Author's Note: This picks up right where Tomorrow's Rose left off. Remember, this is a Desperate Love sequel, and in that universe, "We'll Always Have Bourbon Street" episode didn't exist so Stefan and Damon never talked about 1942.

Chapter 8: Truth Written In Lies

STEFAN

When I went out hunting this morning I expected to spend a quick half hour blunting the ache that lives inside my fangs, returning with a bitter savory taste on my tongue that I'd hurry to scrub off with cinnamon-flavored toothpaste. I did not expect to come back without my girlfriend, or my pants, but that's the kind of thing that happens when my brother gets involved in my affairs.

I can't resist a glance back toward the woods as I leave her to replace the clothes my brother stole. I can just see a hint of shining golden hair, one scrap of smooth pale skin showing through the branches of the bushes.

The tattoo sits easier on my shoulder now that Caroline knows its story. I never realized before how odd it was, that no one knew but me what was written in my skin. If I died before telling her, it would have gone like a hieroglyph into my grave. Un-translated, as storyless as my bones.

A slight smile settles onto my face as I turn and walk toward the back door of the boarding house. I don't bother with speed, because I'm sure that whatever I do, Damon will be waiting so he can gloat over his juvenile little victory. Honestly, after 170 years, you'd think my big brother would grow up. I just want to retrieve our clothes as quickly as I can so that Caroline's not left crouched in the bushes like a criminal. She's not happy with Damon as it is and now she'll be distracted the whole rest of the day with plotting whatever new prank she wants to pull on him.

At first I was proud of her ingenuity and the tiniest bit smug to see Damon being the butt of the jokes in this house for a change. But now I can't help but worry. For her the pranks are just good fun, but my brother gets bored easily. And when he gets bored, he usually does something impulsive. The last thing I want is for a prank to get his temper up at the wrong moment.

I think he was bored when he offered to go to war with me.

Think they could use another driver?

I shouldn't have said anything to Caroline about that and I'll have to remember to ask her not to bring it up to him. It wasn't fair of me. He never really meant it, anyway. He was just joking, teasing like he used to when we were kids. He'd clout me on the back and laugh, saying that I wouldn't recognize a joke if it bit me on the tip of my nose.

We laughed a lot that night in '42, high on sharing our first drinks together in thirty years. It's not like we talked seriously about the war, or our plans. It was just a little comment in passing and then I had to leave in a hurry when Charlotte came with her "leftovers."

He didn't get a chance to tell me he was joking. I'm sure he would have laughed himself into stitches if he'd known I was actually waiting for him at the train station. I was still watching for him as the train pulled out, the platform fading into the distance, filled with crying wives and wide-eyed children waving at other men.

I'm sure Damon never mentioned it again because it wasn't a promise broken at all. It was just me, never learning how to take a joke because I'm too slow, too serious. Which are no doubt the exact same things he's going to accuse me of when I come in the back door to find that he just so happens to be in the kitchen, lounging against the doorway with a whiskey, a poorly faked look of surprise and some snappy little quip already on his lips.

Damon can tease and feel superior all he wants. My sense of humor is fine; Caroline and I laugh all the time. Just because I don't like to laugh at other people's expense doesn't mean that I'm not funny.

But still, I don't want him to know that I didn't get the joke in 1942, so I deliberately never mentioned it in my letters. Not that he read them since I didn't have an address to send them to, but he wrote me letters when he went to war, and so I did the same.

There was something about putting a pen to paper in an army tent filled with the snores of strangers that made me feel more adult than anything ever had. Like maybe in learning not to be a monster, I'd found how to be a man as well.

I wrote brave letters to my brother, and I didn't mention the blood. How much of it there was. How much I wanted it, even from those who would never miss it again. How I wanted to lick it when it had dried, feel it congeal on my tongue or flow hot and fresh into my stomach until it glowed under my skin.

I didn't care how or who or where, or why not. But somehow I didn't touch a drop of it to my tongue and so I felt like a man when I wrote about all the things I should have been thinking about when I was actually thinking about blood.

