Maybe I spoil you, but what the heck! :D Enjoy and don't forget to leave a few kind words to cheer me up ;)
Elena was not particularly pleased with the appearance of the new character in the Salvatore house. Lexi behaved very friendly towards her but she acted even friendlier with Stefan, which penetrated the heart of the brunette with slight jealousy. Her boyfriend and this smiling vampire had something he didn't have yet with Elena – a common past. Listening to their peals of laughter and watching them exchange glances filled with something special, at least according to the girl's opinion, a certain warmth perhaps...she felt uncomfortable.
Damon noticed this and raised an eyebrow, smiled mischievously and saluted her with a glass filled with whiskey. Elena wanted to strangle Stefan's obnoxious brother, though she knew it wouldn't change anything. If there was someone in the room who was literally asking for it, it would be Lexi, lying with ease on the sofa and obviously not caring about who thinks what about her.
"Maybe, Stefan," said Elena with slight exasperation, "we can distract you a little from your memories and get back to the not particularly joyous future? For example, to my friend Bonnie and Elijah?"
Lexi chuckled, finally turning to face the little angry brunette. She gave Stefan's girlfriend a careless onceover and crossing her legs, leaned back on the couch.
"Well, let's talk about Elijah." Somewhat ironically, as it seemed to Elena, said the vampire. "It is not often you meet people who are eager to know more about him. And for such a good reason as a kidnapped friend."
Elena stared at the beautiful girl's face, trying to understand what she's led by. She didn't believe that Lexi was an altruist, so the brunette considered that it was all about Stefan and this was somewhat straining. Though the vampire insisted that Lexi's nothing but an old dear friend of his, it didn't make her jealousy disappear.
"So who is this Elijah guy again?" Impatiently asked the girl, at heart glad when Stefan got up from the couch and went up to her, sat on the arm of the chair and put his hand on her shoulder.
Lexi smiled at the couple but then pursed her lips when Damon sat on the couch next to her. The elder Salvatore himself however seemed to have little joy in this proximity. Anyway, the man theatrically pulled on a martyr's face, making Lexi judging by her expression want to immediately throw Damon off the couch. But she restrained herself, deciding to simply ignore such childish behaviour.
"Well. I'll tell you briefly so as not to bore you with unnecessary details. Elijah is the Original. That is, one of the oldest vampires. His family was the first of the vampires, and consequently – the strongest of us. They can even compel us, regardless of our age," the girl said and a shadow flashed in her eyes. "To be honest, I was quite surprised by the appearance of Elijah in this area because he has his own laws and lives up to his standards and principles and rarely intervenes in events not related to him directly. This implies that this is something meaningful for him, if he came here and stole, or if you prefer took with him your witch friend. And, knowing the scope of the Original family, I can safely say that your Bonnie is in real danger."
"Weren't you the one to assure me that Elijah is a man of his word?" Damon asked sarcastically, sipping from his glass.
Lexi gave him a look full of irritation.
"Somewhat conditionally, he always keeps his word. But he has a brother, as I have already said. Klaus will make sure to cause every each of those who are not on his side more than enough trouble to reconsider this fact. And something tells me that your girlfriend is no exception." The girl looked at Stefan. "Believe me, the deal with the Original was the dumbest thing that your dim-witted brother could ever have done."
Damon smiled, though his eyes blazed fury. He was about to say something offensive to their guest, but all of a sudden he heard a knock at the door. Knowing that there was nothing he could possibly do to this annoying blonde, he went to see who else would roll into their abode.
The man opened the door and was surprised to see a beautiful woman on the threshold. Piercing eyes, cute little nose and a short hairstyle complemented her simple clothes and heavy shoes. Damon raised an eyebrow, silently looking at the stranger. She was apparently not in a hurry to say anything. Suddenly he was unceremoniously pushed aside by Lexi who immediately shook her head with a smile, looking at the woman in the doorway.
"Rose, it has been too long!" She said, spreading her arms in a welcome gesture. "This new hairstyle definitely suits you."
