Can you believe it guys? 70 chapters. 1,000+ reviews (Which, insane. Never in my wildest dreams, you guys. Thank you). 21 episodes. One to go. Hard to believe this story will be nearly over this time next week. The next time I write, we'll have 22 episodes in the can and we'll be figuring how to bring this home, how in spite of everything, our characters might just make it and have that happily-ever-after thing. We'll see how it goes. In the meantime, thank you for being generally awesome, and enjoy this chapter.

The sound of their footsteps ricocheted off the lockers, bounced disconcertingly around the cavernous school hallway. The decorations from the Decade Dance were exhausted in the light of the new day, helium balloons wilting to the ground, sparkly banners half-torn from their posts. Elena and Jeremy hurried through the deserted halls, beating a familiar path to Ric's classroom. This was just a quick stop to clean up the more obvious vampire hunting gear, since it wouldn't do to have some substitute finding his spring-loaded stake launchers while looking for his lesson plans. As soon as they were done, they'd go back to hunter patrol. Stefan, Damon, and Caroline were already back out searching for him, covering all the old ground again, searching for some sign of the monster. But Elena and Jeremy needed to do this first.

"Do you really believe that isn't Ric anymore?" Jeremy asked. He'd been quiet on the drive over, but had insisted on coming. Elena had let him. She didn't have the heart to leave him in that room, trying to cover those memories over with paint. And it wasn't like the kid couldn't take care of himself—he'd been the one to take out Esther while she and Damon had just stood there gawking. The kid from the stoner pit who'd gotten the shit beaten out of him by Tyler Lockwood was long gone. Elena didn't even know if that was a good or a bad thing. Probably a little of both.

"Ric never would have hurt me, and his alter ego did. Twice. So if that's all that's left since he turned, if that was part of Esther's spell...then yeah, I think he's gone." She hoped that was the case. Damon had been so adamant about it, so firm about the fact that if they saw "Alaric," they had to forget they'd ever loved him, that they had to put him down like a rabid dog. Elena was trying to remember that, trying to mourn her friend even as she remembered that his body was now in the possession of something without empathy or emotion. But it was a struggle. They turned down the social studies hallway. Posters bearing the faces of presidents and other dead guys lined the walls.

"Sometimes I think the universe is punishing us. I wish I knew what we've done to deserve it," Jeremy said. "Neither of us are bad people, so why does all the shit have to happen to us? That's not how karma works."

How could she argue with the boy who had lost his parents, three parental figures, and three girlfriends in the course of a year and a half? He was right. The entire Gilbert family had more than their fair share of suffering crammed into just eighteen months, not even counting what had happened with Johnathan and Samantha Gilbert so many years ago. But Elena didn't have answers about why the family seemed to be on the universe's shit list. Wished she did, but she had the same questions. "Probably a family curse," she said wryly.

"I only wish you were joking," Jeremy said. "But that's probably the most likely explanation. This town."

Elena quirked a little smile as she pushed the door open. For all her enhanced senses, for all her super speed, she still never saw it coming. Rough hands gripped her head, one at her crown, the other beneath her jaw. The pain was brief as her head was pulled brutally to the side. Elena heard her spine crack like green wood. The blackness swallowed her before she even felt the pain.

Elena had thought that so much pain would blur together, becoming indistinct and fuzzy in its overwhelming awfulness. But she had no such luck as consciousness returned. Each pain was specific and unique in its own way—the cold fire in her mouth, the razorblades shooting down her throat and into her lungs, the sharp pains in her neck as vertebrae ground against each other, rearranging themselves into a configuration that would support life, the splintery pain in her hands as her body desperately tried to heal around some foreign intruder in her flesh.

