I only want to point out: no Delena - no sire bond - no forced switching off the emotions - no burning the Gilbert house - no new hairdo for Elena!
If only for the last two, I'm happy that I wrote this fanfiction. ( not only, of course, but still )


One world apart, part 17: They lived

"So, any question?"

Damon couldn't help but feel smug as he asked that. The look on Magdalena's face was enough to say that yes, the woman had questions, but no, she would not be asking them right away. She was most likely disturbed by her accelerated all-the-supernatural-in-two-hours lessons.

Mag didn't answer, anyway. She simply stood up, and swayed a bit towards the exit, feeling light-headed all of a sudden. She might have been from the Saltzman family, but there still was a limit to how much weirdness she could bear in a day.

Her limit was well passed, this time.

As she finally found the front door of the boarding house, she heard the vampire's teasing voice.

"And don't get lost on the way back! The Big Bad Wolf eats the Little Red Riding Hood in the original story, like, definitely, don't forget!"

Magdalena would have been slightly miffed at the coment, had she not understood what Damon was implying by that. Though it was unlikely for Klaus Mikaelson to go after her for a reason or another, Mag couldn't hold her own against that kind of opponent. A hybrid Original, nothing less! Living in the same town as she did, for so long!

And how had she missed the whole there-truly-are-monsters-in-the-shadows part, all her life?

What the redhead didn't hear was Alaric's scolding at Damon's teasing, since her cousin was somewhat ghostly. Eventually said ghost sighed.

"You're impossible, Damon."

"Of course I am. I'm pretty sure you said that a good hundred of times since we know each other."

The vampire offered his boyfriend a perfect smile, though it might have been more of a blinding smirk, however Damon managed to do that. Ric threw an imaginary pen at his lover, which the vampire evaded easily. After all, it was an imaginary pen.

"And you can't deny your cousin got the 'Red' part of the 'Little Red Riding Hood' right. She's a redhead, after all. Flaming redhead."

Before the ghost could say anything, and believe him, he had something poisonous ready just for the vampire on the tip of his immaterial tongue at any moment, the front door to the boarding house opened again. The undead and the dead looked back at the entrance, and saw Stefan and Elena there, both frowning at the outside.

"Was that...?"

"Yeah..."

"She seemed..."

"Shaken, I'd say..."

"And she looked at us funny, didn't she?"

Damon raised an eyebrow at the shared speech. It was a bit sickening, truth be told. In his opinion, only twins had the right to do that. God forbid, if he and Ric had ever done that, he'd have cut off both their tongues. Or, maybe only his, considering the teacher's tongue wouldn't have grown back, as he was human... Supposing a vampire's cut-off body part grew back. Damon had yet to test that, and, oddly enough, he wasn't eager to if he couldn't test that on someone else first. Just in case, you know, it didn't grow back.

"Lovebirds, over here! Hello, Earth to Stelena?"

Stefan, Elena and Alaric stared at the vampire funnily, but he ignored their reaction. Damon gestured for the couple to come closer, and eventually they did, though they seemed wary of him.

They had reasons to be, of course.

Stefan hadn't forgotten how his brother had lately been talking to himself, as if Ric had been present. Furthermore, he hadn't forgotten that Damon's lover and anchor to sanity had died not so long ago. While the older vampire wasn't completely gone, because he still had his family and his friends to rely on, Damon hadn't been really stable. His sarcasm had become worse than ever, and he hovered from one mood to another. Not that many victims, yet, but he still had killed one or two people in the last months.

As for Elena, the girl had been busy trying to adjust to her new condition as a vampire, and now getting over her brother's death, but she had seen the devastating effects of Ric's death on Damon nonetheless. She was his friend, after all, and that even though Damon would claim she wasn't more than his annoying little sister of sorts. She knew how to read the suffering in him, almost as well as Stefan did.

Sometimes the young vampire felt guilty for having asked Stefan to save Matt first, thus causing her own death, and the hunter's. She knew it was the best it could have gone, anyway, but she still felt slightly guilty for Damon's loss. It wasn't as if the hunter, the Darkness Alaric had become, would have become cuddly with his former lover again if she hadn't died, and everyone knew that. And Matt was alive; it was important, too. Ric would have liked this outcome rather than living at the cost of Matt's life and of all the vampires' on Earth, Damon, Stefan and Caroline included.

Elena knew all that. But she couldn't help but feel guilty, when she looked at Damon, and saw that strange, agonizing glint in his eyes. And she couldn't help but feel sad, suffocated even, when she turned around to ask Alaric what he wanted for dinner, only to realize he wasn't here anymore.

She had lost too many people, these last three years. First, her parents, then Jenna, then Ric, and now Jeremy! And there was no one to blame for all these deaths, because no one had asked for her parents' accident to happen, and she hadn't asked to be a Petrova doppelganger either.

But she had to live on, as long as she could, and not like Katherine, who had only been a parasite all her life. And Damon needed to do that, too. The problem was, the older vampire tended to go by worse, and all the way to the worst, before getting better. The body count since Alaric's death was suspiciously low, and Elena as well as Stefan were waiting for the moment when Damon would simply explode.

Of course, they didn't know about Ariane's nexus ring. So the couple walked slowly, as one would approache a supposedly tamed beast, supposedly being the key word here. So Damon watched them, barely refraining from rolling his eyes at their caution.

The boarding house's resident ghost snorted in the awkward silence.

