TW/CW: prejudice/homophobic violence

I swear, I don't know how I churned out a nearly 7k word chapter at one point. This one felt like twice that while writing it and it's not even 4k. I'm still having a lot of fun with this story though. Hope you are too (although after this chapter, you may not be...)

Soundtrack:
Bonnie "Prince" Billy – "I See a Darkness" from I See a Darkness
The Soft Moon – "Want" from Zeros
Jónsi & Alex – "All the Big Trees" from Riceboy Sleeps

date(s) unknown, closest approximation: February 10, 2013

"Well, you were right. She did it. She escaped."

"Never underestimate my granddaughter, even in the face of fate itself. I always knew, even during her darkest times in there, that she would make it out and be better off for it."

"Malachai will return, that much we know for sure. And now that one of the headstones is gone, it won't be long until that happens. But what makes you so certain she is who the First Ones speak of? Just last year she was so easily controlled by Silas..."

"I've known her since she was born. For a while I could've said I knew her better than anyone. But that's not true anymore, and that's why she will soon be stronger than any of us could ever imagine. She has people she loves, and that love her. 'A strong tether to the beyond, and an even stronger tether to the now,' right? It's her. I'm sure of it."

"Then you must be aware of what else she is destined for? What horrors lie in the path ahead of her?"

"I do, Jonas. And I ache for her. But if anyone can play dice with the universe and win, it's Bonnie Bennett."

January 13, 2014

"The witch is one of the oldest stock characters in human storytelling, appearing in nearly all of the earliest examples of narrative scholars are aware of. She is a mysterious figure whose actual personhood is often overshadowed by what others believe about her—as Madeline Miller once said, the definition of a witch is simply a woman with 'more power than men have felt comfortable with.' Thus, much of the fantastical, supernatural signification the concept of the witch carries has been gradually supplanted by male fear and misunderstanding throughout history, for in actuality, 'witches' have most often been healers, apothecarists, midwives, and other types of natural practitioners. It's impossible to discuss witchcraft and its place in society, and therefore its place in literature, without acknowledging that at its heart, the fear of witches is the fear of women."

Bonnie grins slightly and eases back in her undersized chair-desk combo. She can already tell she's going to like this professor.

"You've probably had plenty of classes here with a chronology-based syllabus, especially those of you who are English majors, but even though history itself plays a surprisingly insignificant role in the topics we'll be discussing, it still makes sense for us to work through our list of texts in order."

Dr. Ghanda is a short, slender Indian woman with long dark hair plaited down her back. She isn't in full professional garb like some of the other professors Bonnie has seen around today, but her attire is just formal enough to establish an air of respect. She's in her early forties, probably, with pronounced laugh lines around her large eyes that give her the appearance of someone to whom you'd immediately want to confess your entire life story. Bonnie was hoping for some sort of crackling realization when she first walked into the room, like that time so many years ago at the masquerade when she walked by Lucy—how cool would it be if her teacher for Witchcraft in Literature was actually a witch?—but no such luck. Who knows though, maybe there's still hope.

As she passes out the syllabus, the professor continues. "Yes, you read it right. My name is Ishani Ghanda. I'm one of the most easy-going instructors at this university, but make no mistake: anyone makes a single Gandhi joke and they're out. Period. And the rest of the class will be unjustly subjected to an impromptu lecture about just how much of a tool that man really was. Call me Dr. Ghanda, Ghanda, Ishani, Isha, whatever you want. Capiche?"

Bonnie looks to her right, where Nora looks equally amused at their teacher's assertive introduction. As if sensing her gaze, the brunette turns too, and they share a secretive smile.

"We'll have plenty of time to introduce ourselves and do all that other nonsense later. For now, I'm eager to start discussing our first text. It's quite short, and should only take us a few days to dig into, but I think it's really important and provides a wonderful starting point for what I hope will become a full-circle inquiry over the course of the semester." Ghanda starts passing around another stack of papers. "Although I began class with the assertion that witchcraft and womanhood are closely related, this first story is actually about a man."

