The Departed
She's always hated the smell of blood.
That metallic, potent odor that helmed viscid death and heartache had never appealed to her. Not like it did to most of her undead friends anyways.
Even still, despite how execrable the smell is, she thinks that she should have gotten used to it by now. It seemed as though she had not lived through a single day where blood hadn't tainted it, not since the Salvatores arrived in Mystic Falls her junior year.
It's that familiar scent that causes her nose to scrunch slightly as she enters the wedding hall. There's nearly hundreds of cracked and crumpled bodies that lay strewn across the floor dusted with glass shatters and coated in ropes of the dark slippery liquid that is oh so pivotal to existence.
She's not surprised when she sees the bodies, or when she has her senses assaulted by the dank irony smell saturating the distilled air. When Matt had first showed her his recording, she had felt a blanket of dread settle itself over her like leadened film. It was so heavy that it had bound her to the worn leather of the couch, trapping her in place so all she could do was watch black, soulless eyes and curving lips underneath the crackling film static.
She knew then, that he would do something like this. Not just from the lifelessness that dulled the gray of his eyes, but maybe also from the crooked smile that never seemed to leave his face. He had promised the Gemini coven an excruciating death for two decades after all. That type of mindset didn't just disappear.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, your betrayal really hurt me, Bon.
She knows that in reality, it wasn't the Gemini's fault. Not really. The Gemini's weren't the reason he had snapped and decided to storm the wedding hall with a grand explosion.
So, this is kind of all your fault.
It was that sentence, that low, lazy drawl of his that crawled through her skin and kept the fine hairs on the back of her neck raised well after she had gotten in the car to head to the wedding venue.
So, this is kind of all your fault.
On the surface level, behind the most basic of rationales, she knew that he was saying this because she had left him bleeding and bruised on the snow-ladened ground of the 1903 prison world. He was getting his revenge on her revenge and ultimately wanted to make her suffer in "new and inspired ways.'' It was as simple as that.
But things were never simple with Kai Parker.
Which is why she couldn't ignore the incessant prickling in the very back of her mind. It came from those shadowed recesses, the ones that she rarely visits because it's typically filled with cold doubt and harsh self-deprecation. It was that dark and fragile place in her mind that told her that revenge wasn't his only incentive.
Your betrayal really hurt me, Bon.
She rubbed the scarring tissue on her right wrist and scratched at the lingering sticky film the duck tape had left.
She hurt him. She hurt him.
It's such a foreign concept to her, trying to grasp at a potential underlying meaning behind the glaring obviousness. Especially one that she has such an unbending bias against.
She hurt him because she left him in 1903. It was her fault, and yet it wasn't because she just knew he would revert back to this crazed version of himself, and she had been right.
What he had done to Elena—she swallowed the thought down before it could latch itself further into her forethoughts.
This wasn't something she could afford to think about.
She couldn't, not when in a few minutes, she'd be facing him. She refused to crumple in on herself deliberating about her best friend, and incidentally make herself emotionally vulnerable before preparing for a fight like this.
Kai liked to fight physically, but he also liked to mentally exhaust and manipulate his opponents, and she couldn't afford anymore distractions.
Right now, she just needed to focus on ridding the ceaseless prickling in her head, because it was starting to act more and more like an itch she just couldn't scratch.
Ultimately, she knew, this uneasy feeling may have been purvey to intuition, or nerves, or maybe her body was trying to tell her that she was just so completely scared out of her mind, that her consciousness refused to pick up on it.
But there was the off chance that this inkling meant that she wasn't looking hard enough, wasn't thinking hard enough about the tape he had left her, or about their time in 1994 and 1903. That she hadn't paid enough attention to that look of desperation that had been etched onto every single detail of his face as she prepared to plunge her knife into his heart. It meant that there was some missing puzzle piece of potentiality that could end up tipping the scales in her favor, to the avoidance of further bloodshed. It meant that there was something more that she wasn't seeing, something that was just on the tip of her tongue.
Or on the tip of his tongue.
So this is kind of all your—
"—Bonnie?" It's Matt cutting through the frantic thoughts being tugged from the deep recesses of her mind. He's looking at her with concern awashed in crystalline eyes and worry lines around thin lips.
When she does nothing but stare numbly at the blocks of yellow paint diminishing on the dark road just beyond the windshield, he speaks up again, this time more determined.
"Listen, Bon. It's not too late. You can still leave town before Damon finds you. I don't have to drop you off at the wedding. You can leave all of this."
She can clearly hear Matt putting on an air of composure to counter the thinly veiled apprehension fogging the car, so she pretends that she doesn't hear the way his words slightly lilt with an edge of panic.
She also pretends not to notice how he's just as terrified for her as she feels.
But Damon isn't who she should be worrying about.
Instead, she clears her throat and unglues her eyes from the windshield to stare resolutely at familiar baby blues, and says what she always says when she's about to thrust herself into a life-threatening situation for the sake of her friends.
"I'll be fine, Matt. I promise."
.
.
Bonnie was never really one for talking.
She tended to do a lot of thinking in her head. She was usually the wallflower of her friend group, the one who didn't need to talk a lot because she could always count on other people to do the talking for her. Instead, she liked to think because it made her feel prepared and controlled.
The talking was usually done by the people who liked hearing themselves, the ones who thought aloud, and who needed validation from others.
She was not one of those people.
She preferred to sit in the background, assess her situation and think about the next possible form of action before observing more and consequently modifying her angle.
Kai Parker was the exact opposite.
He fell directly into the category of people who loved the sound of their own voice.
Which is why she doesn't even need to know where the wedding hall is because she can hear him deliberating to himself as she carefully pads through the barren and blood-stained hallway.
The first thing she notices as she walks into the room, besides the crystalline chandelier that is quite literally on the floor in the doorway, is the ghastly wound resting just above his clavicle.
She can see the bright red blood oozing from chunks of mangled flesh. The crimson secretion grossly contrasts the milky skin of his neck, drenching the entirety of it.
She can recognize a werewolf bite when she sees one.
She thinks she says something to him regarding the bite, as if she just can't help herself from commenting on it.
Just like how she can't help the surge of satisfaction that tingles through to her fingertips at the sight of his wounded body.
Despite the urgency of the situation, she's in a dream state, her head is hazy and calm as if her own mind is subconsciously protecting her from knowing that she's walking through a field of death, or perhaps walking towards her own.
Even when he laughs in response, in a loud, acrid and bitter tone, instead of processing it fully, it just echoes softly through her head without touching her.
She flinches though, when that sardonic bark of laughter abruptly cuts off, the sudden silence harshly yanking her back to reality.
Because the reality is is that he wants her to suffer, and that one of them is dying tonight whether she likes it or not.
She realizes brazenly, as her mind catches up with itself, that there is no need for digging deeper, or scrutinizing all their past interactions like she had been trying to do in the car ride over.
There's something different about him.
It's off and more unsettling in the way it shifts the air around him.
She supposes she could attribute it to the fact that he's now also a vampire, but she knows that that's not all it is.
There's nothing even remotely salvageable about this.
Not when he's looking at her with eyes so dead, she can feel a chill deep in her bones.
In that moment, an unbidden image flashes through her. There's cerulean eyes, hopeful and colorful, illuminated by flurries of white snow. She dismisses the image before it can sink itself further into her, and instead focuses her attention on the calculated glinting of grayed pupils.
Before she can tense her shoulders to prepare herself against the impending onslaught, he veers sideways and goes off on a patronizing spiel instead.
"Do your friends think you're funny?"
