"Yeah, it was a good year, wasn't it?"
Elena laughed again. She couldn't help herself. A good year.
They chatted for a few minutes before Elena casual y asked, "How's your grandmother, Isobel?"
Isobel looked at her blankly. "My grandmother?" she said.
"You must be confusing me with someone else. Both my grandmothers have been dead for years."
"Oh, my mistake." Elena said good-bye and managed to contain herself until Isobel and Jim were out of earshot. Then she took Stefan by the arms, pul ed him toward her, and gave him a resounding kiss, feeling delight and triumph passing back and forth between them.
"We did it," she said when the kiss had ended. "They're fine! And not just them." More solemn now, she gazed up into his green eyes, so serious and kind. "We did something real y important and wonderful, didn't we?"
"We did," Stefan agreed, but she couldn't help but notice something hard in his voice as he said it.
They walked hand in hand, and without discussing it, they headed for the edge of town, crossing Wickery Bridge and climbing the hil . They turned into the cemetery, past the ruined church where Katherine had hidden, and down into the little val ey below that held the newer part of the graveyard.
Elena and Stefan sat down on the neatly trimmed grass by the big marble headstone with "Gilbert" carved into the front.
"Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad," Elena whispered. "I'm sorry it's been so long."
Back in her old life, she had visited her parents' graves often, just to talk to them. She'd felt like they were able to hear her somehow, that they were wishing her wel from whatever higher plane they'd ended up on. It had always made her feel better to tel them her troubles, and before her life had gotten so complicated, she had told them everything.
She put out one hand and gently touched the names and dates carved on the tombstone. Elena bent her head.
"It's my fault they're dead," she said. Stefan made a soft noise of disagreement, and she turned to look at him. "It is,"
she said, her eyes burning. "The Guardians told me so."
Stefan sighed and kissed her forehead. "The Guardians wanted to kil you," he said. "To make you one of them. And they accidental y kil ed your parents instead. It's no more your fault than if they had shot at you and missed."
"But I distracted my father at the critical moment and made him crash," Elena said, hunching her shoulders.
"So the Guardians say," Stefan replied. "But they wouldn't want it to sound like their fault. They don't like to admit they make mistakes. The fact remains that the accident that kil ed your parents wouldn't have happened if the Guardians hadn't been there."
Elena lowered her eyes to hide the tears swimming in them. What Stefan said was true, she thought, but she couldn't stop the chorus of myfaultmyfaultmyfault in her head.
A few wild violets were growing on her left, and she picked them, along with a patch of buttercups. Stefan joined her, handing her a sprig of columbine with yel ow bel -shaped blossoms to add to her tiny wildflower bouquet.
"Damon never trusted the Guardians," he said quietly.
"Wel , he wouldn't - they don't think much of vampires. But beyond that..." He reached for a tal stalk of Queen Anne's lace growing beside a nearby headstone. "Damon had a pretty finely tuned sense for detecting lies - the lies people told themselves and the ones they told other people. When we were young we had a tutor - a priest, no less - who I liked and my father trusted, and Damon despised. When the man ran off with my father's gold and a young lady from the neighborhood, Damon was the only one who wasn't surprised." Stefan smiled at Elena. "He said that the priest's eyes were wrong. And that he spoke too smoothly."
Stefan shrugged. "My father and I never noticed. But Damon did."
Elena smiled tremulously. "He always knew when I wasn't being total y honest with him." She had a sudden flash of memory: of Damon's deep black eyes holding hers, his pupils dilated like a cat's, his head tilting as their lips met. She looked away from Stefan's warm green eyes, so different from Damon's dark ones, and twisted the thick stalk of the Queen Anne's lace around the other flowers. When the bouquet was tied together, she placed it on her parents' grave.
"I miss him," Stefan said softly. "There was a time when I would have thought... when his death might have been a relief. But I'm so glad we came together - that we were brothers again - before he died." He put a gentle hand beneath Elena's chin and tilted her head up so that her eyes met his again. "I know you loved him, Elena. It's okay. You don't have to pretend."
Elena gave a little gasp of pain.
It was like there was a dark hole inside her. She could laugh and smile and marvel at the restored town; she could love her family; but al the time there was this dul ache, this terrible sense of loss.
Letting her tears loose at last, Elena fel into Stefan's arms.
"Oh, my love," he said, his voice catching, and they wept together, taking comfort in each other's warmth. Fine ash had fal en for a long time. Now it settled at last and the smal moon of the Nether World was covered with thick, sticky piles of dust. Here and there, opalescent fluid pooled against the charred blackness, coloring it with the rainbow of an oil slick.
Nothing moved. Now that the Great Tree had
disintegrated, nothing lived in this place.
Deep below the surface of the ruined moon was a body. His poisoned blood had stopped flowing and he lay unmoving, unfeeling, unseeing. But the drops of fluid saturating his skin nourished him, and a slow thrum of magical life beat steadily on.
Every now and then a flicker of consciousness rose within him. He had forgotten who he was and how he had died. But there was a voice somewhere deep inside him, a light, sweet voice he knew wel , that told him, Close your eyes now. Let go. Let go. Go. It was comforting, and his last spark of consciousness was holding on for a moment longer, just to hear it. He couldn't remember whose voice it was, although something in it reminded him of sunlight, of gold and lapis lazuli.
Let go. He was slipping away, the last spark dimming, but it was al right. It was warm and comfortable, and he was ready to let go now. The voice would take him al the way to... to wherever it was he would go. As the flicker of consciousness was about to go out for the last time, another voice - a sharper, more commanding voice, the voice of someone used to having his orders obeyed - spoke within him.