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Chapter 17
gathers no moss
You pile up associations the way you pile up bricks.
Memory itself is a form of architecture.
—Louise Bourgeois
Unlike previous trips, Bonnie's awareness remained crystal clear. One moment she was on a roof, the next she was not. Instead, she sat in a mostly empty room, just her and the dark-haired vampire sitting in the chair across from her.
"Hello darling popsy, long time no see." Bonnie rolled her eyes at that smirk.
"Seriously? That's what you greet me with, popsy? After how many years?"
"A hundred and twenty, but who's counting? And I wasn't going to call you babe, no matter what the modern slang is. Did you miss me?" Katherine's smirk widened into an actual smile. It was infectious and Bonnie had to grin back, despite her reservations and confusion. The vampire darted forward, practically throwing herself into Bonnie's lap for a hug. Bonnie tried to reciprocate, but her arms felt heavy and sluggish.
"Katherine? I don't feel so good." The vampire sprang back. Looking into Bonnie's eyes intently.
"It seems like it worked, you're probably just still adjusting, this was kind of a gamble in the dark."
"Adjusting to what?" Something on Bonnie's inner elbow hurt, like a bug bite. She looked down at her right arm and saw an IV drip and she reached down to pull it out. Her fingers weren't reacting right and, now that Bonnie looked at her hand and her arm, they didn't look right either. No ring, but it wasn't just that. Her fingers looked longer than normal, her forearms more muscled, and her skin was a shade darker than it had been for the last seventeen years of her life.
Katherine hadn't answered but was instead shifting her weight back and forth almost nervously.
"Katherine, what did you do to me?" At the accusation, the vampire straightened her stance and set her jaw.
"It's nothing bad or permanent. Just a little unusual. Besides, we needed to talk."
"Less excuses, more explaining."
"Geez, the Bennett annoyed expression really comes through." Bonnie glared, and Katherine sat back down. She leaned forward, elbows on her thighs, and adopted a serious expression. "Okay, here's the deal. You're not really here right now. Well, you are, but your body isn't. I kinda used a spell to hijack your consciousness." Katherine said, like magical bodysnatching was no big deal.
"What? Where's my body? And whose is this? And what's with the IV? Is that blood?" Katherine stretched out a hand and placed a finger over Bonnie's lips. Bonnie jerked her head backwards but didn't continue with her panicked interrogation.
"I'm not exactly sure where your body is right now, but we could find out…maybe. The body you're borrowing belongs to an acquaintance of mine, Mara. She's a Gemini member. They're always interested in doing this sort of experimental stuff, so she volunteered."
"How do you not know where my body is? And what spell is this?"
"I tend not to ask for witchy details beyond the results. I tracked your patterns, noticed that Damon always seems to find you, asked a seer when you would next arrive, and tried this possession spell. The blood is a Bennett's. I had to steal it from a donation drive of all places, like a common thief. I can't even approach my favorite family of witches anymore. Damon might have gotten lax on the protection detail recently, but not that lax." She ran through her exertions lazily, like it had taken no effort on her part. But Bonnie wasn't leaving notes behind wherever she went, and tracking down both a seer and a complex possession spell took time. Katherine must have really wanted to talk to her.
Bonnie eyed the IV running into her veins. Bennett blood Katherine had said. But which Bennett?
"Thanks for the partial explanation, but you skipped the why."
"I told you, we needed to talk."
"About what exactly?" Bonnie asked.
"Were you here a hundred years ago?"
"That kind of depends on where here is. And what year it is now."
"It's 1984, and we're in Chicago."
"I've never been to Chicago." Bonnie's words were confident, and Katherine released a huge sigh of relief.
"Well that makes this whole thing pointless. I had my doubts, but a story reached me about you jumping out of a window into Damon Salvatore's waiting arms, and, well, I had to check."
Bonnie winced, knowing she was about to remove the relief from her friend's voice.
