ACT TWO; TARGET IN SIGHT
SCENE FIFTEEN; THE ALTER EGOS HAVE IT
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THE SECOND SHE GETS SIGHT OF ALARIC, SHE LEAVES KLAUS'S SIDE TO STAND BEFORE HIM. The Original instinctively begins to reprimand her, but he saves them both the time that the ensuing bickering would waste.

Instead, he turns his attention to Stefan, who's watching the two new arrivals warily. "Well, this is depressing, isn't it?"

Stefan stands, seeming to have the same train of thought that Klaus had of stopping Salem, but with the glare she gives him he quickly holds his hands up in surrender and lets her approach Alaric.

"Oh, and I found this upstairs," Klaus holds the white oak stake in his hand, shaking it in front of the vampire's face. "Now, by my count, there should be one more."

"Yeah, well, it's gonna take a little more time."

"Why? Because we're waiting for that one to pass out?" Klaus gestures haphazardly to Alaric, eyes lingering for a moment when he sees the history teacher's lips part around murmured words that Salem is mindlessly nodding along with. "No, thanks. I think I'll just kill him."

The threat is an empty one, and he's sure Stefan knows it as well, but it does its intended job in getting Salem's attention back on him. He gives her a pleased look as she glares at him, his mind oddly content to have her attention on him so long as it meant she was still there with him.

"Then you won't know the location of the other stake," Stefan reasons with the Original, shifting closer to Alaric.

"I can live with that,"

"No, you can't," Salem's tone is overly sweet and the warning is heard clearly by him as Stefan speaks over her.

"Well, I can't. When we staked Finn, we discovered that killing an Original vampire killed its entire bloodline. Now, I don't know which one of you I'm descended from, but I'd really rather not find out by dying, so why don't we just find the stake and destroy it so we can all be safe?"

Klaus sighs, his eyes fluttering in a roll. "So, the fate of the entire vampire race depends on you finding a stake? And to get it we need you to pass out?" His eyes shift to Alaric who looks at him warily. "Which means that I feel totally justified doing this," 

He stalks towards Alaric, hands reaching for the man's neck, but yellow wisps of magic wrap around his wrists and he groans frustratedly, eyes fluttering in a roll as they land on Salem. "That was terribly rude of you, darling."

"I can handle this, Klaus," Her eyes shift behind Klaus to Stefan. "Just let me have a few minutes with him."

"Salem,"

She grits her teeth, dropping her hold on Klaus to push him away. "Just let me do this, alright?"

Klaus reluctantly nods, backing up slowly as Salem lets go of him and pulls Alaric down to the ground beside her. The two depart, leaving her alone with Alaric.

The history teacher heaves a sigh as she rests her head on his shoulder, her fingers fumbling mindlessly with the hem of her shirt.

"You don't have to defend me, you know," Ric's voice carries softly through the cellar, hoarse from exhaustion. "It'd probably be easier to just snap my neck and hope that Evil Me wakes up." 

Salem shakes her head, more or less just rubbing her cheekbone on his shoulder in a jilted action that makes her scrunch her face up in discomfort. "I'm not going to let him snap your neck just because he likes to prove a point. He could learn some humility."

"Well, it's not like you're with him because of his kind heart,"

Salem scoffs incredulously, though she lifts her head up to look at him with the first genuine smile she's had in days, that he happily mirrors. "Asshole,"

"You love me," 

"Sadly," She shakes her head with a sigh, a teasing glint in her eyes making her irises gleam in the dim lighting.

He nudges her with his elbow and she laughs softly, nudging him back as he slouches down on the wall, eyes fluttering tiredly.

Salem sighs, concern filling her gaze. "Why don't you lay down?"

He doesn't open his eyes, but his lips quirk in a smile at her obvious concern. "Room service forgot to bring me a pillow."

Salem looks around, rolling her eyes when she realizes he's right. With a sigh, she tugs his arm down, making him finally open his eyes to look at her confusedly. Silently, she gestures to her lap, and his eyes widen.

"Salem, you're still healing–"

"Shut up and lay down before I call Klaus back in here to snap your neck." 

Alaric snaps his mouth shut, giving her a glare that she smiles at. Slowly, he shifts his weight and reclines towards the floor until his head is resting on her thighs where her legs are extended flat on the floor.

His eyes unwillingly close again as Salem rests a hand atop his head, gently running her fingers through his hair as her own eyes flutter tiredly.

It's silent, nothing but the faint lull of soft breathing for a moment before Ric speaks quietly into the room. "I thought you were dead."

Salem's eyes open and she looks down confusedly, already being met with Ric's tired, but fear-filled gaze. "What?"

"When I found you that day," His hands are folded together on his chest, and she sees his fingers clench together out of the corner of her eye. 

