Author's Note: So this one was a lot of fun to write. Like, a lot of fun. And again, I so, so appreciate the reviews. I love seeing you guys give your guesses of what you think is going on. And thanks so much to Le1a Naberr1e for rec'ing my fic on tumblr. I'm having a damn good time writing this and your interest in it keeps me going, so thank you!
iv.
She's scooting about on her hands and knees, lifting the bedskirt on Bonnie's mattress, pushing around pairs and pairs of ankle boots. Their door is open, so students passing by make faces.
Bonnie's pulled her knees to her chest, the ceramic bird in her hand. It shows no damage from her fall. Not even a scratch. Watching the blonde move around, her thoughts go back to this afternoon. "What happened in the bar earlier?"
Liv sticks her fingers into a black combat boot but only finds a sock. She tosses both over her shoulder. "What do you mean?"
"When I asked you that question about the prison worlds, you, you went dead behind the eyes."
"Really? I was just thinking."
"It didn't look like you were thinking." Liv shrugs, gets up, and goes to Bonnie's desk, roots through the drawers. "Looking for something?"
"A hex bag." She throws a smirk over her shoulder. "Unless you really do have mono." She goes on flipping through binders and emptying a bag of pens and pencils, letting them scatter across the desk. "Have you been kissing strange boys, Bonnie? Perhaps one who slaughtered half his family?"
Maybe Liv can joke about it like it's only a puckered, pink scar on the knee of her family history, but Bonnie ignores the insinuation. Because Grams focused on teaching the magic soley deemed appropriate by the spirits, her own scholarly knowledge of different kinds of spells is scant. "What do you know about hexes?"
"Enough to get expelled from three private schools in Portland before my parents figured homeschooling me was the better option."
Her blood runs cold. "Aren't they deadly?"
"Private schools? Only to your sense of cultural and sociopolitical finesse."
"No. Hexes."
"They can be…if the witch who placed it is an über bitch who won't reverse it. Lucky for my former classmates, I'm one rung under that at mega bitch."
If there's a hex on Bonnie, then a witch is responsible. What's the likelihood a witch from a third coven attends Whitmore? Then again, they are this close to Mystic Falls, which is a unique kind of hellmouth. Does she even need to look that far? One guess who her prime suspect is. "If I've got some sort of curse on me, it was Kai. He did it."
Liv lets a psychology textbook fall from her fingers. "Yeah, he's his own breed of fucked up but he's got this reverse Stockholm Syndrome thing for you. Why would he hex you?"
"I don't know and I don't care. I just know I can't think or walk by or talk to Elena or Caroline without vomiting or passing out and it's getting old. Fast." Bonnie's voice breaks, still exhausted from her fainting spell. Wearily, she glances up. "Can you break it? Or at least figure out if and why I'm magically diseased?"
She drops to her haunches and squints at the other girl. This could be her shot to get a sneak peek at a Bennett mind. Not just photocopies of spells from their family grimoires or her childhood breakfast visits from Sheila Bennett, who always had a regal air about her. Liv would've hated Sheila if she hadn't been so in awe of the woman. She did find it a shame that when her coven sent her and Luke after the Travelers that Sheila wasn't alive to teach her Occult Studies class. It would've been nice to learn something that didn't have the Gemini stamp of approval on it.
But you can't break another witch's hex – unless it isn't a hex.
"Hm." Liv picks a couple of lit candles from around the room and sets them on the floor on either side of her and Bonnie. She waves her hand at the doorway, and the door slams shut. The last thing they need is their resident advisor finding out about their use of candles in the dormitory, which may or may not be prohibited. Kneeling, Liv purses her lips. "I'm not going to lie to you. This will probably hurt."
She places her slender fingertips to Bonnie's temples and both shut their eyes. Liv is a little rusty, having not practiced this spell since her early adolescent years. Some nights she'd forget to study for school, so she'd take a peek into Luke's mind. It was quicker than copying his notes and they were twins, so they were pretty much on the same wavelength.
But a witch is a witch is a witch.
A stream of guttural Latin slips through her tight lips and Bonnie feels nothing. A rustling, like Liv's flipping through the binder of her brain, brief flashes of memories. Bright reds, of her lifeguard one-piece uniform, of her high school cheerleading outfit, of Matt's truck, of the blooming on her purple plaid shirt from her seeping stomach wound.
Grams' smiling face, her hair a cloud of curls around her. The twitch of Kai's lips after his attempts and failures at charming her. It's when her memories turn to Elena with near-waist length straight hair and Caroline with her color-coded Biology notes that the sickness comes over her. She swallows against the nausea, but Liv digs deeper and the taste of bile gets bolder. "Liv…" she coughs.
