Hey guys! So this chapter sets the story in motion. Tell me what you think, what you like and what you don't. Thanks!
-Sarah
"Stefan," Elena calls out, leaning in the doorway of the large Salvatore Mansion. "Are you here?"
When she doesn't hear a response, she quickly steps into the house and out of the crisp, mid December air, closing the large, castle like door behind her. She walks farther into the mansion, looking around for any sign of Stefan, or even Damon for that matter. No sign of Stefan. When she reaches the living room, she expects to see Damon at the bar, pouring himself a drink or sitting on the couch with a girl between his teeth.
She finds neither.
She had gotten a text from Stefan, asking him to meet her here, so it wouldn't have made sense for him to have left. That doesn't sound like Stefan. She knows if Stefan was here, she would have already seen him. He would certainly have heard her enter the mansion.
Growing worried, she walks to his bedroom, looking around for any sign of trouble. Any reason he might not have met her at the door. She reaches the open door and peaks in. What she sees confuses her. Stefan, with his back turned to the door, putting clothes into a large bag.
"Stefan," she says, stepping into the room.
He reacts to his name, turning around to face her. The blankness in his face and eyes scares and surprises her.
"Stefan, what are you doing?" she asks, her voice sounding breathless. She steps forward, one hand out to embrace him. He steps back, rejecting her. Her heart skips a beat. What is going on?
"Elena," he says. His voice is empty, emotionless, like his face and eyes. It reminds her of Damon. "I-"
"Are you leaving?" she interrupts, her voice raising an octave.
He looks down at his feet. "Yes."
Yes. That one simple word stabs at her heart and she absently looks down at her chest, looking for any sign of an actual physical wound. She knows she wouldn't, but when she doesn't find one, she's surprised.
"Why?" she asks, searching in her mind for something, anything that would make him leave. She comes up blank. Katherine is in the tomb, turning into ashes by the second, Elijah hasn't been seen or heard from, in about a year, since she had made the deal with him to release Stefan from the tomb, protect her friends and family in exchange for her cooperation when the time comes and he needs her to help drawl out Klaus, the oldest known vampire hell-bent on breaking the Sun and the Moon curse, killing herself and almost everyone she loved in the process. Mystic Falls has been quiet since that night last December. No vampire, werewolf or any supernatural murder for that matter, no stray vampire had shown up causing trouble, not even Damon caused any trouble. For the last year, Mystic Falls has been your normal, quiet small Virginia town.
She can't think of one reason why he would be leaving. Unless- no, Elijah wouldn't have contacted Stefan. Elijah made it very clear that night in her bedroom, it was her he needed to drawl out Klaus, not Stefan, or Damon or even Katherine. It was her.
She knows this but she can't help but ask. "Stefan, is it Elijah? Or Klaus?"
He looks at her evenly. "No, its nothing like that."
"Then what is it?" she asks, confused and desperate for answers. "Why are you leaving?"
He looks down at the floor, staring intently at something she can't see. "I just- need to leave, Elena."
"Not good enough," she says, stepping forward. "I need more than that."
He turns his back to her and continues throwing stuff into his back, almost angrily. "I can't give you anything more than that, Elena."
"Is it me?"
She watches as the muscles in his back tense and a moment later, he turns around, very slowly. His face is controlled, as is his voice. His eyes holds something she can't put a name too. A fierce emotion she has no name for. "Elena, you're in your senior year of high school. It another 9 months, you'll be off to college. Four and a half years from now, you're probably going to be writing articles for some newspaper or magazine. You're going to be living your life, growing older, moving forward. I'm not. I will always be what you see right now. When I'm in your life, you can't have a normal life."
The rush of information leaves her speechless. Of course, she knows that Stefan won't grow older and she will. She's always known that. She never worried about it. She loved Stefan and Stefan loved her. That was enough. Everything else they would figure out later, together. She had always assumed Stefan felt the same. But now….
"Why now?" she asks. "Why not a year ago? If that's the problem, why are you just now doing something about it?"
"From the time I met you, something has always been going on. Whether it was Damon or Katherine or the Tomb Vampires and a year ago Elijah, something has been going on. Keeping us all on edge, ready for a fight. I wasn't thinking ten years ahead, I was thinking of the moment, keeping you and Mystic Fall safe. The last year, nothing has happened."
"And that's a bad thing?" she challenges. The shock is wearing off and replaced by almost anger.
"Of course not," he says. "The last year has been completely normal. Nothing has happened to keep us all on edge and I've finally been able to relax and take a breath. I've had the chance to look ten years down the road."
"You don't like what you see," she says, flatly.
