.

Chapter 24

to forgive, divine

The sea is dangerous and its storms terrible,
but these obstacles have never been
sufficient reason to remain ashore.
—Ferdinand Magellan

Bonnie stood in the small entryway, amazed she'd even made it past the door. Talking to Grams, seeing her alive and vibrant after months of growing accustomed to her death, made her grandmother's empty home more unsettling, wrong. Bringing Elena here had been a decision she'd landed on without thought, an instinctive choice made as she had searched for a safe place. Safe from vampires, and safe from her feelings. But without Elena to distract her, every photo leaped from its frame, every knick-knack and book called her name, every room swelled with memory.

She had wandered through the house in the days after Grams had died. Her father had come home to help arrange the funeral, and he'd suggested that she start packing away Grams's things so that they could put the house up for sale. He hadn't pushed, and he'd soon left on business, so Bonnie hadn't boxed up even a single book. Everything had remained in place, and the house remained off the market. Instead of her grandmother's things, it had been who left. She'd been chased out of town by her friends' pitying looks and her father's uncharacteristic concern.

Now, Bonnie walked up the stairs to her Grams's office and pushed open the door. This room, more than any other, held her grandmother's spirit. It is where Sheila had planned her lessons, done her research, and called her friends. It was in this room that she'd first told Bonnie that she was a witch. Bonnie took a moment to breathe in the scent of old books. She stroked the woven tapestry that hung on the wall, feeling each individual thread. She tapped each candle on the middle bookshelf, five among the many that were dotted around the room. Her grandmother had attempted chandlery for a few years, before giving it up and passing all her tools onto an semi-interested grad student. Amused at the memory of her grandmother's hobby hopping, Bonnie turned away and finally took a seat in Grams's creaky leather chair.

Waiting on Grams's desk, a framed photo stood, angled to face the chair so that Grams would have seen it every time she sat down. It featured Grams and Abby, smiling and squinting against the sun, with an infant Bonnie cradled in her mother's arms. Bonnie had thought about calling Abby, after she'd spoken with Caroline about their information resources. Her mother had faced Mikael, imprisoned him, and lived to tell the tale. She might know more about the curse than anyone left alive. But even after Bonnie acknowledged to herself that contacting Abby was a smart move, she couldn't bring herself to do it.

That's why she was here instead. Bonnie planned to search through her grandmother's records, in the hope that Grams had some insight into what Klaus actually wanted. They had never spoken about it, but Bonnie was pretty sure her grandmother had kept in touch with Abby. At least more than Bonnie ever had. Maybe Abby and Grams had talked about whatever had really gone down that day, the day Abby never came home.

But Bonnie would not be reaching out to her mother. Bonnie couldn't count on her. Too many missed birthdays, holidays, and phone calls lay between them. Abby couldn't be relied on as a first option, or a last resort. Just a contact, a name and an email, that Bonnie had slipped into Caroline's planner on a post it note.

Bonnie tipped the photo, placing it face down on the desk.

In the center of the desk was a thick composition notebook, stuffed with extra pages, receipts, and pressed herbs. Its worn marbled cover was so ordinary, very different from the formal heft of Emily's spellbook, but it still held the same aura. It was imbued with the individual imprint of all grimoires. Bonnie hadn't dared open it before, knowing how personal it was to her Grams.

Bonnie ran her fingers over the cover. Grams had inked her name, in purple sharpie no less, in the text box as if this were any old schoolbook. Maybe that is what it started its life as, but it was much greater than that now. Bonnie sat in her grandmother's desk chair and opened the grimoire.

There, slipped between the cover and the first page, was an envelope with Bonnie's name. Grams had left her a letter. With shaking hands, Bonnie broke the seal and pulled out the letter. Grams didn't stand on ceremony, and the letter was written on loose lined paper, not any fancy stationary. Still, it retained a hint of her grandmother's perfume, and her slanted cursive was easily recognizable to Bonnie. She smoothed out the pages and read.

To my darling granddaughter,

I write this knowing what it must mean for you to be reading it. I am gone, just as you told me I would be so many years ago. On that day you looked so grown up to me, so much more mature than the young child I'd known you as just that morning. Now, I look at you and am startled by my blindness. Bonnie, you are growing up to be a beautiful woman and a powerful witch, but you must remember that you are still growing. Nothing is concrete, least of all yourself at seventeen.

