Chapter Three: The Proposition
It was the middle of the day but Bonnie ordered the most expensive thing on the wine list and asked the waiter to leave the bottle.
Lucy raised an eyebrow as her cousin took a large gulp.
"Developed quite the tolerance, I see," she murmured, taking a dainty sip from her own glass. "Should I thank your fiancé for that?"
Rather than a response, Bonnie regarded her with a frosty glance before she took another gulp and emptied her glass. She poured herself another, eying Lucy defiantly.
Lucy's lips tightened, and she looked away. Her sharp eyes took in the fancy interior of the Italian restaurant; they shone with approval when they returned to Bonnie.
"Nice place. Does he bring you here often?"
Bonnie had asked to meet at a restaurant in the middle of Whitmore, a ritzy place that was out of her commute and her budget. Of course, she took up Lucy's offer to foot the bill and ordered the most expensive things on the menu. It was pettiness, of course. She doubted she could bring herself to eat. Her stomach was already full of butterflies and anxiety. Had been since the day she listened to Lucy's message.
She ignored her cousin's probing question and cut to the chase. "Kol Mikaelson told us that spell was unbreakable. That if we tried to find a loophole, Elena and I would both die."
"And you took the word of a madman and trickster as the gospel truth?" Lucy drawled mockingly.
"We asked the heretics to siphon off the link, and Elena's sleeping spell. They told us that it was far more complicated than that. They weren't two different spells, but one. Kol's Curse wasn't just a link that bound our lives together… It merged our lives, destroyed one of our lifelines and forced Elena and I to share one lifeline. That's why Elena is in a sleeping spell. She can't truly live while I'm alive and vice versa. If they drew out the magic from the spell, the lifeline will stop sustaining us and we would both die."
"And of course the same people who put the Curse on you in the first place would have no reason to lie about it, either?"
Bonnie resisted the urge to stab her cousin with her table knife. Instead, she said tightly, "The heretics had no quarrel with us. They made a deal with Kol: their freedom in exchange for the Curse. Elena and I were just…" Her mouth twisted. "Collateral damage."
Even now, the pain of Kol's vindictiveness still hurt.
She took a deep breath, and went on. "Their real enemies were the Gemini, the coven in Portland that imprisoned them. Most importantly, one of the heretics and I came… to care about each other. She couldn't have been lying to me about this."
"How can you be so sure?"
For the first time in close to twenty-four hours, a genuine smile crossed Bonnie's face and she looked away, not wanting Lucy to read the emotions on her face.
"I just know," she said softly.
Nora Hildegarde had been in love with her. She had been more invested in keeping Damon and Bonnie apart than Lucy could ever imagine. If there was anyway she could resurrect Elena, she would have – to have a chance with Bonnie.
"Hmm," Lucy said but must have decided not to press the issue. "Now, that coven -"
The food came just then, and Lucy fell silent. The two waited for the waiter to be done, then Lucy fed herself a spoonful, and hummed in appreciation over the overpriced food. As she feared, Bonnie couldn't take more than a bite and put her fork down with finality.
"Help yourself," Lucy said between mouthfuls. "It's a lot of money to go to waste."
"All the more reason to be wasteful," Bonnie said sweetly. "I'm not paying after all."
Lucy heaved a sigh. "You're acting like a child."
"What makes you…" Bonnie bit of her words, then changed her mind, and said it anyway. "You've been out of my life… for almost all my life. What the hell gives you the right to waltz in here and try to mess things up for me?"
"I left everything to help you when the Armory were hunting you down."
"You had as much to lose from the Armory as I did."
"And I stuck around. I've been an active part of your life for the past three years."
"Wow! A whole three years. Someone please give this woman a frigging prize!"
"Do you know," Lucy said in an infuriatingly calm voice as she took a slow sip of wine, "that you sound just like him now? Snarky. Asshole-ish?"
"Well, I told you yesterday: He makes me stronger."
Lucy just shook her head, a rueful look on her face.
It infuriated Bonnie even more. "You know I have a job, right? If you don't have anything important to tell me then I'm going back to it."
