In The Beginning

"Take what you want", says God, "and pay for it"

- old Spanish proverb.

San Diego, California

Lucy Bennett was late for a very important date. She had shopped for it – bought the short, red bandage of a dress plus matching shoes, purse and sexy underwear and was now in the middle of putting on her makeup.

It's not every day a girl got the proposal from the man she was going to spend the rest of her life with. She needed to look back on this day and remember that she was an absolute knockout.

Sean was downstairs, waiting in the car. She had asked him to because she wanted to be sure that the question was asked in the fancy restaurant that he booked two weeks ago. She knew this because… well, being a witch came in handy now and then, right? And if Sean came upstairs, she didn't trust that her darling, who was a perfect gentleman outside the bedroom, would be able to resist her.

So when her doorbell rang, she knew it wasn't Sean. And she sure as Hell wasn't going to answer it. Unless something was on fire, then whoever it was really needed to get lost.

But it rang again. And again. And then she felt a wave of magical energy come yelling through her wards to make her jolt her wrist as she carefully filled in her cat eyes eye-shadow.

No effing way.

That was not Bonnie Bennett standing outside her door, ringing down her house and screaming magically into her head like a mad woman.

Lucy matched through her studio apartment to the front door and flung it open.

Petite, chin length bob, wearing a leather jacket, carrying a back-pack, a teddy bear and a tear-streaked face.

Yep. It was Bonnie all right.

"This. Had. Better. Be. Good."

Lucy hadn't been particularly welcoming at first. Something about a date. And a ring. But Bonnie had burst into tears – or more precisely, continued from where she left off during the overnight drive from Virginia – and her cousin's face had melted and she ushered Bonnie into the house.

She gave Bonnie a pair of pyjamas and a bucket of ice cream, then promised to be back in a few hours.

A few hours turned into the whole night and Lucy didn't turn up until the early hours of the morning wearing a different outfit, a smug 'guess-who-just-got-lucky' smile and a humongous diamond ring.

She flashed it in front of Bonnie's face with a triumphant smirk.

Bonnie struggled to smile. But she burst into tears instead.

Lucy frowned. "You have got to be kidding me?"

"I'm s-sorry," Bonnie stammered. "It's just that an engagement is what started this mess I'm in."

Lucy shoved off the teddy, plopped down on the pillow next to Bonnie and turned her clever eyes at her cousin. "Start from the beginning and keep going to you show up at my door."

Almost an hour and two slices of leftover pizza later, Lucy was ready to cut a bitch. Or more specifically, a vampire.

"As soon as I get off work, I'm going over to Virginia and I'm burning Damon Salvatore alive."

Bonnie sighed.

"The pig! The absolute pig!"

"Alaric shot himself. We were all in shock. I mean, Caroline had put us all under so much pressure getting ready for her perfect wedding with Stefan, nobody thought of Alaric. Of what the memories would do to him until it was too late. Damon took it hard. He took it really hard."

Lucy dropped her pizza like if it had burnt her. "Are you making excuses for Damon?"

"No! I'm just telling you that he wasn't himself. This wasn't … him."

"This is exactly him. His friend died. He came to you, his other friend to make him feel better and probably to give him some excuse to do what he's wanted to do for years and hit on you. And when you acted like you'd rather kiss a cobra, he strangled you and told you that Alaric's death, Elena, the heretics and everyone that had died in the past three years were all because of you. Did I miss something?"

Bonnie's eyes filled with tears. "But he isn't wrong, is he? It is all my fault."

Lucy stared down at her with furious eyes. This was clearly not a time for coddling. Her cousin needed some tough love right now.

"It's that why you let him get away with talking to you like that? With putting his hands on you like that? Because you felt guilty?"

Bonnie's tears dried up. "What? You're blaming me for this? Did you hear a word I said?"

"You mean the part where you've been babysitting this one hundred and seventy year old man for the past three years because his girlfriend's taking a well-deserved nap? Or the part where you've pretty much turned yourself into … into me when Katherine had her hooks in me?"

