A/N: We rage, we cry, we look for the silver lining. This is me looking for the silver lining. Inspired by 7x19 because several things were exposed in the context if you know what to look for, or know what questions to ask. No Bonenzo, but it is mentioned. Baroline and Bamon ahead. Other things you need to know, Bonnie doesn't have those nasty scabs yet. Besides that, angst ahead.
Disclaimer: Characters belong to LJ Smith/CW. Plot is mine. No copyright infringement is intended.
"People belong in your life by natural vibration, not forced will or expectation."
They stared at one another pained….
….feelings existed there that were uncomfortable, that were different from what they were used to feeling for one another…
….decisions would have to be made; there'd be no backing out of this…and yet…
One chose to hide in self-imposed darkness. One was left behind, abandoned with a broken heart…a heart now encased in ice and stone…
1.
Bonnie's visit to Dallas would be short, an overnighter because the risk was too great to stay any longer than that. She arrived a little after three o'clock in the afternoon, hoodie on, dark sunglasses to conceal her notable orbs. Hustling through the busy airport, she stood in line waiting for a cab. Once one was procured, she rattled off the address and settled into the supple leather seat observing the downtown metropolitan area and its cloud touching skyscrapers. The sheer size of the city made her feel microscopically small by comparison, and anonymous. One thing she needed as she was still on the run.
The phone smashed between her palms vibrated. A gentle smile tugged at the corner of her lips as she read the text from her boyfriend, and typed a reply she made it safely. Another message hit her inbox, this one giving her a status update on the progress being made to eliminate Rayna's targets. Bonnie lost her smile as she was reminded of one of the reasons she wanted to escape from her topsy-turvy life for five seconds.
Twenty minutes later the cab pulled up along the street and parked in the driveway of Alaric's home, a quaint two-story bungalow in a recently gentrified area. Paying the fare, Bonnie headed up the pathway and rung the bell. The door opened.
Caroline Forbes beamed as bright as a moonbeam. "You finally made it to Dallas!" she yanked her best friend into a bruising hug that squeezed the breath out of Bonnie who giggled bemusedly, and did her best to hug Caroline just as tightly.
Bonnie's nose began to tingle, a sure sign the waterworks were coming. Seeing her close friend for the first time in person in three years hammered in how disconnected Bonnie felt from her old life. Hammered in how much she missed being able to call Caroline at any hour of the day, pop up on her doorstep. She'd had to keep her distance and communication at the minimal because of The Armory, so being here under the same roof as Caroline bought out a lot of emotion.
Hugging Caroline reminded her of something else. Her inhuman strength.
"Ribs," Bonnie wheezed.
"Oops, sorry. Come in. How was your flight?" Caroline stepped aside and closed the door once Bonnie entered the residence. She discreetly wiped a tear away because it wasn't until now Caroline was hit with how much she missed Bonnie. She knew this was only a twenty-four hour visit and already she was dreading having to say goodbye. For now, she'd relish having Bonnie so close.
Zipping off her hoodie, Bonnie stashed it across her overnight bag she dropped on a chair next to the front door. She gave the home a cursory look before bringing her gaze to Caroline.
"My flight would have been better had the dude sitting next to me didn't confuse my shoulder with his headrest. When he ended up slapping himself awake I think he got the message."
Caroline laughed and ushered Bonnie into the kitchen. There was a spread of Dallas cuisine laid out on the table, a pan of double fudge brownies cooling on the center island. The saliva in Bonnie's mouth pooled, stomach growled with hunger. Peanuts and bottles of water had sustained her on the flight, and it wasn't until now that Bonnie realized she was starving.
"Where are the girls and Alaric?" Bonnie settled on a stool, eyeing the brownies.
"The girls had a play date and afterwards a party to go to. So we'll have the house to ourselves at least until eight. Hungry?"
"Yes," Bonnie hopped off the stool to wash her hands.
The two worked around each other piling food on plates, pouring drinks into tall glasses. They went through the requisite catching up questions: work, the twins etc.
Munching on a chicken leg, Caroline licked barbeque sauce from her thumb. "So how are things between you and Enzo?"
Bonnie washed down her bite of food with a sip of her iced tea prior to answering. "Good. Things are good. It's nice to see him every day instead of when he could manage to slip away to come see me without The Armory noticing."
The immortal withheld making a comment as she had her opinions about Enzo. Not many of them positive, and no one liked their boyfriend to be bashed. However, there was another male in Bonnie's life Caroline was curious to hear details on and whether or not Bonnie would divulge any.
