Whatever It Takes {Two | Alaric Saltzman}

I Would for You

Caroline smiled at Abigail, who had a diaper bag slung over each shoulder, and Alaric, who was carrying the car seats, as they entered her hospital room, chuckling as she exclaimed, "It must be time for another check-up!"

"Actually, that thing I was going to tell you last night?" Abigail did not drop the bags as Alaric put down the car seats. "It can't wait any longer."

"What's going on?"

"We're leaving for Dallas today."

Shaking her head, Caroline said, "You weren't supposed to leave until the end of the summer."

"We don't care. After everything that has happened, we decided the sooner the better. And when we saw their little faces yesterday, sooner meant now," Alaric said. "We got approval to finish the semester remotely, we got out of our lease, the guy I sold my car to picked it up last week, the trailer is loaded and hitched to the back of Abigail's car, our house is ready, and-"

"Do you know how hard it is to travel with one newborn, let alone two?" Caroline asked. "Two car seats, two feeding schedules, crying in surround-sound, not to mention the driving part."

"And stopping every ninety minutes," Abigail added. "We get it."

"You guys are moving a thousand miles away. There isn't going to be anyone you know within five hundred miles of you in either direction. You're going to need help." Caroline sat all the way up, more like she did when she was human than when she wasn't, but they hadn't taken offense to her words in the way she thought they did. "I just mean you're going to be busy and in that list of things you guys made sure to do, hiring a nanny wasn't one of them."

She took a hesitant step forward. "Well, we hired a nurse to come with us in the meantime."

"A nurse? Who?" Caroline raised her eyebrows. "Frankie with the heart murmur? Or Jarica, the perpetual boyfriend-texter?"

"Jarica."

Caroline scoffed. "Come on!"

"Do you have a better idea?" Alaric asked.

"Me!" Caroline pointed at herself. "I'm the better idea."

"But, uh, you just had a C-section."

"And I'm all healed up. That is the one and only perk of a vampire pregnancy. I can either sit here, alone, freaking out that my boyfriend is somewhere in this country trying to outrun a Huntress that will stop at nothing to kill him, or I can be useful." Caroline looked between them. "It's up to you."

The drive from McKinley, Virginia to Dallas, Texas was seventeen hours without stops, so, seeing as it had already been that long and they were only halfway there, they had rotated drivers so many times that they were back to their original post. Alaric was driving, managing to avoid the traffic altogether, Caroline was sitting in the passenger seat talking to Matt on the phone, or trying to at least, the twins were in their car seats in the second-row captain's chairs, and Abigail was sitting in the middle spot of the third row. Whimpers turned to cries as they crossed into Tennessee, and in the time it took for them to realize one of the babies had made a sound, both of them were screaming.

"What do you mean you don't know where Rayna is? She's wherever Stefan is," Caroline said over the noise. "What? Sorry, I'm in a literal bell jar of baby noises."

Without unbuckling herself, Abigail put a comforting hand on each baby as she spoke into the front seat, "I think they need to be fed and changed. Are you guys hungry?"

Alaric looked at her through the rearview mirror. "No, maybe, yes? I don't know. We should probably just stop."

The diner they found off of the highway was poorly run yet filled with travelers. They were sitting in the only booth that was open when they arrived, Josie to Abigail's left and Lizzie to Alaric's right with Caroline across from them. So much had changed since the last time they found themselves together in the booth of a diner yet so much was the same, so when Caroline made it back from the search for ketchup, they didn't even let her get out a word.