Title- When I'm Haunting You
Fandom- The Vampire Diaries
Characters- Alaric/Damon, Damon & Jeremy, Damon/Elena, hinting at Anna/Jeremy, implied Alaric/Damon/Elena
Rating- PG-13
Word Count- ~2,300
Summary- "Is it worth it?" Damon asked him once. Alaric watches Damon live his life after he is gone.

Later, when the boy was grown and sat to the right of Damon and they drank the way he remembered, Jeremy would suddenly look towards him and say with wistful awe that only the truly drunk know intimately, "We were all so young."

And even though Damon always presumed the boy, who was now a man, was talking to him, in an empty bar stool the ghost of a history teacher would raise an invisible glass in salute.

Because they had been impossibly young, Alaric knew at the time. He and Damon - the ridiculous parents to a tattered group of sad, lonely children. And what had he given them? Only another loss to prey at their waking minds. What had he left them with? A sociopathic serial killer, more sad and lonely than they'd ever know. (Isn't that what they both turned out to be, after all?)Children themselves, playing at being old men.

And what had he been - but a man grasping at meaning beside a man who was too full of meaning, too full of his own story - and so they drank to forget what they didn't mean... they wandered carelessly through the lives of children as though they had the right to be there, as though they were finding meaning through their heedless guard of innocents that had never been innocent.

And when the boy who became a man was so much older, when he no longer could hold his liquor like his old friend, the man who was once a vampire hunter sat next to the boy who had been his son until all that was left was silence.

It never occurred to Alaric it would happen any other way - the day they all crowded to the graveyard to send off Jeremy, who had stayed so inexplicably mortalthrough all of the mess and the gore -

(and Damon threw dark looks at everyone in silent desperation for someone to call him out, give him a reason to rant and storm, and Elena cried and Stefan pretended to be stoic and strong and Caroline shed silent tears as she held her head higher and higher and everyone pretended that Bonnie wasn't missing, that Matt wasn't missing, that Tyler hadn't chosen not to come, that Rebekah after all wasn't hiding in the woods behind, and Jeremy stood beside him and watched - they were always so close but never touching and now they were in the same space, and there were no words spoken and that seemed best)

- that after him, it would be Jeremy.

The boy who grew old too fast, who seemed to grow and grow without ceasing, who filled the room with his goodness even after the world tried to rip it all away. How had he ended up on the barstool next to a melodramatic vampire, playing babysitter to a group of children stuck as children forever? How had it been that he was the only one to grow old and watch them stay young?

Just as after Katherine there had been Elena, just as after Sage there had been Rose, just as after Caroline there had been Andie, just as after Rose there had been Caroline, just as after him there had been Jeremy. Just as there was always ever Stefan and Stefan and Stefan.

Damon Salvatore lived in cycles and cycles of love and loss - he made his world into one that repeated the pain he felt he so deserved. He told himself a story that had to be true.

And the ghost of Alaric Saltzman sat in an empty bar stool, watching the cycles pass by.

The first time he watched, they were alone in a graveyard and he thought of coursebefore the monologue even started.
And there was his friend, alone in a graveyard with a bottle of something dark and moist that he'd never taste again, and he smiled as he said,"I miss you too, buddy."

Because that was the end.

Alone in a graveyard. And that seemed right.

He stopped feeling sheepish about watching them together after a while.

He liked it best when Damon took her from behind and crushed her into the wall. There, he could see them both looking forward, he could stand in front of her and hold himself out - brushing their faces with his empty hands as they drove each other forward. He could see each spasm of emotion and lust cross their faces, could watch her hands curl around his, watch him rip her head back with one hand, could hear them whisper to each other.

He would cup her face, so full of nothing and something and death, and whisper to her, "I'm here."

(this girl who had been his child, his daughter, his sister - this girl who had been so much to him when his body was held together with bone and flesh and blood... she cried out into his empty hand and he no longer saw his little girl in this creature of passion and dust - and sometimes when she slept, or when her face hit the light at a certain angle he would reach for the girl she once was, but it was a truth that had never been - a lie that he had held onto... which was so ridiculous! he wasn't even her father, yet he had needed her to eternally be his innocence)

And her face would flash with blood and lust and when she screamed out his name, Alaric would touch forehead to forehead to the man who had been his friend and they two would shout out and shudder in unison.

He begged his second self never to mention his presence - there at the bar in the stool that was always empty. And Jeremy complied - once he took the stool to the right and began to see the world from a stool beside Damon Salvatore.

Because it was so much easier if he could just watch.

Because it was so much easier if his name was never mentioned.

And afterwards when there was an empty stool on either side and Damon took to drinking alone in front of his fireplace,
Alaric stood watch - wincing at every broken glass that happened with charade-like frequency (as if he knew there was someone watching)- but Jeremy left hand-in-hand with a small girl they once had known. And Alaric was alone with him -his dark self, still living despite the odds.

(He never went searching for her, for them, for all the women he had loved and lost - they were all here, it seemed, waiting for him to take one last step and join them in the deep. But he had to keep watch, he had to keep watching. what was he if he wasn't watching?)

