Note: Thank you all for your lovely comments! Only reviewer: I'm sorry but the dead girl doesn't have an actress. Nor a description. Or a name. She is a ghost in the most literal sense in this story - and she will never grow beyond that.
I hope you all enjoy the second part! Happy reading!
(I'm) a hurricane
In the end, Bonnie reaches the Gilbert home too late to do anything.
By the time she's standing on the doorsteps, there's a burning body and a raging hybrid, and Bonnie takes down the threat to her friends, to Jeremy, before she even realises that she's moving. Leaves him behind because that's easier than having her failure shoved into her face. Doesn't look back because the heartbreak of loss and missed chances isn't any easier to bear on the face of an enemy than a friend.
Jeremy walks by her side, silently. He's steadying Elena, who's still recovering from the blows Kol dealt her—and there's a part of Bonnie that wonders how her best friend walked away from this fight a victor, wonders if there even is a victor, considering—but he's keeping pace with Bonnie effortlessly. It's a nice feeling. Familiar and comforting.
They used to be good at this, her and Jeremy. Not always, but. Sometime after Bonnie had lost her gran, after Jeremy had lost Anna, when Elena had been too caught up in the whirlwind her life had become, they had clicked. An understanding that had never been explicitly expressed. Had later on been buried by mistakes and jealousy and secrets.
There are always secrets, these days. Some they keep for each other. Others they keep from each other. And to what end?
Bonnie almost snorts out loud at the turn her thoughts have taken. She doesn't face Jeremy, doesn't even look at him. She doesn't need to. The answer will always remain the same.
To keep Jeremy like this. Bloodied and bruised and exhausted and alive. Bonnie will protect all her friends. Will walk through the fires of hell herself if she has to. But for Jeremy?
For Jeremy, she might just go a little further than for anyone else.
And in moments like these, when he matches her pace step for step, Bonnie wonders if he knows that. If Jeremy understands just how far she will go, just how far she has already fallen. Then she catches sight of his white-knuckled grip on the stake he refused to let go of, an echo of what looks remarkably like grief in his hooded eyes, and she thinks maybe Jeremy does get it after all.
They are at the boarding house. Officially, they're supposed to plan their next step. Wait for the mark on Jeremy's arm to complete itself and plot. But with Klaus out of commission and Rebekah sufficiently calmed—and no, Bonnie doesn't want to know how Stefan managed that, refuses to contemplate whether Rebekah is truly so blinded by her love for the younger Salvatore, or by her desperate wish to become human—it has turned into more of a holy-fuck-we're-still-alive celebration than anything else.
As per usual, Bonnie remains on the sidelines. She doesn't feel particularly festive at the moment. Neither does she feel particularly alive. There are too many dead eyes watching her. Too many cold breaths against the back of her neck, the touch so gentle it's hardly even there.
Jeremy is nursing his third whiskey. He's spent the last two hours bantering with Damon—from across the room, they're still wary of letting Damon close, even now—, reassuring Elena and smiling weakly at Caroline. Surrounded by vampires, witches and wolves, Jeremy stands tall, at ease. It strikes Bonnie then, how at home he looks in this crowd. And he should, shouldn't he?
He is a hunter now, after all. He may relish in killing vampires, but he is as supernatural as any of them. Humanity has become a rare treat in their circle.
Even Jeremy's smile and jokes can't quite hide his anxiety though. The furtive glances he throws at the incomplete tattoo on his forearm that, once completed, may damn or redeem them all. The tenseness in his shoulders. Jeremy still hasn't let go of the white oak stake either.
Absently, Bonnie wonders whether Jeremy can feel death clinging to him the way she does. Can feel its cold fingers stretching, reaching towards him.
Absently, she wonders when he has learned to lie like that.
Because despite his exhaustion and nervousness, Jeremy looks for all intents and purposes happy. Relieved. Satisfied.
And it's to be expected, considering the circumstances, considering what he has accomplished today. Except it doesn't match that short moment they shared, when they were still out of earshot of the boarding house, after Elena had already sped away to bring their friends the good news. When it had just been Bonnie and Jeremy, and the understanding that something happened that night that would define them for the rest of their lives.
