xxxxXxxxx

"The Salvatore's' may fight like dogs, but in the end they would die for each other."

~"Rebecca Mikalson" "The Vampire Diaries"

xxxxXxxxx


Caroline had spent a lot of time in the Salvatore house lately. But she had rarely spent time in either Salvatore brother's bedroom, with the one exception of when Damon had been compelling her into being his Barbie doll. She still hadn't fully forgiven him for that; but she had learned to move past it. But she had then made it a rule not to be in either of these rooms again, out of principal.

Tonight she was breaking her own rule as she sat cross legged in the middle of Stefan's vast bed holding out a glass almost completely full of blood. "All of it gone mister. Matt's going to find some animal supplements to it so you don't OD."

Stefan took the glass from her, the back of his ring hitting the faceted crystal. He took a slow drink. He was sitting against the headboard of his bed. One leg crossed over the other, not quite lying down, but not quite sitting up either. He was still in the same clothes with the only acceptation being the leather jacket he shed. His clothes stunk from the accumulation of three weeks of sweat, blood and stagnant water.

"Caroline-"

"Don't-!" Caroline said, raising a hand up to silence him. "Don't you dare say I'm fine Stefan Salvatore, You spent three weeks at the bottom of the quarry, staked and desiccating because of Silas! Okay? You're not. fine!" Her eyes betrayed her concern.

Elena's shoes echoed off the hardwood tile as she came out of Stefan's on suit bathroom holding a damp rag that smelled pungent of soap. "Here," she rounded to the side of the bed that Stefan was on. "You're probably not up for a shower right now, but this should work until you are-"

"Thanks," Stefan took the rag from her, but only set it aside on the nightstand.

"How are you feeling?" Elena asked in genuine concern.

"I'm okay," Stefan responded.

"Stefan you almost died," Elena argued. "You can admit you're not okay-"

"Hey," Matt came into the room before Stefan could counter. He was holding a 1965 .45 Remington Rifle in two heavily bandaged hands. "This things got only 2 rounds, and I've never shot anything besides an automatic, what kind of shells does it take?"

"I thought Damon was supposed to be looking for extra rounds," Caroline argued.

"He is, but I can't find him anywhere. It's not officially hunting season until next week. If someone one catches me out in the woods shooting and draining a stag of all its blood they're going to get suspicious."

"My dad went hunting with you Matt," Elena argued. "You're a good shot, you shouldn't need more than two rounds."

"Guys!"

Stefan's voice made all the others in the room turn to face him.

"I'm not dead. " Stefan pulled forward, staring at all of them." I'm right here. I appreciate what you're all trying to do. But none of its necessary."

"How's the patient?" Damon came into the room. He clothes and hair were still damp from diving into the quarry. "Broody and non complaint?"

"Matt is going out there by himself to kill a deer, Damon." Stefan argued turning his eyes to his brother. "Not with Silas on the loose."

"You heard Elena, Donovan's a good shot." Damon argued back. "You were desiccated and staked Stefan. Straight Human blood makes you Charles Manson; this is the only alternative to rehab you. Liz is going out to watch his back- she can explain away a drunk high school grad trying bag his first 5 point buck better than her tryst with the local vampires."

"I don't need to be rehabbed, Damon-" Stefan swung his legs over the bed, but when he attempted to stand he stumbled, knocking into the night stand by his bed, sending the lamp wobbling. He found purchase on one of the bed posts, shrugging off both Elena's and Caroline hands.

Damon observed the whole thing with a silent look. "Until you can say that without falling over like a drunk college pledge brother, you don't get a say in the matter." He tossed a red box of shell casings to Matt. "Get going, it'll to be light soon."

Matt caught the box one handed and left out the door.

Damon turned to Elena and Caroline in turn. "If you two don't mind, I need to have a private chat with my recently impersonated, dead undead little brother."

Both Elena and Caroline recognized the dismissal, and neither one of them said anything as they left.

Stefan was still standing. He leant more on the bed than he was willing to admit, but kept himself at his full 5'11" height. "What are you doing? You can't send Matt out alone in the woods at night. Silas can be anyone. How can Matt protect himself from what he can't even see?"

"Silas curried a favoritism to turn into you, Stefan," Damon returned. "And he was a bit narcissistic about it being his true fce, so I say we're safe for a while on the costume changes." Damon's look turned into a glare. "You know I just saved your life brother, you might want to fall off your high horse and say thank you." His eyes roamed lower. "Or stop bracing yourself against the furniture if you're trying to convince me you're up to full Vampire status."

