A/N: It hasn't been like almost a year since I updated this. Not at all. You're imagining things. And if it was, once a year seems like a perfectly normal posting schedule.

(In all seriousness, thank you guys very much for your patience and continued amazingness. Special shoutout to RunChildRunAnd-Don't-Look-Back, SilverTippedWings, Make A Shadow and Emilongbottom99 for recently making me almost cry at my actual job when I checked my email and saw your very sweet comments.)

XXX

The next thing to meet Kai's eyes was a poster for spaying and neutering pets. The poster read: "It's Hip to Snip!" It featured a cartoon dog giving a thumbs-up.

Kai wondered if this time he really was in hell. If so, hell was much more avant garde than he'd imagined. He was in a small room with raised counters, kind of like a doctor's office. It smelled like a doctor's office. The walls were pastel purple and lined with a paw print pattern. Pale light fell on him in stripes from the blinds over the windows. The air smelled of antiseptic.

Once he had looked around, once he heard the noise of passing cars outside, saw Bonnie's small form curled up across the room from him, and noticed that he had been sleeping on top of a dog bed, it was clear that this wasn't hell. Worse. This was real life.

Everything came flooding back to him, and the force of his memory hit him like a punch to the chest. The cool shard of glass in his palm, his shaking hands, the pitiful sobs sticking in his throat, choking him. He'd failed. When it mattered most. He couldn't do it. He was pathetic.

It had only been what he'd been thinking about and planning and basing his existence on for the past twenty years. No big deal.

He lay back down on the dog bed, wishing he hadn't woken up at all. His head hurt. He just hurt, in general. He wished the whole world would just crumple into a ball, fade away like the prison world had, and leave him alone.

But just as he'd set his head back down, ready to be dead to the world, he heard the click of a door opening and saw Jo make her way inside. She was wearing pale blue scrubs, her dark hair up in a ponytail. She carried a bag bulging with what looked like medical supplies. Kai wondered vaguely why she was dressed that way, and where they were, and why Jo had taken them somewhere at all, but he couldn't seem to find the energy to ask. He lay there, pretending to be asleep.

Jo moved first to Bonnie, and woke her with a gentle shake of her shoulder.

"Jo…?" Kai heard Bonnie murmur. "What is…" a pause, and then, "Where are we?"

"Vet's office," Jo said, with a soft, apologetic laugh. "Not ideal, but it's not someplace the Gemini would think to look right away. And it's closed on weekends."

"But you—" Kai heard the rustle of blankets as Bonnie shot up to a seated position. "Where's Kai?" She apparently saw him lying down across the room, because he heard her make a soft "oh" and settle back against the wall.

"Is he okay?" Bonnie asked.

"As far as I know," said Jo. "I'll need to check you both over, but I think it's just minor cuts and bruises for the most part."

"Were you gonna wake him up?"

Jo sighed. "I hadn't quite decided yet. Do you mind…?"

Bonnie didn't say anything, and there was more shuffling of blankets. He thought maybe she had stood up now.

He kept wondering when Bonnie was going to ask the vital question: What did Jo think she was doing? What was her plan? And even if she just wanted him to stay alive to suffer more, why the fuck would she bother?

He heard more shuffling and then, his stomach sinking, Kai felt Bonnie's hand against his arm. He reluctantly opened his eyes again.

"Hey," she said softly as he pretended to wake. Her green eyes were big and full of concern. And pity.

Pity. Ugh, god. He wanted to rip his own head off.

"Hey, Bon," he said. Half-heartedly, he pretended to be surprised by Jo and their surroundings. "What's going on?"

"I've come to your rescue," said Jo. Her tone had chilled noticeably from when she'd been talking to Bonnie. She stood upright again and crossed to one of the counters where she rifled through her bag.

"Jesus christ," said Kai. His head slipped back down against the dog bed, his arm falling out of Bonnie's reach. "Why?"

Jo gave him a brief, penetrating glare, but didn't answer. She returned to her rifling.

"Won't Joshua be able to find us?" Bonnie asked.

"Not for a while. He's never been brilliant at locator spells, and I threw up a decent block that should slow him down."

"What about Luke and Liv?" said Bonnie.

Jo sighed. "I don't know. God, who knows what they'll be thinking? I stunned them just after I stunned you, so they're probably just waking up now."

Bonnie was about to ask another question, but Kai cut in, loudly and abruptly, "I'm sorry, I just don't get what you're trying to do, making nice with me and Bonnie. I still fucking hate you all. I don't want your help."

