.

Chapter 22

a problem shared

A person is not a suitcase,
with a finite number of items to unpack.
A person is a world.
—Leah Stewart

Bonnie and Elena sat across from each other on the bed, a mirror to how they sat all those months ago with a ripped open pillow between them. Now, they were in Bonnie's guest room at Grams's house, with none of the happiness and awe of that day present. The memory of Elena holding Bonnie together just one room over after she'd discovered her grandmother's cooling body was the only thing keeping Bonnie tethered to the bed. She wanted to storm out in frustration, but instead she inhaled a steadying breath. She'd gotten through explaining the entire supernatural world to Caroline earlier in the day, and an emotionally draining confrontation with Damon less than an hour ago. This conversation with Elena should be easier in every way.

"I guess I just don't understand, Bonnie. You tried to erase your memories?" Elena finally said once Bonnie was finished explaining. Because Elena knew Bonnie, and knew how to slice right to the root of the issue. Caroline could be distracted by every shiny new aspect of the supernatural, Damon with feelings and memories and, Bonnie thought guiltily, kisses, but Elena unerringly cut to the quick.

"Not exactly. I wanted to travel back in time and change the past completely, not just my memories of it." Bonnie wanted to cringe as she gave voice to her own arrogance but kept eye contact with Elena. She wanted her friend to understand. "It obviously didn't work out that way. Turns out you can't really change the past, because it would affect the future, which has already happened. Or something like that."

"But why?"

"I don't know, I'm sure some physicist has a theory, but magic certainly—"

"No, Bonnie, you've explained everything that happened. I don't understand the why. Not the science or the magic why, but your why."

"Well, there's a lot of stuff I would have liked to change. Saving Grams for one, and I was feeling guilty about Caroline and Tyler's accident." Bonnie faltered, waiting for Elena to break in with a comment. She was expecting her friend to say something about how the accident was her fault, because she hadn't de-spelled the Device, or maybe to completely ignore that in favor of her wish to save Grams. Surely Elena could understand that? But Elena said nothing, just continued waiting, her face open and ready to empathize.

"When I couldn't heal Caroline…I realized how powerless I really was. I'm just a teenager, but I was acting like I could take on the whole world. I had no idea what I was doing—I barely do now!—but at least I now know what I don't know…if that makes any sense?"

"But you said you wanted to, um, forget magic. Wouldn't that make you even more powerless?"

"Talking about it now is weird. I'm in such a different headspace. I feel like I'm giving myself more motive and logic than I even had at the time. The truth is, I was looking into time magic to save Grams, that's why I had the bloodstone, but I wasn't researching it seriously. But the accident with Caroline, and the fire, and you asking me to save the Salvatores…it twisted something in me. I felt all this pressure to protect the town, to kill the vampires, to save me friends, and it was just too much. I blamed magic for all of it, because it was what caused me to enter the supernatural world at all. It seemed simple, that if I just went back and changed this one thing, everything would be solved. It doesn't really make sense, but I was in a weird state of mind; overwhelmed and alone and set on a solution that wasn't a solution at all."

"But all of that would have happened if you were a witch or not."

"Probably, but like I said, I wasn't thinking straight."

"And without your magic we never would have stayed close; it's what brought us back together." Elena gestured to the empty space between them, evoking the missing down feathers. "And you would have left town. You'd be dooming all of us."

"Okay, doom is a bit of a strong word here. But do you really think that we wouldn't have stayed friends if I wasn't a witch?" Elena's expression twisted. Bonnie thought about Caroline's odd happiness at her violent entrance into the supernatural world, and the reason she gave for it. Now they couldn't shut her out. Was the same true for Bonnie? Was her magic what was holding her and Elena's friendship together?

"No, that's not what I'm saying Bonnie. But the way you're talking about this…well it seems like you would have caused your past self to move away from Mystic Falls."

"Maybe? Honestly, probably, if I could have found a way to encourage it. After Grams died I went to stay with my dad's family for a while. It was a nice change of pace. Peace, without the urgency or the grief. The same can be said of 1864, for the most part, despite everything wrong with Mystic Falls back then."

