And I like it, when a review appears out of nowhere! Thanks, Great First Reviewer, your name ( or username, but who cares? ) shall remain in my memory forever and ever ( what was it again, )! No, jokes aside, it's endearing, you know? So follow the example! Review! Or, let's be generous: Reviews!

Anyway.

Better not to let my hopes up.

And yes, I see a grand happy end. But far away in time. There shall be much suffering beforehand. Actually, I' like killing Ric. It's fun. It's not every character you can kill again. And again. I don't like killing characters when they actually die. But that...


Set in 3x13.

I changed some things about Evilaric's murders, seeing as the guy is, raving mad, of course, but also a seasoned killer with instincts about those things. Saltzman. Falkenbach. You know.


Each a monster, part 28: It was necessary

A lot of things had happened since the last time he had died, and surprisingly enough, considering the murders and everything, what was really, really unnerving Alaric, was the fact that Theodoric seemed to be trailing him, lately.

Damon had told him, as soon as he had been out of the hospital, that Theo was interested in his "accident". So interested, that he'd have seemed worried, if he hadn't been completely emotionless in all that concerned empathy. Ric knew better, of course. And what he knew told him he'd have to get his cousin out of Mystic Falls before anything too odd happened. Not easy, considering there were witches, werewolves, vampires, hybrids and resurrection involved in the daily town story.

And well, Theo had taken it upon himself to discover who had started killing people. The serial killer / hitman in him didn't like other people preying on his current territory, and he certainly didn't like that the idiot out there who had sliced a guy's throat and left the body with a stake in its chest in the wood behind the major's house had driven the feds back to Mystic Falls – the two FBI agents who had come after the Sobriety Merchant's stop in the city had finally left, empty-handed of course. Theodoric's aliases never left any hint behind.

Alaric turned on his left side, trying to sleep, but no matter what he tried to do, he couldn't seem to find peace. Either he thought about the danger Damon and Stefan were facing, dining with Klaus and Elijah, as he was here, safe and secure at the Gilbert house, or his mind went to the two murders which had happened during the last days.

At first he had suspected Theo. Who wouldn't have?

But the thing was, just before Bill Forbes had been attacked at the hospital, Alaric had been glaring intently at a flirty cousin of his misleading his older students at the Grill, and Theo had still been at it when he'd left. So the teacher knew for a fact, that, unusually, Theo wasn't the culprit.

Ric sighed, and turned again, ending with his nose in the pillow, which made breathing quite difficult. He turned one more time, now facing the ceiling, and smiled thinking about how Damon sometimes did sleep with his nose in the pillow. The teacher had observed his boyfriend often enough: the vampire habitually breathed like anyone, out of habit, unlike some vampires who freaked everyone out by forcing themselves not to breath, just because. Those were freaky, anyway, and never pretended to be ordinary people. On their summer trip, Damon had explained to him the various kinds of vampires there were, and while Alaric had not been surprised to hear most of them were pretending to be normal people, like Stefan, or partied every night and moved a lot, devil-may-care, like Damon, hearing about those who did everything to be even more bizarre than being a vampire already made them had left him perplexed. Though he had to admit Damon was becoming more and more like his brother as he stayed with people who actually cared about him. Anyway, the point was, his boyfriend usually breathed out of habit, save during the night, when he buried himself in his pillow. Once the fun part of sleeping-in-the-same-bed was done with, of course.

Alaric still wasn't sure where he and Damon stood.

They were making their way back to their previous relationship, he could say that much. But he didn't know how well on the way they were exactly.

Oh well. It wasn't like they could simply be back to normality so quickly. And Damon was lucky. Most of the time, lovers one killed tended not to be this forgiving – not that they actually had a choice about that, but still.

Alaric turned again. He really couldn't sleep. In fact, he wasn't even sure why he wanted to go to sleep so soon. It wasn't as if he was tired.

So he got up, and went downstairs with a good book to read about medieval England.

The first hour went smoothly.

But after a while, the teacher remembered why exactly he had thought it better to go to sleep so soon in the evening.

Right, the murders and the dangerous dinner were hovering above his head, mocking him as he tried to push them aside, and worrying him endlessly.

The fact that the stakes next to the two victims came from the Gilbert arsenal didn't make it any better. Alaric was positive Jeremy and Elena had murdered no one lately – well, no one except vampires and hybrids maybe, but those didn't count. Damon was having too much fun breaking people's necks, so it certainly wasn't him, even considering his dark past. Stefan was way too busy hating Klaus, and killing humans could hardly disturb the Original Bastard, so he was unlikely to be the culprit. Caroline wouldn't have killed her own father and a forensic without reason, though the fact that she had a reason to murder her father was debatable – he had tortured her, after all. Tyler wasn't a murder-type, just a sired-type. Bonnie was a witch, she didn't go around murdering people.

And that was about everyone who had knowledge of and access to the Gilbert arsenal.

And, of course, there was Theo, who had almost been stalking his cousin since the "car accident", and had already trespassed in the Gilbert house once. Alaric wouldn't have put it past him to do the same with the lake house. But he had no reason to create one more serial killer persona, he already had seven of those in activity, well-established and convenient. And he had Ric as an alibi for the second murder. Reinforced concrete alibi, that.

Lastly, there was himself.

But Ric thought he'd ought to know if he spent time murdering people. And as he hadn't noticed anything like that, it surely meant he wasn't the one who had done it. Logic.

