*disclaimer: don't even pretend like you don't already know that I own -0.000% of The Vampire Diaries.
The latest in a string of violent and confusing animal attacks, 17 year old Jessica Walters was discovered early this morning...
Caroline leaned forward to press her finger on the blessed button that would silent the sound currently blaring from her television. There unfortunately wasn't a button to convince her to peel her eyes away from the screen, however, and she watched as silent photos of a redhead with bright green eyes and braces moved across the television.
"Stefan!" She found herself unconsciously calling out for him, regardless of knowing what his response would be. He'd given her the same, dumb answer every time she asked about it since this thing...whatever it was...had started. The same answer he'd given to Damon the day it had started.
The news proclaimed animal attacks, as usual, and hunters were up in arms, demanding to be let loose in the woods with their rifles. Caroline was in the know, though; not surprising, she considered, since she could easily have claimed the title of town gossip. At any rate, it was picking up pace and her mother was spending at least 20 hours a day at the station. Poor Jessica Walters was the third body this week, as Damon would surely be coming over to point out any minute now...and it was Wednesday. "Stefaaaann!"
The phone rang before Stefan had a chance to show up...that is, if he even would have. He'd all but disconnected himself from the world after Damon's surprise visit. The world including Caroline. Conversations were hassles to initiate and even more difficult to hold. He left all the time, never asking her to come and changing the subject when she tried to suggest that she tag along. Sometimes he was even gone overnight leaving Caroline laying silent in bed, attempts to sleep being futile with horrific scenes of Stefan's prospective death playing through her head. She couldn't remember the last time she'd convinced him to eat dinner. She hated it. She was scared, and worried, and guilty. And it could all be blamed on the name currently blinking across her phone screen.
"7 people!" Damon was yelling into her ear the second he'd heard the ringing end, before Caroline had even had the chance to say hello.
"Yeah, I have a TV..." she responded bitterly.
"This guy's killed 7 people in 2 weeks and you're telling me that my brother still thinks I'm too terrible to work with?"
She was quiet on her end of the phone, answering Damon with nothing but a sigh because she didn't know how to answer. How could she betray Stefan? How could she tell Damon that his noble brother had become some puddle of sick sadness? She couldn't tell him that Stefan snapped at her when she asked where he'd been, or that she'd found 3 empty blood bags in the bathroom trashcan, or that the nights he did spend at her home were spent pacing and clanging around downstairs instead of sleeping...inadvertently preventing Caroline from sleeping as well.
Maybe she should tell him, she thought briefly, since it was all his fault anyway. But she wouldn't say anything. She wouldn't give any indication that Stefan had made some sort of humongous backslide in progress because she wouldn't give Damon the satisfaction of feeling like "the good brother." Stefan was the good brother. Stefan IS the good brother, somewhere underneath there. It was all stressful enough and the last thing she needed was for Damon to swoop in and pick up the "hero complex" that his brother had apparently dropped. He didn't get to do that. "Damon, can't we just...take this on separately?"
"Don't be naive, Caroline, Elena and I have been trying to figure this thing out since the day it all started."
"And?" She inquired anxiously; her curiosity overwhelmed her annoyance that he was calling her cell phone every. single. day. despite the fact that he already had an investigative partner in her best friend.
"And nothing." His voice was frustrated and confused; she could practically hear him frowning and pacing his unnecessarily large living room. "Nothing but bodies. It's...it's like nobody's here but us and, as much as it pains me to admit this," he emphasized the word 'pains', drawing it out and straining his voice, "with Stefan, we probably could have ripped this guys heart out 3 days ago."
Damon was right. She knew he was right. "I'll talk to him again, okay? Just give me some time."
"Well as much as I'd loove to do that, time's one thing we may not have, Little Blonde." And the dial tone began.
Caroline huffed and pulled her feet up onto the couch. Why couldn't things ever go south singularly? Why did it all have to happen in some proverbial avalanche of SUCK? Couldn't Stefan save his deepest and darkest for a time when some unknown outsider wasn't snacking on kids she went to school with? Or couldn't said outsider at least go on some sort of diet until Stefan was well enough to crawl out of his hole? She was almost ready to laugh at how wrong it all was when she heard the door slam. "Stefan? Stefan!"
She could hear his feet moving through the entry way, but by the time she entered he was already gone. As usual. "Stefaaaaan!"
She walked back to the living room in frustration and stared at the television screen. She'd almost given up and decided to just try again another time when her cell phone began to vibrate, loud against the coffee table and flashing Damon's name once again. She hit the 'Ignore' button in annoyance and spun around, ready to bellow out Stefan's name with even more unnecessary "As" attached, but there he was. Smirking right behind her as she gasped loud and jumped at least a foot backward.
"Ugh, STOP!" she shoved him back away from her, attempting to be stern while he laughed. She failed though: partly because Caroline Forbes has never been an accomplished disciplinarian and partly because Stefan's laughter was such a completely and totally rare thing these days. She could hardly believe it and far too much joy immediately formed in the pit of her stomach. Smiling was a stretch, speaking was even a stretch, but laughter...she would insist upon him sneaking up and scaring her every time they interacted if she could. He still seemed sullen and more slow moving, but he was in the same room with her, seemingly willing to breathe the same air as her, for at least a few minutes, and she relished it as she thought of how she could possibly bring up the topic of working with Damon and not send him spiraling back out of her life.
