A bouquet falling from your lips,

Which you gathered up in ribboned bands

You put them on your table, jealous of each flowered strand

But you can try and you can try and the

Thorns can still cut your careful hands

So you left your love untended; still it grew in reprimand

Hanahaki (Blooms) by mollyofgeography.

ii.

In pure Caroline fashion, she feels guilty for not being able to kill someone.

How did he know? She asks.

"Because that's what makes you, you."

Once upon a time… yes, because it feels ages ago, Caroline had begged him to talk to Tyler after the whole thing with Mason's death was out in the open, and reasoned that he always knew the right thing to say.

This time it seems that is the case, however, Stefan has found that very often the opposite was true. Caroline always had the right words to help him, when he broke up with Elena, when he needed to control his bloodlust, when his memories were gone and when they came back with all the ptsd associated with them.

He looks at her and wonders… doesn't she see how good she is?

Maybe she doesn't. Their friends have this tendency to criticize Caroline more harshly in her failures and mistakes than anyone else in their group.

Stefan, on the other hand, cannot ignore that in this friendship, he is the one who benefited the most from her compass and her light. Caroline has been there, by his side, at his darkest moments during the past year. Her voice kept him sane and linked to reality hours ago, and even now, as his body still feels the effects of the torture the Travelers put him through, her presence is he soothing balsam that tells him he can close his eyes and rest for a while.

So he does just that.

She comes closer, leans her chin on his shoulder, and it does feel, for a brief moment, this is the one right thing in his fucked up life.

When he wakes up with his arms wrapped around her, Stefan does not question it much. He can't afford to face the implications of this want that whispers to him.

"Maybe I didn't want you to know I killed Enzo."

"Why?"

She frowns, a look of confusion in her face.

"Because I know you and I know you had this weird chemistry going on."

"Oh, please, you're delusional."

Is he? Stefan doesn't know why he is bringing that up again. Teasing Caroline is part of their dynamics, but this has little to do with that. Just like that night when she came back for him at the Traveler's camp, after her trip with Enzo, and he mentioned her thing for men with British accents, waiting for her to deny it somehow.

He told himself he was only worried for her. Caroline had already suffered enough because of Tyler.

To be honest, he was worried about himself. What she would think of him once she saw him as someone who murdered a person she might like a little bit, and not just an enemy of theirs. Then Caroline would see he is not the good person she has made him up to be. That he cannot live up to her standards.

"I did not want you to think less of me."

There it is. He has finally said it, and Caroline shakes her head, purses her lips like she does whenever she thinks he is being impossibly hard on himself. Relief comes in waves.

Because it is the truth.

She is his best friend. Has been for a while now.

Stefan did not think much about it, at first. How when he lost his memory she was the person he decided to trust, how the roles in their friendship had reversed at some point, and she was not the one relying on him, he was the one relying on her to keep afloat when it felt like he would sink into a bottomless pit. Or how she had become his best friend in the first place.

It is only now, when she smiles at him, the first real smile he's seen on her face all day, that Stefan realizes there is something wrong with him.

His stomach flips in a funny way, his throat burns in a way that is not at all related to blood thirst, but there is no time to think about what it all means, no when the Travelers kidnap him and Elena, and there are more pressing matters to take care of.

Later he refuses to think about it, after he dies for her.

It is not something Stefan had to think of, shielding her from Tyler (or, well, the Traveler inhabiting his body now).

Because it is Caroline, and he promised once.

"I will not let anything happen to you."

He meant something else when he said those words, years ago.

"Besides, you'd do the same for me, right?"

He still refuses to think about it after seeing her cry over his body, or after Lexi spells it out for him.

"I would hate for you to come back to life before you even had your first date with Caroline."

That will never happen, it is just Lexi's wishful thinking.

Someone like Caroline is too good for the likes of him.

For months after coming back to life, he thinks of that moment in the forest when he rested his head on Caroline's shoulder and cried. How good she smelled, how comforting her touch was. He refuses to think of it the same way he refuses to think about his brother, or anything related to his life in Mystic Falls.

It is all gone, anyway, and he is trying to start from scratch.

Sometimes he hears her voicemails and drowns in alcohol to the point that just hearing her voice makes him want to throw up, because this is all wrong.

Other times her calls make him want to forsake his idea of a new beginning and go back to her (eventually he breaks his phone, and eliminates the temptation).

But it is all for nothing when she comes to him.

How can Stefan pretend this life away from home, away from her, is real?

The betrayed look on her face that turns to disappointment and then disgust leaves him feeling the metallic taste of his own blood.

She thinks he never heard her messages. He does not tell her otherwise.

"Well, let me summarize them for you. You are a dick."

She leaves, just as he wanted her to, but the sense of loss that overwhelms him at the moment numbs him.

Even after Enzo comes and kills Ivy, something that should hurt him more, the most he can feel towards her is guilt for dragging her into his life, and what will Caroline think of him?

He thinks of her disapproval, of how he has failed to live up to her expectations. It was doomed to happen at some point. She left and she won't come back, which is exactly what he wanted and yet…

The part of him that wants to live, that wants to follow Caroline and hold onto her and cry on her shoulders, that part of him roars in his chest, it looks at him with disgust.

It makes him feel sick.

He really means to apologize to her, but he screws up when his need to finish Enzo becomes a priority. Caroline is right, of course, isn't she most of the time? So why is he mad at her now?

"I did not know about Ivy, but…

"But what? What? I was fooling myself, I was using her as an escape? Yeah, I know what you think, Caroline."

