Your Heart Of Flesh
"And had I known but yesterday you'd be no more my own, I'd have cut out your heart of flesh and put in one of stone." -from "Tam Lin"
i.
"You're changing," she says, blue eyes smiling. "You're becoming something wonderful."
He holds his hands up in front of him and examines the pale skin and long fingers. "What was I before?"
She reaches up to put one cold hand on his face, fingers bent to trace his cheek. "You were an awful thing."
ii.
He stands in the shade of the quince trees, avoiding the harsh rays of the sun. He had wanted to use his Power to pull a storm down around them, to let the rainclouds block the harmful light that drained his strength, but Katherine had stopped him. She bade him stand in the shade. "We'll be inside soon enough."
He can see the back of her, her curtain of blonde hair even brighter in the sunlight. She's moving, talking to someone he cannot see.
Her command in his head, and he's moving across the yard to stand next to her in front of the door.
"Stefan," she purrs, gesturing to a teenage girl and her younger companion standing beyond the threshold of the house. "Meet young Margaret and her babysitter, Lisa." She turns to him and puts one hand on his arm, speaking to him in a conspiratorial whisper. "They won't let me in. They say young Margaret's sister told them not to let anyone in."
The babysitter has had enough, and starts to close the door. Katherine's hand shoots out, grabbing the older girl around the throat. "But what young Margaret's sister seems to have forgotten," she says, baring her teeth, "is that we've been here before." Katherine pushes herself in and Stefan follows, closing the heavy door behind them.
Katherine moves her hand from the babysitter's throat, replacing it with her teeth. The girl goes down fast, slumping to the tiled floor in the entryway. Margaret, whom he decides can't be more than ten years old, merely stands there, eyes open wide in shock. Stefan puts one hand on her shoulder, preventing her from moving.
Katherine turns to face him, blood smeared over her mouth. Impulsively, he leans forward to kiss her, her lips warm against his, the taste of blood flavoring their kiss. She pulls away slowly, and smiles before opening her eyes. The girl glares up at them from beneath Stefan's restraining hand.
"I know what you are," the girl says. "I know how to kill you."
Katherine laughs. "The little kitten has claws," she exclaims. "My, how you've grown."
The babysitter's parents come by to check on her, first the father, then the mother two hours later. Stefan kills them both while Margaret screams impotently into Katherine's hand.
"Now, we didn't gag you because you promised not to scream," Katherine admonishes. They've tied the girl to one of the dining room chairs, using the sashes from the curtains for her bonds.
Stefan leaves the bodies slumped in the entryway, one on top of the other. Margaret sobs when he comes back into the room, licking the blood from his lips.
Katherine pulls her hand away and runs the back of it down Margaret's cheek. "Shhh, little kitten," she whispers. "We're not going to kill you. You're going to be a message." She tucks a strand of the girl's hair behind her ear. "We found the note your mother left. We know they went to the airport to pick up your sister and her friends. A whole day alone and they won't be back until late. Mommy must be so proud of her little girl."
The girl bows her head and starts crying harder. Stefan leans against the open doorway.
"Shhh," Katherine whispers again, stroking her hair. "Shhh."
iii.
A tangle of limbs and the moonlight shining on the pale skin of his bare back. In a crypt under an abandoned church, she lets him drink her blood.
Her hair is spread in golden rivers over the ground, the dust and the dirt doing nothing to dull its ethereal beauty. Her hand is in the middle of his back, holding him close, and a gasp of pleasure escapes her lips. He turns his gaze to her face, his green eyes hazy, the pupils wide.
She looks like a figure in a painting; pale skin, blue eyes, her face enraptured. He remembers the crowds that formed outside the gates of his father's house, hundreds of artists begging her to sit for them, begging her to let them see her for ten minutes. And she had laughed, laughed and turned them all away.
But not him. Never him.
He tilts his head back and lets the moonlight wash over his face. Her blood is sweeter than anything he's ever tasted, it races through his veins, Power pulsing after it.
A vision: Florence in the morning, the light of the sun cresting over the horizon; his father standing on the balcony; Katherine turning her head; the weight of his sword in his hand, the burn of metal through his heart, the sting of tears in his eyes-
Katherine's cool hand touches his face, pulling him back. "What is it?" she asks.
