Author's Note: It took me a while to realise that everyone was freaking out in the reviews because the story was marked as complete. This story is not completed! Still a couple chapters left and you'll know it's ended because it will tie into the start/"real time". I must have accidentally marked it as complete when I was doing the same for some other stories of mine. Sorry for the panic! It is almost done anyway & since I'm going full-steam-ahead to finish up my shorter fan-fiction stories, you can send in requests on what story you'd like to see completed next.

In Memorian

The Memoria spell was Bonnie's only chance.

First, the three Bennetts had to leave the pocket world, because the spell was useless there. A sleeping spell kept Bonnie docile in her bed while they slowly gathered the ingredients in Sheila's house.

The house was exactly as it was a few months ago – in real time, not a moment had passed between when they left it and now.

They did the first part of the spell and then, they waited.

That was the second thing. There was only so much magic could do. Bonnie had to heal. Emotionally and physically, her mind and soul were a mess.

Her mother and grandmother were with her every step of the way during those horrible two months. Two months of nightmares, of not eating, of screaming in her sleep, then sobbing during the day.

The time she managed to get away from them, and stood at the edge of the roof, looking down, until Sheila had found her and, trembling through it all, used magic to pull her back.

But finally the two months were gone, and they completed the Memoria spell. It was complicated, delicate, dangerous magic and they ran the risk of losing Bonnie completely if they made even the slightest mistake, if they overestimated how ready she was to withstand it.

But they had to do it. If either her grandmother or her mother had had any doubts, the last two months dispelled them. There was absolutely no way this child could survive with the memories of what had happened to her the past year – even though it was really just a few months in the real world – since Kai Parker had come into her life, and infested it with his poison.

The spell was Bonnie's only hope.

Bonnie was whistling in the kitchen when Sheila came downstairs the next morning.

Breakfast was already made – all of Sheila's favorites – and the girl was all smiles. "Morning, Grams," she said with the shy, pleased smile of someone who knew she'd been exceptionally good and was waiting to be praised.

"Bonnie," Sheila whispered, clutching at her chest.

The girl blinked. "Are you OK, Grams?"

Sheila shook her head, mutely and she stretched out her arms.

Bonnie went into them at once, her face knotted with concern when she pulled back. "Grams?"

Sheila blinked back tears. "I'm fine," she said finally. "I'm just… happy to see you again."

The concern fled, leaving wry humor. "You make it sound like if you didn't see me last night," she quipped.

The shining simple trust in her eyes made Sheila quiver. It had been ages since she had seen such a look on Bonnie's face.

Sheila looked at the spread on the table to distract herself. "What's the occasion?"

"It's the last week of summer," Bonnie said, cheerfully. "Can you believe it? I have no idea what I've done with the time. Ooops, the muffins!" She pulled back to rush to the oven.

Sheila sank into the chair and clasped her hands together.

It had worked. Bonnie was back. Bonnie was fine.

Joshua Parker would keep the Gemini's end of the bargain, Sheila would see to that. Bonnie would leave the rest of her life and never know what happened this summer. She'd be safe and happy, and at peace.

A single, simple memory…

A knife, buried in the stump of a tree, laced with a very, special spell…

Sheila shook her head, shied away from the thoughts that had been haunting her these past two months, even as she shied away from the memory of two pairs of eyes – brown and slate-blue – staring up at her with innocence.

Sheila watched Bonnie gasp over her slightly burnt muffins, and flit around the kitchen looking for something to salvage them.

She had got her grand-daughter back. No price had been too high for that. Not even Bonnie's own children.

Kai never thought he would miss 1994. But after the devil knew how long he had been in this box, he now did. There were times where he didn't bother to open his eyes, because there was nothing to see. Didn't bother to get up from the pad he slept on, because there was nowhere to go.

And the hunger. He was never hungry – and yet, he was always hungry. Not because he was starving but because he missed the taste of food, and a part of him that seemed to sink deeper and deeper every day, longed for the taste of Bonnie.

Sometimes, he wondered if they had already sent him back and if he was dead. There was no Other Side anymore. Was he in Hell?

Sometimes he wondered if he had always been in this box, always alive, but never living. Perhaps his family was a dream of his? Jo, his mother, his father, his six other siblings… Did he dream them? Or where they real?

Bonnie couldn't have been real, could she? How could his bleak, empty existence have ever held such light?

