Disclaimer: TVD belongs to our CW overlords. Title is from (guess who) Explosions in the Sky.

A/N: Stefan doesn't make it to Matt's truck in time. AU, 'The Departed.' Caroline/Stefan/Damon brotp.

Also, lots of hand-holding.

remember me as a time of day

Caroline reckons the only reason Stefan is managing to stand upright at this moment is because the crooks of her arms are hooked underneath his shoulders, holding his weight. His entire upper body leans on hers and the stench of alcohol that wafts off of him is so strong that she stops breathing just so she doesn't have to smell it.

"You're drunk and you reek," she informs him and she feels him blink into her shoulder, his eyelashes grazing the neckline of her dress..

"Because," he says slowly, "I can't, Caroline. Car. O. Line." He draws out her name. "I can't." His fingers dig into the back of her dress, fisting in the fabric. "Not today."

She walks him backwards towards the couch and drops him on it; he lands with a muffled thud. "Does Damon know you drank his entire liquor cabinet?" she wants to know, grabbing the pair of dress shoes sitting neatly by the fireplace. Stefan shakes his head, the movement heavy and labored.

"Damon," he mumbles, "hasn't been around." He lets his head fall back against the sofa cushions, staring up blankly at the ceiling. "Haven't seen him at all, Care. Not at all." His words are slightly slurred and she doubts there's enough time for him to sober up. She ties his shoelaces with nimble fingers, occasionally yanking too hard; but Stefan is silent.

Caroline pushes her hair out of her face, noting irritably that even after a solid half-hour of straightening, it's already starting to curl. "Of course not," she says under her breath as she ties his shoes. "Because him being present would make actual sense, and God knows how allergic Damon is to that."

Stefan hums, and she takes that as his agreement. She stands and looks down at him, her hands on her hips. "Did you pick out a tie?"

"Nope," he says, popping the 'p' sound and lifting his head slightly. "You'd just change it anyway."

"Stefan…" she groans and he raises an unsteady arm to point at her.

"I told you," he reminds her, eyes unfocused. "I told you this was a bad idea." He lets his arm flop back down heavily beside him. "'S a bad idea and I don't want to."

"Yeah, well I'm telling you that you may think you know self-loathing now, but if you skip out on this—" she takes a deep breath, willing her voice to stay firm, "—just, trust me. You'll hate yourself forever."

He snorts indelicately at her. "Forever," he murmurs, "means nothing to me anymore. Take a good look, Caroline, because this—" he waves exaggeratedly at himself, "is rock bottom." She shakes her head as he sighs loudly and she goes to his room to search for something appropriately somber.

When she comes back, a plain silk gray tie dangling from her fingers, Stefan has moved so that he's lying completely prone on the couch, one leg limply hanging off a cushion. "M'not going," he announces and Caroline grits her teeth.

"So help me, Stefan," she begins threateningly and he interrupts, his voice small and a little broken, "Please don't make me go, Caroline. Please." His hand rubs his forehead and she can see from the rise and fall of his chest that his breathing is uneven.

The tears that she's been fighting off for two days press against the backs of her eyelids and she has to force herself to swallow hard and push forward. "Stefan," she says, voice gentling, "I know. Believe me, I know." She crouches down to her knees next to his head and brushes the hair off his forehead. "But you have to." His mouth tenses around the corners and she bites down hard on the inside of her cheek to keep from succumbing to the despair that's mounting in her chest. "You know you'll regret it if you don't."

"No," he argues weakly, "I won't."

Caroline shakes her head. "I don't believe you," she tells him softly, fingers continuing their fluttering movements across his forehead. "I know how it is, Stefan. You think if you don't go, then it's all just a bad dream and there's still a chance you might wake up. I know. But," her free hand closes around his, "it's still real, and tomorrow, you'll wish you had gone." The only indication he gives that he was listening is the slight tightening of his fingers on hers.