She thought about letting it go, but couldn't Every lie she had told since finding out about her powers, to her father, to Caroline, to the Salvatore brothers, and to herself, weighed on her conscience. Ever since she'd experienced the relief of telling Damon the truth, of her situation if not his own, she'd avoided using actual lies as much as she could. Maybe that was why her heart was easily swayed by Damon's kisses and proposal; she wanted them to be real; she didn't want to live another lie. Until, of course, he reminded her of the rather large one she'd kept about her identity.
"Actually, that might have been me. I didn't know I was in Chicago," Bonnie searched her adrenaline-blurred memory of that day. She vaguely remembered the buttoned-up vampire mentioning Chicago, but that information seemed less useful at the time than keeping track of Klaus's every move and mood. "I didn't really get to see the city that day."
"So you arrived falling out a window that Damon just happened to be under?"
Bonnie shook her head.
"No. I arrived in a basement, or a cellar, or something. It was some weird, underground, ritual room." She shivered at the memory. Katherine had stood and was circling the room restlessly as Bonnie talked. Bonnie ignored the way the hairs on her neck pricked up every time the vampire passed behind her. Did that reaction belong to her, or to the witch whose body she currently inhabited? Both probably.
"He had just killed a coven of witches. Or maybe they killed themselves. It was hard to tell." Bonnie swallowed. She'd left a field of horror, the bodies of the Lakota that had lain for hours after the massacre, and arrived to a room of the freshly dying. The memories overlapped each other, the cool of the stone chamber and the heat of the plains, blending into one nightmare.
"He?" Katherine had stopped pacing but had not turned to face Bonnie. Her word was sharp, a whip of a question. She stood, on the balls of her feet, by the room's single window, as if she would leap from it at any moment.
"There was a vampire. Well, more than one. I think he said they were his siblings." Bonnie hesitated. She almost didn't want to say his name, it looked like Katherine would snap in two with the confirmation. "He introduced himself as Klaus, and he was asking about you."
Rather than breaking, as Bonnie had feared she would, Katherine simply nodded.
"Okay. Okay. So, it was Klaus," She nodded again, talking more to herself than to Bonnie. Bonnie took the moment to stand. Her body still felt wrong, heavy, but her limbs were responding to her mind's instructions now. Bonnie delicately removed the needle from her arm, wincing as she pulled out its length. She flexed her fingers and shook out her legs.
"You said siblings?" Katherine asked, louder, and actually directed at Bonnie this time. The memories came back to the witch more clearly, as she brushed aside the blur of joy and panic that had followed on the Titanic.
"Yes, Rebekah, his sister, and a brother, Elijah." An array of emotions flitted across Katherine's face; sorrow, curiosity, then fear, before her jaw clenched and she settled on determination.
"Okay." She said again. "I can't do this sober. Let's go."
Katherine ordered a bottle of liquor that Bonnie didn't recognize the name of. It sat between their two full glasses, but neither had moved to drink. The bartender was wiping down the other end of the bar, avoiding entering within earshot of the two women's conversation. Not that there was much of one. Katherine seemed to be debating what to say. From what Bonnie remembered of her often-duplicitous friend in 1864, this reluctance usually meant she was preparing herself to actually tell the truth.
Self-conscious of the silent bar and her full glass, Bonnie steeled herself and took a swig. She'd largely inured herself to the burn of bourbon, a necessity when hanging out with Elena and the Salvatores, and nothing would ever taste as bad as that vervain tincture, but she wasn't prepared for this strong burnt sweetness. She only just managed to swallow.
"I see you're not used to the good stuff. So, the drinking age stays ridiculously high in the future then? Buck up, Bonnie, I used to get this in my baby bottle." Just the thought made Bonnie want to gag. Katherine's amused quirked eyebrow looked so similar to the face Elena made when watching Bonnie sputter over her first sip of tequila. The witch turned her head away to dispel the image.
"What is this?" She asked, disgust clear in her voice.
"Rakia, though it's not as strong as my mother made it. No one else as managed to make the plums burn quite like she did." Katherine threw back her own glass and, with a look of satisfaction, refilled it. Bonnie took a smaller, much smaller, second sip.
