Elena got up for the third time that night to the sound of Alaric's cries. After nursing him and tucking him back into his crib, she walked out to the kitchen for a glass of water.
They had unfurled the couch into a bed for Stefan that night, but he was nowhere to be found. The bed looked slept in.
Where is he at 4:30 in the morning? Elena wondered, sleepily walking over and checking the bed to be sure. She felt like maybe she was still dreaming.
Then she noticed that the doors to the patio were cracked open. Curious, she opened them and sure enough there was Stefan on the balcony smoking a cigarette.
"Stefan… aren't you in school to be a doctor? Why are you smoking?" Elena rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Stefan was looking out at the night view of the ocean until her voice called his attention to her.
"Oh, hi Elena. I didn't mean to start, but it helps me relax. I know, it's a terrible habit." Stefan nervously rubbed the cigarette out on the railing. He flicked it in the small trashcan by the patio doors.
"I know why I'm up at 4 in the morning, but why are you?"
Stefan leaned against the railing, admiring the view once more. He took several moments to answer.
"I couldn't sleep. Just being here. It makes me think a lot." Stefan said. "You two having a kid is still kind of… it boggles my mind." Stefan laughed, but there was a painful edge to it.
"I know, it seems unbelievable to me sometimes too. Life just sort of happened. I didn't think I'd ever be a mother when we lost the cure to Silas, but here we are. And it's all because you didn't give up, so thank you for finding another way."
Stefan looked at her from out of the corner of his eye. He sighed and took off the jacket he was wearing to swing it around her shoulders. She hadn't realized she was shivering. This brought them closer together. While she appreciated the gesture, the longer he hovered there the more inappropriate their positions seemed to her. She chanced to look up at him, and she recognized that look from so long ago. Once, that look was all it took to make her happy.
She took a step back.
"Thank you."
Stefan didn't reply. He kept looking at her like that, but the more she looked at him the more she realized that she didn't recognize his face at all. The person he was now was someone she barely knew, he was so changed by time. It frightened her that he seemed much less harmless now than he used to. Even as a vampire, he hadn't scared her as much as his eyes did then. He had the physical stature of a teenager when they were in love, but he was undeniably a man now.
"When you and Damon let the cure go, and you decided to live as a vampire for him, I felt like I could try to get over you because our lives didn't work together. I wanted a life as a human, and you didn't." Stefan said. His grip tightened on the railing. "But now you're human, and you have this life with Damon that I can't help but feel should be with me." Elena's jaw dropped. She couldn't speak.
"Do you ever regret it?" Stefan asked, his voice husky.
"What do you mean?" Elena almost didn't ask.
"I mean, do you ever regret the choice you made between us? Do you ever wish your child had green eyes, rather than blue?"
Elena drew a sharp breath.
"How can you even ask me that now?"
"Because I need to hear you say it, just one more time. That you don't ever find yourself wishing that this life you're living with him was one that you could live with me." Stefan advanced upon her, and she saw his hands were shaking.
"What are you doing? What do you expect by saying these things to me? I'm married. I have a child. I'm in love with Damon, as I have been for the last seven years, Stefan. I thought you accepted and understood that. I thought we were going to try to be friends, half-siblings. Family." She backed away from him, frightened.
"Elena, I've been around for more than a hundred years. I've loved exactly one woman in all that time. Nothing I feel now compares to what I felt when we were together, no matter what I do, no matter who I'm with." Elena ran into the railway, and Stefan pressed closer, placing his hands on either side of her and trapping her. "I know you loved me too. Just tell me that you never think about it, that you never wish for it, and I'll let it go forever. I tried to get over you. I've been looking for someone I can love like I loved you, and it doesn't exist." His voice almost broke at the end, and Elena actually found herself feeling sorry for him. What she had was exactly what he wanted when he took the cure, but he hadn't found someone to live it with yet.
Elena took a shaky breath, fighting what she felt sure was an irrational fear. This was Stefan, the do-gooder. He wouldn't hurt her.
"I never think about it. We were done, Stefan. We've been done for a very long time. Damon is my husband. Damon is who I want to be with, who I want to have children with." Stefan completely deflated at the words. He stepped back, his hands falling to his sides. He looked away, back over the ocean.
