When Bonnie came to, her eyes blasted open into a psychotic night. Darkness was everywhere. Her sense of sight wasted on nothing but black. But these sounds… so ominous yet loud and chaotic. She sat up in a fritz, feeling grainy sand between her fingers. She called out for Damon. Nothing. A frightening stir of emotions surged in her body and it was like a cyclic wind of fear churning in her stomach as she realized she was alone.
Being alone to Bonnie was where her fear was at its peak. A time alone is a time procured by anxiety and paranoia, and it picks at the mind until the brain understands it's time to choose. To choose between giving up or taking charge. Her nails dig into the sand and she decides to fight. The sounds grew louder, like, something violent or malicious was closer to her. She heard a whip-like sound in earshot and a sharp sting landed on her upper arm. Bonnie gasps and grips onto it. A warm, mildly wet feeling filled her palm. The blood spilled profusely and that's when Bonnie's decision became a reality. Her mind had already knew. It was her body that was slow to react. A physical dysfunction stopped Bonnie from action, maybe it was the harsh hold of fear or the disconcerting reminder that Damon may be in trouble. Though now as the sound of a high pitched screech rises and rises, she stands to her feet and starts in a full sprint. A sprint that could lead to anywhere. The dark clouded her vision and immersed her into a world of uncertainty. But here she was, almost gliding across the soft, spur sand and making way down an endless, narrow cave-like pathway in the vault.
The sounds soon became background noise and the deep breaths from her started to grow loud. She steadied them, giving herself more stamina and more time to get farther and farther away from the sounds that surrounded her. Bonnie looks back when she hears the voice of a person. It was deep and scratchy, and seemed to vibrate the area. Her sprint slows to a stop and she bends over to catch a breath. A breathless "who are you?" leaves her mouth. Bonnie put her hand on the rocky wall.
"Hear me, Bonnie," The voice was saying. Bonnie's head leans forward in the darkness. "Hear me and know that we are coming."
The voice vibrated the walls and minuscule rocks fell between Bonnie's fingers and down the backside of her hand.
"Who are you? What is this?" Bonnie asked. She continued to ask these questions, taking two steps from the wall and to the other. Her hands felt over the bumpy, crater-like formations. As her fingers ran down the wall, as she stepped through the sand slowly, her hand sunk into a deep hole. The air was cold and something took a snip at her finger. Bonnie tries to pull her hand back out, but she couldn't. The fear she thought fled, well, never left. It was intense. Just as intense as the sounds circling her. It was a haunt of methodic melodies, a mess of poignancy filling her ears endlessly with terror. And her hand, caught in a cold wind, would not budge. She grabbed her arm with her free hand and pulled. Again, nothing. She jerked. The snip-snip sound of scissors came from inside the hole and Bonnie's panic rose. She pulled her arm hard and thought she might pull it from the socket. She didn't care nor did she let up. Bonnie felt the scissors begin to close around the tip of her middle finger. The scissors close and she screams. She joins the circus of sounds. The tip of her finger snaps off and Bonnie tugs more at her arm. She falls back into the wall, grasping at her hand with the other. She knew it was bleeding like a fountain and she, through quiet sobs, rips the bottom half of her dress off and tightly wraps the fabric around her finger. She puts a fist over the fabric and tucks it into her stomach. Her eyes shut tight.
"Bonnie!" The voice appears again and startles Bonnie. She jumps to her feet.
"How do you know my name?!" Bonnie yells back. She takes a step back. The voice, along with the other noises, were very close to her. Uncomfortably close. And after losing her finger, she wasn't taking anymore chances.
"You better pick up some tread, because I am so close to you, Bonnie."
Bonnie turns and sprints again. "Damon!" She calls again. "Damon, where are you?!"
Had they entered the vault and got torn from each other? Bonnie didn't know what happened to him. Or Enzo for that matter.
"Enzo!" There was a lot of fear in her voice. The other voice could sense it. The voice heard past the bravery that masked it. "Enzo, please answer me!"
Bonnie stops running again. She was exhausted and fell onto the floor. The dirt was soft, if not comfy, and she brought her middle finger to her chest. The blood was seeping through the thin fabric and her fist closed harder around it to seal it in. Bonnie shifted in the sand and felt something crawling on her foot. She flicked the little critter off with her other foot, but there was more. One swiftly crawled up her neck and before Bonnie could react, another was under her dress on her stomach. It pinched her stomach and Bonnie smashed it with her hands. The one on her neck gnawed at her, piercing her neck and making Bonnie scream.
Enzo's eyes opened. Stricken in red, like blood vessels were popped, he couldn't see a thing. It wasn't because of the nullifying darkness, but he really could see nothing. He could hardly move. A paralysis soothed his body. A drug-like paralytic that made him feel weightless. He was immobile.
