Before and during 2x12
(mumble) English lessons are the worst. I hate english. What the hell with the fucking aspirated h? I'm sorry I'm only good at reading, writing, listening, and not at talking. Fucking pronunciation. What if I slaughtered every person that wants me to talk english? Let's do this. (realize) What, someone is actually reading this? So sorry.
But I feel way better now.
A chapter in which you know for sur I'm french.
In which you know for sure I love the first name Alaric.
And hell, I save characters if I want to.
Adjusting to our reality, part 12: I'm out of here
"How much have you drunk?"
The vampire let go of his accessories and walked towards Ric with an angered face.
There was only a third of a meter left between them when Damon stopped and looked right into the teacher's eyes. He wasn't half as drunk as the time Alaric actually had had to lead him to his room, but he certainly wasn't sober.
And he couldn't have cared less in the world.
Ric shut him out? Good. He wasn't needed anyway, so why would he care? If only another werewolf could came in town, he would gladly handle it, so that it'd prevent him from seeing any known face! He knew that if he ever went after the Lockwood boy, he'd be in trouble with Elena and Stefan. The other people he would upset by doing so were uninteresting. And Alaric was already on his blocklist. But if he could find a werewolf, that would be great.
He definitely was in the mood for some torture.
The teacher's face, who seemed kind of tired, pissed him off some more.
"That I can't answer. You can count the bottles if you want. I'm out of here."
And with that said, he left.
Ric had stood dazed in the room for almost two minutes when Stefan got upstair to get an explanation. Obviously, the man was in no position to explain anything, beyond the fact that yes, Damon was, by all the odds, drunk, but no, that wasn't it. Alcohol never got the vampire angry. Dizzy, for sure, dangerous, too, shameless, finally, but not angry like that.
"He didn't hurt you?"
Alaric gave Stefan a puzzled look. Did he look like he was hurt?
"You have a feint and bloody scent on you, so I was wondering."
"Oh, right. I cut myself shaving this morning and it got kind of messy. I had forgotten about that."
Liar.
"If ever Damon says something about a girl he saw at my place, she's my cousin. From what I understand, he got grumpy after I told him he couldn't stay because of her. I don't know anything more, though."
The vampire raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.
Ric guessed Stefan was as dumbfounded by his brother's demeanor as he was.
He finally left. Everything had been way too awkward, the two of them standing in Damon's room in silence.
On his way to his loft, he wondered why his best friend had been acting so strangely lately. It wasn't only the sulking part. Those questions, when they were at the Grill, after he had punched the fool. Alaric hadn't given him a proper answer, because he felt Damon needed to find out on his own. But the hunter hadn't expected it to drag on for so long.
As for him, Ric knew the answer: the man was pissing him off, made too much noise, and was going to get himself killed. Also, you didn't just let some thug insult your best friend for the sole reason that the man had a leather jacket and two lip piercings.
He had done it for the man, even though he couldn't have cared less about what would become of him, for himself, because you couldn't enjoy your drink when there was a bunch of morons wreacking havock all around you, for Damon, because it was the right thing to do.
Why couldn't the vampire understand that? It was simple. Genuine, really. No need to overthink it.
The teacher cared about Damon. That was all.
The kids liked him a lot, even the ones who weren't part of the Vampire & Co or Affiliated Secret Society, because yes, even if Ric tended to forget lately, he was still a high school teacher, and he didn't want to see them hurt any more. To bad that it was likely to happen anyway. He cared about them. But they were kids. His students didn't know the slightest thing about him, and that was for the best. Elena, Jeremy and the others were important. But they were kids. He watched out for them.
Damon was a friend. As Jenna, he was one of the only adults who had gotten – who had tried – to know him since he came to Mystic Falls. One of his two only friends in the whole damned town. As such, the teacher cared about them a lot. When your circle of friends came down to two people, you tended to pay extra attention to them.
Or at least he did.
When he had told Damon to fuck off earlier, he knew that the vampire was angry. But not like that.
That was the result of alcohol on a mind he couldn't decipher for now.
Which was odd. Alaric was pretty much the only one around here who could brag about understanding Damon. For him not to understand his friend, he must have had missed something. None of the reasons he could imagine explained anything. There was something, obviously, but the hunter's brain didn't seem to even be able to consider what had to be the right answer.
Ric got out of the car and found Cassandre waiting for him.
She had her suitcase with her.
He frowned.
"You're going already?"
She didn't look really happy to do so, but she also seened to know she had to go.
"When Dad said he would go to Italy with your father, I thought something was wrong. And apparently, I wasn't wrong about it. Landyn just called. Everybody is going home."
Everybody. Even those who had fled the main house were being called back, in other words.
"Something happened?"
"I don't know what, but yes. She asked for you to come back, too."
"I won't."
No matter what, he wouldn't go back to Boston. Not for now. There was too much to do in Mystic Falls. Too many people he cared about. Too much danger. And he still had a lot to think about before he would ever set foot in the main house again.
