Note: In this story Stefan and Damon aren't siblings, they just share the same last name. :)

-o-

in wisps of blue and fading aureolin

"There is some kind of sweet innocence in being human – in the nature being able to be both broken and whole, at the same time." - C. Joybell C.

It's the last place she expected to find herself in eight weeks into her surgical internship.

She's Caroline Forbes, for crying out loud – smarter than you since kindergarten, prettier than you since the discovery of dating, and perfect in all the ways you wish you were but will never be since birth. Perennial valedictorian, Ms. Mystic Falls, Prom Queen and Head Cheerleader all in the same year, leadership and character recognition awards by the dozen. One look at her resume and you'd expect the very same thing she expected of herself for the course of her residency at the most prestigious medical institution in Virginia: she'll kill it. After all, that's what she always does.

Except that this time… she didn't. And now her attending surgeon – the one person she needed to prove herself to the most - the renowned cardiothoracic specialist Dr. Katerina Petrova, was furious at her.

"You told him he died? Just like that? You knew he was a religious man, and you didn't think that might be traumatic?"

The patient's name is Castiel. Male, 27, long history of coarctation of the aorta. Open-heart surgery at 15 and 22, balloon dilation at 18 and 20, omental patch at 25 - all performed by Dr. Petrova. They had a close relationship, he being her first solo heart surgery twelve years ago, and every intern in Leventhorpe-Rath Medical Center fought to be on his case when he was admitted two days ago for end-to-end anastomosis to repair the swelling of his aorta. Cas had developed severe allergic reaction to anesthesia, and Dr. Petrova was one of the only five doctors in the Mid Atlantic who could perform aortic valve repair surgery with the patient awake. Luckily for Dr. Forbes, Dr. Petrova had decided that the intern with the highest in service exam scores would be assigned to Cas, and that intern was her.

The case was far from easy - there were a thousand things that could go wrong with open-heart surgery without anesthesia, but at least Cas was optimistic. As Dr. Petrova had briefed Caroline upon her formal assignment, the patient was a religious man who left his life entirely to the will of the Lord, believing that whatever happened to him was part of God's plan, whether the surgery was successful or otherwise. When Caroline told him before the operation that he needn't worry because he was in Dr. Petrova's hands, Cas couldn't help but smile and quip "Through which God's hands work."

Which was why she readily told Cas - after his operation when he woke up and asked what happened because the only thing he could remember was blacking out in the middle of surgery - that he actually flatlined but Dr. Petrova was able to revive him.

"You mean I died?"

"Technically yes. It's a medical miracle, actually - your heart stopped beating for thirty six seconds. But Dr. Petrova was able to bring you back, and so far the tests we've done have returned with great results. You're going to be fine, Cas."

She did exactly as Dr. Pierce had told the interns before; the same things that all medical ethics textbooks advise. Be honest, explain the situation in a simple, concise manner while still making all the important details clear, and emphasize the positive.

How was she supposed to know that the near death experience was going to have a psychosomatic effect on the patient?

"What did you say to him?"

"I told him an honest answer that emphasized the positive. I told him he died but you brought him back."

"You told him he died? Just like that? You knew he was a religious man and you didn't think that might be traumatic?"

"I had no idea he would -"

"Do you know what's happening to the patient right now, Dr. Forbes? He's utterly lost. Everything in his life is based on one fact – that there is a God, and that He has a plan. But now Castiel is saying that during that half a minute when his heart wasn't beating, there was nothing. Now he thinks that maybe there is no God and that everything he has done for his faith his whole life has been pointless. And this psychological trauma is getting in the way of his physical recovery."

"I thought he would see it as a miracle..."

"Well apparently you were wrong. And you better fix it."

Oh, what she would do for the day to have ended then and there, awful as her meeting with Dr. Petrova was. But it didn't, and the afternoon only made things all the more worse. She was so miserable about distressing Cas and pissing off Dr. Pierce and she couldn't even think of anything she could do to make the situation any better… so who was there to cheer her up? Stefan Salvatore, of course.

"Hey, I heard about what happened to Dr. Pierce's patient. You okay?"

"She's going to hate me for the rest of my life. How am I supposed to make Cas feel better, short of proving to him that God exists?"