"M'sorry," he says suddenly, green eyes opening and fixing on hers. She blinks in surprise, eyebrows slashing together.

"For what?"

He sits up slowly and she rises slightly to sit next to him on the couch, their hands still joined. "For not going to your father's funeral."

Needle-sharp pain pricks through her heart and she looks away from him because he isn't quite absolved from that. "All the more reason you have to do this," she says quietly, and her hair falls like a curtain between the two of them. He takes the tie from her and, despite his less than sober state, manages to tie a passably neat knot around his throat.

He holds his arms out and gestures. "Approve?" he asks and she stands, smoothing out the bottom of her dress as she glances over at him.

"Very nice," she says, holding her hand out to help him up. "How do you feel?"

He fiddles with the bottom of his tie. "Not ready for this at all," he says and she nods, reaching for his hands and stilling them.

"It'll be over soon," she promises and he shakes his head.

"That's what I'm afraid of," he says.

... ... ... ...

"Explain it to me again," Jeremy says flatly, arms crossed as he stares at the shiny wooden box several feet away from them. Caroline avoids looking at it—avoids thinking about who is inside, what they've lost and how she has no idea if she'll be able to hold Stefan together because she's in danger of crumbling herself.

She's holding Stefan's hand, partly for moral support, but mostly so that when he starts slurring his words together, she can clamp down on the tiny interconnected bones in his fingers to remind him of just exactly where he is and what he's doing (even though she knows he's painfully aware).

Stefan shifts on his feet and in doing so, sways a little; Caroline sees Jeremy's eyes sweep over him with an unreadable expression.

"Rebekah called me," he says slowly, carefully. "She said the only way—she and her brothers could only survive if Alaric were—" Caroline grits her teeth to keep from making a noise of pain when he reflexively squeezes her hand, "—dead. And then she just hung up."

Jeremy stares at him, his eyes rimmed red and a small amount of stubble dotting his face. "And you didn't hear anything—didn't see anything to give you any possible kind of a clue of what her plan was?"

She sees Stefan's jaw clench and she tightens her fingertips against his knuckles, feeling them rub together. He exhales a tiny hiss before saying dully, "If I had, don't you think they would still be here?" He and Jeremy lock eyes and something unspoken passes between them. They both look away.

"If y'all don't mind," Jeremy says quietly, turning so that his back is to them, "I'd appreciate some time alone with my sister."

Caroline's stomach twists and she tugs gently on Stefan's hand, leading him away from the cemetery. He goes with her fairly willingly, for the most part, until they reach her car.

Damon holds out a nearly empty bottle of bourbon to them as he leans against her passenger door. "Drink for our dearly departed, brother?" The remaining few gulps splash around in the bottom of the bottle, throwing shades of gold across their shoes.

Before she can even begin to process what is happening, Stefan has Damon pinned against the hood of her car, completely vamped out. "Where the hell have you been?" he snarls and Damon stares up at him with pure loathing in his eyes. Regaining her senses, Caroline tugs on Stefan's sleeve and whispers urgently, "Stefan, your face—we're in public!"

He doesn't acknowledge her, but his face slides back to normal, his green eyes blazing, and Damon says with a coldness that sends chills down Caroline's spine, "Spare me your sanctimonious loneliness, Stefan. It's bullshit." He pries Stefan's fingers off of his sleeves and Caroline watches helplessly as the two of them throw murderous looks at each other. "You and me, brother—we're done."

"Damon," Caroline whispers, her grip on Stefan tight and the palm of her free hand facing Damon, "what happened was not Stefan's fault." Screw you, Damon Salvatore, for unraveling two days of talking him off a freaking ledge with a single paragraph.

Damon snorts at her but doesn't tear his eyes from Stefan, whose muscles are jumping under her fist. "You were here," he snaps, pushing himself off of her hood. "You were here and you did nothing."

