A/N a.k.a Bonnie's foreword: RoryFrankenstein (Bonnie is starting to feel plenty things! Feelz beyond her control. You'll have to see. I wish I was better at updating.), jordanjanellejoy (I'm always here loitering in the background somewhere! I'm just so slow. Bonnie's magic issues is a big thing for me. It's not addressed in canon at all and glossed over as if she wouldn't have fears after dying because of magic a few times. If the writers would get their heads out of Damon's ass they could do more with her.), nekilarose (Thank you for taking the time to comment! I'm happy you seem to be enjoying it so much.), Fireismyelement (Life and my ability to procrastinate is the worst. I need a ring master to whip me into shape sometimes - which he does. I'm flattered that you think I have their voices down. That's needed.)


CHAPTER SIX

"Do you think anyone's noticed that we're gone yet?"

Kai squinted down at Bonnie resting upon the furs between his legs, her head on his left thigh, body angled slightly to savor the heat fashioned by the fireplace. They'd taken a break from their vicious grind and spent some hours indulging in each other's bodies.

Action that was becoming as frequent and familiar as their daily quests.

"Or do you think time travels differently here?"

"I haven't given it much thought," he responded, combing his fingers through her hair, smiling as her eyes fluttered shut in implicit gratitude. "Why?"

"We can't stay here forever, Kai," she added, her heart and its skipping thump contradicting that thought.

Kai's hand allayed mid-stroke, motivating Bonnie's slender fingers to automatically snag them, eyes open once more to fix themselves upon his tense features.

"We can't keep avoiding it either. I know we've grown comfortable." Happy even, if she analyzed the entire spectrum of their newfound imprisonment. "But we need to get back to the real world."

Kai withdrew his hand and shifted from beneath her, forcing Bonnie to sit up and watch with a hint of onus as he retrieved his discarded clothes and stepped into his pants.

"I know you don't want to talk about it."

"What gave you that impression?" Kai snapped, all hints of afterglow and warmth devoid.

"Maybe because I've been trying to have this talk with you for days?"

One of the numerous habits he'd picked up from her and she now detested. Bonnie eased onto her knees, swiftly closing the distance between them, heedless of her nakedness or how vulnerable she might have felt in the past. Those days were gone and they were far closer than she'd ever imagined possible.

"What's to discuss?"

Bonnie's lips twitched sadly. "Kai—"

"Bonnie," he mimicked, tone acerbic at best. "My hands are tied. I told you what we need to do."

"And we've done it," Bonnie maintained. "We've been level seventy for days now and nothing has changed."

Kai's eyes flittered to her face, fixing on her emerald gaze before drifting lower.

"That's not what I'm talking about and you know it."

As if to stress that point and make sure they focused, she went in search of something to wear. He did the same, plucking his shirt off the floor, dusting it idly before pulling it on. She didn't know—given all he'd endured in his last prison world—how he wasn't working harder at this than she was. That he was content enough to sit in their fantasy land and pretend the outside world didn't exist.

"Don't you miss it?" Bonnie asked.

Kai made no attempt to respond, rigidly yanking at his armor, looking at everything but her while she awaited his answer or at least some kind of explanation.

"Kai, please," she implored as she walked up behind him, sliding her arms around his waist to keep him from dressing, affectionately pressing her cheek to his back. He didn't resist, calming for an instant.

"What's to go back to?" he said after silent contemplation. She slackened her hold as he turned to face her, making no move to fight him as he removed her arms from around his waist. "Detachment? Contempt? Regret?"

Bonnie hadn't realized he still felt that way. Not when he'd put up such a good front. "I—"

"Josette hates me."

It was on her tongue to deny it, to defend the woman's standoffishness and their unrelenting hostility, but given their history—the unchanging ugliness—she couldn't bring herself to do it.

"My coven detests me and is probably seeking an alternative in the twin-loophole gene as we speak."

He said nothing of regret. Nothing of what she knew—and believed—he wished he could take back. He wouldn't, fragmented by the idea of voicing it and giving it anymore life than it already had.

