Fic - Inertia (Caroline, Caroline/Stefan) pg, 1/1
Title: Inertia
Summary: They find their way again.
Rating: pg
Author's Notes: 3,296 words. Spoilers for everything to date with speculation about future events. This is not really my sandbox anymore and my first time with this pairing, so con-crit is both welcome and appreciated. Thank you to justforyoudear for the beta. All remaining mistakes are mine. These characters, however, are not.
For youcallitwinter. I hope this lives up to your standards, bb. Happy Holidays!
Damon is the one to save his brother. This is the part of the story that everyone, including Caroline, predicts.
With Stefan firmly rooted on their side, they beat Klaus in an epic battle of wills and strength. It's legendary. It's bloody. They lose too many people they love, but in the end, after all is said and done, they stand together, a unified front. After, they move on the best they can - finish high school, make plans for college, and try to get things back to the way they were before vampires and werewolves became reality and not myth, before Caroline became stagnant at seventeen.
Stefan flicks the switch back on. He moves back into the boarding house with Damon, goes back to bunnies instead of blood bags, animals instead of humans. It's not that easy though. All of them know that, know that the lust for blood is hard to overcome, that it drives you and consumes you and holds on and never fully lets go. They all know it is a constant battle, a never-ending fight and sometimes you don't always win.
Still, though, they pretend as though he's the same. Elena and Bonnie and Alaric, they all pretend he's reverted back to the Stefan they knew in the beginning of all this. The Stefan who saved their lives while simultaneously risking his own - constantly selfish and selfless at the same time. They act as though he is the same guy, the same Stefan because it is easier than admitting the truth: this straight and narrow life is not normal for him - bunnies and restrictions and settled down - it isn’t normal for any of them. Not Stefan. Not Damon. Not even Caroline. It goes against the very nature of who they are now and will be for all of eternity.
It's just another fight they struggle with every day.
(Some are better at it than others.)
"I'm not okay," he tells her.
This is sometime after graduation. She and Stefan are sitting under the stars, beer dangling between their fingers. She looks at him, watches as he bites the inside of his cheek, counts the taps of his beer bottle against his knee. Elena and Bonnie are heading off to college in just a few short months. Caroline is still undecided, still weighing her options. It all seems trivial now, almost unimportant when she is going to be seventeen forever and has eternity to get things right.
"I know," she says, like she understands and she muses she probably does.
Stefan takes a long swig of his beer. "I'm not going to be okay if I stay here."
Sighing, Caroline nods. "I know," she repeats, her words wrapping themselves around her sigh.
Neither says anything further for a long time, her fingers prying at the peeling label of her beer.
Damon is the one to pull his brother out of the dark, deep hole he'd dug himself in.
Caroline, however, is the one that keeps him from stumbling back into it.
They head west first - her choice, not his.
There's the desert and the wide open plains of the mid-west. They trade turns driving, sleep in separate beds in the same room, watch the same television and breathe the same air, but they couldn't be farther apart. Stefan’s too quiet at first and Caroline has never been able to function in silence, so she fills the void with conversations about anything and everything - shoes, clothes, movies, the book she read last month about the British shopaholic and the dashing American business mogul. This lasts exactly seven hours before they lapse into a mutual quiet, her voice hoarse and tired as they adjust to the other's presence, to their quirks and behaviors, to all the things they are going to have to accept for this to truly work.
When he decides to actually speak, to actually to take a step back from brooding, he argues with her about the radio station she’s chosen, the reason why Bon Jovi will always be superior, and the fact that the speed limit is a law, not a suggestion thank-you-very-much.
They stop at tiny, off the beaten track motels along the interstate. Caroline likes to sleep in the middle of her bed, knees curled to her chest. Stefan sleeps on the left of his own, stoic, the picture of calm, but the way his fingers ball into fists at his sides give him away. Often, Caroline finds herself tracing the lines of his body before she falls asleep, counting the minutes and hours between every single slightest movement.
But Stefan sleeps like he's dead and it unnerves her almost completely. She finds herself waking in the middle of the night with a start, eyes scanning for him just to make sure he's still there, still with her.
It is a habit that will never truly fade with time.
She sees the Grand Canyon just as the sun is starting to peak over the horizon, painting the world a golden hue in the early morning air. The beauty takes her breath away.
Next to her, Stefan's mouth is drawn into a thin line, eyes squinting against the light.
