It took him twelve weeks, ten hours and forty-three minutes to find her body. Sallow husk speckled with bite marks as nature endeavoured to feast and caked dirt.
"Is that her?"
Stefan didn't look up or address the inquiring voice to his left. They'd already found two other bodies.
"Stefan?"
His companion crouched and stretched to remove a leaf from her hair, to attempt to brush the matted and indistinguishable curls from her covered eyes, action Stefan stopped with near wrist snapping intensity.
"Don't," Stefan ordered, deadpan. He released the man's wrist in the same instant, unrepentant as the young deputy rubbed at the tender bone.
After his violent confrontation with Damon at the boarding house, Stefan had headed to the station, shaping himself to the shadows to wait on Sheriff Forbes – unwitting culprit who played witness and contributed to his best friend's murder – in hopes of sniffing out where or what she might have done with Lexi's body.
He prayed she hadn't burned her.
The plan itself had been modest enough but as the minutes ticked on to hours, life once steering back to mundane 911 calls of indiscreet birds in lofts and poorly wired alarms, he grasped how badly he'd underestimated the council's ability to hide the otherworldly mayhem under their population's nose.
Deputy Dewey a.k.a Christopher Michaels was a last and desperate resort for answers. A strategy that dawned on Stefan as the unacquainted stranger made his way to his car after an especially long shift.
He followed him home, contemplating the stranger's possible role in the supernatural world and the fact that—if it all went wrong—he'd have revealed who and what he was.
Two things he'd only a week ago been begging his brother not to do.
Security was a minor inconvenience and once inside, he learned Chris lived with his fifty-six-year-old divorcee mother, two toy poms and an obsession with Jennifer Aniston. Information that came with compulsion and discovery. One of which he hadn't needed human blood to accomplish. Just rage.
An investment that paid off two months after Lexi's death and only after Stefan carefully influenced Chris to insinuate himself in their dark world.
"I'll get the car and bring it closer," Chris proposed, rising, collecting both their spades before heading off into the trees.
Stefan dug his hands into the dirt, peeling clumps of wet sand, dead twigs and rocks away as carefully as an archaeologist discovering a sacred temple, steadily revealing the rest of her buried body.
There were tears in his eyes and onus in his heart for not being strong enough to avenge her as she deserved, for not accepting her offer to join her in the gardens for that Jon Bon Jovi concert.
If only he'd said yes.
Chris's footsteps were heard trudging through the woods, cursing as his tired legs threatened to give way and the day's lack of sustenance began to kick in.
Ever since the tomb vampires escape and the extra 'animal attacks' that needed covering up in Mystic Falls, Liz—and her tight-knit squad of hieratical backers—had become a bit sloppy, putting more pressure on the department, forcing them to seek help outside their inner circle. Fatefully feeding into Stefan's scheme.
A blanket dropped to the ground beside him, along with a size sixteen sundress bought at forever21.
"Take that back to the car," Stefan directed, disregarding the delicate fabric, unfolding the blanket and spreading it out in the muck as if preparing for a picnic.
"You don't need help?"
Stefan's eyes flicked to the officer's face, features unsmiling. Chris lifted his hands in surrender, dress waved like a white flag, boots crunching as he backed up and headed for the car again, affording his assumed friend the privacy he wanted.
Stefan crawled to her side again, double checking to make sure he'd freed Lexi's body of anything that could snag or scratch her skin and lifted her out of the shallow hole, setting her down in the middle of the blanket as tenderly as a sleeping child. He smoothed her hair from her face and winced as the right side peeled away from her scalp, tethered by a piece of discoloured skin that might as well have been leather, maggots stuck to the underside like wiggling lifers. He removed them with all the care and precision of a mother, flicking them aside, pushing the skin back and wincing as it furled back up. There was nothing left in her to hold it in place, no fluids, no blood. All that remained was matured skin, bone and the war torn outfit she'd worn the night of his birthday.
He covered her up, sealing her in the blanket and then lifted her off the ground, slowly carrying her through the forest, careful not to jostle her too much, her head uncovered and resting in the cradle of his left shoulder as he walked.
Each step making him feel whole again.