Without Me

Chapter 28

"Lizzie, I'm not going anywhere."

"Well you should!" Lizzie sputtered around the tears. She could feel the magic in her veins buzzing dangerously. "You need to go."

"No." Landon planted his feet. "No, you can't hurt me."

"Landon, please ..." She didn't have the strength to argue with him, and he was so fucking stubborn.

"Lizzie, I'm an immortal phoenix. No magic you do can hurt me." He reached for her, but she spun out of his grasp in her stumbling pacing of the locker room.

She pressed her palms against her forehead. "Just because you can't die, doesn't mean I can't hurt you."

God, that was the whole problem wasn't it? That Lizzie kept hurting people? That apparently, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't change and she would always be nothing but pain to everyone around her? That hurting everyone was clearly just a part of who she was? That deep down, it always would be?

"I've stabbed you before," Lizzie gasped out. "With a sword. Do you remember that?"

Landon furrowed his eyebrows. "What?"

"You have new memories, but I did. There was a demon in you. I -" Lizzie wasn't even sure where she was going with this. She knew she was telling him too much - that she was giving up a big chunk of her secret - but she wasn't exactly in a position to be making good, rational choices. The lockers rattled around them with the force of her magic, threatening to explode. "I actually killed you a second time, although that one wasn't really my fault, because I didn't know that your life had been tethered to mine when Josie killed me -"

Landon really wasn't following now. "Josie Saltzman?"

The lockers all slammed open at once, their broken locks falling to the floor. The sound of metal crashing was deafening. He could barely hear Lizzie's scream over the sound. The tiles on the floor rattled and loosened. For a moment, he thought they may all come flying up at them, but they didn't.

"Lizzie." Landon reached for her shoulders.

The showers turned on, the sound of twelve streams of water hitting the floor joining the rest of the cacophony.

"Hey, hey, hey." Landon looked her in the eye. "It's okay. Okay?"

"Stay back," Lizzie said. She held out her hands, but didn't dare try to push him away, too afraid that she didn't know her own strength. "It's fine. It'll pass."

The lights above their head flickered. The buzzing got louder.

"What do we do?" Landon asked. His eyes widened as he watched the lights grow brighter and brighter.

"I just need to come clean, okay? I need my old life back."

"Then come clean." Landon tucked her hair back that had fallen into her face.

"But it's so selfish." Lizzie's lips twisted with the force of her sobs now, but the chaos around them was dying down.

"How?"

Lizzie just shook her head.

"Okay, deep breaths. Just ... deep breaths." Landon helped her to a bench, squatting in front of her knees. "Tell me how it's selfish to come clean."

"Because I ... Because everyone else is better off without me." Lizzie's eyes snapped up. "Oh god, I'm Hope Mikaelson, aren't I?"

Landon couldn't even voice his confusion this time.

Lizzie buried her face in her hands. "Oh my god, I'm such an idiot."

"You're not an idiot -"

"No, I am. I am." Lizzie rubbed at her temples. "Because I learned nothing from Hope and her swan dive into Malivore."

"Wait a minute ..."

"I have to go." Lizzie stood up suddenly.

"Go? Go where?"

Lizzie didn't answer, and Landon wasn't fast enough to see where she went after she booked it out of the locker room.