A/N: I am at the point in which I don't really care who Elena ends up with. I don't particularly like her anymore as a character. One of the things I still love in TVD is the bromance between Damon and Stefan. I am interested to see how this last hurdle will play out and so this came out. It's choppy but in a way it's meant to be. It's in Stefan's POV and ideally I might want to add Damon's POV but I am not sure I'll be able to write him in a decent way.

Enjoy my first foray in Stefan's mind!

It surprised him.

He was talking with Elena animatedly. He was telling her that she had to ask Damon to let her go. That just like wearing a vervain necklace this was a necessary step for her to regain her choice. That she had to understand that this sire bond would never go away otherwise, she would never again be Elena and forever be Damon's Elena.

"Right and instead the one you call Elena isn't just Stefan's Elena? The one that chose you even after you became a ripper and terrorized her, the one that forgave you everything, the one that completely trusted you?"

He flinched at her words.

"You chose all of those things, Elena. I was always the greatest champion of your free-will."

"The Champion of my free-will. How could I forget? So when you decided that my brother had to become a ruthless killer so that I could return human, you were following my free-will, right? The Champion of my free-will wouldn't do anything other than that. You need to get off your high horse, Champion, and listen to me. I am in love with Damon. When I kiss him it's not any less real than when I kissed you. It's not servant Elena that sleeps with him, it's me. You need to accept it."

It surprised him.

It shouldn't have. Elena had let him go because of his feelings for Damon. Of course she had acted on them. Of course she had slept with him. Of course there wasn't any word except love to describe those feelings. Of course.

It still devastated him.

He had known. Hell, he had sent her on a roadtrip with him, to let her figure out her feelings. He had known the looks she had sent him, the trust she had felt towards his brother. He had known. The sire bond had been just the last strand of hope he had clung to. His last delusion. He had known.

It still made him cry.

Without even looking her in the eyes, he disappeared from the school parking lot and found himself in the woods, where he could take it out on the trees, where he could scream, where he could vent out his anger throwing rocks and devouring animals.

The sun was setting and animal blood was still dripping out of his mouth when he found himself on the ground, his back sustained by a large tree. His brain conjured an image.

Him, Damon and Katherine during a cool autumn day. He had arrived from the house and found the Princess reading in the garden. His brother, on the seat next to her, watching her, a book open in his hands for cover. Katherine had perceived him first. She had given him a smile, and gone back to her reading. Damon had waited for him to take the seat next to him. Then, with that proud and mischievous smirk of his, he had taken his hand, pointed briefly to a sentence before leaving the book closed on his lap, standing up and asking Katherine to go for a walk.

"I have given my young brother something to think about", he said, winking at him, looking conspiratorially at Katherine and then moving away with her.

Stefan opened the book at the page his finger was still marking and started reading:

" ...and the younger brother must help to pay for the pleasures of the elder."*

At the time, he had laughed at Damon's antics. Today, the sentence had an haunting quality. Just as haunting was his situation. Just like that afternoon, more than a century before, his brother had the girl and he was left with nothing. His phone was vibrating in his pocket. He turned it off without even looking at the caller-id. He wasn't ready to talk to anyone. Commiseration had taken hold of him and didn't want to let go.

Morning saw him still in the same position, his eyes bloodshot, his thoughts still entangled. Somehow during the night his prospective had shifted. He had expected his anger for his brother to consume him, he had expected that this day would start with an epic confrontation. He had expected his desire to kill him to outlive the night.

Instead it hadn't. This morning Stefan understood Damon more than ever before. This morning he comprehended how his brother must have felt when Katherine and then Elena had rejected him. This morning he felt the incomprehensible urge to apologize to him, to tell him that he had been an ass in judging his actions. Because being the unchosen Salvatore meant excruciating pain and any reaction was somehow justified.

It was easy now to forgive him.

" ...and the younger brother must help to pay for the pleasures of the elder. "

But it had been just the opposite. Damon had paid more than his dues over the years. He had watched him with Elena. He had risked his life for the girl that was in love with his brother. All of that after having discovered that Katherine hadn't been pining for him. He had suffered in relative silence for so long, he wondered why he hadn't turned off his humanity.

"I hated you. I still do... But not because you forced me to turn...Because she turned you. It was just supposed to be me, Stefan. Just me"

It was easy now to understand him.

Funny how the world works sometimes. His brother had betrayed him. He had stolen his girlfriend right from under his nose. He hadn't waited before inviting her into his bed. He hadn't given him the heads up. He had tried to cover it all up.

It was easy now to hate him.

Nevertheless, he felt now closer to him than he had in decades, centuries even. Back when they still shared everything, when they were each other's rock.

It was easy now to love him.

Would he ever be able to tell his brother that? How would it go?

"I hate you, brother, because she was supposed to love just me. Only me. But I understand. I finally understand and I forgive you for hating me. You had no other choice. When it hurts this much, there is no letting go, hate is the only answer."

"Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris. Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior."**

Stefan was no novice to pain and guilt. He had survived his share during his supernaturally long life. But he knew that he could not bear to watch the two of them be happy as they seemed to be, at his expense. It was beyond his capabilities.

There was only one thing to do. He would have to leave Mystic Falls, to leave Caroline, his new Lexie. He would have to leave the only woman he had ever loved without compulsion behind. Most of all, he would have to separate himself from him.

His nemesis. His ally. His enemy. His savior. In a word, his brother.

"...all the evil and good of their earliest years could be gone over again, and every former united pain and pleasure retraced with the fondest recollection. An advantage this, a strengthener of love, in which even the conjugal tie is beneath the fraternal. Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connexions can supply."***

*Mansfield Park, Chapter III

** This is Catullus 85. Wikipedia's translation is: " I hate and I love. Why I do this perhaps you ask I do not know but I sense that it happens and I am tormented"

***Mansfield Park, Chapter XXIV