You are strong, but you don't have to take the entire world, or even the entire town, on your shoulders just yet. Let others share your burdens. Elena has asked for your help in opening the tomb, and I know what this will take without the crystal and comet. Bonnie, I know.

I know that you must be weighed down by regrets, only a soul heavy with them would have attempted the spell that you did. I know the feeling. For so long I pushed off your magical education, scared of what it would mean for you, and for me. But when I saw you last summer, I knew it was time, just as I now know it is my time.

I can only hope that this letter takes a little of that regret, that weight, from you. You can't continue to live your life looking back, and I'm sure you've discovered that the past is much more immutable than the future.

I wish I could watch you graduate high school and college, hug you on your wedding day, and help you discover your magic and your potential. Knowing that I will not be able to brings tears to my eyes. But everyday I've had with you, since the very first when your mother placed you in my arms, has been a gift. Every moment brought joy. Know that wherever we witches truly go after death, I will still be with you, watching over you with a smile on my face.

Trust the spirits, trust your friends, but most of all, trust yourself. You are a good person Bonnie, and I know you will accomplish anything you set your mind to. The only obstacle you face is your own will.

I hope you find my grimoire educational and entertaining, I'm afraid I had a habit of journaling alongside my forays into spellmaking in my younger years, but try not to judge your old grandmother too much as you learn more about her. I hope my experiments will inspire your own, but I suggest picking a nicer book to start with than I did. You'll be carrying it around for the rest of your life.

I love you so much baby girl, remember that.

With love,

Sheila Bennett

Her Grams was truly gone. Any other change wouldn't have been worth it, but she'd held a small flicker of hope for this, that maybe another type of time spell, or some power revealed in Ruthie's journal might allow her to speak to Grams one more time. Bonnie breathed in deeply and let that flame of hope die. It lingered a second longer, burning low like an ember, before fading. Bonnie would never see her grandmother again. She let out her held breath. But Grams was not gone; she was still with her. Bonnie smiled down at the letter that Grams had left before carefully refolding it and tucking it back into the grimoire. She looked up. Every candle in the room was lit.

The impulsive visit to her grandmother's house following her meeting with Katherine and Lucy had done wonders for Bonnie's state of mind, but she had still needed time to decompress.

So, after a night of troubled sleep, Bonnie had spent all morning alone, phone off, trying to sort herself out. Her cousin had put it kindly, but finding out that she'd accidentally blazed a mark across history wasn't easy. Even if Bonnie hadn't really changed anything major, had never known a world that wasn't affected by her actions, she worried. She found herself thinking of all the witches who'd apparently jotted down the effects of her appearances. Is that how Damia Bennett had found her on the Titanic so fast? Bonnie had assumed that her ancestor was cleaning Stefan's compartment by coincidence, but maybe not.

She set these questions aside. Lucy was the scholar, not her. Bonnie was done mulling over what-ifs and what-could-have-beens. Grams was right, she couldn't keep looking back. Bonnie had tried to perform a spell to change her own past, to forget a huge part of her life. She'd risked her knowledge of magic for it. She'd told Damon that they had to move on, to forget what had happened between them, but she knew that wouldn't be possible. If she wanted to live without regrets, she'd have to accept her emotions, and actually face them. Bonnie eyed the kitchen clock. She'd finished her meager lunch, washed all the dishes, and changed clothing twice. There was no putting it off further, and she really shouldn't. After all, there's no time like the present.

She turned on her phone and texted Damon, asking if he had a moment to talk. She stared out the window, waiting for her phone to chime, and trying to formulate what she was going to say. If she planned ahead, she wouldn't be caught in the traps she fell into when they spoke. Emotion and snark sidelining the conversation and making her forget what she'd wanted to say in the first place. She slipped her ring on and off her left hand. It didn't fit quite right, a little tight, as it was still strung through the chain with her necklace, but she resisted the urge to truly put it on.

