𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐃𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐇𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐓𝐨 𝐇𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐅𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐌𝐞

- - -
❝Remember to let her into your heart,
Then you can start to make it better❞

Hey Jude
~The Beatles
- - -

The crowd suddenly seemed to be too thick to pass through. Everyone was half-drunk or on the way there, falling into Kat as she pushed herself towards the exit - where Damon led the police deputies with an incapacitated Lexi.

Kat's eyes had zeroed in on the empty syringe in Damon's hand the very moment she had noticed Lexi falling limp against him across the room. Even with superspeed, Kat could do nothing but to try and run towards her, but not before Sheriff Liz's officers had already hauled Stefan's friend outside.

Kat heard Stefan and Elena's shuffling behind her right before she pushed the dirty back door of the Grill. Outside, cold breeze wafted her way, and with that, the awful sound of flesh slashing. She could see a shiny black back leaning into a tuft of blonde hair, and with a thud - Lexi Branson fell to the ground with a wooden stake through her heart. Stefan pulled himself past Kat. She locked her arms around his chest, pulling him behind the corner against her; Elena held onto him.

He struggled at first, trying to leave Kat's protective grip to the sounds of Lexi's last breaths wheezing out of her, but she couldn't let that happen. There was no way to prove that Stefan wouldn't end up the same that very second. Stefan finally gave in, falling flat against the brick wall in the shadows. His chest shook with sobs, sound barely escaping him against his palm pressing his mouth.

They heard the deputies leave with Lexi's body, which is the moment Stefan broke free of his shock to pounce out of the shadows.

"Stefan don't-" Elena hung onto him stronger, pulling him back with a cry. She tried to hold him down from murdering his own brother.

However, Kat did not have such discriminations.

Anger was boiling deep in her like every vein in her body was on fire. The person who had known Stefan the longest - his best friend - had died right in front of her eyes at the hands of Damon Salvatore. If only she hadn't left Lexi's side, she would be alive right now. Nothing would have changed and Stefan would still have been happy on the one day that was his.

Running to the street, she found Damon walking back inside. She pulled him behind into the alley with a snarl. She smashed him to the brick wall, her hand like a vice grip taking the life out of him. He struggled, but meekly.

With the wide look of horror on Damon's face, Kat felt a swell of sick pleasure. She was stronger than him, and she might as well use it to do something good for this world. Damon kept banging his palms against her shoulders, trying to push her away as she held him tighter. It felt so right to be in control, like this was her - the avenging angel who eliminated the wrong souls off Earth.

"Give me one reason to not kill you Damon." she whispered to him, her voice shaking with power. "Give me one reason to not snap your body in half right this moment. You killed Lexi, you're killing Stefan everyday just by breathing the same air as him. Why shouldn't I change that right now?"

Damon looked at her eyes, his blood running colder at the flash of golden he saw in them. She didn't seem like the Kat he saw, she was different - more powerful than him and scarier.

"I... did- this... for him."

Kat gave a wistful laugh at his struggle, "You mean you're making his life living hell on purpose? Look at you Damon, all you do for him is make his life hell." She held him up higher, his legs hanging and swinging to get her off him.

"This isn-n't you!"

He repeated it again and again until the yellow flash in her eyes dimmed and her grip loosening. Something clicked in place, like a switch snapping the light open, and she let go of Damon almost immediately. He fell to the wet concrete in a sputter of coughs, leaving Kat to reel from the after-effect of what she was about to do.

Was she going to... kill a person?

Be it human or vampire, how was she really willing to do that? And eager even? Stefan just lost his best friend, Kat should be with him - holding him together. Why was she here!

She left Damon behind in the dust, bolting desperately until she saw Stefan. She heard the panic in his voice, saw the tears in his eyes. Elena, in front of him, was sobbing as they fought about something.

"-he killed Lexi, and what's next, you?! Wherever I go, Damon spills blood and this ends tonight."

Elena ran closer to him, "No Stefan! You can't kill your brother be-"

"He killed Lexi!" was Stefan's answering outburst.

Kat came in front of him, tears of her own. "You can't kill Damon because it won't feel any better Stefan."

"He ma-"

"He makes it hell for you everywhere you go, I know. He killed Lexi, who did nothing to him. I know. But killing him is just going to make you feel worse, guilty and monstrous. Leave him, don't do this."

She didn't tell him about how she herself was ready to wipe Damon's existence off the face of this planet.

But before she could, Stefan was nowhere in sight.

He threw over a chair with the loudest scream he could muster. It was strangled, loud, but it didn't make him feel any better. Whoever said guilt was a calm sorrow that settled in your gut was wrong. Guilt was anything but calm - it was a monster that tore up your veins, clenching your heart in its hands until you refused to feel anything.

Guilt was his catastrophe, and he wanted to be wrecked.

