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"Tell me the Third Thing.."

~Bonnie Bennett

"Vampire Diaries" Episode: "Death and the Maiden"

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The sun burned in full morning where they landed, 500 feet below on a packed gravel grade for trucks gone out of control on the mountain. The gravel had been blown apart like a bomb surrounding two bodies. Stefan was the first thrown awake, coughing the dust and gravel away from his lungs, already aching, something horribly wrong with his throat, it felt corroded, boiled.

"Damon," Stefan's voice was reedy noises and dryness. He flung himself at the still form of his older brother, who was on his back, not 5 feet away from where he was. Damon was still, streaks of blood stained down on his face. "Damon-Hey!" Stefan shook him, and when nothing happened, he could feel panic set in. "Come on man, not now!"

Stefan wished for one moment that he didn't have memories of Damon, because then he wouldn't care about this, about any of it. But it couldn't be turned off anymore, it throbbed through every part of him that connected him to his brother.

Stefan shook Damon harder. "Damon!"

Damon's head listed to one side, but he didn't move after that. Stefan bit through his wrist and shoved the bleeding mass into Damon's mouth, waiting, his mind screaming.

The blood tricked into Damon's mouth, patter, patter, patter.

Eleven patters later, Damon's eyes flew open and he coughed massively, working the cough into a groan.

Stefan fell back with heavy exhausted breath, watching as Damon sat back up, gaping at him.

"Stefan," Damon stared at the state of the road, then the state of himself. He levered himself back up to his feet, coughing out bits of gravel dust with each breath.

Damon turned a look that was pissed and murderous, fully onto Stefan. "Next time wait for me to answer before you in enact your brilliant plan to hurl me off a mountainside!-"

Stefan had propelled himself to his feet during Damon's rant, then slowed his pace down to one deliberate step at a time. He set both his hands on Damon's shoulders, then both his arms around his brother.

Damon's remark fell, like he just did, off a cliff. His arms remained down at his sides until they reciprocated the last few seconds before Stefan pulled away.

"Thanks," Stefan said to his brother. "For-"

"I'm going to stop you there Stef," Damon interrupted. "The whole bromance/oozing sentiment isn't really my style, now that you have your memory back you should know about that-"

Stefan managed a laugh, that dry 'not used to doing it sound', but sounding just like him. "Thank you, Damon."

Damon volleyed back with nothing more than a silent look before casting his eyes up to the higher elevation of the mountain. The pale blue sky of the morning revealed the trees and plants that had just been darkness and shadow up until that moment. He saw the guard rail up two elevation points on the mountain twisted open like a vivisected animal; and also what was left of his powder blue Chevelle, torn apart like a beetle splattered on the roadside.

"I'm not a mechanic, but I'm guessing my car is pretty much useless," He reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out his iPhone. "At least one of us didn't obliterate his phone-" The iPhone screen was cracked in a jagged diagonal and the volume button had been ripped off, but it actuallystill worked despite all of that.

"Who are you calling?" Stefan threw out, the question so seemingly normal it felt weird saying it.

"Reinforcements," Damon hit a speed dial number and waited for the call to connect, the phone only showed one bar, but he figured Karma owned them a shit load. "Unless you want to walk back to Virginia."

"You know she's going to wonder why you didn't call sooner," Stefan returned, even without the return of his memories he would've known who the 'reinforcement' was.

"I was a little busy bailing out Amnesiac Dooshbag You Stefan," Damon returned right back. He had actually tried to call Elena back in Neil's cabin, but the place was so secluded he couldn't get any form of signal. "She'll understand." The call connected.

"Hey there."

Damon said this slowly and with the sarcasm that Stefan finally remembered outside of being just annoying. Stefan could here Elena's returning: 'You said you were going to call when you found Stefan!' blasting through Damon's even without the aid of his enhanced hearing.

"Yeah," Damon said slowly emphasizing each letter of the one syllable word, his eyes raised up to Stefan. "About that-"

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Damon gave the black puddle of blood that stained the road like a lake a wide berth. The Riders dead horses had all vanished, as well as the last remaining Rider, as well as Quetseyah. The black stains were the only indications that any of the last two hours had happened. His car lay on its roof like an overturned bug, pieces of twisted metal and glass everywhere.

