The pell-mell sprint toward Part Two continues. I hope everyone is enjoying where the story is going, and if you're a little confused, that's okay. One, it'll all be clearer later, and two, confusion is beautiful. Just like Bonnie and Nora's love, which, though we do know it returns (GASP... BUT HOW?), currently seems nothing short of hopeless...

Also, thank you all so much for 3k views on and 2.1k on AO3. Paltry numbers compared to a lot of fics, I know, but hey, small victories. 3

Soundtrack:
Haiku Salut - "Entering" from The Hill, the Light, the Ghost
Lea Porcelain - "Bones" from Hymns to the Night

October 30, 2010

"You'll have to excuse the mess. Apparently Damon has hurt my sister's feelings."

"Oh my God."

"Go on. Help him. Save the man who turned your mother into a vampire."

"Just— just get me out of here."

"Very well."

"...Is she going to kill him?"

"She talks a big game, but Rebekah falls hard, and easily, and I believe she's quite fond of him, for whatever reason. So, probably not. But life is full of surprises."

"I hate you."

"I know, Bonnie. Most do. But you know, I actually admire you."

"Wow. I'm so touched."

"I've always admired witches. I do have a tendency to end up on your bad sides, I'll admit. But all of the ones with whom I've crossed path in my thousand years in this world, even the most cutthroat and malicious, share not only an unyielding moral resoluteness, no matter what those morals might be, but also an insatiable thirst for knowledge and new experiences, a constant yearning for something more."

"...and?"

"And I see it in you too. Mark my words, this town, even this country will become too small for you soon enough. You will see great things, and you will do great things. Thank you for your help today."

"... Goodnight, Klaus."

March 16, 2014

Despite the fact that it has been a veritable whirlwind of a month, Bonnie feels the most put-together she has in a long time.

Despite the fact that she expended impossibly vast amounts worrying about Caroline's final-month pregnancy complications—it turns out the kids are siphoners, and their prenatal reign of terror began as seemingly harmless witch-baby kicks every now and then but soon became extended episodes that left the blonde vampire unconscious, the greyness of desiccation creeping up her arms and legs from her extremities, and it all culminated in a nerve-wracking magical C-section performed by her, Valerie, and Beau—right now she's calm, satisfied, stable.

Despite the fact that it's unlikely she'll be seeing much if any of either Caroline or Ric now that they have the full-time unpaid job of child-rearing—not even in school, because thanks to Care's precisely phrased compulsion he got the rest of the semester off for paternity leave, and now her African mythology course has been taken over by Professor Fairchild, who, to be fair, is kind and eloquent and easy on the eyes, but it just isn't the same not having her friend there—and that now she's essentially an on-call pro bono babysitter, Bonnie has actually built a social life for herself: she's made friends in almost all of her classes with whom she studies or grabs coffee; she gets drinks with Matt every Thursday at the impressively revitalized Grill; she and Damon and occasionally Stefan, whether they go out or stay in, continue to consume brown liquor by the bottle; and she's even developed a weird rapport with Enzo the few times she's gone with Damon to the Armory to check up on things.

Despite the fact that winter seems resolutely unwilling to cede its slot to spring, she's been trying to reconnect with nature, finding peaceful green spots around campus in which to do simple relaxation and olfactory spells (she once cast one of the latter with too much intensity and ended making the entire surrounding area smell like lavender, but no one complained).

Despite the fact that Nora—

"Okay, this is stupid. Sorry. It's not stupid. But I'm not doing this."

"What? Why not? You looked so in the zone for a second there, I totally thought it was working."

"Maybe this kind of stuff helps you, but it doesn't help me. Sorry." Bonnie stands up from where she was sitting cross-legged on the floor and blinks the spots out of her vision. "I think I'm just gonna go."

"Hey, I'm sorry, I totally did not mean to put any pressure on you." The expression on her friend Delphine's face is so full of guilt and compassion that Bonnie un-bristles almost right away. "It's not supposed to— it's not, you know, manifestation or anything. I don't think anyone can just will something into existence. But I do believe that affirming and reinforcing what you do have despite everything that could have denied it or taken it away can help you be more present and autonomous in your life."

"How are you so smart?" is all Bonnie can muster.

"I'm not. I'm a psych major. We're just really good at sounding smart."

