[ fic ] i've got my veins all tangled close ; caroline/stefan, the vampire diaries
This is all kinds of random, but I wholeheartedly blame youcallitwinter :p
i've got my veins all tangled close » the vampire diaries. caroline/stefan. pg. 1,086 words.
She sticks with him, when there's no one else left. warnings: future-fic, references to character death. I own nothing of TVD.
They stand beside each other with their toes on the borderline of the town.
Give or take.
“So.” Caroline clears her throat, looks in any direction but that of the home she grew up in. “Where do we go now?”
It’s over, all of it, and the idea is so incomprehensible that she’s not sure it’s sunk in all the way. Klaus dead, Tyler long dead - but last week was the first time she could think it without crying - Elena resolved to live a human life because she still can and she’s seen enough - and Bonnie and Jeremy with her - Damon off on a bender, Rebekah somewhere far, far away.
There is nothing left to keep them in this town, where their own faces will eventually sell them out.
Stefan looks long at her, then turns and starts to walk back to his car.
“Chicago.”
The drive isn’t awkward. It’s not. Caroline insists this to herself about nine times before she decides to turn on the radio, and they listen to music for the next few minutes without really hearing any of the words. She pictures them floating out the window.
“Snack?” she asks at one point, offering out a blood bag from her purse. He’s sort of back on them now. Sometimes.
Stefan gives a small, grateful smile, nods and takes it from her, elbow cocked on the steering wheel as he drinks quick.
She sips from hers, and leans her head against the window. She’s pretty sure Stefan’s only taking her with him because he knows she’d be totally lost on her own---even if they are friends. That doesn’t make it any easier to know what to say when they’re literally leaving behind them the only life she’s ever known.
Why Chicago? she almost asks, over and over and over. She would have thought Stefan would want to stay as far away from that city as possible, but she thinks she kind of gets it. Closure, isn’t that what they all want? He’ll go back to where it began and then he’ll move on, turn a page and start a new chapter.
She’s not sure which side of things she’s going to be on, so just in case Stefan does bail on her, she gets out her phone, and Googles “sites to see in chicago” while he drives.
The first place they go is a small bar bustling with nightlife. They order cheap beer and cram into a table in the corner, and that’s when Stefan gestures around and says “This is where I met them.”
Caroline almost chokes on her beer.
“Here? This-this is the same place, right here?” She pictures Klaus, the smug grin he’d always worn, and feels a bit nauseated, if she’s being honest. “I mean,” she stumbles to correct herself. “That’s impressive-almost a hundred years, wow. Good business.”
She’s talking too much. She takes another sip of her drink to shut up, but Stefan only looks faintly amused.
“You would have liked this place,” he tells her, and she blinks.
“Really?”
He nods, all assured now. “Oh yeah.” Slouched in his seat, he waves a hand at the room. “The dancing, the little dresses... lots of sparkles, actually.”
And he says it so straight-faced, sparkles, that she can’t help a giggle. Mostly, she just feels a little warmer to hear him imagining her into his past, because that has to be a good sign, right? A sign that she means something, that she might get to stick around?
(Or it’s a sign that he’s going to leave her behind with his past. But she tries to ignore that thought. Tries.)
“I think I would have liked it all back then,” she muses, trying to picture it, the dancing and the sparkly dresses.
Stefan’s expression grows tight, and he reaches for his own beer, grimaces over the top of it. “You wouldn’t have liked me back then,” he tells her, and he seems so lost in thoughts and age-old demons that she doesn’t know what to say to that. She bites her lip, puts a hand lightly on his shoulder.
He doesn’t shrug her off, so that’s got to be something.
They stay a hotel that night, one room with two double beds.
Caroline’s in pyjamas when he comes out of the bathroom, and she glances over at him. “Hungry?” she asks, already reaching for her purse on the floor.
Stefan grins so wide it startles her, raises his eyebrow. “There was still a receptionist down in the lobby-”
She makes a small, choked noise, and he breaks off, realizing his mistake, frowning, and seeming to struggle with himself for a moment before he sits down on the opposite bed.
“Not what you meant. Right.” He grimaces, and she lifts up a blood bag, reminds herself not to look pitying and bites back the automatic sorry.
“D’you still want?”
He shakes his head, and claps his hands on his thighs - “Think I’ll just get some sleep.”
“Okay.” Night, Stefan, she thinks, watches him lie down on top of the blankets and keeps the words in her mouth.
“It won’t be so hard, you know, one day,” she says instead as she hits the light switch, figures she should just curl up in her own bed but then sits down on the edge of his. She’s not sure if she’s talking about blood or everything, but does it make a difference?
There’s silence at first, only silence and near-darkness, and then Stefan sounds tired when he does speak. “And how would you know that, Caroline?”
She smiles to herself, feels more confident when she tells him, softly, “A wise, old friend once told me you just have to tell yourself that you’re strong enough, you’ll get through it.”
“A wise, old friend, eh?” Stefan asks, a few seconds, or minutes, later, and she likes to think he might be smiling too.
Caroline shifts on the bed, and nods, even though he can’t see. “Oh yeah. Very wise-and very old. Practically ancient.”
He laughs.
“You’re strong enough, Stefan,” she adds quietly, when she’s lay down on her side, careful distance between them. “And that's how I managed it, and now you need me, so I’m not-I’m not going anywhere.”
Because she had it backwards, she realizes - none of this was ever about whether Stefan would leave her behind.
He won’t.
But most importantly, Caroline, who still remembers promises in a bloody bathroom-she won’t leave him behind either.