The hospital was buzzing with activity in the wake of the explosion. Nurses and doctors were trying to calm and soothe the frightened, elderly patients that were milling around, some fretting and nervously wringing their hands while some were trying to eavesdrop and get a scoop of the action. Damon could feel Meredith's eyes glowering into his back as she was talking to an elderly man who was proclaiming, 'It's just not right!'. He let out a sympathetic wince at the sight, but he figured it would've been the least catastrophic hall to blow up—he didn't want to imagine what the paranoid schizophrenics would've been like.
He headed over to where Carol and Liz were talking to several of the firefighters and Liz's deputies, bypassing a woman with a large water cannon she was blasting into the space of the storage cupboard, hoping to quell the still roaring-flames. He took a peek inside with a satisfied smirk—yup, that hunter had to be toast.
"So, the hunter was inside?" Carol was asking one of the deputies.
"Should be," Damon cut in, announcing himself to the two women, "Unless he can disappear into thin air," he added. He seriously doubted that.
Carol smiled in relief. "Well, I can cancel the curfew and call off the extra patrols, for now," she decided, while Liz nodded and moved off to her deputies to no doubt tell them about it, "if it turns out he's still out there, I'll have to think of something," she added, nervously wringing her hands at the thought.
"I can't say I approve of your methods, though," she said in a lower voice, leaning in towards him so the firefighters nearby wouldn't hear anything.
"Good thing I don't need it, then," Damon retorted, giving her a sly wink while she looked like she was about to protest, but decided against it.
"Catch you later, Mayor," he said, patting her on the shoulder, but he doubled back before he was about to leave, "Oh, and uh, I do accept gift baskets for my heroic deeds," he grinned, leaving Carol to roll her eyes with a faint smile.
He headed off, frowning in surprise when he spotted Jeremy milling nervously in the midst of the doctors and nurses. He beckoned him over when the kid accidentally caught his eye.
"Is he dead?" he blurted, perhaps a bit too loudly as some old woman looked aghast.
Damon waved her off and guided him away from prying, unsuspecting ears. "Be surprised if he wasn't," he shrugged, with a quick backward glance at the still-raging fire, "What did he want with you anyway?" he wondered.
"Said I was a potential since I could see his tattoo," Jeremy said, shrugging.
Damon frowned. "Instead of dead people, you see tattoos?" he joked.
He didn't appreciate the joke, narrowing his eyes. "He said potential hunter," he revealed, and Damon nodded in acknowledgment, "But I'm not a vampire hunter—my own sister's one for Christ's sake!" he stressed, looking utterly bewildered.
Well, wouldn't that be a bitch of an unsatisfactory situation if Elena's little brother ended up wanting to hunt down his sister. But he was fairly certain Jeremy Gilbert couldn't fight his way out of a wet paper bag, so there wasn't anything to worry about.
"Jeremy, the guy was living in a rundown trailer in the middle of nowhere and hoarding letters about 'greater evil'," he said, making air quotes with his fingers, "I'm gonna go ahead and say he wasn't exactly compos mentis," he added with a chuckle.
Then something crossed his mind. "But don't mention this to Elena or Stefan, all right?" he advised him, "No need to bring them into this, and Elena's got enough to deal with right now," he added.
Jeremy looked in complete agreement. "Fine by me," he shrugged, "I just wanna forget all this; it's too weird even for this place," he decreed.
"Ditto," Damon agreed, waving him away with a small smile.
He watched Jeremy go, spotting the figures of Rose and Alaric staring at him from across the hall. So now he was being haunted by the ghosts of his past?
How droll.
And he was sure he was being haunted by his hybrid-bite induced hallucinations because Rose and Alaric had hounded him on the walk back to the boarding house, both eventually screaming into his ears that it was his fault they both died.
Ric's hallucinated tirade was easy enough to wave off — really, it was his fault Rebekah ran Elena off the road? — but Rose's tearful one cut him to the core, opened up those raw emotions in his chest that her death awakened. If he didn't know any better, he would've sworn that her ghost was speaking to him.
He didn't want to admit that even after all these years he still blamed himself for what happened to her. Jules had been coming after him, and he shouldn't have played nice and should've just ripped her heart out then and there for retribution. He hated how much physically seeing Rose was making his chest ache painfully—he needed her now, more than ever. He needed someone that understood him, someone he could talk to without needing to constrain himself because the other party would've been offended.
They had both disappeared after Damon, having stepped into the main parlor, picked up a nearby chair and hurled it in their general direction. The loud splintering sound had jarred him back to reality and the pained laments of his dead friends finally stopped.
He sighed, running a hand through his hair. His bottle of bourbon was looking extremely tempting.
Uncorking it, he picked it up by the neck and started to drink heavily. The alcohol burned through his veins and momentarily dulled the — literal — throbbing pain in his chest from the bite. Once the decanter was empty, save for a few dregs, he eyed a letter opener that laid nearby.
He picked it up and started unbuttoning his shirt with his other hand, mulling an idea over. It was nuts, it would hurt like a bitch, but he had to try. He turned the letter opener inwards and began carving into his chest, stopping occasionally through the searing pain to suck in breaths between his teeth. Blood leaked down his skin and onto his hand as he continued to work at the bite.
