On My Own (TVD Series)

Dream Of Me

Lauren's POV

"Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt."

Sitting at the farthest corner of the kitchen island with a cup of steaming coffee and the slightest dim of light coming from the fireplace, I sat in silence,whispering the words of Sun Tzu. Entranced by this vision of him wandering behind me as I flipped through each page, the words he spoke out of me embedded themselves into the seams of my skull like a death note.

"Appear weak when you are strong and strong when you are weak."

Gripping the edge of the cup with my fingertips, I flipped through the remainder of my chapter when the slidding doors to the back porch rolls open quietly. Walking in with the sunrays beaming on his back, Enzo's eyes creeping up from behind his lashes as ours meet seamlessly. There was a moment of silence between us, or at least that's what it felt like to me until his eyes break our gaze and he finds a place on the island to gaze upon.

"Good Morning..." I mumbled, placing my cup down.

"...good morning." He hesitated, walking around the island to the fridge.

Having both doors open, the chilly air from inside the freezer erupts around his ankles as he hid behind them. At a standstill, I could hear the sound of glass grinding against each other, followed by plastic clicking before silence again.

"Are you feeling any better?" I asked, waiting for him to show himself, but nothing followed, just the sound of gulping.

It wasn't like him to be this quiet, to close the world off and lock himself inside of his little bubble. So, as he stood between the island and the cool wind from the freezer, I flipped my book over and inched myself to the edge of my seat before the fridge door slammed close.

"I'm fine." He sighed, staring blankly at his eerie reflection on the fridge door.

"Last night you were-"

"It was a nightmare. A vision of my imagination, that's all."

And yet, that's not what I saw. Last night I saw the one person who has shown me loneliness isn't something to be scared of, the person who showed me that it was okay to welcome silence, and the only person to still had hope of something better for me. But the person that stood in front of me, he was a complete stranger.

"...that's not what it looked like." I added.

"Then please...enlighten me."

Stretching his neck, he burned his gaze directly at me, sending an unimaginable surge of heat down my neck.

"Since you feel so knowledgable in my sufferings, tell me why my own head is tricking me. Planting these seeds of deceitful and manipulating lies that feel so real, I can grasp it!" He snarled, slamming the unfinished blood bag on the counter.

"Tell me how to seperate my world and the one I have created in my head seem different everytime I open my eyes!"

"...Enzo-"

"Tell me, Lauren! How do I fix this without breaking everything I have now?"

There he was. The stranger I found curled up in Enzo's bed, clawing and pushing himself against the headboard as he cried and yelled at the walls from last night.

"...I can't...but-"

"But nothing...you can't help me every time I don't seem okay because then it'll just complicate things." He gasped, holding his breath before falling back against the counter.