Thanks for reading, everyone! It seems now I have a good amount of regular readers and it warms the hell out of my black pit of a heart. I don't plan on stopping this story anytime soon, and even when I do I have a sequel loosely planned, so stick around, if you like.

With the flashback I have pretty much used all of the actual Bonnie/Nora dialogue from the show. Which is hilarious considering it's probably less than a hundred lines total and this thing is pushing 80k words. A testament to our magical gals onscreen and off. And beware, this fluff bubble may pop soon...

Soundtrack:
Daughters – "Less Sex" from You Won't Get What You Want
Skybox – "In a Dream" from Morning After Cuts
Vampire Weekend – "Hold You Now" (feat. Danielle Haim) from Father of the Bride

December 6, 2013

"Professor Dowling or Marcus?"

"Excuse me?"

"You're taking freshman English, right? Who's your professor? Please tell me it's Dowling and not Marcus."

"I can deal with difficult people."

"Oh, I know you can. Which is why I'm saying take Dowling. I don't want Professor Marcus to end up dead. I'm joking... sort of."

"Everything I said earlier, and yesterday... I wasn't lying. I really am trying to turn over a new leaf."

"And I tentatively believe you. But if you want me to trust you I have to know more about you. So tell me, why do you want to go to school here? And don't say it's to spite Mary Louise again. Because I know that isn't true."

"I may or may not have another reason. But I can't tell you."

"Oh come on, seriously?"

"It's a secret, Bonnie. You have to earn my trust too, you know."

"Well if neither of us tells each other anything then we're not gonna get anywhere, right?"

"Maybe you can answer this. Can you really see yourself ever truly forming a friendship with me? Or will I always just be a pity friend?

"A pity friend is still a friend."

"You know what I—"

"Yes. Yes, I do. It makes no sense, but I can't deny that we… this... works. Somehow."

"Oh."

"Yeah um, let's move on, shall we? Forget I said anything. Let's do some shots and play 20 Questions. We can start with easy ones. Okay?"

"Okay."

January 13, 2014

It's the first day of classes for the spring semester, but all Bonnie can think about is death.

It doesn't help that taking up the first slot on her MWF schedule is OCC326: Sacrifice, Death, and Reincarnation in African Mythology with Ric in the same dark, dusty lecture hall as he's held all of his other courses, or that the anniversary of Grams' death was the week before, or that the weather hasn't gotten the memo about activities on campus resuming and has cast the town in a shroud of ashen darkness for the entire day. But Bonnie's thoughts aren't just simple clumps of doom and gloom. They're flashes of images, emotions, light-speed montages of agony too flitting to be identified, somewhere between the Phoenix Stone's grating mental assaults and the premonitions she had before honing her magic. It's not her own death she's afraid of, nor anyone else's that she can tell... more of a general terror, with greater urgency than usual. She'd reach out to Freya about it, but the witch has gone radio silent since their meeting, and it's not like Bonnie can just dip down to the Big Easy to check up on her. Since Mikaelsons always seem to find a way to endure, she's been doing her best, with varying levels of success, to keep everything at the back of her mind and enjoy the atmosphere of Whitmore settling back into routine, especially now that she actually has someone to enjoy it with.

By now Bonnie should be finishing her third full year of school, but after being dead for almost the entirety of what would have been her first semester, and spending almost a year in the prison world following her actual first semester, she's still barely a sophomore in terms of credit hours. Luckily, some strategic AP classes her senior year of high school got her out of most of the mind-numbing freshman intro courses, but she still has a lot of catching up to do, and thus without even coordinating as such she ended up having two classes with Nora: Magic and Witchcraft in Literature and Intro to Anthropological Studies. The heretic had been cast into an adorable panic when they first compared schedules, assuming Bonnie would think she had infiltrated her academic life on purpose, but either way the witch found she didn't much care at all; it would be nice to have such a close friend to walk with, swap notes... never mind the fact that "close friend" doesn't exactly describe what Nora is to her. With anyone else she might worry about overexposure, or being too tightly intertwined, but none of those usual anxieties have arisen. Instead, she finds herself excited at the prospect of bonding with her in this new way. Perhaps it would be a chance to finally do some actual magic together. Or just cute study dates during which absolutely no actual studying gets done. Bonnie's trying to look on the bright side.