A knock sounded from her front door, and Bonnie shook herself out of her reverie. She glanced down at her phone. Fifteen minutes had passed while she was lost in her head, constructing and discarding conversation starters, and Damon had never texted back. A second knock, harsh and impatient, told her that he had decided to come straight to her rather than responding. She tucked her necklace into her shirt and hurried towards the door.

He must have heard her walking down the front hall, because he wasn't impatiently knocking again when she opened the door. Bonnie stopped short for a second, surprised that he was so far away from the entrance when she's expected him to be looming over her as soon he saw her.

"Thought I'd save us both some time and come straight here. You wanted to talk?" Damon said. His words were clipped, sharp. Whatever good will, or familial promise, had compelled him to deliver Ruthie's journal without rancor was now gone. Damon's annoyance bled through his every word. But he was here, Bonnie reminded herself. He'd come when she's called. Well, when she had texted.

February was coming to an end, and the air was crisp even in the afternoon sun. Bonnie stood still in her doorway for a moment, eyeing Damon. He was leaning against her porch railing and hadn't made any move to come closer even after she'd opened the door to greet him. He expected them to conduct their conversation like this, with the threshold barrier between them.

Bonnie wouldn't dishonor Grams by inviting a vampire into her house. Her Grams wouldn't have wanted them there, and besides, it was practical. A safe house in her name if they ever need one. With the amount of vampires running through town, and the extremely powerful vampires who were hunting Elena and possessed the ability to compel other vampires, it was good to have an all-human bolt hole. But this wasn't her Grams's house, this was hers. Her father may pass through every few weeks, but he hardly counted as a resident with the time he spent away. Her house, her decisions. Bonnie doesn't feel any regret as she turned her body sideways and gestured to the warm living room behind her.

"Yeah, I thought we should talk. Please come in."

Damon blinked once in surprise, before smoothly straightening and crossing the porch to her. Bonnie's breath caught and she held it as he passed her, but Damon didn't linger at their momentary proximity. He sauntered into the living room and eased into an armchair. Bonnie followed. The witch noted his seating choice. He'd chosen the chair, not the couch where they could have set together. But he'd sat. That was something at least. Bonnie briefly hesitated over the couch, weighing whether she should sit on the edge nearer to him or farther away, and what message each seat would send. After a few seconds of overthinking she slumped into the center, situating her weight awkwardly between two cushions.

Damon drummed his fingers against the chair's arms, waiting for Bonnie to speak. Her throat felt tight, but she had to make the first move. Katherine had been right when she pointed out that Damon had been holding them together. He had been. He'd been waiting, hand outstretched, for so long. It was only now, that Bonnie contemplated how hard this was, that she realized how difficult it must have been for him, each time she'd walked away.

The distance between them felt like an inch and a football field worth of space at the same time. Damon could cross both in the same half a second he could the actual three feet between them, so Bonnie pushed the thought aside. Gathering her courage, she met his eyes head on.

"I think we have to talk some things through." She began, but now that she was looking at him, she couldn't continue. Damon looked more like he had in 1997 than he how he'd looked in 1864, or just yesterday. Her silence on their relationship had been given time to fester, and compounded each time she'd left him in favor of a doppelganger, and his hurt made him combative.

"So you've said. Well, I'm yours to command, but make sure to keep the message consistent, my small brain is easily confused" Damon said sarcastically as he bowed his head to her. Bonnie winced, remembering her demands back at the high school, and the following kiss. She'd been so certain that he hadn't felt the same way she had, that a few kisses over the years would have meant nothing to Damon, even if they had meant a lot to her. She'd been wrong.

Bonnie bit her lip, unsure how to begin despite her efforts at preparation.

"Planning on using your words anytime soon, Bonnie?" Damon broke the silence impatiently.

"Damon, I'm scared." She admitted. The annoyance drained from Damon's face, and he shifted forwards an inch. At his newly open expression, Bonnie took her cue to continue. "You have to understand, I never meant to travel in time to when you were human, I only meant it to be for a few months, and it was to get away from everything. I was going to change the past, so I wasn't involved with vampires anymore. Getting thrown back to 1864, to you and Stefan and Katherine, was the opposite of that. It was…" Bonnie cut off her deluge of words. She had meant to be more organized than this.

