The kid has known how to throw a knife for a year, how to shoot a crossbow with good aim for 6 months, and whittling Damon taught him sometime last May (something about a skill lost to the ages).

The boy is prepared. Or rather, as prepared as any of them are; which really isn't much. Alaric hates how young this kid still seems to be, how when he falls asleep on the couch he looks no older than twelve, not the sixteen he's meant to be, let alone the 21 he's pretending to be on the fake Ric is supposed to have no idea about.

He's just a kid. One who spends his weekdays not doing calculus homework and helping make contingency plans for the Armageddons his sister and her friends repeatedly make occur. Weekends are for training, though Alaric always hesitates to call it that, because they're kids, not soldiers, but they're at a war, so how else would you refer to them?

So weekends are for training, for Elena taking out all her frustration on punching bags and dummies, for hunting in the woods for Caroline, for him and Jeremy, in the woods with a crossbow, and a battle axe, and a shot gun, learning how to stay alive a little bit longer. Alaric never lets it stray too far from his thoughts that he's teaching a sixteen year old how to fight a war. Just closes his eyes and prays Jenna isn't watching.

It's January. The weekend is as usual, but a thought strikes Ric when he rises, his shoulder protesting the dip in the temperature, the stiff muscles, over used and undertreated, taut and bitter. He rolls both shoulders together in a fluid motion, an inkling stirring in his head, coming together to form an idea.

Yeah. This could work.

He wakes Jeremy with a football being thrown at him.

"Get dressed" Ric says, back already turned, headed downstairs to coffee and the last slice of banana bread Caroline had baked on Thursday in lieu of writing a paper on the 60's.

"Uhm, hello, I was on 'let's not have crazy originals kill people duty.' So, sorry I didn't get to write about a decade with questionable fashion sense."

"wha-?" the kid replies, groggy, eyes bleary and unfocused

"be downstairs in ten, ready to leave," is Ric's only response.

Fifteen minutes later, Jeremy is only slightly more awake, wearing a grey hooded sweatshirt and jeans. Alaric has drunk two cups of coffee and put a plan into motion to kill whoever ate the last piece of banana bread.

"you ready?" he asks, hands palming the keys where they lay on the counter

"yeah man," Jeremy responds, "should I get the 'bows? Or the knives? Or maybe—"

"get the football."

He takes him to the back field of the school, the fence broken in many places by the potheads and hormonal teenagers. It's a good field though; long and wide, grass growing haphazardly with patches of dry brown dirt intermixed to give it a good run down feel to it. He can almost see the generations of cleats that graced this ground.

"What are we doing here Ric?" Jeremy asks, holding the ball against his side, less like how Matt would hold it and more like Jenna had that night she had found it underneath his bed at the loft.

"We're going to throw the ball around" Ric says, grabbing the ball from Jere and taking a few steps back.

"Yeah? It like secretly laced with vervain or something?"

"No, just a football." He reaches back and lets the ball go free, spiraling perfectly towards the kid. He catches it, but looks down at it like it has personally told him that he has Justin Bieber hair.

"I don't get it."

"You don't need to get it, just throw."

So he does. Back and forth they pass the ball, silently. Repetitive, like a metronome, the thump of a football against callused hands, the soft intake of breath before the throw.

Then, Ric takes a step back, and with his arm reaching behind him, he smiles at Jeremy and simply says, "Catch."

The ball hurtles out of his hand down the field, his body remembering old motions, creaking and cracking as they fall back into place. Jere pivots and turns, trips over his feet for a second before chasing after the ball and where it's landed a good thirty yards back.

"Dude. You can, like, throw, man." He shouts back, ball twirling in his hands.

"Yeah? Think you can, like, catch?" Sometimes making fun of teenagers is too easy.

The kid huffs out a bit of air and tries and fails to throw the ball back. Ric jogs over to it anyway, picks it up, and says, "Ready to catch this time?"

With a grin that goes for miles, he begins to back up and turn with speed, "I got this old man, just you see."

They come home muddy and grinning. Ric grabs two water bottles from the fridge while Jeremy grabs towels from the hall closet and they meet on the back porch.

"How'd you learn to throw, though, really?" Jeremy asks, rubbing the towel through his hair.

"My dad when I was a kid. Loved Sunday because it meant the two "F's", of football and fried became so ingrained in me that I ended up joining the local league. Then, I played in high school, and then in college."

"Really? You played football in college? What, like as a benchwarmer" he drawls, his eyes wide in fake shock and wonderment.

"Yes you idiot, in college, and no, not always as a benchwarmer. It was fun, and it paid for school, which meant that I had the money to go to grad school and not be completely in debt. Student loans are no fun."

"Huh."

"Yes, huh. That's why I'm going to bust all your asses to apply for scholarships because as evidence by today you have no future as a star receiver." He pushes the kid away, and stands, eyes the muddy towels discarded on the deck, and kicks them aside. Must be someone else's day to do laundry.

"Hey Alaric, just, uh, thanks, for teaching me, you know, the basics. Dad wasn't very athletically minded, and uh, mom was even worse, so just, thanks, for it, all, and, yeah."

Ric just grins, and squeezes the kid's shoulder for a second before heading inside to start lunch.

Footballs beat crossbows any day.

1. The one where Alaric decided the kid needs to know how to throw