open | super super super rusty brief surprise revival...

[otherwise]

Quick and painless — that was a lie. There was nothing quick or painless about having your neck broken. Maybe it seemed quick and relatively painless to the inflicter and the observer, but to the one experiencing that 'quick and painless' death, the brief moments that seemed to go on for hours and sharp spikes of pain unlike anything you've ever felt before said otherwise.

It hurt. It hurt a lot, and the darkness that enveloped him while he waited out his return wasn't exactly what you'd call comforting. Unsettling was more like it. There was nothing. Nothing but a dark veil cast over you, like you were underwater and unable to surface.

But eventually that ice cracked and Matt surged past it, taking a great big gulp of air that went rushing into his lungs so powerfully it startled him. He bolted upright, bumping against the cool metal of the railing that gnashed against the line of his spine. Vision still blurry, a rush of sounds assaulted him: birds, footsteps, voices, and the distinct sound of waves slapping against the side of a boat.

He'd only been on a boat once, with Elena's family out at the lake before her parents passed away, but the sound of water rushing against the side of a boat stuck with him as one of the most soothing sounds he's ever heard.

It had him twisting around and grasping the railing to peer down over it, to try and get an idea of where the hell he was. Had Damon gone back on his word and done away with his body? Had Elena? Had their attempt to get her to turn it back on gone awry?

Matt couldn't say. All he knew was that he wasn't where he should be, this wasn't exactly a boat, and there was a strong possibility that the ring hadn't worked like Damon said he would and death was having a good laugh at his expense over daring to trust the word of a Salvatore.

Comments

[lockwood]

Tyler's been on the boat for months now. Honestly? He doesn't ever want to go home. Why? Because his mother is dead back home, and she isn't here. He can have his mom back -- who wouldn't want to stay for that?

Still, there's a few people form home who aren't here that he misses and when he's making his way out on the deck today he spots one of them. Matt. His best friend. He runs over to him with the speed that comes with being a hybrid, crouching down next to him.

"No offense, but you kind of look like shit. Are you okay?"

Yeah, Tyler doesn't know about how they killed Matt to trigger back Elena's memories. He was on the run when that happened. So. A little confused. But happy to see his friend all the same. Like, a little ridiculously happy, honestly.

god i'm so rusty

[otherwise]

Panic.

It swells up within him as if the threat of Tyler being near him is real, as if the reason he's on the run and was forced to hand the deed to the last vestiges of the parents he lost too soon over to him is going to jump out from behind the nearest corner and make good on his threats. But soon the disorientation that's still clouding his vision and ability to think clearly fades and Matt remembers that they aren't in Mystic Falls anymore.

Klaus could be somewhere on this ship, but somehow, that feels unlikely.

Or maybe he's just dead and walking through some sort of dead man's wonderland, playing out a series of crazy scenarios from now until the end of time.

"Ty?" Matt reaches up, grasping the rail to help haul himself to his feet. "Where the hell are we?"

He asks his own question before realizing belatedly that Tyler had asked one of his own.

"Yeah, yeah. Fine. Just fine. Looks like this thing," he held up a hand, Jeremy's ring on one of his fingers, "actually works. Hopefully. You're not a figment of my imagination, are you?"

ssssh ssssh you're perfect

[lockwood]

"This is a ship that goes to nowhere, which is as insane as it sounds, but no less true. It's not even the craziest part of this place."

That would be how people who should be dead are alive here. And general timeline shenanigans and alternate universes -- it's complicated. To say the least. But on the plus side Matt's not dead and Tyler's not a figment of his imagination.

He promises.

His eyes widen a little at the ring -- he recognizes it for sure. He got Caroline's message about Jeremy dying but anything past that is patchy as information goes. Rebekah had just delivered him back home to Matt before he showed up on the boat so they haven't exactly had time to catch up.

He lets out a shaky laugh, shaking his head. "I promise, I'm real."

