Whatever It Takes {Two | Alaric Saltzman}

I Went to the Woods

A whole day had passed and Abigail was still in Dallas. The pictures in frames on the mantle, the built-in shelves around the fireplace, and on the coffee table were not enough to keep her company while she waited for Alaric in the dark. So, she watched the news.

The cycle had filtered through twice: headlines, weather, sports. The flow was anything but what it would have been if Caroline had been there. Which was all she could think about until one report brought her to the edge of her seat.

"Reports coming in of an accident on Route 70 near Glenwood, Arkansas involving a Dallas student charter bus. At least four dead, with more injured..."

Alaric's voice cut into the report from the kitchen, "Did you hear from Caroline?"

"Yeah." Abigail didn't even hear him come inside, but she was walking toward him as if she had. "Josie and Lizzie have no idea that anything is wrong, which somehow makes this worse."

"Every way you're second guessing yourself right now, I already have." He pulled a case out of the locked cabinet. "I was expecting to leave this morning." 

"That would be why after I let you convince me to go to work where my proposal for the exhibit was accepted, by the way, I came back here. I packed for us, I packed the things the girls asked for on the phone, I told Jeremy all about what the sheriff of our hometown has been up to, and then I sat down. I have been staring at the TV, watching the news while I wait for Caroline to call again because I-" Her phone rang, sending her back in the direction she came. She swiped it off of the end table, reading the name only because it was not one she thought it would be. "It's Matt."  

He looked up from the duffle bag of weapons he was packing. "Are you going to answer it?"

"No." She looked at him through the archway. "You answer it."

"He called you."

"Then we'll both answer it." With a frustrated sigh, she answered the phone on speaker. "Hi, you've reached the Saltzmans. What the hell do you want?"

"I'm calling to warn you-"

"Oh, it's a little late for that, don't you think?" Abigail turned away from Alaric, the look on his clean-shaven face one that only made what she was feeling more intense. "We have a family. Kids we need to take care of."

"Yeah, well, I had a family and a life, and now I don't."

Alaric took the phone from Abigail. "Listen to me, we were out. Three years. Three years with no stabbings, no hostage swaps, no supernatural threats breathing down our necks, okay? And that changed overnight. That changed because of something you did."

Matt sighed. "Look, something bad happened, and I'm calling to warn you that I sent some visitors your way."

"No!" The unicorn and the teddy bear were still in the fort, so she moved them to the rest of their things. "We're about to leave to meet our kids who had to flee the only home they've ever known in the middle of the night." 

"This affects everybody," Matt said. "And I'm three states away."

"Hang up." Her free hand balled into a fist. "Right now."

Just as he hung up the phone, the doorbell rang. She shook her head as he sighed, following him to the door with heavy footsteps. It was Valerie. Valerie and an unconscious Rayna.

At the dining room table, Abigail said, "So, you're telling us there was a way to transfer Stefan's scar to Damon, but Damon, being Damon, had this plan that fell through just before Stefan's soul was sucked back into the Phoenix Stone and now..."