Stefan inhales a shaky breath, and Damon is already walking away. He covers her fist with his hand and says, his eyes fluttering tightly shut, "Don't let go."

So she doesn't.

... ... ... ...

She cleans the boarding house because it still smells like Elena's shampoo, and when she's finished, the harsh scent of bleach burns at her nose. But it's better than expecting to see her best friend around every corner and she sits on the floor in front of the couch, piling her hair messily onto the top of her head. Her own brand of grieving.

"When's the QB's funeral?" Damon wants to know, and Caroline looks up in surprise, eyes narrowing at him as she tries to discern any mocking in his voice. But he only looks blank—not expressionless, she thinks wearily, but like he's a slate wiped completely and tragically clean. He's null and void, a crossed out name.

She clears her throat, her voice suddenly scratchy. "Um—day after tomorrow. His mom couldn't get an earlier flight." She rubs the back of her neck, looking down and Damon sits next to her on the floor, eyes glazed.

"I loved her," he says finally and she nods because she knows. "I loved her, and she told me it would always be Stefan." He fairly spits his brother's name.

Caroline finds her hand grasping his of its own accord and she thinks that all she wants is to be curled up somewhere dark and private because somehow her own mourning ended up on the backburner. "She did love you, Damon," she tells him tiredly, her head dropping back against the sofa seat cushion. "I—I don't know if it was in the way you wanted, but she did love you." He makes a noise of disbelief and she shuts her eyes.

"She loved me as a goddamn friend," he says bitterly and Caroline opens her eyes, turning her head slightly towards him.

"Love is love," she says quietly, her thumb absently rubbing his in long, comforting strokes. "Just because it's not the kind you wanted doesn't make it invalid, you know."

He doesn't say anything and she returns to gazing up at the ceiling because Tyler's face—and the sound of his voice, and the way his arms felt around her—is already starting to fade, the edges blurring. "So are you basically moving in?" he wants to know and she's so thrown by his sudden change in conversation that the tears that had been starting to well in her eyelashes dry.

"Kind of," she says dejectedly, turning her head slightly to face him. "Can't go home—the Council's watching my house." She pauses and adds gently, "And I don't trust Stefan not to do something stupid."

Damon scoffs. "Something tragically romantic, like stand in the sunrise without wearing his ring?"

With Elena's name on his lips. "Yeah. Something like that."

"Why do you think they left you alone this morning?" he asks suddenly and Caroline's forehead scrunches because she hadn't even thought of that through her hazy gauze of pain.

"I don't know." But she has an inkling—one that makes sense in her own mind—that maybe everyone is just tired of burying loved ones. She ticks off the names in her mind: Logan Fell, Vicki Donovan, Bonnie's Grams, Mayor Lockwood, Aimee Bradley, Andie, Jenna, John Gilbert, Chad and Dana in the gym, Alaric, and now Elena and Matt. Her dad—her heart still squeezes painfully. Tyler. One lifetime can't possibly hold this much death this early in the game.

A wall of names, Elena had said. He had a wall of names of the people he killed. But then again, didn't they all?

Which reminds her. "Stefan hates himself, Damon."

"Good," he says flatly, his face stony. "That makes two of us."

Caroline shakes her head. "No, you don't."

"No offense, Barbie," he says, pulling away from her, "but you have no idea what you're talking about." He stops and says, as though from very far away—on a cliff's edge— "He was here but she still died."

Caroline sighs and rubs her forehead. "You're being here wouldn't have changed anything. You know that." He turns red-rimmed eyes towards her and she presses on, "Stefan was here, but it's not his fault." Her hand creeps out and brushes an errant piece of hair out of his eyes, the same way she had done with Stefan earlier in the day. "Just like it's not your fault for not being here."

She doesn't belabor the point and she thinks he appreciates it because he reaches for her hand again. She lets him take it because maybe she loved him once and maybe Elena did too.

... ... ... ...

