Thank you so much for all your amazing reviews. I can't express how much it means.

(Please don't hate me for this chapter. Everything will be fine. Eventually. I hope.)

Soundtrack:
Massive Attack – "Angel" from Mezzanine
Shearwater - "Animal Life" from Animal Joy

May 10, 1994 | Real-World Estimate: July 26, 2012

"Salt n Pepa again?"

"I may or may not have commandeered the changer tray when you weren't looking."

"That's evil."

"Not as evil as nonstop Mariah yesterday."

"Your tastes are so bizarre. Besides, everyone knows if you wear a checkered flannel you can't pick and choose from the 90s. You have to love its entirety, warts and all."

"You're calling Mariah a wart?"

"Don't put words in my mouth, square."

"Square. Wow. You really have been corrupted."

"And I wonder whose fault that could be."

"You know we're coming up on the three-month mark in this fucking place?"

"Don't remind me. 90 days of unfinished crosswords, whipped cream fangs, and bad jokes. Why don't we celebrate? I'll get the confetti poppers."

"If it weren't for my whipped cream fangs, we would have gone nuts a long time ago."

"We probably already have, and just don't know it. Because, you know, we're nuts."

"Jeez, Bon. Since when did I become the optimist? And speaking of that, since you brought it up, we have to do our monthly words of affirmation."

"What are you on about now?"

"Oh come on, don't act like you don't remember. 'What's the first thing you'll do when you get out?' This is the stuff that keeps us sane."

"What's the point? Won't our answers be the same every time?"

"Doesn't matter. It's saying it that counts. Here, I'll start. When I get out of this time capsule that has mysteriously immortalized one of the worst decades this earth has ever seen, I'm going to find Elena, tell her that I love her, and live happily ever after with her."

"..."

"Now you go."

"When I get out of this place... I... I'm going to be better about being me."

January 18, 2014

"Does your new girlfriend know what you're up to?" Somehow, even though Nora only gave her just enough blood to wake her up, not only is Mary Louise being her usual snarky, taunting self, but she's also up walking around the cell like the cracked concrete floor is a runway, even though her joints must feel rusted in place and every movement like every blood vessel has been replaced with sandpaper.

"Don't ask me about Bonnie."

"Why not? Don't I have a right to know a thing or two about the perfect little bitch witch I got dumped for?"

"If you insult her again, I'll decapitate you." Nora says it calmly, at a steady and level volume, even though her insides are already boiling with anger. Was this a terrible idea after all? "And I didn't dump you because of her. I dumped you because you turned your back on our sister."

Mary Louise rolls her eyes. "Oh, not this hogwash again. You still believe Valerie's cute little story? So conveniently sad and timed so perfectly? Please. You're a lot of things, Nora, but you're not naïve."

"No, I'm not. I'm also not so self-absorbed and callous that I can look at a woman who's been my family for more than a century and tell her she's lying about something she has no reason to lie about."

"No reason? She wanted our help taking out Julian, which is what she always wanted. Lily all to herself. I bet he's taught you all some very important lessons by now."

Nora looks at Mary Louise's smug smirk and is surprised to feel a small but noticeable pang of guilt as she tells her. "Julian's dead, Mary Lou."

The smirk drops immediately. "What did you say?"

"Stefan and Valerie killed him right after we took you down." And then, even though Nora doesn't really mean it: "I'm sorry."

Mary Louise is straining her face in the way she does when she wants to look angry without crying, but she fails, and intermittent streams of tears begin to flow from each eye. "How could you do this to our family, Nora?"

"Don't even say that word to me. You no longer have permission to evoke it. Because you aren't just responsible for Julian's death, you're also responsible for Lily's. I can barely even look at you anymore." Nora can feel tears of her own stinging the edges of her narrowed eyes, but she blinks them away.

"Why even wake me up then? Did you come to gloat? To rub my face in the fact that not only have I been unwillingly imprisoned by those I once called kin, but also that there isn't even a world for me to return to?"

"We didn't do this because we wanted to, Mary Lou. We had to. Valerie and Beau miss you."

"Why won't you allow them to release me, then?"

"Any of us has the ability to come here and free you. But we all know that this is the best place for you right now." Nora unfolds the camping chair she brought and sits down facing the cell. "And if you had shown me any indication in the past few minutes that we made a mistake, I would have been the first to apologize. But you didn't. You're just as hateful, vindictive, and selfish as you were when you rammed that sword through Valerie's chest."

"So then just leave me alone. Spare me your insults and moralizing drivel. I'd rather keep starving."

"And you shall. Once you answer a few questions."