Bonnie recoiled. "I've been nothing like that. I've done nothing like the things you did."

Lucy squinted her eyes. "Let me see… Did you or did you not unleash a ripper into this world and her merry band of heretics because he asked you to?"

"He didn't ask me to free the heretics! That was Kai!"

"But he asked you to release a ripper, didn't he?"

Bonnie balled her hands into fists. "She was his mother."

Lucy gaped at her. "And what did Damon do to your mother?"

Bonnie squeezed her eyes against the tears that were about to start falling again. She had a feeling that Lucy won't be so sympathetic. "You don't know what I went through on the Other Side, then in the Prison world. What we went through together. We bonded. We became friends. And now we're all we've got."

"What I'm trying to say," Lucy retorted, "is that you shouldn't let Damon or anyone else make you feel responsible for what that Gemini guy did, OK? No matter what you think you did to him, he made the decision to go stab his sister and bring hell on earth. And if you're looking someone non-dead to blame? Blame Damon for putting you up to it in the first place. You had just got out Prison. You were stuck there for months and you had to save yourself in the end. And less than two days after you got back, he was sending you back to the same hell for his mother. If anyone started all this, then it's him." Her voice raised as realization hit her. "And he knew this. He got drunk after Alaric died because he felt guilty. And when the alcohol didn't wash away his guilt, he turned to you. In more ways than one."

Bonnie opened her eyes, shook her head. "He's not… he's not the guy you remember, Lucy. He saved me. Kai's twisted riddle… Damon could have let me die so that Elena would wake up but he didn't. He killed Kai and he saved my life. He loves me. And I love him, too."

Lucy drew in a deep, noisy breath in an obvious attempt to calm herself down. "He didn't do you a favour by not killing you, Bonnie. And please don't tell me that you've fallen in love with that monster?"

"I don't love him like that!" Bonnie cried. "I could never love him like that! He's like… an uncle … or a big brother to me. I thought he saw me the same way. When he tried to kiss me, I felt…"

Lucy sighed with relief, then shook her head ruefully. "You felt like if all this while you had a genuine friendship, while he was just being Mr. Nice Guy, bidding his time to make a move on you?"

Bonnie glared down at her hands. "I guess I look stupid to you. I guess I should have seen it coming, right?"

"You're not the first girl to have a run-in with some jerk who thinks the 'friendzone'"- Lucy curled her fingers in the air – "is a level in a video game and if he keeps collecting points, he's going to move up to the next one. But when you told him no, he had no right to hurt you. Physically or verbally."

"He said that I owed him," Bonnie whispered, shuddering. "That he saved my life for Elena, so I needed to make it up to him. He made me feel like… like if he owned me." She laughed, bitterly. "He's done it before, you know. I mean, not tried to force me to have sex with him. That's new." The bitter laugh repeated itself. "But before we became friends. Asking me to do magic. Like my magic was just waiting … for his beck-and-call." She sighed. "If I'm honest with myself, he still kept acting like that after we became friends. It just didn't bother me so much."

"Vampire and witches… never a good mix," Lucy said. "Take it from someone who knows. They don't want allies. They don't want friends. They want minions. I don't know why our family keeps getting entangled in their crap."

Bonnie stared at her fists silently. Despite herself, a few more tears fell.

"Oh, cheer up, Bon," Lucy said with a sigh and gave her cousin a one-armed hug. "This is a great. You came here, didn't you? You didn't hang around there waiting for him to give you some half-assed apology and reel you back in, right? It's high time you cut yourself off those idiots and let them work out their crap. You're done with graduate school. Hang out here until you can find a job on the West coast. People like us don't belong in Virginia anyway. Creepy state with all their old-timey slave-timey re-enactments."

Bonnie wiped her eyes. "I can't leave Mystic Falls. The heretics. They ate through the whole town before we made a truce. If they find out I'm gone, they'll go crazy. Someone needs to keep them in check."

"It doesn't have to be you, coz. No one died and made you the Chosen One."

