Kalaric (Kat/Ric)

A Helping Hand

Summary: Set in S4 when Ric and them are looking to get back to the land of the living, and they find out it has to be done by making things right with the people you've wronged. What if Kat was Ric's ticket out of there? What will ensue?

Ric had just finished sucking at helping someone he'd wronged, when Landon came up with someone else.

"I hear you need quite the assistance," the familiar face from the past commented.

"What are you doing here? You went up in hellfire," he needed to know.

"I did. Then when all the prison worlds were destroyed, I ended up here. I've got what you need. Now, since I want to help even as a human, we just need to ask if the necromancer is worth going anywhere with. That skeleton isn't going to let all four on that boat without a huge price."

"I think she's right. We're the most important ones that can help Hope. And Katherine might have the knowledge to help," the teenager said.

"I have one question. Why do you want to help?" Ric asked.

"Because for her to have turned it off, she has to be in pain. And you know how much of that pain I know personally. I think I can help her. And I've lied so long in my vampire life, I'll know if she's lying or not. Besides, if Rebekah can't help and the others won't, it's just the three of us," she answered him.

"Fair enough. Just try not to backstab any of us," Ric replied. He remembered the story of her life that she'd told Elena not too long before Jenna got caught up in the supernatural mess. He also knew how bad her bad side could get. At the same time, he knew she had 500 sum years of knowledge that he might not have. She had to know something that would bring the tribrid back.

"I assume that's as much of a yes as I'm going to get," she replied, knowing him. "Let's go save Hope from herself."

After getting to the boat the skeleton was on and the coins being weighed, the three of them were able to get on it, heading back to the land of the living.

Kat was in his office, already looking for Hope, not even waiting for them to wake up. But it wasn't in a way that anyone else knew. Since Kat knew that Hope was the only one of her kind, she decided to use an old way of finding a species. Scrolling. This took away the side effects other spells gave. The only thing that could go wrong was if she was cloaked. And she wasn't.

"You didn't waste any time, did you?" she heard the stranger say.

She looked up to look at him.

"Enough time has been wasted. Step one is done. She's found. We just have to split up to get her here. My usual way of forcing a vampire's humanity back on won't work. She's going to need something else done," she explained to the teen she didn't know.

"What's your usual method?"

"The way I taught the Salvatores. Lock or chain the vampire and starve it. Then give it some blood with vervain it to sustain it. Sometimes even add a little sunlight. Pretty rough, but no humanity is dangerous."

"That's excessive," he commented.

"I had to survive her father. I had to become excessive and always be in survival mode to live through it. Otherwise, he would've found and killed me for me escaping before he could become the true hybrid. But enough of a history lesson. You're going to be the first face she sees. If we're lucky, she's going to feel something when she sees you. If we're not lucky, then it'll be me and Alaric. Ric's been killed a bunch by vampires. He's learned how to take care of himself in a vampire fight. Me, I always have something up my sleeve."