"Give me a second."
Now snapshots of Abby and Isobel as teenagers and Rudy's tired face walking through the door from yet another business trip. Damon finding her wandering alone on that island in Nova Scotia. Bonnie yelping as her foot slips and she feels two of her toes crack against rock as she wanders alone on that island in Nova Scotia.
Bonnie nimbly wipes at tears escaping through her closed eyelids. Liv drops her hands and scratches at the ripped denim on her knees. "Huh."
Opening her eyes, she frowns. "Huh? Huh what?"
Liv goes for her grimoire and flickers through the pages until she finds whatever she's looking for. "The Bennetts are descended from Salem witches, right?" Bonnie agrees but Liv means it rhetorically. "The whole hoopla up there was over hallucinations caused by moldy bread, rampant smallpox epidemics, and good ol' religious scare tactics. You know, the scientific explanations, anyway."
She runs her finger down the page and stops at a passage. A word is highlighted yellow, its definition underlined in black ink. "'A pox is a temporary magical ailment inflicted on another being, which causes a variety of physical sicknesses. It fades with time but can be prolonged with consistent attention.' People used to say 'a pox on your family', 'a plague o' both your houses'. Huh means someone does have it out for you."
"Not someone. Kai. He's hiding something from me. Or trying to keep me away from something."
"Maybe. Only one way to find out..." Liv pushes the book out of the way and puts her hands back on Bonnie's head. "Okay, this is the part that hurts."
Before the counter-spell can leave Liv's mouth, the door swings open and both turn to face their visitor. Kai leans against the doorframe, crosses his ankles, and twists at his silver thumb ring. "Girls, isn't it past curfew?"
Liv snaps her wrist in his direction and he's softly rebounded back into the hallway. "Olivia, what are you doing?" The playfulness has all but left his voice, replaced by increasing alarm. He smacks at the air in the doorway but can't push past the invisible seal.
She will have to work fast, so she recites the incantation. The spell is to essentially starve Bonnie's fever, to strip her body of any foreign magical intrusions. It's similar to ridding a human of a vampire's compulsion and equally as painful. Bonnie screams and keeps screaming, her synapses on fire. Her nerves are like spiders crawling underneath her skin, up her back, over her legs. All while her brain boils.
This is a different kind of torture for a girl who's been stabbed, bitten, possessed, strangled, has died, and had her magic revolt against her. Try as she might, she can't bite back the pain. The bird in her grasp clatters to the floor and she clasps her hands on top of Liv's. Through gritted teeth she groans, her chest heaving. But she won't tell her to stop. Instead, she loosens her grip on her magic, allowing Liv to channel her and strengthen the spell.
Over the noise of her own moans and Liv's muttering, Kai yells. "Bonnie! Goddamn it! Liv, stop! Bonnie?! Bonnie!" He sounds angry...and scared? The familiar sensation of blood tickling down her nose brings Bonnie's focus back to her skull expanding.
Liv's hands finally fall away and both girls catch their breath. Liv suffered her own nosebleed from doing the spell, but she's more concerned with the witch in front of her, a sheen of sweat broken out across her tawny forehead. "Did it work?"
"Uh…" Bonnie gasps. She racks her brain for something, anything to think about. Sophomore year and cheerleading practice. Her first official meeting with the Salvatore brothers over dinner. The scarf around Caroline's neck that night. Elena waving and grinning at her from the Founder's Day reenactment parade float. Caroline's shocked expression over Elena sans humanity daring to order the same prom dress as her. She thinks of calling them right now, of getting off the floor and going to see them. Bonnie can taste bile on her tongue, but her head doesn't spin and there's no new dizziness.
She breaks into a grin, blood coating her front teeth. "Yeah, I think so," she nods, wiping at her face. "Whatever you did… Thank you."
Liv scrubs at her own nose and mouth and lets one of her shoulders rise and fall. "Yeah, well. Maybe it was the least I could've done."
They help each other to their feet and their gazes level on the boy at the door. His fists are raised and resting on the transparent barrier, his face both guarded and calculating.
Bonnie raises her hand in Kai's direction and Liv takes a deliberate step back. She saw enough of the Bennett's past to know two things:
She was right. Bonnie has no memories whatsoever of the last few weeks. They end with Bonnie jumping into Damon's arms and start again with her waking up across from Liv. She only got tiny glimpses of the dream that she keeps mentioning but enough to worry her. A snowy cave that couldn't possibly exist in May 1994 and a woman with red hair. A destroyed banquet hall. Liv dead with a shoulder length haircut, shattered glass and crushed bouquets everywhere. A version of Kai hellbent on decimating everyone and everything their coven has built, everyone who ever wronged him, even at his own detriment. With a dream, or premonition, that intense, the girl's got a right to be cautious. But also…
There is Expression radiating through her. Any magic is good enough when you have none, but Liv grew up on tales of how reckless and dangerous and consuming the power from Expression could get and she knows to stay clear of it. Especially when it's welded by a direct descendant of Qetsiyah.