Stefan leant up from the bed, transferring his weight fully to his feet."Damon-" he slanted forward, this time he succeeded in knocking the lamp over into a crash into the floor.

Damon and Stefan did an awkward sort of dance; Damon was half ready to give into the urge to throw his brother back onto the bed on his ass so he would stop standing like he was drunk. And Stefan tried to find a way to right himself without making it seem like Damon's remark had been a valid one.

The end result of such a dance was that Stefan braced an arm against the wall and found his bearings and Damon produced a long eye roll at the whole scene, all the while keeping an look of indifference on his face.

"If you wanted to get Matt out of earshot, you ask him to leave the room, you don't send him on a suicidal death mission-"

"The Justice League of Female Vampires wasn't about to let any of our conversations be private Stefan; not after you red flagged their hovering radar." Damon threw back. "I used Matt shooting things in the dark to divert their focus . I need to know what Silas told you."

"Wow it didn't take long for that concern of yours to melt, Damon." Stefan said.

"We'll hug it out when we're done brother, tell me what Silas told you." Damon returned. "Other than that you and Katherine now share more than just a tawdry string of affairs."

"He taunted me, and then he threw me into a safe after staking me in the chest; there wasn't time to pen a soliloquy in between there." Stefan went for the honest, brutal answer. The lack of food and the desiccation, not to mention the stake through his chest made things a bit of a limbo'd blur. He felt like he had after a Ripper binge, waking up to a pile of bodies and a house he didn't recall. But he still remembers the tearing feelings of what got him there in the first place.

"How much water did you ingest?" Damon threw back, his voice a bit disgusted. Stefan graced him with a look. The same one he had worn as a kid when he came home with their new hunting dog. Still a puppy, with a broken leg, and with no explanation other than a mass amount of 4-year-old crying as to how it happened. "Fine. But you're telling me later, brother. Switching gears then, we need a way to distinguish you from fake you. Silas is an ancient dick, which means he's still going to play his best card, we need to be one step ahead of him."

"If he finds out you all broke me out of that safe, he'll kill you." Stefan tells Damon like his brother should know such things. "Being one step ahead of him is sticking to my original plan-" He watched Damon give him a 'blow off' look. It was one that was deeper than Caroline, Matt, or even Elena would ever see Damon use on him; because they would never be around to witness it. "I need to leave town-"

"You can't even leave this room without looking like a deflated marionette on crack, and you want to try going past the 100 square foot mark?" Damon retorted. "Brilliant plan Stef."

"I'm putting everyone in danger by staying Damon and you know it," Stefan returned. "So whatever this-" he waved his hand in between him and Damon "-concern you're trying to show for me. I appreciate it, but we need to think practically."

"Part of thinking practically is knowing when to shut up, Stefan!" Damon's voice rose to a yell. "Don't think, for one second, that just because I want to drive that stake back up your chest I'm indifferent to how it got there." Damon was now only a few steps away from his brother, having moved there almost unconsciously. "So you want to be all moral, and ride of in a self depreciating sunset? Fine. But you're not doing it tonight."

Damon moved away from Stefan with the same fluidity he would have used had he pinned his brother against the wall. His room was larger than Stefan's, but Stefan's was still large enough to making walking to the door not accomplished in a handful of steps.

In the middle of leaving the room Stefan's voice turned Damon back around.

"Damon, one of the things Silas told me, it was about Bonny – She's dead."

The look on Damon's face went from heated anger at his brother to something that bordered on shock had Damon actually allowed himself to succumb to such an emotion.

"It's how he was able to break out of the spell she put on him."

Stefan listened to the footfalls of his older brother wing off the hardwood floors as he approached him again. Damon had a morbid streak that he exercised on a daily basis, that ripped blood from the necks of everyone he chose to exercise it on. But he also had an affinity to proximity; getting close enough to someone that their breath exhaled on him.

Stefan wasn't excluded on this; he had been the first one Damon had ever done on. As a child, breaking in amongst the governess to peer inside the English pram at the baby, going nose to nose with the tiny thing, feeling the puffs breath blow into his eyes. To Damon it gave a sense of solidity, that the thing in the room had a beating heart, and breath just like him. That it wasn't just some sort of illusion.

