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Chapter 3
bears poison fruit
The farther backward you can look,
the farther forward you can see.
—Winston Churchill
"You seem just lovely Miss Bonnie. I can see why the language fascinates Jonathan; it is so…different." Bonnie smiled, trying not to feel like a show pony facing its final exams. Stefan and Damon's father had been grilling her for the past half hour, as dishes arrived and were carried away by silent servants.
The room's heat was stifling, and Bonnie had never been so aware of how good a life she'd had in a time of air conditioning and ice cream. And where a grown man grilling you over dinner had more to do with him approving you as a girlfriend for his son, and less to do with you staying free, from shackles or a stake.
Giuseppe Salvatore asked his questions kindly. Not exactly what she had expected, especially from the stories Elena had recounted in her post-date debriefs with Bonnie and Caroline. He seemed a loving father.
"You should attend the Founder's Day Ball with us. I am sure that one of my boys would be happy to escort you, I believe they have finally finished fighting over, ahem, deciding who will be escorting Miss Katherine." This was said in good humor by Mr. Salvatore, but immediately drove the brothers to wear matching scowls. Some things, Bonnie thought, never change. Katherine sat between the two brothers, looking as innocent as a dove, even as she drove a gigantic wedge between them that would remain for a hundred and fifty years. At least.
"Founder's Day? I thought this was a new town?" Bonnie vaguely remembered that the last Founder's Day celebration in Mystic Falls marked the 150th anniversary, but she'd been mostly avoiding it, like always. The antebellum south didn't exactly mean pretty silk dresses and parades for people like her. Or, Bonnie chanced a glance down at her ridiculous ruffled skirts, so she'd thought. Her memory of the parade was largely dominated by fire, and death, and her desperate search for a solution, but still, she was pretty certain on that 150. Carol Lockwood had said it often enough. Were the founding families celebrating themselves for starting the town a couple of years ago?
The patriarch clapped. "I see Miss Pierce has been writing you about our little community. And I see you have been paying more attentions to my rambles than I believed Katherine." He shot the vampire a familiar and indulgent smile. "We've christened the town Mystic Falls very recently, just before this nasty business with the tyrannical north broke out. It used to be less organized, and was just known as Fell's Church, after the church Honoria's family built years ago. But we are a town now, and it has helped keep us together during these hard times. The ball will be small, but we're hoping to collect some money to send to the boys at the front and maybe start a tradition as well." This last statement was colored by a glare at Damon, which helped mask Bonnie's blanche. He wanted her to go to a party that was raising money for the Confederacy? God help her.
"But at I was saying, you've come at the perfect time. Afterall, one of my boys here is still unattached." Bonnie thinks Katherine may have gone overboard on the compulsion. This man was way too accepting of her at his table and in his home.
"I could never accept, sir. I would rather not go to the celebration at all then be someone's second choice. Even if that someone is Damon Salvatore." Giuseppe Salvatore's eyes danced with amusement at Bonnie's refusal while Damon just looked peeved.
"And why would you assume that Stefan is escorting her to the celebration, Miss McCullough?" Damon seemed seriously miffed and Bonnie suppressed an unladylike snort.
"Well, Katherine and I are old friends, she confided her choice earlier to me. Besides, your brother wears his victory quite openly on his face." Stefan did look supremely smug. Damon raised an eyebrow, conceding the point to her, but didn't look away from Bonnie.
She remembered those early days of Elena and Stefan's courtship. What was the term she'd used for Stefan's focus? A romance novel stare to pierce the soul? It was an ability obviously shared between brothers, stemming from their familial blood and not the supernatural. Now, focused on her, it seemed much more piercing than romantic. A Heathcliff, not a Darcy, ready to flay her down to her very bones to see just what made her tick. Bonnie shivered, despite the heat.
"Ah, but this was before your arrival. Perhaps if you'd graced us with your presence earlier, we'd have been arguing over you." Bonnie didn't curb her amusement at Damon's words, and her wide smile was accompanied by a loud laugh.
"Now Mr. Salvatore, no one can fault you for raising your sons to be charming, but this is too much. They must also know the value of honesty."
"Ah! You're calling me a liar, and you won't even do it to me face. How cruel, I thought love would be a rose, but your scorn is biting!" Bonnie rolled her eyes at Damon's over the top dramatics, which including chest clutching and the brushing away of fake tears.
