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Better Than Forever

"What could be better than forever I wonder? Surely nothing is better than the idea of everything? The chance at having it all? Oh, but I'll tell you one thing that usurps the throne of eternity...It is here and now."

Damon was about to leave Bonnie to step into Kai's mind when something occurred to him.

"Bon, wait!" He reached for her as she made to press her fingertips to Kai's temples. "The siphons, don't they like, I don't know, sense when you're using magic?"

"I haven't really thought about them much since the whole Elena thing." Bonnie admitted, "What then? We have to get inside his head."

"He's unconscious, I'm a vampire-"

"This sentence is getting very dark-"

"We can step into his head."

"We?"

"Duh, we. I'm not letting you use any magic you don't need to, and well, it'd make me feel better if we both did it."

"Okay. How do we do this?" Damon took her hand and her heart skipped a beat.

"Sorry, the last time we held hands, we kind of died." Bonnie explained with a nervous grin. A long moment passed where Damon just looked at her. As she opened her mouth to ask him if everything was okay, he turned to Kai and placed his hand over the Coven leader's head and Bonnie's vision went blank.

When they opened their eyes they were back in the woods where their journey with Kai began.

"Of course he'd bring us back here." Damon hissed unhappily, his hand still in Bonnie's as they walked toward the Boarding House.

"It makes sense if you think about it, it's been embedded in his memory."

"And it is a step up from Oregon, so. There's that." Damon agreed. Bonnie was looking up and around, her trilling heart on high alert when she covered their clasped hands with her other hand, catching Damon's attention. She seemed so unaware of it, that he didn't think there was a point to saying anything. As they reached the edge of the woods and stepped out onto the tarred road they both looked up and saw a string of moon's, like a bracelet in the sky, all eclipsing at once. "What the hell?" Damon wondered.

"All the chances he could have had to go home, I guess." He pulled Bonnie closer to him as the sky darkened.

"I don't like this."

"Yeah, that's kind of the point." Kai's voice sounded out from behind them and Bonnie stiffened as Damon spun them around. "I knew it" Kai grinned, pointing at their hands. "Oh my god, Elena is never going to stop crying."

"I was scared!" Bonnie defended, pulling free of Damon's hold. "Being back here isn't exactly good for me." Damon narrowed his eyes at Kai at the reminder of what the warlock had put his best friend through.

"I ought to kill you for that scar on her stomach alone." Damon seethed. "But as fate would have it, we need you."

"And I'll tell you whatever you want, when I get what I want." He beamed.

When Stefan came to, the first thing he could hear was his mother's voice and he honed in on it.

"Now, darling, you know perfectly well I would never let anything or anyone harm you... in many ways, you're the daughter I've always wanted."

"I just think we need to give Stefan a chance."

"And we will, I just need you to be out of the way wherever there is danger. Forget how I'd feel about it, I doubt my son would survive it." he felt Sarah's eyes move on him in that moment. "He loves you Sarah, Damon and Bonnie do as well, I can't have you in the same room as him, not until we know it's safe."

"Okay." Stefan listened as Lily planted a kiss on Sarah's cheek and ushered the girl out before she made her way to him.

"Stefan? Darling?" Stefan peeled his eyes open and winced at the light.

"Mother?" Lily's eyes teared up and she flashed over.

"Oh, my dear boy." Stefan pressed his crying eyes shut as she held him. But the itch of his thirst was instant.

Caroline woke up in a cell, limbs tightly bound, her throat searing with pain.

"Hello?" She cried. "God dammit, isn't the whole point of convincing me to turn my emotions back on to actually be around long enough to try?"

"Don't bother." Caroline stilled.

"...Elena?"

"Cell to your left."

"What are you doing down here?" Caroline laughed as she pictured all the scenarios that could have played themselves out.

"Who knows. Bonnie and Damon are to your right, they're inside Kai's head right now."

"What is a Kai? What are they doing?"

"I don't know."

"Yikes."

"...What?"

"I never thought I'd live to see the day where you were tossed off of your pedestal."

"I let Stefan out of his cell before he turned his humanity back on..." Caroline snorted.

"You're so stupid, you thought he still loved you, huh?"

"Stefan doesn't love anyone when his switch is flipped."

"He loved me just fine." Caroline teased.

"You're disgusting." Elena chided.

"Rather that than delusional." The blonde vampire paused. "So...Bonnie and Damon huh, who would have thought?" Elena's brows lifted as she perked her ears and focused on the sounds of her best friend's breathing as Bonnie stood holding Damon's hand.

Kai had disappeared after his goading and the sky had dipped into an unprecedented nighttime.

"We should get inside." Bonnie reasoned. Damon nodded, lifting her into his arms without any preamble and ghosted them to the Boarding House. They walked quickly across the lawn and into what had been their home for months. Bonnie's hands started shaking as she made her way to the den and Damon was about to ask why when the obviousness dawned on him.

"Bonnie, how did you think you could do this by yourself?" He stepped in front of her, frowning. "I'm serious, look at you. You're in a state and you weren't ever going to ask me to come with you."

"Damon, our lives, all this supernatural bullshit has never been about what we can or can't handle, it's just been about what we can't live without." she folded her arms. "I've been through worse." She lifted her brows at Damon's incredulous expression. "Walking through Kai's mind is a step above being in the prison alone, trust me on that." She looked down at her feet. "I'm fine." Damon's hands dropped gently onto her shoulders and she lifted her gaze.

"I'm sorry, Bon...I'm sorry about leaving you behind and not doing more to get you back home. I'm sorry I left you with Kai, and I'm sorry he left you alone, I can't even think of what that's done to you because then we'll never get anything out of him with his head rolling around on the floor." Bonnie's eyes welled up with tears, even as she backed away from him.

