AN1: X-posted to AO3 with the full summary. This is bonkaiqueen's all human FBI AU. Title from Troye Sivan's "Touch". Older Bonnie, younger Kai. Bonkai. Heavy Monnie. Set in the undisclosed future, because the tech - archives, records, etc. inspired by the Black Mirror episode "The Entire History of You", the classic anime "Ghost in the Shell", and Netflix's movie "Anon" (and btw, aren't you guys just living for this cyberpunk sci-fi revival in media? Cuz I am) - is muy importante for future plot points. Also this Ether thing really is sticking with me lol. Probably gonna be another slow-going WIP - I have a problem. Enjoy.
AN2: Thanks to shadowcatgirl09 for helping me plan this. If you guy like my stories, you should really be appreciative of Fee taking the time to be my soundboard. She's a trooper.
"So, you never told me, Bonnie - can I call you Bonnie? Anyway, yeah, you never told me exactly what gave me away," leaning forward, Kai's orange jumpsuit stretches across his chest in a way it hadn't six months before. The bracelets that keep the teenager cut off from the Ethernet blink green lights in the fluorescently lit interrogation room. Dark circles shadow his storm-blue eyes as he stares across the table at special agent Bennett. "So what was it, Bonnie?"
The petite agent leans back into her chair, assessing the murderer in front of her and keeping her face blank. He watches her like prey and it's unnerving. But she had caught him when no one else was able to, proof that the imprisoned man wasn't nearly as infallible as he convinced himself he was. Ignoring his question, she spins the styrofoam coffee cup in her hand.
"Why aren't you sleeping well, Mr. Parker?" she asks instead.
His semi-smirk fades and she can see the annoyance flicker over his face, briefly, before he shuts it away, his snake-charmer smile back in place. He has a nice smile, she's willing to admit. There's a lot about him that's nice. He's handsome and brilliant, funny and a talented musician and technophile, if a bit obnoxious and weird. Even Bonnie wasn't immune to his particular brand of charm.
But his outside appearance and demeanor hid a monster. If Bonnie hadn't trusted her gut, Malachai Parker would have had her fooled too. As it was, she'd been able to link the young man to a string of murders around the DMV tri-state area because of her instincts.
"You're looking for that guy, right, Bonnie?" he queries, returning the rude gesture of answering a question with a question. "That Lolita-loving freak? Why not do him like you did me?"
"Who says I'm not, Mr. Parker?"
Pulling up a file from her archive, Bonnie shares it on the Ethernet-locked, safety-monitored comm-link she shares with the criminal before her. The browsers in his eyes lend his pupils a familiar, but eerie, silver glow and Agent Bennett watches him as he skims the images' contents. His lips purse when he sees what she shared with him.
"We already know that you and Mr. Salvatore - or 'that Lolita-loving freak,' whichever you prefer - had established an online correspondence. How do you think that will go at your trial, Mr. Parker? Not only did you kill over a dozen pairs of twins and mass murdered your family for occult worship -"
"Perceived occult worship," Kai mutters.
"- which is worse, because if there's no motive, you did all of this out of sheer cruelty," Bonnie snaps. "You also encouraged another person to commit murder and offered to help hide the body. You may be very skilled at erasing and hacking your record, Mr. Parker, but you got sloppy and now…" Bonnie smirks.
"We've got you. You may as well help us find Mr. Salvatore and possibly save Elena Gilbert - it would very well lend a judge reason to lighten your sentence."
Kai stares at her for a moment, then starts to laugh.
"This isn't about catching Damon, is it? It's about the bodies. You just want to know where the rest of the twins are buried."
"Allowing the families of your victims a chance at closure is of interest, yes."
She pulls a record from her archive, the parents of one of the last pairs of male-female twins to fall victim to Kai's obsession. The pair were one of many not found, Kai being nearly impeccable at hiding evidence - physical and digital alike. She sends it to him, so he can get a taste of the devastation he'd wreaked. Kai frowns at her impatiently.
"I told you, the bodies were destroyed," he grunts.
"And I told you, I don't believe you," she parries.
Crossing her arms Bonnie raises an eyebrow at him. He mimics the expression, annoying asshat he is, but he's hooked. Bonnie has him curious, and Kai is not the kind of young man to ignore his curiosities.
