Grace - Elijah Mikaelson -

Chapter 57

Mystic Falls and its inhabitants lived for another year. They literally went through hell, saw loved ones coming back and loved ones dying.

But there was one person in the small town that was alive, but didn't really live.

Grace Gilbert wasn't much to be seen in the streets. She didn't take part in the events that unfolded, because she wasn't much needed anymore. The world seemed to move on, but Grace seemed to remain in the past, the pain slowly but steadily taking away her sanity.

The once so glorious Mikaelson estate seemed to be forgotten by its owners. But actually the girl that was left behind just like the home of the Original family remained to live in there.

Every day it was pure torture for Grace to see the traces her family left behind. It made the wounds rip open again, the pain and the loneliness swallowing her whole. Sometimes it was by seeing a movie that Rebekah and her had watched together and cried their eyes out over the happy end. Or when her gaze wandered around and found one of Nik's paintings.

But it was the worst when she saw the countless reminders of Elijah.

Even after deleting the few photos she had of him on her phone or burning the handwritten notes he had put on the nightstand whenever he left before she woke up.

It was simply impossible to erase them from her life. Sometimes it were just little things like coincidentally picking a bottle of wine that she knew he enjoyed.

But what should she do?

The home she grew up in was burnt in. Her resurrected brother lived with Matt in the Lockwood estate. She would commit suicide before she'd willingly live with the Salvatores and Elena.

Over time everyone let go of her. Elena, Caroline and Bonnie left for college. Damon and Stefan stopped their attempts to get her to help with the Silas problem.

So she decided to simply stop caring about everything that went on around her. She taught herself to become a better fighter, she trained her mental abilities and became the most hated person in town. At first everyone pitied her, but they all quickly came to remember that she couldn't be trusted. For them she was still a Mikaelson. And she did everything to prove them right.

Grace became the protagonist of a horror story that spread quickly above the borders of Mystic Falls. It became a popular dare of stupid teenagers and young adults to go to the abandoned Mikaelson estate. Because every night the figure of the woman they left behind stood in the bedroom that she and the love of her life shared, making it for some minutes the only light lit room in the house. No one ever came back after entering the mansion.

Of course it wasn't true. They thought Grace was a ghost, which was a straight lie. But it was right that no one ever came back after trying to enter. Grace killed every idiot who stepped over the doorstep of her house uninvited.

The day of Katherine Pierces death changed things. Well, exactly because of her, Grace was very happy about her death, but because of Nik coming back to gloat. They spent an afternoon talking and for the first time in months Grace actually smiled. She was so amused over the leaves she kept picking out from his hair and t-shirt because he slept with Caroline in the middle of the woods, that it made the sound of a raspy, chocking laugh came over her lips. In the wonderful year she spent with the Mikaelsons, she had smiled and laughed a lot. But now it had turned so unfamiliar to her, that it actually hurt in her lungs.

Nik didn't scold or lecture her like all the others did. It broke his heart to see her this way, but he never told her to keep herself together and get over it, because he knew her better than anyone else in this town ever would. He knew that she couldn't.