"He's My Brother."

Summary: Elena wasn't the only one who lost someone. Defan centric. Tag to 5x23 "Home"

Rating: T for language and imagery

Disclaimer: They belong to Julie Plec and the CW.

A/N: This is my fix it for the season 5 finale. I get that Elena loved Damon and is grief stricken, but I feel that the grief of Stefan overrides all others.

xxxxxXxxxx

"At the temple there is a poem called: "Loss" carved into the stone.

It has three words, but the poet has scratched them out.

You cannot read loss, only feel it."

~ Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

xxxxxXxxxxx

The sky had painted the sunrise in streaks of oranges and reds, the outline of the trees a shadow against the rising brightness. in It had rained hard the previous night leaving the air damp. On a wide porch made of dark cedar wood Caroline sipped coffee slowly, steam rising from the white cup in her grasp. Down the steps of the porch a thick forest lay just past a beaten footpath; birds flitted from the tree branches into the air that still lingered with the scent of smoke.

The old wood of the porch creaked comfortingly under her flatfooted boots, its song discordant and full of memories of a past life when she came here as a kid with her mom and dad for three weeks every year at the end of summer. She used to run barefoot through the wet grass just beyond the cabin, building houses out of sticks and leaves and blowing out dandelions like candles into the wind, just being a regular dirty kid, no worries, no thoughts of fear, or vampires.

The ringing of an axe sliced her memory back to the present. Beyond the small yard and half into the woods beyond, a tall figure in denim and dark gray hacked away at Birch tree that had fallen over during a summer storm. Caroline watched as the tree came apart under Stefan's blows with the axe, the sound rained hard like gunshots, over and over again, wood falling in tattered pieces at his feet in the wet earth below.

Footsteps came from behind Caroline as she kept watch as Stefan attacked the trunk of the tree at its widest depth, splitting a deep trench down the center with a single blow.

Caroline turned at the light sounds of boots not dissimilar to the ones that she wore. "Elena-" Caroline took in the disheveled sight of her friend in the same sweater she had gone to bed in two nights in a row. Elena's eyes were hollow and red, and her hair resembled a bird's nest that had been attacked for its eggs. Caroline's eyes swirled into concern. "Do you want some coffee?"

Elena shrugged off the gesture "No, it's okay."

Elena's voice was heavy and Caroline could tell that she had been crying very recently.

Caroline drew back her own coffee cup as if in an act of solidarity. "How are you?"

"Today's not bad," Elena pulled at her hair like it would somehow style itself from the chaos that it was. When that failed, she dropped her hands and walked closer to Caroline. "As long as I don't think, which is virtually impossible-" she tried to laugh but it just sounded damp and misused. "So I just have my 'not bad' days instead." She hugged her arms over her gray blue sweater, even though the air was warm, shifting her eyes out away from the porch and over to the fallen birch tree and the ringing axe blade.

"Why is Stefan chopping wood?" Elena asked in the way someone did when they came across something dangerously odd. "It's not cold enough for a fire."

"He wanted to," Caroline returned; her gaze moved back over to the figure in the woods who didn't notice he was being watched. Or rather, was most likely pretending not too, because he was the oldest out of all of them now, and his abilities to hear from long distances far exceeded their own.

Elena stared at Caroline like Caroline had gone crazy. "And you let him? Caroline after everything that happened, none of us are exactly in the best frame of mind right now-he shouldn't be hacking a tree into stakes! He should be yelling or crying! He hasn't cried since the night Damon-" Elena paused her breath her next words a whisper into the air. "since Damon died." She felt the tears, just behind her vision, wanting to destroy it. "It's all I've been able to do to keep from falling apart, it's not healthy."

"I know Elena, okay?" Perhaps Caroline's voice was a bit too defensive given that Elena grieved for Damon too, but she didn't let that realization lower her voice any. "But he saw that my dad's woodshed was empty, and he said he wanted to help. I think it gives him something to do besides think." Caroline was just as concerned as Elena at the fact that Stefan was this way. That first night after the Other Side had dissolved, Caroline had held Stefan on that cold bench for only minutes while he cried for the loss of his brother before Jeremy's calling for Bonnie had broken the air and they had listened in the emptiness for the voices of the Bonnie and Damon that would not call back.