Damon impatiently went toward the living room. After looking at his brother, he hissed angrily:
"Somebody explain to me what the hell is going on? Our house is not a court yard!"
Lexi had just entered the room with her friend, throwing a contemptuous look at the indignant man.
"I invited Rose because she probably knows the true cause of the appearance of the Original..."
The woman standing behind the blonde shook her head, looking at Elena who was sitting on the couch, clear surprise and slight enthusiasm in her eyes.
"Hell, she's a spitting image of Katherine!" Shaking her head she said and walked closer to perturbed by such reaction Elena.
The girl wrinkled her nose and raised her chin, looking at the strange woman who was staring at her like at some unknown animal.
"I'm fucking tired of you all," Elena's eyes at this pointedly shifted from Stefan to Damon and back, "reminding me of her existence every second. Enough!"
Rose laughed, sitting down in a chair and gratefully taking a glass of bourbon from Lexi.
"And this must be the famous Salvatore brothers, another trophy of charming and cunning Katherine?" Damon clenched his teeth, looking angrily at their guest, but she raised her hand as if stopping the vampire in his rush. "Trevor and I can quite understand you. We ourselves experienced the charms of this young woman."
Elena looked with interest at Rose. Just like all the others present in the living room at home Salvatore. Stefan leaned back on the sofa, looking at the woman taking a sip from her glass.
"All this is fun of course. I am glad that we cheered you up, but I would like to understand what has Katherine to do with this?" He said, looking at Lexi. "How is she connected to the Originals?"
Rose casually shrugged her shoulders and smiled.
"Don't rush me, and I'll share with you everything I know about this...company."
"Oh, come on!" Damon snapped, rising from his seat. "Why do we have to believe her? We haven't even seen her before!"
Stefan glared at his brother. Damon has always been impatient, but now it could be well understandable. Stefan himself was not a very trusting person, and now when Bonnie was in danger and it was not known what to expect from the Originals, he didn't know what to believe. The vampire turned to Lexi, and she looked at him firmly:
"Stefan, I can vouch for Rose, as for myself." The girl said confidently. "She risked everything coming here, after more than five hundred years of hiding from Elijah. For such a sticky situation, Rose can thank Katherine exclusively. Oh, and of course Trevor. So be patient. In the end, we didn't have to and would be smart not to interfere in this story, while you... You are already sucked into it up to the very top..."
"So we lose a witch..." Damon said casually, instantly causing Elena to scowl at him. "I never even liked her!"
Lexi shook her head at the older Salvatore with a slight irritation.
"Why this bravado now, Damon?" Said the vampire mockingly, crossing her legs and pretending to examine her impeccable manicure. "If you just for a second thought that it will be all over with Bonnie's death, you would never have called me. So even you with all your immaturity know that it's not that simple. Or am I wrong? Maybe there is something else that you're hiding behind such cynicism?"
Damon just waved his glass.
"Rot in hell." He said through teeth clenched in anger and walked out of the room. "I think I'll wait for Stefan's retelling in a company more to my taste."
...
Bonnie walked along the bookshelves, her fingers touching backs of the antique leather bindings. The girl was not particularly full of enthusiasm, as Elijah went to the city with his brother and Greta. "It will be fun. Sorry you can't join us." The image of Klaus winking at her was still fresh in her mind, making the witch gnash her teeth. She was somewhat annoyed, even though she knew that Elijah's doing it for their common goal. She had no right to tell the man how to spend his leisure time, but jealousy still plagued the witch.
"The hell with it." Bonnie muttered, going way back and continuing to brush her fingers on the book covers.
It was the tenth time along the shelf pointed at by Emily, but there was no result. The girl asked her dead relative mentally to give her at least some sign, but in the end after realizing that all the pleading was in vain, she became angry at herself. If she would have paid a little more attention last night, now she wouldn't have to wander here all alone, turning at the slightest of rustle.
