Summary:
Friendship
"What are you doing?" Damon asked from behind the girl he could now identify easily as Bonnie 2.0.
She was drawing a circle of into the ground with black soil instead of the white powder Bonnie 1.0 usually used.
"A little bit of dark magic." The girl responded, not bothering to look around.
It's been two weeks since she first came to Mystic Hills and this would be her eighth visit since that fateful day.
In the time she had been visiting this town, she has met Damon five out of the eight times and mostly, in the woods. She didn't want to ask what he was always doing in the woods because she didn't want to care about what he did in the woods.
Elena and Damon were still dating back home even after speculations had been made about a sire bond and its effect on their relationship. Whatever effect the sire bond had on Elena's feelings, they didn't have on Damon and it was evident for all to see that the older Salvatore loved the former-human girl.
Their relationship was wrong in several aspects, but no one could deny that truth. Not even her. And that was more reason why she steered clear of those two.
She started making markings on the ground in the circle, drawing her perfect hexagon and placing six black candles at each point.
"Is it going to hurt people I know?" Damon asked after a while of watching her work. "I mean, Bonnie and Stefan... are they at risk?"
"Not Elena?" She turned around to quirk a brow at him, genuinely curious about what the Damon in this world's feeling were for her best friend.
"Well, Elena too but mostly Stefan." Damon responded. Stefan would always be his priority, no matter how many friends he made and how many people he fell in love with and it was something he hoped wouldn't change any time soon.
"No one will get hurt, I just use what's necessary." Bonnie reassured Damon, taking a seat in the middle of the Star of David.
She didn't try to leave, something she refused to think about because if she did, she would wonder about why she seemed to be staying just to talk to Damon Salvatore —whom she still hated, right?— when she could be testing out her theory to perfect her own inter dimensional spell.
"Spirit magic not working for you anymore?" The vampire asked, stepping around to sit in front of her on the ground.
"No... it still works but my spirit is tainted so I'm more comfortable with dark magic. It's liberating." Bonnie shrugged. It felt good... talking to someone about the things she thought about but didn't have the courage to speak about. Telling Damon that she was practicing dark magic, telling him that she felt a part of her spirit was tainted with darkness... felt liberating in and of itself. Almost as potent as practicing the dark magic itself.
"I can imagine." Damon says quietly, breaking through her thoughts.
"Which part?"
"The freedom part." The vampire chuckled, leaning back on his palms. "That's how I feel when I'm drinking from a live person."
"That's not the same." Bonnie frowned at him.
"Pretty much, Bonica Magica... it feels good, but it's not right."
She squints at him, ruminating over his words... was Damon Salvatore telling her that practicing dark magic was bad? Damon Salvatore? "Am I being lectured on morality by Damon Salvatore?" She asked, shocked at the absurdity of this particular outcome.
"A shocker." The vampire rolled his eyes, a soft chuckle falling out of his lips.
"I promise I'm not sacrificing any babies. I only use it to escape my reality. Literally." Bonnie felt the need to reassure him although... once again, she refused to think much about it.
"Need to go again?" Damon asked, watching the smoke start to form around her hands.
"For a while, yeah." Bonnie heard herself say. She hadn't meant to make it sound like some kind of promise to meet again.
And yet, as she sat alone in the woods of her home town, Mystic Falls, looking at nothing in particular after being dragged back home by the candles running out, she realized her words had sounded like a promise.
Like telling Damon she will be back again —which was obvious— but still...
———X———
"Do you ever spend time in town? Why are you always here?" Bonnie asked when she was whisked once again through time and into Mystic Hills. She didn't even need to look for Damon this time around. The vampire was sitting in the same spot she had left him in, two days ago, three bottles of bourbon by him.
Two were empty.
"I stay out of trouble when I stay out of town." Damon replied, no longer fazed by her ability to come and go at will. "You're back again... curious about something?" He raised a brow at her.
"The name of my hometown is Mystic Falls." Bonnie says slowly, cautiously, and waited for Damon to pick the bait and start bombarding her with questions but nothing of the sort happened. "You're not asking questions." It wasn't a question... more like an observation.
"I figure you'll tell me what you want to, with or without the questions." Damon shrugged, shifting around so he was close enough to a tree to lean on.
"You're different." Bonnie finally admitted to herself. She's been thinking about it since day one but now, it felt concrete to say it. "The Damon in my world is very impulsive."
"So am I." Damon chuckled, as if daring her to say something new.
"You seem reasonable." She tried again and raised a brow when Damon's smile seemed to broaden further.
"Seem." He stressed with a chuckle, and added; "I'm highly impulsive, and pretty selfish too." for good measure.
"The Damon in my world is the reason why my Grams died, and the reason why my mother became a vampire and lost whatever bits of her witchcraft there was." She finally said it. From the very first day she walked into this strange town where everyone seemed happy, she had been curious the most about what this world's Damon's history was with the Bonnie of this world and how they remained such good friends.
Now, she was comfortable enough around him to say what was on her mind.
"So am I." Damon replied after a while, his smile subdued on his face till it fell off completely.
"Then how can Bonnie be friends with you?" Bonnie asked incredulously, finding the Bonnie of Mystic Hills weirder by the minute and most importantly, why was she so darn happy?
