Disclaimer: I don't own the Vampire Diaries nor am I making any profit from this. Characters, etc. all belong to their respective owners.
A/N: Sorry it took me so long to update again…I was feeling a little burned out after that massive writing spree I had gone on this summer (I don't think I've ever written like that before…not even when doing NaNoWriMo) and then I started a new job (nothing glorious…just substitute teaching since there's literally no teaching jobs out there…at least in my area).
Anywho, thanks to all who have been reading, reviewing, etc.! I very much appreciate it!
Enjoy!
The last person Caroline expected to show up with Klaus's blood was Klaus himself.
"What can I say?" He said with a smug smile when her jaw dropped upon sigh of him. "I got curious."
"Yeah, well Bonnie and Damon aren't here, so you can just drop off your blood and leave," Caroline hissed.
"Now, where's the fun in that?" Klaus replied, brushing by her to step inside. "And you might sound more appreciative, considering I'm doing you a favor…speaking of, if Damon is supposedly suffering from a werewolf bite, why would he be running around with Bonnie?"
"It's a long story that's unbelievable, even by our standards," Stefan supplied, stepping into the foyer.
"If I'm about to graciously give you my blood—"
Caroline snorted.
"Yeah, so graciously that you're demand a favor to hold over Bonnie's head," she muttered.
"If I'm about to graciously give you my blood," Klaus continued, ignoring Caroline's snide comment and the eye roll she exchanged with Stefan. "I believe I'm entitled to an explanation."
"Okay," Caroline snapped. "A crazy whack job came from about sixteen years in the future to settle some insane grudge she has against Bonnie and Damon. She poisoned Damon with werewolf venom, threw him in another dimension, and Bonnie accidentally came along with him for the ride. But she's confident that she can bring both of them back, but that still leaves the problem of the werewolf venom," Caroline explained rapidly, not even pausing to take a breath.
"Hmm…you lot do find yourself in the strangest situations," Klaus said dryly, side-stepping Caroline and Stefan and heading down into the living room.
"Any reason you came here in person to find all this out?" Stefan asked dryly, following the original hybrid.
"Boredom, curiosity. I like to keep tabs on these sorts of things…just in case they can affect me or my own adversely in any way." Pause. "You're new," he said, looking over at Dominic.
Dominic looked at Klaus warily, recalling some of the stories he had been told. Enzo just raised his eyebrows at Klaus before shrugging and going back to finishing a bottle of Damon's favorite bourbon.
Klaus picked up with of the crystal glasses by a decanter filled with liquor, then he bit deeply into his wrist, allowing his blood to spill into the glass.
"Let Bonnie know I'll be cashing in on that favor some time," Klaus told Caroline with a wink, handing her the now half-full tumbler. And with that, he was gone.
"That was strange," Enzo said dryly.
"It's Klaus. He's probably just senile by now," Stefan said with a shrug.
Bonnie found herself waking up on the couch with a stiff neck and sore back. Groaning, she forced herself up into a seated position, feeling her joints creak slightly.
Damon was nowhere in sight and that worried her. Getting up, she thinks about where he'd most likely be. When she poked her head into the kitchen, she sees Damon standing there, flipping a pancake with one hand while sucking down a blood bag with another. There were several empty blood bags littering the counter.
Okay, not a good sign.
"Hey, she said, entering the kitchen and taking a seat. She looked him over. He was even paler and the sheen of sweat that made his skin shine told her that he was burning up.
"You look horrible," she told him bluntly.
"Funny. I feel like shit," he replied with a scoff. He places a plate of pancakes down in front of her.
"I think maybe I can slow it down with some cleansing herbs. I mean, it's hard to know exactly what would work best because nobody really knows how werewolf venom works or why Klaus's blood is the cure for it, but it's better than nothing," Bonnie said, pushing the pancakes around on the plate with a fork. "I still think we're cutting it to close by waiting for this lunar eclipse."
