Note: It's been about a million years, and I didn't think this fic would be the one I updated if I ever logged back on here, but such is life.

I actually DID edit this. Shocking, I know, so if you see any typos, you've earned it!

I hope you're all doing okay, x.

Part VI

sometimes you gotta close a door

to, open a window

Bonnie fell back into Tyler's hold, grabbing at him to ground herself. Even through her reeling, there was a sense of calm that had followed her 'meeting' Stefan that had buoyed her as magic carried her back to her own body.

"Oh my god," she muttered, leaning into Tyler as his eyes watched the two glowing orbs dissipate into the wooded darkness, before looking back down at Bonnie in his arms, hands moving rapidly; feeling, checking. "I'm okay," she tells him.

"Where did you just go, I mean, what just happened?" Tyler's hands are shaking as she takes them in hers.

"I saw someone," Bonnie tells him. "Something is going on here."

"Should we go?" Tyler frets.

"No, I don't want to ruin anythi–"

"–You're not ruining anything." Bonnie takes a deep breath, shaking herself loose, and squares her shoulders.

"I mean like, it's not going to change anything if we go, and I don't want to go." Tyler's face is still a mixture of emotions as he holds Bonnie's gaze, repeatedly asking her with his eyes if she was sure, or if she was fine. She nods at every question she sees reflected back at her and keeps her face steady as she watches him deliberate.

"Bonnie, this is like the time with Gush and the tree stump and those floating crystals, there was someone there then, and there was someone here now."

"You saw someone?" Bonnie gaped.

"Someone, some-thing, I don't know."

"So, it's connected, somehow," Bonnie thinks aloud. "Okay."

"I am not liking where this is going, and I don't think we're particularly safe here at night ... in the woods."

"It is very horror-movie intro credits, right now," she nods, "but, I can't explain it. I just know we're fine."

"That's vague and ominous as shit, you know?" Tyler gripes, still tense as she cuddles up to him.

"I know, but it's still true. All I care about right now Ty, and I'll say it as many times as you need to hear it: my mission right now is to be here, with you, for as long as we can be. Okay?" She could see that he wasn't going to let it go, but he was pacified with the knowledge that neither would she. Bonnie was smart, considered and had the reflexes of an undercover agent. "Will you be here with me?"

"Of course," he kissed her quickly, easily, pulling away to look at her. "Anything for–" she kisses him, pulls him closer and breathes him in.

Stefan was still blinking and gaping wordlessly at the corner of his room where Bonnie had just been.

"She seems nice," Damon's voice calls to him, and Stefan's heart rate doubles down.

"Damon, please. She doesn't know what she's getting herself into."

"Who does?" His older brother's laughter, something that had brought him so much peace, so much hope, ran chills down his spine now as Stefan thought of the endless possibilities of sharing his soon-to-be-friend with his undead sibling.

"I'll give her a charm like the one I gave Mara," the younger Salvatore decided. "She'll be protected."

"You think a goddamn crystal kept your first love safe? How far gone are you?" Damon's laughter sours, turning into a condescending cackle. "Even in death, you take everything I do for you for granted."

"What about the part where you turned out to be a mass-murderer?" Stefan spat, "and how you get gunned down before I come home from school and I never see you again, I never know what happened or why, and you mock me from my bedroom window, like, like you're helping me, or you're still here for me when all you do is drive me insane!"

"That wasn't me." Stefan slows, a prickle on the back of his neck putting him on high alert.

"What do you mean it wasn't you?" Stefan asks, trepidation peaking.

"I mean it wasn't fucking me, bro! It wasn't me!"

"Then, who–" before he can get a straight answer, he can only watch through his window as Damon is swept up in a flurry of startling black plume. "Damon?" He follows the embers of the spell-casting, eyes landing on his father, already glaring back at him. Jerking backwards, Stefan doesn't even think before he casts a spell to vanish.

Running across the parking bays, Stefan kicks off his shoes as he reaches the beach sand, not really sure why his panic hadn't ebbed away yet. When the sand under his feet changes texture, and the water seeps into his socks, he stops to pull them off, using that as an excuse to draw in a deep, loud breath as he looks across the water. He doesn't know what to do, so he calls Mara.