"Where's the girl whose favourite blood type is 'be positive'? Come on, don't let it eat you up. You've always known what to say to get me out of my rut, and I know you'll know exactly what to tell that patient to get him out of his, too."

"… You should've seen him, Stefan, he was a wreck."

"Think about it later, I'll help you figure something out. But right now, you, miss, need to eat a proper lunch. Leith's, my treat?"

Stefan. Thoughtful, supportive, "You never have to pretend with me" Stefan. They knew each other like the palms of their hands, having been best friends since they met in college eight years ago, and Caroline had heard from more than one person in the past that her friendship with Stefan had made her a better person. And it did – Stefan was kind, selfless and compassionate, and when you were with him you couldn't help but want to be just as good as a person as he was.

She'd fallen in love with him without even realizing it.

"Stefan?"

"Hm?"

"I have something to tell you."

She had wanted to tell him how she felt since their last year in medical school... she was just waiting for the right time. Stefan had always been her rock and she had always been his, but he'd never openly told her anything that hinted he had romantic feelings for her and Caroline was hesitant to tell him how she felt because she knew it would affect their friendship if it turned out that he didn't feel the same way. Since they started their internship, though, Caroline thought that Stefan had been more attentive to and encouraging of her, and she'd started wondering if he was trying to tell her something without saying it in words.

What if Stefan felt the same way about her, but didn't want to make a move because he didn't want to risk their friendship either? Sometimes Caroline wondered if she should just pull Stefan aside and put her feelings out in the open; that way, no matter what happened, she could move on.

But what if -

Screw it, Caroline had thought that day, pausing to put her sub down and look at Stefan right in the eyes. She already had a shitty morning, and really, there was only one thing that could make the rest of her day great: telling Stefan how she felt, if only to end the sleepless nights thinking whether he saw her as more than a friend or not, and hearing him say that he felt the same way.

"Stefan… I like you."

There. She said it. And just like that, the dam broke open.

"I've liked you since we were in med school. When we were in Dr. Gilbert's gross anatomy class and we cracked that cadaver chest open. You took out the heart and you held it in your hands and I suddenly realized that at some point in our friendship you stopped being just my best friend. You were holding my heart too. It was like every moment we've spent together flashed back in my mind and I realized that you've held my heart for a long time; you've had it all this time but I just didn't see until that moment. And for the last twelve months I've wanted nothing more but to tell you about how I feel but I kept on thinking that it might jeopardize our friendship and I didn't want that so I kept it from you. But I don't want to be that girl anymore, Stefan. I don't want to be the girl who keeps on wondering what would happen if she had enough courage to tell the guy she likes about how she feels, and what would happen if he turned out to feel the same way. I want to be the girl who made her life turn out the way she wanted to. And what I really, really want is you."

Big mistake.

Stefan smiled, and Caroline knew that something was awfully wrong when five seconds later he was still smiling at her – a blank, empty look that was all too different from the overjoyed expression his face was supposed to light up into after hearing what she just said.

"Uh… I... um, I'm really touched by what you said..."

... Touched? Why wasn't he saying -

"Caroline... I'm sorry, it's just... I don't see you that way –"

Freeze. Crack. Shatter.

" – but you're my best friend, I value our friendship, and I hope we can still be –"

"Friends? O-of course we can be friends! I just needed to get that off my chest, and now it's off, and…"

She lied. Of course she did. She couldn't even bear to look at him the entire time they walked back to the hospital. Stefan was gracious enough to give her the space she needed and didn't force the small talk, simply nodding at her awkwardly while she mumbled some half-hearted excuse of needing to go attend to some patient the moment they walked back into the doors of Leventhorpe-Rath.

The truth was that she ran all the way to the fourth floor labs with her hands shaking inside her white coat and her heart feeling like it would give out and stop anytime. A rush of hot tears welled in her eyes, blurring her vision as she ran, but she willed herself not to let them fall. She's Caroline Forbes – she's better than this. She's not going to cry over some guy who turned her down - not even when the guy is the only man she has ever loved enough to bare her heart to.

She saw the vending machine and immediately grabbed a bunch of bills from her wallet. Pressed button after button after button, fumbling her way through buying every single chocolate bar the contraption could give out. What was it that Kol Mikaelson, her favourite grad student instructor from college, used to say?