He doesn't give her a chance to retort and she thinks that it's for the best.
She's become too aware of the sudden paranoia seeping through her to dignify him with a response.
She can't wrap her head around why he's still prolonging the inevitable when those soulless eyes of his have been telling her he's wanted the exact opposite from the moment she stepped into the wedding hall.
"Because maybe," he adjusts the collar of his shirt, and she watches guardedly as more blood seeps from the neck wound and underneath his fingernails, "if you were funny, if you were the one with the good jokes who they could always count on to make them laugh, maybe they'd be cool with letting you live instead of Elena."
She pretends that his comment doesn't cause a slight pang of hurt to bleed into the expanse of the dread she's feeling, but rather purses her lips into a sententious smile, because she knows that seeing her crack is what he wants most, and she won't give him the satisfaction.
After tonight, she's counting on never having to deal with him trying to worm his way under her skin ever again.
This is the thought that splurges her forwards.
She slowly stalks closer, worn boots carefully stepping around the dead bodies and glass fragments.
"You're right. Sadistic humor's your thing. I'm just the one that does magic."
Before realizing that he had a werewolf bite percolating and poisoning his body, she hadn't been so sure about the outcome of this night. She now credits her uncertainty as to why she had been desperately excogitating their shared past and his possible alternative motives on the car ride over.
Even so, he was an all-powerful coven leader, and she was simply a witch who had (foolishly) dappled in Expression magic. But now, she can see the instability in his eyes, and the way he leans slightly onto one foot. She's willing to bet that if he walked towards her, his gait would hold a staggering limp.
He's been physically weakened, and he's slowly going insane. He may snap again, but he'll be unorganized, and sloppy in his attack while his own darkness consumes him.
But even though she can see him slowly spiraling, he still wants her dead.
And she wants him dead—which means, it's now or never.
And besides, she's tired of talking.
The saccharine tilt of her lips immediately slips from her face as her hand raises. She can feel her tendrils of bright magic seeking the only other form of life in the room as she sends an aneurysm coursing in that direction.
"Undo the spell, Kai!"
She watches; her emerald eyes narrow, directing all her focus and strength into her magic, and only losenning her grip slightly as large hands begrudgingly press onto blood-stained temples.
"I can't," he grits out at her, "my death made it permanent."
She almost falters when she sees his eyes flash with something other than dull black. Instead, she hastily tightens her grip and sends another powerful flood of magic towards him.
She can feel each and every one of the bones in his kneecaps cracking and giving under the pressure of her magic.
She lets out a small breath as he finally drops to the ground like a cement building wavering then abruptly crumbling in the midst of a hurricane.
He cackles.
And she sucks that small breath right back in.
She pauses, that uneasy feeling of dread and paranoia threatening to sink back into her even harder than before, but she reminds herself that despite his mocking bravado, he's still thoroughly battered on the floor by her hand.
That, and there's only a matter of time before his gruesome wound becomes more than happy to do the rest of her dirty work for her.
"Fine," her voice cracks slightly, but that's besides the point, "I'll just wait for the werewolf bite to kill you."
The unsettling air percolating through the room is making it impossible to think of anything but a calm before the storm.
She tries not to flinch as he languidly pops his jaw in response, and chooses to ignore the way the derisive grin doesn't leave his face. Her gaze instead flickers to the dark red that's been steadily trickling from his neck onto the lapel of his jacket.
"You know what's funny?"
She thinks that he may be trying to smirk at her, but it comes out as more of a grimace.
"I didn't even know werewolves were real until I got bit by one."
There's something distinctly off putting in the way his voice has remained airy and offhand while on the brink of death.
Despite logic telling her that she is winning this fight, that unsettling air still hasn't left, so she decides to take precaution and notices the overturned table just to the left of her.
He's long since rolled over with his back turned from her, so when she goes carefully to break off the leg of the table, she doesn't notice the faint murmuring of Latin floating from under his breath.
This time, when she treads closer, she's more than ready to bury the wooden stake into his bloody flesh and finally finish what she started back in 1903.
But he speaks again, in that same airy tone before she even gets the chance.
"The thing is, Bon. The only way a guy turns into a wolf, is if it's magic, right? So technically, their venom's magic too."
There's a pause in his haggering breathing, and already she can feel foreign coils of bright magic rising like heat from the same trickling path of blood on the lapel she had been tracing with her gaze earlier.
"So I just went ahead and siphoned it up."
She freezes at his words, and it's like every single nerve ending webbed in her brain is screaming at her to run as that steady steam of magic grows bigger and then melds into something darker.
But she can't run, she's paralyzed.
She feels paralyzed because she knows, more surely than anything, that it'd be no use, not when she watches as he stands up on legs that should be broken and runs his bloody fingers over a bite that is no longer there.
She's not sure if she drops the stake in her hand from pure shock, or if his magic makes her do it.
She doesn't try to run as he raises a ringed hand and feels his synthesized but growing aura of magic latch onto her throat.
She's suffocating, and her body levitates. She feels as though she's being hung from the ceiling by her throat as it tightens more and more, but she doesn't scream or frantically kick her legs. Instead, she watches villainous eyes bore into her, straight through her soul.
There's only one thought floating through the panic fogging up her mind.
This isn't the Kai she knows.
He's not the one she left in 1903, but he's not the Kai from '94 either.
The man standing before her is different, worse somehow.
His eyes don't carry that cold, unfeeling, apathetic rigidness she'd gotten so used to while trapped in his prison world, or that sickeningly overwhelming swirl of emotion that he'd bared to her in 1903.
He's more like a dark abyss of nothingness, the eyes staring back at her contain nothing but a painfully dull listlessness, his face blank.
She realizes now that his eyes aren't boring into her. He's not even looking at her, he's looking past her. It's like he's detached himself, he's let go of her. Like there's no shared history between them, no shared anything.
His expression shows that he is only concentrating on curling his magic tighter around her.
She has a brief trembling thought that he may have turned his humanity off, but dismisses it because she can very clearly feel a very real and jarring anger emanating from his aura that makes the little air that's trickling into her lungs burn.
A sort of jolted revelation bursts through her previous panic as she comes to the certain realization that he may hate her more than she hates him.
But that's when it clicks, the last piece of the puzzle she had been slaving over before Matt had abruptly tugged her from her thoughts in the front seat of his truck.
That's when her revelation turns into something more on its own accord, into something appalled. Her panic turns to dread. The missing puzzle piece in of itself doesn't fit itself into its correct place all at once, it slowly seeps in, and even then it doesn't quite fit the way she wants it to.
That prickling sensation crawls back up her skull, much stronger this time, as if just understanding the urgency of her situation.
And she can see it now, the puzzle piece in all its glory.
It comes to fruition in the form of that unbidden image from before: beautiful blue-gray eyes flooded, drowning in a sea of aching emotion, illuminated by snowflakes petaling through the air.
It's the puzzle piece that explains it. It explains the detachment. The suffocating aura of anger smothering the room. The video. His hurt. 1903.
Or at least it tries to. And that's enough.
Because now she knows that it wasn't hate that she'd felt pouring off his aura in waves.
It was resentment.
The brooding dread spreads over her gradually as the puzzle piece finally clicks succinctly into place.
She doesn't wait for the dread to settle.
"Wait...wait."
She's surprised that she can even get her weak voice to croak over his tight hold around her throat. Her neck muscles gallantly stretch and gasp around the cord of magic pushing her trachea into itself.
She isn't shocked when he doesn't release his hold on her, but almost gasps in sheer surprise when she can feel his tendrils of magic slightly lessen their burning grip.
