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It starts with a visitor.
Or, it starts decades and an ocean of blood ago, but, at the time, Stefan hadn’t known that.
So, when one day, an old colleague of Elena’s father knocks on her door before school, he hadn’t thought anything of it. Other than a vague worry and understanding as Elena teared up while talking to him, reminiscing about Grayson Gilbert’s dedication to helping others.
Stefan had met the man for only a handful of submerged, adrenaline fueled seconds, but from what he knows, the sentiment is more than accurate.
Jenna is out and Jeremy has already left, picked up by one of his friends. It’s a shame, he had thought, that they weren’t here for this, but Elena will no doubt pass everything along.
The guy—Wes, he’d introduced himself as—says all the right things, seems to have genuinely liked Grayson as more than just a coworker. He passes on condolences from others, offers to give Elena—and Jeremy—a tour of the college he works at if she’s interested, and, when Elena tentatively floats the idea that she might like to follow in her dad’s footsteps and become a doctor, seems pleasantly surprised but encouraging.
Stefan, who at this point, is little more than a bystander, loves the idea—it’s good to see Elena figuring out what she wants to do with her life, it means she’s thinking about more than grief, more than the chaos that has been happening recently. Even if there is the creeping realization that their relationship has an expiration date, that it has always had one.
She’s human, after all. And will remain that way. She’s going to get older, go to college, live her life. Stefan may be able to stick around a few more years, but….
Wes gives Elena his number, says a few more words about Grayson, then leaves.
They make it to school on time, and Elena mentions something about talking to a guidance counselor about the best classes to get a start on med school. She seems excited about it.
The only thing that had seemed odd about the encounter, Stefan will remember later, is the way Wes had paused at his name, when Elena introduced them.
After school, when he gets back to the Boarding House, he listens carefully at the door.
No loud music, no screaming, frightened or otherwise. It seems safe enough to enter.
Damon has been—quiet, lately. Ever since the Tomb had opened, since he’d realized what Stefan has known for years.
Katherine never cared about them.
They were only ever a game to her.
When he walks into the den, it is to find his brother perched above the fireplace, leaned back against the wall with a book on his lap that he’s not reading. He’s just… staring off into the distance. Melancholy, Stefan would name the portrait, should anyone dare infringe and paint one.
When Damon notices that he’s still there, watching him—instead of quickly moving on as their unspoken truce has recently dictated—it is near painful to watch him gather up shreds of armor, paste a sneer onto his face. “How was school, little brother? Learn your ABC’s?”
“Got all the way to Q,” Stefan snarks back. Showing concern—care—would only result in Damon taking it for weakness.
His brother tosses the book onto the couch, leaping down in the same graceful motion. “Tell me honestly. Do you get anything out of it?”
Stefan stands his ground, even as Damon draws nearer, circling like he’s looking to pick a fight. “Other than social interaction and not being picked up for truancy? Elena is there.”
Damon let out a near silent noise of amusement. Stefan turns his head just enough to keep him in sight. “Elena is there. Right. How is Elena, by the way?”
It’s a goad, obviously, but Damon’s been sulking or drinking alone or partying like there’s no tomorrow, stumbling back home reeking of perfume, booze, and sex, for the past weeks. It’d probably be good for him to realize the world has kept spinning outside his pain. “She’s doing good. Talked to an old friend of her dad’s today.”
Damon begins to lose interest as soon as it becomes clear Stefan’s not going to give him the fight he wants. He picks his book back up, leafs to a random page. “Trip down memory lane?”
“No,” Stefan says slowly, “looking towards the future, actually. The guy offered to get her a college tour. Early, yeah, but….”
Damon glances at him, rolls his eyes.
He presses on. “She’s thinking about being a doctor, like her dad.”
Damon’s lips twitch into what some people might call a smile. “Cute. Does that make you the nurse?”
It’s Stefan’s turn to roll his eyes. “It’s a good opportunity for her. And it’s linked to some medical charity, so even if she doesn’t end up going to Whitmore, doing work with them will look good on applications.”
Damon—stills. Then almost imperceptibly shakes himself. He sits on the couch, eyes on his book. Dismissively, “That’s nice.”