"I take it you want me to tell Elena," Damon said by way of trying to explain away the odd sense of mourning he had for Bonny Bennett. The witch that had tried, on more than one occasion to kill him, along with half of her linage. But that he couldn't exclude in his short list of friends.

"No, Damon," Stefan let go of the wall, and it was like a chair trying to now stand on three legs.

Damon had enough of the crap of his brother. He grabbed Stefan's arm and shoved his brother back onto the bed.

Stefan looked at him with angry indignation for a moment, but channeled it into his words and remained sitting. "If you tell Elena that her best friend was killed by Silas now, it will send her back over the edge, and she may not come back this time."

"Just because lying is my normal department Stefan doesn't mean I'm going to pretend Bonny's off at Vassar when she's off haunting the Other Side." Damon insisted.

"You're supposed to love Elena, right?" Stefan, stared up at Damon. His height on the bed was akin to when he had just turned 13 and Damon was a good head taller than him. "You have to protect her from things like this. You need to do this for her-"

"This isn't Guiding Light," Damon retorted. "I don't have a 'need to do' quota for my girlfriend that must be met so the ratings stay good."

"Fine, than do it for me," Stefan insisted. At his words he watched Damon give him the a look like he'd drunk lemon milk instead of blood. "You want me to stay in Mystic Falls, than this is what will get me to stay."

Damon stared at his brother like he wanted to punch him, perhaps stake him. But neither of those actions were blocking out the creeping, nagging feeling that feeling that jumped ahead of others. That Elena Gilbert may be his star-crossed love; but there were things that were even more ancient than stars.

"I've got to make a phone call," to demonstrate this, Damon removed the iPhone 5 from his jacket pocket. "You stink brother. Take a shower. Change your clothes into something less drown rat infested. Do all of that with falling over, and I'll be in my room with the keys to Part Deux."

Damon left through the opened doorway without bothering to close it.


xxxxXxxxx

Matt had been in Damon and Stefan's garage a handful of times, and each time he was amazed by it. It had four sliding door entrance points and was like a showroom/professional garage combination. Flat concrete floors with several drains, a mechanical lift, shop bench with enough tools to outfit ten garages in town, and the most amazing cars.

Against the furthest red wall was Stefan's cherry red Porsche, next to that, Damon's powder blue 1969 Chevy Cheveille Convertible. Beside that stood a collection of Harley's from the 1950's in various colors.

A beautiful dark maroon 1939 Packard with white walled tires was next in line, and finally Damon's solid black Ford Ranger.

It was the SUV that Matt was standing by with the flat bed door opened. The limp head of a young buck sat half lolled out, antlers like fallen branches. It's throat was slit from ear to ear, and a large puddle off blood stained the floor's plastic shell.

A plastic milk jug sat beside on the ground, a funnel stuck in the bottle's neck. It was already half full of blood. Trickles pattered like lessening rain into the funnel from the flesh of the buck.

Liz Forbes had helped Matt load the buck into the Damon's car after he took it down. She had radioed her dispatch desk to the 'suspicious gunshots in the woods' but then radioed back a moment later, informing that it had been some out of town drunk teens popping off soda cans (She had brought pock marked soda cans, scattering them around the scene) and that one of them had missed and injured a deer, the animal had bounded off into the woods and the kids had scattered.

It was a very paper thin story but Liz had used all her influence to make it stick, Matt backing her up as being the one who had stumbled upon the 'kids' in the woods. They could only wait and see now.

"You're back," Caroline's heels echoed off the concrete floor. She stared at the head of the buck, eyes glazed over in death. "Ugh, that's so disgusting."

"You hunted these things with Stefan Care," Matt insisted. "Is it a little too late to go all Animal Activist?"

"I don't stare at them Matt and dry drain them over a plastic Velda Farms bottle," Caroline argued. It's just cruel."

A look and half a dry laugh was Matt's reply. The deer's blood was still draining, but he replaced the jug underneath with an empty one. He closed the cap and handed it to Caroline. "How's Stefan?"

Caroline took the jug from Matt. "Damon cloistered him off for some brother bonding yelling session, I don't know-" Elena and I haven't heard a peep from either of them in half an hour."

"And it's driving you crazy huh?" Matt hadn't dated Caroline in a long time, but he had grown up with her, he could still read her.