He licks the blood from his lips, another thrill of Power running through him. "Nothing."
She pulls him close to her, her teeth at his throat.
iv.
He stands with one arm hanging limply at his side, broken. The wind howls through the trees overhead, the rustling of the leaves something dark and ominous. It seems familiar somehow, though he can't place why. A pause for breath, a single heavy beat of his undead heart, and the other man comes at him again. He turns to the side, a smaller target, his broken arm behind him. A burst of Power from the other man and he's a blur of movement in the last few meters. Stefan swings his good arm and catches him with a backhand to the face, knocking him unconscious.
The blonde girl screams, and then covers her mouth with her hands, as if she wants to force the scream back down. She's drawn his attention. He starts towards her. She's the weaker of the two, easier for him to subdue. He'll drain her, kill the man, and then return to toy with her as he pleases.
She turns and runs, trying to call down the Change, to transform into something faster, but it's a weak tendril of Power that he easily breaks with his own. She stumbles as she runs and turns back to look at him, her face pale in the moonlight. She's lithe and quick, darting in and out between the trees, hardly making a sound as she moves. She stinks of animal blood though, a smell like death and rot that almost makes him gag, and it's an easy thing to trace her winding path through the forest.
But then something starts to mask her scent, another smell that overrides his senses. He bursts from the trees into a clearing, and he can see her suddenly, making her way across a shallow river. The water is up to her thighs, but she still wades slowly across, casting nervous glances back in his direction.
He slows and stops at the river's edge; he can feel the invisible wall holding him back, the threat of pain if he takes another step. She's stopped in the middle now, half-turned to look back at him.
It's amazing, he thinks. She can stand there and not be harmed, her weakness her very protection against him.
She turns around completely and starts to make her way back, her mouth open as if to speak.
He calls down the Change, and lets his falcon wings carry him into the night.
v.
He watches them from the shadows, listening to every word they say. They've left the window open, the man pacing back and forth restlessly, the girl following him, pleading.
"You're changing into something you're not," she says. "You're starting to scare them."
"They should be scared," he says.
"Don't do this," she warns. "Do you think Stefan would want you to do this? Consume enough Power until it consumes you?"
"I need Power to fight him, Elena. He swatted me away like a fly last time, and he would have killed you if it hadn't been for the river."
"If you keep this up, soon you won't be able to cross the river, either."
A grand sweep of his arm. "Do you think I want to do this? Do you? He's already killed at least three people. He's terrorised your sister." A harsh exhale. "Damnit, Elena, he's my brother."
"We should never have let him go." She sounds wistful.
The man stops pacing, a brief pause before beginning again. "We can't change the past. No use crying over it now."
She takes in a breath, a shuddering sob that catches in her throat. "How can you say that?"
He stops pacing again and turns on her, grabbing her by the shoulders. "They're going to kill us, Elena. We have to think about that now, we can't afford to get emotional about this."
She leans against his chest, the fight dying in her. "I can't live seeing him like this, Damon."
He puts his arms around her and lets her sob.
Stefan moves from the solace of the trees to the shaft of light spilling from the open window. He watches them together; she looks enough like Katherine she could be her sister, and if he squints his eyes just right, ignores the straightness of the other man's hair and the slight shortness in height, then he could almost be his twin, his brother. He wants to laugh at that, but it dies in his throat, stillborn.
They begin to kiss, and Stefan watches the way the fingers of the girl's hand curl when their lips meet, the slow movement of the other man's hand over her back.
He wonders if this is what he and Katherine look like embracing one another, touching each other tenderly, sweetly, kissing each other softly.
Then he remembers Katherine is none of those things.
vi.
She doesn't turn around. "What are they doing?"
He doesn't answer her at first, instead he watches the confusion running across the faces of her captives. The blond boy's head is lolling weakly, blood coating the side of his neck and down his shirt front. The red-haired girl is untouched, but bound like the boy, fright widening her eyes.
"Talking," he says, a lie, but she has no way of knowing.
She pulls away from the boy, her hands red with blood.
The girl starts to scream behind her gag, words he cannot understand. But he does understand the sudden flood of Power that pours from her body. It's too much to be hers alone; one of them must have fed her their blood.
