Try {One | Alaric Saltzman}

Rage Against the Dying of the Light

A picnic in the cemetery didn't seem like a thing to celebrate, yet Abigail, Alaric, Elena, and Jeremy were doing just that. A new blanket was under them, the same but different than the one that they'd grown accustomed to, there wasn't a picnic basket, no, the brown paper bags in the middle of the circle were from the Grill, and the stories that were passed between them couldn't possibly be enjoyed by any other group of people.

Through a full mouth, Alaric mumbled, "Oh, my God."

Jeremy held up a French fry, nodding his agreement.

Elena laughed. "No grease on the Other Side, huh?"

"You have no idea how much I've missed this." Alaric held up a bottle of bourbon. "And this." He kissed Abigail. "And that."

Jeremy reached for the bottle, but Abigail grabbed it before he could. "You wish!"

"I'm dead." He gave her a goofy smile. "What are you gonna do? Send me to boarding school?"

"Well," Alaric said, "at least you'd have a place to live."

Smiling, Elena threw French fries at them. "You all suck!"

"It's good to see you smile. I wasn't sure we were gonna see that again."

She took a deep breath. "I did some pretty terrible things."

"Well..." Abigail looked down at her fidgeting hands until Alaric's encompassed them completely. "So did I."

"Hey, we have a no crying rule," Jeremy reminded them. "We only have until tonight."

Elena's phone rang. "It's the Grill. It must be Matt."

"Hello, Elena," a familiar, unexpected voice came through the phone, "It's your dead friend, Connor. You remember me? We want Silas, and we want the cure."

"I don't know where they are, so I guess I can't help you."

"Huh. Well, you know who's gonna need some help? Everybody here at the Mystic Grill for graduation brunch. So, you either give me what I want or they die."

Alaric leaned toward Abigail, whispering, "I'll take care of that bastard."

When Abigail walked into Damon's room, he was looking at himself in the mirror. She closed the door behind her, something she only did to give a message to the other vampires in the house. One of privacy.

"Hey."

"Hey." He faced her more dramatically than she would have liked. "You hear Qetsiyah found all her little minions on the Other Side and reminded them of their supernatural destiny? To cure Silas, and then kill Silas."

"Yeah, I also heard there's a dead, not dead, dead again Hunter in the basement." She had been speaking quickly, rushing through her words until they came to a complete stop. "But that's not why I came up here."

"Then why'd you come up here? Are you okay?"

"Yesterday I was, today I am, but tomorrow?" She shrugged, shaking her head slowly. "How could I be okay?"

"I don't know. I just know it would really suck if you passed me up as a killer. Not that it's a competition or anything, unless you want it to be." He was laughing and, although that was something she almost sought out in moments like these, she didn't want him to be. "I mean, I am-"

"Damon, I-" She forced her way into his arms, not giving him a choice but to support her weight. "Thank you. Thank you for looking for me. Thank you for bringing me home."

"I wasn't going to stop. I couldn't. And not just because of Elena, Jeremy, all of your friends, or the ghost of Alaric Saltzman." All the humor that had laced his words was gone, he was helping her back onto her own two feet, and his eyes, the eyes she once feared, were what told her he was speaking the truth. "I wasn't going to stop because you are my best friend."