"I know why...you're doing this."
Her eyes are still locked on his, and she refuses to look away, not even when he lets out a cruel, disbelieving puff of laughter through perfectly straight teeth.
She tries not to gasp again as her body is suddenly yanked closer to him, she's still suspended in the air and her feet barely graze against the floor littered with cracked glass and blood.
"Uh, yeah... I kind of told you why I was doing this in the tape recording I left you, remember? Does, I want you to suffer in new and inspired ways, ring any bells?"
He's mocking her. She can tell by the slight smirk that's quirked up the corner of his mouth, the way one of his eyes brows is raised and his head tilts slightly to the side; in the way the once dull gray of his eyes now sparkle.
But she swallows her pride and her need to viciously bite back at him, and instead focuses on the fact that she is able to swallow in the first place, and that her body has been lowered to the ground.
She can't help but think that he's only spared her life thus far so he can have one last fleeting satisfaction of taunting her to her face.
But his grasp isn't as heavy as before, it feels more like a phantom hand holding her from stepping closer to him, rather than the white hot grip of his magic that had been squeezing the air from her lungs just a few moments before.
The tell-tale waves of angry magic that's still spilling off of him despite his construed mask of mockery is what strengthens her conviction to continue.
"No."
She ignores the way his eyebrows raise all the way up to his hairline at the surprising amount of steel in her voice.
She swallows again, to prevent her voice from cracking as she gets the next words of out, less aggressive this time.
"That isn't why you're doing this. And you know it. We both do."
Kai blinks once, as if surprised that Bonnie would even dare to challenge his remark when he was so viciously holding her suspended between life and death just moments ago.
And she supposes she should be more desperate and less demanding, should be fighting more for her life, trying to manipulate or plead with him in any way possible to keep herself alive.
But right now, she just wants answers. The pleading can come when she knows she's failed.
"Wow. Um, please enlighten me then, Bonster, because I would really, truly love to know what other reasons you have for my linking your life to your best friend."
She takes a deep breath then. Her eyes briefly waver shut—that puzzle-piece image of gray eyes in snow burn behind her eyelids—before snapping them open to look him squarely in the face.
She just needed a reaction, anything to prove that she was right. And then she could use this to her potential advantage. One that was yet to be bestowed on her.
She hadn't even really been paying attention to his earlier inquiry, but she gets the gist of it. She's too busy readying herself in pushing out the most onerous tasting words she'd ever say to someone like him.
"You like me."
She feels like an absolute idiot saying it out loud.
The words somehow fall flat despite her strong and sure tone, and there's an awful silence that's fallen over the room.
But the mocking smile is immediately dropped from his face at her words. And for a second, she thinks she has him.
But then his eyes sparkle again, a wide dimpled grin cracks through his faux seriousness, as if he can't even try to pretend to take her seriously, and she feels a sinking feeling drop low in her stomach.
And then when he laughs again, it's a hearty laugh. He practically doubles over into himself, and she's pretty sure she can see tears spring from the corner of his eyes.
Her cheeks heat up despite herself and she has to keep the burning embarrassment and loathing threatening to crawl up her throat at bay.
She doesn't think she's hated anyone more.
She barely has time to register that he's released his magical hold on her before he suddenly straightens up and settles a disgustingly patronizing look onto her.
"That—that got me, Bon. For the record, I don't have some sort of school girl crush on you. But I truly am flattered you know, that you'd think I'd go through all this trouble because I "like" you."
Her green eyes narrow when he moves his blood-stained fingers to form quotation marks towards the end of his sentence. The amusement is clear in his features, and it's a look she's seen many times before; should be used to even, but she's not.
Not when it's her life and her friends' lives at stake.
Except what he's saying makes perfect sense, it's more than logical. Why would anyone go through this sort of trouble, other than for revenge.
But she knows better than anyone that this type of thing—feelings aren't logical.
And she's not yet ready to let go of the puzzle piece; the raw, bleeding emotion she saw in 1903, of what she saw on the video recording, and of what she's seeing now.
Somewhere in that twisted little heart of his, she hurt him. He wouldn't have lashed out this brashly if he didn't care in some capacity, for her. And she should have known better than to think that the manipulator who likes to twist situations to his will would ever allow himself to be truly vulnerable and confess to her without struggle. But she was going to keep trying if it meant she could buy everyone more time, if nothing else. Because even if he never ends up admitting anything to her, the longer he stays in the wedding hall and talks to her, the less time he spends running after everyone else she cares about.
So she swallows down her embarrassment, her pride, everything, and continues.
"I know that you're lying, Kai."
She takes a tentative step towards him, but his eyes flash dangerously despite his amused grin, and she immediately knows that that was the wrong move. But she continues anyways, not knowing why or when her voice started sounding so hoarse.
"And I know that I..." she swallows harshly, his words from the tape recording echoing through her head as she gets the next words out "...hurt you."
She swallows again, wondering maniacally if the reason why that patronizing grin hasn't moved from his face is because he's somehow frozen it on.
"Admit it."
She has absolutely no idea of why she spits that last part out at him, there's just something about his very existence that brings forth a deep seated aggression.
"Admit it."
She says it louder this time, answering to his determined silence, because maybe she finally has become desperate. That image of the missing puzzle piece has been slowly fading out of her vision, just like the possibility of her coming out of this alive.
She just needs to wait for the right time to strike; she can feel the faint beat of her magic humming just under her fingertips in anticipation. She's not strong enough to fight back yet, as she'd used too many powerful spells in breaking his bone marrow. She just needed more time to get her strength back. She doesn't know when exactly she'd become more concerned about stalling, and less about getting the answers she had desperately needed just a few moments ago.
But despite her stalling, she thinks that maybe she has finally pushed him too far this time.
So when that stupid smirk falls off his face at her repeated demand, she knows that it's for real, because now she can feel a new bout of anger simmering around him.
There's her reaction.
And she can't help but be relieved.
But her short-lived relief vanishes because the longer she stares at him, the more she can see something breaking from the inside.
It's like she's tapped into a dam. His magical aura that's been darkly tainted grows stronger—stronger and angrier than it should be. His jaw clenches in an attempt to regain his self-control. His eyes refocus in a confusing array of emotions—none of which she can place—before they snap back to hers. The rest of his face settles into an irritated and dangerous scowl.
She knows then, looking at the darkened features of his face, that she should run.
It'd be her death wish to try to use any of her magic against him now.
But he's on her before she can take a step in any direction.
His body is hunched over hers and he's crushed her into the wall behind them, his cold, blood-stained fingers curl around her throat, pushing her head backwards, her neck uncomfortably angled in a way that forces her to look up at him.
Although this kind of choking hurts less, it feels more real and final. But she's not even thinking about her imminent death, all she's thinking about is how he got to her.
He had pinned her with a superhuman speed, one that she was all too familiar with.
She'd forgotten that he was also a Heretic.
An abomination of nature.
A vampire.
And that fact alone somehow terrifies her more than being murdered in cold blood.
"You admit it!"
He growls at her, his hot breath puffs onto her forehead. His anger is practically seeping out of his ears. And it's overwhelming the both of them.
She doesn't know why, but her brain suddenly short circuits at his demand. She can't even feel her own terror anymore. She's preparing herself for tarring veins and reddened corneas; they don't come. And he's too close to her, she can see too many details of his face, too many peels of dried blood clotting against fine stubble.
He smells like death.
Her mouth opens and closes, wanting to defend herself, insult him, anything, but it snaps shut instead.
