A/N: How badly did JP and her idiot writers cheat us out of that Beremy reunion last episode after giving us so many feelings with the Beremy-adjacent scenes in 4.19? Ugh, I'm still mad.
But enjoy this chapter where Bonnie's actually focusing on what SHE wants!
Chapter 4: Apocatastasis
Bonnie was wired when she got to the entrance of the woods. She parked her car in the empty lot. She'd hoped that Abby's car would be there, hoped during her smelly ride from the cemetery that she wouldn't have any more alone time with Jeremy's dead body than she needed.
But it made sense that Abby had yet to arrive. While Bonnie had known exactly where she was going and who she was going for, Abby had the task of finding a stranger in a place that would provide her a cover. Bonnie had suggested she go to a gas station, but Abby had nixed the idea, reasoning that gas stations tended to have people milling about on foot and waiting for who knows what early in the morning.
Bonnie looked in the rearview mirror for the first time since she'd left the cemetery. She bent the visor so that she could see Jeremy instead of what was behind her car. He looked as bad as he smelled. She threw the car door opened and got out, her movement unhurried. She paced away from it and told herself to breathe normally now. She'd resorted to breathing in segments during her drive, holding her breath for as long as possible and then exhaling through her mouth, because she couldn't take the smell of him hitting her nose.
Even though she was out in the open now, she still smelled him. Then she realized that she smelled of him. He was on her clothes, on her hands, in her hair. Putting her windows down hadn't helped any, though she wondered how much worse it would've been if she'd kept the windows up.
She retreated inside her head and went over her list of spells: the one to heal his epidermis, the one to make the offering of the sacrifice to the spirit world, and the one to resurrect him. Thinking of the sacrifice, she walked back to the car, imagined torching it after all of this was done, and she stuck her upper body into the car and grabbed her notebook that lay on the passenger seat. Then she opened the glove compartment and retrieved the eight inch chef's knife she'd gotten from her kitchen.
Her father had a thing for kitchen knives. They had gorgeous (and some were expensive) sets. She'd actually had to go over their inventory and decide which chef's knife to choose. Abby had been impressed and had thought to herself that Rudy could buy Bonnie at least three semesters' worth of college books if he sold all of the knives.
Bonnie had gone with the Miyabi Kaizen chef's knife. She could've chosen one of their less expensive ones, but her dad's obsession with kitchen knives was diluted into a simple liking for her, and she liked the Miyabi Kaizen set. It was her favorite. Her dad's favorite was the Wüsthof Classic collection, so she'd decided that choosing a knife from that set was off limits.
The knife was wrapped in newspaper. She had always liked how it felt in her palm, the handle, the way the steel gleamed, and the sharp point. The sharp point that she was going to plunge into someone's heart in less than thirty minutes.
The three subject notebook she held was her makeshift grimoire. It contained the spells she'd written under Abby's guidance. She'd bought the book right after she'd come into possession of Jonas Martins' thirty-eight grimoires. She was still making her way through the collection, the collection she'd shortly realized was partly stolen. She was only on the third book, due to frequent distractions in the form of actually needing to put her powers to use to solve the problems Stefan and Damon brought to her. She took notes in the book, attempted to make her own version of some of the spells, wrote the names of herbs and their different uses, their different mixtures, what to avoid, and sometimes she wrote down the things she felt and thought while performing some spells, like the one she'd used to send Vicky Donovan back to the OtherSide.
Bonnie tucked the book under her right arm and opened the backseat door. She levitated Jeremy out and closed and locked all of the doors. Her legs regained their stiffness while she walked through the woods, and she wondered what she looked like. She probably looked worse than the emo kids about whom she and Caroline used to gossip.
She reached the clearing and hoped Abby wouldn't get lost.
She was alone with Jeremy. She floated him down to the ground and looked at him, let his state further brand itself into her mind.
She needed to think about something else. She couldn't spend the entire time waiting for Abby by staring at Jeremy. Not realizing that she still held the notebook and knife, she walked away from him and paced. She wondered if her dad had thought about canceling prom. She'd freaked out about him canceling the eighties dance, but she wouldn't mind him canceling prom. She was woefully unprepared to go to prom.
She wondered what her dad was doing at the moment. Mayoral duties, probably. Maybe looking over the city's finances, its budget and spendings. He might be wondering how everything is going. He'd suggested using his new power to have Liz Forbes dig up Jeremy's body to be exhumed, that way there'd be less things to explain. Unfortunately, he'd realized that they'd need a judge's permission to dig up the body.
