[S1E20] Blood Brothers __TOP__
Stefan (Paul Wesley) is still locked up in the basement and he is hallucinating because of the lack of blood. He flashes back to 1864, the night Katherine (Nina Dobrev) got taken. He and Damon (Ian Somerhalder) try to save her, Stefan distracting the guards of the prison truck and Damon getting her out. The moment they try to untie her, Damon is shot from afar and dies. Stefan is also shot and dies a moment later. He wakes up in a quarry and Emily (Bianca Lawson) is there who explains to him what happened. He and Damon are both in transition and she made them the rings to protect them from the sunlight at Katherine's request. Stefan says he never drank Katherine's blood but Emily tells him she was compelling him to do it, while Damon was doing it willingly.
[S1E20] Blood Brothers
In the present day, Damon brings Stefan some animal blood to drink but Stefan denies it saying he is not hungry. Damon throws the bottle in the cell and leaves when Alaric (Matt Davis) calls him to inform him what he has found about John (David Anders). He tracked some calls to Grove Hill and the two of them plan to go and check it out.
In 1864, Damon and Stefan discuss about their new state with Damon saying that he doesn't want to complete the transition and prefers to starve to death since Katherine is gone and there is no purpose to continue living. Stefan decides not to turn as well and heads to his home because he wants to say goodbye to his father Giuseppe (James Remar) before he dies. Giuseppe freaks out when he sees Stefan and tells him that he was the one who shot and killed his sons. Believing that Stefan is now a vampire, he attacks him and Stefan - not knowing his own strength - hurtles his father away in defense. Giuseppe gets hurt and starts bleeding and Stefan does not have the strength to resist to his need for blood and he feeds on his father completing his transformation.
Back in the present day, Elena visits Stefan in his cell ignoring Damon's warnings not to go down there alone. She tries to make him drink the blood but Stefan still refuses it. She opens the cell door and goes in. Stefan tries to scare her away but Elena does not go anywhere. He finally takes the blood and drinks while he is telling Elena the whole story of how he completed his transformation. Elena is shocked at the story but not turned off and she wants him to keep talking to her. She leaves to give him some space but puts his ring next to him telling him she will be upstairs to wait for him to continue their conversation.
In 1864, Damon still tries to resist human blood when Stefan arrives with a young girl as a gift for him to feed on. Stefan admits that he fed on their father and he keeps telling Damon how better he feels now and insists that Damon needs to complete the transformation. Damon does not want to do it but Stefan bites the girl's neck making it bleed. He pushes Damon closer to her blood and Damon cannot resist so he finally drinks from her.
Stefan's memories bring him back to present where Elena finds him. She knew where he would be after Damon told her the whole story. Elena tries to talk to him and make him see that he is not responsible of everything that happened since they cannot control everything. She tries to tell him that he is a good person and Stefan tells her that it hurts to try be good because every time he fights his need for human blood it hurts. He is afraid that if he continues living he doesn't know if he'll be able to fight this forever. Elena gives him his ring and tells him he has a choice; throw it away and die or put it on and keep fighting. She turns to leave when Stefan calls her out, he puts his ring on and they kiss.
Elena and Stefan return to the Salvatore house. Elena goes upstairs leaving the two brothers alone. Stefan thanks Damon for helping him through his withdrawal and Damon tells him that there is no need for him to carry his own guilt as well. Before Damon leaves, he admits that the reason he was always being mad at Stefan was not because he betrayed Katherine and the others took her to kill her or because he made him complete his transformation, but because Katherine was supposed to turn only him but she turned both of them.
In his dying moments, Stefan sees Katherine being hauled off by the townsmen. Elena peers through the basement bars and expresses guilt about having him locked up. Damon reminds her that she was the one who locked him up and Damon only helped because he couldn't have Stefan feeding recklessly while the town was hunting vampires, denying that he did it out of concern for Stefan. They leave the basement while Stefan continues to reflect on how he became a vampire. Stefan wakes up the next morning by the quarry wearing a strange ring on his finger, his bullet wound healed. Katherine's handmaiden, Emily Bennett, reveals herself to be a witch who owed Katherine for saving her life. Katherine had her make the rings for the Salvatore Brothers weeks prior. She explains that she and her brother had found the brothers dead in the woods and brought them here. She tells Stefan that he is transitioning into a vampire. Katherine had compelled him to drink her blood but Damon had done so willingly. Damon sits by the edge of the quarry and explains to Stefan that he had seen Katherine being dragged into Fell's Church which was set on fire; Katherine was dead. At the house, Elena and Damon talk. Damon examines the device that belonged to Johnathan Gilbert, submitting that it doesn't seem to work. Pearl, who had given it to Damon, only said that she had meant to steal another device from Johnathan, his vampire compass/pocket watch. Damon asks Elena whether she has seen her Uncle John lately; she admits she's been avoiding him and spending most nights at the boarding house. Damon teases her, calling her a nuisance for staying over, as she leaves.