Bonnie takes the short packet from the girl sitting in front of her and glances at the title. The Legend of Arcadius. She starts and looks again. Why does that name sound familiar?

"Perhaps surpassed by only the Epic of Gilgamesh and a handful of other works in terms of first-manuscript age, 'The Legend of Arcadius' is one of the oldest written stories ever discovered. Its initial iteration dates back to the 3rd millennium B.C. during the peak of the Bronze Age, somewhere near the Mediterranean region. The original dialect is a novel mixture of Sumerian, Nubian, and Greek elements, suggesting that the village the tale speaks of, if it really did exist, was a diverse independent community such as a refugee colony or religious sanctuary, possibly for splinter factions embracing early forms of monotheism."

This much historical context might be boring to some, but it's like music to Bonnie's ears. She follows Dr. Ghanda's slow paces across the front of the room with rapt attention.

"The powers ascribed to Arcadius in the tale more closely align with what we might call a 'psychic' or 'telepath' than a witch, but the central theme of the narrative is one we will see time and time again: when confronted with things they do not understand or cannot explain, people, particularly men, react with intolerance and violence. A more apt title might be 'The Tragedy of Arcadius,' for the main character's inevitable fate is a classic betrayal, a tale as old as time. Though the story makes clear that Arcadius's 'unnatural persuasions' are the reason for his being stoned and burned at the stake, it is quite vague about what exactly was the specific action that led to his discovery and subsequent punishment. Contemporary scholars have posited that the powers described are a metaphor for a marginalized identity, specifically that Arcadius was executed for being gay. It's interesting that—"

A switch in Bonnie's head flips and suddenly she's behind the eyes of someone else.

ca. 2200 B.C., translated from unknown dialect

"You cannot teach me any new tricks, for I am already the master of fishing!" Izdubar laughs his full, melodic laugh and runs a water-soaked hand through his shoulder-length black hair.

Cade blushes and jogs to check the next net installed along the river, trying and failing not to sneak one more peek at his friend's muscular, sweat-sheened arms as they flex to lift the heavy bundle of freshly caught fish. Everyone in the village wears the same sort of makeshift dress-robe sewn from leftover fabrics and whatever else they had brought with them, but the garb is certainly more flattering on some people than others. Ever since Izdubar came of age a few years ago and started to fill out from all his hours of manual labor he's been the most beautiful man, and perhaps just the most beautiful person, in the whole community. Anywhere he worked, lounged, or exercised was reliably always intruded upon by groups of giggling girls. All of the most beautiful women had offered him their hand (most marriages were arranged, but in Izdubar's case there were an abnormal amount of volunteers) but he had turned every single one down with impeccable grace and a flash of his perfect smile. No one knew the reason for his denial of so many eligible partners—except Cade.

Well, not for sure.

Ever since he could remember, Cade could read people's minds. He'd only learned to call it that with time; when it first began it was less like reading and more like experiencing. He could feel others' emotions and joys and anguishes, see through their eyes and beyond, glean the deepest essences of their being that not even they themselves could ever know. It was both a gift and a curse. He had the ability to love and help people in an entirely unique way, but he was also plagued by doubt, confusion, and shame. He has mostly worked through the former two—after more than a few eerily accurate premonitions, he was forced to confront the evidence—but the shame remains. The thought of what they would do to him if his abilities were discovered haunts him. Tortures him.

But Izdubar is different. Izdubar understands, even if he doesn't know what specifically he is actually understanding. The two of them grew up together, battled the harsh torrent of life side by side, knew each other to the core. Cade refuses to read his best friend's thoughts, because telling each other everything rendered its purpose irrelevant. At least that's what he tells himself. Deep down he knows that he's simply afraid of what he would find.

