The Variable of Choice

by 12301980

What if Isobel had not given Elena to the Gilbert's to adopt? What if she rememebered meeting Damon first? An alternative storyline... Stefan, Elena, Lexi, Damon, Alaric, Jenna, Jeremy, Bonnie, Caroline, Matt, Tyler, The Originals. As always, I write Stelena, but never guarantee a happy ending :

4. Chapter 4

The Variable of Choice – Chapter 4
-STEFAN-

When I open the door and find her doe-eyed, staring back at me from the edge of my bed with my open journal in her hands, I'm almost taken all the way back to 1864; it takes a moment for my mind to find its place back in the present.

She's an exact replica of Katherine… the girl that I believed I loved. The girl that I believed was perfect and all-consuming and that I spent weeks dreaming of one day making my wife – Soon after those daydreams turned into long nights shared in my bed, secret meetings in the stables, stolen kisses while escorting her into town, I learned that the woman I thought I knew was something I could've never imagined. Katherine was my first of many things, but most notably, she's the vampire that turned Damon and I. Katherine is, and always will be the girl I was victimized by and compelled by - she destroyed my entire world. The love I once had for Katherine is now a thorny and painful hatred that I can't shake.

From the auburn tint of her long, dark hair under direct light to the same doe-eyed, disarming expression on her face when I catch her snooping through my things – she's a mirror image… the resemblance is strangely off-putting. Yet, somehow I know that like a mirror image she and Katherine are alike and completely opposite at the same time.

I have mixed emotions, conflicting thoughts about the girl on my bed... part of me, the usually rational side of me is saying, protect her. Keep her safe. Don't let Damon near her. Make her yours. I want her. I want her to want me. I can see the innocence in her wide, dark eyes. I can feel something, something unexplainable... unrecognizable.

But there's a voice in the back of my mind... I think it's my father's voice, maybe – whispering reminders of Katherine and what she did to me and my family. A quiet murmur that's blurring the lines of reality and secretly wonders if the girl should pay for Katherine's transgressions simply because of her resemblance. I know it's wrong. I do. I can tell you with full-confidence that I will let no harm come to this girl, but I see the psychological need behind Damon wanting to kill her. A strange form of justice against Katherine a hundred and fifty years after she burned to death.

Bonnie, now compelled to accept us as vampires, goes directly to her and is carrying on about her bite mark while the girl and I stare one another down – I can't tell if the tension between us is a shared fear of one another or something different, something much more dangerous between a vampire like me and a girl like her…

Doing her best to look nonchalant as she closes my journal and breaks our stare, I figure it's a decent mixture of both and quickly close the door, leaving them in my bedroom before either temptation grows any stronger in my body- I can still smell her blood. Even with the door closed. And I can still picture her sitting on the bed, my bed, with her bare legs and bare shoulders and those eyes.

I'm lost in my own mind – picturing her, or maybe Katherine, honestly I can't tell which I'm imagining holding against my body when Damon and Lexi crest the staircase and the sight of them drags me back to reality.

Simultaneously, Lexi and I speak the same sentence – "What are you doing!?"

She's speaking to me, wide eyes and raised eyebrows.

I'm speaking to Damon, furrowed brow and tight neck.

I ignore my only friend and move to Damon in some feral attempt at keeping him from getting closer to the girl. Even as I step up to him in this threatening manor – chest to chest, staring my brother down – I know my urge to keep the girl safe is unfounded and groundless. But it's a strong urge, this burning need to keep her safe – after more than a hundred years of fighting off the urge to feed, to kill, I know my body and it's desires pretty well… My want to keep her safe is useless to fight or ignore and I know it.

After the life I've lived, the things I've done, my ability to see myself clearly is one of the few pieces of myself that I take pride in.

"Whoa." Damon snickers, dramatically rolling his eyes as he steps around me and strides to his bedroom door – I let him go only because he's moving away from my bedroom, further away from the girl. "You're getting really good at the whole tough guy, I'm a vampire act, little brother. You almost scared me there…" Stepping in his room, he does his eyebrow thing that always goes all over me and adds just before the door shuts, "Almost."

Lexi and I stand still, quiet – both of us listening to my depraved vampire brother kick off his boots, move across the hardwood of his bedroom and into the attached bath. Once the water starts and we catch the jingle of his belt our cautious stance is finally broken by the slight turning of our faces towards one another – mine still angry and stern and Lexi's shocked expression quickly returning to her heart-shaped face.