Bonnie lifted her chin and glared at Lucy. "Remember when I asked you to help me stay out of things? You told me that the middle of things is right where I belonged. What's changed now, Lucy?"

Lucy had the good grace to be embarrassed. "Yeah, I know what I said. But you took it to far, Bonnie. You've died… I've lost count how many times now. I think you've more than earned the right for a lifetime vacation from saving people's asses."

Bonnie turned away, her chin still set stubbornly.

Lucy sighed. "You're not going to do it, are you? You're going to go back and save all their asses again, right?"

"I have to do something, Lucy."

"Then what happens, Bon? Mmmm? You make nice with Damon and you become 'friends' again. Then you get to choose to either become his sixty-year-long bit on the side or pray that someday he doesn't get tired of waiting for his girlfriend to wake up and snap your neck. He can always tell Elena you tripped and fell. And forget trying to have a life, or a man or kids of your own. If Damon has got it into his head that he's 'owed' you, he's not got letting anybody else have you."

"That's not true. Damon is my friend."

"He's also Stefan's brother. How well did that help Stefan when Damon decided that he wanted Elena Gilbert?"

Bonnie shuddered, remembering like something from a nightmare, the events of those early years. Damon had haunted both Stefan and Elena. She still remembered the sound of Elena's tears over the phone the day Damon broke Jeremy's neck.

She still remembered Aaron Whitmore who had just died because he was Elena's friend at a time that she and Damon had been on a break.

But the heretics were out because of her, Bonnie. No matter what Lucy said. Bonnie couldn't just walk away.

"I didn't just come to you for a shoulder to cry on, Lucy. I need help doing a spell."

"This is crazy. You're crazy."

Lucy looked at the notes in Bonnie's journal and shook her head, all but backing away in horror.

"Do you know what this is? Do you know what kind of magic this costs?"

Bonnie looked at her levelly.

"Expression. I know."

Lucy snorted. "And you just happen to have Expression magic right now? And it hasn't torn you into shreds?"

"I don't carry it inside me. But I do have it."

Bonnie gestured with her head to the side. Lucy followed her gaze to land on the Teddy bear beside her.

She looked at it again, this time with an eye tuned to pick up magical essences.

And she kicked it across the room.

Black, curling… hungry.

"You get that thing out of my house!" she shrieked.

"Poor Ms. Cuddles! Relax, Luce. It's been there for the past three years. It's safe. Unless you know what's in it, all anyone ever sees is dear old Ms. Cuddles." Bonnie smiled at the bear.

Lucy shuddered. "No. No. And in case you didn't hear me the first two times: No."

Bonnie nodded gamely. "That's fair. You've got a right to say no. But just to let you know, I'm still going to do it. By myself if I have to."

"It won't work," Lucy said. "You'll just destroy yourself for nothing."

Bonnie smiled again, and this time her grin was manic. "Not for nothing. Haven't you been listening? Elena wakes up."

Lucy burst into laughter. She couldn't help it. She could hear her near-hysteria.

Bonnie stared at her worriedly. "You OK? You sound a bit … crazy, right now?"

Lucy laughed harder. "You're going to use Expression and a wonky spell to time travel back three years – something that no witch has ever been able to do – and you're asking me if I'm the crazy one?"

Bonnie shrugged. "Why don't you help me and give me a better chance of surviving this spell and making it work?"

Lucy closed her eyes, counted to ten, took deep, calming breaths like Sean taught her.

"There's something in it for you," Bonnie said sweetly. "The other two points in this triangle… they get to keep their memories. Imagine using that to do some stock speculation. Or fast track your engagement."

Lucy snorted. "Yes, but I'm already engaged, Bonnie. I have a beautiful life ahead of me. You're my cousin and all, but let's face it, we barely know each other. I don't know if I can put my life on the line for you. I know I can't put my life on the line for you for the sake of Damon and your skanky friends."

Bonnie's eyes narrowed. "Fine." She snapped her journal shut, and slid off the bed.