"What could you possible spend so much time thinking about? What could you possibly be thinking about while we're here, now, in one of the most amazing places in the entire world?" she asks him.
It's been a week, maybe two, and their conversations have been few and far between. She's over letting him brood. She's over being supportive of his silent, macho, I just need to do this on my own motto. They're in this together now and she's not quite sure how to make him see that, but she knows it starts with letting him know she's here, with him, and she's not going anywhere any time soon.
Still, though, he's quiet. The silence that consistently hangs between them pushes and pull at allt he insecurities she tries to bury. After a moment he turns towards her, his smile soft and tired.
"I'm just trying to forget,” he says.
At a diner that straddles the state line between Arizona and Utah, she pulls out a map and lays it in front of them. Her fingers are sticky from syrup and he smiles at her over the rim of his coffee cup.
"Close you eyes and point. Our next destination is completely up to you."
"Caroline," he starts, his tone teetering on the edge of annoyed and she tries so very hard to remember the guy she met a lifetime ago in the bathroom when somebody else's blood was on her face and lips and hands. She tries to very hard not to mark the differences between then and now, all the ways the both of them have changed irrevocably - for both the good and bad. “This is ridiculous,” he says.
Rolling her eyes, she forcefully shoves the map in his direction. “Just do it.”
He does that huffy thing that will always remind her of Damon. He looks inconvenienced as he dramatically closes his eyes and slams his finger down smack dab in the middle of her little map of the world so hard the table shakes.
This is how they end up in Europe.
Since Stefan has seen it all before many times over and is finally starting to warm to their newly acquired situation, he acts as her own person tour guide. There is England first, then Ireland and Scotland, with Barcelona somewhere in between. Slowly they make their way east, Stefan regaling her with stories and facts you don't read about in history books, places that are more beautiful than the ones advertised.
They spend months in Amsterdam. Even longer in Austria. Caroline dips her toes in the Danube and Stefan spends entirely way too much time with his nose buried in a book, re-reading Tolstoy and Chaucer even though Caroline would bet her last dollar that he already knows the words by heart.
"You don't understand," he tells her. They've settled for the time being - a small town in Southern Italy where nobody speaks English and cares in the slightest who they are or what they do or how they afford this huge, fancy house without working at all. "It's soothing. It calms me."
Caroline rolls her eyes, curling her feet underneath her as she settles next to him on the couch. "Reading a book? Do you realize how much of a pretentious jackass you sound like right now? It's soothing. Reading calms me," she mimics. "Seriously, Stefan?"
Rolling his eyes, he shoves the book in her lap. "The feel of the book in your hands, Caroline. The rustle of the pages, the creases in the spine. The sound of the spine cracking when you've made it half way through the story… That is calming."
Running her finger along the spine of his worn book, over the edges of the pages and the dips and curve of the words that bleed onto the paper, she doesn't get it at first. At first, she looks at him with stifled laughter, her left eyebrow raised as if to say are you for real?
And then, suddenly, it kind of, sort of makes sense - even though she'd never admit it to him. Or anyone for that matter.
(This is how Caroline gets that education in English Literature her mother always wanted her to have.)
"Don't you miss it?"
Stefan just looks at her for a beat, his eyes narrowing. "Miss what exactly?"
"I don't know... Mystic Falls? Life before? Elena? Damon?"
"Do you miss it?"
Caroline laughs awkwardly, her fingers crinkling the pages of the book in her hand. It's summer and they don't have central air, so they're hovered in the living room, the small window unit tirelessly working towards blowing semi-cold air in their direction.
"Of course I do."
"Then you know the answer to your question."
"You never talk about them. You never talk to them. It's just weird. And, really, it’s just denial at its worst. Pretending it all never happened isn’t going to make it all suddenly, like, unreal, Stefan."
His shoulders stiffen, his fingers tightening into fists. She sees it happening before it even starts - the walls go up immediately, putting as much distance between him and her as possible. He says shortly, "It's complicated," and she snorts unattractively, rolling her eyes as she mumbles that's an understatement. She expects that to be that, for him to grow silent and broody once more, but instead of shutting her off almost completely like he normally would, he tries to explain. "My relationship with Damon is better from a distance… It always has been. Maybe it won't always be that way, but it is now."
Stefan's words are clipped and short, but still offer more than she thought she would hear from him, more than he's ever offered before in lieu of any explanations.