“Yeah.” Stefan debates leaving him to it, but—he hasn’t been stabbed, thrown out the window, or even threatened. He thinks Damon’s in a good enough mood for him to keep talking. Maybe see if he can figure out some way to keep him from further falling off the rails. “He said they both worked for the same research facility. Augustine—“
“Did he touch you?” Damon demands.
Stefan blinks. Jerks back.
Victim of gravity, Damon’s book hits the ground, Damon himself less than a foot away, nearly nose to nose with him.
“Damon—?” he starts to say, eyes wide. He hadn’t even seen him move.
His brother only grabs him by the shoulders, looks him up and down like—like he’s checking for missing parts.
His brother’s face is ferocious. Stefan would be worried—more worried—but it is the same expression he’d had the time Stefan had stepped on a snake as a boy during a walk. He hadn’t been bitten, but his brother had checked him over anyway, then carried him the whole way home. “Did you eat anything he gave you, drink anything?”
Stefan steps back, yanking himself out of a too-tight grip. Damon lets him, does not follow, but the fire in his eyes does not die, nor even flicker. “No, no—I—what’s going on?”
“Good,” he says shortly. “His name. What is his name?”
He’s not—there is no way he’s about to set his brother looking like this onto some poor human. He does not know what has provoked this, but he suspects it will end only in death. “What are you going to—?”
“Stefano. Antonio. Salvatore.”
“Wes,” Stefan stammers, unable to control his expression. His eyes are wide, posture suddenly straight and hands clasped in front of him. He feels all of six again, caught with ink on his fingers to match the ink on the walls. “Wesley. Maxfield.”
He hadn’t given more than Wes, but there had been an ID card on the bag he’d had slung over a shoulder.
“Good,” Damon says shortly. He gives him one last look over, then, “I will call you in sick from school for the next… three days. Do not—” He sighs. “You won’t listen if I tell you to not leave the house.”
Good to see his brother hasn’t completely lost touch with reality. “Yeah, no.”
Damon points a finger at him, eyebrows knitted together. The frantic energy he’s been exuding is being tamped down in real time, Damon visibly pulling into himself. His face smooths, posture loosens. It does nothing to drive away the fury making his eyes spark. “You will call me if you see him. Or hear from him. Or anyone from Augustine.”
A puzzle piece slots into place. “This is about where he works?”
“Don’t take anything a stranger gives you—actually, don’t take anything anyone gives you.” There is the briefest of hesitations. “Including Elena.”
Stefan nearly scoffs. Maybe his brother has simply moved on from alcohol to harder things. It’s not impossible for vampires to be affected by drugs. Simply more difficult. “Now you think Elena—?”
Damon cuts him off. “Not on purpose.”
When his brother turns to leave, Stefan grabs his arm. Damon lets him. “Damon, what is going on?”
“Nothing,” his brother lies, so blatantly Stefan does actually laugh. “I’ll take care of it.”
When Stefan tries to get any more answers, he only repeats the same. That he will take care of it. To call him if anything happens. To stay away from people, trusted and strangers alike.
When Damon leaves, Stefan tries to follow, but his brother does not take his car, instead heads out into the woods and runs, far quicker than Stefan can keep up with.
The next few days are quiet.
Eerily so.
Damon does not return home, but he does pick up his phone whenever Stefan calls. Even if it had been five times within a span of twenty minutes.
It is that, more than anything that has him so on edge.
It is one thing for his brother to disappear—he’s done that many times before. It is another for him to keep in contact, no matter how annoyed he is once his customary question is out of the way. Is something wrong?
It speaks of worry, no matter the irritated comments that come after Stefan inevitably says no before he hangs up.
Which is worrying in and of itself.
What could have Damon so rattled?
He shares what happened with Elena, who is equally clueless. She hasn’t spoken to Wes since that day, and, when she asked Jenna about the man, her aunt confessed to not knowing many of Grayson’s former colleagues.
Stefan has indeed been called in sick, and misses a good chunk of the school week. Elena stops by to bring him homework and company and news. Mr. Saltzman had asked about him, she tells him. Which is… nice, even if it is making the Damon-born paranoia itch at him. Especially so when he catches the man’s car close to the house. The Boarding House is isolated enough from the rest of town that it would be one hell of a coincidence.
He debates mentioning this to his brother, the next time he calls. Decides against it. Setting Damon on one human is more than enough. He’d thought about calling Wes, with the number he’d left Elena, warning him—except, warning him of what? That a vampire may be out for his blood? If he doesn’t know about the supernatural, then Stefan will sound insane.