"Bonnie, I want you to be happy, I really do. But could you have been happy knowing you left all of us defenseless?"

"You wouldn't have been defenseless, both the Salvatores are here. Besides, it wouldn't have been much of a loss. I could hardly do magic before I left. As for regret, I wouldn't have known what I was leaving behind. That was kind of the whole point. I wouldn't be involved in any of the Salvatore drama."

"And you were okay with that? With erasing yourself like that?" Elena's tone was accusatory, and Bonnie bristled.

"I wasn't committing suicide or anything, you don't have to act like I was."

"Weren't you? If you'd managed to change reality, it would have changed all of us. Including you."

Bonnie thought about her fears of erasing Damon, and of the boy that had sparked those fears. How his life had made it seem like a single memory could determine a personality.

"Our memories and experiences make us who we are? Is that what you're saying?"

"Yes."

"So what exactly are you doing to Jeremy when you have Damon erase his memories?"

Elena's mouth opened and closed twice, like she was unsure how to respond, before her eyes began to well with tears.

"Bonnie, what am I doing?" Elena placed her head in her palms, turning her body away from Bonnie. The witch quickly shifted closer to her friend, hugging her awkwardly.

"Just forget I even said that, Elena. It doesn't even matter. That's not how the spell worked out anyway." Bonnie hoped that mentioning the spell again would bring Elena's focus back to her, instead of her familial problems. It worked; Elena now looked more angry than upset.

"Instead you went back to 1864 and hooked up with Damon and replaced me with a murderous clone."

Okay, she loved all of her friends, mostly equally, but they really needed to learn that she could have more than one of them.

"I didn't hook up with Damon! I didn't even kiss him before 1900!" That had been a stronger argument in Bonnie's head. "And I never replaced you, Elena. I became friends with Katherine and Damon, but what would you rather I have done? Risked the woods? Do you know how lucky I was that it was Katherine that found me? And that I managed to convince her to have a spark of interest? Do you know what I would have faced back then without her compulsion? Or do you think I should have tried my luck in the old South, alone and friendless and black? I can tell you it wouldn't have been pretty, and not nearly as fun as Caroline's Miss Mystic float."

"Bonnie—"

"Did I mention that Stefan wanted to drag me to the Lockwood plantation? Maybe you think I should have let him?"

"No! Bonnie, never! I'm so glad you're safe. I guess…I'm still just having a hard time wrapping my head around it all. The last time we talked you could barely tolerate even Stefan, and now…"

"Well, botching a spell so badly that you get stuck a century in the past makes you question your own judgement a bit. I did what I did to keep myself safe, Elena, and to get back here without causing any major universe shifts. I took what allies I could get, and I can only be thankful that some of them actually became my friends. The vampires more than proved their worth."

"Was Damon that different? As a human, I mean?" Elena shifted forward, tears forgotten. This was a question she must have been waiting to ask all night. Bonnie could understand the curiosity, mostly. But she hadn't asked after Stefan. Did Elena think Stefan's personality was too good, already too close to human, for him to have changed? Bonnie picked a piece of lint off her comforter, mulling over her phrasing.

"No, he wasn't. To be honest, Damon wasn't different at all. Stefan seemed…worse as a human, or less open minded at least. He hadn't experienced the world or any of his own suffering yet. But Damon was the same. He was still snarky, and had a serious lack of care for the sanctity of human life, but he also loved Stefan so much, even as they fought. It was weird seeing him be human, with human weaknesses, when he was still so himself. After he transitioned he didn't change, didn't metamorphize into some horrific monster, and I finally had to face that they were the same man, and that I liked that man."

"Liked? It looked like a bit more than that." Bonnie had almost forgotten that Elena had walked in on Damon and her kissing. Her friend had been waiting tactfully to bring it up, how kind of her.

