This ship is consuming my soul. I need help.

And I need, I need,
Need to show her what her heart is for,
It's been mistreated badly,
Now her world has started falling apart,
Falling apart.

When you lose your way and the fight is gone,
Your heart starts to break
And you need someone around now.
Just close your eyes while I put my arms above you,
And make you unbreakable.

Jamie Scott, "Unbreakable"

43. KNOW THAT SOMEBODY IS THERE ALL THE TIME

It's a rare morning when Caroline isn't up way before him. She didn't rest properly last night. Stefan still has trouble accepting that, while his nightmares pretty much disappear when he can hold her at night, there's nothing he can do to help with her night terrors.

Nothing except preparing her morning coffee. She'll probably be here in five minutes.

"Since when do you get up so early?" Elena asks, leaning against the counter.

"Well, you pick up some habits from Caroline after a while."

She nods and gives him one of those smiles, the ones she wears when there's more she wants to say. Which is probably the case.

"So… Caroline says you want to move out. Is it really a good idea to live alone? Isn't it better to go back to the dorm?"

The truth is, even if it's been extremely uncomfortable that he's had to watch his every move with his girlfriend, now that Elena knows it might not be that much of a problem. After all, she's here for the very real concern of her blood addiction, and the reason behind it… the loss of his brother.

It's strange how much things can change in the blink of an eye. It feels like a lifetime ago when he felt like falling into an abyss of darkness, heartbroken that Elena made her choice, and she chose Damon over him. Now? She's the only person who probably misses Damon as much as he does, and he's glad. Glad that his brother isn't forgotten, and that he's still loved.

"I'm going to be fine, Stefan. I… you and Caroline are so sure that they will be back, I can hold onto that hope for a bit longer and keep myself together. I won't steal blood from the university hospital again, I promise."

He nods. "Okay. Just remember that we are here for you."

"I will. And you, take care of Caroline."

That's all he intends to do.

"Treat her well."

He raises an eyebrow. Why does it sound like she's suddenly playing the role of the mother hen?

"She's the only friend I have left." Elena adds, as if explaining herself.

It's a good thing, he thinks, that she's caring for something else than his brother right now (only the devil knows where he'd be if he did not have Caroline), and it probably will be good for Caroline too, even if he's pretty sure she does not confide in Elena the same way she confided in Bonnie.

"Likewise." He responds, passing her a mug of blood. "Don't let her do all the effort and call her once in a while too, please."

He fears for her when he starts to notice that sometimes she confuses her dreams with reality. There are many things related to these dreams that she won't tell him, and it's so easy to see how careful she's with her words when it comes to these stories, not at all like the girl who always seems ready to speak her mind.

In spite of her silence, Caroline has always been very transparent with her emotions. Her feelings are deeply intertwined with the things she sees in her sleep, yearning for things that might never happen, like the twins she often mentions without even realizing.

Stefan understands just how deeply these images are ingrained in her heart when she's even willing to help Klaus set a trap for the witches who want to kill Hope. She isn't someone who takes human lives lightly, and yet she is always doing things that weigh heavily on her conscience for the sake of her loved ones.

Her eyes light up when she sees a picture of the child. "She's so cute! I'd like to meet her one day."

Later he tells himself that he's making this more of a big issue than it really is because of his own, most selfish reasons. One day she's going to want things that they cannot have, that he can't give her.

In the midst of all of this (his brother missing, his house and his town being off-limits, and his evil, mad original version running free somewhere out there), he still feels like his life is the most peaceful it's been in ages because he has Caroline.

He has their mornings, waking up together, her laugh when they dance in their living room, her voice filling up his day when he comes back from the garage after hours of work in the Camaro. She makes it so easy to fall into this calm, homely life that makes him wonder why he ever wanted epicness in his life. This is what he's needed all along.

However, life cannot go without its struggles, even if they don't come in the form of some new supernatural threat.

"The doctors told her that if she starts the treatment now, there's a chance she can get cured and live longer. She doesn't want the treatment, Stefan."

For so long she has been his sounding board, that Stefan doesn't know if he's going to be enough now that the roles are reversed.

His heart breaks as he sees the crestfallen look in her face when they part ways with her mom right in the invisible border that marks the point where they can no longer follow the same road.

