notes: i'm pretty sure this isn't even coherent i just tried to listen to a lot of sad music and ended up with this. i'm publishing this now because i'm supposed to be working on a paper and [basically] i'm a piece of shit. also klaus and mikael are going to meet again this chapter, get excited (and worried because mikael is disgusting and gross and i want him nowhere near klaus).
warning: is klonnie heavy a warning? idk read on my friends...oh yeah gun use/abuse tw and minor blood tw
She wakes with shadows under her eyes the next day, eyes ringed with dark circles that are a testament to the crumpled sheets on her bed, proof that she did not sleep more than a wink last night.
Bonnie chokes down bile rising in her throat as she walks down to the kitchen, trailing her fingers absentmindedly over the staircase railings that she can't look at without getting choked up, because the very thought of losing this house is one that is so absurd to her she can't even fathom it.
Although the snatches of sleep she did gain, she can remember memories wrought with nightmare, usually punctuated by a cottage she remembers only faintly.
(Faintly- but she can remember the whitewashed walls, the sound of Abby Bennett humming as she rifles through papers or cooks them dinner, just the two of them)
Bonnie doesn't dwell on these memories, knowing that Grams would rather not talk about the daughter who abandoned not only her mother but also, eventually her daughter. In her eyes, Rudy Hopkins is the one true son she has, and it's not in Bonnie to challenge her.
So she never mentions how she can still remember the feel of her mother's arms around her, and how she still lies awake some nights, dreaming of her scent.
Bonnie makes her way downstairs as usual, the scent of coffee invading her nostrils the minute she steps into the hallway. Colombian roast because it's Grams' and her dad's favourite, and she has grown used to it even though she's not much of a coffee drinker.
"Bonnie?" Her Grams calls, and she can hear the smile in her voice as she pushes open the kitchen door. "Sit and eat your breakfast."
The stack of fresh buttered toast is pushed under her nose and Bonnie takes a breath, ready to blurt out-
Ihadsexwithstefanandhisdadwantstokickusoutofthehouse
-she can't do it.
So she takes a deep breath, curls her fingers in on themselves and breathes deep before digging into her breakfast, trying to ignore that it tastes like sawdust in her mouth.
X
The morning mists roll over the shadows of the hills as Grams and her dad leave for church, and Bonnie accepts the kiss her dad drops to her forehead with a clenched jaw and guilt in her veins. She's never kept anything of this magnitude from them.
She takes a walk around the Heights because she has to get out of her house, placing one foot in front of another and trying to sort things out in her mind.
The first thing she will do tomorrow is resign, she promises herself.
And then she will find another job, and tell her dad what's going on. In fact, she'll tell her dad today.
"Bonnie?" Rebekah's fingers are gentle and slightly hesitant on her arm, but Bonnie jumps nonetheless, drawing her wrap a little tighter around her shoulders. "Are you alright?"
"I'll be alright," She smiles, "Thanks for asking." She's never had much of an interaction with Rebekah before, she just knows that Klaus is closest to her, out of all of his siblings.
They walk in silence for a few beats, Rebekah looking out over the landscape of the town, sprawled beneath them. "Our fathers- Stefan and mine-are the worst kind of men that exist, I don't know about yours."
Bonnie looks at Rebekah, surprise crossing her face. "Mine's not-not like yours, I don't think."
Rebekah shakes her head and laughs, bitter sound dripping from her tongue like acid. "I didn't think he was. You know, when I was five years old, I broke my wrist. I can still remember the pain- I nearly bit straight through my lip from trying not to cry. And do you know what my father said?"
Bonnie shakes her head, knows what Rebekah will say before she does.
"A Mikaelson doesn't cry. And that's what I grew up hearing. What Klaus grew up hearing- every time my father hurt him in any way- a Mikaelson doesn't cry."
"Why-why are you telling me this?" Bonnie can remember the Rebekah of not so long ago, the one who was so deeply protective of her family she wouldn't admit Kol would ever be wrong.