My sensitive ears pick up Living on a Prayer and Bonnie laughing, I hear the smile in her voice when she says something about Damon's blue eyes – the girl responds with an unenthusiastic, yea. Adding, "The other one, his brother, he's –"

I can't hear what the girl says about me when Lexi interrupts, "So what, we aren't going to talk about the Katherine look-a-like you and your psycho case brother are holding hostage?"

Hearing it outloud, the situation spelled out in painful and blunt honesty, makes my gut knot up… or maybe I'm hungry. Both probably.

In a loud whisper, I push my reasoning through tight lips and a guilty frown. "He was going to kill her. What choice did I have?"

Lexi does that thing she does when she's calling me out, declaring my words as bullshit – pursing her lips together and pushing them to the side a bit – her left eyebrow slightly cocked upwards. I've known her so long now that she doesn't even need to speak for me to get her message.

I respond in a frustrated tone, my whisper a bit louder than before. "I swear, I didn't know… I hadn't seen her."

"This is all bad. Very bad, Stefan." Lexi's expression straightens up – I guess she hears the honesty in my voice. Still, she's got her hands on her hips and her neck wiggling a bit as she speaks. "Coming back here was a bad idea. Pairing up with Damon ,bad idea – agreeing to help him, Bad. Idea! Stefan, you've got to get out here before you're right back in Mystic Falls circa 1864."

I know she means this as a warning…but not all of 1864 was a nightmare. The year began with an easy winter and my father's logging company – the family business that I was being prepped to take over – was able to begin work sooner than expected thanks to an early thaw. By spring, I was looking forward to traveling north for some time at the University and Damon had left to fight the war. The first truly warm day – the kind of warmth that lets the honeysuckle bloom and gives the breeze that comforting effect when it touches over-heated skin – that was the day I laid eyes on Katherine Pierce.

I remember the day so well… with almost as much detail as when I recall the scent of her hair and the softness of her hand in mine. When I feel her name tracing across my tongue – threatening to break from my lips – I force them into a tight, straight line. Press my teeth into the flesh of my bottom lip so hard that my eyes water a bit.

There is something disturbing about recalling a warm memory and feeling nothing but cold.

Lexi places her hand on my arm and my muscles flinch from her touch. She sighs at the sight of me like I'm a pound puppy or an injured child. I'm her hopeless cause… her never sufficed need to save me is radiating from her round eyes when she says, "Tell me you have a plan to get out of this before we're both staked in the square."

-Elena-

Don't ask me how, but Bonnie has actually fallen asleep! She's comfortably laying across Stefan's bed with her head resting on a make shift pillow made by wadding up the corner of the comforter, while I'm still surprised by her light attitude about her deal she made with Damon and sitting on the floor with my back to the footboard and my eyes on the closed door.

The mind control thing, compulsion, it must be very strong… more potent than any narcotic or pharmaceutical that I've ever experienced. I've known Bonnie since I was seven years old – that's the first summer I spent with Jeremy and Aunt Miranda and Uncle Grayson. It was my first sleepover… I can still see seven year old Bonnie with her wild curly hair, hunkered down on the couch with tiny hands covering her eyes as the other girls and I watched some horror flick that a teenaged Aunt Jena snuck in for us.

Bonnie's not the kind of girl to make deals with vampires.

I know her grandmother swears that they come from a line of witches, but Bonnie has never really bought into that story... it's always been a joke for her, something to laugh about and use as an ice-breaker conversation. So yea, I'm shocked by the news that Damon Salvatore is going to help her access her powers. Funny thing, when I asked what he was getting out of their deal, Bonnie fell silent... my lips purse into a straight line as I wonder if he hasn't told her his required payment for his help or if he's compelled her to keep her mouth shut.

Either way, this is bad.

When I realize that I'll soon be oblivious to all this – the danger and the supernatural element of Mystic Falls, my hand moves on it's own and my fingers gently touch the scabbing puncture holes at the curve of my neck. I'm trying to calculate how long I have before Stefan, the warden vampire, looks into my eyes and steals away my memories when the door opens and Lexi the new bartender strides into the room like she owns the place, her long blonde hair swooshing side to side is keeping time with her steps.

Raising her eyebrows, she gives a wide how ya doin' kid? smile as I move to my feet. "I brought you some clothes – something for you two to sleep in."

