Part 36: Don't Hate Who You Were

Bonnie squealed in excitement when they entered a room peppered with stalagmites and stalactites. Tyler laughed, and she set to snapping pictures. The room was virtually unnavigable, because there were rocks everywhere.

After finding Emily in the massive chamber, they'd gone down the left corridor.

"Oh my God, Ty, look! These look like crystals," she whispered.

"Ever thought about being a cave explorer?" Tyler asked as he took a seat on a smooth patch of ground and leaned his back against a thick column of stalagmite.

"No, but I'd love to see more like this," she said as she explored with her hands.

"Maybe we can. The summer's pretty long."

Bonnie spun around to face him, her eyes lit up from more than just the lights. "Are you serious?"

"Why not?" he shrugged. "It'd be fun to explore more together. Maybe figure out the stories of the throwback people who walked in there before us. I think it'd be cool."

Bonnie smiled, one side of her mouth stretching wider than the other. "I think that sounds amazing," she said as she jaunted over to him.

Tyler took his arms off of his knees, a silent signal for her to sit between his legs. She took the signal and sat.

Bonnie sighed and bit her lip, now very excited for the summer. After all, tonight she was saved. "This was worth the wait," she said. "Wasn't it? I mean I know you suggested we come down here like three years ago, but."

Tyler chuckled. "It was worth the wait. I had no idea you'd be this excited about it."

"Me neither. But it's cool."

Tyler kissed her right ear. Bonnie lifted her phone and said, "Smile."

Tyler kissed her ear again, and Bonnie snapped the picture. They took more, with Tyler actually smiling this time, them kissing, her kissing his cheek, him kissing her cheek, her neck, her shoulder, and then she stood and took one of him sitting there looking too cute for his own good, and then she reclaimed her seat.

Tyler resumed kissing her ear until Bonnie turned her head around and claimed his mouth. She moaned in the kiss while he stroke her cheek with his knuckles, and there, they made out, surrounded by history.

They tried to set some music to their makeout session, but neither phone had any reception, so they did without. Afterwards, they sat in comfortable silence.

"It's hard to imagine there's a bustling town up there," Bonnie commented as she gazed at the ceiling.

"An infected town," Tyler said.

"The leftover Mikaelsons," she guessed.

"Yeah. We killed Klaus. We'll kill them, too."

"I'm gonna kill Silas before He can bring Klaus back, I promise you that," she said.

"I'm not worried about that. Though I guess Caroline should be. Or not."

"What she did...it doesn't make any sense to me. I know people change, but why like that?"

"I'm not gonna try to figure it out," Tyler said.

"Are you sure?" she asked curiously. "When I realized what was happening between Elena and Damon way back then, when I realized that that had to mean that my best friend had something in her that I couldn't identify with at all, it messed me up. It hurt. I denied it. And I didn't really accept it until my mom was killed. That's when I had to accept it. Her still sticking with Damon after that? There was no more point in denying. So if you're not okay, it's okay. I get it."

Tyler rested his chin on her shoulder and closed his eyes. "I don't get it," he admitted.

He felt her nod knowingly. "I'm not in denial, I'm just….I'm very, very surprised. I was in denial. I've been in denial since Chris died. I've been fighting the thought that she doesn't care about me, that what I was going through didn't matter to her anymore, that it was an inconvenience. I think I detached from her when she actually came to me during the Festival, trailing behind Stefan, and told me it would be best to put off killing Klaus until we found the cure.

I've been fighting feeling like I'm a burden to her. It just seemed like I was always causing her pain, like I was this thing, and I couldn't function correctly. I wanted to be wrong; I wanted it all to be in my head, because….I've been here before. My dad. Klaus. Those aren't the guys you wanna be lumped in with, you know?"

Bonnie grabbed the hand that was resting on his right knee and started to caress it, wanting to comfort him.

"Only three people have made me feel like there was something fundamentally wrong with me: my dad, Klaus, and now Caroline. I couldn't be what my dad wanted and for the longest time while he was alive I wondered why. Why couldn't I just do it? Why couldn't I just be this tough hardass? It seemed to come so easy for him. And then with Klaus,….I fell for his schtick. I thought he cared. And when I found out how much he didn't….holy crap. He had this way of looking right through me and being disgusted by everything I was at the same time. I was his first successful Hybrid, but I can't tell you how many times he looked at me like I was a complete failure. And when he started using the sire bond to make me do things, like setting Jeremy up to get hit by that car and biting Caroline, he'd look at me like, well what did you expect from me?"

He chuckled then, and the disgust in it made Bonnie feel uneasy. She felt him shake his head.

"Klaus' selfishness surprised me for way too long. I should've caught on much sooner. It's like my dad, you know? I know you know he used to hit me."

Bonnie swallowed. "Matt used to defend you when I'd badmouth you because you were bullying or being mean to someone. He never said anything, but he came close enough times that I figured out that something was wrong at home."

"He slapped me. First time was when I was like twelve. And every time after that, I was always surprised. Always. It made no sense."

"Tyler, there's no reason why you should expect your dad to hit you."

"But he did," he insisted. "So some part of me should've been ready for it. At least once. But I never was, and every time his hand connected my vision shook. One time he did it in public at the Grille. I was so freaking embarrassed."

Bonnie grabbed his other hand and wrapped his arms around her. She was hugging him more than he was hugging her, but that was fine.

