A/N: This idea came to me a couple of months ago. It's a little out there, very painful (pre-warning) but I was determined to flesh it out.
Note: Set 60+ years after Elena was put under the sleeping curse (S6 finale).
vi. Stop all the Clocks
The church buzzes with colour: green hats, orange scarves, even a band. Damon glances down at his black suit. No invite; how the hell was I supposed to get the memo? Somewhere on the periphery is Caroline. Maybe. A lot of wood can graze the heart in sixty something years… and it only takes a particularly pointy one.
"You want to sit down, young man?"
She shuffles along the pew, throwing him a wonky smile missing a few teeth. The musicians cease playing and the room vibrates with a low applause. This is funeral for fucks sake. At an angle, on the platform, is her picture – a woman he doesn't recognise, lined and folded. There's a laugh in her eyes he wants to believe is magic, her magic, not humanity. The dying kind.
A man clears his throat: "Bonnie Bennett was a vibrant woman. Loving, joyful-"
And Damon turns from the old lady's hesitant question and strides, like a fleeing bride, back up the aisle. Every head turns at the pressured groan of the doors; the dude in the blue shirt pauses his cookie-cutter lamentation. Damon's fingers flirt on the handle. He twists his hand as the man introduces Samuel Layton, Bonnie's husband, prepared with a poem.
The outside wind is whipping itself into a panic. Damon inhales, air-starved, his pulse-less blood drumming. He needs to feed, distract himself from the Bonnie that isn't Bonnie, dead, gone, the world emptied. What has he done for the last sixty years but lose himself in blood and women? What has she done but build a perfect, normal life?
Feeling nauseous, he lifts his chin to the pinkening sky. The church-yard graves only make him feel sicker, or worse, want to cry. And what kind of hypocrite would he be if he cried at the funeral of the woman he hasn't bothered to see for the last six decades? Damon bends to sit on the last step of the church, the chorus of a gospel hymn vibrating through the wood. Like a man in worship, his eyes flutter close.
"Hey, stranger."
Bonnie's voice warms all of him; a smile loosens his frown.
"Open your eyes, silly."
And there, arms draped over the railing, is his Bonnie Bennett, luminous, young again. The laugh that falls out of his mouth is delicate, almost dis-believing. Almost.
"Did you forget I was a witch, Damon Salvatore?"
She's so beautiful, his mouth just hangs ajar. Bonnie's face breaks with a grin, "I'm glowing, aren't I?" She unhooks from the railing, walking around the side to join him on the step, so close he could touch her. Bonnie notices the flinch of his fingers and sighs, "I can't feel anything. I'm just between stages," her gaze lifts to the sky, eyes closing like his had done, "Holding on until I have to let go."
"How did you know I'd come?" He asks, his voice returning in careful syllables.
"I didn't. But I had hope," and her smile is one he can't recognise, wise and forgiving, "I've always had hope, Damon."
"I should have seen you."
"Why didn't you?"
Her question is soft but it claws, unanswerable. "How long do you have?" He asks instead.
"Not long." She searches his face so intensely he has to look away.
"You should be with your husband."
Bonnie exhales in mist. "I've already visited him."
"Like this?" he asks, gesturing at her golden-tinted youth.
"No…" she forces his eyes to hers, "He never loved this version."
His next words fight for breath: "And I did?"
And Bonnie smiles like it's too late. "Are you sad?" she says after a beat, continuing the dance of question after question. Answers too agonising.
This is what he's waited for. Why he fell away. He needed to leave Bonnie behind, to prepare for losing her: so he could open his arms to the love of his life when she awoke calling his name.
"Yes," he tells her.
"I'm not immortal. You knew this was going to happen."
He wants to ask if she was happy with him, this Simon. Did she have children? Did she travel the world? Was it the world she dreamed about? He wants to ask and not know.
"Cheer up," Bonnie says softly, "The rest of your life is starting today."
The hymns have stopped; a solemn silence behind the doors, between them. The wind has settled now, merely flickering with the leaves on the ground, and he's never wanted to hold her more.
"I know it's selfish, staying here, keeping Elena from you… but… this is my last moment on earth, and in my eighty-four years of life, I've realised I deserve to be a little selfish sometimes."
"You deserved more than all of us, Bon-bon," he confesses, the nick-name surprising, not unpleasant. Wonderful, actually.
The woman hums in thought. "Simon tried to call me Bon-bon once. I didn't let him."
Ignoring the tumbling in his chest he says, "I assumed you hated me."
Bonnie chuckles, "Oh, I did. I was furious, also with myself for letting you affect me so much. Then I just missed you." Her eyes glimmer, "At one point I came to the terrifying conclusion that I must be in love with you."
His mouth dries up, words thick in his gums. Bonnie pushes from the step to stand facing the graveyard. The slipping sun has warmed the world in fire-light – she is now the brightest thing, and probably always was, Damon can see.
"I should let you go," she says without facing him, "Give Elena her life back." Nothing he wants to do can be delivered in words and Bonnie speaks over his painful silence, "I like being this me, Damon. I like the me I am with you."
Stop. Please.
"Imagine if I didn't leave… stayed this young me with glowing hands. I've died before and carried on living… what's one more?"
There's a humour to her words that only makes them heavier and Damon wants to scream, turn back time, grab her fucking luminous hand and pull her into him.
"I'm sorry," he offers, pathetically.
With that same wise, forgiving smile, Bonnie looks over her shoulder. "I was happy, Damon. I was happy with you, and I was happy after you."
"Bonnie…"
"They're singing again… this is the last hymn," she hums along with the melody, "I've always loved this one."
"Let me try and touch you," he hurries, standing too, reaching for her vaporous arm. If falls to nothing and he almost collapses.
"The service is nearly finished. I think that's my cue."
"Bonnie…"
But she shakes her head, curls bouncing like a halo. "It's time, Damon." She lifts a brow, the expression crushingly familiar, "I know I asked for colour at my funeral but that Salvatore suit, your trademark black… I'd be disappointed with anything less."
He searches for words to keep her there, even if only for a minute more, but the doors groan and the congregation pours out. Damon is carried with the crowd, across the grass, searching for her amongst the gravestones, the trees. The fingers that slip over his are pulse-less but palpable.
"You ready to come back now?" Caroline whispers, squeezing the hand, still reaching for Bonnie, back to life.
An elderly woman in the distance watches them, green shawl blowing in the returned wind. Her smile says it's okay to let me go.
"Okay," he answers, "let's go home."
A/N: The title is from Auden's Poem 'Funeral Blues' – do read it if you haven't already. Please do leave a review. I know this story was a lot sadder than my usual one-shots but I hope you can appreciate the beauty of Bamon, even in these circumstances. (Was crying writing this yikes).
Requests for stories are very encouraged!