Lexi sits two small stacks of folded clothing on the desk and takes a pause, her hands splayed open ontop of the folded fabric and her eyes straight ahead.

The curl in my hair is beginning to fall out, leaving my naturally straight hair hanging like ropes from my head. Something about the slick as ice sunny blonde hair laying in a perfect sheet down her back reminds me I must look like a mess. "Are they… I mean," Using my fingers, I slip my hair behind my ears as I try to pick out the right words. "Is he keeping you here against your will, too?"

Pivoting in place, Lexi leans against the desk top and crosses her arms over chest, her face telling me she's confused. I figure she must be compelled like Bonnie so I start to go into more depth, "I can help you. My da-… I mean, my friend has this herb that can stop the mind control."

"Oh sweetie…" Lexi gives me a friendly, amused smile just about the time that the needle comes to a scrapping stop and falls from the Bon Jovi record. "I'm twice their age."

I feel my eyes double – maybe triple in size as I look at her, surprised. She's the bartender at The Grille. She looks to be a few years older than me. She's wearing a pair of boots that I've been dying to buy and her nails are painted a tangerine… I realize my mouth is gaping open a bit and pull my bottom lip up to meet the top one. "Not what you expected?" Lexi asks as I rudely inspect her from the saddle-brown Nicole boots to professionally applied eyelash extensions. I don't say it out loud, but I know my expression is screaming but you look so normal!

"Everything you've read and seen in those awful movies about vampires, forget it. Most of it's just a lot of dramatization and B.S." Pulling the length of her hair over one shoulder, Lexi speaks to me like she's giving me a crash course on vampirism. It's quick and simple, a cliff-notes lecture in a light tone of voice as Lexi focuses on braiding her hair. By the end of the short education on vampires I've learned that they are ten times stronger than humans, have enhance hearing, a sixth-sense to help with hunting, and somehow, the fear that had been coursing through my veins since I spotted Damon sitting at my table with Bonnie has nearly disappeared.

She finishes up her long, loose, side-braid in time with the end of her vampire-101 course and she looks up from her finished braid like she's waiting on me to ask questions or take notes.

I only have one question.

"But it's true that you drink blood to survive?" Again, I'm crass – a rude tone in my voice just like how I'd spoken to Stefan. And again, I regret it. I don't know why I care. I don't know why I had to soften the end of my interaction with Stefan and I don't know why I want Lexi to like me. It won't be long before I've dried out and I'll be ignorant to their existence.

Lexi shrugs, playing it off as if it's not a big deal. "That is true. But it doesn't mean we have to kill… we need blood for nourishment, to survive, but it doesn't have to be some horror-flick attack."

Her easy tone of voice angers me, really digs into me and my rude tone is just barely under the surface when I say, "How can you sound so accepting with the fact that vampires feed from humans? You make it sound like killing the person is just a side-effect, or an option to add to your meal?"

"You're letting your imagination add inflections to my words." Lexi says calmly, like maybe she's had this kind of conversation before and my reaction is par for course.

I chuckle – it's meant to be sarcastic but honestly, this whole situation is just so impossible, completely ridiculous that the laugh isn't false. "I was attacked. Damon. Bit. Me." I say in a choppy tone as I point to my neck wound. "I'm not imagining being kidnapped by two – ah, make that three vampires and having my friend compelled into believing she's a witch."

Lexi's eyes cut to Bonnie, still sleeping, then back to me. "The majority of vampires are not like that. We don't attack and bite and kill. Otherwise we'd all be dead and rotting. Personally, I haven't taken a life in more than two-hundred years. But just like how there are a handful of humans who are psycho, our race has its fair share, as well."

I exhale loudly as her words settle in my ears, making sense in a senseless situation. Vampires and witches and two-hundred years and psychos. "Should I be worried? About Damon, I mean?"

Again, Lexi shrugs and gives me that same sorrowful smile. "I think you should probably keep your doors and windows locked."

I laugh – frustrated with this whole ordeal. "Like that would make a difference. I thought you said vampires are super-human strong?"