♥

[otherwise]

If Matt knew that Tyler had been in Klaus's clutches and Rebekah had been the one to convince her brother to allow her to give hand him over in a gesture of good faith towards him, he'd been floored. Floored and filled with a mix of conflicting emotions that seemed ever present when Rebekah was involved. He wasn't stupid; he was well aware of the Original's interest in him, but Matt wasn't sure how interested he was in her. Even considering that he might be — that he could be — felt hypocritical, given that he'd broken up with Caroline on the basis that he didn't want to be romantically involved with a vampire.

But this is Tyler, not Rebekah. And if there's anyone Matt's going to trust right now when Elena's riding the emotionless super train and the word of others is dubious at best, it's Tyler.

"Good, because hallucinating my best friend and some giant ass ship wasn't exactly on today's agenda."

Re: ♥

[lockwood]

To be honest, if Matt doesn't know all that, Tyler probably isn't going to share it. His time spent in New Orleans isn't exactly something he's proud of, to say the least. And Matt's connection with Rebekah isn't something he's particularly pleased about either. But as far as he's concerned the Originals in general are just trouble. Klaus particularly so.

"Yeah well, it's not the weirdest thing you can see on the boat." Tyler hesitates, he doesn't want to overwhelm his friend but he knows there are jarring things he needs to be warned about as well.

"Like...people can be taken from all sorts of places in time here. Which means....people who would be dead back home can show up here too."

He's almost bursting at the seams to mention his mother, but he's managing to variable degrees of success.

[otherwise]

His mind immediately jumps to the possibility of seeing Vicki again, but after the stunt his sister tried to pull, he's unsure of whether that would be a warm welcome or not. Still, he can't but hope to see her again, the last vestiges of a blood relation who actually felt like family instead of the distant mother who wasn't even bothering to come to her own son's graduation.

"As long as it's not someone who wants to kill us," he says instead.

Joking aside, the concern is real. There's a lot of people who'd like to see them dead. (Or make them kill one another.)

"...have you seen anyone who should be?"

[lockwood]

"Yeah." Tyler's voice is considerably more quiet now, as if if he says it out loud things will suddenly change. It's a little paranoid, he supposes, but it can't be helped after everything Tyler's gone through. He's not used to getting a chance like this.

"My mom's here, actually."

The reunion had been tearful, to say the least.

"You missed the party she threw a while back."

Because of course, if Carol Lockwood gets a second chance at life she throws parties.

[otherwise]

If that's not a reason to hug his best friend, he doesn't know what is. Matt's grinning and slapping his friend on the back, happy for him. Carol had been a loss Tyler shouldn't have been forced to suffer, one of many, many things Klaus had taken away from him. He's really glad that this ship, as wacky as the situation sounds, has given him his mom back.

"I missed a Lockwood party?" He asks as he draws back, stuffing his hands in his pockets. "Just how many of us are there?"

[lockwood]

Tyler hugs his friend back easily. Honestly, it's really nice to see Matt. And he knows his mom will want to see him. (Matt had spent almost as much time at their house growing up as he did in the Gilberts, after all)

"You did. She'll forgive you I think as long as I take you to say hi to her now," He agrees with a small smile. Getting his mother back was a gift Tyler never expected to have. He won't squander it.

"I'm not sure. Other than my mom I only really talk to Caroline and Elena. But I think both the Salvatores are here too. And Rebekah."

He might be watching his friend's reaction on that last name.

[resuming]

"Matt?"

His name is spoken on the edge of a lone, steadying breath. It's accompanied by a bittersweet ache that's almost relieving. The sight of him isn't unfamiliar. The sight of him on the ship, however, most definitely is. Selfishly, it's welcome for all the reasons it shouldn't be - it isn't safe here, despite what the voyage itself would like them to believe, and Matt will always be that boy she wants to protect against all possible costs.

(But then, isn't Mystic Falls unsafe, too? Isn't it true they have opportunities outside of their world they would never have otherwise?)

There isn't time to think about their timeline discrepancies. There isn't time to think of anything at all as Elena rushes over to him, intent on throwing her arms around Matt to embrace him. Elena, with her pin-straight, long dark hair and those dumb Converse sneakers she still doesn't go anywhere without. At least most days.

this is probably terrible, i'm sorry

[otherwise]

Matt's spine grinds painfully against the railing as he backs up in response to that voice, pressing himself back against it as far as it'll allow him to go without cutting him clean in two or letting him fall to the ocean below. He doesn't enjoy reacting to her like that, doesn't like that his body seizes up seemingly of its own accord in response to the very real threat Elena's proven she is while her emotions are off and she no longer cares about herself or anyone in this town.

