Try {One | Alaric Saltzman}

Bringing Out the Dead

Abigail had taken what once felt like the safest part of the day and turned it into something that wasn't. A morning run, a drive to work, a stop for coffee; whatever routine a person stuck to, she interrupted it. Damon was right by her side, repeating the same things in different degrees of sarcasm that wouldn't have been thinkable when they started their early morning trips out of town.

Snatch, eat, erase. It was easy until it wasn't, yet slowly but surely, she was gaining control. There was a part of her, the human part, that favored blood bags, but there was another part of her, one that was growing stronger, one that was driven by the hunt.

Mystic Falls was getting closer faster than it should have, but with Damon behind the wheel she wasn't surprised. The radio was blaring, her hair was whipping in the wind, and the feeling that settled in the pit of her stomach was not for what it should have been. She couldn't hide it from him, not now that he was paying attention, so she reached for the volume dial.

"We're vampires. We're a predatory species. We enjoy the hunt, the feed, and the kill. When the guilt gets too bad, we switch off our humanity and we revel in it." He turned the radio off completely. "That's what makes me able to drink my fill, leave someone breathing, and not rip their head off like my brother. That I can revel in it. I can have fun."

She looked up at the sky, sinking further into the leather seat without the confines of a seatbelt. "Maybe everyone is right. Maybe I should have done all of this with Caroline."

"We both know that would only make you feel worse. That you would take everything she said and spin it until..." He used his free hand to drop her visor down. "You couldn't look at yourself in the mirror for feeling the way you do."

"Thanks for putting it lightly." She flipped the mirror away, ignoring him as he snickered. "I don't feel bad at all, not about what we just did. That's the problem."

"You don't feel bad because you haven't killed anyone, which, by the way, is a really big deal." Shrugging his shoulders, he hummed. "So, guess I'm good at this after all."

"Fine! Do you want me to say it?" When she looked at him, she knew he was waiting for it. "I like it!"

"Of course, you do." He smirked. "And it's because I taught you how to have fun."

"You and I are lying to everyone about feeding on people." She looked down at her interlocked fingers. "And I've gotten really good at lying."

"Everyone but Alaric."

"Yeah," she scoffed. "He's not exactly happy about it, is he?"

"Look, you can't learn to control it if you don't experience it." He let go of the wheel only to slam his hands back onto it a second later. "God! Be selfish for once in your life or sooner or later you're not going to have a choice."

She shook her head. "Don't try to turn me into someone I'm not."

"You do realize when I say that to you, you ignore me."

"No, Damon. When you say that to me it's because you know I'm pulling you back to the twenty something year old who got caught in Katherine's trap. That I'm pulling you back to who you really are." Now it was her with an expression that was totally predictable, but not at all what the other wanted to see. "You want to be the bad guy, and you were for a long time, but you don't have to be. Not anymore."

He pursed his lips and looked back to the road. "I undaggerd Elijah."

Alaric was shuffling around the kitchen when Abigail slipped inside through the backdoor. He was already dressed for the day although the few articles of clothing that he'd left there in the summer didn't match and were not fit for the weather. She knew he hadn't heard her, that he wasn't doing what he did the night they found the Lockwood cave, so she let her feet follow the path her mom's did when she found her dad in the kitchen.