"Damon?" she elevated an eyebrow.
Bonnie scowled at the mention of his name. "I don't know. I haven't been forced to deal with him for the last couple of days."
Hearing the edge in Bonnie's voice, Caroline traipsed to neutral territory. "How are things coming along in finding the Phoenix Stone vampires?"
Shaking her head at the dizzying amount of souls that had been in the stone, Bonnie candidly spoke about her dwindling hope they'd all be killed in time before the scabs would appear signaling the end stage of taking those anti-magic pills. The other piece to that was…
"Say Rayna's life is transferred to me before those vampires can be hunted down and killed…am I going to end up just like her? Am I going to become obsessed with taking them out? I don't want that."
"I don't want that for you either, Bonnie. There's gotta be some other way to save your life. I can't lose you again."
Bonnie's chin quivered. "And I don't want to die again."
Reaching over, Caroline rubbed her arm wishing she had the magic words to say that could reverse every bad thing that's ever befallen her friend. She could no more than offer a hopeful smile.
"The Armory…" Caroline began tentatively. "You figured out what they want with you?"
Bonnie nodded. "They need a Bennett witch to open a vault built underneath their headquarters. I don't know what's in it, but at this point if it means I don't have to spend my last days running, I'll open it."
"Do you think it's smart to give them what they want?"
"Is it ever smart to give into a shady organization? No, but what are my other options, Care?" I'm dying.
Thinking of her impending death coaxed Bonnie to remember the times she died and her attitude about her mortality in the last few days. Revealing to Caroline she didn't want to die relieved a weight off her shoulders, but also brought back a poignant memory of saying those words to Damon five years ago. She had died but he had been right there with her, holding her hand, fingers intertwined.
Bonnie smashed her molars together and asked for more Mac-n-Cheese.
"I wouldn't do anything until you have more to go on," Caroline heaped more cheesy noodles on Bonnie's plate.
Yeah, that went without saying.
Bellies full the two friends later occupied the living room sitting on opposite couches. Music on low in the background, beer bottle in her hand, Bonnie swigged from it occasionally. Caroline giggled and the witch stared at her askance.
"What?" Bonnie said.
"Nothing…well…and I know you probably don't want to talk about this, but fuck it we spend too much time not talking about the things that matter. Anyways, your situation with Damon reminds me of how I felt abandoned by Stefan after you and Damon died. I was pissed at him for not wanting to hold on to the life he built in Mystic Falls, but also in part…I had fallen in love with him."
Bonnie swallowed and sat up straighter along the arm of the couch. An alarming pang went through her. "Are you trying to suggest I'm in love with Damon because I'm angry he chose desiccation and didn't have the guts to tell me to my face?"
"Yeah," Caroline hefted a shoulder insouciantly.
"How drunk are you right now?"
"I'm not drunk. I'm calling things as I see them."
"Maybe you need to get your eyes checked because I'm not seeing the correlation here."
"Of course you wouldn't because you're too close to things to be objective," Caroline adjusted on the couch, stretching her legs on the coffee table. "You barely gave Elena and me a slap on the wrist for not noticing that you were dead for three months after you brought Jeremy back to life. Your anger with Damon taking a 60 year nap infuriated you, and you have every right to be pissed at him. I'm not saying you don't."
"That was different," Bonnie argued. "I could see you guys. With Damon…I never would have seen him again." she tipped the bottle to her lips and guzzled. "He chose not to be here for me. You guys didn't have one. I'm not in love with him. I'm extremely hurt by his actions or I was."
Caroline gave her a perfunctory look. "Sure."
"I'm with Enzo. I love Enzo."
"Un-hun."
Bonnie swung her legs off the couch feeling her ire being deliberately pricked, feeling goaded. "I'm a Bennett not a Petrova. Loving two people at the same time is not my thing."
"First time for everything," Caroline singsong.
"Whatever!" Bonnie seethed.
"Answer this…since Damon came to see you, since you've been around him—reluctantly, have you made love to Enzo?" she waited as Bonnie remained incriminatingly mute. "I didn't think so."
With a roll of her eyes, Bonnie placed the empty beer bottle on a coaster. The veins in her head weren't throbbing, but she suspected they would be very soon if she and Caroline didn't veer off this topic. However, the need to defend why she hadn't been intimate with her boyfriend superheated her tongue.
"We haven't had time," she defended lamely.
"People who are being chased by a serial killer or hired assassins in movies always manage to find time to have sex. What's your excuse? Can't get a certain dark-haired, blue-eyed pest out of your head?"
