{2.01 | I'll Never Give Up Hope | part four}
August
The Virginia heat wasn't so bad in the late mornings. The clear skies and the gentle breeze evened out the August sun. Josie walked back and forth across from one of the trees on the lawn of the Salvatore school, the projection crystal in her hand. With a wide smile on her face, she finished catching her twin sister up on what she'd missed throughout July.
And she had missed a lot.
"You and Elara saw The Notebook without me? How could you!"
"To be fair," Josie began, pausing her steps, "dad was there, too, and he and Elara nearly duked it out in the lobby before it even started."
Lizzie hummed. When it came to the relationship between her father and her friend, there was always the expectation of clashing. "Please tell me she didn't kill himâ or he killed her."
"Nope. Fortunately, they both survived being in the same room." Josie smiled. "It's been fun, like actual fun, and for the first time, I think we're all doing good, resident Emos included."
"Gizmo the Gremlin?" Lizzie groaned at the mention of the Phoenix.
"Actually, Gizmo's a Mogwai," Josie corrected.
"Ugh, your cool factor is seriously suffering this summer." She flicked her blonde hair over her shoulder, watching Josie resume her pacing. "Felix could be cool, in a jock with a secret nerd hobby kind of way, and Elara is cool. Unfortunately. Don't tell her I said that."
"My lips are sealed, but it's all been good. Elara's okay, too."
And she was. Elara was coming out of her room more. She was spending time with Josie, with Landon. They'd spend hours during the day hanging outâ be it research in the library or learning different board gamesâ even watching movies into the dead of the night.
"Has she told you that?"
Josie tapped the crystal against her hand in thought, remembering one of their conversations from earlier that week. Elara wasn't forward in any manner except for confrontation. When it came to her mind, her emotions, she sealed them away the second someone got too close.
But she had a feeling that Elara wasn't always like that and that there was something that had changed her. Even momentarily. "Kind of? You know how it is getting her to talk."
"Like pulling teeth, unless it's about mythology. She is weirdly passionate about the ancient Greeks and Romans."
"When did you talk to her about that?" Jose asked, a brow raised. The last time the blondes spoke was before Lizzie left, and Josie had been there. They had been bickering about color combinations. Or color names. Josie wasn't completely sure.
"Last weekend. She called meâ well, and technically, she called mom." Josie had several questions to ask, but Lizzie answered them promptly. "Apparently, Aunt Bonnie bought her a phone and is letting her use it for emergencies or whatever."
"Oh?"
"Yeah, I'm not sure when she and Aunt Bonnie got so close."
"It was a couple of months ago," Josie answered. "I think."
"Anyways, as glad as I am that Lara is getting out of her funk, she can live without you for a while. Mom and I are taking the speed train to Rome for the weekend, so get your ass across the pond!"
Josie shook her head, smiling softly. She was having fun, actual fun, and they still needed her there.
"Love you!"
At least, she hoped they did.
~-~-~
"Emma?" Alaric called out. His voice echoed around the empty hall.
A crash echoed from within the school.
Elara's head turned towards the sound, the ringing in her ears drowning out the rest of the chaos. Her chin tilted downward, and her eyes latched onto the stone creature at the top of the stairs. Perched like a bird of prey, the gargoyle looked down at them with glowing red eyes.
The fight didn't last very long, and they came out victorious. Afterwards, she sat on the edge of the bathroom counter, letting her legs slowly swing. Alaric had let them use his private bathroom in order to avoid too many lingering eyes as Elara's wound was cleaned and wrapped. Blue eyes watched her movement as its owner's hands finished wiping off the blood on her hands.
She swallowed, looking at the floor as her friend walked over with a bandage. The blood had been cleaned off, the wound was almost closed, but she still wanted to be careful.
Neither of them had spoken since the hall, be it because they didn't know what to say or because they didn't want to speak, they didn't know.
But her...roommate/somethingâsurprisinglyâ broke the silence.
"Thank you," she uttered, lightly dabbing Elara's shoulder with a cotton pad. Elara hissed at the gentle sting. "For... helping me."
Her eyes remained on the floor as she felt a heat rising in her neck. She didn't have to look at the other girl to know she was being stared at, and all she could think about was the sincerity in that annoying gaze.
"No problem," Elara responded shortly.
