Chapter 25
Stefan is a good guy. At least, he tries to be. He likes to play the hero, and he's usually pretty good at it, but it's not an easy role. Figuring out what the 'right thing' is can sometimes be just as difficult as actually doing it. That's one reason why he fell in love with Elena. Her moral compass always points due North. When Stefan is unsure of what to do, he can just do as she asks and trust that it's the right thing. Sometimes it's hard to give Elena what she wants because the world doesn't always let him. Tonight is a good example.
Tonight, Stefan was supposed to be his girlfriend's emotional support while she uncovers mysteries about the future and introduces said future to her family. He anticipated the emotional toll exposing Jenna to the supernatural world would take on Elena, and he wanted to be there in case she need him. He did not anticipate Katherine. She was supposed to be dead, but apparently werewolf bites take longer to kill than he realized.
Instead of holding Elena's hand while she divulges the secrets of vampirism to Jenna, Stefan relives night after night as the Ripper of Monterey. He listens to the screams of his victims and savors the taste of their warm blood. He revels in the feel of their heartbeats slowing to nothing before their heads break loose from their bodies. It's a satisfying high that's unmatched by anything else that he's experienced within his century and a half of life. It's also the most horrific and evil thing Stefan has ever done. And he's done it a lot.
"It's not very hero-like, Brother," Damon says, walking through the 1917 campsite. He peeks into one open tent and makes a disgusted face before tugging the flap closed. "All this blood and gore. What would Elena think?"
Stefan finishes with the young man in his arms and tosses the headless body into one of the large tents. He ignores his imaginary brother and listens for the very real heartbeat of a woman hiding inside one of the camp barrels. Stefan rips her from her hiding spot, and she screams at the site of him covered in her husband's blood. Stefan pulls the woman close and bares his fangs, anticipating another hit from his drug of choice.
"Stefan, stop," Lexie says from behind Damon. She pushes him aside and stands in front of Stefan, pleading for him to release the innocent girl. "You have to control this part of you and all the other bad parts of being a vampire. You're better than this."
"Is he really? I mean, I'm pretty much the standard for evil in his mind, but I've never done anything like this…"
"Shut up, Damon." Lexi sneers at him before shifting her gaze back to Stefan with the compassion and steel will that defines her. "Listen to me, Stefan. You're going to stop now. None of this is real. You're hallucinating and divulging in these memories because you know they aren't real. But what happens when you wake up?"
"He'll go back to the brooding hero we all love. More importantly, the hero that Elena loves." Damon shrugs as he leans against a tree, then jerks straight as though a new thought occurred to him. "Oh, wait…oops. I mean the hero she used to love."
"This isn't about Elena. This about you and the fact that what you're doing is wrong. You can't be the good guy and enjoy killing innocent people."
"I don't," Stefan says as the terrified woman in his arms whimpers. "I don't want to kill her."
"Then don't," Lexi says with the same gentle smile that always helps to pull Stefan from the edge. And he can feel it working again. He can feel his need to kill the woman in arms ease, and he considers lightening his grip on her. Then Lexi's smile twists into a gasp of anguish, and her skin pales to ash before she tumbles to the ground with a stake sticking from her back. Damon stands behind Lexi's body with a faux expression of guilt that does little to hide his satisfaction.
"I'm sorry, but it was for the greater good. We had to get the town off our back."
"What did you do?" Stefan screams at the loss of his best friend. He clutches at the young, dark haired woman in his hands. The sound of her heart thrums in his ears, and his blood thirst surges.
"He's just being Damon," Katherine says, stepping out from behind the older Salvatore brother. She slips a possessive hand over Damon's chest and flashes Stefan a sadistic grin. "He's the bad brother, the evil one. So he get's to do whatever he wants, even steal your girl. Twice."
Stefan growls at Katherine, but recognizes the truth of her words. Damon has it so easy. He does whatever he wants, whenever he wants. He has perfect control of his vampire side, but he divulges in the bloodlust when it suits him and treats humans as breakable toys. He never pays the consequences of his actions or cleans up his messes. The only time Damon pretends to have a shred of humanity left is when he is trying steal Elena. Katherine wasn't enough; no, he has to take Elena too. What does that leave Stefan? Nothing. All the control, the pain, the sorrow of playing the hero, but none of the rewards.
