A/N: Sorry about the gap in updates, the past month and a half have been ridiculously stressful. Thank you to everyone who reviewed and kept my spirits up these past few weeks, and shoutout to Chelle for being my Klonnie landfill neighbor. I hope y'all enjoy this chapter!
Abby Bennett is beautiful.
This fact washes over Bonnie with the late afternoon sunlight that silhouettes her mother like a portrait. She is some inches taller than her daughter, with long black curls pinned in silver barrettes, wearing a flowered green sundress and matching espadrilles. Everything about her, from the rose lipstick to the gold-and-white purse slung over a tanned shoulder, is arranged in an elegant synchronicity.
Bonnie, who had thought her flowy blue maxi fine enough for lunch at Mystic Grill, suddenly feels underdressed.
"Hi," she says, her voice sounding foreign to her own ears. "I umm ordered some chips and guac...I'm hungry every half hour now." She smiles cheerily, ignoring the stone in the pit of her stomach, the sudden flood of questions in her throat. Something tells her Abby Bennett would not respond well to public displays of strong emotion.
"I ate like a horse the end of my second trimester too. Pints of ice cream and Chinese food, sometimes together," Abby makes a face, sliding gracefully into the booth. "Do you eat a lot of pickles?."
"All the time! I can't stop."
Abby laughs ruefully. "I used to take a jar with me to work and eat in my cubicle. My keyboard smelled like pickle juice for months."
"I eat like half a jar everyday," Bonnie confesses. "It's embarrassing."
"They just taste so darn good though. Especially with a little mustard-,"
"Oh my god, I love putting mustard on mine. People think I'm crazy."
"They're totally missing out."
Bonnie drinks in her mother's smile, determined to ensure their shared laughter doesn't skitter off. That the silence, with thirteen missing years tied to its ankles, doesn't sink between them.
She'd had been back in Virginia almost three weeks when she sat down at her dad's desktop computer and saw the email from Abby Bennett. Several emails, in fact, dating back over the course of two months and each one containing the same information: she was visiting Mystic Falls and needed to deliver part of Sheila's will to Bonnie.
She confronted Rudy about the messages one evening while Anaïs was in the shower.
His reaction outraged her.
Rudy massaged his temples, his face taut and weary. "I told her, whatever she needs to give you she can give my lawyer. There is no need for you two to be in the same room-,"
"That's not your decision to make! I had a right to know-"
"I had a right to know a lot of things too," he said, tiredly. "Like the fact that I was going to be a grandfather."
Bonnie opened and closed her mouth. She fought against the feeling that she was just a child, a girl who doesn't know any better. "I was going to tell you, it's just-,"
"Complicated? Difficult? I don't even know where you've been for the past few months, Bonnie." His jaw clicked. "Or who you've been with."
"I've been staying with a friend, he's. -"
"A 'friend' who lets you stay with him for free and buys you clothes? I suppose he's the father?"
"No! He isn't. He can't- anyway, it doesn't matter. I'm not staying with him for free, I was helping him with some magic stuff...," she trailed off, noticing the pinch of anger on Rudy's face.
"Of course, magic." He gave a short, bitter laugh. "I wouldn't understand anything about that, would I? That's what your grandmother used to say."
And Bonnie saw decades mapped on his face, in the loose skin under his eyes, the deep lines on his forehead, the soft flesh of his jaw. Decades of being on the outside looking into a world of magical beings where he had no power to intervene, no power to gain a foothold, no power to prevent his wife from leaving, to protect his daughter.
She wished, in that moment, that she felt sympathy or compassion, even anger. But these emotions required attachment, a knowledge of the person or thing they were drawn to.
Standing there before the man she called father, in the house she had spent her growing years, all she felt was empty.
Bonnie learns that she has a half brother: Jamie. He just finished middle school, is the star of the school debate team, and wants to be a photographer some day.
Abby shows her a picture of a skinny, dark-eyed boy with a beaming smile, dressed in a smart navy suit. There's a self-assured radiance to him that fills Bonnie's throat with envy, makes it hard to swallow. She sees the way her mother's eyes shine as they look upon Jamie's image and tries to remember a time when Abby had looked at her that way, had smiled that stained glass smile.
Still, she makes herself focus on the positive. She has a sibling, someone who shares Bennett blood, shares the curious burden and gift of generations upon generations of witches and warlocks.
When she asks about Jamie's powers however, Abby's smile flickers and dims. Jamie doesn't have any magic, Abby tells her. She made sure of it.
"What do you mean 'made sure'?"
"Oh it's no big deal," Abby waves a hand, the charms on her Pandora bracelet tinkling like faint laughter. "Plenty of witches take that option nowadays. The right herbs at the right stage of pregnancy and the magic never gets a chance to take hold."