She wondered if she should go ahead and heal Jeremy's skin while she waited for Abby. No. That might mess up the ritual. The way she'd imagine it in her head, Jeremy and the sacrifice would be lying next to each other when she said all of the spells. It was probably best not to deviate from that.
She thought about the conversation she'd had with Jeremy on the OtherSide. She kept coming back to a couple of things they'd said: he'd said he loved her. He'd said he wanted to get back together. And she thought about the hints he'd shown to prove that: he'd told her that he didn't mind her taking pictures of his naked chest. There was the time at the lake house. Before that, even, there were times when they would make eye contact, and she would remember how he looked at her when they'd been a couple.
Now Bonnie didn't usually doubt her readings of boys. She was good with boy signs, always able to tell when some guy was crushing on Caroline or Elena. She could even tell when some of these boys were into her. She'd been able to tell where Jeremy's head had been at when he'd braved Katherine Pierce in order to keep her from over-exerting herself.
But she'd been burned by Jeremy; he'd thrown her reading of him off course, so when he voiced that he had a desire to protect her, one strong enough to override the leanings that the Hunter's Mark forced on him, when he worried about her doing Dark magic to kill herself in order to bring Elena back, when he carefully bandaged her hand after she cut it falling in the cave, she wondered what it all meant. She'd refused to assume anything, refused to trust anything she felt when it came to his words and gestures. Instead she'd settled on asking herself what it all meant without daring to give herself an answer.
She had the answer now: he'd been thinking of asking her to give him a second chance.
She thought back to the time when she didn't need to question her instincts when it came to Jeremy. When was the last time they'd kissed?
She stopped pacing and stood frowning in the clearing. When was the last time she'd kissed Jeremy? Surely after she came back from summer vacation. The last time she'd kissed Jeremy was when she'd jumped into his arms upon crossing the Gilberts' threshold.
Bonnie didn't think that was right, and yet that was the last time she remembered kissing Jeremy. No later instance came to mind. Probably because he'd been busy trying to deal with Anna's ghost by himself. Oh yeah...they definitely needed to talk.
She heard leaves breaking apart under heavy footsteps, and her heart jumped to such heights that she put the hand holding the knife against her chest. She told herself to calm down, that it was only Abby, that normal people weren't out walking the woods of Mystic Falls this early in the morning. Besides, she'd chosen a spot deep into the woods to ensure they wouldn't be easily discovered.
Abby appeared, and she sighed with relief. Her mother was taller than her, but she was slender, so it was strange to see her lugging a man who was taller and weighed more than her.
"Hey," Abby said, not sounding at all out of breath.
"Hey," Bonnie greeted, and she watched Abby slip the man down her shoulder and gently lay him down. The man's mass didn't cause her to stumble at all. The perks of having vampire strength.
Abby flipped her hair away from her face and saw the state of Jeremy's body. She had offered to retrieve Jeremy's body, thinking that in Bonnie's state the less time she spent with evidence of Jeremy's death, the better. But Bonnie had insisted. Her nose scrunched at the smell of him, and she wondered how much worse it would be if she used her full vampyric smelling ability.
She turned her attention to Bonnie, and there she stood clutching the knife in one hand and her notebook in the other. She looked like she was trying to take up as little space as possible. "Bonnie," Abby said softly and moved toward her.
"It's fine," Bonnie cut her off. "Is he...is he a garbage man?" She forced her feet to move, and she went around to Jeremy's right side, on which the man lay. The man wore a neon green vest.
Abby didn't know if Bonnie was covering up her vulnerability or if she really didn't need her comfort. It wouldn't be the first time she'd refused Abby looking out for her. Even on the day that Bonnie had spent crying and throwing up, Rudy had been the one to hold and comfort her. The soothing words had come from him. She'd looked on, kept her distance, and it had all seemed natural. Even though her heart had ached for Bonnie's suffering, Rudy was the one who raised her. He'd been through things with her, mundane things, arguments, disagreements, annoyances, first days, milestones, things that Abby only knew of because of the six years she'd spent raising Jaime.
Bonnie and Rudy had found a way to get along without her, so when Bonnie clung to Rudy because her clairvoyance had allowed her to see how Jeremy had died, Abby hadn't thought anything of it.
