Fic: Architects of Decay
“She was your friend, Caroline.”
“I know! But she’s dead, Stefan. And it’s been a long time... longer than she was alive and she was alive a long time because of you.”
“You mean in spite of me.”
She gives a little shrug. “I could say no but you wouldn’t believe me.”
His mouth twitches as he fights a smile. “Maybe you’re right. It doesn’t mean we should forget her.”
“Okay, so we won’t.”
“Okay.”
It was the most unexpected thing to ever happen in their world. An aneurism. It was expected that her blood would betray her eventually but no one thought of it combusting and leaking inside her body.
Damon caught her before she hit the floor. Elena was already dead.
“What do you want to do today?” Caroline is painting her fingernails in double time as she asks.
Stefan doesn’t look up from his book.
She blows on the pink polish, willing it to dry. Her patience hasn’t improved much over the years. “So?”
“Hmm?”
“Why are you not better at multi-tasking?”
“Did I miss something?”
“I asked you a question, Stefan, the polite thing to do is reply.”
“I wasn’t listening.”
“Duh. What do you want to do today? We’ve been inside forever, I’m bored.”
“You know you don’t need me to escort you everywhere, right?”
“Well, sure, but you won’t let me make any friends and who knows where Damon is right now.”
“You can make friends if you want, Caroline, just don’t tell them you’re a vampire.”
“I don’t do it deliberately! We just keep meeting people who know.”
“I don’t want to go out today.”
“That’s not a surprise, Salvatore. But as my only-and therefore best-friend, do it for me?”
Stefan’s eyes roll before he can stop them. “What are we going to do today, Caroline?” he sighs.
Stefan doesn’t know how he ever thought he was going to kill Katherine when she looked so much like Elena. Maybe when she was safe and warm beside him and he could see the difference with his own eyes it would have been possible.
Now there is no Elena.
He knows he’ll never be the one to kill Katherine.
“Happy birthday!”
“What?”
“You didn’t think you were getting away with this again, did you? It’s your birthday, Stefan!”
“Caroline-”
“Oh no you don’t. ‘Caroline, I don’t do birthdays. Only with Lexie. Means nothing when you don’t age. Blah blah blah.’ Well I’m your best friend now and-”
“You can’t just replace her.”
Her eyes look stung. “I’m not, I just...”
“I don’t want to celebrate, Caroline. I know you mean well but of all days today is the one I want to celebrate least.”
The silence is thick and soupy between them before she speaks. “You’re my best friend too, y’know. And not just because I don’t have anyone else.”
She gently removes the birthday banner from the wall and folds it neatly in the blink of an eye before leaving the room.
“Caroline!”
She doesn’t turn back. The slamming door rings in his ears.
She remembers Elena looking more like a waxwork than a dead body. She was shiny and cold and very, very pale but not in the way someone drained of blood is. Caroline could smell it-Elena’s blood-oozing and seeping in cavities it shouldn’t be but still wrapped tightly inside Elena’s skin.
It wasn’t tempting at all.
The funeral was in a church and she had to ask Stefan beforehand if they would be able to go because she had read a lot of vampire books and the thought of crosses scared her in a different way than religion had when she was human.
Of course they were perfectly capable of walking into a church. Caroline wasn’t completely sure that’s what she had wanted to hear.
Damon didn’t attend. She was surprised although she probably shouldn’t have been.
“I brought you O positive. It’s warm from the microwave.”
He stands next to her chair, holding out the blood like a peace offering.
She takes the mug from his hand without looking at him. “This isn’t True Blood; nobody cares what kind it is. It’s just blood.”
“I’m sorry, Caroline.”
“I know you are but I’m still mad.”
“You have every right to be.”
She sighs, infuriated, and finally meets his eyes. “I care about you, Stefan Salvatore. And I’m a hugger. I’m an insecure, hugger who likes validation and you make me feel like you don’t care about anyone but Elena-”
He flinches at the sound of the long lost name.
