Previously: Casey leaves Richmond.
Chapter five: mayhaps
Casey's burner, and the dredges of her life, are dismantled and discarded in Richmond.
So, there's no way to get a heads up for what they're walking into, in Mystic Falls. No one to get a heads up either.
They pull into an empty Boarding House driveway, with only Zach inside.
But only Zach, isn't as comforting as it used to be.
The Boarding House is a different setting, with the curtains thrown open, bathing the dark wood in golden sunset.
They don't stumble in, with Stefan being dragged, the way they had carried him out. He's still in his clothes from last night, now wrinkled, in socked feet, and white undershirt. Still underdressed. Casey feels more comfortable in comparison, to where she was last night. Not being near death helps. Not having Grayson in this space helps.
Stefan waits in the foyer, listening to footsteps she can't here. She's not sure if he pauses because this is where he wants Zach to see him first, or if the ramifications of last night have made him reluctant.
Zach comes into the room with a careful step, nervous around the mouth, in the way he holds his shoulders. He relaxes in increments as he sees Stefan, seemingly fine, not starting off on the offensive. That's the problem with magic. It can heal almost as easily as it can harm. From the outside, it can make wounds lose their sting.
"Can we talk?" Stefan tilts his head towards the parallel, red couches in the living room.
Zach swallows, glancing at her before tearing his eyes away. "Is she joining us?"
They both look up at her, standing back, shy of the couches they've both chosen. There are questions she wants to hear Zach answer, because she doesn't have nearly enough to go on with Grayson, but she's not sure she should be here, for what might come from this.
She meets Stefan's eyes, and glances at the porch beyond the French doors on the other side of the room, a place where she can step out.
Would you prefer I...?
He shakes his head just slightly. She's not sure if he's sure, but she nods, stuffing her gloved hands in her pockets, and determining to be more of a witness, than a participant between the two Salvatores.
Stefan leans forward, curved to look between Zach and the loose hands he keeps between his knees. His first question throws Zach off. "Was everything alright, after we left?"
"Yes... I, I took Grayson back to the hospital," his eyes flicker between them as he decides to add more. "His daughter will be alright, from what I was told."
"Did anyone ask why you were the one to bring him back to the hospital?"
"No. I- I don't know. He...Grayson, had left when his son and Miranda's sister arrived. I think, or, people assumed, it was grief. Of being around his family. That he needed to compose himself."
Zach stops, like he's pulling back a defense of Grayson that he wants to voice. His hands spasm, tight against the couch on either side of him.
She glances at them both, searching for similarities in this taller, sun-kissed, human relation to the Salvatores. She doesn't see Damon, but she thinks she sees hints of Stefan. His eyes are a clearer, lighter green, but they express heavy thought, and turbulent emotion. Only with Zach, it looks like he's trying not to openly express his fear.
"Has anyone called from the Sheriff's office, to ask for a statement?" Stefan continues.
Zach frowns to himself. "No. I don't think they will. Grayson said that he was the one who pulled Elena out of the water. That you two had just seen the crash and called the ambulance for him."
Stefan and her eyes meet, both processing what that could mean. So Grayson is trying to, and succeeding, in controlling the narrative. That could be a boon or a warning, that he doesn't want any connection with Stefan, or doesn't want him to come across as sympathetic, if and when Grayson exposes him.
"What really happened?" Zach wonders, leaning forward.
For the first time, Stefan looks at him directly, instead of glancingly, looking up from his hands. Zach flinches.
Stefan sighs, rubbing at his eyes. He's reluctant to answer. Instead of anger, or showing his hurt, Stefan has handled the questioning thus far with distance, talking to Zach only because he needs to know. Now he feels, if he doesn't answer, what's fractured will never heal. That Zach will always be uncomfortable around him.
"I heard the crash over the water. When I got there, the car was at the bottom of the lake. He was barely conscious, and he asked me to rescue his daughter in the backseat. There wasn't – we both thought there wasn't time to rescue them both, with her unconscious. When I came to the surface, I saw," he briefly looks to Casey, "Casey there. She had dived in too. She took...Elena, and I went back for him. He was holding his wife's hand. I think he knew I was coming back, because his eyes were still open. I pulled him out."
