A/N: Hello, sorry for such a long wait for this, but writer's block was a rude lil B.

The little splotches of blood seemed to multiply in the palms of her hands. Uncurling her fingers, she gasped sharply. She couldn't get control of her breathing or her elevated heart rate. Her hands shook as she fumbled with inserting the key in the lock, but her fingers kept slipping.

Finally, she was inside.

She was grateful for the darkness. It was easier to melt in the shadows and to move about undetected. Not a single light was turned on, which was just fine by her. Light would have made everything more real. A few moments later she locked herself in the bedroom then the bathroom.

She lit a single candle, turned on the bathtub faucet and stripped out of her soiled jeans, T-shirt, and toed off her shoes. Discarding her undergarments with it, she stepped into the tub. She had forgotten to turn on the cold water and what awaited her would have surely melted skin. But she didn't care. She held in her cries as the scolding hot water pricked her skin. Biting her bottom lip, she sank until she was fully submerged.

She shut off the water once it reached her shoulders. Her breath rippled the top as steam covered her in a halo. The mirror was foggy, a haze engulfed the room as she sat for a while—thinking. She brought her hands out of the water, water that was now a very pale pink. They were still stained with blood. Grabbing the sponge and a bottle of body wash, she began to scrub maddeningly.

Her movements were feverish as she cleaned herself again and again and again until miraculously the water had grown cold. She stepped out, grabbed a towel, dried herself, and went back into the bedroom.

She dressed in a short loose nightgown and climbed into bed. She hugged her knees to her chest, something she hadn't done since she was a little girl. Unconsciously, she bit her nails as she blocked out the images that assaulted her, pricked her like needles. A groan tried to climb out of her throat but she forced it back down. A tear fell and then another and soon her cheeks were flooded as mucus covered her top lip.

Dahlia said her training would be cruel. Bonnie wished that had been a lie.

Hours Ago…

With the moon half hidden behind a patch of dark clouds, her mind wandered to previous adventures in the woods. Playing hide-and-go-seek when she was little, the parties. Little by little her childhood was pushed aside by bodies. Bodies and blood draining into the ground.

Bonnie's mordant thoughts clashed with anticipation. She could feel the subtle change in the air. It was becoming weightier, heavier, infused with magic. She hardly thought of Mystic Falls as a magical place in the sense of dreams coming true. It was a harbinger of death. Anyone to enter its city limits never left out alive. Yet Bonnie drew power from this place since it was the epicenter of her ancestors. Or so she had been led to believe. Dahlia said someone had been negligent in telling her who she was. Grams hadn't lived long to tell her, and her mother never cared. As usual she was left to figure out what came next on her own.

The woods curved and Bonnie begun to see the faint glow of light. Candlelight, perhaps torches. Inhaling, she smelled hickory, pine, and oak burning. She was getting close and her hands, which were already a bit clammy to start with, were now drenched. Bonnie walked faster despite wanting to run in the opposite direction. But it was too late to fold. She was there.

Dahlia stood with her back to her in front of a rock formation of some sort. Bonnie had no idea what it was. She looked closer. It wasn't a haphazard rock or boulder jutting from the ground, but carefully arranged large slabs of stone constructed into an…altar? Bonnie gulped and forced her feet to move. As she did, the torches flared higher. She stopped abruptly.

Dahlia turned, dressed in the same dark coat she wore the previous day. That same no-nonsense expression hadn't changed a bit, and Bonnie figured she wouldn't be welcomed with hugs and kisses. Besides, she didn't want to touch Dahlia if she could help it.

"Tonight will not be what you expect," was Dahlia's warm and fuzzy welcome. "Are you ready?"

Bonnie nodded jerkily; her heart in her throat. "I am."

"Are you? You seem nervous."

"I…am," Bonnie admitted ruefully.

"At least you're honest, but how honest are you really, Bonnie?"

"What do you mean?"

Dahlia began to approach. "There is the truth we tell ourselves and the truth we tell to others. How often do your truths align or clash with one another?"

Bonnie's questions was: What does honesty have to do with learning how to use spells to defend herself and kill? She wisely kept that to herself, but by the brightening of Dahlia's eerily yellowish eyes, perhaps she plucked that thought straight from her head.

"You don't trust me," Dahlia postulated without offense. "You're smart not to. Come here, witchling."

