And ten other chapters, ten!
Did I just send Alaric to Nervousbreakdownland? Oops.
Well, it's not like he will have time to dwell on it.
Adjusting to our reality, part 21: The day had been silent
"Right."
No. Nothing was right. Nothing was ever right in Alaric Saltzman's life. Everything was wrong. Always. If a single thing had ever been right, he woud know.
Looking at Gal through his glass of bourbon, the teacher was seeing disrupted images of the one who was supposed to be his oldest friend ever. Pretty close to the reality, those images. Everything he knew about Gal was disrupted, now.
"You're a vampire."
Galswinthe looked away. As if it could erase the last events.
"Did you compel me not to notice you weren't ageing?"
She didn't say anything, but the twitch that won over the right corner of her mouth was enough of a give away. To be accurate, she had been compelling every generation of her family for something like seven or eight centuries.
"Ric..."
"What is it, Damon? I'm busy wondering how I might kill myself because my life makes no sense, so please don't interrupt me."
"She said she was your ancestor."
Alaric switched his stare to his best friend, not sure if he should take it seriously or not.
Damon was trying really hard not to fidget as the hunter's eyes were examining him under every angle. It was bad enough that he was feeling as if he had insulted his betrothed's family on their first meeting – which wasn't exactly true since Ric was definitely not his fiancé, but wasn't exactly false either, as he had made a very bad first impression on a distant relative. No need to make things worse by letting his best friend discover he was head over heels for him.
Whatever Damon was trying to hide, it wasn't working very well. Sure, Alaric had no idea why the vampire's eyes were turning in all directions, as if to escape his own. But it was so obvious there was something even Ric just couldn't not see it.
And Gal saw it too.
Slowly understanding what was going on with the younger vampire, she interrupted their eyeing minuet and took the blame for what she had done. Figuratively speaking, of course.
"My... family merged with the Falkenbach Family centuries ago. And I'm one of those rare vampires who chose to turn instead of dying because their children were too young to be left behind. When my only daughter died, I thought of walking into the sun, but I had grown fond of my grandchildren, and their children after them... Now I'm always keeping an eye on the kids."
Ric frowned, and didn't see how relieved Damon was when he broke eye contact.
"Wait a second... You always keep your wedding ring with you... but you're saying you'd have left your daughter alone if you died. So where was he at the time?"
Damn. She really couldn't throw the kid off the trail, could she? Sometimes Gal wished the history nerd in Alaric wasn't so prompt to grasp the implications.
"We died that night. Hans and I. We chose to be undead rather than leaving our six years old Leona to die alone in the woods. But when she died of old age..."
Damon understood quickly what the silence meant. The switch. Alaric's great-great-great-whatever-grandfather was certainly dead by now, if his wife was all by herself, seeing how much she seemed to love him, just from the sound of her voice. The humanity switch only worked for some decades. If he had come back to his senses, he would have been with Gal.
And he wasn't.
"So you're the family type, like Stefan."
Because Damon wasn't exactly the family type, right. In fact, he was more of the family-murdering type. But his brother had had his heyday too, back when he had killed their father. Granted, it hadn't exactly been his fault. But still.
Damon guessed he could have been a family-loving guy, if only his father had been a family-loving guy. Because the vampire was, always had been, would forever be the kind of guy who became who he was by following the lead. Giuseppe Salvatore had been an uncaring father. Katherine Pierce had been an inhumane lover. His friendships had gone from bad to worse to the worst. And now he was this jackass who didn't care much about his family, his brother put aside, and for humans in general.
Not exactly the dream lover, or even dream best friend, was he?
"Stefan?"
"My little brother, who forced me to turn, if you remember well, Ric. Saint Stefan isn't so perfect, just for the record."
"And he offered to help me kill you, too, but you were an asshole who killed people for the simple reason you were frustrated that your unloving girlfriend was trapped in a tomb since 1864, which wasn't true by the way. You're no more perfect than he is, you know."
"Right, I'm a murderous bastard, and you're a remorseless killer. I guess we're two of a kind."
Gal couldn't help but be amused by what she was seeing.
Watching her favorite kid from this generation bickering with a young vampire was unexpectedly entertaining. She could totally see why the vampire...
"By the way, Ric said your name was Damon, right?"
The vampire stiffened and turned almost sheepishly towards Gal.
"Damon Salvatore, yes. Why?"
The older vampire had this crooked smile that made the two youngsters shiver.
Yes, she could totally see why Damon was so into his best friend, and she didn't think it was strange at all. She would nonetheless encourage whoever was with Ric at the time, because it was his choice, and she didn't really want the kid to be involved with vampires even more than he obviously was already. But she wasn't going to blame someone for falling in love. Alaric was awesome, and Damon surely hadn't planned to fall in love with his best friend. Hell, it was most likely that he'd have chosen not to if he had had a say in the matter.