Eventually, and nauseatingly, the mangled, purpled piece of flesh dropped to the ground with a squelch. He winced as the gouge in his chest began to heal over, leaving behind smooth, clean skin. He felt marginally better, but he knew it would be short-lived.
He went to pick up the scrap of skin but stopped mid-crouch. It was fossilizing before his eyes. That was something he hadn't seen before. He picked it up and crushed it between his fingers, tossing the dust into the fireplace. One less thing for him to explain, he supposed.
But something kept nagging at him. The storage room had been lit up in a blaze and Damon only made it out because Klaus literally shoved him out the door, and as far as he was aware, there was no other exit for Klaus to have made it out of. As much as the thought of Klaus' charred corpse laying in a storage room amused him, it still bugged him.
He pulled out his phone, scrolling to his call log to find the number Klaus had rang him on earlier. He sent a quick text, thinking it couldn't hurt.
To: Number Unknown
Message: Still alive?
Not even a minute after the message registered as 'sent', the home screen lit up with an incoming call screen. Damon rolled his eyes as he answered it. Of course, Klaus Mikaelson wouldn't let himself be killed by something as stupid as a claymore bomb explosion.
"Worried about me already, darling?" his voice floated through the receiver and Damon could hear the goddamned smirk in his voice, "You know, people could start to talk about this mystery number in your phone," he teased.
Damon rolled his eyes again, throwing back the dregs of his bourbon and grabbing a bottle of whiskey. He was going to need something stronger to get through this conversation without trying to reach through the phone and strangle him.
Klaus suddenly chuckled. "Bit early to drink, isn't it?"
"It numbs the pain," Damon responded, shrugging even though Klaus couldn't see him. "You know, of the bite you left me with you son of cu—"
Immediately, he cut himself off as the front door opened and Stefan and Elena walked in.
"Why are you calling me, anyway?" he wondered, frowning to himself.
"Just thought you'd like to know the hunter is still alive," Klaus said.
Damon's nostrils flared angrily. "Excuse me?!" he hissed but was loud enough to catch Stefan's attention. He waved him off.
"Unexpected blast from the past," Klaus explained, "You'll thank me for it later," he added as a matter-of-fact.
He lowered his voice to spit harshly into the receiver: "You saved him?!"
"Damon?" Elena called over to him. Great, now both she and Stefan were frowning at him like he was a deranged lunatic.
"I've gotta go," Damon said quickly, "But we are not done!" he declared, angrily thumbing the 'end call' button so hard he thought he was going to crack the screen.
He slammed his phone down, watching out of the corner of his eye as Elena headed upstairs, waving half-heartedly at Stefan as he walked over to him. Just great, his problem was still running around. He was going to make it his personal mission to see him dead before he took his last breath.
And, with a niggling feeling in his brain, he wasn't going to let anyone stop him, not even Klaus.
"What was that all about?" Stefan wondered.
"Telemarketers just won't quit," Damon lied, waving a dismissive hand, "Supposedly a washing machine I don't own needs a new warranty," he added with a convincing shrug.
Stefan rolled his eyes with a faint smile, but his expression turned quickly alarmed. "What the hell happened?" he asked in surprise.
"Huh?" Damon frowned, until he realized Stefan was looking at the blood on his exposed chest. Shit. He moved to button it up, hiding it from his view. "Went out for a snack," he lied again, "Although it fought back this time," he added, giving a dramatic little shudder.
"Word of advice don't attack a camper who's got a hunting rifle," he finished sagely, wincing and rubbing the bloodied area of his chest over his shirt to add to the effect.
"Damon—"
"Don't start," Damon snapped, not having the patient for a goody-two-shoes tirade, "just because you two are content to wallow in your own self-pity, doesn't mean I can't enjoy myself," he pointed out.
Stefan looked like he didn't have the capacity to argue with him, so just shrugged it off with an annoyed look on his face.
"Speaking of," Damon interjected to fill the silence, "You perk miss Mary misery up a little?" he wondered, nodding his head in the direction of the stairs Elena had gone up.
"Took her to Rebekah's party," Stefan revealed, "She seemed to be having fun," he added.
Damon frowned in confusion; surprised Elena had come back with all four limbs still attached. "They actually managed to put the claws away for once?" he asked in surprise, raising his eyebrows.
"Downsized to death glares," Stefan shrugged, taking it as a win.
"Good thing I didn't let her find the white oak stake, then," Damon said with a slight grimace. An Original versus baby vampire cat-fight would've made the party a hell of a place to be.
"What?" Stefan asked in confusion.
"She wanted to find it earlier, practically rearranged my entire underwear collection and I'm pretty sure violated some Amendment to privacy," Damon explained, trying to add some levity, "Three guesses on what she wanted to do with it," he said.
The answer went unspoken between them, but Stefan caught on, looking mildly disturbed that Elena had even considered something like killing an Original vampire. Damon was just waiting for the moment it would hit him that Elena was also, by proxy, considering mass vampire genocide in her angry revenge fantasy.
"I could've told her though, sticking anything in crazy rarely works out," Damon joked.
