"The spirit dances, comes and goes. / But the soul is nailed to us like lentils and fatty bacon lodged / under the ribs. What lasted is what the soul ate. / The way a child knows the world by putting it / part by part into his mouth."
— Jack Gilbert
It's disdain. She can taste it cold and sharp in the air between their brief conversations. In the way he never addresses her directly if Damon is in the room, the way his eyes slide coolly off her like she's a potted plant or a clean surface.
Witches are repelled by vampires - it's the law of nature. The anger and hatred she feels for Damon, Klaus and sometimes even Stefan are lodestones reminding her there's order in a world riddled with chaos. But Elijah's disdain disturbs. Like a cold draft, it gets under her skin.
She is always "the witch", or "Miss Bennett", never just "Bonnie". After a few weeks on the road with him and Damon, even the latter's condescending nicknames start to feel more human.
They've been trailing Klaus for nearly a month after the hybrid left Mystic Falls with Elena and Stefan in tow. Bonnie's only concern is getting her best friend back alive. Damon's stakes are doubled. He wants his brother back, but he also wants to swoop in and rescue Elena, to harvest the gratitude and wonder in her eyes she normally reserved for Stefan.
Elijah's motives are opaque. Bonnie knew he had a soft spot for Elena - they all did. What was less clear was his relationship to his brother.
"Niklaus can be reasoned with, but only by a select few," he says one night, after they'd settled into their small hostel on the border of Hungary. They travelled light and stayed in inconspicuous locations. Bonnie had passed through five countries in four weeks, and each one was a blurry, rushed landscape. It made depressing sense this was the closest she'd get to a semester abroad.
"That's cute," Damon says with a cold smile. "But my plan is to get my brother, get Elena and get the fuck out before either of you notice." He downs another glass of whiskey and sets it down hard on the small coffee table.
Elijah looks at the younger vampire with mild disgust. "You'll be dead before you take a step. My brother is not to be underestimated."
His tone irks Bonnie, how he made Klaus sound like someone they should revere instead of the monster that had upended their lives for his own gain. "I'm with Damon," she says. "Our plan should be to distract Klaus and get Elena to safety."
Elijah pours himself another glass, his movements slow, stately. His white shirt was still crisp, his appearance unmarred, while she and Damon were travel-stained and showing signs of wear. "You should get some rest, Miss Bennett. Our schedule is hard on a human constitution."
She's tired and irritable and misses her bed and not living like a fugitive in a Liam Neeson movie. She wants to repeat his own words back to him like a taunting child.
Instead she stands her ground. "I'm fine," she says with icy firmness. "The sooner we find them, the sooner we can all go our separate ways."
"You are welcome to return to Mystic Falls whenever you choose," Elijah says, folding up his left sleeve, then the right. It's the most he's spoken to her in days. "As you know, I discouraged both of you from joining this venture to begin with."
Damon snorted. "Like we were gonna trust you to do the right thing."
But Bonnie caught something else underneath Elijah's voice, a snag of displeasure and impatience, like she and Damon were strangers intruding on whatever mad, inhuman bond he had with Klaus. She tries to imagine loving someone who shares your blood, who betrayed and imprisoned you, for centuries, but such a reckoning is beyond her, like a vast, dark lake in which the only possibility was drowning.
Throughout the night, she starts awake several times, gasping for breath, her sheets clammy, as though she'd been plunged under black water.
It's a rainy afternoon in Oslo and they'd stopped at a roadside inn to make inquiries. They'd figured Klaus couldn't Compel every single human that laid eyes on him. After fruitlessly approaching several locals with the aid of Google translate, Bonnie had given up and decided to call Rudy.
Her dad had been traveling for weeks and still thought she was in Mystic Falls.
"Have a safe flight, Dad. I lo-,"
The call drops in a flare of static. Bonnie tries redialing but it won't connect. A text comes through from him. "I'll text you when I land." Then another. "We'll take a trip. When I come back."