But now, as when Bonnie had vehemently disregarded her warnings about Dark magic, she wondered if she was purposefully being shut out.
"Yes, he's a garbage man. When I was leaving the neighborhood, I saw the truck in my rearview mirror. I parked beside a house and waited for it to get in front of me, and then I followed it. When they were five blocks over, I got out and nabbed the driver while the other two worked in the back."
"Are you sure no one saw you?"
"As sure as I can be. Generally people are not on the look out for something out of the ordinary, esspecially when they've got a routine rooted in their minds. Especially in Mystic Falls, ironically enough."
"Thank you," Bonnie said sincerely.
Abby nodded and wiped her hands on her light grey skinny jeans.
Bonnie took a deep breath and remembered that she held the knife. It was almost time. "Um," she began and looked at Abby. "I can do this...by myself. It's fine," she assured when it looked like Abby was going to protest. "I can do it on my own."
"You don't have to," Abby said. After how much Bonnie cried and how out of it she'd been the past couple of weeks while remaining impressively focused with a one track mind, Abby was perturbed about the amount of time Bonnie had had to spend with Jeremy's burnt body.
"I'll be fine. I can do this. I'm ready; I'm prepared."
Knowing that arguing was fruitless, Abby nodded and then said, "Call me if you need anything. I'll be waiting by the cars."
"Thanks," Bonnie said again.
Abby sped off. The cars were in her supernatural sight when she stopped. Concentrating, she sped back and nailed the stop: she didn't stumble, didn't bump into anything, and she ruffled as little of the leaves, sticks, and dirt as possible. She didn't take a single step for fear that she'd alert Bonnie to her presence. And from her vantage point, she watched.
Bonnie crouched and set the knife and notebook down. The man in front of her had a stomach that was enlarged by a steady diet of soda beverages. He had blonde hair shaved close to his skull; he was her father's age, as she'd wanted, and he had a natural rosiness in his cheeks that had paled over the years due to the amount of time he spent outdoors.
The sun beat on her shoulder blades. Her window was closing. She reminded herself of the steps she needed to take, the literal steps she needed to take. She needed to walk, needed to forge a circle with her feet the same way she'd been doing in her bedroom, so she faced forward, her right ankle next to the sacrifice's body, and she proceeded to walk clockwise. Arms bent at the elbows and extended in front of her, she started the ritual:
"Natura renovat. Natura renovat."
"Natura renovat. Natura renovat."
"Natura renovat. Natura renovat."
She stopped in front of Jeremy and meticulously got down on her knees. Extending her right hand toward her notebook, she floated it to her. She flipped to the page with the spell to repair Jeremy's skin, and a small excitement picked at her. By the twelve pm, Jeremy would be able to talk to her.
She looked at his charred skin and pictured his face and body as she last saw it: whole, spotless except for some beauty marks. She was going to make him that way again.
Sitting back on her calves, she repositioned her hands in front of her, bent at the elbows. No matter her emotional state, no matter how tired her body was, her voice always conveyed authority and confidence when she chanted a spell, and this time was no different. The self-deprecation she'd gone through in the car took a backseat, and she was a witch in charge of the elements, able to morph them with her will however she saw fit. Her tongue rolled the Rs; it pressed against her teeth when she hissed the Ss; her lips puckered when she pronounced the Us, and as the strength of her voice forced Jeremy's skin to heal, so did the dead things in the forest heal: the leaves in trees bloomed green, the barks grew in strength, the soil looked darker, moist, the scant pieces of grass around her became numerous and lush so that both Jeremy and the sacrifice lay on the bed of life.
"Natura renovat. Sicut mortuis cutis effundit, renovateur. Vita mors, et repondit circuli pergit. Vitam mortem reponit et, cute renovat. Vitam et mortem cedit cutem emendat. Isti revertatur ad ardet, cicatrices! Haec vulnera vitae cedere! Cedere ad vitam! Cedere ad vitam! Isti revertatur ad ardet, cicatrices! Haec vulnera vitae cedere! Cedere ad vitam!CEDERE AD VITAM! CEDERE AD VITAM!"
Jeremy's burns turned from black, to red, to dark pink, to pale pink, to scars, and the closer he got to his true self the more Bonnie's voice rose until she was screaming him into completion, yelling at his body, shouting the proof of death away, away from her eyesight, away from her memory. She wanted the bugs gone, the flies, the beetles; he wasn't their home anymore. He wasn't a dead thing; he was coming back to life. He was healing.