"You know what chocolate is rich in? Serotonin. And you know what serotonin does? It inhibits cellular and neural activity so you perceive less pain when you're hurt."

And that's how she – Caroline Ms. Perfect Forbes, ended up here – sitting alone in the fourth floor fire exit stairwell, surrounded by seventeen freakin' Mars bars which turned out to be two days past their expiration, face buried in her hands, trying to keep herself from breaking down in tears because everything is going horribly wrong and for the first time in her life, she doesn't have any idea what to do.

Don't get it wrong – she knows failure. She's tasted the bitterness of loss and disappointment and frustration and all of that before. But for all that she has failed in the past, she has always known exactly what to do to make things right: study harder, practice more, prepare better. There has never been any goal, no matter how base or grand, that she wasn't able to achieve through industry and sheer determination.

What hurts the most is the fact that this time, she knows that no amount of hard work or persistence can change what has been done.

How do you bring back the faith that someone lost?

How do you make someone love you back when he doesn't?

How do you mask the pain when your source of serotonin is stale?

"Dr. Forbes?"

She freezes at the sound of someone calling her name in the lilting brogue of the British articulation.

No, Caroline, don't cry don't cry don't cry

She takes a deep breath, moving to smooth the stray strands of her hair behind her ear in an attempt to feign a guise of normalcy as she turns to face the man whom she knows is the only person who could have called her name that way. Dr. Lorenzo Julian, senior resident in charge of Dr. Petrova's interns, is standing in front of the stairwell door, an ever striking figure in the brazen air the strapping Brit has always exuded.

"Dr. Julian."

"Dr. Gerard said he saw you come in here with half the vending machine." Enzo remarks, brow rising in amusement at the pile of almost two dozen chocolate bars on the floor beside his charge. "And I'll be bloody damned, he wasn't kidding."

She lets out a short chuckle, which she hopes doesn't sound as strained as it felt, and casts her eyes downward to avoid his forthright gaze. Of course she wasn't going to let her supervising resident see her on the verge of tears like this - just minutes ago she let down every wall of strength and skill she ever built around herself in order to show her heart to the man she loved, and look where that got her. No, she won't let another man see her broken and vulnerable again, thank you very much.

"I just had this really bad craving for Mars bars, you know?"

"'Really bad craving' is a way to put it... In England you'd be called famished for something like this."

"Come on, can't a girl enjoy her Mars bars without stares from her judgey supervising resident?"

"Oh, don't fret Dr. Forbes. I'll gladly leave you to enjoy your beloved confections - I just need the labs for James Barnes. You were supposed to hand them to me fifteen minutes ago?"

Had it been any other day in her life Caroline would have been furious at herself for forgetting about a patient's labs - but today she restrains her disappointment by mocking an expression of regretful surprise. She can't even bring herself to ask how four simple words – Stefan, I like you – made her life this much of a mess.

The perks of having Lorenzo Julian for a boss, she thinks inwardly; a silent and shallow consolation. At least he's brash and aloof enough to remain focused on his duties as her senior resident and not to delve further on the peculiar fact that she was sitting alone in the stairwell with all those Mars bars.

"Sorry, Enzo, I can't believe completely forgot – I'll have the labs in two minutes."

But then... she's wrong. The moment she lifts her eyes to straighten her scrubs before rising to leave and fetch James Barnes's labs, Enzo catches a glimpse of her tear-glossed eyes, and it's enough to make the perpetually smug expression on the British doctor's face slowly softens into one of guarded concern as he begins to walk towards his intern.

"Are you alright?"

There is silence at first.

"Huh. Why wouldn't I be alright?" eventually comes the forcibly chirpy reply.

He doesn't even have to say anything. Enzo simply tilts his head knowingly, and the blonde can do nothing else but let out a defeated sigh. Of course he isn't daft enough to buy her sorry excuse.

"It's just... just pesky unimportant stuff..."

"You'll have to forgive me if I don't believe that perky blonde overachievers get this upset over pesky unimportant stuff then."

"I just need a quick break, that's all."

"Caroline. I'm not even asking you to tell me what it's about. I'm just asking you to stop pretending like you're fine, because really, wallowing in misery is easier and feels much better in the open than in secret."