"I don't know, Elena. I didn't know that he already knew everything, I thought I'd come back and it would be different. But, he already had lived all that, and he still attacked me, and is still in love with—" Bonnie stopped. Was Damon in love with Katherine or Elena? Or was he being honest back there? Was it possible that he actually loved Bonnie? "I don't know. I just don't know how to act around him anymore. Or really how to act, I almost screamed when my new phone vibrated earlier, I'm not used to everything modern again yet."

Elena laughed. "Well at least the time travel explained some things. Honestly, if I hadn't seen you and Damon kissing I never would have believed it. I thought you were possessed again when I first walked in."

"You thought a ghost possessed me so that they could kiss Damon?"

"I thought it was more likely than you two suddenly getting together. You guys weren't exactly friendly last time I checked. Remember how I had to beg you to save his and Stefan's lives?"

"I didn't want that responsibility. That's kind of what spurred this whole thing in the first place, so yeah, it's pretty memorable."

"But you'll stay right? You'll help protect the town from Katherine?" Elena asked, her earlier anxiety showing through once more. Bonnie paused. Yes, she would protect the town. She would protect Elena. That was not in doubt. But—

Bonnie thought about the sign Grams had printed and hung on her university office door; 'If you are silent about your pain, they'll kill you and say you enjoyed it.' The Zora Neale Hurston quote was allegedly to remind her students that they should ask for help if they needed it before the day term papers were due. Bonnie thought it applied well here. How would Elena know her limits, her wants, her pain, if Bonnie never told her?

And she could see the future in which she stayed silent laid out in front of her. Elena asking her to do things over and over that she didn't want to do, and Bonnie doing them. Because Elena was her friend and she loved her, because Elena was her coven and she needed her.

Bonnie knew that all of the tasks needed of her would add up, and that she might not like the results. She would be stuck in that unenviable and unforgiving place again. Tasked to de-spell a device she didn't want to and forced to betray either her friends or her morals. The irony that the Gilbert Device, the first set of crossroads Bonnie had faced, had represented a similar choice for Emily was not lost on her.

Could Emily just watch the vampires continue to terrorize the town? As they hurt people who couldn't fight back? People who she cared about? The vampires, for all their enforced equality under compulsion, had certainly not been kind or merciful to the slaves in Mystic Falls. There were more of them then there were white masters, and they were easier to make disappear. But if Emily enchanted Jonathan Gilbert's inventions she would doom a member of her coven to a century of desiccation. It was only later, with Damon's bargain and Bonnie's nod of approval, that Emily had found a loophole that allowed her to save the town and Katherine both.

Bonnie wondered at that initial decision. She'd attributed it to jealousy, to annoyance over Pearl and Jonathan Gilbert's flirtation. But Emily was too staid to be that petty, and her infatuation with Jonathan Gilbert hardly rivaled her longing for her husband. Was it something else that had prompted her to act? A realization that her service to Katherine had gone too far? Or had the appearance of Bonnie, a descendent from a hundred and fifty years in the future who appeared to still be beholden to the same vampire, forced her hand?

Bonnie wasn't Emily, and her relationship with either doppelganger hardly reflected Emily's own. But she didn't want to ever face a decision like that again if she could help it. She'd traveled back in time to avoid them, but she had never needed to. She could prevent them right now. The future was hers to shape every day she lived in the present; no time travel necessary

"I'm going to do what I can to help the town, but I still have a lot to learn. And we seriously need to work on our communication. We shouldn't just be making decisions by ourselves about this stuff anymore. We can't have all these cliques or infighting, or people just going off on their own without any warning."

"So what? You think everything can be solved with a groupchat?" Bonnie was pretty sure that forming a groupchat was near the top of Caroline's to-do list, despite Elena's derision.

"It might be a start. At least we'd all know what the problem of the day was."

"Katherine is the problem. Did I tell you that she threatened Stefan? Said he had to break up with me, or she'd kill everyone I loved. I don't know how we're going to take her out."

"Take her out? What are you talking about?"

"Bonnie, I know that you managed to become friends with her in the past, but here? She's evil and trying to kill us just because she wants Stefan back."