"This was what you wanted, wasn't it? Thought you were pretty bad ass after you killed that hybrid, didn't you? Well here's your chance to keep going, to become the hunter you could be." The voice was familiar, even the rhythm and the cadence of the words were right. But that voice was devoid of warmth, cruel and mocking. Elena managed to tear her eyes open. She wished she hadn't. She sat propped in a desk in Ric's classroom, both her hands staked to the writing surface with number two pencils. But her own predicament wasn't the worst part. Not by a long shot.

In the desk beside her sat Jeremy, slouched and sullen. Not unlike he looked during an actual class, she suspected. There was a shiner on his cheek, angry purple and sickly green. That still wasn't the worst part. The worst part was Alaric standing over him, brandishing that strange silver stake. His eyes were alight with that same zealous fire as Esther's, glowing and righteous. That look, full of pride and fury and hatred, was infinitely worse than the pain that coursed through every part of Elena's body. "Here's a vampire, Jeremy. Kill it," the thing said, gesturing to her.

Jeremy folded his arms tightly across his chest, not even glancing at the stake. "Why are you doing this? If you wanted to kill her, you could've done it the moment she opened the door. Why are you bringing me into this?"

"When that bastard killed Jenna, I promised I'd take care of the two of you." He looked at Elena and sniffed. "There was no saving that one—she didn't just walk into the lion's den, she fucked the lions, too. Now look at her." He threw a disgusted hand toward Elena. "She's one of them now. I can't save her." Ric crouched in front of Jeremy's desk, their eyes level. "But there's still hope for you. I can still keep my promise to Jenna, still raise you like your parents would have wanted."

That tiny part of Elena who had still hoped against hope that Ric was in there somewhere, that he could be redeemed? That part of her died a quick, violent death. She had to get them out of here, or he would kill them both; first her, of course, but then it was only a matter of time before Jeremy did something that stepped too far out of this thing's narrow world view, and he too had to die. Slowly, excruciatingly, Elena began to raise her hands from the desktop. She bit on the vervain gag to stifle her scream of pain, but that only made her tongue sizzle, and she couldn't stay silent, letting out the smallest of whimpers.

Ric slammed both of his hands onto the pencils, shoving them farther into her flesh. Elena screamed through the gag, lightning bolts lancing across her eyes. "Just sit quietly," he said as if he were scolding her for talking during a test. "We'll get to you in a minute."

"What—what do you know about what my parents would have wanted?" Jeremy asked. Elena choked on a sob.

The thing turned back to Jeremy, his voice almost gentle as he spoke the vile words. "They headed the Council, when the Council still remembered its mission. Do you really think they'd be proud of her—hell, proud of you? You've fucked them, befriended them, been kind to them. But you can still be what they wanted you to be. You can still be a Gilbert." Through the shadows clouding her vision, Elena could see him extending the stake again. And this time, Jeremy took it.

"That's it," Alaric cooed. "That's it."

Elena closed her eyes. She wouldn't blame Jeremy, but she couldn't stand to see it, to watch his eyes become empty as Alaric's words and the evil of his ring stole her little brother and left a killer in his skin. At least she'd see her family again. She hoped Damon would be strong enough to carry on without her, that Stefan would be his rock, that they could give each other the courage to survive. She hoped there might still be redemption for Jeremy, that he might come back from this yet and be the strong, sweet, dorky little brother she loved. Perhaps most of all, she hoped it would be over quickly.

The desk screeched against the linoleum floor as Jeremy stood. Soft footsteps. "I'm sorry," Jeremy said. Elena braced herself, her tears mingling with the vervain.

There was a grunt of pain, a clatter as something fell to the ground. "I thought you were smarter than that," Ric said. She wasn't dead. That was surprising. She opened her eyes. Ric held Jeremy's forearm in his grasp. Elena heard something crunch in the boy's arm.

Jeremy winced, but locked his eyes on Elena. "I am," he said.

Elena ripped her hands upward, bellowing as the pencils tore her palms to shreds. But she still had enough faculty left to snatch the glass of vervain, the one he must have used to soak the gag, and smash it against the side of Ric's face.