Zach listens without interrupting, as Stefan tells him how Grayson immediately made for the bank. How Casey called the ambulance. He leaves Casey's injury out, her revelations, their visit to Sheila Bennett, that Elena was Katherine's doppelgänger. He makes it seem like they stayed with the ambulance, and then came to the boarding house to change out of their wet clothes.
Zach frowns, confused about one part of the story. "You two met last night?"
They glance at each other, him longer than her.
Stefan is the first person she's met, from her visions, after her visions have been taken away. In that way, there's nothing to compare it to.
"How did you know he was a vampire?" Zach asks her.
She answers Zach shortly and politely. "He's not the first vampire I've met."
It's not that, Zach's face communicates easily. But he knows that's all he'll get, and about what he deserves.
Stefan's jaw ticks under the back of his hand as he rubs his jaw. "Why did you invite him in Zach?"
He had turned over this question a dozen times, to himself. Had dread Stefan asking it. "He told me he knew. About the Salvatore family secret. That there was a vampire living here."
Stefan looks at his hands, the large Salvatore crest on his ring. "And that's all he had to say?"
"No. He...he also said that Miranda was dead."
Oh.
"I thought you had –" but he stops himself from saying it.
Stefan bows his head, and nods.
Casey's hands clench in her pockets.
Zach looks at her, as if expecting the condemnation that Stefan won't give, but she doesn't look at Zach at all, only Stefan, his sloped shoulders, and his cupped hands.
"Is that how he found out, because you saved him?" Zach asks him in an undertone.
Stefan shakes his head. "No. That was my past, speaking for me."
She mentioned it herself, that this all stems from killing Johnathan Gilbert, but -
It's not the whole story, by far. As she said to Grayson Gilbert, it's a hell of a thing to condemn someone in an act of kindness.
She could allude to Grayson's activities. Share the history with the Augustine, and the Salvatore who tried to give his two vampire relatives up for a reward. Might actually do a lot to explain why Damon has treated his relations since with distrust and hostility.
But, it's not what this moment needs. Come on Zach. For a man who's held himself like he expects retaliation, hasn't he realized he's gotten Stefan's nature all wrong? Did anything she said to Grayson last night, reach Zach?
"Are you going to leave Mystic Falls?"
She closes her eyes, briefly. Instead of apology, he asks Stefan if he's leaving, in a tone that poorly disguises his hope that Stefan says yes.
"I don't know," Stefan answers heavily and non-committal.
Zach frowns, and pushes. "Why would you stay, given...?"
Because this is his home.
She looks away from the adornments in the glass cabinet against the wall, her attempt to stay unobtrusive, because Stefan doesn't say it.
Mystic Falls is my home.
She hears his voice, his real voice, not the echo of the visions, say, 'so every time I came home to Mystic Falls...' in the weary realization that home hadn't been safe for him, hadn't been real since 1864.
She's hurt him, with her knowledge.
He can't even defend coming home.
"It's your decision Stefan," Zach says uneasily, pushing "but do you really think it's safe for you to stay?"
Stefan huffs, like he agrees, making Casey bite her lip with her eyes still turned away. "Do you know where he got the vervain?"
The question takes Zach completely by surprise. He tenses like a string, then berates himself for it.
"I didn't think it grew here, after 1865," Stefan leads.
"Not openly," Zach admits, reluctantly. "But...some things have been passed through the generations."
"Right," Stefan nods. "I remember."
In another life, perhaps that's the only way she should look at it, Zach had shown Stefan his stalks of vervain and said: Blood only runs so deep when you're related to vampires.
The hints were already there. She needs to remember to listen to what people mean, underneath what they say.
"Remember little Cassandra, never take the visions at face value."
There's one thing in particular that she's drawn to, in the library.
Not that she couldn't spend hours admiring the books. Weeks even. These are the stories Damon and Stefan felt worthy to keep, to send back, on top of what the human Salvatores collected, and what survived from the original library.
It also holds a clue, that Stefan deserves to know. She can't predict how many things she's thrown off track, but she can ensure this one is there, ready to be unearthed, when he's ready to find it.
She has the library all to herself, while Zach keeps far away, and Stefan leaves to hunt. A hunt she encouraged.
When she realizes he didn't keep any blood in the house, she couldn't help the look on her face.
