Damon slammed Jeremy against the wall of the crypt, pinning the boy against the cold stone with his forearm. Withered, leathery magnolia leaves tumbled to the ground. "What the actual fuck is wrong with you?" he demanded.
"Damon, let him go! It was an accident, Ric just woke up and bit him. You know what it's like when you're in transition," Elena said, tugging at Damon's arm. But he didn't budge, didn't even glance her way. His eyes were fixed on the squirming, coughing, bleeding Gilbert in his grip.
"It wasn't an accident," Jeremy gasped. His face was pale but proud. "I saved Alaric's life—what you two should have done."
"You're brain damaged. Just fucking touched," Damon said. He shook Jeremy, and Elena heard his teeth rattle. "Don't you get it? That's not Ric anymore. That's some thing wearing his face and trying to kill pretty much everyone you've ever met."
"No. Ric wouldn't do that. He just ran away because he was scared, that's all. He'll come around and we'll go back to being a family again," Jeremy said. Elena had to turn away; the hope in his eyes was too desperate, too painful. She wanted nothing more than to turn to Jeremy, look into those brown eyes so like her own and make him forget everything. Take away all the sordid details of his miserable life, all the death and pain, fill his head with new memories, new parents, new loves that hadn't ended in blood and death and fire and send him away, across oceans and continents, to a place where no one even knew the word "vampire." Let him live a life of lies, but let him live a life. But she couldn't. Selfishly, she couldn't send him away again, couldn't take that pain away. But God, she wanted to. More than anything, she wanted to.
Damon's voice was soft, almost gentle. "Ric made his choice. You took that from him, kid. You took that from him." Fangs clicked into place; the familiar smell of Damon's blood, iron and spice, mixed with the must of Esther's blood, the spoiled-milk foulness of Ric's. When Elena turned back to them, Jeremy was wiping his mouth.
This wasn't the time to chastise or berate Jeremy; it sure wasn't the time to mourn (it never was). It was the time to keep moving because, like a shark, if they stopped moving, they'd surely die. "If what Esther said is true, he's trying to kill all vampires. But he can only kill one of the Originals, right? There's only one stake."
Damon popped his head into the tomb, withdrawing a moment later. "That weird silver stake he had is gone. I'm gonna guess Esther did some witch bullshit to it; she seemed to have a plan." He glanced down at the crumpled witch on the ground. Raising one foot, he brought a booted heel down directly on her face. Once. Twice. Three times, until the face had become a gaping hole in a hollow skull. He scraped his boot clean on the grass.
"Two Originals in town, right? One beef jerkified, one blond and bitchy," he said as if nothing had happened. Elena blinked. Great. Rebekah. The only thing that could make this miserable night worse would be Rebekah's callous indifference. Or worse, her rage at what they'd done to Klaus. Perfect. "Better get the bitch out of the way first." He turned to leave.
"Wait, slow down. What are we going to do if we find him? In case you missed it, Ric's like Mikael now. As in, can't be killed," Elena said.
"Don't call that thing Ric," Damon said, his voice so low Elena wasn't sure Jeremy could hear him. Something dark and cold flitted across his face. "Alaric Saltzman died tonight. Don't ever forget that." Then the mask was back. Damon shrugged. "Anyway, Mikael died, all right. Unless you forgot the night of my brother's greatest idiocy. Hey, maybe our siblings can compare notes on what it's like to be complete fucking morons."
"Shut up, asshole," Jeremy said, but it was a heatless, perfunctory gesture.
"Okay, fine. Let's just go find him and end this," Elena said. She was tired of the bickering, tired of the fighting. She just wanted to go home, pull the covers over her head and sleep for a hundred years or more. Once this was over, she just might.
Who was she kidding? It would never be over.
The sun was bright and beautiful. Not a cloud in the goddamn sky. Birds were chirping, like everything was fine. Elena wanted to systematically hunt them down and drain their teeny, tiny bodies to their feathery dregs. Anything to shut up that awful, cheerful singing.
Damon slammed the door shut behind them so hard it rocked the Gilbert house foundations, walls shuddering uncertainly. Jeremy appeared at the top of the stairs, a smudge of paint on his forehead. Why was there paint on his forehead? Elena was too exhausted to even ask. She just shook her head. Jeremy dropped his eyes to the ground and disappeared into the bowels of the house.
Rebekah had fled town; the mansion was a shambles of slashed paintings and shattered sculpture, clothes and crumpled bodies strewn among the wreckage. Damon had called her cell and left a message warning of the danger (why he had Rebekah's number was a question Elena didn't have the energy to worry about just now). Klaus was still sealed in the tomb—they'd heard the soft rattle of chains from within the ghastly prison and a tinny, keening sound of horror that never paused for breath. They left quickly.
The rest of the pre-dawn hours were spent scouring Mystic Falls in all of Ric's old haunts—his loft, the Grill, the witch house, anywhere else they could think of that had held significance to the dead man, or might hold significance to the hunter with his face. Nothing. Just nothing.
