The Salvatore family crypt was a crumbling heap of gray stone. The family name was emblazoned in bold letters above the door, and dormant magnolias embraced the facade with boney fingers. Esther stood in front of the mausoleum, dressed all in white. Her face was transfixed with joy as she watched the door of the tomb like a bride waiting for her groom.
Damon and Elena skidded to a stop. Elena had worried they they'd have to search every tomb in the cemetery to find Ric, but obviously she shouldn't have worried. Of course Esther was here. Of course she was behind this. Of course her ten minutes of happiness had been too good to be true. "Where is he?" Elena asked. "What did you do?"
"I have given him his fondest wish," Esther said, tearing her eyes from the tomb door. "I have made him the scourge of the undead, the deadliest of hunters. He shall have his revenge on the creatures who took everything from him."
"The fuck you talking about, lady? Ric hasn't staked a vampire since...ever," Damon said.
"The spirit was willing, yet the flesh was weak. I have remedied that weakness. Now, he is capable of doing what my husband could not," Esther said. What the hell did that mean? While Ric might have come to town with the intention of staking every vampire he could get his hands on, that had all changed once he'd realized the situation with Isobel hadn't been as black and white as he'd believed. Now, Ric wanted what they all wanted: to survive, to maybe one day try to be happy.
"You mean getting rid of Klaus? Newsflash, we did that. Problem's solved," Damon said, storming toward her. Esther extended a hand in warning and Damon checked his step with a growl.
Esther turned away from the tomb, the zealous light fading from her eyes. "I unleashed a great evil out of foolish maternal love," she said softly. "I have spent the past thousand years regretting what I did to my children, what I did to the world. It is only now that I am able to correct my error." She floated forward, reaching out to Elena with open arms. "Elena, even you must see the truth of my words. You know what they have done—what you have done. You know the world would be safer if vampires were no more. The world would be safer for people like your brother. Jeremy, isn't it?"
"Don't talk about him. Don't even say his name." Elena hissed, but Esther's words were already worming their way into her heart. Esther was right. The world would be better without them, better if the dead buried their dead and there were no vampires to prey on humans from the shadows, to turn on the people who loved them most. Humans would be safer, the world would be brighter, Jeremy would be happier if they were all gone. That much was undeniably, indisputably true. Yet it wasn't the whole story. Elena wavered. She should attack Esther, should rip her to shreds for laying a hand on her guardian. But she couldn't; Esther was making too much sense.
"Leave Jeremy and Elena out of this—your crazy doesn't concern them. What did you do to Ric?" Damon asked in measured tones, tearing Elena from her guilt-ridden spiral. What the hell was she thinking? Who was Esther to get to decide that none of them deserved to exist? Because they'd wrought evil on the world? By that logic, Esther should kill all the humans while she was at it, creatures who had victimized themselves far more than their vampiric predators ever could. Like any species, there were the good and the bad, and Esther didn't get to decide which was which.
"He will be the instrument of my atonement. It's all thanks to you, Elena. The blood of a doppelganger, living or dead, is a powerful thing. Your Alaric will complete his mission and will die in the service of humanity." A mad smile curved her lips. "Well. He will die again."
Elena heard the whistle of the arrow a bare second before it plunged into Esther's throat. Her eyes were round coins as she fell to her knees. Blood cascaded from her ruined jugular, smelling of must and decay. Her heart beat once, twice more, then was still. She collapsed like a broken marionette.
Jeremy stood behind them, crossbow still raised high, face full of that grim determination Elena had seen only once before, when he'd clutched a cleaver and sent a head rolling across the porch. "Where is Alaric?" he asked in a tremulous voice. "We still have time to save him."
"Jeremy, what are you doing here?" Elena asked. It was the simplest question, the only one she could bear to ask. The other questions were too difficult, and she didn't want the answers. Esther had murdered Ric, done something with the blood Elena had given to her. Selfish, stupid girl. She'd tried to buy her happiness and had wound up destroying them all. Why did the price always have to be so high? But Ric was alive, Ric had called her, and that meant...no, that couldn't be what it meant.
"I heard you two talking about Ric and the cemetery, so I followed. Good thing I did—you were starting to listen to her, Elena." Jeremy accused, tossing the crossbow against his shoulder as he stalked forward. "Alaric! Where are you, Alaric?"
