At this point in time, I'm going to say that all of my fics are on a very temporary hiatus. My inspiration is at zero and my time is even more scarce. So instead, I'll write little fics, short oneshots that are inspired by my own thoughts or reader prompts. I've already written a few for Glee, I have some ideas for Arrow and a few for TVD. I'm so sorry to all of the readers who are wanting resolution to my other stories. You'll get it, just not right now.

This is an Alaric story, or at least what the first few episodes will probably look like, from his POV. (Because he's excellent and I'm so stupidly happy that he's back.)

Enjoy.

He talked to him sometimes. Not all the time but often enough that if anyone heard him, he'd have a hard time explaining himself.

Alaric understood that the Other Side was no more. He knew that everything that had happened in that final showdown with the travellers had caused the Other Side to crumble and more than likely killed all of its inhabitants. Damon was dead, he was probably dead-dead. Alaric knew that.

But when he himself had been dead, not dead-dead, but dead enough, Damon had still talked to him. He'd ranted and raved in the general direction that Alaric always seemed to inhabit and more than once Alaric almost wondered if Damon could actually see him, if he knew somehow that Alaric was there. Sometimes Damon would simply fill a glass and leave it beside him, no words necessary to show how much he missed his buddy. Other times he would wax poetic and scream his thoughts at the emptiness of the boarding house.

The point was that no matter how permanent Alaric's death was supposed to be, Damon had never stopped talking to him. Those one-sided conversations had saved Alaric's sanity on too many occasions to count. The Other Side had been a literal nightmare but listening to Damon speaking to him had given him hope. It had made him feel alive again even if Damon couldn't hear his responses. Damon knew Alaric well enough that sometimes he seemed to know just what Alaric had said in response anyways.

So he talked to Damon. He had no idea if Damon was there or if he could hear him, but the alternative was just too damn depressing. So he told Damon about his day and about the lectures he was planning for his classes at Whitmore. Sometimes he practiced the lectures aloud for Damon to hear, just grinning to himself as he almost heard Damon's snarky replies about irony. And there was irony. Alaric teaching about 'myths' surrounding the supernatural was comical. The fact that one of his classes was made up of about 45% supernatural creatures was hysterical. And he himself being a vampire made it all the funnier.

It had been a devastating five months since Bonnie and Damon had failed to cross back over. He had swallowed his own grief in a desperate attempt to hold everyone else together. But nothing he said or did could patch up the huge, gaping hole in their lives. Jeremy was despondent over the loss of Bonnie for the final time after only having gotten her back months beforehand. His decision to put off university and work at a pub eerily similar to the Mystic Grille was made without argument from any sides.

Matt had chosen to remain in Mystic Falls and Alaric knew that it was the only thing that helped any of them to breathe easier. For once, Matt was safe, perhaps the safest of any of them.

Tyler had not adjusted well to being a potential werewolf and his new relationship with Liv was volatile and hard to witness. Especially when the two of them started having it out in the middle of Alaric's classes.

Stefan had disappeared into the night faster than any of them could comprehend. Without his brother around, he seemed to have zero desire to continue living in Virginia. And the adolescent vampire had taken nothing but Damon's car and Caroline's heart with him.

And Elena, oh God, Alaric talked to Damon about her the most. It was perhaps selfish, because if Damon was there and he could hear him, then it wasn't fair to put all of that on his friend's shoulders. But if there was any way for Damon to get back to her, Alaric needed him to do it.

She was a wreck, inconsolable and unrecognizable in her grief. She showed up for school and excelled in her classes, but then she would disappear and no one would be able to get a hold of her until the next day of classes. Alaric had been resisting the urge to kill Liv's brother for supplying Elena with those witchy drugs. Hallucinating Damon was not helping and the fact that she was so sure that it was really Damon and not a hallucination was destroying her.

So he told Damon all about it. He urged his friend to figure it out, to make his way back to them. Because what were they without him, really? For all of the harping on about Stefan's heroics, it had been Damon's death not Stefan's that had torn them all apart. How awful was it that the final nail in the coffin of Stefan and Elena came with the realisation that she just couldn't live without Damon? Her final choice was just too late.

He didn't speak of his own grief. Alaric knew that Damon understood how much he was missed. If Alaric hadn't been bereaved then he wouldn't be speaking to a ghost that may or may not actually be there.

"We need you here, Buddy." He announced thickly before draining his glass and Damon's.

Damon's head fell back against the wall with a loud crack. He preferred Alaric's company these days. God knew he'd never gotten along with Bonnie and the prospect of an eternity together wasn't helping.

He preferred to listen to his old friend talk about their family's lives. He couldn't watch as his brother self-destructed in Cuba, nor could he bear to witness Elena's misery. His very best and very worst moments so far had been the ones where the witch drug had summoned him to her side. The drug allowed him to hold her, to kiss her and to really love her. But those moments of comfort only hurt them both more. No amount of begging her to move on, to let herself heal worked. She refused to exist without him.

"I'm working on it, Buddy." Damon promised his friend as he left the apartment. "I'll be there soon. No matter what it takes."

Thoughts? Thanks for reading.