It was now nearly nine in the morning, and so far only one semi hand been spotted traveling up the mountain. The rig had stopped at the sight of the overturned car and asked if they needed any help. Damon had compelled the driver to turn around and put out a report on his CV radio about the mountain road being closed.

Stefan stood on the other side of the car, staring at the black stains on the road. "Where did they all go?"

Damon crouched by the pretzeled front door, opening it, breaking the entire door off in the maneuver. "You know my motto, don't question the absence of evil." He threw the door aside like scrap metal, reaching in the car to snag his leather jacket that still hung on what was left of the driver's seat. He stood back up and shook out glass from the folds of the material.

"Here," he tossed the jacket to Stefan. "You look like road kill."

Stefan caught the jacket. "Thanks," He and Damon were around the same height and build so the jacket fit over the shredded remains of his shirt. His jeans were a lost cause, his blood the only thing keeping the scraps of denim on his legs, but he preferred half functioning pants to no pants at all, especially in front Damon. He rubbed at a particularly large stain of blood blooming on his right upper thigh.

"Is Humpty Dumpty putting himself back together again?" Damon attempted a quip, but it sounded more like concern.

The fall from the mountainside had broken Stefan's legs again, but they were healing faster than they had before. They still hurt, but it was a healing kind of pain, not the sharp, death grip acuity of before. "Whatever Neil did back at the cabin, its working."

"Too bad you snapped his neck, we could've made millions on a supernatural cure-all." Damon returned. He stepped back around the black stain of blood, the tip of his boot hitting the pavement by the stain, and a huge chunk of asphalt crumbed to dust, creating a pothole 3 feet around in diameter and almost twice as deep. "How is it that you're not doing that?"

"I don't know," Stefan answered. "And since I'm alive, more-or-less, I'm not going to question it." He came around the now, crater, walking the same foot path as Damon and stood beside his brother.

"Guess you're going to file that away for later journal scribbling's, along with how pissed Quetsiyah is going to be at you for giving her the bad kind of hickey," Damon patted Stefan on the shoulder. "Don't worry, Stef, I got your back."

"She tried to kill you too Damon," Stefan reminded.

"Yeah because I was trying to help you Stefan," Damon returned. "She's vindictive and judgey about 2,000 years' worth of crap she wasn't even around to see."

"She's been on the Other Side for the last two centuries, she's had a lot of time to scheme," Stefan threw back.

"As if we didn't have enough to deal with," Damon bit back with snark. "We had to add your Psychotic Super Fan to the list."

"You know nothing actually happened between me and her," Stefan insisted. "At least nothing that wasn't all just a one sided mantra in her head."

"You've got your memories back Brother, which means you should remember that you overshare." Damon turned his eyes over to the stretch of road that led up from the mountain, watching.

"Why'd you do it?"

Damon tracked his brother's voice back up to his brother. "Do what?"

"Come after me," Stefan replied, sticking his hands into the pockets of Damon's jacket. The weather was actually starting to warm up from the rising sun, but not by much because it was November and they were 1000 feet above sea level, and with as many injuries as he had sustained, Stefan was grateful for the extra covering. "I mean I wasn't exactly subtle about wanting you out of my life-"

"Let's not do the whole 'reunited at last speech' Stefan," Damon insisted. "It's all too cliché."

"My memories are back like you say Damon," Stefan returned. "So I know that you like to use sarcasm and one liners as avoidance tactics-"

"Kind of like the way brooding eyebrows and hair grooming are your avoidance tactics," Damon shot back.

"Why'd you save me?" Stefan finally asked the question flat out, a chilly wind gusted by the car, traveling up both of them and out into the open air.

"Why wouldn't I?" Damon retaliated, the last word, biting, hard, and full of something that dulled the anger in his voice. "You've been a memory wiped dick for the last few weeks, but I wasn't just going to let you die in a fiery crash." Damon took a moment for pause, looking to the road again for just a moment, then back where he was supposed to look. "I already let you die over and over again for three months in a safe – I figured I owed you."

The look in Stefan's eyes intensified. He still felt the confinement of the metal box, the water entering his lungs, the agony of it repeating in a compendium of absolute physical pain. It left him wanting his memories to not be there anymore, if it meant that he couldn't remember that.