"I've thought about this… I could give her my blood, it's worth a shot."

"Caroline, if our blood could cure cancer, I think I would have heard about it by now."

She sighs.

"Right… I probably tried that too, and it failed anyway."

She's talking about her dreams now. But even if she knew this would happen at some point, there wasn't anything she could have done to get a different outcome.

Caroline won't see it like that because she is the kind of person who always tries to solve things. He understands Liz, who wants to live the time she has left to the fullest, instead of going through painful treatments that won't allow her to keep her life the same as it is now, and will only prolong her suffering in the long term. But how could Caroline just accept this kind of decision, and what can he possibly say to comfort her?

"I think you should spend time with your mom now."

"It's a bit difficult when going to where she lives will literally kill me way before I make it to the town."

Breaking the anti-magic spell might take time, so he needs to talk Liz into leaving Mystic Falls.

His hands caress the back of her head, and he pulls her closer to him. She rests her chin on his shoulder, and her eyes fall to their interlocked hands.

"Let's just go back home now."

In times of despair, he remembers that, if they follow Caroline's hunch of the Parker twins being Gemini, and aware of the doppelgänger and the magic related to the travelers, then there was also another witch who might be easier to track that fell under that category: the woman who kidnapped Tom in Atlanta.

Yes, she's dead, but in these cases, the dead might tell more tales than the living. The Parkers are good at disappearing, but a dead person can't cover her own tracks.

"I need you to look for information about a woman named Hazel. She was killed in Atlanta months ago"

"Your doing? That's shocking, does Caroline know?"

"I don't have time for this, Enzo. I can't just leave Caroline now, her mom is sick. So just try to find out about this woman, she knew about the doppelgängers so she might be related to-

"-the coven of the damn twins. We're going through many assumptions here."

"Do you have any better idea?"

"Alright, I'm onto it. Atlanta. I'll call once I get there."

Stefan ends the call and walks into the house, and for the short minutes, he was outside Caroline managed to finish another bottle all on her own. He hasn't seen her get this drunk in ages.

"It feels like everything is spinning around. Like dancing."

At some point, she vamps from the living room to the top of the stairs, and it's not like she's really going to hurt herself, but he still follows her and lifts her in his arms.

"Maybe you've had enough for tonight." He regrets saying anything at all when she sighs loudly as if her high spirits abandon her all at once.

Her blue-green eyes are staring at him, though, suddenly watery, gleaming with tears.

"Can't we really make this right?"

This should not be happening to her.

"We'll make it right, Caroline. You have one year to spend with your mom, we're going to get rid of the anti-magic barrier and you'll be home."

She rests her chin on his shoulder and sighs loudly.

"It would not be a problem if she came here to stay with me. But she won't, will she?"

Caroline is still busy talking to the doctors inside when he comes back to pick them up. The exchange is the same she had with the experts they went to see at Duke last week. Liz has this resigned expression that he understands all too well.

"You know it would mean the world to Caroline if you moved in with us." He smiles at Liz, "and it would be good for you too."

"I know you think I'm going to need help all the time, but I still have the energy and work in the town that I can't just pass to others now. Mystic Falls is our home, and one day you might go back there, isn't that what you're working for?"

He knows very well that mother and daughter love each other, and Liz risked her life (almost died that day at the Grill) helping to bring her daughter back. It's just that Caroline comes first for him, and he knows just how much she needs her mom, especially since there's nothing else she can really do to fix this situation.

'Let her have this. Put her first too.'

That's what he wants to say. Of course, he can't, this is Liz's life after all.

"Ever since I lost my brother and my oldest friends, I've been putting a lot of thought into this… life is not really about how much time we have left, but about what we do with that time, who we spend it with. It's all the moments in-between that matter. And I understand you take the mission of a founder very seriously, Liz, I really do. But vampires have a very long life. I don't want Caroline to spend hers with regrets."

She sighs and offers him a smile.

"I'm glad she has you, Stefan."

In the end, they reach a compromise; she's going to transfer to McKinley and move in with them, just temporarily, until they can all go back to Mystic Falls. There's history and too many memories in that land that belongs to them, but Stefan also understands (perhaps for the first time in his life) that home is not a place, not a house, but the people who stay with you.

He plans to stay with Caroline for a very long time.