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Tyler's holed up in the Lockwood cellar after leaving Hayley a few non-too-friendly voicemails when the Sheriff calls him. At first, he thinks it's about Klaus, about twelve bodies in the woods, about Caroline.
Then she says, "Tyler, it's about your mom."
And she doesn't even need to finish because he already knows.
This is how he ends up on Elena's porch.
She looks tired, is his first thought, when she opens the door. She looks tired and fragile. Which is kind of stupid, because of all the words he's ever associated with Elena Gilbert in his entire life (hot, cheerleader, Matt, legs, party girl, spoiled, sad, sweet, strong survivor orphan he's an orphan too fuckfuckfuck—) she's never been that, not once.
"Tyler," she says on an exhale, and she knows, he can tell she knows, it's in the sad tilt of her mouth and the way her arms are coming up for him and jesus he can't — he just — "Tyler."
"I don't know what to do," is what he says, even as she hugs him, all thin arms and soft, knowing eyes, the curve of her spine hard beneath his palm. She smells like strawberries and death. He remembers she'd smelt like that at the lake house, too, and at first he'd thought it was just because she'd been with Stefan — vampires had a distinct smell, see; not like rotting skin on an old corpse, but just this musky sort of thing like dust in an attic or the old pages of a book — but no, it's always just been Elena, even when she was human, strawberries and death and sadness: a summary of all her parts.
He likes that she doesn't lie and tell him he'll be okay. Instead, she pulls back, touches the pads of her fingers to his cheek (she's so cold, he thinks, has Caroline ever been this cold?) and sighs.
"You'll survive," she whispers, and he can't tell if it's a promise or a reminder or maybe both. "You always do."
He blinks at her, thinks she's wrong, even as she tugs him inside for hot chocolate, but she is a girl who lives in a house full of ghosts, who has buried love in graveyards, who has died for villains and friends and nothing. If she sees a fight in him then that's something, isn't it?
It's something.
.
.
.
Hayley catches up with him in Louisiana, and the sudden white hot rage that spirals through him when he sees her almost makes him double over. Almost.
"Tyler," she chokes out, his hand at her windpipe, his name tiny and scared, "I'm sorry, I didn't have a choice."
He wants to scream at her, bury his teeth in her throat, put his hand around her heart and squeeze until she cries. She lied to him and used him and Klaus never vowed to make her suffer, and it isn't fair, it's never been fair.
"I'm so sorry about your mom."
She's looking up at him with damp eyes, and for a second, she's Hayley, the girl in the mountains who'd found him forcing himself to shift, who'd sat with him and listened and pressed her fingers to the place his heart had beat once and murmured this is what makes you better than Klaus will ever be, Tyler; this is why you won't always be his slave while his bones settled and his hands shook.
"Don't." He doesn't recognize his own voice, rough and low and hurt. "Just shut up."
There are two drunks at the mouth of the alley laughing and kicking a can back and forth. There's a girl smoking by the back door to a club who's wearing too much eyeliner. Hayley's pulse skips every other beat beneath his thumb, steadying the longer they stand there. Tyler inhales, exhales—
("You're a leader, Tyler," Caroline's fingers sweep his cheekbones, feather light, even as the paleness of her skin turns an ashy grey, "don't ever forget that."
And he's staring at the pulpy mess of flesh at her shoulder, nearly hysterical, thinking I can't lose anymore people, this is all my fault, all my fault—)
— steps away from her.
"I never wanted you to get hurt." She bites the corner of her lips, shadows in her hair, her eyes, the dip in her throat. "I just wanted to find my parents."
"And?" He desperately hopes she found them, suddenly; at least then, it would have been worth it.
Hayley looks down at her hands, tucked into her jeans, then back up. "Dead."
And all the anger goes out of him, because they were just two orphaned kids now, standing in an alley, regretting all the choices that had brought them there. The only difference was she'd never know what it was like to spend forever glancing over her shoulder, gasping in the dark.
"I'm sorry," he says, honestly. There's a spark in her eyes, quick and hot and bright. "Let's go get a drink."
Forever is a long time to hold a grudge after all, and Tyler refuses to be anything like Klaus.
.
.
.
Sometimes, he thinks: half my heart died in a fountain a month ago; the other half is planning prom.
But when he hears Caroline's message, the desperate, wanting lilt of her voice, the Jeremy's dead, Tyler he knows he's wrong, that there's a piece he left behind without even realizing it.