My words traced through my stationary like a mirror of the confident script that once flowed across cheap, thin paper on pages that live now tucked away in one of my old books, the postmarks still intact on the envelopes that carried them from my brother to me.

Damon wrote of the girls who spread their quilts and billowing skirts on meadow grass. How colorful they looked on the hills above the battleground with their baskets of picnic lunches. How he'd snuck away once and risked court martial because he knew he could flirt peaches and some fresh bread out of the debutantes before the drums called the men into formation.

I tried to write about girls, too, but in Egypt there were only the exhausted nurses, once so crisp and smart and full of professional optimism. Their untended hair scraggling out from underneath their crooked caps and their dark, puffy eyes that never met yours, only registered and dismissed you for your lack of wounds. There were no towns where I was stationed, only tents and the kind of sun you need two daylight rings for.

I always wished there had been girls to write to Damon about.

At the back door of the boarding house, I stop to listen, because Damon may think it would be funny for me to walk in naked in front of Elena, but I wouldn't. And neither, I suspect, would Caroline.

There are more voices than there should be, and I have to focus to identify them because they're all the way in the living room. Women's voices, but not young and teasing…Carol Lockwood. That's the mayor's voice.

I press my lips together in annoyance. He's hosting a damned council meeting and not only did he not tell me, but first he took a morning stroll to steal my underwear and run them up the figurative flagpole for the entire community to enjoy. Fortunately, he's arrogant enough to think that because only half my diet is human these days, I wouldn't have heard the voices before I came inside.

Not that I care what they see. I've lived in this body long enough that I can't work up much of an interest in who has or hasn't seen it, but the reason behind the nudity will start talk. Talk that will certainly involve Caroline and that will undoubtedly upset her.

So instead of trying to sneak to my room the conventional way, which is likely what Damon is waiting to catch me at, I duck below the windows, moving in an undignified crouch until I'm out of sight. Once I'm close enough, I leap as quietly as I can manage up to my balcony.

The brass doorknob won't turn. I glare at it and jiggle it a little, giving up my pretense at silence. It's locked.

I never lock my door.

There's no point; anyone that wanted to get inside my room would likely be a supernatural creature strong enough to break it and the knob is an antique, contemporaneous with the first construction of the boarding house. My room is in the original structure and Damon's wing was added on twenty years later, so the fixtures in my side are the oldest in the building. I might be able to get a replacement from a specialty dealer but if I did, it wouldn't share the history of the house, only its façade.

I drop back to the ground, glowering at the lawn beneath my bare toes as I scuttle underneath the windows again. I hope Caroline isn't watching this. I jump onto Damon's balcony and his knob turns easily under my hand. I smile.

Take that, brother. Didn't think I'd try your room, did you?

My eyes narrow and I give the door a shove, letting it swing open and waiting for any sign of a trap. Nothing. I step inside and close the door. It swings smoothly, silently, and I frown, noting that Damon has traded out the original hinges.

I pause to listen. The voices are louder than they should be. I need to hurry, since I have no interest in finding out what asinine stunt he intends to pull in front of the council.

"We have several prints here from the idealistically morbid Dale Gallon," Damon says. The practiced charm in his voice completely fails to disguise his disdain for that particular artist or the underlying delight that has nothing to do with art and everything to do with the fact that he knows where I am and is probably leading this faux-intellectual walking tour on a beeline straight for me.

Footsteps on the stairs accompany his running commentary. "We have a few early example of Impressionists here. Unimpressive, mostly, though it's nice that they finally realized after a couple thousand years that things move."

I roll my eyes at his snobbery. I think the only reason he attends these useless council meetings is because some perverse part of him loves that they never see through his aggressively facetious show of manners.

I gauge the distance between me, the door and the closet. I might be able to get dressed by the time they come in, or I can hightail it back to the woods. But if I do that I'll have to make another attempt at sneaking in, and I'm sure Damon is not above leading tours around the house all day as if the council is a roving home-security team, guarding against the invasion of improperly clad siblings. By nightfall, their feet will be killing them and he'll still be happily jibbering on about historic wall sconces, making up names and architectural styles as he goes along.