“-and she’s dead. I’m so, so sorry and I miss her too but, Stefan, she’s dead. I’m not in love with you and I don’t want you to be in love with me but I want you to love me. I want someone to care if I even exist.”
His thumb tidies her stray bangs back behind one ear. He sighs, warmly exasperated, and wraps his arms around her waist. Her hands run up his chest to lock behind his neck, her body twisted awkwardly in the dining room chair she’s curled up in. She feels safe even though her mom is dead, along with everyone else she knew growing up.
“I’m not a hugger by nature.”
The first time she saw him really drunk Caroline knew eternity would never be boring. At the time she hadn’t ever imagined them being left alone.
Secretly-from the moment it happened to her-Elena becoming a vampire seemed inevitable to Caroline. She still can’t quite believe it didn’t happen.
“Do you ever think about the future?” she asks absentmindedly.
Caroline is painting her nails a cherry red today. The color is too bright and perky to resemble blood. The brush is steady in her hand and although she could paint every nail in under a minute she takes her time. Slow strokes cover the nails from bed to tip and she shakes them gently as if it will help them dry.
Stefan slides a bookmark in to neatly hold his page although he could certainly remember the number if he wanted to. His voice is quiet when he replies, “I used to.”
She tilts her head in curiosity. “Why’d you stop?”
It takes him longer to form the words than he’d like. They swim in his mouth, escaping him. “When she died.”
“I used to make a lot of plans,” she admits.
“What a surprise.” He smiles softly.
“Don’t be a jerk. I just wanted to make sure things went right.”
“What stopped you?”
“Well, I never change. No matter what I do... how wrong things go, I have infinite chances to fix them. Y’know? I could go to college as many times as I want, just like the Cullens. I could change my name. I could wear pleather and eventually anyone human who saw me would be dead and I would still be here and still be exactly the same.”
“Not exactly,” he muses.
She bobs her head noncommittally. “I haven’t grown up yet. I haven’t really changed at all.”
“You think anyone really grows up? Just because they get grey hair and crow’s feet?”
“It’s not the looks, Stefan. It’s the responsibility. It’s... the... the weight of inevitability creeping closer. We don’t have that.”
“Bad things can still happen to you.”
She nods so that her hair falls in a spectacular gold curtain around her face. The dim light through the window fractures off the strands. “I know-they already have-I just don’t think making plans will stop them anymore. I know it won’t.”
She always assumed people would discover vampires eventually. Their time in Mystic Falls was so dramatic and unsubtle. How could they be so obvious and yet unseen? That being said nothing dramatic has happened to them in almost fifty years, unless you count Damon’s departure.
At this rate, it probably won’t end. Stefan is resigned to his purgatory. Caroline is bored, so very bored.
“You’re so much fun.” She sways toward him in her seat and pokes a perfectly manicured index finger into his chest. “Why do you hide how much fun you are?”
“You’re drunk.”
“You’re drunk! I am drunk... but you’re fun. You should always be fun, Stefan. Can I have another drink?”
“Can you make it to the bar to order one?”
She presses her lips together in concentration and works on lifting herself steadily out of the worn, sticky chair without accidentally splintering it in between her fingers. Caroline’s behind grazes the seat just before her elbows unlock, wobble, and she falls back into it.
Stefan’s mouth quirks in an amused smile. “Still want that drink?”
She leans across the table. “I’m gonna compel someone,” she stage-whispers. “Bring me someone to compel!” Her grin is toothy and intoxicated.
He taps her nose with his finger and-laughing-moves to smoothly swing her over his shoulder.
“Oooh, are you taking me to the bar? You’re so good to me. I need a straw so I can drink upside down. Stefan, we’re moving away from the vodka!”
“We have vodka at home.”
“No, we don’t! We have scotch.” She wrinkles her face in disgust. “Erghh, it makes me feel like my face shrunk and my skull is trying to tear out!”
He shrugs with the shoulder she’s not currently draped over. “Only if you drink the whole bottle, Caroline.”
She moans quietly into his back. “I think I’m gonna be sick... can I still be sick?”