Finally, he sat up all the way, looking Jo savagely in the eyes from over the countertop. "And I know you hate me. Come on. What is this really about?"

"Kai—" she said sharply, and then pulled back, resuming her calm tone. It was as if she'd known he might say something like this, and had planned it in advance. "I don't owe you an explanation for what I might or might not do. If you have any other options, by all means, there's the door."

Kai scowled, slumping back down on his dog bed.

"That's what I thought," she said. She returned to her bag, pulling items out in handfuls and piling them on the table: gauze, syringes, antibacterial wipes.

"I figured you'd want more than heartworm pills to treat those cuts," she said to Bonnie.

"Thank you," Kai heard Bonnie say. "Really. For everything." The warmth in her voice made him feel just a little bit queasy.

"Don't thank me just yet," said Jo. "I'm much rustier at magic than Joshua is."

"We'll help you," said Bonnie. Kai gave a kind of disgusted scoff, but Bonnie pretended not to hear. "It's the least we can do."

"You're sweet. Much too sweet to be involved in this bullshit. But thanks." Jo finally emptied her bag over the table, spilling out more bandages.

"Alright, well, I'm starving. And I'm guessing you both are, too. I'll leave you to bandage up while I get something to eat. Are you…?"

She trailed off, but Kai knew what she meant. Are you going to be okay with him around?

"Of course," said Bonnie. There was a pause, and then Kai heard the jingle of keys.

"Okay," said Jo, still sounding slightly doubtful. "Be back soon."

Kai heard the tap of shoes on the tile, the door closing, and then nothing.

Bonnie hesitated. Kai was being very quiet. That never boded well. She had half of an urge to comfort him, but that seemed a little ridiculous to her. For failing to kill? What a tragedy.

Slowly, she made her way back behind the counter where Kai lay. He was curled up tight, his legs against his chest. His eyes were closed tightly as if he were trying to block out as much light as possible.

"Kai?" she said tentatively. He didn't move, so she said again, "Kai."

"What?" He said. He opened his eyes, and Bonnie could see that they were rimmed with red, his face tight and pained. Was he crying?

"Are you okay?" Bonnie asked.

"Peachy," he said in a throaty voice. "How about you, Bon?"

In spite of herself, she moved closer. "Kai…" she said. She knelt down, her hand against his arm.

"Don't," he said, twitching his body away.

"Don't what?"

"Don't feel sorry for me," he said desperately. "It makes me feel like I'm in an after-school special. Kai's Just Different, kids."

"I don't feel sorry for you, Kai," she said, only semi-convincingly. "I just—"

"Well, you should," he spat. His face was twisted, his eyes open wide, trying hard not to let any more tears escape. But then he slumped back down again onto the bed. It smelled like musty fur. "God, is this what having emotions is like? It's bullshit. It makes no sense. Any of it."

Bonnie just sat there, considering. "No," she said finally. "It doesn't."

"How do you deal with it?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Practice?"

Kai looked at her critically, as if he didn't quite believe her.

"I don't want to fucking practice this," he said.

"Look, Kai, I don't know exactly what's happening to you, or why you couldn't...you couldn't do it. But maybe—-"

He cut her off, as he suddenly thought of something. "Bon...Bon, wait. You could do it!"

"Do what?"

"What the fuck do you think? You could kill them! It'd be such a huge favor, Bonnie. You gave me your blessing to do what I needed to do, right, Bon? But I just...can't. You could!"

Bonnie rolled her eyes. "Kai…"

"No, listen to me!" He gripped her arm tightly, his skin feverish. "You've got amazing magic, Bon. Maybe this was what was supposed to happen, you know? Fate! Like Sleepless in Seattle!"

She snorted. "Since when do you believe in fate?"

"Since right now, when I'm desperate, Bon." He looked pleadingly into her eyes. "Come on. Magic charm?"

Bonnie sighed, ran her fingers distractedly across his forearm. "Kai, you should know better than to ask that. You know I never wanted your family hurt."

"But you said—"

"I was bluffing!" She said loudly, impatiently. "I was betting that when it came down to it, you wouldn't be able to kill your family."

Kai stared at her in disbelief.

"And I wanted you to realize that. I'm sorry."

A hand felt like it was twisting Kai's insides. He couldn't remember feeling this many things, ever, and none of them pleasant. He didn't understand how people didn't explode from it all.

"You knew this was gonna happen?" he asked.

"I hoped…" Bonnie said. "I mean...I thought. I would have stepped in, if it seemed like..." She trailed off.

"You were never on my team, then," he said sourly.