"Stefan," she had sighed, guessing the why – to not discomfort Zach, and thinking it inhumanly considerate and kind of dumb in equal measure. "You haven't had a moment to yourself – and monitoring my health while I slept does not count – since finding out," she waves her hand, to encompass everything that's managed to cram itself into a day, less than a full day.
"That Katherine is alive? That Damon thinks she was in a tomb all these years? That he'll come to Mystic Falls to try and get her out and might unleash twenty-six starving vampires instead? Or, the Council is still around, and the Gilberts already know our secret."
She nods along to his sarcasm, relieved he's framing it like a joke, after his dealing with Zach. "And one of those Gilberts happens to be Katherine's doppelgänger," she sing-songs.
He shakes his head, brows drawn together. "I still...don't understand how that works? Was Katherine from here? Did she..." he sounds like he doesn't quite believe what he's about to ask "have a child before she was turned?"
She purses her mouth, choosing how much to reveal. "To answer your first question. No. She was born in Bulgaria, but..." she sighs "the Petrovas, and um, one of her direct, very identical ancestors, came from Mystic Falls. And yes...she had a daughter before she was turned."
But that's a lot to get into. She continues her original point. "What I mean is, you haven't slept. You've been vervained. Personally, I would take a hot bath and then curl up in bed, and I know you're more likely to write this all down to help you process it" at his look of slight surprise she smiles in apology, again knowing just a little too much "but maybe you should just...go for a hunt?"
He's surprised how open she is, in bringing it up, surprised and uncomfortable.
His brow drops. "You honestly think that's a good idea?" he asks with heavy self-incrimination, realizing of course she knows about...that.
But it's because of the ripper instincts that she recommends it.
"It's not my worst," she smiles, matching the self-deprecation in a lighter manner. "And... I think it's a better choice than bourbon."
He crosses his arms against his chest, takes a step away from her. "I'm not sure that's true."
That's the moment she thinks about his father. Before they're even in the library. Maybe because she's trying to communicate nothing can be found in a bottle, or because his issues with blood, with being a ripper, partly stems from the horror of his first kill. She thinks about Giuseppe's grave and feels an idea spark.
She puts that on the backburner.
Instead, she tries to find the right words. She understands why he's a ripper. Knows there are things he needs to come to grips with that can't be solved by telling him one day he'll learn better control, one day he'll be able to take human blood without falling into a pit that takes him years and years of deprivation to get out of. That one day he'll be able to hold onto the parts of himself that are shut away, in the throes of bloodlust.
She doesn't want him to think she's giving him false hope. She doesn't want to hurt him by comparing him to an unrealized version of himself.
"Remember the Spinnetod in the library? The one I said hunted men?"
He looks up, brows wrinkled at the sudden conversation change, wondering where this is going.
"Yes?"
She's not sure if the parallel will be comforting, but if anyone could empathize with a Black Widow, to understand what instinct and need can make you do, without changing how you process it, it would be Stefan Salvatore.
"See, their transition, it starts at puberty, as young as twelve and thirteen if you can image. They start molting, the le retour d'age. It takes three days, three days for three layers of skin. And three men to..." she doesn't want to go into detail on what happens to the three men. His brows shoot up, but he listens intently. "Pre-puberty, they're normal. No instincts, no awareness that there's anything different at all. Then it starts. The, um, overwhelming urge to hunt. To seduce, copulate, and... consume. And if they don't, they can't molt, and they age rapidly. Very rapidly." She bites her lip. "See, if all you knew about them was the way they hunted, you would think they were...monstrous. To know their victims intimately, then to consume them the way they do, while they're still alive..." She hesitates, "but in truth, most are horrified by it. And, deeply remorseful. And even though they could feasibly live a very long life...there's a lot of...deaths, in their community, right before their second, or third, or..."
When they've had enough of fighting it.
"The woman in the library," he questions, thinking of a glimpse of woman who didn't seem monstrous at all.
How can a man with a pure heart turn into a ripper?
"She kept to herself, while I was there," she twists her mouth. "I think she was...painfully shy."
He drops his crossed arms, the ring almost never not moving back and forth under the direction of an absent thumb. She watches his hand flex, follows the muscle up his exposed forearm, as he stretches his shoulders. The conflict runs under his skin, as he sighs.
It reminds her that he pushes his body in activity, in exercise, when he's curbing his wants. Instead of pull-ups, she thinks he's better off at hunt, at satisfying part of his instinct.