"I love seeing your name pop up on my screen," they tell him as a greeting. "I miss you."

"I miss you so much," even he can hear the shake in his voice. He listens as Mara moves, giving him their full attention.

"Is everything okay, Stefan? It's really late on your side."

"Something weird is happening with the house again, and I don't think everything I was told is true."

"Something weird like what?"

"Well, I always saw my brother next door right, like, in my room or whatever. As like, a ghost, and I thought it had something to do with me being sad and not moving on, or whatever, but that's not it. It's something else. Something bad. Something to do with why he did what he did."

"How do you know?"

"I can't explain it," he tells them. "Not because I can't or don't want to tell you, I just, literally don't have the words." His phone makes a sound and he pulls it away from his ear to see that Mara has changed the call to video. Seeing their face soothes him almost immediately, undoing the knot in his chest.

"There you are," Mara says, smiling at him.

"Hi," Stefan tries to smile, tries to show them that he has missed them, and wasn't just calling to trauma-dump on them. "Sorry about coming in so hot."

"Call me whenever, you know that," they say, lighting the end of a glass-paper joint. "Dad asked about you the other day, he'll be sad he's on set while you called."

"I think about you and your family every day," Stefan admits. "I should have packed a bag, and just gone with you."

"Then you'd be here," Mara turns their screen to show him the view from their latest headquarters. They were in their new bedroom, the shimmering foam of the crashing waves seemingly within reach from them. "It's kind of the perfect summer's day." Stefan looked away from the screen for a moment and took in the bleak colour of the lack of light on his side of the world, and wanted –in that moment, more than anything– to be beside Mara. When he turns back to them to say as much, he feels the strength of his wishful thinking bind to his power, and move him, and then, before either of them know it, he's sitting in front of them.

Without saying a word he reaches out, takes the joint from them, and takes a drag, watching them watch him. Together, they end the call, and he watches their eyes shift as a thousand thoughts lift and fall away while they try to wrap their head around him suddenly appearing out of thin air. He hands the joint back to them, watching the spark colour their eyes as well when his hand touched theirs, and they take a few drags themselves, putting it out and flicking their braids over their shoulder as his cue.

"I should have told you when you were still in LA, but I didn't want to scare you off, or, put you in any danger, or hurt you, or get you hurt, I–" his rambling is cut off by their mouth closing on his, and he melts into their touch. The sound of the waves, the blistering heat, and the image of his soggy socks and abandoned shoes on their favourite beach back in LA twist and fade into the feel of the present.

Stefan lets himself unravel and spill into them. This time, and after the long time he'd spent missing them, he knew better how to hold them, move with them, be with them.

"This is," they breathe against his mouth as he lets them push him onto his back and climb onto his lap, "I mean, you are the most amazing–" his tongue curls into their mouth and he lifts his hips up to meet the rolling rhythm of theirs. The sound they make when he does this tears more of him free from himself, and he follows the flickering white obliterating everything behind his closed eyes.

Mara's body rocks into his, as his hands explore and savour every curve and sensation passing through the two of them. Stefan follows the impulse to switch their places, flipping Mara easily onto their back and lowering his mouth back to theirs, pressing into them. "Best birthday, ever," Mara tells him, pulling his face to theirs.

"Wait, it's your birthday?" Stefan pulls away, and they nod. "Okay ... one more surprise." His heart swells at the way Mara's face lights up and the heat of it pulls him further away from the roar of his father's surging magic as it scoured the earth for him.

Lucy was never convinced about Rudy.

He had the surname of an infamous sect of witches from the south, but only because he'd orchestrated the performance of taking on his wife's surname as an ode to new wave feminism, and not because he believed in, or had ever experienced the supernatural. No, Rudy was the poster boy for looking good on paper. A pod-person at best if you asked her. Taking on Abby's surname also hadn't stopped him from cheating on her sister, and obliterating their family's so-called pristine future. Every sacrifice Rudy had asked his wife and daughter to make in pursuit of his own ideals for them fell lifeless at the feet of his own actions. Lucy had just about had it with him and Abby.