I choose a shirt at random and nearly pop a button as I hurriedly tug the hanger out through the neck. It's way too fancy for Mystic Falls, as usual. When will Damon notice that jeans or not he's two thousand dollars overdressed on any given Tuesday? I busy unfastening buttons on the fastidiously stored shirt when I'm distracted by the increase in outdoor sounds from the open balcony door.

"Stefan?" Caroline whispers.

"Oh, but wait until you see this. I've saved the best for last, of course," Damon says smugly from the other side of the door.

I blur across the room, shoving the shirt into Caroline's surprised hands just as he leads the tour inside.

CAROLINE

I've got one arm into a shirt that feels like heaven and I don't have time to do more than slap the loose half across my naked torso before Damon opens his bedroom door with anticipation in his eyes and a smirk that I want to slap off of his stupid face.

"And in my private collection, we have this delightful little gem," he pauses deliberately for effect as they get a look at what exactly is in his private collection.

"Well," Damon says into the silence of eight adults that have known me since I needed teething toys. "That wasn't exactly the gem I had in mind, but it certainly has curb appeal."

I'm going to kill him.

"And X-men eyes." Damon smiles his pleasant smile, which is as fake as the contents of a Kardashian's brassiere. "Good thing I wore my lead-lined underwear."

Stefan clears his throat pointedly and steps in front of me, which would be more gentlemanly if he were wearing, um, anything.

"You've had your fun, Damon. Why don't you take your tour elsewhere?" Stefan suggests.

"Caroline Marie Forbes," my mother says tightly, finally having recovered her voice and apparently her long-dormant lecturing ability. "When you moved out, I expected you to…anyway, I didn't…I should think that–" she sputters.

"What, Mom, do you need to check your parenting app? Oh wait, you probably left your charger at home and your phone went dead." I grab a pillow off Damon's bed and thrust it in front of my fiance's personal business. "Don't worry. I keep a spare for you in my room. It's right next to my ID that says I'm of age and none of your dang business and the house key you gave me when I was eight because you couldn't be bothered to be home after work to let me in."

"Well, I think I've seen enough, erm, art," Carol Lockwood says brightly, her eyes lingering on Stefan's pillow for a beat too long to make her words believable. She takes my mom by the arm.

"Liz, let's head downstairs and make some tea, shall we? Damon, take your time, sweetie. We'll wait."

The rest of the council has already heeded their exit cue, and my mom only puts up token resistance before fixing Stefan with a final thin-lipped expression of disappointment and following Carol downstairs. I can see his shoulders wilt a little as he grips the pillow awkwardly over his lap.

I smack him in the arm. "Seriously? You're going to feel guilty for having sex with me?"

"Say it a little louder, Caroline," he says, flushing slightly. "I don't think the Pope heard you."

Damon crosses his arms over his chest, clearly not done enjoying himself. "Now kids, I thought we'd talked about appropriate attire for when I have company over."

I drop the front of the shirt that I've been holding stretched under my armpit and cram my arm into the armhole, exasperated.

Damon shades his eyes, whistling through his teeth in mock distress. "Easy there. You're not my official sister yet, Caroline. Show some decorum."

"Oh right, like you hav—" I snap that sentence off before I have to see the pain in Stefan's eyes that invariably follows any mention of my very brief stint of "dating" Damon about a thousand and fifty years ago.

"You did this on purpose," I hiss instead. "In front of my mother, Damon Salvatore. In case you are not acquainted with it, the linebetween this and even semi-appropriate behavior is about two miles," I point furiously. "In the opposite direction. Of you."

He holds up his hands with smug innocence. "Hey, it's not my fault you can't keep track of your britches, sweetheart. And just where do you think you're going with my shirt? That's Kenneth Cole and I know how women like you 'borrow.'"

"I can skin you and wear that instead," I threaten, my whisper hitting a pitch high enough to break any dishware within a half-mile radius.

Stefan chucks his pilfered pillow at his brother and stalks over to the closet.