"Will you be here, when I get back?" he questions like he isn't sure she won't disappear at the opportunity.
"I... can be, still not sure if I should," she admits.
He smiles wryly, understanding, for all that she's said she had visions that he stays. But before he leaves, he thinks of something to entice her, to make her want to stay just a little longer.
He asks if she'd like to see the library.
She smiles.
There's nothing overt about vampires, about the tomb, about the plan the town constructed. Giuseppe Salvatore speaks in metaphor, though not particularly descriptive or engaging ones.
Not vampires, but demons. Demons that prey on your mind, twist and enslave your spirit.
When it's not recounting the day to day, it reads like a confessional, disappointments, resentment, allusions - not outright admittance - to fears. Fighting a dependence that makes the worse of you. Focusing on the faults of others because of a loathing of self.
Stefan finds her mulling over a particular phrase, two weeks before the fire is set in the church.
And so, I have determined to go to my grave, with as many secrets as a man can hold.
"That's my father's journal," he realizes, questioning.
She jolts, taken by surprise, and feels a twist of guilty. "I'm sorry," she apologizes, hoping this isn't a liberty too far. "I was hoping I could show you something, but your father was more cryptic than I expected."
He shakes his head, his hair dark and damp from a shower. There's something looser, in his demeanor, that she hopes means the hunt was successful.
"Show me what?" He wonders, pulling the chair out next to her.
"Well..." she starts carefully. "Your father carried something to his grave. I thought I could show you the proof of it, so that you would...know."
He leans his bare forearms against the small desk, hands loose as he gestures to the journal. "May I?"
She smiles begrudgingly, that he would ask, when it should have been the other way around, letting him turn the journal as she reaches over to point to the specific phrase.
If only she was pointing at Johnathan Gilbert's journal, where the secret was laid out much clearer.
He reads it silently, without expression. "It was a... surprise, when Damon and I found out that he had another son. He was legitimized in father's will."
That's not the secret she expects to hear. She sits back, shifting her braid behind her when it falls forward. "I had wondered, how the Salvatore name continued after 1864."
He raises a brow. "You didn't know?" he asks drolly.
She narrows her eyes, but her mirth gives her away. She shakes her head. "As far as I know your...half-brother led an ordinary life. I never had a vision about him."
There's a wistful tilt to his smile, maybe something bittersweet, at a life he could have led, a brother he didn't know. "I saw him once, but I didn't...we never met. Better that we didn't."
The grandfather clock chimes behind her. Stefan looks back at the journal, as if it were a reminder. She wishes the clock had stayed silent. "My father used to say he would have a grave full of secrets."
And a secret child isn't the last of them.
"He also meant it...literally."
His green eyes search hers.
"Before the council enacted their plan, for the vampires, they also knew about Emily Bennett. They talked about what to do with her grimoire. Johnathan Gilbert was particularly wary about keeping it."
He frowns. "You said Emily had created a ring for him, that protected him from supernatural death..."
"Yes. She also created the compass they used to find the vampires that night. And a device that produces a high pitch frequency that incapacitates vampires and werewolves. And other creatures too, I suppose."
"So she helped him," He realizes, flatly, filtering through his memories. He doesn't understand why, but if she did... "She helped him, and he still..." betrayed her, let her be burned at the stake, left her child an orphan.
She realizes she's making it seem like Emily and Johnathan had some sort of alliance, which might be misleading.
"She helped because it was Katherine's plan. He benefited from it," she tilts her chin "sort of - the ring actually drove him crazy – but...in the end the town would have been better off with just vervain and branches of wood. Instead they got party tricks, which the Gilberts consider neat heirlooms I'm sure, but it also made the round the vampire plot unnecessarily convoluted."
His brows raise at her disparagement. "It seemed to work," he shrugs, to see her reaction.
She huffs, leaning back with closed arms. "Yeah, one for the humans. Except, the threat isn't eliminated, and you died, so I'd say the round them up and put them in the church plan turned out to be unbearably dumb."
He ducks his chin to hide his smile. "I think they planned it that way, because they wanted the cover of war. It was happening elsewhere; burning churches with civilians inside."