Not even him, if what they did didn't work. Something had to be done, but Matt still felt bad about tricking her, even if it worked. (Especially if it worked.) The decision was made before he had time to think on it, because there was no reason to think, only do. He could die for this girl who died for him, this girl who he once loved with all his heart who now had to live out the rest of her days as a vampire, because she demanded Stefan save him and not her...

He wants to believe it worked, wants to believe that it wasn't all in vain. Things have to go right in their world sometimes, right?

But something's not right. Elena doesn't... No, she looks more like herself than she has in months, more like the girl who swore she was fine when she really wasn't, the girl who had the ability to discern between fine and not fine.

Christ, he really was dead.

um no it's perf

[resuming]

Elena's footsteps come to an immediate stop only a few feet away from Matt when he backs away from her.

She doesn't think that's ever happened before. She'd say she can't imagine a scenario where it would happen, except that's not necessarily true anymore, is it? She's learned the truth in Teleios; things she still hasn't fully processed, and now she is back on this ship, standing in front of her best friend who looks at her like he might just be afraid of her. (He looks at her like all those things she ever feared about herself are true, and her vocal cords don't work at first.)

There is nothing else to do but take a step back in turn to give him the space he needs. She can't even take comfort in letting herself believe he is mistaking her for Katherine. She knows Matt like the back of her palm. Something has changed, and that something is her.

He isn't from Teleios. He's from home, a home she hasn't seen in years.

The space grows and so does the silence, before Elena finds her voice again. "Matt, it's me," she says. (Pleads?)

;w; ♥

[otherwise]

And just like she knows him, he knows her. It's what made her transformation so heartbreaking for him — not the vampire part, Matt would've still cared about her if she had grown two heads and sprouted horns and a tail — but willingly letting go of herself. He understood that Jeremy's death broke her, understood fully the need to be free of the torment that the loss of a sibling brought, to do and want things that weren't necessarily you, because you felt like you'd lost a part of yourself... But this wasn't the way to go about it.

He hated that she turned it off, hated that they coerced her into doing it. Elena would've survived the loss of her brother, if they'd just left her alone to grieve. She would've felt it powerfully, it would've left her raw for months to come, but she would've made it through. Because that's what Elena Gilbert does: She survives. She's a survivor.

Damon refused to let her survive — at least, that's how it seemed from Matt's point of view. Both brothers refused to let her be, to get through things her own way and with time. They refused to acknowledge that anyone was there for her beyond them... And he, Caroline, Bonnie — they would've all been there for Elena if she had been allowed to feel.

Oh, he wants to believe it. He wants to believe that the Elena standing before him is feeling what he's seeing in her, but he's still not convinced that this isn't wishful thinking. For all he knows, this is his eternal torment: Having the ghost of a girl who died for him dangled in front of him, a missing puzzle piece that he was unable to find.

"I wish," he says, and it's not harsh or clipped. If anything, the plea is almost broken, lost. "But it's not that simple. It's never that easy. And we were foolish for thinking it would be."

Easy way out. The Salvatore way. He was an idiot to go along with it.

[resuming]

A weighted pause follows Matt's answer.

Elena has an almost compulsive need to fix things, but she's come to learn there isn't always a band-aid for everything. It's not as easy as applying a solution and acquiring the results you want. Part of growing up means understanding there aren't always good reasons or good choices. Sometimes terrible things happen, and all you can do is learn to live with them. She is here, trying to learn to live with the things she has done and the things that have been done to her. She isn't always successful, but she can at least say she's left a lot of Mystic Falls behind her. She's had to. The alternative was drowning in the grief, so she let go.

Not Matt, though. Never Matt and the rest of her family. She carries them with her in the coffin of her heart and she never relinquishes the tight grip.