He patted Stefan on the shoulder, leaving him to mull over his thoughts. He headed up to his bedroom, not caring that the sun was still shining brightly outside, and toed off his shoes, collapsing onto his bed in a tired daze.
"Damon?" a familiar voice sang to him.
He turned warily towards the sound of the voice, smiling when he saw Rose's face wasn't marred with dirty tear-streaks and blossoming angry red over her cheeks.
"Move over," she instructed, nodding with her head.
Damon frowned, realizing he was indulging a hallucination, but complied, nonetheless. The bed didn't sink under any weight when Rose laid herself next to him, but he still felt his smile getting bigger. He tried not to let his chest burn with nostalgia, trying not to dwell on what could've been.
"This is a really nice hallucination," he commented as Rose smiled back at him, reaching over to brush her fingers soothingly over his face.
The missing sensation of her skin against his own was what made something break inside him. He couldn't help but notice she left a trail of cold chills wherever her fingers moved. What sort of hallucination would be cold?
Or perhaps he was toeing the line so finely between being undead and dead that he was seeing her ghost? He didn't care, he was going to enjoy it while it lasted.
"I really miss you, Rose," he admitted as she continued to stroke his face, trying to fight his exhaustion so he could just look at her face. He didn't even have a picture of her to remember her by.
She leaned over and dipped her head down to kiss him on the forehead, feeling cold bloom blissfully across his overheated skin. He tried desperately to grasp at her, praying to anything that would listen that he could just touch her, but no-one was that kind. His fingers slipped through the air and he felt frustrated tears burning in his eyes.
She returned back to his field of vision and he allowed himself to stare into those beautiful, olive green eyes. "Everything will be all right, you'll see," she promised.
He eventually succumbed to sleep to the sound of her melodic humming, dreaming of fields under the bright, sunny sky, and himself with a long-haired beauty with olive green eyes in a shocking blue dress.
All they did was run, run together frolicking and laughing like they had no care in the world. They were happy.
The buzzing and vibrating of his phone startled him into consciousness. Eyes still heavy and closed, he fumbled for his phone, still in a daze, accidentally slapping it off the dresser and onto the floor. He grumbled and forced himself to wake up and open his eyes, registering a familiar, throbbing pain in his chest.
He tore his shirt open to see the hybrid bite had returned, looking much angrier if that was even possible. Oh well, he sighed heavily, the respite was nice whilst it lasted. He flicked the lamp on, noticing it was now pitch-dark outside.
The absence of Rose made him sigh wistfully. He could still smell the fresh air and the wheat in the fields tickling him as he ran after her, hear her laughter when she had tackled him to the floor.
His phone's buzzing was becoming incessant and grating on his nerves. He didn't even look at who was on the other end before he snatched the phone up and pressed the call button, ready to utterly chew out whoever was on the other end.
"This had better be good," he growled unceremoniously.
"Damon?" Elena's terrified voice whimpered from the other end.
He had to fight harder than he thought he would have to keep the annoyance out of his voice. "Elena, what is it?" he asked tiredly, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.
"Oh god," she took a hiccupping breath, crying, "It's Matt. I need help, please…" she pleaded, breaking off into chest-heaving sobs.
Instead of feeling a pang of pity for her, he just felt annoyed and irritated, more irritated than just being woken up out of nowhere. It was a niggling in his brain he couldn't shake — something that felt both foreign to him and commonplace.
"All right, I'll be right over," he said, ending the call before Elena could hear his long-suffering sigh.
Couldn't she have just phoned her boyfriend? he wondered as he strode over to his closet to grab a fresh shirt, throwing the torn one in his trash can. Instead of running with Rose and laughing like a schoolboy — something he hadn't actually felt since the night he and Katherine were running through the woods and first fed him her blood — he was having to play babysitter and clean up yet another mess.
Good thing burying bodies was one of his specialties. Elena hadn't specified, but he threw a shovel in the trunk of his car before he drove off towards the Gilbert house for good measure.
Once he got inside, the smell of blood overwhelmed him to the point he thought he really was going to need the shovel, but as he heard the faint sound of labored breathing, he threw the shovel out of Elena's view and headed into the kitchen.
Matt was passed out, face-first on the floor, with smears of blood over him and pooling around him on the ground, staining the hand pressed to his neck. Elena was beside herself, sobbing quietly as she curled in on herself like an ashamed child. The sight just annoyed him the more he looked.
He turned his attention to Matt, crouching down and scruffing him with the back of his shirt. He slapped a hand none-too-gently into the kid's face. He groaned quietly.
"Come on kid, wake up," he said, already bored with this, impatiently giving Matt another slap.
It jolted him back into consciousness and he felt Elena hovering nearby, sighing loudly in relief. Matt groggily came too, and Damon stood up, hauling him to his feet.
"Oh my God. Matt, I'm sorry," Elena cried, her voice breaking, "I'm so-I'm so sorry. I didn't-I didn't mean to—"
She stopped when she noticed Matt backing off from her in horror, retreating back in on herself and crying harder. Damon kept hold of him and bit into his wrist, force feeding Matt a bit of his blood.
The kid choked it down and Damon watched as the bitemark on his neck sewed itself together. He was surprised his blood still held healing properties and wasn't tainted beyond repair by the werewolf venom at this point.