Her breath hitches briefly and she rests a hand atop his clenched ones, feeling the tension seep out of him at the touch. "Oh, Ric. I'm so sorry."

He shakes his head, the action stilted from how his head was resting in her lap. "I thought you were dead, and there was so much blood– I just, I didn't know what to do. I couldn't stop thinking about what I would do if I lost you."

"You didn't though," She smiles, the action forced. "I'm alright." 

"Are you?" His eyebrows twitch in a furrow and she shifts beneath him uneasily. He'd always been able to read her, but for once she was hoping he'd just drop it. "Salem? Are you alright?"

She almost laughed at him, restraining the action because it would just open up a new line of questioning she didn't have the energy to deal with.

It was hard to imagine the thought of being alright anymore, after everything that had happened recently. Her unconscious moments were spent in a torturous loop of reliving her mother's behavior, of her biggest fears coming to life. She'd wake in the middle of the night in a panic, clutching at the wound on her stomach while refusing to look at her own hands because they were the hands that got every person she cared about killed.

Rebekah and Klaus both seemed to be walking on thin ice around her now, keeping things from her and talking in hushed tones every time she was nearby. It seemed to slip their minds sometimes that they weren't the only ones with enhanced hearing, so their secrecy was practically useless.

Klaus didn't seem to mind being around her, but she couldn't help but become overwhelmed with guilt when they were alone too long. He was so angry at Finn that he had no hard feelings over his death, but Salem couldn't even relish in it along with him. Kol's words had become a nightmarish mantra on repeat in her mind, replaying every time she tried to tell herself differently. Klaus would never love her, she felt as if she'd always known that deep down, but if she told him the truth about everything that happened, he'd hate her.

Are you alright, Salem?

The thought is comical, the longer she thinks on it. She's hiding the fact that in an attempt on her life, she lost the baby of a hybrid that shouldn't even be able to get someone pregnant, her best friend has a murderous alter ego, and there is almost always a threat to her well-being every time she gets out of bed in the morning.

How could she possibly be alright?

She wants to scream all of this out, to try and get the weight off of her chest, but she doesn't. Instead, she just gives Alaric a smile and pats his cheek reassuringly. "Of course I'm alright. Aren't we all used to almost dying by now?"

He seems like he wants to push her further, but her words do the job of distracting him and he huffs a slight laugh in agreement. "Yeah, I guess you're right."

Salem clears her throat, eager to change the subject from herself. "How's Meredith?"

Alaric hums, a small smile grows on his face. "She's good. Supportive. Still attracted to me even though I'm murdering her exes."

She chuckles lightly, nodding along with his words. "It could mean something that she's still attracted to you after all of this. She's probably a closeted killer herself." 

"Come on," Ric laughs a bit, fond exasperation in his tone. "Why don't you like her? Give me one good reason, Salem. I promise I'll hear you out."

Salem looks down at him, her palm resting against his heartbeat that's pulsing steadily through the fabric of his shirt. She shakes her head, searching her mind for any sort of answer. Truth be told, she doesn't not like the woman. Especially after everything that happened in the hospital, she likes her more than she probably should, which is what worries her the most.

"I just want you to be safe." She finally answers, settling on a half-truth. "After everything we've been through, I think we both deserve a bit of a break. I want you to be happy, but I'd rather you be alone if it meant you'd be safer." 

"Well, your caution is appreciated. If I ever have a murderous girlfriend, I know who I'll call."

Salem hums, the corners of her lips wavering in their gentle smile. "Close your eyes," 

He furrows his brows, looking up at her with a gleam twinkling in his forest eyes. "Why?"

Salem's smile falters, but he misses it when he blinks and she lets out a short breath. "Just do what I say, Ric. Don't be difficult." She keeps her tone purposefully light, but her fingers twitch above his heart.

"Okay, okay," He does as told, lids fluttering shut. "Are you gonna do some witchy magic on me?"

"Maybe," Her fingers skim his chest for a moment before she returns her palm to his chest, pressing it flat and firm over his heart. Slowly, a yellow hue lights her olive skin and her hand begins to glow where it lays.

Her irises bleed yellow and she inhales sharply when his pulse fills her ears, beginning to slow with each pulse her magic makes. Eventually they sync, yellow hue in tune with his steadying heartbeat and Salem looks down right as Alaric's eyes snap open, confusion filling his tired gaze.

"I'm sorry, Ric," She shakes her head slightly, tearing her gaze away from him as his heartbeat slows further and further. "But I need to know where that stake is."

Alaric's eyes fill with confusion, and perhaps betrayal, and Salem bites her tongue as a lump forms in her throat. His eyes slowly flutter shut once more, and Salem presses her palm harder against his chest as his pulse dies in her ears into nothing, and his chest stops moving with his labored breaths.