"Look, I know it's frustrating that you haven't found someone you feel that strongly about yet. But you will, I promise. I mean, you're going to Stanford Medical School! I'm sure there will be plenty of future doctor ladies that are perfectly wonderful girls to fall in love with. With everything we've been through in Mystic Falls, the bonds that we formed over struggling and protecting each other are hard to replicate. It will be tough to forge those kinds of relationships again under normal circumstances. But you wanted to be human, so you have to do what humans do. You have to fall in love the normal, non-life threatening way. It may not be as quick, but it can be as deep if you give it time." Elena was glad that her heart rate slowed down. She felt she needed to say this to Stefan. She couldn't meet him again in seven years and hear something like this come out of this mouth. They needed to be a real family now. She wanted her son to have a relationship with his uncle.
Stefan ran two hands over his face.
"God! I know, I know that… I don't know what made me say those things to you. I shouldn't have, I'm so sorry, Elena. This whole situation just brings up old feelings that I guess I'm not over yet. Can we forget about it and go back to normal tomorrow?" Stefan asked quietly.
"Yeah, of course. But I'm not going to forget about it. I want you to find happiness, Stefan, and it can't be with me. Please don't give up on that idea yet." Elena shrugged his jacket off and handed it back to him. Stefan took it and slowly shook his head in acknowledgement, lost in thought.
Elena said goodnight and wandered back into the bedroom. Damon wasn't fooling her, she had seen the shadows move in the kitchen.
"I know you heard." She said as she climbed back under the covers.
He didn't answer, still upholding the pretense of sleep.
"Let's try to forget about it. This is the first time that he's said something like that to me since we've been together."
"Seven years later…" Damon mumbled.
"How would you feel if you saw me and him with a baby and you still had no one?" Elena sighed.
Damon was suddenly on top of her, his lips crushing her into the bed. Elena squirmed in surprise, but then she sunk into the strangely timed kiss with a groan. His hard body rubbed against hers and left her breathless at the sensations.
"Don't even say that. I can't stand it." Damon nuzzled her neck, caressing her with gentle urgency. His hands were the source of shivers under her shirt.
"Damon… I can't, not yet." Elena was nervous.
He went limp.
"Ugh… I know. I just can't wait… I miss being inside of you." Then he touched her in a way that made her close her eyes and forget where she was.
Elena was still afraid at the idea, though she missed being intimate with him as well.
Instead, Damon kissed every part of her body until she was hot with longing. Then he brought her to the brink and watched with pleasure as she fell over it.
He wrapped her in his arms and she could feel his fear when he kissed her hair.
"I'm never going back to him." She panted, still falling slowly down from her orgasm.
"I know you aren't. It's just the thought of it that makes me crazy." His arms tightened around her.
Stefan kissed Alaric's cheek before setting him back down in his crib.
"You were right Damon, he just needed to get used to me. He seems to like me just fine now." Stefan peered down at the smiling little boy.
"Time mends all." Damon shrugged, his arms folded as he stood next to the crib with Stefan.
"Are you ready to go?" Caroline asked with keys in hand.
Stefan turned to hug his brother. Elena saw Damon hesitate briefly, a spark in his eyes. Then it melted away and the two embraced briefly.
"I hope I get to see you guys soon. He's going to grow up fast." Stefan said, patting his arm.
"Real soon." Damon nodded with a hard swallow.
I just can't fight the feeling that Stefan needs to suffer a little bit… and the biggest f. you is to have him re-confess his feelings to Elena and have her shut him down and sleep with Damon. TAKE THAT STEFAN! I WISH I WROTE THIS SHOW DX. Then Damon is the bigger man by letting him go without punching him out, because he knows how much it would suck to be in his position so he forgives him. Though I'm so pissed at Stefan at this point I may write a sucker-punch scene to feed my inner sadist….
I'm not sure if it's my writing or just that the last episode killed fan's enthusiasm to read fanfiction since it was THE SADDEST THING I'VE EVER SEEN HOLY CRAP, but that last chapter got very little love. Let me know if I'm taking the story in a direction you don't want it to go, or what you want to read more and less of so I know what you quiet readers are thinking.