Bonnie crossed an invisible boundary and the minute she did, it was like a veil had been snatched from her eyes. She had entered the real world, the real world to a witch. The power of it knocked her off kilter. Bonnie could feel the exact age of the earth, the trees in the forest, could feel the death of a recently killed possum, and a bird settling into its nest to protect its young. It was nature at its most unfiltered and she was at the center of it.

Bonnie's hearing was magnified. Her hand lifted, faltered before closing over her left ear. She yawned to forcibly pop her ears but it was still too much. So much her balance was thrown. Bonnie wobbled.

"Don't fight it," Dahlia cautioned.

"What is this?"

"What you're feeling is what your magic is derived from. The source."

"I thought…wow," a nervous giggle escaped, "I thought magic came from the spirits and the earth, too, but mostly the spirits."

"It does but where are the spirits today?" Bonnie had no answer. "There was nothing tethering them to this world once the other side collapsed, so they went back to the source."

Bonnie could hear the smoothing trickle of water but couldn't see the point of origin, and the reason for it was because it was traveling underground. Several herbs were burning and Bonnie noticed candles, which weren't there before she crossed that boundary. They were now displayed on the stone altar. Wax cooled and hardened into stalactites on the side of its surface.

"What is your weakness?" Dahlia asked.

"Lack of knowledge."

"Yes, but no. It's your thinking," the older witch pointed to her temple. "Your mind controls your body while your thoughts control you. You have to break those thoughts, Bonnie. One of the earliest lessons my mother taught me was…look at yourself like the universe. How everything was designed to carry out its own part. That's how you should look at your magic, carrying out its part. It is its own entity that happens to be a part of you. See yourself as magic."

"How would I do that?"

"In steps. This is a process," Dahlia lowered to the ground. "Give me your hands, child."

Bonnie sat opposite of Dahlia on her knees and stretched out her arms. She flinched a little as the older woman wrapped her steel-like fingers around her wrists.

Dahlia closed her eyes. Bonnie did the same.

Every spell she's ever done, every aneurysm, every broken bone, every daylight ring created, siphoning the magic of a hundred witches, coffin and tomb opened, heart stopped and started (her own included), veil lowered, prison world escape, every configuration of water into fire, Dahlia now knew about it.

Languidly, Dahlia's hooded lids parted, "Which of these made you feel the most powerful?"

Bonnie opened her mouth to reply since the answer seemed obvious, but she thought some more. When she used Expression someone else had been playing with her controls most of the time. Healing herself during the prom fiasco had been badass and Elena's fear she might kill her—delicious—but it was out of character. Bringing down Klaus meant the possibility of dying with him. Stopping Jeremy's heart…that power turned into fear as it took longer than expected for his heart to restart. Bringing him back the second time, she died instantly leaving no time to test out her new gifts in other ways. No matter the type of power or magic she wielded it went hand-in-hand with her death. So in a sense it left her weak.

But there was one tiny moment in time where Bonnie had absolute control. "Making feathers float," she declared.

Dahlia gave an imperceptible nod of her head in approval. "And you want to know why out of everything you've done you've felt the most power doing that simple thing? Because you had the most control. Power is no good if you're punished for it."

Three people wandered from the shadows standing some distance away. They wore dark clothing; faces obscured by the moonless night, the flicker of candles did little to highlight any noteworthy features.

"Here you have a werewolf, a vampire, and a witch," Dahlia orated. "You know the ways to kill them all. You can desiccate a vampire, drive a stake through its heart, decapitate it. Werewolves are still human so any wound inflicted to the heart or head would be fatal, the same with witches. Watch," Dahlia raised a hand in the air and closed it into a fist.

The werewolf, vampire, and witch began screaming and gripping various body parts as they cried out in agony.

"What are you doing?" Bonnie asked nervously.

"What does it look like I'm doing? I'm hurting them, using their weaknesses against them."

Bonnie watched in mystified horror and something akin to perverse excitement because it was clear what Dahlia was doing to them. And they actually sighed up to be used like this? But hurting them at once, these three different supernatural beings, she hadn't seen anything like that before.

As if she were watering her plants, Dahlia casually inquired, "Have you never tried to siphon the magic out of any of these beings?"

"No." She knew what having her power siphoned felt like, but hadn't learned to return the favor.

The vampire dropped to his knees, pleading for mercy. The witch was arched awkwardly caught between falling to the ground but suspended in a state of paralysis, a gurgling noise croaked from the depth of her esophagus. The werewolf twitched as the sounds of his bones breaking popped in Bonnie's ears that made her wince in sympathy.

