Disclamer: I wish I owned TVD so I could take the credit for creating Rebekah, because she's flawless.

Summary: My take on what should have happened between Stefan and Rebekah in 3x04 "Disturbing Behaviour".

Author's Note : Am I the only one who's incredibly frustrated that the Stebekah romance was neglected in Season Three? Oh, and remember that scene where Klaus gives Stefan his memories back and our favourite Ripper starts walking towards Rebekah, but Klaus stops him? Am I the only one who screamed in frustration at that? haha.

Forever and a Day

"Your sister," Stefan echoed after Klaus' tale. "So I knew another Original Vampire."

"If you can't handle it, then don't ask," Klaus answered as he walked towards of one the open coffins.

Stefan felt something stir inside of him for the umpteenth time that day. A shiver of anticipation ran down his spine as the hybrid allowed himself a tender gesture and brushed his thumb against his sister's cheek. The green-eyed vampire cautiously got closer to get a look at her.

She'd been carefully laid down in the coffin. She was wearing a typical 1920s white dress that time has darkened. His eyes were immediately drawn to the dagger which sat straight in her heart, in the middle of a strain of dried blood.

Her blonde hair was still perfectly curled and in sharp contrast with the greyness of her skin. Despite the dark veins lining her face, it was undeniable that she held a special beauty that no man in his right mind could stay insensitive to.

Stefan didn't have a particularly good memory for faces, especially after ninety years, and given he'd seen so many over the years, but how could he have loved that woman, and forgotten about her? Even in her state of apparent peaceful sleep, Rebekah didn't strike him as the type of women easily forgettable.

"I don't recognize her," he breathed in confusion.

"Don't tell her that," Klaus warned. "Rebekah's temper is worse than mine."

—

Later that day, as Klaus called for him to come in, Stefan paused for a second. He ran his tongue over his teeth and inhaled deeply. His intuition told him this was to be a defining moment, in more ways than one, and that he would never be the same.

He walked in slowly, trying his best to maintain a detached expression, however unable to conceal the fascination in his eyes. She was simply standing there, expectantly. Knowing that he'd had feelings for her in the past, her face seemed more familiar to him, this time, although he still couldn't place it.

Rebekah was truly breath-taking. As he let his eyes scrutinize her from head to toe, Stefan wondered what had been his favourite thing about her face. Her pouty red lips? Her silky blonde curls? The intensity of her gaze?

"Stefan," she breathed, a shy smile ghosting over her lips.

His name on her tongue bore the undeniable, unmistakable trace of intimacy; it erased any doubt he still had about Klaus' sincerity. This was not another mind game – this woman used to be in love with him, and judging by her glistening eyes, she probably still was.

Stefan was so enthralled by her presence that he didn't react when Klaus put a hand on his chest.

"Now, you remember," the hybrid commanded.

And just like that, it all came back. Stefan nearly felt light-headed as a whirlwind of emotions overwhelmed him.

The soothing feeling of her forehead against his as they sensually swayed to the music, caught in a world of their own, blissfully oblivious to the presence of others. The thrill he never failed to experience when they shared a human's neck, each breaking the skin on a side and savouring the thick blood dripping onto their tongues in perfect synchronization. The heavenly taste of her lips, that he could barely resist.

"Rebekah," he whispered with a smile.

—

"He told me about the girl you loved," she said cautiously. "The one who died."

Stefan said nothing, but had the decency to let pain show in his green eyes.

"He also told me you that you're only with him because he saved your brother," she added.

"It's true," he confessed, figuring that it wouldn't be smart to lie about this.

"I think he secretly admires that about you," she revealed with a smile. "You'd sacrifice anything for family."

Stefan remained silent, wondering where this conversation was going now that he had failed to gather information about his only way to keep Klaus away from Mystic Falls.

"Don't tell him I told you that," she whispered, installing a climate of confidence that made him laugh.

"Your secret … is safe with me," he replied, a familiar glint in his eyes.

Rebekah stared at him as he endeavoured to walk away, and experienced one of her infamous mood swings. She had been patient with him over the past few days, but there was only so much she could endure. The revelation that he had loved somebody else deeply upset her, and her possessiveness got the best of her: acting on impulse, she grabbed him and brought him in for a kiss that was long overdue, if you asked her.

Stefan tensed against her lips for a split second – and it was already too much. Before, a second of hesitation would never have crossed his mind: he yearned for her kiss, all the time. But ninety years had passed, and there had been another woman. When she pulled back, he stared at her in confusion.

"Do you think you'll ever love anyone like you loved that girl?" she asked.

I can't, Stefan thought. However, he couldn't stay immune to the gripping insecurity he could hear in her question. But could he deceive her? She had, after all, warned him that she could always tell when he was lying. He looked down for a second, then met her eyes again.

