"I'll tell you my sins so you can sharpen your knife" - Hozier, Take me to Church
She was all the light of the Sistine Chapel contained in a delicate human body. Klaus enjoyed witches and what they offered his ambitions as well as his bed, but there was something numinous and fierce in Bonnie Bennett that even he wouldn't dare touch. She was too full of a kind of righteous innocence that would singe the flesh off his condemned body if he got too close.
But some nights when the darkness was suffocating and thick with the endless years of immortality, god how he wanted to have her flickering beside him like a votive candle, to touch and devour her radiant flesh, to burn and burn and burn.
She'd hated and feared him as long as she'd known him, but it was different from the way she hated other vampires. That was a brutally simple kind of hate that would die with a stake buried in their hearts. But this, the way she hated Klaus, it was a desperate, unfocused, stormy kind of hate, the kind of hate that was hungry and that could consume. She hated how he moved through the world like he owed nothing to anyone except himself, how he could be so utterly and luxuriously selfish.
Yes, she hated Klaus, but in her heart of hearts, in the place where she burned with desire for more than she could ever possibly have, she envied him too.
When he heard that bitch Katherine was on her long deserved deathbed he had to come see for himself, to glut himself on centuries of foiled triumph. He didn't expect to stumble on Bonnie Bennett in the moonlit woods. It took him a second to recognize her newly bobbed hair, but the crooked jaw and angelic full lips were the same. She didn't see him, and he watched her wiping tears from her face, sniffling and looking up at the sky as though the stars could deliver her somehow. Before either of them could make a move a gust of cold air rattled the bare branches and disturbed the leaves at their feet. When he looked up another figure stood before her, facing her: the hulking spirit of a young vampire, blustery with the rage of his stolen immortality.
"It's you?" he spat, "you're the Anchor?"
"The one and only," she said, dryly, tiredly.
Klaus watched the exchange with interest. His informants had been correct. Bonnie Bennett was now a living, breathing gateway to the Other Side. No longer a witch, but a gatekeeper to Death.
"Well what the fuck am I supposed to do now?" the young vampire sounded increasingly agitated, "I thought I'd have to go through some big black door, or swim across a lake or something. Instead I'm talking to some hippy-dippy tramp out here in the woods."
Green eyes flashed with a fire that Klaus remembered but had tried to forget. The fire of a lost innocence.
"You can go through me, or stay in limbo for eternity letting fools with Ouija boards play with you. Just imagine how many "hippy dippy tramps" are gonna summon you as their own personal Edward Cullen. Or maybe some witch or warlock will decide to carry you around in a slow globe. Go through me, or you don't get to go. Anywhere. Tough choice I know," her voice crackled with sarcasm, but he could sense a bitterness underneath. She was tired. And she was alone.
"What do I do?" the vamp asked, sullen and quiet.
She didn't smile. Queens and angels rarely did, but her face was ethereal in the moonlight. She said one word.
"Kneel."
Klaus watched as the youth complied, supplicating himself before her slender form. When she put her hands on his shoulders he started to tremble, the outline of his body dissolving into light. Bonnie's agonized cry melted into the young vampire's groan of release and Klaus felt desire lance through him. He wanted to kneel there, at her feet, and have her slap his hand away just when he tried to touch her. To to do what no one else could truly do: deny him.
He suddenly flashed back to that long-ago night when he'd forced her to Unlink his siblings and she, incandescent with rage and desperation, had said "You bother me. You use people to get what you want and it's not right." It took all his self-possession not to risk everything he'd worked for and kneel before her, let her read him his sins while he begged to kiss her sweet, young feet.
Just as he gathered his heated thoughts the young vampire was gone, crossed over to the Other Side, leaving a wilted and gasping Bonnie. She took a ragged breath then crumpled to the ground.
She was so tired of emptiness. A gate was neither desired nor reviled. The wind whistled through its grates but left the structure unmoved. It swung open into Paradise or locked you shut in Hell. But no one truly cared about the gate after they got where they wanted.
Bonnie felt her senses return along with a scent she remembered from a childhood holiday: the warm, salt smell of the soothing rush of waves settled over her like a blanket and her eyelids fluttered against a soft darkness. She was blindfolded.