It riled him how there was no clues on the crime scenes. He had asked and somehow convinced Liz Forbes to hand him the files as soon as the first murder had happened, because he had a thing with those kind of things – wonder why, right. The sheriff hadn't denied it. She had seen him fight, heard him talk during the attack on the Salvatore house. She knew how he was.

He hadn't asked for the pieces of evidence, though. He knew it would have been inappropriate.

But he was worried by the modus operandi, obviously pointing at vampires and vampire hunting. He was worried by the victims' identity, it being that of a Council member and Meredith Fell's ex. Meredith whom he had befriended, and who had proven to be quite an interesting friend by exposing Damon as a vampire, saying she had nothing against it, exposing them as a couple, and making snarky comments about their love life. He didn't want anything to happen to her, if possible.

Even if Damon had deemed her a psycho.

The teacher had told his boyfriend it was the pot calling the kettle black.

Damon had raised an eyebrow and snorted, saying it took one to know one.

Ric hadn't been sure if that had been the vampire admitting he was as much of a psycho as he accused Meredith of being, or if it had been himself being accused of being a psycho since he could tell Damon was one. Eitherway, Ric wasn't denying being mentally abnormal, as a Saltzman and all, so he hadn't taken offense.

Strangely, Damon seemed to warm up to Meredith quickly enough given that he had suspected her of murder for a time. The teacher had wisely chosen to ignore what it said about his boyfriend, as he often did when the vampire talked of killing people and other violent actions.

Anyway, the two murders had been slightly different, and that concerned Alaric.

Sure, both Brian Walters and Bill Forbes had had their throat sliced and a stake had been left nearby both times, but it wasn't the precision of a serial killer. It was significant, and the hunter didn't doubt the culprit to be the same person. But it wasn't a serial killer's work.

Not a traditional serial killer's work, if anything.

Hell if he knew what it meant, though.

Alaric just let himself sink into the sofa, his book closed on the low table. He closed his eyes for a second.

Just a second.

When he opened them again, the hunter had taken a decision.

The man stared at the ceiling above him for some time, wondering how much it would hurt. A lot, surely. But it couldn't be worse than being hurt by a car or having a lung punctured with a stake. And he was skilled at that. A Falkenbach didn't particularly enjoy killing, and they certainly didn't care about suffering. They knew how to make it quick, and as painless as possible.

They could also make it slow, and as painful as possible, if needed.

They didn't care, and so, the hunter didn't care.

But it wasn't the matter here.

Here, it was about slicing his own throat.

He was allowed to wish for it to be quick and painless. Even if it was only a wish.

He went to the front door, and played with a kitchen knife as he waited for one of the kids to come back. If Elena was the first one to arrive, he'd carry on with his plan. If Jeremy was there before her, he'd have to wait for another time.

It wasn't like he wanted the girl to find him dead upstairs, not that it wasn't the plan, but anyway, close enough. It wasn't like he wanted for her to have to finish him off so that he'd come back. It wasn't as if he wanted to frighten her with what could have happened and what could still happen when she was associating with so many dangerous supernatural beings.

But it was necessary.

For her, because despite everything that had already happened to those she cared for, she still wouldn't see they were the responsible ones. Most of the people around her had known suffering and death because of vampires and werewolves and wayward witches, and still, she didn't want to understand how they were wretched lost cases. Monsters.

Alaric was like that, too.

Which irked the hunter to no end.

And so, it was necessary for her. And for him, too.

Because Alaric really needed to understand, there was no hope for the monstruous beings he liked, and worst, loved. Because each time the teacher died, the hunter gained more power over their mind. Because Alaric and the hunter really needed to merge, and to finally let go of the pointless feelings he felt for the undead atrocities and other supernatural beings. Because if he let Alaric to his own devices, they'd be dead before long.

It was necessary.

Eventually, the hunter heard Elena's car. He went to the window to check it really was hers, just in case. He made sure he wouldn't be seen from outside, thought. It'd have been difficult to explain afterwards.

His ears had not wronged him. It was time to play.

The hunter slashed his left arm and made sure to leave a bloody handprint on the wall, then he rushed to first floor. There, he let himself fall against the landrail, and took the knife to his own jugular.

He had to be precise, for he didn't want to die too soon, thus dying for real. It'de be a pity if all his work had been for nothing, and even more if he ended up dying by his own hand.

The hunter winced as the blade cut open his flesh, as his blood ran down his neck, into his clothes. He didn't like the feeling. Agonizing wasn't his thing. That was one thing he had in common with normal people, at least. The thought made him smile wistfully.

He'd have loved to be someone ordinary.

He hoped Elena wouldn't take long to come into the house.

It'd be bad if she took her time to play with a lost puppy, for example. Maybe he should have checked there were no lost puppy outside the house before doing this. But no, it was just his thoughts going astray because of the blood loss...

There it was. He heard the door opening, closing, someone's footsteps. There was a silence. Elena had surely seen the blood, by now, and it was still processing to her brain, he guessed. The silence didn't last. Rushed sprinting up the stairs.

The hunter's eyes saw a blurry form bending over him, and he heard Elena's voice.

The girl was terrified, and he couldn't find it in him to blame her for that, even when he knew it hindered her reaction as he talked, as best as he could when one side of his neck had been butchered – no, sliced, mind you, but still – it hurt, even when he knew any lost second could be his last amongst the living. Idly, he wondered one more time if cursed men got to pass on, or if they also went to the Other Side.

He told her.

He told her the obvious, that he would die no matter what, and if she wanted to be sure he'd come back, she'd have to finish him, in case the culprit wasn't supernatural.

The hunter wondered idly. Did he classify as a supernatural being, seeing as he was cursed?