#annemy

She’s had several lifetimes’ worth of experience doing her make-up, to the point where she can convincingly make herself pass for sixteen or seventeen, maybe even eighteen on a good day, but it only partly remedies the problem.

Anna had died five days short of her fifteenth birthday, and there isn’t a single day when she isn’t reminded of it.

The worst thing is the frequent need to relocate. A vampire turned at the age of 25 has an immense advantage in that respect, easily able to masquerade as a twenty-year-old and living comfortably for a whole decade or more before people start wondering. Anna can barely stay in any one place for more than a couple of years.

Anna has never heard of a vampire physically younger than herself making it past his or her fiftieth birthday. Part of the reason being the aforementioned fact - a twelve-year-old vampire is many times likelier to be found out than an adult. Another part is the high rate of suicide as the increasingly older baby vampires find less and less common ground between themselves and their reflection in the mirror.

Still, she has persevered.

She is small, and she is weak - far weaker than her years should’ve made her. The one thing she has on her fellow undead is the speed. She can outrun anyone and anything. Her few friends use to joke that she could hide in a shower with three other people.

But, yes... She hates her mother.

She despises her for the fact that when she was turned, Pearl had been so afraid of hurting and killing her child that she didn’t dare to wait changing Anna as well. Just a little self control, and she’d had a slightly more normal life. A life that now stretches over half a millenium. 

She despises her for always treating her like a child, being overbearingly dominant and condescending towards her well past her hundredth, and two hundredth, and three hundredth birthday.

But Annabelle hasn’t seen her mother in almost 150 years. Pearl has missed her four hundredth and five hundredth celebration and despite all her grievances, Anna still misses her dearly.

Time heals all wounds.

And that’s  why she is back in Mystic Falls at last, back to try anything and everything to get her back.

She is clad in a punk rock leather jacket with Martens boots and blue jeans, a worn Ramones t-shirt hugging her petite figure tightly, heavy on the mascara and a few “adjustments” that might actually let her order a drink without compelling it, on the way to the Mystic Grill, when the door opens and a couple exits.

The girl is stunningly pretty, young - not as young as you, she thinks bitterly - and blonde, blue eyes and an infectious smile, but it is the boy that catches her attention.

Dark blonde hair and a face as if lifted right from a greek statue.

It’s been too long.

Elena and Bonnie are standing in the corner by the cafeteria, so he makes his way over there, tapping his girlfriend on the shoulder.

“Hey.”

Bonnie excuses herself, clearly not too comfortable with the company of the undead. Not that he can really blame her, vampires and witches generally only cause trouble for each other, and besides, his words aren’t for her.

Elena turns to him, a slightly worried look on her face.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch. I've had a lot to deal with.”

Like dumping the charred remains of my brother way across state lines... Like selling the Camaro... Like getting back on a reasonable diet... Like talking to Zach and trying to convince him that I’m not crazy, even though by his standards I probably am... Like trying  to figure out what hell my business really is with you.

“Oh. So... that’s been taken care of?” She almost looks angry.

“Yes.”

Caroline makes her way over, looking at him expectingly.

Wow, she’s pretty.

“Stefan...? Where’s Damon? He has some serious apologizing to do.” She sounds chipper enough, but there is an undertone to her voice that is... strange?

I must’ve been too busy obsessing over my dead love’s copycat to notice earlier.

“I...” He coughes. “He’s gone, Caroline.”

She looks confused. “Gone? When’s he coming back?”

“Never. He’s not coming back.”

She doesn’t answer. She looks stunned.

“I’m sorry.” He turns around and leaves, not bothering to listen in on their chat as he makes it through the hallway to math class.

The second time he sees Caroline for the day is at lunch break. He’s brought a thermos filled with 0 negative mixed with cocoa, drinking directly from it. For some reason neither Elena or Bonnie is around, and she tentatively makes her way to his table.

“Hi.”

“Hi again, Caroline. What’s up?”

“It’s just... weird, you know? Why would he just leave like that? I know things haven’t exactly been the best, but...” She rolls her eyes.

Stefan clears his throat, staring up at her since she hasn’t taken a seat. For some reason, she always seems a bit nervous on the few occasions she’s alone with him.

“Listen, Caroline... This is a good thing.”

She sighs. “I know that.” She still looks unconvinced.

It might be prudent to find out how deep that interest in his dead brother really runs. Wouldn’t be good if she kept nosing around.

“I have to get home after school, but maybe we can talk about it later?” He shoots her a pleasant smile.

She meets his gaze, an undeterminable look in her eyes. “Sure... When?”

“The grill, around six o’clock?”

“Ok, thanks!” She beams at him. “Oh, and... enjoy your cocoa.”

It’s not until she’s left that it hits him. How could he be so stupid?

Damon’s been compelling her all these weeks, but Damon’s dead.

Today, I turned my humanity off, but I didn’t.

Today, I killed my brother, but I didn’t.

What I have not done is to fake my way out of an impossible situation, but rather to embrace it, meet it head on, do what needs to be done, and face the consequences. 

What I have done is to reject my human values.

Lexi was a good friend, the best, but in a sense, I might thank Damon for killing her for me. Lexi helped me, and God knows I needed help during those dark times, but she did it in all the wrong ways.

The twelve-step program. Draining me out. Torturing me for years and years. Doing anything to stuff away that part of me.

I can’t live as a half-person and that was what she thrust upon me. I was thankful for her help but only because it enabled me to reconnect to the young boy before I was turned, an echo of the past.