Elena started towards him. "Matt—"
She was cut off as Damon turned around, holding up a hand and looking at her in warning. She could've put a kicked puppy to shame with the hurt look on her face. Like he was going to be stupid enough to let her near the friend who's neck she almost bit in half?
He looked back to Matt, easily catching his dazed eyes. "Forget what just happened," he intoned, compelling him, "You came over to help her, she fed a little bit, and you left. Now go home," he ordered.
Matt nodded and left, staggering a little on the way out. Damon finally turned his full attention onto Elena—she looked awful, her eyes were red and puffy, and her cream shirt was stained with Matt's blood, as well as her jeans. She had really lost it.
"What have I done?" she cried, her voice trembling in shame, "I almost killed…" Her breath hitched on another sob, and Damon went over to the island to grab a piece of kitchen tissue.
He handed it to her and she started to dab away her tears and the blood staining her mouth and neck, looking like she was trying to scrub off the first few layers of flesh too.
"Nothing you should be ashamed of," he said simply. Honestly, compared to how his and Stefan's first kills looked like — he had stopped by the house to grab his copy of Gone with the Wind and dad's corpse had looked like a wild animal ripped him to shreds — she was already doing better than them.
Of course, when she let out an aghast screech of, "Nothing I should be ashamed of?!" he decided to keep that to himself.
Elena wasn't done accosting him. "Damon, I almost killed my best friend, I—"
"I know!" he snapped, a little louder than he meant to, but it made his point and she stopped talking.
"But no-one's an expert right out of the gate," he said as a matter-of-fact, betting even a vampire as calm and composed as Elijah had his issues, "But I'll help you, okay?" he decided.
Elena nervously bunched the sleeves of her ruined shirt up around her hands. "What about Stefan?"
"What about him?" Damon asked, only just managing to downplay his frustration—why did everything with her come down to Stefan? What about what she needed to do for herself? "He can't help you with this, and you know it," he added, gesturing to all the blood staining her and the floor, hoping it would finally sink in.
It's why I'm stuck here cleaning this up, he thought to himself, the words right on the tip of his tongue, but he kept it to himself. It was harder than he wanted to admit.
Over the faint sound of Elena's sobs restarting, Damon felt his phone buzz in his pocket. He picked it up and saw a message from Klaus flash across the screen.
From: Number Unknown
Message: We need to talk. You'll find this very interesting.
Klaus was none too happy about being kept waiting, but Damon felt reckless enough to tell him to take a hike when he accosted him from the doorstep of his mansion he was staying in. Stepping inside the mansion, he felt a weird, phantom pain in his wrists.
"You looking for this?" a female voice asked from behind him.
Damon frowned, glancing behind him from where the voice echoed. Nothing.
The woman turned around and chuckled at him, able to see more of him in the sunlight. "That sure was nasty, huh?" she smirked, glancing back at the chains still hanging from the ceiling and dripping with Damon's blood.
"Oh, my apologies," she said after a sudden start, walking over to him, "I'm Kara," she introduced herself, extending a hand.
Damon's lips curved into a snarl. "Never cared much about my victim's names," he said with a nonchalant shrug.
Before the woman could register what he said, he snarled and lunged forwards, sinking his fangs into her warm flesh, drinking as much as he was able. His hands fumbled for hers — the sickening snap of her fingers reached his ears — in an effort to snatch back his ring.
Eventually, he triumphantly snapped it up, sliding it onto his finger whilst continuing to crush the woman's neck between his mouth, his blood spilling around his mouth and pooling between the two of them.
He blinked several times. There was no woman and, with a cursory glance upwards that Klaus was frowning at, there were no chains hanging from the ceiling. Strange. He shook it off and followed Klaus into another room as he wordlessly beckoned for him.
Inside, he felt rage boil him from inside out when he saw Connor chained up to a wooden rack, stripped of his shirt. Jeremy was perched on a nearby chair, sketching into his pad. He didn't pay Damon any mind, only looking up every so often to look at Connor's tattoo only he was privy to.
"You don't do anything by halves, do you?" Damon commented.
"It's from the Spanish Inquisition. I thought it was a nice touch," Klaus said with a faint smile, while Damon had to refrain from quipping, 'Because no-one expects it?' "Hanging him from the wall by hooks might be too on the nose," he added off-handedly.
Damon ignored the comment. "Is he saying anything?" he wondered, nodding over to where Connor was just sat glaring daggers into the wall behind Jeremy's head.
"He's mum about the Council fire and says he doesn't actually know anything about this 'greater evil' we're all supposed to be shivering over," Klaus said with a displeased look, shooting Connor a glare of his own.
"So, saving him was a bust, then?" Damon pitched in—what a surprise, he was usually right about this sort of thing. "Can I rip his head off yet? The dying man should get to choose his last meal," he added.
Klaus huffed a laugh, smiling at him. "It's the condemned man," he corrected.
Damon just rolled his eyes as Klaus moved off over to Connor, looking him up and down with a mystified look on his face.
"You're full of mysteries, aren't you?" he marveled.
"I told you, I don't know anything," Connor insisted.
