Caroline scrubbed at the burn mark on the floor, her face screwed up in concentration. Above her, Riley had her head in the cupboards, making sure that everything was exactly as they'd found it when they first arrived. Having sole control of two houses without any parental figures was a recipe for disaster.
"Hey, you're home!" Caroline called, standing up when the door opened and Elena walked into her house. "I was trying to clean the burn mark where Kol..." she trailed off when she saw Stefan walk in. Riley turned around to see the cause of the abrupt interruption and was immediately frozen, as she saw that Stefan was carrying Jeremy's body, wrapped in a blanket.
"Come on. Let's get him upstairs," Elena said, her face devoid of any emotion. She walked up the stairs and Stefan followed her slowly, wondering how long it would take for her to break.
"Is he...?" Riley asked Caroline, her voice a low whisper. Not knowing how to answer, Caroline stayed silent, breathing heavily. Maybe it was a mistake, or maybe they were confused. Jeremy couldn't be dead... could he?
After a few minutes of their silence, Stefan came down the stairs, each footstep heavier than the last.
"She's waiting for him to wake up," he informed the girls.
Caroline spoke for the first time, smoothing some of her blonde hair behind her ear. "But he's not going to... is he?"
Stefan shook his head. "He was supernatural. The ring won't work."
Caroline nodded, already knowing this. "So she knows that, right? She knows that he's not gonna wake up?"
Riley shook her head and raised a hand. "Can you... please... stop saying that?"
"Sorry," Caroline said sympathetically. "But we need to focus, make a plan. What are we going to do about Elena?"
"I think we should just wait, until we know that Bonnie's safe. Then when Damon comes back-" Riley interrupted Stefan.
"He can use the sire bond to make her think that everything's OK?" she guessed. When he nodded, she continued. "So we're gonna use supernatural sire magic to stop Elena from grieving her dead brother?"
"It's not that simple," Stefan told her. "Elena feels grief more powerfully than anyone else. Right now the best thing we can do is let her stay in denial."
"I'm not in denial," Elena argued, silently appearing in the kitchen. "His tattoo is gone. He opened Silas' chamber and fulfilled his supernatural destiny, so isn't it possible that he's not a hunter anymore?"
The three of them stared at her, knowing that she was clutching at straws. None of them wanted to be the one to tell her that her brother was gone.
Riley shrugged. "I guess it's possible."
Stefan turned to look at her with outrage, while Elena's lips formed the ghost of a smile. She turned around and quickly walked back up the stairs. She wanted to be the first person that Jeremy saw when he woke up.
"What are you doing?" Stefan asked Riley, worried about giving Elena false hope.
"You wanted her to stay in denial," Riley reminded him. "And you know what? I need to be in denial too because otherwise I'll have to think about the fact that Matt and I are the only humans left and then I'll start to freak out wondering which one of us will be the next to go."
"You're not going anywhere," Caroline asserted. She was about to say something else when she stopped. "What's that smell?"
Stefan sniffed softly. "It's his body. It's starting to decompose. Riley, I think you should call your mom and get her over here."
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Unstoppable | The Vampire Diaries
Fanfiction❝Because there was no possible way that someone who was alive in the 1920s could still be alive today. No possible way.❞ [TVD 1x01+] Riley Fletcher is a human. In a normal town, this would make her extremely ordinary. In Mystic Falls, this makes he...