Bonnie feels an emptiness again, like her bones are hollow, like the wind is whistling through her.
"Just...like that?"
Abby nods, tucking Jamie's picture back into her wallet. "Bonnie...the reason I wanted to see you is because, well, your grandmother insisted on leaving me in charge of her...will." She reaches into her purse and retrieves a manila envelope sealed with a curious wax. "I kept telling her to just let a lawyer handle it but she insisted. She was always so stubborn."
She was funny too, and brave, Bonnie wants to insist. She smelled like jasmine oil. She stroked my hair sometimes if I couldn't sleep. She helped me out of a fugue state before I even knew what that was.
"Are you feeling okay?" Abby questions, a small frown on her perfect forehead.
She reaches for a glass of water and gulps it down. Manages a smile. "I'm okay. So...Grams' left you in charge of her will?"
Abby sighs, folding her manicured hands. "She left you her entire estate, Bonnie. The land, the house, her savings, some property she had in Switzerland. I would estimate it's all worth about half a million dollars, after tax."
Bonnie gapes. Half a million -
Sheila had always lived so simply, thrifting her clothes, tutoring kids at the college, collecting old books on the history of witchcraft that academics considered obsolete.
"It's a magic seal, see?" Abby points to the ornate wax stamp that pops open at a touch. "She mixed it herself when you were a baby, with some of our blood and hers. She told me it's spelled to open when 'the next generation of the Bennett line is preparing to be born'." She shrugged her slim shoulders with a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "I thought it would open for Jamie but...I guess Mom had other ideas."
Bonnie grasps the envelope with trembling fingers, too dazed to speak.
"I tried with you too, you know," Abby says, looking her over speculatively. "The herbs, I mean. They didn't work, of course. You and magic were always like this," she held up two entwined fingers. "Inseparable."
Such a strange word, Bonnie thinks. Inseparable. There's something thorny in the syllables, something that stings.
She stands next to her mother her under the restaurant awning while Abby waits for a cab. Her flight to Atlanta is leaving in two hours.
"You don't have to wait with me," Abby says, readjusting her purse strap. Her face is still dewy and fresh, her lipstick unmarred. Every so often she'll tilt her head and Bonnie feels like she's catching her own reflection, furtively, out the corner of her eye, in a small and hidden mirror.
"I don't mind," Bonnie smiles at her. "Hey... I was wondering-,"
"Just a sec, hun." Abby holds up a finger and answers her phone. Bonnie tries not to fidget. The seconds tick by, small and sharp as papercuts. Their afternoon together is dissolving like a lemon drop under the tongue.
"Yeah, yeah I'll be home in a few hours. Make sure dad heats up the leftovers okay? Love you too. Bye."
Unseasonal clouds are gathering in the sky, hastening a grey, watery dusk. The bright yellow of the cab looks almost garish.
Abby opens a flowery Coach umbrella over her head. "That's my cab. Thanks for meeting me, Bonnie. And congratulations, you're a little heiress now."
"Oh but...it doesn't have to be just my money, right? We can split it, Jamie and me. I can't wait to meet him... maybe after the baby's born I can-,"
"Bonnie-," Abby stops her with a hand on her arm, her smile glassy again, cool and quiet, without brightness. It's the first time her mother has touched her in thirteen years. "Bonnie, you can't - meet Jamie. He and my husband...honey, they don't know about you. They don't know anything about my life in Mystic Falls, or witches and - and that other stuff. I just came to town to give you the will. It had to be delivered personally-...," she withdraws her hand. "I'm so sorry, if you got the wrong idea - It's just, I can't tell them. It would -,"
The honking cab cuts her off.
Bonnie blinks, trying to feel her feet on the pavement. There's a strange, yawning hole in the middle of her. She thinks it will stretch and stretch, until she is no more.
"Sorry, Bonnie, I have to go. Go inside before you get too wet now." She gives a little wave from under her bright umbrella, gesturing at Bonnie's belly. "And good luck with everything!"
Bonnie searches for a word, a gesture, something she can throw like a hook, something to hold on to. But she has one last glimpse of her mother, a woman standing palaquinned by rain and yet untouched by a single drop, and knows, deep down, that nothing she could say, nothing she could offer, nothing she could try and be, would be enough to keep her there.
Abby disappears into the cab. Bonnie grows vaguely aware that rain is seeping through her sandals. She looks down at her hands, peppered with water. Feels rivulets down her back.
"Bonnie!"
A familiar, young voice calls out. She looks up and sees Monique bounding towards her, her sneakers splashing through puddles. Klaus follows behind, navigating the slippery sidewalk with ease in his usual boots.
