A/N: Y'all are the light of my life. Thank you
Treasures were often buried in obscured places. Until unearthed. Refurbished they became spectacles, drawing in shock and awe that a remnant of an unknown past had survived. Treasures hidden in plain sight were harder to reconcile for they exposed observational weaknesses. Somewhere on the scale Damon was finding out how long he had stumbled around in the dark when the light he needed had been in front of him for years.
Damon eagerly swooped in for another kiss. The first explained his interest, this would reaffirm his intentions. Steamy spice was exchanged with the flit of his inquisitive tongue along Bonnie's who mewled softly at the invasion. The more they kissed, the longer they kissed, the hotter things became. Damon pushed Bonnie up against his ride, the back of her knees coming into contact with the chrome bumper. Her ass unexpectedly landed on the hood and she threw out a hand on its hard metal surface to keep her balance.
Unbeknownst to the preoccupied witch her hand began to dent the metal as if it were clay. The paint melted, the metal groaned in relief once Bonnie removed her hand and wrapped it around Damon's wrist as their mouths moved with purpose and hunger.
Somewhere along the edges of his consciousness, Damon sensed whatever magic it was that kept him alive in his dead state, was ballooning. Filling up with an unidentifiable substance he could only call—Bonnie. He swelled beyond what should have been possible everywhere but felt it most notably in his dick.
He pulled away, severing the connection, shuddering uncontrollably for long moments. If he moved so much as an inch he probably would have blown to pieces, and the image of him scattered on the ground in little edible Damon bits made him grin. Pressing their foreheads together, Damon stared at Bonnie whose eyes were closed.
Lightly panting she licked the taste of Damon off her lips. Groaned lowly. Craved more. "Thank you, I…I really needed that," Bonnie breathed sultrily.
And she did. The emptiness she carted around far longer than ending up a prison world had receded. It wasn't…entirely gone. The pit was still there lingering in the bottom of her stomach it felt like, but it wasn't as big as before. Being with Hayden meant being with a body, another person to connect and anchor her in the world she had been snatched from prematurely. Seeking attachments to other people stirred anxiety and Bonnie couldn't help but second guess if she relied too heavily on Damon when she wasn't sure of what she meant—if anything—to him. Doubt lingered like an infestation that he was kind to her in his own Damon way because she sent him back, sacrificing her chance to go home. That for him it never went any deeper or meant anything beyond Bonnie being Bonnie.
For Damon to kiss her like that spoke volumes and yet that hope killer was gaining in support that perhaps the kiss still really had nothing to do with her, but everything to do with Damon deciding which between two women he cared for more.
Bonnie's chin dropped to her chest and she tried to put space between them, but Damon maintained his hold on her. "I should go," she mumbled softly.
Damon blinked. That hadn't been the response he anticipated. "What? Why?"
Her stare was liquid sunset that penetrated through his stratums of indifference and ice when she met his gaze. "You know why."
"You think I'd kiss you if my head was still lodged up a Petrova's ass?"
"You've kissed girls who were in love with your brother so…"
The barb stung.
"A kiss is nice," Bonnie expounded. "You're my only friend right now and I don't want to mess that up, but I need…more."
"Haven't I been in your corner since you've come back?"
"You have been and I appreciate it. It's just…"
"It's just…?" Damon probed. He stepped closer, so close he was pretty much standing on top of Bonnie. "After what we've been through why can't you tell me what's wrong?"
"Because," Bonnie had to stop herself from petulantly stomping her foot. Why couldn't Damon understand that talking about her feelings besides the ones on the surface was hard as hell for her?
"Bonnie…?"
She lost her patience. "I HAVEN'T FELT LIKE ANYONE LOVES ME IN A VERY LONG TIME!"
Her shout echoed and Damon jerked a bit at the force of her words as if they were a physical slap.
To Bonnie's annoyance her throat hurt as she fought off tears. "Loves me independently of anyone or anything else," she continued. "Loves me without conditions. I don't know what that feels like anymore. I need love, Damon. Genuine love."
There it was out. She was not so cold inside to scoff at the idea of needing love to survive like Dahlia would. She was not so far removed from the girl who sighed dreamily at the idea of what her future husband would look like, or blushed horribly when passing by her latest crush. Bonnie wanted something of her own. She had her magic, which was great, but she couldn't exactly hold it.
Damon's chest expanded on an inaudible inhale.