"I think you'll find roses have thorns to stab you as readily as my scorn. Besides, there is no lost love between us, and I am not a flower."
"Oh, how your judgement burns me to the core." He continued for a moment more, before a servant set a dish of soup in front of him. He abandoned his thespian ambitions for the food. Dramatics and hunger, how very Damon.
"Are you sure that you would not consider attending with my eldest son?" Bonnie shook her head at the father's further prodding.
"As sorry as I am to inflict your son on the other ladies of your town, I have to insist. I doubt I will go to the party at all, so no one will know he is a man twice scorned." Bonnie spared a guilty thought towards Caroline and the attentions she'd endured from the older Salvatore. How much of his cruelty was born from Katherine's bite, and how much was simply him?
"No other lady will do. We only host the finest here in our great estate, Miss McCullough. If I can't have you or Miss Pierce, I will simply go alone, letting everyone know my shame and misfortune."
"You set yourself up for a lonely life, Mr. Salvatore. Katherine has already spurned your suit, will you chase after her memory forever?" The lady in question shot a sharp look at Bonnie. The witch guessed Katherine didn't want her rejection put in such harsh terms, she wanted a set of Salvatores, not just one. Before Katherine could speak an encouraging word to the eldest, Damon put forward a rejoinder.
"But that is only Miss Pierce accounted for. Which can only mean that my future is entirely in your hands, and it is you that must save me from a lifetime of loneliness by agreeing to accompany me."
"Accompany you for all your days?"
"Well, at least to the Founder's celebration. Would that be amenable?"
"The answer is still no." Bonnie tilted a spoonful of the soup into her mouth, trying, and undoubtedly failing, to copy Katherine's controlled movements. She wanted to gag. The soup was as awful as the pie before it. She missed modern spices.
"Well, a twice stung rejection is definitive. I will respect the lady's wish, though it bids me to die of a broken heart three days from now."
"One night won't kill you." Bonnie couldn't help her slip back into modern speech. The pattern was so familiar. His snark, apparently, was just as strong when he was a human.
"You can only hope. If it does, you'll be a murderess destined for damnation." Bonnie laughed at the thought of Damon Salvatore trying to save her from hell.
"Stay alive then, for the sake of my eternal soul if not your own." Any musing on heaven or hell Damon may have put forward was cut off by Katherine.
"Ahem. As lovely as I have found tonight's meal, I find I'm quite unable to continue. Perhaps, Bonnie and I can retire to the drawing room for a spell, before the gentlemen join us?" Katherine's face did not look kind, and she looked more peckish than stuffed.
"I'm also finished, but I think I will go straight up to my room if you don't mind. I had a long journey today, and I need to rest. Besides, we will have all of tomorrow to catch up on all we have missed in each other's lives since we last spoke." Katherine demurred and Bonnie internally fist pumped. Even vampires could be trapped by social convention.
Bonnie pushed away from the table and headed out the door. Between her heavy and unfamiliar skirts and Katherine's vampire speed, she didn't even make it halfway up the stairs before she had her arms pinned behind her back. Katherine walked her up the stairs the rest of the way before she thrust her through a doorway, into Bonnie's assigned room, and locked the latch behind them.
"Well wasn't that a cute show you put on for all of us. But I don't appreciate you playing with my things. A little flirting with Damon is one thing Bonnie, I know he makes it hard to resist, but don't go putting ideas in his head about me." Bonnie sorely hoped the vervain hadn't left her system yet, because Katherine looked ready to make a meal of her.
"Flirting? Are you joking? Me and Damon are always like that, we just, rub each other the wrong way."
"Well now he wants to rub you the right way, and if that's how you are used to speaking with him, I would guess it's not a new development. But, more importantly, how did you know which of them I chose?"
Her words could have been referring to her choice of escort, but the emphasis on chose implied something else, a deeper feeling from Katherine.
"I'm from the future, remember? Which is why I know you chose Stefan, and how I know that Damon wasn't, and isn't, interested in me. He still carries a torch for you in a hundred years, even with all of your bullshit."
"I keep them on the line that long? God, I'm good." She tossed her curls and released Bonnie's arms. "But speaking of bullshit, I should tell you, Damon knows some of yours." Bonnie's head snapped up.
"What do you mean?"