"He was my friend."
It's such a simple statement. A fact. And it's not supposed to hurt, to burn, yet Bonnie can feel the flames gently licking her fingertips. She should have known, shouldn't she? A friend, a good friend would have. Would have asked about Jeremy's time in Denver. Asked about the friends he made. Would have wondered why Jeremy had Kol's phone number. Why he'd looked so terribly amused that one time Bonnie had seen Kol harass him at the Grill.
Bonnie loves Jeremy, always has. But maybe she isn't a good friend to him. Maybe she hasn't been in a while. Maybe, just like back when they were fifteen and Jeremy was Elena's baby brother, she just didn't bother to notice.
Across the room, Bonnie meets Jeremy's eyes as he raises his fourth glass at her. Mirrors the gesture. Because maybe they aren't quite on the same page anymore, but they still get each other. And even if no one around them realises it, Bonnie knows, just the same as Jeremy does, that this isn't a party.
It's a wake.
Bonnie notices it first. She isn't more sensitive to the dead than Jeremy. Less, actually, considering his past as a medium. But Jeremy is well on his way to being drunk—his intent, no doubt—and she's been waiting for it since she saw the insatiable flames in the Gilbert's kitchen.
Has been waiting for him.
"Nice party. Not quite the turnout I expected, but it will have to do, I suppose."
Jeremy's head whips around inhumanly fast at the haughty words, the sneer so familiar Bonnie feels something loosening in her chest she hasn't even noticed was knotted together. In the middle of the room Kol turns on his heels, observes the room with an appraising glance and a healthy dose of derision.
Of course, dead or alive, Kol Mikaelson always knows how to make an entrance.
Jeremy drops his glass in a gesture of shock that Bonnie personally thinks a little exaggerated. They are in Mystic Falls after all. A town doomed to relive its past, where the dead haunt the livings' every step.
Why should Kol be an exception?
Jeremy's dramatics have drawn the attention of everyone else, not that it matters. They can't see, won't ever see. Because the dead aren't meant to keep touch with the breathing and an exception comes at great costs.
"You—you—" Jeremy stutters. It would be comical, if not for the fact that there is nothing funny about the past few hours. The past few years.
"Awww," Kol coos, "Look at you, gaping like a particularly unattractive fish. Why, darling, you didn't think getting rid off me would be that easy, did you?" His voice is really more of a purr, and Bonnie wonders if he's putting on a show. If Kol realises that no one except the two of them can see him.
Then again, it's Kol. He probably doesn't care one way or another. He's standing so close now he's looming over Jeremy, even though they're about the same height. Even with Kol's every feature painted by a blood-thirsty fury and Jeremy's ashen face, with death clinging to them, lingering in the air around them like a light fog that never clears, they make a striking image.
Friends Jeremy had called them. A sardonic whisper in the back of Bonnie's mind wonders exactly how much that simple term really covers.
There's some yelling—Damon and Elena, of course—but it's only when Jeremy's horrified gaze meets her own that Bonnie is drawn out of her own thoughts.
"You're not a medium," Jeremy chokes out. He's addressing Bonnie, but his eyes flicker back to Kol, as though he can't quite bear to look away for too long.
"Neither are you," Bonnie reminds him hoarsely.
"Then how do I see the dead? Again?" Jeremy forces the words out like they physically pain him, the half-hearted joke barely recognisable as such.
Elena gasps, asks horrified whether Kol is here, what he's saying, but neither Bonnie nor Jeremy pay her any mind.
"You don't," Bonnie says, the words layered with a meaning she can't put into words. Because that would be admitting what she has done, what she's accomplished. What she's committed.
Perhaps Jeremy hears that, everything she can't voice, or perhaps he's subconsciously known all along. Almost on instinct, Jeremy grasps his forearm.
Where the hunter's mark remains incomplete.
Bonnie doesn't understand why everyone is so shocked. So surprised.