He knew exactly what Bonnie was asking, what she needed. Damon knew how Bonnie felt because he'd been there not too long ago. Besides Stefan he had had no one else, and that relationship for years had always been shaky and violent. Until he started letting people in. And those people around him tolerated him for lots of reasons but love was dead last on the list. Apart from Elena. Being the greedy creature he was, Damon made a vow he wouldn't rest until the love that turned him inside out, made him occasionally check his conscience was returned. However, he misread something. Severely.
It hadn't been Elena explicitly who motivated him, for lack of a better word, to be a better man. She never made him question if he could be selfless enough to save someone else and not himself. The person who had made him reevaluate his choices, see himself from a new perspective without disregarding the atrocities he committed was Bonnie. She didn't reside on a unearned pedestal, Damon mused.
As he opened his mouth Bonnie wasn't in the mood to hear a rejection. She pushed Damon far enough aside for her to wiggle away.
An approaching car lit up the road and Bonnie shielded her eyes from the glare of the headlights. The car zoomed by showing no signs of slowing down once crossing into Mystic Falls. She turned to watch but noticed Damon was gone.
He was in front of her. Bonnie bumped into his chest as he blocked the short path to her car.
His head was tilted in a way that cast his features in shadows. Bonnie waited for him to say something. He did.
"I love you. I love you like I've loved no one else before. That's real."
An indecipherable noise fluttered between Bonnie's kiss swollen lips.
The first drops of rain dotted the pavement. Thunder rumbled. Lightning flashed intermittent between the inflated clouds. Clichéd as it sounded, they felt like the only two people in the world.
"Maybe I'm the wrong person but I want to be the person who gives you what you want and need. Tell me you don't feel the same," Damon caressed her cheek with his thumb. "Tell me that once again I'm in something that's one sided."
Slowly her head shook from side to side. "It's not. I…" Bonnie's tongue momentarily got stuck to the roof of her mouth. "I love you, too."
The tautness in Damon's chest released, the octave of his voice lowered as he fought off a smile, "You just love me?"
"Do you just love me?" Bonnie countered with a tipped chin.
"No, I don't just love you. I'm in love with you, Bonnie."
It was Bonnie who initiated the kiss this time. And she didn't stop until she was good and ready.
Bonnie knew for a fact that the two guys huddled in the corner were Whitmore professors and one of them was screwing his student. Someone was carrying a concealed firearm and had robbed a woman while she loaded packages into her car last night. The lady at the far end of the counter lost her job since the company she worked for decided to outsource her department to India, and the cook was currently thinking about sending his sick aunt roses while preparing an order of chicken wings.
Her psychic powers were on one hundred but none of it mattered because Damon loved her! Was in love with her!
Perched on a stool at the 50's themed diner near Whitmore University, swinging her feet, Bonnie had a song in her heart as she spooned ice cream into her mouth. Anytime she felt herself smiling too broadly or spacing out to replay last night, she'd blush and covertly look around to make sure no one was staring at her strangely. But again, what did any of it matter? She was air, one of the lightest substances and for years she had been lead. Bonnie couldn't remember the last time she felt this happy. Felt this hopeful about the future. Nothing and everything changed with the stroke of a tongue.
Her cheeks blazed more.
"I had my own Pacey and Joey moment," she grinned maniacally into her banana split.
If asked how long they languished on the side of the road, Bonnie wouldn't be able to answer. Night disappeared and became day as they sat on the hood of her car talking about everything and nothing until exhaustion caught up to Bonnie, and they parted ways.
It was the single most romantic night of her life. So far.
Bonnie sighed again. Her happiness declining like the economy.
Ever experience that feeling that someone was going to ruin your day? That feeling throbbed in Bonnie's temples, but she continued eating her ice cream as if she had not a single care in the world. She did crick her neck, moved her shoulders, and tap her fingers on the countertop.
The bell above the door jingled. Bonnie's eyes slid to the left.
"Well, well, well if it isn't the boyfriend stealing bitch," Caroline Forbes crossed the sticky linoleum floor like it was a catwalk whereas the girl trailing behind her strolled in timidly. "How've you been?"
Those who heard that colorful proclamation swiveled their heads, conversations tapering off.
Bonnie spooned another bite of increasingly melting ice cream into her mouth. Caroline came up to her left, propping her elbow on the counter. Elena…she stood to Bonnie's right but a foot or two away.