Because Cade is in love with Izdubar. And he wants so desperately to believe that the cause of his friend's matrimonial reservations is that he feels the same way. And today, when he finally can't stand the electric tension between them any longer, Cade looks into Izdubar's mind at long last and sees his own passion reflected gloriously back at him. He can barely contain his excitement as he re-primes the net and strolls over to where the other man has just finished loading the pile of fish into a creaking wooden cart and pulls his strong body into the kiss he has fantasized about for so long.

"Cade... what are you doing?" Izdubar says as he shoves him away.

"I… I thought…" Cade's eyes are wide and starting to brim with tears. How could he have been so wrong?

"You thought what? That I was some kind of repulsive beast like you?"

"No, Izdu, I— I saw into your mind and I—"

"You read my mind? What kind of freak are you?"

The disgust in his friend's voice is like a hot knife in Cade's chest. When he found the love within Izdubar's mind it had not been infected with this horrible poison—has he lost his gift? Are there things even he can't see?

It's dark when they come for him later that night. He's peacefully asleep until his eyes are burned by the blaze of the throng of torches and his ears assaulted by bellowed threats and curses and his mind filled with the smog of fear and hatred that saturates the air and then suddenly he's wide awake, breathing fast, looking for a way out. But the mob has already surrounded the cottage where he lives alone, and so Cade is helpless as his hands and feet are forcibly bound by those he once loved and trusted. His heart breaks even more when he sees through his pooling tears that one of his vicious pallbearers is none other than Izdubar, his face a mask of stalwart determination. He shows no sign of recognition as Cade desperately pleads for his life, appealing to all of their wonderful conversations, the beautiful times they've had together.

Izdubar responds only once, as Cade's restraints are hoisted and affixed to a makeshift pyre in the center of the village, with scalding venom in his voice: "You mean nothing to me anymore."

These heartless words echo endlessly in Cade's ears as the first stones start to hit, losing their meaning as they blur with the unintelligible mass of slurs and insults being hurled at him harder than the stones themselves. He wants to scream and scream and scream but refuses to give them the satisfaction of his suffering. But when the flames begin to lick his feet and he begins to descend into an agony the likes of which he has never even dreamed of and he looks to the faces of his tormentors and sees only cold, meaningless evil, which he now knows was there all along and he was just too naïve to see it, his final furious breath takes the form of an earth-shaking cry that tears the air in half. The next thing he knows he

January 13, 2014

Bonnie is thrown back to reality with all the gentleness of a car wreck.

"—so many would come to this conclusion independently, since little to no archaeological evidence of the village described exists, but proponents of the theory point to linguistic clues and motifs that mirror countless other examples of homophobia across different cultures. If you even just look at the first few lines here, you can…"

The constancy of Dr. Ghanda's voice is one of the bits of the present to which Bonnie is desperately trying to hold on—her fingers are also curled white-knuckled around the edges of the desk surface before her—slurring to a persistent drone amidst the whirlwind of her thoughts. She just lived at least a few hours in the life of someone else, someone who apparently died more than 4,000 years ago, felt the pain of his horrible death, and then snapped back to her own brain seemingly without losing a single second of time. Her head feels overheated and sickly like she's just sprinted for way longer than she was in shape for. She turns her head to look at Nora for any sign of her sudden vision causing some sort of commotion, but her girlfriend's countenance is that of the archetypal attentive student, eyes only moving from the front of the room when notes need to be jotted down.

I must be fucking losing it, Bonnie thinks to herself. First her nightmare, now this? What's next, a Final Destination–style premonition in which everyone on campus dies an agonizing death? She wouldn't be surprised. The collective silent focus of everyone sitting around her is paradoxically building to a dull, grating roar in her ears. I need to get out of here before something bad happens.

