One world apart, part 9: To scowl and snarl

Alaric stared at the grim reaper with wide eyes, unable to speak. It certainly was the first time such a thing happened to him since his death. Usually, he just didn't bother talking, because people who were not Jeremy couldn't hear him.

But this time, he literally was gobsmacked.

Damon's grim reaper friend, Ariane, could see him.

After all, there wasn't any other vampire than himself on Damon's bed right now... Not that he was aware of, if anything. Maybe it was an invisible vampire, and maybe she was simply able to see invisible vampires, but Ric doubted it. Even if he could somehow be counted as an invisible vampire, considering he had died a vampire, and people couldn't see him.

Invisible vampire or vampire ghost, it did not matter. What mattered was that Alaric was pretty sure he was the only vampire pouting – sulking would have been better, but those were Ariane's words, not his... – on Damon's bed at the moment.

By the way, he wasn't pouting. Nor sulking, for the matter. He hadn't been worried about his lover disappearing with a corpse and a grim reaper who seemed to resent him for something Damon had done years ago. Not at all.

Of course, he could have followed them, but well. What could his ghostly self do if the big bad grim reaper decided to get her revenge on the vampire? It wasn't as if he was able to interact with anything. And while Alaric couldn't do anything to her, he wasn't so sure about it being true the other way around. There was something definitely nasty about the black scythe she had used to kill Connor. Considering Ariane was a freaking grim reaper, the ghost wouldn't bet she couldn't do anything about annoying ghosts that got in her way.

Or at least, thatwas what he had been thinking when he had watched the car with the vampire, the corpse and the grim reaper in it being driven away. And when he had come to the conclusion that maybe he should have gone with them... Well, the gost had had no idea as to where they were.

So Ric had gone to wait for Damon at the boarding house, hoping against hope that his boyfriend would still be in one piece and very much undead the next time they'd see each other – or, well, next time Ric'd see him. Alaric was more than aware of Damon's habit of making ennemies out of everyone he met, and apparently he had already irked the grim reaper in the past, enough that he had been worried over her coming to Mystic Falls. The ghost also knew the vampire well enough, and if there was one thing that could be said about Damon, it was that he always and without fail managed to say just what wasn't needed to be said at the worst moment.

With such thoughts, it wasn't a surprise that Ric was scowling – not pouting or sulking, thank you very much – on Damon's bed, waiting for his idiot lover to come back and not see him as usual. While the vampire couldn't see the dead history teacher, the dead history teacher really wanted to make sure the vampire hadn't indulged in any kind of bad and usual behavior. Knowing Damon...

Anyway, it wasn't a surprise, and Alaric would gladly admit that he had been snarling at the door of the room, lying on his stomach, and squinting with a death glare at whoever would pass the door first, when said door opened and let in Damon... and Ariane.

Who could apparently see him.

Because if she couldn't see him, then she wouldn't have seen a "pouting" dead-dead vampire on Damon's bed.

So the logical answer was that she could see him.

A few seconds only had passed since the terrible statement had gone out of Ariane's mouth, and Damon was staring at his bed, helf-expecting Stefan to just appear there, brooding. Of course, it never happened, so the vampire eventually turned to look at his friend with a confused look on his face.

"When you say there's a ghost pouting on my bed..."

Alaric's ghost scowled once more. He was not pouting.

And his brain apparently had yet to reboot, or else he'd have tried to stop what was inevitably going to happen.

Even if Ariane might not have complied, he'd have tried to make her shut up about his continued ghostly presence. One got to try to accomplish anything, and Ric absolutely wanted to accomplish keeping his existence a secret from his favorite vampire. He had no idea as to how Damon would take it, but he knew it wouldn't be good.

But right now, besides the simple reaction of scowling when accused of being pouty, Alaric just couldn't come to the realization of what was happening. It was so unlikely...

Ariane looked at the ghost on her friend's bed, still a bit surprised with the fact that the vampire from the Mystic Grill had actually come here, in Damon's home, in Damon's room, on Damon's bed, to scowl and snarl. On the ground floor, with an imaginary glass of bourbon, she'd have understood. But on Damon's bed?

What was the relationship between the two vampires, exactly?

"I mean that the ghost who was sitting besides you at the bar is lying on his stomach on your bed, and scowling angrily at me as he does so."

Damon blinked, his eyes going to and fro between his friend and the bed where his boyfriend was supposed to be sulking right now, even if the vampire just couldn't see anything.

"You said he was there too, at the Grill?"

Ariane didn't turn away from the ghost, not even to answer Damon's inquiry. There was something fishy about all this, but she simply couldn't see what.

And there was something wrong with that ghost. Hell, the grim reaper could sense he had been a vampire, she could even tell he had been an Original, however-it-was-freaking-impossible, but it wasn't what was strange. The facts didn't add up, considering she knew what the Originals looked like, and none were supposed to look like this man, but there was no questioning it; this guy had been an Original Vampire. But there was something else, and she simply had no idea what it was supposed to mean, especially when it felt so... familiar.

