Hey guys! It's been a while so I've uploaded two chapters. This one takes place in Stefan's POV after he leaves in search of Jeremy. Hope you like!
Stefan jumped to the second story ledge on the far side of the Gilbert house and peered in through Elena's window.
Even though he knows she's not there, he almost expected her to be sitting on her bed, scribbling away in that journal she always carries around with her.
He remembers it sticking out of the side pocket of her backpack the first time they met…well, the first time he'd had the courage to speak to her, that is.
Their true first-time meeting is a collection of memories he'd rather forget.
But even with circumstances around their introduction being so damn unusual and crazier than anything anyone could ever make up, for some reason that brown, leather bound journal cradled in her arms has always stuck out in his mind as a beacon for her acquaintance.
Aside from the fact that she was an exact replica of the ex girlfriend he'd shared with Damon more than 150 years ago, that journal of hers was confirmation that he was right where he needed to be. He had to know her.
In his room back at the Boarding House are hundreds of little leather bound books that he'd constantly scribbled in when he was lonely, or missing Damon when he'd gone off to war, or when he was mad at Lexi for making him feel again (that one makes him smile).
And previous to that, he'd had hundreds more at the Salvatore Manor that he'd written in as a boy.
Writing has always been a form of therapy for him, a safe haven. The magic of putting your thoughts, and dreams, and feelings on paper and being able to visualize and touch them was so calming to him and seeing that Elena never let her journal out of her sight, he imagined that she'd felt the same.
He remembers being amazed by the number of times he'd watched Elena as she would stop, open that book, and scribble things down throughout the day.
Sometimes she'd have a tiny smile playing on her lips while her pen flew across the page. Other times she'd wear a frown, lips turned down at the corners. And more often than not, he'd watch silent tears roll down her cheeks while she wrote and he'd burn just a little more inside, smelling the salt in her tears and feeling his heart ache right along with hers.
He imagines those times, when she's alone and furiously brushing tear stains off her face with the palm of her hand, that she's writing about the night of her parents death.
He wonders if she writes about him during those times.
The mystery man who had rescued her from the bottom of Mystic Lake.
The mystery man who she'd begged to "please save my parents"…
The mystery man who had let her down in the worst way…
...the mystery man who erased himself from her memory that night because he was a coward and a cheat and he wanted a do over. He wanted to steal his second chance to make a good first impression.
He was sad and damaged that way.
After he'd pulled Elena from the wreckage and called 911, he'd compelled her to forget all details of the man who'd saved her life.
All she'd know when she finally woke was that "a dark figure swooped in out of nowhere, pried the back door open and pulled her to the surface and by the time she'd finished coughing up water and gasping for air, her savior was nowhere to be found and her parents were lying lifeless a few feet away."
He'd stalked the edge of the woods near Wickery Bridge, out of sight, watching and listening to Elena tell every detail of the story he'd planted in her head.
He'd sworn off human blood more than 50 years before, after he'd nearly ripped the heads off of half of northern Virginia, and with his alternative lifestyle choice to feed on animal blood, his compulsions can, at times, be rendered obsolete when practiced on very strong or determined minds so he had to be sure this wouldn't be one of those times.
He'd watched the silver Volvo being dredged up from the bottom of the lake. Watched the paramedics and the coroner as Elena's mother was first placed on a gurney, followed by her father. He'd watched as their bodies, cold and still and lifeless, were covered with white sheets. He'd watched as they both were rolled into the back of a big black van and the sound of the doors slam shut with a finality that twisted in his gut.
He remembers wanting to scream and cry and end the whole world. If that's how he had felt... he couldn't even begin to pretend he knew what Elena could be going through.
The story was over. His compulsion had worked but he couldn't turn and leave. He'd just stood there, watched her as she'd sat in the back of an ambulance. Big grey blanket thrown over her shoulders that looked like it was trying to swallow her whole. She was still soaking wet and her red T-shirt stretched out of shape, her jean shorts plastered against her thighs like a second skin. She was shivering violently but he didn't even think she realized it. Her face was blank and her eyes were staring out at nothing.
The look on her face that night haunts him to this day and he knows he'll never, ever forget it. So, when he'd bumped into her in the hallway at school three months later, he grabbed his moment and put it in a chokehold and he planned to spend every day of Elena's life doing penance for his failure to keep her family whole.
He easily pops her bedroom window open and slides through. The scent of her lavendar scented body wash and peppermint shampoo immediately reaches his nose and he's equally angry and sad all over again.
Angry at Klaus for coming here and ruining everything.
Angry at himself for not being strong enough to save her.