"One day, maybe," he said, nodding to give more weight to his semi-promise.

When a smile appeared on her lips, he felt almost relieved. For a reason that remained unknown to him, the last thing he wanted was to hurt her. A fragility in her eyes told him that she'd had her share of sorrows through her long life. She caressed his cheek with great tenderness, and his hand travelled down her arm comfortingly.

"I can always tell when you're lying, Stefan," she simply said.

"What? I'm not—"

"Don't bother," she interrupted bitterly. "Your kiss already gave you away."

Stefan stared at her in silence, surprisingly disturbed by the flash of sadness that had crossed her face. Despite the significant amount of human blood he had been ingesting since he left Mystic Falls, remnants of the true Stefan struggled inside of him: although he wanted to persuade himself, as well as others, that he didn't care about anything anymore, he did.

He had history with Rebekah. Their relationship had been short-lived, yes, but it had been the most intense he had ever known. Unable to make sense of this feeling, he figured that he owed it to her, and to himself, to do better than that. He extended his hand to catch her wrist.

"Let me try that again," he said, his voice distinctively more seductive than moments before.

Rebekah pivoted to face him with a hard face. Enthralled by him as she was, she couldn't disregard what her intuition told her: Stefan's mind wasn't here with her and Klaus. The questions he asked about Mikael, on top of his incessant disappearances, and now the lying, were too much to ignore. She sensed something off about him, and it was more than the natural difference that came with the passing of ninety years. If she had learned one thing over the years, it was to trust her instincts.

However, as their eyes met again, her thoughts quickly became clouded by the intensity burning in Stefan's eyes. For a moment, she caught a glimpse of the Stefan she had fallen in love with, the man for who she was willing to give up on her own brother.

Seeing that he had effectively won her attention back, Stefan slid an arm around her waist to close the distance between them. Almost as a reflex, Rebekah laid a hand on his arm and waited for him to speak.

"I loved you before," he said. "I can love you again."

She inhaled sharply as a shiver ran down her spine; this time, she failed to detect any trace of dishonesty in his words. Before she could think of a proper answer, Stefan let his fingers caress her cheek, much like seconds before, and her eyes fluttered in response. This time, she felt more intimacy in the way he touched her – it was exactly like it had been before. She still felt paralyzed by him, after all this time, and suddenly, it mattered little that he had touched and loved another woman like this.

She swallowed as she felt Stefan's lips press to her neck. Immediately, memories overwhelmed her.

The music slowly died, but Stefan did not let go. Rebekah smiled to herself; she was accustomed to drawing attention from men, but there was something about this reckless young vampire that had caught her eye, from the moment she had stolen that glass of champagne from him.

She was about to take a step back when he leaned closer to whisper in her ear.

"Will you tell me your name, now?"

"I told you," she answered, trying her best to sound bored. "You have to earn it."

Stefan laughed softly and boldly pressed his lips against her neck, causing her to shiver in his arms. The touch was soft in contrast with the strength of his embrace; it was daring of him to initiate such an intimate contact with her. She couldn't help but internally swoon at that. He left a trail of feathery kisses along the nape of her neck and she barely managed to suppress a sigh as she closed her eyes.

"It's Rebekah," she breathed.

He dropped one last kiss under her ear and suddenly let go of her. A cocky smirk had surfaced on his face.

"Pleasure to meet you, Rebekah," Stefan said lightly.

And with that, he walked away, leaving her all flustered and frustrated. An incredulous laugh escaped her lips and she shook her head. Stefan Salvatore definitely knew how to play games, and she happened to love that.

She came back to reality when she felt him pull back; the loss of his lips against her skin upset her.

"Pleasure to meet you again, Rebekah," Stefan whispered in her ear.

Her eyes slowly opened as he stared at her, and she smiled. The back of her hand brushed against his face, and Stefan readily leaned into the touch.

"So you do remember," she observed, her voice filled with emotion.

Stefan was looking forward to another night at Gloria's speakeasy. Chicago was a much livelier city at night and he had his habits there, but the truth was that he could not wait to see Rebekah again. She was different from all the women he had known before.

He easily spotted her, unsurprisingly surrounded by suitors. Competition annoyed him, but could he really blame them? She was hypnotizing; a single look from her could make a man feel invincible. That's the way he would have felt if he wasn't already immune to most evils that humans dreaded.

"Rebekah," he called loudly, content that he could finally use her first name.

She turned around with a seductive smile and walked up to him, her hips swinging in rhythm. He noticed that she had no qualms walking away from her crowd of admirers, and lost no time in bringing her hand to his lips. She rolled her eyes at him and he wondered what he had done wrong.