"I wouldn't talk smack with eyebrows like yours, Care," Bonnie smiled broadly.
Caroline's lips flattened into a thin line.
"What do you want?" Bonnie addressed the doppelganger without looking directly at her.
Elena had it down pact what she would say to Bonnie the moment she saw her. Now that the moment was here, her confidence dried up like a country facing famine. This was a first for her. Being dumped for her friend. She didn't get dumped, she did the dumping. Damon wasn't going to walk away from her just because he might have confused gratitude for love. No, it wasn't happening. Elena was going to stake her claim, and for Bonnie's own good she'd let go of any notion of her stepping aside so that the two of them could be together.
Elena was certain that Bonnie wouldn't toss their friendship aside for Damon. That's not how Bonnie operated. She valued those in her life like a lifeline, and for years she had placed everyone's happiness above her own. Bonnie wouldn't stop with the selfless act now.
Right?
"We need to talk, Bonnie," Elena glanced at Caroline for assurance.
Caroline skulked into the proverbial shadows. Grinning. Running into Elena last night who sat in a booth at Skull Bar crying into her drink, she had had every intention of ignoring the simpering doppelganger, but her curiosity got the better of her. All it took was one question and Elena spilled her guts everywhere, sniffling and wiping her snotty nose as she recounted Damon telling her straight to her face that he was in love with Bonnie.
Caroline wasn't sure how she managed not to cackle and wheeze, but kept it together. As she plied the annoying twit with drinks, she also poisoned her. Poisoned the weakling with improbable scenarios of how Bonnie and Damon were probably celebrating their newfound feelings. All right so some of those scenarios were possible. Caroline appealed to Elena's overinflated victim mentality telling her she shouldn't just plop herself on the sidelines and let Damon and Bonnie get away with betraying her.
Honestly she really didn't care what the witch and vamp did with their genitalia, but this was proving to be far more entertaining than being on the lamb.
"So talk," Bonnie hunched a shoulder.
"I don't know how else to say it so I'm just going to say it. Damon…He thinks he's in love with you but I know that can't be true," she blurted.
Bonnie turned her head just enough for Elena to catch her profile. "Why wouldn't it be true? I'm not good enough for anyone to love me?"
"I'm not…that's not what I'm saying. Bonnie…the connection that Damon and I share…it…even without my memories of him I still managed to fall in love with him and he never stopped loving me. Am I supposed to believe that somewhere along the way he fell for you, too?"
"If he said he has then when why are you refusing to believe him? You think if you deny, deny, deny what's right in front of you that it won't be true? Let me be frank, your relationship with Damon was high school on meth. The Damon you're with now—had, sorry, you only had because of me."
Elena was totally affronted and it showed in her slacked jaw and arched brows. "Oh, so you think you're a better choice for Damon?"
"Yes," Bonnie deadpanned.
Elena stabbed her fingers through her hair, distraught, "I can't believe I'm hearing this right now."
"Believe it."
Elena searched her over trying to spot a defect that would tell her the Bonnie she was talking to was a doppelganger, or a fraud, or anything to get rid of the bitter taste accumulating in her mouth.
"You're saying you don't care that the two of you having feelings for each other hurts me? You don't care that Damon broke my heart last night for you? You don't care at all?"
This would be the point where Bonnie would say she was in love with Damon but loved her friendship with Elena more. That she would happily bury her feelings in order not to lose her sister because family was more important than pursuing what was in her heart. That she would forget everything about Damon. Pack him away like clothes that no longer fit, and deny herself any measure of happiness. That she would gladly reside on the sidelines clapping and smiling as her friends experienced every facet of life there was to explore.
That Bonnie died in 1994.
That Bonnie died when she was shot through the stomach with an arrow.
That Bonnie died when she had been choked, drugged, kidnapped, thrown into a trunk, made to share a holiday meal with the asshole who stabbed her in the stomach and left her for dead.
That Bonnie died when her botched rescue mission failed and she was left utterly alone for months.
That Bonnie died when, upon being reunited with her friends, the blonde made a nasty quip about 'why are we happy she's back again?'
That Bonnie died when she realized her dreams, desires mattered, and she was more than the black best friend.
"Sure I care. Hurting you is not what we're trying to do, but that's out of our control. And yes I love him. More than love him," Bonnie admitted. "For the second time in my life I'm in love and I'm not giving it up."
