You want a revelation.
You want to get right,
But it's a conversation
I just can't have tonight.

You want a revelation.
Some kind of resolution.
You are the revelation.

- 'No Light, No Light' by Florence + the Machine

"When did you find this?" Damon asked, holding up the note.

"About an hour ago," Matt said, lines of worry stretching across his forehead. "It was sitting outside her locker, and when Caroline and I went to her house to ask her about it, she wasn't there. Her dad said she hadn't been there all day."

Damon glanced at the paper. It was a rough sketch of the area surrounding Mystic Falls, with two locations- on opposite sides of the map- circled in black ink.

"Are we sure Bonnie's even in danger? That map could be for anything," Alaric pointed out, leaning against the wall near the front door. Lately, he preferred not to venture too far into the Salvatore mansion. Damon wondered if, in light of recent events, that Alaric was regretting his brief alliance with them.

"Bonnie's not stupid," Damon said with a touch of irritation. "Even if she's mad at us, she wouldn't go on a suicide mission by herself."

"But there's these rumors I've been hearing…" Stefan began, and Damon made a shushing motion, for he had heard this many times before.

"Yeah, yeah, I know. There's been talk at the vampire water cooler that a small cult was heading our way. We didn't know whether they were enemies or not, but if Bonnie put it upon herself to go greet them before they even got into town, then she was not taking any chances on where their loyalties lie. So we shouldn't either."

"What can we do?" Elena asked, though her words lacked the readiness they usually had. She had been relatively soft-spoken since the incident.

"We find her," Stefan said, already moving to retrieve some stakes that they stored in the mansion. Caroline nodded in eager agreement from her place beside Matt, who had his arm around her shoulder for comfort.

"I know she's not careless, but she hasn't been herself lately," Caroline said without explaining, for they all knew why. "This whole thing freaks me out. I'll feel much better when we find her and know she's ok."

"What if she doesn't want our help?" Elena abruptly asked, and there was an uneasy silence.

"Of course she doesn't want our help," Damon said, like it was obnoxiously apparent. "But we don't exactly do what people want us to do most of the time. We just do it, and hope everything turns out the best for everyone."

While this was true, it was clear that this did not sit well, particularly with Caroline.

"And how has that been working out for you?" she asked acidly, crossing her arms over her chest. Damon gave her a sarcastic half-smile.

"Look, we can argue about stuff that can't be changed until I run out of immortality, but that won't bring our little witch back to us safe and sound, now does it?"

Caroline pressed her lips tight together, as if stopping herself from replying. Damon took this as compliance and nodded to everyone.

"Alright, then. I'm going to check the south spot and see if she's there. Text me if you guys find out anything," he said, beginning to leave.

"Wait," Stefan called, and Damon turned just in time to catch a stake. Stefan leveled a somber stare at him. "Be careful."

"As always, brother," he said with an ironic smirk, pocketing the weapon and walking outside.

The smell of blood reached him first.

He was running southeast at the time, and he smelled the faint, rusty scent of spilt blood to his right. Turning abruptly, he followed the trail until it led to her. Branches reached and scratched at him, but all he could focus on was the cluster of movement ahead of him. It looked chaotic and violent and at the center of it all was her, her arms raised like a conductor at the start of a musical masterpiece.

Damon was too far away to help, so he merely watched her as he grew closer.

Her limbs bent and swayed, fluid and lithe. He could just feel the power gathering, swelling around her body. It was as if her power was water, pooling at her feet and rising at her call, swarming around her body, rushing and colliding and curling and flowing. The enemy was all around her, diving in and out to try to land a blow, but every time, she would fling them away with a flick of the wrist, sending them crashing into the trunk of a tree. Nothing was getting through the ever-adapting shell built around her. It tightened and drew in upon itself every chance it got, lashing out at the threats and treating them like unwanted ragdolls. If one tried to escape, Bonnie would whirl in their direction, swinging her palm in a circular motion, and their body would be slumped against a rock in the next moment.

Ravenous ferocity colored her face with its shadow, and her eyes were lit with the fiery influence of bloodlust blended with sorrow. He knew that expression. She wore it well.

Trees knelt at her gaze, the wind bowed to her touch, and she bore it all with a rhythm and a sense of elegance that reminded him that magic was not something that she did or performed. Magic pumped through her veins, filled her lungs, lined the walls of her heart. As she moved, he realized that in order to master magic, you have to become it. You have to become the strength you need, the force you apply, the impossible you want to be made possible. A vampire came from her left, slinking his way to her, and she pivoted, her hands arcing through the air until they slammed downward, bringing with them a powerful blast of energy that sent the would-be assailant flying.