Dear Elena,

So much to tell you, and yet somehow still so little. Time seems to have given up making sense, at least to me. I can barely tell the difference anymore between a month and a year, an hour and a day. Maybe it's the tedium of the prison world still lodged in me. Who knows.

I would ask how you are but, well, I kind of already know. I think. I hope you're having happy dream after happy dream, or that all these years will be simply a blip, like when you're really tired and right after your head hits the pillow it's the morning, except instead of the morning it'll be me, you know, dying.

Jeez, what a bright-eyed start. I promise you I was in a good mood when I started this. And I still mostly am. It's just hard to "talk" to you without also talking about… it. When I write these I think a lot about what the world will be like when you finally read them. Will the sun shine a little brighter? Will a third of what's now dry land be engulfed by a swollen sea, with what's left of humanity huddling in Denver? Will Damon be there, making you tea and telling you about all the dumb things I did over a whole lifetime of life?

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I wish you were here. As much as I want it to be otherwise, knowing that you'll have a whole life of your own someday doesn't make the gaping hole you left in mine any less painful. Some fucked up part of me almost wishes it was your fault so I'd at least have someone left to blame, someone to be angry at. But no, it's mine, only mine, and I'm so, so sorry. I

Bonnie drops her pen and pushes the sheet of letter paper away before too many more teardrops can fall onto the page and smudge the ink. She really was in a good mood before starting it, but these days, even with things going so well with school, Nora, Damon, her mom—pretty much everything on paper, really—she always seems a thought spiral or two away from a sudden drenching wave of misery. So many little things have been combining and making her uneasy: Nora's near-slip at the party, Freya's radio silence, the vision she had and then the words Rayna spoke... it all seems to be building toward something.

If you were to ask Caroline, that "something" is none other than Bonnie's 21st birthday, which is a little over two weeks away. Though she very well knows it's entirely pointless to do so, Bonnie feels strange if she doesn't beg Caroline not to organize something excessive, because otherwise it just seems wrong. It was always something she shared with Elena, too, that persistent but ultimately futile protestation of their friend's love for oversized parties and "meet and greets." Nora was indifferent to the issue, at first, but after somehow only just realizing that Bonnie isn't actually technically old enough to drink yet, she's fully on Caroline's side: girls' night, bar crawl, the whole shebang.

"But you can't even drink at all! " she had exclaimed in response to the set of "itinerary samples" she'd been presented, each one meticulously listing a sequence of bars, how much time to spend in each, and what drinks to order.

"Bonnie Bennett, I will never turn 21. Ever. You are my last hope until Elena wakes up. Or..."—she shudders—"Jeremy."

Bonnie winces. Now that will be a reality check.

"Do you even want to do this? Or do you just feel like you have to because it's my birthday?"

"You should know better than to try to get me to distinguish between those two reasons. It's all a blur up here. But believe me when I tell you that I won't be caught dead— more dead—sitting at home on my best friend's twenty-first. And if anyone gives me dirty looks for being out at a bar with two babies in the oven, they can keep looking from whatever corner their severed head rolls into."

Right now Bonnie fingers the stack of samples on her desk, still not having chosen one, grinning at Caroline's ridiculous but always at least a tiny bit endearing inclinations. With her other hand she picks up her phone and unlocks it. It's 10:43; no new texts or missed calls. Bonnie frowns. She and Nora had made plans to go to lunch today the night before, but when she woke up that morning the heretic was gone, leaving a note saying she'd be back later. She thumbs a quick message: Hey, everything okay?

Nora feels her phone buzz in her pocket as Mary Louise sneers at her, derision almost dripping from both her contorted mouth and the words that slither out of it. "And what on this God-forsaken Earth do you think would make me inclined to answer your little questions?"

"Because you're the one that broke me," Nora replies, maintaining eye contact even though all she wants to do is look away and leave and push Mary Louise as far out of her mind as possible. "And now you're going to help me fix that."

The blonde girl's laugh is harsh and cutting like spurts of acid, the dryness of her throat making her sound like that globe-eyed git from those ludicrous Lord of the Rings films. The random referential thought almost breaks Nora's tough countenance with sudden laughter, and in that second she aches for Bonnie, wants to pull out her phone and tell her everything right now, but she doesn't, not yet. She keeps her face drawn and determined as Mary Louise finally responds. " I broke you? What kind of pathetic revisionism is that? You're as bad as the rest of us, Nora Hildegard; you always have been. Just because you finally discovered some flimsy sliver of morality so you can delude yourself into thinking you deserve someone like Bonnie, and somehow delude her into thinking you're anything but a ruthless monster, doesn't erase the past."

