Notes: Hello I have like three other half-written fics in my notebook and this is the only one that will probably go beyond three pages, which means woo posting.
(no but really kai is so much more likeable as a more complex character I was super over the whole sociopath thing but this is way more interesting and it's about time bonnie had someone who could keep up with her amazingness and who has actual witch powers that can rival her own?)
(I also alternated between a scream of horror and one of joy because ship pain? but also girl power? I mean this show man. you totally lost me for a while there but I am back and mostly for these two because I called steroline literally four years ago and this is not how I imagined it going down so here is my shiny new painful ship)
(because what are all my ships if not painful and half-doomed?)
*tl;dr - this first half is essentially just a character study from 6.17 - a characterization exercise if you will, and a kick in the ass because I want to write a second part but I'm having trouble actually deciding where I want to go? It's making starting difficult.
(one)
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Damon says, "We need Kai to get the ascendant from 1903," and his eyes are so pleading and so apologetic beneath his blasé attitude that Bonnie can almost forgive him for the ambush the other night.
Almost.
He says, "Stick with me, Bonnie Bennett," and then his grin is razor sharp, conniving and cruel; the mere fact that these two versions of Damon can exist at the same time is nearly unfathomable. But then again, spending months on end with only one person leads you to accept a lot about them, and Bonnie just doesn't have the time or energy to hate the man her best friend is eternally in love with — not when her other best friend has decided to be rid of all emotions — especially love — altogether.
Besides, even Bonnie can't deny that something grew between her and Damon in all that time and that not-enough space, something that made him the first person she wanted to truly see (to truly touch), and something that lets her draw on the warmth and emotion of that last voicemail, sometimes.
"I'm doing this for Caroline," she informs him, as if that needed any clarification. "And Stefan."
Damon just nods, somehow serious and sarcastic both at once, and hands over his phone.
—
Kai sounds too gleeful on the phone, over the fact that she is finally (however unwillingly) reaching out to him, and in person it's nealy too much to handle. As he dangles the ascendant in front of her like some kind of pet treat, Bonnie has half a mind to get up and leave him to his ridiculous self-satisfied smirk. The other half of course, is thinking of her friends.
"What's the catch?" she demands, because there is always a catch in conversations like these. Kai's confident teasing falls away, and everything in Bonnie tenses.
He says, "I'll go if you go," something so earnest in it even as his eyes are oddly guarded.
She wants to throw up.
Kai prattles on about 1903 and time travel and she is only half-kidding when she tells him, "I'd rather die of cholera than spend an afternoon with you."
He drops his gaze, like a flinch, and Bonnie is oddly and terribly satisfied.
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Using her best friend to convince her is as easy as he expects it to be; the voice he has dubbed 'stupid Luke' hums its disapproval.
Kai figures he should be worried, in the part of his brain still so wired for self-preservation and deceit, what with three people who hate him and an arguably complex and risky use of magic, but the sight of Bonnie's blood dripping onto the ascendant between them banishes the thought.
You've done that to her.
It actually makes his stomach turn a little.
Stupid empathy, Kai thinks, before losing himself in the swirling rise of his magic (he will never be tired of his magic) and the familiar (uncomfortable?) hum of Bonnie's life and power in his hands.
She was dying, nearly, then.
Now she could probably take him, if she wanted to — if her hate was strong enough. Even Kai's quiet inner voice recognizes how deeply Bonnie could hurt him, if she truly tried.
—
Kai hasn't seen snow in nearly twenty years — not that he'd tell anyone that.
While he tilts his face up to the sky, he overhears the girls — "I don't want to leave you alone with him." Kai is tempted to grin out of sheer egotism.
"I'm fine," Bonnie says, and he feels a twinge somewhere in his chest. "He's good now, remember? New leaf."
He can tell without looking that Elena is dubious; Kai would be too — good is a bit of a stretch.
Maybe that's a sign.
"New leaf?" he echoes, the stupid Luke voice making his sound stupidly eager and hopeful. "You believe me."
Please please please—
"Hell no."
The old parts of Kai — the original, the untainted with feelings — probably would have lit a fire by now.
He can't decide if it's good or bad that he can't quite bring himself to do it.
Bonnie's scowl fades only a little as she relaxes and opens her hands for the locator spell; Kai is distracted once again by the dot of blood.
"You have really nice palms," he blurts, nearly unthinking.
The humiliation is quick; Bonnie just closes her eyes while Kai berates his stupid Luke voice for its idiocy. The spell takes invisible shape around them, and Kai is very aware suddenly of Bonnie's magic — powerful, graceful, terrifying — calling to his own, to that place in his chest, like a siren. Maybe that's what pulls the words out, pouring unchecked from the singular honest part of his soul.
Maybe he can do it now that she is concentrating on the spell, now that Kai, for a brief moment, doesn't have to struggle so much beneath the utter, scathing disdain and distrust in Bonnie's eyes.
"Do you know why I'm here?"
She ignores him (of course) but he presses on anyway. It's too late really; this is already happening. "Because my guilt keeps me up at night."
Stupid empathy.
Bonnie is still carrying on with the spell, as if she can't hear him (or just downright refuses) and Kai can pretend all he wants that it doesn't — doesn't hurt — but now that he is fractured and put back together in mismatched pieces, all Kai wants is to be rid of this feeling — of all of these feelings.
"I know — I know you don't believe me, but I need you to give me one more chance."
And...
nothing.