"They're speeding up," she pointed out the obvious.
Stefan simply nodded in return, his eyes now locked on the muted TV. She studied him as they spent a few minutes in silence. She was going to speak up, of course; she's Caroline, it's what she does. And considering the circumstances, that was a lucky thing. But he was so fragile and she was so afraid. Anything and everything, she felt, could be exactly what he needed to send him back to her bedside in a drunken, 4 AM fit. Approaching things gingerly had never been her forte, but now it was a mandatory task in every conversation she had with her temporary roommate.
His eyes were what finally drove her to speak; they were crushed, but not the same kind of crushed they were at 4 AM. They made his mean streak of the past few days seem even more uncharacteristic of her friend. They were devastated for the redhead and her tearful mother who had now come onto the screen, speaking words that they couldn't hear frantically into a news reporter's microphone. He watched it all intently, his eyes following the movement of every picture of the girl that they displayed, as if he could hear what was being said, hear the story they were telling about her life.
"She was just a kid." His voice was hardly above a whisper. He seemed hypnotized, completely wrapped up in the world of Jessica Walters' Family, like Caroline's eventual words may have been futile because he probably wouldn't even hear them. But she spoke anyway.
"What do you think?" was the response she'd finally settled on after at least 5 minutes of silent, mental debating, and for a second, maybe just like, a millisecond, she swore that she saw him...Stefan, her friend, who he had been before this mess had thrown him into the mud and left him for dead.
His eyes finally broke away from the TV, with a loud intake of breath, and he looked at the ground, shuffling his feet and shaking his head. "You know what I think, Caroline."
She rolled her eyes, one thing that was her specialty. She'd known it was coming, his empathetic yet incredibly apathetic answer, but that still did no good in preparing her for the frustration that would come with it. Every single time she'd asked, any time she'd pointed out the killings throughout Mystic Falls, or suggested that something was possibly seriously amiss, he'd responded the same: it wasn't their business, he didn't want to be the hero of Mystic Falls, they couldn't risk it, they didn't know for sure that it wasn't an animal, Damon and Elena, and blah, blah, and blah. And with that, the split-second glimpse of the real him, her real sweet, brave friend, vanished into thin freaking air.
"Stefan." she turned to face him, willing her face to be serious and fear-inspiring.
"Caroline." she clearly failed because he placed a hand atop her blonde head and gave her a half-smile as he turned to exit the room. His unusual friendliness spurred her on.
Maybe she should just let him go and forget about it, forget about everything. Clearly it was what he wanted and maybe it was what he needed; maybe his refusal to do something good was part of his mourning process or something. Maybe he needed to be apathetic and disconnected from the world, and sit and sulk about his own problems while everything burned. And maybe...she should probably let him. But they were the A-Team Good Guys, and maybe this mourning period needed to take 5. Damon was right; seeing as this vampire was also some sort of wizard, without Stefan they would never get it done, they wouldn't be able to stop this guy until it was too late...until he'd taken down half the population of Mystic Falls.
"Stefan, I get it, okay?" he halted in the doorway, his back still to her, "I get that the last thing you want to do with a broken heart is be some kind of hero. I get that you don't feel like working miracles, or sticking up for people who would drive a stake through your heart with a smile on their face...but we can't just sit here, okay? Like, obviously somebody is doing something bad..."
She paused, waiting for him to snap at her, or just turn around, or laugh, or even cry...something. But all he did was lean against the door frame, still facing away from her.
"I know that you know that, Stefan." And she did know. He watched every newscast about the killings; she could hear the TV blaring every night from all the way upstairs in her room. And just then, watching the latest victim's story, he'd stood completely still for the first time in weeks...with pain in his eyes, even more pain than usually plagued them, and she desperately wanted him to act...them to act. It was the one pain in his life that they actually had the power to do something about, yet they weren't. They simply weren't.
"Someone is doing something really, really bad...in our town...and you always protected it before."
"You're wrong," his quiet voice cut through the thick silence that had immediately started to suffocate her as soon as she'd stopped speaking. "You're wrong," he finally turned to face her, "I didn't do it for the town, Caroline, or these people. I did it for...her, I did it for one person's protection and that person is now a vampire, who can no longer be killed-"
She jumped in, cutting off his ramblings before the fire they'd started in her stomach could grow any hotter. "Except by other vampires, which this clearly is, and-"
He returned the favor: "You don't think Damon will protect her?"
They stood facing one another: two sets of arms crossed over two chests, 2 sets of eyes locked in some sort of epic stare down, and 2 hearts, she could only assume, beating frantically in two bodies. The A-Team, suddenly on opposing teams.