There are things they don't talk about, subjects they don't dare broach - Elena, Tyler, that time when Stefan very probably would have killed them all given the right circumstances. It is an unspoken agreement they cultivated on day one, never to be violated.
Caroline mentally draws three very bold lines under Damon's name on the list, a reminder of sorts. Some things are just better left alone.
To ring in the following new year they drink wine and make dinner - Caroline chopping and Stefan cooking because she still isn't very good at it despite the numerous lessons he's given her. After, Caroline makes Stefan stay up and watch It's a Wonderful Life with her on their tiny, dying TV. The words are poorly dubbed in Italian, the timing terribly off, but the sentiment is still the same. Outside there is a commotion, then the sounds of fireworks going off in the distance. She smiles behind her wine glass and settles back into the cushions of the couch.
"I'm okay now, you know," he says to her then. "I'm okay," he repeats, as if he was trying to convince her. "If you want to go home now, I would understand."
He doesn't say it to be cruel even though the words he has chosen might suggest that. A year or two ago Caroline probably would have taken it that way, would have let both her pride and heart become damaged as a result. Now, instead, she just smiles, reaching forward and past him for the wine bottle to top their glasses off.
Shrugging, she says, "It's not just about you, Stefan," and means it.
Stefan slips while they vacation in Cairo. There is a waitress - someone's daughter, friend, mother. The disappointment rears through her like a storm, licking her nerves and putting her completely on edge. Caroline is angry as she buries the body, as she puts the shovel into the earth and digs a grave three feet too deep to keep anyone from unearthing it.
She drags him home, locks Stefan in a cellar, detoxes him, drives a stake through his chest and reminds him of all the reasons not to do this, to be better than this - Just like Elena taught her years before.
After one hundred and twenty-four days she finally manages to pull him back from the ledge.
This is four years in.
After, she grows weary. Hovers too closely, watching his every move, analyzing every word spoken between them for some indication of what he's thinking, whether or not he's going to slip again.
It causes them both to grow tired, their nerves spread far to thin as Caroline walks on eggshells and Stefan calculates his every move before physically making it.
"Are you ever going to trust me again?" he asks. They are growing back into their routines. He asks this over dinner - he's chopping and she's cooking this time because she's gotten used to doing it all without him. She doesn't tell him this, but he understands all the same.
Caroline doesn't look at him as she says, "I don't know, Stefan."
His sigh is heavy, tired as it ripples through her. It's what finally causes her to look up and towards him. He's glancing at her with the most peculiar look on his face, and she doesn't quite know how to pinpoint exactly what it means. "I'm sorry, Caroline."
The honestly behind his words cause her to smile just slightly, the corners of her mouth turning upwards. "I know you are."
(Here's what she should have said: I don't want to lose you.
She just simply didn't know how.)
Inevitably, they miss birthdays and graduations back home. Elena sends her emails and Caroline always gets them weeks or even months after the fact. Bonnie and Jeremy get back together, break up again, and get back together. Her and Damon are happily working towards something - even if, years later, the two of them aren't quite sure what it is. Where Elena's emails are long and wordy, filled with mundane details only Caroline would ever care about and Elena would think to include, Caroline really only sees factoids of Bonnie's life through photos - her emails are short, but attached are a million and one different photos of things, people, life back in the world Caroline left behind on a whim years earlier.
They grow apart in most ways, but closer in others.
On Sundays, at the same exact time every week, Caroline calls her mother. The calls are short and sweet, almost painfully to the point. Her mother never says, please come home but it's there, lingering beneath every sigh and silence, every word fallen between them.
A few months in to this journey, maybe even a year, she would have feared those words because she probably would have been too quick to say yes.
Now she sees what she couldn't before: There is no life for her back in Mystic Falls. Caroline no longer belongs there - defined by the town's limits, their people, the hatred that burns so deep within the people for what she has become and can not even begin to control.
With distance comes clarity. With distance comes perspective.
Now, after having severed ties from the world she never thought she would tire of back when she was seventeen and had her whole life before her, she finally finds peace.
They find their way again. Eventually they find home in their routines while establishing others.
One day, as she's leaving him to head upstairs to bed, his fingers catch around her wrist, the pressure slight, tender. She pauses, turns back to look at him. She's woozy from wine and sleep, the merlot they drank with their homemade pasta leaving a stain on her teeth. He smiles a rare, full-blown, beautiful smile that does something wonderful to her insides, settling deep. They're getting better at trusting each other again, at re-building the foundation of their relationship.