They had made their way back to Mystic Falls that same night. Their home had been reduced to nothing but burned, shelled out buildings, the blast traveled all through the town thanks to gas mains that Damon, Jeremey, Matt and Tyler opened up. The smell of smoke was overpowering even for those of them who were vampires, almost gagging Caroline under. But even stronger than the smell of the smoke was the odor of over a hundred burned and charred bodies of Traveler passengers. They were scattered along the streets and in the burned out buildings like dried, dead leaves as they made their way over the rubble that used to be their home. When they came to what was left of the clock tower and Mystic Grill, they came upon the remains of Damon's powder blue Chevelle, scorched down to the metal frame, but even more gruesome than the charred car, was the sight of Damon's body in the driver's seat. He was barely recognizable, skin molted blackish red with charred burns; clothes shredded and melted together with burned flesh. The image had turned Caroline's stomach, Elena had gasped, then cried out Damon's name, Matt and Jeremey turned away in equally hard winces. But Stefan's expression as he gazed at the dead body of his brother was trapped in a shock so complete that he didn't make a single sound, not even to breathe.

Elena had fallen to her knees in hard sobs, but it had become overpowered with the sound of the metal being wrenched apart from what had been the driver's side door as Stefan reached inside the mangled convertible frame to lift Damon's body out of the car, Damon's head listed in dried blood and burned skin against Stefan's shirt.

Elena had gotten a semblance of control of herself and had tried to help Stefan lift Damon out over the rubble, but Stefan had pushed by her hands, not letting her touch his brother, carrying him out of the building's ruins and back out onto the acrid smelling street.

Stefan had walked ahead of them long miles into the woods, until the trees parted into a clearing of dirt and soft grass. It was here that he dug Damon's grave with his bare hands, Caroline had gone on her knees to help him until the hole was as tall as Stefan. She had let dirt had fall out of her hands as Stefan climbed out of the hole and returned in it with a jump. He laid Damon down like he had just fallen asleep, his hand had reached up to the charred skin of Damon's face, Stefan had ghosted a hand over Damon's closed eyes, completely quiet, not crying, letting out only the softest of breaths when he had forced his hand away from Damon's face. He emerged from the hole with Caroline, damp brown earth clinging to his jeans, and had slowly began to bury his brother.

It could have taken minutes for a vampire, but Stefan had done it at a normal human speed, not rejecting the help of Caroline and Matt as they began to help, but not acknowledging it either.

That had been nearly a week ago, as she, Elena and Stefan had found their way to Caroline's father's cabin, the absence of Damon's voice heavy in the living room and at the bar where she had schemed with him into playing party games against Stefan and Elena in what had only been three weeks ago, but now seemed like another lifetime.

That silence had become overbearing intermingled with the sounds of Elena's poor attempts to muffle the sounds of her crying in the bedroom she had claimed, and had chased Caroline out onto the porch to breathe in the rain soaked air.

But the life that they led now, the aftermath of all that blowing up their home encircled, had followed Caroline out in her attempts at solitude, bleeding and demanding to be noticed.

The sound of the axe blows stilled replaced itself with the noise of Stefan gathering its results into a large pile that towered nearly four inches above his head.

Caroline abandoned her coffee cup to a dusty round cement table on the porch and descended the stairs, the damp earth yielding with soft cracks under her boots as she made her way over to the pile of wood wearing her friend's arms and legs.

"Hey."

Caroline heard Elena speak few paces behind her as they both reached Stefan only seconds apart.

"Let us give you a hand-" Elena reached out to Stefan's pile.

"No it's okay, I got it-" Stefan replied in a no avail attempt as Elena reached high up and pulled pieces of wood from the very top of his pile and handed them off to Caroline until the pile lowered and revealed Stefan's face like a wooden curtain.

"Now you got it," Caroline hugged her small pile close to her. "Come on, let's go put these in the shed." She led the way to a footpath that wound in a serpentine fashion through a gently sloping grassy knoll to the side of the house where a squat unpainted honey gold wooden storage shed emerged where there knoll ended.

The doors were built like the ones a barn and Caroline opened the right side of them to reveal a shed half taken up with piles of firewood stacked neatly against the right wall and piles of old junk everywhere else.

Caroline said nothing to the sight of nearly a three months' supply of firewood before her after Stefan had denied its existence. The smell of cedar, birch, and motor oil from the riding mower that sat under a tarp hung like a cloud in the air. A single mullioned window released a slanted shaft of orange sunlight onto the firewood piles like it was about to set them alight. Caroline set her wood on top of these piles and Elena and Stefan laid their firewood next to hers, their movement shaking loose pieces of dried bark from the older pieces of wood in the pile.

Elena turned to Stefan once her hands were free of anything to do but be empty. "How are you Stefan?" Her voice was like processed raw hamburger patty due to the amount of times she had cried over the last week, but she tried to make it sound normal.

"I'm okay," Stefan didn't pause for as second before he replied with this, like his words were a rehearsed speech. "I mean it hasn't been easy, but I'm better than I was when that Traveler in Tyler ripped out my heart." He offered Elena his trademark dry laugh that scattered like the bark to the floor of the shed. He turned so that he was looking at her fully in the face. "How about you? How are you handling all this?"