"Gross," Damon complains, swatting the pillow away. "Like I want a pillow you rubbed your johnson on. Keep it for posterity." He winks. "Besides, I think Carol Lockwood liked it on you."

Stefan emerges from the closet, zipping a pair of borrowed pants and wearing his only-mildly-irritated face. "Care, do you want me to get you some of your clothes or are you good with the shirt? Elena has a robe in there that you could take," he offers.

I turn my glare on him. "How are you not more upset that your brother just showed off our goods in front of the entire freaking town? He practically built us a parade float, Stefan!"

He frowns. "I told you to wait outside."

Like I was going to do that when I saw Stefan furtively ducking under window ledges and jumping onto balconies instead of using the dang door. Of course I thought someone was trying to kill us. What else would they do?

Damon's eyebrows bounce playfully. "Ooh, no excuses to hide behind now, Beauty Queen. I always knew you were dying to indulge your exhibitionist side."

"The only thing I am going to be exhibiting is your spinal column," I hiss out through my teeth. "Pranks are one thing, Damon, but this..this—" I sputter.

"So speechlessness is genetic," he says, his eyes sparkling merrily. "Noted."

"Look," Elena says on a long sigh as she appears in the doorway. "You guys, stop it. The tru—"

"Ah-ah-ah," Damon interrupts, wagging a warning finger at her. "Nobody needs a suicide hotline. It's fine, Elena."

"No," I snap, smacking my hands down on my hips without even finishing the last buttons on my shirt. I can't take it anymore. I can hardly look at him right now.

"You know what's not fine? Leaving your brother to go to war alone is not fine. Not by a long shot." I stomp across the width of his annoyingly classy bedroom so I can poke him right in the chest. "Not when you know how hard blood is for him to handle. Not when you promised to be there."

Damon's casual posture suddenly looks like it was carved from glass. My accusing finger softens into a hand on his chest that drops away when I meet his glacial eyes.

"He needed you, Damon. How could you…" I lose my momentum, the breath just falling out of my mouth as I search his face. "Why? I mean, I know it's complicated, I know you guys fight and whatever but–" I shrug, my hands falling back to my sides with a slap. The tension in the silence says everything I want to say.

And Damon says nothing.

His eyes flare very slightly as he pushes away from the doorframe. "You call me, Caroline," he says evenly. "The first time you go to war and you have the first fucking clue what you're talking about." He nods once with an edge and speed that is anything but human. "If you'll excuse me, I have guests."

Elena reaches for his sleeve as he leaves, but his strides are too long and she misses. Her hand pauses for a second in midair and I watch her with pity. She probably didn't know that about him, that he was a deserter. That's not going to be a happy talk for them later, I bet.

She tosses her hair back from her face as she turns to me, the corners of her eyes tight.

Stefan sighs. "Hey, why don't we—"

"No," Elena says, her voice cracking against his. "You know what? I stole your clothes. Not Damon. Me." She laughs bitterly.

"I guess I should have known you'd blame him. He thought it was funny, you know that?" Her eyes are a blade dropping toward Stefan's neck. "He thought it was funny that you would blame him. But I didn't. I don't."

I scoff. "Yeah, because it's so out of the realm of possibility that Damon would steal our clothes. Maybe we blamed him because he does that stuff all the time."

She laughs harshly. "Right. And he doesn't care if you blame him, because he's used to everyone expecting the worst of him." She runs a frustrated hand through her hair and then glances down the hallway before stepping further into the room and closing the door behind her.

"No, you know what? That's crap. He doesn't let you think the worst, he wants you to think the worst." Elena focuses on Stefan. "He showed up. Uniform and everything; he was waiting by the tracks and Lexi told him the worst thing for you was him." Elena's mouth twists and tears come into her eyes.

I'm frozen wearing her boyfriend's shirt, and I don't know if I want to argue with her or give her a hug. Stefan's lips part on an anguished breath with no words and I know neither of us have the first idea of what to say.

