Come all ye dead or alive

[dirtsinmylungs]

He came back exactly as he was. They simply never liked him to begin with.

It started slow; the suspicion, the leading questions. Then there were the hushed conversations that cut off as soon as he entered a room. After that it wasn’t long until he could hear Elena hissing over the phone to Damon, “Something’s wrong with him Damon! You don’t know him like I do, Jeremy isn’t like this. It’s…this isn’t normal!” As if being resurrected against the will of Nature was normal; as if his soul being clawed away from Death was normal; as if anything about their lives could be considered normal anymore.

He wanted to scream; to throw something; to ask her how she thought he should be acting? Ask her if she even once thought about how this might be affecting him? Ask her how she could possibly be so self absorbed to make his death about her? 

But he didn’t. Because he couldn’t. Not if he didn’t want her to get Damon to compel him again; not if he wanted to still have some semblance of autonomy in his own life. 

He didn’t get a choice, whether he wanted to be brought back or not it didn’t matter; he couldn’t let them take any more of him, he already had so little left from hacking away at himself to make everyone happy. 

They wondered when he had become so distant; why he’d started spending so much time alone in the woods; why he didn’t seem to want to spend time around the people who dragged him back from Death, only to keep looking at him like he was a disappointment. He’d been dead for less than an hour, and somehow he was already failing to live up to their memory of himself.

They blamed it on him dying. They said that none of this would be happening if he hadn’t died, that if he hadn’t been shot then things would be fine. None of them said what they actually meant; none of this would be happening if they didn’t bring him back. 

He thought they’d be happy. They brought him back. Shouldn’t they want him? Why didn’t they want him?

If they just let him stay dead, they could remember him as they imagined he should be; he never matched up to who they thought he was even before. But now they couldn’t make themselves ignore it. Now they had a reason to pay attention to him, they couldn’t help but see the differences between him and ‘the ideal’; Elena’s sweet, snarky, supportive and fun younger brother. 

   Now they noticed how he always stood on the opposite side of the room to Damon, how he never turned his back on the Vampire; how there was a certain bite to his words when talking to Elena sometimes, how he disagreed with her more often than not; how he preferred to spend his time alone than with them.

Now they finally saw him, and they decided he fell short. Now they have to see him everyday and hate themselves for wishing, just a bit, that Bonnie loved him just a little less. Sometimes he did too.

[dirtsinmylungs]

The Tragedy of Inevitability: A Kol and Jeremy mini rant

I think one of the things I love and find so tragic about Kol and Jeremy is that (at least to me) they’re mirrors of each other, perhaps funhouse mirrors that warp and distort certain attributes, but mirrors nonetheless.

It’s less that Kol is Jeremy, and more that Jeremy is Kol. Jeremy is who Kol could have been if he wasn’t forced into being a Vampire; if his ties to nature wasn’t severed by a mother who should have known better, being a witch herself and knowing how deeply rooted in her very being such a connection was; if he was not forced to live every day in a tormented hell, growing mad from the hunger and disregard of a family who claimed to love him. If time and terror had not formed him into someone wholly new and alien to himself.

They’re both forgotten younger brothers; trapped in a cycle of abuse and neglect they can’t escape, due to their innate desire to be wanted. They both show explosive and self-damaging tendencies in reaction to abandonment, Kol simply has the power to ensure the repercussions of this are lasting. They both loved someone outside of the family, enough to consider leaving it, who were then killed by said family (Davina and Anna).

Kol and Jeremy are repeatedly killed, abandoned, sacrificed and neglected by the very people who claim to love them. We see them repeat the same cycle over and over again, with the same results. They’re unable to find happiness outside of their toxic and codependent families; because any time they do, their family destroys or kills it.

Who could understand them better than someone who is always the last choice, always the forgotten one, always expendable enough to be useful but never cared for enough to be kept. 

The main difference between them being: Jeremy met Kol before he was fully trapped, Kol didn’t have a Jeremy. Jeremy gets away from Mystic Falls and all the nightmarish scenarios he had to deal with there (yes I know he was compelled, but I’ll die on the hill that he knew. Something I’ll likely talk about in a later post); he finds someone not connected to his sister, someone who chose HIM, someone who is solely his, and not merely as a bi-product of their relationship to Elena.

We can see his reaction to Kol hitting Damon, he’s laughing. You cannot convince me that if Kol didn’t say they weren’t really “mates”, that Jeremy wouldn’t have forgiven him. That if Kol actually chose him; Jeremy wouldn't give everything, be everything for him. Jeremy was desperate. He was alone, he was tired, and he needed someone to want him for no reason other than itself. Kol could have been that someone. If Kol hadn't said their friendship was fake, if he admitted Elena was right but that he did actually care about Jeremy, Jeremy would have stuck with him.

Jeremy is so much more resigned after this point. Now believing Elena is the only thing he has, he naturally clings to her, and grows panicked at her pulling away. He needs her to want him; he needs to be obedient, useful, loyal, expendable. All in the hopes that if he can do enough, be enough, she may love him like she used to.

I genuinely believe that, if things were different; if Kol spoke to Jeremy before the ‘Hunters arc’, then he wouldn’t have died. Because Jeremy would have someone outside of Elena, and wouldn’t be so desperate for her to need him like he needs her.

But that would never happen. Because Kol had been doing the dance far longer than Jeremy. He already had his point of no return.

Kol never would have reached out to Jeremy; because when Kol was at that point, when he reached out in the desperate hope that someone, anyone would reach back, he was met with only the lid of his coffin.

Their deaths were inevitable. Dying in pursuit of protecting a family that mourned the moment they were gone and no longer (I remember Elena’s reaction to Jeremy dying. But it means so little in the face of how flippant they were about Jeremy’s deaths, his ring allowing them to feel little guilt when faced with his cooling corpse, knowing he would return in a few minutes). Things may have gone differently; if Jeremy were older or Kol were younger, if they had met before the poison of familial betrayal and longing for acceptance hadn’t yet blinded them to alternative paths.

But they were not. And it had. So there they walk – arm in arm, led by the hand of their older sibling, so trusting and hopeful that this time will be different, down the road to death.

[dirtsinmylungs]

Jeremy fighting the bile creeping up his throat as he sees Kol’s body burn, wondering if it’s worth it.

Jeremy watching with morbid curiosity as the hunter’s mark grows, hoping it will be worth it.

Jeremy dying in their quest for the cure, needing it to be worth it.

Jeremy learning Elena gave Kathrine the cure, knowing it wasn’t worth it.