"True. But nature has its way of keeping us in our place." My eyebrows raise, I nearly beg her to continue with my expression alone. "Vampire's have to be invited into your home. It's like a loop-hole. A way to protect the innocent." I'm thinking about what she's said, the irony of it – wondering how it works and if I'll ever wrap my mind around all of this when Lexi takes a stack of clothing from the desk top and holds it out to me, adding in a half-joking tone "Besides, I don't think Stefan will let him get close enough to you." A tiny, barely there pause before she continues doesn't give me the necessary time to wonder about what that means, but I feel my lips threaten to curve into a smile. "Here. You can take a shower if you want. There are towels in his bathroom and shampoo and stuff, but if you want something more girly you can use any of my things – it's all in my room. Down the hall, second door on the right."

Taking the change of clothes from her, Lexi gives me another friendly smile and I watch her leave while I keep myself from glowing from the thought of Stefan protecting me... my own personal white knight.

-Damon-

I've spent most of the night trying to put my plan on a play-by-play. Hoping to get the timing right by going over each and every detail with a fine-tooth comb, but you see, the problem with working in the supernatural element is that nothings every really set in stone – count on many problems and expect nothing to go smoothly. Witches and their tricky witchcraft.

Maybe an hour after I finally fell asleep, my eyelids slide open when I hear Stefan's boots slapping on the floor and the door to my bedroom being pressed shut. I know it's Stefan because of the rhythem of his steps and the gentle, purposeful movements that glide like smooth glass. Last time I saw my little brother he was starting a fifteen year binge – this guy, standing next to my bed with his arms crossed tightly across his chest, waiting for me to give in and stop acting like I'm asleep, this guy is a one-eighty. Totally opposite. Close to the brother I grew up, light years away from the vampire that forced me to turn. When I reach over to the bedside lamp, illuminating the room and his brooding face, I cant stop the snarl from coming to my mouth when I see him.

He disgusts me.

I wonder if he knows that I'm not fooled? Big brothers know their little brothers… this stoic version of Stefan is bullshit. When he turned… when we turned, we changed. We're not the same as we used to be no matter how good of an act he's putting on.

"What?"

"Lexi says you're going to help Bonnie learn to use her witchcraft?" He asks, monotone. Broody face and broody voice.

I shrug, rest my head on my hands and don't bother getting out of bed or even sitting up.

"Come on, Damon. What's all of this about? You call me up and tell me you need a favor – never giving me any details. Then you shut me out and hardly even speak to me other than when you try to push me to feed. It's been two weeks. Tell me what we're doing or I'm leaving. Tonight."

My eyes are closed as I try and play off the tension between us, but I can sense his anger… cool-headed, easy going Stefan is having trouble keeping up his show. Using my best sarcastic tone, I sigh "What can I say, brother? I'm a giver. I just want to help."

He huffs. Half laugh, half frustrated sigh. I open my eyes wide with pretend shock, a false look of offense on my face. When I can't hold it, I crack a smile and chuckle a bit.

Stefan pivots, moving to the door and shaking his head with aggravation – God he's got the same you're such a disappointment, Damon mannerisms as our father. "Wait." I groan, pushing myself into a seated position against the headboard. I have to say it again before Stefan stops, his hand on the door knob for a quick exit just incase I'm fucking with him. I consider it – cracking a joke –but Stefan's face has a hopefully expression that I remember from when we were kids… when I'd let him play with my toys or come with me to the river to go fishing.

"She looks just like her." I hate how sincere my voice sounds. The hope on Stefan's face is quickly suffocated by a much more angry expression. But after a moment of the two of us sharing an unfocused gaze and our minds replaying what I guess are similar memories of Katherine, he gives a curt nod of his head. "Do you realize it's been a hundred and fifty years? In just a couple of days."

After a long moment of silence, Stefan's face scrunched up and brow low, he lies when he says, "No, I didn't."

His lying pisses me off. It's one thing that I had to share Katherine with my little brother, that I wasn't enough for her, but his lying seems disrespectful in some way – as if he cared so little for her that he hasn't even been bothered by her absence. "Really? So what is it you're writing about in those diaries of yours?"

Stefan's eyes cut away from me for a moment – he's never been good at lying, even worse at being called out for it. "So what? Why do you care? Why would we want to remember that?"

I stand, stretching in a dramatic fashion so he can see that human blood does more than make you feel invincible… Stefan's scrawny on his animal diet, very thin. "Do you know what a doppelganger is?"

-Elena-

Sleeping is not an option. Not when I know what I know. Not when my mother's murderer is napping across the hall and his brother is keeping me hostage. But I've been laying here and trying not to read through his journal and wondering why Damon would want to help Bonnie become a witch when I hear that soft, low voice of his – I catch it in the middle of a sentence, the word 'doppelganger' stealing my attention away from my crazed imagination.