She wants to laugh, ask them when they got here, tell Monique to pull her hood up over her bare head. But she finds she can't speak, or move. She is dripping at every corner, wearing rain for earrings.
"We saw your car!" Monique bounces on her heels. She squints up, puzzled. "The rain just started out of nowhere...Bonnie?"
The girl takes her hand, giving her a little shake. "Bonnie?"
Klaus' shadow falls across her, she feels her chin being tilted up. Rain pools at the corners of her mouth. He seems displeased, she thinks it must be the weather.
The words come slowly, her lips barely moving. "I- I don't have an umbrella."
"I don't have an umbrella-," she mumbles again as the car rolls up a long driveway to stop in front of a towering house. The rain is slanting sideways now, like a crooked smile.
Klaus places the back of his hand along her neck, his touch cool and dry. He's still frowning. Bonnie hears him give Monique a quick instruction followed by his phone. Then, he's sliding her out of the car and into his arms.
The world spins and swoops and she can't find the ground. She struggles against his hold, trying to put her feet down.
"Hold still will you -," he mutters, ducking her flying hands.
"I can walk-,"
"No doubt," he replies, lifting and carrying her towards the house. He pauses at the door and the loss of motion hits her. Her head falls dizzily on his shoulder.
"Put... me down," she manages.
He snorts. "Where, pray? Among the azalea bushes?"
She can't raise her head, the rain makes everything look like smudged watercolors.
Klaus' face looms in her vision, his brow all furrowed. She wants to touch the lines there and smooth them out like paper, but her hand feels too heavy to lift.
Her magic buzzes fever-hot beneath her skin, like dragonflies in summer trapped behind a window screen. He strides inside, Monique at his heels, footsteps echoing around the vast, empty rooms.
Her eyes drift close as he lays on her something soft, next to an empty fireplace.
She is burning, her magic blazing with the effort to anchor her, her consciousness drifting like smoke. Bonnie blinks salt from her eyes. She's floating-
"Put your arms around my neck."
-no, being lifted.
Klaus is carrying her upstairs. She holds onto him, her nose brushing his shoulder.
She's so parched, it hurts to swallow. She hears running water and licks her lips. It's strange, like her tongue and mouth are two separate entities, disconnected from any sense of her body. She's so very thirsty, but the thirst feels almost removed, like a fly buzzing around her. There's a piece of her burning to run away, far away, and let this body sag with absence. Her magic tightens its fiery tethers.
The sound of water fills her ears and the bright light of a bathroom nearly blinds her. She sees Monique emptying a bag of ice into an enormous tub, her sweatshirt rolled up to her thin elbows. Bonnie wants to touch those elbows, tell her everything's alright, be the one holding the blankets again. But she can't seem to manage the words, to manage anything save being lowered into the tub like she is a child herself.
The cold water cuts through her haze. Her dress is billowing like blue clouds around her. She wants to fight them off. She thinks she might drown-
"Easy, love- "
Klaus pushes the soaked fabric off her shoulders, over her breasts, down to her hips. She gasps when her skin breathes free. His hands are holding her like she might float away. Steady, earthen hands. Hands that keep her, that want her to stay.
Seized by a sudden, tearing panic, her own hands fly to her belly. She feels for any movement, a sign that her baby is still swimming happily, that her body can still hold him this way.
Her baby boy, her butterfly.
Her eyes burn with tears that won't come, throat clogging in desperation, "He's not moving - I can't feel anything-," she hiccups, "Please, I can't-,"
Klaus covers her hands with his own, stilling their frantic movements. "He's fine-,"
"I don't feel -,"
"I can hear his heartbeat," he says simply, his eyes going wolf-amber for a moment. "The baby's fine, sweetheart."
"I feel so stupid," she whispers, hot tears slipping from her eyes. She'd wanted so much to be strong and brave for her baby, like a well-rooted tree. To be the kind of mother that can weather any storm. But she's just a girl in a blue dress hungry for love who's never really been fed, whose own mother doesn't want her, not at five and not at eighteen.
"Just a few more minutes. Gloria's orders." Klaus adds gruffly when he notices her shivering. He stands and wipes his hands on a towel, averting his eyes from her exposed body. Bonnie nods, chewing on her lip in an effort at control, fighting down the urge to beg him to stay, to hold her. The bathroom door closes quietly behind him.
The bathwater is thick with magic, with the feverish effluvia of energy. Her sobs pour out of her with all the rage she did not know a five year old girl could possess, with a depth of angry grief she had not realized she'd carried under her skin for thirteen years.
They come, and come in waves. They wrench her back into herself.
A/N: Soooo don't hate me! LOL. I already have most of next chapter written, so you should see another update pretty soon. I sweated over this chapter for two weeks, so do let me know your thoughts in the reviews ^_^
