old lady leaves then and she steps closer but still leaving the cart between them.
"You do realize you're stealing from their folklore, right? Orihime?"
"It's not like she'll figure that out. I tweaked here and there." She merely shrugs. "You know. Bring it up to date a bit. Make it more real...ish."
He chuckles, unlacing his fingers, and reaches out to unknot her arms around her torso. "Even then you could have picked something less tragic."
His hand traps hers but his other arm is still leaning down on the cart so she stands there towering over him, rolling her eyes.
"Of course you'll see it a tragedy, you Debbie downer."
"Well Hikoboshi and Orihime were separated, weren't they?"
"No."
His eyebrow shoots up tauntingly.
"I mean, yes! They were separated." She drops his hand to fall on a step beside him. "Technically."
"But?" He straightens up, pushing the cart.
"But... you know. It's not like it ended there. They still see each other in the seventh day of the seventh month, right?" She pauses for a bit and side eyes his contemplative expression. "And it's not supposed to be a sad story. That's why the people celebrate it... Because it's not an ending. It's a promise."
The word lingers on her lips for a good second and, at his silence, her gaze drops to her feet as a quiet laugh rumbles out of her chest.
"I mean, they could have had it a lot worse, right? Just look at us. At least Hikoboshi never tried to kill Orihime in his humanity less state."
"Hey! You tried to kill me too."
"Everything was sorta good for us, until..."
She never dares to finish it. He never dares to ask if she misses her mother much like she never asks if he thinks of his former "love of his life". They made a pact before all of this began, before they ran away like fugitives in the night. Like Bonnie and Clyde although even Bonnie and Clyde had it easier.
Yet she wants him as much as he wants her—by God he wants her so helplessly, so selfishly—and he knows he'll follow her to heaven or hell if she wills it.
"Anyway," Caroline chirps, skipping forward and lacing her hands behind her back. "For the record, I would totes still fall in love with you even if you're a cow herder."
"For the record,..." Extending one arm, he pulls her closer to him without breaking a step. "We could have met in a sinking ship and in my dying breath, I would still fall in love with you."
He kisses her then before she can make a comment about Jack and Rose, and still he holds her close to him as they disappear through the bustling crowd.