If he does know about the supernatural… Then, well, Damon had known of him somehow. It is Elena who carefully floats the idea that Wes may be some sort of vampire hunter, maybe even connected to the town’s secret council.
So, Stefan does nothing.
It eats at him, staying home. On the second day, he makes it as far as Whitmore, but finds nothing there except campus security asking for his student ID, which he does not have. When he tries compulsion, discreetly, it fails. He’s not sure if it is him or if they are on vervain, and does not want to open any veins to find out. He tries Wes’ office, finds it empty. He leaves.
The last day passes slower than the others. He spends it out in the woods, hunting, then at home, catching up on homework. If he finds himself straining his ears, trying to pick up the sounds of his brother’s return, then there is no one around to tell. Elena had offered to stay with him, but Jenna had dinner planned, so Stefan declined. Her spending time with her family is more important than whatever is up with his brother now. Even if company would have been nice, her’s especially.
When the door opens, he jumps to his feet. He’d been in his room upstairs, going through his journals, trying to remember is Damon had ever mentioned the name Augustine before. He hadn’t. But—the door swings closed, there is a muffled curse—maybe now he can get some answers.
Except, when he gets downstairs—
He is suddenly very glad Elena is not here.
“Go get some blood,” Damon orders. Arm around the shoulders of a man already covered in it. “The fridge in the basement.”
Where he keeps the blood bags, Stefan knows.
“Who is—?” the man asks, leaning on Stefan’s brother like he’s all that’s holding him up. His eyes are unfocused.
“Stefan,” Damon says shortly.
“The brother,” the man says, eyes focusing on Stefan’s face. They are dark; he cannot tell if his pupils are uneven. One is bloodshot. There are deep, slow-seeping cuts on his face, temples and cheeks, symmetrical in a way that screams deliberately inflicted. Stefan is not sure what the man sees, but he continues with: “With the stuffed dog. Princess, yeah?”
Sir Princess, Stefan does not correct, because, somehow, the name of the childhood toy he used to pretend to rescue from his brother is less important than the man bleeding in his living room. Instead, he says, “What’s going on?”
Damon doesn’t even look at him. Just carefully sets the man down onto an armchair, without even a quip about getting stains out of the fabric. “Stef. Blood. Now.”
Stefan stands in the doorway a moment longer, but—
“Yeah, okay.”
He leaves with one last glance over his shoulder.
The man is slumped over onto a chair arm, head lolled to the side like he can’t quite keep it up. His brother has knelt beside the chair, on his knees with blood-stained hands in the air, hesitating like he’s unsure whether or not he should touch.
Stefan returns with the blood, which is quickly given to the vampire Damon has brought home. The bag is drained, then the second Stefan has brought, just in case.
After the plastic is thrown onto the floor, he asks, “What’s going on? What’s Augustine? Who is—?”
His brother looks up at him. There is blood misted across his face. Not like he’s been using his teeth to rip out throats, more like he stood too close to a gunshot victim. It makes his eyes seem even more intense. His hair is un-styled and he’s wearing the same clothes he had left in.
There is a wheezing laugh. A few of the cuts on the man’s face have healed, but not all. After two blood bags, they should’ve. “You haven’t told him?”
“No,” Stefan says. “He hasn’t told me anything.”
“Guess it wasn’t that important,” the man says, eyes fixing to Damon. “Just a blip in your life, eh? Easy enough to forget—”
“I never,” Damon snarls, standing so that he looms over the man still in the chair, “forgot you.” The sudden burst of emotion seems to have shocked him, because he steps back, moving so fast he’s blurring between the motions.
The man, who hadn’t so much as flinched during the outburst, studies him for a second, then turns to Stefan and says, “Nice to finally meet you. Lorenzo St. John. My friends call me Enzo, or they would, if I had any.”
Damon does not say a word, but Stefan catches the way his fingers twitch. He’s standing like he’s braced for a blow.
“Nice to meet you,” Stefan echoes. He thinks about asking about Augustine again, but instead offers to run and grab him more blood. The cuts are closing, but so slowly that it’s hard to tell.
It is declined. “No, thank you,” Lorenzo says. Flexing his hands, he looks down consideringly. “I may throw it back up. Seems a waste.”
