Chapter 3, One Of Us.
A distantly faint sound, almost as though it's reaching the definite endpoint, makes him realise that he's conscious. He's conscious, he accepts without a doubt, but he doesn't open his eyes just yet. He first wants to understand what happened to distract him to this current state.
He's not going to go through the basics, because he knows his name, he knows what he is and everything about himself that he should know. What he doesn't know, however, is what happened and where exactly he is. He may be conscious, but more than that, he isn't in his conscious way of reasoning just yet.
With his eyes still closed and to mainly rely on his acute vampire senses, he uses his hands to feel around him. Somewhat moist earth meets his touch and just like that, his memory is triggered. Exactly as fast as lightning flashes, everything returns to him; Kai, the cave, the escape from where they were (or are), Bonnie within Kai's reach…
Bonnie!
His eyes snap open as if he just received a powerful slap on his cheek, as he simultaneously jerks his body clean off the ground into a ready-for-combat position. Like that, he speedily scans the area around him, keeping his vampire senses on high priority alert. He spots Bonnie's body a little way from where he is, and without planned will on his part, he finds himself on his knees beside her body, with her head lifted off the ground and in his hands.
He's known real panic in his life before, and he's lived through nerve-wracking situations, but this, what he feels right now, seems so unfamiliar to him. As he supports her seemingly life-drained head in his hands and seeing the serene look on her face, he can't say that he's panicking, because he doesn't feel like he is.
'Bonnie?' he breathes out fearfully.
That's it, he realises. That's what he feels. He isn't panicking, because he's afraid. He's really, really afraid.
Although he doesn't want to (not when he's this scared), he pulls his left hand from under her head, using it to lightly tap her on the cheek, in order for her to open her eyes at the insistent contact.
'Come on, Bonnie,' he says lowly, 'Open your eyes.'
What is wrong with her, that she's not opening her eyes? Why isn't she responding to him? She usually has a dictionary and a paragraph of words for him, so why is she playing silent now?
He questions all this, while searching her face desperately. The absolute silence that welcomes his unuttered questions, unnerves him so deeply that he forgets all about Kai and the previous happenings.
He forgets about the escape, he forgets about Miss Cuddles, and all of the things that led to this moment, disappear from his mind as his eyes deeply focus on Bonnie's face. She looks at peace like this, he thinks with his eyes set on her face. He's attentively studying her like he will see the answers that he's looking for, appear in writing on her face. They don't, though, but upon acknowledging how peaceful she looks, it forcefully hits him that she's human. Witch or not, she's still actively mortal and if she's at peace this way, it's because she's…
No, he rudely stops himself from thinking the next word. That idea is absurd, because it just isn't possible, his perked up ears tell him. He can still hear the beating of her heart, but to offer himself extra reassurance, he lowers his head so that his ear is almost literally pressing against her chest to listen for the sound of her heartbeat.
It's there, his ear assures him, her heartbeat is there, but barely holding on. What's strange about that, is that it's the same sound that got him conscious. Seeing as the heartbeat is almost not there, it's strange that her fading heartbeat was the reason that he gained consciousness in the first place. She's the reason that he's…
Deliberately trailing off that thought, he lifts his ear away from her chest, to do the only logical thing that he just now thought to do in this situation. Moving quickly, he rips into his free wrist and brings the openly bleeding wrist to her lips. He carefully uses the hand keeping her head steady, to adjust her into a position where she can take his blood down her throat without it coming back up.
His blood should heal her, he tells himself as he lets his blood drop onto her tongue. He's had one previous experience, where on the brink of death, someone jolted to life because of his blood; so this should be no different. But, just like he feared it would happen, his wound begins to close up too soon, shortly cutting into the healing process.
'Damn it!' he curses with as much frustration as is going through him.
He aggressively bites into his flesh again, except that this time, he comes away with a small piece of his skin and flesh, to make sure that the blood flow down Bonnie's throat, doesn't abruptly end. As he spits his own flesh out to the side, he returns his wrist to her mouth.