If Lexi were here, she'd remind Stefan that being a good person isn't about the rewards. It's about being able to look at yourself in the mirror. It's about not destroying what good remains in the world. It's about protecting people like Elena from turning into people like Katherine. She'd remind him of everything he already knows. But Lexi isn't here to say these things. She isn't here to pull him from the edge that werewolf poison and demons from his past pushed him toward. Instead, he's all alone, and he knows the one anchor to his control and humanity that he has left will eventually leave him for his brother. Resigning to his fate, Stefan rips into the young woman in his arms and disappears into the high.
When the hallucination ebbs, Stefan sits on the couch in Elena's living room. Katherine is here, arguing with Elena. Two humans stand at the end of the couch. They taunt him with their heartbeats, but he's too weak to reach them.
"We have to do something," he says when Elena announces the futility of their plight. Elena may not want him anymore, but he still wants to live. He wants to taste the sweetness of human blood again. He'd give anything for just a drop right now. As though the gods above are listening, a spray of red nectar splatters across the room and covers Stefan's face and chest. The feeling of strength and joy from that one taste is exhilarating. Stefan swallows every ounce of blood he can find, scrapping it from his face and arms into his mouth. Even as the world brightens from Lucy's curse breaking, Stefan's bloodlust wipes away it all, except the two beating, human hearts.
When Elena shoves the unconscious Lucy at him, Stefan rejoices at the familiar feel of a victim drawing her last breath. He's not concerned with the scuffle between Elena and Katherine; the bitch deserves what she gets. All Stefan can see is the pulsating vein in Lucy's neck and succumbs to the call of her blood. When he rips into her caramel skin, Stefan is lost in the euphoria of his high. He doesn't hear the other human calling to him or feel her small, familiar hands tugging at him. It isn't until he hears the tell-tale crack of Lucy's spine breaking loose that Stefan lifts his face from his meal.
That's when his vampire eyes meet her horrified, tear-filled gaze, and reality finally slams into Stefan like a sledgehammer. He drops Lucy's headless corpse but doesn't watch it fall from the couch onto the blood soaked floor. He can't take his eyes from Elena, who sits on the other end of the couch and covered in Lucy's blood.
Elena grimaces at Lucy's lifeless body and sobs from the horror of it all. Still, she turns back to Stefan because she knows it's not his fault. It's the bloodlust that made him do this. It was bloodlust. It had to be. Stefan would never chew someone's head off. He would never murder a helpless person like that. It was the bloodlust.
This isn't Stefan, Elena silently prays.
Stefan watches the horror on his girlfriend's blood-smeared face twist into sympathy for his victim and a desperate pleading for him. He isn't sure if her silent pleas are for her sake or his. He lifts a hand toward her tear soaked cheek, but she flinches away at the sight of his blood-covered fingers. Stefan catches a whiff of her fear-induced adrenaline rush and listens to her already spiked heart rate jump to impossible speeds. It's like music to his ears, and his mouth waters at the thought of her heart pumping that sweet red nectar into his mouth. He closes his eyes and tries to reign in his control, but they spring open again.
"Run," he say, struggling to form the worlds around his fangs.
"No, I'm not leaving you."
"Please." He climbs free of the couch, but Elena follows.
"Stefan, you can do this. You already look better. I can see that the spell has broken," she says, motioning to Lucy's pitiful state on the floor. "You had to kill her to break the spell. I understand that. It's okay, I'm here for you. You'll detox again, and everything will go back to normal."
"Normal?" Stefan is shocked by the absurdity of her suggestion, and his vampire face disappears.
"Stefan, I love you," Elena says, placing her hand on his chest. Her blood-covered hand almost disappears against his soaked shirt.
"For now."
"For always."
She slips her hand to his cheek and strokes it. Stefan savors the gentle feel of her skin and tilts his head into her touch, and she smiles at him. When his mouth brushes across her palm, scrapping Lucy's blood across his lips, his tongue instinctively darts out and tastes the drug. Elena spots her mistake, and an unfamiliar wave of fear washes over her. Never before has she feared Stefan. Never before has she considered the possibility that he might hurt her. But when his vampire face resurfaces and his bloodied gaze fixates on her, she gasps. With a jerk, his fangs pierce her neck, and she screams.
Vampire Elena rips Stefan away from his victim, and human Elena stumbles to the floor, grabbing at her wound. She crawls away as best she can with one hand pressed against her neck in an effort to stop the bleeding. Vampire Elena stands between Stefan and human Elena, but he's is fixated on the fresh blood spewing from his victim. He surges toward his girlfriend, and vampire Elena reacts. She breaks his neck with a crack and scrambles to her counterpart's side before the Stefan hits the ground.
