Bonnie knew she shouldn't have eaten those pancakes. What was she thinking? Of course they were laced with painkillers. Of course Kai was still a sociopath. Of course he brought her to Portland on his own Vision Quest for his sister's magic. And of course he left her there, bleeding and alone.
As Bonnie staggered around the outside of the Gemini Coven homestead she let it sink in…she was never going home.
—
"Are you sure this is what you want to do?" Stefan asked his older brother as they sat down on Alaric's couch, Damon putting his feet up on the coffee table.
"Are you sure you want to pretend those leftovers aren't from one Miss Forbes?" Damon asked, taking a sip of scotch.
"I wasn't pretending."
"No, but you're not spilling either," Damon stated. "I thought you were "just friends". I thought you didn't like her that way."
Stefan shook his head. "And you think my getting a doggy bag from Caroline somehow means—"
"That she's still totally into you," Damon interrupted. "And that you are probably, most certainly, totally into her."
Stefan shot his brother a dirty look, but Damon continued.
"Let yourself be happy, brother. One of us should be."
Stefan opened the small box of leftover and took out a dinner roll. Taking a tentative bite he carried on.
"Now that talking about my love life is complete—"
"Oh, no," Damon said. "It will never be complete."
Stefan couldn't help but smile. "Well, those issues aside, I think we should discuss if this is the best plan or not."
"What plan?" Damon feigned.
"The compel Alaric to do your bidding plan."
Damon finished his drink and slammed the glass on the side table.
"Hey, he's the one who compelled my girlfriend into forgetting our whole relationship," Damon practically yelled.
"I know, but keep it down," Stefan commanded. "Alaric might not be endowed with super hearing anymore, but he's out in the hall right now."
"And since I'm still endowed with super hearing, I know he's on the phone with Jo. He has no idea he's been compelled."
"He's your best friend, Damon. I just think this isn't your wisest move."
"And I think Bonnie deserves to be here with us, to be eating Thanksgiving dinner instead of…" Damon trailed off. He didn't like to think of what was happening to her instead.
—
"I knew there was something going on," Tyler said, pacing the insides of Caroline's dorm. "I knew it wasn't good."
"Then why didn't you tell us?" his ex-girlfriend asked, her eyebrows arching, a firm hand on her own hip.
Tyler looked to her, then back to Liv, his soon-to-be-girlfriend, and wondered what to do.
"It was my fault," Liv began.
"It was no one's fault," Tyler stated. "Damon needed our help to reach out to Bonnie—" Caroline opened her mouth to speak, but Tyler stopped her. "And we didn't tell you because at that time we weren't really sure what was going on. Beside, you both found out eventually."
Elena stood from her bed. "Yeah, we did."
"In a secret meeting I wasn't invited to, might I add," Tyler quipped.
"Yeah, that too," Elena agreed. "But you were communicating with Bonnie. Don't you think you should have told us?"
"Communicating is a strong word, Elena," Liv told her. "I'm not sure she even got the message."
"Oh, she got it," Jo stated, walking into the room unannounced, Alaric right behind her.
"How do you know that?" Liv asked, still not knowing how to act around her newly discovered sister. Her body tensed as Jo reached out for her, then thought otherwise. The awkward atmosphere put everyone off kilter.
"Mr. Mason's tombstone, right?" Jo asked.
"Yeah," Liv responded, confused.
"Damon told me," Alaric revealed, putting his hands on Jo's shoulders, letting her know he was there to support her.
"John Mason is an old Gemini Coven follower. He was welcomed into the fold after marrying a full-blooded Gemini, but he never had powers of his own," Jo began to explain. "His death destroyed his wife and she placed her magic inside the stone, Gemini magic, essentially creating a supernatural touchstone since the object exists in all realms."
"Even in the prison realm, because he's Gemini and Gemini's created it," Liv finished.
"So it's conceivable to think that Bonnie would be able to read what you wrote, because the writing itself should transcend any barriers due to the stone's magic," Jo finished.
"My head hurts," Caroline said, sitting down on the edge of her bed.
"Great, Bonnie read some message from Damon. It still doesn't mean we can free her, and it still doesn't get any of you off the hook with your crazy coven," Elena said, still reeling from the idea that her friend could return.
Both Jo and Liv looked to Elena and the vampire realized calling their family "crazy" was perhaps a tad much.
"I just mean, we have nothing else to go on," Elena said.
"We have the Ascendant," Alaric told them.
Jo whirled around and looked him in the eye, knowing that using the Ascendant would ensure Kai's freedom. She stared him down, but Alaric didn't seem to notice. His compulsion was too strong.
"We could use that to free Bonnie," Alaric continued.
"It doesn't work that way" Jo began. "And freeing her means—"
"Freeing Kai," Liv finished.
"But we have to do everything we can to get Bonnie," Alaric stated. "Right?"
Everyone in the room knew that saving Bonnie was paramount, but unlike Damon Salvatore no one was able to admit that they would free a murdering psychopath to do it.
—
Bonnie sat on the outdoor steps of Kai's family home, holding her mercilessly wounded gut, her mind reeling with "what if's" and "can't dos".
"You know, I won't leave you here," Damon told her. "Not without a fight."
He was sitting right beside her, dressed in a white t-shirt and his signature black denim jeans. He was smiling at her, a real smile, the kind he reserved for the best of times, the best of people.
Bonnie knew she was hallucinating.
"I can't talk to you," she told her illusions. "Kai will just use it to get to me."
"But Kai's not here," Hallucination Damon said, waving his arm around the expanse of the property, as if to prove his point.
"I can't keep dreaming of you, or hallucinating you, or thinking about you," Bonnie said, more to herself than to her imagination. "I have to stop...because I'm never getting out of here."
Suddenly, she was crying. Not sobbing, but the tears were flowing freely and hard as she try Bonnie could not stop them. It was exhaustion, pain, sadness and defeat. It was being so far from Mystic Falls, in space and time. So far from the real Damon, the one she wanted to talk to, to listen to, to laugh with. The real Damon that she had to admit, she desperately needed.
"All the more reason to keep me around," Hallucination Damon told her. "If you let me go, you'll be all alone. You don't want to be alone."
He was saying what she was thinking, yet again. He was the voice of her fear, her heart, and her hope.
She turned to him, eyes watered, looking deep into his being and seeing a glimpse of the real man she wanted to reach out and touch.
"I miss you," she told him.
Hallucination Damon put his arm around her, and even though it wasn't real, Bonnie let her body list to the side, imaging what it would feel like to be held by him. Imagining the warmth she would find in his embrace.
As blood dripped from her stomach onto the white porch beneath her, she sighed and let herself go into the hallucination, allowing the fantasy to overtake her.
"I miss you too," Damon told her. "I miss you so much."
