Redamancy | Elena Gilbert

Chapter 29

Everyone was dead.

Tyler was dead. Klaus was dead. Elena was dead. Her cousin, her friend, and the girl she hoped would be her girlfriend one day. Three more names to be added to the already-long list of people she'd lost.

She didn't know how to think. How to feel. She felt like she was being torn apart from the inside, and simultaneously compressed on all fronts by a machine that aimed to turn her into a small block of sadness and misery. She knew none of her pain was truly physical, but it felt like it was. Knives stabbing repeatedly into her gut as she forced herself to accept the truth.

Klaus is dead. Tyler is dead. Elena is dead.

Tyler's death was the easiest to accept. In the past year alone, her Uncle Richard had died, then her father, and now Tyler. Lockwood men seemed to be cursed, while Lockwood women lived on in their grief. She hated that he would never get to graduate, never get to decide if he wanted to continue down the same path as his parents or forge a new one all on his own. He'd broken the sirebond to be free and he'd died before getting to accomplish anything.

Klaus's death was harder to accept. A thousand years and no one had bested him until now. It infuriated her. More so because she should have died alongside him. All of them should have died. And yet, they were still standing. Maybe Klaus had been lying about siring Mary Porter, but it made no sense why Rosalind was still alive. She recalled drinking directly from his hand, the memory very vivid considering he'd been caressing her bare thigh while she fed. How could he be gone? How could she still be here? His death raised questions she couldn't answer.

Elena's death made no sense. And at the same time, it made so much sense that Alaric would meet his end this way. It made absolute sense that Rebekah would have been the one to end her life. But despite her involvement with the supernatural, nothing had yet torn Elena apart quite like this. Even with the ritual, John Gilbert found a way to keep her alive. Rosalind might have thought her immortal. But suddenly, she was nothing. The mark of Elena Gilbert was gone in the world. Rosalind thought she would die and that Elena would live on. But instead, the hybrid was meant to survive with a gap in her heart big enough to fit three people.

All three of them hurt badly. Tyler's most of all, because he was her family. It surprised her that she felt so distraught with Klaus's death. But when she wondered more about it, she was assaulted with the memories of him teasing her during training. Snarking back playfully and trying to teach her to win at chess because she was so terrible at it.

In all honesty, the others around her didn't feel like friends in the way Klaus did. The others had accepted her because she was Tyler's cousin. Klaus, however, had been someone she'd begun to build a real friendship with. One she chose and was chosen for not out of pity but because of a genuine interest (and maybe a little bit of bullying on her part). She was becoming his friend because of her own qualities, not because of who she was related to. She hadn't had an automatic in with him. It wasn't easy getting to the point where he relented to allowing her to lead with him.

Gone. Everyone was gone. All gone.

She probably shouldn't have driven herself to the hospital. She could hardly grip the steering wheel firmly, and she continuously had to blink harshly to get the tears out of her eyes. Miraculously, she made it to the hospital in one piece. No one could stop her from rushing down to the morgue and finding where Elena's body lay.

"No," she whimpered, feeling her cold face and confirming she was, in fact, dead. "No, no, no..."

She was still. Completely still and quiet. Rosalind had never heard such silence.

"Please, no," she pleaded, holding Elena's hand to her face. Cold. So cold.

Turn it off.

It was a thought lingering in the back of her mind, tempting her. Cooing in a soothing voice to see if she'd take the bait.