Part of Kai (the Luke part) insists that Bonnie doesn't owe him anything, that even a shot at redemption in her eyes is more than he should be allowed in this new second life, but the larger, older parts of him did not grow up while he was frozen in time.
There is a reason Malachai won the merge, after all.
"Bonnie!" he shouts, "Listen to me!" He breaks her trance, grabbing at her arm—a deep-rooted place in him can feel his darkest magic surging up, and where he'd normally just pull, Kai can also feel Bonnie's own power bursting forward to meet his; the clash is like lightning beneath his skin.
Kai is used to pulling— used to pulling Bonnie's magic right out— and she knows it too, the expression in her eyes strong enough to recoil him and release her. She is trembling, nearly imperceptively.
"Sorry," he starts, something bitter (shame) coating his tongue and making him falter. "Oh my god, I— I didn't mean to do that." Kai's heart is beating too quickly.
"But you did it anyway." Bonnie's expression is almost as resigned as it is furious. You wanted to hurt her. "Because even if you're telling the truth, the old you is still inside of you."
She turns away before he has time to digest that terrible (or not-so-terrible) truth.
"The ascendant is this way."
Kai has to take a breath (why is his heart still beating so fast?) before he can follow.
—
He tries not to stare too hard at Bonnie's back, or at the way snow looks in her hair.
"If you don't think I'm capable of change, why spend an entire day with me?"
She seems determined to ignore this particular line of questioning; now he's determined to know. "Why bring me out in the middle of nowhere?"
Bonnie stops, and the Luke part of Kai warns that he should too, but the thought is already stuck in his throat. "I could gut you all over again."
Her shoulders go still.
"Your friends would never even hear you scream."
She turns and he stamps down the urge to lean away. "Because maybe you're right."
He doesn't feel particularly good about being right.
"Maybe deep down there's a part of me that believes there's a sliver of good in you."
Kai is surprised; there's something in her tone, in the way she's looking at him right now.
Maybe that's another sign.
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He laughs and she wants to throw up again.
Kai turns his back and as Bonnie pulls out her knife, a small part of her brain wonders how he can't be suspicious here now, in the middle of the forest where, like he said—
no one will hear him scream.
She plunges the knife into his back and the rush of having finally been able to hurt him is almost frightening.
Not enough to stop her, though.
"Bonnie!" Kai turns over to face her, a kind of desperation in his face and all she can think is, now you know how it feels. "What are you doing?"
He oddly doesn't sound that panicked, not really, as if maybe some part of him had expected this all along. The thought just flares Bonnie's anger hotter.
"Gaining your trust," she spits, fury making the knife in her hand tremble, "and then stabbing you in the back! Feels pretty sucky, doesn't it?"
"Please don't—"
"Don't what? Don't leave you here? All alone? Drive you to the point of wanting to end your own life?" Her free hand smacks him nearly of its own volition. "I almost killed myself because of you!"
The utterance of that truth nearly pulls her all the way down again.
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He wonders if anyone told her what they'd tried to do, that day.
What he'd tried to do.
Kai wonders (in a far off 'currently not about to be stabbed to death' part of his brain) if he'd be bleeding in the forest in 1903 if she knew.
But the new parts of him know that it would be selfish to tell her now.
It wouldn't change anything.
Even if he wishes it would.
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"Please believe me, I've changed."
"I know." Beneath Kai's pleading and the roar of in her ears, Bonnie is aware—almost separately?—of Kai's magic, immense and nearly as (or just as, or more) powerful than her own, and a voice in her head whispering, he's letting you hurt him.
But Bonnie doesn't care.
"So have I."
When she hits nothing, deep down she isn't surprised at all.
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Kai's magic carries him further than he thought possible, until he collapses onto his back to stare at the endlessly grey sky.
She tried to kill you.
Even Kai the sadist is having trouble handling that one.
It takes him a long time to get up; by the time he manages it, Kai is damp with snow and dizzy with blood loss.
His vulnerable state—the softness of his heart and the fragility of his bones—has never troubled him, until now.
Kai is magic — even the awful (abomination) before of him was magic, even if it was of the darkest kind.
His magic will keep him alive.
If he lets it.
Kai wanders back, following the trail of their footprints (wonders if Bonnie is scared sometimes in the same way he is now, because their hearts pulse in a way their—her vampire friends' hearts do not, despite their birthrights and skills and hours upon hours of learning and growing—he wants to ask, but knows deep down he never will) and only hopes that stabbing him was enough—
that she won't actually leave him here.
Above, the aurora blazes, lighting his way.
Kai knows, even before he breaks the final line of trees, that he's too late.
Her magic is calling; he could follow it anywhere.
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"I just want you to be sure," Elena says, even as she holds out the ascendant to receive Bonnie's offering. "Will this give you what you need?"
His magic will keep him alive, if he lets it.
He'll survive. He'll be trapped.
That's all she wants.
Bonnie looks her best friend in the eye.
"Yes."
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"Bonnie!"
She sees him, but as the darkness in his heart can see darkness in hers, Kai knows she won't wait.
He wishes he'd imagined that curve of her mouth.
They disppear in a flash of light and the Luke part of him whispers, you deserve it.
She'll never forgive you.
You're alone again.
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Kai is gone.
Bonnie tells Damon it's closure, and it is, in a way.
But she will carry that scar until the day she dies.
And she can't shake this feeling that it isn't over yet.
More Notes: I am all for those terrible longing looks and the path of most resistance.
here. for. it.
(part two to come within the next few days? maybe? at some point this week for sure. spring break is only so long – then back to work. sigh)
thoughts are loved!
Annie