Forget All, Remember None | slow updates

RHYSAND ABERNATHY

"Ah," Damon said, almost smirking as he caught Alaric Saltzman, standing in the dimly lit high school hallway. "You look a lot more alive than I last recall having left you. It seems as though Rhysand was correct about the Gilbert ring."

"You can try to hurt me all you want, but you won't be able to." Rhysand rolled his eyes, coupling it with a scoff. Arrogance could be fun when coupled with a bit of alcohol and the right person, but it was never quite so much a joy when it was coupled with stupidity.

"You interpret him wrong, Saltzman. Killing you is at the top of the list of the things that Damon is capable of. The chance that such an opportunity might come into play is one that he hopes for, too," Rhysand cautioned. "Believe me, this hill is not the one to die on, especially considering that the end result is Damon taking off your ring and snapping your neck. It is to my understanding that you cannot come back again if the ring is not on your finger, so agreeing with us may very well be in your list of prerogatives." 

"Ric, please," came Elenas voice from behind them. "Stefans life is at risk. We wouldn't be asking you otherwise, I swear."

Alaric sighed, glaring at both Rhysand and Damon before leading the trio into his classroom, the only light throughout the space being the lamp, facing down on one corner of his desk.

"Weapons is what you need, right?" He asked.

Rhysand shook his head. "Damon and I can't go into the house where Stefan is being kept because we're vampires and that puts our lives at risk. Elena can't go in because she's a Petrova doppleganger. It leaves you, Saltzman. Properly equipped to handle it—"

"And putting my own life at risk!"

"You have the Gilbert ring, relax," Damon said. "You die, give it a few hours and you're back, good as new. Don't try to fight Rhysand on this. If you cross him, you cross me, and I tend to practice being a lot more lethal than he is."

"Well then, it pains me to say that I can't be of assistance."

"This is Stefan, Ric," Elena said again. "I promise, we really wouldn't be here otherwise, but it's fucking Stefan. That makes a world of difference."

"Again, sorry. I can't help you."

"Pearl is the name of the vampire who's in charge of the home," Rhysand said. "Ask her politely, and I'm sure she'll have a world of things to say about Isobel." Whether or not it was a lie wasn't something Rhysand hadn't yet bothered to decipher. He was saying it mostly just to get Alaric to agree to the terms, knowing that the only other option was compulsion, which would prove a literal impossibility provided that Alaric was on vervain.

"Lies might work on others, Mr. Abernathy, but they certainly don't work on me."

"How do you know that I'm lying?"

"He doesn't," Damon said. "I'd assume that he knows that the only way to find out is to see Pearl, which, of course, involves going to the house, but then again, it's like you suggested. The Gilbert ring could lead to gaps in memory, or gaps in judgement?"

Alaric scoffed. "That's not going to work."

"I'm a very convincing person, so it might just."

Alaric pulled two duffle bags from underneath the desk, sighing as he did. 

"Fine," he said, unzipping the bags as he placed them on the desk. 

"Vervain filled tranquilizers, a few stakes? I think we're set to go," Alaric asked, pulling out a few of the weapons and looking over them.

"I get in, grab Stefan, and get out," Damon said.

"Your 'genius plans' aren't nearly so genius as they used to be," Rhysand said. "That's fucking stupid, Damon. Going into that house, when theres practically a guarantee that you'll encounter vampires no less than two hundred years older, two hundred years stronger, than you are? You're guaranteed a death sentence if you do it that way."

"I'm pretty good at being stealthy," Damon said as Elena picked up a dagger.

"Elena, you'll get yourself killed if you go in."

"I'll distract them, then," Elena said. "Give Damon a bit more time, a bit of a leg up."

"Absolutely not," Alaric said. "The minute the vampires smell your blood, you're gone. No way."

Elena sighed.

"I'm at least going to the house with you," Elena said. "He's my boyfriend, Alaric. I'm not going to stand by idly as he gets hurt. No fucking way."

"I admire your commitment a lot," Rhysand said. "Though I will say that your willingness to get yourself killed is something I admire a lot less. You can come with us if you must, but if you get yourself killed, Damon and I aren't planning your funeral."

Elena grinned.

"Thank you."

Rhysand shook his head as the four of them went to leave, exiting the classroom and heading to the car that waited outside.

--

"You and Damon read that one together, didn't you?" Stefan asked a while later. "The one you're thumbing through was his copy."

Rhysand allowed himself a single, reminiscent sort of smile.

"We did, yeah," he said. "I was trying to get him to realize that Austens prose is the exact opposite of insufferable. Back then, I think I called it 'trying to make Damon Salvatore see sense.'"

"Do you ever miss it?" Stefan asked. "Your life before everything happened?"

"If you're talking about my life before I was turned in 1865, I cannot. Those memories were taken from me, so missing my days as a human is not possible. If you're referencing that thirty year period of bliss I had with your brother, the answer is yes. I miss it, and I miss it everyday." It was impossible not to, really. Those days were some of his best, and there would never be a part of Rhysand that didn't hold a love for Damon Salvatore that ran so deep it was sometimes terrifying.

"Why not go for it again?"

"I live in fear of Klaus Mikaelson," Rhysand said. "I live in fear that when he finds me again, he'll kill me. I lived in fear of that ten years ago when everything happened, afraid that he would kill me or Damon because falling for one meant abandoning the other. I was almost right back then. I would've been right, had Klaus listened to Damons demands to hurt him instead of turning around and nearly killing me. I don't want to go through that, I don't want Klaus to force Damon to have to make a choice that he could easily disregard, ever again." 

"You're an honorable guy, Rhysand," Stefan said.

"I appreciate you for saying that," Rhysand said as he put the book on the shelf, his heart weighing down with the action. He wanted to keep a hold of it, to keep thumbing through the pages and grinning at Damons annotations as he reminisced, but he didn't. It was best to let go of the past rather than to hold onto it, but acknowledging that made him feel hypocritical. He'd been holding onto his past with Damon since things ended, had been holding onto it since he'd returned to Mystic Falls. "I understand that it's your house, but—"

Stefan laughed. "I'll leave you to a few hours of quiet contemplation," he said. "It's not just mine and Damons house, either. It's yours, too. You live here. You get a say in things." Rhysand did not look at Stefan as he left. He merely walked to the small table in one corner of the living room wherein alcohol was kept. He poured himself a glass of brandy, objected to stare at the bookshelves once again.

Rhysand had been through a tremendous amount of pain the day that Damon had confronted Klaus. As he stood, reading titles of a variety of books off of their spines, he could feel that pain in memory, attacking his bones and making him yearn for death, just as it'd been that day.

He took a sip of the brandy he'd poured.

The only time that Rhysand Abernathy had ever regretted falling in love with Damon Salvatore was the day that Klaus Mikaelson took it to be his responsibility to break all of his bones as punishment for abandoning him. As he remembered the day ten years after it'd happened, the regret had freed itself from his bones entirely, been replaced by a regret for choosing to go through with the transition, the regret for not having thought to be careful when he decided to go for a swim, the regret for having decided to swim at all.