Fear was more than heightened for Enzo, who, alone in the dark, could feel a shiver of warmth on his cheek. It became a part of him. It molded into him like clay and was beginning to form his truest fears. One of those, as he lay unable to do anything, was Bonnie in danger.
She was out there paralleling him. She was succumbing to her fears like him, drowning in a well of loneliness like him, and trying with the utmost strength to fight it all, just like him. He'd heard her call his name, but he couldn't reply. His mouth mumbled words quietly and nothing recognizable came out.
He might've thought this a good thing, though very ironic. He'd been in the dark about Bonnie, and about Bonnie and Damon ever since she'd awaken. She would never tell him anything. Enzo was a ghost. He was not seen and he was not heard, and he'd found out truths in this way. Silence does that. It becomes a reminder that everything you see is just a placid disguise for what's beneath it all.
Bonnie doesn't reciprocate the love that he shows her and she probably never will. And he's come to think that maybe laying here and waiting to die is the best solution. It might be terrible. But it will be telling, and honest, and more closely resembling his life than anything else at the moment.
He shut his eyes to speed up his long-awaited death. It was the first time he was prepared to die. He was willing. He'd accepted everything in his life as truth. The life he was living wasn't real and there was nothing keeping him here. But it seemed, and as depressing the candor as this was, that everything was pulling him away. Then, just as he thought of what Bonnie would say, he heard her screams.
Enzo grunted and put as much force as he could into moving his bones. He tried to lift his fingers. He attempted to move his legs. He even tried to lift his head up. Not a bone budged. That didn't stop him. Her screams grew horrific and the images in Enzo's head did too, so he knew he couldn't stop. And although his mind was all over the place: maybe Bonnie didn't love him in the obsessively horrific way he loved her; maybe he deserved to die; maybe this was it; he understood that Bonnie deserved a life worth living.
In his state though, Enzo wasn't going to be able to do anything. His mind was too controlled by delusion now to know this but with good intention. That's when a light appeared on his chest. It grew and grew and the darkness of Enzo's sight grayed a little. Hands grabbed under his shoulders and pulled him out of the vault.
Hours passed and Enzo awakes yet again. He wasn't blind anymore. The room he was in was white. White walls, tables, and doors. It was neat. He sat up instantly. An ache coursed through his body and resonated at his neck. The bloodspot. He felt over it but there was a patch on it.
"Enzo." Enzo looks up and sees Alex. One of his family. His expression turns sour and he swings his legs off the table, hopping off.
"Where's Bonnie?" Enzo asks. He starts to walk but his leg gives out. It cramps up and Enzo leans over, holding his leg.
"You're still in pain… I only, I only prolonged the time you'll stay alive." The look on Alex's face erased any resentment Enzo had shown for Alex. She was scared. Enzo was the face of fear too.
A loud, blaring alarm started to sound and the lights shut off. Red ones, emergency ones, came on and a man over the loudspeaker announced a lockdown. Alex bends down and helps Enzo stand quickly.
"What do you mean? What the bloody—ahh! What the hell is going on?" Enzo asks as Alex helps him across the room.
"Something must've escaped the vault when we pulled you out! We're all in danger now."
"Great." Enzo sighs and purses his lips as they move around a table in the center of the room. A large creature crashes down from the ceiling and onto it. It was half-blue, half-tan. A human-creature hybrid. Enzo glares at it in pure disgust. "Ugh, just what the doctor ordered, huh?"
The two of them slowly back away, not moving their eyes from it. It had a long tentacle for one arm and a human one on the other. It took slow, loud steps toward then hissed, revealing its sharp, mini-fanged teeth. The thing leaped up and pounced on them both.
It shoved its tentacle into Enzo's face and slammed it into the wall. With its free hand, it gripped Alex's neck. She rises off the ground, pulling a sharp knife out of her back pocket. She lifts it from her side, then brings it down into the things' arm. It drops her and Alex pulls the knife out just as it stumbles back, dragging Enzo with it. He tries to pull the tentacle off of his face, but he was too weak.
Alex walks towards the thing, spinning the sharp knife between her fingers, and she takes another stab at it. She pierces its tentacle and it retracts, then she stabs it in the eye. The thing lets out a loud screech and Enzo and Alex cover their ears. Glass windows break and the door busts open as the thing disappears into the ceiling, leaving a trail of turquoise blood.
Alex had fallen to her knees. Enzo was pulling himself up with the table. They both look towards the door and similar looks of anguish are exchanged. A plethora of things, big and small, jump through the windows and stomp in through the door.
"Before I die I need you to tell me, where is Bonnie?" Enzo demands.