Elena swallowed a thickness in her throat. "Like you said it hasn't been easy. I have to stop myself from calling Bonnie- or expecting Damon to come up through the woods-" she felt the pain claw its way out of her heart like it was a living thing.

She felt the brushed contact when Stefan laid his palm against the side of her face.

"Listen to me, you'll get through this, okay? I promise."

Elena could nod her tears smudging against his palm. Stefan pulled her close and she reached her arms around his neck, burying her chin into the fabric of his shirt that smelled like sweat and the dampness of the forest.

Caroline dusted off her hands and turned back to the half open doorway where the orange and pinks of the sky had begun to yield to the soft blue of full morning. "How about we go inside and I'll fix us something to eat?" Caroline didn't feel much like eating, nor did she need to outside of human blood now that she was a vampire. But cooking was her something to do, the way wood chopping was Stefan's.

Caroline's voice pulled Stefan and Elena apart slowly, Elena pulling matted wet hair off of her face and tucking it behind her ears.

"You two go ahead," Stefan said in a voice as every bit as soft at the hair Elena was pulling away from her face. "I have to-"

"You don't need to be hunting Stefan," Caroline interrupted. "Just because Markos and the other Travelers' are dead doesn't mean it's safe for us to be out alone, even in the daytime okay? –You need to stay here- I took enough blood bags from the hospital in Fairfax County, you don't have to go out."

"I'll stay, Caroline," Stefan set his hand on Caroline's shoulder which ended her words and transformed them into a raised look up into his hazel eyes. "I just have to do a few things out here first."

The shed they stood was lined in piles that were numerous but weren't messy, nothing warranted as something 'to do.' "Stefan-"

He kissed Caroline softly on the forehead, his hand was warm and calloused against her skin. "I'll be there in a minute."

The kiss was soft and lingering with a sadness that wasn't meant for Caroline to feel, and she pulled away to see that look flicker in his eyes before he masked it and turned back to straighten up a mess that didn't exist.

"We'll be inside, okay?" Elena's voice spoke softly behind Caroline as she watched her friend take one last look at Stefan before walking out the door leaving Caroline to follow and Stefan to not.

xxxxxXxxxx

The cabin echoed as Elena walked through its wooden floors in her boots; the bed she slept thick with an unmade white comforter of fluffed down, white sheets spilled out halfway to the floor. She had slept alone since before Damon- but the queen sized bed had never felt so empty before.

A scattering of her clothes lay in puddles at her feet, next to an overstuffed brown leather suitcase she had dragged out of her dorm room at Whitmore College. Thanks to that fact she had managed to save her belongings from perishing in the fire. Though that fact brought very little comfort to her lately.

Her room had a balcony with a double set of French doors that were closed against the morning, white muslin curtains filtered the sunlight into a soft glow over the wooden walls. A cracked picture of her and Jeremy as kids sat on an unpainted wooden nightstand, next to it lay Damon's battered lapis lazuli ring. Elena walked over to the table and picked up the ring, the metal had been damaged and charred black in some areas from intense heat of the fire, but the damage was minimal, Emily's spell protected the ring from being completely destroyed. The night they had buried Damon, Stefan had laid the ring on her bed and said that Damon would have wanted her to have it.

The ring was bulky in her hand. She sat down on the edge of the bed, tracing the block cursive 'D' under her fingers. The colors of the room blurred together.

"Elena!"

Caroline's voice raised Elena's eyes up from Damon's initials, she wiped at her eyes as Caroline's voice became more urgent.

"Elena!"

"Caroline?" Elena stood up from the bed, the ring still in her grasp and ran out of the bedroom with a hard click of her boots on solid hardwood.

The wooden hallway filled her vision in each direction, then the wooden stairway that she made her way down and back to the first level of the cabin. She reached the bar bordered kitchen where the smell of eggs and bacon intermingled with scent of opened blood bags laid out on the table. The scene was absent of Caroline, so Elena moved past it.

"Caroline!" Elena called out again, moving through the kitchen to an open doorway just off and behind it.

It was the smallest bedroom in the entire cabin, converted from Caroline's father's old study after Caroline started wanting to have so many friends come over that their noise level and capacity couldn't be contained anymore in her bedroom or the living room.

It was the bedroom that Stefan had chosen as soon as they had all agreed to set up temporary camp here, yielding the remaining bedrooms to Elena, Caroline, Matt, Jeremy and Tyler. The latter three were currently out on a scouting mission for any remaining Traveler threats. Their going out alone had been met with protests by the first two plus Stefan, but in the end they had yielded providing that they check in hourly, which so far, they had been doing.

It was in here that Elena finally found her friend. "Caroline?"