Klaus grinned, but Connor didn't look at him. "Thankfully, I know plenty," he said, with a purposeful quirk of his eyebrows he directed towards Damon.
He then turned on his heel and made to walk out of the room, stopping at the door once he opened it.
"Shall we?" Klaus asked Damon, extending an inviting hand.
He shot a last glance at Connor for a few seconds, before he followed Klaus out of the room, the other man shutting the door behind him and locking it. Suffice to say, the reason Klaus had kept him alive instead of letting his ass be barbecued had better be epic.
"So, what's so interesting you feel the need to drag me over here?" Damon demanded, folding his arms and leaning against the door, "And spit it out before I expire," he insisted, tugging his shirt collar aside to show the reddening bite—it had gotten so angry and large that he could now see it peeking over the necks of his lower cut shirts.
He glared at the mock-pitying look Klaus gave him, his eyes seeming to deliberately trail down his body to his shoes, then back up to his chest. He tried to ignore it.
"I'd best make this quick, then," Klaus agreed, nodding for Damon to follow him once more.
Damon complied with a heavy sigh, following him into the spacious sitting room. He sat down on the large couch, while Klaus perched on the footrest of a nearby armchair, leaning forwards with his elbows on his thighs.
"The hunter in there is part of a group called the Five, a group of highly skilled vampire hunters," he informed him, "My family and I crossed paths with them in the 12th century in Italy," he explained. Then his expression flashed with hatred and went dark. "And my sister's fickle affections almost got us all killed."
Damon raised his eyebrows in surprise. He hadn't been expecting that.
"I'll show you," Klaus said, coming to sit next to him on the couch.
"How are you gonna do that?" Damon asked warily. Maybe it was his fever, but something between the two of them felt incredibly hot, tickling his bent knee that was brushing against Klaus' thigh.
"I can put my memories into your head," Klaus said simply.
Damon leaned back skeptically, raising an eyebrow. "Bullshit," he snorted in disbelief.
"If my brother's red-headed little tramp could do it, don't you think I can?" Klaus pointed out knowingly, raising an eyebrow.
All right, he got him there. Damon had completely forgotten about Sage's little trick she'd showed off.
"Besides, I don't think you have long enough for me to go over the whole sordid affair myself," Klaus noted, giving him a once-over.
"So long as you don't have to kiss me," Damon quipped dryly.
Klaus chuckled and placed both his hands on the sides of Damon's head, gently applying pressure. He saw blinding white flash across his eyes and he reflexively squeezed them shut.
The darkness behind his eyes began filling with writhing, twisting strands of colors, growing and stretching bigger and bigger until Damon was seeing an old town square, that Klaus and Elijah — both sporting the long hair and nobleman finery of the time period — were strolling down.
They came to a stop in the middle of the square, where a man was onstage with an enthralled audience surrounding him. Several people — human people, they bore no hallmarks of a desiccating vampire — were tied to wooden poles dotted around the stage and had stakes driven into their chests.
"These demons live among you," the man onstage called out to the crowd, catching Klaus and Elijah's attention from the looks of it, "Passing as human," he added, with a disgusted sneer.
He approached a large box. "Behold!" he cried with a flourish of his hand, wrenching open the latch on the box.
A man stepped out of the box, howling in agony as he was caught ablaze in the sun, flailing and shrieking into a raging inferno. The crowd parted with a horrified cry as the vampire collapsed onto the ground beneath the stage. The man smiled in contrast, looking unabashed as he jumped down from the stage.
"He's quite the showman," Elijah commented, looking slightly disturbed as his eyes flickered to the still-burning corpse.
Klaus on the other hand, snorted derisively. "He is nothing," he declared with a little shake of his head, "I could eat him for sport," he added with relish.
"Still you should heed the warning," Elijah said seriously, "Between you here and Kol in the east, you have not been discreet," he continued, whilst Klaus looked like he couldn't care less.
"Stories of the Original vampires are spreading," Elijah said in concern.
"We cannot be killed, remember?" Klaus pointed out knowingly, "But if you're worried, perhaps you should wrangle our sister," he said with a well-meaning look over his brother's shoulder.
Elijah turned around, and Damon saw Rebekah and the man from the stage were standing together nearby, interlacing their fingers with happy smiles on their faces. The man leaned in to kiss her on the cheek, and they walked off arm in arm.
The town square scene was gone abruptly as Klaus removed his hands. Damon shook his head in amazement.
"So, these hunters are as old as you and your family?" he wondered.
Klaus shrugged. "They've been around that long, seems if you cut off one head, another grows back," he said distastefully, a sneer curling his mouth.
"Makes me wonder what they've been up to all this time," he added as an afterthought, looking intrigued, "Our friend in there is the first one I've seen since Alexander," he admitted.
"And Rebekah had a thing for one of them?" Damon asked, looking to Klaus for clarification.
He nodded, looking briefly disgusted. "She fell in love with him, pathetic fool she is, even wanted to marry him and had a place picked out and everything," he explained, "And he told her all his secrets," he added, sounding pleased about that part.
"Then why isn't she here?" Damon asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Because I don't want her knowing I'm not buried in a crypt," Klaus responded, looking at him pointedly, "Not yet, anyway," he corrected.