She made to stand up and Lucy grabbed her hand. "Bonnie. Sit. Down."
She didn't yell, but there was a sternness in the woman's voice that made Bonnie obey at once, even as much as she felt irritated with herself for doing so.
"So?" she retorted, glaring.
Lucy sighed again. "What did the heretics tell you about the coven in Portland that imprisoned them?"
"The Gemini coven. Old. Powerful. Influential. Barbaric."
"Well, the heretics would say that, won't they?" Lucy said, her voice hardening slightly.
"I doubt that. Before I ever even heard of heretics, I knew at least one Gemini witch. A warlock named Luke Parker – or at least that was what he said. But he was a user and a liar so who knows how much of that is true?"
A curious light entered Lucy's eyes. "How so?"
"He told me he was a mundane-born witch, acted like he didn't understand his powers and I…" Bonnie chuckled with residual bitterness. "I took him under my wing. Tried to 'teach' him, even though I didn't have any powers of my own as an Anchor. Turns out that he had grown up in a magical family and knew more spells by the time he was six than I did when I was sixteen. He was spying on me, waiting for the Travelers to find me..." Her voice trailed off as dark memories followed.
The Travellers had found her.
6 years ago
"Bonnie! Bonnie, are you alright?"
She came to with her head still swimming with pain, her whole body on fire from the assault. She had never passed through so many. She had never had anyone pass through from the Other Side to Reality. She felt like if she had been ripped apart and reassembled badly.
"Bonnie?"
She tried to sit up, and would have fallen back to the ground if not for the warm arms holding her up. There was no point moving much anyway, she knew she won't get past the circle. It was late evening and she was surrounded by corpses and Kol Mikaelson's ghost.
"Where did he…" She shuddered, remembering the dark-eyed Markos. "Where die he go?"
"Bloody hell, witch, you nearly sent me bonkers…"
It was only then she noticed that she was in his arms. For a moment, she just stared in confusion at what appeared to be a look of genuine distraught on Kol Mikaelson's face…
Then someone shouted her name and she forced herself to sit up, shoving Kol away, as Luke Parker barreled into the room.
"The ward," she started in warning, to draw his attention to the circle in chalk that surrounded her. The Travellers had placed the magical shield around her, preventing her from stepping out of the circle.
Luke didn't pause his stride, raising his hand, his eyes glowing with magic.
Bonnie felt it rush at her, a blast of power so strong that it sent pin pricks all over her skin.
Then the white chalk disappeared in a cloud of smoke and Luke was crouched before her, peering hard at her.
"The Travellers," he insisted – and his voice was no longer the shy, self-deprecating tone it usually took but strong, demanding. "Where did they go? What did they do?"
Bonnie blinked at him, her thoughts scattered and confused as she tried to understand why the young witchling she had been mentoring for the past year, the mundane-born wizard who struggled to light a single candle, had just broken through a powerful boundary spell like if he was literally sweeping away chalk.
"Not a newbie witch after all," Kol muttered behind her.
"You lied to me," she managed.
Luke didn't flinch. "I had my reasons. Now, look-"
"You pretended…"
He rolled his eyes. "Get over it, Bonnie! There's more at stake right now. I need to know if Markos escaped from the Other Side."
"Bonnie?"
She snapped out of it. "Luke is the only Gemini, apart from the heretics I knew but they're supposed to be an enormously populated coven. They invented the prison worlds as a way to keep in captivity their immortal and un-killable enemies. Apart from heretics and Originals, this also included the coven of the Travelers, the last of which they eventually destroyed five years ago."
Lucy looked impressed. "You've done your homework."
Bonnie glared at her. "I did try to find a way to break the Sleeping Curse from Elena. Long before I was in any position to ask a heretic for a favor. Found out it was the Gemini who invented it in the first place. I even tried to reach out to Luke – he had left Whitmore after that first year – but the bastard never returned my calls. Maybe his number had changed between when I died and came back. Maybe he's dead. It doesn't matter. Like you said, I did my homework. It's an unbreakable Curse, Lucy."
"It can be broken."