"I guess it's not so bad." She ventured. Insulting the alcohol of someone's mother didn't seem like something that would ever go over very well, and Katherine seemed uncharacteristically sensitive at the moment.
"No insulting the drink, even if it's swill." Katherine swirled her glass. "It brings back a lot of memories. If you want something else, just order it, it's on me." This offer wasn't exactly generous. Katherine had compelled the bartender to hand over the first bottle for free, and would no doubt do the same for any drink Bonnie ordered.
"I'm fine for now. Not like I have any drinks of sentimental value." Katherine snorted.
"Give it a few years. But for now, I'll share mine." Katherine topped off her glass and Bonnie took another small sip. "Soon enough you'll have a drink that will remind you of home, a city that will evoke all your deepest fears, a color that will always make you think of the seven years that you and your best friend didn't speak because you disagreed over the fate of Fanny Price."
"How do you know Klaus?" Bonnie asked, hoping to push Katherine out of her melancholic musings.
"What did Klaus ask about?" Katherine countered before Bonnie had even finished speaking.
Bonnie decided she would answer first. She could afford to be nice.
"Mostly he was confirming I knew you. And then he tried to kill me. But he called you another name—" Bonnie hesitated over the half-remembered accented consonants.
"Katerina Petrova." Katherine spoke. The name, so lyrical on the tongues of the vampire brothers, was imbued with defeat on hers. "My birth name."
She didn't offer anything else.
"So, you knew Klaus when you were still calling yourself Katerina?" Bonnie asked hesitantly, unsure what this story would unravel into. The fact that it involved another pair of vampire brothers was not lost on her.
"I knew Klaus when I was human." Bonnie's eyes widened, but Katherine didn't look at her. Her eyes didn't leave the liquid in her glass.
"Since my first day in Chicago I have known this bar had Rakia. I haven't drank any in a century, but I suppose now would be the time."
Bonnie really didn't need to know anymore about the drink, and was much more curious about the ancient vampire who tried to kill her just for knowing Katherine, but she stayed quiet. It was hard to ignore the waves of sadness coming off the vampire, and Katherine had said she needed to be drunk to share. They could linger on the liquor until her friend was ready.
"Why now? Homesick?"
"Not in the way you're imagining, I'm sure, but maybe something similar. I've reached that special age in a vampire's existence, the Change of Life, Pearl used to call it. It's been coming on gradually, but I can't deny it anymore."
"Menopause?" Bonnie asked. It had been an incredulous knee jerk response to Katherine complaining like Grams used to bemoan over her hot flashes.
"No, though I guess some find it comparable." For the first time in the conversation, Katherine looked directly at Bonnie. "I supposed you've heard that vampires have a switch, and that one flip of it means no emotions?" Bonnie nodded. "Well that's true. And it's great. You can turn off everything unpleasant, no guilt, sadness, or pain. Probably some kind of evolutionary thing to help young vampires when they first turn. But that switch hasn't been as clear to me for a while, emotions have been creeping back in, without anyway to exorcise them. Recently, the switch disappeared completely. So now I have to live with everything I've done." Katherine held her glass up, toasting some invisible past victim. "About time, I guess."
"Wow. Rough life." Bonnie motioned for the bartender. She wasn't about to sympathize with Katherine for having to feel her well-deserved guilt for manipulating and murdering her way through the centuries. She was her friend, not her therapist. Bonnie ordered the bar's largest fruity cocktail. She was still human, with no advanced metabolism, so she had no need to drink liquor straight when she wanted to get drunk.
"What does this have to do with Klaus?" Bonnie prompted, no longer inclined to wait.
"I was getting to that." Bonnie mirrored Katherine's previous expression, one eyebrow raised. The vampire set down her glass without refilling it. "Okay, I'll stop with the pity party. Let's see, where should I start?"
"The beginning?"
"Wow Bonnie, it's like none of us have heard that one before."