(When he's younger, there's a girl with dead eyes and a flat voice who tells him Jeremy's all I have three days after she buries her parents. She's curled up in a little ball on her couch, paper thin and frail and barely seventeen, and Tyler is thinking about all the times he's wished his dad would just drop during dinner and never get back up with something like guilt. He doesn't think he deserves to see her like this. They aren't that close anymore; what is he even supposed to say?
I'm sorry, he mutters, to a family photo sitting on the mantle, like it'll do anything, like it's any help at all.
Her voice is empty when she mumbles, thanks for visiting.)
Elena the martyr, Elena the victim, Elena the friend is gone by the time he gets there. All he says is, "fuck" when Caroline fills him in, and thinks it sums up everything pretty well.
.
.
.
"Does it get better?"
Elena glances up at him through those impossibly long lashes, the deep pink of her dress almost black somehow in the moonlight. The bleachers are empty; prom is the only event no one ever tries to skip out on, and there's a half empty bottle of vodka sitting in her lap.
"If you turn it off," she says, with a smile like a knife, her old mean-girl smile, the one that could put even Caroline to shame, "it gets amazing."
He doesn't believe her. She'd known right away what he was talking about, and that's a sign, right there, that she hasn't forgotten the pain. "So amazing that you gotta resort to drinking yourself stupid alone, right?"
"Fuck off," her voice is deeper, the line of her shoulders straighter; he thinks she's trying to imitate Katherine a little, without all the seduction. "Is it your turn to try and fix me?"
Tyler shrugs and sits down two rows above her, off to the left, so he can see the outline of her profile. "I don't really believe in fixing people."
"Good." Her voice is flat, and this is the girl right after the accident, he muses. This is the girl who grieved so hard she had nothing left in her to give. "Drink?"
Caroline is inside, wearing Klaus' dress because Elena stole hers. Caroline is inside wearing a dress from the man who murdered his mother. Caroline is mad he won't dance with her.
"Yeah," he says, without pause, and she settles next to him so gracefully, so very much still Elena, the delicate bones in her wrist visible when she tilts the bottle towards him. "Sorry about Jeremy."
She shrugs, stares off into the distance, but her fingers clench against his hip. "It was bound to happen eventually."
No inflection, no tremor, just a bored sort of acceptance, like her dog died, like she failed a test. Tyler's tempted to turn it off, seeing her like this, seeing her make it look just so easy (everything's always come easy to Elena, see, always) but. He's learned that the measure of how much you love someone is equal to how much it hurts and that's the only kind of math he'll ever be good at, the kind they never teach you at school because you can only really ever figure it out on your own.
"I guess we aren't all that different, huh?" he finally mutters, the bitter taste of alcohol in his throat. She hums in response. "Just two orphans, getting drunk at prom."
"We're better off alone," she whispers, while they both stare down at the football field where she'd made the cheer team freshman year and he'd scored his first touchdown, "now we've got nothing left to lose."
She'd tried to kill Caroline, he knows. She'd killed a girl in a diner. She didn't want the cure. Her brother was dead.
"We'll survive," is what he says, even if he doesn't agree with her, and they don't move for a long time.
.
.
.
Hayley texts him three days after he leaves for the last time, Caroline crying in a parking lot, his voice breaking over after everything he's done, Care, I just can't and Elena, in the street, staring after his car as he drove away.
All it says is, The Originals are in NO.
He was Steven in Louisiana, a part-time barista and a volunteer assistant football coach at the high school. He had a decent apartment, a few casual acquaintances, and Hayley came over every other night to eat take out and watch shitty werewolf movies with him. He had a life.
Tyler turns the car around, thinking, I'm gonna live forever, dammit. Steven'll have another chance, someday.
In Chicago, he's Zach, a physical trainer who lives above an old speak-easy. He doesn't stay there long because it reminds him too much of Rebekah, reminiscing on the twenties and Stefan and Klaus, but he makes a few friends, a couple of werewolves looking for a pack and a witch who says she'll keep an ear out for him.
In Dallas, he's a stripper named Paul. That doesn't last long, but he has enough cash when he leaves to last him a while, and by the time he makes it to Denver he thinks maybe he can do this.
Except Denver makes him nauseous, reminds him too much of a stupid, funny, good kid who could draw like the best of them and never had a chance. He stays, though, checks in on the family Jeremy had been living with, and then decides fuck it, if he's going to do the memorial thing, he'll do it right.
It takes a few months, the longest he's ever been in one place, but he spends the time compelling publishers and piling sketches around his room. At the end of April, he releases one comic book under the penname Jerbert (he isn't very original okay, whatever, it's not like anyone's going to get it anyway) and it features a hunter with too much heart and a love of wife-beaters, and an angry werewolf kid who eventually becomes his sidekick. It isn't the best thing out there, but it's the best thing he's ever done and on the back of every single copy he scribbles, this is for you, kid.