And sad because even though he refuses to say the words out loud, a small part of him can't help wonder if he's too late and Elena's already dead.
He grinds his teeth together until he hears the bones in his jaws start to crack.
Focus Stefan.
He trains his hearing so that he only picks up the sounds inside Elena's house.
He hears the slow drip of water from the leaky faucet in Elena's bathroom. He hears the wooshing sound of the air from the air conditioner blowing through the vents to cool the house. He hears the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen downstairs.
These sounds are all artificial.
He closes his eyes and makes himself listen again.
No heartbeats. No breath.
No sounds of human life.
He heads through Elena's bathroom and out of the door on the opposite side that connects Jeremy's room.
Jeremy's bed is expectedly empty and unmade and the sheets are cold to the touch which means wherever he is, he's been gone long enough to be lost to Stefan. He scans the room and find Jeremy's cell on the corner of his desk next to his sketch pad.
He knows deep in his gut that Jeremy wouldn't have left the house alone willingly without his phone and the already tight feeling in his chest deepens, giving home to a sinking feeling that he's not sure he can fight much longer. Everything he's encountered so far is telling him that he's one step behind, one second too late…
He tries to bury that train of thought as he picks up the phone and scrolls though the call log.
He sees the 3 missed calls from earlier when he'd dialed Jeremy from Bonnie's porch.
The fourth call is a number unsaved.
He hits the redial button and tenses as the line begins to ring. He sucks in breath he doesn't need and holds it as the line connects.
"Yeah?"
The voice on the other end is hard and emotionless, but unfamiliar.
Stefan quickly ends the call and exhales.
It's the last number on Jeremy's incoming call log and he figures it's as good as anything.
He pockets Jeremy's phone and hops out of the window on the other side of the room next to the bed and heads for the sheriff's station.
Its business as usual at the Mystic Falls sherriff's office.
Layla, fresh out of the Police Academy, works the front desk answering phones and filing paperwork. Ninety percent of the documents filed in those gray file cabinets behind her desk are of gruesome "animal attacks" and "strange disappearances". All suspicious…all unnatural, but it's human nature to shy away from what can't easily be explained away or to cling to whatever lie they're told, no matter how ridiculous, as long as it helps them sleep better at night.
Sheriff Forbes and her daughter, Caroline, are having lunch in the break area toward the back of the building at a small table tucked off in the corner. How ironic is it that the Sheriff of Mystic Falls and leader of the Town Council who secretly hunts and kills the vampires of this town while covering up the murders committed by said vampires is sitting across from her vampire daughter and doesn't have a clue that one of the murders she's recently covered up was a body drained by her one and only child?
This horror show literally writes itself.
Once of the few scarce items that he can add to the plus column though is that if he is forced to say one positive thing about his brothers actions in the past year he'd have to say that Damon's brilliant idea to infiltrate the town council was by far some of his best work.
Not only did Damon become close friends with the sheriff, but he also threw the Council off their trail by helping them find and kill vampires. No way would they guess that a member of the council and a member of one of the Founding Families, was a 160 year old vampire with a vampire little brother, would be helping them kill off their own kind.
Again. It writes itself.
But, if it hadn't been for Damon's sinister, yet well calculated plan, it wouldn't possible for Stefan to just waltz freely into the sheriff's station and right up to the sheriff and ask a favor.
She spots him just as he clears the threshold and stands immediately, motioning for him to stop. Caroline turns and meets his eyes. Confusion and suspicion barely hidden there, but she stays quiet.
As Sheriff Forbes nears him she nods behind him toward her office. He allows her to pass and follows her.
Once they're in her office with the door shut, she motions for him to sit in one of the hard wood armchairs in front of her desk while she has a seat across from him behind her desk.
"Sorry about all that. It's just that this whole thing with Elena has already got Caroline in a funk, I just didn't wanna add to it." She says, scooting closer to her desk, tidying some of the papers on top. "That is why you're here, isn't it?"
"Well…not exactly. He pauses. Actually…it's Jeremy."
She stills where she's stacking manila folders into a pile and looks up at him. "Oh God, what now?" She asks him almost whispering.
"Well, I honestly don't know yet." He lifts enough to pull Jeremy's phone from his back pocket and slides it over to the sheriff.
She looks down at it and back up at Stefan blankly.
"That's Jeremy's phone." He says. "I went over to Elena's earlier to…"
He started to tell the truth. Give her the whole story about the blood spell and their plan to go rescue Elena but thought better of it. Sheriff Forbes has already been though enough over the past few weeks juggling every lead on Elena's whereabouts while also trying to support Caroline and Bonnie emotionally. It would just be too much so he decided to omit...most of the story for her sake.