If he could hold his breath during all this, he knows that he would be doing that right now, as he waits for Bonnie to come back to consciousness through the supply of blood. But since he can't hold his breath, he keeps his eyes concentrated on her closed lids, not even thinking to blink, because any second now, those eyelids will draw up to reveal her eyes.
A few seconds later, he realises that the reality, however, is not the same as his expectation. In reality, she doesn't open her eyes, his wound is slowly healing by trying to stretch back together around the damaged ends and his hope is dampened. He almost growls out his frustration, when he recognises that growling won't get him anywhere. Instead, he chooses to use his frustration as motivation to ignore the closing of his wound and press it further into her mouth. He won't give up just like that. He can't give up, even if his hope dying.
'I know you hate blood,' he softly reasons, 'but you need to take it.'
And that is when his ears pick up a sound that brings him to a standstill. A different beat to be exact.
From a gradually dying, beating sound, her heart rate smoothly transitions into a steadier beat than before. The reasonable change in the beat of her heart, reaches his heart like an absolute silence resurrects to the winning side after a strenuous final battle; nothing could ever be more welcome…
Overcome with relief in a way that makes it seem like the relief has drained him of energy, he slowly –as though tiredly- rests his forehead on hers as he physically breathes out his relief.
Thank you, he thinks behind closed eyes. He doesn't even know who he's thanking at this point, what he does know is that he's grateful that there's a difference in her heartbeat. Also, he's grateful that he doesn't feel scared anymore.
26Chapters
Now that he's given her his blood a second time, he should go back to the cave.
He wants to return to the cave to inspect it, but there's a conflict within as to whether or not to leave her side. He's literally spent all of yesterday seated next to her bed after he brought her in from the cave, and so he doesn't know if Kai's gone or if he's playing a trick on them.
To be honest, he hasn't given Kai any thought until this morning. And even though he's had questions about Kai's whereabouts, his concern for Bonnie being stubbornly asleep, hasn't allowed him to revisit his questions about Kai. But now that he just fed Bonnie a bit of his blood again –to test if she would wake up with the help of his blood-, and her heart beat changed from steady to healthy, he feels like he needs to go and investigate what could've happened. It's only that he can't find it in himself to leave her all by herself.
He is suddenly divided from his intention to leave for the cave, however, when the healthy heartbeat that he'd been hearing a second ago, turns into a frantic rush. It's as though he's listening to the flow of water from a faucet. All cave thought erased, he stands on perfect alert at her side as he tries to listen for the pauses between each beat, because all the beats seems to mesh into one rushing sound.
As he's trying to listen for the breaks between the heartbeats, Bonnie starts moaning faintly, and he would assume it happens consequently, as a result rushing heartbeat, when her entire face breaks out in a sweat. There's no gradual development or anything like it, everything just appears as intensely as it does suddenly. And just as swiftly as everything happens, he finds himself panicking.
What has he done? What if, in some strange way, (which wouldn't be a surprise to him in this world) she's transitioning to be like him? Did she somehow die between the last time he gave her blood and now? Was the little blood that he gave her just now, what was needed to complete the transition?
In his panic and confusion as to what to actually do, Damon wants nothing more than to fiercely rip his blood from hers. He doesn't want to be responsible for turning her into a vampire. He wants her alive, there isn't a question there, but he just knows that she won't like to wake up as a vampire. If, under normal circumstances, he was given the choice between dead and vampire for Bonnie, he would rather pick for her to be a vampire instead of the other. It's only that at the moment, it sounds and looks like she's uncomfortable, and he especially doesn't want that for her. He quickly drops onto his knees beside her bed and lifts her head by her neck off the pillow.
'Bonnie?' he tests for a response in her face.
She doesn't open her eyes, she only continues to moan lightly as though she's going through something that's taking a lot from her, to the point where she doesn't have enough energy to moan harder than she is.
