She felt him before she saw him.
It had been months. She wasn't sure how many. Except for photographs, magazines and movies, she had not seen a human face in all that time. The last person she had seen was him, before he left. And at the time, she was glad he went. She didn't even have to scream at him to leave her alone. It was in the same moment he realized he was back in hell that, even though he'd dragged her into it along with him, he took off. How was that supposed to make her feel? She was his only cellmate and the sociopath wouldn't stick with her.
He was angry. He had dropped to his knees, knotted his fists in his hair and screamed as if someone who cared could hear his despair through a hole in his world.
His world, she called it in her head. She was stuck in his world; although she tried hard to make it her own. She made home where she always had: in her Grams' house. She made do as she always had: alone. She went to the same grocery store, ate the food she liked for free, shopped for clothes somewhere new each time and took them home for free, she was free. She could do whatever she wanted; run through town like a hellion, swim in fountains, defile public art and play her favorite music at top volume wherever and whenever. His world was her playground. But fun and freedom only take you so far when you're alone.
She lost track of how many months she stayed glad he was gone. She knew the amount of time it took before she wished he'd come back was the exact amount of time it took to break Bonnie Bennett; it was the exact amount of time that existed on her moral clock, and however long ago it chimed, it chimed so loud it shook her into what she could only assume was the basest insanity she would ever reach. Bonnie Bennett missed Kai Parker.
Knowing this, and hating it, she lost sleep revisiting her last moments with him and dissecting them, analyzing, scouring the details for possible redemption, first on his part so that she may find hers second.
She was still blurry, but from what she understood it went something like this:
She was dying. The pain was great. Damon's face loomed hazy above hers saying, "I'm so sorry, Bonnie." He kissed her forehead. Then he disappeared. Kai, apparently incensed, started rambling. Her heart felt heavy with betrayal and her breath brought her less oxygen with each second that passed. She listened to Kai monologue away hating that his voice was going to be the last one she heard. "Did that just happen? I don't care what you think, none of you are any better than me. Your friend just left you. Like, to die. And you're bleeding a lot. Like, a lot a lot. God it smells delicious. I wanna eat you right now more than I've ever wanted to eat anything in my entire life," he mused. "Yeah. You should probably hightail it." Then he laughed, "Oh that's right, you can't. Because I broke you. …Wow, he really just left you." For a minute, he actually stopped talking. She hoped he would stay quiet long enough for her to take her last breath in what little peace the moment afforded her, pretending he didn't exist.
She gasped for what felt like both terrifyingly and hopefully the last time, her peripheral vision grew darker and darker until it closed in on the rest of her sight and she let her eyelids fall. Then, oddly, she felt her body turning. It struck her as death first and she felt a breath on her face, but something about the angle to which her spine curved gave her just a slight surge of energy and she lazily opened her eyes. Kai was holding her up, his cruel eyes beseeching her, his mouth forming the words she heard in a second's baritone delay, "That's too easy." And the next perceptible thing that happened was her lips on his wrist and a hot mouthful of viscous, copper tasting liquid. His blood pulsed into her mouth and her throat urged it down. She knew she only needed a sip but the drink seemed to last forever. He made damn sure she got a thorough helping; it was so thorough that his relieved face became clearer just as quickly as Damon's had blurred when he left her to die. She thought she might have a shot at getting herself the hell away from her fucked up killer-turned-savior, her fucked up friends and maybe her fucked up identity in the end.
Her motor skills hadn't quite caught up, however, and Kai picked her up. It was as he carried her bride-like over the debris and the bodies of wedding guests that the eerie chanting began. She felt Kai tense his grip on her as he looked around. "No," he said. In an instant they were consumed by blinding light and gravity abandoned them only to return with a vengeance seconds later when they collapsed on a new ground.
Bonnie didn't need to look around to know where they were. She knew by Kai's frustrated screaming. They were back. Or, he was back. She just happened to get caught on the same line, an unlucky bonus fish.
"I don't understand," she croaked. "How?"
Kai looked down at her with an expression of such rage she worried that he would undo the revival he'd just put her through. In a flash, he was gone. And then she was alone.
Weeks passed before she let her guard down, stopped looking over her shoulder all the time or waking to a light wind at night. Though she knew Kai Parker was somewhere in the world, she finally let herself believe he was gone for good. She found enough temporary peace to feel like she had indeed died. It wasn't so bad, especially after she realized that it wasn't 1994 they had been sent to. It was instead a new prison for a new crime. It was wedding day. It was the day Kai killed his entire coven, and the bride among them, who was his pregnant twin sister. This particular action was the one that left Bonnie with the most heartache, even above the sleeping beauty spell cast upon her best friend. She didn't know anyone capable of more evil in one day than Kai. However many horrors he'd committed, he somehow managed to reveal one of Bonnie's best friends for who he truly was. This repeating day, originally a shaming reminder to Kai of what he'd done, was the same day Damon essentially killed Bonnie. So Kai's world was hell for both of them in that way. But at least she had access to modern music.
To keep her mind off of betrayal, she buried herself in an investigation. Bonnie was plagued with the question of how they did it. How did a dead coven of witches spell their killer into a new prison world? She had exhausted her collection of grimoires looking for an answer and still to no avail. 1994 had presumably collapsed when Kai killed himself, but when he rose as a vampire she supposed that reopened the potential of binding new prison worlds to him, as he was still the coven leader. The mystery that remained was what kind of power could do such a thing. Everyone was dead.
It was possible that Kai knew what had happened. Having been raised in a family of witches with magic out in the open, he knew more about it than she did. He certainly knew how to get himself out of prison worlds by now and the fact that Bonnie hadn't heard from him meant 1.) He already escaped without her or 2.) This prison was designed more cruelly and escape was not possible.
At her darker, desperate moments, she screamed his name into the sky hoping that wherever he was he would hear her call, or feel her need. She wanted answers, and more than that, company. Even if it was bitter. Even if they killed each other. Even if she loathed him with more passion than she'd ever used for love. But when she finally howled herself hoarse with his name in her dry throat and a slew of tears embarrassed her and still he made no appearance, she gave up on him. She accepted hollowly that she would die alone after a lifetime of wondering where he went, how they got there and why he never came back for her.
Until she felt him.
Though he was now somehow both vampire and witch, she noticed when he force-fed her blood that she could still feel him. She could still feel the magic in him, contrarily even stronger than she'd felt it when he was human and the magic was like a dead jolt. The time he picked her up, it was nauseating but impossible to refute the zing that travelled through her, witch to witch and back again, a bonding current between two naturally kindred beings. She wasn't versed in vamp-witch technicalities as the condition was unheard of before Kai's transformation, but she believed he was still more witch than vampire. His mere presence was vibrational.
She didn't know how near he was; only that he was. As the feeling went on for days without a more tangible clue, she understood she wasn't meant to know of his return yet. She would have to wait for him to reveal himself. And so, impatiently, she played dumb and continued her sentence in solitude with a quicker beating heart.