"Elena, I don't know what Katherine said to you, or to Stefan, but I doubt he's the reason she's here."

"What do you mean?"

"Katherine has known the Salvatores were vampires this whole time. If she wanted Stefan she could have had him." Bonnie said matter of factly.

"Well, what about John?" Elena shot back.

"She stabbed him before she handed out any ultimatums about your relationship, so that probably has more to do with him working for her then anything else."

"What?"

"Umm, remember him and your birth mom? Weren't they both working for Katherine? She probably stabbed him because he was late on a check-in. Or maybe he didn't inform her about you fully enough. Who knows? The point is, Stefan and Damon hardly matter to her. The only thing that's changed about Mystic Falls is you, Elena"

Me?"

"You don't look exactly like Katherine because she's your ancestor and some freak genetics accident spit you out. You're both doppelgangers, which are basically people made to be sacrificed for a strong spell."

"What?"

"Yeah. And the creepy vampire I mentioned towards the end, Klaus? He tried to sacrifice Katherine when she was still human because he's under some curse, and he'll probably try to do the same to you."

"So Katherine is now working for the guy who tried to kill her? And you don't want to kill her? Are you…on her side now?"

"What? No! I'm not going to let anyone sacrifice you, Elena. And we don't even know ,if she's contacted Klaus yet. I haven't really touched base with her since I realized she was back in town. But I doubt that they're actively working together. Neither of them is the forgiving type." Bonnie said, with a shiver. If Elena thought Katherine was an evil vampire with a grudge, she'd be in for a reality check when she met Klaus.

"But what does that have to do with Stefan? Why would she care about us dating if she's just trying to hand me over to this Clark guy?"

"It's Klaus. Please don't call him Clark again. And I'm not sure about the whole Stefan thing. Maybe she wants him to be out of danger when Klaus comes to collect, but it's just as likely she's bored and wants to cause drama for her own entertainment."

"You don't think she could be telling the truth? That she came back for him because she realized she still loved him?" Elena's eyes shown with worry, and Bonnie realized how nervous the appearance of Stefan's first love had made her. Not because of the supernatural dangers, but because of the relationship ones. It comforted Bonnie that, in the midst of time travel, vampires, and werewolves, Elena was concerned about her own relationship, though she couldn't help the sliver of disbelief.

"I doubt it. Katherine liked Stefan, but she was using him." Bonnie paused, unsure about how much of Katherine's drunken ramblings she should divulge. "I don't think you have anything to worry about on that front, Elena. Stefan's love for you is real, in a way it never was with Katherine. And everyone involved, including her, knows that."

"Thanks, Bonnie. You always know how to make me feel better." Bonnie accepted Elena's words, and her hug, but she couldn't help the judgement she felt. How did Elena feel better just from that? Didn't she remember the bit about human sacrifice and Klaus possibly coming to their disaster-prone town?

"Okay, but Elena, about the curse and the ritual, I want to make sure we're on the same page. We need to find out everything we can about it. Do you think Isobel might have researched it at all? I'm planning on going through Grams's things and I think I remember some promising texts, but Caroline said we should tap all our research sources."

"Caroline? She knows about all of this?" Elena pulled away.

"Of course. I told her everything when I found her transitioning. I wasn't about to explain vampires and time travel but skip the looming threat. A bit counterintuitive."

Elena's hands twisted in her lap, and she bit her lip.

"I get it, I just can't help but be worried. I feel like the more people know, the more danger they're in. And I've already gotten Caroline killed."

"Caroline is a vampire now. You can't have Damon compel away the bad memories or her knowledge of the supernatural." Bonnie said flatly.

"I know. What you said about Jeremy was right, I never should have done that to him. But sometimes I feel like the whole world is on my shoulders, and I am pushing that burden on to you and Stefan, and even Damon. I didn't want that for Jeremy. I don't want that for anyone."

"Katherine killed Caroline, not you, and we have no idea what her motives were. Believe me, I'll be talking with her about it, but you can't shoulder the blame. And I think it's better if we share all of the information we have with each other, and stop erasing anyone's memories from here on out. More heads mean more solutions, right?"