There's no trace of that cool and calculated anger that's she had gotten so used to in '94, but he's no longer detached either. It's like he's been set aflame.
He's someone whose last breadth of sanity was melting apart at the seams.
And she knows it's not just because he's now a vampire. This was a long time coming.
She'd felt a very brief and fleeting relief at getting a reaction from him, but she couldn't ignore the very stiff and unmoving blanket of dread that had fallen over her the moment that last puzzle piece had fallen into place, the one that lead her directly to this.
It was because, despite her relief at being right, she didn't want to be right about this. She didn't want to have to bear the responsibility of all the heartache and destruction that he'd caused because of her. Or be forced to evaluate, or question herself. So when he asks her to 'admit' to her own feelings, her mind goes blank and she suddenly can't register anything but fear at her own confused denial. She simply doesn't know how to think of anything but her hatred for him and him alone
"I don't—I don't know what you're talking about."
Her voice comes out small, too small, because now he's searching her face frantically. He's trying to find something, anything that contradicts her words.
And she should have seen this coming, but she hates his desperation so much that she'd rather he just rip out chunks of her throat with his own teeth. She's become outraged at the prospect that he could possibly think that she has anything else to offer for him to use against her.
Because there's nothing there but hatred, and she's sure of it.
But even still, she feels like coiling into herself.
He's supposed to be the enigma who hides things, not her. And he's too vicious and demanding in his search, too close to feeling like he's peeling and ripping her soul apart.
He's too close to her.
He suddenly stops his searching, his back straightens, putting a slightly larger sliver of distance between them, and it's like she can finally breathe again. But then his eyes finally zero in on something other than her face.
Her neck.
Rough pads of large, ringed fingers squeeze once around her throat, as if testing her pulse, no doubt able to feel and hear how hard it's hammering away just under the surface of her skin.
He'll eat her if he can't find anything.
And she's ashamed for feeling grateful for it.
"Do you know what it's like to be a human blood-bag for a bunch of previously desiccated vampires?"
His eyes are still trained dazedly on the squeezed skin of her neck underneath his fingertips, almost as though he's hypnotized.
"Taking bites from your flesh like you're an all you can eat buffet? Having to heal yourself with as much power as you can and draining your energy so much to the point where you'd only wake up to realize you're being fed on?"
He pushes out of his daze slowly as he speaks and by the end it's like he's trying not to explode at her, like he's frustratingly attempting to make a dumb child understand his use of big words.
She tries to speak then, she really does, but the words turn to sand in her mouth, because his eyes suddenly snap back up to hers with a gaze that is now pinning her too sharply.
"You thought I was ruthless, you can't even imagine what they put me through. And they were siphons at that. I always lost, no matter what. No matter how hard I tried to fight them off, screamed at them to stop, they'd never listen, I was their goddamn coven leader, but they knew I'd never be strong enough to fight them all."
"I'm sorry…"
Her voice finally pushes the words out, as if on reflex, as if out of politeness—because it's the right thing to do. It's like she can't help but feel an ache of pity for a person who suffers, even if that person was Kai Parker.
Because when it comes down to it, she's not that sorry that she trapped him in a prison world again.
What she meant to say to him was, I didn't know.
Maybe if she had known he'd be stuck with a bunch of raging vampire-siphons, she might have thought differently about her revenge plan. It wasn't in her nature to be so cruel.
Cruelty was in his.
He briefly searches her eyes again, and again, she's not sure what he's looking for, but he must have found it because he lets out a short exhale of disbelief, his plump lips quirking upwards ruefully at her apology.
It's like she's so transparent that he just knows that her apology was more automatic and out of courtesy and pity than real responsibility for her own brash actions.
"You thought that you knew the real reason I did all of this. That it was because I liked you."
His voice curls oddly around the word "liked" as if it's something so trivial, that he's never had to utter it before. He gets back in her face then, in the way that makes her want to fold into herself. He's not holding onto that same tightened coil of emotive anger from before, but slips more into an eerily calm growl as he continues.
"You're still wrong, Bonnie."
A new shot of fear spikes through her at his ominous admission. Because she had been so sure of his motives, but he was just too convincing in proving her otherwise.
She struggles only slightly against him then, maybe just to see how mobile she was under his firm grip on her neck, to see if she could still escape if she needed to. She barely budges against him, her knees knock slightly into his, but her head stays firmly planted against the cold wall behind her. His grip is too tight, his height too overbearing in comparison to her small frame. Her magic still hasn't completely restored itself.
She's not leaving anytime soon.
So she tries instead to dampen the tilt of hysteria threatening to cling to her next words.
"We don't have to do this, Kai. I'm sorr—"
"—It's a little late for apologies, don't you think?"
His voice is calm again, but it still cuts meanly through her meek second attempt of an apology in a way that makes a prickling of tears appear behind her eyelids. And then, when she can only watch his face while he watches her, slowly, the upper side of his lip quirks upwards, as if remembering the faint outline of an old joke.
"I will say that you were right when you said you hurt me, I mean that much was obvious.
"And I guess you were also right about us not having to do this, not how I originally planned it at least. Before you decided to pull a fast one on me, I was going to deliver you dying to Damon to agonize the two of you for a while, you know, make him choose between you or Elena."
There's something sparkling in his eyes as he continues, and Bonnie has to fight the bile rising up her throat.
"But Damon's not here, and you're not dying yet."
He shakes his head slightly, murmuring the last part to himself, as if in disbelief that she had managed to survive thus far.
"The thing is, Bon, I don't want it to be over so soon anymore, your suffering, I mean.
"I mean, I was stuck in 1903 for months, killing you now would just be mercy."
No, no, no.
She thinks it over and over again in her head. She wants to scream it at him at the top of her lungs, let the sentiment rip from her entire being, and have her magic implode with it. But she can't, because there's a lump lodged too deep in her throat. And she can do nothing but helplessly watch gray eyes languidly trail over her face until they settle on the top of her Cupid's bow mouth.
"I think it's time for a little change of plans, don't you think?"
His eyes travel back up to pools of drowning green, and she can tell that he really wants to make sure she's listening this time.
She is.
"First, I want you to feel the pain and suffering that I did. All of it."
Her chest constricts tightly on its own volition, she can feel the first tear drop balance precariously on the edge of her eyelid. But she won't let it fall. She refuses to cry in front of him; she won't give him the satisfaction. Her chin lifts on its own accord, in the only bout of defiance she can muster.
"I want you to beg, and plead for my forgiveness, just like I did before you stabbed me in the back. And then, I'm going to drink your blood until you beg me to stop. But I won't kill you, not yet, I'll bite you until you know that there's no hope of escaping me, that you'll always be too weak to. I'll feed on you until you can't feel anything but pain and me. And then maybe, I'll kill the rest of your friends—you know, for good measure."
She can feel her magic roar to life almost in defense at his threatening words. Her power is warm and bright underneath her skin. It had been depleted earlier, only a dim candle in comparison to what it was now. If it hadn't come back when it did, she knew she would have had no other choice but to resort to doing something completely dangerous like using Expression.
She doesn't know why, but she stays frozen, mutely blinking up at him, the burning sensation behind her eyelids finally lessening with the knowledge that her magic is back. She'll wait for the right moment to make her escape.
She'll be damned if she doesn't go down without a fight.
His eyes bore into her, and it feels worse than the baseless searching he had been doing earlier. Her magic flares brighter.
He speaks again just as she is about to release her magic crackling through her fingertips.
"I want to ruin you, just like they ruined me."
His hands move from around her neck, faster than even her own eyes can track, to harshly clutch the sides of her arms in a vice grip.