Hands, warm yet shocking, carefully brushed across Elara's shoulder and arm as they wrapped the bandage securely. Elara found it strange. The same hands that she watched cast a spell to blow up a stone gargoyle were as careful as can be with her shoulder.
"You shouldn't have jumped in front of me, Elara. It could've killed you."
"A lot of things could, to be fair. There could be a freak storm and I get struck by lightning, or I fall into the lake and drown." Elara shrugged. "A gargoyle isn't special because it could kill me."
"It was going for meâ"
"And it missed," Elara cut in, looking at the shorter girl. The sincerity, the stupid sincerity, pierced her just like the wall had before.
"Then it threw you against a wall."
"Look, I can't go back and change it, so can we go back to where you thanked me for saving your ass and that was the end of the conversation?"
She cleared her throat. "Yeah, we, uh, we can."
"Great."
Elara stopped in front of the mirror, drying her hair with a towel. She'd pulled on a tank top with thinner straps than she liked, but it was all that she had with her. The scar from the gargoyle fight had healed on her shoulder while the mark from the Maligoo bullet had barely changed. The dark veins were gone, but Elara could still see the impact scar. Her supernatural genes were meant to heal all of her wounds, yet Elara's luck prevailed. Her eyes were the same shade of blue that they'd always been although the bags under them were unpleasant to look at. Her hair was shorter, her muscles were bigger, toned. She tilted her head to the side, and she was met with a flash of a glowing orange.
A lot had happened in six months, and a lot more had happened in just three.
A knock at the door caught her attention, forcing her to look at the white door. She had gotten so caught up in her own head that she had forgotten that she wasn't in her own bathroom.
"There's food if you want some," Bonnie said through the door. "Oh, and please, don't get blood on the rug. I just washed it."
Elara dropped the towel back onto the rack, glancing at the dried blood under her nails. There was a scratch on her forearm that stuck out against her freckled skin, and it wasn't her that made it.
She was out within the minute, pulling on her denim jacket as she walked into the kitchen. Bonnie Bennett's house was nice, and Elara could tell by her kitchen alone. It was open with an island adorned with fancy bar stools.
"Thanks," Elara began, sliding into one of the stools as Bonnie slid a plate of pancakes and bacon in front of her, "for letting me in. And for feeding me. This actually smells really good."
Bonnie offered a small smile. "Usually when someone I know shows up at my door covered in blood, I at least give them that courtesy." Bonnie watched as Elara took a bite of the food, nodding her head in approval of the taste. "Andâusuallyâ they show that same courtesy by explaining why. Please tell me it wasn't yours."
"Some of it might have been," Elara answered after swallowing. "She got a good shot in. Crossbows 2, Elara 0."
"She?"
Elara took another big bite. Bonnie wasn't an exceptional chef by any means, but at least Elara seemed to be enjoying it. "Another hunter. She caught me off guard while I was looking for Raf and got a shot off. Lucky for me, I heal. She, on the other hand, was not so lucky."
A brief pause overcame them as Elara dove into the meal once more. Bonnie ate off of her own plate, but her worry was catching up to her. Elara was just a teenager who was expected to handle the consequences of a man she barely knew, of a family that she didn't get to have. Alaric knew the hunters would go after her, as did Bonnie and Caroline, but they knew that they couldn't hide that Elara Laurent was gone anymore. The strings of their reality were too tight to pull.
"Does anyone else know?"
"No," the teenager answered quickly. "I came here right after it happened. I couldn't- I couldn't let the others see me like that, again."
Bonnie slowly nodded.
Elara inhaled deeply. "This is the part where you ask me if I'm okay."
"And you usually just say you're 'fine' before you try and take my booze."
"Speaking of, do you haveâ"
"No."
"Worth a try," Elara mumbled. She tapped her fingers rhythmically on the marble counter. She'd been to Bonnie's house a number of times within the summer. She felt more comfortable with the woman than she did with Alaric or even Josie. Bonnie Bennett was a strong woman in more ways than Elara could imagine, but she was also gentle and kind. "It'd make this a lot easier."
Elara's bravado vanished as she slouched. Three words fell from Elara's lips before she even realized what she was saying. The comforting air around Bonnie was stronger than Elara's walls. Bonnie was basically the first adult she felt like she could completely trust, and if Bonnie ever betrayed her, Elara wasn't sure she'd be able to come back from it.