In short, abrupt movements, she stuffed her teddy and journal into the backpack on the windowseat, and started changing out of her borrowed clothes.

Lucy sighed. "Where are you going now?"

"Back to Virginia. I can work on the spell on my own there as good as anywhere else."

Lucy watched her wordlessly for a few minutes. Bonnie was back in her leather jacket – a different outfit underneath, though and was holding the door. "I can see my way out."

"Come back here you crazy girl," Lucy snapped. "I won't help you but I just may know some other crazy ass Bennett that will."

Houston, Texas

"Tiki's grand-dad?"

Bonnie stared in shock at the shockingly familiarly looking librarian. No longer looking like someone who had no idea what year it was, his eyes were alert, his walk towards her spry.

He laughed and stretched out his arms. Hesitantly, Bonnie stepped into the hug, careful not to crush the glasses dangling on a rope around his neck. They broke the hug and she turned to stare at Lucy in confusion.

"I had no idea that you were a witch. That you're related to me? Did you change your name?"

He tut-tutted. "Oh, the arrogance of Emily Bennett's branch. You wear that name like if it's something that she was even proud of, not something that her daddy slapped on her like a brand." At the grimace on Bonnie's face, he nodded. "So you know? She got the name honestly enough, because her daddy felt her mama belonged to her. But believe me, it wasn't something any of them was glad of. And she's just one branch of the family that descended from Ayana, and Questiya before her. We're a lot bigger than you know, Bonnie Bennett."

As he talked, he was turning over the sign at the door so that it read 'CLOSED' to outsiders, and he drew the blinds shut. Then he led them down a corridor to an office with his name and the title 'Librarian' on it.

It was a neat office, the desk was clean except for a ledger and a tablet. In the corner of the room was a set of armchairs, surrounding a low table and that's where he gestured to the two girls to sit. On the walls were maps, and a small-sized book cubicle with a just a few books.

"You met another branch, the Martins, didn't you?" He continued.

Bonnie stared at him. "I had no idea they were B-… descendants of Questiya, too."

"Here's a tip, little lady, if the witch has skin that looks like yours or mine, odds are likely that they came from Ayana."

A thought crossed Bonnie's mind. "Is Tiki a witch?"

He grinned. "Not that she knows it but yes, my girl's got magic, too. I did some work on her dad, and then on her and her brother when they were all babies. Unless they go digging for it, they'll probably never know what they are. Which is just dandy. Because what we do," he waved at all three of them, "comes with a price. As you all well know."

Bonnie looked away from his hard stare. Lucy shifted in her seat.

"Which is why the moment I saw those vampire brothers back in town, I kicked up a fuss and got my Timmy to move us out of that town." He frowned. "I will never forget what they did to poor Zachariah's girl and their baby."

Bonnie felt a lump rise in her throat. She had finally met Sarah Salvatore and seeing the girl in flesh-and-blood had brought home to her the tragedy in a way that Damon's story, narrated in bits and pieces over the course of a day in an alternate world, could not.

"Told Sheila to do the same before I left. Guess she never got round to it. I'm sorry about your Grams, Bonnie. She was a good woman. A bit too confident in herself but she had a good heart."

Bonnie blinked hard, and swallowed. "Thank you," she whispered.

"I moved my family out of Mystic Falls to get away from vampires and here you are, Bonnie Bennett, whom everyone knows is in hand-in-glove with them. What the hell were you thinking bringing her here, Lucy?" He barked the last sentence at her cousin.

Bonnie jumped but Lucy, who had all this while been silent, merely raised an eyebrow. "When you hear her story, you're going to thank me."

"This better be good," he muttered, grumbling.

Bonnie brought out her journal and showed him her notes.

Five minutes into her narration, he put on the glasses and picked up her journal. She could see his posture shifting, as he became more and more engrossed in what he was reading, even as he gestured with his hand for her to go on.

"This is good stuff," he said bluntly when she was done. "You've been working on this for how long again?"