Bonnie waited, and Katherine's snappishness faded into contrition. She sighed, and began,
"I was born a Petrova. We were an old family, but we hadn't been at the top of the food chain for a while. My father had only made the situation worse. When I was young he bet everything on a single harvest season. When the rains came, too long and too heavy, the crop was lost, and everything with it. We were forced to sell and rent our own home; we were tenants where we'd once been lords."
Bonnie made a small noise of encouragement.
"We didn't own the land we worked on, the food we grew, or even ourselves, not really. We were owned by the boyar, he by the Tsar, and the Tsar by the Turks. But my father no longer held any serfs; he basically was one himself, so he was at the very bottom. Except his wife and daughters, of course. They were below even him."
Katherine took a deep swig straight from the bottle, even though her glass wasn't empty. Bonnie remembered the light that danced in the vampire's eyes when Bonnie had mentioned university so casually, as a goal well within a young woman's reach.
"But me, I was special. I was the eldest, and I was smart, and pretty, and most importantly, I was ruthless. The family had their hopes pinned on me, and with the way that the boyar's son watched me…well, it seemed like their hope was not in vain. A marriage like that would have made me a real golden goose; it would have saved us all." Katherine finally poured out another glass. Bonnie's cocktail arrived covered in fruit and umbrellas. They half-heartedly clinked their drinks together.
"I'm guessing you didn't get married to him. What happened?"
"What happened? What I should have expected; what we all should have expected with our lowly place. Pyotr had certainly been watching me, but not with love. No matter how pretty or charming or cunning, I was much too poor to be his bride. Too poor to even woo me as his mistress, which my father would have happily settled for. So instead he took what he wanted, what he'd really been thinking of while I daydreamed about wedding feasts and the envious faces of my sisters. And after he was finished, he let a few friends take a turn too."
Bonnie's mouth had fallen open in horror. The vampire continued, tone more blasé than it had been all night.
"Of course, I tried desperately to hide it. Burned my bloody skirts, made up a horse-riding accident to explain away the bruises. But these things have a way of making themselves known, especially as this was long before the wonders of modern medicine and women's liberation. No little pills to prevent inconveniences."
"You were pregnant?"
"Yup. And for some reason, this is what broke my father. This was the family's great shame. Not our poverty, his gambling, or the bowing and scraping we were forced to carry on whenever one of our so-called betters graced us with their presence. No, it was my baby that brought shame to our family." Katherine's voice had been gaining volume and anger, but just as quickly as they had come on, they left. She continued quietly, eyes staring into the lacquered bar like it would show her something other than peanut shells and cigarette burns. "And then they took her from me. They didn't even let me hold her once."
"Katherine, I'm…"
"Don't say you're sorry. Nothing to do with you. And could you even imagine? Me, as a mother?"
Bonnie could barely imagine Katherine taking care of a plant, let alone a baby.
"But all this exposition is hardly important, I'm just trying to find excuses for my stupidity."
"None of that was your fault Katherine."
"Yeah well, that doesn't exactly help me feel less stupid, even now. Anyway, I need a little more lubrication before I can continue this walk down memory lane. Let's talk about something else."
"Alright. Umm…" Bonnie struggled to think of something to say. Was she supposed to be comforting Katherine or distracting her? "Where is my body, really?" She settled on, and the other woman took up the topic gamely.
"Have you noticed that you always end up in certain places, in certain situations?" Bonnie thought about the tragedies she fell into, and how Damon was always there, and nodded.
"Emily mentioned something. I'm not very well-versed in magic, so you'll have to look into it more once you settle into your own time. But she said something about death and its aftermath, and she talked about a magic I'd never heard of before. Something called Expression."
"Never heard of it." Bonnie said. Katherine shrugged.
"Neither have I, but like I said, I'm not the most witchy vampire around."
"Did she say anything about the magic creating a bond? Or a tether to a specific person?"
Katherine smirked.
"Why Bonnie, is this you telling me that you feel a magical bond to Damon Salvatore?" Bonnie blushed but shook her head.