"I guess you're right."

"Good, glad you agree. Because one of the research sources we'll be tapping is Katherine herself, and I need you to be on board, and convince the Salvatores to be too."

"What? How could you even say that, after what she did to Caroline?"

"Well, it was Caroline's idea, and I think it's a good one. She's been reading Sun Tzo, or maybe it was Machiavelli? One of those war strategy books anyway, and she has some serious opinions about how we've approached problems in the past. She thinks we should try to gain more allies, rather than attacking everyone right away, especially if they're stronger than everyone on our team, like Katherine is." Bonnie may have planted that seed, when mentioning her conversation with Damon about Mason, but Caroline had jumped on it. Of course, Caroline had also made sure to point out that Damon was probably jealous of Mason, not worried about him as a town threat.

"So we're just supposed to let people kill us because they're stronger?"

"No, we're just making sure that they actually want to kill us before we attack them. Hopefully, we'll have less enemies to deal with this way, and more information and allies to face our real enemies with when they show up."

The Salvatores hadn't known werewolves existed. They weren't exactly reliable sources on the supernatural.

"I'm pretty sure Katherine has been clear. She's evil and doesn't want to be friends." Bonnie did not roll her eyes, even though she wanted to. They'd already established she was Katherine's friend, and Bonnie wasn't sure what allowed people to be classified as evil in Elena's book. Damon certainly wasn't, even with all the lies and murders, but Uncle John often made the list when his rap sheet was considerably shorter.

"I know, but in the eighties Katherine told me that she planned to gather all of the ingredients to break Klaus' curse, which means she knows way more about this than any of us right now. If I can convince her to help us, or to at least let me know what she knows, we'll be better off than we are now."

"But how could you trust anything she says? And how will you even get in contact with her?"

"Don't worry, I know how to keep Katherine honest. As for how to reach her, she's been texting me all day."

All Bonnie had to do was text her back, and hope that the local liquor store stocked Bulgarian imports. And wasn't IDing.

Damon was waiting on her front porch. Bonnie stood frozen for a moment, half in and half out of the house, before she stepped outside fully. He sat on the porch swing that never rocked right, looking extremely out of place. This porch was for lazy Sundays in her pajamas, the rare shared crossword with her father, and the much more common gossip and popsicles with Elena and Caroline. Leather clad vampires that she was maybe in love with were not the norm.

"Damon…I wasn't expecting you." Bonnie said, tucking the bottle she'd recently purchased under her arm. She'd only stopped at home to change. Elena and Bonnie had both fallen asleep at Grams's the night before, tangled together in the double bed like they were eleven again. When Bonnie had slipped out earlier, not turning on any of the lights and avoiding actually looking in any of the picture frames, Elena was still sleeping soundly. Bonnie had let Elena sleep; she hadn't wanted to start another argument over Bonnie's decision to meet with Katherine. Who, Bonnie glanced at her phone for the time, was expecting her in twenty minutes.

"I'm not here to…press for anything, don't worry. This will only take a minute."

Bonnie's feelings were a jumble inside of her. Telling her to run from him, before he could run from her. Repeating his plea for her to stay by his side, while reminding her that he would never stay himself, because no one did. Replaying their most recent kiss, before interrupting it with the harsh embrace he'd forced in '97.

At her nod, Damon held out a leather-bound book. Bonnie took it gingerly but didn't open it.

"Damon, I know I hang out with Elena and Stefan, but diaries really aren't my thing. I don't even keep a school planner."

"Pff, I'm offended you think I would gift you an empty diary. I am not my brother." He said with a smile. He seemed determined to act nonchalant, and to ignore the tension stemming from the night before. His requests and her abandonment. "This is from a mutual acquaintance of ours. I guess those spirit pals of hers told her what was up, and she started this for you."