"While I was away, before I met Hayley, there was this one transition that wrecked me. It was like it was the first time I was shifting. It took forever and at one point I was on the floor crying, in pain, and this part of my mind was like: no one cares that you're here. No one's….thinking about the fact that you're here. This doesn't matter to anyone but you. And then I thought of my dad and how he probably would've breezed through the transition. This was what he'd been preparing me for, and I could never live up to his expectations, and now here I was: failing. Unable to complete a single transition. I was scared…."

He rolled his eyes and felt a tear fall. "I'll never be that person again."

"Sounds like you hate that person," Bonnie said, her own green eyes shining with unshed tears.

"There's not exactly much to admire there."

Bonnie unwrapped his arms and turned her body sideways so that she could see him. "Don't hate him. Don't be disgusted, don't….don't look down on him. Otherwise, you're right: no one will have cared about what he was going through. You can't be one of the people who lets him go, Ty. You can't be one of the disappointments, no matter how easy it is for you to transition now."

Tyler wiped his eyes and sniffed.

"Do you know why I always got mad when you'd talk down to me about saying yes to every magical request and helping everyone who asked? It's because….that girl...didn't know any better. She was trying to figure it out. Nothing was gonna rescue her, and it was impossible to fight anymore; Grams was dead, and no matter how many times she said it wasn't my fight, no matter that my mom said I should just let the coffin stay sealed,…..I didn't know who to be if I wasn't doing what I was doing. I knew how to exist….like that. It's the only way that I knew. At a certain point, it became familiar. The alternative? I didn't know what it was. The alternative was an idea that no one could stick around long enough to help me follow through on. Grams was dead. Jeremy and I were broken up, and he wasn't a constant. Mom was gone. Dad was dealing with his own pain. Everyone had an idea about how I could be doing better, but they had more important things to follow through on.

Tyler, I love you, but I'm not that far away from being that girl. Who knows, if something happened to you or mom, dad and Lucy, I could easily fall back into that pattern. I can't look down on the fact that I was Yes Girl. It hurt so much, and I was so alone. But if I turn my nose up, then that means….that means that that hurt didn't matter. And that's the saddest thing to me.

You can't hate who you were. You can't hate yourself for flinching away from your transitions. Transitioning is painful, right? You can't hate yourself for being surprised every time your dad hit you or for having hope in Klaus. All of that is okay. It wasn't your fault. They failed you. Caroline failed."

Tyler sniffed and wiped his eyes. More tears came, so he kept his fingers planted against his eyes. "I just wanted her to be different. People can break up, that's fine, but feeling like she didn't care," he said, his voice trembling badly, his throat closing up, "I couldn't do strike three. But I did. And….and I can't help but wonder what it is about me-"

"Mmm-mmm, no," Bonnie said, shaking her head, stopping him before he could go down that road.

But down that road he went, his voice hitching on every other word. "She told me she slept with him, and even though I wasn't completely thinking it in that moment, I still wondered what it is about me that makes it so easy for people to stop caring."

He broke down, and Bonnie turned around completely. She stretched her legs over his and scooted forward. She pulled him in and hugged him close, and he held on to her and cried into her neck.

"It's not you," she insisted, her voice distorted by her tears. "Klaus was a monster. Your dad had issues. Caroline is disturbed."

"I know; I know. I know they all suck," he struggled around his sobs.

"You have two people who support you so much that they came back to fight for you despite their reservations. That's a lot, Ty. It's a lot. It's you. That's what you inspire. You wanna know what it is about you? Look at the fact that Kim and Adrian came back and now refuse to leave. That's the only answer to that question. The only one. What is it about you that inspired eleven people, strangers, to follow you? What is it about you that made Chris trust and believe in you so much that he agreed to help strangers. You inspire people. They see how hard you fight: all those times you went off by yourself to transition to try and get away from Klaus? They saw your fight; they saw your spirit. And they knew you'd fight for them just like that."

"I couldn't break up with her because I couldn't bring myself to say you don't care about me anymore," he revealed, sniffing, his voice a little more even. "Not after how we started. Not after she cared so much in the beginning. I mean she's Caroline. If she can care about someone like Stefan, then she must care about me, right?"

"Not in the way you need. Not in the way you deserve," Bonnie said.

"That's what I didn't want to deal with at first," he said, lifting his head from her neck. She wiped his eyes with the back of her hands as he spoke. "I was giving her a chance. I was giving myself a chance. You and Jeremy are broken up, have been broken up for a while, but he's still trying to help you. He'd never sell you out to Silas."

"No, he wouldn't," Bonnie said.

"He still has your back. He's annoying right now, but he still has your back. You told him about us in front of everyone, and he still called to find out how he could help you afterward. That boat has sailed for me and Caroline. It doesn't hurt much. It's just sad and unbelievable. We went downhill so weirdly and so completely."

"She did," Bonnie said. "You got stronger."

Tyler smiled and nodded. "Kim and Adrian are cool. And you're cool. And my mom and I are supposed to be starting this new honesty chapter, though she's sucking at it so far," he said, rolling his eyes.

Bonnie smiled. "I love you," she said.

"I love you, too."

"I admire you, and I'm proud of you. I wasn't kidding earlier: you're my hero."

Touched and speechless, Tyler hugged her again. "Sorry I drenched your neck," he said.

Bonnie smiled. "It's okay," she promised, rubbing his back. "It's okay."

A/N: Short but emotional! I didn't want anything to distract from Ty and Bon's emotional bonding. I've been looking forward to posting this chapter ever since someone asked why Tyler didn't just break up with Caro in one of the earlier, earlier chapters! The next chapter is like 23 pages long :). Put your guess in for who's waiting on Bon's porch when Tonnie gets home! It aint gonna be a nice visit.