I know the word.

Isobel wrote about a doppelganger over and over. On hundreds of pages and in a hundred contexts but I never figured out what she was talking about… still I'd only come across the word 'doppelganger' in my mother's research, so when I hear Stefan say it, my heavy eyes fly open and I sit up from where I'd been laying on the floor. Like a cat, I move lightly on all fours to the exit door of his room. Pressing my ear against the dark wood and trying to hear their conversation.

Again, I catch Stefan in the middle of a sentence, but this time he sounds less inquisitive and more frustrated. "… wasn't real, Damon. None of it! What we thought we felt for her – she compelled us so she could feed off of us and play us against one another, don't you see that?"

Damon laughs arrogantly. "Katherine never compelled me."

"Yes, she did! Don't you remember? I thought I loved her too, but when we woke up by the creek with Emily I remembered everything she'd compelled me to forget… to accept! She ruined us, Damon!"

Louder, angrier, Damon's voice is rough, "I loved her. Katherine loved me. I. Was. Never. Compelled."

…Silence…

I'm imagining Damon and Stefan staring one another down – cold lightening blue against warm emerald green – as I try to play out what I'm hearing. I knew from Isobel's research that Damon and Katherine were lovers, but it sounds like there may have been a triangle romance between the three of them. I'm both intrigued by the scandal and disgusted by the sharing – apparently forced onto Stefan but welcomed by Damon.

What kind of girl pits brothers against one another?

"I love her, Stefan. And with the Bennett witch and the doppelganger, I'm going to bring her back."

-Stefan-

"She's dead, Damon. She burned in Fell's church with the rest of them." Even as I spell out the facts that we already know, he's looking back at me with bright eyes and a proud smile – thrilled by my shocked expression to the bomb he's dropped on me. "It's impossible."

He rolls his eyes, does that eyebrow thing. "Look around, Stefan. We're vampires! There's a witch in your bedroom and her best friend is a supernatural glitch – it's all impossible!"

I swallow hard – I've started pacing in a short, half-circle without realizing it. I don't want her back. I don't want her to be saved or resurrected or whatever Damon is planning when he says bring her back. I hate her. With every memory slipping through my minds eye, my execration for her grows by leaps and bounds.

It takes me less than half a minute to decide that I will stop Damon… but to stop him, I've got to know what he's doing. "How?" I ask, my voice forced into a calmed tone. "What do we have to do?"

"We don't have to do anything, baby bro. Leave the planning and the scheming to me." He replies in a coy tone, knowing how I hate being in the dark.

Damon puts his shirt on, fiddles through a drawer until he finds a pair of pants while I contemplate a response. "What do you need me to do, brother?"

My sentimental use of how we used to address each other – the way we did when we were kids, still brothers and not just siblings – it works as I hoped it would. Damon pauses for a moment and though he's facing away from me, I can feel him relax a bit, drop his guard in just the slightest way.

"So you're going to help me?"

It should bother me that my own brother doesn't trust me, but he's right in his unease – I'm doing my best to fool him. It's working.

"I'll do anything you need."

Damon pivots on his bare feet and once again my mind is lost in memories of my life before Katherine – the look on his face, I've seen it a thousand times… hopeful, happy, excited – the Damon Salvatore that existed before Katherine pummeled us into fractured pieces. His telling expression doesn't last long – just as quickly as it appeared, it's replaced with his usual smug face as he begins.

"Did you know she was running? She'd been on the run for hundreds of years." I almost say, Katherine and I didn't do a whole lot of talking – but shake my head no instead. "That's why she kept a Bennett witch as her hand-maid. Emily Bennett helped keep her off of the grid and used some kind of spell to keep a tracer on the person hunting her."

"Who was it?"

Damon shrugs, "She'd never say. But that's beside the point… what I'm getting at is when I found out that the founders took her, I went to Emily and she used her witchy-juju to save Katherine." I know I look confused, my forehead is deeply wrinkled and I have a pounding headache. "She's in a tomb below the church – no fire, no death. Desiccated and locked under there for exactly a hundred and fifty years until a Bennett witch can free her."

I hear Damon's words in my head - it's been a hundred and fifty years - In just a couple of days

"That explains the witch – but why the other girl?"

Damon breaks his eye contact with me when I ask and I immediately get the feeling that he's not telling me everything –like he's lying when he says, "Just a play toy until I can get Katherine out."

