Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to The Vampire Diaries. If I did, I'm sure I'd be doing something more exciting than writing fanfiction on a Friday night.
Notes: This story has officially been completed (although this is not the last chapter). I should be putting out a chapter a day until the last one is posted, but I just wanted to let you know that after a very long, writer's-block hiatus, the story will actually be done.
Morning air, succulent and sweet, smacked Bonnie Bennett in the face as she flung open the front door. She squinted her eyes up at a hazy sky, cursing the fact that her instincts were right- it was going to rain. Yesterday, she had spent over an hour washing her hair, conditioning the curls, and delicately pinning them up one by one- now, this humidity was certainly going to destroy them. Stefan jumped back when the door opened; he hadn't even knocked yet. Bonnie however, underestimated as always, had sensed that they were there, and more importantly, sensed why.
"So Elena and Damon are both missing. Both of them." Bonnie pinched the bridge of her nose, sighing in frustration. "Do you really need a witch to figure out what they're probably up to? I am pretty busy you know."
"Bonnie, I know, I know, but look- Damon is human. I don't trust Elena with him right now. Who knows what could be happening. I've tried calling him almost a hundred times and he isn't answering-it's going straight to voicemail." Stefan's eyes looked exhausted, lavender-brown rings making his face appear hollow. Vampires technically didn't need sleep, but Stefan looked like he was somehow deprived.
Bonnie wondered to herself: When was the last time he fed?
Shaking off the worry, she pulled her attention back to the matter at hand.
"Alright, I'll help you find them, but afterward, I have to keep continuing my research. If my theory is right, Elena hurting Damon might actually be one of the potential solutions to our problem."
"What are you saying? That like, the link can still go both ways? It's not like a one and done thing?" Caroline was suddenly filled with excitement. "Stefan it means we can make Elena human again! That's amazing!"
Before Caroline could start celebrating Stefan jumped in, his demeanor somber and reserved.
"But Damon would have to die for us to test out this theory. And if we're wrong… then he's dead for good."
"But if we fed him vampire blood, wouldn't he come back regardless?" Caroline whined. "I mean what's the big deal, he's been a vampire before."
"But is that what Elena would want Caroline?" Bonnie's eyes were digging into Caroline's shallow exterior. "Would she want us to take Damon's human life away from him?"
"This is a second chance for him. After all he's been through- after what I forced him to do- I think he deserves to not lose his humanity over a magical hunch."
"And who knows, with the way this soul bonding seems to work, there's a chance that it might not work the same way this time. Magic is unpredictable. I'm powerful, but if things were to go wrong, I couldn't fix it. Any action we take for this has to be Damon and Elena's decision."
Stefan and Caroline both hated that this was the situation they were in, that Damon and Elena would have to agree on something that affected Elena's well-being. It was completely out of their hands.
"For now though," She sighed. "since you barged into my house at 5:00 in the morning, let's at least address the immediate task at hand: finding Damon and Elena. Follow me."
Bonnie led them downstairs into her small, unfinished basement. As they descended, candles began to alight, following them until the room was comfortably lit. She had become quite the elegant witch, making every expression of magic appear effortless. It was a far cry from her early days, when even the most simple spells would cause blood to trickle from her nose, or for her body to entirely collapse. While nobody was paying attention, Bonnie Bennet had grown into the birthright of the Bennet witches.
"I just need to grab some materials and I should be able to do a simple locator spell. Despite all of the overwhelming evidence that they are together, I'll do a locator spell for both of them anyway."
She walked over to an old, rusted metal cabinet- the kind used to store tools. Opening it up revealed what seemed to be hundreds of tiny vials. She grabbed two bottles that, from a distance, looked nearly empty. Placing them on a rough wood table, Stefan and Caroline noticed that they were actually filled with strands of hair. The tiny labels in Bonnie's delicate handwriting weren't particularly helpful- the text was written in some kind of code or runes. While the two observers stood baffled by the little vials, Bonnie spun around to a small fridge. Once the light flicked on, you could see that it too was filled with tiny bottles- mostly dark crimson. Blood.
Bonnie produced two tiny bottles, again, with indiscernible labels.
"When did you start collecting all of this?" Stefan furrowed his brow in confusion.
"Listen, with as much trouble we find ourselves in, a witch has to be prepared. Nobody misses a few strands of hair, a syringe or two of blood. Then there's the powdered blood that I scrape up when we clean up after, say, stabbing an original vampire." She shrugged her shoulders. "I'm the center of attention when someone needs me, but the rest of the time, I kind of slip through the cracks unnoticed."
A heavy brass bowl made a thud as she dropped it onto the table, adjusting it at a specific angle to the corners of the table. She poured in the blood and hair from vials with matching labels. The locks were long, silky, and dark.