"I'm forcing the werewolf to turn. I'm occluding the major arteries in the vampire, and I'm amplifying the witch's power to destroy her from the inside out."

"Ohmygod," Bonnie whispered.

Dahlia unfurled her fist and waved her hand in circle. The torture stopped and now her test dummies seemed to be in a state of bliss. Their harried breaths rushed out, groans turned into pants and moans.

"Being able to wield and control magic are two different things. You can control the severity of the spell. Make it the most painful feeling on earth, or the most pleasure-filled."

Bonnie licked her lips, eagerly wanting details. "But how? How can I switch it between the two without saying the words?"

"You rely so heavily on language, but language is nothing more than unconverted action. They are key but not always needed. Enough with the tricks. It's time to get started."

Shifting her focus to Dahlia, Bonnie gasped. Eyes doubled in size. The woman, Klaus' auntie, was butt butterball naked. Her long hair shielded her breasts; the rest of her was open to the elements. Her pale flesh was thankfully and strategically tattooed with symbols. Upon closer inspection which Bonnie really didn't want to look any closer, she recognized some of those symbols having seen them etched on the walls of the caves under one of the Lockwood properties. They were Viking symbols.

The air hit her body differently and when Bonnie slowly, unhurriedly looked down at herself, her clothes were gone. She immediately crossed her arms over her chest feeling violated and mortified. "What the fuck? Why am I naked? Why are you naked?"

"Rest assured there is nothing sexual about this. This is simply a ritual."

Bonnie's hands were gently pried away and she went blank. Dahlia was speaking but she wasn't listening. People started emerging from behind the altar. Six total. Three women and three men. They too were naked and covered in symbols.

"Who are they?"

"A few of my acolytes."

A woman walked straight toward them, her orbs overly large and the same color as Dahlia's. She carried a bowl in her hands fashioned from clay. She handed the bowl over to Dahlia, her head bowed.

Dahlia dipped her fingers in the contents of the bowl and began to paint a symbol on the center of Bonnie's chest. It burned and smelled of isopropyl alcohol and mint. The fumes made Bonnie cough and wiggle uncomfortably. "What is this?"

"For your protection. We're dealing with energies that can be…hostile at times. Unstable, yet potent. "

That did not boost Bonnie's confidence. Honestly what had she gotten herself into?

A clay cup was thrust toward the skittish witch. She lifted a brow but by the hard look on her mentor's face, questioning what it was, and declining to indulge was not an option. Bonnie accepted the cup and swallowed.

It almost came back up. The beverage—if she could even call it that—was bitter like radish juice diluted with honey. It was acrid stuff to intake and Bonnie slapped a hand over her mouth as her esophagus revolted. She grumbled when the liquid hit her belly and nausea flared for a minute but eventually the twisting of her gust settled. She dropped the cup and heaved a breath sure she was about to vomit. Luckily she managed not to.

The effects of whatever she drunk were immediate. Bonnie's head felt detached from the rest of her body. Her arms and legs weren't working in concert together. Her feet wanted to climb whereas her hands wanted to fly. Her skin wanted to dance right off her bones, her tongue swelled, her sight went into warp, and she was giddy, aroused, terrified, tired and hyperactive at once.

"What…what's happening?" her words slurred together like she was talking around a wad of gum.

Bonnie was tugged closer to the altar. Trepidation mounted and spread like weeds. Her eardrums began beating. No, that wasn't right. That was an actual drum she was hearing. And other instruments as well. Bonnie tried to turn her head to see, but with her body operating on its own volition she couldn't get it to work. Her bare feet slid across the cold dirt and she was brought to a stop.

Dahlia nudged her forward and Bonnie clumsily made her way on the altar lying down, hissing quietly once the cold slab came into contact with her skin. With her lying down the world around Bonnie shifted, became something else. Not something sinister though she could feel those vibes, but something indulgent and pearlescent.

The pulse of the air changed again. Bonnie glanced around as much as she could but shapes and forms blurred. She jumped when something wet was dashed on her. Bonnie went immobile. Something was crawling lengthwise on her legs. Her head lifted to see. They were fingers. A man in a mask.

"What is this?"

Dahlia was nowhere to be found, but Bonnie could hear her disembodied voice as she said:

"Explain to me how it was possible that you died. You had three different kinds of magic in you, Bonnie and you wasted them for what purpose? To defeat Silas?"

Arms came into view and Bonnie was flipped on her stomach.