The back of Katherine's hand catches her across the face, cutting off her scream and sending her into the cave wall. Her red hair is like a painted cloud, thrown across the rock face by an unsteady hand. But then gravity reasserts itself and she sinks to the floor, long strands of hair dragging across the stone.
Katherine rises to her feet and he can see the mess she's made of the blond-haired boy, blood and sweat and dirt, and the muscles of his neck are visible beneath the translucency of his pale skin.
"He's coming," she says, and he barely manages to turn away to meet her eyes.
"Who?" he asks.
Her eyes slide closed, a happy sigh escaping her lips. "Damon."
vii.
He comes back to himself on the forest floor, the side of his face pressed into the cold, wet earth, the light from the cave bright and blinding in his eyes. He pushes himself up, his hands sliding in the thick mud beneath his palms. He turns away from the light, back to face the darkness of the forest. He can hear heartbeats and smell blood.
A confusion of bodies, limbs and breath and voices, but he can still see her, spread out like a butterfly, dirt and mud tangled in the long strands of her hair and the gauzy folds of her dress.
A stake descending. White ash wood.
He screams when she turns to dust. They turn on him, eyes wide and surprised. His head pounds with a dull ache, and for an eternal moment, he can't remember who he is. He stumbles away like a wounded animal, slipping in the mud before he can get his feet under him. He slips suddenly, and falls. Someone screams his name, but it's not Katherine.
viii.
Voices.
For a moment, he thinks they're speaking German, because for the last three years that's how Katherine woke him every morning: I love you, I love you; Ich liebe dich, Ich liebe dich.
But that only reminds him of Katherine, sweet, beautiful, dark Katherine. He misses her so.
He had learned German to impress her, to show her he wasn't like him, wasn't like . . .
He can't seem to remember who his rival was. But he remembers the nights he had pored over old dusty books trying to change his native Italian into the strange German that had seemed harsh to his ears until he learned of the subtle beauty to be found in its words. He remembers practising on Gudren, Katherine's maidservant, the way her hard eyes had softened when he tried out his broken German on her. They had laughed together in the shadows of the hall and the delight in Katherine's eyes had been well worth the months of struggle. She had smiled and said "He never bothered to learn my language, not like you have."
But who was-
A hand tangles itself in his hair, pulling his head back, and away from those hazy memories. "Little brother," a voice whispers in his ear. "Time to wake up."
He's bound to a chair, facing a window where the moonlight is painting the floor. There's something wrong with his neck, it's cold and sticky, and there's a raw pain there that must be an open wound. He tries to fight back; he opens himself to let the Power flood into him, a purely instinctual reaction, but there's nothing there. He's lost too much blood, he realises, there's nowhere for it to rest. His veins are practically empty and the trickle of Power that does fill him isn't enough, but that hand still yanks his head back, and the bones in his neck crack slightly.
"Awake now?" It's a cold voice, a clinical question.
He grits his teeth, and grimaces, pulling back his lips to reveal teeth stained with his own blood.
The hand lets go, fingers threading through his hair.
Voices again. "I've taken as much as possible. But I'm afraid he's changed too much." A pause. "Katherine's blood always was powerful."
"But we can't leave him like this."
"No, we'll have to kill him."
"Not you Damon."
"I can get Alaric, he's done it before."
"I'm not letting a vampire hunter kill my brother."
A long pause where he's counting his heartbeats and listening to his own uneven breathing. There's a voice inside him demanding blood, insisting he break free and kill and kill and kill until he's been sated. And then there's another voice, one he's never heard before, telling him to give up and sink into the darkness of unconsciousness, into the oblivion that he craves.
The girl, he recognises her voice at least. "Let me say good-bye."
"Elena-"
"No, Damon. You're not going to take this away from me."
Her hand, warm on his cold face. "Stefan?" She's fighting back tears. "I don't know if you can hear me, but I want you to know I don't blame you for any of this." She bites her lip and hesitates slightly before kissing him on the lips, like a schoolgirl with a crush. But her kiss is anything but schoolgirlish, filled with a passion and love that was never in the ones he shared with Katherine. "I love you," she whispers as she pulls away. "More than anything in this world. I love you, I love you."
