She doesn't open her eyes for a full five seconds. Katherine feels the gravel scraping her knees, dimly aware of the fact the car is still beeping, its horn loud and insistent, and that Damon is splayed under her, chest rising and falling.

Chest rising and falling.

Her eyes fly open and she looks at him under her, his eyes still shut. She can smell the alcohol on his breath, wonders if it matches her own.

"Katherine!" Someone calls from behind her and she watches Rebekah run down the steps, her blonde hair streaming behind her in the dark. Rebekah's arms are warm around her shoulders as she lifts her gently off Damon. "You're bleeding," She says, and Katherine watches the dark stain spread though the thin, thin silks of her dress.

"I'm fine," Katherine says in a firm voice, throws Rebekah a smirk and rises to her feet, glad she has steady knees.

Damon's eyes are still closed. "He's alive," Katherine promises, and leans down to give his shoulder a shake. "Get up, Salvatore."

His blue eyes are dim when he opens them, and Katherine and Rebekah help him to sit up. "He's bleeding," Rebekah says, her voice strangely calm as she lifts her finger away from the back of his head. "We need to get him inside. Make sure he doesn't sleep," She tells Katherine with the air of someone who has done this a thousand times before.

Katherine's still fairly dazed herself, but she sits next to him on the road and watches Damon stare straight ahead. He's been like this since he came back- oddly empty, always tired, only alive when he's with Stefan.

"So," she says quietly. "Tell me about it."

"About what?" Damon's still slow when he speaks, and she knows he's more vulnerable now than she's ever seen him, wonders whether having this conversation with him now is morally right of her.

"The war," She says, and she watches him blink twice, the furrow in his forehead reappearing. "tell me about it."

Damon's silent for so long that Katherine's surprised he even answers. "It's hell. I've lost every single one of my friends to that pit, watched their bodies caught in barbed wire, remembered their screams as they died. I watched good men-men better than I was die, and knew the only reason I wasn't there dying with them was because my father had more money than theirs. I should have died out there."

He finishes bleakly, and Katherine watches his shoulders shake as he cries and wraps her arms around him.

She usually tries to save her emotions, save her empathy because if she gives at freely as Elena does she'll be sucked down to the bone. But Damon needs this, she thinks as she squeezes his broad shoulders. "Move on," She tells him with a gentle sigh. "Forget."

"I can't," His voice cracks and she focuses on the yellow light of the streetlamp ahead of her until her vision is no longer blurry. "I can't move on."

They don't speak again until Rebekah comes rushing back, a slight sheen of sweat dotting her forehead. "Nik's sending Marcel's car around."

There's something in the way Rebekah's fingers tremble, Katherine thinks. She takes those trembling fingers anyway, and gives them what she hopes is a reassuring squeeze. "Damon will be fine," Katherine assures her. "He didn't hit his head that hard."

"Okay," Rebekah stammers, and between the two of them, they manage to get Damon stirring and barely alert. Rebekah doesn't say a word to Katherine during the drive back to Klaus' house, but she doesn't let go of her hand, either.

X

Hayley grins up at him when he leads her out of the house, and Stefan watches as her huge eyes slide back to where their fathers are conversing. She doesn't want this, either. It's just that she seems to be much more adept at hiding it. "It was a pleasure to meet you," She says quietly, and her tone is the very picture of good breeding. He can't help but feel as if there is more to her than the perfect image she is projecting.

They've had their lives set out for them since they were born, Stefan thinks. But he's so tired of doing everything that is expected of him. It's so hard being the prodigal son, he thinks as Hayley slides into her car after he drops a final kiss on the back of her hand.

But then there is Damon to think of, Stefan thinks with an internal groan, and then he sets off on a walk in an effort to untangle the mess that is his mind.

He finds himself at Henrik's grave, on the very edge of the Mikaelson property with all the other dead Mikaelsons. He doesn't belong here, Stefan knows. This is no place for a little boy who loved to laugh and run around and hated the indoors.

"He was taken from us," Esther says from behind him, and Stefan feels his heart speed up. He hasn't spoken to her- hasn't looked so much in her direction, for what seems like years. "He was supposed to live so much longer, Stefan."

"I'm sorry," Stefan says, and Esther shakes her head sadly.

"This is what I should have stopped. It wasn't your fault, yet my husb-Mikael has ensured they cultivated a hatred for you that meant you and Klaus would never be friends again. And he succeeded."

