✓ | 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐓𝐈𝐂, Stefan and Damon

Chapter 50

So we made it this far. Exactly one month ago today I started this. I can't believe I have pushed out over 70k words for this in a month. I mean, that's more than NaNoWriMo and that's not even counting my other stories.

I've never done this sort of chapter. Yeah, Broken Memories has a lot of letters, but I have never done something quite like this. I mean, there's that singular life long diary entry from Anna in that one chapter (not gonna spoil), but that doesn't feel the same way that this does. I don't feel the emotion from that as I do in this one. This just feels...sensitive....

Even me writing this is hard. I mean, I'm at chapter 50 and this has to be a big one. It's a time for reflection in my life and in this book. 

We were at a divergence in our life, between what we were and what we could become. Things, while often more chaotic than they had ever been, are good. Yeah, I could finally say that things around here really are good. No longer did I have to handle the burden of being a heretic alone. No longer did we all have to deal with a looming threat of Mikael or any of Esther's followers.

Freedom had come to find us at last.

I took time to reflect on what life had been like, what I really felt like. Yes, I had taken the chance over the weekend to buy my very own diary. Stefan was so into it and I just thought that maybe if it worked for him that it could work for me.

At that, I started to write down whatever I could to make myself feel something.

Dear Diary,

While I come to you for the first time in my life, and in fact for the first time in your life, I do have to take out some time to give you my warmest welcomes into the abyss that is my thought process.

Although I would normally start off something like this with background information, who really is going to be reading this? Even if somehow one of my mates found this and started to read it, they would know what I am talking about and of whom I am speaking of. It truly matters little in the end.

For me, my life just feels complete in so many ways, but in my heart I feel as if something is just wrong, missing and cannot be filled by what I have now. It is so selfish of me to dream of what I cannot have, but I simply can't help myself sometimes. I mean, what could be better than to have everything that you want when you want it. I would give anything to have the right information at the right time, whispering itself in my ear as if it were a part of my own mind. Such a gift would be so useful in times like these, where I didn't know what to do.

The great Astrid Mikaelson has no idea what she is going to do with her life.

What more could I want? I don't know. I just really don't know. Something about what I feel just makes my heart sink. It feels hollow on the inside, reminding me just how much immortality has given to and taken from me.

What more could I dream of when the sun sets? Of the sunrise, of the blinding stars to burn brighter in the night sky? It just doesn't make any sense. I should be the happiest that I have ever been. Something is not right in my life and I want more than anything to figure it out. This mystery is not one that I want to have right now, diary, and I don't know how to find what I need to to solve it.

My mother is dead, I ripped out her heart like it was nothing. My father is dead, I stabbed his own white oak stake through his heart like my life depended on it. That as it was, my life did depend on their deaths. I had to kill my own parents in order to save my life. As much as everyone hated them, I did still hold some amount of guilt over their deaths.

They were my parents and they hated me. No matter how much they would claim to hate what I was and love me, I know deep down that they hate me. They always hated me. I should just hate them back, make the feeling mutual, but I can't. I can't and it hurts so much. All I wanted was for them to love me, to want me to be happy more than they hated what I was and what I could become. Broken. Abomination. Freak of nature. Witch. I have been called it all, yet now even thinking about what I am hurts. I am all of the above, yet people claim that they can see past it. Or even worse, they deny what I am and say that they think I am a good person.

My parents were right. I can't deny that they were right in their judgements against me.

Yes, I have saved some people, but I have also killed more than I can even remember. I don't even remember their faces. I just kill and kill and kill and kill my enemies until my last one remains, the one enemy that I will never be able to conquer.

Myself.

I am the last thing that I will hate. The only person that I have ever been able to hate is in fact myself. I should be stronger, have less of a fragile self esteem after all these years, but I still hate myself just as much as I did over a thousand years ago.

I want to live.

I want humanity.

I want life.

I want to stop death.

In the end, there would be no cure to what I am. Even if vampirism could be cured, I would just be stuck at square one: being a siphoner who hated herself and had no immortality to fuel her magic.

My love knows no bounds.

My care.

My internal compassion.

My love for my mates is what keeps me strong.

It keeps me together.

Even when things are bad, I will always have them.

My sun and my moon.

The only thing that will survive this torment that I put myself through.

I have failed so many people that I wish I could save. I just wanted to be good and save people, not hurt them. My Marcellus, I am sorry that I couldn't be there to save you. You were the one person that I cried over the most when I woke up. I raised you like you were my own son. I still love you. On the other side, I hope that you know that I will always love you. No matter what, even when you are gone and dead, I will always be thinking of you.

Your smile.

Your laugh.

The ways that you would piss off Kol. You were always so good at that.

If I could find you and bring you home, I would. Nik did tell me what happened. I just want you to know that your father loves you. God, how he always does love you. Nik will never be able to stop loving you. The first child that he raised, that we raised.

It hurts even to think about how much I love you, my little warrior. If I ever did get to see you again, I would never be able to let you go. Maybe I could, someday, find a rip in the other side and take you back home.

Our family will now always have room to grow. You would love that. You always hated the fact that Nik wouldn't trust anyone but his own family. Now, he can make friends and also have his family. We will always be the ones he trusts most, but now he has grown.

I wish I could have seen you grow.

The heretics are my home.

My mates are my home.

My siblings are my home.

The hybrids are my home.

I have been home for a long time.

I just need to learn how to open the door to my heart.

Just wide enough to let my darkness out and allow the sun in.

For the sun and moon both come in phases.

Just as I hope this despair will go.

It will come back someday, but I will be ready.

I will be ready to let my fear go.