PRE-S1 / 𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖊𝖗 𝖔𝖓𝖊

The week her parents died, it rained more in Mystic Falls than it had over the last ten years.

This is the Mystic Falls sheriff's department...

That's how Jeanie Gilbert would remember the drive from New York to Virginia: the kind of violent downpour that had left her in laybys on rural roads, tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth as the walls closed in. 

It had kept going and going. Going and going and going.

...calling for Miss Jeanette Gilbert...

She'd watched the rain swirl against the windshield, radio crackling with stormy static as she tried to reason with herself that this wasn't the bad omen her head was saying it was.

...we regret to inform you...

It's how she'd remember the parking lot at the hospital too–– the fatal pause in between the engine cutting and opening the drivers door. She'd just sat in that car and taken a deep breath––

...a car accident...

It'd been the slight blip of radio interference, a hesitation with her hand on the handle. She'd squeezed her eyes tight as the rain thudded, heavy, against the car roof. When she'd opened them, for a second, she'd wondered if she was drowning too––

...Wickery Bridge...

And then she'd held a broken umbrella over her head and walked through every puddle on her way into the ER, and somehow, just somehow, it'd been enough to keep most of her dry.

...both parents...

But that hadn't really been enough.

A shitty umbrella didn't cut out the harsh, scathing light overhead and her old hiking boots didn't wash out the sound of her water-logged footsteps against hospital tile. Going from a lonely, disassociated overnight drive into the sudden hustle of a trauma ward had been a shock to the system––

... drowned ...

Jeanie had tried her best not to compare it to a sudden plunge into ice-cold Virginia water.

She'd been oddly numb. 

She was pretty sure she hadn't had a single coherent thought in hours. Cold fingers had pushed back her hair and muscles had stammered and lagged in a way she hadn't recognised. In fact, she couldn't recognise any of herself––

... dead ...

She'd been a body of walking bones since Brooklyn, the kind of limp and lifeless that had made the lady at the front desk do a double take.

"Gil––"

It had been harder than she'd anticipated to speak.

She'd cleared her throat and tried it again, hands slipping on the desk as her heart thudded at the back of her throat––

"Gilbert."

The name alone had been enough for the blood to drain out of the receptionist's face.

... please take our deepest condolences from all of us here in Mystic Falls ...

And Jeanie had smiled when she'd said thank you, room number scrawled on the bottom of a memo. A smile that had been alien and programmed and had left her burning up inside––

It'd been a nervous twitch, a twist for the sick feeling in her chest that had her whole skin itching, bones licked by embarrassment as her cheeks flared––

... they were good people ...

Why the hell would she smile?

What was that–– what was she even––?

... immense losses to the community ...

She'd pressed a stammering, frozen hand to her aching, twitching cheeks as the elevator had closed around her.

What kind of freak smiles when their parents are dead?

... and we hate to bring this up as I'm sure you have so many other things to think about ...

She didn't mean to smile, in fact, she hadn't meant most of the things she'd done in the past twenty-four hours. She hadn't meant to drop everything. She hadn't meant to rent a car on Adam's card. She hadn't meant to drive all the way out here with not even a get well soon card or even a toiletry bag––

She didn't feel like a freak, but she didn't feel like a person either. Maybe she hadn't just had been anyone, or even too many people, all at once––

For five minutes on the phone, she'd been the daughter of two corpses' strapped into a car at the bottom of a river.

For a heart-stopping second, she'd wondered if she was the last remaining child.

For nine whole painstaking hours hours, she'd been the only driver on midnight-soaked roads––

"Jeanie?"

Then suddenly, with the call of her name from a boy older than she remembered him, she was the eldest sibling, too.

... We need to talk about Jeremy and Elena.

──────

Jeanie didn't really want to talk about it, but people in this town had never understood that.

She'd realised it'd been a small-town thing as soon as she'd moved to New York. A small-town meant small talk with big expectations. You knew all your neighbours and they knew you. A big city, on the other hand, came with the gentle peace and silence of being one in a million.

The streets were too big for greetings, people too mean and self-involved to notice much. Jeanie had spent the better part of the last six years feeling pleasantly invisible. She knew a few names, made a few friends, but ultimately had felt like a nobody drifting from one street to the next–– and she'd loved every second of it.

People asked too many questions here and she'd never wanted to answer them.

Not even when she'd been eighteen, a shoe-horned daydream with a 4.0 GPA and a bottle of Prozac; the kind of golden child that they'd wanted to put in places, like photo ops and local newspapers. An introvert forced to dream a bit bigger. She hadn't wanted to talk when she knew they didn't want to listen––

And nothing, and Jeanie meant nothing, had really even changed.

