𝐀𝐏𝐑𝐈𝐂𝐈𝐓𝐘 ⚜️ ELIJAH MIKAELSON

[ The Mourning ]

CHAPTER 40
[ New Orleans, 2013 ]

The morning bled into existence in muted grays, the sky dull and lifeless, as if even the universe had dimmed itself in mourning. Georgia hadn't moved from the couch. She wasn't sure if she even could. Every part of her body ached—not just from exhaustion, not just from lack of sleep, but from something deeper, something relentless, something unbearable.

She had spent the morning staring at the ceiling, at the cracks in the walls, at the ghost of a life that had slipped through her fingers like sand. She had barely blinked, barely breathed, barely existed beyond the weight of her own grief pressing down on her ribs like a vice.

Cami was dead.

Davina was gone. Truly gone, not resurrected, deprived of a second chance.

And Marcel, the last piece of family she had left, the only constant, the one who had held her together when everything else had fallen apart—Elijah had taken him, too.

Her eyes burned, raw and swollen from the hours she had spent crying, but there was nothing left now. No more tears. No more breaking down. Only the hollow, aching numbness that had taken their place. Grief had settled into her bones like a sickness. Heavy. Inescapable.

The worst week of her life. The worst day of her life. And still, the world had the audacity to keep turning, to keep moving forward, while she sat there, stuck in the wreckage of everything she had lost.

She had spent the night on the bridge, standing in the very spot where Marcel had fallen. Waiting. For what, she didn't know. Maybe for him to rise from the river below, to shake the water from his skin and smirk at her like he always did, calling her Doll in that teasing, affectionate way of his. Maybe for the world to acknowledge her loss, for the universe to show some sign that it understood what it had taken from her.

But the river had only stared back at her, dark and unyielding, giving nothing.

Now, in the stillness of Marcel's loft, the grief settled deeper. It clung to the air, thick and suffocating, seeping into every inch of this place—his place. The scent of him still lingered, a mix of aged bourbon and spice. His leather jacket was draped over the back of a chair, the sleeves folded like he might return for it. His books, his music, the life he had built here—it was all still here.

But he wasn't.

Georgia curled in on herself, her fingers gripping the fabric of his shirt that had been discarded on the couch days ago. It smelled like him. Like safety. Like home. But now, it was nothing more than a cruel reminder of what she had lost and what she had once had because there was a time before all of this. Before the blood, before the harvest, the prophecy, before the Mikaelsons had ripped through their lives like a hurricane, leaving only wreckage in their wake.

Georgia squeezed her eyes shut, as if blocking out the world would somehow dull the pain, but it didn't. Nothing could. It was inside her, consuming her from the inside out, hollowing her out piece by piece.

She had lost Marcel - her best friend, her family.

She had never known what that kind of bond felt like before him. She had been raised in a world of duty and expectation, surrounded by people who only saw her for what she could offer them—the shy, quiet Claire sister, the one with untapped potential. Even Davina, for all her love, had been her responsibility more than her equal. It had always been Georgia's job to protect her, to carry her.

But Marcel had carried Georgia.

He had been there when no one else was. He had been there when she was nineteen and lost, standing behind that bar at Rousseau's, overwhelmed and barely keeping herself afloat in a city that swallowed people whole.