"I told you I can't come back, Damon. It's too late for me," she says, "You keep going at it like a bull in front of a red cape," and she would like not to be touched by such insistence, but it's hard not to when she never felt like she mattered enough for anyone to hold on to.
There's a sense of something bigger, and it all makes it alright; though, she can feel the pull of melancholy every time she glances at his blue eyes through the rear-view mirror.
Bonnie can't help but think of the little accident with the jukebox. She's been trying so hard to make contact and now a single burst of impatience makes things come to life when she didn't even mean for them to, in the first place. How ironic. "We're almost at the end of the road," she murmurs, to herself, contemplating the lost time, and the misunderstandings and the stubbornness that drove them here.
Bonnie looks at his long fingers wrapped around the wheel of his car, the index tapping on it while he waits for the light to turn green. A stupid detail she tries to hold on to in hope that maybe her eternity will be made of this, too. But she shouldn't.
Bonnie turns her head, watching the girl sitting in the driver seat in the Volvo next to Damon's Camaro. She's wiping away a trace of smeared lipstick with a fingertip. It makes her melancholic, wondering if the girl left the house in a rush, or if she kissed someone breathless, because none of that will happen to her, again.
"I'm not trying to embarrass you… that much."
She realizes he's talking again, successfully tearing her away from her thoughts, and she turns again to look at him.,
"But… you tried to kiss me, didn't you?" he asks, his eyes wondering to the side, trying to catch a glimpse of her. Her hands close into fists to keep them from flying to her cheeks. Absurdly, she can feel the blush rising to them, before she remembers that she cannot blush anymore.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she protests, though he can't hear her, looking out of the window car. She's tense and the fingers of one hand press on her cheek to make sure she's not burning.
"You know what I mean," he continues, like he's trying to get an answer out of her when truthfully the seat next to his is empty. "When Elena arrived. I think it was happening something there. Which is really awkward because I would like to be informed when I'm fooling around behind my girlfriend's back, you know."
If she could talk to him at all does he really think she would waste her time on this instead of talking him out of his umpteenth disastrous idea?
"There was absolutely no fooling around," she clarifies, incredulous that he's having this conversation with her, even if one sided, as usual. But he's too full of himself to let it go, she knows that.
"I'm not trying to make you feel guilty. I understand. It's not your fault," he says with a smirk, which she is itching to slap off of his face. "The flesh is weak. I'm a ladies' man," he explains with a shrug, like he's used to flocks of women throwing themselves at him at every turn.
"I'm a ghost, Damon. I have no flesh and I am not weak," she insists, trying to contain her irritation. He's a man with a mission, and her problem is that he can switch that mission whenever he feels like; so, in the middle of doing something she purposely told him not to do, he can squeeze some time to torment her because of a little, tiny, insignificant slip he wasn't even supposed to be aware of. Damn him.
"I am actually involved with someone, as you probably remember," he sighs - he himself can barely remember that, like Elena is suddenly a minor detail in the great scheme of things - as he moves his hand n the air, "But-"
"He's not really saying it," she whines to herself, letting her face sink in her palms.
"I wouldn't see anything wrong with-"
"Don't even say it," she warns him, eyeing him like she could poke his eyes out.
"-let's say, a little celebratory smooch-"
"Shut up, Damon," she warns him, already fed up with his attitude. Of course someone like him would choose to concentrate, of all things, on a stupid thing that had not even happened.
"Of course you could have admitted your animal attraction towards me before actually assuming room temperature-"
"Can you concentrate on something that's actually important? Like listening to me and not dragging my cousin into this mess?" she asks, hoping that, for once, fate or heaven will assist her and for an incredible turn of luck he will actually listen to her. "Really Damon, I'd think that in a life-or-death situation at least you would be able to set your priorities straight".
But his ego is his priority. His ego and her. She thinks she can feel her heartbeat accelerating at that thought.
"-but you can't have both timing and such excellent taste."
She whines and bends her head, covering both her ears with palms pressed hard against her skull in the useless attempt to block him out.
"And I know how hard it was for you to ignore the-"
"I can't believe you're being such an asshole!" she explodes, hands open and palms up, her head thrown back like she can't believe the disgrace inflicted upon her. And the stereo of the car turns on, on its own, her irritated voice arriving through the statics, with blank spots here and there, but the last word is loud and clear.