It felt like he was getting closer and closer to a flame-laced tornado. The wind was snapping at anything in its path, but it also was charged with a heated influence that tried to push him back. Leaves were now razor-sharp projectiles that stung as they sliced across his skin. He pressed on, determined to reach her in the eye of this storm.

She saw him coming and, for the first time since her mother's conversion, they met eyes.

Damon could not help it; he flinched.

There was a flash of recognition, and reflected in her iris was a tangled mess of betrayal and regret, covered with a thick veil of distrust. However, what made him flinch was what he did not see.

Pain.

She stifled it expertly, as she had hidden it thousands of times before. So many instances of feeling hurt, feeling used, feeling like her entire existence was belittled, all of it confined to a corner of her being that she would never, ever show anyone. Especially not him. Especially not now.

If there was one sensation he understood, it was pain. He wanted to tell her that he knew why she was upset, that he made the wrong decision by not consulting her, that he was a selfish asshole, that they were all selfish and she deserved none of it. But she would not even allow him the knowledge of her hurt.

Instead, she showed him what sent more toxic self-loathing to his heart than he thought ever possible. Her careful stance, her narrowed gaze, her armed hands, and her raised chin. Bonnie appraised him with a calculated indifference and resoluteness, as if she had decided her opinion of him forevermore.

Damon wanted to scream, to come upon the scene and righteously object her apparent decision to write him off. Somehow, her perception of him mattered more than anyone else's, even Elena's. Elena always saw parts of him- parts she wanted to see, parts he wanted her to see. Constantly, ruthlessly, Bonnie saw all of him, whether he liked it or not. She saw the pain, the egotism, the jealousy, the obsessiveness, the constant cloud of self-imposed inadequacy that cloaked him for as long as he could remember. He knew she saw all of this because it had been taking her the longest to trust him.

In the beginning, he rightfully deserved no one's trust, and she was damn well aware of that. She saw what was wrong with him, but as he hung around, she also saw what could be right about him. Not because she wanted to see it, but because she knew that pain only happens to people who are able to be hurt, who allow themselves to be hurt. A person without a soul cannot be harmed emotionally, mentally.

So he had been damaged. He had scars. She saw them, pointed them out. He had just been beginning to see her scars when this happened. When he made the decision that he had no right making.

Now he saw nothing but flawless skin under flowing clothes, a perfect face etched out of stone with a masterful hand, a stunning figure silhouetted against a backdrop of a darkening forest. Her hair, somehow shining with its midnight hue, framed her face, making her the picture of pristine grace. Even with all the chaos around her, with the world in disarray, she was almost ethereal in her magnificence.

Bonnie had always been beautiful- that much Damon had no problem confessing. But she always treated her beauty as if it was an afterthought, a secondhand priority in a world of more important issues. Caroline wore her beauty just as transparently as her clothes, and Elena wore it not vainly but with a self-awareness. But Bonnie's beauty simply always existed, both as a natural reflection of how she carried herself and as a physical fact. Now she was wielding it as protection between her and the world, so everyone else could not see her wounds and instead be fooled into thinking she was fine, perfectly fine. No scars, just color-kissed skin and luminous eyes full of apathy.

He hated it with every fiber of his being.

He wanted ugly. He wanted the dark, the grotesque, the wrong. He wanted faults because he knew she had them. He wanted her rage, her spite, her grudge. He wanted every real part of her. Now, all of that was concealed from him, and all he could see was the shell, the protective wall that she had built around herself.

Perfection was never real; it was a façade that separated the real from the unreachable. And at that moment, nothing felt more beyond his reach than Bonnie.

He hated it. And he brought it upon himself.

She turned to him carefully, every movement deliberate and measured.

"I'm fine," she told him, her icy tone reminding him not of a frozen pond surface, but of a massive glacial sculpture that reaches for the sun and tears down ships. "I don't need your help."

"Well, everyone else seemed to think you did," he said, looking around, knowing that the vampires would lurk until the right moment. Now that they had a new enemy to fight against, they were waiting in the shadows to access his strengths and look for a weakness.

"They're wrong," she said with resolution. "Now leave."

"Can't do that, witchy," he replied calmly, not daring to take any more steps toward her. Instead, he pretended to be checking the perimeter of the clearing.

"Haven't you done enough?" she asked, her words low and sharp, like a knife to the gut. He turned to her.

"I'm here to make sure you don't die. Is that such a horrible crime?"

"Yes." The word was stated with poignancy. "I don't want to see you, Damon. I don't want your help, I don't want your pity, I don't even want you in a five mile radius of me. Now leave."

"What do you want me to say, Bonnie?" He suddenly found himself shouting, because the more he looked at her perfection, the angrier he became. "I did what I had to do!"

