Standing in the doorway to the Salvatore Mansion, a home he never would have believed could help heal his broken heart, Damon starred out into the night scanning the yard for the mysterious visitor who had just rang his bell.
He couldn't see Elena, cloaked by Kai, laying slumped on the porch, her body crumpled against the hard stone, her attacker standing almost nose to nose with the vampire she was just starting to like again.
Shaking his head in defeat, Damon closed the door on a demonic, smiling Kai.
xxxx
Just three weeks before, Damon sat on the edge of Elena's bed as she slept off her encounter with Liv and the visions of Bonnie circa 1994. The drain it had placed on her body and mind was enormous and on the fourth day of his vigil Damon was sure his quest to free Bonnie had clocked its first victim.
Just after it had happened, after Elena was left lying on the floor, her face grey, her features etched in pain and fear, Damon sprang into action. He had comforted Stefan, when it was really he who needed the comforting. He had assured Caroline he was doing everything possible to solve the problem. He yelled at Liv and threated Jo, all in an effort to fix her.
He was unravelling, suddenly finding himself at the end of his rope, until finally, just a few hours ago, Elena called out "Damon" in her sleep-state and slowly, but surely, he knew she was beginning to pull out of whatever it was he had gotten her pulled in to in the first place.
The color in her skin was returning and he breathed a sigh of relief, but it was tinged with guilt.
Whatever had happened to Elena was because of Bonnie, or something that had happened to her. If it took Elena four days to even begin to recover, he knew somewhere Bonnie was worse off, maybe even-
Damon shook his head, as if shaking out the morbid thought. He didn't want to think of Bonnie, only because for the first time in a long time, he was certain he couldn't help her. No amount of banter or breaking the rules or stuffing his face with pancakes was working. In fact, he was sure he was making it worse.
Taking Elena's hand in his own, he waited anxiously for the storm inside them both to pass.
xxxx
Bonnie awoke, screaming and sweating and soaked in fear. She was in the high school auditorium, but it took her more than a moment to adjust to the surroundings and remember what she was doing there.
It was Christmas back home. A tree was burning itself out in the parking lot. And she was exhausted and sore and ready to call it quits.
Every night since Kai left her in his childhood home in Portland, she would awake from a nightmare. They were always the same: Kai was killing her. Trying to stave off the visions, Bonnie attempted to stay awake, but even then she would hear his car horn honking, signaling his return to do her harm, or feel his breath on the back of her naked neck, letting her know she would never be free of him. She even thought she could see him with that knife, the one that gutted her, but it was only a horrific mirage. Everywhere she went, everything she did, everything she thought...it was all tainted by Kai.
After months in 1994 and now weeks without Damon, Bonnie wasn't sure how long she could go on.
She had said it before, to herself and to her visions of Damon. She had been ready to call it quits and then somehow he pulled her back, with magic and mystery and hope. The vision of him was keeping her going, but sadly she hadn't seen him in days. She tried and tried to think him into existence again, to almost feel him hug her, like she imagined he did on that porch as she bled. But he was nowhere to be found.
Watching the tree burn, watching the lights pop in the intense heat signaled the first time she really wondered what it would feel like to burn herself. Suicide. How could she have ended up there?
Marching from the auditorium, forcing herself to believe that a change of location would equal a change of attitude, Bonnie ended up back outside, enveloped in the warm Mystic Falls night. There was nowhere to go, but home.
xxxx
"What are you doing?" Stefan asked, finding Damon in his leather chair, before the fireplace, cradling a drink in his hand like a villain in a Bond movie.
"Getting drunk, little brother. Why? What does it look like?"
"Like you're upset Elena didn't show."
"What?" Damon scoffed. "No, never."
"Like you're kicking yourself for not letting her get hurt."
"She's a big girl. She knew the risks," he said, taking the last gulp of alcohol.
"Like you miss Bonnie, more than you want to let anyone know."
Damon didn't respond. Stefan took the decanter from the table and walked the length of the room to fill his brother's glass. Damon reached out to take it, switching Stefan for his glass, so they could both drink. Clinking the items together the brothers settled in across from one another and drowned their sorrows, and everything else.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"You always ask me that," Damon told him.
"Yeah?"
"And do I ever say yes?"
Stefan smiled to himself. "I think, you need someone to keep asking...just in case."
