Elena hugged him tightly, her arms wrapped around his bare shoulders with desperate strength. For a moment, everything seemed okay. She was alive. He was alive. They were together. The fire burned behind them, but it could not touch them here, in this small bubble of safety they had created.
Then her grip loosened.
Her arms slid from his shoulders. Her head lolled back. Her body went limp, heavy, a dead weight in his embrace. Her eyes, which had been open and filled with tears just seconds ago, closed slowly, gently, like curtains drawn at the end of a long day.
Leo's heart stopped.
"Elena?" His voice was sharp, urgent. He shook her gently, then a little harder. "Elena!"
She did not respond. Her face was pale, too pale, the color draining from her cheeks even as he watched. His eyes dropped to the ground beneath her. The asphalt was dark with blood. Her blood. It had pooled beneath her while she lay there, while he held Stefan and Lexi, while he made his decision about whether to kill them. She had been bleeding this whole time, and he had not noticed.
The nameless anger rose again. It had quieted after he broke their necks, satisfied that they were neutralized, content to let them live. Now it returned, hotter and sharper than before. He wanted to go back to where their unconscious bodies lay. He wanted to beat them until they bled the same way Elena was bleeding. He wanted to make them feel every drop of pain they had caused her.
But he could not.
He knew he could not wait. This was a normal problem, the kind that happened to normal humans every day. Blood loss. Injuries. Shock. It could be treated with normal medicine, normal doctors, normal hospital care. But only if he acted now. If he delayed, if he gave in to his anger and went after Stefan and Lexi, this normal problem would become a serious problem. The kind that required serious treatment. The kind that sometimes had no treatment at all.
He stood up.
Elena's body hung in his arms, warm and soft and terribly still. He held her carefully, cradling her against his bare chest, supporting her head so it would not loll. He looked up at the road. It stretched out before him, dark and silent, empty of traffic at this late hour. Behind him, the burning cars still crackled and popped, sending sparks into the night sky. Farther away, barely visible in the darkness, lay the two vampires who had done this. They would wake eventually. In an hour, maybe two. They would groan and sit up and wonder what had happened. They would remember, slowly, the feeling of his hands around their throats. And they would know that he had let them live.
But that was later.Right now, only one thing mattered.
Leo ran.
His speed was immense, fifty times that of a normal human. The world blurred around him as he pushed himself forward, his feet barely touching the ground before they pushed off again. Trees became green smears. Road signs became flashes of light. The wind screamed past his ears, a constant roar that would have deafened a normal person.
He noticed, after a few seconds, that Elena's clothes were beginning to smoke. The friction of moving through the air at this speed generated heat, enough heat to singe fabric, enough to burn. He slowed immediately, adjusting his pace until the smoking stopped. He could not risk hurting her further. He could not arrive at the hospital with her clothes on fire.
So he ran at a speed she could survive. It was still faster than any human could run, faster than any car could drive on these winding roads. But it was slow enough that the air slipped past them without burning, without harming, without adding to the damage already done.
Ten minutes.
That was how long it took him to reach the town hospital. If he had used his full speed, if Elena had not been human and fragile, he could have made it in two minutes. Maybe less. But ten minutes was what she could survive, so ten minutes was what he gave her.
The hospital appeared ahead, a blocky building with lights glowing in some windows and darkness in others. A red sign, a plus sign, glowed above the entrance, marking this place as a refuge for the injured and the sick. Leo did not slow as he approached. He simply redirected his path, angling toward the entrance, and came to a stop directly in front of the glass doors.
He pushed them open.
The lobby was bright, sterile, smelling of antiseptic and cleaning products. A nurse sat behind the front desk, her head bent over paperwork. She looked up at the sound of the doors opening, and her eyes went wide.
A half-naked man stood before her, his chest bare and gleaming with sweat, his pants burned and torn. In his arms he held an unconscious girl, her face pale, her clothes torn and bloody, her body limp as death. The man's eyes were wild, desperate, fixed on her with an intensity that bordered on madness.
The nurse did not hesitate. She had worked in emergency rooms for years. She had seen everything. She pressed a button on her desk, and within seconds two more nurses appeared, followed by a doctor still pulling on his coat. They moved toward Leo with practiced efficiency, their hands reaching for Elena, their voices calm and professional.
Leo looked at the nurse who had first seen him. His voice was rough, urgent, carrying the weight of everything he could not say.
"Can you do it fast?" he asked. "Can you help her fast?"
The nurse met his eyes. She saw the fear there, the love, the desperation. She nodded once, firmly.
"Sir," she said. "We will do everything we can."
They took Elena away on a stretcher, her body small and pale against the white sheets. Leo watched them go, watched the nurses wheel her through a set of double doors that swung shut behind her with a soft whoosh. The doors had small windows, round and glass, and through them he saw more nurses gather around, saw a doctor appear and start giving orders. Then they moved her out of sight, and the windows showed only empty hallway.
He stood there for a long moment, staring at nothing.
He took a deep breath, pulling air deep into his lungs, holding it, releasing it slowly. His heart was racing, pounding against his ribs like a trapped animal. He had faced vampires and car crashes and fire without fear. But this—this waiting, this not knowing—this was worse than any of it.
He needed to sit down.