"But the bodies aren't the topic of discussion right now. Give us a location, Malachai. Where would Damon Salvatore take Elena Gilbert? And if his dumping ground happens to be near one of your own - well, I'm sure the DA could arrange for an amenable judge to be assigned to your case. I'm sure you know, but many of the less rehabilitation-focused judges are gunning to be the one to sentence you."
Bonnie can see something flicker in his gaze and she has to clench her jacket in a fist under her crossed arms to hide her excitement. She has him - she has him. She just needs him to give it up.
"You've only just turned eighteen, Mr. Parker. You spent your last birthday in prison - and I'm sure it wasn't pleasant. There are more accommodating places you know: rehabilitation centers, places with limited Ethernet access. If you don't want to spend the rest of your birthdays in a shithole like this…" She trails off to let it stew in his brain. Quietly, she adds. "All I need from you is a little cooperation."
His jaw clenched and the beauty mark on his neck bobs when he swallows. It really is unfair, how a man so twisted on the inside can be so devastatingly beautiful on the hold each other's gazes, Bonnie's heart pounding like a bass-driven pop song. A stare down between the criminal and the cop, until finally - finally! Bonnie internally cheers - the media-dubbed 'Gemini Reaper' nods in acquiescence.
"There's a spot near Virginia beach," he says. "We talked about it once in an offline comm-link chat."
"Sorry I took so long, Agent Bennett," Detective Matthew Donovan greets as she walks into his office. He grins, handing her a to-go cup, causing Bonnie to pause in confusion.
"I got you a vanilla bean and Irish cream latte with skim milk," he says. Bonnie raises her eyebrows and he elaborates. "I took a peek at your public archive to figure out what you like. I wanted to thank you for meeting with me - and to get into your good graces," he confesses with a chuckle.
She takes the offered coffee with a small, polite smile that she soon drops in favor of getting to the point.
"I took a peek at yours as well, Detective," she says, taking a sip of the latte - it was perfect, much to her surprised delight. He rubs the back of his neck, his ears slightly red.
"I know I spend too much time at the local bar," he says. "But there's really no place else to hang out in Mystic Falls. I'm sure you remember."
The small grin that comes to her face then is bit more genuine. She'd forgotten that she and the detective share a hometown - their respective jobs keep them away, although Bonnie had completely moved away while Donovan chose to do the two-hour commute to Richmond.
"Not your public archive, Detective Donovan," she nods to the scarring on his body. "I took a peek at your private archive."
He deflates slightly.
"I figured as much," he sighs. "I hope you don't mind, but I don't exactly like talking about it."
"Of course," Bonnie turns her gaze out of the window behind him, not wishing to make him or herself uncomfortable. It was no fault of his own, but looking at the detective's bad scarring made Bonnie feel sick to her stomach. "I only meant to imply that perhaps you and I would not be the best partnership for this case."
She grimaces.
"A little personal for us both, don't you think?"
"Maybe not personal enough for anyone else," the detective counters softly. Bonnie looks at him in surprise. His eyes, one scarred up and the other smooth and beautiful, crinkle as he sends her a self-deprecating grin. His mercurial blue-grey pupils seem to shift to a darker shade as he continues.
"No one else really needs the closure."
Bonnie is a great profiler. She knows this - she's consulted damn near two hundred cases the past decade, drawn up nearly perfect profiles of the sickest minds, despite the smear on her reputation that was Malachai Parker. Discredited and demoted after that clusterfuck, she'd had to work her ass off to prove that she was still worth the investment the bureau had placed in her when selecting such a young cadet to become an agent. Almost every profile she had created - even Kai's - lead to an arrest or identity exposure.
She'd gotten hasty with Malachai. A little too cocky and a little too eager to prove herself on one of her first big cases. She'd overestimated herself and underestimated him, a stupid, stupid thing to have done when she understood, almost better than anyone else, exactly how ingenious and outright devious the young man was.
Kai Parker, after his death, became a bit of a white whale for her. She was always chasing his ghost, in every case she worked after him, determined to let no one else evade justice the same way he had. It was redemption and revenge, exacted on criminals who hadn't exactly committed the crime she caught them for.
Indulging her pride was likely her greatest sin.
