Someone to Lean On

Disclaimer: Just a quick one shot on Bonnie's feelings about Damon during Season 6. I'm loving the entire Bonnie and Damon storyline this season. After Katherine, she's my favorite character, and I just think the writers could do so much more with her. Please tell me what you think.

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Bonnie Bennett had never told him, and she doubted she ever would, but Damon Salvatore was her sanctuary.

She had no idea when this had happened. She had no idea when he had become the person she turned to when she really needed help. Bonnie prided herself on her independence. She was the caretaker; the one with all the power and the intelligence and the ability to sacrifice herself for others. She was always the one people called when they needed help, and yet…

When it was her turn, when she needed someone to give her a leg up, a new perspective, a bit of an edge, that person always turned out to be Damon.

Damon always had a plan. Sure they were stupid, borderline suicidal and generally involved someone dying, but at the end of the day, Damon's plans worked.

Looking back on it, whenever Bonnie needed to call the Salvatore brothers, it was Damon she generally called. He was the one she'd looked to first to help deal with the Katherine situation when Elena's twin had first arrived back in town. Damon was the one who'd successfully divined that she would have to die in order to defeat Klaus and had come up with a plan to help her fake her death and put off the inevitable.

It was Damon who had decided to take her mother's life, instead of her own, when the Mikaelsons gave the Salvatores only two options to save Elena's life. It was Damon who had had her back when she was becoming lost in Expressionism, and it was Damon the magic led her towards after Jeremy's death.

And now it was to Damon that she sent her magic.

She had realized Damon's place in her life as she made the slow trudge through the woods with Kai and her stuffed bear in order to take them both home again. Even running from the sociopath had not worked to set her free. Kai was a wily one – it was why he and Damon had butted heads so often – and she knew that if she wasn't careful, he would divine what spell she used, steal her magic and escape.

Well, she wasn't going to take that chance. Kai showed no signs of redemption; he was a smooth-talking, opportunistic, self-absorbed murderer.

And sure, Damon Salvatore was also all of those things, but the different wasn't, Damon Salvatore wasn't just those things. He loved and he sought forgiveness, he fought for the ones he cared about and he was perfectly willing to sacrifice himself if it insured the safety of the few people he cared about. Bonnie knew that he would make the same choice as her. She also knew that Stefan and Elena would have discovered Damon's sacrifice and rescued him.

She only hoped that Damon discovered her sacrifice and felt enough for her to attempt the same.

She wouldn't have placed her trust in him before these last six months, but she had been completely honest when she'd told him that she wouldn't have wanted to spend that time with very many other people.

It was a strange, strange world when Damon Salvatore made the list of her favorite people.

The man had tried to kill her, for God's sake. He'd actually killed Jeremy.

But Bonnie had learned this lesson long ago; vampire morality was different than human or witch morality. They were not entirely human anymore and thus they saw the world completely differently. So things that Bonnie would have condemned without a chance of redemption in a human – what she rightly condemned in the witch, Kai – she accepted and even made a stab at forgiveness for a vampire. She had gone through the doubt, the questioning of the morality of her own actions in letting her vampire friends commit horrible acts when Caroline had been turned. And when Elena had been turned she saw again how even the most righteous of humans was changed by the process.

And so when Damon Salvatore had finally let her see that he felt remorse for his actions as a vampire…..well, she was fairly sure that that constituted him being on the course of redemption. And it would be just as bad for her to condemn him now, as it would be for him to murder someone again.

Kai, on the other hand, was complete scum.

Sure, there was some chemistry with him, but it was entirely on his side. The man-child had been locked up in a magical prison – alone – for twenty years. He would have had chemistry with a rock if it deigned to talk to him.

Plus there was the niggling fact that he had shot her, was blackmailing her and threatening to steal her magic, and should no signs of not immediately going back to killing more innocents if she let him out.

So she wasn't.

And he sure as hell wasn't going to get his hands on her magic, for she'd sent it to a safe place.

And as he roared at her, and tried in vain to find Miss Cuddles, Bonnie reflected again on exactly why she'd sent her magic to Damon.

And the only answer was that he was her sanctuary.

She remembered that hug they had shared on the island. Death removed all sorts of magical compulsion, and her first death had restored that particular forgotten image to her. She had been high on dark magic, reeling from Jeremy's death, and so out of her mind that she hadn't even thought about grabbing him and holding on tight.

But Damon had opened his arms to her first, and he had held on just as tightly.

She remembered closing her eyes and feeling safe; safe for the first time in what felt like forever. It was as if Damon would help her. She knew what to do, and how to do it, but it was as if now someone was there to help her, and as though a burden had been lifted.

Bonnie had spent so much of her life alone and left behind. She had never really had a mother, and her father had hardly ever deigned to stop by. Her Grandmother had loved her, but it had never quite filled that void of having actual parents who loved her enough to stay for her. And then her Grandmother had been taken far too soon.

But her Grandmother had stayed anyway. She had stayed in the afterlife and made sure that Bonnie was alright before she passed on. And Damon had been willing to stay with her in this hell too, even if it meant that he would have to leave Elena behind forever. He hadn't even thought twice about it.

But then she hadn't thought twice about sending him home – even if it meant her own death – either.

Bonnie vaguely wondered if her Grandmother had known, somehow, that Damon would die with her; if she had planned it that way. Somehow. Because everyone else seemed to know. Klaus promised to continue Damon's torture to get her on board with his plan. That Vampire Hunter on the island had kidnapped Damon to get to her, and even Silas had threatened her with Damon's death in order to prevent her from destroying him.

It was as though her enemies had known something that she did not.

She wanted him to find that bear, and she wanted him to keep it safe. Most of all though, she wanted to find a way out of this hell-hole, with or without Damon's help, and make it back home. She wanted Jeremy's smile, and Elena's and Caroline's laughter. She wanted to call her mother, and go out to lunch with Matt. She even wanted to see Tyler and Stefan again. She wanted her Physics study group and the dwarf Professor who taught the most boring class in school; the History of Medicine.

She wanted to leave Kai behind and make him feel the weight of his crimes.

But most of all, Bonnie Bennett wanted to make it home and have Damon Salvatore wrap her in his arms again. Because then, and only then, would she believe that she had made it back.

For he was her sanctuary.

Endnote: What did you think? Do you want a one-shot of Bonnie and Damon having adventures in 1994?