gorysortofstory | Open Picture Prompt Post

[After he graduates, Tyler leaves Mystic Falls. He hires people to keep up the Lockwood property, turns it into a town museum but he doesn't return. There's nothing for him there. He and Caroline broke up shortly after his mother's death and more than anything he just wants out. Away from Klaus, from everything.

It's about a hundred years before he comes back, and he doesn't expect to see any familiar faces anymore. He doesn't expect anything at all as he wanders around the familiar woods of the Lockwood property. Land he knows well. Where everything started.

He doesn't know how long he's wandering until he picks up a scent he recognizes. One he hasn't smelled in a long time, but he recognizes it nonetheless.

He zooms to follow it until he stops in front of Elena as well.]

Hey.

[What else do you say when you first see someone after a hundred years?]

[There's no cure for being a vampire. There's always going to be the craving for blood. Elena feels it every day and every time she indulges she a little bit of herself melt away. Over and over again for over a hundred years.

But when she stands in these woods, she's home. She's safe and warm and if she closes her eyes she can almost pretend to be the girl who used to run through the trees hiding from the Fell ghost. The little rabbit girl who just wanted to be free and to be loved.

In the end she was given claws and wings and they tried to make her fly. She loses herself to madness in cycles, the kind that comes and goes and last a little longer each time. Stefan is gone. She feels the ache of Damon's absence every day and she wonders if him invoking the sire bond took a little piece of her with him.

Still, he isn't there. He let her go. Matt and Bonnie, dead, Caroline, gone.

Jeremy, dead.

There's no one left in Mystic Falls. No one left who knows her real name or who she used to be before they replaced her hands with claws and her teeth with fangs.

She should remember that wolves always come home. They always remember their pack.

She closes her eyes when she hears the patter of feet, waiting to see what happens when it stops. She protects the town from stray vampires, doing what the council can't, but sometimes the one that comes back is friendly. She waits until she hears his voice, and she smiles.]

Tyler.

[She doesn't know if he's heard anything about what she's become, but she's happy to see him nonetheless. Her eyes open and she lunges forward, wrapping her arms around his neck.]

[Tyler doesn't really have a pack, not anymore. He's run with a few werewolves over the decades but here's the thing -- wolves grow old and die. Hybrids don't. And the only other hybrid in the world now is Klaus and like hell is Tyler going to keep company with him.

So he travels alone most of the time. Loses himself a little more every passing year. He doesn't really fit in with other wolves, and he doesn't totally hit in with other vampires either.

And maybe that's what finally drew him home after all this time, the memory of a time where he did have a place. A purpose. Some sort of sense of belonging. Maybe it had been brief, but it had existed.

It doesn't really surprise him that of all the faces he could be running into here, it's Elena's he finds. At least it's a friendly one. A hundred years hasn't made him like the Salvatores anymore than he used to.]

Elena.

[The hug surprises him. He's not really sure the last time anyone hugged him back, but he seems to remember how to do it well enough, his arms wrapping around her tightly.

He's heard whispers here and there of how she's been doing, but that's about it.]

[She settles into the hug, letting the little bits of familiar seep through her and crawl under her skin. Under the blood and under the dirt and it sits there, reminding her of the girl she used to be.]

You came home.

Yeah, well, it was about time. [He really hadn't expected anyone else to be here -- maybe he should have.]

[She nods as she pulls back, cupping his face in her hands.]

No one comes home anymore. Even when it's time. It's usually when the time is all wrong.

[that comes out wrong.]

It's good to see you.

It's good to see you too.

[He smiles, just a little.]

I didn't expect anyone to be here, honestly. [Last he heard, Caroline was somewhere in Europe now, and who knows, or cares, where the Salvatores are these days.

The Mikealsons were long gone as well.

And everyone else they knew? Dead.]

[They are dead, but Elena can feel them here. She can delude herself for a moment that they're still there and she's still the girl that she used to be, which is good because sometimes the delusions are all she has.]

Someone needs to stay. It's safer that way. Just because we leave doesn't mean others don't come.

Right, this has always been sort of a magnet for the supernatural.

[And somehow, Tyler doubts that's changed.]

Like moths to flames.

[it's also where the supernatural goes to die, when you think about it. Then her face lights up.]

The Grill's still here.

[He can't help but smile a little at that.]

Really?

[She grins before taking his hand and pulling him.]

It's older now. You can hear it if you listen, but it's still the Grill.

[Sometimes she can see Matt and Bonnie playing pool, or Damon and Alaric at the bar, and it starts to feel like home again.]

[He doesn't pull his hand away, instead he lets it grasp around hers, cementing him in a way he hasn't felt in a long time.]

I didn't expect it to be here still. But I also didn't really know what to expect at all.

The world doesn't really get here much.

[She leads the way back through the trees to the main road once they hit the center of town they stop. They aren't really a lot of new structures -- just things that have been updated to fit with the changing times. Still, Mystic Falls has always valued their history, and they never changed any more than they had to.

It's almost like walking into a picture book.]

Sometimes it feels like time stands still.

I imagine that has some advantages and disadvantages.

[Still, he's glad for it in this moment. The familiarity. It feels like home, something he hasn't felt in a long, long time -- not since he left almost a century ago.]

It's nice though, seeing something familiar again.

[She nods, not letting go of his hand. Having something familiar and friendly is tethering her to the ground in a way nothing has in a very long time. If she lets go, she might float away, and she doesn't want that. Not yet.]

There aren't a lot of the families left.

[He doesn't mind that she isn't letting go. It's nice to have something familiar to hold onto -- to not feel so alone.]

Which ones survived? [Not the Lockwoods. He had been the last one left -- and he can't have kids.]

The Fells.

[because somehow the Fells manage to outlive them all.]

There's a Forbes sheriff. There might be Gilberts out there somewhere, but they're not here.

[and of course, the only Salvatores left aren't here either.]

It's good to hear a few the founding families still exist, at least.

[It's something. Not much, but something.]

[She nods. She feels so isolated, away from the rest of the world. People kept dying and leaving, until there was nothing familiar left but the town, and still she stayed.

She doesn't know why she stays.]

Have you seen anyone? Since you left? Stefan or Caroline?

I saw Caroline a few decades ago, while I was traveling through Spain. She seems to be doing fine, making new lives for herself.

[She had seemed so removed from the girl he had once loved, he supposes they both were now. Time changes people, no one's the people they used to be.]

I don't generally go looking for the Salvatores. [He was never friends with them, barely even allies most of the time.]

[She nods again, before taking his hand and tugging him towards the Grill.]

Matt lived here his whole life. Had a family and everything. His granddaughter works at the hospital.

[she thinks he would have wanted to know.]

I would have called you for the funeral, but I didn't know ... I lost track of everyone.

[she hates that she did. she shouldn't have, but they all managed to slip through her fingers.]

I'm glad to hear that.

[And he was. Matt had been his best friend -- he deserved all those things.]

It's okay. I think most of us lost track of one another.

I just wish there had been something more to keep us together.

[They were a family, in an odd way. They kept losing people, but they still had each other. She doesn't blame them for wanting to leave, she just isn't sure whether or not she wanted them to take her with them.]

I couldn't stay. Not after everything that happened. [Not after losing his pack, losing his mother. Not after continuously failing to get anything right. Klaus always won, so he just left, metaphorical tale between his legs.]

if this doesn't work at all, let me know

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