Rebekah catches the look on Bonnie's face and shakes her head. "I'm not loyal to him. I can't be. And I'm tired of protecting someone who not only has no desire to protect me, but also sees my value as nothing more than a business asset."
"Something happened between you two, like what happened to Klaus before."
"Nothing that serious. Just what was expected of me."
Bonnie wants to shake the blonde and tell her she's entitled to a life of her own, that this is what they fought for, but she can't form the words. Instead, she twines her fingers through Rebekah's and gives her hand a slight squeeze.
"You can get out too, you know. Klaus isn't the only one."
Rebekah straightens her spine and turns to face Bonnie, tugging her hand gently from her grasp.
"Oh, I'm not too worried about getting out. I'm warning you not to think about getting in. My brother can be very persuasive when he wants to be."
"There's nothing going on between Klaus and me," Bonnie says, confused, and Rebekah laughs, sharp and quick, an Iknowsomethingyoudont smile, edged with promise.
"Maybe I wasn't talking about Klaus."
She takes in the blank look on Bonnie's face and offers her a slightly crooked smile, squeezing her palm before dropping it. "Elijah's honour itself, but that doesn't mean he never has an agenda. I would trust him with him my life but just be careful."
Rebekah pauses for a beat, the only sound the chirping of birds in the otherwise quiet compound, before turning and making her way back up to her house, leaving Bonnie with far too much on her mind.
X
Klaus lets himself into the house quietly, trying to remember everything Marcel has taught him about standing straight, engaging a room the moment you walk into it. Try as he might, the thought of Mikael has him shrinking into himself as usual as he takes the stairs two at a time, fully prepared to quickly grab the paints he requires from his old room before running out.
The sight that greets him when he opens the door is one that has him stopping in his tracks, rage rising in his throat.
His room has been turned into another of the inconspicuous rooms that litter the house- walls painted over once more, heavy rugs moved in once more, and there's no trace he ever existed.
And in the middle of it all, lying on a chair as if he has not a care in the world, his father sits, nursing a glass of spirits.
It's almost as if he planned this, Klaus thinks, and the rage that spirals in his stomach is so instantaneous it almost blinds him in its intensity.
He doesn't say a word, instead forcing himself to make his way to the decanters and pour himself an amber coloured drink with shaking fingers, raising it in a toast to his not-father.
"Niklaus."
Klaus inclines his head, unsure how to address him- Mikael? Father? Sir? And chooses to remain silent.
"I was wondering when you would come crawling back."
"I haven't-" Mikael raises a single hand and stops him mid sentence, and Klaus hates himself almost as much as he hates Mikael, for giving him so much power over him.
"You know," Mikael begins, holding the glass up in the lamplight, and Klaus notes that he is drunk with a kind of detachedness he'd use to judge whether the abuse would come to physical blows at some point. "I knew you weren't my son. You proved it with every breath you took. No son of mine would ever be second best, but that's what you were- second best, always."
He sees red, imagines strangling him with his bare hands because he doesn't have to take this anymore, he won't. "You made me like this!" He blurts out, and Mikael only raises a single, unimpressed eyebrow.
"Because you were weak. No son of mine would let me wholly exert this degree of control over him."
He's drunk; his speech is not slurred the slightest bit, and Klaus knows him well enough to know that he is at the point where all he wants to do is infect people with his bitterness, the very definition of diseased.
"I don't have to put up with you anymore," He says quietly, and knows Mikael has heard the deadly note in his tone as he finally- finally- turns to face him and finds himself staring down the barrel of Klaus's gun.
X
The gunshot shatters the midday peace that is usual for The Heights on a Sunday afternoon. Bonnie, sitting with her dad and Grams in the kitchen, jumps to her feet immediately, heart racing.
"It came from the Mikaelsons'," She says, pressing her palm to her chest in an effort to calm down its beating. "Do you think-"
"No," her Dad says, tone tightly controlled, "Sit down, Bonnie."
