NIGHT 54: M11-M20 Hallway

[deathandgin]

To the individuals who participated in this morning's insubordination: know that you're in part responsible for what happens tonight.

"I wasn't even here then," Alaric sighed under his breath, feeling under his pillow for the flashlight he'd found during dinner. He was starting to catch on to the game, if that's all this really was - this kind of

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[saviored]

Oh. Fabulous. More ominous bullshit. At least they'd replaced the James Bond villain of the past four nights-though what the hell was going on with that was another thing altogether, one that he'd contemplated over dinner already. He wasn't going to bother with it now. Waste of time. He hated wasting time.

Anyway, it normally wouldn't have even matter all that much-he could handle whatever threats they chose to make good on, thank you-but with Elena involved...Look, he'd have enough on his hands keeping her ass alive. He couldn't say he looked forward to a bonus round of interference.

And what about Stefan? If something kept his brother from feeding properly, he wasn't going to be happy. Not that he was-no, fine. He was worried. Sue him. He had a good cause to be when every day Stefan went without eating was a risk to them all. Including Elena. He already didn't like the idea of the one or two people here knowing what they were. An entire institute getting a free show of Stefan snacking on some unfortunate human soul? Forget it. That was not happening under his watch. Except it easily could. His brother might've been the poster boy for Victorian repression, but every vampire had a snapping point. Vampires were their snapping points. Self-starvation worked because the accompanying weakness kept you in check. Stefan didn't have that here.

Never mind. That was Stefan's problem now. And Edward's, apparently. Damon had Elena to keep an eye on; he didn't need to be distracted by Stefan on top of that.

He stepped out of his room without a look back at Klavier and stopped just outside the door to check on the bandages over the bites along his ribs and his leg. It could've been worse, but he wasn't in the mood to look on the bright side. Dammit, this was a real pain in the ass. Partly because of the obvious, and partly because there was every chance Elena would notice and ask, and he wasn't up for admitting how easily he'd been taken down. Being Elena, she'd start to worry about him. Which would be counterproductive to the whole protecting thing, wouldn't it.

There were a couple of people in the hall, as always, and Damon went on ignoring them as he moved down the hall until-

Okay. Pause. Was that-?

Yup. Guess so. Rick being somewhere in the vicinity wasn't unexpected, but what, had he fallen? Seriously? Because they were two minutes into the night. This wasn't exactly indicative of a winning lottery ticket. Though truth was, he hoped the teacher had just fallen since other options were somewhere along the lines of an attack, a spontaneous broken leg, or other such inconveniences that would really make his night.

He strolled up, one eye on the periphery just in case. "Well, you're off to a good start."

[deathandgin]

Just the person he wanted to see - well, hear - when he had nearly face planted on the floor. Sitting back on the cold, tiled floor, he ran his hands over his palms to feel the scraped skin there. With a few pats on the area around him with probing fingers, he found the flashlight, cracked along the entire side of the plastic tubing, as well as the shattered remains of the lens. The bulb inside was still intact, warm and... completely broken.

"Somehow I'm not surprised," he sighed, though he didn't dictate his words entirely to the flashlight or to Damon's appearance alone. He slapped the end of the light a few times, hoping for a flicker or - in his wildest dreams - the beam to cut back on.

Big surprise. All there was was the sound of the batteries rolling around angrily.

"Do you have yours?" he stood up, trying not to fumble around in the dark. Nothing like being completely blind after the threat of monsters and being clawed to death had been thrown over his head to make him feel confident. He thumbed the ring to reassure himself it was there.

[saviored]

On some level, neither was Damon.

"Yeah, because you see vampires carry a night light all the time when we go hunting." He threw Rick an exasperated look that was probably wasted given the teacher's night vision deficiency. "Wait here."

He disappeared back into his room without another word. If anything was going to happen to Elena, it probably would've happened already-she'd said she hadn't even made it back to her room last evening (not the best thought, by the way)-but you know, he just didn't really do delays well.

Flashlight. Great. Where was it? He hadn't needed to look before. He pulled open a drawer, felt inside the desk, finally flipped over his pillow. There we go. He snatched it up and switched it on to make sure it worked. Almost two centuries of living, he'd learned to recognize when it was gonna be one of those days.

A beam of light flooded the room. He switched it off again. After a second's hesitation, he grabbed the radio, too. Would it be useful? Who knew, but it couldn't hurt. They were...hard up on sources right now.

"Here." He pushed the light into Alaric's hand and moved down the hall without waiting. "Try not to drop it on your foot before we make it to Elena's room."

[going here]