"When I looked down that road, I saw us."
She stares at him, wondering if this was suppose to make any sense.
"I saw the imbalance."
She scoffs. "Imbalance," she repeats, making the words sound dirty.
"Let me ask you something," he says, looking as if he was about to prove a point. "Name one thing that has changed about me since the first time you saw me."
She opens her mouth, about to shatter his little point into a million pieces.
He holds up a hand, stopping her. "One physical thing."
Damn it.
She says nothing, knowing she's lost the battle.
"Exactly," he says. "You can't name anything because nothing has changed."
She crosses her arm tightly across her chest, knowing with an aching fierceness exactly how this going to end.
"Since I met you," he says, "You've grown half an inch and your hair is two inches longer. There's many more things I could name, but I think you get the point."
"So that's it?" she asks, feeling a prickling in her eyes. "After everything that's happened between us- Katherine, Damon, Elijah- you're going to leave because I'm human."
"I'm leaving for you," he says.
She shakes her, raising her hands and backing up towards the door. "If you leave, its for you."
He simply shakes his head.
She bumps the wall, stopping her retreat. "If you leave, my life isn't going to go back the way it was before you. I don't want it to. Whether you believe this or not, my life has gotten better since I've met you."
He snorts.
"I've become more myself than I've been since my parents died. When you met me, I was broken. The last year and a half hasn't broken me more. Stefan, its put me back together. I'm not a broken little girl who lost her parents anymore."
"You were never broken, Elena," Stefan says. "You were hurt, not broken. I didn't fix you. You fixed yourself. I was just there while you did."
"That's not true," she says, gritting her teeth.
He looks down at the floor. "Whatever helps you sleep at night," he says softly.
She laughs, shocked and hurt. "Don't say this is for me. Its not for me. I know whets best for me and this isn't it."
"It may not feel like that now, but at some point in the future you're going to realize-"
"Realize what Stefan?" she yells. "That my life is so much better without you? That two years from now this is all going to be just another bad memory? Fading with age? I hate to be the one to tell you this Stefan, but if you leave, all my problems aren't going to leave with you. Elijah and Klaus aren't going to disappear just because you did. If you leave, the only thing that is going to change is you being here."
Silence.
"What if a month from now Elijah comes and tells me its time?" she asks. "What am I going to do then?"
"The same thing you would do if I was here," he says. "Only-"
"How am I suppose to-" she interrupts but Stefan continues as if she hadn't spoken.
"-with Damon."
"What?"
"Damon's not leaving," Stefan says. "He's staying here to help you."
"I don't want his help," she whispers, knowing she's lost. "I want yours."
He says nothing.
She can feel it coming, the aching in her chest, the prickling in her eyes. She won't allow herself to break into a million pieces in front of him. "Someday you're going to realize how wrong you are," she whispers, know her voice would shake if she didn't.
"Someday you're going to realize I'm right," he says.
"Whatever helps you sleep at night," she whispers, throwing his words back at him.
She turns on her heels, walking out the door, leaving the boy and a large piece of herself in the room behind her.
One Month Later
Elena is lying on Caroline's bed, watching as her friend destroys her closet, looking for something to wear.
"What about this one?" Caroline asks, holding a simple, elegant black dress up to her perfect body.
Elena sighs. They had been at this for almost two hours. "I think it'll look great."
Caroline groans and throws the dress on the floor. "You said that about the blue one, the red one and the green one!"
"Because they'll all look great too!" Elena says, running a hand through her hair, frustrated.
Caroline sinks into the light green moon chair beside her closet. "Its hopeless," she says.
Elena gets up, preparing for one of her friend speeches. "Get up," she tells Caroline.
"What?"
"Get up," Elena says. Caroline obeys, her face a question mark. Elena reaches for her hand and leads Caroline to the her vanity. Elena points to the mirror, which is littered with pictures of Caroline, Elena and Bonnie, before and after all their lives had changed. Pictures of her family and the source of all the distress is also taped to the mirror.
Elena points to one picture in particular.
"What?" Caroline asks, looking at the picture.
"What are you wearing in that picture?" Elena asks, setting the foundation for her speech.
"A red mini dress," Caroline says, sounding confused.
Elena points to another. "And in this one?"
"Jeans and a t-shirt."
"Now look at both of the pictures," Elena says, doing so herself. "Is Tyler's facial expression different in either?"
Caroline examines the picture and realization of what Elena is doing sinks in. "No," she says.
"That's because he loves you," Elena says, confidently. "He doesn't care what you wear on a date, or whether your hair is curly or straight. He loves you."