"No no no no!" he brought his fist to the wall with all the force he could muster. It crumbled beneath his knuckles, but it was like nothing changed in him. The anger stayed, the guilt stayed and his skin healed. He punched again, the same thing happened. Wasn't he even allowed to let himself bleed? He huddled down to the cold floor, letting his tears drop down with a heave. His fangs pushed out with a snarl, his eyes going red. He couldn't stop the monster inside him, it was so difficult to reign it in. This was who he was - a man who left blood in his wake and killed every soul he loved. He was at war with his guilt - he wouldn't let it go, and it wouldn't hold him close.

"Stefan?"

He froze at the meek voice coming from the other side of his closed door. It was Kat. He could recognize that voice even in his sleep. He heard her holding breath, knocking against the wood as if she couldn't bring herself to be louder. At the very whisper from a merely human girl, Stefan was able to breathe again.

"Stefan I know-" she sniffled, "I know you're in there. And I know everything seems magnified. Just... Please let me in. Don't blame yourself."

He pressed his eyes shut, willing for his fangs to go back. He won't be a monster in front of her. He was more than that, he was human. He was supposed to be human damn it!

He hadn't realized when it happened, but Kat was in front of him when he looked up. kneeling before him, she looked into his eyes with tears of her own. It was an angel's gaze against a demon's.

"No," Stefan gasped. He turned his head away from her, grunting harder to suppress his vampiric instincts. "Get away from me, go!"

Her soft hands laced around his wrist, making a sob tear it's way out of him. She pulled him back to face her. Her eyes were wide, tears teetering at the rim. They reminded Stefan of the green earth after a storm - wrecked but beautiful in it's misery.

The first time she had seen him with his monster bared, was the night of the game. She didn't find it monstrous anymore. She saw the smiles that the fangs overtook, the tears that the red eyes masked.

"You don't have to hide from me..." she told him.

She brought her fingers against the black veins running to his eyes, wiping his tears with the pads of her thumbs. She was as gentle as a mother, choosing to see the beauty in the most broken parts of a boy who had nothing holding him together but his grief and past.

"She's dead because of me."

"No Stefan... She might be dead, but she won't leave you unless you let go."

"Everybody dies around me Vivi! Lexi is dead. Because of me!"

She hugged him close to her, letting him sob into her shoulder. Her hair was a curtain to his grief - letting no one see him vulnerable other than herself.

"Shh..." she rocked him, "Nothing is okay, but it will be when you decide. Let it all out Stefan."

It was pitch dark, the odd hours after midnight and before sunrise - when the whole town was asleep as Kat jumped out of the hole she had dug. Flashlights shone around her as cast a look at Stefan.

He was expressionless, standing at the edge of the hole. He was dressed in a suit, one of Lexi's favorites as he remembered. Elena was right beside him in a black dress, hand around his shoulder to hold him up. He couldn't tear his eyes off the coffin that stood in front of them. Everything looked macabre under the old lantern flame that hung from the far away lamp-post of the Mystic Falls cemetery.

"Stefan," Kat whispered. It was time - they couldn't keep the coffin up much longer.

Shakily, he nodded. He teetered forward, taking one side of the smooth wooden coffin like it held his life. Kat took the other side, leading them to in front of the depression. They were both strong enough to let Lexi down by themselves.

That didn't mean that their hearts didn't break.

While seeing Stefan compel the mortuary for the body, Kat's eyes were spinning with deja vu. It hadn't been long that she herself had come to collect her parents' bodies. All alone, with everyone else in Elena's hospital room, Kat had to identify the pale lifeless corpses of her own parents with a limp in her legs and half her eyes swollen.

With all the effort that she put into making sure the funeral was perfect, Kat felt surprised that she didn't even remember half of what was to be said.

"To Alexia," Stefan hung his head low. He thought of anything she might want him to say at such a moment, but he came up shamefully empty. Lexi always planned for life, never for death. She was the champagne, and sunshine, and late night adventures. She was anything but the unmoving ghost that he had laid to rest in the coffin. How could he say that out loud?

"To Alexia." Elena said.

"To Alexia." Kat echoed. She thought it was fit for a friend. Lexi seemed to be the one who had taught Stefan to live in the moment, keep it short and sweet before you could fall into the same timeless loop. She didn't need any other speech.

"You can let go now..."

Kat's eyes snapped up at the source of the faint voice. There was no one in a one-mile radius around them. But she could still hear the voice say it. Kat wished she would be hearing things. But it seemed so real. She felt a warm breath at the nape of her neck, she imagined Lexi's spirit with that sensation. And she hung onto it.

"Take care of him for me, will you?"

She let her sob be caught in her throat, smiling at the request of Lexi's voice in her head. She will take care of him. Kat nodded.

On the other side of the veil, Lexi's ghost stood petrified with happiness at Kat hearing her.

And that was how Alexia Branson was laid to rest.

☆ﾟ. ── 𝐈𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐞'𝐬 𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐫

I'm not crying, you are.

Rewatching TVD, and I realized how lightly Stefan took Lexi's death. They didn't even have a funeral for one of the most important friends of Stefan's. So here I was. The funeral Lexi deserved, the funeral Stefan wanted, and the funeral I needed to write.

Ps. this whole chapter was rewritten, that is why all the in-line comments have vanished. Thanks a lot for your love till now!