I'm so tired... but here is your chapter.


Adjusting to our reality, part 15: The remaining tears

When Alaric woke up, he got up pretty violently.

Violently because the shock of being alive again lead him to search for air really fast, but also because by doing that his face encountered something hard.

He held his head with one hand and looked anxiously around him.

There was a bunch of dead people on the floor of the living room, nearly as many hearts laying around, and, more important, an all bloody Damon sitting beside him, a hand on his nose as he was swearing like a trooper.

"Goddamn it, Ric! You broke my nose!"

Well, sorry, next time he'd come back from the dead, the hunter would be more careful.

"It's not like you won't heal."

The vampire made a strange face, but it lasted only one second, so Ric wasn't sure of what he saw.

"You got blood on my clothes?"

That sounded almost like a plea from someone who absolutely needed something to be angry about. But as Damon was searching for an excuse that would be acceptable, it wasn't very convincing.

"About that, I think you're doing just fine on your own."

Alaric eyed the many corpses in the room, then the blood on Damon. Who, surprisingly enough, took offense at his implied contribution to the bloodbath that was definitely going to stain the floor.

"I'm not the one who did this, Elijah did. As for me, I was chained to the chair right here!"

The teacher was going to ask about the torture device that laid on the back of the chair in question, but decided against it. Sometimes, you just didn't want to know.

He then saw Damon's gaze going to the only corpse that still had its heart.

The werewolf Alaric had killed.

"I'm falling behind... I didn't even kill one of them."

"But you didn't die, so I guess it's a tie?"

Ric saw the vampire stiffen, and noticed brilliant spots in the corners of Damon's eyes.

"You cried?"

"Almost."

Damon showed his pant leg, jagged where the stake had been pushed in his flesh.

"The pain was too much. But what about you, how are you feeling? I mean, you just died, so is there any pain left?"

Alaric chose to ignore the fact that Damon wasn't telling him everything.

"I'm alright. The ring healed me. Maybe a little stiff, though."

And to prove it, he stood up and went to an armchair. Then he sat down.

"I'd gratefully accept a drink, you know."

The corpses lying around were obviously irrelevant. Not that he enjoyed drinking bourbon in the middle of a bloodbath, but at the moment, he just didn't care. He needed a drink.

Hopefully, Damon had an amazing collection of overpriced wines and whiskeys.

The vampire looked one more time at the bodies. When he had said to Andie that Ric wasn't bothered about body parts at all, it wasn't a figure of speech. But still. At least, he could clean up the ripped out hearts. Hide them in a vase or something. Because that was really gross.

"Fine, but you're helping me burry them."

"Deal."

Alaric closed his eyes and listened to his best friend leaving the room.

Damon stepped into the kitchen, in search for a good bottle of bourbon that wouldn't need him to go dowstairs, but soon he stopped his search and sat on a chair.

So that was it. He loved Ric, and once again his love was doomed not to be. That was a repeating pattern, wasn't it? Always, always, he fell in love with someone who loved someone else. The only difference was this time the one he loved wasn't in love with his brother, but with the aunt of a girl he had loved too. And, the one Damon loved was a man. That was new, and kind of freaking him out, but well, you didn't choose who you loved.

The vampire wiped away the remaining tears and went back to finding that damn bottle.

He wouldn't let Alaric find out about his feelings for him. If Damon could still have their friendship, it would still be better than nothing. It didn't matter that at the mere thought of how he wouldn't ever get the love he needed, he felt as if someone was crushing his heart. A strong, big, amazing hand, crushing his heart with the same determination it usually used to push stakes into vampiric chests.

The vampire found a bottle of alcohol, and returned to the living room.

The two of them drank, drank again, and went on drinking until the bottle came empty. Alaric then gave it a disappointed look, and tried to get on his feet.

"You're not leaving already, are you?"

"What? No! We didn't even bury the corpses... No, I was just thinking of robbing your wine cellar."

"That's one hell of an idea. Wait for me, I'm coming too."

Walking down the stairs to the basement proved to be a bit difficult for the newly alive Alaric. Staggering a little, he leaned on the wall and sighed.

"Dying is not my thing..."

Damon looked at him with a shocked face which was obviously fake.

"I'm not sure dying is anybody's thing... and you manage pretty well for a twice-dead guy."

Ric chuckled.

The vampire loved that sound. It was so comforting. As if everything was going to be alright. Because for one of them to laugh, even a little, that most of the time meant no one had died, was dying, or going to die. That meant the supernatural farce of the world was almost on hold. Vampires kept on drinking blood, of course, witches and warlocks kept on being aware of the nature all around them, werewolves kept on being annoying, and all the usual bullshit, but no one was trying to murder anyone else for at least one peaceful hour.

And it was Ric's chuckle. Not just anyone's.

The teacher's chuckle had always been more comforting than others'. Now he knew why.

When they finally arrived, Damon and Alaric scoured for the perfect bottle, and decided it was a pain in the ass to go back upstairs.