The skin repaired itself so that he was whole again, his face smooth again save for some beauty marks, and his hair...she looked at his hands, and she could see no bone. The way it was supposed to be. She smiled and swallowed the lump in her throat.
Barely breathing and keeping her eyes on Jeremy, she stood with the notebook and moved clockwise towards the sacrifice. She descended onto her knees again and unsheathed the Miyabi Kaizen. It was heavier than it was a minute ago. She held it tight at her side and said:
"Vigilaveris."
The man remained aslumber, and she faltered. He was supposed to wake up.
"Vigilaveris," she pressed, but the man's stomach rose and fell steadily. This was the spell that Abby had given her; it's the spell Abby always used to awaken her preys.
She couldn't kill the man while he was sleeping; she didn't want to. That wasn't how she imagined it. She was going to steal his life for her purpose, and she owed him her face. He should know why he was going to die; he should get a chance to be scared; he should get a last thought. She'd been close to death before. Twice. And everyone deserved a last thought.
"Wake up," she pleaded softly.
Abby forced herself not to move from her spot. Bonnie needed to get it, and she needed to get it on her own.
Bonnie closed her eyes and tried not to feel let down. She couldn't kill him like a coward, but she wasn't going to let the opportunity to bring Jeremy back pass her by. Trying one more time, she opened her eyes wide and screamed down at him, "Vigilaveris! WAKE UP!"
His eyes flew open, and she was exposed to pale blue irises. The man's next breath caught in his throat and he cleared it, snorting a little in his throat, as if he truly was waking from eight hours of sleep. Bonnie held herself still while he recuperated. She moved the knife onto her lap.
The man noticed her and quickly sat up. He chuckled nervously at her presence and rigid face and looked around. He saw Jeremy lying next to him and moved to stand. Bonnie quickly threw out her left hand and forced him to sit.
"Hey! Hey," he laughed again. "What's going on? Where am I? What's-"
"You're in the woods. In Mystic Falls." Maybe he thought he was dreaming.
That part sounded familiar to him. Mystic Falls. He'd been at work. He'd been at the wheel yet it felt like he'd been in the woods all along. He hadn't brought himself to the woods, so the situation felt surreal. He was waiting for something that made sense.
Bonnie moved her left hand toward the ground, and the man was forced onto his back.
"Hey! What's-what's going on? Where am I? I don't understand. How did I get here?"
"You were brought here. You were drugged," Bonnie explained matter-of-factly.
The man still had trouble understanding. She was a teenage girl, how could she have drugged him? He didn't remember ever seeing her.
"I'm going to kill you."
"What?" He smiled as if a punchline was coming.
"To wake him up," she nodded her head toward Jeremy.
He noticed now that Jeremy's suit was dirty. He noticed now that Jeremy smelled. He cringed away and tried to get up, but he was rooted to the ground. He looked to Bonnie and she wielded the biggest knife he could ever remember seeing.
"Woah, wait a minute! Wait, wait. You don't have to do this. Please? He's not gonna wake up. He's dead. If he's dead he's dead, and nothing will change that."
"He'll wake up," she insisted. "I'm a witch. I have magical powers. Killing you won't be in vain, I promise. This isn't some weird ritual. This is true. This is magic. And he'll wake up as soon as you die," she said softly.
"No. No, please; you can't do this. He won't wake up," he said, looking at Jeremy. "You're making a mistake!" he yelled when he saw Bonnie raise the knife with both hands. "I have a kid!"
Bonnie's eyes fleeted over to him.
"Oh my God. I have a baby, a baby girl. She's only a month old, and her name's Ellna. I didn't say goodbye to her this morning. I didn't say goodbye before I left; I almost turned back but I decided to go anyway, because I'd make it up to her when I saw her later. I never leave without saying goodbye, oh my God." He banged his head against the floor and battled with his negligence.
"She won't remember you," Bonnie said. She was trying to make him feel better.
"I'm begging you. She is my whole life. My wife-I can't leave them. I'm dieting, and I go on walks with them every night, and we're making plans for how we're both gonna be there with her while she grows up. We just got into a routine with the baby. It just became easy. I'm begging you."
"I have to kill you."
"No, you don't. We can talk." His blue eyes were huge as they implored her. "I can help you."
"I'm sorry about your baby and your wife. I really am. They'll move on. But I can't lose him. I can't move on again. I wish this didn't have to happen."