Caroline stood just a few steps inside the bedroom. Elena had never been inside it since they all had started staying here; not for any reason of Stefan's, but out of respect for his privacy. A single bed in a metal bedframe was pushed against the wall, the flannel bedspread neat and orderly like it had never been slept in at all. A square window lay completely open to the sunlight.

Sunlight that spilled over the mess that existed in reality over the illusion of the woodshed. On the bed and the single wooden dresser lay piles of objects: dark colored clothing that reeked of smoke, teetering piles of charred leather bound books, boxes covered in soot and ash filled high with the ashy remains of papers, dated on the side in decades in Damon's handwriting.

Elena stepped slowly in the room, taking in each charred and smoke reeked item, Caroline doing the same thing, her expression just as wide eyed, both of them trying to calculate the number of times Stefan had gone out without their knowing to bring Damon's things to this room. Some of the stuff Elena recognized: a copy of a first edition of Catcher in the Rye that Damon had showed her, some of the ledgers that used to sit in the Salvatore Boarding House's second floor hallway. But there were other items: gold tipped fountain pens, a worn football so old its edges were solid black and crumbled, a cat made out of wood aged yellowed in places and made with rough strokes like it was done by someone just learning how to carve. Elena ghosted her hand over the little cat, and pieces of it burnt off to yellowed soot under the pressure. She moved her hand away like she had killed a living creature, and turned to see Caroline's lifting a leather bound journal off of the bed.

Elena opened her mouth in shock, about to proclaim that she thought Stefan had burned all of his journals, until she saw an insignia of golden letters etched at the bottom corner of the brown leather cover. D.S.

"Damon kept a journal?" Elena's voice was both heartbroken at speaking Damon's name out loud and filled with a longing to look at something that Damon wrote in his own hand.

Elena watched as Caroline turned over the first journal page, it felt like her heartbeats could not be contained in her ribs, "Oh god, Caroline what does it say?" Elena pulled at the journal, the pages yellowed and brittle like dry leaves under her hand. "Caroline please, I have to see it-!"

"Elena stop it!" Caroline jerked the journal hard and away before Elena could tear it in half.

Elena's breath came hard and shocked, as Caroline looked down on the yellowed pages and began to read:

"Mama gave me this journal for Christmas, but today is the first time I am writing in it. I wanted to remember that I got a little brother today. He came at night when mama was asleep and she screamed a lot and didn't let me see until morning. He is all squishy and pink, and has no clothes, Mama says his name is gonna be Stefan after her grandfather. I don't know if I really like him yet, but he smelled nice after the maids cleaned up all the sticky stuff off of him.

Caroline stared at Elena for just the briefest of moments, and the look traveled before Caroline flipped to another one of the yellowed pages with a ruffle she started to read again:

"5, January 1852

I am trying to teach Stefan how to carve a pennywhistle. He doesn't have patience for it and sliced open his hand with my knife. Father yelled at me for it, and Stefan told me he was sorry all day for getting me in trouble even when his hand was bleeding bright red. I told him to stop being dumb and let him chose what he wanted to carve. He said he wanted to make a cat like the ones in the barn so Mr. Jenkins gave him an old block of cedar from the woodpile to work on. It doesn't really look like anything but a big mess yet, but it has kept him busy."

Caroline felt her eyes sting at the moment of nostalgia, reading about Stefan and Damon as she had never seen them before, as human children.

"6, April 1863

I've received my papers for the Confederacy this morning. I'm to report to Atlanta in two days' time, and I must leave by sunup if I am to make it on time. Stefan has not left my room all night despite the maid's berating him that he needs to leave me to rest for my journey. But I am glad for the company, for I know it will be a long time before we are to see each other again.

12, November 1863

I have been an enlisted man for nearly eight months. It is gruesome work, and I hear the sounds of soldiers screams and smell their dying blood even when I am asleep, when I am able to even sleep at all. I often times feel like I have fallen through the earth and into Hell as Dante wrote about it. I long for the days when I can come home and be with Stefan again, I miss him more than I hate this war- the pain of it is like a festering wound. The one prayer that I make every day into the smoke filled sky is that I see my little brother again and hope that the letter that I have written for him if I don't will never have to pass his eyes."

The journal entry ended there, and in the folds of the pages was a lose piece of paper, half crumbled to dust, yellowed beyond a century's worth of age. Caroline's fingers ghosted over the pages like she was afraid to touch it and crumble the remaining half of it to powder. When she finally did lower the pads of her fingers over the paper, it was with a movement so deliberately slow that it was like she was swimming in a lake of viscous syrup. She carefully held the folded note- Stefan's name was written in a neat calligraphy hand half hidden away in the yellowed age of the paper. Doing so revealed something else, a folded piece of new white paper, written in the same hand.