Stefan has taught her to play blackjack and poker and how to count cards. She has taken up knitting, crochet, cross stitch, decoupage and drinking. Well, she has refined her drinking. She was never that great while she was alive. Now, she’s still not that great. Nothing another fifty years can’t improve.
She thinks fleetingly of all the worthwhile things she could do with eternity and then uncaps the clear nail polish she has selected today.
They’re both drinking almost exclusively from blood bags. Although they’re not on the run and although no one’s really likely to attack them Caroline never managed to ascribe to an all-animal diet and if Stefan had to get blood for her it made sense to keep drinking as well.
They know a guy. Stefan always seems to know a guy.
He’s not as tame as she always assumed.
Damon makes appearances-sporadically-but he never stays. She thinks he’s probably out trying to destroy himself, or the world, perhaps in equal measures.
When he’s with them he’s drunk-and cold, and callous. Caroline can’t imagine how he could still be alive if that’s the case when he’s away... but then he’s not, so maybe that’s how.
She keeps out of his way. It’s too depressing to be around him.
One day he leaves and doesn’t come back. Caroline isn’t entirely sure what Stefan thinks of his brother’s vanishing act. They have so much time at their disposal that perhaps he doesn’t see the disappearance as permanent.
It’s not sudden-like Elena-but for some reason she’s sure that it’s just as lasting.
It’s a day like any other day. They’re inside despite their rings. They have a huge yard but no one maintains it. She looks up from her bottle of prissy pink polish and considers-not for the first time-taking up gardening. She could landscape the front yard. They could put in some of those tiny bushes and delicate little water features which always look so refined outside rich people’s houses. It’s as though the miniature foliage magnifies the house itself.
Their overgrown wasteland and churned up driveway are intimidating in a different way.
“We should really do something with the lawn, it’s dying.”
From beside her Stefan looks up momentarily from his book. “Are you sure it’s not already dead?”
She stares out at the dry, yellowing grass still clinging desperately to a last flush of color before she returns to cover the last fingernail of her hand in a thick, clean stroke of polish.
“No,” she tells him, “not yet.”
“I know! But she’s dead, Stefan. And it’s been a long time... longer than she was alive and she was alive a long time because of you.”
“You mean in spite of me.”
She gives a little shrug. “I could say no but you wouldn’t believe me.”
His mouth twitches as he fights a smile. “Maybe you’re right. It doesn’t mean we should forget her.”
“Okay, so we won’t.”
“Okay.”
It was the most unexpected thing to ever happen in their world. An aneurism. It was expected that her blood would betray her eventually but no one thought of it combusting and leaking inside her body.
Damon caught her before she hit the floor. Elena was already dead.
“What do you want to do today?” Caroline is painting her fingernails in double time as she asks.
Stefan doesn’t look up from his book.
She blows on the pink polish, willing it to dry. Her patience hasn’t improved much over the years. “So?”
“Hmm?”
“Why are you not better at multi-tasking?”
“Did I miss something?”
“I asked you a question, Stefan, the polite thing to do is reply.”
“I wasn’t listening.”
“Duh. What do you want to do today? We’ve been inside forever, I’m bored.”
“You know you don’t need me to escort you everywhere, right?”
“Well, sure, but you won’t let me make any friends and who knows where Damon is right now.”
“You can make friends if you want, Caroline, just don’t tell them you’re a vampire.”
“I don’t do it deliberately! We just keep meeting people who know.”
“I don’t want to go out today.”
“That’s not a surprise, Salvatore. But as my only-and therefore best-friend, do it for me?”
Stefan’s eyes roll before he can stop them. “What are we going to do today, Caroline?” he sighs.
Stefan doesn’t know how he ever thought he was going to kill Katherine when she looked so much like Elena. Maybe when she was safe and warm beside him and he could see the difference with his own eyes it would have been possible.
Now there is no Elena.
He knows he’ll never be the one to kill Katherine.
“Happy birthday!”
“What?”
“You didn’t think you were getting away with this again, did you? It’s your birthday, Stefan!”
