Chapter 11
More suddenly than she had ever seen before, Bonnie watched Damon's fangs ascend as the veins around his eyes rippled and turned red. When his eyes reddened, it was more frightening because something else was prompting this. The thing inside him had been provoked.
She didn't try to run when he lunged at her and sank his teeth into her neck. She didn't scream as she felt the blood leaving her body, which was growing weaker every second. Something else was dragging her into blackness, too. The evil inside him was lashing out, and she was letting it.
"I think it's time. I think I heard something," Caroline said. She looked at Stefan and he nodded. She gunned the engine and they pulled up to the diner. It looked vacant.
Then Stefan saw them. He rushed into the diner with Caroline at his heels just in time to see that Damon had nearly drained Bonnie of all her blood. Caroline saw Bonnie look up at them and then she was unconscious. Caroline looked at Stefan again. He inclined his head, barely this time, and they attacked from behind, wrenching Damon away and throwing him to the ground. He looked less human than ever.
"Wait for it," Stefan instructed as they held him back. Damon leapt to his feet, still struggling under their grasp to get to Bonnie.
Then Stefan saw it. He caught a glimpse of Damon behind the wild eyes that weren't his.
"DAMON!"
It all happened at once. Caroline broke a chair leg with vamp speed and staked him in the stomach just as he broke free and saw Bonnie's crumpled form laying in front of him. His cries of agony filled the diner.
"You killed her," Stefan yelled over him. He knew it wasn't true, but he also knew what that knowledge would do. "You killed her."
Damon heard those words through his own yells as he felt the wood pierce his abdomen, and somehow the pain there was less than the pain he felt everywhere else upon hearing those words. Something in him snapped, and as he yelled, he felt the evil inside him dying. Its wrath was nothing compared to his. His pain. His guilt. He was more broken than he had ever been in his life.
Bonnie Bennett was dead and it was his fault.
Did this mean Elena would be back? He didn't know, and he wasn't surprised to find that he didn't care. All he cared about was what he had done. It was unforgivable, that's what it was. He would never forgive himself. She was gone, just like that.
"Bonnie…"
He struggled to stand, feeling the overpoweringly familiar waves of guilt that meant he was himself again. He couldn't stand it. He shut his eyes, ready to block everything out, of his own accord this time. He couldn't keep feeling this and he knew it wouldn't stop if he didn't do it. He missed her already. Her eyes, her smile, her rapid heartbeat when she was around him. He could almost still hear it.
Damon opened his eyes. He could still hear it.
"Holy fuck–Bonnie–WAKE UP!"
He ripped open his own wrist and raised it to her lips, forcing her to drink. When her eyes fluttered, his body filled with something different. Joy? Relief? Something else. He didn't want to admit anything more, even to himself.
Then icy blue met emerald green and his smile was wide enough to break his face.