Notes: Warnings for references to character deaths and suicide. Written for Amber's Attic at Hogwarts' Writing Club. The prompt was Superman: Write about someone losing everything. WC = 593
Diana was asleep when she got the phone call. It was after midnight in London, and she awoke to the sound of her cell phone ringing. Glancing at the screen in the dark, she saw it was her grandmother calling. Answering the phone, she gave a groggy "Hello?"
"Diana?" said her grandmother. "You need to come home immediately."
Diana felt her heart drop. Something was wrong. Even thousands of miles away, she could hear it in her grandmother's voice. "What's wrong?" she asked, her voice trembling.
There was a moment of silence. Then Kate said "The circle is dead. All of them."
Diana took the first flight out of London that would get her back to the United States. Throughout the entire flight, she tried to process what her grandmother had told her. The skull had corrupted the circle, one member at a time. Driven mad by it, they turned on one another, becoming violent. In the end, Cassie was the only one left standing. The police who had been investing the crimes had arrested her for killing her friends. She had hanged herself in the holding cell that night.
Diana's grandmother met her at the airport. During the ride back to Chance Harbor, the younger woman was quiet. Finally, after about an of silence, Kate said "You can't blame yourself."
Diana shook her head. "I shouldn't have left" she said. "Not when the circle needed me."
"You couldn't have known this would happen" Kate pointed out.
"But I should have" said Diana. "Cassie begged me to stay so we could bind the circle again." If the circle had been bound, maybe they would all still be alive. Suddenly, a thought occurred to her. "What happened to the skull?" she asked. She didn't want to fall to the skull''s temptation. Not with John Blackwell's blood running through her veins.
"I buried it somewhere that I hope nobody will ever find it" said Kate. "I should have done that in the first place, instead of leaving the responsibility to a bunch of teenagers."
Although she didn't say anything, Diana had to agree.
The next two weeks passed by in a daze. Diana went to more funerals that week than she'd been to in her entire life. By the last one, she was tired of hearing people say "I'm sorry for you loss."
The evening after Cassie was buried, Diana sat on her bed flipping through a photo album. Inside were snapshots of her and her friends, her and her father, even a few of her and Elizabeth. Everybody she cared about was lost to her now.
Hearing a sound outside her bedroom, she glanced up. Kate stood in the doorway. "Its dinner time" her grandmother said.
Diana shook her head. "I'm not hungry."
Kate frowned. "You've said the same thing every night for the past two weeks" she said, walking over to sit next to Diana. The younger woman could tell her grandmother was worried about her, but she was too unhappy to care.
Kate wrapped one arm around her granddaughter's shoulders. "I know it seems like nothing will ever be okay again" she said. "It was the same for me after your grandfather. But you will be happy again, Diana."
Diana felt tears coming to her eyes again. "It doesn't feel that way" she said, her voice breaking.
"And it won't, not for a long time" said Kate. "But you can't give up hope. That's what makes life worth living."
Diana nodded. Then she buried her head in her grandmother's neck and sobbed.