"No, he's just always been there. A bit much for a coincidence."
"You travel to Damon? Every single time? I thought maybe there'd been more instances, and I was only hearing about it when you were both present."
"Not right next to him or anything, but we always seem to find each other." Katherine looked nervous. "What's wrong? Do you think that's bad?"
"I just wouldn't want to be around Damon right now, if I were you."
"Why not?"
"That switch we were talking about? Something happened to Damon a few years back, and he flipped his. He's been ripping his way through the old country for the last decade. Even I lost track of him a couple of months ago when he came back to the states. He's been on and off the radar out west, very erratic. I doubt you would want to see him like this. I don't know if he wouldn't eat you himself."
"What?" Bonnie scrambled off her barstool. "I have to get back to my own body! If Damon's off his humanity he'll kill me!" Katherine rested her chin in her palm, looking up at Bonnie lazily.
"Mara's body is burning that Bennett blood out, but you can't make it go any faster. Once you're through, you're through. Unless you suddenly have the power to teleport us to a completely unknown location, figure out exactly where your body is, and still have some leftover to fight Damon, there's not much we can do. You'll just have to wait it out."
"I'm supposed to just sit here and drink while my body is God knows where? Who knows what could be happening! Damon could drain me dry and I wouldn't even know!"
"I think you'd know. Probably. Besides, I think you should be more worried about why you're wherever you are. So many fun possibilities. There was a rash of earthquakes earlier this year, and I heard about some Satanic schoolteachers sacrificing their students last week. Plus, the Unabomber could strike at any minute. Really this year has been a mess, and that's just the U.S. Even if we turned on the news, it'd barely narrow down the potential spots. "
"What? Kath—!"
"Bonnie, you'll just have to trust Damon. Even if it's just trusting that he'd rather have fun and kill you when you're aware and awake, instead of when you're unconscious and boring."
"We don't even know if Damon found me this time."
"You just said that he's always found you before."
"That was different. I wasn't just a slumped over body, I found him," Or she told someone her name and they brought her to him. But Damon wouldn't be talking about her now, not when he had his emotions off. He would hardly care to create a backstory. "and Damon had emotions."
"Don't worry, even with our emotions off, vampires retain some…imprint of what they love. I'm sure he won't harm you; I was kidding before, mostly. He's probably just waiting for you to wake up so he can seduce you to the dark side."
"You're sure?" Bonnie asked, not wanting to question the L word just yet. Or the Star Wars reference.
"Not really. But I'm drunk enough to continue my story, and there's nothing we can do for your body right now, so you might as well sit back down and rejoin my pity party."
Katherine pushed Bonnie's glass closer to the glaring witch.
"Come on, take a drink, lose yourself in my tragic backstory for a while."
Bonnie huffed out a laugh and reached for her glass. Maybe she'd be less worried with another drink. And she'd forget Damon's hurt and worried eyes from the rooftop. Katherine had said something had happened to Damon in the fifties, which meant it was at least a decade after they'd last seen each other. Not her fault, she heard Damon whisper. But could she have stopped it? Would she have? She hadn't protected him from the hurt she knew was coming his way in the future.
"Lay it on me. What happened next?"
"After they took my daughter, they kicked me out of the family home. No one in all the Balkans would have accepted a ruined woman in their house, so my mother called in one last favor for me. My last bit of family kindness. Her younger brother was a first mate on a merchant ship, and he secured me a spot on a journey for England."
"You moved to England?"
"More than moved, I became English." She said this with an overexaggerated posh accent. "Not that they spoke like that back then. But I ran a couple scams, swindled some nobodies out of their money, and had set my sights on an old widower. I would be able to live comfortably after his death, and maybe, with that inheritance, I'd be able to find my daughter." Katherine took a deep breath.
"Instead, Klaus found me. He was Lord Niklaus then, and he was richer than a king. He was smart and charming and ruthless. I thought, this is him. This is the man I've been waiting for. But still, I'd learned. I could love Klaus, but I couldn't trust him. He was like Pyotr, a man who could turn on me at any moment. But he had something Pyotr never did, my weakness so to speak."