"It doesn't! It doesn't have to happen. You can save me!"
The words barged into her brain and tore at her resolve. She can save him. She could save him. She could save him and then he'd go home to his baby and his wife and continue striving to achieve his plans for the future. He'd go home and resume being happy, and it would be because of her. It would be because she was merciful. She could be merciful and a little girl would grow up with both her parents.
She can keep the family whole, and while they were off being whole, she would-she would-
Jeremy's first response when she'd told him she could bring him back was a firm "No." He hadn't wanted her to take the risk. "I can stay dead," he'd said.
Yes, he could stay dead. Life was unfair. People died too early all the time. She wanted to force death on this man, and for what? The state of her life wasn't his fault. Her unhappiness wasn't his fault. Why should she rob him of his? She stared at him and how quickly his chest rose and fell. He was someone's happiness. The month-old little girl who didn't have a single memory of him yet-he was her happiness.
She can try again. She can accept the cards she's been dealt and try again. Leave Jeremy be and try to be happy again. How long would it take? Where would her happiness come from? Would it be enough? Would she ever be whole again? The scars from her grandmother's death still open so easily. The slightest scratch, the slightest betrayal, the slightest hiccup with her magic, and she remembers how different her life is because Sheila is dead. The spirits are alive, and they crowd her. Spirits talk, spirits are aware, spirits feel. There is another side and it brushes against the side of the living.
If she let the hurt from Jeremy's death turn into new scars, would they ever heal? Her life hasn't been charmed since Sheila died. What would it look like if Jeremy stayed dead? How would she move, how would she feel, how would she speak? What would she look like?
She'd been so convinced when she'd spoken to Jeremy on the OtherSide: "I can kill someone."
She was faced with that choice now and suddenly it was better the man live than she be happy.
She smiled, and her smile turned into a grimace and fat tears spilled over her cheeks. She knew what she wanted, but she didn't know how to have it at any cost. She'd gotten very used to sacrificing, to doing for others. She could save this man. Saving and providing happiness and opportunities felt more familiar, felt more comfortable now, than having happiness. Scars burned, but she'd had plenty of opportunities to get used to having them.
"Bonnie."
She looked up at the sound of Abby's voice and quickly wiped her tears.
Abby got on her knees on Jeremy's side and sat on her calves, at eye level with Bonnie. "What's the matter?" The man had started pleading with her as soon as she'd appeared, begging her to help him. She'd quickly tuned him out, which is exactly what Bonnie needed to do if she hoped to get Jeremy back.
"I can't do it," Bonnie said bitterly, avoiding Abby's eyes.
"You don't want to anymore?"
"I want to, but I can't-He doesn't have anything to do with this," she said sadly.
"But this is the spell we came up with."
"I know. I know this is the only consequence-free way," and the tone of her voice said that it was anything but consequence-free.
"Jeremy's waiting for you," Abby said softly.
"And I don't want to leave him there." She sniffed and wiped her tears.
"And you don't want to kill this man. I understand. It's no different when you're killing for an altruistic reason." When Bonnie looked at her, she continued, "Killing to desiccate an Original and save a town or killing to bring a loved one back: you're still choosing someone who had nothing to do with the situation, someone who most likely doesn't believe in magic, or witches, or vampires."
"Who did you choose?"
"A little boy," Abby said thickly. "He was probably in high school. I came up with the spell myself and grabbed the first boy I saw: a little Black boy." One of her many thoughts after committing the act had been about the fact that she'd chosen well: the boy would be reported missing after a time, but how much effort would be put in trying to find him? Not that much. In the end it would be up to the family to decide whether or not he was dead. But now wasn't the time to give Bonnie every single detail of her thought process at the time.
"He had a future," she continued. "One that I wouldn't have let anyone try to take away from you. And while I walked as far away from Mystic Falls as possible, I thought about how I wanted you to live to be a high-schooler and then a college student and then a career woman and then whatever you wanted to be."
Bonnie considered the man in front of her and understood what Abby was saying. If someone came to her and asked for her help in order to stop a witch who wanted to sacrifice a human, she would help; she would stop the witch. She'd been disgusted with Shane for killing twenty-four people. She was someone who needed to be stopped right now. She wouldn't stand for anyone doing what she wanted to do, but she wanted to do it for herself.