"I don't think this storm is going to pass anytime soon..."

Sheriff Forbes had found her outside.

Jeanie had been in Mystic Falls for not even an hour before word had gotten around.

She'd walked into that hospital, seen her brother and sister for the first time in over half a decade, carried the weight of their parents passing on her shoulders, and walked right out–– when Liz Forbes stumbled across her, Jeanie had her back pressed against the wall, sheltered under some awning and jaw clenched as she stared into the rain.

"It'll blow over eventually," Jeanie replied, arms folded tightly across her midriff, "Stuff like this always does, right?"

It was easier to find her voice now.

After all, she'd spent the last forty minutes whispering gently to a devastated Jeremy as he sobbed in her arms. That was the one good thing, she guessed, about your Mom and Dad suddenly dying in a freak car accident, it didn't leave space in a room like that to talk.

She hadn't had to ask him how he was or remark how much he'd grown in the six years since she'd last seen him. Jeremy had just seen her and she'd seen him and suddenly, the fact they were standing there, unscathed and together, had been enough.

Jeanie swallowed the lump at the back of her throat and looked away from the blonde woman in the police uniform, back across the parking lot.

Once upon a time, she'd loved a good thunderstorm. Now, she just wanted to go to bed.

"How are they?" Liz asked.

"Jeremy's asleep," She said, "He was exhausted and upset and... I don't think he's slept at all since everything's happened..."

Jeanie blinked and saw his bloodshot eyes at the back of her mind, a kid who looked too big for her memory of him. Six years had left him overgrown and scrawny. She almost hadn't recognised him. 

And then Elena...

Shit.

Well, Elena...

Jeanie paused and cleared her throat.

"Elena's still, uh," the eldest Gilbert rubbed at her eye tiredly, "She's alive."

And then another pause.

"They've got her on a ventilator," Jeanie hated how robotic she sounded. She played with a ring on her finger, "She can't breathe on her own at the moment because she took in so much water...but she's alive."

She was alive. That was the one part she'd held on to for longer than all the others.

It was exactly what they'd told her on the phone, exactly what the doctor had echoed too. The fact that she'd even made it out of that car was a miracle. 

The odds had been stacked against her and yet here she was, further than their parents had made it–– as the doctor had watched Jeanie hold tightly onto Jeremy, she'd tried to make it all seem nicer than it really was––

She was alive. She'd made it out the hard part. The girl who'd been locked away in Jeanie's memory as the gap-toothed nine year old tugging on her sleeve, was alive.

"And you?" Liz asked, head tilting the side, "How are you holding up?"

Jeanie's brow furrowed slightly.

It felt like a weird question to ask her when, a floor above them, Elena was in an induced coma.

Jeanie couldn't really describe the way her body had lurched when she'd been told her sister was in the car with her parents when they'd died. Elena had gone down with them to the bottom of the river, to whatever watery grave had buried them six feet deep... 

But whatever feeling that had gripped her, it'd really sunk in when she'd stood in that hospital room, ears full of a heart monitor and robotic breaths.

But how was she? How was Jeanie?

The kid that didn't quite fit.

"I'm okay," she said.

"Okay?"

Liz raised her chin slightly and, by the time Jeanie looked back at her, she was standing right beside her, shoulder leaning against the same wall. The brunette took one look at her and then heaved a long breath, every muscle in her body just begging her to slide, unceremoniously, down to the floor.

She'd crawl into a little ball, right here, maybe she'd even reach the rain. She'd make herself as small as physically possible and, once again, no one would ever be able to guess where Jeanie Gilbert had gone.

So Jeanie cracked a dry smile.

"Do you have a script that they give you for this kind of thing?" She asked, fingernails sinking deeper and deeper into the skin just by her elbows. Liz's eyebrows raised, "Like the whole conversation just... line by line?"

The Sheriff paused for a moment, as if caught off-guard by the shift in the mood.

Was it a joke?

Had she meant to joke?

Jeanie herself couldn't tell. But she was smiling that smile again; the kind of smile that told both of them that she didn't know what to do. With her words, with her hands, with her face and all of the rest of her.

Please.

She didn't know what helped Liz catch on, but she was grateful for it.

"They teach it in the Academy," She nodded, "They print out and make you memorise it. It's, uh, not a conversation that really comes naturally––"

"I bet," Jeanie agreed and then she sighed, "Does it have what I'm supposed to say back in there?"

