Set in 3x22


Each a monster, part 39: Until nightfall

Alaric had swallowed the ring. He had swallowed it. No more feelings. Nothing to stop him from...

Damon wrestled himself away from the hunter, and ran for it. He shouldn't have been able to, but if the amethyst ring had one capacity he was currently thankful for, it was that while it took away every single shred of humanity in a Falkenbach, it also caused them great pain for an instant. And the hunter hadn't just touched the ring for one instant, which would have caused intense pain and turned off his feelings for a few seconds. He had swallowed the thing, certainly to make it so that his humanity wouldn't come back and prevent him from killing Damon.

The hunter's scream resonated in the whole school, and Damon ran.

The scream stopped. He wasn't out yet.

He pushed the door. He heard the hunter blurring after him.

Damon leapt into the sunlight.

He turned around, and saw the expressionless face of Alaric Saltzman, vampire hunter and enhanced Original, cursed man and inhumane foe. The unkillable vampire was standing just at the limit between shadows and light, and he was looking at him.

And this time, there was nothing, absolutely nothing in his eyes. No love, not even hatred.

The hunter talked, and his voice had no tone.

"Hold onto hope, Damon Salvatore, and save the girl. Your time will eventually come, but hope, and in doing so you will allow me to finish my task. You know that by saving her once again you'll ensure your undoing, but because you have hope, you will save her nonetheless. Go. You have until nightfall, and then the Originals will all be dead, and you alongside them."

And the hunter did not move, staring at him in all his inhumanity.

This time, Alaric was gone for good. Damon's heart shattered as he broke eye contact.

Alaric was gone.

He rushed to Bonnie's side, and they decided they'd use the spell she had tried to use against the hunter on Klaus, since he was likely to kill Elena now that he knew he couldn't best the hunter. Tyler agreed to participate, and no one missed how he was avoiding looking at Caroline, who herself didn't look pleased with their decision to desiccate Klaus, but said nothing, because she saw no other way to save her friend. No one missed that, except Damon, who was still too shaken by the absolute blankness he had just witnessed in Alaric's eyes.

Out of despair, he called a number he hadn't called in years, not since he had done something that had upset her so much he feared for his life next time they'd see each other. Except this time his life was already on the line, and Ariane was too far away to do much damage before the hunter managed to kill them all. And well, Ariane was still a friend, even though she might have liked his head on a spike for her birthday gift.

If there was one person who knew how to deal with nearly immortal supernatural beings, it was Ariane. She was older than anyone he knew, and had seen a great deal. Maybe she knew something he could do, be in it killing the newest Original or saving his sanity.

But Ariane didn't answer her phone, and Damon ended up leaving a message that surely sounded like a bunch of insanities.

What happened next was to him like a blur. Klaus, Elijah, Alaric, Jeremy, and finally the phone call. Driving out of Mystic Falls with Bonnie and Klaus' coffin to hand over to Rebekah. Waiting alone.

What drove him out of the blur was the unexpected sound of the hunter's voice instead of Rebekah's, and Damon more or less jolted back into consciousness.

As the murderous Original checked all the storage lockers, the older vampire made his way to the entrance he knew Rebekah would use, hoping to get to her before the hunter did. But he was too late, and she had already started calling for him, saying it was hardly the time to play hide and seek, and she was surprised he even had the heart to do so after all that had happened. Damon wouldn't ask how she knew about his relationship with the psycho who was trying to murder them all.

The sound of the lockers being opened stopped, and Damon grabbed and gagged Barbie Klaus before she got staked with white oak.

Together they had almost gotten Klaus' coffin out, but the hunter finally found them, and staked the desiccated body.

There was a scream, and Rebekah's despair. There was the fear in Damon's eyes.

She ran away. He stayed behind.

He was dead anyway. His sire had died, and he was going to do as much very soon. And even if he hadn't been about to die, Alaric was too far off, and way too strong for him to fight for his life.

Damon let himself fall to the ground, and he looked up at the hunter, who was still before the coffin with the body in it. Strangely, it hadn't completely burned, but all in all, it didn't matter. The stake had done its job, and was back into the hand of the hunter.

"What do you want?! Kill me, and let us be done with it!"

But the monster that had once been his lover only watched Damon as he said that.

"Why? You are going to die anyway."

"Then I don't know, go after her, hunt Rebekah, and Elijah too for all I care! But don't stay here, don't look at me like that, with his face, don't talk to me with his voice, and get his body the hell out of my sight!"

But the Original before him, the Original who had Ric's face, Ric's voice, Ric's body, the Original stayed there, and stared at him, as if wondering how much time it would take for him to die after Klaus' death.

"I can live with killing only one of them this evening. There are only three left. And even if they are good at hiding, I am a Falkenbach. I am good at tracking people down. Sooner or later, they'll die."

There wasn't even the wrath the hunter had had before. There was nothing.

All that because of the damned ring!

And Esther, too, of course, damned bloody Original Witch, but she was dead, and he couldn't do anything about the fact he didn't have the possibility to take revenge, so he'd settle with complaining about the ring.

He should never have taken it when Katherine had told him about it, and that way, the hunter wouldn't have been able to put his feelings away. Sure, he'd have still hated them all, wished their deaths, acted for these deaths to become reality, but it would have been better than what was in the hunter's eyes right now.