"And then there's you."

Bonnie waited, seeing there was more to say in his eyes and dreading what was to come.

"Do you think you would have opened up to me as much as you have, if this had never happened?"

They both knew the answer to that question. No amount of making out, clandestine envy and other intricacies would have changed a damned thing. Neither knew how to communicate. Not as they did now.

"I live with you."

"Do you think you would have ever opened up to me?"

"I—I trust you."

Kai strolled toward her, determined now, eyes locked on her shifty features.

"Do you think you would have opened up to me if we hadn't ended up in this game?" he seemed to grow desperate for an answer, making Bonnie fear that their relationship—what it was now—depended on it.

She trembled, arms folding across her bosom, unable to form the words needed to appease him and at the verge of tears. When had she become such a crier? When had the idea of being left behind by Kai become so terrifying to her? When had she realized that she couldn't live without him?

"Would. You. Have—"

"No," she interjected, the word slipping from her mouth in a near inaudible puff. The truth tasted bitter. Kai stopped, lips drawn into a thin line of what she acknowledged as hurt.

Before she could clarify and make him understand her apprehension, something polished appeared in the flat of his palm, along with a small box. A lockbox.

"It's irrelevant. It's the past," Bonnie stated, trying to make him see past his tainted pride and what he deemed was some miracle cure to everything they'd dealt with in nineteen-o-four.

"We were brought here for whatever reason," Bonnie sustained, stiffening as he pulled her in close, securing one of her arms against his body, slipping the key into the lock despite her tangible opposition. "It's different now. I lo—"

There was no hesitation as he turned the key, his eyes uncharacteristically glossy as he pitched their world into unexpected blackness.


AN UNKNOWN TIME LATER…

"Bonnie? Bonnie? Can you hear me?"

Bonnie groaned in reply, sweeping a hand to the side of her splitting head, incapable of concentrating on the voice. Nerves that shot up her throat and had her immediately rolling over onto her side and onto her stomach to vomit. Unaware, as her eyes watered, that there was a hand comfortingly rubbing her back, keeping her hair away from the fluid slopping into the convenient bucket positioned on the floor.

"I guess I owe him a fiver," the nurse said, opinion she acknowledged as Caroline's.

"Who?" Bonnie croaked once she was able to speak.

"Kai."

"What?" she asked, using the back of her hand to wipe at her mouth as her friend attempted to messily tie her hair away from her face, accepting the glass of orange juice the blonde shoved under her nose.

"Drink," Caroline demanded gently.

Bonnie indulged her with a small tentative sip. Head spinning.

"He said you drank a little too much beer," she persisted, finally answering Bonnie's question.

"Beer?"

"Yes. Beer," Caroline echoed, smiling with meaningful delight. "I told him that was impossible, of course. That after your hangover at Tyler's New Year's Eve party you were swore off the stuff."

Bonnie groaned at the thought, fighting the urge to be sick again, taking a large gulp of orange juice, heavily setting aside the glass on the bedside table. Caroline helped.

"But here you are."

Caroline fell silent, anxious by seeing her friend sick, her mother's death and best friends untimely return still fresh on her mind despite the year and a half of healing they'd had.

"Are you okay?"

Bonnie's eyes opened to regard her best friend.

"I'll survive."

Caroline's smile widened, her head coming to rest on her friends shoulder, giving her a little time recoup.


TWO HOURS AND A LOT OF SHOCK LATER….

"So… you're telling me you were trapped in a game? Alone? Just the two of you?"

"Try not to sound so amazed. It's happened before. We live together, Caroline."

"I know, I just… I mean, you guys aren't exactly bosom buddies-"

Bonnie's cheeks colored slightly, lips suddenly dry. Caroline didn't know the half of it.

"I just… I thought you moved in here to police him, to make sure things didn't get out of hand and he didn't go on some spur-of-the-moment killing spree."

Well, maybe, at the time that had been part of it. But as a whole – there was more to it.