"Ha. But why— I mean, isn't dwelling on all the bad shit that's happened to you like, not good? There sure as hell are a lot of things that could have prevented me from being here right now had they gone differently, and I don't really enjoy the process of flipping through those memories like a highlight reel."

"It's away to leave the past behind without forgetting or denying it happened. Those things are mostly irrelevant in terms of what's happening right here, right now, but they are definitely relevant to the why and how of it all, you know?"

"Yeah." Bonnie bites her tongue, not sure how much she should candidly share. "Unfortunately, I don't really think the rules apply to the shit I've been through."

Delphine doesn't look scared at the ambiguous statement, more just slightly wary. "Okay, understood. Everyone's different." They stand up too and face Bonnie, flipping through a notebook until they reach the desired page. "I guess I'll mark you down as 'did not find it at all helpful'?"

"Sure. Sorry. Did I waste your time? I mean, can you use any of this for the paper?"

They laugh. "Yes, don't worry. It's an experimental study, after all. No result is guaranteed."

"Okay, good." Bonnie grabs her bag from the table near the door. "We still on for getting drinks at Scull and cranking out that project for WitchLit next weekend?"

"I'm counting down the days."

Bonnie smiles and waves, says "See you then," the perfect picture of a happy-go-lucky campus gal bidding farewell, but as soon as she's outside Delphine's dorm room and the door is closed her face drops into moroseness and she slides her back down the wall until she's sitting on the floor, trying to get her breathing to slow down. All the good things about her life she had picked out on which to "intensely ruminate" were true, real as can be, and in all honesty this is mostly what she had always pictured as a young girl dreaming about her future college days, but it's all just bullet points on paper, because the truth is there's a huge piece missing and she refuses to acknowledge what she knows it is.

And the exercise for Delphine's project had reminded her that that huge piece couldn't just be ignored, because it could once again loose that same eviscerating volley of misery and dread and masochistic memory inundation at any time. It's not enough to just push it into a corner like a mess in a closet she doesn't want to clean up. But how can she make progress, let alone heal, when the mere thought of Nora's name so severely incapacitates her?

She finally composes herself enough to rise to her feet, brushing the dorm hallway dust off her but and warding off a quizzical glance from a fratty-looking guy walking the opposite direction with her most vicious the fuck are you looking at? face. It's only just hit three o'clock but Bonnie has too much to do before the next week begins to waste time feeling sorry for herself right now. Two essays and a sizeable handful of new reading assignments Fairchild had been giving that she's relentlessly procrastinated until now are silently screaming at her from her desk in her room, and she's also meeting Damon at Scull around eight. It seems her schedule these days barely allows any time to think, and yet she's always thinking, the darkness of regrets and fears past, present, and future always pulling at her, preventing her from ever being truly in the moment. But what is she supposed to do about any of this? The experimental "causal affirmations" technique didn't help, short of getting one of her friends to compel a shrink she can't really see one of those either, and when she does get one-on-one time with anyone, even Abby, she either chickens out from explaining her feelings or does explain them only for the other person to not get it at all. It's more than exasperating; it's exhausting.

At this point all she wants is one simple conversation with Nora. Even if they still couldn't be together, or even see each other ever again, just a few minutes with the person who—improbably, inexplicably—understands her best would fix everything. Or mostly everything. Or maybe it would just tear her already shredded heart into even tinier pieces. But at least there'd be some sort of closure. But in this world, closure is almost always too much to ask for, so Bonnie isn't getting her hopes up.

It's the middle of March, and yet the short walk between Delphine's nearby dorm building to her own is a windy, brisk 45 degrees. By the time she gets back to her own room she's shivering in her insufficient layers and wants nothing more than to get some hot herbal tea and curl up in her bed with as many blankets as she can find, but with such imminent deadlines her brain wouldn't let her veg out even if she had time to. So she sighs as she drops her stuff onto her bed, pulls out her desk chair, and sits down at her computer as she's done so many time before... but the zombish routine is broken by something out of the ordinary when she folds the screen up: a new email from FM, subject line URGENT.

B—

Sorry been out of contact so long. Working to try stop what may inevitably happen anyway tonight. Powerful coven doing spell to unlink K and E sire lines. Huge amount of energy will be used and even more released. You will probably feel it if it happens. So will friends. Be prepared. But still trying. Will get in touch after everything goes down. I hope.