“Caroline-”
“Oh no you don’t. ‘Caroline, I don’t do birthdays. Only with Lexie. Means nothing when you don’t age. Blah blah blah.’ Well I’m your best friend now and-”
“You can’t just replace her.”
Her eyes look stung. “I’m not, I just...”
“I don’t want to celebrate, Caroline. I know you mean well but of all days today is the one I want to celebrate least.”
The silence is thick and soupy between them before she speaks. “You’re my best friend too, y’know. And not just because I don’t have anyone else.”
She gently removes the birthday banner from the wall and folds it neatly in the blink of an eye before leaving the room.
“Caroline!”
She doesn’t turn back. The slamming door rings in his ears.
She remembers Elena looking more like a waxwork than a dead body. She was shiny and cold and very, very pale but not in the way someone drained of blood is. Caroline could smell it-Elena’s blood-oozing and seeping in cavities it shouldn’t be but still wrapped tightly inside Elena’s skin.
It wasn’t tempting at all.
The funeral was in a church and she had to ask Stefan beforehand if they would be able to go because she had read a lot of vampire books and the thought of crosses scared her in a different way than religion had when she was human.
Of course they were perfectly capable of walking into a church. Caroline wasn’t completely sure that’s what she had wanted to hear.
Damon didn’t attend. She was surprised although she probably shouldn’t have been.
“I brought you O positive. It’s warm from the microwave.”
He stands next to her chair, holding out the blood like a peace offering.
She takes the mug from his hand without looking at him. “This isn’t True Blood; nobody cares what kind it is. It’s just blood.”
“I’m sorry, Caroline.”
“I know you are but I’m still mad.”
“You have every right to be.”
She sighs, infuriated, and finally meets his eyes. “I care about you, Stefan Salvatore. And I’m a hugger. I’m an insecure, hugger who likes validation and you make me feel like you don’t care about anyone but Elena-”
He flinches at the sound of the long lost name.
“-and she’s dead. I’m so, so sorry and I miss her too but, Stefan, she’s dead. I’m not in love with you and I don’t want you to be in love with me but I want you to love me. I want someone to care if I even exist.”
His thumb tidies her stray bangs back behind one ear. He sighs, warmly exasperated, and wraps his arms around her waist. Her hands run up his chest to lock behind his neck, her body twisted awkwardly in the dining room chair she’s curled up in. She feels safe even though her mom is dead, along with everyone else she knew growing up.
“I’m not a hugger by nature.”
The first time she saw him really drunk Caroline knew eternity would never be boring. At the time she hadn’t ever imagined them being left alone.
Secretly-from the moment it happened to her-Elena becoming a vampire seemed inevitable to Caroline. She still can’t quite believe it didn’t happen.
“Do you ever think about the future?” she asks absentmindedly.
Caroline is painting her nails a cherry red today. The color is too bright and perky to resemble blood. The brush is steady in her hand and although she could paint every nail in under a minute she takes her time. Slow strokes cover the nails from bed to tip and she shakes them gently as if it will help them dry.
Stefan slides a bookmark in to neatly hold his page although he could certainly remember the number if he wanted to. His voice is quiet when he replies, “I used to.”
She tilts her head in curiosity. “Why’d you stop?”
It takes him longer to form the words than he’d like. They swim in his mouth, escaping him. “When she died.”
“I used to make a lot of plans,” she admits.
“What a surprise.” He smiles softly.
“Don’t be a jerk. I just wanted to make sure things went right.”
“What stopped you?”
“Well, I never change. No matter what I do... how wrong things go, I have infinite chances to fix them. Y’know? I could go to college as many times as I want, just like the Cullens. I could change my name. I could wear pleather and eventually anyone human who saw me would be dead and I would still be here and still be exactly the same.”
“Not exactly,” he muses.
She bobs her head noncommittally. “I haven’t grown up yet. I haven’t really changed at all.”
“You think anyone really grows up? Just because they get grey hair and crow’s feet?”
“It’s not the looks, Stefan. It’s the responsibility. It’s... the... the weight of inevitability creeping closer. We don’t have that.”