She takes her palm off of his chest and heaves a deep breath, resisting the urge to turn and empty her guts beside her in the cellar at the magic swelling through her body. She cradles her hands to her chest and tilts her head back, refusing to look at Alaric's lifeless body in her lap.

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Salem's mother, although widely useless in the grand scheme of things, had taught her one very important thing about her magic. She'd said as much the day she sat her daughter down to tell her.

"I know that one day, you will have to take someone's life. But it's different– you must always use physical force if you can. I never want you to use your magic to take someone's life– to stop their heart."

Her youthful face stares innocently up at her mother, awaiting her rare guidance. "Why?"

"Your magic only draws from your life source. It is limitless so long as you are still breathing, so long as your own heart still beats," She tapped her pulse in warning and Salem instinctively covers the pulse point protectively with her smaller hand. "Every time you take a life, you're adding more power into yourself. Your magic will grow stronger along with you and it will be less of a piece of you, and more of your soul. It will take over everything you've become, and you'll go mad with the power."

She nods dutifully, having grown past the point of trying to defy her mother. "What happens if I do kill someone with my magic, though? What if I really have to, to save my own life?"

She hesitates briefly, but takes her curiosity at surface level. "That all depends, Salem. If you kill someone and they stay dead, the only thing you have to worry about is keeping control of your magic."

"Well, what if they don't stay dead?"

"Then," She sighs, her look far from pitiful and more like a threat. "You leave a part of you with them. Death cannot happen without give and take. Someone will give, and someone will take. Your magic will give back what you stole. It will not keep the power of a life not truly taken, child. And as your magic is in your soul, you'll give a part of your soul in place of the life you could not take."

"What– what will they see? In my soul?"

"Perhaps your fate, a premonition of sorts. The piece of your soul that already knows what is coming to you."

"But how does my soul know if I don't?"

"Salem," Leila sighs, shaking her head. "When I tell you these stories, and teach you these lessons, I'm giving you something that will go to waste one day. Because with you, your magic dies. There will never be another one like you. It's pointless, in the end."

Salem ignores the hurt she feels at her mother's words. "But how will my soul know what will happen to me if I don't? What could it tell someone that I don't know?"

"Your destiny has already been made, child. People look at you, and they know that you are doomed. You're set to self-destruct. The only person that doesn't know what will happen to you is you. And it is your own ignorance that will kill you."

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Salem checks her phone for what seems like the twentieth time in the past few minutes, her fingers drumming nervously on the couch in the living room of her and Klaus's home.

"I know you're a witch, darling, but you can't manifest a solution through text." Rebekah's snarky but soft voice breaks the silence that had fallen over the three of them, and she looks up from her lap to glare at the blonde who simply smiles in return.

"I'm nervous. Ric has been dead for a majority of the night and I haven't heard anything from Stefan in the past thirty minutes."

"I'm sure that martyr has fallen into a deep, depressive episode wondering if his brother is giving it to Elena in a motel in the mountains." 

Salem huffs a laugh at Rebekah's crude explanation, giving her a wry smile that she seems victorious to have produced.

Klaus rolls his eyes at Salem's unwavering worry for the teacher, but smirks as he joins the conversation. "I'm sure Alaric has joined the living once more, no matter how much the universe seems to want him dead."

Salem rolls her head towards him, narrowing her eyes in a glare. "Thank you Klaus, I feel so much better."

"Anytime, love,"

She shakes her head exasperatedly at him, but picks her phone up once more as she checks the late hour. With a slight grimace, she pushes herself off the couch and grabs her jacket from the arm rest. "I'm going over there, I can't stand sitting around waiting anymore."

"That's not a good idea, Salem," Rebekah starts, already standing to stop her. "Alaric could be dangerous, and you've only been out of the hospital for–" 

"Then I guess you'll be coming with me, won't you?" She raises her eyebrows, looking back at Klaus and Rebekah expectantly.

The siblings share a slightly exasperated look, and Rebekah silently shrugs at her brother, urging him to make a decision.

Klaus heaves a sigh and grabs his car keys from atop the piano he'd been seated at for most of the night, and gestures for Rebekah to follow. "I suppose we should go check on the situation,"

Rebekah rolls her eyes at his concession as she follows after Klaus and Salem. "You have the backbone of a wet leaf, Niklaus." 

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Salem looks up as Stefan enters the parlor, unaware of their presence as he sends a text on his phone.

"That wasn't too hard, was it?" 

Klaus approaches the minibar as Rebekah passes by him to get Alaric from the basement, uncaring of Stefan's shocked look as he stood helplessly before them.