"I know I know," Caroline says, rubbing a hand down her face. "I just feel like I have to- oh, I don't know!"
Elena puts a comforting hand on Caroline's shoulder. "Tyler isn't the same person he was a few years ago. He's changed."
"I know, but I'm always scared he's going to become that person he was."
Elena thinks about the way she used to be before her parents died. She was always happy, involved in everything and people loved to be around her. She was involved in cheerleading, volunteering and anything else that struck her as interesting. She drew people to her without even trying. But after her parents died, she became more melancholy, withdrawn and quiet. Trivial things like prom and cheerleading no longer struck her has interesting. She wasn't the same person she had been, even if she had tried. And she had tried. She tried to be carefree, peppy, sunny Elena Gilbert. But that Elena was gone. That Elena died with her parents. Once something that life changing happens, its almost impossible to go back to the way things were.
"Do you remember the way I was before my parents died?"
"Yeah."
"After they died, I was completely different. I couldn't be happy with the things that made me happy before. It all seemed so clique and unimportant after they died. No matter how much I pretended, I changed and there was no going back."
She nods, understandingly.
"What you helped Tyler get through that first full moon, it tied you together in a way that no one can understand," Elena says. Neither Caroline or Tyler had given them much detail on that night. They had given them the basics, he began the process of changing and a few hours later he was a wolf. He stayed like that for a few hours and then he changed back. That was all they gave him. Elena knew whatever happened had been traumatizing for both of them in many different ways.
"I know," Caroline says, that look that she got whenever someone talked about the first time he changed entered her eyes.
"So what I'm saying is you aren't just another girl to him."
Caroline nods, looking a little less frantic. "I know I'm being ridiculous, I just want everything to be perfect."
"I know," Elena says. She pauses. "Its been a year hasn't it?"
Caroline bites her lip, smiling. "Yes."
"Wow," Elena says.
"I know," Caroline squeals. She gathers Elena in a hug, careful not to squeeze her too tight. When she pulls back, her face is less pinched and more excited. "Thank you so much, Elena. I really needed one of your epic speeches."
Elena laughs. "Any time. I'm full of them," she says. She glances at Caroline's closet and then at the pile of clothes on the floor. "Now, lets pick out something for you to wear."
Caroline nods, a fresh wash of enthusiasm rolling over her.
They throw themselves into finding the perfect outfit for Caroline to wear on her and Tyler's one year anniversary date. They pick out the clothes suitable for the date and matches each with the perfect jewelry, shoes and purse. After another hour, they've come up with three different options.
The first is a black, knit dress with a draped neckline and a fitted bodice, reaching just above her knees. The second is a dark blue satin strapless with a black belt just around the waist. Its tight fitting until it reaches the belt, which is where it flows out to her knees. The third- and Elena's personal favorite- is a red, bandaged style dress with upturned seams, encrusted with heaving beading. Its tight fitting, sleeveless with a low v-neck and shorter than the first two.
"I love them all," Caroline says. "Which one do you like best?"
"I like the red one," Elena says, confidently. "I think it'll look the best."
Caroline looks at the three dresses, moving from the first, to the second, to the last and back to the beginning. "You're completely right," Caroline says, picking up the red dress.
"Go try on it," Elena urges, smiling.
"Okay!" Caroline says, excitedly. She picks up the shoes, purse and jewelry they picked out to go with it and heads to the bathroom.
Elena sits down on the bed, waiting patiently. She looks around Caroline's familiar green bedroom. She smiles at the poster of Sing It Loud, Caroline's favorite band and remembers when they went to see them in concert. Caroline nearly fainted. She looks at the picture of herself, Bonnie, Caroline and Matt from freshman year, their arms wrapped around each other. She smiles when she sees the home made calendar with pictures of herself, family and other things that are interesting to Caroline.
This month is a picture of Tyler and Caroline at school, him leaning in and kissing her neck. She crosses off the days with hearts instead of X's.
With a shock, Elena looks at the date.
No that can't be right, Elena thinks and immediately starts counting backwards in her head.
She doesn't notice when Caroline comes out of the bathroom, looking absolutely dazzling. She does a quick turn, freezing in a pose.
"How do I look?" Caroline asks.
Elena can't answer her. She's frozen, She can't breath, let alone talk.
"Elena?"
Elena looks up at Caroline. Caroline's eyes widen at the absolute horror on Elena's face and rushes to her. "What's wrong?"
She opens her mouth but nothing comes out.
Caroline grips the top of her arms. "Elena, what's wrong?"
Elena finds her voice. "I'm pregnant," she says, horrified.
Caroline's eyes widen and they both look at each other in shock.