"It didn't matter that we agreed on not seeing each other for 60 year increments-" A moment for Damon to sigh, but absent of one came and went. "The point is, you're still my brother Stefan," Damon locked eyes with him. "I should've noticed something was wrong – I should've been the one to find you."

The guilt that Damon felt for basically leaving his little brother to drown for three months, and the longing Stefan for not wanting to have come out of the ordeal alone blew past each other in the silence that kept them from being spoken.

The sound of an engine rumbled upwards from the road, a familiar engine to Damon's ears, Stefan's too.

Damon and Stefan turned and watched as Elena's red Mini Cooper crested the curve in the road. The car came to a stop a few feet in front of the wreckage of Damon's car.

Elena threw the car into park and ran out at an inhuman speed. "Stefan!"

Caroline climbed out of the passenger seat, and was two seconds behind Elena. Damon had told them both over the phone about Stefan's memory returning, so, while both girls looked shocked, it was for other, more obvious reasons.

Elena threw her arms around Stefan, at the same time Damon drew a breath to stop what he wanted to say because he saw the way Stefan's face lost, for just a second, the haunted look in his eyes.

"Ease up Elena," Damon told his girlfriend. "Internal injuries."

At Damon's words Elena pulled back from Stefan, "Oh God," Elena held him at arm's length, taking in all blood staining his clothes, noticing the way he wore Damon's jacket "Stefan-"

"What happened to him?" This question came from Caroline, directed at Damon. Her blonde hair was the same color as the edge of the sky painted in the light of the morning sun, and her green eyes stared at him.

"A better question might be what didn't happen to him," Damon insisted.

Caroline cocked her head at Damon, looked half ready to kill him, and half ready to perform some sort of first aid on Stefan that she didn't know.

Before Stefan could utter a counter to Damon's response, Elena glanced behind her and finally caught sight of the overturned burned out husk of Damon's Chevelle.

"What happened?" Elena dircted the question at both of them, eyes still locked on the car. "It looks like the car was thrown over the mountain," she whipped her head back to face them.

"Not the car," Damon returned.

Elena's eyes widened. "What are you-?" Her eyes went wider as she started connecting the blood stained clothes, the burned out car, the holes in the guard rail. "Are you saying that you," Elena turned from Damon to Stefan. "That both of you were thrown off the mountain-"

"Jumped," Damon corrected. "More like a skydive really," He glanced past Elena to his brother who glanced back at him. "Ask Stefan."

"Wait," Caroline interjected, her eyes as wide as Elena's. "You both jumped off a mountain?" She stared at Stefan and Damon like they had gone mad during the time they'd been away.

"I was thrown off, "Damon insisted, like he was correcting the wrong answer on a test. "To clear up that technicality, but its not like dying by Tessa and her evil minions was a better option."

Caroline looked both baffled and horrified. "Tessa tried to kill you?" She looked down over the hole in the guard rail at the very smooth, very hard rock hundreds of feet below. "How far did you fall?"

"Were you not listening to anything Caroline?" Stefan cut in, his voice hostile. "We didn't do it for kicks," Stefan returned. "Quetsiyah was three seconds away from killing us out of spite for ruining her plans, would you preferred that we just laid down for it?"

"No, Stefan, of course not-"Caroline sounded horrified that Stefan would even suggest something like that, "It's just," she raised her arms like she wanted to release something to fly from her hands, then lowered them just as quickly. "We were worried, about you especially. Damon went to find you and neither of you were answering your phones, and now you're both bleeding like something ran you over and tried to burn you alive-" Caroline looked to Damon for support.

"Let's derail the morbidity pity train for the sake of recent events shall we?" Damon insisted, giving her none, because as much as he was beginning to understand Caroline Forbes, he didn't want to hear her talk about what happened so clinically, not when it was this recent.