"Nearly three years," Bonnie murmured, and ignored Lucy's sharp stare.

"I've been fiddling around with something like this for a decade and I keep getting stuck right around this part." He stabbed a finger at her scribbled drawing of a pentagon with a triangle embedded. "I think you may just have figured it out. If I can put this in what I already have, we might actually build a spell that can work. And you say you have the fire power to do it?"

Bonnie nodded. "I got Expression."

He sat up straight, stared at her, then at Lucy. "Is she for real?"

Lucy nodded grimly.

"Where are you keeping it? Because it's not on you." He peered hard at her over the rim of his glasses.

Bonnie nodded. "It's safe."

He grinned ruefully. "Smart girl. That's not the kind of information you just let anybody have." He cracked his knuckles. "You ready to do some work?"

For the first time in days, Bonnie smiled. "Right now?"

"If you wanna go back in time, the sooner you start, the shorter the journey right?"

"Are you sure about this, Bonnie?" Lucy asked urgently as the old man went to pull out a rolling white board from the other side of the room and started dragging it to them. "We're talking about something more permanent than building an alternate world, we're talking about changing history. Do you have any idea what kind of price you'll pay for that? Do you think it'll be worth it?"

Bonnie thought.

Going to Alaric's house two days ago to ask if he had been able to pick up the wedding rings. And finding his body surrounded by flies.

Stefan finally… finally tearing out his mother's heart… and then the look of utter hatred that he had thrown at Bonnie afterwards. He'd rather have kept happy memories of his mother than been forced to face the reality of her monstruosity and indifference.

The graveyard in Mystic Falls and how the death rate had got so high that the town had started pulling down long-abandoned houses to get enough real estate to expand the burial grounds.

Damon drunk, clutching her, mashing his mouth on hers, as she yelled at him to stop, and then later, strangling her, cursing at her and cursing himself for not killing her.

The massacre that had started out as Jo's wedding.

Matt being torn apart in front of her eyes by two heretics. Then later, being thrown into a pyre by another. Both times, he had come back with the Gilbert ring. Both times, she had looked into his eyes and seen his soul was a little bit deader. Wondered if a time would come when he'd come back completely changed.

Elena sleeping in the Salvatore mausoleum.

Kai Parker's face as she left him in the 1903 prison world, her heart full of joy at finally getting back at him.

Bonnie looked Lucy straight in the eyes. "I've never been surer of anything in my life."

Mystic Falls, Virginia

They had sneaked into town in the dead of night. If all went well, no one would ever know they were even here.

"Are you ready?"

Bonnie picked up Ms. Cuddles and slowly, but with the confidence of someone who had been rehearsing the incantation for days and could say it in her sleep, she casted for the magic in the bear.

It came to her slowly at first, and even then she gasped, reeling from it.

Across the flames, she saw Lucy's worried eyes and smiled reassuringly. Looking at Lucy, Bonnie felt a big swell of fondness fill her up. Despite all her protests to the contrary, in the end her cousin had stood beside her.

Then the Expression started really pouring into Bonnie and she bent over in pain, gasping and shouting as the magic filled her. She could see her veins through her skin – black and shiny with power.

When it was all over, she pulled herself up into an aching, painful position to look into the awed eyes of Tiki's grandfather.

It was strange, Bonnie suddenly thought, that even now after weeks of building a nuclear bomb of a spell together, she didn't know the man's first name. But her eyes teared a little at how much he had helped her. Mostly for his own innate curiosity, she acknowledged – the old man seemed to be the witch equivalent of a geek. Still, after almost a decade of Bonnie figuring out magic on her own, it had been a wonderful experience working so closely with an older mentor-like figure. She had learnt so much in these few weeks just from being in his orbit.

Not for the first time, Bonnie wondered how her life would have been if her grandmother had lived.

But she and her Miss Cuddles-sized lump of Expression could only carry her so far. And she knew that this point in the past was the fork in the road that she needed to be on to change the course of destiny.

"You OK?" he asked.