"It was your worst nightmare?" Damon completed her phrase resignedly.

"No! Well, honestly, yes, a bit. But the nightmare came from the time period, not from you. You were the opposite of a nightmare."

"Is that it? I was fine then, but you don't want me now that I'm not human? Now that I'm different and evil?"

"You're not different, and you're not evil, Damon. Besides, we never even kissed when you were human, so you can hardly accuse me of preferring you before the transition."

Damon shrugged, but he looked more willing to hear her out than he had before.

"I was thrown into a situation I wasn't prepared for, and had no idea what I was doing, and that happened over and over again. And each time it meant I was going to witness something horrible. But I knew I wouldn't face it alone, because you would be there. So, thank you."

"Glad I could help. But was that all I was to you Bonnie? A familiar face?"

Katherine's words, urging her to go after what she wanted, surfaced in Bonnie's mind and she shook her head.

"You were such a light, a candle in the middle of a dark football field, Damon. But you were more than that too. And, if you wanted, I'd like to continue that."

"That?"

"Us. Together. If you're interested?"

"Oh, I'm interested, Bonnie, don't doubt that. Just waiting for the conditions. You didn't seem pleased when Elena found us yesterday."

"That was embarrassing!"

"So is this going to be a secret hookup type of relationship, or are we actually going to make a go of it before you realize in two weeks exactly what everyone in this town thinks of me?" Bonnie took a moment to figure out just how to respond to his question. She could see that he was holding out his heart to her, and was willing to hand it over to her no matter the conditions she placed on the relationship. Even if she told him she didn't want anyone else to know, or that she only wanted sex, or that she did plan to end it in less than a month. It was a very bruised heart, but still a courageous one, and Bonnie knew she had to be careful with it. Each moment she took added to the insecurities mounting in his eyes, and Bonnie decided a more immediate response was better than a perfect one.

"I can't say I won't have any conditions. I'm still strongly anti-murder which you'll have to work on, but I don't think two weeks will be nearly enough time for me to tire of you, no matter what anyone in this town has to say about it. And a secret relationship has never been my style. Too much drama. I want to love you in the open, in the daytime. Because I do, love you I mean. I love you, Damon."

She paused, biting her lip, unsure how much more she should say. She didn't have his ability to express her feelings elegantly. But Damon didn't wait for any further clarification Bonnie might have offered. He was out of the armchair and in her arms, pressing quick fervent kisses onto her mouth. They had to be quick because both were having trouble suppressing their wide smiles.

"We still have to talk—" Damon said, before throwing himself forward into a kiss again.

"You have a lot to answer for," He continued. Bonnie pulled out of his next hurried the next kiss to reply.

"I'm not the only one. You have—" Damon didn't cut her off with a kiss purposefully. In fact, he seemed to have been avoiding her mouth so that he didn't cut off any of her words, even the ones that let annoyance creep back into their joyful bubble. But as his lips made their way down Bonnie's neck, the witch forgot whatever words and accusations she'd meant to lay at Damon's feet. He pulled his smiling mouth from her skin.

"I've waited decades for my answers, Bonnie. But," He ran a hand up her side before anchoring it in her hair once more and pulling her closer. "I can wait a little longer. I have to kiss you enough to make up for all my decades without first."

He went in for another kiss, and Bonnie didn't protest. Just the opposite. Bonnie reveled in the warmth of his arms and his lips, and didn't bother trying to hold herself back. It was her house after all, and, finally, there was no one to interrupt them.

When Bonnie's breathing techniques stumbled in the face of a non-human partner, Damon gamely returned to his explorations of her neck. Bonnie squirmed, near feverish with the want and bubbling happiness dueling inside of her. She wanted to laugh, and sing, and light a bonfire in her joy. But she also didn't want to move an inch away from Damon for the next hour. Had she ever felt this way before?

Damon chuckled into her skin. She felt the upturn of his lips, the graze of his teeth, but the nip that followed didn't break skin.

"You're sparking, Bonnie."

"Huh? What do you mean?"

He pulled away but didn't release her.

Damon caught her hand with his, grasping it as if he was about to press a kiss of greeting to its back, or as if he was about to lead her onto the dance floor of a 19th century country ball.