Elena gasped. She stared at the writing on the paper, the one written 150 years before she was even born, with hands that she knew now, would never be able to get out of her head, and the one written much, much sooner.

She was not an irrational person, some part of her knew that. The same part that knew that the meaning of both letters to their original recipient far out trumped the meaning that she herself had to read them in her own mind. But the rational part of her died somewhere the same time Damon did, the same moment the dirt of his grave covered her hands, and her nightmares started.

"I get it Elena, okay?" Caroline's voice was sharp despite all that was trying to reign her in knowing that the grief of losing Damon wasn't confined. But she couldn't reign it in forever with the evidence of just how deep that loss actually went. "You loved Damon, and losing him is sharp and painful- and you want Stefan to acknowledge the same hurt your you need something, anything from someone who loved Damon like you, to feel what you're feeling. But he can't, okay? He can't! Because you didn't love Damon the way Stefan did. You lost your boyfriend, but Stefan lost his brother, Elena! His brother that knew him for 165 years is gone! You will never feel the same hurt he does!"

The acuity of the words were like a slap in the face to Elena with barbed wire, it made her take a step back like the words would hurt less if she were further away from Caroline.

Caroline's anger began to deflate like a pinhole in a balloon at the wounded, startled look in Elena's eyes. "I'm sorry," Caroline's voice was laced with heaviness. Elena was one of her closest friends, she was like a sister to her. She didn't want to hurt her; but Stefan was hurting more than any of them and she had to get Elena to see what she already knew to be true, but was too blinded by her own grief to remember. "Elena, I shouldn't have-"

"No, you should." Elena held up her hands and ran them through her hair, and the cold presence of metal made her pull back to realize she was still onto Damon's Daylight Ring. It suddenly felt like she was holding onto a rock. "You're right Care," her eyes shifted over to all the objects in the room. "I've been so caught up," she grabbed at her hair again, and a few tears escaped her eyes despite her trying to keep them in. "I can't compete with all of this-" She turned to a stack of thick cardboard boxes, the topmost box was singed black from the fire, but when she removed the lid, the objects inside remained undamaged from anything except age. "I'm not supposed to."

The first thing that she pulled out was a black and white photograph of Damon in a suit with his arm around Stefan, dressed in an soldier's uniform, each holding onto a shot glass, smiling at the nameless photographer. When she flipped the picture over a single phrase was written in pencil in Damon's handwriting:

'Good Luck Brother'

"When Jeremy died I couldn't handle it, I turned off my emotions, my humanity, just so all that pain wouldn't drown me. And that's exactly what Stefan's doing-"

"But Stefan hasn't turned off his humanity," Caroline argued in a soft voice that was putting pieces together of something that she didn't want to be true, because she had seen Stefan without his humanity, and it was something she never wanted to repeat seeing again.

"What if he's afraid too?"

"What do you mean?" Caroline returned Elena's question with a question.

"The part of him that is still connected to Damon is strongest with his humanity, if he shuts it off, he risks losing Damon all over again." Elena fingered the ring in her hand, like it should have never been there in the first place. "Come on, we have to find him."

The clicking of boots is what Caroline was left to follow through a cabin that was more empty spaces than actual people.

xxxxxXxxx

The sun had finally risen high enough to coat the world in a luminescent yellow, making the forest stand out in sharp greens and earth laden browns. Caroline's coffee cup still lay abandoned on the table as a dark colored insect hung on the rim of the glass contemplating if tasting the concoction was worth drowning in it.

"Stefan!" Elena's footfalls were soft against the grass and curved dirt foot path.

"Elena!" Caroline called after Elena who called after Stefan, following the same path as Elena until the woodshed once again came into view.

The door still stood open to the now midmorning sunlight but was absent of anything but the junk that it contained.

"Stefan?" Elena called out his name even though she saw that he wasn't there.

She and Caroline stepped inside the shed, motes of dust and dirt being swirled upward from the movement of their shoes, but only a fraction of what had existed before, like someone had taken a broom to the concrete and had swept it away.

Caroline roamed her eyes over the shed that had been organized and stacked in such an unnatural way because a woodshed was supposed to be somewhat chaotic. The wood was now piled in perfectly symmetrical and even stacks from floor to ceiling and all of the boxes were pushed against the walls making the shed appear twice as large as it normally did. High above Caroline's head were boxes labeled with her name containing old childhood outdoor toys and fishing baubles her dad had given her that she had never used.

"Stefan?" Elena said Stefan's name again like she was expecting to find him again admits the wood and neatly stacked boxes. The boxes were so numerous inside the little shed that they created a small maze of a hallway that Elena moved into with a cautionary step like something unnatural was hiding just behind one of them.