"All this talk about me. What about you?" Bonnie threw Caroline into the fire.
The blonde immortal squirmed on the cushion as she picked absentmindedly at the label on the beer bottle. "What about me?"
Bonnie presented a knowing, self-serving smirk and gestured at their surroundings, the immaculate suburban domicile that had Caroline's signature written all over it. "This," she said at length. "This is what you honestly want? To mother children, albeit beautiful and intelligent as they are, who aren't technically yours, and marry a guy who under different circumstances could be your uncle?"
Caroline pressed her lips together. Her gaze wandered to the pictures that lined a fireplace mantle chronicling the twins stages of growth with her holding one child and Alaric the other. Their proud smiles, the happiness that seemingly poured out of each photograph that told a story about a family that seemed to have been constructed through and by normal means.
"I'm happy," Caroline attested. "I love being a mother and Alaric he…he…he's good to me. What more could I want?"
"Stefan."
Caroline shot daggers at Bonnie. "I've made my peace with it, Bonnie."
"Have you? And I'm not being facetious, I really want to know. Have you honestly made peace with things?"
A person with a genius IQ wasn't needed to explain Caroline would have preferred to have a say in being a mother rather than the choice being made for her, and having to go along with it. And yes, she had much different far different aspirations as to who her future husband would be. She was in too deep now. Josette and Elizabeth needed her. It was for them she woke up every morning with an artificial façade of happiness juxtaposed on her face.
But sometimes it was too heavy a responsibility she learned to master and excel at, but deep down was not her one true desire.
Staring her friend head on, Caroline opened up. "Truth? There are days where I just want to get in my car, drive, and just keep driving and never come back. Don't get me wrong, I love the girls, I do, but I feel like I'm living another woman's life, and the idea makes me feel like a fraud, like a stand-in. And feeling like that then leads to feeling guilty because two young innocent lives were saved. I just wish…I hadn't been the vessel chosen to save them," she lowered her eyes to her lap.
Bonnie rose and walked around the table and sat next to her friend. "It's all right to feel that way, Caroline. You didn't ask to become pregnant with Jo and Alaric's twins. You didn't ask for your boyfriend you were madly in love with to be chased by a single-minded huntress up and down the US. It's okay to feel anger about the life you had to give up and the one you were forced to accept."
Caroline flashed a here and gone smile, sniffled. She rubbed her hands down the length of her jeans. "I hear you, Bonnie. It's just…" she fell back against the couch, "so many things have been done to us we never asked for. Where's our breaking point? Have we already exceeded it? Has it yet to come?"
To that Bonnie had no answers.
"I do miss Stefan," Caroline confided.
"You know he loves you."
"Yeah," the vampire mommy deadpanned.
"It's better to know that then not know where you stand with someone," Bonnie murmured, a faraway look in her eyes. "With Damon, besides feeling guilt, I don't know what he feels. I don't know if he ever really cared about me the way I cared for him."
Sympathy flushed through Caroline. "You know he does, Bonnie. Guilt can only carry you so far in fixing something that's broken. Love is what helps to endure until things are right. He could have easily gone back to sleep after helping to get Stefan's scar removed, but he's still awake."
"Yeah, but there's no guarantee that if…"
"When…" Caroline interjected knowing precisely what her best friend was going to say.
"If a cure or solution can be found for me. Say there is and I live on to see another year, I don't know if he'll give up and go back to sleep."
"Something tells me that he won't ever leave or abandon you again."
Bonnie wagged her head in disbelief. "It doesn't matter either way," her chin jutted up a fraction. "I'm with Enzo. What Damon does with his life after this latest crisis is over is none of my business."
Skepticism darkened Caroline's features. Bonnie noticed and as a result her back muscles tightened.
"Talk to him," Caroline advised. "You're never going to move past anything with Damon if you don't, and you need the closure."
"I got closure three years ago."
"Then why are you still holding on to your anger? You need to find that reason, Bonnie. You won't be truly happy until you do."
She couldn't love someone who rather check out as a backwards way of protecting her over someone who actually weathered several storms by her side. I just can't, Bonnie thought as she stared at her reflection in the guest bedroom around one o'clock in the morning. But Caroline was right. She needed to know so she could really close the book on this chapter.
2.
Damon Salvatore counted slowly until the rage in his head dwindled down to a throbbing tick that matched the one pulsating in his jaw. In between counts he took a sip of bourbon. Drinking was more habit than anything else as bourbon was supposed to help curb the cravings. What it did was make the cravings worse. Achieving intoxication was impossible so bourbon's only true purpose was to give his mouth something to do.