"I do," Damon pointed out.
"And you can't tell anybody," Klaus retorted smoothly. "Remember?"
Damon rolled his eyes at the sight of Klaus' irritating smirk. Any time Rose wanted to pop in in the form of a hallucination would be welcomed. He'd be damned if the last face he ever saw was this smug asshole's.
"But luckily, she shared them with me," Klaus revealed, giving him a secretive smile.
Then he stood up. "I could do with some lunch, how about you?" he wondered.
Damon wordlessly followed, being that feeding him was the least the prick could do considering the circumstances. Once they were seated in the dining room, he noticed the same compelled women serving food that were here from the last time he'd had the — ahem — pleasure of Klaus' dining company.
He then remembered, with a smirk of his own, all the vervain — save a few little protective charms made — was burned up in the explosion Pastor Young caused. At least it would make late-night snacking a hell of a lot easier.
As he picked up the silverware to start on the food in front of him, Damon had a strange flash of an image of himself spitting something up into a man's face, but the face was blurred and he couldn't place it. He shook it off, chalking it up to the werewolf venom playing its tricks.
"So, about Rebekah's boyfriend?" Damon questioned as he started to cut into the steak—rare, he wasn't even going to ask how Klaus knew that.
"Alexander," Klaus nodded, "A decent bloke, foregoing all the obvious issues," he admitted, shrugging to himself. "Luckily my family had daylight rings, so we felt quite safe around him," he continued, while Damon noticed Klaus still wore one despite not needing it anymore. Keeping up a pretense, maybe?
"He told us he was part of a group of five, bound by one cause," he went on, while Damon simultaneously ate and nodded along. Needless to say, he wasn't expecting to go down such a large rabbit hole. "The destruction of all vampires," Klaus said, rolling his eyes at the thought—sure sounded familiar.
"And that they had a weapon no vampire could survive—even my family and I, apparently," he finished, sounding like he didn't believe a word of the last.
Damon frowned through his mouthful of potatoes; he wasn't buying that either. Esther had to create a weapon a few years ago to kill Klaus with, and even then that was dependent on creating a jacked-up vampire hunter to even be able to get near him.
"This is about a weapon?" He swallowed his mouthful as Klaus muttered,
"Apparently."
"Then what's this 'greater evil' the Pastor wrote about?" he wondered, bewildered.
Klaus shrugged, looking as confused as he did. "I have no idea, and if Alexander or his ilk ever knew anything about it they took it to their graves," he said solemnly.
"And you want to find this weapon and destroy it, I bet?" Damon guessed, spearing a few green beans on his fork and popping them into his mouth.
"But to find the weapon, we need to solve the puzzle," Klaus said, looking at him expectantly.
"Connor's tattoo," Damon answered, putting the pieces together in his head, and Klaus nodded. "What is it?" he wondered.
"A map straight to it," Klaus said simply.
"Handy map if no-one can see it," Damon said with a derisive snort.
Something suddenly began slithering up his throat, choking him. He coughed roughly into his hand, his own blood spilling onto his palm. He felt a gentle hand on his shoulder as his stomach twinged.
"Are you okay, sir?" the compelled woman asked.
Damon was in such pain he couldn't lift his head to look at her. It was a miracle he wasn't throwing up what he had eaten.
"He's fine, Jenny," Klaus answered for him, and Damon clenched his bloody hand closed into a fist before she could see something and get alarmed, "Just a bit under the weather," he said, sounding concerned, and Damon couldn't tell if it was feigned or not.
When the hand on his shoulder disappeared, Damon slumped back in his chair and wiped his bloody hand clean on his jeans.
"I suppose you've learned your lesson," Klaus said gently, smirking to himself.
Damon watched him take an empty glass and his dinner knife, slicing the knife into his wrist and letting it drip into the glass until his wound healed. He noticed it was a fairly deep wound—the small glass goblet was almost completely full before it healed.
Klaus slid it over to him and Damon picked it up with a shaky hand. It seemed too good to be true, but he wasn't going to spit in the face of an opportunity to live another day. A tiny part of his brain was lamenting he would no longer be able to see Rose or Ric anymore, but then he remembered that hallucination of his father — or had it been his ghost? — and drained the glass with a few gulps.
He felt Klaus' blood rushing over the werewolf venom poisoning him and rejuvenating his senses; his vampire hearing came back with a nauseating pop that he wasn't prepared for and his eyesight sharpened up almost instantly. There was a soothing sensation blossoming over his chest, where the bite had been, and he pressed a hand there, relieved to feel only smooth skin.
"Took you long enough," Damon snapped, putting down the empty glass and wiping his lips clean with his sleeve.
Klaus raised his eyebrows, having the nerve to look offended at his reaction. "I've got too much invested in you to let you die, Damon," he admitted.
"What?"
Klaus just smiled cryptically. Damon gave an aggravated sigh and exaggeratedly rolled his eyes, realizing he wasn't going to understand until Klaus wanted him to.
So, he got the conversation back to the topic at hand: "What ended up happening to that Five then?" he asked, frowning a little.
Klaus motioned for him to come forwards again. Damon reluctantly did, with a roll of his eyes, shuffling the chair closer. Klaus put his hands on him again and that brilliant shock of light blinded him again.
