Set in 3x21


Okay, by the way, last chapter Damon left just a bit earlier than in the show, so he missed Bonnie.


Each a monster, part 38: This wasn't going to be pleasant

Damon looked at his glass a long time, and did nothing else. There was bourbon in it, and the vampire was certain it was all he needed to forget, even if only for a little while, what had happened to the man he loved. One glass of alcohol, and then another, and another again. It was all he needed.

But he only looked at the glass.

All he needed to get drunk was here, but he wasn't drinking, despite everything.

Some people said that drinking after a tragedy was a way to forget, and that continuing to do so afterwards was a way to stay unhappy on purpose, because happiness hurt more than grief, or so they thought. Damon couldn't deny there was something contenting in misery. A feeling that no matter what others may say, one was the only person who could truly understand what was ultimate misfortune. An impression that one was different from others, who could only guess what one was experiencing. Unhappy, but better – or worse – than anyone else. Different.

But the vampire didn't want to forget, that night, that Alaric was lying dead in his family crypt. He didn't want to revel in his misery thanks to drunkenness.

It didn't mean he was ready to move on.

Just that if he wanted to revel in his misery, it wasn't in a drunken stupor.

So he stared at the glass, and drank nothing of it. If he had felt bad, he would have drunk. But he only felt angry, and filled with a lot of sarcasm.

Damon Salvatore truly wasn't supposed to get his happy ending.

The vampire was still staring intently at the glass of bourbon, arms crossed and under his chin, himself sprawled on a table at the boarding house, when something happened.

He couldn't have said what, because he didn't care. Alaric was dead, and had killed the real culprit before leaving for the afterworld. Damon couldn't even murder Esther in some gruesome manner or another to vent out the part of him that was angry. The other parts were, respectfully, sad, lost, desperate, and in denial.

So he didn't go to the front door when the bell rang.

Stefan, who had been glancing awkwardly at his brother for the past hour, shifting on his chair and unable to focus on the book he had taken as an excuse to stalk Damon, remembered too well what had happened when the older vampire had been bitten by a werewolf last year. He was determined to keep an eye on Damon, but still went to the door... hoping his brother wouldn't do anything stupid meanwhile.

Not that Damon had made a habit of doing stupid things. Apart from killing people he shouldn't kill. Upsetting people he shouldn't upset. Destroying things he shouldn't destroy.

Right. Damon's plans usually went south no matter how well planed. But there, it wasn't about planning things, and if Stefan left his brother alone, the vampire was totally able to play the suicide card without anything going south. Because usually, the plans that went well were those that were supposed to hurt people to begin with.

For years, Stefan had believed his brother to be unbreakable, and he would have laughed at the prospect of Damon killing himself. Last year had changed his beliefs. He suspected that meeting Alaric had changed Damon in a good way... but also into fragility.

Stefan sighed and opened the door.

It was Bonnie waiting outside, a hand on her neck... And the unmistakable smell of blood.

"Bonnie, what... What happened?!"

Stefan looked at the young woman, and she had fear in her eyes. This wasn't going to be pleasant. He didn't know what it was going to be, but it wasn't going to be pleasant.

He heard Damon coming to them, maybe mildly curious about why Bonnie was all bloody on his doorstep. Mildly only, because he had more interesting things to mope about. Curious, still, because... Well, because.

Bonnie opened her mouth to answer, but she paled when she saw Damon behind Stefan. What would he say? Would he be glad, despite the obvious problem, or would he be furious that in the end, Alaric had lost his fight against the hunter? If "Alaric" was still alive, there was a chance they could still get Alaric back. Bonnie doubted it, truthfully, though she knew there was always a loophole. She doubted it, because no matter how things went from now on, they surely wouldn't have the time to find said loophole. And if "Alaric" was alive, it also meant that an unkillable vampiric psychopath cursed to be the perfect killer was walking around in the body of Damon's beloved. Sure, it was still "Alaric", in a way, and from what they knew he liked them as much as the original Alaric did, but he hated them at the same time, and wouldn't back away from killing them all for the sake of his own feelings.

The young witch removed her hand from her neck, and looked back at Stefan. She couldn't look at Damon.

"The hunter fed. He's still out there."

One second before, the glass of bourbon had been in Damon's hand.

Now it was shattered on the floor, and Damon's pants were soaked with alcohol.

There was a long silence.

Then Damon got himself back in the game, and there was a hard edge to his voice.

"Don't tell me you suddenly felt the urge to ensure our utter destruction."

"The spirits of the witches possessed me to go and feed him. I think I arrived there just after you left, Damon, but I'm not sure. It was as if I was in a dream."

"Your stupid magic ancestors have once again gotten in the way! Great! Well then, you'll ask them to help in undoing their mess, because we now have a vampire who is possibly more dangerous than Klaus to deal with. I mean, sure, we could just run away and let the Originals deal with him, since they're surely his primary targets, but there's still a problem. Our sire dies, and we're all caput."

The hours after that went in a fog for Damon. Everything was so clear, his mind was so clear, it was almost transparent, almost non-existent, actually. The vampire acted, and that was all. He certainly said some snarky remarks, but it was as if he wasn't really the one saying them.

He was here. His body was there.

