Prompt: Stefan, carry your violence like a lost limb itches and aches; you can't forget at the lj VD Comment Ficathon Part 2
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He leaves Mystic Falls that night, blood still staining the skin around his mouth.
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He kills a family.
On the outskirts of Atlanta, a small house with tears in the fence and a caving in roof. The mother looks to be about fifty, two blonde teenage daughters, a burly father with a salt and pepper moustache. When he bursts in, they're sitting at the dining table, hands clasped together to say grace.
He rips open their necks and sucks them dry.
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It comes back easier than expected. The killing.
Some part of Stefan had always hoped that he had gotten past it all, that he had evolved beyond the enjoyment and the need. After all these years of denying himself, of being good, he convinces himself he's changed.
The skill with which he quickly drains his victims, the precision, the satisfaction. They prove him wrong.
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The two of them move out west within a week, leaving a trail of bodies behind them. Stefan thinks idly that Damon and Elena must be coming after them by now and then he thinks that Damon is alive because of this and then Stefan stops thinking and continues to rip.
He steals a map at a gas station right before they torch it; he writes down the number of people he's killed in each state, each township. He skips over Mystic Falls, Virginia.
Too many to count.
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Klaus and Stefan. Stefan and Klaus.
It's almost like something out of an old horror story told to children: a pair of bloodthirsty monsters who wander the earth looking for something to destroy. No matter how fast you run or how far you go, they will be one step ahead.
Klaus tells him of centuries past, the history he's lived through, the history he's made. He tells him about bloody rebellions and hostile takeovers and there is nothing good and there is nothing kind in these stories. Somehow it always circles back to the quiet pursuit of the perfect ripper. The partner in crime that Elijah could not be.
Klaus' favorite story is of Stefan's 1917 massacre. He goes into excruciating detail of the angles of the necks, the blood. He talks about how the towns down the way were afraid to go outside their houses for days, the river running red with the blood of the thousands upstream.
It's the only story Klaus tells with an emotion.
Pride.
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He almost calls home once, when Klaus is off burning the bodies of a prayer group in Provo. He gets as far as the seventh digit before hanging up.
He still has a decade of lives to take before he can rebuild his own.
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He stands over the bloody remnants of a family reunion in Nevada and feels no guilt.
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