AFTERMATH [ 2 ] | LEGACIES

S E V E N T E E N

I stood up, breathing heavily. The speakeasy was trashed, chairs and tables broken or flipped form Stefan and I stumbling or flying into them. He looked at me with sad eyes.

"I can do this forever," he said. "I'm dead. You? You lose time being here, you don't get to go back until I'm positive I've finished my job here."

"I'm not losing any time," I replied. "I'm a vampire, I live forever."

"Maybe time stopped for you, yeah," Stefan said. "But not for Hope, your cousin that you love so much. Not for the twins... those beautiful little girls who grew up into beautiful young ladies, who might need you because of what destiny they have... the one you know about but won't tell them because you respect Alaric's decision. The one my poor wife has to travel the world to try to stop because my step-daughters have been cursed. You will lose time with them Lilah. Time hasn't stopped for that wolf you're fond on, the one you like talking to. What's his name? Rafael? Not for Alaric, who took you in like his own when your dad left. Time hasn't stopped for Freya or Keelin or Vincent, Davina's mortal. Yeah, Lilah, you're the great golden child of the Mikaelsons, the one who cannot be destroyed, the one who is strong as hell and wonderful. But you don't have eternity."

I blinked, staring at Stefan with tears in my eyes. The twins, the merge, the fact that in 80 years I'll look exactly the same and the twins, whichever one wins, Rafael, Alaric, Bonnie, everyone else... they won't be. Some of them won't even be alive.

"So, go ahead, Lilah. Go on a ripper binge. Go kill more mortals who already had limited time on Earth because you're hurting. Go and make other people, innocent people, grieve the loss of their loved ones without even the truth of what happened to them. Go ahead and make other people hurt like you do. But none of that will fix the fact that you are broken. None of it will matter when you took someone's one chance from them."

I stared at him some more.

"Don't you see how selfish that is?" he asked, sounding desperate. "You get a million chances, you get to start over whenever, however. These people have one chance at life, and you're going to take that from them? Take it from a dead guy, that one chance... it's everything."

He inched closer with every word, and tears flowed down my face. Soon, he stood right in front of me. He wrapped his arms around me, pulling me into his chest. I started to sob.

"I miss you, Stef," I whimpered. "I never got to fix things for us."

"I know," he said, kissing my forehead. "But we both ended up where we were meant to be."

He stroked my hair, trying to calm me down.

"You're beautiful, inside and out. Please don't ever change that."

"Do I really have to go back?" I asked. "I have so much I want to tell you, so much I want to ask you..."

"You will be able to, one day," he said, pulling away.

He looked down at me, grabbing my face in his hands. He wiped my tears and kissed my forehead. 

"Now go, your mom is waiting."