Author's Note: Thank you for all the kind comments and warm welcome back, everyone! Please enjoy.
10 / twisted
She's been ignoring her friends for weeks when she receives the voicemail from Elena saying that Kai hasn't been seen and, putting two and two together, they know he's abducted her. Damon supplied that theory. But they aren't giving up on her. They'll find her, and that's a promise.
"Good fucking luck," Kai says when she plays him the message. He's heating up soup on the stove, banging everything he sets down. He's angry. "Wonder how long it'll take them without you doing all their locator spells."
He quips, but he's wounded. She can tell.
"I'm not ready to be found," she admits.
Kai gently removes her cellphone from her hands. "You won't be," he assures her, and drops her phone in the kitchen sink. As he hovers his hand over it, the plastic and glass bubble and liquefy into a clumpy black puddle he'll have to unstick from the steel later.
"Hey!"
"We'll get you a new one."
It's a bold move, but strangely she feels relieved of some great burden. So funny, she thinks, because she's just spent about a year wishing, needing, to hear from someone she loves. Now that she can and does hear from them, it hasn't felt anything but loud. She understands now what Kai means by describing the world so. It isn't just the noise.
He goes back to stirring and stewing, and pauses.
"Wait, you told them you're ok, right?"
And so she finds herself writing a letter to Elena over her dinner, finally clearing up the mystery of her disappearance and explaining in clear terms that she hasn't been abducted. She needs time away. Yes, Kai is with her, she writes, but he's on his best (or better) behavior. She's helping him. Taming him. However they want to look at it. And he's helping her. She mentions the grimoire scans, that she's already come across an old Bennett recipe for a protection wreath, shared with the Gemini coven ages ago. Soon, she'll try making one with maple twigs. And she hopes that Caroline and Stefan aren't causing too much trouble. She hopes they all understand, but she just can't be part of it anymore. She signs it off telling Elena that she loves her, that she's still her best friend and of course she always will be. She'll come home when she feels ready.
She leaves out her as yet undetailed revenge scheme but promises that she can handle Kai. Trust me.
She stamps and addresses the letter to the Whitmore dorm room, leaving the return address space blank. She feels bizarrely light. It feels good to be honest.
"What did you write?" Kai asks, buttering his bread.
Bonnie licks the envelope she was able to find in the kitchen drawers, effectively sealing it off from Kai's view.
"Nothing," she says, "Just that we're fine."
"I'm sorry. Sorry I broke your phone. Not exactly a good guy move."
"No, it wasn't," she agrees, gladly returning to her half-eaten bowl of soup. His cooking isn't the worst, she's decided.
"I really will get you a new one as soon as Buck pays us."
"It can wait a while."
"Really?"
"Might actually be nice, not getting texts every other day badgering me about my whereabouts."
"We can change your number."
"That's not necessary. I just need more time, Kai."
"Do you think they can honor that?"
"Elena, maybe. But I don't think Damon will be happy when this letter arrives."
Damon's first instincts on Kai were sharper than hers, she remembers. He was, at first, a pest. Then a somewhat attractive pest. An exciting and new person to talk to. Damon despised him. Attitudes shifted as they learned more. Damon just wanted to go home and Bonnie just wanted Kai away from them. Away from her. He was frightening.
It really surprised her that Damon would show up at the rave and place him right in front of her. Like toys he could manipulate, make them kiss and make up. Knowing even a little of what she'd been through, it was a deliberate betrayal. And for what? Because Kai, as the new Gemini Coven leader, knew something about Damon's mom and Damon wanted to find out what it was, at the cost of Bonnie's trust.
"I think he has a thing for you."
Bonnie rolls her eyes.
"He loves Elena."
"I dunno. Sure. Yeah. But also maybe you."
"No, that's not—"
"Makes sense. You're smart. Suffer no fools. Not to mention kind of beautiful."
"Gee, thanks."
"Fine, freakishly beautiful." Kai pushes a carrot around his bowl with his spoon, musing. "I've seen the way he looks at you, Bon. Not that I want him to hit on you or anything, and I personally find the idea of a witch dating a vampire disgusting...but it kind of bugs me that he hasn't tried."
"Are you serious right now?"
