mikaelsonsister:

@tetheredtoelena i hope you’re happy 

she’s been dead for over a thousand years. 

she’s been dead longer than she’s been alive. 

she’s doled death out like gifts, to those both deserving and innocent, to hundreds, thousands of people. she’s felt death, watched it, slowly leave her victims bodies. she’s even died once, has stared death in the face dozens of times since then. she thought she knew death. she thought that death could no longer surprise her. 

but she was wrong. she was so, so wrong. 

her own father shoved a sword through her chest, her brother had daggered her more times than she’d like to admit. but it wasn’t the same. it never felt like this. it happened slow. she felt the tip of the stake pierce her skin, and plunge deeper and deeper into her body until it hit her heart. and then, even slower, somehow, as it ripped through the muscle. 

when she looked down, however, there was nothing there. no dagger, no blood. but she could feel it, in her body. she felt it clearer than she’d ever felt anything. as she looks up, the first thing she sees is niklaus. sapphire eyes travel over him, along his arm and to his hand, the end of the stake, the skin it had torn open, and, finally, him. 

she doesn’t understand at first. her brows furrow as their eyes meet. and as they stand, side by side, their hands reach out for one another, and it looks like they’re mirrored images until their hands connect, and their fingers entwine. while she watches the grey death creep up his shoulders, and his neck, and his chin, she feel it happening to herself. 

there’s something else. 

she doesn’t know how to explain it. it feels like something being torn from her. it starts at the very beginning of her being and rips and tears more and more as the death creeps up their faces. no, she wants to say. no, no, no! but she can’t seem to get any words to leave her lips. and first his hand becomes limp in hers, and then he’s falling. she’s falling. backwards, onto the floor, both of them hitting the hard wood at the same time. 

there’s no tearing anymore. now, it’s more like a whole part of her is missing. like it had been stolen. this emptiness does not have a name. there’s not a name for the type of missing she feels. like a sword had been driven down her middle and now she’s only half. she’s laying there, part of her dead, and she doesn’t hear whatever niklaus is saying, she doesn’t hear hope, or the creaking of footsteps, the wind, she doesn’t hear his breath. 

time does not exist. she lays there, eyes fixed on his face, on his dead, grey skin. she lays there for days, maybe weeks. she lays there, part of her dead and stolen. part of her growing hungrier. she does not care. she does not want to eat. she does not want to live, that part of her that still does live, that is. she does not move. she barely breathes. 

until a strong pair of arms are lifting her from the ground and she torn again, this time from her hypnotic half-dead state. but even as the world around her comes back into view, she still feels like she’s only part of a person. she still feels like one half walking around in a whole body. no, she wants to say as he becomes smaller and smaller in her vision and then disappears entirely. only then does she look up to see elijah, stoic as always, carrying her. 

‘ you have to eat, ’  he tells her as he sets her gently in the front seat of his car.  ‘ you look like you’ve been laying in a coffin for a hundred years. ’ 

the first words out of her mouth in she’s not sure how long are,  ‘ where’s hope? ’  because that’s what he would have asked, that’s what he would have been thinking about. hope. if she’s safe, if they failed in protecting her, if she’s still alive. 

elijah insures her that their niece is fine as he holds out a bag of blood to her. and she stares at it, her fangs aching, her throat burning, desperate in her hunger. she does not take it. instead, she stands, and her legs are weak and wobbly, but somehow they still work. she wants nothing else, nothing again from those people who she used to call family. even elijah, all knight in shining armour like. because he told nik, and therefore, he’s dead to her. 

every last one of them are dead to her, for as long as she remains. 

and this time, she means it.

she has to take him back to his sister. that’s what he’d want. hope’s safe. and now it’s time to take him home. and rebekah hopes that when she does, elena, the salvatores, the whole of mystic fall, will have found a way to kill her, too. but, in the back of her mind, she doesn’t think she’ll receive the kindness of being reunited with him again. that would be a fate far better than she deserves. she failed to protect him. she deserves this half death she’s living.