It happens too quickly. She's not prepared, and she will forever hate herself for waiting so long to use her magic against him.
It's like every cell in her body is being ripped apart as he siphons the magic from her.
A cry is torn from her throat, the precarious tear that she had sucked into herself falls freely and is followed by others. She feels so weak, that her knees buckle under her, and she can feel nothing but the fabric of worn dress pants slotting firmly against her jeans to keep her weight upwards, and a ghost of a painful sting settling through her body.
Her vision becomes darkened with spots with blurred edges, her eyelids droop with the exhaustion of keeping herself from letting the spots bleed over the entirety of her vision.
She feels a finger trail down her tear-stained cheek next. It's a feather-light touch so delicate, it's like he's touching porcelain. A faint, warm breath of air brushes against her skin like a caress, the voice soothingly shushing the miserable sobs that she realizes belatedly are coming from her.
She barely hears when he speaks to her next. The voice that slips through her ears is distant and soft. The hand that's not delicately wiping tears from her skin, comes to brush stray strands of hair from her forehead, like he's lulling her to sleep.
"We can start with the begging for my forgiveness first."
She startles then, when she feels the hand that was brushing her hair from her face roughly grip her jaw and force her lulling head to center itself.
She feels her eyes begin to water again as they settle themselves on his face, recognition pouring through her as she realizes that this isn't just some horrible dream that she'll wake up from. This is real life and it's happening to her.
She doesn't register the way his eyes travel back to her lips.
"I've always wondered what lengths you'd go to for your friends. You want me to spare the rest of them, don't you? I mean, you are their self-proclaimed martyr and all."
The once rugged and handsome features of his blood-speckled face become ruined with a taunting wickedness.
She's snapped herself out of her lovely dream-state now.
His comment forces a new bout of anger to surge through her. And another bout when she realizes how close he's hovering over her again. She tries to viciously move her head out of his grip through a sudden burst of energy, but she cries out as the fingers clutching her jaw clamp right back onto her throat, cool metal bands digging themselves into the already tender and bruised skin.
And then they're right back to square one.
Except this time, she can't stand on her own.
His knees are still locked against hers, keeping her pressed and upright against the wall behind them. The hand gripping her neck keeps her back from slouching and her head from lulling. Their chests graze slightly.
And he must know that he's torturing her with his closeness, that of all the things he could've done to her, that this—each brush of his sternum against the bare skin above her v-neck top, each involuntary squeeze of his long, undead fingers against the live pulse of her neck—is what makes her stomach twist and coil in the worst possible way. It's worse than any torture or pain. Because this is what makes her feel trapped and inherently violated. It's like he's trying to brand and dig his vile touch into her skin, and keep it there.
She watches his Adam's apple bob against strong neck veins splattered in a layer of dried blood, and a sliver of a pink tongue dips outwards to lick the underside of his upper lip. His eyes sparkle again.
He's enjoying this.
He's enjoying watching her practically lose her mind, and not being able to do a single thing about it.
She bites her own lip to prevent herself from screeching at him.
"So tell me, Bonnie, what exactly would you do to gain my forgiveness...
...To save your precious friends from me?"
His voice is still slippery and low, stroking its way through her ear canals, like he's trying to dress up his threat in dripping sweetener.
His intense gaze flickers distractedly to the lower lip that she's plucked between her teeth, except he pauses, and lingers there. And when his eyes darken considerably, and she knows then, that he's lost himself.
The small steady fan of his warm breath against the skin of her cheek falters just for a second.
But it's enough.
The realization smacks into her so harshly that it's like all the air in the world is being wrenched from her lungs completely.
It's in his eyes, his stilted breath, his gaze, his closeness.
He's hungry.
But not for her blood.
She hadn't prepared for this. This wasn't on the tape or 1903. She'd thought that he was just doing this to torture her; the closeness, the intense stares. His feelings for her were supposed to be mild, bridled, simplistic and hallowed. She hadn't known, hadn't registered the possibility—
"—Would you beg, Bonnie?"
His voice comes out as a hoarse whisper then, and now Bonnie doesn't miss the way it slightly bends along something that almost sounds like a groan. And the way he says her name, in that deep tone, like something delicious is wetting and swirling around his tongue, causes a nervous tremor to ripple through her. The sinful implication of his words travel straight down to her stomach and the warmth lingers somewhere lower than she had meant it to.
They both know that he wants her to beg for an entirely new reason.
He's no longer talking about his forgiveness.
His eyelids lower, his dark gaze is laser focused as he raises a ringed finger to gently brush against the skin of her lower lip. And she's so terrified by her revelation that he may actually want her, that she suddenly gets a perverse image of him delving that same finger deep into the warm cavity of her mouth.
She watches in slight horror as his pupils begin to bleed through the gray of his irises, as if knowing exactly what she didn't mean to think about. Heat blossoms on her cheeks despite the disgust and shame crawling through her at her uncontrived thought. Except now the only thing she can focus on is the way their chests brush slightly against each other with each rise and fall.
She can no longer separate between the air she's breathing and his.
They're so close now that they're practically breathing in the carbon dioxide leaving each other's lips.
She feels his breath spread over her face, grazing against the curve of her lips, his fingers dip and stroke themselves a trail of fire across her cheek bones, the smell of death and blood looms around them. The little magic she has left cackles beneath her skin and her veins throb with each frantic pump of blood to her hammering heart.
...until all you can feel is pain and me
He's assaulted each and every one of her senses.
She can almost see the fragile air that's barely dividing the space between their lips tremor slightly.
He's too close to her again.
And her brain short circuits for a second time.
Her eyelids flutter shut on their own accord.
Maybe to make him finally disappear.
Maybe to give him permission...
At first there's nothing, just absolute darkness and the sound and feel of their warm breaths intermingling.
She holds hers, sucks her breath deep into her lungs, and it's like time freezes.
She feels his lower lip just barely brush against the underside of her upper lip and something white-hot rips through her body so violently that she has to bite back a gasp.
She doesn't even register the sound of footsteps falling determinedly in the distance.
"Well, look who finally decided to show up."
Her blood pumps so viciously and loudly that she can barely even hear the muddled affirmation that another body has joined them.
Her eyes open slowly and with no urgency. She dazedly stares at Kai, briefly wondering why his attention is no longer on her.
Her eyes graze over the profile of his face, tracing the sharpness of a jawline that she'd never noticed before, as she follows his line of sight.
He's looking at Damon.
Damon is stood in the doorway, the lines of his forehead are creased, impossibly bright blue eyes are staring determinately at her, scaling her face, no doubt looking for any signs of harm.
His confirmed presence promptly shakes herself out of the spell Kai must have put her under, and she can't help the surge of gratefulness and familiarity she feels at his presence. The breath that had been coiled within her is finally exhaled in relief.
She opens her mouth to speak to him, if only to say his name, but Kai beats her to it.
"I must say, I wasn't sure you were gonna show up at all given that for all you knew, I could've been doing your dirty work for you. But I guess I did get a bit sidetracked—"
His voice is back to that careless lilt. The low timbre no longer seeps into her skin and makes her think about things she shouldn't. It's still silky and smooth, but in a different way. He was different with her.
"Let her go, Kai."
It's the first time she's heard Damon speak, the first time she'd seen him all day. And she can't help but feel a sense of pride at the way Damon is unwavering when it comes to protecting her, but even still, an uneasiness falls upon her again. She doesn't know exactly how hard he'll fight for her. He must know what Kai did to Elena.
