eunoia, 𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐅𝐀𝐍 ¹ ✔

𝟔𝟐

She cut her off, "No, thanks. I can do this on my own."

"You will have to talk to him at some point."

"Goodbye, Caroline," Charlotte said before hanging up. She was in no mood to listen to Caroline listing out all of the proofs that Stefan Salvatore was a good guy at heart, moreover, she was sick of it.

It sounded like everyone could understand his many attempts at becoming a hero again but nobody could put themselves in her shoes and feel their chest tightening with no place for air to get it.

What Caroline and everybody else couldn't understand was that the experience didn't hurt, the panic attack didn't—well, they did hurt but they were nothing compared to what she felt when she looked at Stefan that day. He wasn't the same boy she fell in love with and she had come to accept that many times before. Charlotte just didn't know how he had fallen so far.

She pursed her lips together, looking down at her textbook, murmuring to herself, "Then we do 2 to the power of 9 and...," Charlotte continued mumbling quietly, seconds away from getting the final answer before her phone started buzzing and she sighed, picking it up.

"What?"

"That's an odd Hello," Stefan commented on the other line before Charlotte furrowed her eyebrows together—Did he have some odd superpower of knowing when someone was thinking or talking about him?

Not that she was thinking about him or anything, just pure and utter curiosity.

"Hello. Good morning, how are you, Stefan?" Charlotte greeted, huffing out, "Is that better?"

"Slightly," She could feel the light tone in his voice which almost made her want to smile. There was some shuffling in the background before he asked, "Hey, how fast can you get to Elena's?"

"Pretty fast...why?"

✵ ✵ ✵

"What do you mean he turned?" Charlotte questioned, folding her arms over her chest as she looked from Bonnie to Damon, "You were supposed to be on guard duty!"

"Don't blame me," Damon shook his head, pointing over to the witch, "Blame Bonnie the blood bank. She fed him."

"I had no idea what was happening," Bonnie sighed, holding a wet cloth over her neck, "Okay, the witches led me there. They wanted him to feed so he turned."

Stefan ran a hand over his forehead before asking, "So, where's the stake now?"

Damon raised an eyebrow, checking, "Oh, you mean the white oak one? The one that can kill an Original and wipe out an entire line of vampires?" He shrugged, sending Bonnie a pointed glare, "We don't know."

She huffed out in response, "If you are so upset with me, why did you feed me your blood to save my life?"

"Because I do stupid things, Bonnie. I do things, like let my friend die with dignity when I should have just killed him!"

Charlotte took in a deep breath, "Okay, we should all just calm down. This...all of this is not helping," The brunette inhaled sharply, "What are we supposed to do now about Ric?"