Elena turned left to where the window streamed in daylight, and at her feet was a neat stack of boxes lined up under an unpainted wooden shop table. All except one, which jutted out just slightly with half of its contents sticking out like it had been examined. She bent down and slid the box out from underneath the table with a swishing sound.

Caroline turned at the noise and saw Elena peering into the contents of the box, before reaching up to grab it in one hand and set it up on the table with a thud. Caroline walked through the maze of boxes and joined Elena in on her inspection. Inside were things Caroline couldn't bear to part with after her father died, old photographs of them at the cabin fishing, Elena, her and Bonnie as little girls laughing at some scary story her dad told them by a blanket tent in the cabin's living room.

Elena unearthed a rectangular box of hammered silver and carved with intricately curved designs. It was heavy in her hands and she lifted its hinged lid to reveal an inside made of faded black velvet, only whatever object the box was designed told hold was absent from it, and in its place was only a few curled scraps of wood chips.

"Oh my god," Caroline's voice was a breathy whisper.

"Caroline, what is it?" Elena turned to her friend, still holding onto the box.

"My mom and I gave my dad a silver pocket knife for his birthday when I was seven-" Caroline stared up at the carved 'Happy Birthday' written in an engravers cursive script at the top of the box. "Elena we never took it out of here after he died."

Elena reached in and plucked up a carved wood shaving in her fingers; it was a rich brown color, and didn't break easily under her fingers, like it had just been carved off. She glanced down at her feet, and when she peaked under the table and saw pieces of the same color of wood shavings at the toes of her boots.

Elena whirled around to stare at the piles of wood behind her. The piles all reached the top of the roof, all except one in the very right pile, creating a barely noticeable gap high up off the ground from where one of the logs was missing.

Caroline's eyes widened when she saw the gap. "Elena-"

Elena pulled out her phone and dialed a speed dial number, the phone rang, and continued to ring before switching into voicemail.

Elena stared at Caroline in fear before uttering a: "Come on!" as both vampires ran out of the shed.

xxxxxXxxxx

The phone vibrated against the cracked tree stump, spinning around in a slow circle like an insect caught in a jar. Stefan reached out with one hand and saw Elena's name light up in a display. He powered the phone all the way off and set it back down on the dead stump before returning his hands to the knife, moving it slowly across the honey colored wood that he held. He carved downward for several deep strokes before he picked up the black labeled liquor bottle behind him, already more than halfway empty, and took a long pull from it.

Birds lofted high in the trees above him, and a breeze cooled from the dew damp grass blew with a trickle into the air. Stefan moved the silver blade down and around the wood in his hands, until the slightest rustle peaked his head up from his task.

His eyes moved across the forest as his ears picked up the sounds of a biped tread moving over the grass as a dark figure emerged through the trees.

"You shouldn't be here."

"Neither should you," Tyler Lockwood's voice held dredges of the cockiness that he had as a hybrid, even though he was now stripped back to a human being, something that seemed almost unnatural after so long away from it.

"Get out of here Tyler," Stefan's voice was caught up in the wind and the air.

"I can't do that man," Tyler defied Stefan's warning and continued to walk over the damp grass. "Caroline called-" Tyler broke off to reach for something near the rock that stood behind him.

At least that's what Stefan thought until Tyler grabbed at the rock itself and turned it around.

It was thick and heavy, and when he turned it around the air and the wind caught itself up in Stefan's throat.

Tyler was holding onto a flat piece of granite, a headstone that bore Damon's name. "Her uncle owns a stone quarry in Fairfax, she got her mom to ask him to make this."

Stefan stared at Damon's name carved in the exact center of the rock. A quiet sound escaped from him, too dry to be a laugh "I guess I'm supposed to thank her." He took another long drink from the bottle.

"She wanted to help," Tyler watched Stefan swallow five more times before he pulled the bottle away from his lips. "She figured that it wasn't something that you'd been willing to do."

"Oh I see," Stefan's voice was honey thick due to the effects of the alcohol. "So she went behind my back and did it any way without my input?" Stefan quietly blew off his own remark. "Typical Caroline, not contemplating doing things to benefit other people besides herself." Stefan raised the bottle again and sipped because the alcohol was now too low to gulp down.

"Look man, I know you're going through a shitty time and you don't really mean that, but I suggest you not talk like that about Caroline again."

Stefan lowered the bottle down from his lips, now completely empty. He set it down on the grass hard and moved in a slow dangerous stride towards Tyler. "You're human now Tyler, so I wouldn't make threats I couldn't keep."

"It's not a threat Stefan," Tyler spoke like he was trying to pacify a bomb from exploding. "I came here to stop you from doing whatever the hell you're thinking about doing with that knife."