—F

Bonnie leans back in her chair, mind reeling at the concise but shocking message. The Originals' sirelines being broken? That would be a good thing, right? No more worrying about Klaus finally finding someone or something more powerful than him to piss off and taking at least Tyler, and probably Stefan, Caroline, Damon, and Abby with him. But from their perspective, it makes sense to maintain, she supposes; it's a nice insurance policy to have your life linked to your enemies. There must be something to worry about, or else Freya wouldn't have told her... right? But she decides she deserves to put off any worrying until something actually happens, shoots a heads-up text to the group chat, and gets to work. School's cool, after all.

In between fielding dramatic responses to the news and being convinced by Damon that they should still go get drunk, she bangs out the occult reading assignments one after the other and then tears through the first of the two essays, a midterm paper for Anthro that she'd already started, the rest flowing easily from the roots of her thesis paragraphs. She decides to put off the other one until tomorrow, since it's due Monday at midnight. After printing and stapling the double-spaced pages at the hall station she slowly trudges back to her room, and before she even knows what she's doing she has a piece of her letter stationery on her desk and pen in hand. And perhaps for the first time all day, Bonnie smiles, because all of a sudden she realizes exactly what her personal route to therapeutic growth will be.

Dear Elena,

I have a proposal for you.

I know you can't really answer. Or maybe you can, and I just can't hear you. But my question is this: will you help me?

The fact is, I need someone to talk to who is different from everyone else in my life right now. And not only were you already different from everyone else when you were awake, now that you're asleep you can still be there for me. It'll be like playing tennis with yourself against a wall. I hope it's more effective than when I actually tried to get good at tennis in middle school. If my dad were here he'd still be bringing up that window I broke.

Maybe you won't even want to read these letters. I doubt that, since presumably you'll still be, you know, you when you wake up, but I'll mark them just in case.

I think my problem is that Nora was a really important person, not just to me but FOR me, someone with and through whom I could learn and grow. And I was, I really was. The more time I spent with her the more I started to realize that I've been wrong about love my whole life. I always knew that falling in love shouldn't be the ONLY goal in life, but I did believe it was the only path to the fullest happiness, as if finding that connection unlocked some new level of content unattainable otherwise. I think a lot of people believe that, actually, whether they realize it or not. But it's not that way at all. Falling in love with someone just shows you that you already had that happiness—you just didn't know where to look. I'm sure I don't even have to explain it to you (I mean, this is therapy after all), but when Nora and I were together I learned more about myself than I ever had before: new things to acknowledge, to value, to respect. And it was going so well. But now that it's been ripped away, and so suddenly, I'm like a horrible mess of frayed edges, incomplete connections, and it feels like all of the new perspective I gained is leaking out like blood from arteries. I know, I KNOW, that I can become the best I can be with no one's help but my own, but now I have so much more to handle, recontextualize, unlearn and learn again. And I'm tired, Elena. Too tired to start from scratch like this. And now I can feel Caroline and Ric slipping away... I mean, my best friend right now that even knows I'm a witch other than Damon is ENZO. If that isn't rock bottom, I don't know what is.

So here I am. And I'm going to tell you about what I thought today when my friend tried to get me to do some wild thought-pattern therapy technique.

Out of all the days I've almost died, and ACTUALLY died, I thought about the only time I was the one trying to do the life-taking.

Sometimes I can still smell the exhaust, feel it burning my eyes and my lungs. I've felt fear at the prospect of death, but I've never accepted it like that, and that feeling haunts me—the moment when the switch flipped in my head and I knew it was really going to happen. I never, EVER want to experience that again. I think I still have a lot of shame from it, which has gotten better with time, but then when my friend was telling me to ruminate on things that could have prevented me from being where I am today, and the knowledge that I could've deprived myself of a long, full life of MY OWN ACCORD had Jeremy not save me kept overpowering everything else.

And Nora... she got it. She had tried to, in her own prison world, and so we had that channel (which takes most people ages to work up to) open almost right away. And again, it's been ripped away. I

Bonnie suddenly starts as if breaking out of a deep trance, shaking her head quickly back and forth before looking at the digital clock on the edge of her desk. It's past seven already? She picks up her phone, expecting a horde of missed calls and texts, but there are only three of the latter: two from Damon (So we're still on right? followed by Answer me you slug lush) and one from Stefan (Hey, have you talked to Care or Ric recently? According to their phones they're at Ric's place but neither are answering. Probably just busy with the kids but would you and Damon mind checking in on them? He's on his way.)