After meeting Detective Donovan at his office ("Please, just call me Matt," he had laughed. "We're pretty much neighbors, anyway") Bonnie had followed him back to Mystic Falls, her car trailing behind his car on a route that came back to her like an old habit. They agreed to work dinner at The Grill, the restaurant-bar that Matt spent a lot of his downtime playing pool at. Bonnie had spent a lot of time in high school there herself - Matt's older sister, Vicki, used to work there and she would sneak Bonnie extra cherries in her Cokes when the manager wasn't looking.
The thought of Vicki Donovan makes Bonnie flinch. Vicki, who had been so nice despite her self-destructive behavior, who took care of her younger brother in favor of taking care of herself, hadn't deserved to die the way she had. Bonnie had done more than peek at Matt's full archive: she had outright perused it for hours, seeking clues on Kai's escape and she'd seen what Matt had seen, watched his sister die the same way he had at the brutally efficient hands of the Gemini Reaper. She wonders if he ever replays the records - Bonnie had been on the verge of abusing her authority to access people's private archives to view Matt's records of his run-in with Kai Parker.
It both fascinated and sickened her, how obsessive she became. It was less about the victim's pain and more about catching that white whale, and Bonnie had to redesign her thinking in order to shift her focus back to where it should be.
Helping the victims.
Working with Detective Donovan is a particularly surreal experience for Bonnie. Not only did the younger officer share a hometown with her, he stood as a living, breathing testament to her failure. If she hadn't fucked up so badly with Parker, his sister would still be alive, and Matt wouldn't be so disfigured.
It was why looking him made her feel sick.
Because Matt Donovan wasn't just a victim of Kai Parker's boundless derangement. He was a victim of Bonnie Bennett's pride too.
So yeah, looking at him was a sickening reminder of why she does what she does.
"So, these recent murders are a perfect recreation of what the Gemini Reaper did," Matt says over the encrypted and classified private comm-link they share - having civilians catch a whiff of this case was a major no-no. Outside of it, she watches him take a bit of his burger and say something about not enough avocado. The silver glow of active browsers light up his eyes, and it's an extra creepy sight when half his face is burn-scarred. But Bonnie's sure hers look similarly off-putting as they share go over files on comm-link together.
"Kidnapping the victim in the daytime, in a public area without leaving a trace on anyone's record. Disposing of the body completely and being blocked out of the victims' records entirely upon an Ethernet archive review. No traces of a hack or tampering, suggesting a high level of cybersecurity understanding," Matt continues as they watch the final moments Greta Martin before the copycat ends her life. There is large blanks space of nothing in her view, a knife seemingly descending from the heavens to stab her multiple times and slit her throat before the record goes black with the words Record Discontinued appearing. It's a highly disconcerting sight.
"I went back to compare this with the records of Parker's victims. The Buchanan twins," Donovan throws that record onto the comm-link. Bonnie watches Muriel Buchanan's record as, again, as if wielded by an invisible entity, a baseball bat beats Mitchell Buchanan, Muriel's twin brother to death as Muriel screams for it to stop. The bat is then turned to Muriel before the record goes black.
Bonnie's really come to hate the phrase "Record Discontinued" over the years.
"The Reyes twins," and the record plays, this time from the male twin's perspective as he watches his sister's beheading via chainsaw before the same chainsaw is used to tear open is midsection. And again, it's as if the weapon was floating around and acting of its own accord.
"The Changs," a dual image record is played, the Chang twins each tied to a chair with a clear plastic bag duct taped closed around their heads. They'd watched each other asphyxiate while a pair of teasing, snipping scissors floated between them.
Record Discontinued.
Bonnie sighs and takes a bite of her white cheddar alfredo macaroni with cajun chicken and applewood-smoked bacon. It's still as delicious as her memory implied it would be. Bonnie thinks it says a lot about her that she can watch several terror-filled final records in a row and still enjoy her dinner.
"The major difference between now and then is victim choice," she provides over the comm-link.
