After 3x09
Be happy, I hadn't intended to finish this today!
Each a monster, part 25: Something amiss
Alaric closed the door behind him, and went to sit on the nearest chair.
Silence.
He looked around. Nothing unexpected. Not a surprise. After all, why should there be something unexpected in his own flat? Well, besides the fact that Klaus still had access to it, must have invited his real body in while he was playing the body scrounger with the hunter's. Really, the only thing good with vampires was that they couldn't block the door with their foot when you didn't want to let them in. But no, why would the Great Niklaus the Maniac play by the rules? Uh? He wouldn't.
And he hadn't.
So, if the original hybrid had the mind to come and visit, he could very well come in, and, try as he might, Alaric was nowhere near able to deal with the unsufferable but hellishly strong monster. Not strong enough, and not in the mood, too.
Ric scowled at no one in particular, since, you know, he was all alone and miserable, and grabbed the bottle of bourbon and the glass that had taken permanent residency on his dining table.
Klaus was back in town.
Admitedly, the bastard had nothing to do with Alaric, so it was unlikely he'd come to see him, kill him, have a chat, whatever the freak might do. But it wasn't about himself that the hunter was worried.
Klaus was back, Stefan was completely brainwashed by anger, blood, and compulsion, the number of supernatural deaths had gone up again, Elena had almost burned alive in an unexplained event, and the girl was considered an "asset" by an unkillable psychopathic hybrid, another original vampire was walking free under the sun, one of his student had been turned into an hybrid, and he had had to deal with a ghost invasion of some kind, as well as viking paintings in a cave to translate. There certainly was more, but right now, right here, Alaric didn't want to think about it.
It was only truer when "more" had raven hair and blue eyes.
Sure, he and Damon were on speaking terms once again, but not like before. It wasn't the same as during the past months, it wasn't even the same as when they had only been friends. They couldn't go back to being friends, not after having had so much more, not when they still loved each others. They couldn't go back to being lovers, not even when Damon had apologized. Not for now, at least.
So both were something again, but what exactly, Ric didn't know.
Bloody supernatural! If not for it, in a world where there wasn't anything that couldn't be explained by science, in a world where Damon was human, where he wasn't cursed, where Elena wasn't constantly in danger because of what she was born as, where people simply didn't die with no blood in their body...
The hunter's facial expression froze, and suddenly, he felt...
Relieved? Or angry? He wasn't sure.
The man looked at his left hand while he used the right one to take a sip of alcohol.
There was no reminder of what had happened, not so long ago, days only, at Bonnie Bennett's. His skin was perfectly normal, he didn't have a scratch left from the wounds he had gained while saving the girl. No reminder, except that he had band-aids all around the tips of his fingers. Under the band-aids, no nails.
Yet another wound to thanks the supernatural for.
The scar on his left shoulder had been throbbing for days, after his last death. He hadn't slept more than two hours a night since then.
Damon could apologize, it wasn't a difficult thing to do, the only thing needed was for him to act like a decent person once in a while, and not like I'm-a-bloody-Salvatore-why-should-I-apologize?. There was no pain, no bounds preventing him from opening his mouth, and simply, oh so easily, say the words.
But no.
It hadn't even been a "I'm sorry".
Why had he accepted, or even acknowledged, such piss-poor apologies?
Love. What a joke. Love, from and for a vampire? Ridiculous.
Beasts. All of them.
The hunter threw his empty glass away in an angry motion.
There was no sound of breaking.
"Someone is in a bad mood."
The hunter felt there was something wrong with him, because he didn't even tense when he heard the voice. The bloody voice of Klaus. The Hybrid had come to him, for whatever reason he might have, and was now standing in his flat, and the hunter wasn't even apprehensive. Disgruntled, at most. Or maybe uncaring would be the better word to describe how he felt.
How strange. He wasn't even slightly drunk, he had only had one glass of bourbon, and yet there he was, as if in a drunken stupor – that is, a Falkenbach drunken stupor, which was infinitely more dangerous than a normal drunken stupor, for it tended to leave the common sense he had in place of human feelings at the door. Dangerous for who, was open to discussion.
The oddity struck him as he stood up and turned to face his unwanted visitor, but he couldn't bring himself to care.
"I was killed by my best friend not long ago, I'm entitled to be angry."
Best to keep this about friendship, and nothing else. It wasn't Klaus' business, after all.
He had also left out the part about how many worries and problems the hybrid had arisen by coming back to Mystic Falls, feeling it wouldn't be wise to talk about it, and anyway, Klaus was surely aware of it already.
The hybrid took a seat at the other side of the table, and the hunter offered him a drink without thinking much about it, out of habit, and at the same time, wondering what it would be like if the bourbon had been poisoned with wolfsbane or vervein. A shame it may have altered the taste.
Klaus looked at the man sitting in front of him with mild interest.
"I was killed by my own father when I turned, and after that I've been stabbed with a white oak ash dagger trice by one of my brothers or by my sister. I can't see what you're complaining about."