"No, it doesn't. But I've finally chosen to make amends, which gives me the opportunity for a new future." Nora does her best to sound 100% confident, even though she doesn't actually have nearly that much herself. "But I can't do that if inexplicable things keep happening."

Mary Louise tries not to look curious, but her instinctively raised eyebrows give her away. "What kind of inexplicable things?"

Nora sighs. "Whenever I'm with... with Bonnie, I don't feel any desire to feed on her. But the more people that are around us, the hungrier I get, and it's not like it usually is, when I can just push it down. It seems to come from nowhere, and before I know it my fangs are out and I'm salivating and I'm about to slaughter a whole room of college students."

"So then do it," Mary Louise spits. "We're vampires, Nora. We kill humans. Who's going to miss thirty spoiled kids destined for useless office jobs and mediocre suburban families?"

"You know I don't think that way, Mary Lou. And deep down, I don't believe you do either."

Mary Louise rolls her eyes. "If I just answer you, will you quit the saccharine ethicalizing and leave me to rot in peace?"

"I'd love nothing more."

As she turns her back to Nora and walks toward the open coffin at the back of the cell, Mary Louise says, "You're obviously sublimating. No vampire in history has ever had feelings for a human and not also the temptation to feed on them. Hurting Bonnie is so unacceptable to your brain that it's pushed all of that hunger somewhere dark and hidden, except it doesn't dissipate, it just stays there until it's satisfied. One day you're finally going to feel like everything's okay and then you'll snap and crash back to reality when you've chewed halfway through her pretty little neck. After that the cravings will be gone, along with any shred of illusion that you're anything but a worthless, irredeemable bloodsucker."

Nora stares at her in shock. "That's not true. You're lying."

"We'll see who's lying when you come crying back to the only person in this world you actually deserve after you inevitably kill her." Mary Louise smiles sickly sweet in the dim yellow light of the concrete basement. "Now, we had a deal. Are you going to move along and get back to your cute little fake life, or what?"

Before Nora even realizes what she's doing she's pressed against the dirty rusted metal of the bars, eyes surging red, fangs bared. "THIS IS WHERE YOU BELONG! I CAN'T BELIEVE I EVER LOVED YOU!" she shrieks, surprising herself with the intensity. But also not really—this outburst has been a long time coming.

Mary Louise just smiles again. "Already coming apart at the seams, are we?" She ever so slowly slinks over to the coffin and climbs back in, glancing at Nora one more time before pulling the lid shut. "Turn off the light when you leave, yeah?"

"So the note didn't say why she left, just that she'd be back before lunch?"

"Yeah." Bonnie shrugs and takes the folded piece of paper out of her purse and hands it to Caroline. "Am I stupid to be worrying this much? Every couple needs to be able to spend time apart, right?"

"Only when you both know each other are safe." Caroline takes a bite of the second of three Scull Burgers—a ridiculous local sensation that boast an oversized beef patty and all sorts of unspeakable toppings, including a fried egg —smeared with the mixture of spicy chipotle mayo and A-positive from the massive glass jar she now carries with her everywhere. "Plus"—she pauses to swallow the enormous mouthful of food—"you had plans. Totally normal to be concerned if someone goes AWOL when they aren't supposed to be. I know she's a vampire and all that, but like, you're a badass witch and I know you can take care of yourself, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't be worried about you if I didn't know where you were."

Bonnie doesn't really say anything out loud, just softly hums in agreement. She pushes her still mostly untouched strawberry-kale salad around on her plate with a loosely held fork; she ordered it because she wasn't hungry enough to eat a full meal, and yet now her roiling, anxiety-wracked stomach apparently isn't even up for rabbit food.

"But it's going to be fine. I mean, Stefan's been around since cell phones were invented and he still forgets to charge his, loses it all the time too. Nora's had like, less than a year of practice. Her battery died and now she's just trying to figure out how to get here on her own."

"But why wouldn't she just tell me where she was going?" Bonnie asks, partly in response to Caroline but mostly to herself. If it weren't for recent events, she probably wouldn't be this apprehensive, but they still hadn't discussed either Nora's sudden-onset hunger or her feeding on Bonnie the previous night, which Bonnie doesn't regret but has a sneaking suspicion Nora might.

"Plus, think about how much time it took Stef and Damon to recover from the Stone. Even Val only recently seems to have pushed the weight off her chest. As Stefan has not hesitated to tell me, a lot of it has to be dealt with alone."

"You're right." Bonnie keeps wanting to just forget Monday ever happened, and yet all it takes is one hint of the events of that day and the horrible memories come flooding back: the invasive memories, the desperate running, the rollercoaster of relief and horror of Rayna's death via Damon-ex-machina and subsequent inexplicable zombification. "Does he talk about it much?"