"Look." Damon said, and Bonnie humored him with a glance at their clasped hands. To her astonishment, he wasn't speaking metaphorically. Small sparks were leaping from her skin, fizzling in the air, on their clothes, and on Damon.

Bonnie immediately jumped back, her shock and worry replacing her happiness. The sparks faded and reappeared.

"I'm so sorry! I don't know what that was!"

"Hey," Damon softly said, "It's okay." He shifted towards her again, eliminating the space she'd created on the couch between them.

"I've always been able to feel your magic, how strong you are. This was just a little bit more." He smiled. "A hundred little love zaps. I think your magic wanted to kiss me too, Bonnie."

"Don't be gross." She said with an eye roll. She would never be as…demonstrative as Damon. Was her magic trying to express what her words couldn't? How annoying.

"It never happened before though. Have I become a better kisser? What do you think Bonnie? Have I aged like fine wine?"

"Like vinegar." She said, but she kissed him again. In truth, he was a better kisser. But Bonnie didn't think the sparks could be attributed to the mechanics of the act. No, they were a sign of her irrepressible happiness. They were finally kissing for them. Not for an audience, or a ruse, or a series of misunderstandings. She loved him and he loved her and the only thing getting in the way of their happily ever after was a homicidal megalomaniac ancient vampire-werewolf hybrid. But they had each other, plus a scheming Katherine and a plotting Caroline, so that was hardly an obstacle.

They broke apart when they could no longer contain their smiles. Damon ran a hand down her arm, setting off another set of sparks in his wake. Bonnie was going to have to figure out a way to control that, but for now he didn't seem to mind.

"I like it. It's fiery, like you. And it also let's me know you're enjoying yourself." He finished with a smirk and a wink, but Bonnie took his words seriously.

"Damon, I really am. I never knew I could feel like this about someone, that someone, you, could feel this way about me. I never even knew I wanted this until I had it. I didn't even know it was possible."

"You knew I loved you. I wasn't exactly subtle."

"Well I can be pretty hardheaded if you hadn't noticed. And even after I was sure of our feelings…I wasn't sure if I should act on them."

"What made you change your mind?"

It wasn't just that everyone in Bonnie's life was telling her, directly or indirectly, to get her head out of the sand. It was their own actions.

Bonnie thought of her grandmother's final note, of Caroline's frenzied planning, and Katherine's willingness to let Elena go, in the name of Bonnie's friendship. Elena's concern, Stefan's apology, Ruth's carefully dedicated journal, and Matt's entreaty for her to reach out. Lucy's easy acceptance of her, Emily's sacrifice to save her children and Bonnie, and even the single text from her dad, currently unanswered on her phone, asking her to check in when she had a moment.

Finally, she considered the man in front of her. They'd shared happy times and hard ones, and Damon had lived literal lifetimes without her. He'd made mistakes, and he owned them. But he'd always been there, waiting, as a friend or a fiancé or anything in between. And now here they were, together.

Her trip had connected her to people she hadn't ever imagine knowing, but it had also brought her back to the people she'd already known and loved.

"I realized I wasn't alone, that I never had been." Bonnie answered him finally. Damon's face didn't show immediate comprehension, so Bonnie elaborated. "I thought I had to struggle through everything alone. Even though I was willing to help when others asked, I never thought to do the same. That thinking invaded everything in my life. It was only after I recognized that I had all of these great people in my life that I realized how ridiculous my plan to give you up was. I'd been stuck in this cycle of thinking about what I deserved, or what was better for you. But it doesn't really matter. Because we both are making this decision for ourselves, and we're both choosing each other." She finished with an audible full stop.

"Damn straight." Damon said before he decided that words weren't enough to show his appreciation.

Enough time had passed for them to have gotten fully acquainted with the others' lips before they separated again.

"Let me just look at you for a second."

Bonnie let him look. The sun was starting to set, and she hadn't turned any of the lights on earlier. She didn't want to get up. She was comfortable, entangled as she was with Damon. Besides, he didn't need the light to see her.

