He watched her pace at the opposite end of the cave, littering the crags and nooks with candles that flickered with the restless panic he could feel building within her.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
She threw him a sidelong glance and replied, "Elena needs her brother. I have to bring him back." Her hands and feet never stopped, and her movements were taut and clipped like a wire stretched to its breaking point.
He nearly flinched, anticipating that wire's snap. Instead, he moved further into the cave. "There's no magic strong enough to bring someone back from the dead, you know that."
She turned on her heel to face him at last, her hands splayed out and hair whipping around her. "I have EVERY magic!" she lashed out. Her low, urgent chanting filled the air for but a moment before every candle and torch strewn across the cave flared violently. "I have the spirits, I have expression."
Her eyes fixed on him with an unsettling focus, but instead of malice he found fear in her gaze. Fear and pain.
"Bonnie, don't -" he began. But her eyes had closed and she breathed deep and slow, dragging the thick air into her lungs as writhing veins of black crept over her soft brown skin.
"I have the darkness." When she opened her eyes once more, they were still trained upon him. But now, they were unrecognizable. He lunged towards her, vampire speed kicking in involuntarily. They were both thrown against the back wall of the cave.
Her concentration broken, the flames all extinguished. She looked up at him in surprise, her breath caught in her throat.
"I said, don't," he repeated, gently.
She blinked at him, as if waking from a heavy sleep. The tears that spilled down her cheeks glimmered in the cold moonlight that filtered through the cave's entrance.
"It's too much. The human body can't handle that much magic at once. It would have killed you," he said.
Her voice cracked as she finally spoke, helpless and resigned. "I can't just do nothing."
She felt his grip on her shoulders tighten.
"Look, Bonnie... You've done everything you can. It wasn't your fault." He seemed to notice her grimace and the tight clutch his fingers had on her skin. His arms dropped to his sides and he took an uncharacteristically awkward step back. "You don't get to martyr yourself over guilt that wasn't yours to begin with."
She was quiet, and she watched him while she considered his words. Finally, she said, "Sorry, I forgot you had a monopoly on destructive expressions of guilt." Her mouth curled into a broken smile that disappeared as quickly as it had come.
His eyes softened with chagrin, but she would have sworn she heard a quiet chuckle escape his lips. "There we go. Now that's the Judgy I know and love."
The word lingered in the air. Their mutual affection had always been an unspoken thing, and to have it said aloud felt like a shock. It permeated the dank cave with an expectant electricity.
She took a step forward, traversing the empty space that had been between them. Slowly, she brought her hand up to his neck, fingertips sliding lightly across the cool, sensitive skin to tangle in the hair at his nape.
His eyes flickered down to her lips as she drew nearer, and she could feel his arms encircle her waist.
When they finally kissed, the tense energy that had twisted within her began to unfurl, revealing something else entirely. Something lighter, something warm.
And she began to wonder if things really could be okay, someday, in Mystic Falls.
A/N: I hope you liked it! You can find the AU gifset for this on my blog if you like AU gifsets. Or even if you don't like AU gifsets, I dunno whatever I'm not the boss of you. Just change the commas on the url below to periods (or not, again, not your boss). lol ILY GUYS
esmeralda312,tumblr,com/post/73587405306/bamon-au-bonnie-lives-for-thefudge