"What?" she asks, the word tangled around a soft laugh when he doesn't say anything for a moment.
Stefan shakes his head. Releases her wrist. Her arm falls to her side, the loss of contact sudden and deafening. "Nothing," he says. "I just... I'm glad you're here."
There is no adequate response she can come up with, so instead she just smiles softly.
Caroline kisses Stefan on what should have been her twenty-fifth birthday. They're in Greece, standing on the beach, toes digging into the white sand. The silver of her ring gleans under the sun, a constant reminder. She turns the emblem in, so it is facing her palm, and encloses her fist around it.
She doesn't want a reminder today.
Instead, she thinks about Elena and Bonnie and how much they would love it here. She thinks of her mother then too. Takes a mental image of what is before her so she can describe it in vivid detail in the next letter she writes home.
"Thank you for bringing me here," she tells him.
Stefan laughs, uncrosses his arms and allows them to dangle at his sides. She can't see behind his sunglasses, but she knows the smile curling at the edges of his mouth reaches his eyes. "I figured it was the only way to get you to shut up about it. And, no, this is not an invitation for us to listen to Mamma Mia! on the way back to the hotel."
There is another laugh - his, maybe hers - the sound light and falling between them easily. There is a moment, tiny and small, where she squints against the sun and up at him and thinks about kissing him. Thinks about leaning in and pressing her lips to his just to see what he would do, how he would react.
After a while she forgets to think and just acts.
Caroline rises on her tip-toes and slants her mouth against his clumsily with no one but the sun and ocean as witnesses. It isn't feverish or frantic, not it any way needy. Instead, it's slow, easy almost. Right. Stefan's mouth moves against hers with precision and grace. His lips are soft, his sigh softer as she swallows it whole, makes it a part of her as her fingers curl into the fabric of his t-shirt out of sheer need to hold on to something.
When he pulls away, his smile matches her own.
Later, on the way back to the car she reaches for his hand without thinking and is surprised to find his already there waiting.
(She mumbles the lyrics to Honey, Honey under her breath just to be spiteful, but Stefan just laughs and laughs, the sound warming the very core of her.)
Summary: They find their way again.
Rating: pg
Author's Notes: 3,296 words. Spoilers for everything to date with speculation about future events. This is not really my sandbox anymore and my first time with this pairing, so con-crit is both welcome and appreciated. Thank you to justforyoudear for the beta. All remaining mistakes are mine. These characters, however, are not.
For youcallitwinter. I hope this lives up to your standards, bb. Happy Holidays!
Damon is the one to save his brother. This is the part of the story that everyone, including Caroline, predicts.
With Stefan firmly rooted on their side, they beat Klaus in an epic battle of wills and strength. It's legendary. It's bloody. They lose too many people they love, but in the end, after all is said and done, they stand together, a unified front. After, they move on the best they can - finish high school, make plans for college, and try to get things back to the way they were before vampires and werewolves became reality and not myth, before Caroline became stagnant at seventeen.
Stefan flicks the switch back on. He moves back into the boarding house with Damon, goes back to bunnies instead of blood bags, animals instead of humans. It's not that easy though. All of them know that, know that the lust for blood is hard to overcome, that it drives you and consumes you and holds on and never fully lets go. They all know it is a constant battle, a never-ending fight and sometimes you don't always win.
Still, though, they pretend as though he's the same. Elena and Bonnie and Alaric, they all pretend he's reverted back to the Stefan they knew in the beginning of all this. The Stefan who saved their lives while simultaneously risking his own - constantly selfish and selfless at the same time. They act as though he is the same guy, the same Stefan because it is easier than admitting the truth: this straight and narrow life is not normal for him - bunnies and restrictions and settled down - it isn’t normal for any of them. Not Stefan. Not Damon. Not even Caroline. It goes against the very nature of who they are now and will be for all of eternity.
It's just another fight they struggle with every day.
(Some are better at it than others.)
"I'm not okay," he tells her.
This is sometime after graduation. She and Stefan are sitting under the stars, beer dangling between their fingers. She looks at him, watches as he bites the inside of his cheek, counts the taps of his beer bottle against his knee. Elena and Bonnie are heading off to college in just a few short months. Caroline is still undecided, still weighing her options. It all seems trivial now, almost unimportant when she is going to be seventeen forever and has eternity to get things right.
