Bloop bloop.


"Breathe, Bonnie. Just. Breathe."

She stared at the door, eyes as big as saucers.

Breathe?

She felt the desperation in her lungs, crying for air. Breathe. The word echoed in her head. She screamed it inside of her. BREATHE.

She willed it. Her sudden intake of oxygen was a wheeze of fast building hysteria. She had come home to an abandoned house again. Again.

The lights were off, the constant buzz and chatter of the television noticeably missing. She went inside her mother's room. The closet door was wide open, empty hangers littered the floor. The only belongings her mother had taken along with a few pairs of shoes.

She didn't even bother with the pictures of her daughter or her late husband. The doorknob Bonnie clung to was heartbreakingly cold.

The memory wasn't really hers, but the effect was the same. The anxiety Bonnie suffered from every so often raged inside of her, squeezing her chest, pushing out life, tightening the larynx. Fat drops of horror rolled out of her eyes. Someone, somewhere that wasn't her Mystic Falls, clenched the top of her arms.

"We need to leave."

She reminded herself to breathe. Another wheeze. And then another. They came in quick succession as she was lifted off the porch, toes dragging along the sidewalk she had thought she recognized.

Her lungs weren't filling. The world was spinning. She clung to the arms that held her. They were the only lifeline in this sea, pulling her back to shore, but she was too far out.

She stopped telling herself to breathe. She started believing it was impossible. Bonnie started gasping like a fish out of water. If only her tears could sufficiently lubricate her gills.

She was shifted to one hand, heard a car door pop open, and was set on the edge of a seat. Damon knelt in front of her and cradled her neck, forcing her to look at him.

"Bonnie." His voice was stern. Her voice was a deflating balloon.

"I can't breathe!"

"You're having a panic attack."

She shook her head, curling her right hand into his collar. She's had a couple of panic attacks before, but never this bad. She was dying. She was sure of it. Whatever Grams had promised her…it must have went wrong. Because this was just a different kind of hell.

"Wait here."

He disappeared, sending another spike of fear through her.

"No!" She propelled herself out of the car and collapsed onto the sidewalk on her hands and knees.

"For God's sake."

Damon pulled her off the ground and back onto the backseat. He whipped open a brown paper bag and cupped it over her nose and mouth. "Fucking breathe. Slowly."

She did as instructed and eventually she calmed. She covered Damon's hand and pushed the bag off her face but didn't let go of him.

"He brought that for her until she got new meds. Anxiety attacks are in her file."

"She doesn't have health insurance. Did he bring her a pack?"

Damon smirked at her and she returned a small grin, but it fell off her face and was replaced with exhaustion.

"Its way worse than I ever had it. Her life is worse than mine. And I didn't think that was even possible because I've almost died how many times? Actually died how many times?"

Bonnie shook her head, bothered that she couldn't feel her hair fanning her face like before.

"She has nobody, Damon. She never really has. And it's a terrible thing to be alone. Especially for your whole life."

Damon stared at her and they shared a moment, both understanding the tragedy of loneliness.

A rumbling erupted beneath their feet. The ground shook, then the sky. The sun bleached, expanded, swallowed the blue, swallowed everything. The two watched as the world disappeared in an expanse of white.


Month 18, Day 1?

She kept her face in the crook of Damon's neck as he carried her to the boarding house. Jeremy had tried to offer his help, but Damon shoved him away and Bonnie didn't reach for him.

The walk back was uncomfortably silent and all Bonnie could do to keep from crying was focus on Damon's smell, his hard chest, and the strength of his arms.

She knew she wouldn't be able to ignore her flat, empty belly for too long.

Matt opened the door and everyone followed him inside to the living room. Back to Stefan and Elena.

"Is she okay?" Elena asked.

Bonnie buried her face deeper into Damon's neck, fruitlessly trying to wake herself up in her king sized bed, back where she was happily married and expecting. Not in Mystic Falls. Not with the people she had gladly forgotten about.

She wanted to go back. God, she wanted to go back. Tears leaked out despite her efforts to control herself.

"Not even remotely," Damon answered. "You've seen her. You've seen me. We're alive. I'm taking her home."

"Wait-"

"I'm borrowing your car. I'll be back later."

"Damon!"

Bonnie could tell they were walking again and then there was the sound of the car door and she was deposited into the passenger seat. She saw Elena and Jeremy at the door. She stared back, wishing she were still dead.

Damon got into the driver's seat and quickly started the car and drove off. He grabbed Bonnie's hand, squeezing it painfully and glancing at her every so often. They got to her house and she immediately got out and moved a potted plant on the porch to retrieve a key.

She opened the door and walked in; she was on her way to traveling deeper into the house, but was stopped Damon. He stood outside the door, hands braced on the frame.

"You have to invite me in."