He discovers when he moves one of his hands down her back to get her up in a seated position, that she's sweating on her upper body too, not just her face. And unfortunately, that can only mean one thing; she's transitioning.
It's like the bough breaks then, snapping something within him, along with it.
She's transitioning, he dryly accepts, and there's nothing that he can do to prevent it. There's nothing he can do to prevent the hollow feeling inside either. He's completely sold on the idea that she is becoming one of them, one of the creatures that she doesn't have a particular liking for. How in the world is he going to break that to her when she wakes up?
Feeling similar to drained, he sets her to lie back on the bed, so that he can take her clothes off to help with the fever. He felt the high temperature fever on her neck and as a vampire, he's experienced that fevers aren't especially pleasant for vampires. Because she's transitioning, he needs to get her clothes off and then get her into a bath tub full of water, to tame her fever. At least that, he can do something about, unlike her transitioning.
'Well,' he begins as his hands reach for the buttons on her flannel shirt, 'I never in a million years thought I'd be doing anything to undress you, but here I am.'
He says that, to mostly bring humour into the situation, so that the hollowness within wavers even just a little, but it doesn't work. His panic over her fever and the fact that she'll wake up a vampire, doesn't die down, not even for show, it stays exactly the same way and in the same spot within him until he tries to undo the third button on her shirt.
She's not wearing a bra, he comes to see. He didn't remember that particular piece of information.
Feeling like a creep, he quickly pulls his hands back. He definitely won't be taking off her shirt if her breasts aren't covered. That's not who he is. Instead of the bathtub, he decides, he'll just get a bucket of water and some cloths that he can bring to place on several parts of her, to help the fever go down.
26Chapters
This is starting to get ridiculous. He gave her his blood, three times now and... This is just getting ridiculous. Her fever died down sometime during the night, but she didn't wake up. How much more ridiculous can it get?
If this is Kai's way of trying to mess with him, it's working and he'll readily accept that it is, if it means that Bonnie wakes up.
'You won,' he says out loud as he looks around the room.
Although he's suspicious that Kai left, he can't rule out the possibility that he might still be there with them, doing that creepy thing that he did before he revealed himself.
'I said,' he slowly drags out, hoping Kai clearly catches his drift this time, 'you won.'
That has to draw Kai out, because although they didn't interact much, he gathered that Kai is one of those thrilled-by-the-idea-of-power people. It should stroke his ego adequately to be acknowledged as the one in total control of everything, to make him appear from the shadows.
Even with all that surrender of power in his favour, Kai still doesn't come out.
'Tell you what,' Damon says, using his last bit of patience, 'if you make an appearance in the next three minutes, I'll spare you. But if not, make sure that you stay hidden.'
He gets that it probably isn't wise to threaten someone who is a master at remaining hidden and then suddenly appearing, but every time his eyes dart to Bonnie on her bed, he can't help it feel impatient. And because it comes naturally, his impatience morphs into irritability, and his irritability begets a seriously provoking itch to be violent. Hence, him like this.
But still, Kai doesn't surface. Not even with two extra minutes that Damon adds for Bonnie's sake.
Okay, he tells himself, this is war. The next time that he so much as catches wind of Kai, Kai'll be lifeless before he knows it. He still hasn't spared time to think about Kai, because constant worry for Bonnie has been devouring him all these days. Whether Kai is hiding or not, he needs to focus on Bonnie.
He's noticed that his blood has some type of influence on her. However, the truth is, that he doesn't want to overload her with his blood. He isn't all that sure how his blood in excess would affect her, even though he doesn't know what else he can do to wake her up.
Pancakes, a memory in a verbal form occurs to him. She hates pancakes, he remembers and it's like everything falls into place. A bright light bulb suddenly goes on in his head, illuminating the recesses that had been switched off as to what he should do to get her to awaken.
That's what he'll do, he'll make pancakes for her. Smiling from ear to ear, feeling like the biggest genius in the world, he flies off to the kitchen.