Damon stumbled his way through the darkness. The last thing he remembered seeing was the vault's steel doors. Him and Bonnie had to drag Enzo into the vault to not take a chance at leaving him outside by himself. The idea was stupid, both ideas were, so him and Bonnie decided on the one that seemed less idiotic. But he didn't think that he'd be put in this predicament. A scenario so unpredictable it left him unhinged.
He saw a light. It floated in front of him for a long time before Damon started to reach for it. He'd thought it was Bonnie sending him a message, hopefully, and so following it might lead him to her. Little did he know, Bonnie was in just bad a position he was.
He followed the light like a spirit lost in purgatory. It floated in a straight line for a long time. Then, it turned abruptly and so did Damon. He tripped over his feet in the sand and the light started moving quicker.
Damon's pace quickened also and as he got closer, he noticed the light was like a small floating flame. He tried to grab it, but it flew from his grasp. Damon smiled like a child, but his eyes were a whirl of excitement and rage. The flame flashed away, a few hundred feet or so from Damon, and he used his vampire speed to catch up to it. In a zap, he was right in front of it. The flame lit up Damon's blue orbs and a faint red circled in his eyes. It was like fire and ice, circling and shaping with each other. When he revealed his teeth to smile because he was mesmerized by the flame, the flame lit them up in the dark.
Earlier, he felt he was being chased. There were sounds and noises coming from everywhere. He shouted at them, threatened them, and egged them to come out and show themselves. It slowly started to drive him insane and he was in a sprint. His vampire speed let him get away from the sounds quickly. Tranquility put him at ease when the sounds were gone and the silence was gratifying. He let himself be vulnerable for a short time and leaned against a wall. But it didn't last long because Bonnie's voice called out for him.
Damon went into sprint mode again and traveled as far and fast as he could. Her voice was growing closer, her screams louder, and it could only mean he was getting closer. His sprint was cut short when he ran into a wall. It put him straight on his back, but he could still hear Bonnie's cries. He yelled her name, hoping she could hear, and he stood to his feet and kicked the wall in front of him. He ran at it in full force, smashing and pounding his fists into it. He banged his head into it a couple times, then the rage that possessed him went away. He leaned his forehead onto the wall and noticed Bonnie's cries disappear.
He fell slowly onto his knees. Bonnie could be dead or she could have saved herself. She was good for saving herself. She persevered in that way. He'd only hoped it was the latter as he turned and leaned his back against the wall.
"She's not dead," He said to himself. "She's not dead. Bonnie you're not dead!"
And that's when the light he now followed appeared.
He was the one doing the chasing. He was the one forcing fear into a life force. He was the one driving them away and on the run. It made him feel good to have the upper hand again.
The flame zig-zagged across the room and Damon followed suit. It rose in the air and Damon crawled the wall, leaping off of it to grab the flame. But, again, the flame zipped away and Damon landed on his two feet in pursuit of it. He went to grab it again, leaping off of it his feet and launching towards it. He misses again and rolls onto the ground and into a wall. He laughs to himself, standing, and the flame charges at him. It burns into his stomach and Damon grunts, clenching his teeth. He sprints away and the flame dislodges from his stomach.
Kneeling against a wall, Damon looks in paranoia for the flame. It had turned on him. The flame appeared back in Damon's face and he stood, backing away from it. It followed him. It followed him and Damon didn't remove his eyes.
"Get out of my way!" Damon tried to hit the flame but it disappeared again. He circled. "Where are you?"
It appears in his face again. The flame backs away slowly and Damon watches it with thinned eyes. It charges at Damon again and this time, Damon dodges it. It comes at Damon's arm and he moves it just in time. The little flame goes for his stomach again, but Damon hops back. Soon, Damon found himself dodging the flames attacks and walking back.
The flame runs Damon into a wall and charges at his chest, but Damon sprints away. He zig-zags, circles, and tries to be unpredictable in his method of moving. Each time he looked back, though, there the flame was. It was catching up to him, closing the gap Damon had between them, and eventually… it would catch him.
Damon stops. The flame is gone. He looks all around him and sees nothing. No light. But Damon had no idea where to run now. He didn't know where to start to look for Bonnie, or Enzo, and couldn't even try to get out if he wanted. He knew nothing. He heard something.
It was the sound of a match starting to light. And before Damon could look, a line of fire was coming towards him. He turns around to see another line of fire. Two more were coming from other directions, and more were filling anymore space Damon would've tried to run. The walls were swallowed by fire. This was the end. The fire swallowed Damon whole and he yelled loudly. He was a walking torch, stepping across the room slowly until he falls to his knees.
He could think only one thing, the one thing he denied himself thinking: including him, everybody's dead.