"I know," she says, like she understands and she muses she probably does.
Stefan takes a long swig of his beer. "I'm not going to be okay if I stay here."
Sighing, Caroline nods. "I know," she repeats, her words wrapping themselves around her sigh.
Neither says anything further for a long time, her fingers prying at the peeling label of her beer.
Damon is the one to pull his brother out of the dark, deep hole he'd dug himself in.
Caroline, however, is the one that keeps him from stumbling back into it.
They head west first - her choice, not his.
There's the desert and the wide open plains of the mid-west. They trade turns driving, sleep in separate beds in the same room, watch the same television and breathe the same air, but they couldn't be farther apart. Stefan’s too quiet at first and Caroline has never been able to function in silence, so she fills the void with conversations about anything and everything - shoes, clothes, movies, the book she read last month about the British shopaholic and the dashing American business mogul. This lasts exactly seven hours before they lapse into a mutual quiet, her voice hoarse and tired as they adjust to the other's presence, to their quirks and behaviors, to all the things they are going to have to accept for this to truly work.
When he decides to actually speak, to actually to take a step back from brooding, he argues with her about the radio station she’s chosen, the reason why Bon Jovi will always be superior, and the fact that the speed limit is a law, not a suggestion thank-you-very-much.
They stop at tiny, off the beaten track motels along the interstate. Caroline likes to sleep in the middle of her bed, knees curled to her chest. Stefan sleeps on the left of his own, stoic, the picture of calm, but the way his fingers ball into fists at his sides give him away. Often, Caroline finds herself tracing the lines of his body before she falls asleep, counting the minutes and hours between every single slightest movement.
But Stefan sleeps like he's dead and it unnerves her almost completely. She finds herself waking in the middle of the night with a start, eyes scanning for him just to make sure he's still there, still with her.
It is a habit that will never truly fade with time.
She sees the Grand Canyon just as the sun is starting to peak over the horizon, painting the world a golden hue in the early morning air. The beauty takes her breath away.
Next to her, Stefan's mouth is drawn into a thin line, eyes squinting against the light.
"What could you possible spend so much time thinking about? What could you possibly be thinking about while we're here, now, in one of the most amazing places in the entire world?" she asks him.
It's been a week, maybe two, and their conversations have been few and far between. She's over letting him brood. She's over being supportive of his silent, macho, I just need to do this on my own motto. They're in this together now and she's not quite sure how to make him see that, but she knows it starts with letting him know she's here, with him, and she's not going anywhere any time soon.
Still, though, he's quiet. The silence that consistently hangs between them pushes and pull at allt he insecurities she tries to bury. After a moment he turns towards her, his smile soft and tired.
"I'm just trying to forget,” he says.
At a diner that straddles the state line between Arizona and Utah, she pulls out a map and lays it in front of them. Her fingers are sticky from syrup and he smiles at her over the rim of his coffee cup.
"Close you eyes and point. Our next destination is completely up to you."
"Caroline," he starts, his tone teetering on the edge of annoyed and she tries so very hard to remember the guy she met a lifetime ago in the bathroom when somebody else's blood was on her face and lips and hands. She tries to very hard not to mark the differences between then and now, all the ways the both of them have changed irrevocably - for both the good and bad. “This is ridiculous,” he says.
Rolling her eyes, she forcefully shoves the map in his direction. “Just do it.”
He does that huffy thing that will always remind her of Damon. He looks inconvenienced as he dramatically closes his eyes and slams his finger down smack dab in the middle of her little map of the world so hard the table shakes.
This is how they end up in Europe.
Since Stefan has seen it all before many times over and is finally starting to warm to their newly acquired situation, he acts as her own person tour guide. There is England first, then Ireland and Scotland, with Barcelona somewhere in between. Slowly they make their way east, Stefan regaling her with stories and facts you don't read about in history books, places that are more beautiful than the ones advertised.
They spend months in Amsterdam. Even longer in Austria. Caroline dips her toes in the Danube and Stefan spends entirely way too much time with his nose buried in a book, re-reading Tolstoy and Chaucer even though Caroline would bet her last dollar that he already knows the words by heart.
"You don't understand," he tells her. They've settled for the time being - a small town in Southern Italy where nobody speaks English and cares in the slightest who they are or what they do or how they afford this huge, fancy house without working at all. "It's soothing. It calms me."