"Bonnie never had to ask," he blurted out, his speech not nearly slurred, but his tongue was noticeably looser and free. "I could just talk and talk and talk to her. And she would just listen. No matter what."
Stefan nodded, as if he understood, but the truth was he and Bonnie had never gotten close. But he did know she cared more than anyone he had ever met, including Caroline, which was saying quite a lot. So, sitting back in his chair, Stefan closed his eyes and he could easily imagine the scene Damon was painting: one of his brother running his mouth and Bonnie being too good to shut him down.
"Don't get me wrong, she talked too. And she would put me in my place if I got too...out of line. But about Elena, she would let me talk for hours."
Finishing the bottle, Damon stood up.
"And now, she has no one."
"And whose fault is that?!" Kai screamed from the landing by the front door. He was carrying a shovel, perched up on his shoulder, his legs planted firm and wide, his power evident, if only it could be seen by the Salvatore brothers.
"You can't blame yourself," Stefan told Damon.
"Oh, yes, yes he can," Kai interjected, even though it went unheard. "If you had just let us all leave with the Ascendant she would be here right now! Or maybe I would have killed you both once I figured out the huge benefits of draining the stupid anti-magic border...I don't know. But that's not the point, is it?"
Kai rushed over to Damon's side as he switched out his bottle for a new, full one.
"The point is, drinking won't bring her back and it certainly won't make me any less pissed with you. So now, you know what? I'm gonna-"
"I think Jo is the key," Damon said.
"Don't interrupt, Damon. It's rude," Kai quipped. "I'm going to-"
"I don't know," Stefan replied. "You've gone down that road before. She didn't have the Ascendant. She wouldn't help with the spells and now she's preparing for a duel to the death with her psychotic twin brother. I think her mind, and powers, are elsewhere."
"Stop interrupting!" Kai shouted, his voice strangling the air in the room. Damon felt a chill up his back and he turned around, sure he would see something, someone, but Kai was securely cloaked.
"With her powers back, she's the best bet we have."
Stefan stood to join his brother. "And with his ability to think for himself back, Alaric is never going to let you go near her."
"Alaric? I don't think that will be an issue," Damon said mockingly.
"Oh. My. God. What are you two talking about?" Kai bemoaned, talking a seat in one of the vacant leather chairs.
"It should be an issue," Stefan told him. "He's your best friend. He's died, well a lot, and he came back from a hellish experience to...what? To have you use him?"
Damon didn't respond.
"I just think you need to go about this another way."
"What way?" Damon and Kai said simultaneously.
"She's stuck! Move on!" Kai cried. "And soon enough I'm going to merge with Jo and consume this whole town. Now that I think of it, Bonnie's lucky she's there and not here, because soon I'm going to kill everyone you love Damon and watch you slowly die inside as you realize it's your fault."
Kai relaxed in the chair, wishing there was something he could put his feet up on. "Now who wants to pass me a drink?"
xxxx
"I could feel her, Caroline. I'm sure it was her," Elena said, lying in bed, resting after her ordeal with Liv and the spell gone wrong.
"No, it was something else," Caroline said, trying to sound convincing, but failing miserably.
"It was her. I'm telling you-"
"No!" Caroline spat out.
"Caroline?"
"If it was her then that means she's-"
Elena reached out her hand and Caroline took it, finding a spot on the bed with her, they held one another. Suddenly, Caroline began to cry. She was losing so much, so fast. Too fast.
"She's not dead," Elena said. "It was painful, but I'm here, so she's here."
Elena knew the logic in that statement was lost, but crazier things had happened to her and her friends. Besides, Elena could only feel Bonnie's fear, her pain, or at least she thought she could. She couldn't really see anything, and Liv was no help, she claimed everything was too "blurry" to make out.
So who was Elena to say what caused that fear? Maybe it was dream. Maybe it was an old injury.
Maybe it was Kai torturing her.
No! she told herself. It wasn't that. It could never be that.
Bonnie, left alone with the man-child an entire coven of witches was afraid of, a person who murdered children and nearly murdered Bonnie by knifing her in the gut in front of Damon's eyes: that thing, that psycho would have her to answer to if he did anything else to Bonnie.
Even sitting, nearly immobile in bed, her strength just barely clawing its way back, Elena knew she would trade places with her friend in an instant, if it meant getting her back to present day Mystic Falls.
xxxx
"Wakey, wakey," Kai said, slapping Elena on the face. "We've got a lot to do today."