The hunter didn't react in anyway, and Klaus found that strange. The man was sitting there, waiting, watching him, watching out even for the tiniest move, but he wasn't reacting.
"What have you come here for?"
"I like your kind. They're interesting. Ever met Hans?"
The hunter snorted at that.
"He came not long ago. Nearly killed me. Then he was reunited with Gal, and they're gone on a second honeymoon or something like that. I have their phone number, if you want. But if he doesn't hate you anymore, I wouldn't let him anywhere near this brother of yours who played him anytime soon."
Klaus winced at the mention of Kol's stupidity.
"Right. He got Galswinthe back, that's better than nothing."
The hunter only shrugged, and Klaus could tell he didn't care, or at least, he didn't at the moment. It was so unlike the man he had learned the Falkenbach to be, that the hybrid couldn't help but grow suspicious. Not of the man's behavior, because he somehow trusted it to be honest, but of the man's state of mind. It was like there was something amiss, and he didn't know what, because he didn't know the hunter so well. And Klaus didn't like being left in the shadows.
The man looked up at him once again, and the Original found himself staring at those eyes once more. Falkenbach eyes. Cold, uncaring, inhumane.
"What have you come here for?"
Same question, again.
"Nothing important. A fair warning, maybe."
"I doubt anything is fair with you, Your Highness."
There was sarcasm in the hunter's voice, but Klaus didn't mind. After all, it was the truth, most of the time. He did what was best for him, no matter what the consequences for the others were.
The hybrid spared a look at the bottle on the table. It was nearly empty, so maybe the man was drunk, you could never really tell with those Falkenbachs. Then again, he could see the dust-free circles in the area of the table where the bottle had been left, apparently for days. No wonder there was almost no alcohol left.
"You should clean your place more often. There's dust on your table."
"I haven't eaten here since the last time I died. The noise at the Grill makes it easier not to think."
The noise. Not the drink. Interesting. But not what he had come for.
"Anyway, as I was saying... I've come here to warn you, and, by association, your friends. Don't try anything to oppose me, and you shall live. No matter who I kill, no matter how much your friends are suffering, if one of you tries to stop me, the deaths will be more numerous, and the suffering will be worse."
The hunter's only answer was to stand up and take another glass to pour himself a drink.
"In short, not to expect any pity from you. Understood. Actually, it's like you came to say something we all knew already. So, why bother?"
"Because I know the like of you. You hope, and when hope is gone, you don't know it until you die. I'd like to keep my Petrova doppelganger alive, in order to create more hybrids, and for that, it's easier if I don't have to worry about you getting her killed while trying to save her. If you obey, there will be casualties, I don't deny it. But you don't, and you won't be there to see how much more despair will be caused."
And Klaus, saying that, had his most chearful tone, the one he habitually used to make death threats. When he wasn't too angry, of course. Though, he rarely had to make death threats while angry, because the ones he could have threatened were usually already dead.
The hybrid was about to leave, ignoring the hunter's reactions, be it protest or begging, as he liked to do to mark his word, meaning there was no open door for negociation.
But he didn't pass the treshold.
The man behind him – the man whose reaction he had intended to ignore, at least in appearances – the man hadn't said anything. He hadn't moved to foolishly try and punch him, or any other kind of stupid behavior.
Not that he had expected something like that from a Falkenbach. Falkenbachs acted only when there was nothing to lose, be it because everything had already been lost, or because they could only succeed in improving the situation, even one bit. Well, sane ones did, at least. Klaus wasn't sure Alaric Saltzman was sane anymore.
The man hadn't frozen in shock either. Those kind of things happened, from time to time. Unlikely, with someone like the hunter, but possible.
The man was laughing.
And it wasn't a nervous laugh, nor a laughter of madness. It was something cold.
Surprised with himself, but more surprised with the situation, Klaus turned back to the man standing in the middle of the loft, laughing a mirthless laugh.
The hunter had put his glass back on the table, and was looking at him.
"You know the like of us? Interesting. What I wonder about, however, is what you know of the like of me. Last time we... spent time together, I wasn't available, if I remember correctly. Even if I'm as cursed as Hans, we're not the same person, and it can be said of any other member of my family that you might have encountered. So excuse me if when you say 'the like of you', I think mainly of Elena, Damon, and the others. I don't consider you're talking about me at all, you see."
Klaus' eyes squinted as he listened. He was a bit puzzled by the man's attitude. It was so unlike what he had understood of Alaric Saltzman, it was unnerving.
"Then what do you consider your possible course of action confronted to such threats?"
The hunter smiled, but as for his laugh, there was nothing behind his smile.
"Mine? I'd kill whoever dared to utter such threats and destroy all evidences, body included, before they got the time to go back and order someone to avenge them in the worst possible way if needed. But you're no ordinary author threat, and it just so happens I can't kill you. So I won't do that. The question being, what will I do? I don't know yet. You'll have to wait and see."
Klaus, of course, managed to appear as if there was nothing disturbing about the whole visit, and left. He was long gone when the hunter, his scar aching like hell, muttered between his teeth:
"Alaric's course of action, however, you knew it well. Lucky he's not available now either."