"Kai had an obsession with male-female twins, stemming from his own preoccupation with his stillborn twin sister and the mosaic traces of her DNA in his cells - Kai was a partial chimera. He believed they 'merged' in utero and that he was the stronger twin for having survived and his high IQ, attractiveness, and talent for piano and computers no doubt fueled this belief. He hated his parents for their exploitation of his gifts however, and soon developed a paranoia that their continuous, uh...breeding was an attempt to replace him with a better child. His killing spree started shortly after his youngest siblings, a healthy pair of male-female twins, were born. He always went for male-female twins around his age."
"He escalated when he realized you were on to him and killed his entire family by trapping them in the basement of his childhood home and starting a fire," Matt finished for her. He grins and says out loud, "Been there - not exactly fun."
A flash of guilt shoots through Bonnie. She pushes it aside to continue the review.
"His family died of smoke inhalation, and their bodies were found to be half-dissolved. Whatever Kai had used as an accelerant may have been some kind of highly combustible and corrosive substance. He was arrested and shortly before his trial escaped."
Taking a deep breath, Bonnie looks at Matt solemnly. "I'm sorry for my part in what happened after that," she says in a soft voice. "I'm sorry he escaped and I'm sorry for what happened to you and Vicki as a result."
Matt stares at her in muted shock, seemingly both taken aback and unsurprised by her apology.
"Nothing to forgive," he tells her. Over the comm-link, he says, "Seriously, don't sweat it. I don't blame you, I blame the psycho pretty boy. Let's complete our review and go over our list of suspects. If you really feel bad, catching this copycat is the best way to help me get some peace."
He takes her hands in both of his and Bonnie blinks at him. Her mouth feels suddenly dry and she wishes there was someone around who would refill her water. Gentle touch is a nearly foreign concept to her and Matt's hands are warm and welcoming. They envelop her small digits completely. Almost absently, Bonnie finds herself tracing the smooth ridges of Matt's scars with the pads of her fingertips. Ashamed, she stops herself, shooting him a sheepish smile. It falls away at his vulnerable and probing expression
"And you too, Bonnie. I think you deserve some peace of mind as well," he murmurs, squeezing her hand before he releases her and retreats. Her fingers still tingle from where they touched.
Slipping back under the mask of professionalism, the vulnerable moment between them passes and the two detectives continue their case review over the comm-link.
"Dad?" Bonnie calls out, slipping inside her childhood home. Her father appears in the foyer quickly, a large grin on his face as he steps towards her and wraps her in a warm bear hug.
"Pumpkin!" he greets. "I missed you." With a laugh, Bonnie pats his back.
"I missed you too, Dad," she tells him. Releasing her, Rudy Hopkins leads his daughter to the kitchen, where he makes two cups of chamomile tea and the duo catch up with each other. It's past midnight by the time her dad groans about being an old man in need of sleep. With a soft smile, Bonnie hugs her dad goodnight and insists she can do the dishes on her own as she shoos him to bed.
"I'm thirty-six and an FBI agent, Dad," she laughs. "I can handle a couple of dirty mugs and a tea kettle."
After putting the dishes away and getting ready for bed, Bonnie hunkers down and thinks of the day she had. Deciding to do a rewind, she replays her record of the case review, annotating and attaching notes to the file. The biggest difference was that the killer's profile had shifted. Kai went after twins. The copycat's favored victim was slender, pretty African American women. If it weren't for the aspects of the crime that were exactly like the Gemini Reaper's, she would have thought this killer was pursuing some sort of sexual release.
Or revenge, a rogue thought intrudes. Bonnie tries to ignore it. The sheer vanity that the new victim profile had anything to do with her filled Bonnie with self-disgust. Still, not willing to overlook any possibility, she adds the note to the file.
She rewatches the moment that Matt had grasped her hands in his several times before pausing and adding an annotation.
Warm, she notes. Familiar. After some hesitation, she also adds, I enjoyed the feeling.
It would be just her luck, she muses to herself, to fall for the guy who shared her fixation with another man. How fucked up.
Finishing her rewind, Bonnie closes her eyes and tries to sleep. But as per usual, she gets a nagging sensation in the back of her skull that she can't ignore. With a heavy exhale, Bonnie begins another rewind, replaying events from over ten years ago.
AN3: Don't spoil who the killer is if you piece it together.
AN4: Yes, the opening is a rewind that Bonnie is watching. Scenic rewinds (flashbacks, lol, I think I'm fancy) will be in italics.