Tyler doesn't have a funeral because Mayor Lockwood refuses to accept that he's gone, so the night of Matt's, she has her own private wake for him—for all of them, really, but it's Tyler's face she sees in her mind's eye even if it's all their names she says.

Vodka for Elena.

Tequila for Tyler.

Whiskey for Matt.

(And a swallow of something that burns all the way down for Klaus, but nothing more.)

At some point they all run together—Elenatylermatt—and she's sitting cross-legged in the Salvatores' backyard, staring blankly at the black sky above her. It's too cloudy for stars and she says unhappily, "I wish I could wake up."

"Me too," Stefan says from over her right shoulder, and without looking at him, she hands him a glass.

"Does it get any easier?" she wants to know, and she isn't sure which answer will hurt more.

But Stefan shakes his head. "I don't know." He sits next to her and leans back on his elbows, his head tilted up at the sky. "I've never lost anyone like this."

Lost. Like they were a sock missing its mate in the vast confines of the dryer, or a set of keys tossed hurriedly onto the wrong table.

"What about your friend?" she whispers after another gulp of tequila.

Stefan is quiet for a long time. "It doesn't go away," he says finally, finger tracing the outer edges of the glass she had given him. "It always hurts—a constant pain, but you sort of just...get used to it." He lies all the way down on his back and she unsteadily follows suit. "Damon hates me."

She bites her lip. "He needs time."

"I hate me, too."

Her hand finds his and sleep is suddenly threatening. "You need time, too."

... ... ... ...

"In some cultures," Caroline tells Damon, who watches her with hooded, half-open eyes, "they have this holiday called the Ghost Festival." She gingerly places a picture of herself and Elena from their third grade Halloween party into a deep, sturdy bowl. "They burn little paper cutouts of things like clothes, cars, money—so that when the smoke goes up to Heaven, or whatever, the people they love who are—" dead "—gone can have it with them."

"I didn't know you were secretly Singaporean," Damon drawls and she adds a picture of Tyler with his arms around her from the Decade Dance to the bowl.

"Shut up," she says automatically. "It's a nice thought." She picks up the final picture and squints at it. Matt and Tyler—she doesn't know how old they are—comparing gap toothed smiles, and she thinks she might be healing some small amount when her first reaction is a tiny smile of her own. "Do you want to put anything in?"

Instead of answering her, he says sardonically, "You have a weird healing process, Barbie."

"At least I'm trying," she retorts, striking a match and staring at it as it burns nearly down to her fingertips before dropping it into the bowl. The edges of the photographs curl and turn brown before dissolving into ash. She watches the smoke rise and disappear out of the open window nearby.

Damon is suddenly at her elbow, reaching for the Post-Its on the counter and tearing one off. He scribbles something on it and tosses it into the flames before she can ask—or see—what is scrawled on the surface.

She's pretty sure she knows anyway.

... ... ... ...

Stefan follows Damon to Florida—bright and warm, he says; like Elena, Caroline thinks—and she follows Stefan. The three of them stand on the beach, feet slowly sinking into the sand from the pull of the foaming waves.

With the sun beaming down on her face, Caroline thinks that Elena was like morning—hopeful and shiny with possibility and optimism, sunlight in her eyes; that Matt was like the afternoon, breezy and reliable with daytime soaps airing like clockwork. And Tyler—she inhales the salt on the air—Tyler was nighttime, with stars glittering in his dark eyes and infinity stretched out in front of him.

She doesn't know what that makes the rest of them, but out of the corner of her eye, she sees Damon rest a hand on Stefan's shoulder.

Together, she decides. It makes them together.

... ... ... ...

end.

A/N: But really, how did Stefan know what had happened to Matt and Elena? And how did he figure it out quickly enough to be able to rescue them? (Let's be real, he could have yanked Elena's seatbelt and whisked everyone to safety.) I thought drowning took like 3 minutes, tops.

ANYWAY. Review?