And then one day, there was a change. He turned his head – whether he was asleep or he was awake, he didn't know, it made no difference – and he looked towards the light.

A familiar looking man was walking towards him, a ball of light in his palm. Kai couldn't look at the light for too long, his eyes were already tearing. So he stared up into his father's face.

Joshua Parker crouched so he was at a level height with his son.

"You might like to know that we found Jo. She was half-way around the world by the time we caught up with her. We fixed her memories, too. As far as she knows, you never found her, never tried to merge with her."

Jo. Bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, his enemy from the womb. So she was real?

"I just have one question, Malachai. Jo had been back for days, travelling across the States, before we found you. You could have gone for her, forced her to do the merge and won. What made you wait?"

Kai's mind grappled with the question – there were so many things in it that he no longer understood. It was as if his father was speaking another language.

"The Traveller's spell may not have been able to sustain such a drastic break in the timeline… or it may have, who knows? It's not like you to fear a little risk to get what you want?"

His father's words barely made sense. Had Kai really found Jo? Had he really been a hair's breath from merging with her, claiming the coven, and the authority to keep Bonnie and his children safe?

Had he really stood at the cross-roads between love and power, and taken the wrong turn?

Kai opened his mouth to speak. He had to swallow several times and still his words just came out in a croak.

His father flickered his other hand, and suddenly his throat was clear.

"I hadn't… decided… yet…to… merge…"

"You hadn't decided?" Joshua asked, incredulously. "I was positive you had been waiting impatiently, only the risk of losing your magic stopping you from going after her and forcing the merge? What could possibly have made you not-" His words cut off abruptly.

Even with his eyes closed, Kai could feel the weight of his father's stare on his face.

"I've given up trying to understand you, Malachai."

"Did you ever try?" Kai wondered aloud, almost to himself. It was a pointless question, and both of them knew it.

"What are you going to do with me?"

Abby's words were the one thing he never forgot, but a part of him was still hopeful…

"We are sending you back."

And the light in his father's hand start swelling, growing larger and larger until Kai had no way to avoid it – it pierced through his tightly shut lids and filled his shut eyes with brightness.

"Goodbye, Malachai."

The voice was distant, disembodied.

He was floating in the sphere of light. Alone. Where his father was, he didn't know nor did he care. Maybe Joshua had forgotten the other part of Abby's revenge… His memories, he still had them. He could still take them, use them to find Bonnie, to make her remember…

Then pain like a hammer smashed into the head and he screamed with agony. Suddenly the light was no longer white but red, the color of blood. He was swimming in blood, and dark shadows that slipped out of the wound in his skull and floated out of his reach.

In the depths of one, he saw an image of Bonnie's smile the day he taught her to make fire. In another, he saw the look on her face when he licked jam off her fingers.

His memories.

"No!" he shouted – thought – and reached for it, and another blow rammed into his skull and he screamed again. The black shadows were slipping out faster now and when he caught them, they clung to his fingers like slime and slipped away.

Soon the light wasn't red again, but black once more, and he was shouting and screaming as the agony in his brain and the agony of his loss took turns in driving him mad.

Kai was standing at the beginning of a tunnel. It was a clear day with a bright purple sun in a yellow sky, and the blue leaves were falling up into the green clouds. The tunnel was suffused with light of a color he didn't have a name for, and it seemed to beckon him.

He looked back at the quiet, peaceful glade he was leaving. He had left something behind, he felt – knew instinctively. Something important. Something… precious…

For a moment, he hesitated, torn between the overwhelming urge to answer the tunnel's call and step into it – and the equally strong one to go back and find what he had lost.

But the more he tried to remember, the more he seemed to forget, and the nearer he drifted to the kaleidoscope opening. Soon he was a foot away from the tunnel and was berating himself for stalling.

Possessions, he decided. They were always such a nuisance because people tended to get attached to them. In the end, they were just things. Things got lost. They got stolen. They got destroyed.

How stupid.

He turned his back on the glade, and didn't notice that the green clouds were now pouring out a purple rain, almost as if they were weeping, as he stepped into the tunnel.

a/n: Reviews keep me motivated and happy so please send some. Thanks! Don't forget to also send in requests as to which of my un-completed stories you'd like me to finish next. (Not Long Shadows, though. Everything else.)