Caroline drew in a breath, licking her lips, looking the same way she did when she was an angry cheerleader back in high school, only this the emotions ran much deeper."Quetsiyah wiped Stefan's memories away Damon, she tried to kill him, and you! You could at least act upset about it-"

"Enough Caroline," Damon cut in, stepping around a crack that spider webbed from black hole in the road, pieces of asphalt crumbling like dust at his feet. "Just because I'm not weeping like a depressed teenager in front of Guiding Light doesn't mean that I'm emotionless about this, so back off-"

"Why?" Caroline wasn't trying to be hostile, she was just upset, and scared. She'd become close friends with Stefan recently, even through his amnesia. And the thought of Damon, his own brother, being so indifferent to what had just happened, wasn't sitting well with her. "So you can pull a Damon move and lock your emotions down in cold storage?"

"He said that's back off Caroline!" Stefan stepped right up to Caroline, glaring at her, not coldly, but with a harshness born from something she couldn't understand because she wasn't there. He folded his hands over each other and pointed them at her with each word "Just, Shut. Up."

The blonde Vampire's mouth closed at the anger in Stefan's voice, swallowing the words that would never see fruition in shocked silence.

"I get it," Stefan breathed out audibly, like dry leaves being scraped across the ground. "You hate my brother, I know what that's like. I spent those first few days when I was freed from the safe hating him, because I needed him to show up when that door opened, I needed him to not forget about me, but then I forgot about him-but being angry's never going to make things even Caroline It's never going to be restitution for what you think Damon did, or for Quetseyiah trying to kill Damon right in front of me because she knew that no amount of hate could ever take away how that felt."

The intensity of the looks from Caroline and Elena burned through Stefan like the morning sun breaking the barrier spell of his Daylight Ring; he turned back to the rubble of Damon's car because that feeling was blinding.

Damon watched his brother, feeling something tug in him, the same tug he felt when he found out that Stefan had been locked up and thrown into a quarry, when he had been lit up on fire on the roadside, had screamed his name in what Damon thought was last time he would see his brother. Something so deep it could swallow the entire mountain they were standing on and still leave room to drown in.

Damon stepped over to Caroline, stopping a half foot in front of her, but not retaliating with the anger than he was known for. Instead, he side stepped over to Elena.

Elena's brows creased when she saw the expression on his face. "Damon?" His name was a million questions wanting to ask themselves all at once.

Damon cupped her face in his hands, kissing her, not passionately, but long, with a warm breath, like he was drawing strength because his had gone somewhere in the night.

"Damon-?" Elena's question became softer after she felt what she did in his kiss. She grasped his hands on her neck. "Talk to me, please-"

Damon pulled away, watching her dark eyes, letting the crease of his thumb slide away from her face.

"I'm sorry-"

Stefan turned at the utterance of those words.

In 165 years Damon only apologized for a handful of things, things that were his fault alone, things that were the result of the times they lived in – But every reason, one like this.

Damon moved past Elena slowly over to Stefan. "Hey-" His hands went on each of his younger brother's shoulders, squeezing both of them in place of the hug that Stefan would've given had it been him.

It was a gesture that Damon hadn't done in such a long time that Stefan half thought he was hallucinating again. But Damon's grip was solid, even with the audience he knew Damon would not have preferred.

"Let it go Brother."

There was no curtained parlor, no bourbon, no drowning, it wasn't even the same words Stefan had hallucinated over and over again while he died a thousand times over. It had been replaced by the reality of the night, the mountainside, the reality of his brother.

Stefan nodded, unable to talk, still remembering things that would haunt his nightmares for a very, very, long time, torn between not wanting to remember anything again, but at the same time, wanting to because it still counted.

Damon watched Stefan's expression go somewhere else. "I know-" He exhaled everything that came after that, Stefan watching him with the understanding.

Damon released his grip on Stefan and watched as moved past him towards Elena's Mini Cooper, and after a moment, followed just a few steps behind.

Elena shared a glance with Caroline, their voices gone to silence as they watched.

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END

This ending was a long time coming, the story created itself, from itself, if that makes sense. It started as one idea, but took me down an entirely different path, winding, creepy, and longer than I anticipated (though I love that part).

And the ending was hard because I had to feel it out, not make it too sappy, or about the external parts of the brothers, but about the brothers, about the reality of a connection that is older than anything else.

I placed the part from 5x07 about Damon buying Stefan his motorcycle because I thought that was pretty awesome.

Thanks for reading.

Mystic