"Damn right it's driving me crazy!" Caroline retorted. "Stefan is my friend, and I'm just down stairs playing sentry duty."

"You gotta understand that he's the guys brother," Matt said of Damon leaving Caroline out of the loop. "Vicki used to get under my skin all the time. But she always came to me first with the deep stuff, even before all her crack head friends, before Jer," the longing in his sister's name or Jeremy's was not hidden. "That kind of thing tends to trump the other stuff; even you, and even Elena."

"Or they're both just being dicks," Caroline retorted and turned on her heel almost a kind of grace that wouldn't seem possible given that she was holding a jug of stolen deer blood, but yet she managed to pull it off.

Matt followed her back inside the boarding house.

Elena was sitting on the couch, but rose when she saw Matt and Caroline enter through the side door.

"Matt," Elena walked down the risen part of the floor where the couch was. "Are you okay? Did anyone see you?"

"Liz got everything buried Elena," Matt reassured. "It's fine."

He found himself in Elena's embrace. They had grown up as friends for so long. Through all the vampire insaneness, and the loss of their loved ones, they had gone from girlfriend/boyfriend, to ex's, back to the friends they always were.

A knock on the door brought Elena out of Matt's embrace. It turned all of their heads to the heavy wooden door. None of them were expecting anyone, and given what had just happened, a knock at ten minutes to midnight did not bode well.

Elena walked to the front door, Matt not far behind her.

"Who is it?" Elena called out.

"It's Rick," came the reply from the other side of the door.

Elena shared a total confusion look with the others. The Veil had gone up weeks ago. The voice was all wrong, and the inflection of the end of the word sounded like a 'k', not like the Ric they were all thinking about.

Which buzzed warning signals at high alert, because it could easily be Silas.

Regardless, Elena opened the door. If there was a threat, she chose to see it, and if it was Silas, a door wasn't going to stop him from getting inside.

The door swung slowly open to reveal a guy, tanned, in his early teens or late 20's, buzzed head, angular face dressed in jeans and an olive shirt that looked like they had been hastily pulled on. "Are you Elena?"

"Who are you?" Elena asked, keeping the doorway blocked, her head cocking just so to see Caroline moving closer.

"If you're Elena, I'm supposed to say: you have the worst kind of kinks for headboard smashing." 'Rick' spoke in almost a monotone kind of voice like he had been drug, or compelled.

"Perfect delivery,"

Elena whipped her head around to see Damon at the stairs with Stefan. "Damon, what the hell is going on?"

"Relax Elena, just a little security system for our pal Rick here," Damon and Stefan moved down the stairs almost at the same pace.

And when they got closer, Elena could see why. Damon had a grasp on the upper part of Stefan's arm like he was guiding his brother.

And Stefan didn't look completely happy about it, but it was like had resigned himself to just go along with it because he didn't want to deal with Damon's mouth.

"Set up over there Rick, that's a good boy." Damon said to the kid, gesturing to the living room with a jerk of his head.

Rick closed the door and came into the boarding house. He had a black carryon bag slung over his shoulder and he set it down on the coffee table, rattling the jug of blood that was already there.

"What is all this?" Matt came over to the coffee table and watched Rick unzip the pack and pull out a black tattoo artist needle and several pots of dark henna ink.

"This would be insurance Donovan," Damon picked up a sleeve of needle heads Rick had set on the table top. He opened it and examined the pointed needles inside and then grabbed Rick by the collar of his shirt. "These inks and heads are just regular run of the mill henna and pointy metal-"

"Yes," Rick answered in the honest way people did when a Vampire compelled them. "No werewolf venom or vervain in anything like you asked."

"And Silas?"

Rick turned his eyes up to Damon. "I don't even know who that is."

Damon seemed somewhat satisfied at this. "And if anyone else comes in asking for the design you do tonight, even a twin of Wonder hair over there-"

"I deny it to them, do a similar one but with enough difference that you'll be able to tell, or I stab my jugular with this needle, whichever is best case scenario."

"Damon!" Caroline shouted.

Damon seemed not to hear her. Instead he turned his gaze over to Stefan who was standing beside the coffee table. "Time to add another Tat to your collection brother."

Stefan had changed into a dark red and black plaid shirt and he rolled up the left sleeve of his shirt and sat down on the couch facing Rick.

Rick picked up Stefan's arm, holding a sharpie in his hand like he was a regular client in his shop, on any regular night. "You know what you want?"