"He isn't like that," Bonnie defended, scowling as she attempted to brush the knots out of her newly washed and dried hair. "He isn't a senseless serial killer."

"Isn't he? He did slaughter some of his family."

Bonnie lowered the hairbrush onto the dresser, using some spray on her hair to try and fix its volume in place, doing her best to style it despite her want to admit surrender or scream. "He's different now. He's trying to be better."

Argument Elena might have used for Damon one too many times. Only in Kai's case it seemed to be true.

"I know. I mean... I've noticed. After the merge, after the whole prison world aftermath and unexpected bonding thing," Caroline agreed after a brief silence, smiling softly as she stared at the back of her friends head. Bonnie stopped fussing, throwing a look over her shoulder to study her friend in tacit silence. "I just wanted to hear you say it."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"We've all made some unfathomable choices over the last few years and—" Remorse Bonnie could see shone in her best friend's once sunny stare. Body count she'd accumulated after her mother's death and during her twist-a-ripper segment. Truths Caroline was still coming to terms with."—I—I've been on the receiving end of your searing objectivity. Place I never want to be again."

Confession that came from and referred to Caroline's turning. Dying had been terrifying, being alienated from her mother and her assumed sister within the same breath – that had been heartbreaking.

"Place I don't believe he wants to stay either."

Bonnie inhaled, feeling tears blur her vision, abhorring how much she appeared to have hurt her best friend, how complicated things could be with Kai and how easy it was to mess up.

"Then why won't he talk to me and why is he—" Bonnie didn't even want to think of it, the look of detachment in his eyes –once she'd managed to hunt him down—and the casual mention of his former fuck buddy like a stake to the heart. Had their time together really meant that little?

Silence stretched between the two. Tears blurring Bonnie's eyes.

"Here," Caroline interjected in that all too forgiving tone of hers, snapping Bonnie out of her melancholy, reaching for the eyeshadow and eyeliner in her make-up bag on the dresser. "If we want to get you to that party on time. You better let me take it from here. I am a professional."

And she was. Bonnie had always appreciated her flare for fashion.

"I don't believe being crowned Miss Mystic Falls gives you a beauty degree," Bonnie teased.

"The sash says otherwise," Caroline shot back with exaggerated indignation, using her index to tip her Bonnie's chin heavenward, giving her more light to work with. "Now don't wiggle too much or I'll end making you look like a raccoon and that's a stain my reputation can't afford."

Bonnie laughed softly, making a show of settling her hands in her lap and giving into her order.

Game they upheld for a full five minutes before falling into thought again.


GIRLS WILL BE GIRLS AND BOYS MAKE GOOD CONVERSATION MATERIAL….

"Are you sure this isn't some dream you cooked up in your head because of the beer?"

Bonnie's eyes snapped open, latching on her friend solemnly.

"Okay, okay. I guess stranger things have happened, than being shuffled into Mortal Kombat."

"Neverwinter," Bonnie corrected. Caroline looked unphased by her mistake. "I've died," the witch added, driving the point home. "And come back. Twice. Three times if you take into account the sixties dance."

Caroline grimaced at the reminder, action she hadn't even been a part of, news that had stricken her at the time, voted from the know-how because of Katherine's bullying participation. Klaus couldn't know.

"I'm fine, Caroline. There is no lasting effect. I just wish I knew how he did it or why he'd trying to deny it."

Caroline lowered the make-up brush she was holding and perched herself against the dresser.

"Me too. I mean… I only left you yesterday."

How was that even possible? They'd been stuck together for weeks, and yet it was as if no time at all had passed here, as if it had been less than twelve hours since their fight.

Bonnie said nothing in reply, looking resolute in her thinking, her friend yet again tipping her chin, quickly finishing her work—not that she needed much to add to her beauty—and then left to change.

Kai might have taken to pretending he couldn't remember anything of what had happened between the two of them or what had gone down over the last few weeks but Bonnie wouldn't let him get away with it.