Tears prick her eyes. He's promised that before and it never quite happens, but she used to live inside that promise, nurse it like a dying bird. Here, a continent away, that bubble dissolves. But she's already putting her phone away, ducking under her umbrella and following Damon and Elijah back to the car. A gust of wind pulls her umbrella upside down, nearly taking her with it before Elijah grabs her wrist, pulling it down and folding the umbrella in his other hand. The action is swift, and complete. She's momentarily dwarfed by his presence, suffocating on the stony, contained power of a thousand years of life, a thousand years of mortal and immortal blood.
"Everything alright, Miss Bennett?" he asks, holding his own, far sturdier umbrella over them. His shoulders cast a fatherly shadow.
"Why wouldn't it be?" she says, pushing past him to climb inside the car. She wipes the mingled water - tears and rain - from her cheeks and takes comfort in her small, precious act of insolence.
The locator spells work, and then they don't. They find a trail, then lose it. Damon buries his frustration in whiskey and bloodlust, leaving a trail of dead and dying women from Rotterdam to Vienna. Bonnie burns with disgust, but she can't afford to target her ire on Damon, not when Klaus might be draining Elena of every last drop of life. Still, her nights are filled with the faces of his victims, their dangling arms, their fading eyes, their mouths open, drooling, in a fateful pleasure.
They never see Elijah feed. As an Original he needs blood less frequently than younger vampires, but she knows he's getting his sustenance. He's too sharp and inhumanly alert for her to think otherwise.
Bonnie's grateful, and resentful of his discretion. She preferred to know the kind of monster she was allied with, instead of subterfuge and false manners. But it was different with Elijah.
She didn't want to know how he took his meals.
They get close, in Vienna.
Their intel confirms Klaus is at one of his safe-houses, and that he's traveling with a pack of wolves. Damon is convinced Elena is being kept there. Elijah is uncertain, and thinks they should lie low, observe Klaus for a few days.
Bonnie leaves them to their arguing and returns to her room. She retrieves a vial of Jeremy's blood. She'd procured a few before they left Mystic Falls. She'd lied to Jeremy about leaving. Maybe she would've told the truth if she didn't know he'd kissed his ex-girlfriend's ghost. A lie for a lie. Maybe she's more vindictive than she knows.
While the vampires exchange tense words outside, Bonnie pulls out the pocket atlas she'd been using for spells. The geography is pockmarked with old blood. A map of repeating failure. But this time, the spell flares true and strong. Elena is close, mere miles away.
She closes up the map and sits on the edge of her small bed. Listens for their voices to die down. Later, when they've all retired to their separate rooms, she texts Damon.
B: She's here. At the safehouse.
D: Spell?
B: Did it while you guys were yapping.
D: Nice work, Judgy. He's gone out. Let's go.
B: What's the plan?
D: We get them, we go home.
Relief, sweet and searing, floods her head to toe. They hurry down dark alleyways, dodging strangers, focused, energetic, purposeful - like when they'd plotted to trick Klaus back in Mystic Falls. When they'd nearly succeeded in killing him if not for Elijah. Her skin crawls at the memory. She can't wait to be away from the Original.
The safe house is quiet, tucked away behind a copse of old, gnarled trees. They creep along the outer wall, and get far as the inner gate before encountering two guards.
Bonnie charges them with aneurysms so Damon can snap their necks. It works. They leap over the prone bodies and hurry through the grounds. A labyrinth welcomes them, statues and grass and overgrown hedges. For the first time, Bonnie starts to lose her nerve. The night is quiet and watchful, the stars are spies. Damon hears them coming before she does.
He grabs her and speeds down the twisted pathway towards the house. Her feet skim the ground.
He sets her down beside an empty gazebo. They can see the empty, lightless windows of the house. Damon squints, then his eyes turn icy, fury twisting his features.
"There's no one," he says. "There's no one in the house."
Mind reeling, she shakes his arm, demanding an answer. "I did the spell, I did the spell they have to be in there."
But Damon is listening for something else, and then she hears it too. Dozens of feet, hurrying through the foliage, headed for them.
A trap.
This time, they don't escape. This time the creatures fall on Damon. Faster than vampires, fiercer than wolves. Hybrids, burning with mortal and immortal blood.
They push her aside to get to Damon. Six against one. An army against a single enemy. Her spells take two of them down, but the rest drag Damon between them, tearing, biting. Blood sprays warm in the cool air, bathes her face. She hears herself scream. The two hybrids, released from her spell, stagger to their feet, eyes malevolent yellow.