"It was my fault-"

"Your mother was ill, Stefan. I doubt you were told of her illness; you were too young to rememeber and Damon was too occupied in his own grief to tell you, but all those years living with your father warped her illness into something more uncontrollable, something which led her to do what she did."

Stefan wants to interrupt, but Esther sounds as if she is getting something off her chest that she has held in for too long, so he watches and waits for her to continue.

"She thought having another child would fix the relationship between her and your father. But when she found she couldn't have children, well she was consumed with a jealousy that your father egged on. And when my baby died, I promised never to let my children become like their fathers."

She lets out a long, shuddering sigh. "I think I failed. But Stefan, it wasn't you. It's taken me years to accept it and to move on from my grief, but it wasn't you. Don't be caught up in your father's lies."

He isn't sure what prompts her to do it, but the next thing he knows, he is caught up in an embrace that smells suspisciously like his mother and makes tears prick the lids of his eyes.

X

This is where the night pulls her in, Bonnie thinks as she looks up at the square of gleaming light that signifies Stefan's room. The place she'd bascially grown up in. Maybe they'd ruined it the minute they became more than friends, but Bonnie can't bring herself to regret something that only felt like the natural progression of their relationship.

She takes a deep breath and pulls the shawl tighter around her shoulders before stealing her way up the back stairs like a thief. She can't help but hear Guiseppe's words in her mind with a wince, and she tries her best to block them as she pushes open the door.

The quiet whispers of the piano relax her instantly, and Bonnie makes her way to the curved windowseat to where the sun is just setting, painting the sky with subduded pinks and purples.

Unbidden, the rembrance of her mother's voice, curling over her as she tucked her into bed. Let them go before they leave you. Bonnie shakes the thought from her mind and turns back to Stefan.

"Is this new?"

He nods, and the silence that stretches between them is taut as a tiny strand of thread. Bonnie takes a hesitant breath, then breaks it. "Are you engaged?"

"Not officially. If my father had his way, I would be." Bonnie senses the hesitance in his tone and straightens her spine a little more.

"What does not officially mean?" She mocks, "Does it mean that you are still interviewing candidates?"

Stefan stands, and Bonnie wants to kiss the bleak emptiness from his eyes. She forces herself to stay put. "Bonnie-I love you."

His voice cracks and she swears, she swears she won't stand by and watch him destroy himself. But he's a grown man, he does as he pleases and Guiseppe can be cajoling when he needs to be.

"What did he tell you?"

"Damon gets the company if I don't do as he says. But it's only a few years, until he dies and then I'll make everything how it should be-"

A few years, Bonnie thinks, and is surprised to find that her mind is strangely empty. And in those few years Stefan would be married and possibly made a father, and where would she be? On the sidelines watching him. She didn't deserve second place, and her hand fell open from its position in a clenched fist.

"I'd do it for you," She trembled, and blinked away the tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. "You know I would. Because I love you."

Stefan just looks at her, and Bonnie understands just how hopeless he is. They both look at each other for a moment, and she watches his face highlighted by the oranges of the sunset and drinks it in.

And then she reaches for him and he is reaching for her and they are tumbling into his bed in a mess of sweat and sobs and they try to memorise each other, every groove, every scrap of skin. "I love you," Stefan says, again and again as if it will make it alright. As if goodbye will hurt any less.

X

When he had been seven, his mother had picked him up for the last time and dropped a kiss onto his cheek. "I'm going," She said quietly in that sing song voice of hers. "Mama's leaving you now, but baby don't you dare cry."

And then she'd walked to his father and intertwined her fingers with his own. Marcel didn't remember much of the following half hour, because he was sure the self preserving part of his brain had blocked it out, but he remembered being huddled in his parent's wardrobe when they had found him.

He remembered the scent of his mother's clothes. And the bright, blinding light as the man who had killed his parents looked down upon him.

"Get up," He had told Marcel, and then he'd instructed him that he would either stay weak and die, or he could toughen up and join him.

Marcel had chosen the latter option.

He looked Rebekah's blonde head from where it was bent over Damon, laid out with a compress on his head, and wondered whether she'd ever been given the same ultimatum as him.

"Penny for your thoughts?" Katherine Gilbert-Pierce piped up next to him and he took in the easy curve of her smirk, her red painted lips now worn off to a light pink stain.