Damon blinked out of his trance and surged to the tomb door. With a negligent yank, he pulled the heavy iron gate open. The three of them stepped into the mausoleum.
"It's about time," Ric said weakly. He sat propped in a dusty corner, the coffins of long-dead Salvatores on either side. An empty bowl sat on a low stone altar; the floor around Alaric was sticky with repellant blood. This blood was wrong, as spoiled and sour as old milk. Clutched in Ric's hand was a strange silver stake, thick veins bulging from its surface. "What the hell happened?"
"Was hoping you could tell us," Damon said. "Didn't anyone ever tell you not to go into tombs with strange women?" The joke was strained, a desperate hope that Esther had lied, that this wasn't exactly what it looked like.
"I...I don't know. The last thing I remember was Stefan, telling him to hit me harder, to make my dark side come out. Then I woke up here, blood everywhere." He pawed at the ragged hole in his shirt. "My ring was gone, and I had this." The stake gleamed in his hand. "I heard yelling, and...I smelled something." The confusion on his face gave way to longing, incessant and insatiable need. That look broke Elena's heart in two. She'd chosen this, she'd asked for this. Ric never would have wanted this life. He might drink with vampires, might respect her choice, but he would never turn out of boredom, as Isobel had, or for love, as Damon and Elena had. Ric's humanity was everything, and now it had been stolen from him in the name of revenge. But Ric was strong. He could adapt, he could learn to survive. She'd help him, and they'd get through this together. They had to.
"It's going to be fine. Everything's going to be fine." Elena turned to Damon. "We have to get him some blood. It's not far to the house, I'll go grab a bag and-"
"I'm—I'm in transition?" He laughed, rusty and thin. "Oh, God is too fucking funny sometimes."
"You are, but hey, this is nothing we can't get through." She had to hold it together for him. He needed someone to be strong now, and she could be that person for him, help him understand what was happening and what he needed to do. "We just have to get some blood and then it'll all be okay."
"No," Ric said. "I'm not going to complete the transition."
"What?" Elena asked.
"You have to!" Jeremy cried.
Damon was silent.
Ric pushed himself to his feet, wincing. "My dark side was dangerous enough when I was a human. If I transition...Elena, you know how it works. That's the part that will become strongest. The darkest part of me will be all that's left. I can't be a vampire."
"You can't leave," Jeremy said. His hands were balled into fists at his sides, entire body trembling. "You can't just abandon us now. We need you, Alaric."
"I don't want to. But this is the best thing for you. After everything that's happened, after everything that I've done...maybe I deserve this," Ric said, his eyes soft as he watched Jeremy.
"What about what we deserve? What about what I deserve? We need you," Jeremy pleaded again.
Elena found her voice. "Jeremy's right; this isn't your fault." Ric hadn't wanted this to happen, had never wanted to hurt anyone. Hell, he hadn't even been able to hurt Damon when push came to shove, had turned his wife's murderer into his best friend. He never would have hurt Bill or Meredith or any of the others if he'd been himself. Ric was a good man who had been overcome by something darker and stronger than he was, just as Elena had been. If she deserved a second chance, then so did he. And she couldn't lose him. Not him, too. Not her last tie to Jenna, not the good man who had taken care of two orphans simply because they had no one else.
"Please, guys. Let's not make this harder than it already is." The words caught in Ric's throat. "You should go. Damon—you'll make sure it goes down the way it's supposed to. Right?" He looked to his friend, eyes shining in the dim light.
Damon stood to one side, brushing his fingers across a simple pine box, back to them all. "Yeah. You two should go."
"So we're just going to lock you in here and wait for you to die? Is that how this is 'supposed to go down'?" Jeremy asked. "Then we're just going to come back to your body, dig another grave next to Jenna's? You don't have to do this, Ric. You don't have to die."
"I'm already dead," Ric reminded him gently. "It's too late, Jer. It's too late." Jeremy's face grew pale. He spun on his heel, beginning to march out of the tomb. "Hey," Ric said.
Jeremy stopped, shoulders shuddering, back still to the teacher. "Don't. Don't give me some crap speech about how I have to be the man of the house now."
"Okay," Ric said. He stepped in front of Jeremy and hugged him. For a moment, Jeremy seemed to have forgotten what it meant for someone to hold him, to just love him as a friend and a son, but his body remembered and he clutched at Ric. Then he fled the tomb.