Someone was carrying her, strong warm arms that held her with firm tenderness. It never even occurred to her to protest. Whoever it was, they carried her like she was the most precious thing in the world.
This is a dream, she thought faintly as the sea breeze caressed her hair. And any moment I'm about to wake up screaming in agony, feeling hollowed out with another Crossing.
She waited for wakefulness but the dream flowed on. A door was being opened, she felt the slight jolt of being carried upstairs. The sea scent was fainter now, replaced by new and stirring odors of lemon verbena, lavender, chamomile and soap. Then, fresh air swept over her again. Her bare feet touched warm stone and firm, gentle hands at her waist.
The silk blindfold slipped off her eyes and she blinked away dots of blue and yellow. When her vision cleared, Bonnie caught her breath. She was standing on a sprawling white marble balcony, gazing out at a moonlit sea. Foam white as pearls blossomed in the hands of the dark silvery water, and over it all lay an awareness, like the stars themselves were looking down at her with adoration.
"It's all for you, love."
The voice, his voice, jolted through her and she whipped around. Klaus stood behind her at the entrance to what looked like a lush bedroom. He was wearing jeans and a white Henley that, along with his softly waving dark blond curls, gave him the look of some modern day Adonis, instead of the monster who'd terrorized her and her friends. The realization that Klaus had always been a handsome bastard surged to the surface.
"What are you doing here?"
Full, blood red lips twitched in a smile, "I could ask you the same thing."
"But you must have brought me here. Why?"
"Dreams don't work that way love, at least not for witches. I can't bring you anywhere you don't want to be."
At that word "witch" she felt an ache so deep that the air around them shifted, grew cold and harsh for a moment before she steadied her breath.
"You miss it don't you?" Klaus said quietly.
"And? You offering to be my supernatural therapist?"
He brushed close to her in a blur of movement before disappearing into the bedroom. His soft, deep laugh ghosted across her skin.
Somewhere in the back of her conscious or subconscious a voice piped up. This is crazy, you need to wake up. It's Klaus for god's sake!
But that voice came from another time, another life, when she was naive and full of hope, before Death had swallowed her whole and spit her out.
So instead Bonnie ventured inside to a bedroom that lit itself in baroque splendor with each step she took, reminiscent of the illustrated Art of Europe books she'd pored over with her dad in a long lost childhood. Back then she'd had dreams of working in a museum, turning corners of a gallery in smart Loboutins impressing the rich and powerful with her knowledge of Rembrandt and Monet.
Yet here she was, in the company of her former nemesis, painting the walls of a dream with her imagination.
Klaus was sitting in a chair in the middle of the room. A fireplace crackled behind him, casting his features in an otherworldly light, like torches flickering shadows across marble statues. But he was no statue, and as she watched he took off his shirt in a smooth motion. His skin was unmarked and smooth with the flawlessness of immortality, except for a feather transforming into a flock of birds tattooed across his shoulder. She wondered how a tattoo needle could pierce his skin long enough, if he felt pain, if he enjoyed it.
Her mouth was dry, "What are you doing?"
Klaus lifted a pair of steel handcuffs into the light. They had thorns like a rose-stem. He put his hands behind the chair and she heard a click and his eyes met hers. His face was different now, expectant, hungry and there, behind his eyes, the slightest trace of fear. "Offering, love."
Revulsion mixed with a dark excitement in her lower belly, and the walls around them grew closer, velvety and glistening.
Klaus continued in a low voice, "I saw you in those woods when the vampire Crossed through you. How many has it been today? This week? Last month? And did your friends hold your hands, did they comfort you through the pain?"
"I don't have to listen to this." She closed her eyes and tried to will herself awake, but the dream persisted, clinging to her like a second skin. I can't bring you anywhere you don't want to be.
"Or were you alone, like tonight? Alone and caught between heaven and hell? I know a little something about that."
"You don't know anything about my pain."
His eyes were burning into her, "Then why don't you show me?"
Soooo I just wanted to publish this before the week caught up to me. This isn't my best work but I wanted to celebrate Klonnie week with y'all. Enjoy and look for an update soon :) xoxo