"Do you have a penny to spare?" He asks reflexively, expecting her to snap back at him. The others may not notice that her dresses are always a few seasons out of date, but he does.

Katherine merely shrugs and leans back against the wall. "If I did, I wouldn't waste it on you."

Marcel laughs slowly, and she moves away from him, laying a hand gently on Rebekah's shoulder. "He'll be fine," Katherine says. "Leave him and get some sleep."

As she brushes past him, he raises a single eyebrow in question. Rebekah shakes her head. Marcel takes his answer with something like a heavy weight in his chest, but turns away all the same.

X

Bonnie steals out from the back stairs at the crack of dawn, one hand fisted in the tiny silver chain Stefan had given to her so long ago. There's a taste in her mouth that seems slightly bittersweet, and she closes her eyes for a moment as her fingers trace the banister for a long time.

"I expected you here," Guiseppe says, and it jolts her out of her reverie. "I expected you here a lot sooner than this."

She really can't listen to this, Bonnie thinks, and she reaches behind her neck for the silver chain that has been holding her together. "-Here," She interjects, dropping it to the floor at Guiseppe's feet. "Give it back to Stefan. My debt to you has been paid."

"Your debt to him hasn't-" Guiseppe calls after her, but she is already gone, steps steady and measured.

She'll miss the sureness of that tiny silver chain around her neck, she thinks as she steps into the almost blinding sunlight and into the rising sun. Bonnie lets herself into the house and begins her new morning routine, one that starts with making her dad coffee.

Maybe it's for the best, she thinks and there's a sense of almost peace as she adds just the right of milk, stirring the mix three times clockwise, three times anticlockwise.

"Klaus called for you," Her father looks slightly disapproving as she slides his mug over to him. "Last night."

"Oh?" Bonnie raises an eyebrow and waits for him to continue.

"I told him you'd talk to him when you got the time. But you're quite busy."

Bonnie laughs softly. "You don't want me to talk to him."

"He's mixed up in an awful lot of bad stuff. But you're old enough to make your own decisions." He brushes his lips across her forehead as he leaves, reminding her not to come in too late.

Bonnie hunches over her own mug and tries to focus her own thoughts on work.

X

Everything about Stefan screams that he doesn't want this, Hayley thinks as she settles a little more firmly into her bed. He could at least try and be a better actor, she thinks.

It's not as if she wants this either.

But he's not- cruel, and so she'll go along with it. She was prepared to run away if he was cruel, she thinks as her fist clenches around the comforter. Because look at how her parents turned out.

She strains her eyes through the darkness to catch the high, intricate ceiling of her room.

I can do this, Hayley wills herself silently. She can get through playing a part well enough. Only, there's a chance it will break her mother's heart enough that it might splinter completely.

Be realistic, she thinks to herself, curling a little tighter into a ball. She knows how much her mother wants to live through her, but life can't be perfect all the time.

Stefan is not my father, Hayley tells herself. This time, there will be no raised voices or raised fists. This time, there will be no children. She's firm on that. No children that have to do what they are doing again and again.

X

Caroline twists a strand of golden blonde hair around one finger and narrows her eyes at Bonnie. "You're dealing with it quite well, I'm not going to lie."

"I don't think it's hit me yet, not properly." Bonnie closes her eyes and rests her head in her hands. "Life's been so sped up these past few weeks, it hasn't caught up with me properly."

"It'll come," Elena says, and her eyes are shadowed with experience. "I felt like that, when-"

Bonnie places her hand over Elena's with a half smile. "It's not as bad," She admits. "At the end of the day, everyone has first loves. Everyone seems to move on from them just fine."

"Let's go out," Caroline stands abruptly from Elena's table with a grin. "We're being mopey. And that's the worst thing to do."

"Where would we go?" Bonnie asks, but Caroline is already dragging them out to Elena's garden.

"Do you remember when we were children, and we'd hold hands and spin so fast we were so sure we'd fall over and collapse but we kept going and just went round and round until we felt sick?"

She reaches for Bonnie's hand and they begin to spin, and Bonnie watches the world blur behind Caroline in the fading light and can't help the laughs that escape her lips. It's only when they have finished and have stumbled onto Elena, that she rests her head on Caroline's stomach and looks at the ink sky and knows that she loves Stefan.

But he won't break her.

A/N: thoughts? sorry this was late I got caught up with some school stuff :/