There were chairs against the wall, plastic and uncomfortable, the kind found in every hospital waiting room in every town in every country. He walked to one and lowered himself into it. The plastic creaked under his weight. He leaned back, tilted his head up, and looked at the ceiling. White tiles. Fluorescent lights. A small stain in the corner where a leak had been repaired imperfectly.
Then he looked down at himself.
His chest was bare, still damp with sweat from the run. His pants were destroyed, burned and torn, with holes that exposed patches of skin below his knees. He looked like someone who had crawled out of a fire. Which, he supposed, was exactly what he had done.
This was embarrassing. Sitting in a hospital waiting room half naked, waiting for news about the girl he loved. People would look at him strangely. They would whisper and point and wonder what kind of person walks around like this. He needed clothes. Proper clothes. But where could he get clothes at this hour?
His eyes scanned the lobby. A male nurse walked past, carrying a clipboard and reading something on it, his head down, his attention focused on whatever report demanded his attention. He was young, maybe thirty, with a friendly face and efficient movements.
Leo hesitated. Then he spoke.
"Hello?" His voice came out a little hesitant, a little uncertain. "Can you help me get some clothes? I'll pay for them."
The male nurse looked up. His eyes went to Leo's face, then traveled down to his bare chest, then to his burned pants. They widened slightly, but he did not comment. He had worked in this hospital long enough to have seen stranger things.
"Sir," he said calmly. "We have clothes here. For patients, sometimes. When their own clothes get damaged or lost. I can have someone bring you a set."
Leo nodded. "Thank you."
The nurse walked away, his footsteps fading down a corridor. Leo waited. After a few minutes, another nurse appeared, a woman this time, carrying a folded bundle. She handed it to him with a small smile and pointed toward the bathroom.
He changed quickly. The clothes were simple—a thin cotton shirt, loose pants, the kind of thing a patient might wear after surgery. They were not his style. They did not fit well. But they covered him, and that was all that mattered. He looked at himself in the bathroom mirror.Tired eyes. Worried expression. Clothes that belonged to someone else.
He walked back to his chair and sat down again.
Time passed. He did not know how much. Minutes, probably. Maybe an hour. The clock on the wall said one thing, but he did not trust it. Time moved strangely in hospitals. It crawled when you wanted it to run. It sprinted when you wanted it to stop.
Then he heard it. A door opening, somewhere deeper in the building. His superhuman hearing, always active, always alert, picked up the sound clearly. Footsteps. Voices. A doctor's calm tone, a nurse's quiet response.
He was on his feet instantly, moving toward the sound before he consciously decided to stand. His legs carried him down the corridor, around a corner, to where a doctor stood writing on a clipboard.
"Doctor." His voice was sharp, urgent. "How is Elena? Is she okay?"
The doctor looked up. He was middle-aged, tired, with bags under his eyes and the look of a man who had been working too many shifts. But his expression was calm, professional.
"She's fine," he said. "You don't need to worry. She lost some blood, but we've addressed that. She'll need a few days to recover completely.And she should wake up in about two hours."
Relief washed through Leo like a wave. His shoulders, which had been tight with tension for what felt like hours, relaxed. He let out a breath he had not known he was holding.
"Thank you, doctor," he said. His voice was soft now, grateful. "Thank you so much."
The doctor nodded and walked away, his footsteps echoing down the corridor.
Another nurse appeared. She held a clipboard with papers attached, and she extended it toward him. "Sir, please fill out this information form. And you'll need to pay the bill at the counter when you're done."
He took the clipboard. His eyes scanned the paper—name, address, insurance information, emergency contact. Then they landed on the bottom of the page, where a number was printed in bold.
$220.
His money had been in his wallet, in his pants, in the car. The car that was now a pile of burning metal on a dark road. He had nothing. No cash. No cards. No way to pay.
He looked up at the nurse. His face was calm, but his mind was working, calculating, searching for solutions.
"Okay," he said. "You can go. I'll fill this out and bring the money to the counter."
The nurse nodded. "Thank you, sir." She walked away.
Leo filled out the form quickly, neatly, printing each letter with careful precision. Name: Leo Whittemore. Address: 123 Birch Street, Mystic Falls. Insurance: None. Emergency contact: He hesitated, then wrote down Alistair's name and number.
He walked to the front counter. The same nurse from before sat there, typing at a computer.
"Excuse me," he said. "Can I use your phone? I need to call someone. He'll bring the money."
The nurse nodded and pushed a phone toward him. He dialed from memory, the number etched into his mind from years of knowing Alistair, his butler, the man who managed his household and his affairs.
Alistair answered on the second ring. His voice was calm, professional, even at this late hour.
"Alistair," Leo said. "I need you to come to the hospital. Bring money—about two hundred and fifty dollars, just to be safe. And bring me some clothes. Proper clothes."
There was a pause. Then Alistair's voice, still calm, still professional: "I'll be there in twenty minutes, sir."
He arrived in fifteen minutes.
He was an older man, gray-haired, dressed in a suit even at this hour. He walked through the hospital doors with quiet dignity, found Leo in the waiting room, and handed him a bundle of clothes—jeans, a shirt, a jacket, all clean and folded. Then he walked to the counter and paid the bill without a word, counting out bills from a leather wallet.
Leo changed in the bathroom again. The new clothes felt good. Normal. They fit properly and smelled faintly of fabric softener. He looked at himself in the mirror and saw someone who could walk through the world without being stared at.
He returned to the waiting room and sat down.
.....
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