Ric took the red wine bottle his friend was handing to him and poured himself a glass of wine, as Damon had already done. There were glasses everywhere in the boarding house, even in the bathroom, and that alone told a lot about its occupants.

Drinking a lot and bad at tidying up.

"It's funny to think how I wanted to kill you for Isobel's death and here we are, getting drunk together with a crime scene on the ground floor."

"Creepy would be a better word, no?"

They were sitting on the cell's bed, already light-headed.

And being dizzy was always simplifying everything when you wanted to speak the truth. Alaric wished to come clean, or at least divulge some of his secret to the vampire. He couldn't bear it anymore. He needed someone he could talk to when things became too much.

And talking about that to Jenna or one of the kids was a really, truly bad idea.

"You don't care, you're a vampire. Creepiness is your motto."

"But it isn't yours. You're human, remember?"

Ric snorted. He was losing track of what he wanted to say.

"Isobel isn't dead, she left me by faking her death, and I'm not even angry. I'm just... sad."

He had tried to build a regular, boring-but-perfectly-normal, life by marrying the woman he loved, but she had put an end to it. Now there he was, in a reality that was even worse than the one he was already living in with his family's legacy only.

Maybe he wasn't meant to be freed.

And, in a way, this reality was still better than the one he had as a Saltzman. Here at least people had feelings, remorse and everything.

"Even our relationship was a setup. Maybe she loved me, I don't know, but when she first looked at me, it was out of pure curiosity."

It took a while for Damon to understand that something was going to be said. Something important.

The vampire grew a bit anxious. Of course, he didn't like to hear that Alaric wasn't happy, but there was more to it. Everybody knew about Isobel's obsession about vampires, and supernatural shit in general. What could have triggered her interest in her husband, he really wondered.

"What do you mean?"

Ric took a sip of bourbon, then closed his eyes.

"There has always been this saying about our family, that we were cursed to the bone. I used to think we only had some kind of mental problem running in the family, but now, I don't know anymore."

Because magic was real, something he didn't know back then.

Mason Lockwood's words, the hunter's strange endeavor, his cousin's visit, came back to Damon's mind. The fact that untriggered werewolves, even if they were still human beings, were affected by their condition with outbursts of anger. The fact that doppelgangers were human beings and yet supernatural beings. The fact that witches were able to do magic even though they were human beings. The fact that being human didn't prevent you from being affected by magic, in a nutshell.

Or curses, for what it mattered.

Family Curses and Cursed Families, an interesting book indeed.

"My whole family is composed of murderers."

Damon didn't say a word. He didn't want to interrupt the avowal, and really, what he was thinking right now was a little beyond words.

"Every one of us, every single person who was ever born in my father's family, has killed or will kill a human being at some point in their life. It can't be avoided, and that can't be coincidental."

Oh no that couldn't. But that explained a lot, too.

"Be it self-defense, accident or murder, we all went down that road at least once, and no one ever felt guilty about it. We're like immune to remorse when it comes to killing. Hesitation? What's that? A Saltzman simply kills and then it's done. It has been that way for generations."

Damon said nothing, but frowned. He was sure he had read something that sounded almost the same in the book he had stolen from the teacher. The name wasn't Saltzman, but it was the same curse.

And apparently, Isobel knew about it.

"Murder isn't a problem for me, and that is my problem."

The vampire wanted to say it was normal for the hunter not to like it, but coming from him, it might not have sounded very honest. After all, he was the guy who killed on a whim...

"Am I right to guess that you're also instinctively skilled with anything linked to fighting?"

"Exact. I learn combat skills, or, more likely, assassination skills, as easily as any naturally gifted individual in the discipline."

No wonder the man was so dangerous.

"What about the time you came after me? I killed you pretty easily, even if I'll admit I was surprised you fought back with so much strength."

Damon saw Ric wincing, and it seemed to him it wasn't only due to the memory of his first death.

"I had only killed one vampire back then. Wasn't aware of the way your strength increases with time. And, to be frank, I had only recently gone back to training. After my first kill in 1991, I stopped any sport activities to reduce the odds it would happen again. I was a little rusty."

The wine soon shut them up about any serious matter, and when the two friends returned in the living room, they fell asleep really fast.

When Stefan came home this night, he found his brother and his history teacher asleep on the sofa for one and in an armchair for the other. There were corpses that had obviously been forgotten there by the delivery guy – because, really, why would there be corpses in his living room if it wasn't the delivery guy who did it? Coagulated blood was all over the floor, and Damon's shirt, and Alaric's shirt. The icing on the cake: three or four ripped out hearts, the vampire didn't stop to count, on a plate, in the kitchen.

And the sleeping beauties were faintly smiling in their sleep.

A memo on the dining table: "We'll clean up tomorrow."

Stefan had had some problems with a werewolf during the evening, but that...

What the hell had they been doing during the afternoon?