"Yes, yes, you've been hinting that all this while but I've still not heard how, Lucy," Bonnie said impatiently. "So spit it out right now or I will leave."
"It's not a how, it's a who."
Bonnie froze. "Are you talking about … sacrificing someone's life?"
Lucy stared at her, her face drenched with shock. "Why would you think that?"
"You just said that it's a who."
"A witch who can break the spell. Who is powerful enough to undo it, and keep you and Elena both alive. Not whose life will be sacrificed."
Bonnie let out a sigh of a relief. For a moment, it had seemed so obvious that-
"Your mind immediately jumped to that conclusion – murder, probably betrayal – and you wonder why I don't think he's a bad influence on you?"
"I own my thoughts, Lucy, not him. And can you shut up about Damon for one minute?" Bonnie snapped.
"How can I? He's the third person in this conversation right now. Or are you going to look me in the eye and tell me you're not imagining Damon's reaction when you tell him you can bring Elena back?"
"I'm not going to raise his h…" Her voice faltered to a stop. Ignoring the sudden light in Lucy's eyes, she went on hastily, "I'm not going to p-put us on a w-wild goose chase that will lead nowhere. It's a waste of time that will d-derail us. Derail him. Set him back five years…"
"Five years less the years he spent in a coffin, waiting for Elena to wake up, waiting for you to die."
The wine glass in Lucy's hand exploded. There was sudden silence in the restaurant as the other patrons turned to stare at them. Then a duo of wait-staff appeared at Lucy's elbow, and quickly took care of the mess, apologizing profusely and insincerely.
"Would you like your bill now, madam?" One asked, pointedly.
Bonnie had sunk into her seat, her face flooded with embarrassment. But Lucy merely straightened her spine and smiled sweetly at the man. "I'll let you know when we're ready. Can we have another bottle please?"
"Of course."
It took a few moments before the stares stopped. By then, Bonnie was ready to run out of the restaurant.
"Interesting choice of words," Lucy murmured.
"What?" Bonnie snapped.
"What you first started saying. 'I'm not going to raise his…' You meant to say hopes, didn't you? 'I'm not going to raise his hopes.' Because that's what Elena coming back now would mean to Damon. Hope."
Bonnie said nothing.
"So you know that if he was given a choice, he'd choose her in a heartbeat."
"But he was given a choice and he chose me. He could have left me to die after what Kol did but he didn't. He killed Kol and he saved me. He chose me."
"Your life against Elena asleep for the next sixty years, give or take. That wasn't Damon choosing you. That wasn't a choice for anyone. Or it shouldn't be. Bonnie, do you really think so little of yourself?" Lucy asked sadly.
Bonnie closed her eyes for a moment, refusing to let the words hurt her. "It's not about me. It's about Damon. If it had been anyone else, lying there dying over being apart from Elena for one day, that person would have died. You don't know how much he loved her."
"Loved. Still loves, Bonnie. He still loves her."
"He chose me. He's marrying me. He's taking the Cure for me."
"When?" Lucy pressed.
Bonnie blinked. "Our wedding is in a few w…"
"When is he taking the Cure?"
Bonnie shifted in her seat. "Soon."
"How soon?" Lucy pressed. "Before your wedding? Or will you do it like Twilight in reverse and he'll become human on your honeymoon?"
Bonnie grabbed her glass, took another large gulp. Then another. That was the problem with developing a tolerance for alcohol. Apart from the obvious damage to her liver, it took more glasses for it to kick in. And she really needed a boost to deal with Lucy's bullshit now.
"Why can't you just mind your own business?" she hissed. "I never asked you for your opinion on this."
"Of course, not," Lucy said and for the first time bitterness crept into her voice. "You only ever call on me when you need help getting out of a problem. A problem that he usually got you into in the first place. Besides that, you have no use for me or your mother."
"So that's what this is about?" Bonnie asked, incredulously. "You're just butt hurt? May I remind you how you stayed out of my life for years while I floundered in Mystic Falls by myself?"
"Can I remind you how Abby came running to Mystic Falls to get you out of a jam and she ended up being turned for her trouble? Can I remind you how Sheila died helping the same vampires? Can I remind you how many times you've died for these people? Mystic Falls is bad luck for us Bennetts. You think I was going to make the same mistake, Bonnie?"