Ringing, Elena could hear ringing in her ears that felt superhot along with a pain boiling in the center of her chest, and like ripples in water, fanned out, radiating in every nerve and limb. The floor tipped sideways beneath her feet. This couldn't be happening. But it was happening. Her boyfriend and best friend were in love with each other.
And there was nothing she could do to stop it.
"Don't tell me you think Damon is your soulmate," the skepticism was thick in Caroline's voice.
Bonnie ignored the question. "I said what I said."
Elena had no idea what to do, how to take what was said, had no clue what her next move should be. Pain like she'd never felt before engulfed her that for a second she thought for sure she'd been set ablaze.
"So what do you want to do now, Elena? Fight? We both know who's going to win."
"Maybe you haven't noticed but its two against one," the blonde instigated. "And…there are so many toys here for me to play with."
The threat was clear. Caroline would slaughter the patrons and staff therefore dividing Bonnie's attention while Elena got her cheap shots in. Clever.
Swiveling on the stool, Bonnie faced her friends.
Their jaws dropped.
Slag. Demon. Succubus. Heretic. Witch. Just the many names she had been called yet she would only answer to one. She had been a daughter, a sister, a mother figure to a witch who lacked discipline, but she had never been a friend, a confidante, a wife, and that was fine with her. So long as she was respected to hell with all the rest.
Dahlia looked at the massive clock tower right as the long hand struck the 12 signaling the start of a new hour.
Looking forward once more, Dahlia caught sight of her nephew traipsing along the sidewalk all golden-haired and dimpled smile.
"Ah, my darling aunt."
Dahlia sniffed, "Hybrid."
His insolent grin widened to mocking proportions. "I see you're as personable as falling on a cactus this fine afternoon."
The old witch merely looked at him.
"How is our dear apprentice coming along?"
"How she is fairing I can guarantee is no business of yours. Though, if prompted, I'm sure she'd be eager to demonstrate what she's learned thus far…on you."
Klaus chuckled, "I'm sure Bonnie would salivate at the chance to get me on my back. And you know, I'm not averse to her straddling me."
Dahlia looked heavenward, "If you have nothing of value to say, tuatha then I suggest you go about your day."
Forehead bunched like an accordion, Klaus stretched his lips into a facetious smile. "Enjoy your stroll then."
Klaus resumed his stride toward the main entrance of Mystic Grill. Unbeknownst to him, he opened and held the door for a fuming Lily Salvatore who blazed past him barely giving the Original a glance or acknowledgement.
"You're welcome," he retorted irritably and darted inside.
Lily's chest swelled and deflated with disappointment and aggravation. She had returned to the scene of the crime hoping Bonnie might show her face to check on the annoying blond boy. Not so. Did Bonnie think she had been bluffing about ending her little human friend? Yes, she'd done no more harm to Matt Donovan than him taking a spill down the stairs, the fact remained she could have torn him limb from limb. Crushed his bones, turned his muscles into mashed potatoes. She was, after all, a ripper. A trait she unfortunately passed to her second son. Nevertheless, the ball had been in her proverbial court and she lost it. But make no mistake, Lily's jaw tightened, the little tart along with her stalwart of a son had another thing coming! She had been patient and kind; laying low as Damon suggested, but no more. This era, these people were strange, and Lily saw herself balancing on a tipping point.
She wanted her companions. Was there any crime in that?
Ordering herself to move at human speed, her head turned right as she was sailing by Dahlia. Lily almost stopped dead in her tracks but kept moving. There was something about the woman in the black coat that reminded her of…ah yes, Lily had her answer with the shift in the wind. That was magic she smelled on the woman. Ancient, unfettered, insidious. She would remember that.
Her pocket began vibrating. Frowning, it was then Lily remembered the device Enzo had been kind enough to procure for her. An object he referred to as a smartphone. She was in his debt and not just for the phone, but for not writing her off as her sons had done. Imagine her surprise in discovering the vampire Damon had ordered to track her, she had turned in 1903.
Pushing the answer button, Lily held the phone to her ear, "Yes?"
"I have eyes on the witch. She's at a diner not far from Whitmore University. I'll text you directions."
"Good. I'm on my way. If she should leave before I arrive, follow her. Do not let her out of your sight."
"I won't."
"Thank you, Lorenzo," she hung up and quickened her steps.