As long as the vampire wasn't doing anything bad, there was no reason for her to resent him.
"How old are you, Gal?"
Ric wasn't comfortable with calling her that anymore, but calling her by their family positions would be a bit long. He had no idea how many generations there had been since her time, but surely a lot. If the fact that they looked nothing alike wasn't a reliable deduction element, the fact that she was nowhere in his family tree, which was precise up to the sixteenth century, and which he knew by heart, was a good enough hint of her great age.
"I died in 1285."
Well.
That was old.
Once his glass of bourbon came to be empty, Alaric left, with a I-don't-care-anymore face on.
Gal thanked Damon for his hospitality, then left as well to go back to the room she rented in the nearby motel. The look she gave the vampire before leaving left no room for doubt. She knew how he felt about her kid. And she also knew he wouldn't tell anything.
While on his way to his loft, Alaric made his mind. He was going to talk to Jenna. He couldn't tell her everything, he had promised Elena he wouldn't if she didn't wish him to do so, and himself, he wasn't really earger to include the young woman in any supernatural farce. But he'd tell her how much he cared for her. That no matter what happened, Isobel was well and truly dead.
He wouldn't add that he wasn't the one who had killed her. Though it was the truth, saying it would make him sound more than suspicious. Usually, you didn't point out that you were not the one who had killed your wife unless you wanted to be suspected.
He told her.
It didn't exactly go well. It didn't exactly go wrong.
Maybe Jenna would believe him, given a little time.
Alaric slept better than he had in days this night. He woke up refreshed. He went to work. Some idiot had written salacious things on the blackboard in his classroom, so the teacher cleaned it before the students came in. When Peter sat down, he looked very disappointed that the literary masterpiece wasn't on the board anymore. Alaric said nothing.
The night had been silent.
So would he be.
Sometimes you could only shut up, and if you did that, everything went smoothly.
At noon, he saw a text on his phone, saying that Isobel was back in town, and had destroyed his last hope with Jenna. Alaric said nothing.
The morning had been silent.
So would he be.
When the classes ended, Elena came to him, completely panicked, and even more enraged, at her mother. She didn't know what to do about her aunt, but she was kind of relieved that the young woman had left town to go and live on the campus. At least she wouldn't be there if things turned ugly, which was an important consideration. Things always turned ugly in Mystic Falls.
The hunter tried to calm her a down, he told her that there was nothing they could do. Ultimately, it was as if he had said nothing.
The day had been silent.
So would he be.
Ric walked to his car.
Isobel.
He should have seen thar one coming.
Isobel said things about compelling him, about loving him, about being sorry.
All of his right hand's joints creaked when he smashed her throat with his fist. Of course, it didn't do much, but her grip loosened for a second. Alaric didn't run away, nor he tried to fight back. He simply stood there, looking at her, with those horribly blank eyes.
Everything was collapsing. Once again.
Their love. His loves. She had blasted them all.
And yet Isobel dared to say she loved him?
Maybe she did. She surely did. But she was so broken inside she destroyed everything around her.
Including her husband. Including her daughter.
He could have killed her, in this unique second, when her neck was in such bad shape that blood had escaped from her mouth. He had what he needed. A stake in each of his sleeves. Who said being paranoid wasn't a good thing?
It would have been easy. Staking Isobel in the heart, once and for all. Getting rid of her.
But he didn't.
Alaric only stood there, looking at the vampire that had been his wife, that had been a mother for some lonely hours only, that had been human, and, by becoming what she was now, was way worse than any of the vampires he had met so far, Katherine being the exception, but that surely ran in the family. Ric would make sure Elena could remain the compassionate girl she was, if only he were to stay alive long enough.
He had his poker face on, and yet tears were rolling down his face. Salty drop of water, hesitant to leave the shelter of his lashes, but too numerous to stay up there, leaving a trail of misery on his cheeks as they were falling along the curves of his face. Some of them broke the barrier of his lips, and he felt as if their bitterness was a reflection of his mind.
Everything he was was in these tears.
Alaric was nothing, he knew it now.
Because bitterness, anger, sadness, resentment were nothing.
Isobel looked her husband in the eyes.
He had never shown her how terrifying he could be, not even when she had come back into his life to destroy it one more time, some months ago. Because he loved her. Him being compelled or not was irrelevant. Even compulsion couldn't erase a feeling as strong as his love for her. It only locked it away from his consciousness.
Now, his love was stained with so much hatred he could finally look at her with this terrible look that was the privilege of the Falkenbachs.
The emptiness in his eyes, every other feelings escaping from his being as the tears were running down, taking away what made him human for a moment, made Isobel's heart freeze with terror.
She looked away. Walked away. And the hunter felt a terrible pain. Lost consciousness.