Almost two hundreds years of medical training kicks in, and Elena shoves her palms over her doppelgänger's hands to hold pressure to the wound. Elena's house disappears, and the boarding house assembles around them. No longer smelling blood, vampire Elena lifts her hands from the human's grip. The younger doppelgänger follows suit when the pain of her wound disappears.
"Is it gone? Am I healed?"
"Yes. At least, here you are. You're probably still injured in the real world." Vampire Elena stand then helps human Elena to her feet.
"Am I going to die while we watch this memory?"
"No. Remember, we'll only be dazed for a minute, and we won't move. Once we're back to reality, I'll give you my blood and…" Vampire Elena pauses. "Wait, I can't give you my blood."
"Why?"
"Because it's your blood. I mean, what if doesn't work?"
"Then we'll go with plan B. What's the worst that can happen?"
"I don't know. The two universes could implode on each other, or something else just as crazy. This doppelgänger thing is weird enough. Besides, the fact that you're still alive means Stefan didn't completely severe your carotid artery. You're lucky that he only nicked it. The combined pressure of our hands is slowing the rate of blood flow from the wound, increasing time until death to twelve and half minutes. If I lift my hands or change the amount of pressure to the wound, blood flow will increase and that time is cut in half."
Human Elena sits in one of the plush chairs surrounding them, and stares at her counterpart in shock. "How do you know all that?"
"I'm a doctor. It's not the first severed artery that I've treated," Elena says with a gentle smile.
"That's good. That means you can save me, right? Even without the vampire blood?" Human Elena peers up at her vampire version with hopeful eyes, but the returned expression isn't confident.
"Do remember where your phone is?"
The human pats her pockets, expecting to find it in its rightful place. She's not too alarmed to find all her pockets empty, but she's not comforted by the knowledge either.
"I think I put it in my pocket."
"Okay, when we get back, you have to use one hand to reach the phone."
"You said if we change the pressure…"
"I know, but we have to do something. And I can apply more pressure as you move your hand."
"Okay," Elena says in a shaky voice that cracks into a sob as the seriousness of the situation weighs on the young girl. "How could he have done this to me? I thought he loved me."
Vampire Elena's heart breaks at the pain and fear in her younger version's voice. She remembers feeling this way. She remembers devastation at losing that unwavering trust in her love for Stefan. She also remembers waking up after her trauma to find Damon at her bedside in the hospital. He lifted her into his arms and carried her all the way to the boarding house. She felt so safe in his embrace. Recognizing the memory at hand, vampire Elena looks toward the front door in time to see Damon enter with Elena still in his arms.
Damon sets the young girl down in one of the plush chairs and squats in front of her. "Elena, what happened?"
She shifts in the seat and leans toward Damon until her forehead rests against the crook of his shoulder. His scent is overwhelmingly warm and makes her feel safe.
"He attacked me."
"Klaus?" Damon asks hopefully, but senses the truth. It's a truth that will haunt him for not being there to stop it, for not teaching Stefan control when he had the chance, for playing any part, no matter how small, in Elena being hurt in this way.
"Stefan," she says and then describes the night of horror. Human Elena watches memory Elena experience the same shock and trauma that she's enduring. She also watches Damon listen and comfort her when he can. When he stands to wrap memory Elena in a nearby blanket and pour a glass of bourbon, human Elena glances at her vampire counterpart.
"It happened to you too."
"It's bound to happen when you date a ripper," she says with a shrug, but human Elena frowns at the unfamiliar term.
"Hey, have some bourbon." Damon hands her the glass as he sits across from her on the couch. "It'll help you forget."
Elena takes the glass and stares at the amber liquid. She's not certain alcohol will help, but it couldn't hurt. She'd give almost anything to dull this pain. She sips the drink and cringes at the taste.
"Yeah, it's strong." Damon says, watching Elena struggle to hold herself to together. She shouldn't have to hold herself together. She shouldn't have had to experience anything like this. She shouldn't have to remember it either. "You know, I can help you forget too. At least, the memories you don't want to keep."
Elena looks up at Damon, considering his offer, but she shakes her head. "No. No compulsion. I need to remember. All of it."
Damon listens to the strength in her voice, and he can't help but admire her. She's trying to keep it all together. She doesn't want to give up. So he tries to help with something that should allow her to hold on to Stefan a little longer. He pulls her necklace from his pocket and offers it to her.
"I stole it back for you."