"And so he left," Elena says, her voice quavering as she hugs her arms across her chest. "He was lonely, Stefan," she tells him, keeping her voice low so Damon won't hear from downstairs. "He would never say it like that but he didn't have anything in those days. He was trying to deal with Charlotte and the fact that her feelings for him weren't real, weren't healthy, and he needed you. He needed you to need him. So he did both. He stayed hidden because Lexi told him to and he went, because he couldn't leave you."

She touches Stefan's arm and I can see his muscles clench and shiver.

"He watched you every night," she whispers. "He made me swear not to say anything and maybe I shouldn't have promised. It was stupid, but I thought—" Her tears finally spill over and I see Stefan's forehead crumple.

He reaches out to her, but his hand hovers as if it's no longer sure where to land. "Elena…"

"I thought you knew," she whispers urgently, dashing tears from her cheeks. "I'm sorry, Stefan, I thought you must have caught some sign of him in Egypt, with vampire hearing and the way I can see, like, everything now. I just figured you were doing the guy thing and not bringing it up."

He shakes his head, swallowing. I go into the bathroom and come back with a handful of toilet paper that I press into Elena's hand before I pull her into a tight hug, squashing her damp nose against the soft shoulder of Damon's shirt. When I release her, I notice that Stefan's pointedly looking away and he looks like he might need me to make a second trip to the bathroom for tissues.

I wrap my arms around both of them and yank them in for a group hug. They're stiff, because we all live together, but it's not like they really, you know, hug anymore. I just squeeze them harder to make up for the awkwardness.

"I'm going to fix this," I announce. "It was my great big foot in my mouth that started this and I should be the one to make it okay."

Stefan clears his throat. "I was distracted, with the blood and I thought maybe…but I was never sure," he tells Elena.

Elena bites her lip, her eyes shining as she looks up at him. My stomach clenches, because I know both Salvatores just go to pieces when she's sad like this and even though I know she doesn't mean for that to happen, I hate that she still has that effect on Stefan.

"I just wish you'd start believing in him, Stefan. After all this time, after everything, he's earned that much." She turns away before she sees the tears that catch in his eyelashes, trembling with the weight of her words.

The door closes quietly behind her. Stefan's fingers twitch, hanging by his sides. I reach for him just as he turns to me and for a second our hands clash and then clasp firmly.

"I–" he starts and I press my cheek against his chest, holding him a little too tightly.

"Shh, I know. She doesn't know everything that happened back then. She's wrong, Stefan."

"No," he says into my hair. "She isn't. It's been seventy years and I've never even asked him, Caroline. Not once."

I squeeze him one more time, kissing his chest before I let him go. "I'll meet you in our room, okay?"

I leave him looking lost beside Damon's empty bed, because I love Stefan. I love him more than I've ever loved any person ever, more than my mom or Matt or Tyler or Elena or Bonnie. So I know he's not hurting for himself right now, and I know what I need to do to make him better.

"I think vervain is our best bet for early detection," someone is saying from the living room. "This place is on well water, anyway, isn't it? So it won't affect any of you?"

When Damon rebuilt the council after the disaster on the Young farm, he did it without lying to them. They know what we are, and that the town isn't in danger from us. They're grateful for our help when it comes to a fight with any of the supernatural creatures that invariably show up here, and we're grateful to them for always cleaning up the mess. But that doesn't mean we always agree.

"What am I going to do, carry Purell in my purse like a neurotic soccer mom if I want to wash my hands when I'm not at home?" Damon's voice cuts across the tentative suggestion like a chainsaw through a flower garden. "Fuck that. When we have a vampire infestation, we can bust out the fire hose. Until then, we have a limited supply of vervain and I know a damn vampire when I see one. I'm perfectly happy to skewer them on an individual basis."

I finger-comb my hair and fasten one more button on my crooked, borrowed shirt as I bound down the stairs. I burst into the living room before I can think better of my plan.

"Damon," I call out, interrupting the old argument.

He rolls his eyes. "Somebody wearing pants have anything to say?"

"Don't," I warn him, stalking into the living room and not stopping until I'm all but standing on his toes. When he finally looks at me, there are about six layers of snark and posturing between me and the man who is my friend and words aren't going to make a dent. So I grab him around the waist and hug him hard.