"Unless Esther gave him a Prince Albert, he didn't have any day-walking jewelry," Damon said as he yanked his jacket off, throwing it onto the couch. "We've got a few hours to figure something out."
Elena nodded and drifted up the stairs to check on Jeremy. He was in Alaric's bedroom—Jenna's bedroom. He was attacking the wall with primer, a can of the truly hideous green paint they'd used to paint the basement years ago cracked open beside him. "What are you doing?" she asked.
"Painting."
"Oh." Elena picked up a brush. "Why?"
"Because I can't burn this room down like I want to, so this will have to do." Jeremy said, furiously rolling the thick white goo onto the walls.
Elena dipped her brush, delicately stroking at a bit of trim. "I wanted to do it too, Jeremy. I wanted to save him," she said.
"But you didn't. You would have just let him die there, all alone," Jeremy said.
"It was what he wanted. His choice was all he had," she said. Just like it had been all Bill Forbes had. Just like it had been all she had.
"Yeah, and I'm the dick who ruined his life. I got it, Elena." She started to tell him no, that it wasn't his fault, that everything was okay and it would be okay because no matter what he'd done, the parts that were really Ric were gone and somewhere else, somewhere better, but he wouldn't let her comfort him. He never had, really. "Just go. I want to be alone."
She lay the brush down. "I'll be downstairs if you need me," she said. She left.
Damon stood at the liquor cabinet, examining a bottle of bourbon with a critical eye. "Aren't you still drunk? How can you drink any more?" Elena asked as she flopped onto the couch.
"There is not enough drunk in the world right now," he said, settling on a bottle and pouring a glass nearly to overflowing. The man had a point.
"Give me one," she said.
Damon managed to be a bit neater with this one, shoving it into her hand as he collapsed in a chair opposite her. The bourbon tasted of smoke and ashes; it tasted of sweetness and loss. She drank it in tiny sips. Everywhere there were reminders of him: the pile of half-graded tests, the neat stack of Sports Illustrated magazines on the coffee table, the little pot of vervain growing in the window sill, the one he'd tended to so carefully.
"Do you remember that time Ric accidentally set the vervain grenade off in the great room of the boarding house?" Elena asked, swallowing a giggle as she remembered Ric's sheepish grin as Damon had ranted at him about how hard it was going to be to get the smell out of his drapes.
"How could I forget? I couldn't go home for two fucking days," Damon said, taking a great gulp of his drink.
"But you stayed with us and we all got drunk and played Pictionary, you and him against Jeremy and me, and you kicked our asses," she said.
Damon looked up from the depths of his drink, the faintest smile twitching around his lips. "Remember the first day you started training and we were setting up that practice dummy and Ric insisted on drawing a face on it?" he asked.
Elena couldn't stifle the laughter this time; it exploded without warning. "'Your enemy's gonna have a face, Elena; you might as well get used to it,'" she said in Ric's gruff growl.
"Too bad it wound up being cross-eyed. Not the motivation he was looking for, I think." Damon downed the last drops, looking sadly at the empty glass. "Oh, Ric. Ric, Ric, Ric." He set the glass down, head hanging low, fingers gripping his hair. The gesture was so vulnerable, so raw, Elena wanted to look away; hell, wanted to flee the room and leave him to his solitary grief. But she didn't. She stood and grabbed the bottle, refilling both their glasses and perching on the arm of his chair. She hoisted the glass high.
"To Ric, a good man," she said. Without looking up, Damon took the glass. They drank.
"To Ric, the worst vampire hunter ever," Elena said. Damon snorted. Again, they drank.
"To Ric," Damon said quietly. "My friend." They drained their glasses.
"What you said to Jeremy is true. Ric is gone, he's on the other side." She swallowed, pushing the empty glass away, the bitter sweetness lingering on her tongue. "He's with Jenna now." Maybe Isobel, too. Elena didn't know. Ric had loved truly and well, and Elena hoped they were all waiting for him. "He's at peace." He had to be. If anyone had earned their peace, if anyone deserved a blissful eternity, it was Alaric Saltzman. If there was any justice in this world, any of that balance witches loved to talk about, there was one hell of an afterlife waiting for that man.
Damon didn't respond. He wrapped his arms around her waist and buried his face against her side. There were no tears, no hysterics. He held her; she stroked his hair. Strangely, no tears prickled her own eyes, only the gentle tug of loss. She missed him, a dull and physical ache around her heart, but Elena was getting better at this mourning thing. The days ahead would still be hard; there would still be days when the tears came and the loss was almost too much to bear. But Ric would be the first to tell her that she was strong enough to bear the pain, that she just had to put one foot in front of the other. And she would. So would Damon.
When he was ready, he released her, eyes as bright and as hard as cobalt glass. "I know. I know he is. Now let's figure out how we're going to kill that motherfucker."