She eases out of her chair as stealthily as she can given that her whole body has begun shaking (vibrating?) but still manages to make an obnoxious squeaking noise as the crude metal edges of the desk legs grind against the tile floor. Bonnie does her best to portray "don't mind me, I'm just a totally normal college student who just needs to pee, not about to have a massive psychic mental breakdown or anything haha just go about your business" as she walks quickly-but-not-too-quickly to the door of the classroom. She can feel Nora's—as well as everyone else's—eyes on her; I hope she's not worried. Then again, maybe she should be. I certainly am. She makes it out into the empty hallway and takes a deep breath, expecting to feel some sort of refreshing relief, but none comes. Her thoughts continue to spiral and distort, merging and clashing with the invasive traumatic memories she was just subjected to, all of it writhing without meaning and yet still tying together into a single mass of dread.

Bonnie reaches the bathroom and performs her default de-stress routine of splashing cool water on her face and breathing rhythmically. It doesn't help; she still feels like rivers of lava are about to erupt from the top of her head, jets of steam from her ears, fountains of blood from her eyes. She can feel the liquid touching the skin of her cheeks and nose, but with such detachment that it may as well have belonged to someone else. Everything storming inside her is collapsing to a single point and she is both desperate for it to get there so she has some chance at relief and terrified beyond belief of what event it has all been presaging. She's crying now and would give anything for a hug and a few comforting words from Grams.

Just when Bonnie thinks it can't get any worse, she hears the bathroom door creak open and what has become her favorite voice in the whole world say, "Bonnie? Are you okay?"

All of a sudden it clicks, finally makes sense in the most horrible way. It's Nora. She has to protect Nora. Because— can't think about that. Supernatural foresight happens for a reason right? So you can stop whatever it is from happening? She pushes the memory of Coach Tanner's murder out of her mind and gloms onto her newly singular goal. "Nora, this probably isn't going to make a lot of sense. But I promise I am not crazy, and I really just need you to trust me. Okay?"

Nora's beautiful eyes start to show the terror Bonnie imagines is already clearly visible in her own. "Okay. What's going on?"

"Every atom in my body is telling me that you're in danger. We need to run, now."

The terror spreads to Nora's face, out of which all the blood drains almost instantaneously. "Oh my God. Beau. My phone's been in my bag on silent all class period, what if he was—"

"Go. Get it. You can say I'm sick and grab both of our bags, but don't look scared. I don't want anyone else trying to investigate. I'll meet you by the back stairs. We should stay out of sight as much as possible."

Nora gives her a quick nod, but her expression speaks volumes. In the time it takes Bonnie to blink she's already gone. The besieged witch does one more vigorous head shake to focus what remains of her functional brain capacity and then heads for the stairs, preparing to cast whatever spells necessary to fight off their attacker. Or attackers. If only her volatile, fragmentary seer-hallucinations could be more specific.

It doesn't take long for Nora to return from the classroom. "I think I was convincing enough," she says, handing Bonnie her backpack. "I told her it was a lovely class and that we will certainly be back."

"Let's hope you're right," Bonnie replies grimly.

Nora reaches over and strokes her cheek. "Bonnie, everything is going to be okay. I—"

They both hear her phone buzzing in her satchel bag. She fishes it out and after she reads what's on the screen, her look of fear earlier pales in comparison to her face now. Nora goes to speak but it comes out choppy through gulps like she's choking: "Beau's— Beau's scar opened up about fifteen minutes ago."

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck "Is he okay? Is he—

"He's calling me right now, so I hope everything's fine. But I— we need to run."

Bonnie doesn't say anything, just leans into the heavy metal door to the emergency stairs as Nora answers her phone. "Beau what's— no hold on slow down, can— I'm with Bonnie at Whitmore, we're running now— yes out the back of the building so— how do you know?... Are you sure?"

"What's he saying?" Bonnie asks desperately as they bound down the steps three at a time.

"He says he can sense her and that she's close by."

Bonnie's stomach drops. "Fuck. What do we do?"

"Run. And if we can't run, fight."