There was something wrong with this situation, and something wrong with the very core of that ghost.

In other words, the whole thing was suspicious like hell.

"Yes, he was there all along."

"What does he look like?"

Finally catching up, Ric cursed, and in a second, he was standing on his feet.

"Don't tell."

Ariane's upper lip twitched at the demand. She was alright with requests, but she hated demands.

Then again, the ghost seemed downright panicked, so she'd let this one pass... Maybe.

"If he knows I'm still around, Damon will never let go. And I want him to move on, even if I obviously can't."

Ariane's eyebrows shot up as the pieces of the puzzle suddenly fell into place. She took an instant to look at the – definitely male – vampire from head to toes, and while he was obviously very good-looking, she had believed Damon liked his boys more...well, girls, really. Finally she turned to look at Damon, and for an instant she wondered if he wasn't standing a bit more femininely than before...

Nah.

Just a trick of her imagination.

Even if she was quite sure about who the woman was... had been in this relationship. Damn, she wished she could just tease Damon with that, it'd be enough fun for at least half a century, she reckoned.

But no, Ariane could understand why this ghost didn't want her to tell the truth to his lover. She had made that mistake, once. Eventually, the other one had ended her life because she couldn't take it, that her lover had been around... but not reachable.

"Dark haired, grey eyes, tallish, male."

And there it was. A lie. But it was for Damon's sake, and Ariane had long since learned that sometimes, a lie was better than the truth. Not always, mind you, but sometimes. Especially when one of the lovers was ready to suffer seeing the other move on if needed.

At first, Damon seemed confused, obviously oblivious to her lie. Why would there be the ghost of a male vampire looking like that haunting his bed?

But before the confusion could make itself at home on his face, the vampire frowned. There was something wrong with all that. He had been so sure... The unknown ghost had been in the Mystic Grill, with him, and now he had followed him to the boarding house? Yeah, right!

"You're lying. He's a tall, male vampire, with blue eyes and dark blond hair."

His face basically said that no other lies were allowed. Ariane rolled her eyes, and shrugged.

"You got me. Still, I didn't know you swang that way, back then, Damon."

The vampire flushed a bright red, but didn't look away.

"Not your business, how I like to be fucked, Ariane. Just tell me it's Alaric and that he asked you to say it wasn't."

The grim reaper hadn't thought her friend to snap at her, but even in her surprise it only made her snicker a bit more. She was almost two thousand years old, in the name of Jupiter! She had seen more than enough homosexual couples not to judge.

"Calm down, Edward Cullen. Your Bella isn't as I imagined her, especially considering how you told me her name was Katherine, but anyway. If you sparkle both ways, good for you."

Not sure if he ought to be astonished that Ariane even knew about sparkling vampires, Damon only looked away, muttering a bit.

"I don't swing that way. Ric's special, that's all there is to it."

Ariane arched an eyebrow at her friend, and smirked.

Then her eyes flickered back to the ghost, asking for confirmation: though Damon's description was accurate, she couldn't just assume his name was Alaric. There was, and had been, more than one person on Earth who matched the description, after all. Now, if he had been missing an eye or something...

So she was going to ask the ghost who he was.

The ghost... who wasn't there anymore.

Ariane blinked. Damon grew impatient.

"So?"

The grim reaper blinked again, trying to focus on the fact that one ghost had left the room, and a hallucination had just appeared in the corner of her eye.

She cleared her throat, and turn to look at the bloody hunter of the Five who stood next to her, playing with the knife he had tried to use against her earlier.

"Well, Damon, I'm afraid your sweetheart ran away before I could ask. Now, if you don't mind, I have to deal with a Hunter's curse..."

Ariane had finished her sentence in a murmur, and before Damon could ask what exactly she meant by that, she walked out of the bedroom. When the vampire went to look after her, he found the boarding house completely empty, except for himself.

And maybe wayward, lying ghosts, he thought bitterly, even if he had no idea if Ric's ghost was actually still in the house or not. For all he could see, Damon was alone, and in the end, that was what mattered.

Ariane stopped a few miles away from the boarding house, and finally paid attention to the multiple hallucinations that had fallen onto her since the first, a few minutes before.

They were hundreds of them, and truly, it wasn't suprising. She had killed a lot in her very long life, between enemies, rogue vampires, murderers, wild werewolves, rapists and other kinds of scum who thought they could do whatever they wanted. And while the Hunter's curse was supposed to work on vampires, because the hunters of the Five couldn't afford to ever be felled by their preys, it also worked on grim reapers. The witch who had created them had made sure it did, after having been told of the chaos brought upon a small town of what would latter be known as Germany.

All this was Ascagne's fault, obviously.

The grim reaper gritted her teeth, and took out her scythe.

She knew the hallucinations wouldn't stop before a new hunter of the Five replaced the one she had killed. The witch hadn't been very thorough in her work, though: grim reapers could hardly kill themselves, and Ascagne's slaughter had began because of madness...

Well, she'd just have to hold on. Besides, the hallucinations died like anyone else... even if they came back after a time.