After all, she's done it all before, hasn't she? She's body-jumped Klaus once, to ensure her friends's survival. His body lit up in pretty flames too, and yet nobody died. A win-win for everyone. Granted, it's not the same situation, but they're still playing the same game.
They're in Mystic Falls, a town doomed to forever repeat its past.
And what walks among them is neither living nor dead, another line crossed between the blacks and whites of life and death.
Kol smirks at Bonnie, something like intrigue in his eyes, and isn't it curious, how the one who knows her the least is the only one who isn't surprised by this turn of events?
Oh, Bonnie has no illusions. Kol knows no more or less about her motivation than anyone else—because there are secrets and then there are secrets, and the second kind will only be kept between two people when one of them is dead, and she is—but maybe he doesn't care. Maybe he understands what she's done, and that's all that matters to him.
Or maybe he's just relishing in the knowledge that he's still here. That he's still got a hold on life, no matter how fragile it might be.
Bonnie wonders what he fears more, death or the ones waiting for him there. She wonders if his answer is the same as hers.
"What did you do?"
Surprisingly it's not Caroline who asks—well, demands. It's not even Elena. It's Damon. Or maybe that's not so surprising after all.
Bonnie tilts her head so that she can keep Kol, Jeremy and a glaring Damon in her sight at the same time. Her expression remains impassive. There are many people she owes—I saved the man you love, it's time for you to return the favour—but Damon Salvatore is not one of them.
Why she answers, Bonnie doesn't even know. Perhaps she's simply tired of swallowing down the things that need to be said. Perhaps it's the mocking smile on Kol's face—so much like a girl she doesn't want to remember, and yes, it's clear as day in this moment what, whom, exactly Jeremy sees in him—edging her on. Perhaps it's Jeremy's expectant look because he, at least, deserves to know.
"I bound them," Bonnie admits, yet another crime she has committed. But at least this one she doesn't feel shame or guilt for. "Kol's life is tied to Jeremy," she meets Jeremy's gaze steadily then, "He won't die until you do—"
And I, she wants to add, but doesn't get the chance.
Damon is fast, his motions just a blur as he rushes at them. And maybe if Bonnie had been watching him, she could have stopped him. But as it is, all she sees is the sudden look of terror on Kol's face, is the sickening sight of Jeremy's head being snapped sideways, bent too far for his body to bear. All she hears is the deafening, terrible cracking of breaking bones.
All Bonnie sees is Jeremy, Jeremy crumble, Jeremy fall, Jeremy motionless, Jeremy lifeless, Jeremy dead, Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy.
And it can't be real. It can't be. Bonnie can't.
But there's the laughter of a dead girl in the echo of Elena's horrified scream, and it's close enough.
The thing witches struggle the most with when it comes to expression is that it isn't logical. Even magic has rules, its own sets that it follows, always and without question. Expression doesn't have those types of limits, expression isn't regulated or controlled. It's what makes it so dangerous. So addictive. So all-consuming.
When Bonnie weaves the bond the dead girl demands of her, she doesn't need to ask why it has to be Jeremy that Kol is bound to instead of her. She knows. Because Bonnie wouldn't hesitate to sacrifice herself for her friends, but she'd never, never sacrifice Jeremy. The dead girl knows this too.
So Bonnie weaves the bond as asked, except she doesn't play by other people's rules anymore. And so she doesn't stop, continues to weave her web instead. Insurance, she calls it, when she binds her blood with Jeremy's because it's true and she won't lose him again. Common sense, is her excuse, when she mixes what's left of Kol's blood with her own because triangles are magical, are stronger, more stable than an unequal exchange.
Kol dies, and though alive plus alive plus dead doesn't equal alive, he can't quite die either. The bond should have caused a backlash, but it is controlled, in parts, by the betrayal of one bond member destroying another.
It always had to be Jeremy. Not just because of the mark. And that, banking on Jeremy's willingness to betray Kol, to murder Kol, will haunt Bonnie in ways the blood on her hands never has.