"Yeah, well there's nothing we can do about that," he said. "Although, if we make it out of this one, I'm going to personally hunt that little bitch down and every single version I can find of her, present and otherwise, and she won't be a problem ever again."
"No," Bonnie said automatically. "Look, I'm not stupid or naïve enough to think that future Jacqueline isn't going to try something again and if it comes down to us or her, then I understand we'll have to kill her. But we don't know anything about Jacqueline at the present. We don't know for sure if she's in cahoots with her future self, we don't know what makes her this way. Maybe we can prevent her from becoming that way."
Damon frowned, but ripped into another blood bag. As usual, he'd make the tough decisions if he has to. Because he was sure that if they managed to survive this one, they'd find out that this was just a warm up act for that crazy witch.
Things always got worse before they got better.
"This is kinda like old times, isn't it?" he said.
"No, not really," Bonnie said dryly, looking pointedly at the blood bags all over the kitchen.
"No need to be a buzzkill."
Well, at least he still has his crappy sense of humor, Bonnie thought sardonically.
Caroline had always hated waiting for anything. In fact, in grade school, she would always cut in line for everything and when the teachers tried to make her go back, she'd throw such a fit that they couldn't do anything with her.
She kinda felt like throwing a fit now.
After years without doom and gloom, only to be faced with this…God, they'd never catch a break would they?
And what if this was really it? What if Damon died for real? Stefan wouldn't survive it. Not again.
And then there was Dominic…
She looked over at him. He had been sullen and brooding ever since they found out what had happened to Bonnie and Damon. He was obviously still kicking himself over all of this.
"You've gotta find a way to let it go," she said aloud. "I'm not going to pretend that I fully know everything you've gone through…you keep a lot of things to yourself, which I guess you must have gotten from Bonnie, now that I think about it." She smiles wryly. "And whether you do it to protect us or yourself, I don't know. But what I do know is that you can't keep putting the burden of everything on yoursel. Everything that's happened is not your fault. And if you keep dragging yourself around like this…it can kill you."
He doesn't respond.
"Now, I'm going to go to sleep and I suggest you do the same. Tomorrow night, Bonnie and Damon will be back here and then we can go back to making sure that you're actually born."
She didn't know if anything she said actually stuck, but she really hoped so.
He was just a year younger than she had been when she became a vampire and Bonnie discovered she was a witch and they learned how crazy the world really was. Except, he'd been dealing with this stuff since the day he was born.
"You were pretty good down there," Stefan said, when she entered their bedroom. He was shirtless with pajama pants on and toweling his hair dry from his shower.
"Yeah, well, hopefully it sunk in. But I'll keep saying it to him over and over again if I have to." She flopped down onto their bed with a sigh.
"Do you ever think about it?" He asked, laying down next to her. "About kids?"
She bit her lips and shrugged.
"Yeah, a little. I always figured if we wanted to, we could adopt," she told him softly, curling up into his arms. "Although, realistically, all the diapers and snot and stuff is just not for me…but they wouldn't have to be a baby. A lot of children that aren't babies need good homes, too."
Stefan smiled and began to stroke her hair.
"I don't know," she continued. She tilted her head upwards to look at him. "Maybe someday, far down the road." She lifted her head up to look at Stefan. "What about you? Have you ever…?"
"When I was human…" he began. "Damon was expected to inherit the estate if our father didn't disown him, which he actually seemed ready to do more than once…but if Damon had inherited the estate, I would have been expected to take up what was considered a respectable profession, like a lawyer or a doctor. I had planned on being a doctor, actually," he explained. "Then, I would have been expected to marry and have children." Pause. "And then I became a vampire and none of that was no longer an option. And even if it was…I was just too unpredictable, too volatile."
"But what about now? Would you ever want to?"
"Maybe," he replied. "How about we survive this and then talk about it again?"
"Sounds good with me," she said with a smile, snuggling back into him. "But I say that we also take a nice, long vacation to the Bahamas or somewhere that has a nice sunny beach when this is all over."