"I need to go see if-"
"Bonnie." There is a note of finality in his voice that has her slump back down onto her chair, picking up her book with shaking fingers. "Why on Earth do you think going into a house where a gunshot just sounded was a good idea?"
"Rudy," Grams admonishes, not even looking up from where she is cross stitching a cushion cover painstakingly, the tiny cut on her finger the only indication she heard the gunshot. "Of course she's worried about her friend. Let it be."
"I won't let her go in there right now."
"No one's asking you to. Just show a little respect for my granddaughter's feelings."
Bonnie watches her dad mutter out a sheepish apology to her Grams with a touch of a smile on her lips, appreciating the power dynamics in her family.
"Dad," she takes a deep breath and begins, already having imagined every possible scenario in her mind of how this will play out. "Elijah's paying Mr Salvatore out for the mortgage and we're taking a loan from the Mikaelsons instead of the Salvatores."
His head snaps up, and she watches the focus grow in his eyes and knows she has his full, undivided attention.
"Why would we do that, Bonnie? Mr Salvatore kept his word, so we should keep ours."
She thinks on her feet, comes up with the most plausible excuse she can find in the spur of the moment. "I think Salvatore's business model is faulty and they're going to sink in a few years." Her dad only nods, and her Grams goes back to her work. It makes sense, Bonnie thinks, because if Salvatore's business went down, the house would have to be sold off as an asset.
She thinks. Her dad seems to be engaged in some deep thought as he scribbles figures down into his leather bound notebook, faded from wear.
It's only when her Grams leaves to wash and he turns to face her once more, that she takes one look into his eyes and realises with a sinking feeling that he hasn't bought her excuse.
"Salvatore's business model isn't faulty. He's bringing in record numbers, and we just went out for a drink to celebrate. So would you like to tell me what the real reason is?"
Her heart speeds up in her chest, and she curls her fingers into fists and wonders if it's really beneficial to keep this from him. No, is the conclusion she arrives at.
"He wants to sell our house," She says quietly, fingers curling around the rough wooden handles of her chair, "He wants to turn it into a hotel and we wouldn't be able to do anything about it because he legally owns it, and I couldn't just let him do that so I asked Elijah-"
"Bon, calm down," Her dad says, and she doesn't even need to look up to know that there will be tension etched into every line of his big body once again, and the thought that it was her who caused that makes her want to cry again. "You didn't do the right thing by trying to keep it from me. Just tell me next time, okay? I would have helped you."
"I didn't want to worry you." He looks at her with such a tender expression that she can't stop the solitary tear that slips out of her eye and has to crawl onto his lap like she did when she was younger so he can rub her back and calm her down.
"It's your job to worry me," Her dad laughs slightly, and it's a conversation they've rehashed so many times they both know there's no final answer, but they keep having it anyway.
Her Grams comes down from her shower and stands in the doorway, watching the two with the faintest smile on her lips.
X
Bonnie slips out of the house the moment she feels it suitable, memory of the gunshot making her fingers shake as she lets herself out of the huge Iron Gate and out onto the compound.
She wonders where he will be- her mind immediately leaps to the thought of his lifeless body curled on the floor of his hallway, blood seeping through the cracks like it did when he was a child.
The wind's picked up; it musses her hair into a frenzy as she looks first one way, and then the next, before decided where she will find him and running off into the night as fast as she can.
Bonnie takes the stairs to his townhouse as fast as she can, slippers sliding on the ivory marble as she grips the railing and struggles to draw breath, slapping her palm onto his door and praying that he opens it.
Praying he is not with a physician at this very moment, or with a police officer. She doesn't know what she'll do if either of those is the case, but she'll do something.
The door swings open and she lets a huge sigh of relief, barrelling past him and into the hallway of his father's house.
It wasn't even him, she tells herself firmly as she tries to catch her breath. He wasn't even at the house.
"Klaus," She chokes, and the words of relief stop rising in her throat as her eyes fall to his bandage, the crimson blooming against it showing her the wound on his arm is still fresh. "Did you?-"
"Come inside," He takes her arm and leads her into his drawing room, helping her into a chair.