Caroline rolls her eyes, curling her feet underneath her as she settles next to him on the couch. "Reading a book? Do you realize how much of a pretentious jackass you sound like right now? It's soothing. Reading calms me," she mimics. "Seriously, Stefan?"
Rolling his eyes, he shoves the book in her lap. "The feel of the book in your hands, Caroline. The rustle of the pages, the creases in the spine. The sound of the spine cracking when you've made it half way through the story… That is calming."
Running her finger along the spine of his worn book, over the edges of the pages and the dips and curve of the words that bleed onto the paper, she doesn't get it at first. At first, she looks at him with stifled laughter, her left eyebrow raised as if to say are you for real?
And then, suddenly, it kind of, sort of makes sense - even though she'd never admit it to him. Or anyone for that matter.
(This is how Caroline gets that education in English Literature her mother always wanted her to have.)
"Don't you miss it?"
Stefan just looks at her for a beat, his eyes narrowing. "Miss what exactly?"
"I don't know... Mystic Falls? Life before? Elena? Damon?"
"Do you miss it?"
Caroline laughs awkwardly, her fingers crinkling the pages of the book in her hand. It's summer and they don't have central air, so they're hovered in the living room, the small window unit tirelessly working towards blowing semi-cold air in their direction.
"Of course I do."
"Then you know the answer to your question."
"You never talk about them. You never talk to them. It's just weird. And, really, it’s just denial at its worst. Pretending it all never happened isn’t going to make it all suddenly, like, unreal, Stefan."
His shoulders stiffen, his fingers tightening into fists. She sees it happening before it even starts - the walls go up immediately, putting as much distance between him and her as possible. He says shortly, "It's complicated," and she snorts unattractively, rolling her eyes as she mumbles that's an understatement. She expects that to be that, for him to grow silent and broody once more, but instead of shutting her off almost completely like he normally would, he tries to explain. "My relationship with Damon is better from a distance… It always has been. Maybe it won't always be that way, but it is now."
Stefan's words are clipped and short, but still offer more than she thought she would hear from him, more than he's ever offered before in lieu of any explanations.
There are things they don't talk about, subjects they don't dare broach - Elena, Tyler, that time when Stefan very probably would have killed them all given the right circumstances. It is an unspoken agreement they cultivated on day one, never to be violated.
Caroline mentally draws three very bold lines under Damon's name on the list, a reminder of sorts. Some things are just better left alone.
To ring in the following new year they drink wine and make dinner - Caroline chopping and Stefan cooking because she still isn't very good at it despite the numerous lessons he's given her. After, Caroline makes Stefan stay up and watch It's a Wonderful Life with her on their tiny, dying TV. The words are poorly dubbed in Italian, the timing terribly off, but the sentiment is still the same. Outside there is a commotion, then the sounds of fireworks going off in the distance. She smiles behind her wine glass and settles back into the cushions of the couch.
"I'm okay now, you know," he says to her then. "I'm okay," he repeats, as if he was trying to convince her. "If you want to go home now, I would understand."
He doesn't say it to be cruel even though the words he has chosen might suggest that. A year or two ago Caroline probably would have taken it that way, would have let both her pride and heart become damaged as a result. Now, instead, she just smiles, reaching forward and past him for the wine bottle to top their glasses off.
Shrugging, she says, "It's not just about you, Stefan," and means it.
Stefan slips while they vacation in Cairo. There is a waitress - someone's daughter, friend, mother. The disappointment rears through her like a storm, licking her nerves and putting her completely on edge. Caroline is angry as she buries the body, as she puts the shovel into the earth and digs a grave three feet too deep to keep anyone from unearthing it.
She drags him home, locks Stefan in a cellar, detoxes him, drives a stake through his chest and reminds him of all the reasons not to do this, to be better than this - Just like Elena taught her years before.
After one hundred and twenty-four days she finally manages to pull him back from the ledge.
This is four years in.
After, she grows weary. Hovers too closely, watching his every move, analyzing every word spoken between them for some indication of what he's thinking, whether or not he's going to slip again.
It causes them both to grow tired, their nerves spread far to thin as Caroline walks on eggshells and Stefan calculates his every move before physically making it.
"Are you ever going to trust me again?" he asks. They are growing back into their routines. He asks this over dinner - he's chopping and she's cooking this time because she's gotten used to doing it all without him. She doesn't tell him this, but he understands all the same.