It must be Elena's.
"Yes, this is Elena's." Stefan and Caroline were shocked as she seemed to read their minds. "Don't be shocked. In a room this quiet and remote, with very little outside distraction, it's pretty easy to hear your thoughts. We are essentially in a magical panic room. Bennett witches couldn't possibly be this powerful if we weren't at least a bit psychic." Nobody pried any further, they were starting to notice that perhaps she felt underestimated, and they didn't want to step on any toes.
"If it's Elena's…" Caroline squinted her curious cat-like eyes at the now empty bottles. "Then why isn't her name on the label? It seems just like a bunch of random characters."
"It's an ancient gaelic script. Before you ask, no- Salem witches weren't gaelic, but it's a common language I picked up along the way in my studies. Of course, it's then put through a cipher that only I know, so that any random person who knows gaelic couldn't come in here and find what they are looking for."
Her precautions were wise. There's no telling what this much material - especially doppelganger blood- could do in the wrong hands. The damage could be unprecedented. Bonnie was incredibly comfortable with this power however, cool and collected as she popped from shelf to shelf grabbing more generic ingredients. It looked to be brick dust, some kind of oil, and a dried, flowering herb. She tossed tiny pinches of the dry ingredients in before pouring just a tiny amount of the oil. The heavy marble pestle came down hard on the brass bowl, an almost melodic sound reverberating through the room.
It reminded Stefan of the Tibetan Singing bowls. The ones he had used to help Caroline calm her unquiet and neurotic mind after her transition.
The last step was spreading out a rudimentary map of the southern mid-atlantic onto the table. Placing both hands on the bowl, Bonnie closed her eyes, setting the mixed contents on fire. A pungent aroma wafted from the conflagration, a floral and mineral scent muddled with burning hair. When she opened her eyes, the flame died out, the remaining glow showing specs of gold in her eyes.
Pouring the viscous mixture onto the map, it slithered about as if a live snake, settling on a point just about 30 miles outside of Mystic Falls. Bonnie pulled a pin out of a nearby tomato-shaped cushion- the type used for sewing- and placed it on the map.
"Elena isn't very far away, that's great!" Caroline looked like she was ready to run upstairs, get in the car and go, but Stefan reminded her of the other reason they were here.
"We still need to figure out where Damon is." If he's anywhere. If Elena didn't lose control with him. Stefan couldn't imagine having such strong emotions toward a human while he was a new vampire. When he was turned, the only person he had felt attached to was Katherine. Once he finished his transition, he learned that a large amount of that attraction was just compulsion, and with Katherine supposedly locked in a tomb, he was left with nobody he even had an ounce of attraction to. But if he did, he knew for certain that that emotion would have turned into ravenous hunger. Swallowing hard, he tried to calm his nerves and hope for the best.
Before repeating the ritual for finding Damon, Bonnie placed her hands on the table and closed her eyes. The entire table seemed to become engulfed in flames. When the flames flickered out, it revealed a clean bowl and a clean map; the only thing remaining was the tiny red pin. Stefan and Caroline were left, again, confused.
"Just because Damon and Elena are so… connected…" Bonnie shuddered at the thought of just how connected they could be. "... it doesn't mean that I should ignore sanitary practices. You wouldn't leave an operating room dirty just because your last patient was someone's brother or husband." She rolled her eyes, clearly annoyed with all of the questions from Caroline and Stefan, both spoken and unspoken.
The ritual seemed to take different times for different people. To Caroline, she barely cared this time around. Not paying attention, the second half seemed to take less than a second. For Bonnie, the entire spell was so methodical, that each motion felt like an orchestrated measure in sheet music- each step taking a perfectly concise set of time. For Stefan, the ritual seemed to take hours. As hard as it was to admit, he was more worried about his brother than he had ever been worried about anyone before. The anticipation that, perhaps, the tracking mixture might hit the map and disperse, not finding a location at all, was too much to bear. That would confirm his worst fear- that Damon was dead. This time, for real.
To Stefan's relief, the mixture sprang to life as it hit the map, quickly concentrating itself around the little pin.
"Just like I thought, Damon and Elena are together. Honestly, I don't think I needed to waste my precious ingredients for this, but at least now you have peace of mind." She dusted off her hands on her pants, gathering up her materials and putting them away.
"So like, that's it?" Caroline's voice was growing more impatient. "What do we do then? Go in, guns blazing, and rip the two lovebirds apart? Ugh, nevermind, it doesn't matter. We just need to get her back. Let's go, Stef." She turned around on her heel, storming out of the basement like a woman on a mission- which she was.