Damon turns his bulging eyes on the stereo, his eyebrows flying up, and a sneer appears on his pink lips.
"Uh. And you're gonna kiss me with that mouth?" he asks, while someone honks behind him. But Bonnie can't share his amusement, not only because contradicting him and denying him satisfaction has always been in her job description, but because the fact that her emotions and actions can manipulate reality so easily can only mean that she's less and less part of it.
"Maybe… I wish," she admits in a whisper, looking at him with a bittersweet smile and the calmness of resignation. Why deny him when this is all that's left for them? Why deny herself when she's going to disappear within a blink? At least, she supposes, one of them can pretend that everything will be alright. And so, for a moment, it will be. But this time her words – not nicked by irritation or panic, for such truths always come from a place of quiet – do not reach him.
#
She would hold her breath, if she were able to. Instead, she lingers in Damon's shadow and puts an inconsistent hand on his shoulder as he faces his little brother in the Forbes' kitchen.
Stefan, on his part, keeps moving his eyes from Damon to Caroline like he needs to look at her to hold on his control when he feels it slipping away.
"We have some pressing matters at hand so we need to get over this, fast, or at least schedule the heart-to-heart for another time. It would be convenient any time you can actually speak to me." Damon says, standing on the door waiting for the moment shit will hit the fan. His brother only tightens his jaw, but doesn't say a word, which is a lot better than a blind scream. Or maybe not.
Stefan opens his hand pressing the palm against the surface of the table, balancing his weight on it as he slowly sits down. All the while his eyes are empty, like he's going away in a place where Damon can't follow, where Elena never broke him, a place where it's warm and bright and smells like Caroline's pillow.
"The 'aspiring' you is back," he says, avoiding the name that he fears could lock Stefan inside his head for good; but his brother has no reaction at all. "He wants Katherine. I don't know exactly why, maybe it's just that bad taste runs in the family. He waited for me to refuse him this little favor before telling me he could bring back Bonnie… just so that he could twist the knife and smell blood."
That's when Stefan's eyes lift to meet his.
"Oh, right. Did I tell you?" he asks with a shrug, "Bonnie has cashed her chips. Since she's being intimate with my girlfriend's body I have planned a goodbye party," he explains, informing him that "you're invited."
"So that's it?" Caroline shrieks, breaking the awkward quietness in the room. "We're abandoning her?"
"She's the one that abandoned us," Damon replies, hardly keeping at bay his own rage as he hisses between his teeth, "Because of the young Gilbert stallion," he adds with derision, "Well, little pony." He turns around in the opposite direction like he expects her to be there – she is, approximately – "A stupid ankle-biter that needs a diagram to know how to stick Rod A in Hole B."
"Don't be vulgar," Bonnie scolds him, embarrassed, crossing her arms over her chest.
Bonnie sees Stefan blink, and he looks more human for a moment.
"But… I'll be gracious and give her at least a chance to say her proper goodbyes," he says, sounding so overly disinterested in her faith that she feels her stomach sinking. "Oh."
"But we can't-"
"There's really nothing we can do, aside from grinning and bearing it," and he does grin, like a puppet whose strings are being pulled. "Matt is taking care of the refreshments. I'll get in contact with her only living relative that won't have a heart attack if a vampire shows up at her door to invite her to a party for a ghost. It seems right."
Caroline has her eyes wide open, her mouth moves like it's trying to put the words together before her brain has grasped them.
"It's what she wants," Damon adds, to stop her from trying to argue about it any longer.
Caroline ignores the steps coming from the front door and turns around to reach Stefan and sneak inside his arms like a child in need of a hiding place. The younger Salvatore is alarmed by the sudden contact, the enclosing force of her slender arms, but she ignores his clumsy attempt to free himself and just keeps on holding him until he stops pushing her away. Instead his hand flies up to her head to pat her gently, fingers sinking into the golden strands.
He makes a throaty sound, like a man waking up from a deep sleep, before murmuring, "It's okay."
"So he speaks," Damon says more to himself than anyone else.
"Shouldn't he?" Liz's voice asks, putting her car keys down in a crystal bowl on the piece of furniture next the door, before rubbing the sleep away from her tired face. She had a night shift and she's in serious need of a relaxing bath. "What's the matter?" she asks Damon, putting her eyes on him, "What's so urgent that it couldn't wait for me to get two hours of rest?"