And, again, Liz had been caught off-guard.

The stagnant static of silence made Jeanie sigh.

"I just, uh," She didn't like how hard it was to find the right words, "I get the feeling that I'm going to get that question a lot for a hot minute... and... uh, I don't really know what people are going to want me to say."

She knew this town. She knew how Mystic Falls worked. She knew how everyone wanted to talk but no one really wanted to listen–– it'd driven her half crazy the first time and now, just thinking about it, she couldn't breathe.

If she thought too hard about anything, Jeanie felt like her brain was going to catch on fire.

It felt like the most serious thing she'd said in years and she wondered, if in a way, it was a cry for help–– did Liz feel the undertones there? The fact that her 'I don't know' stretched so much further than just knowing what to say.

She didn't know how to speak... how to breathe... how to stand... how to hold her brother as he mourned their parents... how to stand there and watch Elena fight for her own life...

She didn't know how to process the fact that she'd been estranged from her parents for six years and, just like that, they were gone.

For a moment, Jeanie let herself wish that someone would tell her.

She wished that someone would tell her how to feel... how to look... how to blink... how to move... how to place that sick feeling that restrict the back of her throat whenever she tried to picture that car in that river off of that bridge.

She needed someone to tell her how to speak... how to answer that question and pretend that it didn't make her want to pack up her car already and go home. She needed someone to tell her that her parents were dead and shake her over and over until there was no disputing it. She needed someone to let her know that she was still their kid, no matter how long it'd been since they'd stopped taking her calls––

She stared over at the Sheriff of this tiny town and waited for her answer–– she waited for Liz to look over at her, place a hand on her shoulder and tell her how this went––

But Liz didn't hear that, not what Jeanie hoped she would, at least.

It was this town. The same town that had killed her parents on a dark summer's night, now killed that tiny child in Jeanie that, for the first time in six years, really needed her Mom.

Everyone wanted to talk, but everyone only heard what they wanted to hear.

"You're staying?"

Jeanie wished she'd missed the way the blonde's eyes lit up. It was too easy for a woman on a hard shift to shift from condolences to business.

A sour taste filled Jeanie's mouth and she found herself scuffing the bottom of her shoe against the floor. Her chin dropped to look at the floor, a dent in between her eyebrows as she stewed on the slight surprise in Liz's voice–– she didn't know whether to be hurt or angry or just numb like she had been for weeks––

She didn't know... She didn't know... She didn't know––

"I didn't mean it like a..." Liz seemed to catch herself, the light fading in her eyes as she composed something more professional and shook her head, "Of course you're staying there's... I just meant that––"

"They already mentioned it on the phone."

Jeanie cut her short, dragging in a long breath through her nostrils. Her sinuses burned with an impulse to cry but she didn't really think there were any tears in there.

The small-town cop just stared.

They had mentioned it on the phone.

They'd bought it up as if it had been the time or place, as if this kind of transaction came with paperwork. It had felt like a sales pitch that had already been sold to her against her will: death and a complex kind of grief with a dotted line and an asterisk underneath and elaboration in the footnote. They'd sold Jeanie orphanhood and then tried to immediately pile on all the legal extras.

Liz sighed.

"I know it's soon, but––"

"No, it's not just soon," Jeanie said, her voice barely audible, "It's literally still happening right now––"

"I would have left it until later, but––"

But Jeanie shook her head. Her hands shook slightly so she tensed them, fingers curling into fists as she moved her hands desperately.

What did she do with her limbs? What did she do with this fucking feeling in her? What did she do with the impulse to smile like it would burn her up in flame?

She spoke with her jaw clenched, eyes tracking the slowly flood as it crept towards her shoes, as if reaching out, begging her to go down with her parents. Then her heart seized with the kind of confession that hurt to even think––

"Elena is in that hospital room," She said, "And even though her prognosis is good... there's a part of me that is convinced that she won't wake up––"

"Jeanie––"

"We're still in this right now," Jeanie spoke over her. A slightly miffed laugh fell past her lips as she pinched the bridge of her nose. "It's not the after part–– it's not too soon, it's still happening and you guys want to talk about legal guardianship like I'm not...like it's not..."

She couldn't really bring herself to finish that sentence out loud, but in her head, a part of her brain was screaming it with all of the volume it could get––

Like I wasn't their kid too.

She was pretty sure they hadn't asked Jeremy about this when they'd told him his parents were dead now. She was pretty sure they'd let him grieve. They'd given the kid his space, let him process everything and set it all aside for another day.