He studied the glass, the liquid inside. There was nothing unique to it. Not the glass and certainly not the bourbon. Damon just needed something to distract him because if his mind began to wander like it had been the last few days, he'd replay certain scenes he never wanted to see ever again. If he could help it.
His fingernails were caked with blood; he could smell it all over him. Typically that wouldn't bother Damon in the least, and his tongue would be itching for a taste, but his thirst wasn't the same. Nothing was—well apart from certain people being pissed at him. That he could deal with in due time.
Out the corner of his eye, he spied his handwritten letter addressed to Bonnie that she ruthlessly thrust into his chest after making some grand spiel about Enzo being by her side when she dies. He snorted repugnantly because if it weren't for her precious boyfriend she wouldn't be dying. Yes, Damon could see that Enzo thought he was being innovate in keeping Bonnie cloaked from The Armory, but seemingly forgot drugs came with a list of side effects, and if he had stopped to check…
Damon drank more bourbon to settle his grumbling stomach. What's done was done, and all he could do was find a way to save Bonnie's life again even if she wanted him to burn in hell. Dense, far from it, Damon understood perfectly why Bonnie hated his guts. He felt the same way after learning the truth about Katherine. Yet underneath his pain, humiliation, and hurt of Katherine's deception, was love. He loved Bonnie but she couldn't see it and he knew he was at fault because he did a cowardly honorable thing. At least in his mind.
"I'm going to make it right," he vowed to no one in particular because no one was around.
Snorting, Damon surmised he should get used to being alone. Stumbling from the couch he went upstairs in his newly rented property a few miles from Enzo's safe house, to shower.
3.
She could kick herself for being here, but oftentimes being where you least wanted to be was exactly where you should be. She was here for closure and nothing else.
Staring up at the darkened house, Bonnie let out a puff of air. Crossing to the door, she pushed down on the lever and crept inside.
Damon was the first thing she saw. He was seated in an armchair in front of the hearth, hunched over. He gave no indication he heard the front door open, that he was even aware he was no longer the lone occupant. Bonnie thought for a moment he might be asleep, but she heard him sigh, saw him shift and then, he was looking right at her.
Bonnie fortified herself against that tortured expression he had donned since showing up at her room at the institute. Tonight it was just as intense.
The silence stretched from seconds to a painful minute and she had come no closer than the edge of the carpet in the living room.
"Here to yell at me some more?" Damon inquired hoarsely.
Bonnie crossed her arms and felt walls going up. She hadn't come here with a confrontation in mind; at least not one that entailed yelling and throwing things. She wanted to confront Damon about his mistakes, about how his choice really broke her. He could say his peace, but she was already resolved that it wouldn't budge the mountain between them. She couldn't afford to let him back into her life and most importantly back into her heart.
Vampires had the luxury of switching off their humanity. She didn't have that amenity.
"No, Damon I'm not here to yell at you. In fact I'm tired of yelling."
"Then…what are you doing here?"
"The truth. I want the truth."
He looked away, giving her his profile, "My truth is in the letter and if you had read it…"
Bonnie's hand shot up to silence him. Her eyes closed and opened again momentarily. "After everything we've been through, I figured I deserved to hear the truth from your mouth and not in a Dear John letter. You owed me that much respect. You wanted to waste your life in a box and I had been more than willing to die for my friends—and had—I can get that. But the fact you didn't tell me goodbye…that you could so easily cut me out of your life like you never even gave a shit…"
"Bonnie…"
"Just tell me why you left!" she screamed. Her vision blurred as she tramped the urge to cry.
Raven strands of her hair fluttered as Damon used his vampire speed to stand right in front of Bonnie bringing a sharp wind with him. "I left to protect you and Stefan! I took myself out of the picture so you and my brother would stop putting your lives on the line to save mine. With me around you weren't going to make it to eighty years old, let alone twenty-two." Damon took a breath to calm down. "I'm sorry that I abandoned you, that choosing desiccation hurt you. I wasn't trying to hurt you. I was trying to protect you."
"Protect me from what?" Bonnie moistened her lips, "The Amory showing up at Whitmore a week after you desiccated with a task force to bring me in?"
Damon's brows arched, nostrils flared but he had nothing to say.
Bonnie was feeling pretty superior as she twisted the knife, "You weren't there but somebody else was. Someone else got me out. Someone else kept me hidden. Someone else protected me."
