The Elementalists

MARK

I look over at Robin, then at Daemon's still body, and then back at Robin. She stares down at her hands as if she can't grasp what just happened, and then she asks, "Was I... Did I die?"

I have to hold back the tears that threaten to fall—whether over Daemon's death or the fact that Robin's alive I don't know—as I reply, "Yes, you were."

"Daemon...," she asks, "he brought me back?"

"He did," I answer. And then, without thinking, I say the quote that Daemon had told me what seemed like a long, long time ago, " 'A life for a life'. His life for yours."

Robin continues to stare down at her hands. Liz, who has finally stopped crying, looks over at her and then throws her arms around Robin. "I...I was so...I...," Liz begins, but she trails off and instead just sits there, hugging Robin tightly.

Robin looks at Liz, but it looks as if she's in a daze. She just stares at the girl who's hugging her with no expression at all on her face... No, there is one expression on her face: one of pure regret.

She thinks it should've been her, I realize. She wishes it were her.

"Why?" I hear Robin choke out, and then tears starts streaming down her face and she clenches her fists and I watch as small drops of blood fall from where her nails have cut into her skin. "Why can't I ever make the right choice?" She puts her face in her hands and, her shoulder shaking with sobs, continues with, "I thought...I just...I wanted you all to live."

I try to move towards her to comfort her, but my feet won't listen to me. I can only stare at the broken form of Robin that isn't broken physically this time, but mentally—she's broken inside.

"It was...supposed to be me," Robin says, her tears ceasing as if the shock and disbelief are returning. "I...I let them take you Mark. I let you be taken away from me twice. I let Peter turn into a traitor because I must've not always been there for him. I left Emma in charge of the others, but if anything happens to them, it'll be all my fault. And Daemon, and Angel...the two people who cared about me more than anyone else and made sure I was okay...I let them die." She looks up at me, her eyes full of hurt, and asks a question that I'm not sure how to answer. "What kind of leader am I? What kind of person can't protect those they care about?"

I stare at her, unsure of how to answer, when Liz says, "Robin, you're a great leader and a great friend. There aren't many people out there who would die just to save the lives of their friends; there are too many selfish people out there. You're a great leader Robin, because you value your friends' lives more than your own. You died for us. And Angel," Robin winces as she says his name, and I'm not surprised that I do a bit, too, "he died for Mark because he had that same quality. He knew how you felt about Mark, and he knew how much you cared about all of your friends, and he cared more about Mark than he let on. He forgave Mark for you, because of you. You've done more good things than bad things, Robin. You've done more right than wrong."

Robin stares down at the ground as if thinking this over. Without looking up, she says, "The town is probably as good as dead because of me. It's probably destroyed by now because I couldn't protect it."

"Actually," Jamal replies, speaking up, "because of you, Time reversed everything. The tornado is gone, the wave is gone, and whatever the heck else happened, she reversed it all. She reversed it all because she seemed to realize how much your death weighed on all of us," he mumbles the last few words, "and especially to Daemon."

Robin's eyes are filled with regret. She looks over at Jamal and simply states, "He shouldn't have died. It was supposed to be me."

Jamal opens his mouth to argue, but Liz interrupts him with, "Robin, do you remember how crazy you went when Mark disappeared?" Robin hesitates before nodding, and Liz continues with, "Well, when you were...gone, Daemon was so shocked all he could do was scream your name before he began sobbing. He didn't want to live without you, Robin—you were the only family he had left. Would you have wanted to live if everyone you cared about had died?"

Robin shakes her head no; she tries to stand up but stumbles and falls back to the ground. "It's just that...I thought I had lost one person today, and then I do lose another," she mumbles. "Time's gone; I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, though, to be honest. Daemon...he shouldn't be gone, but he is. And Mark," she looks over at me when she says this, "was gone, I thought he was gone forever, but he came back, because..." Robin trails off and looks back down at the floor.

I open my mouth to finish her sentence before thinking better of it. If she had wanted me to know, she would have told me herself; she would have finished her sentence.

Instead, I just look over at Jamal, who now stands beside me. Without thinking, I look back over at Robin and suggest, "We should bury Daemon next to Angel."

Robin, who seems to be regaining some of her senses now, looks up at me and surprises me by saying, "No." She hesitates and adds, "We'll bury him next to Lily. He'd like that." She looks back down at the floor and surprised me again by asking, "When I got hit on the head... Was that how I died?"

There's only stunned silence for the next few seconds. Liz finally breaks it by answering, "Yeah, Robin, it was—the big rock chunks hit you. You were...you were so...so broken..."

"I feel broken right now," Robin mumbles in response. "I feel like somebody took a knife and stabbed my heart over and over again, and then played a mean trick by trying to help me before they delivered the final blow."

It takes me a minute to make sense of what she's saying—finding Liz kidnapped was the first strike, then my "disappearance", and then me coming back before Time collapses the tunnel and kills Robin, and finally Robin awaking to find Daemon has traded his life to give Robin's back to her.

Angel's voice appears in my head, and I remember some words he had told me what seemed like forever ago. "I don't want that—I don't want Robin to ever be upset." He had turned away and begun to walk again before adding, "You mean the world to her, you know."

"I don't want Robin to ever be upset."

And suddenly I remember Daemon saying something very similar to that. I don't remember the exact words or phrase, but I know it was something along the line of, Stop putting so much stress on Robin. She considers your lives in her hands, and one day the responsibility will become too much and she'll become broken.

I'm afraid that, if another person close to her dies, she'll snap.

And I begin to realize how Robin must feel and what she must be wondering—what will she do now that Daemon and Angel are gone? Where will she go? We have families and homes to return to... Robin hasn't had foster parents for awhile and must have lived in the tree house; she had Daemon and Angel to keep her company and take care of her.

But what's she going to do now?

"So the town's alright?" Robin asks, breaking me away from my thoughts. I nod, and Robin seems to think for a moment. Then she says, "If Time erased the events that happened, then the normal people's memories of the events will have been erased as well. Their minds won't want to remember this...this terror, and they'll gladly give up the memories." I hear her mutter under her breath, somewhat regretfully, "But our minds, and people who have seen what an Elementalist can do firsthand with no explanation, don't work like that."

"What will they do when they all wake up at the school, then?" Liz asks. I look at her in confusion, and she explains, "Emma, John, and I were trying to get everyone to evacuate to one place so that Emma could use a force field."

"We'll have to make up a story," Jamal decides. "Say that there was a tornado and it tossed the school and jumbled everyone's brains a bit or something. Shouldn't be too hard; Robin's right: they want a rational explanation, and they're willing to believe almost anything as long as it somewhat makes sense."

I nod in understanding before turning to Robin and asking, "So, what now?"

She stares down at the ground and says, "Webury Daemon, find the others," I notice a sadness in her eyes with the lastphrase of, "and then you all go home."