Bonnie knows the expression on her face must be stricken; she's a mess of anxiety and grief and the pained expression that flits across her face seems to match hers.
"I didn't kill him," Klaus says firmly, and she sags against the armchair, a little of the worry alleviating, "But I shot the gun."
"Klaus!"
"At the wall behind his head." There's a slow smirk crawling across his face, one that curls over her skin like ice, chilling the blood in her veins. "And all I got for my troubles was a glass tossed at me."
"Must have been a fragile glass," Bonnie mutters, and he throws his head back and laughs.
"It was. Like the entire Mikaelson empire. And we're going to take them down."
She narrows her green eyes at him and squeezes the wrist of his injured hand, anticipating the hiss of pain he releases. "Once your father dies, Niklaus, what is left of your family?"
Bonnie doesn't wait for him to continue, refuses to break eye contact and sits a little straighter. "Your siblings. And I don't know you as I used to, but don't destroy their chance at a life."
"They don't want the empire."
"Are you so sure? Because I'm almost certain it's all Elijah wants."
Klaus stands, and when he looks at her Bonnie realises what people speak of, when they say he has a famously violent temper- she has to fight herself not to recoil from him.
He breaks away first, sigh escaping his pursed lips with a soft hiss that lets her know she's won.
"Wonderful," Bonnie says with a tight smile. "I knew you'd come around."
She laughs softly and he joins her, holding his hand out to help her stand. "You're infuriating," He admits, and Bonnie grins.
"Good. You need someone to ground you."
Only, Bonnie thinks, relaxing a little into her chair, it's not her job to ground Klaus.
X
The knock on the door comes just after her dad has left for work- just before she leaves the house, too, and her Grams watches her rise with a disapproving look in her eyes.
She knows her father has chosen not to tell her Grams a thing, but gets the feeling that her Grams at least has inkling, and it's what makes her stop in her tracks and chose not to run to the door in the hope that he's back.
"Bonnie," Her Grams lets out a sigh, pushing her tortoiseshell glasses a little further up her nose, "You have a ridiculous desire to prove everyone wrong."
Her smile is a little sheepish, because she's always felt the need to prove that she can do everything, can be everything and she knows her Grams has seen it manifest in her growing up.
"Like your mother," Grams says, and her eyes seem to glaze over as she looks at Bonnie, and Bonnie knows it's not really her she's seeing.
She wonders what Abby Bennett was like in her twenties, knows she had Bonnie in her mid-twenties. So it's around this time that she ran away. Bonnie knows she could never, would never, run away from her family.
"Go," Grams says with a taught smile, placing one wrinkled hand on the back of Bonnie's smooth cheek, "See if he's still waiting."
Bonnie smiles and leaves, taking care to keep her footsteps even and measured as she throws open the door.
Stefan's back is silhouetted against the springtime sunlight, streaming a bright yellow as he turns away to head off, obviously under the impression that she's already gone to work.
"Stefan," She calls, and runs down the path to meet his arms halfway, laughing as he spins her around.
Bonnie breathes in the scent of him and it feels like coming home as he sets her down and steals a soft kiss.
"I missed you," he says with a grin, "Sheffield was boring."
And the illusion that she has so carefully crafted, that he is not at all involved in this, seems to tremble, and she throws her arms around him again and breathes in his scent.
"Thank god you're home," Bonnie whispers against the cotton of his shirt, "Everything's changed."
He clutches her tightly to him and tells her that everything will be fine now he's back, and Bonnie wonders if he realises how much everything will change.
end notes: rebekah and bonnie are hbics i really wanted to see more interactions from them on the show...and before i forget, shoutout to leni18 for pretty much the best review i have ever got in my entire fanfiction writing life, i live for long reviews 33
next chapter:
would you guys rather see elijah/bonnie, klaus/bonnie or stefan/bonnie interaction? ask and you shall recieve!
