Redamancy | Elena Gilbert

Chapter 23

"Concentrate," said Klaus. "Close your eyes. Visualize a path, one of your own creation. I personally like visualizing hallways with doors, a door representing each memory. When you enter his mind, you will see that path, and you could organize the doors however you want. If you focus, you can bring forth all the most recent memories to facilitate the search. Then, get to opening the doors, to seeing the memories. Got it?"

"Easy enough," said Rosalind. She did as told, closing her eyes and sinking into Alaric's mind.

The hallway appeared, with a simple marble floor and doors running on either side of it. She concentrated again, and the doors started to move, dates printed atop them so she could examine all the ones starting from the day of the Bridge Fundraiser.

She moved forward, popping the doors open, absorbing all the details of each memory in the blink of an eye. It felt like she had only been there a minute and she'd already seen every single thing Alaric had witnessed since that day. There were lots of images of Meredith, the fight with Brian Walters, the moment Damon brought Bill Forbes into the hospital, and the night he was stabbed. None of which showed any other faces, or anything relevant.

The one where he was attacked was strange. It was like a chunk of it had been removed. It skipped directly to him being stabbed without showing who had done it.

In fact, if she lined the memories up chronologically, there were gaps everywhere. Like, one moment he'd have been talking to Elena, the next he was asleep and dreaming. But there was no memory of him going up the stairs to his room. No memory of him even saying goodnight to Elena.

"Something is wrong," she said, emerging and seeing that Klaus was still standing exactly how he'd been when she dove in. "Wait, how long was I in there?"

"Ten seconds, perhaps," said Klaus. "What did you see?"

"There are gaps," she announced, glancing back at Liz Forbes. "Missing memories." She looked up at Klaus. "Did I do something wrong? I thought I pulled them all forward to arrange them..."

"Allow me." He moved her aside and held onto Alaric's head himself. In five seconds, he'd opened his eyes again and frowned. "There are missing memories."

"What does that tell us?" asked Liz.

"Nothing," said Rosalind. "Literally nothing... because there are random timeskips that could have had anythinghappening in between. Except we wouldn't know it."

The two hybrids left before five minutes had even passed. Klaus claimed he'd never seen anything like that, where he couldn't just call forth those missing memories. As if someone had taken them, or as if they didn't even belong to Alaric.

"What do we do now?" asked Rosalind once she'd messaged Elena to tell her they hadn't found anything.

"We go back to training," said Klaus.

"But how are we going to help Alaric?"

"We won't."

"Some of my friends are from Founding Families. I'm from a Founding Family. If Alaric knows something about the murders or if he is the murderer, he might go after my aunt!"

"There isn't anything that can be done if the memories simply aren't there. What matters more to me is that you are trained and ready for when I call the hybrids home to introduce you to as the other Alpha. Alaric is the least of my concerns."

Rosalind tried to focus on the training, even if Alaric and his strange mind continued to plague her thoughts, making her wonder all the ways those memories could have possibly been hidden. It was just her and Klaus now. Kol and Elijah had left after Finn and Esther fled. Rebekah was still there, but just not in the house.