After a long day of dealing with the hurricane of endless bullshit that is Mystic Falls, all Bonnie wanted to do was to curl up with her old ass bestie and his old-ass bourbon. It was bad enough having to fight miscellaneous evil with her powers, but far worse when she had to do so with her own two hands. Thankfully most of the blood she was covered in was not her own, although that mixed blessed meant that she got to officially add "ax murderer of minor demons" to her resume. While Matt has always been a reliable second when evil needs vanquishing, what Bonnie wanted now was Damon. Unfortunately, with his brother on an extended vacation from his humanity, Damon was less available than usual.
One thing that was sure to spring him into action was her coming home covered in blood. He'd know by the smell that it wasn't hers, but the thought of her coming near his couch with it would be enough to set off a hurricane that guaranteed her a slot in his amazing shower, followed by the opportunity to wind up wrapped in his obscenely comfortable pajamas. Why a man who sleeps nude even has a super comfy pajama wardrobe she would never know, but her plan to win up ensconced with them was both flawless and simple; a masterpiece if she'd say so herself. With a smirk and a bounce in her step Bonnie approached the door, electing not to bother with knocking since his supernatural senses would have told him that she was there as soon as the distinctly unmanly and energy efficient sound of her Prius announced her arrival.
Used to the door being unlocked she simply sauntered on in. Well, saunter is an optimistic word for what probably looked more like an exhausted lurch, but she didn't want to let on how bone tired she was. The fireplace was crackling merrily, so clearly he was home. "Damon!" she called. She expected him to appear right before her any second, or possibly behind her for effect, but several moments passed and no such luck. It wasn't Damon's usual habit to leave a guest waiting long for his appearance, he'd usually appear entirely nude except delicious smelling bubbles before he'd have someone waiting for him. That was strange. And strange was never good in Mystic Falls. The wheels in Bonnie's head started to turn, did she see his car out front? She didn't even think to look for it…
Torn between shaking that off and waiting for a few moments in case she had interrupted him or he simply didn't hear her because he was showering, Bonnie hesitate a few beats more in the foyer. She took a deep cleansing breath and consulted her instincts. Her gut told her to get the hell out of dodge so she whirled around and bounded for the door like a bat out of hell. No sooner than she begun to run towards the still open door did she find it shoved shut by a pale hand and herself pressed against it in a single, impossibly rapid movement. She had instinctively blinked when she started moving at an incredible speed. She could feel even without looking that the muscular body pressed against hers was not Damon's. As she opened her eyes to see Stefan's ring right in front of her face her heart dropped.
"What's the rush, Bon-bon?" he drawled in a chilling mockery of Damon's teasing cadence. He leaned in close to her bloody neck and took in a deep inhale. "You smell like dinner. Did you bring take-out for me?"
This was pretty much her worst nightmare. She'd dealt with plenty of blood-thirsty psychopaths in the last few years, but the Ripper of Monterrey is the only one that she didn't know how to deal with. Normally such a force of evil would be countered with a plan to slay or at least banish it, but because this creature's alter ego was Damon's little brother, she knew it wouldn't be that straightforward. If her life was on the line he would understand that she did what she had to do, but the light behind his eyes would go out without his little brother, and he would never look at her quite the same again. What is worst for a slayer of beasts than a beast she can't slay?
"Stefan, I'd really rather not...socialize with you right now," she started. "Least of all with you so close in my personal space." Without the benefit of her powers, frankly, she was in no shape to dispatch him at all. Which meant that her least favorite task was unavoidably upon her. It was time to reason with crazy.
She could feel him bristle behind her, which heavily implied she was already off to a bad start. "You NEVER want to 'socialize' with me, now do you Bon-bon? It has nothing to do with my humanity being on or off, ever since you met me you NEVER wanted anything to do with me, now did you?" He was escalating fairly rapidly from a low growl to a controlled rage. She could feel his chest rising and falling rapidly against her back as his hot breath fanned across her neck. "Unfortunately for you, I'm not really interested in being brushed off, so I'll make you a deal. You tell me what the fuck your problem has been with me since the day we met, and I will let you go. I can't kill you anyway since Damon might actually stake me and I'm in no mood to find out the hard way, but let's just say I know how to get an answer to a question without leaving anyone dead."
That was enough to prompt a proper shiver, that he could definitely feel seeing as he was pressed so intimately against her. "Mmmm," he groaned with what would have passed for a sultry chuckle under better circumstances. "Come on, Bonnie, are you game or not? The only thing I love more than ripping is torture. Although I have unintentionally cut my own entertainment short when I was just having too much fun."
"I'll tell you, but only if you get out of my personal space. I've been quite sufficiently molested for one evening." Vampires without their humanity have little incentive to lie, so she was pretty sure that he wouldn't kill her. With that out of the way, she was ready to cut the bullshit and have him stop literally breathing down her neck. Running would only get him excited to be chasing her, and cowering would get him excited to be scaring her.
As suddenly as he had appeared behind her he was suddenly on the couch looking as sedate and relaxed as if he had been there the entire time. "Fair enough, now your turn." All of the teasing and flirtatiousness from his tone earlier was gone and his face was the very picture of bored indifference you would expect from a creature with no emotions. But the fact that he was staring unblinkingly at her and his posture of subtly rapt attention belied his studied apathy. Any display of emotion was a hint that you were getting closer to their actual selves, so Bonnie chose her words carefully. Since somewhere deep within him he genuinely wanted to know the truth of why they had always been distant, she decided to bet on actual honesty. At least as close to honesty as she could get without setting him into a spiral of frustratingly heightened emotion.