Absolutely nothing.

Alaric had already looked at him strangely, when he looked at him like a Falkenbach, all emotions veiled, and once, Damon had thought it creepy, because those eyes were the eyes of a dead man. But it had never lasted, it had only been for a few seconds, or if it had lasted longer, because his boyfriend had been hiding something for example, Ric's body language had told him what his eyes wouldn't. It didn't matter that it was a carefully controlled body language, it was still better than nothing. When Alaric kept something to himself, his eyes were entirely empty of all emotion, but he let his body act according to what he didn't want to hide.

There, there was absolutely nothing.

All because of one tiny magic ring made of amethyst, with the Falkenbach seal carved on it.

All because of that.

Damon's eyes lit up suddenly with a sickly gleam, and his face bore a new determination when he looked back at the hunter. He'd rather die by the Original's hand, with all his hatred and love for him reflected in Alaric's eyes, than agonize in front of a monster who felt nothing as he watched.

Damon launched himself at the hunter who wasn't expecting it at all. Nevertheless, the Original was also a Falkenbach, and he reacted in the blink of an eye, breaking one of the two arms that had just torn his shirt open. But the older vampire was determined, and despite the pain, he kept pushing with his other hand, until the skin of the stomach broke and let his fingers in.

Blood dripped on his arm, and the hunter seized the hand that had started rummaging in his guts.

He was strong, way too strong, and even if it must have hurt, such a wound could do no lasting damage to a vampire, let alone an Original. Even if it had, Damon doubted the hunter could feel anything, for he had the ring in his body, and the seals on his shoulder and on the amethyst must have been resonating like crazy, making a mess of his sense of touch and pain. Not that the hunter cared, since he wasn't humane anymore. At most, it was a bit inconvenient.

"What are you doing?"

The question mark was barely audible, because there was no tone, no emotion behind it. Not even frustration or mild interest. It was nothing more than a question to figure out what Damon was trying to do, because this wasn't something the hunter had expected. It wasn't something that could worry him either.

But if the hunter was way stronger than Damon would ever be, the older vampire was desperate.

"What are you doing?"

In a last attempt before his hand was taken out of the hunter's body, Damon's fingers found what they had been searching for. One single tug from the hunter, and the hand was out, with what it had seized.

The hunter's eyes became glassy for one instant, and then everything came back. A whirlpool of emotions – granted, not as many as it would have been if the hunter had been a regular guy, and not a cursed one, but still so many more than just a second before – a whirlpool of emotions appeared in the blue of those eyes. The hunter's face distorted into something that was between monstrous and wonderful, because there was so much anger, and yet, so much love, and most of all, because there was finally something after hours of nothingness.

"What have you done?!"

Alaric's voice thundered, and Damon was so relieved to hear a tone in it that two tears escaped his lashes and rolled down to die in a battered smile.

"I've brought you back, my love."

He opened his hand, releasing a disgusting substance, mostly made of gastric fluids and blood. One shadow fell faster than the liquid, and when it hit the floor, it did it with a metallic tinkle.

A ray of artificial light fell on it, and as the blood flowed to the ground, the hunter saw a violet glint.

The hunter, with his emotions back, kicked Damon hard in the ribs, and the vampire got flung to the nearest wall. The disturbing sound of some of his bones breaking from the shock resonated in the room.

"Why do you always have to complicate everything, Damon?! What can't you just let it happen! I can't stop myself from loving you, and yet I can't do anything else but kill you, or get you killed, eitherway, same thing, same result. You have to die, don't you understand that?! You deserve better than this dratted condition, and the only other alternative for you, for both of us, is eternal rest! We are dead, and so we shouldn't be here, walking, and yet we are. I have to end it, and make every vampire on this planet disappear, for we are abominations!"

The hunter glanced at the ring, but shook his head, clearly angered and exasperated. He let it there, and walked to the one he loved so much that killing him was so difficult, even if necessary.

"You wanted me to come back? Here I am, and I'll make sure you won't enjoy our last minutes together. You should die any time soon, now, but I can make you suffer as much as you condemned me to suffer when you decided we couldn't do it the easy way! You, Damon Salvatore, are going to wish you had never taken that ring out of my stomach!"

Then it started, kicks and punches so strong they shattered Damon's bones instantly, and with those, twisted limbs and ripped out teeth. The hunter only waited for it to heal the bare minimum before going at it again, and his face was as messed up with tears and winces as the older vampire's, though he was the one doing the beating.

But Damon regretted nothing, despite the pain, despite the suffering, because at least he could see emotions on Alaric's face, and that was all he asked for in his final hour.

Then it hit him, as surely as the hunter's heel landed on his stomach. He wasn't feeling any weaker than before Klaus' stabbing, considering the massive blood loss he was experiencing.

But before he could think anything of it, a punch hit him on the face, and it wasn't strong anymore.

Damon looked up, and saw Alaric stagger, and his legs give away. The older vampire reached for the Original, who fell in his arms, going grey, going venous, sputtering water, dying.

Dead.

Alaric's ghost watched, as his lover started crying over his corpse.

Then he closed his eyes, and disappeared.