The hand that had cradled the back of Bonnie's neck slipped around, tracing the thin gold chain over her collarbone and down her chest, before plucking the chain from her shirt with a crooked finger. Damon stared at the pendant, with the inset bloodstone, and the ring that dangled next to it. His two tokens. Bonnie licked her swollen lips nervously.

"You're wearing my ring." Damon smiled gently, like he couldn't control how much the sight of the ring pleased him.

"Not on my finger." Bonnie's abrupt reply made her wince. She had meant for it to sound playful, coy, but even to her own ears her words sounded belligerent.

Instead of causing the offense she'd feared, her denial made his smile widen. He met her eyes with a skeptical raised eyebrow that hardly matched his grin.

"Because having it around your neck means less? Stringing it next to the stone that brought you to me in the first place means less? You're wearing it, knowing that I meant it when I asked you all those years ago. You have to know what that makes me think."

He swooped in for another kiss, and she let him for a moment, responding enthusiastically, but then shifted away once more.

Bonnie drew the chain back from him before letting it go. The pendant and ring fell back to her chest but were no longer hidden beneath her shirt's neckline.

"Damon, I'm barely eighteen, and some of that age is from time travel and not recognized by the state. I'm too young to be getting married." Damon huffed and leaned back, falling heavily into the couch cushions.

"Okay, I'm just going to take this moment to point out that when we met, our age difference was much less creepy." Bonnie actually laughed. Of all the things he was worried about being held against him, this was it.

"Well since you haven't matured at all since 1864 I won't count that extra century against you."

"Century and a half, Bonnie, which is even worse. But I was actually referring to the seven-year difference that we appear to have between us."

"Yeah, I didn't see you strictly following the half-your-age-plus-seven rule when you were compelling Caroline or making moon eyes at Elena."

"That was different. They weren't…people."

"They're both people, Damon! You might consider one a used blood bag and the other an extension of Katherine, but that's not who there are."

"Yeah, yeah, I get it. Humans are friends not food. Kindly remember that this was conversation was about to be about you adding yourself to the list of women who reject me, break my heart, and drive me into murderous rampages, not my many other faults."

"Okay, first that list is not a real list, because it's still only Katherine. You've blamed most of your violence on Stefan, and I think you'd rather agree with me when I say that the murders you commit are your own fault than unpack the psychosexual implications of your relationship with Stefan."

"Bonnie." He gave her a flat look.

"Oh, right, the point. Age difference and everything aside, this isn't a rejection, if we're actually counting your proposal on the Titanic as real. This is a… not yet. My brain isn't fully developed yet, I can't marry my immortal boyfriend without full brain capacity, even if we've technically been engaged since the turn of the last century." She joked, hoping that softening it with humor would help the quasi-rejection go down easier.

"Boyfriend?" Damon asked. Which was…not what she was expecting him to focus on.

"Yes, that is the non-threatening, non-eternally binding term for you, because we're dating." Right? Bonnie resisted the urge to add. That wasn't a question. They had just spent hours making out on the couch and confessing their love, they were dating.

"You know divorce exists right? Not exactly eternally binding?"

"That's your pitch for marriage? That we could always get a divorce?"

Damon grimaced, and Bonnie laughed. Then she kissed him.

"Perfect, very fatalist, very you. But I doubt you'd want to fight with me over custody of our friends."

"You mean your friends." He volleyed.

Bonnie raised a single brow.

"Your brother?"

"We split custody of Stefan, but I get Alaric." She laid another peck on his lips, before pulling away and trying to school her face into seriousness.

"Damon, when I say yes, I have to be sure. Sure about more than just me and you. I have to be sure about forever, immortality and all that it entails. Are you okay with waiting for that?"

"As long as you need, Bonnie, take your time. I'm with you until the end. Besides, I've always had a thing for older women." He wriggled his eyebrows and Bonnie rolled her eyes.

She laid a hand on his chest.

"The other night, you said you weren't looking for any vows, just a chance at tomorrow," She looked up through her lashes. "so, I'm saying yes to that, and a firm maybe to your much earlier proposal. There's so much I'm not sure of right now but I'm willing to take this chance, not on you, but with you." She took a deep breath and met his eyes head on. "You in?"

Damon practically beamed.

"I'm all in, Bonnie. Let's see what tomorrow brings. Together."