"Oh, for fuck's sake, Kai. I'm on your team, okay?" She got to her feet, propelled by exasperation. "But I'm also on the...the practicality team. The team that doesn't think mass murder is the solution to everything."

"I thought you'd changed," said Kai.

"Not that much, you idiot," she said, raking a hand through her hair. She let out a breath, and spoke in a gentler voice. "Kai...would it really have made things better? Honestly. Would you have been happier if you'd killed them?"

"Yes!" he said, shooting up to a seated position. "Obviously."

"Then why did you stop?"

"I DON'T KNOW!" Kai yelled. The small room rang with the silence that followed his shout, and he said again, in a smaller, choked voice, "I don't…"

His body seemed to crumple back in on itself as he lay down on the floor. Bonnie watched him, feeling her heart wrench. God damn it.

"Just leave me alone," he said into the dog bed.

She paused, wrestling against her better judgement, not to mention what Kai himself referred to as her martyr complex. Try as she might, she couldn't seem to rid herself of that pull of selflessness now and again. Sighing, she said, "Nope. Sorry."

He opened his tired eyes to look at her. "Huh?"

"Not gonna leave you alone to mope. You need to take a shower, for one thing."

"Bonnie—"

"And get bandaged. You're an infection waiting to happen."

"Fuck off."

This time she kicked him, sharply in the shin. "Get up."

"Ow! Jesus, Bon."

"I'll motus you if I have to," she said.

"This is a vet's office! They don't have showers!"

"They have a handheld thing for dog grooming," said Bonnie. She tilted her head towards the other end of the room, which featured a large window looking onto a room filled with high metal basins, hairdryers, and handheld shower heads.

"Kinky, Bon," he said half-heartedly.

But he was sounding more like himself already.

XXX

Kai wasn't normally the reflective type. Scheming, yes. Fantasizing, yes. But sitting back and thinking about the trajectory of his life? Not so much. What was the point?

But still, Kai found himself thinking. He'd thought, a few hours ago, that failing in his twenty-year-long (no, longer) purpose, his father looking on, had been the low point of a life that already had several significant valleys.

But as he sat, shivering, in a set of flowery nurse's scrubs after having been sprayed with lukewarm water by his nemesis/lover/whatever in a room that smelled like wet dog, he knew. This was it. This was rock. Fucking. Bottom.

But Jo had brought breakfast burritos, so that was something.

He devoured his nearly whole, gazing around at the boxes of syringes on the wall while Bonnie and Jo talked. We wondered whether he could slit his own throat with a syringe. Might not be big enough, sharp enough. It'd be messy, probably. That was something he'd never tried in 1994.

Bonnie and his sister were devising a strategy to stay hidden from Joshua for as long as possible. It involved layers of magic, complicated spells. Kai wasn't really listening until he heard his name.

"—until I run some tests and figure out what's happening with Kai."

"What do you mean?" Bonnie asked, darting her eyes towards him, sat on the dog bed once again. "Specifically?"

There's so much wrong with him, he could almost hear her saying. Aw, Bon.

"Well, his magical ability, for one," said Jo. "Be good to know if that's gonna be a permanent addition or not."

"Oh, sound less excited, sis," Kai said dryly. "And why are you the one running tests?"

Jo's brow crinkled for a moment, confused. "Well...I'm a doctor."

"You are?" he said. It seemed so official for his sister. But she had always been so annoyingly concerned with other people, so protective. Maybe it did make sense. "Huh."

"Anyway," Jo said, waving away Kai's interruption, "We don't exactly have a full lab in a vet clinic, but I should be able to rule a few things out."

"Like what?" Kai asked loudly, annoyed by the way she kept turning back to Bonnie, talking like he wasn't there.

Jo let out a sharp huff of breath. "Well, have you tried doing any magic since…"

"No," he said.

"Maybe you should." Kai cocked his head, and Jo quickly added, "Something small. Non-dramatic."

He could try to light himself on fire. A step up from candles.

"Here," Bonnie was saying. She rustled through Jo's bag, pulling out a crumpled receipt. "Levitate this." She let it fall from her fingers to the tiled floor below.

Kai sighed. He really wasn't feeling like magic right now. Never something he thought he'd be feeling. But magic had always been power to him. Something to be taken, gorge himself on, lord over other people, hate them when they had it and he didn't. And then suddenly when it was his own, at last, it had failed him. Made him weak. Or maybe he had made it weak. Either possibility sucked.

He stared intently at the crumpled piece of paper and soon it began to twitch until it rose a few inches off the ground, rolling over and over as if lost in space.