Ric watched Jeremy go before he turned to Elena, a half smile on his lips. "Thank you," he said.
Elena couldn't contain an incredulous laugh. "Thank you? How can you thank me? You didn't want any part of this, Ric—you gave me your ring back, you moved out, but I forced you to stay and take care of us." Her fault. This was all her fault. More tears sprang to her eyes—how on earth could she have any tears left? Surely she'd cried enough to drown the whole world by now, yet still there were more.
"Taking care of you and Jeremy has been the closest I've come to the life I always wanted." He smiled ruefully. "Not that I did a a very good job at it, considering you've both died twice while I was supposed to be looking out for you."
"You did great." She flung her arms around him. "You did great," she repeated. He didn't have to die; he didn't have to go. She could still go get the blood, pour it down his throat, force him to stay with them, to be the parent and the friend they all needed. But the moment of madness passed. It was Ric's choice. She couldn't force him to stay. But she couldn't force herself to leave. If she let him go, that meant accepting another death, going home to another empty bedroom, another empty chair, another hole in her heart.
"Elena." Damon turned from the coffins. "You need to go now. Your brother needs you." He gave a tiny nod, his face carefully blank, eyes dark and unreadable.
She didn't want to go; she wanted to stay at Ric's side until the bitter end. But that wasn't her role in all this. Ric had turned to Damon in his final moments, knew his friend was strong enough to ensure everything happened for the best. Elena gave a nod of her own and stepped into the chill night.
Heartbeats guided her down the hill and over the little footbridge to the willow tree where Jeremy knelt. If you looked closely, just to the right of the small headstone marked "Sheila Bennett," you could see the gentle heap of soil, the edges of the sod ragged like slowly healing wounds.
Elena hovered outside the curtain of willow branches, unwilling to intrude on Jeremy's solitude. She had no right to even be here. Time passed. Jeremy sat in silence, fingers tangled in the thick grass that grew on the double grave. Finally, Jeremy looked up at her, lips trembling. "What do we do now?"
In an instant, Elena was at his side. He flinched away at the inhuman movement, but Elena didn't yield. "The same thing we always do, Jeremy. We keep going, we don't look back, and we survive."
"How can I not look back? Memories are all I have." Tears spilled out of his eyes. He swatted them away.
The urge to tell him that she'd protect him, that she would never let anything bad happen to him, was nearly overwhelming. She was his big sister; that was her job. But even as strong and as fast as she was now, Elena knew she couldn't keep that promise. "All of the people you love, all the people who are gone, none of them would want you to live in the past. They'd want you to keep living. We'll get through this together, Jer. We have to."
Her brother just shook his head. Heavy footfalls sounded. Damon swayed his way toward them with unsteady steps. Before he'd even crossed the bridge, she could smell bourbon on the breeze. "You're drunk?"
"It's Ric," Damon said, as if that explained everything. "I had a bottle in the car, and what the hell else were we gonna do?" His head was bowed, hair falling free of its pomaded grip and spilling across his eyes. "Besides, it'll be better this way. He's asleep. Just won't wake up, is all."
"But he's still alive?" Jeremy asked. "And you just left him there?"
"It's over. You don't want to remember him that way, kid," Damon said. Jeremy shot him a dark glare and stomped up the hill. They watched him disappear into the tomb. Damon shoved his hands into his pockets, body folded in on itself. Elena wanted to bury herself in his arms, sob into his shoulder as she had so many times before. But she couldn't put her grief on him. When he was ready, she would have to be his rock. Not yet. Damon wasn't ready to mourn yet, and Elena wasn't ready to help him through it. Not when her own pain was still so raw, not when Ric still clung to life.
A scream punctured the night. They raced up the hill just in time to see a flash blur away through the headstones. Jeremy staggered from the tomb, clutching his neck. Blood dripped from between his fingers, but his face was defiant. Triumphant, even. "He's alive. Ric's alive," he gasped.
Before you start messaging me, I know they've indicated that doppelblood doesn't work once you've turned. But (1) did they ever actually try to work magic with vampire doppelganger blood? And (2) none of the doppelblood stuff makes sense anyway, so I decided to just go with it. Hope you don't mind too much. See ya'all after sunset.