He's holding his usual glass of whiskey and he acts as if that's some sort of impediment to returning my hug, though it never slows him down when it's Elena wrapped around him like a vine.

"I was wrong," I whisper fiercely, and when he doesn't respond, I pull back and say it louder. "I was wrong. We didn't know you went to Egypt. I was a super big jerk and I shouldn't have said that and I'm sorry."

He swallows and his eyes flare and flick to the side before he remembers to take a drink from his glass. "Easy, Blondie. You must have taken a wrong turn on the way to the confessional."

I put a hand flat on his chest and push him a little to get his attention. I know the whole council is watching us with their accusing old-fogy eyes and they're all wondering what kinds of sexual shenanigans are going on in the Salvatore house, but right now I can't bother with them and their bingo night gossip.

"I'm sorry," I tell Damon quietly, my eyes searching for his. "We're sorry. Really. Seriously."

His gaze skates away and his lips start to form their customary sneer, so I pinch him, right in the tender flesh of his stomach.

He yelps, and then laughs. "Easy, Killer. It's fine. You can say your rosary in the morning. Go plant a penance tree or something."

I poke him in the arm. "Seriously."

"Seriously," he echoes, focusing on me for the first time. "For reals, pinky swear, till death do us part. We can do the blood oaths after dinner, 'K? Let the grown-ups talk for a while."

I tilt my chin up and give him a stern look. "It's a deal."

I want to hug him again, but I don't want to push my luck, especially not with so many people wondering what I've got on under this shirt. Somehow it would be so much less embarrassing if I weren't still wearing my shoes. At least I took off my one, orphaned knee sock.

I march out of the living room, my head held high. I'm a Forbes, and a vampire, and I'm younger, hotter, and stronger than all those old biddies who are going to start whispering behind their hands about us as soon as they think they're out of Damon's earshot. They deserve whatever they'll get when he hears them, too.

I find Stefan perched uncomfortably on the bottom step of the staircase that leads to our wing of the house. I notice that the pants he swiped from Damon belong to a tuxedo, and that he's forgotten to button them. The zipper is slowly peeling apart, leaving them slung dangerously low on his slim hips.

He shoots to his feet when I come around the corner, his green eyes dark with questions even though I know he heard every word of what was said.

I embrace him softly, running my fingernails through his hair. "It's alright. He knows. He's okay."

I should have been born in 1922, not 1992. I would never have let them be so stupid, never would have let them spend seventy years without each other.

Stefan's breath comes out in a rush, curling inside my collar under the curtain of my hair, as if it knows it's safe there. I stretch up onto my tiptoes and hold him tight, knowing that Damon can still hear us. That he knows we're here, and we're not going anywhere.

DAMON

The inside of the Camaro is blissfully quiet, the breeze swimming in through the windows hardly a disturbance to the eight beautifully roaring cylinders under the hood. It's my favorite kind of driving music.

I pull off at the end of our long driveway to check the mail before my passenger speaks for the first time. One of my favorite things about Elena's little brother is that he's not chatty.

"Hey, thanks for the ride," he says as I lean out the window, noting that it's time to repaint the mailbox. Again.

"You wouldn't have needed the ride if you would have taken me up on my very generous offer to teach you how to work on that Jeep," I point out.

"Yeah, whatever. I figured I'd learn it better if I sorted through it on my own."

I snort, glancing through the mail in my lap. People want to save the earth? Abolish grocery coupons. Who the fuck wants to save 33 cents on Spam that bad anyway?

"Yeah, well you figured out enough to break it. That's fifty percent, right?"

Underneath the junk mail is a small, rough-textured envelope, and I flip past it but not before Jeremy sees.

"What's that? It looked old."

Kid thinks he's a historian since Alaric got him reading antique journals. Apparently Mystic Falls attracts bad journal writers at roughly the same rate as supernaturally-gifted serial killers. Which explains how Stefan and I both ended up living here again.