That included vampires, werewolves, Originals, witches, and some research about the Falkenbach Curse. He needed to know if it was an actual thing, or if the people of their two families just had a screw loose. If it really had anything to do with magic, maybe a witch could help him to end the infernal circle that lead every single person from his family to kill someone one day or another.
Cassandre shrugged.
"You won't like it if she comes for you."
"I won't like it either if I go back."
The young woman had a timid smile.
"Good luck with that."
Alaric cocked his head to the side, confused. She looked genuinely happy about his decision. As if he was being brave or something.
"You know I'm only running away, don't you?"
Her smile went from shy to cocky.
"No you're not. You're living your own life, Alaric. I wish you to be happy."
Once she had left, Ric went to bed, thoughtful. It was only six in the afternoon, but he couldn't concentrate. All his thoughts were always going back to Damon and his incomprehensible behavior. And the hunter didn't know what to do with that.
Days went by.
He made some happy memories with Jenna. Sometimes, Elena and Jeremy would join. At these times, Alaric Saltzman felt as if he had two kids that had nearly become adults without him knowing it. He had almost forgotten how much he had wanted children before Isobel had said she didn't want any.
Ric had complied, back then.
He didn't love her anymore, that was a thing he was certain of, but it still hurt when he thought of every concession he had made for her, because he loved her, and how he had been repaid for every single thing he had given up for her. She hadn't even be able to overcome her obsession to be a vampire for him.
Truth to be told, if she had asked him to turn with her, he might have considered it. What wouldn't he have done for her! And to be with Isobel for all eternity would have been quite a convincing point, regardless of all other considerations.
But she hadn't.
Speaking of vampires, Alaric had the feeling Damon was avoiding him.
One day he had met him at the Grill, and his friend had barely finished his glass of bourbon that he was gone.
That wasn't exactly helping him to understand what was going on.
But at least, the vampire wasn't poking around his past anymore.
The thing was that Damon had his head full of too many things to concentrate on only one, such as the secret Ric seemed to be keeping. What's more, he didn't even want to talk about what was the problem between him and the history teacher.
Because it was obvious to anybody who knew them a little, that something was off.
They weren't drinking together anymore, and the bored customers of the Mystic Grill were trying to figure out if it had anything to do with the almost-fight from before. Almost-fight, because for it to have been an actual fight, the thug should have been able to at least do something. But no, the man had been utterly overpowered. By the high school history teacher.
The awesomeness of Alaric was being pointed out too often there, and so Damon had begun to avoid the Grill too.
Rose had tried to get him to talk when he was already half drunk, but he had only grunted and left the boarding house.
But one day came the awesome news.
A new werewolf in Mystic Falls. Finally, the vampire would be able to take his anger out on something else than a wolf skin rug. Saint Stefan would object, naturally, but hell, Damon needed to let off some steam, and a werewolf was already better than a guiltless human. At least, he knew this one was a killer like him.
To trigger the curse, the woman had to have killed a human being.
So she was a killer. And a good enough torture subject. And currently drinking at the Grill, alone.
She had that strange name, Jules. For someone from this century, it wasn't so strange, but for Damon, who had been around for a few more decades than the majority of the world's population, it was. He had gone to Europe in the early twentieth century. He knew France. And Jules was definitely a man's name. No french girl would have ever thought of nicknaming herself Jules. But well, that was the thing with the United States: people were from just anywhere, so names had undergone tremendous changes. It wasn't so bad a thing.
Where else could you meet someone with such a regal name as Alaric? Here and there, certainly, but well, they weren't many of them. Ruler of all, for God's sake. That was badass.
But it was also not the point.
Right, right, he wouldn't torture her if he didn't have to. Really, Ric, he swore.
But Ric wasn't here. In fact, Damon had been the one to reject him – to reject his company.
Damon wouldn't think about Alaric.
So, to clear his head of the mental image of the hunter which had been pounding at the door of his mind for days, the vampire went and tried to pour some wolfsbane into her drink.
He then learned that werewolves really had a wondrous sense of smell, and that he had forgotten something very important when dealing with werewolves. Don't piss them off during a full moon.
And unfortunately, it was the full moon.
Things went out of hand. Pretty badly.
And Rose was dying, bitten.
Bonnie came to the boarding house with a pocket mirror. Damon didn't get what she was doing, why she was doing it, or how she was doing it, but she confined Rose-Marie in the mirror. She told him that in there she wouldn't be hurt anymore, because it only captured the essense of a person. But she also told him she had no idea how to get her out. She had imagined the spell to trap Klaus, but it wasn't even powerful enough to do that, so she had thought she might as well use it to save the life of a vampire who wasn't so bad. She glanced at him while saying that, but he didn't care.
Rose had almost died, and she was trapped in a mirror for what could as well be all eternity, because of him. Because he was so interested in his own problems he hadn't been careful about anything. Because Alaric was driving him mad. He had to end it.