She knew that Bonnie and Tyler were at the last bonfire of the term and that she only had so much time until they were back. Hurrying up the back end of the house, to where she'd smelled it at her sleepover with Bonnie, Lucy waved her hand over the unassuming patch of grass underfoot and waited. The residue of the spell lifted up to her and she drew it in through her nostrils, her dark eyes momentarily the colour of azure. Lucy's head snapped in the direction of the woods, and she couldn't help the snarl that twisted her mouth as the faint trail of blue revealed itself to her.

Following it, Lucy finds a tree stump in the middle of the woods. As the witch nears it, she feels her body grow cold, her eyes taking in each crystal, remembering its purpose.

"What are you doing here?" Lucy is shaking her head as she turns to Abby. "What is that?"

"What do you think it is?" Lucy throws an arm out, "it's a fucking grave."

"No one buries their dead like that anymore, not for at least the last hundred years," Abby insisted, seeing the anger colouring her sister's features.

"You know," Abby hardly recognises Lucy at that moment. Her usual smiling, effulgent demeanour dimmed to a dark scowl, "even when you believed that you were a witch, and even when you behaved as one you were too caught up in your own bullshit to even understand what was being asked of you, or the fucking context of the supernatural world you refused to actually live in." Lucy licks a line across her bottom lip as she steadies her temper, "you think no one buries their kind like this anymore, because you only saw the magic you could gain from, or would deign to even acknowledge. You don't get that you didn't limit the world of witches by 'protecting'," another sneer, "yourself, or your children," Abby flinches at the hand her sister swings between them, "you limited yourself with your ignorance. Your denial. Your mistakes."

"You don't know what happened," Abby interjected, "you don't know what they took from me, or what they still demand of me–"

"–And yet you're still using magic, aren't you?" Lucy finally accuses aloud. "Aren't you?"

"Luce–"

"–I just don't get why you'd lie to me, I'm your family, Bee. I'm your sister. We're witches. You and I, and our family, dead or alive, that's our coven."

"Who would do this to me?" Abby asks through a shaking breath as her tears come. "It can't be on from our tree?"

"Who's closer than a Bennett to a Bennett?" Lucy asked then, crossing her arms and giving her sister a look as she quoted their mother. Abby's mind goes the same place Lucy's does: to Rudy, her husband.

"Get a room!" Someone calls over at Bonnie and Tyler as their mouths remain fused together. Bonnie's laughter catches in his mouth and he's grinning as he pulls away to look at her.

"You're not worried?" He asks again.

"I am, and about a million things," she tells him moving her mouth back to his, "but the only thing I can control is this–"

"–It's very romantic," he pecks her, "I appreciate it, I do," she resigns herself to the 'but' she can hear coming, "but, I don't think we should be ignoring the stuff that's been happening in the woods. I mean, the drawing–"

"–I'm not going to see these woods for a long time, maybe ever, if we can run away somewhere else entirely," she wiggles her brows at him.

"Okay, I'm liking where this is going–"

"–Thought you might." Bonnie gives him a look he'd never seen on her face before, obscure but saturated with an intensity of some kind, and it held him to her. "Tyler ... you and me? We're gonna be just fine." The smile that spread across his face as he watched her grin grow sets them both at ease.

"Have you seen us?" His eyes drop to her mouth and back up to her eyes, and the difference in his demeanour called to a part of her that Bonnie didn't recognise. "One thing about us? We're fine."

They get up and dance, enjoying a few songs. Bonnie sings along with the rest of the crowd, swimming in the energy spiking between the music, the booze and the sense of ceremony for the endings of things, she even yelps with glee when asked, letting Caroline sneak her for one final gyration to Rihanna.

"Burn this shit-hole to the ground," Bonnie laughs in her ear, "and then move somewhere big. Somewhere beautiful and loud and alive, you can't stay here forever."

