Disclaimer: I do not own the Vampire Diaries nor am I making any profit from this whatsoever. Characters, etc. all belong to their respective owners.
A/N: Sorry it took a little long to update. School started back up and it's been pretty crazy since then.
Anywho, enjoy the update!
It doesn't feel any different than a dream. But the first thing Bonnie had learned when she became a witch was that most dreams weren't just dreams.
It takes her a moment to get her bearings, but once she does, she realizes that she's in the old witch's house. It's not so much the where she is that's important, but the when, she quickly realizes.
Right in front of her, she sees herself clinging to Jeremy's lifeless body like that night almost a year ago.
"Emily, please!" She hears herself crying out.
Bonnie looks away from the scene in front of her, confused. She thought this journey would be her having to confront the spirits directly or something, not having to relive the past.
"Bonnie," an all too familiar voice says near her.
"Grams?" she whispers, turning to look at her. "Wh—I thought—I thought that after what I did…the spirits—" she can't even finish a coherent sentence.
Grams smiles softly and a little sadly. "I know, child." Pause. "The spirits decided to appoint me as your guide on this journey."
Bonnie doesn't know what to say.
She looks back at the scene in front of her, sees the tears and blood smeared on her face, hears her own heartbroken pleads to the spirits, to Emily.
"This is where you took your first wrong turn," Grams tells her.
"Wrong?" Bonnie asks. "What do you mean 'wrong'?"
"You played with life and death here, Bonnie."
"What? But…it's Jeremy? How was I supposed to just let him be dead?" She whispers. Then, she finds herself growing angry. "If it was so wrong, why did Emily help me?"
"She blamed herself for getting you into this whole vampire mess, so she granted you that favor. But just because you have the ability to do something, doesn't mean you should, Bonnie," Grams tells her sternly.
The scene in front of her suddenly changes. She's still in the old witch house, but this time, she sees herself and Grams.
"I don't want you getting mixed up in this vampire business," Grams says sternly.
"I was trying to protect you. Our family doesn't have a good history of vampires."
"That's the world's biggest understatement." A pause, a sigh. "How was I supposed to stay out of the vampire business, though, considering who my friends are?"
"Are they really still your friends?" Grams asks.
Bonnie bites her lip and looks away from the scene in front of her. She thinks back to the fight she and Elena had, about how she felt like maybe she really didn't know her best friend anymore, how maybe she hasn't known for some time.
"Caroline is, Matt is," she says softly. Grams looks at her knowingly.
The scene changes again. This time she's in Caroline's house with her mother's dead body on the bed and the vague sounds of Caroline talking to Elena.
"What is this?" Bonnie snaps, turning towards Grams. She tries to keep her voice even, but it cracks a little. "Are the spirits trying to torture me now?"
Grams firmly grasps her shoulders. "That's not what this is about. You've lost your way, Bonnie, and part of finding it again is realizing how and why you lost it in the first place and you lost it when you decided that."
Looking away from Grams, she watches herself sitting by her mother's body.
"It's not like I want these things happen," Bonnie says quietly. "I try to do what I can…and I know, I know I'd be better off walking away most of the time…but what kind of person would I be if I turned my back on the people I care about?"
"Sometimes the best thing you can do for someone is letting them stand on their own," Grams tells her gently. "They've relied on your magic for so long and you've allowed them to do so at your own detriment. They can learn to take care of themselves."
"And if they don't?"
"Isn't it about time you valued your own life?" Grams rebuts.
Deep down, Bonnie knows she's right. The past few years of sacrificing (both willingly and unwillingly) hasn't gotten anybody anywhere and now, with Silas on the loose, they were pretty much staring down into the mouth of hell.
"So what do I do now?" Bonnie asks quietly, wiping a few stray tears that have fallen from her eyes.
"You're going to go back, find a way to get rid of this Silas bastard for your sake, and then you will graduate high school and leave Mystic Falls because you are too smart and too beautiful to stay there forever and then you will live a wonderful life away from all of this."
The tears Bonnie had just wiped away are replaced with more tears as she nods. "I really miss you."
Grams embraces her gently. "I know, baby, I know."
They stay like that for a little while before Grams releases her.