She pauses, not quite ready to give up ground. But it is a good point. "Why couldn't they dose them with vervain, and pretend they had a deadly disease? Shuffle them off to a quarantine area, then let the records say they all perished."
He shakes his head. "And how could they blame that on the Union?"
She...hadn't considered the war perspective, the mentality of the time.
"But that's not how it's remembered today..."
"No," he agrees, straight faced. "They say it was that confederate soldiers who fired, thinking there was a cache of weapons in the church, and killing twenty-seven civilians."
She scrutinizes him carefully, feeling that spark of curiosity, in unearthing a secret.
"It was Damon's idea," he admits.
Kind of petty, but clever, making it a point of shame for the town.
But then, by the time Stefan argued that history with Tanner, under the admiring gaze of Elena, even the history teacher didn't know it. No one wanted to remember that version.
"Still..." she considers "all it would take was one stake-happy council member and Katherine's plan would have blown up in her face, like it should have."
He frowns at the reminder that Katherine had planned it all, deeper than he ever knew. Or Damon, who knew more than him.
"I guess no one knew vampires could be killed that way."
Her mouth drops. "What?"
He tilts his head. "It wasn't common knowledge then. No Bela Lugosi. Dracula wasn't written until 1897."
She's actually dumbfounded. Of course that isn't true. There have been vampire hunters for a thousand years. But...that's among people who have been exposed to them. Before 1864, this town hadn't been. She took current, 20th century pop culture for granted. Of course even humans, now, know what a vampire was and how to kill them.
"Wait. Didn't you know, when you turned?"
He shakes his head.
That surprises her further.
Damon would have known though. Damon knew what he was getting into.
"Huh."
He's smiling now, as strange as it is, given what they're talking about, because she's frowning to herself, annoyed that she didn't know this. Had overlooked this.
"So Emily's spell book is in my father's grave?" He asks, to bring back her attention. She blinks grey eyes at him. "Even though he died before her?"
"They..." she shakes herself "took her spell book that same night. Your father wouldn't of had it long, before..." Before Stefan killed him, the next day. What a strange fate, to receive the stolen relic you plan to take to the grave, and be buried right after.
"I wanted you to know where it was, because you found out, originally, by the Gilbert journal, and... I doubt Grayson is going to let Jeremy lend it out to Alaric this time around, so..." she raises her hands, to shrug. Stefan looks at her covered palm, wonders if it pains her still, the way she's kept it by her side. He can guess who Jeremy is, and that just leaves an unknown Alaric.
"You think I'll need it?" He wonders.
She bites at the corner of her lip in thought. "Well, you dug it up before."
He can only think of one reason why he would do that, to dig up his father's grave. "To prevent someone else getting it? Like Damon?"
She nods.
"Because her spell is in there, to open the tomb," he realizes aloud. "If Sheila had the grimoire, would she be able to keep it sealed?"
"I don't think it would turn out the way," she answers diplomatically. She purses her lips. "Can you see Damon taking it on anyone's word, that Katherine wasn't in the tomb?"
No. He knows Damon. He would do anything to prove Stefan, or anyone else, wrong.
"When does Damon arrive, in Mystic Falls?"
She makes a face.
Stefan sits up. "He's here?"
"No! He was, but he left."
"Why?" But then he falls back in his chair, realizing, with dread "Did he kill someone?"
"No. I – no?" Probably not. "He decided to leave and make his grand appearance to you in... September, I think. Whenever the school term starts here."
The school term? "Why did he leave?"
She blows out a breath. "He might have met Elena. Before the crash."
Stefan's brows draw together. "He saw Katherine's doppelgänger and he left?" That part doesn't sound like Damon at all.
She lifts her hands again, to show she doesn't actually know the inner workings of Damon's mind. "It was meaningful for him. Maybe it weirded him out too."
Stefan's frowns to himself. Knowing that Damon was here, and left bothers him. The fact that they came to Mystic Falls at the same time, met Katherine's doppelganger the same night.
How would he have reacted if he saw Stefan was vervained, if he had been there, if he knew Zach gave Grayson Gilbert, a member of the council, an opportunity?
Is he even capable of caring? Had he truly written Stefan off long ago?
Casey's reluctance to mention Damon and Elena's meeting, is curious. The fact that she had a vision of it at all, is more so.