In the kitchen, he gathers all the ingredients with everything that he needs to make the perfect pancakes, in what a normal, non-vampire person would call a second and a half. He doesn't even realise how happy he is, until he catches himself dancing to a song that is being played only in his head.
He didn't think that making pancakes would make him this happy, because he can actually say that he feels happy. What he doesn't know, is that he's not really happy about making pancakes, rather that his subconscious has it all figured out; He'll make the pancakes, and then he'll take them to her, and when she smells them, she'll spring from her unconsciousness to stab the pancakes and shout at him that she hates pancakes.
His subconscious may have a plan, but even it doesn't really understand that it's on its last leg, desperately pleading for Bonnie to wake up.
In no time at all, he finishes up the pancakes, placing them on a tray to carry to her room. All through this, he doesn't lose his smile, it stays glued on his face. What's more, he breaks out into a tuneful hum as he sets the tray on the bedside table.
And then he waits. He gently hums his happy tune as he waits for the smell of the pancakes to reach her nostrils, so that she can wake up.
Ample waiting time passes, but nothing happens. Though his humming slowly fades out, he doesn't take that as defeat. Instead, he takes the opportunity to provoke a reaction out of her.
'Guess what I made for you...' he says to her.
Still, he receives nothing, but it doesn't discourage him.
'Pancakes!' he announces as a surprise, but still nothing.
This last nothing, however, unlike the previous responses that he didn't get, bluntly shoves his happy feeling down a trench. It sinks in, just as his happy feeling travels down the trench, that she's not going to wake up. If she was going to wake up, she would've done it already.
'Come on Bon-Bon,' he plops down on her mattress, feeling the deepest tone of defeat, 'What do you want me to do?'
He stares down at her for a long moment, and wow, -it unexpectedly smashes right in the centre of his chest- she's beautiful. He wouldn't particularly describe her as the epitome of perfection, but man she's really, truly beautiful. Her beauty almost makes him reach out his hand to stroke her cheek, because beauty like that, should be done justice by being literally felt.
But then he remembers who they are to each other. Where they are concerned, they only know the pattern that they've been living by, nothing else. If he reaches out and touches her cheek and she wakes up then, will she be surprised, but still take it, or will she pull her face away with a look of disgust?
'Give me something,' he cries.
He cries it out like that, because he's at a loss as to what else he should do and slightly from the fact that he can't reach out and touch her.
'You always come back,' he says so softly, that it would qualify as a whisper.
He isn't just talking about what Kai said in the store, he's also referring to the many times that she had the worst happen to her. She's always been an overcomer, even when it seemed impossible.
Again, silence is the only response that he gets, making him sigh his resignation to the world for finally turning against him. He gets up from the bed and he bites into his wrist one more time –adding up to the fourth time now- to give her his blood. He gives it a few minutes to see if she will break out into a fever again, but she doesn't.
He'll just have to sit back down in his chair and wait, because he can't do anything else. Maybe he can hold her hand in his while he waits, but he won't fool himself in believing that it will do anything for her.
26Chapters
Something inside him just wanted, so badly, to feel normal again. He felt like he needed to do something normal, which is how he ends up in the kitchen, making dinner and pretending that Bonnie would come down to eat when he was finished.
She was always the one who made dinner, never him. But in this case, he forced himself to believe that he was doing her a favour by making dinner on her behalf, and she would thank him when she came down from her shower smelling of that lightly scented creme of hers. Believing a lie, doesn't hurt like the truth of knowing that she wouldn't wake up soon, and even if she does wake up, she would wake up a vampire, not a witch. But still, an awake vampire is better than a sleeping witch, even if it is just a lie that he's choosing to believe.
To his shock, however, at around the end of his dinner preparation –he's set the table in the meantime-, Bonnie comes down into the dining room.
