With pain wriggling through his middle and along his spine like a tangle of spooked snakes, Kai was surprised to register the thoughts sweeping around him in a turmoil with no beginning or end. Among all the shreds of coherency, there was one suggesting it was all a set-up. A masterful trap to get rid of him against all odds. And he knew it wasn't true – however much Elena, Damon and Jeremy hated him, none of them would flush Bonnie's last chance down the drain. When he finally set his eyes on Liv – panting and furious, her hair in disarray – he realized it WAS a set-up, after all, but one his dear late brother Luke would refer to as karma. Kai never gave it much thought before. Now it made perfect sense.
Another laugh spilled from him when, unexpectedly, he managed to fling a fork at her neck, and she stumbled back, sliding against the wall. Kai picked up a bottle with the fluid they used for their fireplace, and pain subsided just enough to make space for what he was more used to: the thrill of upcoming death he would inflict. An eye for an eye, or however they say it. He grinned down at his sister, spurting the liquid over her as she tried to turn her face away yelling for him to stop. "It's all coming back now, sis," he informed her. "That charge that goes through your bones at the prospect of watching someone burn to death. I really missed that feeling." He took one of the candles from its holder and held it over her like a priest would a cross against a vampire in one of the black-and-white horror movies they used to like with the siblings of his that were long dead.
"Just kill me, Kai," Liv said, tears trickling down her cheeks, both plea and hatred in her eyes. "You've already killed my best friend. So just do it."
For the first time in his life, Kai felt he was no longer in control of his own body. Even the pain throbbing in his stomach felt as though it was someone else's, and he saw his hand tremble like the flame on the candle it held. Icy dread stroked through his spinal cord. It couldn't be happening.
"Get it over with," Liv said, the candlelight dancing in her darkened eyes like a promise of relief he was no longer certain he would grant.
Soon enough it wasn't just his hand trembling, and his body tensed like an overstrained guitar string. Kai couldn't will any of it. Tears of impotent anger, confusion and something else – that disgusting compassion that burned the brighter the more he stared into his sister's eyes – stung and threatened to spill. He could repeat and yell 'Do it!' to himself all day, and it wasn't going to change squat.
"Motus!" Liv jerked her hand suddenly, and Kai cried out in pain seeping through his shoulder where the fork stabbed. He staggered back, slipped, and fell down, grunting as the agony thrust in all directions from his midsection where her poker first got him. She stood up, once again resembling a goddess of vengeance they learned about at school's mythology – furies, was it? He couldn't tell, nor remember where the hell Jeremy was; his head was swimming. As if from another universe, the voices screamed and laced together. Then Jeremy's arm jerked him up unceremoniously, and he dragged Kai out of the room. Kai could hardly see where. He got a blurry picture once sat on the floor against the kitchen counter, bolts of white-hot lightning shooting through his torso.
Jeremy grabbed his hand, shoved the ascendant in it. "Send me back."
Kai couldn't resist a laugh, though it cost him a terrible throe. "Jeremy, look at me. I'm half dead."
"I have to stop Bonnie," Jeremy said. And Kai saw the same desperate but sharp plea in his stare like he noticed in Liv's earlier.
Bonnie's face, strained with barely contained desperation of the same kind, swept before his inner eyes. Kai nodded. "Okay… okay." He could hardly remember the incantation that helped him focus, and he knew the little of the focus he had was not enough to do what Jeremy asked. But it might just work for what Kai had in mind.
There were running footfalls that burst into the kitchen where they were; there was Kai's name yelled in Liv's voice and something Jeremy cried in return. His hand was off Kai's, and then it was done. A small electrical charge zapped through Kai, stealing his breath for a moment, and he tumbled on the floor in the other kitchen. His vision went dangerously black for a moment while an explosion of fiery suffering wracked his insides. He gasped and tasted blood on the base of his tongue. He scrambled to his feet and dragged himself across the dining room. Bonnie was nowhere to be found.
"Shit, you little witch." He grabbed the edge of the table, coughing up a few drops of blood on its polished dark surface, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. While he tried to get his breathing in order, he heard it. A faint humming. It could only be one thing.
Her strained coughs broke through the humming of a working engine behind the white garage door. And it was a sea of grass between Kai and that damn door. Sweat rolling down his back and temples, he fixed his eyes on his destination and tried to cross the lawn without falling down. He wouldn't get up if he did. He stumbled a few times, gnashing his teeth at the twinges. Blood was practically pouring out between his fingers pressed to the wound. The last bump he stumbled on nearly sent him headfirst into the concrete wall. He put his hands before him and left two bloody imprints under the switch before slipping down to the ground. It was only the engine running inside. No coughs, anymore.
Kai threw a glance at the switch, knowing he would never get up and reach it. "Please, God," he muttered automatically, like a curse when you hit a finger with a hammer or something, and felt surprised. What would God want to have to do with him? He winced, focusing, and repeated the silly prayer under his breath, raising a hand. He started a little as the door began creeping up with metallic screeches, revealing the smoky garage insides and Bonnie lying on her side at the front tire of Damon's car. "Bonnie," he called, knowing she wouldn't answer. The exhaust seeped into his lungs, stinging and wrenching his windpipe shut. He bent over the ground, coughing violently and thinking he was about to die right here. Breathing in short gasps and coughs, he slowly crawled aside, sucked in a deeper, painful breath and held a hand towards Bonnie. His hand weighed a ton. "Mo… Motus."
Bonnie's body lifted off the floor and flew out of the garage to the center of the lawn, guided by his trembling hand for as long as he could wield it. Her landing wasn't gentle but neither there was more than half a foot between her and the grass.
It felt like an eternity before Kai got to her and slapped her pallid cheeks, calling her name, still tempted to cough until his guts came spilling through his mouth. Finally, she stirred and coughed. He fell back beside her, feeling like a depleted battery consisting of throbbing pain and wetness that was his blood escaping its vessel like rats a sinking ship.