"Hmm, tempting argument, Damon, but uh, I don't think so."
Contradictrally, Kai releases Bonnie, and it's so sudden, that the gasp she had been holding earlier spills from her lips and her knees crumple below her. She hadn't realized how weak she still was from his siphoning. Her vision begins to blur completely, and her back slides down the wall behind her. She thinks she sees Damon charge towards her out of the corner of her eye, but something's stopped him.
She fights through her body's need to throw itself out of consciousness, and finally focuses her attention on Damon. His dark, bushy eyebrows are furrowed in the distance, and large veiny hands are raised to clasp themselves around his throat. She can practically feel the air around her desperately trying to work its way down Damon's throat to feed his straining lungs. Her eyes travel to Kai, who's ringed fingers are spread towards Damon, the corner of his upper lip stretches upwards as he takes in Damon's suffering.
Somewhere in her weak state, Bonnie finds it within herself to protest.
"Please, don't."
Her voice is soft, and slightly hoarse from all the choking she's endured, but she knows that with their super-hearing, they both know that she's spoken.
She watches the smirk twitch on Kai's face.
"You know, I always wondered what you saw in him, Bon Bon. I mean you forgave him, him, practically ate out of his hands and kneeled over no matter how many times he insulted or berated or used you."
Damon lets out another groan as he's forced to his knees, Bonnie flinches when his black jeans crunch loudly against dulled and bloody glass.
Kai turns to her then, his eyes holding that same blazing fire that they'd had when she had first tried to force him to admit his feelings to her.
But she's not focused on his words that are meant to cut through her. She supposes, that somewhere in the very back of her mind that Kai is making sense, but none of that matters.
Not when she could lose her best friend.
"I mean come on, he's a pregnant-lady-murdering abomination of nature, and—didn't he turn your own mother into a vampire or something?"
Bonnie swallows the scratchiness out of her throat and forces the old wound that Kai has reopened to stitch itself back up. She can't afford to waste time in letting Kai get to her. She uses her hands to claw against the wall behind her to push her body weight back into a standing position, her head comes to rest on the cold plaster as she gathers her breath from the exertion.
Kai's not looking at her when he addresses her for a third time.
"And yet you couldn't find it in that big ole heart of yours to forgive the one person who truly mattered in the long-run."
Damon abruptly splutters then. She watches in horror as blood begins to seep out of his eyes. His mouth hangs open and he coughs viciously as the crimson secretion dribbles down his chin and then spurts from his ears. Damon's face turns a terrifying red color, and his entire body hunches over as pain wracks his form.
Bonnie propels herself off the wall, launching herself towards Kai, aiming to grab onto the ripped fabric of his arm, only to stumble to the ground just short of him. Her palms fall directly onto the cracked glass littering the floor, but she doesn't even flinch as the sharp glass shards cut themselves across her now bleeding palms.
She watches, a hysteric sort of fear reaches her when she sees graying veins creep up from under the scuff of Damon's collar. It looks like he's being desiccated, like poison traveling steadily through his body, and it's only a matter of time before it reaches its destination.
"No! Kai! Stop! You're killing him!"
Her voice comes out louder this time. The exhaustion melts off her body, the adrenaline that pumps through her makes her alert of each writhe of pain Damon omits, each twitch of Kai's fingers causing wave after wave of power to crash onto Damon's desiccating form.
"And still, she defends you. I mean, Bonnie, what did you think would happen, that he wouldn't take the opportunity to leave you here to die so that he could go back to his precious Elena? That he would fight for you?"
He turns to her with an eyebrow raised, his dimples ghost against his skin as he laughs incredulously at Bonnie. He turns his gaze back to Damon's crumpled form and she can see Kai's Adam's apple bob in his throat as he swallows his grin into a thin line.
"You're deluding yourself."
His voice turns bitter as he mutters that last part. A shadow appears over his face as he continues to stare at Damon's dying form. His anger has settled into something calm, into something morbid and uncaring. There is no doubt in Bonnie's mind that he will kill Damon if its the last thing he ever does.
Bonnie's grief catches in her throat as the graying veins travel higher, almost covering the entirety of Damon's face. She's so frightened and so certain that Damon will die that she can't even will herself to get up from her knees. Her aching terror explodes outwards instead.
"Kai! Stop!"
The scream is so frantic and piercing and devastated, that it finally directs his attention towards her.
His head swivels towards her disgruntled state on the floor, but his hand slowly ceases its magical onslaught in Damon. She carefully watches the ringed hand that has lowered in surprise at her outburst with her face twisted in horror, and fresh tears dampening her cheeks. Her eyes frantically skid over to Damon's unconscious form, waiting to see him fully dessicated, only to watch the graying veins gradually dissipate from his bruised and battered face.
Orbs of green finally settle themselves back on Kai's face. A somber silence fills the room.
He simply stares at her with those gray eyes, as if seeing her for the first time, like he doesn't recognize her.
Like he'd expected differently from her.
His eyes drift onto the floor, to the space right between them, they unfocus, and then he's deep in thought, somewhere far away.
Damon's body lays stagnant and unmoving in the background.
I just need you to give me one more chance
She remembers thinking then, that his eyes were such a delicate blue color that they were almost transparent, just tinted with a twinge of light gray. She remembers wondering in 1903 how eyes so beautiful could hold so much malice.
That guy at the Grille. She hadn't wanted to give him a chance. She'd refused to. Because she'd hated him just as much as the guy who left her out to bleed alone at his childhood home. Maybe even more.
She knew now that her hate had been misplaced. It was misplaced if it meant that she could have avoided what was standing in front of her now.
The way he had tried to kill Damon so tactlessly, the way he had looked at him so cruelly, it almost reminded her of the monster he had been in 1994. The one who made others suffer if only for his own benefit and spite. Except she knows now that he wasn't doing this only out of spite.
That was the old Kai Parker.
What he had said about Damon to her while he was making the blood seep from his brain was a direct attack on her.
It was from the workings of this new Kai Parker the one who only wanted her to suffer, who only wanted for her to see the blinding truth in her own errors and mistakes. To feel the same pain that he had.
Their adversaries from before—Kathrine, Klaus, the Originals—had never bothered in making her suffer explicitly for things she did to them. They had been concerned with everyone in the Scooby gang to ensure their goals. Sure they'd threaten a family member or a boyfriend of hers, but never had they done something like torture someone she loved in front of her, with the sole purpose of making her suffer. Because the thing is, none of the enemies she had ever dealt with involved her suffering as their end goal. Never had their attacks been this personal. Never had they went out with the sole purpose of attacking her character, her self-righteousness and need for protecting those close to her.
Kai was different from the others.
He wasn't killing Damon because he hated Damon, he was killing Damon because he hated her.
Resented her, she reminded herself.
Because it all lead back to that missing puzzle piece. All because of what she had done to him back in 1903. All because she had looked at the overwhelming sea of emotions swirling within pearly gray eyes as he begged her to give him one more chance, watched the bright dimpled smile that lit up his face when she had pretended to, saw his grief and devastation as he told her that he had changed for the better, and still betrayed him.
She had been hurt and angry beyond measure, so consumed with hatred for him that she hadn't been able to think logically. She had been so twisted and influenced by her own selfish need for revenge that she had never considered anything else.
She remembered what that kind of hurt did to her. And she remembered what the revenge did too. It had felt good at first, and then it had felt like nothing.
And then the nightmares started. And all she could think about were paranoid thoughts of Kai escaping the prison world, which had marred over the realization that her revenge had still done nothing for her.