"Bonnie, are you alright?" Lucy cried.

She nodded, tried to smile through the pain and the shocks rushing through her. "Peachy. Let's get this started." She stretched out her hands.

Lucy and Tiki's grand-father grabbed either hand, then joined their own hands and they formed a triangle around the flames of the five candles, set equidistantly apart to form each peak of a pentagon.

"Whatever you do, stay the hell away from me and my family," Tiki's grandfather said now.

"And don't call me for exactly two years. I don't want you to mess up Sean and I."

Despite her pain, Bonnie managed to smirk. "First thing I'm going to do is destroy the 1903 Ascendant. The next thing I'm going to do is hunt Sean down and get him for myself."

"You little brat!" Lucy yelled, but she was laughing.

"It's time," Tiki's grandfather intoned in his librarian "silence" voice.

Bonnie swallowed, gripped both hands in hers tightly. Lucy squeezed back in reassurance. To her surprise, Tiki's grandfather did, too.

Let's see if this works, she thought. Then she started the spell.

Mystic Falls, Virginia.

3 years ago.

She woke up in the cave. Lucy was gone. So was Tiki's grandfather.

The cave. The one where she Ascended out of 1994. And for a moment, she panicked. Because she thought they had over-calculated and she was back in the Prison World again.

But when she climbed out, and heard the sounds of birds in the air, she knew she was back in the real world.

Back in time.

Everything was just as she remembered it. The backpack. The camcorder in her hands. Expression magic – fresh from Qestiya's blood – beating against her bones.

The spell had worked well.

Too well.

Goosebumps broke out over her arms and she shook it off.

She had reached the point of no return anyway.

She looked around her, and got her bearings back, then started walking to the road.

She knew this. She had done it before.

Up until she flagged down the Mack truck and climbed in.

"Where to?" the guilelessly cheery middle-aged man behind the wheel asked.

She told him.

Elena's arms were tight around Caroline's neck, holding her like if she was an anchor that could keep the grieving girl from floating adrift.

"I can't let you do this, Caroline," she whispered into her friend's ear. "You will never be able to forgive yourself. I won't let you turn off your humanity."

"Oh, Elena," Caroline sobbed, her words barely decipherable. "It's not your choice to make."

And with a snap, the dark haired vampire slumped in Caroline's arms, then she let her fall to the floor.

Caroline looked down at her friend's twisted body and felt guilt fill her. Then she closed her eyes. In a few seconds, it will go. As well as the devastating pain that had come to take residence in the space in her heart where her mother used to live.

"Do you know the worst part? It's after today. When everyone's gone. And you're all alone. With your grief."

She swallowed as Damon's words haunted her. If it was going to get worse than today, then she was not going survive this. And she had made up her mind: she was not going to try.

She took a deep breath. Then let it out with a gasp as her nose drew in a familiar scent. That she had known since very early childhood. A beloved scent of a dear, beloved friend that was closer than a sister.

But it was impossible. She was impossible.

But she was there, standing at the end of the hallway, in jeans and plaid?

"Bonnie," Caroline gasped. "What are you wearing?"

Bonnie –

it was Bonnie, wasn't it? It couldn't be a hallucination, right? Grief brought pain… not daydreams –

Bonnie gaped at her. Then she burst into laughter and came running into Caroline's arms.

Caroline caught her friend, gripped her tight and broke down in tears.

Author's Notes:

(ducks tomatoes)

I hate myself, I know. I gave into another plot bunny, started another story.

What is wrong with me?

(I don't know. The bunnies come and sometimes they just keep BITING you until you give in and write. Believe me or not, I just finished this under an hour. I sat down to write a chapter of Long Shadows and this came out of me like… vomit. It was crazy.)

OK, if you want a leave a review to yell at me for not updating Yibbum, or Long Shadows then I can't blame you, OK? But if you liked this one, and you enjoyed reading it or didn't enjoy it and can think of ways to make it better, please let me know that too.

(goes back to write Long Shadows which will be updated soon. Promise.)