They're almost to the bottom floor hallway that leads to the back alley door. "Anything I should know if it does come to fighting? Weaknesses, modus operandi, etc.?"

Nora shrugs. "We came face to face with her exactly once, and if Julian hadn't been there she would have slaughtered us all."

Bonnie finishes the sentence, "...because, thanks to a universe that has made screwing us over its personal pastime, magic doesn't work on her."

"...right."

"How is she even alive anyway? She was like a million years old and then she died. I saw it. I mean—"

She's cut short by the door opening to the golden midday sun, pitting them face to face with a badass-looking biker type woman holding a short sword. Rayna, I presume.

"I did die, Bonnie," she says, taking a step toward them. "Your friend Enzo threw a scalpel into my jugular. It wasn't pleasant. And I was 98."

"'Friend' is a strong word," Bonnie replies, defiant even as her whole body tenses in preparatory defense. "Plus, you were the one who attacked me in the first place."

"True." Rayna glances between the two girls. "I see my advice didn't stick if you're still hanging around this one."

Nora fumes and takes a step forward but stops when she meets Bonnie's outstretched arm. "What do you want?" the witch asks the huntress.

"Her,"—Rayna gestures toward Nora with the Sword—"in here"—she points to the glowing orange stone embedded in the handle—"where she belongs. But for some reason, ever since I escaped the Armory there's been this strange little voice telling me that for this particular heretic abomination, I'm supposed to use a stake and make it final."

Nora glances at Bonnie, raw fear in her eyes once more, before turning back to Rayna. "Why haven't you gone after my brother? Don't you always seek out those whom you've marked?"

"Don't ask me, lady," Rayna answers. "I've been following psychic orders for over a century now; my brain's sorta wired for it at this point. New boss? Random mission? Who cares. I don't ask questions."

"You know how fucked up that is, right?" Bonnie can't imagine living like that.

"Like I said, I don't ask questions. And I don't hear appeals either. So—"

The stake and the Sword both clatter to the ground simultaneously. Rayna's smug smirk has contorted into a grimace. Her arms go limp and the light leaves her eyes, and when she crashes to the ground a new silhouette is visible against the blazing light outside: that of Damon Salvatore in what may be his most iconic pose, freshly removed heart in hand dripping fat red droplets onto the ground. Bonnie smiles.

Damon smiles back, then looks down at Rayna's corpse. "She likes to talk, doesn't she? I mean, I thought I took the obnoxious supervillain thing the furthest it could go, but apparently there's a ton of ground I didn't cover."

"For the love of God who may or may not have blessed us on this very day, leave it. I've heard enough diabolical master plans for five lifetimes." She walks toward him, raises her eyebrows, waits until he realizes and drops the bloody heart, and then she's hugging him, and by now she and Damon have pretty much perfected the hug thing, but the more seconds that go by the more difficult it becomes to ignore.

The feeling hasn't gone away.

Just some glitch. Just some—

She hears a small puncturing sound behind her, a gasp, a thud. Bonnie knows that puncturing sound because it rang in her eardrums during nightmare-replay after nightmare-replay of being stabbed by Kai.

Just—

She opens her eyes and sees Damon's: wide, horrified, lost. She whips around, everything warbling in slow motion around her, nausea rising in her abdomen.

Rayna, still sans heart, still mostly lying on the ground but now with arm raised and hand closed around the Phoenix Sword, which is buried to the hilt in Nora's heart.

There's a semi-intelligible "NO" buried somewhere within the heart-wrenching sound Bonnie makes, but most of it is pure, languageless shock and confusion and pain as she watches the warmth of life in Nora's face freeze and crumble as her soul is sucked into the Stone.

The huntress's head twists to look at her. Eyes that once hinted at a deeply suppressed warmth are now hopeless, endless pits. When the mouth moves before the half-corpse ultimately collapses, it is stilted, robotic. Puppeted.

"Bonnie Bennett. Cade sends his regards."