"It's a little gratuitous, don't you think, Stefan?" Klaus's gravelly voice floods the room and the hybrid smirks with a sick satisfaction at the sight of the history teacher beaten and bloody. Though his hand comes to rest on Salem's back as he steps behind her, seeing the way she tensed uncontrollably at the image Alaric presented. "I would've been more gentle." 

"I'm going to take him to the caves," Rebekah sighs, not caring to get involved in Klaus and Stefan's pissing contest. She gives Alaric a stern look, her tone not garnering any argument. "You're going to go inside and fetch me the stake. And if you think you can hide, you're wrong."

"I should go, too," Salem looks at her friend worriedly, missing the panic that floods Rebekah's eyes. "Just in case anything happens."

Alaric gives her a leering smile and she furrows her brows at the unfamiliar feature on his face. "I would love–"

"Not happening," Klaus cuts in, glaring at the evil alter ego of Salem's best friend. "He can't be trusted and Rebekah is perfectly capable of handling it if something does go wrong."

Salem gives Klaus an irritated look over her shoulder and faces Rebekah with a hopeful look on her face that dwindles when she sees the blonde's look.

"I can handle it, Salem."

She frowns at the defensiveness in Rebekah's tone, but her fight is quickly lost when Rebekah shoves Alaric towards the front door and the two are gone in a moment's time.

"And then there was one,"  Klaus quickly changed the subject, his concern for Salem shifting to the usual disdain he held for conversing with Stefan and all of his martyrdom. "I know about your brother's little mission to Denver. He failed. Not that that's news anymore."

Stefan turns, facing the two hybrids with a glare on his face. "So, what are you gonna do now, Klaus? Are you going to kill me?"

Klaus shrugs, draping an arm over Salem's shoulders. "I haven't actually decided yet." He gently guides her to the couch, less convinced about the scarred over wound she'd shown him days ago when he tried to take her back to the hospital. 

"Oh, sure you have. See, you've had every chance and every excuse imaginable to do it, but yet you haven't," Stefan's tone takes on a smug aspect, and Salem narrows her eyes at the vampire who goes unaware of her ire. "Which means you don't want to."

"You know something, you're right," Klaus concedes Stefan's point, his hand coming to rest on Salem's thigh. "See, I'm still waiting for my old friend to come back. By the looks of it, he's just beneath the surface. Waiting to come out and play."

Klaus chuckles, a grin crossing his face. "Isn't that right, Ripper?"

Stefan's jaw clenches momentarily. "I've been fighting that part of myself. Thinking that if I repress it, it would go away. But it won't. And now that I've accepted it, it can't control me. And neither can you. So unless you're going to stake me, why don't you get the hell out of my house?"

Klaus chuckles to himself as Stefan walks off, and he slowly slides down on the couch beside Salem, who unclenches her fists as Stefan walks away.

"Could you kill him?" Her voice is otherwise quiet, but the anger in it doesn't go unnoticed by the hybrid.

He furrows his brows curiously at her vexation, and he gives her a slight smile. "Not just yet, darling."

"He's a liability, Klaus," Salem folds her hands together, giving Klaus a quick look from the corner of her eyes. "I'm tired of people trying to take advantage of us, or thinking they have the upper hand."

His hand slides from her thigh, rising to cup her sharp jawline and gently turn her head towards him. His eyes glimmer with concern, but understanding is laced in his heavy gaze. "We will win, Salem. We always do." 

Salem nods gently in his hold and she leans forward, pressing a kiss to Klaus's cheek. She drags her lips across his scruff, resting them beside his ear as she whispers. "One more time, Klaus. One more slip up, and I'll kill them all." 

She punctuates her words with another kiss and stands up, stuffing her hands in her jacket as she heads towards the front door. "We should go check on Rebekah."

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The cave is dark as Alaric and Rebekah enter it, the former passing the invisible barrier as Rebekah stops herself just outside of it.

"Go get it. You know I can't get in."

Alaric walks over to the crevice in the cave and grabs the stake, turning to give Rebekah a quick look as he takes a seat on Esther's coffin. "Now why would I give you the one thing that requires everyone to keep me alive?"

The Original scoffs. "Are we bargaining now? Fine. What's your offer?"

"There's only one stake out there, which means only one Original has to die. Help me, and I'll make sure it's not you."

She seems to contemplate his offer for a moment before deciding. "Tenuous, but I'll give you points for effort. You see, I don't want one Original to die." Rebekah steps over the barrier, shocking Alaric visibly.

"I want them all to die. And that abomination, Salem, while I'm at it."

"How the hell did you do that?"

She shakes her head. "It was easy to fool Niklaus, but I thought you of all people would understand. After all, my son did use your body at one point."

Realization washes over his face. "You're not Rebekah,"

"No," She gives him a small smile. "My name is Esther, and we have a great deal in common."

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author's note; how's everyone doing

edited and published; 7.25.23.

- liz