"Damon, it's all done. It all happened. We're here now and we need to focus on that."

"Bullshit, you deserve the apology and the moment."

"Which moment?"

"The moment where someone makes you realise what you're worth. When Elena and I came back here with Kai to fetch you...we wandered more through our own bullshit than anything else, she just had that effect on me and vice versa. But even then, I told her. I was here for you, not for her. And that's true even now...Bonnie, I'll always do this for you. Go back to oblivion, whether it's to find you, or whether it's just to stand right next to you so you're not alone. I will do that for you. Always."

"Damon..."

"Bonnie, I,"

"Stop, Damon."

"I love you."

"This just makes what I'm about to say, so much better." Kai cackled as he turned a corner into the den with his manic smile in place. "Are you two ready to play a game?"

Sarah screamed when she peaked into the room where they'd bound Stefan up and he had Lily gripped from where her neck was lodged into his mouth.

"Stefan!" She yelled. "Stop!" She injected him with the vervain-syringe they'd kept aside just in case and eased Lily away from him, only to drop under their weight as she cradled the women to herself. "Lily?" The woman's eyes rolled a little before they fluttered open.

"It's going to take more than that, dear. I'll tell you that much." Lily winced a smile.

"It looks like you two could use a hand." Lucy called from the doorway.

"Oh my god..." Lily gaped. "Odette?"

"Lucy, actually. But your friend should be here soon, too." Lucy stepped inside. "So, where do we start?"

Bonnie's heart was somewhere in her throat as she tried to pay attention to what Kai was saying while Damon's words rang repeatedly in her head.

"It's actually very simple," Kai spoke, "I want a Bonnie of my very own."

"Get fucked." Damon snapped. Kai chortled.

"Not your Bonnie, Damon." Kai explained. "I'm going to make my very own one. Bonnie has to help of course."

"Why me, Kai?" Bonnie's voice shook. "Haven't you taken enough from me?"

"Not even close." Kai spat, his expression suddenly dark and hardened. "You have no idea what I'm really capable of when I want to hurt someone." His face brightened. "All this, from before," his hands swung around happily as he gestured, "that was 'cause I liked you."

"You stabbed me and left me to die because you liked me?" Kai nodded.

"Remember when you stabbed in the neck? I figure you liked me back." The warlock reasoned. "And I kept thinking to myself, how much happier my life would be, if I had someone like you, who was a little more like me, in it. You got pretty close alone here, I'd bet."

"You're sick." Bonnie spat.

"I think you'd love me just fine if you understood me better, and you're only fighting me so hard on this, because a small part of you...she knows I'm right." Kai shrugged as he lay draped across one of the settees. "And all I want is that small part of you. The one who knows exactly where the brink is. The one who's tired of fighting the good fight, the one who wouldn't mind letting go of it all, if it meant she got to stop acting like everything is fine. If she got to stop acting like she even wanted to be here anymore." Kai beamed. "That girl practically belongs to me anyway." Damon stilled as Bonnie's tears welled over. "Bon, if you give me that part of your soul to make my Bonnie, then I will personally swallow those bottom-breeders whole." He toyed with the outline of his cartooned shirt. "Damon gets his Bonnie, and I get mine. And you get rid of that hollow version of yourself that you wishes was dead anyway. It's a no brainer."

"Bonnie, you can't be considering this?" Damon turned the witch toward him, "we don't know what losing a part of your soul will do to you."

"To get Lily peace of mind and you the family you've always wanted, what the hell is some of my soul in the face of that?" Bonnie asked, tears running down her face.

"Lily would not consider this peace of mind." Damon argued. "She would never allow this, excuse us Satan." Damon threw the last bit over his shoulder as he pulled Bonnie out of the den and upstairs to his room. "Bonnie, I don't know much about the components of souls, but my gut tells me it's kind of a package deal."

"Damon...I don't even think I have much of a soul left anyway, why hang on to anything when it's the only thing standing in the way of everything we want?"

"When you say we...?" Bonnie sat on the edge of his bed and looked down at her hands as he crouched down in front of her.

"Damon, what if I want to stop existing? What if I'm tired of trying? What if I'm tired of pretending? What...what if I died years ago, when Grams did?"

"So what then? Lily and I get our happy ending, and have to make peace with the fact that your happy ending was for it all to end?" Damon shook his head fervently, "Bonnie, I just told you I love you and you tell me you want to die."

"Damon of course I love you," Bonnie put a hand to his cheek. "I do. But I'm more broken than I am anything else, and that changes the way I see things, the way I feel things, and I need you to understand that so that you know what I mean when I say it's not enough for me. I'm not saying you're not enough Damon," she emphasises, cupping both sides of his face in her hands, "I'm saying that I can't feel how much you mean to me anymore. And that makes me very, very sad."

"I want to be human with you." Damon blurted. "I can't lose that because you can't see how close we are to everything we want."

"It's everything you want, Damon."

"And you're a massive part of that." Damon pulls Bonnie closer to the edge of his bed, so that their foreheads can rest against one another's. "Bonnie, you're my best friend."

"And you're mine... and just like me, Damon, you've been through worse than losing someone like me. You'll be fine."

"How you've convinced yourself of that is beyond me," Damon whispered hotly, tears quietly falling where she couldn't see, "If you die, so do I."

"Kai only wants me."

"You're not hearing me." He pulls away so that they can look one another in the eye. "If you die, I die." Damon swallows. "You don't see that everything I want is tailored to you as well...you don't get who you are to me." She watches as more tears fall. "And to have you die not knowing the answer to that, is what will kill me along with you."

"What are you saying?" Bonnie gaped.

Damon simply closed the last breath of space between them and kissed her.

A/N: So, I mean, yeah. That happened. Reviews give you wings.