Repressing his snickers, Damon's eyes narrowed, "Oh, yes let's give Enzo an award for giving you anti-magic pills that is poisoning you to death."
"At least he was there for me which is more than I could say about you."
Damon couldn't believe he was hearing this but he wasn't exactly surprised by Bonnie's blind faith in her boyfriend. She wore the same goggles when she had been with Jeremy Gilbert who did jackshit to save her life on the many occasions the chance arose. She wanted to prop Enzo on a pedestal that was her right. Yet there was one key fact she and her latest boy toy were overlooking.
"I find that utterly convenient," Damon said conversationally. "Did Enzo also tell you he was the one who put the idea in my head you would never be safe so long as I was around? That my continued presence in your life would equal your perpetual endangerment?"
Bonnie blinked.
Damon smirked. "Not so smug now are we? Yeah, Enzo might have been there for you, Bonnie but he won't be the one to save you. I will and you know that's a check I always cash," Damon promised self-assuredly.
Bonnie leg bounced. "It's not your job to save me."
"You think saving you is a job? It's never been a job to me, and I'll tell you why, because you mean too gotdamn much to me."
Bonnie's eyes went heavenward. She skirted around Damon and parked herself in front of the fireplace, her back to it. "Oh, I mean too much to you? You have a funny way of showing it."
Damon turned, the tendons on the side of his neck protruded as he growled, "I made a mistake, Bonnie. A stupid, boneheaded mistake. Do you remember what you said to me in Amsterdam?"
Confusion puckered her visage. "I said a lot of things to you in Amsterdam in between the jokes you cracked about me choking on my food or being hit by a train."
Damon swallowed at that acrid truth. He had made light of Bonnie still being alive as he adjusted to living without Elena. He had been an unnecessary asshole and he regretted it.
He banked that for later as his bare feet moved across the rug bringing him closer to Bonnie. "What did you say to me after I pulled you out of the way of that van?"
"What does that have to do with anything?" Bonnie sighed.
"What did you say?!" Damon's voice cracked like lightning.
"I said that you're stuck with me. I said that you could either love me or hate me but you're stuck with me."
"I do."
"You do what?"
"I love you!"
Bonnie clammed up. It was said that the effects of love could feel like the effects of poison. At the moment Bonnie was unclear on what it was that was driving her to feel nauseous and like the room was spinning. Love or poison? She wanted to sit down but doubted she'd make it to the couch. She locked her knees so she wouldn't wobble or tip over. Ringing started in her ears, but she heard the sound of her heart booming above that. Blood rushed to her head and drained to her toes.
Her back went completely straight as Damon loomed over her. He was so close Bonnie could count his individual eyelashes, and each time he exhaled his breath brushed across the bridge of her nose and the hills of her cheeks.
Bonnie's mouth had gone dry. She knew the wise thing to do would be to take several steps away from Damon. The heat she felt emitting from him came from slinging bourbon. She could faintly smell it on his breath. His hair was finger combed; several strands fell across his forehead. Damon's cheeks were pinker than usual, and tiny whiskers were poking out around his sculpted jawline. Bonnie hated she was noticing these things about him, these trite things, but maybe she was taking notice because she had gone three years without being this close to him.
She jerked slightly when Damon's hand lifted, came into view. Her lips parted on an inaudible sigh, eyebrows drew together and flattened as her cheek was cupped by his palm.
"You think I would subject myself to your scathing looks and commentary if I didn't love you?"
Bonnie fought through her bewilderment seeking out a single word to latch on to that she could hurl at Damon. She wasn't given a chance to respond.
"You said you kept my letter for three years to remind you who to trust, but there has to be another reason. You didn't want to let me go, Bonnie. Say. It."
Her mouth watered and her pulse fluttered temptingly beneath the fragile layer of her skin. Bonnie stared at Damon's dilating pupil and without her magic she felt like she was being compelled, but she was in total control of everything. Her thoughts, her actions, her feelings.
Now she really couldn't move since his right hand joined the left in framing her face. Her chest rose rapidly and Bonnie was screaming at her feet to bolt, yelled at her hands to thrust him away. Feeling and mobility bled out of her and she could only stand there with Damon so close, his deep voice softened with familiarity.
"You don't want to let me go because you love me, too. Deny it," Damon challenged.
His words hung in the air like a scarf ready to be dropped to start a race.
"Dammit," she whispered. She couldn't. She couldn't deny it.
TBC.
A/N: Thoughts? Thanks for reading.