We’ll Meet Again || Alaric & Faith
@allroundlostcause
       Faith's late on the scene. Weeks late. The updates about the Mystic Grill explosion didn't make it out of Virginia until the 18th, since then it's all cable news can seem to talk about. She was in a coin laundry when the first of it broke, playing on a ticker across the bottom of an old television mounted up in the corner of the room. Later, the real news story and photographs of the reported missing and confirmed dead.
It took her all of a day to get herself a car, been on the road for what feels like a week. Heading into the hornet's nest to pay her respects to an old friend and all the while kicking herself for waiting so long for a reunion.
   She pulls into a gas station, somewhere out on a wooded road about an hour outide Mystic Falls at some odd hour of the dark and dreadful morning. It's peaceful, overrun by trees and the soft and rustling sounds of night in the forrest. It's almost a shame to break that peace to pump gas into the lemon she swiped but she's out and she means to be in the heart of town before light. Fills up, heads in to pay.
        The inside of the gas station's not charming. Once you get into Mystic Falls, everything looks like the end result of a rich person's craft project. High end, new and well made. Outside the city limits, though? It's all Country Bears, all the time.
Faith hugs the outer wall. Gets her jerky stick, her chips and grabs an iced coffee from the little, old-fashioned cold case and heads to the front counter, such as it is. An old computer desk with a money drawer, a tablet to accept credit cards. No one manning the damn thing, of course, and waiting's not one of Faith's strong suits.
 Exercising any kind of patience is in direct violation of her contract with the CW. Still, she won't find another gas station for thirty miles and she's already got the gas in her tank, so she doesn't have much choice but to wait it out. And she would have, like a model citizen if the bell over the door hadn't caught her attention and baited her to look behind her --- and there's no fucking way.
      "Ric?"