#
Damon puts on a pair of sunglasses and gets in his Camaro, adjusting the radio station before taking the road.
"I'm grateful…" she says, speaking as she sits next to him, "You're listening for once. I never thought I'd see the day," she explains with an unsure smile. "I suppose, technically, I'm not seeing it. But you know what I mean."
Damon looks at himself through the rear-view mirror, his hair is pushed back by the wind while he drives with the window down and hood up.
"In case you happen to be here... I think it's best if you stay with them, you know. Make sheets fly and chains rattle, so they know you're still around and maybe it will be easier to let go."
It's so reasonable, so sensible; it's like she's sitting next to someone else, someone that doesn't care that much if she stays or she leaves forever. His thoughts barely linger around her for the time he speaks; then, they're gone elsewhere. Maybe to the road in front of him, open and long and at his mercy. Maybe they're back to Elena, and the promise of her eternal beauty. But they're not with her, and she feels like a balloon left to fly away from a child that lost all his interest because he found a new, much cooler toy.
She knows this feeling, but the source is new and so is the cutting quality of this pain she's feeling.
"I think you're right," she offers, with a trembling smile and a voice that's shaking way too much for someone that doesn't even live anymore. Her fingers curl around air. She waits and waits, putting off her parting from him from second to second, unable to leave him. But then she feels tears in her eyes and she shuts them hard, tearing herself away from him like a Band-Aid from a wound.
She's not there when he murmurs under his breath, "Go away, Bonnie. Go away," and gives a look to his cellphone, waiting for Liz's instructions.
#
It's what she asked him to do and she doesn't have the right to feel hurt and abandoned because he obeyed for once in his miserable life; so, she angrily wipes away her tears, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands. But she wanted him to care a bit. It's okay if Caroline understands and digests the pain in time. It's okay if Matt can't do much with his human strength but wish hard and wait for directions. It's okay if Stefan is too traumatized to face it all right now. It's okay if Elena has become incapable of caring for anything else as deeply as she cares for her own happiness. But Damon's refusal to let her go had made her feel alive the way she never felt even when she could pick her clothes in the morning and have people talking back to her.
She was not expecting him to go to hell and drag her back, but she would have liked for him to say that he was sorry though he wasn't. She wanted him to disagree with her selfless plan, even just for the sake of it, even with the knowledge of not being able to do anything to stop her fate from becoming unchangeable.
She was so silly. She thought he was looking for Lucy so that she could help him bring her back; instead, he was making a chance to let her say goodbye to her family. She barely knows the girl, mind you, but she supposes it's a touching gesture on his part.
Just one day ago, he was telling Elena how he thought he could drag her out from any trouble if the need arose. Just three days ago, he ridiculed her, making her speak through an Ouija board. Just hours ago, he was teasing her about the almost kiss they would not have shared. And now, he just needs a shrug to shake the idea of her off of him completely.
She tries to pay attention to her dad as he attempts to fix the shower, tries to speak to him but he is focused on his task and she knows he can't hear her anyway, unless he's sleeping. She follows Matt through his errands, can feel him thinking of her when the radio plays a song they kept singing until they were blue in the face the summer before all hell broke loose. It's comforting, though the feeling is short-lived.
She doesn't have the nerve to stick around Caroline just to watch her cry her eyes out, so she watched the sun going down. For a moment she's so taken by the changing light that she forgets everything else and suddenly she can see everything broken down into molecules, like a pretty mosaic. It shakes her so badly that she feels her legs going out and she falls down, on her back, and it awakens the memory she could never possess. Gentle fingers caress her cheek, brush over her chin with a sort of reverent devotion. Damon doesn't look triumphant to see her dead, if only shortly. He doesn't look happy at all. In fact, he looks like something is slipping from him so rapidly that he's horrified and infinitely sad. His hand passes over her eyes, but she can still see him, kneeling next to her, looking like someone is trying to break his heart with a hammer and he's doing his best to appear unfazed. He's tender as he picks her up – she had always thought he had carried away like a potato sack and dumped her in his car annoyed as hell – hides her face in the crook of his neck like a scared child to protect, and murmurs sweet nothings though he knows she can't hear him.
And then she's lying down on the grass again. The sky is dark, the night is quiet. And she's stupidly blinking away a tear.
She cannot mourn the loss of a love she never knew. Can she?