Dahlia too seemingly took notice of Lily. Her anger was caviar, her rage the juiciest of venison. More than likely someone would be dead by nightfall, the old witch was sure of it. A vampire that mad only knew of one way of exorcising their wrath.
Murder.
Dahlia summoned her acolytes. It was time to do a little spying.
We're all tougher in our heads than in real life, Elena mused dancing on her feet as she waffled on what to do. She couldn't look away from the golden hue of Bonnie's eyes. What did that mean?
A young mother sensing the danger, hastily gathered up her two small children, threw some money on the table and propelled them out the door. For others who were simply too enthralled or scented bloodlust, they discreetly reached for their phones ready to capture the brawl if it ever came to fruition. The owner of the diner wandered over ready to diffuse the situation that was brewing. Several things were covered in his insurance, but knucklehead customers getting into it and destroying his shit was not one of those things.
He ambled closer, cleared his throat that was promptly seized by a milk-white hand.
A collective gasp rent through the air, the patrons rendered immobile disbelieving what they were seeing. A preppy blonde choking a man twice her age and size. The owner's nephew began cursing up a storm in Italian as he debated whether he should come to his uncle's aid or call the police.
"It's been a while since I've eaten Italian," Caroline quipped. "A few weeks at the most. I'm drooling at the thought of it," she eyed the rising colors of her hostage's face.
"Caroline," Elena warned. She hadn't agreed to a pointless killing spree.
"Call your dog off, Elena before I have to raise my foot to it," Bonnie stated icily.
Hearing the insult, Caroline let go of the man's throat who immediately cupped it and coughed violently. "The fuck you say?"
Even with her back to Caroline, Bonnie knew the exact moment her fangs came out and her eyes bled red and black.
She lunged right as Bonnie hopped to her feet, freezing Caroline and Elena to the spot.
Ivy began growing along the walls, the floor, sprouted from the fake, potted plant near the rear of the diner.
Dozens of pairs of widened eyes darted around. No one could move a muscle. Panic seized those unlucky to get out while the getting had been good. The trilling of twenty heartbeats engulfed the space, food sizzled and burned on the unattended grill, a song by Sammy Davis Jr. crooned melodically in the background providing a stark contrast to what was unfolding.
Outside the diner the windows were obscured by the spontaneous burst of fauna. Enzo who was parked across the street in his vintage Mercedes sat up straighter.
"The hell is going on?" he pondered aloud.
"Bonnie?" Elena said through clenched teeth trying in earnest to move any body part she could. Useless.
But Bonnie wasn't listening or focused on the long-haired brunette but the blonde gone rogue because her mother died. Caroline thought she knew pain, was an authority on what it felt like to lose a parent. She didn't have a gotdamn clue. Maybe Liz couldn't have been saved no matter what in the end. The point was: she died peacefully and with dignity. Rudy…his death had been cold-blooded, cruel, the crux of white patriarchal privilege that you could kill a black man and get away with it.
Each injustice she and her family suffered inundated Bonnie. The temperature spiked. Sweat poured off everyone, objects unable to sustain the heat exploded. Those sunset colored orbs of Bonnie's turned turbulent.
Veins bulged from the foreheads of the vampires.
"Sleep," Bonnie whispered.
Heads hit the tables; bodies slumped in booths and at the counter. Bonnie knocked out the humans but kept the blood drinkers very much awake.
"Caroline, I'm going to make this painless for the both of us because I refuse to deal with the 2009 version of you."
"You know the parts of the brain," Dahlia's reminded evenly in a disembodied voice Bonnie was unsure if she were actually hearing or not.
"Yes," she answered out loud.
"What are you doing?" the façade slipped and nervousness bled out of Caroline. The words, 'I'm sorry' where right on the tip of her tongue but she refused to let them out.
"The brain is made up of chemicals, enzymes all of which you can control. Find the right sequence and you can control her."
"I said what the hell are you doing?"
Ah, yes, Bonnie could see the synapses firing in Caroline's head and saw where there was a void, a dark area where there was very little activity. Her power, like an EMP pulse shot out of Bonnie.
"Say hello to your humanity. A 'faireachdainn," she snapped her fingers, triggering Caroline's hypothalamus—the origin of emotions and pituitary gland in her brain.