Now both women were visibly angry, glaring at each other across the table. Stares were being thrown their way again, but this time, Bonnie was too angry to care.
"You're full of crap, Lucy Bennett," she hissed and pushed back her chair to stand.
Lucy grabbed her hand.
"Let go now or I swear…"
"The leader of the Gemini coven wields the power of the entire coven, living and dead, spiritual and ancestral. He can break the link between you and Elena, and save both your lives."
Bonnie yanked her hand away. "The leader of the Gemini coven, whom from everything I've heard is ruthless and ambitious and territorial, would do this just because…? You asked nicely? You told him how worried you were about your little cousin's love life and he was moved to pity? My last encounter with a Gemini witch ended with me almost dying at the hands of the Travelers. I'm not going to jump from the frying pan to the fire, Lucy. I'm not making a deal that will take from me more than I'm prepared to give."
"You're not going to give him anything. He owes me a favour," Lucy said calmly. "And I'm giving up everything else that I could ask for … to help you."
Bonnie smiled sweetly. "Gee, thanks but I think I'll pass."
She stood.
The waitstaff, who had been hovering all this while, rushed to their table. Lucy glanced at them over her shoulder, heaved a loud sigh, then raised a hand and snapped her fingers as she said softly:
"Phaesmotos Prohibere Tempus!"
At once, the restaurant froze. The approaching waiters froze in mid-step. The patrons who were all looking surreptitiously at the two cousins, froze in mid-stare. A waiter who was filling up a glass, stood motionless as the wine overflowed and spilled all across the table.
Everyone was at a standstill except the two Bennett witches.
Bonnie eyed her cousin warily. "Lucy…" she said warningly.
"Relax. It'll time out in a few minutes. Just enough for me to tell you a couple of home truths."
"I don't care to list-"
"The Gemini leader won't ask you for anything but I want something in exchange."
Bonnie scoffed. "Now, we're getting to it."
"Offer the Cure to Abby."
Bonnie froze.
"If she says no, all well and good. If she says yes, then Damon can still drink it out of her. Five years of her life won't kill her."
Bonnie said nothing.
Lucy's eyes flashed. "He turned her because she came, on your request to help his brother. For fuck's sake, I shouldn't even have to ask you of this."
"You're assuming that I want this… That I want to accept this help from the Gemini."
"Now why won't you want it?" Lucy asked sweetly. "A chance to save your friend's life? Live your lives together? Why would you want to turn it down?"
Bonnie felt her heart jump. "There's no guarantee that it will work. That this leader can break the link…"
"That's not what you fear and you and I both know it."
"Lucy, you don't know-"
Lucy glanced at her watch. "The tempus spell will break soon. You can run along now, and figure out what you want from life. The certainty that you're spending your life with someone who loves you and only you. Or forever wondering if you settled for scrapes from Elena Gilbert's table."
"I hate you," Bonnie whispered.
Lucy flinched, then she smiled sadly. "You hate me… because you know I'm right."
Bonnie grabbed her bag and walked out. As the door swung shut behind her, she heard the sudden sounds that told her that the spell has run its course.
If only there was such a spell to put the whirling thoughts in her head on pause.
When Damon came home, she jumped on him before the door had closed and they had an intense lovemaking session.
"What's the occasion?" he asked, when they were done, grinning happily at her.
"Just a reminder that I love you and you'll be Mr. Salvatore-Bennett soon."
He snorted. "You mean, you'll be Mrs. Bennett-Salvatore soon."
She cocked her head, shifting it against his bare chest. "Er… no. I think I got it right the first place."
He laughed. "You are lucky that I'm allowing you to keep your hyphenated name at all. Don't push it."
"I'm lucky?" She asked, sputtering with mock outrage and punched him playfully. He turned her on her back, and tickled her hard, which led to laughter and another round of lovemaking, this time light and playful.
Afterwards, they fooled around in the shower and then went down for dinner. Since Damon was cooking, it was pancakes.