"I know you did!" she yelled back, fists clenched, the wind roaring with her. "But that doesn't stop me- or my entire family- from being affected by your actions! Do you even realize-…"

But she was cut off.

Damon gritted his teeth. The vampires had found his weakness.

"Now, now. There will be plenty of time to bicker later," drawled the vampire behind Bonnie, gripping her in a headlock. He was clothed in black, his snake-like eyes peering at Damon warily. "Unless I kill her, that is. Which I will do if you don't let us go on our merry way."

He had a slight British accent, and Damon wanted to rip that arrogant look right off his face. Bonnie did not look afraid; she looked furious.

"Why are you even here?" he asked, spreading his arms wide. His blood was burning with annoyance at these insolent intruders.

"If you must know, we're looking for the…"

But he was interrupted. Or, rather, his throat was pierced with a stake. Damon had subtly taken it from his back pocket while the vampire was talking, and he thanked all the times he played football with Stefan for his excellent aim that allowed him to hit such a precise target.

"Actually, I decided I don't care," Damon growled to the gurgling vampire, who had stumbled back with a hand clutched at the wound. "The second you threaten miss Bonnie Bennett here, it's not a matter of how you'll get what you want, but how you'll die."

The vampire fell to the ground and was frantically trying to dislodge the stake. Damon went to finish the job but stopped when Bonnie hit his arm.

"I didn't need your help," she informed him again angrily. "I was muttering a spell under my breath. I was about to send a rock into his eye."

He stepped closer, into her personal space, just like how they used to banter before. His eyes held hers in a firm grip, trying as hard as they could to reflect the sincerity that he felt.

"Did you ever think that maybe I'm helping you not because you need me to, but because I want to? I know damn well that you could kill all of these vampires with just one of your witchy spells. But I'm here because I chose to be. Because I-…"

Suddenly, they heard a rustle of leaves. Damon whipped around, but he saw nothing. The sound faded to his right, and he realized that it must be the rest of the gang of vampires leaving the area.

"We have another group…" choked out the vampire behind them. He was slightly hunched over, the bloody stake in his hand. "…on the north side of Mystic Falls…you'll never catch us all…"

Bonnie's head snapped to Damon's, and he could read her thoughts.

Elena.

"I know," Damon said, half to the vampire and half to Bonnie. He saw her brow quirk out of the corner of his eye. "When I was on my way here, my friends texted me that they met up with the rest of your pack."

"Damon," Bonnie said. "Go ahead. I'll catch the ones that went in the other direction." She gestured to where they had heard the rustling leaves.

"No," he said without looking at her. "Stefan is with her, she'll be fine."

"I know you would rather be with her, Damon. Go on."

"No," he said, firmer, turning to meet her gaze. "I choose to be here. Now, if you'd kindly take care of our guest..."

Without looking away from him, Bonnie lifted an arm and swept it across her body. An immensely powerful gust of wind smacked into the side of the injured vampire, slamming him into the nearest tree. He crumpled to the ground and did not move.

Letting her arm fall, she regarded Damon.

"Don't think sucking up to me will make me forgive you," she said, pointing a finger at his chest. He waved it away with a roll of his eyes and a grin.

"Don't be conceited, Bonnie. I only suck up to girls that I eventually want to sleep with," he told her, giving her that smug, sideways smirk that he was famous for, that never really revealed whether he was lying or telling the truth. Bonnie glared at him, and he would never admit how he welcomed that well-known glare over any other look she had given him that night. He was sure he would prefer that glare over a flirty smile, any day.

"Don't get in my way," she finally said with severity, and then began to run ahead.

Damon waited, allowing himself the smallest of smiles, just for a moment. It was a glare and a caustic command that she had given him- hardly anything to be happy about.

But there he was all the same, grinning, grateful for the simple fact that she had given him anything at all. He knew he would have to appreciate these little victories while he could.

Damon was not an idiot. It would take more than helping her in battle and flattery to earn him Bonnie's trust. Much more. But there were few things that he had the patience to work hard for, and gaining Bonnie's trust was one of them.

He set off after her, hoping to see a little more of that glare he so enjoyed.

end.

Author's Note: Hey everyone! Ugh, I'm so sorry I've been MIA, it's so bad of me. I've been really involved in trying to fix my grades and get a job, so it's been eating up my time. I've been definitely writing Bonnie/Damon in the meantime though, and this fanfic is supposed to show that I'm back! I've SO SO SORRY I've been seemingly ignoring all of you, it's definitely not been on purpose. I can't wait to write more (because the latest episodes have been a GOLDMINE as a writer who likes to write angst) and catch up with all of you! Thanks for reading this, I hoped you liked it!

This entire fanfic was written while I was listening to "Blinding" and "No Light, No Light" by Florence + the Machine. Suuuuch good songs, and so relevant.