It was lies, all of it, and she couldn't stand it. The fire in her stomach was spreading up to her heart, moving up her windpipe until it hurt to suck in oxygen. He was discounting himself and who he was, his entire character, and nothing she was saying mattered in the least. She knew him still, even if he had forgotten himself entirely, and she couldn't stomach her friend being torn apart by anyone. Least of all himself. The tears stinging her eyes and undoubtedly ruining her eyeliner only made the burning in her stomach hotter. Elena was her best friend, her lifelong partner in crime...yet Caroline suddenly found herself mentally damning her to Hell.
"Damon couldn't protect anyone as well as you could."
And suddenly he was right in front of her, moving at lightning speed, and squeezing both of her hands in his so tightly that she had to fight her instinct to pull away. "Don't do this, Caroline."
"Do what?!" His eyes were no longer crushed, or sad, or melodramatically depressed...but she didn't know what they were. They were different, and wild, and, unless she was crazy too, they were hungry.
"LIE TO YOURSELF! DON'T..." he suddenly furrowed his brow at her and blinked twice, almost as if he were suddenly realizing who he was, and where he was, and who she was, and that he was completely yelling in her face. Her instinct had won over and she'd made her best attempt to pull her hands away, but it hadn't worked. He was stronger than her by far and his iron grip on her hands was making her palms sweat, and...and for the first time since the day she had met him, she was afraid of him.
Her hands were suddenly free as he released them and ran a hand through his hair, his eyes returning to normal, or as normal as they could be. She crossed her arms and waited for him to either compose himself and continue or flee the room. She sent up a silent prayer for the former and it was apparently answered.
He put his hands on her biceps and made eye contact with her for the first time in half a minute. "Don't lie to yourself, Caroline. Don't put me on some kind of pedestal where I don't belong...it was always selfish."
She shook her head hard and fast, lips pursed to tell him that he was wrong, but he continued, his grip on her biceps tightening. "I never did it for anyone but myself. It was always selfish, Caroline...it just didn't seem that way until now." He released her once again and his hands dropped to his side with a smack. "I'm just...I'm just like everybody else, okay? I'm not noble...you're better than me, Caroline, you want to help them and I...I don't." His strange eyes were wet with tears. "I'm so sorry."
She couldn't see him now; all she could see was a blurry outline of the body in front of her that had just produced the biggest lies she'd ever heard in her life. Stefan was...Stefan was...Stefan was the best person she knew, the best person she'd ever known. All of her successes as a vampire stemmed back to him. The only reason she'd found strength enough to not eat the entire population of Mystic Falls High School was because Stefan showed her how. Stefan had taught her how to hunt, he'd given her the ability to walk in the daylight...hell, the only reason her own mother hadn't driven a stake through her heart was Stefan's kick-ass mediating abilities. Without his help, it would be her who was making headlines under the alias of animal attacks right now. And that had nothing to do with Elena, nothing at all. Caroline was Elena's best friend, of course, but she wasn't ever there when Stefan showed up to save her. Stefan had helped her, Stefan had been there for her, Stefan had reached out to her because that's who Stefan was...IS.
Maybe Stefan needed to mourn, but...but Caroline needed Stefan.
"You're lying." She pushed past the blurry image in front of her, bumping his shoulder with hers as hard as she possibly could. "That's a lie."
"Caroline..." his voice was nothing but a whisper behind her as she fled the room and made a beeline for the stairs. She began to stomp up them, two at a time, suddenly grateful for her vampire strength.
"Which is really lame because I thought we were friends, y'know?" She reached the safe haven of her room, thank God, and slammed the door behind her with such force that the walls vibrated with repercussions for a good 30 seconds. She stood with her eyes shut, letting her entire being shake with them. And then she sank to the floor, in the exact same spot that Stefan had slept...that seemed like 2 eternities ago now.
She had probably ruined everything, she realized with a sudden pang of horror and an equally sudden sob. All the progress she'd thought he was making was crushed or barely hanging on, she was sure. She'd believed in herself, like an idiot, and thought that she could help someone who hadn't even told her he'd wanted to be helped. But maybe he needed to be helped anyway and she thought she was doing it. She had been so sure that she was doing what needed to be done, doing what he'd needed her to do. Maybe she should have slapped him across the face with the truth about Damon and Elena much, much sooner...but she'd ruined it, hadn't she? He was so fragile, so sensitive, she had to handle him with such care...and she had completely thrown it all out the window. What would he do now? Go on a killing spree? Go pick a fight with Damon? Try to go outside without his ring on? Attempt to make another deal with Klaus? Or maybe he wouldn't do anything. Maybe he wouldn't be fazed because it was just Caroline. It was just Caroline, not someone who actually mattered like Elena. Caroline and everyone else meant nothing to him, after all. He'd only just admitted it himself.
In spite of herself, she waited for him to come after her like the Stefan she used to know would have. She waited, and waited, and waited. But all she was met with was more suffocating silence and a stream of hot, hateful liquid flowing down her cheek.
a/n: Do vampires have heartbeats? I was struck with that question in the middle of writing this...but I wanted to include it for effect, I guess, and I was definitely too lazy to actually attempt to research it, so whatever, enjoy. lol Annnnd, REVIEW POR FAVOR. :)