Stefan stared at the sharp knife in his hand like he was just now remembering that he was holding it."And just what do you think that is?"

"Why don't you tell us?"

Alaric's voice came from behind Tyler, and behind Alaric walked Caroline and Elena.

Stefan swept his eyes to the now crowd in front of the clearing where Damon's grave was. "Let me guess? This is an intervention-" His smile was loose. "Pretty ironic speech coming from you Ric."

"I don't care if you get drunk Stefan," Alaric said. "I'd even go so far as to say it's more than warranted," he brandished a full bottle of dark colored Yeager in his hand. "How about I replenish? in exchange for what's in your hand."

"You mean this?" Stefan raised the silver knife, the empty liquor bottle met with a smash against the stump as he bent down and retrieved the piece of wood from off the grass.

The wooden log had been half carved down into smooth planes, half a horse's head peaked out from inside the wood like it was emerging from it. Stefan turned his eyes back over to the group in accusation. "Did you honestly think I came out here to whittle my own stake?" Stefan laughed, a fake frail sound like the pages of an aged book being turned over. "C'mon guys even I'm not that emo." Stefan tossed the silver knife over in Caroline's direction, and the blonde caught it wordlessly with two clasped hands. "I just needed a little alone time, thought you'd understand why-thanks man," Stefan took the full bottle of Yeager from Alaric and unscrewed it downing long gulps of the alcohol.

Alaric glanced at the unfinished carving in Stefan's hand. "What is that?" Alaric asked

Stefan pulled away the bottle, letting the alcohol slosh around inside, he held up the half carved chunk of wood. "It's an Appalachian Stallion, or at least it's supposed to be-it's been a long time since I've carved anything but weapons to kill other vampires." Stefan laughed a little too loosely. "Pretty hard to do when I've already had one of these," he wagged the bottle around in his fingers.

"Stefan," Elena took a step towards him.

"Did Damon ever tell you that he liked horses?"

Stefan's words stopped Elena in a confused, stunned silence.

"I think it all started when we visited our grandfather's plantation up in Williamsburg," Stefan talked in the voice of a story teller, calm and low, despite having drunk through a 20 ounce bottle of alcohol standing where he stood. "He was a horse breeder, and Damon spent one entire summer learning how to ride, hard to remember a lot since I was five at the time, but all he talked about afterwards- was wanting his own horse. Our grandfather promised him one when he turned twelve, but then he died, and his land and all his animals were sold to pay off his debts, so I thought I'd make him one, you know out of wood," Stefan shifted the wood to his other hand and held up his palm and pointed at the center of it. "Too bad I'm a vampire cause there used to be this big ass scar from where I sliced my hand trying to make this damn horse for Damon; I told him I was making a pennywhistle, couldn't ruin the surprise. But then our dad got pissed at Damon when he found out he taught me how to use a knife, so and he made sure that was the end of that." he side barred the last remark while swallowing more alcohol.

"Guys, I'm fine, it's a carving," Stefan wagged the horse's head into the air, stared at all the faces staring at him, with disbelieving eyes like he was a caged animal unaware of the wounds that he self-inflicted from repeatedly banging into the bars of his own cell. "Geez, lighten up." He swallowed more of the liquor, and a splash of it coughed its way out of his lungs.

"Stefan, I think you've had enough," Elena said, her voice choked between a demand and fear.

Stefan lowered the bottle from his lips and stared out at her like he was watching a baseball game. "How much is too much?" He swung the bottle back up to his lips and swallowed until only dregs of the bottle remained. "This much?" he tipped the remaining spill of liquor onto the grass below. "What else am I supposed to do?"

"Stefan," Caroline moved towards him with a swish of her boots on the grass.

Stefan held up a hand at Caroline, pointing a finger at her. "No no, see – I'm not asking you-" He moved his eyes over to Elena, and stared her down. "What am I supposed to do, Elena? Damon's dead-"

The sounds of the woods amplified over the silence that slammed itself into them all at the words that came from Stefan's mouth. "What do you want from me? What do you want me to do?, hmm," he stepped over to her in the grass away from the mound of dirt that marred the land. "You want me to write about this in my journal, hold a service- You want me have grief sex with you what?"

"I want you to feel, Stefan." Elena answered him, stepping to him this time. "I want you to feel all this," she swept her gaze around the clearing and the newly dug earth of the grave. "All this hurt, about what happened to Damon, Stefan he was your brother-"

"You want me feel hurt?" Stefan repeated Elena's words in harsh undertones. "Hurt like you do, crying in your room for him every night?" He smashed the empty liquor bottle against the side of his arm. "Hurt like this?" He held up his arm torn into a bloody jagged hole, blood dripped down his arm and pooled onto his hand.