"Matt, I don't know what's happening back home, exactly - "

Not all of it. She doesn't know about Jeremy or she wouldn't be nearly as okay with compartmentalizing what Rebekah told her. She doesn't know much about what happened after the car accident or her transition. No one's spelled it out for her, but she can connect the dots when it comes to her complicated dynamic with Damon and Stefan. Everything else is fuzzy, and her and Matt in Teleios have been temporarily estranged.

"And I don't know because I haven't been home in a really long time. We're on this ship that pulls people here from different worlds and different times. It's not like the Other Side. We're not dead. We're just ... in between. I know it sounds crazy, but I promise you it's real."

Elena doesn't know if anyone's explained it to him already, but she can try, if he'll listen.

[otherwise]

In an attempt to get his bearings and stand his ground, to not be as afraid of this Elena-shaped threat as he perhaps ought to be, Matt brings himself to his feet. And although he does just that, he can't quite bring himself to push away from the railing just yet. His hands grip it tight, the Jeremy's ring digging into his skin where it's pressed between his finger and the cold steel.

"Everything's crazy," he tells her, still believing her to be some sort of delusion or trick. "Half the people we know are dead, on the run, or sucking blood for a living. Crazy stopped being crazy a long time ago, Elena. Crazy is the new normal. It's the normal things that are crazy, like having hopes and dreams and not letting someone kill you in some stupid, crazy-normal attempt to save a friend from themselves."

[resuming]

The world tilts off its axis at Matt's last proclamation. She falls along with it once her gaze lands on that hand gripping the railing.

"Why are you..." her voice trails off, dread sinking into the pit of her stomach. Her words transform into flint. "That's Jeremy's ring." When she lifts her gaze back up, something much more vehement resides in it. It's no longer about trying to get Matt to believe her. It's about needing to know. Panic claws at her chest and she shakes her head. "That's Jeremy's ring, Matt."

He shouldn't be wearing it. He's not the person that let himself get killed. She is not the friend he did it for. That's not how this works.

[otherwise]

"Jeremy's not exactly around to wear it anymore."

The words are laced with venom, a poison that's not necessarily directed at her so much as this entire situation. The cure, the Salvatores' need to fix Elena when she was never broken, Jeremy's death, Elena losing her sense of self... Jeremy's gone and there's virtually nothing left of his sister. Bad things keep happening with no end in sight, and Matt is tired of it.

"We thought it would work. Damon and I." He laughs a bitter laugh to accompany his poisoned words. "Damon and I. No wonder this whole stunt went wrong."

[vampireboulevard]

Caroline never really gets used to the fact that the boat can just take someone from anytime, anywhere. You think she would, with the number of her friends that are so far back from when they were before, when she has so much time on all of them, but she doesn't. Every time someone she lost, someone she loves, someone she misses, finds their way onto the boat, it's like she's being smacked in the face with it all over again.

(Oddly enough, the first thing that strikes her is that he looks so young. It's such a vain thing to notice, but she forgets that they were kids then, dumb and stupid and while she never changes, she knows that he did.)

It's the fact that he doesn't look okay that starts her back into action again, towel for the pool abandoned as she drops it at one end of the deck, zooming with vampire speed over from the other. Her knees connect with the deck hard, one hand moving to the side of his face as she draws his attention back to her.

"Matt? Hey, Matt, it's okay. You're okay."

She's not sure when he's from yet, but from what she can tell, it doesn't look good.

[otherwise]

She doesn't look any different to him, still appearing as the same old Caroline. He forgets, just as she does, that he ages and she doesn't. Matt hasn't really put much thought into the fact that one day, he'll be old and wrinkled and his best friends will still be as youthful and unchanged as they were when they were teenagers and the hopes of living a normal life were pulled out right from under them.

"Caroline?"

His vision's still a little fuzzy, his neck still stiff from the dying experience. He'd reach up to rub that spot on the back of his neck that still feels like it's snapped in two, but his arms feel limp and as weak as noodles. Damon was right about it being disorienting at first, even if what he'd shared with Matt when he handed him the ring had been second hand knowledge from Jeremy and Alaric — nevermind Damon being the one to make them experience that disorientation in the first place.

"What happened? Where am I? Did it work?" Had Damon even told her what they were doing? She and Bonnie seemed to have washed their hands of Elena.

