Disclaimer: I do not own the characters or the Vampire Diaries

Takes place between episodes 17 and 18 of the Vampire Diaries Season 3

Rebekah was going to kill Elena Gilbert. She was going to kill the doppelganger for fooling her again.

Rebekah shrieked her fists ricocheting off the air, she shoved herself off the barrier snarling at Elena. Clenching her nails into her palm the familiar metallic scent of blood filled the air until her skin knitted itself back together. The cool air of the cave embraced her, welcoming her back to the playhouse of her childhood, her eyes flickered across the walls her mind translating the language lost long ago. How could she fall for one of their schemes again?

At least she had company; Stefan stumbled past her to lean against the cave wall by the barrier, crossing his arms and shifting his weight onto one leg he addressed their captors.

"Satisfied she won't go telling Klaus your plan now." Rebekah could smack herself, if only she had not entered the classroom when Elena was unveiling her big top secret plan to kill Klaus she would not be in this predicament.

"What your bloody brilliant plan to kill my brother with a white oak stake that I didn't manage to burn from Wickery Bridge?" Rebekah drawled skirting her fingers over the symbols, "And you staked me and stuffed me in here so I can't run and warn big brother. I have to say Elena your plans are getting better, still utterly pathetic, but better."

"Says the one who is trapped."

"Well, I'm sure your plan didn't include your boyfriend being trapped in here with me." Rebekah traced her fingers over Stefan's shoulders, a feather touch making him shiver, but fail to flinch away.

"She has a point." Stefan refused to look Elena in the eye, focusing instead on Rebekah who stalked the cave like the caged monster she was.

"That's not my fault now is it." Elena whirled to face Bonnie, who licked her lips and went back to studying her Grimoire.

"I can't let Stefan out without freeing Rebekah, I'm sorry."

"It''s alright Bonnie, you guys will have to make the plan work without me." Stefan sighed pushing off the wall to venture deeper into the shadows of the cave: Rebekah steered away from him to perch on a rock jutting out from the cave wall. The rock's dampness seeped into her black jeans, the cave's cool air prickling her skin she rubbed her arms despite not feeling the cold. The hole in her top left by the stake clung to her, the edges still damp with her blood.

She lent head back against the stone wall closing her eyes briefly the energy ebbed out of her, tired of fighting for a family who did not ask for any of this. Pretending to be desperate for love when she only wanted the love of one. Each day he strode further away from her while she stayed rooted to the spot unable to catch up with the new life he'd created. She cracked her eyes open to focus on Stefan, who paced the far edge of the cave, escaping the gaze of his friends he breathed deeply and looked upwards as if the rocky ceiling held the answers.

A rucksack was tossed between them, their gazes meeting over it for a second before Elena's voice chased away the silence and their eyes darted apart. Rebekah heard his intake of breath that matched her own as she turned to face the Doppelganger.

"We have to go now; we'll be back soon." Stefan emerged from the shadows, his lips clenched together,

"Be careful."

"Don't worry, Damon will look after me." Stefan ducked his head and muttered an agreement as the two girls turned to leave, only Bonnie spared a backward glance at the boy whose heart had been sucker-punched. Rebekah bit her lip, she knew exactly what that punch felt like, the feeling of not being enough for the person you love was something she would never wish on anybody.

She glanced at Stefan after their retreating forms had gone out of sight, his blank face stared back at her making her flinch away and let a curtain of blonde hair fall between them to protect her from those bottle orbs. He exhaled pulling a fist full of long white candles from the rucksack and a box of rattling matches, looking up at her through his lashes the traces of a smile dangled from the left corner of his lips.

"You didn't think I'd leave you in total darkness, did you?" She could not bring herself to voice how he had done exactly that, instead, she turned to look at the wall that told her family's history. Painted nails pierced her palms as she fought the tears and once again the cave's musty smell was replaced by a metallic one.

Then hands pried her fists open placing a candle in them before encircling them. Her head tilted back towards him the only barrier between them a twirling flame, casting a flickering glow across his skin reflecting in his sad eyes. Nowadays his eyes always seemed sad, she noticed, they had lost their shine becoming calloused to protect him from the disappointment of the mindless actions of those around him. Too used to having his emotions taken for granted, his ability to love with his entire soul wasted on a girl who would never see him as enough. He squeezed her hands tighter as if trying to mould her fingerprints into the wax she held.

"There was a time you trusted me to look after you." He stood up hands falling to the side and her heart wrenched at the brazen reminder of their history.

"You don't get to say that," Her teeth ground together as she stood, "You're the one who got to move on."

Rebekah shoved past him, ramming her shoulder into his, the shadows quivered with her heavy breaths to calm herself before the tears could fall - he didn't deserve them.

He sighed watching her move around the cave to light the candles, placing them in the nooks and crannies of the walls until they were surrounded by the dim glow.

"Rebekah, what was I supposed to do? I had no idea you and Klaus even existed, how could I wait for something I did not know existed. Yes, Rebekah, I moved on, the world has changed and so have I, I'm a better person now with Elena than I ever was with you." He paused raking a hand through his hair and she wandered to the ledge. Fingertips trailing against the jagged walls, the coolness kept her grounded as his words sunk in. She did not need a reminder of the precious time she'd lost, of how nothing made sense to her anymore as if the laws of the world had been revised. "Elena makes me want to be a better person, makes me see the value in human life-"

"Elena didn't make you see that." Her raised voice rebounded off rocks, "Lexi weaned you off blood and took care of you for all those years, not Elena. If it weren't for her Elena wouldn't have known, it was possible to wean you off the blood."