"No, really Enzo, I'm great. Except that Dr. Petrova hates me because I made her patient think that God doesn't exist, Stefan doesn't like me and I don't even know how I can ever look at him again now, and these Mars bars which are supposed to get me high on serotonin are stale."

The intern immediately stops. Her misted eyes suddenly widen, and then her jaw drops in horror at the realization that she just blurted everything out to her supervising resident.

"Oh God, I –"

To be honest, it felt relieving to finally let it out and stop pretending that she's alright. Having to fake being okay made the hurt twice as painful and she would have given up anything to find herself on top of some Tolkien mountain to scream and cry until it all stopped hurting inside... but to yap it all out to Enzo, who as Dr. Petrova's protégé and resident in charge of interns was the last person she should be moaning her gripes about Dr. Petrova and Stefan, her fellow intern to -

Enzo's lips curl into a puzzled grin, coolly collected and void of any kind of judgment. "Sorry, you lost me at 'I made her patient think that God doesn't exist'."

"I'm sorry..." Caroline replies with a resigned shake of her head, honest to herself and to her resident for the first time that afternoon. "I'm really just having the worst day."

"Right. Here, come with me."

He holds out his hand. Her eyes fix upon the smooth pale plane of his open palm, and then everything that follows is a blur.

Did she take his hand and let him help her to her feet or did she decline his assistance and stand up on her own? Did they walk up the stairs or did they take the elevator? Did they walk side by side, did she hold his hand the whole time, did she follow him on her own as he made his way through the hospital hall? Caroline isn't sure. But the next thing she knows, she's standing beside Dr. Julian in the lobby of the sixth floor private wing of Leventhorpe-Rath.

"See that man over there?" Enzo says, subtly motioning at a rather gaunt-looking man being wheeled by a nurse through the hall. Caroline's eyes follow the patient as the nurse helps him back into his room, noting the patches of darkened skin around his neck and his bandaged right foot.

"…Diabetes Milletus?"

"Type 2, resulting to arterial ulcer. He's going to have an operation tomorrow, after which he's going to have to learn how to walk with just one leg. And that woman –" he continues, gesturing at a young brunette - couldn't have been older than twenty five – lying in her cot, awaiting transportation through the hospital bed elevators, "- she just got diagnosed with Alport syndrome."

The younger doctor swallows. The prognosis means that that the poor girl would need dialysis at least twice a month for the rest of her life… as if the fact that she was certain to lose her hearing before she turned 30 wasn't bad enough.

"And that guy down in 508? A few hours from now he's going to be told that he has Stage IV heart cancer – rhabdomyosarcoma, with metastatic spread to the lung parenchyma. Now his brother will try to sell him on the fact that there's all these new trials that he can get into, but you and I know the truth. He's done. He's got eleven months, if he's lucky. And he's going to feel sick every single day of that year."

He finally turns to her – a firm but honest expression painted on his face.

"So no, Dr. Forbes, I hope you know that whatever you're going through with Dr. Petrova and Dr. Salvatore that you need all those bloody Mars bars to feel better, you're not having the worst day. Not by a long shot."

The throbbing in her chest subsides slightly, pain giving way to both guilt and gratitude as the intern's blue green orbs linger at Room 508. Being told that the man she had feelings for didn't feel the same way for her still hurt her bad... but at the same time, she knows that whatever she's feeling now, being told that you or someone you loved had only one more year to live would hurt a thousand times worse.

Suddenly it felt so shallow to say that she was having the worst day.

He doesn't miss that look in her eyes before she bites her lip and casts her gaze downward.

"I'm sorry – you must think that I'm incredibly self-absorbed." Caroline says quietly.

"No," Enzo replies. He throws his shoulders back in a careless shrug, the ghost of a sincere, understanding smile tinkling on his lips. "Just human."

-o-

By the time Caroline Forbes' shift ends six hours later, virtually nothing has changed in her life. She still doesn't know what to tell Cas to make him feel better, her heart is still broken over the fact that the man she has loved for the last two years doesn't feel the same about her, and the seventeen Mars bars she bought from the fourth floor vending machine are still stale.

The lone but stark difference, though, is that she is finally able to afford the world a small but no less genuine smile as she walks through the hallway towards the sixth floor elevators, headed for home at last.