[vampireboulevard]

"You're on a boat." She decides to start there, since she can't answer his last question until she finds out when he's from, what he just left. The Gilbert ring is sitting on his finger, but Matt wore that for a while. She can't say for sure which death this was.

(There's a part of her that hates that she can quantify them.)

"It's weird ... sort of like a holding room between worlds. It grabs us out of nowhere and just drops us here for as long as it wants."

And that's not really the weirdest part, but she's easing into it slowly.

[otherwise]

"With what, Andy Samberg and T-Pain?"

On a boat... Get it?

It's probably not the best time to joke, but they've had enough seriousness to last them a couple lifetimes. And Matt has no idea how many lifetimes Caroline's lived at this point, and joking about their location is better than talking about what it was like to die and how he can finally relate to something she's experienced herself.

[vampireboulevard]

It's a moment where she has to pause, and not just because it's been decades since Andy Samberg was actually relevant. It's also a moment where she's just smacked in the face with how much she's missed him.

Some losses are easier to take than others. Matt was one of them, not because she didn't love him, but mostly because she knows that it came at the end of a good life. He grew up, he grew old, he was loved, and those are the things that matter. His death didn't come violent and bloody at the hand of a unseen monster in the dark. Matt died human, and so when the time came for Caroline to say goodbye, she could almost say her tears were happy ones - happy that her friend that she loved got to live the life they all should have lived.

The one they would have lived, if not for vampires. Living as long as they do puts things in perspective that way.

That doesn't mean Matt wasn't missed. It used to sneak up on her when she would catch the tail end of a high school football game or see a classic car. There were fewer and fewer of those as the years went on, and it was usually something small and subtle that would eventually pass, as most things usually do, but this is different. This is Matt and he's here and she can touch him, and she's missed him in a way that makes her chest clench.

Even his dumb stupid jokes in the face of insanity.

"No mermaids," she says with a bright grin, one that she hopes covers the tears that she can feel blurring her vision. "I'm sure that's probably a big disappointment."

[otherwise]

"Little bit," he admits, though the admission is mostly to cover up the fact that he does notice those tears.

There are times when he doesn't know how to act around Caroline. Things between them didn't exactly go well towards the end there, and he still feels like an ass for teaming up with her mom to take care of the threat he perceived all vampires — including Caroline — to be at the time. He knows better know, and his intentions had been entirely noble and pure, but they hadn't exactly gone off without a hitch. He's just glad he came to his senses in time, even if his inability to deal with the fact that his girlfriend was a vampire meant that their relationship would never be what it used to and had come to an end.

Nevermind the fact that she's with Tyler now. Or was. He's a bit sketchy on where his ex and best friend stand now that Tyler's on the run, but as awkward as he feels in their presence since they became an item, he does hope that it works out for the best. If anyone deserves happiness, it's those two.

"Knowing our luck, they'd be the scary type of mermaids that want to drown us all instead of the kind in The Little Mermaid." Elena may have made him sit through several replays of that when they were kids.

[vampireboulevard]

She laughs a bit at that, nodding in agreement. "Yep. With super gross teeth and claws. Mermaids are nothing to be trifled with."

Though who knows, maybe saying it aloud will make a flock of them appear somewhere on the boat. Caroline wishes to discourage this like of thinking, but she's mostly caught up in the Matt of it all. And, for the record, she and Tyler never get less complicated. In fact, she and Tyler kind of split up. But it's something they work through, and maybe in some ways they come out better for it.

Caroline isn't really sure. Before the boat, she hadn't seen Tyler in a while, and this Tyler isn't her Tyler.

There's a moment where she just looks at him, those tears just sitting there, and before she can think better of it, she's throwing her arms around him and pulling him close. Gently, in deference to his recently resurrected state, but still tightly, like she doesn't really want to let him go.

"I missed you."

[otherwise]

Missed him? "What? Care, I wasn't—"

But he doesn't finish that, sensing that something's off. There's something he's missing here, a big piece of the puzzle that would explain why Caroline's hugging him like it's been years since she last saw him, not the few hours it ought to have been. So he hugs back, wrapping his arms around her and running a soothing palm up and down her back.