"Not for all the money in the world!" Caroline slurs, laughing.

Bonnie is breathing deep and loud into Tyler's side as he navigates her to his Jeep, laughing at how drunk she is.

"Come on, your dad is going to kill me."

"His aim is shit," Bonnie tells him, pressing the cold point of her nose into the crook of his neck. "Don't worry." Tyler bugs his eyes out at the absurdity of what his girlfriend is saying, chuckling under his breath. She whines as he tries to guide her into the passenger seat.

"Bon, how am I supposed to get you in the car when you're sewing our skin together?"

"Kiss me and I'll get in," she laughs, dodging him as he starts to tickle her.

"Get in the car, Bonnie, baby, please–" before either of them can comprehend, a violent, white light cuts them apart like a bolt of lightning. Tyler is sent careening through to the left, crashing through branches and landing unevenly against a particularly skew tree trunk. Bonnie takes in a jagged breath, green eyes wide as her mouth hangs open, her body going still with fright. Aware that she's shaking uncontrollably, Bonnie can only watch as a woman walks into the little light from the moon as she enters the clearing where Tyler had parked.

"He's alive," the woman assures her. "For now." Bonnie swallows, her eyes finally leaving Tyler's motionless form in the distance.

"Who are you?"

"That depends on how you answer this question," the woman informs her, something sly slithering underneath her eyes as they rake over Bonnie's stricken face.

"What's the question?"

"Are you willing to take a life to survive?" Bonnie frowns, a thousand questions rising and falling, her mouth opening and closing as she tries to phrase herself. "Yes, you know the person. No, you don't have a choice. It's you or them."

"Then, no," Bonnie shakes her head, "I choose death. No life is worth more than mine." The woman looks almost amused before condescension swims across her facade.

"Wrong," the woman tells Bonnie, "yours is a life worth thousands." Fresh chills run down Bonnie's spine.

"Who are you?"

"The mother of the one to whom you belong," her eyes sparkle, "in more ways than one."

"Am I supposed to know what means?" Bonnie wonders, wiping at the tears lining her eyes now.

"Where's the fun in that?" The woman laughs darkly, promptly vanishing. Bonnie doesn't even confirm the woman's departure before she's running to Tyler's side.

"Did you feel that?" Lucy asks Abby after the pulse settles on the surface of their skin with an ungodly chill.

"Bonnie–" Before Abby can say anymore, Lucy vanishes.

"Oh my god, oh my god–" Bonnie's hands are shaking as they're hovering helplessly over Tyler's injuries. Lucy appears beside the boy's Jeep, and balks first at the sight of the two teenagers, but straightens her shoulders and shoots out both of her hands and takes Bonnie, Tyler, herself and the Jeep and take them to a part of the woods closer to the Bennett house. Bonnie screams at the tug of power, but when her eyes lock on Lucy, they widen again, realising the woman's extension of her fingers was dictating the swell of the current carrying them. "What the fuck is going on?" Bonnie shouts.

"Move, so I can heal him!" Lucy yells in return, satisfied with their distance from the attack. Bonnie falls out of the way and watches with crying eyes as Lucy crouches over her boyfriend and starts muttering under her breath, pouring bands of light into Tyler's body. A strained growl turns into a shout of pain as he comes to, drawing in a harried breath as his body shoots upright.

"What the fuck?" Tyler heaves, wild eyes moving from Lucy to Bonnie and back. "What the fuck just happened?"

Mara watches as Stefan takes their hand, turning it upwards, and cupping his own hand underneath it. Using his free hand, Stefan lowers his onto theirs and slowly lifts it, and they both watch as a crystal starts to take shape in the growing space between their palms. A reel of colour catches the light between them as the gem is fashioned onto a chain of smaller crystals. Mara feels the undercurrent of the spell in some kind of tether between them.

"This is for you," Stefan tells them. "Nothing will ever hold the light of the world the way you do, but something ought to come as close," he explains, smiling. Mara moves, and then hesitates, a small catch of their breath punctuating the flux of their emotions in that moment. When they take the gift into their hands, the feel as though the warmth of the summer sun bathing them was filling them up from the inside. They look at him with shining eyes.