Which is really goddamn hard when your head is filled with portents of doom. Between trying to counteract all the darkness pooling in the back of her brain with positive thoughts of the future and attempting to prop up her travel mug full of coffee and have her notebook out at the same time, she's not exactly focused on what Ric is saying, which doesn't matter until all of a sudden she has the immediate icewater-drench sensation of everyone in the room staring at you.

She look up to the front of the room at Ric, who has an expectant but slightly confused look on his face. "I'm sorry, what was the question?" she asks with a gulp, her cheeks burning.

"Not paying attention, huh? That's not like you, Bonnie." Her heart jumps as she watches Ric shake his head and pace back and forth in front of the lectern. What's going on? "You know what else isn't like you? Falling in love with a vampire."

Bonnie gasps and glances around to see the class's reaction, but she isn't met with any watching faces; every seat in the room is filled with a headless corpse, neck stump uneven and ripped like they've been chewed through. She screams and twists out of her chair, only to be blocked by Ric, whose face is that of his short-lived Original vampire form: eyes blood-red, veins seething, fangs bared. "Caroline could do this, you know that right? All it takes is a bad day and a vampire will kill innocent people, just because they're hungry. Just because it's fun. Damon could do this. Nora could do this. And she would enjoy it." He steps closer to her and she takes a step back, the smooth bottoms of her flats slipping on the concrete floor slick with blood. "But you love her anyway, don't you? Because you're just as bad as they are. In fact, you're worse."

She shuts her eyes. This isn't real. "Shut. UP." She splays a hand to cast a wordless telekinesis spell, but it doesn't work. Her magic is gone. She watches helplessly as the dripping fangs close around her neck…

"Bonnie! Wake up! Hey, hey, wake up, you're okay!"

Her eyes snap open to the reality of her dark dorm room, her body clenched too tightly in fear to notice her position at first, but she quickly returns to full consciousness once she registers the familiar, comforting sensation of being held by Nora; one of the heretic's arms is propping up her neck and the other is draped encompassingly over her torso. She's gently rocking Bonnie now that she's awake, whispering near-inaudible sweet nothings and affirmations of safety as the frightened dreamer gets her bearings.

"Are you okay?" Nora asks gently once Bonnie finally meets her gaze and shows some semblance of awakeness.

"Yeah, I think so…" The witch cranes her neck to look around at the bed. The mattress is stripped of everything but the fitted sheet and all the blankets are in a haphazard pile on the floor. "What was I doing before I woke up?"

"You were thrashing, screaming, crying. It was like there was someone attacking you in your dream, but I couldn't get you to break out of it." Nora's eyes are wide with concern. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"I—" Bonnie's brain is still foggy, especially when she tries to remember details of the nightmare. "It was the first day of classes. I was in Ric's lecture room, and then…" It comes rushing back to her all at once: the terror, the gore, the accusations and judgment that seemed to sprout from the darkest depths of her subconscious. She can't tell Nora what she saw, what she heard... they'd only just made such progress on the issue, and this would come across like a complete backslide. Plus, she doesn't even feel the way that the dream implies she does. Dreams don't actually mean anything… right? "...and then I can't remember. I guess it was a night terror. I haven't had one of those since I was a little kid." Which makes her think of her dad, and how he was always there when she woke up screaming, and now tears are streaming down her face, and she feels horrible because she's lying but Nora's comforting her anyways, so she lets herself cry it out for a bit before gathering herself and relaying the true summary of her nightmare. Because the more the memory of it sits in her head, the more strange the dream feels. Alien. Almost as if someone else put it there.

When Bonnie finishes talking she looks at Nora, whose face doesn't bear the stupefied confusion of someone presented with a completely unfamiliar problem, but instead a grim look of dread, like this has happened before. The bleary witch rubs her face and finally glances at the clock. 4:17 a.m. The glowing red diodes seem to laugh at her. The horrible realization that it's still Monday, still the first day of classes, and that she already went through it once in dream-world, finally sets in. So does Nora's expression. Is something wrong with me?

"Why do you look like I just told you I was going to die?" she asks the brunette somewhat playfully, more than mildly hoping the answer would be something other than because you're going to die.

"Something like this has happened before. A young witch Mary Lou, Valerie, and I befriended in London had a nightmare about us, but until then she didn't even know we were vampires. I had to convince Mary Lou not to kill her, but we couldn't compel her, and after she ran off with her confirmed knowledge we knew we had to leave."

"That's why you left England?"

"Originally yes. And it's most likely how the Gemini coven knew exactly where to find us when we arrived in New York. But that very night, as we gave the city our own horrific sort of goodbye, we were ambushed by Rayna Cruz."