Bonnie finally decided to take off all the books from the shelf and look through each. In any case, she could safely assume that Klaus won't be leaving his own home every day on the first call, so waiting for the next convenient opportunity could take a decent amount of time. And she didn't want to wait. There were a lot of reasonable causes, but what worried her the most were her rising and ambivalent feelings for Elijah. On one hand, the Original sometimes frightened her and the rest of the time annoyed her, but on the other – Bonnie felt irresistibly drawn to him. The girl knew that the more time she spent with him, the more dependent on him she became.
Even now knowing the importance of her quest, the witch couldn't help thinking that somewhere out in the Chicago night, Elijah was spending time in the company of his brother, whose loose morals were somewhat infamous. It distracted her, but still she tried to focus. She was taking one book at a time and briefly leafed through each, trying to find something... just something. But the distance to the end of the shelf constantly grew smaller and the search has not been fruitful at all. Bonnie put another book back in place and picked up a new one. This book was a little different from the others, though she felt that it wasn't what they were interested in at the moment.
The witch put her hand on top of the cover: someone's portrait in an oval shape frame had been there once for certain. Bonnie frowned, surprised by the fact that all the books were in an almost perfect condition, while someone's face was ripped off from the cover of this one in a barbaric way. The girl closed her eyes, trying to focus and squeezed it in her hands.
Suddenly she felt warm wind, and opening her eyes Bonnie found herself in the middle of a huge meadow. No matter how she struggled, she couldn't see where it ended. It seemed just like a sea of blooming flax around, and the bright sun overhead. The witch heard someone's carefree laughter in the distance and carefully, as if afraid that her foot would slip into an invisible swamp, followed the sound. Bonnie was looking around cautiously and listening after every small step she made. She tried to determine exactly where the sound source was and finally her efforts were rewarded.
Behind tall stalks of flax, she heard a man's voice speaking with a hint of irony:
To make a graceful act of revenge,
and punish a thousand wrongs in a single day,
Love secretly took up his bow again,
like a man who waits the time and place to strike.
My power was constricted in my heart,
making defense there, and in my eyes,
when the mortal blow descended there,
where all other arrows had been blunted.
So, confused by the first assault,
it had no opportunity or strength
to take up arms when they were needed,
or withdraw me shrewdly to the high,
steep hill, out of the torment,
from which it wishes to save me now but cannot.
Following the poem was a ringing female laughter.
"Don't laugh, it's Petrarch. Maybe one day we won't trample over the earth anymore, but he, or rather his sonnets will remain. You'll see." Said the stranger.
Bonnie gently pushed the thicket and saw a kind of an island in the middle of the meadow. The girl was lying on a blanket on the grass, and Bonnie tried but couldn't see her face. The stranger's head was resting in the man's lap, casually lounging on a blanket... Klaus. Bonnie shuddered, fearing that he would see her again as it happened in the past vision. But this time, even though the man looked at her, he didn't seem to notice the somewhat confused witch looking down upon them.
"Come on, I could easily write a sonnet, and a much better one!" Mockingly said the vampire and casually tossed the book on a blanket next to him.
The girl laughed and rolled over. Putting her palm to her cheek, she exclaimed with feigned admiration:
"Please, Lord Niklaus! When you find time to break away from your insidious plans, you can compose a sonnet for me!" The stranger turned back again. "I can already imagine you scratching your chin in search of the muse, covered in flecks of ink."
Klaus laughed, throwing his head back.
"Why so much disbelief in my hidden talents?" He asked, and suddenly found himself already on top of his companion, touching his lips to her neck. "Well, the hell with sonnets! Maybe I'll ask Elijah to do it!"
The interest he had in the girl was clearly not platonic, and the vampire started quickly unlacing the bodice of the stranger's dress. Bonnie closed her eyes and upon opening them again, she was standing in the middle of the library in the apartment. The girl looked back at the book in her hands. She opened it and read the author's name – Petrarch. Slamming the book shut, Bonnie brought her back into its place. The girl was uncomfortable with what she had just seen in her vision. The scene that unfolded before her eyes seemed much more intimate compared to the one she had seen in the dining room a few days earlier. There was something different about Klaus, and while the vampire was not naked this time, for some reason the witch felt ashamed that she peeped over those two.
