ACHILLES' HEEL ▷ KOL MIKAELSON [2] [COMPLETED]

𝟐𝟒. 𝐈 𝐒𝐖𝐄𝐀𝐑 𝐈 𝐋𝐈𝐕𝐄𝐃

(CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR :
I SWEAR I LIVED)

✧࿐ ཾ✧

WOULD YOU DIE FOR someone you love? In truth, it was a question that often crossed my mind after I realised the amount of people I loved, the amount of people that I needed to anchor me. Without them, I would have been lost. However, I found the concept in itself to have become too romanticised in the media, the reasoning behind why someone would sacrifice themselves blurring. Contrary to the lies of television and novels, it wasn't out of bravery that somebody died for another, it was out of selfishness. In my case, I was too self-serving to live without Kol, so I forced him to live without me instead.

Looking back, my ending was bittersweet. I died by the hands of Jeremy Gilbert — someone who promised to protect and fight for me — and I died inside the house where the wallpaper was peeling from the weight of the secrets it held. Not that I minded much, the death was quick and the decor didn't faze me as I combusted into flames. From the beginning, I was destined to die, damned by death as punishment for turning off my emotions. My complicated and sometimes confusing curse was meant to be my downfall since day dot — but fate was never as black and white that. Instead, Kol caused the collapse of my castle.

"Oh, Kol . . ." I muttered in disappointment, scanning the bloody scene with vehement eyes. As the latest addition to the Other Side, it meant I was isolated from interaction — I was condemned to observe, nobody ever hearing my whispers in their ear. And I watched everything, from the unexpected heart to heart between Kol and Klaus after the two were trapped inside the Gilbert living room to Elena's breakdown amidst the search for the cure on a distant island when her guilty conscience caused her sanity to deteriorate. In my blackened, dead heart, I couldn't find it in me to pity her either because she was the reason I was dead, thus she was dead to me. Damon even broke up with her — not that I expected it to last long — and a spell had to be cast to act as supernatural restraining order against a murderous Kol. I watched it all.

Somewhere in Oregon, Kol Mikaelson stood leaning against a brick wall, licking his lips as his predatory eyes trailed one of the many humans that were strolling down the bustling high street road. Typically, his prey were on their phone and far too caught in their own materialistic world to be able to comprehend what lurked in the shadows. Days — or at least I think, time blended on the Other Side — passed and I was accustomed to his little routine. Like clockwork, Kol would pluck out an unsuspecting human from the crowd, drain them dry and then discard their corpse in a nearby dumpster. He didn't care if the authorities were onto him, he wanted Portland to burn. On first glance, I had assumed his humanity was off, but upon closer inspection, I concluded he couldn't have flipped the switch. His chocolate brown eyes weren't empty or void, they were simply dead. Kol didn't need a motive or escape route to kill without empathy, he could be cruel with humanity because he had no reason to like humans when they were a means to an end. Fuelled by anger, he hated the same new world that I had wanted him to flourish in. Yet, he wasn't weak enough to splinter under the pressures. Bathing in the blood he spilt, he mourned in the way he deemed appropriate.