He could lose himself in the blue of her eyes, not as turbulent as an ocean, but calm and still and fathomless as a hidden mountain lake, and as gentle and as welcoming as the canals of the city he was born in, guiding him swiftly and inexorably home to the heart of her. His mouth opens, lips parting to ask her, is that what this is? Is this love, at last? His mouth closes again, and internally, he shakes his head. He thinks of Katherine, of Elena, and decides, no; what he feels for Caroline cannot be encompassed in so small of a word as LOVE. What he feels for Caroline spans lifetimes and eons, surrounds his soul and his spirit and his heart and his head and his hands. What he feels for Caroline feels, ironically, far more like FAITH. Forgive me father for I have sinned. It has been six hours since my last confession, and in that time I have consumed the blood of my fellow man, I have borne false witness against my brother, I have coveted, Father, I have been lustful, and I have loved this woman more desperately than I have loved God. Tentatively, as if she might deny him, Stefan reaches up, and twists a lock of golden hair around his finger, winding and winding until they are locked together. A hundred years ago he might have taken her apron string like this, and for a moment, he pictures her, in all of her glorious and righteous modernity, in a cottage in the countryside, her hair in braids, a simple apron tied ‘round her waist. The thought nearly sends him laughing to tears. “ I do not feel like I am the same man as before, ” he finally agrees, releasing the lock of her hair, only to plunge his hand into the wavy strands. They slide like silk against his fingers as he twists and clutches, until his hand is cradling the back of her head like a child, and his thumb is brushing idly on her jawline. Back and forth, back and forth, like a watch, keeping time. “ Perhaps you are not the same woman, either. Perhaps, ” he grins, now, teeth white and sharp and gleaming, “ we are like Adam and Eve, washed of every lover and sinner who came before and made new in the eyes of one another. ” Ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, Amen. His smile fades into something serious, and his free hand reaches up to trace the curve of her brow. “ I wish I had waited for you, ” he says suddenly, his voice soft and small, secretive in the space between their bodies. “ If I could do anything in my life differently, it would be to come to you with clean hands and clean conscience and an untouched heart. ” She might laugh at him. He is prepared for her laughter; Caroline is, after all, deeply modern and entirely practical. But he, bogged down by lifetimes of DIVINE GUILT as he is, cannot help his sentimentality. “ Still, ” Stefan whispers, leaning in to press his lips to one of her eyelids, and then the other, “ unclean and scarred as it is, my heart is yours, Caroline. It belongs solely to you. ”
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