14 / safe
There are no weekends in this business. There are only trees and their continual dripping. It's morning and he's collecting, unhooking a full bucket from the trunk of a maple tree and replacing it with a sanitized empty one. He sets the full bucket on the ground and kneels to tie the flapping undone shoelaces on his Converse. As he finishes up, he notices a fallen crow's feather lying on top of the snow and feels his wrenching frustration flare up again.
Bonnie makes a sham witch out of him when she's around.
He keeps asking her why it matters if he can send the whole pillowful of feathers up in a fluff. What is the significance of one? He made the mistake of trying to prove his point by levitating Bonnie against her will. When she yelled at him to cut it out, he accidentally dropped her. It wasn't that high up. Just a few feet. But it bruised her ankle. The smack she gave him set the tone for the week. They aren't friends right now. If they ever are. She keeps insisting they aren't.
Rolling his eyes, he scoops the crow's feather into his palm and stares at it.
Dance, he wills it.
Dance.
Dance.
"Dance, you bastard." Do the fucking Charleston.
For a second, it twirls a few inches above his hand, before the life slips out of it and it sinks, zigging and zagging, back down.
He's so angry he can't even make this one rise for him. It's the dumbest thing. Dismayed, he blows at the feather hard until it flies out of his hand. He picks up both of the full buckets he has with him and heads to the shack, kicking a tree and yelling "Come on!" in a rage as he goes.
It isn't just the goddamn feathers, or his goddamn inability to do anything the way she likes. It's her annoying, incessant, self-centered friends, too.
When he gets to the sugar house, she's already inside setting up.
"You ok?" she asks at the sight of him.
His eyes are watery. She must think he's about to cry. Really, he's just so angry he could break something. All of the things. Give the proprietors a real reason not to trust them.
"Super," he says. He sets the buckets down and goes to wash the stickiness off his hands in the sink.
"Well, you didn't make coffee this morning, so I tried. It tastes like ass."
She sets the touristy NASA thermos he's been using down on the countertop. Is this some kind of gesture on her part? She doesn't seem as angry as she's been, but her tone is flat.
"Elena got your letter," Kai says, drying his hands on the towel. This seems to interest her, as he knew it would, and he wishes he could just keep it to himself without his conscience embroiling him in guilt. Since when do lies of omission bother him? Since when do lies?
"How do you know?"
"Pardon me," he grumbles, reaching over her shoulder to get the thermos because she's blocking it. He feels her shrink in his nearness and that's just great. He can't even reach over her without feeling like something abominable. He clears his throat and takes the time to try a scalding sip and plan out how he's going to say this. She's hanging onto his every movement. And good, he thinks. Let her. He even draws it out with a melodramatic impression of how disgusting her coffee is. Finally, she purses her lips and her eyebrows tick up impatiently.
"Well, I got a text," he begins, with a sarcastic smile. "From Damon. Letting me know just what he thinks of me for stealing you away."
"No."
"And they're still looking for you."
"But I clearly told Elena that I don't want to be looked for."
"Apparently, your girl can't read. Either that or she's looking for a fight."
"Wait, why? I don't understand what makes them think—"
"They're greedy helpless fucking vampires who need a witch to correct their mistakes."
"Don't talk about my friends like that."
"You don't get it," he groans. "They need us to let psycho Mama Salvatore out of her prison world because Damon thinks it will set off a chain reaction of humanity switches and fix everything, to the detriment of every human being in the general vicinity of Mystic Falls."
"Wait. Back up."
The confusion on her face trips him up. Makes him wonder...
"How much has Damon told you?"
"All Damon told me was that he needed me to forgive you because you were withholding information about her. Like an extortionist jackass."
"Figures."
"I was too upset to ask for clarification."
"Well then let me clarify. He wants me to let her out. As with my prison world, I'd need Bennett blood to do it."
"That's why they want to find me so badly...?" Her voice breaks and he's worried for a second she might start crying, but she doesn't.
"Something tells me they aren't going to stop looking for us until we give them what they want. They don't care who they take advantage of."
"No, Elena would never..."
"Doesn't matter. We're not going to help them. Lily Salvatore is a ripper. She's staying put."
He can tell this is news to Bonnie as well.
"And Damon knows this?"
"Insofar as I told him in plain English."
"I need to sit down," she says faintly, crossing the room and slowly lowering herself into a little wooden chair. "Why haven't you mentioned any of this?"
He shrugs and crosses his arms as he leans against the wall. "I assumed somewhere in all of those text messages you were getting that somebody told you. Instead of keeping you in the dark."
"You're sure this is still what Damon wants?"
"Want me to play you the voicemail?"
"No."
Kai's phone vibrates in his pocket. Dreading whatever it may be, he pulls it out to find yet another pressuring text message. Reading it, he can't help but smile at the insanity of it all.
"It's Elena," he tells Bonnie. "Apparently we're being selfish for not helping."
"She didn't say that."
Carefully so as not to rile Bonnie's magic, because her anger will almost certainly rival his, making for a dangerous cocktail of dysfunctional processing, he kneels in front of her, where he turns his phone so she can see for herself.
When she turns her eyes away in disbelief, he pockets his phone and considers the logistics of every evil, vengeful idea as several dozen of them enter his mind.
"Maybe we should go back," he mutters. "Just fucking execute them all."
"Don't talk about my friends like that," she repeats. He can hear the tension in her jaw. She's angry, alright. But why is she holding back?
"And just why not? They're practically hunting us down for their own personal gain."
"I'm not saying their methods are justified, but they mean well. Caroline's humanity is my gain too."
He pauses, confused. How is this not getting through her head?
"Ok. I give up." He slams his thermos on the counter. He can't look at her right now. "I don't know who's crazy anymore. Maybe they're right and we are being selfish. Maybe I am stealing you away, if you feel so indebted to them you can't even see bullshit when they're rubbing your nose in it. Maybe I'm still the bad guy after all. You should go home to your friends, get out while you can, you know?"
She stands up, her fingers twitching omens. "Don't say that either."
He turns to regard her out the side of his eye, readying himself to grasp her and take magic if he needs to.
"Well, what do you want me to say, Bon?"
The steam from the boiling sap rises around her and she looks at him with such pity, but there's something else there too.
"Say you'll keep us safe."
"Safe," he scoffs. "You realize who you're talking to, right? I killed my own family."
"Stop."
"Almost killed you twice."
"Stop."
"I'm a fucking monster. If you want me to keep you safe, listen to me when I say fucking run, because I can't hear another minute of you defending them."
"Stop it!"
All the exposed light bulbs in the shack flicker. A bottle somewhere bursts.
"Am I gonna have to go get the box of lightbulbs?" he asks, testing her.
What is the feeling permeating the room now? Despite what she says, he feels like she's finally beginning to believe the changes he's now starting to doubt, believe in this thing they're doing, this reckless and cautious companionship. At the same time, she's breaking his fucking balls with her loyalty to her friends. He has to ask himself...if she wanted to go back and help, would he pack up the 1903 ascendant and oblige her?
Of course he fucking would. Anywhere she goes, he goes.
But he hopes beyond hope she doesn't take them there. If anything would trigger whatever remains of his former self inside, it's that, and he doesn't want to lose her over it.
To his relief, she loosens the spring in her arms, the snarl in her magic, and sits down again. Frowning, she stares off and appears to be reckoning with something. He wants to tell her that he will keep her safe, he absolutely will. Even he doesn't know for sure what it means that her friends are looking for them—do they intend to physically force them back to Mystic Falls to do this spell? Whatever their plan is, he won't allow it.
"Give it time," she says. "They'll find another way."