There's a loud crash close to him, porcelain hits the ground and shatters, pulling him out of a deep sleep. Alaric jumps off the couch before he is even aware that he's awake, banging his knees painfully into the coffee table in the process.

"What the hell?" he yelps, swaying, fighting to keep his balance. His feet are tangled in the covers that have somehow ended up on the floor next to him and he almost ends up on his ass when the room tilts on its axis from a sudden case of vertigo and he can't really move to compensate for it.

For a too long moment he has no idea where he is, doesn't recognize the room or the furniture, caught on the threshold between the oblivion of sleep and sudden awareness. He blinks, runs his hand through his hair and forces himself to focus, and slowly, piece by piece, reality starts to make sense again. Green covers, leftover pizza on the coffee table, the couch from hell—the Gilberts' house.

He looks up, toward the kitchen, where a figure is standing in the middle of the room, frozen on the spot, despite Alaric's earlier shouting. Jeremy is staring at something that has to be next to the freezer but isn't in Alaric's line of sight. He looks awfully pale, shocked, almost as if he's just seen a ghost.

"Jeremy?"

At the sound of his name the boy turns to face him, blinking dazedly. "Huh?"

"You okay?"

Jeremy frowns, as if he has no idea what Alaric is talking about, then his lips pull into a guarded, kind of nervous smile. "Yeah, sure, I just—uhm—I dropped my plate… it slipped…" He shakes his head. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you up."

Alaric senses that he's missing something, but before he can say anything Jeremy moves out of sight and starts to pick up the broken plate.

Alaric sinks down on the couch, staring off into the distance for a second as he tries to get his bearings and his racing heartbeat back under control.

The evening is a rather vague memory, he'd come 'home', waited for the kids to show up, which they didn't, because Jeremy was working late at the Grill and Elena was over at Bonny's—Caroline's?—on some girls' night. He'd had pizza all by himself, fought hard not to feel too pathetic because they apparently didn't need him, at least not this night, and then… he'd fallen asleep, on the couch, just like that, no alcohol, no TV, just him, being so bored by his own company that he'd nodded off. Great.

He groans and flops back against the couch, throwing an arm over his eyes. This night is officially the new low of his existence...

Not that the days are any better. When he's not at the boarding house he's here, doing the normal, the usual things. He goes shopping, he does the laundry, he takes out the trash, he picks up the newspaper in the morning… at a house that's not his, for a family that doesn't exist anymore and two kids who are just as lost and helpless as he is. He pretends him being there makes a difference, makes him at least a little useful and helps them to feel not as alone, but deep down he isn't sure, doesn't really know anything anymore.

This is what Jenna would have wanted him to do under these circumstances, and it feels right to do it. And so he does, he cleans the dishes, orders pizza for dinner and he's there. For them, for her—but not for himself.

If it wasn't for the kids, he'd probably just leave town. Get a new job somewhere else, some big city where the odds of him stumbling over things that go bump in the night are about as high as being the victim of an actual animal attack in Mystic Falls. Somewhere where he could put all this behind him and move on, literally, get a chance at a normal, vampire-free life.

It is a little ironic that the one person who is holding him together these days represents everything he yearns to get away from.

The nights with Damon are… different. First, of course, there is sex, every night, good sex, sex that usually does the trick and knocks him out for a few hours, much to Damon's never ending amusement. "Fucked you senseless again…" he whispers in Alaric's ear in the mornings and he never figures out if he's feeling insulted or grateful about the smug tone in Damon's voice. Probably both.

But, as much fun as those nights are, there is something else, something more satisfying, more real to him than physical relief. It has taken him a long time to identify it, to put a name… a feeling to it.

It's peace.

For some strange reason that will probably elude him forever, he's at peace with Damon close to him. It makes no sense, Damon hasn't changed, he's every bit the same snarky, extremely frustrating and not to mention incredibly self-centered bastard who has the ability to rile Alaric up like no one he has ever met before. And still… something about the vampire puts his mind at ease and lets him rest, even when they're going over police reports of the most gruesome kind to track Stefan.

Maybe it's because he doesn't have to keep secrets from Damon. Maybe it's because he doesn't have to be strong for him, to pretend he's okay and getting better when he really just wants to hit himself over the head until he forgets about everything. Whatever it is, he doesn't care, he lets it go, it's not for him to think about or understand, it's just there, it's one of the few things that keeps him, if not exactly sane, then at least stable enough to get him through the days.

His life is strange.

"Wake up, mate, I have a message for you to deliver…"

The voice drawls in his ear, so close, so very real that he jumps and opens his eyes, forces himself to take in his surroundings, to realize that he is not in his apartment, that Klaus is not there, that he's no longer helpless.

Sometimes, when he's really tired—or drunk—flashes of what happened rise to the surface of his mind. Images, memories, smells—pain… Klaus' voice comes back to haunt him, whispering into his ear, words he never actually heard from him but which still frighten him to the point of where he needs to get away, from everything, as far away as possible so that the words won't catch up with him, won't be able to hurt him again—

He has no idea how to deal with it, there's no one to talk to, no support group for ex-meatsuits—Damon's term—no literature to help him find a way to cope with it. He tries to ignore it, suppress it as best as he can, but the memories—the voice always finds a way back.

He's never sure what's real and what's not, he doesn't just remember what happened to him, he relives it. The panic of waking up to a stranger looming over him, looking down at him with an indifferent gaze and so much power over him that he can't even blink if the witch doesn't allow it.

"You'll do… I guess…"

How he couldn't move an inch, how he was screaming in his head, all the time, scared out of his mind, trying to move, to get away, to do something—and the blood, again, the blood they'd forced into him, that had burnt its way through his veins while he just sat there, feeling his hold on himself slip away with every heartbeat until he was starting to fade—

"NO!"

It's like waking from a bad dream, he bolts upright and stumbles away from the couch, heartbeat racing, breath rushing in and out of his lungs so fast it's making him dizzy—

This time he goes down, he loses his balance and falls to the floor, barely avoiding smashing his head into the damned table. He lies on the floor, panting, fighting to get some sort of control back, mind spinning, only one thought loud enough to be heard over the rushing in his head.

I have to put an end to this. I have to make it stop.