Blue ▹ The Originals [2]

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
BRILLIANT MIND

"Nothing is more creative—nor destructive—than a brilliant mind with a purpose."

(   trigger warning for vomiting   )

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

     Over a thousand years, Henrik had grown accustomed to being asked, "Where do you go when you die?" It was a natural question. He was one of the few people who knew what truly happened after death, one of the few that saw the peace everyone always spoke of. He had also grown accustomed to the disappointment on people's faces when he told them that he didn't go to that peaceful place anymore. The place he used to go to was just like their world, only another plane of it. He could see and hear everything, but he couldn't touch anyone, and no one could see or hear him. It was like he was a ghost, wandering aimlessly as he looked for his own body—because of course he didn't appear beside it. That would have been too easy. He wandered, sometimes, for hours and hours until he inevitably felt a painful tug at the center of his chest, and then he was flying and flying until he slammed back into a body that was his, but also felt entirely different.

He'd been relieved when the supernatural community coined that place as "The Other Side." It was a simple, boring name, and it fit perfectly. The place was cold and dull and lonely. Over a thousand years, he had never once walked into another soul wandering like he was, despite the fact that he knew other souls were there. He could constantly hear them—the whispering, the crying, the screaming. It was an awful place, and Henrik had actually been relieved when it had collapsed in on itself. He had thought, with it gone, that he would then be spared of wandering and being conscious whenever he had the misfortune of dying. He should have known it was too good to be true.

His siblings fell asleep when they temporarily died. The one time that he had admitted he would have preferred that, they had reacted angrily. Boredom, they insisted, was better than absolutely nothing. Henrik used to disagree until he saw what he had to wait inside when The Other Side was no longer an option. It was a black, endless void, the only thing inside of it being Henrik himself. It was absolutely nothing, and Henrik found himself agreeing with his siblings the more time he had to experience it. Boredom was, indeed, better than bearing absolutely nothing. It was agony, and Henrik hated it.

If that was what now awaited him if he ever did actually die, then he preferred immortality.

He didn't know how long he waited in that awful, silent, colorless place. Long enough to go from frustrated to lonely to scared. Long enough to remember what had happened, which wasn't much. All he could remember was that Lucien was involved somehow. The rest was a blur. Or perhaps Lucien had been a blur? He wasn't sure. He just knew that when he felt that painful tug, he was relieved. Sliding back into his new, healed body was always unpleasant—like putting on a new shirt that wasn't quite comfortable yet, the fabric too stiff and unused. It wasn't painful—not at first, anyway—but he was always abundantly aware that it wasn't natural to come back in such a way. All he could do was bear it with a smile until he was comfortable in his body again.

It probably would have been more comfortable if he could move the second he was back inside his body, but that was impossible. His soul had to settle, and then he had to slowly get the feeling back in his limbs. It was like he was learning how to move all over again. He was always stiff and clumsy, always bedridden, when he came back. It made him feel weak in a way that made him especially frustrated, because there wasn't a spell he could use or any type of tea he could drink to fix it. He simply had to wait, and immortality did absolutely nothing to give someone patience.