Caroline doesn't look at him as she says, "I don't know, Stefan."
His sigh is heavy, tired as it ripples through her. It's what finally causes her to look up and towards him. He's glancing at her with the most peculiar look on his face, and she doesn't quite know how to pinpoint exactly what it means. "I'm sorry, Caroline."
The honestly behind his words cause her to smile just slightly, the corners of her mouth turning upwards. "I know you are."
(Here's what she should have said: I don't want to lose you.
She just simply didn't know how.)
Inevitably, they miss birthdays and graduations back home. Elena sends her emails and Caroline always gets them weeks or even months after the fact. Bonnie and Jeremy get back together, break up again, and get back together. Her and Damon are happily working towards something - even if, years later, the two of them aren't quite sure what it is. Where Elena's emails are long and wordy, filled with mundane details only Caroline would ever care about and Elena would think to include, Caroline really only sees factoids of Bonnie's life through photos - her emails are short, but attached are a million and one different photos of things, people, life back in the world Caroline left behind on a whim years earlier.
They grow apart in most ways, but closer in others.
On Sundays, at the same exact time every week, Caroline calls her mother. The calls are short and sweet, almost painfully to the point. Her mother never says, please come home but it's there, lingering beneath every sigh and silence, every word fallen between them.
A few months in to this journey, maybe even a year, she would have feared those words because she probably would have been too quick to say yes.
Now she sees what she couldn't before: There is no life for her back in Mystic Falls. Caroline no longer belongs there - defined by the town's limits, their people, the hatred that burns so deep within the people for what she has become and can not even begin to control.
With distance comes clarity. With distance comes perspective.
Now, after having severed ties from the world she never thought she would tire of back when she was seventeen and had her whole life before her, she finally finds peace.
They find their way again. Eventually they find home in their routines while establishing others.
One day, as she's leaving him to head upstairs to bed, his fingers catch around her wrist, the pressure slight, tender. She pauses, turns back to look at him. She's woozy from wine and sleep, the merlot they drank with their homemade pasta leaving a stain on her teeth. He smiles a rare, full-blown, beautiful smile that does something wonderful to her insides, settling deep. They're getting better at trusting each other again, at re-building the foundation of their relationship.
"What?" she asks, the word tangled around a soft laugh when he doesn't say anything for a moment.
Stefan shakes his head. Releases her wrist. Her arm falls to her side, the loss of contact sudden and deafening. "Nothing," he says. "I just... I'm glad you're here."
There is no adequate response she can come up with, so instead she just smiles softly.
Caroline kisses Stefan on what should have been her twenty-fifth birthday. They're in Greece, standing on the beach, toes digging into the white sand. The silver of her ring gleans under the sun, a constant reminder. She turns the emblem in, so it is facing her palm, and encloses her fist around it.
She doesn't want a reminder today.
Instead, she thinks about Elena and Bonnie and how much they would love it here. She thinks of her mother then too. Takes a mental image of what is before her so she can describe it in vivid detail in the next letter she writes home.
"Thank you for bringing me here," she tells him.
Stefan laughs, uncrosses his arms and allows them to dangle at his sides. She can't see behind his sunglasses, but she knows the smile curling at the edges of his mouth reaches his eyes. "I figured it was the only way to get you to shut up about it. And, no, this is not an invitation for us to listen to Mamma Mia! on the way back to the hotel."
There is another laugh - his, maybe hers - the sound light and falling between them easily. There is a moment, tiny and small, where she squints against the sun and up at him and thinks about kissing him. Thinks about leaning in and pressing her lips to his just to see what he would do, how he would react.
After a while she forgets to think and just acts.
Caroline rises on her tip-toes and slants her mouth against his clumsily with no one but the sun and ocean as witnesses. It isn't feverish or frantic, not it any way needy. Instead, it's slow, easy almost. Right. Stefan's mouth moves against hers with precision and grace. His lips are soft, his sigh softer as she swallows it whole, makes it a part of her as her fingers curl into the fabric of his t-shirt out of sheer need to hold on to something.
When he pulls away, his smile matches her own.
Later, on the way back to the car she reaches for his hand without thinking and is surprised to find his already there waiting.
(She mumbles the lyrics to Honey, Honey under her breath just to be spiteful, but Stefan just laughs and laughs, the sound warming the very core of her.)