The spell keeping him out drops and Kai stumbles into the room, tripping to his knees. Bonnie rotates her wrist in a way to mime her fingers around his throat, constricting his breathing. He claws at his neck, struggling for air.
"You did this to me." Not an accusation. A fact.
"I was trying to help," he manages to get out. She stiffens her fingers and he falls silent, crumpling forward in that stupid, black coat of his.
"You don't get to determine what's helpful and what isn't. Not after everything you've done. Not after the hell you put me through."
She has Expression but he's the leader of his coven, so he pushes back with his own magic and straightens up, exhaling heavily. "Can't you see I'm trying to make things right?"
"Cursing me to keep me away from my friends is your way of 'making things right'?"
"They're bad for you, Bon." He stands to his feet, tugs at the sleeves of his coat. He may tower over her but they all know who's in control of this situation. "I thought I was protecting you. Your co-dependency on them is dangerous. It always has been."
Her virulent eyes blaze. "Excuse me? Who the hell are you to judge?"
"Please. You've died for them, Bonnie. Anyone with half a brain would make that call."
He smirks at Liv, which only infuriates the little witch more. She steps towards him, grabs two fists full of his grey shirt, and charges forward until his back collides with the door across the hall. His head ricochets off the wood and he cries out, something cracking at the back of his skull.
"You and I are not friends. You don't get to decide what benefits me and you don't get to kiss me like you're not the person who shot me with an arrow. Like you didn't gut me like a pig."
"In his defense, he also helped bring you back!" Liv shouts, bouncing on her toes, her hands in fists at her sides. The exasperated sigh she expels after indicative of how her own blatant honesty is both a blessing and a burden. Kai deserves to get cut down to size, but she knows it's only fair if it's in context.
Liv's comment reminds Bonnie of what Damon told her. Kai performed the spell that led her to remembering Silas' headstone in Canada. He inadvertently saved her from suffocating to death in a garage - even though he was part of the reason she locked herself in the garage in the first place. At the end of the day, she's alive and he had a hand in that.
Bonnie rolls her eyes. "I know you're keeping something from me. Maybe Elena and Caroline are involved somehow, maybe not. But I have the right to see my friends if I want, so quit trying to stop me. You lost whatever sympathy I had for you when you left me in Oregon."
He groans against the throbbing in his head, blood dripping down his collar, wraps his fingers around her wrists instead, and pulls her closer. "What do I have to do to make us even?"
She snarls but is short of a response. He abandoned her in 1994 and her preferred revenge was leaving him behind in 1903. Giving him a taste of his own twisted medicine. In her stubborn naivety, she would've been fine leaving him there, but she figured if and once he got out they'd be square.
Please. Believe me, I've changed...
That's not how it happened. It never happened.
She manages to get her hand around his throat, but it's her magic that lifts him off the floor. The heels of his boots kick back against the door. His breath comes out in spurts but he still manages a smile. "You can't kill me, Bonnie."
"Oh, yeah?" She knows she can't, knows a banquet hall of dead bodies is somehow where this ends. Knows her anger at him will hurt the girl who just performed a massive spell for her. But the challenge in Kai's voice makes her tighten her grip and his eyes involuntarily fall shut.
The door opens and he falls backwards out of her grasp and into a skinny, shirtless freshman in boxers. People are outside their rooms. Watching. Bonnie's anger coils smaller and smaller inside of her, and she gives Kai one last look. "I want you to leave me alone."
She turns on her heel and enters her room, slams the door behind her. Like she did nights before, she leans against it to catch her breath.
She's never been a fan of massacres or mass genocide, though the former once came to pass on her behalf and she turned a blind eye to the latter, but she really wants to kill Kai. Not because it's the practical thing to do, for her personal well-being. She wants to kill him because her body sings for it. Feeling his erratic pulse against her palm, the pounding of his heart underneath her fists, the rattle of his lungs as he struggled for a measly breath. A lot of people would die too, yes, but the thought of seeing him laid low gives her a rush of pleasure she never anticipated. Not since the snowscape of 1903. No, never.
Eyebrows up in surprised approval, Liv watches her. "What?"
"I'm famished. I want waffles. You want waffles?"
Confused, Bonnie self-consciously rubs her hands over her arms, coming back to herself. "…I could go for some waffles."