She frowns. Wait, he was already on his way by then? That means...

And as if on cue, and he might as well be because the universe seems to really be into him always having perfect timing, there's the unmistakable sound of the Terminator-theme knock twice from the hallway side, and then, since an unlocked door is clearly always an open invitation, Damon lets himself in and peeks his ever-shifting eyes around the edge. "Ah! Good. You're not dead."

She glares at him. "I went like three hours without responding to you and you had to come check in on me?"

"Nope." Damon waltzes in and makes himself at home on the corner of her bed, as usual. "I was just bored."

"I should've known."

"Stefan was being extra neurotic today. Ric and Blondie didn't reply to your text about the crazy witch shit and he was freaking out. I kept telling him they're probably just waist deep in dirty diapers, lack of sleep, and baby-cry fatigue, but he's still worried. Wants us to stop by and check up on 'em."

"Yeah, he texted me."

"Mama Stefan, always on top of things." He slaps his hands on his knees. "So, are you done with your stuff, or what?"

"What if I wasn't, Damon? Would you just sit here and twiddle your thumbs while I did homework?"

"I'd probably just annoy you until you gave up trying to focus so we can go get drunk."

She throws her pen at him, which he catches in a blink-of-an-eye movement of his arm and then twirls around his fingers. "Ass."

Damon sort of cranes his neck to see what's on the desk in front of her, and his face immediately softens as a wave of realization hits him. "Were you writing to—"

"Yeah." Bonnie switches off her little study lamp and stands up from her chair, yawning and stretching before she grabs her coat. "Just needed to get some stuff off my chest..." And... she hasn't really had time to stop and think much since Damon's impromptu arrival, but she actually does feel better, like a bit of the weight she's been shouldered with Atlas-style lately has been chipped away. "And I think it actually helped."

"The power of Elena Gilbert, whether conscious or catatonic." He visibly hesitates, then continues: "You know I'm always here too, right? I know I haven't always been the best friend for you, but I want to be. I really do. I mean, you'll always deserve more than—"

He stops, mouth open, eyes wide, like someone has just unexpectedly grabbed his neck in a tight grip. "What the hell?"

Bonnie feels a raw, powerful electricity suddenly surge through each and every nanometer of the air around them. "I think this might be—"

Damon suddenly screams in agony and claws at his lower torso, and Bonnie isn't sure what he's doing until she sees the deep crimson like a wine stain on carpet rising up his chest and neck, uniformly as if he's being filled up with some carnivorous liquid, and as it passes up through his face he screams again, more desperately this time, the utterance tearing at his vocal chords as it leaves his throat, and Bonnie can't do anything but grimace and watch as he collapses to his knees, panting and slick with sweat.

"Well. I guess that was it." Bonnie runs to the bathroom to fill up a small cup of water and brings it to Damon, who drinks it greedily. "You okay?"

"Blood. I need… blood." His voice is quiet and scratchy.

She jogs to the fridge, grabs a bag from Caroline's emergency stash, tosses it to him. "Normally you'd have to risk that being stale, or whatever the hell happens to blood when it sits around too long, but in the last few months of the pregnancy Care was restocking it like every other day."

Damon sucks the entire thing down before saying "Thanks," and he's about to continue when they both hear two things: one, a light but frantic knock on the door, and two, Bonnie's phone aggressively vibrating on the wood surface of her desk. It's Ric.

"What the hell just happened?" he asks loudly.

Bonnie doesn't hear any crying babies in the background, which seems like a good sign. "Give me one second Ric, sorry." She takes the phone away from her ear and opens the door, revealing a petite, wide-eyed girl who lives on the next floor. "Can I help you?"

"Uh…" The girl taps her feet and surreptitiously tries to look around Bonnie into the room. "Was there not just a horrible scream coming from this room like 30 seconds ago?"

"Oh, sorry. That was my friend—he, uh, stubbed his toe." Bonnie steps to the side a bit so the girl can see Damon, who gives her a sheepish smile and a wave.