It hadn't filled the aching gap in her soul that had been left there the moment she decided that she needed to take her own life after months of solitude. It hadn't fixed the steep aloneness she had felt at the rave amidst a crowd of people. Hadn't stopped her from drifting off into her own head to escape the overwhelming amount of background noise and the presence of other people, even if they were people she loved. It hadn't distracted from the fact that Kai Parker was the first person she ever killed.
It hadn't helped her be herself again.
She'd done this to Kai back when she didn't even believe that he'd had any real emotions to be felt. She'd been wrong.
Because he's just as hurt as she was.
And she knew that this, what Kai was doing to her, in hopes of filling that aching hole of hurt that she'd carved into his soul, it wouldn't help him either.
And she knew that ultimately, maybe nothing ever would.
She closes her eyes then, briefly, wondering if Kai's off center gaze means that he's contemplating his actions just as much as she is.
And then she exhales and finally stands, and staggers onto her tattered boots.
He doesn't look at her.
But she needs to say this, even when it ends up killing her.
"Listen, Kai. I screwed you over back in 1903, I know that, and I know that that was a mistake. And I know that you're hurting right now, and you want me to suffer, but that won't truly make you happy in the long run."
His eyes snap determinedly to hers then. A sort of salaciousness has shadowed over the far away look that had been on his face.
And she's about to continue, but both of them still when they hear Damon let out a sort of dry wheeze. She can practically see the murderous intent creep back onto Kai's face and his spine straightening at the sound.
But she won't let Kai turn his attention back to Damon to distract himself from her.
She steps closer and hurriedly pushes out words that she knows will keep his gaze on hers, and away from her best friend.
His revenge was about her and only her.
Her brain wracks itself, thinking of 1903, of the one thing he wanted from her that she could still give, besides her suffering.
"You said to me once, back in 1903 that you just wanted one more chance. I can give that to you. I wasn't ready to forgive you then, and I'm not sure I am now. Because you seem to forget that you've also hurt me more than anyone else has.
"But despite this, I know that nothing either of us do—no matter how much we try to hurt each other—will be able to change what's happened in the past."
His face changes again, and she's not sure if it's blankness is a good thing or a bad thing. So she swallows again, her eyes briefly flickering to Damon's limp form despite herself, before walking close enough to Kai that she can see the faint scar that's diagonally etched onto his forehead.
"But if you stop this now; Stop the killing, undo the spell, we can change what will happen in the future, for the both of us. I can give you that second chance. I will give it to you"
She speaks her words with a conviction that she hadn't thought possible, and stares into the eyes of the monster who had hurt her more than anyone.
And although she doesn't quite believe her own words, doesn't quite believe in the sanctity of either of their futures, what she does firmly believe is that this resentment that he holds for her won't go away in the way he is hoping it will, so there's no shame in trying it her way.
In the way that will give both of them that second chance.
She thinks of Damon, and of Elena, and of all the people she could've saved if she had just given him that second chance the first time around.
Even if she hadn't meant it.
Even if she doesn't mean it now.
He's still looking at her with that blank look on his face, the one that doesn't give way to anything that he's thinking about, and even further, she can sense his aura as muddled and churning.
"I promise you we can do this together."
She doesn't know why she adds that last part, maybe because the blankness still hasn't cleared from his face, maybe because he really is one step away from finally ending it all, ending her life. Maybe because she wants him to believe that he's finally not alone in his hurt. They've hurt each other. But she knows how to fix him. She's gone the extra mile to offer her willingness, her chance that he had wanted so badly, and the promise that they'd get through this together.
She's offered him so much of herself that he may actually believe her. He has to.
She had given him the one thing he knew she wouldn't be able to take back; a promise.
The blankness clears from his features slowly, in a way that makes her have to guess what emotion will replace it.
The feeling reveals itself plainly.
The icy chill that cuts through her is so deep and so malicious, that her entire body pauses its functioning.
She doesn't even get the chance to think about anything but raw panic before an invisible hand clamps tight around her throat in a vice grip and drags her until her boots scuff against worn dress shoes.
His eyes pierce through her skin.
They're murderous.
She has never seen her death more clearly than when staring at his lethal visage.
Warm breath washes haggardly over her cheeks, his nostrils flare, and he gets so close to her fear-stricken face that she can see every single dark fleck of blue splattering the gray of his irises.
He speaks to her in a warning tone, and it's so low, so menacing, that she can practically feel the anger trembling underneath his will to maintain his control.
"If you're lying to me, I will make sure that you suffer worse than you can ever imagine, even worse than what I already had planned for you."
Her eyes squeeze shut, her body practically trembles with the need to get as far away from him as possible.
But she knows that this is him giving her her chance, and she needs to take it.
For everyone's sake.
Her throat constricts so harshly at his threat that she hadn't noticed when his magical death grip had left her. She unsteadily meets his dark eyes again and has to swallow twice before she can respond to him.
"I'm not lying to you, Kai."
Her heart beats too frantically for anything to be discerned. She could be lying or terrified. Or telling the truth and terrified.
Or all three.
His eyes search hers again, in that familiar franticness, before he slowly takes a single step away from her. His eyes wander back to Damon's still form behind him before he turns to face her once more, his voice and gaze holding a sort of tenderness that surprises her.
"You have five minutes to say goodbye. I'm gonna wait outside."
She watches cautiously as he turns and stalks away from her, as if waiting to see him turn around at the last second and out her for trying to fool him.
"...B-onnie"
Her guard is immediately broken down once she hears the gasping croak sound from Damon's lips. She immediately rushes towards his side and doesn't care when her scabbing knees make contact with the shards once more.
"Damon, Oh God. I swear everything is going to be alright okay? I will get Kai to undo the spell, I just need some more time."
She settles Damon's head in her lap, her fingers running through the wet and matted raven hair on the top of his head. Tears begin streaming out of her eyelids as she takes in the dried blood that's caked itself all over his face. She holds out her wrist to his mouth, as a sort of offering, reminded of the time all those years ago when he had found her bleeding and bruised after the 1920's decade dance and fed her his own blood. That was back when the Damon she knew then wasn't the Damon she knew now.
Her eyebrows furrow when he doesn't take her blood offering and instead raises a shaking hand to gently cradle the side of her face.
"This...isn't...love."
Shock and confusion erupts through her at his omission. She blinks blankly at Damon, trying in vain to understand why his train of thought has lead him there of all places.
She thinks back to the tender way Kai had looked at her before he'd left, the way his voice had softened. That must've been what Damon had heard earlier.
Damon was right, that wasn't love.
That was someone getting what they wanted.
"Of course it isn't, but he—he needs me. And I—I can help him, help all of us by keeping him at bay, and away from you guys."
Bonnie laughs in disbelief to herself as more tears stream down her face. The implications that she is actually willing to send herself off to Kai Parker of all people, that she had promised togetherness to the one person who remembered promises for 18 years at a time, that he is actually waiting for her outside, is finally starting to sink in.
But it's for the best, she reminds herself. For her friends to be safe from him.
"And you heard him, I mean he actually agreed to stop killing and to reverse the spell if I did this. I'm doing this for you guys. And it won't be goodbye forever. I will see you guys as soon as I can, you guys have my phone number—"
"—Bonnie…"
"Just, tell Elena I love her when you see her okay? And everyone else too. Matt a-and Caroline—"
She chokes up then, the steady stream of tears begin to pour down her face like a flood that doesn't plan on stopping. Her throat is filled with too many hysterical emotions that she doesn't know how to properly express.