Finally throwing the thoughts about Elijah's brother out of her head, Bonnie began to think about unexpected problems. She couldn't understand how to find The Book and also how to do everything before the arrival of the Originals and Greta. In the end, Bonnie waved her hands desperately. In fact, she didn't know that she wanted to do and so with wide open eyes, she stared in amazement at all the books suddenly hanging in the air. Afraid to move her hands, Bonnie looked at what she had done. How to make the books go back into place, and not just let them collapse on the floor?
The witch tried to apply to them the same method she tried out with the feathers, and was relieved to realize that it was working. Before finally pushing the books back on the shelf, Bonnie had noticed a yellowed piece of paper glued to the back of the shelf. Overcoming temptation to immediately grab it, she first finished the process with the books. Just set them in place, Bonnie pulled out a few of them in the usual way and got the intriguing piece of old parchment.
Putting everything in place, she looked around for any evidence left behind, and then, with her find in the pocket walked into their bedroom. Sitting on the bed, she looked at her catch that cost her so much trouble and snorted. If this piece of paper was what that they need, then she obviously couldn't deal with it alone. It was all covered in some strange unknown to Bonnie symbols. The girl carefully folded it and hid it under the mattress: she obviously wouldn't need it before Elijah joined her and definitely didn't want to be caught with it in her pocket. The witch held her arms, thinking with irritation that for someone interested in the search her captor wasn't particularly in a hurry to get back home. She felt incredibly dreary alone in this city where she felt alienated, but somewhere in Mystic Falls she had friends. The girl slipped out of the room and went down the hall, looking into every open room for a phone. Finally, it was found in the lobby. Bonnie grinned: how come she had not noticed before this gold-coated, ornate apparatus. She dialed the number but suddenly a hand in a white glove pressed the end button.
Bonnie jumped in fright, turning to see Klaus's butler standing behind her. The man's face was absolutely expressionless as he bowed, as if apologizing to the girl.
"Lord Elijah gave me clear instructions on your account, my lady." The witch looked with astonishment at the butler as no one had called her that before. "No phone calls."
Bonnie's eyes flashed angrily, and her lips became a thin line. Oh how she wanted to kill "Lord Elijah" at this point! After all, she was not going to run or scheme against him. She only wanted to hear the familiar voice of Elena or Care.
"And if I was going to contact E-...the Lord?" The girl said. "Maybe you know at least where I could find him tonight? Or at least how he can be reached?"
The man stood in indecision, shifting from foot to foot.
"It is impossible. Usually when going to a club, they leave the cell phones at home. And disturb their peace I will not." With a touch of reverence said the butler.
Bonnie squinted, watching the man. "What the... club? With no phones allowed?" The girl of course was against such practices, but Elijah's absence was driving her crazy. Justifying herself saying that it's all for the benefit of their mission, the witch remembered her grandmother's lessons and applied the knowledge on her accidental victim. A few minutes later the witch learned that she could find on the sideboard in the dining room a special card with monograms, required at the entrance and where this entrance to the mysterious club is exactly. Bonnie was not ashamed, after all who keeps such secret things in such prominent places?
After hastily dressing in an elegant long dress of bright scarlet colour and throwing a coat on top, she headed for the elevator. She again looked discontentedly at the unconscious butler on the floor of the hall. Applying self-defense techniques her grandmother once taught her, Bonnie has not calculated the force right. And even though she knew she didn't cause any real harm, it still was incredibly embarrassing.
But curiosity tormented her since Elijah's leaving, jealousy overpowered her humanity. Already in the taxi, Bonnie suddenly became afraid of what might be seen in the place where she was going. But the girl wouldn't be herself if she hid from the unknown. So, coming out of the car at the old building and groping around in her pocket for the stolen card, Bonnie tried to calm the pounding of her excited heart. If Greta could come in, Bonnie didn't see why she couldn't.