Another long pause where he can feel his life slowly slipping away from him. He lets his head fall back, his throat exposed in a vulnerable way, but he is beyond caring. Behind him he hears the sound of something being thrown and "I'm not putting a stake through his heart."
Bound and gagged, with Katherine straddling his hips, her hand tracing patterns in the blood slicking his chest. "You always suffered so beautifully, Stefan." She lifts her hand to her mouth and licks her fingers one by one. "Like those saints in the paintings. Remember? Your father's chapel had such wonderful paintings."
With a suddenness that surprises him, the other man is on him, sliding his teeth into the wound on his neck with such familiarity that Stefan knows he's the one that made it in the first place. Someone grabs his clenching hand, forcing it open and gripping it in their own.
He can taste ash in his mouth. The world grows brighter and that doesn't seem right, somehow.
"They left you, Stefan. Let you sacrifice yourself and didn't even bother to try and save you." She smiles, a cruel smile that he doesn't think he'll ever get used to. "But I'll show you how to pay them back. I'll show you how to make them suffer." She kisses him, lips sticky and carmine with his blood. "You're mine again."
It all comes apart, suddenly. He remembers everything. Everything.
"Damon?" he whispers.
His brother stiffens against him, stops drinking, stops breathing, stops moving. Stefan's English fails him so in trembling Italian he asks, "Brother, is that you?" Damon pulls away, and Stefan notices it's his brother's hand that's clutching his so tightly. "I knew it," he whispers. "I'm sorry," and he can't feel his hands anymore, his mouth is dry, like a desert. He's slipping away. "I-"
He hears a scream and Damon's voice yelling something his brain can no longer understand, and then the world fades completely.
ix. (epilogue)
They walk together in the park, hand in hand following the path around the playground. Margaret is playing on the merry-go-round, spinning round and round, crying for Meredith to spin her faster. The sunlight seems too bright for him, but he merely winces and smiles when Elena asks him if everything is okay. "It just takes some getting used to," he says.
"I see," she says, and he knows that she doesn't. She stops in the path and lifts her free hand to shade her eyes against the sun. "Margaret," she calls, "time to go home." While they wait for Margaret, who is patiently waiting for Meredith to slow the merry-go-round down, Elena swings their clasped hands back and forth. "So, what do you think for tonight, wanna go out to a movie? Or maybe out to eat?"
He winces again (he seems to be doing that a lot). "Actually," he begins, "Damon and I have to work out some things." Not that he has to go with Damon, but he feels better with his brother there. The first time he had woken and pinned Elena down to the bed had been enough. He can't control the cravings and he doesn't think he ever will. Not like he could before.
Elena smiles at him and looks down at the dusty path beneath their feet. "I understand," she says. "It's nice that he's helping you."
Suddenly Margaret is running to her sister's side, throwing herself against her. "Did you see how high I jumped? Did you see how fast Meredith spun me?"
"Yes," Elena says, laughing. "Higher and faster than I've ever gone."
Stefan smiles down at the younger girl. The joy disappears from her face and she presses herself deeper into Elena's side. His heart breaks, and when Elena sees him and says "Oh Stefan", it breaks a little more. "It's just going to take a little time," she says.
"I know," he says. And even though he promised he wouldn't, he uses his Power to pull a storm down around them, blocking the sunlight and causing the skies to open and pour rain down on them all.
They run for the car, Elena and Margaret running hand in hand in front of him and Meredith behind him, her breathing calm and even. They pile in, Margaret laughing again at the rain and the way her hair is sticking to her wet face.
Damon is waiting for them when they get back to the boarding house, radiating an anger that Stefan can feel from across the city. Elena only notices it when she sees his face, and Stefan is reminded again of how weak she is, and how terribly changed he's become.
"You gave me your word," Damon says calmly.
"I did," Stefan returns. "And I broke it." He doesn't tell him how they had to take the long way around, how he still can't go over running water. They're dancing around one another, a strange new dance, because the situation has changed and neither of them is sure who is stronger.
Damon clenches his jaw before looking away. "Sunset, the cemetery, meet me in the clearing." And then he walks away, disappearing into the rain.
A crack of thunder booms overhead, and everyone screams and runs inside, laughing at their fear. Stefan stays where he is and the rain comes down harder. He thinks he hears Katherine's voice behind him, 'You're changing', but when he spins around there's no one there.