So when she stares at Damon again, she allows herself just briefly to bask in the tender caress of his thumb thats still brushing against the top of her cheek bone. She allows herself to take comfort in someone she loves because she doesn't know how long it'll be before she gets to feel this safe again.
Before being stuck in 1994, she'd never thought she'd feel this way about Damon Salvatore of all people. He had been stuck in her stereotypical vampire box of vicious and selfish murderers who didn't deserve her respect. And then he had turned into someone she trusted with her life, someone who had fought every day to get her out of that prison world, someone who came to her rescue even though the love of his life was comatose, he'd become someone who she loved. And if she were being honest, Damon's voice was the only voice she could stand the sound of in those dark moments when she retreated into herself and couldn't bear to live through another day with so much noise.
All the words in the world couldn't describe how much he meant to her, how he'd cemented himself so deeply in her life.
So she decides to show him instead.
She leans down, and presses her warm lips onto blood-stained pillows. The hand that was caressing her face stills, but she feels the flickering of eyelids fluttering shut as his dark eyelashes brush feather-light against her cheeks.
The kiss wasn't meant to be romantic. It was more than that. It was a symbol of her gratefulness, for their friendship.
It was to say goodbye.
The kiss didn't mean that she was in love with Damon Salvatore, she simply loved him.
And now he knew.
"Goodbye, Damon."
Her eyes travel over his face once more with a sorrowed smile curving her lips, but looking at him becomes unbearable once she notices a glistening sheen swell over the clear blue of his eyes the longer he looks at her.
She gently rests his head back onto the bed of cracked glass and treachery below them, and makes her way out of the wedding hall.
.
.
She's in a hotel.
That much can be discerned by the sleek drapes and the pristinely white and already made bed in the center of the room.
She had fallen asleep on the way over, probably from being mentally and physically drained from losing so many bodily fluids. She was still consequently exhausted when she had awoken to the sound of the car screeching to a stop in front of the hotel valet parking.
The people at the front desk didn't even bat an eye at her and Kai's bloody and disgruntled forms, instead they merely nodded at Kai while he lead her to their room.
Which is how she ended up stuck in a hotel room with Kai Parker.
They were clearly in a room that he'd been staying in, as there was a half eaten bag of Pork Rinds on one of the bedside tables, and an opened suitcase strewn in the middle of the closet.
He hasn't said a word to her since being in the wedding hall.
She would say that his silence was unnerving, except that she can't help but feel grateful for it. Their relationship is fragile at best, and she feels as though anything regarding this night could easily break said fragility.
She stands awkwardly in the middle of the room as he digs through his suitcase to find an oversized shirt for her to sleep in.
She slips easily into the bathroom, exhaling with a palpable relief when she realizes she finally has a semblance of privacy away from him.
Her phone buzzes in her pocket. Her hands shake as she rips her cellphone from the tight confines of her jeans.
It's a single text. From Elena Gilbert.
She doesn't even get the chance to read it before her shoulders start shaking with sobs. She had thought that she was drained of tears, and yet it was as though she couldn't seem to stop crying.
Everything she had endured today, all the pain, suffering, sacrifice, it had all been worth it.
Her best friend was back.
She shakily wipes the tear droplets from her phone screen to read Elena's text.
B, where are u? Call me as soon as u can.
She feels a bite of pain and dread at having to explain everything that had happened to her, to the both of them today. So she trusts that once Damon heals, he'll fill in the blanks that she's unable to.
I can't talk right now but I'm fine. Don't worry about me, just know that I'm safe. I'll see you as soon as I can. Love you.
She slides her phone shut and presses it face down on the bathroom counter before her, closing her eyes and aiming her head to the ceiling, she takes deep breaths to prevent herself from falling apart again.
She makes sure to avoid looking at herself in the mirror directly.
After washing all the grief and sadness and consequent hopefulness off of her face, she peels her bloody clothing off her broken and bruised body and slips into the clean, oversized Nirvana shirt that Kai gave her.
It smells flowery like fabric softener, not like him.
And for that, she is grateful.
When she finally and carefully creaks open the bathroom door, she doesn't know why she's startled to see him sitting at the edge of the left side of the bed staring in her direction. His positioning tells her that he'd sat and waited for her to finish.
He's no longer wearing the torn and bloodied suit from earlier, but is instead donning loose gray sweatpants and a plain navy long sleeved sleep shirt. She doesn't know why the aspect of him wearing simple clothing is so bizarre to her, but it looks misplaced nonetheless. He looks so mundane and unassuming like this, like he wasn't capable of the evil he's shown her.
He's staring at her with a serious and contemplative look as she exits the bathroom, and she's not quite sure what to make of it. She takes steps towards him until his eyes have to travel upwards and his neck has to slightly angle itself backwards to look at her directly.
She lets out a long exhale of breath and her eyes briefly flutter shut before steadying themselves back on his contemplative face.
"Thank you."
They both know what she's referring to. She's assumed that while she had been saying goodbye to Damon, he had busied himself in undoing the spell.
And she's not quite sure if she means it, to him. But she sure is thankful that her best friend is no longer in a sleeping comma and he's spared her and the rest of the people she loves.
His eyes tear themselves away from hers to focus on the bathroom door beyond her, and she watches baitedly and a bit warily as he gives a stiff and somber nod in response.
She steps over to the other side of the queen bed and turns off the lamp sitting on the beside table to the right of her, before slipping her bare legs under the cool and heavy covers of the hotel duvet. She turns to rest on her side, her legs draw upwards slightly.
She tries to fall sleep, and for 30 minutes, she screws her eyes shut and waits for sleep take her exhausted state unrelenting, and brutally, like she deserves.
And for 30 minutes, sleep does no such thing.
She'd assumed that Kai himself had fallen asleep, as she could hear his steady breathing and nothing else from the moment she'd turned off her lamp and bathed them in pitch black darkness.
But then, she feels a soft dip in the mattress sag just behind where the curve of her hip bone meets the sheets.
Her eyes can't adjust to the pitch darkness that surrounds her, but she hears a bit of shuffling coming from Kai's side of the bed. It seems as though he can't sleep either.
The shuffling noises continue for a few seconds and then abruptly stop.
And then suddenly, a pale hand appears out of nowhere and splays itself gently onto the slope of her stomach, and she has to bite down the startled scream threatening to bubble straight out of her throat.
Her entire body goes rigid.
She's too angry to be scared, and is about to turn herself towards him so she can bear her teeth to his face, when he presses the entire length of his body against the curvature of her back.
She can feel everything about him.
His hard chest packing itself into the jutting bones of her shoulder blades, his pelvic bones melding into the curved form of her butt cheeks.
He's outrageously close to her, and yet she doesn't move.
She wants nothing more than to arch away from him, scream and wrench herself out of his grip, but she remains rigid. She remains "asleep."
She doesn't move a muscle, not even when she feels the slope of his pointed noise brush itself a path of goosebumps onto the back of her neck. Not even when he buries his nose straight into the curvature and keeps it there.
Not even when he exhales a steep and final sound of relief that rattles through to her bones.
Instead, she takes deep breaths to prevent herself from vomiting over the side of the bed.
She had thought earlier, that the thought of him wanting her was terrifying.
But this, this was petrifying.
He doesn't hold her like someone who wants her. He doesn't press his body to hers so intimately with the intent of possessing and corrupting hers.
There's intent, but it's different.
It's delicate and fragile, and desperate.
She had been in denial earlier when Damon had brought it up, but now?
You're deluding yourself.
Kai had said this to her earlier.
And he'd been right.
It's because she knows now, more surely than anything, that Kai Parker is in love with her.