Some nights, when the weather was cool and his creatures were sated from each other and they slept in a tangle of limbs, he would lie beside them(to the left of Damon, always in the empty space to the left of Damon), wrapping a leg over their legs, an arm over their waists. And his emptiness would strike them cold and he would watch - breathless - as goosebumps raised on the neck of the man with dark blue eyes that held the creature who was once a girl.

And he would marvel at the skin of a vampire - so close, so close to it he would have been kissing the back of their necks had he been made of flesh - that it would raise in response to him still, though it was dead flesh.

And this was his satisfaction now, an empty hand on a breathless face, a cold breeze on naked skin.

And he took what he could get.

"What's the point?"

It was late, they were feeling existential (when were they not feeling existential? when did they stop using the word? when did the word lose it's heavy weight - wouldn't it have been so much better if they hadn't known what they were under the weight of, this forever pounding question of their own existence?)and the bottle between them was less than an eighth full.

Alaric turned to his right and looked his friend(when had they become friends? shouldn't they be arch nemesis? should he dress up like a Bond villain or a horrible action figure so that they could take their roles again? should he start the fight again, wear the cloak again, be the hero again? did he have the right to?)and blinked, "Point of what?"

Damon shrugged his shoulders and head behind him, where their pack of high school children giggled and played, because tonight wasn't for the story books - tonight was a night for them to abandon themselves in action while at the bar two war-torn men made peace with a bottle.

And no one would remember this conversation or mark this night, this quiet night without monsters and with only smatterings of fear - when everything went back to some semblance of normal for children and old men wondered what it all meant, anyway.

Alaric shrugged and poured another round, "To give them moments like this, I suppose."

They both turned, simultaneously. As if their movements were choreographed. As if their lives were already laid out for them. As if it mattered to someone that they turn and look - that when they did, it was aesthetically pleasing.

They leaned against the bar and watched children play. And raised their glasses in salute to each other.

Two old men at a bar.

He liked it best when she sat in his lap like a small girl, her limbs all tangled up like a baby doe, and he stroked her hair lazily, and she sipped from the glass in his hand, and teased him, and they sat so comfortable in their own impossible bodies.

He would stand behind them and watch her rest her head against his, her hair always in movement, falling down her back, across his shoulders, wrapping them both up in her scent.

He could stand behind them and pretend that no time had passed, that he could clear his throat and they would turn and smile - she would blush and fly from his lap and brush her clothing awkwardly and tuck her hair behind her ear and smile her bashful smile and the pain in her eyes would bore into him because they both carried the burden of grief. And he would laugh and twirl his glass with his impossibly long fingers and tease her. And they would all look at each other and see each other. And maybe he'd reprimand them for being caught together with a gentle look at her and a hard look at him. And maybe there'd be a disaster - or a dance - or a dinner party - and they'd all be there... smiling or crying; dancing or screaming; laughing or silent. Did it much matter, if they could just see him?

He liked it best when he came into the room from behind them when they were happy, because in that brief moment he could pretend they would see him when they turned around. And they would know that he was seeing them be happy, all tangled up in each other.

Later, when he saw Jeremy age before Damon's eyes - he felt so glad that it hadn't been him who wasted away. That he hadn't watched Damon grow younger and younger before his aging eyes. (Just as he grew so young to Jeremy's eyes - this once-teacher who was now a ghost that could not age, that could not move on, that stayed as stagnant as the man he left behind.)That he could still look on his friend as a partner and feel at one with him. That he had gone out in a blaze of glory and blood, the Romantic way Damon would have written their endings if he could, instead of silently and slowly as Jeremy did.

Perhaps that made Jeremy a better man than him. (He was sure it did.)Perhaps that spoke of an inner weakness in himself. (So much like Damon - wanting, wishing, inevitably dying for the concept.)

But it made him feel whole.

Sometimes he imagined a day (or remembered a day - it all blurred together and he wasn't sure if it mattered any longer which was real and which was fantasy) with a wedding.

At a wedding with a petite brunette in a white puffy gown, He stood beside Jeremy and smiled like a proud poppa - though his son was now so much older than him. And beside him stood Damon, winking at Elena across the aisle, and for a brief moment he could pretend that he was still there.

(For a milisecond he was the groom and Damon was the best man. For a second Damon was the groom and he was the best man. And did it matter, when these three men stood side by side in a line, facing a pulpit - who was the groom? Weren't they all just mirrors, reflecting each other throughout an endless parade of time?)

And he turned his head to Damon (always to the left of Damon, always in the empty space to the left of Damon)and said,
"It's worth it."

And the bride would remember her strong husband turning to her with tears in his eyes. And his best man looked so infectiously full. And his sister - his impossibly young and vibrant sister - with tears gleaming in her eyes.

She couldn't have heard what they all heard just as she walked up to join them, that faint whisper of his voice on the wind. Answering a question they never heard Damon ask, never before heard Alaric answer.

"What is the point?"

"To give them moments like this."

"Is it worth it?"

"Yes. It's worth it."

[Author's Note]: As per usual, Elena snuck into a piece that wasn't supposed to be about her and gave me all kinds of feelings. She's a life ruiner.