"Well, that's that, then," said Jo. She didn't sound pleased.

Kai let it fall back to the ground. He didn't feel particularly pleased, either.

XXX

The day seemed to drag on forever. Kai wished it were night so he could go back to sleep without interruption. But instead Jo dragged him into the exam room next door while Bonnie looked through some old spellbooks.

"You need to be checked out. You could have internal injuries…" She seemed to say this all while sighing in a world-weary kind of way. Kai didn't get what she had to be so upset about. This whole plan had been her idea. And it was going to fail. He didn't really want to say this to Bonnie, who seemed to actually buy it, but it wouldn't work. Joshua would find them and barbeque them. Jo was only prolonging the inevitable.

"So sweet, Jo," he said as he hopped up on the metal countertop. "But I'm good. A little internal injury builds character. Isn't that what Dad used to say?"

"You still love to talk," she observed.

"And you still love to try to save people," Kai answered, with a grimace. "So, fine. Go ahead, do what you've gotta do."

He held out his arms in a supplicating pose. Jo pointedly ignored him, and took down a stethoscope hanging on the wall. "Arms down," she said. She moved behind him, placing the cold metal under his shirt against his back. He flinched a little at the surprise of it.

"Don't be a baby," she said mildly. "Deep breath."

He rolled his eyes, complied.

"One more time. In, out," she said. Kai could tell she'd cultivated a soothing doctor voice, probably for unpleasant patients just like him.

"Oh, is that how you breathe?" he said sarcastically, before doing as she asked. She removed the stethoscope, coming back around to face him.

"No fluid in the lungs. That's good, anyway."

"Yaaaaay," said Kai dully.

"I should check for broken bones, too…"

"I don't have any broken bones," said Kai.

"I'm checking anyway," said Jo. She took his arm, squeezing his wrist hard. "Does it hurt when I do this?"

"No."

She moved to his forearm. "This?"

"No."

She squeezed his shoulder. "How about here?"

"N—aghh," he said.

"Something hurt?" Jo said innocently.

"No, I just feel like you're gonna strangle me to death with your hulk hands," said Kai.

Jo lifted up his flowery sleeve to see a three-inch long cut on his shoulder. "Thought so. That needs to be disinfected."

She took out cotton balls and alcohol from her bag while Kai glared at her.

"You must be enjoying this," he said bitterly.

"Not particularly," she said. She rolled up his sleeve and started dabbing alcohol on his cut, which burned a lot.

"Ow. No, I mean, seeing me now. All pathetic. You won. Good for you."

"That's not how I feel, Kai, and you know it." She pressed a little too hard on the cotton ball, causing streams of alcohol to run down his arm.

"Ow, ow, stop," Kai said. "I'm serious. You've actually been living your life for the past twenty years. I've been festering in 1994, and when I finally get out, I—" He stopped short, not wanting to say it out loud again. Instead, he said, "Why did you save me?"

Jo's eyes softened for a moment, but then she turned them down again, opening up an ace bandage. "First," she said, "You need to stop feeling sorry for yourself. It's obnoxious. And second—" she started wrapping the bandage unnecessarily tight around his shoulder until he winced again.

"Second," she said, softening. "Why do you think, you idiot? You're my family, whether I like it or not. I didn't want to see you killed. I didn't want to see Bonnie hurt, not with how much she clearly means to you. I loved you once."

Kai didn't respond, only looked grudgingly down at the floor.

"...And it kinda seemed like maybe all those years had changed you, after all."

"They didn't," he said stubbornly.

"Well, something did," said Jo. More gently this time, she took Kai's other arm and started examining it for injuries.

They were silent for a while, except for the occasional "does that hurt?" Jo was somewhat surprised to find that she wasn't as afraid of him as she thought she might be all these years. It was hard to be afraid of someone so miserable.

"Why don't you just use magic for this stuff?" Kai asked quietly, after Jo had found another scrape on the side of his neck and was disinfecting that, too.

"I don't know," Jo said. "Fell out of habit, I guess. I haven't used it for so long. I haven't wanted to."

Against his will, Kai felt something inside him almost cringe at her words. He felt bad. Rotten inside. It was his fault Jo hadn't used magic all these years. She used to run around the house levitating objects as she went, giggling like a joyful little maniac. He'd taken that away.

"So, tell me about Bonnie," Jo said suddenly. "How did you two...meet?"

"She got herself a VIP ticket to my prison world. She was being noble, sacrificing herself for her friends. Classic."

"She sounds sweet," Jo said.