"The whole time in '94 it was blah blah blah Elena this, Elena that. When if it were me..."
"Moving on..." She doesn't want to hear about what Kai would do if he were Damon trapped with her.
"Thing I always wondered...did you ever have feelings for him?"
"Excuse me?"
"Did. You ever. Have feelings. For him?"
"I can't believe you're really asking me this."
"Just answer the question."
"Why do you suddenly need to know?"
"That means yes."
"It means I don't know!" she raises her voice and bangs her fist on the table.
Embarrassed, she slides her hand off the wood, into her lap. She can't keep having these outbursts. Kai's eyes are wicked as they sum her up.
"Vampires are the reason my Grams is gone," she says, her tone so intentionally even it borders on threatening. "Everything he wants conflicts with my life and what I want."
She watches as Kai takes a long drink from his beer can, his smirk never fading.
"But he loves Elena," she continues. "The person I care most about. Everything he does, he does for her. That means something to me."
"That all?"
"Sure, there were moments in that prison world when he made me laugh. He made me feel important. Just because I was there. But outside of that, he's just...Damon. That's all."
"Yeah. My money's on a year."
She frowns at him.
"Tops. Before he forgot all about Elena. Maybe a little longer before you forgot about her too. And then...well, it's only natural."
Bonnie sighs heavily to let him know how annoyed she is with this conversation. She gets up and carries her plate to the sink. Behind her, she hears him mutter, "If I were really twisted, I'd put him on the spot. Make him choose."
Sometimes the way he thinks trembles her to the core.
Shaken, she looks back at him. He's zoning out with narrowed eyes, chewing his thumbnail, a dangerous grin dancing on his lips. She takes a piece of bread out of the bread bag and throws it at him. It hits his forehead with a soft thump and snaps him out of whatever problematic thoughts he's having.
"What the hell?"
"You're doing it again."
"Doing what?"
"Making that face."
They've discussed this. That face dredges up 1994 feelings, makes her heart spike, her stomach harden with adrenaline-fueled nausea. Whether or not he's actually plotting, it is his plotting face.
"I'm sorry," he says, his glare not softening, which makes her feel like he doesn't mean it. It's too late, anyway. She is washed over in memories of what that face once meant to her. The urge to run and hide is strong, but she fights it, refuses to let it make her look as anxious as she feels.
"I don't know where this is coming from, but you need to drop it," she says, trying to keep her voice down. As it breaks, she watches him take her in, watches him feel something indeterminate. "It doesn't matter if I've ever felt anything remotely like affection for him. The fact that you're fixating on it is weird. I mean, what, are you jealous or something?"
"Maybe."
"Then you should know that my chances of hooking up with him in 1994 were about the same as yours."
He seems to chew on this.
"Gross."
"Exactly." She grinds her back teeth, pulls herself together. "I'm here now. With you. For some insane reason. But if you can't control yourself—"
"I can," he says, sounding exasperated at last.
"When you say things like that, it sounds like the real you. What does that even mean? You'd make him choose?"
He gets up as she's talking and moves to join her at the kitchen sink, his right hand open and raised like he's got something to say but it's triggering. She tenses up, anticipating that he might try to siphon her, as he usually does when her emotions put them at risk of a magical catastrophe. But she won't back away, and she won't back down. As nervous as he makes her, it's clear that he's just as wary of what she could do to him.
"The real me isn't me anymore. I didn't mean that."
"I am not playing with you, Malachai."
"Ooh, my full name?"
Irritated, she pitches away from him, but he grabs her shoulders.
"Don't fucking touch me!" she snarls and the lightbulb above them bursts.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he pleads, and softens his grip as quickly as he tightens it. They're in the dark now, it's her fault, but he doesn't siphon. At least, she feels no sting. He takes a breath and a second to really convey something through his hands on her shoulders before he lets her go.
He sighs. "It's just—I don't like how he hides it. I hate how he hides it."
"Why does it matter to you?"
He tilts his head back, gives her a look of knowing. Even with only a moonbeam to light him, it's impossible not to see his feelings for her in those blue glinting eyes, plain as the night is dark.
"Because he doesn't get to hide it. After all you've sacrificed. You deserve all the love you can get."