"Stefan, come on man, stop. It-!" Tyler grabbed Stefan's arm.

Stefan jerked back and blurred Tyler into the trunk of a tree with enough force to peel the bark off of it. He held Tyler up by his neck in a choking grasp.

"Stefan stop!" Alaric yelled.

"Or hurt like this?" Stefan squeezed harder and lifted Tyler up into the air, hearing the former hybrid, now very current human gasp and choke for air. "'Hurt like you can't breathe, like everything is breaking apart-" His boot shattered the half carved wooden horse.

"Stefan,"

Alaric called Stefan's name, but it was a far off sound, like he wasn't really addressing him.

"I'm putting this in my journal because I know you're nosy and will find it. I'm too damn drunk to write anything meaningful, but it's not like I have another option at this point, and it's not like my old letter from 1848 is going to cut it-"

Stefan whirled around, releasing Tyler to the ground in a hard fall of choked gasps, Caroline ran to Tyler and helped him up. Tyler pulled and his shirt collar and breathed hard, reaching for air.

Alaric was holding out a piece of crumpled paper scrawled with a pen that had half run out of ink.

Stefan stepped over to Alaric, "what are you doing?"

"I'm at that spot in the woods Stef," Alaric continued to read the letter "-where Ms. Milner's carriage broke down and we stole her horses and raced them over Wickery Bridge before we got caught, except that my horsepower is all under my hood now, and I'm alone, thanks to you and your constant need to be dramatic and die without even asking me if I cared-"

The words Alaric read were the very facet of Damon, snarky and sarcastic, but underneath it all, just sad.

"Well I do, Brother-"

"Stop-" Stefan said in a tight voice.

The word 'brother' spoken by Alaric that held all of Damon's meaning behind it was a rake of needle like claws across Stefan's skin, scraping over the numbness.

"I care Stefan, about you, about all of it-" Alaric didn't listen and continued to read on two pages of blue lined notebook paper splotched with Bourbon stains in a scribbled hand.

"Stop it," Stefan held up his hand like Alaric was about to cross a street that he didn't want him too. The clawing feeling dug deeper, pulling in hard.

"I could never really hate you enough to stop caring about you and who we were before we were this. And I have to bring you back Stefan, because I never stopped caring enough to not love you little brother-"

"Stop!" Stefan scream echoed through the trees and sent birds flying off their branched roosts. He hurled himself at Alaric and snatched the letter out of his hand. He stared down at the words, not being able see them through the stains of his blood that was marred over the writing.

He stared at the paper like it would fly away like an injured bird. His eyes flashed over to Alaric, not accusatory, only filled with a primal hurt that finally had clawed its way deep enough through his skin to burn. "Why are you doing this?"

"Because no one will feel Damon's death like you do Stefan," Alaric said in a soft, pain filled voice, it was almost like the rush of the wind through the trees. "Because you knew him before any of us did, loved him before any of us did."

Stefan felt like he couldn't breathe, like the entire world had liquefied and was rushing at him like a river at its most torrential run. He spun in this chaos, eyes moving over the trees, the sky, the grass.

The clawing broke straight through to his heart and poured his blood everywhere and he screamed a scream that shook the trees. He landed hard on his knees in the soft tilled dirt, the bloodied paper falling out of his hands.

Tears so hot they burned him fell down his face and onto the ground as he grabbed handfuls of earth that Damon was buried under.

"Stefan," Elena dropped to her knees beside him. "Stefan, he loved you," she took one of his hands and place Damon's Daylight Ring inside it. "He loved you-" She closed his hand around the ring and closed her hands around his.

Stefan's hand closed so tightly around the ring Elena thought he would shatter it, but then he bowed his head down over his hands, and sobbed so brokenly was Elena who was shattered instead.

Grief shook and ripped through Stefan with such deep lonely disbelief, what Damon had written echoed and clawed at him. He'd never really hated Damon, he always just wanted to love him, and he only wanted Damon to know that. But now he was gone; he'd never not had a big brother before, and he doesn't want to spend the rest of eternity having this be real.

"Stefan," Elena pulled her arms around his shoulders and rested her head there as his crying shook through her entire body.

He can't do this, he can't do this-please, he can't do this.

"Oh Stefan," Tears fell hard and silent down Caroline's eyes as she dropped next to Stefan and held onto his neck with her hands, resting her head against his. And when she does this Stefan shudderd against her touch and somewhere in that shudder was a shaking cry of his brother's name.

Alaric bowed his head in mourning, as Tyler was unable to move or breathe as the first tear he'd ever shed for Damon Salvatore fell from his face into the dirt of the ground.

xxxxXxxxx

R/R Please.

~Mystic