"…I went over to check up on him and he wasn't there. No signs of forced entry and no signs of a struggle. He was just…gone."
"So. Do you think somethings up?" She's still holding the folders in a tight grip.
"I don't know. That's sorta why I'm here. It's just with Elena going missing, I'm just…really on edge about everything." He says, running his fingers through his hair.
She exhales. The sound that comes out of her mouth could have possibly been a laugh if all hell wasn't breaking loose. "Believe me. I understand." She says. "So what do you need from me?"
Stefan grabs up the phone again and pulls up the unsaved number in Jeremy's phone before placing it back down in front of her.
"Every number in that phone is attached to Jeremy's phone book, except that one." He points down at the highlighted number. "Whoever that person is, is the last person Jeremy talked to. They called him about an hour before I did and the call only lasted a minute and a half."
He leans back in his chair and exhales. "It could be nothing. It could be something."
The sheriff nods, picking up a pen and scribbling down the number on a note pad before standing. "In Mystic Falls…we always err on the side of something." She says, pocketing the piece of paper. "Give me some time. I'll give you a call when I've got something."
He's heading down the front steps of the sheriff's office about to go over to The Grill in search of, well, anything, when he hears the click of Caroline's heels hurrying down after him.
He's not sure why he expected to get away so easily.
He forces on a smile that feels staked to his face and turns to face her. "Caroline, hey."
"So my best friends brother is missing and you weren't even going to tell me? Great."
Stefan's eyebrows crumple. "How…?"
"I eavesdropped! Of course! What did you expect? You and my mom were doing your little secret sign language thing right in front of my face. Have you guys met me?"
Well…she's kinda got a point there.
He loves Caroline, of course he does. He's the one who helped her through her transition when Katherine turned her and during that time, he realized that she was more than a spoiled brat who craved attention.
She was funny, smart, loyal, supportive and, of course, beautiful. She'd become one of his closest friends because of that.
But she can also be overbearing, animated, overwhelming, anxious, and a bit of a worry wart. And right now, he was feeling a bit of all those things himself and didn't need extra emotional baggage to hold on top of that.
He drops his head feeling a little guilty for being so selfish but this thing with Elena has him so out of tune with himself and everyone around him.
When he meets her eyes again, he's wearing a more genuine smile this time. "I'm sorry, Caroline." And he means it. "I honestly didn't want to worry you. Especially since I don't really know the whole story here either." He pauses and when she still doesn't speak, he continues. "I promise I wouldn't keep anything from you if it were important. Come on, you should know that."
She exhales and he watches as the tense lines in her shoulders finally begin to relax and she gives him a tiny smile.
"Yeah, you're right. I'm sorry." She pouts a little. "I just feel so out of control, you know? There's a psycho hybrid running around kidnapping innocent teenagers, Tyler's on the other side of the world looking for his wolf pack, and you're keeping semi-secrets."
They both chuckle at the last part and he steps closer to her, grabbing both her hands in his own.
"Trust me, Caroline. You aren't the only one losing your mind here. Elena is…God knows where…and I feel like a sitting duck."
She squeezes his hands where they're still interlocked between them and pulls him in for a hug.
He holds her there for a second and hadn't realized that he'd been needing that. A familiar touch, like a small reassurance that everything will work itself out…one way or another.
He pulls back and gives her a tiny nod. "Thanks."
She smiles and he actually feels a little more grounded now.
"I was headed to The Grill if you wanted to tag along."
"What's at The Grill?" She asks, frowning, but follows close beside him as he begins to walk.
"Honestly? Who knows? But sitting around waiting just makes this whole thing worse. I just need to stay moving, active, searching…"
She touches his arm lightly, understanding perfectly what he means. "I get it. Let's go to The Grill."
Of course, after 3 hours of searching, nothing turned up at The Grill, or the school, or the woods where Jeremy used to cut school with his friends, or the quarry, or Elena's house when they went by a second time just to be sure.
He hadn't really expected to find anything so it wasn't a surprise. He'd just needed a distraction. And even though she didn't say it, so did Caroline.
They were sitting on a bench at the quad when the Sheriff finally called and they both tensed as Stefan answered his phone.
"Find anything?"
"Got a trace on that phone number you gave me. Traces back to a small motel called The Brookwood Inn, in Charlotte, NC."
They both frown as they take in the information from the Sherriff.
"Charlotte? What's in Charlotte?"
"No clue, haven't found anything yet to link Klaus to Charlotte but I still got my guys looking. I'd say head that way and see what you can dig up."
"Got it. Thanks Liz."
He disconnects the call and looks to Caroline.
"So…road trip?"