The answer quickly came when the blonde captured his lips and kissed him hungrily. For the first time in decades, Stefan felt his entire body ignite. A strong impression of bliss spiralled in his chest as she ravished his mouth and let her fingers comb through his hair. Around them, a few patrons whistled, but Stefan couldn't care less. He was entirely consumed by her taste and the delightful scent of her fragrance.

Rebekah abruptly stepped back and eyed him triumphantly, obviously rejoicing in seeing him properly thrown off.

"This," she said as her thumb cleaned the red lipstick off the corner of his mouth, "is what I call a proper greeting, M. Salvatore."

"I remember," he confirmed, returning her smile.

He did, even more vividly now. He remembered how his undead heart was always pounding in his chest around her, like it hadn't since Katherine. He remembered the indescribable feeling he was going to forget, of falling in love with her, slowly, inevitably, intoxicatingly.

"Every moment. Like it was yesterday," he added.

"For me, it was," she argued.

"I know," he said. "I'm sorry."

Rebekah simply nodded as she went to sit back on a coffin and he imitated her.

She was dying to ask for more details about what his life had been during her absence, but she couldn't bring herself to say the words. Imagining him with another woman made her physically sick. She knew little about that doppelganger, but she knew enough to picture the brown doe eyes, the pouty lips and the false ingenuousness that ran in the Petrova bloodline. If that girl resembled Tatia at all, then they were complete opposites. Considering that Stefan had loved the doppelganger, could he really love her again?

"She was my connection to humanity," he explained as if he could read her mind. "But that part of my life is over. She's gone, now."

To be specific, he was gone. From the moment he tasted human blood again and gave himself over to Klaus, he had cut his every connection to the life he had built in Mystic Falls. He had turned in back on the illusion of humanity that he sustained by being with Elena, and maybe the best way to put this in the past, once and for all, was to pick up where he left off with Rebekah. His time with her had been his happiest as The Ripper. If he was going to be that monster again, he might as well do it with company.

"She's gone now," he repeated.

"Are you very sad?" she asked, rather stupidly, for lack of anything better to say.

"You know how it is for us," he said with a sad shrug.

"Grief cripples you," she answered, and he nodded.

"But not forever."

Rebekah perceptibly hesitated – she had no interest in being his rebound girl when she had once been his one and only. Stefan could almost see her heart trying to reason with her head.

"Do you know why Niklaus drove a dagger through my heart?" she asked.

Stefan nodded.

"You didn't want to run anymore," he said.

"I knew I had no choice, but I wanted you to come with us," she clarified.

The green-eyed vampire smiled softly as he remembered their last night together, and the last dance they shared. Most of his newly-found memories from Chicago brought him shame, but the moments he had spent with Rebekah always came with a distinct feeling of warmth and serenity. He couldn't deny that, at the time, she was everything he lived for.

When they met, he and Damon were at each other's throats – Klaus was the closest he had to a family. As for Rebekah, there was no point in denying how intensely he had loved her. As vampires, their feelings towards each other had spiralled up in the matter of a few days, to the point that he was literally consumed by passion at the mere mention of her name.

That night, when he told her they were being shot at with wooden bullets, he had seen such fright in her eyes that, for the first time, he had felt like he was the strongest out of the two. He had wanted to hold her in his arms, to be her safety.

He tentatively put his hand on top of hers, and she followed the gesture with her eyes. He felt satisfied that she didn't inch back.

"I would have gone anywhere with you," he said truthfully. "You know that."

She smiled at him and gave his hand a light squeeze.

"When Nik told me you weren't coming, I chose to stay with you, and that's when he snapped," she continued. 'This is how much I loved you, Stefan. To the point of leaving my brother behind, even though he was all I had."

Stefan remained silent.

"And now, we've become strangers," she sighed, pulling her hand back.

Stefan's heart clenched. His life was chaotic at the moment: he had Elena to protect, and Katherine to keep at a distance. Wherever he went, the face of a Petrova doppelganger imposed itself to him. But as he looked at Rebekah now, no feeling of obligation burdened him. He simply felt desperate to make her smile again, and to feel as careless as he had when they were together in the Twenties.

He reached for her hand again, and held on tighter when she tried to pull it away.

"I was compelled, Rebekah," he said. "It's been ninety years, and so much has happened. Give me time."

"I'd wait forever and a day for you, Stefan, if I thought you would come back to me," she said sadly.

Without hesitating, Stefan leaned in and simply brushed his lips against hers, tenderly. It was still too soon for the passion they had known, but it was a start. He had no idea what he was doing, but for now, it felt right. When he pulled back, Rebekah was staring at him in awe, surprised that she'd felt nothing deceitful or hesitant about that kiss, chaste as it was.

"Then wait."

Author's Note #2 : Don't forget to review, I'll love you for it ;) Also, I'd like to write more for these two, so if you have any ideas/requests, don't hesitate ! Love you, M.