"To bring back your ex-lover?"

The hands were digging into her hamstrings. She didn't know if this were supposed to be a massage or if she were supposed to be fighting. None of this was making a lick of sense to her, other than the sensations themselves. And all the while Dahlia was still talking.

"—to help the doppelgänger who couldn't be bothered to care that night if you lived or died."

Dahlia's taunts were running together, yet they hit their intended target. Bonnie's heart.

Warmth, her insides clenched at the thought of where those hands may go next. Electricity, lots and lots of electricity. It was mingling with her DNA. Bonnie could feel that, and though it wasn't unpleasant at first, she noticed it was becoming harder for her to breathe, to think. Like falling into a vat of oil, Bonnie figured out too late she was being consumed.

She panicked.

"You died in a cave for nothing, Bonnie. You let misplaced loyalty, lack of knowledge, and your own fear be your downfall. Now I must strip you of it."

"No," Bonnie flipped their positons with the unknown man on the bottom, her on top.

There was a ceremonial blade, curved, the handle made out of ivory. She reached for it, the cold steel burned her hand but she clasped on to it tightly. She reached down to unmask the person, her chest rising and falling, her breath escaping as vapor. Bonnie counted in her head and when she got to three she ripped the mask off.

It was Stefan…wait no Silas beneath her. Hatred and fury rushed through her so fast her head spun. Bonnie dug the blade into his neck. Then a funny thing started to happen. The face changed and she was looking at Klaus. And before his features could become substantial they were juxtaposed with Kai's face and then Jonas Martin's. Esther, Klaus, Elijah, Jeremy, Stefan, Katherine, Qetsiyah, Markos, Atticus Shane, Elena, and Damon people who have hurt her in one way or another, they were there with her on that altar. One after another they kept changing but the one sticking out the most was Kai.

Bonnie lifted the knife and stabbed down plunging the blade into the man's shoulder. Kai laughed.

"You're going to have to do better than that, sweetheart," he goaded.

She snapped. Bonnie started slashing. The knife ripped his trachea open and the surprise on Kai's face made her laugh and she laughed like she was a Disney cartoon villain. Blood oozed and drenched the altar, dripped over the edges, wet her knees. An infusion of something lit Bonnie up like a skyscraper and for two seconds she was paralyzed, back arched awkwardly, eyes pointed up to the sky. The minute it was over she had to catch herself on all fours or she would have toppled to the ground. She quivered and shook, giggled and whimpered.

The body beneath her wasn't moving and when Bonnie chanced a look at the face it wasn't Kai dead and gone looking sightlessly up at her, but Jeremy.

"Jer…?" her brow dimpled in confusion.

The face changed again and kept changing while the body was reanimating, becoming alive once more. Bonnie brought down the knife again. Markos, Silas, Klaus, Atticus, Katherine made no difference who it was they suffered the same fate as Kai. A slit throat. When the face morphed into Damon's…she hesitated.

"You can't afford to have any weakness or Achilles heel, Bonnie. Take him out."

Damon may have taken her for granted but he was there when she needed backup, he knew her the best as she was now, and had been the only one with any foresight to bring her back the first time she died. His reasons in the past may have been to make Elena happy, but Bonnie had a front row seat to his reaction when Jeremy told him the truth. He wouldn't have reacted that strongly unless he really did care.

"Do it, Bonnie."

"No."

"Then he'll be the reason you die again."

"I can't, I can't, I can't," Bonnie repeated softly.

"Why can't you?"

"Because…I…"

Love him.

Now

He had been here just last night and narrowly escaped the doghouse. Damon would say he was morbidly curious about how Bonnie's first training session with Dahlia went, but really he was worried. He didn't have a good feeling about it, and anytime the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, Damon heeded that warning.

Most of the time.

Bounding out of the car, Damon knocked on the front door of Bonnie's temporary home. He waited all of twenty seconds before barging right in.

"Bonnie?"

She wasn't in any of the rooms downstairs so he went up to the bedroom. He snorted seeing a burrito shaped mass in the middle of the bed. Bonnie was clunked out, mouth slightly parted.

Damon waited for her to start mumbling unintelligibly but was disappointed. The tired witch made not a single sound. "She must have put you through the ringer," he wagged his head, gripped the knob intending to close the door but he caught the scent of stale blood.

He tracked the scent to the bathroom where Bonnie's dirty clothes were strewn over the floor. Damon picked up her jeans, sniffed, frowned. It wasn't her blood but someone else's. Fingers plucked the shirt up next. The entire front of it was drenched.