"Are you sure you're okay?" she asks him. "It sounded like someone was being axe-murdered in here."

Damon opens his mouth but Bonnie steps back between him and her concerned neighbor, quickly saying, "He's just a drama queen. Sorry if it scared you."

The girl finally seems to relax a bit. "Okay. Good. Well…" She sticks out her hand. "I'm Ashley, by the way. I just started going to Whitmore this semester."

Bonnie accepts the handshake. "Welcome. I'm Bonnie, and that's Damon. I can assure you, screams of bloody murder aren't exactly the norm for campus. It's pretty quiet here, most of the time."

"Most of the time," Damon echoes behind her, and she whips around and shoots daggers at him with her eyes.

"Don't listen to him. Anyway, sorry again. I have to take this call, so…"

"Oh, right," Ashley says, stepping back. "Goodnight then." She hurries off down the hall.

Bonnie, feeling like an asshole, as she always does when she has to lie to people and/or get rid of them so that everyone on the whole damn campus doesn't know she's a witch, finally raises the phone to her ear again, catching Ric in mid rant."

"—just finally gotten them to stop crying and go to sleep, and if Care hadn't been so quiet even though she described the feeling as 'being wrung out from the inside,' they'd probably be up again now, and— Bonnie, are you even listening?"

"Yeah, Ric, yeah. Sorry. Had to deal with something. So, according to Freya Mikaelson, some New Orleans witches just broke Klaus's link to his sireline, and possibly Elijah's as well. That's what it was."

"And you didn't think to maybe give the brand new parents a heads up?"

Bonnie sighs. "Check your texts, old man."

Silence on the other line, then: "Oh. Sorry."

"It's fine." Bonnie laughs, looks at Damon, who's still sitting on the floor but thankfully no longer resembles a cholera patient. "Is she okay?"

"Yeah, she's okay now, after a blood bag or two. You wanna talk to her? Oh wait, she's on the phone with Stefan now."

"I will, later. No worries." Bonnie pauses. "Wait, you said Care didn't make much noise while it was happening?" She looks at Damon, who rolls his eyes at her.

"Yeah, I mean, we spent like the last three hours trying to put Lizzie and Josie to bed. Why?"

"No reason. Just that Damon may have had a much more... dramatic reaction to it."

"Drama queen."

"That's what I said."

"Shut up, Ric," Damon says loudly. "And also you, Bonnie. My head hurts. Ugh. Klaus really had to have one last laugh before our incredibly inconvenient mortal tether to him was broken, huh?"

"I'll talk to you later, Ric," Bonnie says before hanging up, then to Damon: "Aw, so baby's head huwt? No dwinky dwink tonight?"

"Absolutely dwinky dwink tonight. Are you kidding? Only thing that's gonna keep me sane at this point. Wanna see if Stefan wants to come? He could use it. I know I'm a baby, but... fuck that hurt. I feel like an empty avocado skin."

"Just giving you shit." Bonnie grabs her coat again, but actually puts it on this time. "The amount of power that spell must have released is insane. I mean, I felt it in the room; it was like a lightning strike times ten. I hope wherever it goes, or to whoever, it doesn't get abused."

Damon finally gets up. "So far, seems like whatever the hell is going on down in New Orleans, they're pretty content to keep it contained there."

"Yeah. You ready?"

"Yep. We walking or driving?"

"It's like three blocks away, Damon."

"No distance is too short for the Camaro, Bonnie. I thought I lost that car forever, not too long ago. I'm trying not to take any more of my time with it for granted."

"You talk about it like it's a person."

"More of one than some of the braindead Xanax zombies I've seen plodding around this place."

"I told you, stop judging my generation so harshly. It's not our fault we hate the world."

"Fair point." He steps out into the hallway. "You coming?"

"Give me a sec." She walks over to her desk and reaches over to close her laptop when she sees another email notification pop up, again from FM. This time it has a .zip file attached and the message is much shorter.

B—

Failed. Both K and E lines broken. The prophecy is coming true in ways could not imagine. Must protect my brothers from their many enemies. Sending all of my research. Good luck.

—F

Despite Damon's whines of protest from outside, Bonnie is too curious not to extract the folder, but the first document she opens immediately makes her blood run cold.

It's titled "The Legend of Arcadius."