When Damon kills Jeremy—and Bonnie will never truly understand what has caused this snap decision, will never comprehend how he could have thought that Elena would forgive her brother's murder when there is no magic ring to bring him back (except years from now, maybe, she'll realise that it was never about Elena, will listen to Kol's whispers about Always and forever in the dead of the night, the words infused with a bitter edge even eternity won't even out, and she'll muse that the relationship between siblings is something she will never understand)—the precarious web Bonnie has woven rips, and tears, and fractures.
Dead plus dead plus alive should equal something closer to death than life. But expression has no rules and no logic. And the bond, all the bonds, have been created by Bonnie. Have been fuelled by the desire, the determination, the desperate hope to keep Jeremy alive.
Expression is the manifestation of your will. You could do anything. That's what her grandmother once told her. So Bonnie does.
As the bonds are rewritten and overloaded and forced back into place with a finality they were never supposed to gain, the magic at their core twists and turns to accomplish what it was always meant to do.
The backlash almost kills them all the same.
Jeremy is alive.
Bonnie knows this with a bone-deep certainty before she ever gets around to open her eyes. She feels it, somewhere deep within her being. Feels his bones and muscles righten themselves. Feels his lungs draw in their first breath. Feels burnt flesh scar over and regrow and heal. Feels the magic, wild and dark and beautiful, whirling just beneath her skin.
"What?" Elena is kneeling by Jeremy's side, her eyes wide with relief and the beginnings of fear. It's a look Bonnie has been subjected to more and more often of late. She's beginning to get used to it. "What did you do?" Elena whispers, and she sounds terrified of the answer even as she pulls Jeremy into a hug tight enough to bruise his rips.
In response, Bonnie simply shakes her head. She doesn't feel like answering anymore. Doesn't feel like playing by the rules. She hasn't for a while now. And especially not right now, after she's come this close to loosing Jeremy again.
Besides they're asking the wrong question.
"You know, Salvatore, you really need to learn to keep your hands to yourself," the dry drawl interrupts Bonnie's staring contest with her oldest friend. "This is the second time you tried to take my toy away now." Followed by a quieter and much more deadly, "There won't be a third."
Slowly Bonnie turns her head to the entrance door that nobody has payed attention to. She is unsurprised to find herself face to face with Kol Mikaelson. In the flesh. He's still shadowed by death, but no longer weighted down by it. And anyways, he wouldn't be Kol Mikaelson if death didn't follow in his wake.
Bonnie licks her lips, wonders if she should react in some way. It's hard to focus on the possible threat when her heart is beating so strong in her chest though. When its every beat is echoed. By the man she loves across the room, who's now holding his screaming sister in a hug that looks less affectionate and more restraining. And by the man who's standing above Damon's body, arm dripping with blood, a heart held tightly in his fist.
Welcome back, Bonnie almost says, but doesn't. It's not exactly sensitive in the face of Damon's murder. And besides Kol has never been gone in the first place.
After all, Bonnie always pays off her debts.
The end
(come and fade me) (or alternatively: After the end)
Damon is dead. They all should be, probably. They did attempt to—and succeed, where it mattered anyways—kill an Original after all. The Mikaelsons are hardly the type to forgive and forget.
And for all the calm Kol exudes, how reasonable he looks as he delivers one final warning to the rest of them, Bonnie knows better than to believe such a laughable farce. She feels Kol's rage, breathtaking and all-consuming. Feels his desire, his yearning to murder Elena, to draw out every scream, every second of pain.
He doesn't. He looks at the rest of them instead. Observes them with cold murder in his eyes, and an arrogant sneer no one who's just been bested by a baby vamp and inexperienced hunter should ever wear. But it suits Kol.
And he doesn't kill them. Part of Bonnie can't quite believe it, even though she should have expected it. It's true, Kol wants them dead. More than he wants most of anything else, safe perhaps revenge on Klaus for all the decades lost to a dagger. But Jeremy loves Elena, fiercely and desperately, as only those fearlessly clinging to the last family they have left do. And Bonnie has lost much of the girl she was, hates much about the woman she has become, but she will protect her friends. Will defend them.