"I'll be honest, but don't forget we made a deal," she began, pausing to gauge his reaction. He gave a curt nod and his facial expression remained serious, so she took another deep breath to summon her courage and soldiered on.
"When I first touched you, I felt the chill of the deaths you caused. I thought all I was feeling was death because you were a vampire, but I've never felt anything like it before or since."
"You mean you didn't feel the same when you touched Damon?" he interrupted. As his unreadable expression changed to one of bewilderment she decided to stay silent to let him process, or whatever it was he was doing. As he puzzled over her response, his face registered a range of emotions from confusion to frustration. There were many answers he was prepared to receive, but the one she actually delivered was not among them. He was entirely prepared for her to tell her that it was some annoying habit of his, maybe some obscure judgy thing. He didn't expect it would be something of a magical nature at all. Maybe Damon was onto something spending so much of his time with witches because apparently that well of crazy is deep. "That's ALL? Your witchy senses didn't like me?"
"It's It's not that exactly. It's...it's hard to explain the way a witch's intuition works. A witch's powers are connected to her and a part of her, but they have a mind of their own as well, complete with their own opinions and their own knowledge of things we can't consciously know. When you touched me, my powers told me not to trust you, and as I spent more time around you and saw what happened to people that did trust you, it validated my initial impression. Who you show yourself to be is usually a nice guy, and if that was all then…" she started to trail off fearing she might have said too much. He still looks just like the acquaintance of several years, but particularly at this moment he is not that man and this was no time for witchy chitchat.
"But who I really am is a monster" he finished, eyes bleeding black as veins snaked across his face that had otherwise drained entirely of expression. Bonnie started to get lightheaded because she was just not up to him losing his temper in any way, shape or form. He had never lost his temper with her before, and that was by design. She couldn't think well enough to even attempt to get away or make a move to defend herself and was rapidly getting lightheaded. Having had such a physically exhausting day before unwittingly stepping into that veritable gauntlet she drained of energy so quickly it was like someone had cut the gas line in her car. Just as the room started to blur and go dark she felt herself falling and then nothing.
Bonnie came to on the couch to see Stefan crouching close enough to her to keep a watch on her but far enough that she didn't feel immediate panic from his proximity. His brow was crinkled in broody concern, thank goddess. That means somehow her familiar, if not precisely beloved acquaintance was back. She didn't want to get excited too soon, though, so she decided to check. "Stefan," she asked quietly.
Stefan closed his eyes and lowered his head with a deep breath. Of course after having been rampaging for...an amount of time that's hard to gauge at all in that state she wasn't quite sure what version of him was sitting before her. "Yeah, I'm me. I'm back. Whatever that counts for. I'm so sorry, Bonnie."
"I shouldn't have cornered you, threatened you, I'm sorry for everything I did to you tonight. But most of all, I'm sorry for all of the things that I didn't do in the years that I've known you. I never gave you a reason to trust me, I just quietly held onto resentment about the fact that you refused to. I'm so used to people hearing my story and telling them how tormented I feel and how much I try to be good and having them just treat me like I am good, no matter what I do or have done, that I started to believe my own press." He took a breath and looked at her properly. Even though he was feeling shame, he knew that he would never change this unless he stepped up for real. I never liked that you came to trust Damon and not me, but really, why me? I'm a monster. If I were you I wouldn't trust me either."
"Stefan…" Bonnie started, not really wanting to listen to a round of self-flagellation.
"Don't tell me I'm not. I didn't say that so that you could try to make me feel better or something, I said it because it's true. I've spent all of these years pretending that it's someone else, the Ripper is this other person that takes over me and I'm not responsible for the things he does and nobody should think less of me because of his actions. Stefan is a good guy that drinks animal blood and doesn't hurt people. Stefan has the hero hair. The Ripper is evil and Stefan needs to be saved from the Ripper. I'm the Ripper, and the Ripper is me. You're the only person that has ever really gotten that."
Bonnie's pretty face twisted into a puzzled frown. "That's what brought you back?"
"Well, what brought me back was seeing you faint at the sight of my fangs. You've never done anything like that before. To know that there is someone that knows me, someone that's been around me and knows my family and has seen me laugh and love, but I'm still secretly her worst fear just made me admit what I'd been hiding from for centuries; I am the Ripper. He's not someone different than me, I don't turn it off and become him and then become me again, I'm always the Ripper. That blood is always on my hands and I can't remove myself from what I've done. Other people might have believed me when I said I hated him and it wasn't me, but you saw straight through it the very day you met me."
"I'm just glad you're back to normal," Bonnie sighed.
"I promise you, I'm not back to normal and that's a good thing. I finally understand what it is that Damon loves so much about you." With a ghost of a smile, Stefan quickly stood up. "Damon's here. Tell him what happened."
"Wait," she started feeling a bit of panic setting in. "You want me to tell him that-"
"Tell him the truth. I'm going to get out of here but I'll be back in the morning. I know he'll be upset and I'll deal with that in the morning, but for tonight I don't really want to put you through...watching him probably turn me into a pinata."
Bonnie laughed, but he didn't. Accountability hurts sometimes...but that was for him to deal with tomorrow. For tonight Bonnie was fresh out of worries. Damon came in at a run, with Stefan leaving and Bonnie's car being enough information to tell him he needed to move fast.
"Are you alright?" he asked, his eyes wild(er than usual) with panic.
Bonnie simply smiled, "I'm better with you here, and I'll be better than that if you run me a bath."
Damon instantly forgot his worries at her smile and went to run a bath and get her favorite pajamas. Of course, he had no need to own some for himself, but he wasn't going to tell Bonnie he bought her pajamas.