"You have got to learn something else," she said, only half-joking, as she set the table.
"Why the hell should I? You love my pancakes!"
"Not every day of my life, I don't. And won't you want to eat something other than fried batter, too?"
"Everything tastes the same with blood, BB." He sat across from her, and tapped the blood bag by his plate.
Bonnie's fork was half way to her mouth when it froze. Over the piece of pastry, she tried a teasing smile. "Not for long, it won't. The Cure, remember?"
There was a beat. Then he grinned, his eyebrows cocking. "Not for long."
A cold finger crawled into Bonnie's heart. She forced herself to put the pancake into her mouth. It felt like paper. The first thing she had eaten in… was it really a day? … and she couldn't taste it.
"Fixed a date yet?" she asked casually, after she had forced down a swallow.
He was puncturing the blood bag with a straw at the time. He looked up at her quizzically. "For our wedding?" He asked, his eyes goggling. "OK, I've heard of pregnancy brain but not bride brain…"
Bonnie rolled her eyes. "I mean for the Cure. When are you going to take it?"
He rolled his eyes back, took a deep draw from the bag. "Soon, BB," he said pulling back, his lips and teeth stained crimson. "What's with the interrogation?"
"Just wanting to set a timeline, that's all."
"Since when have you wanted to…" Then his eyes narrowed. "Did you talk to your cousin again?"
Bonnie shifted uneasily. They both knew each other too well. "Maybe…"
He scoffed, dropping the bag on the table. Blood leaked out of the straw but he ignored it, as he reached out his hands to grab hers. "Bonnie, I love you. We're getting married. I'm turning human. We're moving out of Virginia and having lots of disgusting babies."
Warmth filled her heart. "That was so sweet until the part where you called my future children disgusting."
"Anything that poops on itself is disgusting by definition."
She laughed softly, and he squeezed her hands. "I love you. And I put a ring on it to prove it."
They both glanced at the shining stone on her ring finger, twinkling in the candle light.
"I know," she said softly. "I love you, too, Damon. So much."
"So… love me. Stop letting Lucy get into your head. Or I'll have to break her neck."
She snorted as he mock glared, then lifted his bag back to his lips.
They didn't make love again that night, but they slept off cuddled together, her head resting on his chest, listening to the absence of a heartbeat until she felt his breath become steady as sleep took him. That was when she unwrapped herself from him, put on her dressing gown to protect herself from the cold night air, and padded out of the room.
She called Lucy and tapped impatiently on the floor as the phone rang to the end then went into voicemail.
Even better. She didn't want to have a conversation with her cousin.
"I've thought about it and I'm not going to do it. It's too risky and it's… There isn't any point. So this is the new deal – I will give Abby the Cure but only on the condition that you promise me that you don't ever come at me or Damon or anyone we know with this false hope of breaking the spell and waking Elena up. Elena's gone and she's not coming back in my lifetime. I've accepted it. Damon has accepted it. Now you have to accept it, too. Goodbye."
She switched off the phone and took a deep breath, feeling a weight lift from her shoulder.
Lucy was right. Abby taking the Cure won't stop Damon from being Cured. It would just change the logistics a little. She could trust Abby to keep Damon being Cured a secret. Despite everything, she knew that her mother would never actively wish to hurt her. She'd abandon her and prioritize Elena's life over hers, but she wasn't Bonnie's enemy, won't work against Bonnie.
Which was more than could be said about Lucy, who was shaping up to be the biggest threat to Bonnie's happiness than Kol Mikaelson or any other…
"Lucy found a way to wake Elena up?"
For the fraction of a second, Bonnie Bennett's heart literally stopped beating.
She turned slowly, so slowly. She felt like if her body had been turned to marble, her limbs heavy and stiff under her, as she forced herself to move until she was staring into Damon's face.
Damon's shocked, pained, hopeful face.
Bonnie's heart started pounding.
"Lucy found a way to bring Elena back?"
A/N: I made a bunch of very small, but significant changes in this chapter. I wonder if the Sherlockians amongst you will spot them... :D :D Once again guys, thanks for the reviews and the support and the encouragement!