Bonnie's throat dries even more than it already is. Her head feels overheated and freezing at the same time.

"Are you saying…"

"It's impossible." Nora shakes her head quickly, vigorously. "I watched her die. I'm sure of it."

"But if Enzo took her body…"

"No. It can't be. Just a terrible coincidence that I should not have brought up. If Rayna were back, somehow, we would know because Beau's scar would open back up. But she's not, because she's dead." Nora leans over and picks the pile of blankets up off the floor. "Forget I said anything. You having this sort of dream makes sense. You have every reason to hate vampires, but you don't, and either something deep in your mind does, or you feel like you should. I'd wager in favor of the latter."

Bonnie nods, but doesn't say anything. Her mind is racing even as it groans for more sleep.

"Hey. You have nothing to worry about." Nora cups the darker-haired girl's chin with her slender hand and kisses the tip of her nose. "Plus, we still have four hours until we have to get up for classes. So we get to sleep longer." She settles back into bed, draws the covers up, beckons to Bonnie. "Well, come on then, back to snuggles."

As worried as she now is, Bonnie can't help but smile. Feeling wanted was something she used to crave and had to scrounge from scarcity. With Nora, it's constant, and while recently there have been moments where she's caught herself starting to take it for granted, it still never fails to warm her heart, no matter what happens to be weighing on it.

They melt into one of the infinite perfect permutations of their tangled bodies. Bonnie kicks off her socks and intertwines her legs with Nora's, gently rubbing the taller girl's calf with her heel as they stare at each other with eyes hooded from both exhaustion and affection. As she feels herself drifting off to sleep, Bonnie mumbles a question that's been on her mind: "Can you believe it was only about a month ago that we started hanging out?" She utters it with a small smile so it's lighthearted, but behind the simple words churns a maelstrom of insecurity and doubt that she won't let herself entertain: the possibility of Nora having residual feelings for Mary Louise, unease over something her mom said last week about "not falling too hard too fast," worry that the distant, idealized future of chasing her dream career in New York is an illusion, a farce, and that she'll be wrapped up in supernatural conflict for the rest of her life.

Nora looks even more tired than Bonnie feels. She chuckles and cocks her head to the side a bit: a slow, sleepy, yet graceful motion. "Honestly, yes." And with that she plants her head on the pillow and closes her eyes. Bonnie lies down too, assuming that was all she had to say and kind of weirded out by it. But then Nora speaks again, nothing but her mouth moving the slightest bit from her prostration: "I'm a vampire. We love hard. All-encompassingly. And yes, fast. For better or worse. But time has nothing to do with what we're allowed to be or mean to each other."

Bonnie grins giddily and buries her head underneath Nora's chin, her go-to sleep position, before fully processing what she actually just heard. "Love"?

"So tonight I'm going to try and find out if Beau has noticed anything weird about his scar without directly asking. I don't want him to think Rayna is after him if it's just a false alarm, because he'll want to run, and after seeing him so happy for the past few weeks... you know?"

"Of course," Bonnie replies. After her first MWF class with Ric, both of the next two on her schedule are the ones she has with Nora, so right now they're walking across campus to the English department building after a brief syllabus overview in Intro to Anthro. Their professor seemed nice: calm, approachable, passionate about the subject but not off-puttingly so. And thankfully, Bonnie's nightmare didn't end up being at all premonitory; the first meeting of Ric's class passed without so much as a mildly embarrassing moment, let alone any mass decapitations. She was on the fence about telling Ric about the dream, but after seeing him clearly overwhelmed by week-one stress, no doubt compounded by the impending arrival of the twins, she decided against it. Like Nora said, it was probably nothing anyway.

"Is the weather always this cooperative on first days?" Nora asks, her face upturned toward the almost-noon sun. The dream couldn't have gotten it more wrong; other than a few wispy clouds like giant unraveled cotton balls, the sky is a clear, brilliant blue, and the weather unseasonably warm for the middle of January. Probably not a good sign for the planet in the long term, Bonnie thinks glumly, but the reminder of the reality of climate change, unsurprisingly, hasn't stopped anyone from making the most of it. The grassy areas of the main quad are dotted with countless students, alone and in groups, sitting on towels or picnic blankets or just the ground, thumbing through newly bought textbooks or double-checking schedules or taking quick power-naps.