All her fingernails had been bitten down to nothing by now, but she kept chewing at them anyway.
Tomorrow night, they'd be going home. The herbs Bonnie has been using seemed to keep Damon from having hallucinations at the very least, but the blood cravings would come and go and it was obvious that he felt miserable.
God, she really hoped they'd make it in time. She doesn't know what she'd do if…
"D'you ever think about it?" Damon asked suddenly, breaking the silence.
"Think about what?" Bonnie asked, looking over at him. He was sitting on the other side of the couch, bourbon in one hand, a half-empty blood bag in the other.
"That night. Well, I guess it was more than one night," he said. "But beyond the occasional slip-up mention, do you ever think about it?"
Bonnie blinked, her eyes widening a little bit. Why would he bring that up so suddenly?
"I do," he continued, not waiting for her response. "More than I'd like to."
Bonnie found herself speechless as her mind drifted back.
"Do you really think we'll be stuck here forever?" Bonnie asked Damon with a sigh.
"Have we been given a reason to believe otherwise?" Damon replied dryly.
"I don't know. I just can't help but feel like there's some sort of loophole we haven't figured out yet."
"We've been here for two years and we're human here…what the hell kind of loophole could there be?" He pointed out.
Bonnie sighed again. He had a point. And she supposed the circumstances could have been worse than they actually were.
Still, though, she missed home.
"You know, I never understood it," he said, his icy blue eyes piercing hers.
"There's a lot you don't understand," Bonnie said dryly. "But what are you talking about?"
"You're worth the whole damn lot of us."
Bonnie frowned. Quoting the Great Gatsby…really? Could he be any more dramatic?
"You're worth the whole damn lot of us and then some. We've all taken you for granted…you never would have wound up here if that weren't the case. Why stick around through it all?"
She gaped at him, wondering just how drunk he was. He never cared about her sacrificing everything because it had always benefited him.
"Where would I have gone?" She found herself replying before she really even thought about it. "Besides, I wouldn't have kept doing the things I did if I didn't think you were all worth it on some level. The teeniest, tiniest, microscopic level in your case."
Damon snorted and shook his head.
"You're too good," he said finally. "That's the problem. You're too damn good."
"Sometimes I kinda wish I wasn't," she admitted. She reached over, plucking the bourbon bottle out of his hands to take a drink herself. "But the whole 'having an overactive conscience' thing can really fuck you up."
Damon chuckled.
They pass the bottle back and forth, engaging in lighter conversation. It was crazy to think of how much things had changed between them.
Still, though, it didn't stop her head from swimming when he suddenly leaned over and pressed his lips against hers in a deep kiss.
"What are you doing?" She asked when they part.
"I would really hope that's self-explanatory," he replied.
"You're drunk."
"No, I'm not."
"I'm drunk."
"No, you're not."
"Fine. Buzzed. Point is we really shouldn't be doing things that we'll regret later," Bonnie told him.
"Who says we'll regret it?" He asked, brushing some of her hair out of her eyes. His touch feels like it sets her skin on fire. "Do you really want to stop?"
Was she really going to do this? She'd be lying to herself if she said she hadn't thought about it at least once. There was no denying he was attractive (a gross understatement there) and there had always been this strange underlying tension between the two of them (granted, it was a tension that had the tendency to manifest itself in arguments and occasional violence, but still).
This time she pressed her lips to his.
One night. Just one night to get it out of their systems and they would never speak of it again.
Except it hadn't been one night, Bonnie recalled. It had gone on for months before she finally decided to break it off for good.
She never believed it would work between them. Because of who they were. Being able to be kinda sorta friends was one thing. Lovers? That was a whole other deal. And, if she was being honest, the thought scared her a little.
To her surprise, though, all the reasons she had for not sleeping with Damon before had nothing to do with either Elena or Jeremy. And there was something strangely liberating about that.