"This life-we get used to giving," Abby continued. "Bennett witches, we always seem to be on the side that gives, that saves, that gets involved. We don't know how to stay out of it, and we can stay as far away from the next generation as possible," she said, referring to herself and Bonnie, "but that...trait...still gets passed down."
"That curse, you mean," Bonnie said as she wiped her cheeks.
"You say that because you give too much. I'm serious. You'll never stop wanting things for yourself. You won't want them twenty-four-seven or every day, or even every month. But you will want them. You have to allow things for yourself, Bonnie. Take it from me. If you keep pushing it down, if you keep prioritizing doing before having, you will blow up. And when you do, when you finally push yourself to have, you could end up hurting people, people that you cherish. It doesn't happen suddenly, you know. It builds. You're finding that out just like I did. You want Jeremy back: take him back. Have him. Or don't and shelve it in preference of giving, giving, giving until you die miserable. And let me tell you something: a Bennett witch hasn't died miserable since times were miserable for us and people who looked like us."
Bonnie knew the restlessness of which Abby spoke. She looked into the woman's brown eyes and wondered not for the first time if she could walk away like she did. The meager days she'd spent with Abby, she'd thought she was a coward for abandoning her and her father. She'd been surprised at how caustic her resentment of the woman had been. Because she'd spent all of her life pretending Abby was dead, her way of dealing with the fact that the adults in her life, her father and grandmother, refused to talk about Abby, to explain anything about the situation to her, she'd felt that pretending Abby was dead meant she had no feelings about her whatsoever. "There's nothing to talk about," she'd told Elena.
But when she'd been forced to work with Abby, when she'd had to listen to her and deal with the fact that she did exist and she had a past and she had a present, a life, pain, regret, all the things that made a person, her resentment had come swift and punishing. And for the first time in her life she'd acknowledged feelings that meant her mother was anything but dead: she resented Abby for leaving, looked down on her for leaving, thought she was better able to handle the craft than Abby was because while Abby cowered and spoke insecure words about being punished by the spirits for leaving, Bonnie stayed and dealt with the pain. Bonnie was better and stronger, because she stayed and absorbed the pain.
And then the pain she'd had to absorb had came from people who routinely sought her out for help. And as she'd sat over Abby's death bed, waiting for her to wake up, waiting to deal with her reward for staying, a million thoughts had bloomed in her mind, chief of which was: she wondered what it would be like to leave. Abby had been contrite about leaving, yet she'd stayed away. Leaving had decreased the chances of her lying in a bed in transition to become a vampire. Leaving had decreased the chances of Abby losing people.
When bad things happened to Bonnie now, she imagined being in another place and living another life which is why she'd told her dad she wanted to move if Jeremy refused to come back.
She wiped her tears and told Abby, "I want him back. I want him back."
"Then have him. You can do it. And you won't forget how you did it. I promise. You won't forget this man."
Bonnie's resolve returned and her grip tightened on the knife. She looked down at the squirming man with the large, frightened blue eyes and thought one thing: she was someone who needed to be stopped.
But she wanted Jeremy back. No one was going to give her this; she needed to take it. Jeremy was waiting for her. And as she quickly undid the man's light green vest in order to rid his chest of the extra layer, she thought of a second thing:
She hated the spirits, God, the Goddess, whoever or whatever was watching over this, whoever or whatever was deciding not to give her a break.
The Miyabi Kaizen gleamed when she positioned it over the man's heart. She tuned him out completely, tuned out his yells, his squirming, and the panicked rise and fall of his chest.
She pressed down on the knife, her arms stiff in trepidation of what was about to happen. She leaned on it, and her eyes widened when it went through. It wasn't seamless yet it was at the same time. She pierced through skin and tissue, and the knife tore its way into the man.
She drove the knife down to the handle, until the side of her hand rested on his chest, and suddenly everything came back. Her eyes grew big as saucers as the man's sputter registered in her ears, as he flailed from the pain.
"I did it," she said breathlessly, her eyes glued to the knife. "I did it; it's in. It's in. He's dying; he's dying."
"Yes," Abby said sternly but calmly, hoping to calm Bonnie.
Bonnie's hands fell asleep on her and tingled, and she shuffled away on her knees, away from the dying man. "I killed him."
"You're killing him. You need to complete the spell before he dies. Bonnie. Bonnie!" Abby stood and moved to Bonnie's side. She squatted behind her and cornered Bonnie between her legs and firmly grasped her arms. "Hey," she whispered. "It's okay. This is what's supposed to happen. You need to calm down so that you can finish the spell or else he'll die for nothing. You need to snap out of it."