At that point, however, she knew she was going to break if she continued hiding behind her walls.
"I'm not okay," she whispered, her voice cracking. "I'm not okay, and I don't know what the hell to do." Elara wiped a hand anxiously across her face, unable to feel her own heat radiating from her flesh, but Bonnie felt it. "I don't- I don't talk about these things. I just- feel it and bury it as far as I possibly can until I forget about it, but now I can't really forget anything thanks to being the one and only Hellhound."
Bonnie slid into the stool next to the teenager, who kept her eyes trained on the empty glass of orange juice in front of her. She listened intently to the usually tight-lipped Laurent.
"When I died, it wasn't fast and painless. It was slow and agonizing, and I'd never felt anything as awful as it, and I have my fair share of scars. It was like my blood was replaced with glass, and a fire was set in my ribcage. I died, and it hurt, but the worst part was I remember every second of it. Every painful, lonely second of it." Her eyes drifted up onto Bonnie. The mask that she wore so cautiously was gone, revealing the truth of the bags beneath her eyes, the missing shine in her blue irises. She was only seventeen, yet she carried lifetimes of pain behind her eyes.
Elara continued, letting out a shaky breath. "And then I woke up on the beach. Not a real one, a mental one. I was still me, but I was 'alive.' Maybe like a spirit."
"Were you on the...the Other Side?" Bonnie asked although she knew the answer.
Elara answered with a shake of her head. "No. You and I both know the Other Side was destroyed. Think of it more like my own personal mental prison where my dead father was waiting to see me."
Bonnie's brows lifted.
"For two weeks in the real world, while I was dead in a coffin six feet under, my mind was alive, and so was I? I'm still not really sure." Elara nodded her head as if to bring herself back on track. "What was two weeks here felt like only a couple of hours, and when I came back to life, I saw the world completely differently. I knew I was the Hellhound, but I didn't know what it was. None of us did, really.
"Bonnie, I have been through so much shit, and I am so tired of all of it. My mind isn't always my own, my body doesn't feel right, my heart is being haunted by- by something and I can't escape it. Trust me, I've tried. It's- it's like there's this hole in my chest, like I'm missing the most important part of my heart, and I don't know what it is."
The witch couldn't stop her frown at that. She understood some of Elara's pain. She knew what it was like to feel out of place in her own world, and she paused to think of what to say.
However, Elara caught sight of Bonnie's frown, and her defensive instincts kicked in. She had her reasons for keeping everything so close to her chest. Her case worker looked at her like that when she was relocated the first, and the second, and every other time she was relocated. Mrs. Warren looked at her like that right before they gave her a permanent reminder of her "sins." The officer looked at her like that when she told Elara that her foster brother was dead.
"Don't- don't look at me like that," Elara sputtered.
"Like what?"
"Like you pity me. I don'tâ"
Bonnie extended a hand, carefully placing it over Elara's. "Want my pity, I know." Her soft, brown eyes latched onto Elara's; the teenager knew that if she looked away that the tears would start to fall. Elara didn't want to cry. It felt too weak at that moment. "Pity is not what I feel towards you, Elara. I respect you. No one else would be able to handle the things you go through, with and without your supernatural powers. When I look at you, I forget just how young you are because of everything you have had to endure, and you've made it through every bit of it."
Her jaw set into a line. A part of her screamed at her, wanting to retreat back behind her walls, but for once, that part was muffled by the child in her heart that wanted nothing more than to talk to someone who would listen.
"Can I be honest?"
"Of course," Bonnie responded.
For the first time since she could remember, Elara told the whole truth. She told Bonnie about her life in the foster system and how awful it was, she told her about the chaos with the monsters (the pieces that hadn't disappeared), and she told her about the Hellhound, about almost everything she knew about it.
Elara knew that with everything that had happened in the summerâ from coming back from the dead to watching movies with Josie and Landonâ she knew everything was going to change, so she had to keep up with it. She had to adapt.
And there was still one thing she had to let go of.
~-~-~
Felix Sykes stood at the foot of the grave as night settled over Mystic Falls. The summer was coming to an end, classes starting in the next week, and he was eager for his next adventure.
Since he arrived at Mystic Falls, Felix felt... better. Accepting his vampirism had been a challenge, accepting that he died to become a vampire had been like climbing Mount Everest, but Mystic Fallsâspecifically its peopleâ made him feel like he wasn't losing his mind.