"So…" She dreads this next part, but she knows what needs to be done. "What, um, what about the memories Shane took away from or all the Expression magic?"
Grams smiles sadly and extends her hand.
It's eerie seeing Bonnie like this, Matt thinks as he paces next to the bed where she lays.
"You do realize that pacing back and forth like an idiot isn't going to do anything, right?" Kol asks dryly from his seat at a small table in the room.
Matt doesn't respond.
"She'll be alright," Henri assures him. "What's happening to her right now is no small thing, but she will be alright."
Then, Bonnie wakes up with a gasp and almost immediately lurches for a small wastebasket, emptying the contents of her stomach. Matt immediately rushes to her, but Henri gets to her first, supporting her on her shaking legs.
"It's Shane," Bonnie gasps out. "I—I saw everything and Silas is Shane. It's been him this whole time."
When she looks at Henri, sees his concern for her, something suddenly clicks in her mind. She drifts back to the words Grams had said to her after she relived her memories of Shane.
"You're strong enough to defeat him, I have no doubts about that," Grams said, holding her tightly. "And you've got family looking out for you."
At first she had just assumed Grams was talking about her dad, but seeing Henri now, it finally clicks.
We're family. Somehow, we're family.
She never would have guessed it, but she knew that deep down it was true. She wonders why he would keep it from her, but she figures that whatever must have happened in his deep, dark past, he wanted to keep it buried as much as possible.
That's not important right now, she reminds herself.
Henri helps her to a seat and she begins to explain everything, her voice shaking the entire time.
Bonnie stands in the small bathroom in the apartment once she's done explaining everything, gargling water in an attempt to get rid of the taste of bile that sits in her mouth.
She had known that reliving her lost memories of what happened in the cave was going to be difficult, but it was so much worse than she thought. Having to relive the helplessness, seeing Jeremy die right in front of her…
She looks up from the sink in the mirror. Her hair is a tangled mess and there's bags and dark circles under her eyes.
I look so…worn down, Bonnie thinks. It's not so much that she cares that much about her physical appearance (although, she longs for the carefree days when she did), but seeing the days, weeks, months, years of what…well, everything has done to her staring back at her, she can't help but be a little disturbed by it all.
She scoops one more handful of water in her mouth, swishes it a bit, and then spit back out in the sink before leaving the bathroom.
She can hear Henri and Kol arguing.
"That still leaves the matter of what he wants with cure, where it is, and where he is, and how do we get rid of him," Henri tells Kol.
They were fighting about Shane. No, Bonnie reminds herself. Silas. He's Silas.
She half tunes into their arguing, vaguely wondering if they realized she had even re-entered the room, instead getting lost in her own thoughts about Silas. Matt looks at her with concern as she sits down next to him. He covers her small hand in his much larger one and she takes some comfort in the warmth.
He wanted the cure for some reason, Bonnie thinks. So he'll be looking for it. If he hasn't found it already. If only there was some way to figure out where the cure is…
"I think I know where he is," Bonnie says suddenly and everyone turns to look at her. "Well, not exactly. But...wherever the cure is, that's where he would be…or at very least, we know he's looking for it and whatever he wants it for obviously can't be good. So, since I have my magic back—my regular magic—we should see if there's a spell I can do figure out where the cure might be."
Kol grins widely. "It's good to finally be back in business."
A/N: So, even though it took me forever, I'm not the biggest fan of this chapter, but everything in her was necessary, so…
Originally, I had never planned for Henri to be related to Bonnie because I thought that'd be too cliché, but it just kinda ended up fitting that way. And I know I kinda downplayed that in the chapter (mainly because there was a lot going on in this chapter already), but I promise that there will be more about that.
Oh, and, I'm happy to say thatI finally reached the point I needed to in this fic where I can really start to amp up the Kennett and get their relationship really developed, so there's that to look forward to.
Anywho…I'd like to say that I'll be updating soon, but I honestly don't know (like I said, it won't take me a year to update like it did before, but it's my senior year of college and I'm getting ready to do student teaching next semester, so there's gonna be a lot of crap coming my way really fast).
As always, thanks for reading and reviews are very much appreciated!