Katherine smirked.
"Well, I know I said that I was going to compel the boys, but I haven't needed to use my powers to convince Damon to do anything yet. It seemed such a waste to break my record for such a trivial thing. I just dropped a few hints of course, not the whole truth, but that could change." Considering that trivial thing was Bonnie's life, she didn't feel great about this choice, especially since Katherine wasn't happy with her at the moment.
"Fine, whatever. I'll step off your man. Men. But promise me you'll compel Damon if he tries to expose me as a witch."
"Deal! Now come on, I figured you would need as much help unlacing as you did lacing." Bonnie was more eager to get out of the corset than she was wary to take Katherine's word. She turned again, and let the vampire begin to untie the knots.
"You have to be more careful, no more slips of the tongue. And it's not about the boys. There are two dozen other vampires in the town, and I don't want any of them knowing our little secret. Who knows what they would do to you to make you spill what you know. Bad enough they'll know you're a witch, but that can hardly be hidden. Not with your magic practically crackling across your skin."
"I'll be careful."
"Great, because I have someone you need to meet!"
"Who?"
"That would be me." Bonnie whirled, surprised by the voice coming from the previously empty corner of the room. Standing there, was an elegantly dressed Asian woman who looked about 30 years old. Bonnie knew she was centuries older.
"Pearl! We were supposed to meet in my room. And god, why are you dressed so formally still? I assumed you'd come in your dressing gown."
"Well, I'm going to run into Jonathan accidentally later tonight, on a late night stroll, and I can't very well do that in a dressing gown. The scandal it would cause." The two vampires laughed, and Bonnie shifted awkwardly. Which accidental meeting include the charmed pocket watch? When would he know Pearl was a monster? Should she warn her? Could she? She didn't know what kind of paradox changing the future this far back in time would cause, or how many lives would be lost to Pearl's hunger if she lived a century and a half outside of that tomb.
"Well shoo. I have something I need to give you, we'll meet you in a minute." In a flash, Pearl was gone, out the window and to another part of the house. Katherine and Bonnie followed at a more sedate pace, through the hallway.
"This door leads to my rooms. Right around the corner, past that horridly ugly marble bust, is Damon's room. And that one we just passed leads to Stefan's. Unlucky for you, your room shares a wall with his. Don't expect any apologies." With a wink, she opened the door. Bonnie scoffed, disgusted. In the future, Stefan was her friend, or something like one. She didn't want to see him used like this.
The door opened to a formal living room, instead of the bedroom Bonnie was expecting. Of course Katherine had the nicest digs in the house. Bonnie wouldn't be surprised if she'd compelled the master suite out from under Giuseppe Salvatore.
Pearl sat primly on the sofa, sipping at a cup of tea. Or at least, a liquid which was held in a teacup.
"I'm Bonnie McCullough. It's good to formally meet you." Bonnie strode forward, her hand outstretched, already braced for the psychic shock of touching a new vampire. Pearl pinched her hand between two fingers, and jerked it once, like it was a dead rat.
"A handshake? How forward. Still, it's always a pleasure to meet someone of your talents that retains a friendly disposition towards one with mine. We're happy to have you. This is my daughter, Annabelle." In a blink, Pearl's daughter stood next to her mother. She hadn't even been in the room when they'd entered.
It was jarring to see the dead walk. The actual dead, not the undead, and one that Bonnie had indirectly killed at that. So far, Bonnie had been surrounded by either new, or familiar faces. She didn't really know this Stefan or Damon, but they were the same people at their core, and they were as alive as she expected them to be. Pearl and Anna were another matter entirely.
"It's good to meet you both. I hope I can be a friend to you both. Please sit, Anna." She was the only one who had remained standing and having a vampire hovering over her shoulder did nothing to help Bonnie relax.
The girl gave the witch an odd look, but sat. Bonnie realized that she'd used Anna's preferred name from the future, and silently cursed. She had promised less than 15 minutes ago to be careful, and already she had slipped again. Luckily, neither Pearl or Katherine seemed to think anything of it, and had launched into a discussion of fashion without any input needed from Bonnie. It was only when she realized they were discussing fashion in the context of her, as in the gown she would wear to this stupid Founder's celebration, that Bonnie decided her involvement was necessary. Who knew what monstrosity she would end up in if she left it entirely in their hands?