AN: I was given this prompt: How about Elejah and #41, or any of them really :)

So thank you for asking and this is really angsty. Song for this: Ghost by Halsey.

It hits him like a train. He's already in Spain when he gets the news. After that, he's pretty sure he breaks. After all, the morning after, he sees her. He tries to touch her shoulder-his hand passes through.

"Are you real?" He asks, because honestly, he's not sure which possibility is worse.

"I think so." Elena says.

"Why are you here?" He asks, and he means Earth. Why she hasn't joined her long list of dead loved ones, gone to wherever the dead go is a mystery to him. The sun chooses that moment to shine through his window-and her. She's not really there. The thought is worse than a dagger in his heart. He would know.

"I don't know." She confesses. She wants to hug him or do something, but she's dead, certifiably, already buried dead.

"I love you." He says suddenly, he regrets not saying it when she was alive. Her eyes fill with tears, he wonders if they're real, if they'll even hit his carpet-

"I love you too." She admits.

It's not closure, and she has no idea how to move on.

"No one else except Jeremy can see me. I can kind of move things, but I can't touch people." She sounds mournful. He wants their first kiss too. He wishes she had vampire blood in her system, wishes there was a way to save her, but a freak accident involving a bridge collapse-he's not sure even he could have saved her.

She stays with him for decades, he's painfully aware of how tragic they are, but he'll take anything and everything he can get when it comes to Elena. They go to Jeremy's funeral, and she mourns to him, there's only him. No one else believes her, they want to believe she's with Jenna, and Alaric and her parents-she's not. She is happy, however, and that's what matters in the end, she supposes.

Time passes so oddly-it seems long at some points, and so quickly at others-she's told him she wants to stay with him for as long as he lives, she has nothing better to do as a ghost. She doesn't tell him, but she's figured out why she's there with him. If he dies, or forgets her, she ceases to be. She doesn't tell him, doesn't want him to die to have the chance to maybe be with her, she has no idea what happens after death, her first experience was rigged. She can't stand the thought they might not see each other in death. She hopes that whoever got the idea right of what the afterlife is like, if there is one, is kind and lets her keep Elijah next to her. Maybe she might even be able to kiss him then. Not that physical touch is important, but she wishes she could touch him. A hand on his shoulder, a body to sleep next to-she wouldn't blame him for moving on if she was truly dead. But she isn't, so he doesn't. They spend centuries together, and she plans to keep it that way.

finis