But Jeanie, with her inability to figure out whether she was even allowed to mourn, had received legal jargon with her condolences.

She'd hung up on the Mystic Falls Sheriff Department and packed a bag.

This needed to slow down. Everything needed to slow down.

"I'm sorry," Liz apologised and Jeanie closed her eyes.

She was massaging her temples, not because they hurt but because they were numb like she'd been standing in the cold for hours.

"I don't like having these conversations––"

"Then please don't."

"Jeanie, I wish I didn't have to––"

"Please."

Please just let me breathe.

Liz watched her. Even as she turned her head as far as it would go, she could feel her heavy gaze on the side of her face and, call Jeanie crazy, but she'd sworn that she'd been able to feel them all looking at her from the moment she'd passed the county line.

It felt as though from the moment that car crashed, the whole town had been waiting for what Jeanie would do next.

"I wish I could," Liz said and Jeanie's eye twitched, "I'm sorry. I wish I could leave this until tomorrow–– but–– but this is the difficult part and it's the ugly part and you drove all of the way from New York to here for a reason––"

"My parents are dead," Jeanie interjected, voice fried, "If you want a reason, I'm pretty sure there's one in there somewhere––"

"Elena and Jeremy need a guardian," The Sheriff said, "And I am sorry. I'm really sorry that we have to talk about what happens next right now... but Elena is a minor and needs someone to oversee her medical care and it just can't wait––"

"We have to wait for John," Jeanie said indifferently.

It'd been the only thing that Jeremy had been able to tell her between his grief. He'd told her that their Uncle John was coming in from California and that everything was in the air until he arrived.

"Guardianship defaults to John," She said, "My parents always said that if anything ever happened to them, John becomes the guardian."

In all honesty, when she thought of her Father's brother, 'potential legal guardian' was not the kind of descriptor that came to mind, and, from the way that Liz's face contorted slightly, she could tell that she thought the same. In Jeanie's opinion, the guy who couldn't even make Christmas or Thanksgiving once a year, was not the kind of parent material that would ever pull through.

"Well," Sheriff Forbes sighed, shaking her head, "I don't know what changed, but that's not what the County office said when we called them––"

Jeanie's brow furrowed.

"It's what they tried to tell you when they called yesterday," She continued as the blood started draining from the eldest Gilbert's face. Realisation crept in, slow and cold, "Miranda and Greyson must have changed the paperwork years ago––"

"What are you saying?"

Her voice rasped out, a dent in between her eyebrows and a deep trench in the centre of her chest, right where her heart should have been.

"I'm saying that they must've changed the default of the guardianship before they died," Liz said and, with the next sentence, Jeanie's life changed for a second time in twenty-four hours: "John isn't their legal guardian. It's you."

...

...

Oh.

──────

Maybe it was the wrong time to admit this but, Jeanie hadn't really ever imagined herself being a parent.

As a kid, she'd wondered if something was wrong with her. She'd wondered if there was something weird with the fact that she'd never been interested much in babydolls or strollers. It wasn't until she'd got into her twenties and people she knew started having kids, that she'd realised that it just wasn't the way she was wired.

Jeanie was fairly reserved on the maternal instincts front and she'd had very little success in keeping a plant alive, talk about another human. The thought of being responsible for anyone other than herself happened to break her out in a shit tonne of hives and it'd been one of the contentions she'd had when her Dad had been so insistent that she became a doctor, just like him––

It wasn't that she didn't care...

Jeanie just...

She didn't know how to––

She couldn't––

She hadn't––

"No, that doesn't make any sense."

The eldest Gilbert daughter shook her head.

She'd fallen into a short pace, fingers flirting with the concept of gouging her own eyes out as she thought it over and over.

It didn't make any sense and she was pretty sure it would never make any sense to anyone.

Liz had to be wrong. She just had to be––

"Jeanie––"

"We did not get along," It was the quickest she'd spoken in what felt like hours. "I haven't spoken to them since I left this place six years ago. They hated me and I pretty much hated them–– they would not make me Elena and Jeremy's guardian. They would not trust me with them. That's not right––"

"We checked it over with their lawyer," Liz said, a little too calm and collected for the sudden change in pace of the conversation, "I'm not lying, Jeanie––"

"But why?" Jeanie asked, shoulders sagging, "Why would they do that?"

She stared at Liz and Liz stared back.