“Bad things can still happen to you.”
She nods so that her hair falls in a spectacular gold curtain around her face. The dim light through the window fractures off the strands. “I know-they already have-I just don’t think making plans will stop them anymore. I know it won’t.”
She always assumed people would discover vampires eventually. Their time in Mystic Falls was so dramatic and unsubtle. How could they be so obvious and yet unseen? That being said nothing dramatic has happened to them in almost fifty years, unless you count Damon’s departure.
At this rate, it probably won’t end. Stefan is resigned to his purgatory. Caroline is bored, so very bored.
“You’re so much fun.” She sways toward him in her seat and pokes a perfectly manicured index finger into his chest. “Why do you hide how much fun you are?”
“You’re drunk.”
“You’re drunk! I am drunk... but you’re fun. You should always be fun, Stefan. Can I have another drink?”
“Can you make it to the bar to order one?”
She presses her lips together in concentration and works on lifting herself steadily out of the worn, sticky chair without accidentally splintering it in between her fingers. Caroline’s behind grazes the seat just before her elbows unlock, wobble, and she falls back into it.
Stefan’s mouth quirks in an amused smile. “Still want that drink?”
She leans across the table. “I’m gonna compel someone,” she stage-whispers. “Bring me someone to compel!” Her grin is toothy and intoxicated.
He taps her nose with his finger and-laughing-moves to smoothly swing her over his shoulder.
“Oooh, are you taking me to the bar? You’re so good to me. I need a straw so I can drink upside down. Stefan, we’re moving away from the vodka!”
“We have vodka at home.”
“No, we don’t! We have scotch.” She wrinkles her face in disgust. “Erghh, it makes me feel like my face shrunk and my skull is trying to tear out!”
He shrugs with the shoulder she’s not currently draped over. “Only if you drink the whole bottle, Caroline.”
She moans quietly into his back. “I think I’m gonna be sick... can I still be sick?”
Stefan has taught her to play blackjack and poker and how to count cards. She has taken up knitting, crochet, cross stitch, decoupage and drinking. Well, she has refined her drinking. She was never that great while she was alive. Now, she’s still not that great. Nothing another fifty years can’t improve.
She thinks fleetingly of all the worthwhile things she could do with eternity and then uncaps the clear nail polish she has selected today.
They’re both drinking almost exclusively from blood bags. Although they’re not on the run and although no one’s really likely to attack them Caroline never managed to ascribe to an all-animal diet and if Stefan had to get blood for her it made sense to keep drinking as well.
They know a guy. Stefan always seems to know a guy.
He’s not as tame as she always assumed.
Damon makes appearances-sporadically-but he never stays. She thinks he’s probably out trying to destroy himself, or the world, perhaps in equal measures.
When he’s with them he’s drunk-and cold, and callous. Caroline can’t imagine how he could still be alive if that’s the case when he’s away... but then he’s not, so maybe that’s how.
She keeps out of his way. It’s too depressing to be around him.
One day he leaves and doesn’t come back. Caroline isn’t entirely sure what Stefan thinks of his brother’s vanishing act. They have so much time at their disposal that perhaps he doesn’t see the disappearance as permanent.
It’s not sudden-like Elena-but for some reason she’s sure that it’s just as lasting.
It’s a day like any other day. They’re inside despite their rings. They have a huge yard but no one maintains it. She looks up from her bottle of prissy pink polish and considers-not for the first time-taking up gardening. She could landscape the front yard. They could put in some of those tiny bushes and delicate little water features which always look so refined outside rich people’s houses. It’s as though the miniature foliage magnifies the house itself.
Their overgrown wasteland and churned up driveway are intimidating in a different way.
“We should really do something with the lawn, it’s dying.”
From beside her Stefan looks up momentarily from his book. “Are you sure it’s not already dead?”
She stares out at the dry, yellowing grass still clinging desperately to a last flush of color before she returns to cover the last fingernail of her hand in a thick, clean stroke of polish.
“No,” she tells him, “not yet.”