And perhaps none of that should stop Kol. But Bonnie can feel the echo of his heartbeat in her own, and though Kol may not love Elena and Caroline and Stefan and Tyler, Jeremy does, Bonnie does, and so Kol does too.
The bonds were supposed to be temporary. Weak, little things, easily cut once they'd served their purpose. Bonnie can't remember the last time any of her plans went off without a hithc. She isn't sure why she expected this one to be different.
Expression is volatile by nature. As powerful and unpredictable as the depth of the emotions it is built on. And so perhaps Bonnie should have foreseen this. Should have recognised the inevitability of the path she has carved out between them. For them.
There lies untold power in bonds forged by blood. What should have been a link on their life force, ensuring one would never truly pass without the other dead and gone already, has sunken deep into their bones, rewritten their very sense of self, and entangled strands that were not meant to come in contact with each other.
Bonnie is still Bonnie. Jeremy is still Jeremy. Kol is still Kol. But they are also BonnieJeremyKol in any possible formation. Are tied so closely together, have merged so fully with what they didn't used to be, that the cords can never be untangled again. They can't cut the bonds now, for there is no space left between them. They can only cut themselves.
Together, they are more than the sum of their parts. And for that—for every sound Bonnie's ears catch that they shouldn't, every soreness Kol feels that he shouldn't, every breath Jeremy takes after surviving what he shouldn't—they can not return to the roots they used to be.
They are bound, for better or worse. They are bound by something far, far stronger than love. Something that will last an eternity. Because it has to.
Caroline and Tyler leave. Together. Bonnie doesn't think they'll stay that way, but then people have a way of surprising you, and it's not like they don't have all the time in the world to figure it out. Caroline hugs her goodbye and promises to call and sends postcards from all over the world.
Elena and Stefan stay. Together. All that holds them together is their shared grief for Damon and memories of a love they used to have. But Bonnie knows better than to tell them that. It isn't her place. Not when Kol's hands always little a little too long on her shoulder, his hold around her waist just a smudge too tight to be casual.
They'll move past Damon, one day. Maybe they'll learn to let each other go in the process.
As for Bonnie, well. She is happy. She thinks she is anyways. She has Jeremy and Kol, and she loves them, and they love her. Well. Jeremy does. And Kol does because Jeremy does. And she loves Kol because Jeremy does. And maybe that's not natural, exactly, but they aren't natural.
And just because it's a love born out of this connection, built on the foundation of feelings they didn't used to have, doesn't make it less real now. It's not the same love Bonnie feels for Kol, Kol feels for her, not at all the same as what they both feel for Jeremy. But it's strong enough to hold them together. It's strong enough to be real.
So when Klaus rages and daggers Rebekah, Bonnie watches motionlessly. When he makes a threatening move towards Kol, she snaps his neck without a second thought.
Kol looks at her then and smiles, a good shade more honestly than ever before, and. How they began doesn't matter. What matters is that they can work with this.
They leave.
There's Bonnie whose magical power keeps growing like it'll never run out of fuel. There's Kol who's got magic dancing and crackling along his skin, curling around his fingertips like an old friend welcoming him home. There's Jeremy whose penchant to cheat death can no longer be written off as the side effects of a hunter's talents.
The world doesn't fear them yet. But it will.
It will.
It's not real. None of it is. Not this house that she doesn't recognise—except for how it feels like home, more than home ever has, and it scares her, more than she'll ever admit—not the dead girl waiting patiently for her response, blood dripping down her arms, not the cold wind that whispers of things she doesn't want to know. It's not real. It can't be. Because if it is—
Jeremy is dead. His body sprawled on the ground. And still the girl has her claws in him, buried so deeply in his flesh Bonnie doubts even in death he'll escape her grasp, and all she wants is to reach out and pull her off him, get him away from her, keep him save. But when she takes a step towards him, the grounds crumble beneath her feet, and the whole world grumbles and shakes as reality falls apart.
Through it all the dead girl's grip on Jeremy's body never lessens.