"No. Like, not at all. You're pretty much getting the best initial college experience anyone could ask for." They're loosely holding hands as they walk down the wide central sidewalk that bisects the quad. It makes Bonnie feel good in a way she doesn't quite know how to describe; not like they're showing off, more that it's nice to be them in the midst of so many other people. It feels right—that, at least, she knows for sure.

"Have you talked to Damon recently? How is he doing?"

"Much better." Stefan had finally let him out of the cell the week before, and since then Damon has seemed to reacclimate to reality pretty well. Still confined to the house, he's been helping Stefan and Matt with their complex population reintegration plan. After a last round of town clean-ups and an official cessation of the state of emergency, the first wave of residents, which mainly consisted of the mayor's office, city council, and the remainder of Mystic Falls PD, have already begun to return to their homes. During the few phone calls Bonnie's had with Damon since his release, he's moaned and complained about all the paperwork and legal bullshit Stefan has tasked him with, but she's certain that deep down he knows it's the right thing to do, because one, if Damon Salvatore doesn't want to do something he won't do it, and two, it's what Sheriff Forbes would have wanted. "I think he's getting stir-crazy though. At this point I'm more concerned he'll tear Stefan's head off, rather than some random schmuck on the street."

"Their dynamic is truly odd. Even for two-centuries-old brothers."

"Yeah, tell me about it. Sometimes I find myself wanting a sibling," Bonnie confesses. "Just to know what having a bond like that is like."

"Siblings aren't only determined by blood. If they were, I wouldn't have any either. But we can choose our families." Nora lightly squeezes Bonnie's hand. "Would you not call Caroline your sister?"

"At one point, yes. Her and Elena both. But for a while now, and especially since she realized she was carrying the twins, we're more like just good friends. Which is still great. But it's not the same, you know?"

"Yes, I do. And I'm sorry to hear that. It's almost certainly temporary, though. I can't imagine learning of the existence of vampires, dying, becoming a vampire, losing both my parents, and then have a surprise pregnancy sprung on me in the span of less than four years. We've all lost so much, it's true. But even disregarding everything else, children tend to shake lives up quite significantly."

They've reached the English building—one of the oldest on campus, all ruddy brick and chipped, weathered cornices. Amidst the newer, fresher limestone architecture that dominates the rest of campus, it's either an eyesore or a sight for sore eyes, depending on the person.

"Yeah, I know. It's not like I resent her for it or anything," Bonnie says with a sigh. "I just wish she would talk to me more. Not because I need it, but if she needs it. She tends to just lock up all of her stress and anxiety deep inside until it escapes at the least opportune moment. I want to be there for her, and if I'm not I feel like I'm failing her."

"You should talk to her about it. I'm sure she'd want to hear how you're feeling."

"Thanks, Nora." Bonnie checks the time on her phone: still plenty of time until their class starts. "We have a good twenty minutes or so to kill. Wanna sit on this bench and be cute with me?"

"Always, always, always," Nora replies, emphasizing the last word with a slight husk in her voice that makes Bonnie's legs feel like jelly as she plops down onto an open bench. The temperature is too cold to sit in the shade, but under the glowing light of the midday sun the air is perfect. She scoots herself over and lies down so that her head is in Nora's lap, and she feels the brunette instinctively thread her fingers through her hair.

"We'd better be careful and watch the time. I could lie here literally forever," Bonnie mumbles with closed eyes, savoring the warm rays on her face.

"The latter sounds like the better plan to me," Nora answers.

Neither say anything for a while, instead just listening to the chirping birds and the ambient noise of everyone else out and about. Bonnie's pretty much in heaven, but she still can't get something off her mind, something that's been there for quite a while now. And in an instant of total comfort and relaxation, she finally utters the question aloud. "Are you my girlfriend?"

Looking up from her lap, Bonnie can only see a dark silhouette of Nora's head, but she doesn't seem to be offended or taken aback by the question. "I suppose I am." She leans down and gently presses her lips to Bonnie's. "I'm sorry," she continues after pulling away. "Is it something that has to be verbally established? I sort of just assumed…"

"I know. Don't feel bad or anything. It's weird. I never personally felt like it was necessary until… well, until I met you. And I guess I just needed to hear you say it."

"Well be careful what you wish for, because I may not be able to stop… Bonnie. My girlfriend. My girlfriend, Bonnie. Bonnie, the one I—"

Bonnie swats at her chin playfully. "Okay, okay, I get it," she says as if scandalized, even though every time the word she thought she despised so much comes out of Nora's mouth it's like a beam of pure light straight to her soul, even though she probably could listen to her say it forever.