The Five hunter — Alexander — and Rebekah were curled up in bed together, bathed in the dim glow of candlelight, dressed in sleeping linens and in the middle of a passionate kiss. As they pulled apart, Alexander smiled up at Rebekah as she ran a hand tenderly across the large tattoo on his naked chest—
The shared memory broke abruptly as Damon jerked away from Klaus with a disgusted, surprised yell. He was just grinning wolfishly at him.
"I don't need to see that!" he cried, feeling his lunch about to make an appearance.
Klaus chuckled, smiling. "I was hoping you'd focus on his tattoo rather the gory details," he said, giving him a needling look. "He mentions a sword that's the key to reading his tattoo," he explained.
"Problem is, I have no idea where the sword is," he admitted, rubbing a frustrated hand across his face, "Rebekah buried him with it, the sentimental fool," he added, shaking his head in disbelief.
Damon raised an eyebrow. Buried, huh? "I think I know where this is going," he said, a slow smirk creeping onto his lips.
"They daggered us all that night in our sleep," Klaus explained, "When Rebekah was," he paused to clear his throat with a meaningful look, "shall we say, otherwise occupied," he added.
"Bit embarrassing for you, I imagine, dying in your sleep," Damon teased, grinning at the supposed ignominy. Then something crossed his mind. "I didn't think the daggers worked on you?" he asked, frowning a little.
Klaus grinned. "Alexander didn't know that."
Once again, Damon was greeted with a white flash as Klaus placed his hands on his head. The scene unfolded and the first thing he noticed, aside from Rebekah passed out on the bed, was the amount of blood smeared on the walls.
Klaus was watching her, stood at the foot of the bed and covered in blood, waiting for her to wake up. A muscle in his jaw twitched with barely restrained anger as she woke up from desiccation, a large bloodstain on her chest from where Alexander daggered her.
Rebekah groggily put a hand to her head, frowning at the blood on her chest, then her expression turned to horror as she saw the state of the room around her and her eyes landed on her furious brother.
"What happened?" Rebekah gasped, her eyes glistening with unshed tears.
Klaus wordlessly stepped aside and Rebekah started to sob at what it was she could see. Damon saw Alexander impaled onto the wall with his own sword, stabbed right through the heart in a sick sense of irony, with blood coating his lips and chin. He also noticed the hunter's chest was now completely bare, no mark to be seen.
"He will not answer, because I have ripped out his tongue," Klaus said calmly, "Along with the rest of the miserable lot," he spat, utter venom filling his eyes as he all but bared his teeth as he ground them in frustration.
Rebekah was shaking with fear and because of her sobbing. "Nik, I had no idea," she said quietly.
"But you should have," Klaus growled back in response, "Your only family was nearly wiped out because of your stupidity. What did he promise you?" he demanded, coming around the side of the bed to stand closer to her.
"Nothing," but Rebekah's voice was so quiet it looked like she was mouthing the word.
Klaus didn't believe her. Another muscle in his jaw twitched. "He would not have dared make a move unless he knew you were vulnerable," he said knowingly.
Then his eyes darkened and veins slithered out from his eyes in anger. "You trusted him, over me!" he thundered, the sudden increase in volume making Rebekah jump out of her skin, "What did he promise you?" he demanded again.
"Nothing, Nik. I swear to you," she insisted, shaking her head wildly as she continued to cry.
At the end of his tether, Klaus' hands shot out and he grabbed Rebekah roughly by the shoulders, hauling her up to her feet as she screamed in shock. "What did he promise you?!" he roared directly into her terrified face.
"Tell me, Rebekah!" he yelled as she choked on sobs and didn't answer, sounding a mix of furious and desperate.
"He could cure me!" Rebekah screamed back when she found her voice again.
Klaus released her, looking stunned. She dissolved into more sobs as she righted herself on shaky legs, a hand coming up to her mouth to muffle the sound.
"What?"
Rebekah sniffed loudly and wiped at her reddening face with her hand. "From this curse mother placed on us, this stagnant life!" she admitted, her voice rising shrilly, "Nik, his tattoo was a map to a cure; that's his so-called weapon," she said.
Damon frowned as soon as he was out of the memory, while Klaus was watching him intently. "That's impossible," he said confidently, shaking his head, "There's no cure for vampirism," he added. That had to be some lie Alexander had said to Rebekah to get close to her.
"Rebekah had no reason to lie about it, Damon," Klaus said.
He bit back the remark about having an angry Klaus Mikaelson in front of you would no doubt make you say anything to calm him down, and instead asked, "Then why haven't you found it and destroyed it?"
"You've had about nine hundred years to do something," he pointed out.
"Because I made the brotherhood extinct and their marks disappeared," Klaus explained, "Until our friend in there showed up," he said, nodding his head towards the room Connor was trapped in.
"Why not just kill him now?" Damon asked bluntly, "Get rid of them again?" he wondered. Surely that would be the easiest solution? If they didn't show up for centuries after dying, that could give Klaus enough time to find this real weapon?
"I can't," Klaus said, looking annoyed about the idea himself, "They have some sort of failsafe; if a vampire kills one of them, then—"
He was cut off by a loud crashing noise and furious yelling.