He entertained a fantasy in his head that she would smell the food from her room and then she would wake up and come to eat, but he didn't really expect it to come true. He didn't expect it to come true at all. And yet, there she is; awake and standing at a distance, with her eyes on him and from what he can hear, she has a beating heart.
He's heck relieved!
Relieved doesn't even fully describe how he feels, because he's not just relieved; he's appeased and glad, and thankful all at once. He's feeling an elation that he's not quite felt before, so he doesn't know how to interpret. Thus, like he typically would in a situation where everything about himself seems unfamiliar, he tries to make a joke of it. He shouldn't show her that he's thankful to have her awake.
'Oh,' he happily announces, 'look who's decided to stop auditioning for Sleeping Beauty.'
Although he tries to lighten the moment for himself, his body has a plan of its own, because his feet start walking towards her. When he reaches her, his feet move him further behind her and his hands settle on her shoulders. Even that small bit of contact, feels like the first genuine human touch he's felt for decades. If he could, he would keep his hands on her shoulders for a while, until it didn't feel this satisfying to have her in his hold like this.
'Were you hoping I'd wake you up with a kiss?' he asks close to her ear.
He wonders where that came from, and why he hadn't thought of it when he was wondering what he had to do to wake her up. Who knows, it might've worked.
Nonetheless, his hands lead her to her seat at the table. His conscious doesn't know it, but his sub-conscious knows that doing that, is the alternative to really expressing his elation and hugging her like he wants to.
At the table, he makes her sit down as he says, 'It's just as well that you woke up, because all the food I made was going to go to waste. And no,' he adds as an afterthought, 'I wasn't going to kiss you awake.'
He's trying to play it off like her being awake is no big deal, when in reality, it is. It's the third night, but to him a few minutes ago, it felt like he used at least one eternity from his immortality, sitting and worrying about whether she will ever wake up or not.
Her being awake, magically returns the eternity that he spent worrying by her bedside and once again, he feels fully immortal. It's the reason that he fractionally starts skipping off to get her food.
He brings her the food, sets it in front of her and then goes back to get a glass of juice. Over the months, he's learned that she doesn't like to drink at the same time that she eats, because drinking interrupts her appetite, but she likes to have her drink within sight. When he takes his seat across her, his own place empty of anything edible, he simply watches her start to eat.
Too far enchanted at this point, he doesn't even notice that she hasn't said a single word to him since she appeared. He doesn't really notice that she's solely eating either, because he's too consumed with thinking of how glad he is that she's not transitioning into a vampire. Between that, he also thinks of how much at peace he feels again, now that she's awake and that it's not only just him anymore. For an eternity there, it felt like he was the only one of the two of them who existed and if he's being honest, he didn't like any second of it. It's a fresh relief to have her back with him.
While she eats in silence, focusing on her plate, he keeps thinking about her return and how welcome it is to him. When, finally, she takes in a large gulp of orange juice, setting her glass down and looks at him, he immediately sits up straight. He suddenly feels like he has to get back into 'typical' Damon mode for her.
'Who are you?' she asks with a passive expression.
At first, his brain does this thing where it wonders what she just asked, until it repeats her question three times, and then it realises what she's doing.
He'll accept that, he thinks to himself. It's like that morning in the kitchen with Kai, when she couldn't believe that he offered to do something out of the goodness of his heart. She's right to question his good intentions, seeing as the caring side of him, is not a side that he shows to just anyone. He'll accept her jest, but internally, he wants it noted that he can be caring and thoughtful when he wants to be, with the people that he wants; including her.
'You wound me, Bon-Bon,' he leans forwards, a smile to show that he's not really offended, on his face, 'after making you dinner, this how you repay me?'
'I don't know who you are,' she answers him with a frown. 'The only reason I stayed quiet this long, is because I was hungry… but I don't recognise this place, and I don't recognise you.'
She's joking! After the words that left her mouth, his reaction, his feelings and his state, can only be summarised into, 'She's joking.'
Chapter 4, Open The Eyes Of My Heart.