She makes a quick stop at the nurse's station to look for the raven-haired surgeon whose words had gotten her through this mess of a day. Enzo isn't there, I think he went to see a patient, Belle French tells her, so Caroline just reaches for something in her bag and hands it to the nurse.

"Can you give this to him when he gets back?"

Belle looks curiously at a king-sized Mars bar, expiration date marked eight months from then. Even as she takes the confection she wonders why the intern is leaving a chocolate bar for her resident, but the soft spoken nurse decides against asking the intern what it's about and cheerfully nods.

"Alright."

"Thanks, see you tomorrow."

If she'd stayed a few more minutes Caroline would have seen the oddly conflicted expression that Stefan Salvatore's face creases into when Belle asks him if there's something going on between Dr. Julian and Dr. Forbes. ("This afternoon I saw them walking… they were holding hands. And now she's leaving candy bars for him. Are they seeing each other?"). But by the time Stefan gets to sit down on one of the couches in the lobby to brood about what the nurse just told him, Caroline is already on her way home - beat down to the dumps, but sincerely hopeful.

Today was a mess… she thinks heartbrokenly to herself, tipping her head back against the top rest of her car seat and closing her heavy-lidded eyes for a few moments.

But at least she still had tomorrow.

And maybe tomorrow wouldn't be such a bad day.

-o-

He's done this a thousand times – walk up to the patient's room, deliver an ill-fated diagnosis, walk out thinking that no matter how tragic, this is just how the cycle of life goes – some patients can be saved and some cannot.

The science of medicine prides itself in its objectivity, and until that very moment in his life Dr. Lorenzo Julian did too; but the moment he opens the door of room 508 and that familiar face greets him with a faint but nonetheless smug smile, every last ounce of objectivity in his body disappears, only to be replaced by an agonizing pain that almost chokes the air out of his lungs.

Outside, he does not show it.

Wallowing in misery feels much better in the open than in secret. Get a dose of your own medicine, he thinks to himself, remembering the advise he gave Caroline just hours ago.

"Hey."

Damon Salvatore grins, watching his best friend – brother, really, is the more apt term - take a seat by the foot of his hospital bed. Enzo is doing his best to smile back at him and musters a tired though no less heartening turn of his lips, but the thirty one year old industrialist sees through the facade. He knows by the way Enzo's hands are balled loosely on top of his knees that the doctor is trying to keep his emotions in check, and he can only assume that the reason for this has something to do with the results of the tests that he has been staying in this hospital for for the last three days.

"Enzo."

"Hm?"

"…just tell me the truth."

He knows, Enzo thinks, smile fading into one of sadness. Of course he does. Damon has been his best friend for twenty six years, and the man knows him perhaps better than Enzo knows himself.

The surgeon takes a sharp, soundless breath. "You have Cardiac rhabdomyosarcoma… advance stage heart cancer."

It's as if time stops. He watches pained resignation wash over Damon's face, silent in his own helplessness, and Enzo feels like ripping his own heart out.

In front of him is the boy who brought him to the Salvatore mansion and convinced Giuseppe Salvatore to take him in twenty years ago when Aurelia Julian died and left his son without any other family to go to; the best friend who has been by his side through thick and thin, steadfast and loyal as any brother by blood could be; the man he would do anything and and give up everything for.

Why is he the one person Enzo can't save?

He clenches his fists tigher, praying to God for strength that his voice may not break as he tries to speak again.

"But look, there are all these new trials that I can get you into..."

-o-

A/N:

1. And there you have it folks, my first Carenzo fic. So it's not entirely romantic and the plot isn't even original (haha) but I'm getting there. I had a lot of fun writing this and I'm looking forward to putting original Carenzo ideas I have in mind to writing in the near future :)

2. This fic doesn't mean I'm giving up on Klaroline. I still ship them and I will forever ship them – I'm just side-shipping Carenzo while I'm at it. The next fic I will post is Klaroline, I swear!

3. As always I am erica-dreams-in-colour at tumblr for gifs, rants and other attempts at social relevance. My multi-chapter Klaroline fics are posted here in FFN in my she. dreams. in. colour account, feel free to check them out, links are in my profile page. :)