It was the kind of question that neither of them could answer: an introspective look into the dead person's logic, the question that would keep Jeanie up for nights and nights to come and plague her as she stared down into two coffins.

Maybe it'd end up in the descriptive text of the autopsy? The answer hiding between the plates of her mother's skull or behind her father's ribs––?

For the first time since she'd gotten the phone call, Jeanie's eyes welled with tears.

The saliva in her mouth congealed into something thick and unpalatable and it was almost insane to her that this was the same tongue that had so spitefully told her parents to Go to Hell!

Silently, Liz watched her turn away, back to the hospital and lungs seizing as she struggled to bring air into her lungs. She was watching... everyone was going to be watching... everyone was going to be whispering about this by sunrise...

"Fuck," She cried and she pressed a hand to her mouth.

"Jeanie––"

"No, I..." She shook her head, "I need a minute. Give me a minute."

"Do you need me to––"

"No," Jeanie repeated, "Stay there. I just need a... A second just..."

It'll blow over eventually, right? Stuff like this always does.

She stayed like that for a while, getting this feeling out of her system.

She crouched down, heavy with grief and bewilderment and all of the emotions she'd suppressed since New York.

She put her head in her hands and stayed there for as long as she could.

After a while, Jeanie stood up straight, swiping at her eyes with the side of her hand and taking in a long but gentle breath. Six years of grief of being the child of parents that had her maybe a little too young had come fast and furious and now left Jeanie colder than ever before––

She pulled the sleeve of her sweater down over her wrists too, feeling oddly childlike in the way she wiped her nose.

When she turned back to Liz, eyes bloodshot and composure pieced back together, the Sheriff gave her sympathy like it was a gift.

"I'm sorry," She said.

Jeanie almost laughed.

It would've been a strange laugh though, maybe too loud and too harsh for such a tender hearted girl. The truth was she couldn't tell if Liz was apologising for her parent's passing or for the fact that Jeanie would've rather drowned with them than ever signed her siblings over to the fate of having John Gilbert as their guardian. 

"Yeah," Jeanie said, instead, "Me too."

She was sorry. 

She was really sorry–– Sorry for not knowing what to do, for not knowing what to say and not knowing where she fit in a town that she'd only ever been desperate to leave. Sorry for not being able to cope with what was happening around her––

Sorry for not knowing what had happened and what would happen next.

But, even so, it wasn't until Liz was leaving her to her bereaved silence that Jeanie felt any semblance of reality creep back in. She said something that made Jeanie pause, head turning to look over at the Sheriff. 

  "What did you just say?"

  "I asked if you bought Adam out here with you," Liz repeated, turning back to face Jeanie as if it was just a nonchalant off-handed topic. All the while, the Gilbert girl just stared back at her, blinking with clumped eyelashes, "You're going to need support through this. You can't do it alone––"

Jeanie had hesitated for a beat, Adam's face flashing across her mind. She froze, her brain wheeling over the realisation that she hadn't thought about him once, not through all of this––

Suddenly, her mouth was dry and she felt kind of sick again, stomach churning and her mind scrambling every letter and syllable she could have used in reply. It was a long enough hesitation for Liz to falter and, before, Jeanie had even said anything, she knew the Sheriff had figured she'd tripped up somewhere.

  "Oh, Adam," Jeanie echoed and his name almost felt foreign to her. It was if she was saying the name of an absolute stranger and not a man she'd fought to love for years against her better judgement, "Yeah he's um... That's not really..."

Even in that moment, she had to think about it–– really root around her brain for an absence that, at first, she hadn't even noticed. 

When she thought of him, the image was distorted. It was as if she'd been in one of these ORs or in one of these rooms and had had a scalpel skirt around the edges of him and had it taken from her. Whatever had been put back in, in his place, felt, for a startlingly short and brilliant moment, foreign to her.

It's okay, a voice in that part of her mind told her and Jeanie wasn't sure why or how, but she knew it wasn't hers, This is okay. You're okay.

After a minute of deliberation, Jeanie cleared her throat, and it felt right to say what she said next:

  "We broke up."

　　AUTHOR'S NOTE ! . . .
apparently "we broke up" is the cool trendy way to say "some british dude broke his spine"
great compulsion there elijah, very cool.

jeanie gilbert my best girl, so excited to share her with you all <3
if you were a gifted and talented burn out kid like i was,, welcome to therapy,, hope you love the song "nothing new" by taylor swift ft. phoebe bridgers.

WORD COUNT ! . . . 4550
WRITTEN ON THE 9TH OF SEPTEMBER 2023