"More recently." Caroline smiles sadly. "He hit the four-week mark of being out today, actually. It's a good milestone for him. He's warmer, in better spirits. Now even when sober."

Bonnie laughs, remembering utterly sloshed chat-away-the-pain Stefan at the Christmas party—before it all went to shit, that is. "Well that's good to hear. Maybe he can come along on girls' night."

Caroline giggles, then steels her face into a more serious expression. "Wait, are you serious?"

"Why not? Sure he's fine off the sauce now, but we get him drunk enough to the 'dances willingly' stage… that could make it a night for the ages."

"Oh my God, that would be a beautiful disaster." Caroline finishes the burger, seemingly unhinging her jaw to swallow the remaining quarter-chunk like a snake gobbling an egg. "He'll never go for it though."

"You said it yourself: it's my birthday." Bonnie bobs her eyebrows mischievously. "I can make anyone do whatever I want." Her brief joviality dampens when she opens her phone and again sees a complete lack of new messages. As soon as she's about to say something like, "If she's okay the excuse better be really good" she hears that flawless voice behind and to her right: "Bonnie!"

It's Nora, just in from the bitterly cold January air, hair frazzled and frozen in folds and twist that quickly melt into chesnut sheen as she walks over to the girls' table. "Quite a cold one, isn't it?" she says a little too nonchalantly, sliding into the chair to Bonnie's left.

Caroline, seeing the steely glint of irritation in her best friend's expression, eyes her half-finished final burger longingly before scooting her chair out from the table and picking up her purse. "Well, I'll leave you two winter lovebirds to it," she says cheerfully, but before she can stand up Nora makes a gesture for her to stay.

"It's okay, Caroline, I don't want to disturb your lunch!"

"No, no, you're fine," the blonde vampire replies, looking at Bonnie again and beginning to inch away as if carefully escaping a bomb she failed to defuse. "I have lots to do today anyway, I mean, the window for scheduling postnatal parenting classes just opened up, so I need to book those, and I just remembered Stefan said he needed me to get a few groceries, and we're still working on that nursery, and God knows what Ric's up to and…" She continues listing things as she backs farther and farther toward the door before finally slipping outside.

Nora chuckles and looks Bonnie in the eyes for the first time since her arrival. Her smile is not returned.

"Where were you?" Bonnie asks quietly.

"I'm sorry, I should have called or texted, but I—"

"Yeah. You should have. I was worried. And that does not make me crazy considering all that happened last night."

"No, of course you're not crazy, but I'm okay, and I'm sorry for making you worry about me."

"Are you really not going to tell me where you were? I feel like I'm at least owed that much."

Nora sighs, tears starting to brim in her eyes. Bonnie softens a bit—a lot , actually. But she tries not to show it. "Do you remember last night, when you asked me why I wasn't tempted by your blood?"

Bonnie's heart skips a beat. "Yeah… why?"

"I think I might be doing something called sublimation. The vampire equivalent of it, anyway. Feeding on you like I"—she chokes back a sob—"like I did in the Stone is so terrifying to me that my brain buries all of that vicious bloodlust deep down. When there's too much of it, it comes out at random times. Like during the party. Or, eventually, with you."

Nora's full-on crying now, and all Bonnie wants to do is touch her, comfort her, but she sits still as if magically frozen in place. "How do you know this? Who told you?"

Nora puts her face in her hands, and even though Bonnie expects the answer it doesn't make it sting any less: "Mary Louise."

"And you're trusting her?"

"I don't know what to believe. But I can't rule out the possibility. And the thought of hurting you…" Nora takes a deep, ragged breath. "I can't bear it."

"But you already fed on me, Nora. And you stopped, remember? It barely even hurt. Whatever this is or ends up being, we can figure it out." This time, despite them suddenly feeling three times heavier than normal, Bonnie reaches her arms out to Nora, who flinches at first but doesn't reject the contact outright.

"You deserve someone without the lurking instinct to kill you that may jump out at any moment. You deserve someone with whom you can grow old, and start a life. Bonnie, you deserve someone much, much better than me, someone who doesn't have to constantly be afraid of hurting you because they could never dream of ever hurting you at all."

Bonnie's heart is breaking and it takes all she has not to shut down. "No, Nora, I deserve you. I don't care about anything else. None of it. You're my starting point. You're my life." She reaches for Nora's hands, but they slip out as the taller girl stands up.

"I'm sorry, I can't," she says through streaming tears, and then walks out.