(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.

I wasn't like him, I was weak. Behind my barrier of fluent sarcasm, I used the fail safe of turning off my emotions when things got too difficult. Ironically, it was that annoying quirk of mine the entangled me into the mess involving Mary-Alice's curse. When I couldn't handle losing anymore people, I had opted to become a runaway alongside Kol, fleeing Mystic Falls. Whilst he felt nothing with his humanity, I felt everything. If I hadn't unravelled to the point of carelessness, I wouldn't have attacked Kol and if I had never attacked him, I wouldn't have been cursed. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but I considered that night in Amsterdam the final push that aligned the stars. I was fated to die, would I have been in this same situation if I wasn't? Jumping in front of Kol was . . . Instinctive, as if a higher power pulled my strings like a marionette.

Standing at his side, I paced up the cobblestone with the man, reaching my hand out to hold his, only for it to slip straight through. "I'm sorry. I know it's too late now, but I am." I murmured, drinking in his appearance for the final time before I found peace. Closure, I suppose. "When you die, all the things you didn't say are your biggest regrets. I wish I could tell you that I loved you since the very first day, the day I fell into your arms not far from here. More importantly, I wish you knew that I kept you at arm's length for so long because I was scared — scared of losing you again. The thought ripped me apart inside, I didn't want to put my heart on the line for it be stomped on in your panic to follow your family across the country." I admitted, revealing my vulnerable side in announcing I didn't want to love him in case I lost him to his tyrant of a half-brother. "I said I'd wait for you, but I left. One of us had to go, I guess. You know, I never believed in soulmates . . . Until you." I commented after a short silence, he couldn't reply like I wanted him too, so I carried on talking. In my heart, I knew we found our way back to each other and that counted for something. If soulmates were real, he had to have been mine, I had to have hope we'd cross paths in another life someday.

Kol halted in his tracks and I almost thought he could hear me. Instead, he stood eye to eye with me, motionless. "I should have took her to New Orleans personally — even let those idiots go after the bloody cure if it saved her!" He yelled and I ducked on impulse when fist collided with the brick wall behind my head. "If I had went along with their pathetic plan and saw Silas through to death, she would be here, she would be mine." The Original reprimanded himself, his rants being directly at nobody in particular. No matter, his words still peaked my interest.

"No, don't do this to yourself. You can't change what happened, I'm dead. Dead, dead, dead!" I replied to him, a dry chuckle bursting from my throat when I acknowledged how ridiculous I was acting. "Talking to yourself is the first sign of madness." I accepted, remembering his words in the alleyway to me after I had turned my humanity on again. "D—Does that mean we're going mad without each other?" I pondered, standing up right again and circling him. Every part of him was perfect, I didn't care how lovesick I was to talk to someone who would never hear me.

"I thought she would have learned her lesson." I learnt to interpret our own conversation, I took his rambling as a definite 'yes' to my question. Seemingly, we were going mad without each other. "It was getting involved with the Mikaelsons that got her killed the first time." He complained, slipping out from the shadows in order to make the first move on his next victim.

Intrigued, I was hot on his heels as he flirted with a human, analysing the mundane girl. Honey blonde ringlets bounced at the side of her high cheekbones, the brightness of her electric blue irises starkly contrasting with the delicacy of her porcelain skin. No doubt she couldn't have been older than seventeen, it was clear from the way she carried herself that she was clueless how to compose herself in this big wide city. More notably, excluding the fact there was a remarkable resemblance to myself in the girl, I knew from the spark in her eyes that she had her a fruitful and full life ahead of her. Or she did until Kol stole that from her.

Leading her to the back of some buildings, he didn't have the effort for foreplay, feeding from the child — for that's what she was at only seventeen — and dropped her body against the cement with a 'thud.' "She didn't even beg for her life, I hate it when they don't beg." He moaned, stalking off for round two of his regular prowl, eager to take the life of another blonde haired, blue eyed innocent.

"You've come undone." I stated, a chill running through me as he rushed through my spirit to find another meal. Of course, on the day I was searching for peace, I found him at his lowest. Truthfully, I didn't want my last memory to be of 'Kol Mikaelson: the Sociopath,' I wanted it to be of the real him. Regardless of every disgraced and reckless act he committed over the his millennia of life, I had never viewed him as anything other than Kol — just Kol.

Grinning, Kol stared at his blood stained hands, finding humour in the intricate swirls and patterns the liquid formed on his skin. "She wouldn't be proud." He declared, relishing in the kill, but also contemplating which way was forward for him from here. "To Hell with Charlotte Hatton then because she isn't here anymore to make me a better man." He finalised, his head whipping around the space as if he was looking for me. And what hurt the most was how close our lips were and how our eyes were locked when he was looking for me. But, I couldn't hang up on the details, he couldn't see me and the certainty in his tone made me think I'd only be torturing myself by staying around.

I wasn't proud, he was right. Over time, I would confess to have enacting a countless number of harrowing deeds, but none were to ever spite him. It felt like he was twisting the knife, using me as a shield from the repercussions of his grief. When I watched his retreating figure, it dawned on me he was lost — temporarily, at least. Deep down, I knew it would be wrong of me to cling onto the idea of who I wanted him to he for any longer. For a century, I had leached onto the idea of him, the idea of our epic romance and, in hindsight, that did me more harm than good. All the best love stories end in tragedy and mine was no exception. In saying that, even my death and the aftermath of it amongst those that I knew had changed nothing. I refused to let who he was evolving into define my feelings towards him or twist and deform the beauty of the relationship we once shared. I knew if I continued to trail him, I would grow to hate his self-destructive ways and miss the conversations we could never have. In hopes of holding onto what we had, I did what I knew what was best for the both of us — I let him go, taking refuge in my memories and living in them instead.

Nevertheless, nobody was ever ready for death — even if I had insisted I was to Bonnie — as there was no way to be prepared for it. Nobody knew what it was. Death wasn't a place where you lived amongst past friends or family and there were no angels either. Death was a cold, lonely oblivion where the sun still came up and world still spun without you in it. Your dent in the universe was meaningless in the afterlife, there were no prizes for the volume of tears that you dry in watching people forget about you. Rather than waiting for the inevitable pain of being forgotten and being a nameless face in a vintage photograph, I escaped death like I had lived my life — I found peace in the fragments of my past.

I found peace in the parts of me that were stolen from me long ago.

✧࿐ ཾ✧

A.N: With that, Achilles' Heel is over. In this chapter, there was a teaser to how people reacted and this was a closure chapter. However, if you want to see if Kol & Lottie find their way back to each other for a second time, read the third book in the series. More information will be available about that in the next chapter and the extended summary will be posted tonight.

Do you have any questions for me about the book or as an author? I might add a Q&A chapter in about a week if I get enough questions, you can ask me about my process or anything really.