"Beats me sometimes but she's gotten it into her head that I'm worth saving." Damon lamented.
"Are you?" She wasn't angry. Perhaps it was because her anger was towards Mystic Falls Damon Salvatore, not the one before her... and not even the knowledge that he had done the same thing to her counterpart, could make her get angry at him. "The Damon in my world chased after Elena till she broke up with Stefan."
"Again, sounds like me." Damon seemed pensive for a while before he sighed. No one knew his thoughts but he had considered that a few times, been tempted to passive aggressively drop hints to her till he filled her consciousness and unconsciousness with nothing but himself... but he hadn't carried through with it.
He actually felt proud of the other Damon. He seemed to be living the life without inhibitions that Damon wished for and he felt that he would be a lot at peace now, knowing somewhere in the universe, he was living as gratuitously as he can. "Are they happy together?" He heard himself asking after a while.
"Unusually so." Bonnie agreed, ticking a mental note in her head. So Damon of Mystic Hills also loved Elena. What a cursed fate. "It's a bit surprising to be honest." She admitted.
"I always knew I could make her happy." The vampire laughed, taking a swig of his bourbon and holding it out to her.
"So why didn't you do what Mystic Falls Damon did?" Bonnie asked, taking the bottle of bourbon and taking a sip of the strong whisky.
"Because Mystic Hills Damon loves Stefan more than anything in the world. More than life itself." And that was the only explanation to it.
"I think that's why." Bonnie mused.
"That's why what?"
"Your redeeming quality. If your Bonnie is like me, selflessness of any kind is a plus." The witch actually chuckled, thinking back to the Damon back home and trying to gage his relationship to his brother.
"So you mean... Bon forgave me because I chose to let Stefan be happy." Damon muttered, his brain kicking into overdrive. "That's why she goes out of her way... silly little witch." He exclaimed when his thoughts settled, and the affection was evident in his tone.
"What about me?" Bonnie asked before she could stop herself. Later... later, she would blame the alcohol. "Am I happy here?"
"I think so, yeah." Damon replied cautiously because admittedly, one can ever know someone else completely.
"I'm not happy." She confessed. "In Mystic Falls, I mean. Everyday I feel like the walls are closing in and it gets harder and harder to breathe. I feel like a spectator to my own life. Like I'm standing outside looking in."
Damon stood up slowly from where he sat, taking a few steps till he was standing right in front of her. "Aren't you too young to be this pensive?"
"I live alone. Every day I'm casting a spell to save someone." She smiled up at him but the smile stopped at her lips, never reaching her eyes. "Jeremy cheated on me several times but he's Elena's brother so she can only pick my side to a certain extent."
"I'm going to kill that little twerp!" Damon exclaimed.
"But he's not the culprit. I would know. The first time I met you here, I was tempted to kill you to atone for what Mystic Falls Damon did to me." Bonnie tried to be the voice of reason but Damon's reaction to her words filled her with warmth that made her smile.
"I don't care, I'll just hit him in the face twice and hope the Jeremy in your world feels the sting."
Laughter bubbled out from deep inside her chest, startling her. She hadn't laughed this genuinely in what felt like forever. "The Damon in my world loves Jeremy like a brother." She says amidst laughter.
"Because of Elena?" He sneered.
"No, because of Jeremy. Somewhere along the line he became kind of a guardian to him."
He stood there watching her laugh and Damon felt good —happy— that she was laughing. No, the dark eyes he had encountered earlier will be a long time before leaving but at least she seemed to be loosening up.
He reached out the rest of the way against his better judgement —and risking his neck being snapped— and pulled her into a hug. "Give me a chance."
"What?" Bonnie asked, doubly stunned by both his actions and his words.
"The Damon in your world... give him a chance at friendship. I assure you I'm a loyal friend." What was he doing vouching for someone he never met?
He just crossed his fingers and prayed he was right. He just didn't want her to keep feeling alone in that vast world and he knew if the other Damon was anything like him, he would protect her just as passionately as he protected Bonnie here.
"Damon." Her hand came up to grip the back of his shirt but Bonnie told herself that was not the same as hugging someone back.
"I assure you." Damon stressed.
———X———
Four days a week, Bonnie Bennett traversed to the woods and cast a spell only she knew, to open a portal to a parallel world for an hour each time.
She wasn't overly fond of Mystic Hills but she admitted that what had started as mere curiosity had evolved into a desire to maintain a friendship with Damon.
He listened to her without judgement, helped her to find a new location —one that would be undisturbed by rain and will not be found by others— for her to draw her transmutation circle.
Since where she drew it was exactly where she would land in Mystic Hills, they had gone around for weeks till they found a perfect place in the woods that wasn't also someone's sitting room in Mystic Falls.
And finally, she had figured the spell out.
With the transmutation circles in the same place in both worlds, she had the luxury of time and only needed to cast the spell to return home.
When she finally got everything settled with the spell, she spent two full days with Damon in Mystic Hills, just rewinding.
Sharing details about their respective worlds, laughing at funny world stories on both ends, and eating junk food.
———X———
Looking back, those two days were probably the universe's way of apologizing to her in advance for the shitstorm that happened afterwards.