Stefan looked at Bonnie, his eyes apologizing to her for Caroline's behavior. He didn't dare say the words out loud- he knew Caroline would be able to hear both of them. Their friend could be genuinely terrifying when she was so set on a goal.
In the middle of the woods, the silence was pierced by desperate cries, seemingly calling out to anything that would listen.
"Oh God, No, I'm sorry Damon. I'm so so sorry, I didn't mean to, I just… You were just… No- please. You have to wake up." Tears were streaming down Elena's face.
It had all happened so quickly. One minute, they were lounging on the damp ground in post-coital bliss, not a care in the world. The next thing Elena knew, she was on top of him- and not in a romantic way. Somehow during their escapade, Damon must have cut himself on a thorn, because a small trail of blood dibbled from his side. Vampire instincts took over Elena's body and she was on him like a fat kid to cake. Nothing about it made sense. She had been able to maintain self-control during their lovemaking, resisting the constant urge to sink her fangs into him. Even during a blowjob, her fangs stayed hidden; the pulsing blood going to his groin was resistable. There had been a terrible miscalculation in that assumption, though. The self-righteous words of Caroline Forbes echoed through her head as time seemed to stop around her.
'Vices are the best distractions. They draw your mind away from the hunger, the thirst. Any urge you give into that's not blood is a win. Alcohol, cigarettes, food, shopping, sex...'
Sex.
The second the distraction had been over, she attacked. Naively, she had thought the sex would be the most tempting time, but she had been wrong. She had done the opposite: she worked up an appetite.
Now she was kneeling above him, shaking his seemingly lifeless shoulders, completely unsure what to do. She couldn't tell how much blood she had drained, but the gash in his neck was deep, wide, and messy. Blood covered everything in her field of vision. Suddenly, she dropped his body. As she had tried to shake him awake, she was making the scene much more harrowing, spraying blood everywhere. Her skin was stained red, and she could only assume the same of her face.
Think, Elena, think. You can't let him die, you have to save him.
A nagging voice in her head chimed in, taunting her.
You can't let him die if he's already dead.
At that point, something snapped inside her brain. She knew what she had to do. After all, she wanted to be a doctor when she graduated, so she just put her mind into triage mode. If he had a pulse, it was faint- her eyes and hearing couldn't sense it well, so she resorted to standard tactics. Her hand slid down his arm to meet his wrist, pressing her cool fingers into his wrist.
It was an excruciating millisecond before she felt a feeble pulse rise and fall. She knew it wasn't smart, but she leaned down and kissed his forehead- she just couldn't help it. But she knew that he could die at any moment, he wasn't doing well. The only chance he had was vampire blood, so Elena crunched into her arm and held it to his lips. A few drops fell into his open mouth, but nothing was happening. Vampire blood didn't heal instantly, but she felt like she would have seen some change by now. Without the active force of him sucking her blood, her wound closed itself, making her bite back in and reopen the wound.
She repeated the cycle, biting her arm over and over until there was no unmarked flesh left. The bites were coming faster than she could heal as her panic grew. Squeezing her arm made blood flow more quickly, massaging his throat caused him to swallow, but his pulse barely strengthened, his gaping neck wounds wouldn't close. He was alive, but not healing.
Trapped in her bubble of panic and despair, she didn't even hear footsteps approach her from behind. She hadn't heard the car pull alongside the road moments earlier, she hadn't heard the voices of her friends as they called into the woods. All of her senses were focused on Damon.
Strong hands gripped her shoulders, breaking her focus and throwing her off of Damon. It was Stefan and Caroline.
Why are they here?
"Elena." Stefan growled. "What have you done!" Stefan tried the same thing, biting his wrist and pressing it to his brother's mouth, but the result was the same. Caroline held Elena back while Stefan tried to shake his brother to life.
"Damon? Damon, are you with me?" Stefan patted at Damon's cheek, his green eyes growing glassy with welling tears. He went through all the motions, feeling for pulse, peeling open Damon's eyes, listening to his breathing. Unsatisfied with the wound healing, which was finally showing some progress, Stefan bit back into his wrist and rubbed it onto the wound. The skin quickly began to knit together, stopping any more blood from leaving Damon's body.
"Stefan, I'm going to get her out of here. She can't be in the same car with Damon. You can take Damon back in his car; it's on the other side of the street. Are you ok to get him there on your own?"
"I'll be fine, just get her out of here. We can't afford for her to hurt him anymore right now."
But before Caroline could drag Elena away, Elena had slipped out of Caroline's hands and vanished. For a moment, Caroline considered chasing after her- she was an out of control fledgling after all- but she knew that Elena was as shocked at her own behavior as she was. She would find her soon, but right now, she was going to help Stefan save his brother.