"Doesn't she just?" he replied dryly.

"I still don't understand what she's doing with you," said Jo as she pulled away to grab another bandage.

Kai didn't answer. His understanding of it seemed like too much, too important to say to her.

"Do I want to know what happened in that prison world?"

"Probably not," said Kai. "But I'll summarize anyway. Love story for the ages. She got trapped. I magicked my way inside her head and tortured her. She tortured me back. We got out. Now here we are."

"Inside her head?" said Jo. She smoothed the bandage over his skin and stood back, analyzing her work. "Jesus, Kai."

"Yup. Told you I didn't change," he said, with a grim smile.

Jo leaned against the countertop, apparently finished with poking and prodding him. She pushed the heels of her hands into her eyes, sighing. "I hope you at least apologized for that."

"No. But she got me back more than enough times. Pretty sure my brain's permanently broken from it." He tapped the side of his skull. "Fair's fair. Really brought us together."

Jo paused, her eyes still hidden from view. "Yeah," she said slowly. "Together."

She brought her hands down very suddenly. "What spell did you use for that? Getting inside her head?"

"Uh, the mind link, you know, for therapy?The ingresses sum sanguis one. Though since I'm a freak of nature it—"

"Oh my god," she said. She turned and sat down next to him on the countertop, her eyes wide. "Oh my god, Kai, I can't believe how stupid you are."

"What?" he asked.

"Kai, mind link. What do you think that does?"

"Duh, Jo, I get it, but—"

"Did you ever undo it? The spell?"

He stared at her. He had a sick feeling, like he'd missed a step going down a flight of stairs. "No..." he said slowly.

"You never wanted to hear about the side effects, did you?" Jo said, shaking her head. "Never occurred to you why you've been feeling strange? Why you've got magic now? And Bonnie, she must—" she stopped. "I don't even know."

"God, Josette, just spit it out."

"Mind link. That spell blurs the lines between things. Between people. You dumbass. Where did you think this new magic came from? Your newfound empathy? It's her."

Kai's brain seemed to lag and then speed up all at once, flipping through piles of memories. Bonnie's voice in his head while Damon had him tied and bleeding. That surge of power in the diner, the one that he hadn't figured out how to write off, and then the sickness afterwards at the sight of all that blood. That feeling of strange familiarity when Bonnie had taught him that Bennett spell. Bonnie's new, twisted smile, so much like his own...

She'd infected him. He'd infected her. He didn't know which was worse.

He felt like he might throw up.

"You okay?" Jo asked him.

"I think I ate that burrito too fast," he said.

XXX

The light streaming into the Parker's house was harsh, a violent orange with the setting afternoon sun. Little sparks of it glinted off of the pieces of glass on the lawn outside, freckling Joshua Parker's face.

He sat at the kitchen table with a needle and thread. Liv and Luke sat opposite, trying not to watch as the needle wove in and out of his arm. They hadn't liked watching before, either, as they all awoke on the front yard. When Joshua had wrenched a piece of glass the size and shape of a paring knife out of his arm and let out a snarling yell like a tiger caught in a trap. But he'd asked them to stay, which was the same as ordering them.

"I can get something to numb—" Liv started to say.

"No," Joshua cut her off. "No." He gritted his teeth as he pushed the needle back into his skin.

A few more moments of tense silence passed before Luke spoke.

"You haven't heard anything from Jo?"

Joshua's hand clenched. "Don't say that name. Either of their—" He set the needle down on the table with a loud smack that jolted both of the twins on the other side. He didn't seem to notice, and continued to speak as if to himself.

"It would have been better if their mother had miscarried. Her womb turned rotten the moment they both wormed their way inside."

Neither Liv nor Luke wanted to say anything. They'd both learned over the years that being on Joshua's good side was a rare and tenuous state, an eye in the storm. They'd learned to be smart. To chase the storm or to run away, because it was pointless to fight it.

"We need to find them. Put an end to this." Joshua said. "You will both begin locator spells immediately. As many times as it takes to find them."

Luke swallowed. "What are you going to do?"

Joshua picked up his needle again, watched as it glinted in the light. "I am not patient by nature. You know this, children. But a good leader knows when to put his feelings aside and do what is right for the coven."

He pushed the sharp end into his skin again, and his face remained unchanged as he did. "So I will wait. I'll catch them and make them ready and watch the movements of the heavens. It's not so long before there will be another eclipse."

He turned his eyes across the table at the two anxious twins. "You two are the hope of this family. And it will be your responsibility and your privilege to wipe out our mistakes."

XXX