No, it is what he thinks, what he knows to be true. Ivy is also not the reason he wants to kill Enzo. If he is honest to himself, it is a desperate attempt to leave Damon and Mystic Falls behind.

But can he, really, if Caroline still asks him to stay?

"If even just a small, little part of you came back to check on me... Then stay."

Yes, part of him came to check on her, and Caroline is doing well without him. In fact, she will be better off without him.

Stefan has a knack to destroy the lives of those around him, directly or not. Damon. Lexi. Elena. He should not add Caroline to the list.

And, at the same time, it feels wrong to walk away from her, so he keeps coming back, using the most ridiculous excuses, even his dead and now vampire ex-girlfriend to knock at her door. And then leaving again.

But it's when he comes back, driving frantically to her after hearing her voicemail telling Ivy had snapped her neck and escaped, that he goes beyond the point of her forgiveness.

"God, who are you right now?"

The same man he has always been, but Caroline is only seeing this side of him now, and as expected, she hates him for it.

"I'm someone who's trying to start over, and then suddenly you and Enzo show up and now I have hunters on my trail and a brand new vampire who wants to kill me and everyone else in her path! And that's not how someone starts over, Caroline!"

The words that come out of his mouth sound like a lame excuse even to himself. Finally, she hates him, and although this is what he wanted, his heart rebels against it.

"Right now, all I want is for you to just get back in your car, and go."

Up until this point, no matter how wrong he could be, or how he fucked things up, she has been the constant by his side, pointing him the way, lending a hand so he can get back on the right track. This is the first time ever she gives up on him, and the weight of his mistake hits him as he drags his feet to do as he was told.

He has pushed her away, it is exactly as he wanted. Then why does it make him feel sick?

Vampires cannot even get sick, but as he drives without a clear destination in mind, his guts twisting in pain so unfamiliar he cannot even compare to the thirst for blood.

He goes to the cemetery, to visit Damon, to let him know how much he has ruined his life, and the coughing becomes so violent that he spits white petals covered in his blood.

Stefan realizes now that Caroline had always been right in keeping her optimism, that they could get Bonnie and Damon back. Well, Bonnie is still lost to them, but his brother came back.

He should be happy, but he can't.

His antics and his grief have cost him too much. They have cost him his best friend.

When he goes to look for her, it is Elena who tells him what happened.

"You won't find Caroline here. She left early this morning, and she-

"She what?"

"She turned it off, Stefan."

At first, it sounds so ridiculous. There is no way she would do something like that. A Caroline without humanity is not Caroline.

And yet, this is what has happened, as Stefan feels first hand when he finds her later that night. She is walking down the street looking every bit like her normal self, until she turns to him.

"So, what, you came to apologize? Go ahead."

Stefan shrinks under her cold gaze.

He would like to tell her he still wants them to be friends, like they were before, but this is not his Caroline, and what comes out instead is,

"Why would you do this to yourself now, Caroline?"

She laughs at him.

"You make it sound as if I am pitiful. I am cured now, Stefan." The smirk on her face widens. "And I am in control, just as I have always been. Now scram, I have homework to do."

When her green blue eyes look at him, there is nothing. No affection, no anger, nor hatred. Just nothing.

Stefan was no stranger to heartache. He felt it cutting through his throat when Elena and him broke up, and when she chose Damon. But this is different, because even then Caroline was his sunlight, and now the sunlight is gone.

The sickness is back, worse even. What the hell is happening to him? He doesn't cough white petals, but full bloomed daisies bathed in blood until he feels the need to rip off heads and drink to his heart's content (or until he feels nothing at all).

He does not. When Caroline comes back to being herself, because she has to come back, she cannot see him descending to that dark path again.

Meanwhile, he will find out what kind of curse has fallen upon him.

It seems no one except him or Liz are bothered with non-humanity Caroline. It's because she is a little mean, but does not go on killing rampages and pretty much continues her life as usual.

Stefan does not understand.

Why did she turn it off in the first place? What was so unbearable that she took such measures? It is not something Caroline would have done.

Why?

The idea that he is the one to blame crosses his mind. After all, she was herself and furious with him the night she took that decision. So many times she had asked him to come back, to stay. Something hurt her so bad that it came to this, and it could have been avoided if he had been the friend he was supposed to be. However, he soon reproaches himself for thinking he was of so much importance.

He sees her constantly making out with random human guys, and he fights the urge to kill all of them. This is something that did not bother him before, when he heard her complain about Matt, Tyler, or Klaus, even when none of them had ever been good enough for her and only brought her trouble. But back then she would always reach out for him, and they would be miserable and then laughing, but always together. That complicity is gone, and his jealousy is lurking out, he knows, he can admit it now.

That he is jealous of all the ones she has loved, and he is jealous of these kids that don't mean anything to her, too. That he misses his best friend, he misses the Caroline whose smile and laughter brightened up the place, whose warmth and faith in him brought out his best side.

He misses her, and he loves her, but she is so out of his reach it might end up killing him.

The illness that has him coughing up flowers gets worse. He does his best to hide it from others, but confides in Jo, who comes up with an answer that pushes him down a pit.

"Hanahaki, the illness of one-sided love. Your condition is very rare, there are few documented cases even among witches. It is the first time I hear a vampire suffers from it."

Stefan once believed losing Elena was the worst heartbreak he could experience, but he was wrong. At least that relationship ran its course. This, on the other hand… this is love he has never dared to acknowledge, because it is so absurd. Once she liked him, as a friend, but why would someone who knew the worst part of him ever want him that way?

Ultimately, he goes back to his apartment and laughs at himself.

He remembers Caroline likes daisies.