It all came back to Caroline, in a rush, a torrent, like a tsunami coming out of nowhere and she felt everything. She freaked, unsure of what to grip to make it stop. Her head, her heart, her stomach, but it didn't seem to matter because what she wanted to grip lived in a place she couldn't physically reach. Caroline buckled to the floor the second Bonnie released her, rocking back and forth as tears spilled down her cheeks in salty streaks.
"My mom," gut wrenching sobs was ripped from Caroline's soul. "What…how…Bonnie."
Her pleas went unanswered as Bonnie stared down Elena who was visibly afraid.
"There's so much I want to say to you but you'll just hear what you want to hear. The only thing I regret is the friendship we lost long ago, and one we were never going to be able to get back. That will," Bonnie sighed tiredly, "will haunt me. So…" she slapped her hands on her thighs, "you have a nice life, Elena."
The witch vanished stepping out into the brilliance of the warm spring day. Her burgeoning good mood almost plummeted at the sight of her mentor waiting with her arms folded.
"How did that feel?" Dahlia inquired already knowing the answer.
"Fucking amazing."
It was hard to tell but pride did beam from Dahlia's perpetually dower façade. "Wonderful. But I must ask…why did you spare them?"
Bonnie recalled what Klaus said. Power doesn't always equate to ending life. Power can equate sparing life. She knew better than to quote Klaus to Dahlia but eventually said, "Not killing them puts them in my debt."
"Wise girl. Shall we?"
Mentor and mentee fell in step with one another seemingly oblivious to their surroundings.
Lily had caught the tail end of what happened inside the diner. Bonnie was far more powerful than she thought, a lot craftier as well. She'd have to come up with a new fool-proof strategy to get what she wanted.
A day of fruitlessly searching for Stefan turned up nothing. Damon wasn't surprised. If a vampire couldn't make him or herself disappear they were a certified lame, an embarrassment to the species. The search could have gone down without a hitch with Bonnie's help, but until the kinks were worked out with her new anchor, Damon wanted to limit how often she used her magic.
He was on the phone with her now being debriefed as he drove home with the intentions of packing a bag and heading to her place for a few days. He repeatedly reprimanded himself citing he needed to move slowly, at a pace Bonnie was comfortable with; however, the urge to be next to her overrode propriety. He'd made it sixteen hours being separated. Damon refused to go any longer.
Did he think he was out of the woods on the Elena front? No. Their pattern had been break up, have sex, make up, break up, have more sex. Yet during the periods they weren't together (a bulk of it Katherine had spent impersonating Elena), Damon never caught feelings for anyone else. This time around things were vastly different. Nevertheless at the end of the day he hoped he didn't fuck it up.
"Sounds like you had a very productive day," Damon palmed the steering wheel making the turnoff for the boardinghouse.
"If you mean learning there's nothing to be done about my eyes, flipping a vampire's humanity switch, and admitting how I feel about a particular Salvatore to a certain Gilbert, then yes it was productive."
"And how do you feel about this particular Salvatore?"
"Right now, he's making me feel impatient. Hurry up."
Damon chuckled. "I'm gonna grab some stuff from the house and then I'll be on my way to you."
"All right. Have a taste for anything?"
"You sure you want the answer to that question?"
"Damonnnn," Bonnie moaned.
"You keep saying my name like that…"
She giggled, "Just get here."
"I will. Okay? I'll see you soon."
Damon hung up the phone, goofy smile refusing to relax. That smile did slip when he saw the front door to his house was wide open.
Carefully stepping out of his parked vehicle, Damon turned up the volume of his hearing. He heard someone sniffling, logs cracking in the grate, the usual sounds of nature, but nothing else. Stealthily negotiating his steps as not to alert whoever was inside his house that he was coming, he sniffed the air. Smelled perfume. Shadows flickered, firelight. Damon fell into predator mode as he stepped on the veranda. Another step he'd cross the threshold but he couldn't move forward.
He couldn't get in the house. "What the…?"
"Hello Damon," Lily appeared in the doorway.
"What have you done?" her son scowled.
Lily brought one hand from behind her back. In it she held a document. "I had the name on the deed changed."
Damon laughed. "You know I'll just find out who you compelled to assume ownership and kill them."
"You could do that but…could you kill the person who is the daughter of these two people?" she presented a polaroid of Zach and Gail.
Damon paled and stumbled back a few steps. The haunted, horrified look on his face filled Lily with unmitigated smugness.
