Stefan's POV

The flames grew higher and I could feel the heat on my skin. As a human now, lighting bodies on fire felt wrong on so many levels. It had always felt wrong as a vampire, but now it had a new feel to it, like it was tearing at my soul. The soul I had only gotten back 2 years ago. Even though I was human though, I was back to cleaning up after my brother's messes. Usually it was just annoying, sad even to be doing this, but now it was different. Now that I was human, I knew there was only a small period of time I could keep doing this. Now I had a life, a short human life, but a life none-the-less, and I was damn sure I wasn't going to spend this life cleaning up after my brother like I had been for the past century and a half.

"We can't keep doing this Elena" I whispered, my hand gripping the empty fuel bottle.

"I know Stefan. I know. But it's our fault he is off the rails" she sighed, her face so full of grief. I felt guilty inside, but the more bodies I buried or burned, the less guilty I would feel.

"We may have been the reason he took, but there was always going to be something. Something would have set him off and along this path eventually. It's who he is" I told her again, but for the first time, I believed it myself.

I don't know how many times I had tried to tell her, to tell myself, that he was going to go off anyways and we had just been the excuse he needed. For the first 6 months afterwards, the guilt was almost too much to bear and we did everything we could to try and help him. The next year and a half was when I started telling her that he would have done it anyways and we needed to stop feeling guilty for his decisions. But it was this moment, 2 years later, when I finally believed it myself. Perhaps she could see it on my face that I had finally stopped blaming myself, because for the first time in that year and a half, she agreed.

"You're right. This is his choice. He is not our responsibility. Every time he gets hurt, this is what he does. Yes what we did hurt him and caused him to go off like this, but it would have happened anyways. The moment we had a fight, or I started getting wrinkles, or he saw children around remembering I couldn't have those if I stayed with him, or if I had gotten hurt myself. It could have been anything to set him off, it just happened to be us. This has to be the last time we do this. The last time we clean up the bodies Damon leaves lying around" she nodded, pulling her coat up against the cold.

"Plus we are human now. This isn't what humans are supposed to be doing. We're supposed to be doing things like planning weddings" I smiled, my fingers tracing the ring on her finger as she squeezed my hand tighter.

"Exactly. Things like deciding that roses are not a good flower choice" she laughed.

"But they're a classic" I smiled and we started walking back to the car.

"They're ordinary. And we are anything but ordinary Stefan Salvatore" she beamed, sliding into the passenger seat, giving me a quick kiss before I started the car. Just before we left I scanned the darkness one more time, hoping the light of the fire would give something away. I had never seen him when we cleaned up, but part of me always felt like he was out there anyways, watching us.

Damon's POV

I watched them leave and the place fell quiet again. The only sound was the sound of the fire crackling. I knew he was looking for me when his eyes would sweep the area every time before they'd leave, but with his human eyes, I knew he never saw me hiding out here.

I don't know why I hung around each time. Why I waited until they left to leave myself. Seeing them together only caused pain. But that's what I wanted. I could have flipped my switch 2 years ago, I should have, and many times I almost did. But I knew I needed to feel this. Feel the pain. Not only the pain though, but to feel the satisfaction it gave me whenever they'd come to clean up my mess. To know that I was making their lives harder. Also, to feel the satisfaction the blood gave me. I allow myself to once again feel that freedom and that power that I hadn't felt in a long time, since I had tried to be good. For her. But now she was gone, and I was myself once more.

At least, this is what I had been telling myself. That deep down I had been trying to change myself for her. For years I tried to convince Elena that I didn't deserve her, that deep down I was a bad guy, but she refused to believe it, and convinced not only herself, but me, that I was good. She was wrong.

She could have saved us both a lot of pain if she had just seen me for who I truly was. A monster.

All this began when she went of that damn bridge. Well, went off it for the second time. If I hadn't had given her my blood, if Stefan had just saved her first instead of that useless Matt Donovan. If she had lived and not become a vampire that day. None of this would have happened.

For a long time she tried to convince that that it wasn't because she was a vampire that she loved me, it was just that she had changed to see the real me, especially once all my compulsion had disappeared with the change. But no. We were kidding ourselves. Of course it had been the change. She thought once she was a vampire that she could relate to me, that just because she was a vampire that she was automatically bad like me. But even as a vampire she was good.

And the moment she was a human again, I was the monster in her eyes. She promised me it wouldn't matter, that she loved me and that wasn't going to change. But it did. She tried to pretend of a while but I could tell, the way she looked at me, the way her face would scrunch up when she found my blood bags, the way her eyes would sadden when I used my vampire speed or strength. That despite her apparently loving me, she would still wear vervain everywhere. I saw how sad she got whenever something reminded her of the life I couldn't give her. Children, growing old together, having a normal life. I was no Saint Stefan.

At first I didn't notice it, the change in their relationship. It didn't cross my mind that he would take her from me. I don't know why, I took her from him. Apparently, Stefan had lost more humanity as a human than as a vampire.

He was everything she had wanted when she was first human, the only problem was that he was a vampire. So when he became human too, there was nothing that was going to stop them being together again. Not even his marriage to Caroline.

Caroline knew exactly how I felt. She preferred being a vampire, and knew Stefan had no future with her. The only difference between us being that she had something else to hold onto. Where she channelled her anger and sadness into raising "her" children with Alaric and moving as far away from us as possible, I took a more destructive route.

I was supposed to die. The plan was for me to hold Katherine while the hell fire took us both, and I was ok with that, at least I was losing Elena on my own terms. But Katherine woke up. Stefan made his way back, he had been on vervain. As we heard the hell fire making its way towards us, Katherine was still long dead. We had killed her just before it came so there was no way she could have revived in time.

So Stefan was still human, and I had yet again been screwed over. That was supposed to me my cure. My cure to be with Elena. Fate didn't care though, and I wasn't going to take it from Stefan and kill him, even though sometimes I really wanted to. I couldn't even wait for him to die, because Elena would be dead too. So of course they got back together. It was really the only option.

I had never really wanted to be human anyways, I thought, downing the last of my bottle of bourbon before throwing it at the fire.

As I turned to leave I heard a rustle in the leaves, the kind only a vampire could hear and know it meant danger.