Back at the basement, Damon brings Stefan a bottle of animal blood for him to eat, but Stefan refuses it. Damon insists that the human blood should be out of his system and that he shouldn't feel sorry for himself. With that, Damon throws the bottle down at Stefan's feet, but Stefan merely glances at it and continues to stare at the ground. Giving up, Damon tells him to starve and leaves.
Upstairs, calls Damon's phone with information about John Gilbert. Alaric had asked a friend from Duke University to dig up John's cell records; he found the same number that Elena used to call Isobel, and a new number that has repeatedly called John. He has the address in Grove Hill for the new number. Alaric refuses to give Damon the address because he doesn't want Damon to go without him. Damon doesn't want to work with Alaric, who he tried to kill him, but Alaric retorts that Damon did kill him. Damon puts him on hold to field a call from Elena, who says she is coming over and wants to see how Stefan is doing. Damon says "extra broody" and puts her on hold to arrange to meet Alaric. He and Alaric hang up and Damon continues talking to Elena. Damon reports that Stefan isn't eating and Elena asks what Stefan's favorite animal blood is. Damon pretends to be revolted by the question and tells her to hurry up because he is tired of baby-sitting and has other places to go.
He jokes about what blood Stefan likes before their call ends. Elena turns around to see John standing in her doorway. He was hoping they could catch up but she says she was just about to leave. He knows she is dating a vampire and wonders aloud what her mother would have thought. Elena retorts "which mother" and leaves. In the basement, Stefan continues to remember what happened during his transitioning. Stefan and Damon are washing up by the quarry. Stefan suspects that Johnathan Gilbert has already told their father of their death. In Damon's eyes, their father wouldn't even care whether they were dead as he had betrayed them. Stefan reminds him that their father was only trying to protect them and the town. Damon complains that his eyes hurt in the sun and Stefan explains what Emily had told him: their bodies are pushing them to become vampires. Damon decides that he will not feed, and thus die, as he had only wanted to become a vampire in order to be with Katherine. Now that she is gone, he just wants it all to be over.
Elena appears outside Stefan's cell and urges him to drink the blood for survival but Stefan says he doesn't want to survive. Elena tells Damon, but Damon thinks Stefan is just bluffing. Damon knows Stefan feels guilty about attacking Amber Bradley and knows it will pass. Elena is still concerned, but Damon says he'll feel better once he's had blood. He then announces that he is going to meet up with Alaric and warns Elena to stay away from the basement while he's gone.
Damon comes home, where Elena is waiting, and asks her if Stefan has eaten yet. Elena says that he is trying to overcome the guilt he has, adding that Damon making Stefan miserable didn't help. Damon, enraged that Elena thinks it's just him that's not innocent, asks her if she got the rest of the story. Elena sees how frustrated he is and asks him what else happened, and Damon recalls his last moments before becoming a vampire. Damon is waiting by himself at the quarry, when Stefan brings him a teenage girl. Damon asks who she is, and Stefan says that he has brought her to him, as a gift. Stefan explains how he accidentally drank their father's blood and how amazing it is to be a vampire. Damon tells Stefan that he doesn't want to live without Katherine, but Stefan bites the girl's neck. The temptation for blood is too strong and Damon drinks from her, completing his transition into a vampire. Damon tells Elena how different Stefan was once he became a vampire, and Elena finally understands that Stefan wanted to die back in 1864 and that's the reason that he's not feeding. Damon tells Elena that if he's stupid enough to make that choice, then so be it. Elena goes downstairs to the basement to see Stefan, but he has left and all she finds is his lapis lazuli ring, that protects him from burning in the sunlight. 041b061a72