2.8 - To Cure or Not to Cure

"So there is a way to save Hanna from staying a vampire?" Spencer said in a serious yet shocked manner. Spencer, Emily, Stefan and Damon stood in Aria's kitchen. For days they had been trying to plot a scheme that could try to possibly either help or save Hanna from staying permanently as one of the bloodsucking, 'undead.'

"That's what we think anyway," Stefan replied as he looked from Spencer and gestured to himself and Damon at his mention of 'we.'

"So what is it like a potion, or whatever?" Emily muttered, shifting her eyes to try to hide the fact that she already knew about this mysterious cure.

Damon examined the ring of his whiskey glass carefully and looked up at the two girls, "No one knows. We only heard about it from Katherine briefly in 1864, but I'm not going to lie, both of us were understandably too preoccupied to pursue that little detail." He responded with a cheeky raise of his eyebrows.

Spencer rolled her eyes at Damon and let out a frustrating sigh, "So, how exactly do we go about finding this 'cure' then?"

Before Damon could chime in with some witty response, Aria began to walk downstairs to the kitchen with a wearied, yet stronger-looking Hanna following behind her.

"Hey guys, guess who decided to come down and see us." Aria chimed in, as she tried to force an uncomfortable yet reassuring smile at the rest of the group.

All the girls beamed at Hanna, "Hey Han, how're you feeling?" Emily asked politely, trying to decide how far to get close to her new vampire friend.

"I don't want the cure," Hanna stated bluntly as she crossed her arms defiantly across her chest and flipped her long blond hair across her pale, ivory-colored shoulder.

Everyone's eyes widened. Clearly Damon and Stefan forgot to warn them about a vampire's enhanced hearing. At the sound of her statement, Damon began to inch towards Hanna, "Hanna ... are you su-?"

Before he could finish his sentence, Hanna turned around to face the group and cut him off, "No! Listen to me. I don't want to change myself" Hanna sniped, "I like who I am."

Aria spoke up timidly, "Han, what're you talking about?" she whispered, grabbing Stefan's hand out of sense of needed protection.

Hanna rolled her eyes. Relishing her new, heightened, sassy and fearless attitude, "You guys don't get it. After all these weeks of going through this freaking roller coaster of emotions, I'm finally in control of myself! Of my life! I feel like I can do whatever I want, say whatever I want. "

Stefan and Damon became tense at all of these familiar vampire-esque 'signs' that Hanna was now exhibiting. Cautiously stepping in front of Aria and towards Hanna, Stefan cleared his throat, "Hanna, I know it may seem like you have all of this figure out but -"

"You don't," Damon sniped. "Han, didn't you listen to anything I told you? You may think you have everything figured out right now, but Hanna, it's seriously dangerous. Look at how you almost attacked Caroline! Your own sister! You don't have enough control over yourself yet, and I don't know if I can watch you suffer through all of this."

"Hm, well I guess we'll just have to see about that." Hanna replied in a snarky manner. Suddenly, her face began to change, her eyes became black, her teeth began to snarl in preparation of a vampire attack. However, without thinking, Stefan and Damon pounced on Hanna and tackled her to the ground.

"Stefan! Help me get Hanna back up stairs!" Damon yelled as he fumbled with Hanna and tried to restrain her from attacking the rest of her friends.

When Hanna was out of sight, the girls tried to overhear her protesting screams, Spencer looked over at her two other best friends who had tearful, worried expressions on their faces, "Okay, I think we really need to find that cure now." She spoke.


Walking back downstairs, Stefan found Aria tidying up the kitchen. As Spencer and Emily had left a few hours ago, Aria had tried to keep her distance from all the chaos that was still probably going on upstairs.

"How're you doing with all of this?" Stefan asked, as he began to walk towards Aria's side of the kitchen counter.

Aria smiled nervously, "Honestly? I don't know how much more I can take of this." She replied, looking directly into Stefan's eyes, "I don't know if I can take watching my best friend go through a constant range of emotions every single day of my life and living in a constant state of terror that she could potentially try to either kill me or any of my other best friends," she stated bluntly as her words began to blubber over each other, trying to contain all of her conflicting emotions.

"I know it's hard." Stefan whispered, as he started to embrace Aria, "But Damon and I know what Hanna's going through. When all of this happened to me, I became the absolute worst version of myself and I hated who I had become, but I didn't have anyone to help me through the pain."

Aria looked up toward Stefan. In all of this madness, she had to sometimes remind herself that her own boyfriend was one of those vampires, "You've never really talked about what happened after you became a vampire." She muttered with a slight shrug of her shoulders, as if to sort of nudge Stefan into telling her more about what exactly happened during and after his supernatural transition.

Stefan gazed over Aria's head and then back into her eyes, as if trying to reflect upon all of the centuries of his vampire life, "I know, and I'm sorry. It's just... It took me a long time to get to the person that I am now. Actually, the person that I am right now is probably the closest to who I was back in 1864 to be honest. But, probably way less naive," he chuckled, "There were so many times when I was in the darkest of places because I had turned my humanity completely off in order to go on massive vampire rampages that could possibly last for days and days and days." Stefan's words began to falter, "I would then just be consumed with incessant feelings of guilt every time I had an urge to feed or kill anyone that got in my way -" he cut himself off, overcome with too many emotions to finish his sentence.

Looking at Stefan's distressed face, Aria motioned for them to sit down and placed her arm over Stefan's shoulders in a comforting manner, "I know it hasn't been easy for you. But, if you weren't here, I don't know how I'd be handle myself through any of this."

Stefan looked up from his his hands covering his face and smiled at Aria. Taking her hands, he spoke, "I need you to listen to me, Aria. Since you've already seen what could happen to Hanna within a few seconds, how quickly a vampire can fly off the rails, I need you to know how grateful I am that I have you here. How grateful Hanna is that you, Emily and Spencer are here even if it may not seem like it at this present moment." He continued, "Because when I'm around you, when I'm with you. I'm calm. I'm the person that I want to be."

Aria smiled flirtatiously at Stefan and inched closer to his face, "And I'm not going anywhere, Stefan. From you, Damon or Hanna." She whispered, "I'll always be here for you, and for everyone else."

Placing his hands on Aria's cheeks, Stefan looked deeply into Aria's hazel-brown eyes and gently kissed her on the lips. Aria placed her hands behind Stefan's neck. However, hearing the distant sounds of Damon's footsteps echoing down the hallway towards them, they removed themselves from this position and continued to busy themselves with tidying up the rest of the kitchen.

Then, as the sounds of the footsteps began to fade away, Aria turned again towards Stefan, "I'm not scared of you Stefan, or Hanna and Damon for that matter. I'm just scared of what will happen in the future. What it means for us, what'll happen if you ever go off the rails and become the type of vampire you were before that clearly wasn't the actual you."

Stefan turned around and spoke in his usual calm, rational composure, "And I can't promise you that I won't go off the rails. I mean, I really wish I could, but I can promise that I will never hurt you, Aria and that Damon and I can handle this Hanna situation because we have been through all of this before," he moved his thumb gently across Aria's cheek bone. "However, just know that even if Hanna doesn't want the cure now, we just have to accept the fact that she wants to stay a vampire because that's her choice, and that's also very important."

At these last few words, Aria smiled and gave Stefan one last, lingering kiss and a hug. Every time he held her, she always felt protected. She didn't even care that this potentially dangerous creature was embracing her, she just couldn't even think of the inevitable future where and when Stefan would turn of his humanity because it would probably, undoubtedly, break her heart.