"What?"
Katherine laughed, a wet choking sound that was almost a sob.
"Klaus had a brother."
"Elijah?" Bonnie asked. Katherine nodded.
"Elijah. He was everything I wasn't prepared for, and he crept up on me. He was sweet and kind. And, I thought, honest. He didn't pretend with honeyed words like Klaus did. Klaus was the man I had been waiting for, my equal in all things, but Elijah was a man I'd never imagined existing."
The near-empty bottle of rakia was replaced with a new one, and Katherine quickly cracked the seal.
"I was in love with them both, I can admit that now of course, but I never really knew either of them. They were vampires, and I was little more than a lost child. They thought less of me than they did their hunting dogs, and they only continue to think of me now because I ruined their sport."
"Klaus certainly doesn't seem to have fond memories of you."
Katherine snorted.
"He wouldn't. I wasn't as biddable as his dogs or his followers. I wanted to live, and they wanted to sacrifice me over some alter to break their curse."
"Wait, what? They were sacrificing people, not just, you know, eating them?"
Bonnie was shocked. She'd heard of the rare human sacrifice being used to fuel spells, and had seen the aftermath of Klaus's attempt at something, but it was still surprising. Plus, Katherine wasn't exactly the first person you pictured for a virgin sacrifice type deal.
"Not just any people, me. Specifically me. They called me a doppelganger. Apparently I look like one of my ancestors, exactly alike. Can you believe that?"
Bonnie nodded mutely. Yes, she could definitely believe that. But a doppelganger? What did that even mean? It was a name for why Katherine and Elena looked identical, but not an explanation.
"I couldn't believe it, but it explained a lot. Why Niklaus and Elijah had found me, had recognized me. Why Elijah acted as he did. He loved the original woman, not me. Not that I can hold that against him anymore, I've now done the same."
"You found another doppelganger?" How many had there been between Katherine and Elena?
"What? No. I meant the Salvatores. I was reliving history in a way, with Stefan and Damon. A pair of brothers, alike in blood but not in dignity, and a girl caught between them. But this time I had all the power and I could make them love me. Both of them."
Bonnie grimaced, but didn't interrupt.
"I never even planned to turn them, not really. Nothing beyond idle fantasies. Maybe Damon, eventually. He was so eager for eternity, but we never would have lasted together. He gets too easily attached." Bonnie caught Katherine's side eye. "I put one person first in my life, me. Damon never got that."
"As for Stefan…I thought about it. But I don't think I could have watched the love leave his eyes after he transitioned. I knew he wasn't like me. The love he felt for the monster wouldn't have lasted past the unmasking."
"And yours did?"
"Maybe, I don't know. I've lived without emotions for so long, I'm having trouble living with them now. There's obviously some attachment, I tried to recreate the situation even with my switch off. But maybe that was just some latent form of masochism. I knew Elijah would never love me, just like Klaus, or Pyotr, or later the Salvatores. I wanted his love, but I couldn't even get his stand-in to feign it without compulsion."
Bonnie cringed.
"I just wanted to feel—it doesn't matter. None of it does. I've lived the past 500 years looking over my shoulder, terrified I'll find Klaus standing there. It hasn't been so bad this century, but I doubt that luck will last."
"He thinks you're in the tomb."
"Who?"
"Klaus. Well, everyone else too, but Klaus knows about the tomb in Mystic Falls, and he thinks you're locked inside. He's been keeping tabs on you, I guess. He recognized me from that photograph Emily and I took." Bonnie thought over what else the vampire had said to her in between threats. "He said he made sure that Emily burned, for helping you."
"Pearl always said I would get Emily killed. I guess she was right. You remind me of her, you know?"
"Of Emily?"
"No, Pearl. Just as judgmental of me, but just as capable of badassery when you let yourself go. Emily was capable too, but you'd never know it with how controlled she was."