What had Dahlia made her do? He left to go find her.

Blood red flowers were a dead giveaway.

Impervious to feeling cold, Damon's goose bumps pimpled his alabaster skin. The fine hairs on the back of his arms rose as if sensing some electrical interference. His teeth were on edge and he could have sworn his gums were bleeding. There was a force present in the area far more powerful than him and he knew he was on the right track.

Swatting thin tree branches aside his boots made not a sound on the pebbled pathway leading him to a solarium.

Built in 1909 by Emerson Randolph Lockwood it was a wedding gift to his daughter Cornelia who tragically died five days after saying 'I do'. The solarium was all glass designed like a Victorian bird cage. Damon was sure there was a metaphor in there somewhere. The wrought iron pane work had turned green with age. The windows for the most part were heavily covered in mildew, but this was where Damon found Dahlia. He knew to come here because this used to be a meeting spot for witches since the structure had inadvertently been constructed on the intersecting points of ley lines. If anyone cared to believe the hype. He hadn't until now.

Though it never occurred to Damon that he might have purposely been led there.

Damon pulled open the door having to exert force, and swept inside nothing the humidity although it was thirty-nine degrees outside. The entire north wall of the solarium was covered in blood red flowers that shared the name of the woman frowning at him disapprovingly. He gave her an unimpressed once-over.

"So you're the witch who's helping Bonnie," he spat succinctly.

Dahlia tiled her head like a marionette, her dark hair spilling over her shoulder. "And I know what it is you want. For me to be gentle with her because she's been through more than most girls her age. Bonnie's enemies won't care how delicate she is, and once my tuition is done she won't ever be again."

"Then you shouldn't mind if I observe these little sessions between you and my friend."

"Yes I do mind."

"That's tough shit."

"Damon," Dahlia moistened her thin lips, "you believe your own hype just as badly as my nephew. Only, in Niklaus' case he doesn't need to hide behind a twenty year old girl and her magic to be formidable. Don't even think it."

Was the woman a mind reader and saw him about to wrap his hand around her throat, or was he just that damn predictable Damon smashed his molars on top of one another.

"Did you have her kill someone last night?"

A weighted silence, then, finally, "Yes."

Damon bit back several oaths. "Who?"

"Someone who was happy to die."

"Why would you do that to her? She's not a murderer."

"Though she's asking me to teach her how to kill." Dahlia interlaced her fingers. "You believe you care a great deal for Bonnie, and perhaps you do in your own Freudian way. However, love won't keep her alive. And how do you expect her to be at her best when you cloud her judgment?"

A divot formed between Damon's brows, "What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about the fact that you and Bonnie are in love and neither of you has any idea."

If someone had thrown a bucket of iced water on Damon it wouldn't have affected him as much as the words that spilled from the ancient witch's mouth. The look of sheer confusion on his face made Dahlia guffaw.

Damon thawed out. "You don't know us, chick and you sure as hell know nothing about our…my…feelings."

"I was at the party last night…inconspicuous though I was, but I was there just the same. Your actions were not of one friend looking out for the other. But of a man…protecting his mate."

Damon's chest expanded. Inwardly he was scrambling like a cat trying to escape a bathtub filled with water. "I…that's not…you're wrong! My feelings for Bonnie are strictly platonic."

"You can deny it," Dahlia insisted. "It doesn't change the facts but what you do next will change the course. If you care anything for Bonnie at all you will give her the tools she needs and then…you will get out of her way."

A corner of Damon's eye crinkled. One thing he couldn't stand was someone he didn't know telling him what to do. "As long as she needs me I'll be in the picture."

Damon zoomed out of the solarium. He slammed the door to his car too hard and accidentally cracked the glass. His elbow finished the job of busting out the window in its entirety. Glass landed on his thigh, the floor. It was scattered across the dashboard. Damon sunk into the seat and sulked.

Bonnie killed. Bonnie's in love with him? He's in love with Bonnie? Preposterous.

Yet…

His phone started ringing. Damon whipped it out, frowned at the caller, and answered despite not wanting to. "Hey, I'm on my way back. See you soon."

Gunning the engine, Damon drove away.

A/N: Good news, chapter ten is already written. Just needs some fine tuning. What did we think of this? Bonnie's training with Dahlia is far from over, and what will Damon do with that unexpected revelation? Please leave me some feedback, y'all. Thanks for reading! XOXO