"You can't have him!" Bonnie yells, desperate and hopeful and relieved. Because it's true. Jeremy is as far from dead as he can ever be, beyond his reach for as long as the Originals still remain untouchable. And it's petty and cruel, but it's the only satisfaction Bonnie has left.
Across the field, covered by bodies broken and bloodied, carelessly left behind, the dead girl meets Bonnie's eyes. There's a calm in those eyes that only the eye of the storm carries in itself.
The dead girl smiles.
"I saved the man you love. It's time for you to return the favour." The girl doesn't scream. She doesn't have to.
"I did," Bonnie spits back. "Your precious Kol is as safe as he'll ever be."
But maybe the words haven't been spoken out loud after all, because the dead girl doesn't stop smiling. Doesn't twitch. Doesn't react at all.
She still hasn't let go of Jeremy's body.
"I saved the man you love. It's time for you to return the favour," she repeats. Smiles like she has just told the biggest joke, and the whole world is in on it except for Bonnie.
And damn, but Bonnie is tired of the nightmares. The guilt. The games. She's tired of watching a dead girl's grabby hands on her boyfriend.
At least if it was Kol, Bonnie could understand. But Kol isn't here.
The world doesn't quite stop turning, but there's a sick, pulling sensation in Bonnie's stomach that means it might as well have. Because Kol isn't here. Kol has never been here. Jeremy is.
It's always been Jeremy.
Bonnie stares down at the grave. It's unimpressive, simple. There are fresh flowers, curtsey of Jeremy, no doubt. No photos though, nor candles. She hadn't felt any desire to return to her home town after finally leaving it behind, and yet here she is. Confronting one last, restless ghost.
The girl who loved Jeremy more than she loved anyone or anything else in the world. The girl who despised her, thought her undeserving of Jeremy's love and attention. The girl who was callous and mean and didn't deserve a meaningless death in a ritual that never revolved around her.
"I saved the man you love. It's time for you to return the favour."
Despite herself Bonnie smiles. She always had a talent for games, for lies and deflection. Never had she actually told Bonnie that she loved Kol. Just stated that his death needed to be avoided at all costs, and let Bonnie draw her own conclusions.
She had been played. They all had.
And really, after everything that had happened, Bonnie should have seen it coming. The only thing about the dead girl that had never been questioned had been her unyielding loyalty to Jeremy. And yet. Bonnie hadn't seen it. Hadn't bothered to look. Still hadn't learned from her own mistakes.
There is no excuse for her lack of foresight. They are in Mystic Falls, after all, a town forever doomed to repeat its past.
This, all of it, pulling Jeremy back from the dead, saving Kol, forcing Bonnie to bind Kol and Jeremy's lives together, manipulating Bonnie into taking her own steps to ensure Jeremy's safety, all of it had been about one thing and one thing only; saving Jeremy. Giving Jeremy, who loves Bonnie, who has somehow, impossibly, fallen in love with Kol, everything he wants.
Maybe this exact bond isn't what the girl had been aiming for—Bonnie likes to think she isn't so predictable, likes to think her entire life hasn't been planned out by the machinations of a dead girl—but she can't be sure. She won't ever be sure.
With a sigh, Bonnie sinks to her knees. Gently places the white roses in front of the grave stone.
Life isn't perfect. But there are two hearts beating alongside her own, there is Jeremy's genuine love for her, for Kol, purer than anything they'll ever be able to match. And the happiness in Bonnie's chest feels hollow, but the warmth of Jeremy, Kol drown it out until she can almost forget. Until there are no ghosts haunting them that she can feel anymore.
Maybe that won't work forever, but she'll find a way. Bonnie always does. The truth is an ugly thing, but she'll learn to live with it. Just like she has done all her life.
Because this isn't her happily ever after. It was never supposed to be. It's Jeremy's.
It's close enough.
The (final) end.
Author's note: ...yes, there is a purposeful vagueness to this entire story. And yes, there is some not-so-hidden-serious angst. But I'm really really curious what you think so before you leave, please consider sharing your thoughts in a comment! Have a lovely Friday, my dears!