"I know," Bonnie said shakily, her mouth dry. She swallowed past it and winced at the sharp pain. She reached for the knife and pulled it out, remembering Abby's advice. He'll bleed out faster this way. She got goosebumps at how his body spasmed when she yanked the knife out. The Miyabi Kaizen no longer gleamed. It was dulled by red.
She carefully placed the knife vertically on his chest, grabbed her notebook, and stood. Abby stood too and moved a couple of paces from the scene, present but not part of the spell.
Bonnie roughly flipped the pages. She was close. It was time to make her offering and take Jeremy back.
She walked clockwise over to Jeremy's side and looked again at his reconstructed body. She kneeled close to him and laid her notebook down.
Holding her arms out in front of her, she read from the book.
"Ego hoc donum spiritus orbem. Unum est, ita quisquam intrare. Vita et mors cycli perstet supplebit. Et hoc non justo. Sit corpus uri et replete terram, et factum est in convallis. Sit corpus uri, et ad cineres et terrae fecunditatem. Nam convallis est in actu."
Bonnie shivered and folded in on herself. She felt weaker, like she was losing her strength. Her body heated, and her eyes grew heavy as if from a migraine. The words on the page swam before her eyes, and she commanded her body to hold on. This was nothing like the nosebleeds; it simply felt very uncomfortable.
She put a hand to her pounding head, looked up and gasped at what she saw. The man's body was on fire, but that was expected. The spell called for his body to replenish the earth, to fertilize it.
But the woods were dead.
The trees were barren as if it was the harshest, driest winter. The green leaves were brown and cracked, the soil a grey and dry. She whipped her aching head in Abby's direction to make sure she was still standing, and she was. Abby was marveling at the barren woods.
Bonnie had named the spell "Funeral." It was a funeral for the sacrifice, a fiery one, and he, along with the knife, burned hot and fast.
She looked at Jeremy, and her heart filled. It was time for the awakening. Of the three, this was the first spell she and Abby had written. This was the only spell she'd memorized so that she wouldn't need to look at the book.
As the sacrifice burned, she shuffled closer to Jeremy and chanted softly from her heart. From the first word to the last word, her voice was soft as if honoring the delicacy in life, in living. Her eyes were warm and imploring, waiting for the first sign of life in his body.
"Natura renovat. Animam pro anima. Nihil est aeternum, sed naturae cursum. Id ego dico, ut animam pro anima. Spiritum et spiritus nominat offero. Jeremy Gilbert. Et revertetur petere hoc corpus. Redite in herbis virentibus, et in terram bonam, et rore. Spiritum et spiritus nominat offero. Redite in herbis virentibus, et in terram bonam, et rore, Jeremy Gilbert. Est cum sole et luna. Cum luce referri."
The wind picked up and whipped green and orange leaves into the trees; the soil grew moist and appeared a rich, fertile black. The sacrifice burned to ash, and Bonnie's hair flew from her face as she waited for Jeremy to wake up. For the first time, she touched his skin. He was cold, but she didn't falter. She stared at him, not wanting to miss the moment he came back to life.
He warmed beneath her hand. It was imperceptible: one second he was cold and the next he was warm, room temperature, and she smiled and thought of the sun and marveled at the sleight of hand that magic had played on her. One moment ice cold and foreign, the next warm exactly as she remembered.
"Come back to me, Jeremy. You don't belong over there." His skin was dark with life; blood circulated underneath; gone was the sickly pale Silas had shown her on the island.
"Wake up, Jeremy." Her voice teetered, her emotions on the balance. "Open your eyes," she whispered. She smiled. "You're not dead anymore."
She rested her left hand on his heart, just like she'd done when she opened Silas' tomb, just like she'd done in his living room when she'd almost channeled him, just like she'd done in his bedroom the night Jonas Martin had given her her powers back.
His chest rose and fell under her hands, his heart beat against her palm, and she wanted to collapse from the anticipation.
"Open your eyes. Look at me."
Jeremy inhaled and felt the hand on his chest. It didn't press on him, but he was extremely aware of it. He could hear shuffling. He heard a voice, and he knew he wasn't alone.
It was hard to open his eyes, but he needed to do it, felt it was important, but it also felt like it had been a while since he eyes had opened. He felt like he was trapped in a deep and dreamless sleep, and he wanted to panic, but the voice and the hand...they felt very familiar, very important.