They charge.
She throws up her hands, but the attack never comes.
"That's quite enough, gentlemen." Their attention is directed to the Original stepping out of the trees. Elijah wears a look of polite distaste, and gives her a quick, contemptuous glance. "Miss Bennett, step behind me please."
Bonnie's feet are rooted to the spot. Elijah makes no move to stop the hybrids tearing Damon apart. It hits her like a thunderclap that the Original had betrayed them. "You have your orders," Elijah tells the ravening hybrids. He strides to Bonnie and takes her ungently by the shoulder. "Now, you'll take us to Niklaus."
The hybrid closest to them, the one who Bonnie had briefly felled with an aneurysm, sneers with bloody teeth. "Those are not his orders."
Her last, clear sight is Elijah's face in the thin moonlight, cracked open with his brother's betrayal.
Elijah manages to speed them back to their small house, but he staggers the last few paces. His left arm is mangled and bloody from hybrid teeth.
They stumble inside and he collapses on a chair. Bonnie fastens the door and windows. She pulls the curtains and a bubble of hysterical laughter escapes her. As if curtains could keep Klaus' hybrids out.
She glances at the fatigued Original. He isn't healing, and blood drips steady from his arm to the floor. Pushing her hands to the door she mutters a barrier spell. It encircles the house and seals above the roof.
Elijah has dragged himself to his bed. He sprawls there in shoes and torn shirt, breath coming fast and skin turning slowly grey.
Werewolf bites didn't affect Originals, but apparently hybrid ones did.
Bonnie collapses on the floor beside him, her chest heaving with dry, panicked sobs. Her head swirls with the sound of Damon's last moments, the animal cries of pain and death.
She wants him to die. She hopes he lives.
Elijah, who had betrayed her again. Elijah, betrayed again by his own brother. Elijah, crushing the heart of two hybrids between his hands, rushing her to safety. Perhaps betrayal was a language, a grammar of existence she was too human to understand.
For seven days and seven nights she hovered by his bedside. The pantry had almost no food, but she didn't dare go outside. Two hybrids patrolled the neighborhood regularly, kept at bay only by her barrier spell - a spell that weakened everyday as she did.
Elijah's skin was no longer grey, but he tossed and turned in a fevered delirium. Bonnie changed his pillows, tried small healing spells, spoke to him, berated him, cursed him and begged him to wake. He was now her only hope of finding Elena. Of staying alive.
She soaked a rag in cool water and daubed his forehead, the way Grams used to when she was ill. There were no herbs or tinctures to sweeten the water, she knew no clever home remedies or herb magic. The one Grimoire she had brought sat heavy as a stone in her bag - full of arcane words and Latin instructions no had taught her to understand.
The day before his fever broke, Elijah mumbled a name. Celeste.
Celeste. Celeste.
His voice dragged over the beautiful name in pain and desolation. Celeste, Celeste.
The quiet agony of it made her shut the door and stop her ears.
The tenth night, she opened his bedroom door and saw a ghost. A woman shone in the light of the full moon, bending over him with a lovely, sad smile. She wore a bare-shouldered gown and her dark, curly hair dripped water, like she'd hurried from her bath to his bedside.
In surprise and sudden fear, Bonnie dropped her book. As though startled by the sound, the ghost - Celeste - vanished, leaving only moonlight and the fevered body of the Original who had called her name with such pitiful need.
The twelfth day, she only had an apple and some bread left. Her clothes reeked from sleeping in them, so she takes a long, drowsy shower, swallowing hot water to fill her belly.
When she emerges from the bathroom, clutching her towel, he's there.
Shadows mask his face, but the faint outline of him is still, watchful. He takes a step and she sees the black of his eyes.
His face is dark with stubble. Bonnie backs away, towards the small staircase. She climbs slowly up, and he follows, tracking her every move. She knows what he needs, that he can't be dissuaded even if she was lucky enough to have a crate of blood bags nearby.