"Ruthie?" Bonnie breathed as she started flipping through the full pages. Early on, Sebastian and Damon's names appeared regularly in a young child's chicken scratch. Later, as the script flowed in a more mature hand, other names joined theirs. Samantha, Rosalie, Nathanial, and then, on a page filled with a joyful rushed scrawl: Damia. The book held many more pages than should be possible for the slim volume. They continued on and on in a fan of cramped words. Magic. As the pages turned, Bonnie could almost catch the scent of goldenrod. Ruthie must have pressed some between the pages, like Emily used to in her Grimoire.

"She really got into it when she got older, after I'd confirmed I'd seen you a second time. She wanted you to know how it all worked out, I guess. When I last saw her, she asked me to give this to you. And she wanted me to thank you for her."

"What for?"

"She said you were the first person who taught her that she could put out her own fires."

Bonnie reached the last page, and her eyes caught on her own name, there in the middle of the page.

You must forgive an old woman, Bonnie, we want to be memorialized as wise and steady even as we dream of our whimsical youth. I have the unique opportunity with you of being remembered—long past my own time—for both.

Bonnie stopped before she read the last goodbyes, written in a shaky hand. She swallowed past the lump in her throat.

"Thank you for bringing this to me."

Damon shrugged like it wasn't a big deal. But it was.

Bonnie blinked past the tears in her eyes. "Have you read it?"

"No need, I was there for most of it, definitely all the good bits anyway. Wait till you get to her wedding. People still talk about it in Philadelphia to this day, I swear."

"I'm looking forward to it." She said, with a tremulous smile. It was odd to think about Ruthie as an old woman. Bonnie held the book to her chest, pressing it tight to her heart.

"She lived a long time?"

"Longer than she ever expected with some of the things she got up to, that's for sure."

"And she was happy?"

He nodded. "For most of her life at least, not that there weren't rough times. But there always are. For her, I think the good outweighed the bad. I was with her at the end. She was still full of joy, like she was still that little kid in Virginia. She went surrounded by family and friends, and who knows who else was there that I couldn't see."

"I'm glad you were there." Bonnie hesitated, trying to place Ruthie's passing in her mental timeline. Just how old was she when she died? Had she lived to see Damon turn off his switch? "Were you…you?"

"Yes, this was before that. She never saw me…" Damon hesitated before settling on a word, "empty."

"Oh. Good." Bonnie said. The silence stretched between them, but she wasn't sure how she should break it. She glanced at the front door. She'd closed it behind her out of habit. Had that seemed purposeful? Or cruel?

"Bonnie, did you really have no control over where you went?' He asked abruptly. Bonnie blinked at the non sequitur.

"In time? On my way back?" Bonnie asked. Damon nodded in confirmation. "I had no control, Damon. I never knew where or when I would end up, or how long I would have there." She'd come up with a theory, that the length of each trip depended on how far she was from Mystic Falls, which would explain why her sojourn on the Titanic had lasted so long compared to her quick stop in 1997, but nothing concrete or rational on why she ended up there in the first place. Besides, well, him.

"I guess I thought that, well that maybe it wasn't a coincidence that you always ended up near where I was."

It wasn't a coincidence, Bonnie thought. Seven trips was six too many for her to still believe that.

"But then…the stuff that I was talking about yesterday. Bonnie, it wasn't on a whim that I flipped my switch. I was captured by some radical vampire hunters. They tortured me for years, experimenting on me to see the limits of a vampire's abilities."

"Oh my god." Bonnie said. She didn't know what to say, how to comfort him, but Damon just continued talking.

"The last time I had seen you was more than a decade before, so I kept hoping at you would appear in front of me; that you'd burn the whole place to the ground around me. Waiting more than hoping really. Torture makes one a bit delusional, so I didn't doubt until the very end that you would come; the inevitable rescue from my avenging angel. But you never came. And Stefan never came. So I had to burn it down myself."

"Damon, I'm so sorry. I wish…I wish I could have been there."

"Me too, Bonnie. Me too."

"If I'd had a choice I would have been there. I swear it" She reached out and lay a hand on his arm. Should she hug him? Would he want a hug from her? Maybe a cup of tea would be better? Before she could decide, Damon took a step back, out from under her hand. Bonnie's arm fell back to her side.

