Devil's Angel ° {K.M}[Rewriting]

{006}

A/N: I completely missed an episode and didn't even realize. I missed Isobel but I'll just leave it out. Nothing important really happens there.

The Return
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"Don't be sorry. I trusted you, my mistake, not yours."
—Unknown
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After the beam had crushed her, America had laid there in agony, her breathing laboured and her heart stuttering inside her chest. Every breath hurt, rattling the fractured pieces of her ribs and jostling her side where blood was steadily seeping through, wetting the ground beneath her. She closed her eyes as the fire roared around her, so loud, and too hot. It hurt—hurt worse than anything she'd ever known—but soon, she didn't feel anything. Soon. . . she was numb, settled somewhere in the confines of her mind—somewhere soft and cold and soothing.

It was dark around her for the longest time before there was a flicker of colour, a gentle and subtle flash followed by the whisper of voices. Curious, she had stood in the barren landscape and ventured closer, unafraid as she believed pain was a thing of the past considering that she was dead but. . . how misguided she had been. The closer she grew, the brighter the light glowed and the louder the whispers sounded until they were deafening and she was blinded, trying to stumble away from the growing discomfort but it was futile.

A scream tore at her throat as the noise and light seemed to penetrate through her very being. Quetisyah. . . Silas. . . Anessa. . . Amara. A life flashed before her eyes in fast-forward, of familiar and unfamiliar faces, laughter and cries, sadness and joy. The young woman couldn't tell how long it went on but eventually, when it finally, finally stopped, her voice was hoarse and her throat ached, a few stray coughs escaping her as she lay there, having lost her balance ages before. She'd barely taken a relieved breath before the light surged again and the noise smothered her every sense.

Tatia. . . Mikeal. . . Elijah. . . Rebekah. . . Niklaus. It felt as if someone was taking a hammer to each and every segment of her mind, delving into locked doors and ripping them open by any means necessary. The sheer unforgiving clarity of the pain was all that prepared her for the inevitable moment she would open her eyes because there wasn't any way after all she felt, that she could well and truly be dead. Being burned alive, for the fleeting moments the fire had licked at her flesh, had felt better than this. Katerina. . . Nadia. . . Ignat. . . Adelina.

She curled up on the floor of her mind, wishing the coldness of it had been as soothing as it had been before. Now. . . she could barely feel it as her mind was reconfigured.