Which was, y'know, fan-flipping-tastic.
Slowly, Felix lowered himself to the ground, sitting in the spot that he had every day for two weeks. Josie and Landon were watching another classic film that Felix had recommended, but he wasn't going to join. There was too much on his mind to ignore.
As a vampire, Felix would never age. He would eternally live as a sixteen-year-old boy, but his mind would remember every year, every moment, long after it had passed. Before, he didn't have the luxury. He relied on pictures and notes, something to act as a physical reminder of the past.
When he saw the remnants of the hunter that Elara murdered, the missing piece of his death clicked back into place.
"We'll just cut through here," Elara said, sliding into the narrow alleyway. The winter breeze struck their skin, but winter in the south was never simple. It wasn't too cold, wasn't too warm, yet the air was dry. "Then we can get back to the lot from the street over."
"You say that as if you've been here before," Felix chuckled. He followed behind his older sister, hands in the pockets of his red and blue letterman's jacket. "Have you? Because I don't think we have."
"I may or may not have had a date around the corner," Elara responded, a grin on her face. "And by date, I mean I met with Noah at the bar on the corner."
"Noah? As in 'stole a motorcycle and drove it through the school' Noah?"
"Duh. Who do you think got him the bike?"
Felix groaned. "Ellie, we talked about this."
She turned to face him, walking backwards with a newfound confidence. "Relax. No one knew it was me. We just met because he owed me dinner and forty bucks for the whole ordeal. You should've seen the look on his dad's faceâ"
The sound of a can hitting the wall cut her off.
The next part of the memory was a blur. Felix was unsure of exactly how he ended up on the ground, but the sight of Elara...
The sight of Elara was a reminder of what came next.
Gasping, Felix fell onto the ground, his back hitting it hard. His hand flew to his neck as blood dripped from the puncture wounds.
"No, no!" he heard Elara cry. He couldn't see her, a dark, thin figure blocked his view. Her voice was pained, stretched thin as if she'd been screaming for longer than he expected.
"Sorry, cupcake," the figure said, stepping far enough for Felix to catch a glimpse of Elara, who was standing just a few feet away, blood dripping from her nose. "A deal's a deal."
A second pair of hands grabbed him, then he heard Elara scream again as the figure appeared in front of him, white fangs gleaming under the single light of the alleyway.
"Ellie!"
He lifted his head at the sound of crunching leaves. At that hour, the cemetery was closed, and no one else should've been visiting. He knew the town by then, and none of the regulars showed up after duskâ unless they were up to no good.
Carefully, he turned his head, and his eyes caught sight of the last person he expected to see.
"Ellie," he greeted.
Hands in her pockets, Elara breathed out, "hey."
The world was spinning, darkening, faster than he could comprehend. He heard voicesâ threeâ but he couldn't... he couldn't focus.
Blinking, he tried to look around. Blood filled his senses. The gravel dug into his back; an unbearable ache came from his neck. Above him stood Elara, her back to him, hands hanging at her sides.
He watched the blood drip from her hands, landing on the ground, then she lung at the figure from before with a cry of anger.
The sounds were gruesome, Felix stable enough to hear the visceral effects of what Elara was doing, and he didn't want to picture it. His sister- his own sister- would never hurt anyone like THAT.
And he believed that until he saw Elara stumble back over to him, her canines longer than normal, her eyes an unnatural yellow, and a heart dropped from her hand.
"Saying your goodbyes?" Elara asked, coming to a stop a safe distance from Felix. Neither of them had spoken to the other since the incident in June, not intentionally, anyways. Of course, they couldn't avoid the other when Josie and Landon asked them to hangout.
"I already did," he responded, turning his eyes back to her gravestone. The fresh vase of marigolds stood out against the harsh gray. Bonnie had bought them the day before. "And then you came back."
"Sorry 'bout that," she chuckled dryly. "Guess I'm so stubborn that death can't even take me."
Felix hummed at that. This was the moment that they'd both been waiting for, a moment to recollect over what had happened to both of them, and neither of them knew how to start.
A silence fell over them, yet neither of them heard the shifting leaves from several yards away, back near the tree line. Elara felt a tug in her chest, as if the universe were trying to pull her away, but she stood still. For whatever reason, the hole in her chest had vanishedâ almost completelyâ and she felt stronger than ever.