Eventually, they had miraculously come back into their own world. And Elena had moved on with Tyler and they had both moved onto Denver. And then Jeremy had joined them and found some girl in art school.
And she had actually been okay with that. Because how could she have expected them to wait around? Especially, when she had never planned on returning.
Damon had taken that new development with grace as well, a testament to how far he had come.
She'd thrown herself back into getting that life she so desperately wanted. Her undergrad was finished and now she was set to enter medical school in a few weeks…if she made it out of this particular disaster, that is.
Up until now, her life had been good or normal.
"How drunk are you?" Bonnie asked finally.
"I'm not drunk," Damon scoffed. "I'm dying…it tends to bring out all sorts of deep dark confessions from me apparently."
Silence.
"Thing is every once in a while, I think about that first night, the months that came after more than I like. And sometimes I wonder what would have happened if we didn't give it up after a few months. Do you?"
"Honestly? Not very often. But every once in a while, yeah," Bonnie admitted. "Why bring this up now?"
"Seems as a good a time as any," Damon said with a shrug. "That or I may be delirious, who knows?" Pause. "Sometimes, after we came back, I would sometimes think about convincing you to give it another go…but you were finally getting your life together and I didn't want to ruin that for you."
Looking at him, speechless once again, Bonnie finds herself scooching closer to him on the couch.
They look at each other, unsure of what comes next.
Then, before she really even thinks about it, she's kissing him.
It's different than that firs time on the other side all those years ago. Back then, it had been surprising and curious. This time, there was a sense of familiarity and desperation.
They pull apart and looked at each other for a short moment, blue piercing green, and then their lips met again and again.
The sunlight streaming in from the giant windows made Bonnie groan and blink blearily as she started to wake up.
Looking around, she didn't see Damon anywhere.
She looked through the assortment of clothes that had ended up all over the living room to find something to cover herself with. Pulling on Damon's black button down, she began to search for him.
She found him in the bathroom, naked and vomiting up all the blood he's recently consumed.
"Fuck," Bonnie swore and quickly moved to grab some towels to help him clean up.
Then, she helped him up and got him back to the living room, intending to deposit him on the couch.
All the while, the only thing Damon could think about was how much he wanted blood. It would be so easy, so easy to just grab her and sink his teeth into that precious little vein in her neck. Her blood would slide down his throat all nice and warm and delicious.
Growling, he shoved her away from him.
"Wh—"
"I really wanna drain you dry," he panted.
She blinked, not knowing how to respond to that.
"If—if I attack you, you have to stop me."
"I'm not killing you."
"Do be so dramatic," he groaned, flopping onto the couch. "You're a witch. Aneurism me into unconsciousness or something."
"Oh," she said, feeling a little stupid. "Right, of course."
She grabbed a blanket and covered him up with it. He was basically unconscious now.
Tonight, she would be able to perform the spell that would hopefully send them home. She just really hoped that a few more hours wouldn't be too late for Damon.
She managed to clean up and find a change of clothes for herself as well as Damon and she forced him awake when it was time.
She can't help but blush every time she remembered last night's events. Sleeping with Damon while he was dying was definitely not one of her brighter moments…
But for now, getting them home was more important.
She took the potion she had made and poured it around them.
"Okay," Bonnie said, taking Damon's hands in hers. The eclipse was up and it was time. "Let's go home."
She began to chant and felt a slight tugging sensation. The spell was working!
When she opened her eyes again, Damon collapsed into her.
"Stefan! Caroline!" Bonnie yelled, sinking to her knees with Damon still in her arms. "Please, tell me you convinced Klaus to give you his blood."
"Here," Stefan said, rushing over to him. He helped Damon, tipping a glass of blood against his lips.
"I am so over this kind of bullshit," Damon muttered, pulling away from Bonnie and Damon to lean against the wall.
Snorting, Bonnie nodded.
Unfortunately, though, they all knew it wasn't going to end there.
A/N: Thanks for reading and, as always, reviews are very much appreciated!