Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
001. SEASON 4, EPISODE 15 & BEYOND
━━━━━━
JEREMY'S NECK SNAPS.
IT'S AN awful sound, but one that repeats on and on in Elena's mind like a broken record. It's a sound that haunts her more than the memory of water cleaving through the muscles of her throat and filling up her lungs till she feels like she's bursting, the sight of the life leaving Jenna's eyes, the gleam of the sunlight as it rippled over John's splayed body.
Perhaps because this time Elena has not lost someone that was meant to protect that—the expectation that they would die in her name was acceptable, alright, because it was what they were meant to do.
But Jeremy was not meant to die.
It was always meant to be Elena : the elder sister, the matriarch of their two-person family, the protector.
Instead, all she's turned out to be is a failure.
So many people have died, so much blood has stained her hands, but at least when Elena went to sleep, she could comfort herself with the thought that at least Jeremy was alive, was there, breathing deeply in his sleep just across the hallway from her.
He was a stalwart constant throughout the havoc of the last year and a half—a one naivety she allowed herself because if Elena didn't give herself that small piece of innocence ( of idiocy ) that her brother would always be here, she thinks she would've crumbled under the weight of it all a long time ago.
But then his neck was snapped, and everything collapsed with his corpse.
Her mind broke too, just a little bit, just enough so she could fool herself into believing that he was coming back, so she could ignore the stench of his body as he rotted under her desperate hands. So she could steal those few precious hours when it was just them, hiding under the blankets like they used to. Like when their biggest fears were monsters stowed away in their closets and beaten back by tired parents.
But, he's dead.
And, in a way, so is Elena.
She feels the hole Jeremy carved inside her like a wound, like a black hole eating away at her insides, her bones, her soul, her everything . She was first punctured by the loss of her parents, a double blow that knocked her breathless, but she got back on her feet. Then, Jenna died, her eyes shining with forgiveness and awful acceptance as her life and blood spilled onto grass and flames and Klaus clutched her heart in his hands.
A heart that had laughed and cried and smiled. That played hide-and-seek with Elena when she was five, that giggled over her first kiss, that wept with her at her parents' funeral, that was so desperate to prove that she was a good enough guardian that she could never see that just being there was enough.