"You knew Lexi?" He tilted his head to the side to aid him in his new way of looking at her, the previous confrontation forgotten at the mention of his dead friend's name.

"We were friends once, best friends. When she heard you'd reverted to your old ways in Chicago she asked me to keep an eye on you while she sorted out affairs in the old world."

"You never tried to stop me."

"I did once," Her soft voice shook, and she swallowed to try and stop it, "A few weeks after we first met, you asked me to help you and I did. I sat with you for days in your apartment, holding you while you detoxed." Tears welled in her eyes as she remembered how they lay together on his bed, his head smushed into her chest to block out the few light beams that made it around the curtains. She would run her fingers through his matted hair and whispered reassurances fell on deaf ears as he writhed under her touch trying to escape the blood lust's grasp. "You begged me to give you blood, scratched me, slapped me, told me you despised me and wished there were a way to kill me. I didn't let you give in though; I'd spoken with Lexi and she'd told me it was the best thing for you, so I made you keep going," Stefan balanced on his haunches in front of her now, eyes wide as he listened. "One day I had to leave you to get more blood and Nik sneaked in with a woman he'd met outside Gloria's and had you feed on her. I came back to her dismembered body scattered across the apartment and you covered in blood sat in a corner unable to comprehend what happened." A tear dribbled from the corner of her eye recalling how his skin trembled under her touch. Finally, he stopped shaking and she took him to the sink and wiped the blood off, planting a kiss every time she cleaned a bit of skin. She reached out and sketched her thumb across his cheek like she had done 90 years before when wiping away the last spot of blood.

"That never happened," he pushed off the ground and stalked away turning is back to her he rubbed his face with his hands. "Klaus gave me my memories back, so I know that never happened, I would have remembered."

"I thought you had remembered too, until a few weeks after the incident when I asked about something you said during your detox. You had no bloody idea what I was talking about, then Nik let the cat out the bag, he'd compelled you to forget about it, so as not to lose his mate in case you chose the no blood life over him." She finished wiping away her tears as her soul yearned to be back in the golden era. "He didn't give you those memories back when he returned the others."

"Klaus was that scared of losing my friendship?"

"My brother is an insecure bastard at heart." A faint smile crept upon her lips then broke loose into a laugh which infected Stefan until they were both gasping for breath.

"God it was so different back then" He chuckled to the ground as if it were an old friend at the bar, "...everything seemed so simple, we didn't care what anyone thought of us and all that mattered was having fun with you and Nik."

She glided over to him, her trembling fingers reaching to touch his cheek, her touch a feather's caress against his skin. "It can be like that again."

"Rebekah all I did back then was harm innocent people!" He shoved her away watching as she stumbled over the rocks letting herself tumble to the ground with a stifled sob. He lifted his hands to rake through his hair, tugging the strands when his thoughts became too tangled.

"No," the tremble in her voice had vanished, replaced with a sharp undertone as she rose from the ground, "I never let you harm innocents, the people we fed on were not good Stefan. Do you remember how we fed off Lila day after day? I chose her because she went to Gloria's to meet her lover even though she had a husband and four children at home. It angered me how she sought more when she had everything I ever wanted so we fed on her adulterous blood. They were all like that Stefan the people we fed on, Billy Duncan – beat his family, Stacy Dalmolin – ran over another woman with her car and got away with it, Randy Smith – had his way with unwilling women. All of them Stefan! All of them did something... if we were going to be monsters... I was at least going to make sure we had some moral code."

"No... I would remember us doing that...you're just saying this to try to get me back."

"You do remember, you just don't want to accept it. You were the one who picked out Ulysses Hayes after you saw him deflower a girl in an alley, we drank his blood together straight from the vein that night."

"Stop it!" Stefan roared lunging forwards black tendrils dribbling from his deformed eyes fangs glinting in the candlelight.

"Its true Stefan, you just don't want to accept it because if you were capable of compassion then you were capable of loving me."

"It's not true...it's not true..." He muttered pacing the length of the room panting as if he had murdered someone.

"Maybe you still do...love me." The meekness in her voice enticed him forward to her radiant face, watching as a tear caught on her eyelash before it dived down her cheek and plummeted to the floor. Her head fell into her hands suddenly too heavy for her neck to support as all the memories of Chicago swirled in her brain like a thousand voices. She felt the familiar yet foreign weight of his hand on her back and leaned into the warmth spreading through her.

Rebekah raised her head to meet his equally bloodshot eyes, searching them for a sign of the man she knew so long ago, but for her it was only yesterday. "I still love you." Her words so quiet Rebekah barely heard them herself and she ducked her head again unable to meet his stare any longer. "But you only care about your love for Elena now, I get it, you moved on." A chuckle escaped with the words that left a bitter taste in her mouth, the mere mention of the girl who had taken everything from her caused her jaw to clench and nails to dig into the soil.

Stefan chuckled into his breath, hanging his head low as if someone had finally cut the puppet strings off him. Then he rose his head to look at her, and her fingers twitched to rub out the creases in his forehead and tug his bottom lip from his teeth and hold him until all the bad thoughts disappeared.

"You can't possibly blame me for all this, we are both victims of Klaus' sick mind games. He was the one who made me forget. Rebekah, I did not choose to forget about you." He stared at the ground his nose and eyes red, his mouth parted slightly. "For me...you were...are-"

"Stefan?" Elena's cherub voice slashed through the stale air.