"She's right here," she stepped aside to reveal the person Damon had heard crying. A café au lait girl with long black hair sat stiffly on one of the two couches in the living room, sobbing.
He couldn't believe his eyes and was ready to say it was a trick, a well-played lie to get him to behave. The fetus…the pregnant woman he killed some twenty years ago died. Damon had felt the life go out of his nephew's fiancée. Right? He had killed her?
His throat was sandpaper, "Good scam but I'm not falling for it. "
"I assure you, Damon this isn't a scam. Don't believe me ask your brother or Lorenzo."
"If you're doing this for your stupid family…"
"This is about more than that," Lily growled. "This is about respect. Compromise. Compliance…The deed wasn't the only thing I found."
Damon's stomach nose-dived to his toes. In her other hand was the cure.
"The girl will remain here with me until I get what I want. And I wouldn't tarry too long about that, son. I've gone a hundred years without feeding directly from the vein. I just might grow nostalgic." With that sentiment Lily slammed the door in his face.
Cursing and stomping to his car, Damon fumbled for his phone.
Hands grabbed both sides of his head and twisted in different directions. He fell to the ground.
A dark clad figure loomed over Damon's unconscious body.
Worn leather boots crushed the white snow underfoot. Everywhere the eye fell there was nothing but mountains and unexplored terrain to see. Cerulean irises drew a map of which best course to lead his…company through, yet each route looked difficult at best.
The spoils of war were not always as tasty as the war itself. For what were material possessions to a man who loved to see warm blood paint the floor and walls and…his hands? What was it to him to dig his fingers into endless piles of gold, silver, jewels, or cash when he could rummage around in a wriggling body of a person pleading for their life using only their eyes because their mouth was either sealed with duct tape or their tongue had been cut out?
He never once saw himself as…normal. Apathetic—oh yes but not normal. Never normal. Was he the serpent in the garden? Was he the guy news reporters and children advocates warned you not to speak to on playgrounds? Was he the disarming guy at the party who slipped something into your drink and waited for you to stumble away and black out? The man with a friendly smile who offered to help you with your bags just to stab you for the gore of it?
He was all of the above.
Lips crusted, cheeks, forehead and nose red and cracked, the endless winter made traveling a bitch. Under perpetual night, the sky blazed blue-green and stunk of alkaline. But they finally made it. After weeks of traveling they made it to Nova Scotia.
He scratched at the bite marks on his arm, a sinister smile pulled at his tight, weathered skin. Days spent in a barely lucid haze of bloodletting, hours wasted convincing his new prison mates not to eat him at once—using his position of being head of the Gemini coven to stay their fangs, now he was steps away from getting the key he needed to get the absolute fuck out of hell.
His euphoria did not last long as he recalled the reason why he was going through all this trouble in the first damn place.
Reaching in his inner coat pocket, Kai Parker retracted his crude drawing of Bonnie. Lying on a bed of feathers in pool of her own blood. Granted he was not an artiste, but he figured the father of macabre himself William Blake would approve of his sketch. He traced the contour of her figure salivating at the thought of her shock the second it registered he was out, and yes…he…was…going…to…make…her…pay.
You see, she and Damon thought they were leaving him for dead. They thought they were leaving him with a group of starved and desiccated vampires who hadn't eaten in decades, propped up around a table like dogs playing poker. The joke was on them. Being as he couldn't die, the heretics exploited that fact, draining him dry too many times to count.
"I sense it. We're not far."
Kai tucked the drawing away carefully like a precious jewel, and turned to regard the heretic who sidled beside him. Her 20th century bonnet concealed her features but Kai knew which one she was. The serious one out of the bunch. The one the other female heretics couldn't stand.
Smiling cheerily, Kai clapped his hands together and pulled his scarf across his nose and mouth. "Goodie. Let's go kids! Mama's caught a scent."
A/N: How did we like? Just for reference, William Blake painted The Great Red Dragon, in case any were interested. Dahlia called Klaus a peasant, to translate the word she said to him during their scene. I didn't want to go too deep into the Delena thing since I've covered that in CLTP and there's nothing new to discover there anyways about why they're bad together (besides my general dislike of them). Umm, what else? Bamon said 'I love you.' Damon's in trouble. Bonnie is GOAT. I think that covers everything. Hoped you guys enjoyed. Please, please review! XOXO.