They heard about Alaric's whereabouts through Rebekah, and they had to say, it wasn't pleasant news. Esther had made it difficult enough with her choice to make a Saltzman into an enhanced Original, but as she hadn't had a white oak to bound his life to, the white oak stake was no good against the hunter. It didn't even have the basic good point of a normal stake on a normal Original – that is, temporary death. Good news, though, he didn't like the sun anymore than any other vampire. Bad news, he could withstand it, settling with constant combustion countered by accelerated healing instead of simple, definitive combustion.

Well, "they had to say" didn't include Damon, because he was on autopilot.

So now the hunter was in the school, and not grading papers. His current activities were more like torturing student / vampire / namely-Caroline-Forbes. And making Elena watch. And waiting for Klaus to come and try to get his Petrova doppelganger back. Let's not forget waiting for Klaus. While torturing Caroline. But waiting for Klaus came first, of course.

Torturing Caroline in the meantime.

This part was what didn't do it with Klaus, who had decided he wanted his spare tire, his flashlight, his Petrova doppelganger, and his potential girlfriend with him before leaving town. He didn't like the part where the hunter wanted him to let himself get killed, of course. But what he had heard lately from an unsuspecting Caroline had been giving him hope, and he didn't like the torturing-Caroline-Forbes part at all.

Allying themselves with Klaus came as some sort of relief, and at the same time it was alarming – not because they were allying themselves with Niklaus Mikaelson, thought that fact was parlous in itself – but because if the original hybrid was strong, he was also the only thing that kept most of them alive: the creator of their bloodline.

All in all, Damon was doing as he was told.

Which meant, he was about to go along with Bonnie's plan – and hell, how he had come to hate the word "plan" lately – and enter a building with the crazed alter-ego of his boyfriend in it. He took the blood sample from the witch, and didn't ask anything. He knew the plan. Actually, it even gave him a little hope. Not much, but still. If they kept Alaric desiccated for long enough, maybe he'd come back to reason.

He deliberately ignored the part of his mind that reminded him of Hans and his killing sprees each time he managed to get out of desiccation.

They went in.

Damon wasn't sure how it came to this, but at some point, he and Stefan found the hunter and Elena. Elena had been raising a valid point at the time: why was he not killing her, if she was such a traitor to the human race?

But Damon didn't care, and still on autopilot, he did what he had to do. He fought.

Unsurprisingly, he was far from a challenge for the hunter, who had more strength and speed than even an Original, and whose fighting instincts and skills were those of a Falkenbach. Before they knew it, Stefan's neck was broken, and before he knew it, his own was too.

What happened after, he couldn't tell, but at some point his spin went back into place, and he heard the sound of a cellphone buzzing. He opened his eyes.

And saw Alaric, sitting next to him, looking at him intently. In his eyes, there were both deep hatred and incommensurable love. The "Why am I still alive?" froze on Damon's lips.

He knew this was the hunter...

But it was also Alaric, and not a dead Alaric, not a lifeless Alaric. An Alaric full of extreme feelings, not exactly his Alaric, but not a stranger either. Some kind of caricature of the Alaric he had first met, who had wanted his death more than anything else, and who had been human.

Stefan woke up too, and the hunter with Ric's face told them they had to stop Klaus from killing Elena, because she was his anchor into the afterlife.

When he let them go, Damon couldn't get up, and so he stayed still on the floor while Stefan was rushing outside to find Bonnie and save Elena, who definitely had no luck in life.

The hunter had not stopped staring at him. He hadn't moved at all. He was still sitting next to him.

"I told you to go and save Elena."

"Alaric..."

His voice was pleading, Damon knew that, but he wasn't concerned about it. For once, he didn't care if he had to beg, if he had to supplicate. Ric was here, he knew it. It wasn't just the hunter, some stranger. It was Ric, only a Ric who had followed another road. The hunter and Ric were the same person, with the same past, the same feelings. The hunter was just brainwashed.

He could get Alaric back.

He had to believe it.

"Go."

But Damon couldn't get up. Not now that Alaric was looking at him. Not now that Alaric was alive.

"Ric, please! You have to be ther...!"

Damon didn't get to finish his plea, for the hunter had pulled him up from the floor and was now kissing him with fierce passion. The older vampire froze when he felt the veins bulging under his lover's eyes and against his skin, when two fangs grazed his lips.

The hunter backed away, in shock, panting and way too alluring vamped-out like that.

"Alaric, don't...!"

"I hate what you are, Damon. Not who you are. And I will kill you, because you deserve to be freed from the abomination that is vampirism. I love you, but you deserve better than this!"

Damon stayed still, completely unable to speak or think. He stared at the hunter, and this time, he was sure Ric was still somewhere in there, he just had to...

But the hunter couldn't do – not yet – what he had just told the older vampire, and his feelings got the better of him once again. His feelings, and his new condition.

He leaned towards Damon, and bit. His eyes were closed for a second, as he forgot about everything else. When he opened them again, they were hard with a terrible resolve.

He spoke as he wiped the blood off his face, and Damon knew he had to run. Only, he couldn't.

"The damned witch was right. I can't kill you like that... And I can't switch off my feelings, because I'm still a Falkenbach. Then, I guess I'll just have to use it..."

The hunter took out the amethyst ring that suppressed all humanity in a Saltzman's mind, and swallowed it.