The Awakening

"Why do you hate me?" He stared at her. For a moment he couldn’t seem to find words. Then he said, "I don’t hate you." 

"You do," said Elena. "I know it’s not… not good manners to say it, but I don’t care. I know I should be grateful to you for saving me tonight, but I don’t care about that, either. I didn’t ask you to save me. I don’t know why you were even in the graveyard in the first place. And I certainly don’t understand why you did it, considering the way you feel about me." 

He was shaking his head, but his voice was soft. "I don’t hate you." 

"From the very beginning, you’ve avoided me as if I were… were some kind of leper. I tried to be friendly to you, and you threw it back in my face. Is that what agentleman does when someone tries to welcome him?" 

He was trying to say something now, but she swept on, heedless. "You’ve snubbed me in public time after time; you’ve humiliated me at school. You wouldn’t be speaking to me now if it hadn’t been a matter of life or death. Is that what it takes to get a word out of you? Does someone have to nearly be murdered? 

"And even now," she continued bitterly, "you don’t want me to get anywhere near you. What’s the matter with you, Stefan Salvatore, that you have to live this way? That you have to build walls against other people to keep them out? That you can’t trust anyone?What’s wrong with you ?" 

He was silent now, his face averted. She took a deep breath and then straightened her shoulders, holding her head up even though her eyes were sore and burning. "And what’s wrong withme ," she added, more quietly, "that you can’t even look at me, but you can let Caroline Forbes fall all over you? I have a right to know that, at least. I won’t ever bother you again, I won’t even talk to you at school, but I want to know the truth before I go. Why do you hate me so much, Stefan?"

Slowly, he turned and raised his head. His eyes were bleak, sightless, and something twisted in Elena at the pain she saw on his face.

His voice was still controlled-but barely. She could hear the effort it cost him to keep it steady.

"Yes," he said, "I think you do have a right to know. Elena." He looked at her then, meeting her eyes directly, and she thought, That bad? What could be as bad as that? "I don’t hate you," he continued, pronouncing each word carefully, distinctly. "I’ve never hated you. But you… remind me of someone." 

Elena was taken aback. Whatever she’d expected, it wasn’t this. "I remind you of someone else you know?" 

"Of someone I knew," he said quietly. "But," he added slowly, as if puzzling something out for himself, "you’re not like her, really. She looked like you, but she was fragile, delicate. Vulnerable. Inside as well as out." 

"And I’m not." 

He made a sound that would have been a laugh if there had been any humor in it. "No. You’re a fighter. You are… yourself." 

Elena was silent for a moment. She could not keep hold of her anger, seeing the pain on his face. "You were very close to her?" 

"Yes." 

"What happened?" 

There was a long pause, so long that Elena thought he wasn’t going to answer her. But at last he said, "She died." 

Elena let out a tremulous breath. The last of her anger folded up and disappeared from under her. "That must have hurt terribly," she said softly, thinking of the white Gilbert headstone among the rye grass. "I’m so sorry." 

He said nothing. His face had closed again, and he seemed to be looking far away at something, something terrible and heartbreaking that only he could see. But there was not just grief in his expression. Through the walls, through all his trembling control, she could see the tortured look of unbearable guilt and loneliness. A look so lost and haunted that she had moved to his side before she knew what she was doing.

"Stefan," she whispered. He didn’t seem to hear her; he seemed to be adrift in his own world of misery.

She could not stop herself from laying a hand on his arm. "Stefan, I know how it can hurt-" 

"You can’t know," he exploded, all his quietness erupting into white rage. He looked down at her hand as if just realizing it was there, as if infuriated at her effrontery in touching him. His green eyes were dilated and dark as he shook her hand off, flinging a hand up to bar her from touching him again- 

-and somehow, instead, he was holding her hand, his fingers tightly interlocked with hers, hanging on for dear life. He looked down at their locked hands in bewilderment. Then, slowly, his gaze moved from their clasping fingers to her face.

"Elena…" he whispered.

And then she saw it, the anguish shattering his gaze, as if he simply couldn’t fight any longer. The defeat as the walls finally crumbled and she saw what was underneath.

And then, helplessly, he bent his head down to her lips.

"Wait-stop here," said Bonnie. "I thought I saw something." 

Matt’s battered Ford slowed, edging toward the side of the road, where brambles and bushes grew thickly. Something white glimmered there, coming toward them.

"Oh, my God," said Meredith. "It’s Vickie Bennett." 

The girl stumbled into the path of the headlights and stood there, wavering, as Matt hit the brakes. Her light-brown hair was tangled and in disarray, and her eyes stared glassily out of a face that was smudged and grimy with dirt. She was wearing only a thin white slip.

"Get her in the car," said Matt. Meredith was already opening the car door. She jumped out and ran up to the dazed girl.