"Come in," she said quietly, then turned to go upstairs.

She crawled into bed and curled up into a fetal position. She could hear Damon tinkering around in the kitchen. When she closed her eyes, two fat drops escaped her lids. She kept them shut tight.

Damon entered her bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed; he smoothed her hair and she opened her eyes. He had a glass of water for her, but she declined and he placed it on her nightstand.

"As soon as they could wiggle around in my tummy, they never stopped moving," she whispered. "You remember, right? You always told them to stop fighting and making my life more difficult."

"They never listened."

"No, they didn't."

Bonnie started crying, a steady flow of tears making her way down her face. She sat up and fisted the material covering stomach.

"They're gone, Damon. My babies- our babies- they're gone."

Damon framed her face, making her look at him. His eyes regained the level of intensity that had softened considerably since their universe jumping adventure.

"They're not gone, Bonnie. They're not with us, but they're not gone. In a few months they'll be born, and they'll grow up, and they'll be happy. And one day…they'll be in store, or driving in a car, or at a friend's house, and they'll hear one of those Florence songs you were constantly singing- the one about love, or the other one about love, or the one about heartlines- they'll hear that song and they'll feel strangely safe and nostalgic. They'll go home and ask the other version of you if she sang that song to them when they were babies, and she'll say no, and they'll look at each other and use their freaky twin thing to have a conversation without actually saying anything."

He wiped every tear that fell down her face and tucked her hair behind her ears.

"They'll listen to Florence all the time. And they won't know it, but they're thinking of you every time they listen. They're thinking of their mother. They don't know it. They don't know you. But they love you. They'll remember you. Across a universe, Bonnie, across a million of them. They'll remember you."

She was a blubbering mess, laughing and crying at the comfort Damon was offering her. She could see them, her perfect, little angels, with dark curls and skin shades of caramel.

If only she could be there to see them, to help tick their heights on the wall throughout the years, to fix their aches, to watch them grow into adulthood. But she knew that was impossible.

"Are we really back?" Bonnie questioned.

Damon shook his head. "I don't know. But we have to do what we always did. Play our parts."

"Play our parts? Did you see the way they looked at us, Jeremy and Elena? Won't they want to things to go back to normal, to before the Other Side collapsed? Do you want that?"

"Of course not! But-"

Bonnie couldn't let him finish. She grabbed his face and smashed her lips onto his. Fear fueled her- fear of losing him. Her kids were gone, and there was no way she could handle losing Damon too. The kiss was noisy and wet, desperate.

Damon tried to pull himself away from her- managed to say that he wasn't going anywhere, that he loved her- and Bonnie pitched forward and coiled her arms around his shoulders and latched back onto his lips.

Damon held onto her like a man clinging to life and matched her fervency. Their clothes- the outfits they had disappeared in- were ripped off. Damon spun her around on the bed with dizzying speed.

It was all clashing flesh and suffocating embraces. Viselike grips and thunderous heartbeats. The weight missing from Bonnie's ring finger could only be replaced by Damon's body flexing against her, sinking her deeper into the mattress.

She was barely aware when a fang snagged on her lip, tearing it open and causing blood to drip out, but then his pressure was gone.

Bonnie opened her eyes and gasped. Damon hovered above her, her legs still wrapped around his waist, growling at her with deep red eyes and bared fangs. He blinked and came to his senses, but his vampiric visage did not clear off his face. He moved to get off her, but Bonnie tightened her hold on him.

"Bonnie…"

"Its okay. I'm not afraid."

"You should be."

"No. Not of you. Not anymore."

She pulled him back down to her and kissed the corner of his lips and the veins underneath his eyes. "Wherever, whenever, whatever."

The fangs retreated, and his eyes cleared. He stroked her face. "Wherever, whenever, whatever."

She smiled softly and soon they were stuck together by their mouths. Their tongues waltzed gently until Damon moved to Bonnie's jaw, and then her neck. She twined her fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck and could feel him against her thigh.

She lifted her pelvis and pressed into him. He grabbed her hips and slowly entered her. Bonnie moaned with each thrust, whimpered each time he sucked her flesh, shivered every time she felt his teeth graze her damp skin.

"Do it," she moaned. "Do it."

She didn't need to specify. He dragged his tongue across the thrumming artery in her neck before biting into it. Bonnie bucked against him, snaking her hands underneath his arms and clinging to his muscled back.

A year ago, if anyone had told Bonnie the situation she found herself in now, she would have laughed. If they had told her what her relationship with Damon would become, she would have scoffed condescendingly.

She would never had believed that she would fall in love with him so deeply. She would have never believed that their love ran deeper than blood. That it was made of the same glamour that built the stars, comets, and planets that stretched across universes.


Whenever you see Day 1, that means they've jumped.

Bamon babies. *wipes tear* twins *sobs*

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