"To free myself I had to not care about who I was leaving behind, who I was condemning with my escape, but it also freed me from everyone who had left me behind, and the care I had held onto. It was a burden I'd never thought I could shed. My mother, my father, Stefan, Katherine, Ruth. You. The unwilling and the willing abandonments. I'd never realized how much each loss had weighed me down. It was nice not to care."

Bonnie's phone buzzed, and while she ignored it, the sound broke Damon from his musings.

"I know it doesn't really matter, that it doesn't change what I did while my switch was off, but I wanted you to know."

"I'm really glad you told me, and—" I want to talk more, she meant to finish. Or maybe, I'm here for you whenever you need. Or, I'm sorry I wasn't there. Or she could have said, please come inside. Or, if she was really feeling truthful, I love you.

But Bonnie didn't say any of those things. Instead, annoyed at the continual buzzing of her phone, she said "wait one second." And pulled out her phone to turn it off.

She just caught the most recent text (u cant runneth off on me BB! dont b a vazey bitch) filled with poor grammar and old-timey slang, before Katherine's name filled the entire screen. She was calling, again. Bonnie rejected the call and silenced her phone.

"I'm sorry about that. Like I was saying—"

"You two are talking?" He asked. He looked angry, but unsurprised. He'd surely realized by now that Bonnie knew that Katherine was never in the tomb the whole time. Was he upset about that, or the threat Katherine posed to Elena?

"Yeah. I'm supposed to be meeting her, in," Bonnie glanced at her phone for the time, "well, right now actually."

"I wouldn't want to keep you from an important meeting." He said, face hard.

Bonnie hesitated. She could cancel on Katherine to placate Damon, or she could walk away from Damon to meet Katherine. For a moment she remained stuck, before her indecision resolved itself. She wanted to stay with Damon, to hear more about the long stretches of time she'd missed, the life he'd lived in between visits, all the joys and tragedies.

But she could trust Damon to be left alone. And right now, she couldn't say the same for Katherine.

"I know you're not the biggest fan of her right now, but we need to know what she knows. There's a lot more to the story, and we don't have much to lose by hearing her out."

"How about our sanity?"

Bonnie snorted. "I think it's my sobriety more at risk with this meeting," she said, hefting the bottle of rakia so that he could see its label. "and I don't know how well any of us would pass a psych eval, even without Katherine in the mix."

Damon's face lost it's angry cast as he laughed at her weak joke. Bonnie bit her lip. He looked younger when he laughed. Less burdened.

"Listen, why don't you talk to Elena? I went over a lot of this with her already," and since she'd given Elena a condensed and sympathetic version of Katherine's story, the doppelganger might be able to talk him around. "and if you have any concerns I'm happy to hear them out. After I talk to Katherine."

He nodded, "Okay. I don't like it, but okay."

"Alright." Bonnie said with a smile, before heading towards the stairs. Hopefully, Katherine hadn't killed another one of her friends because Bonnie wasn't picking up the phone.

Before Bonnie could start down the steps, she turned and darted back.

"Thank you, for telling me, Damon." She said and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek before dashing to her car. Friends did that, right? It was a normal platonic thing to do when saying goodbye.

Bonnie unlocked her car and tried not to regret sending him to Elena. It was a good idea. Elena and Damon had a solid friendship, possibly more on his side, and he trusted her judgement. Plus, Elena had a line with Stefan too. Hopefully Elena would be able to use her healing heart to bridge the gap between Katherine and the Salvatores. Bonnie very carefully did not consider what other bridges could be built on that trust.

Before opening the door, Bonnie turned back to Damon. He was leaning on the porch railing, watching her. No need to rush when you had superspeed.

"Also, Damon?" She called.

"Yeah?"

She held up the journal he'd given her.

"You can read this whenever you want to okay? She was your family too."

He nodded once, and Bonnie managed half a smile. Maybe they could read some of it together, if he was willing.