At comic three hundred and two, his hand cramps up badly while he's hunched over his desk at half past too fucking early for this and he mutters, "you better appreciate this, you little shit," to an empty room.
If he listens hard enough, he thinks he can almost hear a laugh.
Tired, he thinks, I'm just tired.
.
.
.
His phone rings at a bar in San Francisco, while he's on break, and he doesn't recognize the number.
"Hello?"
"Do you remember," Elena says, hiccupping, "when I told you it gets better if you turn it off?"
He doesn't know what the situation is back in Mystic Falls anymore, hasn't for a very long time. He doesn't know how she got his number. "Yeah, why?"
There's a long break where all she does is exhale short, watery breaths into the static and then, finally, she whispers, like a secret, "I lied."
Tyler stares up at broken light fixture in the back room, something unravelling in his chest. "I know."
.
.
.
He's scrubbing down the jukebox when the door opens. It's been almost a year since he left Mystic Falls for good, six months since Denver, and three weeks since Elena called him crying. Tyler's been too many people to count at this point, and sometimes the lives get mixed up in his head so badly he has to makes lists for each one. He thinks Caroline's rubbed off on him a little bit.
"Tyler Trevino?" a voice, too deep to be a girl's, says behind him. "Dude, you sound like a porn star."
Tyler blinks once, twice, and turns around. "What the fuck?"
Jeremy grins at him, slightly lopsided, with Elena tucked neatly against his side like she's never going to let go. He can't really blame her. "Nice to see you too, dick."
Tyler stares. Elena smiles, with all her teeth, the sort of smile he hasn't seen since before her parents died, the one that could light up a room. "That's his way of saying thank you for the comic."
"Oh, dear god," is what Tyler finally gets out, because no one he knew was supposed to see that, and it's the combination of Elena's giggle and Jeremy's laugh — loud, honest, familiar — that gets him across the room finally.
Jeremy puts an arm around him, says, "dude, we totally have to continue that comic," and starts going on about characters. Elena shakes her head, the sweet curve of her lips unwavering.
She reaches for his hand. Her fingers curl around his palm briefly, nails short and sharp. "Hi."
Tyler taps a finger against cool skin at the inside of her wrist, remembers how once, they'd both been warm. "Hey."
There are things that go under Tyler Lockwood in his head, when he's sorting personas. Things he'll never forget. Things like:
The quirk of Caroline's eyebrows when she's being snarky. The way his mom had smelt like poise and class and homemade cookies. The dimple in Matt's cheek when he gives a genuine smile. The slant of Bonnie's eyes when she glares. The sound Jeremy makes when he's trying not to laugh. The way Elena frowns when someone she loves is hurt and the way she'd been all too long limbs and skinny kid hips when they'd been growing up.
The look on her face when he hugs her and mumbles, "we're doing pretty good for a couple of orphans, huh?"
The way the corners of her mouth soften when she mutters back, "yeah."
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When they're kids, Elena breaks her arm.
It's stupid, really; they're at the lake house for the summer, playing by the pier, and she's trying to show off — she's been in gymnastics for four years now, and Tyler never believes her when she says she can do a back flip, but she so can, she'll prove it, see, so she scrambles up one of the boulders by the water, sneakers slipping, and goes: "Watch this!"
She crouches, braces her knees, then throws all her weight forward as she jumps, legs twisting over her head, and Tyler watches the sleek line of her body cut through the air, like it's so easy (everything's always come easy to Elena, he thinks) and then—
She lands badly. The sharp crack of bone as her elbows hit the ground, the way her lower lip had trembled, the shine of her hair in the afternoon sun, Tyler remembers all of it, even years later.
"Holy shit," he says, and crouches down next to her. Both of them are steadily avoiding glancing at her arm. "Shit, shit."
But she's smiling, even though she's crying and sucking in wet little breaths through her teeth. "See," she whimpers, while he hovers over her, trying to figure out how he's going to explain what happened without getting his ass beat for encouraging her, "told you I could do it."
"Yeah, yeah," he grumbles, tucking her head against his shoulder and just sitting there, not really touching her because he's never been good at comforting people.
"Don't worry," she murmurs; he can feel her smiling against her neck, "I'll survive."
"Like I care," is what he says, but he's thinking, Vicky didn't stop screaming when she broke her leg as their parents rush out towards them.
That's Elena for you, though, he supposes, while she sniffles into his favourite shirt. Couldn't be a mess if she tried.