Maybe it was her talk with Bonnie and letting go of the weight of her trauma. Maybe it was the world's way of letting her know that she would be okay.
Maybe, it was the brunette that had recently escaped Malivore, but Elara didn't know that.
Hope watched the two, careful not to announce her presence. The boy with Elara looked extremely familiar, but her attention was enraptured by Elara. The blonde stood just a bit taller, held herself with a newfound strength that Hope couldn't ignore. Her blue eyes practically glowed in the moonlight, but there was an unfathomable sadness to them that only Hope could see.
Elara was alive. The moment Hope jumped into Malivore, she couldn't shake the sinking feeling in her gut that Elara had lied to her again. A part of her didn't want to believe it, so the moment she got out, she looked. Strangely, she felt pulled towards the cemetery, and she found Elara and her grave. The moment she got back, she lost and found her best friend, her girlfriend...
Who didn't remember her at all.
"Felix, I'm so sorry," Elara blurted.
"About what?" he asked quickly. "The fact that I died or the fact that you did?"
"Both. Neither of us have been the same since, and it's- it's been hard for us to accept that."
"Us?" Felix echoed. "I've already accepted my own death. It's my sister's that I'm struggling with."
"But I'm not deadâ" Elara swallowed, then took a shaky breath.
"My sister, Elara Davenport, died before I could find her," Felix said. If looks could kill, the gravestone would've exploded at the pure intensity from his gaze. "She fought monsters, saved the school, and she gave her life to do it. My sister wouldn't murder. You- you slaughtered a man."
"To protect you," she whispered. "To protect all of you."
"The Elara I knew would've neverâ"
"Do that?" Elara cut in. She felt the Hellhound's anger flare, but she planned on suffocating it for the first time. "Yeah, she never would've sacrificed herself to save a bunch of people who don't care about her, either, nor would she have even considered it." She took a hesitant step towards him. "She would've run, but I wouldn't. People change when their lives' flip upside down. Don't you get that? You died and came back to life in another version of our world. Staying as yourself would've made your incredible adaptation impossible." She took another step, and Felix didn't move. "Elara Davenport was me, and now I'm Elara Laurent."
"Elara Davenport lost the only family she had and learned that she wasn't who she thought she was. She was pulled to a school that tried to help her, and she refused because she didn't think she deserved to be cared about or loved or even welcomed with open arms. In her mind, she lost any chance at living a good life the moment her brother died because he was the only person who didn't immediately think of her as a burden, as nothing but trouble. When she got to the school, she was overwhelmed with guilt over her brother's death because she blamed herself, and so did the rest of the world."
Felix shook his head. "I didn'tâ I don't."
A small smile reached her lips. Those four words were the best thing she could've heard.
"I love you, Felix, and so did she." She gestured to the grave.
"I miss her," Felix confessed, unable to stop the crack in his voice. "I miss- how normal life was, how normal she- you were."
"Me too, but she's not completely gone. A part of her is standing right here, and while she's very different, she's still your sister. She will never hurt you again, and the second you think she might, she'll leave because she'd rather hurt herself over and over again and break her own heart than see the people she loves in pain because of her. It breaks her to even think about the people she loves being afraid of her."
"You're right," Felix uttered, surprising Elara. "The Elara I knew would've never admitted any of that."
Elara laughed softly. Felix wasn't good with emotions either, so he would make jokes just like she did. "Elara Laurent has grown, and she still has a lot left to do, but she can't do it without her family. Even if they're stuck together until the end of time."
Silently, Felix closed the distance between them, pulling her into a hug that would break the bones of a human.
Talking with Felix like this wasn't what Elara had been planning, but she wasn't complaining. They both needed to say their goodbyes to Elara Davenport, the runaway foster kid, and they needed to accept the arrival of Elara Laurent, the daughter of Cedric Laurent and the one and only Hellhound, even if it meant accepting the darkness of her nature, the legacy behind the name.
From her hiding spot, Hope watched the smiles spread on their faces. While she was so happy that Elara was alive and so was her brother, she couldn't shake her disappointment. She was gone from everyone's memories, and they were all happy. They were just fine without her. They didn't need her anymore, and they weren't going to miss her.
As much as it hurt, Hope knew she had to leave.
And she had every intention to until she reached the bus stop at the same time as a troll.
A literal troll.