"1864 Katherine Pierce had the loyal support of a Bennett witch and the love of both Salvatore brothers. Repeat with Elena."
"You had a vison of their meeting?" he asks just to see her reaction.
She makes a face, but nods.
"What was his reaction to her?"
She pauses. "Disbelief at first. Charmed, the usual reaction."
Stefan nods to himself, looking back down to his father's journal. His father's secrets. The grave he was willing to disturb, for a spell-book that Damon wanted. He can guess, based on Casey's insinuations, that he failed to keep it out of Damon's hands.
"What if we did it now?" He wonders, glancing up to see if she's willing to change something else, again.
"Beware any witch who's willing to disturb a peaceful grave," she remarks, remembering a lesson long ago, as she looks down at Giuseppe Salvatore's headstone.
Then again, she's no longer a witch.
It feels like commitment, to a life far from the one she was raised to have – when Stefan takes a deep breath before using the shovel to crack the dirt.
They're really doing this.
Casey mans the flashlight that lays as heavily in her hands as a baton. She switches it to her left hand exclusively, as gripping it even loosely in her right makes her palm ache. She had offered to take two shovels, so she could contribute a little more, but Stefan had tilted his chin to her hand knowingly, and something in his face said, he thought this part was his duty alone.
The old graveyard, more barren wood now, is quiet beyond the beam of light Casey has focused on the ground. Stefan works rhythmically. Thud of the shovel, shift of dirt like falling rain.
"I thought it was my fault," he broaches, eyes still downcast as he works. "Katherine getting captured. Damon and I being killed."
The flashlight wavers, just enough for Stefan to look up at her, see she hadn't meant to physically react, that's she's contemplating what to say.
"Fault is a pretty damning word..." she answers carefully, eyes on the dirt. "Everything had worked out, according to plan."
He stops, resting his hands against the top of the shovel.
"Everything?" He asks with foreboding.
She clenches her eyes. Why she said that she doesn't know. This isn't like telling him some of the things he might do, in his future. The past is a different beast entirely.
And this secret, had never come out.
"There's something more about what happened that night..." he leads, and looks at her, waiting, wanting to know even though he knows it's going to hurt.
She slowly slides down to sit now that he's standing four feet in the hole. They're at the same height now, but she can't look at him as she tells him this. The flashlight wavers again, down at where his father's body is still hidden. She keeps her eyes on the beam of light, licking her lip. "Your father was compelled, that night."
His hands tighten, knuckles taut against the wooden handle. "Compelled." He repeats. Compelled to what?
The graves are silent around them. She wonders if Giuseppe Salvatore would want this said for him, to explain something hidden of himself. Not everyone wants their secrets unearthed.
He shakes his bent head. "He was on vervain," it's almost a rejection, a refutation that she has to be wrong.
"Not always." She stops, but he looks up, needing her to continue. All it takes is a moment, to drain someone of vervain, to compel them, to wipe their memory. "He fought it, but compulsion can be...insidious." He falls back to lean against the side of the grave, the shovel now loose in his hands. His face is too shadowed, backed away from the light for her to read his expression. "I think...from his journal, he could tell his resentments, his anger, were...heightened unnaturally. Made to flourish. He knew what happened to him, even though he was made to forget. And he hated himself, because he thought if...his natural wasn't what it was, he would have been stronger in fighting it."
Stefan looks at the grave like he's looking through it.
"You never found out about it," she can't help but confess. "Maybe you were better not knowing. I – I don't know." Again, she thinks of the ways she's managed to hurt him. "This is why seers are more trouble than they're worth."
"No," he says slowly, sighing with it. "That's...something I wanted to know. And if there's a right place to tell me, I think this is it."
She looks up, wondering if he meant it. She bites the inside of her cheek.
When he gets to the casket, he wipes the dirt off the Salvatore crest, his palm with the daylight ring, laying flat against it. The next time he hesitates is removing the bound book from the grip of his father's bones. She holds her breath until the casket is closed again.
He sets it next to her at the side of the grave. He doesn't break the binding, doesn't confirm what it is. Instead, he takes the shovel again, and buries his father.
Before a new pile of dirt falls onto his casket, she gives a quiet blessing to his bones. "Rest well, Giuseppe Salvatore."
Stefan looks up at her, sees the grimoire untouched where he left it, and her morning dew eyes made silver by the flashlight's reflection, watching him, direct and full.