Jeremy snatches the mail out of my lap and checks the postmark on the envelope. "Nineteen forty two? Are you freaking kidding me? This stamp looks like an antique, like it might actually be worth something."

I pluck the mail back out of his hands. "Right. All the more reason for you to keep your greasy little hands off of it."

He makes another grab for it, looking curious and I slap his hand away. "Hey, do you think that hunter's curse still kicks in if the ring brings you back?"

"Try it," he goads, socking me one in the shoulder. "I can make some money bringing kids by on Halloween to see crazy old Uncle Damon in the basement cell. I can probably charge more if you flash 'em some fang."

I pull into the garage next to the Jeep that I had towed here yesterday after it stranded Jeremy on the way back from school.

"Don't touch anything in that engine until I get back," I warn him, hopping out of the car and tipping most of the junk mail into the recycle bin before going upstairs to change my clothes and stash Stefan's letter for later.

The first letter arrived the day after Stefan's family jewels made their grand entrance to my council meeting and Caroline attack-hugged me in public for like the thirtieth fucking time since she got engaged to my brother. I wish somebody would tell her that her damn finger-mounted disco ball doesn't give her the right to put her paws all over both brothers.

The letter smelled musty, just like the rest of that packrat midden that Stefan's been carting around with him forever. I don't know why I waited to read it, but it was three days after it arrived when I slid out of bed well after midnight and took it up to the roof. No one bothers me when I'm up there, not even the girls.

I read it three times, and then I threw it away. But when I went to empty the bathroom trash the next morning, it wasn't there. I threw the second letter away in my study, but it didn't stay gone either. After that I just started leaving them on the dresser. My girl's stubborn enough that I could throw them away in Pennsylvania and she'd still find them somehow, but I don't want her digging through the damn trash.

She doesn't need to save the letters. I won't lose a word of them out of my too-perfect memory. It's one of the few kindnesses of human aging, that it doesn't let you keep anything too close. Yet another luxury not afforded to my kind.

I put the latest letter in my bedside table and strip, briefly wondering if I need to wear more than my black boxer briefs for the walk across the house to borrow grease monkey jeans from Stefan. I shrug and pad out the door.

Caroline's gone and if she comes back unexpectedly her reaction is guaranteed to be hilarious. And since I heard the mini fridge in the garage open but not close, it's a good bet that Jeremy is busy debating whether he can get away with drinking one of the beers Kyle leaves here for when he and Matt come over to work on the '55 Chevy pickup they're restoring. Honestly, it's like I'm the only one in Mystic Falls who owns a decent set of tools.

Once in Stefan's room, I step over a pair of high-heeled sandals and make my way to his closet, where I help myself to an old pair of jeans. They fit just right in the hips, but they're worn in different places than mine would be.

His room smells crowded, paper and leather and acetone and the warring ghosts of Caroline's perfume and hand lotion, because the girl never wears just one scent at a time, even now that she can smell well enough to know better. I stalk over and open a pair of windows to air the place out.

I don't know why I read his musty letters anyway. They're complete bullshit, an even bigger pack of lies than the journal he kept during the war, and that's saying something.

Even the fact that he wrote them at all was a lie, as if we were brothers who were actually a part of each other's lives, the kind of family who knew where the other one was and cared what they were up to.

I kick Caroline's shoes out of the doorway so he won't trip over them when he gets home and touch the old wood of the doorframe, pausing for just a second with my back to his room that's crowded with memories of a mostly empty life that I was mostly not a part of, even though I've never known a day without his face, waiting always in the corners of my mind.

In a way, I guess, those letters were the truest lie he's ever told.

I leave the door open behind me when I go.

Author's Note: What we would do without the magic that is Goldnox is a question better left un-answered. She did many excruciatingly nice and very important things to this chapter, and I hope you all enjoyed the results.

And in case this didn't have enough happy Delena for you, check out Goldnox's new fic, "Clocks and Closed Doors" which is a look at 4x07 when Elena and Damon finally get together, only with a lot of hot and heart-gymnasticizing added scenes that make the on-camera time both more meaningful and more fun!