Bonnie shifted uncomfortably. She'd rather have been compared to Emily, despite the bad blood between them from their first meeting. In her own time, she'd never known Pearl as anything except a threat to her town and had been relieved to hear she was dead. To be compared to her, by Katherine, Pearl's closest friend, was unsettling. She doubted Pearl would appreciate it either, considering the role Bonnie played in her daughter's death.
"Oh."
"Don't look so glum about it. I doubt Pearl will want to pal around with me after she was locked away in the tomb for so long while I ran free. You won't have to fight to be my best friend."
"I'm your best friend?"
"Well, since I don't have any other friends right now, it's easy for you to be the best one. Besides, who but a best friend would lie to a powerful vampire for me? You did lie right? You didn't use the past tense, so you didn't let Klaus in on our secret?"
"No, I didn't. But I'd stay away from Virginia in 2009. He said he'd be waiting for you when the comet passes."
"He can wait all he wants; I doubt Anna is ever going to get it open. I gave her some clues when I saw her a few months ago, but really? She's not much of a leader that one."
"I think Damon will be in the lead on this one."
"Damon? Why would he want to open the tomb?"
Bonnie stared, incredulous.
"Why would Damon Salvatore want to open the tomb that he thinks you're stuck inside? Gee, I don't know Katherine."
Katherine set down her glass with a thunk.
"Damon still thinks I'm in the tomb? You haven't told him?"
Bonnie shook her head.
"Bonnie, why haven't you told him?"
Bonnie shifted uncomfortably.
"He knows I'll be there when we open it, and he knows I'm a time traveller. I just didn't want to lay too much on him at once."
"Bullshit."
"Okay, unnecessarily harsh."
"I've just shared my human past, Bonnie. I think you can spare me some honesty. So what is it? You're scared if he isn't after the tomb he won't protect you and your family?" She paused as she pondered the problem aloud. "He has been protecting Emily's descendants. But if he wasn't doing that, you have no guarantee that you would be born. You would get back to the future and find out you never existed. Isn't that a paradox? Gosh, this should be a movie."
Bonnie nodded but then shook her head.
"No, well yes. That is part of it, but he doesn't know I'm a Bennett."
"What? But all those times you've met him and he protected you…he didn't know you were a Bennett?"
"At first, I just forgot he didn't know. It's weird to remember when he obviously knows who I am in the future. But I also didn't want him to have to protect me because of his promise to Emily, and I didn't know how long this would go on anyway. Time travel hardly comes with a manual." Bonnie said, but she knew it was more than that. It was more than telling him her name. it was the fear that if she told him, if she laid all her cards on the table, it wouldn't be enough. Of course, that was stupid to think about now. It would never have been enough.
"I'll tell him next time, okay? About me at least." Considering she'd jumped forty years this time, and there were only twenty-six between her and home, this wasn't much of a promise. He'd already know everything. "And if I'd tried to tell him about you not being in the tomb…well, he wouldn't have even believed me. Besides, he's the one who cinched your alibi with Klaus. I guess he heard through the grapevine that Damon was trying to open the tomb for you."
"Well thanks then. I guess the extra thirty years won't make much of a difference, since you've already been lying to him for more than a century." Bonnie looked away, ashamed, but Katherine continued. "But I owe you one. Really." Bonnie shrugged off Katherine's serious tone.
"What are you going to do after the tomb is open? I don't remember Klaus being there, but he must have found out you weren't inside."
"Continue running. And I've been looking for my own descendants. It's a couple of centuries too late, but I figure if I know who they are, I'll be able to find the next doppelganger, if there ever is one, before anyone else."
"What will you do? Warn her?"
Katherine laughed, the happiest she'd looked since Bonnie had woken up in this body.
"No, I'm going to get the moonstone back from those Lockwood dogs pretty soon. Catch myself all the ingredients Klaus needs to break the curse, and hand them over, gift-wrapped. Hopefully, that will grant me enough good will that he won't kill me where I stand."
"You'd kill your descendent. When she'll be in the exact same situation as you were?"
Katherine shrugged.
"Better her than me."