"Open your eyes, Jeremy."
He exhaled and suddenly his slumber wasn't so deep anymore. He swallowed and opened his mouth, and then...he opened his eyes.
It was a blink. His plush lashes lifted from his cheeks, and he quickly blinked. "Bonnie," he murmured, because even though his spirit reconnecting with his body created confusion, because going from ethereal to earthly created a moment of incomprehension and slowness, a memory barged into his brain. "Bonnie."
"Yes, I'm here," Bonnie said hurriedly. "I'm here." She smiled, and hovered over him and framed his face with her hands. "I'm here, Jeremy. You're back. You're alive."
"You're here," he said slowly.
"You're here."
"Bonnie." He lifted his hand and covered one of hers on his face. She was here. He remembered. He'd been waiting for her; he'd been gone, and he'd been waiting to see her again, and she'd come, and then she'd left, and now she'd brought him to her side. She hadn't let him go. She was here.
Jeremy wasn't dismayed at the pile of ash sinking into the ground. Everything stunk: it smelled of burnt flesh; his suit was disgusting and dirty and putrid, and he wanted to take a shower.
He looked at the ash until it disappeared completely, but he stayed aware of Bonnie. She'd killed whoever that had been.
"Come on," she pulled at him and helped him up. "We need to go."
"Are you okay?" Abby asked.
"I'm fine," he answered, though he still felt light, like gravity wasn't affecting him completely yet.
"Let's go, then," Bonnie said, staring up at him. She wrapped an arm around his middle and put one of his arms around her shoulders.
"Okay," he answered, and Bonnie nodded and led the way, routinely glancing up at him.
"I told Rudy I'd meet him after you did the spell, but I don't have to go right away-" Abby said when they reached the cars.
"We'll be fine," Bonnie assured her.
Abby glanced at Jeremy. She'd never seen a resurrection before.
Jeremy nodded in support of Bonnie.
"Call me if you need anything," she told Bonnie.
Bonnie nodded, and unlocked her car. Abby walked to the passenger side and put Bonnie's notebook in the glove compartment.
When Bonnie closed the passenger door after Jeremy got in, Abby softly asked her, "Are you okay?"
Bonnie smiled. "I don't know yet. But it worked. He's here."
Abby smiled. "It worked."
Dangling her keys, Bonnie walked around to the driver's side and put the key in the ignition.
All four windows were down yet the bad smell permeated. Jeremy didn't connect that that was how he'd smelled when he'd been dead.
He glanced at Bonnie, who kept her eyes on the road. Not once did she look over at him. He couldn't wait to get to her house, but then he noticed that the streets were looking a little too familiar.
"Where are we going?"
"Your house," Bonnie said plainly.
He didn't hear the concern from before; there were no whispers. "Why?" he frowned.
"Because you're alive. Oh God, wait, we can't go to your house. I have to take you to the Salvatores'."
"What?"
"Your sister." She finally looked at him.
Bonnie looked back at the road and took a deep breath. She'd said it with a smile; she'd sounded excited, but she'd also sounded forceful. "Sorry. You're alive, Jeremy, and there are a couple of people who need to know."
"I wanna go to your house."
She was quiet while she gently put her foot on the break pedal to come to a stop at the red light. She looked at the passenger seat, and Jeremy was staring at her, and she quickly looked forward. Her throat caught. "I just think...she's been a wreck since you died."
"She can come over to your house. Everyone can come over."
"They didn't know I was doing this, so it's going to be a surprise," she said with a half-hearted chuckle.
Even more reason to be at her house, Jeremy figured. A surprise meant a lot of questions and a lot of explanation and probably a lot of confusion. He imagined being crowded on one side of the Salvatore house while Bonnie was crowded on the opposite side. He didn't want to be on opposite sides. With that thought, he reached forward and touched her hand on the wheel. She flinched.
"Are you okay?" he asked softly.
"I'm fine. Sorry," she smiled.
He contemplated her. She was feeling pretty apologetic. This was the second time she'd apologized, and it definitely felt like something was wrong. "Let's go to your house, Bonnie."
Bonnie looked at him again and got lost in his face. He was staring at her, unblinking. He could see her. She swallowed her emotions down, and quietly agreed, "Okay."
A/N2: Preview from the next chapter: "You brought me back to life, and you refuse to look at me?" he joked.