If they are to escape, he needs to rebuild his strength. Still, she can't restrain a cry of fear when he drags her against him. And for a moment, the black of his eyes flashes with something else. Pity maybe. Despite her resolve, animal panic descends. The first and last vampire to bite her was Damon Salvatore, and he'd nearly torn out her throat. She kicks and struggles in Elijah's grip, drowning in her own terror. His arms are a stone cradle, quelling her fight. The towel falls between their feet as she's turned around, bare stomach pressed against wooden railing. The room spins. He fists her hair, arching her throat to his teeth, but doesn't bite down. "I know," he says. His voice, low and rough, still sounds like him. "Stay still, and it'll be over soon."
Elijah's fangs sink into her artery, into the river of her, drawing her body like a bowstring against him. Damon was more careless, but less deadly. Damon's dead. The puppeteer of his death swallows her blood in fierce draughts and she lets herself mourn. Not Damon, but the part of her that's disappearing down Elijah's throat. The grief and pain are blissful.
He groans behind her and blood runs down her breast, between his teeth.
The room tilts and she buckles over, whimpering, braced by his arm. When she was younger, she would watch for her father returning at the window, would clamber down from her chairs and hurry out to meet him. Sometimes, he would lift her up and spin her around, then they would both walk, hand in hand, into the house where her mother waited.
She's delirious, shuddering. Elijah's hands hold her tight. The room goes black, her blood rushes into his mouth. Her father disappears like the setting sun.
She flies.
She is a small boat on a black, black lake. Smaller than a boat, a body fighting the dark, cold water.
She goes under.
Two boys, one blond, one dark-haired, carve their initials in the bark of a great, white oak. The blond boy, older now, lies shivering on the floor, his back torn open with lashing. His brother wipes the blood from his wounds.
Two brothers embrace in a clearing littered with dead bodies. Klaus buries his neck in Elijah's shoulder. Elijah sits bleakly in a sea of corpses, but can't deny his brother the comfort he craves.
Elijah lifts his lover's body out of a porcelain tub. Her eyes are open, unblinking, her throat stained with blood. He covers her face and lips with kisses and cries like a child. Celeste, Celeste.
It's dark when she wakes, and the windows blurred with rain. She's in her own bed, tucked naked under warm blankets. It all comes back in a wave. A stab of panic reminds her her barrier spell has faded away. Bonnie dresses with trembling hands and hurries to the living room.
Elijah sits by the empty fireplace, drinking from a man's neck. Bonnie recognizes one of the hybrids that had stalked the house. Elijah releases him with a grunt and the dead body falls to the floor.
In the dim moonlight she can see that he's shaved and dressed in fresh clothes, though the front of his shirt is stained with blood. Spatters of blood decorate the walls, pools of it mark the floor. He had dragged the hybrids inside and killed them.
Their eyes meet, and a terrible, shivery heat dances up her spine. Her mind recoils but her veins hum with it. He had given her his blood.
"Go back to your room, Miss Bennet," he says, wiping the viscera off his shirt.
"We could have questioned them," she says shakily, ignoring his command to gesture at the remains of Klaus' hybrids.
He makes a dismissive sound while rinsing his bloody hands in a basin of water. "Unlikely. In any case, this little jaunt has reached its end. You will return to Mystic Falls and I will continue alone."
"Bullshit. I'm not going anywhere without Elena."
"I've taken the liberty of contacting your father. He will arrive tomorrow to see you safely home."
She forgets herself and strides across the blood-slick floor to where he stands. "You had no right! You had no right to go behind our backs. You killed Damon-,"
"Damon was a risk I could no longer afford," he said, not meeting her eyes. He dried his hands on a clean towel.
"You had him killed just so Klaus could betray you - again!"
His eyes dropped to her hand. In her ire, she had grabbed hold of his sleeve.
"Neither of you understand my brother's nature, nor what he is capable of -"
"Is it really worth it?" she shot back, twisting the fabric of his sleeve between her fingers. "To let Klaus double cross you over and over again, no matter how many people die?"
He pulls her hand away, his grip just short of bruising.
"Was Celeste worth it?" she blurts.
Elijah seizes her arm. She slaps him with the other. Her nails itch to draw blood, but he pins her wrists to her sides. "She died for nothing," Bonnie hisses, heady with bitter triumph. A bottomless lake of anger and betrayal churns inside her, longing to erupt.