"This is insane!" Caroline yelled. "How is getting a tattoo going to keep Silas from killing us all?"

"You misunderstood the question Blondie," Damon retorted. "This isn't about Silas not killing us. This is about dulling the edge on Stefan's doppelganger. If the real Stefan has something that the fake one doesn't then we have the advantage."

"Even if you compel every tattoo artist in Mystic Falls not all Silas has to do is see it and get someone from another state, or even another town to copy it." Elena's voice was raised. She didn't know what made her angrier, Damon compelling a kid to commit suicide for a tattoo, or Stefan's almost indifference to it.

"I wanted to get out of Mystic Falls Elena," Stefan spoke up, his eyes turned up to her. He watched the look shift there. He had been with her for so long he could read her thoughts, even if they were no longer together that didn't change it. "I was leaving to give you and Damon a fresh start-It's what Damon and I agreed to last year-"

"-Hey!" Damon cut in. "You can tell her something that was said in Brother Confidence, but I can't-"

Stefan cut Damon a look that would most likely murder anyone else. "Elena, I will stay in Mystic Falls. If you and my brother want me too-"

"Matt go find a stake and run me through with it," Damon said. "I don't want to listen to my little brother wax on anymore."

"But Damon's right," Stefan cut into Damon's sarcasm. "If I'm staying, I have to be smart about this."

"Dude," the voice came from Rick, who was still grasping Stefan's arm. He said it like was just an annoyed extended conversation about where they were all going to eat. Not how to protect one Vampire from the oldest Immortal of all time.

"I need to know what you want."

"A name," Damon answered Rick for Stefan "Charlotte."

"Is that another old girlfriend of Stefan's that you slept with?" Matt blurted out. It was angry and rushed and Damon almost killed him for less.

"It was our sister's name." Stefan's voice happened before Damon could instigate anything on Matt.

Elena's face betrayed complete confusion. So did Damon's.

"You never told me you had a sister-" Elena spoke out.

"She was a stillborn," Stefan told her. "She died a year before I was born. Back then it was taboo to speak the name of a dead child. But Damon told me about her one day after our father got drunk and left us to fend for ourselves with our maid."

"You were two," Damon argued, his eyebrows almost exploding from his hairline. "How did you even remember what I said?"

"Father was drunk." Stefan raised his eyes to his brother. "He blamed me for mother dying when I was born. I ran to the boat house, you found me. It's harder to not remember that Damon."

There was a look that hung in the air between both brothers, the things they never said to each other before Stefan stared talking again: "This will work because of the story behind it. Silas is my doppelganger, but even he didn't live my life with Damon before we turned." Stefan's gaze was back on Damon.

"The guy may be the highest evil up on the food chain; but apparently evil doesn't translate into good acting ability-" Damon said in agreement to what Stefan said. "He's the Devil who doesn't know his details."

"That's how you knew that it wasn't Stefan before," Elena's words were half a question and half a statement. Her head cocked to Damon in the way it did when she realized that she had underestimated him, again. "What did he say to you?"

Damon turned down to look at Rick who had drawn the word Charlotte on Stefan's arm in a curling script. "You're not giving my brother a tramp stamp on his arm, lose a few of the flourishes. Oh and forget all parts of this conversation as well as coming here all together soon as you're done. Confidentiality Vampire clause and all."

"Anything else?" Rick's voice was still glazed over, like his thoughts were being controlled, but he was being a little petulant about it.

"Yeah, lose the attitude or I might just decide to pull your heart out through your mouth instead of letting you go back to your anime porn okay there Ricky?" Damon said like it was a simple, rational alternative.

A second later the needle whirred on and Rick began inking in the lines of the tattoo into Stefan's skin, no retort to Damon's suggestion to maim him crossing his lips.

"It wasn't a big confounding mystery Elena," Damon answered over the whirr of the needle. "Contrary to what you all believe I actually know my own brother." Damon watched the reactions of everyone in the room, finally ending on Stefan's. "Let's leave it at that shall we?"

Stefan watched Damon walk behind the couch to pour himself a glass of bourbon. The whirring of the tattoo needle the only thing that kept him from moving.


xxxxXxxxx

End.

This is not so much an end as a pause to where the season 5 opener would continue. I didn't want to make this a mini episode, I wanted to focus on what I wanted to see Damon do to save his brother.