Still, I don't like his response. That voice in my head is chanting it's mantra Protect her. Don't let Damon near her. Make her yours. Protect her. Don't let Damon near her. Make her yours. Don't let Damon near her. Make her yours. Make her yours. Make her yours. Make her yours. Make her yours. Make her yours.

I've been quiet for a long moment, the silent words too loud in my head for me to be able to think clearly, but Damon seems to have taken my lack of response as me calling his bluff – he continues with a heavy sigh. "Don't get all bent out of shape about this, brother, but I need the doppelganger to help her with whoever she's running from."

Protect her. Don't let Damon near her.

"What do you mean?" I ask, nonchalantly returning to the door of his bedroom – my hand on the brass doorknob in case he tries to slip past me and get the girl… the doppelganger.

"You remember Emily, right?" Damon doesn't seem to notice my defensive stance or the overwhelming amount of tension weighing heavily on my body. Very causally, comfortable with me, he messes with his shabby hair in the mirror as he speaks to me from his bathroom. "How she spoke in code – just really weird… I didn't get a whole lot of information from her or Katherine about why she was running or who she was running from, but I was able to decipher Emily's strange way of speaking enough to figure out that Katherine became a vampire because someone needed her human blood – years later I'm chatting it up with this hot little vampire-lover out of North… no, Sou – I dunno, one of the Carolina's and that's when I learn about the doppelganger blood curse. Of course I think it's bullshit – I mean, seriously, Katherine was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen… no way there could be two. That is until I find little Gilbert hiding from some meathead guy at a party. I thought she was Katherine… just like I'm sure you did."

I didn't. Not for a second…

"Anyway, I quickly put two and two together – compel her to forget me, then head out to find the girl that told me about the curse."

"And?" I ask, hanging by a thread.

"And nothing. I haven't found her, yet. I'm still looking, but in a couple of days Katherine will be released and she can tell me."

Hearing all of this, knowing that Damon's plan of saving Katherine is dependent on the blood of the girl that I can't help but want to protect, it's resonating in my body – like an electric current setting my nerves on edge. "So what is my part in this?" I ask, deciding that once I finish up this conversation with Damon, I'm taking the girl, leaving the witch. Protect her. Don't let Damon near her.

Sitting on his bed, Damon pulls on his boots, then stands and comes to me, tapping me in the middle of my chest as he speaks. "You're the babysitter." I move back just enough that he stops the poking – it's enraging me. "I'm no good at playing human and I need someone by her side at all times – keeping tabs and keeping her safe until Katherine and I can line up the handover. I'll compel her, send her home and this will all be over with in a couple of days" I exhale loudly, realizing I need to make my escape with the girl soon – now. Damon must take it as frustration with being tied up in his plan for longer than expected. "What's 72 hours, Stefan? Before you know it, you and you're Bloodaholic's Anonomous coach will be taking off into the sunset and writing in your diary about losing Katherine to your big brother."

Losing Katherine. No one has ever had Katherine – not Damon, not me… no one. Katherine is the kind of woman that has you.

"Fine." My tone is curt, "Like I said, whatever you need." I lie looking right into my brothers eyes.

Damon nods and we both turn – him back to his room and me to the door – the electric vibe in my body increasing to a fever pitch when I open the door and find her doe-eyed, frowning up at me and wearing some of Lexi's clothes.

"I can help." She says, her voice soft, melodic to my ears. "You don't have to compel me. I want to help."

"What? No." The words slip from my mouth instinctually.

"The woman from North Carolina, that's my mother." I watch her lips form the words, my ears filled by the sound of her nervous heart beat and that chanting about making her mine. "I'll help you. I'll do whatever you need if you'll help me find her." My head is already shaking no. I can feel Damon come closer to me, to her, to us. I don't like his proximity and step to the side to block his view. When I open my mouth to try telling her no in a more forceful tone, she breaks my resolve with the saying of my name and a pleading in her eyes that shatters my resistance. "Stefan, please?"

My gaze moves from her mouth to her near-black eyes, then back to her lips… I know myself pretty well – I step aside and let her into Damon's room as I come to the realization that there's nothing in this world I wouldn't give her, just to hear my name from her lips once more.

***MORE TO COME***

Please leave a comment/review below

Follow me on Twitter IChooseStefan for updates and commentary!

Thanks for reading – hope you enjoyed!