There was no time for thinking, only for reaction. The smell of Ric's burning flesh sizzled her nostrils, the sound of his screams echoed in her ears. She scarcely noticed. Without thinking, she grabbed Jeremy and whisked them both through the empty hallways. Stumbling foot steps followed them, and Elena moved faster and faster, lifting Jeremy's feet off the floor and carrying him like a rag doll until they burst into the blazing sunshine. Only when they'd reached the far side of the parking lot, only when she saw Ric prowling in the shadowy doorway like a caged panther, only then did she stop. Only then did she put Jeremy down and pull the vervain gag from her mouth, bits of flesh following it. Only then did she scream.

They sat together in the sunlight, Jeremy sprawled on the grass, Elena with her knees drawn to her chest and her back to him. "Are you okay?" Jeremy asked for the thousandth time.

She couldn't look at him. Not because of what had happened in the classroom; he'd done everything right. He'd saved them. But she couldn't look at him because all she could see were his veins, his rapid heartbeat making that blood run and run like a raging river. And she needed that blood. The holes in her hands wouldn't quite heal, her tongue still wouldn't work just right. Until the others got here, until Damon brought her what she needed, she couldn't look at her own brother.

"Will be," she croaked, her throat still raw. "You need to take that ring off, Jer. You need to take it off and get rid of it." What had happened in the classroom, his seeming acquiescence to Ric's madness...it too easily could have been real.

"I didn't mean it, Elena. I'm not crazy; I don't black out. I don't want to...okay, I want to kill vampires, but I don't want to kill you. Or Caroline or the Salvatores." His voice turned hard. "No matter how much those two deserve it."

"Not helping your point," Elena said.

"You know what I mean. And Ric got one thing right—I'm a Gilbert. This is my legacy. I'm keeping the ring," he said.

Elena started to argue, to explain that having a legacy of insanity wasn't exactly a proud family tradition to uphold, but she didn't get the chance. The Camaro roared up. They all tumbled out, one after the other: Caroline had an armful of stakes. Stefan had a crossbow in each hand. Damon had a flamethrower.

"Where is he?" Stefan demanded.

"He was in his classroom, but he could be anywhere now," Jeremy said.

"Oh, Elena, honey, your face," Caroline said with horror.

"Not helping, Blondie," Damon growled. He dropped the flamethrower with a clang and settled down beside Elena. The other three strode off toward the school, pointing at various entrances. Elena vaguely heard them discussing the best methods of attack, how to flush Ric into the open. But none of that mattered compared to what Damon had, what she needed.

Fishing in his jacket pockets, Damon produced two pints of blood. She reached for them with trembling, bloody hands, scarlet creeping across her vision. Damon tugged the tubing free of the bag and held it to her lips. Elena gorged, scarcely noticing when he swapped one bag out for the other. She sighed with relief as the pain finally receded.

"Thank you," she said, wiping her lips as she drained the last drops of the second bag.

Damon seized her hands in his, clutching her wrists so tightly it hurt all over again. He stared down at her bloody, though whole, flesh with fury in his eyes. "He did this?" he asked.

"Don't get mad, Damon; there's no point." She pushed herself to her feet, offering him a hand up. He accepted, pulling her into a rough embrace.

"I'm going to rip his balls off and shove them down his throat for laying a hand on you," he murmured into her ear.

The idea probably should have horrified her. But they were so far past that. Any damage to Ric's body was like burning down an empty house at this point. The things he'd said, the things he'd done...no matter what his twisted, paternalistic feelings for Jeremy, those were just echoes of the feelings the man had once had. The monster had none of Ric's warmth, his courage, his love. Whatever happened to that thing now? It just didn't matter, as long as the threat was removed. Only then could they really mourn their friend and move on with their lives. "I'll help," she said.

He pulled back to look at her, dark veins writhing, smile feral and wild. "God, I love you."

They shared a heated, though tragically brief, kiss. Then she picked up the flamethrower.