This is not who I am and it is not who I will ever be again.

I needed help to accept and come to terms with my existence. I needed help to marvel at the beauty of who I am. 

Damon is dead, but he is still with me. Flakes of his burning corpse got into my nostrils. I am not Damon and I never will be, but part of me has to accept him being a far healthier creature in his own rights than I ever was.

I am pure.

I killed the rabid dog but I will treasure his essence.”

“Hi, Stefan!” His tentative smile mirrors her own but it doesn’t seem to be all there, never reaching his eyes. She stands uncertain in the doorway, looking up at the man she’s already, subconsciously, sure is the love of her life, wondering where this is headed.

“Won’t you come inside?” Stefan steps aside and makes an inviting gesture.

“Sure. Whoa, what happened here?” There’s a huge black burn mark on the floor in the living room, and it looks recent.

“Damon happened.” Stefan chuckles.

“Oh... How... Where is he?”

“He’s in the basement, but he’s not taking visitors.”

“Did you manage to lock him up?” Elena asks, incredulous.

“In a manner of speaking. He didn’t offer a lot of resistance.”

Something is wrong, she can feel it in the marrow of her bones, and even if she’s afraid to ask, she does it anyway. “What happened?”

“I killed him,” Stefan states, matter-of-factly, merely a glimpse of emotion on his face. “Then I burned him. You know, funeral, heathen style.”

“Oh my God!” She gasps, hands over her face. “Lexi...?”

“The straw that broke the camel’s back. I thought you’d be happy?”

“Well... yeah... no... Yeah, I guess, in a sense, but he was your brother! You must feel terrible.” That last sentence carries a lot of hope with it.

“I have to admit, I’m a bit sad. On a few, rare occasions, he made a fantastic drinking buddy. Still... It had to be done. Damon never stops. Now I've stopped him forever.” He does look sad, true, but there is also a distance in his voice and his expression, so very far from how he used to be.

“Alright... so... This is a lot to take in. I’m sorry, Stefan. I’ll just need some space.”

“Take all the time you need.”

With that, she turns away and leaves.

As she walks away from the Salvatore mansion, Stefan stares at her through the window.

What did I see in her?

And it’s obvious, really. The girl who reminded him of Katherine. The girl he thought could be Katherine, only without all the scars and the baggage. 

But that was what made her so thrilling in the first place.

The fantasy girl for the vampire who wanted to be a Real Boy, only he doesn’t want it anymore.

She’s weak.

Still, she intrigues him. It wouldn’t do to chase her away. There might be more to learn from her, and besides, she might be almost as fun in bed as the real thing.

“Relax”, Stefan says, “it’s just Damon. Besides, it’s nothing a nice carpet won’t be able to cover. Though I guess we have to do something about the smell.”

Zach stares down at the smoldering carcass with pure horror. “But... why...?”

“Shouldn’t that be rather obvious? He was becoming a liability.”

“Well, hasn’t he been that for his entire life? Why now?” Zach looks utterly perplexed.

“Before, he was just being your average liability. By killing Lexi, he made me angry.” Stefan sighs and goes off on a tangent, “How I hate digging graves... Maybe we can just dump him somewhere?”

“Killing my wife and unborn child wasn’t enough to make you angry?!” Zach’s voice is agitated and tense, as he is starting to realize that the proceedings of the day might have taken a deeper toll on his favorite uncle than he’d expected.

“Of course not.” Stefan twists his head to look at him, steel in his eyes. “You’re human. Never forget that.”

He turns towards the corpse, the flames finally having died out, and covers it with a blanket.

“Give me a hand here.”

As they help each other carry Damon’s body down to the basement, Stefan suddely asks,

“Zachariah... Have I or have I not made Mystic Falls a safer place today?”

“I guess you have.”

That’s what had lead up to this moment, Damon shoved against the wall, the stake in Stefan’s hand firmly implanted in his chest, dangerously close to center.

“You missed”. It’s a mix between a chuckle and a whisper, the older brother clearly in extreme discomfort.

“No, I didn’t.” Stefan pauses and looks Damon straight in the eye.

“I wanted it to hurt.” With no hesitation, he twists the stake and drives it straight through the heart.

In his final few seconds, the look on Damon’s face is shock and astonishment, slowly giving way to sadness. A single tear finds his way down his graying cheek.

“Brother…?”

Then he is gone, just a colorless hump on the floor, void of the life, the hate, the infinitely twisted plots and schemes and all that made his brother his.

Stefan does realize, on some level, that his brother never really hated him. Not really. He wouldn’t have had to see that last tear on his face to know that was true. But he had crossed a line, and he had forced Stefan to cross one of his own in return.

His eyes wander to the bourbon on the table beside him. Damon’s favorite. Surely worth a couple grand a bottle these days. He sighs, opens it up and pours it over Damon’s corpse, finds a match and lights the fire.

It’s stupid and he guesses the burn marks will never go away, but the situation calls for something symbolic.

As the flames rise higher and in the middle of the nauseating smoke, he feels his humanity burn away. It’s nothing like the normal “turning of the switch.” He realizes those were a coward’s actions. A way to get away from everything that hurt, to brainwash yourself from everything making life enjoyable.

He lets it all go. The sympathy for those lesser than himself. The shame for being what he really is. All the twisted, conflicting morals he has stacked on top of each other in his mind over his 162 years on this Earth.

It was probably no coincidence how he spent this morning reading “Also Sprach Zarathustra.”