"Stelena, really? And what does that make us? Dalaric?"

Damon's eyes darted to his lover, surprising his brother and Elena. He almost retorted something, he even opened his mouth to talk, but he remembered their presence. And even if it was a bit selfish of him – especially after Jeremy's death – he didn't want to share the secret of his seing Alaric before a few months, maybe. It was his private, secret garden, in a way.

So, instead of saying what he had been about to say, he paused, and looked back at the couple.

He still had another thing to tell them, after all.

"I suppose you were talking about Ric's cousin?"

Stefan nodded, his gaze wandering back to the front door, which was now closed, and from which Magdalena had surely gotten away for quite some time already.

"Exactly. She seemed... weird. Like she had eaten something bad. And she looked at us strangely, as if she was seeing us for the first time, you know?"

Damon's smile grew larger, and Elena narrowed her eyes at him.

"You didn't compel her, did you?"

The older vampire faked shock at the inquiry. Compelling people was so not something he'd do, right? And what could he have gotten from Magdalena Haguenhauer, anyway? Besides the promise of a clean murder, or maybe some mind-blowing sex, considering she was Ric's cousin, but anyway.

"I'm so hurt you'd think something like that from me, of all people, Elena!"

The girl gave him a pointed look, and Damon threw his hands in the air, as if in defeat.

"No, seriously, I didn't compel her to murder the first hybrid she meets, though it could have been an idea... Kidding. But she might have overheard a conversation between Ariane and me, and I might have just told her the whole truth about her curse."

"Just her curse?"

"You're completely paranoid, Stefan. And yes, I might have also told her everything about us. You know, vampires, werewolves, hybrids, witches, grim reapers, and blah blah blah."

Anticipating his younger brother's reaction to that avowal, Damon ducked a glare and grabbed a cushion, which he put right before his face. As everybody knew, the cushions in the Salvatores' boarding house were Stefan-proof.

"Why did you do that?! What happened to secrecy, and all that?"

Damon's voice came out a bit muffled. The instructions for the Stefan-proof cushions were clear: the closer to the face of the assaulted one, the better a shield they were.

"I didn't really have a choice; it was telling her, or compelling her. And even if she didn't know it that way, Mag is a cursed woman. She's been deep in the supernatural since the moment she was born. And she currently lives in Mystic Falls, so it's not like she could remain oblivious to it all much longer."

Stefan sighed, and let himself fall in an armchair, soon joined by Elena. The younger Salvatore had offered her to stay at the boarding house for a time, now that the Gilbert house was void of any living presence.

"I guess it had to happen at some point..."

The three vampires spent a quiet afternoon, together, while Alaric watched over them with a small smile. From time to time, Damon would glance at him, and they'd share a calm tranquility with only their eyes. If Stefan and Elena noticed the older vampire's behavior, they didn't comment on it.

They spoke of what was happening lately, in Mystic Falls. Damon, outside of what he had been directly involved in, had not kept up with the latest "news", too busy brooding, amongst other things. Jeremy's death had been hard, because he had gotten... attached... to the boy, but Damon hadn't cared about how the others had been affected. Elena told him about Bonnie's reaction, and though the older vampire tried to act unaffected, it didn't work very well. Caroline and Klaus were still dancing around each other, as it was, and Elijah had disappeared God knew where. Rebekah was still pestering Matt, who didn't seem to mind the attention all that much. Carol Lockwood was doing her best to calm her son down, with the goal of not getting herself – or Tyler – murdered by Klaus, once again. Liz Forbes and Bonnie's father, recently back into the game, and not for the witch's pleasure, were keeping watch over strange events, just in case Silas had really decided to come in town and create chaos, as Kol had claimed he would do before his demise.

Things weren't quiet in Mystic Falls, that was for sure. Then again, when were they quiet?

This evening, just this evening, the three vampires and the ghost pretended, not that all was right with the world, but that they weren't the first concerned.

When the afternoon came to an end, Damon and Stefan started cooking dinner, together. None of them needed to eat, but they needed to pretend they weren't completely different from the humans they had once been. They wanted one evening that went like it did for every other, normal person.

Even if they had a bottle of blood on the table, and one more glass each.

Elena took some time to herself, without anyone to fuel her anger after her brother's death. She did her best not to think about the impending doom that seemed to be her life, not to think about her hatred for Katherine, not to think about the pain that clutched at her heart, and that Stefan barely managed to soothe.

Alaric watched, as always, and he was happy. Despite everything, and in spite of his bitterness at not really being with them, the three vampires were managing. Damon didn't look at him for all the time he cooked, and that was great; it meant he lived not only in the past, but in the present as well. Stefan had finally come to terms with his feeding issues, and was happy with Elena. Elena, though she was in pain, managed to get out of bed every morning, and she hadn't switched off her emotions, as she had threatened to do a few days before.

Alaric didn't really belong with the livings – or the undeads – and though it hurt to see them smile without him, it also made him happy. At least, they lived.

Later, Damon and Ric were alone in the vampire's room. Damon was frowning at the ghost.

"Why should you be the one most obvious in our couple name?"

"Sorry?"

"'Dalaric.'"

"Oh. Well, unless you fancy 'Alamon', I'm keeping 'Dalaric'. And that way, you're first in our couple name, so don't complain."

Damon seemed to think for a moment. Then, he shrugged.

"Not wrong."