Alarmed, Stefan can only stare—vampires do not throw up blood. No matter how much they drink. That’s not normal.
“Do you have any more injuries?” Damon interrupts. “Besides the—?” He grimaces.
Lorenzo grins at him, blood in his teeth taking the expression from charming to nightmarish. “Missing organs? It’s possible. I’ll admit to being too distracted by you breaking in to take stock.”
He stands, sways, but does not fall. When Damon reaches out a hand, he stares at it until it drops.
The next thing Stefan knows, his arm is wrist deep in Damon’s chest.
It is only later when he will realize, however quickly the man may have moved to him, his brother, who drinks from the veins of humans, will have seen him coming.
He nearly steps forwards, but Lorenzo flicks a lazy look at him that keeps him in place. Stefan has felt helpless for the last three days, but now it is especially grating.
“This won’t take long,” Lorenzo promises.
Stone-faced, Stefan glares, regretting giving the man blood. He’s not sure what is going on, but they have helped this man and he turns around and does this? “Funny way to say thanks.”
That same bloody smile. “Thanks, mate.”
“Rescuing you didn’t win any brownie points?” Damon asks, sounding strained. Possibly because of the fist wrapped around his heart.
Lorenzo laughs. It is—uncomfortable to hear. It’s closer to pain than amusement, but is made worse because that is there too. “Little late, weren’t you?”
Jaw clenched with pain, Damon tries for a smile. “What’s a couple of decades?”
“Try five of them.” Unblinking, Lorenzo leans in. For a second, Stefan thinks—but no, he just says, lowly, “You left me. Didn’t even have the decency to kill me instead.”
“I—”
“You left me there. To be poked and prodded and cut open for another fifty years. Augustine,” he says to Stefan, though he does not look at him, “was a secret society.”
“Never heard of it before last week,” Stefan bites out.
“Said secret society, didn’t I?”
“Vampire hunters,” he throws out like a dart on a map. All the vervain is in the basement. It will be noticed if he goes for it. The best he can hope for is the man getting distracted and still being weak enough for Stefan to be able to sneak up on him and snap his neck.
“Worse,” Lorenzo says conversationally, as if they are speaking of the weather, as though he is not about to kill Stefan’s brother in front of him. “Scientists. They studied us. Vampires. Wanted to know how we worked. What made us tick. How we could be used to help the human race. Nothing so clean as just killing us. Caught them a few poor, bloodsucking souls. Used them for parts.”
“They captured you,” Stefan does not guess. He may not know what the picture is, but he has enough puzzle pieces to guess.
“I spent years in an underground cell. Tortured and starved,” he says, and Stefan—it is too much to ask for sympathy for the man now, but he remembers when Damon brought him in, dazed and weak, with injuries too severe for blood to heal quickly. “A decade before I met Damon here. Five years he was my fellow prisoner. I thought us friends. More fool I.”
There is always a moment, right before disaster, where time slows. Where he tries to convince himself that, no, the world isn’t so cruel. And he is always proven wrong.
A car goes off a bridge, he can only save one.
Waking up surrounded by bodies and the blood on him is theirs.
A gunshot in a forest at night and his brother does not get up after.
“—got out,” Lorenzo is still speaking and Stefan shoves every useless thought he is having to the back of his mind, to unpack later. His brother had been captured by vampire-dissecting scientists and he never knew, but right now his brother’s life is in imminent danger. “Left me to rot behind him.”
“You want to kill me for it?” Damon asks, too softly. Slowly, he brings up a hand, wraps it around a forearm dripping with his own blood. But he doesn’t squeeze, doesn’t break bones, break free. “Okay.”
Stefan nearly speaks up, opens his mouth, but—
Lorenzo laughs, mean. Dark eyes flash with a rage Stefan has only ever seen reflected in wildfires. “No, no, you don’t get to do this. You don’t get to—”
“It’s fair right?” Damon continues, he steps forwards even, breath hitching as he does. “It’s fine. Rip out my heart.” He sounds like he means it too. “I did it once, to leave you and—“
Lorenzo’s arm flexes. He gasps, falls silent.
“You left me without looking back,” Lorenzo snarls, it made somehow worse by the lack of fangs. His face is wholly human in its anger. His eyes are shiny under the lights. Tears welling, Stefan is surprised to notice.
