She froze when she heard someone say her name, not sure at first if her mind was playing games with her. Because all of this had to be one gigantic game. Maybe she had really hit her head hard at that pageant and everything she’d thought she had experienced, everything she had been through was all just an elaborate dream as her brain healed itself. Except, for one, vampire healing ability probably wouldn’t allow for anything that lengthy, and secondly, she didn’t want it all to be an elaborate dream. She wanted it to be real. She needed it to be real. Needed the friends she had made, the relationships--good and bad--to be real.
“Am I real?” she asked, her voice so very low, barely audible to her own ears with the chaos of the rest of the sounds she was still getting under control. “Am I real?” she repeated, looking up and seeing Kol through her tear filled eyes. “Please tell me I’m real.”
She didn’t want to be a ghost like Alex. Please don’t let that be her fate. She needed touch. She couldn’t handle living like that, unable to hold anyone else, to feel a hand against her shoulder or in her hair. Unable to feel the softness of skin as it brushed against her cheek. How could anyone live like that? Could she just die properly if that was the case? Please.
Though that didn’t sit well with her either. If she had a chance to be there for those she loved then wasn’t that a good thing? It was supposed to be a good thing. It was a confusing thing. Everything was confusing. Her entire existence confused the hell out of her at the moment.
“I want to be real,” she sobbed, hugging herself harder. There was a time she would have cared about Kol seeing her tears, not wanting to deal with any snide remarks about them, but she didn’t think he would do that anymore. Not to her, not when she was breaking like she was.
Part of her knew she needed to pull herself together, and she would--she’d go back to being the strong, capable girl she was known to be now, but only after he answered her. She just needed to know she was real. That she was alive. She stared up at him, willing him to answer her. To tell her the truth, the one she wanted to hear.
Please let me be real. Please, Kol. Please.
Because she shouldn’t be. Not when she’d been staked with wood in her heart.