"What the bloody hell?" he asked with a surprised frown, exchanging a look with Damon.
They were both out of their seats and striding towards the prison room when they heard Jeremy's yelling stop abruptly. Klaus broke the lock off and shoved the door open, swearing under his breath at the sight that greeted him.
The torture rack was broken — had he ripped through that thing with his bare hands? Damon didn't like it — and Jeremy was curled in an unconscious heap by a wall that had a bloody smear on it. The chair he had been sitting on was in pieces, and one of the large windows had been shattered.
"I'll go after him," Damon decided. This hunter had escaped him for the last time.
"Damon, no!"
But Klaus' call went unheard and Damon shot forwards in a blur of motion and leapt out the broken window before Klaus could grab him and keep him back, following the hunter's nauseating stench. No-one, not even the all-powerful Klaus Mikaelson, was going to stop him ripping this guy's head off.
And it was that vengeance that drove him through his hunt, kept him going when minutes turned into hours, right to the back of the Mystic Grill's boiler room as he realized Connor was in the tunnels below. He didn't even flinch as he punched through the weak plaster of the wall and a metal sheet behind it, not even as a foul smell clouded his nostrils and slimy waste gooped over his hands.
He emerged into the darkness of the underground tunnels, flicking the waste off his hands and wiping it on the rocks, smiling to himself as his now-restored vampire hearing picked up the sound of Connor's rushed footsteps. His muscles twitched at the anticipation of his impending death.
Damon caught up to him just as he halted at a T-junction, letting out a groan of frustration as he clearly had no idea where he was going. He let out an audible laugh at the sight in front of him.
Connor spun around in shock, brandishing his weapon. Damon snorted in disbelief—it was a broken piece of the chair Jeremy had been sitting on. How pathetic.
"Your hunter's manual not brief you for anything like this?" he asked jokingly, folding his arms with a smirk.
"You're a hard guy to follow," he went on conversationally, his smile increasing when he realized Connor was looking for an opening to attack him, "I had to punch through a boiler room basement through a septic tank to get into this stupid tunnel," he added in surprise.
(Why he hadn't had the forethought to find the way Connor had gotten in, he didn't know).
"But it'll be worth it," he declared, allowing his fangs to shoot down from his gums, baring them in a serene smile.
Connor was looking smug all of a sudden. "You can't kill me," he stated confidently.
Damon snorted, raising his eyebrows at the guy's arrogance. He had to be the most arrogant guy he'd ever known! And he owned a mirror. "Pretty sure I can," he retorted, "I'm the vampire, and you're just a jumped-up human holding a super-sized toothpick," he added scathingly, looking him up and down.
"And believe me, on the way over here I was thinking of all the ways I could make you suffer—"
He was cut short as Connor charged forwards with the weapon. Quicker than he could comprehend, Damon had grabbed the chair leg with one hand, and Connor's throat with the other, holding him at arm's length and simultaneously immobilizing the weapon.
"Then I realized I just want you dead, theatrics would give you time to escape."
Smashing his head into Connor's face, Damon effortlessly flung him through the air in his daze, smiling at the pained groan when he crashed back-first into the jagged rock walls and flopped limply onto his stomach, coughing and spitting up dirt and spurts of blood.
Damon sped over, delivering a hard enough kick to Connor's ribs to send him sprawling onto his back. He raised a boot to stamp it down on his head but was wrenched from his upright position and went tumbling to the ground as Connor kicked one of his legs out.
He was up on his feet, snarling defensively before Connor could pin him to the ground. He latched onto him just as he attempted to scramble for the chair leg, sinking his fangs into his neck. His yells of pain filled him with mirth, and he didn't want to stop, but something dark in him wanted to see the look in his eyes when he took his life from him.
Connor collapsed limply to his knees, looking dazed. He forced himself to look up at him. "There will be consequences if you kill me," he warned.
Damon raised an eyebrow, staring down at him hollowly. "I don't care."
And that was what it boiled down to. Sure, he was a threat to his brother, Elena and other vampires in town, but he didn't really care about that. All he wanted was to feel the satisfying swell of revenge in his chest after being denied it for so long.
His hand snapped out and grabbed Connor's neck, hauling him off the ground with ease. A startled, choked cry slipped from his mouth as Damon crushed the life out of him, continuing to squeeze until he felt the muscles in his arm rippling with the effort.
His fingers were starting to push through the bone and muscle, blood leaking through his fingers while Connor choked and dangled helplessly in his grip, wriggling like a worm on a hook, trying desperately to pry his hand off.
Not such a hotshot now, are you, big guy? Damon thought smugly to himself.
With a final squeeze, Connor's body sprawled to the ground, limbs splaying limply. Damon smiled proudly into the hollow eyes staring through him. He dropped the head at his feet, pressing his boot into the neck—the conqueror humiliating the conquered.
One less problem to deal with, as far as he was concerned.
But if we all remember the show, Damon's gonna have a BIG problem to deal with soon! I hope everybody enjoyed this chapter, do review and let me know what you thought, and I'll see you all next time. :)
(Also, I really love writing about Rose and Damon-they should've kept her around)