"You will not say her name again," he orders, eyes flashing black.
"You said it over and over when you were sick," she says. "Celeste, Celeste, Celes-,"
"Enough," he roars, pushing her hard against the wall, hand at her throat. She claws at him, battering his chest, kicking with her bare feet. Her magic lashes out in inchoate rage, toppling furniture and rattling the windows. His hand tightens and she gasps. "I hate you."
Elijah pulls her to his face, an inch from his bleak, heated, terrible eyes. "I know."
His mouth slams into hers, a command and a punishment. She sucks his breath for her own. His blood throbs in her veins, all that immeasurable, despairing hunger, the dark centuries alone, the shards of a distant humanity, the gnashing of the monster. Her feet leave the ground and they're back in the chair he had finished killing the hybrid in. They aren't kissing so much as pulling on the other's lips with teeth. Her mouth stings and longs for more. Somewhere there's a distant voice of reason, fading in her head. Then Elijah's hand sinks between her legs and she forgets to think.
She remembers three things from that night.
Elijah's fingers fucking her with merciless care. His voice, pouring soft, jagged words inside her head. Some of them contemptuous, ringing with familiar disdain. Some angry, seeking to punish her. Others, tender as a lover as he strokes her from the inside and makes her come all over his hand, again and again, until she sobs in painful pleasure.
Let me take care of you.
And she remembers the moments of silence, his teeth reopening her vein, his tongue lapping at her blood like the lazy nectar of overripe fruit. His eyes a black unchartered lake, watching her ride his hand. Her hatred meant nothing. No one hated Elijah Mikaelson more than himself. He robs her even of this small victory, this terrible hope.
This time she wakes up to a strong, lemony scent. Sun shines through the window and shines along the pristine walls and floors of her small room.
In a chair at the foot of her bed her father, nodding with sleep, jolts awake.
"Bonnie! Oh thank god." He's instantly at her side, squeezing her hand. "It's okay, honey. You're safe now."
She looks dumbly around her, the same room she'd woken in after Elijah drank from her, yet everything feels different.
"Can you stand, sweetheart? We can fly back home tonight - "
With her father's help, Bonnie climbs out of bed and walks to the living room. He's saying gentle words about trauma and kidnapping and getting her safely home. The living room is bare, scrubbed clean like her room. The chair from that night rests plain and empty against the wall. Her fingers fly to her throat, feeling for the marks of Elijah's teeth, and find only her unblemished skin.
She's restless, and the rainy school day drags on. The weeks since she and Rudy returned from Vienna are monochrome, structured by routine. But something feels different today. Maybe it's the rain, interrupting a week of spring sunshine. Her peers mourn the weather but Bonnie breathes easier. The clouds feel like shelter.
She stares out the window, the slow trickle of water on glass, and a shiver takes hold. Like a rain-spray on a bare face, on a pavement in Oslo while she struggled to hold an umbrella.
It's Caroline who accosts her after the bell, Tyler close at her heels. "Jeremy called."
Rudy prefers to pick her up from school now, but she sends him a quick text and follows her friends to their car. As soon as the pull up to the Gilbert house, Bonnie jumps out and sprints up the driveway. Elena, thinner, paler, but still blessedly alive, appears at the door. She opens her arms with a tired smile and Bonnie hugs her fiercely. The others follow close behind until they're wrapped in a tight, warm, wordless circle.
Later, once they've ordered pizza and brewed tea and plied Elena with questions, Bonnie stands at the window. As she's pulling the curtains close, a shadow in the distance catches her eye. Across the street, indistinguishable from the dark trees, she briefly sees a suited figure under a black umbrella. She lifts her hand as if to wave, but he's gone, melted into the rain. She pulls the curtains shut and returns to her friends.
Caroline gives her a quizzical look and Bonnie returns a smile. "I'm fine."
Her fingers stray to the side of her throat, finding the skin warm and tender.
A/N: Please excuse any spelling errors and oversights in editing! Every couple years my inner Bonlijah Hoe shows up demanding tribute. I hope she is satisfied with this offering! Appease her wrath by leaving me reviews! xoxox