“I turned it off!” Damon yells back, control gone, eyes sparking. There is no armor now, only naked emotion. “I thought—I was scared! Okay? Is that what you want to hear?”
Captive audience, Stefan can only watch as his brother shouts at the man who can kill him with a firm enough grip.
But Lorenzo doesn’t. Only watches, face unreadable. If not for the single tear rolling down his cheek, he'd seem emotionless.
Damon continues, undaunted by the knowledge, by the dark eyes watching him like an abyss, uncaring and empty, “I was scared and it hurt and I couldn’t find the key! I thought I was going to die there with you and I wanted to and that scared me more than anything! So I turned. It. Off.”
“Flipped your switch,” Lorenzo says slowly. He tips his head to the side, eyes Damon’s panting chest like he can see what’s inside it. He does not withdraw his arm.
“Flipped my switch,” Damon agrees. His eyes are shining in the light and blood begins to run down his face. No. Not blood. Tears, mixing with the blood, streaking down to his chin.
Stefan—tries to remember where the vervain darts are, tries to figure out how distracted Lorenzo is, if he’d notice him slipping away. He can count on one hand the number of times he's seen his brother cry in his entire life. Centuries. And he'd still have fingers left over.
His plan is abandoned in the next moment.
“You want my heart?” Damon asks, so softly it takes effort to hear. “It’s yours.”
And Lorenzo—
Steps back.
Stefan shouts, some wordless noise caught between wait and no but Damon does not drop to the ground, hole in his chest, heart in someone else’s hand.
Stefan yanks him back anyway, away from the man standing there, newly bloody hand hanging by his side, just watching.
Damon lets him, lets him nudge him away, but he stops him before Stefan can get in between them. “Stef,” he says, breathing oddly, because his lungs have a window to them, “it’s okay.”
“You just had that guy's hand in your chest,” Stefan reminds him, but Damon plants his feet and gives him a stubborn look.
“Yeah, well.” Damon lifts a shoulder.
Stefan gives him an incredulous look, dips his eyes down to the hole in his shirt, the one that goes all the way down past skin.
Damon shrugs him off, steps back around him, and says, “You didn’t kill me.”
“It’s no fun,” Lorenzo says, eyebrows slightly furrowed, “if you want me too.”
Damon’s lips twitch into a flicker of a smile. “Waiting for me to be happy to strike? It’s going to take a while.”
The man narrows his eyes for a second, then his face smooths. Pleasantly, he asks, as if he is a perfectly normal houseguest, “You said there was more blood downstairs?”
It is the next day, still dark, before dawn. There are no new bodies, only a quiet, stilted conversation with his brother about Augustine, about Joseph, that had left Stefan near nauseated with guilt, before he overhears Damon and Lorenzo speaking quietly.
The vampire had stayed the night, in one of the guest rooms.
Stefan is making his way down to the kitchen, automatically dodging the stair that creaks, then he catches the sounds of conversation coming from the den and freezes.
“I’m not going to thank you,” Lorenzo’s voice says.
“Enzo, I—“
“But you did come back for me. Eventually. We’re square.”
“I came back because Augustine was sniffing around town,” Damon corrects.
Enzo snorts. He sounds… fondly amused, when he says, “Of course. Wasn’t about me, at all. It was about your brother.”
“I thought you were dead,” Damon only offers, quiet.
“I wished I was, sometimes.”
A long, contemplative silence. “Where are you heading?”
“Not sure yet. A city first. Get my bearings in this new century.”
“It’s a pretty good one. And—I know you’re probably not going to take me up on it, but—you’re welcome here. Anytime.”
There’s a short pause. “Ah. I didn’t tell you.”
“Enzo?”
“You’re coming with me.”
“I—? What?” Damon laughs a little, like he doesn’t think the man is serious.
Entirely so, Enzo says, “You said your heart was mine, yes?”
“Yes,” Damon says, still sounding confused, but no less sincere.
“Hard to keep track of it, too far away. Come with me. I—would appreciate the company and—I missed you.”
“I thought you hated me?”
“That too. But I missed you more.”
Okay, yeah, no.
First he tries to kill Stefan’s brother, now he’s trying to steal him. But before Stefan can burst their little bubble and break up whatever is going on in there, a window shatters.
“What now?” he asks the universe, right before a vampire in clothes straight from the eighteen hundreds tries to rip out his throat.