"Stefan, this is ... I mean, it's so beautiful. It's perfect, thank you." Mara kisses him, softly, sweetly after they pull it up and over, the charm swaying against their sternum with fated ease.

"Well, you're beautiful, and perfect, so ... it's fitting." Mara cups his face, smiling at how he blushes after his confession.

"I'm never taking it off," Mara vows to him. "And in return, I only ask you for one thing."

"Anything," he swears.

"Make sure that in five minutes," they pull him closer again, "it's the only thing I'm wearing."

"Done."

"Do you want him to remember?" Lucy asks Bonnie without preamble.

"Remember what? What are you asking?" Tyler, still reeling, holds a hand out for attention.

"Do you want him to know?" Lucy asks again, her eyes urgent. Tyler looks to Bonnie then as well. She nods. "Okay," Lucy nods, more to herself, and wipes at her eyes. "Bonnie's a witch."

"I'm a what?" Bonnie hears herself echo, even as something inside of her falls into place at the recognition.

"What was that back there? It torpedoed my ass like a winning pass."

"No questions," Lucy tells them both, "your job now is to listen, and pay attention. Okay?" They both nod. "You're a witch Bonnie, and if you've seen a tree stump lined with crystals, then you should tell me."

"I've seen a tree stump lined with crystals," Bonnie confirms, her mind in a frenzy. What the fuck, Tyler mouths at her.

"Focus, Bon," Lucy tells her, recognising the look in her niece's eyes. "That is not good. In fact, it's the definition of a death sentence as far as we're concerned."

"The woman earlier, she told me she was 'the mother of the one to whom I belong'. What the hell does that mean?" Bonnie asks her aunt. Lucy goes pale and quiet, and the dread she feels quickly permeates.

Damon feels the distinction. Knows for certain now of its weight and menacing consequence.

His mother had finally left the house.

This would give him hope, or relief's release, but instead, and perhaps because of his father's intervention, and his brother's prompt disappearance, Damon felt himself grow ill with unease. The house, usually cold-feeling and unwelcoming was now simply hollow and abandoned, quiet for the matter of it being witching hour.

"Brother?" He goes still at the voice, unbelieving. Too much was happening at once, and the eldest Salvatore was struggling to grasp why, and how. Still, he turns, and his body almost buckles at the sight of Enzo.

"Brother?" Damon gasps, hurrying to the boy, and taking him in his hold. "Where have you been? Why haven't I seen you?"

"Mother keeps us hidden."

"...Us?" Damon echoes, frowning, face falling as his gaze lifts to the other ghosts entering his line of vision. "Oh god, what has our mother gone and done now?"

Where Stefan's wet socks and sneakers lay abandoned, stands the woman Giuseppe has been searching for. She feels him, but doesn't acknowledge him, not until he makes to close the space between the two of them. Then, she pushes him back, with a mighty force and he feels her magic strong-arm him to his knees. He knows better than to resist without reason, without any answers.

"It's bigger than you," she tells him.

"But not you?" He throws back. The smile that twists her mouth is a mockery of the light that used to colour her features when she was still alive.

"And you know who that is?" She quips in return. "You don't know a fucking thing. Look at the last of our legacy and how you waste it for your own gain," she seethes through gritted teeth, her magic choking him now as she throws a hand out to Stefan's belongings, "he's better off dead, you know."

"So kill him," Giuseppe snarls, daring her, "kill him and show us who you really are."

"If you don't already know, there is no hope for you, and no point to this," Lily's left hand lifts, and Giuseppe's imposing form is reduced to a lifeless doll as it rises in the current of her power. "But don't worry. Unlike you, I know exactly what needs to be done."

A/N: Well, well, well.

When I started writing this three years ago, I didn't know the very many ways my ideas for this fic would change, but it's happened, and I'm into it.

I don't know when I'll update anything again, this included. That's just how the days are lately.

Review and tell me who would win in a fight, though: Lucy or Lily?