He licks his bottom lip. He offers a prayer to his father's spirit, in the Italian he learned as a boy.
He knew, what it felt like to be compelled by Katherine, to see yourself doing things you knew was wrong, felt was wrong. And he knows, the true horror his father must have felt, when he saw his son become –
He covers the grave under Casey's light, and before he leaves the old desolate graveyard, he finds the faded inscription of Johnathan Gilbert's declared death.
1904.
Somehow he didn't need to see it, to know she was right, but it settles something in him, to see the proof of it anyway.
He lets the Jeep idle, lingering on the outskirts of the graveyard, hands still dusty with grave dirt.
"Are there any more graves to disturb in Mystic Falls?" He hopes not, but half expects her to say yes.
She laughs, relieving some of the tension as they had silently made their way back to the car. "I don't know. Not presently."
He looks at the book in her lap, at what they pulled out of this one. His Father's grave.
"Do you want to see it?" She wonders, gathering it to hand over.
"Is there a curse on it?" though maybe that isn't a joke. Maybe there is. He remembers Howard Carter's discovery. "To meet death by a disease no doctor can diagnose?"
"Wouldn't that be interesting," she tilts the book, like she can shake a deadly curse loose. She quirks a smile at his look, her braid loose, so stray red locks curl around her face. "I used to dream about being an archeologist, exploring cursed tombs," she confesses quietly and wistfully.
"Apparently, there's one close by."
"Maybe Emily Bennett had the same dreams," she muses.
He never got to truly know Emily. The witch who played Katherine's maid, who seemed her friend when he thought Katherine capable of it. He wonders if her magic ever gave her a feeling of freedom or if it was a different nature of servitude.
"Are you planning on giving it to Sheila, or her granddaughter?"
She tilts her head. "I wasn't planning to do anything with it. Other than hand it back to you."
"To me?" That seems...sacrilege, to hand a witch's cookbook to a vampire.
She gives him a questioning look, like she doesn't understand why that would be strange. In his experience, most, almost all, witches hold enmity against vampires. It was fundamental to their relationship with nature, to view vampires as a blight, as something wrong. If any of the witches he had met had visions of vampires...he can't see them being kind, after that.
He wonders what she could have possibly seen, to see redeeming qualities, and not a wash of blood.
"Well, I expect you'll give it to them," she shrugs. "But maybe you'll want to copy some of the pages first. About the tomb. So, you could learn more about it? And she has the daylight ring spell in here. Lexi has a witch friend she trusts right? I figured you could..." she trails off, brow drawn together as he stares at her.
A daylight ring. For Lexi.
Of course, Emily had the spell when she made his and Damon's rings. He can imagine Lexi's joy, to finally be able to live in sunlight. "Did you see Lexi with a daylight ring?"
Her eyes slide, for just a moment. She shakes her head, with her lips tight. "No but that doesn't mean anything. She could have it now."
He takes note of her reaction but doesn't comment. Instead, he focuses on her suggesting it, when it's something she hadn't seen at all.
"Thank you," he says sincerely.
She smiles, slightly embarrassed.
Was this her way of saying goodbye, to leave him with this one, precious, gift he can give to Lexi?
As her potentially last act last night, was to dive in anyway, to help rescue Grayson. As her words to Sheila in her delirium, was to impart advice for Sheila's granddaughter's well-being. As she asked Gene for something to counteract the vervain, before she went into the hot box, where he could hear her muffling her cries.
He doesn't expect her to want to stay. Not in Mystic Falls. Not with someone she's known for a day.
He knows the way she left Richmond hurt her, but that doesn't mean she wants Mystic Falls.
But -
He can offer it anyway.
"Would you be interested, in going through it?"
She looks down at the grimoire in her lap, before frowning. "You mean to help you understand it?"
He runs his thumb against his bottom lip, to stall at answering. He doesn't want to be selfish, by asking her to stay, for him.
"If you want to," he decides.
She searches his eyes, mouth slightly parted.
Are you...?
Yes.
"Okay?" she answers slowly, like she can't believe she's saying it. "Yes?"
And though it's the last thing he expected he would do, after digging up his father, after finding out what really happened that night, Stefan breathes, and smiles.
Next: may as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb
A B&E and the Saints of Augustine.