Elena stares at the necklace that represents her love for Stefan, and tears well in her eyes. It's all gone. Everything they had together is gone. Klaus stripped everything good from her lover. The only thing left is the ripper that attacked her.
"He's really gone this time. I watched it happen. After everything we went through to get…to help him. Now, he's just…gone."
Unsure what to say, Damon lays the necklace on the end table. The ripper that Stefan becomes without his humanity is a nasty piece of work, and Damon hates that Elena had to see him. A small part of him is thrilled that she is finally seeing the real Stefan under all that brooding, self-righteous preaching. A bigger part of Damon worries for his brother. It took Stefan half a century to recover from his last ripper binge, and the guilt weighs on the youngest Salvatore every day. Damon should have been there to pull him back from the edge. Now that he's hurt Elena, Stefan will never want to flip his switch back on, and he'll be stuck with the ripper douche forever.
"Where were you, Damon?" Elena whispers, and his heart breaks. He was being a grade-A dumbass, that's where he was. Running off with Queen Slut was the stupidest decision he'd made since killing Jeremy. Never again.
"I shouldn't have left. I promise you, I will never leave you again."
Elena's mouth curves into a grateful smile. She's surprised at how much his promise means to her. It comforts her more than she realizes, and her tension and fear ease. At least it did until Stefan appears out of nowhere.
"Well, isn't this cozy?"
Damon jumps up from the couch to stand between his brother and Elena. Stefan smiles like the Cheshire Cat as he leans against the stairwell post.
"What are you doing her, brother?" Damon asks.
"Last I checked, I live here." Stefan steps forward to pour himself a drink. "Klaus is gone, but he's asked me to keep watch on you until he returns. From now on, you're under my protection."
Elena stares at him in disbelief as a small grain of fear bubbles up. She leans closer to Damon and reminds herself that, according to Caroline's call during their trek back to the boarding house, Klaus needs her alive. Still, the emotionless Stefan gives Elena the creeps, and she doesn't want him near her. Seeing Elena's reaction, Stefan grins and tips his glass to her. As he turns away to head back upstairs, he needles the couple one last time.
"By all means, carry on."
After he disappears, Elena stands from the chair, dropping her blanket, and makes a bee line for the door.
"Elena," Damon calls, but she doesn't slow.
"Please take me home, Damon."
Of course he complies and follows her out the front door. Human Elena watches them leave and then turns to her vampire counterpart. Normally, she'd have so many questions, but all she can think about is what's going to happen when they return to the real world.
"Remember, grab your phone," vampire Elena says. Then the world shifts again, melting away to reveal the Gilbert living room.
Vampire Elena still straddles human Elena with both hands pressed against her neck. Human Elena gasps as the fear and pain returns. She slowly pulls her hand free, and the vampire presses harder into the wound, but not hard enough to cause damage to the nerves. The air around them starts to buzz with power again, and vampire Elena curses.
"It's too soon. You have to hurry."
Human Elena fumbles through the sticky blood that covers everything in her living room. She hopes that most of it belongs to Lucy. Finally, Elena pulls the cell phone loose from her pocket and flips it open with one hand.
Meanwhile, vampire Elena glances around the room for anything that might prove helpful. She spots Stefan's temporarily dead body just a few feet away, but it won't be much help. Especially after it disappears. Startled, Elena looks around to see where the body might've gone, but it's nowhere to be found. She would have noticed if he had woken up, but that's not what happened. One moment he's there, the next he's gone. Like someone cast a cloaking spell on him.
"Jo. Lizzie. I know you're there. Please, I need your help. She needs vampire blood, or she's going to die."
Human Elena stares up at her vampire doppelgänger with growing concern. When no one answers, the vampire swears and turns her gaze back to the human holding out her phone.
"Call Damon," she says, and human Elena obeys. The phone rings, and she tries to hold it up to the vampire's ear, but realizes the futility of doing that. Two rings in and Damon answers the phone. At least,the girls dropped the black out spell, although that may be because they left rather than an act of kindness.
"Elena, I've called like ten times. Are you okay?"
"Shut up and listen," vampire Elena says. "I need you to drop everything and come to the Gilbert house. Now."
"We're already on our way," Caroline says through the phone. "What's wrong?"
"It's bad," vampire Elena says, and Damon growls.
"What do you mean bad? Is the other Elena okay? Is Stefan with you?"
Before she can answer, the power buzzing all around the doppelgängers short circuits the phone, and Elena drops it.
"It's okay. Damon will come. He always comes."
Then the world disappears again.
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